Navy Ships and Father Tolstoy

April 9th.  In both Portugal and coastal regions of China, the Goddess A-Ma (Matzu), is honored with a religious festival in the Portuguese territory of Macao.  Yes, the guardian of the sea and protector of all fishermen and sailors is honored.  Altars are dressed with offerings of fresh seafood and flowers; candles are lit and sweets of all kind are presented.

Does it not make sense then that in today's news, the U.S. Navy is sending out a fleet of ships to the Korean peninsula “to maintain readiness” as Kim Jong Un’s regime celebrates the 105th birthday of its founding president, Kim Il Sung, and to mark the 85th anniversary of the creation of the Korean People's Army on April 25 with a similar fanfare.





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In the year 2011 the population of Iceland said no for the second time to the International Monetary Fund.


The Fund and the European Union had decided that Iceland's three hundred twenty thousand inhabitants should be liable for the bankruptcy of its bankers, for which each and every Icelander owed a foreign debt of twelve thousand euros.



Such socialism in reverse was rejected in two plebiscites.  "The debt is  not our debt.  Why should we pay it?"


In a world unhinged by the financial crisis, this small island lost in the waters of the North Atlantic offered us all a healthy lesson in common sense.
 (Galeano, Children of the Day)


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"He eats simple fare, but he is a great man."  This is a good proverb that we all should follow.


When you could have walked for a while but instead drove, your legs began to weaken.  In the same way, when we become used to luxuries and the trappings of wealth, we begin to forget simple living and lose our inner joy and peace and freedom.


-- Father Tolstoy

And you thought Obamacare was bad.

In Romania today offerings are made to the Blajini, or "kindly ones."  In folklore they lived in the wilderness, on the shores where all the rivers meet, and lived under the shade of the trees.  They lived on wild fruits, and met their women once a year to share fun and laughter before returning to their devotions.

These kindly, priests, shaman, devotees or whatever you prefer to call them, are remembered as "spirits of the water," and are deemed to be beneficent if given the proper respect.

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Hammurabi's Code

Three thousand seven hundred years ago the king of Babylonia, Hammurabi, set down in law the rates dictated by the gods for medical services:

     If with his bronze lancet the physician cureth a man of a serious wound or an eye abscess, ten silver shekels shall he receive.
     If the patient be the slave of someone, two silver shekels shall his owner give the physician.
     If a physician causeth the death of a free man or the loss of an eye, his hands shall be cut off.
     If a physician causeth the death of the slave of a poor man, one of his own slaves shall the physician give him.  If a physician causeth the loss of the slave's eye, half the slave's value shall he pay.
(Galeano, E., "Children of the Days" pg. 109)

And you thought Obamacare was bad. 

Forgiveness, Purple Rain, and Lady Luck!

Need forgiveness?   Well, follow the ancient ritual of invoking the Chinese goddess Kuan Yin.   She
is the goddess of healing, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.   In days-gone-by, we offer her incense and violet-colored candles on this day.  She doesn't expect much from Westerners, maybe wear something purple or burn a purple candle.  If nothing else, think of the Prince song: Purple Rain.

It's all good.

I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain

I only wanted to one time to see you laughing

I only wanted to see you
Laughing in the purple rain

Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you
Bathing in the purple rain

I never wanted to be your weekend lover
I only wanted to be some kind of friend
Baby, I could never steal you from another
It's such a shame our friendship had to end

Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you
Underneath the purple rain

Honey, I know, I know
I know times are changing
It's time we all reach out
For something new, that means you too

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5 April

Megalesia/Fortuna/Nones of April

Celebration for good luck, celebrating the goddess Fortuna, the Lady Luck to whom all gamblers pray. 

The annual festival of Cybele, the Megalesia, was celebrated on this date in ancient Rome.  She was a goddess of fertility whose cult originated in Phrygia.  Her male attendants were self-castrated priests and worship of her was wild and orgiastic.

The rites of Cybele were so bloody that Roman citizens weren't allowed to participate.  "So great is the aversion of the Romans," writes Dionysus of Halicarnassus, "to all undue display...lacking in decorum" that a more sedate festival, the Megalesia, was instituted.  But by 161 B.C.E Megalesian banquets had become so extravagant that the senate decreed a limit to how much a host could not weigh more than 120 pounds.

The roman Megalesia opened with a ritual at the temple of the Magna Mater (Cybele)., where the priests offered the goddess a dish of simple herbs.  This was because, as Ovid wrote, ancient people drank only pure milk and ate only "the herbs that the earth bore of its free will."

Yes, vegetarians.

Jane Goodall

Many years ago, I saw a TV documentary on the brain.  Some animals may be as smart as human animals, the experts said, but they don't have language.  We can't understand their languages, I thought, so we don't know the extent of their intelligence.

