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evil eye

I wrote this in response to a prompt on a private Facebook group, and Peter asked that I post it here so that he could share it. We were talking about the Evil Eye, the deeply and widely held folkloric belief that a curse can come from a glance, a particular way of looking and seeing. This is what I wrote on that topic: ================== The first thing that comes to mind with this is what I think of as “The Look.” I am autistic, and when I was young, this came I wrote this in response to a prompt on a private Facebook group, and Peter asked that I post it here so that he could share it. We were talking about the Evil Eye, the deeply and widely held folkloric belief that a curse can come from a glance, a particular way of looking and seeing. This is what I wrote on that topic: with some physical disabilities that I have since outgrown. When I was little, I was immediately and visibly apparent as a different sort of human. I have this as part of my experience and understanding of the w...
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the sound of your own voice

When I was a child, I knew a girl my age named Lynn. I recall her as a sturdy, kind-hearted child with a generous nature, a little dull but impossible to dislike. She was the only Linda I knew. Today, when I meet someone named Lynn, I immediately associate her with those qualities. I know that there is no real correlation between that name and those qualities outside of my own childhood experience, but there’s that intuitive nudge that tells me that Lynns are OK.  This intuition is false. There are plenty of Lynns in the world who are nothing like the Lynn in my mind. If I relied only on this intuition, this gut feeling that someone named Lynn will be friendly but dull, I could easily be led astray.  We all have these built-in associations, spun from a lifetime of experiences. It’s impossible to be aware of all of them; if you think you have no unconscious biases, you are incorrect. This is, at root, the problem with “trusting your gut.” You don’t even know what is down there,...
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why it’s not like woodworking

In an earlier post, I made an analogy between methods and motivations for studying and practicing magic that compared it to hypothetical methods and motivations for studying and practicing woodworking. There’s an important distinction I’d like to make between these two crafts, though. First, I’m going to talk about Julius Evola. Evola was a prolific author on occult and spiritual topics in the mid-20th century. He was, by any measure, an influential figure on the occult scene and wrote many books on magic. He was also a fascist. I don’t mean that as the sort of catch-all political insult as the word gets used nowadays; he was a literal fascist, an ardent supporter of Mussolini, friends with Nazis, and he described himself as a “superfascist.” He had all the evil, genocidal ideologies you’d expect from such a person. There is nothing about his biography that redeems him in any way as a human being, and his ideology remained odious to the end. I haven’t read Evola. I probably never will....
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ai, neurodiversity, bullying, fears

When I first tried VR, I played a game called "The Climb." It's a rock-climbing game that gives the illusion of being very high in the air as you reach for handholds and dangle from cliffs. The first time I played it, I couldn't do it. I was paralyzed, and even though I knew that I was perfectly safe, the fear of losing my grip and falling was so overwhelming that I could not bring myself to reach for the next hold.  I own a VR headset and use it often for fitness applications. It's a fun and easy way to keep moving. I've had it for about a year and a half now. I tried "The Climb" again not too long ago. I knew that I was in a virtual environment and my body did not react to the height illusion at all. The visceral paralyzing fear was gone. The illusion was broken and it was just another pretend experience, like a TV show. I think it's the same with most new technology. At first, it seems very convincing and immersive; then, the illusion breaks a...
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The woodworker analogy

Imagine three woodworkers. One is interested in woodworking from a historical and academic perspective. She loves to read about woodworkers of the past, she knows the names and personal histories of the great woodworkers, and she understands everything about the theory and practice of woodworking both past and present, and she may even have written her own books about woodworking. She has never carved a piece of wood. The second woodworker loves woodworking with a passion. He loves the feel of the tools, the smell of wood as it is carved, and is soothed by the practice of working with woods. He is not concerned with the outcome of his craft or developing any particular skill or technique, because the pleasure is in the doing of it, and what he produces is of no interest to himself or anyone else. The third woodworker practices her craft because she wants to make useful items out of wood. She doesn’t care for woodworking itself and sometimes actively dislikes it, but she gains great sat...
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The Kitchen Druid's Cookbook, again

 Back when my name was Nettle, I had a Wordpress blog that I enjoyed keeping. I've decided that I want to revive the practice. My last post there was in 2010, and I am a different person and this is a different world, and I don't want to go back to that space. I am making a new space here. I know blogging is no longer as potent or popular as it was back then, but I strongly dislike social media, and I don't mind being old-fashioned. In the spirit of continuity, I'm going to make this first post a re-post from 2008.  Most of what I wrote back then was in a spirit of personal exploration or as part of larger conversations. This post is one of the few things from those days that I feel can stand on its own: -------------------------------------------------------------- The Executive Pagan, my fellow kitchen druid, suggested a  Kitchen Druid’s Cookbook. After thinking about what this would entail, I realized it would actually be pretty short. Here’s how to Cook Like A Druid...
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