Incubi, Demons, Dumb Witches and True Spells

Regarding the comments:  to those who submitted legitimate comments - thank you.  If you'd like to complain that you didn't get a response, complain to the host of the blog, not the owner:  I just found these comments in my inbox yesterday (the 15th of November) and some of them had been written back in September!

In an attack of whimsy, I hung my three framed autographed photos of my young Italian tenor on the wall and, beside them, hung a much larger framed print of a rather gloomy – but aesthetically pleasing - Phaedra. Without going into much more detail than that – walking by the wall "statement" several times a day makes me smile. At least I find the humor in it, anyway. And, fortunately, keeps my ... obsession from rearing its Phaedric head again.
 
I am still on my quest to figure out why the incubus and succubus were so dramatically carried over from the christian horror of sex into the wiccan women’s horror of sex ... in other words, witches who seem to forget the fact that the christian demonic entities don’t exist in the pagan world are still squeaking, "Bad! Bad! Bad incubi!" at anyone who asks a question about them. (No joke!) Well. Correct that. The precursors to the character of, for example, Satan do exist in the Pagan world, but not the christian version of him. Satan is entirely theirs and they’re welcome to him. Because christians were (and still are) so overwhelmed with the desperate fear of sex, they created all sorts of sex demons to explain their own lust. Here’s a terrific example:

Since demons, according to the traditional wisdom, were only spirits and had no corporeal form, the incubus was presumed to come upon his physical form in one of two ways: he either reanimated a human corpse, or he used human flesh to create a body of his own, which he then endowed with artificial life. Especially mischievous and clever incubi were often able to make themselves appear in the persons of real people - a husband, neighbor, the handsome young stablehand. In one case, a medieval nun seem to have been sexually assaulted by a local prelate, Bishop Sylvanus, but the bishop defended himself on the grounds that an incubus had assumed his form. The convent took his word for it.
http://www.whiterosesgarden.com/Nature_of_Evil/Demons/List_of_Demons/H-I-J-K_contents/incubus.htm

Of course it would have been nice if, once again, someone had provided a citation for that.  From one christian writer to another, medieval or contemporary, the definitions of demons and devils and lewdness vary, so merely trying to wade through their nonsense becomes a test of your sanity.

All manner of things are happening this month as I whisper ‘sweet dreams’ to my dogwood, already missing her full parasol of leaves and flowers over my head: my guilty pleasure – the last installment of Twilight - is arriving in the theaters this month on the 16th. To heck with Teams Edward and Jacob, I’m Team Gil Birmingham and Jackson Rathbone, really. Il Volo’s sixth album "We Are Love" (counting the first one, the Spanish one, the French one, the Christmas one and the ‘Il Volo Takes Flight’ one) is due out on the 19th. The Spanish version is due out in January, so of course everyone will buy two of them – again. Blake’s Pledge cd just arrived. Mr. Signpost appeared in Cambridge on the 9th, but there was no way I could stand on line, as much of a crippled gimp as I am ... but he’s coming back to Cambridge in January, so hopefully I’ll be able to stand for longer than two minutes by then. Back to the endocrinologist on the 21st. Thanksgiving on the 22nd. Don’t know if I plan to make an effort – probably not.

Second guilty pleasure at the moment: bypassing the novels and becoming addicted to HBO’s "Game of Thrones". Absolute favorite character: Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister. He just lights up every scene, in that series – what an awesome character! And I can easily see why he won "Best Supporting Actor" for the role.

Back to my complaint about witches trying to pass nonsense off as traditional witchcraft:

I have been utterly fascinated with Faraone’s Ancient Greek Love Magic, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (edited by Hans Dieter Betz), Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (John G. Gager), Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (Faraone) and Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman World (Daniel Ogden). There are more, a wealth of legitimately traditional spells, curses and magical herbs, ointments and charms.

Now, there are many of these spells which would be difficult if not impossible to perform accurately. Most of us can’t come up with, say, an upper tooth of a spotted heifer to wear as an amulet, to use an example from Ancient Greek Love Magic. So this would be the debatable portion of the spell: what would I substitute and why? What was the use of the upper tooth of a spotted heifer? What did spotted heifers represent to this society? What did cows mean? How can I accomplish the same result with something I can find today?

Not only should that be clearly written out as part of the spell for documentation purposes, it should be written out as part of the spell so that an intelligent wizard could pick up the spell, read it and say, "Wait. I have a better idea." If I provide all of the document source material, I have spared him having to go through all of the original research again, which is what just about every witch or wizard with a witchcraft book in print has done to everyone else. Wasted everyone’s time, and dumped a lot of hoohah on them.

But spells such as these should – SHOULD but aren’t – be familiar to anyone learning witchcraft, presented with respect, thusly:

1. Here is the original traditional spell (source cited). These witches MUST go back to an original source, confess they made it up themselves or be charged with fraud. In case someone missed it the first 5 times I said it, I’ll repeat: I have no issues with witches inventing their own spells. I do have issues with witches inventing their own spells and claiming or implying they’re traditional when they clearly are not. THAT is fraud.

2. Here is my variant of that spell, in detail.

3. I substituted these following ingredients or components for THOSE ingredients or components and – here’s an important part of that! - this is why I did it.

4. Herbs and other ancient references: the Greeks (or Romans or Sumerians or Egyptians or Italians or Anglos or Saxons or Irish) may have known the herb as "X"; how would we know it today? Requires "RESEARCH" and most women writing contemporary twinkie witch manuals are too dumb, fat and lazy to make the effort.

Optional inclusion: the personal Book of Shadows details: results, who the spell was used on ... those sorts of things.

I have to add that the bibliographies and source references of all of these books are awesome ... why witches writing books today got the idea that these weren’t necessary I have no idea, but most of them should be slapped upside the head ... I’d curse them with stupidity, except it appears that has already been done.
More tomorrow.

Tossing out More Witchcraft Books

Ahhh, ze blessed San Pellegrino!

Not the church in Vatican City, the sparkling water. I blame Piero for this, since he (and his unofficial brothers Ignazio and Gianluca) handed out bottles of Ferrarelle at New York City’s Beacon Theater and I promptly fell in love with the stuff.

I’ll never forget the sacred moment. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, choirs were transcendentally choiring and with reverence in my heart I lifted "Piero’s Holy Water" to my parched lips, took a hesitant sip of the sacrament – which I was sure he had collected, bottled and shipped singlehandedly – and said (my utter obsession with him at the time notwithstanding), "Wow, this is pretty good."

