Hey Gibbs, Hell Yes I Wanted Canadian Style Health Care

Obama’s press secretary had a meltdown this week about “progressives” and how they actually expect change they could believe in rather than more of Bush lite.

I wanted Dennis Kucinich, voted for him in the primary even though he “officially” was out of the race and further, I did NOT vote for Obama because I did not trust him.  And I was right.  I voted for Cynthia McKinney.  Hell yes Gibbs, I wanted Canadian style health care, in fact Obama promised it during the campaign.  Further, I expected the post election US to return to the rule of law.  That would have meant putting Bush, Chaney and company behind bars for war crimes which the entire world knows they committed and they have openly confessed to.  I also expected the government to stop spying on private citizens, stop acting like thugs, stop acting outside our own laws and stop torturing people.  I expected an end to the illegal wars and the immediate closing of Gitmo.  I expected Wall Street to pay the price for destroying our ecomomy, I expected Massey Mining corporate officers charged with murder and the same with BP.  I expected all of BP’s assets seized as coming from criminal activities.  I expected actual liberal nominations to the Supreme Court.

I expected an immediate end to Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell and the repel of DOMA.  I expected the Department of Justice to start acting like a department of Justice.  I expected the known issues of electronic voting to be addressed so never again could an election be stolen in this country like in some third world dictatorship.  I expected those who are elected officials who have openly espoused treason to be charged and tried for it.

And I still do expect those things but now have something in common with the Tea party folks, I no longer believe those things can be achieved without a revolution…. because we elected an overwhelming majority in both the House and Senate of Democrats as well as sent the “Messiah” to the White House.

And I am not a “professional” progressive.  I am an old style liberal who has watched in horror as her country became a third world fascist dictatorship during my lifetime.  I have not even attempted to fly anywhere since 911 because doing so means giving up basic civil rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  I am infuriated at being subjected to searches just to conduct needed business at government offices.

I’m a pissed off progressive and I sincerely doubt I am the only one and I will have to think about ever again having to vote against someone rather than ever having the choice to vote FOR someone I actually feel good about voting for.  I have voted in every single election I was eligible to do so in since coming of age but have reached the conclusion that it is pointless and perhaps letting the Repugicans finish off the country is the only way we will get our revolution.  I am not voting in November for the first time in my life unless the impossible happens and Obama and the the Dems in Congress actually grow a spine.  It’s pretty bad when an old feminist woman has to tell the Democrats “grow a pair”.  It’s especially ironic when it comes from an old woman who had them removed herself.

 

“Opening the Floodgates” Dealing with an Openly Bigoted Town, Catskill, New York

I have tried to maintain an “arms length” between my secular writings and opinions and those of the Religion I am a major part of.  That is why my wordpress and eblogger accounts do not have my name but nicknames.  Although my secular writings do not violate the IRS standards, I have been cyber-stalked for at least four years by an Attorney named Daniel Vincelette who apparently believes that I am not entitled to free speech and operates under the delusion that the Constitution does not apply to either myself or him.

Daniel Vincelette is a religious bigot representing a Town that has an open history of bigotry towards minority religions.  He makes his living attacking religious groups and non-profits engaged in charitable works.  He is the worst sort of lawyer, the type who argues directly against the law in the apparent hope no one will check his legal citations.  He has the ethical standards of a cobra and in fighting our legally mandated property tax exemption he has singled me out as his target.  None of the other priestesses in our tradition have be subjected to his “investigations” despite that fact we all have equal standing in our tradition because we are horizontally organized.  He tracked down this blog, my other, very personal “Telling My Stories” blog and the personal webpage I have maintained as a sub-domain on our primary domain for over a decade, which I own personally and donated the space to our Religion.  He scours every word I write on the internet hoping to find anything to discredit me personally and has introduced parts of all my blogs and personal page as “evidence” on several occasions.  This has had a very chilling effect on what I write, how much of my own stories I am willing to tell because this unethical individual has made this very very personal.

He doesn’t have a case and he knows it so he has attempted to make this about me rather than the facts of the case in current litigation.  He just keeps throwing mud hoping against hope no one will notice that none of it is relevant and something might stick by way of continued character assassination.  Apparently he learned this from TGs online.  He has repeatedly attacked my clergy credentials despite having multiple copies of my certificate of recognition by the State of Ohio.  He also totally ignores the fact that under New York Law, my “credentials” are solid automatically by virtue of being the founder of our movement!  He continually questions my educational background and constantly tries to hold us to “Christian” standards in our 501(c)(3) standings knowing that we meet every standard and for a year this current case has been in litigation, he and his associates have stonewalled giving any actual reason for our continued denial of what is mandated by New York law.  But during the course of this stonewalling they have let slip the actual reasons, pure mysogyny and bigotry and have done so on the record.

