After noon. You didn't have any blood orders at Tri Health for blood so
you will wait until Tuesday. It had been a trip in for nothing. Earlier Carol
pulled up the bedroom shade and the yard was lightly sprinkled with a dusting
of snow. The surrounding house roofs were white. Quite a surprise. - Amorella
1244 hours. We called and Kim and Paul had a bit of snow also. They have
a busy day and a football party this afternoon at a neighbors. OSU is playing
Penn State. I picked up new meds last night but didn't take them because of all
the health warnings. Paul said it would be okay to start them tonight as
tomorrow you have fewer steroids and only one on Monday. I trust my doctors but
I rely on Paul as a back-up. Carol's going over the mail and a December Consumer's
Report arrived. I don't remember seeing the November issue.
Carol sent you to Kroger's for five items,
you came back close to an hour later with seven. - Amorella
1611 hours. It was like a few days before Thanksgiving. You could hardly
maneuver a cart at times, and there were full lines at the checkouts. People
appeared personally focused on particular objectives like two pounds of brown
rice in aisle four or a tube of Bob Evans hot sausage at the far end of the
meat aisle. I was relaxed with time on my hands but a lot of people had this
'get in and get out' look in their eyes. It was almost three-thirty when I
arrived home and Carol was out in the flower garden cutting back stems of who
knows what flowers long gone. She hadn't had any lunch either so we drove back
to McD's for a couple Egg McMuffins and a large diet Coke.
You managed to complete the new Consumer
Reports. - Amorella
1621 hours. Not much for personal interest in this one. There are
usually a couple of articles worth reading but not this time. I am ready for a
nap.
Later, dude. - Amorella
2016 hours. I have tweaked this old story of mine below. It is a second story from the Merlyn's Mind series pulled not
from random but because like the one last night (also a version of another
story) I think it is fitting.
***
Grandma's Story 2. h17
I have a little story that happened several
thousand years ago. It was on an island off of what is now called Southeast
Asia. A woman and a man were arguing which of the gods they wanted to place on
their porch. The woman’s goddess was kind and generous to a fault, and she
thought that it would be appropriate to show the guest, whoever sheorhe was,
that the guest is always welcome to their home.
The man replied (the woman always
spoke first) that he thought his goddess was best because she was the defender
of the home and this would show the guest that although sheorhe was welcome,
that home security was more important than hospitality. They fought about this
off and on over the course of the next year. Meanwhile no god or goddess was
represented for display so the guest, if there was one, would never really know
whether sheorhe was really welcome in the home. Both homeowners agreed that
better no god or goddess than the wrong one.
Now one would think
that the gods and goddesses would both be offended because none was represented
but that was not the case. Gods and Goddesses of those times were as
indifferent as I, Grandma, was to the whole scene. Eventually though, the
couple broke into a real battle one day. She stabbed him with a knife and he
struck her with an ax. Both died. Both are still fighting in a place after
physical death that I affectionately and timely call heavenanhellbothorneither. I don’t think the remnants either woman
or man once from Southeast Asia really realizes that each physically dead
because the battle is and always was in what I consider to be a metaphysical
realm, you see. The highly conscious mind is in a metaphysical state.
Grandma grinned sharply and added,
“Those who consider the mind to be the same weight as the brain it stems from
might consider how many human minds can be put on the head of a pen.”
A story state is a quantum state in two wee quatrains
On how the ethereal mind is separated from the brains.
You measure once, you measure twice, and much to your surprise;
How fast and long the logic runs from the brain to theorize.
My goddess here, your god sits there, on a porch long laid bare,
The body to the brain is stuck while the mind runs long on unaware.
Yet, all the while, from this old Grandma's toothy gums
Is something new, yet familiar - or so the thought now runs.
***
No matter who wrote the
above story you have no problem editing what was there originally. - Amorella
2056 hours. Legally, I do the writing so I can do the editing.
Ghost writing is purely inventive in nature?
- Amorella
2057 hours. It depends on how deep our human nature is. Mortal remains
are not sacred, but the human spirit is in that it deserves the respect given
to all else with a naturally born infestation of spiritual transcendence or the
feeling of natural spiritual transcendence holding and breaking the bonds of
earth, air, fire and water. (2105)
Post. - Amorella
Terminology
Anthropological context
Cultural
Locale
Post.
- Amorella
You feel this would be a
good place to inject a bit of Wikipedia mainly because you forget what has been
written on the subject. Go to it for that reason alone. - Amorella
**
**
Ghost
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
In folklore, a ghost
(sometimes known as an apparition, haunt, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter
or spectre, spirit, spook,
and wraith) is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can
appear to the living. Descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible
presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to realistic, lifelike
visions. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is
known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a seance.
