Everyone would agree that the languages people speak are good fit for the structure of the human mind. After all, they were invented by people, they are developed and maintained by people, they are used every day for hours on end by every single person on the planet, and their essentials can be mastered by children who don’t know how to tie their shoes. (Conversely, their essentials have not yet been mastered by any computer program, despite decades of earnest attempts, and the vast fortune that would belong to the creator of such a program.) They’re easy to use and in many ways reflect the way we think. Languages are the product of the human mind, and you can learn a lot about how the mind works by studying them.

It stands to reason, then, that if a system of belief can be shown to be similar to lingiustic structure, that that system of belief is a good fit for the human mind.

In this post I’ll look at the two fundamental architectural underpinnings of language — what I’ll call the Dictionary and the Rules — and show how Paganism has essentially the same underpinnings, while monotheism does not. In the sections below, I’ll present the linguistics first, and then the comparative religion. Read the rest of this entry »

This past week my wife and I decided to try the Tarot reading technique Slade described in his guest piece here, Drawing Cards: Storyboarding the Tarot. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we’re going through some interesting times financially, and we felt like we needed some additional guidance on next steps. The storyboarding technique looked like it would be a lot of fun, and would allow my wife in particular access to her intuition, since she’s unfamiliar with the cards. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Alexander over at adamspeace.com has a beautiful article up about why he blogs. It’s a moving story about the trauma of his childhood, his attempts as an adult to deal with it, how he found his life’s purpose, and how his blog fits into that. He wrote on the topic because he was “tagged” by another blogger. The idea, it seems, is that you get tagged with a topic by another blogger; then you blog on the topic, and then you tag another blogger.

I’m delighted and honored to be tagged by Adam in this way, since I take it to mean that he enjoys my writing and wants to see more of it. The feeling is definitely mutual! I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find some topic I can tag him with…

I think Adam’s reason for blogging is a lot more moving and inspirational than mine — although my reason might be a bit more odd. Simply put, I’m blogging because Apollo asked me to. Read the rest of this entry »