By the Goddess herself, Tori Amos.
(Forgive me the “guy moment”, but…Tori=Rawr!   Totally sexier than the blonde bunnies usually selling commercial products)

Need I say more, than this song rocks, and has such a good groove, regardless of the lyrics.

Watch more Under the Pink videos on AOL Video

Also, for more Tori Amos: I also like this groove (Sorta Faierytale…)

Discuss?

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A new trend here I think I’ll start, which is to include some semi-random songs that offer fuel for pondering.    I’ll include a little blurb, but am mostly just going to let the song speak (or sing) for itself.   I’ve also pre-posted five of these now, so they should show up each Monday, regardless of what else I post here.  Enjoy!

.

First, we have a favorite “muse-worthy” song, by Joan Osborne: One of Us.

Lyrical snippet: If God had a face what would it look like?
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that
you would have to believe
in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints
and all the prophets

So, I ask you humble readers, would you want to see God/Goddess manifest and visible without a shadow of a doubt, standing before you? Myself, I almost would not, but in a way I would.

I would, obviously, because on some level all this spiritual searching leads one to a profound belief in the reality of the Divine.    I would not, mostly because such a revelation would crumble a particular part of my worldview, and rather profoundly change the way I feel about my workplace and Reality as I know it. (if that’s not vague enough!).

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Maebius gets inked.

I got my first tattoo years and years ago.  So far if fact, that I honestly can not remember exactly when it was.  Sometime after high-school but before I really finished (in a sense) further University schooling (I never actually graduated per-se).

A friend of mine split the bill for it, though we were not really dating or such.  It’s a long sordid complex story for another day perhaps.    Suffice it to say, I got one.  A small triple-spiral on the inside of my left ankle (shown faded in image below).

Before actually getting the tattoo itself, I spent a good month or two drawing the same image onto my ankle with a ball-point pen.  Every morning, or near enough each one, I would wake, shower, etc, and re-draw my tattoo.   The reason was to see if I really liked it, and could handle having something permanent on my skin.  The more I drew it, the more I noticed the days I forgot to draw it, so, it worked.  I then got properly Inked.

It was painful, especially over the bone, but in a good way.    This was before my deeper explorations into the spiritual aspect of my current lifestyle, but looking back I still approached it as a sacred event.

Years later, with a wife and family, I started to finalize my on-going dream of extending that little triskele into something more involved and more symbolic of things.   The final result is pictured below, and was done by an apprentice tattoo artist, which means it is slightly imperfect.  I’ve gotten comments on this from two people already, which somewhat irritates me.  you see, this imperfection and signs of “learning the trade” were very much intentional on my part, and I love it.

It helped the apprentice artist get a lot of confidence being able to do “a real job” instead of tiny/simple things for random people.  For the same reason I don’t mind getting my hair cut at the local beauty-school by half-trained people.  The way I see it, the only way to get better is to learn and practice, so I don’t mind being a practice dummy. 

Beyond the original spirals, I had gone through countless variations of a Circle & Triangle design around it.  That much was certain in my head, but unclear beyond what what I wanted.    Luckily, the main artist I worked with spoke at length with me, scribbling probably a hundred different ideas.  I wanted a flame, probably, and something that looked almost tribal but was not the over-done swirly flack-fire stuff you see all over the place, including pre-printed “flash art” on the walls of many Tattoo stores.

I can’t form into words what the final product means, other than:  Me.  It’s different, it’s relatively simple, and it’s full of thoughts that don’t really translate into words.  The triangle matches the triple spiral in number, but I’m not a numerologist.  It’s kinda druidic (being a Three-aspect thing) but not quite.  The fires, are Fire, in the same way Nettle explains Deer in her post.   It just IS, on whatever layer you see Fire at.

Something that burns, sure, but something that transforms,  gives light, inspires, reminds me of pagan drum circles, and helps us get rid of paper-trash that can’t be recycled at home.  All that and more, stuck on my ankle, and thus part of Me.

The flames, I will eventually get highlighted with red and orange, someday, with the original spiral re-done or edged in forest green, or otherwise manipulated and modified slightly.  Time will tell, and right now does not feel “right/necessary” yet.    Though probably by the time I am 40, as part of some inner Rite of Passage to that age-bracket?

