Day #25 of My Search for My Soulmate – and How Damien Echols Stole My Reading

VACATION!  Andre Bocelli is singing, appropriately, Libertá, and the song is so joyful it makes me want to dance.  The cats, in grave danger of being tripped over,  fallen on and utterly squashed, if such an event were to occur, are quite pleased that I have restrained myself from trying – and failing, I’m quite certain, with the useless feet and legs I have – to dance. 

Two days until I can finally get a set of snow tires put on the car … three more days until the surgeon can tell me what’s wrong with my lower legs and feet … luckily, I’ll have something fun to do before the back surgeon hits me with the bad news (i.e., “HA HA!  ’yer crippled for life!  Live with it, ‘ya gimp!!”) – Part I of … er … draws a blank on the title … you know, that Twilight movie - opened yesterday, so I’ll be able to sneak into a matinee on Monday after all the screaming teenaged girls have cleared out and gone back to school and have my own guilty pleasure moment.  Forget Team Jake or Team Edward – helllooooo, Team Quileute!  Er, I mean Gil Birmingham!

Was awakened this morning with more horrible leg and foot tendon and muscle cramps that turned my feet inward and down – I couldn’t even press my feet down flat on the floor to get the cramps massaged out.  The “Search” is temporarily on hold until I can get a diagnosis on my legs and feet – the last thing I want to do is saddle some poor guy with a crippled soul mate.

So I attended a “Messages from the Beyond” thingie this afternoon, at a local occult bookstore.  The last time I had any contact with a psychic at all was at a Renaissance fair, about 10 years ago.  The woman ten years ago couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn – not a single thing she said was right.  Didn’t have much hope for this thing either – I was just curious.  I had one question for the “Great Beyond”:  were my feet going to be healed, or was I going lame?”

I shuffled out of it thinking I must have some psychic black box surrounding me – the psychic (who I’d never met before; I didn’t know anyone in the room either) – hit so many bulls-eye’s it was staggering … didn’t even go fishing for them either … but only one of them was about me.  That one was impressive in its specificity, but had nothing to do with my feet:

“Older woman behind you, passed on.  She says she was an excellent embroiderer.  You have a lot of her work.  The sewing table that she bequeathed to you was stolen.”  Bulls-eye.  I mean, such a bulls-eye my jaw dropped.  Maternal grandmother.  Every word of that was true.

That was it, though.  Here are the remainder of them:

“I see a young man, connected with you, isolated for a long time.  I don’t know why.  Why am I seeing the Boston Red Sox?  He’s, like, REALLY obsessed with the Boston Red Sox.  Sagittarius.  Do you know who that is?”

I gulped for a second time.  Well yes and no.  Knew who it was, but “connected with me”?  How does someone say, “Yeah, he’s my signpost”?  More importantly, what’s he doing in my reading?  Never met the guy in person, and besides, he’s galavanting around in bleeping New Zealand!  Let him get his own reading!  She went on:

“Well, the spirits say to tell him they’re working on him.  He hasn’t passed, right?  He’s still alive.  Has he been ill?”

I mutter, “Yeah, I think so, maybe,” still P.O.’ed that Damien hijacked my reading.  Besides, I wasn’t the world’s best expert on his health, either.

“Well, tell him they’re helping him.  Lots of spirits are gathered around him, helping him.  He’ll get much better.  He feels downhearted about it.  But he’ll be fine.”

“Uh … okay.”

WHAT ABOUT ME??!!??  Am I going to be a cripple?  I’m getting pissed at Sekhmet, too, for being so silent.  Why don’t they see a lioness behind me?  I think, “Sekhmet, will you roar or something?”

The psychic turns to a woman two seats away from me.

“Why do I see an Egyptian Temple?  I see you walking through two gigantic pillars into an Egyptian temple.”  She goes into more detail about being drawn to an Egyptian spiritual being.

"You're going to learn a great deal from this being; you'll experience a tremendous amount of spiritual growth."

Now I’m thinking, “Huh?  Wait, that’s ME, that’s the temple at Karnak.  Sekhmet is through those pillars.”

The woman two seats away from me looks startled and completely clueless and then goes, “I dunno, maybe because I read a biography of Cleopatra?”

My head drops in despair.  Remind me never to go to one of those things ever again.  I alays walk out of them feeling utterly ignored by the universe in general and completely “unreadable”.

Anyway, Damien?  You’re going to get better.  There.  Message delivered.  As for whether or not I’m going to get better?  Who knows?  Kudos to the psychic – she did hit a string of bulls-eyes, I have to admit.  I just wish they had been about me.

Day #24 in my Search for my Soulmate: Wands and Trees

I probably should have done a little more research before blowing up at the late Scott Cunningham (see last entry), thinking I was the only person on the planet who refused to subscribe to the theory that wands must be snatched from living trees:

“Many wand makers prefer to only take wood that has already fallen from a tree. This can be a problem since most fallen wood is [sic] already begun rotting, unless you get storm wood (fresh wood that has fallen during a storm). If your wood can be found locally I would suggest getting storm wood, especially since the separation from the tree came during a time of great power of change…Wood from a tree that has been struck by lightning is VERY powerful, I call it Lightning Wood. This type of wood is so powerful I wouldn't suggest anyone making or using one unless they are experienced.”

