True Pagan Warrior

Financial building blocks: paying attention

2012-01-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

It really didn't take much to turn my financial world around.

The job paid well, and my expenses were low because I never felt inspired to spend for the sake of showing people how much money I had. I certainly wasn't wealthy, but I was able to live well within my means and save money for investing and retirement. I had my finger on my financial pulse constantly, maybe even obsessively, and I was headed in the right direction.

As I said, it really didn't take much to turn it all around.

Much like the Great Recession itself, the causes were varied and deep. The job increasingly was a worse and worse fit, and working for myself seemed a good idea. Some bad business decisions and a tanking economy had me working ("consulting") for others before long, at least part-time, while I tried to figure out how to increase cash flow and not live off my savings. There was enough left, thankfully, for me to be able to partner with my wife to buy a house; she had the income to qualify for the mortgage, and I just barely had enough to get us the down payment.

And so we headed into this country's economic downturn: getting by, living in a house which somehow managed to stay worth more than what we owed on it, looking for better ways to bring in money and not paying attention to where it was all going.

That's right, not paying attention. The greater the money problems, the less you want to think about them. You don't want to check the bank balance, you certainly don't want to see how your retirement funds are doing in an endless bear market, and overall, the word of the day is struthious. (In the present economy, maybe the operative word for what many people think about their money is santorum, but that's entirely too offensive to discuss here. I'm only linking to that site so it stays atop the Google rankings.) It's easy to stick your head in the sand and simply hope the money problems go away.

It may be ironic, but in order to honor Ploutos, the blind god of wealth, I'm heading into this year with my eyes open. I want to see what I used to see: all the financial information and trends in my life. I'm not interested in worries, mind you; I find thinking like, "Oh, we won't have the money to pay all the bills!" to be completely counterproductive in all circumstances. You don't look at money to worry about it; you look at money to control it. If you worry, you start to fear again, and then you look away. The only way money will be one's ally is if one can look upon it dispassionately.

The shiny new tool in my toolbox is Mint.com, a service that allows me to view the family's full financial picture in one place. Mint.com is a free financial tracking website which is safe and secure. Part of the security comes from the high-end encryption that they use, but it's also safe because you can't actually move money around from within that site; you have to go to your bank or other financial site to handle the transactions.

The site has pre-figured budgets based on your current income and expenses, which can be tweaked and modified very easily. It can send you alerts about things like low balances, overdue bills, and suspicious activity. They make their money on referrals, recommending things like credit cards and mortgage refinances from their partners if you could use something like that. I haven't found the marketing to be intrusive.

Peeling away the film of ignorance and taking a hard look at your finances is the prerequisite to taking control of money instead of letting it control you. I firmly believe that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe (even if Einstein didn't really think so), and that it works on people whether they pay attention to it or not. In future posts I'll look at the ways that compound interest has positively and negatively impacted my life. Insofar as money is, indeed, congealed energy, compound interest shows that it follows some sort of rule of abundance.

The question to answer, of course, is abundance for whom?

Money: walking the walk

2012-01-05T07:51:00.001-05:00

Drawing money to make a better world!

I've decided to enable advertising on this site, because promoting the movement of money is important to me. Money inspires a knee-jerk reaction of "don't look" in a lot of people, perhaps because the god of wealth is blind, but I want to shed light on the subject and talk about it more, both for my own life and to facilitate it in other Pagans.

Money is linked to the pentacles tarot suit, and I think it's no accident that the symbol has widespread use among earth-worshiping Pagans. Money is congealed energy, the essence of the solidity of the earth element. Pagans don't typically tithe and are often dirt-poor, and I have always gotten a sense that many of us think that wealth accumulation is somehow bad. Maybe that's to make us feel better that we haven't gotten filthy rich? (And how many earth-dirt-money references can I make to drive home the point that the earth and money are inextricably linked?)

So, there is advertising, and of course I'm hoping you'll click on some of it. I also have affiliate links here and there, so if you're inspired to buy something, I'll cut a tiny piece of whatever you pay. The energy keeps moving into the hands of someone who is trying to make the Earth a better place.

Hail Ploutos!

Honoring Ploutos

2012-01-01T15:07:00.002-05:00

I've been giving some thoughts on how to honor Ploutos, god of wealth. The youth was blinded by Zeus so he would distribute more indiscriminately, but that method of wealth distribution isn't exactly working out for most of us. I think it's our fault Ploutos doesn't pay as much attention as we'd like.

Hellenistic gods like offerings, and Ploutos is the blind guardian of shiny things, so I've come up with some ways to honor him. I believe that, living in darkness as he does, that he is appreciative of offerings he can hear, as well as offerings from under the earth and things that grow from the earth.

Offerings to Ploutos in a dark corner

I wrote a hymn to Ploutos, the first hymn I have written to a god. Both the writing and the reading of a hymn is a votive offering.
Libations with beer, both because it is made of grain and because opening the bottle has is audible.
I started a small altar to him. It's in a shadowed corner, symbolizing both his blindness and the subterranean source of precious metals and gems. The offerings are stones and coins. I still need a proper god figure for him.
I'm still researching what kinds of incense might be pleasing. Myrrh symbolizes wealth and is earthy like this god. It's hard to go wrong with frankincense for any god in this pantheon. There are, pardon the pun, a wealth of recipes for incense intended to draw wealth to the user, but I need to figure out which ones Ploutos might like.
I'm making a commitment to avoid mistakenly calling him Plouton, or writing his name that way. I've caught myself several times just in writing the hymn and this post, so I am going to take extra time during my devotions to get it right.

Ploutos seems to help me draw my many polytraditionalist beliefs together. As a classic earth-worshipping Gaiaped, I honor the relentless patience of the earth, in the form of plate tectonics and other slow changes. The sound principles of investing are all based on long-term planning and patience. Sitting in Quaker meeting is all about waiting, and this morning in that waiting I realized I need to write more posts about money, because this is my ministry.

Rich: not a four-letter word

2011-12-31T20:52:00.001-05:00

I'm beginning this new year mindful of the Ploutos, god of wealth. Child of Demeter, he was blinded by Zeus so he would not discriminate when dispensing his gifts, conferring them upon good and wicked alike.

I've long recognized the power of money. Three years ago I promised to make Pagans and their money the focus of this blog. I got sidetracked then, going into a space that made it easier to avoid thinking about money.

I'm thinking about money now. Since I committed to Hellenismos, it makes sense to consider wealth from that perspective, too. Wealth was initially an agrarian concept, and Ploutos was indeed son of Demeter, conceived in a thrice-plowed field. Perhaps as the idea of riches became associated more with precious metals, he became conflated with Hades (Pluto to his Roman fans), whose underworld kingdom is understandably linked to gold and other precious things scratched from beneath the earth.

Gold is more durable than grain, and so it's a better conduit for congealed energy (that's what Joseph Campbell called money, and it makes a lot of sense). Now our money is more often than not simply magnetically-charged electrons, making it more like bound energy than congealed. Nevertheless, money is and always shall be a form of energy, and should be respected as such.

I haven't been respecting money since the Great Recession smacked me down . . . I've been fearing it.

But now, finally, I am feeling the pulse of the energy within money, and starting to remember that it can be channeled and focused, as much as any other energy can be. It's time for me to honor Ploutos, perhaps by tithing in some form like contributing to charity or dedicating a certain amount of money to things which will make the world a better place.

Because I'm becoming more polytraditionalist with every passing year, I'm going to think on Ploutos and wealth when I attend Quaker meeting in the morning.

Poison in the home

2011-11-23T11:13:00.001-05:00

Today, the cats are not at home, nor are the humans. We're poisoning our home.

Dusk, left, and his older sister Dawn.

We brought home two sweet and darling kittens in October, in part to soothe the pain of having my cat Myrlyn disappear without a trace back in June, and in part because opening our home to little furry ones is what we do.

Those darling little kitties were simply infested with fleas, and all the natural remedies we tried to kill the buggers were completely unsuccessful. Sure, we killed and combed out bunches of them, but they breed so much faster than we could remove them that it was an impossible battle.

We've had only partial success with Frontline, and we weren't eager to try it on the little ones anyway, so the problem wasn't going away. So today, we packed up all four cats and carted them off for a flea bath, and set off toxic flea bombs to destroy the ones hiding in the nooks and crannies.

. . . and he was never seen again.

I have mixed feelings about this. Fleas are an intolerable pest. It's cruel to allow our cats to suffer from an infestation. I haven't seen it yet, but I know that they're more than happy to bite humans when they're hungry, as well. Even more concerning to me than getting a few bites is the possibility of them infesting my dreadlocks. They may have evolved to coexist with fur-bearing mammals, but fleas in the home is simply unacceptable.

But harsh chemical treatments don't come without a price. My cats have had some pretty bad experiences with conventional medical care.

Myrlyn was a victim of vaccinosis, brought on by my ignorant belief that repeatedly injecting him with rabies vaccines was a good idea. It wasn't - he became more aggressive, developed irritation at the vaccination site, and over time changed from a sweet a loving animal to one that was unpredictable and extremely temperamental. I've been extremely skeptical of shooting up a pet with this crap ever since I watched his struggles; I really feel like I failed him.
Peregrine had his own issues with conventional medicine. He had to be intubated for some extreme oral care, and he spent weeks in respiratory distress after the procedure. It got so bad that this loving and affectionate cat was avoiding contact with humans, because purring was triggering the attacks. We were powerless to help him. Even now, years later, he occasionally has coughing and huffing fits.

So my cats are all getting this toxic bath, which means that they're all getting vaccines which I think are a terrible idea, and some of them may even get sedated. I don't think it's a good idea, but I don't know what else to do.

There has got to be a better way.

Embracing orthopraxy

2011-11-06T09:44:00.001-05:00

noun

correctness or orthodoxy of action or practice.

I encountered this word in the book Kharis: Hellenic Polytheism Explored, an excellent resource for Hellenismos. The definition above uses its antonym, so let me give it a stab: orthopraxy is the idea of following correct action, while orthodoxy focuses on correct belief.

Home altar to Poseidon

The idea that doing the right things is more important than believing the right beliefs is reassuring to those of us who find that the gods aren't always super forthcoming about their intentions. If your gods want you to believe a certain way but don't tell you right out, that can lead to stress. If, on the other hand, your gods want you to behave in a certain way, well that can be a pretty helpful road map.

Here's an example of orthopraxy: I set up a shrine to Poseidon at home. Making offerings to the gods (my gods, anyway) is proper behavior, and having an altar makes it a lot easier. I've actually had an altar to Poseidon for some months now, but the wreath and Poseidon bust are new additions, and they definitely help keep my orthopraxy sound. In fact, when I received the wreath, I was told that they "have a way of reminding you" to do the right thing.

And yes, because I must care for the wreath, I also tend to the altar (which is also an act of devotion in Hellenismos), and it's not easy to dust and clean without wanting to make an offering or at the very least thinking about the god or gods the altar is consecrated to.

So to me, orthopraxy is about establishing habits, and orthodoxy is about establishing rules. Neither one is going to give a full answer to the unknowable question of "why?" That answer comes from faith and a relationship with the gods. Both orthodoxy and orthopraxy can make it easier to get to that answer, though; for me, the habits of orthopraxy are just an easier tool than the rules of orthdoxy.

Looking in the mirror

2011-10-12T21:41:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was a good one to reboot my faith. That's a better word than "kickstart," which suggests that it wasn't moving at all. "Reboot" describes a religious practice which was sluggish and slow, and is now running more smoothly.

Some of the high points of spending a weekend with old friends and wise ones:

I dedicated myself to Poseidon and took the new name of Terentios to signify my commitment to Hellenismos. It's not a far stretch of a name; it's the Greek name of the poet whose Anglicized name I carry.
I saw a dear friend whom I haven't visited with in person for some fifteen years, and her husband, whom I feel I have known all my life despite having just gotten to know him.
I realized that the difference between being a fool and being wise is simply a matter of how you apply your ignorance.

My naming and dedication didn't come without some apprehension. Heck, it's taken me 30 years to return to the gods of my ancestors after I drank in the myths and tales as a child. One lesson that's clear in those tales is that pissing off these gods is not a good idea, and I'm not above bollixing things from time to time. However, the nautical metaphors and symbolism which kept cropping up helped hammer home that this is a good path for me to follow, and that it will help me grow in new ways.

Encountering old friends is a mixed bag. They see you as they did when last you met, which means they might not take into account your growth. In this particular case, though, my friend always saw me for the man I would become, even when I was an overly-eager college student who rarely took time to think before speaking (and who spoke more than some people breathe). So instead of yanking me back, she again helped me push forward with that view of me.

I've long embraced the archetype of the Fool, because it gives me permission to be ignorant without feeling diminished. People don't always see us as we see ourselves, though, and I found that my newer friends see that confidence as something else entirely. More than one person turned to me as a sounding board, and the fact that I succeeded in not giving advice when I had none to offer tells me that perhaps a kernel of wisdom is taking hold.

The number of lessons being dangled in front of me makes me wonder if "mid-life crisis" is just code for "I'm scared of what I'm going to find out as I age."

Prayers and responses

2011-08-14T08:38:00.001-04:00

Some things I learn the hard way. Okay, lots of things. Take the power of barley, for example.

A couple of days ago I went about happily blessing the old and new shrines and sacred spots in my yard. I learned a new (to me, anyway) prayer for libations to the Greek gods, used with libations (translation in italics):

Khaire O Hermes. Eleibometha soi. I have poured a libation to you. Leipsometha soi. I do pour a libation to you. Leibometha soi. I will pour a libation to you. Kharin ekhomen soi. I give you thanks. Khaire!

I also used barley. The grain can be used as an offering, but it can also be used to mark an offering for a particular god. I sprinkled it on the altar, the upright stones, the moss gardens, and the houseplants I put out for the summer.

Christmas cactus, before it was offered up.

Alas and alack, the barley on my Christmas cactus marked it as an offering, rather than simply as sacred. The plant is enjoying its second summer outside, but never before did a deer think it a tasty snack. It was significantly trimmed back, to say the least, and I will be more thoughtful about how I use barley in the future. I think the cactus got the trim it probably needed, although it may disagree. I certainly hope Artemis is pleased with the offering.

In other news, this morning I found my herm covered in centipedes. One of the little guys was walking about with one of its fellows atop its back - is that still called piggyback?

Hermes is an interesting god, since he was still and solid long before he was fleet and nimble, but he retains the qualities of both. I like having him around.

Doing some landscaping

2011-08-12T10:11:00.002-04:00

Every year that I make the journey, I get inspired by the Lughnasad festival at Laurelin Retreat. It's hosted by the Laurelin Community on 56 acres of land owned by Reverend Kirk White (someone really needs to upload a new image for that page).

This year I came home thinking about the various shrines and sacred places on that land, and how I might emulate that at home. It's tough to do more than emulation when you've got a quarter acre and the place you were camping is 56 acres of fields and woodlands.

Cats have different uses for altars than humans do.

We already have a really ace stone altar, which is being used for all manner of rituals. I like the fact that the cats find it an appealing place to worship the sun, but I probably won't use it in quite the same ways.

I regularly sprinkle khernips (purified water) on the altar, which should cover all the bases. Any gods (or worshipers) who are bothered by kitty activity should be satisfied by purification.

However, I don't think we have anyone with that concern here.

Besides the altar, there are a couple of moss gardens which have taken a more sacred aspect. One of them I started on purpose, and it's been a slow process. I've gathered stones from various places, along with some logs and bark, and encouraged the moss along.

After I killed a deer with my car a few weeks ago I asked Artemis for some guidance, and she told me I ought to honor her on purpose rather than accidentally like that. I've taken to sprinkling the moss garden with khernips and barley in her name.

Moss garden with upright stone

There's another patch of moss on the other side of the yard, and I've been encouraging it by plucking out the adjacent grass and clearing it of competition like clover. It's done really well since I first delineated it with some stones, outgrowing the original ring.

I just found a stone which had been upright in an old wall, and grew lichen on its upper end. It clearly needed to remain upright, so I added it here.

I still want to complete a new ring of border stones.

I added another, slightly larger upright stone at the crossroads of two paths in the yard. It's a herm, a traditional shrine to Hermes. I've been thinking a lot about herms and divination, and having one here will allow me a chance to experiment.

We have a rock garden and a vegetable garden. That kind of effort focused on beauty and life is always going to be sacred, even if it's not dedicated to a specific deity.

So I've been working on this plan for several years, and only now just realized it. More pictures on the True Pagan Warrior Facebook page.

Not knowing is the worst

2011-06-16T08:10:00.000-04:00

Today marks a week since I've seen my cat . . . and five years since my father finished dying. There are a lot of unknowns associated with loss and death, and they really speak to the human condition.

Myrlyn was meant to be wild and free, that much I know. His mishaps and maladies have come mostly from the human intrusions in his life.

He nearly fell out of a second-story window right after I got him. I was petting him and he was stretching into it, so when the screen gave way I caught him.
He did fall or jump off of a second story balcony a couple of years later. He was terribly lonely because I had taken him from a home of constant companionship to an apartment where he was stuck for hours on end while I worked and socialized. He was missing for three days that time before a friend of mine helped me find him.
The last time he was missing was particularly bad, because he'd never been outside in the time I'd known him, and he had a radar-dish collar on which made it probably impossible for him to hunt or fight. The collar protected a massive wound he'd given himself by excessive grooming between his shoulder blades.
That wound was caused by vaccinosis, a condition not accepted by the medical community. I didn't understand that the irritation and increased aggression was in part due to me getting him rabies vaccines, year in and year out, despite the fact that it's been established that one is enough for a lifetime. His loneliness may have pushed him over the edge.

Once we finally started letting him out when we owned a home, he did get into some fights as he established territory, but they were all of his choosing and he was happier for it. He established himself as an accomplished hunter and railed at our desire to keep him in overnight. He sometimes would not come home for dinner if he'd caught his own, but he'd always be back by morning.

Until last week, of course. Was it the storm? Did he get his collar off again, and get caught as a stray? Was he trapped seeking shelter? Hit by a car? Forcefully adopted? I just don't know, and I really don't care, as long as he comes back.

Posters and knocking on doors hasn't worked. Offerings to Poseidon, Artemis, Hermes, and Hestia Caffeina have yielded only troubling results. Every offering to Artemis in particular results in me seeing deer, most strangely a doe and two fawns in midday grazing and playing near a backhoe. Is that a hint that I should look to new life? I've certainly seen many kittens as I've searched what I know of his territory. The fliers I hung over the mailbox and altar keep falling down . . . is it that the tape won't stick, or is that to encourage me to look downward, to where his spirit now rests?

I've always believed Myrlyn to be the sort of cat who would simply never come home one day, but I can't say I am ready. He's not even ten years old, dammit.

That this is happening during the anniversary of my father's death-cycle is also on my mind. I gave him offerings on the anniversary of his birth, which is also the anniversary of the day he fell and sustained a subdural hematoma - bleeding in the brain. Today marks the day that we took him off life support. I was his health-care proxy and held the power of attorney, and I believe I failed him. I knew that he didn't want to be on machines, and I knew within a few days that he wasn't going to get better. I had the legal power to end it, but I didn't press the issue because our family just wasn't ready to shift into mourning.

At the very least, my mother and sister and I were very clear about his wishes, but I alone was able to see the truth in the moment. That's why he trusted me to do the right thing, and I feel that I caved to pressure and didn't follow through soon enough. When the brain surgeon described how patients who recover act, I understood that my initial instinct was correct, and yet here we were ten days later and I hadn't had the guts to give my father the peace he had asked me for.

What lies in death is unknown, so we react to what we know, the living people, and thoughts and hopes of the breathing ones. I am filled with doubt about how good a son I was, and doubt about how good a cat companion I am. There's just so much that can only be taken on faith.

Just as I did with Dad, I'm not giving up hope for Myrlyn even though the gods and logic both tell me that our chances of being reunited are slim. I guess that dichotomy is just another puzzling part of the human condition.

So I had this revelation about the afterlife . . .

2011-05-16T13:31:00.000-04:00

. . . during a ritual and I want to capture it before it fades. The afterlife is a state of reciprocal experience and created expectation. Let me explain.

We spend our entire lives pondering what comes next to some extent; it comes up in all religions and at lots of dinner tables, not to mention bars, colleges, factories, hospitals, and all the other places that people are found. What we believe changes throughout our lives as we're influenced by life experience, introspection, and the views and teachings of others.

We cultivate these expectations, and they form the foundation of what we discover after death. For most people, that means some variation of the teachings of their religion or culture. Diehard Odinists get Valhalla, born-again Christians get either Heaven or Hell, and so on.

But the afterlife isn't solitary - there's lot of dead people. Everyone you've encountered in life (or lives) is going to be there with you. Being that time and space won't have the same meaning, you could experience very intimate moments with any number of people simultaneously, alone with each of them but very much experiencing them all. That's going to make life interesting.

Experience might seem physical, but it will be much deeper than that. There's a level of omniscience needed to experience lots of stuff all at once like that, and it should extend to seeing oneself in the eyes of other people, so to speak. If you don't like me, I will see myself through your eyes as the unpleasant fellow you believe me to be.

