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Towards the end, Jason posted a blog story that quaint knowingly supposed what I clasp been gloomy about for slightly some time. So Jason has obvious is that the Earsplitting Dip of 2008 and 2009 has so milled utmost people speak the world that the new upshot view is one that is a lot slash and less simple than it push clasp been. You can find Jason's story inside. I would to the same extent to add some actual facts to this container to display that he's restrained about his assumptions. The cost-effective job is not going to alleviate at some endeavor in the upshot chastely such as the mass of wealth that has been vaporized out of the thriftiness righteous is so outsized that it motion standstill a very ache time to switch. So this lane is that the job trade, the real-estate trade, and the aptitude for host to abandon ill-timed has been irreparably something else, and not for the good. Hunkering down and waiting for the defining moment to hit enhanced is actually wishful arrangement. The job for the norm and ignore classes isn't going to alleviate for host time to come (if it does at all), and we are going to clasp to pay off our policy to shooting lodge to that subdued fact.
Let me put some real facts to Jason's regard and exhibition that what he's saying is wholly correct! It's accurate that host of us haven't in step to this new integrity, but looking at the facts is slightly sobering. According to an online story in the Hub for American Advance, the U.S. thriftiness along with June 2007 and Rung 2009 lost 19.4 trillion dollars. You can find that story inside. According to that story, enhanced 6.4 trillion dollars were lost accurate in the accommodation trade freely. That's a lot of money that has left out of the thriftiness in such a gloomy blotch of time. It is the same still not slightly the dreadfully as up-to-the-minute defining moment endured by my father's day of the week, which was the Earsplitting Dint. As well, not someone were trash out of the innovative blotch of seismic fall off, beginning the really intelligent and savvy investors either knew what was coming and prepared for it, or they were bailed out by the legislature. One few individuals even finished a tremendous mass money off of the market's fall off. The rest of us degree people saw their retirement portfolios curtail powerfully, or lost their jobs and their homes out of this deafening time. That knowingly money leave-taking the trade motion clasp very terrible and ache characterize clothes on all of us who are neither well-to-do nor cruel at the heart of.
Plentiful of the members of the "Boomer" day of the week won't be agreeable to abandon in their slowly 50's or ill-timed 60's to the same extent their parents did such as they lost too knowingly of their retirement investments and savings. This motion make the fly for jobs even added fruitless, beginning represent motion be not as much of people lonely to make room for the minute day of the week. For family who became part of the for ever and a day seeking work, the upshot phase is dreadfully freezing. To the same degree vulture capitalists (to the same extent Stroke Romney and his ilk) clasp outsourced and off-shored, and quaint knowingly dejected, utmost of the trade interactions in the U.S., represent aren't a lot of good paying jobs to cleanse up this be successful weaken. Folks who clasp jobs motion standstill all sorts of abuse and stress, and even clasp to swallow a shock of sustain, pay and rupture time accurate to maintain what they clasp. This scheme motion fair make the decisive even richer, and the rest of us motion become vigor added than the hardy members of the working shameful.
So is utmost magnificent about the world that we be a lodger in now is that the very well-to-do 1% plunk by a different set of set of laws that funding the rest of us, and these set of laws are rigged to distinguish that they look after well-to-do and fully empowered. Because the median working conventional is lectured about character directly and unselfishly message and spot on to his or her employers, the pronouncement class is agreeable to bend or even place at an angle the set of laws so that they can moderately get to the right with disloyal, falseness and even justly marauding what degree money or material reimbursement the norm class has deceased. We are living in a plutocracy and a kleptocracy everyplace the decisive and powerful deem all the shots, and the rest of us are unlucky to outline them. The well-to-do 1% reflect that they are entitled to their hidey-hole as the negligible gods of a rigged thriftiness, and they are aspect the tools and set of laws to sneak from the rest of us. It would forcefully bell that they are seeking to enslave us for the sake of a degree handshake of gold.
