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| A bimonthly publication of Six Crows Alliance, designed to
promote and support strong community, and to remind us that we are not alone.
This newsletter is distributed to the Six Crows Community and Friends of Six
Crows in February, April, June, August, October, and December. |
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| C R O W C A L L S |
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| CONTENT |
CROW CALLS features:
–
Six Crows Alliance News
– Upcoming Events
– Timely
theme-related
feature articles
– Timely non
theme-
related articles
– A timely deity study
– Our "Crowing" Kids:
Assorted features,
projects, and articles
geared to
our youth
– EXCERPTS Introductions
to prized
manuscripts
from our Arcane Library
– Readers'
Prose, Poetry,
and Art
Contributions
CROW CALLS continues to
evolve according to the interests of our readers. Your preferences, reviews,
and suggestions matter to us. Please email us at
crowcalls@sixcrows.org. |
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| PUBLICATION POLICY |
CROW CALLS actively solicits
knowledgeable writers and authorities on subjects of interest to our readers
for theme-based articles, deity studies, and children's feature articles. If
you are interested in being called on, please make your talents known to us.
We encourage all in our community and our readers
to contribute written, art, and photographic work to CROW CALLS. We
reserve the right to reject materials not in keeping with our values and
standards, to make spelling and syntax corrections, or to work with
contributors if substantial revision is required. We may set aside unpublished
contributions for possible future use, in which case we will provide details of
such use to contributors.
Contributors agree to
the archiving of their work on our website. Rights to all works published in
CROW CALLS are retained by the author or contributor. If Six Crows
wishes to use contributors' work in any capacity beyond CROW CALLS, we
will contact the contributors for permission. Email contributions to The Editor
at crowcalls@sixcrows.org.
In
keeping with the Vision of Six Crows Alliance to foster peaceful
interaction within our community, our policy is zero tolerance for violence in
any form including coercion and gossip, in articles, artwork, poetry, and
prose. As this is a family publication, sexually explicit language and artwork
are also restricted.
Permission by subjects is
required to publish true likenesses artwork, and especially photographs, and
names in written work.
Written work can be embedded
directly in your email, or sent as a Word attachment. Art and photos should be
submitted in jpg or png format.
The deadline is
the 3rd Monday of the month prior to publication. |
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| ADVERTISING |
Advertise with
us starting in our April edition. Watch for the space in this column to feature
fabulous 2X4-inch (144X288 pixels) Ads like the one pictured below at the
terrific bargain price of $5 per ad per issue!! You can see from our sample
that the Ad contains ample space for you to display your product or service,
contact information, even a link to your website if applicable. You will have
the option of submitting your own design or sending us the info and we will
create it for you.
Now note the gold- colored "GET
MORE INFO HERE" at the base of the Ad. This feature can be included to
point/link to a Page. Go ahead and click on it to see what a Page looks
like.
For the terrific bargain price of $50, our
design team will create a beautiful Page like this (letter size so you can also
print and use it as a flyer or poster). Then as long as you're maintaining your
ad in CROW CALLS at $5 per issue, the Page remains active and you can
direct potential clents directly to your Page independent of this site. It's an
especially handy and economical tool for those without a website, and you can
feel good about supporting our work.
Watch the
CROW
CALLS main page on our website for an Ad Submission link coming
soon.
By the way, if you are considering joining
Allies, members get to place ads (not Pages) at no charge. Learn more about
Allies Membership here. |
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EDITOR
Linda Margaret
Ritz |
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DESIGN & PUBLISHING
ImagineIt
Writing & Design |
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| DISTRIBUTION |
| CROW CALLS enjoys a
distribution network of 1400+, mostly around the mid-West and Ontario.
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© 2010/2011
All Rights
Reserved |
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There is light
at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Put another way, "Here comes the Sun, and
I say it's alright... it's been a long cold lonely winter."
How about those Beatles!
Hmmm. It's an interesting coincidence that the Scarab, an
Egyptian symbol of the Sun, is a beetle.
