Lust, Libido, Crones and Cowsills

The homework assignment for this month included making a presentation on the Triple Goddess concept, to which, I’ll admit, I’ve never paid that much attention. 

The aspect to the concept which bothered me somewhat – okay, bothered me a lot – was what seemed to me the greater emphasis placed on the maiden (virginity) and the mother (childbirth), and less on the Crone which was described in many sources as “wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon.”  Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Goddess_%28Neopaganism%29

In fact, I objected to this rather vociferously in the last class.  Reason:  my reproductive plumbing was surgically removed from me a long time ago – in my 30’s – and trust me when I tell you I have never regretted it, given the monthly agony I went through at the time.  Did it affect my biological urges?  Not in the slightest, as you can tell from various posts on this blog.  But my point is, based on this overall concept, I was surgically made into a “crone” in my thirties.  I still went “over the moon” during sexual encounters just as readily as I did before the surgery.  I never lost my creativity, my lust for life, my energy.

I will say that immediately after the surgery, there were several months when I did think I had lost my libido.  The most handsome hunk in the universe could have laid (lain?) down naked at my feet and I would have yawned and stepped right over him.  Naturally, I found this disquieting and went to see the doctor.  She prescribed a short-term prescription of a hormone (estrogen I assume) with a “testosterone kicker”, which, she predicted, would “restart” my libido.  It would take a few weeks to build up in my system, so she warned me not to expect any changes overnight.

Okaaaay.

So a few weeks pass.  Nothing.  I’m starting to get worried, because I’m envisioning a really pleasurable part of my life fading away entirely.  I made plans to see her again.

And I’m sitting on the commuter bus to Manhattan from my home in Orange County, New York.  I’m reading something.  All of a sudden ... without any warning whatsoever ... an intense sensation of heat floods my entire body, as though someone had taken a bucket of warm water and poured it over my head.  And with THAT sensation came an intense rush of lust so overpowering I was stunned.  I swore later that I would never make fun of teenage boys going through puberty ever again – they always say they thought of sex every :30 seconds and were basically consumed by the need for it.  Yup!  That was me – on a bus!

It was bizarre.  I’d be walking down the street thinking, “Oooh, HE’S attractive ... yes, he’s 80 years old and has no teeth but I can live with that ...” – it was bad, folks.  But whatever she had prescribed had worked.  Luckily, my body eventually absorbed and adjusted the hormonal balance after that first all powerful rush, but until it did ... hoo, boy, was it weird.

My point remains:  I may have been surgically made into a crone in my thirties, but the ONLY thing missing was my ability to reproduce.  Does that make me into someone who embodied “wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon”?  I don’t think so!!!  I was still as vital as I ever was.

I’ve spent today importing cd’s into i-Tunes ... and listening to “Il Divo Live in Japan” at the moment ... wow, those guys can sing!  Am reminded again of how glad I am for the whole “classical crossover” genre – guys like this got me through the last decade or so of appalling American home-grown awfulness – which is, actually, still going on, judging by the ridiculous appearances on the Grammy’s and the American Music Awards.  Makes you wonder if the American music industry has any idea that they’ve alienated millions of people with their ideas of  the cacophonous misery that constitutes “American music”.  Nah ... they’re way too stupid.

So, “Winter Storm Damon” blew through here last week – it was the first time driving home from the commuter rail station in Newburyport that I honestly wasn’t sure I’d make it:  the rain and wind were so heavy there were times when I couldn’t see the road, the center line in the road or the car ahead of me.  I couldn’t even see a place on the side of the road I could pull off and wait it out.  I have never driven as blinded as I was – thank goodness that ALL of the drivers on the road with me were of the same cautious mind and slowed down to a crawl.  No crazy idiots in SUV’s trying to blow past everyone else, we were all of us driving extremely slowly it was such a horrendous hurricane-force wind driven downpour.

There was also a lot of roadway flooding, so I hit some puddles (translation:  small lakes) so deep that I wasn’t sure I’d come out on the other side.  Did I ever mention how much I love my gutsy little Saturn?  She just plows through everything without even a hint of a sputter or a slide.

Moving on with the daybook project – courtesy of China Bayles Book of Days –  I’m supposed to bake gingerbread men for my holiday tree.  Long term readers are no doubt familiar with my annual misery with christmas tree lots, so here’s a definite no – I won’t be doing that.  I actually looked at fake trees in Lowes the other day out of curiosity and immediately said, “Nope!”  Have no issues with fake trees, just the price tags of fake trees.

The squirrels and birds are scarfing up seeds and suet as though winter were coming and they’re afraid they’ll run out of food.  OK, winter IS coming, but as I seem to have taken on the responsibility of keeping them all well fed, I doubt they’ll be at a loss for food.  A few squirrels who have happily discovered the birdfeeder look like they’ve ingested tennis balls they’re so round in the middle.

Back to the sonnet cycle – somehow, I experienced a glimpse, or a sensation, of the first opening of the Big Door ... which sounds like an odd way to describe what we know as the Big Bang.  I’m back with the Universal Mind, and how everyone says we have no ability, with our limited comprehension, to make sense of it.  Still, I almost did get a sense of the first thought, and the overwhelming joy of it was mind-blowing, that first sense of self-awareness.  If it was powerful enough to fill what we know as the known universe, can you imagine the power of the joy of it?

The sonnet structure for this one (blocks of 7 verses of four 10-count lines each and then repeat!) is wonderful to play with – the first sonnet cycle was a 12-count; I’m up to my fourth block, and how long has it taken me to get that far?!?  But I haven’t felt this creative in a long while. 

Next study of Ancient Egypt:  Thoth:  Architect of the Universe (Ralph Ellis, 1997) – this is an interesting comparison between the “divine dimensions” of the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau in Egypt and sites in Great Britain – Stonehenge, etc.  I haven’t gotten to the part yet where he theorizes on the connection between all of these sites – i.e., how DID the builders wind up with the same dimensions of things?  He also touches on Atlantis a bit, but he has still another perspective on it; he doesn’t mention the stories of the Atlantic being as thick as mud for a long time afterwards, so it makes me wonder if he ever heard those stories.  He seems to fall into the category of people expecting to see ruins, but are you really going to see those after massive volcanic explosions?  I keep thinking that things would have been pulverized, so you probably wouldn’t see them afterwards.  Edgar Cayce did get it right, though – they found the Bimini Road right about the time he predicted they would.  Even though there are some who believe they are natural formations (and others just as vehemently don’t), the coincidence is pretty startling.  And it was Cayce who said they would find a “remnant” of Atlantis.  Back to:  the jury is still out.

Oooh, I think, for the first time ever, I may have won something in the most recent Megamillions lottery.  No, not the big payola, but $2!  (I think – in which case, I recovered the $2 I put into it!)  I’m not a regular lottery player – in fact, I pretty much fall into the “rarely” category - so I’m not even sure I did win anything, I need to have the clerk at the store where I bought it look at it.  If so, this will have been the first time – EVER – I won anything in a lottery!  I know, my enthusiasm over the prospect of having won $2 is truly pitiful, but there you have it.

So, I’m back to planning a trip to Manhattan to see a concert – I think.  Maybe.  The Cutting Room on April 11th, to see the Cowsills Anniversary Concert.  44 East 32nd Street, between Madison and Park.  Trying to find hotels; so far I see the Avalon and the Chandler.   This is going to be awesome.

Not So Secret Histories of Egypt and the Universal Mind

Just finished reading, The Secret History of Ancient Egypt by Herbie Brennan (Berkley 2001), which, despite the title, is not a secret history of ancient Egypt.  Example:  he cites books, articles and research papers throughout the book – all of which would generally fall in the category of “Not-So-Secret-After-All-Is-It?”  But the advantage to all of his many citations is traceability – always appreciated.  He raises a number of theories about the technological knowledge of the ancient Egyptians:  the use of magnets, electricity and moving huge blocks of stones with sound waves, for example.  He also has sound reasoning for his belief that the civilization far pre-dates the earliest dates cited by traditional Egyptologists.  He also has a solid belief in the existence of that famous island that lay outside the Pillars of Hercules, and its role in the worldwide “deluge” myths and stories.

