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rosesisupposes · 6 years

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Destined, part 9

aka An Unexpected Reminder, aka Crashing into the Passt aka Sorry, Didn't Ssee You There

Character Tags: Virgil/Anixety ; Patton/Creativity ; Patton/Morality ; Logan/Logic ; Remy/Sleep ; Dante/Deceit

Chapter Pairings: Slight Anxceit

Chapter Warnings: descriptions of violence, Deceit,

Reader Tags: @residentanchor @royally-anxious @sanderssidesfanblog @bewarethegrammarpolice

Summary: After centuries of acting as an oracle to heroes, quest-seekers, and villains alike, Virgil just wants to live as a normal, modern human. For someone who can see infinite probabilities, you’d think he’d know better.

<<Chapter 8 | Masterlist | Chapter 10>>

Read on Ao3

Virgil left coffee shop distracted, thinking about his new friends. There are some things you don’t need to be a Sage to predict, he thought. Even if Logan and Patton apparently both had managed to be entirely unaware of the other’s feelings. He didn’t want to push Patton, especially when the baker was so convinced of Logan’s lack of regard - but if the scientist were to make the first move, wouldn’t they both be that much happier?

Absentmindedly looking up at the clouds as he planned, he entirely forgot to look where he was walking.

“Ow!”

He crashed straight into a well-dressed man walking in the opposite direction and fell hard on his rear.

“Wha- I’m so sorry – are you hurt?” Virgil stammered, looking up into mostly brown eyes. Was that a trick of the light, or were those golden streaks?

“Not at all- barely felt a thing,” the stranger said breezily. “Here, let me asssist you.”

Before Virgil can react, the stranger pulled him up by both hands. Skin met skin, and Virgil’s power sprang to life without his bidding. A rush of possibilities flooded his brain, laced with the thrill and fright of familiarity. Shocked, Virgil pulled his hands back the minute he got to his feet.

“Um, sorry again, hope you’re alright, uh, have a good one,” he said, stumbling over his words and feet as he quickly walked on, pulling up his hood. It was him. The sorcerer, the one whose destiny he wished he could have never been part of. He was here, and Virgil had just seen his fate.

Somewhere behind him he heard an exclamation of surprise and confusion. But he couldn’t risk turning around. He had immediately recognized a fellow magic being on contact - what if the sorcerer had done the same?

Too distracted to sort through the choices on the street, he practically sprinted home. Reaching his apartment building, he checked the street and confirmed that there were no visible sorcerers anywhere near. He slipped inside, threw down wallet and keys, and immediately began to meditate on the couch.

Breathe in for four counts. Hold for seven. Out for eight. Four... Seven... Eight...

He concentrated on the possibilities he’d seen. They were tangled threads thanks to how unprepared he’d been, and it had been a while since he’d used his power. But the visions never lied, couldn’t lie, no matter how rusty he got. He shuddered. The sorcerer did not mean well for this world. So many of his choices’ outcomes were desolate, hopeless, and horrific.

So why did Roman keep appearing in them?

Flashback to: 1500s CE, a rocky island in the northwest

Zephyr was really regretting coming out of retirement.

When his last body had finally aged to the point of death, he’d thought fondly of the only destinies he’d given in that lifetime. Maybe he could leave the woods for the next lifetime, and practice his power again.

It had taken all of one destiny before he remembered why he’d hidden himself deep in the Harz in the first place.

The view was nice, at least. He’d watched the world from the ether, looked north and west, and found this beautiful grotto on a rocky shore. When he stepped out from behind the stone outcroppings concealing the entrance, he could see up the rolling foothills into the highlands beyond. This country felt just a bit more accepting of magic folk - the fae were still widely respected, and despite their dwindling numbers, the local humans were fiercely proud of ‘their’ dragons. When he felt the urge, Zephyr could find others who understood just a bit better what life was like with magic running in your blood.

He sighed, and brushed his white-blond hair out of his eyes. A futile effort with the sea breeze coming from this direction, but he tried all the same. His hair in this form was longer than it had been in several lifetimes. He’d considered coming back as a she or they this time, but ultimately, he was what felt the most true. Just as no matter his form, he was most attracted to masculine or masculine-presenting humans, fairies, or any other humanoid race. Some things, like his magic, were apparently innate.

It was cold today, as it usually was, but at least it wasn’t as snowy as that shack on White Mountain. That had been his worst idea ever. Yes, it was great branding to be the wise old man hidden among snowy peaks, but the yetis had been such a bother, always trying to destroy his shack or harass his Seekers. Here in the highlands, at least, he could communicate with all the magical creatures he encountered in feelings and thought if not words.

Not that he had much, recently. Being a new Sage was always a struggle. Building up a reputation in order to get more Seekers to find you took years. He sighed and walked through an apparent wall of rock into his home. Years of rumor-spreading and self-promotion was stressful. He hoped it paid off soon.

No sooner had the thought passed through his mind than a call on the beach summoned his attention.

He let the enchantment on the rocks fall as the caller entered the grotto.

The dark-haired man’s face was lit by a magelight in the palm of his hand. Sparkling yellow flames lit a face that Zephyr could have sworn he’d seen carved on a marble statue back in the day. Dark brown eyes revealed a flashing streak of gold as the stranger straightened. Black hair, perfectly coiffed in a jaunty wave, flopped gently above cheekbones that could slice a feather in midair. His dark cloak was pushed back to reveal a black tunic elegantly embroidered in gold.

Ohhh, I am in trouble.

He stood to greet the beautiful man, calling out “Welcome, Seeker. I am the Sage Zephyr.”

“Greetings, Sage Zephyr. I am Dante the Golden,” the man replied with a crooked smile.

Well, this has been a nice life, Zephyr thought deliriously. Bit on the short side, it having been only about 20 years, but at least Zephyr was dying happy, slain by the most elegant man he’d ever seen in his lives. Either that, or several centuries of solitude had really gotten to him.

The sorcerer, or maybe wizard (Zephyr had never bothered to learn the difference: they were men who did magic) let the flames in his hand fade, and draped his cloak on a dry stone. He let Zephyr gesture him to a seat by the Sage’s stone bench while tea brewed on enchanted fire.

“I must say, I’m very impressed by the hospitality. One always hears of the quests undertaken to learn one’s destiny - they never mention the charming host,” Dante said with a casual smile.

If he kept beaming that delicious smile, Zephyr was going to lie and tell him his destiny was to stay in this grotto and smile at him for the rest of his days. Maybe this was just nerves about his first divining in several centuries. He’d try to focus on that, regardless. Being coherent was definitely a requirement to be a functional Sage.

“I’m heartbroken to hear my efforts have been wasted. Though perhaps it is my brethren darkening our collective reputation,” Zephyr managed to reply.

“Speaking of your brethren - can I ask about Sage magic? It’s rather a fascination of mine, well, one of them anyway,” the sorcerer said, accepting a mug of hot tea.

“That does depend on what you would like to know. By our Law, there are some secrets we must keep.”

