Month: March 2009

  • WCFQ 42a: Job hunting

    When you look for a new job,
    what’s the most important thing
    that you look for?
    Eleoopy

    Some may say that when they’re looking for a job, that they look for something that pays well or is close to home. Those things are important, but when I look for a job, I look for something that I would enjoy doing first and everything else second. Because I can’t imagine working somewhere for any length of time if it’s not something I love or even like.

    To be honest, there’s not a lot out there I want to do. The older I get, the less I want to work for other people. I want to open my own business because I know exactly how I want to do it, how I want to run it, who I want to run it for.

    But back to what I look for in a job… I look for a place that can hold my attention. It doesn’t have to be challenging, but it must be engaging. The first thing my mother thinks about when I get a new job is how much money I will make. She’s talked me into staying at a job simply for the pay, and it was the worst thing I ever did. By the time I left that job (at the bank), I wanted to kill myself. So I don’t look for a job based on pay, and while location is important, the only thing that will keep me at a job is how much it interests me.
    March 30th
    (yesterday)

    A festival of Janus and Concordia is held today.



    March 31st
    (today)

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



  • Writers Choice Featured Questions Week 42

    Since Mondays have been giving me trouble, I figured I’d change the WCFQ to Sunday. I also moved my webnovel updates to their own module to the right, so that’ll be up all the time now. This week’s webnovel update is a little shorter than usual, but I didn’t have time to wrap it up before I got sick on Thursday, so… sorrys. I’m still kind of sick, but feeling much better. The worst part was a sore throat for three days. I was getting really sick of sipping water and running to the bathroom every hour. When I get a bad sore throat, it’s like a headache in the base of my skull. I can hardly function. I feel dizzy and it’s hard to focus my thoughts. Weird headaches like that make me worry about viral Meningitis. Informative commercials about disease make me paranoid…..

    Last night, on a cocktail of Nyquil and Tylenol PM, I had the weirdest dream. Somehow I was working for the government as some kind of gladiator/assassin, but when I told them I wanted to quit, they took all my stuff away. I was in a grocery store with friends and when I came back home, all of my things were either repossessed or destroyed and they’d evicted me from my apartment. There were torn up clothes and ripped up books all over the place. My friend said it was alright. I could stay with him, then offered me a copy of the Necronomicon as a present. I woke up with the song “Help, Help” by Pearljam repeating in my head.

    five questions for this week

    unfeatured questions stolen from the featured question chatboard, dated from October of 2007

    When you look for a new job, what’s the most important thing that you look for?
    Eleoopy

    What would you like to know most right now?
    need_not_to_know

    If you could get rid of one thing in the world, what would it be?
    applegreen_icecream

    What do you remember about your first day of school?
    CobbWebbedCrotch

    What does it mean to be “human”? Is it possible for a machine to be “human”?
    Coleslaw_From_Hell


    Answer any one or all of these questions in the coming week. I try to mix the whimsical with the serious here, so hopefully there is at least one question here for everyone.
    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.



  • Sick

    I have a really bad cold today and I was hoping I’d feel better by now, but…. well, no real post today. I feel like my head is going to implode.
    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 caused by AIDS.



  • Who doesn’t want to be in a band?

    Stole this from Heidenkind

    1. Go to Wikipedia, hit random.  The first article found will be your bands name. 

    Mine was “Against_the_Cult_of_the_Reptile_God“.



    2. Go to random quotations The Quotations Page. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

    Mine was “An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.” by Robert A. Humphrey

    3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

    Mine was On the Marsh

    4 – Use GIMP, Adobe Photoshop, paint, or similar to put it all together.  I use Pixia.

    My first album would total rawk.
    5 – Tag MM5 people (if you’re reading this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged.
    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, a meteorite, set in a body of silver. The high priest washes the wagon, the image, and the other sacred objects in the waters of the stream. A series of religious dramas and entertainments follows.



  • WCFQ 41a: Love/Hate

    Have you ever hated yourself?
    hoshi_froide

    They say that love and hate are two sides of the same coin. They’re the same emotion through a different lens. Those things you love most become the things you hate most when your love is betrayed. I loved my current job more than any other job I ever had. Now that they’ve betrayed my trust, I absolutely loathe the place.

    When you are a child, you love everyone and everything, including yourself. Integral to that love is your ability to trust. When and if you learn not to trust something you loved. Then you are primed to hate it. The more you loved something and the more it betrayed you, the more you find it in yourself to hate it.