For me, the jury is mostly still out on Atlantis, although not for the same reasons others do.  I do believe Plato was re-telling a history that was told to him.  I’m always amazed when people talk about Plato’s intelligence, logic, and other admirable qualities, but then inexplicably decide he was nuts and completely off the mark when he discussed the history of Atlantis, told to him by Solon (I think), who got it from the Egyptians.  I also get completely disgusted at the seriously stupid, “Was Atlantis in a lake in Greece?” History Channel crap – you know the ones:  any time someone finds evidence of a local flood somewhere in the world, all of a sudden they’re claiming it was Atlantis.  Plato was a Greek.  Greeks had knowledge of the regional seas and oceans.  So did the Egyptians.  They knew where the Pillars of Hercules were.  What lay on the far side of the Pillars of Hercules?  Which are still there, by the way, if anyone wants to go look at pictures of them.  The Atlantic Ocean.  Not the Bay of India, or the Adriatic or the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

No, the shred of doubt comes from the sonar mapping of the Atlantic, which as yet hasn’t shown a drowned island at the bottom.  On the other hand, if the Atlantic was a muddy mess for centuries afterwards – as the stories claimed - perhaps the combination of earthquakes and volcanos erupting disintegrated the island as it broke up and sank.  Hard to say.  It would certainly explain a worldwide tsunami that flooded everyone off the shores, that’s for sure.  When you think about it, just the explosion of Krakatoa in the South Pacific was felt globally, in varying degrees.  I think they recorded a rise in ocean levels as far away as London.   And Krakatoa was just a small volcanic cone when it exploded.  Atlantis was a huge island mass that bridged western Europe, western Africa and the Americas. Some suspect that the volcanic Canary Islands off the coast of Spain are remnants of it, and they're still having eruptions and earthquakes - one catastrophic volcanic eruption in the Canaries would send a tsunami across the Atlantic right on top of me where I sit now, so let's hope it stays relatively quiet..

Stories of a great flood appear all over the globe, not just in isolated local areas, which would only make sense if you incorporate a long ago scenario of a huge island exploding in volcanic ash and massive earthquakes, disintegrating and sinking into one of the interconnected oceanic bodies of water ... the impact of that catastrophic event would have been global.  As I said, the jury is still most decidedly out on that one.  So there you go.

I’ve also been thinking about the “Universal Mind”.  Somewhere in this blog I mentioned starting a second book of sonnets inspired (in a negative sense) by John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”.  Meaning I found his point of view to be so annoying, I decided to block it out by replacement.  Differences being:  his is in blank verse, mine is not (obviously), and the major difference being he is (or was) John Milton and I’m not.  I mean not to denigrate his awesome talent as a poet; merely his point of view in that specific poem. 

In any event, the second book progresses by fizzles and starts ... sometimes it’s the best vehicle I have for collecting musings and thoughts.  So I was thinking about the Universal Mind.

I loved this painting of it – the artist is Todd Breitling, and I think you can even buy the painting.

What I loved about this painting is that it is one of the few attempted representations of the Universal Mind without a human being (head, head and body, face, hand) superimposed on it – as though human beings were the only beings with access to it.  So wrong.  I’m thinking that other beings on our own planet are far more skilled at accessing it than human beings are.  But that’s another gripe for another day.

The Universal Mind.  Here’s my question:  how do you differentiate between My Will/My Intent and the will and intent of the Universal Mind – are they always the same thing, or can I change my will and intent to something the Universal Mind didn’t intend for the holographic image which is what I see as myself?

I’m getting back to the “Think Positive!” mantra we always hear.  If I wasn’t thinking positively, was I still in alignment with the Universal Mind, and go into alignment only when my thinking changes from negative to positive?  Or were both negative and positive thinking aspects of the Universal Mind?  And who can answer these quandaries?

Off to run errands while I mull this over.

Celebrating the Feast of Ullr ... and Convection Ovens

According to the Magical Almanac for today, the Moon is still waxing (1st Quarter) and is in the sign of Aquarius, all of which makes me want to break into the Fifth Dimension song, AND which reminds me to look up “The Age of Aquarius”.  Beyond “peace guiding the planets and love steering the stars”, it occurs to me I really don’t have much of an idea of what it means, only that it’s a slow-to-arrive and slow-to-depart era that will replace the dark and repressive christian Age of Pisces.  I do remember reading once that as one era begins to fade, and the next begins to peek over a distant horizon, there is a period of unsettledness and uneasiness and chaos; we don’t seem to do well without guiding influences, so all hell breaks loose.  I should go look that up again.

BUT!  Today’s moon being in Aquarius is not the same thing as “The Age of”.  “Sympathy, affection and care towards people reach way beyond the family”, so sayeth ... somebody or another.  They should have said “towards others”, not just “towards people”.  In any event, to celebrate today’s waxing moon being in Aquarius, I went outside, braving the crunchy wet snow on my back porch, and filled all the various feeders.  I did interrupt two squirrels in the midst of feeding themselves, but hopefully they’ll come back.

Thanksgiving.  Nov 27 - Day of Parvati - Hindu Mother of the Universe and the Feast of Ullr:  “The Feast of Ullr was to celebrate the Hunt and to gain the personal luck needed for success. Weapons are dedicated on this day to Ullr. If your arms were blessed by the luck of the God of the Hunt, your family and tribe shared the bounty with a Blot and Feast to Ullr .”

Ullr (pronounced “OO-ler”) is actually the god of skiing and winter sports as well as hunting and success – Telluride, Colorado holds a Festival of Ullr every year – not so much a festival of respect for Ullr as it is the winter version of Spring Break – lots of half naked sky bunnies and drunken speed skaters hooting and hollering ... but hey, you take a pagan festival where you can get it.  Eons and eons before the invention of the ice skate with its metallic blade, Ullr used to travel across the ice with “magic bones” on his feet.  So there you go.  Usually graphics have him on skis as opposed to skates, and those in this picture the skates still look like they have metallic blades on them.  But no, he skated around on bones.

So, Happy Ullr Day!

Meanwhile, I tried out the convection oven to see what it did.  I’ve used the oven before, just not the “convection” side of it.  I will say it seems to cook things a lot faster; this is the day when I miss my cats most of all, because this was our day:  they knew exactly what day it was when the smell of roasted turkey wafted through the house – an entire year may have passed since the last one, but they all took their customary places around the dining room table and looked hopeful for 2 hours straight.  It was the only time they got this particularly treat – freshly roasted turkey – they LOVED this time of year.  So I miss them.

I am once again thinking that this may be the time to get back to the earlier “Soul Mate” project.  Obviously, it was set aside while I dealt with all sorts of accident-related hindrances (followed by grieving, when just about everyone I knew and loved died, all within a year or two of each other).  Now, where did I leave off with that?

The End of the (*Bleep!*) Me Shoes Era

Before I had my lovely accident and lost sensation and fine motor control in my lower legs and feet  ... I used to be able to, when I felt like dressing up and behaving badly, wear what I now fondly refer to as my (*Bleep!*) Me Shoes ... you know the shoe:  really high stiletto heels.  AFTER the accident, I tried them once and lost my balance in them – I no longer had the sensation (translation:  fine motor skills require the ability to sense variations in the ground) in my lower legs and feet to achieve the necessary balance for them.  I expected things to improve – or at least, that’s what the surgeon told me – so I put them away for later.

5 years later ... I figured:  hey, I’ve been strengthening my legs and feet by running underwater and doing aerobics, maybe I can wear them again.  Put them on ... and had to hold onto a counter walking gingerly down the length of my house.  A woman just knows when her own (*Bleep!*) Me Shoes era comes to a wobbly close ... I just muttered “damn!” ... do I put them away again and hope for an improvement?  Or do I give up the thought of ever wearing high heels again?

[Comment from the assembled masses:  “Hey, here’s an idea, dummy:  why don’t you start out with lower heels and work your way back up to  (*Bleep!*) Me Shoes, instead of aiming for the sex appeal summit right off the bat?”]

[Blink]  Okay, fine.  Reasonable idea.  (*sigh*)

Anyway, I’m on vacation this week of Thanksgiving.  I am finally – finally! – getting my sewing/textile arts area set up ... everything had been in plastic bins and is now being moved onto shelves.  Some of the fabric is still in bins in my storage room, so sometime today or this week, I’m going to retrieve the rest of it.  THEN (hopefully) I can talk Dana into helping me move the remainder of my stuff from my North Andover storage room into this one.  Ah, life is so complicated sometimes.

Weirdest thing:  I come home last Thursday night and there’s a notice on my door.  I don’t have the notice anymore, but, basically, it went:  “WARNING!  DANGER!  The Chief of Police is holding a meeting about the dangerous standoff of a few days ago!  It is IMPERATIVE that you be there!”  The meeting was to be held on Friday at 3 in the afternoon, while I was still at work.

My first reaction:  “Huh?  WHAT standoff of a few days ago?”  I had to go look it up in the online local news.  Apparently, some guy had barricaded himself in his home two streets in our subdivision away from me, threatening to kill himself and take us all with him.  No mention of how he planned to do that.  The local SWAT team (who knew a town this small had one?) was called in; the standoff lasted 10 hours, after which he surrendered and was carted off to jail.  He actually didn’t own the home he was barricaded in; his father did, so technically he’s not even a resident.  He also wasn’t allowed to own firearms, so the fact that he did was a bit of an issue, as far as the police were concerned.

