Gullibility, Irony and Karma

Everything has been upended ... I can’t concentrate enough to work on C’era una volta, I can’t concentrate enough to finish Beautiful Beige, I can’t concentrate on anything, truthfully.

And I have been learning valuable lessons about gullibility.  I know, what a boring topic.  I would agree, had it not just had it hit me squarely between the eyes with the force of a bullet, taking me completely by surprise.

I usually don’t spend a lot of energy on gullibility or even trust, or at least I never thought I did.  I just realized why that was – I didn’t care enough.  Isn’t that a horrible lesson to learn?

Your heart is so lacking in ... whatever emotion most people have that makes them care about “the other” that you don’t really care whether or not they feel anything for you ... some poor schmuck falls head over heels in love with you, and after a time they could spend an hour screaming that you’re the most heartless so-and-so they ever had the misfortune of encountering, and you just regard them as something of a curious insect, because you didn’t share whatever emotion they were feeling.  And yes, that has happened a lot.  I’m not saying it happens every single day of my life – just that it tends to happen more often than it doesn’t.  I seem to have always gotten myself tangled up in uneven relationships ... and 9 times out of 10 that imbalance comes from me not feeling anywhere as much about him as he did about me.

And then – the gods of irony decided it was time for me to learn a valuable lesson – and I fell head over heels in love with the one person even more uninvested than I was.  I think when I regain my wits, I might even see the humor or the irony in it ... perhaps what some might call “karma”.  For the moment, though – I’m completely upended.

I had no familiarity with the other side, or very little of it.  As I said, when it hit me, it didn’t just brush by me and disappear, it hit me with the force of a bullet, and I was left utterly floundering.  It felt like I had just died inside.

I Heard the Trees Scream As They Fell
A clearing, bright as daylight, a body
laying upon the dry leaves, entrails strewn
in crackling tinder, her dried heart bloodied
once torn, silent, accusing and immune

from life’s dim vagaries now, you look down
at the face once animated and young
she says I saw the image, heard the sound
of trees ripped from the roots to which they clung

I heard the trees scream in pain as they fell
Or was it my own cry that I heard,
he lied, he lied, he lied, I know too well
when you are no longer bound to the earth

now falling behind you, anguish so sweet
even the birds are stilled in reverence,
his last endearment, brief as a heartbeat,
my only now forgotten recompense.
© Me, 2015, Snake’s Trail

So there you go, I thought, when I finished with that pitiful ode to my misery.  Stick that on my urn.

Right after that, I started sorting through everything ... it began as clearing out a flash drive, and evolved into a deeper dive into progression.  Actually, it started as a cleaning everything out activity, because I think part of me expected to die. 

Oh, not that I was planning on off’ing myself – hardly.  I’m too big a coward for that.  No, I assumed the Universe was doing it for me.  Wait until the very end and shatter her heart into a million pieces for the proverbial swan song.  Pure entertainment for the Sky Sadist.  When you’ve loved someone that long and that passionately, to have them slide themselves disinterestedly out from under you – where are you going to go but down?  I mean, sure if you had a crush that lasted a week, maybe it stings but you survive.  But all these years?  When they're all tangled up in your head and heart with everything from music to poetry to your own art and your own writing and your own self image to the clothes in your closet to the perfume on your body?  No, you don’t survive that.  I expected to die, because there was nowhere else to go, after that.

So I set about planning on selling everything off, which seemed a worthwhile – and fortunately distracting – activity after the day or so leading up to that poem.  Yes, I had just had my heart shattered into a million irretrievable miniscule pieces, little atomies now spreading out into empty space, alone and isolated - but with what little energy there was left in me, I thought maybe I should start clearing out the rest of me.  Life wasn't all that fun anymore.

Then, for lack of anything else to do, I went to the gym and tried to give myself a heart attack and die (went way over maximum heart rate, running; didn’t work.  All I did was sweat like a pig and stagger home, still not dead but doing my damnedest to get there.)  Looked like it was going to storm out there.  I looked it up.  Yup.  Scattered thunderstorms, starting at 9:15 a.m.  Cheered up briefly.  Maybe I’ll get hit by lightening.  Or hydroplane off the road.  Something!  Anything!  Just take me out of this pain!  Of course not.  The sun came out and stayed out.  Not a storm cloud in sight.  Sure, maybe I’ll hydroplane off the bone dry road in bright sunshine!  Got home safe from a bunch of pointless errands, safe, sound and miserable.