    I’ve never hated myself. I’ve been disappointed with myself and hated my situation. (I still haven’t gotten over hating my species. We’re a sick, undeserving lot.) But I’ve never hated myself despite how people have tried to make me look at myself with disdain… through media or through insults.

    Hate isn’t something you can just do without exerting a lot of energy. Something has to deserve your hate for it to be as effortless as love. So it’s impossible to truly hate yourself. Of everyone, you deserve it least. Right?
    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 or recovery from the festivities.




  • WCFQ 41d : Perfection, and impossible ideal

    Do you believe perfection CAN be achieved?
    Why, or why not?
    X_jshawty18_X

    I don’t believe in perfection. Oh I believe in the ideal of perfection, but I do not believe that perfection can exist for long. That’s not to say that it’s not something to strive for, but that it’s an ideal, not something that truly exists in any way.

    Perfection is something which if it did exist would probably create a reality destroying paradox. Like matter and antimatter or going back in time and killing your grandparents or meeting yourself. Perfection might be achieved for an instant before the nature of our imperfect reality would contrive to destroy it. Have you ever heard of that “perfect moment?” What if a moment is all you get? You achieve physical perfection for one instant without ever knowing you’ve done it, then you start aging, your cells deteriorating, you grow old, you die.

    Perfection is tenuous at best and easily destroyed by the smallest thing. Say you succeeded in achieving permanent perfection. Once perfection was achieved, you’d no longer be motivated to do anything. Why would you have any children? Children are the constant attempt to perpetuate and improve upon a concept, humanity. If you were perfect, there would no longer be a need to reproduce. Therefore by achieving perfection, you would become an evolutionary dead end and therefore invalidate your perfection. Pretty ironic, eh?

    So perfection cannot exist because by achieving perfection, you’d almost certainly invalidate it in the next instant. Even if it could be achieved and kept, it might not be what another being would consider perfection. They say one man’s heaven is another man’s hell, and one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. There’s no guarantee that what you strive for and perceive to be perfection would be considered perfection by anyone but yourself.

    So in short, perfection is ephemeral and short lived. Can it be achieved? Maybe for an instant, but even if you could live in that moment forever, it might be something you’d come to regret… or not if you lost all perception of time in your perfect instant. The quest for perfection is not by any means a waste of time. The act of striving for perfection gives you goals; it makes you attempt to better yourself. Striving for perfection gives you purpose, but achieving perfection deprives your life of meaning.
    March 25th

    This is the Hilaria (festival of joy) or Lady Day. The resurrection of Attis and the onset of spring is celebrated with a sacramental meal and a day of joy and feasting. Those who castrated themselves become Gallicocks, dressing in women’s clothes and wearing perfumed oils.

    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.


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


    Pope Innocent III established the Inquisition in 1199.


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



  • Writers Choice Featured Questions Week 41

    five questions for this week

    unfeatured questions stolen from the featured question chatboard, dated from October of 2007

    Have you ever hated yourself?
    hoshi_froide

    What rights do humans have to use animals as they wish?
    WondersCafe

    Does the internet kill the art of conversation and make people less communicative with those they meet day by day?
    FANOFB16

    Do you believe perfection CAN be achieved? Why, or why not?
    X_jshawty18_X

    If you had a ring which would give you the power to turn visible and invisible as you wish and could get away with anything without getting caught, What would you do with it and why?
    Tally_Heart


    Answer any one or all of these questions in the coming week. I try to mix the whimsical with the serious here, so hopefully there is at least one question here for everyone.
    March 24th
    Today I saved the cutest (comparatively) little black jumping spider.
    He was about as big as my fingernail and just adorable.
    You don’t really need to know what happened yesterday, do you?


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

    Heimdall, guardian of heaven equated with the archangel Gabriel is honored today.

    The Phrygian rites of Cybele and Attis begins tonight with the “day of blood.” The sacred pine tree and an effigy of Attis is buried in a tomb and a day of mourning, fasting, sexual abstinence, self-flagellation and self-mutilation commemorating the Mother’s grief follows. The High Priest playing the part of Attis draws blood from his arm and offers it as a substitute for a human sacrifice. That night the tomb is found brightly illuminated but empty, the god having risen on the third day. Initiates undertake the Mysteries and are baptized in bull’s blood at the Taurobolium to wash away their sins whereupon they are “born again.” They then become ecstatic and frenzied and recruits to the priesthood castrate themselves in imitation of the god.