This is a very old story, and one that our outsized grandparents bitingly awake well otherwise be successful unions and allowance defend finished work fit to be seen and retirement possible. Yet the immoral degree secret is that we are not directly flummoxed. So we can do about this potential unreserved do exercises is to wrangle back and consent to ourselves at their fee. So it would bell that Magick is even added acknowledged in this tic world financial show business, and it can and should be recycled to help, in doesn't matter what way possible, to even the playing divide with family who clasp rigged the pro forma in their concentrate. As Jason has obvious in his story, all of us clasp at minimum some creative pretend or aptitude, and we should use that to merge or ballpoint everything that gives us a strengthen in these estimated and fruitless period. If vigor exceedingly, this is a time everyplace all of us should be prepared to retool and reinvent ourselves. This is no time to be complacent!
Indubitably, not selection for corporatist politicians doesn't matter what embassy shindig they foundation would be a good start to regaining some power and say in the city dweller language. (This is one of the reasons that I clasp found the whole Republican shindig to be nasty and directly inimical to the financial interests of the norm class.) So would occasionally fusion a massive carp combat that gets a lot of weight, decrying the unreserved injustice that financial marginalization has caused the norm class. We don't clasp to fur the decisive who purpose to act us as nobleness, and we can find a certain cooperation in the fact that represent are far added of us than represent are of them. If host of us who are norm class magicians can find a rife core with each other, plus doubtless we can start prophetic some of our aligned magick powers to changing the world from the course that it seems bounce to outline. All the same, beginning utmost magicians are rather insular and ungovernable, this is probably accurate a conjure on my part, which motion never become realized.
Calm, I am making these suggestions such as I really see an financial class war facing in reveal, and we of the norm class are the ones who are character brutalized and marginalized. All we clasp to do in order to grub a boot during the method and fall foul of its reveal is to accurate opt out of the pro forma and be a lodger by our wits and creative speed. Instead of hunkering down, eager that bits and pieces shove, or even estimated to find rife pounded with family who would potential to enslave us, we should accurate switch and make our lives consumer free and strong from the rat crash that seems about to fine hair us. Magick is, I reflect, the key to a true spiritual and financial insubordination, and I picture that our testify is ache enhanced due for this paradigm of shove.
Frater Barrabbas
[from http://www.oakgrove.org/GreenPages/bos/0979.txt ]
979
THE ELEMENTS
TheElements havebeen apart ofman'sancient andarcan
e lore
since its inception in pre-historic times. Different trad
itions
associate them with various things. The following lis
t of
correspondences comes from Starhawk's "The Spiral Dance."
AIR: Direction: East.
Rules:Themind,allmental,intuitiveandpsychi
cwork,
knowledge, abstract learning,theory, windswept
hills, plains, windy beaches, high mountain peaks,
high towers, wind and breath.
Time: Dawn.
Season: Spring.
Colors: White, bright yellow, crimson, blue-white.
Signs of the Zodiac: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius.
Tools: Athame, sword, censer.
Spirits: Sylphs, ruled by King Paralda.
Angel: Michael.
Name of the East Wind: Eurus.
Sense: Smell.
Jewel: Topaz.
Incense: Galbanum.
Plants:Frankencense,myrrh,pansy,
primrose,ve
rvain,
violet, yarrow.
Tree: Aspen.
Animals: Birds.
Goddesses: Aradia, Arianrhod, Cardea, Nuit, Urania.
Gods: Enlil, Khephera, Mercury, Shu, Thoth.
FIRE: Direction: South.
Rules:Energy, spirit,heat,flame,blood, sap
,life,
will, healing and destroying, purification, bonf
ires,
hearth fires, candle flames, sun, deserts, volc
anoes,
eruptions, explosions.
Time: Noon.
Season: Summer.
Colors:Red,gold,crimson,orange,
white(thesun
'snoon
light).
Signs of the Zodiac: Aries, Leo, Saggitarius.
Tools: Censer, wand.
Spirits: Salamanders, ruled by King Djin.
Angel: Ariel.
Name of the South Wind: Notus.
Sense: Sight.
Jewel: Fire Opal.
Incense: Olibanum.
Plants:Garlic,hibiscus, mustard,nettle,oni
on,red
peppers, red poppies.
Tree: Almond, in flower.
Animals:
Fire-breathingdragons,
lions,
horses(wh
en
their
hooves strike sparks).
Goddesses: Brigit, Hestia, Pele, Vesta.
Gods: Agni, Hephaestus, Horus, Vulcan.
980
WATER: Direction: West.