I had learned learned through experience that sometimes things can change in a heartbeat.  Look at the “Miracle Oil” moment.   I say “miracle” although it wasn’t, really – apparently, people have known it was great for muscle stiffness and pain for eons ... no one bothered to tell me, though, until Mr. Spirit Guide got tired of my whining and moaning and decided to slap me upside the head with it:  “Use THIS, you numbskull!”

All I had to do was “google” it, and there it was:  my “miracle oil”.  So I went from relentless leg spasms to very few of them.  Sure, I stink like the fragrant bush the oil is made from, but I can live with that – as long as my legs were no longer twisting themselves into knots.  And that changed in 3/10ths of a second!  So obviously, things can and do change very quickly.

But this time ... no, this time was different.  This time it hurt down into the core of my bones and even further than that – maybe down into my cells, and maybe further than that ... into my quantum self, if such a thing were possible.

I came home and dove into my own past ... for reasons I couldn’t even begin to explain, I was obsessively looking for my mother’s recipe for Rosemary Chicken, astounded because I couldn’t find it.  I had been carrying around our collection of recipe cards since I was a child and naïvely believed I could collect all of the recipes in the world ... handwriting and typing them onto index cards and filing them into categories ... and I had started with my mother’s collection.  She added to it over the years, so I found scores of cards and recipes in her handwriting, as well as her mother’s and grandmother’s handwriting.  So much of it I would never – ever – prepare or eat, but I couldn’t bring myself to cull any of it.  But no Rosemary Chicken.  I sprayed the inside of the box with Liquid Gold ... I hadn’t made any effort to preserve the beauty of the wooden box with its little clasp since I inherited it ... and then started looking through external and flash drives to see if I had captured it anywhere else.

This is when I began sorting through everything.  Temporarily forgot about the Rosemary Chicken and started looking at my own recent past ... after the Carbonite disaster, that is; before that, I had nothing, unless I’d fortuitously printed it out like I had the 1993 journal.  Found the history of disinterest on my part.  Found that I had even questioned it on numerous occasions:  will I ever know what love is?  Will I ever care about anyone?  Why is my heart so cold?  Why was my heart made this way?  Why haven’t I found anyone to love?

Then I burst into tears.  Non ce la faccio, mi arrendo.  I can’t do it; I give up.  I went back to Paradise Lost, because it fit.   This wasn’t where I was expecting to go with Paradise Lost; I was expecting to countermand it; instead, I agreed with it.  Even the First Duality can finally shatter into nothing, huh?  Never saw THAT coming ...

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.

Disorder, Chaos, Orthotics and Pride

Trying to get my life organized.  I’m off to the orthotics people to test a leg brace tomorrow; suspect it won’t be the right one and I’ll need to have my leg molded for the permanent one, which will take another long period of time to get back - and then need to drive up to Portsmouth again to get it.

I’m getting my car looked at tomorrow.  Too many things all at once. Getting the car detailed on either Tuesday or Wednesday, can’t remember which one.  Have physical therapy one day next week; can’t remember which day.  I have an appointment calendar somewhere; can’t find it at the moment.  Have been wasting fabric and time screwing up the applique portion of Beautiful Beige; can’t seem to get it right for the life of me.  Have no idea why things are so chaotic at the moment; it feels like New York City and The Cutting Room all over again.

I thought I would have a leg brace by now; I don’t.  So I’m back to needing to struggle my way around Westerly, Rhode Island without one next weekend.  Just like New York City.  And how well I remember the physical problems I had after New York.

Meanwhile ... ahh, the fun of researching ... I realized that at some point I would need to get some background on Milton’s belief in the character of Satan to begin with.  Since I pay next to no attention to that particular character, one way or the other, I went and read up on what various groups of people have to say about him ... and if that wasn’t a messy and confusing collection of opinions, I can’t tell you what is.  You have christians squealing “Eeek!” and running around in circles like chickens with their heads chopped off, and you have satanists squealing “Yay!” and making him sound like the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.  Was actually hoping for a more rational, reasonable, unemotional approach.  Origins?  History?

I eventually looked up various books written on the subject, and ordered two of them – my interest was in the historical background of the concept, not the generally hysterical fear or glee that some people get themselves bound into knots over ... those people you end up feeling (somewhat) sorry for, as it must be awful to live your lives in such fear all the time.

My own thoughts on the subject?  He exists for those who believe he exists; for those of us who don’t, he’s irrelevant.  And the character is more of an archetype.  You create him in your own mind because you’re told to when you’re too young to question it, or because he meets a need that is already inside of you to begin with.  Or, as Milton himself wrote:  “The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

You want to run around being a serial killer, you invent someone who propels you into it, because you need to. 

