Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's just past midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. 

The picture?  I'm taking a momentary break from chasing down photos of my lineage. Today is the spring equinox here in the northern hemisphere, one of the holy days of the Druid calendar, and this is a photo of the spring equinox sunrise as seen from an ancient stone chamber at South Royalton, Vermont -- one of many astronomically oriented megalithic sites here in New England. The photo's courtesy of New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA), which was gracious enough to send it around yesterday morning.

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I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I have a question about a troubling possibility that has occurred to me about a video game, namely Undertale. The game is a deconstruction of RPG games, and ones of the endings is reached by murdering everyone in the game. This ending, called the genocide run, is truly difficult to achieve, due to the way that many of the character beg and plead for the lives; not just with the character, but with the player as well. There’s another weird thing which happens in this route, where your character mentions that the character's soul does not exist, and explicitly makes it clear it is the player’s soul driving things.

After killing everyone, the game world is destroyed, and the game displays a blank screen rather than any kind of menu. This remains even after resetting the game.

There is no way to replay it, as everything is gone; however, if you wait for ten minutes on the blank screen, the game will offer to restore the world in exchange for your soul. You have no character (since the entire world is gone, character included); and the game repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, and has some weird lines where your character says they don’t have a soul but the player does, all of which raises a very troubling question: when people accept the game’s offer to restore the world in exchange for their soul, what happens? Is it possible for people to actually accidentally sell their souls by doing this?

Given the game was released in September of 2015 and was an immediate success, shortly before things started getting really creepy and weird, it seems like it could explain a lot if even just a small fraction of the people who played it did in fact accidentally sell their souls.....

[(Anonymous)]

Eerk! This scenario would make a good horror movie.

//Princess Cutekitten

The Tree of Spirit

[alifelongme]

I would like to thank you for bringing the essays of John Gilbert to a wider audience. It is a real treasure! I am on Chapter 2 of “The Tree of Spirit” and it’s been an eye opener already. I realized how much work I have ahead of me if I want to gain even a speck of the vast knowledge of the occult. It is exiting! But it immediately brought some questions I need help with.

1. When J. Gilbert writes about subconscious mind represented by the High Priestess does he refer to the concept similar to your GSF concept of subjective mind? I may be mistaken, but if that is the case why did you choose to name it differently? Is it because the term subconsciousness has been overused by pop-psychology to the extent that it nearly lost all its original meaning? Or is it actually a different concept?

2. J. Gilbert states that when we decide to incarnate we choose the place, the time, the challenges, our responses to challenges, and the whole entourage beforehand. Does it mean that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, already happened and known in advance? All we need is to play our part in a play already written. A true tragedy, in the sense that we know what will happen, we know the outcome, but we still play the part and we are not free to change our response because it was already chosen by us before we incarnated. We just go through the motions and our free will is an illusion. The only time we exercised free will was our will to incarnate.

3. But then how we can change ourselves (Strength) in the true meaning of the word change? It seems impossible because even that “change” was chosen in advance and is not a real change. How is it possible? Is it the Divine intervention we opened up to, The Chariot? Deus ex machina? Therefore, we did not know who we’d become and needed to incarnate to get the Divine intervention? So, the self-creation is actually self-co-creation, because without the Divine we’d be just “spinning the wheels” in a totally deterministic world, unable to evolve, to create, and to change.

I guess I worked myself into a corner now and cannot get out of it all by myself :)
Am I even on the right track?
Please help :)
Thank you.

Re: The Tree of Spirit

[ecosophia]

1) I prefer the term "subjective" to "subconscious" because it's not necessarily below the surface of consciousness -- you experience the subjective mind directly in dreams, for example. I learned a lot from John but don't agree with him about everything.

2) No, not at all. It means we know what we're up against. It's as though you're playing Dungeons & Dragons and the DM lets you know in advance that you're up against trolls and an ice dragon, so your character chooses gear and weapons accordingly. That doesn't mean you know in advance everything that's going to happen and everything you will do in response -- among other things, you're not the only player character in the game!

