Day of the Lobster, More Stupid Women and the Corn Moon

So this week, I went back to the beach for another two hours, in another weekly attempt to strengthen my core ... except this time I had a beach chair!  I experienced another roller where I got knocked down by a wave and rolled around in the foam before getting my bearings again, and all of my muscles felt the force of it the next day.  The only other difference was the time – rather than 8-10am, I ran a little late, stayed only a half hour longer and was there from 9-11:30am.

By the time I got home?  I looked like a lobster.  Lay most of the afternoon under a soothing high thread count sheet, teeth chattering, moaning, thinking:  oh, KMN.

I did learn that the same Vitamin E oil that I had on hand to minimize my head scar I incurred a week before my brother’s death worked well on sunburn, so I am now slipping and sliding around in my (now) oily chair, hoping the oil soothes this killer sunburn.  My scar responded better to patchouli oil, by the way, which I have no intention of spreading all over myself ... while I love the scent of patchouli in small doses ... the stuff is too precious to use as a body lotion, and I would probably choke the cat – and maybe even myself - with the fragrant overkill.

I also learned that women are just as empty-headed, narcissistic and mentally unhinged on the beach as they are on the commuter rail.  Within the span of those 2.5 hours, I witnessed idiot women ignoring the beauty of the ocean at their feet while they babbled loudly and maniacally on their cell phones, I suffered through not one but TWO idiot women positioning their idiot selves upwind of everyone else and then proceeding to spray themselves – therefore asphyxiating all the men, women, infants and children downwind of them - with toxic waves of aerosol sunscreen (LEARN TO DO THAT IN THE PARKING LOT, YOU STUPID NIMRODS!!!), and I watched a gaggle of seriously demented women thinking it was cute when their demonic and sadistic spawn chased down seagulls with plastic baseball bats – fortunately, I wasn’t the only person who yelled at them, so there is hope for humanity yet ... maybe.  (Also fortunately, no seagulls were injured due to these women’s complete and utter lack of parenting skills).  The rest of them babbled never-ending bullsh*t at each other in such high, squeaky, loud voices you wanted to muzzle each and every one of them.  Give me a roll of duct tape and next time I might just do it.

And that experience ought to teach me not to oversleep on the mornings I plan to visit the beach.  Last time, I had left before these jackasses showed up.  And before I looked like a lobster.

We’re in the middle of Metageitnion Aug 6 - Sep 4 (no, do not ask me to pronounce that), which I’m guessing runs from new moon to new moon, which Drew Campbell tells me are considered sacred – in Hellenic Reconstruction circles, so I’m assuming in ancient Greece as well.*  The Corn Moon on the 20th (more or less) was magnificent.

(*And once again, I’m wrong.  According to the www.hellenion.org website, Metageitnion began on the 8th, not the 6th, although I hope someone familiar with Grecian months can explain why, because the new moon WAS on the 6th).  True, I could raise my hand on Day #1 of “Witchcraft for Dummies” (not the real title of the course I signed up for in New Hampshire – I just can’t remember it) and ask, “Hey!  How come Metageitnion began on the 8th, not the 6th, considering that the new moon WAS on the 6th??”  But no, I figured I’d wait just a wee bit longer before getting myself expelled for being annoying.

I have spent the last week wandering around the apartment, scoping out “circle sites”.  Nowhere can I find room for a 9-foot diameter circle, but a smaller one, possibly.  I do have my altar in the bedroom, but realized that perhaps I needed more room for spiritual activities as opposed to a focal point for feeble attempts at meditation.  Options are down to the living room and study.

And yet another illiterate witch set off the The Grammar and Spelling Psycho Police Squad.   This time I had looked up Pennyroyal to see if I could remember why I ordered it.  A dumb witch had decided to make anti-flea stuff to spray on the floor outside of her door.  Included in her directions was this piece of nonsense:

The Grammar and Spelling Psycho Police Squad

"Since the infusion is quite dark and heavy looking I deluded it with water."

???

You what?  You deluded it?  You gave it a delusion?  Your anti-flea concoction is now delusional?  Sure you didn't mean you DILUTED it?  Argh!!!   [Ker-blam!]  [Ker-pow!] [Ka-blooey!]  DILUTE, DILUTE, DILUTE!  OMG PLEASE. Buy a dictionary. 

I still haven’t figured out why I bought pennyroyal.  If anyone has a good use for it, let me know.

Discovering Salisbury and Poseidon

Ah.  The things we forget as we grow older.  Our car keys.  The grocery list.  Why we ordered pennyroyal.  The reason for cryptic class notes.  The fact that when we go to the beach for the first time in (mumble mumble) years and remove our bathing suits once we’re back home, we’re going to dump the entire contents of the sandy beach onto our bathroom floor, sink, bath tub and everything else!!! 

Yes, I should have been standing somewhere safe – inside the shower.  On a newspaper.  I was standing there, remembering all of the various efforts to “protect the floor!” my late mother undertook with three sandy kids crawling indoors after a day at the beach in Brewster, and thinking, “Mom, you could have tapped me on the shoulder or something!”  But no, she’s off riding fire engines in another galaxy somewhere (she always wanted to ride in a fire truck) ... and of no use to me whatsoever.  I remembered all of her valiant efforts only AFTER I’d made a sandy mess of the bathroom floor.  Again, I say:  “D’oh!!”

But ahhhh, the beach.  Salisbury.  I got there just as it opened, for several solid reasons:  less chance of huge numbers of people and less chance of a killer sunburn if I left before noon.  And you say, “So wear sunscreen!”.  To which I say, “Have you ever read the contents of a bottle of sunscreen, you gullible idiot ... er, I mean ... you easily misled and altogether rather pitiful nice person??” (I’m trying to be more polite.  How’s it going?)

Given the choice between absorbing all of those toxic chemicals into my skin and spending 2 hours in the morning sun and building up a tan tolerance?  The sunscreen is more likely to kill me than Ra or Sekhmet (“Blazing Eye of the Sun”) ever could.  I can’t believe the vast numbers of people in this country who bought into the “The sun is BAD for you!” nonsense without giving it any thought.  If Mr. Signpost taught us anything, it’s the exact opposite:  it’s the NO SUNLIGHT option that is truly bad for you.  And according to a recent study cited in Scientific American, ¾ of teens and adults in the U.S. are now lacking Vitamin D, “whose deficits are increasingly blamed for everything from cancer and heart disease to diabetes, according to new research.”  I’m not even remotely surprised.
Source:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-deficiency-united-states

Overdoing ANYTHING isn’t good for you, no matter what it is.  If I stayed out there all day and ended up getting a sunstroke, that’s overdoing it.  Try eating a bushel of apples all at once and tell me that eating a bushel of apples “keeps the doctor away”.  Not.  The doctor would be looking at you pitifully over the stomach pump.  That woman who looked like she spent her life in a tanning bed and could now donate her skin to the shoe leather industry definitely overdid it and even she’s not dying of skin cancer.  People have lived their entire lives out in the sun for millions of years without dying of skin cancer in droves. We are without a doubt the most idiotic, gullible country on the planet, seriously.  Dousing ourselves in toxic chemicals is safer than spending a few hours with the glorious, life-giving Sun???  OMG!

But back to the beach.  It was so beautiful.  So peaceful.  So calm and soothing.  I even thought I could learn to meditate to the rhythm of the waves.  I’m still relaxed from a mere few hours there.  I definitely have to go there more often.  I learned a few things about my own health and strength.  As the water rushed in and out, I found it difficult to keep my feet.  A few times I lost my balance, and let the waves push me in to and pull me out from the shore.  Which may or may not be unusual, but I recognized a difference in fearlessness in myself:  at one time I was unafraid of being pulled out – I knew how to swim sideways against an undertow and escape it.  But that was before the accident.  Now I wasn’t as sure of my strength and stamina as I was earlier.  First thought:  “I need to rebuild my core.”

I even found it difficult to walk on the sand itself, and when I returned home, discovered that my ankles and feet were sore and achy.  On one hand:  I should not be that weak in my legs and feet.  On the other hand:  YAY!  I can feel them!  The feeling did go away after a while, but for a time, I could feel the tingling of the water and sand on my feet.  I almost feel like going to the beach more often will contribute to a healing process.  Ahhh, Poseidon!  I’ve come home!

In between happy bouts of rolling around in and enjoying the water, I was reading Sorita d’Este and David Rankine’s Hekate:  Liminal Rites.  Word of the Day:  Apotropaic.  Protection against evil.  Literally from the Greek apotropaios "averting evil," from apotrepein "to turn away, avert," from apo- "off, away"+ trepein "to turn".

But back to the cryptic class notes.  Apple pie spices (i.e., cinnamon, nutmeg, mace) and citrus are examples of incense fragrances that draw higher frequencies ...!  (see last entry on incomprehensible notes.)  That was in the segment about preparing the magickal circle.  Now, if I could only figure out what “higher frequencies” meant.  I have this visual image of being aurally assaulted by a herd of crazed sopranos, and my head exploding from the high-pitched noise.  Maybe I should look that up.

Magickal Circles and Pitiful Class Notes

Recently enjoyed my second Saturday afternoon workshop in New Hampshire, this one on casting a magickal circle.  The workshop was so interesting and so packed full of information, I kept forgetting to take good notes, and ended up with bizarre and incomprehensible scribbles such as:  “apple pie, citrus, wafts in space.”   Which is why no one should allow me to cast a magickal circle any time soon.  (see diagram of my anticipated first attempt at it, right)  And then I spent the next morning trying to make sense of everything that was said.  No luck so far.  *sigh*.   Or should I say, “d’oh!”

Fortunately, the instructor decided to tape the workshop, so I’ll listen to it this weekend and try to catch some clues as to why it was I scribbled incomprehensible nonsense about apple pies and citrus.

Found another wonderful witch in support of anti-Twinkism.  Twinkiism?  WHATEVER!  This one from Zsuzsanna Budapest in The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries.  Now, obviously she’s not in favor of running up and down the west coast zapping everyone who ticked her off with some swishes and flicks of her wand ... or the entire coast would be one gigantic mass of boils, warts and broken bones, and all of Hollywood’s special effects make-up artists would be out of business.  But she is, thankfully, completely in favor of empowering witches with the ability to zap people when they need to.  Such zaps should be well thought out, definitive, done with courage and a willingness to face whatever consequences there may be.

“A witch who cannot hex,” sayeth she, “cannot heal.”

My first reaction?  Just what you might expect:  THANK YOU!!!!!

I hadn’t realized that there was a name for what I had been slowly doing over the last several years – more or less:  Pagan Reconstructionism is the general term for insisting on going back to the original historical source material.  Drew Campbell in Old Stones, New Temples described Reconstructionism as preferring:

•    The primacy of historical precedent regarding deities, worship and symbolism.  (And yes, I can see from here those readers who have witnessed me blowing up time and time again when this hasn’t happened, nodding energetically at that one.)
•    An insistence on cultural specificity and rejection of eclecticism.  (Say wha ...?  Took me a while to figure out what that meant.  Basically:  pagan reconstructionists are not in favor of picking and choosing deities or rituals from various cultures and combining them.  I’m not sure I do agree with that one.  Sounds too much like “rules and regulations” to me.  Why couldn’t I combine a ceremony honoring Sekhmet with a ceremony honoring Aphrodite?  They both have sexuality, lust, love and sensuality as characteristics, although there are differences in nuance, I think.  Other examples:  An and Ki, Nut and Geb playing much the same roles).
•    The rejection of Mesopaganism (e.g., revival-era druidic groups, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, ceremonial/ritual magick) and Christic influences on modern pagan religions.  Another definition:  “A term coined by Robin Goodfellow and used to refer to a religion which attempts to revive any of a various form of a paleo-pagan religion but are unable to completely give up judeo-christianity. Some examples are Masonic Druidism, Thelemic and some eclectic wiccans who still attend a xian church.”
•    An emphasis on “hard” polytheism, and skepticism regarding modern unifying theologies, particularly (1) Wiccan duotheism (“All gods are one God; all goddesses, one Goddess”) (2) the triple goddess paradigm of Robert Graves (Maiden-Mother-Crone); and (3) Jungian archetypism.  The unifying theology sounds to me much like the mesopagan definition.
•    A respect for personal gnosis (individual spiritual inspiration) coupled with a clean distinction between practices derived from intuition and those based on historical precedent.

Now, not every single one of those points pertained to me.  I hadn’t rejected ceremonial or ritual magick, mainly because it seemed somewhat useful in the “Let’s Learn About Incubi!” side of things, and I found Crowley’s work with ritual magick – or was it ceremonial magick? – fascinating.  I did realize it didn’t quite fit in with everything else I was learning, though.

I haven’t stopped searching for methods ways to invoke incubi, which I consider the same as the angels from the Book of Enoch.  I think Ida Craddock’s spirit husband was more of a very talented ghost than anything else.  But to invoke one of those angels, there are a lot of skills I need to pick up first.

About the Christic influences?  Definitely!  That always stuck out like a sore thumb, it was so obvious when you saw it.  Every time I went nuts over yet another “church lady in a pointy hat”, spouting rules, regulations and puritanical anti-sex crap at everybody, that’s what I was rejecting.  Far too many of those running around, pretending they were witches, or, even worse, actually thinking that they were witches.

I’m not ready yet to run headlong into pagan reconstructionism, though, mainly because there are so many directions in which to run.  Towards Sekhmet?  The Sumerians, Assyrians?  The Italians?  The teachers I’ll be learning from focus on the Celtic, which I suspect is not where I want to go – I’m not Celtic, for one thing – and some of the Gardnerian foundation bothers me.  Still, if the recent class was any indication, there is so much to be learned from them.  Once you respect the teacher’s basic skills and intelligence, it doesn’t much matter what tradition they seek for themselves, as long as they have the ability to teach you the skills you need to learn to seek your own.  Basic classes begin in September.

Woke up a week ago SCREAMING.  Charleyhorses in both calves, tendon cramps on the outside of both feet, and the inside of both feet, ankle level; cramps in both thigh muscles; tendon cramps on the backside tendons of both thighs.  All simultaneous.  At that point I was beyond crippled, beyond immobile and howling with pain.  I couldn’t even move to massage the cramps in both legs; all I could do was lay flat and scream into the pillow until I was hoarse, and try to WILL my muscles to unclench.  It took five to ten minutes of horrific agony until I could try to roll over and push myself up, and by that time I was nearly blacking out from the pain.  Even that slight movement set my legs off again – and me into another bout of pillow screaming.  Took me a full thirty minutes before it was even remotely bearable.  By four in the afternoon, Saturday, I could still barely walk, that’s how awful the damage was.  Both of my eyes were bloodshot from the screaming.

There has to be some way to get rid of these things!  The medication they gave me works most of the time, but is also beginning to give me tremors – slight ones, although every once in a while my hand will suddenly fling itself off to the right or something, and my pen flies across the room.  My legs do the same thing every once in a while, too, and thank goodness I’m usually sitting down when it happens.

While I recovered from the horrible leg & foot cramp experience, I read more detail about the cimaruta in The Evil Eye : an account of this ancient and widespread superstition by Frederick Thomas Elworthy, 1895, London: John Murray.  If you can stomach the sneering christian condescension and nastiness ("superstitition"?), it’s available on Google Books for downloading.  Really.  It’s nauseating.  The next time a christian whines about all the anti-christian sentiment directed at people like her who are obviously saints, wave the book under her nose as a good reason why she and her ilk had it coming.

Still.  If you can ignore the appalling rudeness, the book is vaguely useful when it comes to historical practices – even without the information on cimarute, the work is full of the ancient symbols and talismans employed in classical civilizations – although, you have to admit, it didn’t much save them from the onset of the Dark Ages from which  we’re still suffering, although fortunately, the dark Age of Pisces is fading away, brought on by ever more ugly scandals perpetuated by christians and their deeply repressed lust.

The cimaruta is always made from silver, which is sacred to Diana and is always created with three branches, sacred in all sorts of ways:  maiden/mother/crone (see, there’s that Robert Graves thing again.  I should probably read his book); three-road intersection; the three sisters, the three wyrd sisters, the Triple Crown ... okay, forget that last one, but you get the idea.

Early morning nooner with a FWB and went flying over the moon – twice.  Second flight so intense it felt as though it lasted 5 minutes.  Afterwards, he was so sure he was responsible for the experience, strutting around so puffed up and impressed with himself I didn’t have the heart to remark that, in actuality, a Piero fantasy – both times – was responsible.  The second fantasy was just a little more inventive than the first.  I consider myself lucky I didn’t scream Piero’s name out loud and destroy the FWB’s ego for life.

Oh, the shameful deliciousness of it.

The Highs, the Lows, The One and Only - and Sex with Piero Barone

Another one of those span of months … both the highs and the lows … spent a few days in Manchester, New Hampshire seeing another concert; some dimwit bombed the Boston Marathon, the IRS didn’t like my tax return and there has been considerable back and forth discussion about it; the One and Only (or, in his parlance, l’uno e solo) is returning to both Boston and New York (Radio City Music Hall!!) but the New York tickets were sold out back to row SS within one minute of ticket sale opening. (WHAT????) I did get some decent Boston tickets; I need to keep track of the sales of long-range, high-powered telescopes just to see the One and Only onstage in New York.

I tentatively put one toe outside of my front door after a year of near agoraphobia following my brother’s death, and went whale watching off of Cape Ann with a few friends.

As punishment for that, my beloved Casper died the night of the 23rd, sending Peanut into wailing grief on behalf of of the two of us, which was heartbreaking to hear. Now there are just the two of us left, Peanut and me. She follows me everywhere now, like she once did Casper, a little shadow at my heels, looking anxious and lost and needy. And when she moves on … maybe 5-10 years from now … I’m getting on a plane and flying to Italy. And may never come back.

Now, no one will understand this next near tragedy unless they’ve carried a much beloved and oft seasoned cast iron skillet around with them – I had mine since my college days, and (sweadda gawd!) I love that thing more than 99% of my ex-boyfriends, as it is a hell of a lot more reliable and useful. I have no idea why anyone thought those Teflon monstrosities were an improvement.

The disaster began with Stop ‘n Shop. Here’s my thought: if people would tell the truth, however unpleasant, it’s far preferable to being lied to. Or maybe some people like being lied to – I’m just not one of them.

So, there’s this non-dairy creamer I use in my coffee every morning. Got used to it. One day, I’m shuffling around in S&S, and (blink!) there isn’t any! How could they not have it? In its place is the store-brand of the same flavored non-dairy creamer. I whined to a nearby store employee. "Yes," she told me, "they stopped making it. Use ours, it tastes the same and its cheaper."

I took it home, tried it the next morning and spat it back out disgust. It was horrible. It tasted like I had just poured a container of bitter chemicals into my coffee. I pulled them back out of the cupboard and wandered around looking for the receipt so I could return the unused bottles. I temporarily put them in my cast iron skillet, until I could get them all down, and move them to the counter. Yeah, you guessed the rest: forgot about moving them, turned on the wrong burner, next thing I knew I was smelling burning plastic. I grabbed a box of baking powder, doused the mess, turned off the oven and cursed myself out for abject stupidity. My skillet!!! My precious, beloved skillet!!!

A weekend or so later, I reversed the process: melted the plastic back down under more controlled conditions and peeled it off the skillet – good as new, thank goodness! And I discovered they had lied. Right down the street, Market Basket carried an entire shelf of the creamer I used – they hadn’t been discontinued. S&S said the same thing about a type of grocery bag I used – found them on the shelves of Market Basket, too, after S&S told me they’d been discontinued – told me to buy their store brand instead. I started growling. I hate, hate, HATE being lied to.

Written the day after the Boston Marathon bombing.

"It feels no different than the day after 9/11: a vague sense of uneasy nausea, a general state of numbness; a feeling that something ought to have changed, but probably didn’t. Or more that I should feel gravely different … but don’t. I wrote the "Two Swords" (http://snakestrail.blogspot.com/2011/06/two-swords.html) poem crossing the Hudson on a silent ferry after 9/11 but that was all I did – astonished at the sense of pervasive peace and tranquility and silence as the ferry chopped its way cross-current towards Hoboken. Or maybe it was Weehauken. Now I have very little to say. I have no idea who did it. Or, more relevantly, why. But then, I didn’t understand 9/11, either. I suspect we’ll find out soon enough, since rumor has it they arrested someone. Further details unknown.

Actually, when I’m feeling totally illogical, I blame the 9/11 perpetrators for, among other things obviously, setting in motion the wheels that propelled me unwillingly into Massachusetts. When I got home in North Andover from Boston, I sat there, staring at the TV screen (again), wondering why I was in both U.S. cities hit by terrorists (again). Luck? It was also the day that I clasped the cimaruta around my neck. Protection from the malocchio – the Evil Eye. It worked. I survived. Others weren’t quite so fortunate. I learned that there is a group of people who had the same experience that I did – our own little "exiled from New York after 9/11" group of ex-pats. The "ONNA" (for "Oh no, not again") Club, survivors of both attacks. We should sell t-shirts."

Back to the present:

No need to go into the details. We learned who did it, although I should probably toss an "allegedly" in there. And why. The conspiracy theorists are already running full tilt. Again. So unbelievably tiresome.

As the chaos faded … a beautiful full Pink Moon in April rose in the night sky … and on May 25 the Full Flower Moon ... on June 23rd the Full Strawberry Moon. July 22 is the Full Buck Moon or the Thunder Moon. I worked the week up to my first week of vacation since my September 2012 "Il Volo" vacation last year to Manhattan, and then into Boston in a typhoon. I have four weeks of vacation altogether. In the middle of it, I ventured up to New Hampshire, this time to Manchester. A concert in the Verizon Arena on Elm Street.

It was nowhere near as terrifying as the two Il Volo concerts, when I was still suffering from a bout of Bells Palsy and terrified that the One and Only would see me from the stage and grimace at the sight. He did neither, so I was happy. Today I’m still gimping around on a bum knee, but my face has mostly righted itself. The Radisson there had a swimming pool, so for the first time since … (I have absolutely no idea!) … I ordered a bathing suit and terrycloth robe online; they arrived, and I enjoyed the Radisson swimming pool. It’s been so long since I’ve had a good swim. Next step: the beach.

 

Beltane.

All of the references to fertility and lust and springtime and my beautiful dogwood tree outside the office burst into glorious bloom and had wonderful Solomon’s Seal growing at her feet, glistening with dew first thing in the morning – so beautiful!

The One and Only – or L’uno e solo

And of course, speaking of the One and Only has driven me completely off the deep end with not one but two erotic references to being naked:

• the first, his most embarrassing moment: that he’s always naked when he’s in in his room, but then realizes he has forgotten to close the curtains;
• the second, that he has to prepare for concerts completely naked, so don’t walk in on him when he’s in his private dressing room warming up his voice.

Ahhhh, my handsome, erotic, exhibitionistic angel. I knew there was a reason I adored him. There will now be a long pause while I drool helplessly. Of course, then he posted this photo, and damn near killed me. Slide the waistband of those sweatpants just one tiny millimeter lower, and the women who adore him would be unconscious on the floor.

Ahhh, Piero Barone. L’uno e solo.

I know exactly what he wants right now, and it’s not to get married and settle down. That comes later. Right now he wants sex. Hot, steamy, kinky sex. The kinkier, steamier and hotter the better. He is not the romantic third of Il Volo. Someone else pegged him perfectly. He is the gigolo of Il Volo. Yes, I knew there was a reason I adored him.

All of this – and that voice!
 

Megalesia, Cybele, Attis, Piero Barone's Sexy Legs III and New Video, and my new Cimaruta

We are now in the middle of the Megalesia, a Roman festival established in 191 B.C., to honor the Magna Mater 'Great Mother' goddess Cybele. The Megalesia was held from 4-10 April or on April 4 and 10.

A goddess of caverns, mountain tops. wild beasts, bees ...

"Along with her consort, the vegetation god Attis, Cybele was worshipped in wild, emotional, bloody, orgiastic, cathartic ceremonies.

Cybele was the goddess of nature and fertility. Because Cybele presided over mountains and fortresses, her crown was in the form of a city wall. The cult of Cybele was directed by eunuch priests called Corybantes, who led the faithful in orgiastic rites accompanied by wild cries and the frenzied music of flutes, drums, and cymbals. Her annual spring festival celebrated the death and resurrection of her beloved Attis."

Her Greek mythology counterpart was Rhea.

Sexual "morality" is one of the major blind spots to understanding the past. The Western world has become so enmeshed in the Judeo-Christian view of sexuality that it takes a major effort for most to take an unbiased viewpoint of cultures that had a much healthier view of human sexuality. Even today's neo-Pagan, who is taught that all acts of pleasure, that harm none, are forms of Her worship, often still struggle with the "morality" of same-sex relationships and even the existence of transsexuals so it should not be a surprise that much written about ancient sexuality is tainted with unexamined bias. The term "temple prostitute" is an excellent example. The very term is extremely negatively emotionally loaded. To avoid this, I shall refer to those who practiced the institutional sacred sex role as hierodules, a greek term without that loading to the modern reader. http://www.gallae.com/

I agree with her in that the world "temple prostitute" is tainted with judeo-christian-islamic revulsion at the very word "sex". The historians of the time wouldn’t have used the word with the same condemning, condescending, puritanical prissiness being used today. I’m all in favor of creating a new phrase to replace that one.

Our next full moon, the Pink Moon (or the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and the Fish Moon) isn’t until April 25, so we’re within the time of banishing, diminishing spells up until the new moon on April 10.

Vic-tor-yyyyyy!!!!

Aside from the excitement of the arrival of Game of Thrones, Season 3, I finally found a genuine cimaruta – had to search Italy from Trieste to Agrigento to find it. And here is the One and Only and his beautiful, sexy legs congratulating me on my good fortune! (Yes, that was a bald-faced lie ... the congratulating part, I mean, not the beautiful, sexy legs part. Hey, I can fantasize. So sue me).

According to the One and Only, after performing, recording, and taping two PBS specials in Miami, they’ve flown back home. Not sure WHAT they were recording, but whatever it is, it has to be good. The good news is that their presence in Miami suggested a few hours of relaxation on a beach or beside a pool, in or near the water, wearing delightfully skimpy attire, within visual range of people with cameras. Which – at least in Piero’s case – makes me delightfully happy ... (OMG, am I in love with his legs!) I would have been delightfully happy even without the cimaruta.

But I finally found one! A genuine cimaruta!!! It’s gorgeous. This one is from Firenze (Florence), by the way.

Meanwhile, the cd’s recorded by Christopher Penczak arrived. He really does have a calm voice, but the recording itself threw me for a proverbial loop.

He was (calmly) tossing out affirmations that the listener was supposed to repeat. The problem was: I couldn’t do it. An example of one such affirmation: "I love and forgive myself."

I stopped in my tracks after hearing that affirmation, unwilling to repeat it. Said, "But I don’t," even though I wasn’t certain what I was or wasn’t forgiving myself for, in Penczak’s mind. Maybe I didn’t love or forgive myself, and what difference should it make? My brother’s death was a biggie I couldn’t get past any way I looked at it. I’ve NEVER gotten past that. I don’t know that I ever will. I certainly wasn’t wandering the streets starry eyed with love for myself, either, THAT much I knew. Before I could give my objection some more thought, he went into to another affirmation I couldn’t bring myself to repeat because I knew it wasn’t accurate. Then another. And another. I stopped the CD altogether.

And then sunk into a rage of self-loathing, the likes of which I can’t begin to describe. It felt like a free-fall into a bottomless abyss.

And then, about 3 or 4 days later I had started to doze on the train, and was in that borderland between asleep and awake. A voice said, "That was not an observation or a condemnation; it was a path." I thought at first it was someone sitting near me, and then realized it wasn’t.

This was basically the message: no matter how many people tell you that you have to achieve some sort of mental and emotional purity before anything positive will happen to you, they’re wrong. My Spirit Lover was perfectly willing to work with me, even with my feelings of guilt, and understood perfectly why being partially disabled could very easily lead to self-loathing. Neither of those were "deal-breakers".  It wasn't required of me to repeat affirmations that I was emotionally unable to repeat.  The incident merely served to point out a possible path of development, that was all.

Well, we have another reader passionately devoted to Piero Barone of Il Volo, asking for this video. Out very recently, it knocked me flat when I saw it – it was done for fun by Piero and one of his friends while he was in Naro for the December-January holidays; he's lip-syncing to one of his own live performances of this song in 2012 that someone recorded after their performance at the Beacon Theater.  I know this because the first time we heard the revised version of the line, "that anywhere I go" was in New York.  You can hear the audience scream with delight when he got to "that anywhere I go I'm never lonely" - trust me, a live Piero Barone performance is breathtaking and he knocked the audience out of their seats with that line.

I absolutely loved this video when I saw it – you can tell he had a hoot doing it.  Word of warning though:  this may not last long; other copies of this have been deleted, I fear this may go the same way.  Enjoy while you can.

So to "Lauren", who found her way around the requirement that she had to leave a "URL" – she didn’t. Instead she brilliantly signed her name in the message itself.  Here’s the homemade video she asked for:

Worm Moons, Palms and Pine Trees, Leo Louis Martello ... and Piero Barone's Sexy Legs, Part II

Oh my, the beauty of the full Worm Moon this morning!

"Hands, palms up, under water".

Last Saturday was one of the few times I went so deeply into trance I had a slow time resurfacing. I had no idea why I was seeing what I was seeing, though, but it was very clear: I was staring curiously at my own palms – or at least I assumed they were mine – palms up, but under water. Water was clear and blue and looked refreshing and cold. But I was just staring at those hands, palms-up, under the water, and thinking, "What does this mean?" Feminine energy, healing, cleansing, purification, passion, emotion, subconscious? All of those, some of those, none of those correspondences?

I had just finished going into trance by staring at the tall, majestic pine tree outside the window of the Derry Town Hall, or whatever that building was in which the workshop was held, and breathing deeply. I rarely am able to achieve that level of trance during a group – hell, even a private – meditation session. If this wasn’t a directional sign pointing towards my working with trees, I don’t know what was.

It wasn’t until three days later, riding the train, that I decided that I thought the answer was: "all of them". The hands possibly represented "work", as in "working on myself". To raise energy, to heal, to cleanse myself, to purify myself, I needed exactly what this group "trance" had provided: meditation skills that would free my subconscious. Only that would open up the door to passion and emotional fulfillment, all of them properties of water.

And because my attempts at meditation with only myself as the guiding force had never really worked – as I said somewhere, as soon as I started a meditation ritual of any sort I tended to break into jaw cracking yawns – it seems that, in addition to a tree ally, I initially needed an exterior voice to provide the guidance, as I hadn’t started yawning in the workshop. Bob Hackett had provided the vocals at the workshop, but I doubt he had a CD of "trance inducing guidance rituals."

I briefly considered running the idea past Mr. Signpost, because goodness knows, HE has one of those voices that sends you into instant peace and tranquility. I still may do that, actually, but right now he’s preparing for a trip to Sweden? Denmark? Both? I can’t remember. Or he will be, around 09 April. In any event, I’ll suggest it later.

Ahh, but in the meantime, Christopher Penczak did! I ordered his one of his CDs, hoping he had a calm and soothing voice. My definition of "calm and soothing": a voice that can send you into a meditative head space; not a voice that puts you straight into a sleep so deep you start snoring in public. If not? Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Anyone who has studied Native American history is familiar with the late author, theologian, historian, and activist Vine Deloria, Jr. Probably best known for Custer Died For Your Sins; God Is Red: A Native View of Religion and Red Earth, White Lies, he was sharp, incisive, had a wicked sense of humor and could be very, very angry when confronted with ignorance, condescension, willful stupidity and blatant historical revisionism. I remember being completely blown away by him: he made me see things in a way I’d never seen them before.

I was reminded of Deloria when I started reading the late Leo Louis Martello’s Witchcraft: The Old Religion (1991). A lot of the same anger; I haven’t found Vine’s same satirical sense of humor yet, though. I read somewhere that Martello filed lawsuits against the catholic church and against the Village of Salem, Massachusetts for retributions for cruelty and inhumanity against, and the wholesale slaughter of, his ancestors. (Gee, I wonder how those lawsuits turned out?)

In some ways we’re alike – besides being Italian, I mean. He seemed to have very little patience with nonsense.

I had to keep remembering that he was a standing member of the Civil Rights generation – the AIM days, the Gloria Steinem days, Stonewall, Martin Luther King – a lollapalooza of seriously pissed off people, and Martello fought for witches’ rights amidst that passionate crowd, and in his favor, he was obviously NOT trying to placate christians threatening to start a bonfire with him as the kindling. Many of his predecessors – Gardner, Valiente, even Crowley - carried a great load of christian baggage on their shoulders. Martello did not. He carried anger.  Sometimes he was carried away by it.  At other times it was refreshing.

Still, I have many of the same issues with him – as much as I’m enjoying reading the book – as I have with some others. Some historical comments are cited; far too many of them aren’t. And usually the un-cited ones are the ones that make you go, "Wha …?"

One example: "Many modern scholars believe that Jesus was an Essene; this sect was a secret society that had its roots in the worship of the Goddess Cybele, whose priests were eunuchs. It is believed that the thirty years of Jesus’ life of which there is no record were spent as a eunuch priest devoted to Cybele." (page 121, no citation)

Hell, I’m not even a christian and said, "Wha …?" Where did THAT come from? Those are the things we need to be seriously citing, along with avoiding the untraceable passive, "It is believed". By whom? Why? When? It isn’t believed by me right now, that’s for sure. As far as I can see, he’s the only person who "believed" that, because I hadn’t heard that before. Give me some serious reasons for paying attention to that and I might, but you can’t just throw out things like, "Jesus was a eunuch and a Cybeline priest" and expect people to nod, "Oh, okay, sure, that makes loads of sense!" Sorry.

Another example of sweeping generalizations:

"In the Craft, there is no hard dogma. Hard drugs are forbidden. Mindless morons can't be a compliment to our Mother Goddess. Sex is sacred, not something to be exhibited at a peep show. Power is something personal, not to be used over others, which is contrary to Craft ethics. Those who think the Old Religion will make them masters over others are slaves to their own self-delusions. A happy person is always a powerful person and is hated by those who aren't. A happy person is in many ways selfish; in the Craft we must protect our best interests and ensure that the power that comes from joy remains constant, knowing that none of us are immune from the vicissitudes of life, but that our Old Religion will help us handle an adversity."

I sighed heavily, reading this. Ah. "There is no hard dogma, but hard drugs are forbidden." Forbidden, are they? Really. Aren’t those two sentences rather … you know, contradictory? Did anyone tell the Eleusinian initiates that? John Dee? Aleister Crowley? The Sicilian witches in his own ancestry who concocted flying ointment? The shamans of South and Central America? The alchemists who were precursors to today’s chemists? And I’m wondering what Vine Deloria would have had to say about that – given that peyote is considered a "hard drug" in the minds of the U.S. Government, and is a key component of the spiritual practices of a number of First Nations, largely located in the southwest. The minute you start trumpeting ANY hard laws like that, we have a problem. So, the ethics of Martello’s witchcraft trump the ethics of Vine and the priests of Athens and the streghone of Sicily? What’s wrong with this picture?

"A happy person is always a powerful person and is hated by those who aren't."? Riiiiiight. That’s a bit … Tinkerbelle-ish, idn’t it? I know a lot of happy people who haven’t an ounce of power in their entire being, and aren’t hated by anyone. And does sex ALWAYS have to be "sacred"? Can’t it be … you know, fun?

And he should probably have left out the chapter on prophets – all of the "end of the world" predictions were dead wrong. How do I know that? Easy. We’re still here. 1981. 1999. 2000. 2012. All gone by.

Still, I could fully understand his anger, and it’s rather refreshing.

It's nice to have the One and Only back again ... preparing for their third South American tour, and posing for lots of pictures.  He really does have the most beautiful legs ...

 

Tree Magick Preparation and Perdurabo

I’m preparing for a workshop on The Standing People being held today … [pause for thought] … I don’t like the word "workshop"; it makes a tree sound like bacteria you peer at through a microscope, scribble notes about in laboratory notebooks and discuss endlessly with your peers in biology class. "A Respectful and Powerful Introduction to the Magnificent Tree" is better. I’m preparing for that.

I finished Perdurabo, and suggest that if you’ve only heard bad things about Aleister Crowley, you’d do well to read the book, if you have the time.  Very thick, well documented, 562 pages!

Not saying I would have enjoyed being part of his OTO family; just that you realize he was nowhere near as evil as the British and American press said he was while he was alive. Enormously intelligent and quite gifted. He seemed to REALLY enjoy sex magick, until he got older and his ‘get up and go’ got up and went. AND, he seemed to have an odd habit of being sexually attracted to women who were borderline insane – in the medical sense of the word "insane" – as more than a few of them became so downright frightening after becoming involved with him that he seemed tame in comparison. Of course, our primary source for that are his notes and diaries, so he could have greatly exaggerated his demeanor in the midst of their chaotic hysteria, knife-wielding crazed jealousy and baby-producing.

Things I questioned: I tend to give people of Crowley’s era a bit of a break, because it almost feels as though they were the ones who had to forcibly begin to crawl out from under the historically smothering, dangerous, toxic cloud of patriarchal christianity that had placed Europe and the Americas in the dark ages for so long. They tried their best, but they seemed to be still suffering in many respects from the choking stench, even though they’d lifted their heads above the swamp.

For example, Ida Craddock did her best to maintain an intense christianity while railing against their loathing of and longing for sex – the end result killed her.

Crowley’s biography discusses OTO and one of the grades of Magus he claims Crowley had attained:

"The Magus was a special attainment, as only seven others in the past had ever attained the grade and founded a religion: Lao Tzu’s Taoism, Thoth’s Egyptian mysteries, Krishna’s Vedanta, Gautama’s Buddhism, Moses’ Judaism, the suffering and slain pattern of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Jesus and Dionysus, and the Islamic religion of Mohammed." (p. 295)

Now, I would have backed away from "founded a religion" like I would have backed away from a nervous skunk backing away from a porcupine being stalked by a cougar. As it was, my first thought was, "Yeah, THAT’s exactly what the world needed: another religion!" But Crowley was still deeply entrenched in the era of men whose world view consisted exclusively of organized systems of political, sexual and personal power with themselves at the apex, something all the more evident if you look at the gender of the list of so-called "Magi", above.

As far as Crowley was concerned, women were merely tools in sex magick and walking wombs who could produce heirs. Not a single one of them had any real power or respect. (And his women, being the stupid, chronically insane nitwits they were, went along with it.) Crowley wasn’t intelligent enough to see past his own world view, and ultimately, that would be why he DIDN’T found anything of lasting value beyond many interesting ideas which can be incorporated into more relevant and contemporary belief systems. Yes, there are those still studying Thelema and more power to them if they can bring it into the next century. But I don’t think they can.

I don’t mean to pick on the Thelemites, though. Honestly, I don’t think any of us can. Seeing past one’s own world view is something so rare, I have yet to see or read anyone who could manage it. If you’re going to create a "religion", name it the "Religion of Moi", because you’re the only person who will understand it; the only adherent to whom it will make sense.