Your soul will exist as a composite of how every other person you know experiences you, in addition to your own self-image. For most people, there's a lot of pain in a lot of those images, so it's probably going to hurt.

The path to salvation is in changing those images, which will take the cooperation of the people who view you poorly. You're both experiencing pain and perhaps repulsion, but you need to work together to move past it and experience joy.

Joy with my fourth-grade teacher. Or my ex-wife. Joy with George W. Bush (he doesn't know me, but I definitely was touched by him, and won't he be surprised at how much he's going to have to do). Joy with bullies and small-minded people and all the sorts of people I don't much care to talk to anymore.

Of course, how much pain we experience (and work we have to do) is going to depend on where we leave those relationships when we die. It is about expectation, after all. Find ways to heal that pain in life, and you won't experience it all over again afterwards.

If you're a Christian, that would translate into being nice to people in order to get into Heaven. Wiccans might invoke the Threefold Law. Humanists might say, "Don't be a dick." (Well, the ones I know might put it that way, your mileage may vary.) The beauty of it is, we all get to have the afterlife we expect, and the punishment we deserve. How cool is that?

Libations with grape juice

2011-02-26T07:53:00.000-05:00

It's not traditional, but I make libations to the gods with grape juice. Some may feel this means I'm more following Methodism than Hellenismos, but it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me.

The reason at first was pedestrian: I don't care for wine. I've always found it to have an unpleasant taste; in that, it's much the way I discover any alcohol. Fermented beverages are not naturally among my favorites, either for quenching or intoxication. In the quarter-century I've been drinking, I've only found one wine and three beers that I actually enjoy, and no spirits. I'm simply not much of an alcohol drinker.

Grape juice, I remembered reading, largely has the benefits of wine for the heart, so it seems that the grape does not clutch those secrets so dearly that fermentation is needed to wrest them forth. The wisdom of wine in the ancient world came from its ability to be preserved, and its antiseptic properties, in addition to any advantages of intoxication.

Modern grape juice

One of my uncles, from the Greek side of my family, was a consumer of Welch's Grape Juice in that classic form. I remember tasting it at my grandmother's house when I visited. She would keep it on hand because he had lunch with her every day during the week. Grape juice brings this back to me, in effect giving me a cthnonic link to my ancestors.

I've also considered the practice of the mixing of water and wine. It's not entirely clear why this was done, but most followers of Hellenismos continue to do so. Since I am also not clear of its origins, I've elected to allow that magic happen with the mixing of the grape juice concentrate with water. Thus, it's accomplished before I begin.

I do not know Dionysos so well as to be certain his views of the unfermented grape, but I do not believe he looks upon it unkindly. So much of the god of wine is difficult to understand, for he is also the god whom madness struck. Is wine the way to follow him to those revelations, or is it the result of that time? I'm not ready to find out.

True Blood

2010-12-21T10:21:00.000-05:00

One of the books I'm reading as I learn about Hellenismos is Kharis: Hellenic Polytheism Explored by Sara Kate Istra Winter. Early on in her discussion of modern Hellenism, Winter notes that a minority of Hellenic groups feel that the religion should be reserved for those of Greek blood. Okay, I'm covered; one of my grandparents was born in Greece. However, it's a story I've heard before and I don't personally support it, even though I probably would make the cut.

In the early days of my Pagan seeking I was interested in Native American spirituality, particularly because I feel a strong tie to the eagle, and in the USA the eagle is associated with three things: patriotism, motorcycles, and Native American cultures. (I know that this is not very precise, but it's exactly what I perceived at the time.) Since my Wiccan teacher didn't have a strong shamanic background and my shamanic teacher came from a Norse tradition, I turned to a friend of theirs for advice. I knew that this man was a member of a tribe in Canada, and I told him that I was interested in learning more about the ways of his people.

He was gentle in his rebuke, but nevertheless he told me, "you should follow the traditions of your people, and leave ours to us."

The next day I attended the handfasting of my teachers, and this particular Native American presided as high priest in the Wiccan ceremony, since he'd been practicing that faith for many years and was much respected. Typical for my thought patterns, the irony of this didn't dawn on me for some years - by his reasoning, Wiccanism should only be practiced by the British.

Modern worshipers at a Hellenic temple

I can understand where the rationale comes from - in bygone days religion was taught by one generation to the next, and that means it's a family affair. However, for good or ill we've mucked things up with our moving about and mixing up the genes, and also by taking up lifestyles that discourage an interest in the gods. Our souls are much less likely to be born into a family that follows the faith that we belong in than they were centuries ago. If there is to be a test to determine worthiness to worship in a particular fashion, I submit that it should be divine rather than scientific - let the gods choose their own, in their own way. DNA analysis is not the way to discover one's true calling.

Of course, this mindset is nothing new, as Winter points out in Kharis. Isocrates said, some 2400 years ago, "The name Greek is no longer the mark of a race, but of an outlook, and is accorded to those who share our culture rather than our blood. (p 32)"

Full circle: finding Hellenism

2010-12-19T22:51:00.000-05:00

I remember the day it happened. I was in college, first freshman year, sitting with a friend of mine in the Union. We'd been talking about some of the people I'd recently met through him, and the secret community to which they all belonged. My friend had glanced around quickly before lowering his head and his voice and saying, "There's a lot of Pagans around here."

I knew exactly what he meant, of course - it was like the Greek gods. I'd read all the myths I could get my hands on and even tried out some of that Norse stuff when I was a kid, but didn't like it as much. Sure, I knew what Pagans were, but I was sure that if people were making animal sacrifices in great, stone temples I would have noticed.

Of course I was at the same time completely right and completely wrong about Paganism. To learn, I soaked up Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler and a lot of much less substantive works. My early exposure was to a variety of Wiccan practices, which strengthened my love of the Earth and desire to defend the spirits of the land. My relationship with Herne and later, the Green Man, defined how I related to the world around me, but I was never a Wiccan. I enjoy Wiccan ritual and practice, and I respect that Wicca has given momentum to all manner of Pagan revival and reconstruction movements.

When I eventually discovered Hellenic polytheism, I was intrigued but not drawn to it particularly. Learning a new language is a pretty high barrier to entry for me, and the first group I met prayed in ancient Greek. It was also a couple decades after my interest in Greek religion had peaked, so I filed it away.

Starting this summer, though, I started getting clues that it's time to take a second look at the religion of some portion of my ancestors. Little snippets of conversation about gods I'd never heard of. Flashes of insight . . . while watching Xena. Meeting a teacher who was offering a class in Hellenismos and didn't mind using English. Having a conversation with Margot Adler, who started me and many others on our Pagan paths, and having her tell me, "I've always been a Hellenistic pagan, but it just wasn't an option back then.

So in a way I'm beginning again, but more seriously this time, because for the first time in many, many years I feel like I'm not responsible for defining who it is I'm praying to. These gods have been around for a very long time, and I want to give them the latitude to be a bit set in their ways. I'm pretty okay with it. One of the things about Wiccanism which made it hard for me to anchor myself there was the amorphous identity of God and Goddess. They could be represented by specific deities, or be referenced by the broader terms developed in the 18th century like Great Goddess and Father Sky, but if the specific face keeps changing it's tough for me to develop a relationship.

Of course, I'm mindful that without many years of exposure to Wicca, I wouldn't have any basis of comparison. I'm grateful that it's the right choice for so many people, because it's also a visible conduit that helps all manner of seekers find what they're looking for.

Now what I'm discovering is that it's tough not to form relationships. I had originally believed that one god alone took the initiative to wave some ambrosia under my nose, but the more I meditate on it the more I see the work of several divine hands. There are certainly at least three that come to my thoughts almost daily, and I imagine that time will only expand those relationships. Just today I did some reading about Hermes, and how he comes to fill so many roles: luck, messages, soulbearing, thievery, cleverness. I was so intrigued that I bypassed Demeter and Athena to pray to Hermes, because he's the one that whispers the messages of the gods in our ears. So without pressure, and in a very organic way, I'm learning how to talk to each of them.

The one book I have read every night since I began this path is Devotion: Prayers to the Gods of the Greeks - it has a selection of prayers in English to each of the gods, a tremendous help for me. The one big stumbling block for me right now is mastering the pronunciations of the gods' names; even though I will be slow to learn ancient Greek, I want to get everybody's name right. It's simply about respect.

Letting a pet die

2010-09-10T10:44:00.000-04:00

Pagans like to think that we have a healthy view about death, but it's still a painful thing to say goodbye to loved ones. I've been confronted with the passing over of animal friends recently, and I think it's even more difficult when you're dealing with a pet, companion, or familiar. Most of us don't make the decision to end the life of our human loved ones, but doing so for an animal is much more common.

I was talking with a friend of mine about how difficult it can be to help a pet through its end of days. She was telling me how her cat Nate had stopped eating, and that they decided it was time.

"You did the right thing," I told her. "Once they stop eating, it's time to help them go."

Tears welled in her eyes as she said, "You think so? . . . because the last day he ate again and was acting better."

"That happens all the time," I explained to her. I told her about my brother's dog, who had stayed with my parents and I when he moved out of state. Plato loved his back yard and loathed both cars and vets, and although he adored my brother we decided that asking him to go hundreds of miles in a car to live with him would have been cruel. When he reached the point where he couldn't stand up to go outside (another clear indicator that it's time), we called my brother and he made arrangements to drive up to see his dog one final time. I whispered this information into Plato's ear, and he struggled to his feet, went for a walk, and ate a meal.

A last-minute burst of energy often accompanies the knowledge that death will be soon; I think the relief that the burden of carrying about one's body is a big factor in this.

My friend was reassured by my words. It's not easy to decide to euthanize. Are you going to cut a life short, betraying this creature which loves and trusts you completely? Will your hesitation cause undue suffering? Another friend of mine is wrestling with her dog's end-stage kidney failure. She gives him fluids every day, he's losing weight fast, and it's tough to tell from the outside if he's having any fun anymore.

It's really bloody awful tough to make such a powerful, permanent decision. In fact, when the late Cleveland Amory wrote the final book about his cat Snowball (who shared a name with my own first family pet), I was moved to tears and wrote him to tell him so. My own Snowball was the only pet who just up and died on me; in addition to Plato I've helped two of my own cats and several friends' pets pass over. Plato probably had the best passing, because it happened in his own back yard on a sunny day, no stainless steel tables and no cars to stress him out. My wife's cat Gremlin also had a home death on Samhain two years ago, and the vet who shepherded her over always made a practice of saying, "Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again" when the end came.

I even was trusted with making that decision for my father, and I am grateful that he placed that level of trust in me. In that case, my decision could not be unilateral; if it were I would have allowed him to go two weeks earlier, but my family needed to time to come to terms with his brain injury and I don't believe he suffered in his coma. I feel blessed that I have never wavered or doubted when I have needed to make that decision; I have a clarity in that moment and know that it's time.

I can only hope that my clarity will be passed on to whoever must make the decision to allow me to pass over.

How to change your toothbrush and leave no trace

2010-07-11T09:33:00.001-04:00

Toothbrushes should be changed to keep our mouths healthy, we're told. Tossing plastic into landfills should be avoided, we're told. Good dental hygiene can prevent more serious health problems like heart disease, we're told.

We're told a lot about toothbrushes, their value, and their impacts. It's tough to recycle them, and you can almost forget about composting them, so if you remember to replace yours there might be some enviro-guilt. (Check out the picture of a toothbrush that was eaten and puked up by an albatross if you don't have any enviro-guilt.) If you forget, you'll probably get dental guilt.

I looked briefly into the history of toothbrushes and was reminded of the chewing sticks that you can still pick up at Pennsic War (or in my case, at my local open source tech cafe). There's a commercial version called the Natural Toothbrush that seems to, erm, have a handle on this problem, as demonstrated in their how-to video:

It's a great idea, but if the demo is accurate you can only brush the fronts of your teeth, so I don't think it's all that helpful unless you're Robin Hood. However, bamboo seems a much better option for creating a compostable toothbrush - and at a fair price, as well.

If composting is not an option but you're still bothered by the waste, I think the Preserve's toothbrushes are the bomb. They are made of number 5 plastic (best known for yogurt cups), which is usually too much of a pain to recycle, but they created their own recycling program to ease that pain. The brushes come with a mail-back pouch if you order them online (and as a promotion they're even paying the postage), and they accept number 5 plastics at Whole Foods so they can make more. Shoppers can only drop yogurt cups and Preserve toothbrushes in the bins, because most brushes are made of unknown materials in China, which is apparently the toothbrush capital of the world. Preserve makes all its products in the United States, which has the added bonus (for me) of reducing the energy impacts of shipping them.

What makes me love Preserve even more is the toothbrush subscription program that I've signed up for. I'm a good enough Pagan to note the passing of the seasons, and I use solstices and equinoxes as a time to christen a new toothbrush. However, I procrastinated at Yule until well after the summer solstice, so obviously I need a little more help. Thirteen bucks gets me four of them, shipped every three months, with mailers to return them for recycling.

I have to admit I'm intrigued by that bamboo toothbrush, but the fact that I have to contact them special for a shipping quote makes Preserve a better option for me at the moment. I will evaluate again in a year and see which choice appears to leave no trace. In the meantime, though, I have found a list of uses for old toothbrushes which will come in handy, even if none of the options are "bury it in wax."

Summer growth and change

2010-07-10T11:40:00.000-04:00

The summer heat always makes things change, whether they thrive and grow or simply wither on the vine. This holds true for blogs as well as living things. There are some exciting changes afoot for this blog:

There's a new name - True Pagan Warrior. It reflects, among other things, a desire to name everything I touch to correspond with my own initials.
The new name comes complete with a new URL - www.truepaganwarrior.com.
To the right you'll now see a chance to like the TPW page on Facebook. (The page itself will eventually have content which isn't on the blog, so don't be shy with the liking.)
The new templates available from Blogger stink, so that didn't change.

Hopefully all of this new stuff will lead to, well, inspiration to post regularly. If nothing else, posts shall be made at least as quickly as the Earth's crust moves. This will never be the Wild Hunt or anything of that sort, but hopefully it will be a voice that enriches the chorus.

How I became a Geocon (or: True Tales of a Pagan Republican)

2010-07-08T10:46:00.000-04:00

I've had a tough time deciding how seriously I should take my political party registration, and by extension which party to belong to. I wasn't registered to any party at first (they called it "independent" in those days, but the advent of the Independence Party of America saw that changed to "unaffiliated" so inattentive voters wouldn't register with that party by mistake. I'm thinking of forming an Unaffiliated Party, but I digress.), but I eventually joined the Green Party because of its unambiguous environmental agenda.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

Yes, the Green Party cares about the environment, but it spends a tremendous amount of energy on social justice issues, which I believe is an entirely separate agenda. I agree with the environmental agenda, but I'm a social conservative with libertarian streaks; when it comes to people I believe in individual freedom, which is in conflict with a lot of social-justice work. I remain convinced that the Green Party would be more effective if it focused on the beastly things we do to the planet and let another group focus on the beastly things we do to each other.

So that's when I became a Republican.

It started out as a joke (like these things often do), but I came to realize some things about party politics.

A hyper-focused agenda doesn't get a party any traction.
A political party's views is a representation of its members, not the other way around.
Having more than one choice on Election Day is supposed to be the point.

In my home state, smaller parties fight for members by running major-party candidates on their lines. It's the only way the system will let them play, and they're stupid enough to think it benefits them. In my town, this means three or four lines for Town Supervisor, but only one name. It's a Democratic town, and the Republicans have left the field.

My understanding of Republicans is informed by my late father (who wanted to legalize marijuana and kick George W Bush out of the party) and Teddy Roosevelt (who welcomed immigrants as long as they embraced America over their own culture, and started the National Park System). I've come to realize that "conservative" and "conservation" come from the same word, and that wanting to save the Earth isn't actually a very liberal idea at all.

I like the idea of spending money to protect those without a voice, such as forests, deer, and children. I believe that money on programs for humans is a red herring, because I'd rather that money be in my own pocket so I can decide how to spend it, thanks. Put the blank check I'm willing to write for education into something useful like teaching kids how to value the congealed energy that is money, and trust us to make our own decisions.

I believe in a transparent, simplified tax system that makes it very clear how much we're spending to fund our government. Don't hide it behind thousands of little taxes and fees, and don't tax businesses. Business is just going to pass the cost on to me as a price increase; I would rather it all be wrapped up in one big tax bill so I can see what's going to Uncle Sam and what's not. Systems like the value added tax hide the true cost of government.

I call myself a Geocon because I'm a conservative Pagan Republican. Conservation of our natural and human resources (kids) will protect our future, preserve our economy, and keep the United States a strong and relevant nation. There are plenty of Pagan Democrats, but Pagan Republicans should not be restricted to people who "cling to their guns and their religion."

Spell for a Prosperous Home and Marriage

2009-10-18T12:56:00.003-04:00

When my wife and I selected our wedding rings, we were excited by the prospect of having an acorn arrive with them. We secured a place to plant the young tree (our own property being small and already well populated by trees) and went about the process of bringing the acorn through dormancy into germination. The acorn was not viable, however, so when we had our rings refinished they sent us a new one, which felt alive.

When we bought our home, which is very nearly on a corner lot, we learned that the sellers had subdivided off the bulk of the property so that they could sell for a lower price. We were able to buy this home because of the reduced price, but we still would like to rejoin that land with ours.

For the new moon today, I collected leaves in the cold October rain from the four corners of our property as we would like it. I left them outside in a bucket to get wetter as I prepared a fire in the hearth.

The fire itself I started as I always do, with tinder and newspaper, but atop this I placed a prosperity spell I had worked some months ago. It was based loosely on some Hoodoo practices I heard learned about, but in the end I was left with a fair amount of green wax hardened onto brown paper with a number of coins embedded within. Burning this talisman would release the intentions of the spell.

As the fire began, I put some apple cider on to simmer. I added cloves to draw good luck to the home, allspice for prosperity and success, and stirred in a cinnamon stick for love, luck, and money. The ingredients have other uses that I agree with in general but don't focus on as I'm mulling.

When the cider was ready, we could tell because the smell of it permeated the house, taking with it the intentions of good luck, prosperity, and love. We brought in the bucket of leaves, transferring some of them into a large bowl. We poured water in to submerge the leaves, and then removed them one by one to wrap the acorn. We packed it into a ziploc bag, surrounded with wet leaves, and placed it in the refrigerator to signal the beginning of its dormancy period. In six months we'll start the germination process.

The cider we then poured into two mugs, and used to toast Pomona before the fire. We'll save the cinnamon stick for other cider magic as the days grow shorter, and then lengthen into the cold months beyond.

Economic Crisis is Entirely Complicated

2009-03-18T19:30:00.002-04:00

AIG should follow through with its badly-negotiated contracts, and should do so without using one dime of the bailout money.

The roots of our economic crisis are actually really, really complicated; we've learned to do things with money that are so dizzying that we really have no idea what's going to happen next. It comes from the belief that since we invented the stuff, we must understand that laws it behaves under. I'm looking fnordward to seeing how that theory turns out, but in the meantime we're stuck sorting through a hip-deep pool of securitized instruments that's had a slew of interesting derivatives poured into the mess.

To quote myself:

The reason why you should never invest in something you don't understand is because if you don't understand it, someone is going to increase their own profit with your ignorance.

These complicated financial instruments were created because someone found an obscure loophole or a clever sales pitch and manufactured something that would make money hand over fist - but that clever person never spelled out whose hand, and which fist. For all the money you hear about the securitization industry making by slicing and bundling mortages into investment vehicles, you can be sure that lots more got made in ways that none of us really understand yet. If it's complicated, it was designed that way to obfuscate its true purpose.

Luckily for us, not everything in the recovery is going to be as complicated as the downfall. For example, the current flap about the insanely large bonuses given to AIG employees - the same ones that brought the company down? I think the solution to that egregious violation of the public trust is to make AIG pay the bonuses, but with their own money. I wonder how quickly they would backpedal if they had to cough up every cent themselves?

When Money is Worthless, What Next?

2009-03-15T09:44:00.003-04:00

I understand that inflation is one of the effects of supply and demand; increasing the supply of money in an economy lowers demand for it, making it less valuable. Zimbabwe's economy has taken that to an extreme, with an estimated inflation rate of 90 sextillion percent.

Blink.

I can't even wrap my mind around that number. It dwarfs inflation in Weimar's Germany, which was a mere 850 billion percent and made wheelbarrows much more practical than wallets, at least for citizens that didn't have five-billion mark notes kicking around and needed to buy a loaf of bread or two.

So when so much money has been printed that it becomes effectively worthless, what can be done? Is there a restart button that can be pushed? I know that other countries have devalued their own currency, effectively doing the opposite of printing more money by requiring people to exchange their existing cash for bills that actually have a value, but what I can't figure out is how people function in a country where money really has no meaning.

