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In the latest episode of The Infinite and the Beyond, we talk about late Llewellyn author Scott Cunningham in A Corner in the Occult. Many Pagans and or Wiccans often find Scott’s books on their journey as Pagans. Many find his books on magick and religion uplifting and at times pertinent to their growing views on life and existence.

We also look into the idea of human flourishing and happiness and how to create it in one’s life. Are you happy? Are you flourishing? How would you define and list your values and virtues? Would you say that they are serving you and your life beneficially? Learn about virtue and Eudaimonia and how your life lives up to the teachings of Aristotle and other philosophers. See how some of the new virtue systems found in modern Paganism stand in comparison to a tried and true system which comes from Plato as we find an elementary way to update it for modern use.

Later in the show, I read listener email and we look at the history of the five elements in The Essence of Magick. Find out where the five elements of western occultism come from and how they came to be used in ritual magick. And to close we discuss suicide, assisted suicide and how they exist in relation to Paganism. Have you ever had someone in your life kill themselves? Have you ever known someone who died of a terminal, debilitating, and/or painful illness? How do the issues associated with suicide and assisted suicide relate to Paganism?

To message the show please go here.

Photo: SlimVirgin (CC)

AsiaOne reports:

The Chinese media has reported on an extraordinary account of a mother bear saving her cub from a life of torture by strangling it and then killing itself. The bears were kept in a farm located in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall bladders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed. The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bears’ abdomen and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis. The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by hitting their stomach as they are unable to bear the pain.A person who was on the farm in place of a friend witnessed the procedures and told Reminbao.com that they were inhumane.

The witness also claimed that a mother bear broke out its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punctured its stomach to milk the bile.

Read more here.

Hemingway’s depression and instability has been well-documented, but what is interesting is that the FBI’s monitoring of his phones, correspondence and activities contributed to his sense of fear and paranoia.

This could be the rare case of someone who’s paranoia about “being watched” is actually due to the fact that he/she is actually being monitored. A. E. Hotchner writes:

EARLY one morning, [on July 1st], while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life.

There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that it was an accident, that he’d quarreled with Mary. None were true. As his friends knew, he’d been suffering from depression and paranoia for the last year of his life.

Ernest and I were friends for 14 years. I dramatized many of his stories and novels for television specials and film, and we shared adventures in France, Italy, Cuba and Spain, where, as a pretend matador with Ernest as my manager, I participated in a Ciudad Real bullfight. Ernest’s zest for life was infectious.

Read More: NY Times

A woman is feared to have committed ’suicide by snake’ — Aleta Stacey is thought to have deliberately allowed herself to be bitten by a deadly black Mamba. The 56-year-old was found dead at the New York home she shares with 75 other snakes, most of them poisonous.

Friends and family believe Stacey deliberately allowed herself to be bitten. They said she was an experienced snake handler who knew the dangers of getting to close to the fast and venomous snake. They also pointed out that even after being bitten she failed to call the emergency services.

Venom from the black Mamba is lethal unless treated with antivenon. Victims usually die within 20 minutes of being bitten.

Officials removed 75 other snakes from the home, of which 56 were poisonous. All 75 snakes were taken to the Bronx Zoo.

A South Korean man with a religious obsession crucified himself around Easter, police said.

The body of the 58-year-old taxi driver was discovered Sunday in an abandoned quarry in Mungyeong in North Gyeongsang province, The Korea Herald reported. He was nailed to a wooden cross.

Police said the man went to great lengths to simulate Jesus’ crucifixion. He was wearing only underpants and a headdress resembling a crown of thorrns, had a wound on his right side and had drilled holes in his palms.

Investigators said he had apparently been living in a tent near the quarry. They found plans for self-crucifixion and a whip there.

A pastor in Mugyeong said the man once came to him to talk about religion. He described him as having extreme views.

For more information, see UPI and this.

A 91-year-old East County grandmother is getting national attention for making suicide kits. The woman started making the kits after watching her husband die a slow, painful death from colon cancer.

