So why'd you choose your username, anyway?

[Stephen Morgan]

I just made mine up. Not for here, years ago, and kept using it here.

[sunny]

Childhood nickname, confiscated when my Uncle Sonny came home from Vietnam. I took it back for my online life.

Never did figure out why Mom didn't consider the confusion ahead of time.

[beeline]

.

Mine is an abbreviation/homophone of my surname.

[Maddy]

[ShinShinKid]

you have a sword?

Yes, it's name is Taia...

[DeltaDawn]

only alter I am 'fully' aware of and like her the best!!!!

[freemason9]

you have a sword?

Yes, it's name is Taia...

i have a bat, maybe we should team up

[gnosticheresy_2]

Because I was gnosticheresy on the old board, then when we all moved to this board I couldn't login for some reason or other so rather unimaginatively appended _2 onto to my old username to make an amazingly original new username, and then have been too lazy to contact Jeff or the mods to get it changed back to my old one. In other news, my dog ate my homework.

As for why I'm gnosticheresy in the first place I don't really know, I had to pick an online alias in a hurry once years ago and this is the first thing that surfaced from the depths. Was reading a lot of PKD at the time so that's probably got something to do with it...

[chump]

I picked my username because my younger brother called me that for a time when we were in our twenties. I'd walk into one one of those rocking houseparties, and he'd have a beer sloshing in one hand and a cigarette in the other; and he'd stumble over, peering at me through those half shut, glossy, red eyes, then stand there for a moment - as best that he could, and call me "Chump" as he tried to crack a smile. That's what I thought of when I registered here. I was going to change it; but the more I learn, the more I think it fit.

[Squatterman]

The Squatterman (Squatting Man) archetype was something that really resonated with me when I first came across it. If it is what is hypothesized by Anthony Peratt (et al?), it's just staggering to contemplate what was apparently witnessed by a great swath of mankind, and how that may have influenced us in profound ways.

Adding to that - "squatting" is what I've been doing around this board for years!

(And like just about everything else at this place it is both interesting and open to much opinion....)

[Alaya]

It was a stupid mistake.

I want to change mine to Invisigoth.

[Hammer of Los]

From this thread (I still rather miss TKL. What a fascinating fellow he was! After reading his posts, I would occasionally become a little concerned about spontaneous kundalini eruptions): Wheeeeeee!! It's theeKultleeder's Korner!;

The sky is an immortal tent built by the Sons of Los:
And every space that a man views around his dwelling-place
Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount
Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his universe:
And on its verge the sun rises and sets, the clouds bow
To meet the flat earth and the sea in such an order'd space:
The starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set
On all sides, and the two Poles turn on their valves of gold:
And if he moves his dwelling-place, his heavens also move
Where'er he goes, and all his neighbourhood bewail his loss.
Such are the spaces called Earth and such its dimension.
As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner
As of a globe rolling through voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro.
The microscope knows not of this nor the telescope: they alter
The ratio of the spectator's organs, but leave objects untouch'd.
For every space larger than a red globule of Man's blood
Is visionary, and is created by the Hammer of Los;
And every space smaller than a globule of Man's blood opens
Into Eternity of which this vegetable Earth is but a shadow.
The red globule is the unwearied sun by Los created
To measure time and space to mortal men every morning.

A little commentary from Mark Peterson;

Blake has been deeply relevant in that he addresses the problem of how a good God could create a world in which so many suffer and which it seems you either gobble others or are gobbled - in which the Devourer prevails over the Prolific at every turn, as exemplified in the Worm in the Rose and Tiger in the dark forests of the Night. He exonerates the Eternal Humanity Divine by positing a fallen creator, as so the kabbalists and Gnostics. Blake intended his readers to make his visions their own by entering contemplatiavely into the imaginary spaces he evokes and was fully aware that Priests of all religions force their initiates into mental spaces too tight for human comfort, as succinctly suggested in those priests walking their rounds and binding with thorns all joys and desires, and forcing people into circles where the horizon is bounded, not infinite with God's love and mercy.

The 'Hammer of Los' is one of mercy since he uses it to smash down the edifices, crated anew age after age, of religions which are presided over by cruel deities or the jealous God of the Old Testament.

