Aslinn Dhan Dragonhawk

Censorship

2011-09-19T08:36:00.001-07:00

I had to censor myself yesterday. I know, we have to do it all the time, but I am a writer and I write for several bogs and my website. I write a lot of things, essays, research reports for mythology and I write fan fiction for True Blood.

I know what I am doing in not at all that unique. In fact it is down right common place in this day and age. But I do something that is sort interesting, at least to us, and that is I write a long novel length adventure story and I post it up, chapter by chapter on Wednesdays throughout True Blood's long hiatus.

Last year, I wrote Death's Door and it was bout a sickness going around the Vampires they were catching from True Blood. I know, it sounds like the plot of the comic books, but I swear I wrote it months before the comic came out and was more than half way through the story when they hit the market...

This one is called Wake the Dead and there is a dangerous Vampire on the loose...What makes this story and the one I wrote previous to it is we who are the members of the forum are actual characters in the story along with Eric and Bill and Pam and Jessica and Alcide and other characters either from True Blood or the books.

But I also write other things. One of the things I write for the members of the group are what we call date nights and I go into detail about what might happen with an enthusiastic Vampire. Or a werewolf.

Anyway, I also use the creative writing bits to help me think about the characters I write about because I usually go a little deeper into the characters and delve into their past. Eric of course being 1000 years old and a Viking is fun to get into. And in my stories, there is a lot of yummy tension between us. I am what I call in our stories, a sister wife to Bill Compton. That's because all of our girls have aligned themselves with one character or other and we have to share, there is no exclusivity in our group, we have to. So with a nod to Big Love we are the sister wives.

But, the thing is, up to now, all I have been writing about in that genre is about sex. I wanted to explore something else with the characters, I wanted to see if there was something more, and there is, so I wrote a little thing I call the Devil's Delimma. Eric wants my character, and I want him, but I know that as soon as we hit the sack it is all over with, I am just another conquest. So I was using this story to set up a situation where we would be friends... and nothing more, but I left the tale open ended, to continue the line of thought I was having about Eric and I was hoping other members of the forum would come up and write about their chats with their fave character.

What I didn't count on was one of our members would actually get fobbed off at me because of the story. She basically got jealous....Which puzzles me because she takes up a lot of the character time with Eric in the adventures. I just think it is brutally unfair of her to make me feel like I am taking something from her, when she doesn't even wait to see how things shake out.

So I did something, I have never done before. I took the story out. It is no longer openly available. It is on a blog I don't use too much and if I ever get in the mood to write more about our little meetings, I will do it there and not share it with everyone.

What I was hoping is they would remark on something I was thinking about as far the character. I chat with Bill and Pam and Jessica all of the time in the stories, and really Bill and Pam are around the same age and we sort of know what Victorian England and America was like, it was not that long ago. But Eric is ancient. I was hoping they would say something like..you know, I always wondered...and then add a question or an idea.

But no, they were upset I was stealing their fictional boyfriend away from them....Sigh...

So I censored myself and I feel like have been violated. I feel like I have been slapped back and told to stay on my side of the street, to get back to my level. And it hurts. Because I am a writer and I cherish my thoughts and imaginings and what I thought was going to be sweet and blameless relationship has become a battle of the wills. I should have let Eric bend me over and shag me...they would have accepted that better.

The thing that hurts the most is they thanked me for taking down the story....They thanked me for letting them dampen my creative spirit, they thanked me for letting them hate the story I wrote. They thanked me and that hurts even worse than being censored......

So thank you for breaking my heart.....I appreciate it....

Earth Day is the Mother's Day

2011-04-22T10:57:00.001-07:00

I am one of those people who wished I could do more for the environment. I mean, I plant flowers and I try not to make a lot of waste and I love to see the green places and trees that cover the mountains and the critters who sometimes visit the yard. I feel close to the earth in my little green patch and I love it.

I am a Christian but sometimes I feel like a little pagan about the green things because my religion says this earth will pass away and we should not count on the survival of the earth. And I do believe that. But I think in many ways the earth's demise and ours is because we are not doing the very first job God gave his little humans when he made us and that is to be caretakers of the garden.

No, we are not caretakers of the garden. I heard one preacher say we are no longer responsible for the earth because the old earth, including the Garden of Eden was washed away in the flood, never to be seen again...And really, I sort of believe some of that statement because we won't ever see God's Garden again. And that is because of us.

Not because we are sinners, but because we are humans. We don't love what we are not close to and I think that is the reason why Earth will die and we will be evicted. Mother Earth is trying her very best to shake us off her skin with earth quakes and wild fires and hurricanes and floods because she is tired of us leaching off her. In Avatar, the hero, Jake Sully comes to chat with Awah, the mother goddess the Navi worship. He tells her "They killed their mother," and I believe we have.