Better image hopefully once I get the camera working.

Also,  I re-read this and realize it does a horrid job of conveying the spiritual resonance for when I got this.  My brain;s foggy from night-shift work.   I’ll try to add more Musing-type thoughts on a later post.

Enjoy!

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Inspiration From my Hops Bine about Life
Written over the weekend, while working night-shift at work, and conceptually inspired during the Full “Strawberry” Moon while I sat outside staring at the sky.

The spring warmth and fires of inspiration call to your mind, stirring you to action, towards results, towards your Goal.  Softly, yet with the speed of new-found excitement, you spread the first green leaves of purpose out, collecting the sun, gathering energy for the final project, and setting the groundwork for the work to come.

Your roots, anchor in the the landscape of your life, drawing in the richness that surrounds you.  Harnessing the bounty of Gaia.  The minerals, the organic life that has gone before you, fueling your fire, holding you as you reach out towards Creation.

And reach out you do.  Tendrils of greenery, seeking purchase on the supports placed around your life.  Climbing, ever upwards towards your results, and enveloping the potential with ever-growing leaves.

Summer stretches onward, and your goal is in sight.  The efforts of the climb are not in vain, and have graced you with vibrant energy, from the sun, from the earth, from the winds, from the rain even.  Brief storms have only thickened the vines you cling with, and the hot dry days only illuminate your leaves further.

Days, weeks, months even may pass, but time passes and you persevere.

The first buds sprout out, in joyous celebration.  The energy you harnessed is confirmed to form. Your goal, whatever it may have been in this analogy of life, is finally at hand.

Creation happens.

You flower.

…

The wind turns cooler, and rains frequent the ground you grow upon.    You reap the harvest of your actions.

Snows may come, blanketing the core of you.  Seeming to bring death to those vines which prospered so recently and bore fruits and flowers.   But death to those simple vines merely paves the way.   Winter is a mere sleep, a regathering of light, and a watering of the earth you lie upon.  Your roots remain strong and vibrant.

While the harvest you created is lost to Time’s relentless arrow, it lives on in memory and muse.

One day, soon, spring will dawn again.

A new project inspires you.

You flower again.

..and again.

Timeless.

this is magic.

-Maebius   @2009

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Over on Nettle’s Blog, a friend of mine Meme asked a few questions about her Definition of Magic. Here’s my thoughts, with his permission. These answers were written up without reading Nettle’s answers, though there does appear to be a good deal of similarity. Great minds, and all that, perhaps… I will use the term Magick, with a K, to mean what seems to be the implied concept of esoteric alteration of the universe through directed willpower, which is what Meme appears to be asking about. This differs slightly from my own definition, so my answers may reflect that difference.

Sorry for getting this post up so late. We went camping and I was off work a few days, so was online less than usual to do bloggy-type stuff lately. Most of this was written in notebook and later transcribed to e-format here.

1) Do you believe in chance? Does the fundamental nature of the universe include chaos and randomness? If so, how do you distinguish between answers to “prayer” and random occurrences?

I do believe in chance, and the answer of discerning the difference between prayer and chance boils down to awareness and internalized perception. Since Magick to me is not so much the action and result-based fulfillment of prayer, and is more the personal awareness of potentials, even random chance holds magick, like how one of those magic-eye images appear jumbled, but if looked at differently, may contain a hidden image/message. Chaos in it’s truest form IS the magick; that unbounded potential for anything to happen. Thus, as Einstein has been quoted, “Everything is a miracle, or nothing is”, and I prefer to choose the inclusive side of things.

2) What, if anything, makes your version of magick different than a christian who prays to god? Is it only a difference in who you’re supplicating? Would you say that Christians everywhere are practicing magick then?

My magick is not so much spellcasting or energy manipulation, and haven’t gotten a good definition of THAT type of working myself yet. however, I understand many people ascribe such workings as “Magick”. In that regard, I do think that most devout christians (my younger self included) practice a form of magick if defined as seeking change from a Higher Authority in their lives. Myself, I do not count that as magic, and prayer is a completely different beast than the more esoteric concept of my Magick. Not saying prayer serves no purpose, of course. Creating a pot-roast on the stove, and slapping cold meat between bread both make food to sustain our lives, but are not “cooking”, if that analogy helps, yet both provide foodstuffs in different ways.

