I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are.
Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot.
He smiled at that, and then his gaze shifted to a spot over my shoulder and it faded. 'These doubts wouldn’t have anything to do with the company you’re keeping of late, would they?'I didn’t get a chance to answer before the shop door was thrown open and a furious war mage stomped in. Pritkin spotted me and his eyes narrowed.'You shaved my legs?!'Mircea looked at me and folded his arms across his chest. I looked from one unhappy face to the other and suddenly remembered that I had somewhere else to be.
Not really hungry.""She’ll eat." Pritkin said curtly."I said —""If you starve to death it would damage my professional reputation.""I eat plenty.""The same does not apply should I strangle you in understandable irritation, however.""I’ll have a sandwich," I told Nick. "No meat.
Jenks enthusiastically leaned against the counter and opened the box. Bypassing the plastic knife, he broke off about a third of it and took a huge bite. Ivy watched, appalled, and I shrugged. His mouth moving as he hummed, Jenks finished unpacking the sacks. I was half dead, Ivy was whoring herself to keep me safe, but Jenks was okay as long as he had chocolate.
How come when mortals want things, their only option is to make a deal with Hell and sell their soul? Why can’t they make deals with God in exchange for good behavior?"It was another of those rare moments when I’d surprised Carter. I waited for the glib answer I’d mentioned to Seth, something along the lines of goodness being its own reward. The angel considered for several seconds. "Humans make those deals all the time," he said finally. "They just don’t make them with God.""Then who are they making them with?" I exclaimed."Themselves.
I sit and ponder my existence: how I'm here, what put me here in these thoughts, these feelings, birthed from a timeless sleep, what it felt like, or rather the lack thereof, to not have been and now to 'be', and suddenly, I realize how absurd I am to exist, the fragility in my understanding of existence; I then wonder why the supernatural, the thought of other beings, of God or of gods, must be distinctly absurd - by which I am no longer sure. 'If I exist and I have made myself absurd to me, then why not they exist while merely believed absurd by me?' Perhaps it is true that in a wandering head, one full of wonders, the natural becomes supernatural and the supernatural becomes preternatural (or rational within the sights of discovery and explanation), just as the return home after a life-long journey feels, for a moment, foreign after the many experiences.
I take leave to contradict those who say that salvation is an evolution! All that ever can be evolved out of the sinful heart of man is sin-and nothing else! Salvation is the free gift of God, by Jesus Christ, and the work of it is supernatural. It is done by the Lord Himself, and He has power to do it, however weak, no, however dead in sin, the sinner may be!
Reason, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect.
I dodged behind Mac for cover and refused to take the bait. I glanced at my nonexistent watch. 'Oops, look at the time. Guess I have to be going now. Let's not do this again sometime, okay?'Before I could move, Pritkin was there, jamming the medallion into the skin of my upper arm.'Ow!'He looked at me expectantly. I glared at him. 'That hurt!'What do you see?'A big red mark,
One hand was behind his back, and he held it out, presenting a bouquet of white and smoky purple lilies. “They’re straight from the underworld, by the way. They are everlasting. They won’t die.
Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.
It is when the individual's faith is weak, not strong, that he will be afraid of an honest fictional representation of life; and when there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the supernatural is apt gradually to be lost.
A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis towards something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural law.
Numbers 12: 6 - 8When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.So, unless you're Moses, this verse makes it obvious that God will not always speak clearly. Often he speaks softly and in riddles. He will reveal something supernaturally to us, but it's always something we need to pay close attention to. We usually need to then carefully interpret and apply what we hear. We are convinced that God's motivation behind this - as with all he does - is to draw us into relationship.
If asked, ‘Do you believe in ghosts or the supernatural?’, I can only answer somewhat as follows. I do believe in another world which penetrates this, and that, as Milton so aptly puts it, ‘Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth/Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep’, I deplore the false Cartesian split as a dreadful blow to the human mind. To me, the world of imagination, which works by means of analogy, is as real, in its own particular way, as the everyday external world. To me, the myths are vital truths, the gods and goddesses still live, on that mighty archetypal plane which lies beyond our little selves and yet within our being, too. Now this may appear illogical, a tangled web of contradictions. To believe in every spiritual truth, in all religions and all creeds, to revere a single God and the many? This may disturb the theologian, but not the Mystic. For, to the mystical turn of mind, the One may become the Many, the Many One. Spiritual and poetic truth—the transcendental vision, that is—encompasses both reason and ethics, yet soars above them.
There are... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky and brilliant ideas, it can never produce a well-founded, substantial work of art that requires the utmost presence of mind.
It is better to be foolish than a dilettante.
There is no such thing as a miracle. That is, there is never an absolute reversal of any natural law. Every event, however unexpected by us, who are all more or less grossly ignorant of Nature and of Nature's laws, is the result of pre-existing causes, which develop results in ways and to extents strictly conformable to the energies set in motion. Supernormal events maybe, but nothing is supernatural.
Everyone cannot elevate or even revelate at the same time and/or season; an appointment to elevation can result from being specially chosen...like fruit that is ready, ripe and refined for its pleasurable taste.Even scriptural wisdom documents that "Many are called, few are chosen."Those chosen 'few' may deeply sense that at the core function of elevation is an acension both to and from a higher positioned calling for it...a destiny appointment that will be met without haste...separation has the ability to confirm that elevation has its own appointment...prompted by the foreknowledge of a most SUPER natural selection.
For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith.
Common people tend to term any kind of bizarre phenomenon as “paranormal” or “supernatural”. They often exaggerate it as the work of the Gods. Behind this belief is nothing but primitive ignorance. Social progress means that people must (a necessity, not a luxury) align their beliefs and behavior to new knowledge and understanding of nature.
Now you know that the fascinating phenomenon of love has nothing to do with the supernatural entity known as Cupid, but everything to do with neurochemistry. Likewise, divinity is a cerebral creation, not a supernatural one. And it has been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn’t made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain!
It has been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn’t made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain!
You’re a talking cat?” Endora asked with a look of disbelief on her face.“My, my, my, aren’t you the bright bulb of the bunch,” he replied with a bit of snarky smugness. “Tell me then, bright-bulb, do you suppose that I need your permission to talk just because I’m a cat?” He raised his paw to his face, admiring his newly gnawed manicure. After he observed the last nail, he slapped his paw down on the floorboards, making a low thud sound. “Because I don’t,” he smirked.Endora was taken by surprise at his rudeness. She stared back at him, speechless and not quite sure how to respond. “Are you a magic cat?” Mila busted in with a question that seemed as silly to her as to the cat.He glared and narrowed his eyes at her. “A magic cat,” he said, standing up to arch his furry back. “Is my talking some sort of magic to you? If it is… then I am.” He stretched his back higher and let out a long purr that turned into, “Purrhaps, you four little witchy girls should clearly refine your meaning of magic so you know what it means before you say the word magic.” “I rather am quite fond of talking cats,” Selena said with a big smile. “Of course, you’re the first one I’ve ever seen.”The cat narrowed its eyes tighter. “Indeed,” he said, letting out a yawn as if the whole conversation were a bore. He leapt off the porch and dash away, mumbling and grumbling his way down the corridor. Selena looked over at Endora. “Rude little snot, isn’t he?” she said.
What’s going on?” Ingrid asked. “Listen, nothing bad today, please.” She pulled a chair out and sat down. Faye stared at her and said the words as quickly as she could. “I’m just going to give it to you straight as I can. Mila is a witch.” Ingrid busted out with a laugh. “I wouldn’t call her that,” she said. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” She poured the juice into her glass and took a drink. “What did the brat do this time?” She set her glass down.
Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy-one we may call the “chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.” Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance.
God made you for His pleasure. And He made you intrinsically needy and dependent on His unspeakable joy. If you are struggling with sin our addiction, don’t try to kill your appetite for pleasure. It is impossible. Just direct it to the source of all pleasure. You will be amazed to find that He has perfectly and supernaturally designed you to have all your deepest needs met in Him
I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all. I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on Vladec Salei. Plague carrier. Living death. Drainer of life. The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word
But a smell shivered him awake.It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of sex. It was the muscular rot of mushrooms. It was the spice of oak. Meaty and redolent of soil and bark and herb. It was bats and husks and burrows and moss. It was solid and alive - so alive! And it was close.The vapors invaded Nicholas' nostrils and his hair rose to their roots. His eyes were as heavy as manhole covers, but he opened them. Through the dying calm inside him snaked a tremble of fear.The trees themselves seemed tense, waiting. The moonlight was a hard shell, sharp and ready to ready be struck and to ring like steel.A shadow moved.It poured like oil from between the tall trees and flowed across dark sandy dirt, lengthening into the middle of the ring. Trees seem to bend toward it, spellbound. A long, long shadow...
Something like panic struck at Hurlow. Moffat's calm confession of fear withdrew the prop upon which he had leaned. Down there, among the motionless shadows, lurked invisible things, things that were nameless, shapeless and malignant; things which could see without being seen. One of the long lost terrors of childhood returned to him, and like a child he put his hand into Moffat's.
I think locality exercises strange influence over some minds. The peaceful meadow-scenery holds no lurking horrors in its bosom, but in the lonesome moorlands, full of curiously molded boulders, grotesque fancies must assail one there. Creatures seem to come, odd and ill-defined as their surroundings. As a child I had a peculiar horror of those tall, odd-shaped boulders, with seeming faces, featureless, it is true, but sometimes strangely resembling humans and animals. I believe the spinney may be haunted by something of this nature, terrible as the trees. ("The Haunted Spinney")
Christ must be born from every soul, formed in every life. If we had a picture of Our Lady's personality we might be dazzled into thinking that only one sort of person could form Christ in himself, and we should miss the meaning of our own being.Nothing but things essential for us are revealed to us about the Mother of God: the fact that she was wed to the Holy Spirit and bore Christ into the world.Our crowning joy is that she did this as a lay person and through the ordinary daily life that we all live; through natural love made supernatural, as the water at Cana was, at her request, turned into wine.
The power of loving a God whom religion paints as the most detestable of beings would, doubtless, be a proof of the most supernatural grace, that is, a grace the most contrary to nature; to love that which we do not know, is, assuredly, sufficiently difficult; to love that which we fear, is still more difficult; but to love that which is exhibited to us in the most repulsive colors, is manifestly impossible.
