Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Magical Determinism

a blog titled Magical Determinism drafted 03 14 12, posted ___________



Determinism - the philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision, is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs.

In the past few years determinism has manifested itself in various disciplines. The most recent of such disciplines may be subatomic physics. Determinism postulates that the thing you are today and the things you do today have already been determined by past actions and events. In physics this serves to define the expected results of any experiment: "What can we validly expect? What would it be rational to expect, given past actions and their effects?" It can be seen that in most cases it works at the macro level--but the question of whether it works at the micro level is really open. We get into abstract ideas such as chaos theory and probability.
In the magical field the question is whether determinism works to affect the results / outcome of a magical action. If you have done, let us say, a money magic and it has worked perfectly, will it work again? Most magicians will tell you that there is no sure way of guaranteeing that the same results will accrue from the same actions. This seems to indicate, then, that in the magical field determinism does not apply.
We hate to think that their attitude is sloppy or lazy ...
The opposing view is that on the second occasion of trying the "same" magic, something very slightly different was done: a minute change was made in the procedure, and the variation resulted in a different outcome. That is why many traditions require that rituals be followed to the last detail. Even pausing as for a period instead of for a comma in an affirmation can make all the difference between success and "failure", they say. When you have a procedure that works, you must record that procedure in the minutest detail. Example: What was the phase of the moon? What was the ambient air pressure as read by meteorologists at the very hour of the Working? How long had it been since the worker(s) had gotten laid? Did you blink in the middle of it?
Then try it again.
In the early days of the Church and School of Wicca, a large number of our neophyte students had never read outside books on ritual procedure, let alone tried such procedures themselves. That student body was international in scope. Today, in vivid contrast, we see people writing rituals and doing all sorts of unusual procedures in attempts to influence the future. Most of their efforts seem foredoomed to failure.
We encourage you therefore to think about determinism. If determinism is to be taken as a Law, you should obey that law. (That is called rational behavior.) If determinism is just claptrap, go right ahead and wing it. Do what you will--though still harming none, of course. The Church and School of Wicca believes that determinism is real and is valid, since it has been applied to so many disciplines and proven true.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Body and Spirit

For many years we Frosts have taught pro-active stress relief--the means to avoid getting sick from being chronically over-stressed. The technique is simple: you take steps before the stressing event happens to alleviate the response (also sometimes call the fight-or-flight response). In today's world we continually stress ourselves through physical or social stressors that we might just as easily avoid. A very common example? Traveling to work at the same old time every day over the same old route and getting caught in the same old traffic jam. A change of time or of route will eliminate this source of stress.

There are many other situations in which you can easily avoid going into stress. One of the areas that causes most stress--yet scarcely recognized--is the alleged conflict between our spiritual self and our physical/temporal body. The spiritual part of our being wants to do such things as meditate, or give a donation to the local hospice, which our mundane side says are ridiculous or something we can't afford. This means that you generate an internal stress between the two parts of yourself. When you put together your life plan for the next few months, you need to balance these two demands on yourself. Figure out a way to make the demands compatible with each other. When they conflict, you open yourself to all those diseases which are conditions to be avoided. Just as life partners ideally work together hand in hand to form a pleasant life, so the parts of your psyche need to be balanced and to work together so that you can proceed in an equitable fashion into the future.
You've been told that the spirit and the body have different agendas and cannot work together: that they conflict. That idea has served for centuries to control your actions--yet it simply isn't true. The parts of your being can work together. In fact, the truth is this: They complement each other. Each does functions that the other cannot do.
Don't believe these accusing claims fed to you as facts-that-must-be-followed. Always ask yourself: Who gains by telling me that my spiritual side and my physical side are irrevocably at war with each other?
Think about it. It's a ploy that many institutions use to gain control of you through guilt.
1. set up the guilt, as the stick. Then 2. promise relief, through donations or whatever means, as the carrot.

You will very quickly find that when you get your body and your spirit working together, life becomes pleasant and easier.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Progress Report

At long last Gavin is beginning to recover. The office is back on schedule, more or less, after a health caper that started in April 2011. We have to thank the students who have been so patient with us. We can assure you now that, provided there are no more glitches in his health situation, things will be A-Okay. So okay, in fact, that the Frosts are tentatively planning to attend Sirius Rising and SummerFest at Brushwood east of Erie PA in mid-July.

Next year (2013) we will probably be back at Florida Pagan Gathering (FPG) for Beltane. This assumes that their invitation stands, of course ...

We don't expect to be dancing, although Gavin has been practicing a few steps with his physical trainer under Yvonne's careful supervision.
 
We want to thank everyone for their support and the enegy they sent.
Blessed Be  all Gavi and Yvonne

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Progress Report

Greetings, one and all. This is an update on (a) Gavin's state of health and (b) the School of Wicca and its status. First the School of Wicca.

