Some Thoughts on Divine Revelation/Inspiration

This was originally a response on Facebook that I am parking here, so that I can find it later.

As a Pagan who sit as mantis for Apollon, this is how I understand Divine Revelation/Inspiration. Everything from any divine being/deity is "stepped down" and running through the nervous system of the person who is receiving, even in cases of Divine embodiment, such as the oracular work that I do. I believe that I am in communion/communication with the God Apollon. But when I say "Apollon told me" it is mediated by my perceptual faculties, my mind, my brain, my language, the concepts that are built into my mind-stuff. There will always be coloring and may be distortion in that. I try to do the spiritual work that will minimize that coloring and distortion, but if it is going to come through a person and be embedded in language, it is "stepped down" like through an electrical transformer, for human consumption. My understanding, such that it is, is that our mortal systems cannot handle the power of full contact. They (the Theoi) are already interfacing with us in specific ways so that we can understand and handle it, and then it runs through the person being contacted. That doesn't make it untrue, invalid or anything else...it does mean it's an alloy and should be viewed through that lens. I'm aiming to make that alloy high caret gold...but still... So, my personal issue with a lot of the Abrahamic traditions they don't seem to get that and their messengers don't seem to recognize their role, but believe that they are delivering truth unalloyed. That is dangerous. It causes challenges for me, as a Pagan, because I don't ever want anyone to suspend their critical judgement when receiving anything that comes through me, and most of the people listening come from the Abrahamic background, even if they have left the religion of their upbringing. I really, really try to be as clear as I can be, as much of a "hollow reed" as I can be...but the contact is always going to be colored by me. On the other hand, if Apollon chose me, it is for good reasons...and I have faith in that

Millennials and Gen X: A Plea for Meaningful Collaboration

As a member of the Jan Brady generation--a reference my peers will understand without any explanation--I want to make a plea to both Gen X and Millennials to please, please, please recognize how much we actually have in common and to try to figure out some strategies to work on priorities together.

Those things that make life difficult for the Millennials, and their pain is real, are the same things that make life difficult for Gen X, and our pain is real.  But in addition to any idealism of unity, Millennials need to work with Gen X because what happens to us will be directly causal in defining your future.  Very simply, as Gen X is hurtling towards old age, it is increasingly unlikely that we will ever be able to retire but will be facing a future in which we are without adequate healthcare in our dotage and will have to keep working, and staying in positions as long as we can, until we drop dead on the office floor. This is not good for you, for the generation after you, or for anyone else.  And the precedents set in the treatment of us will affect you…just like it has for everything else.

For this to work, there are a couple things that we really need to face.  Millennials, the dire situations you are facing are real.  The idea that you are the first generation to face them is not.  You are not the first American generation to do worse than your parents.  You are the second.  Most of Gen X could have told you that the American Dream is bullshit. There may be proportionally more Gen Xers to have escaped some of the fallout from the collapse of the Dream than the proportion of Millennials who have avoided it, but precedents are being set with us.  In a twistedly fortunate way, that means that if you will look at our experience, you will see some things as they play out a bit later in the lifespan and maybe can intervene before they affect you.  Even better, maybe we can prevent some terrible precedents from being set.  Many are about to be.

Now, my fellow GenXers…dudes, the fact that Millennials are screaming about their treatment doesn’t make them whiners, it just means they aren’t jaded….and there is no benefit to being jaded.  It is a glamour that masks as stoicism and disempowers us from making meaningful change. Being jaded is for suckers.  We could learn a bit from them about not accepting that which is unacceptable.  Besides, how well has that actually served us?  Not well.  Our fatalistic beliefs that we are destined to be screwed just help ensure it.   So, if you are ready to whinge about the Millennial in your office…stop it.  

So, a few ways in which we (Gen X) are like you (Millennials) and some of the issues maybe we can work on together.

1.    We were educated with crippling student loan debt that doesn’t go away, not even in bankruptcy.  At the time, there also were none of the protections around providing students with truly accurate information about placement figures, etc. and there were no forgiveness programs.  These initiatives are important.  Some have been enacted and are now threatened.  We need to defend them.  And we need to change how we structure the economics of our educational system.  As someone who is about to be 50 and is still paying, I can attest to the long-term damage that our current policies do. Not only is it a lot of money to pay back, but with the interest, that is a whole lot of money that is NOT going into investments for old age.  At my age, you can really start to see the true effect of this system.

