Paganism, Rants

Web research is crap

You know, the Internet is a wonderful thing. The World Wide Web is a spectacular thing. It’s a medium for the creative process that is available to many people far and wide. Diary sites like this one is a testament to that great fact. All of us on here can express our innermost thoughts, our most outrageous opinions, the fruits of our research on our favorite topic, and even our favorite cake recipe. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

The problem is, that’s also the greatest weakness of it all. The truth is, any slob can write something and throw it up on a webserver for the world to see. It doesn’t matter how ill-informed his opinion is, how disturbing his thoughts are, how uncritical his research is, or how disgusting his idea of the perfect cake tastes. Reasonably intelligent people figure this out quite quickly.

So why the hell is it that when a newbie wants to find out about Paganism and Wicca, the first thing they do is use this dubious resource as their primary — or worse, sole — source of information on the topic? Why is it they’re willing to accept whatever someone who learned how to submit a link to www.witchvox.com says without a second of critical thought? Oh wait, I know! Because Wicca and Paganism is comprised of “anything goes” philosophy. I say “Phooey!” And that’s being polite!

I’ll be honest. Half the crap out there is just that, crap. Half of the sites are put up by someone who read one or two books (and I’ll get into how crappy some of those books are some other time), decided they had it all figured out, and decided to share their “wisdom” with the world. Of course, half of them are really just sharing the “wisdom” some other author (book or web) already shared, often by copying their exact words. (We won’t go into the number of times I’ve found certain things online that were copied directly out of one of Scott Cunningham’s book without so much as a citation.)

I’m sorry, but if you’re too cheap to actually go out and buy a book on the religion you’re interested in (or here’s a crazy idea, see if you can borrow a copy through a library), you don’t have nearly enough dedication to follow it. Pick up a hobby instead, and start looking to explore your spirituality when you can put some real work into it.

Rants, Religion, Work

Religious Rant/Ramblings

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Today was a pretty good day. I didn’t get a lot of work done, but I did enough to keep myself from getting overwhelmed with guilt. Primarily, I rewrote all of my PCI-X code for the new processor. That was quite an adventure, as I had to handle three different PCI-X cores on the same processor. I hope that all works when I get a chance to finally test it. Of course, that won’t be until the middle of next month, by the look of it.

I spent more of they day putzing around online. Particularly, I spent a good deal of time getting highly annoyed at the one topic on one of the religious forums I visit. Someone started a thread called “Ask a Pagan,” for people to ask all kinds of questions about Paganism. Unfortunately, while a few people have asked some interesting and probing questions, most have taken the opportunity to ask pointed questions to prove why Paganism is “wrong.”

That just annoys me. Why is it that some people have to be such jerks? Why is it that any opportunity to learn about another religion has to be used as a way to “trap” that religion in some way to disprove it? Why can’t more people be like Stace, who sincerely asks questions to better understand others and their viewpoints? But I guess that takes maturity. And my experience, maturity is something that’s severely lacking in our society today. Instead, everything has to be turned into a penis-measuring contest of one sort or another.

Of course, I have to admit that I found a lot of the Pagans’ answers trite, boring, and annoying, too. For starters, they let themselves get dragged into the whole “how can all paths be valid” argument, though “abyss that pretends to be an argument” might be more accurate. Truthfully, I’m not sure I care for the whole “all paths are valid” model anyway. I think there has to be a decent middle ground between saying “I have a monopoly on truth” and sayng “well, everything anyone wants to believe is true.” Of course, this gets into bigger questions as to what constitutes “valid” and whatnot. And while I could probably go on a lengthy ramble abou that, I’m not sure I care to at this time. Let me just say that I think it’s time to say, “Truth is a very complex thing and I think that people can have equally accurate and yet distinct perceptions of truth, but it is not my concern to determine or comment on the ‘validity’ of any particular claims of truth.” But that probably only makes sense to me, and that’s subject to change.

Health, Work

Health Stuff and Job Stuff

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I haven’t been online for a couple days, so I have a handful of events to talk about in this entry. We’ll start out with the fun news from Dr. Lee. He had someone in his office call my house yesterday. He’s instructed me to discontinue my glyburide over the weekend on an experimental basis. I am supposed to take my blood glucose readings as normal and then send them to him Monday mornng. He’ll check them and determine from that whether to make it permanent. Last night, my blood glucose was roughly 110 and this morning, it was 89. So by the looks of it, I may officially be done with one of my medications! How awesome.

