What is the Relationship Between Paganism and Violence?

In the last 100 years more people have died as a result of violent aggression than have in ALL preceding recorded history - mostly because of non-Pagan, religious land grab wars which victimize whole countries and involve total populations. Therefore, it is actually easier to write an article on Paganism and Peace, than Paganism and violence.

It is actually easier to write an article on Paganism and Peace

Define Violence
In a time where there was no police force - people had to be responsible for their own defense. All lives, black white and brindle, mattered and justice was a community agreement. Previous to the establishment of the first Christian empire in the 3rd century AD by Constantine, the majority of people did not live in urban buildup therefore the vast majority of people on the planet lived peaceful agrarian lives untouched by war and violence. Hence violent aggression is not more evident in past -in fact far less so than now.

Lots of evidence to suggest ancient societies fought battles between teams of elite volunteer soldiers only, which avoided involving the majority of an area's citizenry and left the majority of the males (women and children) free to produce the means of living and more young. These battles were by in large border skirmishes or tribute disputes. The ageing population lived to 70+ years, which is on par with us today. Ageing populations can only be maintained in peaceful societies where enough of the young exist to care for the elders.

Pagan = Pacifist
The word “Pagan”  was originally a Roman insult for a country dweller, (Like our term Red-Neck) This insult was used as a put down to discourage those who sort a loophole to get out of conscribed military service. Pagans   used their worship of many gods to avowing doing military service and killing people and there by killing people. Originally it was a term used to denote what we today might call a pacifist. To combat his trend, Rome did not outlaw the worship of indigenous god - it encouraged the ambitious to abandon their "ignorant Pagan” path and only keep the official "refined Roman" religious celebrations. The Pagan desire to avoid military service by their employing their polytheistic loop hole holy-days (holidays) may have been the Roman motivation for adopting the militarized styled Christian faith with only 2 major celebrations per year.

It is ironic that although Christian civilization brought about a widespread lessening of the value of life and the horrors of religious wars  that correlates well to the significantly shorter life expectancy.  From Roman times,  pro-pagan-da   has been utilised to to convince the masses that Pagans ignorant and violent. This propaganda  continued to be utilised very successfully by the post roman Christian theocracy. 

Human Sacrifice = A Biblical Practice - Not Pagan

Christian Religions have pushed the idea that Pagan societies practiced human sacrifice. Yet, no physical evidence exists of this and the rare cases that are sited historical propaganda are sited as exceptions and as shocking.

Yet the truth is that human sacrifice was fundamental to and especially prevalent in the Bible. The Old Testament is all overtly about human sacrifice - Jesus became god's ultimate human sacrifice in the New Testament who taught his disciples to sacrifice themselves like lambs to the slaughter. Therefore, the whole bible and all of its related religions are about human sacrifice. I have seen so may museum exhibits where they are far too quick to encourage the use of the word "sacrifice" in relation to Pagan practices rather than of more obvious alternatives. That's Academics for you I'm afraid , they each interpret evidence as they perceive it or according to the political agenda that will advance them through the academic ranks the fastest.  Yet, there are unsolved archaeological enigma surrounds the grizzly finds at excavations of the Neolithic Villages of Herxheim in Modern day Germany. Yet few consider the obvious alternative that these and and the Scandinavian the bog men are far more likely to disgraced executed criminals. I have seen so may museum exhibits where they are far too quick to encourage the use of the word "sacrifice" in stead of more obvious alternatives. Some uncovered funerary rites that involved cannibalism. Cannibalism did exist in many cultures more as a way to express dominance over enemies than because of a need for food. Even some Australian Aboriginal language groups were cannibalistic too, surprisingly, the matriarchal ones like the Wirradigree. A translation of the Maori battle chant the Haka reveals this over cannibalism too

Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!
I die!      I die!       I live!   I live!
Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!
I die!      I die!       I live!   I live!
Tenei te tangata puhuru huru
This is the hairy man
Nana nei i tiki mai
Who fetched the Sun
Whakawhiti te ra
And caused it to shine again
A upa … ne!          ka upa … ne!
One upward step! Another upward step!
A upane kaupane whiti te ra!
An upward step, another.. the Sun shines!!
Ha La Ha (tongue out)
I will eat you all up

Pagans Make Much Less War Compared to People of Abrahamic Faiths. 

