Sweet Mother of the Gods. Please. Kill. Me. Now

New watch, huh?

Fire

Earth

Many Happy Returns, Mr. Yeats.

Happy birthday, William Butler Yeats
Wiki says that: Recalling his childhood, he described his "one unshakable belief" as "whatever of philosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent... I thought... that if a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world."

Wiki also reminds us that: Yeats was admitted into the "Golden Dawn" in March 1890, taking the magical motto Daemon est Deus inversus translated as Devil is God inverted or A demon is a god reflected. He was an active recruiter for the Golden Dawn's Isis-Urania temple, and brought in his uncle George Pollexfen, Maud Gonne, and Florence Farr. He became involved in the Order's power-struggles both with Farr on one hand, and with Macgregor Mathers on the other, most notably when Mathers sent Aleister Crowley to repossess Golden Dawn paraphernalia in "the Battle of Blythe Road". After the Golden Dawn ceased to be and splintered into various offshoots, he remained with the Stella Matutina until 1921.

I love his poem, "Unworthy Praise":

O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What’s not for their applause,
Being for a woman’s sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.
What, still you would have their praise!
But here’s a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.

And, one has to love a man who loved a woman named Maud, one of my all-time favorite names, and her a revolutionary, besides. With a daughter named Iseulet.

Going Forth By Day

Reading Necropolis Now, which is fast becoming the most talked-about blog in Pagandom, I came across this snippet:

The Book of Going Forth By Day (a.k.a. The Egyptian Book of the Dead). I

I did not know that. I did not know that the Egyptian Book of the Dead was also knows as the Book of Going Forth by Day. But I love that. I love the idea that that's what death is or can be. (Were the Tibetans and the Egyptians the only ones to write Books of the Dead? If so, why is that? I was raised xian and I can't remember any instruction at all on how to conduct myself once dead nor upon what to expect.)

Wicca honors both death and life, both the dark and the light, both the winter and the summer. That's why my compost heap is as important a center of my religious practice as is my altar.

You should check out Necropolis Now's posts on decorative skulls, as well.

Air

Water

My Kind Of Witches

My New Name For A Blog

What Dan Mcenroe Said.

The excerpted poem of WH Auden’s that he quotes:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

reminds me of one of my favorite folk songs by Shwana Carrol called "I Can Be Peace." She's no Auden, but the message of her song -- that in the face of all the horror of war and insanity, the one thing that each of us can do is to work to embody peace, to manifest and create peace in our own lives and for those around us -- makes the same point Auden makes when he prays to "show an affirming flame." I sometimes sing the song to myself when I let the asshole in the Jaguar cut in front of me during rush hour. Really. I do.

~Art found here.

At The Very Least, This Trend Opens Up Lots Of Great New Names For Cars

From today's EEI newsletter:

Plug-in Hybrids, Electric Vehicles Gaining in Popularity

Soaring gasoline prices have spurred enthusiasm for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and a new all-electric import from China is selling well, Chicago Tribune Automotive columnist Jon Hilkevitch reported. The Xebra-PK (pronounced "Zebra"), is offered by U.S. firm ZAP, or Zero Air Pollution. At a cost of about $10,000, an estimated 250 have been sold since last October. Wrote Hilkevitch: "The ZAP line is considered a neighborhood electric vehicle, marketed as a second car to travel short distances pollution-free and gas-free."

The columnist noted that GM has developed a plug-in hybrid concept car, the five-passenger Chevrolet Volt, and the market also features the ZENN (Zero Emission No Noise) and Dynasty, both made in Canada, along with the U.S.-made Tiger Truck, and the Kurrent, produced by American Electric Vehicle.

Al Hallaj, a research associate professor of chemical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was quoted as saying: "Electric cars are no longer just a novelty for hobbyists or tree-huggers. Oil consumption is a national security issue and we should move to electric-based transportation, as well as improving wind, solar and hydrogen fuel cell energy."
Chicago Tribune , June 11.

Imagine. A Goddess Church.