3) Here again, you can always choose and change. The Divine is always present in you, and in everything else, so every creation is a co-creation with the Divine, because no one and nothing is ever without the Divine. Without the Divine, nothing would exist at all! So in one sense you can see life as a dance or a game the Divine plays with itself, becoming an infinity of beings and things in the process.

[(Anonymous)]

For those of you for whom it’s a religious holiday, happy vernal equinox!

—Princess Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

Thank you!

Magic and electronics

[(Anonymous)]

Hello John, towards the end of WOH:Chorazin Jenny makes the comment that sorcery and electronics don’t mix. I suspect there’s more than a little truth to that, and if so, what does that say about the practice of magic in our over-electrified world?

Re: Magic and electronics

[ecosophia]

Oh, magic works quite well in the presence of technology. It's the technology that tends to fail, like the cell phones that Jenny went through.

The Ghost Tourist!

[(Anonymous)]

Thinking about the afterlife, I sometimes imagine how interesting it could be to, before moving on, wander the world as a ghost, seeing it all. A naive thought, probably... Pure fantasy? At all possible? Or do spirits dwell in a distorted version of the material world and that wouldn't make any sense?

Thanks for doing this! :)

Re: The Ghost Tourist!

[ecosophia]

It requires quite a bit of spiritual development before you can take conscious control of the after-death process. Once you achieve that, yes, you could conceivably do that, but you might find other things of more interest at that point.

Monsters and Bigfoot

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Mr. Greer,

As someone who wrote a book on monsters I thought I would throw some bigfoot questions at you.

First, does it exist?
Second, does it have a supernatural component or is this just a rare evolutionary cousin of ours?
Third, do you have any thoughts about Native American legends concerning big foot?

Re: Monsters and Bigfoot

[ecosophia]

1) People certainly encounter creatures of that kind, and have done so for a very long time. There are medieval European accounts of "woodwoses," described as hairy humanoids who lived in the forest.

2) BHMs (big hairy monsters), to use the Fortean term for them, aren't all of the same kind. I'm pretty sure that the yetis of the Himalayas and the sasquatches of the Cascade Mountains are large bipedal apes, probably descended from the Gigantopithecus known to paleontologists, but some other BHMs act like preternatural beings -- for example, they vanish into thin air, leaving tracks that just stop in the middle of nowhere. So each sighting has to be assessed independently.

3) Always worth reading or (if you have the chance) listening to, but don't take them in the simpleminded white-guy way.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello JMG,
Thank you for this forum!
So... Saturn in Pieces... here I come. My second Saturn return has manifested itself promptly. I got flooded, quite literally - uterine bleeding. I had this exact problem 11 years ago. I had a surgical procedure, which fixed the problem for 11 years, but... here we go again. 11 years ago I tried herbs, and homeopathy - nothing helped, except for surgery. Same here - surgery is scheduled for April 10th. I am not in a good place psychologically and thinking about a mantra. What would be a good mantra for this situation? My first thought was, "I am a strong survivor", but this feels like anticipating troubles. I can not come up with an alternative. I am looking for a mantra to put myself together for the next three weeks. I need to un-Humpty Dumpty myself. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Kirsten

[ecosophia]

How about "This will heal and leave me stronger"?

Strange haunting

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,
I have recently widowed friend who thinks he is being haunted by his deceased mother in law. She always wanted him for her favorite daughter, rather then the one he married. He has been having seductive and even erotic dreams about his despised sister in law. Two last week alone.

So, I got him to make a witch bottle containing nails, his urine and a penny dated this year to delight any future archeologists. That hasn't helped. Is this because the witch is in the afterlife herself?

He is a Christian so I told him to burn frankincense in his bedroom and to pray to the Archangel Michael to banish all hostile forces from his bedroom. If that doesn't do it, I am kind of stumped.

Do you have any ideas on how to proceed and what do you think of this haunting?
Maxine

Re: Strange haunting

[ecosophia]

Hmm -- that's interesting. Your friend might want to put a saucer of vinegar out in the bedroom as well, to chase off attempts by the mother-in-law to affect him.

