"What a Drag It Is Getting Old!"

Welcome to Geriatrics for Pagans 2! We’re glad you could make it! Do check out the other Geriatrics for Pagans groups on other networks. Tegwedd plans on starting the groups on every network we’re on except WiccanTogether because they’ve been snooting on our groups, and not approving any. They don’t inform us either of why they haven’t approved them. So we’ll snoot on them right back.

Mick Jagger sang in “Mother’s Little Helper”, “What a drag it is getting old.” It sure is. Mick didn’t know the half of it when he sang those words more than 40 years ago. Stephen is really pissed off about WiccanTogether taking this attitude when we helped build the network up to where it is today, and they snoot on our groups! Tegwedd thinks that they’ve gotten too big for their britches, and that they’re going to have trouble finding hats that fit them. So many networks have gone completely fascist and killed their groups. MySpace killed their groups. MSN killed their groups, and Yahoo’s group categorization process is so draconian that we decided not to create any more groups there. BlessedbeUK and Avalon are also very fascist. They went fascist first. In order to ask for money to pay your bills, you first have to be rich enough to pay for their stupid network. When you’re worrying about keeping the power on, you don’t have the money to pay their bribes. Britain’s version of the GOP must run those networks. But this post isn’t about that. This post is about the funny aspects of getting older. It beats the alternative, right? It’s high summer, but at times Tegwedd’s right hand freezes into a position and aches. Stephen (whom Tegwedd calls Frog) and the putties have something in common; when it gets hot, they all sleep a lot. The putties resemble fur rugs, and Frog resembles a very loose corpse, except that his chest rises and falls. Stephen finds that as he gets older, he gets more humorously sadistic. When he and Tegwedd do libations, he makes her “bark” 3 times before she gets it. Then we say in chorus, “To us and prosperity, to prosperity and us.” He comes up with more creative ideas to get rid of his arch enemies the fascist GOP, aka the Gas-Oil Party. He can accept being older, but refuses to think of himself as old. As time goes on Tegwedd has noticed that he is getting more and more rigid, and less tolerant of others’ points of view, especially in areas of beliefs and politics. He is just as leftist, but less able to let others have differing perspectives without being labeled as fascist. He still feels youthful, and it’s one of the things that keeps him going. Tegwedd thinks it’s our senses of humor and her faith and hope that keep her going. Now you tell us how you’ve changed over time.

Stephen keeps coming up with little games to “entertain us.” One is the “book game”. We tell each other how many pages are in the books we’re currently reading. We show each other where the bookmark is, then the other person tells us what page we’re on. He guessed the very page Tegwedd was on and she was flabbergasted. Tegwedd usually just makes a random guess, since she’s going to be wrong anyway. Why not? It doesn’t matter anyway. It has 2 purposes, to keep us intellectually alert, and keeps us reading books. Tegwedd thinks it’s a stupid frustrating game. Stephen plans on creating more stupid games like this.

We have noticed a definite prejudice against Pagans who have reached an advanced age (age 60s and above) in the Pagan community. Have you noticed this? We’ve worked tirelessly for the Pagan community, and have a lot of knowledge, experience, and wisdom to contribute. Why are there no takers? Isaac Bonewits and Robert Larson both died with very little support from the Pagan community. Which other Pagans can you name who are in our age bracket, and are getting very little if any respect and support? We want to know why you feel that older Pagans don’t get the respect and support we deserve. Stephen has some ideas. He feels that many younger Pagans have no respect for our traditions any longer. These traditions have evolved through much trial and error through several decades. Our generation has seen many improvements in the environment that the Republicans want to do away with. They claim the these regulations are what sank the economy when in reality what did it was all the rich corporations giving away our jobs to foreigners overseas so that Americans cans pay their mortgages and the deregulation of the nation’s banks so that they lost working families’ life savings. The banks got bailouts, which promptly went into the pockets of the top one per cent of the executives. Where’s our bailout? Giving $700 billion to the American people would have resulted in a much needed shot in the arm to our economy because we would have spent it on things we actually needed; to pay our bills, groceries, our kids’ educations, etc.

Back to the environment: This is something we Pagans should be concerned with, and many of us participated in protest demonstrations to push this legislation through. Remember the Love Canal? Chances are, some of the people who demonstrated about the Love Canal and the environmental violations were Pagans. Those who demonstrated against the construction of the nuclear power plants definitely had Pagans in their numbers. And from the meltdowns of the plants in northern Japan following the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year, we know how dangerous those plants can be. Then there are the legal strides made to safeguard our rights to worship as we will. Our generation brought about those advancements. Pagans also were involved in getting religious rights for inmates. Stephen was involved in the demonstrations at Folsom, Soledad, and San Quentin. Tegwedd corresponded with inmates for years, and imparted information about Druidry,and the different books about Druidry that she recommends. Stephen and Isaac participated in a demonstration in San Francisco having people “honk if you like dolphins” when the Japanese were killing dolphins. Charlie Daniels, the bluegrass fiddler, joined the protest, and not only gave them tickets to his concert that evening, but also backstage passes. He did the extended version of the “Devil Goes Down to Georgia.” It was a great concert, and one of Stephen’s fondest memories of the time he spent with Isaac.

We are offering a new service. For just $19.95, you can have spell-coaching. We will take you through the construction and performance of a spell. It’s very simple. If you want to perform a spell but you don’t think you know what you’re doing, hire us to coach you through it. The fee is payable to our PayPal accounts, to either abbotts_inn@yahoo.com or tezra.reitan@gmail.com .
We will coach you using strong ethics. Tegwedd has a couplet she will teach you which you can add to your spell that will ensure that it is ethical. Abbott’s Inn International School of Magick is over 40 years old, having been founded in 1970 in Berkeley, CA. It went cybernetic almost 9 years ago. Lizet has been helping us put the school on a more commercial footing, and with her inspiration, Tegwedd has started packaging the classes into manageable packets. Ms. Freeman did a 3rd website for us almost a month ago at http://abbottsinn.wordpress.com. From there, by clicking on two of the graphics, you can go to either of the other two sites: http://abbottsinninternational.com/ and http://abbottsinn.com/ . You can also get to our network http://abbottsinn.ning.com/ . With her help, we also salvaged some things from his old website, including the mission statement: The Abbott’s Inn International School of Magick aims to provide a gentle nurturing environment that promotes education in both the atmosphere and the specific tools of magick. Our research arm is called the Magickal Research Institute or MRI, not to be confused with the medical MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Image, which Tegwedd had on her right ankle about 9 months ago. Stephen and Lizet came up with the name almost 9 years ago. The three of us have become a very effective working team.