The Astral Pilgrim

Dylan Monochrome

Originally uploaded by Astral Pilgrim

My first Flickr upload from my new camera. The images I post to flickr in this collection will be the ones I feel are the best of what I have taken.

Hi all

Well first off I would like to apologise for not posting any new content for a bit, I have been in the grip of an elusive depression and only in the last few weeks have come to realise it. I guess it is only once you realise / accept you are depressed that you can try and pick yourself up as best you can. Thankfully this hasn’t had any repercussions on my schizophrenia so I’ve not gone totally barking just yet.

On a more positive note, I have decided to take the plunge and get myself a new camera. I will be getting it on the 9th Feb so will be chomping at the bits until then. It is a Canon EOS 500D, my first ever Digital SLR. I am quite excited to see what new avenues it will be able to open for me. I am also looking forward to being able to utilise YouTube again as the camera can take full HD video also. To accompany this we will also be treating ourselves to a new iMac once we have saved up enough. We have needed an extra machine in the house for sometime and it may as well be one I can use for the photo and video editing.

So, in the coming weeks I hope to start adding a lot of content to my Flickr channel – if you haven’t already you can add me on there, my user name is astrapilgrim (surprise! lol).

On Monday 1st Feb I will be giving a talk at the Manchester Pagan Wheel Moot, the subject being cosmology and hidden meanings in the Mabinogion. After that I will next be giving a talk at the Radcliffe Moot on the 9th March, the subject being psychometry.

Well, that’s me for now – I will be busy on a few posts for here soon so expect more rants anytime soon!

For those readers who perhaps play World of Warcraft you can find me hiding out on the Neptulon server under the guider of Orgrub the Orc – feel free to give me a shout and say hi anytime!

I have to say that having not played the game for over 2 years it is quite daunting to now return. What was once a huge game is now even bigger through 3 expansions that have been released over the last 2 years alongside all the additional content in the main game itself. Thankfully a few clanmates have opted to start back up with me and we are questing together at the moment so that helps things along a little. Looking at the game forums and reading up on various articles it makes your head swim at how much content there is compared to most other MMO. That said I am determined to make a good go of this return and see a character through to the some of the large scale involvement to be had at level 60 and beyond.

Hi peeps

Well, here is a shameless plug for a friends new book that she has been working on for some time now. If you like your stories with a bit of difference and a pinch of the quirky then look no further. I will let the books write up tell you the rest…

“Newlywed Danielle Ainsworth has everything: security, a respectable husband and a lavish lifestyle that she has become accustomed to. Her destiny is to be a Mother, nearing children through artificial insemination. She has no concept of love or sex; all she knows is that the lower class are not to be trusted.

Elizabeth Chapman, a lower class young woman born in the slums of Manchester is destined to be a Maid, tending to Danielle’s every need. Her world is every different from Danielle’s; the lower class are seem as unimportant and so the chaste rules of the upper class do not apply.

Danielle despises her new Maid but after overhearing a conversation, her curiousity takes her down a path of forbidden acts and finds herself coming to terms with repressed emotions and a world that seems to be more alive and forbidden than her own.

Now Danielle has opened her own Pandora’s Box, can she close it again before she loses everything?

CONTAINS LESBIAN SCENES INCLUDING A LESBIAN THREESOME!…”

So there you have it – I certainly think I will be grabbing myself a copy O_O

You can obtain your copy at the following link

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/opening-pandoras-box/2776849

Well, I said a while back that I felt changes in the wind and I guess I should not be surprised at today being a bit of a crazy day for me (please pardon the pun you will later get).

The equinox has always been a fascinating time for me – a time when things seem odd, a space beyond space in which the worlds seem to go into an element of flux. I should mention here and now that my opinions of the equinox differ quite a lot from the “accepted norm” of pagan mainstream. Many say it is a time of balance, a time of reflection at the coming changes and a time of peace. My response?

