Tara Campaigners worldwide are supporting a petition to the Irish Government calling on them to re-inter the remains of individuals whose graves have been desecrated by the ongoing construction of the M3 Motorway in the Gabhra Valley near the historic Hill of Tara in Co. Meath. The petition went live on Saturday 19th July.
Campaigners demand that the ancient remains be reburied in a dignified manner and as closely as possible to the ceremonial layout of the original graveyards. It is estimated that over 60 bodies were disturbed and removed from the Collierstown site and over 27 from Ardsallagh to make way for the double-tolled M3 Motorway. Over the last 15 years of the Celtic Tiger, thousands of bodies have been removed from the earth and stored in warehouses.
The Gabhra Valley is the putative site of the last battle of the Fianna in 284 A.D. and they were said to be buried where they fell along with Cairpre Lifechair king of Tara son of Cormac mac Airt.
My findings on Tara were altered, says archaeologist
Current mood: focused
Category: News and Politics
Why, oh why, am I not surprised...
My findings on Tara were altered, says archaeologist Irish Mail on Sunday - 29 June 2008 - By Luke Byrne
A LEADING archaeologist employed to survey the M3 Tara Valley route has claimed her findings were changed to support the motorway when in fact there was evidence against it. In a devastating attack, Jo Ronayne - who was working for the National Roads Authority - says her findings were altered before being presented to ministers. Miss Ronayne, who was an excavation director at the Tara valley site in Co. Meath, claims she was told to 'change interpretations' so as to 'lessen to potential of numbers of sites'. And she says she was excluded from NRA meetings in which her evidence was altered before reports were passed on to the Government.
The damning allegations will shatter the Governments defence that it would not change the Tara route because there is no significant archaeological site on it. And it will lead to disturbing questions about whether ministers - and in turn the public or even the courts - were misled about the archaeological finds.Miss Ronayne, who was directly employed by NRA subcontractor Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, suggests in an explosive academic article that her role appeared to have been a sham. 'I didn't realise that the testing and my reports would be used to facilitate rather than stop the project going ahead. Or that they don't let you write the truth in the reports or give you enough time to do a proper job,' she wrote.
Tara: Voices from Our Past
Current mood: determined
Category: News and Politics
A short film that examines some of the lesser-known earthworks in the complex surrounding the main site, and compares the stonecarvings in the Mound of the Hostages to the map of the area. Includes footage from one of the vigil camps.
Is your grandmother’s skull in a box in a stranger’s closet?
Category: News and Politics
The University of Michigan has the remains of about 1,400 Native Americans, as well as thousands of funerary objects. So far they have refused to return the already-studied and cataloged remains, or the sacred objects, to these people's surviving descendants and communities. Ancestors whose bodies and ritual objects deserve to be treated with respect have their remains scrawled on with pens and gathering dust in the storerooms of the University campus. Check out the video below for more info.
Interview in the Irish Voice - Save Tara!
Current mood: vibrant
Category: Religion and Philosophy
"Reconstructing Ireland at Home: Andrew Nusca provides a fascinating look at a sect of paganism as practiced by Celtic Reconstructionists here in the U.S."
Andrew Nusca interviewed a handful of us involved in the Tara preservation efforts. He quotes two of us who are CR, along with quotes from a Wiccan and a more secular activist from Dublin. We expected the article to focus more on Tara than CR, but as the author did this for a special Irish Voice supplement on Irish identity and Religion, the angle makes sense.
As you can see in the issue, or on the Covering Religion website, the religion section covers those of Irish heritage who practice a variety of religions, along with people of other nationalities and religions who now live in Ireland, as well as Irish citizens now living abroad in a variety of cultures. Just to put that "Irish Identity" blurb up top in context (as I fear it could be a bit misleading out of context).
While we initially found it a bit odd that he focused the most on the only one of us who is not of Irish heritage, we think that became his hook for the piece - the way that those of a variety of backgrounds, as well as those of Irish heritage, are drawn to Irish culture and aiding with the fight to save the Tara Skryne. Our worldwide ritual from last Samhain is mentioned, too.
The article appeared in the St. Patrick's Day supplement in the March 12, 2008 issue of The Irish Voice. The Irish Voice is a weekly published in Manhattan - the largest Irish newspaper published in the US - and covers both Irish and Irish-American news.
Currently
listening
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Rian
By
Liam Ó Maonlaí
Release date: 2005-10-04
Check out http://www.myspace.com/istealfromndns for the sordid tale of Rachel Holzwarth, who has renamed herself "White Eagle Medicine Woman" and is currently touring the US, dressed up in fake Native American regalia, lying and claiming to be Seneca (or, at other times, a handful of other Nations) and charging people for pipe ceremonies and drumming. The pictures are terrifying, and all the Nations she claims to be "authorized" by have either never heard of her, or kicked her off their land and burned the place she used to live.
