PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

Five words. That's all it would take to get Senate Republicans to support gun control.

Really: five. (Well, six, but “the” doesn't count.) You wouldn't necessarily even have to follow through: in this case, the mere prospect should suffice.

When, in this Summer of Mass Shootings, I heard a friend float this proposal, I was (OK, I'll just say it) blown away by its elegant simplicity.

Five words, you say? And just what are these five magic words?

Each astrological sign is associated with at least one precious gem, or soul stone; one power stone; and one heart stone. The most precious gem for each sign is another kind of birthstone, the jewel marking entry into the world—a guide for your life, if you will. Power stones are lucky omens, and heart stones are the more affordable of crystals, so we can all afford to keep them in our homes, on our desks, and in our bedrooms. I highly recommend them as altar crystals. 

Aries, First Half: March 20-April 3 

 Sexual Content

The Marinos Poems

Three Lost Epigrams from Book Twelve of the Greek Anthology

I

You turned down Marinos?

Marinos the Golden, heart-throb of Athens,

muse to ten thousand epigrams, this one included?

Well, Daphne fled from Apollo, they say,

gayest of gods, for whom boys dance naked.

More the fool her.

II

"Bet you a blow job," said Marinos.

Now that's what I call unfair.

An artist friend of my housemate was at the house and said he wanted to paint the Green Fairy but he'd never seen her. So of course I immediately got the necessary things from the wet bar: the absinthe, the sugar cubes, and so on.

I had not originally intended to lead a meditation, just supply drinks. But after we all had some, his speech sped up and he started telling stories about his past nonstop, so rapidly that I thought the fairy would never get a word in edgewise. He might not notice her if she arrived. So I improvised a guided meditation. Those few who have heard what my voice sounds like when I'm guiding a meditation or ritual experience, that's how I sounded. I made my voice slow and calm.

Some Thoughts on the Craft of the Wise

How do you know when someone is one of the Wise?

My friend grew up speaking Polish with his immigrant grandmother. When, as an adult, he visited Poland, he wondered if people would be able to understand him.

Oh, they understood him, all right. They also laughed hysterically whenever he said anything.

He was speaking Hillbilly Polish.

My friend, a successful professional with a PhD, laughed as he told me about this.

“I never knew we were hicks,” he said, proudly.

I learned Old Norse from a man named Anatoly Lieberman, one of the most brilliant linguists that I've ever met. Born in the USSR, he spoke—not read, but spoke—seventeen different languages, both ancient and modern. He came to America because no Soviet university would hire him, so deeply-entrenched is the anti-Semitism of Russian culture.

He once told me that the quickest way to get a laugh out of a Russian audience is to say something in Ukrainian.

To the Russian ear, Ukrainian sounds like Hick Russian.

To the English-hearing ear, there's something slurred and lazy-sounding about the Slavic languages, as if the speaker can't quite be bothered to enunciate clearly. To my American ear, at least, Russian—with its broad spectrum of rubbery palatalized sounds—always sounds like English played backwards.

It's easy to make assumptions about other people based on how they sound to us.

It's rarely wise to do so.

When you meet someone who is absolutely confident that they've got everything figured out, you can be virtually certain—regardless of what they may call themselves—that you're not speaking with one of the Wise.

 As we begin Pride Month...

Hey Smartwater™: your recent “stunt double” ad is seriously f*cked -up.

Dramatis Personae:

Actor, sitting next to

Stunt Double: Clothes and hair like actor's, but actor is plain and short; stunt double is tall and handsome.

Doctor

Set:

Medical Clinic, Waiting Room

Actor: I'm smart. I let my stunt double do the dangerous stuff.

(Actor and stunt double take simultaneous swigs of Smartwater.)

Doctor: (Approaches from behind.) Mr. ___?

(Doctor flourishes clamp of the type used to castrate male animals. Close-up of clamp.)

(Stunt double looks dubious, but gets up and follows doctor.)

Actor: (Calls out to doctor, not looking) Do we get a lollipop after?

Well, ha-dee ha ha.

I'll leave aside the numerous examples of stereotyping going on in this ad.

(The castrating doctor is a woman. She's also Asian. The good-looking guy is dumb....I could go on.)

Surely we can all agree that sexual violence against women is intolerable, not to mention unsuitable for an ad meant to sell a product. How, then, is sexual violence against men any different?

On top of which, we're supposed to find sexual violence against a man's body funny? He's cute and dumb; therefore, he deserves it?

As we all know, men never experience sexual violence. Therefore, it's OK to laugh about, right?

Sour cream keeps for a long time, but this particular batch—filmed over with a scum of red goo—is clearly well past its Use By date.

Normally, I would take it out back and scrape the contents into the compost; then I would wash the plastic container and put it into the recycling. But I'm busy making breakfast and suddenly the extra work seems more than I want to do. I replace the lid and, feeling a pang of guilt, put it into the garbage.

I'm a pagan. I reuse, repurpose, and recycle religiously, and I mean that literally. In the general way of things, I generate very little garbage, throwing out maybe one bag of garbage every couple/three weeks: mostly dental floss (the commercial stuff is all plasticized) and non-recyclable plastic (like the bags that leaf spinach comes in). I feel a little stab, seeing the eminently-recyclable plastic sour cream container in amongst the spinach bags, but I steel myself and turn back to my breakfast-making.

I don't get far in my preparations, though, standing at the chopping board in a miasma of guilt as pungent as a fart. I heave a sigh, retrieve the sour cream, and take it out back to the heap. Life would be so much easier if we had no values.

Many come to the Old Ways from shame cultures, seeking an escape from the internalized guilt that poisons their natal societal air.

Well, I've got some bad news for you: only sociopaths feel no guilt. When it comes to guilt, pagans feel our share; we're just differently guilty. Perhaps the very best to be said is that when pagans feel guilt, it's because we've broken our own rules, not someone else's.