Throughout his revolutionary and missionary travels, Hasan [ leader of the Nizari Ismailis] was searching for an impregnable fortress from which to conduct his resistance to the Seljuk empire. In about 1088, he finally chose the castle of Alamut, built on a narrow ridge on a high rock in the heart of the Elnurz Mountains in a region known as the Rudbar. The castle dominated an enclosed cultivated valley thirty miles long and three miles across at its widest, approximately six thousand feet above sea level. – THE TEMPLARS AND THE ASSASSINS, JAMES WASSER
First Move
- Must make the target come to you – After you have chosen the right victim
- Play cat and mouse – first seeming interested then stepping back
- Make the target think that they are the ones making the first approach
- No paranoia or resentment
- Humans are creatures who cannot stand the feeling that they are obeying other’s will
- Requires giving the victim space – Let them notice you in different places but never approach
- The victim may want to bridge the gap
- Befriend the victim moving steadily closer while maintaining a proper distance
- Checkpoints – Any off-hand comment or physical contact
- Spark different thoughts
- Target will wonder why the hunter hasn’t made a move
- Vulnerable / Friendship opened the mind / Lowered resistance /
- Dissiputing the usual tension between sexes
Several villages dotted the valley, and their inhabitants were particularly receptive to the ascetic piety of Hasan. The castle was accessible only with the greatest difficulty through a narrow gorge of the Alamut River . . . . Hasan Employed a careful strategy to take over the castle, which had been granted to its current Shiite owner, named Mahdi, by the Seljuk sultan Malikshah. First, Hasan sent his trusted dai Husayn Qai0ni and two others to win converts in the neighbouring villages. Next, many of the residents and soldiers of Alamut were secretly converted to Isamailism. Finally, in September 1090, Hasam himself was secretly smuggled into the castle. When Mahdi realized that Hasan had in fact quietly taken over his fortress, he left peacefully… – THE TEMPLARS AND THE ASSASSINS, JAMES WASSER
If you decide to wage a war for the total triumph of your individuality, you must begin by inexorably destroying those who have the greatest affinity with you. – SALVADOR DALI (1904-1989)
The Drama Queen
- Constant drama to deflect boredom of daily life
- Fine victims – harmless and short-term fleeting
- Enjoy playing the victim role
- They want pain and something to complain about
- Identify by the number of people who have harmed them – tragedies and traumas
- Seduction – willing to give them mental rough treatment
To attack or to intervene – WE often make the mistake of actively opposing a tendency or party or age because we happen to have seen only its external side, its deliquescence or the “faults of its virtues” necessarily adhering to it – perhaps because we ourselves have participated in them to a marked degree. Then we turn our back on them and go off in an opposite direction, but it would be better if we sought out their good and strong side instead or evolved and developed it in ourselves. It requires, to be sure, a more penetrating eye and a more favourable inclination to advance what is imperfect and evolving than to see through it in its imperfection and deny it. HUMAN ALL TOO HUMAN 1878