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Gypsy Lantern
09:55 / 17.01.06
But unless I'm badly misreading what Money $hot has posted in this thread, then neither of those things are what happened, are they? What I'm interested in understanding is what is understood to have transpired here, and how that relates to a concept like monogamy.

I don't think either of those things have transpired, as far as I can tell all that has happened is that Money$hot has received a vision of Oshun, the Orisha of love, beauty, luxury, sex, seduction and pleasure. She appeared and interacted with Money$hot in a way that is entirely in accordance with representations, patakis (stories) and personal accounts of Oshun in Afro-Brazilian religion, of which SD is a part. The Orisha of love and sex is very seductive, beautiful and sexual because that is Her language. Those are her mysteries. She communicates through these things as they are her territory. In the same way that an Orisha such as Ogun might communicate through conflict and challenge, or send you experiences of battle or work. If you're dealing with Oshun, the communication will take place in her specific way. She speaks through these things because she is these things. If the experience wasn't described in these terms, I would be sceptical that it was Oshun.

I'm not really understanding what the problem is. I don't get how a vision of the divine mysteries of love, sex and pleasure that are personified in Oshun could be considered "cheating on your wife".
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:11 / 17.01.06
Gypsy - it's possible that in a commendable attempt to present the experience in as accessible a manner as possible, Money $hot's colloquialism has led myself and others to interpret it as something more than a vision. But I don't think that's true, actually - M$ has consistently stressed the physicality of his experiences.

There's a note of "It was a sacred experience, stop making it sound so... dirty!" which seems to be creeping in here. Again, it's not a question (as far as I'm concerned) of trying to make a holy, transcendental experience into something mundane like "cheating on your wife". It's a question of how one negotiates between one set of real experiences and another. If you look back you'll see that this detail sprang out of questions about the 'reality' or otherwise of the experience, and about how one's day-to-day life outside the experience is affected by it and vice versa. Now, personally, if I had sexual encounters with entities that I considered to be real, I would not choose to self-describe any other relationship with a human entity as "monogamous", although it might be all other number of wonderful things like permanent, central to my life, etc. To do so would seem to me to imply a recognition of a level on which the sexual encounter with the entity was, in fact, less real than my relationship with my partner. Now, if somebody could explain to me how one negotiates between those two positions without holding either one, and without falling back on the inherent holiness of the experience, then I'd be genuinely interested.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:23 / 17.01.06
Reading this with interest, but just as an aside:

Though lets not allow a delightful thread to get bogged down with charges of sexism or other -isms when it's quite clearly not worth the candle!

Dude, you don't get to decide that. As mentioned before, obviously if x is more interesting to you than y, you will not want the discussion of y to get in the way of x, personally. However, this amy not be quite clear to other people. To give a somewhat disproportionate example, in previous cases the x has been a number of conspiracy theories and the y the reality or otherwise of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.


Back ontopic, or at least near topic - Gypsy's statement that in this case the respected Orixa came in a form resembling M$'s wife struck me as interesting. From my reading of the thread so far, the point of resemblance is purely that both of these ladies are, to quote, dusky of complexion. what struck as far more interesting was that the female divinities in attendance, which I took also to count for the respected Orixa, resembled to an extent that made them the closest available comparator, the Bratz (tm). Given that the Bratz are both synthetic and in a sense syncretic entities themselves, this seemed an interesting perception - disregarding the reality in various interpretations of the experience and the beings, we can agree, I hope, that the form of the visiting powers varies from person to person, yes?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:52 / 17.01.06
it's possible that in a commendable attempt to present the experience in as accessible a manner as possible, Money $hot's colloquialism has led myself and others to interpret it as something more than a vision.

Indeed. I'd refer anyone still piqued by this back to page 1, where I, almost certainly inadequately, attempted to explain to the uninitiated some indication of the experience of the visionary nature of the Porridge, from my point of view and using my current developing theory...its really about as close to useful as understanding having sex by reading Lady Chatterley's Lover...but, this is a message board, and these are the tools we have...it'll have to do.

But I don't think that's true, actually - M$ has consistently stressed the physicality of his experiences.

