Silver bullet
What does the silver bullet do?
It cuts through everything.
In folklore, a bullet cast from silver is often the only weapon that is effective against a werewolf, a witch, or other monsters.
The term is also a metaphor for a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem: for example, penicillin was a silver bullet that cured many bacterial infections.
What’s the meaning of the phrase ‘Silver bullet’?
A direct and effortless solution to a problem.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘Silver bullet’?
We now use the term ‘silver bullet’ to refer to an action which cuts through complexity and provides an immediate solution to a problem. The allusion is to a miraculous fix, otherwise portrayed as ‘waving a magic wand’. This figurative use derives from the use of actual silver bullets and the widespread folk belief that they were the only way of killing werewolves or other supernatural beings.
Silver bullet
The most famous user of silver bullets was of course the Lone Ranger. This cowboy series ran from 1933 on radio and later as a highly popular television show. Silver bullets fitted well with the masked hero’s miraculous persona. He typically arrived from nowhere, overcame evil and departed, leaving behind only a silver bullet and echoes of ‘who was that masked man?’.
The belief in the magical power of silver, especially of weapons made from silver, is very ancient. Book XVI of Horace’s Odes has it that the Delphic Oracle advised Philip of Macedonia to ‘fight with silver spears’. References to the use of silver bullets date from the late 17th century. An early 19th century citation which specifically mentions the belief in their use as the only way to kill evil supernatural beings is found in Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of My Landlord, 1816:
Conspicuous by his black horse and white feather … the object of aim to everyone, he seemed as if he were impassive to their shots. The superstitious fanatics looked upon him as a man gifted by the Evil Spirit with supernatural means of defense. Many a whig that day loaded his musket with a dollar cut into slugs, in order that a silver bullet (such was their belief) might bring down the persecutor of the holy kirk, on whom lead had no power.
There are numerous examples in 19th century fiction of the efficacy of silver bullets against werewolves, witches, the Devil and all manner of creatures, which were generically called ‘uncanny bodies’.
Into the 20th century and the term was adopted in other contexts as meaning a solution to a problem. War bonds with that name were issued in 1914. In 1916, The Times advised the population of the UK to:
“Invest the savings in buying ‘Silver Bullets’ in the form most suitable and convenient – Exchequer bonds, or through the Post Office Savings Bank.”
Silver Bullet cocktails, a solution in a literal sense, were devised a little later. Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930, lists the ingredients:
Silver bullet cocktail. {half} Gin. {quarter} Lemon Juice. {quarter} Kummel. Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.
The expression ‘magic bullet’ also came into being at around this time. This had a similar meaning to ‘silver bullet’ but related specifically to highly targeted medical treatments. It was coined by the German scientist Paul Ehrlich in a speech in 1906, using the German word Zauberkugel. This was translated as ‘magic bullet’ when Ehrlich’s work was reported in Science, in August 1924:
“Ehrlich aptly compared them [natural antibodies] to magic bullets, constrained by a charm to fly straight to their specific objective, and to turn aside from anything else in their path.”
Oddly, the figurative use of ‘silver bullet’ that is now commonplace wasn’t adopted into general use until well after all of the above, probably in response to the activities of ‘that masked man’. The US newspaper The Bedford Gazette included this piece in a September 1951 issue:
“There are those who warn against viewing the atom as a magic weapon… I agree. This is not a silver bullet which can deliver itself or otherwise work military miracles.”
… and being a clearing to be conned
In this article, as I usually do, I go deep into the recesses of your person… and dig out important information so you can regain your control over you life, and start moving in the direction you envision for yourself… or ignore what I am saying, and be like a boat that is directed by the undertow….
As you can learn from the “Feelings: the need for a new science” book, humans have a lot of needs. But humans can be manipulated… and they are.
One of these needs, the need for security, the need to be sure, the need to not make a mistake, the need to feel good (these sound like they are different needs, but they are the same need) has been manipulated into one of the most dominant needs that tells us what to do, tells you what is most important.