All of this has a transgender element to it.

New York Tax Law, Article 4, Title 2 states the following:

§  420-a.  Nonprofit  organizations;  mandatory  class.  1.  (a)  Real
property owned by a corporation or association  organized  or conducted exclusively  for  religious, charitable, hospital, educational, or moral or mental improvement of men, women or children purposes, or for two  or more  such purposes, and used exclusively for carrying out thereupon one or more of such purposes either by the owning corporation or association or by another such corporation or association  as  hereinafter  provided shall be exempt from taxation as provided in this section.

Please note this is inclusive rather than exclusive on only one of the mandated exempt classes.  Very specifically so as in “or two or more such purposes” but Vincelette maintains that our housing women in need somehow violates the “exclusive religious use”.  For the first three years this has been the basis of his “legal opinions” which clearly show as evidence he is aware of the charitable housing use of the property for years prior to our incorporation and the signing over of the property to the Religious corporation!  Apparently he thinks no one knows he’s lying about the law or can look it up.  He is obsessed with the fact that we housed newly transitioned transsexual women in need under the apparent delusion that this is not charitable work.  He actually provided proof we were doing this charitable work from the day we first acquired the property to “prove” we are not engaged in exclusive religious activities!

In 2009 the Town changed tactics and claims, once again contrary to the law, that we failed to apply for building permits for work that did not require them and failed to apply for a “change of use”, the requirement that was not part of the building and zoning code of our Town.  This was accompanied with the statement that a 130+ plus year old building would be required to be brought up “fully to code” which, given the nature of the code and the construction of the buildings, nothing more than an open attempt to place us in a position that a sound historic building be condemned and thus denying us use and forcing us to move.  This just happens to be in direct violation of a Federal law, The Religious Land Use and Institutionalize Persons Act of 2000 which was enacted to prevent exactly this sort of abuse by municipalities of zoning codes.

So, we have two equally illegal reasons given for denial of exemption, both openly contrary to law.  In court last fall Vincelette’s associate handling the case at the time denied, on the record, the existence of the Town Assessor’s memo regarding the zoning issues despite it having been introduced twice into the record before that.  She then revealed the actual reason, again on the record.  Mind you, she was so sharp she did not know which county Supreme Court she was in or which Town she was representing at the opening of this hearing.

During the Dec. 2 hearing, Pulver (the Judge hearing the case)asked Smith (acting attorney for the Town of Catskill) for the precise arrears amount owed by the Maetreum, to which she responded that “the issue we are looking at isn’t so much the dollars and cents of exactly what the taxes are, which I don’t have off the top of my head, the issue is opening the floodgates. Once you relax the requirements, and if you stretch them too far, then you’re going to have just a multitude of organizations who under the spirit of the law go —”

At that moment, the official court transcript shows Smith was interrupted by Pulver, who again asked how much the amount of taxes owed was. Smith said she didn’t know and did not further qualify her statement.

The issue was “opening the floodgates”….in other words recognition of a Federally registered 501 (c)(3), New York Religious Law incorporated minority religion.  The other word for this is religious bigotry towards a non Judeo-Christian religious organization to send a message to any other minority religious group they would fight against their rights to the death if they tried to claim their rights under law.  Interestingly enough, this actually would qualify as an act of terrorism under the Patriot Act.  It also violates at least three other Federal criminal laws directly.

Any doubt this is what is going on was totally erased when I had an informal discussion with the new “Code Enforcement” officer for the Town who told me, in no uncertain terms in front of two witnesses, one a reporter, that we were targeted because we didn’t “keep our heads down” as a group “that was different”.  He then went on to explain that he would find something, anything and we had “a big yellow flashing light over our property” for having the nerve to seek justice under the law.

Print this out Vincelette and place it on the record.  At this point we have an additional iron clad Federal Religious Discrimination suit against you and Catskill and we will pursue it if need be.

Vincelette’s newest strategy is to “outspend” us knowing we have limited funds because he is well aware he has no defense.  You can help us by paypaling a donation, fully tax deductible, to centralhouse@gallae.com

In the recent past Catskill allowed a Pagan bookstore owned by a lesbian couple to be driven out by local Baptists and a minority Christian group that had owned property directly across the street from us to be driven out as well with false accusations of child labour law violations.  This spring they rolled over and allowed Wal-Mart to bully them into millions in property tax exemptions in addition to the sweetheart deal they got in the first place.  Smith spoke the truth.  This has nothing to do with the money (except to us) and everything to do with an agenda of open bigotry.