The belief in the
existence of an afterlife, as well as manifestations of the spirits of the dead
is widespread, dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate
cultures. Certain religious practices—funeral rites, exorcisms, and some
practices of spiritualism and ritual magic—are specifically designed to rest
the spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as solitary, human-like
essences, though stories of ghostly armies and the ghosts of animals rather
than humans have also been recounted. They are believed to haunt particular locations,
objects, or people they were associated with in life.
The overwhelming consensus of science is that ghosts do not
exist. Their existence is impossible to falsify, and ghost hunting has been
classified as pseudosciece. Despite centuries of investigation, there is no
scientific evidence that any location is inhabited by spirits of the dead.
Terminology
The
English word ghost continues Old English gást, from a
hypothetical Common Germanic *gaistaz.
. . .
Besides
denoting the human spirit or soul, both of the living and the deceased, the Old
English word is used as a synonym of Latin spiritus also in the meaning of
"breath" or "blast" from the earliest attestations (9th
century). It could also denote any good or evil spirit, such as angels and
demons; the Anglo-Saxon gospel
refers to the demonic possession of Matthew 12:43 as se unclæna gast. Also from the
Old English period, the word could denote the spirit of God, viz. the
"Holy Ghost". "
The
now-prevailing sense of "the soul of a deceased person, spoken of as
appearing in a visible form" only emerges in Middle English (14th century). The modern noun does,
however, retain a wider field of application, extending on one hand to
"soul", "spirit", vital principle", "mind",
or "psyche", the seat of feeling, thought, and moral judgement; on
the other hand used figuratively of any shadowy outline, or fuzzy or
unsubstantial image; in optics, photography, and cinematography especially, a
flare, secondary image, or spurious signal. . . .
Anthropological context
A
notion of the transcendent, supernatural, or numinous, , usually involving
entities like ghosts, demons or deities, is a cultural universal. In
pre-literate folk religions, these beliefs are often summarized under animism
and ancestor worship. Some
people believe the ghost or spirit never leaves Earth until there is no-one
left to remember the one who died. . . .
Nineteenth-century
anthropologist James Frazer stated
in his classic work, The Golden Bough,
that souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body.
Ghosts and the afterlife
Although the human soul
was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird
or other animal, it appears to have been widely held that the soul was an exact
reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to clothing the person
wore. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such
works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead,
which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before
death, including the style of dress.
Fear of ghosts
While deceased ancestors are universally regarded as venerable,
and often believed to have a continued presence in some form of afterlife, the
spirit of a deceased person that persists in the material world (a ghost) is
regarded as an unnatural or undesirable state of affairs and the idea of ghosts
or revenants is associated with a reaction of fear. This is universally the
case in pre-modern folk cultures, but fear of ghosts also remains an integral
aspect of the modern ghost story, Gothic horror and other horror fiction dealing
with the supernatural.
Common attributes
Another widespread belief
concerning ghosts is that they are composed of a misty, airy, or subtle
material. Anthropologists link this idea to early beliefs that ghosts were the
person within the person (the person's spirit), most noticeable in ancient
cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears
visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered the metaphorical
meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the Latin spiritus
and the Greek pneuma, which by
analogy became extended to mean the soul. In the Bible, God is depicted as
synthesising Adam, as a living soul, from the dust of the Earth and the breath
of God.
In many traditional
accounts, ghosts were often thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance
(vengeful ghosts), or
imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life. The appearance of a
ghost has often been regarded as an omen or portent of death. Seeing one's own
ghostly double or "fetch" is a
related omen of death.
White ladies were reported
to appear in many rural areas, and supposed to have died tragically or suffered
trauma in life. White Lady legends are found around the world. Common to many
of them is the theme of losing or being betrayed by a husband or fiancé. They
are often associated with an individual family line or regarded as a harbinger
of death similar to a banshee.
Legends of ghost ships have existed since the 18th century; most
notable of these is the Flying Dutchman.
This theme has been used in literature in The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.
Cultural
The
idea of ghosts can be considered a tradition for certain cultures. Many believe
in the spirit world and often try to stay in contact with their loved ones.
Locale
A
place where ghosts are reported is described as haunted, and often seen as
being inhabited by spirits of deceased who may have been former residents or
were familiar with the property. Supernatural activity inside homes is said to
be mainly associated with violent or tragic events in the building's past such
as murder, accidental death, or suicide—sometimes in the recent or ancient
past. But not all hauntings are at a place of a violent death, or even on
violent grounds. Many cultures and religions believe the essence of a being,
such as the 'soul', continues to exist. Some religious views argue that the
'spirits' of those who have died have not 'passed over' and are trapped inside
the property where their memories and energy are strong.
