Citizens of America

During his traditional holiday rant my dad bellered

"In MY day, the newspapers called people citizens! The Citizens did this, The Citizens said that...Now they all call us CONSUMERS!"

Hmmm, the old bird actually gave me pause for thought on that one.

Once Upon a Time...

The term fairy tale brings to mind a children’s story, but the truth is that these tales are in fact, parables of history.

Some feminist researchers have interpreted these tales of “the persecuted heroine” as a negative influence on young girls, citing that the women in these stories need a man to “save them.” While it is true that this could send the wrong message to our youth, a deeper meaning behind these tales points to the liberation of women, and leads to a beautiful concept of harmony and balance. It is a spiritual teaching that calls out to us from the ancient past. It is a lesson that will not die, even though it has been suppressed, repressed, persecuted, attacked, and twisted for centuries.

In olden times, it was common for all religious teachings to take the form of parable. We all know that the New Testament stories of the shepherd and his flock are not lessons in animal husbandry. They are parables for religious teachings.

Fairy tales are the same. In order to decipher them and find their message, we need only grasp the concepts behind the Olde ways, and remember these people and their history.

The fairy Tales and children’s songs that have survived over the centuries tell the story of the persecution of Pagans by the European Theocracy, and preserve a history that would otherwise be lost, if spoken of openly.

Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel are examples of oral folk stories that carry the hidden history of Earth Based Matriarchal world view of pre Christian Europe. These maidens were pricked with needles, subjected to evil spells, fed poisoned apples, demoted from places of status, or condemned to servitude. The maiden in the parable is not of the thousands of women who were burned, or tortured by the church; the Maiden is the symbol of the BELIEF SYSTEM that was under attack.

The “Wicked Step Mother” is the character who enters the story and wreaks havoc in the formerly peaceful life of the maiden. The stepmother is a woman of great power and standing who wants to take over, and supplant herself in place of the maiden. She loathes the maiden, and everything her spirit represents The stepmother is the symbol of the violent censorship of the rising patriarchy. She is not the real mother, The Great Mother, The Earth Mother, she is a false mother, who is trying to step in and take over.

The Maiden draws her wisdom from her connection to nature. This is the basis of all Matriarchal religion. It is a theology built upon observation of the natural world and the cycle of the seasons. Often these tales tell of forest animals or forest people, like dwarfs or fairies, who come to her aid, when the stepmother attempts to harm her.

When you read a tale of a young maiden, being poisoned, or locked away by the wicked step mother, while she waits for her hero to save her so that they can take their place as king and queen, you are hearing the history of how patriarchy wiped out matriarchy, and how the "mother church" sought to destroy the theology of The Divine Couple and usurp their sovereign rule. The message is everywhere, once you learn to see it.

The core message is always the same: The kingdom is in ruin, even nature is dying, and all will be destroyed unless the Maiden frees herself from the clutches of evil, often in the form of a step mother, witch or wolf. Once she calls upon her allies of the forest, her prince appears and they live happily ever after. Its not that he saves her, but that she holds true to the purity of her values. This is what drives him to seek her out.

When we look at the old hero myths, we always find that the hero seeks the maiden at the tree of life, where he is rewared with the fruit of knowlege. (The apple, pumpkin, basket of fruit for grandma, etc are all symbols of this idea.) The reason for the hero is simply that Earth Based religions work in harmony with the Prime Biological Imperative: to mate and create new life.

This passing on of DNA is our link to eternity. Its natures way. So its not a question of the helpless girl being saved, its a matter of the maiden holding on to her values, and thus she and the prince are both rewarded with the gift of each other, the result being that the kingdom comes to life again and they all live happily ever after.

Rumplestiltskin and the Grail Story of King Arthur both require the seeker to “Name the helper.” In other words, the seeker must be aware of a secret truth before the wish is granted. This secret is what makes the failing kingdom whole again.

The Little Mermaid enters a pact with the witch and attempts to conform (grow legs and walk on land) in order to unite with her prince.

The Three Little Pigs must unite and build a house strong enough to keep the wolf at bay.

Little Red Riding Hood is about not being fooled by the wolf disguised as the grandmother. It is interesting to note that the girl in the story wears red. The red robe was a symbol of the Essenes, worn by their highest ranking women priestesses. Jesus was a member of this priestly group, and there is a direct correlation between the traditional robes of the Essene women, and the robes worn by the Cardinals of the Catholic Church. Further, it must be noted that in olden times, a “Woman in Red” was a sign of a woman who held high office as a spiritual leader. The symbolism is ironically, quite different today.

The examples are ample enough to fill volumes of books. So rather than bore you with any more, dear reader, I will bid you good hunting as you seek the deeper meanings in the fairy tales you encounter, and live happily ever after.