Pagan warrior culture are fascinating. The ethics of the vast majority of earth based Pagan cultures world wide past and present, is defense of home hearth and children. Conquering, wars and aggression was not - Sure we have the Viking/Greek raids in their need for arable land - But violent conquest, domination and destruction of any other civilization was not their aim - They were stealing to feed their families - Many times the Greeks/And Vikings were paid off so they did not attack - And they were happy with it. It was not the love of violence for violence sake as is portrayed in the popular media. They were business men and they both had true democratic governments. 

However, the conquest and the inquisitions and the dominance sort by "the people of the book" is based upon violence and child sacrifice - The whole bible is a political document that devised domination and control of nations through the use of child sacrifices. The book of "Judges" in the bible, documents god's plan for systematic genocide in the name of the angry, jealous, hateful, mountain god Jehovah, who promised Abraham real-estate he didn't own for perpetual child sacrifices forever of (the first born of every man, beast and fowl under Abraham's care and his descendants into eternity- Jewish, Christian and Islam - The whole terrorism thing arises from this age old conflict as to who has the right to be the genuine sacrifice - and neither society is willing to reject that level of indoctrinated violence as unethical (and down right stupid)

The Buddhists(the Catholics of the east) practiced child sacrifice until the 20 century. Each new Tibetan Buddhist temple had a small casket buried under its corner foundation stone so that the spirit of the child would become the temple’s guardian spirit. It was the Tibetan Buddhists that backed/pushed Ghengis and Attila in their invasion into the west and Scandinavia - Ponder that even though Hitler had deeply held Pagan beliefs it was over ridden politically by the Catholic Church that pushed his empire's establishment claiming it to be the 'Reich of the 1000 year reign of Christ' - and the Tibetan Buddhists jumped on board with this lauding him as the prophesied Matraiya.

So whilst the basis of modern Christian society is fear of torture and bullying by the emissary of the angry, jealous mountain god - Pagan ethics taught individual empowerment, strength and noble right actions in defense and preservation of family and honor - even challenging, questioning defeating the Gods if they behaved in an overly violent or less than noble way 

Boudicca queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in AD 60, who had killed her husband and raped her daughters

Please refer to Shé D'Montford's articles on Pagan Ethics and Pagan Orgins in 
"Who's Afraid of the Big Bag Witch"

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility - (for the teacher and the student) -

Here's a conversation I recently had on FaceBook:-

Marian Mohamoud
"do you know anyone that can help with body switch? as in exchanging bodies"

Shé D'Montford
"Yes I can - it is not hard - but Its not a simple explanation, some things have to be shown.."

Marian Mohamoud
"can't i just purchase this ritual or rituals online?"

Shé D'Montford
"Wow... It is a shame that so many now have this attitude... this is advanced stuff - you need the correct processes or you risk psychic psychosis... if you purchase anything claiming to be this online beware, its fake as needs to be taught properly. Face -to- face."

Marian Mohamoud
"what attitude? you're the one that said it was rituals (without any mention of training) that you get from a workshop, i can't be hanging about a workshop to be taught stuff, you made it seem like it was a buy and go thing."

Shé D'Montford
"That was all in your head -I never said anything about buy and go - This training takes years - there are no quick fixes - It is all easy ....when you know how... no short cuts -"

Marian Mohamoud
"' it seems more like you're just a bullshitter."
___________________________________

Well Marian is entitled to her opinion but no matter what she wants to tell herself the reality is this:
Advanced stuff takes advanced training
- all things are easy when you know how -
but not all people are worthy of learning them -

I take very few apprentices on - and I meet them usually through my workshops - and they prove themselves worthy
1) via their ethics and
2) determination over time -

There are NO SHORT CUTS - I had 2 teachers that gave me traditional training - It is a long process to learn properly.
Patience and commitment are pre-requisites.

Anyone who has ever done any of my workshops knows that the techniques I teach, work! My advanced techniques work just as well - but they have to be learned the right way.

From hard experience, I have learned to only teach these to people who are worthy
- Can you just imagine if someone with the obviously bad attitude that this Marian Mohamoud has, learned this advanced technique, imagine the damage she WOULD definitely do…. ???

