I tend to be one of the biggest skeptics I know, but every once in a while
I get the feeling that that's not how I'd rather be, and go out - well,
'religion shopping' for lack of a better phrase. I can remember times when
I was much younger when I made myself read the Bible every day because
Christianity was the only religion I knew about, or, later, when I discovered
I'd had Jewish ancestors and demanded to light a menorah for Hannukah in
addition to our usual Christmas tree. It was during one of those moods three
or four years ago that I stumbled into this conference and started reading,
and I felt the same way a lot of the other people here have described feeling
when they found Paganism - "oh, of course, this is what I want to be."
   So immediately I dove into the discussion, and it took me awhile to realize
that wishing I was a Pagan didn't make me one, and that I didn't have the
first clue what I was talking about. I imagine I must've been a real pain in
the neck before it occurred to me to keep my mouth shut when I was in over
my head :) So I started reading various Pagan authors, learning about the
different traditions and ways of thinking and whatnot, and the more I read
the more it seemed to me that this was for me.
   One of my closest friends off Grex is a Wiccan. Back when he first started
moving towards Wicca, when he started mentioning spirits or energy I was
annoyed - I thought he was just saying things, just showing off - but when
I realized he was serious I was more jealous than anything else. I've always
wanted to see the world the way I realized he really does see it, but what
seemed so effortless for him was just about impossible to me.

   Paganism is the example I use because I'm posting in this conference (for
lack of a better place), but I could list similar examples for Christianity,
Judaism, or any other religion I've met members of. The best analogy I can
think of is that of a tone-deaf person with unlimited tickets to a concert
hall. Every night the music is different, and everybody reacts to it in his
own way, but I know they're all finding some beauty in what happens on stage
that I just can't find: I know better than to accuse so many people with such
genuine reactions of 'faking it' or fooling themselves, and in fact the
melodious, harmonious world that the concertgoers describe is just the way
I wish my world was - but it isn't, and as hard as I try I don't hear what
they're talking about.

   
   I'm not really sure why I'm posting this at all, since I doubt anyone else
could give me much of an answer besides "gee, that's too bad, keep looking,
good luck". I guess I'm wondering if anyone here has had to deal with a
similar experience, or how people have finally found their place or what works
for them. 

45 responses total.

THanks for opening this discussion!
Certainly, I've had the experience of wishing I could understand or do what
seemed easy to someone else- usually body stuff, sometimes mental or
occasionally spiritual issues.  Bet we *all* wish we could come at something
gracefully, effortlessly.
Honestly, I don't really believe in "conversion".  For most people who have
a religious epiphany which results in real and permanent change, it's a
"coming home", a sense of having found what they always believed/knew, of
"coming home".  Now, this may be more common among paganfolk, with whom I've
heard it almost universally, but I suspect not.  Somehow I think that, even
among "born again" Christians, those who settle into a deep, fulfilling and
inspiring faith (as opposed to the militant and fearful ones, who seem to have
to fight constantly to preserve their position safely "within the fold"), it's
a deep knowing as if they were just awakening to what they always knew to be
true.  So I guess all I can say to you is to keep looking, keep your eyes and
heart open and be patient; eventually (one hopes) someone will say something-
or you'll read it- and you'll just feel "oh, of course, *that's* right".  It
might be a philosophy, it might be a form of Buddhism, which is not actually
deistic at all, it could be something really surprising like a reframing of
one of the paths you already considered; mystical or reconstructionist
Judaism, a branch of Christianity, a different pagan path.  Or just your own
quiet sense of connectedness with divinity, even if it doesn't give you the
comfort of a like-minded community.  Have you talked to the Quakers?  They're
pretty diverse and really cool.
Good luck to you.

        I don't think it's unusual at all.

        Personally, I was initially vaguely religious - in the way that all
children of the vaguely religious are, by default.  My mother considered
herself Christian, but wasn't really aware of all that, to my mind, it entails
being Christian, and found comfort in her faith in times of stress, but wasn't
really driven to understand it or to explore it.  My father, I'm almost sure,
was an athiest, since I'd never heard him talk about anything religious.  The
rest of my family seemed equally vague on the subject.  But this wasn't for
me;  I was strongly and egotistically Christian at an early age.  

