On Eating Raw Garlic

I've been advised to eat raw garlic daily, which is supposed to be the panacea: the cure for everything. Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn't; in either case, chewing a clove is not only a pain in the ass, it is definitely a pain in the mouth. I decided to find a method to eat it less painfully, and succeeded. All you need is a glass of lemon-water and a garlic clove. You may use fresh lemons, but I've found organic lemon juice found in the store works equally well; make sure it's organic though and doesn't contain any additives. Lemon juice in itself is as healthy as garlic. Take a sip from the glass, start chewing the clove a little and when you feel a slight sting swallow the water and quickly take another sip from the glass, continue until you've chewed and swallowed all of it.

Using this method I can eat clove after clove, and stay healthy. At present time I'm eating one or two before breakfast, and before going to bed. Having eaten garlic this way for some time, many problems have disappeared that used to trouble me regularly: I've had no colds or other infections, and impure energies avoid me, I feel warmer and cleaner somehow and more energetic.

Some crush their garlic and drink with water, or even eat garlic-capsules. Although this may work as well, chewing in my opinion is preferable for several reasons: the saliva contains enzymes vital for digestion which we get by chewing; it's quicker and easier to chew than crush; capsules contains an extraction, fresh vegetables are always preferable in my opinion since they have all nutrients, enzymes, oils and so on intact as nature intended, and living garlic cloves also have the life force (qi, prana) which may not be as good in industrialized extractions.

3D Time

"God does not play dice with the world", is the famous quote of Albert Einstein, and though some claim he was proven by Niels Bohr to be wrong in this assumption; in fact, I'd say he still was right, and I'll try to explain this now.

The idea of chaos is that there is a phenomenon unbound by physical laws which expresses completely irrational behaviours; such as a particle which may or may not in fact be a wave, depending upon the observer. In a universe with a linear time dimension, this would appear to be so, but the nature of chaos can always only be that of a limited perspective; from the perspective of God as the supreme being, perceiving the absolute infinity of space and time, the macrocosm and the microcosm, there can be no chaos, no effect without a cause.

From a limited dimensional view, we can say that for example a 3D object viewed on a 2D plane, moving through it, may express a chaotic behaviour; this is only because of the limited perspective. If we were looking at the object as it is in 3D it would appear completely rational. With this idea in mind, particles and waves may appear as behaving chaotic from a linear time viewpoint, when in fact from a 2D time perspective it is both a particle and a wave.

The appearance of chaos in linear time is in fact the only reason 2D time could be possible, because without it everything that has happened from the advent of time to the end of time would always happen this way and could never in any way ever happen in any other way. Chaos means anything can happen, but actually it both does and doesn't, because in 2D time it looks more like a seed growing into a tree where linear time is but a fibre. All the fibres in this "tree" are all the time-lines there could be from this seed; "anything" means we could find ourselves in either of the time-lines, and "chaos" that we have no idea how we got there.

Scientists explaining that we cannot know which time-line we end up in when observing particles and waves say it is because of a chaotic behaviour, and yet they notice that the observer does in fact affect the behaviour; which is an improper way of saying that the observer is capable of moving from the time-line where it is a particle to the one where it is a wave.

So far we have only had a look at 2D time, which can be seen as the shape of a "tree", but in fact we cannot say which shape it has since time-lines, if time can be found to have a smallest unit, will branch exponentially raised to space for each such time-unit; and if no such time-unit exists: infinitely. A mushroom shape would probably be closer in similarity at any rate. What then would it mean to talk about 3D time, and what purpose would such a concept have?

Well, consider the development of this "tree" or "mushroom" of time, consisting of an almost infinite number of time-lines; now see this as one single time-line: a 2D-time-line. 3D time would be to see this 2D-time-line develop into another mushroom-shape of 2D-time-lines. The same as with 2D time, there has to be a component of chaos in linear time for it to be able to exist; so there has to be a component of chaos in 2D time for 3D time to be possible - otherwise there can only ever be one 2D-time-line. However, just as we may look upon a surface and on it project a 3D space; such as when we view a 3D virtual reality, e.g. in a computer game, projected on our 2D computer screen; we may look upon 2D time and see 3D time projected on it, and then the chaos component is only a requirement for linear time, i.e. the difference between a 2D mushroom and a 3D mushroom; metaphorically speaking, of course.

