"Luminary: A Magical Guide to Self-Care" In a fast-paced world filled with constant noise and distractions, it is easy to lose touch with ourselves and neglect our own well-being. However, Luminary: A Magical Guide to Self-Care aims to change that by providing a comprehensive and enchanting approach to taking care of oneself. Luminary is a book that is truly unique in its approach. It combines the wisdom of self-care practices with the magic and enchantment of a fantasy world. The author, a renowned self-care expert, invites readers on a transformative journey through the pages of this book. Unlike traditional self-help books, Luminary engages readers in a whimsical narrative filled with mythical creatures, fantastical landscapes, and empowering rituals.
TV Review: Bigger, Bloodier, And Better Than Its Predecessor, “Pagan Peak” Is Back For Another Bone-Chilling Season
When the first female body is found, propped up like a hunting trophy, the police fear yet another serial killer in the border region between Germany and Austria. Meanwhile, our Austro-German investigator duo is unfit for duty: Ellie is struggling in the face of trauma, and the attempt on Gedeon’s life forces his early retirement. A new junior officer, Yela Antic, is on the case, but she isn’t able to complete it alone. As Ellie and Gedeon are forced to team up alongside Yela on this deeply unique investigation, they begin to see each other in a way neither could have imagined: as potential adversaries.
Inspired by the boundary-crossing Danish crime series “The Bridge” and utilizing the resurgence of Folk Horror, the latest season of “Pagan Peak” successfully builds on its solid first outing. Last season, a madman unhappy with humanity losing its harmony with nature began killing people while wearing various wood carved animal masks. Once again the series seamlessly bounces back and forth between Germany and Austria where detectives Ellie (Julia Jentsch) from the city of Munich and Winter (Nicholas Ofczarek) out of Salzburg, work together to solve another series of haunting murders.
** Spoilers Ahead From Last Season **
Set a year after the events of the Krampus Killer, Winter was shot in the head by gangsters he betrayed and is now recuperating following a lengthy coma. Ellie is an emotional wreck still reeling from her disastrous affair with her superior Claas (Hanno Koffler) and her near-death at the hands of the Krampus Killer. At first, it felt unrealistic for the traumatized detective to be back at work so soon but the teleplay makes it logical and dramatically compelling.
In Munich, Yela Antic (Franziska Von Harsdorf) is a junior detective occasionally seeking the guidance of Ellie when the veteran investigator is not absent. Yela is a capable investigator and surpasses her colleagues by asking more inquisitive questions during interviews with suspects. Ellie’s return to the force is short-lived and she places the latest homicide of a teenage German tourist in Yela’s lap. In the town of Zill, Austria, the young tourist was found near a river. Back in Salzburg, Winter is looking to return to active duty while battling memories of his mysterious past. After another murder that is similar in nature to the tourist (a victim’s mouth crudely stuffed with branches) Yela seeks out Winter and the two begin working together.
Co-creators/co-directors Cyrill Boss and Phillip Stennert jettison the debut’s Folk Horror aesthetic and take a Noir approach focused on intergenerational secrets and conspiracies. “Chinatown” particularly came to mind with Gössen, the central shady corporation yielding far-reaching power and unhealthy family ties. Most intriguing is the teleplay’s depiction of bizarre hierarchies within hunting cultures, showcasing ancient rituals utilizing violence to subsume everyone it touches. Amongst endless police procedurals to choose from, the thoroughly entertaining “Pagan Peak” should be at the top of your list.
Now streaming exclusively on Topic
Der Pass review – Quick! There’s been a death on the dullest border in Europe!
A people trafficker is found dead clutching a horse’s tail in this new German-Austro ‘thriller’ that shamelessly rips off The Bridge. Only the detective who dresses like a pimp and sucks drugged sugar cubes will keep me going
Wed 31 Jul 2019 22.56 CESTA man’s frozen body lies in the mountain pass, one half in Germany, the other in Austria. Which police force will investigate the murder? “One of us gets the head, the other the ass,” says the Austrian detective Gedeon Winter, Falstaffian of girth if darker of mirth.
Winter speaks not so much with the wisdom of Solomon as with a complete lack of professional interest. He’s a 21st-century Bartleby: when tasked with work or socialising, he would rather not – both get in the way of boozing and sucking illicitly medicated sugar cubes. Despite his terrible tailor (“You dress like a pimp,” says one colleague) and a BMI unsuited to alpine police work – he resembles Wallander; not Branagh nor Krister Henriksson but Rolf Lassgård, the sweaty one with diabetes – Winter (Nicholas Ofczarek) is far and away the most diverting presence in Der Pass.
