Good Vibrations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Do Not Read The Next Sign!

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

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

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

I digress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damien Echols Booksigning in Peabody

Back to magick.

I’d forgotten that Damien was book signing in Peabody until he tweeted it, an hour ahead of time. I vaguely remember, when I first heard about it, looking up the store online and thinking, “Can I stand on line that long?” Then I ended up figuring that might be problematic and had decided that I couldn’t.

Spent the morning doing other exhausting things I needed to do: a car inspection, grocery shopping, and then the fun of having to lug heavy bags of groceries, one by one, into the apartment. Then collapsing in pain and exhaustion.

But then, when he tweeted about needing to prepare for the Peabody appearance, I took off without even thinking about it – it was merely an irresistible urge to go. If I wanted to paint myself as a logical thinker, I might have said that I wasn’t sure I’d have the chance again. No way in hell you’d catch me in Salem (don’t ask me to explain why again!), so Peabody had to be it. But no, I didn’t even give it that much thought. It was just a sudden sense of urgency ... “GO”. And off I went. Didn’t even get dressed up for the occasion, just gimped out the door. I must have looked like hell, but didn’t care.

He’s, what, 10 miles away from me, at this appearance? A straight ten miles up Route 114! – and again, I got lost, by being caught on a “right turn only” lane in heavy traffic, and couldn’t move left – I have no idea where Lowell Road went to (I know it goes to Lowell! Besides Lowell, although I have no idea where that was, in relation to 114, or which direction it was headed) , but I was on it, couldn’t get turned back around and became hopelessly, hopelessly lost. As usual. I ended up banging on the steering wheel with both fists and screaming my utter hatred for the State of Massachusetts and everyone in it at the top of my lungs, crying uncontrollably, screaming curses at the State’s refusal to take good tax money and buy street and directional signs with it, instead of forcing us all to hear tale after tale of Massachusetts politicians snorting it up their utterly corrupt noses. See? Even heading in the direction of Salem was hell!

Finally had to ask for directions back to 114, after half an hour of trying to get turned around, but getting more and more lost. When I finally made it back to 114, I was stuck in pre-Christmas traffic. Then I thought the Barnes and Noble was IN the North Shore Mall but it wasn’t. Of course, I wouldn’t learn that until I’d managed to hunt down a space to park and limp my way into the huge complex. One week before Christmas – took another 30 minutes just to find a parking space. Then another 20 minutes trying to find one of their mall maps screaming (“You Are Here!”) – which the mall had stuck in out-of-the-way places. What they DID have easily accessible were pamphlets with print so small no one could read them. The pamphlet locations are easy to find: just search for clusters of squinting people asking each other, “Can you read what this says?”

And of course, the Barnes & Noble was not only not IN the mall, but it was on the other side of this huge complex, and there was NO WAY I’d find another parking space. I limped from one end of that awful place to the other in a heavy winter coat, dragging my bum knee behind me. Took me at least 45 minutes to gimp through that awful place being run down and bumped and pushed by teenage shoppers. Took me another 20 minutes to gimp through three parking lots, dodging killer women in cars, cell-phone chatting and texting as they sped through parking lots and pedestrian crossings, to the Barnes & Noble, wiping tears of pain and frustration from my eyes. I was so late and in so much pain I was sure he was gone by then, but somehow, by some miracle ... thank you Sekhmet ... he wasn’t.

I found myself at the very end of a dwindling line. The advantage to it was that I was able to manage standing (sort of, as long as there was a wall to brace my back against, or a shelf I could lean on), because I was so late that the worst of the line had already come and gone. It didn’t take that long. Coincidentally enough, they had put him under a sign that said “Learning”. I saw that sign and started to smile. How absolutely perfect was that!

I don’t want to repeat everything I told him, although I did say he didn’t have to sign the book if he was getting hand cramps, because I only wanted to say something brief. He responded with something sweet about if I could stand on line for him that long, how could he not sign the book?, and I remember thinking, “He’s so nice ...” – in fact, he was so nice, I didn’t want to confess the truth about the hell I’d gone through to get there – really! It took hours to go 10 miles! – and that I hadn’t stood on line all that long; just gimped through a killer mall. Which might have amounted to the same thing, but was nothing compared to what he went through, so I wasn’t even ABOUT to complain about it.

Anyway ... it was nice. I was able to tell him SOME of what I needed to tell him and that was all I wanted. And I have an autographed book. Oh yes, and I did make him chuckle mentioning that I could retire on what I could sell his first book for. He’s very easy to talk to. And what a soothing aura. Here’s what his aura reminds me of: the ability that Jackson Rathbone’s character has in the Twilight series: the ability to calm people into a peaceful state of acceptance just by looking at them. I wonder if Damien knows he has that ability. I relaxed so quickly just talking to him that a lot of the back stiffness I’d gimped in there with went away. And THAT was nice too.

