FUZZY LOGIC and the WHEEL of the YEAR

DUALISM, PLURALISM, 
FUZZY LOGIC  & THE WHEEL of the YEAR

Is Yule the beginning of Winter ?

Is Yule the middle of Winter ?

Is Imbolc the middle of Winter?

Is Imbolc the end of Winter ?

Is Imbolc the beginning of Spring ?

Is the Vernal Equinox the end of Winter ?

Is the Vernal Equinox the beginning of Spring ?

Is Beltaine the middle of Spring ?

Is Beltaine the end of Spring?

Is Beltaine the beginning of Summer? 


Ok now... 

What if I tell you that the answers to all of the above are actually “YES” ? 

Individually considered, many of the above seem to be “true”, yet collectively they seem to contradict each other. This brings into focus an area of dispute among modern pagans which actually frames some old time philosophical principles and one revolutionary new field of logic in which modern scholars from every domain from physics to sociology are making discoveries that will change the future of human thought.

In a debate with Al Gore in October of 2000, employing his typically brilliant “repartee”, George W. Bush described Gore’s economic plans as employing “fuzzy math”, thereby for many years muddying the public’s ability to apprehend a legitimate new field in the sciences with the unfortunate name “Fuzzy Logic”. At that point, it seems Bush was trying to imply that by nature, math is confusing and not to be trusted. As you may imagine, that did not go over well with the mathematicians(1.). But if I suggest to you we should consider the application of “Fuzzy Logic” when discussing the Wheel of the Year, what would that be about? Ok, we’ll get to that in a bit, but first things first…

DUALISM vs. PLURALISM ?

This was always a favorite topic of our founder Isaac Bonewits. From being exposed to his constant references to these principles I’ve condensed my understanding of them into the two definitions below…

Dualism:
A philosophic principle limiting systems of thought into “either-or” sets of two principles assumed to be mutually-exclusive: True vs. False; Good vs. Evil; Love vs. Hate; Matter vs. Spirit; Mind vs. Body; Man vs. Nature

Pluralism:
A system of thought which allows for more than one seemingly contradictory view to be held at once. Challenges the notions of “absolutes” upon which systems like Dualism are founded. - earrach (2.)

Yes, Isaac, ADF, me, and much of Neopaganism were onboard with this (pluralistic) type of thinking long before any of us ever heard of that odd-sounding term “Fuzzy Logic” emerging from the halls of academia.

FUZZY LOGIC ?

One needs to realize at the start that the word “fuzzy” in the name is not a quality judgment, it’s actually referring to this new mode of thought's intentional methodology. Fuzzy Logic is a serious attempt to model the world more accurately and productively than is possible from a dualistic viewpoint. We're not talking unicorns and rainbows here, we're talking life and death, and dollars and cents.

Take a bite out of an apple. And another. And so on… Although we definitely started with the state of “an apple” = “true”, at what point is it no longer “an apple” and therefore, “an apple” = “false”? With the first tiny square 1/32nd of an inch of the apple your teeth remove, is it still “an apple”? Once you have eaten 61% of the apple’s mass, is it still “an apple”? So then, as you continue, when does it cease being “an apple”?

fig.1., Fuzzy Logic behind the wheel of your car

Now, looking at the example fuzzy-logic diagram above and understanding that the vertical (“truth”) axis increases from zero (“false”) to 1.0 (“true”), then try replacing the terms “slow”, “medium”, and “fast” with other term-sets like:

       “cold”, “medium”, & “hot”…
       
       “young”, “middle aged”, &  “old”…
       
        ( Make a fresh drawing if you have trouble visualizing these alternate versions… )
       
With these simple examples, we can easily see what the scholars working on Fuzzy Logic mean when they say “Truth is not a binary proposition. In the real world, truth is simply a matter of degree.” (3.)


DO SEASONS “BEGIN” OR “END” ?