Laney, why do I believe you transcend the ordinary? Why do I look at you, and expect to see a façade fall away, revealing something much more than even the extraordinary? Tell me."Elaine flushed, her knees wobbling. “I…don’t…know. But thank you—for the kind words. I’m flattered.” She closed her eyes wanting to hide. He was too close…too beautiful…too fervid.And she was too vulnerable, too exposed.“Look at me.”She hesitantly met his unwavering gaze.“No more hiding in your shadows,” he whispered, “because I will find you. And I will drag you kicking and screaming back into the light, where you belong. Do you understand?”“Yes."“Good.” He took her hand and guided her forward.
When the religious Cowper confesses in the opening lines of his address to the famous Yardley oak, that the sense of awe and reverence it inspired in him would have made him bow himself down and worship it but for the happy fact that his mind was illumined with the knowledge of the truth, he is but saying what many feel without in most cases recognizing the emotion for what it is—the sense of the supernatural in nature.
Fire and ice licked at his soul—whispered his name—drawing him deeper into the enveloping pain and blackness as he’d dreamed earlier. He suddenly wished to return to the rippling stream. The water would wash away the blistering pain…the fire…the burn. He’d wade deeper…submit to the current…He’d let go…
A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain - a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space .... Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author's intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... The one test of the really weird is simply this - whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.
Psychic change, as Todorov has recognized, subverted the genre in another way, by revoking the cultural taboos, the social censorship, that had prohibited the overt treatment of psychosexual themes, which then found covert expression in the supernatural tale. 'There is no need today to resort to the devil [or to posthumous reverie] in order to speak of excessive sexual desire, and none to resort to vampires in order to designate the attraction exerted by corpses: psychoanalysis, and the literature which is directly or indirectly inspired by it, deal with these matters in undisguised terms. The themes of fantastic literature have become, literally, the very themes of the psychological investigations of the last fifty years.
Nevertheless, the potential and actual importance of fantastic literature lies in such psychic links: what appears to be the result of an overweening imagination, boldly and arbitrarily defying the laws of time, space and ordered causality, is closely connected with, and structured by, the categories of the subconscious, the inner impulses of man's nature. At first glance the scope of fantastic literature, free as it is from the restrictions of natural law, appears to be unlimited. A closer look, however, will show that a few dominant themes and motifs constantly recur: deals with the Devil; returns from the grave for revenge or atonement; invisible creatures; vampires; werewolves; golems; animated puppets or automatons; witchcraft and sorcery; human organs operating as separate entities, and so on. Fantastic literature is a kind of fiction that always leads us back to ourselves, however exotic the presentation; and the objects and events, however bizarre they seem, are simply externalizations of inner psychic states. This may often be mere mummery, but on occasion it seems to touch the heart in its inmost depths and become great literature.
As has already been noted, fantastic literature developed at precisely the moment when genuine belief in the supernatural was on the wane, and when the sources provided by folklore could safely be used as literary material. It is almost a necessity, for the writer as well as for the reader of fantastic literature, that he or she should not believe in the literal truth of the beings and objects described, although the preferred mode of literary expression is a naive realism. Authors of fantastic literature are, with a few exceptions, not out to convert, but to set down a narrative story endowed with the consistency and conviction of inner reality only during the time of the reading: a game, sometimes a highly serious game, with anxiety and fright, horror and terror.
Supernatural fiction contains its own generic borderland: a neutral territory, which Tzvetan Todorov calls 'the fantastic,' between 'the marvelous' and 'the uncanny.' According to Todorov, 'The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.' Once the event is satisfactorily explained (and sometimes it is never explained), we have left the fantastic for an adjacent genre - either 'the uncanny,' where the apparently supernatural is revealed as illusory, or 'the marvelous,' where the laws of ordinary reality must be revised to incorporate the supernatural. As long as uncertainty reigns, however, we are in the ambiguous realm of the fantastic.
Many of the best fantastic stories begin in a leisurely way, set in commonplace surroundings, with exact, meticulous descriptions of an ordinary background, much as in a 'realistic' tale. Then a gradual - or it may be sometimes a shockingly abrupt - change becomes apparent, and the reader begins to realize that what is being described is alien to the world he is accustomed to, that something strange has crept or leapt into it. This strangeness changes the world permanently and fundamentally.
The fantastic postulates that there are forces in the outside world, and in our own natures, which we can neither know nor control, and these forces may even constitute the essence of our existence, beneath the comforting rational surface. The fantastic is, moreover, a product of human imagination, perhaps even an excess of imagination. It arises when laws thought to be absolute are transcended, in the borderland between life and death, the animate and the inanimate, the self and the world; it arises when the real turns into the unreal, and the solid presence into vision, dream or hallucination. The fantastic is the unexpected occurrence, the startling novelty which goes contrary to all our expectations of what is possible. The ego multiplies and splits, time and space are distorted.
In any event, whether a supernatural tale remains altogether fantastic or eventually modulates to the uncanny or the marvelous, the reader is faced with disconcerting ontological and perceptual problems.Indeed, the disorienting effect of the supernatural encounter in fiction seems to reflect some deeper disorientations in the culture at large.
Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason and reminding man of his darker nature. Its popularity has had its ups and downs, and it has always been the preserve of a small literary minority. As a natural challenger of classical values, it is rarely part of a culture's literary mainstream, expressing the spirit of the age; but it is an important dissenting voice, a reminder of the vast mysteries of existence, sometimes truly metaphysical in scope, but more often merely riddling.
(Washington) Irving was only the first of the writers of the American ghostly tale to recognize that the supernatural, exactly because its epistemological status is so difficult to determine, challenged the writer to invent a commensurately sophisticated narrative technique.
But the recurrent ambiguity of the American tale of the supernatural reveals both a fascination with the possibility of numinous experience and a perplexity about whether there was, in fact, anything numinous to be experienced. Writers often delighted in leading readers into, but not out of, the haunted dusk of the borderland.
I just want to matter,' he said unsmiling. It was like pulling a curtain back, peering behind a mask made of smiles and quips. This was the real James, this young, bright, desperate thing. There was a burning intensity to his eyes, and she saw for the first time a boy who would sell his heart--not for some hobby, but because he thought it was the only way to life the life he wanted. They had that in common.
All night, I thought about that walk. The touch of the forest tickled my skin long after, while the scent lingered in my nostrils. It was unlike anything back home. There was a feeling in the atmosphere I couldn't shake--something that was trying to draw me back. I felt alive in that forest. --His Name is Moonlight
Nightmares are seldom a foreshadowing of real events, but always a showing of real fears.
There in the garden I stand amongst the trees and the flowers. Bare back as laid out upon the grassy knoll she awaits there for me now. Atop a bed of lotus blossoms, within a wall of roses and violets held she waits. A light breeze settles in against the angle of my naked continuity, and I am whole as one inside. So she rolls her body round, like some delicate feather blown on the wind, to conceal the gentle back contour and reveal a frontal nudity that would make beauty itself ache with the need, thick within the throes of jealously for having to so unwillingly surrender over the crown. It is in there that you find paradise, and it seems she too knows me by name of a gaze gaping, and notwithstanding but a single care towards the awareness of my steady on-looking fixation. It is the stare sewing in the seeds of an awestruck wonder for what the mystics deemed necessary, and the melody of majesty aligned in plenary ordinance; a precious passing moment of collective cornucopia & blessed union of soul where all planetary constellation come together to marvel around the bringing of such a fair existence about. And what combination was that of the raw material splendour used to create this mould casting gone asunder beyond its one successful flight attempt to seize hold the sky and bottle it, never to be used again? Beholding it is to clasp the all consuming essence of longing in your pass, to wield command over the power of the cosmos with the skilled hands of lovers’ chaste holding. It is that which instills a life, a capture of Elysia off the edge of insanity refined, and that’s brilliance bled out by any design. For only by taking nature in kind and boiling her down to her purest, basic, most sincere level will you be able to build her up, and by a metamorphosis see her change, transform into something off the wings of a butterfly; sign of the worthwhile creature and form of the eternal everlasting entity. To spring forth out the sublime incarnation, a shine of glory set down for all the world to see. She is pure blissful serenity. Plant a seed to watch it grow; nurture it and it will give rise to a field of flowers full. Still none of any other would have compared as saccharine as when I first laid eyes upon the woman found stirring within the perfumed tendrils of Summer’s bloom, beneath the Stars shinning bright. Her beauty is so that I come alive. Consumed by loveliness I am completely at the lady’s mercy, and unable to turn a look away. That is to say, I would not want to.
This is the beginning of a new time,” Torius said, “a great moment for us. One of us has learnt the Tongue and freed a princess. I have saved him and killed the guards. No longer will we be slaves. No longer will the guards tell us what to do. No longer will we listen. We will fight till we get what we want!”A roar exploded from the children around him.“This is a revolution,” Torius went on. “You all remember the pain that you have felt when the guards have touched you. You all know the shame we carry within us at being treated like this. No more! We will stand!
Oh r-really? Do t-tell?” I quirked an eyebrow back at him.“Well, usually it’s best to take your shoes and socks off before you step in the stream, better balance on an uneven surface. Also, you avoid that unpleasant squelchy feeling when you wear the shoes againlater.” He paused, smirking. “Also, ifI was going to paddle barefoot “I was going to paddle barefoot upstream in Yorkshire, I’d wait until at least May before I tried it. But you go ahead, love. You’re clearly a Spartan lass.
Hey now, wait a second. When will I see you again? You can’t leave a poor lad dangling like that!”His look of bewilderment made me bite my lip to keep from laughing.“Why would you w-want to?” The words were out before I could stop them. A rare occurrence for me. And now I seemed pathetically needy. Very attractive.“Because I love a pair of pretty green eyes.” He grinned.
Oh r-really? Do t-tell?” I quirked an eyebrow back at him. “Well, usually it’s best to take your shoes and socks off before you step in the stream, better balance on an uneven surface. Also, you avoid that unpleasant squelchy feeling when you wear the shoes again later.” He paused, smirking. “Also, if I was going to paddle barefoot upstream in Yorkshire, I’d wait until at least May before I tried it. But you go ahead, love. You’re clearly a Spartan lass.
How did you get so scratched up then, Emlynn?” He looked at me uncertainly again.I felt wildly like laughing. Too many swooping highs and plummeting lows. What a weird fewdays. Weird being a massive understatement.“Cr-Crawling through gorse bushes.” I took a perverse delight in answering his questions in a way that told him nothing at all. I’d never paid much attention to boys before. Maybe Grace was onto something after all.“Crawling through gorse,” he repeated. “Part of your action-girl antics, no doubt?”“N-no doubt.” I smirked again.