The Luciferians are another breed altogether – they don’t buy into the Satanic thing; they do believe in the Morning Star being; one of light and radiance.  So, as I said, there are a lot of different thoughts on the subject; and trying to wade through all of it can start your eyeballs rolling around in your head.  You start looking for individual threads to start untangling the mess.  Not an easy task, believe me.

I did know that the concept is believed to have originated with both the Zoroastrian concepts of dark and light that infiltrated Jewish tradition during their Babylonian exile, and in a confused mistranslation of references to the “Morning Star” (hence the name of Lucifer – Bright Star, Morning Star, etc.) which seems a rather inappropriate name for the being eventually saddled with the “root-of-all-evil” moniker.  And that christians took this and literally ran with it ... they absolutely adored the concept of an entirely evil creature to hang their dark, shameful sins on.  That wasn’t me, the Devil made me do it!

So how did this being – whose brilliance was so intense that he was named after a bright morning star, and who even resided in the heavenly realms long after ancient scrolls were incorporated into the Torah – come to personify the changes in people’s beliefs that transformed a being who was a brilliant denizen of the heavenly realms to a being who scares the (bleep) out of people and yet makes them do horrible things?

And which version of him was Milton looking at or envisioning, as he wrote Paradise Lost?  The beliefs of Milton’s time had their own flavoring ... the beliefs of the American fundamentalists today may not match Milton’s.

I may have missed something in all of those pages, but it seems like his big crime was “pride”.  Really.  Pride?  That’s what did it – that’s what precipitated the gigantic “fall”?  Do you have any idea how many people on the planet are guilty of the same thing, if not worse levels of it?  Hell, the asshole who cuts you off on the highway and the woman too fat and lazy to wheel her shopping cart into the shopping cart bay are both guilty of the same thing:  the underlying belief that their needs surpass everyone else’s needs – at its most basic level:  pride.

Everyone knows someone who believes that they exist at the center of everyone else’s universe ... which is another form of pride.  People who post their opinions as standards that everyone else should aspire to – yet another form.  Your local gym is packed to the walls with people admiring their own physiques; everyone knows a manager who practically oozes arrogance out of his or her pores.  Let’s face it – the whole planet is practically waterlogged with people who have the same issue that Satan  supposedly did:  a seriously overinflated sense of themselves – and that includes the a lot of the same people I mentioned above who are running around flapping their hands and squealing “Eeek!” at the very mention of his name.  And this was his big crime?  It almost makes you laugh, when you think about it.

My favorite current example of overweening pride came from (naturally) an American fundamentalist who witnessed the devastation caused by the earthquake in Nepal and tweeted:  “Praying 4 the lost souls in Nepal. Praying not a single destroyed pagan temple will b rebuilt & the people will repent/receive Christ.”

The revulsion that tweet generated was global, because it was such an evil thing to think – much less say out loud – and, practically dripping with arrogance, horrified and disgusted just about everyone other than other American fundamentalists.  I don’t think even “Satan” has ever been credited with a quote that awful.  So congratulations to the Santa Clarita, California author of that – for surpassing the big bad guy who supposedly experienced a great “fall” for even less arrogance and pride than that one tweet evinced.  Everyone has been hearing how California is running out of water.  And yet, you don’t see the millions of Hindus and Buddhists tweeting that obviously his beliefs generated a terrifying drought in the State of California, so he should come around to their way of thinking, do you?  Ought to tell you something, right there.  Insufferable pride.  In his case, a nauseating degree of it, and an utter lack of compassion his own deity would have found horrifying.

Needless to say, I look forward to doing a bit more research into the subject ...

Am now the proud owner of the most beautiful ring – a rose quartz in the shape of a teardrop, which means, according to some site which I have forgotten to credit:  “Innocence. Will help you to link with the confidence of your inner being and be grounded with the earth.”  The rose quartz is supposed to attract love, so the combination of the two should ... attract love, but enable me to retain my innocence, which almost sounds like a false impression of unbroken virginity?  Okay, maybe not such a good interpretation.  And okay, I feel neither innocent, confident in my inner being or grounded at the moment – but wow, does it ever look nice on my finger!  Let’s hope I don’t break the nail again, shall we?  Breaking nails right and left does not do a lot for my confidence – in either my inner or outer being.

But maybe it will attract the perfect lover, who doesn’t care that (a) my innocent and confident demeanor exists only in my ring, (b) I have dirt on my shoes (well, I am ‘grounded with the earth’, right?), and (c) my nails may or may not be broken?  I like that possibility, let’s hold out hope for that one.

A Small Break Between Road Trips and I Muse About Leeks

Things I would love to see:  recipes where little or no part of any ingredient is discarded.