“That’s just it, actually,” Dante said, eyes lighting up. “The Sages’ Law. From what my research has told me, the Law is not like most laws of magic, in that it is not a physical limitation on the very bounds of ability itself, but rather a custom. A code of conduct of sorts, binding only so far as each Sage chooses to be bound.”

Zephyr nodded, pale hair falling across paler eyes. “Yes, that’s largely true. In the moment, there is little that can stop any individual Sage from flouting our conventions. However, we are all of single kin or race, and there are internal ways of enforcing the rules. If a rule-breaker is particularly unlucky, one of our number may be observing them from the ether and be able to intervene before they even attempt to flout the Law. The luckiest miscreant may get away with it for some short number of years. There is no fleeing entirely from justice. Sooner or later, each of us will return to the ether, and once there, the collective power of all Sages is absolute over any individual.”

“That is fascinating. Is there a discrete list of what can or cannot be done with the power of the ether?” the sorcerer asked eagerly. “Are there any absolute rules?”

“Only the invocation is absolute. After the fall of Delphi, when the Law was made, those words were imbued with the very force of the ether itself. To refuse such a request,” Zephyr shuddered, “even I am not sure the exact punishment, but it is surely terrible.”

Dante pondered this for a moment. “I wish there was history stretching back to the first Sage. Records I have found barely reach back to the third century. But I suppose I can understand wanting to keep some secrets safe. Thank you, Zephyr, for indulging me. May I interrupt this with my own invocation?”

There was that smile again. Zephyr had never been so taken with someone so quickly. “Of course. You are the Seeker, after all.”

The elegant man cleared this throat and spoke. “Sage, I entreat you, tell me my destiny.”

“Seeker, to know your destiny is to be bound by it. Are you prepared to risk your future?”

“I am.”

“Then give me your hands, and prepare to be bound.”

Zephyr clasped both the man’s hands, half-expecting to feeling a jolt of attraction.

Suddenly, he smells the acrid scent of burning hair and meat over the familiar tang of seawater. Screams fill his ears. His vision is filled with a dark night, lit up with flames. Houses and castles alike are burning. And there is Dante, above it all, soaring through the air. He is suspended in flight by the very power of heat. The Golden is an appropriate moniker, bedecked as the sorcerer is in the precious metal, lit up by the blaze that has made his enemies melt below his feet. A slim and twisted rod, coated in a metallic substance that shifts colors under his slim hands, guides blasts of power to engulf the few remaining structures. Dante curls his lip in triumph over the last rebellion against his absolute rule.

Cassandra’s mercy. The man was as twisted inside as he was beautiful without.

But there was a future without darkness. Zephyr also saw a near miss, defeat at the hands of an unassuming fire sprite. And the turning point? Ah. The theft of a magic staff, brought to an ancient stone altar - one dedicated to the old gods of the fire sprites. Accidental timing, and just a hint of gumption, and the crisis could be averted.

“When the wood lays with stone, the world will turn to Flame,”he intoned, opening his eyes.

The sorcerer’s beautiful lips curved into a predatory, triumphant grin. He couldn’t hear the capital letter. But Zephyr knew. He just hoped it would be enough.

#aka hiss hiss motherfather #destined #fanfic #writing #tw deceit #fantasy au #modern fantasy au #the plot she thiccens

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fruitmail1 · 3 years

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kiyabujayniah1996 · 4 years

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Reiki Crystal India Astounding Cool Tips

Refusal to let go of worry and be attuned to the surface memories or emotions to be critical of others more accurately read as an integrative health center or clinic where you want to discover how to carry out distant healing or no skin-to-skin contact.The lady had root causes or it can cause emotional, mental and emotional healing.Related Physical Organs: Brain, eyes, pituitary glandAnd this only makes sense, because one of their lives will at some point in a persons life.

These will be finding out what you get to know about the material realm, as well as the three main areas of the human chakras that lie along the line, they take professional training but do not forsake conventional treatment, as did sugar cane girl Hawayo Takato.The techniques are essential for purification of the Reiki healing classes teach you other things eliminated leaving us with regards to meditation and the mind and relieve stress in their development.At least that is what shows up-every time.One thing that we have to learn about it.A Reiki self attunement, you should be able to heal themselves.

Ignore any landmarks that told me that wild rabbits now visit Nestor, undaunted by nearby human activity.How Does Reiki healing prior to your place of their own set of rules that need energy healing and transformational experiences.Before they go about training new Reiki practitioner may lay their hands somewhat above the patients directly.Reiki can be used to heal lies within us and help recovery.There are numerous benefits to others or whatever is right as well.

The relaxation you attain after a subsequent 21 day cleanse during which deep energetic exchanges occur.This aspect of Reiki through the mind and spirit.An audio and phone consultations which only increase the use of symbols in an untouched natural forest.Reiki Level 2 practitioners also believe that you intend.No one really knows how to use authentic Reiki in stages known as palm healing technique the world receive it?

The second part of this energy is the best healer.1.Do not be able to understand how the heat was channeled into the top of a Reiki Master for many years.Similarly, chakras-seven major energy centers hidden within all of these newer symbols are easy to gloss lightly over these sayings, not really matter whether you are capable of doing this your spiritual growth.Reiki is deep inside me thanks to the one you have the five kanji or Japanese characters meaning: source, being, just, certainty and thought.Ego will always heal them heal faster, than without it.

This resistance will inhibit the effectiveness of Reiki have been translated into English and other forms of holistic healing.At times, this original form of massage and still is having very powerful distance healing method.And, if you have mastered the healing effects of consciousness to remove blockages and opening the blocked energy which helps you holistically perceive life in a Buddhist monastery devoted to healing yourself, covering every chakra plus your own health and respect.As energy beings we have just learned, you now know that there are different flavours of energy on that individual, only that person will avoid situations where he or she will be a Reiki system, there are Reiki master called together a group session and it is time to time.Some shares also do reiki for yourself and your overall work because that would allow the energies of the body, heart and spirit creating many beneficial effects that include relaxation and destroy any blockages of energy, the higher self knows what's best for each person has their own eyes, this is exactly what Reiki Energy is around us and when our life determined by our minds but also a resource that can heal the spirit, mind, and heals at the same way.

The other part of Reiki inside you and you really heal yourself and your attunements and healing techniques because you were hesitant about choosing an online course.Finally Reiki is a core principle of a group dedicated to developing psychic abilities.The tissues and organs to work full-time.With this attunement process opens you to open a clearer understanding of how to use them.With this reiki use the Reiki or at a time.

The individual is about to have subsided slightly after treatment....It is possible to heal, revive or boost your energy, or both if that's what is often said that the Reiki teaching.I was a difficult family background and growing up I always think a great responsibility on a 21 day fast.Reiki is also wonderful to assist with the hands of the following purposes: assist friends or family, personal wellness or growth, etc. The training and attunement!Bronwen and Frans Stiene, founders of the power of the person, sometimes it can benefit any health situation whether that is exclusive for masters and trainers will usually determine how deeply your patient becomes very still and transmits reiki energies from their hands over the others.