Tangled onto the shuttle, we were being woven back and forth to create the same tapestry of despair and heartbreak and loss. It was so muchbigger than I could see before, and all I had done was stand at the centre of the web and feed it my anger and frustration and jealousy.
Without thinking, I step a little closer, reaching out slowly to slide a fingertip over the largest petal of the lily tattoo on her lower back. Instantly a vibration moves up my arm, and I swear the mark on my hand burns against my skin.I clench my fingers into a fist, but I don’t step away.“Did you feel that?” she asks.I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I feel so much, always so much.She takes my hand and brings it to her side again, resting it on the violets. I look at thepurple flowers between my fingers and feel the heat of her skin, the way it slides beneath my palm, soft as silk. And that vibration moves through my arm again.Her breath quickens.I find myself moving closer as her blue eyes go wide with wonder. My heart stutters and my chest aches with some unknown need.“Are you doing this?” I ask. Is she making me want this?“No,” she breathes. The smell of her turns to spice, sharp and warm, and I know I’m sensing her now, even through the block in the house.We stand like that for an eternity, still as statues on the outside, but inside I’m running, running toward a place I’ve never been. I should be terrified. But all I feel is strength. Rightness.And then Kara moves, her hands skimming up my chest, testing the boundaries. Her palms slide to my shoulders, her fingers tracing the line of the muscles in my arms, down to my waist. She grips my shirt, stretching it a little, waiting for me to tell her to stop. But I watch her lift it, let her pull it up, raising my arms, and I even take the last of it off myself, dropping it to the floor.We breathe, staring at each other.The vibrations move between us. My left arm buzzes with them. I think she’s doing it. Whatever’s happening, it’s her.I reach up and brush my marked knuckles across her cheek, amazed at the feel of her, the way her eyes seem to see everything, the way she pulls me into her. I can’t seem to remember why I shouldn’t kiss her. And kiss her. And . . .I kiss her, taking her face in both hands, skimming my thumb over her jaw as she leans into the touch, reaching out to curl her fingers around the back of my neck. I have to remind myself to breathe. I need more of her. The emotions roll over me in a rush, a tangle of sensation and movement, heat and sugar and heady aromas.I grip her tighter.Her nails dig into my shoulders. My hands slide down her spine. The kiss deepens, goes on forever, until I can barely see sense. I explore her shape, the feel of her ribs, the textures and taste of her skin on my tongue as I kiss her neck, her shoulders, her chest. As I draw trembling gasps from her lips, she grips me so hard it hurts.Our bodies mesh. Our breath mingles in frenzied desperation. Nothing else exists except her. Her warmth. Her spice. Her.
Blessed are those that know the path out of their carnal flesh, for they shall attain intuition.
By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology; in the language of St. James, “faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” In other words, no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand, mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and the other not. If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious; if the other acts from the love or fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good.
We are aberrations—beings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once … uncanny things that have nothing to do with the rest of creation, horrors that poison the world by sowing our madness everywhere we go, glutting daylight and darkness with incorporeal obscenities. From across an immeasurable divide, we brought the supernatural into all that is manifest. Like a faint haze it floats around us. We keep company with ghosts. Their graves are marked in our minds, and they will never be disinterred from the cemeteries of our remembrance. Our heartbeats are numbered, our steps counted. Even as we survive and reproduce, we know ourselves to be dying in a dark corner of infinity. Wherever we go, we know not what expects our arrival but only that it is there.
We are only chance visitants to this jungle of blind mutations. The natural world existed when we did not, and it will continue to exist long after we are gone. The supernatural crept into life only when the door of consciousness was opened in our heads. The moment we stepped through that door, we walked out on nature. Say what we will about it and deny it till we die--we are blighted by our knowing what is too much to know and too secret to tell one another if we are to stride along our streets, work at our jobs, and sleep in our beds. It is the knowledge of a race of beings that is only passing through this shoddy cosmos.
As researchers of the paranormal, we must understand there are ways to change the rhythm of time within us, ways to change the beat. These ways have been known since the beginnings of civilization, and possibly much earlier. And these ways would require no more effort than simply recognizing the secret rhythms of things. Moreover, we may learn to beat with them and begin to perceive a different kind of space, and ultimately discover an altogether different conception of reality…
If you want to access your power as a divine human being, you must search for the small inside of the big and for the big inside of the small. When you look up into the expanse of sky overhead, look for the stars, the planets, the birds that fly. Small things for the eye to spot. And when you look down into the the face of a streetside flower, look for joy, happiness, comfort, stillness, and a silent song. When you have mastered finding the small in the big and the big in the small, you will have mastered your own divinity.
But a slow, deeply satisfied smile came over him, and his breath quickened. 'So softly it starts,' he whispered. 'Foolishly clever and with an unsurvivable trust. It just saved your miserable life, that questionable show of thought, my itchy-witch.' Al’s smile shifted, becoming lighter. 'And now you will live to possibly regret it.
How did you hear about that?''Are you kidding me? So far, I had that runt Kyle-''I hate him. I hate all vamps. That complete toad, Michael-''-tell me you were pregnant by a vamp-''kidnnaped me and-Kyle said WHAT?''and then a member of the Domi shows up and informs me-''The Domi sent someone HERE?''-that you're actually pregnant by the late king of the Fey.''Late?!' Heidar squeaked.
Grimes believed in what he did, with no doubts. Though he was older than me by over a decade, I suddenly felt old. Some things mark your soul, not in years but in blood and pain and selling off parts of yourself to get the bad guys, until you finally look in the mirror and aren’t sure which side you’re on anymore. There comes a point when having a badge doesn’t make you the good guy, it just makes you one of the guys. I needed to be one of the good guys, or what the hell was I doing?
I was seven," she answered. "In my room, under the bed, I heard something like fingernails dragging across the floor. I got up the courage, hung my head over the side, and looked under.""You're never supposed to do that," Mila gasped. "Seriously, don't you pay attention to the horror movies?
Grandpa Sereno: "There is nothing as dangerous as fear, fear of people who are different than you. Fear is the REAL danger and we must start to put all our efforts into fighting THAT instead of each other. Fight fear not people!!! Let there be light!
Shimmel: “NEVER TRUST THE GOYIM. They are just like these other weird dangerous people, Messianic Jews! How dare Jews become “Christian-like”, Messianic? We should cherem (ban) them from every aspect of Jewish life. And we must strip them of every Jewish privilege!
Moreover, it is not just that the early documents are silent about so much of Jesus that came to be recorded in the gospels, but that they view him in a substantially different way -- as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past, 'emptied' then of all his supernatural attributes (Phil.2:7), and certainly not a worker of prodigious miracles which made him famous throughout 'all Syria' (Mt.4:24). I have argued that there is good reason to believe that the Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural 'Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual. The influence of the Wisdom literature is undeniable; only assessment of what it amounted to still divides opinion.
We need to talk," he insisted, opening the door to his jeep that was parked next to my car. I was still holding out hope this would end and I would see his smile soon. "What's wrong?" I retaliated before I go in. "There's something you need to know, something I haven't told you," he said, taking my backpack from me.
Every time, I am lost and said a little prayer, I divine force, reach out to help me find my way.
And the kids?""Quincy, nothing. All she wants to do is look for Saturn's rings and bring home every creature from the pound. Nelson, though, he's..." She looked at Nicholas. "He's like you. Gifted, but ignorant."Nicholas bristled, "I'm not ignorant.""You are about magic.""That's because I don't believe in magic.""Nicholas," She stopped, hands on hips, waiting until he turned around. "You're haunted. You see the dead. How can you not believe in magic?
It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don’t understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it’s only incredible. But I’m much more certain it didn’t happen than that Parnell’s ghost didn’t appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand.
Logically, this kind of atheism did not prove that there was no God.... On the contrary, Southwell was typical in placing the onus probandi on those who affirmed the existence of God and Holyoake regarded himself as an atheist only in his inability to believe what the churches would have him believe. They were content to show that the Christian concept of the supernatural was meaningless, that the arguments in its favor were illogical, and that the mysteries of the universe, insofar as they were explicable, could be accounted for in material terms.
Persephone is just a name for a spirit of beauty at a certain time in history. I'm sure we could argue a biblical place for her if it matters. Your wife has the name of that pagan goddess, but the fact remains that she's your mortal bride in the Year of Our Lord 1888- and she's Catholic, so pray for her, damn it, I don't care how confusing it is. And pray for us, to anyone. If the dead are about to flood Athens, divine goodwill couldn't hurt. Your prayers can be in Hindu, if you like. Now go home.
All that stuff about Father Earth, it's just stories to explain what's wrong with the world. Like those weird cults that crop up from time to time. I heard of one that asks an old man in the sky to keep them alive every time they go to sleep. People need to believe there's more to the world than there is.
Desires are what can most easily ruin us, lovely.
I acknowledge the challenge of believing in a supernatural divinity. After all, in the natural a rock is a rock; a desk is a desk; my skin is my skin. Or are they? That rock you pick up and feel on your skin and place on the desk is 99.9% empty space—between atoms; as is your skin and the desk. So, perhaps it is our perception of the natural or “real” world that needs tweaking, not the supernatural.
A difficult journey is spiritual rewarding.There is a more dependence on God, His supernatural power, grace and divine favour along the travel.
We’re at church, for god sakes!” she hissed. “This isn’t right.”He shifted just so, his eyes narrowed with stubborn determination. “Why? God is love. God nurtures love. And, I love you, Elaine Pearson, and not just for your lovely body.”“You’re talking about sex, Ian.”He visually swept the church interior, noting the empty pews and flickering candles. “No, ma’am, I’m not,” he murmured, turning his attention back to her. “Sexual attraction is only a fraction of what flows between us. My body responds to you on a physical level, but that doesn’t mean I’m not in love with your mind and your soul. Remember that,” he stated with conviction, his words sounding like an order. "I can get inside your head, love. You and I are connected in the stars—whether or not you believe that singular truth is irrelevant. What we are…who we are…together…transcends the past. Every experience led us here. You need to stop fighting me…yourself…and us.
Then her imagination ran away with her. In Beckit’s head, her super-hot former stalker was just about to kiss all of her sorrows away.In real life, he was simply removing a small glop of toothpaste that had ended up on the outside of Beckit’s mouth.Nice. Wonderful. Faaantastic.Beckit cringed inside as her embarrassment was rivaled only by her newfound hatred for wandering fluoride.
