Bad Falls, Bad Drivers and Really Bad Books

Another header.  I can see why they think I’m a fall risk – took one header into the kitchen counter a little while ago; just took another one the other morning – a bad one.  This time landed on my left knee ... and could barely move  I was so sore and stiff.  Didn’t break it – thank goodness – and am actually quite surprised that I didn’t, as hard I hit the floor.  But I was  absolutely miserable for the next few days.  In both cases, I stumbled over the left foot, the drop one, which I wasn’t able to get lifted up in time.

Finally got the brace the same day I fell ... and it does seem to be holding the left foot up, although as miserably sore and stiff as my left leg was at the time, I had no way of knowing if the pain was from the brace or the fall.  It is not the most flattering thing I’ve ever worn, that’s for certain.

I knew the first moment I saw it that there was no way that thing would fit under my new jeans.  I had the same reaction to this thing that I had when I first saw my awful haircut.  So now I not only have un-sexy hair, I have this awful contraption around my leg.  Could I LOOK any more pitiful?  No, I honestly don’t think I could.  Got tears in my eyes when I saw it.  And the gypsy curse continues, doesn’t it?

Went from a reasonably attractive human being with long, pretty hair to a sore, stiff, limping, gimping cripple who can barely move, dressed in loose, baggy jeans bulging unattractively on one side of one leg, while the other leg is atrophying to the point where her own physical therapist called her “chicken legs”, and who looks like someone took a weed wacker to her head – all in 1 month’s time.  How is that even possible?  Feels like I was just mowed down by a Mack truck or something.

Onward.  Nothing I can do about any of that now.  Well, other than bitching and moaning about it.

Started reading the novel I described earlier, The Demonologist (Andrew Pyper, 2013) ... the premise is that a professor of religious literature uses clues from Paradise Lost to find his daughter who went missing under mysterious occult circumstances in Venice.  Ahhh, Venice.  Unless it crops up later, the author has already missed one key connection:  he has a hallucination where he sees a herd of crazed pigs racing towards him.  Makes the connection between that and the story of the christian Jesus supposedly casting demons out of a man into a herd of pigs who then race into the sea and drown – which, when you think about it, was a pretty cruel and inhumane thing to do, really.  But that’s beside the point.

He seems to have missed the underlying foundation for THAT story, which historians believe came directly from the Eleusinian Mysteries ... where pigs were sacrificed - at seaside -  during the trip to Eleusis by the initiates.  Also a pretty cruel and inhumane thing to do, and again, beside the point.  However, the parable in question when it was written down draws a pretty juvenile line between emerging christianity and popular faiths in existence at the time.  Basically, a childish “Neener, neener, neener, our religion’s better than yours!” sort of thing, where they heisted the well-known Eleusinian tradition and stuck their Jesus into it.  The POINT is that the author seems to have missed that key historical link, and since the character in the novel is a Professor of religious literature – that seems like a key detail the character should have known.  And yet – unless he inexplicably remembers it later – he doesn’t.  Generally speaking, readers get a little perturbed when they know more than the author does.  And I still haven’t learned anything useful about Paradise Lost.  Or at least not yet.  I’m about halfway through the novel.

Still, nothing so far has convinced me of anything more than I already know.  If you believe in Quantum Theory, you already know it, too.  You do create your own reality, so if that’s what you believe in, they do exist for you.  If you don’t, they don’t.  It is that simple.

Meanwhile, the car has been detailed, and is absolutely gorgeous, inside and out.  All of the drips from the North Andover pine trees are gone; it’s been vacuumed, cleaned – even the tires were polished.  Smells wonderful inside – nice and fresh and clean.  No sooner had I pulled out of the parking lot with my gorgeous new car, a car stopped short in front of me because a stupid woman ahead of him hadn’t bothered to flip her turn signal, and just stopped and turned without warning – I had plenty of room to stop behind him - and did. 

