The Curious Case of Dr. Bones

Paganarch

I’ve read with a fond amusement the recent onslaught of criticism regarding the writing of Dr. Bones. Fondness, because each new accusation, each from a different angle, recalls to my mind all the previous times I was myself the subject of such mass disturbances; amusement, because each of the various essays and posts reveal more about the critics than those they would criticize.

Such crusades are predictable. I’ve been in some way or another involved in public political writing (and later providing a platform for other people’s political writing) long enough to see obvious patterns. They are inevitable, like the rising of the sun; as a writer’s voice ascends into influence, the attacks begin; when a writer gains enough influence to not only become widely-read but widely listened-to, the attacks become crusades.

The question is only ever whether a writer will continue to shine regardless.

It can be said with…

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Loki’s Hands

A Trickster's Path

Pagan’s of all flavors, even Heathen, tend to recognize the ideas of the Right and Left Hand Path. And it is a simple way to speak to the ideals of the faith you follow. But let us take a look at perceptions of these two paths. 

Right Hand Paths tend toward gentler natures, soft ways, healing with Light and Love. Hope drives them forward, Life empowers them and a prevalent idea is that these types would harm none. And for my part and experience this is more than an apt description. 

They are the SJW’s fighting the good fight, they are the ones you see out there, ignoring their own needs for those who have no voice. Soup kitchens, shelters, VA supporters and workers, the doctors who travel the world to use their skills. These are all Light workers and on the Right Hand Path whether they know it or…

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Personal Gnosis: How Humans Came to Be

A Polytheistic Life

I asked Loki, in his guise of Lodurr, about the day that the gods made humans. He indulged me, and he told me the following story.

Note: This is 100% my own personal gnosis, so please take it as you will. 

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Walking along the coast one day, Odin, Hoenir, and Lodurr came across two pieces of driftwood moored upon the sand. The shape of the wood reminded Odin of the monkeys he had just seen while visiting Tehuti in Egypt. “Perhaps we should create a being to inhabit our world the way the Egyptians have,” he said.

“We cannot recreate the monkeys from Egypt,” Hoenir said, ever practical. “They would not survive the harsh winters of our world.”

Lodurr, always keen to solve problems when they presented themselves, offered a suggestion. “Perhaps instead of recreating the monkeys, we can combine the idea of them with the trees the wood came…

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Part 4: I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Disclaimer/Trigger Warning: This post includes content about rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, graphic sexual.

In Part 1 of this story, I introduce a discussion of Johan Galtung’s theory of cultural violence as it relates to my experience as a young woman in an abusive relationship. To recap:

Cultural violence is: “…any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. Symbolic violence built into a culture does not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. However, it is used to legitimize either or both.”

Cultural violence against women is: Normalization and promotion of pornography, prostitution, degradation, and sexual objectification of females in media, predominantly male language in civic, business, and religious institutions, gender roles and stereotypes, misogynist humor, gaslighting, minimizing or denying any of these forms of violence.

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Frat boy culture endangers all workers

oaklandsocialist

This is what is coming close to dominating all three branches of the federal government. It will not only crush all specially oppressed people, it will crush the working class in general.

Occasionally, liberals are worth quoting. Here is one such time. “This was a job interview, not a criminal trial…. But Kavanaugh’s bleating about due process and presumption of innocence — his rage at a supposed “national disgrace” — misses the point. He failed the job interview. Who would want this spoiled man pieced together on a foundation of repressed anger and circumscribed privilege — this man who quite plausibly was the teenage drunk near-suffocating Christine Blasey Ford as he ground his body against hers, this man who may now have perjured himself — occupying a place for life on the highest court in the land?”

Classmates of Kavanaugh and members of the same DKE fraternity parading with a…

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French “Yellow Jackets” and the Calm Before the Storm

oaklandsocialist

It’s almost as if the “Gray Lady” -the New York Times  – is warning the US capitalist class. “A quiet fear gnaws at [French] households: What happens when the money runs out around the 20th? What do I put in the refrigerator with nothing left in the account and the electricity bill to pay? Which meal should I skip today? How do I tell my wife again there is no going out this weekend?” they write about the situation in France. “We live with stress,” said Fabrice Girardin, 46, a former carpet-layer who now looks after other people’s pets to get by. “Every month, at the end of the month, we say, ‘Will there be enough to eat?’ ”

These are the conditions that have created France’s “yellow vest” uprising, rocking the second largest country in the European Union. French president Macron, known for his imperious attitude, has…

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This Is What Rape Culture Looks Like: Then and Now by Carol P. Christ

I was not paying full attention when I heard a news report on CNN saying that archaeologists had uncovered an “ancient erotic fresco” in Pompeii. Hmm, I thought to myself, this story deserves further investigation.

I had heard whispers about frescoes that only men were allowed to see when I visited Pompeii as a student years ago. I now know that these were idealized pornographic wall paintings in brothels of handsome young men engaging with beautiful prostitutes in variety of sexual positions. In real life prostitutes in Pompeii were slaves who worked in appalling conditions in dark, dank, windowless cells. No doubt many of their customers were unwashed toothless dirty old men.

The fresco in the news turned out to be an image of the rape of the Spartan queen Leda by Zeus disguised as a swan; it was found in a bedroom of a house or villa in…

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