Dominance Versus Slavery

In forming the Church of Wicca almost a half-century ago, one of the guiding principles was that male and female affiliates would have an equal voice in its direction, and that in fact it would be more female-friendly than most existing self-styled places of ‘worship'. Yes, there existed groups like the Unitarian-Universalists who were more female-friendly than many Abrahamic groups; but it was our express intent to make sure that we were totally female-friendly. Many of the Abrahamics have within their ranks, and are supported by, female congregants; yet the basic assumption of male supremacy informs all their teaching and all their hierarchy. We are dismayed to think that males do not realize (or that they deny) the advantage of allowing females to have their say and to govern themselves. It looks to us as if even today--whether they can face the fact or not--men are totally afraid that they will be shut out from governing and from controlling their women ‘friends' (make that dupes). This whether they can even bring their attitude from the unconscious to a level where they can articulate it, let alone address it. Relationships should not depend on dominance--and yet the Abrahamic franchises constantly insist that females be subservient in every way to males. Even in today's culture of ostensible sexual freedom, one is always forced to ask why it is that men require subservience rather than honest partnerships. Living with someone who is subservient and has no will is far less rewarding than living with someone who is free and more than equal. Winning a race is no achievement if the person against whom you are racing is hobbled and denied any real chance to win. Indeed ... why not make it a joint trip? Ever since the time in ancient Greece when males arrogated the dominant position to themselves, women have been required to be subservient in every aspect of their lives. Jehovah and Allah, the great male archetypal gods, repeatedly require such subservience. Nobody really wins. Only in Arab countries are women's rights and liberty suppressed more than in the so-called ‘red' states of the United States where the negative effect of the Abrahamic churches is most notable. Allah (or his mouthpieces, the ayatollahs/imams/mullahs) approves the capture of hundreds of young women and their use as sex slaves. In a complementary move, Jehovah has apparently decreed the bombing of women's health facilities. At least, that's what his self-appointed mouthpieces have told us. Is this because these false-god figures are afraid of losing their power? Or is it because some of their priesthood and followers use them as an excuse to rationalize their various ongoing female-hating crusades? In France women gained equality way back after the Revolution. In most of the western world women gained a semblance of equality during and after World War II. Then, of course, factory owners were unwilling to give up their cheap female work force. But then, awkwardly, a number of women refused to go back to obeying Allah's and Jehovah's thundered commands. In this world the human race needs all the positive help it can get, whether it be in abating war or in encouraging new scientific discoveries. In this latter case, never has the work of women been so suppressed, denied, unrecognized. Only when men stand up for the womenfolk (and what a term that is!) have Nobel prizes been awarded to the women who did the work. A typical non-winner was Einstein's wife. She did all the research on photoelectricity--for which he received the Nobel; though he did at least give her the money if not the honor. If men were to get past our fear of female power, what other discoveries might be made? Is it by chance that Germany under Angela Merkel is the most prosperous country in the world and is accepting more refugees than any other? We need more of women's instinctive altruism and less of orders passed on to us by ancient priests and ministers who are only mouthing the same old threats unchanged since before the Inquisition of the Dark Ages--Jehovah and Allah and their vicious commands date from the Bronze Age. How stupid can we be? Even the Army, in graduating two women from the Ranger School, has finally recognized that we can't ignore 51 percent of the population. With the advent of the Pink Pill, the rules of the game are changing. Ladies will start demanding things which previously they were not supposed to want. We in at least one household plan to sit back and enjoy the fury (the terror?) of Jehovah's self-apppointed master's voice in the face of this new reality. Anger masks fear, after all.

Crcles V Ellipses

Many years ago when Gavin first got involved in what we then called Witchcraft, we became interested in the confusion that reigned over the size of the Circle within which religious services should be performed. There seemed to be two general opinions: 1. A circle with a diameter of nine (9) feet 2. A circle with a diameter of eleven (11) feet. Neither dimension fitted the dimensions of the ancient stone circles that dominate the landscape all over Europe, from Shetland/Orkney to Malta. When Professor Alexander Thom went out and measured many of those circles, he came to the conclusion that they were all built to a standard that he called the Megalithic Yard: 2.71 feet in the English measure of today. Four times that dimension gave him (and us) a circle with a diameter of 10.84 feet. Thus Gavin decided to use that dimension as part of the Church of Wicca's teaching. Later popular thought said that the dimension of the outermost circle, the one designed to keep back the abyss, should have a dimension of an indivisible number of units, ie 17 Ft. and that circles cast within that outer circle should be representative of the earthplane and the spiritual plane respectively as the worshippers who met at the circle site moved from the outermost circumference toward the center. A conclusion became fairly obvious: that those two circles should have circumferences of 16 Ft and 15 Ft respectively, because with circles of such dimensions it would be easy to construct a square representing the earthplane and a pentacle representing the spiritual plane. Such an approach equates nicely with the idea that the hearthstone (Welsh pentanfaen) also represents earth and spirit. In the 1970s further reflection led to the idea that for modern Wicca a "circle" should in fact be an ellipse, because that would give two foci: one for the male flamen and one for the female flamenca. It became a mathematical nightmare when we tried to make the circumferences of the ellipses 17, 16, and 15 MY. Indeed, we are hereby setting this out as a problem for you to solve. Drawing an ellipse is easy: Drive two stakes into the ground. Take a rope loop around them and out to a marker. By simply keeping the rope loop taut you can draw an ellipse. Let us suppose it would be nice to include the Megalithic Yard in your construction. We (the Church of Wicca) hereby offer a free Advanced Course (value $220) to the person who can come up with a workable mathematical solution to this challenge. To summarize: If you put two stakes into the ground separated by a distance of two Megalithic Yards (5.44 English feet), how long must the cord be to cast ellipses with circumferences of 17, 16, and 15 MY? Practically, you can do it by actually taking a rope and some pegs and changing the length of the rope a little at a time until you get an answer. What we're asking for here is a mathematical expression of the solution. Good luck. Send your solution to PO Box 297, Hinton, WV 25951.