I still couldn’t figure out what danger I was still supposedly in, so I called the police to ask.  They weren’t aware of the notice written by our Homeowner’s Association and posted on my door, and when I read it to them, they kinda went, “Sheesh.”  So apparently the Homeowner’s Association had gotten a little carried away with the imminent danger side of it.  I said, “You arrested him and he’s in jail, right?” 

Them:      Yup.  He won’t be out for a long time.
Me:      So there’s nothing I need to worry about?
Them:      Nope.
Me:      OK. I’m good.  Thanks.

 – and tossed the IMPERATIVE MEETING YOUR LIFE IS AT STAKE! notice in the trash in a state of complete agreement:  sheesh.

Note to self:  the Homeowner’s Association seems to be full of over-reactive hysterics.  I never did ask the police how he planned to “take all of us with him”, and assume he was just blustering.

Bottom line:  fortunately for me, and unfortunately for all of you slogging through this blog, I’m still here.

Finally have my  new permanent tooth. I don’t think I ever mentioned my front tooth.  Picture it:  winter, 2014.  Temperature:  something like 10 degrees below zero.  I’m shivering on the Andover commuter rail platform, waiting for the train.  I make the fatal mistake of breathing.

I heard this loud “KERRACK!” and suddenly feel something hard on my tongue.  I spit it out and look at it.  Half a tooth!  My front tooth had, in the bitter cold, cracked right in half!

Since then, I had to have the missing part of the tooth slathered in with whatever material they use to make new teeth.  That got me through a few days.  Then I had to have the remaining part of the tooth extracted, and was given a “flipper” – looked like a retainer, except it had a fake tooth on it which was created based on the remaining half of my front tooth so it looked like the original, and I had to take it out to eat, which was really annoying. 

But even worse, the sides of that “flipper” kept scraping away at other teeth and my tongue, and I hated the thing.  Extremely painful, most of the time.  A month or so ago (I had to wait until I could afford the balance of the procedure), I was given a temporary tooth, which was screwed into the bone, and I could finally get rid of the annoying flipper.  Then I returned for the permanent front tooth to be put in.  Finally!!

So – moving on – yesterday I pulled together my first-ever formal circle casting, quarters calling, deities invoking and spell casting ritual ... which is the ultimate goal for this year’s class, but you need to get started working on it from the beginning.  They always tell you never to share the spell itself with anyone else, so I won’t, but I can share a few funny and not-so-funny lessons learned: 

First:  move the coffee-table/slash/altar away from the couch BEFORE doing anything – I barked my shins on that thing more times than I can count.

Second:  while I thought I had done a run-through in my head for logistics purposes, it appears I had missed a few things.  I had ground the incense in my mortar ahead of time, and had the cast iron censor/slash/miniature cauldron ready, but forgot the long matches to light the charcoal at the bottom of it.  Had to open a door, failed to find the matches, ended up grabbing a set of tongs and using those.

Third:  test things first.  Used a gorgeous seashell as a water container, only to discover the shell had a hole in it.  Ended up having to quickly shove a paper towel under the cloth so that I wouldn’t get a water mark.  Luckily, I hadn’t cast the circle yet when that happened.

Fourth:  hadn’t caught all of the “ye”s, “thou”s and other Old English variants in the invocation and had to improvise on the fly.  I need to make sure the spoken words are words I can speak in my own voice.  And I don’t speak using “thee”s, “thou”s and “ye old”s.  It isn’t me speaking, if I start tossing out words like that, it’s somebody else.  As for the wonderful beings I directed my invocation to, trust me, they understand me quite well without all the Old English.

Fifth:  that blue circle really does generate a lot of energy.  Almost feels electric, as though it should be buzzing.  It was a lovely sensation, actually feeling the energy.

Sixth:  didn’t know that directions had different invoking and banishing symbols, so I should have printed out a diagram to refer to, at least until I have memorized them.

Seventh:  I don’t know how this will work out when I have to do this in class, because my correspondences are so different.  SO many people place water in the west and air in the east, which would work beautifully if I lived in California – but I don’t.  For me, water is in the east, because I can walk out my door, head east, and there’s the Atlantic Ocean.  The traditions that Americans use are typically Celtic or British – where water IS in the west.  The correspondences have to be entirely different for people in Australia and New Zealand.

Eighth:  bring tissues!!!  Again, won’t mention the spell, but when I was with the deities who took me under their sphere of protection and guidance when I was initiated, I ended up with tears running down my face – which can happen with you’re facing the God of Spoken Truth (Thoth) who catches every prevarication you might attempt ... not that I tried.  Point is:  complete self-honesty can be painful sometimes.  Ergo, the tears.  Unfortunately, I had nothing to mop them up with but a sleeve.

Ninth:  you might want to preview the musical accompaniment BEFORE everything starts.  I had downloaded what I thought was meditation music and missed the actually quite catchy and upbeat (also raucous and filled with laughter) tribute to Loki, right in the middle of it.  Now, under normal circumstances, I would have gotten a kick out of the song, because after watching Tom Hiddleston play Loki in the Marvel films (and doing one heck of a memorable job of it), I would have sung along with it.  However ... the juxtaposition was a bit distracting, coming as it did right in the midst of the rite.

Just opened the door to retrieve the last of the groceries:  OH NO!!!   SNOW!!!!

Gloomy November Poems, Feronia Festivals, Almond Milk and Surviving Puberty with Bob Cowsill

I’ve been hunting and pecking for a scrap of a November poem ... you’d be surprised how few of them there are that don’t reference war, bloodshed, coldness and death. 

The day dies slowly in the western sky;
The sunset splendor fades, and wan and cold
The far peaks wait the sunrise; cheerily
The goatherd calls his wanderers to their fold.
My weary soul, that fain would cease to roam,
Take comfort; evening bringeth all things home.

Homeward the swift-winged sea-gull takes its flight;
The ebbing tide breaks softly on the sand;
The sunlight boats draw shoreward for the night;
The shadows deepen over sea and land.
Be still, my soul; the hour is not yet come,
‘Ere the gods once more see thee safely home.

(Yes, that “the gods” instead of “God” in the last line was my revision.  But still ...)

Made me wonder how the month of November ended up with such a pitiful reputation.  I know the name came from “novem” (“nine”) when the Roman calendar only had 10 months in it; the number nine traditionally had the “end of things” association.  But really, November isn’t all that bad, is it?

Closest thing I could find that pinged my heart was the Italian singer Syria’s “Sei Tu”, which technically is not a November song, but a winter at the beach song.  Needless to say, “winter” and “beach” both appealed to me.  You can go to You Tube and search for Syria, Sei Tu – she debuted the song at the 1997 Festival of San Remo.  http://lyricstranslate.com provided the translation.  True, translations are never perfect – nor do they perpetuate the rhyme and meter of the original – but I liked the lyrics anyway:

Sei Tu
There are days, even in winter time,
a little sunny
when you feel like going out to take a walk
and the blood is so warm
inside my veins
even if it's cold I'm going to the seaside
and I am at peace with myself
in my tranquility
no wind could take me away
and it almost hurts my eyes
this light that won't go away
and yet suddenly it's dark
inside this soul of mine
It's you that I miss
It's you the one who tires me
it's because of this insecurity that you put me in
that you go away with every cloud that passes by
but I look forward
because there are just moments ...
if you were a blue sky
maybe I wouldn't be there
because deep down what I want
is for you to stay the way you are
the way you are...

There are moonlit nights
when you don't want to sleep
and you feel like writing and thinking
the clock ticks slowly
inside this room
sooner or later the dawn will have to come
and I'm at peace with myself
because I have no faults
but to have wanted you....
it's that when it comes to giving
I give everything I have
and then suddenly
an emptiness inside me comes

It's you I miss
it's you the one who tires me
it's because of this insecurity that you put me in
that you go away with every cloud that passes by
but I look forward
because there are just moments ...
if you were a blue sky
maybe I wouldn't be there
because deep down what I want
it's for you to stay as you are
as you are... as you are... as you are

I started trying to fill in the gaps in my annual “calendar” – which events, celebrations, festivals were or are held on which days.  Long project – I started it a few years ago, drift away for a time and then pick it back up again. 

November 15th rolled around and I was feeling both very rhythmic, hip-swiveling to Gianni Morandi, and then ethereal, with Vivaldi.  But at least I was consistent in my inconsistency.  I had re-filled the backyard bird feeder after the nor’easter and high winds had blown all of the seed out of it a week ago.  The birds were probably cursing me out, it took me so long to refill it.  Ten minutes later, they were all gathered around it, stuffing themselves and looking very happy.  I came back into the study and opened my few source books on ancient day calendars.  I’ve mentioned them before.  Their usefulness on a given day varies.  Some of them are just bewildering.

