Should guns be illegal? Why or why not?

Ha! I’d like to see them try to make guns illegal. At least in American, we have a right to bear arms.

Besides, so many things should be illegal, banning guns is almost anticlimactic. Should they be illegal? Yeah, sure… and nicotine, alcohol, sugar, all forms of pollution and littering, throwing cigarette butts from moving cars, hitting your children anywhere but their clothing covered behinds…

Obscenities… they should definitely be illegal. I hate when people use foul words when talking to me or near me. I don’t want to hear f*** or s*** or c*** or d*** or any other four or more letter curse words. I find it offensive and emotionally damaging. It should be illegal.

Yeah, I’m being ridiculous (mostly), but so is the idea of making guns illegal. I don’t own a gun. I don’t want to own a gun, but that doesn’t mean that I should try to force my views on others. It’s a protected right (for US citizens at least), and in my book that means don’t mess with it. In America, people have the right to be ignorant, gun-toting savages, who use recreational stimulants (sugar, caffeine, nicotine) and recreational depressants (alcohol), butcher the environment, and scar their children for life… yeah.

Should guns be illegal? Yes, yes they should. Will the be? Nope. Not gonna happen. Just like all the other stuff I mentioned will never happen. For one thing, we already tried Prohibition and we all know how well That turned out. Trying to ban anything only creates an unnatural interest in it. Ban guns? Everyone will want one…. and they will say it’s because everyone has the right to defend themselves and (holy moly!) the government is trying to take it away from us! Egads!

It would be much better to bolster people’s sense of pride in themselves and their community than it would to take away the guns of those people who feel they need one, or two, or a dozen. Give people pride in their community and they will seek to improve it, make it safer. A safe community has little need for guns.

Don’t make guns illegal. Convince people that they don’t need them by removing those things in their lives that make them believe that they do. The same goes for anything in our society which we don’t like. Remove the “cause” and the “effect” disappears with it.   

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

March 31st

The Romans honor Luna, goddess of the Full Moon, with a festival at her temple on the Aventine hill.

Well, I did it. At the grocery store today, I bought a ticket for the powerball. I’ll buy one powerball ticket every week, randomly selected by the machine/fate, and we’ll see what happens. A dollar a week is not too much to spend, and supposedly the proceeds go to “older Pennsylvanians.” I know it adds up to $52 for the year, but it’s not like I can say I wouldn’t spend the dollar on some other spur of the moment thing.

I did actually win the pick three once, using numerology. I only did it once though, and that was to prove a point. I took the date of my birth, plus the day I was playing, and added it down to one number. Then I came up with about forty or so likely winners based on three digit multiples of that number. It was over a decade ago, so I don’t recall exactly how many numbers I ended up with, but I think I narrowed it down to about a dozen or so. Then I played those numbers and won forty bucks.

But here’s the thing… I made my point, but I’m not much of a gambler (I’m much to frugal to waste a lot of money on the possibility I might win something) and I lack faith in my abilities as a numerologist. It may have been simple dumb luck that I won… or it may have been because I was irritated with the coworker who egged me on. My magickal talents seem to work the best when I’m cheesed-off at someone. I think it comes from having various gods and goddesses of justice and trickery as patron deities. I mean, just having Loki at my back is an ace in the hole when I’m mad… but let me try the same trick when I’m calm and I’d probably be wasting all the money for nothing, none of the numbers would come up at all. He seems to have my back when I’m ticked off, but otherwise, I’m as likely a target (or more so) for some silly antics as anyone else.

This year actually seems like he’s picking on me a bit too much for comfort. Usually I just laugh it off. I’m typically the first to laugh at myself if I do something stupid. But this year…. a cracked windshield, possible pneumonia, and well… I have some really noisy neighbors and Monday through Wednesday, I have to get up at five in the morning to get to work by six. I am understandably concerned when my neighbors are still running up and down the stairs and apparently having a party at 11 oclock at night. So last Sunday, I got tired of pounding on the wall that separates us and decided to kick the wall instead.