Medusa Coils has a great post up about Goddess temples. I'm not sure that I'd like to attend one regularly, but I like the idea of there being Goddess temples.

And, Of Course, Then There Are The McMansions

From Today's EEI Newsletter:

Star-Tribune Examines How Many Homes are Increasing Energy Hogs

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune examined how the average U.S. household, while attuned to energy efficiency, is less energy efficient, and more of a power-drain on the electricity grid, than ever before. Wrote the newspaper: "Many household appliances have become more efficient, using less electricity than ever to cool rooms, wash clothes and chill food. But the increasingly wired American home, where outlets are charging cell phones and iPods and powering multiple computers and big-screen TVs, is creating higher demand for power than was the case even a few years ago. At last count, six of every 10 homes had a computer. In 1992, the number was one in five. Households that once had one TV now have two or three, some with screens four times as large as the typical television twenty years ago, and some requiring a lot of juice."

EEI spokesman Jim Owen was quoted as pointing out: "Plasma screens use eight to 10 times as much electricity as the TVs they replace." Wrote the Star-Tribune: "Owen … said utilities can count on office buildings and factories lowering electricity use in the summer because business owners don't want to pay higher costs. But residential users 'are less price-sensitive,' Owen said. In fact, hot weather tends to increase power demand from homeowners, as they pump up their air conditioning and stay home watching TV, playing video games or cruising the Web on their computers."

The newspaper said that the North American Electric Reliability Corp. has stated that the power grid is still susceptible to being affected by a wave of hot, humid weather. Wrote the Star-Tribune: "NERC officials said they are hoping to avoid a repeat of last summer, when extreme weather forced some utilities to issue emergency alerts and public pleas for people and businesses to use less power."
Minneapolis Star-Tribune , June 9.

My New Name For A Blog

What the Furious Spinner said.

The Importance Of Labels

I am a priestess. I work with the many layers of creation as I perceive it, with the gods and guides with whom I have a relationship, with those of the spirit world who would share and teach me. Essentially, my spirituality is entirely individual and exists outside any specific tradition or doctrine. It is the same with most people. Mystical spirituality exists beneath the level of community and the framework of religion.

Yet I am known to be a Druid. It is a label that I'm happy to give myself and be given, though it only describes the language, the robes, the colours and tools which I use when I work with others or in public. Wearing that label gives me the responsibility of holding an edge of the big white sheet which is the public reputation of Druidry, bringing with it the threat of politics and conformity, which is in itself a disincentive. If a I a priestess of my dogs and my grove, working my nemeton in private and in public, why do I use the word "Druid" at all? What does it give me?

Druidry holds within it an exceptional archetype, one which offers me just that inspiration of courage I need in order to express myself outwardly, to put my inspiration into action.

~Emma Restall Orr in Druid Priestess: An Intimate Journey Through The Pagan Year.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

In honor of the end of the Sopranos, which, whatever else you say about it, was actually that elusive thing -- good tv -- here's some tres depressing Akhmatova.

All Has Been Taken Away . . .

All has been taken away: strength and love.
My body, cast into an unloved city,
is not glad of the sun. I feel [that] my blood
has gone quite cold in me.

I'm baffled by the Muse's state of mind:
she looks at me and doesn't say a word,
and lays her head, in its dark wreath,
exhausted, on my breast.

And only conscience, more terribly each day
rages, demanding vast tribute.
For answer I hide my face in my hands . . .
but I have run out of tears and excuses.

~Sevastopol, 24 October 1916

Education Matters

I'll start off by admitting my bias: I am a huge believer in education, especially, but certainly not only, a liberal arts education. My great grandparents on my mother's side emigrated from Sweden to the United States; my great grandfather was a waiter. For immigrant families, education was both a tremendous part of the promise of America: free public education! It was also still, to some extent, out of reach. Thus, when times got tough and someone had to drop out of school and go to work, it was often the young women in the family who were pulled out of high school and sent to the mill, or factory, or to the hotel where maids were needed.

