People Keep Doing It. I'm Going to Keep Complaining About It.

Although it starts off a bit oddly, here's a generally well-written article about the continuing struggle of a Pagan group known as the Maetreum of Cyble, Magan Mater to achieve tax-free status. Sadly, the author of the article, Colin DeVries (phone: 518-943-2100 ext. 3325, e-mail: cdevries@thedailymail.net), can't quite make himself capitalize the word "Pagan." One doubts that he'd write about a Catholic convent and refuse to capitalize "Catholic" or about a Christian camp and refuse to capitalize "Christian." So why the refusal to capitalize "Pagan"?

The feminine faction of resolute pagans in Palenville have hit back with yet another lawsuit requesting religious exemption status for the 2010 tax year.

On Aug. 4, the Maetreum of Cyblele, Magna Mater filed for 2010 tax exempt status in Greene County Court, according to a court clerk, after an unsuccessful bid with the town’s board of assessment review in May.

. . .

The Maetreum, a matriarchal pagan spiritual group based at the 19th century Central House at 3312 Route 23A, has been fighting for their religious freedom from taxation since they were denied their exemption in 2007.

Initially, the group was awarded their exemption in 2006 as an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) religious organization, but denied it the following year without reason, according to Cathryn Platine, the group’s spiritual leader and its Reverend Mother.

. . .

Now, already in the midst of an Article 78 court battle on the denied exemptions dating back to the 2007 tax year, the Maetreum has taken the town to task once more — though not without some backlash.

. . .

Platine said she feels that town officials and their attorneys are discriminating against their group, which has been known to take in impoverished and transgendered women looking for support or belonging.

Though those acts are part of a charitable service the Maetreum provides to the community, they are often misunderstood, according to Platine.

In expanding its services to the community, the group plans to open a food pantry to provide non-perishable goods to Palenville and other Catskill communities.

Last week, on Sunday, Aug. 28, the Maetreum hosted their second annual Pagan Pride Day, featuring unique crafts and workshops to help educate visitors on the various pagan religious movements. The event served as a food drive for non-perishable food items.

More information on the Maetreum of Cybele, Magna Mater is available at www.gallae.com.

To reach reporter Colin DeVries please call 518-943-2100 ext. 3325, or e-mail cdevries@thedailymail.net.

I don't think that any religious group should get tax-exempt status, but, if Greene County is going to award such status to Christian groups, Pagan groups are entitled to the same treatment. The fact that the county also may be discriminating against poor and transgendered women only makes this case more egregious.

Capital letters found here.

Aphrodite's Bitch

Labor Day Poetry Slam

TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME
~R. Frost

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Picture found here.

Labor Day Poetry Slam

Factory

BY CHARLES SIMIC

The machines were gone, and so were those who worked them.
A single high-backed chair stood like a throne
In all that empty space.
I was on the floor making myself comfortable
For a long night of little sleep and much thinking.

An empty birdcage hung from a steam pipe.
In it I kept an apple and a small paring knife.
I placed newspapers all around me on the floor
So I could jump at the slightest rustle.
It was like the scratching of a pen,
The silence of the night writing in its diary.

Of rats who came to pay me a visit
I had the highest opinion.
They’d stand on two feet
As if about to make a polite request
On a matter of great importance.

Many other strange things came to pass.
Once a naked woman climbed on the chair
To reach the apple in the cage.
I was on the floor watching her go on tiptoe,
Her hand fluttering in the cage like a bird.

On other days, the sun peeked through dusty windowpanes
To see what time it was. But there was no clock,
Only the knife in the cage, glinting like a mirror,
And the chair in the far corner
Where someone once sat facing the brick wall.

Picture found here.

Labor Day Poetry Slam

A Way to Make a Living

BY JAMES WRIGHT

From an epigram by Plato
When I was a boy, a relative
Asked for me a job
At the Weeks Cemetery.
Think of all I could
Have raised that summer,
That money, and me
Living at home,
Fattening and getting
Ready to live my life
Out on my knees, humming,
Kneading up docks
And sumac from
Those flawless clerks-at-court, those beautiful
Grocers and judges, the polished
Dead of whom we make
So much.

I could have stayed there with them.
Cheap, too.
Imagine, never
To have turned
Wholly away from the classic
Cold, the hill, so laid
Out, measure by seemly measure clipped
And mown by old man Albright
The sexton. That would have been a hell of
A way to make a living.

Thank you, no.
I am going to take my last nourishment
Of measure from a dark blue
Ripple on swell on ripple that makes
Its own garlands.
My dead are the secret wine jars
Of Tyrian commercial travelers.
Their happiness is a lost beginning, their graves
Drift in and out of the Mediterranean.

One of these days
The immortals, clinging to a beam of sunlight
Under water, delighted by delicate crustaceans,
Will dance up thirty-foot walls of radiance,
And waken,
The sea shining on their shoulders, the fresh
Wine in their arms. Their ships have drifted away.
They are stars and snowflakes floating down
Into your hands, love.

