Miscellany

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This page almost wasn't. The wonder of M$' intuitive software designed to make one's work easier wasn't capable of doing so. First I'd found some links not working, in spite of the fact Note Pad Plus (not an M$ product) showed that all the html code & text were correct. Once I'd cut & pasted the text into a new document by the name Miscellany, reset all the links & uploaded it, I found that the link to my home page was dead. In attempting to correct this, Front Pad chose to delete everything in both my Miscellany & Index pages. Oh, of course, software can't do that -- I must be responsible. In any case, I've started over...after hours of hellish & fruitless work.

Here I intend to include things you won't find on my Poetry or Fiction pages.

Here, to be more specific, you will find more of my own work. You may find poetry, fiction & non-fiction; some journal entries. Following, you'll find a work in progress (& oh, what a piece of work it is!). This is something, once I bloody well make it readable, I intend as a forward to another manuscript I've been working on for years (you know what a hassle it is to drag numerous folders & thousands of index cards of notes back & forth across this country? I don't recommend it). But as I'm amazingly lazy, it's not likely the manuscript will ever see binding. Whatever.

Dated: 20-Jul-97

About a year & a half ago, after seeing how much I could charge in my new Master Card & comparing many PC's, I'd finally opted for a Quantex P-133. I knew that a 133 wasn't the best I could get at the time, but I couldn't find a faster PC with the extras this came with in my price range or from a manufacturer I'd not heard countless horrible things about from those who'd bought them. Not having heard anything of Quantex, I thought "Fine. I'll get it."

Well, guess what? The Quantex, in spite of good reviews in computer magazines, turned out to fall well short on all points.

First I'd found that the floppy drive worked for only one action per boot. I could either open files from a disk or copy to it -- I couldn't do both in a single boot. OK "No problem," you say, "call tech support for a new one." Right. I've now the eighth drive -- that's no less than two calls for each drive amounting to sixteen calls about a single problem. But wait, even the eighth didn't work. Oh, no. There's more! One bright Quantex tech had decided that the floppy drive wasn't the trouble at all. The trouble was my motherboard.

In the meantime, I'd been reading about maxing out my CPU (for those who don't know about this, it is a procedure by which you manipulate the jumpers on the motherboard to make your CPU run at a faster speed, so instead of a 133MHz chip, I was thinking of boosting it to maybe 150MHz). Now, getting a new mother board seemed the perfect opportunity to work on this.

New motherboard installed, I boot up to receive the error: NO OPERATING SYSTEM INSTALLED. How is this, I ask. Schematic (from my original PC purchase) in hand, I start to work. Wait. What's this? The jumper configuration on the mother board doesn't match that in the schematic. How could this be? I call Quantex again & speak with a supervisor. It appears that the computer shows the exact part number as is listed for the PC shipped out, so, as far as they were concerned, I had the correct part. Fine, how about a schematic for this motherboard, I ask. No good, I have the right motherboard, therefore, I must have the right schematic & must have done something wrong.

I'd gone round & round with them on this & was left working with the jumpers on my own to find a combination which would at least get the OS recognised. I'd found that the motherboard recognises 120, 133, 150 & 180MHz only in reference to the CPU but couldn't find the OS at those speeds. If I set the speed to 100MHz or less, all was well. So, now I have paid for a PC with the belief that I should be able to access the floppy drive whenever I choose but can't, & have paid for 133MHz worth of speed to be restricted to 100MHz or slower.

While I don't know about any other customers getting the wrong motherboard, it turns out that the problem with the floppy drive was actually an M$ problem. The generic floppy drive drivers are not compatible with all drives. How did I figure this out? First, I'd installed NT 4.0 with the same result in respect to my floppy drive usage. But when I'd updated that with the Service Release 2.0, surprise! The floppy drive worked all the time without fail.

After finding that NT 4.0 was just too damn slow on my system, I'd reformatted my hard drive & reinstalled W95. Then I was back to intermittent use of a floppy drive. But on one of my periodic downloads of all the W95 updates from M$, I'd found, suddenly, that my floppy drive was working again. I'd got nothing new. All I'd done was download the same files I had on another drive to refresh them in case any had become damaged. Fucking M$ had slipped the corrected drivers into one of their updates without any documentation to indicate to the unfortunate that an end to the aggravation was nigh. (Now it seems the bastards have removed that little bit of code, leaving us with nearly worthless floppy drives again, should we have to reformat.)

But the saga of the floppy drive doesn't end there! No, no. M$ has chosen to move that update to something else. After months of not being able to find it, I've installed Internet Explorer 4.0 beta 2. Among all the other enhancements, few of which M$ will tell us about, I find my floppy performing again without having to reboot!

