I love spring

The Eka Dasa Rudra (an eleven-week-long Balinese festival consisting of thirty ceremonies) is held on this date approximately once every one hundred years to restore the balance between the forces of good and evil.  The festival, which is ancient in origin, reaches a climax when thousands of pilgrims gather at the volcano temple to observe animal sacrifices made to appease the god Rudra.

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The divine ones we acknowledge during the two weeks around the spring equinox -- Cybele, Inanna, Ishtar, Isis, Aphrodite, Minerva, Athena, Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus, ST. Patrick, Heimdall -- are connected with death and rebirth.  Before Julius Caesar made January the first month of the year, the new year arrived with the spring equinox, so we have story after story of death and a stay in the underworld, story after story of resurrection.  The Aramaic word for resurrection means "to get up again."  I like the simplicity of that.  We get up again.  After death we get up again, just like we get up every morning.  It's not such a big deal.  We throw back the covers and get out of bed.  Like the vegetative deities, we arise to a new life.  When spring comes, the year also gets up again.

I love spring.

Washington's Apple Trees and Nukes

In ancient Rome, the fertility and wine-god Liber Pater was honored annually on this date (and sometimes on the seventeenth of March).  His festival, the Liberalia, was a time of feasting and drinking, and a day when young males entered into their manhood.
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First Lady Helen Taft

On this day in 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and the Japanese ambassador's wife, Viscountess Chinda, planted two Yoshino cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac tidal basin.  Mayor Ozaki donated the trees to enhance the growing friendship between the United States and Japan and also celebrate the continued close relationship between the two nations. Large and colorful helium balloons, floats, marching bands from across the country, music and showmanship are parts of the Festival's parade and other events.

One has to wonder if President Truman noticed the friendship trees on August 6, 1945 or August 9, 1945 when we dropped atomic bombs on them killing 75,000 people.   I wonder how good those apples tasted that day.

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 A person can escape the unhappiness that befalls her, but not the unhappiness she creates herself.

--Father Tolstoy

Solitude Day, Persephone, and Joseph Campbell

Solitude Day.  This is a time for Wiccans and Neo-Pagans to spend the day (or at least part of it) by themselves, mediate in solitude, and reconnect with their "inner selves."  Take a quiet walk in the woods or stroll down a deserted beach and listen to the music of the sea.  Explore an old barn or write a Goddess-inspired poem.
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We know the story of Demeter and Persephone: Hades, king of the underworld, lusts after Kore and kidnaps her while she's picking flowers in a sunny meadow.  Refusing to let anything grow until she gets her daughter back, Demeter, the grain mother, makes a deal with Hades that allows Kore -- now called Persephone, "She Who Destroys the Light" -- to return to the upper world.  The story is allegorical.  Vegetation dies for a season.  The Eleusinian Mysteries perhaps revealed the mysteries of life and death contained in a seed.

In Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, Charlene Spretnak retells an earlier version of the story, without the rape.  Humankind lives in a happy land of perpetual spring.  Grain and flowers are ever growing, ever blooming, and no one has a care in the world.  One day Persephone hears whispering in the meadow.  It seems to be coming from beneath the roots of the flowers and grass.  She investigates and discovers that she's hearing the whispers of the dead, who exist in a half-life in a shadowy place under the earth.  She feels sorry for them and, talking three poppies and three sheaves of wheat, she descends under the earth.  She tells the dead souls that she has come to be their comforter and their queen.  After she paints their foreheads with the juice of the poppy to initiate them into new life, they are ready for rebirth.

Reader, instead of seeing pale Persephone on her dark throne, let's build a new picture in our minds.  Let's see young Persephone sitting among the shades of the dead -- alone. She's telling them stories and singing to them.  She's holding their hands, caressing their cheeks, reminding them of the joys and sorrows of life.  When they're ready, she sends them back up to the land of the living (Andinger - Pagan Every Day pg86).

