Pagan Resurrection

Just spotted this brand new book published by Random Books - sumat for my Christmas pressies list, I think!

This is the Synopsis from the website:

Pagan Resurrection puts forward a fascinating and controversial idea - namely that it is the pagan god Odin and not Christ who is the single most important spiritual influence in western civilisation.

Far from being just a New Age fad, paganism is fast becoming a major spiritual, intellectual, ecological and political force across the globe.Rudgley is an Oxford trained anthropologist and critically acclaimed author of Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age, who has since presented three series on Channel 4.

He takes the reader through the strange world of modern pagan cults, the beliefs that underpin important parts of modern culture, such as Lord of the Rings and the highly pagan counter culture that sprang up in the sixties and now offers an attractive alternative spiritual vision to millions alienated from Christianity.

He explains the ancient idea of the Web - a cosmic field of energies that encompasses time, space and the hidden potentials of the human organism, and shows that this is a pagan equivalent to the eastern tradition of the Tao.Our civilisation, our belief systems and attitudes, indeed our psyche have been formed by Odin. The influence of Christ, he says, has been relatively recent and shallow.Paganism, like Christianity, can be a force for good or evil.

At this turning point in history we need to choose between the dark and destructive paganism that gave rise to Nazism and modern right-wing movements in America and, on the other hand, the green paganism of ecology and alternative spirituality. Every decade or so a new generation is inspired by a controversial classic of alternative history/spirituality - The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Fingerprints of the Gods...

The time now is just right for Pagan Resurrection.

Year in retrospect

With Samhain being the start of the Pagan new year it prompted some introspection.

I've not done a single witchy or pagan thing this whole year. Or rather, not purposefully. I've read a few random books, lit a candle on my mom's birthday, toyed with the idea of creating a small altar space, but not actually done it. Or anything else, it feels like. Maybe did the grand total of 2 tarot readings, done half heartedly.

I'm as dry as a riverbed in a drought.

The only time I felt connected to something bigger than me was when we were in Greece, in Sparta. Standing in those ancient ruins of that ancient city I looked up at these fantastically huge and majestic mountains towering over the valley and I just yearned to stay there and stare at them forever. I know, it sounds New Age and naff, but it felt like the gods never left that place. Or rather, the goddess. Freaky, I know. The modern town is nothing spectacular. It's not geared to tourists, but it has this, gorram it, I'll call it "magic" about itself. Walking through the olive groves on the Spartan acropolis and looking at the ancient ruins, I felt connected to a different time and place. It could have been my imagination, being in such an atmospheric place, but I would like to think not.

I've resolved, ontop of a few other things, this coming year, to pay more attention to the spiritual side of life. Buy some new mind, body, spirit books, get out into the countryside again, to go and visit the seaside and just sit at the sea and stare at it a bit. To connect to the other missing parts of the elements in our lives. To learn how to meditate, even if I have to go take classes at my local gym. Maybe even take up yoga or pilates. Become a bit more balanced in my life.

This I resolve, so mote it be.

Family

We are a large family - five girls, one boy. Even though I live thousands and thousands of miles away from them, we chat via email and text messages, so we are pretty much up to speed with what is happening in one another's lives. We sometimes say: no news, is good news.

But about 2 weeks ago, I kept having funny dreams and feelings about my oldest sister, Elize, and sent her an enquiring text. Turns out her work was giving her hell and please can I do her a tarot card reading. So I did.

And sometimes, I think, we are so in sync with the Multiverse, that it throws back answers to the extent where it makes you feel ill. Because it is so spot on.

I did the reading, concentrating on what I know about Elize, how much she enjoys doing what she does, how much her family means to her, how incredibly capable she is. All these things worked up into a reading of such clarity that it was announced clearly, like bells in the crisp morning air.

I transcribed what the told me, I added my interpretation and sent it off to her.