My maternal grandmother met that fate, leaving school to help support the family by making hotel beds while her brothers continued on through high school. I think that when my mother told me that story I was maybe five or six. It truly was one of my first intimations that I had landed on a planet with a patriarchial problem. As a little girl, all I could say was, "But that's not fair!"

My mom, orphaned at an early age, made it her goal to get through high school. The youngest of three sisters, she didn't have to quit school in order to support anyone else. As a result, she got an office job instead of a job at the hotel, the office job where she met my dad.

My dad actually had that elusive thing, a college degree. He was the first in his family of Western beet farmers and horse trainers to get a college degree, although his mother had gotten a few years at a ladies musical conservatory before she left to marry my horse-trainer granddad. My dad got that college degree as a gift from a grateful country; he like many other young men of his generation survived World War II to come home to the GI Bill. The GI Bill paid my dad's college tuition. He worked while he was in college, cooking breakfast in one of the women's dorms at the University of Colorado -- something he considered less than taxing, according to his stories.

If I ever got any message at all from my parents, it was: You Will Go To College. College was, in their minds, the key to being able to participate in the world of ideas and to living a better material life, a more worry-free life, than that enjoyed by waiters, hotel maids, and horse trainers. And, oldest child that I was, I absorbed the lesson, earning bachelors, masters, and law degrees. As a percentage of my income, I paid far more for Son's Montessori schooling than for his degree at Princeton, mostly because the Montessori paid dividends and Son got great scholarships and financial aid. He also took out some student loans and took out more when he went to law school.

All of which is a long wind up for saying that I think it is fucking criminal that kids today can't afford a college education without taking out huge private loans in addition to their student loans. We're the richest country on Earth. We can piss billions of dollars a month down the hole of the boyking's vanity war. We can absorb the externalities caused by millions of fools driving Hummers and SUVs and we can pay athletes millions of dollars a year. We can afford tax cuts for Paris Hilton. It is a crying fucking shame that we can't send our bright young people to college.

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Vila

Vila started out as a Slavic Goddess and eventually became known as a type of Slavic fairy or nymph. She is known to modern Pagans as a nature Goddess and the patron Goddess of shapeshifting.
In Goddess & Heroines, Patricia Monaghan begins describing Vila as a Goddess, explaining that:

One of the most powerful eastern European [G]oddesses was called Samovila, Vila, or Judy according to the language of the people, who pictured this woodland force as a fairskinned winged woman with glistening garments and golden hair falling to her feet. She lived deep in the woods, where she guarded animals and plants as well as cleaned streams of rubble and assured sufficient rainfall.

Monaghan then shifts, describing "the Vila" and what "they" might do to those who would harm animals: Hunters were wary of beautiful, well-dressed women speaking the languages of animals, for the Vila was fiercely possessive of her wild herds. Should one be injured or-worse yet-killed, the Vila mutilated the offender or lured him into a magic circle and danced him to death. Alternatively, the Vila might bury him in rocks by starting an avalanche, or simply cause him to keel over with a heart attack.

The Vila was able to masquerade as a snake, swan, falcon, horse, or whirlwind. Cloud Vilas could transform themselvs into clouds or fog.

In the next sentence, Monaghan is back to discussing the Goddess Vila: Born on a day of soft misty rain, when the sun formed miniature rainbows on the trees, she knew all the secrets of healing and herb craft. Should a human wish to learn her skills, blood-sisterhood was forged with the Vila. The applicant appeared in the woods before sunrise on a Sunday of the full moon. Drawing a circle with a birch twig or a broom, she placed several horsehairs, a hoof, and some manure inside the circle, then stood with her right foot on the hoof calling to the Vila. Should the spirit appear and be greeted as a sister, the Vila would grant any wish.

It's appropriate for a shapshifter, don't you think? Monaghan is never really sure who she's describing.