A good example:  told to consume much more fish than I had been, I was making a cod chowder.  Correct that:  I did make a cod chowder.  And I had actually cut the recipe out of Prevention Magazine (February 2015, page 85, one of the components of their article on the Scandinavian diet), so you would think that they, of all people, would have considered using all parts of the ingredients they had in the recipe.

Nope.  The recipe instructions called for me to only use the white and light green part of a leek ... and for those of who don’t know – the leek is a large vegetable.  I had a leek with a good 8 inches of dark green leaves well beyond the white and light green part of it.

My first question was:  why am I not using the whole leek?   Look up leeks and you’ll find they are extremely healthy vegetables, filled to the brim with all sorts of health benefits.  And here these people were suggesting I toss a good 8 inches of vitamins, minerals and fiber into the garbage?  Why?  Not going to “prevent” much of anything in the garbage can, is it?

I stopped what I was doing and looked leeks up online.  Yes, I absolutely could use the whole leek, the greener parts just needed to be cooked longer, that’s all, since they’re a little tougher than the lower portions.  Then they’re just as delicious and nutritionally beneficial as the rest of the vegetable.  Cooked the green part a little longer, and the chowder is absolutely delicious.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit there are parts of ingredients you are not going to consume.  Example:  the top of the carrot.  Excess fat.  Bruised sections of vegetables or fruits.  But what can you do with them?  Replant them and grow more?  The non useable parts of vegetables, a compost pile.  But what about other things?  Fish bones you’ve removed.  Chicken bones.  What can you do with other parts of food you might discard?  No, I’m not suggesting you save it all and stink up the kitchen ... would just love to see ideas about using every part of something you’re eating and actually needing to discard precious little.

Well, my new specs have arrived ... I never mentioned those.  At the same time I shuffled by the jeans section of Walmart’s a post or so ago, I also happened to wander by the Optical Shop and spotted the exact frames I was looking for – was actually stunned to discover that the same frames which cost $300-400 in an optician’s store were at least a fifth of that.  Tripped over myself buying them, and went today to pick them up.  And later discovered that the boot cut version of those same straight leg jeans that fit so well had since arrived.  Very productive day, obviously, as far as jeans and glasses went. 

Before all of that, though, I had gone to physical therapy.  Therapist was not pleased at the way the visit to the orthotics office had gone – said they were being “cheap” by trying to fit me into their stock, as opposed to spending time making the brace molded for my leg.  The orthotics office coldly told me if he had a problem with their suggestions he could call them directly.  THAT side of things did not make for a productive day.

Finally got the ball inflated and have been spending time doing crunches, butt lifts, rolling back and forth and keeping my legs centered, the whole works, all the while wearing 5 lb. ankle weights.  Will let you know if I accomplish anything with this new regimen – I’d better, for as long as it took me to inflate that stupid ball!

Spent more time with C’era una volta and the annotated Paradise Lost.  The reference to “Siloa’s Brook” baffled the hell out of me.  Supposedly, it means the Pool of Siloam, a well known site in old Jerusalem, and also the site of a Biblical fable about a blind man being made to see, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how this connected with the “fall” Milton was introducing to his readers, or even to the story of “Paradise”.  Nothing like getting stumped on Line 11, is there?

Also spent time re-reading the horrific story of the triad patriarch ... since ol’ Abe there seems to lie at the foundation of all three branches of one particularly overly zealous religious overgrowth, taking up valuable space in the Torah, the Quran and the Bible.  What a horrific story that is ... and no one (and I mean NO ONE!) thought to question any of it?  Instead, all three of them waste an enormous amount of pen and ink (or quill and ink, that’s how far back their attempts go) trying to make sense of that story ... “What it REALLY meant was ...”, instead of just saying, “This is the most horrible story I’ve ever read, why am I paying even a modicum of attention to it?”, the way most intelligent, morally sane people would.

The guy rapes the slave, pimps his wife, lets his wife beat the pregnant slave until she runs away, lies, cheats, is perfectly willing to slaughter his own son .... it’s reads like the horrifying story of a textbook psychopath.  But noooo ... I’ve read more ridiculous “interpretations” of the actions of that one psychopath lacking even a fiber of moral backbone than I can count, written by so-called ‘theologians’ from all three threads twisting themselves into logical and religious knots trying to do it and holding this guy up as some sort of beacon of honor.  And not one of them had the wits to think, “What deity in their right mind would condone all of this?”  Stand apart from it, and that’s how it reads:  like a horror story too awful to imagine, guaranteed to give you nightmares for days on end.

That seems to be the true starting point of any “Paradise Lost”, considering you now have three awful global threads of belief trailing after the guy like toilet paper stuck to his dirty shoes.