Understand that I know how to kick a wall without hurting myself. Unfortunately, I did not turn on the light because I also had a tremendous migraine that night, and I happened to kick a very small bench that someone had left in the corner. Well, good news for my headache because the pain in my foot pretty much obliterated it. But, well, I’m still limping around a week later and wearing a shoe for any length of time is agony. I don’t have much problem barefoot (which is how I prefer to get around), but with a shoe on, I guess the pressure is just too much for whatever I broke or dislocated. The weird thing is… my hands and non-hurt foot ache too. All my extremities are in sympathy with my wounded toes.

I feel someone (maybe not Loki in this case) is trying to teach me a lesson about my anger management issues. Next time, maybe I should just call the cops. lol I’ve been putting off making a spell to make my neighbors move because I know what kind of people they are (we can hear the husband yelling at the wife all the time about her spending all his money on beer and pot) so I’m afraid if I did a spell to get rid of them that they might end up losing the house instead of leaving willingly. And we do hope to move ourselves within a year or two so I don’t really care if they live here so long as they are quiet! But it’s really getting to the point where I have a headache every weekend into Monday because between work, the neighbors, and my sister consistently dumping my four year old nephew with us on the weekend (he’s an early riser), I don’t get nearly the sleep I need until Thursday when I can sometimes sleep in providing the neighbors get their kids up in time to go to school. I’m honestly surprised they haven’t been fined for truancy yet.

The neighbors are so inconsiderate. I don’t think we’ve ever had the misfortune to share space with such self-absorbed people. Honestly with the things we’ve heard through the wall, they could very easily lose custody of their children, or end up in jail. Not that they abuse the kids in any way that I’ve heard, but there’s the truancy thing and the fact that the mother is obviously not a responsible parent (to say the least). At the very least, they’re being neglected whenever the father isn’t around because all I ever hear her do is scream at them.

Chances are if I did a spell and asked for justice in the matter, if they did lose the house or get a divorce, I’d have to infer that down the road it would be for the best for the majority of the family. I have to assume that getting away from the influence of the mother would be best for the kids, and that irregardless of whether they actually moved from their side of the house, justice would be served. That’s usually how it turns out when I “call karma” on people. They get what’s coming to them, one way or another. But it still makes me anxious knowing that things will probably get worse for the whole family before it gets better (whether I do a spell or not), so I keep holding back from actually doing anything at all hoping it will resolve itself.

In the meantime, I am terribly tired. And my foot hurts.

……… and people wonder how I can spend so much time online…. it’s because I don’t get the sleep I need.

March 30th

A festival of Janus and Concordia is held today.

Hurray! I got my tax check… in record time I might add. Guess I’ll be going to HR Block from now on instead of doing it myself. For the last three years, I’ve finished and sent out my taxes in February and not gotten them back until May, June, and July, respectively. And that’s just insane!

Unfortunately, it’s already spent and I haven’t even deposited it yet. I have to fix my windshield, get my car inspected (I already know I need three new tires, so at least $200 for that), I need new glasses (it’s been three years), and I hope to put a little extra on my credit card.

Whoops, and there goes my tax check. If there’s anything left, it goes into savings, but I’m fairly certain my car will eat most of it. Eh, I’d rather have a horse, but the tarmac would be hell on its hooves and where would I keep it at work? I miss having horses…

When I was younger, we always had animals. My great grandparents kept ponies for us, and every time we visited, we would gather the eggs from the chickens… until the one year we came home with chicken crabs. lol When the school sent us home, my mother was mortified. I mean, who knew chicken crabs were as virulent as lice. And that was the last time we gathered the fresh eggs from the chickens. Beyond that, we always had dogs and cats… until we found out they were probably the reason I was always coming down with pinkeye. Allergies suck. Non-furry pets are just not as cuddly. I mean, have you ever tried to pet a fish? Lizards are only slightly better. They still won’t cuddle. Something about them not having evolved that part of the brain that shows affection or something. And they don’t have very good personal hygeine.

