“But I don’t want to cross the road!”

There’s something about this photograph which speaks to the folly at the heart of paganism.

It might be the full-arm Gummi gloves and the bondage harnesses. Chair... or sling?

Tits.

I’ve read some nice rants on the subject of Unverified Personal Gnosis lately so I thought I would have a bit of a gnash and a foam myself.

UPG is intended to be a move away from what is seen to be woo-woo. The idea is to shear what would at one time have been called prophecy and revelation away from personal status. What actually happens is that the corpus of heathenry, for example, becomes nothing more than a scrapbook of factoids rather than any coherent and directional doctrine. There aren’t any prophets in heathenry, no small cohort of people who are picked on by gods, just bloggers. Heathens have become god-twitchers, and they get together for a jar and jaw about their latest piece of god-spotting. UPG is portrayed as a technical, evidence-based process but it’s really only a distillation of the Gnower’s knowledge and imagination. What fits is what matters. Methods are more important than message, and methods boil down to a bic and an A4 tablet.

It’s the infection of animism, in which everything is regarded as people and all people are regarded as equal. If everyone is equal then nobody’s message is special or has any legitimate imperative. Which brings me nicely to those who do not regard themselves as equal, and the identification of those who aren’t. If I were asked whose example and guidance it is best to avoid then I would say anyone with a title such as seidkona or druid, or anyone who uses adjectives in self-reference. Such people are hopelessly romantic. It’s all about them and any message they utter serves their ego and their agenda. Who aren’t equal? Who has a valuable message? Those with questions. No claim of magical skill or a seer’s eye from these but a real stuff to give about the life they lead which they love.

There are some people who have always regarded UPG as the aspirational religionist's equivalent of “My cat told me it prefers Whiskas”, that is, when it’s not “Look at me everybody! I‘m a seidkona and a PhD! Wheee!”. They’re really cynical types, though, as a rule, and don’t get invited to Christenings. Anyway, next time some one tells you that they’re spotted the Greater-Bearded Trickster, or the Bad-Tempered Ginger Hammer, step back for a moment and consider the possibility that you may be listening to the song of a Big-Headed Tit.

It’s not modern myth…

It’s fanfic. Derivative, turgid fanfic at that. What next; The Manga Mabinogion?

Do War Gods do Crosswords? (Christmas Colouring-In Competition!)

I haven’t a clue about that, but here's another one; what need does a 21st Century A.D. social network have for a war god?

Looks like Christopher Biggins in Panto. Scarey. Anyway, post your solutions in the comments section and the first n winners will receive a sarcastic quip. Attach a coloured-in copy of Brython's war god and you'll receive two. Those coloured only red will be disqualified for their lack of creative flair. Have fun!

Mothers’ Night at the BBC.

Is that Starhawk Month out of the way for another year, then? Yes? Excellent. You can ditch the stubble now, girls.

Cranial Liposuction.

From the aptly titled “Brain Drain” :

“When the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, they were built on exact 3,4, 5 triangles, to exact mathematical specifications which if we tried to copy with today's technology it would be an almost impossible task.

The likes of astrology that appear to connect with certain sites elsewhere as well, Newgrange comes to mind, and the sheer competence to build both Avebury and Stonehenge with the transportation of stones sometimes over hundreds of miles.

Astrology and mathematics are closely linked, but there appears to be some point in history where the world wide evidence of it being used to any degree, just seems to stop dead.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbreligion/F2213239?thread=7082315

To be fair to the BBC bods they jump all over the poster, but then proceed to sagely head around other oddballs, such as:

“it's clear that reading and writing and mathematics and engineering were going full bore long before the Fertile Crescent, and the alleged beginnings of modern cutlure”

“any similarity between New World pyrmaid construction and Egyptian is not surprising, whether it was because of a common knowledge base before these peoples separated, or because of genetic similarity which expressed itself similarly on both sides of the pond. Either that or some intrepid sailors crossed the Atlantic in reed boats. My money is on the former.”

“The Tattoos on Ozti weren't accupuncture as we understand it. They were more like markers that showed the "spirits/ancestors" the location of pain/injury in order from them to work on those locations.”

While all about them others continued playing keepy-up with their own heads Dancing Crow regained theirs after a brief flirtation with the “parallel evolution” of acupuncture (it's placebo, in case anyone thought it was magic) and referenced the very sensible Snowball school:

“I would suggest that we needed to reach critical mass before the wider human culture expanded as it did”

It’s deeply non-sensational compared with neo-Atlantean accounts of human cultural evolution, and thereby deeply unsatisfying to many - the special effects are nowhere near as good as 10,000 B.C., for example - but until some dirt-digger finds the tomb of King Conan of Aquilonia it’s where the smart money is investing. In the meantime I’m not keeping Howard on my history shelf. I will watch continue to repeats of the Stargate franchise. Amanda and Claudia would miss me.

