Psytrance

Posted here at request of Steve Magiclantern, this is an article from"God Doesn't Talk to me when I wear my purple hat".

 

Psytrance is a musical style that developed from techno in the early to mid 1990s. Early psytrance was often played at beach parties in Goa and Ibiza. Like techno, it usually consists of fast, danceable 4:4 beats, but is characterized by a higher preponderance of squelchy, wibbly noises that add more complicated layers to the music. It sometimes has other rhythm styles and sometimes is slower and easier to follow.

Here are two testimonials describing the amazing benefits of getting into psytrance.

“If you get into psytrance it really does change your life. You instantly become more cool for one, and if you play your cards right you can suddenly have new friends from all around the world. You can look down on other musical styles as being simplistic, and for less trendy people.

It makes you feel and hear music in a whole new way. You can meld in with the energy of it, feeling the pulsing rhythms course through your soul, healing you psychically and mentally and physically. “Normal” trance and techno will always seem flat and unexciting, the kind of thing that less evolved people listen to.

Dancing to psytrance will give your body healing and happiness unparalleled in other yoghurt weaving styles. Healing energy literally beams out of the speakers, targeting your every woe, ache and pain. Different artists' music creates different types of healing.

Of course the most important thing about listening to psytrance is the trances themselves. Assisted a little by some substances, the music stimulates a variety of trance states in your mind and helps you communicate with etheric spirits. Gods and demons literally walk around the dancefloor, weaving in and out of your consciousness at your choice. Other trancers communicate with you in equally paranormal ways. The frenzied dancing that the music stimulates also helps in production of a variety of alpha and theta wave brain states that allow the senses to expand and the consciousness to flow exotically around you in layered whirls of ethereal mindfulness that are whipped into beautiful displays of trancendental dancing.

When you get into psytrance you will join and become part of a truly global community, and suddenly will be whisking yourself off to parties all over the world. It is not a small town thing. It speaks from a global perspective, it truly is Gaia calling us all to dance and be beautiful together, to break down borders created by politics and develop a truly global community. All are welcome in this new world disorder. Come see for yourself, you beautiful people! Come feel the love of psytrance!”

“That party were fookin' shite. Full'o pompous rich kids wi' dreadlocks fookin' trippin' ther noots off. Acid an' 2CI an' that. Look down ther'noses at yer if ye've a can o'beer in y'hand. Thinkin'ther in anoother dimension or summat. Take the drugs away the'd al' be sittin'down watchin' Corry like th'rest of'us.

Shame tha', cos the music weren't ‘alf bad. Like at Samsara bu'bit more interestin', y'know. Be good ter listen to wi'some proper party'eds. The'say thez  a festival playin' this stuff soon, bu'i'ss in Portugal. Who da' fook's got money te go out there? Global Community, pah! For those tha'can afford it. An'ar' pompous enough. Fook tha'shite. I'm off t'a real party.”

Food frequencies

I'm sure you have experienced people telling you that you should eat this or that food rather than another, but have you ever read or heard about different foods having a unique frequency? How higher frequency foods are better for you? Been wondering how it all works? Then this is the article to give you all the answers you need.
For it is proclaimed, by many a yoghurt weaver, that processed and canned foods have a frequency of precisely 0MHz, while fresh vegetables have frequencies in the range 20 - 27MHz, and the really high frequency foods are products like seaweed, wheatgrass, spirulina etc. that hippies have been telling us for years are good for us.
Of course, there are a lot of variations on this theme (an example is given in the illustration below) and a lot of different numbers bandied about, though for some reason they all seem to agree that the frequency of pure rose oil is 320MHz. Not that consuming rose oil is particularly healthy for you, but that's another story. The important message is that eating higher vibration foods will raise your body's own vibration, which will in turn make us healthier and happier. Oh, and cure cancer. And activate all 12 strands of our DNA. Apparently. What does all this really mean?

Meat exhibits a rare phenomenon known as antivibrating, apparently.

It's nothing new having hippies tell us not to eat meat, for example, or non-organic foods, or processed foods, or takeaways from global fast food chains. There are tangible and good reasons behind all of these things - wether you agree with (or care about) those points of view or not. For example, ethics, chemical pollution of the environment, toxic substances in the food or global economics all play a part in people's food choices.
So where do these numbers come from?  It's almost as if someone has come up with a ratings scale for hippy food. There's no need for all these complex arguments about wether the president of Chick-Fil-A is a closet homosexual, or if organic food has more nutritional content than non-organic. You can just refer to the frequency of the food to decide wether it's suitable.
It makes me wonder why this sort of information is not publically available everywhere. I mean, food manufacturers in many countries are required to detail the nutritional content and calorific value of the product, so why not the frequency as well? Wouldn't food choices become so much easier?