I’m also down another pound or so, too. According to the scale at work, I’m somewhere between 275 and 276 pounds. Considering I started this trek at 311 last November, I think that’s fantastic. My coworker, Mike W., saw me at the job fair (I’ll have to write about that too). I was wearing a pair of black pants, a red dress shirt, and a burgandy sweater over top it. He said that with the wait loss, I looked absolutely incredible. I thought I looked darn good in it too, but it was nice to hear someone else say it. I was going to post a picture of it, but Mom didn’t get home until an hour after I did on Thursday, and by then, I was ready to change into something different. The sweater was just a tad bit too warm in the house.

Yeah, I went to a “job fair” (and I use the term loosely) for Lockheed Martin. They were mainly holding it for their Owego facility (though they did have their Syracuse facility represented too), since they’re looking to fill over 700 new positions. I’m not sure I want to work for Lockheed Martin (and after yesterday, I’m even less sure), but I figured I’d check it out. I learned exactly one thing while I was there. I was way underprepared. I might have gotten more out of it if I had spent a few days scouring their website and printing out and reading specific job listings they have posted. That way, I could have asked questions about specific jobs I was looking at. As it was, I had about four or five general questions to ask. They didn’t even have project descriptions or anything there. I was expecting it to be much more informational on their part, and it was quite obvious that they were expecting to collect hundreds of resume and spend between thirty seconds and two minutes chit-chatting with each person. I tend to agree with Mom when she heard about it and commented it didn’t sound like much of a “job fair” to her.

Of course, the thing that really got me was the one manager from the software engineering department I spoke to. He asked me what my GPA was. Now, I will be the first to admit that I haven’t done a lot of inteviews in the last seven years. But the few interviews I did five years ago when looking for my current job, I didn’t have one single person ask about my GPA. By that time, most of them were interested in the three years of in-field experience I’ve had since school. I would’ve expected that eight years later, any potential employers would be even more interested in my experience. So to even be asked about my GPA seemed weird.

And then when I told him that I got a 3.06 GPA, he commented that “made the cut, but just barely.” And then he told me that I’d have a lot of competition. If I would’ve been thinking more clearly at the time (I was a bit shocked by this time), I probably would’ve told him to fuck off at that point. That probably would’ve been a bad idea, so it’s just as well I was too shocked at the time. But it sure makes me want to go with my first instinct to find a job that isn’t with Lockheed Martin.

Work

Even though I’ve been expecting it…

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My company dropped the big bombshell on everybody today. At 11:00am this morning, everyone in the office was gathered up for a meeting, where the big wigs from the main office announced that our office in Ithaca would be closing before the end of the year. I was one of the 50% of the office’s staff that was not offered an opportunity to relocate to one of the offices that will remain open. That means that as of July 1, I will need an alternate source of employment. I wasn’t really planning on moving anyway, but the fact that it’s not an option came as a bit of a shock.

To be honest, I’m not totally surprised by this. I’ve suspected since ADIC bought out Pathlight that they would eventually decide to close the Ithaca office, forcing all of us to either relocate or find other jobs. I’ve expected it at every “office-wide” meeting we’ve had in the past four years. But for some reason, expecting it didn’t really prepare me for it. I’m still finding mysef shocked. I’m still feeling a bit overwhelmed by it. Granted, I’m not the emotional wreck some of the others were (it helps that I didn’t just buy a new house like some of them), but I’m still in a bit of a state of emotional disarray.

I suppose in the great scheme of things, I can just take this in stride. After all, for the past year, I’ve been thinking about getting a different job, one that’s closer to Mike so that I can eventually move there too. This incident just provides me with a strong motivation to do more than just think about it, I suppose. And I can be thankful that if I want it, I still have a guaranteed job until July 1. That’s almost a full six months where I can look for a job without having to worry about how to pay bills in the meantime.

