‘by the power of Ra’

‘at the sign of Ka’ this is the both arms raised gesture you see in tarot cards. 

there is another gesture one hand points up to the sky, the other down to the earth (as in the illustration of baphomet). there is another analogous gesture, one foot is on the solid land of reason, the other dips into the water of the unconscious. 

one of the futile battles of life is the one where you try to avoid being fooled by language. to help your memory and sense of solidity of self you arrange facts into stories with causes and effects, you identify facts as facts on the basis of how well they fit into the story and comment upon them. if your eye should happen to rest on an inconvenient fact that doesn’t fit the story you purse your lips and pass over it in silence. the texts themselves are circulated among the people of the world and in so doing they are subtly changed generating new stories. when placed alongside each other the stories generate new stories. 

it is a mistake to believe this can be ultimately extirpated from reason (leaving only what can be said for certain). but you can keep a watchful eye on yourself and your stories. 

horsemouth has finished reading the magus - he finds the central character unsympathetic (but that’s ok). fowles started writing it in the early 50ies and there are layers in it that are lawrence durrell and graham greene and evelyn waugh. (a friend has just been to port meirion - it is the prisoner also). 

in the latest new left review there is a discussion of generations. they view these as requiring a specific change in economic situation in order to be generated. thus the current generation is made by the financial crash of 2008, a new generation will be made by the deepening of that crisis as a result of coronavirus. before that? probably thatcher/ reagan. we are living in the aftermath of globalisation, in the ruins of the idea that the market is always right (and is itself intelligent). 

outside it is rainy and grey. it will be a day of sitting in and reading horsemouth suspects. yesterday the sun shone. horsemouth sat around outside in his shorts. in the afternoon he went for a walk on the common with his mum. 

it is the islamic new year 1442 AH - the islamic lunar year is eleven to twelve days shorter than the solar gregorian year each year, so it does not occur on the same day of the gregorian calendar every year. (horsemouth is intrigued by the idea of a lunar year). since the beginning of the 21st century, there is a trend within the muslim communities of north america and europe to substitute a lunar calendar based on calculations for the traditional islamic method of monthly observation of the new moon to declare the beginning of the new month in each country separately. 

this strikes horsemouth as very strange - how can the notion of time be disintegrated (though the time is integrated for each country horsemouth notes). conversely it disturbs him that the saudi’s are the main motor of having an integrated time. anyway - not really horsemouth’s business. 

the lunar calendar will gain one year for every 30 years of a solar calendar - the islamic and gregorian calendars are about 2020-1442 =578 years out of sync. can the calendars ever be in sync? when the new year starts on the same day? when the years match? 

last night he watched an amicus horror movie the skull - the skull in question is the skull of the marquis de sade, now a magical artefact capable of causing murders. christopher lee warns him off but peter cushing must possess it (to help him write his books debunking the occult). you can tell how that one is going to end.