Astrology Philosophy I

In this post I intend to explain the most fundamental philosophy behind astrology the way I see it. I will avoid too much technical stuff and focus on the principles.

One of the most common misconception regarding astrology is that there are twelve star-signs; and around the year, for some arbitrary reason, people born at certain dates are assigned certain such signs. Then some goofy "astrologer" imagine the future events for each and everyone, and there are only twelve possible futures, which can be read in most newspapers. This has as much to do with astrology as phlogiston has to do with fire (none at all). Were you really convinced of newspapers telling the truth?

Another common misconception is that astrology is based on the idea that the stars are deciding our lives; this would be like saying that Tarot is about cards deciding our lives. The cards and the stars are a medium for randomness, and the idea is that through randomness we can communicate with the divine. Chaos is the basis of all divination, and it's possible to use any type of agent of chaos, such as: dice, coins, the flight of birds, the palm of the hand, or the shapes in tea-leaves. Incidentally, astrology and tarot makes use of exactly the same symbols, and also geomancy and cheiromancy; thus we could say that astrology is a language of symbols for describing and understanding the soul, which in extension is the essence of the divine.

So, when we try to explain astrology, we should not see it as the stars shaping the patterns of our lives, but instead as the basis of all divination: which is a means of communicating with the divine. Of course, the stars do not move randomly, in fact they scarcely move at all from the viewpoint of a human lifetime; it is actually the planets that make up the source of randomness and though they move in very ordered orbits which we can calculate thousands of years in either direction in time—when we place them in a chart they appear as random; in the same way that there is nothing truly random about mixing cards, they only appear mixed to our limited minds, excluding a few individuals with savant abilities.

Western astrology doesn't even make use of the actual stars in the sky, but instead an imaginary zodiac of how the sky looked about two thousand years ago; it is called the tropical zodiac. This should tell us how little astrology has to do with the stars, except for the Sun which in astrology is considered a planet because of its apparent (from our viewpoint) orbit around the earth. The planets are what we are looking at, and their positions from a physical point in space at a certain time is what we call a horoscope. It would be completely possible to make a horoscope for a person born on the planet Mars or Venus, but since there are no known actual subjects this is merely hypothetical.

Each planet is like an instrument in an orchestra, and the orchestra is playing the soundtrack of our lives. Whether we act on the music playing at a certain time is our choice to make, but the philosophy of astrology is that when a certain tune is playing it is favourable to act upon it; when Venus plays her love-tune, we might more easily fall in love, and when Mars plays his action-theme it is more fitting to be the action-hero. We are not compelled or forced by the planets, it is more that they inspire us, like a full Moon.

It is not that the planets actually sound in any way, or that they radiate some mystical force; but some sensitive astrologers do actually feel the influence of the planets in a very real way, as intuition. If the planets do have any metaphysical radiation is unknown and would only be wild speculation (but the Sun's radiation makes life possible and the Moon makes all the oceans ebb and flow with its gravity).

Astrology as a science is a very precise one, it is actually as precise as mathematics and one of very few sciences that can be as precise as that. It is important though to differentiate between astrology as a language and astrology as an art of divination; the latter is the application of the science and as with mathematics it may be flawed or misinterpreted, e.g. 1+1=3 is generally considered flawed mathematics or a misinterpretation of how to apply it (the way mathematics at present time is understood). A birth chart is only as exact as the astronomical calculations we have to position the planets, and though the definitions of all the symbols in the chart are absolutely exact, the understanding of them and how to interpret them is an art-form rather than science. So when someone claims that astrology is a science, they would be completely correct unless they also include the divination and interpretation in their definition.

The zodiac is logically structured in such a way that the four classical elements rotate in the following order: fire, earth, air and water. In the same manner there are three qualities: cardinal, fixed and mutable. Thus we get: Aires (cardinal fire), Taurus (fixed earth), Gemini (mutable air), Cancer (cardinal water), Leo (fixed fire), Virgo (mutable earth), Libra (cardinal air), Scorpio (fixed water), Sagittarius (mutable fire), Capricorn (cardinal earth), Aquarius (fixed air), Pisces (mutable water). As you can see it results in all possible combinations.