It turns out, the cards were literally screaming at her to do something with her current life as she was busy dying in a deadend job where she was not appreciated and because of this, her home life with her own family was suffering. It told me she had become insufferable, moody and mean. Not something I easily equate with Elize. It was only after I sent the reading off, that she told me exactly how bad things had been of late. She had walked out of the job the day she asked me to do the reading. She had gone for an interview at a direct competitor and immediately got offered the position. Which she accepted. It was more money, same responsibility but her assistants would be more proactive.

She was amazed at how well I had read the situation. I was stunned by how I could manage to tap into her mindset, from thousands of miles away.

We were our mother's daughters after all.

Blue Mood Balm

A lot of this has been going on here in the UK mainly because of the strange weather - very very little sun, a lot of rain and clouds creating a feeling like summer was never going to arrive.

For a dreary and a dark mood day, use the strength of the ancient myrrh to release mind body and spirit.

Combine two drops each of chamomile, myrrh, rosemary and geranium oils with either four ounces of unscented body lotion or almond oil. Store in a corked pottery jar. Sit quietly in a room lit by only one blue candle, and rub the balm gently into your skin after a long bath. Say aloud:

Work they spell and nurse.

Blessed balm, banish my pain.

Harm to none and health to all.

I remember when..

I know I’ve not splattered my thoughts across the page before, not here anyway, but tonight I just felt like it.

Sometimes when I’m walking, alone with my thoughts I get such an all-pervasive feeling of nostalgia, its simply weird. There’s usually a trigger, some little thing I glimpse, that brings it on. It could be anything; an old crone wheeling her basket along, the cry of a lost gull, a lone weed clinging desperately to life in between two slabs of concrete. I’d love to be able to say that it triggers memory of my times as a heroic celtic warrior, sword in hand, as is the wont on certain pagan websites these days (no names mentioned) but in fact it just makes me maudlin and wont to wander into the nearest establishment for a pint.

I start thinking about the world around me, and all the things that are, or have changed, and it depresses me, makes me feel old. Not just granddad old, but I remember the Colosseum old.

Maybe it’s just because I’m a Taurean.

It’s the little things that really get to me. Little compared to my thoughts about religion or the death of nature anyway.

It’s things like manners. And good, old fashioned hospitality. Making someone feel welcome, fetching them a drink and offering a bite to eat. I pride myself in that I never knowingly let someone leave my table having not drunk or eaten their fill, or at the very least having being made to feel at home. Simple things. Things that bind people together, and turn strangers into friends, or neighbours.

And it’s not just at home either. People react with astonishment (and sometimes outright suspicion) if you actually pay attention to them. It’s just a matter of making that extra effort to actually care about their answer to “How’re you doing?”. To say please, thank you or sorry, to pick up something they’ve dropped. To hold a door open.

It’s not hard, it’s just that with all the distractions we’ve got leaping out at us, its all too easy to be distracted, to take the shortcut of sending a text instead of phoning, or taking the time to go see someone. Next time you find yourself ordering something at Starbucks, or signing for a parcel, look at the person you’re talking to. I’m not saying do the unblinking-stare-into-their-eyes-like-a-psycho-stalker move, just pay some attention. That’s a dinkum person behind that counter. Say thank you. Ask them how’re they’re doing – and listen to their reply, acknowledge it. You’ll be amazed.

Voodoo Festival

OUIDAH, Benin - Article here:

The drumming was like a heart beating as West African women wearing cowrie shells and beads writhed before a carved fetish. A knife-wielding dancer with a chalk-whitened face performed intricate steps to honor the python spirit.

The 10-day Benin Voodoo Festival wrapped up Wednesday, 10th January, with a final celebration of ancestor and spirit worship. American visitors of African descent were on hand at a former slave port in Benin to discover their ancestors' practices. Amid the singing, drumming and praying, many also contemplated roots ripped asunder.

"Did my great-grandmother stand on this beach? Am I from here?" wondered 23-year-old Alise Williams, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"There are some things that are similar to back home, like the rhythms of dancing and the catching of the holy ghost in the Pentecostal churches," said Williams.

