Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

In my writing about the upcoming Raw Spirit Festival, which will be attended by Dennis Kucinich and at which Elizabeth is giving a keynote speech, I’ve come across some strange and shady characters, hucksters who go even further than selling snake oil. Some, like Jasmuheen, make money by convincing people that they don’t need to eat food in order to get nutrition.

One thing that Jasmuheen has in common with a lot of the speakers at Raw Spirit Festival is that she doesn’t use her real name. She insists upon being called Jasmuheen, even though her real name is Ellen Greve. I suppose that having someone named Ellen tell you that you can live on sunlight and prana energy is deemed less credible than if someone named Jasmuheen says the same thing.

An unusual number of people involved in Raw Spirit Festival are using aliases instead of their real names. Count the founder of the festival as among these. She calls herself Happy Oasis.

One of the name changers of Raw Spirit is Jameth Sheridan, who writes on his Health Force web site in an attempt to explain why he changed his name. He says he wanted to change his last name so that he could share a family name with his wife without forcing her into the patrilineal system of taking the last name he was born with. But why choose the name Sheridan? That’s not at all clear. “After much consideration, the name that felt the most right was Sheridan. This name has personal meaning for both of us,” says Jameth, ambiguously.

What about Jameth? Well, that’s almost his given name. Jameth was born with the name James, and “did call himself “James” briefly; a fine name indeed, but it did not fit for him. Thus, the name “Jameth” was born.”

I’m confused by this half-explanation. Why would the name Jameth fit this man better than the name James? Is it just that Jameth wanted to seem a bit more exotic?

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if we renamed roses “celestial sky love blossoms”, most of us couldn’t bring ourselves to talk about it without feeling silly.

Why have so many people involved in Raw Spirit Festival chosen to change their names or use pseudonyms for the sake of the business related to Raw Spirit? There isn’t anything necessarily sinister about a pseudonym. Ann Landers was not the real name of the advice columnist. Still, I’m left wondering what brings so many people with cooked names to a Raw Spirit conference. I’m assuming that Elizabeth Kucinich will be speaking under her legal name, and not as Redwood Aura.