Halloween holier than Christmas

Today is Halloween, this being the Netherlands that’s not saying much. Oh sure, some shops at the mall decorate in orange and black and some of the shop’s personnel actually do put on something of a costume, but other than that it’s basically watching the Halloween episodes of well known American t.v. series.  So no trick or treating or company “who’s got the sluttiest outfit contest” here. Samhain and Dia de los Muertos are next to unknown for anything other than plot devices in horror movies and I believe 90% of the world has lost most if not all religious significance to all hallows eve. At least consciously.

I love Halloween and all the related celebrations because subconsciously it manages to at least confront us with that little bit of spirituality most uf us do have, fear of dying and the unknown. And nothing pushes people towards spirituality more than fear of the hereafter. Christmas may have been a spiritual celebration once, but it’s nothing of the sort for most of us having our minds occupied by family- or company get-togethers and returnable gifts. Now Halloween and it’s sibling celebrations like dia de los muertos, with all it’s commercial success, confronts us with, ghosts, zombies and other dead and undead, forcing us to think about our mortality and therefore… what comes next. Watching skeletons, sugar skulls and gravestones fill the landscape seems to be yelling at us, you’ll die one day, better be ready!

So when you’re bobbing for apples, out trick or treating or flirting with your boss in that skintight naughty cat outfit, in the back of your head you are busy contemplating your demise and how you fair on Anubis’ scales. I’ll bet Christmass, Easter and many other holy-days are jealous as hell of that.

Poem

Behind the masquerade, a whisper chills

as shades of dark slowly fills

my soul with fear

while corpses stir

and children’s breaths go still

Tortured spirits, almost seen,

ghouls and ghosts and undead fiends

temperature drops

and heartbeat stops

my God I love Halloween….

Happy Halloween, Dias de los Mueortos, All Saints Day, Samhain!

Flu shot hangover, the fishy details...

nice! oh yeah, the food too...

Okay in all honesty it’s my own fault for at least a small part. You know that whisky tasting I mentioned earlier last week? Well it was a success on several levels, I tasted some really interesting whisky’s and had a really good time, I even ate oyster something I never thought I would do. The girls handing out the seafood hors d'oeuvres were so cute and I was buzzed enough, they could have handed me anything and I would have eaten it with a smile. 

Anyway, halfway through the afternoon I realized it was time to cut back and an hour later those lovely whisky’s had passed my throat twice… in… and out. In short Monday was hangover day. No probs, nothing I can’t handle or haven’t handled before, though with my diabetes extra caution would have been wise.

yeah sure I love... oysters you say?

Monday evening I had to get my obligatory flu-shot, three years ago the shot had me feeling sick for two weeks. Two years ago all I had was an itch on my arm and a severe headache. Today it would seem I have the worst of both worlds, feeling sick and having a terrible headache. So my hangover seamlessly continued into the flu-shot aftermath. And now I have to deal with a nausea-headache combo for gods know how long. And what have I learned? Well nothing really, I still like whisky and I still have no clue how oysters taste. .

 

one will do 'kay?

Well I did learn one thing actually, about that flu shot. Annoyingly the moment I got home after my shot yesterday I read in the news that the flu shot has little to no effect, so basically it's all for nothing. There's has been some discussion before about how effective the shot really is, but now populair media would have us believe the whole thing is as good as useless.

It's magic I tell you

How I look when reading tarot... realy!

Now I’ve never claimed to be a psychic, I’ve never said I am channeling spirits. If anything I usually claim the opposite. In my blogpost last week on the workings of tarot, I’ve even played it all down quite a bit. Calling tarot pieces of cardboard with paint on it however somehow seems to damage the typical image of the tarot as a mystical tool given by gods, angels or at least ancient mystics. Even historically the tarot started out as just a game, we actually know it didn’t come to us from ancient Egypt. It’s a sad thing really to find this piece of ancient magic, hidden mystical power and have it reduced to “just” a card game by cold hard skepticism. It is however also a matter of personal experience.

In all honesty I must admit that it hurts me to put it all on the table (no pun intended) like that as if coincidence, pseudo psychology and mathematics can explain the complete workings of tarot. I was attracted by the mystical aura of the tarot when I started out with the cards and I can easily claim many readings that were interesting, weird or even bizar in a way where extreme coincidence just doesn’t cut it and I still love the mystical aura it has. The thought of wielding a divination tool and the ancient knowledge backing it up is too hard to let go completely and other than having experienced my share of weird occurrences, I truly believe that the mystical or even magical aspect of tarot adds to the mix a pinch of the divine that makes the tarot the strong system it is.