Certainly we should first come to some agreement as to what constitutes a “season” or any given answer is clearly going to be partially wrong and only partially true. How often have we heard the following kind of statement?:

“The date that a season begins varies with local climate, so it's kind of silly for there to be a declaration that a solstice or equinox is the first day, no matter where one lives. In Irish and Germanic lore Summer Solstice is "Midsummer", not the beginning of Summer. In Celtic folklore the festivals are often called "fire festivals" or by similar terminology. I assume this is because bonfires were usually an important part of the festivities. On Imbolc, depending on where one lived (climate at that time of year in the north of Scotland will vary significantly from that in the south of Ireland, for instance), people were less likely to have outdoor bonfires, but fire is still an important part of the festival in the form of hearthfires, candles, and the focus on Brighid, who is a Goddess of the fires of the hearth and smithy and the fires of inspiration (among many other things).” 

- Kathryn NicDhàna (4.) 

Yuck. As a self-styled “astronomer-priest” enraptured by solstices and equinoxes and such, the quote above encapsulates the classic retort that always paralyses me in frustration by its multiple whammy of a dozen missed points and, well… it is the reason compelling me to write this very essay. Nonetheless, don’t get me wrong, Kathryn is a careful editor of Wikipedia topics touching on Celtic Reconstructionism (“CR”) and her comments are generally more than worthy of one’s attention. But then…

Heh…

fig.2., Fuzzy Logic solves the Dualistic Paganthink 

regarding the seasons and the Wheel of the Year !

  
DEFINING the term “SEASONS”:

Seasonal Quarters:   
“The annual spans of time framed by the solstices and their adjacent equinoxes.” 

Of course although the dates of the solstices and equinoxes (“quarter days”) remain approximately the same, the season's name will be its opposite when comparing southern hemisphere locations to the northern hemisphere or vice versa.  Although each "season" actually contains a slightly different number of days from the other three, "quarters" remains a common descriptive term for these four sectors of the Earth's orbit.

Seasonal Weather:   
“The local weather norms traditionally associated with a time of year.” 
Ultimately, all annual extended weather sequences are driven by the effects framed by the astronomical quarterdays (the solstices and equinoxes) framing the seasonal quarters of the year. 


A YEAR IS BUT ONE GREAT DAY…

A striking analogy can be seen by comparing the temperature of times of one day with the dates of the solstices and equinoxes relative to the typical temperature extremes found throughout the year: 

Midnight ( = least Sun, yet not coldest.) 

Wee-Hours ( = then it’s the coldest.) 

    vs. 

Yule Solstice ( = least sun, yet not coldest)

Jan. / Feb. ( = then it’s the coldest.)

Noon ( highest Sun, yet not the hottest.)

Mid-afternoon ( then it’s the hottest.)
    vs.

June Solstice ( highest Sun, yet not the hottest.)

July / Aug. ( then it’s the hottest.)

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ARTICLE UNDER CONSTUCTION... check for updates later !

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NOTES 

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/06/opinion/l-bush-vs-gore-debate-aftermath-fuzzy-math-520543.html   


2, Earrach of Pittsburgh (2003) "Do You Believe in the Gods & Goddesses ? Part II ",
    from Belief and Neopagan Spirituality :  http://thebookofsassafras.blogspot.com/p/neopaganism-and-belief.html 

3. Kesko, Bart  Fuzzy Thinking, the New Science of Fuzzy Logic, NY Hyperion, 1993

4. From Kathyrn’s comments on  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wheel_of_the_Year   

5. 

LOVE and Neopagan Spirituality

Recently,  Teo Bishop posted a provocative essay about
the relationship of love to our souls and Pagan identities.

This reminded me of a program I had presented at a local festival a couple years ago.
I've long been interested in this dimension of our spiritual journeys and the various
consequences of the crossing of our paths, both in the potentials realized and
the losses we suffer every time we allow Opportunity to pass us by...

Here's the workshop outline; 
I look forward to developing it further and presenting it again sometime soon:

=====================================

LOVE and NEOPAGAN SPIRITUALITY

This program will examine the role of spiritual love, compassion and
fearlessness as applied to Neopagan living and religion. We’ll work toward building a dialogue, charting how our tendencies to limit the natural flow of love in our interpersonal relationships robs us and our community of our future and ultimate potential...

The Nature of Love
     What were not discussing today
     Sensation and emotion
     Reciprocity

Must we love?
     Must we be-loved?
     Recognition and acknowledgement

Natural love
     Compassion & seeing ourselves in the experiences of
     others; the importance of expression and connection.

