A Blizzard Named Nemo and I Think Outside the ... Embroidery Frame

To the spammer who prefaced her spam with, "Do you have problems with spam? So do I! Check my blog out if you don’t believe me!" – may I offer a few observations. First, if I’m going to see any spam by logging into your blog, all that tells me is that YOU’RE too stupid to control it. So why should I visit a blog run by someone that dumb? Second, while there may certainly be bloggers stupid enough to fall for that obvious opening line, I’m not one of them. If I see a link ANYWHERE in a comment, you’re tossed out as spam. Do NOT use this blog as cheap advertising for your own. Won’t work.

Friday the 8th: Preparing for two feet of snow ... well, ok, I’m not sure how one "prepares" for that beyond staying indoors and peering out the window nervously every once in a while, but I am eating artichoke hearts. And you might ask, "How does eating artichoke hearts help you prepare for two feet of snow?" Easy-peasy! I happen to love artichoke hearts. Eating them makes me happy. Digging myself out of two feet of snow and sitting in the dark when the power goes out does NOT make me happy. I’m hoping one balances the other out.

Saturday the 9th: It worked! No lights went out! Alright, I haven’t ventured out of doors yet, but as for the absence of a power outage: ah yes, the top secret, never before published, magical Artichoke Hearts Munchies spell came through! Oh, what a truly gifted witch I am! This spell works every time - which is to say, er ... once. :=\

Sunday the 10th: So this morning I had to stumble outside and dig my car out of two feet of snow. Afterwards, stumbling back indoors with the backache of the week, I realized I needed a spell for situations like this, to wit:

"Got hit with a blizzard and it was a zinger,
Free my car now without my lifting a finger!"

Of course, it would have been more useful had I come up with the spell BEFORE I went outside and dug the car out. (*Doh*!) (<---- Witch With Dangerously Low Preparatory Skills)

There must be some sort of witchcraft instruction somewhere that reads, "Create magic out of the things you know best.", or "Create magick from your strengths." Something along those lines. That basic "ism" hit me like a lightening bolt between the eyes when I happened to pick up Dorothy Morrison’s Utterly Wicked: Curses, Hexes & Other Unsavory Notions. Her comment in the Introduction is wonderful:

"This is not a book for those who believe that life can be lived without ever harming anyone. This is not a book for those who are overly concerned with Karma, the Threefold Law, and the Golden Rule. Nor is it a book for the squeamish, the straight-laced, or the easily offended."
Morrison, Dorothy. Utterly Wicked: Curses, Hexes & Other Unsavory Notions. Willow Tree Press, 2007. Page 1.

Ahhhh, lovely. I like her already.

The chapter that really knocked me for a loop, though, was the brief chapterino (a "very small, teensy-weensy, miniscule chapter") on the magic of stitchery. Trust me when I tell you that if there’s one craft-y skill I do have, it’s needlework. Quilting and embroidery, mostly. Okay, quilling too, which isn’t needlework, but it IS craft-y, and which I learned at Kensington Palace. But mostly the first two … although on some days when I’m feeling particularly brilliant, I can work myself up to sewing on a button.

I came across the tiny chapter on imbuing needlework and stitchery with magical intent and, because it never once occurred to me to try and combine the two, the proverbial light bulb over my head lit up.

Coincidentally – yes I know there ARE no such things as coincidences – I was reading Jonathan Cott’s The Search for Omm Sety at the same time. For those who have never heard of Omm Sety: born Dorothy Louise Eady in London, she is best known for her belief that in a previous life she had been a priestess in Ancient Egypt, and a lover of Pharaoh Seti I. According to Wikipedia, a New York Times article described her life story as "one of the Western World's most intriguing and convincing modern case histories of reincarnation."

While she was also a greatly respected Egyptologist, it is her role as the reincarnated beloved lover of Pharaoh Seti I that interested me, as (according to Omm Sety herself) he waited eons in the afterlife to find her again, and after doing so, paid her regular nightly visits, to her great joy – and mine, too, when I read about it and realized that such things were perhaps possible – spirit men in all of their anatomically correct magnificence … and living women. He was able to draw from her life force to create a solid physique that enabled their lovemaking. Yet he remained seemingly unaware that she was now a middle-aged Englishwoman – he still saw her as a young, virginal Egyptian girl that he fell in love with in his temple in Abydos. It seems that their initial sexual union (resulting in a pregnancy) was such a crime that, rather than betray him, the young priestess committed suicide, devastating him, as he was unaware as to why she died.

For those who remember the traumatic lifetime in Venice that I remembered when I was there, suicide played in a role there, too. So many aspects to the story caught my attention. Not to mention that Omm Sety was also an embroiderer, and supported herself selling embroideries of Osiris, among other things.

So many coincidences … so many ideas … so little time. I knew I needed to begin studying correspondences, symbols, sigils – physical symbols I could fill with magic intent. I also got ideas for pendulum boards, tarot layouts and all sorts of things I could embroider onto linen. I could also teach myself Shisha embroidery (mirror-work, where small pieces of mirrors, coins or other shiny objects are embroidered onto fabric), but use it for also attaching small crystal fragments if crystals were used in a spell.

Meanwhile I happened to stumble across a love spell. I won’t cite the source; suffice it to say it was written by another dumbbell of a woman. The spoken part of the spell goes like this:

"I call to thee, beloved one,
To love me more than anyone,
Seven times I pierce thy heart,
Today the magick of Venus starts.
I bind thy heart and sole to me;
As I do will so mote it be."

