Pneumatised!

MM,

I finally got around to working on my website a bit. I have revised the “Spiritual Development” page, and added an article in that section called “Spirituality and Religion – What’s the Difference?” In the future, I hope to write some articles about paganism, witchcraft, and in particular, Wicca. There is an abundance of misinformation floating around the internet about these subjects that I feel it is about time I started to write about them.

I hope you enjoy my new article.

BB,
Cassandrah
Your local pagan
Brigid’s Flame

MM,

I finished reading book five (The Fires of Heaven) of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time last week (I finished reading book four just around Samhain). Interesting story and characters. I got quite absorbed – at least until I thought my life was passing by because it takes me a while to read the 800 to 900 page books. Suffice it to say I’m taking a little break from the novels for a bit. Book 6, Lord of Chaos, is another long novel and I’d like to get some other work done before I find myself absorbed in another 900 paperback. There are a few other novels I’d like to finish reading. I started reading The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley and The Shadow on the Glass by Ian Irvine. Additionally, I have some books on my “must read” list.

Right now, I’m making my way through The World’s Religion (second edition) by Ninian Smart. It’s quite a good read because it is written for academia providing a relatively unbiased (are we ever truly unbiased?) look at many of the different world religions. I’m taking my time getting through the book though because there is plenty of information in each chapter. The book is divided into two parts, and each chapter is divided by geographic region. The first part focuses on the origins of each religion essentially providing a look at ancient religions. The second part discusses modern religion, although depending on the geographic region the time period for “modern” can vary. I’m on chapter four thus far, though I read both chapters on Chinese religion already since I’m already familiar many aspects of Chinese worship being ethnically Chinese myself. Ignoring the introduction and the first chapter on primitive religion, the first region encountered in the book is South Asia, which is primarily India but includes Sri Lanka and Tibet. The next chapter I’m reading is on Japan.

Another book that I’m reading right now (since I’m taking my time reading the world religions book) is Witchcraft Today by Gerald B. Gardner. This book has been on my “must read” list for a while and it was since it was newly published that I got a copy of it. Since getting involved with Wicca more and more, I’ve been more absorbed in reading mythology because in the Odyssean tradition there is strong emphasis on learning mythology. In any case, it’s time to read what “ol’ uncle Gerald” has to say about the religion I have chosen to follow. Plus, it provides a look at what used to be done originally in Wicca versus what is being done now. (Perhaps, if/when the time comes around I will write a review of the book.)

BB,
Cassandrah
Brigid’s Flame

MM,

My Reiki One manual is complete and I’ve just about finished my Reiki Two manual. I have one appendix left to write in the Reiki Two manual. Next, I need to finish my teaching outlines and notes and review the two manuals I’ve completed. Then, I will have to make a good start on the Reiki Three manual.

It seems I’m almost ready to start teaching Reiki One and Two classes. I’m thinking November might too soon for me as I have quite a bit going on right now, December might be too busy for everyone as it is the holiday season, that leaves me with January. In the new year, I will try to schedule some days to teach Reiki One and Two classes.

Starting in November, I am available for private informal teaching for Reiki One. Right now, I have one person studying Reiki One with me. I’ve scheduled her classes to start in November. The private informal teaching is available for those who aren’t too keen on studying reiki in a formal class setting and will allow more one-on-one interaction between me and the student. If you are interested, please send me an email. Make sure your subject line is appropriately titled so I do not mistake it for junk mail. I will reply as soon as I am able.

Be sure to check here every so often for updates. When I have class dates and times scheduled I will be posting them here as well as on Brigid’s Flame.

BB,
Cassandrah
Your local renaissance woman
Brigid’s Flame

An ideal…

If you live each moment as you would like to live it and feel you have done
and are doing so, you should not have any regrets were to you die the next
moment.

BB,
Cassandrah
Your local Webmistress
Brigid’s Flame

MM,

Paganism! As if there was any doubt in my mind!

You scored as Paganism. Your beliefs are most closely aligned with those of paganism, Wicca, or a similar earth-based religion. You may also follow a Native American religion. Paganism 100% Buddhism 92% Satanism 83% Hinduism 63% Islam 50% Judaism 42% agnosticism 42% Christianity 25% atheism 25%

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com

Overall, not surprising to me, except for Satanism. Must be my alternate universe “evil Cass” answering sometimes. 😉 It’s strange how a person’s opinions can change over time. As a teen, I was repulsed by the Satanic Bible and couldn’t even read more than few pages in it. It seemed to be degrading to people overall (though I suppose I should just read it before I pass final judgment on it). Something about it just seems “off” to me. However, I do think people should be allowed to experience pleasure in their lives as long as you don’t infringe on anyone else’s basic human rights. Maybe that’s where my 83% Satanism is coming from. I highly doubt I could practice it.

