Are UFO experts worth listening to?

I’ve been thinking about UFO reports and conspiracy theories in general for a little while now and I have a question. Why, when government officials, the police and military announce something that supports conspiracy theories or more particularly UFO’s are they given tremendous credence and authority, yet when those same officials say something that contradicts “accepted” conspiracy dogma do they become tools of the New World Order? I keep seeing reports being taken as “genuine” evidence because the sighting was by a police officer or an airforce observer or a retired “senior military advisor” when these people are no less likely to make stuff up, or to be generous, misinterpret things than anyone else. If anything, given the vehemence with which officials are typically treated within truther communities one could argue that this fawning is even more strange.

Let us look at a couple of examples. We have the Rendlesham Forest incident, one of the most famous of the UK UFO sightings. This sighting took place on an American airbase in Southern England and the reports were all from military personnel including the deputy base commander. Consequently this is considered by many UFO researchers to be absolute proof of the existence of UFO’s but the evidence is not at all clear. There are no photographs, and when challenged about this witnesses report that the phots taken either didn’t come out or were removed by security agents. There is no physical evidence either from the supposed landing site or from the surrounding area, again when challenged the witnesses are unclear as to why this is. In essence what seems to have happened is that a group of fairly naïve young airforce personnel saw something that they thought was unusual and through the investigation and later through recounting the story to each other and their peers embellished and modified the story as people tend to do.

It is interesting to note at this point that there are considerable motions being made towards reducing the amount of credence given to eye witnesses in criminal cases for the very reason that there is often a discrepancy between what is reported and what actually happened. Much research has been carried out into the fallibility of witnesses, and particularly into witnesses who recall information under hypnosis. A parallel can be drawn between UFO reports and the reports of Satanic child abuse in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. In the latter case it is now clear that children who acted as witnesses were coached and guided to give evidence that fitted the expectation of social workers and psychologists who had an agenda that was not obvious at the time. The upshot? As with the vast majority of UFO reports we get a distorted version of some kind of truth which can bera little if any resemblance to what actually happened.

Let us consider another case, the Phoenix Lights UFO reports from Phoenix, Arizona in the USA. Many hundreds of people including police officers saw lights in the sky in formation over the hills just outside Phoenix. The sheer quantity of reports and the reports of “credible” police witnesses has again led many UFO researchers to claim this incident as conclusive proof of Extra Terrestrial activity in Earth airspace. Anyone who argues against this position is accused of being part of the conspiracy and having a closed mind, yet the video evidence and the subsequent detailed reports from the local air force base leave no doubt that the lights were in fact illumination flares dropped during a night exercise from C130 transport planes supported by A10 Warthog anti-tank planes and F16 fighters. Now when you say this to believers they will tell you that the lights are the wrong intensity and the wrong characteristics for flares, that they didn’t move like flares and so on, but you have to ask how many of the witnesses are familiar with the 20 or so types or airborn flare carried by military planes? Certainly the footage of planes dropping flares used in the documentaries on the sighting for comparison are not even remotely similar being in fact anti-heat-seeker chaff rather than flares, but I guess the programme makers may not have known that…..

Whatever, it concerns me that there are a great many examples of reports of various types that are accepted when they are no more valid, or credible or trustworthy than reports from Joe Bloggs skywatching from his back garden. Just a thought….

Is Paganism too diverse to ever establish itself as a movement……

And does it need to? Ok, so perhaps it is a contentious question, but it also looks to me somewhat like the elephant in the room. Within the many and various Pagan paths there are to a greater of lesser extend guidelines on acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, but when it comes to Paganism itself I question firstly if this is the case, and secondly if it can ever be the case. I don’t have thousands of Pagan acquaintances although I do know a fair few people who describe themselves as or identify with Pagan as a discrete path rather than identifying with a particular path within Paganism. Even amongst this limited group I know people who are vegan, vegetarian, omnivorous, who accept hunting, and who are vehemently anti-hunting, who practice both positive and negative magic, who only practice one or the other or who don’t practice magic at all, who are deistic and who are non-deistic, even some who are ok with certain types of vivisection and of course many who aren’t. I’ve met pro-life and pro-choice pagans, supporters of the war on terror and anti-war protesters, even tree huggers and those at home in the concrete jungle, and of course the problem is that since Paganism is a self-identifying path, I guess you could argue that all are to some extent correct.

Given these variations and differences in ideology and belief should any of us spend time trying to untangle this skein and trying to find commonality across such a vast spectrum or should we instead establish for ourselves as individuals what we personally feel to be our truth and allow everyone else to do the same? I’m sure that there are alternative middle ground options, but for the moment I am unsure as to how worthwhile it is to pursue those so I will just focus on the two poles laid out here for now. If we look first at the implications of striving for commonality we have potential benefits in that we are more likely to be taken seriously as a community if we speak with broadly similar voices on major topics. We would also be in a better position to establish clear guidelines for people coming fresh to the Pagan path as to what is, and is not Pagan. Further we would be in a position to have a voice in societal debates on significant ethical and moral issues that might further the environmental and societal ideologies within Paganism. Of course there are also potential downsides, primarily that in order to achieve some commonality there will inevitably be some people who currently identify as Pagan who find that their particular beliefs are no longer compatible with accepted Pagan beliefs. There is also the question of how you could achieve a consensus view on any given topic across a broad enough range of Pagan voices, and of course the perennial problem of “Pagan Police” in terms of how any such decisions would be enforced.

Not an easy position to achieve, and one that is perhaps subject to a great many frustrations and disputes, but it is possible I think that the benefits would outweigh the costs. Turning instead to the idea of Paganism remaining individuated we have potential to allow what for me is one of the guiding principles of Paganism, freedom of expression and belief at an individual level. It also allows us as a community to welcome a wider variety of people seeking an alternative path to mainstream religion. I would argue that it also allows for greater freedom of expression in terms of open debate and the potential for unforced consensus, but there are again potential negatives. If we are free to pick and choose our individual beliefs, ethics and morals then we allow for the possibility that some of the beliefs may be detrimental to the view of Paganism from an external perspective. We also allow for the possibility of the development of irresolvable differences of opinion and the associated collateral damage to the Pagan community. We also have to consider the possibility that we will end up with a Pagan movement that serves no purpose other than to be a series of lone voices calling in different directions to no overall effect and the breakdown of any remnants of community that we may have.

It is a thorny issue perhaps, and possibly not one with a simple answer, but I thought it might make for interesting debate, and it may tie in with thoughts on Pagan links to Inter-Faith groups….do we have a place within them if we don’t have a consensus position on major issues…..Just a few of my own thoughts…..

Does it matter whether you take from a documentary what you are supposed to take?

This may seem like an odd question given that documentaries are supposed by default to be impartial accounts of events and situations, but I have long held the view, and I accept that this may not be the case with all documentary writers and producers, that often the maker of the documentary has a journalistic eye to a story and has already reached some conclusions about the subject matter and as a consequence whether consciously or sub-consciously the maker will produce a documentary that matches their own point of view. It is a similar issue to one seen in experimental science where an experimenter has an expectation of certain results and is more likely to see those results whether they are accurate or not. I don’t necessarily see this as a major issue, just something worth bearing in mind as you read this.

The upshot of this point is that often in a documentary there will be certain points that the viewer is supposed to take away from it, and potentially some conclusion that the viewer is supposed to draw. There was a good example of this last night on Channel 4’s documentary of Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Now, I should point out that I am aware broadly of Mr Assange, and the controversy surrounding him. I keep roughly up to date on the news and read Private Eye with whom he has had correspondence, and I am aware of Wikileaks as a phenomena and the type of material being leaked. I was interested more in my reaction to the programme since it appeared that the aim was to draw the viewer into the World of media ethics and to suggest Assange as a master manipulator who acted in his own interests at all times. This was not, however, what I took away from it.

There were several points that I felt were more powerful within the piece. The one that stood out more than anything else was that there was an apparent disconnect between the role that Assange had described for himself, and the role that he appears to have taken. He seemed to be suggesting himself as an engineer of information, gathering pieces of data from a variety of sources, cross checking facts and verifying information before presenting it to the public through both his own site and the mainstream media. What appeared to be the case was that he was indeed an engineer of sorts but perhaps more a social engineer. The implication of the documentary was that a large part of the leaked material had come from one primary source, potentially a somewhat naïve young military intelligence officer in the US military who was groomed by a hacker and intelligence operative in an online chatroom.