www.magicwandsofwizardry.com/magic-wands_028.htm

The first thing you need is some sort of rod. Driftwood is choice because it is tough, the bark is already gone, and it is worn smooth. Make sure it’s sturdy, though. The wrong piece can shatter. If you have no access to driftwood and aren’t planning a Spring Break at the beach before the time you want to have a wand, look for a branch. Sometimes campuses have their trees and bushes trimmed and they leave the branches lying around for someone to pick up. Look for a relatively straight branch about the width of your forefinger or thumb and about 12 to 18 inches long (Some traditions call for a wand of 21 inches). …

http://www.collegewicca.com/BOSfiles/wand.html

Many books tell you to ask a tree if you may cut a branch to make a Wand, but I do not suggest this. Leave the trees alone and see what branches they have already shed on the ground. Look on the ground for a fallen branch whose shape pleases you. Peel the bark off, or you can leave some of the bark on if you like.

http://www.realmagicwands.com/MakingWands.html

The next example is an author with the improbable name of Alferian Gwydion MacLir, whose parents (if they actually named him that in the State of Minnesota) ought to be brought up on charges of getting their kid beaten up all the way through his public school years.  Let’s all hope he named himself that, and can bring himself up on charges instead:

“Some among the wise insist that a wand must be cut from a living tree.  I do not think that is necessary; so-called deadwood is not dead in the spiritual sense, and the dryad in it can be awakened just as with a branch cut green.”  (Wandlore, Alferian Gwdian MacLir, page 27)

The author of the book also has a website (http://www.bardwood.com/), where he crossly forbades people from quoting him without wasting everyone’s precious time asking his permission:  “You are laid under a binding geas to ask permission before quoting material from this web site. I mean it. You don't want to break out in boils, do you? I didn't think so.”

No, but since I don't like being threatened either, I decided to applaud the man for his book comment (above), copy stuff from the book without permission, and restrict myself to copying his injunction from the web site without written permission, just to see if he'll stick to his threat to curse me with a bad case of boils.  Of course, if I knew what boils actually were, it would help. 

Meanwhile, I'm setting up a counter-spell on THIS blog to curse him with a serious case of the weeping wilties (and he's a man; I'm sure he knows that the weeping wilties are), if I break out in so much as a pimple.  COPIED WITHOUT PERMISSION ON A DARE! NYAH NYAH HYAH!!!  COME & GET ME!  (<-- hard to believe I'm actually polite and loving with trees, isn't it?)

Prepare for the counter curse!  ("Swish and flick!  Swish and flick!") ("KABOOM!) (Uh-oh, I think I'm going to need a new wand ...")

My ultimate point was:  it seems I’m not all by myself out in left field here, screaming about cutting wands out of live trees.  And my second ultimate point was:  see, I told you I was a disaster as a witch.

Day #23 of My Search for My Soul Mate

Sekhmet has arrived.

Call me neurotic, but I generally like to wash things off that arrive in my home from elsewhere – you never know who sneezed on things, or handled things immediately after leaving the ladies room without washing their hands, etc., etc. (and I say that not because I suspect Sacred Source of anything so heinous but because far too many times I have  watched women from my office stink up the woman’s room with clouds of fecal matter and fart-fragranced air, and then leave without even considering running their hands under water, never mind the soap.)

The irony?  When a woman shuffles out the door, she has to pass right by a sign that orders her to wash her hands.  The drawing that accompanied the sign, if you didn’t realize those were soap bubbles, actually looked like applauding hands.  These women are so stupid they must assume they were being applauded for releasing what had to be a world record stink-bomb of a bowel-movement and then not washing the stench of droplets of fecal material off of their hands.

“Yay!  Congratulations!  You’re a world class pig!”

Who raises these women?  MY mother would have hauled me back to the sink by one ear if I’d even thought about not washing my hands.  You don’t even want to THINK about the piglets these women are raising.

But back to Sekhmet.

I didn’t read the description carefully enough – I was expecting she’d be black in color, instead she was painted to resemble green marble.  Went to wash her off with a moist paper towel, and ended up with a paper towel soaked with a turquoise blue color.  Said, “&^%$%^&*”.  Next I tried a Lysol wet wipe out of  green plastic can.  Same result.  Now I have no idea what to do.  Spray her with Lysol or something?  Nothing like the vision of asphyxiating one’s deity in clouds of toxic fumes.  Maybe I’ll test a swipe of alcohol on the bottom of the statue where it won’t be visible if ALL of the paint dissolves.

I decided to research “ritual baths”, looking for a ritual bath guaranteed not to dissolve resin paint, which is why I ended up with Scott Cunningham’s Magical Herbalism, which I already had, from my Enchantments days.  I’d had that book for so long, the pages were turning beige instead of white.  I hadn’t even started reading about “ritual baths guaranteed not to dissolve resin paint”, because I got sidetracked reading about tools you might need if you decided you wanted to get involved in “Magical Herbalism”.  First on the list was a magical knife for cutting herbs, which I’d already learned was called a “boline”.  I looked some up, and at every turn was met with, “NOT TO BE SOLD IN MASSACHUSETTS!”.

Say what?!?

Now, here’s the catch – I already had knives I used to cut herbs .. and other things.  A few of them I’d even bought in Massachusetts – at the grocery store, in the “kitchen supplies” aisle.  I wasn’t even planning to buy a boline – until I was told that by law, I couldn’t.   All of a sudden, I couldn’t live without a boline or an athame.  I had to have them.  I had to have them NOW.  Actually, until that moment, I had always used kitchen shears to snip herbs for meal times.  Now I just HAD to have a two-sided herb knife or I’d die.

Massachusetts, it seems, has still not developed the intelligence to move past her Salem Witch Trial Days, and certainly not past the days of Prohibition.  Nothing makes an item of desire more desirable than absolutely forbidding it.  Massachusetts is a stupid state.  If you’re a witch, or a wizard, in Massachusetts, you have to sneak out of state, buy an athame or a boline in some other state, and sneak it back in the Nanny State and risk getting arrested and thrown in jail.  Like Damien was thrown in jail for reading Aleister Crowley and calling himself wiccan.  You wouldn’t have thought so, but apparently Massachusetts was as backward as Arkansas.