"Great power requires great responsibility"
- I can't teach irresponsible people because I can't teach them how to be responsible and I cant teach people to use power in a good way if they are not good within themselves
- It takes time to find this out -
Teaching a person with character flaws advanced techniques, can have serious consequences.
(Isn't that what Star Wars is about?)

So sorry -
But I will only teach things that can be used to do damage to those I can trust to be responsible enough not to cause damage - and my trust must be earned and my trust once lost can not be regained.

Magick Brings Joy - It is the Mundane Life that is Tedious & Joyless -

Magick Brings Joy

Magick is Happening everywhere and there’s a lot of it too...

I was sad to see a joyless academic text, by someone who spends time in the Australian Pagan community, that claimed that magick and the Pagan community, was only a passing trend because of movies like The Craft, Practical Magic and Harry Potter. I am happy to say that these movies came out 10 years ago, but the Pagan community is still here getting bigger and stronger.

Sure, groups come and go, form and then become formless, but there are more of them. And more individuals in the census claiming that their belief system is one of many forms of Paganism. Fashions, cell phones and social media are things that ‘trend’ and go (sorry Myspace) but Magick endures. Magick never faltered - Magick always led. Magick is a basic human need that has been around as long as mankind, that pervades EVERY belief system. The study of the science magick continues on to this day and is growing stronger and it keeps me very busy here and overseas. It keeps many of my friends and peers racing from place to place too and we hardly get a chance to see each other. Yet when someone needs something we make ourselves available. Magickal practitioners are there for others during the sorrows and the joys of life. Ceremonies are required not only for the turning of the wheel of the year but also for the turning of life. Ceremonies need to be performed for birth and deaths. For weddings and heartbreak. For children starting school and leaving home. To create work and to recover from loss of employment. For post traumatic stress after war or victimisation and sometimes for mental illness. However, it is also for the times when there are no dramas and we are just immersed in joy and are grateful to the vast magickal universe that allows us to be living on the jewel of a world at this most interesting time. 

Magick brings Joy. It is the mundane life that is tedious and joyless. 

Magickal practitioners help people return to their joy - 

Now that is Magick!

So if I seem a bit slow getting the magazine out, please don't feel neglected... Know that I am busy helping someone somewhere- just as you are too...
And together, the more people we help with magick the more magickal we will make the world.

You are in my thoughts and heart always, that is why I go to all this trouble of producing this magazine. It is for you. Every joy to you.

Shé D’Montford  - Editor
www.magick.org.au

+61(0)402793604

PS: The next issue of Magick Magazine should be arriving in your mailboxes within the next 2 week - Enjoy!

Ice Caps Thickening Whilst Offsets Destroy Rainforest

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Here are the real research facts about Global warming and climate change :-
During the last decade, East Antarctica thickened at an average rate of about 1.8 centimetres per year. The Antarctic is so cold that even with increases of a few degrees, temperatures would generally remain below the melting point of ice. Warmer temperatures are expected to lead to more snow, which would increase the amount of ice in Antarctica, offsetting approximately one third of the expected sea level rise from thermal expansion of the oceans. 

Antarctica’s Ice Cover Thickens

The lowest recorded temperature of any location on Earth surface was −93.2 °C (−135.8 °F) at 81.8°S 59.3°E, which is on an unnamed Antarctic plateau between Dome A and Dome F, on August 10, 2010. The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was 14.5 °C (58.2 °F) in two places, Hope Bay and Vanda Station, on 5 January 1974.

The Antarctic is so cold that even with increases of a few degrees, temperatures would generally remain below the melting point of ice. Warmer temperatures are expected to lead to more snow, which would increase the amount of ice in Antarctica, offsetting approximately one third of the expected sea level rise from thermal expansion of the oceans. During this decade, East Antarctica thickened at an average rate of about 1.8 centimetres per year
http://www.sfgate.com/green/article/Antarctica-s-central-ice-cap-grows-while-glaciers-2669506.php

The West Antarctic ice sheet has warmed by only than 0.1 °C/decade in the last 50 years, and was strongest in winter and spring of the 1980 & 1990s . NOT NOW! Although this is partly offset by fall cooling in East Antarctica, this effect is restricted to the 1980s and 1990s.

