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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in E Speaks' LiveJournal:

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    Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
    5:33 am
    [nebris]
    In Which Nebs Argues For Matriarchy Once Again
    ~This is Michael Anissimov's quite critical assessment of the Deep Ecology Movement in Sentient Developments, George Dvorsky's Futurist/Transhumanist blog.

    And these are my comments upon same.

    I should note that I largely agree with Anissimov's take on the Deep Ecology Movement. It is in many ways a ideological subset of the Human Extinction movement.

    But that said, both Anissimov and Dvorsky were quite specifically who I was thinking of when I wrote the following:

    "What many of you may not know is that there those in the Transhumanist Movement who wish to eliminate Gender itself, to become Immortal Beings of Intellect who reject the Flesh and Sexuality altogether, areas of human existence that are widely considered to be 'of the Feminine'.

    But this is just another form of Rationalism, which is a subset of Masculinism and therefore functionally just another form of Father/God Cultism, albeit without Himself. Not surprisingly, most proponents of this concept are highly educated white middle class American males who tend toward Atheism. But “If God is male, then the male is God,” applies here as these fellows have all been raised inside Patriarchy. They just wish to truly make themselves gods.

    It should not take too much imagination to see where that would lead..."
    From Her Prophet Explains: Part Seven - “Summation”

    They are both major advocates of the development of mind uploading technology and Dvorsky himself of an overall 'degenderization' of the race. If you know me, you could see where I would have Major Issues with the latter and wish to constrain the utilization of the former.

    Current Mood: contemplative
    Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
    10:22 pm
    [nebris]
    Point of Divergence w/ "Culling" and “Apéritif á La Tour Rouge”
    ~With the completion of “Culling”, the Cyber Witch stories have now branched off into two separate, though parallel story universes. The stories that proceed it come from the story universe of The Sisterhood of Vēkkan Cults and are really Space Opera in nature.

    This story universe has a very definite birthday, May 27th, 1996 at around 7pm. That was Memorial Day and I had gone to see The Craft, which I really liked, except for the part where the Sisters fell out over a fucking football jock. That really pissed me off.

    When I got back to Hotel Hell, I sat in my room and started scribbling. By half past seven I had a single hand written page that outlined the whole concept, a page I still have in my procession.

    All the pre-”Culling” stories take place in that story universe, which includes everything presently in “Stories and Works” plus “Bright Blossoms, Divine Wind”.

    Now this was before both E or The Pentavalent and so does not draw upon them directly, even though they are written afterward. I have continued on with the Vēkkan stories because that universe is so well defined and will do so again.

    But once I started to really think through the Precepts of The Pentavalent and then later The Temple, another Cyber Witch universe began to unfold, one which is based upon the practical ideological projection embodied in the Stories and Works paradigm: “What would a world built by a Sisterhood of The Pentavalent really look like?”

    It is in that story universe in which ”Culling” is set, as is “Apéritif á La Tour Rouge”, which, despite its fancy assed Eurotitle, is a failure, at least in my estimation. The didactic totally overwhelms the story, which was kind of thin to begin with.

    But I continued on with it because of its value as an experiment in world building. And I had enough self discipline to maintain the Omniscient Voice instead of descending into a pedantic talking head expositional, you know, where somebody goes on and on explaining things that should in fact be common knowledge to all the participants.

    That shit makes me want to to scream and throw the book across the room.

    Anyway, ”Apéritif ...” is an illumination of this world and I am hopeful that this work I am engaged in is laying the foundations for such a world. It probably won't look like that – these things never do – but at least there is now the beginning of an outline, with some details filled in.

    In time, I'll use this story universe to fill out a new ”Stories and Works”, replacing the Space Opera of Vēeka with this more hard science/socio-political story universe that projects out from The Temple and The Pentavalent, which has been my intention all along.

    And now you know...

    "Culling"

    ~The city had once been prosperous and beautiful, tall shining towers, broad tree lined boulevards, full of vitality.

    Now it was a smashed ruin. Most of that had happened during the Age of Storms, Category Six monsoons scouring those once shining towers, adding their debris to the general destruction of wind and rain.

    Battle damage had now been added to that forlorn landscape.

    Drajica looked around at the ruins from the wide intersection where she had set up her Tribunal. The helmet of her battle armor was opened 'on the half shell' and would snap shut if the suit detected any incoming threat.