I see this all the time with my clients and students. They ultimately want to hand over their decision making to me… because decision making is fraught with the risk of making wrong steps… and that goes against that need to feel good.
… or if not that, they are trying to “suck up to me” to make me believe that they really really really, but really want to do the right thing, are doing the right thing, but the results prove the opposite.
Water energizing… a battlefield
We, the few hundred people who want to raise their cell hydration, have been struggling with the water…
I was, probably, conned into believing that the problem was with the audio
THE water energizer works through and audio recording of me charging some water, breathing heavy. The breath recorded carries the energizer energy. Of course it’s weaker. I can charge a bottle of water in 2-3 minutes with my hands, pushing the energizer energy into the water, while for the audio to do the same it takes nearly 24 hours
I became reactive, looking for a “fix of what’s wrong”. So, as a fix, I combined two energies, and made a new recording.
Turns out the new recording is about three times slower, but it has revealed the mischief… because the cell hydration of most people isn’t going up… while some people’s do.
I could say that I am confused, I am puzzled, I am clueless…
The results are tainted with people’s personal agenda…
You don’t have a personal agenda, you say? Of course you do. Your self-awareness may be dimmed and you don’t see it. Or you are lying to yourself. Or you have more sinister agenda, for all I know. Maybe you want to prove that i don’t know what I am talking about…
Unfortunately this means: the feedback I am getting is not clean.
When you have an agenda, you are plagued with conflicting interest. And almost always the desire to be THE winner while another will be a loser (zero sum game) wins out.
In the work I do with you, in the work I attempt to do, I intend to do with you, I am on the side of what you said when you entered into an agreement with me: take you to a place where you can become the best you can become. I have no other agenda, neither conscious, nor unconscious.
How do I know I have no other agenda? Something hidden from my view? Because I used to. And I noticed it and then eliminated it.
I am OK with you wanting to be right, wanting to be secure, even with you wanting to be smarter than me. But not if that desire trumps your desire to become the best you can be.
In a course some 30 years ago I learned about my silver bullet… which was “selfish”. If anyone thought I had a self-interest, if they implied that I was selfish, I crumbled and lost all power to just be. That is the nature of a silver bullet: it kills.
The other thing I learned in that course, 30 years ago, is that we are all an invitation, unconscious invitation to be manipulated, conned, coerced, forced… and that most of us respond to that invitation with vigor… become manipulative, conning, coercing, and forcing.
OK, truth be told, I could see that 30 years ago. Today I can’t see it on myself… maybe I have left the “we all”… even though if you use making me angry as a tool to manipulate me, I am still putty in your hand… 🙁
I still have three people in my life who use that tool on me, when I am willing to engage with them, so in that regard, I am still part of the “we all”…
There is no protection, only awareness and conscious preparation can help you avoid it.
But in this article I am more interested in YOU being the perpetrator, the manipulator, the forcer, the conman.
Until you get aware, clear, and face the tiger, you’ll never be able to become all you can become, you’ll never develop a Self, and you’ll never love yourself or your life.
And you know what kind of life that gives you.
So what does this mean to you?
Start considering that you have conflicting agendas: your public agendas and your private, hidden, not savory agendas. And that they are mutually exclusive.
Just observe, and bring consciousness to it. Consciousness it the part of you that sheds light to things you do, that you cannot unsee.
Unless you are wholly on the dark side, just seeing what you do for what it is, in the light of your consciousness, is enough to initiate some behavioral change.
In essence, all coaching with me is bringing the light of consciousness to pockets of ugly in your attitude, in your behavior.
If the secret agenda still allows you to grow, that is all you need to straighten yourself out, and start growing.
And if the secret agenda is too strong… then you are on the dark side, and I can’t help you.
One of the places where we touch on the ugly underbelly you don’t want to show is in the Playground. A new course is tarting on the second Saturday of September.