3) If magick consists of praying or asking for intercession, why then all the other trappings? Why the ceremonies and meetings and dress and altars? Is it to put you in a state of mind to ask properly? Is it to put the intercessionary being in the proper mood? If so, why do you think you need to approach your higher power in a certain mindset or vice-versa?

Going with the definition of magic as a ritual, I ask why catholic Mass, or other liturgical trappings are useful? I think (personally) the whole showmanship aspect is more important to get your own mind “in the zone”, but are ultimately for the public. Such rituals if done in a group help to unify the group dynamics, and if done in a solitary manner simply help the ‘performer’ concentrate on the task at hand and direcct energy in a more efficient manner. For such circle-work, having the tools and trappings is simply more efficient, such as using a hammer instead of a rock to drive nails. Additionally, it shows a certain level of respect and commitment to the Otherbeing, if you use things they might like, similar to me visiting a friend to ask a favor, and bringing a bottle of wine or a freshly baked cake. The cake is not so much a “bribe” as it is a gesture of good-will or ‘bartering of energies‘, if that makes sense.

4) In your experience and estimation: Can magick produce any reproducible result? Is there any working or spell or prayer that always results in the same effect?

This one is tough, but my first instinct would be to say “no”. Magick as it seems defined here is a personal change or perception. Casting a healing spell may help the person get better, though no one can say with Absolute Authority that they might have gotten well without the prayer, or that knowing others were praying caused a “placebo effect”.

The hang-up here is that the “reproducable effects” are mainly internal/personal. If I meditate every day, I may lower my levels of stress and lead a generally healthier lifestyle as a result. My own health has nothing to do with an outside observer. Likewise, a “Healing magick” may improve the health of the sick person OR if they get more ill and die, the effort involved may allow the people praying for healing to accept the larger picture that this person is now at peace.

Either way, the effect is not directly reproducible in the same way that a chemistry experiment is reproducible. It’s more probability-based or personal-driven, which is hard to quantify except in the large-scale. Each situation is different, and only aggragate results show a hint of “reproducible results” to outside observers. You can’t measure a single prayer or spell and extrapolate to include all prayers or spells. The nature of the thing being measured makes such an attempt invalid, like using a metric ruler to guage your favorite shade of green. Green can be measured, in some other form, usually by comparing other types of green, but not by itself.

5) If the answer to 4 is no, then how do you personally determine whether something happening was caused by Magickal intervention or pure chance? I’m sure you are familiar with experiments on human pattern matching. Why do you think what you experience is magick and not chance or luck that anyone could have? Why do you think that some people get what they desire/need/want without prayer or intercession?

This is a tough one, mainly since I define magick differently from the assumed topic being questioned here. However, I would answer that I simply do not determine the difference between chance and magickal intervention. If I pray, or enchant some trinket to get a result and it happens, then I do not automatically assume it was purely because of my efforts. I merely assume that I MAY have helped that outcome by my efforts. The converse of that still fits my worldview, and if everything is random, then our own personal mission in life is to make sense from the cards we are dealt. Some folks try to play the cards one way, some folks just play them as they are dealt, and neither is “correct” in the larger scheme of things. For the individual, though, I feel it means more if you try to be smart about which card is played next, but there’s nothing stopping others from simply letting them fall. Also with this view, I may not get the ace of spades, and you might, which fots the analogy of why some folks get lucky or unlucky, even with their [lack of] efforts.

6) Does magick demand faith? If so why?

Absolutely, though again, it seems Meme’s questions include a definition of magick=Prayer. However, faith, being a belief in some higher power, or a certain aspect of Reality, would be a type of magic in my definition, in that it allows the forming of a relationship with something Outside our own selves. Creating that bond is the magick, just like that indescribable feeling when you meet a new friend. Wether that Otherthing be a god, a spirit, or science, the fact that is exists beyond our humble human bodies, is the important magical part.

I read somewhere, “If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get out of the way, that is not belief in the truck.” Having faith in something means you act according to that faith. If magick exists, then you have faith that is does. You could be deluding yourself, of course, but Faith in and of itself, is a type of magick, so exists for me and is esssential for the thing itself. Sorry if that makes no sense. Even if your magick is the fact that invisible electrons flow through metal and make sparks, you have faith that each time electrons flow, you get a spark somewhere. Faith in electricity does not exclude faith in hydrodynamics, or esoteric Faeries in the woods. Apples and oranges, they are. The Magick in my worldview is that you have absolute Faith in something, and it works for you. The details are merely details.