2.    We entered the workforce at a terrible time when the economy crashed during the dot.com bust. There were not good regulations on the market, there was insane and rampant speculation, and the early economics of when we entered the labor market screwed us up.  Many of us graduated with a ton of debt and promises that we would get certain kinds of jobs and then they just weren’t there and we financially struggled.  At the same time, due to outsourcing and organizational flattening, all of the predicted retirements that were going to allow us to get professional jobs didn’t happen.  Many of us did not get our first “real” job until we were in our 30s.  This means that we lost a number of good earning years.  There are, of course, some who flourished, but we really started to see the split between the successful few and everybody else.  Unions were demolished by the time we came in.  Job protections were undermined.  A few lessons from that:

a.    Many of us did not have children because we weren’t financially secure enough until it was, frankly, too late to have children.  Biology is real.   You want kids then find a way and have them.  If you wait to be a mother in your 40’s, expect a rise of a number of things including your own autoimmune problems.  And then there is the sleep deprivation…

b.    We have absolutely no idea what it will look like when we are old when so many of us do not have children to keep an eye out for when bad things happen and we are incompetent.  You might want to be paying attention to what happens to us because it looks like many of you are headed in the same direction.  It is going to require new social forms.  There is no model. 

                                               i.     SIDE NOTE:  Long-term care insurance!  If you can get it, get it.  Don’t ever miss a payment.  We are now of an age in which we are watching and trying to help our parents…the Silent Generation.  Wow. That’s a whole thing, too.  Notes with that:

1.    Old people lose track of their bills.  They need help.  And insurance companies are very happy to allow old people’s policies to go lapse as soon as they are overdue for a split second because that saves them money.  They are horrible. You need to get on as a secondary ASAP when they show the first sign of not being totally on top of things and keep an eye on their bills!  This hasn't yet happened to me, but I am watching friends dealing with things.  KNOW THIS!

2.    OMG, the STUFF. They have so much stuff.  And it’s not like you have a lot of annual leave. Dealing with their living arrangements is a challenge. And then there is this cultural understanding that many of them have that they are going to give you all of this stuff for your inheritance, but most of us aren’t living like they are.  We can’t take it.  It just means that much more stuff to contend with.  Plus…I’m almost 50…it’s not like I don’t have a stand mixer if I need a mixer. It’s 30 years too late to give me household setting up stuff.  Have these conversations with both elders and, if you have them, children, early.  Purge your stuff.  Marie Kondo the crap out of your life and keep it from ever being like that.  Every one I know with elderly parents is stressed out by the overwhelm of their physical possessions.  

3.    Make sure that you have all of their paperwork, including anything that will keep a will from going to probate, that you have their advanced directives and your own, that you are on accounts so that you can deal with things without a will having to go to probate…all of that kind of thing.  Keep it organized.  Be ready in advance.  If you have to, you bloody well FORCE your parents to talk with you about this.  We need to get rid of the stigma around topics of death.  

                                              ii.     Nobody tells you about any of this.  We need to start talking about it and both demystifying it and sharing what we have learned.  Also, trying to get things in place for whoever will come after us, if anyone will.  It is a lot.

c.     Organizational flattening is a reality.  You aren’t going to make money by being promoted.  The idea of a competitive promotion track is bullshit.  It hasn’t happened for us, even if you do take on additional responsibilities.  It isn’t going to happen to you.  You are going to deal with salary compression throughout your career.  There is almost no difference between what you earn when you first enter and what your older colleagues are making.   The exception, of course, is if you make it into the robber baron class…but then you are responsible for being the problem, so screw that.  What we need to do is find ways to raise the whole, rather than focusing on individuals. The other message, here, is this. We (GenXers) aren’t really your competition. The difference between what you make and what we make with our years of experience is probably pretty minimal in most organizations.  

d.    Be afraid of any rhetoric that suggests that people should be let go, reorganized, sidelined, etc. based on a lack of technological expertise, lack of dynamism, being “resistant to change” or “stuck in the old ways.”  All of that is coded language for ageist bullshit, which combines with misogyny in particularly perilous ways.  It is a way to discipline labor and keep us compliant. Don’t buy into it, don’t participate in it, and know that some day, it will be aimed at you.  I am watching this happening right now and it is especially being aimed at keeping Gen X women out of power.  If you begin seeing creepy layoffs, you might want to oppose that precedent.  