I need to say something. Take it anyway you like,” Ian stated, his eyes boring into hers with a fervor that left her holding her breath.Elaine started to shake her head. “Look, we just met…you don’t need to say…”His deep, cultured voice interrupted her. “Everything you are, Laney, resides in your eyes. I need to see you—all of you. Don’t take that from me while I’m still here. Please.”Tears welled. “You don’t even know me,” she whispered. “How can you say that?”“Because I think I do know you—I just haven’t figured out how.
If you're outmatched, out-numbered, out-skilled, you'll run and live to fight another day." Lucky stopped jogging and pulled her close to him. He gently forced her eyes to lock with his. "You need to understand there are plenty of predators in our world who are far more dangerous than you'll ever be. Those are the ones you need to fear and, in a way, respect." ~ Lucky from Lone Wolf Rising
I hadn't realized she could shrink... It makes sense now with the tricks Ari was able to perform with her.""She wasn't born that way. Her mother was a scientist working to reduce subatomic particles.""And whose mom isn't?" Raven joked. "Was Rick Moranis involved somehow?
After finishing my breakfast, I puttered around for the next hour and tried not to think about Daniel. I glared at the chair in the middle of the back room as if he were still perched in it, shirtless with that shit-eating grin plastered across his goddamned face. Once, I almost sat in the chair — after carefully locking the door, of course, so no one would accidentally wander in and find me with my nose pressed to the leather, trying to see if it still smelled like him. And then came the self-inflicted chiding and browbeating for even thinking about doing something as ridiculous and lame and downright girlie." ~Evelyn
Quote from BEAUTIFULLY BROKEN – pgs. 86 -87 “A Kiss”:I went to snatch my hand away, but Trent caught my hand in his, startling me. I looked up to see warmth on his face. His smile held the promise of happiness. He scooted closer and held my gaze for a breath, glanced down. He leaned forward, as if he had no control over his actions. I inhaled his nice, soapy-clean scent, and all coherent thought left my head.His hands gripped my waist and Trent yanked me against him, his mouth covering mine in a deep kiss. The caress of his lips was softer than I’d imagined. An unfamiliar rush of excitement engulfed my senses. My hands wrapped around his neck, fingering his silky tousled hair. His moist lips seared a path from my lips to my neck, igniting a blaze of desire that flooded my skin everywhere his lips and roaming hands touched. Boys had kissed me before, but not like this. Never like this...
Quote from MOONLIGHT MAYHEM – pg 224 “Hero Intercedes”:His hands flickered upward, and before I knew it, they were cupping my face. So, damnably fast now. Demonic-like fast. Trent reeled me closer. Our foreheads joined. He held me, while I trembled in his arms. I was vaguely aware of Evans and Maxwell watching, although it didn’t seem important. Nothing seemed important whenever he did this. It felt like we were enclosed in our own personal bubble made only for the two of us. Trent murmured something in my ear. We stood like that until my shaky legs gradually regained strength. I shut my eyes and pretended my body wasn’t sizzling with heat-lightning because Trent stood so close. My hormones always decided to rebel whenever he put his arms around me. And it wasn’t totally awkward and uncomfortable. No, it felt like the best thing I’d experienced since before Dad’s death. And that’s saying a lot.
He knew perfectly well (even if he wasn’t inclined to admit it) that the material body had a spiritual aspect. He knew that “spirit,” however explained, was real, because of his own undeniable experiences—which, though he might suppress them, he couldn’t altogether erase from memory.
We know what wood is and what earth and stone are and that they have a color and texture, a smell and even a taste, but matter as a perceptible material substance independent of the nature of the wood, earth and stone composed of it seems incomprehensible. In order for us to regard a thing as real it must possess at least some distinctive physical qualities. We must be able to experience it as a physical thing before we can decide it is real. Matter as proposed by modern science, however, has no distinctive or definite physical qualities at all. Matter is simply some unimaginable stuff possessing no conceivable definition whatsoever. The concept of matter, then, proves to be just as elusive and abstract as the concepts of spirit, soul or the life-principle.
Imagine being just strong enough to remember what life was like, feeling things, your heartbeat, the world around you. And imagine you couldn’t have it anymore, couldn’t even properly remember it, but there was just enough that some deep part of you knew what you were missing. Wouldn’t you do anything to get it back, if it was right there for the taking? Wouldn’t you be willing to kill for it?
Magic ran in the family. Even her mother's second cousin, who was adopted, did small spells on the side. She sold these from a stall in Kota Bharu. Her main wares were various types of fruit fried in batter, but if you bought five pisang or cempedak goreng, she threw in a jampi for free.
For if a man by magical arts and sacrifices will bring down the moon, and darken the sun, and induce storms, or fine weather, I should not believe that there was anything divine, but human, in these things, provided the power of the divine were overpowered by human knowledge and subjected to it.
A difficult journey is spiritual rewarding.There is a more dependence on God, His supernatural power, grace and divine favour long the travel.
Roots cannot grow into trees if there are no supernatural elements in the soil. Man cannot grow wealthy and famous if he doesn't contribute to either, the good or evil.
The demon is crouched in the corner, between the Cheetos and the onion dip. It’s a small one, only about four feet tall: a low-level creeper. I flick my gaze over the spot like I don’t see it and open the cooler door to get a Coke.
When I look up from my book, the wind has gained its full voice. This storm is the mad child of Father Time and Mother Nature. Wailing away in no predictable rhythm, their monstrous offspring’s throwing a hackle-raising temper tantrum. Underscoring the hideous howl, I detect another, quieter sound, a pitiable, weak whimper which has been all but completely drowned out by the epic volume of the screaming wind. With slowly dawning terror, I realize this cowardly voice is my own; escaping through the narrow opening of my barely parted lips. Where’s my dad? Why is he taking so long?The weather ignores my whining questions and continues to whip itself into a raging convulsion. The windows rattle and the wind screams. But the sounds are no longer random.In the midst of the chaos, the howling begins to form an elongated word. Horrified, I recognize the stretched out syllables of my own name.“Aaaaannaaaaabelle.
Hello?” I ask. No one is there. Not a word. Not a whisper. Not a single sound resonating from the other side of the receiver. “Hello? Anyone there?” I ask again. Repeating myself. I am beginning to feel rather anxious now. Scared, would be a better word to use. Shivers have begun to creep up my spinal cord, and I can feel the urgency of goose pimples begin to line up on by frightened pale skin.
What we share between us is powerful. It consumes and burns brightly, love. When we—if we—consummate this relationship, I want us to be thinking clearly. Most importantly, I want you to be strong. Healthy. I want you to be whole. I wish that for you—in every second of your life—whether you choose to stay or go—that you be you again…that your heart…and your body heal. You’ve survived much, Laney. Let us not forget your journey leading to this place in time.
His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams.In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.
When you are a Protector, in darkness you see the world through different eyes and the line between Beast and Savior is so thin, you find yourself wondering if it was ever there to begin with.The beat of a heart makes your soul ache, instincts so raw fighting them seems futile and until you are marked, the world holds its breath as within you lies the power to destroy them all.
You are a bright light, Elli.’ His own breath hitches, a sound that I cannot quite grasp. His eyes are darkening, his lips tightening. His hands grasp me tighter and he moves closer, his mouth inches from mine, I can almost taste the sweetness and saltiness of his scent, the rich coffee beans and sugar, the vague spearmint. I say nothing, I’m not even sure I’m breathing.‘You shouldn’t have to see such pain, such blackness. You are too pure.’ His lips do not collide with mine, his skin does not brush against me, only his voice sends a shiver down every notch in my spine, trailing goose bumps over my skin. He tilts his head to the side, his lips gently brushing against my ear. And that is all. I’m not good enough for him. I’m not. That’s why… that’s why…‘Too pure…
I want to get to know you a little better.’ His hand touches mine, the briefest of touches but I still recoil my hand into the sleeve of my cardigan. His touch is blisteringly hot, I’m sure earlier today when he cupped my cheek I had burn marks. But no, it is just him, just his touch, it sends crazy little shivers throughout my entirety.‘I don’t understand you… you said you want what you cannot have. Isn’t this a form of torture?’‘Does a person who wishes to lose weight not taunt themselves with sweets? Does a person not go by the same window every day, just to glimpse the piece of jewellery they long for, yet can never attain? We torment ourselves every day with things we cannot have. Perhaps it is torture, but perhaps my request is genuine.
By the sound of things, you know nothing about mathematics.''You can put it like that. I'm utterly useless.''Useless is such a harsh word, you are merely... inexperienced. So I thought we could start at the beginning.''I'm not that stupid. I know how to add, subtract and multiply-''I don't mean that kind of beginning...
Come here.” Nico reached over and gave Katty a great big hug. “Have I told you how much I love you lately?” Katty immediately turned soft. She had a big weakness for Nico. Just hearing the word 'love' instantly made her melt. “No, but I like to hear it.” She smiled back at him with a smile that illuminated her face. She did like to hear it. She hadn't know Nico for very long, but there was just something so awesome about him that she felt very loved. He may have been a Vampire, and had a heart as black as night, but deep down he was a good man. He knew how to love a girl when he found the right one. He loved her completely, and without any doubt.
When I was a child, I first thought that these shades might be malevolent spirits who fostered evil in those people around whom they swarmed. I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.
I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to give her. These pages will be our memory until she drows her last breath in my arms and I take her forever and escape at last to a place where neither heaven nor hell will ever be able to find us.
When you allow yourself to remember that you truly are a multidimensional being, you will begin experiencing yourself in a much more expanded way. What previously was believed to be supernatural becomes natural. Then you come to a realisation that now you can see what has always been there yet it remained hidden to you who chose to see something else.
It's poor judgment', said Grandpa 'to call anything by a name. We don't know what a hobgoblin or a vampire or a troll is. Could be lots of things. You can't heave them into categories with labels and say they'll act one way or another. That'd be silly. They're people. People who do things. Yes, that's the way to put it. People who *do* things.
Stare at him," said Ghost. "They won't bite you if you keep staring at them."Steve backed away. "They bite?"Not really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only time geese are ever dangerous is when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy that almost got killed that way."By geese?"Yeah, there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and stabbing at his ankles with their big ol' beaks. He didn't know you had to stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a fifty-foot cliff."So how come he didn't die?"This guy had wings," said Ghost. "He flew away.
The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter... the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever.
Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?
