(no subject)

taken from allogenes

The eight books in my collection that I am pretty sure none of you own, but really hope that you do because it would make you my very special friend.

1. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters. In addition to being a fascinating (if dry) read, this book taught me a lot about Valentinian Gnosticism but also opened my eyes about the ways in which Paul's epistles must have felt to the ancient mind and eye.

2. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. A detailed translation of many early Christian scroll fragments used in spells and rituals. This shows how much early Christianity, in one place at least (as practiced in Egypt) was different in form and focus from the religion we know today. That really puts a lot into perspective.

3. Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe. Strange attractors, self-organization, and quantum physics, oh my! Nature can order itself into states of increasing complexity. Does this science take God out of the equation -- or does it show that God *is* the equation? Very thought-provoking book.

4. Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature. This book contains a fascinating argument that there are no "laws" of physics, but that there are "habits" which develop when nature solves problems and then repeats that solution. I'm not sure if I endorse every nuance of his theory, but I agree with it in principle and I think it is very eye-opening to see outside of the neo-platonic box of "eternal laws of physics" to see how well a scheme which has no element of permanence can work.

5. Dan Merkur, Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions. Merkur examines the nature of different kinds of mystical vision and the things which brings them about, and argues that Jewish, Gnostic, alchemical, and Islamic visionary mysticism rely on very similar esoteric altered states. (He doesn't make the argument in *this* book that they all rely on entheogens, but he does make that argument elsewhere. I agree with Merkur's thesis that there is a single strain of esoteric technique behind Jewish, Gnostic, Islamic, and alchemical mysticism, but I'm not convinced that it's related to use of entheogens.)

6. Christopher Bamford, ed., Rediscovering Sacred Science. This book contains a collection of essays about sacred geometry in a distinctly neo-Pythagorean fold. Fascinating stuff.

7. John Read, Prelude to Chemistry. I hate the title, but this book is the most readable, informative, and well-rounded introduction to alchemy, both physical and philosophical, which I have ever seen.

8. Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus. This is a fascinating book presenting an argument that most of the meaning of Jesus' teachings was lost when they were translated from Aramaic to Greek. It contains a degree of conjecture, but even if it does not elucidate the "original and authentic" message of Jesus, it is very worthwhile as a mystical text in its own right. I have quoted from it several times in this journal (and indeed my very first entry contained a quote from this book), because it was very influential for me.

(no subject)

March 8 is International Women's Day. IWD was first observed in the United States in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America, and has been sponsored by the United Nations since 1975.

There is much progress to be made, locally and globally.

At the same time that women produce 75 to 90 percent of food crops in the world, they are responsible for the running of households. According to the United Nations, in no country in the world do men come anywhere close to women in the amount of time spent in housework. Furthermore, despite the efforts of feminist movements, women in the core [wealthiest, Western countries] still suffer disproportionately, leading to what sociologists refer to as the "feminization of poverty," where two out of every three poor adults are women. The informal slogan of the Decade of Women became "Women do two-thirds of the world's work, receive 10 percent of the world's income and own 1 percent of the means of production."

— Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p. 354 (quoted in Anup Shah's report on Women's Rights worldwide (emphasis added)

Last year's address from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described AIDS as a women's rights issue:

All over the world, women are increasingly bearing the brunt of the epidemic. Today, in sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of all adults living with HIV/AIDS are women. Infection rates in young African women are far higher than in young men. In the world as a whole, at least half of those newly infected are women, and among people younger than 24, girls and young women now make up nearly two thirds of those living with HIV. If these rates of infection continue, women will soon become the majority of the global total of people infected.

... Poor women are becoming even less economically secure as a result of AIDS, often deprived of rights to housing, property or inheritance or even adequate health services. In rural areas, AIDS has caused the collapse of coping systems that for centuries have helped women to feed their families during during times of drought and famine -- leading in turn to family break-ups, migration, and yet greater risk of HIV infection.

Why... are women... more vulnerable to infection? Usually, because society's inequalities puts them at risk. There are many factors, including poverty, abuse and violence, lack of information, coercion by older men, and men having several partners. That is why many mainstream prevention strategies are untenable, for example those based exclusively on the "ABC" approach -- "abstain, be faithful, use a condom". Where sexual violence is widespread, abstinence or insisting on condom use is not a realistic option for women and girls. Nor does marriage always provide the answer. In many parts of the developing world, the majority of women will be married by age 20, and have higher rates of HIV than their unmarried, sexually active peers -- often because their husbands have several partners.

What is needed is positive, concrete change that will give more power and confidence to women and girls, and transform relations between women and men at all levels of society.

Change that will strengthen legal protection of women's property and inheritance rights, and ensure they have full access to prevention options -- including microbicides and female condoms.

Change that makes men assume their responsibility -- whether ensuring their daughters get an education; abstaining from sexual behaviour that puts others at risk; forgoing relations with girls and very young women; or understanding that when it comes to violence against women, there are no grounds for tolerance and no tolerable excuses.

An examination of women's status around the world shows some interesting items. For example, Rwanda has the highest proportion of female representation in its government (39 of 80 seats in Parliament). Kenya has the smallest wage gap (10%). (Source: For women, half is the battle)

Much of the achievement of better rights and quality of life for women depends on efforts to secure reproductive freedom. In practice, parenthood places far greater burdens on women -- it restricts their ability to earn a wage, it threatens their health, it limits their options. It is therefore impossible for any real progress to occur without greater reproductive freedom for women.