I did appreciate Jason Mankey listing me yesterday as one of the most influential living Pagans. There have been several such lists promulgated in recent years, and I did feel annoyed about being left off them. I am far from superhuman. I do need to feel appreciated once in a while, just as most people do. So this has set off some thinking. I know that most people are uninterested in history and therefore very ignorant about it. I did... Read more
I College professors love to talk About how poems work, juggling lines from old poems like balloons filled with colors, but surely A theory about how poems work Should itself be a poem. II John Logan said one night, as a few of us Trailed after him from bar to bar In San Francisco, like Aristotle’s students Wheeling about like a flock of ducklings As he walked back and forth in his garden, Thinking out loud—John said that Poetry... Read more
Come, Muse, daughter of memory, In the name of Bertolt Brecht help me call The Gods and Goddesses who wait to return As our warriors against the insanity of the selfish. From the emotional plague of the Aphrodiphobes who hate and fear sex, From the toxic pathology of those who think that sex is evil, When there’s nothing wrong about sex at all, Saint Aphrodite, Goddess of passion, defend us! From the gullibility of those who believe the... Read more
Hilkiah (High Priest of Jerusalem, ca. 660-600 BCE) knew what had happened to the inhabitants of the northern kingdom. When they were conquered and deported by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, they had intermarried with and merged into the local population, because they did not have a concept of themselves as being significantly different from other people. Hilkiah knew that such a fate loomed over the people of Judah, the southern kingdom formed when the united kingdom had split after... Read more
All the prophets say we are deluded. We think we understand our selves, our minds, the world that seems to be outside us, but, no, we don’t, and never know we don’t. I can believe with Hopkins That there dwells down deep in us A freshness or a diamond. Perhaps many more have felt it Than I or anyone has guessed, but, not knowing its name, because It has no name, they speak of it Only to the very... Read more
That’s what Geoff Baldwin called it, as our Neighborhood annual picnic evolved into A Pagan Occult Study and Dancing Society, Then into our Full Moon Coven. No one Could create our coven again unless They loved each other as we did, sometimes Physically—we hoped for sanity about sex—but especially because we cared about each other’s lives and intervened if that seemed needful. We were diverse: a Red-diaper baby, Recovering Catholics, several nonobservent, Jews—though Carol knew the Hebrew prayers. It wasn’t... Read more
As far as I know, Thomas Aquinas was to first to begin thinking about this kind of problem. I suspect that, before him, no one was able to formulate such a question, let alone begin the answer it. He was thinking about angels, more specifically about what we can deduce about the nature of intelligent nonphysical beings. He could see that, at minimum, physical existence requires existing at a physical location. We can tell two absolutely identical things apart simply... Read more
As Professors James and Lewis said, each For a different reason, we humans always Get it all backwards, never understand What are our causes or our effects. That is, I know I am praying if I’m on my knees, Know I am sad if I’m crying: the tears Come first, the feelings later.. Perhaps, as Carl Jung knew, we see inside Out. Perhaps we live on the inner Surface of a hollow Earth Where light bends to fill our... Read more
Few these days remember to ask, How many angels can dance on the point of a pin? Angels have no more dimensions Than points in a line. They take up no space, Though they do take up time, No matter what number you pick, More angels always come to dance. Never make fun of those who ask How dimensionless points can add up to a line. A woman mathematician once Took me out to lunch—because that’s The sort of... Read more
The Road of Excess, as the first installment of my autobiography, covers up to 1968. It is now available on Amazon as a paperback and as a Kindle e-book. It’s not easy to describe what’s in it. Isn’t it all about me? No, it’s not, being intellectual autobiography, in which my life is mostly a thread tying together the actual content. Details that would be of interest or importance only to my family I have left out. I was raised... Read more
Aidan Kelly: Including Paganism
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