These documents ended up with Assange through his personal social network and he then groomed a somewhat overeager media to act on his behalf to disseminate the information. What this left me with the impression of was the intrinsic greed and gullibility of senior players in the global media, the interesting approach to ethics of the intelligence community, and the play of personal ego in dealings of this nature. I’m not actually that interested in the bulk of the Wikileaks material. I know that it has caused a stir, but to my way of thinking, if you are not already aware that in war there is going to be collateral damage, that young men and guns lead to dead civilians, that covert units exist in most modern armies, that covert units are used to “take out” key targets, that casualty figures are generally not accurate during times of war and that diplomats who tend to be in post as a consequence of nepotism rather than ability, and whose exposure to real life has been at public school and Oxbridge tend to be somewhat less than complimentary about each other and tend to indulge in the sort of name calling and general bitchiness more usually associated with “chav” girl gangs then you are probably not the sort of person to whom this information is relevant. And if you are aware of those things then the leaks will probably only have served as confirmation and are therefore largely irrelevant. Just my opinions.

So, the upshot of all this is that rather than take away the idea that Mr Assange is not a very nice man and has few in any scruples, what I took away was that in the main media people who should know better are not that savvy, that computer geeks tend to make poor activists due to a lack of ethics, and that on the whole the Wikileaks drama was just that, a drama, as in something that was carefully scripted to lead the viewer through a story more for entertainment than any genuine desire to inform. If information was the primary goal then producing something that genuinely caused national shock and consternation would probably have been a better idea. Personally I can’t wait for the UFO leaks – now those will be funny…..

War Metal – Defeating the Tremor Wyrm

“Come on! Move move move! Defensive formations!”

The alarm sirens blared out their warning dragging me from a fitful sleep, a glance at the clock telling me that it was still the middle of the night. A shudder shook the chamber of the trench that I called home these days, the trench forming part of the defenses around the encampment, a twelve acre patch of what used to be Dallas back when place names had any meaning. To me it had only ever been camp 2156 in the Southern Sector, but that’s another story. For now the sirens meant only one thing. The camp, my home, was under attack and the shuddering ground told me all I needed to know. The attack was a part of the recent spate of attacks across similar camps to this moving up from the Blightlands further South.

As a part of the camps defensive team it was my job to front up and face this threat, as we faced any threat to our little community, but unlike the inter camp squabbles over precious resources this was going to be something else entirely. We had all heard the stories. The ground starts shaking, cracks appear then blinding panic and terror as the beast emerges from the earth. This was nothing that had any place on Earth, nothing that could have developed on our little planet. This beast was big and nasty and lethally dangerous and no-one seemed to know where it had come from or what it wanted other than to destroy us. We found out later but for now all I could do was grab my weapons and head out to my post.

I’m part of the team that has been working on setting up the camp defenses and my post was in the Command Centre bastion organizing the robotic defences that could be the only thing that would save us. It had taken us a long time to recreate the technology for our robotic units and they were still pretty basic compared with what we had developed before the Big Blast, a handful of gun spiders, a few exterminators and a bunch of the older dreadnaught units that we had managed to rebuild. The biggest challenge had been finding alternative power sources. The Big Blast had taken out everything electronic and we just didn’t have a way of generating power that was reliable even when we could repair stuff. I guess that was where I came into my own originally and what made me valuable to the camp.

My background is in ecological sciences and I was able to piece together algae tanks that produced methane gas as a by-product. Working with Natasha we had managed to use the methane to power gas turbines and generate just enough power to get our modest force up and running but it was pretty much Jerry rigged from the outset. Our robotic units were up to managing a basic defense perimeter but we hadn’t managed to get to anywhere the levels of AI that we had before and all of the control of the units had to be done remotely over fibre optic links. Not ideal since it only took a damaged cable to render a unit inoperable.

I got to the Control Centre and punched in the access code, breaching the security doors just as a tremendous blast ripped through the square outside. Just as the doors clanged shut I got my first glimpse of the beast, the Tremor Wyrm as it tore its way free of the earth and crashed down in the middle of the camp. I sprinted to my post and grabbed the control panel for my units, furiously typing instructions to bring what firepower I had to bear on the monstrous bulk of the Wyrm trying at least to draw its attention from creating carnage all around it. I opened up with all I had, the gattling cannons of the dreadnaughts and exterminators rattling like crazy each cannon pumping out thousands of rounds a minute into the body of the beast as the gun spiders rushed forward, their flame cannons spitting fury.

The Wyrm roared defiance into the night sky and crashed down crushing several of the units utterly, the explosions seeming to have no effect of the monster, but as I watched my monitors and saw screen after screen blank out I heard something, a rushing, screaming sound out of the sky, and looked through my porthole to see something that made my heart leap….maybe we did have a chance! Out of the West, coming in at incredible speed was a flight of combat drones and at their head was a machine I had only ever heard in tall tales around the fire….the Cerberus! It could only mean one thing, there was only one group that could possibly have the power to come to our aid with that force, Lord Alexander! We had all shared the stories of this great warlord, powerful beyond anything we could compare to, well organised, disciplined with the resources to mount a serious challenge to pretty much anyone and as his flight passed over the camp and the missles started to rain down on the Wyrm I heard the rallying cry of our troop commanders and saw a figure at the head of a platoon of bazooka marines – Anastasia! Leading from the front as always, her very presence lending strength to the assault as the Wyrm tried to retreat but it was just too late…..

At once, the Wyrm roars in defeat, opening its massive maw in one final cry of anguish. As it comes crashing down, the brief silence is drowned out by the rallying victory song of your comrades. The mile-long husk of a battered Tremor Wyrm is trophy enough - we are victorious!

Thoughts on coaching and mentoring younger staff

So, as part of my many and various roles over the years I have had the pleasure and indeed the privilege of helping junior staff members along the rocky road of the early career, and in so doing I have come to one or two conclusions. Now, bear in mind that my background is pretty much straight sales. I don’t hold much with this current business development stuff, it’s sales, get over it and move on, but that’s another rant for another post. I mention it because coming from a sales background, most of the training and mentoring that I have done has been based around sales, and that’s telesales, inbound and outbound, with a little customer service, just ‘cause I could, account management, internal and external, field sales, the whole ball of wax when it comes to sales, and for my sins I love it. I love the thrill of the chase, the exciting as a deal closes, the awwwww noooo moment of the one that got away and having to pick yourself up and get on with the next deal, and I think it is that passion that has helped formulate my conclusions.

I got told early on, and I’ve been told many times since that sales people are born, not made, but my conclusion is that this is just so much hot air, propogated by people who just can’t train worth a damn! Anyone can sell, and sell well. The keys to successful selling are twofold. Firstly the ability to communicate and secondly the ability to be resilient. Lets have a look at these in a little more detail. Communication first, and the most important aspect of this is to remember that communication is a two way process and that listening is at least as important as talking. Sure, you may want to get the information you want to convey over to the potential customer as quickly as possible to move on to the next call and keep your call numbers up, but if you aren’t talking to your contact for at least five minutes you are probably wasting your time. People want to feel special and important and if you make them feel rushed they will never come across with the order you want from them. Take your time, understand your client, let them talk but stay in control of the conversation.

This latter part is just as important as having a two way conversation. Never forget you have a job to do. You need to get that sale or at least make progress towards it. This comes in a couple of parts. Whether or not you are in charge of the conversation is a function of the first few seconds of the phone call. Sound positive, sound efficient, sound businesslike and make sure your purpose is clear. If you can get this right your job is more than halfway done. The second part of this is to have a clear plan, possibly even a script worked out so that you are clear in how you want the conversation to go and where you want it to end up. If you can establish control and steer the conversation you stand a pretty good chance of getting what you want, and anyone can do this, we do it every day talking to family and friends, you just need to tweak and tailor it to a business setting.

The resilience can be far more of a stumbling block early on. It is true to say that to succeed in sales in the mid to long term you need to develop a thick skin, or at least to allow the calls that don’t go so well to wash off you like water off a ducks back rather than sitting on your shoulders dragging you down. Each call is unique and once a call is done, make the notes you need then clear any negativity from your mind before you make the next call. You’d be amazed how easily people pick up on someone having a bad day, whether on the phone or face to face so don’t give your client the opportunity. There is a saying in telesales, dial with a smile, and that isn’t just hot air, it really does make a difference. Be expansive with your gestures, even though the other person can’t see them, it will make your end of the conversation feel more natural and less stilted and can make a tremendous difference. So can changing your position can help to, standing up for example, or sitting up properly in your chair. It may sound silly but try it, it really works.