Now to the reason I'd dredged all this up: When my PC arrived, I'd read all the documentation which had come with it. This is not strange, just odd. But I'd found nothing telling me who had manufactured my modem. Seeing as how many applications which use the modem will ask what modem one has if it can't find the information from the OS by the driver installed, I was forced, once again, to call Quantex. After talking with numerous techs & two supervisors, not one person could tell me what modem had shipped with my system.

Finally, again by IE 4.0 beta 2, although the driver installed was the generic 14.4k, it did tell me the modem was manufactured by Logicode. Yes! I now have some power. I quickly find Logicode's Web site & e-mail their tech support in hopes I may get update drivers, upgrade drivers to perhaps 33.6, or to upgrade the hardware itself to one of their x2 56k modems. The tech told me what numbers to look for on the modem to determine which model I have.

Now, I remove the housing from my PC, take out the modem & look it over. Fortunately, Quantex hadn't removed the numbers, & I was able to get the information needed. OK, back goes the modem & all the wires in back of my PC. I then boot up & open my mail to send the information to the tech. What's this? As my mail software initialises my modem, I hear an immediate click, followed by an error message on my monitor telling me that there is no dial tone.

I'd checked everything. The phone worked, the wires worked, the modem was in the correct slot on the motherboard, etc. I look at the configuration to find that there are other errors listed in the Control Panel. I decide to delete the generic driver & install the Logicode driver for this modem & reboot. Still, the same trouble. I'd opened up the PC again & cleaned the modem contacts. Same errors. Aiiiiieeeee!!!

Continued: 20-Jul-97

I'd spent some hours on the phone with Quantex's outsourced tech support (that's what I used to do for Corel) to no avail. I have a modem which gives various errors, but primarily that of a hardware failure. Ain't life grand? In the meantime, I'm using my PC for most of my work & checking my mail, etc. on my girlfriend's PC till I can determine whether the modem needs replacing (& coming up with the money for it) or there's just some dust (yeah, I like dust) not allowing decent contact.

Dated: 22-Jul-97

As it turns out, one of the modem contacts was scratched. OK, that meant putting something more on my credit card in hopes I can afford to eat in the next couple of weeks (I've had little more than some frozen yoghurt & Coca-Cola in the past week). I've gone without solid food numerous times in my life up to a month, so why not buy something decent?

What I'd got was a Cardinal x2 56k modem. While I like it -- boosting from 14.4 to even 33.6bps is pretty damn cool -- everything on it implies that it's voice capable. Not only that, there's a port on the back of it for a microphone. But no -- it's not voice capable. The tech even told me that Cardinal doesn't even make voice capable 56k modems. Uh.... Then why the mic port? No answer.

Fine. It also comes with two other pieces of software (which I'll get to momentarily). One is a dial-up software for BBS-ing. Don't need that, I have Hyperterminal. The other is fax software. That which comes with W95, once it works, works fine. Don't need that. Nice of Cardinal to include disk space wasting software already included with the OS, eh?

OK. The reason I'd called tech support? You guessed it. The modem wouldn't work. I'll save you the details because I think it comes down to the conflict the modem driver produced with my sound card (caused by Cardinal's intelligent driver, designed to search out irq's not being used, setting itself to the same irq as the sound card). Once the problem was corrected, we found the modem now worked. And it continues to work -- so long as I don't connect to my ISP's x2 server.

Dated 24-Jul-97

Three days now, & I've yet to hear from Cardinal. Having worked for M$ & Corel, & dealt with Quantex on too many occasions, I begin to wonder what the word support really means.

Dated 27-Jul-97

Oh, I got a response...Thursday. The support? It was suggested I enter a command line switch (in the properties of the modem itself) which is mentioned in the manual for another purpose entirely. What the hell, I tried it anyway. Same result. Of course, getting W95 to realise that my taking it out of that line mens I don't want it there after I reboot, took some doing. So, like my 133MHz PC running no faster than 100MHz, my 56k modem runs no faster than 28.8. Joy of joys. I wait.

Dated 27-Jul-97

I'm sure you've each met born-again xians. You would probably feel that they are essentially harmless, although so boring they border on annoying. Well, as is evident in other places on this site, I'm not terribly keen on any form of xianity (but I must admit to having liked the Jesuits I've met & having been something of a fan of Dr Gene Scott -- he's a very entertaining wacko). I don't really care for any organised religion or political body, I'm not even an initiate of the OTO.

