It's the Blue Dye, says Robert F Kennedy, jr, and the MAGA folks sing...

 It's the Blue Dye, says Robert F Kennedy, jr, and the MAGA folks sing...

Kafka Thouhhts

I don’t like to get political, because I know no matter what we/tgey/them/us do in this world, whlight always wins off darkness, eventually, historically speaking that is; but, when I hear talk of invading Canada… CANADA, our friends to the north who gave us my two favorite things in the world: maple syrup and hockey, gosh, all I can think of for some reason are the Kafka writings I read as a kid of a dark world run by nationalists… hmmm…

 

Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo

 

Closed For Business Until Further Notice Due To Wars

 I'm taking a war break: Remember, which ever side you're on, sides suck. 

~~ Eso Terry 

A Personal Message on War

Let's pretend there are not wars boys and girls, we can just laugh and have fun!

I've been hiding from the silliness of it all.  How can we have wars without interruption?  What is the price we are paying for this? 

A wise man once said, "Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories. There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."  That wise man was Sun Tzu.  

"If you are angry, so am I.  That's not a reason for more killing, that is a reason for more love." I said that. 

~~ Eso Terry

"War without interruption is crazy."

"What war?  Go on with your life, don't mind me. I'm just dancing here."

October 10th, Esoterically Speaking

Today, October 10th, is not a good day for organized religion for on October 10th, 1793, Joseph Fouché decreed that the only acceptable worship would be that of "universal morality."  Fouché even ordered the Supreme Being out of graveyards, with the Christian promise of resurrection replaced at their entrances with the atheistic message "Death Is an Eternal Sleep." 

The people of France's second largest city had been slow to accept the new order of things and actually had the audacity to rebel.  Fouché arrived to guide them back to reason.  He started by parading the local bishop on a donkey that was dressed in the cleric's vestments and miter, with a chalice around its neck and a missal tied to its tail. 

Oddly enough, on this same day in Brazil, the annual Festival of Light begins; the centuries-old festival which is celebrated for two consecutive weeks and includes a parade of penance and the lighting of candles, torches, and hearth-fires to symbolically drive away the spirits of darkness who bring evil and misfortune.

Active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face on Oct. 8, 2014. The active regions appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy — markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. This image blends together two sets of wavelengths at 171 and 193 Angstroms, typically colorized in gold and yellow, to create a particularly Halloween-like appearance. (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

October, Esoterically Speaking

October, October, Octobre, the wicket month of the year when the veil between us and them has thinned to allow us to go deep into our Earth consciousness.  And as the October veil thins, we're reminded that October is the tenth month of the year on today's calendar, but was the eighth month of the old pagan calendar, and sacred to the goddess Astraea.  She was the daughter Zeus and Themis and lived among humans during the Golden Age.  But when civilization began to degenerate, she withdrew to the upperworld.  The myth of the loss of the Golden Age is appropriate for this time of year when the chills of autumn tell us that the golden days of summer have past and winter's death is here. 

In the Celtic tree calendar, October begins in the ivy month, Gort, which runs until October 27th. The reed month, Noetal follows.  The goddess calendar month of Mala expires on October 2nd, it is followed by the month dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Hathor, ending on the 30th.  The final day of October, Halloween or November Eve, is the first day of the month ruled by the goddess Samhain, this is the Irish name of the month of November, to which I will have a lot to speak about next month, but for now, know that the festival of Samhain begins at sunset on October 31st, the New Year of the Celtic tradition.

The birthstone of October is the opal, which is seen as a protector against painful times, and as the old adage goes:

October's child is born for woe, 

And life's vicissitudes must know:

But lay an Opal on her breast, 

And hope will lull those woes to rest. 

(Yeah, that's some good stuff.)

The flowers for October are the Cosmos and Marigold.  The cosmos stands for harmony, beauty, and self-reliance. The marigold symbolizes purity, auspiciousness, and the divine.  The strong fragrance of a marigold is believed to ward off evil spirits -- a much welcomed fragrance this time of year, wouldn't you say? 

October is shared by the astrological signs of Libra the Scales (or Balance) and Scorpio the Scorpion, and is scared to the following Pagan deities: Cernunnos, Hecate, the Morrigan, Osiris, and the Wiccan Goddess in Her dark aspect as the Crone. 

The I Ching hexagram for October is Hex 22, Contemplation.  As expected, this is a time for reflecting, being quiet, and doing inner work.  

In Tess Whitehurst's wonderful blog on withcraft and magic, she writes, "...the veil of autumn is the place where the everyday illusion of separation brushes up against the divine truth of eternity and universal interconnection. The place where form meets spirit, seen meets unseen, known meets unknown."

In the Irish Farmers Journal, eleven modern day Druids were asked to define the veil of October, and twelve different answers were given, the one I liked best is the one about the Crone, who comes to strip the leaves from the trees, to quicken the decay of the flesh of the year, so that it may feed the new life to come.