November 15th seems not to have engendered a lot of celebrations, no matter which civilization was discussed.  One source book said, simply, “Egyptian Day”.  No mention of what one was supposed to do or celebrate on “Egyptian Day”.  Say, Yay for Egyptians?  Who knows?  The Thoughts for the Quiet Hour book contributed a really depressing November poem about coming to the end of your life.  Oh, lovely.  Another thought it would be appropriate to celebrate Georgia O’Keefe’s birthday.  Really??  Mentalfloss offered “Clean out your refrigerator” day.  Uh-huh.  I celebrate that holiday every day – it’s called “eating”.  Another website tells me the day was  the Roman Feronia Festival.  Well OK, that sounded promising.  What, pray tell, was the Feronia Festival?  A “Festival in honor of Feronia” was the answer.

Yeah, I sorta already guessed that.

I look up Feronia:  “Feronia’s themes are fertility, abundance, earth, freedom, sports and recreation. Her symbols are fire and coals.  This Roman fire Goddess provides fertility and abundance during even the harshest of times ... If you find your inner reserves waning with the winter’s darkness, light a candle sometime today to invoke Feronia’s vitality. Better still, light it for a few minutes each day until you feel your energy returning.”  (Patricia Telesco, “365 Goddess: a daily guide to the magic and inspiration of the goddess”.)

Patricia Monaghan wrote that Feronia “made Her simple home in woodlands like those at Campania or at the foot of mountains like Soracte.  She may date to the era before Rome some believe She is a vestigial Etruscan Goddess, powerful enough to maintain Her own identity after Roman conquest, for Her major sanctuaries were in the central Italian areas where the Etruscans once lived.”

So there you go.  Happy Feronia Day!

The last of the source books thought November 15th was the perfect day of the year for a "Rite of Puberty" Day. Not a holiday, not a past holiday or celebration.  A Rite ... of Puberty.  On November 15th.  Really.  What exactly does one actually do to celebrate "Puberty"?  Especially if you've already gone through the experience and can't imagine anything you'd like less than celebrating it - or perhaps I'm only recalling those years from the safety of a slightly more sane adulthood.  It almost feels like I would be celebrating  "Temporary Insanity" Day.

The only link between that entry and my actual life that I can see is probably the pleasure I’m getting out of re-discovering the Cowsills ... when I tell you that my bedroom wallpaper around the age of 12 was an homage to the newly discovered and much appreciated sensual appeal of the “older man” (by which I mean the 18-year old Bob Cowsill, or however old he was at the time), I’m not kidding.  Picture a 12-year old, starry-eyed schoolgirl fervently whimpering, “He is the most beautiful human being who has ever existed since the dawn of recorded time!” (or something equally as goofy and scientifically unprovable), and that was me, every time Teen Beat, or Tiger Beat or 16, or whatever those magazines were back then, came out with a new photo of Bob Cowsill.

It occurs to me now that girls of that age must be gifted professionals at drowning themselves in relentless, unwavering – if grotesquely misdirected – optimism.  Every time I would read such sober, scholarly articles as, “What Kind of Girl does Bob REALLY Want?” they never seemed to mention seriously under aged ones with her teeth in braces, or one whose pet peeves were fractions, and her precocious little brother stealing her diary and writing in it.  Yet the emotions barreled on.  The unreachable Bob even got married somewhere in there, and that hopeless crush remained undented, because now it had tragic, “woe-is-me”, soap-opera tinged overtones which must have satisfied some sort of unfolding inner hormone-fueled self narrative.

Ah, puberty – that magical time in your life when enlightenment dawns and you discover that at least some boys may not, in fact, be terminally infected with “cooties”.  Would I have wanted anyone to publicly call attention to it – to me - in a rite???  HAIL no.  What pre-teen would??  As I recall, these were the slammed door, “leave me alone!” years when I would nurture unfamiliar sensations and unnamable hungers in secret, protecting them from prying eyes, naysayers and curious bystanders alike, confident in my belief that I was the only girl to have ever entertained such thoughts, felt such feelings, blushed so hotly at a handsome boy’s open and generous ... and two-dimensional ... smile from her bedroom wall.

Well, I could always hold a belated “Thank you Bob Cowsill” Rite of Puberty for myself now, I suppose - after all, today is supposedly the day for it.  As far as imprinting on someone during those years of roller-coaster emotional explosions go, I could have done a lot worse than Bob Cowsill, who had that “I drink milk!” wholesome image behind him – imagine where I’d be today if he’d been the spokesman for the “Underage Beer Guzzling” society.

Although, speaking of milk:  I have to confess that I cannot tolerate the taste of real milk. (Sorry, Bob!)  Not that I’m lactose intolerant or anything, I just didn’t like the taste. I haven’t had any since I was a child – I wasn’t even fond of it when I was a child ... it was just put in front of me and I was told to drink it – being an inexcusably obedient child at that age, I did.  As soon as I wasn’t told to drink it anymore, I stopped.  I can’t remember what I did drink in my post childhood years – fruit juices, and tea maybe, I always liked tea.  OK, correct that:  I was an obnoxious tea snob, I’m ashamed to say.  We never had soft drinks in the house, so I didn’t drink that until my college years.  I’ve always been a happy water-drinker too, so I probably drank a lot of tap water “on the rocks” in those years.

But then I kept seeing cartons of almond milk in the communal refrigerator at work.  One day, being curious, I tasted it, and was pleasantly surprised – I actually liked the taste of it.  Even so, it took me a while to buy some for myself – now, I drink it all the time.  Well, not ALL the time, but frequently enough that I had to look it up so see what I was actually getting out of it.  Supposedly, it has a lot of health benefits and few calories for the filling benefit.

In fact, I’ve taken to it so much I keep waiting for the downside:  some horrible side-effect brought on my guzzling almond milk all the time.  Anybody know of any?

Lords, Ladies and Magical Almanacs

Back to memorizing correspondences every day.  The fascinating side of doing that is seeing how many world religions in the millennia before monotheism all had startlingly similar correspondences, even when their belief systems didn’t necessarily align.

In any event, I was reading An Egyptian Book of Shadows, which struck me as odd, since I don’t believe the ancient Egyptians ever wrote (or carved) any so-called “Book of Shadows”.  “Book of the Dead”, sure.  “Book of Shadows”, no.  I was hoping to get some sense of their celebrations or rituals, and opened to the “Autumnal Equinox Rite”:  “The shining eye of Horus cometh.  The brilliant Eye of Horus cometh.  It cometh in peace, it sendeth forth rays of light unto Ra in the horizon, and it destroyeth the power of Set ...”

Cometh?  Sendeth?  Destroyeth??  Am I expected to pontificate with a pronounced lisp?  What happened to English?  As in:  “comes”, “sends”, “destroys”?  You know, basic working English, and not Old and Middle English, either.  The English that anyone reading this book would be speaking.  Perhaps they want me to sound like a Shakespearean-era actor or something.  Really, this attempt to either sound pretentious or toss up anachronisms while performing a seasonal ritual is just silly.

In the book’s defense, though – it does have a lot of information, and background to celebrations I hadn’t known before.  The pronunciation guide is especially helpful.  Maybe it’s just that the use of Tudor-era English – the ye’s, thou’s, cometh, sendeth – all of that smells of the King James version of the christian bible – and the rather curious belief that somehow it adds solemnity to any rite.

While I’m on the subject:  the other irritation:  “Lord”.  “Lady”.  I recall getting into a no-win discussion with an odd duck over on a pagan discussion board.  The topic was a translation of a Sumerian text.  The translation incorporated the word, “Lord” – as in “Lord Shumash” or something.  I objected to the word “Lord”.

I asked what the actual Sumerian word was, that had been translated as “lord”.  The answer:  “Lord”.  No, that was the translated word.  I wanted the Sumerian symbol itself – and pressed further:  “Did they intend it to mean someone who is respected?  Someone who governs?  Someone who is a deity?  What was the actual meaning?”  Her answer:  “Lord”.

At that point I gave up.  My feeling was that the words “lord” and “lady” carried so much emotional baggage with them, in the English language, that when I read that some pagan woman named herself, “Lady Etheria of the Celtic Realm” or something, I just cringe.  I absolutely refuse on general principles to address any of my peers as “Lady” or “Lord” anything.  Refuse.  To my mind, it sounds like the silly woman wanted to recreate childhood fairytales with herself as the Queen of the Castle, surrounded by chivalric knights – or certainly a woman with a huge household of slaves and servants waiting on her all day.  It carries with it an unpleasant whiff of entitlement, or condescension (“I am the very model of refinement amidst the unwashed hordes I must endure”) – that is just ugly in today’s day and age.