Picture found here.

A Witch's Prayer, MidJourney, for the President

It may be a little late for this, but I'm willing to try anything.

On Inauguration Day, 2009, G/Son and Nonna watched Preznident Obama make his "very serious promise" to the country: "I, Barack Obama, I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Nonna cried like a baby. G/Son asked, "Nonna, is Preznit Obama making the very serious promise to me?" and Nonna cried a lot more and said, "Yes." We went outside an banged on pots and pans and yelled, "Yea! President Obama! A new day! Hurrah!" We ate special Obama cookies and Obama cupcakes and we ran around the back yard in the weak January sunlight and I thanked Columbia, the Goddess of this place, over and over.

And, then.

Mr. President. You're fucking up. A lot. I'm starting to worry that you may, indeed, have been taking your promise to my G/Son rather lightly.

Today, G/Son borrowed my iPhone to play the YouTube he likes that shows President Obama saving the day.

I think you'd better listen twice to this blessing, Mr. President. Snap out of it. Start living up to your potential.

Synchronicity

Lot of blogging going on about rivers and woods.

I love this piece by Derrick Jensen; I've used it before in ritual to call Water and to ground the circle before a ritual to heal local rivers.

Saturday Poetry Blogging

The Angel with the Broken Wing

BY DANA GIOIA

I am the Angel with the Broken Wing,
The one large statue in this quiet room.
The staff finds me too fierce, and so they shut
Faith’s ardor in this air-conditioned tomb.

The docents praise my elegant design
Above the chatter of the gallery.
Perhaps I am a masterpiece of sorts—
The perfect emblem of futility.

Mendoza carved me for a country church.
(His name’s forgotten now except by me.)
I stood beside a gilded altar where
The hopeless offered God their misery.

I heard their women whispering at my feet—
Prayers for the lost, the dying, and the dead.
Their candles stretched my shadow up the wall,
And I became the hunger that they fed.

I broke my left wing in the Revolution
(Even a saint can savor irony)
When troops were sent to vandalize the chapel.
They hit me once—almost apologetically.

For even the godless feel something in a church,
A twinge of hope, fear? Who knows what it is?
A trembling unaccounted by their laws,
An ancient memory they can’t dismiss.

There are so many things I must tell God!
The howling of the dammed can’t reach so high.
But I stand like a dead thing nailed to a perch,
A crippled saint against a painted sky.

Poem, along with a number of other wonderful ones, found here.

Picture found here.

Burn Her!

Old woman and grandchildren hacked to death because the woman was suspected of witchcraft. Her home had previously been burned down for the same reason.

Thank goodness there are no crazed mobs who'd do anything like that over here.

Or, They Could Spend Time Catching the Thieves

Police seem determined to keep spreading the story that Pagans braid horses' hair as some part of a ritual.

However hair plaiting is not always a sign of a potential crime, PC Brittain suggested.
"Braiding is also a Pagan ritual - it's not necessarily for theft," she said.
But Dorset Grove Druid Ian Temple denied that there is any connection.
"It isn't a Pagan ritual - there's no evidence that it is," he said.
"There's been a lot of it going on in Dorset over the last couple of years. None of the Pagans I know can find any relation to it - there's no history."

More here.

We've seen this same nonsense before. And, it doesn't help that attention-seekers spread the nonsense.

All About the Archetypes

Can You Spot Them?



Persephone? Demeter? Hecate? Hades? Neptune?

Some things that you don't think you're going to enjoy, you enjoy. That's what makes it all interesting

True

People Keep Doing It. I'm Going To Keep Complaining.

OK, girls and boys, let's see how many errors we can spot. It will be good practice for "issue spotting," which will help us all to get A's in law school.

Though their worship includes elements from early Christianity, these practitioners are not Christians. They are pagans.

And they are part of a growing body of believers who have moved away from monotheistic faiths such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam into the wide world of syncretic spirituality.

Dear Peggy Fletcher Stack,

Were you asleep the day that they taught capitalization in 3rd grade? If, within the space of two sentences, you are going to capitalize the names of some religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), then you should capitalize the name of the one other religion you discuss: Paganism.

And don't give me the "category" argument. You know, the one that goes, well, xianity, Judaism, and Islam are specific religions, while Paganism is a category, so my discriminatory and demeaning capitalization rules make sense. Christianity is a category of religions. It includes Catholics, Methodists, and Baptists. Judaism is a category of religions. It includes Orthodox Jews, Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, Hassidic Jews, etc. Islam is a category of religions. It includes Sunnis, Sufis, Ahmadiyya, and Shi'a. Similarly, Paganism is a category of religions. It includes Wiccans, Druids, Asatru, and others. If you capitalize "Christian, Judaism, and Islam," then capitalize Pagan.

Sheesh.

I'm not even going to bother with: "Though their worship includes elements from early Christianity . . . ." Because it shouldn't be necessary to point out that it was "early xianity" that included elements of Pagan worship, and not the other way around.