But born-again xians are a miasmic organism of, quite possibly, brain dead contradiction. What is their greatest cry? One word: Love. What is this "love" of which they speak? Since none of those I've met had any great command for the language with which they'd grown up, they were unable to produce even a slightly understandable definition.

What am I getting at, I hear you ask? It's the car.

'Torea & I got it from a man who appeared to be something of a '70's throwback. He, his wife & daughter seemed the perfect family. And the only problem we could find with the car on short inspection was that there were a few pieces of the dread Jesus loves paraphernalia scattered here & there.

After agreeing to buy the car & making arrangements for payment, he, the evil xian, had told us that he would actually need the car for two more days because, although he'd got the front brakes taken care of, he had the parts for the rear brakes & an appointment with a garage to do the rears. "If you could just wait a couple of days...I really wouldn't feel right about letting you have it till the brakes are done," he'd told us.

Finally, key in hand, we go for a drive. Everything was fine for some days. Then, the shit hit the fan. Right & left things had either stopped working, or wouldn't work properly. This is normal for a used car, but I wasn't pleased that the car had, of course, stranded 'Torea one morning after dropping me off at the job I'd had at the time. That turned out to be a problem with the alternator. No problem, I'd found the nut for the ground wire hadn't been turned down tightly. In spite of the fact one garage, about a month ago, tested it to less than the voltage required to charge the battery, it's been working just fine.

But, when I'd gone to have the rear bearings replaced -- one had shredded -- I'm told that not only is one of the rear brake cylinders leaking (for those who don't know, these are rebuilt as a natural part of a brake job) & that the rear pads were nearly worn.

Hmm, I think the xian lied to us.

I'd later, for another problem, had the front brakes checked to find...you guessed it -- the bastard lied about that too.

Now, I ask, is this the meaning of that grand logos of born-again xians? Oh, I get it -- that only applies to other born-agains. The rest of us can burn in Hell.

Is it any wonder these people are not well liked?

Dated 8-Aug-97

I say: Fuck humans.

Dated 3-Jan-98

How's this: Things are rolling round quite nicely; got a couple of decent jobs (finally), a good relationship with a woman, bills not nagging too loudly, etc. So that's when you feel you can take a step out of the house & partake of some of what commerciality has to offer. My girlfriend, 'Torea & I decide to go see a film in a theatre, as opposed to renting a video.

This is way back. Back so long memory would otherwise dim. We're talking about the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Seeing as we knew how to get to the theatre at the mall, we went. Bad idea from the start. 'Torea simply had to get out of the house -- period. I felt ill. But we all have to make sacrifices in a relationship, right? But no -- I do not blame 'Torea.

There were simply too many people at the mall, parking impossible. So, we grab a local entertainment weekly to find another theatre. That found, we go & see a pretty decent film.

It's upon returning home we find the reason for this rant (or rather, whine).

The first thing I notice coming in is that in the kitchen garbage can, the bag is missing. I think little of this -- perhaps 'Torea had removed it for some odd reason (women do many things men will never understand). But as I turn to my desk to boot up my computer, I find nothing but dust in its place.

Some bastard got in & took my prized Lilith.

It matters little how the guy got in. It only mattered that not only did he take Lilith, he knew what else we had of value & had also taken 'Torea's set of keys, containing a copy of our car key. He could come back at any time to remove what he wished due to the many ways he could easily get in & use our car to haul it all away.

Then there are many calls to the land-lord to do something about the points the guy could still get in. In spite of the fact the land-lord had been ripped off by the person we suspect had taken my computer, he didn't seem to care about the fact the burglar could come & take the rest -- particularly since the bastard had left evidence that he had indeed returned more than once for this very purpose.

This is too much. We have too much at stake.

Suffice to say, we've moved to a new apartment.

Again I say: Fuck humans.

II

In magic one picks up the book, or grimoire, the words in which one can now interpret; prepares him or her self & the temple (the temple is the self, I refer to the inner & the outer temples); & either reads, or better, recites the invocations or evocation -- which is -- performing the rite. None of this could be done with even rudiment credibility (unless one be immensely creative or cognisant of previous incarnations during which one was a magician or witch) unless one was indeed able to read the book depicting the preparation & the act of the ceremony itself.

In either case, invocation or evocation, the act (other than to identify (invocation) oneself with some higher power, or purge (evocation) oneself of some unwanted or unnecessary trait) is in no way wrong. The only wrong (except under very special circumstances) act in these two operations is in prostrating oneself before any god or demon. One must always retain one's dignity. No true God wants slaves, & the Adept is the God to those lower elements evoked.