Apparently she decided to claim to be Seneca after having a dream she was one. But at a presentation at a UU Church she claimed to be "Jewish and Celtic". Uh, right.
Native Americans have been protesting her appearances. Rather than listen to their concerns, she has just hired more security. Her appearance in MA resulted in Native people who tried to speak being pepper sprayed and bloodied by her security people and/or the white cops they called. In a creepy and appalling act, Holzwarth then rubbed her hands in the blood of one of the Wampanoag men, who was lying on the ground, bleeding, and proceeded to rub his blood onto her drum. I guess so now she can say she "has Native blood."
We have succeeded in getting her next few performances shut down, but will need to stay on our toes. We are emailing and calling the venues where she's scheduled and explaining who she is, and planning protests in the venues that are not yet cancelled. I'll post more links about her and her scams later, but wanted to at least give people a starting point. We see lots of frauds, all the time, but this one has particularly outraged people. There's also a series of threads on her over at NAFPS: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1513.0
Some people on MySpace have had their accounts hacked. This is how it happens.
You get an e-mail telling you you have a new message, or a friend leaves an odd comment on your page. The address looks like a blog or other MySpace URL, but if you hover the cursor, the actual URL is revealed to be http://rnyspacei.com/
If you click on it, a page that looks uncannily like the MySpace log-in page will ask you to log in. When you type your password, they now have it and can use your account to impersonate you, usually to send porn and financial spam. Here's more details and a screen cap of the pages:
I found out about this just now, when a MySpace friend started inexplicably posting awful, porny messages and comments. I haven't been able to reach him yet, and assume he has no idea this is happening. I hope he gets control of his account back, or starts a new one, because if he doesn't I'm going to have to unfriend the compromised account.
Currently
listening
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Whiskey in the Jar
By
Thin Lizzy
Release date: 25 April, 2000
I Stand with Tara - Samhain Ritual
Current mood: hopeful
Category: News and Politics
On Samhain night, Oct. 31 2007, people all over the world will be uniting in a ritual to help protect and preserve one of the most sacred sites in Ireland, and indeed the world: The Hill of Tara and the surrounding Skryne Valley, in County Meath, Ireland.
As many of you know, the site is still threatened with destruction. We are working together with activists in Ireland to help stop this, both with this-world activism and with a ritual we've written to help support the activists spiritually.
In the time of our ancestors, Tara was the center of a ritual complex, where signal fires were lit to mark the holy day, and whose light spread out from hilltop to hilltop across the land. Now, the center has been neglected, so much so that some think it is no matter to desecrate it. So we meet on Samhain to add our energy and prayers to revitalise and resacralise Tara.
In the past, the signal and sacred flames were taken from Tara; but on Samhain we will all unite to send the power and blessings back to Tara, to rebuild the source. We will light our individual fires on hilltops and in fields, and in homes around the world. We will have people climbing the surrounding hills all across Ireland, and in many countries the world around. We will unite our flames with the center. We will unite to protect Tara.
At the end of the pre-ritual briefing we've posted information on how to help physically - by writing letters, sending money, calling with moral support, or going and standing in front of bulldozers. Our other offering is this ritual, which I wrote together with my friend and colleague, Raven nic Rhóisín, after we both got some heavy requests from the spirits.
Note - I will be adding more graphics and smoothing out the visuals of the site a bit more in the coming days, but all the info should be there. We welcome your feedback! If you plan on participating in the ritual, please consider letting us know. We may be posting a list of participants on the site. If you write us, let us know how you'd like to be named. We suggest using one of the formats in the ritual, explained in the "Introduce yourself (threefold) and Lighting the Signal Fires For Tara" instructions on the pre-ritual briefing page (http://www.paganachd.com/tara/pre-ritual.html).
cross-posted to a handful of other places. feel free to re-post this message and link to the ritual on the website.
Custom settings on MySpace profiles
Current mood: calm
Category: MySpace
You can customize the nav barby getting the code from these pages: make custom details: http://www.skem9.com/html/recreateLeftSide.html hide the default details: http://www.abrax.us/bbz/HideDetails.htm
What you do is go to your MySpace "home" page (not your profile, "home"), then click on "edit profile." Choose the "Interests and Personality" section. Go to the last box, "Heroes", and put the code on those pages at the bottom of the "Heroes" box, with the Custom code first, followed by the Hide code. Go into the text of the Custom code and tweak to your heart's content. If you don't know how to do colors and backgrounds, don't worry, just change the text and it will blend right in. Wheee! Thanks to fer ~ fer for the tip!
Currently
listening
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The Warrior’s Code
By
Dropkick Murphys
Release date: 21 June, 2005
determined
busy
focused
vibrant
angry
aggravated
hopeful
calm