Part of me wants to run right out to the job sites. Part of me wants to fire up Word and start my resume right now (I don’t think I have an old copy of it anymore). And I’m proud of that part of me. I’m glad that I have that “never say die” spirit somewhere in me and that I’m willing to keep going. But on the same hand, I don’t think I’m going to do it quite yet. Taking the bull by the horns is good, but reacting is bad. And I think that if I started these things now, I’d be doing it reactively. And that could lead to mistakes. For now, I think I’m going to instead make a decision to give myself time — at least until the end of the week — and let the emotional impact and reactions of the announcement to work their way through my system. Then I can channel my desire to act more wisely.

Introspection

Letting go of the “undo button”

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I was an idiot. I read an entry on one of Susan’s diaries. And I gave my opinion. Thing is, like an idiot, I didn’t check out my assumptions before hand. Generally a bad idea, I know. But every now and then, I do something dumb. I found out I was wrong. Acknowledged it, and apologized.

Of course, I considered just deleting the comment. I thought about it for….all of thirty seconds, I think. I eventually realized that I was looking down a metophorical road that started in that direction, and I decided I didn’t like where that road led. So in the end, I decided that for me, deleting the comment was a bad idea.

You see, for me, it’s too easy to treat the handy “delete comment” feature as an “undo button.” I think everyone’s familiar with the “undo button,” right? I think we all wanted one when we were a kids. (Heck, I find myself wondering if you ever really stop wanting one when you’re an adult.) If you did something wrong, you’d press your magic “undo button,” and it would magically make it all right, as if what you did never happened. No guilt. No hard feelings. No lectures from Mom. No extra chores or days without television.

Even as an adult, I have to admit that I would love an “undo” button. I’d like to be able to undo the mistakes I’ve made at work and the problems I’ve created with coworkers so I didn’t have to spend time rebuilding a sense of teamwork and trust with them, for one example.

And to me, that’s what the delete option feels like. It’s a way for me to go, “I can delete that comment and make it as if I never left it.” In this case, I probably could’ve even done so. After all, Susan wasn’t online. She hadn’t seen it yet.

But the thing is, I did leave it. And I don’t feel right about pretending I didn’t. Even if no one else knows about it. I’d be deceiving everyone but myself. And I’d be trying to deceive myself in the process, on some level. And that thought bothers me a great deal.

The other thing is, it seems to me that an “undo button” — even one that just let’s you pretend you never did something stupid but doesn’t really “undo” it — would have the side effect of removing reminders of the lessons I learned from my mistakes. After all, how can I learn from a mistake I’m pretending never happened? How can I do so even if I just try to forget it ever happened?

To me, leaving that comment there is about character building the hard way. It serves as a reminder to me — and let’s everyone else know about it, which I think is good in some ways, too — that says, “Hey, remember what happened the last time you spoke without making sure your facts were straight? Maybe you ought to make sure you’re not doing that again.”

It’s painful, but then isn’t that the nature of character building?

Introspection, Work

Getting geeky

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I think I spent five minutes laughing today. It was laugh or cry, really. I had one of those work-related moments where life itself becomes entirely absurd and you realize that there’s nothing worth taking serious anymore. All because of an email I received.

You see, we’re working on a new product at work. And the powers that be have decided that they’re not comfortable with the risk involved in writing the firmware for the product for Linux. They’ve decided that they’d be much more comfortable modifying the code we currently use on other products that runs under VxWorks. So this means a complete change in firmware development. New compiler, new development environment, different baseline code.

That’s all fine for the firmware guys because, quite frankly, they haven’t really been working on the code for this anyway. So regardless of which operating system they go with, they’re still at ground zero. Unfortunately, as I’ve already began working on the bringup code to verify that the hardware is functional (and it only makes sense to write the bringup code and operational firmware for the same operating system for the sake of code reusability), it means setting aside about a month worth of work that I’ve done and starting over from scratch. There’s nothing like saying, “wow, look at all that work I’ve done. It’s great. Now it can sit there and possibly never see the light of day again.” As I said, I laughed because it was easier than crying.

The only thing that really bothers me about this is that I feel like I only found out about this change of direction on “accident.” The program manager for this project just sent out an “oh, there’s been this official decision, just so everyone knows.” No one explicitly came out and said, “you know, this means Jarred needs to change gears too.” So if Mark hadn’t just offhandedly pointed it out, I wonder how much farther they would’ve let me toil away in the wrong direction before I found out. Now that would’ve irked me. It’s one thing to tell me that I need to start over again. It’s another thing to let me keep working in the wrong direction when a change of plans has been made.