The British Antarctic Survey, which has undertaken the majority of Britain's scientific research in the area, has the following positions:
    •    Climate models predict more snowfall than ice melting during the next 50 years,
    •    Antarctica seems to be both warming around the edges and cooling at the centre at the same time. Thus it is not possible to say whether it is warming or cooling overall.
    •    There is no evidence for a decline in overall Antarctic sea ice extent.
    •    The area of strongest cooling appears at the South Pole, and the region of strongest warming lies along the Antarctic Peninsula only
Yet the global warming mob ignored all these findings and promoted the only 2 that suited them
    •    Researchers reported December 21, 2012 in Nature Geoscience that from 1958 to 2010, the average temperature at the mile-high Byrd Station rose by 2.4 degrees Celsius, with warming fastest in its winter and spring. The spot which is in the heart of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet  beyond the arctic peninsula  - is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth. but it must be remembered that this sheet is not static and is slowly moving into warmer seas all the time
http://www.sciencearchive.org.au/nova/082/082key.html

http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2013/04/01/antarctica-ice-cover-thick-climate-change/#.VE2UxOfOpmY

Don't let these facts be selectively promoted and misconstrued by our politicians for the sole purpose of introducing new taxes and policies that are in reality destroying our planet - IE Carbon credits that allow big companies to buy Amazonian rain-forest to off set their tax and then they use it as a toxic waste dump that destroys the forest - These same hypocritical governments hamper the alternative fuel industries due to their loss in fossil fuel industry taxes - Change to alternative fuels is what we want along with a lowering of our cost of living. Real pollution reduction by big business should be rewarded -  not individuals taxed for the air they breath....

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More than 20 billion gallons of toxic drilling waste and 17 million gallons of oil have been dumped into the soil and waterways of the Amazon rain-forest - 

Chevron discharged more than 16 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways

Will dumping mining waste in peat-lands in Indonesia help mitigate climate change?

The Australian Government's preferred site for carbon offset Nuclear Waste. is Muckaty Station, near Tennant Creek,. trucked from Lucas Heights, Botany and Hunters Hill

Healing power of tumeric for HIV and viruses

SHE' D' Montford and the healing powers of Ashwaganda

Stepping Up for the accused "Witch" Children of the Niger Delta

Seven Psychic Secrets

Prevent EBOLA Naturally

With Ebola coming and spreading I want you all to eat lots of "turmeric" - nature's antiviral.
Feed it to your self and your loved ones in copious quantities - 

Please, if you have ignored all of my other predictions & warnings that have come true - just listen to this one, and you will live to thank me. 

Blessings To You  
- Shé D'Montford

http://youtu.be/uOJtg-ANjSI

Carbon Credit Offset Scams, Junk-Mail & Chickens

Junk Mail is Proliferating despite the advent of the internet. Only 4 years ago it was a billion pieces of junk mail sent out world wide a year, but  now it has reached

Over a billion pieces of Junk Mail sent every month -

 EVERY MONTH!!!! 

That is a lot of trees being sacrificed 

and for what? 

99% of junk mail is never opened nor read or in as in my case, becomes toilet paper for my chickens to poop on.

Many Large companies are using their Carbon Credit Offsets to purchase Amazonian and other endangered rain forests to use for pulping for the production of junk mail - what a waste! Then they use the denatured land to dump their land fill and toxic waste in a country with our protective legislation. So the trees can never grow back.
 

The Carbon Credit Offset Tax is destroying the lungs of the planet -

Another example of backward thinking designed not for the benefit of the planet but so that the air we breathe can be taxed.

Here is an example of the madness: The UK people have responded so well to the request to save energy and the UK has saved so much energy that it plans to stop energy saving to boost its emissions trading programme. It is about to pass legislation stopping energy producers reducing the amount of coal and gas they burn… this is nuts and shows they are far more interested in the tax than the benefits.

This is a far more dangerous situation than the global warming scam - ( I laugh sitting in the middle of the coldest winter on record for 6 years in a row) - Sure the climate alters and goes through cycles - it has done since before we started recording it - but take away the trees and we will see drastic changes, like global starvation and suffocation.