OK, FINE. It was 9:00 at night, hot, steaming, any birds there were had been drowned out by traffic, and the choir was in my head. The water was still first rate, though.

The only sparkling water I’d had until that moment was something cheap with carbon dioxide injected into it, and I had immediately choked on it. This was infinitely better. Not even just infinitely better but in another category of water altogether. It was heavenly. But they neglected to mention that Ferrarelle was only available in restaurants; you couldn’t go to the nearest store and buy some. Thanks for the heads up, guys.

But you know me: the minute you tell me I can’t have something, I absolutely have to have it, so next I tried San Pellegrino. It was also superior to the Eau du Carbon Dioxide I’d had when I was a child, so I went out and bought ten 1-quart bottles of San Pellegrino with the expectation of carrying them off to the office to drink. Italy turns out the best stuff, and now I’m absolutely addicted to it ... to the point where I suspect they spiked the stuff with something deliciously and actually medically addictive. Am guzzling a bottle as I write.

Meanwhile ... as we recover from Superstorm Sandy rolling up the east coast, blowing us off the map, drowning everything in sight and squashing us like bugs ... I’ve decided to slide ever so discreetly back into "semi-normal" mode. For me, "normal" means being so overwhelmed with office work and overtime and work-consumed weekends, I can’t can’t get anything else done. "Semi-normal" means it’s easing up a bit, and I’m finally able to read books again.

* * * * * * * * * *

Ahhh, ze blessed historians!

True, most citizens of the United States – given our notoriously poor educational system that left us at #17 in the math and science skills, and even lower in the literacy skills – would have no idea how to maneuver their way through the "arcane jargon of professional scholars" without falling asleep, or drooling in dumfounded bewilderment. In fact, three-fourths of the country couldn’t even maneuver their way through that last sentence without going cross-eyed.

Fortunately for me, I was educated both in an excellent New York suburban school system (Pelham, NY) and majored in history at the University of Michigan, so I’m quite familiar with the "arcane jargon of professional scholars", having needed to employ it myself for various papers and theses.

*Note: I did not coin the phrase "arcane jargon of professional scholars", I just reached over and swiped it because I liked the sound. Credit where due: Christopher Faraone.

The more I read, the more I’m convinced that one’s sacred texts must be self-composed and created; and definitely not a scrap-pile of hoohah written by other people - with their own beliefs and their own inspirations and their taboos, all of which are considerable. So much of what I read conflicts with other texts, or is presented so self-righteously and so dogmatically it might as well have been written by a charter member of the Spanish Inquisition. So many wiccan writers aren’t even aware of how bound up they are by their own former beliefs that it overshadows anything they present. I know that’s true of me as well ... rarely can writers see their own binding ropes.

So ... back to the serious objection I have against getting permission from people before you cast spells on them. I’m sure I sound obsessed by this point, but ... this is important, dammit!

I have read so much ridiculous finger-wagging at readers from so many girly-girly so-called witches who are – in all honesty – imposing their own puritanical christian nonsense on everything they write that it’s beginning to make me nauseous. They do this because it feels safe and comfortable to them, and that’s fine – as long as they recognize what they’re doing and claim it. As soon as they start telling you it’s traditional witchcraft, you should feel so infuriated that you zap them with a counter-spell, like – say – intense and long-standing writer’s block, topped off with a few boils and warts on their genitalia, and why should you do that? Because they’re lying. They’re also depriving an entire generation of witches of their power and their strength, and turning them into Tinkerbelles. You wanna be Tinkerbelle? Fine. Go be Tinkerbelle. But Tinkerbelle isn’t a witch.

Ultimately, I find it sad that I need to read serious history textbooks to learn what REAL witches should be teaching me and aren’t.

"In this regard, according to Christopher Faraone (1999), on the one hand, Athenian male citizens employed love magic in attempts to transfer their erotic suffering from the affliction of Eros onto the love-objects to whom they felt so vulnerably attracted. On the other hand, with the exception of courtesans, Athenian women and male slaves employed erotic magic not in order to project and thereby displace erotic suffering but in the hope of calming and controlling their angry and passionate male superiors."
Stephenson, Craig. Anteros: A Forgotten Myth. Routledge, London and New York. 2012. p. 15.

Nowhere in this paragraph is there mention of anyone dialing up the person they were shooting love spells at, and asking for their "permission" to do it. And the magic of Ancient Greece IS "traditional". The crap that the girly-witches (be they male or female) are feeding people now is NOT traditional, and never was. They’re lying to you. Now - if these ladies and gents want to re-write wicca to conform to contemporary standards of PC-stained morality, I have no problem with that.  Really!!  There is a lot of fully traditional witchcraft I couldn't bring myself to perform - good example:  animal sacrifices.  But I would never try to tell you that my variant (i.e., "no animal has been harmed in the performance of this spell!") is traditional witchcraft.  It most certainly is not.  My problem is that too many writers claim that their way is traditional, when it absolutely isn't.  It is the reader who should be deciding which "ways" they want to adopt, not the writers.  And writers are not owning up to their own variants of witchcraft inserted into their books, claiming it to be the real one.

Along those same lines, they're not owning up to their own variants of so-called "morality", either.  Taboos differ across locales, boys and girls.  One person's sense of "morality" is not the same as another's.  While there may be some taboos that cross cultures, don't make the assumption that your ideas of morality should be adopted by everyone.  Makes you sound, as I said, just like a charter member of the Spanish Inquisition, wearing a pointy hat.

By the way, Christopher Faraone’s brilliantly readable and and well-researched history book mentioned above – complete with an awesome bibliography - is Ancient Greek Love Magic. Back to that next entry.

To digress briefly, and because of the perception of Eros in the above quote, I’m finding Anteros fascinating. For those who don’t know, Anteros is Eros’ younger brother, conceived because Eros – after he was born – stopped growing. His mother, Aphrodite, asked for advice and was told to conceive another son with Ares, the god of war – and as soon as Anteros was born, Eros began to mature.

There is a primary difference between the two, I think: Eros is the god of love and sexual desire; the "madness" of love; you’re shot full of arrows, and are staggering about, clutching your chest, pining for your beloved ... who may or may not feel the same way. Usually not, which makes you crazy. Eros is the insanity, the longing, the desperation, the madness; Eros is Dante idolizing Beatrice from afar, Petrarch aching for Laura ... this is the pain of often unrequited love that sends you into near death spasms when it has passed the point of reason.

Anteros was the stabilizing force that tempered and perhaps (or perhaps not, hard to say) matured the insanity, the lust of Eros: he is the god invoked when requited love is desired, also the deity who punished those who scorn love and the advances of others, or ‘the avenger of unrequited love". He was sometimes mistaken for Eros, but can be identified by his long dark hair and butterfly wings. "He has been described also as armed with either a golden club or arrows of lead."