So here was my badge of courage: the Sky Sadist had twisted my face with Bell’s Palsy and I had still worked up the courage to travel to New York to see Il Volo. Now the Sky Sadist had hairline-fractured my left kneecap (yeah, I haven’t mentioned that yet – sorry) so badly I could barely move, but I ignored it, listened to Sekhmet instead and went to Peabody to meet Damien – Mr. Signpost – even though I was afraid of looking like a deformed old crone. Fuck the Sky Sadist! And as I said, thank you Sekhmet. It did, it felt like I had earned the silver Badge of Courage, afterwards. It would have definitely been easier to stay home and hide.

Continuing with the Fallen Angels list:

4. Kokabiel, also spelled Kפkabמךl, Kפkhabמךl, Kakabel, Kochbiel, Kokbiel, Kabaiel, or Kochab, considered the 'angel of the stars,' is a fallen angel, the fourth mentioned of the 20 Watcher leaders of the 200 fallen angels in the Book of Enoch. His name is generally translated as "star of God," which is fitting since it has been said that Kokabiel taught astrology to his associates. According to The Book of The Angel Raziel, Kokabiel is a holy angel; in other apocryphal lore, however, he is generally considered to be fallen. Kokabiel is said to command an army of 365,000 spirits.

[An army of 365,000 spirits? For what?]

5. Tamiel, also spelled Tâmîêl, is a fallen angel, the fifth mentioned of the 20 Watcher leaders of the 200 fallen angels in the Book of Enoch. His name is generally translated as "perfection of God" (the combination of tamiym and El-God) but Tamiel is also called Kasdeja or Kasyade (meaning "observer of the hands") in the Book of Enoch, Chapter 69. Michael Knibb lists the translation of Tamiel as "God is Perfect" or "Perfection of God." Tamiel taught "the children of men all of the wicked strikes of spirits, [the strikes of] demons, and the strikes of the embryo in the womb so that it may pass away (abortion), and [the strikes of the soul], the bites of the serpent, and the strikes which befall through the noontide heat, [which is called] the son of the serpent named Taba'et (meaning male)" during the days of Noah, not the days of Jared.

6. Râmîêl is a fallen Watcher in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, one of 20 leaders, mentioned sixth. Ramiel means "thunder of God" from the Hebrew elements ra'am and El, "God". Remiel is one of the archangels of the Christian and Islamic traditions, the Hebrew name meaning "Mercy of God" or "Compassion of God" [wow, talk about your irony, eh?] (see Jerahmeel). He is often confused with Azazel who is also called Râmêêl ("arrogant towards God" or "evening of God") although they are not the same angel. Remiel is the angel of hope, and he is credited with two tasks: he is responsible for divine visions, and he guides the souls of the faithful into Heaven. He is called Jeremiel or Uriel in various translations of IV Esdras, and is described as "one of the holy angels whom God has set over those who rise" from the dead, in effect the angel that watches over those that are to resurrect. He is said to have been the archangel responsible for the destruction of the armies of Sennacherib, as well as being the bearer of the instructions of the seven archangels. He is mentioned also in 2 Baruch where he presides over true visions (55:3).

So obviously, none of the judeo-christian scholars can decide if he’s good or fallen ... which doesn’t say all that much for the judeo-christian scholars, does it?

Talking to Jim and more things I learned from Damien Echols

Listening to Nek. Which is, in and of itself, pretty astounding.

I wonder if I’m the only person who remembers making mixed bean soup in the days before you could buy the "Hurst HamBeens 15-Bean Soup" mix in the grocery store. Or maybe you could buy it when I was growing up; we just never did. Actually, I’m not even that old, but I never recall my mother using a "mixed bean" mix. We just made it whenever we had a collection of bean package dregs and then combined them, along with other types of non-dried beans, like green beans, french green beans, yellow wax (waxed?) beans, etc. The we tossed in a chopped onion, leftover ham, seasonings, and abracadabra! Soup!

There usually ended up being anywhere from 5 to 10 types of beans in the bowl, and it was always something we slurped on in fall or winter, never the high heat of summer. I suddenly had a longing for hot peppery bean soup, so here I am, slurping on some, with some barley thrown in for giggles. Very comforting, earthy sort of meal. As I said, I’m on vacation all this week, so I’m not at all worried about any after-effects of 15 types of beans. And of course, I had no dregs, so had to cheat and substitute the bean mix. Mom usually made cornbread along with it; I’m too lazy to do that.

