Weevils Fear Laughter

DISCLAIMER: The following has been blatantly purloined from FreeWill Astrology, the cybertree of that squirrel of sublime silliness, Rob Brezsny, who scampers down and upside through the Grand Irrationalities of humanoid life looking for lost red sock-it-to-mes!

Bees perform a valuable service for the flowers from which they steal.

Bhramari Devi - Hindu Goddess of Black Bees

DEFINITION: Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia. It's the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It's a mode of training your senses and intellect so you're able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

OBJECTIVE OF PRONOIA: To explore the secrets of becoming a wildly disciplined, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, scrupulously curious, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lyrically logical, lustfully compassionate Master of Rowdy Bliss.

HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is your birthright. Receptivity is a superpower.

PROCEDURE: Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination. Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be. Join the conspiracy to shower all of creation with blessings.

GUIDING QUESTION: "The secret of life," said sculptor Henry Moore to poet Donald Hall, "is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do." What is that task for you?

UNDIGNIFIED MEDITATIONS TO KEEP YOU HONEST: Brag about what you can't do and don't have. Confess profound secrets to people who aren't particularly interested. Pray for the success of your enemies while you're making love. Change your name every day for a thousand days.

MYTHIC ROLE MODELS: Prometheus and Pronoia. In Greek mythology, Pronoia was the consort of Prometheus, the divine rebel who pilfered a glowing coal from his fellow gods so that he could slip the gift of fire to humans.  *Pronoia is the Goddess of Foresight.

TOP-SECRET ALLIES: Sacred janitors, benevolent pranksters, apathy debunkers, lyrical logicians, ethical outlaws, aspiring masters of curiosity, homeless millionaires, humble megalomaniacs, hedonistic midwives, lunatic saints, sly optimists, mystical scientists, dissident bodhisattvas, macho feminists, and socialist libertarians who possess inside information about the big bang.

DAILY PRACTICE: Push hard to get better, become smarter, grow your devotion to the truth, fuel your commitment to beauty, refine your emotional intelligence, hone your dreams, negotiate with your shadow, cure your ignorance, shed your pettiness, heighten your drive to look for the best in people, and soften your heart -- even as you always accept yourself for exactly who you are with all of your so-called imperfections.

POSSIBLE REWARDS: You will be able to claim the rewards promised you at the beginning of time -- not just any old beauty, wisdom, goodness, love, freedom, and justice, but rather: exhilarating beauty that incites you to be true to yourself; crazy wisdom that immunizes you against the temptation to believe your ideals are ultimate truths; outrageous goodness that inspires you to experiment with irrepressible empathy; generous freedom that keeps you alert for opportunities to share your wealth; insurrectionary love that endlessly transforms you; and a lust for justice that's leavened with a knack for comedy, keeping you honest as you work humbly to liberate everyone in the world from ignorance and suffering.

USAGE NOTE: We employ the adjectival form "pronoiac" rather than "pronoid." That way, it rhymes with "aphrodisiac" and resonates with "paradisiacal" instead of being conditioned by "paranoid."

“Innumerable lines of black bees then were generated and they joined themselves with those that got out of the Devi’s hands and thus they covered the whole earth. Thus countless bees began to emit from all sides like locusts. The sky was overcast with the bees; and the earth was covered with darkness. The sky, mountain peaks, trees, forests all became filled with bees and the spectacle presented a grand dismal sight. Then the black bees began to tear asunder the breasts of the Daityas as the bees bite those who destroy their beehives. Thus the Daityas could not use their weapons nor could they fight nor exchange any words. Nothing they could do; they had no help but to die.” —from Srimad Devi Bagavatam: Book 10, Chapter 13

Signs, Wonders. Grapevine.

Gordian Knot: an intractable problem that requires an unconventional solution.

 

In a previous life, I visited the intriguing privately owned Naracoorte Museum and Snake Pit in South Australia.  It was a visit that changed my perception entirely about snakes and the owner of this museum is a fair-dinkum Pentecostal serpent-handler and dancer. I know this because he followed me around for about half-an-hour proselytizing.

 

And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. ~ Mark 16: 17-18

Proselytizing.  That sure is one word I can never write without checking the dictionary to make sure I've spelled it right.  I doubt I pronounce it properly either.

Now I've got a curious and healthy interest in other people's faith traditions being an amateur theologian and some folks tend to think my interest gives them licence to recruit me to their brand of old time religion.  Or maybe that's just my perception and the serpent handler was just happy to have a tourist turn up who wasn't a total ignoramus.

As well as being a serpent handler and Pentecost, this chap also milks his snakes and provides a regular supply of venom to the Australian Venom Research Centre for the production of antivenom. When you consider that Australia is home to the most deadliest snakes in the world, I have a great deal of respect for the service this fundamental Christian provides to medical science.  The love he has for his snakes and reptiles was palpable.

I've seen plenty of snakes in museums from behind the safety of glass yet it was at this little museum that I experienced the awe and thrill of viewing live snakes without a barrier between them and me.