Found a novel where the protagonist – a professor – tries to free his daughter from the underworld by interpreting Paradise Lost – swiped it up for $.01 ... not so much interested in the storyline as much as I am on the interpretation, however fictional it may be.

So ... I may be back on the road in 9 days.  Yes, I have completely and totally lost my mind.  I still don’t have my leg brace; and I’m considering doing this again?  Well ... stay tuned.

Hair Disasters Part II, Killing Boredom and Bob Cowsill Makes Me Think Deep Thoughts

You know your hair is a disaster when you take a photo of the disastrous results and your friend – who has been cheerfully hopeful through your description of the horror – now suggests you look into a wig or extensions.  When SHE gave up on improving the style – which is to say, there wasn’t a “style” anywhere in sight - I knew there was no hope for it.

I have never worn a wig, never expected to ever wear a wig or an extension ... my hair was beautiful just the way it was, if a little straggly at the ends ... and now I was considering it, that’s how big a disaster my hair was.  I can’t imagine that one stupid salon could completely trash someone’s hair, but this one did.  This salon cut aged me 20 years, I looked so bad.  (And no, I will not post the photo here.)

If – a few years down the line – I post something stupid, like:  “I’m thinking of getting my hair styled”, I hope someone will jump online immediately and scream, “DON’T DO IT!”  Trust me, I’ll be forever grateful.

So, I bought my wig, which matched my original hair as much as we could, and I look actually unchanged and okay in it, if I can figure out how to pin it properly. How odd that I had to buy fake hair to look exactly like I did before the hair cut.  It turns out I’m allergic to the hair “cap” that holds it in place – as soon as she put that on me, my scalp started itching so badly, she had to take it off and use pins.  It is not dramatically different than my hair was before the disastrous hair “cut”, other than there are a few more highlights than I had.  I can live with that.  I know I won’t have to wear it for a very long time; once my hair grows back out again, I won’t need it.

They also said (and by “they” I mean the very nice wig lady, her daughter, and a random customer who happened to be sitting in the daughter’s hair cutting chair):  “Don’t ever take any pictures of yourself!” – they unanimously agreed I look nothing in a photo like I look in person – I’m just one of those people who take bad photos – who look good in person and look horrible in photos, I mean.

THANK YOU!!!  I already knew that, but people who thought they were being nice kept saying, “Noooo, you look fine!” while looking at photos of me.  No, I don’t.  I knew I didn’t.  Thank goodness three other people completely agree with me, and were honest enough to say, “Yeah, you look like shit in that photo!”  I felt so relieved to hear that, you have no idea.  For the longest time, I really thought I looked as bad in person as I did in photos, and if that doesn’t mess with your self-confidence, nothing will.

Rule #1 of True Friendship:  if someone looks a lot worse in a photo than they do in reality, don’t lie and say they look just the same.  All you will accomplish by doing that is messing with their self-image.  I could never figure out why I looked one way in a mirror, and like someone entirely different in a photo – in a way that had nothing to do with the face being reversed.  I just take really bad photos.  Thank you, thank you, thank you to those three people who never met me before and had nothing to lose by lying – she’d already sold me the wig, so it wasn’t like they’d lose a customer by lying.

Not only that, they all said that before they knew how I felt about the photo/selfie – their first reaction after the comment was, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” in the fear they’d offended me; I was the one who grinned from ear to ear and said, “THANK YOU!!”  And meant it from the heart, it was so nice to have people tell me the truth at last.  They were right, I take crappy photos.  After I said “Thank you!”, they all felt free to elaborate, “You don’t anything like that photo!”, and “You look at least 10 years older in this photo than you do in real life” ... it was such a relief to finally be vindicated!

The clothes that were altered look great too; I finally look OK, and I may have the courage to face my childhood crush now ... who apparently was into hiding out in tents when he was younger; don’t ask me to explain that photo, I have no idea what he was doing hiding out in a tent, or why he was suggestively inviting drooling and oh so willing readers of a teen magazine to come into it with him.  I just remember sighing dreamily over the photo scotch-taped to my wall when I was 12 and wishing he was within tent-invitational distance.

I am not betting on a surge of courage when I actually come face to face with the man, but the chances are greater that I’ll somehow find the courage to say more than “Bluh bluh bluh ergle duh ...” than I was before I fixed the hair disaster, anyway. 

But hopefully he’s used to people – who under most circumstances are outgoing, outspoken and confident - turning into blithering fools in front of him ...?  I mean, think about it:  I can face an entire class of students without blinking an eye, yet I completely fall apart at the seams at the prospect of facing Bob Cowsill?  Yes, it seems I possibly could.  Let’s face it, he’s not just anybody ... he’s (wait for the capital letters now) BOB COWSILL.  The same one I created a bewildering shrine for on my bedroom wall when I was 12.