These are things that anyone can be trained to improve in, and to be successful at, irrespective of background or confidence level or experience. When training and particularly mentoring take time, don’t rush things, don’t get impatient, and above all take every opportunity to give positive feedback. It makes giving the necessary negative so much easier for the trainee to take in and absorb.

Developing a coherent business strategy

I am often asked what the key to a developing a successful strategy for a business is, and after giving the usual stock answers that all consultants give I actually started to think about it and wondered if, as with so many things there are some, for want of a better word, universal strategies that are crucial for any company, whether a new start up or a multi-national. It seemed like a fair challenge given the differences in structure, operation, wants, needs and so on across the vast spectra of business types and models, but an interesting project none the less. I started by thinking about businesses in general terms. Are there things which businesses want and need that are common to all businesses and which can be clearly defined. This second criteria was crucial as you could argue that all businesses want to be successful, and start building a strategy structure around that premise but it wouldn’t be universally applicable because success to one company is not success to another.

An example. Lets take company A, a new start up, reasonably backed and with a good business idea and a clear business plan, and company B a large multi-national plc with 100 years trading and a global presence. Success to company A is almost certainly surviving the first year intact, probably coupled with establishing a firm base from which to move forward. Company Bs success criteria are measured by returns to shareholders, profitability, environmental impact, cost reductions and so on. In other words a completely different set of objectives which are unlikely to be reached by a single strategy applicable to both companies. So lets refine our business needs. All businesses need to operate solvently. It is a legal requirement for a trading business to be able to pay its staff and cover its short term liabilities. What else? All businesses need to be able to plan effectively so they need some sort of reporting structure in terms of financials, productivity and so on. Anything else? All businesses need to know their current position in order to plan effectively. Knowledge is power after all.

So you can see how it is possible to begin to draw together some business commonalities that can have if not universal, then certainly broad brush coverage, being applicable to a large range of business types and sizes. The next step is to try to analyse these needs and further the wants of businesses and to try to find strategies that are fundamental to allowing those needs to be achieved. Here there is a crucial point to make to avoid further challenges moving forward. It is crucial to allow any strategic concept to fit into place comfortably. There can be a tremendous temptation to take a pet strategy and try to force it to fit as one might try to force the wrong piece of a jigsaw to fit. At the core of finding coherence in strategic planning is scrupulous honesty on the part of the analyst in terms of assessing whether a particular strategy fits or not. It can be extremely tempting to carry a strategy that we know has worked elsewhere and to “fudge” the prevailing situation to make that strategy appropriate. This is setting up for a fall.

Another example. There is a huge amount of industry buzz amongst consultants around six sigma process transformation. Let us be clear, six sigma was a Motorola project of the 1970’s specifically designed to reduce component manufacturing component failure to 0.0034% or 66 failures per 1000000 components produced. There are arguments over the success or otherwise of the programme for Motorola but it seems likely that it had an impact. However, there has been an increasing tendency for all transformation projects to require six sigma green and black belts and to be pre-destined to follow a six sigma path. This has been seen across industry sectors from manufacturing to services and across business scales from multi-nationals to SME’s. This is clearly a nonsense since the strategy was designed and developed to address a very specific business need within a very specific environment. How can it possibly be translatable without significant modification not simply in the roll-out of the strategy but in the underlying principles thereby rendering it something completely different. It is akin to you and I deciding to communicate in English but you having all of my work translated into Chinese – it is a questionable conceit at best.

So, how do we address the development of strategy from a start point of mutually shared business goals. Well, lets take the example of the need to establish a base of knowledge from which to plan forward. Here we see sub needs of establishing clear communication within the organization across stakeholder groups, a need for accurate and timely reporting of key information, an understanding of what that key information in and who it should be reported to, a standardization of reporting material such that it is understood correctly by all stakeholders and a clear understanding of what this information is to be used for coupled with a clear understanding of why it is important. Having established these criteria it becomes clear that the strategy required is a combination of stakeholder training in terms of communication and analytical ability, analysis of any bottlenecks in communication, addressing any areas of weakness and putting in place an atmosphere of mutual support throughout the process. Part of this is understanding that beyond the business needs being addressed there are individual stakeholder needs which may or may not fit comfortably alongside the business needs but also need to be brought into alignment.

You can see that there is at least the possibility of best fit strategy, and in finding a genuine best fit, the possibility of developing a cross sector coherence. Interesting stuff methinks…..

War Metal – Beginnings

Peaceful days are few and far between. We watch the vids sometimes, our link to how it was before, to how it used to be, and we understand that what we see, the blue skys, the lush vegetation, the happy smiling people can never be again, but we know that we can be better than we are, that we can make a difference, that we can learn to smile again….

I’m no student of history, certainly not on a par with Sirius or Natasha. If you want the full story you’ll have to talk to them, but from what I have pieced together it began a couple of hundred years ago in 1947, July if you want to get picky about it, at a place called Roswell, in what used to be America. For years before that there had been rumours and news stories and books and stories about flying saucers and aliens and life in distant galaxies, other Worlds, and those in charge had always poured scorn on anyone who made claims of contact with such beings. It was all nonsense or disinformation or conspiracy. We were alone in Gods Universe and even if we weren’t the distances of interstellar space were simply too vast for other beings to cross them.

Even after 1947 we were told that there was no story, that aliens didn’t exist, but we know now that what came down in the desert outside Roswell was just a foretaste of the nightmare that was to come. Maybe if our governments had been straight with us, maybe if our scientists had been let in on the secret earlier, maybe if we had had time to prepare things would have been different, but that’s a lot of maybes, and maybes don’t feed the family baby so lets move right along. The long and the short of it is that our leaders lied to us. There were aliens out there, and they were visiting us, and they had made contact. Fact. Period. What isn’t so clear is that it appears there isn’t just one alien species but thousands, some peaceful, some not. We met the peaceful ones first, they tried to warn us but we didn’t get a chance to listen. It wasn’t long before the other sort showed up….

Timeslip here, we’ve left 1947 behind by a hundred years or so. The history is a bit messed up and that’s our fault pretty much but it turns out that we were a pretty messed up species ourselves. As a species we’d been squabbling over bits of land since we were developed enough to bang two rocks together but as things started to get real tough, as the water and the oil and the food started to run out things got pretty nasty for a while. See, we’d developed some pretty badass weapons, at least we thought we had, but more of that later, We had these nukes and stuff that could big time mess up your day and when things got ugly it turns out that the threat of mutually assured destruction was not such a deterrent after all. I guess some people just get so desperate that they can’t see another way. Anyhoo, no-one really knows how it kicked off, some say the Russians, some the Chinese, so say it was a rogue state, doesn’t matter I guess ‘cause what was left made picking up the pieces something of a challenge.

Turns out nukes have three effects. The initial blast wave is pretty devastating to anyone within a handful of miles of the detonation. The radiation is a bit more problematic over a wider area, but what was the real killer was the electromagnetic pulse that fried most of the electronics. We’d taken it for granted that we had all these machines that monitored the planet, satellites and what not, I ain’t that technical, so ‘scuse me for not knowing all about it, but it looks like there were things lurking about out in space that were just waiting for an opportunity to come have a look at a prime piece of real estate called planet Earth. The fact that it was fire damaged only made it more attractive I guess. Maybe they were looking for a fixer upper? I don’t know. Whatever, it was three weeks after the big blast as I understand it that the tremors started. Wherever folks had banded together in group they started to feel these like earthquakes. I guess they must have assumed they were aftershocks, that old Mother Earth was shaking her good self like a dog with fleas after the mess we had made.

That wasn’t it at all though. Not being able to communicate effectively over any distance was the real bitch. No-one knew that an encampment had been attacked until long after it had happened, but I’ve seen the drawing that the few messengers who did make it out made. They come in the night mostly. The ground shakes gradually worse and worse then tears open right under the centre of the camp and this thing emerges, maybe a hundred feet long, maybe bigger, I guess no-one ever bothered to measure one. I guess the name comes from the ground shaking before they appear but whatever they ended up with a name that doesn’t really do justice to them but hey, I’m just a grunt, what to I know. Anyway, good name or not just pray you never have to face a Tremor Wyrm……They can be defeated, we kill ‘em when we can, and we’re getting better at it, but that’s a story for another day…..

