Llewellyn Witches’ Calendar Offends Animal Lovers
New Age Journal is a witch/Wiccan friendly publication, and we have been longtime supporters of the Llewellyn publishing company. We were, therefore, surprised and disappointed to learn of the lack of sensitivity regarding animal rights in general and rabbits in particular as demonstrated in the 2011 Llewellyn Witches’ calendar, evidenced by the email message from Dana Krempels, copied below. Not only are we familiar with the good work of Dr. Krempels, but we are also proud to be rabbit rescuers.
-Robert Scheer, Editor, NewAgeJournal.com
I don’t know how many of you buy the Llewellyn Witches’ calendar each year (I’m betting more than a few of you), but if you got the desk calendar this year…check out spring. There is a recipe for “rabbit with spring vegetables” for Ostara (Easter).
Appended below is the letter I sent their Customer Service department, in case anyone wants more details or wants to also write to tell them how disgusting this is.
Dana
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Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 13:52:07 -0500 (EST)
From: Dana Krempels
To: [email protected]
Subject: Desk calendar: Ostara
Dear Llewellyn Folks,
I have always enjoyed your Witches’ calendars, and have used one or two every year for more than a decade. I am a rabbit rescuer, and hares are my familiars. They are like my family.
Imagine my shock when my friend (and fellow rescuer), Regina Whitman was leafing through her new Llewellyn desk calendar while I looked over her shoulder, only to find a “Rabbit with Spring Vegetables” recipe for Ostara. Gee, how thoughtful.
But wait! You forgot the recipes for braised black cat with dill sauce for Samhain, and Golden Retriever kabob for Mabon.
Yes, that’s about how well the rabbit recipe will go over with a large number of your customers, many of whom are rabbit rescuers or just have rabbits as beloved members of their families.
PLEASE never do this again. Rabbits and hares are sacred creatures, close to the earth and imbued with special spiritual significance for many of us. They do not belong on a dinner plate, and a company like yours should not be promoting them as food.
I will not be purchasing a Llewellyn calendar this year, and won’t again until I am assured that you will not be publishing any such recipes in future editions. I plan on letting my *thousands* of rabbit-loving friends (and I do not exaggerate; I own EtherBun, the largest rabbit-related listserve on the Internet (7000+ members), and am a member of many others) know about this, so they can confirm that they are just as revolted by this as Regina and I are. We are not alone, and we are not (inordinately) crazy.
Thank you for taking our concerns seriously.
Sincerely,
Dana
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Dana Krempels, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer, Director of Undergraduate Studies
University of Miami Department of Biology
[email protected]
Compassion towards animals is essentially
bound up with goodness of character.
Whoever is cruel to them cannot be good to men.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Definitely share far and wide! Thanks for spreading the word!
Dana
Four Steps Toward Peace
by Jill Lowy
STEP ONE: DO RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
The first step towards peace in your life is to practice random acts of kindness. Believe it or not, by helping others, this will help you to achieve peace in your own life. What are “random acts of kindness?” It is any act of help or kindness for somebody else without any thought of something in return. These acts can be as little as a smile to someone, helping others in distress, being there for a friend, shoveling the walk for an elderly neighbor, etc.
By helping others to feel good, you will be helping yourself to feel good and to be more at peace. The world needs more peace. We need more peace! And I do not mean just the kind of peace that is free from conflict, because this leads to boredom. I mean the kind of peace that fills one with joy and makes us appreciate everyone and everything around us.
STEP TWO: FIND YOUR CENTER OF STILLNESS
It has been said, “Round and round the chaos goes, and in the center, peacefulness knows.” Actually, I made this up. It is a take off on the old saying, “Round and round the secret goes and in the center, the secret knows.” But it illustrates my point. Have you ever been on a merry-go-round? I think most people have. I used to love them as a child. Anyway, all merry-go-rounds revolve around a fixed point. Without that fixed point in the center, it would not work. It is very interesting. The center is at rest, while the circumference constantly changes. Our perceptions or rather our experiences are like the merry-go-round. They are constantly changing. But at the center of it all, lies peace. When we are feeling agitated or disturbed, we are at the circumference of our merry-go-round. The trick is to learn to change our perception to the center. One way to do this is to visualize yourself at the center of the merry-go-round. Watch your emotions as they whirl around you. Then begin to feel your inner self move to the center of peace and stillness. We all have this inner stillness. We could not exist without it. There could be no experiences of any kind without a center of stillness. So find a way to contact your inner center of stillness. “Be still and know God” the Bible says. Many people find that center through meditation, faith, nature, etc. But find your own path that leads to peace and stillness at the center of your being.
