NeoWayland's Technopagan Yearnings

Tue - July 29, 2008

Keltira

So let's talk about my latest project.

I've been looking for a new place. Somewhere rural and isolated enough so I can be casually nude and not have the neighbors call the cops. Someplace outside the city, but still close enough for me to drive in and do some shopping or maybe a night on the town. Someplace private enough so that no one is close unless I invite them. Someplace big enough for me to putter. After most of a lifetime of desert dwelling, I would love mountains and green.

I'd like high-speed internet access, but it looks like satellite is going to be the only option there.

Most importantly, I want to build. A small A-frame to start with, and then a larger house.

I don't intend to leave the land unaltered. I'm seriously thinking about a berm and harnessing microclimates.

Ideally it would be big enough for me to build the Underhill Temple that is in my head, even if I don't think I could get a contractor or a building inspector to touch it. Minimally I do want space for a decent garden, a raised ritual area, a BBQ and picnic area, and a labyrinth.

Of course I want views and provisions for four-feets.

I want a place that I can indulge both my hermit tendencies and my desires for comfort.

I want a home I can experience.

I haven't found the right spot yet, but I am looking.

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Posted: Tue - July 29, 2008 at 03:20 PM
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Bringing you up to date

I've been thinking about what I want to do with this site.

Way back when, the first version of Technopagan Yearnings started as one of those "this is what Pagans believe" sites that have (fortunately) mostly died off. All the pages were hand coded, and it taught me more about HTML and the need for modular design than anything else.

When I started the blog version, I wanted a Pagan commentary to compliment my political commentary. I wanted to share a few insights I have had over the years, maybe a couple of hard won lessons. One of the things that I am discovering more and more is that the sojourner's path is a intensely personal experience. The things I consider important aren't necessarily the things that others think are important. Maybe it has something to do with the way I came to Paganism, I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am a "hermit" by nature and I don't readily allow other people in.

I've spent time on the road the last few months (I'm trying to buy a plot of land in Colorado). The seventh or eighth time on the same road makes you think.

I do think I have something to offer, for whatever it's worth. But it is going to be on my terms. Of course I want to hear what people have to say. But I'm not going to say everything I know or think about every subject.

As for that book thing that someone asked me about last week. Yes, I have a great title. No, I am not sure that I am willing to write it. And I am not sure it would sell.

So what is the outlook from here on out? I am going to try to stick to the twice weekly schedule, but not every entry is going to be one of the long ones. Those take hours to put together, even if I don't have to research them. I'm going to start the Taproots, which will rehash previous entries. Mostly you will see exactly what this version of the site started out as, a brief commentary on neopagans and modern Paganism.

I hope you'll stick around and keep reading.

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Posted: at 02:24 PM
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Mon - July 28, 2008

Sometimes we forget the obvious

"Wisdom is where you find it."

Thanks Angus, where ever you are now. It had slipped my mind.

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Posted: Mon - July 28, 2008 at 07:05 AM
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Mon - July 14, 2008

KMF revisited

I told you about the "Keep Moving Forward" MemeCards I made for my design business. Nothing elaborate, a little graphical layout, the words "Keep Moving Forward," and a quote from the Disney film.

"From failing you learn. From success, not so much."

Well, after I got the cards but before I got the new email addys up and running, I handed out eight as samples to friends to get their opinions.

Five of those eight now have new jobs.

Granted, the sample size is too small to draw meaningful conclusions. But there are three strong possibilities. First, something odd and arcane is going on. Second, I'm hanging out with people who are basically dissatisfied with their lives. And third, it's all coincidence. I'm willing to bet on a combination of all three.

But there is one factor that gives me pause for thought. I wrote a short story once that seemed to have unusual effects on the people who read it.

I think I can count this one as a success.

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Posted: Mon - July 14, 2008 at 02:52 PM
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Mon - July 7, 2008

"Thunder in the vicinity"

On Sunday at 4:26 p.m., I caught an glimpse of the sullen sky through the kitchen window. Quickly I reached for my handy-dandy Palm TX to get an updated forecast. That's when I saw the oddest weather page I think I have ever seen. The weather wasn't "cloudy" or even "light rain" as it had been around noon. No, it was something that I had never seen before.

"Thunder in the vicinity."

Considering where I live in Arizona, that goes beyond uninformative to evasive. After all, I can drive twenty minutes and have a 180˚ view that stretches sixty to seventy miles in the daylight. A few years back when the wildfires in Arizona were so bad, at night I could see the glow to the south, and that was a couple of hundred miles away. My "backyard" is at least anything that is within a half-day's travel.

Direction wise, that's next to useless. I know that if I go north, I'll eventually hit Canada. If I go west, I'll eventually hit the Pacific. But if I want to hit a specific place between those two extremes, say, the Greens Restaurant, I need better directions.