        Fortunately, I was also trained in the art (I won't call it a science)
of cutting things apart; the intellectual's sport-of-choice.  It made short
and somewhat painful work of my early religious beliefs.  It also made short
work of every other religious belief that I'd seen, especially the more
popular ones - the guardian-angel school of Christianity that would have us
believe in an afterlife with wings and a harp isn't even backed up by it's
own documents, but seems a mishmash of cultural iconography and vague readings
of the KJV - but also the more esoteric.  It's impossible to accept a religion
of the Book when you've read about the origins of YHVH in the Sumerian god
Ba'al, and the initial power-struggle between the more-or-less monotheistic
Deuteronimists and the tribes of Israel who were polytheistic;  Ba'al is, far
from almighty, a fairly minor god.  But the same goes for the Badger-headed
Kannons of Zen Buddhism, Krishna and Vishnu, Zoroaster, the Greek and Roman
pantheons - to understand the history of the development of gods in a culture
according to that culture's needs is to break the back of any faith you might
have in that religion.

        Yet I am a spiritual person, in a very heathen way.  I don't know any
better way to explain it than by citing Kurt Vonnegut's _Cat's Cradle_; none
of this is true, none of it, but I choose those lies to live by which benefit
me the most and make me happiest, because I believe the universe is
fundamentally too large to understand without a simplified model or
representation.  I do realise that my model is just a model, however.

        And insofar as that, I've realised the tremendous usefulness of all
of the models that I'd dashed against the rocks of logical fault-finding; 
how the archetypes of the Greek gods represented a range of personalities,
and how the stories of their interactions left a map for successfully dealing
with those personalities;  how the Totemic concepts explained a working model
for harmony and balance;  how Wicca lead to a respect for the Earth, and, like
all active religions, a view of the individual as capable of taking their
reality into their own hands and making something better of it.

        So I remain, to this day, a heretic. :)

Cool item.  If you want to start the way the real pagans start,
go outside and spend lots of time with Nature.  Learn the names
of things, because "with knowledge of the name comes better
knowledge and appreciation of the thing itself."  (Thoreau.)
If you're standing in the middle of the woods some day and 
suddenly this very weird feeling comes over you, don't shrug 
it off.

i heard god talking to itself the other 
night outside of bellaire michigan 

i was polishing off a singlemalt and a 
smoke while letting my dogs take a whiz
off my folks porch at about on am.

god sounds alot like two coyotes.

#3> "real pagans"? *cough*

#0> Actually, you DO become a pagan by wishing you were one, ingeneral,
because paganism isn't a cohesive religion or spirituality, it's a term of
negation: you're pagan is you have spiritual or religious beliefs that aren't
Christian, Jewish, or Muslim (or atheist).

Now, Michael is presumably talking about Neopagans, which I'm assuming you're
talking about as well, although THAT's not really a cohesive group either.
"Neopagan" tends to be strongly associated with spiritual or religious paths
developed (predominantly) in the last two centuries, which are pagan and
focussed on nature and/or the earth (Gaia), and which emphasize tolerance,
non-violence, and ecumenicalism (sharing between religious and spiritual
paths).

There is really no definitive response to "what pagans believe" or "what
neopagans believe"; there are responses to "what Wiccans believe" or "what
Druids believe," but even those are debatable.

what is a pagan?  the word is culturally
irrelevant to me...

Thanks, Happyboy.

Jazz, almost the *definition* of "faith"- of religious belief/knowing is that
a certain sense of the divine/sacred feels right, at a really deep level, in
*spite* of its cultural roots, inspite of any debunking, inspite -even- of
logical inconsistency.  More, someone who has spent a great deal of time
meditating, from a place of faith, on those inconsistencies and anachronistic
bits, ends up with a fundamentally mystical, mystery-based sense of things,
where ends of a paradox can be in the same frame, if not tied up together.

i'm serious...i use to be a pagan, i was
raised in the sticks.  paganus = country dweller.

so...i was a pagan southern baptist in the
U.P.

now i live in ypsi...and i'm not a southern baptist.

i'm running out of labels!