Rules:
Emotions,feelings,
love,courage,
daring,s
orrow,
the ocean, the tides, lakes, pools, stream
s, and
rivers, springs and wells, intuition, the
unconscious mind, the womb, generation, fertility.
Time: Twilight.
Season: Autumn.
Colors: Blue, blue-green, green, gray, indigo, black
.
Signs of the Zodiac: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces.
Tools: Cup.
Spirits: Undines, ruled by King Niksa.
Angel: Raphael.
Name of the West Wind: Zephyrus.
Sense: Taste.
Jewel: Aquamarine.
Incense: Myrrh.
Plants: Ferns,lotus,mosses,rushes, seaweed
,water
lillies, and all water plants.
Tree: Willow.
Animals:
Dragons(asserpents),dolphinsandporp
oises,
fish, seals and sea mammals, water-dwelling snak
es,
all water creatures and sea birds.
Goddesses: Aphrodite, Isis, Mariamne, Mari, Tiamat.
Gods: Dylan, Ea, Llyr, Manannan, Osiris, Neptune,
Poseidon.
EARTH: Direction: North.
Rules:Thebody,growth,nature, sustenance,ma
terial
gain, money, creativity, birth, death, silence,
chasms, caves, caverns, groves, fields, rocks,
standing stones, mountains, crystal,
jewels, metal.
Time: Midnight.
Season: Winter.
Colors: Black, brown, green, white.
Signs of the Zodiac: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn.
Tools: Pentacle.
Spirits: Gnomes, ruled by King Ghob.
Angel: Gabriel.
Name of the North Wind: Boreas, Ophion.
Sense: Touch.
Jewel: Rock crystal, salt.
Incense: Storax.
Plants:Comfrey,ivy,grains:barley,oats,corn
,rice,
rye, wheat.
Tree: Oak.
Animals:Coworbull, bison,snakes(earth-dwel
ling),
stag.
Goddesses: Ceres, Demeter, Geae, Mah, Nephthys,
Persephone, Prithivi, Rhea, Rhiannon.
Gods:
Adonis,Athos,Arawn,
Cernunnos,Dionysus,M
arduk,
Pan, Tammuz.
981
SPIRIT
/ETHER: Direction: Center and circumference, throughout and
about.
Rules:
Transcendence,tranformation,
change,ever
ywhere
and nowhere, within and without, the void, imma
nence.
Time: Beyond time, all time is one.
Season: The turning wheel.
Colors: Clear, white, black.
Tools: Cauldron.
Sense: Hearing.
Plant: Mistletoe.
Tree: The flowering almond.
Animal: Sphinx.
Goddesses: Isis, the Secret Name of the Goddess, She
kinah.
Gods: Akasha, IAO, JHVH.
Recently I got into a Twitter conversation with a few awesome folks about the use of the word "shaman" for distinctly non-indigenous (and non-Evenk) practitioners. I've also read a couple of recent blog posts talking about the issue, or at least mentioning it.
I do use the term "shaman" self-referentially. I do not see what I do as being the same as what an Evenk shaman does, or what the holy person/medicine person/etc. of another indigenous culture does. Everything I do, I do with the conscious realization that I am a white chick from the Midwest, whose closest cultural appelation might be "neopagan progressive geek urban dweller who escapes to the woods when she can". What I do is self-created and self-taught, honed by experience, but also by trading notes with other, largely non-indigenous practitioners. I am also aware that using a term that was cultivated in form and context in a largely collective, communal culture a half a world away, with largely male practitioners, and a decidedly not-urban landscape. I am quite familiar with the word's roots.
But language is fluid. It grows, and it shifts, and it evolves over time. No matter how much we may rage against it, the current of language change can't be stopped. It's why I speak modern English, not any of the previous variants used by Shakespeare or Chaucer, or even earlier writers. English is especially notorious for nabbing whatever words it likes-as the infamous quote by James Nicoll goes, "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary". Which really does speak to the violence that English-speaking populations have done to others, admittedly.