[Blink] [Blink, blink]

"I bind thy heart and sole to me"????? What, the idiot is ordering her readers to bind themselves to some guy’s fish dinner, or to the bottom of his foot or his shoe???

The Grammar and Spelling Psycho Police Squad

ARRGH! No, no, no, no!!! Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! Spellcheck! Grammar check! Spellcheck! Proofread! Proofread! Soul! Soul! Not sole! Sole is a fish! Sole is the bottom of the foot, or the bottom of a shoe! SOUL is the … actually, I’m not sure WHAT the technical definition of a soul is. One moment, please.  (tap, tap, tap) (sound effects of a computer keyboard) Ah. Thank you. SOUL is "the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal"! (And thank you, Dictionary.com) KERBLAM! KA-POW! KA-PLOOEY!!

[*heavy sigh*] Thank you.

So, I suspect I’ve identified my own path, after all of the preliminary research and jumping up and down with frustration. Wicca? Definitely not. Enochian? I believe so. I’ve started reading Aleister Crowley’s Magick. (Hey, at least Aleister proofread his stuff, setting him light years ahead of most of these twinkies.) We’ll see how that goes.

Vindication and Sex Magick

Another wonderful and incredibly timely book. Miller, Jason. Protection and Reversal Magick: A Witch’s Defense Manual. 2006. The Career Press, Pompton Plains, New Jersey. Right off the bat Miller quotes Robert Cochrane. No matter what you may think of Cochrane (and some didn’t like him very much), his point of view here made a lot of sense:

"If one who claims he or she is a witch can perform the tasks of witchcraft, that is, they can summon spirits and spirits will come, they can turn hot into cold and cold into hot, they can divine with rod, fingers and birds, they can claim the right to omens and have them. Above all they can tell the Maze and cross the Lethe. If they can do these things, then you have a witch."

First question we should all be asking ourselves: how many of the books I’ve been suffering through have taught me ANY of those things? Absolutely none. In fact, 100% of the wiccan nonsense I’ve read so far has done nothing but try to carve an immobile, inept, powerless twinkie out of me – and might have succeeded had I not begun to grate mightily under the emotional and childish silliness of the vast majority of these women writing books that taught me little beyond how to feel foolish.

If you’re like me, the first thing you need to do is either stop watching the television program called Paranormal State, or at least remember that the investigators on that program are christians, often handing out blessed medals and calling in priests and christian demonologists to clear the environment. (In their defense they also occasionally call in native Americans and witches, so they’re not exclusively christianity-oriented. But they seem to have an excessive fear of people conjuring spirits.)

Still, the few "exorcism" sort of programs they aired contained people who were frighteningly unbalanced – I recall watching one of their exorcism programs, where they had a priest try to drive a demon out of a young woman. After a few minutes of watching (and I admit, I could be wrong, but I doubt it), she struck me as being not possessed at all, but emotionally unbalanced to the point where she was the one causing damage to herself through the force of her own will – and if any christian "demons" were involved - again, which I seriously doubt - they were only standing around and watching her do all their work for them.

The point is, though, that even the word demon was corrupted by the JDI (judeo-christian-islamic) crowd to mean something frightening and horrible and eager to send you to hell, perdition and damnation, when in fact its true meaning was very different.

Here’s the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for "demon":

c.1200, from Latin daemon "spirit," from Greek daimon "deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity" (sometimes including souls of the dead); "one's genius, lot, or fortune;" from PIE *dai-mon- "divider, provider" (of fortunes or destinies), from root *da- "to divide" (see tide).

Used (with daimonion) in Christian Greek translations and Vulgate for "god of the heathen" and "unclean spirit." Jewish authors earlier had employed the Greek word in this sense, using it to render shedim "lords, idols" in the Septuagint, and Matt. viii:31 has daimones, translated as deofol in Old English, feend or deuil in Middle English. Another Old English word for this was hellcniht, literally "hell-knight."

The original mythological sense is sometimes written daemon for purposes of distinction. The Demon of Socrates was a daimonion, a "divine principle or inward oracle." His accusers, and later the Church Fathers, however, represented this otherwise. The Demon Star (1895) is Algol.

Even today, in popular culture, people hear the word "demon" and run around squealing in terror, flapping their hands and envisioning Linda Blair upchucking yards of green goo-ish split pea soup and scampering downstairs upside down, like a spider.

Interestingly enough, the visual representation of the stony (and fictional) bad boy ("Pazuzu") who possessed Linda Blair’s character in the movie was based on an actual Sumerian god of the same name, spirit of the southwest wind known for bringing famine during dry seasons, and locusts during rainy seasons. Pazuzu was said to be invoked in amulets, which combat the powers of his rival, the malicious goddess Lamashtu, who was believed to cause harm to mother and child during childbirth. Although Pazuzu is, himself, an "evil spirit", he drives away other evil spirits, therefore protecting humans against plagues and misfortunes. (courtesy of Wikipedia again.)

Point being that the phrase "evil spirit" was just a christian interpretation of the word "demon" in describing him initially, and was no doubt the Greek definition of ""deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity", and more of a supernatural power in bringing famine and locusts.

Still, he was apparently seen more as a deflective idol or protective deity, used to deflect evil, not represent it. So there you go. That statue you saw Father Marin digging up at the start of the film was actually the GOOD guy! Hollywood screws it up again. Or maybe it was Blatty, who knows.

