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tabular_rasaFrom Kabalarian Names Analysis:
Although the name Amy creates the urge to be creative and original, we point out that is causes frustration through a scattered and emotional nature.
This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the liver, bloodstream, and in tension or accidents to the head.
Your first name of Amy has made you a friendly, approachable, and generous person.
Generally you are good-natured, though at times you can be blunt and sarcastic.
As you are naturally talkative, you find it easy to meet and make friends with many people.
This name inclines you to be sympathetic and generous to those in difficult or unfortunate circumstances.
You can be firm, positive, and independent in your own ideas and in reaching your own decisions, yet when it comes to taking action or following things through to completion, you often need encouragement.
You respond quickly to kind words or any appreciation shown you.
There are artistic, creative abilities in this name that you could express through music or singing, or, in a practical way, through sewing or interior decorating.
Yeah, that sounds about right, though I'm arguably pretty indecisive, and almost never blunt and sarcastic (I quite hate being that way, to tell you the truth . . . ). For those who are interested, though, it's a gamble; for instance, Lisa didn't sound much like Lisa, though Patricia fit the bill pretty darn well ("a desire for association with people and new experiences," "you desire change," and "farther fields always look greener"? Patricia is the most insistently-changing person I know . . . ).
I found this Christian Home Manual online yesterday, and read through it with a mixture of terror and odd amusement.
"Rock and roll music should never be permitted in the home. Few parents are willing to buck their children concerning it, but they had better do it. Its origin is Satanic and it is soul-destroying."
"[The wife] is to be happy at home, making it the nest it ought to be (Prov. 31:10-31). There is no room for a career outside the home. If she is a mother, she has a full-time job at home. Only in cases of dire need should the mother go to work . . . [if she does work] physical well-being will suffer - she cannot work all day and clean house all night; she is the "weaker vessel."
"When the father is not home, she will spank the children and teach them to fear the consequences of disobedience. She may save the hard cases for when Dad comes home especially if the spanking should be real hard. Children who do not learn to fear Mom and Dad will never fear God."
Then, directed to the children: "You see, God has commanded your parents to paddle you often. It seems that you learn best when it smarts. A child who does not fear his parents will never learn to fear God."
(Question: Why do we have to fear God, will someone please explain? Can't we simply love God so much that we choose willingly to obey Him out of devotion to Him? That seems so much healthier, nicer, and more natural!)
"The baby's crying might better be stopped with a spanking than by picking him up." I'm starting to notice a pattern here . . .
"Teach them to sit by you in church. They should be brought into the pew and trained to sit quietly through the services. You may have to take them out once or twice to paddle them, but it will pay rich rewards." I, for one, would refuse to return, ever, to a place where I was publicly paddled. Good Lord . . .
"Should you have to send your children to the public school there are certain things you should do. Purchase books on creation and have your children read them. This will provide an antidote for the teaching of evolution they will surely receive. Talk to the school principal and have your children excused from Sex Education classes (don't let him tell you they don't have any; they may call it by another name). Sexuality is usually taught in Health or physical education classes and sometimes the classes are coed. See the English teacher and tell her your child is not allowed to read books that take God's name in vain or contain vulgar language. Have your children excused from dancing instruction in the gym classes. Rock and roll concerts brought to the school are not required to be attended by your children. Incidentally, the public school teaches children to question what their parents believe and incites them to seek equal rights in the home. They will hear much about Mother Nature, but nothing about Father God. Oh . . . my . . . God . . . can you even imagine having to deal with a family like that in the school system? Parents bitching about their kid not being allowed to read just about every piece of classic literature ever written? The evolution thing is one thing, but English and Gym (and I would like note I never learned anything about sex in my Health class; I did, however, learn that "Goal Oriented People Find Ways" and "We Go With Goal-Oriented People," apparently . . . L-P)? I am agog, I am aghast . . .
Their justification: "I believe our children should be sheltered from the world, its habits, its talk and its philosophy (see II Cor. 6:14-18)." Shit.
. . . and my personal favorite: "Petting should not be permitted." WTF is "petting?"
As Kristina said, "I didn't know there was an eleventh commandment we missed: 'Thou Shalt Beat Thy Children Into Submission.'" O.o . . .
Apologies if anyone really does live like that, or believe firmly that is their personal route to salvation, etc . . . I mean, it's a religion and a viable lifestyle. However, I would argue one should choose it willingly, and not shelter one's children so that they only embrace it simply because it's all they know. Honestly, that sort of all-encompassing religious-rearing strikes me as a bizarre sort of child abuse. Can you abuse a child philosophically? I would think one can-- just as one can physical or emotionally neglect-- by denying a child their right to their own existential search for truth. It gets so complicated, though, because if one did believe this, they would also believe in its own all-encompassing objectivity and feel they are doing their kids a favor.