7) Would you agree with the statement “Magick is whatever you want it to be.” ?

I would have to disagree with this statement, but not quite sure why as it seems like an invalid question. I think my issue is a difference in semantics with our concept of “magick”, but am unsure how to answer this properly. I defined my magic elsewhere, and in defining it, automatically negates your question or answes it in the negative.

That said, I think you were asking something deeper here, but can’t wrap my head around what it could be…. sorry.

If any type of prayer to any being/force/power is magick, would you say that everyone has access to magick to the exact same depth as everyone else? Do some people have more? if so why?

Again, slightly differing definition I use, but appealing to an Otherbeing is possible by anyone equally, at first. I say at first, because it is absolutely permissible to try and establish a relationship with that person. Like any random peson you meet on the street, though, some folks you’ll get along with better than others. It is the same with Faeries, Gods, Goddesses, or spirits. You can ALWAYS say hello, but some folks will always have a different rapport with certain ones and shy away from others.

I suppose it’s like our jobs. Anyone could try to learn program-code, but not everyone has the natural aptitude or mindset to get really into machine-language, and stops are learning BASIC or C++. With effort, anyone probably could program in PASCAL, but not everyone will ‘want’ to.

This means, while anyone can potentially have deep relationships with a certain deity or Otherbeing, it takes work, (and a bit of Faith that it works.. see what I did there?!) and a natrual inclination to persue that to begin with.

And lastly 9) So my question is, do you apply your skeptical thoughts to your own experiences or do you accept them as they are? Was there a point when you did critically examine whether they could be something other than magick, whether pyscological, neurological, pysiological, etc?

This question was more specific to Nettle, but I understand where it’s coming from. For myself, I am skeptical of everything I do, to a point. More specifically, I ask myself at times “Does this work for me?” and if the answer in my head is affirmative, then I act accordingly.

Your second point, I can answer better. In my youth, I was an assistant minister. I felt the communal energy at church, how the gathering of people there for worship made me feel somewhat in awe or at least ‘different’ than when I sat at home and tried to pray to God. I figured, if I noticed the power of my congregation affecting me on some physiological level, then there must me soemthing to this God/prayer thing. It felt more “Real” in church than alone at home, so I started studying ministry on my own and eventually got to read lessons and hand out communion wafers.

Yet, the more I read about the bible, Koran, and other sacred texts (since I was taught a bit about other monotheistic religions so I could argue my own better with ‘non-believer’ skeptics) the more I started to notice that there were inconsistancies, or flaws in the ‘logic’ of my church. I understood that the church congregation itself was a useful SOCIAL construct, for everyone to gather together, but my core Faiths were starting to be shaky. I started to essentially phycho-analyze my relationship with God, and about this time discovered neopagan concepts.

I didn’t entirely believe them either, but it was the first non monotheistic faith-based lifestyle I stumbled across, and as such, allowed me a borader framework to critically examine my beliefs, and restructure my own thoughts into something resembling my current Spiritual Outlook. I still believe in God, but added a few other concepts to that belief, magick being the biggest one.

Even today, any new thing that I come across, be it Qaballah, Hindu, Jewish, or any other spiritual practice, I am willing to do a bit of reading and see if anything sounds logical. Mainly, it doesn’t. But as you probably guess from the last two years of blog-posting, I periodically still question things and turn a critical eye on what I’ve been believing, which will never stop. Questioning myself (or ones-self) is an important part of any spiritual practice, so you can tell if it’s not working right.

Unfortunately, such critical navel-gazing doesn’t lead you to a better path, but at least lets you know you may need to step off the current one.
Hope that helped you get a different viewpoint.

PS: I do also enjoy philosophical debates on the nature of spirituality. (See God’s Debris, which is a cool little read that I dont’ agree totally with, but does have nuggets of Truth-for-Maebius inside it’s pages) My wife will also tell you how much I banter and scripture-quote with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I do it not out of spite, but to show them I’ve thought of their message and can not bring myself to join it. Knowledge is power, and all that.