I was fascinated by Islam after reading the Biography of Malcolm X and watching the movie. His experiences when he traveled to Mecca were remarkable. It really made me want to go. Unfortunately, non-Muslims are not allowed entry into Mecca. Since I disagree with some important issues in Islam, I could never be Muslim.

Hinduism is fascinating. Like every religion, it has its good points and its bad points. I have some acquaintances who are Hindu and they are quite tolerant people. The mythology is intriguing. I get the sense that some of the deities are quite powerful, though I haven’t had time to explore this pantheon.

I grew up with subtle forms of Buddhism. I still like it. It’s peaceful and tolerant, much like Wicca and paganism. I think for me, Buddhism and Wicca work well together. Buddhism states that “all life is suffering” whereas Wicca tries to appreciate life as much as possible and just accepts the suffering as part of learning, growing and enlightenment. If I were to practice only Buddhism, I think I’d get depressed, but Wicca helps to balance that. (Related blog: Comparing Wicca and Buddhism)

I guess I’m lucky to be practicing a spirituality that suits me best!

BB,
Cassandrah
Brigid’s Flame

MM,

Life has been crazy the past two and a half weeks. My mother decided that it is time for her to sell her house that she’s been living in for 31 years. The past few weeks I’ve been running back and forth to her house to help clean up and fix it up a bit. Well, I’m glad to say the craziness of it all is over. I just have to sit back now and wait for the offers to buy to come in. Speaking of which, I suppose I should post some information about the house for those interested in purchasing a home.

The house is located in the quaint, quiet Riverdale community of Toronto East. Those who enjoy convenience of living in the city will be interested in this house as it is a short walk to the subway and an even shorter walk to catch a bus. It is a solid brick house originally built in 1915 that has been carefully maintained over the years. The original structure of the house remains intact, and there is a wonderful addition to the back. The house offers a beautiful garden in the front and back. For the green thumbs, the soil is excellent for growing herbs, fruits, vegetables, and flowers. (There was once an apple tree, but it was blown down by fierce winds when I was young.) The house has a modern kitchen and bathrooms (one main bathroom, two powder rooms) while retaining much of its early 20th century design in the windows frames, doors, main staircase, floorboards, and electric fireplace.

Located only 30 minutes from downtown Toronto by public transit and maintaining an early 20th century design, this house is one of the more unique on the market. They do not build houses in Toronto like this anymore! If it is your dream to have a quiet home in the city, don’t pass up the chance to own this house.

The open house is taking place this weekend:

Saturday, September 9 from 1 to 5 p.m.
Sunday, September 10 from 1 to 5 p.m.

For more information, please visit:

Bosley Real Estate listing for 33 Hunter Street
Bosley Real Estate open house information for 33 Hunter Street
Agent Karen Trimble website information for 33 Hunter Street

Please note that if you are seriously interested in purchasing, I am required by contract to refer you to my family’s real estate agent Karen Trimble. You may, of course, have your own real estate agent contact Karen Trimble. Please do not contact me regarding the purchase of this house.

You will find Karen Trimble’s contact information on her website linked above.

Okay, so enough about selling a house.

Meanwhile, my friends Dave and Jaime finally tied the knot – literally. (Congrats, Dave and Jaime, who are probably, as I type, enjoying the sun in beautiful Panama.) Since they are Wiccans, they had a Handfasting (they had their Betrothal last year). Simply defined, a Handfasting is a Wiccan wedding. The reason it is called a Handfasting is because yes… they literally have their hands tied to each other. This is done with a cord made specially for the Handfasting. Now, this is not some kinky S&M practice (get your minds out of the gutter people, please?). Having their hands tied together symbolically represents the union these two have decided to enter into. It represents the bonding the two share with each other. While they are still tied together, the couple being Handfasted has to pass over/by a small fire and jump over a ritual broom (called a besom by Wiccans). The ease by which they accomplish these two tasks together will indicate the ease of their relationship, that is, how well they will get through things in life together. (At this point, you’re supposed to say “aw….”) This was all done within a ritual context, of course, since it’s a Wiccan practice. The ritual was quite beautiful and interesting. There is something to be said about being wedded outdoors in front of the gods rather than in a stuffy church in front of some old dude. (Although there was an old dude at my friends’ Handfasting to make their marriage legal, he was far from the typical church old dude. Kudos to one of the coolest Ministers I’ve met!) Anyway, my friends had their Handfasting the week of my craziness with fixing up a house, and I got to attend and participate.

