blog.fourhares

World’s Second Oldest Grand Lodge (finally) admits women!

It’s about time. Actually, it’s really quite overdue: France’s oldest Grand Lodge, the Grand Orient de France, has so far not prevented its Lodges from initiating amongst its ranks women. Presumably such move will be explicitly supported at its next meeting in September.

Of course, women have been in Freemasonry for quite some time, with the most broadly spanned GL allowing both men and women being the over hundred-year-old International Order of Co-Freemasonry (Le Droit Humain or ‘LDH’).

It seems strange that it has taken so long for what should really be an obvious step for Freemasonry. After all, there are no legitimate Freemasonic reasons for excluding women from the ranks of so many Lodges, each either fearful of repercussions of loss of ‘amity’ relations with other GLs, or holding on to a view that regresses to pre-equitable days.

UGLE is now in a strange position: it had the opportunity of being a leader in taking this step. Now, whatever it decides, it will be seen as being mere follower: either following the steps of GOdF; or following the reticence from more bigotted views.

Posted in Freemasonry | No Comments »

SteinerSeminar.com up & running!

I’m pretty pleased with the overall outcome of the new site steinerseminar.com considering that much of the work was done in-between a rather heavy schedule of writing, teaching and other more personal engagements.

There’s still some work to do, especially with regard to content - but much of that is really out of my hands (except for the High School Course, which I’ll have to address in the coming days).

Posted in Anthroposophy | No Comments »

New Forum

In many ways, it’s a pity it had to come to that. I suppose that at least in the online world, when rules and regulations begin to be applied in manners that have a deadening effect, one can easily move on to another domain, without feeling as though those who remain have no choice.

Would but the socio-political world be the same. Unfortunately, this is of course simply not the case, and the last decade has seen unprecedented (in my life-time in Western democracies) erosion of personal liberties. This has occurred by invoking the spectre of ’safety’ - so increasingly we are not only faced with, but incredibly increasingly accept without question, the application of ‘rules’ introduced either ‘for our own safety’ or for the ’safety of others’.

Life is risky, and ultimately completes its cycle…. and so we move on.

In the realms of tarot forums, this will be my own first major move. I am very pleased with both the achievements I have been able to support and encourage on Aeclectic’s tarotforum, and saddened that I was not able to share the depth of my concerns about the slow but regressive consequences of not only a shift from forum guidelines to ‘rules’, but also in their use as though points from which to start, rather than as support.

Each community, of course, needs to make its own decisions as to direction. And in the realm of Forums, there are three inter-related aspects to that community: the forum owners, the moderators, and the contributing members. Each has a part to play in directing the course of a Forum’s development, joy, or degradation.

…’tis time to have moved on.

and so heartily welcome forum.tarothistory.com!

Posted in Tarot | No Comments »

30 Weeks pdf

I have to admit that writing these has so far been both tiring and absolutely wonderful: tiring, as it is on top of my teaching, association for tarot studies, and masonic commitments (as well as my personal life); wonderful in that each week I find myself having to isolate elements I consider more important and central in order to make fit my self-imposed six pages (for the first version).Not only have I now completed the first twenty, but participants - and what a group of people to provide me with feedback in this initial version! - are also now completing this twentieth.Coming up are the last series in the trump series, during which additional comments will also be made in relation to reading in general and tying various loose-ends.The next round is due to begin in July (2008), and subscriptions can still be made on my page at:

 www.fourhares.com/tarot/30_week.html

In  reflecting on the overall course, I will also need to consider in greater detail how to better make use of TarotBB. Although the development of tarotbb.com came as the course in its initial phase had already started, I personally see it as integral to further online course work…

Posted in Tarot | No Comments »

Blogging hits FourHares

Here it is! Finally decided to copy-cat what so many others are doing and create my own weblog! …but of course, this does not mean that my main site is being left - in fact, I suspect that I’ll still be spending more time updating and creating pages there than I’ll do here, but we shall see! So please do visit www.fourhares.com

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