Ethical and legal aspects of sterilizing pregnant companion animals

In my role as a volunteer with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Queensland, Australia, I had occasion recently to co-author a paper with Dr Mandy Paterson considering ethical and legal aspects of sterilizing pregnant companion animals:

“Sterilizing Pregnant Companion Animals: Ethics and Law” (April 2021) Journal of Applied Animal Ethics Research doi:10.1163/25889567-BJA10013

An abstract of the paper appears at https://brill.com/view/journals/jaae/aop/article-10.1163-25889567-BJA10013/article-10.1163-25889567-BJA10013.xml

Cats in our community

In my role as a volunteer with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Queensland, Australia, I had occasion recently to co-author a paper considering aspects of cat desexing in Queensland.

Paterson, M.B.A.; O’Donoghue, M.; Jamieson, P.; Morton, J.M. The Cat Desexing Policies and Activities of Private Veterinary Practices in Queensland. Animals 2020, 10, 841.

The full text of the paper is available at https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/5/841#cite

Central Australian Dreaming Sparks a Glimmer of Hope at a Time of Global Crisis

Featured image is of the Butterfly Nebula by NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team – http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/image/f/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7777740

Marianne Schmidt and Philip Jamieson

Earlier this year, we attended the Cosmic Conciousness Conference at Uluru. There we had the opportunity on 12 January to experience at this sacred site a rare Saturn/Pluto conjunct and, indeed, the more rare for the fact that their conjunction was in Capricorn, something that had not occurred in more than 500 years.

Pluto and Saturn are two of the most feared planets in astrology. Pluto is a force of transformation and Saturn a force of responsibility, restriction and limitation, representing authority and structures like government and rules. So when they meet up in Capricorn, which rules governments, corporations and the economy, we can expect a tumultuous shakeup of antiquated global structures and institutions. When in 1518, Pluto and Saturn last met in Capricorn we saw the burgeoning of both the African slave trade (actions taken by Charles 1 of Spain in August 1518 resulted in a nearly 10 fold increase in the numbers of transatlantic slaves) and the Reformation movement (Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses spread swiftly after their translation from Latin into German in January 1518). Now again, 500 years later, during the period of this astrologically significant conjunction, half of global humanity sits in various stages of lockdown around the world as we experience a viral pandemic, wreaking transformation across all aspects of our global institutions, economic structures and indeed our very way of life – we find ourselves restricted, largely confined to our homes, and with our economic and social lives in disarray.

Continue reading “Central Australian Dreaming Sparks a Glimmer of Hope at a Time of Global Crisis” →

Denisovan Origins of the Zodiac?

Featured image is of Denisova Cave by Демин Алексей Барнаул – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48890364

In New Dawn magazine last year,[1] I explored the work of two British academics (Dr Martin Sweatman and Alistair Coombs) pushing back the origins of the Western zodiac to a time more than 40,000 years or more in the past.[2] As I noted in that article, they have apparently identified an ancient zodiac code that continues to inform the one we use today. In fact, it appears that we still use exactly the same zodiacal constellations. The authors allow though that there are some differences in the symbolism we now use to represent the constellations. Not only would the symbolism in this ancient zodiac likely have been subject to many local variations, some constellations that were apparently previously represented by animals are no longer in our modern zodiac and a few other constellations are now represented by different animals.

Key to finding that this zodiac code dates back at least 40,000 years is the analysis by Sweatman and Coombs of its application to the ancient Lion Man figurine from Stadel Cave in Hohlenstein, Germany, although they have concluded that the lion is actually one of the animal symbols that has been switched. In our modern Western Zodiac, the lion is of course the symbol for Leo. However, they conclude that in this ancient code Leo is likely to have been represented by horse symbolism while the feline symbol appears to have represented Cancer. For them, the Lion Man figurine represents Cancer on the Winter solstice around 40,000 years ago.[3]

These symbolic associations have been questioned as part of a broader criticism of their theory.[4] While I find many of their conclusions persuasive, in my earlier paper I also queried their view that the lion was not associated with Leo in this ancient code. I believe there are reasonable grounds for suggesting that the lion was then, as it remains to this day, the symbolic representation for this zodiac constellation. And since my earlier article was published I believe that those grounds may have been strengthened by recent findings at the Denisova Cave in Siberia. These findings may even support the view that the ancient zodiac code identified by Sweatman and Coombs is an inheritance from the Denisosovans. Continue reading “Denisovan Origins of the Zodiac?” →