Post No. 3,373 - A thought on power while reading Jim Butcher’s “Twelve Months”

 

Photo by Nina Plobner on Unsplash 
(a largely orange crystal, point upwards, nestled amongst the branches, twigs and dark green leaves of a tree) 

 

I wasn’t sure whether or not I would read Jim  Butcher’s “Twelve Months” (pub. Orbit, 2026, ISBN-13: 978-0356515731;   reviews  here,  here,  here,  here,  more reviews likely soon;   Kobo,  Barnes & Noble,  Penguin,  Apple Books,  Amazon) now, or maybe later, but I decided I could do with the distraction during the current heatwave here, so I bought it. 

I won’t go into plot details, but during one chapter, the following through sequence came to me: 

a lot of newbies to spiritual-psychic warfare tend to think that what matters most is the psychic struggles they have around them - families, friends, etc; 

however, while those are important, real power and influence is vested elsewhere - the struggles around oneself are important both locally, particularly in terms of people one loves, and more broadly, in that they contribute to the psychic soup we all live in; 

BUT the stronger powers that have the capacity to influence the nature of the world generally are found elsewhere; 

in this modern world, probably having built up since around the time of the Treaty of Westphalia but particularly since Bismarck reshaped Europe in the 1870s and kicked off a European civil war that manifested World Wars Part One and Part Two, politics has been where those world-shaping nonBPM influences have laid: 

the current dictator in charge of the fascist USA is probably the most obvious of those, but Putin is another, and there are others; 

For a few centuries before that, in the so-called “Age of (European) Empires” which was ended by the newly created Germany’s desire for an empire (and Germany's unification/creation was a notable part of the relocation of these influences from religion to politics), they were in European royal families, but for a millennia and a half before then, they were in religions; 

wherever those nonBPM influences have been (and they have always been where money/wealth was), they have corrupted and perverted wherever they have been;  

but there are also BPM world-shaping influences; 

these influences have been at the start of every genuine religion, although they be sidelined or supplanted entirely later; 

during the Middle Ages, they were part of the Enlightenment, and moves to transform politics away from the powerful to the everyday (i.e., everyone without significant political, economic, religious, or other social power) person - i.e., democracy, or closer to that; 

these influences have been a key part of every progressive, inclusive, social movement; 

these influences aim for genuine, lasting BPM change, which requires 

genuine BPM change of individuals, 

consultative, responsive measures that are monitored and measured against the aim, and adapted as necessary, 

tweaking in response to nonBPM backlashes; 

and makes their work slower than the lazier, quicker, more superficial nonBPM methods.  

 

Going back to the book, I am enjoying it - particularly the exploration of grief and healing ... but there is also the psychic battles and mythology aspects ... 

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider: 

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld   and  

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here, and Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear  

Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2025     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/