Bollocks

Whether you want to look at the equinox mythologically (the oak and holly king or Llew and Goronwy) or whether you want to keep it simple and look at it from a more scientific standpoint one thing is abundantly clear – this is not a time of balance and peace so my advise would be to throw that pseudo-Wiccan bullshit down the pan right now. The bloody sky is at war for crying out loud! The dark and light have been in a continuing state of change for the last 3 months and this is not a culminating time of peace but the damn spearhead, the front line. Mythologically the oak king has been defeated by the holly king, the evergreen has shown its ability to outlast the deciduous and reign into the winter. Celestially the sun is losing its control of this particular part of the earth and the dark, who is ever present, and now assuming dominance of the skies. That sound like a time of peace to you? And if that does not convince you perhaps look at this way

You find me one good example in your real life where this time of year has brought a peaceful balanced experience that you haven’t had to convince yourself of achieving? Have a good long hard think.

For me personally this equinox has been a bloody interesting one. As of 10:18pm tonight I declared myself vegetarian and so a huge change in lifestyle now lies before me which I embrace wholeheartedly – I am looking forward to the changes and challenges ahead. That was my expected experience, the one I had planned for. What I hadn’t expected was the outcomes of my psychiatry appointment today. For some time the department has given me the diagnosis of schizo-affective disorder and I have lived with that, non medicated and dealing with it myself for some years now. Having gone back to the drawing board though, and re-analysed my brain scans etc etc they have now said they were wrong in my diagnosis and have changed to full blown acute schizophrenia. The difference? A bloody lot actually but mostly in how things are now treated. My medication is bordering on enforced (blood checks), my appointments increased and my social stigma level bumped up to 10 out of 10.

I guess that I am not really surprised at the change but I am concerned at the potential implications long term. Already various future employment options are forever closed to me and of course I worry about the affect this may have on our plans to move to Canada but all in all I worry about those around me. Most friends who know of my condition are quite open minded and understanding of my differences, some even embrace the fact I think differently (there is a movement known as anti-psychiatry that aims to educate people into an awareness that just because we think differently doesn’t make us, just makes you scared of difference), yet that have been some friends who are nothing short of scared of me and have treated me quite differently ever since they found out about me. Sometimes it is me and the unknown, sometimes it is the fact they know that if they are sat in a room with just me, to me its not just me and them but a few others for good measure. Is this my problem – it shouldn’t be but sometimes it is hard not to shoulder some responsibility. It makes me feel awkward to think that I make others feel awkward, and although I don’t do a very good job of putting across compassion to people believe me it is there.

The point of this statement is that if you are indeed one of those who cannot / does not want to “deal” with who I am then please do not feel awkward in walking away, and as for the rest of you – hi )

Over the summer we had the blessing of having a pair of blackbirds decide to nest in the ivy just outside our bathroom window. This rare opportunity allowed us to see as clear as day the eggs in the nest and ultimately the babies once they hatched. The children found all this very exciting and would check on the nest each day to see how things where coming along. Once they had hatched the children watched in fascination as they where fed, with more than a few “ewwww’s” each time I would explain that the parent regurgitates the food into the babies mouth. During this time I would explain to them that a long time ago we as humans had to chew the food our babies would eat because they were not able to do so. These small moments led to times of contemplation, making me consider our position in the animal world as a human.

It reminded me that even though we spend all our time trying very hard to escape the animal world, we ultimately cannot escape something that we are bound to, such is the law of nature. Some time later, i was again led to contemplate the laws of nature.

Once the babies had grown to the point where the nest could not host them any more it was time for them to jump ship. We came home one day to a garden full of babies hopping about which was a great and hilarious sight to behold. The laws of nature had there funny moments it seemed, yet soon the harsh reality of nature was to strike as the magpies became aware that their dinner was on the loose in the garden. The parents jumped into action defending the babies with great efficiency so much so that if my counting is up to scratch after day one the magpies left without food. If the magpies are to survive, something would have to die, be it the babies in my garden or the babies somewhere else. A little later I popped my head out the door to see what all the racket was as I could hear the parents going crazy again (they make one hell of a racket!) to see the local cats sporting with one of the babies attempting to grab one away from the crazy parents.