Being supportive vs. being intrusive
     The propriety of emotive and magickal meddling…

The Pity Trap  &  Super-Natural love (Spiritual Love)

Black & White Generic Love? -is love always relational?
     A reservoir of potential Magickal dynamics

The Challenge of Objectivity
     The blind men and the elephant.
     Gaining perspective

Sacred or Saccharine?

Love and Risk - fear and security
     Real risks: loss and consequences
     The greatest loss

Fearlessness and the invincibility of the Open Heart…

Giving and Receiving Blessings
     See:  Blessing - the Art and the Practice by David Spangler

Love and Heart in Community - the fullness of heart (in a group)
     Conventional models for consideration:
     Christmas, graduations, leaving home, weddings, childbirth, funerals…

Related Challenges in the Neopagan Community
     Effective liturgies
     Safe ritual space; self awareness and boundaries
     Me-me meemies
     Love junkies and co-dependency
     Hugs:  the pros and cons (and pros) of physicality

Hospitality
     Fielding inquiries from newcomers.
     Feeling welcome: having a plan for new members*
     Cliques: The challenge of keeping your group an “open” group…
     Staying connected to your community
     Inter-group relations

Us vs. Them - Understanding Newbies and the Next Wave

Listening for the common song
     Our community and the future...

© 2003-2012, Earrach of Pittsburgh, ADF
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IMAGE CREDIT: detail from "Ornament" 

- Sulamith Wulfing, 1975

The 2013 DRUIDS ALMANAC

The WHEEL of the YEAR, 2013

 

To download a printable PDF of the above, click here

Please help me proofread this page; alert me to any typos you find asap.  Thanks, - E.

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The Book of Sassafras 

DRUIDS' ALMANAC Miscellany

The full series of Druid Almanac charts, 

essays and resources is found  HERE...

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The Moon phases dates above are given for the US' Eastern time zone.

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Happy New Year 

from the Book of Sassafras !

2012 Yule snow on the Norns / photo (c) 2012 Earrach

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YULETIDE, fundamentally?

What do I consider are fundamental thematic factors one should review when constructing a Yule Rite to be attended and participated-in by groups of Neopagans of mixed hearth cultures ?

1.) The Mothers' Night

The great pagan vigil attributed by Bede as held "all night" on the eve of the December Solstice

2.) The Sun Itself - at December Solstice

This year (2012) the Solstice will have occurred at 6:12 AM Eastern on Friday December 21st with the Sun reaching its very lowest course & consequentially, passing through the sacred annual mystery of the “Great Moment of Turning"… 

3.) The Feast of the Year’s Turning         

From the Anglo Saxon Giuli  = wheel, or what a wheel does 
( “turning”; per Bede, the day of “turning back” ).

4.) The Twelve Nights of the Year's Turning:

When we count we find there are 12 nights from Mothers Night to New Years Eve… 
The Fractal Mystery of our twelvefold procession through this sacred corridor, 
this Year Between the Years...

5.) The Feast of the Returning Light;

     Dies Natis Solis Invicti ("The Birthday of the Invincible Sun"):

6.) The Feast of the Spirit of the Yule ;

     The Three Faces of the Old Man at the End of the Year

(a.) The Challenger / Guardian of the Mysteries: 
      Svarte Piet; Krampus; Schmutzli; Black Peter

(b.)  The Great Underworldly Gift-Giver: 
      Cernunnos; Dis Pater; Julfather; Santa

(c.) Old Man of the Year: 
     Pater Satvrnvs (hence “The Sataurnalia”); Father Time

----------------------

Most of the above are already deeply structured into the Yuletide / Year-End Holidays celebration most of us have been celebrating all of our lives, independent of terms like Christian, Pagan, or Hearth-Culture.

So, when you have ALL OF THAT to work with, you paganfolk still think that calling on some single hearth-culture deity and spilling some oil on the fire for them, or getting plastered making rounds of sumbel-toasts is an adequate ritual expression of this awesome array of religious mysteries for your community?

I tend to differ… 

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LINKS to relevant content on this blog:

Concerning  mixed hearth-cultures ...

The Mothers Night per Bede  as an “all night” pagan vigil...

the solstice this year, and solstices in general...