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I am enjoying a little discussion going on currently on the AODA mailing list, regarding “Definition of Magic” and only after-wards realized I made a similar comment about Alan Moore’s definition post back in October. At the very least, this shows I have not changed my position on the topic too much!
I’ll toss out my own definition, as best I can. (also with Nettle’s excellent “Merely my opinion” caveat)
Magic is Creation. Period.

*cackles* To broaden the analogy a bit, I see magic as the unnamed force, power, and unknowable spark of divinity that happens when we make something happen. In this regard, calling the quarters, casting a circle of power, and summoning spiritual/aetheric entities is magic, which is directed towards a goal. Ritual magic, in a sense. We change ourselves and adjust our probabilities towards a desired result.

Also, talking to faeries and plant spirits, building up a relationship, and joining those energies with ours to a goal (protection, healing, et al) I also describe as “working magic”. However, in my paradigm, the actual ‘magick’ is not so much the direction of energies, it’s that immensely-hard-to-put-in-words concept of forging the connection with the spirits themselves. The working part is the goal/intent and maintaining the relationship through proper honoring and respect for those entities, but the Magic itself is when that bond formed where it had not been before. Shaking hands with the nearby angelica-fae sparks that magic, but is not the magic itself. Re-affirming the connection is re-making the magic too.

Again, same words, different meanings, and I love the architects analogy. Give each of us an identical bowl of sticks and flowers and tell us to make a festive wreath, they will each look different, using the same materials. The magic itself is the formative process that converts the Will (idea) into manifested Stuff. That primal creativity that allows you to see a pile of sticks and envision a wreath. To watch the sunrise and sense a new day is dawning full of untapped potential. To just watch a baby exploring hte world for the first time. It’s Creation, in its many-faceted glory and awesomeness.

We “work magic” by taking those potentials and manifesting them somehow. “Change according to Will” fits the definition, but I always read that phrase with a more immediate and ego-filled connotation, seeing the results rather than the source. (Ego as in self-aware, not self-ish, and not insulting at all.)

Yet, as always, english words don’t quite capture the sublety of the concept., which is why each person seems to wrap it in analogy and poetic prose. Putting the wordless into words, which is pretty magical too.

To be intentionally vague and scientifically geeky, the box Schrödinger put a cat in was full of magic when it was closed.

Paradoxically, this definition of mine also sees magic in destruction, if you take “creation” literally. Allowing something to die off, stepping back, and other non-actions can be magic, as they create open possibilities for the universe just as much as forging your ideas into reality. Compost is jsut as important as sproutlings, and I’ll feed worms someday.

Heck, This email itself started as a blank white field. Look what it turned into when you read it!
-Nate

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(original Mom-image link)

I just received the slightly inaccurately named “Mom of the Year Award” from my e-friend down in beautiful Rio de Janeiro, Nydia of the Bringing up Salamanders blog. Being a dad myself, I cant quite live up to the full Mom title, though I did share my part in bringing our little bundle of joy into the world (literally), and am happily married to the actual Mom. The image has now been added to the “awards” page for this blog. Thanks!!
Here are the rules:
First, Admit one thing you feel awful about involving being a mom dad. Get it off your shoulders. Once you’ve written it down, you are No Longer allowed to feel bad. It’s over with, it’s in the past. Remember, you’re a good mom dad!

Hmm…I wrote it down, and burned the paper. While I believe the spirit of this rule is to share the frustrations on Parenting as a show of unity and solidarity among all awarded parents, I feel that actual public airing of any grievances on my blog would only come back to bite me years later (when I become president or something). Plus, I don’t want to encourage the sharing of my own dirty laundry. The magic of getting it off my shoulders has been worked. I’m a good dad.

Then, Remind yourself you are a good mom dad, list seven things you love about your kids, you love doing with your kids, or that your kids love about you. These are the things to remind yourself everyday that you Rock!

