The Editorial By Scot Rhoads Changes This is our first issue on our new schedule. Since it more than accommodates our printer's capabilities, our issues should easily be early from now on. But it means that our deadlines are much sooner. If (as we so fervently hope) you'd like to send us something in time for our Winter issue, it should arrive by September 1st. (Yes, that's just the deadline for prompt people. But the deadline for the rest of you is secret to discourage your relying on it.) Profound Erratum One of the more magickal things in last issue's Magickal Events was trying to match up the dates with the calendars. The months illustrated were from last issue (March, April May), the dates listed were current (June, July, August). Sorry about that! Countermeasures are now in place that should help us avoid that mistake so we can focus on exploring interesting new errata. Thanks for your patience! Attack of the Clone Masters In the wake of the recent breakthroughs in mammal cloning it is starting to become apparent that we should brace for changes so incredible that they will be nearly undetectable. One dramatic change might be a cent or two knocked off the price of milk but don't expect them all to be so earth shaking. Bad science fiction is responsible for fantasy ideas of cloning. It does touch on serious concerns monoculture, cloning for replacement parts, etc. but they are all things we have faced in some form for a while now, or are unthreateningly improbable for the foreseeable future. (If you're worried about evolutionary threats, why aren't you up in arms about the immanent death of the sun?) Some human will probably clone himself someday. There will surely follow paroxysms of ethical hyperventilation as ethicists and priests scramble toward another crack in society's apathy toward their professions. When people get over it, they will notice that it doesn't mean much. Someone has a child with all rather than half his DNA (the first one will probably be a guy). Identical twins separated by years. Microwave ovens are a bigger deal. Mammal cloning will probably play a role in developments with more noticeable impact, perhaps even some with plausible new ethical concerns. We should be paying close attention to science, but that is hardly new. We are not our DNA. DNA can only code for proteins. It seems to play only a crude role in ontogeny, morphology and behavior; the things that make us us. DNA's biggest influence is on bad science fiction, playing on our fears of Frankenclone. Compared with bad science fiction and Maytag ethicists desperate for attention, cloning will be deadly dull. Look for real change on more subtle levels. Scott Cunningham, Herbal God A while ago I wrote lyrics for a competition at a Pagan gathering. Though it didn't win, people seemed happy with it so I'm sharing it here. It's to the tune of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. It works best if you copy the emphasis and style of the original lyrics. I was following them exactly as I wrote this. One spell makes you larger
and one spell makes you small,
and the ones New Agers* give you
don't do anything at all.
Go ask Starhawk, `cause she knows it all. And if you go doing Circle
but it's really off-the-wall,
tell `em that Aleister Crowley gave you
that obscure ritual.
Or blame Buckland, if you've got the gall. While cleansing your Circle,
you found it filled with Christian sin;
so you just took some kind of mushroom
now the cops are closing in.
Tell Selena at CNN! When Adler and Margaret Murry
show HIStory's a sham
and the Farrars are fighting Fundies.
Laurie Cabot's our grandam.
Remember, if you're in a jam:
Cunningham!
Cunningham! There are some things worthy of serious comment. I recognize that the New Age line(*) is a bit unfair to the movement. It does not reflect my general opinion. It does reflect my feeling about the weenie aspect of magical work, which seems to well characterize a salient negative side of the New Age, so I retained the nigh controversial line. Even more seriously, one of the thoughts I had when ending this song with Cunningham was something my wife Judy had told me. She did a meditation four days after her friend Scott had died in which he indicated that after about three months, once he had gotten settled in on the Other Side, people could call upon him for magical help, especially for herbal magick. Three months later we got a letter from a friend who had done so quite successfully. Fans of Scott's work should be aware that they can call on him in ritual or dream work to help them when they are stuck. This is related to a most ancient form of religion, ancestor and hero worship. Not that we should worship Scott more than any other aspect of the divine, but we should remember that we can maintain contact with the spirits of those that have been close to us in life. As Pagans, we have a closer relationship to the dead than most in our culture, but we should remember them more than just on Samhain. Books like the Tibetan Book of the Dead warn us not to distract the newly departed with our thoughts of them; they have a transition to focus on. But once complete, we should remember them often enough to allow them the chance to participate meaningfully in our lives, helping to integrate the two sides of existence. We often remember loved ones, but in a society without heroes, we could stand to remember more often others who can help us and who represent ideals. We must recognize that our heroes and experts are human, on this side and the other, so we must always exercise discretion. But once we take that responsibility, the spirits of the dead can be a good source of information and inspiration. We do have a vestigial hero worship in our culture. A salient example is the Founding Fathers. Unfortunately, they are invoked to quell argument with fantasies about the past and rules