The Dionysian

Do You Like Musicals?

2011-11-21T12:58:00.002Z

Do you like musicals? Well, there's a euphemistic question if ever I heard one! Just for a change, though, I'm not going to write about sexuality and social expectations, I really am going to write about musicals. One musical, anyway.

Do I like musicals? No, not really. I love some musicals (yes, you can read that as a euphemism if you want to) such as Rocky Horror, Hair and Cabaret, but most of them just irritate me. I find them schmaltzy, emotionally manipulative and about as subtle as a mallet to the head. The very thought of watching Glee gives me toothache.

I've recently been in a musical and, if you'll forgive the pun, I'm beginning to change my tune ...

Before people start yelling hypocrite! and throwing things, I think maybe a little explanation is in order.
In the summer I joined my local AmDram, Whitefield Amateur Operatics and Dramatics Society, thankfully shortened to WAODS (and which I take a certain childish pleasure in pronouncing as "way odds"). They had already been amazingly nice and allowed me to practise my audition skills the year before, despite the fact that I was over-commited and couldn't do the play. This time they were staging Hobson's Choice (Harold Brighouse) which sounded like great fun. So, I went for it.
They were kind enough to offer me the part of Dr. MacFarlane. This was perfect. It's only a small part (10 minutes out of the whole play) but he's a strong and distinctive character, which gave me something to really get my teeth into without too much pressure. It also allowed me to be in a proper play, on a proper stage in a proper theatre - something, despite all my other types of performance, I hadn't done since I was 12! I didn't know if I could still do it.
I flatter myself that I made a pretty good job of it, all things considered.

Then I heard about the showcase.
WAODS were going to do some pieces from the new Addams Family musical. I love the Addams Family (My friend, Becca said, "You are the Addams Family!"). It meant stepping right outside my comfort zone but, frankly, life's too bloody short to waste such an opportunity. For those who wonder what the hell could possibly be outside my comfort zone, the answer is singing and dancing. Yes, I can sing a bit, folk songs around a camp fire and so on but ensemble singing where you're supposed to actually be in tune was entirely new to me. The same goes for the dancing. People who know me well will say, "But, you bloody love dancing!", which is true, but proper dancing with real, actual steps in time with other people is a world away from the ridiculous, manic thrashing about I do on a nightclub's dance floor.

Unfortunately it didn't happen. The miserable bastards who own the rights got all sniffy about it and wouldn't let us go on. So, I thought that would be it for me until next year's play. WAODS were doing the musical version of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and I wasn't particularly bothered. It's not a story that's ever appealed to me, nor is it an historical period I've any real interest in.
Not long after they'd started rehearsing, the producer, Nick, made a shout out on Facebook for more men in the chorus. The thing is, I like Nick. Maybe if I didn't like Nick I wouldn't have cared, but I do and so I did, and I thought, "What the hell! If nothing else, it's all valuable experience even if it's crap. How hard can it be?" Famous last words!

Rehearsals started off fairly well because were were told to be trolls, the sort that live under bridges. Awesome! Physical theatre. Bring it on! (Aside for anyone who doesn't know: Little Women features Jo March telling melodramatic stories which are illustrated by being enacted in a kind of fantasy world behind her) The song was tricky, partly because I'm not used to harmony parts but mostly because the top note was a whole tone above my range. I cheated and if Steven, our Musical Director, noticed he was considerate enough of my weakness to say nothing. I was okay with trolling it up and thinking that's all I had to do - even though it involved two of us carrying an astonishingly brave actress on our shoulders - until our choreographer, Shirley, mentioned the waltz. Waltz? Oshit!
As weird as it may sound, I find simple, repetitive patterns really hard to do. This is why I'm a much better folk musician than rocker. I can play a long melody with some confidence, but a two-bar riff gets me all confused after the third time round. In waltzing you effectively play that riff with your feet!
Fortunately Shirley gave us a short dance based on the waltz, rather than an actual waltz. It was more like a formal set-dance in 3/4 time, but that doesn't mean it was much easier. It is almost certainly the most terrifying thing I've ever done on a stage, and I never got all the steps right even once.
There was another dance too. This time it was based on ice skating and a bit easier than the waltz, although that doesn't mean it was actually easy. I think I got it to a relatively satisfactory degree by the final night and I'm proud to say that I didn't drop my dancing partner, Helen, at all. Nearly, but nearly doesn't count!
There were a couple more bits and bobs, but they were straightforward and very short walk-on, ad-lib parts. In comparison to the waltz, they were a doddle!

That's just what I did, though and, compared to the principles, I hardly did anything at all. What about the show itself?

Nick, fairly quickly, had us doing whole-show run-throughs at rehearsal. I reckon that was wise. It gave us (well, me certainly) a feel for the story and a chance to understand and engage with the characters - to care about the whole thing rather than just our bits. It also gave me the chance to appreciate just how much work and talent goes into a production like this, and believe me, that's a lot!
There are some remarkable actors, singers and dancers at WAODS and they don't give, or expect half measures. They're also really, really nice people! I should mention this because I'm a) the new boy and b) the only Pagan. Many of the members are Swedenborgian Christians who attend the church in whose hall the rehearsals are held. I am an uncomfortable misfit in non-Pagan company (I don't know the social protocols like "should I hug this person?" etc) but I've been treated like an old friend.
The sheer, demanding professionalism of the principles is something I'm proud to have seen. Remember that these are amateurs, doing this for fun. I noticed that our actors would push themselves a whole lot harder than they were directed to. This doesn't mean that rehearsals weren't fun though, I spent as much time laughing as acting, but it's the perfectionism that really made it.

As show week hit I could feel the tension building up. Not aggressive tension, "When will I fuck it up?" tension. That's how I felt and in many ways I was quite glad of the distraction of helping out a little backstage. But, I did very little, on the whole. I can only imagine how the principles felt. There is a song called Some Things Are Meant To Be, a duet between two characters one of whom is going to die and the other who knows it. It's a powerful, heart-wrenching weepie and it worked on me, who hates being emotionally manipulated, (although a different song got me personally rather more). In order to sing that song well the actresses had to feel it, really feel it. They tore themselves to tiny emotional bits in front of an audience every night for nearly a week, and then carried on singing and acting. By the end of the week they could barely even mention the scene without collapsing into floods, and yet they still went on!
How much respect is it possible to feel? I don't know, but when I find out I'll tell you.

I'm welling up myself here just thinking about it.

One thing that struck me was how many people said they were amazed it was an amateur production. It wasn't. It was a professional production without money.

The show's all done and dusted now. It was one hell of an emotional roller-coaster experience. I've been through the adrenalin crash catharsis, the getting horribly drunk, the weeping like a little girl and the hangover that lasts all sodding day. So what am I left with?
Valuable theatrical experience, certainly, but a lot more than that. Feeling proud to say I'm a member of WAODS for a start, and a feeling of being privileged to have witnessed such talented people do what they do best. The ability to say, "I was there". I've also got this huge, protective Walt Whitman style feeling of love for (when I really think about it) a bunch of people I hardly know.

What's next? Well, WAODS are doing Little Shop of Horrors next. I'm awfully tempted but I've got 18 weeks of acting classes booked with 3 Minute Theatre and I think I need to concentrate on that. After that, though, there's Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, and just you try to keep me away!

Do I like musicals now? Hmm, tricky question. Let's say I'm a lot more open to their possibilities (which I don't think is a euphemism). I still couldn't face the idea of watching Glee though, at least not without a visit to the dentist straight afterwards.

Love and thespianism,
Seán

Liber Malorum by Sean Scullion

2011-08-01T11:56:00.003+01:00

Another book review. This is becoming a habit!

Liber Malorum - Children of the Apple is a fascinating piece of Pagan/mystical/occult "fiction" ... errrm, sort of! It would easy to take the lazy way and attempt to squeeze it into some sort of genre, but that wouldn't do the book justice and, frankly, there isn't one big enough.

Essentially, Liber Malorum is an anthology, collecting original short stories from some of modern occultism's brightest stars, and texts borrowed from more established authors and poets, and weaving them together as part of a larger story concerning the experiences and spiritual evolution of a variety of characters, particularly one Bernadette. The item they all have in common is the imagery and mysticism of the Apple.
The whole thing creates a weird and wonderful journey through the cutting edge of modern magickal practise.

Sean Scullion (aka Seani Fool) is an independent occultist and magickian, and a proponent of his own system of Fool Sorcery. As he makes one if his characters say, "Only a Fool would believe ... And I am a Fool!" The thread of Foolishness is what holds all the disparate stories together and creates a unified whole, like the thread which holds enough patches together to make a magnificent pair of trousers.
Those patches have been created by 23 personally chosen modern writers including Jaq D Hawkins, Ramsey Dukes, Anton Channing and Stella Damiana, and other patches are taken from the works of Starhawk, Robert Anton Wilson, Pete Carroll, William Blake and Timothy Leary, among others.

Such an unusual tome is difficult to describe, so the best thing I can do is to give my own readers a chance to read it for themselves by putting a link to the publisher's website, HERE. If your interests include what magick is and can be nowadays, I can't recommend Liber Malorum enough.

Love and Apples,
Seán

Sex at Dawn

2011-05-06T10:33:00.002+01:00

There's a problem with writing a blog of opinions as opposed to, say, a diary. When you've said all the things that are important to you it's hard to find anything else to say without repeating yourself. I do so hate repeating myself! In consequence, I haven't written on here for well over six months.

Here's something I've never done before, though: A book review. It's by a psychologist called Christopher Ryan and a psychiatrist called Cacilda Jethá, and it's called,

SEX AT DAWN

Sex at Dawn, I feel, is going to become a very important book, partly because it's so radical but also because it's so accessible. I'm not naturally academic, and dense, heavy reading gives me a a headache, which is why I feel qualified to write a review - because I could read and actually understand it without having to go over paragraphs several times out loud!
Unfortunately, Sex at Dawn isn't available in the UK yet, although the lovely people at Waterstones are very accommodating if you don't mind waiting. You can always try Amazon, I suppose, but I prefer personal interaction. That's sort of what the book is about.

The main premise is very simple and something I believe already - that the basic assumptions we hold as a society about prehistoric life and human sexuality are wrong. The book explains why better than I can. You can even look up bits on their website.

What's Wrong?

The first couple of sections look at what sort of ape we are, and what sort of pre-farming societies still survive.
Genetically we're almost identical to two of the great apes, chimpanzees and bonobos - sharing 98.4% of our DNA. Evolutionary science has always looked at chimps to gain clues about our earliest behaviour, but there's absolutely no reason why bonobos shouldn't be equally studied, or perhaps even more.
I like bonobos and have written about them before, here. Looking at bonobos rather than chimps shows a society based on co-operation rather than competition, where sex is used for pleasure and social bonding and infanticide is unknown.
They've also come up with a wonderful new word, Flintstonization. Briefly, we have a powerful tendency to assume our own way of life is "normal" and apply that pattern to other times and societies. In other words we imagine that Stone Age life was a bit like the Flintstones in that monogamy and male dominance were the norm - but without any real evidence. In fact there are multiple societies in existence even now which simply don't fit that pattern.

Prehistory

There's a section in the book which looks at our assumptions of stone-age hunter-gather life, and questions whether it really was, as Hobbes said, poor, nasty, brutish and short. The writers put forward some telling arguments, that I make no apologies for stealing here:

Poor? The pre-agricultural human population was less than a billion people. Food was (generally) extremely plentiful and the diet was far wider than our own modern diet. Hunter-gather people almost never consider themselves poor and sharing is considered the norm. Wealth and poverty are relative terms.
Many archaeologists who have studied human remains from the advent of agriculture consider it a disaster for the human race in terms of health. We acquired masses of new diseases, suffered previously unknown malnutrition problems and (yes, really) shrank in stature.

Nasty? A human being alone in a world full of predators has a likely lifespan of minutes. Individually we're useless. We have no natural weapons, we're not big or strong or fast. On our own we're nothing more than a meal. In a group, however, we're the most successful creature ever. The point is that living in a pre-agricultural society (the vast majority of human existence so far) requires a group mentality, and co-operation. We're built for it, it's the only thing we're really good at, and it makes us happy.

Brutish? We're back to the co-operation angle here. Why fight if there's nothing to fight for? Food's plentiful, nobody owns everything because it's all shared, when you run out of stuff you simply move on.

Short? We're often told that people are living longer nowadays. It's bullshit. The normal human lifespan of "threescore years and ten" has been about standard forever. The reason people believe (against all evidence) that primitive people had short lives is that the ones who make such statements don't understand statistics. An average lifespan is NOT a normal one.
The average human lifespan has been increased immensely because of one simple improvement, infant mortality. In many cultures (including our own until fairly recently) the life of a baby was precarious at best. If a child could make it to 2, they might make it to 5. If they could make it to 5 they would likely make it to 10. If they could get to 10, the likelihood of hitting 20 was pretty damn good, but if they got to 20 they were almost guaranteed a full and normal lifespan reaching to somewhere between 65 and 90.

Biology.

There's some lovely stuff about human biology, and sexual behaviour in the modern world. Like the reasons for female multiple orgasm and sexual "vocalisations", and the weird shape of the human penis and unusually large testicles (for an ape). Also there's a surprising amount of evidence about how having an affair is good for your health and your relationship.
A particular question which struck me was why, if monogamy is the natural state for people, adultery is so common. Even in those sick and uncivilised countries where it's punishable by death, adultery is incredibly common.

It's tempting to quote the whole book, but I wanted to keep this fairly short and simple. I also want to encourage people to read it because I haven't made the arguments they have, I've just stated a few bits and pieces.
Essentially what they are stating is that monogamy is a patriarchal social construct which they believe began when we started farming. Previously human society consisted mostly of nomadic groups of a hundred or more individuals who worked in a female-dominated and totally co-operative manner, sharing everything. Sexual relations were multiple and non-possessive, children being brought up by the tribe as a whole. We haven't evolved our sexuality to cope with our modern lives because we simply haven't had time, we've just attempted to force it into new patterns.

Fitting it into now.

We don't live in tribes any more and we're taught to be sexually possessive from a very early age. It's inherent in our culture, but really it's unnatural. So two methods are considered as possible aids to human harmony. One is polyamory (look here for my views on that) and the other is that we start to take sex less seriously - a one-night stand isn't a betrayal, it's just a bit of fun.

Personally, I don't believe monogamy is natural either, but we do a lot of things which aren't natural - I wear spectacles! We just need to accept that if we do something which isn't natural for us we'll have consequences to deal with. Shaving is unnatural and has the consequence of blocked hair follicles and sensitive skin. Monogamy's consequences are a bit more wide-ranging and complex.
Sex isn't simply for creating children. This much seems to me (if not, apparently, to evolutionary psychologists) blatantly obvious. If the opposite were true we'd only be interested in sex when it was possible to conceive.
Yet humans are hypersexual. We're at it all the time, even more than our old friends the bonobos. We have even created ways of enjoying sex so that we can't possibly conceive, which seems the opposite of evolutionary psychology.

I'm going to leave with a quote from the book which I think is a beautiful attitude to sex and to society. There are tribes in the Amazon who believe that a child is made of accumulated semen. A woman will keep on having sex during pregnancy so that her child grows strong and develops well. If she were to stop the child would, they believe, stop growing.

"... a woman from these societies is eager to give her child every possible advantage in life. To this end, she'll typically ... solicit 'contributions' from the best hunters, the best storytellers, the funniest, the kindest, the best-looking and so on - in the hopes her child will literally absorb the essence of each.
... Far from being enraged at having his genetic legacy called into question, a man in these societies is is likely to feel gratitude to other men for pitching in to help create and then care for a stronger baby ... men in these societies find themselves bound to one another by shared paternity."

Love (in a prehistoric stylee),
Seán

Sexy Friends.

2010-09-14T09:28:00.003+01:00

Hoorah! I've only been promising this for 21 months and it's taken a day of the most atrocious weather, but finally I've got round to it. It's time for some Friend Sex! ...
... Well, writing about it anyway.

I'm pretty positive about the whole thing actually, partly because it's something I've enjoyed a number of times in the past and also because I've got some seriously sexy friends! You know who you are - I've probably told you.

Okay, kidding aside because I'm not trying to get laid here (Well ... mayb ... no! Behave!) it's time for a few helpful definitions.

Sex!

Many people have friends they find attractive, and often that attraction is mutual. I can think of a couple of examples in my own life without trying. Most people probably can.
So, imagine a situation where you've been out with a friend and are on your way home, let's say the heady atmosphere of a nightclub. It's been warm and a bit sweaty, you're (at least) slightly drunk, the people were gorgeous - especially through beer goggles - and, frankly, you're gagging for it! You and your friend happen to look deeply into each other's eyes and think, "Sod it! Why not?"

Okay that's just a simple and facile example, but it's not an uncommon experience with a multitude of variations. It doesn't even have to be two people either - I'm inclined to think that experimental threesomes are probably more common that pairings in the complex and wonderful world of Friend Sex.

Love!

I'm also inclined to place Friend Sex under the capacious umbrella of Polyamory. Why? Because it involves love. I've written about Polyamory elsewhere so I'm not going to go into it here. I am going to examine love a little though.

I've noticed that in the Occult community many people consider love to have the four forms using the Ancient Greek names codified and analysed by such luminaries as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle - Agape, Eros, Philia and Storge (G'wan, look 'em up). We can be a conservative bunch sometimes.
What utter bloody nonsense! We may only have one word for it in English, but there are as many types of love as you, personally, can think of and experience. Simply because some dried-up, old, Athenian pederast could only come up with four and wrote them down doesn't make it true. All it proves is that he had the "emotional depth of a teaspoon"
(Nothing wrong with pederasty above the age of consent, by the way. I'm just feeling a little iconoclastic today)

Friend Sex, therefore involves love, or at least should. It's simply an extension of that love between friends into a more physical experience. Sometimes once, sometimes as a long-standing arrangement. Some people have "fuck buddies", for instance. Personally I wouldn't dream of referring to any friend by such a crude term, but it certainly does what it says on the tin.
This - to me anyway - makes the whole Friend Sex thing a positive experience. Unfortunately, there are at least two sides to every story.

Ooops!

I'm going to tell a little parable now about a couple of mutual friends. Just so you know, I haven't slept with either of them ... although that's an intriguing thought! Anyway, it was a chat with the first of these friends a couple of months ago which reminded me about writing this post. The people involved will recognise themselves, I'm sure, so I'm going to attempt to keep this as anonymous as possible for their sake.

It was after an event a couple of years ago, with an outcome not unlike the nightclub example I gave above. She is an extremely intelligent, educated, attractive and well-adjusted adult woman and she was feeling bloody horny! He is an extremely intelligent, educated and attractive adult man, who was attracted to her.
So, they went for it. Good for them! - Or it would have been, if he had been as emotionally well-adjusted and in control as she was.
It turned out that where she believed she had been completely clear on the casual and friendly nature of the sexual encounter, he had interpreted the whole experience rather differently. Perhaps she wasn't clear (I doubt that) or perhaps because of his emotional difficulties he could only hear what he wanted to hear. Either way, though, it led to problems. He was left feeling rejected while she had to start avoiding him just for a bit of peace.

Communication!

As the above example shows, it all comes down to communication. How do we know that when we say "I love you" or "I fancy you" the person hearing it understands what we mean?
We tend to communicate badly about emotions and sex. I'm as guilty of this as anyone - I'm English, male and middle-aged. Talk about emotions? Err, no! Talk about sex? Meaningfully that is, not mucky jokes with your pals. Dear me, how embarrassing! Maybe if I get drunk first.

As usual, I don't have any answers. Questions and perhaps even suggestions, but no answers.
Is Friend Sex a good thing? I think so, but then I've only had good experiences (apart from one minor problem which was, of course, down to a lack of communication!)
Do we need to talk about these things? Yes, but don't ask me how.

Sex is very strange experience because it's entirely what you make of it. To some it's nothing but a bit of harmless fun, to others it's the seal of a monogamous relationship; to some it's a filthy burden, and to others it's the ultimate sacred act. Sometimes it's all those things and more to the same person.

So, here's to loving, pleasurable and, above all, properly understood Friend Sex.
Gissa kiss!

Love,
Seán

Traveller's Joy

2010-07-19T09:31:00.006+01:00

My posts seem to be a little thin on the ground at the moment. There's plenty to talk about, it's just a matter of finding the time to put it all into words - especially when you type as excruciatingly slowly as I do.
I was going to write a piece on the joys and perils of "friend sex", which is something I've had on the back-burner for about two years and was recently reminded of by a friend and her experiences. I'll get to it soon (no, really), but for now I've been inspired by a recent experience of my own to do a little psychospiritual navel-gazing on the subject of travelling.

I love to travel.

Most people who know me personally will read that statement and say, "Eh? But you've never been anywhere!". They'd be right, too. When most people talk of travelling they're talking about visiting far-away lands, experiencing new cultures, catching dysentery and so-on. I've never really done that because I've never been able to afford it, or when I could I've had other things to do with my money.
I did go to Paris once on a school trip, and I've been to County Clare, western Ireland a few years ago, which I loved. That's about it though. I'd love to do more, and maybe in future years I will but that's not the sort of travelling I'm talking about here.

I love to travel.

What I mean is the act of physically moving through space for an extended period of time - completely alone and under my own steam. I'm talking here about walking, cycling and driving. Trains, boats and buses are really just ways of getting somewhere. They aren't under my own volition nor am I alone.
The two most vital elements appear to be solitude and free will, and it's something I've been doing for a long time. When I was ten years old I used to take myself off for walk quite regularly, for about four hours at a time. I had no idea where I was going and neither did anyone else - it's a wonder my mother still has hair!

Aside: This all seems to be making me look like an antisocial
misery. I'm not. I love my family and friends, and I love their
company. This just seems to be my yin to their yang.

Thirty-odd years later, I'm still doing it. Every so often I feel an overpowering need to just go. It doesn't matter where and it's often best if I've no idea where I'm going, I just need to go. A few hours, or the better part of a day is usually enough, so long as I'm moving forward.
My bicycle has become a very handy part of this process, and I've managed to work out a compromise whereby I will take the train to some distant location and cycle home. I took the chance for a travelling session very recently by riding to and from a Morris band practise day about 20 miles from home.

I even do it in my dreams. Some people have situational dreams where they experience events in one place. In mine I travel (usually) aimlessly from one place to another, usually on foot and usually within my own dream-town. Oddly, I'm very rarely alone in dreams - I'm almost always accompanied by at least one other person and usually someone I already know quite well.

So, what is this travelling all about?
I've just looked up a dream-interpretation website. This is what it says about travel:
To dream that you are traveling, represents the path toward your life
goals. It also parallels your daily routine and how you are progressing along.
Alternatively, traveling signifies a desire to escape from your daily burdens.
You are looking for a change in scenery, where no one has any expectations of
you. Perhaps it is time to make a fresh start. If your travels come to an end,
then it symbolizes successful completion of your goals

That's quite interesting, but surely it can't be as simple as all that. I'm not exactly sure what my life goals are, and never have been. Do I even have any?
The stuff about escaping daily burdens and changing scenery (temporarily) makes sense nowadays, but I had no daily burdens when I was a kid. I do like the statement that the ending of travels means the completion of goals, because my travels never end.

There is a strong element of shaking off routine and expectations when I'm travelling - and when I return my batteries are definitely recharged - but there's more to it than that. It's a kind of meditation, unlike the accepted forms of shutting down against external distractions and concentrating, yet meditational nonetheless.
In fact, being open to the landscape and things going on around you (like not getting killed in traffic!), and getting distracted are important parts of the whole experience. The traveller becomes a part of the landscape through which he travels and the person, place(s) and act of movement become one overall process. That's an important word - it's not a thing, it's a process.
As Kerouac once said, "The road is life".

I'm not going to make any conclusions in this examination as to what it all means, and I'd welcome other opinions. (Am I asking for psycho-analysis? Hell, why not?) I think it's important to keep travelling though, because the journey seems so much more interesting than the destination. Sometimes it's better not to have a destination at all.

Love and sore feet,
Seán

Ye Gods!

2010-03-15T09:34:00.003Z

The problem with writing an opinions blog, as opposed to some sort of diary, is that you eventually run out of things to have strong opinions about. Or at least ones you feel qualified to rant about.
So, it seems that things have been quiet at Dionysian Towers. They haven't really - your humble host has been doing lots of stuff, just not much blogging. Anyway, my lovely friends at Clarian Faeries (Hello darlings!) decided to start a discussion on their Farcebook page which has got me thinking . . . and blogging.
The original question was "What does deity mean to you?" and my original answer was "An awful lot, actually". But then I realised that doesn't really tell you anything at all. So, I'm going to use this page for a personal consideration of what deity means to me.

Note: Please don't expect a sensible, coherent philosophy here. I'm making this up as I go along!

Oh God!

The first question, then is whether or not I believe in god or gods. The answer is a very definite yes. I don't believe in the modern Judaeo/Christian/Islamic concept that there is one (and only one) infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent and consciously active power. I'm sure there is some overall spiritual essence of which all things partake (the Tao), but to consider that deliberately active and conscious, especially in the form of an all-seeing father figure makes no sense to me. It's more environment than object, and to consider it conscious feels like the sea telling the fish what to do.

I do, on the other hand, believe in gods. Yep, plural! I don't like labels, but one that fits me very well is "polytheist" (I'm poly-lots of things, actually. Does that makes me a polypolyist?)
I believe in all the gods, every last one of 'em. Even poor old Yahweh/Allah/Hashem/G-d, who normally comes in for a lot of stick from me, is as real as any other. He's one god amongst many whose followers' rather warlike tendencies imposed a larger role upon him than he should have had, but he's there all the same.
There's another note. Believing in gods doesn't necessarily mean treating them with respect!

Okay, so I think they're real. In fact I think they're more real than most things. For example: Looking at it in terms of time, I have a limited reality. I have existed for 44 years and with luck and good judgement I hope to exist for at least another 44. Choosing a god at random, Zeus has existed for at least 4,000 years. Simple maths makes him a hundred times more real, and from his point of view I'm just a blip - hardly having time to exist at all.

But temporal existence is only one way to judge the reality of something. For some people things aren't real unless they can experience them for themselves, using their "normal" senses. That's fair enough. My coffee table is real, especially so when you walk into it and mangle your shin. The computer I'm typing at is real too, because I can see it and touch it and hear the click when I press keys.
That works pretty well until we get to more abstract things such as, for instance, a tune.

When you hear a tune it obviously exists. You can hear it, sing/play along, dance to it and so on. But does it exist when it's not being played? It may be written on paper, but that's a fairly recent idea (especially to a folk musician) and anyway, that's not the tune. It's only a "picture" of the tune. It could be captured in a recording, but again that's only been happening very recently and it isn't the tune itself - it's simply a very reliable way of repeating the tune.
Yet when the tune is being played it very definitely exists, so it must be real.
To me gods have an analogous form of reality. If a tune can be real, or a dream, an emotion, an idea - the gods also are real in a very similar way.

