The next, and we had hoped, last bit of knews about Ellen came by way of a mailing list we were on. It seems that Ellen had started a list of her own ... (*)
start of letter
What a small world! A friend of mine got a letter from Ellen which he just had to share with me. Wow! I've never seen anything like it before! Ellen wants to start a Pagan group for people who want to communicate with the animals. It's called "the Telepathy Club".
I got to admit, this is different. I never thought of going down to Brookfield Zoo to talk to the zebras as a spiritual path, but maybe Ellen is onto something here. Who knows what the zebras might teach her, and all of us ? I'll be sure to pass this around, and maybe post it on a few lists. People will be interested, I can guarantee that.
If you want to join, (contact information ommitted). Here's a quote from Ellen' letter.
"Max and I had a bit of a brainstorm this weekend. We were in the car, talking about the various groups . . . there are so many folks getting together, that forming yet another circle seemed redundant. So instead of focusing on Pagan theology and ritual, we decided to go with something we both know and agree on.
He and I both believe that animals, specifically our pets, desire to communicate with humans, but most humans just don't listen. There are a lot of people in the world who want to learn to communicate with animals, and a lot of them have written books about the theories and experiences they had. I have found that he and I seem to understand a fair amount about animals and have even learned to understand the language of our cats. (Now I am trying to learn Ferret.) Plus, we have a small menagerie to study and it seems as tho observation is the only way to learn how to understand animal communication.
So we were thinking of forming a very loosely structured study group that met when convienent, and not on any particular day. We could go to the Brookfield and Lincoln Park Zoos and try to apply our knowledge of domestic animals to captive ones, and talk to the keepers. I have a good contact at the Round Lake Nature Center, and she might have some other ideas for us. I have another contact at "Wildlife Inc." a group that does rescues of exotic pets and also presentations for the purpose of educating the public.
This is the sort of thing that I was already interested in, and so I figured that it might dovetail nicely with anyone who was doing totemic animal work. I make no claims as to my own great personal gnosis, or Max's, but I figure that ANY study of animal communication is a good investment of time, since most of us have pets anyway. So here is my idea. I have set up a list called "The Telepathy Club". Anyone who is interested in this idea of ours can just sign up by clicking on the link to the group.
After a few days, when I have an idea of what interest there is, we can start to plan ideas or dates to gather and hang out with some animals. I figure that since I have a ton of them, we can start to meet at my house, but anyone who has pets, or lives near a zoo or nature center, can host a gathering. "
Cool. Sign me up, Ellen.
Um, OK, fine, whatever just as long as we don't get signed up, too. We could not have made this up, if we tried. Dear God.
This is the woman vouching for Sally's reasonability. Need we say more? I mean, aside from noting the irony of the fact that Ellen was worried about internal criticism, because it might damage the public image of Paganism. I guess discussing philosophy with the panda bears is going to make people think highly of us. At least, until the guards take us away.
Let's add that most of the members of the more prominent groups we spoke to, thought this made perfect sense. If you were wondering why most Pagan groups avoid "general Pagan events", well, now you know why. How would you like having a flood of people like these coming in to your group and trying to remake it in their own image?
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(*) Small note : if you were at all in the dark as to what Ellen's "different idea" about Free Speech was, perhaps this bit of policy will explain. Her own stated policy on her own list was that if somebody was angry about a post one had made, that she would give one a single warning, and then remove one from the list.
In what sense is this Free Speech? Even in the old Soviet Union, one had to point to the violation of some established standard in order to have another silenced, however warped those standards might have been. Here, the one being silenced lacks even that meager protection.
When one is literally offering less freedom to dissent on one's own list, than would have been seen by the man in the street in Moscow during the Krushchev administration and calls what is seen as a result "free speech", anybody with an ounce of integrity knows exactly what the significance of the phrase "free speech" is, at that point. It is a meaningless buzzphrase which Ellen has payed lip service to, in order to win her and her forum a sort of credibility which neither have earned.