Non Fluffy Wicca

From AP we have another story of people who want to feel better about the bad things their ancestors pulled, so they touch murder on the head with a Rainbow Brite wand in hopes that the sun shines out their butts. Yep, cynical I am indeed.

By CATERINE McALOON

LONDON (AP) - A Scottish township plans to mark Halloween by officially pardoning 81 people - and their cats - executed centuries ago for being witches.

"There'll be no witches' hats, dress-ups or that sort of thing - it will be a fairly solemn occasion," Adele Conn, spokeswoman for the baronial court that granted the pardons, said in a telephone interview Friday.

Sunday's ceremony in Prestonpans will publicly declare pardons for 81 people executed in the 16th and 17th centuries. The pardons were granted under ancient feudal powers due to be abolished within weeks.

More than 3,500 Scots, mainly women and children, and their cats were killed in witch hunts at a time of political intrigue and religious excess. Many were condemned on flimsy evidence, such as owning a black cat or brewing homemade remedies.

Prestonpans has recorded one of the largest numbers of witch executions in all of Scotland, said Conn, spokeswoman for the Barons Courts of Prestoungrange & Dolphinstoun.

She said Gordon Prestoungrange, the 14th baron, granted the pardons in the last session of his court, which is due to be abolished on Nov. 28.

"'Most of those persons condemned for witchcraft within the jurisdiction of the Baron Courts of Prestoungrange and Dolphinstoun were convicted on the basis of spectral evidence - that is to say, prosecuting witnesses declared that they felt the presence of evil sprits or heard spirit voices,'" the court said in its written findings.

"Such spectral evidence is impossible to prove or to disprove; nor is it possible for the accused to cross-examine the spirit concerned. One is convicted upon the very making of such charges without any possibility of offering a defense."

The court declared pardon to all those convicted, "as well as to the cats concerned."

Conn said 15 local descendants of executed witches had been invited to attend the ceremony and an inaugural Witches' Remembrance Day, which will become an annual event in the township each Halloween.

"It's too late to apologize, but it's a sort of symbolic recognition that these people were put to death for hysterical ignorance and paranoia," said historian Roy Pugh, who presented evidence to the court in support of the pardons.

The last execution for witchcraft in Scotland was in 1727. Such cases were outlawed by the Witchcraft Act of 1735, which made it a crime only to pretend to be a witch.

Posted by mikki at 09:43 AM | Permalink

United Kingdom: If you thought the Ark of the Covenant was buried deep in some anonymous warehouse in Washington DC, you're wrong. It's actually in a basement of the British Museum.

On a shelf in a locked basement room underneath the British Museum, are kept 11 wooden tablets; they are covered in purple velvet. And no one among the museum's staff — including Neil MacGregor, the director — is permitted to enter the room.

The tablets — or tabots — are sacred objects in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the most important of the 500 or so priceless Magdala treasures, looted by Britain from Ethiopia in 1868 and now held in this country. For almost two decades, the only people allowed access have been Ethiopian church clergy; it is considered sacrilegious for anyone else to see them.

Amid growing calls for the return of the treasures, the British Museum has moved them from an anonymous storage site to its Bloomsbury main building and announced that it is considering loaning them to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in London on what would be a permanent basis. They are regarded as representing the original Ark of the Covenant, which housed the Ten Commandments and the Orthodox Church has been lobbying for their return — or at least easy access to them — for more than 50 years.

Posted by mikki at 02:31 PM | Permalink

United States: A judge has rejected a lawsuit from a Christian who opposed the removal of a cross from the Los Angeles County seal. Ernesto Vasquez made contradictory complaints that the symbol wasn't actually religious, but that removing it would be discriminating against Christians.

According to the plaintiff, the cross only represents the historic 'influence of the church and the mission of California,' [U.S. District Judge S. James] Otero wrote. Yet plaintiff maintains L.A. County is conveying a message of hostility to religious groups by removing the symbol from the seal.

A representation of the goddess Pomona is also due to be removed, and replaced with a picture of a Native American woman, but Vasquez appears not to be concerned about that.

Judge Dismisses L.A. County Seal Lawsuit - The Guardian, 21st October 2004.

Posted by mikki at 02:30 PM | Permalink

Don't we have better things to do with our time? More important issues to fight? There's certainly enough REAL discrimination both within in our ranks and without to tackle these days without spoiling trick or treat for kids. The day that they start canceling xmas because Santa is offensive to Christians, perhaps I will reconsider.

United States: A Washington State school district has cancelled Hallowe'en celebrations in case the festival is offensive to Wiccans.

The district said Halloween celebrations and children dressed in Halloween costumes might be offensive to real witches.

Witches with pointy noses and things like that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion and so we want to be respectful of that, Hansen said.

The Wiccan, or Pagan, religion is said to be growing in the United States and there are Wiccan groups in Puyallup.

On the district's list of guidelines related to holidays and celebrations is an item that reads: Use of derogatory stereotypes is prohibited, such as the traditional image of a witch, which is offensive to members of the Wiccan religion.

School Says Halloween Disrespectful to Witches - abc News, 21st October 2004.

Posted by mikki at 02:30 PM | Permalink

No, I don't believe that Satanists are Pagans (I don't subscribe to putting religions based on Judeo-Christian theology (or reverse theology) in the same category as pagans. However, who the hell (pun intended) is this looney tune to decide whose religion is "real" and whose isn't?

United Kingdom: An Edinburgh-born sailor has been granted the same rights as any other religious sailor to practice his religion on board ship and Ann Widdicombe is upset because Ldg Hand Chris Cranmer is a Satanist. After years of trying to impose her religious beliefs on others when she was a government minister, she has now decided it's a private matter which should be kept in the home.