One of the most laughable cases of mistaken identity: christians insisting that the Shaftesbury Memorial in Piccadilly Circus (above right) is actually the The Angel of Christian Charity.

Riiiight. Half naked guy with his (quite attractive) muscular bare butt hanging out, wielding a bow and arrow and sporting butterfly wings. Christian charity. Okay, after we all finish laughing ...

I guarantee that any minute now one of those same christians is going to pop up and squeal, "We call it that because he symbolizes the selfless philanthropic love of the Earl of Shaftesbury for the poor!" Riiiight. He couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to express that, could he? He had romantic and sexual feelings for the poor? Little bit weird, idn’t it?

The rest of the time people who aren’t idiots poo-pooh the Angel of Charity nonsense and assume it’s Eros. It isn’t. It’s Anteros. Look at the butterfly wings.  I find it interesting though, as did Stephenson, that Eros and Anteros regressed to childlike and infant-like proportions only after christianity gained a foothold in people’s bedrooms and proceeded to make people feel like crap for being utterly normal, enjoying the sensation of lust, and falling in love with other people.

Eros and Anteros were originally muscular young men. When you look at the art of the Renaissance, and the art of the romantic era, the young men have disappeared, replaced with one or two chubby infant(s), floating in the air and preparing to shoot things with bows and arrows. In fact, those two somewhat violent chubby infants show up today on 9 out of 10 valentines.

Think about it. Why????? You want to capture the eye of a hot hunk and the best way you can devise to turn the guy into a panting love slave drooling for your naked and lascivious body is a ... card with a fat baby on it??? Did you actually give that some thought before you sent that card out? Why?????

If there were anything more representational of the christian horror, fear, loathing of (or ultimately desperate hunger for) sexuality and fulfilled desire, that would be it: turning Eros and Anteros into harmless and chubby little babies. (Explains a lot, doesn’t it?)

For another example, under the "Why, oh why did I buy this appalling book?" category, I started reading a translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, "a powerful fusion of Greek and Egyptian thought", according to the back cover. Title:  The Way of Hermes. And yet, on page 1 we read the following:

‘I wish to learn,’ said I, ‘the things that are and understand their nature and to know God".

I stopped dead in my tracks at that. God. Capital G. Singular.

Ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphics which contained no "capital letters", and worshiped multiple deities, even in the "Ra" era. Ancient Greeks worshiped multiple deities, and usually identified them by name. God???

This was a gang of translators sticking their big, hairy christian rumps right in the middle of a critical pagan text translation, undermining any trust I might have had in it. And dollars to doughnuts these fools thought they did a great job on this book. Whatever happened to editors? Serious peer review?

I had no choice. I screamed in outrage, pulled out my handy pistol and shot the book... er, which I propped up out of sight against the computer screen (see graphic, right). Oh, yeah. One of the authors is on the board of directors of a group of private schools in England being investigated for child abuse. (Brutality in their caning of small children). Tossed THAT book right over my shoulder in disgust.

More stuff being passed along as "Wiccan tradition" when it isn’t. From an article on Wiccan meditation techniques:

Gerald B. Gardner found Wicca in the mid-20th century after claiming to have been initiated into a coven of Witches. Gardner admits that his information on Witchcraft was fragmentary and that he had to reconstruct it by incorporating other materials. Before founding Wicca, he was an acquaintance of Aleister Crowley, involved with Freemasonry and the Rosicrucian Order. These involvements, as well as more than 30 years spent living in Asia, heavily influenced and inspired Gardner as he formulated Wiccan rituals.

Wicca Meditation Techniques | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_4572037_wicca-meditation-techniques.html#ixzz28aRXsKNW


 
Not at all sure where Mackenzie Wright, who wrote the above came by his or her her information, but given the amount of nonsense a lot of wiccans repeat without any traditional sources behind it, I’m not even remotely surprised.

Special Interest Dinosaurs

From the last couple of entries, you could probably understand why I might feel the need to modernize the writings of the Magi from the turn of the century. Damien said somewhere – may have to dig for it again, though – that the knee-jerk reactions of nutball christians against Aleister Crowley (although in Damien’s defense, he didn’t use the phrase "nutball christians", that was my choice of words) came about because they didn’t understand him, and I’m quickly beginning to see his point. I would add to that comment that the same holds true for twinkie witches as well: the girly-girly, frou-frou, bleached blonde, morality-police twinkie witches didn’t understand Crowley either, or they wouldn’t be spreading around the christianized form of witchcraft they’re spreading around like so much manure. Definitely makes me wish that he’d stop re-tweeting some of the more egregious members of that frivolous coven, but since he has to live in the same town as some of them now, he’s probably being neighborly.

Or at least, I’m fervently hoping that he hasn’t abandoned Crowley’s common sense for some of these twinkies’ nonsense.

I can envision a goop of Gardnerians jumping up and down like Mexican jumping beans and yelling, "You know NUFFINK! You cahn’t be re-writing and modernizing NUFFINK!" To which I reply, "Huh? Speak English! Oh? That actually was English?" – and then, "Well, that’s really the point then, isn’t it?"

If I start out knowing nothing, then I’m the most gullible fool out here, aren’t I? In which case, I need every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed to make sure I’m not being taken advantage of, don’t I? What’s the best way to do that? Make sure every one of you handing me written information purporting to be experts called by your deity to teach me something can CITE YOUR SOURCES! If you can’t do that, then we have a problem, don’t we?

If you can’t cite your traditional and verifiable sources, then as far as I’m concerned, you’re making it up. And as I said, I have no problem with people making stuff up – really I don’t! Shows creativity and originality. But if you’re not telling me upfront that you made it up, as far as I’m concerned, you’re a fraud. Pretty much the end of that story, isn’t it?

Here’s a perfect example of the most appalling made-up nonsense I’ve read yet:

"One modern scientist once went so far as to say that the moon could not exist because its presence simply could not be scientifically explained."

McCoy, Edain. The Witches Moon, "Introduction", Page x"

[BLINK] [DEAD SILENCE] [ANOTHER BLINK]

Say what???!!!??? That sentence can’t possibly be correct – no legitimate scientist in their right mind would have said that. In fact, without footnoting that stunning announcement, she just lost 98% of her educated audience. Is she an idiot???