“I’m doing what I can to improve the world,” she told 10News. “There’s a lot of heartache and difficulty here.” Charlotte makes the kits — which cost buyers $60 — by taking large plastic bags and sewing soft elastic bands around the opening. There is a slot in the bag for a plastic tube carrying helium gas to be inserted. Helium — when inhaled in its pure form — is deadly. Kit users are responsible for securing their own helium gas.

“If heaven is so wonderful, you know you’d naturally want to go there, wouldn’t you?” said Charlotte. Charlotte said her sales were nearly $100,000 last year. That’s more than 1,600 suicide kits. The business is legal because of a loophole in California law but many question the ethics behind it.

The Danish royal family: Are they really so happy? Photo: Bill Ebbesen

From ScienceDaily:

The happiest countries and happiest U.S. states tend to have the highest suicide rates, according to research from the UK’s University of Warwick, Hamilton College in New York and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.The new research paper titled “Dark Contrasts: The Paradox of High Rates of Suicide in Happy Places” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. It uses U.S. and international data, which included first-time comparisons of a newly available random sample of 1.3 million Americans, and another on suicide decisions among an independent random sample of approximately 1 million Americans.

The research confirmed a little known and seemingly puzzling fact: many happy countries have unusually high rates of suicide. This observation has been made from time to time about individual nations, especially in the case of Denmark. This new research found that a range of nations — including: Canada, the United States, Iceland, Ireland and Switzerland, display relatively high happiness levels and yet also have high suicide rates. Nevertheless the researchers note that, because of variation in cultures and suicide-reporting conventions, such cross-country scatter plots are only suggestive. To confirm the relationship between levels of happiness and rates of suicide within a geographical area, the researchers turned to two very large data sets covering a single country, the United States.

The scientific advantage of comparing happiness and suicide rates across U.S. states is that cultural background, national institutions, language and religion are relatively constant across a single country. While still not absolutely perfect, as the States are not identical, comparing the different areas of the country gave a much more homogeneous population to examine rather than a global sample of nations.

Comparing U.S. states in this way produced the same result. States with people who are generally more satisfied with their lives tended to have higher suicide rates than those with lower average levels of life satisfaction. For example, the raw data showed that Utah is ranked first in life-satisfaction, but has the 9th highest suicide rate. Meanwhile, New York was ranked 45th in life satisfaction, yet had the lowest suicide rate in the country.

Read more here.

Coat of Arms of the Taliban regime (1996-2001). Photo: Falerístico (CC)

With the increasing number of suicide bombing, it is often asked, what were they thinking? Why did they do this? After 14-year-old Umar Fidai’s explosive vest failed to detonate, he discusses how the Taliban trained him and his regret towards his actions. BBC News reports:

In early April a suicide blast ripped though a Pakistani shrine packed with thousands of devotees, leaving scores dead. Both attackers were schoolboys in their early teens. But one survived and told the BBC’s Aleem Maqbool what made him want to take his life and the lives of others.

“All I was thinking was that I had to detonate myself near as many people as possible. When I decided it was the right time, it was a moment of happiness for me,” said 14-year-old Umar Fidai.

“I thought that there would be a little bit of pain, but then I would be in heaven.”

Umar did not make it to paradise. Instead, we find him in custody.

[Continues at BBC News with video of interview]

In November, 1990 a man set himself on fire in front of the U.S. capitol, the news reports from the time say that the reasons for the man’s act were unknown, no riots were forthcoming. Last year the cultural shifts in Egypt, Yemen and Algeria proved a different outcome in light of similar self-immolation. As individuals express their anger, alienation and rejection in self willed conflagration it is igniting their communities into violent uprisings shaking the foundations of global culture.

As I’m writing this a young man sits in protest in a Palestinian Mosque, part of the March 15 Youth Coalition who set up tents in the Bethlehem municipality to demand a new Palestinian national council and a unified Palestine. He is threatening to set himself on fire if the Coalition’s demands are not taken seriously. Unlike the young gunmen we have seen emerge in the United States, whose outward acts of inflamed anxiety cause communities to hold vigils and encourage greater controls, these self sacrificial immolations “change the quality of the substance,” of the estrangement, isolation and abuse, to open up the opportunity for cultural change.

