NMR ISSUE 43

Antilion Fly, Abalone & Grouse
Astrological Forecast 43
Chant for the Goddess
Colm and the Unicorn
Dark Passages
Editorial 43
Esoteric Symbology of the Tarot
Evolution
Healing for Mild Depression
In the Fire
Meditation
Meditation is the Key
Midsummer's Eve
Mouse
Namaste Part I
Pathworking
Ravel Magick
The $ Word
The Deserted Castle
Working with Your Shadow, II

Articles
Authors
Rituals
Book Reviews
NMR Issues
NMR Covers

The Editorial

By Scot Rhoads

Big Hairy Changes!
PLEASE READ THIS
so you won't wonder what the heck happened to us

New Moon Rising started out as a bimonthly publication because it fit in with our bimonthly shop newsletter and because I've always felt quarterly was too slow. Now that we have no shop newsletter, I've had to rethink this. I haven't had to think very hard. Economics of time and money make it painfully obvious that quarterly is the only way to go. Though I'd rather be monthly, we're going quarterly.

To avoid the dread December distribution we are going to a March-May, June-August, September-November, and December-February schedule. (That avoids December because that issue comes out in November.) That means this issue will cover four months, from May to August! This will put us on the schedule we need, so all subsequent issues will cover three months. Remember that NMR 8:4 will be coming out in August and covering September to November. That also means there will be five issues in this year. Oh well.

We have been hoping to expand the magazine for a long time. We are finally adding four pages, which is all we can afford right now. This will not affect the cover price. We are hoping that spending a longer time on the shelf combined with our harassing our wholesale distributors will bring our sell-through (number of magazines they pay us for, vs. the number we ship) up enough to cover our cost. This has been our biggest challenge. Now that we are no longer distracted by the shop, we're hoping to fix that and get on track.

What about subscriptions? One year (four issue) subscriptions are now $10 and $15—that amounts to a smaller increase in cost than our increase in size. But those who send $14 (or $21) will still get 6 issues through the rest of this year, anyway. All current subscriptions have been updated to give you the same number of issues you had left, but at our new schedule.

In related news? Tragically, we still don't have our back issues up here yet. Someday, I promise—maybe by next issue. Mean time, we'll continue to hold back issue orders.

Embracing the Wire Mother

Back around the turn of the `70's there was a behavioral experiment which, since I've seen allusions to it on Mystery Science Theater 3000, I believe has become part of popular culture. Researchers were trying to determine the relative roles of comfort and sustenance in the psychological development of baby rhesus monkeys. They made dummy surrogate mothers with bare wire mesh or soft terry cloth. These could have baby bottles installed in them, providing food for the infant monkeys.

Those monkeys with terry cloth mothers grew up to be adequately adjusted. Those with wire mothers were tragically maladjusted—withdrawn and antisocial. Later experiments offered the baby monkeys a choice between a wire mother with milk, or a dry cloth mother. The monkeys were much more interested in comfort and feared the wire mother—until they got hungry. There were no surprises here for those who even dimly recognize the importance of the Mother.

If the treatment the monkeys received makes you want the researchers to suffer a similar fate, rejoice, for they do—as do we all. This is an excellent metaphor for our present relationship to the earth and technology. The Earth is our real Mother, but as a rhesus mother in the wild cannot always provide, so the earth does not always meet our survival needs. Technology, from stone axes to hydroponics, help meet our needs. But in its incredible success, technology has isolated us from our Mother. It has become (when it works) the wet surrogate wire Mother, providing for our physical needs but offering no comfort. Like Bauhaus, it meets no spiritual needs.

But we can go to our terry cloth mother for that. Parks, manicured lawns, nature trails, golf courses and flower shops are the tamed and processed nature that can address our need for the comfort of nature without the threat of the real thing. With that we can get by.

Ideally we would have all three, well integrated and functioning smoothly. How do we get them? First we need awareness. Our desires for nature and safety ensure that if we forget our need for parks, it will not be for long. With the rise of environmentalism and Earth religion, we are finally starting to be aware of our nature Mother and how we must treat Her. And our desires which can only technology can adequately serve make that impossible to neglect. But we seem to remain unaware of the need and potential of synthesis.