I am utterly shocked by this, Miss Widdecombe said.

Satanism is wrong. Obviously the private beliefs of individuals anywhere including the Armed Forces are their own affair but I hope it doesn't spread.

There should be no question whatsoever of allowing Satanist rituals on board any ship in Her Majesty's Royal Navy.

What they believe and do in their own home is one thing, what they do at work is the business of their employer.

The Navy should not permit Satanist practices on board its ships.

God himself gives free will, but I would like to think that if somebody applied to the Navy and said they were a Satanist today it would raise its eyebrows somewhat.

British law does not permit employers to discriminate against someone on grounds of religion.

Widdecombe horror at navy Satanist - The Guardian, 24th October 2004.

Posted by mikki at 02:27 PM | Permalink

Yes, it's true that I haven't been writing enough of late. I have many excuses, that I will enumerate later, however, some very wonderful things and some very terrible things have happened in the past few weeks. One of the wonderful things was that some of the leadership of the Correllian Nativist Tradition came to DC for initiations, temple blessings, and for a Life Passages Intensive class. They stuck around for sight seeing, and general "hanging out" and I was lucky enough to have kidnapped Don Lewis, Chancellor of the Tradition, and his herald, Jason. It was a fantastic opportunity to get to know them better, have many religious discussions, and gain serious insight into yet more uses of humor as learning experiences :-).

Now I may be back, and attempting to post more often :-)

Posted by mikki at 10:24 PM | Permalink

The orders are coming in, and I'm finding that it's getting rather exciting around here. Who would have thought there was just so much to do? Phase one is pretty easy - you generally find a wholesaler or two, sign up with them, "borrow" pictures off their website, build your own website (from scratch if you're someone like me) and sit and wait for orders. However, when you sit and wait for awhile, you tend to go look and see what OTHER people in your position are doing. Then you kind of find that all of the sites that are doing the exact same thing you are, kind of wind up at the bottom of the search engine results and are totally ignored. So, it's on to another strategy.

The new strategy was to offer quality products that I personally test to make sure they're what they say they are, and hopefully build a reputation as someone who offers useful really nice products at a good price. Of course, in order to do that, one must find wholesalers who don't sell the same crap you find on every website in the country, all bought from the same wholesalers, imported from India by the gazillions, etc. etc. And that takes WORK.

So once you get the suppliers together, have ordered the products, etc., you find that most of your new suppliers are small businesses just like you, and therefore they don't have really cool photos. You must then set yourself up as a photography business as well, and the pictures you take had better be relatively nice or nobody will buy anything at all. You get the pictures, you integrate them onto the website, and then you're done, right? Uh, not quite.

Then I had to figure out whether drop shipping was worth it. On the one hand, drop shipping is really convenient. On the other hand, you don't know whether they really have the product, and it's more expensive. So I decided that then I needed more control over the inventory, so I went off and ordered as many of each item as I thought I could easily sell. Of course, then I had to try to figure out where all that stuff went, as well as try to keep straight this thing called "inventory."

With some help from the Wessiepooh, I got shelves in the guest room closet, and immediately filled it with supplies. I got stuff EVERYWHERE. Then could I sit back and wait for the orders to roll in? Well sure. And wait... and wait.... well gee, something is wrong here. So I did a Google search on stuff I was selling to see where I would come up in the ratings. Well, NOWHERE! That's just REALLY not good!

On to do research on search engines, meta tags, keywords, etc. etc. Found out from there that no longer are the days when you could just add things to search engines and *poof* they would appear. Now these bastards want MONEY to include you. Ack! Then I found out that keywords were not what they used to be either.

Of course, everyone has different advice when it comes to how to get ranked on the search engines. And, of course, I have no idea which one is quite correct. And, of course, they all want big bucks for their opinions. So perhaps I should just hang on there and hope that the site catches on.

Meantime, I just got my custom blended oil made ONLY for us :-) Next week or so I should get my lovely custom teas. Then I'll get to play with the website yet some more.

Posted by mikki at 07:33 PM | Permalink

Sometimes you're flipping through those TV channels, and you just stop on a random one somewhere, and while you're doing a few other things, it's on in the background. You might hardly notice it, but then something - a sound, an image or combination of the two - makes you look up and you start to watch. And sometimes it affects you to the point where you partially wish you hadn't. Not because it's "bad" inherently, but because it hurts to watch.

Thus was the HBO special on what's happening today in the Chernobyl area. Something caught my attention, and then I couldn't stop watching, although it was repulsive and horrifying and upset me. The mere fact that children die because the government won't pay $300.00 for a heart patch, and others are born so horribly deformed because their parents are still living in contaminated areas just boggles the mind.

It's so trite to say that we take so much for granted, but when you see a child begging a foreign film maker for a television for the institution where he and other children are essentially incarcerated because they are physically or mentally handicapped, then collapsing because he used his last ounce of energy to ask , you have to stop and think. There but for an accident at birth go I, and everyone else. Think of that this coming thanksgiving.

Posted by mikki at 02:06 PM | Permalink

Spain: Spanish authorities, apparently sick of the church trying to ride rough-shod over them, have given the go-ahead for same-sex marriages.

Homosexuals throughout Spain were last night celebrating a human rights victory after the government approved legislation allowing same-sex marriage.

Posted by mikki at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The days when religion bumps up against the wall of intellectual property has been reached, and we must all be very afraid. As most readers of Kestra's liberal rantings already know, copyright has often been used as a club to stop people from saying things they might wish to. In this episode, we find that you can copyright the messages of a god so nobody else can channel him. Oh how fun!

Read the whole story here

Posted by mikki at 08:42 PM | Permalink