The Heretic's Corner

Buck Jump

Greetings, my Pagan friends; may your Gods be well disposed to you. May the rain fall gently on your rhubarb. May the hail fall in a lake or on a parking lot. May our little six-legged friends develop an allergy to your pickle patch.

Now is the sweet season of our year. Our Mother the Earth is pregnant with the harvest to come. The days are long and the thoughts of the season are long, long thoughts. In the soft afternoon sky the white thunderheads sail serenely on like ships of dream in dreamland seas. Surely even such as I can be forgiven for dreaming a bit, for letting the fancy roam free.

In dreams I see a world set free. I see the human race living in peace, with each one going his own way but with courtesy to all who go another way. I see us as one species, which we are, and all of us acknowledging that fact. I see each walking in beauty, with dignity, and respecting the other person's dignity. I see us loving one another, helping our fellow men along their way. When I dream, I don't mess around - I rear back and dream up a doozy!

So much for dreams; back to the world we live in, back to the life we know. Before I spring my question for the day, a little background, a few facts:

Every one of us must come to terms with his environment and his heredity. We all live on one Earth. That is the main part of our environment, or at least the location of it.

We are all human beings, homo occasionally sapiens. That is the basis of our heredity.

Anything that is done to one of us is done to all of us. Anything that happens in one place on this planet has some effect on every place on the planet.

We are, all of us, stuck with our whole species. Here we are with a bunch of people we wouldn't willingly walk down a country road with. Indeed, we are as ship- wrecked mariners in a lifeboat with a bunch we wouldn't sit down to eat a free meal with. To jump out of the boat is to drown. To try to toss those ***********'s out is very apt to upset the boat and drown all of us. These facts are self-evident, axiomatic.

I have always held that we should all walk the path of life with our hands outstretched in fellowship with respect and love for all. Of course, I have a caveat - keep a Bowie knife handy in case they haven't all heard the message.

As the Ultimate is reported to have said when the mountains were made, "Now for the background". The present situation is a mess. Violence is everywhere. Not even foolish violence, but violence without reason. Surely a leopard is in our streets and a shark loose in our swimming pool.

An armed bandit shoots down an unarmed clerk who is cooperating. A litigant in court shoots down an attorney. A parent beats a child to death. A driver gets cut off coming onto the freeway and guns down the chap in the pickup who did the off-cutting. An otherwise reasonable young man is annoyed by the sounds of traffic on a mountain road and starts shooting at the cars passing. Those are only a few examples culled from the news in recent months. In truth, senseless violence is loose in the land.

As it is with the individual, so with groups. From the racist fringe movement on to great governments. Violence for the sake of violence is epidemic. Each age of history has had a plague - the plague of this age is senseless violence. I have friends of the "born again" persuasion who tell me that it is the Devil doing it. I don't think so. As far as I can determine, devils are a disorganized bunch. Satan Mekatrig Lord of Chaos is a confusion in terms. Seen another way, that's organized confusion. As I see it, the flow of the power of the Universe is organized and rational. So it seems to me that any force opposed to that flow must be disorganized and irrational. That is to say nothing of the personal devils within us. They must have a hand in at least some of this senseless violence.

I have other friends who blame it on some as yet unidentified virus. Could be, but it's a rare virus that has no fever, nor nausea accompanying its onset...

Others hold that it is all explainable by Sigmund Freud and others of that ilk. Again I say could be, but what mental discomboomeration comes on suddenly with no sign of disorientation nor disturbance until it suddenly manifests itself in the acute stage?

For all I know, none of the above are correct. The fact re- mains that a wild unreasoning violence is loose among us, a danger to us all. The fact is, we are all in the same boat, and the boat is encountering some heavy weather. Don't you think we should do something about it? I personally can think of a whole lot of folks who I don't really care to rescue, but being as we are all in the same boat, I am sure going to do my best for them...But what?

In case this is all some psychosis, maybe we should engage a firm of head shrinkers to drag in a trainload of couches and get everyone to undergo psychoanalysis. I refuse to consider the logistics of this. The idea by itself causes my mind to boggle.

Or, suppose it is a virus. In that case when the virologists and immunologists have a bit of spare time from their search for the cause and cure of AIDS, they could do the same for the senseless violence virus. In view of the fact that we are all at greater risk from senseless violence than from AIDS, it might be a worthwhile task.

Or, just in case the gnostics have some truth in their ideas, and it is Auld Clootie, maybe a mass general exorcism is in order. Once again, my mind refuses to consider the logistics.

In view of the fact that the cause of senseless violence is still unknown, we might get a government grant to study the problem. Considering the speed that such grants usually get results, I would expect a definite answer by the twenty-second century. Of course, such a grant would have the added advantage of keeping a large number of researchers out of the pool halls and off the streets.

Now I am going to go against my usual custom and make a suggestion; only a suggestion, mind, and not to be taken as a dictum, but only as an idea to be considered. It has been my observation that there are only two occasions when magic is apt to work. One is after all other methods have been tried and found ineffectual. The other is when there is no other method. Now I believe that I have explored the other methods and found them impractical if not impossible. So I feel that I am safe in saying it's going to take magic to stop this purposeless killing.

So how to go about it? What spell, what charm, what ceremony shall we use? What power shall we invoke? What power evoke? Magic works, the proper ceremony at the proper time, done for the proper reason, will work. True for you, you may well say, but which ceremony? When? Why?

I just told you. The proper one. The one that is proper for you is the one you yourself believe is proper. This is not an essay on morals and ethics, so I refrain from putting in my two cents worth on what is in my estimation proper. When you are fighting a grass fire is no time to discuss what sort of shovel to use.

In my dream we were all walking each in his own way, each helping the others as much as possible. So here let us not try to all walk in one path. No point in the universe can be reached from only one direction. Let us rather each from where it seems most right and comfortable, try by magic means to stop this senseless violence. Not-ice I said senseless violence, not just violence. Some who follow the old Norse way could hardly be expected to endorse some anti-violent intention, but I know of none who do not deplore reasonless violence. We have our differences, but surely no one objects to improving all our chances of kissing our grandchildren.

So, what I propose is this. Sometime in the next quarter year, whenever it seems most proper, let us in our various ways by whatever means one believes in, try by magic means to stop this epidemic of senseless violence.

I have noticed a few things about power on the unseen side. For a ceremony to be more than a mere charade, everyone involved in it must believe in the ceremony and in whatever power is used in it. Everyone must believe that the ceremony can and will work. Everyone must want the ceremony to work. If anyone involved in the ceremony does not so believe and want, that person will be a dead weight on the others that do. When I say everyone, I mean everyone, all, each one with one belief and one resolve. What can be done by a group acting in true spiritual harmony is indeed amazing, but first you must have that true spiritual harmony.

That is why I suggest we go at this not as some sort of super- coven ecumenical pagan group. I have seen a few of these "lets all get together" bunches back in the sixties, and they couldn't even get drunk.

I personally am in favor of any religion that don't practice human sacrifice, interfere in the private lives of the non-believers, or use force in conversion. I love 'em all, but I'm not fool enough to yoke the ass and the ox together. So let's all go, but let's not try to make it a parade.

That is my suggestion, and my question is why not? I'd appreciate your ideas on this, I truly would. If you have any ideas on the subject, please communicate them to the editors of the RMPJ. Even if the ideas are along the lines of, "You're Nuts!!", just say why you think so. I'd appreciate it.

May your dreams come true; may the wind cool without chilling, and may you reap a harvest even richer than the seed catalogue said you would. May your shadow fall long on the Earth. Go in peace, remember your fellows, and with these words I do part now from thee.