The Eighth Sermon to the Dead

"Two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy  My journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.  If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,  My pride, my glory dies...  True, but the life that's left me will be long,  The stroke of death will not come on me quickly."  - Achilles on his death in The Illiad, Book 9, 499-505 Some legends are told Some turn to dust or to gold But you will remember me Remember me for centuries - Fall Out Boy, "Centuries" I don't wanna die, I'm a God, Why can't I live on? -Iron Maiden, "Powerslave" The knowledge that one day we will die makes us crazy. Our whole species is insane. We are these wonderful special snowflakes. Each one different, each one unique, too weird to live, to rare to die. And yet, we will. And it makes us angry. Resigned. Hopeful. Insane. Fearful. Crazed. There is only one form o...

When embarking on a new endeavor, a good question to ask is "Is it sustainable?" For instance: A diet, or an exercise program. You may start out all enthusiastic, but can you sustain the effort and care needed to succeed? Raising animals: Can you sustain the expense or effort required to take care of the animals? Vet bills, feed costs, etc? Ideals: Can you sustain the effort to protect your ideals, even in the face of stiff opposition? This all bears on me. I'm currently looking at how we raise our animals, and it's not sustainable. We currently buy a lot of feed, and we're getting little return for it. Some eggs, some rabbit meat, but not nearly enough to justify the expense. It's not sustainable. So I'm exploring ways to make it more so. Diet and exercise are on my mind a lot. My health would improve greatly if I can drop 40 lbs. It's simply a matter of, what can I do that I can sustain to get that kind of weight loss, and keep it off? Id...

Change always comes with a cost. In our case, changing our residence comes with a disruption of the bills. The immediate needs came first, and now that the dust from the move is settling, some of the more recurring bills are coming to rest, as are some of the realities of owning your own home. For instance, we're woefully unprepared to deal with certain things. There's more work than we can do all at once, we had no garbage cans, or service, there's no power to the Barn and that project will take some time to get off the ground.  All the payment schedules are wonky, and the checking account is overdrawn. We're spending a lot more in gas as we move all the members of the household hither and yon, as we've moved some distance from our former base of operations.. All of the above is temporary flotsam and jetsam in the wake of the move. It will all settle down, in a month or two. The move was worth it, the transformation in our lives is immense. We simply have to navi...

This weekend was lovely. We spend a lot of time hanging out at home, letting the animals explore under supervision. The back pasture is rather steep, and forested, so it was with a bit of trepidation we let the horses graze up there. We need not have worried, as they had a wonderful time. The goats had a wonderful time in that pasture. I'm pretty sure they'll eat all the bushes, brambles, and grass down so we won't have any sort of fire hazard there.   The chickens also had a great time, wandering around the upper pasture and the our yard, eating bugs and generally having a good time. We have three sets of chicken, and two of them are out wandering around on their own. The layers are wandering in the upper pasture, and the 'blues' (blue orpingtons) are wondering in the lower pasture. Our Dark Cornish (velicoraptors) are not allowed to wander, as they're generally too slow moving and too sweet to not get hurt. As for the humans, we sat around some, ...

The move being over, we're now trying to figure out what to do with the space. One thing we've started on is a cottage garden. You can see the path we've started off to the right. The brick is from a Mother's Day present we gave Paddy back in 2011, a bunch of free brick we got with the idea of doing some project with it. We've moved the brick three times: Once from it's original location, then when we moved up to the Farm in Sherwood, and now to the new house. It's not getting moved again. So, we're using it for a path. We've got just enough to make a good sized path. We've got it all laid out, and now we'll put some sand in, and level it, and then place it level. Or something. So, the cottage garden is one thing Paddy is all about. Personally, I'm looking to make a few shrines. Several spirits and angels have helped us on our journey, and I think we're going to set up shrines to them. I have a few out of the way spots that I thin...

Currently I'm reading The Gnosis of the Light , translated by F. Lamplugh from the Coptic Codex Brucianus. It's also been called the Untitled Apocalypse. The edition I was reading had a wonderful Preface by R.A. Gilbert , where he talks about the idea that in order for the Divine Spark to be liberated, three things are needed: The Divine Spark within must be identified  There must be revealed but secret knowledge, gnosis and  There are specific practices that must be performed, known only to the Illuminated Gnostic The elitist ideas contained herein will be addressed later, but one of the things I like about the Gnosis of the Light is that it actually gives you most of the requirements for the third point. I haven't finished reading it yet, but in the first sections that I've read lay out a conceptual map for the specific practices. There are names of power. There are intoned vowels. There are literal maps of temples and names and images for the beings encount...

The mystic reaches within, out, above, and touches the divine. Returning to the world, we see that the mystic returns with a shining face and a joyous heart. This divine the mystic touches is scattered across the world, and the world does not see it. It underpins every action, every transaction, every happenstance is filled with divine light; light not visible to the non-mystic, as we see through our glass but darkly. But the mystic will perceive that light: in the birth of a child, the germinating of a plant, a simple meal of bread and water. No matter to the mystic that the birth of a child may be a torment for the mother, the germination of the plant destroys the seed, the making of bread kills the wheat and the yeast, the drinking of water condemns countless microbes to die. This too is a matter of joy: Life is a fabric, life is a weave, and all life supports life. The divine underpins all. The death, the destruction, the evils of the world brought about by the ignorance of h...

The title of this post comes from this article , where Mr. Samuels is discussing the literary merits of weird fiction, and why reducing it to social commentary or personal characterization has diminished the genre. The title got me to thinking about Gnosticism, however. The gnostic myth is a horrible story. The Demiurge is at worst evil, at best incompetent, and generally has it out for humanity. The Archons rule our lives with no regard to what we need, but are rather cosmic forces blindly going about their tasks with no regard for who is hurt or even how their tasks affect the rest of the cosmos. They care only for their spheres, and not the wider cosmos, and it's up to the incompetent or evil Demiurge to keep the whole thing running. It is the image of imperfection. And in the world, we see this born out: Life must consume life in order to survive. Our time is limited and we fritter it away on things which do not matter. Even death may not be a release, as our material fo...

We've been moving for about 3 days now, and I don't think we've made a dent yet. Nevertheless, the house feels like home. Soon, it will be Empyrean Acres, our farming home. Now I'm sitting in an arena, watching people learn now to ride and exercising their horses. Once we're done moving, I'm probably going to start taking lessons. I've never had a desire to ride horses before, however living with horse people makes it look appealing. I don't have any desire to do any competitions, but riding on a trail would be fun.