David Eagleman

Film

On the Termite

Shrine in a termite mound, Kolwezi, Congo, c.1930.

---

André Castor January 7, 2025

Termite mounds - those brown piles of rigid dirt that protrude from the landscape and hide acreage below them - are as ancient as the land they rise from. In parts of Africa, South America, and Australia, these earthen towers are not just temporary homes, they are enduring monuments, passed down through the generations of termite colonies. Some mounds are known to be over 34,000 years old, but most at least number in the hundreds of years, surviving across centuries and millennia, continually inhabited and rebuilt by successive colonies. 

When we think of buildings and cities, we often imagine them as symbols of human ambition, crafted to last for centuries or successive lifetimes. Yet, the termite mound offers a humbling contrast. Here, time itself does not belong to the individuals who build it, but to the community that comes together—over and over again—to tend to it, to repair it, and to keep it alive. It is not a static monument to human achievement, but a living, breathing testament to the persistence of purpose across generations.

The question then arises: What does it mean to build something that outlasts us? What can we learn from these oft-derided insects about living within the cycles of time, about the relationship between the individual and the collective, and about the ways in which our actions are woven into the fabric of a larger, continuous story?

Built by colonies of termites to serve as both nests and climate-controlled environments, these mounds are constructed from earth, saliva, feces, and other organic matter, which is collected by the termites from their surroundings. The architecture is remarkably complex, with a series of tunnels and ventilation shafts that regulate airflow and temperature, providing the colony with a safe, stable environment carefully controlled to maintain optimal conditions of temperature and humidity in the face of extreme weather conditions outside. The mounds can rise up to 30 feet in height and span much large areas below the surface, offering refuge and safety from predator.

Termites help improve soil health, promote water infiltration and enhance nutrient cycling through the aeration process of their building. Their mounds act as natural reservoirs, absorbing and slowly releasing moisture to sustain surrounding vegetation during dry periods. Some species of termites even cultivate fungi within their mounds, creating a symbiotic relationship that helps decompose plant matter, contributing to nutrient recycling in the ecosystem. In these ways, termite mounds are not just homes for termites, but vital structures that play an important role in maintaining the ecological balance of their environment. In the process of thousands of years, these insects build not just for themselves, and their future generations, but the world around them.

---

“Decay is not the end of things, it is a necessary part of renewal.”

---

Termite mounds are a reminder that individual lives are but fleeting moments in the vast expanse of time. What these creatures leave behind, in lives that usually last no more a few years for workers and perhaps a few decades for the Queen, is not just the work of a single generation, but the shared contributions of thousands of generations. Each mound is built, maintained, and inhabited by countless termites over thousands of years, but it is always the same mound, never fully finished, always in the process of becoming. The generations may come and go, but the mound itself endures. They are constantly being rebuilt, repaired, and adjusted. They are living structures, continuously in flux, responding to the demands of the environment, to the needs of the colony, and to the rhythms of life itself. Nothing about the mound is static. It is a cycle of construction and deconstruction, creation and decay, over and over again.This challenges the human tendency to view our lives as distinct and separate from one another, as if each of us is isolated in time. How often do we build lives as though they must stand alone, seeking personal recognition, fame, or success? The termite mound offers us a different way of being: a life that belongs to something greater, a purpose that extends beyond the self. The mound’s continuity suggests that the most meaningful actions are not those that bring fleeting personal glory, but those that contribute to a larger, ongoing process—one that connects generations, that transcends time.

For humans, the idea of impermanence is often uncomfortable. We are taught to chase stability, to fight decay, to preserve what we have for as long as possible. But there is a wisdom that we often overlook: decay is not the end of things, it is a necessary part of renewal. The cycles of life, growth, and decay are not to be feared, but understood as fundamental to the very essence of existence.

What if we understood our lives not as isolated projects but as part of an ongoing story—one in which we participate, but do not control? What if our actions, like the termites’ construction of their mounds, were not aimed at permanence or recognition, but at fostering a deeper, intergenerational connection to something larger than ourselves? The mound teaches us that the highest form of meaning may lie not in building for today, but in building for tomorrow, and for the communities that will follow us.

---

André Castor is a conservationist and researcher who writes about the natural world.