[open_space]

I think I have an addiction to negative thinking and on avoiding happiness if it is not exactly the way I want it. That sounds really odd but it seems to be the case. Perhaps I like to blame everything on something or somebody else because that way I can escape the responsibility that I have on my life. I've seen this topic discussed before here and if I look back I have always flinched on it when I read it.

This past few weeks I asked about an affirmation about changing my life but before deploying it and after realizing that anywhere that I might take my life to probably isn't worth getting to if I don't do it joyfully I would like to add some positivity to it but one thing I don't want is for it to become "brightsided"

Do you have any advice on how to cultivate a positive mindset about the circumstances I encounter in my life, despite that I want to change them? It certainly isn't good to go about hating my day to day when at least at present, is the best that I can get. I feel that with my present mindset nothing I get would be enough and that seems as much a part of the problem as the circumstances by themselves.

[ecosophia]

This is the sort of situation where I very strongly advise systematic journaling. It makes things much easier if you can unpack the tangled feelings from the past that are getting in the way of clarity in the present.

Quan yin - Guanjin

[emily07]

Dear JMG,
recently I've seen a little statue of Kwanyin/Guanyin...and there She is depicted with a dragon beneath her that she feeds a golden stream of something from a ..beaker..(missing the right word here for something one might use to pour milk from) Would you happen to know if the dragon sybolises earth powers or the Chinese emperors vor both?
Thank you!

Re: Quan yin - Guanjin

[ecosophia]

I'll have to toss this one to the commentariat, as that's not something I have studied. Anyone else?

More Takes on "Hail Idun", and Magical Influences on Significant Historical Events

[jprussell]

Good Evening,

A very happy and blessed spring evennight (equinox) to everyone! May there be the very new beginnings you're looking for in your life.

To Share: After the welcome thoughts on my earlier take on a Hail Idun prayer, I've put together three more takes, with any feedback welcome, either here, or on the dreamwidth comment thread:
Blog post: https://jpowellrussell.com/#heathen_rosary_hail_idun_in_germanish_lay_bit_2
Dreamwidth comment thread (I haven't gotten comments worked out wholly to my liking yet, so this is the stopgap): https://jprussell.dreamwidth.org/4975.html

To Ask: You've mentioned before that Elizabeth I clearly consulted John Dee on her coronation date, with notable effects (to put it mildly). Do you have any other favorite major historical events where you suspect astrological or other magical influences played a mostly-ignored role? (Did Napoleon have an especially Martial natal chart? Was the USSR declared on a unhelpful day? Were the land energies at Thermopylae especially suited to valiant defense? That kind of thing.)

As always, thanks very much to JMG and everyone else here.

To any who will have them, I put forth my blessings and best wishes,
Jeff

Re: More Takes on "Hail Idun", and Magical Influences on Significant Historical Events

[ecosophia]

That's a fascinating question which I haven't looked into. When time permits, I'll poke around and see if I can find anything.

No question, just a thank you

[(Anonymous)]

I recently did some self-transformation with the Sphere of Protection Ritual from your Druid Magic Handbook (checked first with geomancy, also from one of your books). It's working out quite well so far. Thank you for writing it.

Re: No question, just a thank you

[ecosophia]

You're most welcome, and I'm glad to hear it.

[stcathalexandria]

Happy equinox to all! Feels like it came much faster this year.

I'm working through LRM a third time. The previous two times I've stalled on Chapter 15. Now that I'm in Chapter 16 and doing the inner plane exercise, I'm confused by the directions. It says to do the first part several times, then move to step 9 but I only see up to step 8. Can you clarify what step 9 is?

I'm still having hot flashes 2-3 times a night so my interrupted sleep has me miss details during the day. I'm determined to finish these last couple chapters this time through the best I can no matter the circumstances.

Thank you!