    In the distance, she could hear the buzz/hum/hiss of Marine weapons, the snapping of century old ex-Soviet assault rifles, the occasional crump of chemical explosives. The air stank of general decay, with an undercurrent of burnt flesh.

    Her security team had established a perimeter around the intersection. In its center, a hundred or so local males were lined up, kneeling, hands bound at the small of their backs. A stack of black plastic body bags were in an orderly pile a dozen feet behind them.

    “Pathetic,” she thought, “But they had been warned.”

    As the Age of Storms slowly abated, the Union of Matrilineal Republics had emerged from North America's West Coast. The Sisterhood, as it was colloquially known, spread rapidly into the chaotic aftermath.

    In the half century since, it had displaced most of the 'systems' that had survived the Age of Storms in an essentially peaceful process, and then expanded out into near Earth space.

    Some pockets of Phallists had resisted with violence. But with limited capacity to reproduce, they faded quickly. Uterine replicator technology seemed set to reverse that, but unaugmented tank babies were almost universally sociopathic, except for the psychotics, of course. Those societies imploded brutally.

    This city was one of the very last strongholds of Phallism. The Sisterhood had compiled evidence of genital mutilation, impregnation rape, and foot amputation for the women who tried to escape before it took action.

    Two Warnings were issued. Then came an EMP, followed by a Marine Drop Brigade. Mobile Tribunals did the mopping up.

    Ostentatiously removing the armored glove from her right hand, Drajica walked over to the line prisoners. She'd picked the first one specifically. She knew his type.

    He wore a finely knit kufee and a now soiled white robe. His beard was long, but neatly trimmed.

    Drajica faced him. “Do you Swear to honor and respect your Sisters?” Her voice was soft, but firm.

    He smiled, but his eyes were hard. “There is no God, but God,” he said, “And Mu-”

    She pointed at him. An actinic flash burst from her fingertip. A pinhole appeared in his forehead, a thin wisp of smoke puffing upward. He fell over backward, his body jerking. The smell of piss and shit adding to the overall stench.

    She sighed. The next in line, a terrified boy no more than seventeen, had already pissed himself. She faced him. “Do you Swear to honor and respect your Sisters?” she repeated in the exact same tone.

    “Ye-ye-yes, Mistress,” he blubbered with utter sincerity, “I Swear by my life!”

    Two Marines hauled him away to a waiting ground vehicle. His fate would be agricultural resettlement, or possibly servitor augmentation. But that was not for her to determine.

    Two other Marines were dragging the mullah's corpse toward the pile of body bags. He would wind up as DNA harvest. His smug face would haunt her dreams for a while.

    Drajica sighed again. “It will all be over soon,” she told herself, and moved down the line.

    “Apéritif á La Tour Rouge”

    As I said above, this 'fails as Story' and is better read as History.

    ~Miki Nemara sat in a secure private lounge of Le Tour Rouge, sipped her Passito, looked out upon the Parisian skyline. In the distance, the lights of the newly refurbished Eiffel Tower had just come on, bright against the Autumn dusk.

    Le Tour Rouge a was the premier diplomatic watering hole in Paris, the new headquarters city of the United Nations. New York was still a shambles and too vulnerable to storms, so the European Union proposed Paris, with the entire Île-de-France as a UN Protected Zone.

    This choice was to make up for Berlin becoming the EU capital itself, a deal that was brokered by the Union of Matrilineal Republics. )

    Current Mood: contemplative
    Monday, June 29th, 2009
    8:46 am
    [nebris]
    Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images [10-minute preveiw]

    Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images Preview from Amy Kellum on Vimeo.


    http://www.meinradproject.org/

    ..via [info]manifestress



    Current Mood: contemplative
    Friday, June 12th, 2009
    7:54 pm
    [nebris]
    The Cyber Witch Stories As They Presently Stand
    ~As I have written two Cyber Witch stories in as many days, I am a bit reflective of the series at the moment and decided to post them all in a single entry and in their proper chronological order so that you, my loyal readers, can view the length and breadth of them.

    Interestingly, the last one in order, “Crossing The Lines”, is actually the first one written. That it is fully consistent with the others is because this whole series was completely outlined and plotted before I even conceived of “Crossing...”