In the long run, this really doesn’t bother me that much. Sure, I have to let go of my work from the last month and acknowledge that it doesn’t account for anything now (other than the fact that I’m a hard and dedicated worker). But that’ll be a good exercise in ego dissolution. And my ego could probably use a bit of dissolution, anyhow. But on the true positive, it means that I can write the bringup for VxWorks. And in a lot of ways, writing bringup code in VxWorks is a lot simpler than doing it in Linux. Especially when you consider that I’m still really learning the ins and outs of the Linux kernel.

Of course, that does also mean that this project will be less of a challenge for me. I mean, hacking the Linux kernel, figuring out how to do device drivers, and everything else was new territory for me, so it required learning and a shift in thoughts. And I rather enjoy that. I was looking forward to it. Oh well, hopefully I’ll get another project to do that with.

Paganism, Rants

“The Gardnerian BOS”?

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You know, it’s really quite ironic. After Artharaja and I talk about the Sacred Texts website and the supposed “Gardnerian BOS” they have on there, I find someone posting about that very thing on a message board. I think I managed to express amusement about the whole thing rather than annoyance. Though to tell you the truth, I’m both amused and annoyed.

Of course, whenever someone says “Look, I got the Gardnerian BOS,” I first have the urge (and gave into it this time) to ask, “Really? Which one?” I mean, really, the idea of the Gardnerian BOS makes about as much sense as the idea of the paper towel. There’s a bunch of them. It’s my understanding that Gardner rewrote his BOS a few times himself — or at least had each High Priestess he trained copy a slightly different version of it. And it’s also my understanding that each High Priestess added to it as they passed it on to their own initiates. And that’s the way it’s been going ever since, though it’s my understanding that some lines are more likely to add than others. So at best, any Gardnerian BOS would be one version of the Gardnerian BOS as received and possibly appended by a particular initiate. In this case, the culprit would be Aidan Kelly. And to be perfectly blunt, considering the smear job he attempts to do on his tradition’s founder (and what I understand to be his shoddy research), I’d be dubious of any claims he makes.

Of course, the other thing that always gets me is that I don’t see why people get all excited over finding a copy of “the Gardnerian BOS” anyway? Hello? This is (supposedly) the BOS of the tradition that most eclectics think is just a bunch of “arrogant elitist bastards,” anyway? Remember that? Do they remember how they spend all this time justifying themselves by saying “well, Wicca has evolved beyond that, now.” Well, if it’s evolved beyond that, then why give a fuck about the BOS you’ve evolved beyond? Or is this just a case where deep in their hearts, they still believe that those “elitist bastards” might actually have something they want?

Honestly, people turn their nose up at Gardnerians and covet whatever they think they might have at the same time. It’s sad, amusing, and annoying all in one.

Introspection

I want to be petty and snide

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Apparently, part of me wants to be nasty, caustic, and snide. Anything I see that I think is stupid, I just want to mock the person in some way. Two prime examples of this happened on a message board in a topic discussing witchcraft and magic.

First of all, a 14 year old Christian came in and made a pronouncement: “I rebuke the spirit of witchcraft and all other demonic things.” I rolled my eyes. Part of me wanted to make some smartass comment like, “Well, I rebuke the Spirit of Saint Louis. That wicked plane!” I figured I’d have to mention that the Spirit of Saint Louis was a plane because quite frankly, I get the impression that this kid wouldn’t have gotten the reference. And let’s face it, if you have to explain a smartass comment, it takes all the fun out of it. I suppose if I was more caustic, I could’ve taken more pleasure in the fact that the person I was mocking didn’t get my statements, but I guess I’m just not that advanced of an elitist bastard/intellectual snob.

The next person came in on the same thread. Her pronouncement? “I don’t believe witchcraft and magic is real.” To her, I simply wanted to do the online equivalent of giving her a patronizing pat on the head and saying, “That’s nice, now I trust you can find your way the to the exit on yourself.” I mean honestly, if you don’t believe in something, don’t enter into a conversation about it. Is this really that difficult of a concept to grasp? But then, I guess that such an action wouldn’t give them the opportunity to sound so smug.