I was captivated by a beautiful red-bellied black snake balancing upright as it tried to peer over the top of it's enclosure - a corrugated iron water-tank that had been cut in half.  The ruby red underbelly of this creature was extraordinarily beautiful and I had never seen a snake in an upright posture like that before - or since.

Another corrugated iron water-tank created a pit, the bottom of which was a seething carpet of Eastern brown snakes and I never knew that there were so many shades of brown.  This species is responsible for the most amount of deaths-by-snakebite in Australia.  They're also the species that gets killed the most just for passing through places where humans happen to be.  Eastern Browns are temperamental and dangerous : I would be too after decades of having my kinfolk slaughtered for no particularly good reason.  It's not complicated really.  If you don't bother a brownie, it won't bother you.

Those are the two memories from that visit which have stayed with me.  I can't really remember anything else as vividly.  Just the serpent handler, the ruby red belly of the dancing black snake and the living carpet of Eastern browns.

Naracoorte.

From 1983-1999, I had a South Australian penpal who lived in Naracoorte for a few years. Her husband was a signwriter and they moved there with great expectations of a new life, yet the townspeople didn't let them in to the community : they were outsiders.  Folks from the big city of Adelaide and, well, they do things differently in the country.

I found that out for myself when I moved from the big smoke of Melbourne to live in a parochial town in rural Victoria.  There's a popular belief that 'country people are friendly'.  Well, yes they are.  If you're another country person that is.  They aint as friendly to city people.  The only 'country' people that are friendly, are those that were city people themselves and they're never considered 'locals' by the real locals. 

As someone once told me : you're not a local by country standards if you don't have a great-grandpappy buried in the cemetary.

In one small country-town, I happen to have a great-great-grandpappy pushing up daisies in the cemetary, yet I'm not a "local" because I wasn't born or raised in that Wimmera backwater : despite being related to 70% of the people living there who were.  For folks that are stuck in their ways, they sure know how to shift the goal-posts.  I like country people: it's the small-town mentality that gives me the yippee ki-yay go and fuck you very muchness.

The correspondence with this penpal ceased after 1999 and I figured she was hale and healthy with her husband and two daughters and life was good.  Then one day in 2002, I got a letter from her out-of-the-blue.  She had tracked down somebody she hoped was me via the internet and wrote a letter on the off-chance that the address she found belonged to the penpal she once had.

I replied in the affirmative. 

When she wrote again, bringing me up to speed with her life, I was painfully reminded of how nothing prepares you for your destiny and how weeks, months and years can elapse with you thinking that everything is warm and rosy for the other, when it fact, they have been experiencing a circle of Hell that staggers the imagination.

My former penpal told me she had been diagnosed with Temporal Lobe epilepsy that was drug-resistant and had undergone surgery to alleviate the symptoms, yet sadly fell into the small percentage of people who develop post-surgery psychosis.  One day she believed her husband was going to kill her, bundled up her two daughters and drove to the police station to report her fears.  Her husband was taken into custody and she was admitted as an involuntary patient to the psych ward of a hospital where she got the full strait-jacket treatment, ECT and medicated to the gills.

Eventually her marriage broke down and her husband was granted full custody of the children and she could only see them for supervised visits. Her husband was a good and kind man, bewildered of course, and bought her a unit to live in and made sure all her financial needs were covered.

They were teenage sweethearts.  They had been together for a long time.  They had lived in Naracoorte and in all that time when we were writing, exchanging 2-3 letters a week, she never told me about the Snake Museum.

Funny that.

The reconnection of the old penpal friendship didn't stick : neither of us were the same people that we used to be, and the people that we had become were too different.  She wanted to reestablish a dynamic that I had pulled away from providing in the first place.  I miss my friend, yet she is as mad as a cut snake and I don't handle serpents very well.  She is never far from my thoughts though.

There but for the grace of God, go I. 

With the deepest respect Comrades.

"I think we are all of us ill prepared for what is to come and I don't care what shape it takes. And whatever comes my guess is that it will have small power to sustain us. These old people I talk to, if you could of told em that there would be people on the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses speakin a language they couldn't even understand, well, they just flat out wouldn't of believed you. But what if you'd of told em it was their own grandchildren? Well, all that is signs and wonders but it don't tell you how it got that way. And it dont tell you nothin about how it's fixin to get neither. Part of it was I always thought I could at least someway put things right and I guess I just don't feel that way no more. I don't know what I do feel like. I feel like them old people I was talkin about."  ~ Sheriff Bell, No Country for Old Men

Doug Anthony Allstars - for a beautiful acapella rendition of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine"

Get Your Transit of Venus T-shirt

Image sourced from Sydney Observatory

The Sydney Observatory marquee was full to the seams as Nick Lomb, Sydney Observatory Curator of Astronomy and author of ‘Transit of Venus: 1631 to the present’ held us in thrall with his presentation about the fascinating history of the transit of Venus. (clickum for full story)

Singing the Cosmos: Ruby, the Rainbow Serpent & Prometheus

The first woman in radio astronomy, Australian Ruby Payne-Scott 

History of Scientific Women


Asteroid 2012 KP 24, a smallish rock about 25 meters (80 feet) across, will pass pretty close to the Earth on May 28, buzzing us at a distance of about
30,000 kilometers (18,000 miles)51,000 kilometers (32,000 miles) [Note: the numbers at JPL have updated, making the pass a bit farther out than the numbers I originally used]. That’s close as passes go, but still a clean miss.