Way-ull...When Mordant queried the nature of the death and dissolution in the War trabalho, I confirmed that the sensations of destruction of my body were physical, vividly so. Other than that I can't think of any other examples...perhaps a link or quote to the text in question would help?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:53 / 17.01.06
But all that seems to have happened here is a flirtatious dialogue with the personified principle of sex and flirtation, who will tend to be sexual and flirtatious. Please explain to me how this is incompatible with claims of 100% monogamy. An encounter with a Goddess of Love will be sexually charged, because its a Goddess of Love and that's the point. If Money$hot had reported that a deity possessed his wife or another woman and had real physical sex, it would be easier to have this conversation. But that didn't happen.

What did happen? As far as I can tell, a spontaneous vision and subsequent dialogue with Oshun. Did Money$hot have an affair with another woman? Was there physical contact with another human being? Was there a sexual encounter? Was there even a "hieros gamos" type spiritual orgasm? I don't really get that from Money$hot's account. It seems more like visionary contact with Oshun, of the sort that you would expect from a deity concerned with the mysteries that she is, so I'm not understanding your insistence that this is somehow akin to polyamory.

To do so would seem to me to imply a recognition of a level on which the sexual encounter with the entity was, in fact, less real than my relationship with my partner

Not "less real", but real in a distinctly different way to how a physical human relationship is real. You can't cheat on somebody with a principle, and especially not with the principle of sex itself. A clumsy parallel would be claiming that by drinking a bottle of champagne, Money$hot is somehow cheating on his wife. It is a real experience, it is pleasurable, but it is real and pleasurable in a distinctly different way. It takes place in a different arena.

I should qualify all of this by saying that I'm speaking from my own experiences of a very, very close relationship with Oshun, which I don't consider to be in conflict with monogamy. I love Oshun. I am devoted to Oshun. This relationship is real but takes place at a different level from human relationships. I see my human relationships as a direct reflection of my relationship with Oshun. She is present within them. She is all of the good things of a loving relationship. Oshun is love and joy and sex. When they are present. She is present. When they are absent. She is absent. That's one of the things that being a Goddess of love and sex entails.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:16 / 17.01.06
If you consider Money$hot to have cheated on his wife during his visionary encounter with the Orisha of Love, do you also consider his account of a visionary experience of death and dismemberment in a similar reductivist light?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:18 / 17.01.06
Haus - not entirely clear from the relevant post, but Oxum emerged from the 'Gang' of 'Bratz' (tm) and made the introductions etc...at this point she was transformed and took on the aspect she mostly appears in to me, much more human, and resembling a cross between my Mrs. and someone else.

As regards 'appearing to different people differently', I can't speak for anyone else. I identified her by searching for re[resentations and traditional images of Oxum by artistes from within the tradition and being startled to discover a marked resemblance, though with my own preferences and attractions overlaid and intermingled...So I would hazard that She, and other Powers, have a definite form but that it is mutable and either deliberately catered around the tastes/desires/etc. of the receiver, or that this is mental static/interference peculiar to a neophyte brain, and possibly liable to change with time. Who can say?

After the working at the river, at that trabalho, She appeared in many more forms than ever previously...some recognisable to me, some not...

I am interested in Petey's definnition of monogamy which he mentions without expounding upon it above...

I would classify monogamy as a commitment between two sexual partners to not physically enact their desires and attraction to other people. Definitely not a commitment to have no desires nor attraction to other people, and not really able to cover Hieros Gamos within its remit, I feel. Others may of course feel differently. I doubt there is any 'right' or 'wrong' absolute way of looking at these things...

I feel comfortable describing my relationship as '100% monogamous' while at the same time 'unflinchingly honest' because my wife is well aware of my ongoing tryst with Oxum...we have an altar to her, of course, and she is privvy to these visions, I make no bones about...

She neither feels jealous, betrayed nor cheated upon due to my relationship with this Power...in fact, she is my manifest expression of these Mysteries made flesh...I honour both her, and Her, in all my dealings with either...

I think it's of limited use, though no doubt a fun diversion, applying the moral compunctions of inter-personal relationships between humans, and their related emotional make-up, to Gods and Godforms...Somewhat (though not especially) akin to expecting human morality and conduct to be a useful referent or somehow applicable within the so called animal kingdom...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:28 / 17.01.06
Gypsy makes the most apposite point above :

I am clearly still here, in spite of vividly experiencing my destruction at the mercy of explosives - remember, my teeth clattering off each other as they flew this way and that?

I certainly do. And yet...still, I can crunch this Organic Finn Crisp with Tahini on it and carry on typing.