If I have no money, I'm poor. I can't buy the things that my friends and neighbors can. I will either do without, or people will give me things (goods or money), or I will find a way to earn more (converting my mental, physical, or spiritual energy into a form that I can convert into goods and services). But what if my friends, neighbors, and government are all poor as well? What happens if no one has any money to give me, and the work I can find doesn't pay me enough to buy a cup of rice to feed my six children?

While the experts debate the economic realities of hyperinflation, I wonder if a metaphysical approach would be more or less helpful. The value of money is officially tied to something so that we can negotiate price and value. The United States has tied its own currency to gold, silver, and . . . whatever it's tied to these days. But the only thing that money is actually linked to is the effort it takes to create the value behind it, right? For instance:

How many steaks can I get if I butcher that cow?
How many trips to Albany will that full tank of gas get me?
If you knit me a sweater, is that as valuable to me as a hot meal?

The people of Zimbabwe still exist, they still farm, they still have strong bodies and sharp minds with which to create goods and services of lasting value. Their currency is worthless, but they are not. I can only draw two conclusions from this:

Money has failed to serve a useful purpose and is now no more useful than the proverbial ice cubes for Eskimos.
The continuing existence of money in Zimbabwe is distracting from the fundamental truth that all value assigned by humans is based on human desire and need.

If I start seeing numbers printed on my money that I don't have names for, I'm signing up for a time bank. After all, I was taught not to invest in anything I don't understand, and in Zimbabwe at least, I don't even understand money. To put it in Pagan terms, money there has left the realm of Earth to exist entirely as Air - a real imbalance.

Pagan Godparent Research

2009-03-01T09:42:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking a fair amount about how godparenting does - and does not - work in the Pagan community. I've got more than a few ideas, but I decided that before I put them all together that I would like to find out about the experiences of other Pagans as well. To that end, I have a questionnaire!

You may respond in a comment or, if you prefer your answers not to be so public, comment with a means to contact you. If I would like to use direct quotes in any articles I write I will ask in advance.

If you answer "no" to the first two questions, there's probably no real need to continue, but thanks anyway!

1 - do you follow a Pagan, Neopagan, or other earth-centered faith?
If yes, feel free to include your specific path:

2 - are you a godparent?
If you think you are but you just don't call it that, what do you call
the relationship?

3 - how many godchildren do you have?

4 - any of your godchildren belong to a non-Pagan faith?
If yes, did the parents know about the faith difference before you
agreed to the relationship?

5 - How frequently are you in contact with your godchild? Daily,
weekly, monthly, less frequently?
Is the contact one-way (like sending cards or gifts) or two-way (like
email exchanges or spending time together)?

6 - what sorts of activities do you do together, if any?

7 - what percentage of contact with your godchild is focused on
religious instruction, conversation, or activities?

8 - is the religious aspect of your relationship highly important,
somewhat important, or not at all important to you? to your godchild?

Fear of Money

2009-02-26T17:16:00.006-05:00

So I choose not to accept that giving is tax-driven. Instead I subscribe to the law of attraction tenet that generosity begets generosity, and figure that fear keeps it from working better, or at least keeps people from believing that it works in the first place.

Fear is pretty strongly linked with money when you think about it. We fear that:

wealth will change us.
we won't be able to make ends meet.
we will make less than our spouses.
people will judge us if we don't own stylish things.
people will judge us if we do own stylish things.
the love of money is the root of all evil.
money is used to keep the oppressed, oppressed.
if we spend all of our money we will never get any more.

There are a lot of fears about money, and they can be contradictory. It's not easy to have a healthy relationship with the stuff. Obsessive love and revulsion are par for the course, rather than peace and understanding. Money is given the same sense of exotic naughtiness as pornography and recreational drug use - we crave the stuff but hate what it does to us. Not a healthy relationship at all.

The fear and loathing we link to money is what keeps the law of attraction from working well, or from working in more mysterious ways. Maybe we need to have government-encouraged charitable giving, not because people aren't generous, but because the fear of poverty otherwise impedes charity and the government moves in to fill the void. Perhaps it's not a fear of poverty at all the stays our hand - maybe some people are afraid, deep down, that being too generous will bring too much abundance into their lives!

Money's a scary thing, no doubt about it. Maybe it's so scary because it can be solid, which makes us feel like we understand that stuff. I'm sure we didn't actually "invent" money; we tapped into the laws of the Universe to find a way to turn a day's work on the farm into a tankful of gas. It may look very mundane, but there's something very magical about a force that powerful.

Is Giving Tax-Driven?

2009-02-26T16:51:00.003-05:00

". . . the wealthy in fact respond to tax incentives for donations. If the after-tax cost of charitable giving goes down, the wealthy give more; if it goes up, they give less."

This lies at the heart of concerns about President Obama's plan to cut charitable tax deductions for the wealthy; what if the deduction really is the only thing propping the donation rate up in this anemic economy? I really hope that this isn't the case, for a few reasons:

It would shake my faith in the free market economy. I wholeheartedly believe that all of our economic crises were at the very least exacerbated by inconsistent regulation. The only reason a free market economy doesn't work is because nobody's ever seen one. I'd like to think that, given no cattle prod or carrot whatsoever, people would give some of their money to charity.
It would shake my faith in wealthy people. The amount that one is allowed to deduct comes from the amount of money one made for the year. Giving it away, even with a tax break, means you have less money than you did when you started. Unless the amount of giving would drop you into the next lower tax bracket, of course - but that's more a problem of the graduated tax system, so in that case I'll let it pass.
It would shake my faith in a flat income tax, or at least any hope of getting one in my lifetime. Our graduated system creates a disincentive to become so wealthy as to be too highly taxed - at least on paper. The only reason powerful, wealthy people haven't changed this system is because it isn't really to their detriment at all - the deductions and legal tax dodges shift the tax burden back onto the rest of us. The gleeful tone taken in the Nonprofit Law Prof Blog post is popular, but it's counterproductive. A flat tax, fairly written, would get everyone paying their fair share.

"Error Check System" spreads through Facebook

2009-02-21T09:16:00.006-05:00

Thanks for helping me deal with this glitch!

That was Selena Fox's comment to me this morning after I warned her that she had gotten lured into a new phenomenon: a genuinely malicious Facebook application. I had already gotten several notifications that my friends "experienced errors" while viewing my profile, and inviting me to view them with something called "Error Check System."

I clicked the link and found an official-looking page that wasn't like most other application pages on Facebook . . . no real information about the app itself. Suspicious, I clicked the "about" link at the bottom of the page - this is added by Facebook, so app developers can't get rid of it. First thing I saw was the phrase, "This application was not developed by Facebook." Bingo. Praise Caffeina for making me sharp enough to spot a scam!

A Google search showed me a great warning page about this Facebook malware, complete with screen shots, that confirmed all of my suspicions. But then I got another notification about errors, this time from Selena.

Now I posted the above link to my profile and sent it to my friends that had already installed this app, but I know that Selena Fox is a special case. She has hundreds of friends and a dial-up connection, so she can't always respond quickly online. I envisioned Pagans around the world spreading this malware, which may have more sinister intentions than just replicating itself. I shot her a quick chat, and we got on the phone so I could help her make sure her profile was scrubbed of the thing and her teeming army of friends were notified.

This is my first encounter with a really malicious bit of code on Facebook - I guess it's now more like MySpace than it would like to admit! Selena pondered the possibility that it was created as a reaction to the Facebook TOS controversy of late, and knowing how vindictive coders can be, I'm inclined to think she's right.

Pagan celebrities have an interesting challenge on Facebook, one that may be unique. Since they connect so well to people personally, their Facebook profiles often get overwhelmed by adoring and caring people. I suppose other famous people also have hundreds of friends (if not thousands), but they probably have a staff member to manage the profile. I can't imagine how time-consuming it is to get the number of invitations Selena must receive - and she's on dial-up! Luckily, she has a Facebook page, which is really a better way to communicate with fans that admire you but don't necessarily know you personally. It's a suggestion I also gave to Margot Adler - what Pagan wouldn't want to be the friend of the author of Drawing Down the Moon? But how much time should she be expected to respond to requests on Facebook? Pages allow two-way contact with fans in a manageable way; updates that go out to all fans, and a Wall and discussion boards as well. Kirk White has one, and I believe he uses it to advise fans of upcoming appearances, something else that can easily get lost in the Newsfeed if you have many friends. Heck, even I have a page - although I'm not a fan of me yet. I just wanted to justify my article on FB pages.

Moral of the story? I got a very nice chat on the phone with Selena Fox, which is a great way to start your day. After the crisis was averted, we chatted about my handfasting pictures and I told her how I Foolishly crashed the gate at PSG - but that's a topic for another post.

Is it Gay to Call Gays Gay?

2009-01-21T11:56:00.002-05:00

I get shocked looks or nervous laughter from my friends when I do it. There are programs in schools to teach kids that it's a bad idea. An entire reclamation movement wants to make it a thing of the past. But I still do it.

I say, "That's gay." It's long past time for me to explain why.

The common wisdom among openminded people is that it's inappropriate to use gay in a perjorative sense, as in "weak, stupid, ineffective." The wisdom stems, I believe, from the impression that this usage of the word links those traits with homosexuality. I don't believe it does. Rather, I am of the view that it's a circular definition which stems from the ridiculous attempt to change the definition of gay to "homosexual" in the first place.

Gay used to mean happy. It was a perfectly nice word. Then some group of wordsmiths managed to get people to start using it instead of "homosexual," which is a long word desperate for a shorter cousin. Gay is a short word, but unless you believe homosexuality can be entirely encompassed by a pale caracature of limp wrists, tittering, and pristine nails, it really doesn't fit. It's two dimensional, shallow, and insulting to try to make that word synonymous with homosexuality, and I don't think it entirely worked.

Granted, gay has entered the English lexicon along with queer and other terms, but I think the language has resisted this change. In fact, it seems to me that the attempt to turn gay into homosexual is "weak, stupid, ineffective." It doesn't make sense. However, the dismal failure of the word has successfully attached itself as a definition.

There is precedent for words receiving meanings unexpected and ironic. Language is guided by the collective will of its speakers, and nothing that does not follow intuitively really ever gets adopted. Hussy comes from the Middle English houswif. A girl was a child of either sex, a knight was a boy, and a counterfeit was once a legitimate copy. We sometimes try very hard to control the meanings of words, but invariably the one that makes the most sense survives in the end.

I never liked gay as a homosexual label, and I think the perjorative definition is more a comment on that usage more than it is on homosexuality itself. I expect the language to give gay up entirely to that perjorative meaning, and finally free the queer community from its insulting associations. I just wish we could move things along and ditch this turd of a word once and for all.

MLK Day - How Convenient!

2009-01-19T09:26:00.002-05:00

Hey, a holiday in the doldrums of late January! We can take a three-day weekend, maybe get away somewhere . . . wasn't it nice of Martin Luther King, Jr., to be born on the third Monday?

I really think this holiday is a sham. Not that King doesn't deserve some sort of recognition for his amazing life, mind you, but if the intention was to honor him, why do you need to do it on a Monday? Is it more difficult to have observances of his life on a Wednesday or Saturday, if that's when his birthday falls? MLK was a great man, and I think just as much could be done in his memory regardless of the day of the week. So why make it a Monday?

The only reason to mandate that a holiday fall on a Monday is because there's interest in a long weekend. There's nothing wrong with trying to take Mondays off, but if that's the reason for a holiday, why not just make a Third Monday of January and close businesses for that reason alone? Would the movement to honor King have lost steam if didn't offer a mechanism to eliminate those two pesky Presidential birthdays in February that so rarely gave us a weekend?

I still leave in fear of seeing a 9/11 White Sale before I die.

Tithing Enough for Love?

2009-01-17T09:00:00.004-05:00

I think I'm ready to steal tithes from the Church.

I'm only thinking about the idea of tithes, mind you - Pagans and Christians have a long tradition of sharing ideas, and I'd like to put this one on the Mantle of Good Ideas alongside "seminary" and "Christmas carols."

A wise man once said to me, "Anybody can save ten percent." A longtime Boy Scout leader and surrogate father to countless boys, he explained to me that saving is all relative. The poorest of the poor could learn to scrimp by without one penny in ten and not notice the difference, just as the stratospherically wealthy could. In fact, income being no measure of financial management skills, some of the wealthy would have a tougher time of it.

Another man whom I admire is Albert Einstein. It's hard not to look up to a man who owned a set of identical suits so he wouldn't have to waste time deciding what to wear. I don't even know if Einstein said it, but he is often quoted as remarking that compound interest is either the most powerful force in the Universe or the most powerful human invention. Einstein was a smart enough man that he probably could have said all sorts of wise things that he never did, so I've always taken it on faith that, at the very least, he would have agreed with the sentiment.

Anyone can save ten percent. Compound interest is an immensely powerful force. And, lest I forget, money is congealed energy. I think these ideas can be molded into a tithing model that fits the Pagan worldview.

Where would I pay a Pagan tithe?
Pagans are a self-determined lot. Even large, organized Pagan groups tend to cluster off into smaller covens and circles. We move from one group to another as circles dissolve and new covens are born. Our legally-recognized churches aren't known for opulent sanctuaries built as a tangible acknowledgment of the love we feel for our gods. The structure we've created really isn't conducive to passing a collection bowl around and using the proceeds to run a methadone clinic. Who's going to be responsible for the money we collect, and decide how to use it?

Well, if want want a job done well you're going to have to do it yourself. We're going to have to pay that ten percent tithe to ourselves.

How is a Pagan tithe spent?
Covens, groves, and solitaries should make those decisions. Who better to make sure that the money is used appropriately? Just setting aside that ten percent in a separate account is a victory, though; that's a step towards controlling the flow of money. The larger the amount that's saved, the more impact those decisions can make. The possibilities are boundless:

Pay college tuition for a Pagan child. How can education not improve the world?
Join or start an investment club that uses socially-responsible screening or shareholder activism which meets your goals.
Use it to make up the difference to buy recycled, free-range, organic, hormone-free, sweatshopless dolphin-safe stuff that usually costs more than you can justify spending.
Give it to homeless people.
Take in a stray animal.
Donate to your favorite charity.
Adopt a polar bear.
Spend the dollars at Pagan businesses.

Just don't spend the money on anything without thought. Not everyone would want to spend their tithe promoting industrial hemp, but as long as you feel dollars thus spent will improve the world, it's appropriate.

Pagan tithing should be as individual as Pagans, but that doesn't mean it can't make a big impact on our world.

Why Men Can't Pee Neatly

2009-01-12T09:55:00.004-05:00

Warning: graphic biological content ahead.

Women (and some men) that live with men and boys can periodically be heard bellowing the cry, "Lift the seat!" when they are tasked with cleaning the toilet. Dried urine stains on all parts of that porcelain appliance can be pretty disgusting to deal with, and it's a challenge that has divided the genders since we first started putting a roof over our peeing-places.

I'm familiar with more than one strategy to deal with the unsanitary fire hoses men were gifted with upon their creation.

When in Rome: My brother, once he had his own toilet to clean, accepted his poor aim and started peeing in a seated position. I once suggested this as a solution to a coworker, a single mother with a two-year-old boy, but she told me, "I want my son to pee like a man." She may have had a point; a kid trying to head for the booth in the boys' room at school might quickly discover how cruelly his peers treat anything that hinted at being different. Nevertheless, I'm and adult and can handle criticism, so I've tried it, only to discover that aim-and-pray is rather hardwired in me by now. I only remember after I clean the bathroom, and then only for a few days.
Up against the wall: My mother always found the idea of urinals "disgusting." She didn't clean bathrooms for a living, or maybe she would have been more appreciative. Yes, it's a little nerve wracking the first time you're asked to stand at attention and stare at the wall (particularly if you come from a home where nudity isn't the norm), but newer mens' rooms have partitions to afford a bit more privacy. And it's much better than the trough you still find in bars from time to time.
Go outside: A boy's memories should include trying to write his name in the snow. Peeing against a tree or behind a bush has all sorts of problems, including tickets for exposure, sanitation problems if it's done too often, and frostbite if it's done too far into the winter. But you don't have pee stains staring at you the next day, and it is kinda fun.
Take cover: I make it a habit of lowering the toilet cover after every use. That way, I reason, the next person will be lifting something to do their business, and I can't imagine a guy lifting the cover to pee while leaving the seat in place. It's just as easy to lift both as one. The only complaint I heard about this was from a woman who said that she'd be just as likely to pee right on the cover in the night as not. That, I contend, is not my problem.

So why is it that men have such terrible aim? After all, we use this thing several times a day; it should be a snap to get the targeting computer calibrated. Well perhaps I can give a hint of a clue by way of this anecdote:

I awoke, feeling the pressure in my bladder, and after clearing the cobwebs from my brain I arose and walked unsteadily to the bathroom as my sense of balance tried to catch up with my newborn wakefulness. I lifted both cover and seat and took aim at the bowl some two feet below, using all the skill and practice of my nearly four decades of urination. I released the bladder muscle and let fly. My urine burst forth in a split stream; on part hit the edge of the bowl to scatter about, while the other splashed upon the tiled floor. Frantically I tried to stop what I had started, which is no easy task with a nightful of urine clamoring for escape.

This probably doesn't occur in societies without clothes, but for the rest of us, stuff gets in there from time to time and messes with the flow. I don't know about other guys, but I don't make a habit of performing a pre-pee inspection, although it's obviously a good idea.

I'm going back to peeing sitting down again, but I doubt it will last.

How Vermonters Welcome the New Year

2009-01-03T08:47:00.005-05:00

"2008 is dead, now let's see the birth of a Champ!"

When I went up to Vermont for New Year's Eve, I expected a pretty quiet night. The last time I celebrated the turning of the year in that state, in the early 90s, I spent most of the night looking through a telescope; I learned a lot about the stars and how many layers I was wearing that night. This time the plans had included First Night, but Burlington was a bit far and a bit expensive, so I figured a few drinks with friends, maybe some talk about resolutions to pass the time, and we'd be set.

However, as the hour of reckoning approached, we found out that the neighbors had a tradition of their own that they liked to follow. My friend whom I've called Noodleman in past posts became our gatekeeper as surely as Tom Bombadil did for the young hobbits, urging us excitedly into the eerie stillness that comes from great cold in the mountains. We skittered across the road and down the snowy slope to where a flammable, man-shaped construct had been assembled of scrap wood, cardboard, clothing and rope. Introduced briefly to the family and resident partygoers, we all stood around as the father immolated this vaguely manlike representation of 2008. As it went up in flames, it looked almost, but not entirely, unlike the picture to the right. The smell suggested accelerants and the way the construct collapsed kept us well clear of the heat, so it was with no little relief to me when our attention was directed within the tiny house itself.

There were more than a few comments about whether all the attendees, now that our merry band had come across the road, would fit within. As we removed our shoes we were greeted by happy dogs, curious cats, and a warm hostess whose name was lost to me as the barely-controlled crowd entered her home. It seemed large enough for us all inside, so I wasn't clear about the concern as we were all handed drums to play. Then, however, the whole lot of us was taken into the darkened bathrooms with our drums. In the half-full tub was a wooden boat, upon which was a wax effigy of Champ, the creature that lives in Lake Champlain. Pounding our drums with gusto, we forced the boat around the tub with sound alone to propel it. Once, twice, thrice it circled the claw-foot tub before the officiant declared that Champ had been born. There was much rejoicing, and the people did feast upon the orangutan and the fruit-bat and . . .

Well we actually returned across the road at that time, declining the drum circle invitation, but full of a new wonder for Vermonters and their traditions. They don't all build a Wicker Man with the same types of materials or level of skill, but apparently they do so whether they're Pagan or not. And now I suspect that a Champ cabal is alive and well in Starksboro, Vermont. We Discordians must stick apart, indeed.

Adding Yule and Christmas to my Ashes of Community

2008-12-28T19:38:00.004-05:00

Now that I have a fireplace in my home I expect my ashes of community to get a longer pedigree. We had ritual fires for both Yule and Christmas, because a fire in the fireplace just makes everything better.

The last time I tried to post a list of my ashes turned out pretty messy, so now that I know how Google Spreadsheets works with blogs I won't be doing that again. Not only are there missing columns, making it impossible to read the list, but the post lacks any context other than the introduction to the list itself. It's a fine introduction, but I picture someone happening upon that post as they surf the web and . . . just surfing away. Hopefully my writing will get better, like fine eggnog.

So I keep my own list of ritual ashes someplace where it can be found, but that kind of convenience has confused some people. I've had people offer to send me ashes from distant fires - it's a kind and generous offer, but it defeats the purpose! How I want to get the ashes from powerful, moving, and stupendous ritual fires is by having you collect them and then put them in a fire when I'm there. I am always honored when I am permitted to put ashes into a ritual fire, and it's even more exciting when someone else does it too! I was at a fire once when five or six people stood up and recited the pedigree of the ashes that they were adding to the mix - that's pretty intense!