The last group of people who had absolutely NO grasp of science, scientists, theories, the research process (or much of anything else for that matter) was the far christian right, who have made it their life’s work to transform the once great ... ok, the once overhyped ... United States of America into "The Land of the Poor and the Chronically Stupid". These are the same people who are such idiots they keep squealing, "If we descended from apes, how come there are still apes?" – no matter how often you tell them that Darwin never said any such thing, and that they have no concept of anything the theory of evolution actually SAYS.

Point is: I may be a conspiracy theorist myself, but I strongly suspect that Edain McCoy is actually a propped up decoy by the far christian right ... someone they can point to and say, "See how stupid these witches are?" Who else would have printed something so ridiculous?

Trust me, no legitimate modern scientist ever said any such thing. Not with a solar system surrounding all of us populated with planets - many of which have their own moons. That was such a flagrantly appalling and idiotic thing to say, there’s no way she should have ever gone without citing that, and yet she did. Was the scientist subsequently put away for mental illness? Laughed out of town? Was the "scientist" still in 1st grade?? Trust me, NO scientist of any merit would have said that.

But to make certain I wasn’t going to regret blowing up like an overfed boiler, I googled that. Found it. Scientist?!!??

Here are the other topics from the unidentifiable author of the website:

The Truth At Last: exposing the real culprits behind September 11!
THE MOON: A Propaganda Hoax
Exposing the DRESDEN DECEPTION (A response to Ernst Zundel's "Z-Gram")
THE PARTHENON: A post-Hellenistic Fabrication
The IRISH POTATO HOAX of the 1840's
THE TITANIC: Hollywood Propaganda Fraud Exposed!
A MAD REVISIONIST Special Campaign:

A monument has been erected in the heart of Washington, D.C...
It sits on American land, paid for by American tax dollars...
And yet, it is dedicated to the glorification of a special interest group who are not even Americans...
Click here to help THE MAD REVISIONIST to resist this brazen expression of arrogance!

[Psst. He’s talking about dinosaurs.]

Sun Hoax Revealed!
Do the Jews exist?
Report from Sydney: THE OLYMPIC HOAX
The Great Donut Conspiracy
A Revisionist Examination of the O.J. Simpson Trial
Proof of the Allies destroying Holocaust evidence: Fuhrerpants
THE MAD REVISIONIST guide to Revisionist Philosophy
Questions about Revisionism? Ask our resident expert, Dr. Leopold Iv, in Advice from the Sewer

This is her idea of a "modern scientist"? Does she even know what a scientist is? I just sat here staring at the screen with my jaw dropped. Now, in their defense (and because I didn’t have the time or inclination to read any of it), I suspected that it might have been composed as a spoof of conspiracy theories, and not as a web page composed by a serious lunatic. In any event, my greater concern was a dumb idiot claiming to be a witch and writing a book claimed this crap was the work of a "modern scientist". She is looking more and more like a plant of the far christian right.

Need a citation? Here ‘ya go!
http://www.revisionism.nl/Moon/Moon3.htm
[Heavy sigh]

Twinkified Witchcraft

The more eager I am to learn, the more disgusted I am by women (and a few men) who use their infrequently useful knowledge of witchcraft (although even that I’m beginning to doubt) to force their personal twinkie-ness down everyone’s throats.

They try to pass off wicca as a form of personal freedom when nothing could be further from the truth – their version of wicca is quickly becoming the nest of a gaggle of anal-retentive, condescending, pursed-lipped church ladies under pointy hats.

I’m not asking for much. Give me a witch. Give me witchcraft. Give me Mrs. Weasley blowing up Bellatrix Lestrange at the end of the Harry Potter series – now SHE was a witch! Don’t give me your twinkie b.s. and call it witchcraft.

These are women who take away your free will by forcing their make-believe morality on you; they force-feed you invocations and chants with the implication that there is some sort of tradition behind it – when there isn’t; they have made it up themselves to make YOU sound like a twinkie. They completely make-up channeling nonsense which is so goopy and girly they make every deity sounds exactly like every other deity – and trust me, they sound nothing alike; it’s just that the women making this shit up have high degrees – hell, they have PhD’s! – in twinkieness.

Example: I made the mistake of buying one of Edain McCoy’s books on Sabbats before discovering that she is so popular among the Irish they’re planning on passing laws to run her out of Kerry on a rail. (Actually, I don’t know where the McCoys are from – I just made that up! And here’s Example #1: if you’re going to make something up – which really is fine – tell your readers upfront that you made something up, affording them the option of adopting your made-up crap, or telling you to blow it out a convenient orifice). So here’s Edain’s invented (although she doesn’t tell you she invented it) way of cleansing a "tool" – an athame, for example – for spiritual use:

May this (name tool)
Be an instrument for my spiritual growth
An extension of my personal energies
Used only for positive ends in worship, in ritual,
and in magick
May the Goddess and God (or name of deities)
bless my work with fruition and abundance
And my life with their love and peace
In accordance with the free will of all ...
So mote it be!

Notice how she twinkie-fied this? I half expected her to stick a graphic of Tinkerbelle on the page as well. In the event that you haven’t had your morning coffee yet, I’ve highlighted her twinkies in red.

She is not talking about activities here, she is talking about ritual tools used on an altar. Why should the tool be an instrument of my spiritual growth? An athame is used for a lot of activities in witchcraft, and I have yet to see an athame defined as a "tool for spiritual growth". Now I can see meditation (among many other things) being used for "spiritual growth", but how often do you cleanse "meditation" before you use it?

Here’s the "Church Lady" part: "used only for positive ends". Really! By whose definition? And what if I don’t want to use it for positive ends? What if I want to blow up Bellatrix Lestrange and make an entire movie theater audience cheer enthusiastically? Is that positive? Or is it negative because I’ve made the decision to rid the world of a really evil witch? Point is: what I use the tool for is MY choice, MY decision, no one else’s. And certainly not Edain McCoy’s. She’s just bombarding her readership of confirmed Twinkies with a battery of buzzwords guaranteed to get their sterile granny panties all dewy: "fruition", "abundance", "love" ,"peace". Again, not her call to make. If I want to use my tool to cause diminishment, dearth, dislike and public disturbances, that’s my call, my decision, and – karmically speaking – something I may or may not have to answer for. My choice. Which makes her line about "free will" downright laughable.

Here’s my version. And – oh yeah – I made it up!!!

"I command this tool to be an extension of my will alone
Make it so." (Or "Abracadabra!" – your choice)

Here's my source for the Irish rebellion against Edain McCoy:

http://www.stopedainmccoy.com/?page_id=31

Back on steroids – again – to open up my lungs, and considering how poorly I do on steroids (see "Bell’s Palsy" entries), I’m steering clear of everyone until the steroidal rage dies down again and/or I feel better.