I don't know...it's not the easiest of concepts to wrap my own head around, and I was there! I'm sure it must be awkward, especially if reading this with little or no contact with/prior interest in such alterations of consciousness. Even with such, its a barrel of strange. Yet, at the same time, it makes perfect sense and is easily comprehensible from where I'm sitting.

Nurse!!
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:29 / 17.01.06
I wouldn't call it a fun diversion--isn't it quite a serious ethical issue for a monogamous person, in terms of possible emotional fallout for one's partner? If your partner is involved in your work it's a bit different, of course, because you have a common frame of reference that you're both working within. However, I can imagine a scenario wherein the partner might experience jealousy, hurt, feelings of rejection ect.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:32 / 17.01.06
Haus - not entirely clear from the relevant post, but Oxum emerged from the 'Gang' of 'Bratz' (tm) and made the introductions etc...at this point she was transformed and took on the aspect she mostly appears in to me, much more human, and resembling a cross between my Mrs. and someone else.

Ah, I see. Thanks. On morphology and apect - could you say whether this was a specific somebody else or a way of saying "she looked like my wife, but some of her features were not those of my wife"?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:47 / 17.01.06
More a fluid, transitory ephemerality...Rivers, yes?...a flowing from one to the other and back, elements of each remaining, then melting into the other, then flowing, and so on...and the 'baseline' form always hinting, flickering in and back and on, endless...

She is Queen of the Mysteries of Love and Sensuality (among others), and so will, I suspect, fulfill all desires and attractions as she finds them...her forms and functions will reflect the shape of the individual's own predilictions as regards these aspects of existence and consciousness and, in many ways, She is way beyond considerations of fidelity...she is the system itself, the process by which indiscretion or infidelity is even possible...my understanding of Her wonders, so far.

Oxum, nos fluímos com você no amor. Ori Ye Ye O.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:10 / 17.01.06
So you didn't have a physical encounter then? I just want to be clear about this.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:23 / 17.01.06
What do you mean?

I am physical. I am nothing if I am not physical. There was an encounter experienced by me, and it was physical from where I was standing.

Do you mean 'with another physical, that is : made of the same stuff as my body is made of, being?'.

In that case, No. Unless it was vicariously, through me. Which would be an encounter with myself, in some way shape or form. 6 Pages to get to an elaborate poshwank.

No, not in the manner I suspect you mean.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:25 / 17.01.06
To clarify, I am of the opinion that all experience is physical.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:36 / 17.01.06
Well in that it effects you but presumably not in that sex is looking into the eyes of beyootiful woman?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
17:40 / 17.01.06
Mmm, me either, I assumed either Nina was getting tipsy (perhaps a little early in the day) or somebody hijacked the suit somehow...A translator appears to be required, which is most unfamiliar for Ms. Skryty.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
18:27 / 17.01.06
Did I really post that? I'm sorry, it was meant to be a comment on the difference between direct and indirect physical experience. As in every experience is physical but not necessarily to do with the physicality of another. It's missing a comma and the word "way" on the end! Clearly dashed off in working day brain-freeze.
 
 
Dead Megatron
19:10 / 17.01.06
Hey, M$, I just noted you've learned how to put accents on words. Kudoz. 4 posts to go now.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
13:20 / 18.01.06
M$, do you ever experience (what I would characterise as) spirit-contact outside the framework of the trabalho?

I ask because I frequently get contact outside of a ritual setting. This can be simple, subtle, easy-to-dismiss things like a sort of obsessive-compulsive urge to top up someone's libation or put on a joss-stick; it can also be very intense. A dramatic change in skin temperature, for instance (this is still subjective pending my remembering to buy a thermometer); rare but memorable auditory messages; and--more and more frequently--tactile sensations such as a tap on the shoulder, a pinch, or a hand briefly grasping my wrist or arm. (The more intense experiences usually only come into play if I'm rude enough to ignore the more gentle poking.)

You ever get anything like this?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
13:57 / 18.01.06
Hmmm...I'm not sure, really. Dreams, absolutely...incredible post drinking dreams, though not after the Solstice or since...

I am pretty much fully immersed in a headspace of spirit at the moment. I am ritualising much of what I do, in deference to the various Powers - that is, taking great care over how much of what I used to blunder through without mindfulness is conducted (see the 'Toast' post above). My Lady is in my thoughts much of late, as She has given me, by my reckoning, a devotion to Her...I am singing and playing it a great deal, adding layers of harmony and texture preparing to record it sometime soon...