But because of the vacation, this is another day of writing lists, headed by, "DO THIS OR YOU’LL REGRET IT UNTIL THE END OF TIME!", because I have spent the last three months completely unable to get myself motivated to do anything. Friday was the first Friday the 13th since Jim’s death on Friday the 13th in April. I’m going to try to talk to him through someone.

I don’t trust my own intuition as far as Jim is concerned; my guilt and self-loathing is too bound up in his death. The only thing I heard him say after he died came right on the heels of his death – possibly the day after that, when we were at the mall in Yorktown Heights, and Lauren was debating whether or not to buy new shoes for the memorial: "NO NEW SHOES!" He said it so loudly in my ear that I nearly jumped ten feet in the air. He meant: don’t get dressed up for me; there is absolutely no need to go to all that trouble and waste the money. It was such a "Jim" thing to say I didn’t even question it when I heard it. Well, that, and the fact that he yelled it. I haven’t heard him since, though.

The idea of going to Salem close to Halloween in October for a reading was shot to splinters when I had lunch at Bertucci’s with friends yesterday; one of them lives in Salem. I asked her about Salem during the month of October and she rolled her eyes. She had no issues with the spiritual purpose; she did have issues with the traffic.

"Don’t do it!", she told me, "It’s so crowded, it takes me 45 minutes just to drive around my block!" Apparently, all of the Salem residents grow to despise the month of October, when they’re invaded by people from all over the world celebrating witches and witchiness. Instead I found someone in Andover who does it. I’ll be seeing her on Thursday. And am I relieved I don’t have to go to Salem? Do you even have to ask?

I’ll try anyone once. I would award the last woman 3.3333 out of 10 stars for her reading: out of the three accurate bulls-eyes she tossed out (my grandmother, Damien and Sekhmet), I’d say that only my grandmother was fully accurate. Sekhmet probably was meant for me, but delivered to the wrong person, and why she couldn’t figure out who Damien was – someone I was learning a great deal from, although someone I’d never met and was only familiar with through his writings – I still argue that it sent the accuracy of the reading flying off kilter, despite the bulls-eyes on the Boston Red Sox, horoscope sign and health issues, as there was no way to deliver the message at the time, especially to someone I didn’t know, and certainly no way to verify the accuracy of the message. Maybe I’m being too hard on her, I don’t know.

But it bothered me to such a degree that I picked someone else. This new woman apparently uses the tarot, psychometry and help from the Archangel Michael.

I did have a vague recollection of Damien mentioning the Archangel Michael, once upon a time, although I had to dig around to find the context. It turns out he mentioned Michael several times. My favorite was:

May 16, 2010
"My daily meditation routine is focused on the suit of wands right now. That's the section of the tarot which the archangel Michael rules over. It represents will power, ambition, creativity, fire, and the season of summer."

So – we are in the midst of the season of summer – also ruled by Sekhmet, so I feel supported by powerful energy on all sides. The psychometry gave me pause, until I remembered – I still have a few of Jim’s unopened beer cans in my refrigerator. I haven’t touched them, and he’s the last person who did. I haven’t been able to pluck up the courage to get rid of them, and wonder if you can pick up anything from cold beer cans?

I will tell you one thing about Michael, though: Doreen Virtue was fairly specific about knowing whether or not you’re actually hearing his voice as opposed to someone else’s:

"Of all the angels, Michael has the loudest and clearest voice. He’s definitely the easier Divine messenger to hear. He also has a distinctively blunt speaking style. He gets right to the point, but always with love and a sense of humor.

In a crisis, his pitch and tone are similar to a surgeon demanding a scalpel from a nurse. He’s not trying to be bossy or bark orders at us; rather, he just wants to get our attention and put us into action mode. The archangel always sounds loving and compassionate while he’s commanding us to take lifesaving action.

If Michael needs to get our attention in a hurry, his voice booms with unmistakable clarity. Yet, he can also be soft-spoken when it’s called for."http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Angels/2008/12/8-Ways-to-Recognize-Archangel-Michael.aspx?p=2#ixzz20m1WKH8r

Which I like. I don’t give a crap about the "love" part, particularly, but the sense of humor would reach me. The minute someone starts cooing at me, I’ll get up and walk out because I know they’re "channeling" no one but themselves and their own goofy idea of what an angel supposedly sounds like. Any deity or higher being worth his or her salt would know better than to get all girly-girly-frou-frou on me. You’re reading someone who was raised by two engineers: my mother was an aerospace engineer and my father an industrial engineer. I can’t recall either one of them coo-cooing at me like goofballs, and I never once doubted their love. A "blunt speaking style" would resonate with me completely.