So, lets take a step back. What does "frequency" actually mean? It's a hugely complicated subject and there are many different answers. Yoghurt weavers often use the term to apply to mystical, wishy-washy "vibrational energy" of the type undetected by science. The type you need to pay crystal healers and dowsers to help you read. I have written much about those types before.
Instead, this article is about the tangible, known-to-science kind of frequency. The type you can actually measure. Put simply, frequency is the number of times an event repeats itself per unit time. So, when applied to a periodic wave, for example, the frequency is the phase velocity divided by the wavelength. There are all sorts of different types of waves, which have different properties. Light and sound waves are examples. Pulses of electricity through a wire, nervous signals in the brain, and those wobbly things in the sea are others. Frequency is measured with the unit Hertz, which equals the number of cycles per second of the repeating event.

Frequency can also apply to oscillations. When yoghurt weavers are talking about "vibrational resonance" this is the known-to-science version that what they say most closely resembles. You may be aware that at a minute level, matter is made from atoms which are pieced together into molecules.

A water molecule

Consider water. In the diagram you will see that it consists of one oxygen atom bonded to two seperate hydrogen atoms. The "sticks" connecting them are called bonds. There are a number of different ways this molecule oscillates - the bonds can grow longer and shorter, they will move slightly relative to one another (a bit like a pair of scissors moving); both bonds can move in harmony this way and that relative to the oxygen nucleus - and so on. Also, the whole molecule moves around in a regular or irregular way depending upon its conditions - the medium, other molecules nearby, temperature, pressure; electrical, magnetic and gravitational fields; adhesive and cohesive forces that are a function of the container size and shape, and so on and so on. Finally, the spread of the electrical charge around the molecule moves around.

All these individual "frequencies" may be measured in a laboratory, for a given set of conditions, (with difficulty) but to say that a molecule of water has a unique frequency is hugely simplifying the issue. More correctly, it has many different oscillating frequencies pertaining to many different types of movement that vary according to a number of environmental conditions.

Moving up another level of complexity, here's a picture of a DNA molecule. This one is designed to be flexible and move around in a variety of complex ways, under manipulation by other, even larger, proteins and cofactors. Processes that happen in timescales measured in microseconds. In short, a small strand of DNA has thousands of unique oscillatory vibration movements that it makes.

Hopefully you are getting the point I'm trying to make. The concept of "frequency" when applied to a molecule is meaningless. Cells are made up of millions of hugely complex molecules in a dynamic, fluidic environment. Organisms are made up of millions of different cells of lots of different types. Therefore, the concept of frequency when applied to any type of food, or living tissue, is also meaningless. Furthermore, there are no methods of measuring it that are known to science.
(The one exception to this is the frequency of nervous signal transduction. But this too, has many complex local variables, and subject to change from one minute to the next.)

Put plainly, food and living tissues in general do not have a meaningful, fixed frequency of any description - whatever you measure, (with whichever quackery device you are using) is the sum total of thousands of different, fluctuating variables. So, returning to the original question, where do these numbers come from?

Researching this, I came across a lot of people who confused the issue of oscillating molecules with that of the frequency of light and sound, and more generally describing vibration as some amazing concept you can just apply to anything. Amazingly, Jesus had a score of over 1000MHz, a Tibetan singing bowl scores 615, and corn from the local market scores 80. One site proclaimed that cannabis has a frequency of 19, 500 MHz, I think it was called smokadaherb.com. Someone else was trying to convince the world that food comes in packets called "colloids" which can be as small as 0.1 Angstroms, apparently (smaller than a hydrogen atom!). These colloids have their own electrical charge which directly tops up the body's frequencies whenever you eat.
The less said about these fools, the better.

The company Coherent Resources, under the direction of a certain Bruce Tainio used to produce a machine called the BT3 Frequency Monitor. This seems to be the device that has been used to generate all the numbers. There is only vague technical information on how it's supposed to work but it explains the process in terms of molecular structure oscillations. The manufacturers say that results will vary over time, and one of the reasons they withdrew the product was because of the difficulty in reproducing results. They blame this on the increase in EMFs in our environment in the modern age. I would put it down more to the fact that measuring the "frequency" of a food (if indeed, that's what the device does) will give you a different result every time.