Hannah Peel Playlist

---

Mercury Prize, Ivor Novello and Emmy-nominated, RTS and Music Producers Guild winning composer, with a flow of solo albums and collaborative releases, Hannah Peel joins the dots between science, nature and the creative arts, through her explorative approach to electronic, classical and traditional music.

Ace of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

View fullsize

Name: Ace of Cups
Number: 1
Astrology: Water
Qabalah: Kether of He

Chris Gabriel January 4, 2025

The Ace of Cups is the fountainhead, the great source from which all the waters in the suit of cups spring. It is the Holy Grail and the Cauldron: the Heart.

In Rider, we find a golden chalice pouring forth water, held aloft by a divine hand. A dove flies down carrying a communion wafer. The cup is marked mysteriously with an M or W. This is the chalice of communion, the cup that runneth over. 

In Thoth, we find a blue cup with the base of a lotus flower. It is marked with a Vesica Piscis. Water pours forth from the top and bottom of the cup, and all around it are emanations of water, blood, wine, and divine light.

In Marseille, we find an ornate, kingly cup. It is adorned in jewels and ornament. Jodorowsky thought it resembled a cathedral with its 7 spires. The central spire bears 3 interwoven circles, which themselves contain 3 circles. This is the Heart as a temple.

Each of these cards depict, in their own way, the Heart, the Fountain from which all blood flows. In contrast to the Ace of Wands, which is the divine phallus, here we have the divine vulva, and rather than the masturbation genesis of the Egyptians, here we see the birth of the world from the womb of the Great Mother.

The suit of Cups pertains to Water, and thus our emotions and depths. This being the first card in the suit shows us that the Heart is the central source from which all feelings flow. But let us not forget, Water is Divine, and it brings life to the mundane cup. Before the blood of Christ spilled into the Holy Grail, it was just a cup. 

It is the divine beauty of the Blood that makes a Heart worthy and pure. This is shown in Revelation (an image of which appears in Thoth’s Lust card) as the Cup of Abominations that Babalon carries, one filled with the blood of saints, abominable things and her own filth. A heart of darkness. 

The Ace of Cups is our own Heart, whether it pumps pure love and life, or sour acidic hatred is up to us. When we drink from the Grail, will we receive immortality or be cursed by our own impurity?

When we pull the Ace of Cups we can expect an emotional experience, a significant dream, conversation, or vision. Our feelings will be brought forth. As Nietzsche writes: Night has come; now all fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a fountain.

We must listen to our Hearts and let them flow freely.

---

Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Film

Bruce Johnston

The Philosopher’s Stone (Alchemy II)

Cabala, Spiegel Der Kunst Und Natur, In Alchymia. Raphael Custos, (1615).

---

Molly Hankins January 2, 2025

“The Philosopher’s Stone is not a stone, but a state of consciousness.”  - Manly P. Hall, author and founder of The Philosophical Research Society.

In ‘The Subtle and The Gross’, we explored each phase of alchemy, both in the literal and existential sense, and here we can bring these two meanings together. The subtle refers to the spiritual substance which is condensed into gross matter, and makes up the physical world we live in. Alchemists and magicians contend that the gross, on the other hand, can be altered by way of the subtle, and as Manly P. Hall said, it all begins with a new state of consciousness. 

The final stage of alchemy leads to the formation of the so-called Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary substance in physical alchemy that has the ability to transmute base metals into gold. On Becoming An Alchemist author Catherine MacCoun tells us that physical and metaphysical alchemy are achieved through a synthesis of the material and spiritual realms, and the Philosopher’s Stone is the union of the two. As we consciously merge the subtle and the gross within ourselves, so we create the conditions for alchemy and magic to become possible in the material realm. 

MacCoun writes, “Between you and anything that you may wish to influence there is a relationship. If either party in a relationship changes, the relationship itself is changed. In turn, any change in the relationship changes both parties. So if you wish to change something, the first thing you must do is discover the true nature of your relationship to it. Then you will be able to see how to change it by changing yourself. This is the basic logic of alchemy.” 