I love the mystic quality of the 30,000-year unbroken tradition that led to modern Witchcraft, whether or not there's the slightest evidence that it's true. I think the Ashes of Community can, or will, have that same romantic power; I just love the thought that the ashes in my little container includes remnants of rituals in places I've never seen. I want someday to have ashes from rituals that took place before I was born, but I don't know if anyone's got any ritual ashes that old - I may have to accept 1990 as the most ancient date for this tradition.

Nevertheless, if you attend a ritual that I'm at, bring a little box or a film container or a ziploc bag and you can get some ashes that include the fire we lit for our Yule celebration, and the one that kept us company during Christmas dinner. I hope you'll bring some of your own Yule log ashes and share, but I'll give you some just for dancing at the fire with me.

Best. Yule. Ever.

2008-12-27T09:55:00.003-05:00

I've been driving a hybrid car since January 2004. I didn't get a hybrid because I was interested in saving gas, which is a good thing since shortly thereafter I started a period of adding serious miles to the car. Weekly 200-mile round trips for eight months followed by an entrepreneurial period (read: driving to visit clients). Hybrids can't be justified in gas savings, since the prices on these cars spikes whenever the gas prices do; I got mine because it's got 97% fewer emissions than a gas-only car.

Enter the brilliant wife (she likes it when I say that, mostly because I only do so when I mean it) and her amazing Yule gift, a TerraPass. I was introduced to the concept many years ago by my friend Barb, who has been passing them around at the winter solstice for quite some time. For 2009, the already-reduced carbon footprint of my automobile is being offset still more; Robin (my brilliant wife) converted the energy of her labors into money, and used that to buy a TerraPass. That money will be used to invest in more renewable energy resources, contributing to the likelihood that the next time I have to buy a car it won't run on fossil fuels at all.

I'm one of many Americans who has been so sucked into our car culture that I'm unable to reduce the amount of driving that I do more than I already have. I've moved my income as close to home as I can, I've all-but abandoned my friends outside of town except for special occasions, and I walk for local errands whenever it would not be prohibited by needs of cargo room, my failing limbs, or really crappy weather that simply will not take "no" as an answer from my meager protective foul-weather gear.

Incidentally, I have a coupon for TerraPass merchandise that needs to be used by January 31, and I don't expect to use it. It's "not valid on carbon offset or gift certificate purchases," but there may be something else on the site that one of my readers would like 10% off on.

In the New Year: Pagans and their Money

2008-12-24T11:02:00.003-05:00

Money is congealed energy, and releasing it releases life's possibilities.
Joseph Campbell

Pagans have assorted new year's days - I've celebrated the new year on Samhain, Beltaine, and the beginning of the new television season myself - but the cultural association with January 1 is the strongest one for me. So, it's time to set goals for this blog for 2009.

I've always been fascinated by the relationship between Pagans and their money. I remember ten years ago thinking about giving a class on the topic at Etheracon, but I never pulled together the material. In 2009 I'm going to keep the money theme in mind and try to return to the pagan-money relationship at least monthly. It's a love-hate relationship that is worth exploring.

I'm also going to try to include a picture or video from time to time, just to mix things up.

Ritual for honoring a Christmas tree

2008-12-21T22:09:00.004-05:00

This is a ritual I just kind of made up, and I think it's got a few gaps, but the idea is clear enough.

Ritual for honoring a Christmas tree

If choosing the tree while it is still alive:

Place bare hand against the tree.

Tree, I am _____________. Today I am asking you if you will lay down your life to join my family as we welcome the return of the sun. If you agree to this thing, I promise that you shall be honored. We shall celebrate you in lights and finery, surround you with joy and hope, and praise your sacrifice. We shall ensure that your remains nourish the Earth so that your spirit will never die.

If choosing from trees which have already been cut:

Place bare hand against the tree.

Tree, I am _____________. You have laid down your life, and if your spirit is willing, I ask you to join my family as we welcome the return of the sun. I promise that you shall be honored. We shall celebrate you in lights and finery, surround you with joy and hope, and make your death into a meaningful sacrifice. We shall ensure that your remains nourish the Earth so that your spirit will never die.

If you feel the tree is not the correct one:

Tree, I thank you for considering my request. May your days be blessed by bud, root, and thorn.

Preparing the tree at home:

Place the tree in a cold, sheltered area until it is time to set it up.
Cut off the bottom of the trunk to allow for better water absorption.
Dissolve the measures of honey into a hot cup of water. Stir this into enough water to fill the tree stand.
The men should set the tree up in its stand.
The women should add the water.
Decorate the tree:

Skirt to shelter it as the ground once did
Balls and bells to foretell the life of Spring
Lights to honor the returning Sun
Sing songs or chant while decorating

Surround or gather near the tree and sing a carol of your choosing to the tree. Repeat daily.

Saying Farewell:

While removing decorations again sing to the tree, choosing songs of parting and farewell
Allow the tree to rest at least three days outside, if possible

Allow it to decompose naturally if there is space, as it will make a good nest for many animals
Donate it to a mulching facility
Cut off the bottom foot of the trunk for next year's Yule log if a Maypole isn't available

The idea came out of writing an article on the Care and Feeding of Cut Christmas Trees. Suggestions and feedback welcome. What would you add?

Giving my best, I guess

2008-12-21T11:16:00.004-05:00

"So you want me to give you a list of things that I want, and then you're going to surprise me by giving me one of the things that I told you that I wanted you to surprise me with?"

A lot of things have helped form my attitudes about giving gifts, but I think that couples gifts pushed me over the edge.

It's the thought that counts, right? I always took that to mean that thought should go into choosing a gift, because it should be something that the recipient will appreciate. It's a tangible expression of your feelings for that person, whether you want it to be or not. So how do you select a gift for a couple?

No matter how close two people are to each other, they aren't identical. Each of them has different interests and passions. If you get a single gift for two people, and you choose it well, it will probably only relate to those things the two people have in common. Couples gifts tend to be rather generic and bland as a result: holiday-themed items, coffee table books, some hand-stitched dish towels. Very nice things, but when you're shopping for two as one your selection tends to only represent part of your relationship.

Couples gifts started me realizing just how insincere some gift exchanges are. I set a pretty high standard for myself: I really don't want to buy a gift for someone if I don't know what they want by my own observation. I feel like I ought to be able to pick a gift for someone without asking them for suggestions. If I can't, then I probably don't know that person well enough to be getting them a gift in the first place. That can change from year to year, too; changing jobs or homes or hobbies can all change how well I know any particular person.

Not giving a gift can be tough, and sometimes I buy something generic because it seems like the lesser of two evils. If I can't figure out what you want without asking, I reason, then the thought represented in my gift should be that I feel enough fondness to want to give you something, but we aren't close enough for me to have a clue what to get. Presto! I get a spoon for the rack on your wall.

I have a college friend whose family has an informal rule - everyone must have a collection. It makes it easier to buy gifts, you see - I know Katie collect monkeys, so it's off to Make-a-Monkey Workshop. Simplifies the process, but I think it takes the effort and thought right out of the equation. I felt the same way about my mother's practice of buying gifts for herself throughout the year, which my father would sell to us kids so we could wrap and give them. If Mom put in all the effort, then what does that say about my relationship with her?

My parents absolutely taught me to abhor giving money as a gift. I recall them giving me money once, and I got my ear pierced with it (and trust me, shoving a rolled-up twenty through your ear is no fun). Since they never did it, I learned that it's a Bad Thing, and that jibes with my attitude about putting thought into a gift. Of course, I've come to understand that money is energy, so how should that change my attitude about giving it? Well, if I were to give my friend a kilowatt hour of electricity, what does that say about our relationship? Maybe there are times when money is an appropriate gift, but it's not my first choice.

However, there is certainly a place for the office gift collection. If you've worked in an office, you've been asked to put money in for Betty's baby or Dennis' engagement from time to time, and I rather like the idea. My rationale is that this is when money is channeled much like magical energy can be in a Cone of Power. The Collectress is asking all of you to channel a portion of your energy (five bucks or so), and she will focus the energy towards its intended recipient. The person focusing that energy is much more likely to have a good idea for an appropriate gift than I do, so I can relax my threshold of when it's appropriate to give.

Missing the music

2008-12-21T11:04:00.003-05:00

To do for 2009: bring back my music.

I don't have any sound on my computer, and it matters more now. I used to do most of my music listening on CD and tape in the car, but I drive less, and much of my music is on my computer, so I hear much less of it now. This time of year I particularly enjoy music, since so much of it is stuff I can sing along to.

I lost my sound when I reinstalled Windows two or three years ago - something very minor went wrong, and the sound drivers didn't install properly. I downloaded them fresh from Dell and again they didn't install; 45 minutes on the phone with their tech support had the employee take me through the same procedure, with the same result. He told me my only option was to reinstall Windows. I had finished that process oh, two hours before the conversation, so I decided to live without sound.

Well I still have no sound, and I still have the same computer. I don't mind how bad it makes my YouTube videos (example below), but this is the time of year when I really tend to miss out on the music. There is sooooooo much really bad Christmas music out there, and only on my computer may I be selective and only listen to the good stuff.

So maybe this is the year to reinstall Windows.

Auto Industry Bailout

2008-12-19T07:39:00.002-05:00

". . . what we’ve been doing since we replaced horses with cars has about run its course, and that it’s actually a Good Thing that the economy is grinding to a near-halt . . ."

That post by Doc Searls explains the no doubt unpopular opinion that sometimes pain is part of the healing process. I understand that thousands of people have jobs that could be lost, and if managed badly, Detroit and other areas of the country are in for a long period of unnecessary suffering. But really, this bailout just doesn't make sense.

Nobody's buying because credit is frozen, the industry magnates explain ruefully. Sounds like money's a bit like blocked chi here. Maybe the best way to get the energy moving - encourage people to buy cars - is to sell cars we can afford to buy without financing.
Nobody's negotiating in good faith for pay cuts, because the unions themselves are more interested in continuing to exist than they are in their members' needs. The best thing that happened to human rights in this country was collective bargaining; one of the worst was allowing unions to require membership to hold a particular job. Without that, the concept of the full-time union employee would fade away and unions would be forced to really negotiate.
Nobody's greedier than car designers, and we deserve them! They will sell the largest and most inefficient vehicles the market will bear, and have frequently raked in stupendous profits. With gas prices plunging, I don't expect many more hybrids to reach market because Americans have zero short-term memory. Auto makers take advantage of our collective inattentiveness, but that doesn't mean we should bail them out just because nobody's buying what they're selling.

I don't support a bailout because it will just be sending good money after bad. However, it's high time we spend at least that much money figuring out what technologies are necessary to get auto workers employed in a successful industry again if this one fails.

Magic, Magick, and the Written Word

2008-12-17T22:10:00.002-05:00

I've always been fascinated by magic, probably because I'm not terribly good at it.

The word itself is interesting. Magic has five letters, whilst magick has six, the last being a "k." Since K stands for Kallisti, which pretty much proves the law of fives is alive and well. Some people make a distinction between stage illusion and "the Art," as it were, by adding the -k. I don't make the distinction, because anyone who doesn't think spelling it with that "k" isn't ridiculous hasn't tried to work out exactly how one pronounces "magickian."

That question of spelling really has put me off of magic to some extent, because to me language is the oldest magic of all, and it really needs to be respected. Well over a year ago I wrote an article about the topic, and in researching it I found a piece by Taylor Ellwood on Suite101. His article was quite informative and gave me a few more sources to look at, and also introduced me to Suite101.com.

So I know that I'm not terribly good at magic, no matter how you spell it, but my search for answers led me to a way to pursue my writing. Granted, I still struggle with the spelling - it probably reduces traffic to some of my articles, this stubbornness - but I'm writing much more now, and enjoying it immensely.

Christmas and Yule Trees: Do Good Pagans Decorate?

2008-12-12T07:15:00.002-05:00

In 1851, Pastor Henry Schwan of Cleveland OH appears to have been the person responsible for decorating the first Christmas tree in an American church. His parishioners condemned the idea as a Pagan practice; some even threatened the pastor with harm. But objections soon dissipated.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Christmas tree. As a child, many memories of joy and excitement occurred under those trees; when I was a young man I railed against the idea of killing an innocent tree to commemorate the birth of Jesus. The practice is and is not linked to both of the major religious paths that I have followed, and in modern times is more a symbol of Giftmas than it is a sacred object.

Reasons I love Christmas trees:

The bring a touch of nature into the home at a time of year when the outside is forbidding.
They are the most sophisticated cat toys man has ever known.
Much prettier decoration than a Festivus pole.
The smell that permeates a home so decorated.
The feeling of old tradition, old magic, old joy.

Reasons I hate Christmas trees:

The artificial ones. I mean, if you want a tree, get a tree.
Cleaning up the needles
The possibility of uncontrolled fire
Watching a tree die each day
Christmas tree farms.

It's a modern development that Pagans are environmentalists, a natural progression of a religion that strives to be in tune with its own environment. Our intellectual ancestors really didn't need to worry about the impact of cutting down a few trees and dripping them with precious metals. It wasn't like today, where hundreds of thousands of trees are cut down to feed the need . . . one national forest sold 230,000 trees, all of which were probably five to seven years old. That's a lot of impact for a couple of weeks of decoration. Neopagans are much more often concerned about environmental impacts, and Christmas trees are a particularly conspicuous impact.

Of course, humans in earlier times had a much darker world to deal with, as well. They weren't distracted by the glitz and glam, the banner ads and neon signs and all-night Thai restaurants that clamor for our attention, so I imagine they had a little bit more time to respect nature. It may be a romantic notion, but I do hope that it was once common to thank the tree for giving its life.

On being a killjoy
So at this time of year when it's easier to curse the darkness and complain about the commercialization of the world, I would rant about the evils of Christmas trees. I was happy to add a little more strife to a stressful time of year, and dust off my sustainably-harvested soapbox, which was festooned with carbon-neutral lights for the occasion.

A couple of years ago, however, I made the decision to enjoy Christmas and Yule alike. The purpose of these festivals of light is to remind us, in the darkest times, that light returns. This is not a time to grind an ax, as it were. I needed to allow a tree into my home.

I will not ask a living tree for permission to take it; there will always be trees dying on lots whether or not I buy one. Instead, I find a tree that was destined for that purpose, and already has been killed but likely doesn't know that it is yet dead. I talk to that tree, and tell it that its death was not entirely pointless. I speak of light and hope and joy, and promise to return the substance of that very tree to the Earth so that it may renew the land.

At the very least, I know that one tree did not die in futility and fear.

Winter's Wisdom

2008-12-08T08:10:00.002-05:00

Every time I go outside since the frost came, I get a whiff of wood smoke in my nostrils. That hasn't always happened. Much of my life was spent on an asphalt-covered sandbar, where cookie-cutter homes are heated by the oil that isn't powering the SUVs parked alongside every curb. If we smiled fire in my youth, it meant that some kids set the weeds in the vacant lot ablaze again.

As a young man, I spent several years in the northern wastes, and I lived in much quieter places where wood stoves were the norm. This was before pellet stoves, mind you; folks had to split wood or hire someone to do the work. At nineteen, around the time when I periodically ran out of food, I also learned the value of an honest day's work. A sixty-something year old man, a woodsman and farmer all his life, taught me to split wood - or tried, anyway.

Placing a thick log on the stump that was flatter than the frozen ground, he waved away the maul. "You just have to look and see where the grain is going," he told me, "so you know which way the wood wants to go." With a blur, the ax came off his shoulder and the log exploded, three pieces of firewood newly-born skittering across the ice. He handed me the ax. "You try."

After carefully sizing up the piece of wood he placed on the stump for me, and testing the weight of the ax, I brought it crashing down with all the vigor of Bobby the Barbarian. Once it reached its mark, the blade came back up nearly as quickly, careening off the wood as if it were rubber instead. "You hit the knot," he explained, pointing out the offending swirl. I peered closely, but my fifteen minutes' experience didn't show it as clearly as this man's half-century or more.

The lesson was more about patience and observation than it ever was about splitting wood, although the wood did need cutting. The sharp smell of smoke on a bitter cold day always makes me think of that time, and of the other people I have known who brave living in chill places where a cheery fire is the first line of defense against an inhospitable winter.

Winter scares me, because it reminds me that if I don't use the only gift I have - my mind - I won't last in the natural world. It's a good sort of fear, though. If one is aware that death is always a heartbeat away, it makes the living a bit more exciting. I can see why thrill seekers do crazy things - it's because they have lost touch with that lesson and want to remember how precious life is.

Somehow I managed to get the same wisdom by trying to keep the wood stove full.

Feeding the Hungry: Paying it Forward

2008-12-07T09:41:00.003-05:00

"The only thing I ask in return as that you do the same for someone else when you are in the position to do so."

That's what my first spiritual teacher told me, circa 1990, when she offered to feed me. I was a college student, living off campus and without a meal plan. Getting and holding a part-time job in an economically depressed area is tough for an unmotivated nineteen-year-old who thinks the world owes him something, so food was not always easy to come by. My teacher was not flush with cash by any means, but she was a priestess of the mother goddess through and through.

She explained to me that when she was a young adult, she had been in a position where food was hard to come by, and that someone had taken her under their wing and kept starvation at bay. I wasn't exactly wasting away, but I survived on a lot of ramen. She told me that she would do the same for me as was done for her, with the same injunction attached: feed another person when I have the means and he or she does not.

I'm not the sort of person that jumps at the chance to give to charity: phone calls from good causes get the same brushoff as the ones trying to woo my vote or inform me about an "opportunity." However, unless my wallet or larder is bare, I will do my very best to keep hunger from the people I know. I don't have the resources to feed every hungry person in the world, but I have kept my promise, and passed its obligation on three times now.

My relationship with that teacher was volatile and emotional, a partnership both good and bad. Her lesson about connecting with, and feeding, a person in need is one that I will carry with me throughout my life.

Cats: Companions, Pets, or Free Beings?

2008-11-16T17:08:00.002-05:00

My wife and I are wrestling with the roaming habits of our cats. Our two boy cats got out when the house was being painted last month, and since then have gotten better and better at finding ways to escape into the vacant land behind to our home. In front of our home is a very busy road, which they've avoided thus far in their adventures, but it makes us nervous.

Working for a vet, I have gotten her opinion on the matter: she thinks we should let them run about outside. It may reduce their aggressive play towards our lone girl cat, she argues, and she thinks they'd be happier overall.

My reasons for keeping them in since they first came to us (each of them at about three months) were pretty well-thought-out:

It reduces the chance of death by car to zero.
It makes parasites almost a non-issue.
It keeps them out of fights with other cats.
It preserves the local bird population.

My wife agrees with all of these. However, I've been thinking more about the issue, especially in the light of their uncanny ability to get out anyway.

Is it right to imprison them?
Would they be happier going out from time to time?
Since they get out sometimes anyway, would it make more sense to work out a system for them to go in and out, so they know how to get back inside?

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of letting them out - my reasons for keeping them in still make sense to me. But I have a lot of doubts about the right way to go about this. All my prior cats did go out, but it was a much quieter road and the chances of random mishap were far lower. I'm frankly scared to let them roam free, but I'm also wondering if I'm doing the right thing or now.

Handfasting with Caffeina

2008-08-05T07:22:00.002-04:00

I wrote an article about Caffeina last year, and she's been on my mind (at least in the mornings) ever since.
Because it's something that we share, I thought it a reasonable suggestion that our handfasting include Caffeina, and my partner agreed.
Here now is the ritual we used, not including the spontaneous bits.

Opening

The circle is cast with a sacred stirring implement or other ritual coffee tool. The men proceed into the circle deosil, M last. The women proceed into the circle deosil, F last. This puts M and F opposite each other on the perimeter. They move to meet in the center when directed by HP.

Calling Quarters

East

Hail to the Guardians of the East, aroma of the sacred cup, you who are
both inspiration and motivation. I do summon, stir and call you up- Come!
Be welcome in this, our rite. Blessed be.

South

Hail to the Guardians of the South, heat of the sacred cup, you who bring
roast and flavor our celebration. I do summon, stir and call you up- Come!
Be welcome in this, our rite. Blessed be.

West

Hail to the Guardians of the West, borne by the sacred cup, you who are
the barista of our celebration. I do summon, stir and call you up- Come!
Be welcome in this, our rite. Blessed be.

North

Hail to the Guardians of the North, tiller of the sacred soil, you who tend
the land and the coffee trees. I do summon, stir and call you up- Come!
Be welcome in this, our rite. Blessed be.

Charge

HP challenges any objectors to speak.

Marriage

- spiritual union witnessed, shared and sanctified by community

Vows

I, _________, do take you, _________, to be my partner in marriage.

I will take care to listen to your thoughts, and I will share my own thoughts with you.

I will be honest with you, and when I make mistakes, I will not hide them from you.

I ask for your support and strength when mine fails me, as I promise my strength and support in your times of need.

I will share our burdens fairly with you, and we will both share our celebrations.

M: I promise this by _________.

F: I promise this by _________.

The Coffee is Prepared

Firekeeper pours boiling water into the carafe. Firekeeper has already poured the correct amount of ground coffee into the carafe.

