New Week, Another Article

BellaDonna Saberhagen here.
Check out witchvox for my latest article. I have two more pending and am working on another, though that one I seem to have having a hard time organizing. I hope it won't come off as being all-over-the place, but I'm having trouble elucidating my opinion. Maybe I will bring it up to one of my friends tonight, get another opinion on it.

Had an interview today, another comes tomorrow. Still hoping to here back on the one I had last week.

Anyway....not much else to say here...maybe I should work a bit on my fiction pieces for now

Maybe one of these days Barnabus will have some input...

May you be blessed by whichever gods you fancy,


BellaDonna Saberhagen

I have an article published in Witchvox! yay!

 BellaDonna Saberhagen here.

Check out Witchvox for my article, The Chicken or the Egg:

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=uspa&c=words&id=14687 

So, I got a response. It wasn't very nice, but judging from said response, it was from a loon. Here's the complete response (as sent): 

"Beleive it or not I am lew. Bloduewed is a Goddess. The Owl Goddess. Yet she is also an avatar, meaning that she incarnates or appears as a mortal from time to time, or an owl. She has other names in other cultures. she is real. there are sons and daughters of the great gods. and then there are the great ones that are all. man did not invent them. we are their children. I still cannot beleive that anyone can even ask the question did we create them? Look around people. Duh!"

 I wasn't going to justify it with a response, since, you know....loony. However, I wanted to rip him apart here, so I decided he deserved a direct response.  So I responded with what I am posting below, because it amused me greatly to write it and well...I warn people I can be a bit of a bitch on my Witchvox profile, so he should have been prepared. Below, his sentences are in bold and my responses are not. Have fun reading; I will post again should he whine at me in the future (or if he somehow miraculously sends me the citations I request).

Beleive it or not I am lew.

You’re right, I don’t believe you.

1.       I think it is audacious to consider yourself the avatar or human incarnation of a deity. As well as rude to those who worship Llew, because if you’re here, how can you respond to their prayers?

2.      You misspelled your name. Even in your profile name, you spell it Llew (though it could also be Lleu, but there is always the double L in the Welsh spelling).

3.       You left the L lower case, giving me reason to believe you think that either yourself or the god Llew is not worthy of being given the due honor of the typical English capitalization of names.

Bloduewed is a Goddess.

Note; I did not say she was not a goddess now, just that her myth denotes that she was not honored as such by the ancient Welsh.

The Owl Goddess.

Being immortal doesn’t make you a goddess. There are plenty of immortals in myths that are not gods (Psyche, wife of Cupid, for one). You need to give me specific citations.

Yet she is also an avatar, meaning that she incarnates or appears as a mortal from time to time, or an owl.

Seems like personal gnosis to me. The myth (the only myth in which she appears) does not give her that option; she was trapped as an owl FOREVER. It may be a valid comment for you, but it is not valid for me. If you want me to swallow this line, you need to give me valid ancient Welsh mythological citations.

She has other names in other cultures.

What names? What cultures? Again, proof is required here and you give none.

she is real.

I never said she wasn’t. I never said any gods weren’t real. There are Pagans who see the gods only as archetypes of the human psyche; I’m not one of those. I believe the gods are real, just that we created them. It might be hard to understand…but. Okay…before man, there were no chairs. We conceived of the idea, and created it. I would not say chairs aren’t real simply because they are created by man.

there are sons and daughters of the great gods.

 What does this have to do with Blodeuwedd?  Are you talking about demi-gods or actual divine couplings (Like The Morrigan and The Dagda being parents of The Bodb Dearg)? Again, if in man’s imagination, these two had sex and had a baby, guess what…they did. I’m not saying that divine children are not real either. You’ve also obviously begun to spiral in your ire….you’ve stopped capitalizing the first words of your sentences.

and then there are the great ones that are all.

All what? Like Gaia? I see Her as so spiritually tied to the Earth that She is the Earth and the Earth is she, but I don’t think that was the case before man made it so. Or are you somehow arguing soft-polytheism, while still claiming that gods can be born in human form?

man did not invent them.

You are free to believe that, as I am free to believe otherwise. One does not make the other a “bad” or “lesser” Pagan.  Check out Fire Lyte’s Project Pagan Enough:  http://www.incitingariot.com/p/project-pagan-enough.html

we are their children.