At one point in the program, a researcher at The Famous Primate Laboratory picked up a little rhesus monkey hardly bigger than the man's hand and talked about simian intelligence.  Then, to show us its brain, he snipped its head off.  Just like that: I can still see the little monkey's eyes.  I was only marginally aware of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), so I sent out a prayer to Jane Goodall.

As a child, Goodall was inspired by Tarzan and The Jungle Book.  She later worked with Louis Leakey, the paleontologist who discovered some of the oldest human remains in Africa.  She's best known for her work with the chimpanzees in Gombe.

We know that chimpanzees differ from us in the structure of their DNA by just over one percent and that their blood chemistry and immune systems are similar to ours.  We know that animals, both domestic and wild, have intelligence.  We know they have souls.  We shouldn't cut their heads off.

In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation.  "Young people around the world," she writes, "can break through...the brick walls of overpopulation, deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, poverty, hunger, disease, pollution...and human greed."  When she travels, she carries a stuffed chimpanzee named Mr. H.  When people come up to talk to her, they touch Mr. H.  These people, she says, give her reason for hope.
(Ardinger, B., Pagan Ever Day,  pg94)

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Today is Jane Goodall's birthday.  

Statue of Liberty

The old Pagan ritual of "carrying death away" is carried out in certain regions of Germany on this day.  In celebration of Winter's demise, special straw dolls are burned in sacred bonfires or are "drowned" in sacred wells.

The Sun was warm but the wind was chill,
You know how it is with an April day
When the Sun is out and the wind is still,
Your one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over a cloud lit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And your two months back in the middle of March.

-- ROBERT FROST ( 1874 - 1963 )
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Greatness sometimes takes outside inspiration as well as outside aid.  Born in Colmar, Alsace, on this day in 1834, the sculptor Fredric Auguste Bartholdi became inspired while attending a dinner at the
home of Lefebvre de Laboulaye in 1865.  His host suggested that he sculpt a symbol of liberty.  Traveling to America in 1871, Bartholdi saw that New York Harbor was the perfect place to erect his vision:  a cross between the Colossus of Rhodes and the monumental statues that lined Egypt's Nile River.  Although the French government was willing to pay for Barholdi's grand sculpture, the American government had to ask for public donations to fund the construction of the foundation and pedestal.  After six years of appeals, work began on the pedestal, but it wasn't finished until publisher Joseph Pulitzer took on the job of fundraising.  Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty was completed in 1886.  (The statue itself was finished in 1884, although its arm was not properly attached until its restoration in 1984.)

April Fool's Day and Ali Macgraw survives male aggression.

The month of Venus begins with April Fool's Day (also known as All Fools' Day), an occasion for playing practical jokes on friends, family, and coworkers.  This custom dates back to olden times, when inmates of insane asylums were allowed out in the streets for one day each year for the sadistic amusement of those of those who were (supposedly) normal.

April first is ruled over by the Norse trickster god Loki.  It is also the Roman women's festival of Fortuna Virilis, seeking good relations with men and ruled over by Venus. 
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In her twenties she became famous in the 1970 film Love Story.  In that film she played Jenny Cavilleri, a dying girl who isn't told she is dying until her husband and parent have been told first.   Yes, a poor, helpless, woman. 

In her second big film, Steve McQueen's character slaps her for having cheated on him.  No charges were pressed, even though it was a film, they should have been.  Later that year the two were married.

In her 40's she was invited up to Bill Cosby's hotel-room for a drink, she refused. 

Today, Ali Macgraw  is 78 years old.  

Happy April's Fools Birthday.

Today in 1631 John Donne died in London.
This contemporary of Shakespeare's published almost nothing during his lifetime.
Centuries later, we are lucky to have a few of the verses he left behind.

Like this:

         Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
          Before I knew thy face or name...

Or this:

          It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
          And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be...
          This flea is you and I, and this
         Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is...


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On this date in the year 1848, the famous Fox Sisters supposedly made communication with the spirit world at Hydesville Cottage in upstate New York.  Their famous seances gave birth to the popular spiritualist movement, which was all the rage in the United States and England from the mid-1880's to the early twentieth century.

If they were fakes in life, they are certainly not in death.   For we still see them in mirrors, alone at night, try it.   They do come for a shilling. 

The Four Deities

Temple of Janus

Concordia is the Roman goddess of civic harmony.  Janus is the god of thresholds who carries the key to the door and a stick to hit intruders with.  Pax is peace personified, her name was used to characterize a time that wasn't peaceful at all, the Pax Romana.  Salus, like the Greek Hygeia, is a goddess of safety, health, and well-being.  Originally an agricultural deity, she was shown on coins feeding a sacred snake.

amen

When we honor these four deities, we are recognizing some basic elements of a happy home -- harmony, security, peace, wellness.  Neither the Roman Republic nor the empire provided much harmony, security, peace, or wellness except to its richest citizens (have things changed today?), but even the poorest plebian and lowliest slave could burn incense on an altar and make a small, hopeful sacrifice. 

Concordia Coin

Nero and Salus Coins

Pax Coin

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.