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




  • Happy Ostara

    All cultures living in temperate climates celebrate the coming of spring with rituals and festivals. This was one of the most important of spring festivals among pre-Christian Germanic tribes, dedicated to the goddess Ostara, a goddess associated with the “east” and thus “dawn” and “morning light.” Ostara is a time to celebrate the renewal and rebirth of Nature herself, and the coming Summer. At the vernal equinox (6:44 AM EST March 20th, 2009), the world is poised on the brink of light and dark, suspended between the cold months and the new warmth of the growing season. Light and darkness are also in balance, as are masculine and feminine energy.

    Ostara is a fertility festival celebrating the rebirth of the God and the awakening of life from the Earth. Some Wiccan traditions worship the Green Goddess and the Lord of the Greenwood. It is one of the Lesser Sabbats, usually celebrated anywhere from March 19th to 21st. Some celebrate on the fixed date of March 25 (Lady Day), while others celebrate on the next full moon (a time of increased births). While the equinox is a solar holiday, Eostre is a lunar goddess. This may be viewed as symbolic of the goddess (the moon) and the god (the sun) coming together in completion. Other names by which this Sabbat may be known are Oestara, Esther, Eostre’s Day, the Rite of Eostre or Rites of Spring, Alban Eilir, Festival of the Trees, and the Bacchanalia. The Christian holiday of Easter is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox.

    According to the Venerable Bede (673-735), the Anglo-Saxons called the fourth month Eostur-monath for the goddess Eostra. Her festival became the celebration of Christ’s resurrection when Anglo-Saxon and German peoples were converted to Christianity. While English and German Christians still attach the name of Eostra to their most sacred holiday (Easter or Ostern), other European languages base the name on the Hebrew word “pasah,” to pass over, reflecting the Christian holiday’s Biblical connection with the Jewish Passover.

    The Spring-cleaning tradition derived from the old witches who would cleanse their space each spring and set up a “hedge” of protection. All motions involving scrubbing of stains or hand rubbing the floors should be done clockwise. This custom aids in filling the home with good energy for growth. Another Springtime tradition for ancient pagans and magicians was to dig a small trench (hedge) around the outer perimeter of their homes. At each quarter they would bury an egg. A modern practitioner might also add iron, old rusty nails, metal keys, old razor blades, pins and needles or witch bottles filled with the above items to diffuse magical attacks and negativity. (If you are unable to dig a perimeter, you can improvise by placing iron keys above your door, and pentacles and sigils drawn on pewter or parchment paper under your carpet or floorboards.

    As a time of cleansing and renewal, Ostara is an excellent time to begin some new projects It is an excellent month for prosperity rituals or rituals that have anything to do with growth. Spells for improving communications, fertility, and abundance are especially strong at this time. Some Pagan customs include ringing bells and lighting new fires at dawn for cures, renewed life, and protection of the crops. A common belief in nineteenth century Germany touted the curative properties of water drawn early on Easter morning. One nearly universal craft is decorating hard-boiled eggs.

    Eggs

    Eggs have long been a symbol of rebirth. They have been found among the grave goods of Anglo-Saxons, within the tombs of the Egyptians, and were placed on the fresh graves of the deceased in Greece. In ancient time, eggs were gathered for use in the creation of talismans and ritually eaten. The gathering of different colored eggs from the nests of a variety of birds has given rise to two traditions still observed today, the Easter egg hunt and coloring eggs in imitation of the various pastel colors of wild birds. Some believed that humankind was inspired by watching birds weave nests to begin weaving the first baskets. This is perhaps the origin of the association between colored Easter eggs and Easter baskets.

    Eggs are still used today in a variety of fertility rituals. In Sweden, eggs are thrown over the field before plowing. In Germany, they are thrown high in the air before sowing to ensure that the grain will grow just as high. In the Orkneys and Shetlands, boys would go from house to house, begging for eggs. On Sunday, they would build a fire in the hills and boil their eggs. Once they were cooked through, they would throw the eggs to see which would remain unbroken the longest before eating them. How high the eggs were thrown and how lucky the eggs were that remained unbroken the longest were taken as predictors of the growth of the crops and the luck of the year.

    The custom of coloring eggs seems to be limited to the Germanic countries, Slavic countries, and America. In Scotland and Ireland, the custom is virtually unknown. Each spring in Germany, bakery windows are filled with elaborately painted eggs. Eggs are also hung from flowering branches to make “egg trees.” Easter is celebrated in Germany more enthusiastically than it is anywhere else in the world with decorations go up a good month before the festival. There are parties, egg hunts, and other celebrations weeks in advance of Easter itself.