I reacted. I ran out into the garden, chasing the cats down into a corner of the garden that they couldn’t scale the fence of, jug of water in hand. A cat was about to learn that going for the babies in this garden gets you very very wet. Once the cats has jumped ship I sat out back for a bit watching the babies and contemplating what had just transpired. I couldn’t help but ponder why I had reacted the way I had with the cats yet not with the magpies. It didn’t take long for me to realise.

All of life is a part of nature, from a worm, to a magpie, to a human, to a chemical waste silo. Everything is part of nature – nothing can be separate from it regardless of any negative impact it may have. That said, although everything is a part of nature not everything is completely dependant upon it. The example here is the cat given that due to a level of domestication we have removed some of it’s dependence on nature and transferred that dependence onto us. The cats are happy with this arrangement and so are we and so I see no problem there. The problem lies in that although the cat has a known source of food and has no need to source any other, it “decides” to do so. It impacts upon nature beyond it’s need. Some of you cat lovers may say that its in the cats instincts to do so but it is not. A cat doesn’t hunt because it has to, a cat hunts because it can. Also bear in mind that without domestication that cat would not even be there to impact on the local ecosystem so the whole point becomes moot.

In contrast the magpie is wholly dependant on the local ecosystem, a system that nature has tweaked, managed and adapted to suit all its users so that there is usually a balance of food available to the carnivore/omnivore whilst allowing a certain survival rate to perpetuate the species. It is a delicate balance, one that can be thrown into disharmony if outside factors impact too much.

All this then lead me onto a topic I have sat on the fence for some time with now. Being vegetarian. All these thoughts lead me to one simple conclusion.

We are not magpies, we are cats.

We are a domesticated animal with a difference. Due to our natural strength being our intelligence we have taken a different approach and domesticated ourselves. Whilst the advantages of this are extremely self evident the pitfalls are even more so. Self domestication requires self discipline, self control and we have exuded neither. We behave like the cat but in the extreme. We don’t hunt unnecessarily like the cat – we go much further. We capture the parents and cage them, making them have as many babies as we can to support our ever growing numbers. We have perfected this process as it makes the need to hunt them down defunct. The babies are born directly into the cage into which we keep them. Maximum output, minimum effort. We are to be appluaded for such a clever and ingenious idea, and we are to be loathed, feared and condemned for our actual use of it.

The greatest evils in the world are the ones that manage to convince you they don’t exist and most of our world goes through it’s life day by day oblivious to the underworld beneath it that it needs to perpetuate. We are too wrapped up in our obsession with image, instant gratification and pleasure to actually take a moment to make ourselves aware at the true cost of all this. yet once you are aware, as a sentient, intelligent being it is then down to you and you alone to decide if you react to that knowledge or not. Sadly many don’t for denial is much easier. As they say….

…ignorance is bliss… yet we should remember a saying from Guatama Buddha…

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.”

No excuses, no exceptions – make your choice for you are the author of your life, no other.

So, the summer holidays have come to an end, this week most children here in the UK will be heading back to school and for us here our daughter will be having her first experience of high school. For her a daunting and worrying time and for us much the same, yet all with that little hint of excitement at something new.

That said, secondary school here in the UK has always had a strict code of conduct in regards to uniform and various other factors and it has become quite clear that quite a high degree of control is placed upon the children, so much so that it seems to have gotten a little carried away. What schools are not realising is that they are strictly enforcing practices which are both sexist and discriminatory on a personal and gender based level.

Some examples of this are ones that I myself had to cope with when I was at high school. Boys are not allowed to have long hair (if it gets past the chin they demand it is cut) and boys are not allowed to wear ear rings under any circumstances yet for girls both of these are allowed, but with conditions. Girls can wear ear rings but only one in each ear and hair must be in a “simple and suitable style” leaving the specifics out to allow themselves more scope of control. The school even insists on the colour underwear that must be worn whilst at school, specifically for during gym sessions…..I would be interested to discover just ow they plan to check and enforce that one – lawyers at the ready!

