Nexus

It must have been sometime in Summer. The year-end exams were over and the light was deep and warm on the corner of Jan Smuts and Empire Road.

The Nuclear Physics Research Institute stood behind you two, as I brought the canary yellow Yamaha 400 Enduro to a halt by the pavement on which you were walking.

I don't remember, now, where I was coming from or wither I was bound, that afternoon in 1979. Yet there we met up, the three of us, for what was probably one of the last times in any of our lives.

The little, rounded, snub-nosed blond woman feigned terror of me as she hid behind the lanky, bushy-bearded Physics student she was out walking with.I must have laughed as I removed my yellow helmet - you both always managed to coax a lot of mirth from me.

I forget now what we were talking of. The sun, the Nuclear Physics Institute, the bike, the two of you: it was a Nexus in time and in space, burned into my immortal memory for all the spirals of duration.

Shortly, we went our separate ways. Me, to pursue a life of horrendous dissipation which would eventually end in my death, dismemberment and reforming. You two to - where?

The Nexus stands like a frozen wave now in my mind, reminding me of how the dance draws us together, pulls us apart, spins us off into Eternity with just the sharp-limned memory of a boiling place in time as testament to the meeting and parting of 3 different paths.

Roses

Dreaming last night, I was walking in my garden, which was unaccountably - since it is Winter - full of roses.

Huge blooms of all colours grew from bushes and trees, and although I rarely get the sense of smell vividly in my dreams, still I knew that their scent was powerful and beautiful.

When I awoke, something was nagging me...what was it now..oh yes, my doctor had found an unacceptably high blood pressure reading in me when I visited him for the 'flu two weeks ago.

Roses, for those who don't know it yet (and that apparently included me up to a few hours ago) are a sovereign aromatherapy for high blood pressure.

Show Your Sacred Spaces

In response to Lupa's call for us to show our sacred spaces.

This was my sacred space where I grew up in Wokingham:

Here's what I had to say about it, a while ago.

Interestingly, it hasn't changed. Maybe something to do with the area being moneyed.

..and this is my sacred space now:

complete with canine companions.

Laughing Dove

An example of the Mask of God manifesting in a strange and beautiful way is the pair of young Laughing Doves that has been sharing our bit of landbase for the past couple of months.

As you all know, we already share this portion of Earth with two energetic and devoted PitBulls, who exhibit their essential PitBull-ness on occasion by catching and killing any bird silly enough to strut on the ground too close to them.

Scylla, in particular, abhors flying things, and won't have them in her territory - never mind inside the house. Taranis has been known to kill a Hadeda Ibis and then eat the beak. Please look at the beak on a Hadeda when you next encounter one.

Yet these two Little Ones regularly walk casually into the kitchen when the back door is open, sit in Scylla's food bowl, and scratch around in the soil just centimeters from Taranis' nose. The dogs make absolutely no effort to chase them, letting them do whatever the hell they want wherever they want.

I find this mysterious and lovely.

Just as mysterious and not so lovely are the other-dimensional activities which have been going on inside the house ever since we bought it - ten years ago now - involving missing keys, Mag lights and sundry auto parts.

Now, I'll admit that a lot of this could just be two people who are a touch negligent about putting things down and remembering where. Except that, while Warren does tend to be this kind of person, I most certainly am not. I'm a little OC about knowing where stuff is at all times. So when things go missing and turn up in plain sight a couple of days later, it's a bit strange.

As an example, Warren misplaced his bright yellow Bic lighter a week or so ago. Since I'm in charge of the laundry, I would be the one expected to retrieve it from whatever washed-and-ironed pocket it had buried itself in.

But this wasn't happening, so Warren bought himself a new lighter.

This morning, I see the lighter sitting in full view on top of an employee timesheet Warren keeps for his casual hired man, Alex. Sitting on top of these sheets, very visibly on the study desk. The same desk I had dusted and polished the day before. A bright yellow lighter would not have escaped my notice then - especially as we had been on the lookout for it for some days.

Both Warren and I,as has become commonplace, assumed that the other had found it.
When both of us denied responsibility for turning the damned thing up, we agreed, sighing, that we had "faerie" activity once more in the house.

It's nothing more than a little annoying, and frankly, it serves to keep both our minds open to the possibility that what we register with our senses is often not all that is going on.

Like those Laughing Doves, walking safe and unharmed in PitBull territory.

Mask of God, Part Ten Thousand

This is the mask of God:

..and so is this:

..and this:

This, too is the mask of God, unfortunately for some of our perspectives:

..and - sigh - so is this:

I allow myself to become angered by humans at times. I get depressed by their actions and apparent lack of any real thinking. I am sometimes enraged by their violence towards each other and to other beings.