"There is so much of our history that is lost," Williams added softly as a crowd of women wearing red feathers passed by, singing in a language Williams didn't understand to a god she didn't know.

Festival organizers hope more tourists will visit the annual festival, and find links between the contemporary cultures of West Africa and the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe, now peopled with many of African descent.

Practiced in the Caribbean, Brazil, and some Creole communities in the United States as well as on the white sands of west Africa, Voodoo's spread is inextricably linked to Benin's status as a slaving hub.

Memorials of slavery are everywhere, from the beach side Point of No Return arch that shows manacled Africans walking toward the horizon, to the Tree of Forgetfulness that captured slaves were marched around three times in the belief it would break their spirits.

But they brought their spirits with them to sugar and cotton plantations overseas. While indigenous religions are practiced in many parts of West Africa, often interspersed with Christian and Muslim practices, Benin and parts of neighboring Nigeria have particularly strong Voodoo communities.

Many of Benin's 8 million citizens practice Voodoo, which even a strict Marxist-Leninist dictatorship was unable to stamp out.

Former military ruler Mathieu Kerekou banned Voodoo during the 1970s. His successor repealed the ban. When Kerekou was re-elected to office in a democratic transfer of power, Beninese refused to recognize his authority until he relented and took an oath of office that specifically referred to ancestral spirits.

While still deeply impoverished, Benin is now a thriving democracy, and Voodoo is recognized as an official religion.

No records are kept of foreign Voodoo Festival visitors, and it still looks to be mostly a local affair. But guides such as Martine de Souza, a priestess and former curator of the local museum, say that more foreigners have been attending in recent years.

"We want to make our religion known abroad," de Souza said. "Many people do not appreciate our tradition, which is of tolerance and making peace, not harming anyone."
Roberto Strongman, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said that the festival may benefit from a recent upsurge of interest in Voodoo. He flipped through a book on Santeria, the Caribbean version of Voodoo.

"Look at this bibliography — book after book, all published after 1996."
He says Voodoo's oral tradition gives it a flexibility to adapt to modern needs and an inclusiveness.

"This religion admits the possibility of multiple selves within one person," he said.
On Wednesday, devotees broke bottles on their heads and sliced themselves with knives, offering their own blood to the gods amid thousands of dancers and worshippers. Bottles of spirits and the blood of a slaughtered goat were offered to metal fetishes that included an image of a giant snake.

In the town's sacred forest, the statues of Shango, the thunder god with the double-headed ax, and triple-headed Tohoxou, the god of deformed children, stared across the clearing under the shade of trees hundreds of years old.

At the palace of the Voodoo leader Daagbo Hanoun — literally, "the one with the sea" — male dancers wore women's clothes and gaudy earrings while a crowd of women performed a fertility dance, with one leader brandishing a carved phallus.

To the uninitiated, the dances can seem amusing or frightening, such as when a man stamps a series of steps around the drummers, the lifeless body of a kid goat in his arms. The animal's blood is daubed on doorways for protection, or offered as a sacrifice to spirits.

But although animal sacrifices are an intrinsic element of ceremonies, devotees stress that the aim is to celebrate the life, not death, and point out that the animals are used for feasts in the community when the rituals are finished.

Toni Pressley-Scott, a 38-year old from New York city who has resided in Benin for nearly a year with her teenage son, sees not sacrifice, but existence: "It's not about cruelty, it's about the sacredness of life."

Struggles!

I have the memory of a sieve and have been struggling my rapidly diminishing butt off to remember my password to this site - but it is now here = major YAY!

No, I am not about to witter on about NY resolutions - how droll - but to say that we had a fantastic yule, with loads of friends around and it was all in all a fab time to spend with everyone.

I am just relieved that all the food I had prepared had come out in the way I wanted it to = yay! The roast potatoes, always a worry, were 100% perfect.

I am considering signing up with Blogger Beta but I am not sure I want to relinquish ownership over my sites...will do more research and decide then.

But now that I have successfully remember my password I will note it down and make life easier for myself.

Shakes head - happy witching!