His German opposite, Ellie Stocker (Julia Jentsch), all smiles and sensible parka, glares at Winter, silently reproving him for his coarseness and wondering what is this guy’s major malfunction. We already have an inkling: most likely it’s to do with That Thing That Happened in Vienna, which means (as always) that Winter has been exiled to a place where crime is negligible.
How, though, could Winter not be intrigued by this very stiff stiff? After all, the body has been posed on the border after being stabbed in woods near an abandoned Mercedes. The corpse’s passport is Syrian, but its DNA is that of a Bulgarian with previous for people-trafficking. And what’s the deal with the horse’s tail the corpse is clutching? Simulated pagan rite? Gnomic cross-border critique of German-Austro immigration policies?
Frankly, like Winter, I find it hard to care. Why? I’ve been waylaid at these TV borderlands before. First there was The Bridge, where a body was found lying between Sweden and Denmark. Then there was The Tunnel, in which a body was halfway between French and British jurisdictions, unacceptably spoiling London lovers’ chances of necking on the Passerelle des Arts. Now there’s this German-language drama featuring a dead Bulgarian people-trafficker, most likely thwarting smug Bavarians in Audi estates heading to the pistes (so there’s some good news).
Of all the borders in all the world, why did this dead Bulgarian have to pitch up on the least interesting one? Bored at the milieu and by-numbers script, I spent this opening episode dreaming up alternatives. The 38th Parallel, a thriller in which Pyongyang and Seoul’s finest come together like a Trump-Kim handshake to find out who offed an inter-Korean corpse. The Very Hard Border, a silent movie set in a post-Brexit dystopia in which the Gardai and the PSNI aren’t talking any more, so solve Boris Johnson’s murder using hand gestures. Carry on Up the Punjab, a Bollywood musical set on the Kashmiri frontier, featuring a showstopping dance number with dressy Indian and Pakistani border guards and the Imran Khan singalong It’s Just Not Cricket.
Back to Mitteleuropa. In Munich, a jaded hack gets a flash drive in the mail. Say what you want about German news gathering, at least the München Zeitung correspondent has his own sumptuous office, rather than hot-desking in journalism’s equivalent of The Hunger Games as happens at most papers. It contains what purports (I love a good purport, me) to be the last words of the Bulgarian corpse, a forced confession that goes something like this: “I smuggled people … Yadda yadda … My punishment will be your salvation. Blah de blah … The red time of year is coming.” Corbyn at No 10? Serial slaying? I’m no expert in enigmatic threats, but probably the latter.
I liked one scene. The odd cop couple interview the corpse’s jailed cousin, who turns out to be unrepentant, misogynistic and sociopathic – the ideal skillset for the kind profession of leaving refugees to die in an abandoned truck. The cousin tells them the family motto: “You send 20 men, we send back 40 balls.” My family motto was very different: “You send us your shuttlecocks, we’ll bring the double entendres.” Which is why we had no friends.
But the cousin has a point: whoever crossed his criminal mob family by offing the corpse in the mountains will get got. At the end of episode one, a snowplough pulls over so as not to crush a naked woman. She is the woman from an earlier scene, probably a sex worker who visited the chauffeur-driven alpha male at his lair for the usual reasons. My money says the alpha male has been punished by the Bulgarian family for offing their own. Cut to a gang of roughnecks around a brazier, one of whom cackles: “Shall I tell you a secret?” As anyone who has ever watched TV knows, cackling goons around a brazier means only one thing. No good.
Pagan Peak (Der Pass) Review: Stand-Out Wintry Noir
Pagan Peak (Der Pass), on the Topic Channel, is loosely based on The Bridge, the iconic series about a body found on the Sweden/Denmark border, forcing cops from both countries to cooperate on the case. This time, the naked, posed body lays across the mountainous German/Austrian border near Salzburg. Cheery, pragmatic German detective Ellie Stocker (Julia Jentsch) is the first to arrive at the scene, followed by shambolic, apathetic Austrian detective Gedeon Winter (Nicolas Ofczarek, throwing an early Ólafur Darri Ólafsson vibe), who is happy to let the German authorities have the case. But when another body turns up in Austria, Gedeon is forced to join the search for a serial killer. Pagan Peak is a tight, stripped down version of The Bridge that has its own merits.
The Same, Yet Different
While Pagan Peak starts with a body sharing a border, it quickly diverts from source material The Bridge. The victim is one whole person, versus two people put together, and neither of the detectives are married, nor on the Autism spectrum. Instead, Gedeon is a disgraced Viennese cop plagued by substance abuse and unsavory connections from his past. He has been sent to Salzburg as punishment, and as such, he is completely tuned out of his job. Ellie’s regimented, German personality grates on him immediately. But he’s a good, if ethically loose, detective. Eventually he and Ellie work together, and influence each other for the better. There is a pesky journalist in this series who becomes a mouthpiece for the killer, but he is a minor character.