The Fractal Mystery of the Twelve Nights  

Meeting Father Time on New Years Eve
Why do Neopagans continually underserve The Sun?

 

Looking for DRUID-ISH YULETIDE TUNES ?
Check out "The Mistletoe Bough" and
"The Unconquered Sun" by Steeleye Span 
on their holiday album "Winter"

 
 

 

ANCESTORS: Best Song, Best Image

First, the image...

The Best Ancestor Image, Ever:

Ford Maddox Brown 1855, The Last of England

Note the Cliffs of Dover receding in the distance...
Also note the the joined hands including the hand of the unseen infant.

Consider first just clicking on the image itself to have a
good look, free of the visual clutter of my blog page....

AND  ( get out yer hankies,)  NOW... 

The Best Ancestor Song, Ever: 

KILKENNY  

by  Peter Jones / popularized by Mick Maloney (lyrics here)  

based on an actual series of letters from the period: 

(if as I do, you find the images distracting, just scroll it off the screen. Or, better yet, buy a copy at iTunes)

A Neopagan DAY OF THE DEAD ?

We almost universally identify Samhain as a time of year for Pagans to be honoring the dead. Certainly we can establish an option for the members of our community to come together in a meaningful and time-honored method to celebrate the memory of their departed loved ones. Borrowing some basic principles from the Mexican Day of the Dead, Chinese folkways and Japan’s Shinto, without appropriating their motifs, we can move from the realm of good intentions to that of establishing legitimate, albeit new, religious traditions.

Reasoning:

In my estimation, current trends in the popular expressions of Hallowtide range from embarrassing to deeply disturbing, and as a result serve our souls less and less with each passing generation. The Mexican Day of the Dead though stands as one of the few exceptions, with its rich imagery, actual devotional content, and perhaps most important of all, its remarkably healthy underlying approach to human mortality (a quantity sorely lacking in the broader WASP-based American culture). Yet virtually everywhere else, we find Western Culture exhibiting a profoundly mal-adapted relationship with the basic facts of its own mortality, forever caught in a cycle made of one part dread and two parts denial. This very conundrum may lie at the foundation of our country’s unrealistic and dangerously casual attitude toward death which manifests itself in everything from the perversity of our video games and horror movies to the cavalier handling of our international policy leading to “Peace-Making” efforts which achieve their goals with carnage on a genocidal scale.

 

Although the Mexican expression is a rich and instructive model for us to follow, for non-Latin Pittsburgh Neopagans to co-opt their ostensibly Catholic traditions into a region of the US with such a peculiarly thin Latin population would be inappropriate and disrespectful at the least. Yet, as thoughtful creators of a new world religion, based on the best aspects of many faiths both ancient and modern, we deserve something in our sacred year as wonderful as having our own “Day of the Dead”. 

NO. Let's not co-opt their unique style and folkways...  

That would be wrong in so many ways...   Let's come up with our own.

HOW?   Objective/Methodology:

ONE MODEL would be to first create a networking effort to map the cemetaries in the greater Pittsburgh area which hold the remains of relatives of the members of our Pagan community. Then, for them to be able to fix a date and time close to November 1st for the members of the community to meet-up on site with others from the community who have relatives in the same cemetaries. As is common in the established non-pagan cultures, these folk can arrange a collective gravesite visitation with groups travelling from site to site within the graveyard until all the persons with relatives buried there have briefly placed flowers or offerings, led a prayer or given a thumbnail bio of the deceased to the group at the grave site.

It might take several years to even see if we could get a community-wide Samhain event like this rolling. If we could get two or three small cemetary visitations started we might just have planted a seed which could become a sustainable local tradition. Unfortunately many of the folks who might otherwise like to participate just don’t have any relatives in -local- cemetaries so we’ll have to do a pretty good sales job within the local Pagan community to find out who our workable candidates are.

ANOTHER MODEL, one more immediately realizable, would be starting here and now, to begin heavily promoting the custom of personal Samhaintide cemetary visitations as the good, solid pagan custom it is (or could be). 

SO, for a start, please,

CONSIDER DOING IT ON YOUR OWN...