Closest approach is at about 15:00 UTC (11:00 a.m. Eastern US time) on May 28.
It’ll actually pass Earth closer than our geosynchronous satellites!

At closest approach, it’ll whiz by at about 13 km/sec (30,000 mph). I’ll note I calculated most of these numbers based on the JPL site linked above, and they may be refined over the next day or two [see?]. It was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey (as so many near-Earth asteroids are) on the evening of May 23/24.

art by George Ward Tingari 

The Rainbow Serpent

Lake Rason is located 187.21kms East of Laverton, 363.64kms SouthWest of Warburton and 374.99kms NorthEast of Kambalda, in the state of Western Australia. On May 23 — the day after the SpaceX dragon capsule launch - International Space Station astronaut André Kuipers snapped this shot of the Earth: except he didn’t say what this feature was!

Lake Rason, when full, covers an area of around 16000 hectares and is located in WA. Lake Rason is fed by the Bertha Creek (28S37 124E22) 

Towns, villages or cities near the lake include Laverton, the town of Leonora, and the city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy did the detective work with identifying this dry lake feature as belonging to Australia and not Peru.  Lucky we have Phil! 

Great Victoria Desert

There are two wetlands of regional significance contained within the Great Victoria Desert: Lake Minigwal and Lake Rason. Both are significant for the maintenance of ecological processes. Lake Minigwal is a seasonal intermittent saline lake with a static trend and in good condition. Threatening processes include feral animals and a changed hydrology due to de-watering of mine sites and discharge of hypersaline water into lake beds. Lake Rason is also a seasonal intermittent saline lake with a static trend, but it is in near-pristine condition with mineral exploration and feral animals as threatening processes.

(Source: Australian Natural Resources Atlas - Biodiversity Assessment: Great Victoria Desert)

Image Source: Dr Hick's Range  Lake Rason

The Mineral Explorer

Aura Energy (ASX: AEE) is a uranium explorer with advanced projects in Sweden, West Africa and Australia. The company is focusing on two main projects: the Storsjön Project located in Sweden’s Alum Shale Province, one of the largest depositories of uranium in the world; and the highly prospective Reguibat Project in Mauritania.

Aura Energy’s main projects in Sweden are based on the Alum Shales, which have been historically known as one of the largest depositories of uranium in the world. Aura Energy has exploration permits and applications in three regions in west Africa: the Reguibat Craton in Mauritania, the Mauritanide Fold belt in Mauritania, and the Tim Mersoi Basin in Niger.

Current Operations: 

The Neale Project comprises two large exploration licence applications covering 377 square kilometres of Lake Rason and the radiometrically anomalous channel that leads southeastwards into the Eucla Basin. The Project extends over a 57 kilometre length of the drainage system.


There is a striking similarity between the geological and geographical setting of the Neale Project and those of the Ponton and Mulga Rocks uranium deposits to the southwest. The sandstone-hosted deposits formed in Tertiary palaeo-channels cut into the eastern margin of the Archaean Yilgarn Block. At Ponton and Mulga Rocks, oxidised groundwater carrying uranium is interpreted as having come into contact with carbonaceous material in the channel sediments, causing the uranium to precipitate.


The digital elevation model shows that the relief pattern at Neale resembles that in the Ponton area, adjacent to Aura's Kirgella Rocks Project. From this comparison, it is interpreted that the Lake Rason channel is filled with Tertiary sediments similar to those at Ponton and Mulga Rocks, providing a good exploration opportunity to test their potential.


Radiometric coverage is incomplete for the project area. There is standard Geoscience Australia coverage for the western part of the Project Area. However, the eastern section has been flown recently, and only a preliminary radiometric image has been released by the Western Australia Department of Industry and Resources. However, strong radiometric features occur along the length of Lake Rason. In addition the preliminary image for the eastern part of the Project Area indicates that these radiometric features extend to the eastern end of the lake, and along the drainage system to the south.

No systematic exploration for any commodity is reported for the area of the Neale Project tenements. W. Johnson and J.W. Johnson held a Temporary Reserve that included part of Lake Rason within the Neale Project in 1981. The tenement holders carried out field follow-up of a single radiometric anomaly within the Neale Project. This was located on the northern shore of Lake Rason, where lake sediments overlay highly weathered sandstones of the Paterson Formation. One sample that was assayed from this locality contained 25ppm uranium. This indicates that the processes that lead to calcrete uranium deposition are occurring in the Lake Rason area, and confirms the potential for this style of mineralisation in the Project Area.

A Promethean Flame

Mother Toola's Wisdom: Play. Eat. Nap. Repeat.

We are game-playing, fun-having creatures: we are the otters of the universe.