Blessing the Rings

HP: Like all things, marriage moves in cycles. Sometimes the fires will burn brightly, and sometimes they will die down to coals and then spring up again in bright flames. Sometimes love is warm as the spring, and sometimes it becomes winter cold with troubles and disruption. By taking on the symbol of the circle, may these rings ever remind you that all things come around; to keep faith in spring while enduring winter, to never lose hope that the ashes will flame again, and that your love will be renewed.

Exchange of Rings

As rings are exchanged, each says:

I give you this ring as a symbol honoring our choice. Wherever our paths take us, I will always be traveling the long road by your side.

The long form Great Rite, Caffeinated:

M: The male holds the power and is the reservoir of power.
F: The female taps the power in him and channels it.
B: Neither one can work without the other; one without the other is incomplete.
M: The god is a god of life and death.
F: The goddess is of birth and renewal.
B: To learn you must struggle, to live you must be born, to be born you must
die; the beginning, the continuation and the end, over and over and over.
M: The sun gives forth light.
F: The moon holds it in darkness.
M: As above
F: So below
M: As the plunger is to the male.
F: So the carafe is to the female.
B: And together joined they are one in truth, for there is no greater power in all the world than that of an man and woman joined in the bonds of love.

Binding w/cord

M and F join right hands, and then left hands on top. HP loosely ties the cord around the hands.

HP: In the joining of hands and the fashioning of a knot, so are your lives now bound, one to another.

Coffee

HP pours from the French press, M and F to take sips from the same cup.
B: Hail Caffeina!

Unity Candle

Couple lights unity candle.

Blessing and Presentation

HP makes whatever final blessings on the act he deems fit, and then presents M and F to the circle, declaring them handfasted.

Cakes and Ale (or Pastry and Coffee)

Coffee and coffee cake is served to all in the circle.

Dismiss the Quarters

East

Hail to the Guardians of the East, memory of coffee shared. Thank you for attending this celebration of handfasting. Stay if you will, go if you must. Hail, and farewell!

South

Hail to the Guardians of the South, warmth of friendship shared. Thank you for attending this celebration of handfasting. Stay if you will, go if you must. Hail, and farewell!

West

Hail to the Guardians of the West, waters of caffeine shared. Thank you for attending this celebration of handfasting. Stay if you will, go if you must. Hail, and farewell!

North

Hail to the Guardians of the North, the promise of compost shared. Thank you for attending this celebration of handfasting. Stay if you will, go if you must. Hail, and farewell!

Undo the Circle

Revelation!

2008-06-30T18:39:00.002-04:00

It just occurred to me why Commander Adama would sell dog food.

He was a cowboy first!

Oh Lucky Day

2008-06-13T08:16:00.003-04:00

Today is Friday the Thirteenth - how wonderful!
This is a day that according to Abrahamic tradition is prone to bad luck. Not so much for Pagans, unless they choose to honor the cultural traditions of the majority.

Jesus was one of thirteen at the Last Supper
Said supper took place on a Friday (though I have often wondered why the Jews of that era were naming days after Norse gods)
Witches gather in traditional covens of thirteen (a number I haven't ever actually seen . . . two to ten, twenty or more, and one time a few hundred, but never once thirteen in a ritual - go figure)

There are probably other reasons I can't think of at the moment, but that's the gist of it - the intersection of Friday (which we generally think of as joyous in the modern world) and the dreaded number thirteen (avoided by hotels, but honored by coffee manufacturers as the number of ounces in a pound) causes a terrible juxtaposition of ill luck for any who expect it.
Watch carefully. Any even slightly inconvenient incident will likely be attributed to the date. If it isn't, try remarking, "Well, it is Friday the Thirteenth." No doubt you will get nods of sage agreement.
But what I see today is a Friday (yay!) that isn't blisteringly hot for change (woo!) and is leading up to a weekend where I don't have to burn much gasoline (praised be Pedestria!), so it's a pretty good day from where I sit.
If you choose to have a crappy day, enjoy your bad luck - after all, if you really really want bad luck you ought to have fun with it! Otherwise, just enjoy a glorious Friday!

2008-05-28T07:47:00.000-04:00

The Ashes of Community

The ashes you’ve taken from the remnants of the ritual fire were introduced to it in the spirit of community. By tradition, ashes are gathered from one ritual fire and sprinkled into the flames of subsequent fires.

Bring them to any ritual of the Pagan community that will utilize a fire. With permission of the priest, priestess, or other officiant, sprinkle the ashes into the flames.

If more than one participant brings ashes to the fire, the histories of the ashes are pooled into a list showing the dates, events, and places represented by those ashes.

By tradition these ashes should only be given to those who attended the fire from which they were drawn. They represent the shared spirituality of all those people who have honored their gods at these ritual fires.

The cleansing nature of fire allows us to draw our rituals together without fear of negative energy being introduced. These ashes cannot transfer the essential energies raised by one ritual into the next, only the spirit of community.

The ashes have been part of:

67 ritual fires in 7 of the United States of America over 18 years
2 familiar cremations
2 handfastings

1990	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisconsin	Summer Solstice Ritual
1991	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisconsin	Men’s Ritual
1992	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisconsin	Summer Solstice Ritual
1993	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisconsin	Men’s Ritual
1994	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisconsin	Summer Solstice Ritual
1995	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisconsin	Men’s Ritual
1995	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisconsin	Summer Solstice Ritual
1996	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisconsin	Men’s Ritual
1997	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Ritual
1997	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Ritual
1998	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Ritual
1998	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Ritual
Lughnasad 1998	Coven of the Rising Sun	Middletown, New York
Samhaim 1998	Daughters of Chango	Middletown, New York
1999	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Ritual
1999	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Ritual
Samhain 1999	Coven of the Rising Sun	Middletown, New York
May 13, 2000		Big Hill Shelter, Suffern-Bear Mountain Trail and Long Path, Harriman State Park, New York	Honoring the Lightning
Summer Solstice 2000		North South Lake Campground, Catskill Mountains, New York	Fire fueled by lightning-downed pine
2000	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Ritual
2000	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Ritual
February 16, 2001		Long Island, New York	Celebration and cremains of Biff, beloved familiar of Voyager, August 1983 – February 23, 2000
February 20, 2001		Fahnestock State Park, New York	Celebration of snow
2001	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Ritual
2001	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Ritual
October 6, 2001		Slide Mountain, New Hampshire	In memory of the fallen of 9/11/01
June 8-9, 2002	Laurelin Reteat Center	Bethel, Vermont	Cherry Hill Seminary Summer Intensive
Summer Solstice 2002		Dry River Falls, New Hampshire
2002	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Ritual
2002	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Ritual
September 11, 2002		Bridge Bay Campground, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming	In memory of the fallen of 9/11/01
September 12, 2002		Grant Village Campground, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming	Celebration of the Earth
Beltaine 2003		Balsam Lake Trail, Catskill Mountains, New York
Beltaine 2003		Eddyville, New York
Summer Solstice 2003	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Ritual
2003	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Ritual
Lughnasad 2003	Circle Sanctuary	Wisconsin
Lughnasad 2003	Temple of the Old Gods	Hudson, New York
Full Moon, August 2003	Gaiaped Alliance	Mud Lake Shelter, Northville-Placid Trail, Adirondack Mountains, New York	Naming Ceremony: Gaiaped Alliance
Full Moon, October 2003	Gaiaped Alliance	Canary Pond, Northville-Placid Trail, Adirondack Mountains, New York
October 12, 2003	Gaiaped Alliance	Mud Lake Shelter, Northville-Placid Trail, Adirondack Mountains, New York
November 8, 2003		Eddyville, New York	Lunar Eclipse Cremation of Mina, companion of River and Basia, ? – September, 2003
Yule 2003		Highland, New York
June 20, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Opening Ritual
Summer Solstice 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Handfasting of Sunnie and Robin
Summer Solstice 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Morning Ritual
Summer Solstice 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Bonfire Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Tribal Drum & Dance Ritual
June 22, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Bonfire Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Handfasting of Draig & Truth
June 22, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Hickory Grove, Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Rite of Passage Initiation
June 22-23, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Candlelight Labyrinth
June 23-27, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Chaos Camp, Wisteria, Ohio	Sacred Fire
June 23, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Women’s Ritual
June 23, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Hickory Grove, Wisteria, Ohio	Men’s Ritual
June 24, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Hickory Grove, Wisteria, Ohio	Pagan Military Ritual
June 24, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Bornless Rite
June 24-25, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Hickory Grove, Wisteria, Ohio	Sacred Hunt
June 25, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Hickory Grove, Wisteria, Ohio	Rite of Offering to Pomona
June 25, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Bacchanalia
June 26, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Bast Cat Ritual
June 26, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Stone Circle, Wisteria, Ohio	Summer Solstice Community Ritual and Wicker Sun Burning
June 27, 2004	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Town Green, Wisteria, Ohio	Closing Ritual
October 9-10, 2004	Gaiaped Alliance	Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont	New Beginnings Ritual
June, 2005	Pagan Spirit Gathering	Wisteria, Ohio	Stone Circle, Town Green, and Drumming Circle Rituals
July 5, 2007	Gaiaped Fellowship	Baxter State Park, Maine	Pilgrimage
July 25-29, 2007	Laurelin Retreat Center	Bethel, Vermont	Lughnasad Festival
May 23-25, 2008	Laurelin Retreat Center	Bethel, Vermont	Beltaine
May 26, 2008		Town of Ulster, New York	S’moranalia

Finding Tom

2008-05-27T21:09:00.002-04:00

I always enjoy the workshops and rituals availed to me at Laurelin Retreat, but sometimes it's the unscheduled times that are the most educational.

On a personal note, my family is having a housewarming party coming up, and because the owners of Laurelin would not be able to attend, I asked if they could give me what we've been asking for as a gift regardless: a stone, no smaller than two fists.

Laurelin is fifty-six acres of rolling woods and farmland, crisscrossed with stone walls that now or formerly marked arbitrary boundaries and, like any good New England soil, will yield two good crops of rock a year. There are a lot of stones at Laurelin, and finding the right one for my yard was probably going to take some doing.

Fortune smiled upon me by giving me a companion, Noodleman, who was in need of a Fool's Errand to complete. My plan had been to supply any number of pictures and make this into a photojournal of our quest. However, I lost the camera immediately after returning home, finding it again in time for a party, only to have it vanish once again, so I don't expect to be able to give that thousand-to-one ratio promised by pictures. It's been a week and this post isn't finished, so I'm just going to have to do this with words alone.

One of the things that's nice about Laurelin is the plethora of stone walls. Any old agrarian area is going to have them, and central Vermont is no exception. Farmers and landsmen of all sorts learned the art of stacking irregular stones in such a way as to make sturdy boundaries between fields, both marking territory and relocating stones out of plow's way. I've been trying to relearn those skills in the past few days with the stones I've been discovering in my compost pile.

None of the stone walls held my interest, and the searching up and down the various streams didn't find a stone that called out an interest in moving to the Hudson Valley. Finally, we cleared our heads with a solid period of time sitting upon a soft carpet of moss, with no stones in reach.

When we did decide to return to camp, the first stone to catch my eye was perfect. It was sitting on a stone wall along the old road, its top half covered in moss that was populated by inch-long, rust hairs among the bright green carpet. It was in a dry area which was well-shaded, the types of conditions that are abundant in my yard, and particularly in the place where I'm cultivating my moss garden.

"His name is Tom," Noodleman told me.

Fool's Errand

2008-05-25T23:37:00.002-04:00

I took a Fool's Errand this weekend while I was attending Beltaine at Laurelin Retreat. A Fool's Errand often has a specific task, but the way one goes about accomplishing the task is anything but linear.

I took along a companion for this Fool's Errand, a youth whom I shall call Noodleman. Noodleman has a certain bubbling, mirthful chaos in his personality, and I am very curious if this trait is going to settle out as he becomes a man, or if he has the makings of a Fool.

We were searching for a stone and we didn't look particularly hard for it. When we did find it, we ended up leaving the stone someplace where we promised each other we wouldn't forget about it, and ended up returning by another way and forgot it just the same. The stone was not offended, for stones do best when permitted to watch and wait.

But I did take Noodleman's measure as thoroughly as a priestess with a skein of yarn might. I learned about how his thoughts were organized in his head, and I carefully shared some of the mysteries of Foolishness to see how he would respond. Foolish mysteries tend to be right out there in the open, but they're so fnordward-thinking that few people ever notice them. The natural Fool will intuitively understand the rules that a Fool lives by.

Not every Fool's Errand that I have undertaken has been with a companion, and most of my companions are not, and never will be, Fools. As a "Mentor in Mayhem" (dubbed thus by a mother to be named later) I am thrilled if a Fool's Errand can be a rite of passage and a journey of discovery like it was for Noodleman.

So is Noodleman a Fool? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

Patriot Games

2008-04-18T12:14:00.003-04:00

As a Pagan I believe it's important to see the sacredness is everything. Stephen Colbert must be a god:

Anyone that can find an arrangement of "The Star Spangled Banner" which is worth listening to just has to be divine. Based on an English drinking song that is difficult to sing even while drinking, it's not the kind of singalong that a national anthem ought to be. It's also focused on our flag as an inspiration, which is an idea I support but too narrow for a national anthem. And did I mention is was based on a song written in the country that was, at the time of poem's composition, was burning our cities?

So to perform such a beautiful rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" leaves me in awe. Stephen Colbert's talents never fail to impress me.

Body as Temple

2008-04-07T07:04:00.002-04:00

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
- Albert Einstein

Thus opens the web page for Egoscue University, which is devoted to the training methods of Pete Egoscue.

I started a training regimen myself with certified postural alignment therapist Lauren Warren, and I didn't know what to expect. Warren had told me that the Egoscue method was a means of bringing my body back into balance, making up for all the things I do to compensate for an imperfect world.

She started by taking pictures of me, and overlaying them with straight horizontal and vertical lines, to see how close to true my body is. Seems I'm rotating one shoulder, and dropping it a fair amount, and leaning forward on my left side. Despite being a righty, my left side wants to lead in everything.

After studying the way I stand and move, and talking to me about the amount of time I had each day, Warren put together a series of exercises ("ECises") to do each day. Many of them rely mostly upon gravity to perform, and for the most part they're all easy to do, if not pain-free. I'm tight in places that she expects me to stretch, and based on how much easier it is on the one side than the other, I'm pretty unbalanced.

However, Warren feels there's hope for me. I should see improved balance, less pain in my wrist and knee, and improved functional strength over time. ECises are mild, holistic exercises that seek to put that temple which is my body back into shape for worship. It's an interesting concept, and I will be interested to see how different I stand for my next set of pictures.

Low gas prices or the environment: choose one

2007-06-06T08:43:00.001-04:00

So which do we want, cheap gas or a country that doesn't depend on the Middle East and environmental disaster to keep it afloat? (With apologies if my post doesn't come out, I'm still trying to master posting from Digg.)As I've misquoted before (it was Joseph Campbell that said it first), money is congealed energy. Gas prices are a perfect example of this and the trade-offs we face.

read more | digg story

UK study shows Gay men have trouble reading maps

2007-06-04T19:45:00.001-04:00

The more I think about this, the more I think it's probably true but also backwards . . . it's not that gay men can't read maps, it's that the brain structure that results in gayness isn't the same one that makes map-reading easy. Many cultures have viewed homosexuality as an indication of a different spiritual path, which suggests a different way of thinking. Perhaps maps is simply the most obvious form we see these days.

read more | digg story

Time enough for magic

2007-06-04T08:35:00.000-04:00

It's not my wont to perform magic (and I certainly haven't studied enough of Crowley to be worthy of performing magicK), and mostly that's not because I doubt the stuff works. Lots of Pagans are really into spellcraft, and it almost seems like magic itself is their religion; I suppose this is an extension of the active-participant philosophy Pagans have, as opposed to the sit-and-watch-the-holy-man-work tradition that many religions recommend. So as I said, I don't doubt it works, but I do have a lot of doubts that man understands it anymore than he understands science. I don't practice genetic engineering or fertility treatment, either.

Magic seems to have in common with other areas of knowledge one trait: humans learn enough about it to get excited, and then they just rush off and try some. We're really short-lived, so we're always in a great deal of a hurry to put what we just learned into practice, to try it out and see if we're right. Being that we have an Epimethean vision of the future, we're always surprised, a generation or two down the road, when we discover our actions have consequences. What do you mean, all the passenger pigeons are dead? With horror and with the same lack of foresight we often try to fix the problems we created in the first place . . . for example, we added MTBE to gasoline to reduce emissions, and got contaminated groundwater instead.

So mostly I hesitate to engage in magic because Gaiapeds prefer to Leave No Trace, and because I can't foretell the future, even if my life depends upon it. We're just such powerful, creative, hasty creatures, we humans, that we go off and try out all our new toys this instant and then cry and get upset when we break them or make a big mess.

Okay, so I'm an earth-walker, which means that I should follow the lessons of the Earth. The Earth doesn't just sit there, doing nothing . . . should I? Nothing frequently does as much damage as something, and it's important to recognize that leaving no trace does not necessarily mean doing nothing at all . . . it means choosing the course of action that causes the least harm. The Earth does act. Observe the tides, the erosion, the plate tectonics. When the Earth chooses to act in a certain way, the method is almost always the same: slow, careful action with enough force behind it that it cannot be denied. From time to time, those forces result in big changes, but slow and steady pressure usually has slow and steady results, with the undeniable power of a tree breaking a rock or a shoreline dissolving away.

So I'm not comfortable rushing to an altar and lighting six purple candles, sprinkling dragonsblood deosil and chanting the names of God until the full moon rises. That doesn't mean I won't spend three or four months creating serenity, though . . . if it takes long enough, I'm going to understand what I'm doing long before I can do harm. I think that's the secret to magic and science . . . if we're willing to spend enough time we're much more likely to act rightly. Most people really want to do the right thing, but we don't allow ourselves enough time to discover what the right thing happens to be.

So like those zany Druids, I am proud to consider myself faster than a speeding oak tree.

Home Business Isolation for Entrepreneurs

2007-06-03T23:55:00.001-04:00

It's easy to feel cut off from the world if you have a home business. Here's a few good tips on how to feel more connected.

read more | digg story

Geocaching for Fun and Profit

2007-06-03T10:59:00.000-04:00

I'm usually a bit of a slug, preferring to sit at my desk and talk about how cool the natural world is than get out in it. So yesterday was a big day for me, as I got to put my money where my keyboard is and do a bunch of cool stuff. After exploring caves in Kingston I tried my hand at geocaching.

When my partner first suggested geocaching to me I was hesitant, because any hobby that requires a decent amount of time and money invested ahead of time should be approached with caution. I like to be careful how I use my money, so it didn't seem like a good idea. However, I found out friends of mine have a GPS and take the kids out geocaching all the time, so why not?

The finding of the cache, seeing what's inside, and trading some of those items for ones we brought was neat. What made it a different kind of walk in the woods for me, though, was the kids. Holding the hand of a three-year-old on a somewhat rocky trail makes you look at the terrain in a very different way. She is completely trusting in your ability to keep her safe from harm as she improves her locomotive skills. It was a new way to experience the world through a child's eyes.

Going Deep

2007-06-03T10:38:00.000-04:00

I got to explore the planet in a new way yesterday, wandering down into the ice caves and old mines near Hasbrouck Park in Kingston, New York. Historically the area is known for producing natural cement, and these caves were dug out a fair bit back in the day. The climbing down was scarier than climbing back up, and it was intense to experience the subterranean chill. There are a number of flooded old mine shafts that are best to avoid (story has it that some divers have checked them out and never returned), and ice formations that are pretty impressive for June.

Now I'm told that I wasn't in any real caves, but I don't mind. No matter what we accomplish in life, we will always find a friend or acquaintance that will minimize it for us and try to make us believe it's not impressive enough. Depending on how well I know the person, I'll do anything from smile and nod while ignoring them to telling them that life isn't a contest and that if it were I would win because I get extra points for getting over myself. Oneupsmanship is absolutely the most irritating human quality, but I digress.

I am glad I went under the ground. I'm not sure I would do it again, but it's an experience worth having. I guess if I were really into caving and spelunking the word Gaiaped wouldn't make as much sense - earth-walker might mean going underground, but it sounds like a stretch to me. What I enjoyed most was the feeling that I was in very real danger if I made a mistake. Putting the natural world into perspective means recognizing that nature can kill you.

Using Money for Change

2007-05-21T07:32:00.002-04:00

Money is congealed energy.
-Joseph Campbell

It's always interested me that Pagans seem to be afraid of money. I have never seen any studies about the demographics of Pagans, so I'm only going on anecdotal evidence and my own observations when I say this, but I know I'm not alone in this belief. I don't know if it comes from a resistance to the materialistic culture that is in opposition to a lot of Pagans' values, or a deeply ingrained belief that money is the root of all evil (I know the quote is about the love of money, but that's not how our society interprets it), or some combination thereof.