Our existence in the world of the gross is what she calls “the horizontal realm,” and it has a limited vantage point and capacity to affect change within space-time. True alchemy brings in what she calls “the vertical,” or the subtle realm of spirit, which has infinitely more data available than what we have access to in the physical, horizontal world. She believes that the vertical is influencing the horizontal all the time. Understanding the true relationship between these worlds, and then consciously merging them, is how we cultivate the power to create change in our reality. The Philosopher’s Stone is attained when spirit and matter consciously coagulate, a process that is ongoing, but once begun forever elevates our capacity to bend the horizontal world to our will. This is how we change the world by changing ourselves.

---

“Our hearts may feel love in a passive sense, but they express little more than “inept good intentions and niceness.”

---

Section from the Ripley Scroll, c.1550.

Alchemy, also referred to as The Great Work, is described in On Becoming An Alchemist as, “The process of reincarnating into your own life.” We described the phases of that process in part 1, as well as the characteristics and mechanisms of each phase. But the underlying essence of the merging between the spiritual and material, the vertical and horizontal, was intentionally withheld because it requires consideration of the vertical world. We can only reincarnate into our own lives by first accepting that our consciousness exists beyond the physical and that we have the ability to hold more of that consciousness within form.

Richard Rudd, creator of the Gene Keys, has his own description of this process. As of the publication date of this essay, we are currently in the 38th Gene Key of transcending struggle through perseverance to achieve honor. Richard says of this key, “We’re born to struggle, to fight, to move ever-upwards. We are form forced from within to try and free ourselves, to learn to fly - to be free from struggle, to be effortless like the birds in the sky or the dolphins leaping through the ocean waves. But even these creatures struggle, everything does. It’s the nature of evolution to go on expanding and surmounting itself. In humans, struggle can either free us or trap us.” The process of alchemy describes a process of struggle, but one that ultimately frees us when we become conscious of it. 

MacCoun’s work describes a mechanism we can consciously use within our physical and energetic bodies to persevere in the fine art of transmuting struggle into The Philosopher’s Stone by redirecting the flow of subtle energies. Below is what she calls a “muggle configuration” of the human energy body, which has a fraction of our total consciousness operating within the horizontal. The rest, which many spiritual traditions refer to as our “higher self” operating beyond the limitations of horizontal spacetime, is still up in the vertical. 

⬆️

Ideal

⬆️

Thought

⬆️

Word

💚

Territory

⬇️

Desire 

⬇️

Fear

⬇️

Without conscious work to evolve this configuration, we are wired to project all our fears, desires and territoriality out into the horizontal. Many of us then look to a vague, theoretical notion of the vertical - to religion, spiritual traditions, or new age practices. We project our words, thoughts, and ideals out there, all while neglecting to send any energy to what she contends is the true center of consciousness, our heart-center. Our hearts may feel love in a passive sense, but they express little more than “inept good intentions and niceness.” The next diagram illustrates what she calls alchemical energetic alignment.

Ideal

⬇️

Thought

⬇️

Word

💚

Integrity

⬆️

Devotion

⬆️

Confidence

⬆️

Life’s struggles, if we let them, alchemize fear into confidence, desire into devotion, and territoriality into integrity. Becoming conscious of this process, our relationship with the vertical, spiritual world, and the merging of the two is the union of the subtle and the gross which eventually turns our own heart-centers into The Philosopher’s Stone. Redirecting these energies both in meditation and in our horizontal, waking life accelerates our evolution and thus our capacity for affecting change in the world. Meditation, when undertaken with confidence, devotion and integrity, gives us access to the vertical. This takes the form of elevated states of being and profound insights arising in our minds of new ideals, thoughts and words. 

When we cultivate a relationship with the vertical and the heart becomes the meeting point between intention and will, we are merging heaven and earth. MacCoun ends her so-called technical overview of the process of redirecting energy to our hearts by reminding us that  “like a diamond, it is indestructible, cutting and radiant. It loves bravely, shrewdly, mightily and magically. It has become The Philosopher’s Stone.”

---

Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.

Mike Love

Film

Borges and I

How They Met Themselves. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1864.

---

One of the most significant writers of the 20th Century, the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges was a key figure of philosophical literature and magical realism whose short stories expanded upon metaphysical ideas with wit and brilliance. Borges often returned to the idea of the doppelgänger in his work, and in this non-fiction piece he explores his self-perception as a writer in contrast with his public profile, as two different Borges’s exist in his mind.

---

Jorge Luis Borges December 31, 2024

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.