Picture found here.

You Know It's True

I totally stole this from The Urban Pantheist, which, if you don't check daily, you should.

It made me laugh out loud.

All Acts of Love and Pleasure Are Rituals of the Goddess

Maybe it's my Pisces nature showing itself, but I love this.

/Hat tip: Stunt Woman

And I Am Marie of Romania

Nothing to see here. Move along.

And, surely, nothing here, either.

Not Helpful

Story here.

Interesting how little discussion news stories of, say, white xian men who shoot doctors in churches, have about pacts with St. Jesus. Because that would be wrong. I'm willing to bet, however, that Jesu Christo is "venerated in jails and among criminal gangs" to a far greater exent that St. Death.

"Pagan." You Keep Using That Word. I Don't Think It Means What You Think It Means

Benedict XVI Recommends "God's Style"

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, AUG. 30, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Noting that people frequently live according to a "style of pagans," Benedict XVI is encouraging forging one's life in another mode: "the style of God."


This was the exhortation the Pope made Sunday at the beginning of a Mass he celebrated in Castel Gandolfo with a group of his former students, who were gathered for their annual study weekend. The "Ratzinger Schulerkreis" looked this year at the theme of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council.

The Holy Father's reflection focused on Sunday's Gospel, in which Christ tells the parable of those who seek the places of honor at a wedding banquet, Vatican Radio reported.

He noted that in this passage, "the Lord brings us to understand that in reality we still live according to the style of the pagans: We invite reciprocally only those who will return the invitation; we give only if we will get back."

"The style of God is different," the Pontiff continued. "He invites us to his table, we who are lame, blind and deaf; he invites us who have nothing to give him."

The divine style, he added, is experienced above all in the Eucharist, during which we are called to allow ourselves to be touched by gratitude to God, who invites us to his table even though we are full of faults.

"But we want to learn as well to experience the guilt of too infrequently turning away from the pagan style, because we live very little the novelty, the style of God," Benedict XVI continued. "And because of this we begin holy Mass asking forgiveness: a forgiveness that changes us, that makes us more similar to God, in his image and likeness."

In his homily, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, and a member of the group of the Pope's former students, highlighted the importance of humility that "transforms insults into grace."

"Thank you, Holy Father, because you incarnate for us the attitude of Christ, who is meek and humble of heart," he said.

And the cardinal reflected: "Is this not a marvelous element of the Christian faith and the Christian experience? Joy at the fact that the parameters of heaven are so different than ours."

The study circle is made up of some 40 people who presented their doctoral theses to Professor Ratzinger during his tenure at various German universities.

I'd be interested to know where, in modern Pagan writing, the Pope finds support for the notion that it is the "style" of Pagans [Capital "P" please, for the names of others' religions] to "invite reciprocally only those who will return the invitation; we give only if we will get back." In my line of work, citations talk, bullshit walks.

I know Pagans organizing river clean-ups, providing legal services to disabled voters, defending the rights of dead soldiers to have headstones of their choosing, cleaning oil off of animals in the Gulf, working in soup kitchens, etc. I know xians who rant against liberation theology, fight against paying taxes that go to the common good, and gladly support wars, polluting corporations, and the death penalty. Since they have a large and contradictory "book," the xians can find support for almost any position they want to take. We Pagans are different. And while what I don't know and haven't read is a far broader category than what I do know and have read, I've never heard or read any Pagan suggest that we give only if we will get back.

In fact, to my mind, it's the xians who give so that they will get back an eternity in their heaven who appear motivated by this principle. But more broadly, it demonstrates a dangerous practice of this former member of the Hitler Youth to call anything that he dislikes "pagan," with no citations at all. He ought to be made to put up or shut up, before this becomes even more common practice than it already is.

I'm not going to touch "Ratzinger Schulerkreis" with a ten foot pole. Or the pope's Prada shoes.

Seriously.

Their list so far, which goes back several years, includes a comment by conservative radio host G. Gordon Liddy about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor: "Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate," Liddy said on his show. "That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

The women's groups also point to a quote in a Wall Street Journal story about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's run for vice president where a liberal voter asks, "Who's watching the baby? And what kind of nurturing is going on in that 17-year-old's life if she's pregnant?"

The comments were only lightly condemned, said Jehmu Greene, president of the Women's Media Center, and they keep coming.

"Sexism against women in the media has become normalized and accepted in a way that they would not be if the comments were racist," Greene said. "It dramatically affects women candidates."

More here.

Time, and past time, for this nonsense to end.

Picture found here.

September Poetry Blogging

Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard

We, the Fairies, blithe and antic,
Of dimensions not gigantic,
Though the moonshine mostly keep us,
Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,
Stolen kisses much completer,
Stolen looks are nice in chapels,
Stolen, stolen, be your apples.

When to bed the world are bobbing,
Then's the time for orchard-robbing;
Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,
Were it not for stealing, stealing.

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Picture found here.

First of the Month Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and declare it a good day.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading.

Picture found here.