User talk:King Vegita

Hermeticism

Everything looks great so far. No compliants here. I will do some touch ups on my write ups over the week as well. The article is coming together nicely. Take care.

--Armadel

For what it's worth, I think that the article on Hermes Trismegistus is the proper place for mentioning any theories about the figure being based on a real person. It is quite peripheral to the main subject of Hermeticism. Myopic Bookworm 12:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I know too little about it to be able to contribute, but thanks for asking. Tom Harrison ^Talk 17:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Templates

If you mean the userboxes (admin, firefox etc.) they and many many others can be found at Wikipedia:Userboxes. All the best. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 18:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Alchemy problems

I can empathise with the problem you're having vis a vis Alchemy. Iv'e had similar problems in the past. Consensus reality on wikipedia is didactic materialist, and at about the level of imagination of a Ohio University grad student. The only way to introduce upopular ideas is to use unassailable prose and cite a lot of sources: basically you have to exceed the standards that other wikipedists get away with. This is always preferable to looking for an admin, because admins are usually like the people you're debating, only worse.

Citing web sources is easy. External link like this [1] and whoopie, it's a source. Citing book sources is a pain in the ass. You have to use footnotes in the Harvard referencing format, i.e.

Jesus was a pot-smoking essene1 and really he was a butterfly2.

And because it's unpopular you can't just say it. You have to couch it in language like:

During the late middle ages and especially the renaissance the idea of Mystical or Hermetic Alchemy became popular, wherein alchemy was seen as a metaphor for the purification and transformation the of the human spirit. Writers on alchemey during this era distinguished between esoteric alchemists and those they derisively called "blowers", who were frowned upon for being mere chemists.

With plenty of quotes, footnotes, citation links, and so on sprinkled throughout. Remember that you can't say it, you can only say that someone else said it.

Fortunately there's a lot of online source material for you to use if you want to sift through it. The Internet Sacred Texts Archive is one good starting place. You could also look for writings by M.P. Hall, CG Jung, etc.

Hope this helps. —Clarknova 18:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Sources

1. Charles Manson (1972). He Was Just Like Us Maaaaan. Spahn Ranch: Corcoran State Press. 23-25.

2. Dr. Henry Moreau (1896). The Origins of Evil in the Human Genome. Moreau Ilse: BeastMan Press. 237-239.

Reiki and Psychic Surgery

As fas as I can tell, the "psychic surgeries" of Reiki and of the Filipino/Brazilian surgeons have nothing in common except the name and the use of hands. If that is the case, it doesn't make sense to discuss both in the same article. The only issue is how the articles should be named. All the best, Jorge Stolfi 19:58, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Note to self

^{superscripts work like this} Jack Daniels died in a wheat threshing accident¹. He was always playing with that wheat thresher².

Cubeb

Hi, thanks for granting the good article status. Could you please add the article to Wikipedia:Good_articles#Biology_and_medicine, in which it is supposed to be listed. Thank you very much. --BorgQueen 19:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'd like to recommend to create footnotes section for Hermeticism, if you are not planning to do it already. --BorgQueen 19:18, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Pentacle vs. Pentagram

I'm not going to revert your edit to Wicca, as "pentacle" is the common Wiccan term as far as I've seen. However, I think you might find the discussion of this issue on Talk:Pentagram to be interesting, and I wanted to comment that yes, there is such thing as a circumscribed pentagram, and quite a few people do think that "circumscribed pentagram" is more correct that "pentacle," considering the issues about the historical origins of the term "pentacle" brought up in the pentagram article and on its talk page. - AdelaMae ^{(talk - contribs)} 02:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Christianity

