Month: August 2004

  • Today I watched Butterfly Effect. Monday I saw The Village. Two great movies to make you think. Without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t seen either, they are definitely movies to see. And The Village is not a horror movie. Just so you all get that into your heads. It’s not. It is scary in spots, but the movie is not about the scary monsters.


    Both movies are social commentaries in their way. Butterfly Effect examines the individual. What is he willing to do, what sacrifices is he willing to make to ensure that the people around him are happy and healthy. I found it interesting that the main character’s mother had suffered two still births before he was born. I wonder did anyone else catch that and think it was an interesting point. Probably what gave the character his final idea…


    The Village… I don’t want to say too much, because I’m sure there are folks who haven’t seen it yet. Let’s just say, the hero is not who you think, the monster is not what you think, and the Village itself is not what it looks like. A really big clue is when the Elders gather behind a house to discuss the school teacher’s decision (I’m not saying what it is, but it’s nothing they say), but everything is given away once they open the box. If only I could join a group like the Elders of the Village…


    I haven’t been dreaming much. The other night I dreamt of little dwarves fleeing their evil monarch, sliding through tube-like tunnels to the surface. Then I dream of crawling through caves myself until I came to small sandy-floor cave just big enough for me to curl up. And so I did and slept in my dream.


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    Edit
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    Just came across this article this morning and figured I put up such a short post and no one’s commented on it yet, so I’d just add it on…


    The fastest growing religion in the US


    by Moon Lion


    I was wondering if anyone had done a study that would show how many pagans there were in the US. In doing a web search I came across a site for the City Univeristy of New York. This site showed the results of one the most comprehensive surveys of religion in the US. They had performed the survey in 1990 and again in 2001. The changes in the numbers of adherents to the various faiths in the US were extremely interesting.


    Christians showed about a 0.05% growth in numbers, but a 9% decrease in percentage of the total population.


    Muslims showed an impressive 109% growth during that time.


    However, the survey showed that between 1990 and 2001 there was a 1675% growth in PAGANISM!!! 1675%!!! The number of pagans went from about 35,000 to over 550,000!


    Here’s a link to the study:
    http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/key_findings.htm


    This kind of growth is incredible – and the thing that makes it most impressive is pagans don’t seek converts!! You’ll never see a pagan missionary or have them knock on your door to give you pamphlets. Pagans don’t try to find converts – the converts seek out the pagans!


    I doubt there has ever been this kind of phenomenal growth of a non- proselytizing religion in history before. Religions that use missionaries and/or force people to convert by threat of violence have probably had this kind of growth before, but a religion that makes no effort to convert people has probably never had this happen before!
    (This is just a guess though).


    Here’s another link that looks at the issue in more detail: How Many Pagans?
    http://www.paganspace.org/perspectives/answer.php?question=2


    If this growth rate was to continue, (which I don’t believe it possibly could), the entire US would be pagan in under 40 years.


    Looks like the Old Gods are back in a big way!


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    Just thought I’d share! Teehee

  • I dreamed last night I was spitting up pieces of bone. They weren’t normal bone, but smooth, curved pieces nearly too large for my mouth with weird symbols in bas-relief on each piece. I could feel pressure in my throat as they came up and then in my mouth as the edges pressed against the skin of my cheeks and lips, but even though the pieces were large, they didn’t cut me at all.


    So in this dream, I was myself, but not. My parents were completely different people. I went into their bedroom where they were sleeping and showed them the bones, still spitting more up as I went. They were delighted because it meant something was going to happened soon. They collected all the bones which turned into a nude woman once they had been put together properly.


    Finally I spit out this spiney thing resembling brain coral. It was the heart of the woman who had been formed from the bits of bone. As I spit it out, it began to shift and change which somehow represented the switching of earth’s magnetic poles.


    And then I was the woman that the bones had made. A government agency was trying to capture me, but a cult was protecting me and looking forward to the flip-flop of the the earth’s polarity because it would herald the dawning of a new age.


    For some reason at this point, I saw the President taking a French class. If he did not pass the class, he could no longer be President. A male classmate gave him a book about Iraq to swallow so that he could cheat on the test. He gave the man a big kiss on the mouth and then he swallowed the book, his mouth stretching to engulf the whole thing. There were also affluent people in the dream (who had some connection to the President) who were mutating and eating other folks.


    Finally as the bone woman, I was walking around outside my parent’s mansion (I wish!) in a gentle rain while a film crew was setting up. I wasn’t exactly sure what they were filming, but I think it had something to do with me and letting the people of the world know that things were going to change whether the government goons liked it or not. No one seemed in the least bit disturbed that I was nude.

  • Some of you may recall (if you’ve been reading my blog for longer than a year) how I lost my job at the bank, September 11th, 2003. Some may even recall the interesting “benefit” that they habitually offered their employees, namely the free psychiatric services…


    Well, after nearly a year, one of my former coworkers finally tracked me down at the bookstore. It seems after they let me go for “making terroristic threats at the workplace,” they fired many other “problem” employees. Take for instance Joe #1 (we had three different Joes). Joe had a variety of health problems. At one point he went to the dentist and they broke his jaw as they removed a molar, so he was out for that as well as pneumonia later, etc. It seems after I left, he discovered he had a brain tumor. The bank’s response? Well, they fired him.


