2014-02-07 C2 PBP Coughlin & Corvids

2014-02-07 C2 PBP
John COUGHLIN, writer of "Out of the Shadows", through "Waning Moon" publishing. A book more akin to religious anthropology than Llewellyn's style-guide, yet informative without being narcoleptic. Instead of looking at what each Pagan or Neopagan religion does differently, he looks at attributes they have in common. It is one of those books that you want in paper form. Makes a "greater whole" when added to K's Nocturnal trilogy; something greater than the sum of its parts. Makes a great refresher too, especially for those FB comment wars.
-DB

CORVIDs - Crows, Ravens, Magpies, Jays, Birds of Paradise - found on every continent except Antarctica, and every color except clear, plaid, or pooka-dot. YOU may not enjoy the voice much, but they are regarded as song-birds!

A brain the size of a walnut, yet they use more of their IQ points than most of the people you work with! On a memory test, Corvids can hide a few hundred nuts in a forest and remember where, roughly 95% of them are, a month later. Humans on the other hand... Crows and Ravens have also been recorded as making and using tools, just like our hominid relatives, the apes! Ever see one hanging upside down on an electrical wire? They do that occasionally so as to get a different perspective on their surroundings!

Crows and Ravens have also been in theology; Greek, Roman, Celt, Native American, and others. From Apollo's totem, to the Celt's "Transporter of Souls to the Underworld", to the Native American's story of how the world began... Crow or Raven was there, depending on which tribe you reference.

They are not evil, they are misunderstood, just like us. :-/
So, read the book "Bird Brains". It has a BBB on the cover; a Big Black Bird.
-DB

PBP C1 2014-01-31 Cthulhu, Cemetaries,

Rucky you are, this week and next, two-pair you will get.

CTHULHU, the sleeping, mountain-sized tentacle-headed monster spawned from the skull of Mr. LOVECRAFT, almost like Athena's birth from Zeus. He, who will "awaken" "when the stars are aligned" to destroy Earth and everyone on it. (The Mayan's never predicted that one either; nor their own enslavement, so, cant revive the dead horse! :-)

The oddest bit about Mr. LOVECRAFT's Cthulhu concept, I think, is the "religion" around it. Its Dystopic. As the sub-plot thread goes, that when Cthulhu wakes up and starts destroying the world, you worship him in the hopes of being among the first eaten! They are that hopeless NOW; that the "chosen ones" die first "honorably"! Good thing its fiction.
-DB

CEMETERIES, the place where our "skin-suit" goes when humans and the occasional "pet" are off to our next reincarnation. A sort of communal Heroon, where our current dependents and future descendants may come and commit acts of ancestor worship. Being so... orderly, there is lack of individuality, and the odd forcing left, right, head, and toes, absolutely forced to be around complete fucking strangers.

Logically, SOMEthing must be done, so why not a place away from the living, so THOUGHTS of the dead do not "intrude" on the living?

Replace "thoughts" with "smell", and "dead" with "rotting-garbage", and you figure that the cemetery and trash-collection agency are two branches of the same organization :-/

At least with cremation, you and your family can have a private Heroon; an altar devoted to your ancestors, with flowers, their autobiographies on attached book-shelf, and little prayer candles in front of their urns, pictures and incense too. Who knows, maybe the stuff on their altar will remind you enough about them to eventually discover who or what they reincarnated as? Purring black cat, playing in the moon light; Crow or Raven, cloud surfing the thermals; bats, off to find the best deals on fruit; raccoons, chattering away as they wash their food...
-DB

PBP B2 - Beltane and Fire Festivals Generally

PBP: Beltane

Sundown April 30 to Sundown May 1, the balance point exactly opposite Halloween and so marks the point between the dark-half and light-half of the year.

It lies between the spring equinox and summer solstice, and is a fire festival so if you want to incorporate the concept of purifying from miasma, this would be one of those times.

From Wikipedia:
The Mounichia or Mounichia (Μουνιχιας) was an ancient Greek festival held on the 16th (full moon) of the month Mounichion (mid-April to mid-May lunar month) in the honor of Artemis Mounichia. The goddess' epithet come from Munichia's hill, where Artemis’ temple stood, close to Piraeus and the Salamis battle site. The festival commemorates the Greek fleet victory against Persians at Salamis. Dessert breads decorated with burning candles(?!) were offered to the goddess. Young girls dressed up as bears, like at Brauronia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mounikhia

I doubt candles were used, real bee wax ones (the only ones made at the time) can spontaneously start to melt if the day's weather is too hot.