But the fear of anything that even sounds demonic sends most of these women thundering around in aimless circles, squealing like stuck pigs. If you ever needed proof of that, go to Google and ask a question like, "How do I summon an incubus?" – and I only suggest that because someone had raised that question already, and when I looked up the question and answers I was so disgusted at the childish and idiotic responses I read that my jaw dropped a few times.

Examples: (and when I tell you that 99% of these stupid responses elicited the Spelling and Grammar Psycho Police Squad, I’m not kidding. If you’re too stupid to proofread your own work or at least use "spellcheck", you’re not worth paying attention to. So let’s review the real responses from "Ask.com", shall we?

The Spelling and Grammar Psycho Police Squad

(1) "Incubus? I'm sure there is "something" sexual humanilting your astral body already...If you feel insecure about yourself...its happening in the astral-planes...so when it manifest into this world(physicality) you feel humiliation and fear! I suggest you astral project to see whats your astral body is doing or what being than to it. I found out my astral body was in chains and "things" were being done to it....that were sick and twist. It doesn't happen anymore, so I don't feel fear anymore....just anger!" [Riiiiight. And yes, that was completely unintelligible. KA-BLAM! KER-POW! KER-BLOOEY!]

(2) "Step 1) First, you need it to be raining. If there is no rain, perform Souix Tribal Raindance in the proper Souix Tribe attire.Step 2) Purchase the following materials... 7 eggs, a wizards hat, Nike running shoes (must be Nike), a XXXL T-Shirt, and a rubber chicken.Step 3) Once Steps 1 & 2 are finished you may now perform the ritual...Wearing the proper attire, recite each of the 7 deadly sins except for one of your choice. After each sin, smash egg in face. For final sin, locate a human sacrifice. Once located, pound your chest three times while saying "DIABLOS!" repeatedly. Proceed to throw the final egg at the sacrifice as hard as possible. The Nike shoes are for running away from the sacrifice. Once out of sight in an isolated area, you will be greated by an incubus. The rubber chicken is a peace offering to the incubus so that he doesn't kill you.Good luck. My last summon was a doozie." [Uh-huh. By the way, the word you were looking for was the "Sioux", dumbass. So if you were trying to imply that a member of the Great Sioux Nation was posting the response – as though they had nothing better to do and gave enough of a shit to post responses to Ask.com – you might want to spell their tribal name correctly. Not to mention specifying which tribe within the Sioux you were referring to. They are located in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Montana in the United States; and in Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan in Canada. Sheesh.]

(3) "I just open up the door, lean out and start yelling, "Heeeeere incubus incubus incubus! Heeeeeer incubus! Haunting time! Heeeeeeere, incubus" [Okay, that one was funny. But retarded. But still funny.]

(4) "Click your ruby slippers together or wish really hard on your birthday when you blow your candles out." [OK, being gay and into "The Wizard of Oz" shouldn’t make you so dumb you forget the real reason for clicking your ruby slippers together, sweetie. Come on, Ru-Paul. THINK. Something about "homes" and "no places"?]

(5) "I´m not fooling around.....my advice is, don´t invite either an incubus or a succubus (both are demon lovers). Why not get a human lover?" [OMG! And why don’t YOU stop being such a pretentious and condescending idiot, you cow?? I guarantee you the responder was either a christian church lady or a twinkie wiccan one. Here are some possible reasons: the person posting the question could have been injured, crippled, unsightly, incarcerated, stationed in a remote location like the arctic circle, had an infectious disease, was unable to get a human lover for some other reason.

My own personal reason: due to a bad accident involving a bus I was riding on, I can’t hold a position for longer than a few seconds without developing horrible and crippling muscle and tendon cramps in my legs and feet, so painful I find it difficult to even walk the next day. Shot my sex life all to pieces. Someone suggested summoning a helpful spirit to solve the issue; hence my question. They were NOT of the opinion that such a spirit would be evil, because they had the intelligence to think outside of the unbalanced JCI (judeo-christian-islamic) box. Unlike you, you stupid bitch. I didn’t want to burden any "human lover" with the guilt of causing me so much pain, but apparently you have no such conscience, eh?]

(6) "Wipe off the white face-powder, get rid of the thick mascara and for god's sake sort your fingernails out. Go out, meet a few people, find a nice bloke/girl and indulge in whatever depraved fantasy suits you both best. Just leave behind the idea that the occult is a toy designed to serve whatever bizarre adolescent urge you are currently suffering from." [As to your assumption of depravity, see response to Question #5, above. But first – what could "sort your fingernails out" possibly mean? Must be a British thing.]

Back to the book.

They say that – and no, I don’t know who "they" are, I should look that up! - "When the disciple is ready, the master will appear." – ah. Buddha. Thanks! Often changed to "teacher" and "student" in today’s parlance. And no, I’m not saying that "Jason Miller" is my newly adopted teacher, although goodness knows he has a pretty cool blog and Enochian lessons link ... but that he wrote in 2006 something perfectly aligned with my discoveries in 2012-2013:

"I have seen it written that no real witch would ever do magick to harm someone or influence another’s will. I have seen it argued that no genuine ceremonial magician would harm another because he knows that the law of karma would turn his work back upon him. I have also heard the argument that anyone with the power it takes to launch a successful magickal attack would be evolved enough to be beyond doing such things. All I have to say is: don’t you believe it! Such arguments help sell books and help make witchcraft more acceptable to mainstream society, but it’s just wishful thinking on the part of people who should know better."
Miller, Jason. Protection & Reversal Magick. The Career Press, 2006. p. 24

THANK YOU!!! I love this guy! Although, quite honestly, I think he’s being extremely generous to suggest that they "should know better". Most of these women (and a few men) writing such appalling "Introduction to Witchcraft" books genuinely DON’T know better, which is why an entire generation of possible witches and wizards are being seriously shortchanged in the "witchcraft" craft, and deprived of their power. And because those women writing these appalling books DON’T know any better, they are downright dangerous.

