My One Thousandth Post (Finally) With F(Un)FAQ's

Well, here I am at post number one thousand, and I don’t know quite what to say, other than, what took me so fucking long? I’ve had this blog going now since May of 2005. I posted a lot more frequently, if not as well, in those early days, so at the rate I’m currently going I figure I might hit post number 2000 by the time the Mayan calendar ends it’s cycle, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. After all, whether the Mayans are wrong, and maybe even if they’re right, that farm might come in handy.

When I first started this blog, it was with the intention that people would actually read the thing. But, after three years and two and a half months, I have yet to reach the five thousand mark in reader views according to my profile page, and on an average day, I will not hit one hundred readers a day, even when I include the times I link on. The most readers I ever had was something over 300, which was a one time thing, and there have been three or four times I’ve soared over two hundred. I’m no even sure I remember now what all the fuss was about. It is not that uncommon for me to hit well over the hundred mark, but less than that unfortunately seems to be even more common.

On an up note, I’m almost sure Lindsey Lohan has read my blog, which may or may not be a good thing. Well, somebody from Westwood California came from the same unregistered isp and read the same Lohan post four days in a row, so who’s to say? If that is you, Lindsey, stop stealing folk’s fur coats, buy your own.

I was linked once by CNN. Don’t remember the post.

When I first got started, I remember thinking, hey, I need to come up with a snazzy name that is memorable and will come up in the search engines. Since I am a privately practicing pagan, who practices what I call, for lack of a better term, Hellenic Wicca, I decided on what I now see as the presumptuous The Pagan Temple. I think of it now as presumptuous not for the Pagan, of course, nor even so much for the Temple, but, simply put, for the “The”. I think I might take it off. After all, I don’t mean to infer that I speak for all pagans, when of course I obviously don’t.

I remember that when I started out, I didn’t even do the typical and usually obligatory introductory post. I just hit the ground running with two posts about two then current issues of the day. One was about the work of the U2 singer Bono, the other about the then still missing Groene children from Idaho, whom I postulated might have been victimized by a Nazi fringe group at one time prominent in their area, and who might have been sold into sex slavery as a means of paying off a drug debt. Of course, it turned out to be far from accurate, so why link it?

This blog typically has little to do with paganism or witchcraft, though I try to post on those subjects on a fairly regular basis in one form or another. I think probably I would be better off doing more of that kind of thing, as well as other things I enjoy, such as musings on cultural and entertainment stories, and less of stuff that piss me the hell off, such as politics, government policy, and political correctness-but damn, I can’t seem to help myself.

Some of my favorite posts are the satirical ones, which I have listed in the sidebar under the heading “Ancient Rites and Rants (And Immortal Bullshit)” there under the picture of the Norse God Loki transforming into an eagle. Also there and elsewhere are other posts where I give my thoughts on subjects of an historical nature-or in the case of my Sodom and Gomorrah posts, the lack of historicity in mythological stories that are generally presumed to be historical.

Another of my favorite posts, also satirical, are my “Guest Bloggers” which are of course meant to be over-the-top denunciations, ripped off from the days headlines, more or less, as seen through the eyes of fictitious personages. Well, fictitious that is unless you consider Baphomet the Demon a real personage.

So, where do I go from here? I guess I could give some indication as to what directions I am heading.

F(Un)FAQ’s

Will you endorse a presidential candidate?

Probably not. One, I am not satisfied with either major candidate. Plus, I am just absolutely loathe to see the Democratic Party have any more power and influence than it already has as long as it is dominated by its left wing. Unfortunately, John McCain is not exactly a bulwark against increasingly incremental socialistic policies. He represents, as far as I’m concerned, the worse not only of the Republican Party, but a good deal of the worse of the Democratic Party as well.

In other words, the gods sent John McCain to this earth for the sole and exclusive purpose of pissing me the fuck off.

Two, I think I can be a better and more honest observer and interpreter if I stay objective and unaffiliated. It is harder to criticize somebody when you have painted yourself in his or her corner.