Happyboy, I gather that the word "paganus" was originally derived from the
same word as "patria, patritius", etc.--it's not so much people of *the* land,
as people who worship the gods of *this* land.  As Rome absorbed more and more
foreign cults, they became a minority and sort of out of fashion.  When the
cult of Jesus began to overtake the state cult (Constantine's doing), then
being "pagan" became *really* unfashionable, such that those old conservatives
who kept the old gods either moved out, or already were out in the boonies,
and thus became associated with country living- so pagans became the people
of the land/country, where they worshipped the gods of *that* land/country.
To some extent, that's kind of ironic, since we, as neo-pagans, are mostly
worshipping the gods of *that* country- not this one- except for the Native
Americans and NA wannabes...
But certainly in modern usage, it's not a paradox to live in urban Ypsi and
follow the gods of the land- esp. the spirits of this land- and to call
yourself therefore a pagan.

Re#5: Yes, Paul, I meant neo-Pagan. And I've lurked around the edges of enough
"what the heck is a pagan anyway" conversations that, yes, I know there isn't
any one set of things that neo-Pagans belive in or do, but - maybe I'm wrong
here, but there seem to me to be some common ideas or ideals. 
I tend to use Pagan for neo-Pagan because it's less awkward and it seems to
be the word that most everyone else uses. Just read a "neo-" in front of it
in #0...

...and apart from the usual quibbling with Paul over terms <g>, I'm not quite
sure what I think about any of the above. But thanks for responding...

        Kami, understand that I'm not passing judgement on anyone else's system
of beliefs, merely explaining how I got where I am from a set of events very
unlikely to lead anyone into spirituality.

        I do believe in inconsistencies;  one of the most obvious is the dual
nature of light as a particle and as a wave (and as neither until it is
measured by an intelligent observer, exhibiting properties proving it could
not have had existence as one or the other before observation).  I do accept
this as a mystery of sorts - I believe it is an inaccurate model, for
something we currently have no accurate model for, and is indicative of a lack
of understanding.  But this does not change the way light appears in our
current model.

        I tend to strive for what I find myself respecting in others, and,
religiously, I find something above faith admirable.  It's difficult to
describe.  It's a willingness to see inconsistencies, and accept them, without
ignoring or quickly glossing them over, as many with faith are wont to do,
or refusing to think about them.  Wonderful debates can arise from those who
are willing to accept the existence of inconsistencies in their own beliefs,
and that they might have a portion of the picture wrong - or that the other
party might. :)

the god of this land?

kick ass...my new god is the Ypsi Water Tower!

pagan and patri- are etymologically unrelated. Not even close.
pagan comes from pa'gus, village
patri- comes from pater, *patr, father
The ONLY similarity in the roots of the two words is the p... even the vowel
is different (long in pagus, short in pater). There are NO g>t or t>g
consonant shifts that I'm aware of, and *patr is so universally Indo-European
for "father" it's not even debatable (in English, p>f and t>th shifts are well
known and justifiable; German is Vater (fater); French pere shows the
t-deletion; and so on).

A pagan is, etymologically, a villager. Fatherhood and deity are entirely
irrelevant to the original concept.

I'll have to look for the original reference.

Sources are doable.
Webster's New Universal Unabridged (Dorset and Baber 1983, 2ed.) 
Pagan Latin paganus, a peasant or countryman, from pagus, country

Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press
1971, 1ed.) (This is the beast.)
Pagan. Latin pa'ganus, originally 'villager, rustic'; in Christian Latin
(tertulian, Augustine), 'heathen' as opposed to Christian or Jewish;
indicating the fact that the ancient idolatry lingered on in the rural
villages and hamlets after Christianity had been generally accepted in the
towns and cities of the Roman Empire; see Trench "Study of Words" 1-2 and cf.
Orosuis "Ex locorum agrestiem compitis et pagis pagani vocantur."

Origins, by Eric Partridge (Greenwich House, 1966, 4ed)
Pagan derives from Late Latin pa'ga'nus, a heathen, from Latin pa'ga'nus, a
civilian, earlier a peasant, originally a villager, from Latin pa'gus, a
village, a rural district, originally a boundary post stuck into the ground:
probably from pangere, to stick (something) into (especially the ground), to
fix firmly, and therefore akin to pa'x (something firmly established)

Three of the most reliable sources on English etymology, if not *the* most
reliable sources, and NONE of them even HINT that "pagan" is related to
patri-.