According to the
mythos, which dates back between 3000-5000 years, the scarab-beetle God Khepera
nightly rolls the Sacred Barge of Osiris, God of the Setting Sun,
along in the West Sky to the domain of Amen, God of the Unseen
Sun.
Now, with the dark season winding down and
vernal equinox approaching, we look to the "new" kid on the old block, Horus,
God of the Rising Sun, whose falcon wings span (are) the Sky from
the Eastern horizon to the Western horizon, and whose right eye is the Sun, and
left eye the Moon. |
We could look to virtually any long-
lived culture in the world and find birth- death-resurrection allegory. During
this historic season of revolutionary change in Egypt, it seems fitting to
revisit her glorious antiquity.
Let us keep the people
and the land of Egypt, and also North Africa and the Middle East, and in
particular Tunisia, Iran, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Algeria in our thoughts
and "prayers" as the people strive and persevere toward self-determination.
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What? Amen, Osiris, Horus, Egyptian Sun gods?
But what about Ra (Re), who we all know is commonly said to be IT. I mean out
of all the myriad solar deities worshiped over eons by cultures around the
world, when you think Sun god, you think Ra,
right?
Mythology is rarely straightforward or linear, but
a bit of delving makes sense of it. Ra in fact includes and encompasses all
notions of the Egyptian solar deity, which is why we sometimes hear the
Egyptian Sun God called Amen-Ra or Atum-Ra, or Amun-Ra.
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The Pyramid
Texts1 (a collection of inscriptions on the walls of tombs in
pyramids dating back upwards of 5,000 years to the "Old Kingdom") mention a
Creator God who is "Father |
to The King" by the name of Amen, Atum, or Amun (in different
times and parts of Egypt). He is the "complete one" the underlying substance,
Ka (the soul part that supports physical life), and the flesh of the world,
humanity, and the other gods.
According to the
Egyptian Book of the Dead2 (papyrus scrolls
dating from 1580-1350 BCE), Osiris descends of Amen and is the son of the Earth
God Geb and the Sky Goddess Nut. The texts say Osiris was the first pharaoh, a
wise and benevolent ruler who taught Ancient Egyptians the skills of
agriculture (a throwback to the solar deity's primeval purpose). Osiris is
murdered and his kingdom overtaken by his jealous brother Set, God of Chaos.
Osiris is thereafter God of the Setting Sun and the Duat (afterlife), and Judge
and Lord of the Dead. He nightly pilots his funerary barge across the Western
Heavens carrying the souls of the newly deceased into the afterlife.
Right about this time of year, as the wheel turns toward
the light half, Isis is busy lovingly painstakingly delightedly ecstatically
fashioning and polishing the golden phallus that will facilitate the conception
of a son with her dead husband, as dead (spirit) Osiris and living (flesh) Isis
cannot conceive through intercourse.
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Isis will birth her son in a grotto on the
spring equinox, after hiding from Set's
threat on her life for 70 days.
Horus
will grow up to avenge his
father's
murder (through lengthy,
brutal
bloody battle), deliver
His people
from the God of Chaos, and restore
order in the kingdom.
Horus
is in effect a resurrection
of Osiris. Once
he has
overthrown
Set,
Horus becomes King of the
Living
and King of Kings,
the
Divine
Order
incarnate
in
every
pharaoh.
But
when He
reined
no
more as Pharaoh and
passed
from the Earth, |
Horus was forced to appear before the Assembly of the Gods to
contend against His nemesis for the rule of the world. Even Thoth the Wise
cannot give judgment now that Horus no longer resides in the Land of the
Living. And so it is that Horus and Set continue to contend for the rule of the
world.
There is a far more mystical allegory here when you
consider that unlike the "good" and "evil" perspective of Christianity, Horus
represents order, and Set represents chaos. The Ancient Egyptians understood
that the two opposing forces (the principle of duality) are vital and in fact
inherent in the fabric of the manifest world.