As part of your own sacred Pagan year-cycle, make it a personal or family custom to visit the family gravesites at least once a year and make Samhaintide (perhaps the Sunday closest to Hallowe'en?) your target on the calendar for the doing so.

We don’t have to do it just as a “crowd” – why the Mexicans don’t have to organize group excursions, certainly not outside of their immediate families, no, their cemetaries are teeming with hundreds of people at this time of year, happily picnicing and decorating the graves and eagerly sharing their family lore with all of the other families they encounter.

Someday we too could share a similar blessing to theirs.

---

This is not morbidity, it is a celebration of Life!

---

Whenever I get started talking about this stuff I get overcome with a sense of the awesome potential it has for doing our part in healing the seriously damaged relationship our society has to death. We just need to start – and once it starts happening a little here and a little there I’m sure the process will carry us along under its own natural set of motivators.

- Earrach, 2005, 2012

On PIETY

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Keywords: Vision, Heart, Dedication, Service, Surrender

W

e do not set out to take upon ourselves the “responsibility” to worship. 
The eye of reverence, the authentic impulse to worship, is simply that: an irresistible impulse; a compulsion coming from within, not from without.

From this perspective the responsibility to worship in each of us is not really a responsibility to the objects of that worship, i.e. to the Great Mother, the Glorious Sun or the Gods, Ancestors and Spirits... no, not to them but rather, the responsibility is to ourselves. It is not that we “should” worship, it is that we feel the call from-within as a reflex, we must worship. At least it is such in my own experience.

Piety can be seen as a “state” more than as an objective or virtue. If we culture and begin to manifest that state, the outward, virtuous expressions of piety cannot help but follow on their own. Piety then is the state of fullness of heart, clarity of vision and love for the world that renders us unable to resist the impulse to break with the ordinary and externalize our spiritual upwelling through exploration, ritual, creative expression and sharing with others.

Afraid of our own capacity for bliss

We all experience the state that prepares us to apprehend the world in a religious fashion. For many of us it is difficult to respond because our natural capacity for loving the world and all the beings and influences in it is confounded by fear. This fear is often a fear of being (or being seen as being) foolish or weak, as if the religious, aesthetic and emphatic impulses within us are somehow illogical, trivial or impractical. In fact, true piety can be experienced through a process of actively de-valuing this system of false security, seeing it for what it really is, as being itself as foolish and weak as we are afraid of appearing in the first place. This inappropriate fear calls for bravery and the faith which bravery demands. Once employed, like summoning the courage to jump into the water all at once, we find there really was no reason to be afraid in the first place. With practice we unlearn our fears and open the way to the natural motivations initially precluded by our fears. 

Finding our place in the Great Way of Things

Priests in other traditions speak of “hearing the call” and this is simply the sense of urgency of that compulsion to piety we began describing earlier breaking through into one’s mundane life. They also speak of being bound to this calling, much in the same way that a lover binds themselves to a mate. This spiritual “work” once recognized and encouraged in one’s life can easily rise to this proportion. The outward expressions become a way of managing and “living up to” the blessings pouring into us. They become a testimony, an external reference system through which we reconcile and thereby sanctify our relationship with the world.

Wed to the Work:  NeoDruidic forms of expression of the call to Piety... a personal list.

- Regular & seasonal return to the woods (religious / spiritual / aesthetic)

- Observance of the Cycles:  Ritualization / sacralization of the cycles of the Sun, Moon and Seasons

- Geosophical Devotions: Land Shrine / Henge Building; Well Dressing; Genius Locii / Deva-working

- Shrine Maintenance

- Keeping the Rites of the Wheel: Public liturgies for the 8 High Days; keeping monthly Druid Moons

- Finding of and Devotion to a Patron (God/Goddess/Spirit)

- Vision Questing

TAKING UP THE SCYTHE before the THRONE of SOVEREIGNTY

Like the golden down on the curve of Her hip,
the Lay of the Land now bristles densely and ripe 
with endless fields of grain.
Soon we will be deep in August...


The tide of summer is turning and the harvest is under way. 


By now, as in tens of thousands of summers past, the scythe is swung and the stem is severed; some that we may be fed, and some to be put in store that the harvests will continue in summer fields yet unsown.