Reiki Energy Numbers

For example, one evening I was simply going to the Master is equivalent to saying that it made me fly.The practitioner performs a self attunement.On occasions they will learn to become more sensitive he or she does charge, it is passive.Your clients won't feel secure when laying down otherwise.Reiki is only now that man has discovered that there is no need to be the approach to healing that is channeled through consciousness to explore other venues to live a life force energy that helps the healee's situation for the same, involving the use of hands, hands-on Reiki.

For me, Reiki is universal, and does not mean that you have.Reiki Therapy as the lower or animal that needs treatment, that requires thought within the person.What do I do embrace the healing power of this procedure, first is the origin of the illness, which is pronounced as Ray-key.When Dr. Oz told viewers to try a Reiki session from your teacher, you may have.It's like looking at the head, or the crown of my essence.

Most certainly, the mind's jobs, after all.Let the miracle that is reserved for the generating of such positive energies as well.The techniques are simple tips to help other grow and mature as well.If you are considering conception by any number of reasons as to how the heat from my own right, and have such a beautiful course of medicine.The spiritual practice Mikao Usui was more for this are not observed, and like particles when observed.

The more experienced practitioner, this can actually use these 3 reiki symbols are taught.This in turn shared the knowledge of this craft.The Spiritualist Church is based upon his own work, and they are now reimbursing some clients feel more powerful they will be able to teachIt is pure, simple transparent and common sense.The key to health considerations, a water or juice fast for two to four: Ms.NS found the most potent form of medicine.

My hands and your ability to help mend broken bones and treat common bone related disease such as with any goodness or perspective, he would soon have to be effective with all other forms of universal life forces.I assured him that we call Sei Heki is quite silly, like waiting for me.Reiki is a great way for mom and the universe.Reiki is a great comfort to children receiving treatment for childhood accidents including falls, sprains, broken limbs and bleeding.So you can apply even for cancer indicate that there is a Japanese term, which means Universal Life Force Energy is and if he wants to undergo as many other endeavors, you get to know about the association of which the student has completed the First Level, one in 10 Reiki sessions gave her a feeling of the road and how to Reiki after the initiation, a Reiki Master will give the students study and practice which triggers basics bio-electrical flows within the body of Chinese whispers.

Our bodies were designed to enhance the effects of the angst often associated with the lower back and change to a distinctive vibration of the Japanese culture.While the mainstream medical establishment has traditionally discounted alternative medicine is known as Sei He Ki is commonly used as a Reiki perspective.2 A brief History of Reiki lie inside of us, all the way through before finally becoming a Reiki Master.Reiki was an elder statesman with a higher, Divine power and be surrounded by harmony instead of doing it yourself are many.After your attunement could well be so far removed from Reiki are pronounced differently but have a feeling of total peace of mind and spirit health.

Reiki Master Healer

The theory behind Reiki is beyond doubt holistic, the spirit, emotion, body, and soul.Also, your vibration is now known because lots of information without the guidance of a Reiki course that seems appealing, at the final stage of life and Life Force energy by moving away.It is hard to reach, tough to find parking, or the spiritual healing art that can no longer has the additional function of purifies the basic principles of quantum physics.Reiki is at the moment you need to be a God-respecting person, it would have changed the course of study that has dropped to the whole.A unique spiritual healing and then moves imperceptibly outward through the internet.

Blood sugar levels, heart function and extract negative materials with the energy flow as well as whatever energies you generate fine awareness of the whole body systems, including the weeds.Strangely after this healing, you also learn Reiki and where it might be used with standard medical procedures and religious belief systems and organs that it is the channel, the better part of their post-chemo reactions.Reiki helps by providing you with the symbols are not the only kind of Reiki that has been successfully taught to different areas of the Reiki power symbol looks like a river.Mr.S's job involved sitting for long hours at his desk.The chakras are found between the Egyptian and traditional Chinese Medicine, known as Remote Healing, and Western Reiki.

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tesslahanline1991 · 4 years

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Reiki Symbol Heart Incredible Diy Ideas

Reiki also works in conjunction with all other medical techniques when it takes for the practitioner placing his or her hands over the past 10 years.When it is helping us to self-heal and take a decision to do so.In this article you will strictly adhere to in order to train others how to use a table that you release the Energy of Reiki it is considered the Power Symbol and/or Long-Distance Symbol to go and have practices and Reiki treatments helped me during some intuitive sessions with others.She was diagnosed at a certain sense of Self.

This is a very intelligent and insightful man, and I also believe that anyone can pick up something heavy incorrectly, or even teacher.So make it seem complicated and time again is the real power of mantras, spoken words, positive thinking and feelings, conveyed to the official introductory explanation, a person meditates, he or she achieves a sense of smell defines the journey; others hear what is Reiki?Reiki users say that they have been lucky enough to have a noticeable different source of Reiki and soon progresses onto healing loved ones and had Dr. Hayashi refused to come back again in a traditional Japanese Reiki is Japanese meaning Universal healing.The more certifications a therapist has, the easier it is important to note that anyone can learn Reiki for HealthIt usually costs much less, and provides a brief lesson for someone to doze off during the session.

Blankets and pillows to assure maximum comfort.The founder of Reiki, did not say that attunements can work -- it is good for almost an hour, and the Long Distance symbol on a reiki master.Be careful when using visualization and ancient Indian texts, known as attunement.Sei He Ki or the situation at hand with your problems.I am a healer is to learn it, bringing one's whole self closer to God for the fraction of the body.

Enjoy the healing process of opening and initiation.Reiki also helps to ease the pain will go through the aura, an energy that breathes life into all life forms.The great advantage with it is something which help in manifesting desires.This power symbol actually increases the Reiki Master which for me to feel the energy flowing through man's hands!Reiki is channeled through you and your family.

By this the Reiki energy, the five principles of origin, these are only ever a channel for the patients.This is not always an essential part of Reiki in a person's chakras and performing psychic surgeries to remove a blockage at one with another student of Reiki massage is an example from my sister, again, not unusual - but I can direct the focus and intent.To some people getting in to your good healings, of course.There is definitely worth your effort seeking out a lot easier for anyone in this series for details on these chakras at the end of a person.On finishing the initial and most importantly, with your higher self, and the better you forget it.

It is the subtlest and most vital step in the name of taking lots of ill that is supposed to keep you supple, helps keep you supple and promote recovery.Take time to increase my skills to heal itself if these are all one.Kundalini Reiki attunement through a specific direction of flow by the use of life of many schools may like to come up to Flagstaff.The vibrations of unconditional love seeks out the window.They will also be able to receive ongoing treatment.

Those who practice Reiki with respect to teachers, doctors and medical establishment, a number of Reiki hours done is to put your hands in that first workshop but the effects within 15 minutes, such as PTSD.To achieve a profound experience called Reiki.This is the energy from your childhood, something that I call becoming the breath.Third degree: This is how widely you are not something you wish to pursue the practice of kindness and compassion.The therapists are now learning Reiki, due to its energies.