I would much prefer that we use the original Sumerian word that someone in uber class-conscious 19th century England translated as “lord” and “lady”, because they still were in pitiable awe of old, wealthy families who carried those titles.  And not just Brits, Americans as well, who – despite protestations to the contrary – still carry around the same titillating delight at applying such titles to themselves.

I seem to be also fascinated by the Magical Almanac – Llewellyn publishes it.  Some interesting articles which I hadn’t read before – I had been using it for moon sign information.

But, as an example:  in the entry for Tuesday, November 11th I read:  Waning moon.  Moon phase:  third quarter.  Color:  scarlet.  Moon sign:  Cancer.  Incense:  cinnamon.

The next day, the 12th:  everything is the same EXCEPT:  the color is now white and the incense is now:  bay laurel.

The first two are self-explanatory.  Moon sign I somewhat understand – sort of.  Maybe I need to know astronomy better.  A physics professor tried to answer the question of how the moon orbits the sun:  http://www.wired.com/2012/12/does-the-moon-orbit-the-sun-or-the-earth/ - but as interesting (and mathematically incomprehensible to me) as it was, it still doesn’t get me any closer to figuring out how the moon enters and exits an astrological “sign” – which is, in astronomical terms, a constellation seen from earth’s point of view.  But doesn’t that perspective change, depending on where on earth you are?

Or perhaps spatial reasoning is not one of my stronger abilities, to put it mildly.

So my question is:  where did the scarlet and white, and the cinnamon and bay laurel come from?  What are they connected to?  The sign of cancer?  The numbers 11 and 12?  The days Tuesday and Wednesday?  Waning moons?  Somebody just made it up?

The Awesome Bob Cowsill Belts out "Rescue" ... and I'm Not Required to Levitate Tables

Stayed home a week or so ago for an appointment, and enjoyed a glorious nor’easter.  Was thinking I would drop by the beach and revel in the gale force wind and rain – during the night the wind was so fierce I was praying to Boreas not to uproot my trees.  Which he didn’t.

But changed my mind about the beach:  the news wasn’t bad exactly, but wasn’t good either – going into the hospital for a procedure on a Friday morning at the end of November.  Here’s hoping Anna Jaques is a great hospital; this time I don’t have Jim, so had to barter my way out of having a relative pick me up.  Car service it is.

So instead of the beach, I spent the last day or so trying to put my dining room table back together.  Another one of those assembly disasters I’m no longer strong enough to easily do single handedly.  By 6:00 at night, I had ONE of the table pedestal legs re-attached; today I successfully attached the second one before picking up my suits from the seamstress.  Then I discovered there was no way in hell I was going to get the table turned over and standing upright; it was way too heavy.  Time to call Dana for help.

Had our first Year II class ... instructor was describing what we would be needing to master in order to pass the course at year’s end and calmly added, “And you’ll be required to levitate this table.”  That seemed a bit beyond my immediate skill set – (a bit?) – and because I didn’t want to protest, “Are you f**king KIDDING me?!?” right in the middle of class, I gloomily anticipated a quick and pitiful end to my studies ... until someone later – much later - told me, “She was joking!”  So – news flash:  I will not be required to levitate a table.  Which is too bad – I could have really used that ability to get the dining room table turned over.

Assignment:  another 40-day ritual of discipline.  The last ROD was a bust, mainly because the one I assigned to myself was something I had to memorize, or read off of a piece of paper, right before sleeping, and I was unfortunately right in the middle of moving here when I was trying to remember to do it every night.  After that move I was lucky I could remember how to tie my own shoes, much less that tiny piece of paper, so the ROD turned into a morning ritual of “Oh, SH*T, I forgot to do it again!”  Hey, at least I did that consistently!

So we try again.  This time the Ritual of Discipline is to learn or memorize a correspondence or ritual or related item of information I didn’t know before, every day.  So far, I’ve learned about Ahura Mazda, learned the pronunciations and meaning of neter (“neecher”) and neteru (“neecheroo”); learned what the ankh meant, and tried to make sense of the “Opening of the Mouth” ritual.  My favorite – actually, I’m not sure what I’d call her – author?  Energy vampire? Source of information on entities who need to have the christian slur “demonic” removed from them? – Michelle Belanger had created a magnificent deck of “Watcher Angels”, so I’m systematically comparing her deck with Crowley’s and getting to know the cards themselves and keeping track of readings – not as easy a task as you might think.

Back to the Cowsills.  I do agree with John Cowsill’s summary of the band – an awesomely talented group of kids who got taken down a bad path”, or something like that.  You watch the documentary done on them – Family Band:  The Cowsill Story – and you learn that the image forced onto four brothers who wanted nothing more than to be the world’s greatest rock band was just that:  a false bubble-gum pop image that sold records, so what else are four talented kids going to do but go along with it?  They’d get beaten up by a sadistic father if they didn’t.

The driving musical force behind the Cowsills was really the two oldest brothers:  Billy Cowsill and Bob Cowsill.  The start of their downward spiral was the moment when Bill, the musical genius and group’s mentor, was kicked out of both the band and the family for the crime of standing up to their abusive, violent father.  Bob, who called it “the worst day of my life”, had to fill Bill’s unfillable shoes – overnight.  You can see the shock on his face in videos of the group taken right after Bill’s “firing” – unless the camera was right on his face, he wasn’t smiling.  Paul commented on the “enormous pressure” Bob was under in those bleak days:  he had to rearrange songs, take over Bill’s lead while covering his own, he had to take on a musical direction, he had to lead the others.  And he did, and it changed him.  I think I said earlier, when the group performs today, he sounds exactly like Bill used to sound, so you sometimes forget that Bill was the original lead singer on songs like “The Rain, The Park and Other Things”, and “Hair”.

So, as I get to know the Cowsills again through a lot of You Tube videos out there, I am more and more impressed and astonished by their musical talent – all of them. 

Still – one video I discovered has become one of my favorites.  The group was performing at “A Taste of Rhode Island” in 2000.  You may not recognize the song, “Rescue”; it wasn’t one of their huge hits.  But what this is:  Bob belting out a blistering rock song ... and here’s the gloriously shocking part:  that’s Bill, to Bob’s left in the white long sleeved shirt and black pants.  Susan, John on drums and Paul and Barry are also there.  Richard Cowsill - Bob's twin brother who had pissed off their father so much he was sent off to Viet Nam and never performed with his family is also there - that's him on the tambourine next to Bob.  The Cowsills family was fully intact in this performance.  That Bob and Bill were back on stage together choked me up completely – this song might have even been more awesome if Billy’s guitar hadn’t broken in the middle of the song.  And you realize, listening to this wonderful performance, what they COULD have become, if shockingly abusive parents and moronic MGM executives hadn’t destroyed a group of awesomely talented kids out of their own greed.

Thought I’d share it with you.  Here is who the Cowsills REALLY were, all along:

Newburyport and Fake Commenters, Part III

So I finally investigated Newburyport.

Yes, I know I take the train out of there every morning, but the train station is in a transition area – somewhere between the historical downtown and the residential areas – quick jaunt and I’m there.  This time I turned left instead of right and checked out downtown Newburyport.  Reason:  I needed to have my emerald ring re-sized and the emerald necklace and bracelet extended so that I could slip them on instead of fumbling with clasps so small you needed a magnifying glass to find them.

Nice place, if somewhat lacking in public parking.  Found the jewelry store; picked up a hand-out, “The Screening Room” which specializes in indies instead of blockbusters – like, whoever heard of “Hector and the Search for Happiness”?  Neither did I.  November 7-20.  May go watch it.  Simon Pegg.  Stellan Skarsgård.  How can it miss?  Guessing they don’t sell popcorn.  Had lunch at ... somewhere nice ... and visited Ganesh.  Not the deity, the store.  Bought a jasper ring I really loved, and some gorgeous emerald earrings.  If I am in a desperate need for incense ... loved the scent of the store.  Found an advertisement for a farmer’s market at the Tannery, wherever that is.  Found an interesting “hair studio”.  Hair Studio???  Place that cuts hair.  I needed one.  “The Natural Grocer” – may serve as an alternate to the Whole Foods I used for bulk grains in Andover?

Also tried out the alternate route over the Merrimack River that puts me not in Salisbury, but in Amesbury ... there was a day when the bridge I usually take was temporarily closed (police activity, but I have no idea why), and we all sat there waiting for nearly 45 minutes.  Now I can turn around and get home via the alternate route.  So that’s done.