All this implies that reality depends upon someone experiencing it (When a tree falls in the forest, etc). It does, but only for us. Personally I believe that the gods have existed before humanity and will do long after we're gone, but what matters to us is entirely our experience of them. The only way we know anything is via our own experiences, so whether the gods exist without humanity is a bit of a pointless question. It's humanity which is experiencing them in the first place, and to some extent recreating them.

So, what are they?

My daughter, who is 8 years old and therefore a very clear thinker, recently asked me what gods are. The conversation went a bit like this:
Me: "You know how trees have spirits?"
She: "Oh yeah"
Me: "Well, the god of a forest would be like, a really big spirit made up of all the little spirits of the trees, plants, animals and so on"
She: "Oh. Right-oh!"

And that was that!

Okay, all that was a bit simplistic but notice that we don't just have random gods. We have gods of things, like love, war, mountains and so on. Now imagine a spirit of love. What would it look like?

All cultures across the globe have, or have had, deities of some form and, interestingly, their appearances seem to reflect the appearances and experiences of the people and cultures they come from. Very nature-based cultures, such as nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes and subsistence farming villages tend to have a lot of gods which look like animals and a few who look human. This can be related back to the tree-spirit conversation. What would a tree spirit look like? Well, it would certainly have an element of tree-ness. The same goes for say, Anansi, Coyote or the Rainbow serpent. The more abstract powers tend to look more human, such as the Navaho goddess of night and day, Estsanatlehi.

As people become more "civilised" their gods tend to lose their animal qualities and become more human. In ancient Egypt the gods often had animal heads, which suggests a culture which became extremely conservative in the middle of a transition period. In ancient Greece something even better happened, their gods are entirely human but they have animal companions. So do the Germanic and Norse gods, and many others.

To a certain extent, what this means is that we create the gods in our own images, but that doesn't mean we create them out of nothing. The power, quality, experience (etc) is already there but we need to experience it in a way we can understand, a way that we can relate to. We give the gods their shapes.

What about Chaos Magick?

Our society is going through a massive and extremely fast transition period. It's been happening with ever-increasing speed since the industrial revolution and doesn't look likely to slow down anytime soon. Religious experience, to be relevant, needs to keep up with those changes.
Personally I prefer my gods to have tried and tested forms which I can research and understand - my personal favourites being Dionysos (well, duh!), Shiva and Ishtar - but for some it's Cthulu, Shub-Niggurath, Bugs Bunny or Laurel and Hardy. The point is that the "power" is already there, but we need a way of relating to it in order to understand it better. Frankly, if it works who am I to say nay?

The last question remains, "What are the gods for?"
Some people worship their gods. They ask them favours, they give them gifts, they blame them when things go wrong. Fair enough, I suppose, if it works. And, for them, I'm sure it does.
Personally (which is what the question is about), I don't. I honour my gods by dedication of various activities (dancing, exercise, drinking, sex, etc) but in the end they are that which I am aiming to become. It's all very Dionysian because to me the gods are for ekstasis (to stand outside oneself) and entheos (to have a god within oneself). To become one with the nature of the gods is my personal aim.

So, I think I've come up with an answer to the question, "What does deity mean to you?"
To me it means potential, direction, ecstatic union, "An awful lot, actually!"

Love,
Seán

WNBR 2010

2010-01-21T11:08:00.002Z

WNBR Manchester 2010 – An Announcement

Hello all you wonderful naked cyclists.

After our first request your friendly-neighbourhood planning committee have come up with a provisional date for Manchester’s 5th Naked Bike Ride –

Friday 11th June 2010.

It may seem a long way off yet but we need to be getting our heads together very soon in order to keep our agreement with the police (details below). With that in mind we’ll be calling a meeting asap for anyone who wants a say it what goes on.
If you want to be involved, watch this space.

Love and bicycles,
Seán

After the problem on last year’s ride Becca, Dave and I had a nice chat with our local constabulary and worked out how to have a safe, fun and trouble-free ride this year. Not long after that Manchester’s Finest sent me a letter stating the agreements made. I think it’s very reasonable – hell, they even apologised, which is fantastic!

Here is a transcript of the letter:

Tuesday 28th July 2009

Dear Mr Fitton

RE: The World Naked Bike Ride Event 2009

Thank you for your letter dated 21st June 2009 regarding the policing of the 2009 World Naked bike Ride Event in Manchester.

We apologise for the confusion which led to your event being disrupted. It appears that there were initial misunderstandings in the planning process for the event; communication issues within the police in relaying the event details to patrol officers; and confusion by officers as to how to deal with the event when a complaint was received from a member of the public.

On Wednesday 24th June 2009 you attended a debrief at Bootle Street Police Station. Present at this meeting were Inspector Ron Orr (senior officer in charge of the events planning office), Constables Steve Dodd and Ann Ferguson (events planning), you and two other representatives of the organisers.

The issues listed above were discussed in detail with the resultant recommendations being agreed.

1. GMP will liaise with other force areas holding the same event, London and York primarily, in an attempt to adopt a common event policy.
2. An initial event meeting will take place between the North Manchester Forward Planning Office and the event organisers at least two months prior to the 2010 event. At this meeting the route and any conditions of entry will be agreed.
3. There will be regular contact between the organisers and the police between this meeting and the event.
4. Event organisers will ensure that all event participants on the day conform to the agreed conditions of entry.
5. The police will ensure that fully briefed officers accompany the cycle ride from start to finish to alleviate any confusion.
6. The police will ensure that all interested parties are made aware that the event is taking place.

We hope that the meeting addressed your concerns and that we can work together to make next year’s event a safe and enjoyable experience.

Stamped and signed “pp.Steve Dodds, PC 3841”
28 July 2009.

I'm not a Satanist!

2009-11-19T09:27:00.003Z

Woohoo! This blog will be two years old in slightly less than a week. Seems about time for a bit of self-indulgent navel-gazing reflection.

Actually I'm going to look again at one of my favourite topics: our need for labels - in particular magickal-religious ones in the Pagan world.

"What? No sex?" I hear you cry!

Hail Satin!
The inspiration for this little bit of soul searching has come primarily from a young man in America. My FB friend, the inimitable Steve Ash (the names have not been changed because only the innocent need protection!) has created a group called Satinism (sic).
For those who don't know, most wannabe Satanists are dumb kids who can't spell for toffee. The group's a mickey-take. Let's worship the great god Satin, revere the saints Silk and Rayon, and down with that heretic false god 70% PolyCotton mix!

I'm sure you're getting the gist of it. Anyway, I joined because I thought the idea was hilarious. Unfortunately I was spotted by a wannabe Satanist. I suppose it's partly my own fault for having a profile picture of a naked demon playing a flute made from a thigh bone, but dammit, give the bugger glasses and he'd look just like me!
Anyway, I was contacted by a somewhat incoherent young man in Arizona. Let's call him Conner (for that is his name). Conner wanted to start a Satanist group with me involved. Regardless of my making jokes about his spelling and suggesting Silk and Nylon as alternatives he didn't get the message, so I ended up writing back in clear bold capitals, "I AM NOT A SATANIST!"

It's not the first time this has happened, and not just with Satanism. To be fair, most folk who have thought me a Satanist were born-again fundamentalist Christians - to them the Pope is a Satanist. Actually, they may have a point there!

I'm not a Satanist, honest!
Funnily enough, I often get mistaken for other types of Occultist within the Pagan world. It's pretty obvious to most that I'm not a Wiccan, Druid or Heathen. Primarily people guess at Thelemite or Chaos Magickian rather than Satanist, which are interesting but also wrong. So I'm using this blog to consider why. Well, I did say "self-indulgent navel-gazing" didn't I?

Satan
I keep saying I'm not a Satanist. Does anybody believe me yet?
From my own simple point of view the character Satan is just the Christian god of Evil, to match their Father God and his Demi-God Saviour Son. Now, I'll happily acknowledge all the gods, but I won't consider any of them as the only, all-powerful god (which is a discussion for another time), therefore I couldn't follow a Christian path. I also couldn't follow a deliberately anti-Christian path either. Satanism, from this viewpoint is a twisted version of Christianity.
Satanism is based in a Judaeo-Christian framework, and it's a framework I'm not comfortable in. It chafes like an ill-fitting suit.
There's another viewpoint of Satanism brought out by those colourful West-Coast characters, Anton LaVey and Michael Aquino who created respectively the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set (g'wan, look 'em up, give yourself a giggle). Both of these are really based on Humanist doctrines which use Satan as symbol of rebellion from repressive church-based morality. This I can understand, but in reference to Satan they automatically reference straight back to the church they hate so much. It feels like a teenager shouting "I hate you!" at mum but still expecting to be fed and have his washing done.
The Church of Satan also has it's own Satanic Bible, with commandments too! Which is, of course, something that rubs me up entirely the wrong way. I'm a grown-up. I can make my own moral decisions, thank you.
So - I am not a bloody Satanist! Right?

The other two philosophies - Thelema and Chaos Magick - are things I've got a lot more time and respect for. They're not for me personally, but then neither is marmite.

Thelema
I don't think I've ever met a mediocre Thelemite. Many of the people I like best in the world - people who I have real, abiding affection and respect for (and serious lust for in a few cases) - are self-defined Thelemites. A few other people who I think are dangerous nutters and should be avoided at all costs are also Thelemites. It's an interesting bunch!
Put very simply Thelema is the name for a "religion" (for want of a better word) started by the famous occultist Aleister Crowley - although based on earlier ideas and philosophies - after a revelation by an angel in 1904. The basic dictum goes, "Do What Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under Will" Thelema encourages people to find their "True Will", which in so doing will put them entirely in concert with the will of the universe. That sounds pretty good to me.

The reason I'm not a Thelemite is that there are a few things within Thelema which go against my personal grain. One of these is the Book of the Law. As you may have noticed, I'm not good at being told what to do by a book - which is one point - but really, I find reading this "holy book" to be a lot like archaeology. The treasures are there but you've got to dig through an awful lot of shit before you find them.
Another problem is that I don't really like Crowley. He was a nasty man. He used people and he hurt people, and with every evidence of enjoying it. I find it very difficult to respect that.
In the end though what I really find difficult in Thelema are its organised rituals. Maybe there are independent Thelemites out there who aren't involved in groups like the OTO, but they're few and far between. Such groups use pre-defined and pre-written rituals and formulae. There's nothing wrong with that, and the one ritual I've experienced had some very enjoyable moments. I just prefer a more free-form style. Plus there's the heavy emphasis on Ancient Egyptian mythology (which isn't a particular area of interest for me) and on a Judaeo-Christian framework as the basis for Thelemite practices (primarily dealing with angels and such).
It works well for some and that's great, just not for me.
So, I'm not a Thelemite. Am I a Chaos Magickian?

Chaos
I couldn't possibly be a Chaos Magickian. My hair's too nice!
Actually people who think I'm a Chaos-type are pretty well justified in their opinions. Chaos does not follow a pre-set system or philosophy, and neither do I. I'm very happy to cherry-pick bits and bobs of belief, deity, ritual, philosophy etc from all over the place, squish them together and see what comes out. I love that indefinable individuality which marks the concept of Chaos Magick.
Yet at the same time Chaos is a system (of sorts), which is in danger of becoming defined, like "Eclectic Paganism" did once upon a time. In the end though, there is one method within Chaos Magick which throws the whole thing away for me. That's the use of belief itself as a tool.
A Chaos Magickian will, as an exercise, choose to believe something he knows to be untrue. There's an awful lot I could write here about the nature of objective and subjective truth, belief and how the one affects the other, but that's going to take all day. Suffice it to say that in spiritual terms,while I'm willing to redefine my beliefs to fit convincing evidence, I'm not willing to deliberately choose a contradictory belief. It's dishonest! And having lived with someone who did just that, I can honestly say that the practice makes you a complete pain in the arse!

Not a Chaos Magickian either eh? What label should I have then?

Pagan
Human, Pagan, Seán. Those are all the labels I need, thanks.
That's what I put on my MySpace page. I'll happily define myself as Pagan because the label is so huge it's almost one-size-fits-all. Paganism, for me anyway, is a belief in many gods combined with a celebration of seasonal festivals. I believe in all the gods (although what I believe they actually are is a different question entirely) and I celebrate seasonal festivals in a manner relevant to what's happening at that season. That makes me a Pagan, I'd have said.

BUT, on my FB profile I've written, "I'll also accept Dionysian, Discordian or Taoist - if you really must define it"
Why did I do that? Do I have a subconscious need to be defined and delimited by a label? I certainly hope not.
I could also have put Subgenius on there, because I'm a fully paid-up Reverend.

Okay, so why?
Well, a Taoist is a lovely thing to be be because, in Western eyes, it's a religion which is the antithesis of a religion. No ethics, no dogma, no nothing! Taoism by it's very nature is essentially indefinable, with it's emphasis on contact with that which cannot be labelled or defined. The writings of Taoist masters have advice in them, but that advice usually boils down to, "Stop being so rigid and rule-bound and relax!"

The other two definitions, Discordian (or Erisian if you prefer Greek to Latin) and Subgenius are great fun. I'm not going to explain them here, I'm just going to suggest that you look them up, dear reader. All I'd like to say here is "Praze Bob!" and to tell Eris that not only do I not eat hot dog buns on a Friday, I don't eat hot dogs at all - so there! Mwah!

Finally, there's Dionysian. Okay, I'm kind of serious about this one, but not at all in a serious way. In short - if Apollo represents all that is strict and static, harsh and dogmatic, pre-defined and rule-bound then he needs balance. Dionysos is that balance. He's my bestest, favouritest god ever, has the most fun and has never yet told me what to do. He's even given us the gift of wine! What a guy!

I didn't intend this to be a particularly profound post and I hope it's not come across that way. All I want to say before finishing is that, in the end, labels are for jam jars not people. The only truly useful labels for people must be so big as to be almost meaningless or so specific as to apply to them for a tiny portion of their lives.
Some people like to label and limit themselves with definitions like plumber, Feri witch, football fan, cyclist and so on. That's their business and good luck to them, but deep down I feel that they're doing themselves a disservice.

Love and religious awe,
Seán

A Immigration Argument

2009-11-09T09:34:00.004Z

I have a friend on Facebook (yep, that again) with whom I sometimes have political disagreements. I consider him a nice guy if misguided, and I'm sure he thinks the same about me. This friend recently posted a quotation which brought on a discussion completely outside the realms of comment boxes so, eventually, I promised to answer in the form of a blog post. Here it is.

The Statement
The statement my friend posted was this:

Current immigration levels combined with the birth rates of Third World
immigrants already resident in Britain mean that we have about 20 years to avoid
being completely colonised

Interesting isn't it?
My first reaction was, obviously, "Rubbish!" because it was clearly some right-wing media-fed scaremongering, but he assured me it was true. He stated that it was a quote from a government foreign affairs advisor. Now, why I should actually believe such a person isn't entirely clear - he's obviously playing to the crowd like anyone else trying to keep his job. What is this guy's personal political stance and how does it colour his statements?

The statement does have a certain, seemingly deliberate, impact. That's what annoyed me in the first place and that psychological manipulation is something I'd like to look at first.
To me the whole sentence is a huge flashing Fnord (if you don't know what a Fnord is, please look here). Let's look at it in more detail:

1. "Current immigration levels". What exactly are the current immigration levels. I don't know, but I'm going to look them up later. Do you know? The average Daily Mail reader would immediately say "Too bloody high, mate!" This phrase immediately connects on a subconscious level us to the assumption that immigration levels are high, whether they are or not.

2. "birth rates". This phrase is exactly the same as the last one. It assumes that birth rates, just like immigration levels are high. Are they?

3. "birth rates of Third World immigrants" What do you think of when you hear the term , "Third World"? That's right Africa and Asia. Or if you're a BNP supporter, "Niggers and pakis. And, oh my god! the bastards are breeding!" This phrase quite deliberately conjures up images of millions of brown children with funny accents demanding to be fed by the state - as my friend put it, "Where are the jobs & houses coming from? And where is the extra money to pay for social services, NHS & pensions?" That's exactly the expected reaction, but is it even a valid question?

4. "we have about 20 years". Armageddon is coming folks! All such phrases which give a limited time-frame well within a human lifespan have the immediate effect of causing slight panic in the reader. It's a very commonly used brainwashing method. People who panic aren't thinking straight.

5. "to avoid being completely colonised". What the hell does that mean? This phrase is the most deliberately emotive, and completely irrational of the whole bunch. It rips into our deepest, darkest fears of being totally ruled over by a foreign country who, at this very moment, is breeding itself into power through sheer fecundity.
According to the dictionary on my lap, to colonise means to found a colony and a colony is simply a group of people who all live together according to their own rules (like a farmstead, say, or the Amish in America). We've been "colonised", by those terms, for thousands of years. In other words, that phrase is totally meaningless where the argument for or against immigration is concerned.

It's interesting that I've found five Fnords. I wonder if Eris is having a little laugh at our expense. I also wonder if it's relevant that the word "colonise" begins with "colon"!

Truth?
Okay, the statement may be a massive giggling Fnord, but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't still true. There are two basic questions to answer, plus one from the following FB discussion which probably ought to be addressed.
The two questions are: "What is the immigration rate?" and "What is the population growth rate?". If we can answer these two basic questions we should be able to tell if were likely to be "completely colonised" by anybody.

The Immigration Rate
Britain's immigration rate actually is quite high in comparison to other countries and according to most of what I've read we'll be heading for a population of about 70 million within 25 years - if rates remain at present levels.
But will they? According to a recent BBC news report immigration has slowed and during 2008 "The numbers of people arriving minus those leaving actually fell by 44%". Immigration levels are very difficult to predict and tend to come in waves. Present levels are very unlikely to continue because levels change all the time, at the last count they appeared to be falling.
To state that we WILL have specifically higher population because of immigration is impossible.
Here's a quote from Tim Finch, another government advisor:

It is now declining sharply - almost certainly because of a combination of the economic downturn, the short term nature of much migration from new EU
countries, and the impact of stronger controls put in place by the government.
There has been a lot of irresponsible scaremongering about immigration in recent years which was based on the false assumption that high migration was inevitable for years to come.

The Birth Rate
The British birth rate is indeed rising, and faster than immigration. We have just passed 61 million people, but just like immigration, birth rates come in waves. We are currently going through a boom period with 790,000 babies born in the UK last year. Roughly a quarter of those were born to mothers from other countries. A quarter that is - not a takeover, just a quarter. A significant number of these babies were born to Polish mothers - not just Third World mothers.
So, of the rising population 75% has nothing whatsoever to do with immigrants. It's different when you look at it that way, isn't it?
We had massive booms in birth rates in 1947, 1962, and 1993 with either slumps or steady settling in between. We must account for an aging population as well. We aren't living any longer as a species, but a lot more of us are reaching the upper limits of old age than previously. The current population of over-85's stands at more than 1.3 million. That's likely to rise too. There's the answer: kill your granny!

The Countryside
One very valid point was a query about what will happen to our countryside with an increasing population. The increasing population being placed squarely on the shoulders of immigrants doesn't actually work in this case though - it's another of those assumptions we tend to make.
We are losing countryside rapidly and have been for quite some time, but is this the fault of immigration?
Well, no! Immigrants tend to live in whatever they can get. The vast majority of immigrants live in areas of extremely high population, in poor housing close to or even within cities. Most of them haven't acquired the almost uniquely British idea of moving out to the suburbs, or better yet a place in the country. The destruction of the British countryside is not happening, and has never happened, to house immigrants - it happens purely because of our own selfish, short-sighted, acquisitive greed. Why do you think that Wimpey is such a huge company?
This is something you'll see regularly after the building of a housing estate outside a village. Regardless of the protests it immediately fills up with upper-middle class families who'll commute to work, for a better place in the countryside which they've just helped to destroy.

Finally
. . . because I'm getting tired now!
Right at the end of this piece I'm going to put a list of all the immigrants into Britain. See if you know anyone (including yourself) who isn't on that list somehow. We're all descended from immigrants in Britain, even Nick Griffin. A society is made of its people and this society's people are all immigrants. We won't lose our cultural heritage by allowing immigration because our cultural heritage has migrated with us and been adapted by and to where we live. Even the country's national religion is a foreign import.

Personally I prefer the philosophy of the No Borders movement, but perhaps that's a blog for another time. Meanwhile I'd like to ask a moral question - not answer it, just ask:
If someone sees a way of improving the lives of himself and his family
without knowingly causing harm to anyone else, does anyone have the right to
stop him?

Love and freedom,
Seán

Picts, Celts, more Celts, Romans, Afro-Roman Legionaries, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Danes, Normans, Jews, Huguenots, North African slaves, Indians, Chinese, Irish, Bengali Lascars, Polish, Italians, West Indians, Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Ugandan Asians, Australians, New Zealanders, white South Africans, Americans, South Asians.
We're all foreigners sooner or later!

Sex Work - a response.

2009-10-19T13:34:00.003+01:00

Yesterday MJ Tallon, a friend on Facebook, posted a very interesting note about sex work and sex workers asking a variety of questions. The response was huge and I wanted to respond myself but couldn't fit it into a comments box, so I wrote a response as a note of my own.

Since I've been neglecting the blog - and in a fit of self-promotion of course - I'm going to bung it all on here too. I'm very pleased to say that most people who responded have been extremely positive, but I'd like whatever opinions you can give both about MJ's piece and my own.

First here's MJ's piece, without the comments because there are an awful lot. The original - comments and all - can be found here, assuming you're on Facebook.

Folks I’ve known on Facebook a while will recognize that this topic’s come up in
a couple of references before. Recently, it’s been resurfacing in a couple of
places and I’m hoping anyone with opinions, interest, suggestions of any kind
will contribute whether for the first time or again. I’m working these questions
through, and other people invariably offer such valuable perspectives…so please,
chime in if you have any thoughts!

Most people I know, given the types of acquaintances I tend to cultivate, feel that no one should be exploited. There is a particular disagreement, though, when it comes to how exploitation of sex workers should be addressed. Is sex work inherently exploitative? If so, why? What are the underlying conditions that tie it exclusively in any abstract circumstance to a power differential? Will that pertain in the absence of
patriarchy? How?

What is the evidence that legalized, legitimate sex work in society continues to require desperate, reluctant participants to operate? Since we are talking chiefly about women here, are women who live in societies with more legal sex work more exploited, more endangered, more dissatisfied than women in other jobs in those countries? Are they more at risk or exploited etc. than women involved in sex trades in other countries? What are the conditions that decide these factors?

There are two issues most predominant in my mind at the moment. One, the most pressing, is how we would work to make sex work safer. I feel strongly that the most immediate, most likely way to accomplish that is to make sex work legal. Operate businesses, license them, provide workers with services and recourses and employee safety legislation and benefits. The more open those transactions are, the less likely
workers are to be disappearing from dark streets in the middle of the night.

The second issue is the more abstract, simply: how can we envision sex “work” -- or, the experience of sharing sex at all, I suppose -- in an environment where little of the current prejudices and power imbalances were entrenched. “Come the revolution,” as it were, what will sex mean? And how can we aim for an ideal situation where it will mean everything it should, and nothing it shouldn’t?

It's a damn good piece, but too deep for simple comments boxes. So here's my bit:

My friend MJ Tallon posted this note yesterday:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=310669165606&ref=nf

I was going respond in a comments box but (firstly) I'm likely to write rather more than a box can take and (secondly) the response has been huge so far. So, I've decided to write a few opinions - that's all they are folks! - in the form of a note and tag anyone I reckon might be interested. Please read MJ's note first though, if you can.

I'm going to admit right at the start that I'm theorising wildly here. My experience of sex work and workers is very limited. I've never hired a prostitute because I've never felt the need and, frankly, I'd feel like some kind of failure if I ever did. I was offered a job when I was 17, stick thin, effeminate and wore PVC trousers but I ran for the hills.
I also don't like normal pornography. I find it cold, standardised and formulaic, and therefore boring.

I'm also generalising a great deal here. I hate to generalise because every generalised statement is untrue when applied to any individual - but short of looking at every single sex worker individually there's not much choice. So I'm going to assume the sex worker is female and the client (punter, porno-purchaser etc) is a heterosexual male unless I mention otherwise.

The first question MJ asked is probably the most important: Is sex work inherently exploitative?
As with all such questions the answer is yesnomaybe. The vast majority of it quite definitely is. It's exploitative both of the worker and the punter. I can't really speak for other countries because I've never lived in one, but in the UK it's pretty bad.
Here's an example:

I used to live in Cheetham Hill, just North of Manchester, which has a notorious red light district. It's rough. I used to see the "girls" working at all times of day and night and I used to see their customers. I was propositioned myself on several occasions, even once while I was taking my partner's kids to school.
The exploitation and corruption were rife here. The whole area was sordid, dirty and unpleasant. Many of the girls had very obvious needle tracks on their arms and legs and were haggard and malnourished. The cynical part of me wondered how they made any money, they were so hideous, until I saw the punters. They were worse.
These girls weren't doing this job as a chosen career, they were doing it as a guaranteed way of making some cash for the next fix. Their punters were some of the worst examples of humanity I'd ever seen, and this was the only sex (or possibly human contact) they were going to get.
All these people were involved in sex work for the simple reason that they couldn't do anything else. These are people who fell through society's cracks and need help to climb back up.

But does it HAVE to be like that?

Well, no it doesn't. There are sex workers out there who do this because they want to and they don't feel demeaned at all. For something to be demeaning requires a person to feel that way and that's definitely a matter for the individual. Notice what I said about failure earlier on. Most of these women don't consider their job demeaning because of one simple factor - they are in control.
One of my favourites is a young lady called Sequoia Redd. Here's her blog:
http://sequoi aredd.com/blog/

Sequoia is a sex worker by choice. She's highly intelligent and in control and she works both as a prostitute and as a pornographic model (not entirely sure what the difference is, but nevermind). To put it crudely - it's Sequoia's cunt and who she chooses to fill it is entirely her business, whether that's by financial negotiation or not. She looks young and gorgeous but has actually been turned down for porno work because her "tits aren't perky enough". Guess why I don't like normal porn!
Sequioa is part of a growing movement of feminist sex workers who are attempting to get past the exploitative standardisation and money-based control and allow female control of this societal aspect of their own bodies. Other examples would include Abbey Winters and the Suicide Girls.

Others have been known to occasionally provide a really important social service to those unable to help themselves. Many people don't like to think of the very highly disabled as sexual beings, but a 19 year old boy with cerebral palsy has exactly the same bloody painful erection as any other 19 year old boy. And the poor sod possibly can't even masturbate! There are those who can and will help him out, and thank heaven for that.