    So I saw Joe #2 at the bookstore and he filled me in on their policy of firing, and then informed me that he had had a nervous breakdown after they fired Joe #1. Just went up to processing and sat at his desk and did nothing. You’re thinking, wow, the free psychiatric services makes sense now. Right? lol


    Anyway, just thought it was an ironic story to share with you all…


    **


    Last night (or should I say this morning since I didn’t get home from work till 3am?) I dreamed we bought a house and were redoing the attic. We had to replace the roof because it was leaking and rotting out the walls. The plaster was falling, revealing rotting boards, etc. Then we nocked down a wall, and everything past that point was new. There were these spiralstair-like metal “cages” from floor to ceiling, filled with packing peanuts. I have no idea what that means.


    I took a nap this after noon and had some famous people in my dream! Yay… Anyone remember Joxxer and Autolyceus from Xena? Well, I was dressed as a ninja and they were with me. We stumbled into this labyrinth which was supposed to be filled with monsters, but it was dark and deserted. We got all the way through to a dead end.


    Joxxer lean against a wall and fell through a secret panel. On the other side was a message… “Congratulations, you are now a hero. Please collect your token.” So we wandered over to a bin marked “tokens,” but it was full of bottle caps with little fortune cookie messages as on them. There was also a knight’s helmet which Joxxer took for himself.


    Just as we were trying to decide whether or not to actually take one of the “tokens,” a group of men-at-arms came striding down the hall. They started yelling at us because we weren’t supposed to be there, and we ran in the other directing through a set of doors like movie theater doors at the other end of the hall and into a castle.


    There we were told to explain ourselves, at which point Autolyceus went into one of his rambling nonsense stories with many interjections from Joxxer. I was silent through the whole thing. I’m not sure why. I was just reflecting on everything, but not speaking. After they were through, the knights explained that no one had made it through the labyrinth alive in a very long time. So we must be the heros they’d been waiting for.


    **


         I’m starting a new series of articles discussing the “laws” of magic with this issue of the Ancient Whispers Newsletter. This is based on a list of laws or magickal theories which I have compiled from various places (twenty-seven in all). In each edition of the newsletter, I will post one law and any sublaws attached to it, and then explore its function and usage in magic. I invite anyone who is interested to agree, disagree, or contribute with your own understanding of the law.


     

         I begin the series with the first law of magick, the Law of Worldviews. This is a theory dealing with the nature of reality… the known and “unknownable” universes. If you’ve ever used affirmations, you have made use of this law without realizing it. Because affirmations as a way of changing your reality are so much a part of this law, the Sites of Interest are all meditative or affirmation sites.

     

    *~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~* Index *~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*


    Some Sites of Interest

    Evolving The Spirit With Affirmations
    Affirmations for Shifting Light
    Daily Inspirational Thoughts
    Affirmations Can Change Your Life
    *~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*


    This Pagan Week : August
    Humor : Famous Man
    Article : Axioms of Magic: I Law of World Views
    Quote : William James
    Craft of the Week : Application of the Law of Worldviews
    Humor : All the Same
    Who’s Who in World Mythology : Badb
    Quote : Sigmund Freud
    The Magi’s Garden :Chinchona
    Cartoon
    Poem : Birds Nest in My Arms
    Quote : Jean De La Bruyere
    The Power of Stones : Cafarsite
    Humor : Snow White’s Camera
    A Dreamer’s Guide : Pepper to Perspiring
    Quote :Anonymous
    Previous Newsletters


    *~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*


  • Humans are now virtually certain that life exists elsewhere in the universe – hardly anyone would disagree.


    As the universe is infinite, it follows that there are sets of life-forms dispersed throughout it, both bound to planet-like objects and in other places. It is not so difficult to imagine that concept, even if our mathematical and graphical modeling cannot cope with the reality of infinity.


    But the nature of the universe is much more complicated than that. We have not begun to appreciate how complex is matter. It is a false concept to imagine a particle which cannot be separated into other smaller particles, ad infinitum. The notion that all the matter in the universe is created out of identical forms is the product of mathematics devoid of all sensibility, and is absurd. True, some collections of matter have uniform characteristics, but parallel conditions exist with collections of objects in outer space.


    Whole worlds, containing life, are just as likely to exist at the infinitesimally scaled level, as they are in our ‘viewable’ part of the universe. To go outwards, at the next macroscopic level, the objects we see in space may be part of a (to us) massive object. The mind has difficulty projecting further, both down through infinitesimal scales and up through macroscopic ones. Because of our limited imaginations, we have no true size or bearing in the universe. Because the universe is infinite, and because it is infinitely divisible, consciousness must exist in every other hierarchical level of inward and outward progression, relative to our own position.


    We may be subject to the actions of a consciousness at a very high macroscopic level of progression, but we would have difficulty identifying this due to our unimaginably small scale in relation to it. Vice versa, that consciousness would have difficulty recognizing us – this would be the same as ourselves recognizing a consciousness that was infinitesimally small.