~ Richard Bach

"It was clear to everyone on the sea otter exhibit team that Toola, not me, was really in charge. When she wanted to work on something in a training session, she’d give me a ‘look’ or vocalize and I’d immediately cave in and do whatever she wanted. Now that she’s passed, we’re in need of another ‘head trainer’ to run the place.”
—Monterey Bay Aquarium associate curator of mammals Christine DeAngelo remembers Toola, the 16-year-old sea otter who passed away Saturday, March 3 2012, from the infirmities of age.

Watch Toola on The Awl

~ ~ ~

An animal communicator, who passed on a message from the cow consciousness, said that the only contract is a contract to teach and to learn love.

I note a subtle nuance there : a contract to teach, not a contract to teach love.

As a sometimes animal communicator myself, I sense that animals teach us how to participate in our own care. We are human animals and can easily forget the animal of our nature and dwell overmuch in our mind, our logic and intellect.  The cows say the human species' choise is to take the path of greed, excess and ill-health. 

Well, cows would say that and perhaps something to remember the next time you chow down on twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun.

As a Consultant in Sacred Contracts & Archetypes, over the years I have been questioning this concept of 'sacred contract' and how, in some circles, archetypes have been misused to stigmatise the behaviour of people seeking resolution of valid grievances with family members, partners, friends, colleagues, and just about every vicissitude that life throws our way.

I don't teach Sacred Contracts a la Myss style anymore.  Over the last few years I have shifted away from the Mystic Macca interpretations of this journey of being behind the wheel of a human body on a planet where most of the other species have fangs, claws, fur, scales, feathers, flippers, venom, and nice tough skins. 

We are rather ill-equipped and I sense some species feel compassion for us, while others are sizing us up for breakfast.

Many years ago whilst taking a shower, one of my cats sauntered into the bathroom, popped its head around the shower curtain, looked aghast at my butt and I sensed the question: 

Where's your tail!?!

That lovely black-and-white cat, called James, taught me that I could communicate with animals and there is a sad spot in my heart that out of all my cats, James, was the only one who went into that dark night without being held in my arms.  Feline AIDS : fucking sod of a disease!

How I came to be taught by James is a long story.  It involved a schizophrenic work colleague, her unneutered cat who had a litter of six kittens and my offer to look after the little feline family while said work colleague and her boyfriend went on holiday.  After a few days, this one one little black-and-white kitten developed a lump on its tummy, so I took it to the vet to have it checked out, fearing it might be a hernia.  I assumed this work colleague would want me to take good care of her pets. The vet said the lump was just an abscess, administered an injection, instructed me on how to care for the kitten; which meant separating him from the others for a while.

I was astonished at how this little fluff-butt flourished with receiving my undivided attention. How his personality just popped out and asserted itself : no longer lost in the crowd.  Not just another tumbling, rough-housing, one-in-six: he had this aura of dignity.  When I returned him to his mum and siblings, I noticed he didn't seem too pleased about it and shot me that look of feline disdain that belied the tender weeks of his age.

The work colleague came back from holiday and upon collecting her cats, was not at all impressed with the course of action I took, in taking this kitten to the vet.  Actually, she wasn't impressed with the bill for $25 that I gave her and my request to be compensated, which I thought was fair and reasonable, considering I had saved her a heap of money by looking after her cats for 'free' for two weeks.  It would have cost her more to put them into a boarding cattery yet you just can't reason with some people, and schizophrenics are particularly afflicted with a sense of entitlement.

Which is why I mentioned the schizophrenia detail.  Not to stigmatise the behaviour of this work colleague; just to pass on a message from a non-human consciousness, that an entitlement mentality lies at the core of all distortions in the human psyche, and is particularly embedded in humans who exhibit a querulous paranoia.


I digress.

A week or two later, this work colleague calls by my home, not with the $25 she said she would pay me, but with the black-and-white kitten who didn't look like he'd been having a good time since I last saw him.  She said that she felt this kitten belonged with me and that if I didn't take him, her partner said that he would take it somewhere and dump it.

I lifted this little kitten out of the box, brought him up to my face for a head-butt and said: I shouldn't have let you go in the first place. 

And that's how James came into my life and shared eleven years of it. A couple of years later, I took up quilting and the task of Colour Consultant & Chief Quilt Inspector was one that James took very seriously.  During my mystic dark years of agoraphobia from 1990-1993, quilting kept me sane; kept me productive, and kept me afloat in those same waters that schizophrenics drown in.

James loved that I was home 24/7 and had lots of time for playing, eating and napping while my Shaman self was cocooning in quilts of many colours. 

When going through Hell, one needs a seeing-eye cat.

In 1995, my then-husband and I relocated to the country where there are no six-foot high wooden fences and big skies filled with more stars than one ever sees in the cities.  The first time I carried James outside, he was so scared of the wide outdoors that he pee-ed in fright.  All down the front of my body. He was a very proper cat and I sensed he was embarrased about soiling himself, which he had never done before, and I stilled my tongue to not grouch at him and speak words that shamed and blamed.

