Archive | August 7, 2015

Have personhood advocates really thought this through?

Raw Story posts: Mike Huckabee’s bizarre fetal personhood proposal would criminalize miscarriages

Thought experiment time.

Given: zygote through fetus is a legal person.

For a legal perspective, wouldn’t said person necessarily be “incapacitated” for all practical intents and purposes, thus not competent?

Aside from all the other considerations mentioned in the article, upon becoming aware that she is carrying a legally incompetent person, would the woman have to go to court to petition for guardianship?

If the woman isn’t granted guardianship, on what grounds should she be denied that role? Who else should the court consider qualified for the role?

If granted such guardianship, and the person is currently situated in a non-viable ectopic pregnancy, or is determined to have a life threatening, possibly incredibly painful neurological deformity, such as anancephaly, would the woman then be able to make legal determinations pertaining to wishes…

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Weather, emotions and responsibility for one’s actions

Aug7

One of the things we earth based pagans need to be careful of is ascribing all that happens to our deities. That can really send you down a rabbit hole and it can get you out of taking responsibility for things you have done. We can do a version of Flip Wilson’s old routine of “The devil made me do it,” sometimes. Nope, sometimes it’s little old you.

If one gets angry particularly at a family member or friemd or even just on an emotional high, one can and will affect the weather. I know I’ve done it. I’ve blown street lights after big rituals that I didn’t ground after because it can feel so good to do but we can also raise wind and make storms. We can also stop them when someone else makes them.

One Hallows many years ago, a good friend who was a florist and worked out of a fairly large warehouse went to enormous trouble to create an amazing ritual space. It was just a magical place, some of it was outside leading to the door. Huge cornstalks and scarecrows and other decorations that were definitely not windproof were standing there and the wind came up and I saw one of my other friends encouraging the wind because what is more magical than a Halloween wind? But I saw all her hard work start to come apart because of his playing and I stopped the wind. I stopped it because I was angry. And I have to admit it was pretty funny to see him try and push against me and it took him about 5 minutes or more to figure out it was me. Luckily he started laughing and stopped what he was doing because it was making me tired to hold it. He couldn’t believe I could do it. I’m afraid I gave him a good scolding for trying to ruin J’s hard work and he took it with good nature because he was just having fun and he didn’t want to hurt J.

But yes, if you are pissed you can bring the wind and the rain and other nasties out and it’s really not okay. Manipulation of anything isn’t necessarily a good thing and if you aren’t in control you can wind up causing fires and other things you can’t stop. We have a responsibility to control ourselves and our emotions. It’s one of things that can make being a magic worker hard but it’s the truth. If you want to be a witch you must take responsibility for your actions and your thoughts, words and deeds. It’s part of the deal.

PS, The mind is enormously powerful especially when not grounded. We can do anything if we will it.