Without further adu:

1. I love coming home from work and getting immediately accosted to “Help me with this Craft/Homework/Toy/Game”. He looks forward to seeing me return.
2. I love the fact that he’s created an entire fantasy world, with surprising consistency, for us to play in on rainy days or long car rides. Warrior Brothers are we.
3. I love the fact that he is a voracious reader, with a mastery far above his grade level, and a willingness to devour everything at the library. An evening without a book is a sad evening indeed, at our house.
4. I love going hiking outside, swimming, camping, and all the outdoor stuff, and knowing that my little one already understands basic ecological principles. Leaves are worm food and become dirt, the chickens eat bugs and lay eggs, and litter in the water hurts our garden food when we irrigate. Those are important skills to know, and he doesn’t shy away from such “boring science talks” usually.
5. I love boy-time, even when it makes my wife shake her head in soft-hearted confusion. Beating up, and getting beat up by my son until one of us is defeated is fun. The punishment for losing being a tickle-torture or “zerbert” is totally worth surrendering, even if I could overpower him easily.
6. I love the fact that this weekend, my son said “Dad, I love you best cause you help me and are the best video game player in the world!”.
7. I also love the fact that this same weekend, my son said “Mom, I love you best because you snuggle me at night and let me read you stories!”.

Finally, I am supposed to link 5 other mothers across the Blog-o-sphere, to nominate them for this award. Unfortunately, the blogs I actively follow are either already members of this prestigious club, are not mothers themselves, or have blog focuses which seem a bit out of place for such a “parent-centric” award.

So, I will have to possibly break a few rules and try to list just the few blogs who I do not immediately recall having been nominated already, and are parental-types, and are awesome. If you have this award already, my bad… If not, now you do!

• Of course, Anne Johnson of The Gods are Bored. Especially with her latest post.
• Barefoot Kitchen Witch,source of inspirational foodstuffs and awesome kids.
• The Hillbilly Fairy, maker of nifty little purse/pouches and generally nifty blogger.
• Having the word Muse in their blog, Magical Musing gets bonus points from me here.
• Two and a Half Orcs is a young couple with a dedication to family beyond the MMO.
• Pom Wonderful (who I must admit I associate now with delicious anti-oxidant-rich beverages in the goddess-shaped bottle. Sorry, I just love pomegranates !!)

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Inspired by a passed-along link to this Witchvox article, I want to take a moment and thank my mentors who stand out in my head as being quite important to my current Spiritual path.

Thank you to Polly Gainer, my high-school Physics teacher. While she never discussed anything probably remotely related to pagan spirituality, she was the first lesbian adult I remember knowing first-hand, and one of my favorite teachers even beyond this facet of her personal life. She made Physics Phun, and opened the door of my mind to alternative quantum states, directly influencing my religious growth. Her dedicated “well, try it!” teaching style showed me the power of personal experience in learning how the world works.

Thank you to Mr Bowman, and solar energy astral projections, as one of the more memorable “hey, lets play magic” times of my experimental spellcasting phase, where I actually felt a different energy while we tried to “pass the flow”. This stands out as a good benchmark moving from all that Llewellyn study to “I tried it and…hey, it works!” Also for visiting Spoutwood Farm Faerie Fest and associated “social gatherings”.

Thank you to Shara and Jessa, for opening their circle gatherings to me, and exposing me to a slightly more organized side of pagan practice. I learned a lot, some that works for me still, and some that drove me away, but it was all an excellent experience in the larger picture. Sorry for my abrupt departure from your circles, since maturing wisdom has shown me there was much learning potential with you, even though I wasn’t ready for it at the time. The t-shirt graffiti party was awesome fun!

Thank you to Wren of the Zenporch, for friendship and Renaissance Frolics. Your palm reading and close friendship showed me another aspect of kitchen witchery and a more gentle lifestyle-based side of pagan Paths in contrast to the active ceremonial circle-workings I’d seen before. The ZenPorch remains one of my mental “safe spots” when meditating, in a large part because of you.

Thank you to B, for the memories sipping tea in the moonlight with drums echoing through the stillness, spinning Poi under the stars, and crash-space while visiting and being surrounded by Art. Also, thanks for your politico-socio-philosophical topics, which I may not agree at all times, but help me clarify my own Path. You helped blast open one of the biggest doors along my journey, knowing it was also OK to walk through.

Thank you to Nettle, for more Zenporch musings, eastern philosophies, herbal understudies, and quite a lot of inspiration in subtle and unworded ways. Thanks also for introducing me to Starwood, and by extension, FaerieCon, ShareFest, and a myriad of other social gatherings with varied styles and energies. I’ll never forget sitting on a Philly roof-porch with a dark mirror feeling rather frightened because my reflection changed, and knowing that was still OK. You’ve probably showed me how to push open more doors than anyone combined.