Problems in the labour market….

There is an increasing groundswell of talented, experience, well qualified people who are losing their jobs and finding it difficult to find suitable alternatives. This is something that our political leaders seem to have issues understanding. There is constant talk of the rise in levels of unemployment masking the increase in the number of jobs available and that this discrepancy needs to be addressed. There is also a lot of spin around the idea that people are not prepared to take jobs which they consider beneath them. This, to me, is far more about blame shifting than any real phenomena of significance. I am one of those who are in this position. A previous high flyer with a strong sales career I had to take a career break to nurse my father through terminal cancer. Unfortunately this is something which is frowned upon within the corporate World but that’s another story, the upshot being that I am left at thirty nine years of age pretty much unemployable.

To some of you that may sound like an odd statement or a defeatist attitude but let me give you a little of the feedback that I get from the many interviews that I attend. Bear in mind as I do this that I manage to secure on average three interviews a week from an average of thirty two job applications. Can you tell that I like organised figures? These figures tell you one thing straight away. The powers that be are correct, there are job vacancies out there. In sufficient numbers that some weeks I can apply for fifty jobs that I am suitably qualified for. The number of vacancies is not the issue. The issue is that I am not alone in applying for those jobs. I had a chat with a recruiter for a pretty mundane sort of job. A telesales role for a finance company. She had had in excess of two hundred and fifty applicants for the role and was interviewing the top thirty. Pretty stiff competition.

I use this particular vacancy as an example because it highlights the root of the problem as I experience it. Bear in mind that I have fifteen years of solid, verifiable sales experience. I have managed and trained telesales teams. I have written successful telesales scripts. In short I could do this job standing on my head, and yet I didn’t get it. The reason, and being a salesman I’m pretty good at drawing out of people what they are actually thinking, was that the recruiter felt that I would be bored in the role and would move on after six months thereby wasting any time they invested in training me. They went with an eighteen year old straight out of school. Now the recruiter was at least partially correct, the job would not have presented a significant challenge to mje and so could perhaps have been described as boring, but this fails to take into account my professionalism which would mean that no matter how mundane the job I do it to the best of my ability.

The story is the same wherever I go. I am too experienced, too qualified, too high powered, whatever the reason the consequence is the same. Thank, but no thanks. This is the first time that I have been out of work. I don’t like it. I’m happy to take on any role from floor sweeper to managing director and I’m equally qualified to do either role having started me working life sweeping up on stable yards and having at various points in my career run departments and categories taking high level strategic decisions. So, I know from my own experience that there is a discrepancy between the idea of large sections of the unemployed being too picky, and recruiters with vacancies looking for the youngest, cheapest and easiest to dominate employees. Perhaps this will change as I am convinced that companies are missing out on a vast pool of talent that is available at a price point that has never been seen before. There are a lot of desperate people out there who are a bit older, a bit wiser and will work harder and smarter than you might think if you just give us a chance….

A Samhain story

Sitting with legs splayed, quietly contemplating the season, the tools before me, simple tools for the coming ritual, a hardwood rod and carved softwood board, a pile of dry grass and a stack of small twigs and larger pieces of wood. Not typical ritual tools but the tools that have defined the development of mankind beyond the beasts, the tools that allow man to make fire….

I clear my mind as I focus my attention on taking up the rod and positioning the tip carefully into the carved slot of the friction board, the sexual symbolism of the movement and position not lost on me, the potency of the act of creating fire linking in my subconscious with the act of creating life, that most sacred of unions between the male and female energies.

I grip the rod firmly between my outstretched hands and slowly at first begin to rub the rod twisting it and pushing down into the receiving slot, the vigour of my movements becoming more and more frenetic as the rod seats properly within the groove. My mind, focused on this one task is freed of all other thoughts and fears and images start to form unbidden, soft voices at the very limits of audibility whisper, and as the first wisps of smoke start to rise from the wood strange shapes twist in the cold air, faces long past, animal and human forms, strange, misshapen creations of a still mind.

The friction of the wood creates a dark dust of carbonised punk, and within the dust as the heat of the friction rises a coal begins to form, glowing softly red within the inky black pile. I lean forward gently collecting the glowing ember, holding my breath as I ease it from the softwood board into the pile of dry grass tinder, cushioning and wrapping it carefully, before exhaling, blowing softly at first then harder as the heat from the ember causes the grass to catch, the voices rising in volume, in tone, in urgency as the point of combustion  draws near, hundreds, thousands of voices, and the voices become clear, the connection between my act of tribute of lighting my fire and the acts carried out by my ancestors forging the bridge between worlds.

The dry grass catches, flames leap and are transferred almost reverentially to the pile of small twigs, my attention focused as I softly give breath to the fire watching it catch as the voices reach a crescendo before falling silent as I sit back, the warmth of the fire chasing the chill night from my bones, the flames dancing making patterns before my eyes, the smoke rising, curling into the starry sky, and as my mind opens and my spirit reaches out from the world of the living one final voice, soft as down, faint as a sigh, calls my name and I respond…..

“Hello Mom, I miss you”

The urge to be creative….

It is something that every child seems to possess in abundance, the creative urge. The ability to take a cardboard box and transform it into a racing car, a fairytale castle, a pirate ship, a spaceship, and to create and enjoy adventures in the mind and to weave stories around those adventures. The ability to make magic from the mundane, to take the World apart in the mind and reshape it and mould it into something new and exciting. You see it in every play group and playground throughout nursery and infant school and it still hangs on in pockets in junior school, but it seems to gradually tail off with the onset of the more structured learning of late junior school and certainly senior school. There has been a tremendous amount of research, some good, some not so good into areas such as learning through play, and self regulated learning for older children, and throughout the home schooling movement into maintaining and even enhancing this creativity throughout childhood.

Reports of the results of these experiments in childcare and education are mixed, with some proponents of the various systems claiming some amazing results and opponents tending to be rather more dismissive. Unbiased opinion tends to appear hard to come by as disagreements over impartiality are commonplace. An investigation of the research suggests that there are benefits and disadvantages to encouraging creativity as one would expect with any education system. The benefits are suggested to go beyond simply increasing the levels of creativity, not simply in the artistic disciplines but further into the sciences, languages and the humanities to include an increased encouragement to learn and explore concepts and an increased capacity to create the links between knowledge and understanding that are generally accepted to be crucial to learning more complex theories and concepts in later education.

On the downside there are numerous reports of increases in challenging behaviours, particularly in questioning authority figures, and increased difficulty in social integration in the context of mixing with people, and particularly other children who have not been exposed to similar learning strategies. There have been limited studies into the success of children educated using enhanced creativity techniques in later life as opposed to those educated with more traditional techniques but of course such studies are fundamentally open to dispute since every child is individual anyway, and it is difficult to extrapolate the extent to which education style has influenced end result. There is little evidence to suggest that a creative learning strategy enhances post education performance even in creative fields once factors such as socio-economic background, parental involvement and teacher quality are factored in.

So it appears that being creative is something that we all to a greater or lesser extent lose as we grow older, but conversely there is often a re-flowering of creativity later in life. It is often seen post forty years as people begin to become established in their careers and have a little more free time and increases towards retirement. There are suggestions that this is a part of the “mid-life crisis” but I feel that this is to mis-understand the strength of the creative drive, and also its fragility. Stress and a sense of lack of time are anathema to creativity unless that creativity is your primary occupation. Professional authors talk of having to work to deadlines, painters talk about the quality lent by pressure and time constraints and this is perfectly understandable. Many people work best under pressure in their primary occupation, but when that creative outlet is a hobby, the setting of deadlines whether real or artificial can lead almost inevitability to sterility of thought and a binding of creativity. My personal belief is that unless you make creativity your primary function adding pressure to the mix is detrimental.

I am happy to debate this latter point…..

Thoughts on creating an effective group dynamic for discussion groups

There are many ways in which groups, both large and small can operate more or less effectively within a set of dynamics. I have been running discussion groups for a number of years and these have their own specific requirements and styles in which they operate best. In general terms you will find that for every ten people within the group there is one prolific contributor, three or four moderate contributors and the remainder occasional contributors or observers. This suggests ideal group sizes of between twenty and thirty people, beyond this control becomes difficult, and this size group also allows for those who are more forceful at putting their ideas across being controlled more effectively to allow those more reticent or hesitant a opportunity to voice opinion. This question of control leads on to a rather thorny issue. That of who controls the group. In an ideal situation the group is self managed internally with each member aware of all of the other members and their particular strengths and weaknesses and almost instinctively making allowances for these.

