Amissio

In the divinatory art of geomancy, amissio symbolizes the classical elements of fire and water, intent and reflection, loss and giving and love. This website is the little gift of a philosopher and mystic to those who also seek a way Beyond.

Blog

I write quite a bit: mostly meditations on classical philosophy, accounts of weird things I've experienced, or summaries of things I've read lately. It's really all just written for myself, but I post it online in the hopes that some of it may be of interest to others, too.

Transcriptions

We moderns have access to a wealth of public domain texts on the Internet, but these are often in the form of poor-quality scans, which are not very pleasant to read. I have transcribed a number of these using LaTeX, so that I might print and read them more comfortably.

Software

Once upon a time, I was a computer programmer; these days, I'm retired, and mostly use software as a tool to help me understand some problem or other.

Learning Ancient Greek

In studying classical philosophy, I've come across references to a lot of things I'd like to read which have never been translated (for example, Johannes Stobaeus's Anthology) or which are untranslatable (for example, poetry and hymns). I began the process of learning ancient Greek so I could read these. But, I'm an autodidact by nature, and textbooks are written to be studied in a classroom setting, so I'm having to do the work the hard way. I've been posting my study notes online as I do so in case it is helpful to anybody else in a similar situation.

Geomancy

Geomancy is a divinatory art, and is useful as such, though I think it is even more interesting as a sort of calculus or logical system for understanding change. I participate in a study group on Dreamwidth, and have made several tools in order to facilitate discussion there.

Templates

One of my computer science teachers used to say, "Good programmers always draw their pictures." I suppose that's stuck with me: I prefer to work on paper rather than on screen whenever possible. To facilitate this, I sometimes make little templates that I can print out and work with.

All content on amissio.net is dedicated into the public domain.