Partridge lists the following words as being etymologically related (under
the heading "father"): father, fatherhood, fatherless, fatherly, fatherliness,
godfather, grandfather, Vaterland, padre, pere, compere, pater, paternal,
paternity, patrician, patristic, patron, patronage, patronal, patronize (which
is, incidentally, what I'm doing right now), pattern, Jupiter (from Jove
Pater), perpetrate, perpetration, perpetrator, impetrate, impetration,
impetrative, impetrator, repatriate, repatriation, repair, expatriate,
expatriation, paterfamilias, paternoster, patter, patriarch, patriarchal,
patriarchic, patriarchy, patricide, parricide, patrimony, patrimonial,
patriot, compatriot, patriotic, patriotism, papa, pa, poppa, pop, papacy,
papal, papish, papism, papist, papistic, papistry, pope, popedom, popehood,
popery, antipope.

So it isn't like Partridge wasn't being exhaustive or anything. For that
matter, reading the four-column two-page entry on "father", I see that
Patridge goes so far as to link "father" with "abbot" (by a string of
etymological links only a linguist could understand or love: "father" >
"pater" > "papa" > "tata" > "atta" > "abba" > "abbey" > "abbot")... but nary
a pagan in sight.

On the issue of Constantine, by the way, most historians seem to be of the
opinion that Constantine was himself a pagan, and used the Cult of Jesus as
a political leverage to get himself into office, reunite the fragmented Roman
Empire, and maintain power. His major role in the history of Christianity,
besides legalizing the Cult of Jesus, was to syncretize the Pagan Yule customs
into Christmas (whish was placed on Dec. 25 not because anybody at the time
thought that it was actually Jesus' birthday, but because Jesus, being a Saint
among Saints, needed a Saint Day, and Dec. 25 suited because of its proximity
to Yule; Coinstantine's God was a Sun God, and so it made sense to the church
founders -- who had been given permission by Constantine to set up all sorts
of official days and documents -- to place Christ's Mass on the major Pagan
Sun God Holiday). Main sources: History Channel's "Christianity: The First
1,000 Years" and "History of Christmas"; my father; nearly every other history
I've read on the subject, which has been a handful but not a bushelful.

hey...where did the word, "donut" come from?

I *think* I'm remembering a bit of discussion in a book called _The Last
Pagans_ or something like- about the period of transition between Christianity
and the State pagan religion toward the end of Rome.  Don't own the book,
sadly, or I could be more sure of my reference.

16> I donut know. Heheheheh.
Seriously, the older spelling is doughnut. the "dough" is obvious. the "nut"
might be because of the shape, or a change of "knot" (since some doughnuts
are knotted)... I dunno, and I put my sources away.
=}

sounds good...i would say that to the donut seller lady
next time i see her, but she would prolly punch me in the head.

        "Pazcki" is an entirely different word and etymology.

my god!

John, he said "punch me" not "pa,czki"... take the banana out of your ear.

Pascal sez (in the Pensees) that if you have trouble converting to the One
True Faith, all you have to do is *pretend*. That is, you go to Mass, you get
Baptized, you take communion, you go to confession, and after a while, you
discover that you really *believe*. Vous vous s'abetrez, or something like
that, you make yourself stupid, you brainwash yourself. I don't think he's
right. I went to a Presbyterian Sunday School for years and discovered that
I didn't believe a word of it. I took kids in a summer camp to church every
Sunday -- I was the only "Protestant" on the staff -- and I rapidly got sick
of it. I was a minister for a while and found it totally empty. Excommunicated
for not contributing enough to the local church. But a Pagan ritual was
wonderful. It was what I'd always wanted, and what I really felt. It's the
most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. You just have to wait, and
it'll come to you when you're not expecting it. And you'll love it.

That's probably vous vous abetirez. Emphasize the "beast," the "bete." You
make yourself into a beast. Then you'll believe. Turn your brain off.
Actually, another of my childhood favorites was Walt Whitman: "I contradict
myself? Very well then, I contradict myself." 

"I am large, I contain multitudes."  Whitman was a pagan,
for sure.  I love the passage about how he thinks he could
go and live with the animals.  Not one of them is a slave to its
possessions, not one of them kneels down to another, not
one makes Whitman sick discussing his duty to God, and
not one is respectable or unhappy in the whole world.
(Horrible paraphrase, but I don't have a LoG handy.)