Article by David Metcalfe via Modern Mythology.

Facebook is launching a system that allows users to report friends who they think may be contemplating suicide.

The feature is being run in conjunction with Samaritans, which said several people had used it during a test phase.

Anyone worried about a friend can fill out a form, detailing their concerns, which is passed to the social networking site’s moderators.

It follows reports of several cases where Facebook users announced their intention to commit suicide online.

The reporting page asks for the address (URL) of the Facebook page where the messages are posted, the full name of the user and details of any networks they are members of.

Suicide-related alerts will be escalated to the highest level, for attention by Facebook’s user operations team.

For more information, see original article.

For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reasons are complicated and the accounting uncertain — for instance, should returning soldiers who take their own lives after being mustered out be included? But the suicide rate is a further indication of the stress that military personnel live under after nearly a decade of war.

Overall, the services reported 434 suicides by personnel on active duty, significantly more than the 381 suicides by active-duty personnel reported in 2009. The 2010 total is below the 462 deaths in combat, excluding accidents and illness. In 2009, active-duty suicides exceeded deaths in battle.

Last week’s figures, though, understate the problem of military suicides because the services do not report the statistics uniformly. Several do so only reluctantly.

The U.S. Army announced Wednesday that the number of suicides rose again last year to almost one a day, despite major efforts to identify and help at-risk soldiers.

Suicides among active-duty soldiers actually declined for the first time in six years but the numbers increased among other soldiers, doubling in the Army National Guard.

The overall number of suicides for the 2010 calendar year was 343 — an increase of 69 over the previous year — and included self-inflicted deaths among active-duty soldiers, the National Guard, the Army Reserves, civilian employees of the Army and family members. The Army reported 156 active-duty suicides last year and 112 in the National Guard.

“The bottom line is this is a significant issue and clearly there is much to be done,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said in a Pentagon briefing.

While active-duty and deployed soldiers are under constant observation and supervision, soldiers serving in the Reserves or National Guard who are not deployed may be off the Army radar for weeks at a time…

For more information, see original article.

Switzerland is the destination of choice for people from abroad who want to die. The office of the country’s top legal official is pushing to change that.

While assisted suicide is permitted in the Netherlands, Belgium and the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington and Montana, only Switzerland allows doctors to help foreigners end their lives. More than 25 percent of the 380 assisted suicides in Switzerland during 2009 involved foreigners, most of whom died after drinking water laced with a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Former Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, who was replaced by Simonetta Sommaruga in November, has proposed making the practice more difficult by demanding oversight by doctors who aren’t connected with one of the country’s four right-to-die organizations. Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942.

“Those Swiss politicians who want to change the rules on assisted suicide behave like moral apostles,” said Margrit Weibel, president of Zurich-based suicide organization Ex International. “They are backward-looking people, entangled in the Christian belief that human beings don’t have the right to make decisions on when to end their lives.”…

[continues at Bloomberg News]

Williams is among a small cadre of scholars from across the world pushing the rather contentious idea that some suicide bombers may in fact be suicidal. At the forefront is the University of Alabama’s Adam Lankford, who recently published an analysis of suicide terrorism in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior. Lankford cites Israeli scholars who interviewed would-be Palestinian suicide bombers. These scholars found that 40 percent of the terrorists showed suicidal tendencies; 13 percent had made previous suicide attempts, unrelated to terrorism. Lankford finds Palestinian and Chechen terrorists who are financially insolvent, recently divorced, or in debilitating health in the months prior to their attacks. A 9/11 hijacker, in his final note to his wife, describing how ashamed he is to have never lived up to her expectations. Terrorist recruiters admitting they look for the “sad guys” for martyrdom.