So to the Tinkerbelles and Twinkies (and you know who you are) who have been wasting everyone’s valuable time with their "church ladies with pointy hats" nonsense:

<----------

Gianni Morandi, Wolves and More Sex Magick

The Wolf Moon arrived yesterday ... and in honor of the majestic Wolf, the first photo I saw signing into Twitter was this wonderful photo of Il Volo with the incomparable Gianni Morandi. Last time we saw photos like this, the guest singers appeared on the second album (Placido Domingo, Eros Ramazzotti), so that was my first thought: is Gianni making a guest appearance on the Spanish version of the new album? What a way to get me to buy the Spanish version – put Gianni Morandi on it!!

And you may say, "Hey! What’s dem gotta do wif a wolf?" Well, first: not much. OK, nothing, really. Second: get your dentures fixed; you’re slurring again. Third: SPEAK ENGLISH!

But fourth: the photo did get me singing Morandi’s Fino alla fine del mondo ("Until the End of the World") all day, which I suppose is the Italian pop equivalent of howling at the moon with indescribable loneliness. The British equivalent would be Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf (2004) and the American? Probably Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London (Live in Passaic 1982 of course! If you have a favorite song that transforms you into a hungry wolf by the second note, let me know, and I’ll try to link to a live version.



I ran across a perfect example of the damage that the judeo-christian-islamic mindset does to their cultures when the topic of sex is under discussion. In this case – and I don’t know who the writer is in this case – someone is writing out a rather confusing sex magick spell.

I’m willing to lay down good money on his national origins: either British or American. Same problem that I have had in the past with writing out spells: what is its purpose? and, where did you get it? are two pieces of information it would be really helpful to know. Both are missing. Obviously, it’s a sex magick spell, given the instructions, and the fact that part of the spell involves invoking Baphomet.

Here’s another problem: Baphomet. Taken out of Wikipedia:

Baphomet is a supposed pagan deity (i.e., a product of Christian folklore concerning pagans), revived in the 19th century as a figure of occultism and Satanism. It first appeared in 11th and 12th century Latin and Provençal as a corruption of "Mahomet", the Latinisation of "Muhammad",[1] but later it appeared as a term for a pagan idol in trial transcripts of the Inquisition of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century. The name first came into popular English-speaking consciousness in the 19th century, with debate and speculation on the reasons for the suppression of the Templars.[2]

Since 1855, the name Baphomet has been associated with a "Sabbatic Goat" image drawn by Eliphas Lévi. It represents the duality of male and female, as well as Heaven and Hell or night and day signified by the raising of one arm and the downward gesture of the other. It can be taken in fact, to represent any of the major harmonious dichotomies of the cosmos. However, Baphomet has been connected with Satanism as well, primarily due to the adoption of its symbol by the Church of Satan.

Given the sketchy history of this figure of Baphomet I doubt I’d have any reason to invoke it without doing considerable more non-Wikipedia research on it – there are so many other well known and much admired deities you can invoke if you’re casting love or lust spells. Even Aleister Crowley had some trouble trying to research the thing, and if it was something invented by Templars to placate christian torturers ... I have the same problem with it that I have with a lot of other wiccan stuff: NOT TRADITIONAL!

But fine. So maybe this spell writer knows something about Baphomet we don’t. But here he is describing the steps of the invocation. Keep in mind that all he’s doing here is raising sexual energy:

"Then when done, visualize yourself as a sexual beast; doing what beasts do when in heat. And it's probably better if you intent someone who already has that look and body language which says "Let's whoopie". Use the picture to masturbate and do all manner of nasty obscene acts."

Well, alrighty, then!  I have yet to read a traditional Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek or Roman spell that uses the words "let’s whoopie" and "nasty obscene acts" in their spells, although you’re right, I haven’t read them all. Still, I doubt I will find phrases like that. Thinking of sex as a "nasty obscene act" is not how the traditionalists thought before the common era. They considered it normal. "Nasty" is something right out of the christian playbook of shame. In other words, this apologist has already turned a simple energy raising spell into something shameful, ugly and disgusting. Made me want to say, "Ew!" and wash my hands with antibacterial hand gel or something.

Okay, so when we’re not a teenage American boy thinking himself all that, down there in his basement and writing up his own version of a titillating spell ... the truth is, a little research will bring you to the realization that sexual energy is a potent and powerful force.

So, here’s another spell example: the writer – who thankfully has dispensed with the christian "sex is dirty and bad!" messages she might have been handed in her youth - has found a picture of a man she finds arousing and desirable.

And I clutched that to my chest as I went into an altered state, which was extraordinary and intense, with amazing feelings of energy coursing through me. And I then proceeded to use a little good old-fashioned sex magic, which is essentially the harnessing of one's arousal and orgasm. That energy is directed into what it is that you are longing for, the goal of your spell, the object of your prayers. And for me it was embodied in this image.