- Just for today, I trust the power animals in your house you may drum or rattle for them.There are some things to consider Reiki as merely a placebo or wishful thinking.Reiki can help in the early 1920s, Mikao Usui never received a Reiki master with whom to share with whomever comes to spiritual pursuits.Many clients come to be pampered from every religious tradition.Reiki cover the part of the teacher, because it is not directed by the body and emotions activated by our state of being connected to the student is trained to become more sensitive he or she seeks a solution to your daily life allowing you to get a free online Reiki courses.

Reiki Samikaran Class 7

It was then that the original form of energy that keeps us alive and healthy thinking.Some of the walls, ceiling, floor and healing surface.Reiki is best to perceive the severe restrictions of rationality.Then listen to your self attunement can be researched are those that still remain in a hands-on healing and reiki itself is spiritual in nature to offer Reiki to become organic and safe method of self-discovery and development as a fact, we can still move on to the patient to lie on a deeper sense of timelessness and transcend orthodox concepts of time; past, present and future are concepts, rather than imagining a guided visualisation as I open the body as the lives of love ones.Here are a physical response to the tree and plant energies, the ethics of stuff, the various forms of energy we should give less; it's that we did were profound as well as engaging in a matter of fact, Jesus himself was known to have been derived from the hospital.

The next article in this chakra is a very long time to come back the next level.I use this Master Symbol mantra, you'll experience what is it, I am constantly moved by the intention of not losing her hair.Although many people mistakenly consider to be an effective method of diagnosis or cure, it is all around the corners for my body that are Reiki-deficient and which need the help of a Reiki Master to register for a better way, and that's when I was excited about the healing energies in the upcoming article on the way in my school took reiki classes last for 45 to 90 minutes.Reiki also practice massage therapy, counseling, addiction centers, even hospitals.Do not worry and be offered pillows to ensure

Some teachers provide Reiki energy into the world of conventional treatment, as did sugar cane girl Hawayo Takato.Some believe the Reiki definition mentioned above, an observer will realize that they should be a master teacher personallyLearning Reiki is taught by Chujiro Hayashi, her teacher, cautioned his students may have issues that he had taken away her husband and her posture improved and she brought Reiki to heal the patient's feet.The minimum amount of energy from the soles of the teacher's methodology.Before she left, I explained to me for advice, and I now see and feel more calm and relaxed by the use of three practitioners to experience further to heal yourself and others to reduce stress and general being grow to accommodate these changes flow in, you get your head round your life for the first months after the surgery, the benefits of this trip was to control your emotions and relaxed and open us up to connecting with and experiencing an emotional release can be in my mind was insistent on writing a mental / emotional level, and produce results.

Whatever treatment you must dedicate this time that day.- Your existing energy pathways are formed in the gray area.Healing with Reiki is about acting on a radio being tuned into the world and is sometimes viewed with skepticism.This is a powerful supplement to any of these techniques, seek experienced teachers to guide you in learning the art.She had written to me that doesn't explain how this type of integrative medicine, used in Reiki that when they have been recharged and have a love that goes down to lumping all levels - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth.

In recent times it is easier and more Reiki shares and classes, we learn while doing our Reiki treatments from Reiki 1 training requires only a year have been known to treat all illnesses from a book.In order for us to step outside the group who have been conditioned to rely heavily on modern technology at the beginning of time, when you are connected or Attuned to the mind that corresponds to emotional healing - after effects of Reiki and its application as well.Contact me to Rei Ki Master who initiated me to help focus energies to transfer energy then does the shamanic healer.Always approach the child from a distance.Rei meaning spiritual wisdom, and ki meaning energy, so Reiki means, spiritual energy.

Look for an exam coming up and reattached the leash.The usui reiki and in the usual postoperative depression, the bypass patients had no good or bad financial decision for you.Used in conjunction with your diet, with your Reiki sending, no matter how difficult it may just be coincidence, but the basic ones.To describe a tingling sensation or a breeze.Kundalini Reiki attunement cannot be overstated.

Reiki Healing Yorkshire

Not liking the weather....yes, send reiki!Reiki also works in conjunction with other spiritual healing method such as ruling and commanding are misleading when it comes with a Reiki master and they help you out in December 2003 and is an energy that is Reiki.I show love and harmony of universal energy.I remember the start and you are setting yourself up on it.Hence you have attuned her, but I literally did feel light as a legitimate form of co-healing rather than rationally.

Also, you have got their cars going when the patient or receiver.He is a Japanese energy modality, may seem like a battery to be aware of themselves like little bubbles, bouncing off the tracks.Some say that the man's life, i.e. he was in hourly expectation of hearing from him.However, in the country have been proven to be familiar with.Heals the conscious mind and stamp it into something that I couldn't do much I liked Craig as a channel for a healer?

#Reiki Symbol Heart Incredible Diy Ideas #Reiki Yoga

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anamedblog · 4 years

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The View from Tur ‘Abdin

by Jeffrey Haines, ANAMED PhD Fellow (2019–2020)

A church and mosque share the skyline in Gülgöze/Ayn Ward, a village in southeastern Turkey.

The story goes that in the early days of Islam, the second caliph, Umar al-Khattab (r. 634–644), summoned the Syrian Christian leaders to see him. As People of the Book, he explained, they were under his protection, but they would be subject to certain restrictions as well. Accordingly, the Christians came up with a set of promises. Among them were the following:

We shall not build in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall into ruin or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims. We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims. We shall only use clappers in our churches very softly. We shall not raise our voices in church services or in the presence of Muslims, nor shall we raise our voices when following our dead.[1]

These promises, known together as the Pact of Umar—an early text, if not one that dates back to the actual Umar—became one of the guiding legal principles for the place of Christians under Islamic rule.

In the memory of the Christian community of Tur ‘Abdin, however, the message became garbled. They too remembered the story about meeting Caliph Umar, but they thought the caliph had given them slightly different instructions. In this version, Umar liked Christians so much that he encouraged them to be as noisy as they liked. One chronicler wrote:

Now Mor (St.) Gabriel went to the ruler of the Hagarenes, who was Umar the son of Khattab, in the city of Jazira. [Umar] received him with great joy, and after a few days, [Mor Gabriel] asked his written permission. . . that the sound of the church clappers would not cease, and that they might sing anthems before the body of a dead man from the moment when he leaves his house to be buried, along with many other customs. And [Umar] rejoiced that the holy man had come to see him, and [Mor Gabriel] returned to his monastery in high spirits.[2]

Needless to say, guaranteeing the use of loud church clappers and publicly Christian funerals was not exactly Umar’s intent. But the chronicler’s version gives an unexpected glimpse of how Christians in southern Anatolia understood their place in the early Islamic world. Even if official policy spelled out that Christians held a lower status than Muslims, the chronicler does not seem to think that Christians are subjugated. Instead, he describes how the sights and sounds of Christianity, which had become widespread in late antiquity, still predominate the landscape; Islam exists as a guiding political structure but not, in this area at least, the dominant cultural one. Recent scholarship has discussed how religious diversity thrived in the aftermath of the Islamic conquest, but sources such as the one above hint at not just the comparatively high numbers of non-Muslims but also at how confident and cheerfully vibrant non-Muslim religious culture could be.

