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The 52:52:52 project, launching on this site and on social media in 2025, will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

This site addresses what's changing, at the personal, organisational and societal levels. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 elements of life, from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and much more besides, which will help you better prepare for related change in your own life.

Halcyon In Kaleidoscope features irregular and fragmentary writings - on ideas and values, places and people - which evolve over time into mini essais, paying humble homage to the peerless founder of the genre. The kaleidoscope is Halcyon's prime metaphor, viewing the world through ever-moving lenses.

A Mundane Comedy is Dom Kelleher's new book, which will be published in 2025. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

Halcyon In Kaleidoscope

On Imbolc

Imbolc

 

Imbolc, imbolc, the light will soon return, warm the Earth this winter's night and let the candles burn - from Ancient Dream, by Aeolian Songspell

 

A time of purification (hence spring cleaning), this is a hopeful time of year, with the days drawing out and even the mornings slowly lightening. Later this month, the first snowdrop and crocus should visit, suggesting that Spring is not far behind.

Imbolc is the Gaelic word for the slow moment between the winter and spring equinoxes. As the relentless cold makes us wonder for a moment whether it will ever end, we begin to find signs here and there that all is not quite as hopeless as it may sometimes seem, and that everything goes on. Frost is cold, but it will get warm again. It’s dark, but every day we’re given just a precious minute more of light. The dawn chorus grows just a little louder.

 

On Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Halcyon In Kal… 29 January 2025

 

Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology. was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.

Jung was a pioneer in his field who established analytical psychology as a discipline. As a young man, he was seen as Freud’s intellectual heir, but their differences in approach soon became apparent and they went their separate ways

On A Mundane Comedy
Dante
Halcyon In Kal… 27 January 2025

 

This page will contain regular updates about A Mundane Comedy, Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in 2025. Please see below an introductory extract.

 

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To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they control it, wish to influence its direction - Theodore Zeldin, Intimate History of Humanity

 

This book is about what goes wrong in our lives, and about how we can try to make things better, even if temporarily and contingently. It’s not about imaginary progress, which John Gray in Straw Dogs punctured definitively.

On Novelty

Novelty

 

This is a work in progress. Please contact us to discuss further.

 

See also:

 

On an alternative world view

The sheer novelty of the ideas of such leaders not only addresses the issues at hand and but gives the world a new perspective to address issues of the future. The outmoded ways of leadership, of securing selfish interests and of exploiting public sentiments, should be relinquished. The new age leaders must look forward to lead the global thought rather than leading only a particular country or a section of society - Club of Amsterdam

 

This is for you and about you.

On Henry David Thoreau

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In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau swapped his busy schedule in Concord, Massachusetts, for a wooden hut he built himself near Walden Pond. We had the privilege to visit Walden in July 2012; it exceeded expectations in its tranquillity and beauty - and the swim in the pond itself was unforgettable.

Writing in the winter of 1843, shortly after Margaret Fuller’s mentorship made him a writer, the twenty-five-year-old Thoreau awakened to a snow-covered wonderland and marvelled at the splendour of a world reborn.

On Dante

Dante

 

Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" is an epic poem written in the early 14th century, divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

 

Inferno:

  • Dante finds himself lost in a dark forest and guided by the Roman poet Virgil.
  • The pair descends through the nine circles of Hell, each representing different sins and their corresponding punishments.
  • Notable figures from history and mythology are encountered, and Dante learns about the consequences of sin.
  • Satan resides at the centre of Hell, and Dante and Virgil eventually climb down Satan's body to reach the other side of the Earth.

 

Purgatorio:

On the Veil

Veil

 

I have always been attracted by the veil, by seeing through a glass, darkly:

 

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half heard, in the stillness

Between the two waves of the sea

- from Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot

 

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now

On Trees

Black Locust, Essex, May 2020

 

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone - Herman Hesse

As a member of The Woodland Trust, I regularly signed petitions to preserve ancient woodlands and unique trees. Does this make a difference? The battle is an ongoing one, but worth fighting, if necessary tree by tree.