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"Horus purifies and Set strengthens, and Set
purifies and Horus strengthens," say the
The Pyramid
Texts1. |
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The story remains unfinished
in the eyes of the people of the time. They believed that the "Last Battle" was
still to come and that Horus would defeat Set finally, and that after Set is
forever destroyed, Osiris will rise from the dead and return to Earth, bringing
with him his faithful followers.
It is through the loving
actions of His |
wife in caring for His dead body that this return is made
possible. Isis searched tirelessly and in perpetual anguish for Her murdered
husband, dismembered and strewn about the world by Set. She succeeded in
finding 13 of the 14 pieces (hence 13 moons in the wheel of the year) —
all but His phallus. She reassembled, anointed, embalmed, and mummified the
body, thus "preserving" Osiris that He may resume His physical form when the
time comes.
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This resurrection theme
brought hope to the people, that they too may have eternal life. Thereafter,
extensive embalming rites were performed |
on the dead so the blessed souls who made their way safely to
Amenti (dwelling place of Amen) will find their bodies ready to reenter when
they return to live forever on Earth under the Good God Osiris, Isis his queen,
and their son Horus. ...
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CROW CALLS
is a product
of
SIX CROWS
ALLIANCE
for the Pursuit of
Arcane Wisdom and
Understanding |
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MISSION
Our purpose is to serve as a foundation for an active,
diverse, evolving community dedicated to education, inspiration, and
outreach. |
more about our
VISION VALUES &
PHILOSOPHIES
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| SIX CROWS NEWS |
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We promised there would be a
lot of news this issue, and we hope you share some of our excitement about how
Six Crows Alliance is progressing.
We also hope to whet
your appetite for some of our upcoming offerings, which we will list further
down.
The Six Crows Alliance Board of Directors held Part
II of our Annual Strategic Planning Meeting in late January, and made great
progress toward developing short and long-range goals, establishing policies,
and preparing to apply for 501(c)(3) non-profit designation later this
year.
SIX CROWS ONLINE — You will notice
when you visit us online that we have freshened up the look, and redesigned our
website to accommodate our expanding efforts. We appreciate your patience, as
parts are still in development.
You will continue to find
access to outstanding Arcane Wisdom Videos on alchemy, Hermeticism,
consciousness, sacred geometry, and Kabbalah.
Now, in our
Arcane Library, you will also have access to an incredible, growing
collection of prized arcane manuscripts and books, many ancient, which are in
the public domain. If you would like to help build this library in the interest
of open access to the wisdom of the ages, please send public domain materials
to admin@sixcrows.org
CROW
CALLS Now in its 5th bi-monthly edition, our minizine is being archived
on our website, where readers may access past and current issues at any time.
We thank you for your suggestions thus far, some of which we are implementing,
including some print-ready formatting. Please continue to share your thoughts
and suggestions, as we intend to be a rich esoteric resource for our readers
and our community. We also encourage readers to submit articles and artwork for
consideration.
Starting in our April issue, whose theme is
Divine Divination, we'll be including affordable advertising
space for your service or product. For $5, you get a 2X4-inch ad like the one
pictured at left (see Advertising for
details).
PERSPECTIVES — Many of you have
expressed frustration at infrequency of interaction with "like-minded" people
due to physical distance. We're super excited to announce that starting this
fall, we will be producing online study group sessions, to be led by leaders in
the community.
Live and interactive, and held in the Six
Crows Chat Room, we call the program PERSPECTIVES because its purpose is to get
us thinking about different perspectives on subjects of interest in mysticism
and esotericism.
Producer is VV Karen Thoms. Groups will
run six weeks(to start) in the Six Crows Chat Room, and be led by two experts
presenting opposing perspectives on our topic of study (Check the Perspectives
Page on our website for specifics). Each week the 90-minute session will start
with a short bantering by the two group leaders, followed by an open discussion
by all in attendance. Leaders will also answer questions and suggest and/or
provide applicable materials to participants. The weekly discussions will be
archived so ...
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