You may not have to believe in it for it to work, but it does make it more exciting.

Whisky in the jar, or cup, or bowl….

Usually once a year I visit a whisky tasting event here in my beautiful hometown of Alkmaar. Tickets for this event have been a returning birthday gift from my lovely wife for a few years now. This Sunday it’s once again that time of year. While a folk band plays old Irish and Scottish folk music and the Scottish restaurant is preparing salmon and haggis in bite sized portions you are invited to come and taste form a selection of something like 200 whisky’s ranging from cheap, Irish disinfectant to the glorious Scottish Islay’s spread over two large halls, one with the good stuff and one hall with the “let’s try them anyway” category where you can find some interesting surprises like Fryske Hynder, Dutch single malt… good too. Keep drinking and you can barely hear the badly tuned bagpipes at the entrance.

depicted: Whisky, band, people getting in the way

Typically I will try and taste as many whisky’s as possible, I will make those 50 Euro’s go as long as possible. Keeping in mind which we might want to buy the coming year we always try to find the most interesting whisky’s but also those interesting single malts where price, quality and taste are balanced best. Which means I will be drinking, talking loudly and trying to stay as sober as possible for as long as possible, while my wife stands next to me with a list, pointing me to which whisky’s to try and writing down my ramblings and ratings. A three star system slowly changes to a five star system when “even better than the last” whisky’s start to present themselves. Exclamation marks are used to indicate an even better whisky than the last five star whisky and around the time we’re finishing up and I quickly go and taste those last few on the list, the critical comments of my wife are added to my own now somewhat less discriminate opinions… by the time the Irish whisky’s start to taste good it’s slowly starting to be that time to head for the exit and “walk it off” and head home, normally a ten minute walk, now a taxing half an hour.

The one thing that always bugs me about whisky is getting drunk. I am no saint and like a good drink every now and then, don’t get me wrong. But I really dislike getting drunk or being around people who are drunk. A slight buzz can be quite entertaining, but the status “completely pissed” is one I try to avoid at all costs. Any way, up till Sunday I will be humming all known versions of Whisky in a jar ranging from Dubliners to Metallica.

Musha ring dum-a do dum-a da, Whack for my daddy-o,
Whack for my daddy-o, There's whiskey in the jar-o.

I can't wait, serious character flaw....

I have a strange character flaw that I know can sometimes annoy the crap out of the people around me. I can’t wait. Now don’t get me wrong in many ways I am very patient. Without problem I can wait for hours for someone when I have an appointment or when I am for instance waiting till my wife is finished at work when I pick her up. But it’s the waiting for something to arrive, like a package for instance that gets to me. I have actually been known to wait outside and watch for the delivery truck three days in a row.

my preciousssss

Even worse is waiting for something that doesn’t exist yet. For instance a movie to come out, or as is most often the case a computer game. Right now I am waiting for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. For a very long time the release date of 11-11-11 has been known. Ever since the date was released I have been waiting for that date to arrive and now the date is coming closer I have to watch myself so I don’t start growling impatiently. I understand this is a very serious condition, so I believe it to be in the best interest of my health and the general well being of earths population that we either supply me with every product ahead of release date or simply stop advertizing products that aren’t available yet.

Tarot, this sh*t Works!

One of the most asked questions about tarot, at least with me is “does it work?”. And though I believe yes is the simple answer there’s actually more to it (it’d be a pretty short blog post otherwise).

Hmmmm.....

 

Imagine writing the word “home” on a piece of paper. Put that paper on the table and sit down. Ask yourself a question, any question, for example “what can I do to simulate my career”. Now look at the word on the paper and let every association you have with this word go through your mind. All kinds of ideas will pop into mind. Perhaps you should focus on home life, perhaps you have to speed up your career to be able to start a family or maybe you need to fuel your ambition to be able to support your home. Take one of the ideas that speaks to you and dive deeper.

Without it being of any importance how the piece of paper got there, angels could have written it or maybe ghosts, in this case you did it yourself, the word triggered something. It’s also of little importance how the specific thoughts came to mind, triggered memories or perhaps telepathic suggestions by aliens it doesn’t matter, you made a step forward across a barricade. You have grown, you answered your question. Now do the same thing with 78 cards in a certain formation and the subjects that come up are limitless as well as the paths that may come that appeal to you.

