Quiz Idiosyncraticus
Because I’m fond of quizzes and as antidote to that sense of replete ennui that can overcome us in the curious interregnum between the last gasps of the dying year before the reality of it’s successor has had the chance to kick in, I humbly offer up this, the first ever “Quiz Idiosyncraticus”, with the emphasis on nothing in particular but whatever comes to mind in a stream of trivia in the hope that it may amuse, educate and edify.
Answers and performance ratings may be found following the quiz.
Be warned, however, all is not quite as it seems. This quiz has been cunningly devised following a sojourn in the High Pamirs with the aid of the Ascended Masters, whose servant I am, and for whom I have served as a channel. The Quiz will reveal unerringly the hidden depths of your personality. It is therefore not to be undertaken lightly. I also respectfully suggest that you resist the temptation to peek or cheat, if you know what’s good for you - metaphysically speaking that is.
For those intrepid and questing souls who would venture further, rest assured that the lower or more average your score the more psychologically sound and successful in life you are liable to be. If you score over 95% you are probably pretty weird and almost certainly unemployable.
1. What is Rolfing? a) being violently sick b) an invasive form of bodywork c) rocking back and forth while laughing d) a rowing technique introduced to great effect in the Helsinki Olympics of 1951
2. What is a Maenad? a) a frenzied flesh-eating woman and/or New Age salesperson b) a member of the coterie of gay men or groupies fiercely devoted to the person of Mae West c) a classic and aggressive opening chess manœuvre d) a sub-atomic particle
3. Who or what is “Ortega y Gasset”? a) a popular Argentine motoring magazine, particularly known for the sale of second hand cars b) a cult Spanish motorbike popular in the 1930’s and with collectors today c) the leading sanitary ware manufacturer in Iberia & Latin America d) the early 20th Century Spanish philosopher, who wrote “The Revolt of the Masses” and other dense works
4. What does the word “louche” mean? a) sultry, luscious & lubricious b) disreputable, shifty & squinting c) sophisticated, fashionable & quick-witted d) something to do with women’s hygiene
5. Who or what is Mazda? a) a make of Japanese car. b) a make of electric light bulb c) an ancient Persian God
6. Who or what is Ulna? a) a goddess of Norse mythology, their equivalent of Aphrodite b) a river in Bessarabia, where Napoleon concluded a treaty with the Russian Tsar against the Austrian Emperor in 1809 c) a bone in the inner ear d) a bone in the arm
7. Who or what is the Demiurge? a) a lesser Gnostic god and creator of Earth b) a half-hearted attempt c) a compulsion to commit evil d) a minor form of sexual addiction
8. What is or was a “Quango”? a) a fruit hybrid, the genetic cross between a mango and the quince apple b) the actual word according to the Synoptic Gospel spoken by Jesus who appeared to St Peter on the Appian Way as he was escaping Nero’s persecution of the Christians. He immediately returned to Rome and martyrdom. c) a quasi non-governmental organisation d) a hilarious rock version of the quadrille and the tango immortalised in the 1972 Nicaraguan cult movie “Hola Hombres!” starring Bianca Jagger.
9. What is Monism? a) an economic theory developed by Milton Friedman and others at the University of Chicago in the 1950’s b) a refractory misalignment in the focus of the eye c) the doctrine that only one Supreme Being exists d) a mutual & contradictory form of onanism
10. Who or what was “Herodotus”? a) a celebrated Graeco-Jewish historian from Halicarnassus living in the 5thC. BC b) the name of the last play in blank verse written by Oscar Wilde as a sequel to Salomé, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley and only once performed on stage in Paris in 1903 with Sarah Bernhardt as Zuleika c) the incestuously begotten son of Herod the Great, whom the Bible tells us, was eaten by worms d) The Ptolemaic Egyptian Priest/King, and grandfather to Cleopatra
11. What does the phrase “pis aller” mean? a) to rudely tell someone to “go away” in French b) the worst-case scenario or last resort c) to go on a drunken spree (Eng. vulgar) d) an urgent need to urinate (Eng. very vulgar)
12. What is “Lebensraum”? a) “Love Room” in German, or honeymooner’s bedroom in Bavarian country inns. Alternatively an oda or harem’s chambers. b) the desire to travel and roam the world, or wanderlüst even c) “The Dream of Leben”, a mediaeval German text in Latin set to music in the 20th C. as a follow-up work to “Carmen Burana” by the composer Carl Orff d) the Nazi concept post-1933 to justify territorial aggrandisement in the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe
13. Who or what can properly be described as “Manx”? a) a tailless mammal b) an Australian TV crime series from the 1960’s c) a 1980’s word of London/Essex slang denoting something dull and ‘old hat’ d) absolutely anything or anybody coming from the Isle of Man e) the name of a 60’s “adult” comic strip in the US about the erotic and political adventures of a peripatetic tomcat
14. What do you understand by the phrase “Greater Coniunctio”? a) the Freudian way of saying multiple orgasm b) how Nietzsche defined the state of being required to become Superman d) the Jungian and alchemical theory of the archetypal union of opposites e) the connective part between the ascending colon and the ileosacral valve
