That's Not Change We Can Believe In

and

We R In Ur Army, Prayin To Teh Urth

Oh noes!

As we see in flashbacks, Django's training program included the group recitation of a prayer to the earth, one of the pagan devotions that his favored parotege Cassady continues to practice. We're also shown that among the transformative therapies Django sampled during his spiritual metamorphosis was nude co-ed hot-tubbing, though the scene is a short and relatively restrained one.

~Whew! Thank the Goddess for relative restraint!

Where's the concern over animal sacrifice???

Why Poetry Matters

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision–a faith, to use an old-fashioned term. Yes, indeed. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed.”

-Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook


Quote found here.

Picture found here.

Look! A Missing White Woman!

A people with any self respect would take to the streets.

This is not change we can believe in. Just sayin'

Picture found here.

Herne

The Legend of Herne

There is an old tale goes that Herne the Hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know
The superstitious idle-headed eld
Receiv'd, and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.
"The Merry Wives of Windsor"
Act 4 Scene 4
~Wm. Shakespeare


Picture found here.

Rain Into November, Dropped Softly Into The Grave

Finis Poloniae

BY GOTTFRIED BENN

Finis Poloniae—
a phrase/figure of speech,
that apart from its literal historical meaning
stands in for
the end of empires.

Charged atmosphere,
everything breathes damply,
epicene air—if it could think anything
it would think un-European things like monsoons
and yellow seas.

Greatness bears itself to death,
says its last words to itself,
a foreign-sounding swansong, generally misunderstood,
sometimes tolerated—

Finis Poloniae—
perhaps on a rainy day, bummer,
but in this instance a sound of happiness
followed by solo horn,
and then a hydrangea, most placid of flowers,
capable of standing out in the rain into November,
dropped softly into the grave.

Poem found here.

Picture found here.

Yes, Yes It Is

Go look at the picture at the end of Reya's post. Just go do it and then come back and tell me the world is not en-chanted. I dare you.

Just Like That

Lascaux

BY JOSEPH SPECE

Struck a pair of stones to start off. Left behind
ten men curled like scythes round the fire.
Left behind the bracing moon. Passed a pack
of ibex, passed the mammoth. Left the carious
canines before the rath, left the scapula—
freed space for petal dyes, for fixatives.
Passed (in a dream) Chauvet. Alsace. Lorraine.
Past the scree, past the wolf standing sentinel, her
mouth. Struck two stones to hearten the blaze,
sped up; pulled from the sack the manganese, the gilt
mixture of ochre and ore, the animal fat,
the deer bristle. The hare I speared fresh
for better reds. Mash of berries in a rolled frond.
Looked back—still breathing, still lone, set
bone to the bare wall: summoned up the aurochs
in a dervish turn, flank hot with lashes, all hot with dying and kneeling
down. Then nothing. Then the quiet
credit of our kind.

Picture found here.

Listen. Can you hear it? There's no mythology that I know of to support this, but, for me, the period between Samhein and Yule is the Time of the Wild Hunt. I have an odd, unearned sympathy for Herne and what he does on his hunt. And as the veils begin to solidify right back up, everywhere I look I see him, his horse that steams and snorts and hooves the Earth, his horn that sends chills, the kind of chills that I think Mary Oliver may have meant when she said: Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine,, his host that blasts the leaves and sends even the foxes and squirrels racing for covered places. Here he comes. Do you have a ready offering?

This Is Fun

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Claire has never met the painter, Paddy Shaw. And he had no notion of her existence when he painted the picture.

"I'm genuinely puzzled. It's a very strange coincidence that somebody would paint a picture about Alice that looks exactly like me when he's never heard of me.

"I wasn't working on the book when he did the painting. The more I think about it, the more creeped out I get," she said.

"He painted a woman that looks exactly like me, even the way she wears her hair and the fact that she looks the same age as me, it's everything else about it," Claire said.

The portrait also shows Aethiops in the background. He is a mythical figure and supposedly the founder of Ethiopia.

Goddess knows what Ethiopia has to do with it.

Picture found here.

Divination

D.C. is full of little-known treasures, and the Freer Gallery of Art is one of them. Right now there's an exhibition that I am longing to go see:

October 24, 2009–January 24, 2010
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Whether by consulting the position of the planets, casting horoscopes, or interpreting dreams, the art of divination was widely practiced throughout the Islamic world. The most splendid tools ever devised to foretell the future were illustrated texts known as the Falnama (Book of omens). Notable for their monumental size, brilliantly painted compositions, and unusual subject matter, the manuscripts, created in Safavid Iran and Ottoman Turkey in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, are the center piece of Falnama: The Book of Omens. The first exhibition devoted to these extraordinary manuscripts, Falnama: The Book of Omens sheds new light on their artistic, cultural, and religious significance. The exhibition comprises more than sixty works of art from international public and private collections and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

I have to admit that I'd never even heard of this form of divination.

Where I Want To Be, She May Be

How Publishing Is Like A Saint's Work

Sunday Poetry Blogging

My Life Needs To Change

Damn. I wrote part of a pleading this weekend.

/hat tip to ina in comments at Eschaton.

Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading.

Picture found here.