(And I’ll bet I was the only young teen who was given "the talk" by her mother with a matter-of-fact, biological explanation, using all of the scientific terms for body parts and chemical analysis of the reasons for and results of orgasms. My mother was the smartest woman I know.)

Another semi-coincidence: one of the latter sonnets in the cycle was about the blue and indigo colors surrounding Michael.

Concentration
Three months pass; air stops, sun glares at cicada speech.
I turn my head. He listens as she serenades
him, friends called him away, but, his focus unswayed,
he listens as her lips move and slips out of reach.
Grasses browned, faces oily, rainbows sagging, leached
of their jewels. On his face, his lips move though his gaze,
enraptured, never moves, but not watching her face
blushing at his sudden awareness, this young peach.

O! To be the object of such fine scrutiny,
when Michael’s purple and indigo lights the room,
Protecting the unwise with a sword and a tune,
who watched the detonation of the family
and shook his head sadly, although it was not soon
enough to forestall her dull animosity.

©Snake’s Trail, 2012

Meanwhile, Damien continues to freak me out ... although, at this point, it’s less "freak out" and more, "again with the coincidences!", so okay, I’m no longer THAT freaked out ... just a little freaked out ... a month ago, on 18 June, I was being grumpy and brought up alchemy.

So apparently, not only am I a poor excuse for a witch (who flies into trees on her broomstick), I'm in absolutely no danger of turning myself into a skilled alchemist either, as far as being able to make sense of grimoires goes. Too bad, too: I could really use the gold.

And here’s Damien:

Alchemy is about change, destruction & creation. Called the "spagyric art," from Greek words meaning "to tear apart" & "to bring together".

The other coincidence – other than the fact I mentioned it – is that any time he shows up in a tarot reading, he’s always the Magus – in other words, an alchemist.

Next coincidence: was glancing at the Witches Book of Days recently – 2 days ago, actually. It read, "In Asia we celebrate O’Ban, similar to Samhain or Halloween. Trick or treat yourself."

Error #1: it’s not O’Ban, it’s Obon or just Bon, an Asian festival honoring one’s ancestors, and has nothing to do with tricking or treating. Error #2: Obon is in August, not on July 14.

The Real Witches Year wants me to go outside in the high heat, lay down on the ground and absorb sensations. Sure, if by "sensations" she means going into anaphylactic shock from sun stroke and a million and one mosquito bites.

The Pagan Book of Days is actually useful, mentioning that the runic half-month of Ur ("primal strength") begins today, and adding, "it is a good time for beginnings, for this rune is sacred to the Norn Urda, the primal foundation of things, and to the active principle in the shape of Thor, the hammer-wielding thunder god."

I do know that one of the concepts of Ur is "shaping and forcing fortunate circumstances creatively through will and inspiration", which sounds like a waxing moon sort of thing – right now the moon is a waning crescent, so this gives me a little time to prepare a spell I can finally record – keep track of – in my daybook, which is slowly turning into something of a Book of Shadows.

I hadn’t even posted that yet, when Damien (today) tweeted:

"The Dark Moon is this week. On Thursday. Those are the nights that are good for banishing unwanted energy. The ancient Greeks said the Dark Moon is embodied by Hecate, queen of the night. So what gifts does the dark moon like? Red wine. The darker, the better. Leave it beneath the night sky for her ... and ask her to remove any obstacles that may stand between you and happiness."

(After giving that a moment’s thought). I’d need about 100 dark moons to get rid of MY obstacles, but on the other hand, Thursday is the day of the meeting with the tarot-psychometry-Michael the Archangel lady.

More Spooky Coincidences and the Witches Ball

Back to the Daybook.  Things are not going well in that quarter.  I opened Kate West’s The Real Witches Year to July 4 and read, “Curse Breaking.  It is worth pointing out that real curses and hexes are extremely rare as Witches are mindful of the Wiccan Rede and the law of Threefold Return.”

[Blink]  Run that by me again?  Does she realize that there are other people out there besides her strange nicey-nicey version of witches?  Hell, I met some of them in my Wicca 101 class at Enchantments.  One lunatic literally made me nauseous she described so many curses/spells, and how she obtained animal parts for them.  True, the girl was probably unhinged, psychotic and a potential serial killer, but trust me:  they’re out there, Katie.  And here’s hoping that psychotic witch from my past is now in jail casting evil spells on the warden.

