What's in a name?

Hello world, my name is Mark. My user name on this forum might be an interesting story. Way back when, I earned a living between semesters in college as a cab driver. I hung out with two other cab drivers. Frank and Ray. We worked twelve hour shifts and after a long day or night on the job we’d get together to shoot the shit, hang out with a beer or smoke some pot.The story is rich in detail but I’d like to bore down without hashing out all of the details. Frank had two brothers and a sister. Mark John and Julie. John suffered from a speech impediment having difficulty with the pronunciation of the ar combination of letters. And when ever he referred to his brother Mark it came out Mowk. Frank thought it sort of funny that my name was Mark and given his experience with his brother John he took to calling me Mowk. He would emphasis it by spelling it out as part of greeting me which I admit to finding rather annoying. I inherited the nick name ‘M’ ‘o’ ‘w’ ‘k’.

Frank was also a college student at the time at a college that specialize in mining engineering, which was located not too far from a town called Mineral Point. There was a big hill just outside of town with a giant letter M fashioned in stone and painted white. It could be seen from miles around. Frank always joked about climbing that hill and adding the letters ‘o’ ‘w’ ‘k’ just for kicks. On one drunken night Frank managed to convince some of his room-mates to do just that, and added the letters ‘o’ ‘w’ ‘k’ next to that giant letter M.

It just so happened that Ray and I were coming back from a racing event which took us along the highway were the giant M was visible, as we drove by Ray erupted in laughter seeing the letters ‘o’ ‘w’ ‘k’ were placed plain as day along side that giant letter M. From that day forward I couldn’t shake the nickname Mowk as hard as I tried.

When presented with the question of a user name I tried to use Mark, but apparently Mark was already taken and the next thought out of my mind was Mowk. Still Mark in a fashion. It was after all a version of Mark I had been nicknamed so I typed it in as my username and it was accepted. And here on this forum I have been Mowk ever since.

So my name is Mark or Mowk which ever you feel more comfortable with. I will respond to either, If I get any sense you are addressing me. It didn’t turn out to be as short of a story as I had originally intended.

So is there a story behind your username you would be comfortable sharing? Some are clever, and others lack any reference at all. Another question, does the choice represent any attitudes you are attempting to convey as an example of your nature?

Mowk is appreciative of any discussion that might shed light on the notions of how an individual identifies it’s self.

My name is pinkladydragon. I use a name with “dragon” in because…well,… because that is my main spirit animal, specifically a fire dragon i.e. that is an aspect of my nature. (The “fire” bit refers to energy. And I know that I am someone who has an ability to energise, to get people “fired” up.) However, while I might feel comfortable revealing the story behind the “dragon” bit to my user name on other, more general sites, it’s a bit more difficult on a philosophy site. For example, do many members of a philosophy site regularly use tarot and/or oracle cards? Perhaps members of a philosophy site are a bit more rational than that!

A while back we had a few member that were into that sort of thing. There are a few that seem to embrace a sort of mysticism as well. I have a deck of tarot cards but I haven’t touched them in years. I should really clean out my closet. What sort of stuff do you write? The creative writing forum would be a natural for that sort of thing. Thanks for sharing.

Some members are more rational then others. We’re a fairly odd collection of thinkers.

Hey Mowk. Your username reminds me of all kinds of words such as Tomahawk and Mohican. It is impressive. Funny to know how it originated. I also like the name Mark.

My name is Jakob, which I also have as a username here. I am allowed sock puppets. At one point I impressed myself greatly by devising a form of logic which to this day I am impressed with but Ive bored, confused people to tears already explaining it for eight years now, so I wont go into those details. In any case, I had suddenly attained a very high rank in my own eyes, where before I had no rank. So one day, a month or so after the discovery, I decided to give myself an initiation name.