I had never seen a weather reading like that, it sounds impressive but is amazingly uninformative.

I have to wonder how many settle for "in the vicinity," especially with spellcraft. We wouldn't expect a chicken to roast itself if we stuck it on the counter across from the oven. We wouldn't expect to clean ourselves by standing outside the bathtub. Fertilizer doesn't do any good if it stays in the bag on the patio.

Beware of "in the vicinity."

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Posted: Mon - July 7, 2008 at 05:38 AM
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Mon - June 30, 2008

Keep Moving Forward

One of my favorite recent films is Meet the Robinsons. Great Disney flick, and probably the film that convinced me that there is still some of Walt's magic left in the world.

I believe that Americans have moved their grand story telling traditions to the theater, mostly the movie theater. We just don't get together and share stories anymore. We expect those stories to be spoonfed to us on huge screens with refreshments.

I do believe in the power of personal story telling. But I have to admit, when filmmakers get it exactly right, it's really powerful.

I should mention I was a film major in college.

I could feed a lot of bull here about the story mind and the elements of good tale spinning, but instead I'll point out that MTR is very nearly a perfect Jungian tale.

The villain of the film is Doris the Helping Hat, who just happens to be the invention of the hero. Or at least the hero when he grows up.

The supporting villain is wronged by the hero and wraps himself in his own pain and shadows.

The hero only turns things around when he accepts responsibility and literally confronts his own Dweller in Darkness with an absolutely perfect tactic.

Even with all this, the film doesn't stop. Look at the older hero's working space. He surrounds himself with his successes. He doesn't hide from his mistakes, but they are carefully organized for future reference. And then he doesn't pay them any further attention until absolutely necessary.

He accepts his past, he knows where he is, and he chooses his own path.

Keep moving forward. Pretty powerful stuff.

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Posted: Mon - June 30, 2008 at 05:24 AM
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Fri - February 1, 2008

Elvis has left the building

There are times when being a solitary gets tiresome. And then I get a couple of, well, not exactly thumps, but emphatic statements.

One was from a minister friend of mine in the southern part of the state. A parishioner had their feelings hurt by something that wasn't handled especially well. Things got out of control, and this "charter member" (who had already resigned multiple times in the past) wanted to leave in the most dramatic way possible. My friend defused and derailed most of these attempts, but it was the last one that really got him a bit upset. After the fireworks that threatened to divide the congregation and the member had resigined, there was one last bit. The former member put sealed letters on the music stands in the choir loft just before the Sunday services began. Soft of "I've left but I am still going to sow discord from beyond the walls."

Now before we as Pagans start congratulating ourselves because "that could never happen to us," let me tell you about the other statement. I'm putting some feelers out into southern Colorado and northern New Mexico because I want to buy some land to build a house. Through one of those friend of a friend of a friend things, I stumbled across the remains of a small Pagan group that had something very similar happen to them. Things hadn't gone quite so smoothly for them.

Although I don't usually agree with his politics, Isaac Bonewits pointed out a book years ago that covers these situations. I've read it, it's right on. My old friend knew instinctively what to do to save their congregation, my new friend didn't. I suspect that most of us fit with the second.

I've been told that if the participants are "adult" enough, this won't happen. I don't think that's true. People are people. People cherish their passions. Dramatic exits may not resolve the problem, but it spreads the misery and plants guilt.

I've many reasons for staying solitary. Maybe I will find the "right group" someday, but I am not hanging my life on it.

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Posted: Fri - February 1, 2008 at 07:12 AM
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Tue - January 15, 2008

Rolling along

I've had some technical issues which I may or may not have solved.

It looks like Macintosh hard drives can get fragmented, and that can cause a flaky computer.

Depending on how long it takes to roll the copyright dates, I may be making another post here this afternoon.

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Posted: Tue - January 15, 2008 at 05:09 AM
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Fri - December 28, 2007

Great Buzz

I'm not a teacher in the formal sense. Especially not with kids. I don't always have the patience with the slower students.

But every once in a while, someone calls me to talk to kids. Since I used to be a Corporate Clone, I can tell kids how to handle their first job interview. Since I am a history buff, I can tell them about the bits their history books skip over. Since I am a movie buff, I can tell them about great films they have never seen.

And every once in a while under the most unusual circumstances, the fact that I am Pagan means I can tell them about non-mainstream religions. That one is really iffy on a number of levels and I don't do it very often.

When any of this happens, I consider it my sacred duty to bend the kid's brains. I do everything I can to get them to think and question their assumptions. I tell them it's not enough to do something just because Someone in Authority told them to do it. I tell them that there are always consequences, and it's their job to find out what those consequences are.

Sometimes it takes, sometimes it doesn't.