The Witches’ Book of Days ordered me to “be a mountain spirit”.  Yeah.  I’m in Massachusetts for one thing, a state known more for its swamplands than for its mountains.  Sure, I could get in my car and drive to northern New Hampshire or Vermont, but this is the Fourth of July, when every drunken yank or yahoo between here and the west coast jumps into her or his car and aims like a scud missile for the highways.  And she wants me to jump into my car and hunt down a mountain so that I can “feel the power of wind and air and space from the breasts of Gaia”?  I think not.  And that sounds a little weird and kinky to me.  Let the authors of that book go stand on someone else’s tits.

Nigel Pennick’s The Pagan Book of Days is completely empty on the fourth of July.

The one dismal idea I got from Kate West about deflecting negative energy was something called a “witch’s ball” to hang in the window.  She didn’t say WHICH window, but let’s leave that knowledge gap unanswered for now.  I googled “witch’s ball”, and naturally – of course I did! - ended up back in Salem, Massachusetts for the dance called the Witches Ball – the 2012 one is going to be held in October of this year, with a month’s worth of festivities leading up to Halloween.  Was just about to back out of that page at the speed of a greased meteor, when something caught my eye – again.

Connecting with the departed.  My heart cinched a knot in my chest.  The last time I tried this, it had worked, after a fashion, but my brother was still alive, at that time.  My grandmother had certainly shot some arrows of truth into the woman’s head and Sekhmet had sent a visual, although the psychic had gotten confused about the recipient.  And – the spooky coincidence in that case – the woman had picked up something about Damien Echols, even though I had never met him, and he was in New Zealand anyway.  The whole thing struck me as strange at the time.

But it had worked for the most part.  I wondered if being drawn to that event had actually been a precursor of sorts, getting me familiar with the idea.  And now here it was again.  In Salem, this time.  The place Damien felt drawn to, and the place which I will always associate with my brother’s untimely death and my role in it.  And the emotional upheaval of self-loathing and guilt that both Damien and Sekhmet had addressed, even though I doubt Damien was aware of it.  I think Sekhmet used him to smack me upside the head.  (And now the guilt was two-fold:  guilt over my brother, and guilt for not listening to either Sekhmet or Damien, which I usually do).

The only problem was that all of the “events” were from 9-10:30 at night, way past my usual bedtime, unless I did what I did the night I saw Il Divo:  spend the night in a nearby hotel, which I sooooo didn’t want to do.  Not in Salem.  I didn’t even want to go there; I was pretty sure I’d end up curled in a fetal position under a chair somewhere, sucking my thumb.  But it did make me think, maybe I should try it again.  I wasn’t sure about trying the Andover ladies again – the basic information they gave me was correct, but they had trouble determining who it was meant for, which seems to me part of a good, solid reading.  But maybe I should look into it – somewhere.  At least I had some time to think about it.

Luckily, Damien provided some thoughts for the day – I love that guy! – for his next book, he should write “Damien’s Book of Days”!  I’d buy it.  The “Daily Coincidence” – seems to be happening a lot lately, I have no idea why – was his re-tweeting of a Lauri Cabot one – I assume a witchy prediction of something to do on the fifth of July– tomorrow.  I’d never heard of her, either, but I learned she’s connected with Salem as well.

“Thursday, July 5: Wear Turqoise (sic). The moon is helping your majick. Use it.”


Well, OK.  You'd want to hope that powerful witches would want to set an example for others by being born with an internal "spell check" function, but misspelling of “turquoise” aside, I had just finished attaching the sleeves to my turquoise shirt that I mentioned for the first time on the “Sekhmet and Damien Join Forces” post – although I’m sure that was just another spooky coincidence ... and I doubt very much I’ll be able to procure 5 matching buttons and turn up all the seams by tomorrow.  Damien’s posts were these:

“In just a couple hours you'll be able to see the full moon. Want to give her a gift when you make your wish? Put out Milk and honey for her,” and “Full moon, folks. Make a toast to her. The full moon in July is called the "blessing moon". Make a wish. Better than a shooting star.”

Both from the third of July, but I could live with that.  Blessing moon.  I wonder why it’s called that?

According to Ask.com

It's nearly time for July's full moon, and it's the one we know as the Blessing Moon. In addition to being the perfect time to take inventory of the good things you have in your life, use this moon phase for magical workings related to dreams and divination. It's also called the Meadow Moon, so go for a stroll in your favorite fields, smell fresh flowers as you walk in the night, and just enjoy the chance to be outside!