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Comparative folklorist Joseph Campbell once wrote, "Read myths.  They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols."  Born in New York City on this day (March 26th) in 1904, Campbell gained fame for his 1948 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which studied the archetype of the hero in Native American, Greek, Hindu, Buddhist, Mayan, Norse, Biblical, and Arthurian legends.  His concepts were intricately woven into film director George Lucas's scripts for the "Star Wars" trilogy.  Campbell's multi-volume Historical Atlas of World Mythology was only partially completed by the time of his death in 1987.  

Joseph Campbell was a Pagan.

Day of Blood; Ask Lou Reed

In ancient Rome this was a time of deep mourning.  It was an annual religious custom on this day for people to lacerate themselves with knives and for new priest to castrate themselves and spill their blood on the altar in the temple of the Mother-Goddess Cybele.

Oddly enough, on this day in 1973 the groovy singer Lou Reed was bitten while performing on a stage in Buffalo, New York.  His attacker screamed out: "Leather!" and then bit him on the posterior (yes, "ass" to you and me.)

Finally, I guess you could say Mother Nature kind of got a whipping of her own on this day from Greedy Capitalism back in 1989, for on that day one of the worst oil spills in U.S. territory begins when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, runs aground on a reef in Prince William Sound in southern Alaska.  An estimated 11 million gallons of oil eventually spilled into the water. Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil more than 100 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 700 miles of coastline.

Hundreds of thousands of birds and animals were adversely affected by the environmental disaster.

Dance of the Salii and Ronald Reagan.

Dance of the Salii.  On this date in ancient Rome, the gods Mars and Saturn were invoked each year by dancing priests brandishing spears and clashing holy shields.  The evil spirits of Winter were thus expelled from the city, and the growth of crops and gardens was stimulated through sympathetic magic.

Interesting to think that on this day in 1983 President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as "Star Wars." 

Hmmmm.

Spring Equinox and Beer

The astronomical spring in the Northern Hemisphere began on Monday, March 20 and ended on Wednesday, June 21.  Yes, the first day of Spring, the Spring, or Vernal, Equinox is celebrated by Wiccans and Witches throughout the world.  Spring equinox (which is also known as Festival of the Trees, Alban Eilir, Ostara, and the Rite of Eostre) is a fertility rite celebrating the birth of Spring and the reawakening of life from the Earth.  On this sacred day, Witches light new fires at sunrise, rejoice, ring bells, and decorate hard-boiled eggs -- an ancient Pagan custom associated with the Goddess of Fertility.  The aspects of the Goddess invoked at this Sabbat are Eostre (the Saxon goddes of fertility) and Ostara (the German goddess of fertility); in some Wiccan traditions, the Green Goddess and the Lord of the Greenwood are worshiped on this day.  Like most of the old Pagan festivals, Spring Equinox was Christianized by the Church into the religious holiday of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.


Is it any wonder that on this day in the year 1933, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill allowing Americans to consume wine and beer with a maximum 3.2 percent alcohol level, triggering the end of Prohibition.  Happy days were truly here again.

Al Gore addressed the International Telecommunications Union on this day in 1994.  He said, "The Global Information Infrastructure will help educate our children and allow us to exchange ideas within a community and among nations."  President Clinton had asked Vice President Gore to handle the "information highway" thing.  Republicans called the "Internet Thing" another example of the Democrats Tax-and-Spend waste.   Within four years, the "Internet Thing" would be what it is today: our lifeline to information, both true and untrue.

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You cannot separate yourself from humanity even if you want to.  You live in it, for it, and together with it.  We are all created for interaction and communication with each other, but this is impossible without self-denial.

-- Marcus Aurelius

Dionysus lives - March 19

In ancient times, Greek theatrical performances known as the Urban Dionysus began annually on this date in honor of the god Dionysus.  They continued for five consecutive days.  Funny, it was on this same day in 1895 that the Lumière brothers, Louis and Auguste, shot a very short film of workers leaving a factory in Lyon.  That movie, the first in history, was seen by a small circle of friends and no one else.  It wasn't until December 28 that the Lumière brothers gave a public showing, along with nine more of their shorts, which also recorded fleeting moments from real life.

In that basement of the Grand Café in Paris, there was a full house:  Thirty-five people at a franc a seat.