I try to imagine our world the way it must have been when the Native Americans lived here. No great buildings, most Native Americans were semi nomadic and they had rules about resources. They would leave one camp for another to allow the ground to heal, to encourage the animals to come back and they left no trace of themselves except the memories of the elders. I think about the bears and the deer and the panthers and wild cats and the huge turkey buzzards and the hawks and eagles that used to call WV home. I think about the wild things that grew here and the innocent children of nature who lived here and thanked the Mother and her children for every bite of food in their mouths and every sip of water and every breath they took because all of it was precious. It was not a right to have, it was a privilege and if you didn't show respect and bless the spirits of all things all around you, they abandoned you to starvation and disease so ungrateful people would die off and leave grateful people behind.

But then there is this change, so called "civilized people" came and they scarred the earth and they took more than they needed and they killed for pleasure..not just each other...but their brethren, the bears and the deer and birds and they gave no thanks, asked no pardon, revered no soul...except theirs. Which is sad. Because they God they worship starts out his relationship with them as a gardener.

Pagans believe in a God and Goddess. They take many forms, but one of those forms is of the Green Man and Mother Earth. I feel no confusion in seeing the Christian God that way, because God was a gardener and he wanted us to take care of his garden. And the Garden of Eden was not just a place...it was the world entire. Wherever you put your foot there is the Garden of Eden. And when you do not spare her a moment, our Mother, our Eden, then we ignore our first job, our first parent. God created us, we are told, from the earth, from the Mother, and he blew the breath of life into us and made us in his image and the animals were not afraid of us and we named them and we cared for the earth. Man's sin was not simply eating the apple, it was he ate the apple and didn't plant the seeds so more trees could grow and more apples be made.

We are known by our fruits, or so the book says, and though it is a metaphor for living right and being good, it is a truth. What do you give back to the mother when you enjoy her bounty? I know not everyone lives on a farm or a rural place, but...even just planting flowers or picking up a piece of trash on the side walk or sharing clothes with people or being thrifty or walking to places instead of driving everywhere....this is a way of showing appreciation for our world. So even the city bound can be naturalists. And hug that tree a little, she will like it and I suggest you will too....

Peace and Blessed Be

In the Circle of his Arms

2011-02-12T20:21:00.000-08:00

It's been a year. A year since I looked up from a steaming pot of chicken and dumplins and saw my angel come through the door. So much has happened since then, I don't know where to start.

It's amazing...just when I thought no man could ever want me, I curl up each night and let the thunder of his heart beat sing its lullaby to me.I feel his warmth and his arms cradling me and I know without a shadow of a doubt he loves me more than anything in this world. I feel his love for me, not just in those precious times he is inside me but all the times in between.

Sean is the world to me. I love him more than my life. And I hope God forgives me if I love him just a shade more...God is so intangible but Sean is right there. In a way, loving Sean the way I do, I love God as well, because I find God in Sean...

Happy one year anniversary baby...I love you so much

I Hate You

2011-01-14T04:34:00.000-08:00

Don't get excited...I don't hate YOU, but that is what I want to talk about.

I suppose it is a combination of things that is prompting me to write this entry in my blog. No, I am not referencing anyone who would decide that witches should be barbecued. I am talking about simple hate.

And I am not pontificating here, I am guilty of hate. God knows as much as we try we get fed up and decide "I hate you". It's a heinous thing to say. It's a dangerous thing to say.

I see hatred all the time on the net. I hate this, I hate that, I hate her, I hate him, I hate them. I hate the liberals, I hate the conservatives, I hate that religion or I hate this religion...Really.

If you practice some form of magik, regardless of your tradition, you hear it all the time: I hate the fluffy bunny witches, I hate the hyphenated tradition witches, I hate the Christian Witches, I hate the atheist witches. Hate, hate, hate.

And it doesn't stop there... I hate men, I hate women, I hate gays, I hate straights, I hate other races...Whew...it's enough to make you sick really. I guess that is what I am...sick to death of hate.

Now, I am no hippy flower child with peace signs painted on my face. And I am not looking to be voted Miss Congeniality but we have to stop hating. It really is the root of all evil.

Wars are started because of hate. Murders happen because of hate. Theft is because of hate. Adultery is because of hate. The break up of families is because of hate. Hopelessness is because of hate. Faithlessness is because of hate.

As a Christian I am asked to pray for those who hate you and spitefully use you. We are promised that pity is like coals heaped upon the hater's head. So that is what I am going to do...I am going to pity you.