Walt Whitman Rocks.  Nuff Said.

        It's derived from a NT passage, though, isn't it?

        "I am legion for I am many".

        And Brighn, it's a *pun*.  Get the banana out of your arse! :P

Of course it was a pun. =}

        It's an interesting quote, though.  I'll have to read more of Whitman.

Yes, yes, yes, read Whitman. One of the most articulate Pagans of all time.
And he threw out the Calvinist notion that "rational" theologians could arrive
at the truth, even if it meant that unbaptized children would fry in hell
forever. "I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself." ... In
another place, "Logic and sermons never convince. The chill of the night
drives deeper into my soul." First-hand experience, not preaching or the
bible, is where we find the Goddess and the God.

Unfortunately, first-hand experience is a very difficult way for people to
find the Goddess and the God, IMO. Organized religion is as successful as it
is becuase many people are looking for someone to give them the answers
instaed of trying to divine answers for themselves. Why search for the
divine when someone will tell you where to find it? Most people will settle
back and accept what answers are given to them or adapt them to their own
world views. Thinking for your own and developing your own relationship with
the divine is the harder task. Most people choose to avoid that since too
much effort would be involved.

I don't claim to be beyond this sort of difficulty, or feel that I'm beyond
being intimidated by the daunting task ahead of me. I was raised Baptist
and am used to having the answers spoonfed to me so I don't have to think
for myself. I'm still working my way through that. I know that the effort
will be worth it.

It might be said, although perhaps I'm being both harsh and prejudiced, that
there came a moment when the Church, as the dominant force in Europe, very
consciously said; "hush, children, don't think or question- let the Good
Shepherd lead you".  Since then, we've been taught, conditioned, programmed,
to believe that clergy are specially educated and trained messengers of the
divine, so that any personal experience is suspicious at best.  From there,
how could be *not* relegate religion to a designated place and time?  The rest
of the time, we "don't worry our little heads" about it.  What happened?  The
charismatic sects, whose clergy are those who have had personal
revelations...Guess this religion thing must be some sort of basic human need,
it keeps on croping up...<g>
Now, not to romanticize excessively, the ancients had a professional clergy,
too; the SUmarians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, just about everyone
one I've studied.  So people are sheep?  Or only a certain sub-set of the
population has the religious urge?  Even for folks who, as Mercea Eliade would
suggest, are living in a fundamentally religious miliu with a sense that the
gods are around thgen and interacting with them on a regular basis, there were
still those "professionals" who preserved the rituals, kept track of time,
interpreted religious experience for people, and basically taught them how
to worship.  It's just that, besides the large cultural festivals, every
householder was a "pater familias", the priest of his domestic cult (why do
we call priests "father"?...), Every matron was priestess in her own home,
every craftsman, fisherman, farmer was priest to the goes of his/her art. 
We can do that too.

Thanks, Kami, for stating it so well. I do find a major difference between
what Neo-Pagans are doing and what most Western religions do, even though we
certainly do have trained Priestesses and Priests. The job of the traditional
clergy is to hand down the word, in the form of a set of beliefs, to the
congregation. This was certainly true in the very "liberal" church where I
was first trained and ordained, and it's true in the lovely, friendly
Christian church that I sometimes attend (Church of the Good Shepherd, UCC).
Our Neo-Pagan Priestesses and Priests are not expected to hand down a set of
beliefs, but to assist others in meeting the Goddesses and Gods, getting their
own shit together, finding love and friendship, doing their own magick,
contacting dead lovers, family, and friends, taking exciting journeys
out-of-body -- in short, finding their own truth within themselves.
Incidentally, the ex-minister of that church I mentioned called himself a
"Christo-Pagan," and tried to be both a conventional minister and a Pagan
priest. It was a total disaster, both for him and for the church. 

        If you accept that a religion, in order to be successful, must be a
creature of the beliefs and needs of it's believers - laypeople and priesthood
alike - then the repeated emergence of the priesthood makes a great deal of
sense, as a response to the needs of the laypeople, as any other
specialization is a response to the needs of the consumer-community.  All of
the things that the community looks to the heavens for as a group - a
resolution to the troubling or confusing, a social structure, a reason for
struggle in times of strife or doubt, replacements for figures missing in
their development - can be met exceptionally well by an established and
specialized priesthood, and it would seem to be that only in the most
adaptable religions (such as Buddhism, which adopted the existing structures
of whatever beliefs it encountered) or the youngest (Gnostic Christianity,
Quakerism, neo-Paganism) that the priesthood does not exist, or exists in an
embryonic form.  