I sensed how bewildered he was and just held him close in to my body and softly chatted away, explaining where we were, what this tree was, what that flower was, where I was taking him.  I walked slowly, meandering about the large yard, weaving back and forth from this tree, to that tree, letting him smell the leaves and take in this new environment.  I paused when his body tightened, only moving on after he relaxed...slowly...slowly....approaching the far northern border of the property.  Turning around every now and then so he could still see the house and being very aware that for a city-slicker cat like him, this country gig was more than a little alien. 

After a slow spiralling path, I reached the far perimeter of the block, holding James firmly yet gently in my arms - he hadn't wriggled once - I stopped and we gazed across this vast paddock that stretched on for miles and looked at the black-and-white cows that were grazing there. 

One looked up and moo-ed : Wassup?

James dug his claws in, looking frantically up at me, wide-eyed with fear.  I laughed and drew him him up for a head-butt and said: It's okay.  That's a cow. That's where the milk comes from that you like to drink.

He looked at me, amazement replacing fear:  No shit?

No shit, Jimmy-Wimmy.   He looked back at the cows and I felt I had taught him something that he didn't know. That milk comes from cows, not from plastic bottles in the fridge.

I have never forgotten that wild and precious day. All creatures seek life, happiness and freedom from fear. 
James remembers that I held him for as long as it took for his fear to ebb away. He loved the country. His bones are still there.

Otters give us the all important gift of laughter. They are joyful, talkative creatures who float in the womb of the Earth, enjoying her bounty and playing much of the time.  If Otter has come to you, see what areas of your life can do with a bit more laughter and lightness. ~ Gary Buffalo Horn Man

Must Surf

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Primordial Pastry

Your Sweet Devotion

My Rumi-reciting friend
You are becoming the object
Of your sweet devotion.
You drip with the same honey
That sweetened
Rumi and Hafiz’s poems.

My friend
You are the honey
Inside this honeycomb existence.
From your bright nothingness comes the taste of God.

Yes, I know you have your
moments of doubt.
But each one brings you closer
to the doubtless.
So throw caution to the wind
And dare to love
Even the bee’s sting.

- Adyashanti
My Secret is Silence

Lack of contact with nature 'increasing allergies'

By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News

A lack of exposure to a "natural environment" could be resulting in more urban dwellers developing allergies and asthma, research has suggested.

Finnish scientists say certain bacteria, shown to be beneficial for human health, are found in greater abundance in non-urban surroundings. (click to read full article)

The Art of Extreme Self-Masochism

It is not often that I visit a wellknown cyber library of New Age/Ascension cult-waffling, yet it can be good for a laugh.

Take this recent offering:

It all started with the dishwasher. After a good night's sleep, I walked into the kitchen one morning to make a cup of tea and found my husband loading dirty dishes into the top rack. I stood quietly by, taking special note of how he "tossed" them in without much concern for how they were placed. Once he was done and safely in his office, I, knowing full well that the dishwasher needed to be loaded correctly, walked over, opened the front of the machine, and proceeded to rearrange what he had done. Just then, Beavis* walked back into the room.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Nothing," I replied, looking guilty as hell.

"No really, Butthead*, what are you doing?" he demanded.

I quickly explained how important it was to put the dishes in the dishwasher in a certain way to insure that they'd be cleaned properly. Before I could finish my well-honed argument, he exclaimed:

"That's ridiculous. They'll get clean regardless of how you put them in. Why don't you just tell the truth? You're a control freak and since I didn't do it your way, you need to fix it."

I felt like a little girl caught in the act of stealing candy at the corner store. I stood there, head bent, looking down at my slippers.

"Butthead," he explained, "what do you think goes through my mind when I come into the kitchen and find you redoing what I just did?"

I looked up with a sheepish grin on my face.

"It makes me say 'Why bother? It's never right and she's just going to do it over anyway.' So I don't help out and that's why you end complaining that you never get the support you need. Rather than receive my help, you criticize it."

Ouch. I hate when you're face to face with the person who knows you better than anyone else in the world and there's no where to hide.  Beavis was right. I was a control freak and when it came to asking for or receiving help, I got an automatic "F."

(* names changed because it's MY blog and I can write what I like)

Damn right!   An automatic "F", for Butthead who doesn't realise she is in a highly manipulative and psychically abusive relationship with a partner who knows that she prefers the dishwasher to be loaded properly ~ that this is a small detail that is important to her.  How easy would it be for Beavis to take the time to load the dishwasher Butthead's way once in a while......to make the effort.....once in a while.

You tell me who the real control freak is here and just how adept the freak is at getting the other person to believe that they are the one with the problem?  Daddy's Little Girl just might wake up one day to what is really going down with the Dishwasher Clown who lurks around the corner and waits to ambush her with a surprise attack. 

Oh well.....this is the stuff and nonsense that New Age nitwits thrive on...and when one considers the amount of energy it takes to run a dishwasher and the amount of water it uses, this calibre of anecdote is more EGO-friendly than eco-friendly.

Here's three syllables to meditate upon:

Hand Washing

As in wash your hands of a partner who knows what irritates you and just keeps on doing it anyways. Honey, that's a way clever sadist.  But I guess all these amusing little anecdotes help sell your crappy books.