    In many places, it is traditional to keep Easter eggs or shells all year to ward the family and cattle against harm. They are also used specifically as a charm against hail and lightning. For this reason, great care and thought goes into the creation of egg decorations, egg-trees, and boiled and decorated eggs for eating.

    Ostara eggs can either be hard-boiled so that they may be eaten or blown while raw, removing the yolk and white while leaving the shell mostly intact for use as hanging ornaments to decorate your home or egg-tree. The traditional method for preparing eggs as decorations and luck-talismans for the coming year was to leave the egg intact and raw. The contents of the shell would eventually dry up completely over time, though there was the danger of a big stink if it was accidentally broken before then. The decorated raw egg is, magically speaking, the best type of egg to keep, as the life-potential of the egg remains within the shell.

    To blow an egg out, make a small hole with a needle at either end, being sure to pierce not just the shell but the yolk as well. Place your mouth over one end and blow gently until all the contents are out. If this doesn’t work, either you are not blowing hard enough, the hole is too small, or the yolk membrane is still intact. Reserve the raw egg for use in baking cakes or omelets. To hang the blown egg, use a piece of wire which is an inch or so longer than the egg and make a loop in one end. The wire may be used as the hanger by twisting the bottom end until it will not come back through the hole, or you can tie a piece of yarn or ribbon to the wire and pull it through the egg, tying it off at the bottom.

    Another use of blown eggs at Easter time is to make cascarones or confetti-filled eggs to break over Ostara celebrants. Take the blown egg and remove a circle of shell carefully at one end. Fill with confetti, then glue a small piece of tissue paper over the hole to keep the contents in place. Cascarones must either be decorated before the larger hole is made, or spray-painted after filling.

    Some natural dyes which have been used for eggs are carrot, red cabbage, and beets (for red); saffron and gorse flowers (yellow, orange, or brown, depending on the cooking times); spinach, artichoke leaves, sage, mint (green); beetroot, sunflower seeds, elderberry fruit/bark (purple); gall nuts, oak bark, elder twigs or bark (black). Onion peel can be used get any color from yellow to red to dark brown. The egg is gently cooked in a strong solution of whatever colorants you have chosen in water with a few drops of vinegar. The vinegar is a fixative. To vary the colors, mark patterns or portions of the egg with wax or a crayon to prevent the dye from adhering to that part of the shell.

    The Hare

    Eostre is a goddess of the moon, an ancient measurer of time. The lunar month of 28 days gives us thirteen periods in 364 days, equivalent to the solar year. The hare, though viewed as a symbol of fertility, is also a symbol of the moon. Ixchel, the Mayan Goddess of the moon, midwifery and weaving, has a rabbit totem. Mexican panels of 600-900 AD show her giving birth to and suckling a rabbit, and another shows the rabbit representing phases of the moon. The Egyptians called the hare Un, which means open, to open, and the opener. The month of April, the first month of the spring season, comes from the Latin “to open.” Un also means period of time. The hare as “opener” symbolizes the New Year at Easter, and the beginning of new life within the young. Since the hare can sleep with its eyes open, the Romans equated it with vigilance and believed that rabbits watched over everything. According to one story, Buddha placed the rabbit in the moon after it voluntarily gave itself as food for one of the Buddha’s hungry friends. In another, a rabbit jumped into a fire to feed a hungry Indra and out of gratitude, Indra placed the rabbit in the moon. Rabbits were significant totem animals however and eating them was prohibited in Britain and Egypt. A Scottish superstition suggested that eating rabbit was equivalent to eating one’s grandmother. In Asian myth, rabbits and the moon are virtually identical. The Rabbit in the Moon sweeps its surface clean with bound horsetails according to Japanese stories. The rabbit pounds rice into flour, making mochi which means both rice flour and full moon. The Sanskrit word, cacadharas also means both moon, and “that which carries the hare.”

    Rabbits also represent immortality and vitality. Pliny the Elder stated that rabbit meat enhanced one’s beauty and radiance for a week afterward, and Chinese myth believed rabbit meat was essential for vitality. According to Chinese myth, the rabbit is a symbol of longevity. Its fur turns white at age 100 and blue at 500. In Eastern Asian myth, rabbits created an elixir of immortality. The Algonquin trickster rabbit, Manabozho, is thought to embody all life-giving energy.