The “pagan” in Pagan Peak refers to a few things: Cernunnos, the Celtic God of the Forest, who is often depicted with antlers, and Krampus, the traditional horned figure that scares misbehaving children into being good at Christmastime. The killer fancies himself an amalgam of the two, living in the woods, making horrifying masks out of wood and antlers, and punishing adults who misbehave by killing them in a ritualistic way. He believes he’s making a difference in society, but in truth, he is simply filled with rage borne of insecurity and rejection. When he gets called out on that in the press, he escalates his crimes to include the innocent as well.
Our Take on Pagan Peak
More than The Bridge, Pagan Peak reminds me of season 1 of True Detective, with its foreboding soundtrack and gorgeous yet gloomy cinematography. Not to mention the pagan references (Yellow King of Carcosa, anyone?). But aside from comparisons to other shows, Pagan Peak stands on its own. Gedeon is a compelling character-dangerous and remote, trying to avoid a reckoning. The wintry Alpine location is evocative, and the killer is realistically delusional, versus being portrayed as a superman able to be in 3 places at once. It’s refreshing that there aren’t any bratty teens in the story, either. The plot is less about people having secrets than it is about working leads to find this guy. As of this writing, season 2 is making its way to the U.S. I highly recommend getting caught up now.
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Unlike traditional self-help books, Luminary engages readers in a whimsical narrative filled with mythical creatures, fantastical landscapes, and empowering rituals. The protagonist embarks on a quest for self-discovery, learning the importance of self-care along the way. Each chapter corresponds to a different stage in their journey, providing readers with practical advice and guidance.
From learning the art of relaxation to embracing vulnerability, Luminary covers a wide range of self-care practices. The book explores various dimensions of self-care, including emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. Through the protagonist's adventures, readers are encouraged to cultivate self-compassion, develop healthy habits, and embrace their unique strengths. One of the standout features of Luminary is its emphasis on harnessing the power of magic. The author skillfully incorporates magical elements into self-care practices, creating a sense of enchantment and wonder. Readers are invited to create personalized rituals and spells, adding an extra layer of creativity and imagination to their self-care routines. However, Luminary goes beyond simple self-care practices. It encourages readers to take a holistic approach to their well-being, incorporating self-reflection, gratitude, and mindful living. The book provides practical tools and exercises to help readers develop a strong sense of self, build resilience, and navigate life's challenges more effectively. Luminary is more than just a book; it is a transformative experience. Readers will find themselves captivated by the vivid descriptions, inspired by the protagonist's journey, and motivated to prioritize their own self-care. The book serves as a reminder that self-care is not a luxury but a necessity for leading a fulfilling and balanced life. In conclusion, Luminary: A Magical Guide to Self-Care offers a refreshing and enchanting approach to the practice of self-care. By combining elements of fantasy and self-help, the book creates a unique and transformative experience for readers. Luminary serves as a valuable resource for anyone seeking to prioritize their well-being and embark on a journey of self-discovery..
Reviews for "Awakening Your Inner Light: Luminary's Influence on Self-Care"
1. Jane Doe - 2/5 - I found "Luminary a magical guide to self care" to be a bit too outlandish and far-fetched for my taste. The author seemed to rely heavily on mystical concepts and spiritualist practices, which I personally don't connect with. While I appreciate the intention behind promoting self-care, I couldn't relate to the content and felt like it lacked practicality. Additionally, I found some of the advice given to be contradictory and confusing. Overall, this book just wasn't for me.
2. John Smith - 2/5 - I was excited to dive into "Luminary a magical guide to self-care," but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations. The book seemed more focused on creating an ethereal, whimsical experience rather than providing tangible tools for self-care. I found it hard to follow and understand the author's vision, as they often delved into vague concepts without providing clear explanations or examples. The language used was overly flowery and poetic, making it difficult to extract any practical guidance. If you're looking for a straightforward and grounded approach to self-care, this might not be the book for you.
3. Emily Johnson - 3/5 - While "Luminary a magical guide to self-care" had some interesting ideas, I felt that it lacked depth and substance. The book was filled with enchanting illustrations and beautiful storytelling, but when it came to providing practical steps or techniques for self-care, it fell short. The author's focus on connecting with the mystical and the divine might appeal to some readers, but for me, it felt too abstract and disconnected from reality. I was hoping for more actionable advice and tangible strategies that I could incorporate into my daily life. Overall, I found "Luminary" to be a bit too whimsical and light on substance.