Just a little bit of craft before today’s workday. Then I shall return to a most special evening. Happy Samhain, or Happy Halloween if youre a Cowen, and I shall be back to post of today’s most sacred happenings.
Blessed Be-
-in Peace, light & love,
~Derique.
the high priestess by joanna powell colbert
”Search within for the questions. Search without for answers. Search behind the willow tree curtain, and the secrets behind the pomegranate are yours to be had…”
Tomorrow, tomorrow. A New Phase begins. Three days of insight, knowledge is given and information is received. My New Moon spread of the Year and for the “Moon-th” of October into November is the High Priestess. Which is so grand, and relieving. I am finally back in my peak, and it feels good again to be connected. My transition period is over, and now I will have my answers. Secrets will be revealed. The Scrolls of the Ages will be shone. This is a very good time for me to listen to my dreams, and with Samhain (Halloween) a few days afterwards, perhaps I should take advantage of this time and really LOOK. Look within myself for the questions. Well, of course I already have the questions, the high priestess already knows that, but now comes the time where I will be able to make the decisions for the answers. Of course answers may not always be what we want them to be. Truth hurts after all sometimes, but there is a peace that comes with the burden of true knowledge, and I am ready. I am ready to go back to school. I am ready to stop worrying about relationships, I need to be a bit more selfish, hehe, and do what I must for my own success. I deserve to be happy, and if certain people cannot be supportive and compassionate, then they will just become a cotton eating moth (a pretty moth of course but equally irritating) and I will just have to ’shoo’ them away….
This is what Joanna has to say about the HIGH PRIESTESS
“The woman of mystery calls upon us to turn within when the moon is waning. Listen, she says, to the voice of the wind with its pungent salty scent . . . listen to the voices that arise in our dreams or from our wombs during the time of moon flow.
She sits before the willow veil of Hecate and hears the unspoken words of Owl and Salmon, the sea behind her illuminated by a waning moon. At her side is the Sleeping Goddess of Malta, who sends us healing dreams. In her hands is the ruby fruit of Persephone, symbol of fertility, death and sexuality.
Is she Maiden? Is she Crone?
She carries both within her, balancing the wisdom of age with the freshness of youth — and holds fast to the autonomy of both.
Sssh . . . the priestess whispers:
Guard the Mysteries! Constantly reveal them!”
I am ready for what I must know in order to prosper as a witch and as a human being. being a witch is more than a title, or a label, which is why I don’t do so very often; but I am at a point in my life where there are things i need and not just want. There are things in which I YEARN for, and as such should be very high priority instead of on the back-burner.
Thus, here I am go forward from this point onward, with the wisdom of the ages in my youth fresh autonomy!
“Don’t you understand? She’s coming back-” said Yackle….The Grimmerie shut itself; the Clock withdrew the book into a hidden chamber, the dragon up top sighed and clanked rather noisily to a finish-Show’s over, folks-and they were out of the realm of mystery, and back in the realm of war.” “Though they all stood for a minute, in between moments, as a light wind pushed into the courtyard, and a small of smoke and greenery strengthens. It whisked their spirits in silence; they felt upbraided by possibility; they felt taunted by the aesthetic appeal of justice. They felt hungry, and several of them felt horny, and the light flickered as a flock of birds coursed against the sun-too high to be identified, too high to be heard, but not too high to be influential.”
So we have yet to await the NEXT, the FOURTH Volume in the Wicked Years. Some questions were answered, some un-asked questions were answers, and some questions have yet to be answered from the First Volume. Gregory Maguire is sure spinning quite the story, quite an epic story. Volumes upon volumes, could the “Wicked Years” as it has been deemed, be the next Harry Potter series? For grown-ups for certain, but possibly not as much for teen readers.
All in all it took me six hours these past six days to finish the 308 page tome. On page 309 reads the quote by George Herbert in his “The Collar”:
“Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart Could have recovered greenness?”
Is this a clue? Could this be the theme for the next volume? About the Tin Man perhaps? Boq the man saved by Elphaba, or cursed? Will he join Brrr and Nor on their pursuit for Liir? Or does the quote have nothing to do with him, and only Brrr himself? Now that is is free from being the EC’s lackey lion? Could this refer to Elphaba’s green heart? Volume three did hint at all the staying alive past your prime with Yackle and the Dwarf Mr. Boss. Could the graffiti be true from Son of a Witch, does Elpahaba really, LIVE? Only Mr. Maguire can answer. But I think it will be a good long time before we find out exactly.