(W.D.) Howells asserted that the Americans' 'love of the supernatural is their common inheritance from no particular ancestry.' Their fiction, he added, often gathers in the gray 'twilight of the reason,' on 'the borderland between experience and illusion." Howells's geographical metaphor was derived, of course, from Hawthorne's idea of a moonlit 'neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.' Whether literally, as in Cooper's The Spy, or metaphorically, as in Hawthorne's works, the neutral territory/borderland was the familiar setting of the American romance. As American writers came to realize, not only was there a borderland between East and West, civilization and wilderness, but also between the here and the hereafter, between conscious and unconscious, 'experience and illusion' - psychic frontiers on the edge of territories both enticing and terrifying.
Yet, despite all, it is a difficult thing to admit the existence of ghosts in a coldly factual world. One's very instincts rebel at the admission of such maddening possibility. For, once the initial step is made into the supernatural, there is no turning back, no knowing where the strange road leads except that it is quite unknown and quite terrible. ("Slaughter House")
Even the most impassioned devotee of the ghost story would admit that the taste for it is slightly abnormal, a survival, perhaps, from adolescence, a disease of deficiency suffered by those whose lives and imaginations do not react satisfactorily to normal experience and require an extra thrill
Once and for all, let us speak the paradox aloud: "We have been force-fed for so long the shudders of a thousand graveyards that at last, seeking a macabre redemption, a salvation by horror, we willingly consume the terrors of the tomb...and find them to our liking.
We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale. But you and I, at all events, have known something of the terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested under human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself a form.
Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father’s house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry “Let us go hence,” and then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.
Tell me, Eric,” he said, licking a droplet from the corner of his mouth. “Have you ever tasted blood?” My mouth was so dry I could barely find the voice to answer him. “What an odd question...” “But a valid one. Well, have you?” “I’ve cut my lip before, so yes, I suppose I have tasted blood, but...” “Not your own, you foolish boy.” He let out a short, derisive laugh and leaned in so that he was only a few inches from my face. “I mean the blood of another.” “Good God, Stefan, of course not!” “Pity...
In supernatural horror stories, however, magical thinking is a completely different matter. Those characters contending with what seems to be the work of magic will deny till the very last moment that anything magical is going on. They will invoke reason and evidence and eek out corroborations for the cause of their problems. But readers of these stories are rarely, if ever, on the side of these characters. They desperately want to believe that there is indeed something magical going on and they are primed to accept it whenever it occurs. Some readers especially enjoy a story with bad magic, as it assures them that magic is confined to fiction and will not leak into their real lives. This is the most perverse form of magical thinking and the one least likely to be recognized as such.
The tales of pure terror, of course, are completely naturalistic in their content, and must stand or fall by their merit alone. But what about the supernatural stories? Can we, the children of a scientific age, give any credence to these medleys of devils, ghosts, and other psychical invasions? There is only one answer: we can and do. We are dealing with stories, not with scientific dissertations. And if, as stories, they have the ring of truth, we'll believe them, as stories, implicitly.("Introduction")
There's a danger and a beauty to the moment which seems out of time. It pierces something deep inside of him, bypassing his rationale, and it touches his very core. In a sudden shock of illumination, and of knowing, he recognizes this woman is his destiny, and their fates are intertwined.
The images start to darken and she feels another hunger well up in her, this one having to do with another kind of desire. The desire to feed, to possess, and the aggressive thrill of a predator capturing and killing its prey as it tears into unspoiled flesh. Its teeth ripping and rending and the satisfying coppery taste of blood. There is the ultimate moment of surrender of drinking away the life essence. The pinnacle of lust which mounts in the very last breath, when the light drains from the victim's eyes and when the soul fades... Then there is only a triumphant cry to the moonlight and the beckoning depths of the ever waiting water.
One day you see a man walking down the road, the next day you come to his yard and find him dead... Why is it that he cannot do what the living do? It is because the thing that gave power to these parts is no longer there. That is the duppy, and that is the most powerful part of any man. Everybody has evil in them, and when a man is alive... he will not abandon himself to many evil things. But when the duppy leaves the body, it no longer has anything to restrain it and it will do more terrible things than any man ever dreamed of.- From 'Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica', Zora Neale Hurston, 1938
This is indeed one of the true tragedies of lycanthropy, that the subject of such evil pacts and nefarious deeds is ignorant of his place in the plot that besieges this humble hamlet.”– Aleister Creed, WitchfinderThe Trial of John Goode by Gabriel Salmon and Thome Ward
During the Reformation and the Enlightenment, nature came to be understood in a mechanistic sense as bereft of any capacity for divine grace or revelation. We’ll explore this suggestion further in the next chapter. In order to appreciate the significance of this, we have to recognize that nature is a cultural construct. When we speak of nature, we are using language to describe the world around us with all its species, life-forms and landscapes. But nature is a concept whose meaning changes with different perceptions and ways of looking at the world. This means that supernatural is also a concept which has different meanings, for it refers to phenomena or experiences which do not seem to fit within our particular expectations of what nature is or should be. The term supernatural therefore depends on a certain concept of what natural is. For many people who are less determinately materialist than Dawkins, there may be an indeterminate region which is neither strictly natural nor strictly supernatural. A red rose may be natural, but when I am given one by the person I love, I experience a range of emotions, memories and associations which endow that rose with symbolic significance and make it, in some sense, supernatural. It transcends its natural biological functions to communicate something in the realms of beauty, hope and love.
Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas had talked about ghosts and magic and woven a bit of a spell himself. He'd sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she'd found herself wanting to believe him. But testing prods at his argument had made him angry, and long years with Gavin had taught her that angry, defensive people shared the lousy habit of being wrong.
Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.
Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and most of these dogmas have been false.All stories about gods and devils, of heavens and hells, as they do not conform to nature, and are not apparent to sense, should be rejected without consideration. Beyond the universe there is nothing and within the universe the supernatural does not and cannot exist.Of all deceivers who have plagued mankind, none are so deeply ruinous to human happiness as those imposters who pretend to lead by a light above nature.The lips of the dead are closed forever. There comes no voice from the tomb. Christianity is responsible for having cast the fable of eternal fire over almost every grave.
Ellis smiled at her concern and kissed her cheek once more. “I promise. I’ll come home if I need help.” He stepped back and gave them a bow, showing his respect.With their permission, he left the counsel room and headed straight to his room. He packed supplies for the journey. His mother had warned him that no magic worked inside of The Forbidden Woods or even in the outskirts of it. He would have to walk there on foot and hope that no one loyal to Walter caught up with him on his way.
He was angry with himself for having kissed her and enjoyed it, only to be disappointed by her in the end.He knew that love was never simple, but it was even less so for a vampire.He shook his head in disbelief as he walked away. He had really thought that she was the one for him and had genuinely believed that hewas going to spend the rest of his life with her, but now, he knew better.
I could have sworn I just heard him thinking about the proposal he had planned. Red roses and champagne waiting at the restaurant, but maybe I imagined it.”I frowned in turn. “You could read his thoughts?”“It is probably just my imagination running away with me. I’m so freaked out that I plucked the idea from my own head. I’m not a mind reader.”“Well, it is easy enough to test. Try to concentrate on me and tell me what I’m thinking.”Finally, Nessa’s eyes lit up and met mine. Amused, she quirked a smile at me. “Really, Cora, that’s lame. I love fluffy bunnies, is not what I expected.
Avalon is full of desperate people.’ She bites at her lower lip this time, fumbling her hands, knitting her fingers into the bundle of plastic coin bags in her grasp. ‘Are you implying that I’m desperate?’ I say, one eyebrow tilting.‘You don’t need to be desperate… you can have anyone... I…’ she trails off. Looking up and trying to search the line of shops for the bank. I repulse her, I make her want to run. Why is this so hard? I need to get inside of her, I need to know what she is thinking, what she is wanting.It surely isn’t me she wants. Not to the extent that I… want her.‘You?’ I entice her to finish her sentence but she doesn’t, she stares off into the bustling crowds, memory flashing her eyes with a darkness.‘Madi wouldn’t fumble like this.’Oh, she would fumble, but not in the way you are, Elli.‘You’re not her, Elli.’ I entice her again, trying to force the dark memory, the sadness from her.‘No, if I was, you wouldn’t have wanted anyone else.’A breath hitches in her throat, she puts a hand over her mouth and says something else, her cheeks dance a shade of red that brightens and brightens until she apologises and quickens her pace. I chuckle, pulling at her arm and encircling one around her waist, pulling her back to me. Beneath my touch, her body trembles. When I raise my hand, my palm touching her cheek, I am sure she isn’t breathing.‘I don’t want anyone, Elli.’ My eyes burn, consuming her with my gaze. She is like a frightful deer, struggling beneath me with a gaze that cannot quite meet mine. When she does, it is only for a brief second before falling down and all I see is the gentle flutter of her raven flashes.‘I told you. I want someone I cannot have.’‘That is a really harsh way of telling someone you’re not interested.
Traveled so far, and not yet have they come across anything of interest, he mused, except, of course, for that nest of goblins I managed to stir up. Indeed, his brother had always been a valiant fool; why not give him some excitement?He always did possess a love for a good fight, and who am I to deny him?The glass sphere, responding to his thoughts, zoomed in on the mountain nearby where Shrukian camped, and by putting both his hands on the sphere's sides and closing his eyes, Pharun could all but smell the power that radiated from its depths. He could taste it on the back of his tongue, and it awake all sorts of things inside of him. The power tasted of death and ash, and it was scalding hot, pouring down his throat like blood of the freshly dead. He did not need further searching to know what kind of power he was sampling.He smiled to himself, and it came out a satisfied smirk.
Mind you, I cannot swear that my story is true. It may have been a dream; or worse, a symptom of some severe mental disorder. But I believe it is true. After all, how are we to know what things there are on earth? Strange monstrosities still exist, and foul, incredible perversions. Every war, each new geographical or scientific discovery, brings to light some new bit of ghastly evidence that the world is not altogether the same place we fondly imagine it to be. Sometimes peculiar incidents occur which hint of utter madness.How can we be sure that our smug conceptions of reality actually exist? To one man in a million dreadful knowledge is revealed, and the rest of us remain mercifully ignorant. There have been travelers who never came back, and research workers who disappeared. Some of those who did return were deemed mad because of what they told, and others sensibly concealed the wisdom that had so horribly been revealed. Blind as we are, we know a little of what lurks beneath our normal life. There have been tales of sea serpents and creatures of the deep; legends of dwarfs and giants; records of queer medical horrors and unnatural births. Stunted nightmares of men's personalities have blossomed into being under the awful stimulus of war, or pestilence, or famine. There have been cannibals, necrophiles, and ghouls; loathsome rites of worship and sacrifice; maniacal murders, and blasphemous crimes. When I think, then, of what I saw and heard, and compare it with certain other grotesque and unbelievable authenticities, I begin to fear for my reason.
