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During a power outage, you can always tell where the pagans live.
Just look for the candlelight.
A big Thunderstorm blew through one night. Lights were out all over south Minneapolis.
My boyfriend at the time lived just down the street. I walked over. We undressed and stood holding each other.
He looked into my face.
Most of us take out birthstone for granted. It seems like a Hallmark idea, right? Hold on a minute, there may be some deep magic in these gems and crystals you need to tap into.
Editorial Note: This post was the final one Lizann made to the world on Facebook, on May 20, 2018. She died, surrounded by her friends, loved ones, and many divine Beloveds, around 7 am on May 27, 2018. That which is remembered, lives. (Anne Newkirk Niven)
When you see the Tree, you understand right away that this is the Mother Tree of All Apples.
A farmhouse, now long gone, once stood here. Nothing remains but a pile of old foundation stones.
But the Three Springs still bubble from the creek-bed, and feral apple trees fill the Secret Valley.
The Mother Tree is oldest, and biggest, of them all.
Orchard trees are pruned, bred low for easy picking. This tree has known neither pruning saw, nor the shade of other trees. Three with outstretched arms could barely span its girth.
Approach, and understand. Three sister trees—sprung, maybe, from a single apple—have grown up together, merging, in mutual embrace: the Three that are One, the One that is Three. You'd go far to find a better image of the Triple Goddess.
Like every culture, the Minoans had their music. We can see that in their art and artifacts. The image at the top of this post is of a group of terracotta figurines from Palaikastro. There are three women holding hands and dancing in a semicircle around a fourth woman who is playing the lyre. We don't know what the occasion was here: a celebration? A ritual? One of the famous harvest dances on a circular threshing floor? (There was a circular piece found with these figurines that might have been a model threshing floor.)
It could even have been a funeral; there's a lyre-player on the "death" side of the Hagia Triada sarcophagus.
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One of the genres you may not expect to be popular in the Middle Ages is that of riddles. They're not usually as straightforward as the riddles we know. They tend to be more metaphorical. I mentioned before in The Magic of Names the riddle that has 'magpie' as its solution (probably). Many of them are scatalogical or full of double entendres, which also doesn't fit our image of pious monks -- but it's our picture of monks that's wrong.
The myth persists that the church ruled the Middle Ages with a heavy hand. Like the myth that people thought the world was flat, it's just wrong. Many people who thought of themselves as Christian went to church once a year to confess and that was enough for them. Many monks who were part of the church were no more devoted to their religion than the average slacker working for a giant corporation is. It gave them a living if they weren't inheriting any wealth. For many it was an easy life (see Chaucer's monk for example).
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Memorial Day
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