The Shadow
Happy Beltane!
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
Happy late Bealtaine!
Hey folks! Any plans for that fancy lunar eclipse tomorrow?
I'm just gonna do an extra (hopefully extra-potent) "burn your written goals" spell and maybe bake some scones.
Edited by Sharysa on May 25th 2021 at 9:58:20 AM
rollin' on dubs
An old usenet story just popped into my head today, I thought I'd share it with you (in a folder for those who want to skip this and continue with the regular discussion):
An old one from the 90's that I read back then that stuck with me:
A guy posted on USENET about his experience growing up in a small town. There was a bully nicknamed "Porker" (among other colorful names) - huge guy, bully, looked like a pig. Ya know the type, the large kid who got to push around other kids.
Well, as teenage bullies are wont to do, he got his friends, some booze and went out on a night of teenage hi-jinks.
After terrorizing the neighborhood kids, he and his posse went to the cemetery to really get their drink on. No adults would bother them and they could find a nice quiet corner to drink the night away.
Porker decides that, for fun, the group should dig up a grave. Not just any grave, but one of the older graves as they had gotten into the older section of the cemetery. He breaks into the tool shed and gets some shovels and starts digging.
His friends back out. Porker keeps digging, drinking and digging.
Of all the graves he decided to dig up, he picks the one of a woman accuseds of witchcraft (or devil worship) as town legends go. A woman most townfolks speak about in hushed tones.
Porker thought this would be funny.
So he keeps digging, drinking and digging.
As he starts to make progress he hears something.
He keeps digging, stopping to make sure no one has spotted him, by this time he's nearing the coffin.
What he heard was his name.
Oh, not "Porker" or his other colorful nicknames. His real name.
Now most of us will stop when we hear our name and Porker was no exception.
At first he thought it was someone who knew him. Perhaps the grounds keeper.
Seeing no one, he keeps digging.
The voice gets louder.
Porker finds that the voice is coming from under his feet. And it's calling him by his real name.
Once he puts together that the voice is calling him by is real name AND it's coming from under his feet, he sobers up real fast and runs away from the cemetery.
Well of course he tells some friends who tell other etc.
The person who posted this went to High School (and was a victim of) Porker.
He also went to high school with someone who became the lead singer of a famous metal band (who also knew Porker by reputation).
Supposedly, there is a song with the lyrics "I hear her calling me, calling me from below" that was inspired by this. The OP of this USENET post named the band, but I can't remember.
So yeah, either a young man had to much alcohol and not enough sense and his mind played tricks on him or he woke something up - how ever briefly.
Well, if anyone knows what band has a song with the lyrics "I hear her calling me, calling me from below", let me know.
Edited by TairaMai on Jun 25th 2021 at 12:45:56 PM
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48
Oh, that is freaky and I may or may not start looking for the band.
Also, pandemic musings: I friended one of the former pagan tropers on Facebook a while back, but it's been a LONG time since I heard from them and they don't seem to be on FB anymore. One of their names is listed as part of the production team on a Pathfinder game... from five years ago.
Eek. Time to deal with my "are they dead/missing, did they make a different profile and I missed the call to friend them again, or did we just drift apart?" feelings.
Edited by Sharysa on Jun 23rd 2021 at 4:54:13 AM
rollin' on dubs
I hate that - I got a rude surprise when I looked up a college friend and a lady I went to high school with - the young lady died in a car accident and the college buddy died in a hiking accident.
That ruined my for "I should look up so-and-so on FB" for a month.
I'm getting to the age where if I want to connect with old friends I may need a oujia board instead of FB....
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48
Yeah, I'm hoping that they were just dealing with the weirdness of FB. The websites have been constantly banning people for small things, so a lot of my friends have multiple accounts. And when FB isn't actively malicious, it's getting harder and harder to actually USE FACEBOOK, as everyone keeps complaining. Sighhhh.
rollin' on dubs
Say what you will about Myspace (e.g. the mall goths and emo kids dabbling in fluffy bunny witchcraft) but at least it was easy for Pagan Groups to setup a page and coord meet ups back in the day.
Edited by TairaMai on Jul 1st 2021 at 5:27:20 AM
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48
Heck yeah, we did not know what we had back then.
I am technically on Discord with several pagan groups, but with it being so chat-based, I get into a bad habit of clicking "mark all as read." :/
I hope everyone's having a peaceful August. Did anyone plan anything this month?
Edited by Sharysa on Aug 21st 2021 at 11:21:16 AM
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/AboriginalAustralianMyths
I feel like I managed to make one of the most comprehensive and accessible guides to Aboriginal Australian oral traditions.
All info is ethically sourced from a mixture of cultural centre conversations and Dark Emu.
Extremely late response, but that sounds great!
The Glam Rock Wolfpuppy
Heya, eclectic atheist pagan here!
SEGA!Rockruff
Am I the only one who's annoyed at the pentagram still being associated with evil/devil-worshipping? To Paganism, the pentagram is a symbol of nature, nothing to do with evil.
Intended to embody the Beware of Vicious Dog trope plus Super-Speed. Yup.
I have fallen off the forums for a LONG TIME (partly due to Life Happening and partly due to spirit-weirdness, yet again), so hello to the new folks!
RE the pentagram being mistaken as a devil-worshipping symbol: I'm also annoyed by that, but at least paganism in general is getting a little more accepted by others. Also, The Green Knight apparently used pentagrams as the proper symbol for early medieval Christianity instead of crosses, so that's great!
RtU2 and Cosmos And Chaos
Edited by Sharysa on Jul 1st 2023 at 12:14:07 PM
rollin' on dubs
The inverted pentagram was a product of LeVeyan Satanism and the Moral Guardians picked it up and ran with it.
Not helping are the many loud bands, punks and teens who want to be "edgy".
And when those guys make the news for Florida Man style antics, that pentagram is front and center. As someone put it in the 1997 Spawn film:
- Clown: How come God hogs up all the good followers and we get all the retards?
Edited by TairaMai on Jul 2nd 2023 at 6:06:59 AM
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48
Hello! I'm Kemetic. My patrons are Thoth and Sekhmet. I am also a hard polytheist and I believe in every God.
Faemon: Yep, I remember that person. According to folks, a lot of white expats are VERY similar to that guy.
Shadow: Very late, but good news to hear!
—
And for actual magic, I'm gonna start doing some basic spells of "write my goals down on paper, burn them, and put the ashes in my houseplants" every week or so, to see if that helps get me out of my rut.
Spirit-wise, I've been contacted by the Green Man and he looks/acts like Henry Cavill's Geralt of Rivia, of all people. Very sexy until he starts throwing up vines, or turning into a tree-man-thing.
Weirdly enough for an Ent-like nature-spirit, the Green Man Does Not Like how Haik and the other spirits "treat me like a wild creature" and let me roam around having meltdowns and only half-knowing what I'm doing with spirit-work, because he seems to have thought they'd be a LITTLE more stringent on... advancing my spirit-work abilities, or even just helping me out more in the regular world.
He is very emphatic that he is neither "wild" or "human," but a mix of both.
The other spirits have a complicated relationship with him. He does have some good points like how their well-intended "keep everything nice and slow" is a little TOO slow for me, but he also has accidental "no mixing the elements/races" undertones. He's just so INSISTENT that Haik (a sea/water-god) and I (the most land-lubber person ever) don't make a good match because we barely understand each other, and I should find a land-spirit to work with instead. Uh... that's not always how relationships work.