I was pretty much stunned.  Really, I hadn’t even considered buying either one – probably ever – the thought had never even crossed my mind.  Now I was  searching high and low for shops in New Hampshire or Maine that sold them. Then I stopped myself, while I waited to calm down.    I have never been so homesick for New York as I was, after trying to cut herbs in Massachusetts.

America.  Land of the Free, huh?  Not in Massachustts, it ain’t.

Meanwhile, I tried mixing up the annointing oil with my new eyedropper.  Smelled wonderful, but why does the scent disappear so quickly?  I decided I liked the scent better without the orange oil, and tried to figure out why.

The last thing I did before closing the book was have a silent raging argument with the late Scott Cunningham (and probably the Gardnerians too, if they hold to the same opinion) about making a wand.  Not only do the instructions call for you to remove it from a living tree, they want you to remove the bark.  My immediate reaction?  “[BLEEP!!] THAT!”

Truth is, mine is well over 30 years old at the moment, and it picked me.  I also knew nothing about trees at the time (and still don’t) and couldn’t tell you what kind of tree it came from.  I assume the universe knew what it was doing when it handed this beautiful wand to me.  Not only did I find it lying forlornly on the ground, but removing its beautiful bark never even occurred to me.  Years of holding it and always having it near me has left it with a beautiful sheen on the bark.  I love the thing.  When I wandered away from the Wicca lessons, it served as the best back scratcher on the planet.  I have carried it all over the United States and it’s still awesomely beautiful.

And not once did I harm a living tree to obtain her.  Screw THAT!  He may be far more experienced in Wicca than I am, but I still know he was wrong when he wrote that.  And witches are still wrong if they keep spreading that misinformation around.

Witches:  Rewrite your books.  It is NOT necessary that a wand come from a living tree.  The essence of the tree remains with the branch even if it is no longer attached to the tree, and ripping it away from a living tree is cruel to the wand and to the tree.  In fact, your essence bonds more easily to a wand not still bonded to a living tree.  These instructions are WRONG!  Using wood you obtain from the ground is equally valid.  If the wand finds you (easily determined by having it catch your eye and you finding it beautiful), claim it and make it your own.  And the bark is a beautiful part of the wood.  Trust me.  YOU look better with your skin on; so does the wood.

Making the Day Book is turning out to be rather fascinating … on November 9^th, I learned all about the Loy Krathong festival in Thailand.  This year it’s being held on the 24^th of November; Diane Stein in her “Goddess Book of Days” apparently didn’t think her readers would look it up and discover that it’s a floating holiday, and supposed to coincide with a full moon – Stein put it in her book on the 9^th.

Google some images of the festival, and it’s really rather beautiful – all these tiny lights floating on rivers, as everyone uses the festival to floating away their misfortune and bad things in the past and asking for good luck in the future.   Trying to envision what would happen if I went and floated something on the Charles.  Ehhhh … knowing the Boston Police, I’d probably get arrested.  Either for that, or for sneaking back into the state with a ritual herb cutting knife.

But now … back to Sekhmet.

"I am the Darkness behind and beneath the shadows.

I am the absence of air that awaits at the bottom of every breath.

I am the Ending before Life begins again,

The Decay that fertilizes the Living.

I am the Bottomless Pit,

The never-ending struggle to reclaim that which is denied.

I am the Key that unlocks every Door.

I am the Glory of Discovery,

For I am that which is hidden, secluded and forbidden

Come to me at the Dark Moon and see that which can not be seen,

Face the terror that is yours alone.

Swim to me through the blackest oceans

To the center of your greatest fears--

The Dark God and I will keep you safe.

Scream to us in terror, and yours will be the Power to Forbear.

Think of me when you feel pleasure, and I will intensify it,

Until the time when I may have the greatest pleasure

Of meeting you at the Crossroads Between the Worlds."

Charge of the Dark Goddess

http://www.angelfire.com/moon/mothergoddess/SekhmetShrine.html

Day #22 Soulmate Search

And More Things I Learned from Damien Echols

Now I’m experimenting with wheatberries.  I never had them before, and after my disaster with the Japanese radishes (see 2 entries ago), I made sure I was purchasing the right grain.  Of course, then I discovered I had nothing except ugly Tupperware dishes to store the grain in.  Oh, if that doesn’t make me feel just feel so un-countrified unhippy-ish, doing that.  Tupperware.  How suburban.  How provincial!  How un-continental.  I’m physically tying myself to a chair so as not to run out the door and over to Home Goods, looking for a chic ceramic container, since it would be made in China anyway.

I managed to combine numerous cultures into one lunch:  Egg drop soup (China), with spinach (Nepal to China where it was, and still is, known as the "Persian green"), and corn (or maize (zea mays), a domesticated plant of the Americas), wheatberries  (Babylonians, Hittites, Hebrews, Romans, Arabs and Egyptians), matzoh balls (Jewish) and saffron (India and Spain).  Could I cram more stuff into one soup bowl??  Anyway, it was delicious.
 

LOSS AND GAIN.

How sadly beats the heavy autumn rain;

How mournful drives the wind among the trees;

Along the shore the weary sailor sees

The waves roll in that send him out again;

The birds are restless in the scattered leaves,

The clouds move wildly on in massy fold,

And all the outer world, or earth, or air,

But yesterday so warm, so fair,

Is changed, and in a night, to drear and cold.