Hot Flashes

[(Anonymous)]

Try seaweed! I had 1 hot flash. Also like several kinds of seaweed. Didn’t connect the two until I read an article saying hot flashes are almost unknown in Japan, and the only cause scientists could find is that the Japanese chow down on seaweed like there’s no tomorrow. There are recipes all over the Internet. Good luck!

—Princess Cutekitten

Goblin Vs farie

[(Anonymous)]

What is the difference between a goblin and a farie? Are they from the same dimensions?

Re: Goblin Vs farie

[ecosophia]

Goblins, fairies, and other creatures of the same sort all belong to the same category of nature spirits; goblins are spirits of caves and rocks, while fairies are spirits of woods and green spaces. They live in the same world we do -- most human beings these days have just been taught not to notice them, as part of our culture's general prohibition against noticing the enchanted side of existence.

A few Alchemy related questions

[(Anonymous)]

In the past you recommended to take the Jean Dubuis Spagyrics course, and I indeed started working through it. You also gave me good advice in this forum about choosing a crucible. I found the course instructive, and made progress into making my first Elixer. Unfortunately, after this experiment, the course goes into distillation, and I currently lack the funds to build the necessary set up.

1. Do you, or anyone else who may be reading, have recommendations about alternative material that instead of going into distillation right away, continues teaching about elixirs? I was thinking maybe continue in this path until I can get hold of a distillation set up.

2. After reading about the theory of Spagyrics and trying my hand in it, I realized I was already doing something like that in the garden. There is a method of natural farming that is very popular in the organic gardening community those days - knf. It teaches you to ferment plants (preferably wild plants that grow in thriving ecosystems), to produce incredibly bioavaliable fertilizers. There are other methods that resemble calcination to obtain phosphorus salt from beef bones as an alternative to relying on the mined stuff. On top of that, something that is pretty much elixers for plants is also used. Do you think knf could be alchemy hiding in plain sight?

3. I started getting back into homebrewing after many years in haitus, and I want to make herb beers - gruits. To those who are interested, I found a book I plan to buy called "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation" by Stephen Harrod Buhner. But, sine I already started asking alchemy questions - you mentioned in your writing that homebrewing is also essentialy alchemy, but modern brewing books treat it more like science. I tried searching for writings that deal with the alchemy side in Archive.org but was not successful, so I thought I'd ask you or any of the readers if they have other reading recommendations for my research?

Again, thank you for sharing your knowledge and answering questions, I could not get into alchemy without your advice.

Re: A few Alchemy related questions

[ecosophia]

1) You might consider Mark Stavish's book The Path of Alchemy, which has a lot of low-cost practices. Equally, though, distillation gear is not hard to get if you know where to look; American Science and Surplus has distillation trains for sale (and good ones -- that's the source I've always used):

https://www.sciplus.com/lab-still-40056-p
https://www.sciplus.com/essential-oil-distilliation-unit-53893-p

2) That sounds extremely alchemical to me. I'm not at all familiar with knf -- where does it come from?

3) I wish! Brewing is an alchemical art, but I have yet to find any serious discussion of the overlap between brewing and alchemy. If anyone else has a book to suggest I'd love to hear about it.

Temple technology research update

[(Anonymous)]

Some time ago I wrote here about my ongoing research into the radio physics or electromagnetic features of the temple technology. I will be writing this up for you and your readers.

However, I've found the following absolutely fascinating things.

Firstly, the temple technology is most likely a dielectric resonator antennae, something known to radio enthusiasts and professionals for a long time. Dielectric antennae are not limited to the same fractions of wavelengths as metallic antennae, and they do not need paramagnetism to function (although this enhances the effect, or enables it without structure building, in the case of some standing stones). The temple of solomon and herods temple were made from calcite, which is diamagnetic and dielectric. Dielectric resonators have massive Q factors, meaning they store a lot of power in the form of standing waves in the stone.

The holy of holies in solomons temple has a resonant frequency of about 8hz. That's bang on one of the schuman resonances.