“And there the wicked old Witch stayed for a good long time. And did she ever come out? Not yet…”
“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves as well. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen accidents, meetings and material assistance that on one could have dreamed would come their way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” -Geothe, by attribution
So, the day hast been birthed! A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire has seen its at long last debut. Now I can at last return to the darkest recesses of my mind, light a candle, pour a cup of echinacea tea (it is pneumonia weather after all) and devour yet another work of art. Where shall this one lead me? I can only jump up and down like a three-year-old in anticipation over the newest Yoshi and Mario game (this shows what decade I grew up in. YES! the 90’s). Haha. Thusly, I shall recede, scorn the “real world” and follow that fantastical sulfur coloured road of bricks into another wonderful adventure. Oh! and I won’t be clicking my heels until I’m well and bloody ready to!!
first of all, life’s natural bookcraft isn’t going anywhere. i am just trying to redesign my page. sadly, the programs i had on my laptop are gone due to, well my laptop being stolen. so i have to find some way to use another program on another computating mechanical device. so, this should take… awhile…
unknown artist
“Book banning is one of the most ugly things that I could ever fathom, let alone allow to happen.”
Books have always been dear to my heart. And it would seem that my favourites would be those under the header, “Banned Books.” Fortunately for me, I grew up in a school system that did not ban such books, they actually made them part of the curriculum! So, when I first heard about book banning in high school, I was shocked. I was horrified. I was completely saddened by human beings. SO much so that I wrote a paper on the issue for my sociology class. The issue of banning books in America is exclusively an unnoticed phenomenon in our post-industrial society. We are a society that focuses more upon the mundane which can be seen as the everyday celebrity obsessive compulsive fascination that our society has upon these individuals. However, when we are not focusing intently upon our celebrities we are then taking our attention and applying it to the more important: how many people are dieing in the world, and is Sarah Palin really going to become a runner-up president? Too often enough the news draws the attention away from our nation’s interior problems, book banning being of course one of them, look where the reality sector factored in. Not a clue to where it really was going until our financial markets almost completely crash. It’s that sort of not be able to see what is smacking you in the face. But onto this week’s Sunday Scribbling of Banned Books. Why book banning? How is this so important when there are so many other issues within our nation? The fact is that book banning is not some distant mania that happened in our history, but rather it is happening now. All of this concern can be answered by one philosophical individuals views upon liberty- the basis of our very society.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, `mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
The essence of this brief quotation is quite simple and can be divided into two stems that support my hypothesis. One: Americans should have the freedom to think as Americans please. They should have the freedom of opinion otherwise known as freedom of speech. It seems that Lowell Cotton Mill was correct and was thusly rewarded with an entire paragraph in the Bill of Rights, that being the first one. The second would then be a bit more controversial, however Americans should have the freedom to pursue tastes and hobbies, even if they are deemed “immoral” as long as they do not infringe on others. In other words Mill was stating that every American should have the right to express their opinions or views as long as the other is equally allowed. Even in simpler terms Americans each should have the right to intellectual freedom.
According to the American Library Association (ALA), intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause, or movement may be explored. The ALA was founded in 1876 in Philadelphia and subsequently chartered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its mission statement is “to provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.” Intellectual freedom is key to the ALA and harnesses their purpose to further the rights of Americans in regards to especially, but not limited to, the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights guarantees the rights of citizens to speak and publish freely, as well as to “assemble” to demand “redress of grievances.” Therefore writers and publishers have the fundamental right to distribute their world of art to potential consumers who most notably wish to read their material. Here is the underlying problem for the book banning controversy. Book banners who wish to censor our nation’s books however have perhaps a sincere belief that removal of the such book or article can improve society as a whole, protect our societies children and restore our nation’s lost moral values. The structural functional approach to the issue would be the previously stated. There is a societal dysfunction of our society’s books. The ones that are contrary to our society’s traditional unifying morals and concepts are being challenged by these radical writers who wish to inspire our next generation’s minds. We must as a society come together and help to preserve what little morals we as a society have left. This however is not a sound argument. Our society is changing and therefore should not be forced to keep to traditional and out-of-date ideas of what is right and wrong. The structural functional unrecognized the fact that this act is not to promote unity, but to spur societal chaos, forcing our “democratic” society to be led by utilitarians.