Now goes the golden autumn far away;

Now nearer comes the winter to my door;

And thus doth Nature, working evermore,

Create new life from changes and decay.

Between the Lights, page 355

A week or so ago, I was checking out Damien’s journal, which I’ve taken to calling “The Book of Damien” when I quote him in my Day Book, quickly turning into a Book of Shadows, mainly because I enjoy imagining archeologists 500 years from now unearthing my Day Book and trying to figure out what “The Book of Damien” was.  Yes, sadistic cruelty aimed at future archeologists IS my hobby, I’m sorry to say.  On October 25^th of 2010 he wrote,

“The archangel who presides over these things is Azrael. He’s commonly known as the “Angel of Death,” although I think that sounds a little scary to most people. Azrael not only escorts the dead to heaven but also helps the living get through the grieving process. We can also give him the emotions and states of mind we’ve outgrown, so that we can move forward. Azrael takes away fear, doubt, anger, worry, stress, and resentment. If it stands in the way of your developing a closer relationship with the Divine, Azrael will remove it.”  (Book of Damien, 25OCT2010)

Aside from the fact that I can’t find “Azrael” in my Lewis & Oliver Angels A to Z book (I wonder if he’s in Michele Belanger’s book on Demons), Damien really has become my Signpost Guy, because at that very same time he mentioned Azrael, I had begun reading all about Sekhmet, who had, it seems, a lot of the same characteristics as Azrael.

 

Azrael, I have to say, really does personify the utter terror westerners have for death.  Just google images of “Azrael” and see what you come up with.  Except for the one pimply kid who drew Azrael as a women with unnaturally gigantic boobs (you want to pat him comfortingly on the head and say, “Yes, yes, you’re terrified of female sexuality, we understand …”), most of the depictions are pretty ugly.  The one exception is the painting that appears on the Wikipedia page (right), in which he appears almost comforting.

Is he an angel?  Is he a demon?  Who knows?  I’d ask Damien, but see excuses for why I can’t (previous entries) and “ditto”.

Sekhmet  is credited with some of the same qualities of Damien’s “give him/her the emotions and states of mind we’ve outgrown”.  I hope “outgrown” means the same thing as, “the emotions and states of mind that we’ve realized are killing us”.  Anger.  Rage.  Resentment.  Those sorts of things.  Either he had a lot more to be angry about, or perhaps Damien just used a more patient and “understanding-sounding” way of wording the same sentiments.

I’m not as nice as he is.  I know I have an issue with rage, and it’s surfacing more and more lately.  Hence the intense anger directed at, for example, the stupid women of North Andover, who shove shopping carts at or maliciously sneeze on people.  Or, place their need to maniacally babble away on their cell phones while they’re driving high above the lives of others.  Maybe I should have said, hence the anger directed at stupid women in general.  I have basically zero tolerance for them.  Men overlook women’s evil largely because … well, where women are concerned, men are thinking with every other body part they have except their brains.  Women generally don’t have that distraction where other women are concerned.

So, as part of the “burning up those little scraps of paper” step in finding a soul mate – and I still haven’t done it yet - I knew I had to burn up the rage issue.  But there was a part of me that felt it was a larger problem than something that could disappear with a “burning a small piece of paper” ceremony, particularly because the rage rarely turned outward, except on paper or in journals and blogs; in reality, it always turned inward.  And I’d been trying to think of a way of learning how to banish it from myself, my psyche, my brain, my emotions.  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy; it was too big a part of me, and I knew it was causing me serious damage.

THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES.  I know.  I encountered Sekhmet and Damien’s mention of Azrael at the same time.  I don’t know why I found Sekhmet so intriguing, other than:  I was meant to find her intriguing, which almost felt like a calling of sorts. 

I knew a few things about Sekhmet.  I knew she was considered quite dangerous to invoke, and didn’t, as they say, suffer fools gladly.  This I actually liked about her, as I was normally opposed to and disgusted by “girly” nonsense anyway.  That is probably the best benchmark I have for people who claim to be “channelers”.  If any deity claims to be addressing me, and starts out the speech with, “My beloved child” and starts throwing out “thou”s, “thee’s” and “thys”, or something equally as ridiculous, I’ll get up and walk out.  Any deity worth his or her salt knows better than to address me like that and wouldn’t do it.  So needless to say, very few deities have addressed me at psychic fairs, let’s put it that way.  I can’t imagine for a second that Sekhmet would do such a thing so I’m operating on something I swore I would never employ:  a tablespoon of faith..  That’s all though.

From what I’ve heard, Sekhmet never answered questions you already knew the answer to, or did things for you that you could do for yourself, and I knew that even the heavily Islamic contemporary Egyptians recognized her as one of the few deities who still inhabited a ‘living statue’ – I vaguely recall reading about two nutball Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists who broke her statue in three pieces in an attempt to banish her altogether – it didn’t work. 

The thought that she might seek retribution for the damage terrified the local residents to such an extent that they hurriedly reconstructed her and punished the vandals severely – Muslim or not.  Hank Wesselman recorded an astounding encounter with the living Sekhmet in Karnak as well.  If there was one deity who understood a woman’s rage and could transform it, it was Sekhmet.