    I have an entire set Epic Cyber Witch Tales waiting to be told and I shall return to them in due course. That holds true for The Imperium as well. I do not abandon my children

    I have said many times that running out of material is the least of my worries as a writer. First and foremost is the simple act of Facing The Page.

    And so, here are the eight Cyber Witch stories as they presently stand... )


    Current Mood: calm
    Thursday, June 4th, 2009
    11:10 am
    [nebris]
    Regarding The Temple And Male Children
    "The birth of Daughters is preferred over the birth of sons." The Third Valance

    ~That's a pretty straight forward statement, yet clearly there are potential complexities in its application. I will address them here as best I can.

    First, a definition. When thinking of the name to be used for various residences of The Temple, ones that would be exclusive to Initiated Sisters, I looked to the term used in my Cyber Witch stories: Karaal.

    It is derived from the South African term, kraal; “enclosure or group of houses surrounding an enclosure for livestock, or the social unit that inhabits these structures. The term has been more broadly used to describe the way of life associated with the kraal that is found among some African, especially South African, peoples.”

    It is more from that latter part of the definition that I drew Karaal. I used to mean ”Place Where The Horse Riding Amazons Live”. And I think it suits our purposes quite well.

    Not all Karaals will have horses, as it does not mean 'place where Amazons ride horses'. Some Karaals will be urban residences. [See "The Temple's Tactical Initiatives"]

    What will set them apart from The Temple's shelters and general housing is that only Initiated Sisters, their Daughters, and Collared Korettes [male slaves of The Temple's Dommes who will function as servants] will live there.

    This is in keeping with the need to create a fully Gynocentric atmosphere, one that fosters a serious and internally consistent paradigm of Female Supremacy. The Korettes who live within this mini-culture will be subservient adult males who have freely chosen that life.

    And it is this entire dynamic that that leads me to this statement: “There will be no male children raised within The Temple's Karaals. Period.”

    There are two basic reasons for the rule and the necessity of its strong enforcement.

    The first is the most obvious; boys would throw off the whole psycho-social dynamic. The Sisters who first participate in this experiment will all have been raised entirely within Patriarchy. They are all going to have some prejudice toward male children, most of it toward giving favor to them. The problems there are pretty clear.

    The whole idea of having “a serious and internally consistent paradigm of Female Supremacy” is meant to begin breaking that pattern in the Daughters raised in The Temple's Karaals. I believe it will take about three generations to actually accomplish this in most of our Daughters.

    The Temple's whole strategy is to change from within, "to create...a Practical Reality that becomes the microcosm of this new society [a New Matriarchy]...that is vital, replicable, adaptable, and then plant it in the societies that presently exist."

    So we can't have Sisters hiding out in some isolated desert compound. They have to actively operate within the existing social order. That means they have to be strong enough to resist its efforts to break them down, hence the need for “a serious and internally consistent paradigm of Female Supremacy.”

    The second reason is less obvious, but equally important. To try and raise male children in “a serious and internally consistent paradigm of Female Supremacy” is, to be blunt about it, just plain abusive. If you regard Patriarchy's ingrained mechanisms that define women as 'less than' to be abusive, how could you continence doing the same to boys?

    I can't. And I won't.

    This is largely a temporary problem. Gender selection technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, so giving birth to only Daughters will soon be a non-issue. But until then, the above rule is required.

    So what happens to an Initiated Sister living on a Karaal who becomes pregnant with a male child? That will be her choice. If she chooses to bring him to term, she will remain an Initiated Sister. She simply would not be able to raise him in her Karaal.

    Our goal is to have enough resources in terms of living spaces and income that such a choice on her part could be handled with ease.

    Now I know perfectly well that such a thing is unlikely to go with the smoothness implied above. No matter the choice, there would be Grieving and Loss.

    But that comes with this territory. There is going to be Grieving and Loss anyway. Some Sisters are going to get killed outright during the course of this Transition for daring to challenge male dominance.

    This Work is not for the faint of heart. It is the Work of Amazons. And The Prize is The Future.

    Current Mood: contemplative
    Friday, May 8th, 2009
    5:21 am
    [nebris]
    Tribe of Ukrainian Fighting Women
    ..I've been meaning to post this for months..