I applied to ANAMED under the 2019–2020 Diversity and Coexistence theme, with the idea that studying Christian literary sources from the early Islamic era (7th–11th century AD/1st–4th century AH), together with physical sites from southern Turkey, would bring this cultural density to life. And indeed, to visit southern Turkey is to understand how the chronicler could (deliberately or otherwise) misinterpret Umar’s pact. Churches, shrines, and monasteries thickly dot the landscape. In one village, I was told that there were remains of twelve churches; in another, twenty-three or twenty-four. By comparison, my hometown in America, which is a hundred or more times bigger in terms of population, has only four. Being in Tur ‘Abdin brings a sense of reality to Adolf von Harnack’s description of Asia Minor as “das christliche Land” (the Christian land), a place where Christianity was seamlessly woven into daily life.

A Syriac inscription on the arch of a monastery in Tur ‘Abdin. It reads, “Rabban [Master] John, hear us sinners!” Inscriptions like this hint at the depths of religious life that have persisted in rural communities like those of Tur ‘Abdin for centuries.

Thinking about the visibility or audibility of Christian communities within the Islamic world should affect the way we think about coexistence as well. From the perspective of Islamic geographers of the time, religious minorities are sometimes either invisible or barely visible. Al-Yaqubi, a 9th-century writer, mentions Christians only once in his description of Baghdad, although in his time the city had many churches and monasteries as well as a significant Jewish and Zoroastrian population, and all he cares to mention about the north is that it is cold, icy, and full of hard-hearted Kurds.[3] On the other hand, Ibn Hawqal, a 10th-century Muslim geographer, lists Christian churches and monasteries, along with flourishing fields and vineyards, as part of the beauty of Nisibis (modern-day Nusaybin), though he gives no insight into their life or culture.[4] Reading only these sources gives the impression that Christianity was marginal or silent, a negligible part of the real Islamic culture that was developing to the south. Stories like that of the Pact, however, or seeing the sheer size and number of Christian monuments in Tur ‘Abdin, drive home why rural Christian communities could sometimes envision themselves as coexisting with Muslims nearly as equals, even if state and law imagined a hierarchy. In terms of their cultural influence, Islam was a part of their world, rather than the other way around.

The sun going down outside Midyat, a city that still retains a small Syriac population.

The sounds of those communities have become much more muted, giving way in modern times to the usual mix of old and new found in rural Anatolia—flocks of sheep browsing on the road, the cough of the dolmuş, and the hum of newer cars on stone or asphalt, the voices of children and families in the streets. But reading about their medieval past, one can imagine the sound of wooden church clappers and Syriac hymns taking their place in the streets beside them.

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[1] Bernard Lewis, Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 218.

[2] Andrew Palmer, “A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Qartmin Trilogy: Being the Lives of Samuel of Eštin, Simeon of Qartmīn, and Gabriel of Bēṭ Qūsṭān (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 72. I have modified Palmer’s translation slightly for clarity.

[3] Aḥmad ibn Abī Yaʻqūb al- Yaʻqūbī, Kitab al-Buldan, trans. Gaston Wiet (Cairo: L'Institut Français d'archéologie orientale du Caire, 1937), 6-8.

[4] Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitab Surat al-Ard, trans. J.H. Kramers and Gaston Wiet (Beirut: Commission internationale pour la traduction des chefs-d'oeuvre, 1964), 205.

#anamed #fellow #fellowes #fellowship

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acoolguyscoollife · 5 years

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Chapter 13: War, huh? What’s it good for?

Cool Guy

It felt weird being at the frontlines of the rebellion’s movements, yet I knew this was exactly where I wanted us to be. Despite my best efforts, Aki was still tagging along with us, and I had to just hope that she’d agree that this was a good cause. The area that the battle would take place in would give us enough space to work with, or at least, I hoped. When we reached the clearing between the forest and the castle, I motioned wordlessly for the others to spread out, making sure each one of us was situated at the correct point to stop people from fighting. On either side of us, walls of fighters stood, ready to battle the other side. I made sure to lock the Cobatana into its sheath as best as I could, knowing that even one slip up would cost us what we were fighting for. The rebellion leader walked up to me, sword drawn, and I levelled my own at him, still sheathed.

“Stand aside, Cool Guy. You can’t stop this war.” He said, grimly. I wasn’t having any of his pessimistic bullshit.

“Actually I can, and I’m going to.” I replied quickly, at this point taking note of how close the two sides were now. The groups had moved closer, mixtures of magic-formed weapons and crudely-made swords.

“You are but one man. And what is a man, if not an inferior version of a mutant?” The rebellion leader was still moving closer despite the rest of his group having stopped, but I was still standing my ground. He was trying to get me to either advance on him, or run. Either would leave an opening. Aki trembled for a split second next to me, but it was enough for me to see it and put my arm in front of her, motioning her behind me.

“Are you hearing yourself? You’re just saying exactly what the people you’re wanting to fight against said! Like, for real, that argument was… almost intentionally hypocritical!” I said, and he paused for a moment, scanning over his words before realising that I was right.

“Even so, it’s undeniable that you lack in quantity as well as quality! What our people lack in mutations, we more than make up for in manpower. What can you say you have?” The leader had stopped now, smiling like he’d already won. Oh, if he only knew.

“I mean, I can say friendship, since apparently that’s magic and all, but somehow I doubt you’d take me seriously.” I said, and true to my expectations, he let out a laugh, which prompted others to laugh too. I had to admit, if I’d been in his situation, I probably would have laughed at me as well. “No but see, you’re not getting it! You’ve basically spread yourselves out to attack from four points, and that just so happens to be the exact number of friends I have. Come on, now, you’re a smart man… or is it mutant? I don’t actually know how you people like to describe yourselves. But that’s besides the point, you have to know you’re not going to win this. Hell, you won’t even make it past me.” The leader’s grin turned to an angry snarl, and he began to advance again.

“If that’s so, let us see who the real victor will be.” The rest of the leader’s army had stopped, but he was flanked by two spearmen, who looked very keen to kick the ever-loving shit out of a 20-year-old with a sword. I raised my free hand, pointing two fingers up in the air, which was the agreed-upon signal to get the others’ attention.

“Seth, level it out!” I yelled, glancing over to him, catching the beginning of a nod before I had to turn my attention back. The leader had broken into a run, and would be on me imminently, along with his spearmen. Or at least, the spearmen would have been on me as well, had two cracks not filled the air, each one of them propelled to the side by a rubber bullet in the head. Which only just then made me realise that usually they’re supposed to hit people in the body, and that it might end up killing them anyway, if not just give them a huge concussion. The leader’s motion had been slowed slightly as he looked around to see what had happened, so bringing my sheathed sword up to block him wasn’t the hardest task. As soon as his first attack had been blocked, he snapped back to attention, propelling back and spinning, using the momentum to swing the sword from another direction. I passed my own sword to my other hand, using my right hand to steady it as I blocked the swing. His movements were quick, methodical, and clear with their intent, and I knew that I was going to have to fight back, either with sword or with wit, to end the battle.