According to the White Moon Gallery, “It is widely believed that Sekhmet herself is a much more ancient deity, and in fact, Sekhmet is much older than Ra. It is told that she “came to Egypt from a place unknown and a time unrecorded” (Masters) as shown by some of her titles:

Lady of the Place at the Beginning of Time

One Who Was Before the Gods Were

Mother of All the Gods

As far as titles go, she actually has something like 100 titles and probably more.  She is, I believe, the only Egyptian goddess with a temple in the Americas, located in the Nevada Desert, which she inhabits.  She is so alive and visible she is loathed by the United States Air Force which buzz her from a local base regularly, so you know there has to be something good about her, for the obsessively pro-Christian, militaristic U.S. Air Force to hate her so much.  More’s the pity none of them can differentiate between the ancient Egyptians who had a huge impact on their own spiritual and cultural development (although they’re too stupid to admit it), and the present day Egyptian Muslims they feel they have to hate.  Same way the Arkansas Baptist Church Ladies hated Damien, so you know there’s something right about him, too.  Besides, Sekhmet has Sagittarius connections.  One guess what Damien’s birth sign is. 

If you read his description of his wife from his autobiography, his connection of sexuality with feline characteristics is pure Sekhmet, as connected as she is with sexuality and raw, untamed kundalini energy.  She may have her claws in him too, even if he doesn’t know it.  Or maybe he does and just never mentioned it.

There’s that sexual power again.  No wonder the Christians hate her.

http://www.sekhmettemple.com/

“If it stands in the way of your developing a closer relationship with the Divine …”  I think that’s the direction I’m supposed to be going, and I suspect Sekhmet is about to pick me up in her razor sharp teeth by the scruff of the neck and take me there.  And she isn’t going to tolerate any foot dragging or whining, either.  The dream space (see previous entry) was created for that purpose, and my willingness to seriously try to meditate is another part.  As always, Damien was “Mr. Signpost”, turning me in that direction, so that I could suddenly find myself looking into the stern eyes of a lioness-goddess, off in a new bend in the road. 

Sacred Source – which, I have to say, I’d never heard of until now -  agreed to send me a sistrum, which is an ancient Egyptian musical instrument, and a replica (I’m guessing N-scale, but I’m bad at estimating scales, even when I’m looking at model railroads) of the Karnak statue of Sekhmet, which is even awesome to look at in photos.  I should clarify that they’re not sending me an actual ancient Egyptian musical instrument; they’re sending me a replica of that, too.  I had to do another You-Tube video search to learn how they’re played and the rhythms they used.

Bill Miller solemnly pushes me forward with “Never Too Far” from his Spirit Rain cd, while I next research Sekhmet oil.  I love Bill Miller – well, not romantically – he’s just a phenomenal musician – slash - singer - slash - songwriter and I could listen to him all day.  He’s followed by Mario Frangoulis, whose “Hijo de la Luna” always makes me tear up when he gets to that last stanza.

Sekhmet Oil.  I realize I’m kind of throwing myself off a spiritual cliff, here … I know I need her help but am not sure how to ask for it.  Respect.  Anointing her when she arrives – the Egyptian “opening the mouth” ceremony … greeting her with respect at the very least.  Creating an elementary shrine of sorts.  I’m thinking, “Hopefully, she’d appreciate that much more than the Air Force disrespectfully buzzing her in Nevada.”  Will she elect to inhabit her statue in its newly created shrine in Massachusetts, the way she does in Karnak and Nevada?  ?  Well, time will tell.

I’m also thinking that someone ought to tell the Air Force pilots the story of what she did, according to Egyptian history, the LAST time she expressed her disapproval at the disrespect shown to deities, like herself.  Read the myth and you suspect immediately that this is the earlier version of the back-story for Noah’s flood:  a deity becoming so angry with human beings he decides to wipe them off the planet.  In Egypt it was Ra, who sent Sekhmet.  Judeo-Christians, with their contempt for women, rewrote the story to eliminate a feminine role;  they talk about Yahweh sending a flood to wipe humanity off the planet when they got rude and disrespectful.

In the Egyptian version, Ra sent Sekhmet who did her job so well Ra had to save humanity from her blood lust, which was considerable.  Like I said, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly.  And the U.S. Air Force is sticking their very foolish toes way over the line as far as that goes.  I’d back away from the Air Force, if I were you, to avoid getting splattered with the fallout, when she finally loses her temper at them in a big way.  All of the weapons and planes in the world won’t do them a bit of good when that happens.

Understand I have no problem with the U.S. Air Force in general; just with their habit of disrespecting deities of others.

But back to the Oil.  I flip through Bast and Sehkmet:  Eyes of Ra (Constantine and Coquio) and find the recipe. 

2 drops frankincense oil

2 drops orange or sweet orange oil

2 drops sandalwood oil

2 drops rosemary oil

Hmm.  Love the visual image of me trying to measure “drops” without an eyedropper.  Well, THAT has “one big oily mess” written all over it.  What do you say I go looking for an eyedropper and a bottle?  I discover I have all the ingredients except for the sandalwood oil.  See?  I knew there was a reason I had frankincense oil, which I had picked up at a Whole Foods out of curiosity and mentioned, in a previous entry somewhere.

Normandi Ellis believes that the rage of Sekhmet is a manifestation of “thwarted energy.” Because women are taught to repress anger and turn it inwards, it builds up – and eventually, that energy has to be released. Sekhmet is transformative power, and we can use her energy in a positive way by learning how to release and express it appropriately.

Normandi Ellis, Feasts of Light: Celebrations of the Seasons of Life

Sekhmet:

“Ruler of the desert, Blazing eye of the sun” (lyrics from “Om Sekhmet”)

Day #21 in my Search for a Soulmate

The Witch’s Book of Days (Kozocard, Owens and North), has a very Celtic tone to it, but I did love reading about today, the 31^st of October.

 “On this day, be aware of your personal totem as your “ally” and personal guide.  This is whatever totemistic guide you have most resonated to, who has most helped and assisted your path.  This day is given a blank rune, “Odin”, signifying unlimted potential, wide open possibilites, the blank canvass on which to paint, the sum of all totalities.  The Ogham symbol is Koad, meaning Grove and signifying the sum of all knowledge, past present and future.”