Angel of the Gap: guerilla astrology

Astrologically, a Jupiter sextile Sun aspect has been popping balloons and burning boats from 23rd May and will keep locking and loading until 1 June 2012.  A cosmic Jovian wave that will carry me to the outlying reef of the Venus transit across the face of the Sun a few days later.  Last Venus Transit I will see in my current physical form.  I cannot remember being aware of the first in 2004, only that that was the year in which the life I had planned went pear-shaped and nothing prepared me for that.

I lay back in the arms of the cosmos, floating contentedly in the ocean of timespace, knowing that in the gap between 8 June 2004 and 5 June 2012, I have been well prepared to receive the spirits of aloha and kokua and to fulfill a vow I made when I was very small; to do something to help people - like - my Mother.

To help people find my mother agreeable?  And to which mother do I refer - biological, Earth, divine or archetypal.

To help people who bear a resemblance to my mother; is that what I meant?  Again, do I refer to a biological mother or the Great Mother or to Earth as our mother.  As we are all composed of the same elements of earth, then we all bear a resemblance to that mother. 

As for our biological mothers. Well, we all fear that we'll turn out just like them!  Nobody wants to be just like their mother.  It is an off-the-cuff remark: a Pholian jibe that strikes most of us in a chironic Achilles' Heel.

Recently, I learned of the mortal passing of the 'Angel of the Gap' - Don Ritchie - a local hero who
lived near The Gap at Watson's Bay in NSW for over five decades and in that time he talked at least 160 people out of committing suicide.

People like my biological mother.

The philosophy of angels is simple, uncluttered, and contained in 33 words or less. Mr Ritchie said:

 "Never be afraid to speak to those who you feel are in need.

Always remember the power of the simple smile, a helping hand,

a listening ear and a kind word."

Yesterday, was a way freaky Friday kind of day in which I experienced the whole of this angelic philosophy which we really need in our knapsacks while we journey on this planet amongst golden imbeciles.

Andrew Hamilton, the consulting Editor of Eureka Street, writes of suicide being the new leprosy.
Close but no cigar.  There is nothing new on this Earth, only people who have grown new ways in which to see that which has always moved amongst us.

I have come to feel that the practice of astrology, especially natal astrology, is one of the more sublimely insidious ways in which that which has always moved amongst us, seduces the majority to float contentedly in the sewer of timespace; whilst contemporaneously infusing them with the belief, that they are actually getting someplace.

 'Five men were sent on a mission behind enemy lines.

Four never returned.

The one who came back was badly wounded.

He died before he could tell what happened.'

This is a story designed to exclude the hearer.

We have to ask ourselves, those of us who work in the Mysteries, those of us who are in the healing professions - getting our hands dirty, up to our elbows in the psychic filth of other peoples energies - we have to ask ourselves:

......who prepared me for this.....and what the fuck!

At some stage, some of us realise that we are Shamans for the Where-the-fuck-are-we? tribe and there is really nothing you can do about that, except stay alive as long as you can, do what your skills allow you to do, and remain as good-humoured as you can about the human propensity for mass delusion: mad crowd disease.

Venus last transited across the face of the sun in 1882.  Might account for the eco-steampunk neo-druidic trend that has been around for a while.  Either that or folks are grokking the costume design of  Mad Max and Waterworld and are, once again, romancing the Trickster, the Loki, the Heyókȟa

Serious play.
Deadly fun.

Heyókȟa functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviors to mirror others thereby forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, hatreds, and weakness. They provoke laughter in distressing situations of despair and provoke fear and chaos when people feel complacent and overly secure, to keep them from taking themselves too seriously or believing they are more powerful than they are.

Andrew Hamilton writes: "In Western societies suicide has the same aura that leprosy once had. It also evokes the same fear, which in turn leads to exclusion and to silence. It is seen as the inexplicable rejection of the most fundamental human desire to live. This is the foundation stone of all attempts to find meaning and to shape a human society.

Perhaps this explains why in some cultures, which allowed human life to be taken with cavalier freedom judicially and militarily, the bodies of those who have taken their own lives were treated ignominiously. They were buried outside the common graveyards, and even subjected to ritual execution. It marks a fear that suicide may be contagious and corrode the fabric of society.

The families and friends of those who have taken their own lives suffer doubly from this exclusion. It is hard not to feel at times that people who have taken their own lives have rejected our love, and have chosen to exclude us from their lives. Because suicide is so inexplicable, relatives and friends also commonly feel excluded from conversation. They feel unable to speak about what matters to them".

Serious fun.
Deadly play.

The thing with suicide is that there is no taking backsies and being enamoured with Death, romancing the gravestone is just a hidden way of demonstrating that you do not like your Mother: Earth as mother that is.   Y'all might like to think on that.

To play

Catch a face before it slides
from the plate. Screw in

an unblinking eye. Into one
corner hammer a tent peg

so a smile flaps but
holds good. Now shrug on

an amorphous coat. Hurry.
No. Panic won't make for fast-

buttoning; think reattaching
lead to dog, lock-picking,

wire-cutting. The fork-hand
easy but the truculent right:

a fist, a nest of magnets from
which you pry the index out

and fit it the length of that
silver spine, while those

around you spill the loaded die.