So I'm some crazy-ass lost soul trying to corrupt them; I need to be kept out of their saved home. Or beaten into submission. Whatever :-P
(Plus, I totally understand that not all Christians live like that. Read on-- I make more sense when the rest of my philosophy is made more obvious . . . Besides, considering how brutally I make fun of my own dearly beloved Harry Potter, Romeo and Juliet-- you should have seen me watching it today-- Les Miserables, Wicked, and even the entire country of Japan, just know it follows that I make fun of what I love ^_^ in fact, I only feel safe teasing people I feel close and comfortable with! Lol . . . )
Continuing on the subject of religion, I was reading the National Geographic article on the Gospel of Judas (aka the Judas=Snape theory :-P HARRY POTTER IS A GNOSTIC ALLEGORY!!! Heh, that probably makes it even more controversial to many already-skeptical Christian groups . . . ).
I have come to the conclusion that pretty much every time Christianity has faced a fork in the road in its historical progress, it chooses dominantly to take the side I like least. I'm all about the fundamentals of Christianity (not to be confused with Christian Fundamentalism, good Heavens, no!): what Jesus taught, like to be nice to everybody, embrace all people, and exercise one's (newly discovered, according to Nietzche, lol . . . )free will in the practice humility and selflessness, even to the point of sacrificing one's self for one's cause. Yet, like every religion, Christianity has grown and changed:
Jesus divinity-humanity debate: I like humanity, Council of Nicaea decides divinity.
Inherent good vs. inherent evil: I like inherent good, it's decided inherent evil.
Personal connection to God vs. sole clergical connection to God: I like the former, but the latter's the best choice for social control (though Protestism did come back and change its mind about all of that, so it's all good, now, lol . . . ).
Gnosticism was the whole movement back in the early days when Christianity was first growing that had (semi)-radical ideas about internal connection with God, a divine spark of good, the spiritual world being separate and good in contrast to the evil, material world, and the route to the spiritual being through knowledge. There were some weird sects (one liked to wife-swap, apparently . . . ), but the general case I'm rather fond of. Woot.
So I think I'm really feeling the Gnosticism thing, as far as Christianity goes.
Though, pssh, like this is even anything close to claiming a religion. I'm a hodgepodge, what can I say? I'm a really fervent, seeking hodgepodge, but I'm a hodgepodge. I'm spiritual. I'm agnostic. I pick and choose what I like and find organized religion for the most part suppressing and confining. I'm always going to have a little Buddhist and Shinto and even sometimes Daoist in me, not to mention a rather traditionally Islamic fondness for study over action (ironic, now, eh, that they're renowned as jihadists?) and I've always respected the openness of Judaism to interpretation of texts; from what I've seen they're traditionally into studying and understanding rather than just being inculcated without really getting it.
Actually, a better perspective would be that I have a set of beliefs, and it's just that certain periods in history have better connected to them. We all have our views on Islam and Judaism and Christianity and such today, but, apart from differing views on the Messiah and the last prophet, they're all exactly the same-- and I do mean that. They're only different because they're in different phases. They all started out as struggling religions, at their most open-minded point, with diverse followers with diverse opinions. Then, for social reasons, they got strict-- and this strictness became embracable amongst suffering populations looking for the answers. Then, they relaxed, as they grew, all went through a phase of growth, where texts were studied and encouraged to be interpreted. Then, as soon as they became dominant, politics took over and they went strict again, suddenly cutting out all but one strain of the plethora of ideas that had previously branched off. They split into sects-- some more destined to survive than others-- and mostly based off of the same basic conflicts: conversion, elitism of the religious group itself (connected, in part, to conversion), the route to salvation (this applies even beyond Christianity; I once did a report on how the the various rites attached to chanting of Buddha's name in certain sects parallels salvation: some say it once, with feeling, and are Enlightened like born-again Christians are saved for eternity and guaranteed a place in Heaven; others must repeat it over and over in the style of the ever-repenting and renewing-peace-with-God Catholics), the necessity of rites, the personal connection to God, the subjectivity of religious texts. Every religion goes through these periods of change, it's just each one is at a certain more-or-less fundamental point in time than the religions around it, and so it's just a gamble left up to history. Hence, I'm by no means a modern Christian, but I might have been a pretty hard-core one if I had lived sometime from 33 to 300 A.D.
Hmm, it's been a while since I've really done a long, thoughtful rant . . . ^_^ feels good!
Tune in next week when I attempt to write a Gnostic parody of the modern Christian Home Manual.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-03 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 06:30 pm (UTC)that errr... 'home manual' is scary. kinda confirms what i've long suspected that organized religion all too often gets corrupted into a method to control people and squelch any questioning and/or individuality.
writing a parody sounds like a great idea. (yay irreverance!)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-03 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-03 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-03 02:13 am (UTC)