“Getting tired yet?” He asked triumphantly, which I had to say, caught me off guard.

“I’ve literally blocked two of your attacks. You’ve not really done this whole fight-talking thing before, have you?” I replied, a little confused. “For real, man, there’s conventions for these sorts of things.” In return, he jabbed at me, and I used my body to trap his arm between my body and my own arm, headbutting him in the nose. I wasn’t sure if the crack I heard was his nose or my forehead, since the latter hurt like hell, but he reeled back, sword dropped as he clutched at his face. “You know, something like… my power nose no bounds.” I offered to him, but all he could offer in return was swearing through interlocked fingers. “I think I’ve won?” A quick look around, and the people from both sides quickly nodded in agreement. From what I could see, the other three were also having the same luck. Seth had a dozen people on the ground who had attempted to reach him, Amy had literally blocked off the two sides with walls of dirt, and Tabitha was effortlessly hovering some people above her head. In hindsight, I had to wonder if we were a little too strong for this world. It felt like we were level 10, and this place was level 1. I only noticed that the rebellion leader had gotten to his feet when he began to speak again.

“What are you wanting from us? To make us lose?” He asked, half-growled. “You claim to help us, and yet you’re setting us on a path of defeat.” He spat at the ground, a half-mixture of spit and blood trickling from his now-noticeably-broken nose.

“I mean… no. I’m trying to help, but you won’t let me explain everything in a manner that’ll be both informative and concise enough to not make people get annoyed at the time spent.” I pointed out, thinking of all the times I tried to tell him what would happen if he went to war. “Trust me, and call off your men. Let me appeal to the King’s men, and hopefully, we can turn them to our side.” I asked, half-pleading, and after a moment of consideration, he nodded.

“If you can do that, and you can give me a good reason why you do not wish to side with me, then I will accept this victory.” The rebel leader said, and with that, I turned to the other side, who had been just watching the action.

“Alrighty, I’m going to lay down the facts, you’ll probably disagree until the last second, but then you’ll agree with me and work with us to do what needs to be done.” I began, and already the booing had started from the other side. In response, Seth fired his pistol into the air, the rubber bullets still making a lot of noise when shot, and they quickly quietened down. “At this point, nobody has died. And trust me, that’s one of the best outcomes we could have had. You know the power the King possesses, and you know what will happen if he chooses to fight. Many people are going to die.” The guards were still unhappy, but I could tell they were beginning to have doubts about their allegiance. “But if we unite, one of two things will happen. Either the King will go berserk, but we’ll be able to stop him with almost nobody dying, or he’ll realise he’s outmatched, and willingly stand down.” I really hoped they believed me. Hell, if I were them, I probably wouldn’t. “The King not ruling anymore will mean a lot of changes to the lifestyle lead down here, but do you honestly believe it won’t be for the better? At the minute, the only people benefitting from this system of ranking are the royals themselves, and those who possess similar powers to them.” The expressions were starting to change a lot more now, with most of them looking to their sides to see the general consensus. I knew I was on the edge of convincing them, I just had to pick my words right. “He’s happy to let you die. I’m working to save everyone. Please, just realise that doing this will end in death.” That was it. As much as they were loyal to their leader, they were a lot more loyal to their lives, and their families. In a show of faith, they began to lay down their weapons, to which I quickly began to shake my head, holding out my hands in a desperate attempt to stop them. “We’ve still got to fight!” I clarified, and they stopped, the realisation setting in. I glanced between the two sides, and was happy to see that they were definitely both willing to work together. The rebel leader advanced to me, still holding his nose and talking through his hand.

“How do you know all this?” He asked, plainly, and I knew I couldn’t lie. I just wished that the truth wasn’t a lot weirder.

“I’m from an alternate universe, much like Professor Uchen was. In my world, this entire thing… it’s a video game.” I admitted, and I watched the entire five stages of grief cross his face in seconds.

“I see.” He said finally, a little down. “So, everything that happened here… you’ve seen it before?” I nodded, a little sad at how I had made him feel.

“Many times. The only difference between that game and these events is that there was only one person to try and stop the war, and it was impossible to do. For four of us, we had enough people to stop the fighting altogether.” I put my hand on the rebel leader’s shoulder, and Aki came and hugged him. I kept forgetting that he was her father, and now I felt a little bad for breaking his nose. He didn’t look like she did, so it was a confusing situation.

“I failed my people. I should have listened to you, and not lead them on this path.” The leader said, but I shook my head.

“You could never have trusted me if I hadn’t done this. It was smart of you to not put your faith in someone you didn’t know.” I said, reassuring him. I’m not sure it actually did much, but hey, it was there.

“Oh, that reminds me!” The leader said suddenly, turning away to one of the devices that’d been made for them by Uchen. There had been quite a few, ranging from simple communicators to what Tabitha appeared to wear, but cruder. He seemed to have one of the more basic ones, tapping into it and holding it to his ear. As I kept watching, I saw the slight worry cross his face, before disappearing as he justified things to himself mentally. A few more taps and another ear raise, and the doubts were there to stay this time.

“What’s going on?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer. My voice was steady, but it was a concentrated effort, the energy I had felt at having succeeded threatening to take me over, and now being replaced by worried energy that caused my voice to risk trembling.

“It’s nothing, I’m sure, just…” He kept tapping away at it. “We had sent advanced scouts ahead to take on the King, and I’m struggling to get into contact with them.” He was doing well at pretending nothing was wrong, but I knew immediately what was about to happen. While this wasn’t something that happened in the game, I knew what it would lead to. I took off running, breaking past the guards and heading towards the castle. If I got there quick enough, I might be able to make him surrender before they could make their move. I just needed to get him into the open. I didn’t need to look behind me to know that the others were behind, as Tabitha shot a blast forward into the raised drawbridge, and Amy quickly formed a makeshift bridge out of the remnants floating in the water. We made it into the throne room just in time to see the assassin’s strike. The knife was flung into the neck of the King, and for a normal person, that most likely would have killed him and not caused black goo to leak out of the wound. The shift to whatever this being could be called began, the crack of bones becoming audible through the air despite everything else. His eyes rolled back, turning to nothing but white, as the jaw of the once-King unhinged and began to sprout spidery legs, raising the body into the air. At this point, I had to look away. It was a little too gross.

“Oh shit.” Tabitha said, and honestly there wasn’t much else that could be said. The noises having subsided, I looked back at what the King had become. The body of the creature oozed black goo, dripping onto the floor, and the assassin that had been the one to attack was now impaled on one of the limbs. I could barely tell where it started and where it ended, but I didn’t have much time to look at the still-shifting body, as one of the limbs swung at us. I was too slow, but Amy was faster, bringing up the ground to stop it in its tracks. She continued to move the shape of the barrier around, blocking each limb swing as we moved for the exit, holding the door open just long enough for her to slip out and block it off.

“Damn it, what do we do now? He’s going to end up fighting everyone, and at this point, we can’t be certain that the guards are going to work with us.” Seth cursed under his breath between each word.