for the present. The founding Fathers are safely dead in the popular consciousness, thus whatever they are supposed to represent is safely embalmed. If they wanted us all to have guns, then by golly it's always been that way and it always will be. Same if they only wanted guns for the militia. Whatever they meant then, they meant forever and ever amen. If you question, you're a bad American, therefore a bad person. This sort of hero worship is not respectful. It turns the Founding Fathers into gods in life. They knew what was best for us, at all times, in all circumstances. They knew everything. And it turns them into frozen icons in death. They can't change their minds. The spirits of the Founding Fathers are not in an enviable position. By turning to a more lively form of ancestor worship, we can talk with our heroes on a more human level. At first, we can expect them to be remote and two dimensional, like our ideals of them; but once we become more familiar, they can be more alive to us. They can make mistakes, and we can learn not to deify them, but to respect them properly, as fellow children of the Goddess. Certainly we can expect people talking with the Founding Fathers to hear different things. This is not a recipe for getting everyone to agree on interpreting the Constitution. Sometimes we will be wrong about what they're telling us. Sometimes they will tell people different things based on circumstances, what listeners can hear, etc. Sometimes they will change their minds. And perhaps the whole thing is just imaginary anyway. (That's what Eleanor told Hillary.) The point is not to solve our disagreements by appealing to the Founding Fathers as gods. That's just an extension of the unfortunate attitude we have now. The point is to find personal guidance, and to stop using Them as a club on those who disagree with our historical fantasy. I can tell you, Mr. Jefferson is most displeased about that! Also note that death is not a prerequisite. It is a compelling illusion that we are stuck inside our heads (clinging to the pineal, according Descartes, who is now embarrassed that this is still in print); but it is well established, spiritually, intuitively and empirically, that Locality of Consciousness is a crock. (Carl Sagan still doesn't believe it, though.) We can call on anyone, any time, whether living or respirationally challenged. We should remember when we do so that we are not just calling upon their terrestrial consciousness, or even just the ideals they represent. When we call on someone on a metaphysical level, we are also calling upon their Higher Self and their facet of God/Goddess/All-That-Is. These are old ideas to most that have been involved in the Craft or Magick for more than a year. But sometimes we forget to apply familiar ideas where our society has unexamined models for us to follow. We know that dead people are not dead to us. We know live people are not stuck inside their skulls. We know we are much more than we seem to be. We know that, though everyone has failings, everyone also represents the divine; and we can respect heroes, who can be anyone, for the ideals they represent. But often knowing these things intellectually does not translate into living them. It helps to reexamine our views in the context of society's unexamined views to bring more of what we believe into our lives, and into the world. Don't hesitate to ask Scott when you are stuck on a problem that is worthy of him (it would, of course, be disrespectful to bug him about trivialities). Not sure what the Continental Congress meant by the 2nd Amendment? Ask them in dream, ritual or meditation. Miss your grandad? Visit him on the other side. I'm sure he'd love to share a dream or two with you. These things not only bring our own beliefs closer to us by making them a regular part of our lives, but serve to strengthen our connections with others, present, past, living, dead. They become more human to us, more a part of us. And the things they represent become more alive, more a part of us. This makes us less vulnerable to manipulation through external symbols, because the things the symbols symbolize become internal, personal. This is why there will be resistance to the idea. Everyone wants external absolutes to manipulate group thinking, even when they know better. But the individuality of the Pagan or the adept breaks down these external tools by internalizing them, leaving us better equipped to find the spiritual path of the individual. And when we each pursue our personal spiritual path, that manifests naturally in a healthy group without coercive means such as the unbending Will of the Founding Fathers. But as disempowering the external absolutes makes us less vulnerable to others manipulating us, it makes us more vulnerable to self-manipulation. We can achieve this connection with our heroes and ancestors through spiritual attuning exercises like divination, ritual and meditation, but we must be sure to remain true to the other aspects of our spirituality. We must know ourselves well enough to avoid fooling ourselves into thinking we have permission to do something that is not for the highest good. It is through personal responsibility that we will assure the rest of society that reducing external controls is safe to do. But the necessary ethical guides are an ordinary part of early training. Pagans and magicians should all be well equipped to handle themselves properly. So I am confident that we will over the decades become more in tune with a personal sense of past and present, living and dead, family, heroes, humanity, life on earth; and we will also grow in a sense of personal responsibility that will allow is to relax the group controls that are so vulnerable to abuse on a global scale. I may not live to see it, but when it comes, I'll be able to tell people that I predicted it. Blessed Be!
SR | 
