Hackers, Drug addicts and Terrorists?

This is a press release by anonymous, I was tempted to use the word 'official' but that would imply there is an official organisation behind this. It is my belief that there is indeed a core of individuals responsible for things such as this press release, however overall anonymous now seems to be a consensus with a common cause.



The title refers to an attempted smear campaign by the church of scientology which seemed more like wishful thinking than anything, and promptly died the moment anonymous protesters took to the streets. My reason for posting it? Well I think it is probably obvious by now that I support the efforts of these people, and think that any peaceful action, to remove any organisation that subjects its members to such tyranny is laudable and deserves my support.

Regarding Scientology...

Anyone who has spent any time on youtube recently may already be aware of this, no thanks to the mainstream media, or the failed attempts by youtube to censor and repress this information. So what am I talking about? Well I am talking about the cult of scientology picking a fight with the wrong people, and getting a massive dose of their own medicine.

The church of scientology is well known for it's willingness to sue individuals who are outspokenly critical of them, they are also known for smear tactics, harrassment, and in some extreme cases these 'critics' such as Shawn Lonsdale are found dead under mysterious circumstances, may he rest in peace and may the truth about his death be revealed.

So who are these people that are standing up to the cult of scientology, and what are they doing that has caused such a stir? Well the 'people' are anonymous and they are organising mass demonstrations against the church of scientology, with the purpose of educating the public about the methods and harmful practices of this cult.

So what is 'anonymous'? Well from the information available to me at present, anonymous is not an organisation, it has no leaders, it has no base, it is simply a gathering of like minded people, people like you and me, people who are fed up with seeing the vulnerable exploited. The church of scientology is very good at digging up dirt on it's critics, and making that information available where it can cause the most embarassment to the individual, but now that the boot is on the other foot, it is becoming clear that it is they who have something to hide, glass houses and stones springs to mind here.

I will be adding more information to this topic as it develops...

My posting policy.

I know that it's been a while since my last post, yet again... However I really feel it better to make posts about things I believe in and want to talk about, rather than just fill up space with random babble. With that in mind I'd just like to add that when I do take time away from blogging, I am not idle. And until this blog is closed down and removed then it will always be updated eventually, when I have something of interest to post.

Oh no they are onto me!

There I was driving along quite happily minding my own business on saturday, when I see this white car following me, a second glance in the mirror confirmed my suspicions that combined with the flashing lights that it was indeed a police car! Not only that they were pulling me over! Oh crap it must have been that brief interval of 35mph I did as I came off the roundabout, hey what can I say I drive an old ford mondeo it's built like a tank and has the agility and momentum of one too!

So I pull over and do my best to look innocent, as I casually ask the officer in a friendly tone 'Hello there, is something up?' To which he replies 'Oh no we are just doing routine vehicle checks in the area, would you mind stepping out, and come and sit here in the back while we run the checks?' I could smell the bullshit by now, in my book there is no such thing as a 'routine check', now they were making me nervous and yet I knew I'd not done anything wrong, but images of orange jumpsuits kept going through my mind. Perhaps putting that pentacle sticker in the back window wasn't such a great idea after all?

I did have a hard time keeping a straight face once in the back of the car though, as they subjected me to the police version of 20 questions. My humour was sparked by me trying to guess which one was playing the good cop and which the bad, in the end I concluded they were both playing the 'amusing northerner cop', and it didn't help that they both looked like they were related to Wallace from Wallace and Gromit.

Anyway chuckling aside, you'll be pleased to know everything checked out and I wasn't cuffed and dragged off for a waterboarding holiday in Gitmo. They even gave me a reciept, which stated reason for stopping me as a code 'C', which I intend to investigate at some point to see if 'C' stands for routine stop or something more sinister...

The difference between pagan, wiccan and witch.

This is a great little tutorial on what these terms mean and how they interact/interchange with one another when used to define someone. Very simply very clear and with a wonderful backing track, what more could anyone ask?

Oh and if you follow the link, have a look at the comments section, it makes an interesting read, where some Romanian man is trying to insist that I am a christian, you really have to wonder sometimes if it's something in the water.

A touching story.