Also, another celebration for this time, is the HARVEST in some cultures. In Mediterranean cultures, crops were planted in the autumn to take advantage of winter rain, then harvested in the spring, before the summer drought came. There was no choice, as irrigation canals were not invented yet, rivers were seasonal, or the soil is/was too sandy to support irrigation canals taking water from point A to point B.

Long answer diatribe follows; thanks for reading this far, there is no there there, therein.
-"Anonomouse"

So, the British may be confused about that (they are the "Greco-Roman fanatics" usually), using Roman biased eyes looking to look at Greek society, then presuming Greece has been nothing more then a Roman slave-colony; instead of sovereign before Rome invaded, or even existed.

So, Persephone, who was Kore (the "maiden"; or in 21st century speak... a girl who has not yet made it to puberty and her first period) and her mom, gives the clues. Mom (Demeter), walks around with a torch, and the people are starving from lack of food (summer heat and drought), daughter eats the Pomegranate, THEN walk back to the Upperworld... THEN there is rain THEN there is flowers and blah blah blah,

umm... Pomegranates are an Autumn food in the northern hemisphere... so Kore who became Persephone (trans: Destroyer?), then comes back. If we slow this down to the level of Herakles' Twelve Trials (we get the yearly constellation cycle from him), we see that Demeter wandered a season (3 months), it takes a season to walk from the Underworld to the Overworld (3 months), and this ends up not being some obsession over a mere rape & return, misogynist/rapist-scores-new-wife story, but the telling of how the seasons came to be. And being a god, I doubt he would rape his niece... me thinks this is an attempted rewrite of Greek myth to make the abrahamic stuff look better.

Try living in Greece, or southern California, without modern conveniences like running water, and try and figure out how you would water 20 acres of land... a bucket, or planting Winter Rye, Winter Wheat, and Winter Barley... in autumn?

PBP Banishing

Banishings; wonderful learning that one. Cowans have the understanding of Pavlovian response, and doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results, and yet, are still stuck. There is no yo-yo effect if there is no string, the banishing cuts the strings. Remember the LotR quote, "You, shall, not, pass!"? Your aura essentially becomes the citadel wall with patrolling guards walking the battlements... IF you do banishing on a regular basis. Similar to your Ego, your Aura is doing its... we-todd-did*... best to defend you from ethereal bastards, but taking conscious control, means you start teaching it, allowing it to adapt to new circumstances by finding out what was common with the last ones. Every attacker has an MO, every attack leaves a "fingerprint"; how to predict and prevent the next one becomes easier over time. Those who are better at it then you; the auras touch and some of the experience "rubs off". Some ass of a "guru" whose business is con-games not teaching, is known as fraud because they are only empty promise. Some drill-sergeant teacher just needs to shake hands a few times and the aura will learn on its own. Like a music string, the harmonic of one will "tune" the one "out of tune". I presume same with the reiki people too, the "patient" will learn the "vibe" and not need to "inherit" to heal others. Unless the whole "laying hands" thang is just covert Christian missionary filling in the power vacuum that was superb American medicine pre-HMO/PPO legalese coup.

*Nothing against the Special people; you honestly can't do certain things beyond a certain level. That just means you know your limits. Most people around you can do better, but would rather someone else do it for them. You are not a victim either, you are a fellow Citizen just like I am...

And fuck the Olympics, wheelchair or not, one leg or not, there should only be one Olympics... and people with metal legs from third world countries, are not cheating when in the "normal" Olympics.

