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 Radio1 - The Body
Provided By: Akashik
Composer: Akashik
Title: Long Forgotten
Radio2 - The Mind
Radio3 - The Soul
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I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
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· Using Witchvox – a walkthrough
(Sep 02, 2009)
· Nutritionist Stephen Heuer Arrested in FDA Raid
(Jan 19, 2009)
· Spelling it like it isn't
(Aug 09, 2008)
· Funding the pagans
(Mar 08, 2008)
· Giuliani gets Robertson Endorsement
(Nov 12, 2007)
· The Dangers Of Feminism
(Aug 30, 2007)
· The secrets behind crazy airfare prices
(Aug 27, 2007)
· Petition To Rename Stretch Of 401 'Highway Of Heroes'
(Aug 24, 2007)
· Mummified Toronto child a newborn boy
(Jul 27, 2007)
· Quick Summer Meals without all the heat!
(Jul 18, 2007)
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Hephaestus
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Posted by: Makarios on Friday, March 19, 2010 - 02:00 PM
22 Reads
By Rebecca
He is the God of all Craftsmen, particularly those who work in metals, a sometimes God of Fire and Volcanoes. He also was an exiled child who became a disgruntled and disfigured adult. Then he went on to construct the most important items in all of creation. When you talk about overcoming handicaps to achieve great things, look no further then Hephaestus.
Some stories say this Greek deity is the child of Zeus and Hera, other stories explain that Hephaestus was conceived by Hera alone, without you know, having known anyone (wink, wink). One telling of his life’s tale explains that Hephaestus stood up for his mother Hera when she was fighting with Zeus, and thusly Zeus expelled him from Olympus. Quite forcefully in fact, he literally tossed him out and Hephaestus fell for nine days. When he landed it caused him to become crippled and disfigured. Another version says that Hephaestus was born crippled and that Hera was so repulsed by her newborn son that she discarded him, which also involved him doing some falling from Mount Olympus. No matter how it happened, Hephaestus is always shown as unattractive and misshapen, lame and hunched over his anvil. He walks with the aid of a stick because of his physical ailments, which are sometimes played up to such an extreme that his feet are actually back to front! An interesting note here is that some people mention that Hephaestus’s physical appearance could be a caused by low levels of arsenic poisoning. This is interesting because arsenic was sometimes added to bronze to help it harden, which resulted in many smiths of the Bronze age suffering from low levels of arsenic poisoning. This meant that many smiths of that era would bear some of the same marks as their patron Hephaestus. It should be noted that I am not a medical expert, nor a history buff, so I cannot vouch that this is 100% true, but I found it to be an interesting theory at the very least.
Read the complete article: The Magical Buffet
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Henbane - The Insane Seed that Breedeth Madness
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Posted by: Makarios on Friday, March 19, 2010 - 12:00 PM
36 Reads
By Rowan
Henbane, whose botanical name is Hyoscyamus niger, is a member of the Solanaceae order of plants which includes such innocuous members as the humble potato and tomato but also highly poisonous and notorious ones such as belladonna, mandrake and the daturas. It is one of the legendary "witch" plants, renowned in folklore for its claimed magickal qualities and it features in many of the recipes for witches' flying ointments which have been preserved in the records of the witch trials in an various other sources.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the plant makes its appearance in the English language as henne-belle, a form which is recorded as early as 1000 ce in the writings both of Æfric and subsequently in a number of early English medical manuscripts of the 11th century. It seems likely that this form derived at least in part from the bell-shape of the plant's flowers. The more familiar (and modern) form henbane was first recorded in the mid 13th century. The -bane part refers to an archaic Old English word for death, so the name as a whole refers to a belief that poultry, most notably hens, were particularly vulnerable to the effects of eating its seeds.
The same idea is found in the name wolfsbane, one of the common traditional names for aconite (aconitum napellus), which was not only sacred in Greek myth to Hecate and therefore to Cerberus, the three-headed hound who guarded the gates of the underworld, but also refers to the one-time use of the plant for poisoning meat left out as bait for wolves.
Read the complete article: White Dragon
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Freya
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Posted by: Makarios on Friday, March 19, 2010 - 08:00 AM
36 Reads
By Rowan Pendragon
<snip> Freya is a Goddess who comes to us from the Northern traditions and is commonly honored in the Norse traditions of Paganism, such as Asatru, as well as being a popular Goddess in Wicca. Popular as she is, there isn’t much historical information about Freya that is completely solid and much of what we know, or think we know, about her comes from myth and legend. The Prose Edda, considered one of the most important documentations of Norse mythology, was written in the 1200’s by a name named Snorri Sturlson. While this document gives a very important look at the culture of the Norse people, it’s important to know that Sturlson was a Christian writing about a culture and form of worship that had ended several hundred years prior, so it’s only natural that his writing would be colored by his own beliefs and experiences. This is important to keep in mind since it’s information like this, written by Christians and those outside of the Viking Age that created most of the history and myth which can sometimes attribute to the way that deity may be portrayed in the writings, especially one with many sexually charged aspects as Freya.