I had JUST managed to survive the Bell’s Palsy steroids, which made me blow up like the Hindenburg, and by that I mean before the fire ... just the hot air. In the span of a month, I went from "OK" to looking 9 months pregnant, chock full of pissed-off-edness and unable to tie my shoes because my hands and fingers were so swollen. "Not to worry," said my PCP with a yawn, "You can exercise after the palsy goes away."

Unfortunately, no, I couldn’t. No sooner had I recovered from the palsy when the dumb office bitch I mentioned caught a cold, coughed all over me – and gave me a whale of a case of bronchitis. Back on the steroids to clear the lungs. Couldn’t exercise because I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs, so I still looked 9 months pregnant, and was now wheezing and gasping for air. Unbelievable. WHY COULDN’T I GET WELL????

Mr. Signpost pops up: "Oh, by the way," he tweeted cheerfully, "I’ll be signing books in Harvard and in Cambridge."

I suspect that no one has shown him a map lately. Is he holding two different events, or only one – at Harvard IN Cambridge? Point still remains: Thanks to yet another idiot woman, I’m back on steroids and wheezing – mouth still lopsided and I look like the Goodyear blimp. Guy gets sick so often, he doesn’t need ME breathing anywhere near him. More specifically, I look like hell. Oh, this just figures. (*sigh*)

Dream journal: Nowadays, I only seem to remember the dreams I have during afternoon naps. Saturday’s weirdness: a dream I haven’t had since I graduated from the U of M, the "I’m in the midst of finals and haven’t attended class or studied all semester" dream. Usually, it’s a run-of-the-mill nightmare, in THIS dream, I was in the exam room with – who else? – Piero, who was not surprisingly acing the test, and oddly enough, it was a Spanish test. Never took Spanish in college, by the way, only Italian, Latin and Ye Old English ... eth. So, I’m struggling with this final exam, come across a word I’m quite sure I should know, and finally I turned to him and whisper, "What does ‘dejar’ mean, again?"

I couldn’t remember what his answer was, if he even gave one, so after I was awake, I looked it up. Primary meaning: "to give up" (!!!!) Dream interpretation: I don’t know the meaning of "to give up"? In Italian, the phrase is "arrendersi mai", i.e., never surrender, never give up. Where did I get "dejar" from??? And explain the idiocy of my own subconscious: why feed me that message in Spanish of all things?

The other weird moment out of that same dream was the translation portion of that same exam. I looked at the exam paper and read, Translate this into Spanish: "her appearance made him want to move in like the cavalry." I still can’t figure out what THAT was supposed to mean. Sounded salacious, though. And did I ever translate that into Spanish? We’ll never know, will we?

But speaking of universities, considering that I grumbled so much over the Hopwood Awards people at the University of Michigan never even acknowledging submissions, it seems to me that I should also be praising those who do acknowledge submissions. Winning or not winning an award is never the issue – it’s the common courtesy of acknowledging the fact that someone has sent you something precious to THEM, for consideration.

So ... a big thank you to "The Lighthouse" for their postcard with "Thank you for applying!" enthusiastically hand written – and signed by the person who wrote it - on the reverse of the card. No matter what happens next, that card made me smile, and it was all I could do not to frame it for posterity. Take that, you Hopwood Awards people!

Sunday the 30th was the start of the Celtic month of Ivy. A cool, comfortable, rainy day ... the start of the season that brings the leaves down from the trees, so I’ve started my habit of whispering, "Sweet dreams" to my favorite trees – my dogwood outside my office, the trees outside my window, familiar trees along my commute route ...

The Ivy Green
Charles Dickens

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
And a staunch old heart has he.
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings
To his friend the huge Oak Tree!
And slyly he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mould of dead men's graves.
Creeping where grim death hath been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant, in its lonely days,
Shall fatten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the Ivy's food at last.
Creeping on where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Eleusinian Mysteries and Drugs, 2012

I thought I was being wise and proactive when I got a flu shot last week, so of course another dangerous woman came to work with a cold, coughed open-mouthed all over me and now I’m recovering from a bad case of bronchitis. What is it with women and their desperate need to race into American offices while virulently sick, infecting people?

On a more positive note: (1) thank you again to all the men who have the brains to stay at home and whine, and (2) at least I don’t have the flu?

Erratum: "CBS Sunday Morning", not "CBS This Morning."

Eleusinian Mysteries 2012
Given the time of the year, I went back to studying the Eleusinian Mysteries. I’ve discovered a few things: first thing is that a few of the present day crop of secretive societies, the Masons, the Rosicrucians to name two, and I’m sure there are more, have made it a point to study the Mysteries, so many of the papers and books written on them are often aligned with those types of societies, presumably because all of these societies want to align their initiation ceremonies with other ceremonies: "Pythagorean, Hermetic, Samothracian, Eleusinian, Drusian, Druidical" – list is from Dudley Wright in his Eleusinian Mysteries and Rites, a Freemasonry paper-turned-book.

As Freemasonry admits only men - while the Mysteries were open to men, women, slaves and freeborn alike as long as they spoke Greek - if Freemasonry draws from the Eleusinian Mysteries (or, as they claim, inspired them, although there is no proof anywhere of that), there was one heck of a patriarchal perversion somewhere along the line, to the point where they lost all contact and respectability.

As for some of the others, I don’t know enough about them, to support their supposed connections or not. There is a Pythagorean Society (created 1945, Plymouth England), and every math club in every high school on the planet called itself "The Pythagorean Society", after the original. The Samothracian Mysteries venerated mysterious deities called the Kabiri. The Drusian seemed to be connected with both Lebanon and China. The Druids are ... well, the Druids.

Magick
The second thing is a bit harder to pin down, but it seems to be that no one believes in magick anymore. Or is it terror, experienced by our present day crop of christian-Americans (to distinguish our home-grown nutballs from some of the saner varieties in other countries) or science inspired students, when something happens that they cannot explain biblically or rationally? In those cases, one has to reduce the 2,000+ year old Sacred Mysteries to drug-induced mindlessness, rather than admit that both their christian heroes and gods of science destroyed something so irrevocably precious and real? Even the new age twinkies got in on the act:

"The human intellect is not capable of comprehending the god-force directly."
Ventimiglia, Mark, The Wiccan Rede, p. 6.