    In Greece, live rabbits were popular love gifts, indicating sexual intentions. European wedded couples in the Middle Ages exchanged rabbit-shaped rings. Rabbit’s popularity as a sex charm or fertility totem is related to its natural cycle. A rabbit’s gestation period is approximately one month, and it tends to be the first animal to give birth in the springtime, continuing to have litters of kits throughout the year. In Asian folklore, a rabbit may become pregnant simply by staring at a full moon, licking a male rabbit’s fur under a full moon, or running across a moon-lit water’s surface.

    Ostara Associations

    Symbols of Ostara: eggs, New Moon, the hare, butterfly cocoons
    Altar decorations: hard-boiled eggs colored and painted with magical symbols, wildflowers, a small potted plant, rabbit decorations
    Traditional Foods: leafy green vegetables, dairy foods, nuts and seeds (such as pumpkin, sunflower, sesame seeds, and pine), flower dishes (such as carnations cupcakes or nasturtium blossoms stuffed with a mixture of cream cheese, chopped nuts, chives and watercress), sprouts, eggs (hard-boiled, egg salad, or any way you like them), honey cakes, biscuits, ham, the first fruits of the season, spiced wine, fish
    Herbs and Flowers: crocus, daffodil, Easter lilies, ginger, gorse, honeysuckle, hyacinths, iris, Irish moss, jonquils, narcissus, olive, peony, snowdrops, violet, woodruff, and all spring flowers
    Colors: yellow, pink, light blue, green, all pastels
    Gems: amethyst, aquamarine, fluorite, jasper, moonstone, rose quartz
    Animals and mythical beasts: hares (rabbits), merfolk, Pegasus, snakes, unicorns
    Goddesses: all virgin goddesses, moon goddesses, goddesses of love, mother goddesses, androgynous deities, fertility goddesses; Eostre, Rheda (Teutonic), Ma-Ku (Chinese), Lady of the Lake, Blodeuwedd (Welsh-Cornish), Aphrodite/Venus, Persephone/Proserpine, Cybele, Gaia, Hera, Minerva/Athena (Roman/Greek), Isis (Egyptian), Coatlicue (Aztec), Ishtar (Babylonian)
    Gods: all gods of love, moon gods, gods of song and dance, sun gods, fertility gods; Adonis, Pan (Greek/Roman), Cernunnos, the Green Man, the Stag King, Robin of the Woods, Dagda, The Great Horned God, Lord of the Greenwood (English), Ovis (Roman Etruscan), Dylan (Welsh), Odin (Norse), Thoth, Osiris (Egyptian), Attis (Persian), Mithras (Greco Persian).
    Activities: Decorate or dye hard-boiled eggs. Plant seeds or start a magical herb garden. Take a long walk in nature. All forms of herb work (magical, medicinal, cosmetic, culinary and artistic) are practiced now. Go to a field and randomly collect wildflowers or buy some from a florist, taking one or two of those that appeal to you. Bring them home and divine their magical meanings by the use of books, your own intuition, a pendulum, or by other means. The flowers you’ve chosen reveal your inner thoughts and emotions.

    Some Ostara Links




    March 21

    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.

    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.



  • Let’s just say our days are numbered

    So, since I must now keep my work posts out of public hands, there’s a private post up for any friends who might wish to read about my latest trials and tribulations. If you’re on my friends list, your access is guaranteed. If you’re not and want to read it, send me a friend request.




    March 20th


    The Vernal Equinox occurs on or about the 20th of March. Alban Eilir is observed by the Druids. The Spring Equinox is celebrated with a festival in honor of Eostre, goddess of spring and dawn. Many call it Ostara, the name of the Teutonic virgin goddess of Spring. It was a very important Sabbat from Greece to the Nordic lands. In Egypt, it is the Pelusia, a festival of Isis as she caused the Nile to begin its annual flooding.

    It has become Easter in the Christian religion but retains its original theme of rebirth. At Ostara, day and night are equal. The Romans referred to this as Nox et Dies, when Ares made night and day run an even race. The Sun will begin to overtake the darkness of winter until its peak at the Summer Solstice in June. Daffodils, woodruff, violets, gorse, olives, peonies, irises, and all Spring flowers are sacred to the Spring Goddess. Foods associated with this holy day, are seeds, leafy green vegetables, spiced or flower cupcakes, fruits, and hard-boiled eggs. Seeds and eggs are symbols of fertility.

    This is the last day of the Persian Farvardigan festival of the dead.



  • I’m the One Who…. eats words for breakfast

    Honestly, when I saw this Featured Grownups topic, I immediately thought of a song (I’m the Man Who Murdered Love by XTC) which really has little to do with my post, but which popped into my head like Superman’s little extra-dimensional nemesis Mr. Mxyzptlk.