Within the Norse pantheon the deities are grouped into two groups, the Vanir and the the Aesir. The Gods and Goddesses of the Vanir are connected with the earth; the are deities that are associated with fertility in all aspects of the people and animals of earth, they have the ability to see into the future and are connected to all aspects of wisdom. The Gods and Goddesses of the Aesir are connected to the sky and are associated with the larger aspects of working with the Universe (these can be somewhat seen as the larger, mythical themes of the deities, the things that are often too expansive for most humans to understand easily).
Read the complete article: Within the Sacred Mists
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Ghostly Gazetteers
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 04:00 PM
52 Reads
Reviewed by John Rimmer
In reviewing other books in this series, and a similar collection from History Press, my colleague Peter Rogerson has pointed out that ghosts, hauntings and the paranormal are now as much a part of local nostalgia and the heritage industry as they are of psychical research, an impression which is reinforced by this current crop of titles.
The most substantial collection from a researcher's point of view is Darren Ritson's, although the title is slightly misleading, as the book deals mostly with the author's home area, the North-East, with comparatively little on the western half of Brigantia (which Ritson has dealt with in another book). The controversial South Shields poltergeist case is summarised, with the author taking the opportunity to get in a little retaliation to some of his critics, who may or may not include Magonia! This book has much more hands-on investiagtion than the other titles reviewed here, via Ritson's group, Ghosts and Hauntings Overnight Surveilance Team (G.H.O.S.T.S. - best acronym since Jim Moseley's Saucer and Unexplained Celestial Events Research Society - S.A.U.C.E.R.S!)
An account of an investigation of a haunting at a Miners' Welfare Institute in South Yorkshire, and the description of the almost superfluous haunting of the Blackpool Pleasure Beach's ghost-train, shows perhaps the way the ghost-story is moving: from the castles and abbeys, decayed relics of a vanished aristocracy, to the Miners' Institutes and closed-down pits of the post-industrial era, and the fading remnants of the once raucous, lively, working-class British seaside holiday.
Read the complete article: Magonia Blog
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Paganism 101: A Unitarian Exploration of the New Paganism
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 02:00 PM
59 Reads
By Louise Bunn with Fritz Muntean and Kara Cunningham
Today’s Pagans revere the Earth and all its creatures, seeing all life as interconnected, and striving to attune ourselves to the cycles of nature. Pagan practices are rooted in a belief in immanence – the concept of divinity residing within.
The many contemporary Pagans who have found a home in the Unitarian community are grounding our work in the rational structure, the intellectual balance, and the humanist core values that have descended to us from the Enlightenment. We’re working to develop a religiosity that is entirely compatible with, and complementary to, modern Unitarian rationality.
The new curriculum represents contemporary Paganism as:
•A thoroughly contemporary and well-tested approach to Mystery.
•A performative, lively way of attending to the rhythms, wisdom, and demands of Nature.
•A way of using the richness of myth and ritual to build religious community.
Read the complete article: Unitarian Communications
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Thoughts on Pagan Clergy
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 12:00 PM
73 Reads
By Rob Henderson
My views on the role of Pagan clergy have definitely changed since I started down this path twenty years ago. (Egads, that means that next year it will officially have lasted for half of my life.) Back in my early twenties, when I heard the phrase "every Pagan is their own priest", I thought it was totally cool and revolutionary and stuff. Fight the power!
Given how old I am now, I guess a slightly more conservative attitude was inevitable, and if anything I'm a little surprised how much of a "fight the power" kind of guy I still am. But on the clergy thing, I've completely changed. Now I see that "everyone is their own priest" thing as elitist claptrap. Sure, every Pagan *can* act as their own priest, I'm definitely not claiming to have any special relationship with the gods in general, and certainly not with someone else's household gods. I'm definitely a "Protestant Pagan" in that sense. But spending this much time as a Pagan, and as a Senior Druid, and as a Dedicant Clergyperson in ADF, I know all too well that not everyone *wants* to be their own Priest. And further - and here's the bit I know will get some people out there angry with me - not everyone is *good* at it either. Many people through the years have asked me for help creating personal household rituals or ideas for their altars, and I'm not about to tell them to figure it all out for themselves. Nor the folks without the experience or self-confidence to do their own ritual or magical work. Yeah, I suppose I could run a thirteen-week class to teach people everything they need to know (assuming I had the patience to be a teacher), but is that really something most people want to commit to? Sure it would be great if everyone was an expert at household ritual. It would also be great if everyone could sew their own clothing and fix all of their own car problems. Reality doesn't work that way, and I'm happy to share my knowledge and experience - which I've put a lot of my own time and effort into acquiring - with those who hear the call of the old gods but don't necessarily know what to do about it.