But I was thinking last night – “Why him, of all people?” – and maybe it’s because of who I thought he was at the time when I was still 12, naïve and inexperienced:  at the time, I thought he was handsome, yes (and how!), but also intelligent, funny, thoughtful, poetic, gifted ... if you’d listened to me for all those years, since he and The Cowsills disappeared from public view, trying to answer the question, “What are you looking for in a soul mate?” – the same question you all had to sit through when I started this blog and didn’t even know he was still performing –  that’s what I had been looking for and never found - or at least not yet.  Not Bob Cowsill himself, obviously, but someone who was also handsome, intelligent, funny, thoughtful, poetic and gifted. The guys I got crushes on never lasted because they were none of those things, they were other things.  Maybe just one of those things, not all of them.  The guys who liked me unrequitedly had NONE of those things, which is why I ignored them for the most part.  Bob, in my young and inexperienced eyes at any rate, had it all.

So here was the question:  did the preference already exist before I caught sight of him for the first time, and he just seemed like he fit the bill - or is he the one whose imaginary image created the preference because he was my first crush?  Did every other guy since then have to live up to who I thought Bob Cowsill was, when I was much younger?  I say, “thought” because I never met him, talked to him, interacted with him ... maybe he was actually dumb, unfunny, incapable of deep thought, unable to rhyme two sentences sequentially without aid and not as talented as ... well, no, I can’t say he’s not musically gifted, he is.  And no, I really don’t believe he’s dumb, unfunny, etc., or any of those other things, or someone would have made mention of it by now.  Instead, everyone who has met him has said just the opposite.  He’s funny, he’s bright, he’s charming, he’s witty ... so maybe I had it right, back then.

But maybe he’s also a serious pain in the ass or something.  Maybe he is a “curmudgeon” as his sister Susan said once – although I can’t remember why she said it.  Oh yes, because he put Louise Palanker off for so long about doing the documentary, and was so unwilling to do it at first.  (And thank goodness he changed his mind about that, or I never would have rediscovered them!)  But, in all the successive years, was I looking for guys to live up to a standard of perfection that never existed in reality?

Something for me to think about, anyway.  I’m not at all sure it would change anything.  I would still search for someone who had the same qualities.  Or, if not all, at least a majority of them.

So I am now back to looking forward to the trip to New York.  I love going home ... I am always more energized when I’m home.  The city gives me energy; I feel more alive and more present when I’m there.

I’ve been practicing with a cane and took a major header into the kitchen counter.  Yeah, this is going well.  I’ve been drinking my dandelion tea with lemon and unsweetened cranberry juice ... and have no idea what it is supposed to do; I’m just stubbornly drinking it.  Purge me of toxins or something?  Increases my metabolism?  Makes me grow cranberries out of my ears?  Something useful anyway.  Well, when I find out, I’ll let you know.

And MEANWHILE ... I went back to sewing clothes again.  It took a while for me to unpack all of the fabric, patterns and sewing supplies and put them where they belonged ... but I finally started doing that again as well, while working on “Beautiful Beige” ... which is actually looking quite attractive at the moment.  At least sewing gives me something creative and productive to do ... while reading Paradise Lost and letting it percolate ... while preparing for a trip to New York ... while dealing with doctors, physical therapists and everything else.  Well, at least I’m not bored.

Bad Hair, Bad Products, Bad Blood and Paradise Lost

WHEN WILL I EVER LEARN?  I just don’t learn, do I?  Again – the hair styling was a complete and utter disaster.  Complete.  Total. Absolute.  I’d jump out the window were it not for the fact that (again) I live in a one-story and it wouldn’t accomplish much beyond giving me a scraped knee.  Went to a clothing store, bought stuff that was too big for me and had to return to the seamstress and have it fixed.  Went to Tallman’s for new glasses only to discover that they were closed.  That closed the window on my getting new glasses in time.  On my way back, stopped at Sylvan Grille and drank myself into a stupor.  Came home.  Cried a lot.

The disaster now required me to find something that will shape the straight-hanging mess into something less awful.  Tried a hair oil that is supposed to help hair keep a curl, thinking I could get the hair to turn under a little.  Instead, I was allergic to the oil itself and spent the next few hours with tears running down my face, sneezing repeatedly and with my nose running like a faucet.  Bought a curling iron.  Haven’t figured out how to do it right, and only ended up looking even more goofy than I already did.

