Beltane is Nigh...

At Beltane, the veil between our world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest...

Tomorrow marks, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, the arrival of Beltane, sometimes called May Day - a time to usher in the warm exuberance of summer and banish (for a time) the cold and dreary winter. Festivities begin tonight, the eve of this change from one season to the next and, although my spirits have been dampened by the passing of my exceptional cat Nancy, I will light a small fire in the fire pit to honor her memory and keep it close to me. (I have already made a talisman necklace to wear for this very purpose.) The fire will honor any others who have gone on, including my brother's cat Naala, whose spirit also passed on Saturday, not long after Nancy's did.

Nancy with my mom (2008 or 2009)

I plan to write a final posting (well, maybe not final...) about Nancy, a eulogy of sorts, to help me with my grieving. After fifteen years with this little black cat, there comes a horrible, heart-rending feeling of loss when I notice that she's not sitting next to me, and I can't yet enjoy the lovely sunny days we're beginning to have because she isn't here to share them with me. I know there is an ebb and flow to these emotions, but it will take time and practice to better manage them. 

It's waiting for us all...

Tonight, though, I will celebrate Beltane with a small fire and hope in my heart that my little Nancy is where she needs to be. Small pieces of her are forever embedded in my soul and I miss... miss MISS her so freaking much right now... 

For some history and lore about Beltane, visit the Witchvox site:

http://www.witchvox.com

I'll write a bit more about my own Beltane revels...

She's Gone

My beloved Nancy - her spirit was willing to carry on but her body was not cooperating in the least, so I sent her on her way - the pain of it is - I will have to find a word besides excruciating, or intense - robust comes to mind, but it's not the right word...


She is lying in state, upstairs, near the sunny window where the crystals hang, sprinkling tiny rainbows all around her to help light her way to the Otherworld, where all the Others are waiting - I have cleaned her up as best I can and I will wrap her and put her in the ground, where she will give back what's left of her to the Earth

So: At last it's over, my sweet and innocent one - you no longer are at the mercy of your well-intentioned mistress... be at peace

Nancy at play - 2009

Nancy napping

If tears could build a stairway,
And memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to Heaven
And bring you home again.
~ Author Unknown


My soul is full of whispered song;
My blindness is my sight;
The shadows that I feared so long
Are all alive with light.
~ Alice Cary, Dying Hymn

Just relaxing

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,

Love leaves a memory no one can steal. 

~ From a headstone in Ireland

Nancy, My Love, My Light

Last night and this morning Nancy, my wonderful precious cat Nancy, was losing a lot of blood from her mouth. For a minute I thought she had died in my arms but she's still breathing - now she's sitting up and looking around - I feel so helpless

I made an appointment to have her put down this morning (9:15) - I'm not ready, and I suppose neither is she, but I just don't think there's anything the vet can do

So perhaps I should give her up, my Nancy, my love...

It's so painful to write these words - I can't even see the freaking screen right now - but I have to post a pretty picture of her to remind me of her gentle and brilliant spirit that will live on

Oh it hurts so bad I can hardly type anymore - so I am going to stop now

Coming Soon: The Festival of Optimism

I am looking forward to the upcoming pagan "holiday" known as Beltane...

I got this plaster Green Man at a Renaisssance Faire back in the '80s

 

Beltane or Beltaine ( /ˈbɛlteɪn/) is the Anglicized spelling of Old Irish  Bel(l)taine or Beltine (modern Irish Bealtaine [ˈbʲal̪ˠt̪ˠənʲə], Scottish Gaelic Bealltainn [ˈbʲal̪ˠt̪ˠənʲ]), the Gaelic name for either the month of May or the festival that takes place on the first day of May.

...which starts, my young yet very knowledgeable friend "Miss J" informed me, as ancient hallowed days tend to do: on the night before - and that would be April 30 into May 1...

In Neopaganism, Bealtaine is considered a cross-quarter day, marking the midpoint in the Sun's progress between the spring equinox and summer solstice. The astronomical date for this midpoint is closer to 5 May or 7 May, but this can vary from year to year.

What I love about Beltane (and this time of year) is this:

According to Nora Chadwick, in Celtic Ireland "Beltine (or Beltaine) was celebrated on 1 May, a spring-time festival of optimism. Fertility ritual again was important, in part perhaps connecting with the waxing power of the sun, symbolized by the lighting of fires through which livestock were driven, and around which the people danced in a sunwise direction"

This is a good time for recharging and renewal, to cast off the old clinging shreds of winter and rejoice in the return of the Sun and new life on the planet. I hope tapping into this energy will help me to finally be able to get organized, which will in turn allow me to be more productive, and find closure on more than a few issues in my life - yes!!!!