For years my father kept a horse for me. I believe she was a mustang. Her name was Bitsy. (I was very young when I named her ) I used to sit, sketching her, for hours. Horses were the first animal I drew well. If I road a horse now, I’d probably be sore as heck, but I miss it. A car just doesn’t have a personality like a horse does, or well it can, but it’s usually a disagreeable one. And besides, horses are better for the environment. If I had the space, I’d have a horse. I’d probably have chickens again too, and cats… outdoor cats won’t give me pinkeye (hopefully). I was never much of a dog person. I don’t dislike them, I just can’t see myself having one.

Oh if only I or some relative would win the lottery! I can’t even imagine what it must be like not to worry about money. Had anyone heard that Borders is up for sale? Apparently they were up for sale seven years ago and nothing ever came of it (they took out a loan which is due next year), so my boss has told us all not to worry… our jobs are not in (immediate) danger, but it’s terribly stressful! Not to mention that, as merch supervisor I am responsible for all the displays in our store and the dictates from on high have been more asinine that usual. They keep taking stock out of the store, but they still want the same number (or more) displays. It’s maddening. And people keep coming in and asking if we are closing or if Barnes and Noble is buying us. No! We are not closing (any time soon) but it’s really depressing to have people asking that all the time. Really depressing! And B&N is not going to buy us. Duh! They follow us around the country like a pesky little brother. Everywhere we are, they are. It would be counterproductive for them to buy us out when chances are there’s a Barnes and Noble across the street from every Borders in the country. Our local B&N actually moved from down the street to directly across the street from us. Guess we weren’t enough competition before. Still we get more people coming in and complaining about them than not… words like unhelpful, ignorant, rude immediately spring to mind. They’re not exactly the competition people seem to think they are.

Ah, if I won the lottery…. I’d publish my folklore manuscript and maybe start my own Pagan/magick publishing company. I’d go back to school to study business so I could open my own interfaith bookstore. I’d buy a house with enough land for several horses and other animals to run around, in addition to enough farmland so that we would never have to buy produce at the grocery store again. I’d start a scholarship fund for Pagan students to study religion and history. I’d travel, extensively. I’d visit holy sites before they are destroyed by ignorance. I’d donate to protect them and to green peace and environmental and animal protective groups.

So many things I’d do with that money….. guess I should start buying tickets or something….

March 28th

The sun and moon were created.

The old Roman festival of Sacrifice at the Tombs is performed to honor the ancestors.

Scott Cunningham died in 1993 from complications lymphoma.

March 29th

The Bobo people of Africa believe the equilibrium of the sun, rain, and soil is upset every time humans farm. Each year, they masquerade in special costumes and painted masks, begging the intermediary god to correct the balance, banish evil, and bring rain.

This is the date of a festival in honor of Ishtar in Babylon.

The Socrates_Cafe topic #2

Who is responsible for the growing number of bankrupts and mortgage defaults, the individual borrowers or those who extended the credit? How can this be fixed?

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
                                                                                     –Hamlet act I, sc. 3

To my mind, the pursuit of credit is akin to a gambling addiction. The credit is easily accessible, without many limitations on the number of places a person can borrow from.  Both the borrower and lender are at fault here. The borrower is being irresponsible and the lender is taking advantage of their disposition. Just as casinos have had to take a step back and study the problem of gambler’s addiction and bars have policies in place to cut off someone who has had too much to drink, I feel that responsible lenders should pool their intel and cut off certain borrowers who take advantage of the lack of communication between banks, credit card companies, and others.