Color correspondences for this month include green and silver, gemstones are opals, pearls, and moonstones. July's moon is associated with the deities Venus and Cerridwen, as well as Lugh, whose day comes up in just a few weeks. Find a way to celebrate the watery magic of this month's cycle -- maybe hold your Esbat celebration at the beach!

According to Llewellyn:

Color of the day: Yellow
Incense of the day: Cedar

“The old-timers knew July’s Full Moon as the Blessing Moon, because this is the time when Mother Earth begins to bless us with her richness. The monarda and tall garden phlox fill the flower bed with a heavenly fragrance. Tomatoes fatten and the corn tassels out. By day the hummingbird dashes from flower to flower; by night the mysterious sphinx moth haunts the garden border sipping nectar. At night above the ripening fields, the Blessing Moon of July rises.

She glows like a copper disk, shining with a warmth like no other Full Moon. Honor her beginning at dusk. On your altar place as many vases of flowers as you wish. Burn burgundy and green candles. Fill a clear glass bowl with spring water; stir in a clockwise direction with your finger. Carry the bowl outdoors, or at least to a window where you can view the Moon. Raise the bowl until you can see the Blessing Moon through the water and speak these words:

You who have been known by many names, and have shed your light on our Earth since time began, bless us with the bounty of the field and the vine. Gently swirl the bowl while gazing at the shimmering moonlight. In simple ritual, respectfully pour the water onto the Earth. Pause and be aware of the summer night—the stars, the crickets, and the fireflies.”

Last Saturday, off on another adventure.  You have to understand:  Massachusetts doesn’t believe in cross street signs, so every time you decide to hunt down something new, and have only the address to go by, it’s an “adventure” just getting there.  Of course, if you actually need to get there in a timely fashion, “adventure” quickly turns into “yet another reason to hate this freaking state” because you never know where you’ll end up, although you can pretty much guarantee that you will end up pounding the steering wheel in enraged frustration and screaming at the top of your lungs.

Fortunately, it was due to be a scorcher.  I figured I’d run errands in the morning and get home before the serious heat kicked in.  And you’d say, “Hey!  Why not go on Sunday when it may not be that hot?”


To which I reply:  actually, it WAS that hot on Sunday, but more importantly, Sunday was the day when Italy met Spain in Kiev for the 2012 European final.  So in preparation for the big day I decided to try and make some arancini di riso, which I’ve never made before because ... well, because I’m not Sicilian, and I’m pretty sure it’s a Sicilian street vendor specialty.  So the adventure was an attempt to hunt down an Italian deli in Methuen, and see if they have any canestrato fresco – also a Sicilian specialty – and other things I could nibble on in an attempt to send emotional support to the Italians.  I was hoping they were actually a decent Italian deli – I’d been spoiled rotten as far as Italian deli’s go by being a New Yorker.

Summary:  Pttoeeey!  Blech!  Ach!  Ick! 

I now know where the Italian section of Methuen is.  As I predicted:  an adventure.  I had to turn around and retrace my route at least four times, thanks to road signs like, “If you’re looking for Route 110, you should have turned left two intersections ago.  Sorry we forgot to mention it!  Bwaaaah-haha!”

Not that I was all that impressed by the food I came home with, but I can at least say I know where it is, so that I can throw an untranslatable Italian gesture in their general direction.  Okay, maybe it IS translatable, but not on this blog.

I really was spoiled by the Italian grocery stores in New York, because this one was borderline ridiculous.  Heck, I often went to one in Goshen, New York that was infinitely better than this one – and was always packed, back to front, that’s how good it was.  This one? 

Being the moron that I am, I forgot the grocery list.  Turned out that it didn’t matter – all they had was pasta and olive oil stuck on some rickety metal shelving in a corner anyway.  They did have frozen arancini in a freezer.  I thought, “Okay, well – at least I’ll get some idea of what it tastes like.”

Ha!  Not likely!  I don’t even have to be Sicilian to know better than that.  Really?  A mushy, soggy, soaked ball of gooey rice you have to eat with a spoon it’s so messy, filled with a few chopped bits of chicken for the filling, provolone for the cheese, and drowning in tomato sauce?  That’s a Sicilian delicacy?

Well, let’s see, based on that experience, our two possibilities are:  an Italian deli in Methuen has no idea how to make Italian food – which is pitiful for an Italian deli – or Sicilian food is vastly overrated.  Let’s take a wild guess, here.  I’m voting for kicking the deli owner out of the Sons of Italy.  If he was ever allowed in it to begin with, that is.