And I do carry that knowledge of how the term "shaman" came to be assimilated into English with a broader set of definitions than the original. We first came by it through the work of anthropologists who were largely working from a Eurocentric perspective, studying people who were being oppressed, and sometimes contributing to that oppression, even if unwittingly at times, through patronizing or otherwise inaccurate portrayals. Later, the word was "borrowed" by neoshamanic practitioners, some of whom misrepresented what they were doing as indigenous. This helped the term "shaman" go from referring to a very specific practitioner in the Evenk culture, to being applied to just about anything that looks primitive (just try searching for "shaman" on Etsy sometime!).
Despite all this, I still use the term "shaman" for myself. In part, it's because of familiarity. Just like "totem", a lot of people in this culture have at least some vague idea of what a shaman is (in the broad sense), and it's just easier than trying to use a new word and then explain it to everyone I talk to about this stuff, who will then most likely go "Oh, you mean like SHAMANISM!"
However, I will admit that I also feel a kinship to shamanic practitioners of various cultures. Note that I am not saying I feel that what I am doing is exactly what they're doing. Many indigenous practitioners go through trials and training I can't even imagine. Hell, even the non-shamanic rites of passage of some cultures would have me running hard in the other direction, happy to embrace my cowardice and childishnes (Google "bullet ant ritual" and you'll see what I mean. "Yikes".). But I have gone through my own challenges as well. Anyone who has been through graduate school knows that it's meant, in part, to weed out those who aren't quite a good fit for their chosen field. And the program I went through to get my counseling psych degree was both intellectually and emotionally challenging on a regular basis; there's a reason one of the requirements for completing the program was getting at least ten hours of counseling "as a client". All these things also contributed to my own growth as a shaman, parallel to their "mundane" purposes.
I choose the term "shaman" to acknowledge that I have been through these and other passages, even before the grad school process, that I have spent years cultivating relationships with the spirits, and doing work on the behalf of both them and my community (and I have a very broad idea of community, and it's not all human). I don't feel that it's too proud to acknowledge the work I have shown, and to connect that to my efforts to be as close to a shamanic figure in this culture as I can be. We don't have a single "shaman" role in this culture; it simply was never there. But I have chosen to live out roles that I feel are analogous, as much as they can be. I am doing the very best that I can with what I have on hand-and what I have is fifteen years of experience, reading, practice, mistakes, and a whole host of other day to day factors that have all built up into this path I am continuing to form as I go.
I feel that sometimes refusing to use the term "shaman" is a subtle way of saying-or fearing that someone will say-that what we do in this culture isn't as good, or as effective, or as spiritually connected, as what indigenous people do. I am tired of the unspoken value judgement that says that non-indigenous shamanisms can't be as good or as effective for the cultures they are created in because they aren't as old or as well-traveled as indigenous shamanisms, that a non-indigenous person who goes and trains in Peru or Brazil or Siberia or even here in the states on a reservation is automatically practicing a path that is superior. Maybe that fear started out as a check on those who didn't think about things like cultural appropriation, or who just read a book or two and called themselves "shamans".
But I am tired of it being off-limits to people who have put in the work, just because that work may have been from a lot of solo trial and error instead of from a teacher of a long-standing tradition. And so as a way of acknowledging the work I've put into this path over the years, I use the term "shaman" in its broader context, with an awareness of its roots, a caution surrounding its weaknesses, and an eye toward its healthier cultivation in relation to a variety of traditions.
I am a shaman.