My search for a Soul Mate is slowly rev’ing back up again … this seems like a good day to strart giving it some of my attention again.

My own DayBook entry earlier last month (September 22^nd) described the Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Cake Festival, celebrated in Japan, China, Vietnam and other places, and it was at that time that I ordered my first-ever Moon Cake mold.  Have never made a moon cake in my entire life, but there’s no time like the present, even if I had missed the actual day of the Festival.

I love it when things work the way they’re supposed to, as that so rarely happens.  The first step was to “season” the mold itself, which was made out of wood.  And how does one do that?  Well, the old me would have sprinkled some salt and pepper on it for “seasoning”, but I’ve come a long way since my early Jessica Simpson, “Hi, I’m a walking idiot!” days.  I have a cast iron skillet now.  I know what “seasoning” is, when it comes to cast iron skillets, and I was right.  “Soak in oil for two days.” said the instructions.

Did so.  In any event, the oil soak brought out all of the beauty of the wood, and I had the most gorgeous moon cake mold drying out on my counter … so beautiful I almost didn’t want to use it.  But I did.

The wonder of “You-Tube” is never more evident than when you sit mesmerized, watching 10 separate videos of Chinese women babbling away happily in Cantonese, demonstrating the fine art of making moon cakes in their kitchens while you gasp in admiration, “Oh, THAT’S how you do it!”  It looks so easy when they do it – even though you just know you’re going to end up with flour all over you, the ceiling, the floor, the bewildered cats, and bits of dough hanging from the light fixtures.  Also, they put salted egg yolks in theirs, which I have no intention of putting in mine because it sounds so … yolky and salty.

And why is that?  Let’s go to the experts!  Okay, I don’t know any experts, so let’s Google it:  Most moon cakes consist of a thin, tender skin enveloping a sweet, dense filling, and may contain one or more whole salted egg yolks in its center to symbolize the full moon. Very rarely, moon cakes are also served steamed or fried.

According to Wikipedia, “traditional moon cakes have an imprint on top consisting of the Chinese characters for "longevity" or "harmony", as well as the name of the bakery and the filling inside. Imprints of the moon, the Chang'e woman on the moon, flowers, vines, or a rabbit (symbol of the moon) may surround the characters for additional decoration.

Moon cakes are considered a delicacy; production is labor-intensive and few people make them at home. Hence, most prefer to buy them from commercial outlets, which may range from smaller individual bakery shops to high-end restaurants. The price of moon cakes usually ranges from US$10 to US$50 for a box of four, although cheaper and more expensive moon cakes can also be found.”

Woo-hoo!!!!  My next occupation!  Making Moon Cakes and charging $50 for four!  I’d be rich in … (counting fingers) … so in one day, I could make … so, in one day I’d earn … okay, maybe not RICH, as in the “1% getting her ass justifiably kicked by the Occupy Wall Street people”, but …

And of course, this one will have to be an “invent my own recipe” version of a Moon Cake, mainly because I have no idea where to come up with a can of Lotus Seed Paste … even a Google search wasn’t much help.  Of course, all the above mentioned Chinese women are cheerfully boiling Lotus seeds on their stoves and then mashing them like potatoes, as though everyone could just amble down to the local deli and ask for a pound of lotus seeds, no questions asked, no raised eyebrows, no “Say WHAT?!?” tossed at you by the stock boy at the Stop & Shop.

I did find a can of almond paste, so perhaps that will do, and I can have an “Almond Moon Cake”, which will shock any Chinese reader to no end, obviously …assuming I can tolerate the taste of “almond paste”, as I don’t believe I’ve ever had any.  And I found some freshly grated frozen coconut at an Indian grocery store over at Shawsheen Plaza a week or so ago … a container of chopped dates … some chopped nuts … well, we’ll see how it goes.

Later:  Yummy!!  Actually, I’m sure a line of Chinese women would spit it out and howl “Phooey!” (or whatever it is they yell when confronted with a taste they weren’t expecting), but since I have no idea what lotus seed paste or red bean paste taste like … I had to go with the almond paste.  Mixed that with grated coconut, chopped almonds and chopped dates, and it was actually yummy.

However, I’m going to have to grade this a 50/50 attempt.  The mold worked.  (yay!)  And by “worked”, I mean I could remove the cake once I’d pressed the dough and filling into the mold, and then toss it proudly on a cookie tin.  However, maybe someone who is gifted at making Moon Cakes could answer these questions:  by about the fourth cake, the impressions from the mold were getting more and more faint, as the carvings in the mold  were filling with moist flour.  And two, I suspect the yolk wash recipe was a tad off, as it was a thick wash and brushed away what impressions were left.  (The wash I used:  one yolk, 1 teaspoon sesame oil).  And I used a basting brush – was that too strong?

Still, it’s always fun to learn new things.

Since Massachusetts falls apart in a light breeze, you can imagine what happened in the “Wet October Snowstorm of 2011”.  Woke up when the power went off, around 11:00 p.m.  Opened the curtains to get some ambient reflective light … was promptly blinded by a snow removal guy who turned his headlights on “blind to kill” and pointed them directly at my window.  Don’t ask me why.

Shortly after that, there were several huge crashes, as large tree branches came down directly in front of my living room window … (*sigh*) … and we finally got the power  on sometime around 4 or 5 a.m.  Went back to sleep.