We are gradually getting the School's incoming mail back into a current status. Please be patient with us. We expect everything to be up to date by February 1 or thereabouts. The forecast is complicated by the fact that the city of Hinton wants to buy the School's building, so we will be moving its offices to an old house further along Temple Street. When your name is Frost, nothing is simple or straightforward.
The post-office box number will not change.
This year we hope to be able to attend at least Sirius Rising and SummerFest, and maybe in the autumn we will get to FPG, an observance of the Temple of Earth Gathering in Florida. Much depends on Gavin's strength as it returns incrementally day by day. To our very deep regret, Kaleidoscope Gathering is probably beyond our present abilities.
On the health front, Gavin has one more surgery scheduled for the end of January, to fix the ever- present threat of maturing men, kidney stones. Apparently the back surgery (three sessions so far) has gone very well and the rods and screws of October are in place to keep the spine in line and to reduce the pain. He is now walking part-time on a cane, gradually weaning himself from the walking frame as his strength returns, aided by a crew of physical therapists. This last operation is scheduled for the end of January and is not supposed to be life-threatening, although it counts as the fifth in a series since April and each one seems to knock him back further. For the procedure in October, he was on the table for twelve (12) hours. Still, at 81, what can you expect?
We look forward to brighter days ahead, as long as we do our share of the physical work.
An inexpressible debt of gratitude is owed to everyone who has been sending thoughts of healing and strength in our direction. Don't stop now.

To each one who has thought of us, Blessed be, and thank you again. Gavin and Yvonne

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Subject Excruciating Pain in the New River Gorge

Here's the latest update on Gavin's health situation as of October 1 2011: the latest episode in an ongoing adventure with a steep learning curve.
We apologize to readers of our blog as well as to students of the School for delays in communication. Gavin's back decided that it needed more work, and made us aware of that decision in no uncertain terms. After three weeks of intensive testing, including X-rays, sedimentation tests, and an MRI, we have learned that a deep-seated infection began at the time of his surgery in early May and has been simmering ever since: first silently, then only too emphatically.
Having started in May, the thing has progressed into the actual vertebrae that were first damaged so very long ago. After the outpatient tests, Gavin was re-admitted to the hospital in Princeton, West Virginia, where they used a hammer and chisel to take bone samples from the area of infection to culture and identify the specific creature at the bottom of it all. At the same time they introduced a bypass tube into the upper arm so that antibiotics can be administered directly into the bloodstream. He is making daily visits to Summers County's hospital at 8:15 a.m. for an hour or two to receive intravenous addition of curative solutions.
Until the villain is identified, then, the experts are treating for the two most popular creatures in this field: staphylococcus and streptococcus. Once they have identified the exact disease and thus the best antibiotic to address it, he will continue treatments for the next six weeks, followed by a new series of tests.
Meantime controlling the pain with appropriate painkiller(s) presents yet another challenge. In the course of this aspect of it, unsuspected allergies have manifested just to make things more interesting.
We are doing what we can to keep the School running, and student dues and membership end dates will be fine-tuned in light of the delays occasioned at this end. Please understand, though: It's going to be slow. Knowing what is actually causing the pain has been a great relief.
Keep us in your thoughts, and please send healing energy if you see fit. Thanks.

Blessed be. GY

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Legal Molestation of Children

We use this title deliberately because there has been the usual upsurge of innuendo and pointless discussion of "The Witch's Bible". A few people baselessly claim that the book encourages child abuse. It clearly does not.

However, the United States government subsidizes and supports legal child abuse with our tax dollars. In 2007 CE in Prince George's County, Maryland, the school board decided that they would enforce the 100 percent vaccination program that would allow them to get more federal dollars. The school board issued summonses to the parents of 2,300 children who had not had all the seventeen (17) immunizations alleged to be vital to child health and safety. The summonses were delivered in the usual militaristic way by the sheriff's department, commanding the kids and their parents to show up at a central school location so that the kids could be duly vaccinated ... or to appear in court and to suffer unspecified consequences--including jail time and being expelled from school. Effectively this meant that the kids in question were forcibly vaccinated under the glare of gun-toting sheriff's deputies who doubtless wore all their clanking, polished symbols of power, along with de-personalizing sunglasses. This caused lasting trauma to the children and a new and powerful reason to hate the police.

Now we need to look at the known--the proven--effects of vaccination. It has been proven time and time again that such vaccinations cause autism. In the last ten years, according to the Department of Health and Human services, the occurrence of autism in this nation's children has quadrupled. By 2032 it is projected that all male children in the United States who are vaccinated will be autistic. During the Reagan administration public law 99/660 was passed protecting Big Pharma from the results downstream of poisonous vaccinations. You cannot sue Big Pharma if a vaccination legally required happens to cause autism, disability, or death in your child. That is the law.

The Amish population have gotten a blanket exception to the vaccination/immunization program on religious grounds. In the Amish population, there has not been a case of polio or smallpox in thirty (30) years, and the Amish children have little or no autism. What we are wondering is whether or not Wiccans can come together to save their children from the results of vaccination, by getting our own religious exception to the law. Such an exception could be worded in such a way that if parents wanted their children to be vaccinated, they could be. Parents and their kids would have a choice instead of being coerced. As any thinking parent should know, though, these mandatory vaccinations are dangerous and are purposeless.