Supposedly all loans and whatnot come up on your credit report when you attempt to apply for credit, so why is it that certain people still receive more credit when it is obvious once all their finances are accounted for that they cannot pay? They know they cannot pay, and the companies that extend the credit know they cannot pay, and yet they still receive more credit at the drop of a hat. The lenders should take into account the problem some people have with spending and establish a cutoff point. There should be counseling for problem borrowers, and no one should be able to borrow without the credit report and outstanding debts being explained to them. At the very least, this would cut down on and alert people to potential identity theft.

I do not feel that the lenders are entirely to blame however, any more than I feel alcoholics, drug addicts, or gambling addicts are blameless. Sure, the lenders make credit entirely too accessible and society abets their tactics by brainwashing people into thinking they need various luxury items to be popular, but for the most part, I think the people who borrow know they cannot afford all the credit they take. They know that they are merely borrowing against time. As I sit here, eating candy, I know that eating white chocolate hershey kiss after kiss is not good for me (even though they are wonderful!). So I will stop eating them. That’s not just self-control, it’s common sense. The same goes for borrowing more than you can repay. At some point it goes beyond the realm of self-control and becomes common sense to stop, either on your own or by seeking help through debt consolidate.

Both lenders and borrowers are at fault, though for different reasons, and society is to blame as well for telling people they need various items that they cannot afford in order to be part of the “in crowd.” The real problem here is that people and businesses are disinclined to take responsibility for their actions. To take responsibility is to admit fault, and no one wants to do that. Admitting fault diminishes your standing in the community. For a business, that opens the doors to litigation and loss of income. For an individual, it means being less worthy of the esteem of your peers.

We need to build up the respect given to people and businesses who take responsibility for their actions, not those who try to cover up their misdeeds with more and more costly mistakes. Personally, I respect businesses who take the well-being of their customers as a higher rule than the almighty dollar. There’s more to life than money, and a business that is willing to take a loss to do the right thing will have more loyal patrons than the business that takes its customers for all they’re worth before moving on to greener pastures. The same is true of people. Doing the right thing is not necessarily the easy thing or cheap, but a person who takes responsibility for their actions and tries to make them right will always have my respect and support over someone who thinks they have no faults. No one is without fault. No one is perfect. It’s something to strive for, but not something that can ever be attained.

March 27th

Liberalia honors the Roman vegetation god Liber. Held to mark the transition from boyhood to manhood, this is usually set at the age of seventeen.

This is the last day of the rites of Cybele and Attis, the Lavatio. A procession travels to the brook Almo with an image of the goddess sitting in a wagon drawn by oxen. The statue’s face is of jagged black stone. The high priest washes the wagon, the image, and the other sacred objects in the waters of the stream.

The Socrates_Cafe topics this week are….

1. Is generosity a selfish or selfless act?

2. Who is responsible for the growing number of bankrupts and mortgage defaults, the individual borrowers or those who extended the credit? How can this be fixed?

I’ll answer the second question tomorrow. For now, is generosity a selfish or selfless act?

I say it all depends upon motive. For the most part, motive is unknowable unless the person chooses to share it with us. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious that the person performing the act of generosity is not doing it for kindness’ sake. The more public a person is about calling attention to their act of generosity, the more we can infer that the act was never selfless. A person who risks their own life to push a child out of the way of a car is probably behaving selflessly. A millionaire who donates money to their favorite charity is probably taking a tax cut. Someone who makes a habit of being generous may in fact have something akin to the adrenaline addiction of risk takers and extreme sports fanatics. It gives them a little thrill to know that they’ve helped someone, even if they don’t tell others.

Perhaps the only creatures capable of truly generous acts are small children and animals and people acting on the spur of the moment. Rather than being motivated by rational thought, they are inspired by instinct. So a child may offer another child or adult a piece of candy, an animal in the zoo may rescue a small child after it falls into their pen, an adult may dash into traffic to save a child from being run over. We are mostly broken of any altruistic tendencies by the time we reach adulthood, and that, I feel, is a trait that is most important for judging whether an act of charity or generosity is selfish or selfless. Though not a quality altogether beaten out of us, most people are incapable of any act more altruistic than holding the door for someone as they enter a shop, and some are even incapable of that. Even saying thank you to someone who has done them a service is sometimes too generous an act.