There's also a possibility that the gold lining on the calcite creates a piezoelectric effect, meaning that sound, in the way of a beat frequency with chanting, could excite the structure and enable additional effects. It could also work the other way, as a chamber enhancing meditation. Yes, this thing may have been a transceiver.

The actual mechanism by which fertility is enhanced is ultra weak photons,or non thermal photons. These flow out from the temple and excite plant roots.

Next step is for me to model the temple itself in software, which runs Maxwells equations over the 3 dimensional features of it.

Hope this helps.

Re: Temple technology research update

[ecosophia]

Good heavens. Many thanks for this! Can you point me to some sources that I can use to understand this and, in due time, cite in my writing? Alternatively, have you considered writing and publishing something on this?

[davidastrom]

If I remember correctly, last week you suggested in an answer to add the Rose Cross to the LBRB + Ritual opening + Mp + Closing + LBRB. How do you suggest one do this practically, since the ritual opening/closing has the altar at the center (and some parts of the Rose Cross crosses the space where the altar is)?

[ecosophia]

The way I always did it is to have the altar a little east of center. That allows the Rose+Crosses above and below to be exactly above where I stand while at the west of the altar facing east.

[(Anonymous)]

Are there any particular rituals or practices that a neophyte of the GD tradition should take the opportunity to do during the equinox?

[ecosophia]

If you're a neophyte and don't belong to a temple, it's not yet time for you to celebrate the equinox. Don't worry about it for now; build your skills until you can do a basic temple opening, and then do a simplified equinox ceremony -- the version in my book Circles of Power is one option.

Star Logoi

[(Anonymous)]

Fine business on this weeks picture! NEARA seems like a cool organization. Next time I'm in New England I'd like to visit some of the ancient stone chambers. I first learned about them from Manny Grossman who had done some "Forbidden Archaelogy" videos on his youtube channel, and he also mentioned having been a member of NEARA in the past and going on some field trips with them. Sounds fun! (He plans to do some more of these videos, and made an announcement here for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVMoOxcvPuo )

I hope everyone here has a blessed equinox.

John, I was curious about the lore around the Star Logoi. Are there any good sources to read more about them, or is it more of a matter of that knowledge being scattered around in various sources?

All the best,

Justin Patrick Moore / Viridian Amorous Moth

Re: Star Logoi

[ecosophia]

Next time you're going to be in New England, if you'll be anywhere near Rhode Island and are interested in a joint road trip to megalithic sites, drop me a note!

As for the Star Logoi, as far as I know it's another "stuff scattered all over space and time" sort of topic. A good book on that would be great, but I don't know of one.

Jung and Steiner

[lukedodson]

Happy spring equinox to all those who are marking the season!

JMG, if I'm not mistaken I recall that you once compared Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner, and concluded something to the effect that Jung did not pay enough heed to his inner visions, whereas Steiner paid too much. I am writing a piece on Jung currently and I'd like to quote you on that, if that's OK with you, but I haven't been able to find the original comment in which it was made.

Also a quick question on planetary charity: if a gap between donations exceeds one week, does the usual advice apply, to simply pick up the donations from where they left off until the round is completed?

Many thanks,
Luke

P.S. Belated gratitude to JP Russell for his book recommendations a few weeks back.

Re: Jung and Steiner

[ecosophia]

I'm not sure where it was either, so I'll say it here and you can cite me: the great difference between Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner is that Steiner took his visions too seriously and Jung didn't take his seriously enough. (If the voting on this month's fifth Wednesday posts goes the way it seems to be going, I'll discuss both men there, so you'll have something else to cite.

As for planetary charity, yes, the usual advice applies.

A rare mention

[(Anonymous)]

Hello, JMG
I recently came across a mention of a practice that doesn't get openly mentioned in most Golden Dawn materials, and I was wondering if you knew anything about it. It's called the "Indigo Egg", I think.

Re: A rare mention

[ecosophia]

Sure. The Indigo Egg or Egg of Harpocrates is a protective working that can also be used as an invisibility working. (Like other forms of magical invisibility, it works by making people not notice you -- it doesn't actually make light pass through you or anything like that.) Regardie gives a version of it in The Golden Dawn, in the Z-2 ritual for invisibility.