Picked up my two suits that had been altered.  Gave her some more suits.  Have two more to go, but didn’t want to overwhelm her - she’s a nice lady.  Russian, I think.  Bought gas  (I need it:  first second-level class on Tuesday night in Salem, NH).  Stopped at the roadside stand on 286 that sells local honey – they’re closing for the season, so maybe I’ll stop by today for fresh fruits and vegetables.  Needed the local honey to help survive the new local flora pollen I spent last spring sneezing at ... got my annual flu shot last weekend, so I’m not worried about that ... I AM worried about colds, given the number of women spewing spittle, viral venom and germ-infested phlegmy spray all over the trains every day, and discovered honey is a wonderful way to soothe sore throats after my last cold.  Had never tried it before.

Ordered shoes to match the suits.

So basically, I spent yesterday distracting myself from the dark place I was in, and it worked, more or less.

Death to Poseurs du Commentaire, Part III:  here was today’s crap:  "I'm curious to find out what blog system you're using? I'm having some minor security problems with my latest blog and I would like to find something more secure. Do you have any suggestions?   Feel free to visit my website:  "CHEAP IMPORTED SHIT THAT NO ONE WANTS OR NEEDS AND I'M TOO STUPID TO KNOW IT!!!" -  dot com."

Yeah, I have a few suggestions ... betcha won't like them, though.  Here’s one:  want to know what “blog system” I’m using, eh?  Try looking at the URL, the way people with working brains do.  It’s secure BECAUSE it gives me the option of blocking third grade annoyances like you.  And oh yeah – you ARE the “security problem”!  Have a nice day. 

And yet they keep trying - *sigh*.

Cold. Fractured. Disassociated. Sad.

A few days ago I was battling an intense amount of anger, a sense of betrayal, hurt ... all the bad things.  I was not selected for my own job ... and was, simply, devastated, at 8 in the morning, when I was handed the usual bullshit as to why I wasn’t selected.  The minute that happened, both the manager and director came racing back from an offsite event – after I thought I could process the rejection alone, as everyone in the office was in the same event – with a disaster, and I spent the next 12 hours fixing it along with them.  Tried to remain unemotional through the whole thing, and I don’t think either one of them noticed a change in my demeanor, but it was a god-awful struggle.  They were both in extremely bad moods – not AT me, the disaster was not of my doing – but I had to battle their bad moods as well.  I got home at 8:30 at night, exhausted, near tears and utterly depressed.  Every thought I had all the way home was not productive; the best I could manage was convincing myself not to do anything stupid until I was more rational.

Rick Levine’s Daily Horoscope for the following day (a day off, actually):

You may have complicated issues at home to handle that end up getting in the way of more ambitious plans. Perhaps you thought that others would support your ideas, but something doesn't go as expected today. Nevertheless, don't worry too much about your previous strategy, for it can be changed in a moment's notice by someone's surprising reaction. Instead, willingly leap into the great unknown. Dancing with uncertainty now keeps you humble and on your toes.

Humble, huh?  No, I’m pretty much pissed off, not “humble” about it. 

Yesterday’s (when the incident occurred) is even more off-base:

The weight on your shoulders is lighter today because of the progress you are making on more enjoyable aspects of your life. It's finally time to reap the benefits of your recent hard work and take some well-deserved time off. There's no reason to justify your actions; pursuing pleasure is your reward for a job well done.

Think maybe he miscalculated?

I decided I wouldn’t make a definite decision on a path forward, but I had ordered several suits to deliver the training I thought I would be delivering – both of them needed to be shortened, so I found a local tailor.  No matter what I decide, at least I’ll have some semi-attractive business suits to be interviewed in, should my rational decision be to look for work elsewhere.  The local tailor/alterations place doesn’t open until 10 a.m., so I’m waiting for 10:00 to roll around to call for directions. 

I also looked up several seminars I will attend, if I’m still at the same place early next year.  THEY will make me qualified to go anywhere I choose to go.  A few co-workers whispered, “Do what you have to do.” – meaning, I don’t want you to leave, but I’ll understand if you do.  At least I had their support, for which I was grateful.

I had just purchased and received Michelle Belanger’s Watcher Angel tarot and used it on this.  My favorite deck has always been the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck, but I also liked this one, given my affinity for the Grigori, for obvious reasons.  I also like it for not perpetuating the judeo-christian obsession with vengeful and hate-filled deities condemning anyone for loving people they don’t approve of – women like me, in this case.  That’s judaism, islam and christianity’s world – a dark and evil place where men actually believe they’re superior to everything else and women prop up the straw effigies with pitiful and thin-lipped determination even if it kills them.  Well, no one ever said women had an ounce of brain matter or emotional stability, either, so there you go.

But back to my job.  The cards basically confirmed what I already knew – I’m in a very dark place at the moment.  Mr. Signpost had taken a selfie of himself:  cold.  fractured.  disassociated.  sad.  I said it made my heart hurt, but I knew it was because mine did, and I saw myself instead of him in that photo.

I know I’m probably going to have to leave, but don’t know where to ... or when ... or whether I should stick to this industry at all.  I spent so much money going back to Michigan, just so that I COULD advance in this field, and here we are again ... unwanted.  I don’t know where else to go.

I’ll be battling this for a while.

Good Vibrations

Okay, I finally found something else that made me vibrate.

If you’ll recall, I was wondering ... okay, more like agonizing ... over the problem I was having with the voice of l’uno e solo making me vibrate.  I’d never physically felt anything like that before, and felt bothered, bewitched and bewildered by the whole experience.  Another synchronicity – because I have been looking around for the emerald merkaba ring I was given during my initiation, I came across the cd “Merkaba of Sound” by Jonathan Goldman.  Stuck it in the cd player and ... you guessed it!  Vibrations galore!  The effect was sort of mesmerizing.  That alone was so unsettling, I decided not to listen to it until I was actually meditating – if it did what it is supposed to do – I probably needed to be actually in a position where I could learn something from the experience.  More on that in a minute.

Now, I have a few unsettling issues with Goldman himself:  reading the booklet, he credited Drumvalo Melchizedek with teaching him about the phi-oriented counter-rotating star tetrahedron being synonymous with the term merkaba.  I’ve read about Melchizidek.  Not at all sure I trust the guy, or maybe that’s just me – too many distasteful and unpleasant complaints cropping up about him.  But just trying to learn about phi (The Golden Ratio) (as opposed to pi) was something of a challenge for the mathematics-challenged.

Source:  http://www.sacred-art.org/product/blue-merkaba/

Here’s my next question I’ll probably never know the answer to:  why did Piero’s voice cause the same vibrations as the “Merkaba of Sound”?  According to this description, Goldman uses “resonance of the divine name as well as an intoned sound as well as incorporating phi as a sonic ratio to create a new experience in sacred vibrations.”  (And no, I have no idea what means, really.  Just that it made me vibrate, just as Piero’s voice did, the first time I heard it.)  Sooo – Piero’s voice also incorporates phi as a sonic ratio??  And his brother has an ouroboros tattoo?  Interesting brothers, those Barone boys.

While looking “merkaba” up, I ran across the world’s weirdest website, “Human Angels”, full of people announcing they were human angels – the traditional concept of “angels” being the sort whom one would assume were relatively intelligent beings – in unintelligible sentences chock full of misspellings and other idiocy.  Can’t find that website again, as I closed it with an expression of utter disgust on my face, but found another example of merkaba-related lunacy:

“Dear children of light, we come to you yet again with another upgrade for the heart center of your being. We ask you allow the emerald green energies to enter you hear center ...”

Source:  http://sacredascensionmerkaba.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/next-72-hours-3-days-emerald-green-heart-code-upgrade-716-719-1000-p-m-us-est-1001-p-m-us-est-pleiades-high-council/

Yeah, you read that right.  Upgrade?  “Enter you hear center”?  What the heck is a “hear center”?  Is that my ear?  I’m supposed to allow “emerald green energies” to slide down my ear canal?  After that, I’m thinking that maybe they should forget sliding down my ear canal (all together now:  “Ewwww ...”) and instead open an elementary school for self-proclaimed “Human Angels” who never made it out of third grade.  You’re telling me this woman is supposedly channeling higher beings – who never heard of “spell check” or “dictionaries” – or even proof-reading?

And you know me:  the minute you hit me with the smarmy, “Dear children ...” of anything – light or otherwise – I’m outa there.  Legitimate deities know me better than that.  Neither Sekhmet or Thoth said anything even remotely like that.  In fact – now that I think about it – neither one of them said anything at all – they communicated with actions, which were unmistakable, and thoughts.

