(Southern) Imbolc on Wicca

Many things in Wicca have changed. The changes are well documented.

There are several traditions, not just that of GBG. Even GBG's religion evolved with the addition and expansion of his original work by the likes of Dorien Valient. Gardner started out condemning homosexuality, eventually he accepted it.

Here in the Southern Hemisphere even most Trad Wiccans now circle sunwards not clockwise, and celebrate Midsummer in December. They are a few still hidebound by the calendars written in England a half century ago, but they are increasingly rare.

Wicca itself was an eclectic conglomeration of Cabalistic/Abrahamic imagery and now largely discredited early 20th century anthropology and folklore studies.

Wiccans share 

- the Rede, at least the short form

- a belief in a masculine/feminine duality in our relationship with the numinous

- a relationship with the natural cycles through a solar/lunar ritual calendar.

You do not need to be initiated in a lineaged tradition to be Wiccan, you need that to be a lineaged member of that tradition. Wicca is a mystery religion, one path to the mysteries is through the rituals of GBG and his original coven. Another valid path is to seek those mysteries for oneself. That won't qualify you as a 17th Degree Priestess of the Isle of Ducks Tradition, but it will make you Wiccan if you share certain basic beliefs. Except that beliefs aren't necessary, because what is shared is rituals - actions.

Get out of being Evangelized Free Card

Also works against "Jesus loves you!"

I'm a huge Nukees fan, and have to thank Gav for pointing out this Get Out of Being Evangelized Free card. Some of my friends have questioned if it is fair dinkum, so:

Mar 3:29 

But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.”

Nukees - Wednesday, May 2, 2007

http://nukees.com/d/20070502.html

So, remember, I believe "The Holy Spirit is a Prick", and thus will never be forgiven. There is thusly no point in trying to save me, please find a less hopeless way to spend your time. Yay me.

Frontier money

In many places larger companies would mint tokens or notes to make up the shortage of circulating official coin. The better ones were sometimes better than government money in their primary circulating area. Similar coins and notes were printed for Company Stores, usable only to buy at inflated prices from your (effective) owner. Some of those Company Store peonage operations were frightening.

Others allowed the notes to be circulated, with a promise to purchase them back (effectively making them cheques) but there were many scams. Often the notes were printed on paper that was fragile using soluble inks. Get them wet, handle them, do anything much and they became useless scrap.

Some bosses baked the notes brown and crumbly so they wouldn't last long enough to be spent.

Here in southern Queensland they were known as Calabashes, nobody seems certain why. More generally in Australia they were called shin plasters (possibly derived from chin plasters after the use of scraps of paper to stem bleeding shaving cuts).

On Marriage

Way back when the Established Church (ie only legal one) recorded Marriages in their ledgers. If any question arose as to the status of the relationship between Mary and John, it could be answered by digging through dusty books.

Then people started moving long distances to cities where the book of their home parish was inaccessible. Around the same time religious diversity started to become an issue.

Inheritance; moral hygiene laws; contracts; huge areas of the law considered marital status as significant. Something had to be done, so the State stepped in to hold a central record of marriages and other significant life events.

Somewhere along the way a certain degree of protection of the vulnerable and various crank concepts like racial purity slithered in and so it went from a registration of a legally significant fact to the State regulating the institution of marriage.

In some places and times the regulation was minimal, not already married, old enough and of sound enough mind to understand what they were doing, not entering into a fake marriage to claim some benefit or privilege. In others it was intrusive.

I'd like to see the word "Marriage" given by the state to the churches, let the babies have their bottles. Hold back the registration of domestic partnerships and the protection of the vulnerable to the state.

Of course under such a reform I look forward to making popcorn and watching the fun when a Gay friendly church starts Marrying (Oh Noes!!!) same sex couples...

Conspiracy Theory²

I have a theory...

Actually several.

1/ There really are conspiracies. Some of them are large and nasty. Some are Government sponsored.

2/ These real conspiracies sometimes interact, getting in each others' way, forming alliances, sometimes sharing key personnel. The world doesn't make sense and sometimes that is because somewhere there are madmen playing god.

Which brings us to

3/ Many Americans are blind to the nature of the American Capitalist System, which is effectively a bucket of conspiracies. 

4/ There are a lot of crazy people who spew their madness into the world. Disturbingly sometimes they are right.

5/ Some crazy conspiracies are promoted to discredit conspiracy theorists and classes of theory.

6/ Many Conspiracy Theories are displacement of other fears.

Finally Occam's Razor is your friend.

Banksterity

Banksterity - Making the 1% carry their share.

The Banks profit from their own mistakes, reach into the public purse, then insist the poor and the middle class pay. Austerity measures see the lives of billions across the world disrupted to preserve the wealth and profits of the very richest.

• Trading in all bank and financial services corporation shares suspended immediately.
• A 5% levy for 10 years on all income over 13 times the average wage in each country, no deductions.
• If a bank took more than 1% of its total deposits in government subsidies, or an absolute amount more than 1,000 times the national average price of a home in 2004, administrators are to be appointed for 5 years to ensure that the public receives every cent back with average credit card interest. All interest on residential owner-occupier loans to be suspended for 5 years.
• “Performance” bonuses paid to senior executives after subsidy payments to be reversed.
• Foreclosures on homes to be allowed only if the bank holds no (an insignificant number) vacant properties.
• Banks to be charged vacant possession fees equivalent to 24 hour commercial security patrols to repay the public purse for the fire and police services used to protect their vacant property. 
• Any foreclosed property vacant for more than 6 months and in poor repair to be seized by the government, repaired at the bank’s expense and used to the public benefit by sale or lease with no return to the bank. Any foreclosed property vacant for 1 year to be sold at no-reserve auction with the proceeds after administrative fees returned to the bank.
• A public enquiry into the finance sector in each country with the highest level of power to investigate and to compel witnesses.

Love is Asymmetrical

I love, you are loved.

We are *in* love, but that doesn’t mean your experience is anything like mine.

Anyone who had a crush in high school should recognise the asymmetric nature of love. As might anyone who was the object of an unwelcome crush, if they have a modicum of self awareness and sympathy for their fellow primate.

To love is to place someone else’s happiness above one’s own. To ignore their imperfections and exult their finer qualities. To be willing to endure hardships to defend their peaceful existence. Unfortunately we do these things with many of our cynical higher intellectual functions swamped by biology, so we suffer tunnel vision that often prevents us noticing that our level of devotion is not reciprocated.