See above response. At least you used the correct “their”. Even if you can’t capitalize properly or spell believe.  (I before E except after C except in cases sounding like A as in weigh).

I still cannot beleive that anyone can even ask the question did we create them?

This is your opinion; again, believing otherwise does not make me a bad Pagan.

Look around people. Duh!

At what? You think there is proof that the gods made us right in front of our faces? Everything is a matter of faith when seeing the gods’ actions and presence in the world around us. Do you REALLY believe Apollo pulls the sun across the sky in his chariot? Or is that a metaphor or a myth created to explain things the ancients did not have the science to understand yet?

Honestly, the fact that you think yourself a god makes me not take you seriously. I almost didn’t justify you with a response since I think those that believe they are gods, fairies, dragons, etc. are deluded. They want to feel super-de-dooperty special, when they are just crazy (and want to justify their crazy with their religion). However, since I intended to post this on my blog, I decided to send it to you.

May you be blessed by whichever gods you fancy,

BellaDonna Saberhagen

Justice

BellaDonna Saberhagen here.

I can't say I know everything about the case of the West Memphis 3. I do know that most of the "evidence" against them seemed circumstantial and that the region in which they lived had bias against their subculture. I must say I am glad that the case is being re-examined and new evidence is allowed to be submitted. If they are re-tried and found innocent, no one can give them back the 18 years they have spent behind bars, hopefully the Arkansas judicial system will pay for their new technological education they will require after being in prison for so long, but they'll probably just be turned loose and it will be up to their families to re-integrate them into society.

If they are found innocent, I hope the evidence will point to the real culprits and I hope it is not too late to hold  them responsible for their crimes.

link to the article referenced:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43920906
May you be blessed by whichever gods you fancy.

Pet Peeve Time!

BellaDonna Saberhagen here. I was reminded yesterday of one of my personal pet peeves. People writing "alter" when they mean "altar." It drives me crazy. I'm used to it in forums (though I usually correct the person), but yesterday I found it in a book by a fairly well-known (and fairly respected) Pagan author. Most likely, it was an editing glitch.  After all, spell-check won't catch that error. It was there, however, glaring at me, grinning wickedly, reminding me why I frequent fewer and fewer forums. I just started the book and I believe it will be useful, so I'm not going to spurn it for this one error.

I can take newbies mispronouncing things, that's fine. We were all new at one time, and many 101 books are sadly lacking in pronunciation guides. However, using the wrong word entirely, that is an issue. Don't get me started on to and too or there, their, and they're. Remember you can alter your altar, but you can't altar your alter (unless you suffer from DID and one of them is a god).

---

I, Barnabus Saberhagen, would like to chime in on this one too.  I can't remember which one, but one of the forums my lovely wife visits actually had a post by a moderator informing the forum goers that anyone who corrected this particular misspelling would be removed from the forum and banned from returning.  Are you kidding me?  I can understand mentioning to someone who really ripped into the original poster about his spelling errors being told to cool down, but what if you were only trying to educate someone?  Like BellaDonna said, newbies encounter lots of weird words and are quite likely to mispronounce some of them.  But this isn't a mispronunciation, this is a totally different word.  It would be like someone painting eggs to celebrate Oyster.  While there's no need to berate or belittle someone who misspells altar, I do feel there is a need to inform them of the proper spelling of the word they are trying to use.  And if someone were to be so sensitive that even constructive criticism hurts their feelings, then they have no business posting things on the internet, the Land of Flaming.  And that's my two cents on this one.


May you be blessed by whatever gods you fancy.

Hello!

BellaDonna Saberhagen here. This blog will be the effort of both Barnabus Saberhagen and myself to become more active in the online Pagan community (and the Pagan community at large). We have been quite remiss in meeting and discussing with others of like mind and well...it's time we did something about that. We have much to share and our beliefs are a bit different from your average Pagans (more on that in a future post). Perhaps a podcast will be in our future...but we need to buy the proper equipment first. So for now, our thoughts will be relegated to this blog.

May you be blessed by whichever gods you fancy.
BellaDonna Saberhagen