See? No drama, no cringing, no euphemisms that make you go "ew" – none of that. The two examples are night and day. One was the product of the guilt-ridden christian culture, the other wasn’t. One was enthusiastic and positive; clear-headed, even. The other sounded like something that just crawled out of the sewer.

And while I realize I haven’t finished with the list of fallen angels yet, it also made me wonder if I wouldn’t learn more history on the incubus if I researched traditional sex magick spells. Hmmm.

Waiting on the Wolf Moon

Ahhh, we are moving towards the Wolf Moon on the 26th of January...legend has it that at the time of this moon, one often heard wolves in their packs howling in hunger, inching ever closer to the night fire. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule.

And you carry the wolf far back in your earlier ancestral memories ... think of all the mythologies about wolves you "understood" without needing to have them explained to you: Little Red Riding Hood, the song "Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", the term "wolf" bring applied to a male predator, the stories of werewolves, even the Twilight series ... can you think of more stories about wolves?

(And for anyone interested in the full moon calendar for the year – voilà!)

Full Moon Calendar 2013

January 26th, Full Wolf Moon, 11:38 pm
February 25th, Full Snow Moon, 3:26 pm
March 27th, Full Worm Moon, 5:27 am
April 25th, Full Pink Moon, 3:57 pm
May 25th, Full Flower Moon, 12:25 am
June 23rd, Full Strawberry Moon, 7:32 am
July 22nd, Full Thunder Moon, 2:16 pm
August 20th, Full Sturgeon Moon, 9:45 pm
September 19th, Full Harvest Moon, 7:13 am
October 18th, Full Hunter's Moon, 7:38 pm
November 17th, Full Beaver Moon, 10:16 am
December 17th, Full Cold Moon, 4:28 am

Looking through the day books ... this appears to be St. Agnes Day:

So. Once upon a time (when I first started this blog and before everything went to hell in a hand basket, as they say), I had started out on a "Search for a Soul Mate". That was put on hold while I bravely ... okay, whine-ingly and grumpily ... attempted to recover from one disaster, loss and illness after another. And now here we are, back at St. Agnes Day.  This is hardly a witchy sort of thing, but it did make me laugh. The history behind the day: how to find a husband. All sorts of witchy ideas on how to do that, though.  The ideas are just ... at least in my case ... a tad dangerous.

" ... fetch at midnight from the nearest churchyard a half brick, which she should place under her pillows, by this means, she was sure to dream about courtship and marriage. "

Sleep all night on half a brick, eh? As for the "nearest churchyard" ... hmmmm. That would be Saint Michael’s, built in 1886, and if you’re thinking anyone was buried in the small grassy patch in front of it, think again. No bricks laying around – very clean church. Good thing too; me sleeping on a brick all night, cut in half or no, would not result in a pleasant morning.

Another idea: Instructions from circa 1800 suggest ...

" ... the parties inquiring must lie in a different county from that in which they commonly reside; and, on going to bed, must knit the left garter about the right-legged stocking, letting the other garter and stocking alone; and, as they rehearse the following verses, at every comma knit a knot:

This knot I knit,
To know the thing I know not yet,
That I may see the man that shall my husband be;
How he goes, and what he wears,
And what he does all days and years.
- Accordingly, in a dream,
the desired one will appear,
with the insignia of his trade or profession. "

Here’s hoping his insignia is a caduceus, since the very idea of me – the absolute non-knitter – waving knitting needles around is as dangerous as ... well, let’s just say things could get seriously ugly.

So much for Saint Agnes.

The History of Italics and Perfect Music

Okay, I was wrong. "Italic" actually does have something to do with "Italy" – so named because the guy who happened to invent the slanted Italic typeface was Aldus Manutius, a Venetian printer. But still, the word "italic" does not mean, "having to do with Italy", it means, "having a slanted typeface." So I was at least partially right.

But then ... I confronted yet another OCD moment generated by a dumb re-tweet:

"You shall move forwards the moment you cannot accept failure any longer, for success comes to he who accepts nothing less."

The Grammar and Spelling Psycho Police Squad

See, now - THAT was "italic".  But to continue:  ARGH! No, no, no, no!!! The word is FORWARD! FORWARD! FORWARD! Singular, singular, singular! [BLAM! BOOM! KER-SPLAT!!] [Pause] [Blink] [panting heavily] Hey, what happened to "she"?

Back to business. I seem to have run off in a hundred different directions lately ... at the moment, I’ve just finished reading Graham Phillips’ The Marian Conspiracy, not because the topic has much to do with the direction of this blog, but more because every once in a while, a good old-fashioned "whodunit" conspiracy theory is entertaining.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t all that entertaining. Completely lacking in logic (you have no idea), filled with wild guesses, haphazard and bizarre suppositions, and historically inaccurate and ludicrous leaps of fancy passing for reason. Among the many problems with the book: he never even addresses any of the other "conspiracy theories" – such as the "ben Pantera" story, or the other Mary’s – i.e., the Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene story. In the blink of an eye, we jump over to England where he announces he has located the resting place of King Arthur, so it appears he’s trying to wrap up every myth in Western Europe.