    -Paul Haseman


    **


    Physicists have created blobs of gaseous plasma that can grow, replicate and communicate – fulfilling most of the traditional requirements for biological cells. Without inherited material they cannot be described as alive, but the researchers believe these curious spheres may offer a radical new explanation for how life began…


    …But perhaps the most intriguing implications of Sanduloviciu’s work are for life on other planets. “The cell-like spheres we describe could be at the origin of other forms of life we have not yet considered,” he says. Which means our search for extraterrestrial life may need a drastic re-think. There could be life out there, but not as we know it.


    -David Cohen

    **


    There could be life in here, but not as we know it. In here, meaning the subconscious. Where do we go when we dream? What worlds do we create or partake of? Scientists are so gungho to find life out there, in the infinite universe, in the macro or even microcosm. They’re keen to create new forms in laboratories and say look what we did! Do you know what this means? Life might not adhere to the same rules we as carbon-based organic lifeforms do.


    Maybe life, in all its infinite forms, is not only physical, but metaphysical as well. As our strict definition of life is eroded, I begin to wonder about the cartoon I once saw of a dream that discovered it was a dream and took steps to ensure that its creator would never wake.


    Life…



    in here::::::::><::::::::in here


    Who’s to say that we and our universe are not someone else’s dream or nightmare? Do we represent some other being’s subconscious as it works through daily traumas and barely recognized personal fears in nocturnal technicolor imagery?


    Some ancient cultures believed that every evening, the world was destroyed, and come morning the world was remade. Many cultures believed this was not the first, but one in a series of worlds or ages. Might these ages represent the waking and sleeping of our creator?


    What worlds have I destroyed by opening my eyes?



  • I had a really weird dream last night.


    No, really, I mean it this time. I know I’ve said it before, but this was bizarre…


    I was lost in the woods when I came upon a house where these two elderly but not old people lived. The man had no hands and the woman had no feet. She was very fat and he was very thin.


    I stayed with them for sometime. Since I couldn’t find my way home, they let me stay in return for doing chores around their home. But I ate veggies out of the garden because a cat told me not to eat their soup, which was always bubbling in the fireplace. When they would offer food, I would say I was too busy but that I would eat later (but I never did).


    After about a week, they told me they wanted me to stay with them always. Then they took out a display box. Inside were her mummified feet and his mummified hands! They said that to prove their love and devotion to each other, they had exchanged body parts. They said they would give these to me as a sign of their adoption of me into their family and asked what I would give them. Whatever I gave them would go into the soup and we would all eat it together so that I would become a part of them.


    Needless to say, I was very surprised, but I hid my disgust and asked if I could go outside and think about what I should give them. They agreed, and I went out to the garden with the box. Immediately the cat appeared and said I should take the box and run. The old people in the cabin were cannibals and immortal because of their diet. They would slowly wittle me out of my parts for their soup until all that was left was their box of hands and feet which they would take back and keep till the next unsuspecting girl arrived at their cabin.


    So I ran off with the box and came upon a large, blocky building with no windows. When I went inside, there were two men. One attempting to leave, and one chasing him. The man who was in pursuit yelled that I should catch the other man, so I did. Then we dragged him into a room with a coffin-like box and several rows of folding chairs set up in front of it.


    We manhandled the running man into the box face down and closed the lid so the back of his head was the only thing showing, and he could not move. Then a bunch of very beautiful, young-seeming, cultured people came in and found chairs. The man took my box of hands and feet and put it behind the ‘coffin,’ directing me to take a thin hose with a spike at one end and insert it into the other man’s brain which had somehow become visible through the hole in the ‘coffin.’


    A clear fluid that looked a lot like water, slowly filled a glass after being processed through the hose and a machine. When the glass was full, the man took it and passed it to the people in the chairs. Each took a sip and nodded before passing it on. Finally the glass came back to me half full. The man said the rest was for me. 


    Not having much choice in the matter since I was under scrutiny, I drank it, but it really was just like water. Some attendants came in and took the other man out of the box. He was alive, though semi-conscious, and the back of his head was back on. They led him away where he could recover.


    As the other people filed out of the room, the man explained to me that I would now have to have an infusion once a month or I would rapidly grow old and die. He knew I was part of their ‘cult’ because I was beautiful and because I had helped catch the ‘donor’ trying to escape. If I continued my treatments, I would never grow old or die… just like all the other privilged people who stayed there. He said that he guessed I must have escaped from the cannibals because of the hands and feet. They knew about the cannibals because they used to belong to the ‘cult’ but had left. They only managed to remain alive through their diet, but not to stay young.


    I asked after the man who had been led away and he said that eventually the man would die, but he would give many months worth of elixir before that. They had many people like him kept in a large holding cell.


    And at this point I woke up, so I don’t know what happened after that. I sure wish that cat had warned me about the brainsuckers like he did with the cannibals. But on the other hand, that might be why he had me keep the box. So I would be recognized and accepted by them.


    Man, I think I should start writing screenplays. Don’t you think some of these dreams would make great movies? They make about as much sense as some horror movies I’ve seen.