I look at your faces. Do you know how ugly you are when your face is twisted while you spew out your vile words and you shake your fist at the objects of your hate? Who could love you? I know you don't love yourself. And perhaps that is the worst thing about hate. It reveals a deep seated inner hatred for self. So I pity you.

We are not going to be holding hands and singing Kumbya anytime soon, nor are we going to be taking long walks on the beach together. But I resolve to stop hating you back. I will pity you, and I will pity your children and your friends and your family because they must either be like you or are victims themselves of your tyranny of hate.

I will light a candle scented with lavender and inscribed with the pentacle and the peace sign and send up my greatest prayer for you, and for myself, that you and I both will transcend our hate for one another. I will pray for you. Because in hating you, I have become you. I don't want to be you anymore. I want to be free of you and if I can, I want to free you from it as well.

So, I light this candle for the following:

Myself: Aslinn Dhan Dragonhawk
Osama Bin Laden (Lord help me and give me strength)
KKK
The Phelpses from the Westbourough Baptist Church
Neo-Nazis
Nazis
Trolls and Flamers on the internet
Gay haters
Woman and Man haters
Drama Queens and Kings
Witch Haters
Religion Haters (Bill Moyer, Ricky Gervais, anyone else...you know who you are)
Anyone else not on this list but should be.

I don't expect you to fall down and have the scales fall from your eyes like Paul on the road to Damascus...But I hope some day you will feel the energy of not tolerance but acceptance, and instead of hating you learn patience and even a little pity.

Brightest Blessings Be

Samhain

2010-10-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

Another Samhain is coming and I am loving the coming Witches New Year...I simply love this Sabbat the most. It is time for us to remember those who have gone before us and a time to reflect on the old year and welcome a new year.

Things I Would Love to Accomplish this Year:

1. Get my new house painted on the inside and get moved in if the landlord will just move it along....
2. Get ready for my trip to Sweden and England to see my future inlaws....
3. Have a really great holiday season with my inlaws here in the states...
4. Love my boy more this year than I have ever...which isn't hard
5. Continue having good health...Which I have enjoyed for some months now...
6. Continue my work with my True Blood Fansite and finally get the adventure I have been writing finished.....
7. Be a better person to my fellow man....
8. Enjoy my life with little or no drama....
9. Stop and smell the roses....
10. Thank God for all He has given me...

What are your hopes for the New Year?

Happy Mabon

2010-09-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone is preparing for the fall seasons and the Sabbats we will be celebrating soon. One fo the things I love the most about the Sabbots for fall are the colors. The yellows and golds and muted greens and purples and black. I remember a particularly important gift I received at Mabon: My pentacle star.

When I decided to become a witch I seemed to see the five pointed star everywhere, and not just the star but the ring around it, the true witch's star. It has such rich meaning to us who follow the craft. Despite years of abuse by Hollywood, the pentacle and the pentagram, the transversed star, is full of symbolic meaning and all of it good.

The Pentacle symbolizes the spirit and the four elements. The Pentagram symbolizes elements of faith: Wisdom, Fortitude, Intention, Intuition and Empowerment. It enables us to seek and know one another. I love to see other witches wearing their pentacles and I can smile and say a quiet Blessed Be or Merry Meet and see that surprised but pleased look on their face. It is the feeling of not being alone in a society that often times lets you know they could do without you. You walk a little steadier, your shoulders are a little straighter and you feel recognized and treasured.

To all of those who wear the Star: Happy Mabon and a very blessed be.....

Aslinn.

Love and Magik

2010-07-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

So, I have happy news. I am engaged to be married. I met the most wonderful man in England. His name is Sean and I am head over heels. He has left England to live with me in America. He is a very bright lawyer and he is my safe place.

One of the wonderful things about being in this relationship with Sean is he knows I am a witch. How could he not. When I met him I was boiling some mugwort for my bruises and he came in and asked me what I was doing. I told him what I was doing and told him I was a witch.

When our relationship deepened, I gave him a book about being in a relationship with a witch, either as a family member or a romantic partner. It explains some the basic things he should know about life with a Witch...which is basically, we are just like everyone else, we simply pray and work a little differently. He has accepted me wholeheartedly and I love him deeply for it.

So, one of things we must really think about is how to tell people we love who we are. This is not always easy and it will not always work out the way we would like, but being honest and being open to questions, even if they trouble us or make us feel defensive is always the best policy. Sharing yourself with the universe is always hard, we are raised to be so self centered and egoistic. But letting go and letting God is always the best way to do things.