However, we are all aware that this is not an ideal world, and certainly when the discussion turns to something more heated, the concept of sharing of ideas or even time can be somewhat lacking as each speaker strives to get their point across. There have been a variety of methods tried to maintain some semblance of control within heated discussions, from the implementation of a timing bell, to the passing of a talking stick or similar token, to the appointment of a chairman whose role is to organise and control each speaker and the subsequent interjections. All of these can at times feel unnatural and forced and can limit or impede the flow of discussion and lend an artificiality to the debate. One method that does seem to have let to more engaging and productive discussions is the debate method particularly on more contentious issues such as those where there is a clear delineation between two or more sets of beliefs and argument and counter argument can be established and debated.

This tends to draw the loudest voices to a focus whereby they are limited in their input by time constraints and if they are effectively managed as primary speakers, others have a better opportunity to contribute. It can feel a little schoolroom-ish but this is not necessarily a bad thing in the context of a discussion or debate that is aimed at a less experienced audience who are looking to learn as part of a group process. Of course, part of this process raises another potential area of interest, that of subject matter. There are a vast range of potential topics in most subject areas, but particularly within discussions around Paganism and it can be quite intimidating perhaps to be thrust into a debate without some prior notice of the subject area. Again experience has shown that when there is an effective group size good work can be achieved by having a discussion about the topics to be discussed and formulating a list of discussions and debates and possibly presentations to encourage more regular attendance and perhaps more structured discussion since people are actively encouraged to do a little research for themselves.

Again this can have the negative consequence of feeling a little like homework, but for me this depends on the context of the group. Most people join a group firstly for fellowship in whatever form that is defined and secondly to understand a little more about what they do and what others do. This is the essence of socialisation and is for me at the core of most pagan groups, the opportunity to learn together as a group. Of course the biggest problem facing any sort of discussion group is membership. All of the opportunities to have organised discussions and debates are predicated on there being sufficient regular attendees in order to allow a structure to develop and for each individual within the group to derive benefit from their association with the group. It is something which should be addressed as part of the process of establishing a productive group in the first place.

Finding a route through the ethical maze….

The way in which modern Western society operates at its’ most fundamental levels from bottom to top from small business to multi-national corporates seems to be founded on lies and mis-direction. We are told that we live in a stable society where every person is valued and respected as an individual and everyone is considered equally when making decisions. However it is patently obvious that this is simply not the case. Let us consider the position of the poorest members of society, often those most in need of assistance through a lack of education, or a lack of provision for those with mental and physical conditions that present difficulties in finding employment. In terms of housing these people are at the mercy of private landlords as there is inadequate council owned property for them. When it comes to fuel these groups are forced to take pre-pay meters which offer the highest rates of energy prices making fuel, already a significant proportion of income for low income households, even more expensive for those who can least afford to pay. Then we have food prices. Inflation is on the rise anyway, but inflation overall is nothing when compared to the price increases in individual staples such as bread, vegetables and most significantly meat. This creates yet more discrepancy since as a proportion of income food becomes a luxury rather than a necessity.

We then look within companies and see a vast number of small businesses taking advantage of the current dire circumstances of many unemployed but employable workers with people being taken on on month long unpaid work trials which end up getting extended and even when people are taken on the supposed minimum wage is largely ignored. Consider my own position. I have now been with a company for eighteen months and have in total received somewhere in the region of four thousand pounds for my labours, with typical hours being fifty plus a week. This is not simple grunt work to make it clear. This is project and production management at a web design company combined with creative content writing. How is this flagrant breach of company law possible you might ask. You’d probably be surprised how many companies are making their staff take self-employed roles to avoid paying tax, national insurance and minimum wage. But in desperate times what exactly are employees to do?

And then we come to the biggest minefield of all. The issue of debt. There are suggestions that the current governments growth and economic figures are based on an increase in consumer debt from the current trillion pound levels. There are two issues with this, firstly the banks are becoming less and less willing to lend to individuals and businesses and the cost of borrowing is increasing despite continuing record low bank of England base rates of 0.5%, and secondly people are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with their current debt levels let alone taking on more as jobs and wages are consistently squeezed. Evidence for this is the massive increase in advertising for “Cash for gold” and similar services and the proliferation of “Off high street” “payday loan” lenders offering phenomenal interest rates if debts are not repaid in the very short term.

This position is not sustainable and there is yet another economic black hole being created beyond the obvious European one. It is unlikely that we will avoid this one as we seem politically set on a course that will make another yet deeper crash inevitable.

So how does one navigate through this minefield to find an path which allows for the retention of ethics and moral standards when all around we see a degradation of these standards in daily public and private life? It is never easy, but each of us has a moral compass. We don’t need to be told what is right and what is wrong at a fundamental level. We each need to live for ourselves and for those immediately around us first and try to make sure that at each step we take we are being true to ourselves and our moral compass as we understand it. This smacks of anarchy, but when the leaders are playing by their own rules, how can they expect their followers to do any different?

Unexpected benefits of playing War Metal…

Ok, so I confess that I take gaming perhaps a little to seriously sometimes. I perhaps get a bit competitive and try a little too hard, but I’m like that in pretty much everything I do. I was a nightmare to work alongside, I won’t say with because I’m not someone who plays well with others, when I was working in a competitive sales environment. Now I’m not saying that I would steal a colleagues sale or anything underhand, but I didn’t take being beaten well, so I tended not to be beaten even if that meant working twenty hour days or whatever. My gaming follows the same pattern. Do to circumstances beyond my control I am pretty much washed up in terms of employment at the age of forty, finding out the hard way that if you put your family before your career when you are in the corporate World you not only don’t get anywhere, but you end up out on the street, but hey, I may be competitive but I have ethics which I try to hold fast to. What this means though is that I am not in a position to contribute much in terms of money to the game I love, I can’t afford to buy very many War Chips but I would if I could. This means that I can’t really hope to compete with players who can. Now you may think that as a competitive soul that this would annoy me, but it doesn’t seem to, and I’m beginning to get an idea of why.

Anyway, I digress, as is often the way, I was meant to be talking about the unexpected benefits of playing War Metal here, right? So, I have been playing for a while now and I seem to be doing ok. I’ve racked up a thousand plus kills, my win to loss ratio in PvP is pretty good, and my progress through epics and missions is going ok. At level 145ish I can do reasonable damage in Swarms, Chimera, Wyrms, Kraken and XMS and I reckon a couple of months and I’ll be competing in Titans at a respectable level which seems pretty reasonable. I’m not far off getting onto the leaderboard for my tier in PvP battle victories either, so all in all my competitive nature is quite nicely assuaged. What is interesting though is that in order to achieve this I am finding that I have to keep a pretty sharp eye on the game when I am playing. Particularly with events like Kraken and Titan, and even Swarms and Chimera if you aren’t in quick you miss out. This means that when I have chance to play I often have a couple of windows open, one with my groups up so I can see new Epics being posted, one with the game itself so I can follow PvP battles and one with the Wiki open so I can target mission tokens. All of this activity means that for the first time in many years I am actually being successful health wise on two fronts.

Firstly, I am drastically cutting down on my smoking, to the point that I have almost given up, and you know what? I’m not missing it anything like as much as I have done in the past. And this is without any nicotine replacement therapy or anything else. Just a bit of willpower and a focus on the game that is distracting me from my cravings. The second benefit is that I was finding that my age old habit of snacking pretty much continuously was interfering with my ability to follow the game and keep pace with the faster Epics, so I’m snacking less and I’ve dropped fifty pounds in a little over six months which is pretty good going I think.

So thank you Alex and your developer team for providing an engaging and stimulating game that is keeping me occupied in my free time to the extent that my health and consequently my happiness is improving week on week. Keep up the good work guys…..

Finding motivation…..

Some days it can be pretty difficult to get going. There can be many reasons for this, tiredness, aches and pains, ill health, laziness even, but perhaps the hardest to overcome is a lack of motivation. This in itself can have a number of causes, from depression through to lack of incentive. Most are possible to overcome with a bit of effort, but the issue becomes more recalcitrant when there are several causes operating simultaneously. Take this morning for example. I am in a pretty bad mood to begin with having once again been lied to regarding promises made on Friday. These lies have additionally meant that I have not had any resources to have a single moment of pleasure over the weekend but rather have spent it worrying and stressing which has led to lack of sleep and tiredness. This hasn’t been helpful to my ongoing depression which has taken yet another downward turn in its never ending spiral into the abyss.