STEP THREE: FORGIVENESS
This can be a toughie. Many of us carry around hurt and pain from previous relationships and even previous lifetimes. It can be very difficult to find peace in your life when you carry a lot of unresolved hurt, pain and anger. And it can affect everything that you do and everyone that you meet. You must find a way to let go of all your pain and frustration, or any resentment that you may carry. Why are you still holding on to it? What good is it doing for you? Sometimes it takes time to heal. But there is a very fast way to let go of all hurt and pain. Jesus said it best “forgive them for they know not what they do”. Forgiveness is the cure to unresolved pain and hurt. Even if you are the cause of it all! Learn to forgive others and yourself. Once you learn to forgive, then you can learn to let go. Once you can let go, then you can find peace. It is very easy to say, but very difficult to do. Some of us have suffered tremendous pain and abuse in our lives. But the road to peace lies in forgiveness.
STEP FOUR: LOVE OTHERS AS WELL AS YOURSELF
Step Three and Step Four are actually interconnected. If you truly love others, then you will forgive them. It doesn’t mean you may approve of their actions, but you will forgive them their transgressions. A Mother loves her children even when they are naughty and tries to guide them in right action. The Divine loves all creation. It shines like the sun to everyone and in everyone. We can open our hearts to it or close them as we choose. Peace comes to those who open their hearts to love. It is the strongest force in the Universe. The Jewish greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and soul. Jesus added the second commandment to “love thy neighbor”. And it is definitely the harder of the two commandments. I think it is easier to open your heart to God, but to your neighbor? That is a different story. We tend to fight with each other like crazy on this planet. And over the dumbest things! “Hey, asshole the light turned green, get moving!”; “I was here first! Get behind me or I will kick your butt!”; “Don’t let your dog piss on my yard!” Everyday we assault and are assaulted by each other. “Loving your neighbor” does not seem to be a prevalent theme here on planet Earth. But it is the path towards peace. If you can practice “loving your neighbor” then you will begin to experience peace in your own life. Learn to love those who hate you. Why? Because it is a more powerful force that brings peace. Is it easy to do? No way! I think it is one of the most difficult things to do. But leaders like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi were able practice it in their daily lives. We can do it, too! Start in small ways. Give peace to others by your smile and your friendship. Pray for those who may hurt you. Wish others well in their endeavors. Be happy for other people’s happiness. Try to be a good neighbor and open your heart to other people. You will be amazed at the peace that will come into your life!
Jill Lowy is the author of: To Jill With Love, Memoirs of a Modern Day Mystic and you can visit her website: wwwTheAstralYoga.com.
On Good and Evil
Believing evil is something to fight against leads our world to one future: knowing wrong cannot be confronted that way takes us to another. We can never be forced to love our neighbor; non-violence can be imposed only within confined periods. The responsibility for true peace resides with us – the world’s citizens – and it is only through changing ourselves first that we can expect to abolish war.
There is no evil per se: no entity is opposing God or trying to dominate our minds. There is perfection of love – the essence of our Creator – on one end of the scale, and then the absolute lack of the divine – manifested as human fear – on the other. In-between these two extremes everything else is relative: each act, person, or situation scaled in direct relation to the degree of divinity it contains.
Achieving different results means breaking the cycle – countering fear with love. Ours is an obligation to mature, as individuals and as a race. The ways of the past have not worked: to continue to use them labels us insane. We require a greater understanding of God, and the resultant higher level of conduct this knowledge produces. This changes the ratio between that divine and that not. Light obliterates darkness, but fear only adds to itself.