But I get this, also, sometimes.

For this , too is the mask of God:

..and so, praise the thousand names, is this:

Blue Pearl

What do you see when you close your eyes?
Behind the eyelids, against the red-black-grey formless designs drifting, what do you see?

I have been having hypnagogic hallucinations for a couple of years now, usually just before the onset of sleep. I see faces, crowds..mostly people I don't know in this life. Not one has ever been threatening. I am not afraid of this phenomenon at all.

But this afternoon - while taking a Saturday after-lunch nap - I suddenly saw, behind my closed eyes, the most  awe-inspiring field of blue.
Well, I say awe-inspiring. It was more like frightening. To my body that is.
This wall-to-wall field of violet blue was an exalted sight to my soul. But my animal body was going "what the fuck was that??"

So I googled around a bit, and found reference to the experience known as the Blue Pearl (or Light) Phenomenon.(That link is a bit flaky-be warned).

This is something I have never experienced before - not in meditation, or shamanic trance, or Pagan ritual. And it has really struck me a little dumb.

As a bit of background, I have to add that I've been suffering from an unusually intense form of 'flu this past week. I wonder if this has anything to do with it? The meds my doctor prescribed are nothing I'm not pretty tolerant to, so I've tentatively removed them from the equation. The actual 'flu virus my body is hosting at present is, however, a more promising line of enquiry...




Pic: from Invoke the Presence

"In The End There Is One Dance You'll Do Alone"

Suddenly

It happens every year.

I plan on celebrating Samhain, using the mid-point between the Solstice and Equinox as a base. I buy a Butternut Squash, or a Crown Pumpkin, disembowel it, carve it into a JackoLantern. I grind up resins, roots and oils to make the incense.

After a supper featuring Pork and Pumpkin, I light the JackoLantern, hang the swinging censer outside and light the charcoal, sprinkle the incense, and annoy my neighbours.

That's on the outside: inside a rich conversation with my Ancestors has been going on for a few days.

I'm observing the Moon, how she is fading to New in a few days and I keep the internal conversation going. I fling the arms of Spirit out embracing the dry wind which whistles away all our precious moisture, here in Joburg.

Warren and I trek into Rosebank to stock up on sacred oils from Isis and we get lost among the noisy renovations of The Mall. We smell onions frying from street cafes and hear the tribal dancers gearing up for the morning batch of tourists.

It's the start of Winter. And I seem to neglect that factor every single year. For the morning after I start my Samhain celebrations it is invariably the first frost-nipping, sitting-on-hands-to-warm-them, breath-steaming morning of the year so far.

But I - I have forgot my gloves, my beanie, my Winter-weight coat.

And so I complain - as every year - how suddenly the Winter came on this time.

And all the while, on the inside of Spirit, a bow wave of Ancestors -yours,mine, everybody's - is winging out behind and to the side of me. Weighing lightly but insistently on my earth soul, and reminding me: we are the leading edge in Time of All Those Predecessors.

The Wyrd

Dear Terence McKenna; still making me laugh out loud 14 years after his death.

Oh, and he is so right. The Shaman is the interface between the Culture and the Other, in human societies.

Paraphrasing the Bard:

"OK, you...you can go and be weird. We'll give you a hut on the outskirts of the village and -yes - when we need you we'll call you."

I think that there are more Shamans walking the Earth today than at any point in the past. We are experiencing that concrescence which is a hallmark of a great shift in levels of awakening.

Why, I had an hour-long conversation with a Shaman just yesterday, at work. I very much doubt he calls himself that, but that is the effect. You, you go over there and be weird. We'll call you and use you when - not if - we have need.

And so it is perhaps not such a shock to find groups of Pagans and other minority clusters at seeming war with each other: they are each and all behaving like the Shaman of the village, and being weird. It takes a certain level of weirdness to handle magic at after all.

And we so need our Weird ones at this critical juncture in our species' history.

Samhain 2013

"When the pale white moon is climbing slow,
            Through the stars to the heavens height,
            We hear Thy hooves on the wings of night!
            As black tree branches shake and sigh,
            By joy and terror we know Thee nigh.
            We speak the spell Thy power unlocks,
            At solstice, sabbat and equinox.
            Word of virtue, the veil to rend,
            From primal dawn to the wide world's end!"

Blessed Samhain, or possibly Beltane, to All.

I will be observing this Sabbat on Sunday.

Here is the artist's FB page.

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