3.    Right when many of us finally got on our feet financially and had been saving for retirement, it was 2008.  This screwed you up and made your entry into the work-world abysmal.  We lost what little bit of wealth and security we had managed to accumulate and, frankly, are unlikely to earn it back in time to retire. Again, a large part of it is robber barons gone wild, no regulation, all the badness we know.  We are mutually screwed by it.  A couple of lessons, though, from being a bit further along because there will probably be another crash since we haven’t done what is necessary to address the causes.

a.    Pensions are gone and our survival in old age is based on the market.  We need to freaking stabilize it.  We should be prioritizing predictability rather than trying to get wild profits.  Companies are incentivized to choose very short-term quarterly gains over long-term strategy, which creates more volatility.  What you really, really want in old age is to know you are going to have a place to live and can pay your bills.  We need to join together and tame the bad actors.  I think we need regulation and anti-trust enforcement.  I also wish I understood more about investments that I could control…like, should I invest in a local business?  I don’t know.  I don’t have that knowledge. It would be a good idea to try to understand it.

b.    Many, many of my peers lost everything in the housing crash in 2008.  We are always told that a home is an investment.  Not necessarily.  I am lucky in that I did not get sucked into some subprime bullshit that was being constantly marketed to me combined with warnings of how dire my old age would be if I didn’t do it.  Don’t ever buy more house than you can afford.  It will seriously fuck you over.  I admit to having anxiety about my old age because rent control is a joke and I doubt I will ever be able to own.  However, maybe our energy should go into real rent control.  People in Europe don’t have this fascination with owning property.  I just want predicable affordability.  Main lesson…be wary of all of the cultural bullshit telling you that you have to own a house and just be sure you can actually afford it.  It may make sense for you, but buy from knowledge.

c.     Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare.  We need to defend them.  I know that the robber barons want to take that money that we have put in and, as a member of the Jane Brady generation, many of us have always assumed that we won’t have any social safety net for us.  But the older I get, the more terrifying that reality is.  I am grateful for Obamacare, which is being undermined. The idea that you could lose your job for being sick, and then lose your health insurance, and then have everything that you have be a pre-existing condition…that is no joke.  I know you know that…but seeing it from the age of 50 and watching elderly parents, and having a brother with disabilities who needs assistance, it has a terror that it didn’t in my youth.  I am so grateful that my parents own their house, have a pension, and have health care.  That will not be the reality for either of our generations.

d.    What I can also say is that most of us didn’t start saving for retirement until we were in our thirties, because we couldn’t.  Yep…that does screw you up.  This isn’t a guilt/shame thing because…I couldn’t do it any sooner than I did. However, it is true that the sooner you can figure out how these systems work, the better.  If you have matching retirement and aren’t maxing it, do it immediately if you at all can.  Then, I think, trying to get any debt paid off that you can do it.  Credit card companies are specifically trying to screw you. If you can pay them off every month, do it, then hit the student loans. I know it might not be possible. I couldn’t live on what I brought in until I was in my mid-30’s…and I was living in a studio apartment.  But I started making a “war board” and tracking things.  It helped. 

4.    “Adulting.” One of the most telling comments I heard from a Millennial recently was when she told us that when Millennials say they are adulting its was because their parents never taught them the things we were taught, like sewing buttons.  Okay.  For the record.  No one taught us either.  Most of us were latch-key kids who often had to take care of younger siblings so, the language rubs us the wrong way because we were often carrying some pretty adult responsibilities when we were children.  The experience of being adultified children is a common generational trauma among Gen X and so references to “adulting” by people who are adults is, actually, the one thing that Millennials often say/do that makes me bristle.  However, being self-taught, the truth is we don’t always do a great job in some of those life skills either.  I know a ton of Gen X folks who really should be in better financial positions than they are in because we tend to have some pretty poor financial literacy.  That’s a big one.  So, although the language makes me cringe, the way in which there are important life skills are not being passed on and most of us have significant holes in our knowledge, that is an important truth. Perhaps we can create some structures that would allow us to do a better job of learning and sharing…such as creating “lunch and learns” in our work place in which people can share what they are good at.  Or finding ways to divide things up among your friend groups and teach each other? I am grateful to youtube.  I am trying to recover some of the life-skills surrounding repair in order to combat planned obsolescence and over-consumption. But I am hopeful that those who are parents will put more emphasis on sharing these important life skills.  And we should document and share. 

