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points by PaulHoule 17 hours ago | 0 comments
So? Lots of organizations do retreats with a similar cost, though certainly that kind of pricing put events out of reach of most people.

At the top page of that site I saw a lot of pictures which reminded me a little of the "Witch Camp" gatherings that the Reclaiming movement puts on which are an education in ritual that costs a fraction of what the above organization charges but these are non-profit gatherings run by very lefty people.

[–] ChickeNES 16 hours ago
It’s kinda amazing how many different variants of the Ancient Aliens scam exist.
[–] PaulHoule 16 hours ago
Well, when I do see Mormon missionaries coming I do tell them my story about how "After Quetzalcōātl came to teach Americans how to grow corn he went to teach people in the Middle East about spirituality" and that "He's really a dinosaur, and that impact 66 million years ago was no accident but an engineered collision of a space colony off the Yucatan peninsula (like what happens in Gundam!), the remaining dinosaurs live in large space habitats out in the Oort Cloud."

That is a joke of course and is much as humor is a part of my practice [1] I don't believe or or expect anyone else to believe it.

Overall I believe in ritual as a technology, that the things people say about religion are fiction but the the things they do are real. I led a small group of students to what I realized later was the highest spot on our campus and we did a simple ritual and experienced immense joy in simply pulling something off in a group and more later when it primed me to see something really sacred in watching the moon rise over an unspeakably profane commercial strip.

My green witch wife would totally say witchcraft is about manifesting your dreams and to me the esbat rituals for the new and full moon are about making and keeping commitments, Steven Covey kind of stuff, really applied psychology. [2]

[1] ... introducing a crude hammer as "a ritual tool my wife gave me on condition that we can only call it 'the hammer of whammer', my wife says that ritual tools gain powers through being used and... this has been used, it has a legendary origin story which I've been sworn to secrecy about"

[2] ... and those of you who say I digress too much are wrong this time, modern pagan practices are very much modeled after the nearly universal practices that your (more or less distant) ancestors practiced in their village before the Empire [3] showed up with its soldiers and scribes

[3] ... the Romans, the Shang, the British, the contemporary world system, what they have in common is that they send in stormtroopers and blow up your planet if you try to resist