In Pursuit of Mysteries

Ten Tons of Flax!

It is amazing the amount of drek that is on the Internet sometimes. I was thinking about the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn today and my thesis. Since I put it up on Lulu as a free download, I happened to go there. I then made the mistake of doing a search there on
"Golden Dawn". Whoa! 83 items!

Of course, like anything in life, out of 83 items, 90% are probably of sub-standard value. I must say that I wasn’t overblown by the things I saw there though I did see a few things from friends or acquaintances of mine who are practicing magicians. Not exactly a center of scholastic endeavor, unfortunately.

I’ve been thinking of doing a paper on Golden Dawn ritual, mapping the Neophyte ceremony using the method of Frits Staals that Richard Payne makes us of in his analysis of the Ajikan in the Journal of Chinese Religion and his dissertation on the Goma. I’m not fully convinced that it is the best method but there seem to be no excellent or even good methods of analyzing different rituals and comparing them that aren’t simply long discussions of them. At least this method presents the data in a different manner.

I’ve been wanting to try to publish an essay or two in the field where I actually did my master’s and I figure that it wouldn’t hurt on my doctoral application to have a publication credit, if something I write is accepted and doesn’t take two years to show up. I am still surprised at how little actual academic work is done on the Golden Dawn, of all things.

I’ve also been considering trying to publish the Allan Bennett rituals that JFC Fuller copies down between 1906 and 1908. I have copies of most of this material from the Ransom Center in Austin. I would have to get their permission, because it is from their archive, but, as far as I know, given the date and history, it is all public domain outside of it being in a collection. Fuller’s handwriting is pretty clear and the illustrations are very well executed, as I’ve mentioned previously. Given the amount of work involved, I’m not sure that it would be worth the work to transcribe 400+ pages of Fuller’s handwriting in order to try to publish rituals of the 1890s Golden Dawn. I mean, it might sell all of 100 copies.

Mozilla 10th Anniversary Party

We have cake!

Tonight, R and I attended the 10th Anniversary Part for Mozilla at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco.

There was quite a crowd there from Mozilla past as well as present. I didn’t get a good count but the place was packed wall to wall. It was enough that I did not manage to circulate from one end of the room to the other until we decided to leave.

Mitchell, Brendan, and Shaver all did a little speechifying for the masses and then the party continued.

Strangely enough, Frank Chu was also present… This led to a few conversations about our local icon/nutter.

Because I can, I must include the obligatory post of my QA peeps from MoCo:

Stephen "Pillsy" Donner and Juan "Hoooo-on" Becerra
(with Gary "Dazed and Confused" Kwong)

Stephen and Juan have worked with me on the QA for most of the Firefox and Thunderbird security releases for the last six months. For that alone, they should be called out.

Oh, and me, courtesy of Paul Kim:

The party was a lot of fun and I’m glad that everyone got a chance to celebrate 10 years of Mozilla. Mitchell had a good post about it earlier today for those that don’t know what’s going on.

Classwork and Pagans

I haven’t had as much to say lately. Between the security releases that I spend much of my time on at work and classes, day to day life has been a bit busy. Outside of these things, dramatic things have not occurred.

I did finally decide to drop the Japanese language class until at least next term. Doing the graduate seminar on Esoteric Buddhism at the Institute of Buddhist Studies is taking up a huge amount of time with its assigned reading and pondering. I really don’t have the time for language study, a graduate school class, and my job (along with various other responsibilities). I did decide to take the IBS class for credit (I was previously auditing). I did this primarily because I am still thinking about getting my PhD through the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), of which IBS is a member school. I would be pretty bent out of shape if I audited this class and then was forced to take it again in two years because it was part of my PhD. Since any PhD work that I do will be related to Buddhism, it would be very likely that I’d be taking this class.

I’ve also considered getting an Master’s degree in Buddhist Studies through another school in the UK but I’m not sure that I really need a second Master’s degree. The coursework would be good for my own study of Buddhism but we shall see.

If I do decide to go to GTU, assuming that they accept me, it would be a year from this September at the soonest, as one must apply a year in advance. The primary issue, really, is financial still. There are very few half-time jobs in tech and I could not work full-time and also work on a doctorate (well, maybe I could if I was 20, not needing sleep, and single with no family). The problem with stopping working, other than GTU’s high tuition, is that I still need to support my eleven year old daughter as well as pay a mortgage. I haven’t figured out the best approach to the financials at this point but I do know that there is very little aid at GTU. Everyone I know who has attended has taken out huge loans, which I’m not sure I want to do in my late 30s. Paying off six figures of student loans in my 40s, especially when there is no guarantee of work in my field, isn’t my idea of a good time. I still struggle with the idea of going to school for six to eight years (even if I can manage the finances of it) to come out of it with little chance of finding a job (and that job, if I do find it, for 75% of what I make now, if I’m even that lucky). Of course, some say just to follow my Bliss but I’m not sure an adventure into academia is it.

This is a three day weekend due to an American holiday. Other than my 200+ pages of school reading in Snellgrove, I plan on going down to Pantheacon on Sunday for the day. While I’m not a pagan anymore, my roots are still within the Neopagan community (far more than Catholicism or the like) and I will have many friends, both local and from afar, down there this weekend. The convention is about an hour drive away (not that far from my work), so I expect to go and come back, rather than spending the night. The hotels are full anyway…

Al and a friend at a previous Pantheacon