    By: Dahlia Rideout via Divine Caroline

    French photojournalist Guillaume Herbaut spent some time with an unusual and tough group of 150 Ukrainian women who call themselves “Asgarda.” These women live in the Carpathian Mountains and follow a rigorous routine of fighting and boxing, often with medieval weaponry.

    The women idolize Yulia Tymoshenko, the icon of the Orange Revolution and leader of the Ukrainian Fatherland party.

    The portraits are inspiring, bizarre, and strangely beautiful.
















    Current Mood: inspired
    Friday, May 1st, 2009
    9:23 pm
    [nebris]
    Stage Two
    ~This is an excerpt from Her Prophet Explains: Part Four - "The Temple's Tactical Initiatives"

    "...[U]pon thinking through the practical steps toward implementing this process I soon realized that first The Temple needs a Home, a safe, stable, and effective base of operations from which to start these various projects.

    As I have said above, as of this writing, The Temple is a 'Mom and Pop Operation' and in what I refer to as Stage One. However, Stage Two has already been initiated, that being the acquisition of a piece of our own land, a plot large enough to allow for expansion.

    The Stage Two property will come together in roughly the following order and look something like this:

    ~In addition to our presently owned 1800 sq foot manufactured home, we will acquire three more of a similar size, but of varying layouts, placing them in a square formation centered around a large above ground swimming pool. This will create a comfortable and communally oriented living space for about two dozen Sisters.

    ~We will acquire a few surplus steel shipping containers, placing them on the property for use as storage space and other purposes. They are plentiful, cheap, and extremely durable.

    ~We will build stables on the property, large enough to accommodate two to four horses. The promotion of Horse Culture is central to the creation of a new Amazon Culture.

    ~We will acquire a smaller manufactured home to be used as The Temple's first school house, a long singlewide laid out in two rooms separated by a bathroom and storage space.

    Stage Three will essentially be a much larger version of the above upon a much larger piece of land. But for now Stage Two is the goal and it can be archived with the resources that are becoming available in the near future. The time line for this is two to five years."

    Current Mood: calm
    Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
    4:29 pm
    [nebris]
    Fifth Wave Feminism
    ~This is an excerpt from Her Prophet Explains: Part Three - "The Temple's Grand Strategy".

    "Modern Feminism is generally agreed to have come in three 'waves'.

    First Wave Feminism focused on the legal rights of women and traditionally starts with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792 and culminates with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment of the US Constitution in 1920 which gave women the right to vote.

    Second Wave Feminism started in the Nineteen Sixties, and only really flourished until the mid Nineteen Seventies, focusing upon the socio-cultural perception of women and how that effects women's rights and opportunities.

    As most of these issues are still very much unresolved, The Second Wave has not really ended; it merely became diffused by the political and economic conditions of the times.

    Third Wave Feminism has a much more complicated pedigree. Depending upon who's talking, it either started in the mid Eighties or early Nineties. It evolved from, and yet is also in reaction to, The Second Wave. It's 'focus' is extremely diverse, to the point where I would say it has no real focus. Its overall issues are about class, race, and gender identity as they relate to 'women's issues'.

    Whatever Fourth Wave there may be will would be one that somehow emerges from this often bitter struggle between the Second and Third Waves.

    It is my belief, with which E concurs, that these issues are essentially unresolvable inside of the Modern Corporate Marketing Culture, a 'culture' that co-opts every single part of these movements almost as soon as they manifest in order to 'sell product', a practice which allows Patriarchy to 'divide and conquer' while simultaneously profiting financially from the strategy.

    Hence the need for a Fifth Wave “that it leaps ahead...to an entirely new construct,”"

    Current Mood: contemplative
    Monday, April 6th, 2009
    4:13 pm
    [nebris]
    E Speaks
    “It will not surprise many of you that the vast majority of human concepts regarding deities and their nature is anthropocentric nonsense, evolved out of tales told around camp fires thousands of years ago and based upon a combination of fear and the echoes of race memory.

    Let me go straight to the point: there is no 'God', not as most of you conceptualize 'God'. However, there is a Source of All.

    But even my race, which in its prime explored in ways that you will not be capable of for a very long time, could never actually find said Source. We did however find Its Shadows and Echoes and from that we determined a number of things.

    First, as Its Name implies, It is in All, Its Creative Energy imbuing everything throughout all of Creation with Its basic nature. Because your presently bi-gendered race rightly perceives Creative Energy as Feminine, calling The Source of All “The Goddess” or, better still, “The Creatrix”, is an accurate and effective way of labeling It.