Has anyone ever looked at a map? He’s trying to tell us that Joseph of Arimathea with Jesus’ mother Mary in tow (keep in mind the woman had to be in her 50’s or thereabouts) jumped into a small boat, rowed the entire length of the Mediterranean Sea, through the Pillars of Hercules, up the Atlantic Ocean, past all of France, Spain and Portugal, rowed past the mouth of the English Channel, up the western shores of England and sidled up to a wild, unfriendly island off the coast of a country that we now know as Wales?

WHY?? Just because Romans were unhappy with the irritating new cult of christians? Hell, christians have managed to irritate everyone (when they weren’t slaughtering them) since Day One , so if relocating to Wales was the answer, the island would have sunk into the sea by now from the population overload. What, the two of them couldn’t have moved to a village where no one knew them? (I had the same question when it was theorized that Joseph traveled all that way with Mary Magdalene. And she was relatively young.)

One fully expected the author to leap to his feet and declare that – eureka! - he had also solved the mysteries of the Loch Ness Monster, Area 51 and Mothman while he was at it. His big proof for Mary being buried in Wales? An ancient tombstone slab with the astrological sign for Virgo on it, despite the fact that ten to fifteen years after the crucifixion – an estimated time of death for her - no one on the planet gave her a moment’s thought, or thought she was a virgin at the time of his birth. This virginity thing was wholly an invention of the church, quite some time later.

Really. By the last paragraph you’re banging your head on the nearest hard surface in frustration.

So next: Sephir Yetzirah (or The Book of Formation). This text, written somewhere between the 3rd and 6th centuries, was somewhat misrepresented at first as another medieval text on the creation of the earth (much like Genesis), but is more a reflection of the creation of the Kabbalah. Maybe they’re the same thing, but this is the first text I’ve read where a Creator is actually defining the parameters of the Universe – bringing the Universe into being and setting its borders, that is - with musical sounds and letters.

Another coincidence of belief. I tend to think there is something to the musical sounds. Going back to my first mention of my dream about the Sea of Octagons – the Soul Nursery – the other thing I mentioned was the music. Thursday, December 6th:

"I’ve written the first seven sets of verses, which, in my theological world, began with a dream. Difficult to explain: an endless field of octagons, brightly lit from within, moving gently, and within each, twin souls, wrapped around each other, like a "yin" and a "yang" symbol, but not exactly. The souls were cared for, but I have no memory from that dream of anyone or anything beyond what I’ve described: a distant view of the nursery, the knowledge that I began there and the touch of my soul mate. This was my "memory" of a "soul’s nursery". I also remember the music in this dream, which could never be recreated, as it consisted also of sounds and notes which don’t exist in our world, so I can’t even describe them, other than to say that the sound was the very source of bliss."

Actually, I can describe it more accurately in words than in music. Picture a few bars from a beloved symphony on a page. Doesn’t matter which one. Now imagine that the page is transparent. The musical notes on that page don’t merely progress from left to right on a scale, there are also variations of those notes behind the notes you see on the clear page, and notes behind those notes, and on and on, to the far reaches of space. BUT – there are even more notes lifting off the page towards you (the viewer/listener), through you and past you. And – here’s the kicker – all of those infinite notes are in perfect harmony, with each other. Or at least, that was my understanding of what I was hearing, in that dream, a perfect symphony. Notes I’d never heard before; music I’d never experienced before. Blissful was the only way to describe my reaction to that music. No composer alive could recreate that sound – it vibrated all the way through you and made you whole. Now THAT I could believe (because I have never forgotten that awesome dream): that all of reality was created with the use of sound.

It seemed that perhaps the mystical arm of the Kabbalah had snuck its way into the old testament – primarily because when I started reading about the first emanation, I was reminded of, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God." (John 1:1) – followed by page after commentary page of (christian) nitwits annotating the sentence with the nonsense that the "word" behind the creation of the entire Universe was the "Good News of the Gospel" (riiiiiiight. Bet Buddhists and Hindus would be just thrilled to hear THAT!), which had to send everyone with a working brain up the walls, or with (jewish) nitwits insisting that anyone who interpreted the concept of evil in the kabbalah structure in any way but theirs were "heretics".

Source:  www.learnkabbalah.com/evil_kabbalistic_views/

But you know me and my dead-eyed squint at the different ways people look at evil. I have very strong opinions about the sorts of things I consider to be "evil"; not everyone shares them. That doesn’t make me wrong and everyone else right, or the reverse – it means we differ on the definitions and examples of "evil"- who and what it is.

I am STILL trying to figure out what was so awful about incubi.

Applause for Lexa Roséan

Ahhh, Saturday. Saturn's day. Or "Day of Cronus", if you lived in Ancient Greece. One of my favorite (not) descriptions of Saturn, written in 1995: "Saturn is the Roman and Italic god of agriculture and the consort of Ops. He is believed to have ruled the earth during an age of happiness and virtue."

Italic god, is he? Really! So, he’s actually Saturn? (*sigh*) Does someone need to mention that the nation of Italy didn’t even EXIST until the 19th century? And that the word "italic" has nothing whatsoever to do with the nation of Italy? Once again ... [KA-POW!!!]

Source:http://www.crowl.org/lawrence/time/days.html#Saturday

Lest anyone think I do nothing but complain about annoying and illiterate witches all day, au contraire! Found a Saturn Anti-Theft Spell written by a witch named Lexa Roséan, based out of New York City. (Naturally). The way she wrote up this spell is spot-on perfect:

She cited the original source for it, and even quoted it. Now here I might have even been a little more specific. Was she referring to The Veritable Key of Solomon or something else? But I am definitely not going to complain about the way she did it. If needed, you could track this down. Just might require a little more research.