Shame on you Catskill, the rest of us should boycott everything inside your borders.  And Daniel, in the ancient world we Cybelines were known not only as physical and spiritual healers and seers but also for the ability to curse.  We are not Christians, remember?  I’ve danced with the Witch of the Catskills who protects these mountains from those like yourself….fair warning.  Look up the legend.

footnote: a little preliminary number crunching would indicate our annual exemption would average each household in Catskill about 1.36 dollars a year, the legal bill for denying us the exemption stands currently at around 4.64 dollars per average and the Wal-Mart give away raised property taxes an average of 356 dollars per year. We will gladly provide every property owner in the Town of Catskill a quality cup of coffee at our Cafe if they feel cheated.  From public figures given at Town Meetings, the entire budget for fighting challenges such as ours has been spent to defeat our exemption this year.

 

Signs and Portents

Monday night an obscene 62′ tall “Jesus” in front of an Ohio Mega-church was struck by lightening and burned up completely literally within minutes.  Coming on the heels of the worst ecological and economic disaster in the history of the US, a totally man made one, if I were inclined to look for messages from above, this would be about as clear as it gets.

Now before I go on, let make this completely clear.  I am a fan of the actual teachings attributed to Jesus whether or not he was an actual historic person.  Not Paul, that mysogynotic asshole, not the insane acts attributed to Yahweh, the murderous psychotic “god” of the old testament who’s clear message over and over was humanity should be forever stupid and die….  Jesus.

Theologians have long known there had to be a root “gospel” that the eventual others was based on.  It’s called the “Q” document and even has been reconstructed to some degree and available online.  Reading it makes it clear that almost every church calling itself “christian” today stands in opposition to the actual teachings attributed to Jesus.  Especially the christian Taliban also called the Evangelists or religious right (who couldn’t be more wrong).  Most of my life I have had to put up with these self righteous bigots claiming every natural disaster was the fault of godless heathens such as myself, Amerika not being a theocracy, or not killing everyone not straight, white and the right kind of christian.  Katrina was because New Orleans was too gay friendly, 911 was due to gays and lesbians and witches not being killed in the streets.  The christian wrong is directly tied to alleged conservatism, the right wing fanatics that believe in uncontrolled and unbridled corporate greed and raping the planet is a good idea.

BP just killed the entire Gulf of Mexico.  Whatever the spin you are hearing, it’s been killed.  Criminally as it turns out.  Now one of the most offensively obscene graven images imaginable was struck by lightening, the literal traditional christian indication of Divine displeasure in every joke about that I’d heard in an entire long life.

It burned in minutes….as in as total quick destruction as it gets.  If you are into signs and portents it really doesn’t get much clearer.  And by the way, many years ago a demographic study was done on tornadoes and extreme christian churches.  Funny thing, Yahweh doesn’t seem to approve of them because there was a direct correlation between concentrations of right wing christians and destructive tornadoes.

The endtimes talk is already starting among the idiots….but if Yahweh was sending them a message on this, wouldn’t Mecca been wiped out instead of a six story high Jesus?  If you buy their snake oil, it’s a piss poor choice.  But then what do I know, my own birth condition made me a living inhuman abomination at birth in the eyes of the Catholic church, Papa Ratzinger just said so…twice.

Then again, maybe, just maybe, it is a sign that spreading hate, intolerance, war, greed, raping the planet for profit and oppressing the poor of the world isn’t cutting it especially when done in the name of someone who taught exactly the opposite.

 

One of Those Turning Points in History

Once in a great while a major shift in global understanding of how the world works and should work occurs.  We are at one of those moments.  Anyone who has seen the documentary “The Corporation” will know what I’m talking about.  The film asked the question “if corporations are actually people, what kind of people are they?” and then goes on to examine this in terms of psychology.  The answer was “a sociopath”.  Multinational corporations pretty much control the world at this point.  They call the shots to governments, almost always get exactly what they demand and have stacked the deck so much that self rule is a poor joke.  Recently our Supreme Court made this official with a ruling that essentially allows corporations to now openly (as opposed to slightly covertly) buy elections.

