Trance

Trance denotes any state of awareness or consciousness other than normal waking consciousness. Trance states may occur involuntarily and unbidden.

The term trance may be associated with hypnosis, meditation, magic, flow, and prayer. It may also be related to the earlier generic term, altered states of consciousness, which is no longer used in "consciousness studies" discourse.

Etymology

Trance in its modern meaning comes from an earlier meaning of "a dazed, half-conscious or insensible condition or state of fear", via the Old French transe "fear of evil", from the Latin transīre "to cross", "pass over". This definition is now obsolete.

Working models

Wier, in his 1995 book, Trance: from magic to technology, defines a simple trance (p. 58) as a state of mind being caused by cognitive loops where a cognitive object (thoughts, images, sounds, intentional actions) repeats long enough to result in various sets of disabled cognitive functions. Wier represents all trances (which include sleep and watching television) as taking place on a dissociated trance plane where at least some cognitive functions such as volition are disabled; as is seen in what is typically termed a 'hypnotic trance'. With this definition, meditation, hypnosis, addictions and charisma are seen as being trance states. In Wier's 2007 book, The Way of Trance, he elaborates on these forms, adds ecstasy as an additional form and discusses the ethical implications of his model, including magic and government use which he terms "trance abuse".

Trance (Steve Kuhn album)

Trance is an album by American jazz pianist and composer Steve Kuhn recorded in 1974 and released on the ECM label.

Reception

The Allmusic review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4 stars stating "This is jazz that touches on fusion, modal, and the new spirit of the music as ECM came into the 1970s as a player. There is restlessness and calm, tempestuousness and serenity, conflict and resolution, and -- above all -- creativity and vision".

Track listing

Personnel

References

Standing Stone (album)

Standing Stone is Paul McCartney's second full-length release of original classical music (coming after 1991's Liverpool Oratorio) and was issued shortly after Flaming Pie's release in 1997. The world premiere performance was held at The Royal Albert Hall on 14 October 1997.

History

Following up on 1991's Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, the Standing Stone project was composed out of a long poem McCartney authored and was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Lawrence Foster at EMI's Abbey Road Studios. Unlike Liverpool Oratorio, this new project is not an operatic performance of a story, but an instrumental one, though it employs the use of a choir.

The cover for the album is actually one of the many photos taken by Linda McCartney during late 1969/early 1970 that would initially be seen on the inside gatefold cover of Paul's first album McCartney. Incidentally, this project was her husband's last release before Linda died of breast cancer on 17 April 1998, having been diagnosed almost three years earlier.

Thoth

Thoth (/ˈθoʊθ/ or /ˈtoʊt/; from Greek Θώθ thṓth, from Egyptian ḏḥwty, perhaps pronounced */tʃʼiħautiː/ or */ɟiħautiː/, depending on the phonological interpretation of Egyptian's emphatic consonants) was one of the deities of the Egyptian pantheon. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat, and his wife was Ma'at.

Thoth's chief temple was located in the city of Khmun, later called Hermopolis Magna during the Greco-Roman era (in reference to him through the Greeks' interpretation that he was the same as their god Hermes) and Shmounein in the Coptic rendering, and was partially destroyed in 1826. In that city, he led the Ogdoad pantheon of eight principal deities. He also had numerous shrines within the cities of Abydos, Hesert, Urit, Per-Ab, Rekhui, Ta-ur, Sep, Hat, Pselket, Talmsis, Antcha-Mutet, Bah, Amen-heri-ab, and Ta-kens.

Thoth played many vital and prominent roles in Egyptian mythology, such as maintaining the universe, and being one of the two deities (the other being Ma'at) who stood on either side of Ra's boat. In the later history of ancient Egypt, Thoth became heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead.

Goa'uld characters in Stargate

This is a list of the Goa'uld characters that appear in Stargate, Stargate SG-1, and Stargate Atlantis. In the Stargate fictional universe, the Goa'uld are a parasitic alien race that use other beings as hosts. Ra had stated in the original Stargate film that he had used humans exclusively as hosts for millennia, because Goa'uld technology can repair human bodies so easily that by inhabiting human forms they can be in effect ageless, though they can still be injured or killed. Most Goa'uld pose as gods in order to control slave armies, and are considered evil, egocentric megalomaniacs by those who do not worship them. The Goa'uld are extremely intelligent and have an aptitude for understanding, working with, and using technology that is superior to that of humans. They each have full access to their species' genetic memory from the moment of birth. As a result, no Goa'uld has to learn how to operate any technological device; they 'know' how to do so innately.

Thoth (newsreader)

Thoth is a newsreader for Mac OS X written by Brian Clark, currently at its revision 1.9.1.2. It requires Mac OS X 10.5.0 on Intel or PPC platform. There are also special versions for MacOS 10.4 PPC or Intel platform.

On December 30, 2013 the developer posted a notice to the software's web site stating that development and sales of Thoth had ceased, and that the software was no longer available for download. Poor sales was the reason given for this action.

References