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MungBeing is two years old! Huzzah, with party hats and streamers and the like! Choc'lit cake for all!

I celebrated my anniversary by working on MungBeing. Oh, yes. There's a lot of magic floating 'round this issue. Appropriate, given our theme of ritual & myth. As with any good plunge into the mystic, connecting threads and synchronicities abound.

I worked for my anniversary. Damned hard. See, the subjects of my two interviews, Robin Hardy and Riane Eisler, are very important to me when I think of all of the magic they've conjured in the world through their art and writing. They've seeded some very insidious memetic vines that have crept up through culture and grabbed me.

See, okay, let's play follow the vine (oo, trust me, it's fun!) See, Robin Hardy directed this movie called The Wicker Man, which focused on an isolated society of pagans who openly practiced fertility rites alien to the culture of Christians. This movie shone forth like the sun god Nuada on the dawn of the new pagan 'morn, when out from the shadows emerged the renewal of the Old religion. The neo-pagans were into the Goddess and allied with feminists and New Age philosophers in bringing light of the Goddess unto the world. Without the resurrection of the Goddess, would Riane Eisler have been exposed to Marija Gimbutas? Further: psychedelic guru Terence McKenna was an Eisler devotee. When I encountered him he baptized me in the brain wash of Eisler, then (indirectly) hipped me to the Burning Man festival, an event that features the ritualistic burning of a gigantic wooden effigy, just like the one in... The Wicker Man! McKenna and Eisler let me see the world through their glasses, and I found a playground on which to experiment experientially with my Utopian ideals of human relationships and community structures. In the meantime, Robin's movie persisted through my ages as a top favorite, as I was emotionally invested in the theme of religious antagonism, and fired by the rites of the ritual of sex, music and dance.

Somehow all these vines coming up from both Robin and Riane became very intertwined in my current worldview. We share a concern about the rise of Christian fundamentalism, and we all express this in the way we tell our stories to the world. Riane and Robin look very carefully at the way people treat each other in their relationships, within the context of their communities. We recognize there are some enormous powers who have the ability to manipulate and control peoples' lives, and to commit violence against them. We all ask the question, is there an Older World returning? And what will it look like when our worlds Old and Not-So-Old collide?

I'm about to found a new religion based on Santa Claus as the pagan avatar of the Archaic Revival. I once wrote of him in these very pages as being the central figure of a new, postmodern kind of Saturnalia. In MungBeing Mark and I have explored several related themes, and have shared the work of artists and writers who have looked upon the soul of our culture. Things are happening, there is a struggle going on in our Universe that is finding its way into our art and stories. There is a dark and repressive force, The Man, Big Brother, you know, that wants to keep us down, hold us back, squash everything within us that is beautiful and sacred and sexy. They come at us with an Angry God on their side, one who wants to punish us, do us harm if we don't obey. As artists and writers, we're reacting, we're saying, just what the hell is going on, what is possible, what will come of this growing cultural storm?

I think it's becoming a mission for me. Not a step I can take to divorce myself from it, it creeps up in everything I think and do. I want Eden, dammit, I want the snake and the Tree of Knowledge, I want the nakedness, I want to dance upon fruited, fertile and abundant plain! I don't accept being cast out, and I'll stand as the Adversary against this injustice! We're human beings, and we demand sexy times and yummy food and joyous friendship and, you know, freedom from abuse, domination, violence. But the more I read and research the fundamentalist religionists and ideologues, the less I understand about their psychopathological desire to control everything, and justify it using ancient verse.

I am grateful to have MungBeing, and grateful that Mark came into my life so we could use our collective power to share our visions of the world with the world, and to discover some of the world's best thinkers, writers, artists in the process. We have voices, we have new questions and seek different answers from the word. We ingest memes and deconstruct them and bring about new life by using our creative, receptive, expressive powers. The folks you read and see in MungBeing, all who have ever participated, show us new ways to look at the human project, at ourselves. They strike you because they have fresh things to say, and they deliver it from the heart, or someplace even deeper. I really feel our MungPeople's ideas rippling out into the Universe. People are paying attention.