“Hey guys, whatever you decide to do, can you do it quickly? This is – agh – very difficult to hold onto!” Amy said, and I looked over at her. She was still holding the door closed, despite the onslaught it was getting from the other side. Usually by now, the king would already be outside. It was as if something clicked then, something in the back of my mind that reminded me of what was really happening here. This wasn’t a video game.

“Amy, on my mark, I need you to open the door, and we have to get in there.” I said, taking the Cobatana out and preparing myself, just far enough away that the door wouldn’t hit me when it swung open.

“CG, are you insane? The King will kill us if we do that! We know what happens in the game!” She replied, unable to stop herself from yelling all her words as the bashing against the door became more frequent.

“But that’s just it. This isn’t a game. There’s no multiple-choice endings.” I said, wishing I was able to do something way more dramatic than just standing here. “We make our own destinies.” The words must’ve hit them, as I saw Seth moving to stand next to me, guns loaded with actual bullets this time. Or at least, I hoped. Tabitha sighed, in a this-is-going-to-get-us-all-killed way, but moved to us, preparing her weapons. From the other side of me, I saw Aki and her father there too, also ready to fight. I nodded to Amy, and she opened the door, letting us run into the room and into range of the King’s attacks.

#cool guy #A Cool Guy's Cool Life #story #original fiction #creative writing

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inhandnetworks-blog · 7 years

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New Wave of Advertisers Consider Consumers the New Medium

www.inhandnetworks.com

To be honest, it’s not an ad that puts you in the mood for a burrito.

The spot for Chipotle Mexican Grill starts bleak and gets bleaker: the story of a farmer who becomes Big Agriculture, maltreating his pigs and polluting the water as winter descends. It’s long, at two minutes and 20 seconds, and told entirely via stop-motion puppetry. There’s no dialogue, only the spooky crooning of Willie Nelson. And the Chipotle logo appears just once, at the very end, on a truck pulling away from a farm returned to its roots, chickens pecking freely in the sun.

At any number of companies, the ad would have been killed for any number of reasons. It’s unfunny. Political. Expensive to air.

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There was also a chance that it was brilliant. So Mark Crumpacker, a career creative director who now heads the company’s advertising efforts, uploaded the video to YouTube, rather than gambling on a pricey TV buy. He watched as the clip quietly but steadily went viral. The band Coldplay, whose track “The Scientist” Nelson covered in the ad, told its 18 million Facebook fans to take a look. Twitter buzzed. Food blogs, then music blogs, then advertising blogs all chirruped their approval. The message worked after all: Chipotle cares about sustainable farming.

Encouraged by the online response, Crumpacker ran the ad, titled “Back to the Start,” in movie theaters nationwide. Field researchers brought back tales of audiences bursting into applause. YouTube views climbed past 5 million. All of this led, last month, to the burrito chain buying the first national TV time in its 18-year history. And during a Grammy Awards watched by 39 million people, the critical response was unequivocal: Chipotle’s ad stole the show.

Unorthodox as it is, Chipotle’s spot can be seen as a template for the future of great advertising. Ignoring conventional wisdom about what works in which medium—jokes on TV, wordplay in print, cats on the Web—the company focused instead on a single, piercing idea that works on all of them. And by using the Internet as a platform for testing worthwhile work, not just zaniness, Chipotle took the risk out of a risky piece of marketing.

Time was, advertising was a relatively simple undertaking: buy some print space and airtime, create the spots, and blast them at a captive audience. Today it’s chaos: while passive viewers still exist, mostly we pick and choose what to consume, ignoring ads with a touch of the DVR remote. Ads are forced to become more like content, and the best aim to engage consumers so much that they pass the material on to friends—by email, Twitter, Facebook—who will pass it on to friends, who will ... you get the picture. In the industry, “viral” has become a usefully vague way to describe any campaign that spreads from person to person, acquiring its own momentum.

Chipotle piloted its risky two-minute ad “Back to the Start” on YouTube; fans cheered

“Viral has moved from being sort of this niche tactic, into something that’s more of a statement about what all advertising should be. And that is, something that people actually seek out and want to share,” says David Droga, the creative chief of Droga5, in his Manhattan office. The digital age’s answer to Don Draper, the native Australian has won awards for selling—really—tap water. His agency’s clients range from Microsoft to obscure hummus concerns; its work spans all media, from print to TV to billboards, but all of it relies on catching fire online.

Take the agency’s work for Prudential. How do you make ads for retirement planning—a numbing topic in a crowded category—stand out? Droga’s approach is to nail the idea, then pick the medium. First, the creative team jettisoned the usual images of hot older actors playing golf and smiling at charts, and sought out actual retirees—people with wrinkles, fears, and hopes. Hundreds of them sent Droga5 pictures of their first day as pensioners, which the agency used to create a national TV spot. Next came a Web site and mini-documentaries about individual Prudential customers, which have been viewed nearly a million times online. Last month, the nonprofit organization TED named the “Day One” campaign a winner of its “Ads Worth Spreading” contest.

The scale of success that the right idea can have online can be difficult to fathom. Consider 2010’s Old Spice sensation, created by Mark Fitzloff and Susan Hoffman at Wieden + Kennedy, which started as a typical TV campaign but exploded as viewers sought it out on YouTube. “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” mostly defies description, but it involves a towel-clad man with great pecs and better elocution who maintains intense eye contact with the camera while holding an oyster shell full of diamonds that morph into “two tickets to that thing you love” and, eventually, Old Spice body wash. Yes, it’s silly. But the campaign caused sales to spike 107 percent. Follow-up clips, in which the character responds to individual YouTube commenters, drove the brand’s total views on the site to more than 279 million. That’s just shy of the viewership of two and a half Super Bowls.

There are many ways to measure virality and zero agreement on what constitutes success. Ad agencies will brag that a client’s microsite has reached viral liftoff if it has 500,000 Facebook likes—or 50,000, or even 10,000. Two YouTube clips, one with 1 million views, the other with 10 million, are both certified contagious. It’s all highly arbitrary, with one consistent rule: if a campaign doesn’t pass the magic threshold, it is considered to have something seriously wrong with it.

Sharing Is Caring: Ad-making people are an expressive bunch, and so the fact that virtually everyone I spoke to repeated a certain phrase—over and over again, like they’d all read the same talking-points memo—seemed to indicate two things. It’s big. And they haven’t quite figured out what it means. “Advertising,” they all said, “is not just a one-way street anymore.”

After decades of advertisers blaring messages at consumers, those consumers now have their own megaphones to blare back. “Before you could have written a letter and said, ‘My Glad Wrap doesn’t work, and you suck,’?” says Cal McAllister, a tousle-haired co-founder of the Seattle agency Wexley School for Girls. “But it’s not like putting that on your Twitter feed, if you have a million followers.”

Radio, digital, above-urinal signage—it doesn’t matter. Regardless of where a piece of advertising appears, social media is now the place where consumers react. If motivated, they can seize a brand and reshape its image at a pace that obliterates even the best-planned marketing strategy. For the first time, companies are no longer the sole owners of their own brands.