We can't make the whole planet our technological Bauhaus abode. Even if it were possible, it would be our destruction. We can't make the planet our park; we are too far from having the knowledge to keep the whole planetary ecosystem healthy under our control. And though we could go back to a natural state, without either our wire or cloth mother, the cost would be outrageous in lives and suffering. It follows that our best solution is a synthesis, but we still seem to lack a dedication to that goal.

This lack is most apparent on a personal scale. We work for money to pay our bills and, if we're lucky, for some luxuries. If we pay our bills, and get whatever luxuries we need to keep us sane, we get to work some more. We work so we can work. If we have children, we work for them—so that they can grow up and work for their children. We work so our children can work. It is the work ethic. The work provides money that can meet our physical needs. Money and spare time can address our other needs, but for the vast majority of us with less than fulfilling jobs, the work itself is a wire mother. We tolerate it in order to provide for our physical and psychological needs, but it offers us nothing more. To sustain us at work, all we have is the promise of needs met on our off time— limited by what time and money we can afford.

Sometimes this is enough. But when it is not, consider that we can do better. Though we cannot go back to pre-industrial or pre-agrarian or pre-lithic society, we can go forward.

At work, our awareness, our personal identification with the process, may extend to our boss and coworkers, or to our department, or our company, or our industry, or even our country, but rarely to our species, or the world. Our horizon may be our paycheck or our retirement, but not likely our evolution over the millennia. Despite the limits of our awareness, we do participate in life on these huge scales—just in staying alive. And the nature of this life, of our species and planet, has changed dramatically since, for instance, the introduction of tools or agriculture or cities or industry. Over the millennia, people with awareness more limited than our own have participated in processes that have made the world a very different place—and in many ways a much better place—through changing technology.

As we go everyday to jobs that mean nothing more than a paycheck to us, we participate in our wire mother's changes but without conscious direction. We could, if we choose, consciously seek to shape her evolution. One of the improvements that we can work towards is making our wire mother as automatic as possible, so we will have our physical needs met but still have the time and resources to be with our cloth mother and real mother. We have made great progress in the post-industrial era. We have automated many unrewarding chores, eliminating many of the soul-sucking jobs that keep our wire mother producing milk. Though we have far to go, it seems a plausible dream that we might eventually bring this kind of scut labor to negligible levels.

But remember that it is the wire mother that has made this progress possible. Technological advances are built on earlier technology. So, ironically, we can best get beyond the nightmare of the wire mother not by neglecting, but by serving her. We can do it wrong. We can serve her with little regard for growing beyond serving her and, if we are unlucky, get stuck in a feedback loop that makes her share of our lives grow instead of shrink. We risk, if we serve only myopic ends, becoming slaves to the mechanical needs of the wire mother in order to merely survive. But if we serve the wire mother with the goal of her becoming self-sustaining, she will best serve us.

Though we don't often have an opportunity in our jobs to make clear strides in that direction, we must remember how important tiny strides are in a long journey over the centuries. Or millennia. We can dedicate ourselves to the goal of meeting physical needs without sacrificing spiritual needs. That can manifest in our attitude in the work place, our suggestions, and the subtle pressures we exert that can change societal paradigms in mere decades.

When dissatisfied, we should try to avoid the temptation to be negative. It is easy to hate the society that asks us to trade our souls for food. It is easy to hope for millennial destruction or even encourage it. But we should instead embrace the wire mother, not to become the slave of a master without a will of her own, but to help her on her road to becoming what we want and need her to be.

As Pagans, we know the wire mother as a manifestation of the Dark Mother. She is the consuming aspect of the Mother—the Kali, the eater of souls. We know to respect Her, but not to fear, hate or try to destroy Her—these only feed Her and make us think She is our enemy. We know better than to dread Her, though we may not be able to help it, because She is an inescapable facet of life. But when we can integrate Her, we can live with Her, and life is much better. This awareness can find vital application in a trying work place. And it can help us remain dedicated to a difficult path, which, even if we are near the end, may yet take lifetimes to walk.

Blessed Be!