Campbell's observation that money is just another form of energy articulated an idea that had been in my head for quite some time. The symbol for material goods in the Tarot is the suit of coins or pentacles, which also represents the element of earth. If I use the pentacle as my religious symbol and worship the Earth, what's wrong with using this earth-form for the Earth's benefit? Thinking of it as energy divorces money from the values placed upon it by society, and make it more like electricity or magic: something that behaves according to a set of rules, rules which can be understood. It also fits nicely with the observation Einstein allegedly made about compound interest.

I'd like to see more Pagans actively using money to promote their beliefs. Since we're very independent, individual expressions are easier to pursue than group ones. I've come up with some examples:

Boycotts. I haven't bought gas or other products from Exxon (and since the merger, Mobil) since the company failed to take responsibility for the Exxon Valdez spill. I won't buy a Toyota because it offends me that one of their SUVs is called the Sequoia. Do your daily buying decisions reflect your values?
Charity. Giving freely of ourselves, and by extension our money, is a powerful way to change the world. Even small donations to charities add up if many people do the same thing. Make a five dollar donation to a local soup kitchen, or the Lady Liberty League, or Big Brothers-Big Sisters of America - or whoever it is that's doing the good deeds you never find the time to do yourself. Your time is now money, so you have another chance to do good with it. And no matter your ethical system, it's tough not to find a life of more abundance if you become a more giving person.
Politics. Yes, scary as it sounds, you can give money to a political campaign! If you feel strongly enough that a particular candidate should (or should not) be elected, or that a particular referendum vote is crucial, your congealed energy efforts can make as powerful an impact as a cone of power.
Giving. This is different than charity - no tax deductions, more personal. Overtip waitresses. Give money to homeless people. Feed a teenager.
Invest. There are a tremendous number of socially responsible ways to grow your money while adhering to your own values. Check out the mutual funds from Calvert and Domini Social Investments, for a start. No better way to ease the guilt of having money than to put it go good use.

So those are a few different options off the top of my head. If any of my three readers want me to go more into depth on any of them, I'd be happy to.

How Music Shapes Paganism

2007-05-18T07:58:00.000-04:00

Originally published on Witchvox.

I am proud to be a Pagan. It thrills me to hear the call of the Earth; I rejoice at being in the green woods of the Mother, of raising my voice with others who believe as I do. All things of the natural world are precious to me, and even though I occasionally get morose about what damage we humans wreak, I am glad to be one.

One of the gifts I hold most dear as a human (and one of the reasons I’m really glad to be one) is the power of song. I love listening to, and especially being part of, powerfully woven harmonies that lift up to the heavens themselves. Whether it’s a Handel run or a ringing barbershop seventh, it’s all sacred to me. I love singing Christmas carols and I won’t deny that if Roman Catholics had more really good music I may never have left the church (Well, it would have to be lots more).

I see songs as a way of defining a religion. The Christian hymns based on Gregorian scales say something very different than the tonals and percussion of sacred Islamic music. The topics, too, speak quite a bit about what a religion feels and how it wishes to be perceived. Most Christian music speaks of glorious communion with Jesus, with a fair smattering of strategies for casting out Satan, for example.

What then, does Pagan music say about Paganism? Well, we have a fair amount of music that’s used in rituals and generally for praising our gods. However, it doesn’t take much of a search online to find other songs, songs that are not based on the love and respect that I find important to my faith. These songs, rather, are built upon anger and hatred.

There is a good message in “The Burning Times” by Charlie Murphy. It is saying that the Goddess does not abandon Her followers. However, that message is at the end of a diatribe about the evils of the Inquisition:

There were those who came to power, through domination
And they were bonded in their worship of a dead man on a cross
They sought control of the common people
By demanding allegiance to the church of Rome

More derisive towards Christianity are such songs as “Be Pagan Once Again!” and “Bring Back the Snakes, ” both penned by Isaac Bonewits. The former is particularly chilling as it states:

Both Catholic and Protestant, led us round by our noses,
Distracting from the deadly scent, of England's bleedin' roses!
Kick every preacher 'cross the sea, burn out their golden dens.
It's the only way we'll ever be free -- let's be Pagan once again!

Paganism isn’t a really a religion, in the sense the Hinduism and Islam are religions. Self-identified Pagans believe an incredibly diverse number of things, and any author that has tried to define Paganism is either forced to be so incredibly broad that virtually every thinking human is included, or narrows the definition in such a way that a group that identifies itself as Pagan is left out in the cold.

It’s perfectly natural to find ways to bring our community closer together, and since we don’t have the luxury of finding that common bond in the deity we worship, it’s understandable that we draw upon stories and documents from history to find that commonality.

But is anger the common bond that will draw us together? Hatred about acts committed centuries ago? Is this one of the Five Pillars upon which Paganism will stand?

There are innumerable instances of persecution against Pagans in the modern day. Such acts are offensive and it’s a good thing to work towards a time when the US military acknowledges the pentagram on veterans’ headstones and children are not taken from parents because of their religious beliefs.

But ask yourself, if you were a devout Christian and heard the verses I quoted above, would you think of Paganism as a threat? Certainly you would, and with good reason!

Songs serve as our emissaries and diplomats, and these old ditties are not serving us terribly well. How Paganism is perceived by the world at large is shaped by how Pagans act, the art they create, and the way they relate to the members of other faiths. Is it possible that the perceptions we create for ourselves lead to these misunderstandings? I think it would be naïve to think not.

I understand that the songs I reference here are not recently scribed, but they are still being performed. These songs, and others like them that seek to cast blame upon Christians for the plight of the Pagans of old, is as specious as the argument that war is good for the economy, and as vindictive as the Christians themselves casting out Jews because some of their number crucified Jesus two millennia ago.

Unspeakable crimes have been committed by groups of humans upon other groups of humans since before recorded memory. Genocide and torture, slavery and disenfranchisement, rape and swindling are all part of the lowest levels that human beings can sink to in dealing with one another.

Do I bear the karmic responsibility for white people who enslaved Africans, or for men that subjugated women? Is it my responsibility to atone for the sins of all Europeans that brought disease and murder to North America? Of course not!

My job is to see that such acts are not committed again if it is within my power. I should not remain silent and allow the Holocaust or other genocide to occur. But I don’t see how having a foaming rage over heinous acts committed against alleged Pagans six centuries ago is going to help me be a moral and caring human being. Instead, it’s more likely that it will foment unreasoning hatred in me, and make me more likely to heap abuse upon the descendants of those criminals using acts no less despicable.

I prefer not to walk that fine line between moral outrage and immoral vengeance.

Blazing My Trail

2007-05-14T16:39:00.000-04:00

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

There's always been lots of talk about the path a person takes in life. I don't think of it that way - to me, it's a trail, not a path.

A path is worn by the steps of the many that have walked this way before us. A path declares itself, commanding, "Come this way!" Water yields to the furrow of a path, for it is easier to follow the path than find another way to low ground.

Trails are marked by blazes which may or may not always be sufficient to the task. Foot traffic is infrequent enough, or the surface durable enough, to keep a furrow from being worn in. Trails beckon to the attentive, "Come, this way!" Water sometimes impedes trails, crossing them on the way to low ground.

It's easy enough as a Gaiaped to see how trails better suit my course and direction than do paths or roads. There are times I'm just not going to be able to go the exact way I had intended, and that's going to happen no matter how much I plan. Planning is good, being able to think on your feet is really good.

Mercury, God of Death

2007-05-12T09:01:00.000-04:00

Most agree more energy-efficient light bulbs can significantly curb air pollution, but fewer people are talking about how to deal with them at the end of their lives.

This troubling quote comes from a recent, sensational article about the dangers of compact fluorescent bulbs. I learned about this poor woman's plight, and how I may have been led down the garden path in my own desire to do the right thing for the Earth, by Glenn Beck's radio program.

I like Glenn Beck's program. I think I would like the man if I knew him. He calls shenanigans on people when they make outrageous claims, and tries to present opposing views. Granted, his views are framed by his own worldview, but so are mine. I respect his desire to make people think, and I am more than happy to take up that challenge.

Glenn used this story recently as a springboard for his road show, "An Inconvenient Tour." Beck isn't impressed by the facts presented in support of the global warming theory, and has found quite a few scientists who find the whole thing alarmist. This story about the dangers of mercury in CFLs is a perfect example, he claims, of how rushing to solve a problem we aren't sure even exists generally causes more harm than good.

So I decided to do more digging, and discovered that there's more to the story of this lady in Maine than he reported . . . I'm not sure if he failed to research it sufficiently, or just spun it to his own purposes, but either one is a bit disappointing. Apparently he found the story as reported by Steve Milloy, but didn't discover that he's known for junk science reporting. Maybe, like me, he was unable to read the original article in the Ellsworth Times (which apparently goes on to say that the claim that a full environmental cleanup was necessary was excessive) because registration is required to read old articles, and confirmation takes some time.

Now I'm not going to get deep into the global warming debate here. However, the graph comparing mercury of CFLs and incandescent bulbs is instructive. If you want less mercury polluting the world, compact fluorescent bulbs are the way to go. If you want to save money by using less energy, CFLs do that as well. Who cares if you believe we are destroying the earth through global warming? Can you get behind less poison and less money spent?

Pharyngula also talks about Mr. Milloy's hypocrisy on environmental issues, which is in keeping with my own observations on how environmentalists are held to a higher standard regarding caring for the Earth than others. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who is seeing a trend to shoot people down for trying to do the right thing, since it's a lot easier than feeling guilty about not giving a crap yourself.

So I'm not going to remove any CFLs from my home. I'm also not going to stop listening to Glenn Beck. He challenges me, and I like that. I hope I challenge him, too.

Children Are the Future

2007-05-07T22:16:00.000-04:00

"The decision to have children should be seen as a very big one and one that should take the environment into account."

This study is going to be attacked as liberal, alarmist nonsense. Our planet can feed and shelter far more humans than it does presently, they will explain, and we don't have the power to destroy it anyway!

We probably don't have the ability to destroy the Earth. We may be able to effect greater change over a shorter period of time than other of species, but that isn't the same as destruction. However, the very political factions that scoff at altering our lifestyles for the sake of our world also believe in personal responsibility, and that's a Pagan Value as much as it is a Conservative one.

I love children. They really are our future. They haven't been trodden down by the worries of the world, the burdens of being a nurturer or provider don't yet weigh on them; they still know how to play. In my own quest for immortality, the only thing that has come close to making me feel younger is spending time with a child, be it holding a nursing babe or watching a teenager show off a new skateboard trick.

Humans really don't live all that long, and it's damned difficult to form opinions that extend beyond our own generational boundaries. Honestly, we can't even predict the weather beyond next week with any real accuracy, so I can't blame anyone for being skeptical of science like this study and Al Gore's global warming charges. And even if our ability to understand large systems increases, our ability to care won't. If we're lucky, we can really get passionate about the future, but probably not any further out than our own age. Each of us can do better from time to time, and some of us are far beyond the limits I've just expressed, but I think it's fair to say that this is where the average human's head is at.

The irony is that we have children, in part, to extend our own lives. Whether or not you believe in an immortal soul that takes new form, you probably like the idea that descendants you will never meet may visit your grave, research your life, preserve your legacy. It's a heady feeling, isn't it? I won't have that feeling, because I don't, and won't, have children.

I have felt for many years that I fall short in my ability to leave no trace upon the Earth. It's really tough to reduce how much packaging I create, how much energy I use, how much carbon I emit. How I measure that impact has changed over the years (carbon is big right now, pounds of garbage was all the rage when I was in college), but the song remains the same. The one thing I know I can do, though, is not have any kids.

What's funny is that I've had a lot of environmentally-minded people tell me that I should change my tune. I can teach my offspring how to live right, they explain, and help change the world. They may be right, perhaps I would be that good of a father. But no matter the character of my children, each of them would create about as much pollution as every other human, as would each of their children. For a lazy man like myself, it's tough to find an easier way to reduce my impact and honor my faith.

I think the recommendation of having no more than two children is fair. I don't expect people to overcome their values and instincts and dreams of family; that's a personal choice.
Hopefully the idea won't be blasted out of existence, because it's an idea whose time has come.

Is a Hate Crime a Crime?

2007-05-04T12:27:00.000-04:00

I am not comfortable with the idea of hate crimes. A hate crime is judged to exist when it appears that another crime, generally a crime of violence, was committed because the victim was a member of some group that was hated by the criminal. A black person, for example, or a transexual, hispanic, homosexual, amputee, or Republican.

Hate crime laws do not punish acts. The underlying crime, that of assault or rape or arson or some other atrocity, invariably has sentencing guidelines for punishing those acts. Rather, these laws seek to punish attitude, mindset, and intent. They seek to protect classes of people from those that would seek them out for who and what they are.

I'm Pagan, and I'm gay. I am not comfortable with the idea of someone assaulting me or threatening my life. I believe I wouldn't care for the idea any more or less were I a woman, or a Baptist, or a father of three, or an Alpacan yak. I think the laws that forbid a person from violent acts should be strong. I don't think that the laws should be stronger if I'm the victim, though. I don't want to be treated differently, I want everyone to be safe. You can't legislate attitude, and laws that are written with that intent are more likely to have the opposite effect. I don't want to be singled out by your laws. If I want to stand out, I'll do something exceptional and you may feel free to judge me by my acts.

The Threefold Law doesn't seem to have a standard written form, but the general sense of it as that you get back three times as much as you put out into the world, for good or ill. So would I get punished more for running down a black man because I hated them all then I would be for running down my brother because he picked on me as a child? Anger is anger, no matter its cause. Any violence that's committed without anger is more troubling, I should think.

I'm not comfortable with the violence man is capable of committing. I'm also not comfortable with some of that violence being labeled as "hate crimes," while some of it is not.

Is a Pagan Filter Like an Oil Filter?

2007-05-03T08:01:00.000-04:00

The idea of this "filter" is that the world is filtered through my perceptions, and I'm a Pagan, so the worldview that is expressed here is going to be a Pagan one. But what on Earth does that mean?

If I were Christian you probably could get a general idea of my beliefs from that label alone. Granted, there is quite a bit of disagreement among and about Christian theology, but for good or ill you, as my reader, would have formed an opinion about my beliefs pretty quickly were I Christian, and if you were perceptive you would be able to fine-tune that opinion as you read more.

Now that's possible still, with me being a Pagan and all, but trickier. As a Pagan, I don't necessarily reflect the beliefs of a much larger group. Rather than being pigeonholed together because of a common source of belief (e.g., the resurrection of Jesus Christ), Pagans a lumped more as a free association of folk that don't belong somewhere else. A more accurate term for it is really Neopagan, since myself and most of those I've met follow a path that was more or less created or reborn within the last century or so, not handed down from Paleolithic times like you may have heard. But even that term doesn't necessarily narrow down the beliefs too much, or make it easier for a reader of my ramblings to conveniently categorize me and my beliefs.

Quite a few Pagans identify themselves with Earth spirituality or Earth-worshiping. I count myself among that number; not all of my Pagan friends think the Earth is of primary importance. The vast majority of Pagans are focused on leading an ethically positive life (albeit one whose code is not laid out in a revealed text) and shun association with forces and practices generally considered evil. This same vast majority recognize the force called Satan as being one of the Christian gods, and rather than rejecting him, we just don't permit him power over us. This doesn't mean that there aren't people that follow a spiritual path that they identify with as both Pagan and Satanic, but this is the slipperiness of language: just because you call it something doesn't mean it is that thing. Educated Pagans and Satanists alike agree that their paths don't intersect in any meaningful way.

As a Pagan I recognize that the most powerful force that humans have any meaningful control over is sex; this is the power of creation in its most basic form. Metaphorically and literally it is the source of all life and power on this planet. Even as we honor that force more openly than many other religious paths, we're less likely to condemn sexual acts that do not fall within the confines of a heterosexual marriage. "Do what you will, but harm none," is a common Pagan ethical belief that I adhere to, and what happens in privacy among willing people is not something I would condemn, even if the act in question is one that I would find distasteful.

My own beliefs draw from the precepts of Wiccanism, Shamanism, Discordianism, and Eclecticism. In the final judgment I label myself a Gaiaped, an Earth-walker, a sacred backpacker. I follow the wilderness code of "Leave No Trace" as an ethical code, and find that I am most likely to find divinity waiting quietly in the trees for me. As such, my beliefs tend to support human population control, environmental protection, and waste reduction. Humans are able to effect the world far more powerfully than we are ready to comprehend, and are not likely to recognize the consequences for generations. What we do now is blindly guess, with our words and our deeds; we're not cut out for much more than that.

As a Gaiaped I strive to approach things in a way that emulates the Earth. Slow changes, guided by irresistible forces. Don't be hasty, but don't be afraid to commit to a course of action.

So that's the filter through which I see the world. We can talk about oil some other time.

Pentacles Approved

2007-04-23T22:28:00.000-04:00

The pentacle has been added to 38 symbols the VA already permits on gravestones. They include commonly recognized symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as those for smaller religions such as Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho-No-Ie.

Well it's really nice to see that even Seicho-No-Ie must finally acknowledge Paganism as a real faith. The pentacle is actually only representing Wiccanism according to the article, but it is the closest thing to a universal symbol that Paganism is likely ever to get. With the exception of certain Discordians who will remain nameless, other recognized symbols used by Pagans, such as Thor's hammer and the ankh, appeal to a more narrow segment than the pentacle. It is likely that there will always be Pagans that do not use or identify with this symbol, but now in the spring of 2007, upon reaching this settlement with the Veterans Administration, the pentacle is the most widely accepted symbol that Pagans have.

Congress Can't Have It Both Ways

2007-04-23T17:48:00.000-04:00

What you put out into the world, comes back to you three times.

Congress has made it clear that it wants to put the brakes on the "war" in Iraq by stipulating a troop withdrawal deadline in the current funding bill. With the Democrats holding the majority, they are now attempting to undercut the President's constitutional role of commander-in-chief with their own mandated job of holder of the purse strings.

I'd be more comfortable with our Senators and Representatives taking the high road and staging this cleverly executed end-run around W if they were at all willing to take responsibility for their own actions in the current conflict.

I placed "war" in quotations because we are not now, and never have been, at war with or in Iraq. I know this because the Congress is the only body that is entitled to make such a declaration, and the Congress abdicated this role. Instead of actually having the balls to declare war if they felt so strongly about the Hussein regime, they simply authorized our President to invade.

Now, after countless dollars and a fair amount of lives have been spent on the effort, the legislative branch seeks to hide its own malfeasance by demanding a strategy that can do nothing but fail. Leaders take their responsibilities seriously, and admit their failures with grace. Our congressional leaders, most of whom voted to support Bush's actions in the first place, have done nothing of the sort. Instead they seek to misdirect all the blame onto a President who certainly is equally tainted in this debacle. Tainted Bush is, but he could not have engaged our military in Iraq without the willing compliance of Congress. That Congress should have either declared war, or declined to permit the President to act. To decide several years later that they would simply deny our soldiers funding is a weak act, not one worthy of leadership.

Perils of Political Polling

2007-04-20T13:56:00.000-04:00

First, do no harm.

The polls for the 2008 Presidential race are in full swing, detailing how John Edwards has surged ahead since the disclosure of his wife's tragic illness, but not enough to eclipse Hillary (who somehow has managed to almost entirely ditch her last name since entering politics). I've gotten my share of calls from pollsters, and every politician lives and dies by those numbers, since one's ability to raise funds for campaigning is pretty closely tied to how one tracks.

Polls frustrate me. It may be interesting to see how any particular candidate would fare in the election if it were held today, as a measure of current stated positions and name recognition. It may be fun to predict what will happen based on how much we've learned. But they're undeniably dangerous.

High-polling candidates get more coverage in the media, both paid and free. Those that slip tend to tweak their positions to improve their numbers. Everyone claims that polls don't matter when they're doing well, and care a great deal about them when they're doing poorly. Why is it, exactly, that the polls are given such great value, considering that the only poll that has legal significance is the election itself? It's actually pretty easy to explain: it's the stupid people.

I'm not saying that people of low intelligence are, as a rule, more likely to use a poll as a guide in their voting decisions; I'm saying that people who are stupid enough not to spend time educating themselves about issues and candidates are. These are the people that are targeted by the commercials that cast the opponent in an unflattering light, literally, as well as in black-and-white with a wide-angle lens that adds twenty pounds. People who are far too lazy to have a clue what the debates over Iraq, illegal immigration, education, and the environment can do to the lives of they and their children. People who will stumble, bleary-eyed, into a voting booth after a long day at the office, basing the decision of their voting franchise on the results of exit polls they heard on the radio. These people scare me.

The right to vote is the right of choice, and it a right that was paid for in the lives of many patriots. Choice is personal. I used to be a critic of people who did not vote, particularly those who complained about the results afterwards. However, I am garnering a new respect for those who choose not to vote, because they do not feel they have educated themselves well enough on the issues. Making a voting choice based on a hunch, commercial, poll, cocktail party conversation, or opportunity to improve one's chances in bed is guaranteed by the Constitution. If, however, you are not prepared to live with the consequences of that sort of half-witted decision, I implore you to do no harm by making a choice not to vote.

