ekimout 188 Report post Posted April 26, 2008 I found these two articles in the Ottawa sun, interesting. http://www.ottawasun.com/News/OttawaAndRegion/2008/04/26/5391671-sun.html http://www.ottawasun.com/News/OttawaAndRegion/2008/04/26/5391676-sun.html Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cat 262460 Report post Posted April 26, 2008 Dear Ekimout, Thanks for putting up the links, I have been trying to access them and for some reason couldn't! Damn gremlins in my laptop again... Catherine Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Joyful_Jillian 102 Report post Posted April 26, 2008 Adding my thanks for posting these links - very interesting. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freestyleswimmer 100 Report post Posted April 26, 2008 I found these two articles in the Ottawa sun, interesting. http://www.ottawasun.com/News/OttawaAndRegion/2008/04/26/5391671-sun.html Aren't we all glad to learn that all kinds of crime have been eliminated in Ottawa so that the Police can finally devote all their man(and girl)power to fight the evil, obscene deeds committed by consenting adults (in private). Now, finally, we know that there are no drugs anywhere within the NCC region, that street gangs have all been sent to Devil's Island (or the Chateau d'If), that nobody in any Ministry (even DND) embezzles millions, that every single driver obeys all the traffic laws, by-laws, signs and indicators, that rape, murder, theft, burglaries, jaywalking, arson and (Yes, even) graffitti have been eradicated and that graft and corruption in HIGH places are a thing of the past. That child molesters are all in the prisons' general populations; (S.O.S. I'm running out of crimes here.............. but since they're all now vague and distant memories; let's all applaud the valiant efforts of our men (and women) in black. (I believe it is black. Right?) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest f***2f*** Report post Posted April 27, 2008 Yeah I thought it was a bit sleezy of the Sun to put an add on cl and have people respond to it thinking it was a legit SP. Next they'll be publishing names I suppose. we really haven't advanced much beyond the Victorian age in North American have we? there's still a whole bunch of folks out there that want to criminilize normal human sexuality so they can justify their uptight hypocritical Victorian morality. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest MADONNA Report post Posted April 27, 2008 So what does this all mean? The articles in the Citizen and all? They want us to come and work there because there aren't enought escorts? And now we are accepted because there's a high demand for us? LOL . Just clarifying. I'm curious about why the article's in the paper too. Is there something I'm not seeing? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest MADONNA Report post Posted April 27, 2008 we really haven't advanced much beyond the Victorian age in North American have we? there's still a whole bunch of folks out there that want to criminilize normal human sexuality so they can justify their uptight hypocritical Victorian morality. Yes, I agree with you Boner ! Read this article below about the call to drop the sex-negative religions: http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/96-1/issue9/goddess.html The Peak, Simon Fraser University's Student Newspaper since 1965, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6, e-mail: [email protected], phone: (604) 291-3597 fax: (604) 291-3786 Volume 92, Issue 9 March 4, 1996 Features Unearthing the mystery of The Goddess by Michelle Rainer Ancient societies the world over, it is believed, revered a Goddess or Earth Mother who was the source of all life. Around 3,000 B.C., Goddess worshipping cultures Western Europe, the Near East, and India began to decline as they were conquered by various nomadic tribes from Northern Europe and Central Asia who worshipped a fiery sun god. Gradually, as first Judaism and then Christianity rose, Goddess worship was suppressed and its followers villanized. Now, centuries later, both women and men are once again worshipping the Goddess. Unable to fully identify with the tenents of more mainstream religions, a growing number of people are discovering alternative spiritualities, such as Wicca and Shamanism. Based on the practices of ancient, Goddess worshipping cultures, these spiritual movements are attempting to rectify the imbalance between male and female that has characterized our society for so many years. But who, or what, exactly is the Goddess? She has been known by many names in many cultures. In the Near East she was worshipped as Innana, Ishtar, and Astarte. In Egypt she was Isis, Hathor, Neith, and Maat. Shakti, Adati, and Duraga in India, Tara in Tibet, Kwan Yin in China and Japan. Traces of her can even be found in the Sophia, the Virgin Mary, and the Shekinah of Christian-Judeo tradition. For modern-day Goddess worshippers, there is no clear-cut definition of the Goddess. To some, she is a specific and personified deity within Egyptian, Norse, Celtic, or another mythology. For others, she is an abstract and all- encompassing entity. She is Mother, Maiden, and Crone; life- giver and destroyer, masculine and feminine. Her followers have a myriad of different ways of worship, embodied in a number of different religions or spiritual practises, each based on an intensely personal relationship. One movement whose followers are again embracing the worship of the goddess is Wicca, also known as Witchcraft or The Craft. To some a religion and to others a spiritual way of life, Wicca is based on an ancient pre-Christian European tradition that dates back to Paleolithic times, in which the god of the hunt and the goddess of fertility were worshipped. Sue McGowan is an SFU student and a Wiccan, or Witch. "I think of the Goddess as female," she says, "but when I think of female, I think of all of the qualities that we can embody, all those that we traditionally call male as well. I think of vulnerability and of strength... I think of aggression, I think of passivity, I think