And of course, some idiot in an SUV (naturally) behind me wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention either, and all I heard behind me was the screech of tires.  Fortunately, he swung to the left and just missed rear-ending me by half an inch – he stopped just as our front seat windows were side by side; I’m in the regular lane; he’s in the turning lane.  The look of shock on his face pretty much said it all – he hadn’t been paying any attention whatsoever and got caught (extremely) short.  I just looked at him with an expression of disgust.  Really?  I now have the world’s most beautiful car and you came HOW close to squashing both me and my car like bugs?  He just shrugged, “Sorry.”

There are far too many dangerously inept people who need to have their licenses revoked.  The stupid woman and the SUV driver are both at the top of the list.  It’s almost summertime now ... I’ll be willing to bet that both of them are idiot touristy beach people from Massachusetts, where learning how to drive properly is optional.

The two books I thought would be useful for my research for C’era una volta/Paradise Lost came in – was a bit disappointed in one of them and utterly disgusted with the other, to the point where I’m thinking of returning it as fraud.

The far more tolerable of the two was I, Lucifer (Corvis Nocturnum, 2011).  I’m all in favor of photos and diagrams where they aid understanding of the text, but I, Lucifer is slick, shiny and chock full of pictures, to the point where you take it the author assumed his readers couldn’t follow the text without pictures to keep them entertained.  In its favor:  it cited Michelle Belanger and her “vast personal library” as a resource (when I mentioned it to her, she said she had 3,500 books in her library).  Knowing her, I could assume her material was educational and knowledgeable ... she is the one who went and researched demon bowls at the University of Michigan for her encyclopedia, and is one of my personal resources for Sumerian deities.  And I will give him this:  he had an excellent bibliography at the conclusion of the book.  I wished for more text, less photos, if I could have had a choice.

The other, Lucifer, Father of Cain, is utterly ridiculous.  You turn the book over and get to read a “review” on the back cover from a mentally unstable woman named Joye Jeffries Pugh.  I’m not even going to touch her idiotic theories they are so ... distasteful and appalling.  All you have to do is Google the fool to get some idea of just how awful she is.

Point is:  that is not a good selling point for the book, and you haven’t even opened it yet.  “The true message,” she babbles helplessly, “Concerns getting to know God, the Creator, and His only begotten son, Jesus.”  So, this was NOT a study of the archetype, this was a book written for fundamentalist christians who’ll buy anything.  Pugh figured out just how to tap into this idiot market:  she bottle bleached her hair, gave herself a fake doctorate (she insists its in education from Nova University in Florida, but her idiocy is so pronounced, I have no idea how she got one unless she wrote up the degree  herself), and dove into apocalyptic books with wild and irresponsible abandon, insisting that a bad dream when she was a kid made her do it.  Why her parents didn’t haul her off to a child psychologist I have no idea, but they instead set her free to torture the rest of us.

Meanwhile, the author, a guy ironically self-named “Zen Garcia” seems to have written most of the book based on voices he’s hearing in his head.  He makes stuff up, and twists them into knots to feed his own demons.  It felt like I was reading – and that was only a few pages – something written and then endorsed by two of the most mentally and emotionally unstable people on the planet.  It was a  shudder-provoking experience.  Ugh.  And what knocks me flat is:  there are a myriad of demented fundamentalists in the USA who buy this retch-inducing awfulness without even blinking.

Hell, even John Milton would have blinked in horror at this book and then decided maybe writing HIS poem was not such a good idea after all ... as it appears his prime protagonist had already captured these two nitwits and their drooling readership singlehandedly.

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:

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.

Michelle Belanger, Sekhmet, Phobias and Sex Magick Again

Ran out the door of a terrific workshop conducted by Michelle Belanger on Psychic Vampires, dashed home, frantically packed a suitcase and was back out the door at 4 the next morning after 2 hours of sleep.

I seriously dislike flying.  Sekhmet was burning away a phobia of flying, but I was still suffering from air pressure changes, and usually staggered off the plane with blinding headaches and a runny nose.  This time I had to be delightfully pleasant and charming as one of our VPs was on the same flight and graciously chauffeured me over to the Raleigh office.  Last thing you want to do on a business trip is puke all over the shoes of senior management, so I managed not to.

