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[sl] Introduction, History, and CB Radio Metaphor

To: "sacredlandscapelist@egroups.com" 
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: [sl] Introduction, History, and CB Radio Metaphor
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 11:19:11 -0800

Hello, 

I post so rarely these days (due to other committments, not other
interests -- for i see them as all connected), that i might as well be a
lurker. So perhaps a re-introduction is in order. 

I started this e-list in 1995, mostly to find intellectual conversation
on the varied topics we now cover here, and as an offering to my friend
Barry Carroll, who had long complained (like, since 1967) that he and i
were the only two people he knew with such eclectic interests. We had
read a lot of books on the subject, from Claude Bragdon to John Michell,
and from Fulcanelli to D'Arcy Thompson; we had each travelled around in
search of sacred sites; i was an astrologer; and Barry had taken to
studying some of the number-crunching aspects of the geometrical basis
for such forms of architecture -- but we never seemed to find anyone to
talk with about the material except each other, which was not always
feasible, since we only saw each other about once a year or less.  

In a conversation that year, Barry had offhandedly dismissed the newly
developing internet as a "fad" similar to CB radios, and i wanted to
show him that my much more all-encompassing vision of the internet -- as
having the potential for uniting people from diverse cultures and
regions -- could be demonstrated by picking a very obscure topic of
intererst, our so-called "interdisciplinary studies" (what a name!), and
finding enough bright minds who wanted to share ideas on cyber space
that we could hold a multi-levelled conversation such as we had never
been able to do in the meat-world. 

System resources for the net were very limited in 1995, and most of them
at the time were controlled by academic institutions. This e-list was
originally hosted at the University of North Carolina's SUNsite, under
the name sustag-principles, due to the kind offices of a sysadmin there
named Larry London, who did not have the authority to create a new list,
but "hid" us in an unused e-group that had been designed for talk about
the principles of permaculture and other forms of sustainable 
agriculture that emophasize perennials and tree crops. Larry also
allowed me to set up a portal for the e-list on a web page at UNC and
archived the posts there. The only requirement that Larry had was that i
occasionally post on topics related to agriculture, which was no
problem. The only problem with this location for the e-list was that
every once in a while we would have to explain ourselves to some farmer
who wandered in to the newsgroup raring to discus cover crops. 

In January of 1996 i taught myself html and set up my own web page, the
Sacred Landscape, to host both the e-list portal and my own essays on
the subject, as well as a few by Barry and others. Shortly thereafter,
UNC reclaimed the sustag-principles e-list for use by permaculturalists,
but one of our list-members (i forget who -- sorry!) put us in contact
with Jeffrey Mishlove, who offered us the use of one of his "empty"
e-lists, which was called space-l. Jeffrey's organization dealt with
psychic phenomena and thus we went from playing host to the occasional
bemused farmer to playing the host to the occasional bemused
UFO-watcher, who could not understand that by "space," we meant
territory or place and not that region above the atmosphere. 

Eventually, as e-groups made e-list hosting a possibility for those
without their own servers, we made the move over here, and finally got
our own name -- the sacredlandscapelist. Barry and Dan took on the
chores of administering the list and e-groups maintains the archive. 

So who am i? Well, i am an eccentric hippie woman with a pretty good
processor in my head and not enough time in the day to do eveything i
wish i could. I earn my calories as a writer and graphic designer,
which, practically speaking, means that i work at tasks ranging from
comic book production to growing herbs and manufacturing spiritual
supplies in the hoodoo tradition for a primarily African-American
clientele. I live with my husband nagasiva yronwode in an old farmhouse
in Sonoma County, Califonia, a rural area north of San Francisco, where
we garden, raise chickens, glue artifacts of spiritual and magical
import onto our art-car, and maintain about 4,500 web pages at our
luckymojo.com domain on a variety of esoteric subjects. Here is a list
of our major sub-sites:

The Sacred Landscape ------- http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredland.html
Hoodoo in Theory and Practice -- http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html
The Lucky W Amulet Archive ----- http://www.luckymojo.com/luckyw.html
Karezza and Sacred Sex ------ http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredsex.html
The Esoteric Archive --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/esoteric.html
Freemasonry for Women ------- http://www.luckymojo.com/comasonry.html
The Mage's Guide to the Internet ------ http://www.luckymojo.com/magi
Hoodoo and Blues Lyrics --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/blues.html
The Lucky Mojo Spells Archive -- http://www.luckymojo.com/spells.html
Lucky Mojo Curio Co. http://www.luckymojo.com/luckymojocatalogue.html
cat yronwode (my personal page) --- http://www.luckymojo.com/cat.html
nagasiva yronwode (his page) - http://www.luckymojo.com/nagasiva.html

I greatly enjoy the discussions here and although my current
top-priority online project (transcribing, htmlizing, and uploading one
pre-1960 blues song about hoodoo folk-magic per day, with hyper-linked
commentary to my online book "Hoodoo in Theory and Practice") is
currently keeping me too busy to write much about architecture,
geometry, or the like, i read every post and enjoy all of those that
don't go over my head. 

I was especially grateful to see that there is an entire newsletter
devoted to holy waters! That is remarkable! Please post more on that
subject, will you? 

In fact, may i sugest a project for someone on the list? Could one of
you volunteer to put together a link-list of the web-pages on
"interdisciplinary studies" topics written and/or maintained by our
list-members? I think it would be a neat way to introduce ourselves to
each other's works -- and if such a list were collated and presented in
coherent form with re-posting, say, once a month, then new members could
get some idea of what each of us is doing. 

I would do it, but right now i have to go htmlize and write a commentary
on the mention of goofer dust in Will Batts' "Country Woman Blues,"
recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1933. 

Catcha on the flip-flop, good buddy, and a big 10-20 right atcha! 

... or is that a big 10-40...? i forget :-)

cat (posting from the Hillbilly Junction of the Mind) yronwode



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