This issue of book banning is more of a social conflict issue. It is not the writer or publicist who is the dysfunctional one, but to the contrary the cencorists. Our society is already led by the rich and powerful who try to control our society’s minds- our intelligence. The repression of ideas and information is a tactic used by censors to try to impose their view of what is truth and appropriate, or in the case of book banning, abhorrent or odious to everyone else so no one will have the choice to decide and read what they please. The censor in fact wants to prejudge materials for everyone according to the American Library Association.According to a social conflictist, all information, all knowledge should be available to everyone, even children. There should be no restrictions whatsoever. What though the social conflictist fails to recognize is that some information is undoubtedly inappropriate for some individuals. Our society defines actions in terms of appropriate and unsuitable for certain people. In our society it would most certainly be inappropriate to allow a 6 year-old to read, or attempt to read, a pornographic magazine.
The individual, American, has a right to view, watch, or read whatever they please as long as it does not infringe upon another individual. So why does book banning exist? There are four key issues that bring about book banning. They are family values, religion, political views, and minority rights. What sort of books do you find banned and/or challenged? They are books about non-traditional family values where parents are viewed as shrewd, controlling, and in most cases abusive. They are books which supposedly promote occultisms or Satanism such as the Harry Potterseries by J.K. Rowling. They are books discussing changes in government or promoting a more “communist” thought pattern. They are books which deal with the untalked about: minority rights. Most books that are of minority rights discuss the rights and even everyday lives of minorities such as homosexuals, blacks, Hispanics, etc. Seeing this there are those that wish to allow the availability of such books so as to converse and actually deal with such issues. However, there are those that wish to control the viewing of certain material upon the whole. The censors boast and use the many legal references that parents do have a right to control what their children learn. This is a true statement. According to Morrow v. wood passed in 1874, “The schools cannotcompel the child to pursue study that is forbidden by the parents.” Many many more legal resource court cases are there including State Ex Rel Sheibleyv. School District #1 of Dixon County passed in 1891, which states that “the right to the parent…to determine what studies his child shall pursue is paramount to that of teachers.” This can be completely understood, but only when parents try to deal with their own children, not others. That is where the line is drawn on this issue, when a form of parental oligarchy is formed to try to control what all children should and shouldn’t be allowed to read. These parental censors may think that articles discussing political content, profanity, sexuality, rape, murder, drugs and alcohol use is wrong to allow their adolescent children to read, but they fail to acknowledge that most of these issues are now happening to their children and should then be forced to confront the “evils” so they will be more prepared for the actual real world, the one that bad things truly happen in. Early adolescence is a crucial time in the human life-cycle. Evil acts are not happening because they read about the committing of these acts, but rather because like everything else, they choose. They choose to be deviant and to act upon their impulses, not because they may or may not have read a book in high school depicting the act. The censors are considering these materials, heretical, blasphemous, seditious, obscene and inappropriate and therefore are trying to impose restriction upon what they feel as unsuitable upon an entire area of our society, which is just bluntly not democratic.
So, should parents deem certain books inappropriate for their children? Not allow them to read books deemed “inappropriate for society”? Challenged minds will always strive to do what they want. If the censor-parent wishes to enact laws and regulations that were created during the same era that it was socially acceptable to hit children in order to make them “learn” properly then very well. However, associations exist to do quite the opposite. The ALAaside, KidSPEAK (not to mention countless others) which stresses that children have rights, rights that are guaranteed within the first amendment and helps children fight for them. In a democracy such as ours, no one should have say over the minds of others, especially children. The imagination is a wonderful and powerful thing and should not be allowed to be removed from the human intellect. Some of the greatest books ever written in our nation’s history have been banned and challenged by those wishing to suppress the discussion of topics deemed not suitable for discussion. Our society has created wonderful works of art, from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, that have been banned at one time or another and to an extent still are. What censors fail to recognize is that the world of books is almost always a way to help morals and values. To show children and readers a world where they see controversy and subsequently have to confront it and answer for themselves the morale. Books do not offer children a means to become monsters, Satanists or murderers; but rather allow them to verify for themselves that some issues in life are real and will therefore be able to know the opposite which is good, and which is right. Books do not just separate us intellectaully so that we have conflicting ideas, but instead they allow us to be more than just people with thoughts. They transport us, they offer an out from the horrible rigours of this reality. Sometimes they even offer glimpses and others whole stories of it sans sugar coating. Books offer us one human theme: that we’re all connected in our differences, and it is beautiful and it is funny and it is good.
ocean at night~ unknown artist
”A wedding is a ceremony. A bonding, in which two individuals profess their never ending and unconditional love for each other. It is when their souls are entwined, in which all present should be able to witness the golden sparks and glow surrounding them. In effect all present should see, feel, smell, hear and taste the love.”