In our orchestra each sign in the zodiac could be imagined as a specific melody or rhythm. So let's say that Venus plays the harp and Mars the drums; then imagine that fire-signs have an energetic and powerful theme, earth-signs a harmonious and calm theme, air is visionary and thought provoking, and water emotional and dreamy. It seems natural that Mars enjoy to play drums with an energetic and powerful rhythm, and so finds himself more at home with cardinal fire: the sign of Aires; and therefore it is said that Mars rules Aires. In the same way, Venus resonates in harmony while playing the beautiful melodies relating to Taurus, or the romantic and aesthetically pleasing themes associated with Libra, and so Venus is said to rule the signs Taurus and Libra. When planets are in the sign they rule, their sound becomes stronger and can be heard louder in relation to the other planets.

Planets relate to each other also, by looking at the difference in degrees on the chart between them; this is called aspects. The most common aspects can easily be found by looking at the chart and counting the number of signs they are apart, and the difference in degree in their respective sign should be as close to each other as possible, i.e. the closer the stronger the effect. Planets on the opposite side of the zodiac are in opposition; they are forcing the influence in opposite directions. Similarly planets in the same sign may or may not cooperate, if they do they strengthen each other, otherwise they compete for dominance; this is called conjunction. When planets are three signs apart, that is in a 90° angle, and of the same quality (but not the same or opposite sign), it is not considered a harmonious aspect; this is called a square. Planets four signs apart, that is in a 120° angle, and of the same element (but not same sign), this is thought of as the planets are working well together; this aspect is called trine. There are a few additional aspects, for more advanced studies.

Considering our orchestra again; planets with many favourable aspects would be thought of playing beautiful music, the instruments strengthen and flow naturally with each other. On the other hand, planets with many unfavourable aspects may not even be considered as playing music, and you might get a bit of a headache from listening to it.

This concludes the first post on Astrology Philosophy, but a follow-up will come later on.

Green Lantern and Magick

The film made quite an impression on me; I hadn't noticed this superhero previously and didn't know what to expect. By just watching the film it was apparent that there is lots of thelemic and occult symbolism associated with this mythic character and universe; even though perhaps the original creator hadn't intended it to be so, or possibly wouldn't admit to it.

To begin my analysis, the most obvious characteristic is the force of Will, which is the superpower of all Green Lanterns; it is the will of the entire universe focused and tapped by an army of intergalactic superheroes. The green Willpower manifests as matter, by the will of the wearer of the ring that makes each Green Lantern. By willing it all Green Lanterns can project any material manifestation imaginable, and they can also apply kinetic force toward objects; making themselves capable of flying and great physical strength. Obviously the phrase "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" comes to mind.

In the world of the Green Lantern, green is the colour of will, and incidentally also it is the colour of the heart chakra of the yogic philosophy; and so we have: "Love is the law, love under will".

The colour of fear is yellow, which in the yogic system is the colour of the solar plexus chakra, where also the ego resides.

All Green Lanterns wear a special ring that gives them their superpowers, the symbol on the ring and on their chest is a circle with a line above and below; this symbol reminds me of the words from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing".

When the rings become exhausted of power they need to be recharged by a lantern; giving the superheroes their name. The lantern is also the symbol of the Hermit in the tarot deck, which is often interpreted as the Adept (or superhero) in search for hidden knowledge and wisdom.

The headquarters for all Green Lanterns in the universe is the planet Oa. This can be interpreted in two ways, there is the Rosicrucian Order of the Alpha et Omega: the AO, which read backwards becomes OA. Another interpretation is the formula of the IAO, an acronym for Isis-Apophis-Osiris from the Hexagram Ritual of the Adeptus Minor grade of the Golden Dawn; Oa then is the removal of Isis from the formula and again read in opposite order: Osiris-Apophis. There is also the "Book of Oa" which contains the law of the Green Lanterns.

According to the inventor Martin Nodell, it was primarily "The Ring of the Nibelungen" which inspired him and not Aleister Crowley in creating the Green Lantern; the same story was also a source of inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Teutonic Pantheons

Teutons were described by Romans to be a people living in some parts of Denmark, but more generally in Scandinavia; about a century before the birth of Christ. They spread across the northern parts of Europe and became the Germanic tribes. Not much is known about them, their culture and religion, or what was before. Eventually the Teutonic tribes in present day Sweden, Denmark and Norway became the Vikings.

