Well...

[silveradept]

...today was productive. Of a sorts. I felt pretty bad this morning, so I slept in, like I wanted to, avoided work like I wanted to, did my meetings like I had to, worked a bit like I needed to, and went shopping and dinner with the family like I really needed to. I probably haven't made much mention of my family, but they're a great bunch. They're who I learned quick wit and odd humor from. My younger sister is attending university one town over from me, at an institution highly rated for its teaching program. Yeah, she wants to teach, and I commend her for it. Still, maybe it's part of my birth sign, but it's nice to spend time with them. I feel better when I do.

Plus, if things weren't going my way, I think I'd know. But I'll still cross my fingers and hope I didn't futz my challenge too bad.

Out of lordmork's journal, there's a bit about beams and specks and eyes that might be worth reading by the people who believe that stopping gay marriage is a moral imperative.

Plus, from the same site, Dominion Theology at it's finest. Scarily enough, what is being described is feasible. It may be very soon indeed that the Republican party is nothing more than a facade for zealous dominionist Christians, or that Republicans who aren't dominionist Christians will be on the fringes of their own party. Then, perhaps that graphic that floated around about "United States of Canada" and "Jesusland" will be truer than we think.

It'll be bumpy for the next couple of weeks. Why? Papers, of course, that are going to come due, along with substantive writing requirements for my thesis project. So I really don't have much more time to sit in front of my computer and not do work. The paper crunch is always the point where I start losing my mind more than usual. So if things get angsty and bitchy and problem-riddled, well, that's the reason why (some of the more astute readers of my journal, of course, are saying, 'That's what he does normally. So we can only expect more of it, huh?')

But on a positive note, I got a wonderful e-mail from one of the freshmen this year praising the seniors for all the work and dedication they've shown. While not a rank leader, nor really an instructor of any sort... and a fairly low chair, I feel a little touched in thinking that I might have had some small (VERY small) part in helping to craft the positive image that he's got of our section. Even though I'm sure it's directed more towards all the other seniors than myself... I can live vicariously through it, right? And take pride that one of the freshmen is learning the lessons that I did, and quicker than I did.

Oh, yeah, and keep with the Get-To-Know-Ya meme. I crave more questions from you, my readers. I prefer a dialogue in my journal, rather than a mere chronicle of my life (partially because my life is probably boring to read most of the time.)

Bedtime now. Artifact-watching for the next couple days in classes. Fun-fun.

Comments

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

Very well. Aome more questions if I may...

When did you start to consider alternative religions and philosophies? When did you start to seriously question the religion you were brought up with and was it a gradual process or was there a snap, some event that made you drop any old faith and look for something else (if the latter, I don't expect you to elaborate on what). And how far do you think you have come since then?

Also: aadvarks or orangutans?

[silveradept]

There's no break point, so I'll be more than willing to describe the process.

The whole things starts because of an atavism of sorts from my very young days. I liked fantasy books, (still do!) and even out in the "real world", with a good solid Catholic elementary education, I was never willing to believe that magic, like the stuff in the books, wouldn't be cool to be able to do. So far, so good, ya?

Well, off to public school I go, and through scouring through library catalogue and inter-library loan (while attending the high school for mathematics classes), I came across a most interesting book that claimed what I had always believed - magic was possible. And better, it had real results. The book itself was about magical properties of foods, but it would be the way that I wandered into finding out about Wicca, and eventually from there, the Neo-Pagan movement in general.

Being the voracious reader I was (am?), I went from the extension into the core philosophy and liked what I saw. Of course, at this particular time of my life, I still live underneath the parents' roof. As I found out, when by accident, my dear da noticed that I had a witchcraft primer and gave me a rather strong lecture about witches being in league with Satan. Luckily, the bus came to take me to school, and I was much more careful around them from that point on.

As an aside, I think Mom would be more receptive if I were to declare that I were a Witch than Da, but I don't think either of them would approve particularly much - even here at university, when I took a course on the evolution of the concept of witchcraft through history, it raised some eyebrows. So, even though I have a small collection of occult-related items, I don't bring attention to it, and I wonder if they pretend not to notice.

Back to the story - Wicca was a useful start-point, but I progressed further inward and took a look around the various Neo-Pagan philosophies that I could find, again using the library's resources to further my reading. But at some point, I realized the unreconcilable nature of magic to Christianity (even though I've entertained means that it could occur) for most people of the Christian persuasion, and so I no longer subscribe to being a Catholic. Since I haven't been zorched entering churches with the family, I can only hope that they're not too annoyed with me upstairs.

That was my status through high sachool, and after having garnered the philosophy, I spent those years reading materials that dealt with specific facets of working with magical energy, in the forms of dragons, angels, elements, et cetera. Of course, it probably would have been good for me to stop there and be a sort of fluffmeister, or perhaps age into a useful Witch, but the drive for knowledge continued. Still realizing that for all the corruption of practice, the messages expressed in Torah and the Christian Foundational Writings still were good and useful, I have gone one level farther removed and begun to look for synchronities of religion, to see if they all are expressing the same messages, merely in different forms.

With the transition to university, that search began in earnest, and the haphazard manner of my classes has helped me figure some part of that out, and I'm lucky that I can turn it into a viable degree at all. That is probably the current stage of my search - now looking both inward and outward, looking both at specific practicing styles to see if I can adopt one that has all the things I want, but also beginning to progress towards the metatopics. Thus, Part-Time Discordianism and full-time Chaos Magical Theory may be the place I will call home and go out venturing from in search of the answers that yet elude me.

That's a bit longwinded, of course, but you asked about how far I've come since then. The smartass response is, of course, perhaps one step in one direction, but there is truth to that. Perhaps I have not gone very far at all, and perhaps I've gone light-years away. I wouldn't know, since I still feel a very long ways away from the enlightenment of any religious practice.

And, aardvarks. Not only do they have the cooler name, I like them better than the silly monkeys.