The Alchemy of Puss in Boots

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I only just got around to seeing Puss in Boots with the family. It's a cute little film that could fairly be described as Shrek meets Zorro meets Desperado. And I have little doubt the boardroom discussion went about like that.

I was not, however, prepared for all the esoteric subtext in the movie. I do remember William Henry pointing out the stargate imagery in the Friskies commercial tie-in. Not that there's anything terribly new about fantastical imagery in children's stories -- including portals into magical lands. But it is kind of interesting that it's through a circular Stargate like opening. Having now seen the movie, I think it's at least arguable that the commercial is a thematic extension of the movie.

It had never occurred to me before that Jack and the Beanstalk is a kundalini metaphor. Now it all seems kind of obvious -- a magical vine that connects earth to heaven and leads to a winged creature that manufactures gold. No duh, huh?

But Puss in Boots ups the ante on that metaphor. Not only is the gold they discover in the shape of an egg, which connects it to core creation mythos. Puss's partner in crime is an egg, specifically Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty's lifelong ambition is to find and plant the magic beans of legend. So an egg is seeking golden eggs. And ultimately the base, mortal, and terribly fragile Humpty is transformed into the gold he is seeking.

Amish Hair-Cutting Case Goes to the Jury

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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The jury will begin deliberations today as to the guilt or innocence of Sam Mullet and fifteen of his followers.

Jurors will begin deliberating on Thursday whether Samuel Mullet Sr. and 15 of his followers are guilty of federal hate crimes for the attacks on nine Amish men and women last fall.

All 16 were charged with conspiracy to commit a hate crime, and some face charges of lying to police or withholding evidence. They face up to life in prison if convicted.

It's hard to get a sense of how a trial is going from press reports alone. But from those accounts, I can't help thinking this trial was a slam dunk for the federal prosecutors. They built a strong case and the defense closed quickly providing no witnesses. Sam Mullet's attorney Edward Bryan is certainly right that the burden of proof is on the prosecution and the defense has no requirement to mount a defense at all. But in this case it looks like they didn't present a case because they just didn't have a reasonable defense to present.

From the press accounts, their various defense strategies look to have been all over the map and internally contradictory. They disputed none of the factual elements of the case, neither the attacks themselves, nor the shocking disciplinary and sexual demands of the Bergholz bishop. They simultaneously claimed that these were not religiously motivated attacks, but based entirely on family and financial disputes, and that the attackers acted out of concern for the souls of their victims, which would seem to imply a religious motivation.

Amish Trial Closes With Damning Testimony

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Federal prosecutors wrapped up their case against the Amish hair-cutting ring this week with strong testimony from several witnesses, including Sam Mullet's daughter.

Barbara Yoder was reluctant to testify against her father but, all the same, gave a very damning account.

Mullet's daughter, Barbara Yoder, testified that she never heard her father order any of the four hair- and beard-cutting attacks, but confirmed her father had endorsed the humiliating hair-shearings as disciplinary measures, and laughed when the men reported back to him in the aftermath of the attacks.

. . .

"He said it would help stop people from being Amish hypocrites," Yoder testified.

This is not the first evidence jurors have heard that Sam Mullet found the brutal, humiliating attacks hilarious.

The Trip from Bountiful

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

As discussed, Warren Jeffs appears to be totally losing it. Deranged proclamations, paranoia, mass excommunications, and propaganda blaming members for his continuing incarceration, have raised the concern of social agencies and law enforcement near his Yearning For Zion Ranch and other strongholds around the US. Now comes news that Canadian officials are also dealing with the fallout of an FLDS spinning out of control as the compound in Bountiful, British Columbia shows similar signs of distress.

Jeffs's earlier edict prohibiting sex and marriage for all but fifteen of his most faithful stewards and their selected females has resulted in hundreds of husbands and fathers being excommunicated and their families shattered. Numerous teens have also been excommunicated for innocuous offenses like wearing short sleeved shirts or improper hairstyles. Most tellingly, socializing with their friends is now a banishing offense. Wives have been reallocated like the chattel they are.

Six men from Bountiful, B.C., went to Provincial Court in Creston this week pleading for access to their 40 children after having been excommunicated by Warren Jeffs, the jailed leader of North America’s largest polygamous sect.

Earlier this year, the fathers were deemed to be “unworthy” by Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Some of these men are actually risking their own legal standing because they're practicing polygamy -- and not necessarily willingly.