Three, and most importantly-what difference does it make? Me endorsing a candidate and thinking it’s going to make a dime’s worth of difference would be like me pissing in the ocean and thinking I’m going to make the sea level rise.

Have you changed any since you started blogging?

Yeppers, especially politically. I used to be a left-of-center moderate, and in some cases a flaming liberal, depending on the issue. Now, I’m a right-of-center moderate and seem to be becoming more conservative as time goes on. It’s probably due to reading more and paying more attention to what’s really going on and having less of an inclination to excuse the inexcusable for the sake of group cohesion.

When it comes to workers rights, wages, and benefits, however, I’ll always be a leftie. Social issues are of secondary importance, as in the end a conservative-a true conservative-point of view suggests that government should stay out of people’s lives and bedrooms insofar as consenting adults are concerned.

When it comes to religious rights, of course I stand for the legitimate rights of the practitioners of all religions within the framework of the law. Don’t castrate your eight year old daughter, or fuck her, or treat her or your wife like a piece of shit because you have it in your head some god gave you that right, and I probably don’t have a problem with you.

A special hint-pagans-honest to gods true pagans-worship goddesses as well as gods and tend to look unkindly on any who treat women badly, and look particularly askance toward brutal rag head bullshit. Any who don’t see it that way, well, sorry, their “paganism” is selective and leaves a lot to be desired. Opposition to the “evil” George W. Boooooooooosh is not an excuse.

A second special hint-the preceding was not intended as a slam at all followers of Islam, most of who are probably decent people who treat their wives and daughters probably very well. In fact, they probably put them on a pedestal, if anything. They just mainly have an oddly eastern way of showing their esteem.

Otherwise, whatever you do is fine with me as long as you don’t try to force it down mine or anybody else’s throat, and especially as long as you don’t try to control the government to that end.

If you want to tell me I’m going to hell for my beliefs, then, sigh, I guess you have the right-just use that right judiciously. When I walk away from you, take that as a hint not to follow along behind me, especially to my house. I’m good with a gun too.

I guess I should point out something else here that should by now be painfully obvious. Although they would seem to be in the majority, not all pagans are liberal pacifists and/or environmental extremists and/or ultra-feminists and/or LGBT Act Up activists and/or socialistic utopians who take their cue from “elders” who manifest unto them through a fog of nineteen sixties pot haze and patchouli. There are a growing body of us who are libertarian and conservative, and though I don’t always side with them (in fact I have gotten into some pretty good rows with them, especially the Libertarians), I trend increasingly in their direction.

But are you fair in your assessments of everybody?

Hell yes, I tell it like I see it.

So, do you have any predictions for the future?

I’m not much on predicting the future. I will go out on a limb though and say that I think Lindsey Lohan will eventually gain recognition as one of the all time great actresses and will display a remarkable poise, elegance, intelligence, beauty, and natural talent that will make her one of the all time great respected personalities of our or any day and time.

Aren’t you kind of a sexist?

Yes

But how does that square with your statement about respect for women and worshipping goddesses?

Errrr, I like to fuck.

If you were truly a religious pagan, shouldn’t you promote peace? You do believe in peace, don’t you?

I sure do. That’s why when anybody starts some shit I think we should blast them back to the Bronze Age as quickly as possible.

What do you actually believe about the deities? Do you think they are real, or do you think they are personifications of nature, or do you think they are really all various manifestations of the same one or two deities, or do you believe they are archetypes?

All of the above, but for my own personal use, the archetype thing seems to work best for me. Really though, there is truth in all approaches, and I mean that literally, not symbolically. You can’t understand that if you try to see it through a finite understanding of nature, though, you have to look beyond that. It’s all tied in to mankind’s and the universe’s own evolutionary development. I can’t explain it any better than that. Suffice it to say atheism and monotheism are also equally valid concepts.

Would you raise your children to be pagans?

I don’t have any children, unless you’re counting the billions I’ve flushed down the toilet or put through the wash and rinse cycle when I do my sheets. Well, there’s a few thousand I haven’t gotten to yet, dried up on the crotch of my jeans.

Okay, but if you had children, would you raise them to be pagans?