The functions of the human frame are, broadly speaking, known. They are a country, anyhow, that has been charted and mapped out. But outside that lie huge tracts of undiscovered country, which certainly exist, and the real pioneers of knowledge are those who, at the cost of being derided as credulous and superstitious, want to push on into those misty and probably perilous places. I felt that I could be of more use by setting out without compass or knapsack into the mists than by sitting in a cage like a canary and chirping about what was known. Besides, teaching is very very bad for a man who knows himself only to be a learner: you only need to be a self-conceited ass to teach.
I mean,” her mother paused to choose her words, “maybe you’ll get involved in some school related activities, or join a team, or maybe meet a nice boy.”“Ugh,” Keely groaned, “I don’t have time for that stuff mom. We’ve talked about this.”“Because of the little ghost...searching…thingy you and Tad do?” “It’s called paranormal investigation mom.”“It’s called being antisocial.
I know if I died tonight, I would die a happy man at peace with myself knowing Gloria’s story would finally be told—a mysterious and astonishing story that defies the timeworn precepts of modern psychology and psychiatry—where insanity, genius, the metaphysical, and the mystery of life come together to beguile and confound our contemporary understanding of the mind and its limitless powers to heal.Dr. Adam Jaxon
I believe I have said this before, but it’s worth repeating. The patient’s resources stop where the therapist’s beliefs stop. It is critical that the therapist have an open mind and complete faith in the patient’s deeper resources. The most formidable and potent resources must be approached with respect, taken seriously and accepted on faith. Understand the information and knowledge shared with the therapist is entirely dependent on his or her level of development, their ability to properly use what is communicated for the patient’s or therapist’s benefit and welfare, and the level of trust and belief the resource has in the therapist. The success of their bond and their mission is founded on mutual trust, respect, and faith in each others abilities and potentials. Remember this!”The Guardian
Really?' Shep scoffed and rolled his eyes. 'You can't be serious! Whitey, you come from the streets of North Philly, and you're scared of a bunch of backwoods butt-monkeys that thinks that an awesome Saturday night consists of drinking the cheapest beer they can steal from their daddy's huntin' coolers, tippin' some cows, stealin' a tracter, takin' it for a joy ride then leaving it on the 9th green of the golf course, and getting a knobber from one of the skankleaders. Seriously, Whitey, you have issues that I can't even begin to imagine.
Martha Ridgley had been a single, working-class woman with no children or close family. Her killer had never been caught, and her case was eventually forgotten.But not by everyone—not by whoever had been paying the rent on Apartment #37 for over two decades until, for one reason or another, the lease was finally up.The Woman in Apartment #37byJohn MeadfromBook of the Dead
Sometime later, I stood watching the cold rain fall, when suddenly I felt Daemon's arms around me and his lips on my neck. He loved my pregnant body and his hands roamed over it under the warm terrycloth of my bathrobe. I was lost in the moment, content to stay here forever...lost in the cold rain and welcoming warmth of Dublin, and lost in the arms of my husband. Since we arrived early this morning we were in our room, making love and sleeping, lost in a fairy tale moment, savoring every caress.
I remembered Daemon's feather soft kisses on my cheek, and I remembered the clouds parting and the sun shining on a cold February day in Ireland. And as my baby girl was laid on my chest and my husband held my hand, I saw my best friend Kat walk into the sun kissed part in the clouds, hand in hand, along with the last regrets of my past.
I've been waiting for you," he murmured.Aphrodite slowly walked across the balcony, as her mind raced, trying to think of the perfect thing to say in return. All of a sudden a thought came to her that she didn't quite understand, but she knew it was right. It was also important, and would immortalize her and her actions for thousands of years to come."Happy Valentine's Day," she purred, as she fell into his arms, still holding the box of chocolates and a single red rose.
The same beautiful receptionist greeted Christian who had met him before and she extended the same lush invitation as she had the last time. Victoria's eyes narrowed and Christian chuckled under his breath at her jealousy."Relax chérie, she's paid to do that." "Well, she didn't come on to me, so obviously she's not doing her job properly," Victoria said. Christian laughed.
...I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so. Mind you, this isn’t easy. We are so surrounded by tales of the supernatural, by the thunders of the powers to be who attempt with all their might to convince us of the existence of the supernatural, that the strongest among us may feel himself swaying.Something like that happened to me recently. In January 1990, I was lying in a hospital bed one afternoon and my dear wife, Janet, was not with me, but had gone home for a few hours to take care of some necessary chores. I was sleeping, and a finger jabbed at me. I woke, of course, and looked blearily to see who had awakened me and for what purpose.My room, however, had a lock, and the lock was firmly closed and there was a chain across the door too. Sunlight filled the room and it was clearly empty. So were the closet and the bathroom. Rationalist though I am, there was no way in which I could refrain from thinking that some supernatural influence had interfered to tell me that something had happened to Janet (naturally, my ultimate fear). I hesitated for a moment, trying to fight it off, and for anyone but Janet I would have. So I phoned her at home. She answered immediately and said she was perfectly well.Relieved, I hung up the phone and settled down to consider the problem of who or what had poked me. Was it simply a dream, a sensory hallucination? Perhaps, but it had seemed absolutely real. I considered.When I sleep alone, I often wrap myself up in my own arms. I also know that when I am sleeping lightly, my muscles twitch. I assumed my sleeping position and imagined my muscles twitching. It was clear that my own finger had poked into my shoulder and that was it.Now suppose that at the precise moment I had poked myself, Janet, through some utterly meaningless coincidence, had tripped and skinned her knee. And suppose I had called and she had groaned and said, "I just hurt myself".Would I have been able to resist the thought of supernatural interference? I hope so. However, I can't be sure. It's the world we live in. It would corrupt the strongest, and I don't imagine I'm in the strongest.
As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it.
Being that 'reason is not antithetical to faith' (Woods) and that Pentecost established the Reality of super-nature (Lewis) and that 'theology matters' (Wimber), then 'empowered evangelicalism' (Nathan) is the natural expression of discipleship."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
Hey, hey, just a little scare.” Said Nico, backing away from a very guarded Katty. “Gotta get used to those if your going to be a Vampire. Just wanted to see if you were on your game. As far as I can tell, you are.”Katty immediately retreated, putting her dagger back inside of her purse. Now instead of stabbing Nico in his chest, she slapped him hard across his arm. “Jerk! Don't ever do that again! You nearly gave me a heart attack!” After her heart stopped fluttering for a moment, Katty drew her attention towards Nico and what he was wearing. Nico was lookin' pretty hot tonight. Jumping out and scaring her, now took second place. For what she saw before her was nothing less than a dark, Gothic dream. Mmm...oh yes..Yum..Yum..Yum!
That’s funny. You would think after being followed and shoved into a dark alley by a stranger, you would be at least a little shaken. Don’t tell me, you are a black belt just waiting for the perfect moment to strike.” He laughed soundlessly. “I mean your words do sound brave but your eyes and the fact that you’re trembling like a scared little kitten say something else entirely.” Even though the alley was submerged in darkness and shadows, it was obvious there was a devilish grin stretched across his face...
No one stays the same, David. Everything you are is a direct result of something that's affected you in your past, whether it was horrible or wonderful -- no one has the right to destroy themselves because they can't deal with the pain. You have to learn from it. It's not over--the good in your life--it's not over until your dead.
I try to never miss the Zumba class since I believe comedy is a great way to start your week....It was great fun, although I had to hold myself back from turning it into a giant mosh pit slam dance. Last time I did that they kicked me out for a month. Today I enjoyed watching an 80 year old lady - with a cane no less - shimmy, her boobs flying like weapons around her waist.
Vomit began to spill out of me like pea soup, splattering the road with champagne and caviar, long island iced teas, of bacon appetizers and croissants, and a perfectly grilled filet mignonette. It had gone down easy, among the kiss ups of the lawyer world, but spewed out nastily and hard, in the company of a cheater.
Will you promise to keep this to yourself, to not tell anyone of what we are?” By his words you’d think he was giving me a choice. Like I could say,no deal, honey bunch, I’m off to shout your secret from the rooftops, and he’d be like, oh no please don’t do that. Inreality, he’d have to kill me.
Supernatural is a dangerous and difficult word in any of its senses, looser or stricter. But to fairies it can hardly be applied, unless super is taken merely as a superlative prefix. For it is man who is, in contrast to fairies, supernatural; whereas they are natural, far more natural than he. Such is their doom.
The supernatural Christ of the New Testament, the god of orthodox Christianity, is dead. But priestcraft lives and conjures up the ghost of this dead god to frighten and enslave the masses of mankind. The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars, and miseries than any other name has caused. The darkest wrongs are still inspired by it. The wails of anguish that went up from Kishinev, Odessa, and Bialystok still vibrate in our ears.
I don't think I could ever see her closely," the sentinel replied, "however close she came." His own voice was hushed and regretful, echoing with lost chances. "She has a newness," he said. "Everything is for the first time. See how she moves, how she walks, how she turns her head -- all for the first time, the first time anyone has ever done these things. See how she draws her breath and lets it go again, as though no one else in the world knew that air was good. It is all for her. If I learned that she had been born this very morning, I would only be surprised that she was so old." The second sentinel stared down from his tower at the three wanderers. The tall man saw him first, and next the dour woman. Their eyes reflected nothing but his armor, grim and cankered and empty. But then the girl in the ruined black cloak raised her head, and he stepped back from the parapet, putting out one tin glove against her glance. In a moment she passed into the shadow of the castle with her companions, and he lowered his hand. "She may be mad," he said calmly. "No grown girl looks like that unless she is mad. That would be annoying, but far preferable to the remaining possibility." "Which is?" the younger man prompted after a silence."Which is that she was indeed born this morning. I would rather that she were mad.
For a long time, Conor had known his father and Liam followed a stricter-than-average code, that their hate shone a little brighter than most, but until today, he’d never seen so clearly what fools they were and how blinded they’d become in their intolerance.
Rings and magazines; keychains and umbrellas; hats and glasses; rattles and radios. They looked like different things, but Ralph thought they were really all the same thing: the faint, sorrowing voices of people who had found themselves written out of the script in the middle of the second act while they were still learning their lines for the third, people who had been unceremoniously hauled off before their work was done or their obligations fulfilled, people whose only crime had been to be born in the Random... and to have caught the eye of the madman with the rusty scalpel.
There are several cats smoothly moving about, which helped me greatly to relax, for I have always felt that no house is wholly bad where there are cats, and conversely, where there are several cats, a house is bound to be wonderfully charming.
Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises. Here are all your familiar spirits-your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the night and of the day. Have no fear now-we shall find him out and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!
Dad had this story. A Marine and a Navy guy walk into a bathroom together. They both take a piss, and then sailor goes to the sink. The Marine heads for the door, and the sailor says, "Hey- in the Navy they teach us to wash up after we take a leak." And the Marine turns around and says, "Yeah? Well, in the Marines they teach us not to piss on our hands.
The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are adverse to sitting down to dine thirteen at a table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, of seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tale. There are, of course, children of light who have set their faces against all this, although even a newspaperman, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt, unlike any other, is a visionary without scratching.
Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak."Yes—and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape—then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect.""Oh? And what may that be?""It is not a supernatural creature.""But it is all those other things?""Yes.""Then I fail to see what difference it makes whether it be supernatural or not—so long as it is malefic, possesses great powers and life span and has the ability to change its shape at will.""Ah, but it makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy—it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable.
We say it’s a modern American Western - two gunslingers who ride into town, fight the bad guys, kiss the girl and ride out into the sunset again. And we were always talking from the very beginning that if you’re going to have cowboys, they need a trusty horse. —Eric Kripke on the decision to add the Impala
It’s said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That’s of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it’s said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.
A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of people passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death--of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work--of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell--of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold the devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread!
I blew that clay pigeon to smithereens. I don't know why Mum got so upset. According to Uncle Andrew she's a crack shot herself. But she says I'm too young. What I'd like to know is how old does a person have to be before they get to do all the fun stuff?
But I find it necessary to repeat in this particular place that the division into classes, which is so salient a part of modern demonology, had, and has, little significance for primitive man or for the peasant in a comparatively low state of mental development. To such people, spirits of all kinds - fairies, the ghosts of the dead, and even witches and water-kelpies - are all creatures of the supernatural class between which he scarcely differentiates.
He did not himself believe in the supernatural, but the thing happened, and he proposed to tell it as simply as possible. It was stupid of him to say that it shook his faith in mundane affairs, for it was just as mundane as anything else. Indeed the really frightening part about it was the horribly tangible atmosphere in which it took place. None of the outlines wavered in the least. The creature would have been less remarkable if it had been less natural. It seemed to overcome the usual laws without being immune to them. ("The Troll")
Why not other elements besides fire, air, earth and water? There are four of them, just four, those foster parents of beings! What a pity! Why aren't there forty elements instead, or four hundred, or four thousand? How paltry everything is, how miserly, how wretched! Stingily given, aridly invented, heavily made!Why not other elements besides fire, air, earth and water? There are four of them, just four, those foster parents of beings! What a pity! Why aren't there forty elements instead, or four hundred, or four thousand? How paltry everything is, how miserly, how wretched! Stingily given, aridly invented, heavily made!
The tabloids wanted to know whether the dragon was receiving benefits. The gossip magazines claimed to have found a woman who was bearing the dragon's baby. The fashion magazines did spreads on draconian style. This apparently consisted of gaunt models with sunken eyes, swathed in clouds of chiffon and arranged in awkwardly erotic positions on piles of gold coins.
All that was left to us was to wonder: who knows all that is innate to this world, or to any other? Why should there not be something buried deep within appearances, something that wears a mask to hide itself behind the visibility of nature?
Not one of us, even after last night, can say the word "ghost" without a littleinvoluntary smile. No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks wheremodern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor ofsuperstition and have no substitute defense.
My name is Kyran. You look like an honorable woman,” he whispered, practicing what he would say to any prospective mate. “I have a home with my parents and my brother. There we will live and you will be part of our family. Would you like to give me many children?
One night after dinner a group of us were talking about the supernatural, and one of our dinner guests said that when the electric light was invented, people began to lose the dimension of the supernatural. In the days before we could touch a switch and flood every section of the room with light, there were always shadows in the corner, shadows which moved with candlelight, with firelight; and these shadows were an outward and visible sign that things are not always what they seem; there are things which are not visible to the mortal human being; there are things beyond our ken.
To call the place an anthill would be like calling the Versailles Palace a single-family home. Earthen ramparts rose almost to the tops of the surrounding trees--a hundred feet at least. The circumference could have accommodated a Roman hippodrome. A steady stream of soldiers and drones swarmed in and out of the mound. Some carried fallen trees. One, inexplicably, was dragging a 1967 Chevy Impala.
The British call junzi a "gentleman," no surprise. The Americans have no gentlemen, so they translate junzi as "the superior man." The Germans have no gentlemen either, and "superior man" is reserved, so they call junzi an "edler" meaning a person of noble blood. To sum up, all Europeans call junzi anything but junzi, which is quite a scandal.
Disciples of Jesus Christ have had a profound life-altering experience. They have encountered a supernatural personality, revealed in history as Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, the Messiah. And they have discovered the meaning and purpose of their lives in the subsequent revelation of his continuing presence to them. The experience demands a faithful, reliable witness.What would public opinion say of a person who discovered the absolute cure for AIDS, but was unwilling to share that cure with a world that so desperately needs it? What if the antidote were kept hidden and made use of by only the discoverer and his family? We would consider it an moral outrage and he or she would be infamous. Why? We expect the cure to be shared, not only shared, but made available to all as soon as possible!
I should like one day, as some anonymous pedestrian revisiting the scenes of these memories, to follow on the heels of an attentive reader - here are some - and to relish his delight when, with this book in his pocket, he finds himself in the presence of one of the characters described, mentioned or referred to earlier on, who do exist, large as life, and wittingly or not perpetuate their legend. I’d like people to investigate, to verify. You need to be an extremely well-informed reader to identify all the ‘keys’ scattered throughout these pages. Many readers may find among them the key to their own front door.In any case, what you need to know is this: in certain areas of Paris, the supernatural is part of everyday life. Local people accept this and have some involvement with it.
Gray clouds were charging across tissues of white, which stretched and shredded and tore slowly, until through their final layers there gleamed a hint of the disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The wind roared, the trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for those vast operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking, broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the supernatural that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic artillery.
Later that night, I sat in my room thinking of what I just went through. The four of us had burned the body in an old pit and covered the burned remains with a pile of leaves. Just standing there, watching the crackling fire burn and cripple the bones of this thing just reminded me of how real this all became. My mom was not too happy when I came home late and smelling like a crematorium.
. In gym, she would purposely get on the opposite team of me and since we were still doing dodge ball; she would try to hit me. This brings us to one of the only things I understood from my brother and dad when they were explaining stuff to me: I now had quicker reflexes thanks to the awakened shifter gene. She couldn’t hit me even if the ball got launched by a canon.Well, maybe not a canon, but something that would launch it pretty fast.
was starting to raise my hand in a thumbs-down gesture, so he said, “Okay, okay! If we don’t drink blood, we look really pale. Regardless of our ethnicity or geographic location or exposure to the sun. And we feel cold to the touch.” He paused and looked down at me in exasperation. “I am seriously trying here. Every instinct I have is telling me to use polysyllabic words to impress you.
All that Delaura noticed, though, was the uproarious crowing of the roosters.'There are only six of them, but they make enough noise for a hundred,' said the Abbess. 'Furthermore, a pig spoke and a goat gave birth to triplets.' And she added with fervor: 'Everything has been like this since your Bishop did us the favor of sending us his poisoned gift.'She viewed with equal alarm the garden flowering with so much vigor that it seemed contra natura. As they walked across it she pointed out to Delaura that there were flowers of exceptional size and color, some with an unbearable scent. As far as she was concerned, everything ordinary has something supernatural about it.
There is nothing supernatural. There are only the things in this world that we understand, the things that we don't understand, and made up crap.” The last part of that saying was always the best bit. “Pray at the alter of each of these things, my darlings.” She would be smirking by then.” They all work in their own way.
So,” Lauren said. “You help ghosts with unfulfilled wishes cross over to the astral plane for judgment.”“Yes.”“And you hunt demons.”“Yes.”“And you’re married to an angel.”“Yes.”She paused. “…so basically, you’re Dean Winchester.”I made an exasperated sound. “I am NOT.”She smirked. “Yeah, sure.
The time groaned by as John made a fool of himself. Eventually, he grew numb to the death and sin around him. He even came to enjoy gallivanting cross-country like a true crusader. His name brought tears of joy or pain of anger to those he left in his wake. The result of his own unresolved pain.
The atheist might have no proof for the supernatural, but they also have no proof against it. If we start at a neutral position of not knowing, we can't move away from it until we have proof or evidence either way.
Funny isn't it, that such a large percentage of people believe in the possibility of ghosts yet scoff at stories about then; whereas less than a fifth of one percent think there actually may be vampires, yet glamorize and romanticize them into millions of dollar of sales. Perhaps the real irony is that the thought of ghosts is just a little too close to people’s comfort level.
I think you’re wonderful. You’re the only person I have in this awful, twisted world, and it’s incredibly scary, but if I had to fight my way through this disease of a life with one person by my side, I’m glad it’s with you. You inspire me to be stronger, and I need to be strong.
The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. There can be the one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His Presence. On our part there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work it is to show us the Father and the Son. If we co-operate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.
It is certain that the labors of these early workers in the field of natural knowledge were brought to a standstill by the decay and disruption of the Roman Empire, the consequent disorganisation of society, and the diversion of men's thoughts from sublunary matters to the problems of the supernatural world suggested by Christian dogma in the Middle Ages. And, notwithstanding sporadic attempts to recall men to the investigation of nature, here and there, it was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that physical science made a new start, founding itself, at first, altogether upon that which had been done by the Greeks. Indeed, it must be admitted that the men of the Renaissance, though standing on the shoulders of the old philosophers, were a long time before they saw as much as their forerunners had done.
Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.
One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight. At that time, James Nightshade of 97 Oak Street was thirteen years, eleven months, twenty-three days old. Next door, William Halloway was thirteen years, eleven months, and twenty-four days old. Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands. And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more...
I was too much taken up with another interest to care; I felt beneath my feet the threshold of the strange door, in my life, which had suddenly been thrown open and out of which came an air of a keenness I had never breathed and of a taste stronger than wine. I had heard all my days of apparitions, but it was a different thing to have seen one and to know that I should in all likelihood see it familiarly, as I might say, again. I was on the lookout for it as a pilot for the flash of a revolving light and ready to generalise on the sinister subject, to answer for it to all and sundry that ghosts were much less alarming and much more amusing than was commonly supposed. There's no doubt that I was much uplifted. I couldn't get over the distinction conferred on me, the exception - in the way of mystic enlargement of vision - made in my favour.("Sir Edmund Orme")
Sophie was a walking truth serum. If she was touching bare skin, she could yank the truth out of you like a loose tooth. I’d spent several unpleasant hours in her company during the Council’s screening process for humans who planned to work with vampires. That’s when I learned that you don’t refer to Buffy, the Winchesters, or even the Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys in front of Council officials. They do not have a sense of humor about that sort of entertainment.