(Damn, I hate this generalisation! What about gay porn/prostitution, trannies, kinks? Since when were all women so perfect they never exploited anybody? There's so much more to the whole issue of sex work.)

How can sex-workers be kept safe?
The obvious answer here is legalisation, although that doesn't necessarily prevent exploitation. I've known men who have worked on production lines six days a week, 9 hours a day making 35 coffins a day for the CWS for 20 years and more - that's exploitation of poverty and it's perfectly legal.
Legislation may help too, but that can just as easily lead to a black market of non-legislated girls who'll do stuff the law doesn't allow. Legal protection has got to help though because it can provide health care, free condoms, holidays and so on. I don't think it's the answer, because there isn't one single answer, but it may be an answer.
I believe another answer comes in self-determination. I understand that there are websites which some prostitutes use to advertise themselves entirely of their own volition. They can vet clients and arrange meetings in safe places very easily and don't have to face them in the street.

I think what's keeping sex work in the dark, in this country at least, is of course the stigma. We see sex work as a "bad" thing, a dirty, sordid thing. I would see going myself to a prostitute as a personal failure, that's my stigma. It's going to take a lot more than legalisation and legislation to remove that stigma, to stop us considering sex for personal profit as demeaning.

It's possible in our utopian future of perfect equality and liberality (well, you never know!) that prostitution and other sex work may cease to exist because they've become unnecessary, but I doubt it.
For some punters it's the prostitution itself which is the attraction. It's the sordid illegality and risk which turns them on, and where there's demand there will be supply. Even if we had a society which had dispensed with money, there are other forms of remuneration.
And as for pornography - well there are those who simply like looking at pictures!

As a final note, someone in the comments said that "If people were 'balanced', no one would look for a sex trade worker. There would be just monogamous relationships."
I disagree with this statement entirely because it considers a balanced society to be restricted to a single viewpoint. I think that a perfectly balanced society would include monogamy, polygamy, non-gamy, and all the other -gamys as well as all non-exploitative sexualities (including prostitution in that sense). What would make it balanced is that nobody would give a damn. But that's a different discussion.

Love and freedom,
Seán

Sex & Drugs & the Left-Hand Path

2009-08-26T10:29:00.005+01:00

This blog is inspired by (and thus dedicated to) a friend of mine. I'm not going to name her because that would be embarrassing but she's a Pagan of the Wiccan style and a hard-working young woman in the caring professions who is utterly devoted to her children.
She has, though, come in for some criticism for her use of certain narcotics and sex-magick in her magickal and religious practice. I love her to bits - most people do -but there's a small and vociferous minority who find her and her methods and philosophies offensive because they are "Left-Hand Path".

Disclaimer: Any non-Pagan or non-occultist reading this is likely to find it a wee bit confusing. Sorry! If you do need anything translating please ask.

Left-Hand Path

What do we mean when we talk about the Left- and Right-Hand Paths of magick? As a simple Pagan boy back in the '80s, who had read his share of Dennis Wheatley novels as a kid, the answer was pretty straightforward - good and evil! A Left-Hand Path magician would hurt and use people for their own ends. They would command demons, perform sacrifices and cause destruction. Proper sensationalist stuff.
Many people still believe this and judge accordingly. Certain activities, though, are classed as Left-Hand Path, regardless of whether they are destructive or harmful, and then condemned outright.

It can be argued, because words change their meanings over time, that a word or term means what people believe it to mean at any particular moment. A look at the history of the word "nice" is quite revealing in this regard. Equally a look at the origins of Left- and Right-Hand Paths is very enlightening.
The terms originate in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra and were first applied to Western Occultism by the famous Mme. Blavatsky back in the late 19th Century.
To give a general gist: Right-Hand practices can be considered the slow and safe way to Divinity - prayer, meditation, strict adherence to moral codes with the aim of (in Christian terms) "sitting at the right hand of God".
Left-Hand practices go direct - they are the methods which, occasionally dangerously, speed things up. The ingestion of certain mind-altering substances and sexual magickal acts are commonly used. They use real-world rather than symbolic methods and, most importantly, consider the practitioner to be potentially God themselves. A good description I've read describes the difference thus: ". . . the Great Rite performed symbolically using chalice and athame is a right-hand ritual. When the High Priest and High Priestess perform the Union by actually having sex, it is a left-hand ritual."

Magick

When we perform a Magickal act we're are looking at the multiverse in a different way from normal. We have to. We have to consider that there is an unseen force which we can be aware of and manipulate. During our normal lives this force is usually not noticed and we have to tune in in order to become aware of it.
Crowley defined Magick as causing changes in accordance with will, (such as the healing of an injury or the removal of an obstacle) but that's only a small part of the whole thing. What we are really changing using Magickal practices is ourselves. We change our awareness. We change it temporarily during a circle in order to be deliberately aware of the force we're tuning into and manipulating. In changing our awareness and perception of the multiverse we change ourselves into creatures with a wider perception.
And what is this force into which we tune? Mana, chi, the Holy Spirit, the "force", the True Will? By whatever name it's known it is our direct link to divinity, to Heaven, Samadhi, Yoga, enlightenment. By widening our perceptions we become more godlike, and the more we do it the more divine we become. The modern Pagan does this in very old-fashioned ways, such as invocation - which makes one divine by identification with the divine.

SEX!

How do you feel when sexually aroused? Do you feel "normal"? No, neither do I.
Sex is a great way of altering our awareness of the universe. The best method for most people appears to be loving sex with an absolutely equal partner - you open up yourselves and each other together. During orgasm the human being has an experience like no other and when two people do that together they join in a manner not possible by any other method. They literally know, for a moment, how it feels to be divine.
Yet, this is not the only way. The alteration of awareness via sexual methods can be done solo or even in large groups, via orgasm or the suppression of orgasm, or even via the various "kinks" which work so well for some people. Frankly from my own point of view, as long as everybody's happy doing what they're doing then whatever floats your boat is great. Go for it!
From a Western magickal perspective there is also another sexual road to divinity, to tuning in - the afterglow.

Here's a note to all men who get up, give it a wipe and then ring for a taxi - you're an idiot!
Awareness during afterglow whilst cuddling your partner/partners/simply enjoying it, is exactly the same as the awareness deliberately attempted during a circle. During afterglow we are automatically tuned-in, no longer a small, separate creature and instinctively aware of what Buddhists spend years of meditation trying to achieve.

DRUGS!

I'm not going to suggest here that people should use illegal and possibly dangerous substances. In fact, for legal reasons I'd like to declare this section on drugs entirely theoretical. Don't try this at home kiddies!
Okay, that's that out of the way!

I have a very limited experience of narcotics, so I'm happy to listen to experts on the subject. One of those experts is William Burroughs who considered opiates to be bad, and frankly he should know. So I'll say right now, stay away from opiates. Opiates include heroin, cocaine, opium, "smack" and so on.
There are certain other substances, however, which appear to have rather positive effects, both in the long and short terms. They also appear to have almost no addictive effects. These are the hallucinogens.
As I've said over and over already, magick is about changing yourself by means of changing your awareness, which is what hallucinogens do. Some people call them entheogens, which is lovely Greek(ish) word -literally within-god-create! They make you like a god inside.
In my own experience I have tried only one entheogen (unless you count kava-kava which was a bit pants), the psilocybe semilanceata or Liberty Cap/magic mushroom. In all honesty, it was great! It altered my perceptions so that I could see with ease all that I imagined and allowed me to look at the world in a completely different manner. Should I try it again I shall do so in a deliberately ritualised environment to heighten the experience yet further and to tune in even deeper.
This is exactly what shamans have been doing across the whole world for the whole of human existence! In other words, altering one's awareness has been magickal practice forever and the use of a substance to aid that change is one common, nay normal, method.

I'm not sure about marijuana simply because I don't like it. Personally I find it a vile substance and can't see the appeal. Different strokes for different folks!
There is one drug I would definitely not recommend - tobacco. Having spent most of my adult life addicted to the bloody stuff, and only having broken that addiction about 5 years ago I can honestly say that there is absolutely no good in tobacco whatsoever.

There is one mind-altering substance which is commonly used by millions on a regular basis. So commonly, in fact, that few consider it a drug at all. It's even used by people who disapprove of "drugs". It's legal, it's relatively cheap and it's incredibly dangerous. You've probably worked out by now that I'm talking about alcohol.
I deliberately use alcohol for what I consider its intended purpose - to get drunk. I'm not an habitual drinker (although there's always a danger of that) and so don't drink except for the effect. If I don't want to get drunk, I simply don't drink! To me this is a form of worship. A night drinking and dancing is my Bacchanale and I dedicate it to Dionysos as soon as I step through the door.

Paganism.

One of the wonderful things about Paganism is its immediacy. You don't need a priest to talk to the gods for you, you can do it yourself. You don't separate your worship to a specific day, your life becomes worship through the alteration of your awareness. You can even join with a spirit or deity so that they can speak through you and the two become one.

These are precisely the aims of the so-called Left-Hand Path!

By that definition, the whole of Paganism is Left-Hand Path, but does that mean that Paganism is also evil?
Bloody stupid question! Of course it doesn't!

It's about time we got rid of such simplistic definitions as Left- and Right-Hand Path. They don't help anybody. The vast majority of us use methods which combine elements of both definitions and therefore make a mockery of the whole concept. We're human beings and, as such, simple black/white categorisations are inadequate, belittling and frankly, bollocks!
If someone uses sexual magick to harm another person then they're not Left-Hand Path. They're bastards!
Similarly, if someone uses sexual magick to heal another person they're not Right-Hand Path, or Left- either. They're sexual healers, and probably an amazing shag too!

We need to get beyond petty moralisations and over-simplified definitions and open ourselves up to a whole multiverse of infinite possibilities. We are potential gods, and whatever methods we use to achieve that realisation for ourselves are the "good" ones.

An it harm none, do what you will.

Love,
Seán

Codex Alimentarius (finally!)

2009-07-06T09:32:00.002+01:00

I've been meaning to write about this for quite a long time and, frankly, have been putting it off. It's not that I'm frightened of Monsanto's mafia or of simply being wrong, it's just that there's so much of it I haven't really known where to start.
Codex Alimentarius is also really, really complicated and technical. I make no apology here for running on gut instinct - it feels wrong - and allowing other more informed and expert people to do the talking for me. I'll come back to those people a little later.

A History Lesson
A short, potted history of Codex Alimentarius (lit: "Food Book") goes a bit like this:
In 1963 a group of countries involved with the United Nations' FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation), and the WHO (World Health Organisation) got together to create the Codex Alimentarius Commission (or CAC, which is hilarious if you speak any Irish!). CAC's aims were to create international health and safety standards for the production, hygiene, and labelling of food and food supplements, and thus give consumers a chance to protect themselves from shysters and monied interests.
Sounds pretty good so far, and to be honest, it was until the advent of Genetically Modified foods and the biotech industries who created them. Power corrupts and money, of course, is power!

The Experts
The first person I'd like to bring into this argument is gentleman called Dr. Robert Verkerk. Dr. Verkerk (who has more letters after his name than enough) used to work as a research fellow at Imperial College London and has worked all over the world, often with governments using his combined expertise in agriculture, sustainability and health care. He's also, to some extent, involved with CA - but he's one of the good guys!
In 2002 he started the Alliance for Natural Health, and has been campaigning on multiple fronts ever since. Basically, he's worried. And if he's worried, perhaps we should ask why.

Another person to bring in is Ian R. Crane. I've put a link there, but I think it's probably better to watch his videos on YouTube. Where Dr. Verkerk is possibly a little dry and analytical (like any good scientist) Mr. Crane is a tad more sensational and radical. This doesn't make him wrong (or right either) but it does make him accessible.

One of the most informative and accessible videos about Codex is called We Become Silent. It's worth half an hour of anybody's time and the fact that it's narrated by Judi Dench does no harm at all.
Finally, of course, there are the loud and slightly nutty ones. That still doesn't make them wrong, you just have to turn down the volume a bit. Prime amongst these is Dr. Lima Raibow, although there are plenty more.

On the other hand there are plenty of pro-Codex sites too. The problem with these is that they tend to be government-approved and very technical and confusing. Here's the official site, and if you can translate it you're cleverer than me.

My Own View
There are several things which worry me about Codex Alimentarius. One of which is how quiet and secretive it is. The vast majority of people don't know about it, yet it affects one of the most basic aspects of their lives - food!
Another is the fact that I don't understand it. I'm not meant to understand it because I'm not an expert. But it's my food, and surely I should know what I'm eating and feeding my children, rather than relying on experts to tell me what's okay. It reminds me of the Monty Python sketch of a woman giving birth - Woman: "What should I do?" Doctor: "Nothing dear. You're not qualified!"

The most worrying thing of all, though, is this:
The Codex Alimentarius Commission is staffed mostly by governmental appointees. There are some experts with ethical stances in there but this is never going to be enough. CAC claims that there are no profit-making interests involved in its decisions, which is true as far as it goes. The point here is that there doesn't need to be.
A politician is not an expert in his or her department. A Transport Minister doesn't have to know a lot about transport because they might be the Education or Health Minister in six months. Instead they rely on expert advisers to provide them with all the info they need and suggest what they ought to do. So who is providing CAC with their info?
The answer is vested and monied interests. Big pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness and biotech companies. One of the biggest of these (if not the biggest) is Monsanto.
I'll write about Monsanto specifically another time. The purpose of this piece is simply to make people aware of Codex Alimentarius.

Please research Codex Alimentarius. Find out everything you can, and everything you can understand. Then make a decision. If you decide you're against it you'll already have found a large number of groups to help you do something about it.
If Codex Alimentarius doesn't bother you, then fair enough. You can put your feet up and not worry about it. But I'd like to offer a final quote to think about. It comes from John Hammell, a legislative advocate and the founder of International Advocates for Health Freedom (IAHF):

The Codex Alimentarius proposals already exist as law in Norway and Germany where the entire health food industry has literally been taken over by the drug companies. In these countries, vitamin C above 200 mg is illegal as is vitamin E above 45 IU, vitamin B1 over 2.4 mg and so on. Shering-Plough, the Norway pharmaceutical giant, now controls an Echinacea tincture, which is being sold there as an over the counter drug at grossly inflated prices. The same is true of ginkgo and many other herbs, and only one government controlled pharmacy has the right to import supplements as medicines which they can sell to health food stores, convenience stores or pharmacies."

It is now a criminal offence in parts of Europe to sell herbs as foods. An agreement called EEC6565 equates selling herbs as foods to selling other illegal drugs. Action is being taken to accelerate other European countries into 'harmonization' as well.

Would you like some basil with your tomatoes?

Love,
Seán

A Question to Ponder

2009-06-18T13:44:00.005+01:00

Oh wow! I haven't written on here for ages, and I will write something about the Codex Alimentarius soon. Honest. I promise!

In my defence, I've been seriously busy lately what with Naked Knitting Calendars, playing with a Morris Team (Yes, I know they're all women. The musicians are mixed.) and part-organising a Naked Bike Ride. Really this entry is just a wave to keep me on the radar, but there is a question I'd like to ask. It's near the end of this piece.

WNBR
This year I became one of the organisers for Manchester's leg of the World Naked Bike Ride. It's been quite hard work but definitely worth it. Everyone volunteered their time for nothing, the atmosphere was ace, Caz the body painter kept her clothes on (boo!) but was still a total star, and all was wondrous.
There were mistakes I'd made (like the ride being a bit too long) and things we should have done but didn't get around to - but on the whole it was a resounding success.
Or it would have been but for police interference.

Manchester Evening News readers will know all about this already, but for anyone who doesn't here's the general gist.
In April Becca, one of the other organisers, informed local police of our intention to ride and what it was all about. Two days before the ride on Friday they rang her back and gave full approval. Woohoo! Fantastic! Unfortunately they neglected to inform their officers on the ground.

When we got to St. Anne's Square there was some poor bemused copper who hadn't the vaguest idea what was going on. When we got to Portland Street, however, things were a little different.
Two guys in a van flagged us down and insisted we dress (which, hilariously, wasn't possible for some!) and then a third turned up in another van. Portland Street is busy at the best of times - they blocked it for 20 minutes!

So why were we stopped?
Well, the second reason they gave us was that we'd agreed to cover up in the city centre. Where they got this bullshit from I've no idea, but I'm going to find out!
The first reason was that there had been complaints.
I found out later there had been one complaint, from someone who was "appalled" because a bunch of roughneck Rusholme kids had decided to follow us.

Here's That Question
We live in a democracy. Stop laughing! We live - officially at least - in something roughly resembling a democracy. It's better than a lot of places, anyway. My "Question To Ponder" then is this:

How, in a democracy, can one person be able to disrupt, destroy or prevent an event approved and enjoyed by, literally, thousands?

Meanwhile, there are loads of pictures on Flickr: have a look here, here and here!
And below is one of my favourites courtesy of SamScam. WARNING: The picture contains naked people having a harmless good time. If you find that offensive, don't bloody look at it!

Love, freedom and bicycles,
Seán

Dietary Re-Education

2009-02-08T17:11:00.003Z

Nothing deep and meaningful. This is more of a diary entry than anything else.

Most people who know me will, by now, know that I'm a fairly fussy eater. It's not that I'm finicky over mushrooms or something silly like that, it's that I eat low-fat vegetarian. Vegan, nearly!
The reason for this (again, as most people already know) is to do with cholesterol.

I have a genetically based tendency for my liver to make more of the "bad" (LDL) and less of the "good" (HDL) cholesterol than is normal. In order to combat this - and make sure that I can still climb stairs and enjoy sex over 50, without suffering a stroke or heart-attack - I avoid saturated fats in my diet as far as possible.

I've been using a fairly simple rule-of-thumb: if it comes out of an animal, it's high-saturate and BAD! The only two vegetable products to add to that are palm oil (which is environmentally bad too) and coconut oil. Nobody in their right mind would deliberately eat hydrogenated oils, but those are avoided as well. The only animal product I've been having is a drop of milk in my tea because, frankly, soya milk's a bit bloody grim.

Last night I began a little voyage of discovery. As it was a Saturday night I treated us to some chocolate to go with our wine. Okay, chocolate's very naughty but I reckoned it would be okay - plain choccy is vegan. It's got no animal fats and so should be okay.
Boy, did I get that wrong!

I decided to have a look at the nutritional info on the label: Fats 46%, of which saturates 29%.
That's 29% saturated fat, without so much as looking at a cow! My immediate thought, after bloody hell that's a lot, was how much more must be in milk chocolate.

This morning while shopping, I decided to do a little research. I compared milk and plain chocolate (with a shocked look on my face): milk chocolate has 19% saturates. That's 10% less than the vegan stuff! Bizarre!
I also thought I'd have a look at eggs - something I've been avoiding for (I thought) very sensible reasons. The saturated fat in an egg counts for 3% of its content. That's all! Three piggin' percent!
I'm coming to the conclusion that received wisdom = bullshit.

Later I blitzed the cupboards, checking everything I could lay my hands on to find out the saturated fat content. Some things are as I believed: cheese 22% (less than plain choccy!); butter 54%; fake veggie suet 34%.
Other things were a little more surprising: soya margarine 14% (nearly as much as milk chocolate); peanut butter 9% (3 times more than an egg); semi-skimmed milk 1%.

Weird and wonderful!
I've been making vegan porridge for breakfast to avoid the dangers of fatty milk. I've eaten Fruitus bars, which I now find have the same amount of saturates as an egg. I've eaten peanut butter sandwiches because I thought nut fats were completely non-saturated.

So what's going to change?
Well, there needs to be some more research, but while I'm doing that all chocolate's definitely off the menu, vegan or otherwise. I'm also going to remain vegetarian and eat a lot of fruit and greens, because that's natural for me - I don't like meat very much anyway. Cheese and butter are also still off, obviously.
But at the same time, I'm not going to be frightened to put a little milk in our porridge in the morning, or add an egg to our fried rice. I may treat myself to an occasional boiled (not fried!) egg - apparently it's safer than a peanut-butter sandwich. Possibly even a very occasional white sauce, if I can work out how to make it with olive oil instead of butter

Who'd have thought it!

Love and good dietary health,
Seán

In Praise of Poly

2009-01-08T09:44:00.005Z

That's poly- as in -amory, rather than Polly as in parrot!

Last time on here I promised a consideration of polyamory as a concept, so here it is. Before starting I think it probably best to put my own position forward - I consider myself a polyamorous person in a monogamous relationship. Happily so, too. I'm not looking for a lover or anything (it'd be nice to have the energy!)
On the other hand I do want to see if I can shed a positive light on polyamory as a viable lifestyle choice for many people. Not for everybody by any means, but probably for a lot more than there are now.

History

Polyamory simply means, in its mixed-up Greek/Latin way, "many loves". By dictionary definition, a polyamorous person finds that they have the ability to love more than one person in an intimate and sexual way. I'm going to question why it needs to be sexual later, but for now I'm going to look at the historical and cultural precedents for polyamory.

The next word in our new poly- collection is polygamy, closely followed by polygyny and polyandry.
Polygamy means a marriage between one person and several spouses, although it's often confused with polygyny, which means a man having more than one wife. Polyandry is the gender-opposite: one woman, several husbands.
In our nuclear-family, montheistic and monolithic western culture we are conditioned towards monogamous and possessive relationships, but this hasn't always been the case and in many cultures polygamy is accepted as normal.

Sadly polygyny is often the result of a male-dominated, competitive and possessive culture. It is, therefore, the most common form of polygamy. Where women are seen as property and second-place citizens, it is not unusual for a rich man to show his status by "owning" several wives in the same way that he owns several cars or houses. This was the case in China until about a century ago, and is still the case in certain middle-eastern countries.
Having said that, in cultures where men would often go out to fight and die in battles, many women would be left widowed or remain a spinster indefinitely. In such a culture an unmarried woman would have no security, or in extreme cases any life of her own at all. Polgyny made sense, then, for a culture with few men and many women.
Many people also consider Mormons polygynous too, which is true up to a point. In most western countries it's illegal anyway and even then not all Mormon men can have more than one wife. The founder, Joseph Smith had several wives who also had other husbands themselves, which seems more fair to me.

Polyandry is rather rarer but still exists, most famously in Tibet. This is usually a form of fraternal polyandry, where a woman marries a whole stack of brothers, although not always. Polyandry makes a certain amount of genetic sense in harsh lands like Tibet, where resources are scarce (a man with eight wives can have eight children a year, a woman with eight husbands can only have one) and a child has a greater chance of survival with little or no competition and two or more dads bringing in food.
Even though Hindus do not generally practise polyandry there is a precedent in the Mahabharata where Draupadi becomes the wife to all five Pandava brothers.

Here and Now

Those examples are very much distant from our normal lives. In the western world monogamous relationships between a man and a woman are considered the norm. This has been borne out recently by the bizarre Proposition 8 ruling in California and the Christmas speech by "His Holiness" the Pope.
Yet, at the same time, old patterns are being broken down. In the space of my own lifetime (and I'm not especially old) the UK has gone from homosexuality being illegal to allowing same-sex marriages. Yes, I know they're really civil-partnerships, but they've been accepted as marriages regardless of the technicality of the law.
Standard monogamy is also breaking down as can be seen by hugely increasing instances of adultery and divorce in the last 30 years or so. Many people worry that such is a sign of the breakdown of society. I see it as a good sign. It's dreadful for those individuals going through it (been there, done that, still have the t-shirt!), but so is surgery!
Just as an example, I used to have a neighbour who was a very old widow. This was 15 years ago and she was pushing eighty then. She had spent more than forty years married to the same man and yet the only good thing she could say about him was, "Well, at least 'e never 'it me!"
If someone can explain to me why that was a good life, I'm listening!

The dissolution of highly defined marital patterns also means an increase of tolerance for and experimentation in "alternative" lifestyles. I see it as the caterpillar's physical breakdown and rebuilding as a butterfly. At the moment we're in the chrysalis, but eventually we will become transformed and be able to emerge.

Modern Polyamory

The wonderful thing about modern polyamory is that it is ultimately indefinable. There are so many forms that the term itself almost becomes a nonsense. There are, for instance, open marriages where two partners take lovers; triple or other number partnerships which are entirely exclusive and closed; amorphous communal group marriages where people come and go as they please. The variations are endless and, wonderfully, also don't define themselves in terms of simple gender. The two things they do have in common, and which define the relationships entirely, are honesty and love.

I don't consider swingers to be polyamorous. That's not to say that swinging is a "bad" thing, simply that casual sex does not require love. It's lustful rather than amorous. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, it simply doesn't work within even this loose definition. Adultery, also doesn't fit, because it is, by nature sneaky and dishonest.
"Friend sex" does fit, as an extension of the definition of love. Loving one's friends can be extended into physical expression. I may write about the joys and pitfalls of friend sex at some future juncture, the point now is that it involves love

In the same way as sex need not involve love, love (and intimate partnerships) need not involve sex. There are rare couples (and I understand that my adoptive grandparents were of this nature) who love each other and marry, and stay married until death, yet never have sex. Who's going to say they're not really married? Not me!
To the polyamorous monogamist like me, love does not divide, it multiplies. I can love my wife with every fibre of my being and still love my friends almost as much. I can be totally turned by my wife but still fancy most of my friends and cuddle them all. Most people probably feel the same, even if they don't admit it.

Aye, but here's the rub!

Polyamory isn't for everybody, but then again, neither is monogamy. That's the whole point. Ideally we should have no alternative lifestyles, because there should be no norm from which to deviate. It's going to take some doing, though. (We need to stop bombing each other first, I think.)
There's also the fact of individual social conditioning. I flatter myself that I'm an enlightened and relatively free individual who can see the fnords and thinks before he reacts, but at the same time I have been brought up in a society which expects me to be possessive and insecure. I try not to be, but mud like that sticks. I've got the greatest admiration for those who have enough confidence to be open about their own forms of polyamory in the face of a disapproving public.
I suppose the test would come if my belovèd chose to take a lover. I wouldn't dream of trying to stop her, her will is equal to mine, but I wonder if I could cope emotionally. Am I mature, free and secure enough, or do I still harbour the demons of possessiveness and jealousy?

The polyamory movement has taught me another new word as well - compersion. Frankly, I had to look it up, but I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful concept.
Compersion is the state of happiness in knowing that someone you love is happy in loving someone else too. It's not voyeurism or cuckolding, because it's not necessarily sexual and they are exclusively sexual practises. It's love that goes entirely beyond expected confines.
What would a society be like if, instead of its marital ethics being based on ownership and exclusivity, it was based on compersion?

That would be truly enlightened.

Love,
Seán

Bah, humbug!

2008-12-18T10:25:00.002Z

I was going to write something about polyamory next, but I think I need a little more research. So instead I'm going to moan about Christmas!

Well, not really. Okay, maybe a bit!

Humbug!