Fortunately we didn’t sit together, so I was able to distract myself somewhat by reading,  without having to explain that I was reading the biography of the woman who was married to the King of the Witches of  the Alexandrian line, in England.

At the suggestion of the WC1 class instructor, I was now reading Maxine Sander’s biography, Firechild.  I didn’t think I’d enjoy it all that much, but it turns out I did, because she describes initiation and instruction that is exactly what I think it should be … and not the twinkie nonsense women are spewing out ad nauseum in their frustratingly inaccurate and nonsensical Tinkerbelle wiccan books (“Clap your hands if you BELIEVE, boys & girls!”) every time I turn around.  She both received and then delivered serious initiation training that was, in turn, amazingly intense, enormously valuable and sometimes almost cruel.

Still, those are the events that were  real learning events, the ones that stuck with you.  They taught her things she could use.  They let her pick the wrong herbs out in the wild and watched dispassionately as she retched them all back up again.  They left her in a trance in the woods all night – alone.  The hard housekeeping work – brass polishing, robe laundering, cleaning floors, walls, altars ... each act done with focused intent and enormous concentration.  I was finding myself more and more inspired and despairing of ever finding initiation instruction here in the USA like that.  (Actually, the first WCI instructor did initially strike me as a bit of a slave driver, but then she also told me a lie about Charles Leland which irked me a bit.  Okay, it irked me a lot.  She’s going to really work hard to get past that lie.)

But back to Maxine.  On the negative side, a lot of her talents seemed to be inherited … for example, astral projection came really easily to her from a very early age, while others of us need to struggle with simple things like basic meditation and feeling energy between the palms of our hands.  Her mother wavered between the occult and the rigidity of the catholic church ... which had to make for an odd upbringing.  And lastly, the book devolves into being insufferably British now and again, obsessed with “knowing your place” and dubbing people “royalty” within the occult world.  I find that difficult to get past ... especially when women here in the U.S. demand you call them “Lady Such and Such”, which generates in me a raised eyebrow of disdain, mainly because it makes women sound like they never grew up past their fairy tale-believing days when they really wanted to be a “princess”. 

Be that as it may, so far it’s fascinating.

I had raised the spectre of sex magick again last entry, and came across the three spirits Sitri, Beleth and Zepar, three of the so-called “demons” that the Judeo-Christian Solomon controlled.  And you know how defiant I am about taking a definition (i.e., “demon”) from the judeo-christian-islamic world without first doing my due diligence on their personality and what they do.  The majority of them, (so far anyway) seem to be completely – or mostly – free of malice or anger or hatred or any other personality trait that would earn them the title we now know as “demon”.

I am of the belief that those of us in this generation need to be the ones who research these beings and systematically strip the title of “demon” from them.  Until proven otherwise, they will be “spirits”.  So, here are three conjurable “spirits” I found:

“The 12th spirit is Sitri, he is a great prince & appeareth at first with a Leopards face, and wings as a griffin. But afterwards at ye command of ye exorcist, he putteth on a humane shape very Beautifull, Inflaming Men with womens Love, and women with mens love, and causeth them to shew themselves Naked, if he [it] be desired, &c. he governeth 60 Legions of spirits, and his seal to be worne is this.”
http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/goetia.htm

Original Purpose:  Sitri is a lust spirit and causes men and women to be passionate and get naked around one another.

Author’s Notes: Invoke Sitri for seduction rituals (become Incubi or Succubae). Invoke Sitri during sex magick to boost the energy raised. Sitri can also be called up when you seek to infuse any creative project with passion.  (Connolly, S. (2010-09-02). Daemonolatry Goetia (p. 60). DB Publishing. Kindle Edition.)

Then there is Beleth:

He can breathe fire.  He can shape shift, and can manage about three shifts in a day before he wears out. Human (winged or not) is his favorite and most-seen form; his true form is slightly beyond human comprehension and for the sake of interaction is not used often.