So, I force myself out of bed, shower, dress, get to the bus, the bus I am forced to take not being able to afford to run a car for the first time in twenty years because after eighteen months I’m still not getting paid anything like what I have been promised, yet another lie. And I get to work, unhappy, stressed, tired, fairly down and I’m immediately greeted by another lie. Do people think I’m dense, stupid, slow witted? I’m presented with a piece of work so obviously plagiarized it is ridiculous and the senior person presents it as their own work. I wouldn’t mind so much but what they had done in using this other companies work is correct. We are outsourcing to them so it makes sense to use their template for pricing so why even bother to try to pass it off as your own? It is ridiculous and petty and yet another example of how lying becomes a habit.

This is followed up by a complete lack of apology for the lies of Friday, and yet more promises which will undoubtedly turn out to be lies. Really it is entirely my own fault for letting this situation develop to the point that it has, but am I really to blame? I have no real, viable choice but to be here until I can find something else. From experience I know that should I leave and return to the unemployment queues I will once again fall through the cracks in the benefit system and have no income. No change over my current position except that I will have the additional stress of a lot more time on my hands and the associated depression spike that that brings. So do I stick it out and put up with the lies on the off chance that the situation might improve? Or do I bite the bullet and force myself to leave whilst I still have a shred of dignity left and try once again to spin the wheel of fate and see where I land this time?

I think the choice is becoming more clear, but the thing about depression and lack of motivation is that it is wearing on the very soul and it dulls the mind to the point when any decision is unlikely to be the correct one…..such is life….

Thoughts on Druidry

Of all of the structured Pagan paths it could be argued that Druidry is the most established and perhaps most widely recognised. From the perspective of acceptance by national legislature the Druid movement is accepted as a religion from the perspective of the charity commission, the first, and so far only path to gain such recognition. There are a number of well established and well respected Druid orders around the World, and the origins of the reconstruction of a Druid faith go back to the pre-Raphaelite art movement and the Romantics of the 17^th Century. There are also suggestions that Druid colleges continued in Ireland and North Wales through the dark ages although this is contentious and if it were the case would almost certainly have been a Christianised version of Druidry following the Celtic rather than the Roman Catholic Christianity.

Druidry seeks to promote a spiritual engagement with and attachment to the land and the ancestors and an understanding of mans place in the natural environment and the need to live sustainably. As with all Pagan paths there are areas of Druidry which are at best contentious. The linking of Druidry to the building of Stonehenge is rather unlikely given the archaeological evidence that the monument is Neolithic/Bronze age in date whereas the evidence suggests that Druidry was far later being Iron Age, a difference of some 1500 years. The suggestions, now largely dismissed by serious scholars that there is a continuing thread of Druidry from the Iron Age to the current are similarly unlikely, and it would make more sense to suggest a reconstruction, largely by Christian theologians in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

The principles of Druidry are of a training system with an aim of selecting and preparing people within communities or tribes to fulfill the role of priest, possible judge, possibly healer, advisor and intermediary in negotiation with other tribal groups. The training system as it currently operates within the better know Druid groups tends to be three levels, bards, ovates and druids. Bards are considered to be the storytellers and songmakers, responsible for carrying knowledge and information in a pre-literate society. Competitions amongst bards take the form of Eisteddfods common throughout Wales although how similar these are or if they have any link to Iron Age Druidry is hotly debated. Ovates are generally considered healers in physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological senses, taking care of the communities needs through an intimate knowledge of herb-lore and counseling, Druids are generally considered to take the role of priests and spiritual leaders for the tribe and the wider community as well as taking responsibility for the settlement of disputes.

In modern Druidry this is not generally seen as a continuous progression through a rank system. It is perfectly acceptable for an individual to enter bardic training and to remain at that level if that is where their talents and skills are best employed. It is thought from Roman writers that men and women were accorded equal status within Druidic groups, and certainly that is the case with modern Druidry. Tacitus gives us reports of the attack on Anglesey and the intimidatory effect of Druid warrior women, although the transformation of this into suggestions of a Matriarchal system are almost certainly taking the concept beyond what is credible. The story of Boudicca is sometimes cited as suggesting such a system but that seems to be rather a specific case. Whatever the original system within Iron Age Druidry, modern Druidry has no bar on office based on gender or sexual orientation.

Modern Druid groups tend to be organised into groves, meeting outdoors to celebrate the major seasonal festivals and to give honour and “sacrifice” to the land and the spirits of place and ancestry. There is in my opinion an over-arching theme to Druidic practice but a theme that fully allows individuals and groups the freedom of expression to make Druidry their own within that framework. Some groups practice in ceremonial garb others choose not to and this is perfectly acceptable. Some groups integrate magical aspects into their Druidry, others don’t. There is no specific deity followed by all Druids but generally it accepted that there is some concept of deity within each Druid group whether that be in the form of an Earth Mother or a Lord of the Hunt or whatever form it may take.

There are some very good books on Druidry from the likes of Phillip Carr-Gomm and Emma Restall-Orr and Ronald Hutton has researched the subject extensively and is involved in a Bristol based Druid grove. Unlike many organised pagan paths Druidry is in the main an open system with organizational bodies such as Order of Bards Ovates and Druids and the British Druid Order being contactable for further information, and many individual groups being open to newcomers and those interested in the path. This generally makes it a more accessible path than some of the other Pagan belief systems.

Why blog?

It is a fairly straightforward question, but one which I think too few people ever actually address. There are many reasons for writing a blog or even multiple blogs. Some are written to convey information that the writer feels may be of use or interest. Some are written to make money, either by demonstrating writing ability, or from advertising on more popular blogs. Some are written as a form of vanity publishing, people who love to write often crave an outlet for their creativity and a self published blog can serve that purpose admirably, and some write blogs just because they enjoy writing and would like to get some feedback on their work. It is my opinion that whatever the reason for blogging, the process of consistently writing creatively has benefits for the writer in terms of creating new neural pathways and keeping the brain generally stimulated. Many blog writers find that there is an element of research in their work prior to writing and that can be a stimulating aspect too. As far as I am concerned, anything that stimulates the mind is a good thing.

There was a point in the history of blogging, and of social networking in general where it was going to be the next big thing in marketing and in creating and redistributing wealth. The internet was seen as a meritocracy that would free up creative people to succeed, but I think that it can be argued that in the majority of cases this is not what has happened. As with so many other bandwagons that have rolled through town before this one was leapt upon by the get rich quick merchants, particularly those already involved in multi level marketing (MLM) or “Pyramid” schemes. This is not surprising as these schemes rely on a steady flow of newcomers to the system to keep generating revenue for those already involved, and historically the issue has been that the primary way of finding newcomers was personal contacts and when the scheme inevitably fails this causes problems. The internet removes these by allowing a distancing between the originators and subsequent “Marks” as people who come in later are known.

In my opinion, many people have become wary of bloggers and social networks in general as a consequence of these schemes and we are left with a hard core of highly popular blogs that are successful and offer quality in terms of content and comment and a periphery of many thousands, perhaps millions of small blogs read by a handful of people. So, what is the difference between the big successful blogs and the also rans? Again this is only my opinion but it appears that there is a small amount of luck involved, say 1% and the rest is sheer hard work and determination, say 99%. This hard work takes the form of quality content written in an engaging style and the associated research that allows the producer of the successful blog to catch the zeitgeist, that ephemeral “now” buzz of what is popular right this second, and perhaps more importantly what is going to be popular in the coming seconds.

The internet is about immediacy and you will see time and time again that the best, and most popular blogs are those which deliver that immediacy of information in an accessible and creative way. Whatever your reason for blogging, for profile, pleasure or profit, there is no replacement for hard work, no get rich quick, no easy route to success, but you can succeed. The internet can be the meritocracy that it was heralded as, the great leveler that allows anyone a voice, but you have to work at it, consistently and passionately.

Creating stimulating content for websites

It seems that what search engines really like is a website that does what it says on the tin, to use the old advertising slogan, and why not use old advertising slogans? After all, if there is one industry that is already completely up to speed with the principles of recycling it is advertising. Just have a look at the current adverts for Bells Whisky and the Skoda Estate….both of which are imitations of a rather good YouTube video that has been doing the rounds for a couple of years, and for which the original producer is unlikely to be credited for his work. I mention this in passing for one reason. When it comes to advertising copy for websites, plagiarism just will not do. The key reason for this is that the search engines are learning to hate one thing above all else, and that is duplicate content. That can be duplicate content within a site, the home page and about us using the same text for example, or between sites where a new site has lifted content directly from an existing site.