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning, everyone.

A few weeks back I posted here and Tunesmyth added a request to the prayer list for a little boy undergoing a serious brain surgery.

Fortunately, the little boy (who we shall call ES) recovered well from that surgery. Unfortunately, the surgery was unsuccessful. ES is now having upwards of 60+ seizures in a day and doctors believe if he has to go back into paediatric intensive care, he won’t come back out again. He has been living in the hospital for months and today he’s being flown to another city with a more experienced surgeon who will perform a second brain surgery on either Tuesday or Thursday. ES is only 2 years old.

I am once again requesting prayers and positive energy from anyone willing to send them to ES. His mother is a good friend of mine for many years and is a big believer in prayer. I have her permission to pray for ES as well as to solicit prayers on his behalf. We feel every bit of prayer helps.

Thank you again to JMG and Tunesmyth, as well as all the readers and posters here who help with prayers. I think it does make a difference 🙏🏻♥️

[tunesmyth]

Oh no, I'm very sorry to hear this. What a tough experience for ES. I'll add a prayer to list right away.

Spring Solstice and Noticing the 5th Layers

[(Anonymous)]

Happy Spring Solstice.

I have JMG's Occult Handbook and for this week, mediating over the Spring Solstice section and one part of the practice for this week is to see if we notice the changes in the various 5th layers of the different planes.

For the etheric plane the 5th layer is the top chemical layer; astral 5th = individual likes and dislikes, if I remember correctly, book not with me and mental layer 5th = functions.

Request for those with more experience for any tips on how one sets the stage to notice. I may be overthinking things but for the etheric plan, I guess I will focus on digestion and bodily functions, astral is easy enough but wondering about the mental 5th layer of functions? Possibility there will be some nuanced changes in functions of certain objects, theories, practices, habits, etc., as we transition to more solar current than telluric?

Re: Spring Solstice and Noticing the 5th Layers

[ecosophia]

Remember that the mental plane is the cutting edge of our spiritual evolution right now, and it's fairly difficult for most people to sense! I found that it works well for me, at least, to focus on functions in a more general sense. Encountering anything and thinking about it, I ask myself, "What is the function of this? Set aside its form and name -- what does it do?" But of course your mileage may vary.

[adara9]

Hello,

In the section "Practical Work with Color and Sound" of the "Principles of Color and Sound" chapter in the CGD book, it specifies "you will need a musical instrument that does not require the use of your mouth". I'm wondering if this is because that's easier for untrained singers to match, or if there is some occult significance precluding the use of e.g. a pitch pipe for this purpose.

Thanks,
Heather

[ecosophia]

The point is that you're chanting a divine name while you're sounding the note. Most people have trouble chanting and playing a pitch pipe at the same time! If you have musical experience, of course, you can do as you like.

Dealing with fear

[brenainn]

Thanks to my ongoing work with the Mayan Order lessons and also the Order of Spiritual Alchemy, I've realized that I am very much full of fear. Just a generalized type. I sense, without any specific memories, that it has something to do with a past life. If that's so, I'm assuming that, when I am ready for it, more details will be revealed. Anyway, my question has to do with using an affirmation to help overcome the fear. I'm a fan of the Dune series (Frank Herbert's work, not his son's) and I seem to recall someone asking you about the Litany Against Fear that characters used in that novel. Though the entire litany resonates pretty well with me, I also seem to recall you suggesting something about leaving out the first couple of lines. Any thoughts on whether I could potentially use this litany as an affirmation, and whether any modification would be necessary or just helpful?

Re: Dealing with fear

[liamq]

I really, really hate to butt in here… but I believe you were formerly involved with traditionalist Roman Catholicism, and I was as well.

I noticed in myself that a daily examination of conscience coupled with weekly confession and a general study of traditional moral theology made an absolute mess of me, and that there was much fear of punishment and of making reparation that was caused.

I just wanted to mention that in case it might be relevant to you in any way.