Meanwhile, back at the Bird-Brains Trust…

“The other major attitude I will call the Animist perspective. In this the body and the spirit are felt to be one, they are both forms of energy and there is no division between the two, they are both intrinsic to the person and indivisible.”

http://www.pebble.uk.net/organdonation.html

They Sure Like The Bone.

It suddenly occurred to me that the HAD-beans (they like their history half-baked) are just a bunch of angry people with a misguided cause. I’m sure that 30-odd years ago they would have been called something like Wimmin Against Bollocks. In these modern times, however, they’re Wimmin For Bollocks.

Pagan Forum Post Of The Day.

"My dog’s having its period."


UKiP.

The Rancid Turd.

I see the lad behind the The Ancient Code, a Philip Gardiner, has also tossed off some rubbish about Lewis Carroll which sounds like a John Shuttleworth production.

The Ancient Code.

I've seen this advertised on a few blogs.




Looks like a right old pile of shit.

Got it!

I knew I recognised that voice!

Is There Wife On Vase?

Shock footage from Stonehenge as Arch Wookie flaunts relationship with pot of forecourt chrysanthemums. Amazing feat of ventriloquism, shape-shifting gone sour, or something more queer? You decide.

I Can’t Beard It Any Longer!

Why is it that pagan menopausal men seem compelled to grow big white beards? Is it a Santa fixation? A homage to Charles Darwin? Or do they actually feel that a bag of cotton wool Marvined onto their chin will confer upon them supreme authority and convince all those pagans in their immediate vicinity and those who clap eyes on their photographs of their right to rule by virtue of the pride with which they wear their tonsorial tumour?

If it’s true that a beard is a sign of an alpha male then what would happen, I wonder, if everyone turned up for the next Made-Up-Festival at Stonehenge sporting big white beards. Would there be a fight? Would the hirsute horde mill around aimlessly like sheep on stilts, swamped in a miasma of beardy-pheromones? What if only the women turned up in beards? Would Ye Grande Olde Stonehenge Wookies explode from sexual confusion at the mixed signals or would they start jumping one another in reconstructed fertility rights? That would make for more entertaining news footage than the stock shots of scrawny layabouts banging drums they nicked from Oxfam and middle-aged women nattering to themselves while swatting imaginary flies.

Boneheads.

Given some very sensible noises from that quarter of late I’m reassessing my opinion of Brython. They have some funny ideas but, heck, so do most pagans! I know they have this tribe thing going on, mutual support, brothers-in-arms, that sort of gig, but when it comes down to it there is the odd bod who’s prepared to stand up and oppose the silliness. Well done those chaps.

Expelliarmus, Boyo! Welsh as the New Latin.

Over here, Robin made reference to the Hogwarts’ school of paganism. Well, further proof that pagans are growing increasingly loopy comes from the increasing incidence of Welsh in some non-Welsh quarters. September and October seemed to be Welsh month over at the BBC’s pagan forums when several members decided to adopt Welsh names but they soon got bored of that and went back en flock to using English.

Less easily bored are the Brython lot, who seem determined to elevate Welsh to the level of a ritual language. They’ve even started to make up new Welsh names for the days of the week. Yes, there are native Welsh speakers in Brython as there are native Welsh speakers in Britain, but why should so many people seem determined to give it such prominence? Are they convinced that there was some Arcadian age of Albion in which everyone spoke Welsh? Boys and girls - give it up. You just look and sound silly. I saw a television programme once featuring a Star Trek convention. There were all these fankids going around with bits of liver Sellotaped to their foreheads shouting at each other in Klingon. That’s what you’re like, with your made-up mythology and your pick‘n‘mix pantheon. Seriously, you’re an embarrassment to paganism, and that’s not easy. It’s a definite sign of a practice’s incoherence when the BBC pagans get bored of playing with it.

Attention-seeking Acts of Vandalism.

What is the point of ruining perfectly good trees? They have their foliage, they have their flowers and their thorns and their bark. They have their fruit. Who in their right mind thinks that a tree will look better with tatty pieces of ribbon and rag hanging from it? “Why not?” asks the question. Because it looks ugly and it means nothing to you, comes the answer.

I suppose that this is just another example of pagans trying not only to monopolise a past to which they have no connection but also the landscape which they share with everyone else right now.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics.

I don't know. I look away for a year just when I thought it could get no worse and when I look back, what do I find? The BBC pagan board is an even thicker stew of morons than I could ever have imagined.