The night of no sleep.

Or morning I guess. I dunno. I didn't even get to bed until 6am ish, and read to Jon for a bit after that. (We're reading Fall of Angels, my favorite Recluce novel. Ryba, the marshal of Westwind and progenitor of the Legend -- which is basically a manifesto of female equality if not supremacy, I guess you could say o.O -- reminds me of a rather extreme version of Archana. In fact, reading it, I wonder just how much inspiration I drew from Ryba subconsciously, heh! Though Archa does none of the women vs. men thing, eh. That's irrelevant in most Exalted settings.)

But I really gotta work on UnshapedWiki, it's bugging me. =_= The sooner it is done the sooner I will be satisfied and rested.

Though I just randomly happened upon some sites about Christians condemning Halloween, 'cause they were linked from dictionary.com when I was looking up 'progenitor'. Hah. Those are painful to read a lot of times. Oh noes, it's a pagan holiday converted into a Catholic one to make Roman Catholicism more accessible to witches. And all that stuff about all pagans (I hate that term, btw) being Satanists, etc. It's... um. Embarrassing.

I admit I was raised Roman Catholic myself, though I no longer practice it, so every time I see this attitude from other denominations of Christianity it amuses me. I mean, even among Christians, Catholicism is the evil black sheep, because of all the saint worship and idols and icons and stuff. Because the religion tried to be more open to converting people of other religions, and the saints, Mary, etc. worked as a common ground. When I went to Catholic school, it was fairly open to other religions (at least, it allowed people who did not practice Catholicism to enroll, and did not *require* you to take Communion or any other sacrament during masses) and able to study religion from a theological standpoint -- even able to interpret the Bible in non-literal terms. So, oddly enough, I could actually credit my education, religiously oriented as it was to a certain extent, in my open-mindedness concerning religion today.

But, apparently to other types of Christianity that still makes me a borderline "pagan". Psh. I don't care, though. First of all, I have no problem with people practicing whatever religion they please, whether it's Wicca, or Catholicism, or Protestantism, or even Satanism, so long as they're not hurting or forcing anyone in the process. Secondly, I already don't think there is an afterlife. I think that no matter what I do with my life now, it won't get me admitted to the "special club" that Heaven apparently is, or get me any privilege at all, so the best I can do is do whatever I can to improve life on Earth for the generations to come. While I find the abrupt end of my existence a discouraging and frightening thought, it also means that I'm immune to the whole "if you do x you'll go to Hell" attitude.

Actually, since I'm not even a practicing Catholic any more, I'm not just a pagan but hopelessly soulless, because I'm one of those agnostic fence-sitters who believe in the concept of a "clockwork god" (or if not BELIEVE, at least it seems a likely possibility). I'd like to believe in reincarnation, but I don't think I have enough proof to comfort me into that. On the other hand, I do believe the universe is a "living organism" on a macrocosmic scale, so that each autonomous part, including humans, are recycled beyond death and reform into other substances, other living things perhaps. Just a fancy way to describe the idea of conservation of matter. But I can never quite accept that there's a conservation of souls, too, or that there really IS a 'soul' beyond the grey matter and chemicals and whatnot that control our behavior. I mean, sure. I'd like to believe it. But then how do you explain things like Alzheimer's, irreparable brain damage that can change your personality, and so on?

Blah... you know I woke up on the wrong side of the bed when I wake up to thinking about the nature of souls and death. I should get back to work on the wiki, in any case, and maybe I can catch a nap in the afternoon.