We had the spectacular banking/housing failure that forced the public to bail out banks that returned the favour by foreclosing every mortgage in sight when the ruined job market wiped out the last of the American dream.   This was followed with yet another coal mine disaster where it was clear human lives were openly devalued and lost for corporate profits.  Now we have BP’s latest in a long long string of “incidents” that cost human lives for profit margins.  Although most have not figured it out yet, they also just dealt a death blow to the US economy,  wiped out the viability of most of the Gulf States as places to live and work already and it will get much much worse in the months to come.

The reason of course is “we owe our shareholders the profit”.   Unstated is that in the past forty or so years of unbridled greed of investors, the entire concept of “shareholders” is a false one.   Back in the day someone would research and then invest in a company.  They would take a direct interest in that company and participate in decision making either directly or by proxy to shareholder meetings.  That day is long long gone now.  Often shareholders are such for only hours or days at most because the same profit at all costs mentality that ruined so many communities with the house flippers and real estate “investors” replaced and often out and out drove out those who actually owned property, lived there often for generations and had a real interest and commitment to the local community. Let me say it straight out…..yuppie greed did this along with the patriarchal business attitude “it’s nothing personal, just business” to somehow justify wholesale destruction of someone’s life, livelihood, and families. Capitalism just imploded people and consumed the world economies with it.

Obama needs to grow a pair right now.  Something can be salvaged from the mess that was the Mother Goddess sending message after message but only bold action will do it.  We must immediately invest every available asset in a renewable energy base.  This will also help the unemployment problem and do so in a fashion that actually makes economic sense just as the WPA programs did in the thirties to build the US infrastructure.  It cannot wait.

We must nationalize all the oil corporations US holdings, all of them………now.  We should have done it to the big investment firms and banks. No more offshore drilling, none, nada, zip. Yeah yeah, socialism and the right will go ballistic.   In case you haven’t noticed, they already have gone that way.  If the South wishes to secede, this time we let them.   I would never advocate just cutting them loose, but they will want to be cut loose politically if we, as a nation, do what needs to be done.  Perhaps Atlanta will be a walled city similar to Berlin during the Cold War as a result. Imagine the Atlanta airlift program to keep them going, thankfully they have the hub for it.

We will be in a major depression by this time next year.   Too much has already been lost forever including more than 1/2 of the seafood consumed by the US, all the southern wetlands and eventually all of the Everglades as well.  This is already gone regardless of what actions we take from now on.  America must immediately renounce the culture of greed and realize we all are each other’s “keepers”.  Can we do it?  I hope so but am not holding my breathe because so few people in the US seem capable of rational thought anymore.

BP changed everything, now we must also change everything else or perish. This may be literally the last moment in history when the world governments can take back control of their own countries from the multinational corporations. If they don’t we all are to be corporate property from this time forward and all our lives held hostage by their worth to those corporations.

Is anybody listening? The Goddess just screamed in your ears.

 

I’m No Longer A Feminist???

Yes, after a lifetime of feminist consciousness (well since I was nine years old anyway) I was told the other day I am no longer a feminist because I reject the victimhood hierarchy that passes for feminism among so many younger feminists today. I was told this in no uncertain terms by a young lady on her blog who then proceeded to lecture me, apparently in total absence of any knowledge of my body of writing or my actual life, about the evils of the second wave feminists, gender as having any meaning and, as has become strangely common among some like her, my own relationship with Goddess Consciousness.  Oh yes, I’m also an “ablist” too despite the fact I walk with a cane due to multiple back injuries and have chronic pain as a result.

What happened to Feminism?  I will freely grant I am not a Feminist by her definition but not a Feminist?  Hardly.

A brief history lesson might be in order.  “First Wave Feminism” spanned almost a hundred years beginning with abolishing slavery as it’s first goal then suddenly expanded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the famous Seneca Falls conference where she proposed womans suffrage to the shock of almost all who attended.  You might notice, because it is significant, that First Wavers were tied to what became the Civil Rights movement from it’s very beginnings.  Stanton, basically a stay at home mom, and her close lifelong associate and friend, Susan B. Anthony spent the rest of their lives dedicated to womans suffrage and Stanton continued until her death to keep pushing the envelop on woman’s rights and sexual equality, so much so that in her last few years she was so far ahead of the curve the Movement denounced her.  Women like Rebecca West and Alice Paul continued the fight using direct confrontation, picketing the White House and eventually hunger strikes when they were imprisoned.  If these women were anything, it was not victims.  And eventually they prevailed and won the right to vote for women. Frederick Douglass supported Stanton at Seneca Falls but later, when Black men were granted suffrage told the Suffragettes they had to wait their turn and denounced tying womans rights to voting rights for Black men.  It’s history people, read about it because the history of the Movement reads better than any thriller ever penned.