You see the problem here. What exactly is generosity? Giving a proper tip is an act of generosity and how many people are capable of that? Or saying “bless you” when someone sneezes? I mean, it’s just something polite people are taught to do, but in a way, it is also generous. If you can’t take a second to bless someone who has sneezed (not even really bringing any specific religion into the mix), you’re not a very generous person. Blessing someone when they sneeze is just about the most selflessly generous thing an adult can do, and yet hardly anyone does it, though it costs you nothing. It is a way of saying, I hope you feel better (if you want to know the folklore behind blessing someone who has sneezed, let me know). By definition, most people are incapable of a generous act unless it benefits them physically, monetarily, or psychologically.

The selfishness or lack thereof should not be judged by how great the cost is to the giver, but by how little they call attention to their act, and in fact, how little they think of it. The more offhand is the act of generosity, the more selfless it is likely to be. Blessing someone who has sneezed, stooping to pick up some dropped article for a stranger, holding the door for someone who is a few seconds behind as you enter a building…. these common acts of “courtesy” are the best examples of selfless generosity because they cost the giver nothing more than a few seconds of time. By these examples we can judge most people to be very selfish indeed, since so few are willing to give these moments away for the sake of another person’s comfort.

So is generosity selfish or unselfish? I say it depends upon the value we place on the thing given, but only insofar as a “worthless” act is likely to be more selfless than something to which we attach monetary, psychological, or emotional value. The more we value something, the more likely it is that giving it will be motivated by selfishness, as in, if I give this, I may get that. We are likely to be truly generous only with things we do not value.

March 26th

This is the start of the growing season in Slavic countries. Until today, the earth was pregnant, and it was considered a grave sin to plow the pregnant earth with iron.

This is the birthday of Joseph Campbell, author and professor of mythology.

The rite of Cybele and Attis continues with the Requietio, a day of repose.

How do you get over someone who doesn’t love you back?

If you really love someone, then you don’t need them to love you back. The simple expression of love should be sufficient. Now if the person you love mistreats you, they simply aren’t worthy of your love. You can still care about them, forgive them, pity them, but avoid them all the same because your love for them will cause you to make questionable decisions concerning them. But if you love someone who simply doesn’t love you the same way you love them, be content with giving them the love they will accept and not demand that they reciprocate in a way that pleases you. Demanding someone give you a certain kind of attention because you love them is just selfish. That’s not loving them; in some ways, that’s trying to own them, to keep them and dictate their lives to them. We are all of us individuals and none of us have the right to tell someone else how to live their lives, not even if we love them.

They say if you love someone, you should be willing to let them go. If your love is true, then they’ll eventually come back to you. But if they do not, then your love was never meant to be. It’s a good rule of thumb that if you put yourself out there and tell whoever it is how you feel, that if they say they do not feel the same, you have to do the honorable thing and let it go. Oh sure, I make it sound so simple, right? But honestly, time heals all wounds, even heart ache. Eventually it hurts less.   

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

March 25th

This is the Hilaria (festival of joy) or Lady Day. Cybele and Attis are honored by the Romans with a celebration. The pine tree, which is sacred to Attis, plays a central role in the celebration. Self-castrated priests served his cult.

Lady Day became a strong tradition in Cornish and Welsh areas. Though the date varies, April 24th or Mid July, today’s date dominates. During Medieval times, this holy day was moved to April 4th and renamed in honor of St. Mark in an effort to break the pagan influence of the holiday.

Eggs are buried in fields in Cornwall for fertility, everything is decorated with flowers, and there is feasting and dancing. Looking into a pool of rainwater while drinking fresh milk allowed young women to scry for a future mate. Dairy products were a major food of the feast.