5.    Ubiquitous technology and organizations owning your freaking life.  We are totally in this one together.  If you don’t set some boundaries, you will end up socially isolated, working all the damn time, and numbing yourself out with tech or worse. I won’t pretend to have the answers to this.  I will say that we need to find them and that is a struggle for both of us.  I will also say that the guidance from earlier times doesn’t necessarily hold water.  What we need is a revolution in our culture.  These are preliminary, but some of my personal ideas about this.

a.    We are in an economy of attention.  Everyone is always trying to capture your attention.  Give it with discernment and make conscious decisions.  Whereas old advertising used to work because you didn’t want to switch off your channel, now the whole game is to make you click and keep reading. Humans are highly emotional, social creatures.  The easiest way to hack us is by making us outraged.  I want us to refuse to give into it.  I keep seeing this carried into all walks of being.  It is just the most recent social technology of control.  It also builds habits into our character that will bleed over and harm your relationships by encouraging you to make people disposable.  I oppose it.

b.    The people we work with are the people we spend the most time with.  Let’s actually work on making healthy, caring environments in the work place.  This is something that can work from the bottom up.  Let’s reclaim the human-ness of ourselves and make our workplaces responsive to more than just the bottom line.  Especially since I doubt we are going to be able to retire without massive economic change, let’s make our workplaces kind.

c.     Generally, we live in a world that is not good for humans.  We need to rest.  We need to unplug.  We need to spend quality time with each other.  We need to feel like our lives have meaning.  We need to create.  Actively choosing to live a life that embraces our humanity is one of the biggest acts of revolution we can claim.  Life is busy.  Create structures that build habits and feed your soul and the soul of others. Schedule regular crappy dinner parties, or going out to happy hours, etc.  Something.  Anything to keep you from being socially isolated.  Tell our tech overlords that we will not constantly check our phones when we are with people and put them away when we are with others.  

d.    I think we should build a culture that gives priority to experiences over accumulating stuff.  This goes against the models we learned.  But prioritize spending time with people, experiencing the world, doing something creative, being in nature, all sorts of things over accumulating stuff that you don’t need, likely can’t afford and that is killing the planet.  Part of Gen X’s conflict with earlier generations (we were called the slacker generation…which, like the slights against yours, is bullshit) is that we decided that we would rather take time off and travel than to pursue status.  Obviously, that was not universal, but I still think it is the right choice. Choose to invest in your soul, your relationships, and the planet.  Status through stuff is stupid.

6.    Growing up with divorced parents became common for Gen X and has remained so.  We need to think through our social structures. What many of us know is that it is better to have children raised in joint custody with loving parents than to have parents who are miserable remain together “for the kids.”  However, we still have not really figured out what our new social forms look like.  What is clear is: one person is not a support network; deep friendships are more stable than passion; people are mobile; many of us don’t have children and those who do are often overwhelmed.  We will need to come up with ways in which we are creating stable communities that cut across generations, but we don’t know what that will look like.  It would be good if we could work with you in experimenting and seeing what that might look like.  Regardless, we need to look at the various barriers to creating those kinds of communities and think through alternatives.

7.    The environment. Both our generations know that this has to be a high priority and it is incredibly complex.  Frankly, the generations older than us are likely to die off before they have to fully face the ramifications of all that we, as humans, have done.  We will need to clean up the mess and it won’t be pretty.  It will require a total remaking of our society and we will be blocked at every turn.  Individual action won’t be sufficient because of how we are embedded in systems. However, we probably could make significant differences if we work on a local level with local structures of power. 

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Thoughts about the Group Soul of Humanity

This afternoon I was in a visionary state at a Temple of Apollon.  He was working on healing the group soul of humanity, which appeared to me in a humanoid form, but with pieces missing.

There were several things that I learned and areas of contemplation that I need to think through. 

First, as far as our growth goes, one of the biggest challenges for humanity is that we are pack-oriented apex predators.  That is part of what we are.  So, the evolutionary path forward for us involves recognizing that, and then taking control of those instincts and directing them differently.  It is not suppressing them.  If we suppress them, we aren’t growing.  The clearest path forward is to take those instincts and direct them to towards the pursuit of excellence.  It is still the PURSUIT that will drive us.  That is part of our nature.  It, honestly, is less about the achievement than the pursuit. 