-Anonomouse's Daimon, and Anonomouse

Wikipedia's:
"In Ceremonial magic, banishing refers to one or more rituals intended to remove non-physical influences ranging from spirits to negative influences. Although banishing rituals are often used as components of more complex ceremonies, they can also be performed by themselves.
In Wicca and various forms of neopaganism, banishing is performed before casting a Circle in order to purify the area where the ritual or magick is about to take place. In his books on Nocturnal Witchcraft, for example, Konstantinos recommends performing banishings regularly, in order to keep the magickal workspace free of negativity, and to become proficient in banishing before attempting acts that are much more spiritually taxing on the body, such as spellworking. Banishing can be viewed as one of several techniques of magick, closely related to ritual purification and a typical prerequisite for consecration and invocation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banishing

PBP - Apotheosis - 2014-01-10

PBP - Apotheosis - 2014-01-10

As Hesiod wrote regarding the Five Ages, in particular, the Golden Age, people lived happy, war-free, died in their sleep, worshipped the gods of their own free will (enjoyed it, not treated like a chore but wanting to), and achieved apotheosis at the end of their lives.

Heroes/-ines become, when they have traveled to the Underworld, and returned to the world of the living (Overworld, technically?).

But, Apotheosis is when we no longer need to reincarnate; when we can spend the rest of our nights with the Muses, Heroes, Family, Gods, Daimons, there on the Blessed Isles. My personal understanding, vague though it may be, is that is regardless of we mortal-born.

In other words, there is no need for a "personality cult" like Michael Jackson had, or Elvis, Betty Page, DaVinci, or anyone else, because it is not based on mortal-born opinion; its not a vote where we outnumber the gods a bazillion to one.

Its more like school, learn English 099 and pass, good, now learn English 100, now English 101, while also History, Art, Numbers, Physics, Chemistry, Modern Greek, and an elective of reincarnating as a African American left-handed 4 ft tall circus-clown, who is lesbian, Atheist, and desires to be elected to local City Council in Buenos Aires.

So just like the above example, there are things to learn that when successful, do not need to be relearned, others can only be learned by experiencing them and are not bad in and of themselves, but the lack of progression through reincarnations makes a non-issue; suddenly a problem that only tyrants would enjoy.

So if you recycle a soda can, you might get a Karma Credit, but if you recycle a second soda can, you don't because you cant do the same thing twice and get credit.

Keeping with the school example (which life is), you can do it over if you got less then an A-grade, but as soon as you get your A-grade Karma Credit, you cant take it again.

There is also this thing where, as I understand it, we do not have to climb out of the muck, but originally incarnated neutral. Our mess is our own making since then. This may be what Aristotle meant when he wrote something like: Do not reward the good for doing good, as they are doing it for the reward, not because it is good, you will find that out when you can no longer reward; however, punish the bad. (Pavlov Response 22.75 centuries before Pavlov was born!)

Things we need closure on, are from things that happened lifetimes ago. Psychic and magickal power due to dedicating, and initiating into one of the Mysteries lifetimes ago. Being a "natural" at something is that A-Grade Karma Credit learned from previous life-times.

So those who achieve Apotheosis are either those who do not frak up at all, while learning...
or those who see it not as reincarnation but one giant life living in two vacation houses called Underworld, and Overworld; who have the sense enough to clean up their own mess, and not only apologize, but never do it again because they meant it when they said "sorry".

*Charon should build a bridge, if he has to ferry us to the Underworld when we are allowed to reincarnate as a spirit, and the Overworld when we are allowed to reincarnate among the living, he must be busy! If he had a bridge, he could charge the obol to cross the bridge but there could be lane markers and a center divider so people can walk across easily. If it were a draw bridge those who do not pay would not be able to cross for 1k years [ouch!]*

- Anonomouse, happily with no anonomice!
PS - Wikipedia on Apotheosis, though I am not happy about the writing style of this one. I could not bear to quote the entire thing; I feel I already need a shower from the hubris miasma dripping off the page. Any religious anthropologists want to take a whack at it with the unbiased-objective-neutral-deductive logic-stick?