A woman who gives birth today is considered blessed by the goddess. The afterbirth is sacred and is offered back to the goddess in sacrifice. The famous Men an Tol, standing stones, in Cornwall is a site of fertility rituals for women having trouble conceiving. The woman passes herself nine times clockwise through a natural hole in the stones.

Ironically, my mother was born today. Her name is Donna, which means Lady. My grandmother is a hardcore Christian, so she had no idea of the significance of the day or her prophetic choice of names.

This is one the days upon which it was asserted the world was created.

On the 14th day of Pachons, the Day of cutting out of the tongue of Sobek is recalled.

Pope Innocent III established the Inquisition in 1199.

“If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” True or false?

This statement assumes that there is only one way to deal with a problem, but reality is never as clear cut as this. What problem and what solution? What if you have your own solution to a problem? What if you see a problem and others do not? Extremism is not an adequate way of dealing with a problem. It often contributes to new problems, even as it accomplishes the goal of solving the first one. There is no simple and clear answer to any problem. 

So this statement is false. Just because I do not attach myself to The Solution does not mean that I don’t have a solution of my own, or that others do not have their own solutions to The Problem in their life. No two people are exactly alike and so no Solution will fit every problem.  

So I may be part of your problem, I am not part of The Problem.

I have my own solutions.

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

March 24th

This day is sacred to Prytania or Britannia, the guardian goddess of Great Britain (Albion).

Heimdall, who is ever watchful on behalf of the Aesir, is honored today. He is equated with the ArchAngel Gabriel.

The Phrygian rites of Cybele and Attis begins tonight.

This is Dies Sanguinis, called Bellona’s Day in Rome.

Evocation Vs. Invocation

In magick, there is a great deal of confusion for beginners between the terms invoke and evoke. Both derive from the Latin vocare, “to call,” but the prefixes make the words mean two very different things. To evoke is “to call forth, to summon, to elicit,” while to invoke means “to call upon, to appeal to, to resort to, to beg or ask.” Magickally speaking, when something is evoked, it is ordered to appear before you, outside yourself; while invoking something can have a much broader application but basically means calling something in to yourself. Invocation can be as simple as prayer, calling upon your deities for support or aid, or it can apply to the act of calling a spirit into yourself, as in certain ceremonial magicks and voodoo rituals. By invoking a spirit, you invite it to become a part of you and/or act through you for the duration of the ritual. Evocation calls a spirit as a witness to your ritual or as a guardian or helper.

Depending upon the type of spirit you are working with, you will not want to practice invocation. Just like hanging out with friends who have a bad reputation, invoking a spirit with an unpleasant reputation can have lingering affects on your personality. In other words, they are a bad influence. Your body is the home of your soul. Don’t invite any guests over that might track “mud” on your carpets or might want to spend a few nights on your couch. If you do plan on inviting spirits with bad reputations into your body, it’s not something you want to do right off the bat. Better to start with lesser spirits with better reputations so you can get used to the idea of invocation and learn what to expect.

So why invoke a spirit at all? Well, it can be a consciousness expanding experience. You get a sense of your connection to the spirit and to all things connected to that spirit and ultimately your connection to all things. Despite the danger that something of the spirit may linger in you after it has gone, this isn’t technically a real danger unless you make a habit of drawing entities into yourself with little or no preparation or knowledge of the entity you are summoning. Knowledge is a magician’s best friend. A magician should know themselves as well as they know the aspects of the spirit they summon. Don’t fool yourself. Know your faults and try to fix them or, if you choose to summon unpleasant spirits, they will use them against you or augment them before they go. A vain or proud person will become more so, etc. (I’ve seen it happen!) If you want to interact with spirits, good or bad, you should hold yourself to the highest possible ideal. “Good” spirits will appreciate it and “bad” spirits will be unable to use any of your non-existent bad habits against you.

