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In the Lair of Orange Helob

Hey folks, remember the hex on Tr*mp?

News flash: it didn't work.

Dateline: Tr*mp I.

Various Wiccans and other magic-makers publicly hex Tr*mp, including regular coordinated workings.

The community publicly debates the ethics of hexing Tr*mp. Some come down on one side, some on the other.

The non-pagan media mostly snickers.

Some possible conclusions:

The hex on Tr*mp actually did work, buying us four Tr*mp-free years.

If so, apparently hexes, like canned goods, have a “use-by” date. Really, what good is a temporary solution?

Magic doesn't work.

Under the circumstances, I find this conclusion difficult to escape. Magic—at least, causative magic as literally conceived—simply doesn't work.

But then, I've never thought that it did. Thoughts aren't things. Magic is metaphor. In which case...

Tr*mp is a master magician who out-magicked all the opposition.

The Orange Helob gorged on all the energy the would-be hexers sent him, and now, bloated with power, spins his evil webs to capture yet more victims to suck dry and throw away, drained.

Dateline: Tr*mp II

Origin of the Runes I: The Historical Version.

Roughly 2000 years ago, a speaker—or speakers—of Common Germanic, the language from which English and its sister-tongues derives, took the concept of letters from either the Latin alphabet or from one of the North Italic scripts—Etruscan, et al.—and applied them to his (or her) own language.

Origin of the Runes II: The Mythic Version.

Oðinn hangs himself from a tree and stabs himself with a spear, a god paradoxically sacrificing himself to himself.

From this self-imposed shamanic ordeal, he gains knowledge of the runes—those building-blocks of existence—and their mysteries.

Two stories: mutually exclusive, one might think.

Here's the rub: from their very beginning, or at least from very early on in their history, the runes seem to have taken on a mysterious character (the very word itself means “mystery, secret”) and to have been used for magical purposes.

The same cannot be said, though, of either the Latin or (so far as we know) any of the North Italic alphabets.

The runes are something very different from the script or scripts from which they derive.

The runes aren't just an alphabet: they're Alphabet-Plus.

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Nature Abhors a Monoculture

The chickens are coming home to roost, and most of them have bird flu.

With the Spring Evenday coming up, it looks as if we may well be paying a dollar apiece for our Ostara eggs this year. Don't blame the avian flu, though.

Blame battery farming.

I heard an interview this morning with an egg farmer who was anguishing over the emotional toll of having to cull three million birds.

While I empathize with his pain, I really have to ask: when we raise poultry in flocks of a million-plus birds, why in the world would we be surprised that, when systemic failure strikes, it should strike on any but a massive scale?

The vast majority of American eggs and chicken are industrially-raised on an industrial scale. Short-term cheap food, maybe, but sustainable?

Talk about a disaster just pleading to happen.

Some things that every pagan knows: generally speaking, Small is better than Large, Local is better than Global, Particular is better than General.

As recent experience all too readily demonstrates, nature abhors a monoculture.

Recently I found another frog statue in my garden. I suppose I probably put it there once, but finding it really helped me feel better about having to take out some trees. I had been feeling slightly bad about that even though I had waited until they were in full winter dormancy and also bade them goodbye and thanked them and let them go, like I would do for any thing, living or not, that I felt had some sort of spirit and which was dead or broken or otherwise had to go.

I would not have found it if everything had gone exactly to plan. A Keystone Cops level of incompetence by a series of 4 different companies led me to be the one that had the spade in my hand that day. It was meant to be; I was meant to find it, for my personal reassurance from the spirit of the land.

Water from the Tines

Anyone that knows Old Hornie knows him both for a trickster and a shifter of shapes, who “shows himself to each according to their desire.” Nor indeed is he god of witches alone, but everyone's, knowing or no.

(Frearth Hobson)

While visiting a friend in Ireland's Burren region, mythologist Martin Shaw spent the night in the mossy limestone cave once inhabited by Colmán mac Duagh, a 7th-century holy man.

The next night, he dreamt that he was back in the cave.

A stag came to the entrance of the cave, in moonlight. He looked in and he was twelve-tined, which means he had a great rack. I suddenly realized in the dream that I was phenomenally thirsty. As I had that thought, the stag, which I know in some form was Yeshua [= Jesus] leaned forward with his antlers, and on the tip of every antler was a drop of water. It's very much like an icon. I was underneath it with my hands cupped, gathering every drop of God-water, of Yeshua-water, of Spirit-water. I drank, and then I woke up [Dreher 215].

Forthwith, fair reader, some questions.