It is a real fusion of Bata drumming and traditional Toque (Afro-Cuban drumming and chanting for the Orixa) and the sweet melodic beauty of SD hinos...I love it, and it came from Her, no question, a sweet/sad 6/8 devotion in G minor...She is sweet, but also sad...Her beauty and merry conduct contains and hides these things if you look into her Mysteries...I seem to be surrounded by and encountering her Mysteries rather powerfully at the moment...People I meet, places I end up, fun I'm having, synchronicities and chance encounters with this and that...The whole hino just splurged all at once, apart from a last verse I received last night...all in Portugese, which DM has helped proof-read (many thanks :-))

This is an absolute core shift in me as regards creativity. I have never, it is now very obvious to me, created anything...not even an 'I', a self, though it was pretty convincing for quite a while, hah! And the absence of it is not a million miles away from it's delusional presence. Everything changes and nothing changes. Draw water, carry sticks.

Either I'm channeling Spirit, or I ain't...and if I ain't, I'll just stop and do something else, it is completely unmistakeable.

Although this is not so much of a shift really, I just used to call it 'Vibe'...although, I was deluding myself under the impression that I could somehow force or push it into action. Still, bringing a recognition of the process to the process seems to be magnifying the process a lot!

Actually, there was this thing for a while last year...I'd get the distinct, quite creepy, impression sometimes that a large insect was hovering around above and behind me...occasionally seeing it out of the corner of my eye, clinging to ceilings etc....a sort of shadowy stick insect, rather large (like, as large as a person)...Not for a while though.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:04 / 18.01.06
Oh, and during my fast - its in that thread actually - I started receiving an internal voice very very much like the teachings of the Vine, a lot quieter, but unmistakeable.

I think fasting, water fasting particularly, raises the internal 'frequency', so to speak, to such a vibration that this voice, which I suspect is ever present, is amplified to an 'audible' level...much as meditation and similar practices also do...both quieting the ego and incresing the internal amplification...so the natural expression of Life itself, which is Dao, God, call it what you want, dress it up in silly clothes and give it funky colours, whatever, begins to manifest more clearly, to express through the organism...maybe very clearly...and the mind becomes more reflective, more Buddhist-Mirror-Analogy as a direct consequence of such things...reflecting what is, rather than smudging it out with busy forgetfulness.
 
 
Dead Megatron
20:42 / 18.01.06
I swear to Nossa Senhora that this post is more than just a excuse to hit the 200-mark. But, M$, since you're into I-Ching AND Afro-brazilian religions, have you ever tried, or witness, Candomblé's oracles (aka: Búzios [shell-fish shell throwing])? They are pretty handy, but damn if I know how to read them...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
22:00 / 18.01.06
You little bugger! I was going to post a piccy of Minha Rainha for the 200th post, but needed to scan it at work tomorrow. You've pipped me to it.

Actually, no, I haven't. Been reading about it, though. From what I gather it has some parallels with the Book of Changes. It looks very interesting.

My engagement with Yoruba/Candomble/Santeria etc. is very very tentative, in spite of what you may surmise from this thread...Obviously I am working with Oxum, but that's about the size of it at the moment (and quite enough for now, thank you). I am looking at how syncretic the two systems are, and there seems to be significant overlap to me, and much room for careful blending and value in researching more about the Mysteries I seem to be engaging with. The percussionist I am working with next week lives with two Santeria Priests, many Latin musicians are into it, and I am going to pick their brains soon as regards a few matters. I feel that great caution is required as regards diving into a seperate, however related, practice, especially when the SD is so...immediate and intense.
 
 
Dead Megatron
23:06 / 18.01.06
Sorry man! Gee, I feel bad about it now. If you want, I'll ask the mod to erase as many posts of mine as it takes to give the Queen her well-deserved 200th post. AND I'm lighting a candle and saying a prayer for her right now, as a personal apology from me to her...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:48 / 19.01.06
OK, I take it you have deleted some of your posts, DM?

Answer by PM if you want me to sort the Oxum at 200 thang. I wasn't that bothered, to be honest, you really didn't have to, you know.