Whatever self-confidence I once had (and it wasn’t much) disappeared in the blink of an eye.  And I will be seeing my childhood crush in exactly 9 days.  Of course I will.  Why strut out of an expensive hair salon looking like a quadrillion bucks when it’s so much more typical to slink out of it looking you were just run over by a leaf mulcher?  I just never learn, do I?

Well, while I battle the utter horror that is my hair, I’m also battling a never-ending round of doctors, appointments, physical therapy, more doctors, more appointments, more physical therapy - and my life shrinks to the dimensions of my appointment calendar – I started reading an annotated version of Milton’s Paradise Lost, which I’m finding inspirational, and I’m only in the Introduction.

I cannot get my head around Milton’s point of view ... by the time he started writing his Paradise Lost, ships were already sailing their way across the Atlantic, depositing colonists on the North and South American east coasts, so he is already aware that there is an entire continent over here, chock full of people who had no knowledge of the supposed “truth” he was espousing, which had originated within a very small tribe of nomads based in a very tiny region of the Middle East – of which, needless to say – none of these North and South and Central American continental natives had any knowledge.  So why – at some point – didn’t that “a priori” truth he was basing his entire epic poem upon stop making logical sense?  The Far East was already well known.  The beliefs of China, India ... they were well known.  Where is his logic?  His “lost paradise” was intelligence?  That isn’t saying much for him and his ilk is it?

From his first book, he is only making reference to Greek and Roman mythology, as though they were the only civilizations with which he had to parry and thrust.  It may be that he looks at Egyptian later in the work, but at least in his first book his entire glance towards Egypt consisted of Moses.  That’s it.  Just Moses.

True, the fact that most historians are seriously questioning the Biblical story of Moses altogether may be a more recent development, and ancient Egypt wasn’t really discovered by western culture until the time of Napoleon, so perhaps I can’t fault him for that as much.  But the other regions?  Makes no sense to me, none of it does.  So much of his initial argument makes no sense I can’t even find a place to start, as far as making a counterpoint is concerned.  Maybe with the original Lilith or something, to squash his Eve?  But he doesn’t focus on Eve so much anyway – Adam is his guy, which, for a man steeped in the toxicity of an extremely conservative, religiously fundamentalist patriarchy – much like the Republican Party of the U.S.! - isn’t surprising.

I have just discovered today that I really love tea made from roasted dandelion roots.  Why stupid suburbanites (the evil “Manifest Destiny” lunatics)  have this passionate need to destroy, slaughter, poison or trample everything worthwhile, I have no idea, but it seems they do.

One thing you should try not to do is allow your blood sugar to drop so far you nearly black out from it – which happened to me when I started feeling gawdawful and discovered my blood sugar was 37.  That isn’t a typo.  Thirty-bleeping-seven.  Drank two glasses of fruit juice pronto and had some toast ... and that was before I could make my way back to the bedroom where I had the glucose tablets.  I was hanging on to the countertop, trying not to let my knees buckle.  37.  Who gets readings like that?  And it wasn’t as though I was doing anything unusual when it happened; my sugars just plummeted for no good reason that I could determine.

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".

Incubi come from Watchers?

Am relaxing this day before Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Thursday with a White Fluffy: 1 oz. marshmallow vodka, 1 oz. dark chocolate liqueur, 2 oz. cream, all poured over ice and garnished with marshmallows and cocoa powder. Yum. Tomorrow I’m going to taste absinthe for the first time – have my own glasses, sugar cubes and spoon! – expensive as hell, but supposedly heavenly. But first ...

Il Volo released their latest cd. (I would have said "second", but they released so many variations of #1 – Continental, Global, Spanish, French, Takes Flight/Live in Detroit – and I suppose the christmas mini-cd counted as something – I’m not sure what number this actually is). Anyway, they just released their latest cd.

You get so used to groups or solo artists releasing their first cd, a spellbinder, and then falling flat on the second ... even someone as talented as Vittorio Grigolo, whose classical crossover career fizzled as fast as an open bottle of coke in a desert ... but not so this one.

My jaw dropped again – this is actually better than the first one, and I didn’t think that was possible, because I adored the first one! Holy crap, these guys are awesome! I can’t even find a "least" favorite, and I could on the first one – ("Smile". They sang it beautifully, it was just a snoozer of a song).

Mr. Signpost tossed out one of the Native American Plagiarist’s insipid tweets again: "Unusual sights can fill the heart with great joy. Keep your eyes open for the odd and different." Well, okey-dokey dear! And you have a real Tinkerbelle Day too, ‘kaaaaay?

Of course, the very next thing I saw was this photo:

<---------------

of the members of Il Volo goofing off while getting ready for a concert in Los Angeles.