I was recently called a miserable old bugger because I don't like Christmas. The person who said that was actually joking, but she wasn't the first and she certainly won't be the last. Other people have said it and really meant it.

Funnily enough the nobody considers me a misery when I celebrate:
The Winter Solstice and The Summer Solstice;
The Autumn Equinox and The Spring Equinox;
ImBolg, Bealtaine, Lughnasadh and Samhain;
Hogmanay and Apple Wassail;
all thirteen full moons and all twelve new moons (or vice-versa);
everybody's birthday;
Vinalia, Dionysos' birthday (Jan 6th) and Global Orgasm Day!
That's probably not everything, either.

Gimme a break. I don't have time for Christmas!

Festive fun.

I've no great objection to Christmas per se. It's a great festival for Christians - just like Diwali for the Hindus, Channukah for the Jews and Eid for the Muslims. No problem with any of that - you want to celebrate? Go to it guys - go nuts! I'll even give you a present if I can afford it.

Admittedly, Christianity pinched the date of Christmas from European Pagans (this is a matter of historical record) but that's okay. Nobody actually knows when Jesus was born anyway - although the clues indicate some time in September as the most likely - so choosing the date Pagans celebrate the rebirth of the sun was very logical for the birthday of a Messiah.

No problem!

Here's the problem:

It's completely meaningless to almost everyone who celebrates it.
It's been cheap, tacky and tawdry since the Victorians popularised it.
The classical radio has wall-to-wall carols, the shops have wall-to-wall 1970's Xmas hits (Slade! AGAIN!) from the first day of December.

On top of all this the jollity is enforced by Wal-Mart and Tesco for no more reason than it increases profits. We are told that it's the season of "goodwill to all men", which, basically, means buying them expensive things they neither want nor need.
(Bullshit - EVERY season is the season of goodwill, and Wal-Mart has more money than Saudi Arabia, or Poland. No, I'm not kidding here. The people who own Asda have more money, and therefore political clout, than roughly 75% of the world's countries. Turns your stomach, doesn't it? )

The consumerist society's banking controllers have us over a barrel. Again!

But I can live with that, for now.
I buy my family presents because they celebrate Christmas, and good luck to them. What I really object to is the automatic expectation that, because I'm a white person in England, I'll be celebrating it myself in the same way as everyone else. Brainwashing! Possibly racist brainwashing too.

"Are you all ready for Christmas?" says the woman at the checkout.
"No luvvie. We don't really do it." says I.
And, because I don't look Asian or Hasidic Jewish, the poor woman is lost for words.

An it harm none, do what YOU will!

Happy Christmas!

Every culture in the Northern Hemisphere has a midwinter festival of some kind - so in that case I'd like to wish everybody who will be celebrating:

Blessèd Yule
Shalom Channukah
Saturnalia Bona
Hail Sol Invictus
Happy Winterval
and
Merry Bloody Christmas too!

Love,
Seán

Buy Nothing!

2008-11-27T12:10:00.005Z

Today I'm using the blog to promote something which I think is worthwhile and important - Buy Nothing Day, which is this coming Saturday (29th November - Happy Birthday, Pixie!)

But before that, have a look at this video:
(Hope this works, I've never posted a video before)

Better yet, don't just watch it, steal it from me and spread it around. It's from a website called Bonfire of the Brands. Go check them out. I found it on The Idler, check that out too!

I'm not going to plug Buy Nothing Day for it's anti-capitalist, anti-work ethic. Nor am I looking at it from the environmental perspective. Other people have already done that far better than me. There's a list of them on the right under the heading Kick-Arse Politics.

What I'm proposing is that we use Buy Nothing Day as a way of proving to ourselves and the world of high-brand media marketing that we can and will take control of our own lives.

Advertising

I've nothing against advertising as a thing in itself. In order to get your message across you've got to tell people about it. There are even ads on this blog, and I wouldn't dream of suggesting that anyone abuse the system by clicking them on and then off again! But we are surrounded by it and saturated by it and we barely ever realise just how much we are being controlled.

I understand that it's fairly normal for marketing to be taught as a subject in American schools. I'm impressed, if it's true, and I would like to suggest that we all make a study of marketing and branding techniques. (In fact, I'm using one right now by emboldening the words, Buy Nothing Day every time they appear.)
Why? - So we can become good marketers? No! - So we can defend ourselves against them.

Here are some examples:

Catch 'em young: A recent study in Chicago showed that pre-school children believed things tasted better when they came wrapped in the McDonalds label. That's anything at all - carrots, milk, apples, anything. That's pre-schoolers, 3-5 year olds. That's the power of branding!

Repetition: the vast majority of advertising works on the simple process of repetition. If you tell someone something often enough, they will believe you!

Make it emotive: Nike don't sell shoes, they don't even sell sports shoes. They sell dreams! Watch a Nike ad someday (if you don't feel too dirty). They won't tell you how good their shoes are, how long they will last or the wonderful stuff of which they are made. They show you what you dream of being - a sporting hero. Buy Nike shoes and YOU will score that goal, live in that house, drive that car, shag that appalling mindless bimbo with the bleached hair and tits like halves of grapefruits.

Space creation: Supermarkets are full of psychological tricks and controls. The newest in my local one is a Christmas Santa-and-his-Elves floor painting. It's bright, cartoonish and kids want to play on it for hours. Funnily enough it's right down the aisle of Christmas chocolates.

Smells: Supermarkets do this as well. Bread is a real biggie. Who doesn't love the smell of newly-baked bread? And doesn't it set off your saliva glands and make you feel hungry. Oh to hell with it, let's get an extra loaf. In fact I feel really good now, let's splurge on something else!

AAARGH!

I could go on with this for an awful lot longer - there are psychological tricks around every corner in every shopping centre, every time you turn on the telly, listen to the radio or look at Yahoo/Google/MySpace/Blogger. Please feel free to seek them out. We could create a new hobby - fnord spotting.

The question I'm asking is this: When we go out into the civilised world to buy (say) apples, whose will are we doing? Are we buying them because we want to or because the marketer says we should? And if we do how do we know our choice of apples is our choice?

How much more does this question apply to a pair of Ugg boots, an iPod, or a Renault Laguna?

Buy Nothing!

Buy Nothing Day is a way of - at least temporarily - taking control of our lives and our rampant bloody consumerism. My dad honestly believes that we buy ten times more stuff than we did when he was 25 (about 40 years ago). He may be right.

I read a lovely saying the other day;
The only things which like permanent growth are corporations, goverments and tumours. Damn right!

Our consumerism went too far 50 years ago and it's still getting worse, primarily because we're being influenced by very clever, very evil people who want us to buy stuff. Buying stuff we don't want or need is good for the economy.

Fuck the economy.

Consumerism is directly responsible for all of the environmental disasters we're going through right now. It is destructive to the planet and, worse, destructive to the human soul.

Do your will. Not mine, not the government's, and certainly not McDonalds'!
Just make sure it really is yours, and I'll try to do the same.

Love,
Seán

We Are One!

2008-11-24T09:33:00.010Z

Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday dear meeee.

Happy birthday to meeeee eeeeeee
eeeeee eeeeeeee eeeeeee eeee eee!

Well okay, it's not actually my birthday, that's in two months - cards and really good red wine always welcome - but it is The Dionysian's first anniversary.
I've been writing this nonsense for a whole year! My goodness, I feel a review coming on. How very clichéd and self-referential.
Navel- gazing, anybody?

"What do you think of the show so far?"
"Rubbish!"

I have noticed one thing, which is the fact that I've slowed down rather a lot. It might be because I've got other projects on as well as this or that I'm busier as a househusband than I was as a University Groundsman but mostly, I think, it's because I don't like repeating myself.

That could be a bad idea. I've noticed that many writers, particularly ones on witchcraft, base a whole career on self-repetition by producing a series of books which - in content at least - tend to be updates of previous books. Boring but useful. I'm just not sure I've got the patience.

I've also managed to offend a few people, although surprisingly nowhere near as many as I'd expected. Perhaps the ones who would be offended have stayed away (which would be very sensible) or perhaps most readers are too polite to say anything. I can't believe that most people agree with me. That's highly unlikely.
I really pissed-off the guy from the BNP, though. I consider that a plus!

I've also changed the status to "adult" so I can post pictures of people who have genitalia without Google feeling the need to cancel me.

Let's have a look then.

Using the magic of "tabbed browsing" I can look at the things I've written about over the past year. There's been quite a lot, actually.
There is a fair bit of social politics involving stuff like disabilities, vegetarianism, surveillance culture, drinking, environmentalism, generosity and honesty.
There's some stuff about art, music, film and poetry. There's also deeper stuff about Will and Identity. There's been a SubGenius rant.
There's a lot about love, sexuality, affection and nudity! I like nudity, okay?

The most popular by a long measure (in terms of response) has been the one where I called Jesus a Pagan. In fact the comments were four times longer than the articles.
It certainly seemed to hit the right chord (A Major!), and I'm getting feedback still after slightly more than three months. I even met, a couple of weeks ago, a very nice young fellow called Simon who is a church minister and used that post as the basis of a sermon. I don't actually know what he said - for all I know he could have vilified me as Satan incarnate - but I'm still rather chuffed!

One of the great things about writing a blog is getting the comments, including the ones which tell me I'm wrong. They validate my existence and prove that I'm not ranting into a vacuum. There's not much more pointless than intellectual masturbation, so huge thanks to everybody who has commented and I'll do my best comment on your own blogs (I will, Jake, honest!).

Look to the Future

So what's in store for The Dionysian over the next year?
Errm. . . Dunno actually! I never really plan these things, I just respond to stuff which affects me in some way. I do have some vague ideas about fnords and radio advertising and probably more stuff about nudism and sexuality. I'll definitely be plugging WNBR again next year, and likely one or two other projects and events.

In the end, though, what is the Dionysian for?

Am I saving the world? No, but I'm trying!
Am I giving people something interesting to read and talk about? It would appear so. Phew!
Am I helping my friends do the same? Hope so!
(Note: All the blogs bar two under the heading, "A Rather Good Read" are personal friends. One is my wife! The exceptions are Qelqoth and Ms. Coco LaVerne - and I'm bound to meet Ms. LaVerne's PA, Paul Harfleet sooner or later)

Upon final analysis, The Dionysian is no more than this: A self-created platform for a middle-aged dilettante to ask questions and express his opinions about the world he lives in. No more or less than that, really.
I hope it gives you, dear reader, pleasure and interest in its perusal.
If it does then I'm happy too.
If it doesn't, sorry but there's a whole internet out there to explore. Go find something that does!

And now, because it's my "birthday", I'm going to decorate the post with lovely naked people.
Because I can!

Love,
Seán

P.S. The photos are by the following people (from top down). Please check them out on their Flickr photostreams:

phheww, siberfi, DGHdeeo, spinneyhead, SunCat

If you object to my pinching your picture, please tell me and I'll remove it.

A Touchy Subject

2008-11-06T18:29:00.004Z

Please excuse the title, it's a pun worthy of a hairdresser's shop I admit but, for some reason, the best I could come up with.

Back in September I wrote a piece called Temple Tarts, and towards the end I suggested ways in which we could improve our attitudes to sex as a society. One of these was to promote nudism and the other to be more open to touch. The response from a couple of friends on Facebook was especially interesting.

Right or Wrong?

One of those friends has an uncle who was a schoolteacher who was falsely accused of child molestation. The case was proven to be total bullshit and thrown out of court, but not until after his life had been ruined. Many people who didn't know either him or his accusers were willing to believe entirely without proof and acted like vigilantes.

In yet another fit of synchronicity, I'm also working in a film at the moment about an innocent man who is accused of the inappropriate touching of a child. It ruins his life too.

Also, back in the early '90s a friend of mine was accused of child abuse. Again it was wrong and proven to be so, but many people believed it. In his case it was because he was male and a known Pagan. Most Pagans over 30 will have some recollection of the Rochdale and Orkney debacles and this was in their wake.

I have no answers here. I still believe that to touch a person who doesn't want you to, sexually or otherwise, is wrong but that the world will be a far better place if we allow more people to touch us. We really need to be open to intimacy and less distant from each other.
At the same time there is this amazing and ludicrous paranoia that anyone (or any man particularly) who is affectionate to a child is doing something sinister.

It's strange: When I was small teachers were distant, dominant dragons. You weren't supposed to like them, you were supposed to obey them. Now my children (aged 7 and 9) often hug their teachers or dinnertime staff. To my mind this is better. There is still some discipline, but the teachers are considered more as human beings in their own right.

Obviously this will happen less and less as they get older and develop personal space, but at the moment it's good and gives the children a sense of security.

In The Beginning

Not long ago I used to think that the primary human sense was sight. I got that one wrong!
Sight is exceptionally important to us. It's how we interact with the world, it's our advanced warning system, it's how we recognise each other. But it's not our first sense.
The first experiences of a newborn baby come through the skin during birth and the moments immediately after. The child doesn't see mum, she feels mum. She feels warmth and comfort.

Our skin is the largest sense-organ we have and we can't turn it off, like we can shut our eyes, and through it we experience everything around us. In other words we need to touch and be touched to fully experience the world as a whole and not just each other.

So why this paranoia over something we need so much? I think it's down to sex.

Touchy, Feely

To touch someone in certain ways is highly intimate and pleasurable, and to be touched like that is much the same. The point of crossover comes in the use of an unwilling person to acquire that pleasure. No longer loving or sexual it becomes a matter of power and dominance.
This is what makes it wrong, the imposition of one's will upon another without their consent. It is, in the words of Granny Weatherwax, "Treating people as things".
Such acts, quite rightly, upset and disgust people. But that's not the problem here. The problem comes in the willingness to believe the worst immediately.

Sex is a natural obsession. Once we've got ourselves sorted out with food and shelter our minds tend to turn that way. Advertisers know this - sex sells, and the manipulation of sexuality for profit is an amazingly effective way of making money. Newspapers know this very well.

Sensationalism feeds the human hunger for stimulation. We are incredibly intelligent beings, we've had to be to survive, but when it's no longer needed for survival that thirst for information can easily be perverted to sell magazines. It's just a more modern form of gossip.

Put the two together and what have you got? You've got a willingness to believe in the most unrealistic nonsense if it's novel enough. Sad but true and I don't think there's a cure. Misquoting William de Worde this time, "A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on". This is no consolation to my friend's uncle, I know, but it appears to be what happens.

What Do We Do Now?

Well, one thing we shouldn't do is worry too much. The sensationalist newspapers notwithstanding, our society is not populated by rampant child-abusing maniacs. Sexual crimes are very rare in comparison with other crimes, and other crimes are going down.
Here's a link to the official figures.

What we need to do is be affectionate with our friends and loving with our children. We need to do our own will, in other words that which we truly believe to be right, rather than to have our wills controlled by the media.
It's the hundred-monkey syndrome again. If enough people behave in a certain way (eg. considering what the truth might be before believing in the guilt of an innocent schoolteacher), eventually the behaviour of the whole society will change.
We can make our society a better place by starting with ourselves.

Love,
Seán

Music and Mediocrity

2008-10-11T10:07:00.003+01:00

After suggestions from some friends on Farcebook I'm going to write about touch at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, here's a rant while I'm taking time to think about it.

I feel I should apologise first. I've got a touch of 'flu, I'm feeling bloody awful and consequently somewhat grouchy and my chavette neighbour annoyed me this morning with her "musical taste".

Music
I love music. Even before I learned how to play myself (which wasn't until I was well past 30) I was incredibly sensitive to music. Music could raise me to heights almost as exalted as those brought by religion, love and sex.
A particular rendition of Nessun Dorma (from Puccini's Turandot, an otherwise dull opera) once reduced me to a quivering wreck. I'm not exaggerating here: I was shaking all over, covered in cold sweat, crying, unable to breathe and my heart-rate had almost doubled. I thought I was going to die there and then!

It's not just Classical either. In fact I listen to a relatively small amount of Classical music
Here are a few examples to explain my meaning:
When I hear The Sisters of Mercy play Alice, I find it difficult not to dance. Kate Bush's Breathing makes me horny (which I'm sure it isn't supposed to do!) as does Leather by Tori Amos. Sing by the Dresden Dolls makes me exultant for the future of the human race but Tomorrow Belongs to Me from the musical, Cabaret makes me want to hide behind the sofa and try not to wee myself.

I'm sure you get the picture. But there's music and there's music.
This morning my neighbour put some music on. It was what is now called R&B. It sounded EXACTLY the same as every other song labelled R&B. Not similar, exactly the same. It was as if someone had created a worksheet entitled, "This is How you Create an R&B Hit" and followed it to the letter, ticking every box on the way. Sara suggested you can get instructions like you could for a Mills & Boon novel.
Actually, I find the term R&B offensive for this type of music. In the 60's Rhythm and Blues musicians included such radical world leaders as the Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin, nowadays it's TLC and R Kelly.
I'd recommend listening to Destiny's Child singing Say My Name (if you can stand it) immediately followed by Janis Joplin singing Piece of my Heart to understand how much the genre has changed.

Mediocrity
I'm picking on modern R&B because it was what my neighbour played, but it's not the disease - just a symptom.
I'm probably coming across by now as some sour middle-aged git who thinks that all music created after 1987 is crap compared to the real stuff from my youth and, if I'm brutally honest, there's a temptation to think like that. Thinking a little more deeply though, shows it to be untrue.
When I was 15 the fashionable and popular music (ie. the stuff that sold) was made by Lionel Richie and Sheena Easton, the stuff I liked was by David Bowie and Japan. What's the difference?

The difference is that the music which sold best was the music which was meant to sell best. Punk and independent labels began because major label executives would not take on artists who couldn't guarantee a specific amount of sales. They knew what would appeal to the mass of the population. It had to be ordinary, bland, homogenized and, above-all, profitable.
It's always been like this since the invention of recorded music, because music is a profitable business. It actually became a virtue in the 80's to provide bland-but-saleable pop aimed to make money and the Hit Factory of Stock, Aitken and Waterman were experts. They gave us Kylie, Rick Astley and Sonia (the bastards!)

There will always be interesting and experimental music made by people who care about music and there will always be bland cash-cows for those using music for making a fast buck. What bothers me is that they do it really, really well. They've realised an unpleasant secret - people are predictable, thoughtless and mentally lazy. People are crap!

Crap!
It's a conclusion I came to quite some time ago. Most people are crap! It's actually quite an upsetting thought for me and it's taken some getting used to because I genuinely believe that the Human Being is one step below a God and capable of reaching two steps higher:

What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form and movement how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. I apprehension, how like a God!
(Apologies for any misquotes - I wrote that from memory)

Yet, when I look out of my window I'm not looking at potential gods. Mostly I'm looking at barely alive, transparent zombies without thought, or depth. Without even the realization that they are alive. They wear uniforms so that they don't appear different, they watch the same television programmes and listen to the same bland, ordinary and shallow music because they have made themselves incapable of depth, thought or the realization of being truly alive.
AND - those who create this music, this television, these newspapers, bloody well love it that way!

Social Control (again!)
We live in a society which relies on conformity, which even categorizes non-conformist behaviour so it can be controlled. Human blandness, laziness and lack-of-thought are essential to the system in which we live. It's all about money and the ability to make it by predicting the behaviour of human beings.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Perhaps it's just an impotent rant because I'm feeling rough. Perhaps Lyall Watson was right when he theorised that the human race produces only 5% of special people, and the rest are destined to be ordinary, but I'm damned if I want to believe it.

Dear Reader, YOU ARE A FUCKING GOD! At least in potential!
Don't let them tell you any different.

Love,
Seán

Temple Tarts

2008-09-20T09:20:00.009+01:00

Hooray! We're back on sex!

One of the things I love about the way life works is how significant things tend to clump together. A little while ago in a piece called Sex and Violence I mentioned the concept of the Temple Prostitute and my friend, Pegasus asked for some more info. I've also recently "met" (if that's the correct word for what one does online) a group calling themselves the Temple of Ishtar. On top of that I've found a group of American Qadishtu (more on that word in a moment) and I've just re-read Gilgamesh. Also, my friend Bridget recently gave a talk on ancient and modern Pagan attitudes to sexuality which mentioned Temple Prostitution.

I think the Gods are trying to tell me something, so maybe I should listen for once!

Anyway, I think I need to start off with what I know about these prostitutes, and I think it would a good idea to use some more sensible terms.
We have no word in English to describe the people I'm talking about. Whoever gave them the title prostitute did them a terrible disservice. It's technically correct in that they made their living by having sex with people, but so does a porn star. We have an image (I do anyway) of what a prostitute is like and it's pretty sordid. I've actually met a few prostitutes and, frankly, I'm amazed they make any money! It's definitely the wrong word so, as from now, I'm going to use a new term I've learned - Qadishtu.

Quadishtu
A Qadishtu is a sexual priestess, one for whom the act of sexual intercourse is given as a form of worship. What we know of this practise comes primarily from ancient Mesopotamia. It was expected of a woman that she would, once in her life, act as a priestess in the Eanna temple and have sexual intercourse with whoever wanted her. Most of the time the Qadishtu was someone who made it their profession and lived, or at least worked, in the Temple full-time.
We also have evidence that this practise was common well outside the walls of Uruk and for quite some time. Some 1,500 years later and roughly 1000 miles away in Biblical Canaan and Syria the practise was still going on. Deuteronomy 23:17-18 mentions it:

No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine-prostitute.You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute into the house of the LORD your God to pay any vow, because the LORD your God detests them both.

There are also references in I Kings, II Kings and Job. The Hebrews (or their leaders anyway) didn't like it at all!

So Who Were They?
Well for a start, they weren't all women. There were men as well. In fact the word Qadishtu refers to a woman. The male word is Qadash or Qedesh and I suppose the plural (it being a Semitic term) would be something like Qadishtim.
There are stories which tell of religious ecstasies where the men would castrate themselves. It appears that these men were naturally effeminate, whether castrated or not, and worked in the same way as the women. There may be a remnant of this in the Hijra of India, some of whom are castrated, many of whom work as prostitutes and are regarded with a mixture of awe and superstitious dislike. Many of the societies that we would consider "primitive" have kept a special place for their "third sex" members
I have no idea whether the customers were all male or not, but I don't believe there was any deliberate form of discrimination. I can see the job of a man being difficult, though, if he is expected to perform on demand. It would be easier for him to be on the "receiving end".

Most importantly though, is what they were doing it for. There are many ways of earning a living and there must have been some distasteful moments where a Qadishtu would have to "lie back and think of Babylonia". The point is that, unlike in our strange and hypocritical modern age, sex and sexuality were celebrated openly as good things. Most of the mythology we read nowadays is taken directly from Victorian and Edwardian scholars who edited heavily according to the appallingly prurient morality of their day. Here's an example:

"O Ishullanu of mine, come, let me taste of thy vigour, Put forth thy hand, too, . . . . . . . . . ."
(Gilgamesh Book VI, R. Campbell Thompson, 1928)

"Sweet Ishullanu, let me suck your rod, Touch my vagina, caress my jewel"
(Gilgamesh Book VI, Stephen Mitchell, 2004)

To be a Qadishtu was a source of pride and honour. It was to be a representative of the greatest and most powerful Goddess Inanna. The word Qadishtu comes from a Semitic root which literally means "Holy"

Inanna
Inanna seems to be a most powerful and primal goddess. She doesn't go all Victorian when it comes to sex either. She shaves her pubes off like a modern porn queen and hangs around outside pubs to take out her sexual lusts on drunken men. (Don't believe me? I got it from Wikipaedia)
She's quite aggressive too, in many ways. Her lovers tend to die by violence, and she can't handle rejection one bit. Despite the constant sex, though, she's not a Goddess of childbirth - just the bit that tends to lead to it!
There are characters just like Inanna all over the mythology of Europe and the Near East, and probably the rest of the world as well. Inanna is her Sumerian name (a language used by the Ancient Babylonians specifically for religious purposes), in Akkadian (ie. the normal language of 2,500 BC Uruk) she's called Ishtar. She's also called, in various languages across the Near East, Astarte, Asherah Esther and Ashtoreth.
The Romans identified her with their own Venus, which is very appropriate as they are both Goddesses of the morning and evening star. Likewise, in Greece, she is considered the same as Aphrodite. In Norse she's Freya and in Ireland she's the Morrigan (lit: "Great Queen").

The Qadishtu's job was one of worship by sex. A Qadishtu was the vessel of the Queen of Heaven herself and to have sex with her would be an incredibly important act of communion, not to be taken lightly. Similarly, if ancient texts are anything to go by, the Qadishtu enjoyed their job a lot. Hell, why not - it was their job to have orgasms for the good of the community!

Where Are They Now?
Nowadays due to 2000 years of Christianity we separate the sacred from the normal when we should be find the sacred in the normal. We separate sex from the spiritual and consider it profane. We hide it away as something "dirty" or "shameful" and don't talk about it in polite company. Even someone like myself, who thinks (and writes) about these things, has suffered the brainwashing that we all get about sex. I don't think sex is dirty or shameful but I still keep pictures of it private. I believe sex is a beautiful and sacred act but I don't think I could do it with people watching!
I consider myself fairly open-minded and well-educated on the topic but most people that I've met during my working life (blue collar) are not. They have a contradictory attitude which makes them disgusted to see teenagers snogging on the street, but lets them watch a porno DVD of the most blatantly abusive type. The only difference between them and me, really, is that we're all brainwashed but I realised, and am trying to do something about it.

So what can we do about it? Attitudes to sex are changing, particularly amongst the better educated and marginal groups like Pagans, but ground-level changes are very slow. In the end, though, in order to change society we need to change ourselves - the only bit of society we've any real control over - and hope others follow. There are modern-day Qadishtu like the lovely Inara de Luna and a variety of sex-educators, workers and helpers but they're often marginalised as nutters or worse, pornographers and therefore "dirty".

Intimacy
I think our attitudes to sex in general could well be improved by improving our attitudes and habits concerning intimacy. Specifically we need to look at touch and nudity.

Touch is a funny thing for an adult human. We're sociable creatures yet distant from each other at the same time. Small children don't care, they touch each other all the time without it being considered a problem. Babies actually physically need to be touched, held, cuddled in order to grow up healthily.
Somewhere between the child and the adult, though, we develop this weird thing called personal space. Personal space varies according to how crowded your upbringing was but it can be considered as about 12" with a person you really like and about 3 or 4 feet for ordinary social contacts. I have no idea why we develop personal space, and I'd be grateful to anyone who can enlighten me. At the same time we also have a craving for human contact, usually in the form of a friend or loved one.
Look at the different behaviours of the adults and children around you and you may notice something quite interesting. Adults will avoid touching and entering each other's personal space unless they are either lovers or one is trying to dominate the other. But, it's perfectly acceptable for an adult to touch a child (hair-ruffling) or a child to touch an adult (like the three-year old who will plonk themselves on your knee).
The answer to this is, of course, to be open to touch. Not to touch other people more, because that would be invasive, but to invite them to touch you. One of the most wonderful experiences I've discovered is the "friend cuddle". Nine times out of ten I've found that, rather than shaking hands with a friend, opening your arms to them has the result of causing a massive sense of relaxation in the other person. Tension drops, acceptance is felt and the two people become both physically and emotionally more intimate. I'm extremely glad to say that Pagans do this a lot and consequently we don't feel so tense if we're crowded into a small area together.
The Free Hugs guy is a genius and pioneer!