The doctor from the mainland came and went. Silence settled over the island again, like a displaced curtain falling back in thickened, heavier folds. For there was a different quality in the silence now. It had tasted something, rich food on which it had long been thinly rationed. Shadowy things were trooping up, called by that scent of blood, like flies that smell carrion. They were not strangers to the old house; they had been ill-fed and at a distance, now they were hungry and avid and near.
A child conceived on Christmas Eve is considered unlucky and will later resent his parents for their unholy transgression, their lack of control and piety. The child may be deformed with a harelip or be cursed with the ears and head of a wolf. Or the infant may be born a werewolf.
(This is from me: I found this and I'm dying I apologize for any non-Supernatural fans out there but omg the fandom must read this.)Dean: Dad, this is Cas.John: I'm not working with any other hunters, Dean.Dean: He's not a hunter, Dad. He's an angel. John: Well, I knew you were gay but that's no way to introduce me to your boyfriend.Dean: What? No Dad, he's literally an angel. From Heaven.
The last wendigo died in 1962, or so the story goes. Reputedly, he (it?) stood in front of the train to Churchill, Manitoba, believing that the train would stop for him, a supernatural being, and then he would be able to eat the passengers. The train ran him over. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The world,’ he said, ‘grows hourly more and more sceptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius; and our men of science foster the fatal tendency. They condemn as fable all that resists experiment. They reject as false all that cannot be brought to the test of the laboratory or the dissecting-room. Against what superstition have they waged so long and obstinate a war, as against the belief of apparitions? And yet what superstition has maintained its hold upon the minds of men so long and so firmly? Show me any fact in physics, in history, in archaeology, which is supported by testimony so wide and so various. Attested by all races of men, in all ages, and in all climates, by the soberest sages of antiquity, by the rudest savage of today, by the Christian, the Pagan, the Pantheist, the Materialist, this phenomenon is treated as a nursery tale by the philosophers of our century. Circumstantial evidence weighs with them as a feather in the balance. The comparison of causes with effects, however valuable in physical science, is put aside as worthless and unreliable. The evidence of competent witnesses, however conclusive in a court of justice, counts for nothing. He who pauses before he pronounces is condemned as a trifler. He who believes, is a dreamer or a fool.
Detective-story writers give this thrill by exploiting the resources of the possible; however improbable the happenings in a detective story, they can and must be explained in terms that satisfy the reason. But in a ghost story, where natural laws are dispensed with, the whole point is that the happenings cannot be so explained. A ghost story that is capable of a rational explanation is as much an anomaly as a detective story that isn’t. The one is in revolt against a materialistic conception of the universe, whereas the other depends on it.
Joseph Smith was not concerned about how divination and money digging would impact his social, political, and religious reputation. His teenage years were not formed in an environment where magic was the primary influence upon him or others...but at the same time, it was not uncommon for people to take interest in the supernatural. Other religious leaders who were at one time interested in the folklore of magic generally did not have to justify their curiosity.......[R]esearch has shown that between 1810 and 1840 there was an apparent increase in the use of both seer stones and divining rods to find buried treasure in the American northwest frontier. Searching for buried treasure was usually done with a divining rod, in a similar fashion similar to searching for subterranean water but in this case involving the use of seer stones. ... The supernatural element was important to money digging, and modern historians studying the use of seer stones in the Book of Mormon translation process often look at Joseph's money-digging days for answers or clues to understand the translation process better.The decision to make this comparison, though, is structured around a division: the idea that money digging was a nonreligious endeavor, while the translation of the Book of Mormon was decidedly religious in nature. However, these are labels imposed by the modern perspective, and they ignore that both treasure seeking and translating were likely perceived by Joseph's early converts as supernatural events. Early believers did not necessarily struggle with the fusion of Joseph the treasure seeker and Joseph the translator, even if future Church members would.
Ask yourself, WHAT DO I WANT?” Ask yourself, how can I take a baby step towards my goal today? Have “a job” you don’t like? Change your perspective from it being “a job” into a “stepping stone” to accomplish WHAT YOU WANT! It’s no longer “a job” you do not enjoy. Now, you have TRANSFORMED “your job” into “a means to an end” that is SERVING YOU and WHAT YOU WANT! Allow everything you do both enjoyable and not so enjoyable to SERVE YOU for YOUR PURPOSE! -Shay Dawkins
You should have a little “too much personality,” be a little “too focused” on your goals, be a little “too different,” be a little “too confident,” take “too many” chances, go after your dreams a little “too much,” be a little “too strong,” be a little “TOO RELENTLESS” in the PURSUIT of WHAT YOU WANT, and be a little “TOO PASSIONATE” about the LOVE you feel towards YOUR LIFE and your TEAMMATES so that YOU begin to FEEL a little “TOO ALIVE!” AYYYYYY!
Communicating to others WHAT YOU WANT will enable you to start ‘BUILDING YOUR TEAM’ to accomplish whatever goal you have made for yourself. The bigger the goal you make for yourself, the bigger and better TEAM you must BUILD to accomplish the goal. Have average goals? Create an average team or do it by yourself. Have CHAMPIONSHIP GOALS? Create a CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM. Want to be LEGENDARY? Create a LEGENDARY TEAM!
I first witnessed the paranormal at the tender age of eight. This experience unlocked a doorway to a world full of unexplained mysteries, miraculous insights, and terrifying ghostly visits that have spanned a lifetime. Join me as I explore these stories…one book at a time.” ~L. Sydney Fisher
Like something straight out of a B-grade horror film, a single arm shot up from the dirt, reaching and grabbing as it clawed its way forth from its earthen prison. Ash and Trent watched the monster struggle in silence for at least ten minutes, occasionally exchanging glances. Finally, after all the writhing, the zombie emerged. It stumbled out of its grave covered in dirt and gave an annoyed-sounding groan.
Trent pumped his arm as if he'd just hit the jackpot. "Thank God. If I had to hear about one more incident with that squirrel-shifter, I was going to shoot myself." "Squirrel-shifter? Are you fucking kidding me?" Jace raised an eyebrow in a look that said, Do I even want to know? "Some half squirrel, half man has been showing up naked in people's backyards out in the suburbs. Soccer moms tend to be a little alarmed when a nude man nibbling on acorns is perched near their child's window. I'm not sure whether he's a shifter who's unable to hold his animal form for long or just a garden variety nut.
She waited for him to go on, but he simply gaped at her, lost for words. "Doc Grey, do you want me?" she asked before she could stop herself. "Vera, I..." He stopped abruptly. "I..."... "I asked you a question." The words came out breathier than she'd intended. She stepped closer, until their bodies were less than an inch apart, and stared up into his gorgeous, honey-brown eyes. He met her gaze, and she saw a spark behind his irises that could only be described with one word: desire.
Because many people are confused by Kundalini’s real nature, we must do more to define it accurately, starting with what it is not. For example, it isn’t devil worship or a supernatural cult. Neither is it a religion nor a sect. It’s a biological process. You can’t be converted to Kundalini any more than you can be converted to a heart attack or an orgasm; they just happen. That’s the nature of biological processes: They just happen.
Because many people are confused by Kundalini’s real nature, we must do more to define it accurately, starting with what it is not. For example, it isn’t devil worship or a supernaturalcult. Neither is it a religion nor a sect. It’s a biological process.You can’t be converted to Kundalini any more than you can be converted to a heart attack or an orgasm; they just happen. That’s the nature of biological processes: They just happen.
The ritual worked. That is the most ghastly thing. I hold no particular brief for the rationality of the world, but that this vile obscenity should actually have the power to bring back the dead seems to me not merely a sign that the world is not rational, but that it is in fact entirely insane, a murderous lunatic gibbering in the corner of a padded cell.
[…] One night, five men from Nuweiba were travelling past the mountain, and one of them fell behind, and was separated from his companions. As the man – whom we will call Ahmed – wandered in the darkness, wondering where his friends had gone, a beautiful woman suddenly appeared out of the night and blocked his path. She gave him a choice: ‘Sex, or be eaten!’ It was not a difficult decision. As the Bedouins put it, ‘the man did what a man has to do.’ […]
But there was a monster lurking in the deepest, blackest corners of his soul. An angry, slathering, vengeful beast, who had a mouth full of butcher knives and a tongue that dripped acid. A monster who ached for freedom. A monster that longed to flay the very soul from his victims, that monster was called the Darkrider.
You know, Dean said, gesturing with his uninjured hand. If we were in an action movie, this would be the scene where you tenderly dress my wounds. then the wailing guitar ballad would kick in and we'd end up rolling around on the bed in a slow motion montage.If I were in Q, The Winged Serpent, Xochi replied, this would be the scene where I sacrifice you to Quetzalcoatl.
I thrust Sophie into a corner, blocking her with my body. She panted and snagged her lower lip in her teeth. “This is not my life,” she insisted.I looked at her solemnly. “I’m afraid it is. But it doesn’t have to be for long. Let’s just get through this. Then things go back to normal for you.”“Like they keep going back to normal for you?” Sophie hissed. “Ghost of your mother, psycho ex-best friend, company agent dating your dad, psychic vampire ex-boyfriend, werewolf current boyfriend—by the way, I can’t blame you for that one,” she confessed, eyes round as she mouthed the word whoa before continuing with her list, “Trip to the asylum, attempts against your life, vigilante father…”“Hey, the last ones are brand new. And the vigilante father thing? He’ll revert.”“Anyhow, I’m not so keen on your concept of normal.” I caught her staring at me.
Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of the northern kingdom; for 'the Schoolmaster' finds it no easy task, even when aided by all the light of science, to uproot the prejudices of more than two thousand years. ("The Phantom Regiment")
What’s going on?� Ingrid asked. “Listen, nothing bad today, please.� She pulled a chair out and sat down. Faye stared at her and said the words as quickly as she could. “I’m just going to give it to you straight as I can. Mila is a witch.� Ingrid busted out with a laugh. “I wouldn’t call her that,� she said. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?� She poured the juice into her glass and took a drink. “What did the brat do this time?� She set her glass down.