Dr Robert Rife was an inventor who came up with a device for measuring the frequencies coming from different types of body tissue. He was interested in using this information in medicine and claimed that disease only sets in to the human body when the frequency of body tissue drops below 62MHz. He then went on to invent a device for "beaming" certain frequencies at tumours to try and cure the cancers. This consisted of an anal probe typical of alien abduction movies rigged up to a car battery, and he had the same kind of measuring system, in MHz.
Several people died as a result of their abstention from medical treatment whilst undergoing this procedure. Rife claimed that his work was covered up and discredited in a conspiracy to supress cancer cures.


So it's almost tempting to come to the conclusion that there are no reliable ways of measuring the frequency of a food, or a body part for that matter, and these numbers that people ascribe are made up by the people who manufacter the health food products. These "superfoods" may be good for you because they have a good range of vitamins or fatty acids or minerals, because they are chemical free, or other tangible reason. But beware of claims that they have a higher frequency and don't listen to anyone who tells you that a food can cure cancer.

Tropical Astrology

In the west, since about 2000 years ago, there have been two schools of astrology that appear, to the outsider, to be fundamentally opposed – tropical and sidereal - but astrologers claim that there is no conflict. Astrology is a hugely complicated subject that has grown and developed over 5 millenia in many different traditions. Here I'm not planning to question the astrological interpretations themselves – tripe though they may all be; but instead I'd like to focus on the astronomy involved and what it can tell us about these two different astrological models.

Astrology basics

So as you probably know, astrologers seek to make predictions about our lives, and about world events, based on the “influences” of certain heavenly bodies. Of particular importance in developing a person's chart are the relative positions of these heavenly bodies at the time of birth. Depending on which system is used, the position of the sun, the moon, the other planets of the solar system and various distant stars are used and the angles between them are calculated and plotted in a special way to develop the chart. The positions of each of these relevant heavenly bodies are looked up and referenced using a chart called an ephemeris. Of course there are numerous disagreements about how this process should be done, and numerous different, contradictory ephemera. And numerous, different interpretations of the influences. But don't let that put you off this scientific, results-driven science.

Terran orbital mechanics and how we see the universe

If you are already familiar with the language and concepts in planetary geometry, you may want to skip this bit. In order to make it is simple as possible, I'm going to explain everything at a basic level.

The Earth moves in three main ways –  it spins round on its axis, it orbits the sun, and it wobbles on its axis. The period we call a day is the time taken for the Earth to do one revolution on its axis. It takes a bit shy of 365 and a quarter days to go all the way around the sun, which is simplistically the period of time we call a year. More on this later. The wobbling on the axis is what is called precession, and is much slower – one whole cycle of the wobble, known affectionately as a great year, takes approximately 25,800 years (no one seems to be able to agree on the exact length of time).

So, when we look from the Earth at the skies, all these three motions play a part in the way we observe the rest of the universe.

The daily spinning of the Earth on its axis means that, through each 24-hour period, looking directly up, we see a whole 360 degree panorama of the universe appearing to rush across the sky from East to West.

The yearly motion of the Earth's orbit round the sun means that over the course of a year, the time of day that we see a particular star or constellation (from a given location on the Earth's surface) gradually rotates around, coming round full circle in a year's time. I'll make that simpler with an example. As I write, here in Los Angeles at 130am, the constellation Perseus is just rising from the Eastern horizon. At the same time of the night in a couple of month's time, it will already be high in the sky. Next spring it will be invisible to the naked eye, as it will only be in the sky during the day. On this day next year, it will once again be rising in the sky at around 130am.

The sun can be seen to “appear” in a series of certain constellations throughout the course of the year. What this means is, that constellation is directly behind the sun, from the Earth's perspective, depending on the time of year. (That is, assuming that there are no light bending effects of the type known to be exerted by dark matter and black holes). In a way, the sun traces a path across the heavens, always “appearing” in the same series of constellations in a constant cycle, year after year. This path is called the ecliptic line. The movement of the moon across the skies is essentially the same is this, tracing roughly the same line, except it cycles around the heavens in about a month instead of a year. The other planets of the solar system can only be seen on or close to this line, since the solar system is basically a flat plane. Their periods and locations in the sky are more complicated.