Maybe once a year, one of the kids I have talked to before asks me on their own to talk to them and a few friends about almost anything. That's even more dicey. I almost never talk about religion or sex in that context, and I always do it in a public spot away from their house or mine. It usually ends up costing me some pizza and a few rounds of soda.

But the buzz I get from those kids makes it all worth it. Makes me even wonder if I should have become a teacher.

Oh, about the "almost never." The exceptions have been the emergencies, and there haven't been very many of those, thank the gods.

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Posted: Fri - December 28, 2007 at 02:47 PM
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Tue - December 25, 2007

I saw Beowulf last week

It's a film I've looked forward to seeing. I've been a fan of Robert Zemeckis since Romancing the Stone. The Back to the Future films are one of the very few times I think that the film sequel pays off more than the original. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was brilliant. Used Cars is an overlooked Kurt Russell film that makes a pretty good date flick.

So when the news hit that Zemeckis was taking on the epic Beowulf, I was happy. Especially when I found out that Neil Gaiman cowrote the screenplay.

Overall, the CGI animation is amazing. There are shots that would be impossible to pull off otherwise, like the beautiful sequence where the viewer's perspective winds through the rafters of the mead hall. With a few jerky starts, the principal characters look fantastic, and eventually more real than real. The landscape is everything you could want from an epic tale.

But that opening sequence in the mead hall reminded me of Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and not in a good way. Amazingly detailed, but very mechanical and jerky in movement.

Somebody should please tell the animators that horses don't move that way. A horse is more than a piece of furniture to be sat on, he's a living breathing creature with his own desires and fears. These reminded me of the mechanical horse race in Popeye.

All that is acceptable and we can live with it if the story is strong enough. And that is where the film falls down.

In every translation of Beowulf I have ever read, Grendal's mother is protrayed one of two ways. She's either a monster herself or a mighty warrior woman only a half step removed from the Valkyries. The demon-seductress thing used in this film feels like it's been lifted from medieval Hebrew stories of Lilith where the demon seduces men and leads them astray. There's also more than a little of Morgan le Fay in this version of Grendal's mother, which I suppose justifies lifting a huge hunk of the Grail romances and plopping it down in the film's story. I can't think of another reason for the Arthurian elements.

It just doesn't fit.

The change in emphasis shifts the story from an epic to a Christianized morality tale. Hrothgar and Beowulf are brought low by their secret lusts, each lies to hide what he has done.

Women don't fare well in this film, except for Grendal's mother. There are only three speaking female parts, and one of those is the teenage bedmate to an elder Beowulf. Wealthow is in a loveless marriage with Hrothgar, and by the end of the film she has long since kicked Beowulf out of her marriage bed as well. The only other female character I remember is a serving woman who spends more time almost popping out of her gown than anything else.

I think I could have bought into the shapeshifting demon seductress if it weren't for the high heels. Or maybe Angelina Jolie's voice. She was miscast here. The character looked good on film, but the voice was exactly wrong.

My only other real problem was with the nudity taboos. Strategically placed swords and shadows get old real fast, not to mention the molecule thick gold coating that still manages to utterly smooth out nipples and genitalia.

Beowulf could have worked. It was close but still a missed opportunity. It could have been about a joining a kingship to magic, and the kings choosing to betray that magic. All the pieces were there. Instead it comes off as a morality play about men's unbridled lust, even to the ending.

Put this one in the almost pile.

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Posted: Tue - December 25, 2007 at 12:46 PM
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Mon - December 24, 2007

What's in a name?

I wasn't exactly without a computer, but I couldn't get to my current files. That made blogging a near impossibility until I could recover them.

In a way, it was an opportunity. To get away from my computer frustrations, I broke out my graph paper notepad and did some thinking.

For a few years now, I have not exactly been happy about using the "traditional" Neopagan names for the sabbats. Some like Lammas come from medieval Christian sources. As for the Gaelic, the fact that I don't speak the language means I am not honoring the tradition or the holiday, even if I am more CR than anything else.

The "traditional" meanings of the sabbats (and especially not the watered down versions usually published) don't match my meditations and understandings. I use Mike Nichols as my jumping off place, and try to match my celebrations to the solar year.

The names, now that is a challenge. Wintergate and Summergate are obvious, especially in terms of birth and passing. Greenmark and Redmark are less intuitive, but still make sense in context of initiation and sacrifice. Then things get a little stretched. Treecrest and Heartwell even work mostly. But I'm not real happy with the last two names.

As I write the descriptions this time around, I am focusing more on the Divine Journey.

Since my calendar files didn't completely make it through the data recovery, that's another reason to go through and rethink what the sabbats mean to me.

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Posted: Mon - December 24, 2007 at 04:03 PM
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Tue - December 4, 2007

Root tapping

I figured out what I am going to do with this blog and it has everything to do with that new "Taproots" category.