Nancy taking a sun bath after her water bath

I will light a small fire next Monday evening, tossing in some dried herbs to cleanse and balance my spirit (sage, mugwort and wormwood) and perhaps again Tuesday night (all depending on the weather, of course) On Wednesday, Nancy and I sat outside in the sweet sunshine for quite a while after I gave her a much-needed bath. It was a lovely day, after all the nice rain!

In Irish mythology, the beginning of the summer season for the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians started at Bealtaine. Great bonfires would mark a time of purification and transition, heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year, and were accompanied with ritual acts to protect the people from any harm by Otherworldly spirits, such as the Aos Sí. Like the festival of Samhain, opposite Beltane on 31 October, Beltane was also a time when the Otherworld was seen as particularly close at hand.

by Howard David Johnson 2008 (?)

If the otherworld is indeed close at hand, I hope it will give me the inspiration I need to continue working on the children's book project (it's sort of a Lemony Snicket meets The Spiderwick Chronicles...) - I need all the help I can get!

(original photos by TJBGoogins/2012)

Faerie image found at: http://paganpages.org

That's Life

I saw this quote posted recently on Facebook and thought it was worth sharing:

Me & my muse (I'll call her "Ell") get a facelift (1990s)

"In life, you will realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet: Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you; but most important are the ones who bring out the best in you, respect you and accept you for who you are. Those are the ones worth keeping."

(Below: The 4 Musketeers - my best friends from high school at my wedding, 2009)

I've seen that quote before but I could not find it attributed to anyone - I also found this, though, which I like even more:

Gareth Williams' art for E.B. White's Charlotte's Web

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.” 

— Charlotte, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

(image courtesy of Flavorwire)

http://flavorwire.com/260278/garth-williams-gorgeous-original-illustrations-for-charlottes-web

What a wonderful book - I wonder if I still have a copy...

For now, I am struck dumb by the serendipity of this moment: a simple illustration showing a small spider "spinning" her unique philosophy on the meaning of friendship - with a pig, yet - now that IS terrific!


"From now until the end of time - I am your friend and you are mine." (TJBGoogins) To my friends: you know who you are and I love you all.


Peace ~ Love ~ Light

Animism or Pantheism?

Yesterday I wrote about the meditation I went to and how we were honoring the Earth and the "elementals" (air, fire, water & earth)

I was online Googling this and that, trying to find images to go along with that posting, and discovered it was quite difficult to find any artistic representation of the four traditional symbols for the four elements, at least all four together (air = sylph, a sort of nymph of the air; fire = salamander, a fire lizard but not a dragon; water = undine, a mermaid-like creature; and gnome, a small entity such as a leprechan or tree spirit - except for the salamander, the elementals are humanoid in many respects) 

What I kept finding were either scantily clad women (in colors of indigo or silver, red-orange, blue, green) or odd little cartoons/toys; however, I did find an image of Pan, an ancient forest deity, that led to a link that I followed to a Wikipedia page about animism...

Pan's goat legs are hidden from view

"Animism in the widest sense, i.e., thinking of objects as animate, and treating them as if they were animate, is near-universal."

"The biologist Rupert Sheldrake has supported a form of animism which David Skrbina calls "a unique form of pansychism". Sheldrake in his book The Rebirth of Nature: New Science and the Revival of Animism (1991) has claimed that Morphic fields "animate organisms at all levels of complexity, from galaxies to giraffes, and from ants to atoms". In his book The Science Delusion (2012) he wrote that the philosophy of the organism (organicism) has updated the ideas of animism as it treats all of nature as alive."

It is sometimes confused with pantheism:

"Pantheism is the view that the Universe (or Nature) and God (or divinity) are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek (pan) meaning "all" and the Greek (theos) meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of relating to the Universe.  Although there are divergences within Pantheism, the central ideas found in almost all versions are the Cosmos as an all-encompassing unity and the sacredness of Nature."

There's Pan again, considered by many to be the source of the nature deities, including the Green Man and perhaps even the Devil (the horns, however, are a reference to his association with sheep and goats, and go along with the rest of his anatomy). Pan, depicted here gathering grapes, was also associated with Dionysos/Dionysus (a.k.a. Bacchus, Greek and Roman god of wine, vegetation, pleasure and festivities.)