Wikipedia says:

The Vila, or Willi or Veela, are the Slavic versions of nymphs, who have power over storms, which they delight in sending down on lonely travelers. They are known to live in meadows, ponds, oceans, trees, and clouds (cf. Leimakids, Limnades, Oceanids, Dryads, Nephele). They can appear as swans, horses, wolves, or, of course, beautiful women.

The Vilia is the Celtic version of this woodland spirit. She enjoys captivating passing men with her beauty, but then abandoning them. In a love song titled Vilia, from "The Merry Widow" by Lehar and Ross, a hunter pines for Vilia, "the witch of the wood".

Named vilas in Serbian mythology are: Andresila, Andjelija, Angelina, Djurdja, Janja, Janjojka, Jelka, Jerina, Jerisavlja, Jovanka, Katarina, Kosa, Mandalina, Nadanojla and Ravijojla.[1] Ravijojla is the most well known of them, connected to Prince Marko,[2] while Jerisavlja is considered to be their leader.[
J.K. Rowling adopted the idea of Veela in her Harry Potter series. Wiki notes that, in Harry Potter Fleur Delacour's grandmother was a veela, making [her] at least one quarter veela. This heritage accounts for Fleur's fair hair, skin and eyes, and apparently her ability to entrance men. This could put her in danger from Voldemort and his followers, as they have a strong prejudice against "half-breeds." She is engaged to Bill Weasley, the eldest brother of Ron Weasley.

Art found here, here, and here.

Habitude

Echoing a theme that Atrios often sounds, Miniver Cheevey asserts that: "We have to start digging our way out of the suburbs right away." He's likely right. I live seven miles outside of Washington, D.C., in the suburbs of north Arlington, Virginia. It's perfect for me, but I'm a weird bird, a happily single woman who needs at least a bit of Earth upon which to garden, which I wouldn't get in the city. Faced with the choice, I'd move farther away from the city, as long as I could have internet and wifi and FedEx.

Sense Of Place

Lately, thanks to the kindness of NTodd, I've been allowed to do some blogging over at Pax Americana and it's had me thinking quite a bit about peace. When I was a young, young woman, we'd sing:

Bring me some peace when there's talk of war,
When it's hard to find.
Oh, bring me some peace when there's talk of war.
I've got peace on my mind.
Oh, peace is sweet, most any time and, yet,
Bring me some peace when there's talk of war,
And how easy we forget.

Tuesday evening, I got my hair done and, as I often do, walked back to the office, stopping at one of my favorite D.C. restaurants, La Chaumerie, for dinner on the way. You walk into La Chaumerie and there seem to be about half-a-dozen Inside entryway/anterooms, but, finally, you step through the last door and you are no longer in Georgetown, just off of Pennsylvania Avenue. You are inside an old French farmhouse, winter or summer. If you are ever in Georgetown, you must eat at this place, not the least because their seafood is amazing. I had oysters on the half-shell, which I never eat without a salute to Venus, and softshell crabs as good as any that I've ever had. I washed it all down with a lovely, white chilled sancerre, well, ok, several glasses of a lovely, white chilled sancerre.

While I ate, I read the latest issue of Faerie Magazine. Now, how to deal with the realm of Faerie without becoming either ridiculous or banal or twee is a serious challenge for modern Pagandom and I don't pretend to have found the correct balance. I do know that it doesn't lie in purchasing tacky ceramic "sculptures" of "fairy queens", which is what a lot of modern Pagan "Faerie" seems to entail at times. Nor do I think that it rests in gothickly-pouty "faeriez" splattered across spaghetti-strap tees, as, again, much of modern Pagan "Faerie" appears to entail.

Yet, I'd be the last witch on Earth to disparage fairies. They live in my house, sometimes holding these old beams together, sometimes fucking with the intenet modem, sometimes demanding honey and v., v., v. good booze on the altar -- now! My own dear grandma showed in every line and shadow of her face that she was of the ancient Pictish (pixie) race and she could play music that indeed made you wonder for just how long you really had been underground. I've seen what they did at Findhorn. I see what they do under the oak trees and holly bushes and fig trees and grape vines in my yard. I understand that Fairies are here and that they hardly consider our good to be conversant with theirs.