~ Aiden Coleman



 References:

Suicide is the New Leprosy
Vale, Don Ritchie
John Fire Lame Deer
Aiden Coleman, Poet

The Topsy Turvy World

Detail from Netherlandish Proverbs (also called The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World) is a 1559 oil-on-oak painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder which depicts a land populated with literal renditions of Flemish proverbs of the day.

Bruegel's paintings have themes of the absurdity, wickedness and foolishness of mankind, and this painting is no exception. The picture was originally entitled The Blue Cloak or The Folly of the World which indicates he was not intending to produce a mere collection of proverbs but rather a study of human stupidity. Many of the people depicted show the characteristic blank features which Bruegel used to portray fools.

Many Hands Make Light Work

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

~ Marge Piercy

The Size of the Fight for the Pluto in Virgo generation

Living in revolutionary times is only wonderful and romantic when you are in your teens and twenties. When you are over fifty, it messes with your retirement! Because, like it or not, when you are older than forty-something, you are established, even if you’re not part of the Establishment. ~ Lee Lehman

Sputnik was launched October 4, 1957, with Pluto at 1 Virgo. The first moon landing on July 20, 1969 had Pluto at 23 Virgo. But before you wonder about the 23 degrees, consider that the last landing on the moon was by Apollo 17 in 1972 – the year that Pluto’s retrograde cycle took it back into Virgo for the last time.

It’s very easy to see the “can-do” engineering attitude as Virgo. For this brief moment in our history, nerds were cool. But let’s be honest: this was the space race – the USSR and the USA were in a contest over national pride. In other words, what we saw being played out through Virgo was the overbearing mutually assured destruction contest of superpowers, which also resulted in an insane arms race that continues to have severe environmental danger 40 years later.

Thinking about these past passes, I propose the following adjustment to our understanding of Pluto’s transit through a sign: Pride goeth before a fall. We can accordingly note that, while the Pluto in Virgo engineers succeeded spectacularly in getting us to the Moon – we didn’t stay there! We didn’t develop a colony, we didn’t follow up with an observatory. The moon launch became a dead end instead of becoming the gateway to the exploration of our solar system. President Kennedy perfectly embodied the Pluto in Leo call to put a man on the moon – but he said it while Pluto was in Virgo. The vision that got us there couldn’t encompass the concept of knowledge and engineering for its own sake – once the deed was accomplished, the funding was cut. We went for the wrong reason, and having gotten there, couldn’t sustain it. Pluto in Leo was gone, Pluto in Virgo spent, and the needs of Pluto in Libra would direct our attention elsewhere.

In the words of President Lyndon Johnson: “It's unfortunate, but the way Americans are, now that they have developed all of this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away.”

Extracts pirated from Hope in the Time of Pluto in Capricorn

The Emperor Wears Pajamas

You are handed a life, and if you're lucky enough and smart enough, you become the person you want to be. My life is in direct response to the way that I was raised, which is true for everybody. Much of it is still connected to the boy who dreamed the impossible dreams. If you don't remember who you were, you don't know who you are. And I love the boy who dreamed the dreams. ~ Hugh Hefner (1926 - )

Did she make you cry
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of love
Is it over now--do you know how
Pick up the pieces and go home.

Rock on--ancient queen
Follow those who pale
In your shadow

Rulers make bad lovers
You better put your kingdom up for sale

Did she make you cry
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of love
Is it over now--do you know how
Pick up the pieces and go home.

~ words by Stevie Nicks

 For the coming Venus Transit of June 2012, we can use archetypes and imagery to imagine the Sun (representing persons in power) as a great lord or king, such as Midas, with the golden touch, who sits on his throne controlling everything with his gold; in fact, all he touches turns to gold. Everything he sees is for his use and everything has a dollar value. Our king is nearly exhausted with this tiresome ‘golden touch,’ when, from out of the shadows, glides a graceful and beautiful goddess in flowing robes.........Annalee Smith, TMA, April 2012

Playboy leaves Town

Kiss My Ring

There is much kerfuffle and speculation within astrological circles about the annular eclipse and I found myself ponderosing about Saturn.  Found myself thinking:

If I emptied myself of everything I have read about the qualities astrologists have applied to Saturn, then what would I know about Saturn?

Turning to astronomy, I know that Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun - the sixth or the sickest planet?

I know that Saturn is twice as far from Earth as Jupiter and that its most distinctive feature is the complex system of rings that surrounds it.  Saturn has a large family of moons.

I also just found out that my username in a well-known astrological forum, happens to be the name of one of Saturn's moons : Phoebe, which travels backwards.

The planet Saturn is visible to the nake eye for about 10 months of each year, and it looks like a bright yellowish star.  Except planets don't twinkle.

If we stripped Saturn of all its negative associations and looked at it the way we look at any other planet, we would approach its natal meaning and its lessons by transit with the assumption that the laws Saturn governs would be taught to us by the most cosmically efficient and graceful means possible. We will have noticed that the universe functions this way with the other planets, and we would expect Saturn to be no exception.