It can be very tempting for an inexperienced content writer to take this route, as there has long been a maxim in industry “Why re-invent the wheel?” and if you find a website that says exactly what you want to say, where is the harm in “Borrowing” that material, after all that’s what the big boys in advertising do. Unfortunately, in the online world it doesn’t work that way. If you spend any time using a search engine you will already have spotted that if there are multiple websites using the same content that returns from your search you will see something along the lines of two or three websites listed in the results and a note advising that there are multiple similar results and you can click here to view them. You can probably imagine how many people do that….

So, first principles, if you are writing for a website the content has got to be original. Not necessarily groundbreaking, but at least in your own words. The content needs to be engaging and written in a style that is appropriate to both the website itself and its target audience. There is no point writing content which is full of slang terms and colloquialisms if you are writing for a technology company that focuses on high value business clients, or a private banking group providing services to high net worth clients. In the same vein it is pretty pointless writing as you would for a scientific research paper if your target audience are more familiar with Heat magazine than New Scientist. Taking this point a little further, humour is a great thing, but never forget that what you find funny may not be so funny to the target audience. Aggressive “In your face” humour seldom engages a broad spectrum of any consumer base, although a few gentle chortles can work well.

Above all, avoid anything that could be construed as derogatory or offensive. No matter what your personal views they have no place in the content of a website that you are writing copy for. Having made that clear, you can still be yourself. The bset way of creating content that will work is to allow yourself the scope and confidence to run with an idea. Never forget that content can always be changed if necessary, the first draft is seldom the finished article so put a little of yourself into your work and see what the results are. Oh, and don’t be precious about what you right. You are never going to please everyone and it is easy to become downheartened or dispirited by negative feedback, but just take it on the chin, and carry on with a second draft taking on board any criticism. Content writing is not for the thin skinned and the customer has their own thoughts and ideas that you will have to work around. So, get out there, get writing, and most importantly, have fun….

Thoughts on the disambiguation of Pagan and New Age philosophies

There seems to be a great deal of both cross over and confusion between what constitutes Pagan beliefs and what New Age beliefs. This article is not a definitive guide but simply my own thoughts on the subject from the perspective of a self confessed New-Ager turned Pagan. My understanding of New Age thinking is that it is predominantly focused on improving the World by bringing about self improvement or self empowerment. It tends to be predicated by the 1960’s and ‘70’s ideology of the dawning of a new astrological age, the age of Aquarius and with that a concomitant shift in humanities consiousness and ability to use ones mind to achieve a state akin to enlightenment. Strong influences on New Age thinking are Eastern esoteric traditions such as meditation techniques, chakra or body energy fields, acupuncture and acupressure and the principles of creating a harmonious environment found in Feng Shui. Mixed in with these are concepts of an early pre-historic age of enlightenment which is linked to the development of pyramid technology and the Egyptian concepts of re-birth and re-incarnation.

New Age beliefs take in a wide range of “alternative” teachings including, but not limited to, astrology, tarot, palmistry, chakras, crystal healing, tonal therapy (such as the use of singing bowls), astral projection and travelling, self improvement techniques, talking therapies (such as NLP), hypnosis and dream analysis. There are links through many of the key New Age thinkers to Freudian and Jungian psycho-analytical techniques and through the Eastern traditions to Gurus and Brahma of the Indian mystic traditions including asceticism. There is no obvious single path which an adherent can follow but each individual creates their own taking into account personal preference, balance and “feeling”.

Pagan beliefs, in my opinion, tend to stem from an awareness of ones place as a part of the natural World, and whilst there can be for some an urge to improve oneself physically and/or mentally, this is considered in terms of ones place within the framework of the wider World rather than as a path to personal enlightenment. In broad terms Paganism tends to draw together ideas from a range of views of pre-historic human beliefs, these being in the main extrapolated from archaeological discoveries and from fragmentary sources such as Roman and Greek writers. This, for me, leads to the first key difference in that New Age philosophy tends to focus inwards towards understanding the self, where Paganism tends to be outward focused seeking to find ones place in the natural World..That is not to suggest that there is no sense of “self” within Paganism, but simply that it is not the primary focus.

Paganism, as with New Age beliefs draws on a wide range of source material, from Eastern philosophy, Western and Middle Eastern mystery cults, pre and post Enlightenment Europe and pre-historic European and Middle Eastern culture, but a second key difference is that within Paganism, although eclecticism is common, there are well established and defined paths for those who chose to follow them, Druidry, Wicca, Shamanism, Heathenry and so on, although the mixing of paths is generally considered to be acceptable if done with care and respect. As previously mentioned, New Age philosophy tends not to have equivalent paths within the overall movement, tending to be more individually focused.

There is an argument that as a consequence of the structure of New Age beliefs there is a greater tendency for spiritual “teachers” to rise to prominence, and that this is not mirrored within Paganism. I am personally unconvinced by this argument, although I can see that it can be made, but does rather suggest that followers of New Age beliefs have more of a need for guidance which personally I feel is not correct. A better argument can I think be made in terms of practice. Whilst within the New Age movement there is a acknowledgment of the importance of the environment and its protection, there is not the reverence for the natural World that is found within Paganism. This creates one of the more heated debates at the junction between philosophies, that of the use of crystals for healing. There are ethically sourced crystals available, but these are not as readily available as it may appear, and provenance is extraordinarily difficult to ascertain. If you consider the difficulty faced in the Diamond trade, a far more heavily regulated area than semi-precious crystals, in limiting the trade in “blood diamonds” you can perhaps see the scale of the problem. Commercial crystal extraction is a tremendously damaging process and should be anathema to a Pagan, and yet it can form part of the core belief of New Age thinking, being at the heart of chakra healing and of course crystal healing itself.

I am aware that many pagans use, or have used crystals and I wonder at the environmental cost of that use on a global scale.

Thoughts on Wicca

The growth in interest in Wicca as a lifestyle choice has been one of the highest within the vast panoply of Pagan paths. There are debates about whether Wicca has anything to do with Paganism, but for the purposes of these thoughts I will be taking as read that it does. The reasoning behind this is that Wicca in its principles is reverent of nature, the founder of Wicca, Gerald Gardner was a keen naturist and naturalist and the use of Celtic symbology within some branches of Wicca suggest that it is at least a reasonable fit. This is not to say that all Wiccans would consider themselves Pagan, or that all Pagans are comfortable with the fit with Wicca. Personally I don’t see any insurmountable issues.

That debate having been put aside for a moment, it is worth recapping what Wicca actually is, as there seems to be a tremendous range of “wiccan” practices and information, much of which is not necessarily Wicca as it was originally intended. The history of Wicca as a spiritual path dates to the 1940’s and ‘50’s and was founded by Gerald Gardner, a well travelled gentleman with a background in Freemasonry and turn of the Century Occult practices of the type favoured by the Ordo Templis Orientalis (OTO), the Golden Dawn and by association Aleister Crowley and Thelema. After a number of years researching occultism in various forms Gardner decided to establish a movement that would embrace much of what he had learned, and allow him to disseminate that knowledge to a select group.

The form that this movement took in the first instance was of a small, private group which he described as a coven. It is generally accepted, although still controversial, that in order to lend credibility to his ideas and thoughts Gardner created a back story for his movement linking it to the cunning folk traditions of Essex, Hampshire, Dorset and Somerset and also to a purported intact surviving witchcraft tradition in the New Forest. It is unlikely that this back story had any significant validity, the New Forest coven being almost certainly a late 19^th Century reconstructionist group based loosely around Rosicrusianism and the work of the folklorist Margaret Murray. I can understand in the context of the period why Gardner felt a need for historical validity, but for me this is no longer a factor and is best treated as an interesting aside. The subsequent work carried out with Wicca is probably of greater benefit as a subject of study.

