Sunday, 27 May 2012

Post No. 386 - A Sunday's musings [discussion on mistakes/negative learning, prejudice, war & violence, historical evil]

Well, I've been busy - as usual. Probably one of the biggest things is getting ready for the next meeting of the organising committee ("organising mob", some of use call ourselves, using a good ol' piece of Aussie vernacular :) ) of the Victorian Queer Spirituality Conference (the new website will probably be hosted here), but I've also managed to finish another little project I've been working on, aimed at making our neighbourhood a nicer, more pleasant place (our move to the country is still some time off, sadly).

What I've done is create a small ... "base station", using Wolfsangle[1], Dagaz and Stan, with the idea of transforming negativity to create a sacred space, and a wand using those same runes plus the Eyes of Ra (see here and here, although the latter should more properly be called the Eye of Sekhmet) and the glyph for Ynpu ("Anubis", to use the Greek name) for personal protection, with a bid of copper binding (which I almost totally mucked up by trying to adapt a rope whipping technique - I'll stick to standard techniques next time :) ) and some crystals (peridot, which personally gives me great strength, apophyllite and a clear quartz tip).
The idea is that I do my normal ritual for protection, light a candle, and then walk the streets of my block and a neighbouring block or two (my neighbourhood is pretty safe, if you discount bigotry [2] ) carrying the wand, and using the two devices as a link to help flood the streets with light and positive energy..

The energy is building up nicely, but it will take some time for it to work properly. At least I feel ... more welcome in my immediate neighbourhood. It has made me doing rescue work in the neighbourhood easier, and more thorough (I did a very large rescue yesterday morning by simply opening a portal, which allowed around twenty entities who had been stuck and were now ready to willingly pass over to do so).

I've attached a few photos of the devices below.




I plan to make more wands from commercial dowel - eventually I hope to find a timber merchant I can get more appropriate timber from, but dowel is durable, readily available, and affordable ... I'll also be working from naturally-found, suitable timber, but living in the city makes that a more difficult source of material.
(This is partly me acting on the reading I recently received, by the way, which include advice to do more to express myself :) My next such project will be making small shields to use when establishing protection ... )

This device is largely about energy or, you could say, power. I was talking recently to my partner, the wonderful Sharlot, about this when we were discussing nightmares, and I pointed out that the biggest source of power around any person, a source that could be biblical in action, is actually one's own Higher Self or Oversoul. Your soul takes a role in helping to maintain the creation that we call physical reality, and, if it chose to be less cooperative, it could choose to allow you to perform literal miracles by bending or declining to go along with the "rules" that the Higher Selves have agree will form the basis of this creation.
That isn't likely to happen from you wishing it - no matter how hard you wish for it. There are greater purposes at play here, purposes such as spiritual growth, which is the fundamental reason this creation exists.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the greatest source of power and strength around any person is their Higher Self (or, as I prefer to say, their Innermost Self). Things like the devices I've created and described above are tools, much as Tarot or dowsing are argued to be a tools to bypass conscious doubts and blockages and allow the inherent psychism in people to act.
So ... what else have been doing? Reading :)
One of the books I'm reading - re-reading, actually - is Jim Butcher's "Turncoat", from The Dresden Files series (I like the humour, the style of writing, the reasonable portrayal of traditional - largely British - mythology, and am looking forward to reading the book where Harry Dresden rides a zombie Tyrannosaurus Rex against zombies ... :) ). "Turncoat" is the book I was recently trying to remember that discusses the Dresden-verse "Laws of Magic", created as a plot device. In the discussion, Harry takes the normal, human point of view, that justice and right and wrong matter; others in book, and, to some extent, Harry himself, tend towards the view that, because of the consequences of the body (existing only in the Dresden-verse) governing wizards getting involved in human affairs and trying to ensure justice (which would include the wizards having to declare war on the United States because of its treatment of Native Americans) being so severe, the only safe thing was to stick to the simplistic, absolutist interpretation of their Laws of Magic, in order to limit the damage that any one wizard can do.
It's an interesting discussion, and well worth reading the book purely to stimulate consideration of that issue, but what it led to me thinking about (oddly enough, as I was doing the mass rescue yesterday that I referred to earlier in this post), was the topic of evil.
Now, this reality exists for the purposes of ensuring that, in the long term, our souls grow spiritually. The key points here are:
  • the growth is of our soul, which means that
    (a) we, as off-shoots of the soul, don't necessarily have to make the growth: we might actually have to make mistakes or go through unpleasant experiences so our SOUL can grow - I'll come back to this in a moment, and
    (b) the interpretation of growth is mature; 
  • the growth is in the long term which ,particularly combined with the maturity behind the interpretation of "what is growth", means that
    (i) we may have a few lifetimes of rest and taking things easy, and
    (ii) the time that karma sometimes takes to work is not necessarily a problem.
It is still love that is the key to growth, but the interpretation of "what is love" is on a spiritual scale that we may not necessarily understand.
Now, making mistakes. How do we learn from those?
Well, one explanation is that we learn by karma returning the negative consequences of our actions, which then is recognised at a soul level and eventually trickles down to our level of being, and we feel uncomfortable doing that mistake and say our conscience has told us not to do it :)
Another explanation is that we, or at least, our innermost, truest self, feels inherently uncomfortable at what we are doing, and eventually we choose to feel more at peace by not doing that wrong act.
Hmmm. Which of these is correct? So ... do I go to that extreme polarity of this divide, or do I go to the other extreme polarity of this divide? Or do I say, well, actually, they're both right, and people's experience varies between the two extremes in a dynamic way, depending on where they are at in life.