Imagine what our lives would be like if encountering an obstacle were just like any other event… except that we paid more attention.
~ Extracted from 'Saturn Without Suffering' by Jessica Murray, 2005

A little suffering is good for the soul ~ Leonard 'Bones' McCoy

  

Of Sky Gods, Mitans & Ordinary Tortals: Carrying the Fire

"...when the psyche is dominated by Prometheus with no integration of Saturn....Promethean energy then tends to be embodied in compulsive and unintelligent forms: rebellious in ineffective ways, stubbornly eccentric or nonconformist, unreliable and undisciplined, constantly proclaiming new ideas with neither substantial basis nor lasting value....Prometheus needs a structure for his revolution, and Saturn is that structure." (Tarnas Prometheus the Awakener 95, p112)

British-born, Canadian Gerry Goddard was an astrologer, metaphysician, transpersonalist, consultant, writer, teacher and scholar whose special interest was the bridge between foundational astrology and the field of post-Jungian transpersonal studies. He held an honours BA in philosophy from the University of British Columbia and a degree in library science from the University of Toronto. Gerry died unexpectedly in November of 2007 at the age of 64.

Not Drowning, Waving

Freud believed that in states of mental disorder, the suffering person can be lost to the world of form and definition, and dropped into a formless chaos of undifferentiated life, where the boundary lines between the ego and the external world become uncertain.  This is why psychotic patients often report that they are 'at sea' and cannot distinguish the outlines of objects, such as chairs or tables, because their perception is blurred, and everything appears to be in a swirling chaos.

Psychosis plunges us into an oceanic void which precedes form, where everything is intermixed with everything else, and nothing can be perceived as separate from the chaotic stream. Jung would call this the descent (or nekyia) into the undifferentiated life of the consciousness, although it shares with spiritual experience the overriding sense that 'all things are one', that everything is connected and nothing is separate. However in psychosis this is far from a pleasant or elevating experience. It is deeply destructive and the ego seems to drown in the ocean of being, rather than be swept along blissfully by its current as in states of transcendental meditation or spiritual rebirth.

This is a vital point of difference that we need to make clear. What the mystic or guru experiences as a state of bliss can be experienced by the psychotic as a terrifying nightmare of disintegration. The waves of preconscious existence can be destructive, like a tsunami or tidal wave, but they can also bring healing if we relate to them in the right way. The ocean of being is the same ocean in madness and transcendence, but the difference between spiritual awakening and psychosis depends on the nature of the consciousness that encounters the ocean. Here we might learn from observations made by anthropologist Joseph Campbell in Myths to Live By:

The difference [between the mystic and the schizophrenic] is equivalent to that between a diver who can swim and one who cannot. The mystic, endowed with native talents for this sort of thing and following, stage by stage, the instructions of a master, enters the waters and finds he can swim; whereas the schizophrenic, unprepared, unguided, and ungifted, has fallen or has intentionally plunged, and is drowning.  Can he be saved?  If a line is thrown to him, will he grab it? . . . What I am saying is that our schizophrenic patient is actually experiencing inadvertently that same beatific ocean deep within that the yogi and saint are ever striving to enjoy; except that, whereas they are swimming in it, he is drowning.

Jung warns that if the ego 'lacks any critical approach to the unconscious ... it is easily overpowered and becomes identical with the contents that have been assimilated'.  He says it is a 'psychic' catastrophe when the ego is assimilated by the self'.  Jung insists that the ego must find a 'right relation' to the unconscious, and this involves, first of all, the ego preserving its integrity in the face of the ocean of being that makes up the collective unconscious.

Image sourced from: california photo scout

If the ego is not properly formed, if it has been damaged by trauma or eclipsed by devastating inner or outer experiences, it is not in a fit state to make contact with the ocean of being. When the ocean comes towards it the ego will drown, because it needs to hold its integrity before the onslaught of the unconscious. If it can't hold its integrity it is lost in the water and becomes a subhuman fish swimming in the sea, or, more fatally, it dissolves into the ocean like an aspirin dropped in a tumber of water.  In states of psychotic depression or anxiety, dreams will indicate that the ego has been submerged under a wave, or lost to some distant galaxy or star.  The metaphors will constantly change, but the message will be the same: an eternal force has obliterated the temporal personality. This becomes problematical, as I will explain, if the sufferer is a follower of a cult or creed which views such self-obliteration as a spiritual achievement.

Classic symptoms of such 'psychic dissolution' are inflation, depression, paranoia, mania, catatonia and bipolar disorder. In each of these states, the ego has been eclipsed and replaced by archetypal contents that substitute for the personality - the ego has been assimilated by the unconscious. In severe cases of psychosis, this may involve identifying oneself with an archetypal power or figure, in which the person claims to be Jesus, Caesar or Napoleon.  Whoever the chosen figure is, it is apparent that the ego has been annulled by the unconscious, which has wiped out the human element and replaced it with an archetype that exerts a destructive impact.

Extract from Gods and Diseases: Making sense of our physical and mental wellbeing by David Tacey, Associate Professor in Humanities, La Trobe University, Melbourne. Published 2011