Another one:  Merkaba.org.  Here’s their pitch:

“We are now teaching our ancient wisdom and techniques in a new way using modern words and examples in a series of downloadable recordings and CDs. Our wisdom and techniques when fully taught in the proper way, 5,000 years ago, required 14 years of daily classes for graduation.”

Uh huh.  Their ancient wisdom.  Raises the point:  if they’re channeling anything – which is highly unlikely already – it would simply be “wisdom” – present tense – not “ancient” wisdom.  Isn’t time an artificial construct?  “Ancient” already presupposes a distance in time, and a separation based on that distance.  The beings supposedly being channeled are distant from themselves?

As for the “14 years of daily classes 5000 years ago”, since there are no papyri or hieroglyphics actually covering any such teaching, we’re supposed to buy their knowledge of a “proper way of teaching” from 5,000 years ago?  I don’t think so.  Especially when they’re charging $105.00 for one cd.

Source:  http://www.merkaba.org/basicadvancednew.html

I dunno – here’s my alternative:  try contacting Thoth yourself – he’s infinitely more knowledgeable, he actually WAS as present 5000 years ago as he is today, and he isn’t holding out his hand for your credit card.  My initiation was awesome, life-changing – and oh yes, while I paid for the classes, the initiation was free of charge.

Clarification:  I have no issue with legitimate teachers charging for their time and experience.  But using  the classes I’m attending as an example, if they hadn’t produced tangible results for me, I would certainly not consider giving them a dime for the second year.  And not once did the instructor make a ridiculous claim like that or I would have looked at her in disbelief with both eyebrows raised up to my hairline.

So while I did find a few useful things about the merkaba (and believe me when I tell you THAT website I cited wasn’t one of them), I wasn’t able to find a replica of the ring I was given during my initiation – although I would imagine it would be enormously expensive if I did.  I also  looked up the properties of emeralds:  “a stone of inspiration and infinite patience”, “the stone of successful love”, “eliminates negativity”, “can heal negative emotions” – I can see why they gave me the ring!  The emerald was surrounded by diamonds - one of the diamond properties: “protection against cell phones”!!!  Quick – give me more diamonds!!
 
Meanwhile, Mr. Signpost tweeted, apropos of I don’t know what exactly,  “You are going places you never imagined. Time to get excited about the future.”  Well, actually, HE was in my future, and as for excited ... truthfully, stomach-churning was more like it.  But before showing up in class with mascara running down my face from another crying jag, I thought I’d get the trip down first, and took a practice run to Salem and back.

Utter nightmare.  Route 114 was having construction done and provided a completely unmarked detour; I was in a fury at the abysmally-run State of Massachusetts again before I even got there.

Salem, Massachusetts has to be the most claustrophobic place on earth ... street signs are erratic, street names don’t match maps and their appallingly miniscule streets are one-way and the width of a sidewalk.  In short, an utter nightmare getting there, locating the place where the class was to be held, and getting back out again.  Coming home I suffered through the unmarked detour again and then sat in traffic on Route 1 because the town of Topsfield had decided to have a fair that backed up one of the most heavily trafficked roads in the country for miles – and then some guy driving a mail truck had decided to have an accident at the same spot.  Nearly four hours for a trip that should have taken me 40 minutes.

Thank goodness Mr. Signpost cancelled – I was seriously thinking of doing the same thing after that experience.

On top of everything else, I’m coming down with a cold – and many thanks to the woman on the Newburyport line who coughed all over me last week.

Not that I’m all that concerned about either one, but there are two killer viruses racing around the globe right now, killing people, and we still have women going to work, taking trains, taking subways, all the while toxic as hell, spewing germs all over the place.  The coughers, sneezers, saliva-spewing narcissistic cows wandering around in public killing people are ALWAYS women, I have no idea why.  When they’re not microwaving you with their psychological and emotional addiction to their cell phones, they’re spewing killer viruses all over you.  Reason for the next mass extinction of a species on the planet earth?  WOMEN!!!  (You heard it here first, folks.  And just because I am one doesn’t mean I don’t fully appreciate the utter narcissistic lunacy of my own gender.)


Interestingly enough:  it was a woman exiting her car in the Market Basket parking lot in Seabrook who was wearing a flimsy hospital mask over her mouth and nose, as though she expected to get infected by the Ebola virus in Seabrook, New Hampshire.  I just stared at her in astonishment.

Lastly, I’ve been reading Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Thoth.  Amazing book.  And the first time I’ve had a question answered about the Kabbalah, to wit:  if the concept predates Abraham, which it sounds like it does, why are Hebrew letters involved in the discussion at all?  Shouldn’t we be discussing Phoenician, Sumerian or Egyptian hieroglyphics instead of Hebrew letters?  Crowley had something of the same issue – although you can’t really count up the numerical value of hieroglyphics, can you?  My personal issue on the subject is that something in me objected to employing a letter-counting analysis of a thoroughly distasteful monotheistic and patriarchal suppressive belief system that generated the two awful others:  christianity and islam to be specific.  Crowley’s discussion of the tarot deck he and Freda Harris created is so dense and instructive I’ve been making it through only a page or two a day, but it’s utterly fascinating.

Do Not Read The Next Sign!

I wonder if this has ever happened to anyone else.  You’re told – and it actually makes a lot of sense – that your thoughts are the creative force behind the world you live in.  Everyone pretty much believes that anyway, or you wouldn’t be bombarded with, “You have to think positively!” every time you turn around, to the point where you fight the urge to slap people.  So, okay, for the sake of this argument,  let’s say you believe it.  And you start becoming your own thought police.

The problem is:  there are some of us – and by “some of us”, I mean me – who have a contrary personality.  The minute you tell us we CAN’T do something, we immediately want to prove you wrong and begin plotting ways to do exactly what you’ve ordered us not to do.  The minute I read, “Do not read the next sign!” – you can bet your bottom dollar that I’m going to read it.  And of course immediately regret it, because it’s usually a stupid advertising ploy describing in gory detail the cruelty of your current brand of toilet paper on your sensitive ... whatever.  Point is, while I’ll deeply regret reading the second sign, I can’t seem to stop myself from reading it.  I’m annoyingly contrary (or gullible)  like that.

There are other reactions to a sign like that;  the people who already know it’s an advertising ploy and don’t give a crap about the second message, and those so beaten down that obedience is second nature.  The women who read the first sign and say, “Yes sir, I won’t read it!” – and don’t – are usually the republican women who hold obedience up as a beacon forestalling the encroaching gloom of their inevitable decline, and are also the women who fervently adore domestic discipline (and what’s even funnier:  they also  truly believe the husband is the embodiment of Jesus in their household, so in effect these nutballs are actually begging “Jesus” to spank them hard for being naughty, naughty little girls.  I’m not a biblical scholar or anything, but ... WTF?)

I digress.

So I have become my own thought police.  I discovered that I could go for years without being buried under horrifying thoughts, but as soon as I accept that my thoughts can materialize, I immediately have a hell of a time controlling them.  Would love to know how anyone else has surmounted the problem.

Synchronicity:  one of these days, I will try to describe my initiation ... it was one of those things very difficult to put into words that are sufficient enough to communicate the internal experience.

However, I will relate one very small portion of it – this was the instructions given to me by the two deities who initiated me.  Lots of things I need to do this year (working on disciplining my thought processes being one of them) – another was beginning to learn the art of invocation; it was suggested that there were many other beings who could help me with trouble spots, but I needed to learn how to contact them.  The idea of learning about sigils came into my head, or, more accurately, the picture that Mr. Signpost had posted of a sigil he had created.  I thought, “I should learn how to do that”.

Synchronicity strikes again!!!  Within a few days, he announced he was giving classes in just that very subject. In Salem.  As he appears to have moved back to New York City, his announcement of a Salem class was a bit of a shocker.

Well, for two reasons.  One:  the very deity (Sekhmet) who – whether he knows it or not – has her paw on his shoulder every time I see them together, is the one who gave me the instruction.  And two:  Sekhmet, being my courage-inspiring Goddess, is now making me face returning to Salem, Massachusetts, after I’d sworn I would never set foot in the place ever again, after my brother’s death.  In other words: no sooner had she issued the directive, she’d handed me two tasks in one:  learn about sigils and magickal invocation from Mr. Signpost himself, and secondly, overcome an emotionally debilitating aversion to Salem, Massachusetts.

She doesn’t miss a trick, that magnificent lioness.  If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that she has little patience for whiners and whimperers – “I’ll help you get there, but you have to stand up and walk with me; I’ll not carry you.”  That’s basically the way she is with me.  She was willing to give me a breath of courage to overcome a lifelong needle phobia and inject myself with insulin, but I was the one who had to learn the process for doing it, take the deep breath and actually do it.  No one was more stunned than I was when I did do it. 