Clearly though what is made evident to the pupils is differentiation. One rule for boys and one rule for girls, separate conditions for separate genders. Is this really how we should be influencing those who are so easily influenced? Of course it is, that is if you want them to grow in healthy members of a controlling social system that has inequality of pay and different treatment for men and women from the workplace all the way to the courtroom and back again. Another thing to ponder is this – in the UK, as a woman are you ever in your life going to wear a full suit with shirt and tie? The chances of anyone saying yes are very very slim, yet we insist that all school girls dress up like boys with full suit shirt and tie….erm….am I missing something there….hmmm

What starts as can or cant wear ear rings over time develops into an underlying acceptance of various other segregated levels of control. Why has unequal pay persisted for so long, and is still to this day not contested enough to actual cause much change? Because we are socialised to accept it.

What I like about this topic is that it is one that you can actively start to try and change – how do I plan on going about that. My name is down for the parent/teacher association and I plan on running for school governor as soon as elections open. I did the same at my daughters primary school and played an integral part in exposing and helping stamp out an disturbing and often overlooked problem – racism against white people (and yes for those who get their back up at this issue, it bloody happens and ignored because it is almost ASSUMED that white people will NOT be on the receiving end of racism which is flat out rubbish). Yes that was me shouting a bit there but that issue has affected my family quite a lot over the last 5 years at my daughters school.

So, if you have children at secondary school, take a close look at the “school rules” and have a think about just what kind of example they might be setting for your children – do you really want them to grow up repeating the same mistakes we are all making right now?

Oh dear oh dear

Deary deary me

Yup, what more can you say. I will admit to being a regular follower of some of the more popular RSS feeds of the moment such as mashable and techcrunch and whilst having my daily read of tech info something suddenly dawned on me.

The world of technology has become just as image centric, conceited and flat out pathetic as the fashion world. The geeks of yesteryear are the hot know it alls of today and to be quite frank it is nothing short of tragic. All it would take is for one of these blogs to have its writers start referring to a 6 month old phone as “oh my god that is so yesterday”…oh, wait a minute…..they do….moving on. The fact that the term discombobulated has become trendy…no, just…no….

So, with the geek firmly at the helm of a ship so saturated in a 90’s haze of fashionista humdrum, what is becoming cutting edge these days? What has entered the realm of the elite few? Who knows, but the world of iphones, android handsets and overpriced netbooks reigns supreme as it is.

Personally I think home automation is to have its day within the next 10 years – all the technology we are seeing now are quite clear baby steps towards a bigger utilisation, but for now we must suffer the fashion wannabees in the gadget utopia.

To all those tech blogs out there – what exactly are your goals – really? What are hoping to acheive by constantly repeating each others statements and reiterating each others content. An opinion with a mass readership does not make an opinion any more true or valid, it just makes it more popular – wisdom is in remembering that.

Our emotional responses to things are determined by our previous emotional moments, responses and experience. The key word here is experience – anything and everything we do is a governed by our prior experience and this is why your beliefs MUST be based upon your experiences. If you try to follow a path governed by what others have experienced only then you are living a lie.

This is not to discredit the value of shared experience and calling upon the experience of those who have come before us, but true discovery can only come from when we then leave the comfortable realm of surety and cast our ship out onto the astral by ourselves, trusting our instincts and experiences to guide us to where we need to be.

Many neo-pagans today criticise, sometimes myself included, the concept of congregational faith, in that by having those sitting on the sidelines observing ritual they are not really gaining anything fromm it. What they are doing is essentially staying in that comfort zone, taking their religious comfort from the experiences of others.

So my thought for the day on this? Want something doing, want to understand something? Get off your bum and do it yourself, it’s the only way your ever going to “get it”, the only way you will ever truly understand those things that you seek.

Humans are creatures full of confidence, full of tenacity to succeed and to impose their will upon their surrounding environment, and surrounding humanity. We are quick to point the finger of blame, to accuse and blindly deny responsibility for our actions. We often take the easy route of finding another reason other than ourselves for why something has happened.

The next time you do, remember this. When you point your finger, when you accuse, blame or judge – there are three fingers pointing right back at you.