I was browsing youtube as I am won't to do lately, and I found the following video. It's not often I come across something that so clearly expresses my own feelings on belief and paganism in general. His journey seems similar to mine, I was also brought up as a christian, but always felt I believed something different inside. I also never agreed with the hate and the judging that goes on, and found it hard to balance the idea of a loving god with a god who could happily sacrifice all those who didn't worship him in a certain specific way.

Has it really been a year? (New Comment Rules)

Wow I can't believe I took a whole year out from blogging, ah well it probably did me some good to get away from all the whining by the 'precious kiddie fiddlers' and their specious arguments. I have a nice Beesom here and it's being used as we speak to sweep out any crap from this blog, nothing like a nice clean start, so yes some old posts are going to disappear, and hopefully some new ones are going to start going up...

From now on the ground rules here are as follows:

1) Freedom of speech. Leave it at the door thanks, if I don't like what you have to say and can't be bothered to argue/debate with you then it gets the Beesom. ( I am generally fair and willing to listen to most viewpoints unless they are promoting something harmful ie rape, murder or paedophilia. )

2) Right of appeal. If you think I have unfairly deleted your comment then feel free to go and cry yourself to sleep in a corner, trust me on this I don't delete comments without good reason, and once it's deleted it's gone end of story.

3) Whose opinions count here? Mine of course, it's my blog, I post my opinions and people can comment on them, that's generally how it works. Yes of course I love to hear other peoples views and opinions too, providing they don't violate rule one of course.

I didn't really want to have to make ground rules for posting comments, but after the three ring circus we had here last time I decided to make it clear from the start, then I won't be losing any sleep worrying about peoples 'freedom of speech' or right to debate things that I don't want on my blog. Hopefully have some more interesting updates posted soon...

The planes of existence

Again as mentioned in my previous post, these are my beliefs and views on the nature of things, and are not intended to be statements of universal truth, I am quite happy to accept that my beliefs are not those of everyone else. Of course if sharing my beliefs sheds some light on things other people are grappling with in their own lives then all the better.

This next subject is quite deep, but I am again going to provide an overview rather than an in depth analysis, we can always come back to things and examine them more deeply later, or even do so in the comments section should we wish. My reasons for choosing this as my next subject are really because this is one of the fundamental things that I believe, and all other things are based on or affected by my views on this.

I believe there are many planes of existence and we are able to reside in or experience all of them in some way if we choose to. For the sake of simplicity I will limit myself to discussion of the following realms in this essay, the physical, astral, and spiritual realms. I see these particular realms as useful to this discussion simply because they are already fairly well understood, and a majority of people already have some experience with them in one form or another.

The Physical realm.

This is the realm we are more at home in, at least while we have physical bodies or avatars anyway. The physical realm is what most people refer to as 'reality' even though this very reality is still subject to being relative to the individuals experience and viewpoint. The physical realm allows us to interact with energies in a very direct sense, in fact it is a requirement that we learn to do so to even survive in this realm (eating for instance). Everything here is composed of energy, it is just in a very tangible form, though only to other physical beings, spirit beings are not susceptible to this, which is why they can quite easily walk through walls for instance. The thing about physical matter is that it is a temporary state, everything in the physical realm decays and returns to it's natural form eventually. It is this measure of decay that gives the physical realm it's concept of time, which is really just way of quantifying this decay and the spacing of events.

The easiest way to describe the difference between a physical being and a spiritual one, is to use water as an illustration, with ice being the physical state and steam being the spiritual, with water itself being the transitionary state. Another way to illustrate this would be to burn a piece of wood, the wood isn't really destroyed by burning rather it is changed in form, with the release of it's energy the wood breaks down in a physical sense and is no longer a piece of wood but it's energy still exists.

The Astral realm.

This is actually one of the realms we all are familiar with, even if we don't grasp the concept of it being another realm or plane of existence. Remember the illustration of the water? Well the astral realm would be that transitionary state between the physical and the spiritual, so it would be water in the sense of that illustration. The astral realm is the realm of dreams, it is the place we go when we sleep, the place where we are able to manipulate both the spirit and the physical. In this realm we are much more aware of our spiritual side, and indeed of the spirit realm itself, which is why I see it as a transitionary realm between the physical and spiritual.

The spirit realm.

This is the realm represented by the steam in our water illustration, it is a realm where the physical plane has very little relevance, a place where form is dictated not by physical laws, and where decay and time do not hold sway. Often beings encountered there may still retain some semblance of a physical form, if they really use these forms in that realm or if they are just using them when encountering travellers from the physical planes is unclear.

One thing about this realm is that although it seems unbound by the laws of the physical plane, it does seem to reflect the physical in many ways, often objects that exist in the physical plane will have a distorted twin here. Again it is unclear whether these things are brought about by the presence of a traveller from the physical realm, or if they exist there regardless. Reminds me a little of if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

I hope to cover how these realms interact with one another in a future essay, but for now you have a brief overview of how I perceive our planes of existence, I hope it makes at least some sense.

What 'pagan' means to me.

After some recent events online led me to take another look at what I am doing here, I decided to use my blog to share some of the things that are important to me. My thanks to Gabby and Anne who showed an interest and suggested this direction, I appreciate your encouragement and support. I hope I can put things across in a way that make some sense without coming across as dogmatic or patronising. When I make statements on belief they are always a matter of my own personal perspective, and I don't intend for them to be taken as applying to anyone else unless of course those are the same conclusions reached by the reader.

A good starting point would be to define what I mean when I use the term 'pagan' in reference to myself, as this label is used to describe a vast range of ideas and beliefs, some of which I agree fit my definition others however do not. A quick google of the word pagan will bring up a range of definitions, one or two that come close to describing how I view myself. My only issue with most of these definitions is that most seem to use the term 'follows a pre christian or earth based religion', which although not really incorrect in my case is a little wide of the mark as I do not see myself as following any religion, rather I have my own set of personal beliefs based on my opinions and experiences, which is not uncommon among other pagans that I have got to know over the years.

Many pagans follow the seasons and celebrate the solstice and equinox, so I suppose that can be taken as representation of a common belief system. I however do not celebrate these, not for any particular reason really, if I was in company with people who did then I would have no problem joining in the celebrations at all. I just don't see them as relevant to me, as my view of the marking of the seasons with ritual, was to pass on the knowledge of older generations in regards to living in accord with the land, ie when to sow seed and when to harvest among other things. This is also true of most rituals, I see them as a way of passing on information to illiterate people, you don't have to dig very deep to see this when you examine any of the pagan rituals, they are all very much based on living in harmony with the seasons, and the favour or disfavour of the gods is simply a way to bring meaning to the consequences of acting in accordance with this good sense or going against it.

So in my case then pagan does not mean a religion, or even a shared set of beliefs or rituals or even celebrations. What it does mean to me is this, the word pagan in my personal definition means a person who follows their own path to belief, a person who examines the world and tries to live in harmony with nature rather than against it, a person who sees the spiritual and the physical realms as synchronous and equally relevant. That's what I mean when I use the term pagan, I am sure as I go along I will elaborate a little more on what this means to me personally, but I think this is a good overview to begin with.

Mostly I have been thinking...

Yes it would appear that I've been neglecting my blog lately, however that's not exactly true, you see it's more a case of being involved in issues that I didn't want to have crossing over here. As is apparent from the contents of several articles on this site I have a strong personal dislike of child abusers and those who would promote a greater acceptance of paedophilia.

I've tried to avoid going on about it too much here because of the attention such things inevitably attract. The last time I opened a topic on the subject I saw my regular commenters driven away, and ended up with many abusive, threatening and time wasting comments from those who support the paedophile agenda.

So with that in mind I accepted an offer that was made to me quite some time ago by the people who run the absolute zero blog. They are a well intentioned group who are committed to countering the pro paedophile activists online, by challenging them wherever possible. I did have some misgivings from the start, and sadly it became apparent after a time, that we cannot work together despite the shared goals. I will leave the discerning reader to discover the reasons for themselves.

In the meantime I have been pondering on what to focus on here, I've had several ideas but not been able to settle on one just yet, so we shall have to see what develops...