15. What is “The Archimedes Screw”? a) an ancient means of water irrigation, invented by Archimedes of Syracuse in the 2ndC. BC and still in use today b) underhand business dealing, erroneously attributed to Archimedes because he was an inhabitant of Syracuse, whose citizens were notorious for sharp practices throughout the Ancient World c) a “hold” in ancient Greek wrestling, introduced to the Olympic games by Syracuse and the other Italian Greek cities, which the Athenians and Ionians held to be unfair. d) title of the book by William Burroughs, banned for obscenity in the US and UK but published in the 1950’s in Paris by the Olympia Press e) a viciously potent cocktail invented by the owner of Harry’s Bar in Venice in honour of the prodigiously endowed 1950’s Dominican diplomat and hitman Porfirio Rubirosa’s double whammy in winning the Mille Miglia and becoming engaged to English starlet Belinda Lee on the eve of her marriage to Prince Felippo Orsini
16. What is Arianism? a) a type of esoteric magic or Red Tantra practiced by the 6th Dalai Lama in 13thC. Tibet before his deposition for deviant behaviour, and subsequent murder b) the physics of human flight as illustrated and described in the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci c) the Nazi philosophy of the Master Race as set out by Hitler in “Mein Kampf” d) a 4thC. Christian heresy taught by Arius of Alexandria, which denied the divinity of Christ e) a term of contempt coined by the people of Milan, who were fans of Renata Tebaldi, to describe the emotive performances of her archrival and co-Diva, Maria Callas
17. What is a Hierophant? a) a pompous or credulous character or, a puffed-up silly New Age person b) someone who always believes things were better in the past. Nostalgia for a bygone age (hier. fr.) c) the ancient Egyptian term for the Pharaoh’s eldest son or successor d) an accepted interpreter of sacred or esoteric mysteries
18. What is a Pantheist? a) definition in clinical psychiatry for a person with a fetish for, or the desire to steal, women’s underclothes. Or, a conspiracy to steal women’s underwear b) a believer in the Divinity of Nature and acceptance of all Gods c) a follower of the 3rdC. AD Alexandrine neo-Platonist philosopher, Pantheus, the earliest known proponent of cosmic expansion d) a follower of the doctrine originated by the 12thC. Teutonic Knights, later espoused by Frederick the Great, Clauswitz and the Prussian Junker in the 18thC. holding that “Might is Right”
19. What is Psychosynthesis? a) the process by which plants use sunlight to derive energy b) a system of transpersonal psychology introduced by the 20thC. Italian psychologist, Roberto Assaglioli c) the theory of psychiatric healing whereby plants are used to pacify analysands, first introduced by C.G. Jung in the 1920’s d) a pathological psychiatric condition whereby sufferers believe they are becoming omnipotent, commonly known as the BS or Buonaparte Syndrome
20. Who or what is a Fenian? a) a London cockney (what other kind is there?), or someone who can’t say Athenian properly b) a genus of highly venomous snake found in S. America or the filleted “fenny snake” featured to in Act 1 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth c) term for an Irish hooligan, street brawling drunkard or political agitator d) the ancient Irish, or 19thC. Irish freedom fighter against the British e) Both c) & d) above
21. What does the word “picaresque” mean? a) sweet and hauntingly beautiful b) sharp, witty and ironic humour c) in the style of Picarus, the 15thC. Italian from Pisa writing in the Courtly Love tradition, various of whose plots were later adapted by Shakespeare as plots for his plays d) fiction style recounting the episodic adventures of rogues and other low fellows
22. What does “chthonic” mean? a) relating to the underworld or the primæval feminine b) an adjective invented by Camille Paglia in her book “Sexual Personae” to describe the vampirical, homicidal, cannibalistic, and pathological matriarchal aspects of the female psyche c) the grammatical term for the running together of consonants d) a person who is very stupid
23. Which is the correct definition of “Orphism”? a) a specific sexual perversion, whose nature I am not at liberty to divulge, first practised by high-born society women in Vienna during the latter years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, involving the degradation of men b) the above is something I made up, but wish were true...... c) true or untrue, the above definition a) above is something you wish were true....... d) followers of the legendary Thracian, Orpheus; or a reformed and cleaned-up worship of the great God Bacchus and the Dionysian revels e) a chronic clinical condition whereby a sufferer constantly hears music
24. And lastly, what does the phrase “Yasou Nafti!” mean? a) “Pretty Camel!” in Arabic b) “Hark! the Reindeer’ in Finnish c) “My Mother’s arms” in Basque d) “The End is Nigh!” in ancient Mayan e) “Hello Sailor!” in modern Greek
On that note I will bid you farewell, strong in the knowledge that the channeled wisdom of the sages encrypted within our Quiz, as it is, has been, and may be again, shall have wrought even an infinitesimal degree of self-knowledge to a thirsting world.
================= CORRECT ANSWERS: =================Award yourself one point for each correct answer, or as directed.
1. (b); 2. (a); 3. (d); 4. (b); 5. All. Give yourself 1/2 point for answering(a), (b) or (c), but give yourself 1 point if you didn’t pick an answer & insisted on all 3; 6.(d); 7. (a); 8. (c); 9. (c); 10. (a); 11. (b); 12. (d); 13. (d); 14. (d); 15. (a); 16. (d); 17. (d); 18. (b); 19. (b); 20. (d); but deduct a half point for self-indulgence if you are English and answered e); 21. (d); 22. (a); 23. (d) for full point. But deduct 1/2 point for impertinence if you answered (b), add 1/2 point for honesty if you answered c); 24. (e).
==================== PERSONALITY RATINGS ====================1 - 5 : I’m not sure you should be allowed out unescorted.
6 - 10 : You are a well-rounded personality. You and people like you should rule the world and probably do.
11 - 17 : You are an intelligent and well-educated personality, what more can I say?
18 - 20 : You might be getting a bit weird, Hi There!
21 - 23 : You are weird. Join the Club!
24 out of 24 : You are either unemployed or self-employed. I’m not sure you should be allowed out unescorted.