Then, I heard of a great opportunity for something that I’ve been wanting to do, and I jumped at it. Of course, that involved some anxiety… waiting is always nerve-wrecking. In any case, I received some happy news, and now I’m looking forward to a very interesting year ahead of me starting Sunday, September 17th. I’ll post some more information on what this is later, but for now I’d like to keep this a secret.

Tied into this great opportunity, I’m happy to say that I’m moving along with my Wicca studies. I have a few more things to do in the next three weeks or so and then something special is at the end for me… I hope, I hope. I was told to cross a date off my calendar. So there! I’m not available October 21. I’ve warned you all in advance.

Because of all the craziness with my mother’s house, I have not had a chance to get back to taekwondo since I picked up my certificate. 🙁 I really was not planning on taking so much time off. I was just about to go back after being away for more than a month when I got caught up with selling my mother’s house. I’ve missed three weeks at the gym, and as I indicated, more at the do jang. At the least, I’ve managed to get some exercise by running on the days when I had some time. I pretty much spent most of the past three weeks at my mother’s, the whole day each time. Definitely no time for running, the gym, or the do jang, never mind writing on a blog. So, of course now, I’m missing taekwondo like crazy, and the gym, but I have too much work to catch up on now. This brings me to…

Reiki. I was about to settle down and finish writing my Reiki Two Manual, then all the craziness started. I get a call from my do jang, but I have to help out my mother’s house and try to do some of my own work and try to get some rest in between. Then in the midst of all that, other things have happened. Sucks to be me sometimes, I guess. But… *shrug* life is good for the most part. Aside from selling my mother’s house, I like my life, and I like what I do with it. So, my dear readers and those especially interested in reiki, I have not forgotten. I’ve only been delayed by… life. I think the gods like to test me every so often, and they throw things in my way. Is that Loki or Eris I hear laughing? Haha… glad you enjoyed my performance. Thus, I have to push back my own personal deadline of getting classes started by the autumn equinox on September 23, in just over two weeks. I’m definitely not going to make that deadline. My new deadline is Samhain (Hallowe’en to you non-magical folk). Hopefully that should give me enough time to finish writing my Reiki Two Manual and get my materials together for teaching. *Knock on wood*

Okay, I think that about sums up my two to three weeks of chaos ruling my life. Now, I think I can breathe again.

BB,
Cassandrah
Your local webmistress (who will be back to writing on a regular basis)
Brigid’s Flame

MM,

For those who are in Toronto or the GTA, the Toronto Pagan Pride Day will be tomorrow, and your local webmistress (yes, that’s me) will be available, though wandering around, to give reiki treatments upon request. If you make it out for the Pagan Pride Day, be sure to ask for Cassandrah if you would like a reiki treatment, completely free!

Here are the details of the Toronto Pagan Pride Day, as posted on a few of the yahoo message boards:

Toronto Pagan Pride Day
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Wilket Creek Park, firepit 1
(At Eglington and Leslie)
From noon ’til after dusk
At harvest time, our pagan and pagan-friendly communities come together to celebrate the rich heritage and diversity of Paganism in Toronto.
With workshops, children’s activities, musical performances, bardic competition, and more it’s an event for everyone! Bring a blanket or a chair, sunscreen, comfortable footwear, and an open mind. Come to celebrate our community, come to dance and come to enjoy.
Opening Ritual at 12:00 p.m.
Workshops, children’s activities from 1:00 to 5:00 pm
Sacred Circle Dancing from 2:00 to 5:00 pm
Harvest Ritual at 5:00 pm
Drumming and a bardic competition are scheduled for the early evening.
For more information and workshop descriptions, please see our new website:

www.torontopaganpride.com

MM, MP, and BB!
Cassandrah
Your local pagan webmistress
Brigid’s Flame

MM,

Well, it took me a few more days to get everything onto my new laptop. First I had to install all the applications I wanted that could run on Debian GNU/Linux and Gnome. So far, things work nicely, but I’ve had to tweak applications here and there to get it to do what I want. After I got the right applications working, I then had to transfer my files over. All of this took some considerable time. Next, I had to log into WindowsXP and install some of my games on there. I don’t play many games, but I have a few just so I have some leisure activities once in a while. Anyway, these games don’t run on Debian GNU/Linux – they needed to be installed on Windows. I ended up taking some time installing my pinball games, and then had to play them a bit to make sure they all worked fine. When I was done installing all my games, I had a few more files to transfer and then I was done. Yay. I can now enjoy my new laptop, but…

I’m now running Debian GNU/Linux instead of WindowsXP. This means that I have to get used to some of the applications on here. I primarily do work online nowadays, but I still do much of my document production offline. For document production, OpenOffice is available as a free application. I tried the first version on my old laptop running Windows and wasn’t impressed. I stuck with using MSOffice95 for a little while longer. OpenOffice has since released a new version that seems to work better than the first. It seems to have nearly the same functions as MSOffice95. Now, I’m a fairly expert word document user. I know how to do everything from your basic document to doing form letters to using macros to inserting tables, charts, spreadsheets, and graphics. MSOffice95 admitted allows you to do this stuff easily. Supposedly though, OpenOffice is the newest favourite for word documentation, and Nathan assures me that it works just as well as MSOffice95. I will have to see though. I have not had time to do any of my bigger documents to see if it works the way I’d expect. The big plus with OpenOffice is the free capability to export your word documents in PDF format. This is great because you won’t need Adobe Acrobat anymore (the newest Windows version takes up a whole load of disk space).

I still have to tweak my email application. I can download the emails, but I’m having issues sending email out. I think in the end, it might just be easier checking email online instead. For now, I’m just leaving the email application installed until I figure out what to do about the loads of email addresses I need to check often.

Aside from a word document application and something to download my email, I don’t need to adjust to much more. (For MSN users, there’s aMSN or you can just use GAIM.) XMMS is the player you use to play mp3 music files. You can get plugins to play other music files like mpc. The player works nicely and looks nice (it has a bunch of skins that can change randomly with each song it plays). To watch movies, mplayer does a good job. It’s best run through the terminal though. The GUI is a little confusing – I’d need to spend more time fiddling with it to get it to work. I haven’t checked to see if my DVDs work, but I expect it should or at least shouldn’t be too difficult to fix (besides I have a resident computer expert at home – Nathan. ;)) BTW, the laptop sounds great with headphones or speakers (like all laptops you WANT external speakers or headphones).

Gnome has a lot of packages that you can install. The nice thing about Debian GNU/Linux is that if there’s an application you need, you can go to the Synaptic Package Manager, search for the appropriate application and install it. You don’t need to look around for special software. If there’s a Debian version of an application, you should be able to find it on Synaptic. The other bonus I found out is that I don’t need a separate FTP application to upload to my website. 🙂 This is easily done through the file manager. First you set up your FTP server on the file manager (just go to “file”, “connect to server”). Once that is done, you can find the server directory in your file manager. FTP is done just like transfering files on your hard drive.

Debian runs much better than WindowsXP. I can multi-task on my laptop and it won’t crash on me. WindowsXP already has given me problems with the few stuff I have installed on there. I’ve partitioned my disk drive into 30 GB for Debian GNU/Linux and 10 GB for WindowsXP. The 10 GB for Windows seems like a waste, but there are some applications I can only run on there. I’m just appalled that for the Windows operating system alone, it takes up so much disk space. No wonder people are switching to Debian GNU/Linux. It is fairly easy to switch too. The neat thing is that you can do things using the GUI (graphical user interface) or using the more traditional terminal (remember DOS?). This is nice because with a terminal you can use specific commands to get the computer to do what you want while with a GUI sometimes you’re stuck doing only what it gives you. It’s great to have to option of doing something more than one way.

Okay, that’s my little review of using my new laptop and Debian GNU/Linux. This is a change, but it’s all good. I was getting bored and annoyed with Windows. Change is good. Something new is good. It keeps me on my toes and life interesting. 😀

BB,
Cassandrah
Brigid’s Flame

P.S. This blog entry is a follow-up to a previous entry, My New Laptop – Acer Travelmate 2428