Is there hope for a cure?

2007-01-14T15:43:00.000-05:00

I have been suffering since I was a teenager, but I thought I was alone. I did not realize that millions of other people are lying awake at night, thinking (as I did) that nothing could ever be done about this problem. I am a sufferer of restless cat syndrome.

If you do have restless cat syndrome (RCS), you are not alone. Up to 10% of the U.S. population may have this felinic condition. Many people have a mild form of the disorder, but RCS severely affects the lives of millions of individuals. In order for you to be officially diagnosed with RCS, you must meet the criteria described below:

You have a strong urge to move your legs but you are unable to. The need to move is often accompanied by uncomfortable sensations. Some words used to describe these sensations include: "full bladder," "kneading," "rolling," "purring," "poking," or "meowing."
Your RCS Symptoms start or become worse when you are resting. The longer you are resting, the greater the chance the symptoms will occur and the more severe they are likely to be.
Your RCS symptoms get better when pay attention to your cat. The relief can be complete or only partial but generally starts very soon after starting an activity such as petting, scritching, or feeding. Relief persists as long as the motor activity continues.
Your RCS symptoms are worse in the evening especially when you are lying down. Ignoring your cat at night bothers you much more than doing so during the day.

Still have questions? So do many of us. Won't you please help us start a support group or develop a drug?

The Light Bulb Challenge

2007-01-09T20:24:00.000-05:00

[Note: this is part of a webwide series of blog posts about compact fluorescent lightbulbs. January is the darkest month of the year in the Northern Hemisphere (December might be a bit darker, but with all the candles, trees and dropping balls, we work hard to light it up). To fight off the darkness, bloggers everywhere are invited to create a post with their own riff on why CF bulbs are cheaper, better politically, harder to market or just plain cute. Your choice.]

I was slow to adopt compact flourescent light bulbs. I still have trouble spelling fluorescent. I use flour over fluor. But floury speech alone will not change our approach to light. We knead to recognize what it is that keeps us in the fold of the incandescent bulb. It may be a bad idea to stir this issue up but a challenge was given and I dough not shirk that easily. In fact, I eat it up. Any facts I come up with will just be icing on the cake.

Buy those bulbs or I will continue.

New art, new trends

2007-01-04T09:21:00.000-05:00

Global art prices grew 27% in 2006. That is an incredible figure, especially when you consider how quickly they have grown in preceding years (2005: 10.4%, 2004: 19%).

That simple phrase took me down a path of memories through my own experiences in the world of art. Now I've never had the pleasure of being directly involved, as subject or creator, with any art that has been sold to anybody for any price. But this might just be the time for that to change.

When I was a college student I became friends with a talented photographer by the name of Barbara E. Cavin. I had the pleasure of being her primary model for a series that explored aspects of light and dark. The image to the right is one of her untitled works from that period, which was quite an exciting experience for me. I was an art model! I went on to model for a number of art classes that needed figures to record in ink, paint, and charcoal; I can't say how many renditions of me might exist. I've always felt that the human body is both beautiful and sacred, so if nothing else I was making a few bucks in keeping with my values.

I went on to try my hand as an art student, but became frustrated by petty concerns like rules and talent. Creation of art requires some amount of each. However, the rules given to me chafed as much as the predetermined definitions of talent. One semester in one class made it obvious to me that art as a career wasn't going to be my destiny.

That didn't stop me from wanting to create art, though! As stupid as I thought the rules were, as sure as I was that my talents did not lend themselves easily to creating art, I found myself . . . creating art. It took a lot of time (extremely peaceful time, I found) and a fair amount of encouragement from Barb, but in 1990 I was accepted into the annual Juried Student Art Show at SUNY Potsdam. At left I'm pictured at the opening with my composition The Effect of Reaganomics. Almost as an afterthought, I entered the piece Titled in the competition as well, and its stark simplicity likely spoke the the juror in contrast to the cacophonous imagery of my other entry.

My interest in art was renewed by these successes, and I began exploring sculpture with earnest. Never having been particularly good with tools, I worked with any number of transient media, including glue, thread, croutons, and guitar strings (a material that proved to have stunning successes, such as G-String Dragon and Small Furry Decisions, as well as many failures). After much soul-searching I realized that my successes came from the layered, solid technique I had initially tried; it reminded me of what I imagined the creation of an archaeology dig would be like. The dig is created by time adding layers of material that records history for the people that are willing to destroy it in order to unlock its secrets. For me, art worked best when I knew that there were secrets inside my creations that no one would ever see without destroying what I had created.

Retroarchaeology was born in 2001 when I returned to my candles and created Job's Lament, the first of what became a series of pieces that reflected on the events surrounding September 11 of that year. The term itself didn't catch on until sometime in 2005, some fifteen years after the first piece was created. I've seen a number of different materials used, including fabrics, adhesives, and packing supplies. These pieces take a long time to create, encouraging a thoughtful construction and intense dialogue between artist and composition.

New Year, New Resolve

2007-01-01T14:02:00.000-05:00

Today is the first day of 2007, in the year of our Lord and in the Common Era. On January 20 those that follow Islam will celebrate El-Hijra, new year for their calendar. February 18 is the Chinese New Year, February 3 by the Hebrew Calendar, the Discordians inexplicably align with the Gregorian calendar, and many Pagans celebrate on May 1 or October 31. Two things come to mind about this cycle of celebration.

Ablution. A new year is a time to put the pain of the past behind you, to commit the lessons to memory and action, to make peace with whatever has come to pass for good or ill and accept it as part of your total experience. It really doesn't matter if you celebrate today, as I do, or on one of the many other days available on the many calendars, or if you just make up a day of your own. What matters is that you should have a day each year that you finish this chapter of your life and begin the next. It's as important as blinking.

Irrelevance. The many calendars and cycles highlight the diversity of human experience. Our many cultures take a huge number of important dates for a large number of reasons. Just about any day of the year is going to be important to somebody, whether it be St. Swithun's supporters of those who would see all stray animals adopted as pets. So when I see that New York City was declared a low terrorism threat for New Years' Eve, I am bemused.

Why do the media and governments take extra care to alert us about holidays and anniversaries? Terrorists, at least the ones that we're concerned with, don't use the same calendar that we do. And they're smart enough to notice that we get into a habit of tightening security on Election Day and the Fourth of July and New Years' Eve. Isn't the point of "terror" to be unexpected? Do people really think that planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11 because 9/11 uses the same digits as 911? Or that the trains were bombed in Spain on 3/11 to "send a message" to the Western world?

Well these acts do send a message, but it's not calendrical. Terrorism is apparently a force that only a Discordian can understand, and thus truly loathe; it uses the principle of destructive chaos to spread fear and, so it hopes, destabilize civilization. If terrorists timed their attacks to coincide with any date of significance they would be limiting their own effectiveness. It is the randomness of the violence that makes it truly horrifying.

Blessed Yule

2006-12-21T22:30:00.000-05:00

This is the longest night of the year. It is a time of darkness, of quiet, and of thoughtfulness. The sun returns today, and each day from here on will be longer and brighter. Some think it a time of sorrow, for the long winter is still before us, but I see it as a day of joy, and not just manufactured joy, because now we have seen the proof that life shall return and winter shall not be everlasting.

Look to the dark parts of your life, the defeats, weaknesses, and sadness. Yule is a day of promise, and should serve as a reminder that all bad things hold a kernel of goodness, and all death contains life. No matter what your religion, never forget that the sun will always return each year.

The Secret to Population Control

2006-12-14T21:38:00.000-05:00

The human population growth rate has always been of concern to me. Through compassion and innovation we have cut the death rate drastically without doing anything to reduce the number of babies we create. The amount of humans that this planet can support is probably tremendous, but we won't be able to reach that maximum number without destroying whatever life we don't simply transform into fuel for the human engines. I don't believe it is ethical to sacrifice this planet so we may continue our unnatural multiplying, nor do I agree with the shortsightedness that prevents us from taking the painful steps to resolve this issue. It would involve overcoming instinct, and making a conscious choice not to procreate.

I have made that choice as a result of divine inspiration. I love children, but I am gay. Rather than believing this to be an unnatural state, I recognize what any gay person does, that it is part of their nature, and born to them. My beliefs do not accept things that occur in nature as being without reason, so it occurred to me that homosexuality must be intended as a method of population control, albeit one that isn't terribly effective. The instinct to procreate is simply too powerful, and so we continue to have babies. Even if no gay people had children (and quite a few do) I'm sure that gays would continue to be born, as this mechanism is built into our genetic code to manifest proportionately to our population density.

You see, I believe strongly in Intelligent Design: a divine intelligence created man, using a tool we call evolution. But I digress.

When I discovered a few days ago that soy creates gays and shrinks penises, I was intrigued. There is some research out there about soy being used to slow the growth of prostate cancer because of its estrogen levels or somesuch, so could this article have value?

Others asked the same question and, turning to the research of Kinsey, found that ". . .homosexual men reported larger penises than did heterosexual men." So when science is shone upon soy beliefs, they fail, at least in the penile department. As for orientation, I know a boy of fifteen that nursed on soy and hasn't exhibited anything less than a full interest in girls, but that's just anecdotal.

So where are we? We know that gay men have large penises, that soy may cause gayness, and that gayness may be a method of population control. Add to this the revelations from India that men there have smaller than average penises. We've always been led to believe that this is the case in China and Japan as well. Sounds to me like small penises can be correlated with large families. Whether this is due to compensation, or if it's that sperm lose motility swimming that extra inch or so, I can't say, but the evidence for this link seems fairly compelling. Being that gays have larger penises, this lends credence to my theory.

Now we have established that small penises increase population, and gayness exists to reduce it, which is why gay men have such large penises. Perhaps a link between soy and homosexuality can be established, so that we can feed our baby boys soy formula, engorging their members and reducing the chances of them ever having children. If soy does not, in fact, cause gayness (and, logically following, increased penis size), we should investigate other methods of increasing penis size to determine if they also reduce fertility, including hormone treatments and surgical engorgement.

This could result in a win-win situation. All men want larger penises, and larger penises can be linked to smaller families. Science should focus its efforts on increasing worldwide penile dimensions as quickly as possible.

Vita-meata-vege-min

2006-12-11T14:21:00.000-05:00

According to eartheasy.com, if you ate meat-free meals every other day for a year, you would save 487 pounds of CO2.

I like the idea of being a vegetarian. Eating lower on the food chain uses less energy. The amount of pollution that is created by our meat-production facilities is really stunning . . . and most of it comes from the meat itself, from animal waste pouring into rivers to methane in the air. Our digestive tracts really do a better job with plant matter than animal parts. The foods are more nutritionally diverse, lower in fat, and would reduce my chances of heart attack, stroke, and gods know what else. Only one thing has ever gotten in the way of a lifetime commitment to vegetarianism:

I don't like beans.

Have you noticed just how much of the healthy vegetarian diet is comprised of beans? Black ones, white ones, orange and purple ones. Beans that taste like every variety of paste imaginable, and even some that taste like dirt. And each and every one of them doing its best to strengthen the one skill I have that I would prefer to downplay, at least in polite company. Maybe I should just scald my tongue or have the taste buds surgically removed?

Now to be fair, that is only a seeming requirement of the healthy vegetarian diet. I could keep myself full of plant-based convenience foods and not have to eat all that many beans. But if
it's not going to be healthy, why not eat bacon and go for broke?

There are some good arguments for eating meat in the proper mindset. Animals are animate, and so it is easier to remember that they had an end to their lives so I could continue with mine. It's easier to remember to thank the animal for dying than it is a carrot. Or a bean. Heck, probably didn't even have to kill the plant.

But I'm going to give a vegetarian week a shot. Maybe beans aren't so bad after all. But it's not just about what I taste, it's about what the family smells . . .

Unconsumption

2006-12-10T18:20:00.000-05:00

I have a lot of stuff. Being someone that cares a bit about the environment, I tend to hesitate before I throw things away. So my files and furniture and clothing and especially books pile up.

Rationally the best way to deal with this is to get less stuff. I try that, I really, really do. Stuff = bad. I get that. But a love of the physical rears its not-unattractive head and bats those lashes at me and I find myself with yet another object that it completely cool, absolutely worthwhile, and utterly useless.

Enter the concept of unconsumption: getting rid of what you've already got, in a responsible manner. My typical cycle of materialism is like this: Get stuff. Get some more. Sort out stuff to get rid of. Get more stuff. Organize stuff that can be recycled. Birthday comes, more stuff! Panic; much stuff goes into the trash. Repeat. Shameful, and unpretty. Unconsumption is work, yes, but I'm hopeful that attaching a cool new word to the idea will give me the impetus to make something more of it this time.

Economy that Mimics Nature

2006-12-07T20:17:00.000-05:00

Supply and demand are much like natural laws, and a balance must be struck when we tinker with them.

Government procurement policies can be used to dramatically boost recycling. For example, the Clinton administration issued an Executive Order in 1993 requiring that all government-purchased paper contain 20 percent or more post-consumer waste by 1995 (increasing to 25 percent by 2000). Since the U.S. government is the world’s largest paper buyer, this created a strong incentive for paper manufacturers to incorporate wastepaper in their manufacturing process.

I've been saying this for years. If the only barrier to lowering price is that there is no demand for the product, it seems silly that governments will create the supply through mandating recycling without similarly creating the demand by becoming the first and largest consumer of those goods.

The most pervasive policy initiative to dematerialize the economy is the proposed tax on the burning of fossil fuels, a tax that would reflect the full cost to society of mining coal and pumping oil, of the air pollution associated with their use, and of climate disruption. A carbon tax will lead to a more realistic energy price, one that will permeate the energy-intensive materials economy and reduce materials use.

I have to draw the line here, however. Taxing of the most common pollutants will only lead to resistance to the environmental movement at best, and its defeat at worst. Humans are convenience-driven and will fight tooth and nail for the right to spew filth. However, I'm fully in support of dropping any government funding and support for these industries. They are mature businesses that should be able to succeed or fail on their own merits, and the good of the country does not depend on taxpayers supporting their efforts. If they can't hack it we'll find a better way all the more quickly.

On Violence and Force

2006-12-07T16:55:00.000-05:00

King Arthur, it is said, lived in a time when might made right. He created a new order, one where the little guy was watched out for by the strong sword arm of his beneficent monarch. Whether or not it happened that way, the tales demonstrate an appropriate use of force.

I'm not fond of using force, nor am I of violence and aggression. Quickly-flaring tempers and enraged posturing say to me that you have not done much to earn your status on the evolutionary ladder. We have an amazing combination of opposable thumbs, a versatile oral cavity, and brains large enough to use both well. Why stoop to using force to get what we want? I can find no better reason to abandon respect for a person than to see them posturing, screaming, or striking to solve their problems. I don't think it's what the gods intended for us, and I think it's a shame when someone ignores the amazing gifts we are given to behave like any other animal.

It's not unreasonable to argue that force is the way of nature, and that Pagans worship nature, so we should emulate it, rather than being incense-burning love monkeys. What better way to honor the Old Ways than to honor the really old ways? Fine, do that if you wish; I still think it's a copout that ignores the intelligence and sophistication that those selfsame forces of nature bequeathed you with.

I'm not someone who is so clouded by pot smoke and patchouli that I believe that no man will ever raise a hand in violence. I'm of the belief that violence is the first refuge of the incompetent, and the rest of us will use force when it is necessary. However, when that time comes that force is necessary, it should be used decisively, to put an end to the matter as quickly and definitively as possible.

The United States of America has carefully brought itself to a fascinating conundrum through its policies about the use of force. We are regarded as the brutish overlords that will force our wills upon any that dare disagree with us, smashing them back into the Stone Age and making them over in our image. And yet, when push comes to shove, we are extremely reluctant to ever use decisive force. More than half the world regards us as a looming threat, but we continue to cultivate despots and zealots as enemies precisely because we do not react forcefully, thus sending a simultaneous, contradictory message that we lack the nerve.

There are many, many places that I do not believe my country has any business exercising force. I do not draw a parallel between now and the early days of World War II. Sixty years ago several countries were hoping to divide the world as their subjects. Today several fanatic religious groups feel that the world will not be a good place as long as this country continues to exist. Then, it did not matter who stood in their way. Now, it is only our perception as a threat that creates the enemy.

If we were to commit to an energy policy that was free of oil, the money that funded these groups would vanish and they would blow away like the sand upon which they now live. If we were to withdraw our forces entirely from the Middle East and allow the Semites (which include both Hebrew and Arab) to pursue their bloodthirsty need for vengeance, and commit horror after horror upon each other, ranging from blowing up busloads of innocent children to bulldozing the homes of families that are only trying to survive, our country would no longer be perceived as a threat, and the violence level of that region would drop considerably. Our presence in the Middle East is the primary cause of violence in the Middle East. It is not in our best interests to maintain any presence in that region. It would honor the Earth to cease sucking her blood, and it would be more natural to allow the humans of the region conclude their ancient fight for territory unmolested.

I do not believe we will, as a nation, abandon oil; nor shall we withdraw support for Israel. In that case, it is time that we finish what we have started. We have the power to end violence by unleashing so much of it that no one will be left standing that can hold a gun. Let all those that threaten us fall so that the timeless winds of the desert will scour their bones, and their names will be forgotten as swiftly as the dunes do shift. This would honor the gods of war, the ancient ways of glory in battle that show the Universe who holds the true power. The world would tremble before our might, and for generations none would threaten us, for we would again remind our fellow, short-sighted humans that we are capable of eradicating our enemies.

Both paths hold peril. But one must be chosen. To walk the middle path is to walk into the twilight that heralds extinction.

Fear, Justice, or Cheapness?

2006-12-07T08:49:00.000-05:00

My father tried to teach me well, explaining that every doorman, porter, cabbie, waitress, and mail carrier deserved a tip for their services and that the bulk of their earnings depended on tips--a precarious situation since one's paycheck is thus determined by the often inconsistent kindness of patrons.

I continually wrestle with tipping. Emotionally I understand that it's a good way to put positive energy out into the world, in accordance with the Threefold Law, because money is nothing but congealed energy. Intellectually, I find myself demanding that people "earn" the tip that they get.

I go out of my way to treat anyone that traditionally expects a tip kindly; this includes waitstaff, hairdressers and the like. I have been in the service industry and understand quite well that they are ofttimes abused needlessly. When it comes time to tip, however, my sense of justice demands that the tip be commensurate with the service, since I made a special effort to make them feel at ease. I'm completely willing to leave two pennies in a upside-down glass of water if the service warrants it.

Then there's the other tippable professions, like garbage collectors, postal carriers, and yes, even baristas. Despite what Donna Freitas says in her essay in tipping, these people don't depend on tips to survive, and if they are getting a large percentage of their income from their holiday tips, they are doing much, much better than I. The intimation that your service will be improved by a generous tip smacks of extortion to me, so I avoid it.

But then we get to the crux of the matter: giving is good. Tipping is giving, and so tipping is good. What we put out into the world comes back to us three times. I don't think I would be classified as a bad tipper, but my excuses, borne of fear of poverty, prevent me from being a good tipper. I don't have faith enough in my own beliefs, and that's something that needs to change.

Christmas Carols are Better

2006-12-06T23:12:00.000-05:00

Bear in mind that holiday traditions, and even religious songs are often borrowed from older/other religions. Before someone reading this takes offense, bear in mind that many aspects of Christmas festivity where first borrowed from the pagans.

I can't see any good reason for someone to take offense at "paganizing" Christmas carols. Of course, after I think about it for a bit, I can't see the point in doing it at all . . .

Yes, a lot of Christmas, and Christian, practices come from Pagan and other traditions. Even a lot of the songs that are sung for Christmas are loosely adapted or unadapted Pagan songs. However, not only is borrowing okay, sometimes the borrower does it better.

I'm not ashamed to enjoy singing Christmas carols. Even the ones that are really Christian don't offend me (although most of the ones that are just plain bad I avoid regardless of content, like "Jingle Bell Rock"). The majesty of the powerful chords, the magic of the swelling harmonies, I think it's one of the best-honored forms of vocal music left in our society. There is not only not a need to "paganize" these songs, it's a good idea not to do it, since changing the words often changes the quality of the entire piece.

In addition to monkeying with success, I don't understand why any religion would want to have something like Christmas. Despite the fact that it has importance (although only importance) in the Christian faith, it is completely embattled by secular forces that seek to make it into a day that is marketed by way of various live-action and animated specials that preach the importance of giving while pushing the importance of getting. "Keep Christ in Christmas" is not a fight I think would be easy to wage over Yule or Hanukkah; for one thing, I don't know what catchphrase we could use for either of those faiths in order to defend the sanctity of our holy days in the darkness. Christianity has a pretty good marketing department, so let them take one for the team.

We Pagans know where Christmas trees came from (yes, for some reason we like to lay claim to the tradition of killing trees solely to watch them wither in our homes), and like to point out that most, if not all, Christian holy days were deliberately overlaid on various ancient festivals. That's fine. But let Christmas carols stay Christmas carols. They sound really good, have a great message, and are better than they would be if we tried to "reclaim" them.