Cafe

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Rising to the potential that exists in 2012

What can happen now? We can step into our power to create a Global Shift out of our current Global Crisis. To do this we must engage in conscious practices to find our real power in our integrity and open heart. What needs to happen is a shift of ethos and practice to one that is earth-honoring both locally and globally. Join host, Christina Pratt, and her guest, C. Michael Smith, PhD, (aka Mikkal) author of Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue as they discus a path forward. Mikkal shares how we can use shamanic skills and processes to truly empower ourselves to realize the potential in our current times and risk manifesting a future better than we imagined. Mikkal is director of Crows Nest International, Centers for shamanic Studies in USA, France, Belgium, and South Africa. He is a Jungian scholar, clinical psychologist, and international shamanic teacher. He is also trained in both North and South American shamanisms, undergoing a 14-year initiation and apprenticeship with Cherokee medicine woman Ai Gvhdi Way and an 8-year initiation with Iachak don Alverto Taxo. This is Part 2 of a series exploring how we transform a global crisis into a global shift.

This week's guest:
C. Michael Smith (aka Mikkal)

C. Michael Smith, Ph.D., (aka Mikkal) is an internationally recognized pioneer in the synthesis of Jungian psychology and Shamanic Healing. His most widely known book is "JUNG AND SHAMANISM IN DIALOGUE: Retrieving Soul / Retrieving the Sacred." Mikkal's teachings are a synthesis of shamanic principles, learned from inner and outer teachers, and the principles of Jungian and archetypal psychology. These teachings are a heart-centered shamanism offering skills that cultivate the daily expression of Spirit and the spirit-helpers through the heart, the absolute core of our being and of a life. Mikkal's training and apprenticeship programs, and the intentional heart-centered and earth-honoring shamanic communities that have grown around them in France, Belgium, and South Africa are known collectively as Crows Nest International.

At Crows Nest Center for Shamanic Studies, his home base in Michigan, Mikkal conducts his USA based workshops, retreats, and individual apprenticeship intensives. Mikkal is currently teaching in North America, France, Belgium, and South Africa and sponsors an annual Wounded Healer Wilderness Quest on South Manitou Island in Lake Michigan. Mikkal will be a featured speaker in July 2012 at the 8th International Amazonian Conference on Shamanism, in Iquitos, Peru. He is also in the private practice of psychology (Jungian and transpersonal psychotherapy).

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

Disaster Planning: Remote Controlled Roaches

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Scientists at North Carolina State have come up with a practical use for cockroaches -- search and rescue. Where miniature robots have proved impractical and power intensive, remote controlled roaches may be just the ticket.

“Insects have a power process on them, a natural one,” Alper Bozkurt, an electrical engineer at North Carolina State University, explained to me Friday. “We just needed to supply power for communication, which is not much.”

The research builds on studies that have attached radio tags and sensors to insects to learn how their muscles work. Bozkurt and colleagues took this a step further and stimulated their muscles.

Their remote control system consists of two parts: antennae stimulators and another on their rear end.

. . .

Spurring the cockroaches to scurry forward comes via a sensor on their rear end called cerci “which senses if there is a predator trying to reach from behind. When they feel something, they just go in the forward direction to run away from the predator,” Bozkurt explained.

“So, we use that to make the insect go forward and antenna electrodes to make it go left and right.”

Has Judge Hatch Read The Secret?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Robb Gary Evans ~ Former Cop

Stop me if you've heard this one. A drunk cop walks into a bar. There's a cover charge but he flashes his badge instead. He sees some women in the bar. The first one he pinches on the ass. The second is a friend of a friend. He walks up behind her, sticks his hand up her skirt and fondles her private parts. The woman doesn't care for it so she complains. When the bouncers throw him out of the bar he tells them he's a cop and they'll be arrested. Later, a jury of his peers finds him guilty of sexual abuse. It's a class 5 felony, so he's facing up to 2 1/2 years in prison. But the judge thinks he's a pretty swell guy and lets him off with probation. He doesn't have to register as a sex offender, says the judge. Then the judge turns to the victim of the assault and gives her, wait for it... a very stern lecture about how young ladies shouldn't be hanging out in bars. The punchline? That judge is a woman.

Said Judge Jacqueline Hatch:

"If you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you," Hatch said.

. . .

"I hope you look at what you've been through and try to take something positive out of it," Hatch said to the victim in court. "You learned a lesson about friendship and you learned a lesson about vulnerability."

Hatch said that the victim was not to blame in the case, but that all women must be vigilant against becoming victims.

"When you blame others, you give up your power to change," Hatch said that her mother used to say.

Oy vey.

Anglican Archbishop: We Were Wrong on Gays

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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"We've not exactly been on the forefront of pressing for civic equality for homosexual people, and we were wrong about that," said Rowan Williams, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury. He apologized for not doing more to hold together the fracturing Anglican Communion as the Episcopal Church here in the States advanced and other Anglican bodies... did not.