He can transport himself and other people between summoning circles, even if it means crossing between dimensions. Beleth is capable of moving between a highly technological location to a magical location and back again, though this requires a great deal of energy and leaves him exhausted afterwards.

If someone successfully makes a contract with Beleth (which not only requires the agreement of Beleth and the character involved in the contract but the agreement of the players of any third parties), he can do more. His specialty is that he “causeth all the love that may be, both of Men and of Women, until the conjuror hath had his desire fulfilled” (LKS).

Finally, Zepar:

Zepar is a Great Duke, who tries to seduce women, and if requested by them, he can change his shape into that of their beloved man, but makes them sterile. He has twenty-six legions of spirits under his command. Other sources say that he makes women love men and brings them together in love.  He is depicted as a soldier with red clothes and armour.

Now comes the fun part - learning how to invoke .... and not forgetting the controlling and banishing part ... one of the three of them.  More later.

Shamash, God of the Sun, God of Justice

Three pages of journaling or blogging a day … not only are you – loyal reader that you are - going to be bored witless, I am going to run out of things to say.  I had to reset my word processing program line spacing to bring myself up to three pages a day, not counting the graphics.

Today - the Friday before closing - I started to shake a little.  I had to change the propane, oil, electric accounts and went through hell with my current renter’s insurance company, who I finally dumped (sorry, li’l gecko guy!) in favor of another local insurance broker who didn’t leave ridiculous voice mails detailing the 1,001 required pieces of paper they needed before they would even speak to me 3 days before closing.  Geico really needs to upgrade their bedside manner. 

By the end of the day I was so rattled I couldn’t remember anything.  The tremor in my hand was getting worse.  I knew it was due to meds breaking bad, but was still staring at my own hand in befuddlement as though it didn’t belong to me.

I sat at the desk and wrote out grocery lists, “things to do” lists, trying to make sure the order was correct.  I knew I had to tack some hours onto the cheap and easy cell phone I never used (because I absolutely hate cell phones), to call Dana the Fixit Guy later on in the day of closing.  I was still trying to figure out what absolutely HAD to be done before I could move into the home. and what could wait until later.

And now, here’s where I knew what my priorities were, and they surprised me:  I was more focused on what to bring to the circle on Saturday night (potluck something) than on the new home I was on the verge of purchasing.  Reason:  it was one of my homework assignments:  attend a circle.  They were the closest circle.

Celebration:  Mabon.  I’d heard of it (vaguely), but am not a Celtic practitioner. so had never celebrated it.  I’m an Italian solo practitioner with a love for Sekhmet, and a healthy respect for Aleister Crowley, if anything, but Italians rose out of a land of agriculture; they also celebrated the last harvest, the fruit and grain harvest.  I didn’t have the time to fully research the Italian equivalent of Mabon, but I would before the next one rolled around.  Meanwhile, I needed food to bring to this one, after I’d packed most of everything in the kitchen.

Well, the one thing I knew I could make were Italian wedding cookies, but I didn’t know if they fit into the theme of “Last Harvest”, which I always associate with corn.  (“Ahhhhhh ...... corn!”)  Except ... do you bring corn to a potluck?  I don’t spice it up or anything ... to me, corn is absolutely perfect just the way it is.  I eventually decided to go with the Italian wedding cookies in the shape(s) of a crescent moon and magic mushroom (the closest I could get to the Eleusinian Mysteries of this month), and so there you go.  Off to the bank to get a check for the house and the insurance; off to the grocery store to get wedding cookie ingredients, off to the storage facility to get more packing supplies ... and off to the sharps disposal bin to get rid of my needles.  First day of vacation and I would already be exhausted.