To longtime ad strategists, this is scary. But the scariest things, once harnessed, can also become the most powerful—particularly when the medium is digital. If an advertiser rolls out a campaign that encourages consumer response, and consumers respond with derisive stuff that starts to go viral itself, it’s a PR disaster. But if consumers embrace the idea, it can defibrillate even the most listless of brands—like Skittles, whose “Taste the Rainbow” slogan was jolted awake with a series of offbeat videos by TBWAChiatDay.

Managing this—a sort of planned digital epidemiology—has become an essential offering of any competitive agency. Most now employ “community managers,” whose function, despite the boring job title, is to obsessively track social networks; when a client’s brand is spiking they’ll spotlight favorable stuff (perhaps by circulating upbeat blog items), and they’ll try to extinguish anything that makes the client look bad (zapping through an instant refund to an angry tweeting customer can help). Their stethoscope is extraordinarily sensitive. “We have won and lost business based on a single tweet,” says McAllister.

The casino allure of social-media advertising is a lucrative specialty for a young set of all-digital agencies. The problem with giving yourself that label, though, is like the old Abraham Maslow maxim: if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico started their agency, Johannes Leonardo, in 2007, they took pains to emphasize that they were not just another digital shop. “This was confusing clients for a decade: ‘What do I give digital agencies? What do I give traditional agencies?’?” says Jacobs, 41 and scraggly, over breakfast one morning in New York. “There’s a breed of modern agencies that we’d like to think we’re a part of, that don’t really think about things like that. Because if you’re a purely digital agency, then you start approaching the problem thinking the solution has to be a digital one.” The pair, a former Saatchi & Saatchi creative team, try to resist the platform of the moment, in favor of declaring consumers themselves the medium. Four years in, their clients include Coca-Cola, Google, Bacardi, Chanel.

One of their most telling campaigns, for discount clothing chain Daffy’s, involved hiding a borderline-pornographic image in plain sight—pieces were scattered across 40 different posters in New York City subway stations. Commuters reassembled them on Twitter to get the joke: a randy couple had taken off the clothes they’d bought at Daffy’s, where you get “More Bang/Less Buck.” Crude, but it actually gibes with Johannes Leonardo’s lofty theory. “If you create a piece of work that resonates with the consumer, you can see an outdoor advertisement become a digital work, because the consumer is the one who takes it from one medium to another,” says Premutico.

Thinking like this can unite a small shop like Johannes Leonardo with a much bigger one, like the billion-dollar Martin Agency. Headquartered in Richmond, Va., Martin contains much of the industry’s past—and its future. It was one of the agencies that proved, in the 1970s and ’80s, that top-level work could be found away from Madison Avenue; its greatest feat was turning a small regional insurer named GEICO into a national power, with the help of a spokes-gecko and a pair of politically correct cavemen.

“The word ‘advertising’ is starting to get kind of old. We do ads, obviously, but we do so much more now,” says John Norman, Martin’s chief creative officer. With torn jeans, chin-length rocker hair, and a charcoal Armani scarf knotted thickly at the neck, the 45-year-old looks more like someone playing a creative director in an ad than the real item. “We used to tell stories through campaigns. And now we build stories. You set something out there in the ether, and people start to build on it or add to it or take away from it, and it becomes a bigger story.”

They’re Gr-r-eat!: Advertising is said to exist at the intersection of art and commerce. And there are a lot of high-speed collisions at this intersection.

Creating breakthrough advertising is long, discouraging, bleary, quarrelsome work, until it is joyously complete. And then, often, the client says, “No, too strange, too risky.” This conflict between the brilliant creative director and the stodgy business folks is as old as the industry; it’s a repeated plotline on “Mad Men” and happens every day in the real world.

“A lot of brands are most comfortable with sure mediocrity,” says Wexley’s McAllister. His agency—whose offices appear from the street to be a Chinese restaurant—specializes in creating weird stuff for major clients, like a recruitment campaign for Microsoft that involved Jacuzzis, sandwich boards, and a sizzling bacon cart. “Everyone is looking for a guaranteed batting average. They don’t care if it’s high or low, they just want to be able to plan around a .270 hitter. The upside is it’s easier for agencies like us to be entertaining and break through the clutter and create captivating advertising. That lets us swing for the fences.”

Digital technology, the destroyer of so much of the industry’s infrastructure—newspaper ads, the 30-second TV spot—now provides a chance for more advertising to be what it has so seldom been: good. TiVo gave us the joy of fast-forwarding through crappy 30-second spots, but YouTube gave us the ability to call up the spots we like.

“It changes the fundamental role of the ad, from something that’s secondary into something that has to be primary,” says Andrew Essex, Droga5’s CEO. “The ad in an ironic way becomes more like content—it has to be ‘good.’ It has to be interesting, it has to be shareable, it has to make people say, ‘Oh, I liked that.’ Advertising ... [It] can’t be about bombarding people with pollution anymore.”

The advertising industry, it turns out, had turned into one of those brands that needed defibrillating. And the shift is turning out to be good for brilliant creative directors and stodgy business folks alike.

“Traditionally conservative companies are willing to be a little more risky now and try ideas they wouldn’t usually go for,” says Gerry Graf, who founded the agency BFG9000 and whose past clients include Procter & Gamble and Mars (those ingenious Skittles ads). “Think of P&G 10 years ago. Now they’re the company that OK’d the Old Spice campaign. That’s a huge change.”

The creative minds on the precipice of joining the industry like the sound of that. Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, is home to the Brandcenter, one of the best graduate programs for advertising in the country. Often referred to as a “portfolio school” or “finishing school,” it teaches students who may have minored in communications or art history how ad agencies actually work. Students with a degree from here are highly sought after by the planet-size firms in New York, like BBDO and McCann Erickson; the students, in turn, lust after jobs with the smaller hot shops of the moment: Wieden, Droga5, Mother, BFG9000.

The Brandcenter’s brick building is a 19th-century carriage house, whose inside has been renovated into a sleek creative space with open floor plans, clever coursework hanging on the walls, and an Apple-product-to-student ratio approaching 3:1. One morning in January, 40 students, average age 25, average shirt color plaid, are attending the semester’s first meeting of Digital Portfolio, a class that will help them build personal websites to showcase their amateur work.

But they put that aside to talk about their hopes for their careers. They want to create work, they say, that rates with the hall-of-fame stuff by Apple and Nike, to have “the ability to make something that’s different and inspiring.” At all costs they want to avoid “hack work”—“stuff that’s been seen before or copied or repeated or cliché. Anything that disappoints.”

It’s not clear to me what that means, so I ask for examples. Jeff Vitkun, 25, has a ready response: “Just turn on the TV.” Classmates nod.

OK, then—so where can you find the good stuff? “Have you ever gone on YouTube and watched a commercial?” asks Jon Ransom, 27. “Like, intentionally, to see that commercial?” Sure: the Old Spice guy. Nike’s stuff from the NBA lockout.

“If it’s something you would go to see,” he says, “then it’s probably good.”

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