For Lankford and like-minded thinkers, changing the perception of the suicide bomber changes the focus of any mission that roots out terrorism. If the suicide bomber can be viewed as something more than a brainwashed, religiously fervent automaton, anticipating a paradise of virgins in the clouds, then that suicide bomber can be seen as a nuanced person, encouraging a greater curiosity about the terrorist, Lankford thinks. The more the terrorist is understood, the less damage the terrorist can cause.

Islam forbids suicide. Of the world’s three Abrahamic faiths, “The Koran has the only scriptural prohibition against it,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who specializes in the causes of suicide terrorism. The phrase suicide bomber itself is a Western conception, and a pretty foul one at that: an egregious misnomer in the eyes of Muslims, especially from the Middle East. For the Koran distinguishes between suicide and, as the book says, “the type of man who gives his life to earn the pleasure of Allah.” The latter is a courageous Fedayeen — a martyr. Suicide is a problem, but martyrdom is not.

The 24-year-old man, who has not been named, was found dead in his apartment in the city of Sendai early on Tuesday morning. Police had been alerted by viewers of the Ustream web page and were able to locate the man’s apartment. By the time they arrived at 8am, however, the man was already dead.

The man had announced his intention to kill himself in online chat rooms last week, according to the Yomiuri newspaper, after complaining for some weeks about problems he had been experiencing at work.

Employed by a bank, the man had been suspended from his duties since August. The man, who lived alone, started a live stream on Sunday evening, repeating his plans to commit suicide.

While some people posted messages attempting to talk him out of going through with his plans, others encouraged him to kill himself. Apparently believing they were watching a hoax, some viewers even suggested that he hurry up and get it over with.

Police told local media that the man initially tried to hang himself on the balcony of his flat shortly before 4am on Tuesday. When that attempt failed, the footage showed the man repeating the attempt elsewhere at 5:30am…

[continues at the Telegraph]

It was a fatal blow struck from cyberspace.

A shy Rutgers freshman was so humiliated when two cruel classmates secretly streamed live video of his gay encounter that he leaped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, authorities said yesterday.

“Jumping off the gw bridge sorry,” Tyler Clementi, 18, posted on his Facebook page just eight minutes before his plunge at around 8:50 p.m. on Sept. 22.

Clementi’s suicide led to a swift criminal probe and the arrest of his roommate, Dharun Ravi, and a fellow freshman, Molly Wei, for their alleged vile voyeurism.

NYPD Harbor Unit cops yesterday pulled the body of a young man from the waters off Manhattan’s northern tip — and cops suspect it was that of Clementi, a quiet, highly talented violinist from Ridgewood, NJ.

Authorities hoped that a watch found on his wrist would help identify him. Last night, NYPD detectives visited the teen’s parents, who were apparently unaware that their son was gay.

Robert Righthand, who had been friends with Clementi since grade school, said his pal had been holding that in.

“I can tell you that whatever state he was in, he had it in reserve for a very long time,” Righthand said while choking back tears.

“You never thought he was depressed. You just thought he was quiet. He wasn’t the person to open up to a lot of people.”

The tragedy was set in motion on Sept. 19 in Davidson Hall on Rutgers’ idyllic Piscataway campus, where Clementi and his alleged tormentors, Ravi and Wei, started school a month ago…

[continues in the New York Post]

New York native shot himself to death in Harvard Yard last week — after penning an epic 1,905-page suicide note.

Mitchell Heisman, 35, quoted Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Einstein as he attempted to explain his motives in the rambling missive, which included a lengthy preface and 1,433 footnotes.
Heisman put the encyclopedia-sized note online and asked that the Web page be kept up after his death, so that everyone could know his feelings about life and the universe.

“I propose opening your mind towards the liberation of death; towards exposing the blind faith in life as a myth, a bias, and an error,” he wrote.

The massive document contains little information about his life, but includes many long passages touching on issues such as Jesus, the Battle of Hastings in 1066, sociology and the First Amendment.

“If my hypothesis is correct, this work will be repressed,” he surmised on the first page.

The note ends with a 19-page list of sources and the comment “What good suicide note would be complete without a bibliography?”