Origins & Peoples

The Proto-Indo-European people emigrated from an area north of the Black Sea, probably from a time around 4000-1000 BCE; and brought with them a class of warriors, a patriarchal society structure, metalworking, brewing of alcoholic beverages, and a religion with gods of such nature. For this reason we can see a similarity between the Greek, Roman and Teutonic pantheons: they originally came from the same people.

In the most northern parts of Scandinavia there is the Sami people, they immigrated around 10.000 BCE; there are archaeological findings that old at least. There is also the Finno-Ugric people which may be among the oldest of the European peoples. Archaeologic findings in south of Sweden date as far back as 12.000 BCE, but there is no way of knowing which people it was; perhaps some unknown and now extinct paleolithic people?

The Worlds of Yggdrasil and the Races of Gods

Teutonic religion, also called Norse Mythology, consists of several races of gods; which comes from entirely different worlds, each world being part of a great tree called Yggdrasil. There are nine worlds in total: Midgard (Miðgarðr) is the physical world of humans; Asgard (Ásgarðr) is where the Æsir gods lives; Vanaheim (Vanaheimr) is where the Vanir gods lives; there is also the world of the light-elves (Ljósálfr), which is called Alfheim; and there are dark-elves (Svartálfar) and dwarves (Dvergar) in the world called Svartalfheim (Svartálfaheimr); there are three worlds where the giants (Jotunn, Thursar) lives: Jotunheim (Jǫtunheimr), Nifelheim (Niflheimr), and Muspelheim (Muspellsheimr); and there is the world of the fallen dead called Helheim (Helheimr), where the daughter of Loki rules: Hel.

Why is it that there are many races of gods in one religion; why did it develop in such a way? There have been some speculation concerning this, and a theory is that they were worshipped by different peoples who intermingled and so merged into one consistent religion.

The Æsir and the Vanir

The Roman historian Tacitus tells of a cult dedicated to the goddess Nerthus, which of course is a Latin spelling; during Teutonic times, around the first century AD. In the cult of Nerthus male slaves were sacrificed by drowning, and Tacitus described her as being Mother Earth. Some believe this early Mother Earth worshipping people were matriarchal.

Later the god Njord (Njörðr) appear, which is a male sea deity of the Vanir. The Vanir are primarily fertility gods, while the Æsir are primarily war gods. Njord was probably the non-Latin version of Nerthus, which Tacitus wrote about, but strange enough Njord was male while Nerthus was female; how come? Could it be that a matriarchal society changed the gender of their deity when they became patriarchal? What happened that made such a change?

In Norse legend there is told of the Æsir–Vanir war, and many believe it represents a real war between two peoples, with two different religions: the agricultural people worshipping the Vanir, and the invading warrior people worshipping the Æsir. Apparently the people of the Æsir won, and the gods Njord and his children Freyja and Freyr became hostages of the Æsir and moved to Asgard. Not many other gods of the Vanir are known, unfortunately.

Other Gods

Giants

The different races of the gods met and mingled and married and had children, so they were generally of the same kind. This also included the giants, the elves and the dwarves/dark-elves. Njord, Freyja and Freyr were not the only hostages taken by the Æsir, there were also a few giants, the most famous of them being Loki; and they were all considered equal to the Æsir.

If the Vanir and the Æsir originally were worshipped by two peoples, would it be reasonable to assume the giants were worshipped by a third people? The giants were powerful and magical nature gods, and often they represented an anthropomorphic personification of some natural phenomenon, or a physical object: such as a mountain. Perhaps the giants were worshipped by a nature people, of hunters and gatherers? The enmity with the giants perhaps came from that this people were not very cooperative and would not submit to the dominion of the people worshipping the Æsir gods?

Among the giants there were also several different types; the Jotunn lived in Jotunheim, the Rimthursar or "frost giants" lived in Nifelheim, and the "fire giants" also called Thursar lived in Muspelheim.

Elves

What then of the elves, were there a fourth people worshipping them? Possibly. As stated in the beginning of this text, there were many peoples who moved about for a very long period of time; many thousands of years. Their religions were polytheistic, which means they did not have to compete for superiority the way monotheistic religions has; because monotheistic religions say there is only one god, but which of them is it? And so they demonise all competing gods.