History
There are many references
to ghosts in Mesopotamian religions– the religions of Sumer, Babylon, Assyria and
other early states in Mesopotamia. Traces of these beliefs survive in the later
Abrahamic religions that came to dominate the region. Ghosts were thought to be
created at time of death, taking on the memory and personality of the dead
person. They traveled to the netherworld, where they were assigned a position,
and led an existence similar in some ways to that of the living. Relatives of the
dead were expected to make offerings of food and drink to the dead to ease
their conditions. If they did not, the ghosts could inflict misfortune and
illness on the living. Traditional healing practices ascribed a variety of
illnesses to the action of ghosts, while others were caused by gods or demons.
. . .
Archaic and Classical
Greece
Ghosts appeared in Homer's
Odyssey and Iliad, , in which they were described as vanishing "as a
vapor, gibbering and whining into the earth". Homer's ghosts had little
interaction with the world of the living. Periodically they were called upon to
provide advice or prophecy, but they do not appear to be particularly feared.
Ghosts in the classical world often appeared in the form of vapor or smoke, but
at other times they were described as being substantial, appearing as they had
been at the time of death, complete with the wounds that killed them.
By the 5th century BC,
classical Greek ghosts had become haunting, frightening creatures who could
work to either good or evil purposes. The spirit of the dead was believed to
hover near the resting place of the corpse, and cemeteries were places the
living avoided. The dead were to be ritually mourned through public ceremony,
sacrifice, and libations, or else they might return to haunt their families.
The ancient Greeks held annual feasts to honor and placate the spirits of the
dead, to which the family ghosts were invited, and after which they were
"...firmly invited to leave until the same time next year."
The 5th-century BC play Oresteia includes an appearance of the
ghost of Clytemnestra, one of the first ghosts to appear in a work of fiction.
Plutarch, in the 1st
century AD, described the haunting of the baths at Chaeronea by the ghost of a
murdered man. The ghost's loud and frightful groans caused the people of the
town to seal up the doors of the building. Another celebrated account of a
haunted house from the ancient classical world is given by Pliny the Younger (c. 50 AD). Pliny describes the haunting of a house in Athens, which
was bought by the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus, who lived about 100 years
before Pliny. Knowing that the house was supposedly haunted, Athenodorus
intentionally set up his writing desk in the room where the apparition was said
to appear and sat there writing until late at night when he was disturbed by a
ghost bound in chains. He followed the ghost outside where it indicated a spot
on the ground. When Athenodorus later excavated the area, a shackled skeleton
was unearthed. The haunting ceased when the skeleton was given a proper
reburial. The writers Plautus and Lucian also wrote stories about haunted
houses.
In the New Testament, according
to Luke 24:37-39, following his resurrection, Jesus was forced to persuade the
Disciples that he was not a ghost (some versions of the Bible, such as the KJV
and NKJV, use the term "spirit"). Similarly, Jesus' followers at first
believed he was a ghost (spirit) when they saw him walking on water.
One of the first persons
to express disbelief in ghosts was Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century AD. In
his satirical novel The Lover of Lies
(circa 150 AD), he relates how Democritus "the learned man from Abdera in
Thrace" lived in a tomb outside the city gates to prove that cemeteries were not
haunted by the spirits of the departed. Lucian relates how he persisted in his
disbelief despite practical jokes perpetrated by "some young men of
Abdera" who dressed up in black robes with skull masks to frighten him.
This account by Lucian notes something about the popular classical expectation
of how a ghost should look.
In the 5th century AD, the
Christian priest Constantius of Lyon recorded an instance of the recurring
theme of the improperly buried dead who come back to haunt the living, and who
can only cease their haunting when their bones have been discovered and
properly reburied.
Middle Ages
Ghosts reported in
medieval Europe tended to fall into two categories: the souls of the dead, or
demons. The souls of the dead returned for a specific purpose. Demonic ghosts
existed only to torment or tempt the living. The living could tell them apart
by demanding their purpose in the name of Jesus Christ. The soul of a dead
person would divulge their mission, while a demonic ghost would be banished at
the sound of the Holy Name.
Most ghosts were souls
assigned to Purgatory, condemned for a specific period to atone for their
transgressions in life. Their penance was generally related to their sin. For
example, the ghost of a man who had been abusive to his servants was condemned
to tear off and swallow bits of his own tongue; the ghost of another man, who
had neglected to leave his cloak to the poor, was condemned to wear the cloak,
now "heavy as a church tower". These ghosts appeared to the living to
ask for prayers to end their suffering. Other dead souls returned to urge the
living to confess their sins before their own deaths.
Medieval European ghosts
were more substantial than ghosts described in the Victorian age, and there are
accounts of ghosts being wrestled with and physically restrained until a priest
could arrive to hear its confession. Some were less solid, and could move
through walls. Often they were described as paler and sadder versions of the
person they had been while alive, and dressed in tattered gray rags. The vast
majority of reported sightings were male.
There were some reported
cases of ghostly armies, fighting battles at night in the forest, or in the
remains of an Iron Age hillfort, as at Wandlebury, near Cambridge, England.