Georges Méliès was in the audience.  He wanted to buy their movie camera.  Since they wouldn't sell it to him, he had to invent his own.


Yes, Dionysus lives.

We're All Hindu Today Mr. President

The annual Hindu festival of Holi is held in India on this date to celebrate Spring and to commemorate the burning death of the child-eating, she-demon known as Holika. Ceremonial fires are lit and Saturnalian street processions take place; with the usual distinctions of caste, sex and rank suspended, the revelers cover each other in powders and colored water and licentious frivolity is tolerated.  The frolicking recalls Krishna's adventures with the cowgirls (gopīs). Images of the gods placed on special platforms are ritually swung during the festivities; this is the Dolayãtra.

For all its popularity, the festival has little to do with the principles of orthodox Hinduism, and it seems clear that its origins are more ancient, lying in the primitive celebrations of new life and the need to restore fertility to the earth.

Notes on King Philip IV, Pope Clement V, and the Knights Templar.

March 11th has arrived, and what you should know about this day is that it is the day the last Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Templars, Jacques de Molay, died. Yes, he was burned alive at the stake on this date in the year 1314.  Shortly before he died, however, he accurately predicted the death of King Philip IV of France within the year and the death of Pope Clement V within forty days.   

The Templars  

The original Templars were founded in the 12th Century to guard pilgrims on their way along the dangerous roads that led to Jerusalem. Its members were effectively armed monk-like knights who were granted certain legal privileges and whose status was backed by the church. They were reputed to be the possessors of great wealth and power. 

King Philip IV

In 1306, King Philip IV expelled all Jews from France, seizing their property and confiscating the monies owed to them. Philip’s devotion to St. Louis was witnessed that same year by elaborate ceremonies in his honor, and Louis’s anti-Semitic proclivities might have inspired Philip to act against the Jews, whose usefulness as a source of regular revenue had in any case been exhausted by his earlier repeated impositions.

Feeling his oats from his successful removal of the Jews, King Philip then attacked the Knights Templars, the wealthy, powerful, independent crusading order that had long acted as the French monarchy’s financial agent. Philip’s newfound interest in uniting the crusading orders made him mistrustful of the Templars’ opposition to such plans. Thus, he was receptive to charges of heresy and sodomy presented against them in 1305, and so in September 1307, he ordered the seizing all Knights Templars in France.

Pope Clement V

Pope Clement V (1264 – April 20, 1314), born Bertrand de Goth (also occasionally spelled "Gouth" and "Got"), was Pope from 1305 to his death. He is memorable in history for suppressing the order of the Templars. He was Philip IV The Fair's personal choice for Pope, and more or less served Philip's interests.

Clement on throne

On October 13, 1307, came the arrest of hundreds of the Knights Templar in France, an action apparently financially motivated and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown. Philip IV was the force behind this ruthless move, but it has also tarnished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very day of Clement V's coronation, the King had charged the Templars with heresy, immorality, and abuses, and the scruples of the Pope were compromised by a growing sense that the burgeoning French State might not wait for the Church, but would proceed independently. Clement was initially slow to respond to these charges and "with considerable courage … refused to give the king an answer … at once." He tried to "fend off" Philip's "demand for an inquiry" until Philip ordered the arrest of all members of the order. Clement interpreted this as an attack on the Church itself, and issued a bull ordering the "kings of the Christian lands … to arrest the Templars in their countries" but to do so in the name of the Pope. Clement may have hoped that the Templars' innocence would be proved, so yielded to the King's pressure to move against them. However, charged with heresy, sodomy, and all manners of abominations, they were, despite Clement's delaying tactics, eventually found guilty. Clement tried to avoid taking personal responsibility by sending a delegation of Cardinals to Paris to interrogate the prisoners.
In 1311, Council of Vienne was convened to pass judgment. Most of its 300 members thought the charges unproved but Philip himself testified to the order's guilt. Then, the Bull Vox in excelsis, dated March 22, 1312, written by Clement, was read. In this Bull, "the pope said that though he had no sufficient reasons for a formal condemnation of the order, nevertheless, because of the common weal, the hatred borne them by the King of France, the scandalous nature of their trial, and the probable dilapidation of the order's property in every Christian land, he suppressed it by virtue of his sovereign power, and not by any definitive sentence." Many of the knights were executed, and the order's wealth was confiscated. Although the order's assets were meant to devolve to the Hospitallers, they were appropriated by Philip. The guilt or innocence of the Templars is one of the more difficult historical problems, partly because of the atmosphere of hysteria that had built up in the preceding generation and the habitually intemperate language and extravagant denunciations exchanged between temporal rulers and churchmen, and partly because the subject has been embraced by conspiracy theorists and pseudo-historians.

