Thoth, Writing, Books, Magazines and SubSCRIPTions?

I recently bought a two-year subscription to the English magazine 'Mind Body Spirit' from Watkins Books and a library bag featuring the Egyptian god Thoth.

"Watkins Books is London's oldest esoteric bookshop specializing in esotericism, mysticism, occultism, oriental religion and contemporary spirituality.

The bookstore was established by John M. Watkins, a friend of Madame Blavatsky, in 1897 at 26 Charing Cross.

John Watkins had already been selling books via a catalogue which he began publishing in March 1893.

The first biography of Aleister Crowley mentions that Crowley made all of the books in Watkins disappear and magically reappear.

Geoffrey Watkins (1896–1981) owned and managed the store after his father.

He was also an author and publisher, with notable books including first publishing Carl Gustav Jung's 1925 edition of Septem Sermones ad Mortuos.

In 1901, Watkins Books moved to 21 Cecil Court where it has been continuously trading ever since."

I found a copy of 'Mind Body Spirit' magazine in a newsagent in 2016 while on my travels but haven't been able to find the magazine in my local newsagent's magazine racks, so I decided to buy a subscription direct from the bookstore.

I mainly wanted to read the magazine for the annual "100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People" list it prints, but I also like a lot of the articles written in the magazine I had purchased.  

"Watkins makes an annual list of "the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People," which is published online and in the spring issue of their magazine.

The three main factors used to compile the list are that the person has to be alive, the person has to have made a unique and spiritual contribution on a global scale, and the person is frequently Googled, appears in Nielsen Data and is actively talked about on the Internet."

"Thoth (/θoʊθ, toʊt/; from Greek Θώθ thṓth; derived from Egyptian ḏḥw.ty) 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 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."

The strange thing is that the ibis has been showing up regularly in my life since two of these birds landed in front of me when I was leaving the Byron Writers Festival last year.

These birds didn't just land anywhere, they landed right in front of the #BYRONWF2017 sign, and I captured it in the photo above.
This was the first time I had ever spotted ibis at the festival in all my years of attending it.

I actually subscribe to the Byron Writer's magazine now, as well.

Peter Levenda's book 'The Dark Lord', which I'm still reading, is printed by Ibis press in Lake Worth, Florida, as well.

Which I find amusing, as those ibis I photographed at the Writers Festival flew over the lake to land in front of the festival sign.

A musing articles maybe?-)

Recently I had picked up two magazines from the local supermarket which I found worth reading and was thinking about buying subscriptions to.
One was called 'Muse' (which I have only just glanced through so far) and the other called 'Breathe'.

'Breathe' is a mindfulness magazine and what initially drew me to look inside it was the cover of a tree with birds sitting on it.
Being a fan of birds and crows in particular, I only noticed the blackbirds in the tree on the cover at first, but I soon noticed that there were all kinds of birds in the tree and even one owl near the centre of the tree.

The owl in the tree on the 'Breathe' magazine cover

Flicking through the magazine in the supermarket I liked what I saw so I threw it into the shopping trolley and took it home to read.

This particular edition of 'Breathe' magazine was full of bird like articles, which appealed to a mystical life birdwatcher like me, as I often have birds turn up in the trees outside of my computer room window, like this magpie pictured below I snapped the other day.

The magpie who visits me outside my computer
room window on a daily basis, almost 

In fact, as I'm writing this post my magpie friend has turned up outside my window and is sitting pretty much how I snapped the shot of it the other day.
And if an ibis shows up in that tree now, I will fall out of my chair, I would think.

There was even an article about the art of calligraphy in this magazine, which made me think of another bird ... the ibis ... and ibis headed god of writing and scribing ... Thoth. 

Muse-ic?-)

 I don't have the patience to take up a hobby like calligraphy, but it got me thinking when I was mulling over whether to buy a subSCRITion to 'Breathe' and saw that if I subscribed the month I bought the magazine I would go into the running to win one of ten calligraphy sets.

That's when the word "subSCRIBE" hit me and I realized that most of the good writers and musicians tap into something deeper than ordinary consciousness when in the process of writing.
So to "subSCRIBE" could also mean in a sense to see below the writing and just where it was coming from.

I didn't end up buying a subscription to 'Breathe' magazine, but just the thought of "subSCRIBing" was food for Thoth, you might say?-)

In Australia ibis are known as "bin chickens" because they are always looking for food and scraps, so they will dig through rubbish to find what they are looking for.

More food for thought I guess when it comes to people searching through "New Age" magazines for their quest in life's journey.
But I'll write more about that subject in future posts.

Some bin chicken humour:-)