Do you believe in the phrase
"Everything happens for a reason"?
Why or why not?jesuslovesstevie
Before we are born, we choose some of the challenges we will face. We choose them in order to grow, to become stronger or to alter our point of view. Each life we live is lived in order to experience new things, or re-experience things which did not have the desired affect the first time around. We live in order to change who we are, to give us a wider range of understanding and a greater scope in our choices. Karma is not about punishment; it's about opportunity. The more choices you make that coincide with your higher self's goals, the more choices you will be able to make as time goes by. They will not necessarily be easy choices, in fact, they will probably only be more complex, not easier.
Everything happens for a reason in so far as you decided before birth that various things would happen in your life in order to increase your awareness and degree of interaction with the larger world. When you go against Tao or the way of the world, you incur bad karma and bring suffering on yourself. Sometimes all your choices are bad, but if you look at them objectively, some will be better than others. Make your choice and a dozen more may present themselves. Life is as much a matter of choice as it is a product of cause and affect. Make your choice, learn from your experiences, and experience will open your eyes to opportunity.
January 21st
St. Agnes' Day is traditionally a time for divination by fire.
Comments (3)
Yup!!! I've had to bite my tongue so many times...I think I'll stop doing that now.
I knew TB would agree with you on this one
. Isn't St. Agnes's Day also associated with a superstition about young maidens going to sleep in a certain way and dreaming about their future husbands? Sexist and awful, but interesting, and the source of a really scary poem by John Keats.
@BoureeMusique - All of these charms were said to allow a woman to dream of her future spouse.... On St Agnes eve, a woman who was curious about her future mate was told to fast all day and not allow anyone to kiss her at all, and then bathe and dress only in her cleanest clothes. Sometimes she was instructed to eat only a salt-filled egg (a hardboiled egg with the yolk was replaced by salt) or a salted herring before retiring. Then as she lay in bed, she should lie on her left side and recite three times:
St Agnes be a friend to me,
In the gift I ask of thee,
Let me this night my husband see.
Her future spouse was supposed to appear in her dream and offer her water.
Other traditions said the girl had to stick a load of pins into the ground and then withdraw them one by one and insert them into the sleeve of her nightdress before heading to bed. Some instructed that a pater noster had to be said as the pins were used. Another charm instructed young women to take a sprig of rosemary and a sprig of thyme and sprinkle them with urine (or holy water) three times. Then put one sprig in one shoe, and the other in the other (or place a sprig on either side of the bed) and place both by the side of the head of the bed. The girl was supposed to say:
St Agnes that's to lovers kind, come ease the troubles of my mind.
In another tradition, the girl was instructed to sew her left garter to her right stocking while saying:
I knit this knot, this knot I knit,
To know the thing I know not yet,
That I may see
The man that shall my husband be,
Not in his best or worst array,
But what he weareth every day;
That I tomorrow may him ken
From among all other men.
She would then go immediately to bed without looking over her shoulder. If she was to be married that year, her husband would visit her in a dream and give her a kiss.
Another charm employed on St. Agnes Eve was the baking of the "dumb"
cake, so called because it was made and eaten in silence. The cake made of flour,
spring water, malt and sugar, could be made by one or sometimes a small
odd-numbered group. The girl was supposed to walk backwards with it to bed before eating it.
A very simple charm instructed girls to go into an apple orchard at night or if one was not available, find an oal tree and sew barley seeds. If the seeds sprout, then they were sure to wed in the coming year. Scottish girls would meet in a crop field at midnight and throw grain onto the
soil, while reciting:
Agnes sweet and
Agnes fair,
Hither, hither, now repair;
Bonny Agnes, let me see
The lad who is to marry me.
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