Furthermore, both the agon, (which means struggle and competition) AND the cooperation are parts of our nature as well.  Again, the question is how to we redirect them so that they are healthy and not destructive?  If we direct them towards the pursuit of excellence, we will thrive and evolve. Challenging our personal best. Challenging our team’s best and wanting our partners in competition to be at their best.  The emphasis cannot be on winning so much as excelling, or we are in trouble.  We do best when we are working in teams and we feel best when we are part of something larger than our individual selves, but we have to be careful that this does not create in-group/out-group hostility.  We need to direct it towards the excellence we are striving to achieve and our main comparisons should be against ourselves on timelines.   In other words, measured against our own improvement…individually and collectively.  But we will always need to be in pursuit and expansion.  We begin to die inside when we aren’t pursuing something.

So…those are the reflections on our own nature.  The pieces that seem to be missing are the parts that experience wonder, and joy, and experience beauty without complication.  It is the part that we identify as “childlike” but really it is just a part of us that we tend to lose touch with along the way.  A lot of this has to do with glamour (a delusion that happens at the level of self in which cognition is mixed with emotion). Because we identify this aspect of being with a life-stage, we have a delusion that we have to give it up in order to attain maturity or that, if we possess it when we are older, it is a sign of immaturity.  That is a glamour that needs to be stamped out.  There is some sort of an illusion (I think this is mostly a cognitive mistake) that it makes us vulnerable…as opposed to being a source of resilience. There is a glamour in our society around suffering that is very strange…like the “suffering artist” bit. I don’t think their power comes from their suffering…I think it inhibits their creativity.  I think that some of this comes from the fact that we are apex predators and almost all of our hero tales involve fighting….trying to fight for something that has a mental and moral code to it, maybe…but our hero tales always involved agon…struggle.  

Anyway, we, collectively, seem to be missing some pieces of this aspect.  Even children seem to be losing these aspects of self earlier and earlier.  From my vision, I think there were several things going on.

The parts we should be focusing on are two-fold at this moment.  We should be focused on strengthening the parts of us that experience that sense of wonder that we call “childlike” but is really just an essential part of the human soul.  The more that we build that and do so intentionally, the better.  We are all cells in the greater body.  We need to call those parts of our collective soul back through the call of like to like.  Any of the work that we are doing on re-enchantment is a part of that.  But it needs to be done from a place of play and joy and wonder…not duty.  On a personal level, this is where I can fall down.  I get overwhelmed by the enormity of it and I start to lose touch with what I am actually trying to do sometimes.  

The second line of action is also to look at our social structures that inhibit the development of this part of human nature and build alternatives.  So, for example, we have created a society where we are all consumers of the art of the very best artists and then we compare our own artistic/creative endeavors to them and feel lacking.  This is really harmful.  And, of course, unless you are making a living by your art, it is incredibly difficult to prioritize making time for creating it yourself and spending the time to develop.  Plus, we are all too isolated and are often consuming professional art alone.  If we could create more opportunities to come together and just artistically “play”…whatever that looks like….that would be helpful. And we have generally got to do something about the way in which our “work” lives take up more and more and more of our time, energy, and psyche.  We need to find ways to put the breaks on that because it is wrecking us.

There are other issues of collective soul loss, by Apollon said that They are working on some of them and we should focus on the pursuit of excellence and re-enchantment of ourselves and the world.  

Re-mineralizaing Tooth Powder

I will write more when I have the time about the full WHY of some of what I am about to share, but I have a number of initiatives that I am undertaking.

This post is in service of two of them.

1.  I am trying to gradually eliminate single-use plastics from my life.
2.  I am trying to gradually eliminate toxic chemicals from my life.

One of the places that I am working on this is in relation to personal hygiene products because they both tend to have a lot of toxic chemicals that we put on or in our bodies and they also tend to have a lot of plastic packaging etc.

This evening, after my philosophy group let, I made my first tooth powder.  I did a fair amount of research and came to several conclusions.  The purpose of fluoride in toothpaste has to do with remineralization.  However, fluoride is also on the toxic side of life and there is some research suggesting that in the little bit of time it is in contact with teeth through brushing (unlike fluoride treatments you get at the dentist), it doesn't really help as much as it looks like some other ingredients do.