Nope, I’d raise them to be good people to the best of my ability and encourage them to find their own paths, which they would be welcome to pursue once they were grown and out of the house. I haven’t got the time to try to undo the foolish shit people tend to put in kid’s heads. Unfortunately for every bit of good they might learn, which I can teach myself, there’s an equal amount of bad I don’t want to have to try, probably futilely, to excise from their psyches.

Do you believe in heaven or in hell as literal places?

I believe they are both something you create within your own psyche and you carry them with you once you leave this life. It’s not real in the sense of being a literal place with a geographical location as such, but it is real in the sense that a dream seems real while you are asleep and dreaming. Your emotions and attitudes that you carry with you though life is like the brick and mortar by which you build these places within your subconscious. They are eternal in the sense that, once you leave this life, you are stuck with what you have spent that life constructing for yourself. You can’t add or subtract to it at that point, for the simple fact you are by then lacking in the physical brain cells necessary to create and store new thoughts and memories. You are nothing but a form of mental and emotional energy, and as energy can neither be created nor destroyed, you are pretty much what you are at that point. Of course, it might fade over time and disperse throughout the universe-possibly after a period of years, months, weeks, days, minutes, or even seconds. However, just like a dream seems to go on forever-well, you get the point, I guess.

So how does that square with reincarnation?

I’m not sure I believe in reincarnation. I tend to think it happens, but rarely, and when it does-if it does-it’s a natural process based probably on an overwhelming desire to go on living. Karma has probably little to do with it, though past actions would probably influence the next life’s attitudes and inner desires and fears. Wiccans tend to take the opposite approach from Buddhists and most Hindus, who see it as something to avoid, to the point they spend what seems to me an inordinate amount of time trying to transcend the “cycle of rebirth”. Most Wiccans tend to think it is something to embrace, and as such teach living in positive ways to insure a good life upon return. I’m not so sure that makes a lot of sense to me, and I’m not sure either approach is more or less valid than the other. I think you should mainly concentrate on this life, on living in moderation and as good as you can live it to the best of your ability. Let the end sort itself out. You’ll get there eventually, wherever you’re going-if anywhere.

Do you believe in magic and witchcraft?

Yep. Been there, done that, just too lazy to do it on a regular basis. It works too, but not like most people conceive of it. It works mainly as a form of self-hypnosis, though there are other important factors as well having to do possibly with quantum physics. An effective ritual will empower you to go about accomplishing what you set out to accomplish in such a way you don’t have to give it that much thought. It eliminates a lot of the inner drudgery, angst, and other negativities that gets in your way, and you find yourself arriving at where you need to be, sometimes unexpectedly. In other words, it’s more psychological and emotional, and not at all “supernatural”, which is an unreal concept to begin with. Movies and television do a real disservice in their portrayals of magic and witchcraft as concepts that are more fantasy than real.

Do you believe in the Law of Three?

Yes. The term might be a bit simplistic, but the overall Golden Rule/Karma concept of the belief is valid. Again, it is not “supernatural”, but a natural consequence of negative actions and thoughts. No deity points his or her finger from on high to “punish” you for your actions. What happens is that by engaging in negative actions, you poison your own psyche and energy. You imbue your own personal power with a negativity that actually never leaves you from that point unless and until you cleanse and purify yourself. As such, if you extend your energy in a way that is harmful toward another person, while you may succeed in harming that person, or taking advantage of the person in some way that is damaging to him or her, the damage you do to your own self is exponentially greater. That is simply because it is and remains a permanent part of your energy and psyche, and wreaks a degree of havoc measurable according to the energy you put into the initial act.

There are many who deny the legitimacy of this concept in the pagan community, but their attitudes are, as far as I’m concerned, self-serving and maybe even a hypocritical and delusional bit of wishful thinking. They have a ways to go. I suggest a revisit to Paganism 101. While they are at it, Living Life 101 might be an even better idea.

So, where do you go from here? Do you want to join a coven?

Only if I’m the boss.

So, where do you go from here with your blog?

I don’t have the slightest idea. That’s half the fun of doing it.