This was in the summer of 2011, I was in my home in Amsterdam, away from my girlfriend in Vienna where I had devised the logic in the presence of all kinds of wonderful signs. I spent an afternoon and a night sitting at my desk just thinking about which name would be cool. Slowly it dawned on me that, since I am next to a philosopher also astrologer (Ive been forced to become one because I could not avoid the evidence for it and I am after all a philosopher, and thus cant ignore reality as it presents itself and must investigate its riddles) I could use terms from that field which is especially relevant to initiations, cool also since due to my logic I could now explain why astrology works. My natal chart has planets in all the fixed signs: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius, and three of these are on the same degrees of the consecutive signs, making a powerful and very difficult aspect. The four fixed signs together are called the Fixed Cross. (There is also the Cardinal Cross and the Mutable Cross.) I thought this is a very cool name and because of my particular astrological makeup, and the struggles Ive mounted on its account leading to this philosophical breakthrough, I figured I earned that name. So I went on ILP and registered. Since then Ive become quite a different person.

People started calling me “Fixed”, a name I am fond and proud of. Years later, I went to Montreal to visit a friend Id met online on account of the network that came about around me because of the logic and there I largely went by the name Fixed Cross. In the first months I lived above a dive bar in a dirty neighbourhood full of misfits and ex convicts and the like, where I had a lot of fun. People knew me there as Fixed Cross. One day a group of new people came in and I got to talking with them, and introduced myself to one of them as Jakob. He shook his head and said that cant be right. I then said well Ive called myself Fixed Cross, and he nodded vigorously and shook my hand.

my username expresses my respect and support for methamphetamine manufacturing, hence the ‘pro’ ‘methean’. and my spirit animal is the duck billed platypus… but i couldn’t figure out a way to get a meth and platypus reference in the same moniker.

Fixed Cross it is. Sounds like you’ve been around the block a timer or two your self. Well that’s something I wasn’t aware of, I’ve read a bit of your posts under that moniker but didn’t draw the connection. If I ever get to know you better, I may drop the Cross and just call you Fixed as well.

Prom, I can only guess guess as to why you would support it but the duck billed platypus reference did make me laugh. You’ve got quite the sense of humor. How did you realize that was your spirit animal? You ever been down under?

My real name is Jason.

Ecmandu happened back in the late 90’s when a game called Everquest came out. I made my account the first day the servers went live (I wasn’t a beta tester)

Anyways, when I saw all the server names, I was drawn to one called E’ci (ice spelled backwards).

I had the option of creating a barbarian in the land of ice cold Halas and did so. The land reminded me of Kathmandu in the Himalayas … so I used the “ec” part from ice spelled backwards and added the “mandu” from Kathmandu, making drum roll

Ecmandu!!

I pronounce it: ec-mon-du

Having discussed things with you first person, I was curious where your user name came from. Thanks for sharing the background. I am aware of a little bit more this day, that is the greatest gift I could receive. It help so much with understanding, if I could imagine such a thing possible. Jason is pretty cool name too, but Ecmandu is even more cool. Katmandu is such an exotic place with so much myth and mysticism involved in it’s cultural portrayal. I’m a handy man of sorts, intellectually and practically; a jack of all trades and a master of none. But when it comes to the animate, life, I am just as likely to fall flat on my face.

Thanks.

I’m writing, co-authoring, a non-fiction book with a view to being published. I also write purely for enjoyment such as on forums like this. I do a little creative writing too, but have not done so for quite a while now. I have spotted the creative writing forum and had a read of the submissions. Good forum.

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but care to describe the evidence you have that prompted your interest in astrology?

Why do you want to know?

The problem is that there is only evidence.

Since you’re asking about possibly the most coveted knowledge there is among powerful humans, it would be recommended that you spend, like with all sciences, some time on serious study so you know what kind of questions to ask and if you really want to know the answers. For example, draw a few dozen charts, to begin with of yourself and of the people around you.
You can use this.
astro.com/cgi/genchart.cgi
and just google whatever you want to see explained, make sure to read a few different hits for everything.