Can we Wiccans come together as a group to fight this real menace to our children? Wouldn't it be great if we all worked together for once? Reflect on what is at stake. Ask the parent of an autistic child how that parent's life differs from yours. How would you like to live with a child whose body is present but whose mind is missing?

The public law mentioned above sets up a special office of masters to judge whether or not a child has been damaged by a vaccination. To date it has paid out over $2 billion in compensation --from tax money, not from Big Pharma.

We need a title for this effort. What about
                                             Wiccans against Forcible Immunization--WAFI?

Thursday, September 8, 2011

State Your Complaint

First let us apologize for not keeping everyone up to date with our blogs. Trips to the hospital, doctor visits, and three half-day physical therapy sessions a week--as well as trying to keep the School current--have kept us busy. Gavin is doing better but still having a lot of pain; we do not know whether a third back surgery will be required.

Locust plagues occur predictably every seventeen years. In a similar fashion, though perhaps a little less regularly, in an event that has become almost a ritual, the Christo-pseudo-Wiccans get up in arms about "The Witch's Bible" (republished as "Good Witch's Bible") with rumors of unarticulated complaints. People just attack us and our work because of some vague discomfort we're alleged to be causing them. So now, as the Walrus said to the Carpenter, it's time to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing-wax ... and of natural endorphines.

Since earliest times it has been known that orgasm while under the influence of psychedelic substances creates the possibility of visiting Nirvana. In the ancient Hindu Tantric tradition this was accomplished by drinking something called soma--honey mead with psychedelic additives-- and then having multiple orgasms while ascending a path made by combining opposite-natured gods and goddesses. Under Indira Gandhi the Indian government sponsored a college's efforts to reconstruct this very ancient knowledge that probably dated from earlier than 20,000 BCE.

Gavin was allowed to attend that college in the Indian Punjab. As a result of his experiences in the time he spent there, we wrote "Tantric Yoga", published in 1989 CE by Samuel Weiser. The book contains adequate instruction on how to climb the path to Nirvana and how to enter the secret chakra. It includes information necessary to bring you safely down again to the earth plane. The final day of raising the kundalini serpent requires multiple orgasms, one every 2 hours and 4 minutes, for a total of eight.

Every time we have tested the path, it has worked. Only in the 1990s, when Professor Candace Pert wrote "Molecules of Emotion", did we realize in objective scientific terms what was actually happening. Her work was further enhanced by the discovery of the ligands that entered the opiate receptors at the cellular level. These ligands, actually a naturally occurring form of morphine, were called endorphines. The more endorphines you have in your bloodstream, the stronger will be your chance of reaching dramatically altered states of consciousness.

Of course endorphines can be raised in many ways. Punishment such as being whipped raises the level of endorphines. An early work of Gerald Gardner's included sex and whipping in the third-degree initiation. An easier and more pleasant way to raise endorphines is to eat dark chocolate and drink red wine. Endorphines are also raised by bodily stress such as is experienced in a sweat lodge. So this is the first aspect of sex magic that is scientifically proven to change your state of consciousness.

In our books we have scrupulously avoided encouraging the use of psychedelics. Such use is illegal and thus would bring you into conflict with the Wiccan principal guideline: "If it harm none, do what you will." The revelation that Professor Pert's work gave to the world showed why ancient covens had all done sex magic. And not only covens: In early Rome the reports of early Christian sex-magical practices are well documented.

A second aspect which has not been so widely explored is the level of adrenalin which occurs during any form of excitement. The higher the excitement, the more energy seems to be raised. One way to raise the level of excitement is the promise of sexual release after a short spell of celibacy (perhaps three days). It has also been found that changing partners dramatically increases the amount that a group can raise. Many years ago in festivals (first in Minneapolis and then in Connecticut) we had volunteers of mixed genders work both toward Nirvana and in healing. The rates of success were truly dramatic. All this information is easily available to the researcher in our book "Bible of Sex Magic and Enlightenment" published in 2007 CE.

Now if we switch back to the infamous "Good Witch's Bible"--written before the knowledge of endorphines and other methods of raising them was known--we Frosts described and recommended a Tantric method.

If a coven is going to practice sex magic regularly with changing partners, then obviously during initiation partners should be changed. We admit that there may be some confusion about the initiations. We did state quite clearly in "Good Witch's Bible" that no one under the age of eighteen (18) should be initiated; now we want to add that the coven's most recent initiate of the appropriate gender should be the one to initiate the incoming neophyte. This approach obviates any power play by a senior priest or priestess in the form of grabbing all the newbies--all the fresh meat--for him/herself.

We Frosts have frequently been criticized as well for not answering questions. All your questions can be answered if you simply read the books on the subject that we have published; the most recent is "The Bible of Sex Magic and Enlightenment." The book contains 300 pages, so it should be obvious that your questions cannot be answered in a tweet or a facebook paragraph. Further we want to say this: If you can't be bothered to read the published material before you ask your questions or start your carping, you cannot expect and do not deserve a coherent answer.

We have a question of our own for people unhappy about us Frosts and about our work:

What is the title of the most recent work you have published in the interest of promoting Wicca, instead of tearing down its founders and denigrating the book on which the court decision recognizing Wicca as a religion was founded?