    Second, because The Source of All is a functionally infinite concept, even my race needed to 'break it down' into more workable elements. The details of how we did that are not relevant here as they are mostly beyond your race's present capabilities.

    But the basic concept is well within your reach, what Buddhists call Tulpas, a manifested Thought Form. By focusing individual or collective Will upon a specific Aspect of The Creatrix, meaning a specifically Named Goddess – such as Astarte, Kali, or, Bride – a Tulpa may be invoked out of The Creatrix, a part of Her that can be understood and related to, and therefor directed.

    As we are all part of The Source of All, this is really just reaching into our own Being. All is within each of us.

    But...once one has invoked any Aspect one must attend to two things. First, Tuplas can take on a life of their own, so attend closely to them. And second, they live through your focus of your Will, so if your Practice fades, they will likely fade as well.”


    From ”The Temple's Metaphysics”

    Current Mood: calm
    2:05 pm
    [nebris]
    Nebs Sez
    ~Christianity is, like its sibling Islam, the child of Judaism, which is in turn simply the metaphysical operating system of a collection of Bronze Age nomadic desert tribes.

    That we as a species and a civilization have outgrown such primitivest systems should be obvious on the face of it. But we humans are both stubborn and fearful creatures, clinging to old ways even when they cripple us. Just look at how most of us handle our personal relationships.

    The underlying Truth here is that the actual Source of All is so far beyond us that we cannot even begin to frame a conception of such. The idea of Absolute Faith is anthropomorphic nonsense and could even be considered Blasphemy, if the Source of All ever even noticed such a thing, which is unlikely in the extreme.

    No, our Deities are fictions, beings we have created to serve us, not the other way round. But that is not to say that we do not need them. Given our ever increasing comprehension of the Universe and its vast nature, we need our Deities more than ever.

    But we must be honest with ourselves and with Them. It is through our collective Focus that They come to life and Their Purpose is to give us an often undeserved comfort and to provide us a metaphysical path upon which we tread toward our future.

    Yahweh, who is at His heart, a controlling and pathological SOB, not only no longer serves us, but, given that we now in many ways wield power far greater than His, could very well be the death of us unless we relegate Him to the dustbin of history.

    That's my two cents....

    Current Mood: calm
    Saturday, April 4th, 2009
    6:21 pm
    [nebris]
    Her Prophet Explains: Part Seven - “Summation” [Final Edit]
    ~I have finally finished mucking about with this version of The Explanation by completing – for now – my edit of Part Seven “Summation”, which I have posted below in its entirety. This edit has taken The Explanation to a bit over 20,000 words and to almost 57 pages in the Word File version. As soon as I get my own printer up and running, I'll ship a few hard copies out. Check it out... )

    Current Mood: pleased
    5:10 pm
    [nebris]
    Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
    11:57 pm
    [nebris]
    Lesbian Nation
    ~I personally find this article so personally validating I cannot express it in words. Those who have followed my path these X number of years will fully understand and those who have known me for only a little while will see that I did not 'pull this outta my ass'. There is a solid grounding for this New Matriarchy I rant about. Prepare to have your minds blown... )

    Current Mood: pleased
    Sunday, March 15th, 2009
    2:25 am
    [nebris]
    New LJ Bio [3nd edit]

    I am not an Atheist. I am not a Pacifist. I am not a Liberal. I am a madman from the desert who has been given the Vision of a Global Amazon Republic founded upon and operated through a Revealed Feminist Spirituality that worships The Goddess in all of Her Aspects and every single day I do something that brings the manifestation of that Vision closer to fruition. That such will mean the end of me and my brothers is of no concern to me as I Know when the time comes we shall all Ride The Wheel back here to live as Sisters among Sisters.



    Current Mood: content
    Saturday, March 14th, 2009
    1:11 am
    [nebris]
    Nebs Sez

    Starting a real Spiritual Movement requires Revealed Knowledge; that's just how them sumbitches work. Trying to use 'reason' or 'logic' to do so it just blowing smoke up your own ass or extracting said outta same."