Plus, I have a pretty strong aversion to mint flavored toothpaste which leaves me with either Tom's of Maine Cinnamon/clove toothpaste or my Greek toothpaste.

A lot of the most toxic ingredients we have in our products are preservatives...but the toothpaste you can make at home goes bad.  But tooth POWDER doesn't.  The way you use tooth powder is that you get your toothbrush wet and then get some of it on your tooth brush and...brush!

Apparently, acid is really hard on teeth and causes the enamel to demineralize, so you want to offset acidity with ingredients that are alkaline.  Also, you want the enamel to have access to the minerals it needs in order to strengthen itself.

I settled on the tooth powder recipe by Wellness Mama.  https://wellnessmama.com/5252/remineralizing-tooth-powder/

It includes:

·      1/4 cup bentonite clay (is alkaline and produces an electrical charge in water, removes toxins, and can help remineralize teeth with calcium, magnesium, and silica)

·     3 TAB calcium powder (minerals for enamel and whitens)

·     1 TAB baking soda (minerals, alkaline, removes stains)

·     1 TAB ground cinnamon (anti-bacterial)

·     1 TAB ground cloves (anti-microbial)

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·     1 TAB + xylitol powder (keeps bacteria from sticking to teeth, which prevents demineralization)

You can also add powdered mint or some mint oil.  I choose not to do so.

You put everything into a mason jar and then shake it really well.  Put some aside into a smaller container where it is easy to dip your wet toothbrush into it.

I spent $36 on ingredients and made the recipe three times over.  If it lasts me as long as 7 tubes of toothpaste, then I will have broken even on the expense.  I have no idea if I will.  However, I also have a ton of bentonite clay left over and a bit of the xylitol left over.  I could order a bit more of the food grade calcium and make even more.  The reason it is expensive is that the smallest bag available of bentonite was $17 and there was a similar situation with the xylitol.

It will take me some time to figure out if I like this, if it is worth it, and if it helps my teeth.  But if I do, then this was easy to make and, while there was some plastic in the ingredients packaging, the hope is that it will last long enough to be less plastic than the tubes of toothpaste.  It certainly does not have questionably safe ingredients.



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Cynicism Can Bite Me - I Choose Hope

Our country and much of the world is currently in thrall (enslaved) to a large number of powerful glamours.  When I say a “glamour,” I am referring to a type of delusion that occurs at the level of being in which cognition is mixed with emotion.  Most of our waking experiences are characterized by cognition (thoughts) that are mixed with emotions.

Glamours are incredibly dangerous because they function by inviting someone to feel powerful, especially in relationships to others, while simultaneously stripping those in thrall of their actual power.  I want to give you an example of one of the most powerful right now and invite you to become aware of its operation and to reject it when it invites you to give it your power while pretending to give you power.  Glamours are defeated by awareness and an act of will in which you reject it.

Let’s talk about the glamour of Cynicism:  Cynicism is pervasive, but let’s look at it in the context of politics. It is the attitude that everything is rigged, so there is no point in trying, or if you are going to try it will be in some grand protest that is not actually a strategy. The cynical person believes that they see the putative “truth” because they are intelligent and that they are more intelligent than anyone who “doesn’t see it”.  Functionally, cynicism becomes an “identity marker” of intelligence and a way to justify feeling superior to other people. Because people who are intelligent tend to value their intelligence, there is pressure from this glamour to verify one’s intelligence by becoming cynical 

So, the glamour of cynicism removes masses of people from actually working to make a meaningful difference in their community, which is what politics is, while simultaneously enabling them to not feel any responsibility for improving things. Instead there is a self-amplifying feedback loop that absolutely disempowers those who are under the thrall of this glamour while increasing their own deluded sense of status as “intelligent” people.  The more things go to hell, the more self-righteous they feel believing they have been vindicated as being “correct” while being blind to the fact that their role is significantly causal.  

Additionally, those who are working for change are dismissed and disempowered as being either polyannas or sell-outs, and are written off as either not intelligent or not strong enough to accept the “cold, hard truth of the world,” or they are not pure enough.  And, again, this particular glamour appeals to and infects an extraordinarily large number of truly intelligent people whose talents and abilities to make change are effectively neutralized.  If I were Sauron trying to devise a spell to put humanity in thrall and spread my corrupting shadow over the world, I couldn’t do better than the glamour of cynicism.  