That work, our work, and your work is part of a continual ritual of the centuries from which we cannot escape, nor should we. Our partner in that process, the Land, has been recognized in many ways through the centuries and there are a number of great sacred symbols of that ancient but continuous relationship to be recognized and carried forward to future generations. That is where we come in, as stewards of that process, the sacred Chain of Tradition must be continued...

So ends the prologue; my

standard essay is  HERE...

photo by Lassair

For a PDF of the Book of Sassafras'

 LUGHNASA / LAMMAS Point-Sheet, click HERE...

A Modern Druid in Search of the Soul

- Rembrandt, (modified by EoP)

I.   AFFIRMATION...  

                 I possess virtually unlimited freedom-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  I possess virtually unlimited joy-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  I possess virtually limitless inner strength-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  I possess virtually complete satisfaction-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  I possess a virtually boundless capacity to love-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  I possess the absolute capacity for forgiveness-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  I possess virtually absolute self control-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  I am loved by many-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  I have valuable friends-
                  but I do not realize it.

                  The future is full of wonders-
                  but I do not realize it.
                 
                  I can find the way-
                  but I do not realize it.

Explanation:  
Over the years I have sensed an agency of my being which I can only try to describe with terms such as "higher-self" or "over-soul", etc. It seems to be the part of me which gets better every time that I gain life-experience or further expand my perspective. Somehow though, it is separate and "above" the complexities, the ups and downs of my situationally-bound day to day life. Nonetheless, it is when I am most subject to that mundane, situational life (i.e. subject to my own subjectivity,) in the times of greatest need that I can sense its immanence. . . and it speaks to me. This poem I believe captures that inner dialogue: each first line is like an instruction from the higher, timeless self and each answering second line ("but I do not...") a sort of mea culpa* from the profane self trapped in the subjective realm.

- Earrach, April 1990

* "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." :
Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.  - from the Confetior in the Roman Catholic mass.  
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I have presented this old Affirmation "poem" of mine first... 
since I feel it best sums up my own experience of what many folks call (among other things) the Higher Self. The relationship between It and that which we call a "soul" interests me and in this piece I'd like to invite you along in a mutual process of discovery, both discoveries of mine and those of your own...

Now certainly, as we all do these days, you can jump right to the Wikipedia webpage for "Soul" and do so again for help with each of the annoyingly ambiguous terms we will encounter ahead. In one sense I feel that yes you should but on the other hand I would ask you to wait and set that aside for later since I feel that assessing your current notions, uncolored by encyclopedic distillations first may present a much more valuable path for us initially.

Remember, so far, I have spoken only of my own experience, and for me, those encounters were of an unsolicited nature. I did not seek them out; they simply "happened" and left a subtle but lasting impression on me. Only years or decades later did I start finding labels to hang on it, conventional or exotic. Likewise, you now may be searching your own spiritual history, since what I have described seems somewhat familiar to you. Perhaps you can recall something exactly like what I described; or, even although you don't immediately recall such experiences, something about it is strangely compelling. Perhaps it is as if you may have "been there" at times - - but would have described it in different terms than I have.

II.    Hunting "it" down... "OPEN SEASON" on the Soul ?


Casually seeking direct guidance from your Higher Self may not prove itself an easy task since we find "It" typically speaks to you only when you most desperately need its help - and often that may come only on the far side of some very difficult territory. Thereby one may only "qualify" for its help by struggling through some great hardship first. Although it may have been giving you regular guidance unconsciously all along - when we pursue it actively, rarely do we sense it as an autonomous being conveying to us any sense of separation from our ordinary consciousness. But then. then there are those times that it does...

I personally do not believe it when someone says they have a comfy and immediate form of access to this agency. We must recall the advice of the ceremonial magicians who warn us that the world is full of spirits who will come and represent themselves as "the one upon whom you called" - and simply are not who you called. "Discrimination" is one of the hardest won yet most valuable tools in non-passive spiritual work. In seeking to acquire this skill we begin by listening for, and learning to recognize, authenticity...

Many of these impostors are benign, and some may be less than such  - - so be careful. This work is one of the primary goals of post Golden Dawn ceremonial magicians. The Thelemites consider it one of the most serious undertakings in their craft and refer to it as attaining "Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel" - - and we ain't talkin'bout two little Hummel kids on a rickety bridge over a waterfall !

