Halloween Protection Ghost

For those of you who don’t know, I make poppets (also known as spell dolls) I use them when I want to attract positive energy or good luck.

By placing the right herbs inside a poppet, I can enable it to represent luck or love or protection or basically anything I want so that I can manifest it in my life.

Halloween is coming up and it’s around this time that I like to go ghost hunting and conduct séances with or without a Ouija board. Some people believe that trying to contact spirits can be dangerous, for this reason it’s a good idea to stay safe by incorporating certain charms or herbs. I decided to create a protection poppet and in keeping with the Halloween theme, the little poppet is in the shape of a ghost.

This little protection ghost contains seven different herbs and ingredients that are used for protection and to ward off evil spirits. I like to keep my little ghost on my bedside table and it really does make me feel a lot safer.

My sister and I always spend Halloween together since we love it so much! I plan on placing my protection ghost in the centre of the spirit board and I’ll also carry him around in my pocket when we go ghost hunting.

I’ve handsewn a few other little protection ghosts and they’re available in my shop on Etsy. Click the link below to find out more.

Etsy

Advertisement

What Are Elementals?

When I first heard the term ‘elemental’ I got quite excited because the word sounds so mysterious and mystical. I was surprised to then learn that the things we believed in as children like mermaids and fairies are classed as Elementals.

Plenty of intelligent adults are open to the idea that ghosts exist, but mermaids, fairies and gnomes? Nah! That’s just ridiculous, right? Well I used to think so, until I did a little more research.

Firstly, I’ll talk about the four kinds of Elementals. As you’d expect, they come under the elements of earth, water, air and fire. Gnomes are of the earth, undines are of water (mermaids come under this category) , sylphs are of the air and include fairies, finally salamanders are of fire.

I was surprised to discover that many old houses and castles are rumoured to be haunted by Elementals. I had no idea that they could be classed as haunting a place like a ghost would be.

For me, the scariest example of an elemental being a nuisance is in Leap castle in Scotland. I don’t really understand why this entity is classed as an elemental and I dont know which type of elemental it’d be classed as, however it definitely doesn’t sound like the spirit of a dead person. There’s something certainly otherworldly about it.

The creature has been described by a previous resident of the castle, Mildred Darby as being about the size of a sheep with a human face and black holes for eyes. Others who have encountered this entity have mentioned that before seeing the creature, they’d be hit by the sickening smell of a rotting corpse.

In old folklore, Elementals are said to be without a soul and therefore need to marry a human to gain an eternal soul. The creature haunting Leap castle doesn’t sound like it’s looking to marry anytime soon and it is hard to picture that thing being classified under the same category as fairies and mermaids.

There seems to be two types of Elementals, on the one hand you’ve got fairies, gnomes and mermaids who are charming, mysterious and maybe a little mischievous and then you’ve got the other kind that are gross and creepy.

Before anyone points out that fairies are in fact evil because there are tales of them stealing babies, I am aware of this but you never hear anyone these days tell you their house is haunted by fairies, but evil foul smelling Elementals are still feared to this day.

Right, this is where we get to the main point of this article. If years ago it was a lot more common for folks to believe in fairies and other such entities, then surely that means people must have encountered them. Today most people think of that kind of stuff as children’s fairytales, and we surely wouldn’t relegate them to that if people were seeing winged creatures left, right and centre. You have to question if they did exist but died out or if they never existed and it was a case of some kind of mass hysteria.

What if humans have a kind of need to believe in otherworldly beings. Maybe fairies, ghosts, aliens, Bigfoot etc are one of the same thing; a manifestation of our desire for life to be more magical.

We have an emotional need to bond with people over a common enemy and what if ghosts, goblins, Elementals are that common enemy, one that we made up so that we could hide our fear of the real enemies that exist in reality. It’s more fun to fear a ghost than it is to fear nuclear war after all.

Memories

Unless you’re a pilot, flight engineer or airplane enthusiast, you’ll probably find it difficult to clearly visualise a plane. You know it’s got wings, landing gear, cockpit etc but if I asked you to draw a plane without looking at a picture of one, you’d probably end up missing a lot of detail out.

Why is it so difficult to visualise something you’ve seen many times? We’ve all seen planes in films, TV shows, on the news and of course most of us have seen them in real life too. It’s not just objects that we’ve seen before a few times, even things we see every single day will cause us problems when we’re asked to visualise or draw them.

If you go outside and try to picture each room in your house, you’ll find yourself thinking of an overall image, you won’t be able to picture every little detail or see the exact colour and pattern of things. You’ll have a rough idea of where objects are placed in the room but you’ll still miss out a lot of details and even some objects.