What about nudity, then? I've written a lot about nudity, and I'm sure I will again because I like it! One of the things I've found about social nudity is the absolute degree of acceptance, both from other people and oneself. I have found that clothes hide a lot more than just your body. When we dress we are subconsciously projecting an image, even if we don't think about it! Nobody sane and normal deliberately dresses to look bad (fancy-dress parties excepted). When we dress we put a personality on with our clothes and thus hide a part of ourselves.
First-time nudists almost always use one word to describe their experience - liberating!. They're right too. Once you find that you can't hide anything then you almost immediately realise that there was no need to hide anything in the first place. There is no need for a shield because there is no threat to be protected from and the personality that you would otherwise have put on can be your own.
In doing this you are, like with the friend cuddle, inviting intimacy.

What's This Got To Do With Sex?
Nudists will tell you that nudism isn't sexual. It isn't, but it is intimate and intimate is sexy. Sex is the ultimate intimacy. You can't have sex fully dressed (you've got to remove something!) and you definitely can't do it without touching (I'm not talking about phone sex here - that's something entirely different!)
The Qadishtu offered a valuable service to their community. By being intimate and vulnerable, by "opening up" to all comers they performed a marvellous Taoist paradox - they got on top by being underneath. They were valued for their nakedness and loving touch and the sacred nature of lying with them. They were powerful and important people - perhaps a memory of a bygone age of matriarchal communal sexuality - and this sense of acceptance and holiness in the sexual act would be passed into the wider community. Therefore, not only would it be an act of worship to have sex with the Qadishtu, but also to have sex with one's spouse(s) at home

Religion should, first and foremost, be fun. A religion is there to make one's life better and what could be better than more cuddling, nudity and sex - they are acts of worship to the Great Goddess Inanna.

Life is sacred, let's live like it is.

Love,
Seán

Jesus Was A Pagan

2008-08-18T10:08:00.004+01:00

Not even a question- a definite statement! But, it's going to take a lot of explaining!

I'm writing this in response to the comments on the last blog between Pegasus and myself. My friend Pegasus could best be described as a multi-faith kabbalist scholar and mystic, and so this essay is dedicated to him. I'm also considering sending this to another friend, Revd. Phil Edwards, who is a relatively high-ranking CoE minister and head of a local university's multi-faith chaplaincy - because I'd value his opinions.
Please note that I'm not a biblical scholar, I'm a Pagan who knows his mythology, so I may get some things wrong. If I do, please tell me. I welcome correction.
Hell, if nothing else it makes a change from all the sex-obsessed stuff I've been writing lately!

Warning!
In the highly unlikely event that this blog is being read by a fundamentalist Christian who believes that every word in the Bible is literal truth - stop reading now! You are going to find the rest of this essay very offensive indeed. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Where I'm Coming From
The chance of finding a Pagan who was brought up that way, and especially one of my sort of age, is rare. Most of us were brought up either Christian or secular, and adopted Paganism when we eventually found it. In my own case my parents were not religious, but I was sent to church Infant and Junior schools. I would probably have been sent to secular schools, but there weren't any - so I was brainwashed! (I don't use that term lightly)
Later, and in common with other young Pagans, I rejected the church outright. The problem with doing this is that Jesus tends to get rejected along with it, and a study of Jesus reads like a text-book version of the life of a Solar Hero or Corn God. It's a pattern which repeats with variations all over Europe, the Middle East and probably the rest of the world.
I still reject the authority of the church, but throwing Jesus out with it brings to mind visions of babies and bathwater!

The Life of Jesus
There are two Jesuses (if that's the correct plural). The first is a Jewish human being, political activist and preacher born sometime around 4AD, the son of a carpenter and his wife. The second is the mythological Jesus whose story is told in the Bible.
Are they not one and the same? Well, sort of! The two blend, one into the other and back again.
We must remember that what we read in the Bible is not a diary. The earliest gospel (Mark) was written around 70AD, roughly 40 years after Jesus' death and immediately after a civil war in Palestine. Memories change and writings are alterable. Even the writings we have aren't complete. There were many "gospels" rejected by the early church and others only recently discovered
Early Christianity was promulgated by Paul of Tarsus. I don't know his reasons for doing so, but what he put forward seems tailor-made to appeal to the Pagan peoples he encountered by virtue of the similarities between his own hero and the pre-existent local gods. It was even common at the time (as often happens in India nowadays) for people to accept Jesus alongside their own gods because he fitted in so well!
Suspicious? So am I. It does seem awfully convenient that the one-and-only-God's one-and-only-Son should be so similar to, say Adonis, Hercules, Balder, Lugh, Dionysos, Cú Chulainn, Krishna and a great deal of others.

The salient points of Jesus' life, which we'll look at in more detail can be broken up as follows:

Miraculous Birth (and relative unimportance of a human father)
Miraculous Childhood Feats
Period of Withdrawal (Initiation)
Ministry: A Life of Miraculous Acts
Betrayal and Sacrificial Death
Resurrection

The Miraculous Birth
Jesus was special even before he was born. Paternally he was of the House of David, ie. Jewish royalty (Luke 3:23-31). That's a fascinating claim considering Jewish birth is passed through the maternal line.
The most well-known story, of course, is the virgin birth. The story states that Mary was visited by God in the guise of a spirit who impregnated her. She then gave birth to the infant Jesus without ever having had sexual relations with her husband. There are arguments that "virgin" meant an unmarried woman - one who had never subjugated herself to a man. These are interesting but, as we'll see, unnecessary. The miraculous birth by non-human paternity is necessary and very, very important. So is the early threat to his life by Herod
It should also be noted that Jesus had to be born at Bethlehem, which translates as House of Bread. In other words a centre of the worship of a Corn God.

Okay, let's compare:
Dionysos is the child of a human woman, Semele and the God, Zeus. His half-brother Hercules also has a human mother Alcmene. Lleu Llaw Gyffes has no known father, his mother produces him "by accident" when proving her maidenhood. Merlin is the child of a human woman and a "demon", while King Arthur's conception is brought about by an act of magic which also indirectly causes the death of his father. Adonis/Tammuz has a birth shrouded in mystery, his mother is turned into a myrrh tree, but who his father is is anybody's guess.
The story of Osiris is long and complicated but one could boil it down to the idea that he becomes his own father - the ultimate in magical rebirth!
Most of these characters are royal in descent, particularly on the human side and definitely divine on the paternal side. Their "human" fathers, where they exist at all, take little part in their upbringing. Lleu is brought up by his uncle Gwydion; Dionysos spends his childhood with the Hyades and his granny, Rhea. The youthful Merlin is the "child with no father" and in turn brings up the young Arthur. The lack of a father figure goes right back to ancient, matriarchal (and unprovable except by extrapolation) tribal society where paternity is highly uncertain. The most important male role-model in a young boy's life was usually his uncle. This pattern was kept as a tradition amongst Celtic peoples right up into Roman times and beyond.
They were often hidden away as children to protect them from a specific danger. In the case of Dionysos, his stepmother, Hera is the one after him. The same goes for Hercules. The baby Adonis is hidden in a box for his own protection, as is Lleu (and a few others were too - qv. Perseus)

Miraculous Childhood Feats
Only one gospel features an early childhood feat for Jesus. Luke 2 tells us about his being found teaching in the temple at the age of 12. It's surprising that only one gospel mentions it, but not surprising that it is mentioned. The proof of divinity by means of a miraculous act is an important part of the overall pattern.
The child Merlin divines two underground dragons which are preventing a castle being built and, almost coincidentally, predicts a major war. Hercules strangles snakes while in his cradle and Dionysos shape-shifts to avoid the Titans who are going to dismember him. Lleu learns all the perfections of humanity to become Llaw Gyffes (a long story!) and the Irish hero Cú Chulainn fights and kills a vicious guard dog with his bare hands.

Period of Withdrawal (Initiation)
Between the birth of Jesus and his 30th year, except the one event mention in Luke, there is no record. Many people have theorised about what he did during these missing years, without any real result. The mythological pattern works well though.
Most of our Corn Gods and Solar Heroes have some kind of missing period which they spend learning, training or coming to terms with the reality of their own existence as demi-gods. Merlin famously becomes insane and lives in the forest among the animals. Dionysos disappears to Phrygia to be trained by Rhea. Arthur's upbringing by Merlin is as much a period of training as any other and Cú Chulainn's training in the arts of love and war by Scatha are in the same vein.
Adonis spends his youth hidden by Persephone, the Goddess of Death, who doesn't want to give him back to the world.

The moment of Jesus' initiation is obviously his baptism by John, after which he spends a period of purification before starting his ministry.
This pattern reverberates through Arthur's pulling the sword from the stone (as Siegfried does from the branstock) and his drawing together of his court, Lleu's finally being given a name and arms by his mother and the beginning of his kingship and with Dionysos, who is struck with madness by Hera but cured by Rhea who sends him out on his own ministry.

Ministry: A Life of Miraculous Acts.
The miracles of Jesus are too many to name in any detail here. Most people know about turning water into wine, driving out demons and raising the dead. Miraculous behaviour is definitely not restricted to Jesus, though.
Hercules has his 12 labours, Merlin has his multiple acts of magic, Dionysos has his ministry of the vine which covers umpteen different myths and a great deal of land! Krishna picks up mountains and Cú Chulainn defends Ulster

Betrayal and Sacrificial Death
By far the most significant points of a Corn God or Solar Hero's story are his birth and his death. His death usually contains three significant aspects: it is unnatural, it is entered into fatalistically and it is brought about by a betrayal.
The story of Jesus has these points well covered via Judas and the crucifixion, even though the Koran and a few others, insist on Jesus' survival. That's a consideration for another time, but it can be said that to be accepted (ie. fit the pattern) Jesus had to be betrayed and sacrificed.
King Arthur is betrayed by his son/nephew Mordred to his death, although he is also earlier betrayed by his wife, Guinevere and best friend, Lancelot. I could go on about the merging and splitting of the myth but we'll be getting off the point.
Merlin is betrayed by Nimue but doesn't die, he's imprisoned forever instead. Adonis is betrayed by Aphrodite in favour of Ares who kills him in the form of a boar. Dionysos is torn to pieces at a very young age by his stepmother's cohorts, but stuck back together later, like Osiris.
Cú Chulainn kills his brother/lover Ferdiad at the behest of Queen Maedbh, interestingly reversing the pattern, although he is later killed by Lugaid after being forced to break a taboo by an old woman.
My favourite version is of Lleu Llaw Gyffes who is betrayed by his lover, Blodeuedd into giving away the secret of how he can be killed. This she gives to her lover, Gronw Pebr, who kills him according to the given formula. For a biblical scholar, it's a bit like the Samson and Delilah story.
It's unusual, but not unknown, for a male to be the betrayer in any of the myths, but the killer is always male and can be seen to represent the "dark twin" of the hero. Arthur has Mordred, Lleu has Gronw Pebr, Jesus has Pilate.
There is a Norse god of light, Baldur who fits the pattern very precisely. His name is Baldur, he is betrayed by his Cousin Loki - in the form of a giantess - and is killed by his brother, the blind god of darkness, Hod.

Finally - Resurrection
After three days Jesus rises again, appears some important people and then ascends to heaven. Funnily enough, he's not the only one, although usually the Solar Hero is promised to rise again rather than actually doing it.
Merlin isn't dead, he's trapped (symbolically dead) awaiting release and King Arthur is taken to Avalon on the point of death in order to return when the country needs him. Baldur will be reborn to begin the world anew after the Ragnarok.
Other heroes don't have a specifically promised rebirth, but their story begins again every Winter Solstice - the traditional birthday of all Solar Heroes.

To conclude:
The tangling of the historical Jesus and the mythological, Solar Hero/Corn God pattern is inextricable, and so it should be. The church's denial of all that came before was a simple claim to political power by means of propaganda and Jesus' Pagan origins were deliberately forgotten. It's easier to control the minds and hearts of the masses if your god is the only one rather than one of many.
The question now remains whether the Pagans can accept Jesus as a demi-god (rather than a threat) equal to Krishna, Merlin, Lleu Llaw Gyffes and a great deal of others I've not mentioned? Similarly, will modern Christians be able to accept that Jesus is not alone, but is one among many as the earliest followers believed.

It's quite common for Pagans to follow one or two patron Gods (no prizes for guessing who does that!) whilst acknowledging all the others. Is it possible for anyone else?

Love,
Seán

Sex and Violence?

2008-08-11T09:06:00.007+01:00

One of my Fasebook friends recently wondered why violence is so prevalent in our society. My answer was that we don't have enough sex.

That's a pretty glib statement at first and sounds a bit like a joke. It is a joke, sort of , but that doesn't mean I don't think it's true. I didn't have enough space in the Facebook comments box to qualify my statement properly, so that's what this essay is about. I'm thinking of adding pictures too. (Why not - I like pictures!)

Just as an aside - does anybody else find Facebook to be the world's most amazing consumer of time? I'm beginning to think it may be evil.

Boys and Girls, Chimps and Bonobos

Have you ever noticed the different ways very young children play. At a really young age (crawling into toddling) they tend to play individual games next to each other, but as they learn to communicate boys and girls start to fall into different styles of playing. Boys become competitive and girls become co-operative.

This is an appalling generalisation because on an individual level it doesn't actually work, but the subject is so big I've got to use averages. I'm assuming - and with good reason - that my readers have the intelligence to see the difference between, for instance, "male" and "a boy".

So why should this be? The nature/nurture debate rages on; personally I think it's a little bit of both. The fact remains, though, that by the time they start infant school (3-4) girls play together and boys play against each other.

Let's apply this to our own societies which have been highly patriarchal in character across a vast history of thousands of years. Obviously competition becomes the norm and violence, which could be considered the ultimate form of competition, is widespread.

We could wonder how much different our societies would be if we'd been matriarchal from the start. Actually, we don't have to wonder because we've got a perfect comparative example right in front of us: chimps and bonobos.

I'm assuming that everyone knows what a chimpanzee is. Well, a bonobo - which is endangered and only lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo - is a smaller, slimmer species of chimp with longer legs, more individualistic facial features and a greater tendency to stand upright. Physically they're very similar. Socially they could hardly be more different.

Chimp society is male-dominated and competitive. Extreme violence to males outside the group is normal and violence as a conflict-resolution is common within the group. Bonobos are female-dominated, co-operative and egalitarian as well as very family oriented. They also have conflicts but deal with them in a completely different way: they have sex.

Bonobos have sex for any and every reason they, or we, can think of. They use sex as a greeting, as reconciliation, as conflict-resolution and tension-relief and, frankly, because it's fun. They don't discriminate in terms of age or gender, group sex is normal and permanent pairings are non-existent. You can usually spot a female bonobo by the huge, swollen vulva.

An example (which I think I'm plagiarising from Rev. Ivan Stang) would give a good demonstration of the differences between chimp and bonobo societies:

Imagine a small tribe of chimpanzees at rest. Now throw a large bunch of bananas into their midst. Immediately there's tension. The browbeaten females cower; the braver males make a grab for them. The dominant male beats the daylights out of everyone else until they give in and the bananas are all his. He eats what he wants, leaving the rest to the others to fight over. The females are lucky if they get the skins.

Okay - Imagine a small tribe of bonobos at rest. Now throw a large bunch of bananas into their midst. Immediately there's tension. Suddenly everyone turns to their nearest neighbour(s) and start having frantic, orgasmic sex. In a little while everyone feels much better at which point the dominant female takes all the bananas and shares them out evenly amongst the tribe. It seems that if violence is uncivilised then sex must be the world's greatest civilizer.

The chimps probably developed violent competition due to a lack of resources, the bonobos never needed to. They have all they need and more. Sounds idyllic doesn't it? It sort of is.

Human Bonobos

I'm going to state right now that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence for the existence of matriarchal human societies in our distant past. This doesn't actually mean that they didn't exist (and I believe they probably did), just that we can't prove it. So, I'm going to postulate one.

Imagine living in a place where all your immediate needs are completely taken care of and always have been. There is no need to compete for resources so competitiveness in society is unnecessary. Female-domination would be highly likely. Co-operation and leisure are, therefore, the norms and what could be more co-operative and leisure-based than sex? Lots and lots of sex.

Frankly, such societies would be rare. Should a highly competitive tribe from a neighbouring, but less well-resourced land decide they want all the food, then it's goodbye to our feminist utopia. But they wouldn't be completely forgotten. They would live on in memory and folklore.

They are certainly remembered in the ancient Greek and Celtic legends of the Fortunate Isles away to the West. Tir na nÓg and Tir na mBan in Celtic mythology are perfect examples. These are places where there is no hunger or thirst, where all are healthy and need not struggle, where sex has no shame attached and which are ruled by a Queen.

Patriarchal Religion

The supreme sexual power of women was still recognised (albeit in a somewhat lessened form) in the Middle East in the shape of the Temple Prostitute. This carried on right up to the 4th Century AD and was a form of worship for Astarte (Ishtar). The word "prostitute" has connotations nowadays which cannot be applied to the Qedeshah (local Semitic word). She was a sacred female, a minor queen in her own right and not the servant of the men who came to her. She was a servant of her Goddess.

Patriarchal Judaism didn't like it at all. In order to hold position and gain strength in a world quite hostile to its harsh and ascetic ways the Hebrews had to be competitive, they had to fight - like men!

The suppression of women is Patriarchy's most successful policy when it comes to gaining political power. The suppression of women is also the suppression of sex - remember that woman's sex-drive is far more powerful than a man's - and the suppression of sex leads to an immense build-up of energy. Nothing has suppressed sex like Patriarchal Monotheism.

The human sex-drive is incredibly powerful - it's next on the list immediately after food, warmth, shelter. When suppressed that energy has to go somewhere and a skillful propagandist can sublimate and redirect it in anyway he chooses. Fundamentalist Islam (which treats women slightly worse than cattle) is particularly good at this nowadays.

Back to the Present

So that's the history - but how does it apply to the present day?

Well, we're in a kind of flux position. The position of women in modern Western society has improved immensely in recent years, although true equality is still a long way off. Most of us also have all our immediate needs pretty much sorted and secure. A franker and more accepting attitude to sexuality has also become more prominent, although nowhere near enough.

On the other hand we have several thousand years of ingrained Monotheistic history and cultural propaganda which isn't going to go away.

Even though it's no longer necessary for survival, competition is still encouraged and lauded in ordinary society and on the sports field. Violence is less common than it was, but still prominent.

What we need to do now - and in many ways it's just following a trend that's already begun - is to promote two things: Firstly, the feminine (anarchist) virtues of mutual trust and co-operation and secondly sex - lots and lots (of lots of different types) of sex.

Taoist Bonking

According to the ancient Taoist sages in China, the teachers of wisdom are female. The Tao is female, and in sexual (ie. civilised) terms women are superior to men. The sooner both men and women realise this, the better. Sex needs to be learned and taught and practised a lot and, contrary to our society's norms, the teachers need to be women. This doesn't preclude homosexuality because in a truly civilised society all forms of consensual sex become normal - just like the bonobos.

There are violent people in our society, mostly poor and uneducated young men. There are less than the papers would have us believe, but they do exist. They are brought up to be competitive, suspicious of sex and fearful of difference, just like the boys who killed Michael Causer in Liverpool recently. Had they been brought up in a feminised society, would they have considered a gay person as a threat, or a target? Or would they be too busy with their own sexual experiments to want to go hurting anybody?

It's a huge subject and I've waffled for long enough, so here's a little question to finish:

You and you belovèd(s) have just had a fantastic, multi-orgasmic session - do you really want to listen to somebody telling you to get up and fight? No? Neither would I.

Love,

Seán

Scary Sexuality?

2008-07-19T10:38:00.006+01:00

I'm afraid things have been a little busy here at Dionysian Towers, so please accept my heartfelt apologies for this little hiatus. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I've worked out what normal actually is.
Some of my more eagle-eyed friends may have also noticed that this blog now has an "adult" setting. Basically this is because I don't want Google to wag its virtual finger in my direction when I post nude pictures or, as I'm about to do now, write about SEX!

YES! I SAID SEX!
Really, I mean sexuality rather than actual sex. Sex is a lot more fun to do than to write about. Sexuality, on the other hand, should be thought, spoken and written about as often as possible.

The inspiration for this came from my number-one son who, upon hearing that I could sew better than my wife, said, "How gay are you?". Okay, he was just making a joke but there's a very obvious implication there - that sewing is "gay". I recently found out that my late uncle's father worked as a jobbing tailor in the East End of London in the 1930's. He was a happily married, respectable Jewish man and any unlikely questions about his sexuality would hardly have had anything to do with his ability to sew.

We are coming back here to a particular bugbear of mine, the categorisation of human beings. Stereotypes make us less than what we really are - human.

Gay?
We tend to define a person by their sexuality. In truth we define people in many ways, one of the biggest being by their job, but sexuality is seen as a somehow important one. There are precedents, of course, which allow for certain positive generalisations: the lumping of people into "gay" and "straight" gave the world an identifiable group who managed to successfully campaign for the legalisation of homosexual sex. How much, though, of this definition can be said to be true?

I have a friend - let's call him P - who is definitely and obviously GAY (the capital letters are deliberate). He comes across as thoroughly camp - he works as a hairdresser, has perfect nails and calls everybody "darling". He even used to do a drag act many years ago. His boyfriend (and also his ex-) is quite definitely not obviously gay. You would have to ask if you saw them together.

The question is, therefore, how can we define any person as gay in any other way than by the fact that their preferred sexual pleasures are taken with someone of the same gender? There's no correlation to lifestyle apart from sexuality. If P slept with a woman, would that make him a better or worse hairdresser? Would another gay friend, S, be a better or worse prison guard if he was straight? Indeed, can he sew?

Straight?
At a recent Pagan camp a talk was to be given by Mr RH. My friend T asked his girlfriend who this was because he couldn't remember. She described RH thusly: "You know. The one you fancy!"
The thing is, T is "straight". As far as I know he has only ever has had sexual relations with women. But does it make him a better or worse driver, electrician, boyfriend because he considers another man as good-looking and charismatic? Interestingly, RH is generally rather popular with women, but very masculine men seem to hate him on sight!

Some people have described me as bisexual because I consider myself open-minded. I'm affectionate with my close friends regardless of gender and choose not to use a sexual label for myself ("Human, Pagan, Seán. Those are all the categories I need, thanks!"). Yet, I am very obviously happily married to a woman - and we have three children. What, then, would be the difference should I indulge in a bisexual act? Would my vegetables grow any faster? Could I play my flute any better? I doubt it.

I also have two female friends who are both very happily in heterosexual relationships. They don't normally find other women attractive - although they appreciate good looks when they see them just like anybody else. Yet they are strongly attracted to each other, especially when alcohol has knocked a few barriers out of the way. Does this make them lesbians? It might, but who cares? Does it make them better or worse parents?

Queer?
Human sexuality is as rich, diverse and complex as any other human trait - there is no such thing as normal with which to compare. Homo-, hetero-, bi-, are all labels for acts, not people. Some people love the opposite gender, others their own. Some people love being tied up and whipped, some people love multiple partners, some people love enormously fat people. It's even possible for one's tastes to change over the years. In the end we're all queer, because there are none of us who are normal. Is it scary to be queer?

What is scary is the deliberate definition of "normal" into a very strict and limited group of behaviours. The monotheistic religions are particularly responsible for this as a form of social control. Sadly, they have given us groups who believe that they can "cure" homosexuality. Don't believe me? Read this.
In certain cultures different types of sexuality have been considered "normal", consider Classical Greece as a pretty obvious example.

Being Different is Necessary!
The human race evolves not just physically, but also culturally. Sexuality is one of our strongest driving forces after the needs for food, shelter and the security of the tribe. A friend of mine (who may write about this himself yet) considers homo- and other non-breeding sexualities as natural results of over-population. I think they are natural results of our tendencies towards civilisation and social interaction. The Shaman/Witchdoctor/Priest of the tribe is the strange one, and quite rightly so.
There's a rather wonderful book by Stan Gooch called The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals. Yes - I too thought it would be hilarious, but it's actually pretty good. Here's what he says about homosexuality:

. . the priesthood has always been a refuge for types of homosexual and lesbian, as also for other kinds of sexual "deviance" - ie. sexual, presexual, or asexual behaviours whose aim is not the production of children. . . the homosexual/lesbian and androgynous human being has made a significant contribution to the evolution of religion. . .

I would suggest that non-breeding sexualities - which would normally die out as a behaviour pattern amongst most evolving creatures - are necessary to the evolution of both the individual human and human culture as a whole. Therefore (assuming the rule of An it harm none. . .) they should be encouraged. Those who stand for "normality" and simple categorisation are actually standing against the natural evolution of the human race. From this point of view, we need more queers!

Can we be define sewing as "gay" then? I suppose it depends whose trousers they are!

Love (in all its forms),
Seán

WNBR. There's more!

2008-06-21T10:43:00.003+01:00

Please watch this video!

Featured video: World Naked Bike Ride 2008 - Manchester

The guy in the blue helmet looks really familiar!

Love (and naked bikes!)
Seán

An Odd Thought.

2008-06-16T13:34:00.003+01:00

Just a thought, bit of a radar blip.

Yesterday was Fathers' Day.
I don't believe in Fathers' Day. It's a con to make money for the card and present manufacturers. Remember the Simpsons? -

"No, no, no. It's got to be something warm and fuzzy, like Love Day only not so lame" . . .

"Happy Love Day everybody!"

That's how I see Fathers' Day.

So yesterday I gave my Dad a card I bought for him. He doesn't really believe in Fathers' Day either.
My kids gave me cards they'd made and some vegan chocolate, which I accepted and enjoyed.

So
On a scale of 1 - 10, just precisely how brainwashed, controlled and thoroughly duped am I?
Happy Love Day everybody!

Love (and a deeply exasperated sigh),
Seán

WNBR Update

2008-06-16T09:55:00.003+01:00

Well, we did it! Hooray.

It was bloody cold though.

Huge support and thanks should go to the fabulous Meg Fenwick for organizing things again despite being mad busy with the Liverpool city of culture stuff.

There was an estimated 80 people riding, which is about 50% up on last year and we covered a little more ground this time. Sadly, the gender balance was a bit off. There were more women last year than this, which is a shame because it doesn't encourage women to take part. Having said that, Manchester's ride is organized and led by a woman - which is no bad thing at all.