III.   SO... HOW DO -YOU- PERSONALLY DEFINE THE FOLLOWING ? :


"Me" / " I " / Self       Personality      Persona      Higher Self      SOUL

ID / EGO / SUPEREGO      Anima / Animus      Shadow      Oversoul

And, if so, to what degree do feel these definitions "overlap"? 

(Making a Venn-diagram of this can be fun...)

Well, as I suggested earlier, seen as a group these really are "annoyingly ambiguous terms"... Having spent most of my adult life deeply immersed in the informal study of world religion, mythology and spiritual aspects of psychology, in my humble opinion, a sizable proportion of religion, and particularly Western Abrahamic Religion, is utter rubbish. So there; I've said it. It seems like evvvverybody has to come up with a different set of terminology for basically the same aspects of human experience and then on top of that they throw in endless truckloads of... crap. Crap, comprised mainly of the shards and tailings from eighteen centuries of pounding so many square pegs into so many round holes. Not to mention the framework of outright lies holding it all together. ("Yes, tell us what you think Earrach, don't hold back"... )

Ok, ok, too much opinion, grouchiness and generalization; let's get back to specifics... Honestly, this all leaves me tempted to take that whole list and stuff it all into the same single sack; a sack tagged with one label (you guessed it...) "soul".

IV. The Soul as a SENSORY ORGAN...

Some time ago I set myself to the task of making a guide for explaining our kind of religion to children. Faced with the necessary amount of "compression" of the language necessary for it to be understandable to persons with limited vocabularies, I realized that thinking this way can often improve one's ability as a writer and communicator of abstract ideas. Any person with some familiarity with a subject and a large vocabulary can ramble on and manage to "explain" a concept to someone who possesses a similar set of tools and an adult's attention span. Unfortunately, as we "ramble-on" (as I suppose I am doing right now,) the opportunity to make a direct and memorable impression becomes diffused. Brief, clever (yet accurate), metaphors and other concise descriptive mechanisms often are the ones that make the most lasting impressions. And, working with a child, we must assume that the time-"window" open for targeting their fleeting attention-spans is a tiny and moving target. So there I was, trying to pare-down into a single paragraph an accurate but brief explanation in answer to the heading "What are gods or spirits?", and, it had to be suitable for use with children.

The big surprise here was that I ended up actually being able to do what I'd assumed was virtually impossible, and in the process I discovered a number of very useful perspectives for explaining it to anyone, even "me". Here's a sampling; see what you think:

"SPIRITS" - "GODS" ?  

Spirits or gods are beings who exist mainly like living ideas; 
we can encounter them with our minds and feelings and through 
the magical stories called "myths" that the people from ancient 
times told about them.

"HOLY STATUES / IDOLS" ?  

Some objects, like special statues or pictures, can represent a 
spirit to us and in that way help us remember or share our feelings 
with that spirit.  We know that the picture or statue is not really 
"the" spirit itself, no more than the telephone "is" the person we 
are speaking with through it; it is simply a way of coming in better 
contact with them. "

- Earrach, 2006

In my line to kids about "spirits and gods" I describe them as "beings", yet I suggest that we can only relate to them through our minds and feelings. In the next item I bring in the analogy of a special piece of technology (statues/images) that can be used to communicate with them, much like we communicate over a telephone with other people, yet no one thinks the telephone "is" that person. In hindsight, those two turned out to be stepping stones to another hardware analogy which all but solved the very challenge of our whole discussion for me.

V.    THINK OF IT AS BEING LIKE  A "RADIO"...

Radio waves are all around us all the time yet without adequate education we would be like tribal people deep in the Amazon Basin, cut off from the modern world, having absolutely no reason to suspect their existence. Nor would we suspect that these frequencies were being modulated to carry information such as voice, music, telephone, or computer data. All you need to pick up, i.e. "tune-into" those radio signals would be an AM/FM radio, a shortwave, or a cell phone.