And finally, thank you to the pagan Blog-o-Sphere I follow. So many viewpoints, facets, and diverse opinions and virtual correspondances out there, I can’t help but grow and deepen my own Path through shared learning. I won’t list them all here, but the best are in my blogroll page, linked on this site.

Thank you.

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A short little muse, to keep up my habit of posting regularly…

Inspired slightly by my friend Nettle and her Love post, I did a bit of meditation on Love last night, which quickly transformed topics and became a musing on the nature of Good and Evil.

I couldn’t come up with a proper definition, which tended to pop words like altruism into my head, that still neatly put the initial concept of Love on what felt like the “evil” side. Either that, or it continually crept into “Innocence”, as a primal force, and thus neutral. (Neutral=good, affective[sic]=bad?!?)

It’s complicated. I think my own preconceived connotations of the word are pretty deep, and human English is unable to properly describe the “feeling” I have when trying to describe the concepts.

Then, today, I read a World of Warcraft blog I have been following, which did a quite remarkable job of putting words onto what I tried to come up with last night. Here is the post Pondering this topic..

“Evil” has a reason. Always a reason, and many reasons. A man beating his wife always has a reason. “You’re lazy, you burned the food, you’re stupid, you never just shut up.” Evil is always trying to punish the world for not being what they want it to be. The world should be different, that’s the reason. Only good doesn’t need a reason. Why hug a child? No reason. Give to the needy? No reason, it just is.

Likewise, a quote I commented on to Nettle on her blog is as follows:

Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale… Love loves; this is its nature.” – Howard Thurman

This…perhaps.. in some undefined and as-yet unpondered way… may be why we see all sorts of “bad stuff” (bad as defined by you, of course) which can often be rationalized as “Human Nature”.

We think, therefore we are, therefore we have Reasons, therefore….

Hmmm.

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I made a mental note to do some actual scholarly research, but I was pondering a discussion recently about Oral traditions, Written books on Spiritual Paths, and such things. Essentially, what is the current ‘media modus operandi‘, for today’s culture and it’s relation to myth? I may be completely wrong about history and precedent, but it doesn’t sound completely false logically. I’m a bit ignorant (ie: unlearned) on the academic levels of this topic.
I am guessing that historically, faerie tales, and oral traditions of bedtime stories were the most common form of passing down myths and cultural values. Beyond the simple safety-lessons like “Don’t go in the woods or the Boogie Man will eat you”, such stories were able to pass along ideas for morality, and cultural memes.

After the age of printing, books started to replace the bedtime stories, or at least allowed them to find a common ground. Regional tales still existed, but the advent of books helped to somewhat “standardize” the most well-known stories. For better or worse, this may have introduced or sterilized some of the more potent or subtle/scary tales. Just look at what Disney has done with “the classics”.

In more modern times though, staying on the topic of passing Myths and stories to the younger generation, even books may be falling out of favor. For the youngest kids, picture books are still a decent part of learning, but more and more, I seem to see Television and Movies as the media of choice. I can’t help but feel this is a bad thing.

My own son’s imaginative play is awesome for a geeky parent like me, but visiting other kindergardeners Birthday parties, it always strikes me how commercial those kids are. Every girl, even at age 5, must MUST have a Hannah Montana thing, or High School Musical. Age five =/= High School, people.

In a similar vein, the stories of our culture are mainly passed on by movies now, I believe. The trend of either horror stories, which stand in (poorly) for the archetypal “boogie man” myths, or the comic book heroes which replace the Heroes Tale by shallow replacement of action CGI over the deeper character development. Granted, Characters still exist, but the most popular movies, and thus the ones who set the pace for future movies generally, are a much different beast from the old Grimm’s tales.

In life, unlike the movies or those old stories, not everyone wins.
I see this as a good thing.
Is this over-hyping of commercialism the new Spirituality? Are we missing the old spooky tales, and thus depriving ourselves from the deeper questions of life and accountability?

There’s much more to ponder here, and it’s a vast and complicated topic to be adressed again in part later…

Your thoughts?

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