The best thing to off set carbon is the trees that breath carbon in - Green house emissions make trees grow faster which means more carbon is being processed into oxygen -It is the way it has always been  - one offsets the other naturally -  if we allow the green house to become green... That is if there are trees left that have not been culled in the race to offset the carbon tax...

This video clip is my playful but pissed off early morning take on this issue:
1) Please share comments about what you think of this situation 

and 

2) What you do with your junk-mail -

Maybe, if we all join in we can help get the message through that the junk mail does not work. Maybe we can embarrass these large companies and show them that junk mail creates bad will and is ineffective anyway. Maybe we can reach the conscience of someone we can convince into thinking a different way about how they spend their advertising dollars . Let them know it pisses you off so much that you will not patronise any big business that regularly send out large weekly catalogs.

Lets all give it a shot and I hope you enjoy my little video

The Green Search for Little Blue Men Loses Sight of the Human Cost

The idea of protecting the environment is to make sure that it is there for our children to enjoy in the future - Not to depopulate it of humans & keep is secretly hidden away - Humans have become the endangered species on Springbrook Mt when Government funds allocated to buy land adjacent to the national parks has been missed used to purchase and close down business and infrastructure essential to the survival of the centuries old community in Springbrook... - 

Instead, priority has been given to this group in the newly acquired area... See Picture....

This shows how just ludicrous the situation has become. 

I did not vote for this . Did YOU? 

$40.1 million dollars of your taxpaying dollars here - It is time we started prosecuting the idiots who deal so recklessly with our money and are destroying lives, homes and futures in the process. -The Greens laws in Victoria, preventing back-burning cost nearly 300 human lives during the bushfire season - 

The vocal minority is blackmailing Australia. If this was happening in their back yards they would be screaming to the press so why are we so silent. 

It is time to DEMAND JUSTICE- 

 I say lock up all who are responsible for this farce. 

IT IS CRIMINAL - 

IT IS FRAUDULENT & 

IT IS DANGEROUS.

- The article linked here has more details - 

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-green-deal-upsets-springbrook-community/story-fnihsr9v-1226713585933

To find MH370, Follow the Dollars -

 This keys in with my previous predictions - This video is a bit out there but this possibility has to be considered

STUART WILDE REQUIEM

 

“See you again soon, yeah?”

“Yeah!”

Stu & Shé at the Milton Castle

They were the last words I said to him. Sure, it had been years, but we both meant to catch up soon. If it were important, we would drop each other a message. I have been going through some of our emails to each other today. In the beginning, his were brief and mine were long. However, as time passed, that reversed. Eventually the topic of one of our emails became one of his most controversial articles and then he included me as  “The Lady She-She-La-La” in one of his books. (God’s Gladiators) Sometimes it was hard to get a message through to him. There were layers of protection around him. He liked being one step removed and a little inaccessible. Yet, if it was important it reached him no matter how convoluted the trail. Like when be had been flagged by immigration to be refused entry to Australia. It would have isolated him from his son and his home. (The castle at Milton.) How did I know this was about to happen to him? An ex of mine had grown jealous of my friendship with Stuie. Tony boasted that he had flagged Stuart and because I gave him the heads up, Stuie was able to get it sorted before he returned to Aus. Stuie sent me a simple reply to that piece of information – “Thank you so much – I know you love me. You’re such a decent bird.”

Jealousy is such a waste. Stuie was jealous of me when we went out. "Stop flirting with everyone." he would complain. In my mind I wasn't. I was just being friendly and approachable. As usual, he was right. Many have misinterpreted my inverted snobbery as a sign of sexual attraction. Contrary to what I believed about myself, Stuie thought that I was arrogant. He called me his fallen angel Shé Shé. I knew my training put me streets ahead of many of the so-called spiritual crowd that hung around him. Stuart loved to pick my brains about my techniques and Asian training and then would give me a hard time for sharing too easily. He was a contradiction and a challenge. He always made me feel I had to prove myself. It was a competition that he always won. In front of his class, he derided me once. "She' you can do all this stuff and you have all of these qualifications, do you know how boring that is and how repelled people can be by that?” A slap in the ego but it made me strive harder.