---

Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986) was an Argentinian short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature

Iggy Pop Playlist

---

Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, and actor. Since forming The Stooges in 1967, Iggy’s career has spanned decades and genres. Having paved the way for ‘70’s punk and ‘90’s grunge, he is often considered “The Godfather of Punk.”

Consolations

Questlove Playlist

---

Questlove has been the drummer and co-frontman for the original all-live, all-the-time Grammy Award-winning hip-hop group The Roots since 1987. Questlove is also a music history professor, a best-selling author and the Academy Award-winning director of the 2021 documentary Summer of Soul.

Two of Swords (Tarot Triptych)

View fullsize

Name: Peace, the Two of Swords
Number: 2
Astrology: Moon in Libra
Qabalah: Chokmah of Vau

Chris Gabriel December 28, 2024

The Two of Swords is the beginning of Thought. It is the mind taking its first steps; comparing and contrasting, balancing opposing ideas and finding peace. This is the card of the beauty that forms when we master this ability.

In Rider, we find a blindfolded woman balancing two swords in her hands. One faces left, the other right. She is seated, and behind her is a rocky shore. This is Lady Justice, for Justice is blind. It is evening, and a crescent moon sits in the sky above her.

In Thoth, we see two swords piercing a blue rose and crossing one another. The rose emits white geometric rays. Two miniature swords uphold the symbols for the Moon and Libra.

In Marseille, we have a central flower and two swords.

Sigmund Freud writes that “neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.” As a card of peace, the Two of Swords embraces ambiguity, duality, and finds the balance therein. Like riding a bicycle, continual movement is necessary to maintain true balance. One way to look at this card is like a Gyroscope or spinning top. It stands balanced and upright when in motion, but falls without it. Peace is not stationary, and certainly not permanent. 

Beyond the mechanical gyroscope, the Two of Swords calls to mind a baby learning to take its first steps. Once learned and mastered, it will never be forgotten. The development of the Mind is similar, but immensely more difficult.

We must train the mind to engage without belief, without attachment and sentimentality. We must treat it as a tool, sharpening and honing it until, we achieve balance - then the flower starts to grow. This is the true beauty of the mind unpoisoned by belief, natural processes flourish. 

A full mind can be polluted and congested with ideas that are not one’s own. A mind may be taken over by viruses for all manner of reasons. Our desires and fears can be hijacked, thoughts can be inserted in that we believe to be our own, and they then run freely with our bodies. This must be avoided if we want to create great things.

When pulling this card, we can expect a period of peaceful consideration, a lull in things. The hard work that we’ve put in before now grants us the freedom and time to think. 

---

Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, READINGS

Film

The Curriculum of the Bauhaus

The Bauhaus School Building in Weimar, Germany.

---

Four years after the formation of the Bauhaus, its founder Walter Gropius wrote a text entitled ‘The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus’ as a manifesto, declaration and explanation of the radical new world they were trying to form. The Bauhaus was a new type of art school, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany that attempted to unify individual expression and the process of mass manufacturing and modernity. It was inherently inter-disciplinary, and its output ranges from furniture and buildings, to paintings and craft work, each of which was valued individually and as a cohesive part of the greater whole. Perhaps no single movement has had quite as much impact in the 20th century, and the very visual language of the modern world owes its debt to this small school in Germany. Here, Gropius explains the curriculum of the school, and in doing so espouses some of the core philosophical ideas of the movement - that of intersectionality between mediums, rigorous focus on craft and technicality and an emphasis on the freedom that can be found within constraints of production.

---

Walter Gropius December 26, 2024

The course of instruction at the Bauhaus is divided into:

The Preliminary Course (Vorlehre)

Practical and theoretical studies are carried on simultaneously in order to release the creative powers of the student, to help him grasp the physical nature of materials and the basic laws of design. Concentration on any particular stylistic movement is studiously avoided. Observation and representation - with the intention of showing the desired identity of Form and Content - define the limits of the preliminary course. Its chief function is to liberate the individual by breaking down conventional patterns of thought in order to make way for personal experiences and discoveries which will enable him to see his own potentialities and limitations. For this reason collective work is not essential in the preliminary course. Both subjective and objective observation will be cultivated: both the system of abstract laws and the interpretation of objective matter. 