"I don't think I've got it right over the last 10 years. It might have helped a lot if I'd gone sooner to the United States when things began to get difficult about the ordination of gay bishops, and engaged more directly," he told Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper in an interview published Saturday. "I know that I've, at various points, disappointed both conservatives and liberals."

The archbishop reiterated the church's opposition to gay marriage but said it had been "wrong" in its past treatment of homosexuals.

So, wrong on gay rights but still right on blocking marriage equality. I guess Church politics are still something of a balancing act -- even at retirement. Ah well. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Amish Bishop Uses the C Word

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Prosecutors in the Amish hair-cutting trial were proscribed from using words like "cult" to describe the Bergholz clan, in a pretrial decision by Judge Polster. But nothing prohibits witnesses from such characterizations and one of the brutally butchered bishops, Myron Miller, did so.

Pressed by the prosecutor to specify his concerns, Miller mentioned without details "cultic" activities and reported "brain-washing" of community members required to submit to Mullet's authority.

. . .

Ed Bryan, defense attorney for Mullet, asked Miller whether the dispute involved personal issues instead of religious differences as the government has argued in calling the attacks religion-based hate crimes.

"I have nothing against Sam Mullet," Miller responded. "What's going on in that community, or was going on, we were very concerned about interaction with any of our members."

Miller's excommunication of one of Mullet's sons was one of the key triggers to the series of attacks and he was the second victim to be targeted.

Cafe

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Around the Web, Around the World

"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

What is the change in 2012 asking of us?

What is our part in the global crisis we find ourselves sharing in September of 2012? What is the nature of the challenge ahead of us? How can we use our shamanic skills and mature earth-honoring consciousness to actualize the shift All Life is asking of us? Join host, Christina Pratt, and her guest, C. Michael Smith, PhD, (aka Mikkal) author of Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue as they discus what the great and compassionate thinkers of our time are saying. In their own way each confirms the need for a heart-open and earth-honoring shift in the way we all live all parts of our lives. Mikkal is director of Crows Nest International, Centers for shamanic Studies in USA, France, Belgium, and South Africa. He is a Jungian scholar, clinical psychologist, and international shamanic teacher. He is also trained in both North and South American shamanisms, undergoing a 14-year initiation and apprenticeship with Cherokee medicine woman Ai Gvhdi Way and an 8-year initiation with Iachak don Alverto Taxo. This is Part 1 of a two-part series exploring how we transform a global crisis into a global shift.

This week's guest:
C. Michael Smith (aka Mikkal)

C. Michael Smith, Ph.D., (aka Mikkal) is an internationally recognized pioneer in the synthesis of Jungian psychology and Shamanic Healing. His most widely known book is "JUNG AND SHAMANISM IN DIALOGUE: Retrieving Soul / Retrieving the Sacred." Mikkal's teachings are a synthesis of shamanic principles, learned from inner and outer teachers, and the principles of Jungian and archetypal psychology. These teachings are a heart-centered shamanism offering skills that cultivate the daily expression of Spirit and the spirit-helpers through the heart, the absolute core of our being and of a life. Mikkal's training and apprenticeship programs, and the intentional heart-centered and earth-honoring shamanic communities that have grown around them in France, Belgium, and South Africa are known collectively as Crows Nest International.

At Crows Nest Center for Shamanic Studies, his home base in Michigan, Mikkal conducts his USA based workshops, retreats, and individual apprenticeship intensives. Mikkal is currently teaching in North America, France, Belgium, and South Africa and sponsors an annual Wounded Healer Wilderness Quest on South Manitou Island in Lake Michigan. Mikkal will be a featured speaker in July 2012 at the 8th International Amazonian Conference on Shamanism, in Iquitos, Peru. He is also in the private practice of psychology (Jungian and transpersonal psychotherapy).

Tuesday, September 4, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

Cardinal Slams the Church in Posthumous Interview

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Cardinal Carlo Martini Maria, who passed on Friday, was once considered a likely successor to Pope John Paul II. From beyond the grave he has delivered a blistering critique of the Church, calling it "200 years out of date."

"Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our rituals and our cassocks are pompous," the cardinal said.

"The church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and the bishops. The paedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation."

While unusually harsh, the Cardinal's words are not out of character. He was known for being socially liberal and had long advocated for a kinder, gentler Catholic Church. That was not, by all reports, why was not made pope. It was his diagnosis of Parkinson's disease which also led to his retirement in 2002. He was, however, a quietly divisive figure.