The Deaths

King Philip’s stubborn resolve to defend morality and the faith was shown when, with royal acquiescence, the grand master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake after retracting his earlier confession. 

Clement V died in April 1314. According to one story, while his body was lying in state, a thunderstorm developed during the night and lightning struck the church where his body lay, igniting the building. The fire was so intense that, when it was extinguished, the body of Pope Clement V was almost completely destroyed. He is buried at La Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne.

The death of Clement V was a blow to King Philip.   Shortly after hearing of this death, the king had a minor stroke. Having regained strength, he travelled to his birthplace, Fontainebleau, and there, a day before his death, he halted collection of his last tax and provided for a crusading expedition to be conducted in his name.

We now return you to your normal broadcasting.  

Devil's Trill Sonata

Ah, you're going to love this, on this day in the year 1909, the famous Dutch clairvoyant and psychic healer Gerard Croiset wss born in the Netherlands.  What makes him so special?  Well, using his clairvoyant abilities, which manifested early in his childhood, Croiset healed hundreds of patients daily at his clinic.  He also worked with various police departments as a psychic criminologist and solved crimes in more than half a dozen countries.  His death occurred on July 20, 1980.

Also on the night of this day way back in 1712, the Devil visited the young violinist Giuseppe Tartini and played for him in his dreams.

Giuseppe didn't want to wake from this dream, he wanted it to go on and on, but it didn't, but he was left with his greatest work:  Devil's Trill Sonata.

A Pagan thought on International Women's Day.

March 8th you say, so what?   Well, so what, it is Mother Earth Day, a festival which honors the birthday of the Earth as a Mother Goddess, is celebrated annually on this day throughout China.  The festival consists of street parades, the lighting of firecrackers, feasting and partying, Birthday presents!

Weeeee....

 Guess what?

For the last 2000 years this honor has been screwed by a few good men.  Here is what they said:

Aristole:  "Woman is an incomplete man."

Saint Thomas Aquinas:  "Woman is the misbegotten product of some defect in the male sees."

Martin Luther:  "Men have broad shoulders and narrow hips, and accordingly they possess intelligence.  Women have narrow shoulders and wide hips, to keep house and bear and raise children."

Regarding their nature:

Francisco de Quevedo:  "Hens lay eggs and women lay men."

Saint John of Damascus:  "Woman is a sicked she-ass."

Arthur Schopenhauer:  "Woman is an animal with long hair and short sight."

Regarding their fate:

Jehovah said to women, according to the Bible: "Thy husband shall rule over thee."

Allah said to Mohammed, according to the Koran:  "Righteous women are obedient."


So what's in your wallet?

March 7, Esoterically Speaking

In the year 1770, the English Parliament debated a law to punish wily women.

Perfidious females had been seducing His Majesty's subjects and tricking them into matrimony using such evil arts as "scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, flase hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoe or bolstered hips."

The authors of these frauds, the bill said, "shall incur the penalty of the law in force against withccraft and the like misdemeanours and the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void."

Given the technological backwardness of the times, the bill failed to mention silicone, liposuction, Botox, plastic surgery and other medical and chemical innovations.

                                                                  --Eduardo Galeano

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On this day in the year 1890, the poet William Butler Yeats was initiated into the Isis-Urania Temple
of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.  There, he studied the magical arts and took the magical name Daemon est Deus Inversus (The Devil is God Reversed.")