Did we get our message across? I don't know, only time will tell; but perhaps a few people will wonder why they saw a bunch of naked cyclists on Friday night in Manchester and ask themselves what they were doing it for.

If you like to look at pictures of naked people on bikes (Hell, I do!), then you can find some by Lily The Pink here, some by Spinneyhead here and my own here.

There's even a short film report by Granada, interviewing Meg. It starts off with a very handsome young man doing spinning exercises in a vain attempt to keep warm. You can find it by following this link, but be quick as I'm not sure how long it will last.
There should also be short documentary by Gary and Sylvia (aka G7UK) somewhere, but that hasn't surfaced yet. I'll keep looking.

Will I do it again next year? Absolutely! And hopefully so will my beloved, after a little cycling practise.

Love,
Seán

Public Nudity - Hooray!

2008-06-10T10:24:00.008+01:00

Firstly, before I start to waffle on, a particularly important diary entry:

On Saturday 7th June my (much) better half of ten years, Lily the Pink (Losing The Thread) and I got married. Twice actually - one legal, one Handfasting (because Pagan weddings aren't recognised over here).

I want to thank all our family and friends for being there and for giving us nice presents. I also want to particularly thank the following people:

Laurette, for being an excellent musician and leading the procession so well;
Morag, (the mysterious LRM) for a superb vegan wedding cake;
Womble, (Womble's Rants) for fabulous photography;
Cath, for being the marvellous maid of honour;
Daniel, ( The Astral Pilgrim) for being the only person who could possibly cope with being my best man.

And finally Michelle Screechowl for being our celebrant priestess and creating such a superb ceremony.

We love you all and if we've missed anybody out - please accept this heartfelt apology, my head's only just stopped spinning.

Now, onto today's subject:

PUBLIC NUDITY

That's about as big as I can get it! (ahem!)

Now is the time of the World Naked Bike Ride. All across the Northern Hemisphere (the Southerners do it in March, usually) people are stripping off their clothes, painting slogans on their naked skin and riding bicycles around highly populated cities. In the UK it has already happened in Sheffield, Southampton and York. It's due in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff soon.
For details of a ride near you please follow this link.

Manchester's ride will be on from 6pm (riding at 7pm) on Friday 13th June - meet outside the Basement Café on Lever Street. I will be there. I hope you will be too.

WHY?
Frankly, why not? Actually WNBR has a proud history starting in 2004 as a collaboration of Artists For Peace in Canada and Manifestación Ciclonudista in Spain. It quickly spread to the rest of the world and is now (I believe) the world's largest environmental protest.

So what's it for?
At base WNBR is a pro-cycling, anti-oil pollution protest. The overuse and overproduction of the private car has been instrumental in the devastating environmental disaster that our planet is going through. Spaceship earth is rapidly falling to bits because we've abused it.
The greenhouse gases that are causing the ice caps to melt are primarily due to exhaust emissions and car production.
Human activity is directly responsible for the extinction of 136 species every day. If that doesn't make you want to do something about it - after you've stopped crying - then it bloody well should.
One way is to stop using the car and start looking at alternatives, like cycling. Nobody is saying that cars should be removed altogether from the world because that would be impossible, but that there are better ways. Car pooling could immediately halve the traffic on the way to work. Walking the kids to school reduces morning congestion to a quarter of its previous level - as all drivers know who work the same hours as schools.

The message of WNBR isn't negative, though. We want to encourage cycling as a healthy, effective and fun way to get around. Here's a link to a lovely list of all the benefits of cycling, such as lower health care expenses, cardio-vascular improvements, stress-relief through exercise, much cheaper fuel and parking and a license to dress like a nutter!

Why naked?
Actually, you don't have to be naked, though most people are. It's "bare as you dare", which is a good way of encouraging fancy dress and body painting.
One of the reasons for the nudity is to highlight, in a very graphic way, just precisely how vulnerable a cyclist is on our roads. According to this report 15,000 cyclists are injured or killed on our roads every year. That's a lot. The point that WNBR is making here is twofold - firstly less cars and more bikes means less accidents and a lot less fatal ones; secondly that drivers need to be more aware of cyclists (as one naked rider had painted on his back last year, "Not Invisible Now!")
To be fair, I understand that many drivers will complain that cyclists don't follow the rules of the road and put themselves and others at risk in so doing. I agree. I hate the stupid bastards too, and if I can use WNBR to promote cycling according to the Highway Code then I will.

Although not to do with cycling, the nudity aspect of WNBR has one further message - that of body positivity. I was quite upset recently by a friend who said she would have ridden naked but she's put on a stone recently, so won't. That is not what it's about!
World Naked Bike ride is NOT a beauty contest.
Promoting body positivity is about saying to the world (especially advertisers and film-makers!) "Human beings are available in a wide range of sizes, colours and shapes - and they're all good!"
We are bombarded with images of the body beautiful, we (especially if you are female) are told that we won't be loved if we're not thin enough, we are made ashamed of ourselves for being imperfect and therefore human. Images of perfect people are used to sell us products so that we too can become equally perfect if we buy them, yet these perfect people don't even exist. They are digitally enhanced to conform to an expected image.
WNBR proves it all to be bullshit. Beauty is not in conformity, it is in diversity. And there are few species more diverse than people.

One more point to encourage nudity: There is one word I've heard again and again (and used myself) from first-time nudists. They said they found it liberating.
That is absolutely the correct word. When you are released from the need to project an image via your clothes, or to hide your imperfections behind them, then you are totally free to be yourself. It really is truly liberating.

Finally, to prove that I really do put my money where my mouth is, here's a picture from last year's ride. It was taken by a very fine gentleman known as Spinneyhead. Thanks, Ian.

Love and bare bicycles,

Seán

A New Poem

2008-05-30T09:20:00.006+01:00

Rather than my usual rant, this post comes under the heading of a diary entry, or possibly shameless self-promotion! Hell, why else do I write this thing?

Whitman
The town of Bolton has a long and powerful connection to America's greatest poet, Walt Whitman. The museum even has Whitman's canary. It's a long story.
In a fit of synchronicitous timing I've had a whole Walt Whitman week. I've been reading about him, writing about him (he features in a forthcoming book, pluggity plug!) and last night I was part of the band who played some tunes for the University of Bolton's section of the Walt Whitman Weekend that's happening in Bolton.
I'm thinking of growing a huge white beard and fancying soldiers now!

Anyway.
I don't write enough poetry. I always feel like I'm doing too many other things to find the time and moving too fast for the inspiration to hit me.
So - on Wednesday evening I went to the starting event of the LRM's psychogeography festival (see the link at the side of the page). On the way back I bought some cider for my beloved and I to share. The thing is that alcohol, endorphins from a 10-mile cycle ride, and a head full of things to do aren't really conducive to a good night's sleep. I'm normally early-to-bed-early-to-rise; this time I collapsed at midnight and woke at 2:30am with weird dreams, reflux pains and an inability to get back to sleep.

Side note: For those who don't know, acid reflux is one of those joys of getting older - abuse your body at 20, pay for it at 40!

Since I had a headful of Whitman and couldn't sleep I decided to write about it and exorcise his spirit at the same time. To whit(!), I wrote a Whitman-inspired poem.
Derivative? Probably. A pale imitation? Certainly. But actually, I quite like it.
So here it is:

I am empty of sleep

Because too full of what is, and is, and will be

And that which is, which opens itself before me.

With all, and of all, and be all resounding

Excludes dream

Until thought and fullness overflowing force escape to ink and paper

And the fluttering, laughing, howling mind pinned,

Folded, forced into

Inadequate shapes of words.

Seán Fitton

May 2008

In other news:
If you can get to the Royal Exchange in Manchester before the end of June, please do so. There's an exhibition on which is part of the LRM's "Get Lost" psychogeography festival (yup, the link's at the side of this post!), which includes 5 paintings by me.
I'm amazed too.
I originally offered one, which is a kind of map crossed with a kind of sigil. The other four are naked cyclists which I painted for the I Bike MCR festival but which, for reasons not fully given, were never displayed. The LRM's organiser, leading light and generally very fabulous person, Morag asked if she could have them in an emergency. The emergency happened!

And finally. . .
World Naked Bike Ride is coming!
Manchester's leg (please excuse the pun!) will start by meeting at 6pm outside the Basement Café on Lever Street, on Friday the 13th June. It's "bare as you dare", which means you aren't expected to strip off completely if you don't want to, just be there and ride.

If you can't ride, please come to watch your local city's ride and support it. Here's a link to the world site where you can find your local ride and take the chance to show your botty in public.

In the middle of all this I'm getting married. I wonder if I've got the time!

Love,
Seán

Surveillance Culture

2008-05-27T15:17:00.005+01:00

I've recently read an interesting article by Nick Rosen about ways to attempt to live "off the grid" or, in other words, how to to avoid being spied on in everything we do.

Here's the link to said article:

Living Off The Grid

Who's Watching You?
It would appear that we Brits are the most paranoid, surveillance-obsessed people in Europe. As well as the fact that we can all be traced every time we use the internet (like I'm doing now, and so are you!) or use our mobile phones (which are GPS trackers), we have more CCTV cameras on our streets than any other country excepting the U.S.A.

Here's a nice quote:

Four years ago there were an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras – the exact figure is unknown as there is no central registration system – but there are probably nearer 6 million cameras now. There are up to ten on every bus and dozens at every station, so avoid London Transport if you want to evade the cameras. Most CCTV runs from speed cameras, which are less prevalent in the countryside. Maps of them are available on car websites

Note that figure: 6 million cameras. That's roughly one camera for every ten people in the country. That's a lot of cameras, and yet so many of us want to get on telly - including me!

There's also a total lack of legal registration dealing with these cameras except one simple rule - the height. You can put up a camera and legally point it just about anywhere you like as long as it's 8 feet or more above the ground so nobody can bang their head on it.
The way we pay our bills is recorded and so is the stuff we buy with our debit cards, our credit cards, our store loyalty cards. Such figures, particularly the ones from store loyalty cards are sold to marketers in order to sell us more stuff. Social networking sites are notorious for doing this sort of thing. Facebook has by far the worst reputation.

Suggestions in order to live off the grid include:

Wearing brimmed hats in public (because cameras are above head height)
Tinting your car windows
Using an infra-red light to illuminate your registration plate at night
Swap store loyalty cards with friends
Swap cards for cash
Use the Freecycle Networks
Email via companies that send messages through a "data cloud" (such as Xerobank)
Living in such a way that the use of public utilities is minimized or removed altogether, such as buying a houseboat.

These are pretty good ideas when you find a lack of privacy a problem. My problem is whether or not all these security measures fulfill their specified purpose which is to protect us all from crime.

Let's have a look and see what we can find
In an article published here the police admit that CCTV has had almost no effect on street crime.

Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe

According to this really useful website the country with the least public surveillance in Europe is Greece. Greece has annually about 31 assaults per 10,000 people, we have 745! Similarly the UK gets about 157 robberies per 10,000 people, Greece has about 8. Even with mucked-about and massaged figures the discrepancy is obvious.

What To Do?
Frankly all this extra security is proving pretty pointless, but because people are paranoid and (despite the evidence) think more laws and security measures mean less crime it isn't going to go away. So what can we do about it?

One way is to attempt to live off the grid, which is difficult but possibly not such a bad idea. There is an alternative, though, inspired by those wonderful people, M@ and holly from HUMANWINE in their song Big Brother. The chorus, very simply put goes:

Big brother is watching. Let him watch!

I've forgotten where the reference is but there's some more inspiration from one of my favourite American heroes, Justin Boland (see the links to Brainsturbator, Skilluminati and Hump Jones). The point he's made goes something like this: If we are under constant surveillance which we cannot but accept then we need to turn that to our own advantage. Our lives are no longer private because we are being watched and the way to take control of that is to make one's life a performance.
We could try to escape our spy-on-you culture but we're fighting a losing battle, so instead (as in Tai Chi and Akido) we use the enemy's strength against him. We make the surveillance cameras see what we want them to by performing for them. This has it's occult element also in being an exercise in consistent self-awareness.

In other words AN IT HARM NONE DO WHAT YOU WILL. Do what you believe is absolutely the right thing to do, because to do otherwise would be to become less that yourself, and if the cameras are watching - let 'em.

What more can we do other than our true will, regardless of who's watching? The question now (with the greatest sympathy for those who live under totalitarian regimes like China and the US) is are we brave enough?

Love,
Seán

A Positve Environmental Future?

2008-05-15T12:27:00.003+01:00

Please read this:

http://www.alternet.org/story/84960/

and then tell me what you think. I'm impressed but I'd value other opinions for balance.

Thank you.

Love,
Seán

Small-Town Racism

2008-05-10T17:27:00.003+01:00

On May 1st we had our annual council election. Whilst not terribly important on any global scale political pundits usually see these elections as an indicator of the mood of the country and the potential state of the next general election. Overall there was a general rise towards the Conservative party and away from the present Labour government (For my U.S. friends, that's a bit like Republican and Democrat respectively). But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to look at things on a much more local level.

I live in a political area (ward) called Radcliffe West which comprises of roughly 7,000 voters as do the other two wards, Radcliffe North and Radcliffe East (odd names, considering I live right at the Southern tip of the town!)

Only about a third of the population actually bothered to get off their arses and vote, and here's a rough breakdown of the results:

Labour 44% (a fall of 6% compared to last year)
Conservative 27% (a rise of 5%)
BNP 18% (about the same)
Liberal Democrat 7% (about the same)
UK Independence Party 3% (no candidate last year)

A Worrying Pattern Emerges
The fact that Labour hold almost half of the votes (they actually had 50% last year) comes as no surprise, nor does the fact that the Tories are second with roughly half of Labour's votes. After all, this is an area of low education, poor health, low life-expectancy and all the other things that make up a typically "working class" town.

What bothers me is number three - the BNP.

For those who don't know, BNP stands for British National Party. Some years ago, before re-branding, they were called the National Front and were rightly known as vicious, racist nazis. They still are, but nowadays they have a respectable, clean-shaven face and a nice suit (instead of being a bunch of skinhead football hooligans).

We've only had a BNP candidate for the last two years but they seem to have been remarkably successful. Look again at the figures - the Liberal Democrat Party is, nationally, the third party in the country with 63 MP's (as compared to Labour's 351 and Conservative's 192, the BNP don't have one) - but that doesn't seem to be the case round here. The Lib Dems actually got less than half the vote of the BNP. In fact, if you round up the figures a bit, roughly 1 in every 5 voters in Radcliffe West voted for the BNP.

Or, to put it in a really blunt way: where I live, a fifth of the people who care about the government are fascists!

The BNP
I vote even though I instinctively don't trust politicians. I have a strong feeling that anyone who actively seeks out political power is the sort of person who shouldn't have it. Nonetheless I vote because it's one of the very few chances I get to have a say in how my country is run - it's bullshit really, but it's the best we've got so it'll have to do. Use it or lose it!

However, assuming that people vote because they want to express an opinion, it's safe to assume that the BNP voters also care about how their country is run. That's pretty scary. Let's see what they're voting for:

According to http://www.stopthebnp.org.uk/ the BNP are white-only party opposed to any none-white immigration (where do Greeks and Turks stand, I wonder?) who deny the Holocaust, believe that all black people should be repatriated - including the ones who were born here - and would make mixed-race relationships illegal. They're also anti-gay and anti-feminist.
I'm not going to go into them all, but their policies can be found by a simple Wikipaedia search - they are the same, in substance as the policies of the German National Socialist Party in the 1930's.

Why, then, is 1 in 5 of the voters in this area voting for them?

An Answer?
Okay, I don't have one! But then, I'm not a BNP voter so I wouldn't. I do believe, though that it comes down to something I've mentioned in previous posts - the fear of difference!

I would like to state the following as my own opinion of immigration:

Immigration is a good thing!
Immigration does not weaken a country, it enriches it. The reason for it is that the people do not make a country - the country (ie. the LAND itself) makes the people. The landscape, weather and language are what make the British what they are - and to become fully British takes an immigrant family three generations.

This country is made of immigrants. Everyone in Britain is the distant (or not-so-distant) descendant of an immigrant. Everyone. Including the members of and voters for the BNP. Having dark skin is the same result of ancestry as having red hair, but it's easier for simple-minded fascists to pick on.

A final word
Some of the nicest people I've ever met are immigrants. I spent a lovely day a couple of weeks ago talking to a native Pole and a native Norwegian. One of my best mates is an immigrant, again from Norway, who brought other friends - a Swede and an Italian to a party recently.
One of the nicest couples I've ever met are Ugandan Indians - the BNP would have them out like a shot because they've got brown faces! One ex-girlfriend of mine was of Indian descent and one was Ghanaian. My doctor's a Pakistani.

Should the BNP gain power at all, such people would be forced out of the country. Is this really what 1 in 5 people actually want? I do hope not! As a final note I'm adding Stop The BNP as a permanent link on this blog.

Fascists: we don't want them, we don't need them, we're better off without them.

Love,
Seán

The World's Tiniest Share in a BAFTA!

2008-04-22T09:23:00.008+01:00

On Sunday night the BAFTA TV awards were announced. For my non-Brit friends BAFTA stands for British Academy Film and Television Awards. They do one ceremony for cinematic releases and one for telly.

So here's the story.
Almost exactly a year ago I joined Gadbury casting as a supporting artiste (ie. an "extra") and they sent me to Trafford in Manchester for a couple of days to play a factory worker in a film called Boy A. It was my first time and very weird but fun, in an odd kind of way. I had to do really exciting things like walk past a window, or pretend to count bottles in a warehouse.

It turned out that Boy A was taken from a fictional book by Jonathan Trigell, based loosely on the famous Jamie Bulger case; the Boy A in question being one of the young murderers trying to build a new life and identity after his release from prison. For those who don't know, Jamie Bulger was a little Liverpool boy of about 2 years old who, in 1993, was taken quietly away from his mother by two older boys (both 10) in a shopping centre, who then tortured and killed him.
(On a personal note, it actually made me feel ill to write that last sentence. Jamie was born in the same year as my eldest son - in other words, I was taking a two-year old boy out shopping with me at the same time.)

The main part was played brilliantly by a young actor called Andrew Garfield, and bravely too. He would have been 10 himself in 1993, so he's exactly the right age, but would you want to be associated with such a dangerous part?

The film
The film of Boy A came out on Channel 4 (where else?) in November last year. It isn't the sort of thing which would attract me and, frankly, I watched it because I was in it! In many ways I'm glad I did but I also wish I hadn't.
Boy A is bleak, deliberately so. The colours are washed out, the atmosphere is all echo and emptiness and the whole thing does Manchester no favours at all. It was what it set out to be: a hard, gritty, uncompromising drama. From my point of view it was two hours of fucking grim. As you can tell, I didn't really enjoy it much.
As for my part - after all the cuts I appear for about two seconds walking away from camera. I only knew it was me because my beloved and my mother recognized the way I walk.

The award
Amazingly Boy A won a BAFTA. Really, that's not so amazing because it was actually won by Andrew Garfield as Best Actor - he earned it too. He's a really nice lad and a damn good actor.
The odd thing is that because I was involved in it - and despite the fact that I barely appear, have no functional role or input to speak of and didn't actually like the end result - I still feel some kind of weird pride in the award.
Somehow I feel like I've got the world's tiniest share in a BAFTA!
Strange or what?

On a much brighter note, Best Film was won by Mark of Cain which starred my agent, and a proper actor, Matthew (Michael) McNulty. Fantastic!

Love,
Seán

A Band is Born!

2008-04-15T18:36:00.006+01:00

This is more a diary entry than one of my usual rants, but what the hell. It's something I'm rather proud of and want to share.

April 12th.

For those who don't know, I'm involved in doing stuff to help restart the Basement Social Centre/Café in Manchester. On Saturday April 12th a group of people involved had decided to join in the days of action for squats and autonomous spaces by creating a family-fun-day-type-thing in a public space. At the meetings various ideas were put forward. I offered a Tai Chi workshop and suggested that I ask some of my lovely musican friends if they'd like to get together for a fundraising busk.

So, some time in March this year I mugged my friends Womble and Brynjar into having a go. I play wooden flute and tin whistle and I'm self-taught and, therefore not especially good. Brynjar plays guitar, self-taught like me, but he hasn't really performed before.

Womble is a different matter altogether. She plays violin, amongst other things, and is classically trained to a high degree. When it comes to understanding music she really knows what she's talking about, which can't be truthfully said of the other two of us.

From my point of view that's fantastic. Not only has she got a better ear than me (not difficult), she's forgotten more than I've managed to learn - and working with a properly trained musician means I can learn a whole lot more.

I think we managed about four rehearsals, in my kitchen, which included choosing tunes and working out how to put them together, chord structures and so-on. All-in-all, maybe 6-8hours of rehearsal time was what we managed.

We even thought of a name - Cacaphonix - for which my number one son created a banner

And then came the day.

We met up at Cathedral Gardens in Manchester on Saturday afternoon. The people running the show (Hi, Nic and Vera. X) were finding food and painting banners. Sara took the munchkins doing stuff, a samba band turned up as well as more people and I did my workshop.

Then it was our turn.

Okay, we played a lot of bum notes (well, I certainly did). Okay, we were slightly out of time on more than one occasion. Okay, we could barely be heard over the sound-system of the No Borders people.

Yet, it was great fun. We set up, we tuned up and we played. In public. For the first time ever. Perhaps I'm an attention-seeking tart (perhaps?!), but I loved it and I wanna do it again!

It is my hope that this officially heralds the birth of Cacaphonix, folk trio extraordinaire!

We even have documentary evidence:

Love and musicianship,

Seán

I'm a Film Star (sort of)!

2008-04-03T13:43:00.005+01:00

Believe it or not!
Okay, I'm not really a film star, although I could pretend to be Johnny Depp's slightly chubby brother. I have been in a film, though. It was called Poppy Shakespeare, and was on Channel 4 on Monday night (31st March). It'll probably be on one of the digital channels again fairly soon.
I'll apologise here to my chums outside Britain who won't have the vaguest idea what I'm waffling on about.

Stardom
It's very wierd watching a film you've taken part in. When I watch a film normally I naturally suspend disbelief like any good TV-weaned automaton. The actual filming process doesn't matter to me and I treat the goings-on as if they are reality, albeit in a temporary and limited sense.
When you know the process it's very different. Firstly I was watching the film past the main characters to see myself and my friends who were playing the background parts. Secondly I remembered what happened in the actual filming and how completely different it was from what appeared on screen. Obviously that difference is down to the amazing skills of the crew and director, but it does give one a type of double vision.
I watched Harvey eat a little bit of banana in one scene. The important thing to know is that any scene is shot from several angles, each angle several times over. I timed one scene - 3 minutes (a longish one) - it took half a day to film. The whole scene is, therefore, repeated by the actors over and over and over again. The more people doing or saying something the more camera angles there are; the more camera angles there are the more the scene is repeated. Harvey ate a bite of banana in one scene: in reality he ate at least six bananas, very slowly, over a five-hour period.
Frankly, I feel ill for him.

Bunny
There are other things too. I know that the guy in the bunny costume is really a red-haired Scot, that the cameraman is called Zack and that my trousers were held up with safety pins. I know that all the cigarettes were herbal, but still absolutely vile, and that the director pinched a lollipop from one scene potentially cocking-up the continuity if anyone noticed.
Yet, despite all this insider knowledge I still found it all believable. Not just the film itself, but also during the making of it - it's that double vision thing again.

Acting
I make no claims whatsoever to being a great actor, but I like to think it's something I have a kind of raw talent for. I was cast as an unnamed mental patient in the film, and was told to be nervous and twitchy, subject to shocks; so I was.
In doing so, though, it became a temporary reality. When I heard "Action!" I was Mr Twitch, when I heard "Cut!", I was Seán again. It was less a pretending and more a momentary becoming - double vision again - and it struck me that what I've been doing is very much akin to Shamanism.

Shaman
I like the frog as a symbol of the Shaman. Frogs live in two worlds equally and neither entirely, they are a bridge between them. They need both worlds to survive.
The Shaman does the same thing. S/he ("He" from now on) moves between worlds equally, bringing the qualities of one to the benefit of the other. He has a double vision that sees the reality and necessity of both worlds at the same time.
The Shaman also does something else: he acts. To truly understand the creatures and people around him he becomes them in a temporary way. One of the ways a Shaman will honour his totem creature or animal allies is by dancing them, in other words becoming them temporarily.
I'm sure that many will simply pretend at first, but as I found, pretending with conviction turns into becoming.

Jazz
I'm back to the old Jazz cliché, Fake it 'til you make it again. If I can become a mad person in a temporary and controlled manner, what else could I, or anybody, be and for how long?
Can a human being become exactly that which they choose to be temporarily and then revert to some base state?
Can that be made permanent so that the new state becomes the base state?

I believe in Fake it 'til you make it because I know it works. What I'm finding fascinating is that should the Shaman/Actor be able to change the base state of their being then the base state must, necessarily, be impermanent. In other words, there is no true person except what (and if!) that person chooses for themselves.

Find your true will?

Love,
Seán

The Demon Drink!

2008-03-13T12:21:00.002Z

It was budget day yesterday and our Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has made the usual measures of increasing fuel and road taxes and adding extra duty to alcohol. Fair enough, nothing newsworthy there then. It sounds like the usual pretending to be the good guys (read, "fashionably ecological") whilst being nothing of the sort. For an example of this consider our government's increase in tax on high-polluting cars as compared to their insistence on building yet more runways at Heathrow and Stansted

Booze
What caught my attention was the "reason" for the price rise on booze. According to the radio news this morning it was aimed at curbing "binge-drinking culture". Binge-drinking is the latest fashionable way to sell sensationalist newspapers by selling us the latest recycled horror stories of how society is about to crumble into violent chaos because the "youth of today" are doing something their elders don't approve of. Thus, we must attempt to legislate against it - or more cynically, use it to acquire extra tax funds from the general public. Perhaps even Mr. darling believes that we live in an ever-increasing binged-out drunken culture.

Do we?
But do we? Is drinking any more prevalent now than it was at any time in the past, and if it is what are its effects?

I started drinking at around the age of 15/16, as did most of my peers. At the time nobody had heard of the term binge-drinking, you just got drunk. The papers were, of course, full of the latest youth-related horrors which were about to tip society over the edge. I seem to recall it being glue-sniffing at the time.

That was more than 25 years ago. I'm not an alcoholic although I do enjoy a drink 2-3 evenings a week and I do get quite drunk sometimes. Society, it appears, is still standing.

My dad was one of society's young drinkers in the 1950's as was his dad in the 1930's and his dad at the turn of the 20th century. They all drank, their friends drank, their girlfriends drank and they all got thoroughly plastered quite often. They lived in a binge-drinking culture and yet society is still standing after all this time (even if they weren't!).