I also made the mistake of visiting an Italian bakery on the same road.  Result:  their “Italian bread” (and I mean the pane di casa bread) is nothing more than Wonder Bread with sesame seeds on it – oh my GOD is it disgusting! – and excuse me, but how many native Italians make cannoli with vanilla pudding in them?  Not ricotta, people - your choice of cannoli filling from an ITALIAN BAKERY was vanilla pudding or chocolate pudding. As in “Jell-O” pudding!  I just stared at them in horror and walked out.  There was one thing from the bakery I did like:  two single serving boxes of La Florentine® torrone.  Oh, right.  They taste right because they’re IMPORTED (from Italy)!  I’m not saying they were healthy – just saying they tasted the same way here as they did in Italy.

No wonder all three members of Il Volo were stumbling around the United States politely trying not to disrespect the Italian food.  They SHOULD have dissed the American Italian food, if it was anything like this!  It’s disgusting!  Hey!  Methuen Italian Americans!  Turn in your “Italian Pride” membership cards!  You’re a disgrace!

End result:  Spain 4, Italy 0.  I was seriously bummed when that game ended.

The One Place I Can't Go

Stitched the interfacing, finished assembling a heavy bookcase I purchased at Walmarts using incomprehensible instructions, started shampooing the living room carpet. In a bit of a better mood, even though I was back to digging stuff out of my toolbox(es): Phillips head screwdriver, straight edge screwdriver, hammer. Last time I used these I was searching for a soul mate by furnishing the bedroom, as I recall. Immediately had to put the whole soul mate search thing on hold while I tried to heal from the injuries inflicted by a fool in a jeep trying to get to a (wait for it): funeral, which he felt it necessary to drive to at the speed of light. Heh. And we can all see how well I healed from that.

Mr. Signpost again reminded me of the more familiar signs of the Summer Solstice: the Holly King taking over from the Oak King. There is actually a park celebration here in the Andovers today where they replace the Oak King banner with a Holly King banner and then tell the story of the Oak and Holly Kings. They also rent out kayaks and paddle boats on the pond, and I'm reminded of Greenwood Lake, and how badly I wanted to do that.

In any event, Damien's version is much better than being chased naked through a dark forest and bleeding out through my dead feet (see last entry). Although I'm not sure how much safer that version of searching for a soul mate is, compared to setting little pieces of paper on fire in my apartment without a fire extinguisher nearby.

Well, I got off my lazy butt and looked it up: Damien switched over to Twitter on May 7th - and rather calmly as a matter of fact (as you'll recall, I had assumed he did it a tad more dramatically, an entry or so ago) - which is about the time I was beginning to really suffer from the pain in my forehead and had stopped posting blog entries for a while.  And of course I missed it, being as miserable as I was at the time. I enjoyed reading his past tweets the same way I enjoyed reading his journal, and found a few other semi-coincidences between his tweets and my blog:

Me, on 9 October 2011
Back many, many years ago I had started a Day Book. There is (or was) a witchy little shop I loved, on East 9th Street in the Village, Enchantments, where I went through Wicca 101. Another reason why, when I read about Damien, I thought, "Thank goodness I lived in New York", where they tend not to arrest you and throw you on Death Row for going to Wicca 101 classes.

If you ever find the store, not only is it the best-smelling store on the planet, they have the coolest stone carving of the "Green Man" hanging from the wall in the back of their tiny garden; something you never expect to find in lower Manhattan.

Damien, on 27 May 2012
Today I paid a visit to Enchantments. It's one of the more well known magick and meditation supply stores in NYC. Herbs,incense,books,etc.

I don't consider this a genuine (and startling) "coincidence", as I did when I found him next to Sekhmet. THAT was so unexpected, I'm still struggling with that one. This, no. We're both Wicca; that we both visited Enchantments doesn't seem all that much of a coincidence. I just smiled when I read the entry.  The "coincidence", such as it was: the reason I re-opened the Daybook I'd started during those classes - and actually started in the backyard garden of Enchantments under the watchful eye of the Green Man or Horned God on the wall - was because of Damien's prison journal, which I'd found so inspirational.


Last coincidence I'll mention. Salem. I'd thought he had just visited Salem. Now after reading all of his tweets and slowly catching up on what he's been up to, I realize he's moving there.  Another gloomy reaction; the sonnet cycle went up another notch.


The One Place
Packing up and moving so I hear: Salem, Mass.
I know my way to Salem in the dark; trust me.
I’ve been there, I know the jogs in the road, I see
the signs, I remember the smells and the hourglass;
the grains of sand slipping through, how I was aghast
to realize in Salem, what a chance I’d been
given and how, in Salem, I’d let it slip free.
I hear her name and turn quick away, let her pass.