Keep in mind that this was one of their last concerts at the tail end of a long, three-month straight, country-wide tour of the states. They were three exhausted and punch-drunk teenagers, eager to go home ... so silliness was perfectly understandable to those of us who had working brains.

Ah, but America is so lacking in working brains and so overstuffed with pretentious church ladies, the reaction of the American Hissy Fit Society was utterly predictable. "Eeek!" "Put your pants back on!" "Ohhh NOOO!" "Can’t we just... sing?" ...

Perfect example of the puritanical nonsense most American women spew all over the place to the point where your fingers are literally itching to slap them silly. European women wouldn’t have even blinked; American women – some of them, anyway – were all in this flutter of despair that "da boys" had turned into lusty old men on them. I’m sorry, I started laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair at some of their prissy, condescending church-lady nonsense.

***********************

Lost my train of thought. Incubus. I arrived back at the incubus question via the direct and roundabout way: a while ago, I discovered that I really missed my daily sonnet burning its way out of me – and while the agony that provoked them has lessened somewhat, the comfort derived from creating them has not. I decided to start writing again.

I thought I would venture off in a different direction with the second poetry series. My inspiration was found in Milton’s Paradise Lost – although when I say "inspiration", I actually mean that the more I read of it initially, the more I wanted to slap him too for allowing himself to be sucked into a mass delusion. On the other hand, the more I read about him, the less I was sure as to what he did believe. Some day, I may get around to reading a biography. Meanwhile ...

This is the bit that bothered me:

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme

I do realize that the line directly after "Aonian mount" was a nod to either or both Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato or Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso but my irritation was his reference to the Greek gods and their creation being far inferior to his "Adam and Eve" story.

For the more under-educated readers, "Aonian mount" is a another way of saying "Ionian mount" which is another way of saying, "Greek mountains, such as Mount Olympus, which was the home of the Grecian deities." He’s basically saying, "They sucked; I win!" So, yes, he more or less comes across as the literary Sheldon Cooper of medieval poetry.

Second point being: a complete refutation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost is also possibly among those "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme" (I suspect not but wouldn’t lay down a wager on it), but that’s the direction I wanted to go. I began this attempt a few weeks ago. And as I have decided that I also want to look down my upturned nose at poetry that doesn’t have a rhyming structure ... I ridicule him for his complete rhyming failure as well! BWAH-HA-HA!

So, speaking of Paradise Lost, and the urgent need christians have to demonize human sexuality ("Bad incubus! Bad! Bad!"), it made me wonder how many other spiritual beings were respected and even loved by the pagan world, and then turned into sexualized demons by christians.

For example, The Horned God was so demonized he appears regularly on your TV as Hellboy with his horns shaved off ... (and actually, I love Ron Perlman’s interpretation of him, so I’m not picking on Hellboy, believe me). But the Horned God was absolutely beloved in the pagan world, not made into something evil, as christians have done. Rather than draw from a variety of sources, I’ll quote from Wikipedia that the horned god was "associated with nature, wilderness, sexuality, hunting and the life cycle." I’m not sure this was one of the sources of sexuality and demons, but it certainly contributed. I’m not sure how far back that goes.

In the Book of Enoch. ("the wha ...?") we read an interesting story about The Watchers. The Book of Enoch is dated back to somewhere in the 3rd century B.C. Some of the mythology in Enoch is found in judeo-christian texts, but the larger version is only in Enoch. What makes Enoch interesting as far as research into incubi and sucubi is concerned? Angels falling in love with women and mating with them. But even that isn’t the whole story.

This may be one of the first mentions of situations which christians now call an "attack by an incubi". Basically, so Enoch reports, angels fell in love with human women, mated with them, and the resulting offspring were ... not particularly human, to put it politely.

But I’m not sure that was essentially correct. Enoch lists the band of angels who fell in love with mortal women; their leader’s name was Samyaza or Semjâzâ.

And here’s what I think may be the real source of the demonic attribute: "And the Lord said unto Michael [ this is Michael the Archangel]: 'Go, bind Semjâzâ and his associates who have united themselves with women so as to have defiled themselves with them in all their uncleanness."

Read that one again. They’re fallen angels not because they're evil or demonic, or have done anything awful or unlawful, but because they consorted with women ... who are UNCLEAN! Fallen angels? Demons. According to your local judeo-christian hate-spreader, THAT may be the real reason why incubi are demons: they are attracted to and have sexual relations with women!! My jaw dropped when I found this – if anyone else has any other ideas behind incubi being demons, I’m all ears.

In the meanwhile, I'm thinking we need to free the incubus and succubus from christian clutches and treat them with respect again.