Gin
In the 18th century William Hogarth produced some very popular satirical cartoons of lower-class gin drinkers containing a moral message about the evils of gin as compared to the proper British drink of beer (marijuana versus wine, anybody?). Gin was also a fashionable evil in the mid 19th century, allowing Charlotte Bronte, in Jayne Eyre, to use it as the reason why the Mad-Woman-In-The-Attic's nurse allowed her to escape periodically and wreak havoc. Funnily enough people were happily drinking wine, and brandy, throughout the rest of the book. It was normal. And occasionally people overdid it - maybe they lived in a binge-drinking culture.

In the late 16th century Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a tract for his son warning him about the evils of over-drinking, especially wine. Shakespeare makes a popular comedic hero of his character, Falstaff because drunkenness was not only common it was, and often still is, funny. Rabelais, at roughly the same time was writing about his great, lusty hero, Pantagruel specifically for his fellow boozers. They wrote these things because they lived in a binge-drinking culture.

Chaucer, nearly 700 years ago, made drunkards the primary characters in his Pardoner's Tale, and drinking too much as a theme in The Wife of Bath because boozing was so common it was normal.

Pre-history
It strikes me that the world has had binge-drinking since alcohol was discovered, and especially since we discovered how to make it ourselves. Our western society, supposedly based on biblical teachings and morality, is built on wine and drinking. Jesus produced gallons of the stuff, and Noah was traditionally the first to get pished after planting the first vines, and look at what happened to Lot!
The bible actually mentions drunkenness - as a moral failing - over seventy times. The various peoples of the bible, over the extremely long period that book covers, appear to have lived in a series of binge-drinking cultures.

Back to Booze
The newspapers and Mr. Darling MP are absolutely right, we do live in a binge-drinking culture. What they haven't mentioned is that we've always lived in a binge-drinking culture. Our society won't collapse if a lot of 19 year-olds get plastered at a weekend - it hasn't done so far - and in fact it may be a social necessity.

I'll leave the last word on binge-drinking to the self-sufficiency writer, John Seymour who puts the whole concept into a perfect nutshell:

"During the war we had a company brewer in every company of the King's African Rifles. He brewed once a week, and would brew beer out of absolutely any kind of grain or grain meal that he could lay his hands on. Most of it was pretty horrible stuff but it kept us sane."

Sláinte!
Seán

Disability Issues

2008-02-24T15:25:00.005Z

I thought about this recently when I went to a meeting about the coming day of action in April. The meeting was held upstairs in a rather nice old pub, but one of our number couldn't come because she couldn't manage the stairs. She is classed as a disabled person, although I didn't know that until quite recently - I just thought she was a small person with wonky hips.
This led me to wondering what a "disabled person" actually is.

Tai Chi
A couple of years ago I used to teach a beginners' class in Tai Chi. One of my students was also a student activist on disability issues and asked me if I could teach a disabled person to do Tai Chi.
I couldn't answer her.
The reason is that she wanted a simple yes/no answer and there wasn't one I could give. From the point of view involved in teaching Tai Chi there's no such thing as a "disabled person", there's just a person. That person may or may not be able to do certain things, and the teaching would therefore take that into account on an individual basis.
To explain a little more clearly: If a person can't touch their toes, is stone deaf, has only one arm or has balance problems from cerebral palsy then I can probably teach them Tai Chi. If a person is blind or confined to a wheelchair then I probably can't - although I'd give it a good old try first!

Car Parking
I understand the usefulness, from a governmental perspective of considering certain people with certain difficulties as "disabled". It's useful for someone who can't walk very well to have some kind of guaranteed car parking near to where they want to go. It's also useful for a governmental agency to be able to classify people by their ability to earn a living, or need for state benefit. This sort of thing is, though, surely as far as the classification needs to go.

Pigeonholes
Regular readers of my rants will probably have guessed what I'm getting at by now: Pigeonholing! The necessities stated above notwithstanding, I've noticed a tendency amongst people to consider "disabled" as a category of person. This is what my, supposedly politically enlightened, Tai Chi student was doing.
It's probably a linguistic thing - we tend to categorise things into simplistic types so that we don't have to think about them properly. Reactionaries and activists rely on this tendency a lot - it dehumanises the enemy and makes them easier to throw things at. Most people do it. I've heard men talk about women and women talk about men as if they're all the same. I've heard whites talk about blacks, pakistanis talk about jews, and cleaners talk about caretakers - all using that same unthinking group categorisation.

A "Disabled Person"
Is it possible to say, then, that people with a blue parking pass for their car are all the same? My friend who didn't like the thought of the stairs probably would say not, and I think she'd be right.
To think in terms of a "disabled person" (and I'm as guilty as anyone else) as opposed to a person who can't perform a particular activity, or has a bit missing, belittles the person. It puts them into a little box labelled "disabled" - one might as well put them in a box labelled "broken" and have done with it.

I'm thinking about the many, many people I've met over the years and a lot of them have been considered disabled, officially that is. My mother is disabled, as is an ex-lover and my friend mentioned above. I know a deaf artist and a one-handed artist. A good friend has schizophrenia. I've known drug and alcohol addicts and a woman who lost a leg in a motorbike accident.
That's just a select few. The question is what, apart from governmental categorisation, have they all got in common? The answer is, frankly, sod all - except one thing.

They're all people.

Let's keep pigeonholes for pigeons.

Love,
Seán

Oops!

2008-02-22T16:30:00.002Z

Just a note to say that I boobed (if you'll excuse the pun!) on the date of this year's World Naked Bike Ride.

It's in June, not July, and Manchester's is on the evening of the 6th to be exact. Here's an addy for all the events around the world as organised so far:

http://nakedwiki.org/index.php?title=List_of_rides

Hope to see lots of you there. Interpret that statement in whatever way you see fit!

Love,
Seán

Basement Shennannigans

2008-02-09T09:36:00.000Z

The Past
For those who don't know about the Basement, here's a quick history lesson. There's also a link to your right and down.
The Basement is/was a volunteer-staffed social centre and vegan café at 24, Lever Street, Manchester. It provides/ed a place for a variety of groups (anarchists, animal rights, LGBT, psychogeographers and a great deal of others but I'm sure you get the picture) to meet and also to promote their agendas with leaflets, newspapers and such. It even has/had a library and bookshop.
It is/was a place where radical artists could display their work and where new musicians could play their music. On top of all that it is/was also a nice place to go for something to eat and drink in a very busy city centre.

The Present
The reason for all the "is/was" business is that the existence of the Basement is, at present, difficult to ascertain. In May 2007 there was a fire in the building above the Basement. The fire didn't do that much damage to the Basement itself but the sprinkler system really buggered things up. There have been several meetings to decide what to do and how to do it and the general concensus was to return to 24, Lever Street when the building was fixed.
The landlord dragged his feet somewhat, but after an arse-kicking by the Basement's legal team he's capitulated. The problem is that it'll take at least another year for the building to be safe and habitable.

(A personal point here: I used to work in the building trade and know how it goes. One year is an overly optimistic estimation. It will take at least eighteen months.)

The question is what to do in the meantime, which is what was discussed at a meeting on Monday night. Many of the groups that used the Basement have found alternative venues on a temporary basis and there are people looking at alternative addresses. One of these is the concept of a squat, although it was thought that it shouldn't be entirely in the name of the Basement. Another was an address provided by the landlord, which needs to be checked out. Nothing has been decided as yet.

The Future
At the moment, what the Basement needs is money, cash, filthy lucre. And to get it, individual people and groups are having events either as Basement fundraisers or at which there will or could be a Basement presence. I'm on the fundraising team I'm going to be using this blog to promote these shennannigans, whether I'm actually involved or not. So here are a few:

On 11 & 12 April there will be a day of decentralised action for squats and autonomous spaces across the UK and Europe (qv: http://april2008.squat.net/en/). The Basement would like to provide a squatted ceilidh/free party/ music weekend for this. I've offered to play in the ceilidh.

February 2008 is also LGBT history month. The UK has its official stuff going on:
(http://www.lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/calendar/Events_Calendar.php)
as does Manchester:
(http://www.manchester.gov.uk/lgbthistorymonth)
and there are some less official free or cheap things with info at the following addies:
http://www.lgym.org.uk/
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/queerreadinggroup
http://www.lgbt.manchester.ac.uk/
http://www.myspace.com/save_the_gay_centre_mcr
http://www.queeryouth.org.uk/
http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/

Across the end of March and April there's the I Bike MCR festival (I've offered some paintings, but not heard back yet - not radical enough?):
http://www.ibikemcr.org.uk/festival.htm
And there's also Critical Mass every month.

Finally for me, how about World Naked Bike Ride (http://www.worldnakedbikeride.org/uk/) in July!

There's a lot we can do if we really want to.

Love,
Seán

PDF Library To Close!

2008-02-02T10:01:00.000Z

The latest news from the Brainsturbator/Skilluminati camp is quite alarming. The library is going to close.

I've mentioned this site before, a few posts ago. For knowledge freaks like me closing it is a bit of a disaster, especially since there's no way I could afford to buy these books. It is highly recommended, therefore, that we all get over there and download what we can while we can.

There's some fascinating stuff, some mind-blowing stuff and some rubbish. Which is which is up to you to decide.

Free knowledge!

It's all here:
http://docquan.com/lib_dead.html

Love,
Seán

six_events the report.

2008-01-27T15:58:00.000Z

I've spent the last week doing an international interactive art thingy called "six_events". It's a little difficult to describe, so I recommend going here to understand what it was all about:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=280211565

The main body of this will be the reports I sent each day to the organiser, Matthew Lee Knowles. Each daily report also contains references to photographs. They can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10634308@N03/sets/72157603801879566/

1 - BUS. Mon 21/01/08
Well, that was odd.
The idea was to take an unpremeditated bus ride, and since I normally cycle to work I was wondering how to fit it in. It seems the fates decided.
I got up this morning to torrents of water falling from the sky - a bus ride had been decided for me! This required getting some cash out of the machine at Asda and breaking it at a paper shop (Asda being closed). I'm of the sort of age that won't give a bus driver a tenner.
After that, catch the bus to work from Radcliffe Bus Station - not the least depressing place in the world, especially at 6.45am (see pic day 1-1).
Disaster - the paper shop was shut!
A walk was required to find another paper shop for change and then another bus stop. Both were found, but neither were especially nice (qv. day 1-2). An unpremeditated beginning to my journey.
When the bus eventually arrived at 7.20, it was getting quite full (day 1-3). It's amazing how so many people can be so quiet in such a small place, each sitting entirely on their own next to someone, listening to the windscreen wipers' rhythmic squeeeeeeek. Everyone has such protective body language, covering themselves with newspapers, bags and hands folded on laps - including me. It smelled of rainy coats and faint tobacco and Monday-morning-don't-want-to-go-to-work-ness.
How to decide where to get off? Fortunately a woman - about 30, black and slim with a plastic bag on her lap - had sat down beside me, so I let her decide. Also fortunately it was at 7.45 at the stop before Bolton Bus Station where I normally get off (day 1-4). I'd like to give that angel a small vote of thanks for saving me another soaking.
As an extra prize, I saved the ticket. (day 1-5)

2 - ROAD. Tue 22/01/08
I found my magickal road through my complete inability to find hi-vis gloves in Bolton. It turned out to be, at least temporarily, the road with no name. So at 2:25pm I got off my bike and pushed around the corner, to be faced by the back end of a wagon, evidently called Smitty (day 2-1).
Whatever it's called, it's a noisy road that rises up and down like Newton's gravity - what goes up above the railway must come down beyond the railway (day 2-2). No apples fell on my head.
This is a road which keeps its dangerous buildings behind bars (day 2-3) - possibly to stop them from attacking unsuspecting situationists pushing their bikes - although the elephant on the pavement gave me some very good advice for life (day 2-4). The shouting of the children from the school across the road threatened to drown out the traffic.
Finally at the end of the road, and at the end of about ten minutes' pushing, the mystery was revealed (day 2-5). Green Lane. Hurrah!
So it's back on the bike and off to the modelling gig.
Oh, bugger. I forgot to clap!

3 - BUILDING. Wed 23/01/08
I've had to cheat a bit on this one!
The building I entered at 7:45 this morning was the one in and outside of which I work - The University of Bolton, specifically the caretaker's office.
I've seriously discovered the building today. I've discovered how hard it is to get full filing cabinets through double doors and that the most popular receptionist is leaving in two weeks!
I did get to sit down, but closing my eyes for more than a moment wasn't really much of an option - so I tried to listen to the University. It sounds like people talking, and talking, and talking. Given time surrealist conversations could be created in the style of the cadavre exquis simply by recording the snatches of conversation of the people who walk past a window.
The photo record was simple - four piccies of the office, which I wanted to leave, taken facing South, West, North and East in that order.
It's amazing how easy it is to forget one's intentions when thrown into a world of busy-ness, and I was glad to leave the building for another day, six and a bit hours later at 2pm.

4 - SUPERMARKET. Thu 24/01/08
Have you ever felt like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers? I have. It happens every time I walk into a supermarket, and walking up and down the aisles feels like I'm pretending to be a zombie so they don't notice me.
The supermarket I chose was Morrisons in Bolton on the way home from work (day 4-1 and day 4-2). Walking in at around 2:10pm and using my funny little trolley token for the first time. I'm really glad to say that there was no muzak, in fact everyone was remarkably quiet (and wearing invisible blinkers).
My find for less than a pound was easy, a local newspaper for 38p! (day 4-5) The hunt for the thing to relocate was a little harder - until I saw the chocolate Santa leftover from the Christmas displays. Here's the little fella for me! Now where would he be happier?
I found his ideal new home on the magazine rack (day 4-3). I think he'd like to be a male model.
Then I queued to pay (day 4-4)!
What to do with the newspaper? I decided to anonymously donate it to whoever had my bus seat after me.
The overriding feeling on this day's event was nervousness. Why did it feel naughty to take photos in a supermarket? There were signs saying no this and no that, but none saying no photography. Yet, I was still expecting to be thrown out by a security guard.
How's that for social brainwashing?

5 - PUB. Fri 25/01/08
This was by far the scariest event of all. I don't like pubs very much anyway and I made a poor choice - I chose the scally pub!
Anyway, on the way to my birthday night out (at a much nicer private nightclub for goths, trannies and other misfits) I chose the Black Lion in Salford for my sixth event (day 5-1, day 5-2).
I entered the pub at approximately 9:25pm, immediately screened out the appalling music and the fact that I was being scrutinised by the Mancunian equivalent of the clientele at The Slaughtered Lamb, and gave the small troll behind the bar my nicest smile.
"Hi, how are you?"
Silence.
"Could I get a glass of water please?"
She refused my offer of payment, so I took the glass to a small table in an, as yet, unoccupied area and photographed it (day 5-3). I then left the pub for somewhere much, much nicer. I was there for a total of three minutes. It didn't even smell pleasant.
Day 6 is going to be a lot more fun.

6 - Park. Sun 27/01/08
The last event but not the least enjoyable.
I entered my park at 2:20 pm. Okay, call it a park. It's more of a small field behind a council estate (day 6-1), but it has a kiddies' play area so it's officially a park. It also has coal tits which I stood and watched/listened to for a while, but couldn't photograph because they move too fast for me.
I also, as instructed, looked at the sky. A January sky isn't particularly interesting (day 6-2). Much more interesting was the strange insect-caused growth (day 6-3) on the budding tree (day 6-4), although you can't play golf with it! (day 6-5).
The field also proved itself to be a park by virtue of having a path, seats and doggy-do bins (day 6-6 and day 6-7). Finally, I found that it also had a front gate! (day 6-8). Serves me right for going in the back way.
A cold and dull Sunday doesn't make for an exciting day in the park, there were two other adults and one child on the play area, but the birds were excellent little performers for the 15 minutes I was there. Gone at 2:35 and back home to warm my ears.

Conclusions:
Why did I do this? Possibly because I was asked. Part of me wonders if Matthew isn't some odd person who gets off by having people do weird things for him. If he is he's going to be drowning in emails!

Actually it felt a lot like psychogeography, the making of the mundane into something special, the ordinary into something strange. It's a psychological method of living like a Betjeman poem.

Doing weird things like this makes one look at the world in a different way, even if it's only for five minutes, and for all of us that's got to be a good thing.

Love,
Seán

Genocidal Vegetarians.

2008-01-23T12:58:00.000Z

For those who don't already know, I don't eat meat. In fact I eat the absolute minimum of animal produce one could have without actually being vegan. There are three main reasons for this:

Meat is, for me, unnecessary and expensive.
Due to a genetic cholesterol problem animal products, particularly red meat and dairy stuffs, are bad for my health.
I don't particularly like the damned stuff.

There are some veggie fascists out there who would hate and vilify any meat-eating human being. I'm not one of those and fortunately they're becoming rarer. It's not an ethical matter for me - if I had to eat meat to survive I would. Thankfully, I don't.

Hitler
Life is amazingly balanced. For every ridiculous veginazi out there there also seems to be an equivalent anti-veginazi. These are the rare people who think that a person who doesn't eat meat needs treatment, or to grow up. I'm going to call these the "carninazis".

The carninazis have a wonderful phrase which has been churned out to me on several occasions. I've even seen it on a t-shirt.

"Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian"

Really?

So?
To be fair, most people trot out this little phrase as a sort of joke. Bizarrely, though, some people actually take it seriously. Whilst anyone of average intelligence and a little time to sit and think will soon realise that this statement is irrelevant, the hard-of-thinking carninazi actually sees some connection between a distaste for meat and ordering the violent enslavement and death of an entire race of one's fellow human beings.

The List
Whether Evil Adolf was veggie or not is under discussion by historians, so it may not even be true. But, working on the assumption that it is true, I'd like to forward a few more names.

The following people, to the best of my knowledge were NOT or are NOT vegetarians:

Benito Mussolini
Joseph Stalin
Mao Tse Tung
Saddam Hussein
Osama bin Laden
George W Bush
Richard Nixon
Margaret Thatcher
Kim Il-sung
Torquemada
Hernando Cortez
Charles Manson
Joseph Goebbels
Herman Goerring
Walt Disney
The White Queen of Narnia
Matthew Hopkins
and Father Abraham!

So there! Nah-nah-ne-nah-nah!

Love,
Seán

Six_Events.

2008-01-22T13:29:00.000Z

I'm doing six_events.

More on this later but for now information can be found here:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=280211565

Love,
Seán

Who Me?

2008-01-12T12:13:00.000Z

In my last post I made a statement which I think might need a little working on:

". . . I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made."

It seems a pretty glib thing to say at first, but what does it actually mean? I know what I have been made because I am very much the sum of the last 40-odd years of experiences, learning and buggering things up. Everything I have done and everything I have had done to me has resulted so far in the person typing this.

Me
Physically I am the results of two sets of DNA, which has blessed me with wavy hair, bad eyesight and the family nose, and a lot of physical experiences which have had a variety of effects ranging from trained thigh muscles to permanent scars. In other words, I'm just like any other person on average. But this is just the physical side and - even though I believe that a person is not a body or a mind or a soul/spirit but an inter-related, ever-changing combination of all the above - I'm going to discount the body as not who I am.

What I'm getting at here is a question that has plagued religious and spiritual thinkers and philosophers since forever - If I am thinking, who is the I that is doing the thinking. If I am a combination of the primal me and everything else that has made me, who is that primal me and how do I find him? In fact is he a "he"? Maybe he's a "she", an "it" or even a "they"!

Paganism
As a good Pagan boy I try to live by a deceptively complicated guideline known as the Wiccan Rede. I'm not a Wiccan, but then again I'm not really an anything specific - pigeonholes are restrictive and get on my nerves - but the Wiccan Rede is useful. It goes:

"An it harm none, do what you will"

This is open to interpretation, as are all rules and guidelines. My own works something like this: using the proviso that as little unnecessary harm of any kind is caused to everyone and everything around you, including yourself, then do your own will

"Doing your will" is a very Thelemic bit of jargon and not one I like much because it conjures images of some complete and total deadlegs from whom I would prefer to be disassociated. The trouble is that I'm not sure I can think of a better one. As James Curcio has said, Will is synonymous with Identity, but Identity in action. To do your will is to be yourself just as hard as you can manage. This takes us full circle back to the original question: who is the me that I must be to be who I am?

Circles.
So far this article is going round in ever-decreasing circles and will soon disappear in a puff of smoke up it's own arsehole. Before it does, perhaps it's time to look in a different direction.

Pope Tim Leary and Saint RAW the Optimistic, both following others and being followed in their turn, have shown that we can change how we are made. Using various techniques we can alter our socializations, our behaviours, our attitudes and our habits - and we can do it ourselves. Brainwashing techniques have shown that even the most deeply entrenched beliefs can be reversed, and advertising and propaganda show us that new beliefs and attitudes can be injected into the human mind with very little difficulty. How many people with dogs even noticed the smell before the Shake & Vac lady danced backwards across her living room?

When one wants to alter oneself in the ways suggested by Wilson and Leary there is usually an aim in mind, even if it's only to become more open-minded. The aim of finding the True Will is in stripping away the layers of social conditioning and beliefs until all that's left is the pure primal self. This isn't really changing oneself, which is like changing one's mental "clothes" - it is more like stripping completely naked. (Good grief, I'm on nudity again! It's becoming an obsession.)

A Radical Thought
The concepts of primal Self or true Will imply a certain belief - that there is such a thing. It's the assumption that the human being has a single, eternal and unchanging central core which has become known as the Soul. What if this isn't true?

I'm not proposing that we are all soulless automata or that there is no spiritual dimension at all to the human being, only that it's not a separate and eternal thing. If the human soul is as capable of change, growth and deliberate alteration as the mind and body are then how much more wonderful it surely is. It means that I am not some abstract thing distant and separate from my mind and body, but a soul/mind/body gestalt where all the bits blend to become indistinguishable at the edges. It implies that when my body dies and changes its state by becoming part of the soil fertilizing a tree whose buds feed a bird, then so do my mind and soul in their own ways.

It also implies that all creatures must be like this and therefore, by a process of extension, so must groupings of creatures - like families, societies and forests. I am part of my family and a separate individual at the same time; my children are part me, part their mother and individuals in their own right at the same time. Could there be, therefore, a family soul which joins us and is within us in the same way that we form a gestalt as individuals all together under one group concept? If there is it is made of the combined souls and DNA of the parents within the children, but the parents' souls are made of their parent's souls ad infinitum. Extend this far enough and you end up with a universal physical/intelligence/spiritual gestalt which covers and includes everything that exists/does not exist, has/has not existed and will/will not exist - ever!

Big thought!

Have I answered my question, though? Probably not, except to say that I think I'm getting there. Not only can the true I be found, I can decide what I ought to be. I think!

Love,
Seán

News in the Nudes

2008-01-08T14:43:00.000Z

I've just realized that this is my first post of 2008, so if you're reading this -
Happy New Year!

Anyway, part of the inspiration for this inconsequential ramble came from here:
http://losing-the-thread.blogspot.com/2008/01/topfree-equality.html

The other part came from the fact that very soon I'm going to spend two hours sat/stood/lay in front of a group of people, and I won't have any clothes on. In my quest to question the entire universe therefore, I'm going to ask why. Not why am I doing it ? per se, I already know that. I'm doing it because I'm good at it and I enjoy being paid £8.50 per hour for being an attention-seeking old tart! What I'm questioning is why our dichotomous relationship with the naked human body?

Bare Bits
It seems strange to me that our western society uses the nude as the greatest of its art forms, yet at the same time considers nakedness as something corrupting. For instance, I can take my children to an art gallery full of, often very realistic, paintings and sculptures of people without clothes but they can't see an unclothed person on a film because that gets rated as adult.
Film censors are strange like that. A 14 year-old can watch some of the most horrific violence, yet as soon as someone takes their clothes off the film gets an adults-only rating.

Back to art. I can (and will) sit naked in a room full of clothed people, and anybody can see me do it - it's a publicly advertised drop-in group for life drawing. Yet if I walked down the street naked I would be arrested. Interestingly, I wouldn't be arrested for public nudity because it's not actually illegal in Britain but if someone were to complain then I could be arrested for Breach of the Peace. I wonder how many police officers would observe such niceties.

The situation is worse for women, they can't even take their top halves off without someone being appalled by an offensive nipple. Some women have actually used this shock value as a political tool, PETA are famous for it.

Am I a Hypocrite?
At the same time a funny thought arises, I like looking at naked women! I like looking at clothed women too, but I prefer naked ones. Is this a subconscious sexualization or just personal taste in the same way that I like looking at mushrooms, or complicated Victorian architecture?

Thinking of situations I've been in involving group nudity, I've not been offended by anybody's body and seriously impressed by a few, but I definitely liked looking at the women more than anyone else; and women of all sorts of shapes and sizes depending on how it seemed to suit them. Thinking even more deeply, I've just realized that the most attractive people I've met without clothes are actually the people I've already found attractive regardless of what they were wearing, or not. In other words, naked is good and can be a turn-on, but the real turn-on is the person and not their body (I think!).
Phew! I'm obviously not as shallow as I thought.

So Why Does It Matter?
It's a question I've been asking myself for a while: why does it matter to be naked? I have realized in a religious context that nude rituals are definitely the best. Being naked ("skyclad"!) in that situation is equivalent to making a universal statement: This is me. Entire. Uncovered. With nothing hidden.
Why, then, is the nude so popular in art? I can understand nude drawing from the point of a couple of the artists that attend to draw me, because they're animation students. To them a good working knowledge of human anatomy is indispensable. Can this be said for the other artists, though?
Drawing a human being, a human being draped in cloth or simply some draped cloth are equally difficult/easy. It's all about line, shadow, highlight, shade and so-on. It doesn't have to be a naked human being at all and yet drawing the naked human being is considered the pinnacle of art. Perhaps it comes from the thought that Man is the Measure of All Things. This uniquely Classical Greek idea has some sway over artists and society in general, but I find it to be a false flattery. Most models would.
Who would you prefer to draw or paint? Would you prefer the almost featureless, slender modern concept of the perfect "body-beautiful" (Kate Moss, for instance) or would you rather attempt to portray a normal person? You know, with fat bits, different textures and a variety of shapes and colours?
Me too!

Why Does it Matter to Me?
Why indeed. Why, if I'm so comfortable naked, do my balls shrink when I disrobe to take the first pose? Why am I bothered about the size of my paunch when I know it makes me more interesting to an artist?
I'm more comfortable naked than most, and I know that most people who don't have a serious hang-up become a lot more comfortable and relaxed after about ten minutes of group nudity. But am I still as comfortable as I'd like to be nude in public or am I still fighting my socialization which says that naked equals sex? I think perhaps that it matters because I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made.