The system that Gardner established was, in essence, a straightforward one. The group was to be lead by a high priest and high priestess working together to guide the spiritual and magical development of the other group members. New members of the group joined for a period of time before being formally initiated into the group, and once initiated would begin a period of training and learning progressing through three levels of initiation, each marked by an intricate ritual. In this much the template seems to have been Masonic in nature, the difference being found in what knowledge was being imparted. The group would be private in nature, the rituals and practices written down within the group and not to be published in any form. It is my belief that this served two purposes. Firstly it established a feeling of camaraderie and fraternity/sorority within the group that allowed for closer, more intimate sharing of ideas and thoughts within the group, and secondly Gardner was aware that some of the practices within the group were sufficiently challenging from a psychological viewpoint that there was a risk that if practiced alone without a support structure that psychological harm could result.

Having established a working structure for the group, Gardner and some of his group and the wider occult community set about refining and developing a complete belief system based around the cardinal points of the compass, the solar and lunar calendars and classical Greek elemental correspondences and the use of Magic as defined by Crowley and others as the manifestation of change through true will. Gardners initial idea seems to have been to disseminate his system through the training of the initial group members to third degree level at which point they would hive off to establish working groups of their own. Each group was, I believe, to be at least semi-autonomous in that modifications of the original Book of Shadows (BoS – the Wiccan combination of notebook, spellbook, grimoire and almanac) were permitted within the constrictions of holding true to the underlying principles, these principles being that the coven would operate in perfect love and perfect trust, and that the principle belief was expressed as “an’ it harm none do what ye will”, will in this context being Crowleys concept of “true will” as opposed to an invitation to hedonism.

The hiving off of daughter covens led, perhaps inevitably, to transformations in the way Wicca was practiced, particularly seen in the differences between Alexandrian and Gardenerian Wicca and the later American offshoots such as Seax Wicca and it has been suggested that some of these changes caused friction within Wiccan circles. Over time additional friction has been caused by the release into the public domain of sections and eventually complete BoS from a variety of covens, as well as material that owed little if anything to Gardeners original group purporting to come from that lineage. This has let to the concept of solitary wicca as a path available to anyone who is interested, to the point of self initiation and self dedication. This is the point at which Wicca stands today. There are still private initiatory covens practicing various forms of Wicca much as Gardner intended. There are also a great number of non-lineaged covens practicing version of wicca pieced together from a variety of sources and large numbers of solitary wiccans practicing again from a range of source material.

This apparent ambiguity as to what Wicca is has led some to question whether there is a long term sustainable future for Wicca as a movement, or indeed if wicca as it is practiced today bears a close enough resemblance to Gardners vision of Wicca to have meaning were he to see it today. Personally I find initiatory Wicca to be too restrictive and proscriptive to sit comfortably with my particular approach to spirituality, although I find the commitment required to work successfully within a coven structure to be refreshing in an age of instant gratification. By contrast I find much of the solitary wicca espoused online and in books to be a poor imitation of what was intended to be a modern Western mystery tradition. With the mystery element removed, I find myself questioning the purpose, and the spirit of the movement. I wonder if perhaps Wicca is not conducive to solitary practice at all, but that is an argument for another day…..

Thoughts on shamanism

There are tremendous controversies regarding Shamanism in modern neo-paganism. There is an argument that Shamanism is the root of religious or spiritual practice globally, but this is heavily questioned primarily based on the lack of concrete evidence. It is further suggested that all indigenous spiritual practice is broadly shamanic but again this is heavily questioned on t...he grounds that this fundamentally misunderstands shamanism, which itself is a controversial assumption, and that the beliefs of indigenous peoples are being interpreted by anthropologists who may, or may not be interpreting them correctly. Beyond these issues there is an additional question over the use of hallucinogenic drugs, both natural and man made as part of shamanic practice.

The origins of shamanic practice are thought to stem from a root source in the Indus Valley region of India and to have spread with the migration of early man through the Middle East and into Europe after the last ice age 15000 years ago. It would make sense that at the time of the advent of agriculture and the domestication of animals, as small communities were developing, there would be a need for someone to assume responsibility within the group for finding healing plants, organizing work parties, taking decisions for the group and providing advice and guidance. This is not necessarily synonymous with the role of a community leader who, in times of competition would be more likely to have to take a warrior role, a different skill set to that exhibited by the shaman. So, we can argue that there is a perceived need for a healing/spiritual role within early communities, and this is backed up to an extent by archaeological evidence of bone setting and long term care for the sick and injured.

There is evidence from around this time for changes in funerary practices as well with a move towards inhumations with grave goods as well as cremation burials suggestive of a change in attitude towards death and the possibility that death is not the end. This would again fit well with the transition to an agrarian society with its focus on the cycles of nature, birth, life, death and rebirth. So we have the possibility of early spiritual and societal practices that could be associated with some sort of belief system, but is there any evidence to suggest that this would take the form of shamanic practice as we would consider it today? That will almost certainly depend on how we perceive shamanism from a modern context.

In broad terms shamanism appears to consist of a combination of an understanding of medicinal herbs and “natural” healing, an understanding of weather patterns and how they can affect communities, and an understanding of the physical world as being only a part of a greater spiritual whole, and having the ability to communicate with that spiritual world through trance states and altered states of consciousness. This is perhaps as close as we can come to a modern definition, but how does this fit with a potential archetype shamanic practice? There is evidence to suggest that certain sites were considered to be “special” particularly sources of clean water such as springs, as well as areas that would potentially have good hunting nearby such as groves of trees and cliff edges, suggestive of an understanding of landscape and the importance of location which could be interpreted as the foundation of spiritual belief building up around such places. When this is combined with the evidence of what are perceived as fetish idols such as the Willendorf Venus we can begin to imagine that there was a belief system being built around the natural World and around people and their interaction with it. It should be noted however that this can be questioned in terms of the cave paints and geoglyphs of hunting scenes that are found across most of the world and may or may not be linked to beliefs beyond the mundane world. It appears in many cases that the early geoglyphs served the purpose of passing on messages but that these changed to become more stylized and potentially more esoteric in form, particularly when considering some of the more priapic imagery used in art from around the period that we are talking about.

This would suggest at least some surface correlation between what we understand today as shamanic practice and what our ancestors may have been practicing but it doesn’t address the question of the belief that shamanic practice is global. It could be argued that if some form of shamanic practice started early enough in human pre-history that it could have spread with the migration waves but given that there is good evidence for the settling of Australia and South America somewhere around 60000 years ago it is unlikely that we are going to find hard evidence from the archaeology of this period so it seems unlikely. What could be a better suggestion is based on linguistics. There have been numerous studies into the parallel development of language and the commonality of certain sound combinations particularly around onomatopoeic words, and I believe that this could be extrapolated to extend to finding solutions to similar problems such as how to cure a headache or set a bone, in the same way that it has been extended to suggest that one of the reasons for the development of pyramids around the world is in response to having to address the same engineering problems.

This seems a more likely situation to a global or “golden age” religion, and it would allow for the possibility that the various practices that come under the banner of shamanism, be that Native American, South American, Australiasian, Siberian, Northern European or whatever else could have a kind of shared heritage in the sense of similar people addressing similar problems with similar resources. This also dovetails quite nicely for me with my understanding of modern shamanic practice, but it does leave the thorny issue of the use of psychedelics. From archaeological and anthropological studies particularly of the various bog bodies found in Northern Europe and Siberia we have evidence of the consumption of a variety of fungi which have psychoactive ingredients. From South America we have the use of toad secretions and coca leaf, from Mexico the use of peyote as a medicinal herb, from Africa the use of THC the psychoactive component in cannabinoids as a psychoactive painkiller, and from Australasia we have anecdotal evidence of the use of tree sap for similar purposes. Research into brain function in recent years has shown that the effects of psychoactive substances can be similar to the effects of deep meditation seen in many of the more mainstream religions. The research has shown similar patterns in Buddhist monks during meditation, Catholic nuns during prayer and chanting liturgy, Sufi dervishes during dances and Sikh and Hindu tabla players during drumming.

It seems that the question is in part about whether the psychoactive substances used by shamans are just creating an altered mind state or if they are doing something more that we have yet to discover? If the former, then there could be an argument that the use of these substances can be replaced by, for example, meditation, but if the later then there would be an argument for the use of these substances. This, of course, leads to a separate issue of legality since in many countries the use of psychoactives is proscribed in law, even those used for “cultural” purposes. I think more research is needed in order to establish the function and long term impact of psychoactive use, but this research is not currently being carried out in sufficient quantity or quality because of the negative image of psychoactives in mainstream life.

In the UK the issue is moot anyway given the current legislation regarding the use of psychoactives, but it is considered by many to be at the core of Shamanic practice and is something that it would be wrong to ignore.