One of my "touchstones," Lupa, has been documenting part of her path and explorations. It's been a fascinating read.

Then there is my periodic frustration with how my ideas get spread out in different entries in this blog. For example, there are about 20 entries here where I talk about the differences between an experienced and a revealed faith, move to (eventually) realize the Story vs. the Journey metaphor, and toss in refinements as I think about it and talk to other people. But there is no ONE place that brings the best of all that together.

If you are going to be honest about keeping a blog, you don't usually go back and edit previous entries to show later realizations. What I need is something where I can put down the best thoughts and then go back and rewrite and edit.

Enter the Taproots.

Each Taproot entry is going to cover one topic that I consider really important. It will be the best I can do at present, but unlike the other blog entries it will be edited and rewritten from time to time. Eventually these entries will be more like articles, longer and more in depth. I'll credit my sources and give hyperlinks where available. Each Taproot will show my lore, understanding, and opinion in the moment, but subject to change in the details. A few steps further than the FAQs I've put together, and without the questions.

The other entries here at Technopagan Yearnings will be my notes and thoughts will be my notes and thoughts on modern American Paganism. The Taproot entries will be the distillation of those thoughts into something useful that I can send people to when they ask questions.

Originally I was going to call it 180 proof, and then one eighty-three proof. Kudos and a gold star with apple leaf clusters to you if you get the latter reference. It just goes to show that you can't count on all your inspiration from when you crouch over a laptop, naked and wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, letting the firelight play in the room. You have to filter the inspiration through reason to make it work on a practical level. So Taproots it is, a natural extension of my webtree lore.

Depending on how this works out, I may adapt this idea to my political blog Pagan Vigil, which is spread out even worse.

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Posted: Tue - December 4, 2007 at 11:50 PM
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Creative destruction

Over the weekend I ran across this article discussing a book on the economist Joseph Schumpeter. Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of him, I had to go look him up myself. But the central idea of the book, that I remembered from an econ class or two.

Schumpeter contributed two really important ideas to economics. Let me quote here.

...Previous first-rank economists (with the partial exception of Marx) had concentrated on situations of equilibrium. In that model, development is a gradual process, in which competition keeps goods high-quality and affordable, and the abstemious owners of capital await the long-term rewards of deferred gratification.

Schumpeter pointed out that that wasn't how market economies really worked. The essence of capitalist economies was, as Marx had recognized before him, the entrepreneur and the innovator: the risk taker who sets in motion new and more-efficient ways of making old or new products, and so produces an economy in constant change. Marx saw that the coming of capitalist economies destroyed all feudal, traditional, and patriarchal relationships and orders. Schumpeter saw farther: that market capitalism destroys its own earlier generations. There is, he wrote, a constant "process of industrial mutation — if I may use that biological term — that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in, and what every capitalist concern has got to live in."

This isn't the first time I've dragged in economics to cover a point on magickal theory, and it probably won't be the last. After all, economics studies human activity. But I want to draw special attention to two points here. First that the important stuff doesn't happen in equilibrium but in a state of contrasting tensions. My own phrase for that state is dynamic balance, something I stole from a physics text. At any given moment, many forces act at once. Reduce one and the result is not a resting place, but rather a point where all the forces exactly counter each other again. Constant motion = dynamic, counter point = balance. We never stop moving. It's one of the roots of my webtree lore, a small one, but still important.

But the more important point here is that phrase creative destruction. Again, it's not unique to economics, it's very much a part of nature. There are species of trees that can't release their seeds except in a forest fire. Some insects lay their eggs in the body of another, still living insect so the larvae have something to eat. A decomposing body putting nutrients back into the soil. Circle of life.

It's in mythology too. Odin casting down Ymir to create the Earth, the pheonix reborn in the flames, not to mention that little thing about a Jewish carpenter sacrificing himself. And that is just in the Western traditions.

If it's really a process and you are not going to end up where you started, you have to change things along the way. Rip up a few plants, kick some rocks, drink from a couple of streams, relieve yourself here and there. You're going to leave pieces of yourself along the way and move the landscape where you were.

In other words, a journey.

One of those things where you get to step into the abyss again with your eyes closed and no idea of the next stop along the way. You can't wear your old skin, it doesn't fit anymore. That's okay, it was getting a little stretched anyway. An old way of doing gets consumed in discovering and using a new way. Life goes on, the wheel turns. You can't go back.

Change is the constant.

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Posted: at 04:44 AM
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Anti-woman themes in Beowulf film?

Love on the rocks

Testing, testing, one two three

Attention technopagans

Pagan Legacy

Pagan web colors

Fire good

Looking for good causes

Role tricks

Is the weirdness really wyrd?