Neo-paganism [was Re: older Yamaha keyboards]

You can take it any way you please, of course. But yes, my point (which I then proceeded to explain, in the case I outlined) was that Satan is an entity from Christian, or at the very least Abrahamic, religious cosmology, and I am sufficiently non-Christian (and, indeed, non-Abrahamic) that Satan is not an entity with any meaning to me (beyond, of course, the intellectual "this is something that has reality to others" sense that anything from someone else's religion is accorded). Eh. I hardly conflate the two. But it's a little like asking me whether I write "standardize" or "standardise" and my replying that I don't write English at all: it's presuming a separation which exists only within a framework which has no particular meaning for me. Or like a Hindu, upon hearing that you're Christian, ask if that means you worship (say) Shiva. (The latter analogy is a poor one, since Shiva is not the sort of personification of evil within Hinduism that Satan is within Christianity, but it may give you somewhat of an idea of how the question struck me.) Speaking of "the pagans" makes about as much sense as speaking of "the Christians" - perhaps even less. That aside, I'm not sure what you think this is "a result" of. Indeed, you did. Christianity and Abrahamic religions in general don't have particularly clean hands themselves. Nor are they immune to altering their beliefs (or at least their dogma, their professed beliefs) to suit the times. But yes, it is nice. That's one reason we do it, one reason we do not slavishly follow beliefs and practices better suited to other times and places: the results are much nicer that way. (Another is that most of the neo-pagan ways are antagonistic, almsot, to dogma. I was once asked by a prosletyzer "don't you think it appropriate to invite others to believe as you do?" and I replied, approximately, "no; I would rather you seek within yourself and believe as you find appropriate for you, even if it's different from my way, than that you follow some dogma, even if that dogma would lead you to something like my way.") Indeed. So are some Christians. And Jews. And Moslems. And atheists. And... Eh. If I had a way to contact her, I might be curious enough to bother, or I might not. Whether Squat is real for her has no particular bearing on whether Squat is real for me. I do, however, wonder why you're citing the opinions and perceptions of someone "bat crap crazy" as if they were relevant to the discussion. Not a terribly uncommon point of view, and not too far from my own: the various deities that have reality for me are what the Divine looks like when looked at from my point of view. This has little-to-nothing to do with what it looks like when looked at from some other point of view. Because Beelzebub - to the extent that the name names anything at all - names a relatively specific manifestation of the Divine, one which has little-to-no reality for your acquaintance. Indeed, though I don't see the proverb as being applicable here. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B