So called Second Wave Feminism began in the late 1950’s as essentially a Housewive revolution and has morphed many times into goals and positions  that are often contradictory as it moved through the sixties and seventies because it’s goal was less narrowly focused and much much wider in scope as a result.  The basic goal?  Full social, economic and educational equality of the sexes which we still have yet to achieve.  Younger women don’t remember but most of my lifetime, even want ads in newspapers were divided by sex long after it was supposedly illegal to do so under Title VII rights.  You had ads declaring they were from “equal opportunity employers” separated under “men” and “women”.  What is frequently decried today as “Second Wavers” was hardly monolithic movement and never was.  You had lesbian separatists, sex positive vs sex negative schools, liberated housewives, matriarchialists, andro positive and andro negative and the European school that preceeded it all by around twenty years or so that was just plain Espirt Feminique.   In the early stages the main message to women was self empowerment and the European Second Wave was very much about celebration and restoration of women’s strengths as of equal importance to humanity.

What is being called Third Wave Feminism today is all about oppression with every fraction within jockeying for position as more oppressed than the other.  This is the polar opposite of empowerment.  This is the school the young lady who told me I am no longer a feminist belongs to.    This is passing strange to me because it also, on a fundamental level, feels downright anti-feminist to me personally in that the focus is individual groups vying for position to advance individual “wrongs” based on dis-empowerment and completely at the cost of one of women’s greatest strengths, the ability to compromise and cooperate as a whole for the good of all.  The young lady in question compared me to Sarah Palen and called me a fascist right winger which is ironic because I see true feminism as essentially socialist (in the communal as opposed to communism sense) in nature and my studies of ancient history seem to confirm that egalitarian societies always had a primary socialist organization by their very nature.

I fear we have lost an entire generation of potential feminists to the disempowerment of the oppression Olympics who have been seduced from goal by self indulgent whining and finger pointing at others while crying “me me me” rather than “we, we, we”.  It is no accident that so called Third Wave Feminism began at the same time the “transgender” gender deconstructionist appeared and they are hopelessly entwined.  The supreme irony being the entire goal apparently is erasing women and womanhood.  Does it get more patriarchal than that?  Also interesting is that they decry women of history defining “transsexuality” in it’s original sense and claim the right to expand it to include those who clearly do not have the medical birth condition the word refers to and yet they then turn right around and narrowly define feminism to exclude anyone who disagrees with their position.  Their logic is so fuzzy one is at a loss how to point it out.

I remain a proud European school Second Wave Feminist who has dedicated the rest of her life to full economic and social parity with men and full valuation of so called “woman’s work” with male occupations.  I am not a victim, I am woman, hear me roar.

Postscript:  Susan’s Tranvestite Place linked to this blog and now a bunch of crossdressers are also engaging in revisionist history….way to prove my points.  In response to my reply that they engage in wholesale censorship of ideas, it was denied by a moderator then I received a “warning” and the entire discussion was erased.

 

The Rise and Fall of the Illiterati, Part 2

The Spiritual War of the Sexes

One of the lessons I learned from studying history is exactly how much of it is wrong because of cultural bias, a concept understood in cultural anthropology as ethnocentrism.  Ethnocentrism affects understanding so completely that even facts plainly staring you in the face can be ignored completely, something I’ve observed my entire life on an individual basis, that if something challenges the worldview you hold, most people are somehow capable of total blindness to that even when it’s right in front of their nose or happening right in their presence.

Bearing in mind what I said about thinking globally in part 1, let’s look at fetal development among mammals.  Nature’s default is female meaning absent those factors needed to shift natal development to male, all mammals will develop into females in form regardless of genetics.  I believe that is also true of human spiritual understanding and the human default understanding of spirituality is the concept of the Divine Feminine principles.  It took a cataclysmic event to androgenize human civilizations throughout Europe and the Middle East, one every historian knows about but most universally ignore in importance.  And yet the evidence of this stares every ancient historian in the face!

Everything anywhere near the Mediterranean changed in the course of two days, everything.  It was the almost total destruction of the Minoan civilization by the explosion of Thera, the centre of that civilization.   The Minoans were the last true expression of the Goddess Consciousness, the apex of ancient civilization, the “rulers” of the ancient world, not by military might but by economic cooperation.  The explosion of Thera, one if not the most powerful volcanic eruptions in all recorded human history literally wiped everything in the eastern Mediterranean coasts off the face of the earth with the resulting tsunami in two days.  The volcanic ashes covered the Middle East all the way to the Indus valley and changed the weather throughout the region for years.  If you are a historian how can you ignore this in understanding the complete changes in the nature of civilizations that “just happened to occur” at this precise moment in time?