Actually (outside of prayer), evocation is much more common than invocation. It is much easier (and safer) for beginners to practice evocation. Different magick styles will dictate the way in which a spirit is summoned. A ceremonial magician may order a spirit to appear using various holy names as leverage while a practitioner of “low” magick may prefer to ask for the spirit’s presence, but not demand it. No matter which kind of magick you practice, doubt is any magician’s worst enemy. If you do not believe in the spirit or cannot believe it will come, then it probably won’t. Additionally, if you don’t tell the spirit to appear in some form you can recognize, you may only get a sense that it is present. You may only get a sense of its presence no matter what you demand. Spirits don’t have physical bodies, so some may choose to inhabit an animal to interact with you or just choose to appear as one, e.g. Freya might be a cat, Apollo might be a snake, Loki might be a Raven…. Not all spirits will show themselves if you don’t ask them to, and if you choose to deal with one of the more unpleasant (demonic) spirits, it’s best to be very exact in how you wish them to appear, i.e. in a pleasant form, or risk nightmares later. (Disclaimer: This I only know from reading. I have never invoked or evoked a demonic spirit so I have not had reason to tell one how to “dress.”)

You may choose to cast a circle before summoning any kind of spirit, but conversely if you maintain a sacred space, you don’t really need to cast a protective circle if you do not wish to. The sacred space should be sufficient protection. At least, that’s been my experience. Once you are finished with your ritual, you should thank the spirit for its assistance and respectfully ask it to leave. Even a friendly spirit can cause trouble if it is not thanked and dismissed. For one thing, it will resent the time and energy it spent on your behalf for which you were not grateful. It may not come back to help you if you call again. For another, if you don’t dismiss it, it may linger thinking you still want its assistance. If it stays, but you ignore it, it will get fretful and try to remind you it’s still waiting around. The longer it waits, the less gentle it will be in reminding you.

March 23rd

The festival of Marzenna is a Polish festival. Three to four foot tall straw dolls are woven to represent the waning season. Dressed in festive rags and ribbons, they are tossed into a body of water when spring arrives.

The Asatru festival of Summer Finding, sacred to Thor, acknowledges the light of the sun becoming more powerful than the darkness. Frey and Freya are also honored.

The Spring Imperial Festival, Shunki-Koreisan, is celebrated in Japan. At this, the midpoint of the Higan festival, Buddhists visit their dead.

Today (or on the 25th) there is a festival of Mars and Nerine. Nerine is equated with Neria or Nerio (strong), a Sabine goddess who is identified with Athena (Minerva) or Aphrodite (Venus).

A festival of Isis is held on the 8th day of Pachons

I had another freaky dream last night. This time there were these ultra intelligent toddlers being brainwashed in some kind of cult preschool and I had to bust them out by letting my nephew infiltrate their organization. I ended up blowing the place up… after I got my nephew back out of course. But all the kids were trying to take him back saying he “had not yet released his burden.” CreeEEEEEpyyyyyyyyy!

I’m actually still really tired. I have to figure out what the heck is banging on the roof and nail that sucker down! So what if the interrupted sleep seems to enhance my dream recall… I’d rather sleep! lol Least I have off an extra day from work because of the holiday I guess. I told my boss that she can put me on Christian holidays. I don’t mind. But so far, she hasn’t. I think it’s a pay thing. At least I’ll either get more sleep (unlikely since my nephew is over this weekend [every weekend] and he is a noisy boy) or clean.