To distract myself from anticipatory exhaustion, I sat down and started reading Michelle Belanger’s Sumerian Exorcism – which directed me to Henry Frederick Lutz’s Selected Sumerian and Babylonian Texts (University Museum, Philadelphia, 1919) – which I’ve been pouring through hungrily.  Beautiful incantations, once you start ditching the “thee’s, “thou’s” and “thy’s” for more contemporary verbiage.  In her introduction she suggested Lutz had translated the cuneiform without judgment, which may be somewhat true, as long as you ignore his tendency to write in language straight out of the King James.  ‘Cause, trust me, did they speak that way in 1919?  I’m thinking ... no.  And I’m hoping ye all doth agree with me.  Here's Lutz's version:

0 Shamash, at the foundation of the heavens thou flamest up.
The lock of the brilliant heaven thou hast opened.
The bolt of the heaven thou hast removed.
O Shamash, to the earth thou hast lifted up thy head.
O Shamash, thou hast covered the earth with heavenly splendor.
When thou lookest upon the land establishest thou light.
The way of the land truly guide thou!
The beasts of the field, the living creatures thou hast created.
To Shamash, like unto a father and mother they listen.
Food they are fed.
O Shamash, the chief of the gods art thou!
He who goes before the Anunaki art thou!
With Anu and Enlil a king of mankind art thou!

Guide thou the law of all the people!
O god of justice in the heaven eternal art thou!
Thou art the justice and the wisdom of the land!
Thou knowest the pious, thou knowest the wicked.
O Shamash, righteousness lifteth up to thee its head.
O Shamash, wickedness like a whip becomes torn through thee.
O Shamash, the helper of Anu and Enlil art thou.
O Shamash, the exalted judge of heaven and earth art thou.
And the god of man on account of his son devoutly steps before thee.
A command of peace, a command of life establish for him!
In loving kindness of a joyous heart
In gracious thoughts
May Shamash, the king of the son of his god, speak, so that into the hand
Lord of the kigallu of Kullab to thee, the hero in his land
0 Shamash, the lofty judge, the great lord of the lands art thou.
The lord of living creatures, the merciful of the lands art thou.
O Shamash, at this day purify and cleanse the king, the son of his god.
Whatever evil sorcery, which is in his body, may it be removed.

And here's mine:

O Shamash you rise in flames at heaven’s foundation
You have opened the lock of the brilliant heavens
You have removed heaven’s bolt
O Shamash, you have lifted up your head upon the earth
You have covered her with heavenly splendor
When you look down upon the land you create light
The ways of the land guide your rays!
The beasts of the field, the living creatures you have created
To you, Shamash, like to a father and mother, they listen.
And food they are fed.
O Shamash, you are the chief of the Gods!
You are he who goes before the Anunaki!
With Anu and Enlil you are truly a king of all!
Guide the law of all the people!
You are God of justice in the heaven eternal!
You are the justice and the wisdom of the land!
You know the pious, you know the wicked.
O Shamash, righteousness lifts up its head to you.
O Shamash, wickedness like a whip becomes torn through you.
O Shamash, you are the helper of Anu and Enlil.
O Shamash, you are the exalted judge of heaven and earth.
And the god of man on account of his son devoutly steps before you.
A command of peace, a command of life establish for him!
In loving kindness of a joyous heart
In gracious thoughts
May Shamash, the king of the son of his god, speak, so that into the hand
Lord of the kigallu of Kullab to you, the hero in his land
0 Shamash, the lofty judge, you are the great lord of the lands.
The lord of living creatures, and the merciful of the lands.
O Shamash, at this day purify and cleanse the king, the son of his god.
Whatever evil sorcery, which is in his body, may it be removed.

Well, in case anyone was thinking, "Huh?" Shamash is the God of the Sun in the Babylonian, Assyrian and Akkadian worlds.  Sin was the God of the Moon (and NO, it was not the same word as the Judeo-Christian word for no-no's!)  The two combined often opened incantations with the glorious, "Shamash in front of me!  Sin behind me!" -- an acknowledgement that you're safe from harm morning and night.

You can read the joy of the Babylonians, Assyrians and Akkadians in this ... it's one of my favorite incantations!

Saytan Dun It!