On Michel de Montaigne
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Halcyon In Kal… 12 January 2025

 

Michel de Montaigne's Essais help us better frame and address the fundamental question: "how to live?"

"I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself", said Montaigne, describing his own poor memory, his ability to solve problems and mediate conflicts without truly getting emotionally involved, his disgust for man's pursuit of lasting fame, and his attempts to detach himself from worldly things to prepare for death.

On what's changing now?
Internal Change
Halcyon In Kal… 10 January 2025

 

Please see below significant recent changes across the more than 150 elements of life that we monitor actively and please contact us for help in dealing with change.

 

On the Personal Development Goals
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Halcyon In Kal… 10 January 2025

 

This evolving paper starts to imagine and sketch out Personal Development Goals (PDGs) that could complement the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We will also draw ideas and inspirations from the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) not for profit and open source initiative. (See also Can the Inner Development Goals help us create a more sustainable future? and Start working on your Inner Development Goals now.)

 

Introduction

On Yule
Shortest Day
Halcyon In Kal… 27 December 2024

 

Since the cave we have tried to make the old gods smile. Each year we fail and winter comes. #CLNolan

 

"Wings are for flying, not frying" ...nice quote, nicer sentiment.  Animal-friendly consumerism could be a major future trend. Until 16 years ago I too gorged myself on turkey every Christmas Day, Boxing Day, 27th...and my mouth watered long after at the remembered taste of turkey soup on the 28th or 29th, a meal which constituted one of the culinary highlights of my year.

On Campion

Campion

 

December 1st comes around again. Grateful to witness it once more. So many memories - the most vivid from Campion Days of old...pushing for almost glory or just plain survival through fields of mud, up frosted hills, leading or trailing friends of yore.

On Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

 

I guess I've been aware of Walt Whitman as an American national icon since I was at university, and have long admired what I may be his most famous poem, I Sing the Body Electric.

It's probably been said many times before, and much more profoundly, and studied and dissected, but the poet's words do indeed seem to crackle with electricity, with vitality, with what Robert Pirsig called in Lila, "dynamic quality". This is a celebration of connecting, of being alive.

"Examine these limbs, red, black, or white—they are so cunning in tendon and nerve; 

They shall be stript, that you may see them. 

On the unnamed

Unnamed

 

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs - George EliotMiddlemarch

 

Unexpected celebrities have in recent times included the likes of Captain Sully Sullenberger and Susan Boyle, whose years of patiently working on their own talents suddenly came good, shooting them instantly to international attention, and who then accepted the spotlight, perhaps reluctantly, but with quiet dignity nonetheless.

On Ancestors

Ancestry

 

If the past is replayed too fast, life seems futile, and humanity resembles water flowing from a tap, straight down the drain.  A film of history for today needs to be in slow motion, showing every person who ever lived as a star, though dimly visible in a night sky, a history still unexplored Theodore ZeldinAn Intimate History of Humanity

A call to action. Time to explore these unexplored histories together. 

On Albert Camus

Camus

 

I was first attracted by Camus, "prince of the absurd" when I was 16. Camus still fascinates me, now well beyond what would have been his 100th birthday, and more than 60 years after his premature death in a car crash in Burgundy (it's said that he was found with an unused train ticket in his pocket - he'd planned to go by rail to Paris to rejoin his wife and children, but had accepted at the last minute the offer of a lift from his publisher).

On Samhain
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Halcyon In Kal… 2 November 2024

 

"Sauin" is the name in Manx Gaelic of the festival marking the start of the year's dark half, celebrated from dusk on 31 October to dusk on 1 November. In Gaelic & Irish, "Samhain" is a liminal time, marked by fire, and the crossing of thresholds.

A beautiful seasonal quote from the inspiring Damh the Bard.