Awakened at 7 a.m. this morning with horrible tendon cramps in BOTH legs, pulling my feet up towards my shins, and if you don’t think that was godawful screamingly painful, think again.  I literally started howling “Help me!” because I had no idea how to get rid of the cramps, and couldn’t stand on either leg, because both feet were twisted to the side and pulled up … I ended up massaging them for a good fifteen minutes, while crying my eyes out from the pain.  This was followed by three to four hours of ankles feeling so weak and stiff and sore they felt like I’d twisted both of them.  I’m going lame, aren’t I?

But it was par for the course – this week has been hell.  I spent Saturday morning at Lawrence General Hospital where they sucked fourteen gallons of blood out of me … okay, I lied.  Six tubes.  But still.  Then off to the local credit union.  Ever notice how wonderful everything is when people are trying to sell you something, and then as soon as they have you …?  In this case, I had to wait a good twenty minutes before getting waited on, and even the evil empire, the Bank of America, did better than that.  Although, the credit union isn’t charging me for using my debit card, so …

Soul Mate Search Day #20: More Things I Learned from Damien Echols

Another thing I learned from Damien Echols since I last posted:  “égrégore”, even though I don’t think he ever used the word.  This occurred to me while I was working (and by “working”, I mean “trying every single time I lay down and tried to sleep and failing miserably”) at creating the dream walking space.  It was frustrating.  I kept thinking, “What the hell??  The man managed to meditate for hours in the bowels of hell – (and by “hell” I mean the State of Arkansas) – why can’t I do this???” 

But so far at least – I couldn’t.  A few times I wanted to grab my cell phone, hit the icon for “Dial A Complete Stranger With A Working Brain Currently Hanging Out in New Zealand” and demand, “Give me some pointers, here!  Lessons!  Lessons!  Snap to it, bucko!”  Unfortunately … well, let’s start out the long list of complications snagging that scenario with, as I said two posts ago, he’s already more technologically advanced than I am – I’m the one who doesn’t have a cell phone, and he’s already probably calling half the planet and chatting away cheerfully, darn him.  Instead, I continued with the mental construction of the Dream Space.

My dream walking space has its origins in a vacation, and a weird spooky story, but here goes:

Okay, so I’m in Venice, Italy, the first time I’d ever been there.  This was basically a vacation – I’d already been to Rome, Florence, Milan and the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua.  I walk into a market area near the Ponte Rialto (Rialto Bridge), which had been created there fairly recently.  I should say that from the moment we arrived by train from Milano into Venice, I loved the city.   Fell madly and passionately in love with it.  Felt very comfortable and at home in it.  Looking back on it, it does seem odd since I’d never been there before, but at the time it didn’t even seem odd that I felt that way.

So here’s the part where I scare the [bleep!] out of the person I was traveling with.

I walk into this small piazza and am immediately extremely dizzy.  I feel I’m going to lose my balance and lean against a building.  Then I enter an odd state where I’m seeing one scene (the “present day scene”) with my right eye, and another scene (“the old scene”) with my left eye.  And my perspective keeps shifting, which is why I’m getting so dizzy.  There are points of similarity, but there are differences as well, between the two scenes.  And I’m so freaked out by this, I assume I’m having some sort of stroke or something, and am trying to hold myself upright against the building  and wondering if my medical coverage actually covers anything in Italy.

I start describing what I’m seeing to the person I’m with, although some of the sights are outside of my current field of vision.  (i.e., “There’s a fountain over there, it has a scene of women at a fountain on it, there’s a church around that wall, there’s a staircase behind that pillar, you can’t see it from here; if you look you’ll see a lion’s head on the balustrade, it’s marble, the steps are marble too, the lion’s head has an indent in the stone where I can put my thumb …”  And I’m going on and on, even describing a canal that doesn’t exist anymore.

And what’s even more strange?  In my head I’m saying all this in English.  To my friend, I’m speaking some of it in an unintelligible language (which turned out to be Venetian).  Tuscan Italian I know; Venetian I don’t.  But I was partially babbling away in it, because a resident nearby understood some of what I was saying.

I end up describing my husband and children – and I should clarify at this point that in this lifetime, I don’t have a husband or children.  I babbled a back story about this former husband of mine.  He used to be a fisherman, now he was off fighting the Turks and was killed fighting the Turks.  He came back once from battle, and I ran all the way across the city to the Arsenale to meet him the first moment he returned on shore.  I washed and scrubbed him at that fountain I mentioned when he came home the first time because he was so filthy from being at sea for so long.  The second time he didn’t come home, and I lost my will to live and stopped eating and died.  I left our two children orphaned although both survived.  And while I can’t remember what year it was now, I do remember the year was  correct – when I came back home to New York, I looked it up and during the year I named, Venice had been engaged in sea battles with the Ottoman Empire. 

I kept spitting out the phrase, “Filthy Turks!” throughout the narrative (or other comparable epithet we won’t repeat here) , although, goodness knows, I have no reason NOW to be annoyed at people from Turkey, as I’m sure they’re all very nice, and present day people of Turkish descent can stop spluttering in outrage, thank you very much and have a nice day.

You have to understand, I was babbling this entire story in a weird mixture of Venetian and English while backed up against a wall, and when I got to the part about abandoning my children by dying (basically by starvation/suicide), I started bawling!  The person I was traveling with had very little idea about anything I’d just said, but this was when the resident – a very nice woman – came over and repeated some of it back to me for clarification.  She also couldn’t figure out how I spoke such perfect Venetian a second ago, and couldn’t understand her when I came out of that “fugue” state.  Because after I’d burst into tears and said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” (about the children) – I came out of it, and started seeing the current state out of both eyes again.