He was good at keeping me knocked down a peg or two. I might have skills but he was Stuart Wilde and I should never forget it. Nevertheless, every now and then it reversed on him. 
"I bet you haven’t even heard of TOEism?” he asked me once. I paused for a moment and stared at him in disbelief. Surly he was joking. The existence of Taoism is common spiritual knowledge. “Thought so. My A-list wizards have read all about it and you have never heard of it.”

“Er…Well, actually, I am Taoist trained but I have never heard it pronounced that way before. My Tibetan teacher called the study of the way: “Dow.” Well, at least that’s how it sounded when she said it. However, if your asking me about any spiritual practice involving toes then, nope! Never heard of it!”

Another time, “Shé I have traveled all around the would hundreds of times... Where have you been and where have you taught?”

“The US, China, New Zealand and South Africa." He was surprised. He had not been to China but he was born in South Africa.

We had many little things like that in common. I didn't speak of such things till he challenged me. I think he like that I didn’t back down to him and was always willing to give his challenges a go. Yet, no matter how well I did with his challenges, he always had a reply that put me in my place.

“Shé you can't speak with authority on business until you have been successful in business for yourself." He was surprised that I had been a QLD businesswoman of he year. His reply to my parrying of his challenge made me feel as inferior as discussing business with my successful father... "Well..." he replied... " When. Your second business makes its second million you will have credibility with my friends.” Oh, Stuart had a way of making people feel special but with replies like this it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t have any really close friends. He always kept everyone at arms length. Very few of his lovers ever really knew him. By his friends, he meant his “rich uncles,” the group that would fly him around the world to be the entertaining celebrity author at their soirees. He knew I had wealthy lovers who did the same for me because my beauty and enthusiasm made them feel special.

Stuie had a great sense of humor when it suited him. When it didn't, the do not disturb sign went up. “Already disturbed so don't disturb any more.” I would joke with him. I don’t know how we remained friends despite ourselves. Sure there were moments when he needed me. “Stay with me before I go on stage. I need you to calm me down. Give me healing. Kiss me and push some healing energy into me.” I knew I was useful to him and that in an obscure way he needed me, yet, he never let me need him in return. It was his way of protecting himself from abandonment and keeping me strong. If I played needy or wanted affection in public his reply was always the same: “Stop it Shé. You are stronger than that. People are going to need you and you will need to be able to stand alone. I won’t bend over backwards for you and you will never bend over backwards for anyone. They should fall at your feet, but I won’t.”

The first time he said that to me I countered: “Can't two warriors give each other comfort between battles?”

“We will, but tomorrow you will be alone again and you must learn to stand alone.”

Therefore, the next day I balanced on the battlements of the Milton castle 50 feet above the ground and walked alone right around them all. As I past his bedroom window where he was sleeping with another woman.... I laughed as I past – did a bend back and stood up again. He saw me and froze, thinking it was a suicide attempt. The look on his face made me laugh so hard that I nearly did fall. I wasn't broken hearted. It was what I expected. Yes, I was walking all alone, but, like Scaramouch, I got the cosmic comedy of life.

Stuie was funny but I laughed at life more than he. He only saw me really up set with him once. He didn’t like it and hid. He sent two emissaries to my beautiful hidden valley retreat to see if I was still upset with him. When I admitted I was I didn't hear from him in a long time. Then out of the blue be left beautiful voice messages on my answering service inviting me to dinner in Byron. He was very charming. There was a defenseless side to him like an abandoned little boy. We shared that early experience of childhood abandonment as well. We were two small children sheltering in each other’s arms when we were together. We were friends first who shared the experiences of our wounds left by other lovers, our fantasies, and what we aspired to in partners. We did not want to hurt each other. We knew we would if we developed expectations about each other. We even found ways of getting others to fulfill each other’s fantasies and sexual proclivities. I introduced him to several unique characters. Another game and another challenge.

When he needed me, he would contact me, sometimes through others and sometimes incognito, revealing his true identity at the last moment. He loved games. He hated anything that was boring or ordinary. One of our first dates was to a shooting range. He asked me about Ayahuasca and I put him in contact with Darpan. About security, I put him in contact with my SAS friends; he wanted meditation techniques, magick spells, and safety tips. Nevertheless, he respected me enough to not publish my work. He warned me which publishers to avoid and where to advertise. Like a sarcastic older brother, he was protective of me, guided me and he chided me into keeping my feet on the ground.