But then, can I blame them for wanting to do that? I mean, aren’t I wanting to do the same thing with my own caustic rejoinders? So I surely don’t have the moral high ground from which to criticize. But screw the moral high ground, I say. At least here. This is my chance to express my annoyance.

I suppose that’s why I’m writing this here. It gives me a chance to give into a bit of base pettiness and give “silent voice” to my snide remarks in private while I maintain my poise in that conversation. Part of me finds this a bit two-faced, but another part of me finds this a right action. After all, I am only human. I’m bound to have my moments of weakness, where my less than stellar side rises to the need for expression. And is it not better to give it this more private voice where it at least somewhat contained?

I suppose some day, it would be nice to reach a point where such nonsense truly does not effect me. Then, even such a private expression of annoyance and invective would not be necessary. That would be ideal. But while I strive for that ideal, I think it best to give place to the less-than-ideal reality of my personality, and acknowledge it forthrightly. After all, this is better than repressing it until it builds and bursts out beyond my restraint.

Deep Thoughts

Someone should’ve checked the facts

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It amazes me how sloppy people can be with the facts sometime. Take a recent entry I read on one diary site claiming that people were denied the right to have a Christmas parade in the Midwest. This person went on to decry that this was a violation of Christians’ Constitutional rights. Had her information been correct, I would’ve actually been inclined to agree with her. However, in my naive sense of idealism, I had my doubts about the details. So, I asked the diarist to send me to her original source.

The diariest quite nicely pointed to another entry on the same diary site. I immediately noticed the first discrepancy. In this version of the story (briefly mentioned by this diarist), she mentioned that it wasn’t a case of a request to have a Christmas parade being denied. Instead, this one stated that some religious groups were denied the opportunity to join an established Christmas parade based on the grounds that their entries would’ve been “religious in nature.” Immediately, I found myself curious to find out more, so I asked this diarist for her source. She happily pointed me to a FoxNews article by Bill O’Reilly. While Mr. O’Reilly’s mention of the parade incident was brief and a small point in a larger political commentary, I am grateful that he finally mentioned a source that gave the name of the town: Denver, Colorado.

Armed with this knowledge, I was able to do my own search and discovered a story by a local Denver News Station on the topic. From this entry, I was able to find out that the parade is being sponsored by the Downtown Denver Partnership. With this information, I was able to find the Downtown Denver Partnership’s site. And from there, I was able to find the following statement from their “About Us” pages:

Downtown Denver Partnership, Inc. (DDP) is a non-profit business organization that creatively plans, manages and develops Downtown Denver as the unique, diverse, vibrant and economically healthy urban core of the Rocky Mountain region.

In otherwords, the parade was being organized by a private organization. As such, as parade organizers, they are within their rights to set any standard they wish when evaluating whether to permit a given organization’s entry into their parade. In effect, contrary to the first diarist’s opinion, there is no Constitutional violation involved. (There may well be a question about whether most of us feel the parade organizers did the right thing, but that’s another matter.)

What truly concerns me here, though, is how this story has changed. In the first entry I read, it was presented as a case of a city denying religious groups the right to start a parade. In the second entry and the commentary by Mr. O’Reilly, the facts were more correct in that religious groups were being denied the opportunity to march in a parade already being planned. However, even in those cases, the identity of the parade organizers was kept vague enough so that people might infer that city officials themselves were organizing the parade and were denying these groups the opportunity to participate. (This is further exacerbated by the fact that Mr. O’Reilly mentions that the mayor of Denver had recommended changing a sign saying “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays” without clarifying that this was actually a separate incident.) It’s not until I dug a bit further that I discovered that the parade organizer was a private organization. (And one must then wonder why Mr. O’Reilly — who supports the BSA’s right to exclude certain men and boys from their organization on the grounds that the BSA is a private organization — would turn around and cry foul when another private organization exercises the same right.)