I interviewed Robin Hardy on the full moon. Harmonic convergence?

Happy anniversary.

Two Years! Yee Haw!

First, I just want to thank everyone who has contributed to our humble cyberagazine:
Rik Albatros, Ian Donnell Arbuckle, Kevin Ausmus, Joel Barber, Suzanne Baumann, bibble, Susan Blackmore, Godfrey Blow, Matt Bray, Franklin Bruno, KD Bryan, T.L. Bryers, Jim Bumgardner, Buzzsaw, Allen Callaci, Dave Carpenter, Lisa Crystal Carver, Catling, Cavendish, SJ Chambers, Freedom's Child, Billy Childish, Irwin Chusid, Liz Clayton, The Congress, Mark Connery, Genaro Cordova, Beth Cornell, Kitchen Cynics, John Darnielle, Robert Dayton, R.S. Deese, Mark DeLong, Michael Dickinson, McKenzie Ditter, Howard Drucker, Jeb Ebben, Sune Ehlers, Miss Elucid, Erin Emerson, ethora, Euphoria, Gus Fink, Fishberryjam, Star Alpha Five, Otis Fodder, Steve Folta, Food Fortunata, J. Flinn Akroyd, Michael Furious, Susan Gardner, Roger Gee, r. a. gillespie, Berit Givens, Krista S. Givens, Terry Givens, Trygve Givens, Daniel Gonzalez, David "Starchy" Grant, David Greenberger, Alex Grey, Nicholas Gurewitch, Ella Guru, Danielle Hagel, Naomi Hall, Christine Hamm, Thomas Hangelbroek, Tim Hatch, Rachel Haywire, Ronald Heiloo, John Helmer, Andrew Hessel, Brent Hetherwick, Callie Danae Hirsch, Jeffrey Scott Holland, S.P. Howarth, Ryan Hughes, Ed Hume, Joel Huschle, SinDex Industries, John Gamber, Jr, Amy Frushour Kelly, Mike Kingston, Tim Kirk, Peter Klint, James Howard Kunstler, Darron Laessig, Suzanne LaFetra, Julian Lawrence, Richard K. Lee, peg leg, The Misfit Library, Libraz, Matt Love, Sarah Lynch-Walker, Danielle MacDonald, Joe Machine, Magneticring, Amy Maloof, Mancat, Roger Manning, Jane Martin, Mickel Mass, Chad McCail, CP McDill, mckenzee, Jason McLean, Meatyard, Ken B. Miller, Tim Miller, Mun Mun Mittelbach, Virginia M. Mohlere, Ashley Montague, Kelly Moore, Heidi Morgan, Muayad Muhsin, Mystified, Lyle Neff, Bruce New, Cash Nexus, Nevyn Nowhere, Michael O'Briant, Alexis O'Hara, Dob Ogum, David Ostrowski, Natalie Oswald, Kirk Packwood, Claudio Parentela, Liz Parkinson, Harold Penis, Donna Piazza, Owen Plummer, Leslie Powell, Joanna Price, Ian Pyper, Rebecca Quartieri, Luke Ramsey, Simon Dion Redekop, Christopher P. Reilly, Andy Rementer, Jesse Reno, James Rhodes, Kim Richardson, AJ Rollo, Harold Schellinx, Albert Schweitzer, Sockeye, Spacemummy, Don Swartzentruber, Alan Taylor, Mark Teppo, Charles Thomson, Marnie Thorp, July Fourth Toilet, Patrick Turk, Michael Uhlenkott, Don Vasa, Milos Vujasinovic, Chuck Wadey, Frank Warren, James Whitman, Eric Willey, Gary Wilson, Leonore Wilson, Robert Anton Wilson, Amanda Woodward, Simon Yuill, Cyndi Yuska, John Zachary, Caveh Zahedi, and Robert Zailo

Thanks, everybody, and nice job!

Second, I want to let you know that we've got great things, GREAT THINGS, in store for you in our third year - so stay tuned. And thanks for reading. You have truly made this experience a wonderful and joyful one.

You are all MUNG and you rock!

Mark Givens,
Editor-in-Chief