Above all else, the discovery and proper valuation of the individual's means of expression shall be sought out. The creative possibilities of individuals vary. One finds his elementary expressions in rhythm, another in light and shade, a third in color, a fourth in materials, a fifth in sound, a sixth in proportion, a seventh in volumes or abstract space, an eighth in the relations between one and another, or between the two to a third or fourth. 

All the work produced in the preliminary course is done under the influence of instructors. It possesses artistic quality only in so far as any direct and logically developed expression of an individual which serves to lay the foundations of creative discipline can be called art.

*

Instruction in form problems

Intellectual education runs parallel to manual training. The apprentice is acquainted with his future stock-in-trade - the elements of form and color and the laws to which they are subject. Instead of studying the arbitrary individualistic and stylized formulae current at the academies, he is given the mental equipment with which to shape his own ideas of form. This training opens the way for the creative powers of the individual, establishing a basis on which different individuals can cooperate without losing their artistic independence. Collective architectural work becomes possible only when every individual, prepared by proper schooling, is capable of understanding the idea of the whole, and thus has the means harmoniously to coordinate his independent, even if limited, activity with the collective work. Instruction in the theory of form is carried on in close contact with manual training. Drawing and planning, thus losing their purely academic character, gain new significance as auxiliary means of expression. We must know both vocabulary and grammar in order to speak a language; only then can we communicate our thoughts. Man, who creates and constructs, must learn the specific language of construction in order to make others understand his idea. Its vocabulary consists of the elements of form and color and their structural laws. The mind must know them and control the hand if a creative idea is to be made visible. The musician who wants to make audible a musical idea needs for its rendering not only a musical instrument but also a knowledge of theory. Without this knowledge, his idea will never emerge from chaos.

A corresponding knowledge of theory - which existed in a more vigorous era - must again be established as a basis for practice in the visual arts. The academies, whose task it might have been to cultivate and develop such a theory, completely failed to do so, having lost contact with reality. Theory is not a recipe for the manufacturing of works of art, but the most essential element of collective construction; it provides the common basis on which many individuals are able to create together a superior unit of work; theory is not the achievement of individuals but of generations. The Bauhaus is consciously formulating a new coordination of the means of construction and expression. Without this, its ultimate aim would be impossible. For collaboration in a group is not to be obtained solely by correlating the abilities and talents of various individuals. Only an apparent unity can be achieved if many helpers carry out the designs of a single person. In fact, the individual's labor within the group should exist as his own independent accomplishment. Real unity can be achieved only by coherent restatement of the formal theme, by repetition of its integral proportions in all parts of the work. Thus everyone engaged in the work must understand the meaning and origin of the principal theme.

Forms and colors gain meaning only as they are related to our inner selves. Used separately or in relation to one another they are the means of expressing different emotions and movements: they have no importance of their own. Red, for instance, evokes in us other emotions than does blue or yellow; round forms speak differently to us than do pointed or jagged forms. The elements which constitute the 'grammar' of creation are its rules of rhythm, of proportion, of light values and full or empty space. Vocabulary and grammar can be learned, but the most important factor of all, the organic life of the created work, originates in the creative powers of the individual. The practical training which accompanies the studies in form is founded as much on observation, on the exact representation or reproduction of nature, as it is on the creation of individual compositions. These two activities are profoundly different. The academies ceased to discriminate between them, confusing nature and art - though by their very origin they are antithetical. Art wants to triumph over Nature and to resolve the opposition in a new unity, and this process is consummated in the fight of the spirit against the material world. The spirit creates for itself a new life other than the life of nature.

Each of these departments in the course on the theory of form functions in close association with the workshops, an association which prevents their wandering off into academicism.

*

The goal of the Bauhaus curriculum

The culminating point of the Bauhaus teaching is a demand for a new and powerful working correlation of all the processes of creation. The gifted student must regain a feeling for the interwoven strands of practical and formal work. The joy of building, in the broadest meaning of that word, must replace the paper work of design. Architecture unites in a collective task all creative workers, from the simple artisan to the supreme artist. 

For this reason, the basis of collective education must be sufficiently broad to permit the development of every kind of talent. Since a universally applicable method for the discovery of talent does not exist, the individual in the course of his development must find for himself the field of activity best suited to him within the circle of the community. The majority become interested in production; the few extraordinarily gifted ones will suffer no limits to their activity. After they have completed the course of practical and formal instruction, they undertake independent research and experiment.