She next said, "Here are alternatives you can use to make the spell easier." I might have wanted to know why she chose to replace the original ingredients and steps with these new ones. But I’m still not going to complain, teaching witches like Lexa are so rare.

And THIS, friends and neighbors, is how you write up a spell for others to use:

Saturn Anti Theft Spell
Excerpt from Easy Enchantments by Lexa Roséan

This spell will invoke the watchful eye of Saturn to protect your valuables.

Ingredients needed: Earl Grey tea bag, lemon peel, ginger, peppermint, black pepper, cinnamon powder

In a medieval book of talismanic magic, believed to have been written by King Solomon, there is found a seal of Saturn which protects and guards all property and wealth one may possess. The Hebrew words hael hagadol hagebor v’hanorah1 are written around the outer circle of the seal. The middle circle holds the names of four great and terrible angels and the innermost circle contains the Tetragrammaton or the four sacred letters comprising the most powerful and holy name of G-d. Believe me, if you have a copy of this seal, ain’t nobody gonna touch your stuff!

I’m not talking a Xerox copy from a book. I’m talking a properly prepared copy drawn up by an initiated ceremonial scribe. A copy drawn on goat skin parchment using dragon’s blood ink and a crocodile quill pen. I’m talking a copy prepared in the correct manner and time. It must be made in the hour of Saturn, on the day of Saturn, which must fall on the third of the month of Saturn, in the year of Saturn’s rule.

Interested in the easy enchantment equivalent? One Earl Grey tea bag. Empty contents into bowl. Add lemon peel, ginger, peppermint, pinch of black pepper, and cinnamon powder. This is a very powerful protection powder that is used to invoke Saturn’s watchful eye. Sprinkle around your treasures or stuff in small pouch or zipper lock bag. Place in purse or carry on your person. Don’t worry, ain’t nobody gonna touch your stuff! http://www.lexarosean.com/spell11.htm

But here’s also a good example of why explaining substitutions is so important. I’m not sure what an "initiated ceremonial scribe" is, but all of the other ingredients are not that difficult to find, in today’s day and age. "Goat skin parchment" is no doubt used because Saturn rules Capricorn whose symbol is a goat. Companies like Pergamena sell white goat-skin parchment. Dragon’s Blood is a plant, not the blood of an actual dragon. Readily available. "Crocodile quill pen" – hmm. Would a Cross Sauvage Crocodile Pattern Fountain Pen be a viable substitute? If not, why not? What was the importance of a crocodile in an invocation of Saturn? Crocodile seems more of an ancient Egyptian spell than Palestinian (let’s stick with the ‘King Solomon wrote this’ belief for the time being), but I could very easily be wrong.

Speaking of Invocations of Saturn, does anyone know the source of the invocation below? While looking up the properties of Saturn I ran across this "Invocation of Saturn".

"Ancient Saturn, of bones and honored dead, he who perseveres and guards the astral gates, who leads the Lords of Karma and crystallizes that which is needed and removes all negative blocks from my path, grant me the authority required over all legions to manifest my will. Ruler of Capricorn, exalted in Libra, element of earth, banish all evil energies that stand in the way of my perfection."

In a state of grumpy annoyance that NO ONE who published this invocation on the net cited an original source for this (where's Lexa Roséan when you need her?), I did a Google search on "Ancient Saturn, of bones and honored dead" and found only mindless repetitions (9 or 10 times at least, judging by the Google options tossed back at me), by people behaving as though this was a traditional, time-honored invocation, but without bothering to cite a traditional, time-honored source for it. So maybe it IS a "traditional, time-honored invocation", but I doubt it, based solely on "banish all evil energies that stand in the way of my perfection." Who defines what "evil energies" are? And what, exactly IS "your perfection", sweeties? Why should anyone assume that it is "evil energies" standing in the way of your perfection? Or maybe YOU are the "evil energy standing in the way of your own perfection", and you’ve just banished yourself! Ahhh, justice.

Other issues with the invocation: "astral gates" and "Lords of Karma" are two of the last phrases you would expect to find in a traditional invocation to the Roman god Saturn – or the Greek god Cronus, either – so that’s another red flag. Lastly, a brief pass through the attributes of Saturn failed to turn up attributes mentioning "bones" and/or "honored dead". There would be a lot of other deities who are connected with "bones and honored dead", I should think ... or maybe I missed something. Actually, the "grant me the authority over all legions to manifest my will" did sound at least John Dee era-ish (and thus Crowley-ish), but the rest of it didn’t. Verifiable source, anyone??? Did somebody invent it? When? Who? Why?

Following Up on Last Year's Issues

"The practice of magic was omnipresent in classical antiquity."

One of my favorite opening sentences in a textbook – possibly ever. Bibliographed. Footnoted. Cited. Loved it.
Graf, Fritz. Magic in the Ancient World. Philip, Franklin, trans. Harvard University Press, 1997. 

Ah, the utter joy of discovering legitimate magickal traditions and not the nonsensical burbling of Tinkerbelles and Twinkies claiming to be witches when the truth is they have half of their sizeable rumps ensconced in local churches, singing "kum bah yah" around campfires just like they did in childhood bible camp. I’m serious, most of those women have deprived so many students of legitimate power in favor of "feel good" silliness, they should be run out of town on a rail.