The co-worker from North Carolina called on Monday. "Saytan!" she screeched. "Saytan dun it! Ah’s been cryin’ and cryin all weekend!" Since she’s about as hard, cold and inflexible as a pile of rocks, I was (to put it mildly) skeptical. Sure she’s been crying and crying all weekend. Even her own mother wouldn’t have believed that one.

She’s referring to the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

"Really? I wasn’t aware they’d finished the investigative report already." Impressively fast conclusion to a criminal investigation that just happened this week and was supposed to last about six months. I wondered where the Police Chief in Connecticut was going to write that in whatever report it is they pull together at the end of an investigation: "SAYTAN DUN IT!"

How I despise fanatical christians. She swears all mental illness is caused by demons, which should make the parents of infants born with Down’s Syndrome or the families of depressives or of teenage schizophrenics happy. At least it wasn’t anything the parents did. SAYTAN DUN IT! DEMONS DUN IT! She’s probably going to blame the fallen angels next. Why do I even talk to this woman? Oh yeah, my job requires me to. Since the manager is also a nutball christian, there’s no one I can complain to about the constant proselyting. I suspect the same thing happens in the military, which has been seriously infected with dark and evil christian fanatics.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading all sorts of things.

Lon Milo Duquette’s Key to Solomon’s Key, despite a few inexplicable leaps of "logic" I couldn’t follow, was actually somewhat interesting, although it did take us in a roundabout way back to the Knights Templar. Duquette is a Mason, btw.

In this version, the Templars did not uncover a descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but something that conclusively proved that David and Solomon didn’t exist (more to follow) AND that the genuine church was based in Jerusalem and not Rome, under the auspices of Jesus’s brother James and not under Paul. Duquette didn’t say this, but it occurred to me as I was reading him, that the Roman church obsessing over Paul would be certainly bolstered by their supportive obsession with Mary’s perpetual virginity ... in other words, Jesus wouldn’t have had a brother to be the legitimate "rock" at the foundation of a conflicting version of christianity, if his mother never had sex. And no one gave Jesus’s mother a micro-second’s worth of thought until about the 5th century.

Although I’m still wondering when the Masons will suddenly wake up and wonder why they’re carrying on misogynistic behavior from the BCE era, along with everything else. And no, the Eastern Star – or, more accurately, the "wives of the vastly more important people" adjunct organization – doesn’t count, since it only exists to stop the whining on the distaff side when portly geriatric men march out of their castles to mill and mumble and congregate and play with compasses.

Back to the point of which I was unaware: that there is no independent, verifiable proof that the biblical kings David and Solomon ever existed, and in fact, the archeological evidence there is proves that the great "nation" of Israel at the time those kings were to have lived was little more than a tribal village. First thought: is that right? Went and did some rudimentary research. Yup. He was correct – nothing. Besides the usual yahoos screaming, "I duzn’t need no stankin’ PROOF!" (yeah, okay), and one line out of Josephus. Also irrelevant. Josephus was a Jewish historian-slash- propagandist who wrote a history of the jews that christians re-re-wrote after he kicked the bucket. The christian mis-transcriptionist (I’m guessing an evil and unscrupulous monk) had a Jewish historian proclaiming enthusiastically something to the effect that Jesus was the Messiah (!!!), which provoked so much laughter after the Christian Inquisition was over and it was safe to laugh hysterically without being tortured, murdered and burnt at the stake, that I think there was even a wanted poster out for the revisionist. And christians STILL try to provide that silliness as "proof" because they don’t know any better. Anyway, my jaw basically dropped. Wow. Who knew?

Invoking the Scribes of Ancient Egypt. Normandi Ellis, Gloria Taylor Brown. An irritatingly mis-titled book if there ever was one. A gaggle of grey and white-haired well-to-do women and one poor guy, some dizzily channeling Helen Roper’s personal caftan stylist, take a guided tour of Egypt, shopping for more caftans and writing down uninteresting little personal stories as they go. ("Oh, MY! I got divorced and SURVIVED!") The worst insult is one horrifying christian who squeaks "Praise Jesus!" at every stop, insulting all of the gods and goddesses whose altars and temples she visited. And the dumb cows actually wrote that down, as though the very act of recording it showed how open-minded they were. How appallingly disrespectful they were is more like it; I’m surprised their Egyptian guide didn’t toss them all into the nearest airlock and have them all deported. By the end of the book you have your finger down your throat and are hurling into the nearest toilet. I’m trying to figure out how to get a refund, as no ancient Egyptian scribes were invoked at any time.