In Egypt this is the exact moment of the Exodus and when an Asian population, the Hyksos, Semitic people from Palestine, seized power in northern Egypt (the Delta), with capital in Avaris, and introduces the horse-driven chariot.

This is the exact moment that the Mycenaean Greeks invaded Crete (where the last remainders of the Minoan civilization was still intact (that part high enough to escape the tsunami) and feasting of the scraps of them suddenly went from barbarian tribes to a civilization that became the Greek one of classical times.  This is the time when civilized people suddenly changed from a Global Goddess Consciousness, true monotheism, to the concept of an anthropomorphic and fairly nasty Poppa God sitting on a cloud in judgment of all humanity by rules no one could understand.  The world shifted overnight to patriarchy, literally overnight.  The entire concept of civilization was androgenized…and never again was characterized by peaceful trade as the primary lubricant of societies.

But Global Goddess Consciousness is nature’s default and thus cannot be erased completely.

So what exactly do I mean by Global Goddess Consciousness?  It survived in Asia as the concept that the Divine is within all.  It survived for a time in the Mystery Schools of the classical period.  It survived for a time in Phrgyia where the last of the Minoans made their way to the inlet, in the lee of a large island that shielded them from the tsunami, facing Mount Ida and brought the Goddess full circle back to the very home She came from originally and then to Rome.  It teaches you that you are part of the Divine, a scrap of the hologram that contains the whole and you only need to acknowledge that, embrace that to be connected to the Divine whole.  That is the polar opposite of the teachings of Poppa God religions where you are sinful, always in danger of pissing him off and require a priest to intervene for you on behalf of the Divine of which you are not a part.

The story of Adam and Eve lays it all out for you.

First we have the expression of male jealousy of the female creative element in Yahweh “creating” Adam and then taking part of Adam’s side to make Eve.  He makes a present of a naked Adam and Eve of Eden with the stipulation that they never eat from the tree of knowledge (stay stupid) and the tree of life (never connect with their own Divine nature)or he will kill them deader than a doorknob.  The serpent, an ancient symbol associated with Goddess Consciousness, tells Eve, the woman in the story, Yahweh is lying through his teeth and wants to keep them from their Divine nature and stupid.  It’s all right there laid out clearly.  Even the fruit of the tree of knowlege is consider by most the apple, which when cut open reveals a pentagram, yet another symbol of the Goddess.

Thera exploded and gave rise to the Illiterati that makes a virtue of being stupid to enslave you by insisting you need others to know, give you knowledge and keep you disconnected from your own Divine nature.

 

The Rise and Fall of the Illiterati

Part 1, Global Viewpoints and How I Arrived There

I have to begin this with some personal history.  The phrase “stranger in a strange land” has special significance for me because it sort of sums up much of my early life experiences.  There was a time when I believed that those with similar unusual life experience would be freed by them as I was.  The increasing fullness of years taught me yet another lesson, it’s not the experiences as much as it is whether or not you learn from them and the sad conclusion that most simply don’t learn.

My father, with whom I have many never to be resolved issues long after his passing, was an educator of the humanities who went to Dartmouth and Yale and studied both psychology and history.  I grew up surrounded with all the classics of literature, history and psychology as well as a pretty good collection of the golden age science fiction novels.  The psych eval done on me in first grade indicated I was reading on a seventh grade level then.  I remember in seventh grade having to fight the local Liberian for the right to check out Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” because it was a commie book only an adult could handle.  She lost that argument and I got to expand my understanding of the Soviet people.  Not to mention learning quickly that her understanding of a “commie” book was totally divorced from reality.

I grew up at the very tail end of what is sometimes called a “liberal” education that included an expectation of exposure to Enlightenment literature and the classics.  I was part of the last generation that was taught the difference between democracy and a representative republic, something the average American today has no apparent understanding about.

In short, I grew up feeling I was a stranger in a strange land but schooled in the ideas that knowledge and it’s pursuit were desirable and valuable in it’s own right and no field of inquiry was off limits as a result.  For example, my seventh grade science project was unique.  Already having delved deeply into so called occult subjects and so called fringe science I decided to explore whether or not psychic ability measured by the Rhine cards being used at Duke University would be influenced one way or the other by hypnotism.  The answer was yes by small but statistically significant amount.  I got an F on that project because it wasn’t “real” science given by the very asshole who approved my doing it in the first place thus learning a much greater lesson than the work itself but far different than the one he thought he was teaching me.

A year later we move to New Delhi India.  We traveled slowly throughout Europe and the Middle East to get there using a very out of date version of “Europe on Five Dollars a Day” which meant we were always well off the beaten track the tourists took.  And I got to see a world that doesn’t exist today, one prior to the homogenization of Western/American culture.  And we lived in an India that still was much more similar to Kipling’s India than the India of today.  I explored that India outside the Western enclaves where most stayed and did so with relative freedom.

I attended school with kids from all around the world, not just Europe and America and I met some of the great minds of the time like Joesph Heller of Catch 22 fame, future Ohio governor and first lady Richard and Dagmar Celeste, future Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi to mention a few.

So, due to a perfect storm of a unique neurology and a unique childhood I view the world much differently than most people do.  I learned to see the world though the eyes of an interested, even fascinated alien observing the wider human condition.  I see the world globally and work down to specifics, understand human nature in wide concepts.  The ancients called this “as above, so below” and today it is expressed in fractal mathematics and demonstrated by breaking a hologram which then has each piece a smaller but complete version of the original.

 

“Congress shall make no laws…….” State Religions

New York law:
§ 165.35 Fortune telling.
A  person is guilty of fortune telling when, for a fee compensation
which he directly or indirectly  solicits  or  receives,  he  claims or pretends  to  tell  fortunes,  or  holds  himself  out as being able, by claimed or pretended use of occult powers, to answer questions  or  give advice  on  personal  matters  or  to exorcise, influence or affect evil spirits or curses; except that this section does not apply to  a  person who  engages  in  the  aforedescribed  conduct  as  part  of  a  show or exhibition solely for the purpose of entertainment or amusement.
Fortune telling is a class B misdemeanor.

Now this is pretty darn clearly aimed directly at Pagan practices and the most common result is that anyone telling fortunes or lifting curses for another as a Pagan is forced to a prior denouncement of their own belief system (notice of for entertainment or amusement).  What is interesting is that fringe Christians do the same all the time without this requirement although a strict reading of the law would require them to do so.

Think about it.  Every time some Christian bible thumper yammers on about this or that being punishment from God or makes a prediction of end times, tribulation or rapture they are in fact engaging in fortune telling for money, they always ask for money.  Anytime a revival preacher “drives out a demon”, does a faith healing or claims to have a direct line to God’s will, they are claiming occult powers.  Any time a fundie preacher gives advice supposedly from their direct line to God, they are in violation of this law.  To say otherwise is to establish them as legitimate and Pagans as illegitimate.  And that is a direct violation of the “establishment of religion” clause of the Constitution.

Pagans, I urge you to stop using the disclaimer and dare arrest under this law then challenge it on Constitutional grounds.  It violates freedom of religion as well.  It is far past time we let ourselves have our religious rights violated with unequal enforcement of law.  We need to stand up and demand equal treatment if we are ever to receive it.

Lesbians and Gays, every time a Christian fundie makes a statement claiming to know the mind of God regarding same sex marriage, anything negative about homosexuality, they are in violation of this law.  Almost all states have a similar law on the books, I urge you to look up the exact language in your state and apply this by filing criminal complaints under your state version of fortune telling laws against any Christian claiming these “occult” powers.  Do this each and every time you see these statements, demand prosecution under the law and we can eventually break these hatemongers once and for all.

Karma’s a bitch and the principle involved here is the best way to oppose a bad law is to enforce it equally.

 

Dealing with Criminal Corporations

The Massey mining disaster brings this issue once again into sharp focus.  Far too many US and multinational corporations engage in out and out criminal acts without cost or societies ability to use traditional law enforcement techniques to hold them accountable.

When a company willfully balances the cost of complying with regulations that protect human life against the balance sheet, that is actually manslaughter when it results in foreseeable loss of human life.  The problem has always been how do you apply criminal law to corporate persons?  There is an answer in drug enforcement law.  Now, to be clear, I never believed that asset seizure prior to trial of drug dealers was even remotely Constitutional but better legal minds than mine have upheld it.  The answer staring us in the face is simple, when a solid case can be made that a corporation willfully ignored regulations designed protect human life or willfully engages in policy that they know endangers human life balanced against their profits….they have those assets involved seized immediately as resulting from criminal enterprise and lose them for all time.

Such assets are likely to be business operations.  In a case like Massey, those assets should be reorganized as a collective by the workers under guidance of court appointed leadership will an eventual goal of a cooperative corporation being formed so that jobs continue, workers rights are respected and those who do the work receive fair compensation instead of a life of corporate slavery as still exists today in the case of coal miners.

Corporations, when subjected to psychological analysis, fit the profile of sociopaths which should come as no surprise if one thinks about it.  Societies have always had a problem with what to do with sociopaths because almost all societies assume some basic level of empathic humanity on the part of it’s members and most are loath to simply remove, by life imprisonment or extermination, those who can never be rehabilitated to make them less of a danger to others.  Here we have a model that could deal with sociopathic corporations that actually removes the incentive to place profits over human suffering.  Perhaps this is the answer to restoring sanity to our legal system when it comes to it’s takeover by criminal minded corporations.

Massey should have all it’s mining operations seized today, the smoking gun is openly available in memos and willful violation literally thousands of times of safety regulations and this is the perfect place for society to say “enough is enough”.

 

RIP Mary Daly

Mary Daly passed away some time yesterday.  To many she is best known as the lover and mentor of Janice Raymond but among Pagans she is remembered for her ground breaking work in the formation of the Dianic Pagan traditions.   Her 1973 work,  “Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation” was a seminal work in spiritually oriented feminism.

Mary Daly’s last book  “Amazon Grace” marked a departure from her former, often somewhat over the top,  radical feminist philosophy to embrace the model of the second wave European schools that emerged first in Spain and then later in France embracing the “esprit feminique” –the feminine spirit that embraces rather than reject those unique attributes of women as not weakness but indeed our strengths.  This is the essence of  “Wholistic Feminism”.

Rest in peace Mary, may the Goddess’ arms enfold and keep you.

“The Goddess Movement would not be the same without her. Contemporary Paganism would not be the same without the Goddess Movement. The radical essentialism of thinkers like Daly was a challenge to the pole that said “only men can communicate with the divine”. That pillar that she went up against? Mostly it has changed, leaving behind laughable relics, some of whom unfortunately still hold a measure of power. Yes, inequality still exists and yes, I am still a feminist, but things have gotten better. Much, much better. I don’t know if Mary Daly was able to see the battles she actually won.” – T. Thorn Coyle

postscript...Do You Renounce Daly and All Her Works?
As a Pagan feminist theologian, the debt I owe Mary Daly is huge. As a feminist woman, that debt is also huge. As one with an intersexed/transsexed history I cannot and will not join the hate fest against her because my own experiences as a feminist woman taught me she wasn’t completely wrong. Please allow me to explain.

Almost none of the transwomen trashing Daly even knew who she was prior to her death, I can practically guarantee most of them never read any of her books. No, if they know her name it is because she was Janice Raymond’s mentor and among transwomen, Raymond is Satan. Now most of them never actually read Transsexual Empire either, it is an article of trans-faith one must hate Raymond with the irony being I’d never met a feminist who even knew who Raymond was until some transwoman told them about her.

Now was there ever any justification for the positions that Daly and Raymond held? Many years ago I used to argue with rad-fems on that and then a funny thing happened. Over and over I was personally exposed to exactly those same behaviours both complained about…..by those who claimed some sort of “sisterhood” with me by virtue of my having been surgically assigned male at birth (I was born intersexed) and transitioning as an adult. With one major difference to most of them beyond the intersexed thing, I had always been a lifelong feminist, always been aware of my own femaleness and hyper-aware of male privilege.

I watched feminist after feminist do a mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa on trans people when I was beginning to experience something I had to coin a word for, neo-gynophobia, in the various “trans communities”. It’s out there in plain view but any mention is immediately shouted down as transphobia. Now that’s rich. My need to make my body match my soul/central nervous system/whatever was downplayed and even insulted and the rationale to do so was exactly the same as Raymond expressed! My, and other’s like me, post corrected bodies were insulted as faux vaginas, inverted penises, mutilated crotches and we were told we would never ever ever be “real” woman. Not by rad-fems, by transgender identified people! My participation in NOW was criticized by trans women because I did so as a woman without modifiers!

And talk about hatred? I’ve been subjected to hate crimes, death threats, open attempts to destroy every aspect of my life, even turned in to Homeland Security as a terrorist and outed so I would lose my job. By evil rad-fems? By the Christo-fascist right?…….no, by transpeople because I named and talked about neo-gynophobia. I know first hand the hatred Julie Bindle has experienced.

So will I repudiate all that I gained from Mary Daly’s life work because she had issues with trans women? Not on your life. In this respect she was wrong in many ways but also she was no worse than many that now demand her life be judged on this aspect.