And yet. Salem is where I hear you choose to go,
"I belong there", you say. I’m sure you’re right. And yet,
I feel a surge of grief rising; I won’t forget
where you are as I learn at your feet all you know.
Right below my surface, slithering in protest:
the one place you are is the one place I can’t go.

20 June 2012
©Snake's Trail, 2012, all rights reserved

Damien Echols is moving 30 minutes away from me. The one place I can't go back to. Ever. I'm not sure why that bothered me so much - even if I loved the place as much as he did, I doubt I would have ever gone there just because he was there. But I do remember thinking it would be a fun place to go to on Halloween, though - once. No more. So ... an odd coincidence: he's moving to the one place I can't go to without ripping my heart and guts out all over the sidewalk. I don't know what that meant - such an almost deliberately odd coincidence, if you could call it that.

At least in New York I always knew he was safe. Moving to this state - I don't feel that way anymore, but I'm sure that has more to do with me than anything else.

Day #39, and More Things I Learned from Damien Echols

This I didn't learn from Damien Echols, this I learned on my own.  I learned how to act. Actually, I had learned quickly how to act with the skill of Meryl Streep at Jim’s memorial service – I would watch myself pull off a stage performance of pleasant accessibility and gracious hostessing, only to pull back into a snarling and hellish dark corner and bare my teeth at everything the moment no one was looking at me. I was now doing that everywhere: at the office, while running errands, around the apartment complex. I had turned into an unapologetic, habitual liar wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask.

Everything else had stopped. The Daybook I had been working on with such pride had stopped. Damien Echols, who, as you’ll recall, dashed off to New Zealand and was inaccessible for a while, had taken over his own Facebook page ... and then disappeared. I’d been so used to being inspired by his daily prison journal and using it for my Daybook, that it was another small sense of loss, not having his daily commentary when things began to go so wrong ... and trust me when I tell you: if there’s one guy who has first-hand knowledge of things going terribly wrong when you least expect them to – and then coming out the other side of darkness intact - it’s Damien Echols. But he had disappeared as well.

Losing his voice wasn’t exactly the equivalent of the overwhelming grief that I was going through after the death of my brother ... just a mild malaise brought on by spiritual loss. True, I wasn’t ready to contemplate anything spiritual right then, but I still missed listening to Damien.

I stopped checking his Facebook page to see if he’d said anything interesting, so unfortunately might have missed the moment when he said, "Eureka! Screw Facebook! I’m gonna tweet!" (actually I don’t know what he said about it, and I’m too lazy to go look, so I shouldn’t put words in his mouth.) Bottom line was: one day I discovered that he was on Twitter, and for the first time in quite a while I was back to paying attention to Damien, which helped because that meant I wasn’t focusing on anything else. Oh yeah – and I now knew how to tell him he’d hi-jacked my psychic reading if I wanted to. I was still hiding behind headphones and writing sonnets every day. The sonnet cycle was up to something like 30 poems. I was still religiously clapping Piero Barone’s voice over my ears.

Then I noticed that Damien had been to Salem, just half a month earlier. Home of the 17th century witchcraft trials, yes, but also the home of Salem Hospital (surgery), the place where my brother had complained of heartburn – though it was not really heartburn and I paid no attention to it and therefore killed him; and the place where I had returned alone to have my stitches clipped (and had to pull off the road repeatedly because I was sobbing so hard) the very same week that Damien was there. I was unaware of that until later.

But the one thing we do share is that neither of us believe in coincidences. I read his past tweets, looked at the words he wrote about Salem, looked at the day he posted the comments, felt ice crystals BEGIN to start crackling in that chasm where my heart used to be, and burst into tears – again. Then pulled myself up short.

After what I’d done, or had allowed to happen, in my abject narcissism, my heart was not allowed to heal, so it felt like some sort of unwanted kindness from the Universe. By that point, I no longer trusted the Universe to do right by me and was battling an intense fear of leaving the house because I fully expected something horrible to happen. Why wouldn’t something horrible happen? I’d killed my own brother by not paying attention to him when he needed me to.

Still, it could have been a lot worse, if Damien Echols hadn’t somehow managed to travel all the way up north from West Memphis, Arkansas to the bowels of Arkansas prison system, to New York City, the only place in the world I feel safe and still do, even after fleeing death on September 11th, and visit Salem, Massachusetts at the time he did. I knew there was some sort of meaning or pattern behind it; whether I was ready to accept any kindness from the Universe or not. In truth, I still wasn’t, but it almost felt like the Universe was using him, shining samurai sword that he was (imagery courtesy of Henry Rollins), to lay some groundwork. He was still "Mr. Signpost".