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

Don't Launch a Ship on the 27th of September.

Eso Terry in the Navy

Being a former sailor, I marvel at sea coinkydinks.  Take for example the date of September 27th -- esoterically speaking that is -- after being delayed by bad weather, William, duke of Normandy, embarked his army and set sail for the southeastern coast of England in what would be known in history as the Norman Conquest and one hell of a bloody year.  Then in 1854 on this day over 150 passengers were killed when the shipped named SS Arctic sinks after being hit by a French steamship off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. 

So, if I were launching a new ship, I would probably look at the date of September 27th as not a great day to put a ship on water for the first time, and maybe wait until the 28th. The US Navy didn't see it this way so they launched the USS William D. Porter on September 27th in 1942, and from the get-go, it was a disaster. 

The ship nicknamed the "Willie Dee," was assigned its first mission of escorting the USS Iowa which was transporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a summit with Allied leaders at a secret conference in Tehran; however, before leaving port to join the others the Willie Dee managed to smash into a fellow destroyer and caused damage to the other ship as well as the pier.  In that favorite book of mine, "Bad Days in History," the author writes: "From there it got worse." 

In beginning its secret mission to escort the ship with the president on it, the Willie Dee accidentally dropped a depth charge and caused a sailor to fall overboard and the engine room to lose power for a time -- so much for keeping the mission a secret. 

FDR

To overcome this dilemma and prove the Willie Dee was an asset to the mission, the captain of the Willie Dee thought he would impress the president with a war drill, and so organized a torpedo exercise with the ship the president was on as its pretend target.  And yes, you guessed it, the Willie Dee launched a live torpedo at the ship with the president on it.  The ship carrying the president turned abruptly to avoid the torpedo and the torpedo exploded in the water behind the president's ship.  

After the debacle, and with a strong suspicion that an assassin may have been on board, the Willie Dee was sent to Bermuda where the entire crew was arrested.  The unfortunate crewman who had caused the mistake was sentenced to 14 years of hard labor, but President Roosevelt, a former sailor himself, dismissed the charges and all was forgiven.  

The Willie Dee went on to have more mishaps and sailed for a three years before being sunk by Japanese warplanes.  The bright side of the story is that none of the men aboard the Willie Dee died.  Seems that the mischievous spirits aboard her had hearts, besides, they had another ship to launch on this day which would happen September 27th, 1938 when RMS Queen Elizabeth was launched and would eventually sink in Hong Kong Harbor despite a massive firefighting effort over two days.

Don't launch a ship on the 27th of September.  

Oh, and in today's news: 

LONDON (AP) — Britain on Wednesday (September 27th) gave the go-ahead for a major oil and gas project in the North Sea, ignoring warnings from scientists and the United Nations that countries must stop developing new fossil fuel resources if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Let's see how that works.

~~ Eso Terry

 

A Benefit of Global Warming: A New Stonehenge.

"Thanks for the Global Warming! Can I get a little help here?"

In my Nichiren Buddhist training, I've learned to roll with the punches.  That is to say, happiness has nothing to do with what is going on around us or the material things we have.  Happiness is just what we are with our Buddhist nature.  So, we tend to see the good in all things.  For one, without the bad things, the good things would hardly be noticed.  That is one part, the other part is out of bad things there is always a good thing.  You know, you have a car accident which seems bad but then they find a spot on the x-ray which saves your life.  So it is an attitude thing.  

A great example of this is with today's Climate Change.  We all know it is bad and we all know that greedy world leaders have no internal guidance to do anything about it, and so it will continue to get worse and all we can do is stop using straws and chant/pray.  This is true, but there will be things brought to light by this.  For instance, the Greed Worship that has got us here is being exposed and more and more people are seeing that we need to stop chasing fame and fortune and start being more Earth Conscious. We need to "give more" and "take less."  

Easier said than done, I know.  

On this note, because of Climate Change, receding waters has shown us a new "Stonehenge" in Spain.  That's right, receding waters levels in Spain’s Valdecañas Reservoir has exposed a stone monument dating back to between 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

What's Next?

~~ Eso Terry