of love, I think of hate, I think of all those things." Raised a Roman Catholic, McGowan began to develop a feminist consciousness through the ideas of some of the nuns in her Church. At first she tried to work within the Church to create change, but became increasingly interested in women's spirituality, and began reading about and practicing ritual while still Catholic (though she did not at this time consider herself Wiccan). Disliking the power dynamics within her church, she drifted away, and after a period of confusion and doubt in God, came to embrace Witchcraft. Like many women, McGowan had found it difficult to connect to a God that was so external to herself. "I couldn't see God in a way that wasn't strictly masculine... as not 'that guy with the white beard up in the sky,' " she says. She felt, too, as though God had some sort of ultimate control over her life. "I always felt that if things were going good in my life it was because God blessed me. If things were going bad in my life it was because I did something that I deserved to be punished for... And then, when I was in that realm of spirituality in Witchcraft, none of that was part of it, at all." In Wicca, McGowan was finally able to find a personal relationship with a higher power. "The Goddess was not outside me," she says wondrously, "the Goddess was me." She also found a new sense of control over her life. "If things are going good for me, it's not because the Goddess has blessed me, it's because I've worked hard. And if something is going shitty in my life it's not because I'm being punished, it's because things are going shitty in my life." But, more importantly, McGowan found an alternative to the male-dominated power structure within the Catholic Church. "In the church," she says, "men always have power over you, whether you believe that it's real power or not. "I don't know which came first," she ponders, "the religion or the patriarchy. I think it was patriarchy that, over centuries grew and grew and grew and started twisting the religions... I don't think that it's Judaism that's patriarchal in itself, I think it became that way as society did... and then Christianity grew out of a Judaism in which patriarchy was already established." What Christian-Judeo culture does, she believes, is to "continue to perpetuate misogyny." In the Catholic Church particularly, she finds there are a lot of "archaic rules around women and reproduction and what women are. They see women as just vessels for procreation. We're either whores or virgins. That's a very old way of seeing women that's still prevalent now." Through Wicca, McGowan found a "whole new way of being with power." A lot of the Wiccan reading that she did "was about Wiccan ritual but it was also about feminism. It was about women and it was about our bodies and reclaiming our power. And that, to me, is essential to our practise. We really work to empower ourselves and to have power with other people, not over other people." Our society, McGowan believes, is "about having economic, social, and political power." It's not surprising, then, that we are so resistant to the idea of worshipping the female. "I think, for most people, the revival of worshipping a goddess or 'the Goddess' is more about having equality among people." she says. "It's not like, 'we're going to worship this Goddess and now she's going to have power over everything. The Goddess is something totally different than God. [Goddess worship] is about having power with other people... it's about having self-respect and respect for others... and that is in direct conflict with predominant western culture." We also fear female sexuality, though we are obsessed with images of sex and the female body. But a big part of female sexuality is "female power," says McGowan, and that is what we are afraid of. "When I talk about being involved with a spirituality that works with the Goddess and when I talk about empowering myself, that's very much about empowering all of who I am." Unlike Christianity, spiritualities that work with the Goddess are very much concerned with human, and especially female sexuality. "You can't work with Goddess and not work with sexuality," says McGowan. "I mean, you can work with God and not even touch sexuality, or you can totally discard it or judge it, but I don't think that you can with Goddess. "Historically, those cultures that were Goddess worshipping cultures were very much into fertility and sexuality. You can't be thoughtful of or live your life in line with the cycle of the seasons without being in touch with sexuality... if you are living your life being conscious of the cycles of the moon and the cycles of time and the cycles of death and re-birth and life, then sexuality is going to be part of that because of how you connect the phases of your life with those things. Earth-based spiritualities are very conscious of the cycles of the moon and in many traditions the phases of the moon were really reflective of the phases of women's lives-the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone... it's all connected. And besides, way back in those Goddess-worshipping cultures, sex was pleasure, it was what people pleasured each other with. It was life. It wasn't what patriarchy has made it to be now." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest MADONNA Report post Posted April 27, 2008 McGowan believes, "one of the things that has been most stripped away from women is our sexuality, and so that's been something that a lot of us [Wiccans] have focused on and tried to reclaim and recreate for ourselves and bring back to ourselves... as we do that, we become really powerful, rooted, grounded people. "I think patriarchal culture is really threatened by that, because they won't have power over us anymore if we own [our sexuality] for ourselves." Goddess worship is not just for women. Although McGowan says that Vancouver's Wiccan community is mostly female, in other areas, such as San Francisco, the ratio is closer to 50-50. Dave Oliver, also an SFU student, is one of the relatively few male Witches in Vancouver. "Wicca is not strictly Goddess-oriented," he says. Unlike Christianity, which he believes is "strictly trying to work on the male aspect," Witchcraft is "not patriarchal. It's very much concerned with a balance between male and female." For Oliver, "the Goddess represents growth, nurturing, and magic," qualities that men in our culture are not encouraged to develop. However, Oliver has come to an "understanding of the need for balance." All of us, he feels, "hold within us both the male and the female. To deny one is to deny part of yourself. Without the female there is no life and without the male there is no life." Becoming comfortable with both sides of himself wasn't an easy process. "It took a great deal of time and a great deal of pain throughout my life to reach that point. When I finally did, that's when my spirituality really began to develop. It went from an academic exercise to a really active part of my life. I really began to be able to communicate with the God and the Goddess." Oliver does not believe that society's resistance to revering female power and sexuality through the Goddess is strictly a male-oriented phenomenon. "It's the pervasiveness of the Christian power structure," he says. "A lot of Christians have a personal relationship with Christ and that's perfectly legitimate. But many don't have a relationship with God, they have a relationship with a power structure." This is rather ironic, as Oliver notes that "Christianity is really designed for people in the Middle East." Wicca, on the other hand, as an ancient European tradition, "actually talks to the base of the Christian power structure, he says. "I felt Wicca was touching some ancestral part of my heritage. I thought, 'Hey, this is me!' " This sense of coming home to oneself is an oft-repeated sentiment for those involved in Earth-based spiritualities. Most of these practices do not attempt to recruit people, rather, their followers tend to find them after a long time spent searching for a religion or spirituality that fulfills some need that had not been met through more mainstream practices. For Oliver, Wicca was a return to his cultural heritage. For most women, Earth-based spiritualities allow them to connect with their femininity in a way that they had not realized was possible. Laara Jansen is a volunteer for the Wy'East Healing Centre who follows the teachings of Patricia Spradling, a healer and lecturer who bases her beliefs on the Earth-based spiritualities of traditional aboriginal cultures around the world. Through these practises, says Jansen, "I felt I was really coming home to myself as a woman... I have found a validation and an actual celebration of being a woman that I haven't found in dominant culture." Raised in the United Church, Jansen began to "drift away" during her time in university. Looking for something "deeper and more satisfying," she studied comparative religion and was drawn to Earth-based spiritualities from the world over. However, she says, for her it was never a matter of rejecting Christianity. "I have found meaning in almost every form of spirituality that I have investigated. But with this I've found more of what I needed. Jansen's beliefs involve a deep connection to the planet. Through ritual and ceremony, she attempts to strengthen her relationship with Mother Earth and Grandmother Moon. "It's a very personal spiritual journey," she says. "Building strong and healthy relationships with other women is a very important part of my spirituality." Margaret West practices Shamanism, a spirituality which is also based on aboriginal knowledge. Traditionally, a Shaman was someone who "mediated with spirits," says West. Now, it's more of a "process that uses energy to heal." This healing is achieved through art and ritual. "If you have a trauma and you take and put it on some sort of art, like a shield or a mask, that will move the trauma more quickly," she says. West's Shamanic experience comes from connecting with nature. "I practice prayer with the creator that involves an embrace with the earth," says West. This connection has helped her to "remember what it had been connecting to flowers, connecting to beauty as a small child on the prairies. "As women," West believes, most of us are terribly ungrounded and uncentred from the earth. I started to remember my connection to the earth and to really respect myself as a woman." Like Wicca, Shamanism involves a belief in a creator that is both male and female. "I see the Creator as limitless and really beyond description," says West. "It's both man and woman-Mother, Father, and Creator. At this time, more emphasis is needed on the Mother. The Lord's Prayer did say "Mother, Father" in its original translation," maintains West. But, "over the last 2,000 years, we've somehow gotten ourselves entrenched in a patriarchy. A lot of the feminine has been hidden or lost or forgotten... I don't think even the men are happy about that." "We have lived for many many years in a way that has demeaned and nullified anything that is female, including the earth," says West. "Science has raped and teased the earth to remove its knowledge. Without the female, everything has spun out of control to the point were we in North America have become very arrogant. Now we are beginning to feel the consequences with disease and environmental degradation." However, West stresses that we have the power to restore the balance. "As women in North America, we have a choice about doing something or not. The patriarchal system and patriarchal religions have silenced us for too long. If we choose to, we can break free." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ekimout 188 Report post Posted April 28, 2008 Dear Ekimout, Thanks for putting up the links, I have been trying to access them and for some reason couldn't! Damn gremlins in my laptop again... Catherine Adding my thanks for posting these links - very interesting. Catherine / Jillian, I thought the articles would be of interest to both sides of the business. I'm glad you found them beneficial. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