The elves were like the giants associated with nature phenomenons; unlike the Æsir and Vanir who were associated with more human activities. The lord of the light-elves was Freyr, a Vanir god. This means that if there were once a people worshipping the elves they would have mixed with the Vanir worshipping people, who became their masters; before the Æsir–Vanir war.

The Art of Dreaming I

I love dreaming, and so I love sleeping; it is one of my favourite activities—an interest I share with my cats, who've definitely mastered sleeping... and snoring... yes, one of them snores noisily. Whether they dream, I believe so; the snoring cat, Gersimi, sometimes wake up complaining and shouting and looking angrily at me, possibly she'd had a dream in which I didn't feed her: the worst of all nightmares perhaps; and I've met them in my dreams from time to time.

Mostly my dreams are normal unconscious images and emotions, but now and then I have lucid dreams where I am aware and can direct my will and explore the world in which the dreams take place. The lucidity of the dreams tend to vary between almost unconscious to near awake: where the near unconscious dreams usually return to the unconscious state and are highly chaotic and without much continuity, and the borderline awake state rarely remain dream-state before waking up and tend to have blurred vision with awareness of my physical body. Optimally a state in between unconscious and awake is to prefer in which the vision is clearer and more detailed than the physical world.

Hypnos the God of Dreams

The dream god is the mind which creates the dream world, upholds its laws and invents its story. I choose to call it "god" because that's what best suits its function and description: it is the creator of worlds. There is some kind of mind behind the dreams, it is possibly some aspect of the unconscious or super-conscious; maybe it's an angel, who knows? The Greeks had such a god, and they called him "Hypnos"; whether he was understood as I describe the dream god here is unclear however. Hypnos had three sons: Morpheus, Phobetor and Phantasos; who helped him in governing various aspects of dreams, e.g. Phobetor handled nightmares. Neither of seem to have been handling lucid dreaming: perhaps the Greeks had no concept of lucid dreaming, or that lucid dreams were considered a vision rather than dream? We don't have to believe in any gods to conclude, that there obviously is a mind creating the dreams, and we may as well call this mind Hypnos.

The Natural Laws of Dreams

"It seems" is a phrase best applied to any description of dreaming, because to every conclusion there seems to always be the contradiction; and this should also be considered one of the dream-laws: i.e. when there is a law there is also a balancing anti-law.

The reality in which dreams take place, seems to have some kind of dream-laws similar to the natural laws of the physical world, not in how they work but in that they are there. For example, gravity exists in such a way that objects remain on the ground. It is possible to fly or levitate and to lift objects, but it takes some mental effort. Also, matter in the dream world is solid to some extent, i.e. it's difficult to walk through a wall, but there are tricks how to break the laws: e.g. walking through a wall backwards when you can't see it might work sometimes. Breaking the dream-laws usually requires some element of surprise, so a trick may not work a second time; however for years I've been using Douglas Adams' method of throwing myself to the ground and miss, until flying became second nature and now I usually fly without effort.

An idea could be that the dream-laws are only how Hypnos interprets how the dream reality should be, to make it comprehensible? He imitates the waking reality, as we experience it; yet, we can change the dream-world, so the imitation is only to a degree.

One law that seems to be persistent is to change the dream by focusing the will for a duration of time. This means that there may be some resistance in manifesting a change in the dream: such as materialising an apple in my hand; but by concentrating the will it will eventually turn up one way or the other. The key is focusing for a sufficient amount of time. A great difficulty in this is to avoid waking up because focusing the will also tend to heighten the consciousness.

Dream Energy

Flying often eventually result in some kind of running out of fuel, where I slowly lower to the ground and when landing even walking becomes heavy until finally I lay on the ground incapable of moving at all before awaking. This has nothing to do with ordinary dreaming where it could have some secret meaning, such as fear or insecurity; on the contrary, lucid dreaming contain very little of such symbolic content. My conclusion is that some kind of dream-energy does exist has been confirmed many times when by various means I've succeeded in also invigorating the energy&mbdash;not only raising clarity of vision and potency of will, but also causing a sensation almost similar to taking some very strong drug, with ecstatic emotions and sexual arousal. The sexual arousal make me think that the driving energy in dreams is the sexual energy, and so by raising sexual energy it could possibly also bring more vital lucid dreams; it is at least a theory.