I'll go with the latter - and bless my bisexual partner's heat and soul along the way :)
I've also been doing more reading of Dion Fortune's book "The Magical Battle of Britain". As I wrote previously, the book is far too Christian for my tastes, and I disagree with her assertion that Christian mysticism is the "traditional" European mysticism. Then, as I read further, I came across a statement that the Second World War was largely a struggle between Christianity and "the old Norse gods".
More prejudice and bigotry?
Not necessarily ... although there is some error in this.
Some time ago I read a book called "Pagan Resurrection: A Force for Evil or the Future of Western Spirituality", by Richard Rudgley (ISBNs 0-7126-8096-9 and 978-0-712-68096-7, pub. Century, 2006) [3]. This book argued that Odin had influenced the archetype of the German nation, and that had led it down a path that led to both World Wars and the preceding Franco-Germanic wars. Now, there are a few flaws in Rudgley's approach (just as there are in Dion Fortune's), but Odin is a deity who does not have a flawless reputation. Insanity is associated with this god, and a few other less pleasant things, few of which are associated with the deity Wodan from whom Odin developed, as well as quite a few good characteristics.
I'm not too upset about writing that, as I am a follower of the original "all father", Tyr, who was more about social justice and following personal moral codes of behaviour. Over time, Tyr was usurped (yay Tyr! boo Odin .. with the greatest of respect and appreciation - gulp!) by Odin, and - if Christianity hadn't interrupted the natural progression of things around 1000CE, Thor would probably have replaced Odin as the "all father".
What does this actually mean, when a deity's role changes, or is replaced?
Well, my view of most of the deities is that they are thoughtforms which bind together different aspects of Deity in particular proportions which best suit the task being attributed to that deity. Hence, for instance, Tyr is the combination of characteristics of Deity which best serve the roles of justice and personal valour; Odin that combination of characteristics of Deity which best serve the role of mystic and powerful "all father", and Thor the combination of characteristics of Deity which best serve the role of successful fighter against overwhelming forces.

When Tyr was viewed as the "all father", I suspect tribes were learning how to live together and be internally successful. When that was accomplished, tribes - and individuals - started to seek power, and it was more effective to transform the relatively benign wood spiorit Wodan to Odin. Later, as the consequences of struggles for power led to people and tribes feeling overwhelmed, people and tribes were interested in overcoming overwhelming forces, and Thor would have been best for that - except the overwhelming forces overwhelmed.
How this happens is through the energy that people feed into the thought forms changing, but the fundamental characteristics that are combined in differing proportions are, in my view, universal, eternal aspects of deity - who I view as the Goddess.

Going back to Dion Fortune's interpretation of the conflicting psychic forces behind the Second World War (and Rudgley's book), I think people tend to interpret things in ways that they feel comfortable with. Hence, for instance, one interpretation of a pentacle is that it represents order - the four elements of the earth, according to the Ancient Greeks, surmounted by spirit. Inverting that can be representative of the forces of nature, forces such as Pan or Cernunnos, being in control - and that chaos can be so uncomfortable for some that, rather than admitting they have something which needs to be looked at, they described it as being a sign of evil.

I think that is partly what happened in the case of both Dion Fortune and Mr Rudgley. They got a little bit of it right - the influence of Odin, and the fact that war was against evil - but they then stuck a whole lot of other interpretations onto the situation - such as other Norse deities being the same as Odin, and Christianity having a fundamental role that it doesn't - which shouldn't have been included.In doing so, they have missed a lot - including the wrongs that are always done on both sides in a war.
All food for thought, and her is a little more food for thought, in the form of a few reading links.


Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
 (pronounced "new-MYTH-ear") 
 May the world of commerce & business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.






Notes:
  1. This is properly called t"Wolfsangel", and is named after the hooks that used to be used in Europe in the Middle Ages for catching wolves. What they did was in now way angelic: it was barbaric - but then, I don't see wolves as dangerous nasty predators threatening me and my family, I see them as magnificent predators which largely got a bad rap from human's fears and misconceptions (see Never Cry Wolf (film) for more on my view of wolves). Hence, I very deliberately change the pronunciation of this to "angle", not "angel", and I have now decided to use the modified spelling as well (and, given the possibility that the rune is a fairly modern invention anyway, I'm not losing any sleepover it). However, the association that has developed, of binding and transforming negative energy, is exactly what I seek when I use this rune.
  2. If four years living here, in an area which is supposedly gay and lesbian friendly (I don't think any area even claims to be bisexual friendly, sadly), I have had around three times more incidents of gender identity based discrimination than I did in the twelve years I lived in my previous location.
  3. An extract from the draft post, which I still haven't finished follows:
    I started this post quite some time ago, when I first read "Pagan Resurrection: A Force for Evil or the Future of Western Spirituality", by Richard Rudgley [Note 1] (ISBNs 0-7126-8096-9 and 978-0-712-68096-7, pub. Century, 2006).