He was an excellent writer. Intimidatingly so. He had a way of making the reader feel like they knew him. His books feel as though they are written personally to the reader from an old friend. He liked to ask others what they thought of his work. That was all fine unless they didn't like it. Then he could get angry or aggressive and very insecure. He liked having people around him but resented them in his personal space. He did not accept differing opinions easily. We disagreed occasionally. Mostly on the use of psychoactives in spiritual development. He was pro, I anti. I felt they made students lazy as all states of altered consciousness can be achieved through disciplined meditating techniques. Stuart just liked them and he felt them to be the fast track. He ignored the dangers. They aged him prematurely. He remains the only man to ever pressure me into taking a substance against my will. His doctor/girlfriend “supplied medical grade stuff.” He felt that ecstasy would reopen my heart chakra after my years of abuse. He was right it did. It also opened me to depression, till I found the antidote. I used hypericum to restore my balance as Stuie used me to restore his.

I was reminiscing about him with the Nacson bothers on the weekend at the Mind Body and Spirit festival in Sydney. I had first met them at Stuart’s home in Milton. I had heard about Stuart’s death in late May, but I would not have put it past him to stage his own death in order to make a grand entrance at his own wake. Robert had confirmed it on the weekend. It was real. He was really gone. I had sent Stuie several messages whilst I was in Singapore in April. I felt he needed me and I had tried to urgently contact him on the first of May but there had not been a reply. I was busy so I didn’t pursue it. When I heard the news, I understood why. I felt I had let him down. I left it too long to see him again. I knew his heart was bad. It was becoming more difficult for him to achieve an erection. He was aging rapidly, as vegans often do. There was so much about the post 2012 world that he did not want to face. I knew that was when my main work would start and his finish..... But.....

How do you finish unfinished conversations and ideas not yet exchanged? He has left me hanging again. This restless regret will prod me into finishing what we started via playful internet exchanges twelve years earlier. It was all about things we planned in Italy in 1475. He teased me about how excited I was to discover portraits that looked like me by DaVinci and Botticelli. Then our past-life selves remembered the meetings in the philosophical salons of Milan. Salons hosted by my former self, Cecilia Gallerani, where he, a young bright eye member of the Borgia family, first heard dangerous ideas. Our souls were young then, ready to change the world and we did, and have done many times since. Now his soul was tired so it passed on.

The last time I saw him, he lay in my arms in a motel room in Byron Bay. We started to joke and felt really close again. Looking forward in time, as I often do, I saw the potential pain in our relationship if we stayed together. “How do you want this to end?” I half joked.

Coming from the left, he said, "In the arms of a gorgeous strawberry-blonde looking out to the sea from high on an Irish mountain top." (He got this wish in the end but I am glad it wasn’t me)

"Oh." I sad sadly. He had understood my intent with my question and had deliberately misanswered me. Therefore, I got up to put my clothes on.

"Where are you going? Come back to bed. Why are you always running away from me?"

I didn't get back into bed. I leaned over and planted one more passionate kiss on his beautiful full lips. "Home." I replied. "Its an hour’s drive." I went to leave but he had preempted me and had dead bolted the door. He had the key in his pants pocket. His pants lay scrumpled on the floor. We both sprang on them at the same time. We wrestled around this way and that, laughing and tugging the legs of his designer jeans in opposite directions. He was very strong but I was very quick. I got the keys and opened the door. It was so late it was early. We had lost track of time again. I turned back to him threw the keys to him and looked deep into his blue eyes. His expression held me in a tighter grip than our play fighting. There was his hurt little boy wanting me to stay and hold him until late in the morning. I smiled my love and care to him and tried to hide my fear that was causing me to flee again.

His reply, a simple slow blink and nod. I stepped through the door. “See you again soon, yeah?” he asked after me.

"Yeah!" I exclaimed as I firmly closed the door and stepped out into the cold, dark night all alone.

FAST - Apple Pie - Magic