Whether it’s angels, ghosts, aliens or just cardboard and paint is not important, the point is, it works, whatever you believe to be the driving force behind it. So it doesn’t matter if you’re the cold clinical science geek believing things only when there’s a scientific explanation to it even if that explanation is “coincidence” or if you’re a wiccan priestess believing it’s the will of God and Goddess that those cards are presented to you at that specific moment in time to guide you and help you further the mother spirit, it works anyway or either way.

Travel story, Halloween at Auryn… the full story.

As promised here it is, the full story of Halloween at Auryn showroom (Enchantra). In full Technicolor with pictures in full surround sound and HD 3D. Well pictures and words at least.

Jasmine's outfit

Some time ago at the opening of Auryn showroom, I brought my tarot cards, apparently Linda never forgot this because last time we were at an Auryn event Linda asked me if I could come and do tarot readings at the Halloween party. Off course I said yes. Now understand that we love Linda and Robert to bits and we attend every possible event at Auryn. But each time the night before we look at the average travel time and realize that over seven hours of traveling a day, takes quite the bite out of your weekend, though every time we travel back we realize that it’s worth it. This time was no exception.

Halloween means dressing up, having to travel quite a bit by train and because of the party being in a

showroom, too elaborate costumes were out of the question. Besides that I get warm real fast and since I don’t want to sweat on my cards and keep things practical in general, so we decided on a somewhat simpler sort of outfit. Jasmine and I went as a fantasy style Gypsy couple (sorry no pics of me). So with lace up pants, silk short and all kinds of shawls we set out to Zeeland.

Not that scary yet

In the train we met Agnetha en Linda (there are too many Linda’s BTW, we should have a contest which ones get to keep their names while we do a poll on what names the other can pick). We had to change trains at Amsterdam Sloterdijk where we went to Starbucks. Now I’ve been to Starbucks before and yes, they make good coffee. However… no-one had ever told me about the divine brilliance, the nectar of the Gods that is Crème Brule Macchiato. At this point my day was already a success no matter what would happen next.

What happened next was basically nothing for a long time, with half a liter of coffee in me and little to do I started to “entertain” my travel companions, with which I mean “annoy the crap out of” while they where finishing up their costumes and make up (doing eyelashes one train station at a time). I feel everybody was happy when we finally arrived at our destination, the train station which name I just cannot remember no matter how often I read or even visit it. It’s something like Kruiseicher-Jersygohr. The weather kinda sucked and we had to wait at least five whole minutes (!!!!) until our carriage arrived. Other ghouls, ghosts and witches had already joined our merry band of halloweeners at Kruezinger-Yarsocar when Robert arrived looking almost as scary as I do Sunday mornings before breakfast.

Some pictures:

 

 

at work

When we arrived at the showroom we saw nothing but mist at first, when the smoke machine smoke cleared we were greeted by the site of the showroom. The Halloween vibe was amazing, the decorations, the Halloween style food and all the costumes. Now as far as I am concerned they can make every day Halloween if only for the outfits some people were wearing. I was shown to “my table” pretty quickly and set up shop. After ten minutes I started my first reading and apart from two ten minute breaks and a visit to the toilet I have been doing readings up till half past five. I have done some very interesting readings and met some great ladies. It never stops to amaze me how tarot can go so deep so fast sometimes, especially when you are only aiming to do some light entertaining readings, I always strive to help people achieve progress in their lives and I hope I have done so at least a little.

pretty-scary

Across the table they were busy doing scary dares, which were awesome. The professional photo’s are

slowly being made available and it’s worth a watch, so after you finish reading check the enchanting beauty site. Seeing those pretty faces all horror-ed up is the stuff of nightmares. (http://www.enchantingbeauty.nl/?p=6321 use buttons at the top to browse through the entries)

Around six it was time to head home. It’s hard to explain how completely exhausting doing so many readings can be, even a single reading can drain you quite a bit, a “marathon” like this really takes it out of you. So on the ride back I was barely half as annoying as on the way there earlier. Somewhere between Chruusinkar-Jorsiegehr and Alkmaar I found time for pizza slices, crème brule macchiato and I even fell asleep… hope I don’t talk in my sleep anymore. The whole train ride, both up there and back, actually flew buy, thanks to the company of Agnetha en Linda. Time actually flies when you’re having fun, or at least good company.

Also Read Jasmine's blog on Auryns Halloween Party here.

Life sucks so I brought you a poem and told you about the real me

Good morning........ 