Heisman, who lived in Somerville, Mass., graduated from the University of Albany with a BA in psychology. He worked in several Boston-area bookstores and was able to work on his farewell note thanks to an inheritance from his father, an engineer who died when Heisman was 12

The government in Japan says suicides and depression cost its economy almost 2.7tn yen ($32bn; £21bn) last year.

The figures refer to lost incomes and the cost of treatment. It is the first time Japan has released such figures.

Japan has one of the world’s highest suicide rates, with more than 32,000 people killing themselves last year. PM Naoto Kan sees it as proof of an economic and emotional downturn.

The government is setting up a task force to try to reduce the rate.

From Friday, it will run a video clip of a footballer from the J-league on its website, urging people to be more aware of the problem.

Continues at BBC News …

After nine years of war, the U.S. Army is showing signs of stress because of repeated deployments and inadequate support for soldiers when they return, according to a blunt internal report released today. It blasts the Army’s leadership for failing to recognize the problem.

The figures in recent years are staggering.

The number of soldiers committing suicide has increased since 2004, surpassing civilian rates in 2008. Use of prescription drugs has tripled in the past five years; prescription amphetamines use has doubled between 2006 and 2009. One third of soldiers take at least one prescription drug and 14 percent of soldiers are on some form of powerful painkiller.

Crime is rising every year as well. Each year has seen an increase of 5,000 misdemeanors over the previous year, meaning soldiers are expected to commit around 55,000 such crimes in 2010. Sexual offenses have tripled since 2003. Domestic abuse is up 177 percent in the past six years.

Non-combat deaths among the force have increased steadily since 2001 to the point where the report says that in 2009 more soldiers died as a result of accidents and “high risk behavior” than at war.

“Simply stated, we are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy,” the report says.

The scathing assessment, commissioned by the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli, blames Army leadership for failing to realize the deteriorating trend.

“The Army realized too late that there was a very serious problem,” it says.

The study also faults Army leaders for failing to enforce discipline after violations, leading to repeat offenders whose problems spiral out of control.

“Soldiers are taking more and more risks, and gaps in policies are allowing it to happen. Ultimately, it poses the question: ‘Where has the Army’s leadership in garrison gone?’” the report asks, using the term for the period when soldiers are stationed at home between deployments…

[continues at ABC News]

Really surprised to see the site still up, I didn’t realize the group was still in “existence” after the March 1997 mass suicide.

In case you haven’t gotten your dose of massive creepiness today, here’s an initiation tape from Heaven’s Gate’s Marshall Applewhite. Still creepy after all these years. Thanks to Tim Pugh for creeping me out even more…

The number of suicides among active- duty U.S. Army troops this year reached 133 in October, 18 more than in the same period last year and putting the service within reach of a new annual high.

The 133 reported suicides, including the National Guard and Reserves, between January and October compared with 115 during the same period in 2008 when the service recorded 140 by year’s end, an annual record, the Army said in a statement.

The rate of suicide within the Army last year was 20.2 per 100,000 personnel, exceeding for the first time the age-adjusted rate in the civilian population, which was 19.2, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The institute has paired with the Army to undertake the biggest study ever of suicide and behavioral health among military personnel.

The Army has taken extra steps in the past year to prevent suicides as the number of cases began to alarm officials. Measures include training, a suicide prevention task force and a day of standing down from official duties to focus on suicide prevention…

Switzerland announced plans yesterday to crack down on “suicide tourism”, signalling that it might close the Dignitas clinic that has helped hundreds of terminally ill people to take their lives.

The plans — in the form of two draft Bills that will be offered for public debate — are likely to set off a rush of patients from Britain and elsewhere in Europe since Switzerland has become the main destination for those seeking assisted suicide.

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the Justice Minister, said that two options would be presented to parliament. Either clinics such as Dignitas and Exit, which deals chiefly with Swiss patients, will have to accept much stricter regulation or they will be closed down.

The tightening of the rules would require patients to present two medical opinions declaring their disease incurable, that death is expected within months and that they have made their decision of sound mind and fully aware of their options…