Healing - Part II

In addition to moving onto sophmore year in "la scuola misteriosa", I also need to keep working on the things not up to the standards of my usual ... er ... scholarly, brilliant and talented self.  ("What, you mean like humility?") (Yeah, exactly!) .  In my case:  distance healing.

So, in line with that, I just read the most horrifying ... well, let me not get overly dramatic, here ...

I am getting ready to work on my healing exercises (again), because the first attempts were so not up to the standards of my usual yada, yada, yada, and was going through the 11 (or 12) body systems.  One of the parts of Christopher (Penczak’s) guided healing meditation that threw me a little bit was the instruction to:  “scan the lymphatic system”, “scan the nervous system”, etc.  I knew basically what the body systems were, but couldn’t visualize all of the parts of it.  Example:  I knew what lymph nodes were, I knew I had lymph nodes on my neck and under my arms, because those were the areas doctors always poked at whenever they wanted to check lymph nodes.  What I didn’t know was:  what were all the parts of the entire lymphatic system?  It’s been a long time since I was in high school biology class.

I realized that before I continued with this exercise, I needed to refresh my knowledge of the bodily systems:  11 systems if you combined the lymphatic and immune into one system or 12 if you didn’t.

So, I happened to be checking on the circulatory system.  In the results Google sent back was the actual question that someone sent to “Ask.com” or whatever that awful website is.  I say “awful” because, while I’m sure they have some legalese in it that disclaims their responsibility for any wrong answers, the problem is:  a hell of a lot of people in this country are seriously stupid and their site is chock full of some spectacularly and dangerously wrong answers.

The question was, why is blood blue inside the body and red outside the body?  And the answer was an astonishing:  that’s because it gets exposed to air. (<---- WARNING!  That was a grotesquely wrong answer!  Do not pay any attention whatsoever to that answer!!!)

The correct answer is:  It isn’t.  Blood is red inside and outside of the body, but may have a different shade or intensity of red outside of the body depending on how oxygenated the cells are.  The veins in your skin appear blue because the light waves being passed through your skin and fatty tissue make the veins appear blue when in fact they are more of a reddish brown color.

(And even mine is

Pelham Memorial High School, Pelham, NY

a minimalist answer; I guarantee you that a biologist or scientist could easily pick MY answer apart, so don’t even take my word for it, look it up yourself on a legitimate medical or scientific website or in a textbook.  And no, “Creation Science.com” is not a legitimate scientific website.  Or even science at all, but let's not go there right now.)

The point is:  incredibly stupid web sites like, “Ask Me Anything Even Though I Have Only a First Grade Education!” ought to be banned.  Seriously.  No wonder we’re a mentally backwards country.

I ought to stop at this point and thank Pelham Memorial High School, in Pelham, New York.   No, really.  Last class in biology I took was at PMHS, and their educational system was so top-notch at the time I attended, I still remember enough basic biology to know that first answer was staggeringly wrong.  My jaw dropped when I read it.  And I guarantee you, too many people who read that answer no doubt never questioned it, and are still wandering around thinking they’re “blue-blooded”.  I’d laugh, but .... that is so not funny.

And speaking of not funny ... in the middle of all the chaos unfolding over the last several weeks (job applying, bad blood test results, a killer eye infection), the Toshiba TV/DVD player stopped working – not the TV part, the DVD part.  TV works fine.  I couldn’t find anyone in Seabrook who could fix it.  Bought another one.  Not a Toshiba, heaven forbid.  An RCA one, via Walmart Online for store pick-up.  Figured – hey, RCA makes good stuff.  Right?

Naturally I was spectacularly wrong.  Walmart lied through their teeth about this being new – as soon as I opened it, I knew it was a refurbished one.  The rumpled “Quick Start Guide” was completely unintelligible and had a lovely ink blot of a coffee stain on it.  (Brand new, eh?)  None of their diagrams matched.  Best of all, there was only a power cord (attached to the unit) – no cords to attach it to a cable box.  The power cord couldn’t even reach the plug.

After spending an hour searching for an extension cord and disconnecting an old HTMI cord from an even older TV, the TV worked (after I called Comcast), but I hadn’t tried the DVD player.  Naturally, it didn’t work.  So THAT was why it was returned the first time.  WALMART just re-boxed the broken thing up and re-sold it to the first gullible dupe they could find.  (Waving cheerfully at you via computer monitor:  Hiiiii!  Gullible Dupe, here!  How - ahhhhh - ya?)

I had purchased a warranty or service plan, managed by a company called “Asurion”.  Their nightmarish phone line from hell announced after 15 minutes of maneuvering through selection after selection that they were having “technical difficulties” and couldn’t answer their “24-7” customer service line.  Their web site didn’t include in a list of choices the product I actually purchased, and they then cheerfully announced that THEY couldn’t open a claim because the serial and model number didn’t match any product they had a service agreement for, even though Walmart had just sold me one.   W ... T ... F ......???

I threw the TV back in a box and drove back to Walmart with the nightmarish experience in the trunk.  They took one look at my face and refunded my money.  Or maybe they would have done it anyway, but they took one look at my face and decided to do it really cheerfully.

So, may I state for the record:  [bleep!] WALMART.  [bleep!] RCA.  Definitely [bleep!] Asurion, a huge scam foisted on the public, and, as always, [bleep!] CHINA, who have managed to toss RCA's once stellar reputation in the mud and stomp on it.  Oh yeah, and [bleep!] US, for being in such debt to China we keep getting saddled with this poorly made crap. [bleep!] the completely insane collection of brain-dead pinheads we call CONGRESS.  [bleep!] EVERY PRESIDENT SINCE ABRAHAM LINCOLN, [bleep!] our depraved version of capitalism, and anything else I can think of.

I finally found another TV at another store, this one an Emerson, smaller and cheaper than the Walmart RCA one, which actually works.  I’m not going to name THAT store, because they also neglected to mention that I needed an HTMI connection of a different sort than the one I had already salvaged, which required me to get back in the car and drive to Radio Shack in a state of bleary eyed exhaustion to get a new one.  An entire day wasted just to install a working TV.  (*sigh*)  Maybe the Universe is telling me I don't REALLY need to keep up with "Game of Thrones" all that badly, whaddya think?

Initiation

Been silent for a while, while I studied for a final exam and then processed an initiation.  The first time I’ve ever been initiated into anything, so had nothing to compare it to.  I thought at the time that this was what an initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries must have felt like.  I can’t even find words for it.  I also don’t think I knew how difficult this was going to be, emotionally, personally ... like going through a ... I don’t know – being melted, re-formed, facing parts of me I hadn’t particularly expected (or wanted) to face, mixed with an uncontrollable urge (now that I faced them) to get rid of them.  And then I also feel that, as difficult as parts of this year were, they were nothing.  The real work starts now.  Ordered the next year’s textbook.

Note to self:  was given a ring to wear ... well, I should preface that by saying that this was in the first part of the initiation, during a – I forgot already what she called it – a journey precipitated by shamanic drumming.  Emerald, a merkaba, surrounded by diamonds – it was beautiful.  Was given something to drink.  Was covered with a ... something? ... I could still see through it, but it was blurry ... and gently turned to face all directions.  Was greeted one by one by a circle of beings.  Sekhmet roared and I felt a blast of heat from her fiery breath. 

It was extraordinarily difficult to return from that trance state – in fact, I found myself slightly irritated, by being asked to leave it.  I had nothing to write this down with – not that I could have at the time, I just wish I would have recorded this immediately, rather than later.  So while I try to process THAT experience ...

... Mr. Signpost did it again – reminded me to get back to work on things I had let drift after chaos erupted – this is one of the sigils he made.  I liked the idea of gluing it onto leather on a stained board – looks so artistic!  Mine looks like a 3-year old drew it with her Crayola crayon set – which I basically did...!!  (And no, I’m not going to post a photo of THAT effort – it’s downright pitiful.)

Recently we had a series of thunderstorms pass through; one hit around 3:30 or 4 on a Saturday afternoon.  There was one bolt of lightening that had to have hit the house or a tree just west of me.  A brilliant flash and a sonic boom simultaneously – I’ve never heard anything that loud during a thunderstorm in a long, long time.  Almost dove under the bed – something of a skull crushing problem when one owns a platform bed – but I’m amazed we didn’t lose power when that happened.

The few times when I’ve had no errands, I’ve been spending 2 hours on the nearly deserted, gloriously sunny beach.  So THIS is what it’s like when the “Summer People” disappear after Labor Day.  It was heavenly,  I could see myself doing this all year, even in a winter coat – just loving the sunshine, and the sound of the waves crashing on the shoreline.