You may have heard that there are people in this world who are lucky enough to have a photographic memory or an eidetic memory. Although there has been small pieces of evidence to support the existence of these special talents within some people, it is believed that these talents don’t actually exist. There have been a small number of people who have managed to train their mind to hold into an image of something they’ve just looked at for a few seconds, however when recalling the image, even these people aren’t 100% accurate.

I believe that we do have the capacity to remember every detail of everything we’ve seen aswell as remember every single day of our lives. In fact there is some evidence that all of us remember pretty much everything, we just can’t access the memories in our normal conscious state.

As a touring musician I’ve experienced sleep deprivation many times. It is in this state that I’ve been able to access memories and images that I wouldn’t normally be able to.

On one occasion, I’d been awake for around 48 hours, as I finally drifted off to sleep, I closed my eyes and saw the faces of some of the neighbours I had growing up. I hadn’t seen these people for over 20 years and yet it was like looking at a photograph of them. I then imagined painting them. Every brush stroke and every bit of detail was so vivid and clear and the end result was pretty amazing, yet in reality I can’t paint. I can’t come up with the faces of people I used to know and remember every little detail about them.

I know people might say that I only thought everything was detailed and clear because I was half asleep, but I know for sure that it really was detailed, I just can’t prove it. There have been other times where I’ve seen clear scenes from childhood in a sleep deprived state.

I’m not alone, many other people have had similar experiences when drifting off to sleep, especially if they’re sleep deprived. Other people have had these kinds of experiences after taking certain drugs, in particular hallucinogenics.

The reason why this is so strange is because it implies that we do store everything we see and experience but we’re unable to access it when we want, but why? Is our brain like a computer? would it overheat if we kept accessing all the information we have in our mind. Are dreams the equivalent of a computer playing a screen saver when it’s in power saving mode? When we’re drifting off to sleep, parts of our brain shut down, is it then possible to access memories in this state because there’s no danger of overheating?

As crazy as I sound, it’s still weird that these memories and images are locked away somewhere for possibly no reason. Maybe they’ll come in handy in the afterlife?

Algorithms

Everyone has experienced a coincidence in their lives. There are a lot of famous coincidences. A big one that springs to mind is a novel entitled ‘The Wreck of the Titan’ it is about a fictional British ocean liner which crashes into an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sinks. The spooky thing about this novel is that it was published 14 years before the sinking of the Titanic. There are many similarities between the fictional ship and the real life Titanic, even the name is similar.

You could think that mad coincidences are just that, simple coincidences, but what if they’re not? There are many people out there, who claim that coincidences and weird occurrences start to happen more frequently right before a major event in their lives. it’s almost like the universe is giving us signs to let us know what will happen in out futures. It’s an interesting idea but is also quite a depressing thought, as it’d imply that we have no control over our own lives. It’d mean that we all have a path that we must walk and that we don’t really have freewill.

There is a theory that we’re living in a computerised universe. There are little clues that make you wonder if that is a possibility. The universe appears to have a code, it has patterns that would imply it was created. The Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical sequence where each number is the sum of the previous two numbers. Using the Fibonacci sequence, you can draw a golden spiral. You start with a rectangle for which the ratio between its length and width is the golden ratio. This rectangle can then be partitioned into a square and a similar rectangle and this newest rectangle can then be split in the same way. After continuing this process for a while, you can then connect the corners of these squares by semi-circles and form something that resembles the golden spiral. The reason why this is important is that the golden spiral exists in nature. It makes up certain flowers and shells and even the arms of our galaxy.

Golden Spiral

If we were to assume that we are living in a computer generated world, then it’d maybe explain the weird coincidences and glitches. If you imagine that everything is a jigsaw piece within a puzzle and that these pieces must fit together for the puzzle to uphold it’s function, then it’d be disastrous if a piece didn’t fit. In real life times, imagine you were meant to take a job in advertising, imagine it was your destiny! now imagine that instead of following that path, you decided to be a plumber instead. This different path doesn’t just affect you, it affects a lot of other people. You will come into contact with a completely different circle of people and maybe even meet your future partner through your work. It’s not so much of a problem necessarily because although you’ve altered your code within the computerised world, the game can adapt and write out a new code that still works for you and the other people. The real issue is if you did something completely out of character! something so different that no matter what code the computer altered to accommodate your new path, it’d still affect other people’s path in a way that would destroy the puzzle!

Has anyone ever broken the code? In my opinion, I believe that it’s a possibility that some people have managed to almost write themselves out of the code. These people become like glitches within the game, unable to interact with other people and destined to live alone so that they don’t affect the other puzzle pieces.

I’ll admit that this is a pretty crazy theory, and I’m not saying that this is fact, but it’s a pretty interesting idea and so far we can’t prove whether we’re in a game or not. With the little pieces of evidence we have for the computerised world, I think it is still worth looking into.

An interesting phenomenon that got everyone fascinated with the idea of there being different alternate dimensions was the ‘Mandela Effect’ an example of this would be the Monopoly man. A lot of people have a strong memory of the Monopoly man (Rich Uncle Pennybags) wearing a monocle, but he doesn’t and apparently never has. There are many examples of this and you can type in ‘Mandela effect’ on Google and look at the hundreds of examples, you’re bound to find at least one that will shock you. Although I have experienced my own ‘Mandela effect’ type memories, I must say that the idea of it being evidence for alternate dimensions is weak because our memories are just not that accurate. Things can easily get muddled in our minds as time goes on. When you think of an event in your life, you’re not actually remembering the event, you’re remembering the last memory you have of that event. It’s almost like a game of ‘Chinese whispers’ each time you recall that memory, it will be slightly different and eventually your memory of that event will be less accurate.

I think my message here is that we know very little about our existence, the universe, the meaning of life or where we came from and where we’re going. We get little clues that point to some bigger picture, but we’re never able to get the true answers. All of these odd things that happen in the world, and all of these signs that point to something unusual are worth looking into. There is more magic and mystery to this universe than we can ever know and it’s fun to speculate what the meaning of it all is.

You can never dismiss the idea of ghosts, goblins and aliens, you can’t say that God doesn’t exist, you can’t deny that we’re in a computerised universe because we don’t have all the answers. Stay open minded!

Faculty X

I don’t know if the late great Colin Wilson had the same indescribable feelings that I get from time to time when he wrote about a phenomena he called ‘faculty x’ but I know that my dad and I talked about it at length, and it’s something that not everyone feels. In fact I’ve only met a couple of people who know what I’m talking about when I attempt to describe it.

The best way I can describe the feeling I get is that it is like the feeling of nostalgia, but it isn’t nostalgia for the past or any point in time. Something needs to happen to provoke the feeling, usually a thought of somewhere you’ve probably never been to. When I explain this to people, they usually say something like’ Oh I get what you mean, like when you think of a green meadow and it makes you feel happy and peaceful’ to this I usually explain that it is similar to that, but a million times more intense. Often a few thoughts compliment each other to intensify the feeling. These thoughts don’t have to link or have any connection, but they somehow compliment each other in a more abstract way. What ever the feeling is, it seems to be the feeling I may have had before I was born and what I will feel after I die. It’s like a base feeling that I would feel constantly if I didn’t have a human body. Some people describe similar experiences while meditating however the feeling is not peaceful, it’s not the opposite of peaceful either, it just can’t be put into a category so easily.

It’s strange but the feeling seems to emanate from somewhere around the top of my head. It’s worth mentioning that I have synesthesia which basically means I see colours and shapes for sounds, particularly words and music. Some people have this mildly where they might think that days of the week have colours, for example Wednesday might be yellow. Some people have spatial synethesia which can enable them to do complex mathematical equations and even remember every single day of their lives. Even though I only have chromesthesia (the most common form) I have wondered if I do have some form of spatial synesthesia which could be responsible for me sensing that the feeling comes from a specific place in my head.

I don’t know if Colin Wilson’s idea of faculty x has anything to do with the feeling I get, I only know that my dad took the name ‘faculty x’ from Colin Wilson to describe what we had been experiencing. A different feeling I sometimes get is an intense feeling of reality, like a realisation of my place in time and space. I’m not sure if that would be classed as a form of faculty X.

“Faculty X is simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present. After all, we know perfectly well that the past is as real as the present, and that New York and Singapore and Lhasa and Stepney Green are all as real as the place I happen to be in at the moment. Yet my senses do not agree. They assure me that this place, here and now, is far more real than any other place or any other time. Only in certain moments of great inner intensity do I know this to be a lie. Faculty X is a sense of reality, the reality of other places and other times, and it is the possession of it — fragmentary and uncertain though it is — that distinguishes man from all other animals”

― Colin Wilson, The Occult

From what I’ve read, it seems that Colin Wilson thought of faculty X as a kind of extra sensory perception, the key to all poetic and mystical experience. The most logical explanation that I can think of is that some people might be able to force their bodies to create a rush of endorphins or even DMT. Instead of this weird feeling arising for some mystical, profound reason, it could just be chemical. I’ve tried a few recreational drugs but I’ve never tried heroin and I know I never will (doesn’t interest me) but I have often wondered if heroin users experience faculty X.

I suppose I’m writing about this because I’m hoping there are others who understand what I’m talking about. I know it could sound like a mental illness or even physical illness is responsible for this strange feeling, but I can assure you that’s not the case.