The next time you find yourself invited by the Glamour of Cynicism to give it your power so that it can give you an illusion, I invite you to do this instead.  Choose hope and stay engaged.  This is not a naïve statement.  I do not passively “have” hope because I think the world is good.  I choose hope, over and over again, every day, so that I can have the real power to help make the world good.  And then I go, and I do the work that I can.  

If you are of a magickal persuasion, here is a ritual to dissipate cynicism from the group mind.  https://theophaniadcdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/dispelling-glamour-ritual.pdf 

Witch Problems: The Clutter of Magic

I have read more occult books...well...I was counting up and realizing that I have self-identified as a Witch for 32 years now...and I am a librarian.  I have read a lot of occult books.  They warn you about all sorts of eldritch dangers...but the one I have never seen as a warning is that if you become even a half-serious practitioner, your life is in danger of being taken over by MAGICAL CLUTTER!!!  Now THAT is a serious bane.  I'm not entirely sure what Japanese Organization Lady would advise me to do since, "does this sealed arcane spell binding the power of a serial rapist bring you joy?" is not a sentence that should ever be uttered.  Or typed.  TOO LATE!  Because I am a witch and I say shit that certainly wouldn't be said in polite company and maybe shouldn't be said at all.

This post is coming from a Facebook post that I wrote, and I am memorializing it so it can serve as a reminder and cautionary tale for me in the future.

As an urban witch who lives in a one-bedroom apartment, I am incredibly fortunate to have a special nook just for my altars and magick.  Now...of course, I have altars and other stuff ALL OVER the apartment, but I also have a dedicated little personal temple space.  GLORY!  So superior to the years spent in the 400 square foot studio!  But it really, really needed to get straightened up.  But the STUFF.  How do I have this much stuff?  What is this stuff?  The occult books are very clear that one should not have a cluttered magical working environment.  Both, TRUE and HAH!  I mean, I live in a one bedroom apartment and have 9 altars, 3 of which get daily use and the other 6 get used over once a season.  Minimalism is just not the witchy way...no matter how much we romanticize our ancestors and their "simpler" ways.  And I consciously TRY not to do this.  Try and fail.  Try again.

Anyway, I needed to clean up my supplies.  So, I decided to clean house.  It went something like this:

What are these stones? Why are they together? There must be a reason...is that bark? Is this the molybdenite? Why did I buy this much selenite? I must have been planning to do something with it. What the hell was it? Is it disrespectful to throw this out? It was an offering at one point. I know I'm supposed to bury or burn it...but I think my apartment manager would be mad at me if I did that and I'm not in the mood to get caught digging in the park. Oh bloody hell...what is this? I know it's not one of the McCormick spices...I just used the bottle. And here are bottles of oils that the labels are no longer readable or that fell off. And save me from the collection of feathers and special bits of string and other ritual detritus. I really should have labeled my rocks better. The sacred waters are reasonably labeled at least. Note to self...I DO NOT NEED HYSSOP OIL!!! I HAVE PLENTY. Make a bloody inventory already! Why did I ever think it was a good idea to create a spell that leaves me having to keep a physical item until the end of time? That's just bad planning. Etc. etc. etc.


I know that part of this is because we feel like we need to be prepared for all sorts of unknown circumstances...so we collect all sorts of things with the "just in case" mentality.  My personal favorite, for me, was an early morning phone call from my sweetie (who is a magnificent Darren).  
I answered the phone and he excitedly burst out with a "Good morning, sweetie!  Do you need a snake in a bottle?"
 
I couldn't even fully parse what he was saying and was like, "Wha....?"

"Do you need a snake in a bottle?"

At this point, I was trying to think through whether or not this could be some really weird double entendre that was sailing over my head, or something.  Then he decided to explain."My friend at work gave me a dead snake preserved in a bottle of alcohol and I don't know what to do with it.  Do you need a snake in a bottle."  

"OH!  You mean do I need a SNAKE in a bottle."  And you know, for a witch, the answer to that question, taken literally, is "Yes...Yes I do.  I do need a snake in a bottle."  

I have a magnificent Darren.  He gave me a snake in a bottle.  Now, should there ever be an emergency in which we were thinking, "I could save the world with my wild edge-walking magicks if only I but had...a snake in a bottle..."  The struggle, it is real.  