Most of the stars, galaxies, nebulae and so on can be said to have “fixed” positions relative to the Earth, and to each other. Of course, this is bullshit. They are all moving at thousands of miles per second, as is our own solar system, but since they are all so far away we can't see this movement (without lab equipment) as it appears to happen extremely slowly.

Precession and the different ways of defining a year

So when you talk about a year, what do you mean exactly? The period from New Year's Day to New Year's eve? 365 days? Another cup final day?

In fact there are several distinct and precise ways of defining a year. Two are important here:

a tropical year is the time taken for the Earth to complete one 360 degree orbit around the Sun, being defined by the time from one vernal equinox to the next.

a sidereal year is the time taken for a “fixed star” to return to the same position (at the same place and time).

Because of precession, being the Earth's wobbling on its axis, these two years are of slightly different lengths. This is because the two measurements are topologically different. A tropical year is a function only of the Earth's orbit around the sun; whereas a sidereal year is measured from the surface of the earth, which has it's own independent movements. The sidereal year system has another degree of freedom, as there are two mechanisms contributing to it.

To illustrate by example: this year, the sun was very close to the star Omega Pisces (i.e. the Earth, the Sun and that star were in approximate alignment) on the vernal equinox. They rose from the horizon at about the same time. Next year, the sun will be about 50 seconds ahead of that star. In 2018, the difference in rising times will be closer to 5 minutes. This is because, since the Earth has wobbled slightly, a given location on Earth, at a given time each tropical year, is pointing in a slightly different direction towards the heavens.

Another way of expressing this is to go back to the apparent “motion” of the sun through the different constellations of the ecliptic. On a particular time and day of the year (lets say the vernal equinox) the Sun's position will gradually shift across the sky, over thousands of years, such that at the end of the precession cycle it will have cycled all the way around the ecliptic and back to it's start point.

Zodiacs and different types of astrology

A zodiac is a map of the ecliptic line that astrologers use. Most western astrologers use a zodiac that is divided into twelve equal sections of 30 degrees each. These are just like grid references on a map of a section of the Earth. The sections are named after the real star patterns – Scorpio, Leo etc. but only loosely. (The real constellations have varying angular widths and there are in fact at least thirteen real constellations along the ecliptic).

The starting point for the zodiac was set a long, long time ago as the “first” star in Aires, Mesarthim.  The sun was directly on the line between the Earth and this star on the vernal equinox. In a tropical zodiac, which defines a year as a tropical year, this starting point of the zodiac always occurs on the vernal equinox, March 21^st.

However, because of precession, over many years the position of the sun, (relative to the real constellations along the ecliptic) on this date and time changes. Therefore a sidereal zodiac takes into account the precession cycle by shifting the start times of each “sign” according to what is observed from Earth.

The difference means that over time, these two different zodiacs have become out of sync with each other. In fact, while Tropical astrologers have always defined the start of the sign of Aires on March 21^st, sidereal astrologers currently define its beginning on April 15^th.

(There is a third type that I'll mention only briefly – where the “signs” are of varying length, defined by the movement of the sun through the actual constellations in the ecliptic as defined by the International Astronomical Union in 1930. This zodiac usually has 13 signs (14 in some systems).  Even most astrologers think this system is bogus. “Reputable” western astrologers generally agree that there should be twelve signs of equal length.)

What does this mean for astrology?

To the lay observer, it seems that at least one of these systems must be fundamentally flawed. If your birthday is today, then in one system you're a gemini and the other you're a cancer. All that gobshite about this sign means this and that sign means that, its meaningless. At first glance it seems that tropical astronomy is the one that is bunk, because the dates are so out of sync with the real constellations. So if your horoscope is telling you that Jupiter is rising in Aires, whilst a quick glance out the window clearly reveals it to be in Taurus, it makes you question the validity of this amazing ancient divination tool...

But to be fair you need to look a bit deeper than this really. According to most writers, the zodiacs were never meant to be representative of the actual starscape, they were only supposed to serve as a referencing grid system. One way of thinking about tropical astrology is that its zodiac measures cycles of solar time and, therefore, remains linked to the seasons on Earth. OK, well if that's the case, why all the significance and symbolism around the constellations themselves then? Why do we have to hear about Aires, god of war being influential in our relationships and Libra bringing harmonious balance to our lives?

The tropical zodiac preserves the Earth's solar cycle

Imagine each zodiac like a measuring stick against the heavens. The tropical “measuring stick” is fixed to the Earth's Solar cycle. The cycles and patterns of all other heavenly bodies are out of sync with it. This means that the positions of the “constellations” themselves, and the position of the planets in relation to them, should be meaningless in tropical astrology, since the predictions of their locations via a tropical ephemeris are incorrect.