Last Sunday 28 Sep was the Sunday Scribbling of "Wedding" Here is my post.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in modern day rituals as is used to. It is a thing of insignificance then if people can just say, “oh we can always get a divorce.” That is no way, and is in no way the mentality of going into a wedding. So, what is with the craze that Americans are facing, that have been facing for the past few years? Why is it so difficult to allow anyone the quote above? Anyone deemed unworthy of the society’s mores and values, as if their values and their mores were some how better than the rest of the society, not to mention the countless other society’s in which it is allowed? Of course, you probably have picked out what issue I am talking about: Gay Marriage. And historically both of those words should be coin faces, no? Happy, and marriage. Both realistic synonyms of “wedding.” So, stepping back from my banter that could continue to go on for another paragraph or two, filled with sociological convictions (and envy and jealousy and anger and pain) I will describe to you my wedding plans that I have been fashioning (comically one for every season) since I was a little boy…
It would have been in fashion true romance. Victorian lacework, intricate sewn details with a slight pagan flair, coupled with a modern bow-tie, white glove event. There would have been gardens, in full gloom surrounding the event. There would be no flowers cut to symbolize beauty and death, but gardens: there would be only LIFE. There would be beauty at every corner. Violins and pianos playing all of the world’s old and beautiful love songs, without lyric of course. There would be rich incense of nag champa and frankincense filling the air, just so to couple the sweet floral smell of the flowers perfectly. It would be filled with candlelight, every candle in the world would be surrounding us, like microsmic stars mirroring the sky above. Of course it would be a clear and star filled night with the moon full. Behind us would be wide windows looking out to the sea and a glistening water would be seen. It would be a botanical garden open in a glass filled room. A greenhouse antechamber leading into the ceremony room. It would be perfect bliss, perfect harmony, perfect and true love.
That is just the summer version, and as I quietly chuckle and smile deep within these walls of mine. I also feel a great and terrible sadness that this dream. This single happy day. The day of my marriage, would be denied me. No other word could or would have more significance in my opinion. Marriage is marriage. There is no synonym for that one.
9 of Air(swords) by Joanna Powell Colbert
“When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make lemonade.”~Dale Carnegie
Once, again I am promoting my favourite tarot deck, the Gaian Tarot Deck by Joanna Powell Colbert. At the beginning of the year, you all know that I did a complete 2008 Year Tarot Spread. The 29th marked the New Moon card Nine of Swords, which corresponds to the 9 of Air in the GaianTarot. And here is a little bit from Joanna’s Site describing her card:
“The Gaian Tarot Nines depict the qualities of mastery, solitude and wisdom (like that other #9, the Hermit) as seen through the elemental suits. The RWS Nine of Swords is often called the “nightmare card.” A woman is grieving, on a much deeper soul level than the distress of the 3 of Air. Storm clouds billow behind her, mirroring her inner turmoil. Yet she has gone to a sacred spot, and embraces a standing stone as if it were her mother. She goes down deep into a trance state, letting her sorrow ground into the body of the earth. And with her inner vision she sees the face of She Who Watches – the One who watches over her with love and compassion, always.”
Lately there have been plenty of things on my mind, plenty of negative things. My up and coming court-date, which even though trivial it still frightens me. I have never done anything wrong in my Life, let alone doing something intoxicated, but as they say ‘you live and you learn.’ To match how I have been feeling consciously, my subconscious has been giving me scary dreams, of a man chasing me, trying to attack me, etc. However, it has been this card, by Joanna, that has given me some sense of hope. “She” which would be a he in my case, “goes down deep into a trance state, letting her sorrow ground into the body of the earth…and sees the one who watches over her with love and compassion, always” this has figured prominently since the New Moon in my dreams.
For the past two nights I have dreamed of a woman, I am thinking she is a mix between the All Mother and my own Soror Mystica Mum, whom I haven’t spoken to in a very long time, too long I think. In my dreams she offers me comfort and offers me teaching. It came to a point where incense was lit and I could feel almost like I was out of my body (in the dream) and could see multicultural colours, swirling around me as if an Aurora Borealis projected itself into my mind. With that added feeling, I awoke refreshed and happy. Almost as if everything will be alright. And as I look into the future, the next new moon I see that my next card is of the High Priestess on the 27th of this month.
So, I have grounded my sorrow, knowing that it is all in my head, and that I shouldn’t worry about it. I should remember Fefe’s philosophy and live my life once again without reservations again. True, the court date will be scary, but it is something that I am strong enough to face, and it’s only a fine for something minour, so I don’t know why I am so worried to begin with? And it’s better because I defeated this unknown man last night in my dreams, by use of one of my favourite books, keeping him at bay until he just, disappeared. How divine…
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