But seriously...I am still not done organizing the clutter.  I did create an inventory.  I am thinking maybe I should capture and release some rocks back into the wild.  But I do think we need to be thinking about our magical detritus problem.  If I never, ever, ever get another random piece of special string or a candle I'm not supposed to finish burning or whatever in a ritual...this would be good.  And I am going to be much more conscious about what I saddle people with at the rituals I run.In the meantime, if I'm ever caught burying shit in the park...I promise you a weird trial.

The Abortion Debate is Not About Abortion

The abortion debate is not about abortion.  Abortion is not the issue, it is the battleground.

I know that the abortion debate is not about abortion because, if it were, there would be common ground discovered and actions taken.  We know what prevents abortion and the vast majority of abortions could have long since been a thing of the past if the mis-named "Pro-Life" forces were working with, instead of against, us in trying to shape create the changes that would prevent most abortions by making them irrelevant.

This is how you eliminate the need for most abortions.

• Eliminate all barriers to safe and effective birth control.  
• If we were serious, we could make it state-subsidized, free, and easy to get.
• Eliminate all stigma around women's sexuality that would prevent them from getting birth control.
• Make it possible for minor women to get birth control without parental knowledge or consent, so long as it is medically safe.
• Condoms are in men's control and can be sabotaged.  They are important for other reasons, but women need control of their birth control.
• Put more public money into developing safer forms of birth control that have fewer side-effects.
• Mandatory comprehensive sexual education for all of our youth that focuses on de-stimgatizing sexuality, gives comprehensive understanding of how to prevent pregnancies, and focuses on sexual consent and communication.
• Make ending rape a cultural and societal priority by embracing a culture that openly discusses consent.
• Strengthen the social safety net, especially funding childcare and parental leave, so that women who would want to give birth and keep the child if their financial circumstances allowed them to do so can make that choice.

There will still be some need for abortion in unexpected and tragic circumstances where the woman wants to have the baby, but there is something badly wrong--with her health or with the fetus.  These are, by definition, tragedies and NO ONE outside of the woman, her doctor, and whichever intimates she allows into that inner circle of decision-making even has a right to an opinion.  

When I have tried to find common ground with those who swear that they just want to save the unborn babies by suggesting we could work together on any of the above--which would actually prevent abortions--it became crystal clear that this is not about the unborn babies or abortion at all.  The so-called "Pro-Life" side actually works against all of the things that we know prevent abortions.  The abortion debate is not about abortions.

What the abortion debate is about is whether or not women have full ownership of their bodies, or if that legal, societal, and cultural right is contingent and they can be owned by someone else...be it the father of the fetus, the husband, her father, or the state.  If a woman's right to own her own body is not absolute, then she is not legally fully human.  She is dehumanized and becomes pseudo-property.  If I can be owned by someone else--if the state can tell me that I lose my rights to make medical decisions about my body should I become pregnant--then I am legally much lesser than any man, whether or not I am actually pregnant.  I believe that the ability of the individual to have ownership of their body, the very vessel in which we walk the earth, is essential to being fully human.  The abortion debate is about whether women are legally full persons or if their legal personhood is contingent.  If it is contingent, then women are in a position where they are legally dehumanized.

Abortion is the battleground out of biological necessity.  A fetus only exists inside a woman's body.  Until birth, the fetus is in a dependent symbiotic relationship with the woman's body.  There is no way around that fact.  Once the fetus is in a woman's body, she must either have control over her body or someone else has control over her body.  You can't act "for the fetus" against the woman, without denying the woman sovereignty over her own body.  It logically cannot be done.  

In this way women are simply biologically different than men and vulnerable to having their humanity stripped from them in a way that men are not.  This is the battleground.  There are ways to prevent most abortions without resorting to a battle about whether or not women legally own their bodies--but in the actual abortion debate, there is no compromise.  Women either own their bodies, or this basic human right is contingent and women are not recognized as fully human.  If you give the fetus rights that supersede the mother, you deny women their full legal humanity.    

There can be no compromise on this battleground.  

I have never been pregnant and I never will be pregnant, but my legal-standing as a full human equal to men stands in the balance along with all of my Sisters from all backgrounds.  This is not about abortion.  It is about the emancipation of women.