Read the complete article: Anas Waters
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Differences between Orthopraxy and Orthodoxy
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 10:00 AM
60 Reads
And Why They Are Important to Heathenry
By Swain Wodening
Both orthopraxy and orthodoxy are important to Heathenry, but in different ways. Orthodoxy can be defined as the standard beliefs of a religion. It comes from Greek orthodoxos “rigid/straight thinking.” Orthopraxy on the other hand can be defined as “rigid/straight action/activity.” Orthodoxy concerns beliefs while orthopraxy concerns practice. Last post I identified some areas where Heathenry was orthodoxic or orthopraxic in practice. However, it is not as simple as that. Heathenry by its nature is not orthodox. Beliefs vary a great deal between groups, nay, between individuals. There is no set dogma. The only areas where one might be able to say there is a standard of belief is a belief in Wyrd and the concepts of innangards and utangards. Even then, interpretations of these concepts varies a great deal so that there cannot be truly said to be a real orthodox practice.
There is a better argument for orthopraxy. There is a standard of practice of Heathenry throughout their religions. I say religions, because I am not sure Heathenry can be identified as a single religion. That would imply too much commonality. Still, in my last post, I noted that faining and symbel contain the same elements from group to group, that the thews are roughly the same, and that frith and grith are practiced much the same. Even then there are differences. As my lord Brian Smith put it of a liberal Asatruar attending a Theodish blót, “They may have a good idea of what is happening (cunnan), but the minutia can only come from empirical practice (cýðan).” That is while a Heathen may attend another groups rites may understand generally what is going on, they may be lost on the details. Heathenry though is closest in practice to the Chinese concept of li. Li is hard to define because as Confucius taught that it covered everything from rites to customs. For every single thing there was a right thing to do. Heathenry is no different, for everything we do, there is a proper way to do it, just look at the Havamal. Right action can lead to right thinking, but right thinking may never lead to right action. This is why orthopraxy is superior to orthodoxy. Þu bist þín dæda You are your deeds.
Read the complete article: Swain Wodenings Blog
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Controversy Over Demons
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 08:00 AM
77 Reads
By Frater Barrabbas
Well now that the blogs are all in a tizzy over Goetic evocation and demons in particular, I have decided to state a few of my own opinions on the matter. Over the past few months I have learned a lesson from adherents of the Left Hand Path, that it’s all too easy to judge a group of spirits by their class, even though like human personalities, they are actually unique individuals, and really need to be judged as such. To say that all Goetic demons are of a certain nature is to make a generality that is at best, inaccurate, at worst, a kind of prejudice. I admit that I have fallen into this trap, because magicians tend to categorize classes of spirits in order to place them into a greater context. However, all models and systems of categorization are heuristic devices that help one to understand what actually is a diverse and very loosely organized body of spiritual entities. Knowing a spirit’s alignment and determining its place within a spiritual hierarchy and class is an important tool for understanding and identifying that spirit, but its true identification can only occur when one has actually either invoked or evoked that spirit through some kind of magickal operation. This means that the old grimoires can’t be completely trusted in regards to how they describe and qualify specific demonic entities.
I am not going to name any names from the individual authors of these blogs, of course, since everyone who is commenting on this thread are experienced magicians in their own right. Magick can easily get out of control, but most of the time when this happens the magick just fails to really produce any verifiable effect. It’s also easy to blame magickal operations for being the cause of catastrophes, such as a house catching on fire, having an auto accident, causing the breakup of friendships or love relationships or any manifestation of bad health. Those of us who are committed and consistent workers of ritual or ceremonial magick can tend to paint our realities with too much literal and metaphorical magickal phenomena, since that is what we are particularly focused on.
Read the complete article: Talking About Ritual Magick
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Breaking News: School board approves Pagan/Wiccan holidays
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 06:00 AM
87 Reads
By Kris Bradley
This morning, the New Jersey Board of Education voted to approve their list of religious holidays permitting pupil absence from school for the 2010-2011 school year. Included for the first time on this list are the eight Pagan/Wiccan holidays, or sabbats. This marks the first time any state has approved Pagan holidays to a state calendar, and will set a precedence for other districts and states across the country.