Essentially, a tropical zodiac is little more than a solar clock. Predictions made from it can only really relate to cyclical effects of the Earth-Sun system. Some attempts to justify astrology point to the possibility of the seasons having an influence on foetal development, as a possible mechanism by which time of birth could help predict personality. Of course, even if this were true, it would only explain a tiny minority of the claims astrologers make.

The tropical zodiac does allow comparison of the solar system bodies, however. Astrologers are very concerned with the angles between Earth and the different planets. Using this system, calculations of these angles will be correct, although it does depend on where you get your data. Of course, prediction of where in the sky the planets actually appear will be skewed. But that doesn't matter to a tropical astrologer as long as they are in the correct sign of the chart.

Also, position on the earth isn't relevant either. This is because, over time, a particular place on Earth moves slightly for the same date each year. It doesn't observe the same part of the "measuring stick".

Say a prediction is made about the influence of Sagittarius on someone born in New York. In tropical astrology the same prediction might be made year after year for children born at that place and time of year, but after hundreds of years, Sagittarius would instead be rising over Oregon at that time, and Capricorn would be the actual part of the zodiac “influencing” the birth (with whichever planets are currently in that constellation).

The age of Aquarius is only possible in Sidereal astrology

This is because the so called ages come about due to the precession cycle. The Age of Aquarius is supposed to begin when the Vernal Equinox shifts into the part of the zodiac known as Aquarius.  So if you hear any astrologers who follow the tropical system (most of the ones in the western world), talking about the dawning of a new age, they are talking complete horseshit.

The sidereal zodiac preserves the cycle of the ecliptic

On the flipside, sidereal astrology maps the ecliptic with its zodiac in way fixed to a given location on the Earth. It effectively charts and maps the constellations themselves. The “measuring stick” is fixed to the distant stars. When these guys talk about the positions of constellations and planets in the sky, over a particular place at a particular time, they really mean it. However, this is at the expense of the influence of the cycles of the seasons. This zodiac is out of sync with the Earth-solar cycle. Also, it must be noted that the precise mechanics of precession are not perfectly understood, so the length of a precession cycle is not precisely known. It may oscillate and never be the same from one cycle to the next, which means there will be inaccuracies in the sidereal zodiac also. But as long as it is is based on (and updated according to) actual observation, this doesn't matter too much.

Most writers agree that Sidereal astrology was around long before it's tropical cousin, and sidereal (and complex versions thereof) is still the most common form in the East. Indian writers refer to tropical astrology simply as “Western”. Some say that Tropical astrology is simply a more esoteric and mystical form, whereas sidereal is more practical and factual. Some think that tropical is better for predicting psychology, whereas sidereal is better for predicting events.

However, the best conclusion to come to, is that right from the off, tropical astrology is complete crap. One huge mindfuck of a mistake that people have been labouring under for the last 2000 years, and are still in denial about it.

Think about it. In ancient times, people believed that gods ruled the world and that the movements of stars and planets had a real effect on peoples' lives. It's entirely understandable that they would then invent a system for predicting the movement of the stars and planets, in the hope that it could be used to predict events. Before the days when humans really understood anything about astronomy, this sort of logic is reasonable, if a little flawed.

Was Ptolemy on drugs when he made this?

But then, someone came along and said, “Ah ha! Well instead of using the real movements of the stars and planets, why don't we simply refer to a fantasy one instead? We can use inaccurate information about the heavens to make even more inaccurate predictions about our lives!”

Thinking about it, Ptolemy was probably high as a kite when he came up with the first tropical zodiac system. Looking over it the next day, and realising he'd made a big fuck up, he probably invented all this new age stuff about linking the zodiac to the cycles of the Earth, just so he could avoid losing his status and employment. Not that I'm cynical about these things or anything.

Solstice

1. Celestial event brought about by a combination of the earth's rotation round the sun and the tilt of the angle of the earth's equatorial plane. Over the course of  a solar year, the latitude on the earth above which the sun directly shines moves from 23 and a half degrees north (the tropic of cancer) to the same position south (the tropic of capricorn). The solstices on June 21^st and December 21^st mark, respectively, the northernmost and southernmost points of this apparent journey of the sun across the sky. The equinoxes, on March 21^st and September 21^st, mark the points when the sun is directly above the equator.