Then I located another Paradise Lost and was again stunned. I had been laboring (on my second book of poetry) under the serious delusion that John Milton had written the only "Paradise Lost". I was wrong! Milton, it seems, had stolen the title, and even the idea practically in its entirety from a much earlier poet, who wrote in Anglo-Saxon. I’m reading it now, or at least, I’m reading the translation of it now.

According to William H.F. Bosanquet in 1860, The Fall of Man or Paradise Lost by Cædmon, "was first printed in 1655 [in Anglo Saxon] without a translation, "the year in which Milton is supposed to have made his first sketch of Paradise Lost." (!!!!) Lovely.

Next book: Dictionary of Demons, by Michelle Belanger, and back to the Fallen Angels. Normally, I like Michelle Belanger – she seems very down to earth – not surprising for a Capricorn. That said, reading her entry on Shemyaza, the leader of the 20 I’m listing for you here, in her Dictionary of Demons is a little irritating – "he was guilty of the SIN of lust?" That isn’t what the Book of Enoch said. He was condemned for being enamored of human women who were unclean. You’da thunk that if anyone would regard such misogynistic text as offensive and highly questionable, it would be Michelle Belanger, but no – she just repeated the same judeo-christian nonsense without even paying attention to Enoch – which she referenced in her definition!! Didn’t anyone actually READ Enoch before repeating the fallen angel crap?? I read her entry, hoping to learn something interesting, and sighed heavily. Onward with the list:

7. Daniel is a fallen angel, the seventh mentioned of the 20 Watcher leaders of the 200 fallen angels in the Book of Enoch, who taught the "signs of the sun" to humans. The name is translated by Michael Knibb as "God has judged." Conversely, according to Francis Barrett in The Magus, Danjal is the name of one of the 72 holy angels bearing the name of God, Shemhamphorae.

8. Chazaqiel was the 8th Watcher of the 20 leaders of the 200 fallen angels that are mentioned in an ancient work called The Book of Enoch. The name means "cloud of God", which is fitting since it was said that Chazaqiel taught men the knowledge of the clouds, meteorology. Michael Knibb translates this angel as being the "Shooting star of God".

9. Baraqiel was the 9th Watcher of the 20 leaders of the 200 fallen angels that are mentioned in an ancient work called the Book of Enoch. The name means "lightning of God", which is fitting since it has been said that Baraqiel taught men astrology during the days of Jared or Yered. Some scholars believe that he is Sanat Kumara of theosophists such as Benjamin Creme and Madame Blavatsky; others believe that Sanat Kumara is a separate being. It has also been proposed based on a reconstruction by Schniedewind and Zuckerman that Baraqiel was the name of the father of Hazael, mentioned in the 9th century BCE inscription from Tel Dan. The biblical figure, Barak, known from Judges 4 is a shortened version of this longer name.

10. Asâêl, teacher of forbidden knowledge.

11. Armârôs was the eleventh on a list of 20 leaders of a group of 200 fallen angels called Grigori or "Watchers." in the Book of Enoch. The name means "cursed one" or "accursed one". The name 'Armaros' is likely a Greek corruption of what may be an Aramaic name; Armoni is possibly the original. Michael Knibb, Professor of Old Testament Studies at King's College London, lists the meaning of his name as being "the one from Hermon".

12. Batriel was the 12th Watcher of the 20 leaders of the 200 fallen angels that are mentioned in an ancient work called the Book of Enoch. The name is generally believed to be "valley of God" bathar-el and Babylonian in origin. Michael Knibb lists the translation for this Angel based on the Ethiopic Book of Enoch as "Rain of God".