Says who? Has anyone ever tried? Who made the attempt? When? Under what circumstances? I really dislike these blanket, sweeping statements, that authors hit you with, out of nowhere. And we, the readers, are all supposed to sit here, nod like bubble-heads on dashboards and intone, "*Duh*, okeydokey," without even questioning it. I mean, did the author try, and fail to "comprehend the god-force"? A mere 520 years ago, most people thought that "human beings would fall off the side of the earth if they sailed west", and look where I got deposited!

On the other hand, here’s a contradictory version of that:

"Once, when my mind had become intent on the things-which-are, and my innermost mind/understanding [nous] was raised to a great height, while my bodily senses were withdrawn as in sleep, when men are weighed down by too much food or by the fatigue of the body, it seemed that someone immensely great of infinite dimensions happened to call my name and said to me:

What do you wish to hear and behold, and having beheld, what do you wish to learn and know?"
The Corpus Hermeticum, "Poimandres to Hermes Trismegistus", Book 1, Salaman, Van Oyen, Wharton and Mahé, translators, p. 17

"Someone immensely great of infinite dimensions" seems a perfect a description of the "god force" to me. So we have a first hand account of an encounter with the god-force from a time before Moses and not only having absolutely no problem doing it, but having the same god-force offering to answer any questions he might have!, and a guy from 2003 stating unequivocally that no one can even comprehend this god-force – and without any explanation as to how he came by that rather startling irrefutable announcement.

So which version are we going to go with? Sorry, Mark – I’m going with Hermes on this one.

Still, what is disturbing about these sorts of exposés on what was supposedly the REAL mystery behind Eleusis is a complete failure of any of these people to understand basic magick – the force of the will. It never occurs to them that when participants reported witnessing Demeter ... that those people might have, in fact, witnessed Demeter ... simply because of the force of their will. Many of those same poo-poo’ers would be the first to believe in, say, the shroud of Turin, or the appearance of a woman who looked nothing like Jesus’s Jewish mother could possibly have looked and yet claimed to be her, at Lourdes, or any number of christian miracles, but turn up their noses at Eleusinian ones. No, they say, it had to be drugs.

For example, this is the second time I’ve read The Road to Eleusis, but it appears they’ve done more research on the Kykeon, moving away from an ergot concoction to possibly a fasting and ergot or shroom combination. Also, I don’t recall reading about Socrates’ "impiety" – which is why he was handed hemlock to drink - being in reference to holding drug-addled "Mysteries" parties in his home for high-born Athenians using a stolen recipe for the sacred drink. Where did that come from?

(Mayan mushroom figurines, 1000 BC through 500 AD, Guatemala)

Of interest is the comparison between the use of mushrooms by (possibly) both the Greeks and the Mexicans. Damien used one of their paths: the fast. Used by both the Greeks and the Meso Americans. The Greeks, according to the authors, mixed barley water with mint as a base; the Mexicans used a chocolate drink.

In both Greece and Mexico both eggs and alcohol are taboo, the alcohol for 4 days. In both cases, the ceremonies were "guided" by shamans or skilled practitioners. Twinkies who stomped all over the Mexican forests and offended every native they encountered were considered to have corrupted the sacred purpose of the mushroom. R. Gordon Wasson, one of the authors of Road to Eleusis, was said to have promised the shaman he learned from, that he would never reveal her secrets. As soon as he crossed the Mexican border, he did just that. He sold her "children" – as she called her sacred mushrooms - to a pharmaceutical chemist to be torn apart, examined and eyeballed. He is getting richer by the day from books like Road to Eleusis; she died in poverty.

But I happened upon someone who had the same reaction to the "Eleusinian Mysteries initiates were drugged" explanation as I did. I absolutely loved this:

The initiates were purified. They fasted. They walked in a very long procession to the site from Athens, along the way singing and engaging in ritualized acts like the bawdy jokes. They danced where Demeter once sat. They spoke sacred formulae. They were led together in a series of rituals older than they could even comprehend, on sacred ground, in a place where the veil between this world and the underworld was thin. They had a good deal of psychological investment and religious faith in the process. They built up anticipation and expectation.

And of course, the gods were there. They set up the Mysteries in the first place, and it was a revelation of the gods’ power that formed the climax of the ritual. Now, most scholars don’t believe in the gods, and so this isn’t a factor they can take into consideration, but it’s certainly something we need to remember.

This was from the "Forest Door". Loved the blog so much I subscribed to it. The author, Dver, "is a spirit-worker on the margins of Hellenic polytheism, with ties to English, Germanic and Slavic folk traditions as well. A priestess of Dionysos, and also devoted to Hermes, Apollon, Persephone, Hekate, and a host of personal and local spirits, her main practices include oracular trance, pathwalking, bone-working, and devotional worship. Dver resides in the lush, green, nymph-haunted Pacific Northwest."

URL to the Eleusinian Mysteries opinion: http://forestdoor.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/ergot-and-eleusis/?shared=email&msg=fail

URL to the blog: http://forestdoor.wordpress.com

Check it out.

Damien Echols: Life After Death. And Me Complaining (Again) About the Wiccan Rede

Reading Sirita d’Este and David Rankine’s Wicca: Magickal Beginnings, recommended as a good source reference on the "do as ye will" Wiccan rede, which makes me so uncomfortable. On August 16, the "Sex, Sin and Sumerian Magic" entry, I wrote:

"... the point was that, in those days, people went to the Sumerian magi to not only get protective spells, but to get love potion spells, zap people with curses, etc. First thing you read in the "girly-girly" books on "How to be A Witch" is "Never use spells on other people without their permission!" And you think, "Well, what’s the frackin’ point, then, you pinhead?" If everyone fell in love with you on their own without even blinking, you wouldn’t need a love spell, now would you? You can get some idea of why Aleister Crowley finally got so fed up with the "girly-girly" version of witchcraft he stomped off in disgust and became known as "The Great Beast". True, a lot of women who knew him personally also thought of him as the "Great Perv", but there’s not much I have to say about that. Same thing with the injunctions against using dream walking to spy on people. WHY NOT? Because it’s rude? If we’re all connected, how much privacy could we each have, to begin with?"

Actually, I was a little backward on that. According to d’Este and Rankine, the wiccan "rede" as it now stands actually did originate with Crowley, but not in the format it now has. Crowley’s was (paraphrased slightly): "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under will." I haven’t read his writings yet, but "True Will" was extremely important to Crowley, so perhaps he explains this in that context.

Doreen Valiente is the source of the revised version, "An’ it harm none, do what ye will," which she partially got from Crowley and re-fashioned.

The incorrect belief that it was a traditional tenet of wicca apparently came from Gerald Gardner: "And for long we have obeyed this law, Harm None." Not sure what he meant by "and for long" – he and Doreen Valiente were in the same coven – so, "for long" appeared to mean, "for the last week" or something.

But, ultimately, even d’Este and Rankine concluded, "we cannot definitively state the source of the Rede". They suspect Crowley, but have no proof of it. Their next sentence boggles my mind:

"The need for a practical ethical code has always been paramount in magickal and spiritual systems."

[Stop] [Blink] [Frown] Say what?

Well, THAT was an uncited, unprovoked, "a priori" clump of hoo-hah for you.

WHY was there a need? And who decided there was a need? And who decided that this supposed need was "paramount"? Because of what deficiency? Did something happen to make the adoption of an "ethical code" so vastly important? Who was being unethical? And what is their definition of "unethical"? Not everyone has the exact same code of ethics.

The people who already "went over to the dark side" aren’t going to pay the slightest bit of attention to any "practical ethical code", no matter whose code it happened to be, and those who AREN’T should be able to use their own "practical ethical code". Why should they adopt Valiente’s? Crowley’s? Gardner’s? Anyone else’s but their own?

And then – without anyone even bothering to question it, as far as I can see – it just kept getting passed along as gospel, so to speak.

Sorry, but this sounds to me like christianity and its tight corseted victorian biddies sticking their nose into everybody’s bidness but their own. Or a PC, twinkie "Miss Manners" version of wicca that hadn’t yet encountered modern physics, to wit: a particle and the source of that particle react simultaneously to the same external stimuli. If we all originate from the same source, our reactions are going to reflect that source. Dark matter, light matter. It’s part of our DNA, our gut instincts. There’s the source of our "ethical code", not rules. Regulations. Following the "straight and narrow" or get yourself condemned by the girly-girly white glove wiccan church police.

I’m on the verge of writing to those authors and asking them where they came up with a statement like that, apropos of nothing. This is so NOT traditional, it should be tossed out of wicca altogether. And then stomped into the mud. And then torched. And then salted so it never takes root again.

As for Damien, I’ve been reading, listening to and watching all sorts of media as part of his book selling: Opie and Anthony, Anderson Cooper, CBS This Morning – and his Moth event also became accessible.

His book, Life After Death, arrived, and I dug into it eagerly on the commute to Boston. After a few pages, I frowned, looked at the cover a second time, and asked, "Why am I reading Almost Home again?" Because it did seem that’s what I was doing – in fact, I’d read his first book so many times there were whole passages I could almost recite from memory. And here I was, reading them all over again.

Naturally, in an effort to compare the two books, I came home after work and tried to hunt down Almost Home. You have to understand, if I were ever to be accused of hoarding anything, it would be books. I have 10 bookshelves in my home, divided between the living room, bedroom and study. Not a single shelf contains anything other than books – meaning, I don‘t use the bookshelves to display, say, clocks, small houseplants and ceramics. Nah, they’re all full of books.

Could I find Almost Home? Of course not! Then I wandered around aimlessly, trying to remember where I might have put it. I do remember carrying it around in my backpack, back and forth from the office, for weeks – what the heck had I done with it? Oh, with my luck, I’d accidentally left it on the train, and some other MBTA commuter was happily reading it now.

I did read a review which explained the re-packaging of the first book – can’t remember the exact wording – something about Almost Home sinking into a black hole of publishing oblivion or something. I sulked at that.

"Well, I read it!" As an Almost Home reader and enjoyer, I resented being referred to as a "black hole of oblivion", or whatever they said. And I even read it, like, five times, so that made me a black hole times five. Should I complain? Send rude letters to the editor? Get all prissy and offended? All three?

In any event, until the weekend, when I could find the time to do a good search for Almost Home, I had to work from memory. I eventually figured out that it was a somewhat revised Almost Home. For example, I noticed the mean teacher who liked girls but hated boys was gone – not sure why. The shack in the middle of a field – later captured by an artist - was still there. And in the first book, when he was jogging in place in his cell and bleeding into his socks, he had written a riff on pain being the only path to wisdom, which made me ask, "Is that true?" when I read it the first time.

I have no doubt that HIS pain led to wisdom; I just doubted that was true for everyone. I remember stopping, the first time I read that, and trying to think of exceptions, so even then he was sending me off in thinking directions, even before I nicknamed him "Mr. Signpost".

I thought of the first Greek philosophers and Sophists who awed me when I realized that the majority of their thoughts about spirituality, science and philosophy were never based on anyone else’s thoughts, because there weren’t any "others" who had their thoughts before they did. Original and brilliant. I didn’t remember them going through a lot of pain, except perhaps Socrates, as I’m guessing the hemlock did a major discomfort number on his digestive system, before he croaked. And he wasn’t really considered one of the Sophists anyway.

I did think of the christian Jesus, who was probably pretty wise, but his really intense experience with pain was the tail end of things, not the instigating force – he didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain when he was preaching.

Buddha – I dunno, maybe. He went through self-deprivation, anyway.

Or Paramhansa Yogananda – whose Biography of a Yogi was awesome as well - I don’t recall him being in a lot of pain in order to become wise. Then it occurred to me that, as far as wise people went, I didn’t actually know a lot of ascended masters personally, so I really wasn’t sure if that statement was true or not. Supposedly, if you chanted the name of the ascended master Babaji like a mantra, he would appear and could possibly clarify that point, but the guy’s something like – what? 1000 years old? Older? Can’t remember. In any event, he’d scare the crap out of me if he suddenly did appear, so I’ve never tried chanting his name.

I do remember concluding – at the time – "Well, fuck wisdom, then," because if pain was necessary for it, I much preferred staying really, really stupid – and blissfully pain-free. As I confessed in the flogger entry, I am so not good with pain. Or perhaps Damien meant "wisdom" in the sense that other people meant when they talked about "sub space" – a different level of awareness or reality you achieve through pain. I’d never had that experience, though. And again, wasn’t all that fired up with eagerness for it, either.

Back to hunting for Almost Home!

The Eleusinian Mysteries

I, at Eleusis, saw the finest sight,
When early morning's banners were unfurled.
From high Olympus, gazing on the world,
The ancient gods once saw it with delight.
Sad Demeter had in a single night
Removed her sombre garments! and mine eyes
Beheld a 'broidered mantle in pale dyes
Thrown o'er her throbbing bosom. Sweet and clear
There fell the sound of music on mine ear.
And from the South came Hermes, he whose lyre
One time appeased the great Apollo's ire.
The rescued maid, Persephone, by the hand
He led to waiting Demeter, and cheer
And light and beauty once more blessed the land.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919)

Day Before Yesterday, The Asormos.

Yesterday, the Holade Mystai, the Day of Purification. Ritual bathing to purify yourself for the ceremony to come. Day is dedicated to Demeter and Persephone, with, Stein says, "strong influence of Isis".

Today, the third day, offerings of barley and grain, "the life force".

Last year, I started reading about the Eleusinian Mysteries – which you may recall, got me started on waking dreams – which you may also recall, came to a screeching halt when I was prescribed medication to halt the leg cramps, and temporarily lost my ability to remember dreams, due to the drugged state the medication inflicted on me. I have hope that the ability will return. A year has passed, and I again picked up my reading on the Mysteries. The more I read about them, the more enthralling they become. I still want to go back in dream time into Greece for the Mysteries. I can almost taste the excitement the initiates must have felt.

Meanwhile, I found the mythology that may have eventually developed into the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries:

Telipinu was the Hittite god of farming. He was the son of the weather and fertility god according to their mythology.

In one story, he grew angry at the world and left his house, causing the crops to fail. Hannahannas, the mother goddess, sent a bee to find him; when the bee did, stinging Telipinu and smearing wax on him, the god grew angry and began to wreak destruction on the world. Finally, Kamrusepa, goddess of magic, calmed Telepinu by giving his anger to the Doorkeeper of the Underworld.

The Telepinu Myth is an ancient Hittite myth about Telepinu whose disappearances causes all fertility to fail, both plant and animal. This results in devastation and despair among gods and humans alike. In order to stop the havoc and devastation, the gods seek Telepinu but fail to find him. Only a bee sent by the goddess Hannahanna finds Telepinu, and stings him in order to wake him up. However this infuriates Telepinu further and he "diverts the flow of rivers and shatters the houses". In the end, the goddess Kamrusepa uses healing and magic to calm Telepinu after which he returns home and restores the vegetation and fertility. In other references it is a mortal priest who prays for all of Telepinu's anger to be sent to bronze containers in the underworld, of which nothing escapes.

But the Eleusinian Mysteries were much more extensive. Everything in the Greek world stopped for them. Initiates came from all over the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Ionian Seas, possibly further than that. Wars stopped. Travel to Greece that might have been banned at the time, was now allowed. The buzz in the air was audible, throughout the entire region. Preparations had been underway, and now there was no time left. The Mysteries had begun. THIS is the event I have always wanted to dream travel back to, and experience. Except for the medication screwing with my dream recall, I see no reason why I can’t do that. I just need to learn how.

I’m reminded of a past dream I had that was so immediate and so real I had trouble readjusting when I woke up.

I lived in Yonkers. Took a nap. Fell so deeply into this dream it became reality for me, for a time. This was the dream:

I was a boy of about 9 years old. There was a small group of us, sitting on the ground. A man of about 30-40 years was sitting on a rock. I knew the man’s name in that lifetime. I don’t want to say we were all wearing togas – more that we had cloth wrapped around ourselves by way of clothes.

The older man definitely had sandals of some sort on his feet; I’m pretty sure I was barefoot. He had salt and pepper hair and beard. He was instructing us in something, and I do remember him drawing the infinity symbol in the dirt with a stick.

I had just said something out loud, which was dry or sarcastic. I made the other boys laugh. The man looked at me, and as he reached out to cuff me on the side of the head for interrupting the lesson he was imparting to all of us, I distinctly heard him think (so in this dream, I could read minds as well!) that I reminded him of his younger self. But he cuffed me anyway, for being a smart-ass. As his hand impacted the side of my head, I gasped and said, "Wait! I know who you are! You’re ---", and I blurted out the name of someone I knew in my present life. He put his finger to his lips, and as he did so, I felt myself fall over sideways onto the ground, and side-slipped through time and woke up in Yonkers.

Two things: I did know who the older man was in this lifetime, and he actually confirmed it later on, without even being asked about it, by remarking that he was a man with the name I’d already been aware that he had, because of that dream. I remember every hair on my body standing up in shock when he said that.

The other thing: I was scared out of my wits to wake up and find myself a woman. I cannot describe the terror, because it’s one of those things I’ll bet not a lot of people experience. I’d identified so completely with the body and mind of a nine-year old boy that waking up as a woman was foreign and unfamiliar. I actually started crying out in horror and backing up toward the headboard of the bed in a panic to get away from myself, before I returned mentally and remembered I was a woman. Terrifying, let me tell you. And extremely odd.

I hadn’t thought of that dream in a long time, but a photo of Piero was posted. I looked at it, and suddenly said, "I KNOW him." Well, of course I knew it was a photo of Piero Barone, but it was the first time I’d felt a glimmer of "other recognition", for want of a better phrase ... and couldn’t figure out why. I’d just thought I loved his voice and hadn’t thought there may have been more to it than that. As though I’d known him from somewhere else. The reaction was nearly identical to the one I’d had in the Yonkers dream. Couldn’t place him anywhere else – I knew of only a few other lives I’d had: Venezia was one, and probably the one that left the greatest emotional impact on me. The boy of nine in a Grecian type settlement was another. There was a third one in Mesoamerica.

The Grecian one makes me think, "Might have been ..." where I may have encountered Piero, because I’d always thought that life took place in Greece or Magna Graecia, and Sicily has Grecian roots. No other reason for me to think that, though. I couldn’t remember why he seemed familiar to me outside of his role as "Piero Barone of Il Volo".

But because I’d said almost the same thing ("Wait! I know him!") – or close to it – when I saw that photo of Piero, I found myself wondering if he was a fellow student, or a brother or something in that life. Something about the way his body was shaped, or his collarbones looked, or the way his head was turned. I can’t find it again. I just know that at the time the sense of recognition happened, it sent a bolt of electricity through me, the ‘recognition’ was so startling. Would at least partially explain the period of obsession – with him I must have felt safe, even subliminally.

The point being: is it possible I might have been familiar with the Mysteries while they were actually taking place? After that "glimmer" happened, I was even more eager to see if I could dream-walk into the Mysteries.

"And thou shalt know the Source ethereal,
And all the starry signs along the sky,
and the resplendent works of that clear lamp
of glowing sun and whence they all arose.
Likewise of wandering works of round-eyed moon
Shalt thou yet learn and of her source; and then
Shalt thou know too the heavens that close us round –
Both whence they sprang and how Fate leading them
Bound fast to keep the limits of the stars ...
How earth and sun and moon and common sky,
The Milky Way, Olympus outermost,
And burning might of stars made haste to be."

Parmenides