No, not yet my birthday... I recently bid for and acquired a small (19 string) celtic style harp on Ebay... OK, I have to sell my Q-Chord and my Icuiti V920 vr headset, but I don't care... I can play my harp :-)

Love

"I gave way to delight, as mystics have for centuries when they peeked through the curtains and discovered that this world- so manifestly real was actually a tiny stage set constructed by the mind. We discover abruptly that everything we accept as reality is just social fabrications. - Timothy Leary, 1966...

(the wonderful image was found at www.corpuscallosum.cc/timo.html)

The following was a post I made on the British Druid Order forum (www.druidry.co.uk/forum/pos...html#p153) in response to another board member. Craig wrote "If we apply the philosophy you describe where "within each of us is the spirit that continually creates our own universe", how can we use this in the creation of a stable model of interpersonal relationships and community or tribe? Universal Personal Gnosis is all very well, but it can so easily turn to anarchy, separatism and the belief that everyone else is a heretic or mad."

My response:

Wonderful question Craig, and i think it can only be answered by bringing more into our philosophy than "within each of us is the spirit that continually creates our own universe", to allow us to expand the meaning of that sentence.

Me, I would turn to reverence and worship of the ancestors and development of understanding of mankind's* place in nature, as I think these are two concepts that paganism in general and Druidry in particular have to offer the modern west.

I have long held that revelation of the divine is moving from the political social arena to the personal and transperson BUT your question raises the important point as to whether political and social systems exist to support such a transition. And I guess the answer, currently, is no, not really. But the potential is there and may be as Druid's we can take on part of that task.

The abrahamic religions do indeed have a doctrine that creates and binds communities, one only has to look to the powerful persistence and diversity of diasporic Jewish communities to recognise this. Much of the power of these doctrines lie in negative motivation (you WILL do X or suffer the consequence). While any path that incorporates an ecological spirituality must also, by necessity, preach the negative consequences of continuing down certain paths of behaviour, by

* incorporating the reverence of our ancestors, supported by myth and legend and stories old and new (providing role models and aspiration)
* and acknowledging that humanity IS of nature and partakes of nature
* and that nature is good, that nature is our temple and our source of revelation,

I suggest that this provides a glue that not only binds communities of pagans but could bind whole functioning societies while allowing for the truth of personal and transpersonal revelation (and may, if the environmental cataclysm happens the way some predict, have to)

I am particularly enamoured with the African concept of ubuntu in this context... from that wonderful repository of all knowledge, wikipedia...

...while the Zulu maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu ("a person is a person through (other) persons") may have no apparent religious connotations in the context of Western society, in an African context it suggests that *the person one is to become by behaving with humanity is an ancestor worthy of respect or veneration. Those who uphold the principle of ubuntu throughout their lives will, in death, achieve a unity with those still living.*
(my emphasis)

caveat... this locus of consciousness temporarily referred to as Adam sees only a limited portion of the picture and is prone to errors of interpretation. All points are to be taken as such, cum grano salis. I try not to take myself too seriously and beg you not to either ;)

*(curious conjoin of the two words man and kind, don't you think? )

I am not afraid to dance with death
But will mourn departing my own kind
I will not fight that final breath
Yet with tears will leave my belove'd behind

I've just got out of hospital. I've been plagued by massive headaches for over a week now, and went to my GP last Thursday. She took one listen to my symptoms and packed me off to hospital to be checked out for subarachnoid haemorrhage. The CT scan was clear, which covers 95% of all possible bleeds, so they did a lumbar puncture to eliminate the other possibilities. Lumbar puncture... sounds pretty scary. Maybe they should rename it the lumbar "gentle touch of the cherry blossom". Actually, it went fine with very little discomfort, and clears me of any form of brain bleed, but I gotta say, the young doctor was a star. She noticed that the pressure of my cerebrospinal fluid was high, which can cause these headaches. The fact that after the puncture, the headaches improved is also a sign that we are on the right track. I've been referred to a neurologist (apparently, if this is the condition they think it is, it's more common in women, which makes me an oddity) and it seems manageable and treatable... hell, losing some weight should help.

So, thank all the Gods and Goddesses it's not a haemorrhage. I'm not afraid of death or dying (it isn't anywhere I haven't been before), but I'm not ready to leave the party yet ;-) And my wife has to be given her opportunity to punish me for scaring the crap out of her :-D

attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and oh so pertinent to the middle managers that these days we call politicians in the UK :-(