Short Term Solutions to a Long Term Problem

2006-12-06T15:17:00.000-05:00

The wife exclaims: "Don't you think that whether or not we are 100% sure that your urine has affected my side of the bed that it would behoove you to cease despoiling our honeymoon bed?"

Quoth the husband: "Well it would be extradorinarily inconvenient for me to leave this comfortable and warm (increasingly warm) bed to use the toilet. And we still don't know for sure that my urine is causing you a problem. I can certainly imagine how filling the bed with biological fluids could cause problems but I can also imagine scenarios where the very absorbant bed materials could just soak up the offending pollutant and store it. If that were the case then we could leave the problem for the next guests to deal with."

This was excerpted from a brilliant comment on the linked blog entry from Paul Kedrosky. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to environmental considerations it is generally a bad idea to trust businessmen to make good decisions. In fact, I will go one step further and say that it's blatantly unfair to ask that of them. If you're in business you are, first and foremost, responsible to your stakeholders, be they your family, your Board of Directors, or the shareholders of your publicly-traded company. Those stakeholders, like most human beings, desire results that they can see, which means results that happen significantly faster than a human lifetime.

Environmental considerations, especially those related to global warming, are never going to have that kind of turnaround time. If a socially-responsible businessman (or politician, which for this discussion is pretty much the same thing) puts systems into place to curb carbon emissions, there may very well be incredible profits that result from his efforts . . . in sixty to one hundred years. Not the kind of timeframe that will keep his job.

The better way to address issues of global warming is to take the responsibility for it away from those that are accountable to stakeholders, and their short-term needs. Do we know, for a fact, that we are having a negative effect upon the Earth's climate? No, but neither can the husband in the above example know for certain that his bedwetting is making his wife warm and wet. No one has given me any evidence that it would be bad for the environment if we take efforts to curb our emissions. If the responsibility for implementing long-term policies is given to a body that is appointed, perhaps for long terms like the Federal Reserve, then those of us who must meet short-term needs in order to survive can merrily curse up a blue streak about those SOBs and then just go about our business, doing the right thing whether we want to or not.

America's Only Book

2006-12-05T19:54:00.000-05:00

America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress.

Eric Prager and Sean Hannity are mixing up two very distinct and equally important issues when they discuss their concerns about Representative Keith Ellison's decision to take his swearing-in photos with a copy of the Quran, rather than the Bible.

Those issues are the role that religion plays in American life today, and the relationship we in this country should have with Islamist terrorists.

In this country, there are certain groups that tend to commit terrorist acts. Two that come to mind are anti-abortion activists and followers of radical Islam. It is right and good to find ways to identify terrorists before they strike. I do not know what the profile for anti-abortion activists might be (perhaps white, middle-aged men and women with blue eyes?), but I can say that Islamist radicals are all followers of Islam, and mostly have the physical characteristics that brings to mind the word Arab. The vast majority of the followers of Islam do not commit acts of terrorism, but a large chunk of the people that commit terrorism are of that faith. It is inconvenient but appropriate to take extra care to ensure that terrorists do not hide behind the more honest members of their faith and racial characteristics.

Both Hannity and Prager support this concept, and it is a good idea. The moderate leaders of Islam in this country haven't bolstered confidence through any public denouncement of terrorists acts by their brethren, and in the minds of the fearful and uneducated "one Arab (or even Sikh, sadly enough) looks like another." I'm not advocating interment camps here, but I don't think that recognizing statistical reality is a bad thing. (I also think it's appropriate, although likely more difficult, when it comes to anti-abortion activists and other terrorists.) However, I also think it's obvious that Hannity, in particular, is letting his anxiety over our resistance to profiling cloud his judgment on this issue.

Hannity quotes Prager as saying that this decision "will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, and they'll see it as the first sign and realization of a greatest goal, which is the, you know, making Islam the religion of America." They are, of course, quite mistaken if they think that this country is so weak that it will tremble by allowing the concept of "freedom of religion" to be completely experienced. It's an understandable viewpoint; the United States was founded by Christians escaping persecution by other Christians, so it's generally understood that the crafters of the Constitution did not anticipate religions that didn't maintain Jesus as Messiah ever entering the picture. They view this as change, and not a terribly healthy one at that. They are fearful of radical Islam, which concerns me as well, but they allow this fear to cast doubt on this great country in their eyes.

Like it or not, the Constitution is a living document. This doesn't mean that you can rewrite it, like the Supreme Court tried to do with eminent domain last year. It does mean, however, that it was designed to adapt to the wider circumstances that a flourishing future exposes it to. In a time when all religion in this country was Christian (since the locals had been shot or killed by smallpox), separation of church and state, as well as freedom of religion, were more focused: the government could not declare a state religion and could not ban a religion from practicing. Now that we have many faiths in this great land, some conservative Christians feel that these very freedoms threaten this country. Curious. I have more faith in our Constitution than they do, apparently.

Prager's core premise is that, "This book is the book from which America gets its values in the final analysis." No, Mr. Prager, this is not the case; our values are based upon human values, which just happened to be most prominently represented by the Bible at the time of this great nation's founding. Are you suggesting that the followers of Islam practice cannibalism, or that Hindus believe in incest? Do you think there is a culture out there that encourages murder? And for that matter, where in the Bible can you find the fundamental freedoms of our Bill of Rights so clearly spelled out? I doubt the Church would have encouraged freedom of assembly, and we can ask Copernicus what they thought of freedom of speech!

Hannity, Prager, and those in their camp need to accept, finally, that there are people out there who do not believe as they do but happen to be good people nonetheless. I know it's tough if you're brought up in an Abrahamic faith to think of a nonbeliever anything beyond ignorant, at best, but here in the United States of America our founding fathers saw fit to give us a document that was stronger than your simple, fearful views.

Paperless Society

2006-12-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

CBS Radio's syndicated computer columnist Dave Ross captured the essence of distributed printing this way: The best thing about the Internet is that there's no paper. The worst thing about the Internet is that there's no paper.

Remember the promise of the paperless society? How computers would revolutionize the world and make all that wasted paper obsolete? Hasn't exactly worked out that way, has it?

Truth is, looking at stuff on paper, rather than a screen, is preferred, which is why distributed printing has developed. Xerox is right in trying to develop reusable paper, because we're not going to stop using paper for the written word. It's not what we're used to, and it's not even Pagan.

Yes, lots of Pagans like the idea of saving trees - I'm certainly a big forest slut myself. But there's a reason that Paganism is Earth-based spirituality: it's a religion that's based on the physical world, more than any other. Pagans focus more on the current life than on what happens after death, often expecting reward and punishment to catch up with us before we move on out of this shell. We value sexuality in all its positive forms, and consider sex itself to be holy. We're very physical, tactile, and earth-based.

As much as I want to never sacrifice another tree to my needs, I know I will never read a novel as a pdf. Even those clever little electronic books haven't taken off, and I'm not going to buy one. I want to feel it in my hands, smell the pages, hear the rustle as I turn them. It's the same with other bits of paper. Are physical files really any more real than electronic ones? I can destroy paper as well as I can a document on my computer, and probably there are more electronic copies, so I'm less likely to destroy the only copy. But legal documents, medical records, financial statements and the like still gather in file boxes, in basements and storage facilities. We trust in them, because they're real.

I have some emails from my late father. I also have a letter he wrote to me once. The letter has much more emotion in it than those emails. A physical object can key into memories like those pixels cannot. I can see his handwriting, tell how he felt as he crafted each word. No one will ever save a folder of love letters on their hard drive and then read them, one by one, curled up with their laptop on a rainy day as they fondly recall that torrid romance. Computers are wonderful machines that lack that quality of tangibility that we humans crave.

Now this doesn't mean we can't reduce our harvesting of trees. We can create paper out of a more renewable plant like hemp or by focusing on improving the recycling process. The price and quality of these products will drop as demand increases, and intelligent people are needed to step up to the plate and choose to pay more for the long-term gain. The linked reference to reusable paper is intriguing, and holds promise, though it sounds like it is not quite there yet. Gift wrapping should be done more with gift boxes or bags; this is also a great way to try out the hemp products, since people are willing to spend a little more money at this time of year.

Paper has been around for thousands of years and will not be going away anytime soon. It's okay to love it as long as you know the price you're paying.

Why Environmentalism is a Sin

2006-12-04T11:18:00.000-05:00

I'm big on the environment. I like trees. I like spending time among groups of trees over groups of people, although individual people I have known often prove themselves to be more engaging. I try to be cognizant of how my life impacts the rest of the planet. I recycle. I drive a hybrid car. I compost. I don't have children.

I don't usually talk to people about my attempts to reduce my negative effects upon the world. This is because I really only get two responses to my efforts, and both of them are pretty irritating.

If I'm talking to a self-described environmentalist, they will one-up me at every turn. If I recycle car batteries, they only use solar ones. If I replace all my bulbs with compact fluorescents, they put in skylights in every room and don't use electricity. Life might be a game, but it's not one where we need to keep score. Go away.

The more annoying ones, though, are the ones that feel I am doing more for the Earth than they are. Since they recognize that caring about the planet has value, but don't act because it's not convenient to do so, and they believe that I'm keeping score, they try to undermine my efforts. If I recycle newspaper, they ask me why I don't recycle magazines. If I tell them I prefer using my own bags for groceries, they point out how much plastic packaging I bring home in those bags that I just throw away. When I mention that I'm not fond of the idea of Christmas tree farms, I get a litany of ways that I contribute to deforestation. Yes, I know I'm not perfect, and I know that I can't be. Is it so horrible that I try to improve myself in this way? Are you so incredibly fragile that you can't bear to think of me pursuing a goal, perhaps even succeeding at it? Yes, I now understand, yes. You cannot bear the idea of anyone succeeding, even in an area in which you have no interest in succeeding, if it means that you aren't winning. What you think you're winning by comparing yourself to other people and bringing them to your level at any opportunity, I cannot say. But clearly it makes you feel good about yourself.

I can't say I wonder why intelligent people are unwilling to make the effort to care about the Earth. The more you do, the worse a job you end up doing.

Ship Shape Travel

2006-12-03T13:42:00.000-05:00

Everyone is excited when the Dorito season approaches. Children just want to be out there as the ocean bountifully provides, running through the sand, picking up Doritos just in time for the holidays, to export round the country for everyone's pleasure.

Funny but not. I'm glad they covered this story because it makes me think of one of the extravagances I will never experience: a luxury cruise.

I love the idea of eating seventeen meals a day, having endless activities and visits to exotic (and even more importantly, tropical) ports of call, having a chance to legally dabble in all sorts of things that are legal elsewhere but frowned upon here, like sex on beaches and pool tables . . . but I digress.

The problem with cruises is that, in international waters, they cheerfully dump their waste (your waste) overboard. There are no laws saying that they can't and no cruise lines that I'm familiar with that say they won't. It's one of the cases where laissez-faire really sucks. We need to have the ethics to do what is inconvenient and expensive in the short term to preserve this world in some form of wholeness in the long term. As a Pagan I could not knowingly participate in this kind of activity.

Now I know full well that every day and in every way I make some negative impact on the world. But that is an excellent subject for another time.

NYC is Good for Something!

2006-12-03T11:23:00.000-05:00

However, as of December 1st, new legislation will require New Yorkers to recycle rechargeable batteries.

Mayor Bloomberg has, in the past, lifted recycling requirements for all manner of items including DVDs, and proposed a disposable EZ Pass so people who think that their government actually gives a damn where they go will be willing to use it. Finally a law looms that might put the interests of the Earth above those of businesses and paranoiacs.

Bloomberg is a classic businessman: he's capable of doing some long-range planning, but narrow enough not to recognize the value of minimizing the human impact on the world. The effects of an increasing population will catch up with our economy in brutal fashion if we're not willing to inconvenience ourselves now to avert it. Making recycling of batteries a requirement (and, thankfully, one that's not too difficult to fulfill) is a good step, but there are a few others that he could consider.

Recycling could be expanded to include many more forms of materials. Anything that can be incinerated can be recycled. The problem is economic: for many items it's just cheaper to make it new. If the City itself were to use recycled materials it would tip the economic scales in the right direction.

Composting would be another wonderful focus for new NYC legislation. If residents had the opportunity to have compostables picked up they would be able to reduce solid waste by an astounding percentage. The volume of compost would not be the issue that other solid waste is, since you can find ways to use it.

Pagan Views of AIDS

2006-12-01T14:24:00.000-05:00

"In the ghoulish second story, Denys (Shawn Ashmore), a Canadian pornography actor, conceals his H.I.V.-positive status from his producers by substituting blood drawn from his dying father for his own in required tests. When his mother, Olive (Stockard Channing), a hard-bitten waitress from whom Denys has concealed his occupation, discovers what he does, she concocts an insurance fraud scheme involving tainted blood taken from her son while he's asleep."

I noted in my own comment to this post that this writer, Thom Fitzgerald, probably had an idea about the different perspectives he wanted to suggest, but ran out of religions that matched them. Or didn't look that hard. I mean, he could have used Satanism and even if the Satanists complained I doubt that anyone would have paid much attention. But this isn't about the crappy movie or its alleged use of religion. The article got me thinking about what the Pagan views of AIDS actually are.

Paganism itself is probably more diverse than any other religious category, so the views expressed are likewise varied. Since we can't even agree on the number of gods, we tend to be a scattered bunch; there's also a strong aversion to dogma that discourages any kind of cooperative development of beliefs. But I gave it some thought and have come up with a few likely Pagan views of AIDS:

AIDS affects people as a repercussion of the Threefold Law.
It is a deliberate attack developed by men, in their desire for power and lack of foresight.
It is Gaia's wrath descending upon all of humanity.
It is a cosmic opinion about the appropriateness of homosexuality.
It is an opportunity for enlightened behavior, for we have a real chance to act in a painfully selfless manner to help our fellow human beings.
It is the fusion of silly putty and the pineal gland.
AIDS exists only as long as we believe it is relevant.

I don't agree with all the views I've laid out here, and I'm sure there are quite a few others that I haven't even considered. Essentially I see Pagans as approaching such a disease as karmic, scientific, natural, dharmic, and/or inevitable. The balance of power between the sacred and the profane (i.e., mundane) worlds can vary, and that will affect the individual's perspective.

I'm not being fair, though. This isn't supposed to be about Paganism as a whole, since that really doesn't exist; it's supposed to be about me, and my own views, which I haven't offered.

Well, I think it's a damned shame that AIDS hit gays early and hard, because it would have done a much better job of whittling down the population had it arrived initially through the heterosexual population. I do believe it was created by humans, albeit accidentally, and Nature to it as her own and evolved it into a killer for her own purposes. I think it doesn't work that well, because it sustains its victims for a long time and causes physical and financial hardship rather than ending life. But I'm confident that sooner or later we will unwittingly give the forces of nature a better tool with which to strike at our teeming masses. As long as we're monkeying around in the genetic code without having a clue what we're doing, we have no choice but to serve the true master of this planet.

Gushing Pretension

2006-11-30T10:17:00.000-05:00

Is 'The Fountain' a beautiful story of love and life conquering death? Of a way to find life through death? Or just a terribly weird and hokey new age film that is, at times, unbelievably difficult to follow? I still can't decide.

Donna might not be able to decide for her review, but I have no such difficulties. This movie was an astounding combination of misleading marketing, Oscar-nominee positioning, and irrelevant claptrap. The director moved the viewer through three related storylines in a jerky, disconnected manner, woven together with clunky metaphors that served only to remind us that throwing money at a bad story idea will never salvage it.

I was able to follow this movie, I just thought it sucked. The three stories converge in irrelevant and asinine ways, clumsily strung together in an attempt to convince the viewers to wrap themselves in a garment of caring. If you have the good sense to stay away, or you had the misfortune of believing the hype that it had anything to do with an exciting medieval Meso-American adventure, let me lay it out for you, in spoilerific detail:

Tom is a bald guy in a bubble in space with a dying tree. The web site for the movie tells you his name and reveals he's an astronaut in the twenty-sixth century. He is headed for a nebula the Mayans considered sacred. He is haunted by the visions of Isabel, our dying, brave heroine.

Isabel lives in the modern world, dying of cancer in that delicious way that involves no suffering or symptoms. Her husband Tommy is trying to discover a procedure to save her. He hits upon a process that reverses aging, but it doesn't seem to cure cancer so he moves on in his work. All Isabel wants is for Tommy to read her unfinished novel about the fountain of youth.

As he reads we get glimpses of the book, and about conquistador Tomas who must save Spain by finding the Fountain of Youth, which is actually the Tree of Life.

Tom, in his bubble, promises the dying tree that it won't die, even as he eats of it. He languishes over finishing Isabel's novel for her, a promise made by Tommy.

Tommy discovers too late that his new treatment cures cancer, and Isabel dies.

Tom's tree dies before he reaches the nebula that is Mayan heaven. Tom finishes the novel by using himself as a Deus et Machina - he appears before the Mayan priest and uses his glowing lotus self to convince the priest that Tomas is a god. Tomas gets to the tree, drinks the sap, and plants grow out of him, perpetuating his existence while killing him.

The tree is reborn as Isabel. The End.

Yes, I get that it's about the nature of eternal life. The cycles are really quite Pagan. But fastening these three mediocre tales together with Spell-o-tape does nothing more for them than make them an Important Film or, as I like to call it, a monumental pile of crap.

Tracking the Economics of GMO

2006-11-29T10:43:00.000-05:00

Diapason Commodities Management has just announced its agricultural commodity-based index which incorporates only non-genetically modified organisms.

This is a really excellent, and somewhat chilling, idea. It's a great idea because economics have been shown to be an excellent predictor of the relevance of trends and ideas. Chilling for the same reason - what if this bombs?

Index funds tap into the collective unconscious in ways that Jung could only have wet dreams about. Whether it's the Christmas Index or terrorism futures, election results or Oscar predictions, indices and futures markets are surprisingly accurate because they even out the shortsighted guesswork of individuals and really allow us to work together by motivating us in the one way just about every human can be inspired by: greed. If this non-GMO index shows that these companies are doing well, it's pretty likely that foods that more resemble nature are on the rise overall. However, if the value of the index falls, we might be looking at a world of trees with Prozac in their sap and corn that grows human ears for replacement operations.

So this index could show how much foresight and wisdom is really embedded in our collective unconscious, and how much convenience overshadows it. Face it, it's a pain in the ass to spray pesticides on crops, and it's annoying to find bruised tomatoes in the bin at the store. GMO holds the promise of finding ways to unlock the secrets of DNA and answer all of life's problems with another strand. Of course, genetic manipulation is likely to have effects that will not be clear, for good or ill, for generations to come. Could be the generations of the plants and animals manipulated, or the generations of the humans interacting with and consuming them. Our ability to foresee long-term consequences of our actions are usually impeded by politics, sex, and our own lifespans. I don't know if a futures market is capable of transcending these limitations we have, or if it will just compound the issue.

I also don't know if, in a century, we find that all the GMO products produced now were actually the salvation of the planet. What I do know is that I'm too shortsighted to be willing to risk the world's future on a guess.

Marriage By Any Other Name

2006-11-28T20:21:00.000-05:00

Marriage in America is indeed a contract — a contract that comes with more obligations than rights. Marriage in America is a civil right that is not now and has never been in the past dependent upon any one religion or even religion in general for its justification, existence, or perpetuation. Marriage exists because people desire it and the community, working through the government, helps ensure that married couples are able to do what they need to in order to survive. At no point is religion needed or even necessarily relevant.

I wholeheartedly concur that marriage is a contract, and that it is a contract with the community. That doesn't mean, though, that marriage isn't first and foremost a sacred rite. The confusion lies in the fact that churches were the first institutions of community in most places. The rituals that developed necessarily encompassed the entirety of the needs of the community.

The Romans were extremely secular, and their marriages generally paid only passing homage to their gods, as was their wont. The rights and responsibilities of marriage were established by the secular authorities. However, this departure was muddled by the Church more or less taking over Rome (although the question of who assimilated whom is probably worthy of its own discussion).

We have reached a point in the maturity of our society when we do not need the auspices of a single (or even multiple) religious institutions in order to attend to the needs of our populace. Like it or not, people don't need a belief in a higher power to ensure safe food preparation, prevent homicide, or rear children. Plenty of agnostics roam the earth in a state that passes for happiness, and secular humanists seem to have gotten it right.

Marriage was intended to be a sacred rite. The fact that it came to shoulder the burden of other, very necessary, civil responsibilities does not change this fact. The word itself should be relegated to a religious ceremony, and the definition of an appropriate marriage (or handfasting, for that matter) should be left entirely to the religious institution. To suggest otherwise is to dishonor the varied beliefs of the vast majority of this planet.

The civil contract between a couple and the community should be the sole responsibility of the local municipal authorities. Priests and rabbis should not work for the State, at least not in this country. Let judges and mayor sign the licenses. Taking God out of the equation in this manner might make it a little easier to allow people to have normal family lives even if they don't happen to believe that a heterosexual union is normal for them.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.