    Current Mood: yup
    Saturday, March 7th, 2009
    6:47 pm
    [nebris]
    In Which Her Prophet Explains The Temple Of The Pentavalent

    ~For various reasons – technical and otherwise - I have chosen to post the entirety of In Which Her Prophet Explains The Temple Of The Pentavalent in The Temple, the CJ community dedicated to The Temple of The Pentavalent.

    This entry itself will serve as a 'portal post' in all of my various blogs. The links below are self explanatory. There is a final entry after Part Seven that serves as a 'transit post' with links that will take you back to the blog from which you started.

    You may comment there or join The Temple to do so. Note however that The Temple's membership is Moderated.


    Her Prophet Explains: "The Introduction"
    Her Prophet Explains: Part One - "Her Prophet"
    Her Prophet Explains: Part Two - "The Temple's Metaphysics"
    Her Prophet Explains: Part Three - "The Temple's Grand Strategy"
    Her Prophet Explains: Part Four - "The Temple's Tactical Initiatives"
    Her Prophet Explains: Part Five - "The Trikona”
    Her Prophet Explains: Part Six - “Stories and Works”
    Her Prophet Explains: Part Seven - “Summation”




    Current Mood: calm
    Sunday, February 1st, 2009
    7:42 pm
    [nebris]
    Her Prophet Speaks

    ...an excerpt from Her Prophet Explains...

    "The issue of a female only society has stirred some controversy as one might image. But we do not propose the phallocidal paradigm [e.g. 'kill all the men'] that some have accused us of. Hell, Her Prophet is Male and I can personally assure he is not suicidal. Such a concept is neither moral nor practical. At best, it would lead to a Gender War that could quite likely destroy the entire species; certainly such a conflict would cripple us for generations...


    ....What many of you may not know is that there those in the Transhumanist Movement who wish to eliminate Gender itself, to become Immortal Beings of Intellect who reject the Flesh and Sexuality altogether, areas of human existence that are widely considered to be 'of the Feminine'.

    But this is just another form of Rationalism, which is a subset of Masculinism and therefore functionally just another form of Father/God Cultism, albeit without Himself. Not surprisingly, most proponents of this concept are highly educated white middle class American males who tend toward Atheism. But “If God is male, then the male is God,” applies here as these fellows have all been raised inside Patriarchy. They just wish to truly make themselves gods.


    It should not take too much imagination to see where that would lead..."




    Current Mood: contemplative
    Saturday, January 10th, 2009
    6:08 am
    [nebris]
    Amazons of Black Sparta : The Women Warriors of Dahomey
    From Athletic Women's Blog

    "A word about the title of this book. The British traveler Richard F. Burton called Dahomey 'this small Black Sparta' for its militarism and subordination of the individual to the state. Its amazons resembled the women of Sparta in one respect: their bodies were hardened from childhood by physical exercise. Footracing, wrestling and spear-throwing were sports they probably shared; the Greek girls also threw the discus. (The African girls were more demure: they did not compete naked in public.) Spartan women kept in shape to breed male warriors, Dahomean amazons to kill them.

    Here, then, is the amazons' story."

    (Amazons of Black Sparta : The Women Warriors of Dahomey, from the Introduction.)

    Amazons of Black Sparta is an utterly fascinating book, certainly a must-read for anyone who frequents this blog. In this well-written, erudite account, Stanley Alpern takes us to a time (not that long ago) and place where traditional notions about gender are turned completely on their head and exposed for the sham that they are. Here you will learn about women who were the elite soldiers of a kingdom's army, and among the most feared soldiers on an entire continent. These women warriors were indeed formidable, and the professional soldiers who fought against them didn't hesitate to make that clear in their reports.

    This book is a gold mine of gender-stereotype-demolishing facts. Perhaps chief among these, and spotlighted in the excerpt above, is how the Dahomey warrior women built their bodies, starting from a young age, into lethal weapons through intense physical training; observers frequently noted the Amazons' solidly muscled frames and superior strength, and even conceded that the women warriors of Dahomey were more powerful than their male counterparts. That translated to the battlefield—the ultimate test—where the Dahomey warrior women consistently showed themselves to be superb fighters, easily the equals of the men they fought alongside and against.

    Moreover, the stories of the Amazons' skill, bravery, and perseverance in the face of often insurmountable odds will amaze you. They truly were remarkable women. It will be good for more people to learn about them, and Amazons of Black Sparta serves that purpose well.