Also, I've not brought the piccy in today, so it'll have to wait now anyway.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:35 / 19.01.06
That's a shame. Could I ask if there is a particualr significance in SD associated with the number 200?
 
 
SteppersFan
10:11 / 19.01.06
Haus: >Dude, you don't get to decide that.
I don't get to decide ANYTHING.

I was simply, and humbly, submitting that in my opinion there's no case for M$ to answer. And I think GL has more than amply demonstrated that.

Moreover I think there's a danger of turning a delicate account of encounters with the divine into a grotesque moral argument which will obscure what is most interesting and valuable in this story.

And no, I don't think that is "backslapping".

That's all I have to say on the subject.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:28 / 19.01.06
Haus - Nope, not at all. Hence, why I really wasn't all that bothered. It just might've been 'nice', for no explicable reason except its a round number. Pretty thin, really. And somewhat academic now.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:39 / 19.01.06
As Mordant Carnical said above:

All I'm saying is, those kinds of terms kind of edge into linguistic territory commonly occupied by a sexual-fetishisation-of-nonwhites-by-whites attitude set. I didn't take them that way because the rest of M$'s thread is so passionate and reverential they didn't seem to carry that vibe; but I could just be carried away by exciting magic happenings.

Maybe that kind of language needs to be picked up and given a bit of a shake even here, just in case.

Personally, I don't think it has been amply demonstrated that MC's analysis was invalid. Nor, for that matter, that there was any attempt to start a "grotesque moral argument".


For reference, however, you were not humbly submitting - you were telling people what they should do:

Though lets not allow a delightful thread to get bogged down

Which I think is the problem - you see this is budging conversation back in a friendly way towards the important stuff, which is fine, but is still telling people what to do, how to see their actions and the actions of others and how therefore to behave - as, incidentally, is the characterisation of the result of such discussion being entertained as "grotesque". To put it another way, nobody is ever just saying.

I'm just sayin'.

Is anyone here saying that Money $hot is a racist/sexist/otherist? I don't think so. what has been said is that the terminologies employed here by him had certain associations which he may or may not have been shooting for - for example, that the race of the respected lady was a feature integral to her sexual presentation - that the colour of her skin was a fetishistic detail akin to a body piercing, for example.

I'm not arguing that one response is better than another, although I can be fairly confident that one is more in line with the ideals of Barbelith, but personally I'd rather an environment in which people can have the interpretations, intentional or not, of the language they are using made available to them. To contrast, Dead Megatron has just used the term "ladyboy" to describe MTF transexuals in another thread, and I don't think it will be grotesque or indeed a distracting accusation of "isms" to look at how that use of language informs its reception.

Now, there is a further question about how we should react as a board to language use by people in transformed states of various kinds - whether we need to change our reactions as a result of that - which is quite complex, but also a subject for another thread.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:42 / 19.01.06
M$: OIC- thanks. Well, since the 200th post seems after DM's deletions to be occupied by me, if you want to PM me the URL of the image once set up I'd be happy to replace the (now somewhat redundant) text to the image link, if that would seem appropriate reverence.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:18 / 19.01.06
No worries Haus.
 
 
Dead Megatron
13:00 / 19.01.06
Answer by PM if you want me to sort the Oxum at 200 thang. I wasn't that bothered, to be honest, you really didn't have to, you know.

No problem, it was fun besides, I only deleted my posts that did not contribute to this thread in anyway whatsoever...

...much like this one.

The 200 number was a mark not as related to SD, it's jut that Temple thread's rarely go that far, ans since I have personall feeling about the subject - being a native religion of my country and my people - I was just, well, proud...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:33 / 19.01.06
Groovy. Actually, that reminds me, I'd like to go back to an earlier SD thread and try to work out how popular it is in Europe (although I suspect statistics may be a bit fuzzy), and also how much of that is outreach to other communities...
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:06 / 20.01.06
Just got to the end of this thread, and have enjoyed it immensely. I don't have much to contribute, aside from some mutterings about how a filthy materialist reductionist such as myself might answer the points raised by Money about the scientific viewpoint on his experiences ( mutterings which, frankly, are not really relevant to the direction of the thread). I'll stay at the back and take notes.

Nice thread people.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:10 / 20.01.06
aside from some mutterings about how a filthy materialist reductionist such as myself might answer the points raised by Money about the scientific viewpoint on his experiences

I think that would be a really positive addition to the thread, to be honest.
 
  

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