All this nonsense of danger those adherents (Christians & students on Paths other than Christianity still lost in the maze by the name Phobia) who counsel against the Great Darkness, may have some basis of truth, but, as ignorance is no defence in a court of law, one has no right to enter these planes if one does not know one's place. Any danger one may experience will have manifested for that reason -- experience. The intellectual knowledge one had attained while studying is now put to the test, so one must, necessarily, experiment.

Mistakes will be made. The Holy Guardian Angel, being the Higher (or true) Self, is something of a direct teacher (as well as, sometimes, a protector) as opposed to that of a manifest teacher, i.e. guru. In other words, any fumbling attempts upon any Path are of little or no consequence, in most cases. There are indeed immense dangers, particularly in those Hells lower than this Hell -- the human existence. But remember always, "Fear not the Unknown," for though there are enormous perils, there are also great rewards for he or she who endures.

The Angel is "Himself (the Adept) made perfect," hence Higher or True Self. It matters not how one perceives one's True Self at this early stage, as one has truly not met the Angel. As one has yet to refine one's self -- purify the astral shell, if you will -- one can hardly begin to see beyond the Veil to the Angel.

In this stage of one's aspiration, there are many diverse things one must do. Of these chiefly is, of course, attaining the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. To do this one should begin by attempting to do away with the influence of emotions -- primarily that of passion. Meditation will help immensely here, as one of the most noticeable effects of meditation is the lack of any act of emotion. One may very well feel quite lethargic. This lethargy can be a danger should one indulge in it to the point of actually not doing anything. By no means do I imply that this practise is a sure fire way of attaining the Knowledge & Conversation. This will be different for each aspirant.

The next thing one must learn is that of self-reliance. Anything one must or wishes to do, due to some circumstance, must be entirely without, if you will, asking for help. The actual asking, in itself, is not wrong. What is wrong is asking for help after only a few failures to evoke some demon to manifest before one. Many years ago, in my foolishness, I had on numerous occasions attempted to evoke a succubus of a certain appearance to my bed. My only success of this, before asking for help, manifested only in the dreams on an unsuspecting room-mate. Amusing as this, in the end, turned out, her manifestation in his dreams did not serve me in the way I had intended. Only after failing so many times did I receive the help -- though only in relation the that which leads to section III of this essay.

Having attained the full knowledge & use of diverse meditative practises one now begins to refine one's philosophical comprehension. This is a form of balance whereby one, according to Aleister Crowley, "...putting each idea against its opposite, refusing to prefer either..." will in turn apprehend the futility of words, in the larger, & the control of thought, in the lesser. This will require, for most a great many years to accomplish -- if indeed one remain in society. And one should remain in society, for the hard road is the best.

Crowley also says, "...[the Adept] cannot remain indefinitely as Exempt Adept; he is pushed onward by the irresistible momentum that he has generated." This momentum is quite real evidenced by one's attainments. I am not the only person upon the Path who has experienced this. A colleague of mine & I have gone to great lengths to ascertain what we call time shifting in which, though time itself is not effected, we experience an odd simultaneity, that time is flowing very quickly and very slowly. This shifting is very disorienting. The only explanation, as neither he nor I have found this phenomenon printed as we feel it in any book, we have been able to find is that the momentum of our progress has caused us to experience a great many things in such a short period of time that we feel we are living a life-time in a year & a year in a life-time. To what end all these experiences in such a short time, we have yet to fathom. Perhaps this is a universal sensation -- perhaps not.

Now, if one does not succeed in this absolute self-annihilation, one is thrust forth, as it were, into a state known by the term Abyss. To explain the Abyss would take much more space than I have here (besides, I have more on it in section III), but think of it as Hell -- Hell with the whole gnashing of teeth program. But instead of being able to continue on, progressing, one will remain in the Abyss &, likely, go quite mad.

Sadly, most of the self-proclaimed messiahs or oracles of doom are referred to as Black Brothers. Although enormously enormously dangerous to themselves & all others, they serve a very practical purpose -- as long as they last, that is. These people keep the mediocre minds, the fearful & stupid from getting too close. Most people of high intellect naturally prefer the company of equals, otherwise there would be no such organisation as Mensa -- or any other organisation, for that matter. Therefore, I am only too pleased that there are those who preach against the evils of the Occult. Quite honestly, I much prefer my conversations with books to that of the pointless, babbling discourses which most humans cannot live without.

"He may indeed prosper for a while," says Crowley, "but in the end he must perish...." This is the case -- he will perish because he is neither who he once was nor who he could have become -- he is forever in a state of purgatory, though without any purification. Therefore, he will simply, & thankfully, fade away.

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Last updated: 19-Nov-06

All material © by Angus Fergusson 1997-2006, unless otherwise noted.