As for my own interest, you can check some of these sources.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovHSYGJiaXw[/youtube]

astrologyweekly.com/forum/s … p?t=110629
beforethelight.forumotion.com/t5 … r-calendar

wait dragon lady! before you watch that astrology video, watch this one first…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNSHZG9blQQ[/youtube]

Hahaha, yes, people without self respect can of course not possibly take an honest look at astrology.
This is the “problem”, if anyone cares, with such a science: about half the people on the planet would rather die than have any idea of what they are.

Lol.

For example, if promethean75 would have his chart read, (he couldn’t muster the discipline or concentration to read his own) he would be told that he is intellectually challenged, despite having much intellectual pride. That he should work with his hand if is to make himself useful. And that in turn would be reason for him to reject the whole science. Thats just the way humans are. Childish to the extreme.

Same sort of thing with value ontology (the inside of the will to power) by the way; one must actually exist to dare to understand what it means to exist. Most people don’t really exist nowadays, they’re merely functions of their devices and ideologies.

I take you, dragon, for someone with a good chart, and yet you will want to ask yourself to what extent you wish to know yourself.

so intellectually challenged that after dabbling with astrology charts when i was eighteen years old, i quickly concluded that astrology was an unfalsifiable pseudo-science incapable of any empirical verification that consistently confused correlation with cause (mars in the tenth house caused the stock crash. no way was it just correlated), reveled in the ambiguity of language (libras are ‘graceful’; okay, but how many ways can we define ‘graceful’?), and tended to put into the heads of its practitioners an element of manifest destiny; they begin to act like the personality type they are told they are… and then, post-hoc, believe they are fulfilling the truth of what they read.

but that’s my fate. to be intellectually challenged. it’s written in the stars.

(although i feel the need to inform everyone that i am a capricorn/tiger. in primal astrology, the komodo dragon. but you can just call me ‘boss’ if you want)

Oh you dabbled and quickly concluded, is it?

Brilliant, promethean. Only you could illustrate my point about you so perfectly.

well i’m a little quicker than most, so there is that…

Dragon - it speaks for itself that a person with self-respect will, when confronted with a means to analyze oneself, seek to come up with a favourable picture, and if this isn’t convincingly provided, he will reject the whole method.
A person with self-respect will seek out his own flaws before he looks at any “compliments”.
This is where astrology gets quite dangerous, as most anyone has a good deal of very severe problems in his chart, usually ones that cant be overcome.

Promethean or anyone who thinks “he is a tiger” or “he is a Capricorn” certainly has never bothered to read the first thing about the subject. 1/12th of the people on Earth are born with their Sun “in” Capricorn.

The Sun placement accounts for about a tenth of the placements an astrologer works with at minimum, and placements count for a small percentage of the factors in a chart. What matters are angles and aspects, mostly. It is for a good part geometry.

how do you know the ‘position’ of a celestial body in space is the ‘cause’ of behaviors… like joe being hopelessly romantic? (and i don’t mean shit like the moon affecting menstrual cycles)

but it gets even worse. how do you define ‘hopelessly romantic’ so tightly that you are positive behavior set x is a display of joe’s hopeless romantic nature, rather than behavior set y?

you know why astrology dazzles simpleminded people without a capacity for logic? because it becomes so obscure as it advances in complexity that there is no way to be sure you’re wrong about any particular conclusion.

if a taurus becomes talkative, it must be because his mercury is in gemini. that explains it. but wait, his venus is in leo, and that chick he’s talking to is hot. maybe the talkativeness is because leo is outgoing and social, especially when attracted to someone. well fuck, which is it?

shit, i handn’t thought of this either. part of her attractive nature is her interests in social justice. his rising sign is saggitarius, which gives him special interest in matters of social justice. could that be why he’s talkative?

gosh ya know this is all so complicated. ya know what, maybe all this is bullshit, and there are other reasons why joe is behaving like he is. but those explanations are boring. i like esoteric explanations with which i can make anything work.