Robbins' fourth novel, published 1984

If you haven't read Tom Robbins' "Jitterbug Perfume" you should put it on your list for the summer. It is an absurdly and weirdly wonderful love story entwined with corporate espionage, time travel and the god Pan. 

image of Pan :  http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Pan.html

Now go out there and worship some trees or something!

More On Color Therapy

Recently, I explained that I was playing around with using colored light for relaxing and healing, beginning with the color Lemon (to help my cat with her mouth problems) - I have also been using the two cooler colors (Indigo and Turquoise) to off-set the warmer yellow vibration. It's very pretty - and it's so relaxing that both of us (the cat and I) fell asleep one night with the Indigo light on us


This is what Indigo looks like...

The color Indigo

Turquoise was harder to photograph... More to come!

Turquoise is actually a bit more green than seen here

Every Day Is Earth Day...

"The Elementals" - acrylic on canvas by Josephine Wall

Wind blows

Fire burns

Water flows

Earth turns

by T J B Googins

I sometimes go to a quartz crystal bowl holographic sound healing meditation concert hosted by a local spa - tonight's event honored the Earth and celebrated the renewal of Spring. One of the things mentioned at the beginning were  "elementals" - deities of air, fire, water and earth - something I've been reading about and incorporating into a children's book I'm writing, so it's an interesting topic for me.

I Googled "elementals" and found the image above at this web site:

http://www.josephinewall.co.uk/elementals.html

(I will mention here that one of my all-time favorite films is Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element" - a wonderful romp into the 23rd century where everyone is trying to capture the four elements that, finally, combine with a "fifth" element, or supreme being, to - with a little help from some good-hearted Earthlings - eventually save the world.) The image below was found at:

"Leeloo Dallas, multi-pass." "Yes - she knows it's a multi-pass!"

http://onthisdayinfashion.com

Anyway, we got some much-needed rain today, so our little section of the Earth is very happy!

Happy Earth Day 2012

Today is "Love Your Planet" Day!!!

"New Orleans ~ the other planet
With other life upon it
And everything that's shakin' in-between
If you should ever land upon it
You better know what's on it
The planet of New Orleans."

(Dire Straits - music & lyrics by Mark Knopfler)

Photo: International Space Station, NASA photo archives

I love my planet!

Weird and Wonderful

Today, Turner Classic Movies is showing goofy, campy science fiction movies! Here are a couple I've been intermittently watching so far:

Queen of Outer Space - 1958

And she's not even the Queen - Laurie Mitchell is!

Storyline

Three American astronauts are on the first manned mission to Venus, and when they arrive, they find the planet to be inhabited solely by women with high heels and short dresses. Unfortunately, they are immediately imprisoned, for the queen who rules Venus hates men... Suspecting the astronauts to be spies, she now plans to destroy the Earth. So now it's up to the three men (and some friendly Venusians) to overthrow the wicked queen and save the Earth. (Source: IMDb)

(Spoiler Alert: American astronauts are drawn by a mysterious force to the planet Venus, which they find to be inhabited only by beautiful women and their despotic queen.)

Hey, now, c'mon! It stars Zsa Zsa Gabor!! She's older than the other Venusians, so she wears gauzy, flowing, floor-length designer evening gowns, while the other girls flounce around in mini-skirts and mini-dresses (yowza!) that are oddly reminiscent of Star Trek uniforms...  All the astronauts are young, red-blooded young dudes (their uniforms remind me of the ones from Forbidden Planet), except for Professor Konrad and he's only interested in science and stuff...

Great Quotes

Captain Patterson: You don't just accidentally land on a planet 36 million miles away!
Professor Konrad: It would appear that all things are possible in space.

One of the astronauts, referring to a nuclear device that can blow up entire planets, says: "How could a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?"

Look out, boys, they mean business!

Another astronaut (or maybe it's Prof. Konrad?) asks Zsa Zsa, who tells them the Venusians defeated an entire planet inhabited by men: "How did you manage to overcome all the men?" 

She replies: "They didn't take us seriously!"

Professor Konrad: "The future of Earth may depend on Capt. Patterson's sex appeal."