Remember:

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away."

Iraq Pull Out

Words are such a powerful thing. The way we say things is just as important as the meaning behind the message. For example, telling guys "pull out" goes against the grain of the male psyche, even when its just a conversation about politics.

Maybe it would be better to ask them to "Ejaculate" our forces from Iraq.

That might get the boys excited.

Without Gays, Humans would be Extinct

I am not gay, nor am I scientist or credentialed philosopher. I am just an average woman who claims the right to think her own thoughts, and develop her own ideas. I don’t presume to ask that you agree with me, but I do hope that if you venture to read this, it will lead you to create some new thoughts of your own.

My hobbies involve animal rehab and mythology. A weird mix to be sure, but a mix that has led me to an interesting theory: The survival of the species is dependant on the Gay and Lesbian population!

The seed of this strange little thought came when I was blogging with a wonderful musician and poet, who happens to be gay, and I posed the following question:

I’m curious…
I have done a bit of study into what we call The Prime Biological Imperative: Which basically means that males are instinctively driven to spread their seed, and females are driven to find a long term mate, and that both of these contradictory strategies are used to ensure survival of the species.
When one is Gay, there must be question, deep in the mind, about giving up the ability to pass on DNA. In addition, I wonder which forces are stronger…the male drive to spread seed, or the female drive to pair?
One might assume that each individual hashes this out, but when I look at all the things we do, as an unconscious part of this imperative, I suspect that being gay does not free one from those instinctual bonds.
For example: I always tell women that the reason they wear make up, is not to look pretty, but because when a woman is sexually receptive, her lips and cheeks swell and redden. It’s a signal to men. Make up is just a tool to get seed spreading fella’s to pair up and hang around!
When a husband or wife separate for a day or two, for out of town trips or whatever, the male will always instigate sex on return. Why? Not because he missed her, but because he knows that, other males had potential access to her, and if he makes love to her, his sperm will kill off the other sperm.
There are many examples of this in scientific literature, but I have never read anything about how it effects the gay/lesbian population.
Any clues?

The response from my insightful friend was, “I can say from experience, the male gay culture is built around sex, and judgment of physical appearance is harsh. It’s a superficial culture.”

So I started thinking about homosexuality in the animal kingdom, and what role this plays in the survival and propagation of various species, and why it might be a “superficial culture.” If homosexuality exists in animals and humans, and has existed for all of history, then it must serve a purpose as a function of the Prime Biological Imperative (PBI).

There have been many studies, which show how we are sexually attracted to people with beautiful features. This type of visual selection ensures that only the best DNA is passed forward. The stereotypical male often puts little if any focus on “beauty”. So, since we know that a certain percentage of gay people do pass on their DNA, maybe we can surmise that this harsh “judgment of physical appearance” by the bachelor bonding groups, serves an important function in the overall survival of the species.

After all : “In animals in which “bachelor groups” form, such as bison, gazelles, antelope, sage grouse and Guinean cocks-of-the-rock, it is not uncommon for same sex pair bonds to form and last until one or the other member of the pair departs the relationship and breeds.” So maybe, that small percentage of the gay population that breaks off and breeds, is the key group that stimulates the striking beauty of the male physique.

You know what the girls always say: “All the good looking guys are either married or gay!” So basically, Gay men are the influence responsible for keeping all men attractive enough for women to be willing to mate with.

As for lesbians, I think there is a different PBI. I think that this goes WAAAAY back to our ancient ancestors. Very early societies were much like deer herds, where women and children formed the core group, while the males stayed off to the side in bachelor hunting groups, thus females would pair up as partners and parents. Women learned to rely on each other, trust each other and nurture each other, as only women can. Some found that they had little need for men.

In the book Who Cooked the Last Supper, Rosalind Miles states: “At no point in prehistory did women, with or without children, rely on their hunting males for food…Meat from the kill comes in irregularly and infrequently…women regularly produce as much as 80 percent of the tribe’s total food intake, on a daily basis…In the myth of Man the Hunter, he invents the family by impregnating his mate and stashing her away in the cave…But in contradiction to this Big Daddy scenario, a mass of evidence shows that the earliest families consisted of females and their children, since all tribal and hunting societies were centered on and organized through the mother. The young males either left or were driven out.”

So it makes sense that women would form same sex pair bonds to ensure the survival of each other and their offspring, and that men would create same sex pair bonds, focused on physical attraction, to ensure that they could get some access to that magical link to eternity called DNA.

What really amuses me about this little, amateur theory of mine, is that the social persecution of the religious homophobics to “convert” Gays, is also just a function of the PBI. Their misguided and judgmental efforts for conformity actually serve to keep the Gay DNA in the gene pool!

