Darth Vader's Psyche: What Went Wrong?

Darth Vader's Psyche: What Went Wrong?

Anakin Skywalker, the Star Wars character who became Darth Vader, had borderline personality disorder, psychiatrists report.

The news comes not from a galaxy far, far away, but from San Diego, where the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is holding its 160th annual meeting.

Experts from the psychiatric department at France's University Hospital of Toulouse told the APA's annual meeting that Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader could "clearly" be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder is a serious mental illness marked by instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior, according to background information on the Web site of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

The French psychiatrists — who included Laurent Schmitt, M.D. — based their diagnosis on original Star Wars film scripts.

Schmitt's team describes Skywalker's symptoms, including problems with controlling anger and impulsivity, temporary stress-related paranoia, "frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment (when trying to save his wife at all costs), and a pattern of unstable and intense personal relationships," including his relationships with his Jedi masters.

Changing his name and turning into "Darth Vader" is a red flag of Skywalker's disturbed identity, note Schmitt and colleagues.

The researchers aren't suggesting that real people with borderline personality disorder are Darth Vaders-in-the-making. Skywalker's symptoms are an extreme, fictional case.

Borderline personality disorder can be treated through psychotherapy and with medication. But that wasn't part of Skywalker's script.

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Spiritual Gardening

Spiritual Gardening

The time when humankind decided to move from silent knowledge to reason was the same time it moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Agriculture was not undertaken because big game had died off, or any such reason, but rather because humanity wanted to experiment with thinking, social organization, etc. The human and grain gods made a deal at that point to help each other out. A similar deal was struck with e.g. the bovine god. Cows, in return for the loss of a certain measure of freedom (reduction to the status of property, having their children taken away from them, etc.), received in return freedom from random predators and the condition of something to be protected and defended by some pretty intense little monkey-like creatures.

Similarly, the way back to silent knowledge is through hunting. However it is possible to apply much silent knowledge to the practice of agriculture – hence these lessons. What follows are some samples of notes I’ve channeled regarding agriculture.

Q: How should I control insects and diseases in my garden?

A: Put three pieces of copal (or any acrid incense, such as patchouli) in your censer, and waft the smoke towards each infected plant as you walk down the row. At the same time, ask the afflicting agent to please leave your plants alone because you need them. You should feel as though the incense smoke is carrying your thought towards the plants. It’s a good idea to leave a plant or two (maybe the one or ones at the end of each row, so you remember) for the insects or disease. Don’t waft incense at these plants. Tell the insects or disease that these plants are for them. Be nice about it. Be sincere. Mean what you say. Say it out loud.

Frankincense (or any light, happy incense such as sandalwood) is used to prevent disease and insect infestations (where copal is used to cure infected plants). Waft the incense towards each plant in turn, sending that plant the wish that it will grow well and be fruitful. It is best to be naked when you do this (or any gardening), simply because that is the most joyous way of doing it. This means gardening at night, in the moonlight, so the neighbors won’t see you.

Q: Will this method work for anyone?

A: It will work for anyone who believes in it and means what they are telling the animals or plants. Actually, the incense is completely unnecessary. That’s just for you, to help you pay attention to what you’re doing and give you the sense that you’re doing something “magical”. It’s the thoughts and desires that you have and express that are the gist of the matter.

Q: What do I do about gophers?

A: Dig out the gophers’ burrow and put a trap in it, to trap one gopher. It must be a trap which catches the gopher alive and unhurt. Take the captured gopher to a cage in a dark, protected place, and give it food and water every day. Talk to it gently when you bring its food and water. Tell it you won’t hurt it – in fact, you’ll let it go – but it must take a message back to its brothers.

Keep this up (talking gently to the gopher when you feed it) until you have gained its trust. This doesn’t mean friendship or petting it, but rather until it knows it has nothing to fear from you. How long this takes will depend upon you and the gopher. When you sense that it is calm (unthreatened) in your presence, tell it that it and all its brother gophers must leave your garden and orchard. Appoint some other place on your land where you don’t care if there are gophers, and tell the captured gopher that it and its fellows must move to this other place. If you want to sweeten the deal, promise that you’ll plant sweet potatoes or beets at this other place just for them. If you do make a promise like this, you must keep it.

Then, after repeating this message to the captured gopher for some days (until you feel it has “understood”), release the gopher back into its tunnel, bidding it to take this message to its fellows.

This same method will work for cutter ants. Stand over their trail while they are working (it won’t work if they can’t hear you), and ask them to please find food in some other direction, as you need these trees yourself. Be polite. One such treatment should be enough. If it isn’t, repeat the next day, but ask them why they didn’t obey you the first time. Write down their answer as you are writing this (by automatic writing). You may have to work out some sort of compromise or make a deal with them.

Q: What about planting our own bananas?

A: Bananas are your angels. Anything coming from them is love – love – love, from the tenderness of young leaves to happy, humorous browning splotched leaves, to the spongy, thick, soggy stems. And the tall, older leaves. They all fully participate in love. Of all plants, these will give and receive love more than any other. Their blessings come down with a gentle, steady flow of love droplets.

This is why you must always have bananas growing close to wherever you live (preferably fruiting, not ornamental, varieties). If you ever go North at least grow one as a pot plant. There is no greater gift you can give to those in the North than these plants.

Q: What about Biodynamic techniques?