Okay, now I was kinda hoping to do a post on the Auryn Halloween party, but gosh-darnit, I forgot to upload my pictures because of some serious crap taking up all my brain power, serious hit like for instance a dentist appointment and a disagreement with our housing association (hope google translate is accurate here). Hell we barely had time to celebrate the fact that Jasmine and me have been together for 8 years (love you babe).

Since the auryn thing will have to wait, and I don’t really have that much to write about I will leave you with two things, I will do an interview/ survey thingy with myself so you can all get to know me better. First however I want to give you this.

Right now I know a lot of people who are in tough spots, are having very hard times or are being kept awake by serious worrying. Battling your way through life, sacrificing so much of yourself for others will drain you of all you’ve got. Now I know a thing or two about being in bad places and I also know that, even the most terrifying times, the toughest trials and the loneliest places are things that pass. A cliché as it may be, there is a silver lining. The scariest thing is also the greatest comfort, nothing lasts forever.

From my emo period, seemed to fit the poem

Never would I want this, never,

I don’t want to “come out stronger”

I have been fighting, ‘t seems forever

As each new day seems longer

And every thing seem wrong here

I cannot take this ever

The silver lining, I don’t see

Relief seems far away to me

I’ve swallowed bitter pills for years

But now I long to be, just free

But I will find the way

With help or on my own

I see there will be “that day”

When seeds I’ve sown

In me have grown

To a strength that I know will stay

Today may be the blackest

So tomorrow will be brighter

And though there’s a storm at the horizon

It’s still a little lighter

So here’s me….

I find your lack of education disturbing

Sidney Tuttel van Dorst a.k.a. Nocturnal Lure

Born: 9th of august 1975 (yes way back)

Favorites:

Food: Lasagne, Pizza, Kapsalon

Book: Lord of the Rings, Clive Barker’s Imagica, Rhyme of the Ancient mariner (ST Colleridge) counts as a book right?

Movie: StarWars all episodes (yes, so?), Hellboy, Near Dark

Color: Black, Red, Purple (yes completely Goth)

Bands: In Extremo, Opeth, Skyclad

Heroes in fiction: Darth Vader, Boromir, the Joker and Peter Griffin

Things I like:

Tarot, spirituality, mysticism, music, fantasy, tattoos, Art, reading and enjoying a good meal.

Things I am obsessed with:

Gaming (mainly xbox), Whisky and Sex.

Things I dislike:

Gossip (especially the hurtful kind), cliques, obsessive love of gadgets

Things I hate:

Michael Parkes

Ignorance… I don’ t mind you having other ideas than me and I don’t mind you being stupid but for god’s sake at least within your own potential think before you act/ speak, uninformed opinions and prejudice, authority or lack of personal choice.

Art you should check out:

Michael Parkes, Simon Bisley, Anson Maddocks

Best Tarot decks:

Shadowscapes, Rider Waite (boring but true) and Robin Wood (which I sadly don’t have anymore)

Favorite quote:

May the best of your past, be the worst of your future….

Halloween Tarot readings at Auryn and the brilliance that is starbucks

So here’s a short little blog post about last Sunday. A longer more elaborate post will follow later with pictures and all kinds of interesting stuff. However, I thought I’d share a bit before that since I had so much fun.

First of all, wow I’ve seen some great, creative and hot outfits and especially make-up looks, those who entered the dare contest really blew me away. And the atmosphere with the mist maker and all the decorations was as Halloween-like as one could wish for.

As I have noticed before at events, when you are planning to do light, entertaining short readings, you often end up doing readings with a lot more body, heavier subjects and rarely end up under ten minutes. At Auryn last sunday this was also the case. I met some very interesting people and did some interesting readings, it’s great to get that short look into someone’s life and to be able to give, if but a small piece, advice to help someone achieve their potential in life. In many cases I wished I had more time and a more private environment to dive deeper into subjects and make a more substantial impact. But at a party among al those beautiful and interesting people this was neither the place nor the time.

I want to thank Linda of Enchantra for being a great host, Robert for once again playing (in this case undead) taxidriver and all the people who let me read the cards for them, I had a great time!

BTW: I made a very important discovery, Crème Brule Macchiato, is the best drink ever invented, thank you Starbucks for enriching my life…. 

BTW2: Having good travel company made the trip of aproximately 7 hours fly by, thanks Linda en Agnetha, I actually enjoyed the ride.

Thank you, gods of cafeine