    The review of Rudgley at Wikipedia included this about "Pagan Resurrection":

    Rudgley's 2006 Pagan Resurrection, subtitled A Force for Evil or the Future of Western Spirituality? posits the idea that western civilisation, belief systems and attitudes have been formed by the "Odinic archetype". The influence of Christianity, he says, has been relatively recent and shallow. Rudgley spends much of the book emphasizing the dark and violent side of Odin, according to Independent reviewer David V. Barrett, "committing the ultimate sin of any anthropologist or historian, back-projecting from highly selective examples of unpleasantness today and photo-fitting them to a distorted image from the mythological past". Barrett concludes that Rudgely's book is "a catalogue of racist individuals and organisations whose only connection with Odin, through very dubious links, is by assertion rather than argument."[2]

    What I liked about this book was that it didn't shrink from the less pleasant aspects of paganism - specifically, the interest (obsession) that parts of Nazi Germany had with paganism. The book describes the imperfections of some of the Norse gods (specifically, Odin), and that Jung predicted there would be three waves of effects from the "rebirth" of Odin.


Tags: about me, change, deities, Deity, energy work, evil, evolution, growth, perspective, protection, tools, wands,

First published: Sunnudagr, 27th May, 2012

Last edited: Sunday, 27th May, 2012 


 


 

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Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Post No. 385 - Encouragement, and the "magical battle of Britain"

I had a good reading last weekend at the spiritualist place that I attend so I can do some healing. The woman commented on the fact that I was in a sleeveless top when everyone else was rugged up (I don't feel the cold as much as others ... must be the warming breathing I read about in Rampa :) ), and then talked about me being clairaudient (I tend to consider myself more clairsentient, as my clairaudience - if I have it - is subjective [i.e., heard inside my head], not objective [meaning heard outside my head - see here for a previous post on this]), that things were going to start improving, that my current surge in creativity was going to become even stronger and more productive (she picked up on my writing, of which this blog is but part), and then she talked about me having done something which led to a lot of people being critical and sniping at me (transition, being lesbian, being butch - take your pick) but that I had worked on the anger and "turned it inside out", into something that was constructive.

Well, I have to quite an extent. I've been working on my temper since I was a kid, and I've used a lot of the attacks I've had (the last incident of discrimination was less than a fortnight ago) to motivate me into lobbying (oops - I'm supposed to call that "being an activist" ... or, I suppose "activism", now, since I am not - and have never been - one of those paid, professional lobbyists in Canberra who have been the target of some criticism in recent years). Even that last incident I was able to use to motivate me into making sure some brochures from our local equal opportunity board were improved so I could use them to educate the people running the business concerned.

I don't think of myself as a particularly positive person: I'm genuinely too grumpy for me to think that, but I have worked at turning situations around quite a bit. Maybe that's the key here: some people don't like the term "be positive"; maybe they would respond to "turn the situation around".

The medium also commented on a male figure who she couldn't work whether or not he was a father or a grandfather. After a pause, she said "I'll go with father". I was able to explain to her later that the confusion was because she had picked up my birth father, who had had little direct involvement in my life, which is why he seemed more like a grandfather. Interestingly, she had come across that before, and recognised what I was leading up to as soon as I started.

All in all, not bad for a woman I have never met before, and very encouraging for me.

Now, on another matter, I've recently started using the progressive colour visualisation exercise I use on my chakras (breathe in a colour, and direct it to a chakra, then breathe out negativity as I exhale, working through all my chakras using a sequence of pink, blue, green, gold, orange, purple and "brilliance" [meaning an energy that is so bright it has no particular sensation of colour] ), on my meridians. It has been working surprisingly well, with some very noticeable effects. All of that in fact reminds me of a friend who had a blockage in her heart meridian (relationship issues - valid ones which I could well understand had caused such a blockage) that I cleared with a copper-rod-and-crystal wand: she said the pain was worse than when she gave birth (which she had done twice), but it did lead to her being open to a new relationship. Maybe meridians are a little underappreciated in the pagan/New Age/alternative/etc movements ...


Now might be an appropriate time to move on to some reading I've been doing.

I'll begin with Jim Butcher's "The Dresden Files". I've just finished "Death Masks", and have to say the Denarians in that book are a pretty fair approximation of what I describe as an "uncooperative". I'm also enjoying some of the "moral" aspects of the books.

Moral aspects are also something that crops up quite a bit in Dion Fortune's book "The Magical Battle of Britain".

In brief, this book is about the psychic effort that some people put into helping those who fought against the evils of Nazism. The effort is claimed to have contributed to Dion Fortune's relatively early death, and having personal experience of the wear and tear such work can have, I'm not surprised.

The work I do, however, is somewhat different to that which Ms Fortune and her group undertook: they were interested in establishing connections to higher forces, and then bringing through energies which they would release to do their work on this physical plane. My work is more interventionist: I get directly involved in clearing uncooperatives and fighting against their influence. However, I can relate to the struggle to bring something from the astral and higher worlds into this one (which is described in some of Lobsang Rampa's books), and much of my work and writing is aimed at helping that to happen. Once a concept has established a foothold in this reality, a breach in the resistance of those who dislike change and those who actively, deliberately and maliciously oppose anything which could help others, it is easier for others to start getting the idea - a bit like Darwin and Russell both independently came up with the scientific theory of evolution, or perhaps like Lyall Watson's story about the Hundredth Monkey.