        Other factors contribute to the solidification of the priesthood;  for
one thing, a group in power tends to take steps to consolidate that power and
to ensure that it is not lost to the whims of the public or to fortune's
wheel, and for another, as the role of religion becomes specialized, it
becomes more and more difficult for the non-specialized layperson to play the
role of the specialized priest.  Often spiritual leadership competes,
cooperates, or is intertwined with, secular leadership, if the two are not
one and the same, and in those cases the entrenchment of social and political
structures is leant to the entrenchment of the priesthood - imagine a
politically un-popular pope being elected!

        I haven't found any school of neo-Paganism to be different than any
other religion, though.  All are some packaging of reality or the truth in
a form that fits the needs of the believers.  An individual that distrusts
or resents authority figures, or rejects their family's traditions, will not
be well-suited by a traditional religion, and because such people exist,
non-traditional religions without authority figures (or cunningly disguised
ones) and familliar but different rituals, will of necessity emerge.  These
sects can be Christian, or Pagan, or Buddhist, or Judaic, or none of the
above.

It's hard to imagine whom you've run across in our Neo-Pagan community that
fits your description of our Priestesses and Priests. Certainly not Kami, one
of the most knowledgeable persons in the community, isn't claiming that she's
a great guru with a pipeline to the Divine. Fox, the Arch-Druid, told me that
he might like to be a guru, but the Druids around here are much too
independent for him. When I was talking with Starhawk, who is probably the
most influential Neo-Pagan we've got, she insisted: "I am not a guru." Ditto
for all of the High Priestesses and High Priests that I know around here.
Obviously, if you look through the Llewellyn catalogue or any issue of
Phenomenews, you'll find a lot of people claiming to have access to Perfect
Knowledge, which they'll pass along to you -- for a price. The old-line
occultists often have books of sacred writings -- the revelations of Madame
Blavatsky, for example -- but they aren't the Neo-Pagans that we know and
love.

I don't think it's necessarily an issue of what people claim about themselves
so much as how they're treated ... Fox is *treated* like a Divine Force by
several members of SLG, for instance (and if he said that, even in jest, so
much the worse for the community). Some people, many people, need a spiritual
leader "who can do no wrong," and will assign somebody to the position when
no immediate candidates are available. 

        To be fair, I know of few religions that do set their priesthood up
as gurus, in the sense that most of us are used to, which carries some
pejorative meaning from Revrend Moon and Revrend Jones.  Certainly most
Christian priests and lay ministers, or at least all of those I have run into,
admit their human frailties.  I've seen some less human-admitting Pagan
priests and priestesses, but I imagine that has more to do with their
self-titled status than the faith they profess.

        Many people do feel more comfortable with a larger-than-themselves
figure to guide them, or a wiser-than-themselves figure to turn to in times
of stress or doubt.  Those so inclined often find what they are looking for,
and when they cannot they often invest someone with the qualities that they
seek.  This allows for the existence of a priesthood of sorts, and begins the
path to the priesthood we see in most mature religions.

        Belief in a priesthood - or not - has more to do with an individual's
beliefs than a faith's.

Orinoco- I think I know how you feel.  I felt, and still feel, the same
way.  You spend time with people who describe these wonderful things to
you... but you just don't see it for yourself, no matter how much you
want to.  They talk of mystical things that have happened to them, and
you do believe that they experienced what they said- but you want that
for yourself as well.. Am I correct?

If so... well, I don't have any answers.  I looked to Paganism and loved
the freedom, the threories... but I never seemed to see or feel what the
others around me did.  I have no advice... but I thought it might help to
know that you're not the only one that feels as you do. <hugs>

Yeah, you pretty much said it... 

I dunno, this has been bugging me a lot less since I posted this item - my
current opinion runs something like "yeah, I'll probably never skydive either,
but it doesn't bother me to hear skydivers talking about how wonderful an
experience it is."
Or something like that.  You'll have to forgive me, my analogy generator is
busted at the moment.

But in any case, thanks, all who responded....

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss