Nowadays we nature worshippers have scientific tools like this

http://www.archaeoastronomy.com/2008.shtml

to tell us exactly when our holy days ought to fall-- if we want to be fundamentalist asshats about it, which I do not.

At my Grove, it's all about me. I put fundamental stress on the individual's experience of the Wheel of the Year, which means I'm continually checking in with my Grove as well as on my own relationship with the weather and the world, when giving human voice to the season.

This samhain I decided not to talk about myths and pumpkins and embracing the world's shadow. I decided to confine myself to multilayered verbal impressionism that a reader could take many ways, probably because I am feeling a bit indistinct and querulous about my own edges. I just want to live, unlike other years, and deciding to defy my own weaknesses is strange.

There is no darkness like October darkness. I can feel it creeping in behind the daylight as soon as the final harvest moon begins to wane. 

The trees smoulder with hazes of color which the rains cannot extinguish. Summer foliage catches the brilliant disease, combusts and then scatters to cover the ground with its motley ash. It smears into running pigment underfoot. Bark is soaked and oily looking; gray darkens to charcoal black. Solid looking underbrush turns to detritus that cracks with crumbling decay at its heart.

Beyond this packing down of leavings creatures of all sizes and scales crawl in deeper where they can, some readying for sleep, others merely trying to cease their shivers. Down comforter earns its name, if it has not been sold to appease the wolves.

The mists upon the low places for their part reveal as much as they cover, weighting down each spray with heavy tears to see if it will break. These are the excruciating veils between the worlds. They are visible now precisely because they have thinned. The netting is porous now and larger particles make it through. If the tissue is alive, warmth can tighten it again.  The drum can be tuned. If not, fire will dry it until it cracks into crisp shards.

Doom, the beating heart seems to say. Doom and doom and doom and doom and doom.  The slide away from the sun source is well away now. Dark will only grow, and the cold with it. Rage against it, if only to keep your own toes attached.

Samhain is not just a time of hearing history's ghosts and honoring them.  It is also a time to grapple with mortality.  Face fears. Take their measure. If you dare, let them try to kill you; it will help you locate that spark which denies entropy-- for now. It will strengthen your sinews to wrestle your  fears. It will cleanse you to sweat from the touch of them. Your breath will be hot mist that melts the permeable and illusive and gives luster to the solid.

Take comfort from cauldron over fire, and what steams there to be ladled out, day by day while we prepare for the far away spring. Listen to the stories that rise from the past and the future reflected in forming skins of clarity upon the puddles, and do not take their chill too deep into your heart.

My heart always threatens to crack at the hugeness of the beauty at the year's end.  It takes many deep sighing breaths to fit even a crumb of it into me. But the colors and the smells and the breezes are like vitamins for my soul. I take them with me into the year's night. I must remind myself that I have made it through many times before. I will blessed be.

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 from http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.... which is the blog of a french experimental music group, HERB PROJECT

Tuesday 19/02/2008

Recently we had a big old recession fall on us, and the USA government decided to 'bail out' the corporate idiots responsible, which means the same IRS that didn't send me my tax refund or my 'economic incentive' this year is earmarking billions for the gamblers.  Same thing this post is about, but that was back in January. That means it's a trend.

Comments: 0   Views: 129   Group: General   Tags: politics, inhumanity

This is a repost from writer AJ Llewellyn's blog at http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog....  He says:

I want to talk about Unconditional Love today, in particular a Cause I have been passionately committed to: the canonization of the Belgian born priest, Father Damien. They called him the hero of Molokai because this incredible man was the only one who volunteered to service Molokai when death was almost certain.

He defied the Vatican's orders not to have direct physical contact with his flock and went to the Hawaiian island of Molokai, a leper colony in 1873 to serve the sick and dying. Single handedly.  Hundreds of islanders were banished to this island during the terrible plague traced to a ship load of Chinese farm workers brought unwittingly to the Hawaiian kingdom causing widespread panic and disease.

I have been devoted, along with many others to the Cause of seeing this Blessed man declared a saint. Make no mistake. I'm not Catholic, nor has God whispered in my ear dictating this long and winding road, but I did have an encounter with Father Damien that I have never forgotten.

Damien, thanks to the new Pope, Benedict XVI is on the road to Sainthood. At last.

The spiritual patron for Hansen's Disease, HIV and AIDS patients and other 'outcasts' has finally been embraced by the Vatican, once embarrassed that Father Damien, in caring for what he deemed his Children, fell victim to leprosy (now called Hansen's Disease) himself and died in agony of it at the age of 49.

His story is remarkable. When he arrived on the lonely, isolated Kalaupapa peninsular, he was shocked to find so many sick and dying men, women and children, banished to the island with no food, shelter or any treatment for this hideous, progressive disease. Damien stopped the women from being raped, demanded food and medicine to be shipped to Molokai, built housing and a church for his children. He fed them, bathed them. Respected them. And he loved them. Utterly and unconditionally.

He must have been a talented builder because every single structure he erected is still standing and in use, by the remaining two dozen patients who will by Hawaiian state law be allowed to live at Kalaupapa until their last breath.

Visitors are allowed to Molokai, but a permit is required and no more than 100 tourists can be on island at the same time. A few years ago, after the death of my grandmother, who raised me, I fell into a deep depression and during a long stay in Maui, found a compilation of oral histories from former patients at Molokai. Their stories were devastating. So many families were destroyed by the "Separating Sickness." I felt increasingly compelled to visit Molokai and read everything I could on Father Damien.

I became obsessed with the wonderful Australian movie, Molokai in which the extraordinary David Wenham portrayed Damien. Like many islanders, I became enraged when Father Damien's steps toward Sainthood resulted in the Belgian government digging up his body from his grave in Kalaupapa.

Long before he contracted Hansen's Disease, he considered himself a leper. I felt in death, as in life he would want to sleep with his children and when the Belgian government bent under international pressure and returned his right hand to the people of Hawaii, I felt even more strongly about paying homage to the man I considered a true hero.

Coincidentally, I won a book on ebay called Margaret of Molokai  and couldn't wait to receive it. Then I got an email from a man on Molokai who was devastated because I had beaten him out on the book auction. He had tried to win it for his mother, a still-living resident at Kalaupapa. I offered to give him the book as soon I had read it. I promised him I would read it quickly and send it to him immediately.

He responded with a kind email saying I was the embodiment of the spirit of Aloha. This man and his wife and soon, his mother, started corresponding with me regularly and I ended up going to visit them. Anyone who has read my Phantom Lover series might be interested to know that Lopaka's tutu [grandmother] is based on the woman who became my surrogate mother on Molokai.

She took me on a tour of the hospital. I was shocked to see all the barriers still in place, as a sort of memorial and living museum where family members were allowed to come and visit their loved ones in the disease's curable stage, thanks to new drugs.

We went to Damien's church and we sat in a pew. I will never forget the sun shining on me, the dizzying scent of ginger stems washing over me. I looked at the floor as I thought about my grandmother and all the things I might have said to her given the chance to say goodbye. I saw all the holes in the floor. That, I hadn't expected.

"What are they?" I asked my friend.

"Spit holes. In the latter stages of leprosy, the victims during Damien's time, before there was a cure, could not swallow. Damien still wanted them to come to church and he put spit holes in the floor so they could still come to church and pray."

And then, a wondrous thing happened. I felt him. I really did. His beautiful, Holy ghost was in his House, and I, like all his other outcasts had just become one of Damien's children. It was an indescribable feeling. It was a high feeling of pure love.

"He's here, you can feel him, can't you?" my friend whispered and I just sat, stunned. Had I been alone, I know I would have dismissed that moment as a fantasy. That feeling has stayed with me for years now and I reach in for it, whenever I need it.

Recently, Pope Benedict declared the inexplicable healing of 80 year old Audrey Toguchi's cancer as a Miracle. Her fatal illness miraculously disappeared after a long visit at Father Damien's grave. He has pushed Damien's case to the head of the line where he should be.

Earlier this year, I went back to Molokai and took Father Damien a lei. I know it's only his right hand there, but it still belongs to him. The hand that touched, nurtured, fed and held people terrified and feeling abandoned by their God.

In Hawaii, Father Damien Day is celebrated on April 15.

Beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995, the Catholic Church commemorates Damien on May 10.

Known officially as "Blessed Damien of Molokai," he will soon be known as Damien, hero, father...SAINT. 

Aloha oe,

AJ

Admirable human who shines with great beauty, I make pilgrimage to you as I would to a holy wellspring at this season.

helgaleena

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What I did on my Autumnal Equinox, by Helgaleena Healingline

Those of us who live in the northern hemisphere are having to prepare for the dark of the year.  Oz and Indonesia might be getting their spring now, Chile may be ready to send us strawberries, but for this Druid, it is Harvest Home.

So much is going on at this time and this season-- harvest winding up and fruits of the wilds and hedgerows to gather. Time to get the carrots and turnips into the cellar and the grannies into the house-- how amused I was to find this saying is used in Scotland as it is in Finland. Meteors are falling and the archangels are out slaying dragons. Mikkeli or Michaelmas is also the time for hiring fairs and matchmaking markets for the maids and lads, and back to school for the students -- which is where I got the title for this blog. 'What I did on my summer vacation', the traditional makework essay for day one in the classroom.

Helgaleena forgot to take a vacation this summer, what with the settling and unsettling and press-birthing and all.  If I were a British rockstar who could fly, I'd be rescuing people stranded on vacation when the company folds, I suppose,  modern day heroics instead of demon hunting. But if I take vacation now, at harvest moon, it's actually switching one work for another-- harvesting for the kitchen instead of nitpicking the latest crop of erotic fiction.

I followed my muse away from the keyboard and into the ditches behind the storage units and found Elder Mother.  She even provided a leaky bucket to gather the berries the birds had left. That  provided about two gallons of delicious medicine once the poisonous stems were removed.  Half a turkey leftover from Easter lost its spot in the freezer to make room for the quarts of conserve that will ease my sonny's asthma all winter long in cobbler form.

An impromptu raid for windfall apples at a confidential location in the suburban vacant spaces known only to deer cost me a favorite cardigan, sacrificed to the cockleburrs. But the four pies worth of lovely pink-tinted fruit are worth it. I have other clothes.

The last of the month's food budget covered acquisition of whole wheatflour and oil which have tripled in price, thanks so much, Bush recession.  But I also was early to the market for the marked down produce. Normally I cannot afford bell peppers for us, but the red and gold ones bundled into bags because they have gotten slightly wrinkled? Scored! the same went for the fresh tomatoes and wilted cilantro. There will be fresh marinara; there will be decoration of the Three Sisters in honor of autumn.

Those who don't know them as the field companions of the Americas, corn bean and squash, may have heard of succotash.  My son's people prefer them as a soup with meat in it and hominy made their own special way.  I don't have hominy, only parching corn and corn meal. And I'm going to go multicultural and use mung beans. The squash is a lovely golden tan butternut with a large percentage of flesh to rind, perfect for pie as well.  Result? a ratatouille-like stew will be topped with cornbread.  But first we have to dispose of the turkey pie that won't fit into the freezer. We are not too poor to avoid feasting when it's equinox.

Yes, I 'practice the art of pie' as Garrison Keillor put it.  My pies are not great, but at least they are pies. I think I spent too much time in ceramics and think I'm supposed to be making sculptures, not food.  So as not to break tooth on my crusts I have resorted to adding a mix of egg, vinegar, and milk to them instead of the traditional ice water. That insures that they are more nutritious and also can only be leathery at worst. I suppose that eliminating hydrogenated and saturated fats on doctors orders has traumatized my crust-craft as well. When the oil is liquid, it inevitably looks like 'too much' to me.

The nice thing about pie making if you are not Sweeney Todd's girlfriend is that you can put just about anything into one. This means any sort of ingredient you have much of and can preserve, can, or freeze is potentially pie.  You can barge in on people in an emergency if you have pie with you.  It looks nice too.  I got a very nice letter of recommendation for grad school out of a pie I baked ten years earlier out of a used jack'o'lantern. (Actually it was what happened to the pie that made the difference there, I have to admit.)

The best crusts I have managed in the past year of upheaval have not been the kind that is versatile. When we had no kitchen I developed microwave dessert crusts.  Here's one now--

Granola crust:  Mix equal parts oil and syrup (corn syrup, molasses, even maple syrup) to bind together instant oatmeal.  It should be moldable. Pat into a heatproof glass or ceramic pie dish and microwave until it's candied.  Fill with whatever you have.

Peanut Butter crust:  Mix 100 percent peanut butter and blackstrap molasses to the desired sweetness, then add wholewheat flour until it is a dough. This can be rolled out to shape like a regular crust, but can be microwaved, as it's already brown. It's also made of very expensive ingredients.  But you get the idea.

Harvest Home and Homecoming sports games, for the best time for making war on your neighbors is when they have stores to pillage, and these games are our war substitutes.  Bock fests, football, music carnivals, and the last chance to swim outdoors. Slaughtering and sausage making so stock need not be over-wintered. Dead need not be fed.  That is for Samhain ritual to remedy.

That reminds me that I can't make sauerkraut. The cabbages this year all seem tiny, mostly core and not worth their price, low as it is.  I've been unable to find one the size of a football, or a rugby ball, much less a soccer ball. It ought to be bigger than a human head. 

Yes, humans are killers. I have heard the scream of the pumpkin. I have chopped off the catfish's head. I have pulled the weeds. I have eaten the beef and pork and chicken and turkey. I am no Jain saint accepting only what falls from the tree. But I do get my share of the windfalls before they are lost to worm and deer, I confess.
And now is the time to hustle for them, before things shut down, since I am not planning to be one of the dead.

I did have a terrible stitch in my back from pie making, and went for a leg-stretching ramble. There I found the seed pods of Evening Primrose, an old friend. I brought them home, hoping to encourage it to stay in our yard. Its response will not be clear until next spring, for the seeds need to overwinter to germinate.  Yes, I am thinking of living all the way through till then.

That is what I did for Equinox.

Comments: 1   Views: 575   Group: General   Tags: mythology

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I don't know if the HTML editor is on the fritz here or what.  But today I spent commenting on the Times Online re: Creationsm. 

 http://www.coolscifi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2... this is a recent editorial at the sciffiorums about it.

 I am in favor of it being taught as myth. Especially if it includes Flying Spaghetti as the Creator.  I have been debating internally the proposition that what makes us happy makes us wiser, and the reverse, what makes us unhappy makes us idiots.  It pleased me to 'follow my bliss' today. It made me feel wiser.

This piece of homily is from a book called Little, Big by John Crowley.  In it the old gods are deposed and replaced by a nest of sybaritic rustics who rigorously practice that philosophy and manage to get the 'door' open to where the old gods were. Most intriguing and useful pseudoscience. Would it not be marvelous if what made us happy made us wise in real life as well?

They also were in possession of a microcosmos machine which once started, ran by perpetual motion. Fixing it was instrumental to liftoff, as it were. Would it not be lovely if the yoga of the subtle bodies worked like that? for it is alleged, and fondly wished, that we all contain the cosmos if we look within at the correct angle.

But so far, all I have been sure about is that they who make you happy allow you to be wise, and they who make you unhappy ultimately turn you stupid if you believe them. It's not exactly the same. But it does help me justify my extreme distrust of both myself and the rest of my species. Humans, you are not making Helga happy enough. Yet you did invent this nifty toy I am expressing myself with so thank you for that. Expressing myself is udderly necessary.

No, that is not a gratuitous pun, it is deliberate and the literal truth when looked at from my angle.

Foo Fighters make good vid of myhome life here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p4lhWwkCDo  

 Scary how much it feels exactly like that, o poor pitiful me, huh? Yet incredibly I continue to exist and breathe and stink and sweat and weep and exude and express.  I Ching says: care of the cow brings good fortune. Nobody caring for this cow but herself?

Comments: 2   Views: 495   Group: General   Tags: mythology, politics, fiction

 repost from Sabrina's blog at http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog....

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 I AM A WOMAN --AND I VOTE!

 *Note from Sabrina Luna: This was recently forwarded to me in an email. It made me heartsick...and made me think. I am a voter, yet there are still women out there who don't exercise their right to vote. I sincerely hope this will change their minds! WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE: This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago. Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. The women were wives and mothers and unprepared for the fury that would be unleashed on them. Initially they were jailed for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. By the end of the night, they were fighting for their lives. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and with their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women accused of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

Lucy Burns

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

Dora Lewis

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to 'teach a lesson' to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

Alice Paul

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/n...

Some women won't vote this year because-why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

 Recently I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's movie 'Iron Jawed Angels..' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my voice heard. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder. All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO has released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

 It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote. History is being made. Read more:

 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/n...

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/n...

 + + + Sabrina Luna

Spicy Romance with a Touch of Magick

http://www.sabrinaluna.com

Comments: 0   Views: 134   Group: General   Tags: inhmanity, poliics, mythology, politics, inhumanity

Posted originally at http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog....

Monday, September 01, 2008 SARAH PALIN ~ LOCK UP YOUR BEAR CUBS.

Current mood: cynical Category: News and Politics

 Ahh well, I was going to say "you've gotta laugh haven't you ?" when it came to the subject of Senator John McCains 'sex ticket' Republican running mate Sarah Palin, but after reading the following I have my doubts... I think I'll laugh AND cry instead.

http://twincities.indymedia.org/2008/sep/sarah-pal...

 Enemy of the species ? nahhh, of course not ~ and to prove it here's a rather fetching photo below of Governor Palin posing quite happily in her Alaskan office with a grizzly bear skin draped across the back of her sofa, accompanied by an equally and enormously dead crab on the coffee table.... Now then Sarah... Where exactly DO you stand on the subject of animal rights ?

11:42 PM - 4 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment -

 RIP CRUNCHER

  Posted by RIP CRUNCHER on Sep 2, 2008 12:11 AM [Reply to this]

 crazy christina

 Dam Rip this subject was wild fire in my home, Alaska WOW he came out of no where with that if they win "Oink" will be the next head on there wall!!! I got lot's more to say but I'll bite my tongue a little NOT that crab you know where that crawled out of Christ she should have fired downward BANGGG !!!!!!!!! Posted by crazy christina on Sep 2, 2008 2:42 AM [Reply to this]

Teresa

At the moment I am speachless from seeing the bear thow and crab ashtray or whatever the hell that is supposed to be but give me some time to recover. Posted by Teresa on Sep 2, 2008 3:50 AM [Reply to this]

 helgaleena

 Holy schmear, Rip, you get the repost-to-helgas-blog award. But hey, when she hunts moose she has the guts to do her own skinnin'. Animal rights bleeding hearts aside, this is the shocking true state of American politics, BP and all. They bought my credit card debt from Amoco years back. They are in the Brits' back pocket. :( Posted by helgaleena on Sep 2, 2008 6:49 AM [Reply to this]

Comments: 1   Views: 1290   Group: General   Tags: inhumanity, politics, romance

http://www.comeonboro.com/columns/212104.php

THE STEVE GOLDBY COLUMN - DANCING WITH TEARS IN MY EYES - 27-8-08
Steve Goldby

Helgaleena snipped out a bunch of football news at the beginning here. You will need to read the original at the link above if that is what you are after...
And tallking of crusades, Jerusalem is one place that has always fascinated me, probably because it is the epicentre of world religion and throughout the years has been the centre of some of the biggest events in world history. So I went there to see the place for myself.

I'd been swimming/floating around in the Dead Sea just before I made my entry to the 'Holy City' and to anyone heading off that way, make damn sure you don't get any Dead Sea in your eyes. I did and I thought my eyeballs were about to melt and dribble down my face.

The Dead Sea is very surreal. It's the very lowest point on earth and right on the Israeli/Jordanian border. It's akin to floating around in a huge vat of vegetable oil and you're wasting your time trying to swim as you will just get flipped onto your back every time. It's a great experience though and once there, you know you have arrived somewhere special.

But Jerusalem was the one place I was looking forward to the most. Jerusalem - a city viciously fought over for over four thousand years, former home to King David and King Solomon, site of the world's largest mosque, scene of Richard The Lionheart's crusades, Christ's crucifixion and Mohammed's ascension, razed to the ground several times throughout the centuries and current home to thousands upon thousands of religious maniacs and nutcases.

The Damascus Gate is the main entrance to the Old City and once you enter, you are in the middle of the biggest Arab market you are ever likely to experience. It has a distinct old feel to it and I really did feel as though I had stepped back into Biblical times.

Be prepared to be harrassed at every turn though, a scenario not particularly uncommon in that part of the world. Only in Jerusalem it won't necessarily be by beggars but more likely by someone trying to provoke a religious discussion or find out which religious persuasion you lean towards.

My standard stock response was "Heavy Metal is my religion" which seemed to cause some consternation amongst the more fervent but I had entered Jerusalem in a Fiat with a dodgy CD player, which was slightly better than entering the City sat astride an ass and being bombarded with palm leaves.

The eject button was faulty but I didn't find this out until after I had tried to eject the first CD, Iron Maiden's Dance of Death. So I listened to that particular opus all the way from Tel Aviv to Armageddon, through Nazareth and Tiberius, Palestine and the Dead Sea and into Jerusalem. It was not a problem.

As I entered the City, a track called Montsegur started playing on the CD which was highly apt and appropriate as it's a tale of religious unrest, namely about the Catholic army that destroyed the Cathars, a sect that broke away from Catholicism. They fled to the top of a hill called Montségur, allegedly with The Holy Grail, where they were beseiged until they surrendered. They were all burned alive (about 250 men, women, and children) on a giant pyre.

Walk through the Arab market and you will inevitably pass some of the Via Dolorosa stations, the walk that Christ allegedly took with his cross. They're so smart these days that they've managed to work out the exact location where certain events actually took place, for example each stumble and fall on the way to Golgotha. And certain people take it as read that this is the absolute truth, evidenced by the hoardes of pilgrims falling in tears to the floor around the various stations.

Once I had witnessed these lost souls, I went to the Wailing Wall and realised something very important. Religion is for people who are scared of Hell. Spirituality is for those who have already been there.

I was approached at the Wailing Wall by a Jewish gentleman in the full regalia and he asked me where I was from?

"I'm from a place in England called Middlesbrough," I replied.

"Oh good - I'm from a place in England called Manchester." And he shook my hand, placed a skull cap on my head and gave me a piece of paper and a pen to write out my 'prayer' which I was then to place in the wall. And I wrote the following, rolled it up and placed it in the wall...

"The ferryman wants his money you ain't gonna give it back
He can push his own boat as you set up off the track
Nothing you can contemplate will ever be the same
Every second is a new spark, sets the universe aflame

You watch the world exploding every single night
Dancing in the sun a new born in the light
Brothers and their fathers joining hands and make a chain
The shadow of the wicker man is rising up again

Your time will come..."

Very appropriate Iron Maiden lyrics I thought. Maybe my little piece of paper will be found in a few hundred years and included in some new version of the Bible?

After my first visit to Jerusalem, I retired to the Hard Rock cafe in the main city where I drank beer and smoked joints with some Americans I met. Some smart arse saw me and shouted out; "Hey - Jesus has come back." (see hairstyle).

"I'm not Jesus mate", said I. "He only got stoned once..."

I'll tell you all about part two of Jerusalem next week and how I narrowly escaped getting stoned for real on the Sabbath.

Until then, Up the Boro and Up the Irons.

Steve

It is still the Wicker Man/Burning Man season, one of my tutelary deities, as I have blogged in a previous entry here. I joyfully pass on this tidbit of news of Him. Ash cleanse us all.  Ash sweeten our sour lives. Peace peace peace.

helgaleena healingline MOL DAL RDNA

Comments: 0   Views: 1442   Group: General   Tags: mythology

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.... is the origin for this reprint of a nice guy and punk rocker called Thom Bone. He got it from someplace else again.  See, I'm climbing off the pity pot, kids...

Julie

Don't forget the 2 people in town dumpster diving everyone amazing wastefulness man does this world know how to be wasteful. The 10 homeless people cause why don't the other 9,990 people help them and last but not least the 5 people in town stealing from everyone they can greed Posted by Julie on May 10, 2008 3:23 AM [Reply to this]

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It's that time of year again! Not only is it beastly hot here in the northern hemisphere, and all the plants inundating us with first fruits, but My Matriarchy of the Order of Lugh smites me in the brain and gets me dancing all sweaty and brainless.

Out in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, scads of humans are celebrating with my chosen divinity the Burning Man. "Let's make a statue and burn it," some atavistic part of their brains implored the receptive few hippies of San Francisco, way back when.  And they have done so, in ever greater magnificence, ever since.  All manner of performance art and extreme camping also comes to pass, and tons of gifts are exchanged.

       http://www.burningman.com/

On the other side of the Pond, they call him The Wicker Man, and make movies about him. 

     http://www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/wickerman/20...

     http://www.realbuzz.com/en-gb/RSS/index?pageID=187...

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicker_Man

I want to confess-- I have never actually attended Burning Man, even though it is open and free. That it is because it involves upwards of fortyeight thousand STRANGE HUMANS nowadays!    My introversion remains, even if I am an unusually happy introvert lately.

Do not the bright red draperies conjure up happy bonfires around which to dance in the cooling dusk?  Om jagannatha trinithakura namo namah!

Here is some more info on the season reprinted from rustymon2000 at the RDNAtalk list at Yahoo:

Greetings!

Druids Ring Grove & Fellowship of the Illumination presents...

Lughnasadh

When: Aug. 1st. 2008
Where: Joshua Tree, California

Celebrate the Bright Spears of Lugh in the Coolth of the Evening

Event Details: Lughnasadh

Old Irish Lughnasadh; also spelled Lughnasa; modern Irish Lúnasa;
Modern Scots Gaelic, Lunasdal, is a Gaelic holiday celebrated on the
Full Moon nearest the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and
Autumnal Equinox, during the time of the harvesting.. Lugnasadh was
one of the four main festivals of the medieval Irish calendar:
Imbolq, Beltuinn, Lughnasadh and Samhuinn.

This date has long been considered a 'power point' of the Zodiac, and
is symbolized by the Lion, one of the 'tetramorph' figures found on
the Tarot cards, the World and the Wheel of Fortune -the other three
figures being the Bull, the Eagle, and the Spirit. Astrologers know
these four figures as the symbols of the four 'fixed' signs of the
Zodiac- Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius.
In the Night Skies of this Season, the Perseid meteor showers Dance
in the Dark. They are still known as the" Games of Lugh" in Ireland,
and to others as "The Bright Spear of Lugh ".

"The Thing, the Other, and What's Between" form the Magick Three,
recognizing the relationship between opposites. Inside and Outside
meet at thresholds, Earth and Sky meet at mountain tops, Sea and
Earth meet at tide lines, New Year and Old Year meet at Samhuin. They
also represent the meeting place of our mundane world and the
Magickal Otherworld, and are therefore Sacred. A God, who embodies
the coming together of many different Realms and Energies, would be
extraordinarily powerful, even in the company of other Deities.

Lughnasadh marks the beginning of the harvest season and is therefore
a festival of celebrating Mother Earth and the abundance of nature.
Lughnasadh translates as "Lughs wedding". Lughnasadh festivals last
from 15 July until 15 August. Aside from three days of religious
rituals, the celebrations are a time for contests of strength and
skill.

Event Location: Indian Cove Campground in Joshua Tree
Event TIME Details: 12 noon-all night long

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A big thank you to the Wes Borland Gallery for this image of a solution to Oink's problem.

title: 'Sloss'

Help the world's only oinking water buffalo escape the cruelty of local animal torturers in Derby UK!! http://www.oinkthebuffalo.solarchidesigns.com/

Comments: 0   Views: 525   Group: General   Tags: inhumanity, art, romance

Bob Dylan - It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan is from the center of the continent of North America where the waters well up and flow in three directions to the ocean-- north, south and east.  I am proud to have been incarnated in the same area, though I do not pretend to see as far as he or express it so well. 

A friend has called this the greatest song ever written; it's definetely epic.

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