In an ideal world it wouldn't matter if you went shopping in your birthday suit or a three-piece so long as you were happy and comfortable, but to our societal norms it does. Perhaps as Lily The Pink says in her blog, it's about time we started to go Cretan!

Love,
Seán

ADDITIONAL

After publishing this post I decided to decorate it with some pictures. The photo at the top is my "official" modelling picture taken by Sara Smith.

The drawings of me were created by three of the artists during the University of Bolton's life drawing group that I mentioned in the post. Going from top to bottom they are by:

Martin John Hayes

A. Pederson

Dave Cowley.

A special thanks goes to these three artists for letting me borrow their work.

Love,

Seán

Inspired by The Lord!

2007-12-30T18:18:00.000Z

Links to very cool things
Before I start ranting I'd like to share a couple of links courtesy of Brainsturbator. Check this out while it lasts - free knowledge:
http://docquan.com/lib_dead.html
And also good suggestions of ways to kick society's arse, but in a nice way!
http://www.brainsturbator.com/site/comments/10_ways_you_can_fight_fascism_around_the_world/
I may write a little critique of this article myself at some point.

God
Anyway, to business (he says, clinking his glass), and to the bit where I really annoy my (few)monotheistic friends.

I have a MySpace friend known as The Lord (guess who he's satirizing) who recently sent out a bulletin. It was actually an excerpt from someone's blog which was used to ask a simple question: If you met God today, what question would you ask him? A good question? It was quite well responded to anyway, but there was one question conspicuous by its absence. So I asked it.

I would ask him to stop pretending to be the only god.

Okay, who have I upset?

Religious Dogma
Everyone who answered the question had a very clear idea of God (as if this is a name). It was the assumed model as taught by schools and parents across the western world for the last 1500 years. The omnipotent all-father, exclusive and entire. Even the ones that asked silly questions were making that assumption, that the concept of God is entirely singular.

It's pretty obvious why - we've been brought up in a monotheistic society and this is what has been taught. But at the same time everyone is taught about Pagan civilizations in history as part of a normal education. British education leans heavily towards Egypt, Greece and Rome in this case. We're taught from a very early age about Roman gods, although we aren't expected to consider their existence in the present day. We are taught that the god of the Bible exists now.

Obviously, until I came along, no Pagans had responded.

Anthropology
Anthropologists have an accepted and standardized evolutionary pattern for the development of religion. Basically it states that you begin with primitive animism, which is a belief that everything is alive in some way and that there are spirits all around. The next step is polytheism which has many gods, usually related to natural phenomena like rivers or thunder.
The final, and thus the highest, step is monotheism. This is the belief in one infinite, indivisible, omnipotent and omniscient God (note the capital letter).

Oh, yeah?
I believe that the anthropologists have got it wrong. The natural (ie. unforced from above) religion of human beings is a combination of animism and polytheism, and the rise of monotheism was due to political machination. In other words, war, violence and oppression

I can't prove any of this stuff, nor am I going to try. What I am going to do is put forward a basic model of what might have happened with some evidence to support it. I'm indebted to Prof EO James and his book "The Beginnings of Religion" for the inspiration.

Let's start with a simple polytheistic society. There are many gods who rule over various aspects of people's lives and many people worshipping them. Some people prefer some gods over others, even having patron deities. For instance, a midwife would normally be expected to be a devotee of a goddess of childbirth, a merchant would worship a god of trade. This doesn't mean that the other gods would be denied, simply that there would be a natural bias. This happens amongst Pagans even today - I have a patron deity in Dionysos, although what that says about me I'll leave the reader to decide.
It is also normal for certain tribes to have a patron deity, often considered the ancestor of that tribe. That, then is our picture of an ordinary polytheistic society in, say, the Middle East around 2000 BCE.

Now let's consider a particular tribe. A wandering and warlike group of people searching for a land in which to live, and willing to fight like demons to get and keep it. Just for the sake of argument, let's call this tribe of several thousand individuals the Hebrews. At this time the Hebrews are polytheistic although, as befits a people led by a fearsome warrior-priesthood, their prime deity is a thunder and mountain god. Let's call him Yahweh.
Because the cohesion of the Hebrews is based on male dominance, due to the need for physical strength and mobility which isn't available to pregnant women and nursing mothers, Yahweh's power increases. This isn't to say that Yahweh himself increases, but the political power of his priesthood. The worship of other deities such as Astarte, the queen of heaven, tends to become overlooked in favour of Yahweh, possibly being relegated to private rather than public worship.

Over a long period of time the worship of other gods would become proscribed. Strictly, this isn't Yahweh's fault, but that of his warrior-priests. If other gods are worshipped then there is a dissolution of political power via a multitude of temples, but if only one god is worshipped then the power to control a society through that god resides entirely with the priests of that god. Every now and then the people would turn back to the old gods, but this would be severely punished. Eventually the old gods would be all but forgotten and Yahweh would become not a god, but God.
Outside of that tribe, conquered people would be forced to acknowledge and worship the god of their conquerors, and in time the worship of their own gods would be forbidden to prevent revolt. There aren't many steps from "My god is bigger than your god" to "My God is the only God and yours doesn't even exist"

History is written by the winners
All of the above is conjecture, of course! It's interesting, though, how a cursory study of the bible can lead to some interesting polytheistic conclusions. Here are a few examples:

The word Elohim is plural, and God is said to make man in "our image".

There are multitudinous references to Baal, Moloch and Ashtoreth (Astarte) or the Ashtoreths, as well as other gods, with serious injunctions against their worship.

The first two commandments are prohibitions against the worship of other gods.

Other gods are often called "false", but does this mean non-existent or simply untruthful ("Your god tells fibs! Na na ne na na!")?

The episode of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32) almost stands all on its own. The people had their oppressive leadership removed for a while and immediately returned to their natural religion! The bible even calls the Hebrews stubborn, on a regular basis, because they don't want to do what Yahweh tells them.

The wisest man in the entire book, Solomon, turned from Yahweh to the worship of the gods of his wives' countries (1 Kings 11 - check it out!)

And finally, my favourite - Psalms 82:1-7
1God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; He judgeth among the gods.
2How long will ye judge unjustly and accept persons of the wicked? Selah
3Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy.
4Deliver the poor and needy; rescue them out of the hand of the wicked.
5They know not, neither will they understand. They walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
6I have said, "Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High."
7But ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.

The highlights are my own, and the whole thing has obviously been politicized to make other gods look bad, but it does look like the bible's editors missed a bit with this one!

A final prayer
So, with all the above in mind, I'd just like to say this:

Yahweh. Will you please stop thinking that you're the only god. Will you please accept your place as the mountain/thunder god of a middle-eastern tribe. If you do this you won't have anything to prove any more. You can be happy and content without world domination. There will even be other gods to talk to, when they eventually forgive you. Bullies like you are obviously compensating for feelings of inadequacy. Go and talk to your mother.

If I've offended anyone with this article, think only this - what the hell does he know?

Love,
Seán

Happy Winter

2007-12-24T11:22:00.000Z

We celebrated Yule over this weekend, with far too much alcohol and not enough nudity (it's too cold!). Yesterday morning we got up to watch the sunrise - about 8.30 am where we live - but it was much too misty, of course. It's strange that we watch the sunrise twice a year at the solstices but only see it about once every three years.

Anyway, later on I took advantage of the mists to do a little photography. So here is my little card to everyone - happy Yule, Channukah, Christmas, Eid or whatever else you celebrate. Let's hope it's as pretty as this:

Love,
Seán

Manchester Psychogeography

2007-12-19T19:35:00.000Z

This was sent to me today by my extremely cool (and rather cute) friend Morag. I've thought about writing something on psychogeography but I couldn't possibly do it with as much eloquence as she can. So instead here's a cut and paste of the entire email:

The LRM recently thought about celebrating our first birthday but we decided to build a space rocket and play our melodica instead. It didn't feel like a birthday because we're still not quite sure we exist. But it's a year since the Accidental International Festival of Psychogeography, which is when we were given a name and started the first Sunday shenanigans (how long does something have to go on before it's a tradition?)

Our manifesto is disgracefully over due; we keep getting distracted by the beauty of flowers growing out of the side of buildings and the tragedy of commercialisation. It will appear one day, when you least expect it, but generally we like chaos more than rules.

We are becoming afraid that some people think psychogoegraphy is just for first Sundays or special occasions and one must be taught how to drift or heed expert directions. This is anathema to the LRM. Don't listen to us! We like DIY (but we're scared of power tools) and we never, ever want people to think we are custodians of some secret knowledge.

Symbols, maps and anniversaries matter because we invest them with power. The solstices have always been an important time for the LRM; we like to melt time and blur the boundaries between the worlds of myth and materialism. Last year we collaborated with The Shaping to dematerialise the gruesome Beetham Tower which for us represents much that is rotten within our glorious city but we won't dwell on past glories.

This solstice practicalities mean many LRM collaborators are spreading magick and mischief outside Mancunia but still we wanted to join together to celebrate both the sacred and profane so we politely ask you, whoever, whatever and wherever you are, to join us in a great experiment and help answer the eternal question 'but what is psychogeography?'

We invite you to play a game with us at a time and place of your choosing on 22nd December 2007. These are the rules for you to ignore:

1 Stop what you're doing and tap your heels together. Spin around if you feel like it. (the LRM accept no liability for any accidents that may occur due to over zealous spinning so please take care)
2 Head off in whichever direction takes your fancy and wander at will until you want to stop.
3 As you traverse, aim to discover something new and marvellous and look for something you have never seen, felt or listened to before (we bet there will be something)
4 Repeat as desired at intervals through out the day
5 Or don't. If you think this is pointless you may be right. But we think it will be fun and we can create something beautiful from it.
6 If you do have a solstice adventure please send us a few notes, observations, random words or pictures. We will weave them together into a virtual derive, and thus create a psychogeographical dot-to-dot linking freelance flanauers into a unique and amazing work of art (trust us, we will)

Friends and comrades, this Solstice reclaim your footsteps, invent your environment and discover your own psychogeography. We don't know what it is.

With glittery love and golden apples from

The Loiterers Resistance Movement

PS The LRM would like to thank everyone who has inspired, frustrated, bumped into, walked, talked and raised a glass with us this year, whether you consider yourself a loiterer or not. You have changed our course and bought new ideas, joy and mischief. We thank you all whole heartedly for this and hope to get lost with you again in the new year

I agree with every word.

Love,
Seán

Multiple IQ

2007-12-14T17:38:00.000Z

I've recently learned something I didn't know about our standard IQ test. Let's qualify that statement: I've recently learned anything at all about the IQ test, since previously I didn't know a damn thing.

The IQ Test
According to Ben Mack in his novel "Poker Without Cards", the IQ test was created during WWI and used extensively during WWII to "ascertain proclivities towards success performing specific tasks. A tool invented by psychologists for a war effort. " It was developed from tests created by Alfred Binet to see if certain children would benefit from schooling. The problem with the IQ test is that it only measures one type of intelligence.
I'll come back to that statement soon, but to explain where I'm coming from let me state that I have a high IQ. I know this, even though it's never been measured, for two reasons. The first is that an ex-partner had a measured IQ of 162, and I could keep up with her in everything except pure mathematics.
The second reason is that I once took a test of visual logic. It was a simple thing which involved looking at an arrangement of 3 patterns forming a logical progression and you had to choose the 4th from a small selection. I got 59 right out of 60. The examiner was amazed at how high my score was, I was amazed that I got any wrong out of such simple nonsense.
I also know, because I work at a University and because I know a lot of Pagans, a great many people with very high IQ's. The problem is that they're not all terribly clever!

Multiple Intelligences
I was first introduced to the concept of multiple forms of intelligence by a friend who works as a schoolteacher. One might think that her job would be biased towards an academic view of intelligence, but she has had to find ways to relate to and teach an immense multitude of personalities and abilities. Thus, although the system doesn't work that way, she has a lot of time for multiple intelligences theory.

The theory was formulated by Howard Gardner, a Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He originally discovered or proposed seven different intelligences: interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, mathematical-logical, visual-spatial, kinesthetic and musical. Later he added an eighth, naturalistic.

He also considered spiritual and existential intelligences, but found them impossible to measure.

According to Wikipedia the various intelligences can be defined like this:
Interpersonal: The ability to relate well to, understand and deal with other people. I suppose we could call it a form of empathy.
Intrapersonal: The ability to understand oneself in terms of motivation, fears etc, and use that information to regulate our lives.
Linguistic: A sensitivity to spoken and written language and the ability to express oneself effectively.
Mathematical-Logical: The ability to recognize, analyze and deal with patterns and problems in a logical fashion.
Visual-Spatial: "the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas."
Kinesthetic: The ability to use ones mental faculties to create bodily patterns, such as using a physical skill.
Musical: Pretty much what it sounds like - musical ability. It appears to run in parallel with linguistic ability.
Naturalistic: The ability to "recognize, categorize and draw upon certain features of the environment."

According to a quick self-assessment test my own balance of intelligences is as follows (according to a system that awards points out of a potential 25):
Interpersonal - 13
Mathematical-Logical - 15
Intrapersonal - 17
Linguistic - 17
Visual-Spatial - 18
Kinesthetic - 19
Musical -20
Naturalistic - 22
This seems fairly well-balanced, although I'm apparently not as good at dealing with people as I could be.

Eight
One of the things that struck me is that the amount of measurable intelligences seems to have settled at eight.
There are a lot of eights in this world, especially in occult/religious matters, such as the Eight Sabbats, the Eightfold Buddhist path and most importantly for this piece: Wilson and Leary's eightfold model of human consciousness.

A full explanation of the eightfold model (even just for myself) would take far too long, and will have to be saved for another entry. What I want to consider here are the first four.

The Eightfold Model of Human Consciousness.
This is a model formulated by Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary which basically states that the human mind has four circuits or imprinted behaviour patterns. These are part of the left-brain and rule our normal day-to-day affairs. There are also another four (which we're not really concerned with here) which reside in the right-brain and function as higher or more spiritual aspects of the first four. That was a totally inadequate explanation, but for the functions of this little essay, it'll do.

The four circuits are:
1. Bio-survival: Imprinted at birth or just after and concerned with bodily needs, functions and security.
2. Emotional-Territorial: Imprinted during the toddling stage and concerned with emotional dominance and submission, hierarchies and authority.
3. Semantic: Imprinted during early life and concerned with the ability to handle symbol systems such as language and logical thought.
4. Sociosexual: Imprinted during the first sexual experiences (although I'm not sure that's true) and concerned with social and sexual matters such as morality

Each individual tends to favour one of these four imprinted behavioural patterns or concerns above the others. It's fair to say that I'm rather strongly a 3rd circuit person. Having said that, under threat the most important circuit for anyone immediately becomes the first - biosurvival.

The important thing here is that these circuits are set in the brain, not in stone, and can therefore be changed. According to RAW, the learning of a martial art leads one to deal with biosurvival problems in a much more positive and less stressful way.

Connections
What I'd like to find out now is if these two theoretical patterns can be melded and integrated. I don't know because I'm making this up as I go along with minimal research, but I get a feeling that the eight intelligences could be directly related to the four circuits.
Just as a for-instance: Naturalistic intelligence directly relates to biosurvival because it's the basic intelligence needed by any hunter-gatherer. Linguistic intelligence directly relates to the semantic circuit, and interpersonal to the emotional. The intrapersonal seems to have a relationship with the sociosexual circuit.

That's only half of them, and I'd appreciate any suggestions or corrections of what is becoming a potential working model.

Hooray!
The really great thing about multiple intelligences, though is this. Even though what you are and how you see the world are partly genetic and partly imprinted from an early age, they don't have to remain the same. You can take control and change them.
I've proven this to myself very simply. Before the age of 30 I couldn't play a musical instrument - my musical intelligence was very low - now I play flute solo and in a band and (according to the funny little test) my musical intelligence is second only to my naturalistic intelligence.

We are what we choose to be!

Love,
Seán

Subgenius Announcement.

2007-12-08T12:04:00.000Z

The following is an official communiqué from the Branch Radcliffian subsect of the Church of the Subgenius:

Rejoice, Rejoice, oh Rejoice with Great Gladness.

Rejoice oh my brethren, sistren and transgendren for, behold! there is a new Warrior For "Bob!" amongst you!

I am truly no longer pink, for "Bob!" has indeed seen my green. My ordination papers are at this very moment winging their sacred way to "Bob!"'s holy grove of Cleveland OH!

I have rediscovered my Yeti ancestry, I am at one with my Bonobo nature, I have released my Inner Cuttlefish.

Rejoice, and I say again Rejoice! Loosen the slack and break out the frop (although not for me, thanks - the damn stuff makes me vomit - I'll stick to wine). Let there be debauchery and off-key singing, let cats howl in the night and X-ists dance until their flying saucers wobble uncontrollably.

And let it be known amongst all you Yetisyn and interlecherals, amongst all you morealists and fleshfulsome Texan sekz goddesses that a new SubGenius is born a-knew.

And let his "true" (i.e. for a given value of truth) name be shouted amongst the trees and mountains, cities and car parks, squirrels and winos. Yea, unto the very stars themselves.

For I am here and I am:

Revd. InsertNameHere!!!!!!!

Hail Dionysos! Hail Eris!

Praze "Bob!"

Eeh, I'm glad I've got that out of my system!

Love (and slack!)
Seán

The Honesty of Children

2007-12-01T09:58:00.000Z

Bikeface!
During the summer I attended a Green Party Rally in Manchester. As I was representing cyclists and cycling and there was a nice lady there who did face-painting, I got her to paint a bicycle on my face. It all seemed pretty logical to me!

The rally itself was a bit of a washout. It heaved down and we all got very, very wet. Afterwards, I pedalled my weary, dripping way home via a supermarket for some wine and nibbles to warm up the evening of an otherwise disappointing day. The thing is, I hadn't removed the picture of a bike from my face.

The reactions were fascinating, and all exactly the same - except for one. Everybody looked at me with surprise, and then attempted to appear as if they hadn't looked at all - all within a split second. The body language of a person desperately attempting to be nonchalant while trying to look at something unusual is just this side of hilarious.

So, who was the one exception?
He was a little boy of about 5 years old. He stared straight at me whilst swinging on his mum's arm and said in a loud, clear voice, "That man's got a bike on his face!", to which I replied (smiling whilst his parents suffered mild heart attacks and made frantic attempts to shut him up), "That's right. I have!"

Pink!
My beloved and better half has recently dyed her hair. It's pink. Not pink bits amongst the blonde. Not a subtle shade of pinkish tinge. Bright pink. All of it.
It really suits her. It brings out the blue of her eyes like some kind of lantern. She looks great.

Other people seem to think a little differently, though. She went to Asda yesterday (for my American friends, that's the UK branch of Walmart, more or less) and had much the same reaction that I had with the bikeface - a whole bunch of people deliberately and obviously not looking.
Except for (yep, you guessed it) a child. In this case it was a little girl of about three years old who shouted "Mum, Mum. That lady's got pink hair!"

Any other reactions to her hair have been as positive as the little girl's, but only from friends and family. Never from strangers, who pretend they don't notice.

The Question
Now, I fully understand why a child can (and often will) say and do things that an adult won't. It's called socialization. It's the same training that teaches us from an early age not to shout "Fire!" in a crowded cinema or pinch traffic wardens' bottoms, and for the most part it's quite a useful thing.
Without a basic level of socialization the normal day-to-day interactivities of people wouldn't work. We couldn't, for instance, get a bus to work and expect the driver to take us there. We're socialized to expect that the bus will go to the place that's shown on the front, and the driver is socialized to do what he's agreed to do - ie. drive the bus from point A to point B, picking passengers up on the way.
The question is now whether socialization is entirely good and if it isn't, is it possible to separate the good bits from the bad and retrain ourselves.

Honest children
The children who shouted out were only saying what their parents were thinking, and what they shouted contained no sense of judgement, simply an expression of surprise at something unusual. This was entirely harmless and perfectly acceptable from a child, but not, apparently from the child's parents. I'm reminded of things said by people who suffer some sort of facial disfigurement. Adults try to ignore it, young children ask about it in simple, honest and non-judgemental ways. Unfortunately they get told off for that, possibly because they're doing what the parents want to but can't.

So what are we, as adults, afraid of? Is it possibly the fear of causing offence? In my own example this doesn't seem to work. I'm not a scary-looking person (I don't look like Mr. macho-hard-case, is what I mean), so there's unlikely to be a fear of violence. Questions such as "Why have you got a bike painted on your face?" are likely to elicit a sensible response such as "Oh, I've just come from a Green Party rally". Even the act of shushing the child seemed to be an act of fear of some kind.

Fear of difference
I've always been a bit different from a normal person. Mostly this has been in attitude and interests - I like art but I don't like sport, for example - but as I got older this came out in my appearance. The only strangers to comment (with a few notable exceptions) were confrontational. In other words, they were reacting to something unusual with violence and, as any good Buddhist knows, violence is a direct descendant of fear. Sadly this is a worldwide problem - think of the recent death of young Sophie Lancaster from Bacup, who was killed for wearing heavy eyeliner.

Obviously the "people" who killed Sophie weren't the thoughtful types. If they (and others like them who do and have done similar things) actually bothered to think, they wouldn't have done it. Instead they reacted to a stimulus, much like one of Pavlov's dogs. The stimulus was: here is something different and the response was fear followed by violence. This doesn't excuse them their actions because they are - at least nominally - human and therefore capable of choice in their actions.

Instead, though, they followed a stimulus-response pattern. I used to think that such patterns were genetically coded (like the coding that makes a white blood cell attack any foreign body), but the example of the honest and non-judgemental children proves that theory wrong. Fear of difference is a result of socialization. In other words we are taught to be afraid of what we don't understand, to see it as a threat and reject it, often violently. This isn't genetic, it's societal. Rather than some form of survival strategy, fear of difference has appeared as a form of social control via socialization.

Mutation
I once read a piece by a sociologist (if you know who this was, please tell me!) who said "Nature loves variety, sadly society hates it".
Mutation, change, experimentation and difference are the ways of nature. These are the mechanisms of evolution and without them we wouldn't have the staggering diversity of life that covers this incredible planet, even in places where we think it shouldn't be able to. As a Pagan and Taoist it is my job to accept, understand and follow the ways of nature. To do otherwise would be to hold back the natural evolution of the human race.

Fear of difference is one of the forms of socialization we could do without, but it's deeply entrenched. Can it be separated and done away with? Well, I'm trying to "Embrace the Mutation" (J.K. Potter), and I hope that the more people that do will eventually reach a kind of critical level and cause some perceptual change in society as a whole.

It may take small children to teach us how to do that.

Love,
Seán

Spread the Virus.

2007-11-25T09:48:00.000Z

I recently found out that US and European political philosophies have been based on a concept known as Game Theory. Game Theory was originally exactly what it sounded like, a theory to explain how games work in a mathematical sense - for instance, a game of poker or bridge.

It automatically assumes a certain simplistic and robotic mindset on the part of the players, that being that their aim is simply to win the game. In other words, they are selfish. That's fair enough so far and, since this is a mathematical construct, makes a fair amount of sense. To carry on the example, a poker player looks to their own advantage in a purely selfish way and a pair of bridge players look to their own advantages by using each other for mutual advantage.

I'm sure you get the idea by now. Everyone is out for everything they can get, in a self-centred way, and even mutually advantageous cooperation is used as a method, ultimately, of personal advancement. A good and solid theory for something relatively simple like a game of cards.

The problem comes when game theory is taken out of context. In the 1950's a gentleman by the name of Anthony Downs started to apply game theory to other things, such as the social interactions within a hotel, and since then the meme has spread. Game theory is now applied to all sorts of social and political models to predict how things will work out: economics, voting, social interactions, even family relationships! In each case the basic premise is that the individual is working entirely for their own advantage. It's known as "enlightened self-interest"

This really bothers me.

One thing that concerns me is that I find it hard to believe that people are really that unpleasant. Okay, people as a species have shown themselves to be pretty crap, but individuals are all different. Not only that but different at different ages, in different places and at different times of the day. As proof of that compare yourself as a twelve-year old on a summer holiday, and now first thing in the morning on a working day. To base any form of government on such a simplistic assumption can't be right, and personally I find it insulting.

Further to that there's the problem of enforced pattern creation.
Madame Blavatsky's friend, Col. Olcott discovered that he had the power to heal. He didn't believe it himself, but on a stay in Northern India (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong) people came to him for spiritual healing in the mistaken belief that he could do it. So he pretended, and the more he pretended the better he became. That's pattern creation: if you act a certain way for long enough you create thought and habit patterns, neural circuitry if you like, that make you that way.
Enforced pattern creation does exactly that, but from the outside. If you treat a person a particular way strongly enough for long enough then they will become that way. This is basically how most forms of brainwashing, social control and education work. Consider then that we've been told implicitly but increasingly that selfishness and personal advantage are good and noble things for the last 50 years. "Enlightened self-interest" is now the norm and it's very difficult to think outside that pattern, or even to realise that it's possible to do so. It takes a particularly strong, or obnoxious, individual to stand up to that kind of pressure.

So, what's the way out?

Well, if a mental prison or social control structure is based on the assumption of particular behaviour patterns, then to break the bars of that prison requires new and opposing behaviour.

And what type of behaviour is that?
How about spontaneous and pointless generosity that gives no personal advantage whatsoever?

There's a link on this blog to a thing called the Generosity Game. The Generosity Game is very simple: You go to, say, a shop and buy your stuff. You also buy something extra (it doesn't have to be expensive) which you then give to the shopkeeper and say something like, "Please could you give this as a gift to the next person who comes in". You also leave a card with it which says "Now it's your turn". Then you leave the shop. You don't leave your name.

Insane? Well, if insanity can be defined as non-normal behaviour, then yes!

What you've just done is a tiny act of anonymous and beautifying rebellion, the precise opposite of what you've been told all your life; that you're a selfish git. What you also do by leaving the card is to (a) challenge another person to free themselves from the social norm and (b) spread the meme.

Spread the what?
A meme is a trendy word that means an idea, a thought, a neural circuit. The current overriding meme of our present life is "enlightened self-interest". A religion is a kind of super-meme. In playing the Generosity Game or something similar we are spreading a new meme, which works like a virus. Under the right conditions it infects people.

Sadly, personally non-advantageous generosity isn't a strong meme at the moment, but with time and effort it can be. When it becomes an epidemic it may well save the world!

Spread the virus! Let's make "enlightened self-interest" sick as a parrot and then provide the cure.

Love,
Seán

The Blog Begins! (Dah-dah-dah-dum)

2007-11-24T12:14:00.000Z

Good grief, my first ever weblog. The funny thing is that even though I'm known as a person with strong opinions and no fear of expressing them, suddenly I'm faced with a blank box on a screen and I'm lost for what to write.
I'm sure something will occur to me sooner or later.

As for now, I'm going to explore Blogspot.

Love,
Seán