Yes, as the world around us dies, so too, can the internal aspects of our life which we no longer need, for example: the decaying friends telling us to go for it, as we guzzle another beer, maybe its time we leave that one behind.  Let it decay with the leafs to nourish a new day of sobriety.  Or this can be applied to any another aspects of our lives needing healing.  In my case, maybe I'll stop dreaming of Manly P Hall, yes, that would be a twist in m sobriety, now wouldn't it?

Sadly, I must leave you with a preposition because, well, that rule has died, now hasn't it?

~~ Eso Terry 

Gargoyle Mouthwash

 

Let's talk gargoyles boys and girls, yes, those strange faces in stone telling us to behave or we'll get a massive growth on our heads.

 

In the apartment I lived in as a kid, there was an old building across the street with gargoyles on the top floor, and I would sit for hours looking up at the strange beings looking back at me, some were crying, others laughing, and if I shook my head fast enough, they moved. Of course, then I was giving ADHD medicine and stopped staring out the window so much. 

 

Later I learned that the building across the street was built by a wealthy businessman in the early 20th century who believed putting gargoyles on the ledges would bring him good luck.  The logic didn't work because the building opened in 1929 a week before the  Great Depression, and he subsequently jumped from the building.  

 

The faces of the gargoyles are rumored to be the faces the owner made as he jumped to his death from the building after losing everything he had in the stock crash.  You hear stories like these all the time, and probably the reason you never see gargoyles on buildings anymore.

The history of gargoyles starts in a town in France outside of Paris called Rouen.  The story tells of a dragon that lived in the Sene river and terrorized the town by eating people along the river banks and burning ships trying to pass.  The dragon's name... you guessed it...  Gargouille.

The legend goes that around the year 600 AD a Christian monk named Romanus came to town and defeated the dragon and delivered the dead beast to the town's people who immediately  decided to burn it.  The body of the dragon went up in flames quickly, but the head and neck wouldn't burn.  Taking this as a sign from God, the towns people mounded the head and neck of the dragon on a village wall as a reminder of God’s great power.  This practice soon spread from town to town and the neck and head of Gargouille became the model of today's gargoyle.

The word Gargoyle comes from the French word Gargouille and so it should be no surprise that the oldest gargoyles standing today are found in France.  These gargoyles are on Cathedrals and are a part of what is called Scripture in Stone.  According to most scholars, these gargoyles were placed on religious structures to preach the gospels to the illiterate and warring classes by putting the fear of hell in them.  Others believe the gargoyles are demons of lost souls placed there to scare away greater demons.  Regardless of the reason, all the great cathedrals of France have them. 

The two greatest of these cathedrals are Notre Dame and Chartres.  The gargoyles of Notre Dame are rumored to take flight after dark and watch over the cafes of Paris.  The gargoyles of Chartres are said to watch over the countryside to scare away oncoming threats. 

As I have already mentioned, the word Gargoyle is from the Old French word Gargouille which means throat.  If you look at most of the old Gargoyles you'll see they have long necks with a head at the end in the form of a long spout.  The English words gurgle and gargle share the same French root as the word gargoyle.  This really makes sense because in architecture any drainpipe leaning off the side of a building is called a gargoyle.  Conversely,  if a stone carving does not carry water but does have a horrible face or image on it architects call it a grotesques.

Ostara (1901) by Johannes Gehrts. Spring feasts were held to honour the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre/Ostara.

Although gargoyles and grotesques placed on cathedrals are believed to be of Christian origin, a closer look does tell another story.  A closer look tells the story of how a winter's solstice celebration became the birth of a savoir; and, how a Spring feast once held to honor the goddess Eostre became the resurrection Easter Sunday meal.  Stonemasons who had passed from being an apprentice to a journeyman knew this and so worked out their own ideas in their carvings.  They were, in a sense, independent artist and so were free to do pretty much as they liked.  So why then did they choose to place so many pagan images on the religious buildings of their day?  Could it be they still held onto the old beliefs in secret? After much research, I for one believe the carvings were a message for those with eyes to see.  A prime example of this are the many gargoyles of The Green Man, also known as The Jack in the Green, who was the pagan god of tree worship and can be found in the many grotesques wearing crowns of leaves and branches.

Another common image from paganism that is found on many cathedrals is the multi-face grotesques that represents Diana the virgin goddess and protector of childbirth.  Historically, Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, and Virbius, the woodland god.  These three-faces of the gods to the cults were once worshiped as the Christian holy trinity, that is, until the Pope realized their true meaning and so had the practice banned. Still, the Pope left the pagan symbols on the cathedrals as to not upset the will of the people; seems, even the Pope had a thing for our pagan past. 

So, along with diverting rainwater and scaring off evil spirits, gargoyles seemed to be a way for the artist who placed them there to tell the story of the old religion; the old Pagan religion before the Christian church came along and gave the town's people the choice to convert to the new God, or, well... die.  Knowing this, it's easy to see that these gargoyles are pagan messengers reminding us of the truth that religion can not be ordered by a king, but must be grown from within or else, well, it's gargoyle mouthwash.


~~ Dr. TV Boogie