This story starts with a mother sending in a note to get her daughter excused from school for Yule, 2009. Rev. Elena Ottinger's daughter attends Pennsville High School in the Salem County School District, located in Pennsville, NJ. Brianna Ottinger had recently finished her "Year and a Day", a traditional time of study for many Wiccan initiates. Rev. Ottinger, who has a doctorate in metaphysics, wrote a note to her daughter's school, letting them know that she would be taking Yule off from school to celebrate. When Brianna came home that day, it was with the list of approved religious holidays for NJ schools and a note from the vice principal that stated while they would give Brianna an excused absence, it would not be an excused absence based on a religious holiday.
Read the complete article: Domestic Witchery Examiner
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Grand Inquisitor's Manual, by Jonathan Kirsch
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 02:00 PM
91 Reads
Reviewed by Fionnchú
Efficiently told, often convincingly argued, this surveys the late medieval and Spanish secret police, courts, and prisons where "heretical depravity" could lead to execution, a life sentence, ostracization, or exile and destitution. Kirsch extends the parallels with Stalinist, Nazi, and contemporary applications of authoritarian suppression of what an authority deems thought-crime. He strives throughout to alert us to the parallels that for nearly seven hundred years have perpetuated the crushing of what "heresy" means in its Greek derivation: "choice."
That this choice lies within the individual dissenter infuriates the forces seeking monotheism, and/or conformity of expressed opinion. Kirsch cites Kafka's "The Trial": "You can't defend yourself against this court, all you can do is confess." The show-trials and the torture were applied to not only punish resistance, but to exact the ultimate humiliation-- to reduce the accused to admit accomplices, among his or her family and loved ones.
Read the complete article: Blogtrotter
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Consumerism’s New Frontier: The Preschool Set
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 12:00 PM
78 Reads
By Peter Laarman
Yes, friends: an American culture that says it really, really cares about its children needs to pay close attention now. We already overcategorize these same children; we overstimulate them and then we overmedicate them in so many disturbing ways.
But now we are about to cross a whole new boundary, because researchers have learned that tiny tots are actually able to make “consumer choices” much earlier than was ever before thought possible: they are neurologically ready to shop ’til they drop even at the tender age of three.
According to the new study, jointly conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin, “children use brand cues to determine what food products will be exciting or which toys will be the most enjoyable, and values associated with items (like food choices) are formed as young as three years old.” As well: “The most commonly recognized brand was McDonald’s, followed closely by other brands of fast food, soda, and toys.”
Read the complete article: Religion Dispatches
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Heathen Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 08:00 AM
105 Reads
By Swain Wodening
Many years ago, my brother made a case for orthodoxy in an article for Theod Magazine. The need is as great today as it was in the 90s. But just what is orthodox Heathen practice? To me it is all the things we have in common. But what do we have in common? I think I have identified a few things and I will present them here.
First there are the rites. Faining or blot as it is more commonly called follows a basic outline of prayers, blessing, and giving. While other steps may be added, these three things seem to be common for Theodsmen, Asatruar, Odinists, and Irminists. I have never seen a faining deviate from that. This is for a reason, it is how our ancestors did it for it is drawn from the Heimskringla:
It was an old custom, that when there was to be sacrifice all the bondes should come to the spot where the temple stood and bring with them all that they required while the festival of the sacrifice lasted. To this festival all the men brought ale with them; and all kinds of cattle, as well as horses, were slaughtered, and all the blood that came from them was called "hlaut", and the vessels in which it was collected were called hlaut-vessels. . . .
Read the complete article: Swain Wodenings Blog
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How going green may make you mean
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 06:00 AM
107 Reads
Ethical consumers less likely to be kind and more likely to steal, study finds
By Kate Connolly
When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to "green" type.
According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".
Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.
The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.
Read the complete article: The Guardian
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Heathen Humility
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Posted by: Makarios on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - 04:00 PM
132 Reads
By Siegfried Goodfellow
Things are not always as they seem. They say humility is foreign to heathenism. Bullshit. Humility is the very heart of heathenism, the ground from which we brag.
It is Rome that is arrogant, in its imperial and its religious forms. It is Rome which constructs a great chain of being with human beings at the top, little lower than the angels.
We are heathen. We are of the earth. We humble our humanity before weeds, trees, rivers, stones. Teachers reside there. Great elfin beings of shine and marvel tend these flocks. There is grandeur in a simple field of corn and grass. The wind blows, and we know Odin's thoughts wander about the earth.
We are beings of the heart. Our hearts are not debased by bowing before the humble things of this earth. We are trees transformed. We are bread and meal and milk drawn up through earthen flesh into bone and blood bodies spiralling with stars in our heads. God is mad, wild, uncanny. Enchantment lies deep in the heart of things. This is how it belongs. This is how it should be.
Read the complete article: Heathen Ranter
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