Day Book Failures on Friday the 13th

So on Wednesday, July 11, 2012, according to the Real Witches Year (which makes you think, every time you pick it up and look at the title, “as opposed to what? – a fake witches year?”) – we will learn about reading tea leaves.  I’ve never read tea leaves before, probably because ... well, the thought of dumping loose leaves all over the bottom of my cup and almost swallowing them makes me want to start picking things off my tongue and not gag while I’m doing it.  Loose leaves being something of a requirement for tea-leaf reading, this explains rather succinctly why I’ve never read any tea leaves.

This is how I like my tea:  clear, unmuddled, no lemon, no sugar, no milk, cream, no additions of any kind, no clinking of spoons, poured carefully into a delicate bone china tea cup, placed just so in its saucer, so that it doesn’t rattle.  AND NO TEA LEAVES ANYWHERE IN SIGHT!  Hmm.  OCD, anyone?

Thanks to Harry Potter, I now know what “The Grim” looks like – and fer sure I don’t want to see one, unless it presages the arrival of the awesome Gary Oldman into the living room which would be rather cool ... 

... but it almost seems like a blot test, where you’re interpreting shapes that you see in things.  Not quite sure how you could read tea leaves for anyone else, if it’s your subliminal symbols you’re interpreting.

Meanwhile the Witches’ Book of Days publishes yet another idiotic entry:  they claim the 11^th is the “fete of Magdalene the Harlot, in honor of ladies of the night.  Considered to be the greatest prize as wives, they brought experience, compassion, understanding and pride to their homes and family – and a darn good dowry.”

That was so spectacularly wrong on so many levels I have no idea where to start – because even in ancient cultures, such as ancient Greece, for example, street prostitutes were in a lower class of society than many other classes of women, so I have no idea where they got their “great prize” idea from.  If these idiots were referring to hetaerae, they should have said so – and again they’d be wrong, because hetaerae weren’t considered prostitutes, or “ladies of the night” – they were extremely well educated, skilled in the arts, skilled in debate and conversation, and capable of meeting the top-drawer politicians and businessmen at their own level.  Closest equivalent, minus the submissiveness?  A geisha.  Those women WERE good marriage material, and never considered to be prostitutes, or harlots.

More importantly, they are so wrong on Mary Magdalene, it’s laughable.  Even Christian Biblical scholars no longer consider her as a “harlot” – most people actually believe the church deliberately combined Mary Magdalene with the Mary who actually WAS a harlot, an in effort to thoroughly discredit Mary Magdalene, who was, actually, now thought to be independently wealthy and very close to their Jesus.  Why these dimwits would take up the Catholic Church’s misogynistic view of her, now considered to be completely and sadistically wrong, I have no idea.

And the so-called “dowry”?  Riiiight.  Back to Greece again.  Sorry, again they couldn’t be talking about street prostitutes, or even temple ones.  Rome I’m less familiar with, but I doubt there was THAT much of a difference between the two.

I spent Thursday the 12^th getting seriously pissed off.  Took the day off to check in with the oncologist for an appointment made the last time I was in her Salem office praying I didn’t have to show up in Salem again, for obvious reasons.  The appointment was made to see her in the Andover office, and I even called that morning to verify the appointment.  When I arrived, it turns out the surgeon was on vacation.  I told the receptionist to tell the surgeon to, “kiss my ass!” when she bothered to show up, and stormed out.  I was mostly ticked off because next week was another vacation week, and I could have really used the day to prepare for it.  So, if the cancer has returned, I won’t know until it kills me.  YAY!

Today is Friday, the 13^th of July.  Three months after Jim died on another Friday the 13^th , in April.  The Pagan Book of Days is once again completely empty.  The Real Witches Year discusses the power of the chopped off hands of the dead (“Hand of Glory”), which is something I definitely don’t want to read about today.  In honor of Ndlovukaze, the Queen mother Elephant, The Witches’ Book of Days encourages you to walk around like a stately elephant, waving your trunk to the hoi-poloi, like royalty does with their hands.  Yeah.  THAT sounds normal.  I look up Ndlovukaze and can’t even find it.  I think they made it up.  (*sigh*)