It doesn't, to some extent, matter that I may not have anyone read some of what I do: I have helped establish a connection to bring it through into this reality - the sort of connection that can be contributed to by meditation, as so very well outlined in Dion Fortune's book (it is actually an edited collection of letters to her students from that period), in "Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth" by Stuart Holroyd,and "The Only Planet of Choice" by Phyllis V. Schlemmer.

Dion Fortune's book covers what she calls "telepathic opposition", or a "Sixth Column" that sapped the will of those the Nazis wished to invade or fight against. That is very true, and is what I deal with in my psychic work. Perhaps it goes back to some of the aliens who are claimed to have negative influences on the development of this world and the life on it.

What to do about this? Meditate, strengthen your mind with things like the alternate nostril breathing exercise that Rampa wrote about, and learn about psychic fundamentals such as protection, grounding, shielding and flaming (see here, here, here, here).

PS - I find Dion Fortune's book far too Christian for me, and I dispute that Christianity, a Middle Eastern (a very European term!) religion, is inherently the European mystical tradition: that is actually paganism. Having got that off my chest, though, there is a lot to think about in it, such as the non-judgemental clearing of negativity from Germans so they can communicate more clearly with "higher" (meaning "more spiritual" - comes from "higher frequency", or "higher spiritual frequency" :) ) forces and influences, which was written at a time of increasing hatred towards the Germans for having started the Second World War.Interestingly, over the last few weeks in my neighbourhood, I've found quite a few positive links, including many between people and their Higher Selves, which have been wrapped in negative energy, and thus have been doing a lot of work to clear that in order to get communication going more freely between people and their Higher Selves (check with the Higher Selves first, if you get the opportunity to do such work: the poor mug in the physical may be supposed to wake up to this happening and solve it themselves), and have done other, similar clearing of energy associated with mass thought - generally working with others. 

I found her comments about "Initiates" interesting. Such people must, according to Dion Fortune, "stand alone" - which doesn't mean be a hermit, but means be prepared to accept complete responsibility for themselves, their views, actions, inactions, etc - including being accountable solely for these to higher forces (which, for most people, comes when reviewing your life after death - the higher force then being your Higher Self, or Soul, or innermost being, or truest conscience, or any of a wide range of other terms). This became more interesting when she refers to some Initiates, or people doing advanced spiritual work, having to work an entire lifetime without neessarily getting any feedback that what they are doing is having any effect (some changes take hundreds of years of sustained, concentrated effort to effect), which is at least where we have possibly some help from the Internet ... 

Finally, I'll end with a saying that popped into my mind (no doubt courtesy of that clairaudience!) recently. I don't know whether it was a joke from my guides or not, but here goes: "that's not a brick wall, it's a very steep learning curve".

Hmmmm ....

Here's another one to consider.

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, and the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change." Senator Robert F. Kennedy and US Attorney General 1966 Speech.

And now ... more reading.



Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear")
May the world of commerce & business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.

Tags: about me, anger, change, clairaudience, Dion Fortune, emotions, ethics, personal characteristics, readings, rescue, uncooperative, 

First published: Tysdagr, 22nd May, 2012

 Last edited: Wednesday, 23rd May, 2012 (more reading links, and added the post script)
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Post No. 384 - An accident: a story

I passed an accident this morning, on the way to work - I'm going to tell you the story, and a few others that come to mind. My apologies: this is a bit of a "get it off my chest" post.

I was stopped at a set of traffic lights, wondering idly why the traffic in the left (i.e., outer, or closest to the kerb) lane hadn't been moving, when I looked up around 80m ahead, and saw a truck stopped as it was evidently turning left. Perhaps traffic, I thought? Then I saw the driver running down the LEFT (i.e. passenger) side of his truck, and saw the upper half of someone lift themselves off the road into view, and flop onto the nature strip. Moments later, the driver picked up a bicycle and leaned it against a nearby signpost.

Damn. At least the driver was doing the right thing, and would have a radio plus phone and so be able to get help.

It was a bit difficult to understand what had happened. If I looked at where the truck was stopped, and that the cyclist was near the rear of the tandem trailer (the truck was what we term a B-double) ... had the cyclist ridden into the truck, or had the truck turned without indicating?

I don't know. I probably never will - and, given that someone was hurt, I really don't care what caused it.

What I do know is that the truck driver talked to the cyclist - well, he leaned over, hand on her shoulder, and I - from 80m away - assumed he was talking to her. Then he went back, got into his truck, and drove off!

****! There were at least a dozen cars closer than me to the accident scene, but no-one was showing any signs of getting out. I was in the centre lane, so I couldn't park because of the stopped cars (the traffic lights were still red) on my left. I looked at the other side of the road: no parking, but a servo (service station), I could do a U-turn and park there.

As I looked back to the front of my car to prepare to move, however, I saw a whole group of people arrive to help her - and the truck driver also turned up, so he had evidently been moving his truck to avoid blocking traffic (probably well-meant, but I suspect the traffic police would have wanted it left where it was so they could measure and assess who to blame).

OK, I would have fairly clearly been redundant, and maybe even just one of those onlookers (I hate the ghouls who stare and treat accidents and others' misfortune as entertainment - goes back maybe to when I was a kid and idiot hit our car and I was being stared at by some young men who were amused at my distress) who gets in the way, so I kept going, and sent the poor cyclist as much healing as I could, and a little to the truck driver as well.

But I did quite a bit of thinking as I drove to work (well, I usually do, anyway).

I hate helping at accidents. If I'm asked about it, my answer is usually that I hate seeing people hurt in real life, and I'm not too fussed about a lot of blood.

Yeah, I know, weak and wimpy.

Yet most of the accidents that have stayed with me haven't involved a lot of blood. One of the first I had to deal with was  when I was out jogging while at uni, and a car drove around a corner too fast, hit a roundabout, and rolled over. As the car rolled, it partly turned, and a car coming the other had no chance but to run into the ROOF of the rolled over car. I don't think any of us (only two, actually - me, and the driver of the car that had been coming up the hill, who reversed, stopped and got out while his passenger ran into a house to get someone to ring for an ambulance) sprinting to the rolled over car were looking forward to what we were going to find, but the drunk driver only had a cut finger. (Which reminds me of the story a nurse friend at that time told me, of her mother seeing a drunk get hit by a train, fly through the air, and then stagger to his feet, swear, and toddle off - apparently none the worse for wear.) I left my details as a witness, but wasn't needed as the drunk driver admitted his fault.

I came across another drunk driver who had had a prang a couple of years later, when I working on the edges of outback Queensland. He admitted he had been driving too fast, and drinking, and had slid on a corner, ending up going rear end first into an embankment. The problem was, he hadn't been wearing a seat belt, and had flown up in the car, and left a very visible dent upwards in the roof where his head had hit.

He claimed to have a couple of mates a few minutes or so (yeah, right - I was with him for an hour, and didn't see anyone) behind, and was worried about being charged for drink-driving, so he asked to be taken to a nearby pub. I talked to him about the dangers of concussion, including the dangers of masking it with alcohol, but he was insistent, so we left a note saying where he was on the car (it was off the road, out of the way) and took him to the pub. At least other people were there, and they could keep an eye on him. They also had a phone: this was in the days before mobile phones had yet been invented, so getting access to a landline was good. If need be, they could get a chopper in.

As soon as I got back to civilisation after that trip, I bought the biggest first aid kit I could find - one that was like a small suitcase, and added it to the two spare tyres, 12V soldering iron, folding shovel, space blanket, ropes, tow wire, tool kit and other paraphernalia I kept there.

I was working in some pretty isolated places at the time, and had to be fairly self-reliant if anything happened. (I was very disappointed, many years later, when I found part of the soldering iron had fallen off, and I couldn't use it ... at least I was living in town most of the time then, so it didn't matter.)

The next accident I want to write about was probably around a year or so after that, and also involved a truck. The conditions were wet, that sort of wet it can get with tropical rain, and a stupid car driver had cut in front of a truck - too close, and going slower than the truck, so the truck driver had slammed on the brakes, and slid off the road - right over three teenage girls who were walking along the edge of the road.

No mobile phones in those days, so one of the people helping took off to tell the girls' parents (they were all conscious, and could give names and addresses), and I helped get two of them into the ambulance. One girl was screaming with shock and pain, but pain only in her face, and she was not moving: she probably had a damaged spinal cord. The other had at least a severely bruised leg, too injured to walk on.

That was one accident, despite the lack of blood or visible gore, that stays vividly with me, now, more than 30 years later.

(Coincidentally, that accident also led to the ending of a relationship. I arrived home distressed and wanting to talk, but my then-partner wanted to keep watching TV. I am infinitely better off now - my partner has been very supportive today - despite being in terrible pain from an abscess - following this morning's accident.)

So, to today.

I've been thinking, of late, that pedestrians - and some cyclists - seem more suicidal than normal, almost like they are at Christmas. I don't know why it is, but I've considered writing a post about it.

I guess now I am.

There's a lot to consider about safety on the roads, and it largely comes down to being alert, RESPONSIBLE, and remembering that you are SHARING the road.

I think, however, it is important to for pedestrians and cyclists - and (motor)bike riders - to remember that, if they're in a collision with  car or truck, it isn't likely that the car or truck will be worse off, no matter how in the wrong the card driver is.

Our local tram company has a safety campaign based on pointing out that trams weigh the equivalent of 30 rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?), beside a drawing of a rhino on a skateboard, and asking people to take the appropriate sort of care.

That's sorta along the lines of what I'd been toying around with when I was thinking about doing a post, before this morning's accident. When we were gatherer-hunters, if you came across a predator, or even just a very large herbivore, you were careful. You knew you could be injured or killed, and of these, being injured was probably the worse.

These days, maybe people think they the right to be there so consequences be damned, they'll expect others to do the right thing - and they don't have any precautionary thoughts about what COULD happen. Maybe they're just so used to the situation that they have become blasĂ© about the danger. Maybe it’s a misplaced chutzpah - or the sort of attitude that led to humans (arguably, deliberately?) wiping out anything they considered a danger (and a lot of things they considered good eating). Maybe it’s just the stresses and strains of living leading to tiredness and being too busy.

I don't know. Reminds of the "joke" about the tombstone that reads "here lies John Day, who died maintaining his right of way" * .

It doesn't matter, anyway. Just ... take care out there, please? Whether you're a driver, a pedestrian, a cyclist or a biker, take care.

And oh, if you're scared of helping at accidents, it may be worthwhile pushing yourself to do so. What is worst may not be what you expect, and it may lead to some good changes - such as doing first aid courses (they need to be kept up-to-date, by the way - I could do a post on the changes since my days as a kid in the lifesavers to my last course, where "ABC" had become "DR ABCH", but I'll spare you that).

It may lead to some changes, as well - not just in you, but in society.

Also, sometimes what people need isn't medical care. In the last refresher course I did (we have to do them every few years for work, but there are free course out there, I think - here in Australia, at any rate), when the instructor asked what could be the main concern of someone who had been injured, I was the only one to mentioned kids (no, I wasn't the only woman there, and there was at least one other woman there who also had kids) - as in, making sure someone knew to get a family member or trusted friend to pick them up from school/kindergarten/day care. Maybe the example of that man from the accident with truck and kids stayed with me more than I realised - but it shows that there is often more that can be done in situations than may at first be thought of. Maybe you can talk to the person who has been injured, just be there as a sort of instant friend.

Nothing psychic in this post, not much spiritual, and a bit morbid. My apologies; it was about my needs, this time, not yours :) At least I may be able to get to sleerp now ...

* That also reminds me of one time I - still a teenager - was on a protest committee in my local sailing club. Two of the skippers in one particular class didn't like each other, and had a collision. Well, there are rules that govern how sailing races are held (nothing like as complicated or contentious as the rightfully maligned America's Cup stuff, by the way), and each skipper protested the other for breaking the rules. Well, we found that ... let's call him Skipper A, had broken what is called the port-starboard right of way rule, so should be disqualified for that, but Skipper B had made no effort to avoid a collision, which broke a recently introduced rule stating the obvious, that one should avoid a collision - so ... I did some fancy arguing, and we also disqualified Skipper B as well.

Was I popular, or what!

But collisions were noticeably avoided by all for some time, and Skippers A and B kept their resentments towards each other down to a simmering boil ... and maybe others got to think about how some situations don't have winners.

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear") 
May the world of commerce & business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people. 

Tags: about me, common sense, danger, society,

First published: Manadagr, 21st May, 2012

 Last edited: Monday, 21st May, 2012
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Saturday, 12 May 2012

Post No. 383 - Guilds

Guilds, when I first came across them, were explained to me as being a bit like a union, only also concerned with making sure their members had the appropriate skills to be able to practice their work. Now, I'd say that's not quite correct, and that I tend to see guilds as a bit of a gatekeeper deciding who is and who isn't allowed to practice a particular job first, and the worrying about skills comes second.

As an engineer, I am a member of a professional body: the Institution of Engineers Australia. That body doesn't decide who can and cannot be an engineer (that depends on universities and a few sets of Government regulations), but it does provide a Code of Ethics, ongoing training to help maintain standards and competence, and - very importantly - audits to make sure of things like doing enough ongoing training (I passed my last audit, just over a year ago, and have just under a couple of years until my next one). They also receive and investigate complaints about the conducts of engineers, but complaints can also be made to several Government bodies, and through the courts.

Unions act to get the best employment deal possible for the workers they represent (and there is, by the way, a union for engineers in Australia - APESMA).

So, in my experience, guilds don't seem to exist much anymore - but they have been around, and fairly recently. The friend who started my journey with runes has referred to a rune guild when talking about this early training (and I know, for instance, that they use slightly different pronunciation on some words than I do). Has the ready access to information of the Internet killed off such matters as guilds? Has more widespread democracy and the social changes of the last century and a half or so, with the reduction of the class system and the notion that some people are better than others (mind you, I actually do hold to that view - and I note that Dr Martin Luther King Jr never said people shouldn't be judged, only that they shouldn't be judged by the colour of their skin ["where ... are judged, not by the colour of their skins, but by the content of their character" - or words to that effect]) made the notion of someone choosing who can or can't be "in" unacceptable?

I tend to think demonstration of competence is the best way to demonstrate one's suitability to do something, but that relies on giving people tests albeit under supervised circumstances - and ignoring clashes of personality, notions of having "served one's time", etc. It also assumes that such matters can be adequately tested - which they could, in the case of a trade-based guild from the Middle Ages, but is harder to do so in the case of a complex profession such as engineering.

When you come to something like runes, or psychic ability in general, where do you begin?

I've been led to this contemplation because I am rereading some of Jim Butcher's "The Dresden Files" books, and am somewhat unimpressed by the Council he describes as overseeing wizards. Mind you, in one of the books (I'll post the reference if I can find it again PS - it is "Turncoat") he also gives a fair defence of their apparently simplistic, off-handed attitudes towards enforcing the rules around magic in the Dresden-verse.

In real life .... I think a visible and genuine commitment to a credible Code of Ethics is probably the best we can do [1]. There is just too much in the realms of psychism for any one group to have a realistic hope of enforcing standards (for instance, think of the broad range of paths in Wicca: who would presume to enforce anything in that world????).

Hmmmm. Not sure where this leads me to, but maybe it is of some benefit to someone out there.

There's another thought I've had as I re-read Jim Butcher's "Summer Knight" for the third time, and it has come about as a result of his commentary on the alienness of meeting someone in the fae, and how the Unseelie weren't all anti-human (my words), and the Seelie weren't all pro-human. The problem is the arrogance of humans, who see themselves as being above other things. This is a little like an earthquake, which possibly causes damage, injury and illness. The earthquake didn't say "I will seek to be evil", it was something that relieved stress in the Earth. Our problems were ... too small to register in that awareness, in a sense. Ever step on an ant? Ever think anything of it? I know some people - particularly Buddhists, Jainists and those in some Asian cultures - have, but for the rest of you, think about what you did (even if it was  accidental) from the perspective of the ant: maybe you will feel a little like the human suffering from the effects of an earthquake. Were you evil? If you did that deliberately, perhaps; if it was genuinely accidental, and there was some valid reason for you not to notice the ant, possibly not.

As another example, consider what happens on a playground. Some adults consider kids should sort their arguments out themselves; based on my experience, that risks leading to an opinion that the so-called "Law of the Jungle" applies, and that physical strength matters more than right. Others tend to do the helicopter parent thing, and get over-involved, which prevents kids from learning and developing in much the same way that an environment that is too clean can prevent their immune system from developing. Very few are capable of keeping an appropriate perspective on their kids' problems, and help the kids see that and grow the character strengths and skills they should.

There are greater forms of life than humans in this universe (there is even an idea that the ultimate expression of life is as a sun, which then gets into the whole solar systems are like atoms thing, and maybe all the suns together are art of something greater, just as each of our individual cells is part of something - well, bigger (us).

And now, more reading.


From "The Age":









Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear") 
 May the world of commerce & business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.

Notes:
  1. Consider the following, from my post "Reading and registers":
  • through this book, I came across an organisation called the Australian Psychics Association (which voted the author "Australian Psychic of the Year" in 2005), which has a Code of Ethics for members, and obliges prospective members to provide both a Statutory Declaration that they are who they say they are (i.e., an accurate psychic), AND three Statutory Declarations from satisfied past clients.
I think the idea behind the Australian Psychics Association is interesting, but my Wiccan background leaves me wary of the prohibition they have against misuse of spells in their Code of Ethics: it is well intentioned, and I can't specifically fault it, but I consider recommending that any use of witchcraft/spells be in accordance with the Wiccan Rede would be more appropriate.

There are other matters I would include also: directly mentioning respect for free will, acknowledging that all this is subject to the law (it is, you now - you can no more deliberately commit an act of fraud as a medium than as any other person), and specific coverage of avoidance of discrimination. In fact, I think this (a register of mediums/psychics/alternative healers who are ethical) is something that can go over to the Order of Hermes, with appropriate checks on prospective listees around their knowledge of and attitude to LGBTIQ people, different races, different religions, etc. (A comment should also be included for anyone who uses the website to find someone, that customers are ALSO obliged to obey the law, and are as ethically/morally bound to be honourable as the psychic/medium - so no lies, abuse, etc.)
Tags: ethics, perspective, professionalism,

First published: Laugardagr, 12th May, 2012

Last edited: , 12th May, 2012
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Saturday, 5 May 2012

Post No. 382 - Imminent death, and car accidents

No, these two points in the post heading are not connected - well, not as I'm going to write about them, anyway.

I'll begin with the first point.

You, back when we were gatherer-hunters, you could die through not gathering or hunting enough (largely through the gathering and hunting being poor during winter in temperate climates and the end of the dry season in tropical climates), or through being injured or even killed while hunting (or gathering - things like snake and spider bites). later, when we became ... "civilised" (grrr!) by developing agriculture, you could still die from lack of food, most commonly towards the end of winter/dry season.

Now, if you look at the amounts of adrenaline and stress we live with, you could die all year round.

I know I have a tendency towards levity, sometimes somewhat ... inappropriate, but I'm actually serious when I write that. In this day and age, most of the people on this planet (including those outside the developed world) have a stress level that is FAR higher than our bodies were evolved for. I'm currently in a job situation where, because of economic downturn, my job security is not good (nor that of my colleagues), and the effect of that is major. ONE of the many effects is that it switches my body into survival mode, and I have a craving for what used to be survival foods when we were gatherer-hunters - salty, fatty food. If I fight that craving, I have my body screaming at me "YOU'RE GONNA DIE GIRL - EAT!!!!"

You know, this could be one of the reasons things like diets and watching types of food consumption don't work for many people. The ones who develop and make those recommendations tend, in my experience, to be somewhat logical types, and they have no problems having their mind overrule their emotions to eat sensibly and feel good about it. The other 99% or so of us tend to be more emotional (whether we show it or not), and for us, the screaming message about being about to die, a message based on our biology and the couple of million years or so we as a species were evolving and living as gatherer-hunters and the several thousands as an agricultural mob before the industrial age started a couple of centuries ago and stuffed a lot of things up (not everything, mind), is louder than any silly little words of logic.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Yes, we probably could and should do something about that conflict - but we should EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY, do something about the lifestyle that leads to such stress.

I HATE the fact that so many people are so utterly divorced from such simple things as the seasons - and I recently posted a link about what artificial light is doing to us.

We need to make changes - even if we make those changes to get over the crisis of climate change, we still need to make more changes to get our consumption down to what the planet can SUSTAIN, and then we need to make the sort of changes I am alluding to here: to stop being so divorced from physical reality, meaning nature.

We need our Earth Star chakras [1] to be functioning as they were intended to.

Now, the second part of the post heading.

We recently had a "freak" accident nearby, in Westgarth Street, just a few kilometres away, in which a car - an expensive car that wasn't speeding - struck a parked car, wound up wedged between a tree and a fence, and then burst into flames, killing those on board (see http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/fishtail-link-in-fiery-triplefatal-car-crash-20120504-1y2w7.html). The fire was so intense that the authorities weren't initially sure whether three or four people were in the car - it was a horrible, human tragedy. I've had friends who've lost family members in accidents, and one of my family members lost a partner in a car accident: it is a distressing thing to have happen.

But I'm starting to wonder ... this is not the first time that a "freak" accident has happened in this street. Not that long ago, a woman and her elderly mother ran off the road into a very steep ravine, and were left hanging upside down in the car for 24 hours (sadly, the mother passed away).

Why?

Yes, I know there is all the stuff on the physical level to consider, such as paying attention, but I wonder if there is something on a PSYCHIC level to consider as well?

Some years ago, apparently Druids were invited to place a stone to fix some energetic problems on a highway in Britain (I couldn't find a link for the original story [I may one elsewhere on my blog], but see here for rumours that something similar is being tried in Austria - and here and here also). Could something similar be happening here?

There are two possible scenarios to consider here.

Firstly, a major road in the area has recently been changed to favour public transport over private (which is a change that I favour), but, since major roads tend to becomes conduits of human energy (an idea I first came across in an interview with PAN's then [and possibly still] President David Garland, when he was discussing where PAN chose to hold its public rituals [the posts here and here might also be of interest, but I couldn't find the original interview]), has this change disrupted a human ley line, and the scattered energy be contributing to random problems - such as distraction while driving? (I'd probably need to see police statistics before construction started, maybe before planning started, and after construction was completed, to be able to assess this.)

Second scenario: this road passes the place where John Batman, one of the founders of Melbourne, is believed to have signed the treaty with local people to obtain land to found a village on. That treay was subsequently rejected by the Government of New South Wales, as white settled Australia was then, based in Sydney, on the grounds that (a) Batman didn't have the authority to make treaties on behalf of the Government (true enough), and (b) the land was vacant crown land anyway - which is the heart of the terrible, terrible, terrible lie described as "Terra Nullius", a policy which claimed that the people who were clearly living in the land and fighting (very effectively, it must be said) against the white invaders, did not exist. (I am appalled that it took until the 20th Century before indigenous people were included in the Census as human beings - see here for some information.) Given the genocidal treatment whites dished out to the owners of this land, could that be coming back to whites, perhaps karmically, perhaps through one of the points of entry by whites that is, given the subsequent behaviour by the white's government, notoroious  - i.e., where Batman signed that treaty?

Either way, or even if something else is at work, or a multiplicity of factors, perhaps that surprisingly quiet street needs some psychic work done to improve it ...

And now, some reading links ... just in case I haven't given you enough to think about :)


And, from "The Age" and it's related media stablemates:
And this coming week will also be busy: I'm working on clearing around 30 uncooperatives from northern Africa, major entities (not all human, I must say) who have soaked up the pain of all who have suffered in the Shara, and tried to keep earrthbound and enslaved many of those who have died. I came across the term "phobophage" in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series that I am currently reading, which means someone who feeds off fear: there needs to be a similar term for those who feed off pain - maybe cruciophage?

Anyway, we (the Ranger and others and I) are working at freeing those who have been enslaved and helping them to pass over (each person thus freed weakens their masters), and working directly at clearing the negative energy of the negative emotions that led each of these 30 entities to be doing this evil. I cleared 3 such entities from someone in South America recently: that was good practice for these ones :) (not that I actually needed more practice - I'd done quite a few such clearings in North America [the US, specifically] just beforehand, but it never hurts to keep one's skills sharp :) ) The benefit when we finish is that they will stop working to maximise the misery in that part of the world: they have been trying to make people not help address the famines and droughts in east Africa (by interfering with the energy around media reports, for instance, to bias those who read it to be compassion-weary) and by trying to warp the Arab spring by creating trouble creating new governments, fostering reactionary attitudes, etc.


Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear") 
May the world of commerce & business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.

Notes:
  1. From my post The Secret Scienc of Hugs:
    This chakra is located in the aura, around 6" (sorry - 150mm) below the feet, and (going from memory, as I couldn't re-find the original reference) has the function of connecting us with this physical reality - ie, Mother Earth. My personal opinion is that the lack of awareness of this is one reason that humans as a whole tend to be somewhat disconnected from Mother Earth. This came from one of Katrina Raphael's books.
PS - As a final point, the new interface created by blogger SUCKS. I've written to them about it, but it has become a user nightmare - largely because one can no longer right-click on a link and open it in a new tab (as I have told them via their feeback page). Not happy, Jan :( 

Tags: biology, Druid, energy flows, evolution, ley lines, lifestyles, society, stress,rescue, uncooperative,

First published: Laugadagr, 5th May, 2012

Last edited: Saturday, 5th May, 2012
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