Modern painting, breaking through old conventions, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world. But when, in the future, artists who sense new creative values have had practical training in the industrial world, they will themselves possess the means for realizing those values immediately. They will compel industry to serve their idea and industry will seek out and utilize their comprehensive training.

---

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School. He is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture, and one of the most influential art theorists of the modern age.

Víkingur Ólafsson

Film

Christmas Day

Still from The Christmas Angel (Détresse et Charité). Georges Méliès, 1904.

---

Published on Christmas Day in 1830, in the British publication ‘The Tatler’, Leigh Hunt’s essay on Christmas grapples with many of the same questions being asked almost 200 years later. How, he wonders, can we celebrate in a world full of suffering? Yet deftly and sympathetically, Hunt makes the argument that the best thing we can do in times of strife and trouble is sow seeds of happiness. Much of the original essay concerns the intricacies of eating and drinking in 19th century Christmas celebration, but the extract presented here is his opening remarks. While dressed in the language of the day, it contains within it universal truths of justice, charity, and kindness that are evergreen reminders.

---

Leigh Hunt December 24, 2024

The antiquities of Christmas, its origin, old customs, rustic usages, and mention by the poets, have been so abundantly treated in various publications of late years, that we should have nothing to say on the subject, if the season itself, and the fire-side, did not set us talking. We hope our readers will all enjoy themselves heartily to-day ; but to that end, we have first a word or two to say of a graver tendency. We are not going to tell them that they must have no mirth, because there are many who have a great deal of sorrow. It would be a great pity, were there no sunshine in one place, because there is rain in another. There are many things in the present state of the world, and of our own country in particular, calculated to disturb, even a momentary spirit of enjoyment, if our very humanity did not help to reassure us. We firmly believe, that the end of all the present tribulations of Europe, will be a glorious advance in the well-being of society. This reflection alone may enable the lovers of their species to endure many evils, and to persevere with renewed cheerfulness, in the struggles that yet remain for them to go through. We believe also, with equal assuredness, that the end of the present dreadful calamities of the poor in England, will be a proportionate advance in the whole condition of the English community; and therefore uneasy and cheerful thoughts chase one another in our contemplations, as images of the present or future predominate ; but when we propose to ourselves a special day of enjoyment, or relief, or whatever else it may be called, in proportion to the cares of the individual, it appears to us that we ought not to take it, without doing what we can towards diminishing some portion of it in others, even should our circumstances allow us to do no more than give them an apple or a crust.

What we mean, in short, is, that in all neighbourhoods, there are fellow-creatures to whom Christmas is little or no Christmas, except in reminding them that they cannot keep it; and we would have everybody do something, however small, to shew them that we would fain have it otherwise. The rich can do something in this way, to gladden the hearts of many families; others may be able to do but little for three or four; others for a less number; and some for none at all, to any serious degree, except that the least attention to the poor is welcomed as a serious blessing. But we would say to every one who can spare a slice from his pudding, or an apple from his little children's dessert, “If you can send nothing else, send that.” If you know of no actual distress, still the slice of meat or pudding may be welcome ; the servant will, probably, know somebody who would be glad of it. There is the washerwoman, or the errand-boy, or the poor man who sweeps the cold street at the corner - send out your charity somewhere, and it will find a call for its tenderness.

We give this advice, not because your heart may be wanting in natural kindness, or you may not be even actively beneficent, when affliction is brought before your eyes; but because the best hearted joy may sometimes forget others, in its vivacity, or not have been sufficiently taught to share what it can; but having thus earned a right to be sympathized with by those about you, we say then, “Do forget, if you can, all others." Shut out the world and its sorrows, as you do the darkness of the evening with your curtains, and realize the happiness which you would bestow on all. It is a part of your duty to enjoy what pleasures you can, not inconsistent with others' welfare or your own. 

---

Leigh Hunt (19 October 1784 – 28 August 1859) was an English critic, essayist and poet. In 1808 he founded the radical intellectual journal ‘The Examiner’, and introduced many of the greatest poets of his age, including John Keats, Percy Shelley, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson, to a public audience.