Change cannot come quickly: the events of the past all bear consequences. For some groups of people, generations will be needed to release their resentment and pave the way to forgiveness. This is difficult, but not impossible. Throughout the process those who know must remain committed to maintaining a higher order of being: only by responding to fear with love can we some day hope to extinguish the flames of hatred consuming our planet.
To know God as absolute perfection of eternal truth, divine beauty, and infinite goodness is to know our Creator as pure love, the essence – the binding force – of creation. For us to some day join with God in this state of divinity, we must become as this Original Source: something imperfect cannot join with that perfect, and have the sum remain the same. Only that of love has eternal reality – nothing else can survive.
Any soul participating in this long journey to perfection knows baggage cannot be carried forward: we choose to forgive, or we stay behind. Those times where once grudges and human emotions predominated become nothing more than gaps in our consciousness, while those periods of love we did experience form our eternal memories. To forgive is to forget – forever: as it is with God, so must it become with us.
While mortals rushing through space on the material worlds perceive the movement of time, for God, our universe’s entire process of reaching perfection is but one instantaneous event. We who are experiencing creation may perceive something as evil, and the effects of it are real for us, but in eternity it carries no weight: nothing but love survives the creative flash that in one moment contained our entire past, present, and future.
This is our most powerful tool for directing the evolution of our planet: only love-based actions possess the substance that can move us toward peace. While defense is appropriate, love can still prevail: only that force needed to stop further harm is allowed. Any violence beyond that is based on human reasoning, not cosmic truth. A better future will only result from helping people, not hurting them.
For a planet to evolve requires increasing divinity in the world. Imagine a sphere with billions of inhabitants, each possessing within themselves an individual entity from God that is also one and the same with God. Each person with a mind capable of discerning right from wrong becomes a portal through which our Creator’s love flows into the space, and each is a focal point through whose senses God experiences creation.
We do not receive light from without: we radiate it from within. There is no need to ask God to come into our lives – this has already happened. While our future is to reside with our Creator, we only accomplish this journey because our indwelling fragment of God first finds us, takes up residence in our minds, and over time guides us back to the original source from which that spirit came.
We exercise free will through the decisions we make: our choices either move us – hence to a slight degree our world – forward or backward. Those determinations conditioned by the divine traits of love – such as mercy, tolerance, forgiveness, compassion and empathy – add light to the world; those based in human emotions of fear – such as hate, anger, greed, jealousy and intolerance keep it at bay.
Viewed from without, our world’s spiritual evolution is shown by the light it radiates. Humanity is a sum total – one race sharing the same planet with none having divine favor. While today the Earth resembles a dark unreflective ball, as more people trust the process of allowing their spirit to pour forth we will illuminate our space. This choice is personal, available to everyone, and a prerequisite to be effective in greater work.
Seen from within, some regions improve sooner than others. This contrast is important: the generation that redirects our course can only do so if the results of past decisions are clear. This is becoming easier for people to discern. Violence resides where anger, revenge and intolerance are allowed to trump patience, forgiveness and good will. Two wrongs never make right: only love can bring forth light and eradicate darkness.
Peace is a result of an environment conditioned by love: it can never be forced, imposed, or mandated if expected to last. As we find that our personal lives improve as we mature into more loving people, so will we see our world become less violent: as with the parts so goes the whole. While the scale differs, the requirements remain the same – making conscious decisions based in love.
Violence works to maintain the status quo: war is necessary to support today’s world system. True peace will require new leadership, world federation, and diverse religions existing under a single sovereign Creator. This responsibility for non-violence resides with us, the world’s citizenry: we possess the greatest power – the ability to love. Free will is our divine right, global citizenship our future, and peace our greatest legacy – if we so decide.
Returning to college in 2002, Bob earned degrees in International and Religious studies from the University of Oregon. Working to become bilingual and also present in Spanish, he writes and speaks on God, religious tolerance, and our tools for abolishing war. His book, God Refined: A Proposal for Peace, (http://stores.lulu.com/bobkezer) became available March 1st. He has one son and lives in Eugene, Oregon.