(images: the uranium cafe & belladonna - see links below)

http://theuraniumcafe.wordpress.com/2011/10/

http://belladonna.org

The Cyclops - 1957

Storyline

Duncan "Dean" Parkin as the Cyclops

Susan Winter undertakes an expedition to a remote area of Mexico, hoping to find her fiance, Bruce Barton, whose plane crashed there three years ago. The area is suspected to have a good supply of uranium, so Susan has promoted this to wealthy Martin Melville to get money for her expenses. In addition to Melville, she is accompanied by guide Russ Bradford and pilot Lee Brand in his small-engine craft. But the plane crashes, stranding the four in an isolated valley, which they soon discover is highly radioactive and inhabited by mutated life forms - giant insects, enormous lizards, and a 25-foot-tall human male with a deformed face, just one eye, and only brute animal instincts to feed and protect its turf... (Source: IMDb)

Okay, so the survivors finally get their crashed plane to start (???) and, after fatally stabbing the Cyclops in his one eye with a flaming stick, fly away with the sneaking suspicion that the Cyclops was probably Susan Winters' missing fiance, ace pilot Bruce Barton, who has been horribly disfigured in his own plane crash and affected by the high uranium levels that caused giantism in the Mexican valley's other creatures. The End.

Yeah, it ain't great, but still qualifies as a good old-fashioned 1950s scary Saturday afternoon sci-fi flick (Spoiler Alert: The constant growling of the Cyclops is quite annoying)

Great Quotes

As they're being terrorized by the one-eyed giant, the four normal-sized people who are hiding in a cave just out of its reach begin assigning certain attributes to its constant growling and howling, remarking how it seems to be intelligent. Susan Winter (played by Gloria Talbot) says: 

"Intelligence just makes it more dangerous." 

 (You can say that again, missy!)

Later on, as the three survivors make their escape (murderous millionaire Martin Melville - Lon Chaney Jr. - has died at the hands of the Cyclops), pilot Lee Brand (Tom Drake) tells Susan and guide Russ Bradford (James Craig) that he's going on a scouting mission. 

Brand: "Don't worry - I'm one-sixteenth Indian."  

(Why the pilot goes scouting and not the guide, well, only the Shadow knows...)

(images: numm theory - see link below)

http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2011/06/cyclops-1957.html

And that's why I love the movies!!

Healing Colors

(source: Graphics Fairy)

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter!

Lately, I have been studying a healing modality known as Chromotherapy to learn as much as I can about how light and color affects us - our moods and our health - whether it's basking gently in the Sun's rays or picking out what color shirt to wear; deciding what food to eat because the color is appealing; or choosing to buy or look at something simply because the color is attractive to us (jewelry, sunsets, a new car...). You get the idea!

Here's a tiny fraction of what I've discovered so far:

Chromotherapy, sometimes called color therapy, colorology or cromatherapy, is a complementary medicine method. It is said that a therapist trained in chromotherapy can use light in the form of color to balance "energy" wherever a person's body be lacking, whether on physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental levels. The practice has been labelled pseudoscientific by some of its critics.
Color therapy is unrelated to light therapy, a scientifically-proven form of medical treatment for seasonal affective disorder and a small number of other conditions, and photobiology, the scientific study of the effects of light on living organisms.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Goethe's color wheel (source: wikipedia)

A few of the people who have researched and written about light and color therapy include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Theory of Colours), Edwin D. Babbitt (The Principles of Light and Color), Charles Klotsche (Color Medicine) and Dinshah P. Ghadiali (Let There Be Light).

In Klotsche's book (based on the work of Ghadiali) there are 12 colors, each one vibrating at different frequencies: red, orange, yellow, lemon, green, turquoise, blue, indigo, violet, purple, magenta and scarlet. Some colors are warm, others are cool - green is neutral and can be used either way - and bathing in certain colors helps relieve specific problems, according to Dinshah's theory:

In 1933, Hindu scientist Dinshah P. Ghadiali published "The Spectro Chromemetry Encyclopaedia", a work on color therapy. Ghadiali claimed to have discovered the scientific principles which explain why and how the different colored rays have various therapeutic effects on organisms. He believed that colors represent chemical potencies in higher octaves of vibration, and for each organism and system of the body there is a particular color that stimulates and another that inhibits the work of that organ or system. Ghadiali also thought that by knowing the action of the different colors upon the different organs and systems of the body, one can apply the correct color that will tend to balance the action of any organ or system that has become abnormal in its functioning or condition. (Source: Wikipedia)

My chromotherapy light, featuring the color "lemon" (looks like lime!)

 

Because I find this concept fascinating and intriguing (and I am a sucker for pretty colors!), I will return to this topic again soon, once I have spent some time working with the specific color "gels" (colored plastic sheets), perhaps using the time spent basking in the light for meditating, something I really need. Also, this is a fitting companion to the "earthing" I mentioned in an earlier post - there's no harm in doing things like that!