Now, I don’t know if my idea has any real merit, or if someone smarter has already thought of it, but I do know that we are all who we are for a reason, and that there is a divine purpose for everything.

What do you think?

Thanksgiving: A Native American View

by Jacqueline Keeler


I celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving.

This may surprise those people who wonder what Native Americans think of this official U.S. celebration of the survival of early arrivals in a European invasion that culminated in the death of 10 to 30 million native people.

Thanksgiving to me has never been about Pilgrims. When I was six, my mother, a woman of the Dineh nation, told my sister and me not to sing "Land of the Pilgrim's pride" in "America the Beautiful." Our people, she said, had been here much longer and taken much better care of the land. We were to sing "Land of the Indian's pride" instead.

I was proud to sing the new lyrics in school, but I sang softly. It was enough for me to know the difference. At six, I felt I had learned something very important. As a child of a Native American family, you are part of a very select group of survivors, and I learned that my family possessed some "inside" knowledge of what really happened when those poor, tired masses came to our homes.

When the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, they were poor and hungry -- half of them died within a few months from disease and hunger. When Squanto, a Wampanoag man, found them, they were in a pitiful state. He spoke English, having traveled to Europe, and took pity on them. Their English crops had failed. The native people fed them through the winter and taught them how to grow their food.

These were not merely "friendly Indians." They had already experienced European slave traders raiding their villages for a hundred years or so, and they were wary -- but it was their way to give freely to those who had nothing. Among many of our peoples, showing that you can give without holding back is the way to earn respect. Among the Dakota, my father's people, they say, when asked to give, "Are we not Dakota and alive?" It was believed that by giving there would be enough for all -- the exact opposite of the system we live in now, which is based on selling, not giving.

To the Pilgrims, and most English and European peoples, the Wampanoags were heathens, and of the Devil. They saw Squanto not as an equal but as an instrument of their God to help his chosen people, themselves.

Since that initial sharing, Native American food has spread around the world. Nearly 70 percent of all crops grown today were originally cultivated by Native American peoples. I sometimes wonder what they ate in Europe before they met us. Spaghetti without tomatoes? Meat and potatoes without potatoes? And at the "first Thanksgiving" the Wampanoags provided most of the food -- and signed a treaty granting Pilgrims the right to the land at Plymouth, the real reason for the first Thanksgiving.

What did the Europeans give in return? Within 20 years European disease and treachery had decimated the Wampanoags. Most diseases then came from animals that Europeans had domesticated. Cowpox from cows led to smallpox, one of the great killers of our people, spread through gifts of blankets used by infected Europeans. Some estimate that diseases accounted for a death toll reaching 90 percent in some Native American communities. By 1623, Mather the elder, a Pilgrim leader, was giving thanks to his God for destroying the heathen savages to make way "for a better growth," meaning his people.

In stories told by the Dakota people, an evil person always keeps his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. The hero must find that secret place and destroy the heart in order to stop the evil.

I see, in the "First Thanksgiving" story, a hidden Pilgrim heart. The story of that heart is the real tale than needs to be told. What did it hold? Bigotry, hatred, greed, self-righteousness? We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental devastation, poverty, world wars, racism.

Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused.

Because if we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle.

And the healing can begin.

Jacqueline Keeler, a member of the Dineh Nation and the Yankton Dakota Sioux works with the American Indian Child Resource Center in Oakland, California. Her work has appeared in Winds of Change, an American Indian journal.

Quiz: (for smart people only)

Q: The two preceding posts might seem quite different in voice and philosophy, but they are not. Can you figure out the connection?

Spirit Teacher

When we come across certain animals in our lives it can be an indication that they are put in our path to give us messages from Spirit.


"What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.

You must teach the children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother.

Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.“

~Chief Seattle~

***Part of the Role for the two-legged beside whom Red Tailed Hawk flies is that as Guardian of the Earth Mother. To hold an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things, and will have an inner reverence for all life.

To be involved in making the world a better place, encouraging and educating ~Others~ to do the same.

Intelligent Design

Well, maybe he did darling, but I myself am intelligently Designed.

BRILLIANT !!!!!!

Sand + Lightbox + Orchestra + Korean Genius = AMAZING

This Google Video is Brilliant !

http://gvod.blogspot.com/#113177271659550883

Who would you be?

I came across a blog that asked women what man they would be if they could come back and live another life. Most of the responses were movie stars. (Imagine that.)

What was really funny, is that I posed the oppositie question to my husband. He found it quite difficult to think of an answer. For that matter, I struggled more too. Most of the women I admire overcame a great deal of adversity. It was a tough trick thinking of one whose life I would want to live.

I did eventually come up with a few names. What about you? Who would you be?

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