    But there's a dark side to this book too, though it's no fault of the author's. Life isn't always pretty, and the world of the Dahomey warrior women starkly reminds us of that. Dahomey was, in fact, a totalitarian, war-making state with ties to slavery and human sacrifice. We see also throughout the book European colonialism for what it was: a horrible, corrupting influence on the African continent. And it should come as no surprise that racism sometimes rears its ugly head in the comments of white observers.

    The Amazons, of course, had their faults as well. The book doesn't gloss those over either. Yet you never lose the feeling that these women were special. Often expected to do the impossible, they marched proudly off into battle when certain death awaited many of them. It's hard not to admire the Dahomey Amazons, even knowing they could be ruthless at times.

    The book comes with ample notes, bibliography, and index. It would be a worthwhile read for anyone interested in African history, military history, gender studies, or Amazon feminism. I can safely say that you won't find many books that are as eye-opening as this one, or as well-written.

    Current Mood: calm
    Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
    9:09 am
    [nebris]
    Jeffrey Kripal on Aldous Huxley and the 'neural Buddhists'
    From Sentient Developments
    Sunday, December 21, 2008
    Posted by George Dvorsky

    Writing in the Chronicle Review, Jeffrey Kripal argues that a kind of Huxley renaissance is under way. "It is worth returning to Huxley," writes Kripal, "not as he has been for us in the past — the author of the prophetic, dystopian Brave New World — but as he might be for us in the future."

    Kripal sees a connection between Huxley's work and that of the burgeoning neural Buddhist movement. He writes:

    But Huxley was suspicious of gurus and gods of any sort, and he finally aligned himself with a deep stream of unorthodox doctrine and practice that he found running through all the Asian religions, which, he proclaimed in Island (his last novel, published in 1962), was a "new conscious Wisdom ... prophetically glimpsed in Zen and Taoism and Tantra." That worldview — which Huxley also linked to ancient fertility cults, the study of sexuality in the modern West, and Darwinian biology — emerges from the refusal of all traditional dualisms; that is, it rejects any religious or moral system that separates the world and the divine, matter and mind, sex and spirit, purity and pollution (and that's rejecting a lot). Put more positively, Huxley's new Wisdom focuses on the embodied particularities of moment-to-moment experience, including sexual experience, as the place of "luminous bliss."

    Science, particularly what would become neuroscience, was a key part of that mature vision. Very late in life, Huxley would drift further and further into an oddly prescient fusion of Tantric Buddhism and neurophysiology, a worldview captured in the "neurotheologian" of Island, identified there as someone "who thinks about people in terms, simultaneously, of the Clear Light of the Void and the vegetative nervous system." This Buddhist neurotheologian was in fact a fictional embodiment of Huxley's own philosophy, which we might frame as "the filter thesis." Following the philosophers Henri-Louis Bergson and C.D. Broad, Huxley consistently argued that consciousness was filtered and translated by the brain through incredibly complex neurophysiological, linguistic, psychological, and cultural processes, but not finally produced by it. We are not who we think we are. Or better, who we think we are is only a temporary mask (persona) that a greater Consciousness wears for a time and a season in order to "speak through" (per-sona). That old English bard had it just right, then: The world really is a stage.

    Read the entire article.

    Current Mood: contemplative
    Sunday, December 21st, 2008
    7:24 am
    [nebris]
    Solstices and Equinoxes
    ~Today is the Winter Solstice...in the Northern Hemisphere. But to the south it is the Summer Solstice.

    In my quest to create a New Matriarchy, one that is global, this issue has come up a few times. Here is my idea on how to deal with it:

    The March Equinox, which is Spring in the North and Autumn in the South, would be known as First Equinox and the following day would be New Year's Day.

    The June Solstice, which is Summer in the North and Winter in the South, would be known as First Solstice.

    The September Equinox, which is Autumn in the North and Spring in the South, would be known as Second Equinox.

    The December Solstice, which is Winter in the North and Summer in the South, would be known as Second Solstice.

    These would be festival days and separate from regular calendar months. During Leap Years, there would be double festival days for New Year's. The regular calendar would consist of twelve thirty day months. This would bring the total days to 365, with the extra day for Leap Years mentioned above.

    How the months and days would be named and the weeks structured – e.g. number of days per week - is still to be determined.

    Meantime, Blessed Solstice everyone....

    Current Mood: contemplative
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