Some Thoughts on Memory

Reasoning in dreams usually is a bit dim, perhaps this is because of the memory which tend to contain memories from the dream reality but far less from the waking reality. There may be some communication between the waking memory and the dream memory, but often it requires a bit of mental effort. For exactly the same reason the dream memory isn't as easily accessible to the waking memory. It might be that the memory is organised so that each mental state has mostly access to the memory of this state; so that when we are happy we mostly remember having always been happy, and when we're depressed we have mostly access to the memory of the depressed state and feels like we've always been depressed. In the dream state I often remember other dreams long since forgotten in the waking state. So, even if we wake up and forget a dream, the dream is still somewhere in the memory, and we may remember the dream when in the dream state again.

Universal Intelligence

Translation of a blog-article from November 2008.

There are billions of stars that we can count in a galaxy, and there are billions of galaxies we can see with our telescopes. These numbers doesn't say much about each individual star, how their planetary systems look, and it says absolutely nothing about everything that exists between the stars the telescopes cannot see. The vastness of Universe is all this and 28 billion light-years of it, from one end to the other, as far as we know.

Let's say you've been fortunate enough to construct a computer with infinite amount of memory, and infinite speed because of an infinite number of processors; which are able to compute infinitely small variations (or close to it) in each single point of the infinitely large memory. First of all, this computer would be able to combine all letters and numbers in such a way that all written and unwritten books appears in no time at all. The computer would also be able to read all the books and understand their meaning from all imaginable angles faster than they would be printed.

Since this computer could calculate and combine all possible program-sequences in all possible ways; an AI would appear in a relatively short time. Consider now giving this computer the task of calculating the creation of a Universe; during which the AI would have some time to adjust to the environment and how to handle this magnificent computer.

In this virtual reality, every snowflake is completely unique, as is every sand-grain, and probably every atom. Imagine the imagination this computer must have that it puts so much effort into it, for every little detail to be entirely real.

So far we have only thought of the atoms, but there are so much more that is calculated by this computer; all the waves and vibrations, magnetic fields, radiation, all the wavelengths that we know of, which are only such a small part of what's really there. Add more dimensions too, for both space and time; this computer of yours is really amazing!

In this virtual universe that your computer has created, for a virtual fourteen billion years in virtual universe time (which in our world is just a few moments because of it's infinite processor capacity); galaxies and solar systems with planets which have evolved life and finally living creatures similar to ourselves, because of convergent evolution. These beings have brains and can think, reason and philosophise about life, their universe and everything. They say: "only we exist because we cannot see anything else, and only we are intelligent because all other creatures in our world are lesser than us".

The AI we spoke of earlier is an integrated part of the operating system governing the creation of the universe and its development and evolution; through precise calculations over billions of years it has developed the physical and natural laws of its world—it being the result of these laws upheld over time. The AI does not actively interfere or tamper with the evolution and is not visually manifested—except as the laws and matter in itself, therefore these intelligent creatures are not aware of the AI, though a few communicate with it internally. Some would perhaps call the AI "God"; on the other hand what would that make you, the creator of the computer?

Of course, our universe isn't a computer, as far as we know or as we think of a computer, but all the aspects and infinitely fine detail is there and among all subatomic vibrations radiating through cosmos it seems quite improbable that an intelligence would not have appeared; upholding natural order and law.

Full Lotus Position

I've been stretching and preparing for full lotus position for some time now, and recently was ready for getting into it while meditating. It was the first time I actually meditate in full lotus, previously I've been sitting in half lotus position, and the difference is definitely quite vast. It is required to make stretching exercises for some time before becoming ready for the full lotus without straining, aches and risk of injuries. One of my knees was injured during martial art practice many years ago, and was never fully recovered, and so I still have some ache in it, and therefore it is vitally important to be extra careful not to cause more injury by carelessness.

The meditation in full lotus is amazing, the clarity and the focus of the mind is much greater than in half lotus or other positions, and I experience it as pleasurable even. This is truly something I recommend others, but learn to do it properly, do the stretching exercises and let it take the time it needs for your legs to be ready. After a little longer period of meditation in full lotus, I still need a bit of stretching and awaking the legs, before continuing with ritual practice.