A: Yes. Steiner’s techniques as enunciated in his lectures on agriculture are excellent. He was a genius, and in touch with the spirit keepers of agricultural knowledge (as were also the founders of Findhorn). However, Steiner’s techniques are no more valid than the ones we are channeling to you; they are merely more detailed, more specific, and more complex. A professional farmer would do well following Steiner. And anyone who elects to use Steiner’s methods would do better making the formulations themselves rather than buying them ready-made. The important thing is to put one’s own, personal vibration into the soil and plants. Stirring plain water – joyously – for hours and then spraying it on the soil or plants is better than using store-bought formulations and not stirring long enough, or stirring without a joyous heart. Everything you do in agriculture should be done with joy, or else you are better off not doing it at all. Fortunately agriculture is innately a joyous occupation, so this isn’t hard to do.

Q: Steiner had a lot of wacky techniques for dealing with weeds, insects, and disease; but even Pfeiffer and his other followers admit they don’t work. Why not?

A: Because they doubt they’d work. It is your (and Pfeiffer’s) doubt that keeps these techniques from working. If you had no doubt whatsoever that they’d work, they’d work.

That’s the only reason your rationalist / materialistic world “works” – that when you turn on a TV, it turns on – is because you believe it. If you believed in these techniques with the same certainty that you believe turning a key in an ignition will start a car, then they would work.

Q: How should I graft?

A: As usual. However, fill the censer with frankincense (or sandalwood). Cense the tree from which the scions are to be taken. Tell it that you are sorry to hurt it, but that the twigs you are taking will become new little trees. Ask if this is okay.

Cense the scions with the wish that they take and prosper. Cense the rootstocks and apologize for hurting them, and tell them they will be getting new “heads” which are more productive, and that they will soon be living in the actual earth. If you feel that a particular scion or rootstock objects, then don’t graft that one. It wouldn’t take anyway. Then graft as usual, but as you do each graft talk to the stock and scion and wish them well, that they may join and prosper and be fruitful.

After grafting, run your hand gently up the rootstock and scion, and as you do so visualize in your mind’s eye the graft taking and healing, the tree growing from a sapling to a young tree to a mature tree; and as your hand passes above the top of the scion, look up and see the mature tree full of fruit.

Then bend down and kiss the graft, with the wish that it will take and the tree prosper. Do this with true love and good feeling. And then commend the tree to the earth.

(excerpted from Magical Almanac ezine, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac Copyright © 2007 by Bob Makransky. All rights reserved). Reprinted with permission.

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at: www.dearbrutus.com
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Myth of the Basque Witches

Myth of the Basque Witches

The myth speaks of 12 witches and a warlock that were burned at the stake. There is a full celebration of the original witch-hunt that took place on August 15th, 1610.

"The Witches of Zugarramurdi" has been a well-known myth in all of Northern Spain and Southern France.

It is celebrated every year since the 1600's on the 15th of August. There is a feast and a full celebration of the original witch-hunt that took place on August 15th, 1610.

The myth speaks of 12 witches and a warlock that were burned at the stake.

It was believed there was a cave that was home to these witches, and they would dance and cast spells upon the people of Zugarramurdi.

It is commonly told as children's story throughout the region, as famous there as the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" is to us.

The modern celebration is called "The Feast of the Caves", in which (in tribute to the stake burning), a Lamb (Zikiro) is quartered, and is set near an open-pit fire, being occasionally turned (as a rotisserie).

It traditionally is placed in front, so as not to drip its fat into the flame, and cause smoke to alter the flavour.

Published at http://planetrjl.tripod.com/LaFraughName/id5.html

Pagan Movement Steps In To Help Witches

Pagan Movement Steps In To Help Witches

By Bappa Majumdar

Followers of a global pagan witchcraft movement plan to introduce their beliefs in India to curb the persecution and killing of hundreds of witches every year.

Witchcraft has been practised by women in rural, isolated communities in India for centuries but in recent years witches have become ostracised. Many have even been murdered by neighbours or family who blame them for doing the work of evil spirits.

In the past five years, police say they have reports of more than 700 women being killed as witches or witch doctors in eastern India alone. But the real figure could be many times higher, they say.

Now, followers of the Wicca faith from the United States, Britain and India plan to introduce their religion in the eastern city of Kolkata to promote awareness of witchcraft and provide support for harassed witches.

"People from different walks of life and even governments had asked me to institutionalise Wicca, but I was waiting for the right moment," Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, a prominent social activist who practises Wicca, told Reuters.

"Now is the time we stood up against people who persecute and kill innocent women," said Chakraverti, adding that the Indian "Wiccan Brigade" would also register complaints of persecution and coordinate with police to ensure cases were brought to trial.

Around 100 people have already signed up to take a training programme in Wiccan philosophy, literature and psychology and the students will also set up a grievance cell where persecuted women can register their complaints, she said.

Like many Pagan religions, Wicca practises magic and witches believe that the human mind has the power to effect change in ways that are not fully understood by science.

In their rituals, as well as honouring their deities, witches also perform spells for healing and to help people with general life problems.

In India, many witches practise the Dakini Vidya form of witchcraft, where women invoke the Mother Goddess to draw spiritual strength, a belief which has similarities to the Wicca faith in a Great Mother.

In remote India, where literacy is low and lives are governed by superstition, villagers often persecute witches and blame them for natural disasters or for illness, death or theft in a village.

"They cannot afford medicines for ailments and often put the blame squarely on innocent women and later kill them," said Chakraverti, who studied the Wiccan faith at a chalet in Canada's Laurentian Mountains.

Chakraverti has also written two books on Wicca - one of which, The Sacred Evil, was adapted for the big screen earlier in 2006.

Witchcraft across the world is experiencing a renaissance of sorts after centuries of bad press, led by television characters such as Buffy, Sabrina and the ladies from Charmed.

Internet sites have also encouraged pagans - worshipping as Wiccans, Druids, or Shamans - to come out of the broom closet.