In other news… why do shampoos insist upon including citric acid in their ingredients? I’m allergic to it and it seems like everytime I find one that doesn’t have it in, they change the freakin formula. I was using a Dove moisturizing shampoo and conditioner for over a year, no problems. So what do they do? Add the citric acid without warning and not change the bottle for a month or so. I was wondering why I was getting sores on my scalp and split ends. So then they changed the bottle and surprise, surprise! Citric acid in the mix. Thanks Dove. Thanks for your so-called “gentle” shampoo. Jerks. Before the Dove shampoo, I was using Pantene and they did the same freakin thing! It’s really frustrating! I mean, I don’t think people without allergies really understand the impact they have on your life. It used to be that all I had to do was check foods to make sure they didn’t have any citrus, malic acid, or chocolate. Now I have to check anything I intend to use on my skin as well. It’s going to come to a point that I just use mayonaise, eggs, and beer in my hair or something. All items which are supposedly good for hair…. but eeew! Eventually I’m gonna be the crazy hippy chick who washes her hair in mud or something… until I find out they’ve added something to the mud that gives me horns.

March 22nd

This was New Year’s Day in Mesopotamia.

Sometimes I wish I could live in my dreams, and sometimes I’m glad I don’t……..

So I had some really bizarre dreams last night. I blame the wind which periodically woke me up with its play. There’s something loose on the roof that it kept flapping about, and since I am right under the eaves, it might as well have been some kind of slate gong going off every ten minutes.

So the first dream I seemed to be in London during Jack the Ripper‘s time. Apparently the chief of police, or whatever he would be called, was a magician and all the police officers were simulacrum or golems… they were all black slimy things that could take the rough shape of a human being, but tended to slouch around like sentient tar with one big pendulous dollop of goo nodding about like a head and sometimes carrying one of those clubs. Hmmm, maybe they were shoggoths with their eyes closed. heh No one knew how he had made them, but they liked the gooey police and thought they were much better than human ones. What they didn’t know was that the police chief was Jack the Ripper and that he had made the Goos with things he had harvested from the women he killed at Whitechapel. He was actually trying to make the perfect being, but all he had managed to make were the Goos. He blamed his lack of success on the “quality” of the women he murdered. I was his “daughter,” his only successful “human” creation, and I was constantly sneaking out, trying to stop him from killing more women. Sherlock Holmes was also in the dream, so I hope he eventually figured out the police chief’s game and put an end to the Ripper.

The second dream was kind of a live RPG where I got sucked into this book/portal thingie and became a princess. Apparently I had played this game before because I was welcomed by many people who seemed to know me, but I couldn’t remember it. There was an ogre-prince thing under a spell. I never could figure out whether the spell had transformed him from a prince to an ogre or if the spell had caused him to be in love with me. Either way, not a fun trip for me despite the fact that it was very protective of me. We got to a castle and the people there gave me medieval clothes to wear for some kind of party, but I couldn’t figure out how to put all the layers on and I was too embarrassed to ask for a lady’s maid.

The third dream I kept losing my grip on time. There was some guy with me who didn’t believe what I was telling him until I grabbed on to him and pulled him with me into another time. I fell through time all the way to the age of the dinosaurs. Some of the dinosaurs were intelligent though, and there was a dinosaur wizard who started teaching me magic. Then for some reason I had a cell phone (which I don’t actually, I don’t like them) and someone called me from my own time, or accidentally called me since all I could hear was some heavy metal song I couldn’t identify. Then I got pulled through time to the European Witch Trials and saved this girl from being burned alive. The three of us (me, the guy, and the girl) hid in a swamp and the guy made a fire with a cigarette lighter which completely freaked the girl out. She would have run away from us but the people from her village were looking for her.

March 21st

The holy city of Tara was founded in Ireland by the Milesian princesses Tea and Tephi. A festival is held in conjunction with the Vernal Equinox, and a sacred fire is lit from which all other fires were kindled. Tara is actually in danger right now from road construction. There are many protestors camped in Tara trying to stop the construction in this most holy of places in Ireland, and it has been added to the top 100 list of endangered holy sites for the World Monuments fund 2008.

The Coming Forth of the Great Ones of the House of Ra is recalled on the 6th day of Pachons.

This is No Ruz or Nowruz, the New Year according to the Zoroastrian religion.