In the end, I’m reminded of the old game of “telephone.” Someone whispers something to another person, who then whispers it to a third person. Unfortunately, due to poor enunciation and possible hearing problems, the message gets distorted, and what is passed along by whispers eventually bears little or no resemblance to the original statement. That’s exactly what’s happened here. By not carefully reading what they’ve read and taking care to repeat it as accurately as possible, the story eventually gets changed into something it’s not. And the sad part in this case is that a large number of people — who didn’t take the time to trace the story back like I did — will be crying “Constitutional violation” over the wrong situation.

Paganism

“A Year and a Day”

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Every now and then, I hear various eclectics throw around the phrase “a year and a day.” And to be honest, I somewhat cringe when I hear it. It’s one of those cases where they’ve taken a phrase that came out of Traditional Wicca, taken it somewhat (if not completely) out of its original context, and changed what it’s all about.

In the context most eclectics use it (and I suspect it can be traced back to some author somewhere, though I’m not sure which one), the idea is that one must study for a year and a day to become a Witch. It’s also often assumed that one must study at a certain degree for that amount of time when for a year and a day before you can move on to the degree. In either case, it’s not entirely correct.

First of all, “a year and a day” was not originally a hard and fast rule. In fact, I’m not sure it’s a hard and fast rule today, but more a “rule of thumb.” But before a certain time (sometime in the 1980’s, if I’ve pieced together my information correctly), it wasn’t even that. You see, back in the hay days of the 1950’s, 1960’s, and possibly even the 1970’s, it was not unheard of to initiate new Witches on the spot. It also wasn’t unheard of to Initiate new Witches into all three degrees in the same weekend. This was done for various reasons, all of which I doubt I’m even aware of. However, the basic reason boiled down to the fact that those who were doing these initiations felt it was the necessary, correct, and proper to do things at the time. (At the time, I believe it was primarily motivated by the feeling that it was necessary in order to ensure the survival of Wicca.)

At some point, the various High Priests, High Priestesses, and Elders slowly came to the conclusion — both individually and collectively — that this was not such a good idea anymore. They found that it didn’t give New Witches the chance to truly come to grips with the Mysteries they were being introduced to, nor were they getting well prepared to run their own covens before being thrust into the position of High Priest or High Priestess. In effect, they got “fly by the seat of your pants” style training. Also, as they felt that the survival and continued propagation of Wicca was now assured, they decided that it would be more appropriate to slow down the training process and give Initiates a chance to truly grow in the Mysteries before thrusting them to the third degree and all of the responsibilities it entails. So Witches, covens, lines, and traditions began to set up systems of training to guide their Initiates (and in some-cases, their candidates for Initiation) through what they needed to properly experience the Mysteries of Wicca and work its magics (both big and little).

In addition to this, some of those Witches, covens, lines, and traditions considered the Mysteries. Recognizing that (1) a Witch’s experience of the Mysteries gets deeper in each degree (or in some traditions, each degree involves slightly different Mysteries) and (2) to experience the full range and subtleties of the Mysteries requires the observance of the full Wheel of the Year, they decided that it would be wise for each Witch to experience the full spectrum of Mysteries at each degree by spending a minimum of one turn of the Wheel before moving on to the next degree. And hence, “a year and a day” was born.

It is important to note that, to the best of my knowledge, this is not a unilateral requirement among all lines and traditions of Wicca. This is just what some — and probably even many — have determined is a good thing. It is also important to note that this is often considered a minimum. It is not unusual at all for the teacher or student to decide that more time is needed, for whatever reason. One common example of this is in a case where a student does no live close enough to the covenstead to attend all of the rituals in the year. In such a case, the student may find it necessary to take a few turns on the Wheel in order to experience all of the rituals and their particular aspects of the Wiccan Mysteries. Or there may simply be a matter in the Witch’s personal life that makes a longer timespan necessary.

You see, I think that’s what bothers me. Eclectics seem to think that “studying a year and a day” guarantees one’s Witchiness in some sense. It doesn’t. No amount of studying — either a year and a day or a decade and a year — will ever accomplish that. The only thing that does that is the processes that makes one a Witch.

I also balk at the idea that “a year and a day” is always associated with studying. It’s as if studying was what it’s all about. It’s not. Don’t get me wrong here. I think studying is extremely important. But studying alone accomplishes nothing. It is the process of experiencing the Mysteries that make Wicca what it is that is important. And that’s what “a year and a day” was originally all about.

The thoughts of a gay witch living in upstate New York.