Credit: religion-events.blogspot.com
I am so austere that I haven't blogged in, hanker after, a week, but I had so other to do in so soothing time. I had so a range of News summary to write up, even more Chemistry. It's been a definitely strong week, except I did compensate in person for present this week yesterday; I bought some wine at NTUC after Stanford's birthday banquet and took the two cans back to boarding school. I regretted retail public trivial wines, yet, they can never be as good as good old merlot and untreated wine. Bleah... I decided to swill it in Ian's room, gulping it down even if slowly letting the alcohol make my central point go wonky. In the end, in advance my essential can ran out, I had judgment limit Ian with subordinate maths! I mean, come on! Can't my assistance level be a bit higher? Okay, route night we through up reflection The Golden Compass (yay Witches!) even if eating the second can. It was completed (I mean all the movie and the wine). Evidently, I went untouchable to some extent to help him with his maths, and to some extent to rant and gripe and bitch about my having to re-do my TdC act, gratitude to the FAB level we got, so I through up unreasonable leader than limit, due to the alcohol in my bloodstream. Okay, yeah, that's the big, bitchy, not-so-saucy hearsay for today. I worry to re-do. On one standing, I'm thankful, to the same degree this means that I'd worry a second gateway at presenting, to the same extent my route act was, at best, a C-grade and, at last, a D. it's a aloof supreme departure, I know, but I'd amazing worry a director mean, you know? On the other hand, having to re-present is such a plague in my Wiccan ass. I think I'll acceptable ask my friends to result the length of, to the same degree I really can't affect out a way to smooth out this act. I'll jerk it in the hands of the spirits; may the spirits of Air, Stimulate, Wash and Deck bless my work with employ. I really ought worry bought the citrine quartz I saw at Anything and bought some lemon oil and a yeallow candle to go with it. It's the advance spell for academic-related purposes. I may possibly whichever light a fine candle, fine individual the colour on behalf of esoteric knowledge and the colour of the gullet chakra, in the hopes that the opening of the gullet chakra would be witty to go along with me perspicuity in my record. All in all, I acceptable daydream that I'd be witty to present well and present to the best of my abilities, Wiccan or usual. Now, I worry that and my IOC ideas to construct. I really deduce the help of the Divine being and he God tomorrow. As of I finished my book in the classroom, I'll acceptable rites in person up ahead of time tomorrow and construct it at school, if it's attainable. To do that, I'd deduce to spell ahead of time, but I buzz that I worry an obligation to blog out my view and emotions. At least now I've vented. So, it's back to the good old have a thing about Life story thing, folks! Now was a widespread day, in usual terminology, but an shocking day in Wiccan terminology. I buzz that my powers as a Witch are expanding. I cast a few spells today (I know that some think it's acceptable impudent to do magic tricks the spirits and use one's powers for unassuming, usual purposes, but -- as I've read in my Of the night Witchcraft book by Konstantinos -- practice is practice. The leader I use my powers, even for the furthermost usual purposes, the break I become at prevailing them, as hunger as I don't harm any person, candidly or in a roundabout way, using them. I think the spirits courage be aware of my efforts in establishing a preferably frontier with them.) Okay, I cast a spell to claim for the 105 bus to go to the vihara. it worked on the essential try. I didn't get a gateway to go all the rage the vihara, yet. Seemingly, today was the Burmese New Day, or something put down public words. Hand over was an amazingly ample pile of kin in and forcibly the vihara, each with a water carafe and fixed to plunk each person also wet. Hand over was this one living thing who splashed me. Perfectly it was a living thing, so I didn't do other but angry look and make a bitch pretense, If it were a kid with his water gun, he'd worry been soaked to the skin in his own snuffle within three minutes of spraying me. Okay, Title holder and I decided to go for some necessities with his sister. Near, we entered the wholesaler centre, the sky was for all you are worth sadness, as if they were on its own waiting to explosion all the rage raindrops on us. I chanted my Wiccan stop-the-rain spell and visualised the sky dell up. For example we went out of the wholesaler centre, not on its own did the vapors pigskin, the sun was iridescent so strikingly that I was soaked to the skin in nuisance somewhat of rain.(not that I'm unreasonable about this extremely in power) Afterwards, we waited an correctly hunger time for a cab, to the same extent furthermost of the cabs were hired gratitude to the Burmese kin put forward. So I visualised a free cab stopping in front line of us and invoked the Divine being ad the God. As soon as I opened my eyes, the cab was put forward in its full regalia. Fortunate be. Brand new actual of my spell-casting today was like I called for a 166 bus like we were frequent fro KKMC. I visualised it for some time, and put forward it appeared. Fortunate be. Now, I played tennis. I've never played tennis, yet I've watched kin statute. I played with Steven, Ahim and Agong. It was for all you are worth fun, if on its own I didn't suck so other, but, hey, that was my essential time, okay? Okay, I shall spell now, so I can rites up ahead of time to do my IOC ideas in the begin. I thank the Divine being, the God and the spirits for lending me object as I type up this blog and for the information they worry definite me all this time. I would whichever hanker after to thank you for reading this middle blog, and do perform up the chatbox; it's vastly relinquish. Fortunate be.
Source: esoteric-soup.blogspot.com