Living knights were sometimes challenged to single combat by phantom knights,
which vanished when defeated. . . .
Modern period of western
culture
Spiritualist movement
Spiritualism is a
monotheistic belief system or religion, postulating a belief in God, but with a
distinguishing feature of belief that spirits of the dead residing in the
spirit world can be contacted by "mediums", , who can then provide
information about the afterlife.
Spiritualism developed in
the United States and reached its peak growth in membership from the 1840s to
the 1920s, especially in English language countries. By 1897, it was said to
have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe, mostly
drawn from the middle and upper classes, while the corresponding movement in
continental Europe and Latin America is known as Spiritism.
The religion flourished
for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining
cohesion by periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the
missionary activities of accomplished mediums. Many prominent Spiritualists
were women. Most followers supported causes such as the abolition of slavery
and women's suffrage. By the late 1880s, credibility of the informal movement
weakened, due to accusations of fraud among mediums, and formal Spiritualist
organizations began to appear. Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily
through various denominational Spiritualist Churches in the United States and
United Kingdom. . . . Spiritism has adherents in many countries throughout the
world, including Spain, United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, England,
Argentina, Portugal, and especially Brazil, which has the largest proportion
and greatest number of followers.
Scientific view
The physician John Ferriar
wrote "An Essay Towards a Theory of Apparitions" in 1813 in which he
argued that sightings of ghosts were the result of optical illusions. Later the
French physician Alexandre Jacques Francois Briere de Boismont published On Hallucinations:
Or, the Rational History of Apparitions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and
Somnambulism in 1845 in which he claimed sightings of ghosts were the
result of hallucinations.
David Turner, a retired
physical chemist, suggested that ball lightnig could cause inanimate objects to
move erratically. Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry wrote that
there was no credible scientific evidence that any location was inhabited by
spirits of the dead. Limitations of human perception and ordinary physical explanations
can account for ghost sightings; for example, air pressure changes in a home
causing doors to slam, humidity changes causing boards to creak, condensation
in electrical connections causing intermittent behavior, or lights from a
passing car reflected through a window at night. Pareidolia, an innate tendency
to recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe
causes people to believe that they have 'seen ghosts'. Reports of ghosts
"seen out of the corner of the eye" may be accounted for by the
sensitivity of human peripheral vision. According to Nickell, peripheral vision
can easily mislead, especially late at night when the brain is tired and more
likely to misinterpret sights and sounds.
According to research in
anomalistic psychology visions of ghosts may arise from hypenagogic hallucinations
("waking dreams" experienced in the transitional states to and from
sleep). In a study of two experiments into alleged hauntings (Wiseman et al.
2003) came to the conclusion "that people consistently report unusual
experiences in 'haunted' areas because of environmental factors, which may
differ across locations." Some of these factors included "the
variance of local magnetic fields, size of location and lighting level stimuli
of which witnesses may not be consciously aware".
Some researchers, such as
Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Canada, have speculated that
changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the
Earth's crust or solar activity) could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and
produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. Sound is thought to
be another cause of supposed sightings. Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have
concluded that infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a
room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the
chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning, , which can cause changes in perception of
the visual and auditory systems was speculated upon as a possible explanation
for haunted houses as early as 1921.
People who experience sleep paralysis often report seeing ghosts
during their experiences. Neuroscientists Baland Jalal and V.S. Ramachandran have
recently proposed neurological theories for why people hallucinate ghosts
during sleep paralysis. Their theories emphasize the role of the parietal lobe
and mirror neurons in triggering such ghostly hallucinations. . . .
Metaphorical usages
Nietzsche argued that
people generally wear prudent masks in company; but that an alternative
strategy for social interaction is to present oneself as an absence, as a
social ghost – "One reaches out for us but gets no hold of us" – a
sentiment later echoed (if in a less positive way) by Carl Jung.
Nick Harkaway has
considered that all people carry a host of ghosts in their heads in the form of
impressions of past acquaintances – ghosts who represent mental maps of other
people in the world and serve as philosophical reference points.
Object relations theory sees human personalities as formed by
splitting off aspects of the person that he or she deems incompatible;
whereupon the person may be haunted in later life by such ghosts of his or her
alternate selves.
Selected and heavily edited from Wikipedia
** **
After
reading and editing this you are struck by the last paragraph on Object
relations theory . . . "the person may be haunted in later life by such
ghost of his or her alternate selves." Ironic, huh. - Amorella
2250
hours. During the reading I kept smirking to myself about the location of
hauntings --most of the I concurred begin and end in the human mind. The
haunting trials of an individual's soul and heart and mind. The alternative
selves, in this case being the spiritual selves, each uniquely combative as
well as conciliatory. This allows for a naturally haunted mind. (2254)
No comments:
Post a Comment