If you have any thoughts on changes to the article, I'd welcome your joining in on the talk page. Tom Harrison ^Talk 23:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Ditto - but you might want to take a look at this page before you invest a lot of time on the Christianity page. Whatever you decide to do as a result, please don't just go away. Your voice might be important in the future. Trollwatcher 17:52, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; I appreciate your providing input when your time is clearly limited. Stop in whenever you get the chance. Tom Harrison ^Talk 20:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Dear KV: Forgive me for being a little blunt, but if you are capable of confusing Christian Science and Scientology on the basis of where you used to smoke at school, I do not think you know enough about the range and relative importance of Christian and non-Christian sects to criticize some of the more knowledgeable contributors on this topic. Myopic Bookworm 21:25, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, you caught me at a bad moment: I had been trying quite hard to work on text that had to accommodate a very wide range of Christian opinion, from American Baptist to Syrian Orthodox, in a neutral enough way to mollify apparently anti-religious contributors, and suddenly to have someone throw Scientologists into the equation was really frustrating. I'll try to be nicer. Myopic Bookworm 16:22, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi KV.I just saw your message on Christianity. I hope you don't stop looking completely. I know what you mean about it being time consuming. I just left a defense of fixing the POV problems with "communist states." Maybe you can take a look at what I wrote and the edit I made to fix this problem when you get a chance. Thanks. Giovanni33 00:16, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for calling me in on Hermes Tris

I appreciate being called in to discuss this matter, and I will give it prompt attention. Yours faithfully, drboisclair 15:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I have read your post on Hermes Trismegistus and I agree with your sentiments. Specifically that it is not POV to state: "some people believe that HT was a real man." You are right to say that it would be POV if the statement was made baldly: "HT was a real man in history." I think that some of us, not you, need to be a little more careful about bandying the POV accusation. It would be better to say that an article is NNPOV if there is no neutral point of view than simply POV. POV is not a bad thing. As you state in your post you have to represent all POVs or at least major ones to approach NeutralPointOfView for your article. I think that the skeptics should be represented with their POV, but, as you stated, that does not mean that they should have their whole way and remove everything that cannot be proved absolutely 100%. That would be insisting on their POV to the exclusion of others. As to Thoth's existence as a real person. This is parallel to Asclepius and Pythagoras. Of course, there is consensus that Pythagoras was a real individual. The Egyptian pantheon invites the slim belief that some of them were real people. Osiris was a pharaoh perhaps with Isis as his wife and Horus, his son. Thoth may have been a real person as well. However, in order to put it forward without being laughed at is to have historical record from good sources. As you stated the belief that he was a real person was a conceit of the Renaissance. This POV should be mentioned in the article as a POV with its disclaimers (i.e. that this is not historical verified). This you have done. I agree that others should respect the time and industry that are put into these articles. I hope that that gives you the "weighing in" that you requested. I will look more closely at this article as in my studies the figure of Hermes Trismegistus has intrigued me. Thank you again. drboisclair 17:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Possibly unfree Image:Tuyayuya.jpg

An image that you uploaded or altered, Image:Tuyayuya.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. If the image's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. Please go to its page to provide the necessary information on the source or licensing of this image (if you have any), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

-SCEhardT 05:42, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

If the image was published in a book with a copyright of 1987, the image is still copyrighted. Just because the mummies are very old doesn't mean the photo is PD. If you want to keep the photo, you may make a {{fair use}} claim on the image page. -SCEhardT 05:51, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Hermetic view

Thanks - will let you know when I come across anything where the Hermetic view should be. I must admit I have been looking along racial lines at the moment with countering systemic bias and have created an obscure (to me - very important to them) nigerian geographical feature article Oguta lake - just stub at the moment but I'm looking for more stuff.

Having read the Hermetica and found it a beautiful text you have inspired me to go read it again as there is a lot I have forgotten. Sophia^TalkTCF 07:56, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject: Egyptian Religion

My idea for this Wikiproject is a group that focuses on Ancient Egyptian religion, such as Atenism and Hermetism, and attempts to:

• Remove or otherwise balance skeptical or ethnocentric dismissal POV of Egyptian beliefs from articles.

• Vastly increase the information in these articles based on well cited additions

• Increase the number of articles on the subject of Egyptian Beliefs as it becomes possible, making daughter pages.

• Having any Egyptian influence on other systems added into the articles on those systems. This can be done in a short paragraph.

KV 18:50, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Question

Just wondering if you might have any comments yet on the way that a group of mainstream Christians effectively own the Christianity and Criticisms of Christianity pages and effectively supress anything they do not like, including of course your contributions. Any observations welcome. Trollwatcher 15:14, 2 April 2006 (UTC)