Meanwhile, here is the Dinshah Health Society web site link:

http://www.dinshahhealth.org/

Peace ~ light ~ love

Ninety-One Years Ago Today...

Winnie at Western Kentucky University in the 1940s

... on April 6, 1921, my mother, Winifred, was born, the only child of parents Bessie Mae and Elias Willard Brookshire (both so dearly loved and sorely missed) who lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She grew up during the Great Depression, went to college, joined the Navy during World War Two and fell in love with my father, Joel Edward Buckley. 

Joel Buckley, Army Air Corps photographer

They had some adventures together and, seven years later, I was born, followed by my brother, Joel, four-and-a-half years later. After 25 years of marriage, they called it quits and, a few years after that, Mom remarried - Dad never did. He passed away in 1984 shortly after his 68th birthday (April 3). My mother, who loved her second husband A.J., told me once she never stopped loving my Dad.

At one point during the war, my father was sent to Burma (my mother was stationed in Miami, where she taught English to Chinese and Russian sailors) - this was before the adventures, the marriage, the kids - and my mother was so sad she wrote poetry to get through those troubled times.

A year or two ago she sent me a couple of those poems. This one she wrote in 1944 while on a train ride. I liked it a lot and have paired it here with some photos I took this winter:

Trees - all so stark naked and lonely,

So brazonly naked and homely.

Trees - winter's able hand has robbed them;

Yet they staunchly, quietly await their lover

Who will make their pulses throb

To feel his warmth like heavy cover.

Like them, I wait so staunch and true,

Lonely, coldly, bare of life.

War's hand of blood has robbed me, too,

And I am stripped by its steel knife.

When will my love come to warm me, ever?

My spring will be late - maybe never.


Well, he eventually came home and, well, the rest you already know. There were good times and not-so-good times, but Mom never wavered in her strength and support of our family. 


Mom, I admire your courage and appreciate your humor and respect your beliefs - you are a daily inspiration to me. You gave us life (you also saved mine once - in a swimming pool when I was young, before you taught me how to swim - and you saved your son's life when you climbed up that 30-foot-tall pine tree to bring him down - amazing!) and so we thank you for all that, of course, and much, much more. Have a hip-hop-happy birthday today!

On our cruise last year to celebrate Winnie turning 90

(I may have posted this photo before - but it's still relevant!)
Happy Birthday, Mom - we all love you so very, very much!!! 

Love, Tara

Who's A Fool? You're A Fool...

Tulips and daffodils and lupine - oh my!

April Fool's Day was my maternal grandmother's birthday - Meme, I wish you were still here to celebrate it - but my mom will be 91 on April 6th! Today is one of those days that, if you're into it, can be lots of fun (or totally annoying) and if you're not, it just passes, like any other day - but at least it's spring and beautiful flowers are everywhere!

The above title ("Who's a fool? You're a fool!") comes from the film "Bell, Book and Candle" - one of my all-time favorite movies - with a great cast (Kim Novak, Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovaks, Elsa Lanchester, Hermione Gingold, Janice Rule and a gaggle of other great supporting players) and I chose it simply because it came into my head on this April Fool's Day, which is secondary to how much I love this movie...

Jimmy Stewart finds out he has been bewitched by Kim Novak and needs the help of a powerful witch who can break the spell, so Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovaks take him to see Mrs. de Pass, played by Hermione Gingold. When Stewart enters the house, he is greeted by Mrs. de Pass' overly talkative parrot (a macaw, actually) who, when Stewart seems to be having second thoughts, yells out "Who's a fool? You're a fool!" and is answered by Gingold with (my favorite line in the movie) "Be quiet, Sybil!"

Kim Novak was (and is) one of the most beautiful and sensuous movie stars in Hollywood. She was known as "the Lavender Blonde" because the studio tinted her hair in a special way so she would stand out among all the other movie blondes. Va-va-va-voom!

Kim Novak plays sleek New York witch Gillian Holroyde, who casts spells with her cat, Pyewacket

Thanks to these two blogs for the photos and information:


http://grandoldmovies.wordpress.com


http://thepassionatemoviegoer.blogspot.com


(Movie critic Joe Baltake is The Passionate Moviegoer)

Now I want to watch the movie again! 

Visit the web sites if you want to learn more about Bell, Book and Candle (the 1958 film. directed by Richard Quine, is based on a 1950 play by John van Druten, most recently staged at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre but now moving to Hartford Stage.)