In an effort to help, the woman told me to visit the priest at San Marco, the magnificent Venetian cathedral at the center of the city, because she seemed to think I had abandoned children in this lifetime and was consumed with guilt about it.  She thought I would feel much better after going to confession.

Needless to say, after this experience, I didn’t have too much trouble believing in recincarnation, but that’s another story for another day.  It does lead towards the location of the dream scape I was creating:  it’s  constructed out of an imaginary second floor of a building in Venice, overlooking a peaceful canal and the laguna itself.  I was mentally creating this space, adding details like floors, paintings on the walls, tapestries, the reflection of dancing water on the walls and ceilings … also thinking, “I’ll bet other people would like it here …”  Really, it was so beautiful and peaceful, I just loved it.

Me, during that same trip.  The person  was actually trying to take a photo of the gondoliere (guy in the foreground), who she thought was cute; I just happened to appear in the photo behind him; I'm the small blob in the back.  There had been a pretty significant flood that year, and we’re all watching the recovery efforts.  (That also explains why I’m wearing high-water boots!)  This was not the piazza where the shift in perception happened – this is near Saint Mark’s. 

Anyway, this was when the word “égrégore” popped up.    The psychic and astral entity of a group; a group's meeting place, so to speak.  I’d just finished thinking, “Other people might like it here, too,” and just then envisioned the room I’d created morphing into something of an old world classroom.  We – that is the students – are all lounging on soft pillows; the instructor is … well, instructing.  I think the lesson that day was, “How To Meditate when You’re In  the Bowels of Hell” or something.  Now I REALLY wanted to hit that “speed dial” and “send” button.  “Hey, you know what you should do next?  You need to create a …”  Well, he’ll figure it out; he’s pretty smart.  It’s still me that has to catch up.  Back to practicing.

Still working on my Daybook.  Anyway, as I come across an herb, I also add it to my recently found daybook.  I have begun adding more recipes, information, beliefs, pictures, etc.  Today it was yarrow, because the Real Witches Year (Kate West) discussed Yarrow for today’s entry, and I was thinking that maybe I should start up a Book of Shadows, and not just a daybook.  Googled “yarrow” and came up with all sorts of interesting stuff.  Finally!  Some decent spells, recipes and associations.  Obviously, I wasn’t quite this inspired when I was in Wicca 101.

Then I had to go back and teach myself how to create an outlined index of multiple chapters of books, with a working index and a table of contents, all with clickable links.  Brunhilda never had it so good.

Learning is something like skittering across the face of a spiderweb – you start off in one direction, veer off into another, slide off gracefully into a third, not so gracefully into a fourth, and then can’t remember how it is you ended up reading something about  … whatever it is you’re now reading about.  In my case, Sacred Geometery. 

Well, it began with  Damien’s recommendation that his readers check out the Llewelyn Catalog.  Did so.  Was reading Shirley Andrews’ rehashed Lemuria and Atlantis, which (a) he did NOT recommend, which is fortunate or I would have regarded him with one eyebrow lifted skeptically, and (b) the author mostly lifted from Churchward and Cayce, both of which we could have read on our own.  No one asked for a re-hash of them.  I keep hoping there is some new discovery from the Bimini or Pacific Rim areas that are interesting enough to take notice of, but alas … apparently not, or at least not since the last time I looked into it.

She mentions the discoveries of the Advanced Digital Communications Company, supposedly Canadian but working out of Havana, Cuba.  Paul Weinzweig and Paulina Zelitsky were apparently scanning the area around Cuba, and found some interesting things under water … no one knows what those things are yet, though.  Unfortunately, the last recorded information about anything they were doing dates from 2000 to 2005, more or less, and the photographs are nearly impossible to decipher.  Rumor has it they abandoned the site along with National Geographic over money issues, so it’s just sitting there under water, decaying.  The Cayce foundation was also nosing around, but there is nothing current from them, either.  This is how we’re entertained, in a book last printed in 2010?  How … timely.

I’m one of those annoying people who prefers to have statements annotated and footnoted – and prefers to have her footnotes from a variety of respected sources.  I don’t care if the author hands me a theory or a supposition or a best guess – as long as she identifies them.  In this case, Andrews’ footnotes were so random, sporatic and so poor, I had to start researching things she brought up to find out the REAL story behind them. 

Children of the Law of One.  Starseed Children.  Both of which she mentioned as though they had actual relevance and substance; neither of which I’d heard of, and neither of which did have actual relevance and substance, when I looked them up.  Everything I found on either subject sounded as though it was a self-aggrandizing pile of steaming hoo-haa invented by women who no longer had working brain cells.  They’re behind the times.  Science has moved much closer to spirituality as of late.  The broads promoting this stuff might want to take that into account and try proving things they claim scientifically.  Or at least logically.  If they can.  I ended up rolling my eyeballls in disbelief throughout most of her seriousness on these topics.

However, scanning a reference to Children of the Law of One, I found reference to Sacred Geometry … the reference being something idiotic, like:  “if you don’t know Sacred Geometry, you will never know enlightenment!”  Uh-huh.  Really?  You’re sure about that?  Why does he or she  sound like those evil Southern Baptist Church Ladies of West Memphis, Arkansas?  In any event, I disputed that assertion loudly, without even knowing what Sacred Geometry was, just because those nasty black and white comments are so like those delusional demons who protest at veteran’s funerals and think they’re saints.  Bottom line:  when you split things into black and white, you are bound to be wrong.

In other words, back up historical comments with other historians and not authors who have written previous articles or books on Atlantis.  That’s like silly Christians who back up their “proof” of Noah’s ark with quotes from the Bible and are such pinheads they have no idea how useless, unimpressive and silly that is.

Pausing here ... will continue later.