The practical upshot of this is that the angle of the sun in the sky changes, to a greater or lesser extend depending upon latitude; and the range of stars visible changes also.

The variation in the angle of the sun in the sky at different times of the year is the most direct cause of the changes in the seasons. For example, in the northern hemisphere on the December solstice, the sun is low in the sky and it is winter. On the June solstice the sun is high in the sky and it is summer. It also affects the length of the days, which effect increases exponentially with latitude. The solstice is the shortest or the longest day of the year: at the tropics, the summer solstice day is only an hour or two longer than the winter solstice day, whereas at 50 degrees latitude, the difference is about 8 hours.

2. The second definition of a solstice is that it is an excuse for  hippies to have a party and worship a variety of mystical things. Evidenced vaguely on the back of a few neolithic buildings that appear to have a solstice marker built in, and a few ancient scriptures that encourage solstice worship wrapped in layers of metaphor, such people believe that the ancients worshipped the solstices above all other events, and that to do so is fundamental to our place in the universe. Some believe it is sacreligious and dishonorable not to do so. As a result, such people are often to be seen hanging around at places like Stonehenge in the middle of the night waiting to watch the solstice sun rise over the stones. What they expect to happen at these places, apart from the sun rising as normal, is a mystery. What is slightly less mysterious is that the summer solstice at Stonehenge attracts many more people than the winter solstice....

Quote from a solstice 'sermon' by the Unitarian Universalists:

“This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; the center which is also the circumference of all. Now darkness triumphs; and yet, gives way and changes into light. We will be awake in the dark. We will call the sun from the womb of night. As we celebrate the solstice we join across time and space all the festivals of light emerging from the dark.”

Sounds very mystical and yoghurty to me. The winter solstice is also of astrological significance, being the time when "saggitarius" moves into "capricorn".

It is generally agreed that Christmas was timed to both continue some of the traditions of, yet overshadow, the pagan festival that once marked the solstice.

The winter solstice is also seen as the birthday of the Buddha, a time to celebrate the cycle of birth and death, the death-day of Osiris, the beginning of the time of the serpent days, the beginning of the month of the birch, the best day of the year for introspection and future planning, and the best day of the year to become a vampyre. Oh and it's the specific end date for the Mayan calendar, when we will reach the end of the world/eschaton/massive shift in global consciousness, or whatever it is. But that's just this year, 2012. Just to be clear, that will not happen every winter solstice. Which is lucky.

There is no doubt that the solstice is an important astronomical event which is a significant marker in the process of the solar year. If you don't live in the tropics, that is. If you live in the tropics the solstice makes precisely bugger all difference to your life, because in the tropics it is hot all the year round and the days are about the same length. Ooh, and more than quarter of the world's population live in the tropics.

It is also clear that centuries of religious and ritualistic practice have been ascribed and attributed to the solstices, the scope of which I have only touched on here. Believe what you like, but the only things that are certain about the solstices are described in the first definition.

"Merrick" by Anne Rice - Book review

This novel is a magnificently ornate story of magic, supernatural beings and love. Actually it's mostly about love. I recommend it to anyone interested in yoghurt weaving.

When I first discovered that Merrick involves vampires, I almost shut the book immediately, since I generally find vampire tales to be either woefully predictable or nauseatingly gothic, or both. However, this book was a pleasant surprise because it filled neither of these qualities. The fact that a number of the main characters are vampires is important, but it doesn't dominate the story. Instead, the story is about a young woman, who has powerful magic – and her relationship with a much older man, her ward in fact – who happens to be one of said vampires.

Now I said that the book is not nauseatingly gothic, but be warned there is still a great deal of rich and colourful romantic language. The narrator goes on and on about Merrick's tender shapely breasts and her delicate clothes and her exquisite character that he loves so tenderly. A great deal of love flows between many of the main characters, which is beautiful, but in places it is also dark and twisted.

We see the vampires in action, feeding on the blood of the dregs of society; we see the witch in action, summoning the spirits of her dead sister (wonderfully named “Honey in the Sunshine”) and others; we see magical objects, such as a mask that allows one to see the dead; and all is watched over by the order of the Talamasca, a rich and powerful set of people who govern and look after the interests of all sorts of magical folk. One of the few gripes I have with the story is that I would have liked to have seen more direct involvement from these people.

I found it easy to follow, despite the fact that it jumps from one time frame to another quite a lot, as it is almost always focused and there are few characters.

All in all, an excellent read if you can put up with the romantic language that dominates it.