    As you can probably tell, I’m the one with some kind of weird sense of humor. I realized a long time ago, when I was more apt to cry than smile, that sometimes if you don’t laugh, you cry. I’m not an optimist by any stretch of the word, nor am I pessimist. But like Wednesday Addams, I am a morbid little ray of sunshine, unerringly finding something humorous in even the grimmest circumstances. I have a bit of the gallows humor about me, digging at the grumpiest people until I win a smile. I have a way of twisting words around, warping their intended meaning or stringing things along until the original intent of the speaker or writer is lost or more fully revealed. I pick things apart and slap them back together in a collage of inference.

    So more accurately, I am the one who loves words…. reading them, writing them, tracking them down and pinning them to paper like an exotic insect collection. I fear for the structural integrity of my room with all the bookshelves, packed to capacity with my book collections, old pulp weird fiction and new horror, science fiction and fantasy, occult, mysticism, mythology, history, religion… and some hard to classify topics. I’m the one who loves new ideas and written wit. I’m the weird girl who sits in a corner alone in a crowded room or cafe, chortling at some bizarre series of events set down in a book. I’d rather read than converse with anyone in that crowded room, because let’s be honest, an engrossing conversation is hard to find, but a good book can be revisited indefinitely.

    I’m the one who finds adventure between the lines. Every sentence read or written is another step in a journey of a hundred thousand words. A new idea is like another lens added to a jeweler’s magnifying glass, not creating a new perspective so much as revealing it. Given a choice between eating or reading, it would be a long time before I chose food. When I was a child, I passed up many meals and even sleep in favor of finishing a book. Words fill places food and rest cannot. Words are like seeds. No one knows what they will eventually grow into or how they will alter the jungle of your mind until the moment of epiphany, when an idea suddenly pops into bloom. Even dead and forgotten ideas fertilize future meme blossoms. My mind is a riot of color and growth, unpruned by close mindedness. Words are like rain and sunshine to the garden of my mind.

    I am the girl who consumes the world like alphabet soup, letting tendrils of thought twist and flower into new ideas on a whim.




    March 19th


    Akitu is a ten day long Babylonian festival held in memory of the marriage of heaven and earth.



    In Greece, this is known as the Micra (lesser) Panathenaea in honor of Athene. This became the Quintania or Quinquatrus in honor of Minerva in the hands of the Romans. The Panathenaea is the most ancient and most important of Athenian festivals. The Lesser Panathenaea is celebrated every year, with the Megala (greater) Panathenaea held every fifth year and in the third year of every Olympiad. Only later was the Micra Panathenaea moved to spring, perhaps by Roman influence to make it correspond to the Quinquatrus of Minerva. The date of the Micra Panathenaea in the earlier Greek period was May 5th.

    In the lesser festival, there are three games conducted by ten presidents. On the evening of the first day, there is a race with torches. On the second, there is gymnastic combat and trials of strength and bodily dexterity. The last is a musical contest, instituted by Pericles, and concerts are performed. The poets compete in four plays, called the tetralogia, the last of which is a satire. The victor in any of these games is rewarded with a vessel of oil and a crown of olives (which are sacred to the goddess), which grew in the grove of Academus.

    Other ceremonies were added, such as a procession in which Minerva’s sacred peplos, or garment, is carried. Woven by a select number of virgins called ergazika, from ergos, “work,” the peplos is white or saffron and sleeveless with gold embroidery detailing the achievements of the goddess. Two of the arrephoroi, young virgins between the ages of eleven and seventeen, attend the ergazika. The arrephoroi wear white with ornaments of gold.

    In the ceramicus outside the city near the Hill of Ares, a ship is built. From this, Minerva’s peplos is hung as a sail. The ship is taken to the temple of Ceres Eleusinia and then to the citadel where the peplos is placed upon Minerva’s statue. The statue lies upon a bed (plakis) woven or strewed with flowers.

    The Quinquatrus or Quinquatria in honor of Minerva continues for five days. The first day of the festival commemorates her birth and the founding of her temple, the Minerva Capta. All those whose employment fall under the protection of the goddess celebrate Quinquatria. Students have a holiday during the festival, and begin a new course of study when it is over. Teachers receive their yearly stipend at this time – the minerval. Women and children (as spinners and weavers), artisans and artists, and poets and painters observe the festival of Minerva.



    Eyvind Kinnrifi is a martyr for Odin, remembered today.



    The Elizabethan statute against witchcraft was enacted in 1563.