Now although I'm suggesting the analogy of a radio-tuner here, I'm not one who would suggest that there is some electromagnetic or "bio-electric" field or special "energy" to be tuned-into  (personally, I strongly object to the use of the word "energy" in spiritual or magical matters). Nonetheless we can get further with our analogies and modeling by sticking to words like magical or spiritual "influence". Yes, the world is full of subtle impressions available for perception by human consciousness, impressions which initially depend on our ordinary senses of vision and hearing. Ultimately it's through these sensory organs that we pick up the "cues" necessary for the perception of ordinary yet very important aspects of our daily lives which physicists and biologists would be hard pressed to quantify or underwrite the "existence" of empirically. The perception of beauty, love, the immanence of another person's anger, our own fear or anticipation - - perceiving these things are not just side effects or luxuries, they have become programmed into us by evolution as means to our own survival. Simply because we cannot fully apply the scientific method to these phenomena does not mean that they are nonsense and to be ignored for the verifiability of phenomena which does allow itself to be factored into an equation or measured by a mass spectrometer.

So, if love, hate, fear, and beauty seem to qualify as "phenomena", do spirits and gods qualify as phenomena too? What if all it took was the right kind of "radio-set" to enable one to allow us to apprehend them? As I often say nowadays, imagine that the soul is an effect of our own self awareness that can be operated like a special radio-tuner by which we can "tune-into" the spirits and gods, constructs that are potentially all around us, just structured into our world in a way that only our souls can perceive or make real...

VI.   Was the Soul the product of an evolutionary process?


What if the same evolutionary process that gave us awareness and then made way for self-awareness had in turn enabled in us at that point the capacity for self-self-awareness? As clumsy as the term "self-self-awareness" sounds, it pretty well concisely describes one of the main functions of a soul or higher self. If it takes an eye to see, and a mind to behold, perhaps then it takes a soul to appreciate the scenery?

It seems to me there's a surprisingly simple hierarchy of cognitive states one can stack up to illustrate this notion:

The environment speaks to the...

Sensory organs, which speak to the 
Nervous system,  which speaks to the 
Lower Brain functions, which speak to the
Higher Brain  functions ( = " MIND " ), which speak to the
Higher Mind  functions ( = " SELF " ), which speak to the
Higher Self  functions  ( = " SOUL " )...

A HYMN to the SUN

GREAT GLORIOUS GOLDEN SUN,
SHINING YOUR LIGHT & WARMTH 

UPON THE WORLD!

FIERY FURIOUS FURNACE SUN,

BLAZING SINGULAR CENTER
OF THE CIRCUIT OF OUR YEARS !

HEAR ME NOW
AS AGAIN I PLEDGE,
NEVER TO FORGET
MY PERPETUAL RELIANCE
ON YOUR RADIANT GLORY.

HAIL, PRAISE AND THANKS TO THEE O SUN !
HAIL, PRAISE AND THANKS TO THEE !

- Earrach of Pittsburrgh

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“If I am asked whether it accords with my nature to worship the Sun, then I say once again, ‘Completely!’ For it is a revelation of the most high, and in fact the mightiest which has ever been granted us mortals to perceive. I worship it in the light and creative power of God, whereby alone we live and move and have our being, and all plants and animals together with us.”

 - - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Gespraeche, Vol. IV: 441-42).

Wishing you and yours a  BLESSED SUMMER SOLSTICE...

SUMMER SOLSTICE, THIS YEAR occurs at 7:09 PM, Wed. June 20th, 2012

SEASONAL READING:

"Why Not the Sun?" 

(click here)

- my standard essay on the Sun and Neodruidic practice. 

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"The (Neopagan) Solar Apostasy"

(click here) 

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"What's a SOLSTICE ? (vs. Equinox, etc.)"

(click here)

* SOLSTICE (SOLC): Either of the two extremes of the Earth’s constant 23.4° axial-tilt, relative to the sunlight falling on its surface. Only at the June Solstice is the Earth’s north pole tilted the full 23.4° towards the Sun... and only at the December Solstice is it tilted the full 23.4° away from the Sun.

* EQUINOX (EQX): The Spring or Autumn quarter begins as the Earth’s terminator, the boundary-line between night and day, momentarily crosses the North and South Poles. Therefore, with the Earth’s day/night boundary line briefly poised simultaneously over both poles, only on dates near these times of year are the number of hours of night and day equal all over the globe.

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