And from good old wikipedia.org;

In the mythological writings of William Blake, Los is the fallen (earthly or human) form of Urthona, one of the four Zoas. He is referred to as the "eternal prophet" and creates the visionary city of Golgonooza. Los is regularly described as a smith, beating with his hammer on a forge, which is metaphorically connected to the beating of the human heart. The bellows of his forge are the human lungs. Los's emanation, Enitharmon, represents spiritual beauty and embodies pity, but at the same time creates the spatial aspect of the fallen world, weaving bodies for men and creating sexual strife through her insistence upon chastity. In the Book of Urizen Los and Enitharmon have the child Orc, who is the embodiment of the spirit of revolution. It is of interest to note that the name Los is, by common critical acceptance, an anagram of Sol, the term for the Sun. Such innovations are common in many of Blake's prophetic poems..

Los is the divine aspect of the imagination. After he becomes more mechanical and regular in his actions, he falls and becomes part of the material world. In the fallen state, he becomes the creator of life and of organic systems. He also creates reproduction and the sexes, with his own partner Enitharmon soon after being created. He then creates consciousness through evolution, which leads to the creation of humans. Los is particularly focused on humans and he uses them to breed art and use their imaginations. Eventually, it is through the evolutions of the world that Orc is formed. Like Orc and Orc's cycles, Los is part of cycles as he tries to create the Golgonooza at the beginning of time and the image appears constantly in art. Los's imagination is also connected to the natural cycle, and art within the individual is developed through natural cycles. Art is mimetic of nature but order within nature. Los represents the progression through life to the conscious state...

Los appears in The Book of Urizen (1794) as an eternal prophet that binds Urizen after Urizen, the creator of the world suffers from a spiritual fall. He appears in the connected works The Song of Los, America a Prophecy and Europe a Prophecy at the same time. In these works, he begins as a prophet in Africa that describes how Urizen gave laws to the people that bound the minds of mankind. This was accomplished through Los's children with Enitharmon: "Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave / Laws & Religions to the sons of Har binding them more / And more to Earth: closing and restraining" (lines 44-46).

The Book of Los, completed at the same time, continues from the story of The Book of Urizen and describes how Los fell and was bound in a human form. It also describes how Los, in turn, bound Urizen in a human form. In The Book of Urizen, Los is constantly at struggle with Urizen to control the world and the two represent opposites. However, this was to later change when Blake added two other beings in his later work. In the early works, however, the binary system is possibly similar to the imaginative and reason sides that Blake divided his own mind and a struggle between the two. He also felt that Los was closely connected to Christ, and that is why Los dominated within his myth.

In Jerusalem (1804+), it is said that Los was the progenitor of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the other Biblical spiritual leaders. The work also describes the Four Zoas that are four parts that were united in Eternity but exist in a state similar to a giant after their fall. These four parts include Los and Urizen along with Tharmas and Luvah. The Four Zoas appear also in 2nd edition of Vala, or the Four Zoas (1807) and Milton: a Poem. In Milton: a Poem (1804+), Los is appears as a flaming sun. This view of Los and the sun is similar to a vision Blake claimed to have had on 22 November 1802, and he believed that in the vision he was able to unite with Los. In Vala, or the Four Zoas, Los witnesses a vision of the Lamb of God be sacrificed to reveal his spiritual side while Urizen and the Synagogue of Satan works against Christ and are the ones who condemn him to death. After the Synagogue of Satan promotes Deism, Los seizes the sun and the moon and breaks apart the heavens. The destruction of the world leads to eternity and the second judgment unfolds. The poem ends with Urthona, Los's unfallen state rising up and shepherding in science and removing the dark religions.

The final version of Jerusalem, completed by 1820, was a Gospel about the imagination as God's presence within humanity, and the messiah figure of the work is Los. Los's purpose was to create his own system in order to be free of any other system, and this system would be based on creation instead of reason. The purpose of the work is to describe Los's triumph and the new apocalypse in which the Lamb of God comes to England to rule.

Freedom from your mental chains will show you that the world is indeed visionary.

I hope that explains it. Well, you did ask.

ps I've now wasted twenty minutes searching for my old illuminated copy of Jerusalem. I'll never find it! I have more books than I thought. Stacks and stacks of 'em! I'd never list them all. Mostly they are philosophy, and religion, with a little psychology and science around the edges.

[Nordic]

It was a stupid mistake.

I want to change mine to Invisigoth.

Invisigoth is a great name, but I'm very partial to your current handle. I think it's beautiful.

I have a thing, and a history, for women whose names begin and end with the letter "a".

Don't know why.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

You think I don't know what's goin' on here?

I can't believe I almost fell for this.

[Peregrine]

You think I don't know what's goin' on here?

I can't believe I almost fell for this.

heh. snort.
Got a giggle from me.

And mine's because I like birds so much. Particularly birds of prey. Peregrine seems to be my username predominantly on any forum I use.