Playing Our Part for Peace
by Robert A. Kezer
How can the average person best participate in the effort for a non-violent world? Many people sense that our planet is at a point of crisis – that humanity will see even worse days in the future, and they wish to help. But often the magnitude and complexities of global problems are overwhelming: the person is left helpless. Needed is greater clarity: examination of cause and effect at our most fundamental level of decisions making.
ur history is one seeped in fear, the source of human emotions. Internalized as hate, anger, criticism, intolerance and judgment it manifests itself as greed, revenge, selfishness, violence, and unbridled competition. Stemming from ancient concepts of a wrathful God, this animal characteristic of our dual selves frames the institutions defining our world. Fear is the predominate base from which most people decide: our world is the result.
The other side of our nature is love  those divine feelings of empathy, compassion, and selflessness that show themselves as mercy, service, patience, forgiveness, and good will. These are the characteristics of a loving God. They exhibit an evolved state  a higher order of being – for the individual and humanity. This is the baseline level of spiritual attainment from which global peace will have its first true chance.
e know growth cannot be rushed, but it is a requirement if we hope to abolish war. As people ascend into their higher selves, their lives improve. No longer is life a struggle: inner peace reigns and relationships blossom. With humanity it is the same: the degree of peace anywhere is a direct result of the ratio of fear to love within the people present. On the global scale, this determines our degree of planetary evolution.
This relationship is best viewed as a balance beam scale like that held by the lady of justice. While some decisions carry greater consequences, every one counts – adding to either one side or the other. Modeling God after ourselves limited the degree to which we could evolve. Those who believe that at death they will face punishment from a stern judge are controlled by fear: for most of them, acting out of unconditional love is almost impossible.
Countering this imbalance requires more people making decisions based in love rather than fear. As with the part, so goes the whole: we each have an obligation to participate. Spiritual progression requires intention: a desire to be a better person. This means releasing our fear and trusting we are members of a universe bound by love. This can only happen for many people if they refine their image of God.
Love is the binding force of all creation: the essence of God. All people with minds capable of doing divine will have a fragment of our Creator within themselves. Only in this way can that finite – us – begin to understand that eternal, infinite, and universal – God. When open to the leading of our divine parent, a process of spiritualization begins. Whether known as our intuition or that quiet voice in our hearts, this contact is real for people of all faiths.
Believing in divine guidance, though, is difficult for many people to accept: our world is littered with the carnage of religious fanatics, all claiming the same. It is essential that we have criteria upon which we can evaluate the degree of divinity in any word, idea, or action. Understanding God as the perfection of eternal truth, divine beauty, and infinite goodness helps: in this way we can scale our actions by God’s attributes.
We are family unified through the spirit indwelling us: we are expected to care for each other. As we would never tell one of our own children to hurt the others, neither does our divine parent want us to kill one another. The highest order of the Golden Rule is not to love others as we love ourselves, but to love them as our Creator would have us do. In this way we transcend fear-based limitations and demonstrate our faith in a loving God.
Eternal life is freely given: it should be received as such  it means we accept God’s will. Then we restart above exactly where we left off down here. Regardless of how bad we were, the tiniest desire for mercy will be answered – our wrongs forgotten. None of us are perfect: we will all require forgiveness. As it is extended to us, so must we reflect it to others – the harm done us, forgotten. This is a choice to be divine: God-like.
If concepts of a wrathful God made in our image have resulted in a world destroyed, then remaking ourselves in the image of a loving Creator may save us. To heal we must eradicate the disease: fear. Doing so affects our decision making process from its most fundamental level. This personal effort to evolve is our first duty, and the greatest contribution we can make in our world’s bid for peace.
About the Author: Returning to college in 2002, Bob earned degrees in International and Religious studies from the University of Oregon. Working to become bilingual and also present in Spanish, he writes and speaks on God, religious tolerance, and our tools for abolishing war. His book, God Refined: A Proposal for Peace, (http://stores.lulu.com/bobkezer) will be available March 1st. He has one son and lives in Eugene, Oregon.