Long way round of saying that this issue of Fairie Magazine, along with trying to sell lots of "fairie" tzotchkas, had an interesting article w/ Ari Berk, a poet who's also collaborated on some books w/ "fairie" artist extraordinaire Brian Froud. A poem of Berk's got me thinking -- yes, indeed, she is going to tie this all up at some point -- about the role of a sense of place in our longing for peace.

In Tintagel I, Beck writes:

The sea will swoon and rise
and love the rocks to death
below the walls of Tintagel.

Soon will cave and castle
converge upon the strand --
a cold and churning bridal bed --

And consummate their bond
in ruins of mortar
and turf and shard from Antioch.

"Sense of place" is a loaded term, but one that most Pagans understand. As Beck sensed, it always involves consumation, sex, a linking of the Great Rite to the ley lines of the place and the chance to make the Sacred Marriage between the Lord and the Land. It would be, I imagine, impossible to completely unpack it for some people.

Many Pagans base their spiritual life upon a relationship with their land, and by "their" I don't mean legal ownership, so much as land with which they are familiar enough to have a relationship, land to which they've attended, listened, land that they've watched, learned, loved, to which they've paid attention. The plants that grow there, the animals who live there, the water that flows there, the winds that are wont to blow, the way that the sun hits early in the morning, in high summer, in late fall, on a cold winter's dawn when frost changes everything that it touches and everything that it touches changes. I can place every mystical moment of grace that I've ever experienced to the place where it occurred, to the plants that danced with me in that moment, to the acid content of the soil, to the leaves on the trees, to the way that my own grounding roots felt sinking into the soil, past the rocks, through the water table, beyond the deep lakes and caves, into the deep mystery of Mother Earth.

Modern Americans lack, in general, a sene of place. We are nomads, we hop planes, switch time zones, are citizens of the globe. That has tremendous positives and should make us greater lovers of peace for the entire globe. Ancient people who likely had a greater sense of place certainly waged war. And, yet. And, yet. I can't get past the idea that one is less willing to commit "shock and awe" upon another's landbase if one has a deep relationship with one's own landbase, watertable, micro-ecology. Who wants to piss off those altogether alien Fairies in that distant place, stir them up, get them looking for the cause of their displeasure? Who can't imagine how horrific it must be to see a long-tended garden or grove or field bombed beyond recognition? No one sane wants to do things like that. Goddess knows that i sometimes shudder at "who" is following us back from ancient Mesopotamia, although not at all in the way that George Bush wants me to quail.

Barring what Lovelock refers to as a "hard collapse" there's no going back. So how do we do both? How do we live as citizens of the entire globe and still engender all the good that springs from a "sense of place"? Does a relationship with the land have a relationship to a longing for peace?

Stone Soup

Kim Antieau's recent post about cooking and eating:

We sat at our Big River table and talked and ate and talked and ate. Two soups, even though I'd made three. We squeezed lime into both soups. Added cilantro. I sucked on lime slices. Dropped lime slices into the lentils, pulled them out, and sucked on them. Michelle had brought hummus made from sprouted garbanzos and sesame seeds. We dunked fresh greens and steamed veggies with garlic into them. We ate tofu cheesecake with a strawberry topping and/or plums Michelle had canned.

reminded me of my dinner Wednesday night.

On Wednesdays, my madcap friend R. and my v. creative friend K. and I get together for an evening of ecstatic dance and a simple, healthy dinner. Well, that's how it started out, at least. Lately, the dinners have been getting more and more elaborate. Last night, I made green smoothies. R. fixed tofu w/ a lovely sauce, some tomato, some onion. K. brought chesses studded w/ cranberries and flavored w/ vodka. And apricots. All in all, we generally wind up having my favorite meal of all: Stone Soup. On my screen porch. Seasoned with discussion and friendship.

I am blessed .

May it be so for you.