Liberal Religion and Neo-Astrology, Champagne Breakfasts, Clusters and CMSs

[tcpip]

Gave an address at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on Sunday on Reverend Stephen Fritchman, a radical liberal in the U.S. who caused a great deal of trouble for the political establishment during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. On a vaguely related topic I found myself debating on convert_me last week with astrologers, of all people. Intrigued to discover that some of that ilk now claim (or rather, admit as the statistics and science is beyond reasonable doubt) that it has no predictive value whatsoever, but rather can only be used as a metaphorical and instrospective approach. So, after all those centuries it is finally acknowledged to be fiction.

Last Saturday the deco-apartment of Das Hoehnhauss/Casa di Lafayette held a champagne breakfast with various teas, Timorese coffee, lots of pancakes, almond shortbread, silverware and fine china. In attendence were caseopaya's new workmate and partner along with imajica_lj. We're hoping to turn this into a semi-regular event as it's a delightful way to waste away a Saturday morning and most of an afternoon and catch up with a small group of people as well. We're gradually building a list of people to come along, but if anyone is particularly keen to attend in the next couple, please drop a line below.

Work-related matters have been quite busy of late and we've been somewhat short-staffed. Upgrading the dual-core Opteron systems to quad-cores on Tango is a necessity if we wish to reach at least somewhere close to the c7 Teraflop peak but (as one would expect) it hasn't entirely been smooth sailing. On a completely different tangent, I've been investigating the relative competitive benefits of Drupal vs Plone CMSs for ARCS. Having some experience with both does lead me towards the former for the sake of simplicity, but I'm interested to hear contrary views.

Comments

[madame-mage.livejournal.com]

yah astrologers do draw from a particular format, not always from the sun sign, but other planets come into play. Its fun, but does have a set format in which to determine personality characteristics.. but as for predicting? I couldn't tell you..I really don't know. Fiction? okay! *grins*

as for the Tarot..ehhh, sure its the symbols if someone interpets this and nothing more. BUT there is more to this, I can't account for the strange taste sensations in my mouth, or the visual flash in my head suddenly detailing the aspects of a person's life. or the squirrelly goosebumps I get and suddenly blurt out something I couldn't possibly know..So I guess you could say I read from the gut. I NEVER EVER ask questions OR obtain information from the one seeking a read. I've done phone reads, email reads WITHOUT ever meeting the person.
I've also met people and shook their hand, before they started to tell me everything, I'd just tell them NOT to say anything because I HAVE to read this cold..too much information and the feelings I get are just murky as hell.

Seems I do pretty well. Even made a living from this. I've been reading cards since I was 14, well over 30 years. the deck HAS to have imagery from at least the 17th century, I just dial right in. The Boi (My son) doesn't read cards, but has an unflinching sixth sense about people which will serve him well in law enforcement. Its damned uncanny how he pegs people.

so for what its worth, I have fun with this and try to raise the bar on my talent every chance I get.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think there is value for many people to adopt a supposedly esoteric skill as it may allow them the opportunity to engage in structured thinking which can easily have its own intuitive value.

I remember once, many years ago one afternoon in some rather lovely natural surroundings, when I was having "relationship issues" and "work issues" and so forth, I conducted a tarot card reading. As each card fell into place I marvelled at how astoundingly accurate the reading I could derive from the placement of the cards. It was incredible, everything fell into place!

It was only after completing the reading that I realised that the Empress had been accidently left in the box.

A strong guest of wind came in from nowhere and blew over me, and I laughed out loud that ultimately the Tarot was still keeping secrets from me.

A profoundly mystical experience? Total coincidence?

The atheistic empiricist in me prefers the latter interpretation, the pagan aesthete prefers the former. (And the normative agnostic will make no judgement at all).

This sort of thing happens to me a lot

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I personally sometimes like to use the symbol system of astrology in a variety of ways (more or less for creative inspiration or purely symbolic purposes), in a way this is not predictive and only barely tied to the actual sky. I think its a useful symbol system to relate to tarot, kaballah, etc (I'm a Thoth deck fan), but the actual constellations are just one more correspondence.