Apotheosis - from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotheosis
BEGIN QUOTE
Apotheosis (from Greek ἀποθέωσις from ἀποθεοῦν, apotheoun "to deify"; in Latin deificatio "making divine"; also called divinization and deification) is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.
In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature. In art, the term refers to the treatment of any subject (a figure, group, locale, motif, convention or melody) in a particularly grand or exalted manner.
Ancient Greece
From at least the Geometric period of the ninth century BC, the long-deceased heroes linked with founding myths of Greek sites were accorded chthonic rites in their heroon, or "hero-temple".
In the Greek world, the first leader who accorded himself divine honours was Philip II of Macedon, who was a king when the Greeks had set kingship aside, and who had extensive economic and military ties, though largely antagonistic, with Achaemenid Persia where kings were divine. At his wedding to his sixth wife, Philip's enthroned image was carried in procession among the Olympian gods; "his example at Aigai became a custom, passing to the Macedonian kings who were later worshipped in Greek Asia, from them to Julius Caesar and so to the emperors of Rome".[1] Such Hellenistic state leaders might be raised to a status equal to the gods before death (e.g., Alexander the Great) or afterwards (e.g., members of the Ptolemaic dynasty). Heroic cult similar to apotheosis was also an honour given to a few revered artists of the distant past, notably Homer.
Archaic and Classical Greek hero-cults became primarily civic, extended from their familial origins, in the sixth century; by the fifth century none of the worshipers based their authority by tracing descent back to the hero, with the exception of some families who inherited particular priestly cult, such as the Eumolpides (descended from Eumolpus) of the Eleusinian mysteries, and some inherited priesthoods at oracle sites. The Greek hero cults can be distinguished on the other hand from the Roman cult of dead emperors, because the hero was not thought of as having ascended to Olympus or become a god: he was beneath the earth, and his power purely local. For this reason hero cults were chthonic in nature, and their rituals more closely resembled those for Hecate and Persephone than those for Zeus and Apollo. Two exceptions were Heracles and Asclepius, who might be honoured as either gods or heroes, sometimes by chthonic night-time rites and sacrifice on the following day.
END QUOTE

PBP Ancestor Worship 2014-01-03

PBP
2014-01-03

Ancestor Worship is not a fanatical thing from me...

Humanity is 250k years old, 90 billion people have lived so far, and the human species is sexual no matter what the merely proper people have to say about it... as if the "little darling princess" who is reliving her high-school years now playing the part of the desperate cougar, thinks her kids are "little darling angels"... denial is mastered with our species  0.o

My step-grandfather's ashes were scattered in San Fran bay with the help of The Nautilus Society who helps arrange nifty stuff like that. Yearly, usually something in memory of him, roughly coincides with "St." Patrick's Day; which is funny because his name is Patrick.

Me dad died a 2 years ago, one night after Midwinter, 2k11, his ashes are divided 3 ways, me step-mom #2 has a third, me half-sister has a third, and I have a third.

Me step-mom, will be buried with her 1/3 next to her...
Me half-sister, is covertly spreading the ashes around the world whenever she vacations in a new spot so me/our dad can vacation there too, and...
I keep him as a bookend for a few of his books I have, and would like to spread his ashes at the Asklepieion on the Greek island of Kos, where Hippocrates went to school. Me dad is/was M.D. & D.O. and I figure when Greece gets out of its financial cesspool and rebuilds that ancient medical school, me dad will be there to help welcome every graduating class. ;-p

As I am not "out" to everyone, but only a few people who for what ever reason, I feel I can trust. My remembering of them consists of burning a stick of incense outside, where it is quiet and dark. I usually whisper something on the front patio of City Hall to them on their B-Day and their D-Day about 3 AM or so, after the bars close and before street-cleaning comes along.

Its not formal because of X to the N'th excuses/"pseudo-reasons". Point is, for times like this, no script is better then rehearsed. It may "only" be five minutes saying something, but WOW what a powerful five minutes! Don't let the theater department take over from the magick of magick; it is for remembering your ancestors. Psychodrama is wanted, a psycho's drama is not.

Hades, ruler of the Underworld is married, but hey, Karon and Thanatos are single, so if you want to out do your coven-mates, the Ferryman and Death are just on the other side of the Veil should you swim to the big-kid end of common sense before you are ready! ;-p

- Anonomouse

Good-Dark Neopagan Cosmos Genos - 2013-08-19

2013-08-19
What was before Chaos, (Greek: "Void"), Cacaphony, Anarchy?
What was before space-time?
No physical matter, no light, only Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Shadow)! They came together, and the Big Bang is the sexual release of Them, in that sensual, romantic, erotic moment created the Cosmic Egg, the forever expanding Universe of which we are part of. Citizens of the Universe, Children of the Good-Dark Gods & Goddesses. - DB