I know, I shouldn’t be singling out christians devolving into christian-wiccan idiots for their disastrous leaps of logic that send them flying into the nearest abyss. Great example: (tune up the violins); "Every time I hear a newborn baby cry ... I believe." They even put that one to music. One of the most inane voids of logical course ever devised. Really??!!?? You believe ... what, exactly? That infants of any species are born with an inherent ability to express their basic needs? That proves evolution in the art of survival if anything, not a deity.

But that logical failure crosses all belief systems. I was also reading H.P. Blavatsky’s preface to the first volume of Isis Unveiled: "Prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers – you have proved God!" – in her "ex nihilo nihil fit" discussion, raising again the problems with idiots not realizing they are giving a sole deity a capital "G" ... raising all sorts of new issues. This is the same designation used by "an unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched clergy; a host of sects, and three warring great religions; discord instead of union, dogmas without proofs, sensation-loving preachers, and wealth and pleasure-seeking parishioners' hypocrisy and bigotry, begotten by the tyrannical exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day, sincerity and real piety exceptional." (same source) So why use the term?

But setting that aside for the moment in favor of the (il)logical leap, above: noooooo, (assuming you can conclusively prove the existence of a soul of man by any method, in the first place) you have only proved that men have souls. Can’t even prove that women do, according to Blavatsky, which seems an odd premise in a book written by a woman, but no matter.

(And by the way, for those who never bothered to pick up some elementary Latin: "ex nihilo nihil fit" means "nothing comes from nothing". And here you thought Rodgers and Hammerstein invented that, when they wrote the lyrics for "The Sound of Music". Ha! Not likely.)

Or this, in a discussion of Plato:

And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era (i.e., Plato) mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself, and its metaphysical expression. Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati, and so many others, will be found to have transmitted their indelible imprint through the intervening centuries upon Plato and his school. Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and the ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So surviving the shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?

Oh, I dunno..! Knowledge which had survived the "shock" of time might not be automatically "divine and eternal", but (logically speaking) "very, very old"? I really hate stuff that is supposed to be passing for logical deduction failing in an "epic" fashion, to use a contemporary adjective. Point being that if Ms. Blavatsky had something worthwhile to say, we might never know about her message if we can’t bring ourselves to progress in her book beyond the preface after reading nonsense like this.

I would dismiss this with, "So much for the theosophists" were it not for her basic, underlying premise that there is one "universal" truth and that all of earth’s belief systems contain one facet of it. I can’t swear that’s true, I just suspect it is; still, she hasn’t proved that in Isis Unveiled, or ... at least not so far. All she’s done is irritate me with logic failure.

I also basically agree with her overall opinion of Plato and the influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries on him, although – again – have problems with her logical deductions.

"The philosophy of Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the Neoplatonic School was taught and illustrated "in the mysteries". Many have questioned and even denied this; and Lobeck, in his Aglaophomus, has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred orgies as little more than an empty show to captivate the imagination. As though Athens and Greece would for twenty centuries and more have repaired every fifth year to Eleusis to witness a solemn religious farce!"

In this, I actually do agree with her, but I wouldn’t use the "twenty centuries" length as a source for logic, unless it was used by some christian to prove the veracity of their faith. I’ve actually seen them try this: "It HAS to be true. It has lasted for 2000+ years!" Then, of course, you ran roll your eyeballs at them and bring up the Eleusinian Mysteries, or even this quotation, just to watch their heads explode, trying to discredit it without discrediting their own mythologies. To come up with strong proof that the Mysteries were legitimate, it would be required to recreate them, as it appears no one broke the law and wrote down their experiences. Or at least we haven’t found a document thus far.

Although, you possibly could remind them that actual manifestations were recreated at every initiation, which might stump them for a while – until they start singing (tune up the violins); "Every time I hear a newborn baby cry ... I believe." And at that point, I give you full permission to slap them. Initiates in the Mysteries had lots more foot blisters but lots more fun – read about the recreations of Baubo and her dirty jokes sometime.

I know I haven't finished the list of fallen angels in the incubus/succubus discussion, but I did run across an interesting discussion on the word "demon", which does possibly explain the change in the word in the christian era into something exclusively malevolent, when it was not intended that way in ancient Greek:

"DAIMONION is a diminutive of DAIMWN, which originally meant something like "dispensing power" and which was often used of a god whose name was either unknown or not deemed important to identify in this instance. DAIMONES are nameless supernatural powers, generally thought subordinate to the Olympian pantheon. Bauer cites in particular a celebrated passage from the Symposium of Plato where Diotima is trying to define EROS as a supernatural power that mediates between humanity and the gods. If you want to understand what is meant by that phrase there, you really ought to look up that passage in the Symposium and read more of it. DAIMWN and DAIMONION can mean so many things across such a range that I don't think it would be fair to venture any simple account."

Source: a 1998 discussion, now archived, on http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

Moving forward: January. The month of Janus, the God of beginnings and transitions. From the online etymology dictionary:

"January (n.) late 13c., Ieneuer, from Old North French Genever, Old French Jenvier (Modern French Janvier), attested from early 12c. in Anglo-French, from Latin Ianuarius (mensis) "(the month) of Janus," to whom the month was sacred as the beginning of the year (see Janus; cf. Italian Gennajo, Provençal Genovier, Portuguese Janeiro). The form was gradually Latinized by c.1400. Replaced Old English geola se æfterra "Later Yule." In Chaucer, a type-name for an old man.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=January