Before you decide to tell someone, you may want to cast some spells that encourage acceptance and understanding and cool emotions. You might want to cast for yourself to have wisdom on your tongue and anger cooled, because sometimes they can upset you. You can also ask for protection from negativity, not only for yourself but those you talk to. All these things can help you when you decide, with trepidation, to step out of the Broom Closet....

Blessed be,
Aslinn

Back to Work

2010-06-28T10:42:00.001-07:00

Thank you so much for all of your support and concern, and now I am ready to go back to work on my blog.

So, to begin writing again on my blog, I will write about following your path.

Because, in a way, I have been on the path but stuck along side of the road broke down, with my hood up so to speak. Now I am well enough to put my feet back on it and I rejoice.

So, something that I have been experiencing is meeting people who are just now putting their feet on the path to the Craft. As we all know, not all stay with us, but there is something exhilarating about being on the path. It is intoxicating and suddenly the world becomes brighter.

I remember my beginnings on the path, the rush to buy books and to study and know more and more. The feeling that...Wow...there is more to this than just waving a wand and muttering a few words. It is about finding the magik in yourself, that you have had all along and learning how to use it.

I hope that everyone goes on a path. And not just a path to magik, but a path to self. We are amazing creatures, humans, full of passion and joys and terrors. I think it is sad that so many of us do not go inside ourselves and explore our own human potential. We lose so much.

Aslinn

Hi

2010-01-22T16:37:00.001-08:00

It has been such a long time since I wrote on this blog. Thanks to all who have sent me good vibes and best intentions.

It has been a long time since I have written on this blog because I had a relapse of my cancer, but I am much better now and I will be back in action, writing and musing and teaching and learning about the craft.

Blessed be to all who have sent me your best wishes.

Dead and Gone-Impressions

2009-05-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

So, I have read the latest offering from Charlaine Harris, Dead and Gone. First of all I would like to say that Harris is not a strong writer. What I do like are the characters and the scenarios and world she has created, but in my estimation, I think she could do better as a writer.

Having said that, I will tell you something about the new book.

The new book takes place during the faery wars. Sookie's great grandfather, the faery prince Niall, is in a family feud with Dermott, his grandson, who is Sookie's great uncle.

At the same time, she is being pulled ever closer to Eric, the Sheriff of Area Five and the owner of the Vampire Bar Fangtasia. After much time has elapsed with the take over of the territory which once belonged to Sophie Anne, now definitely deceased, Eric has sent for Sookie and asked her to present a mysterious gift to him in front of the King of Nevada's representative. And Sookie doesn't even take the time to look at it, she simply appears at Fangtasia and with some cerimony, hands Eric the gift. He then unwraps it and reveals it is a cerimonial knife used in Vampire wedding cerimonies (between Vampires, that is, humans and Vampires are still restricted legally in what they can do.). He takes the knife in his hands and kisses it and the representative makes a statement of Eric and Sookie's vow to one another. Aparently they are now bonded together in a love match and that is a bond that cannot be broken by the King. And apparently, Quinn the were-tiger and Sookie's one time (and I mean that literally) lover has been banned from entering Eric's domain.

Sookie resents this high handed act by the Viking Vampire and lets him know about it. But she has bigger fish to fry. Sam and the other shifters have made the great reveal. Figuring that they have the advantage of being human with a quirk, as opposed to being dead bloodsuckers, the shifters have revealed themselves to the world. As a result, Sam's step dad shot his mom when she changed into her animal self and he has been called away and Sookie is put in charge of the bar. Under her watch, Jason's faithless wife has been found crucified behind Merlotte's and the FBI are sniffing around in connection with her work at the Pyramid in Rhodes with Barry Bellboy.

But the FBI and the Crystal story are just side stories that Harris resolves rather abruptly. The meat of the story is the faery war. Everyone is warning her about the impending battle. Dermott is ruthless and very anti human. He knows that Niall loves his great granddaughter and he figures that if he kills Sookie, this will lure Niall into an all out war. Claudine and Claude, Sookie's faery cousins visit with her and tell her to be careful of a man who looks like Jason but isn't.

Meanwhile, Sookie, being burdened by the stresses of the murder of Crystal and the other things in her life, she goes to Fangtasia just for the consolation of Eric's company. She forgoes the opportunity to give Eric a real reaming out for his use of her in the love match thing in favor of listening to Eric's back story.

Eric was the son of a chieftain and he married his dead brother's wife, Aude. Aude was older than he and I think he was very fond of her, even loved her. Eric had six children with Aude and she died with a post-parum infection, she and the baby. One night as he was returning from his courtship of another woman he was waylaid by a man who turned out to be a Vampire. He was made Vampire by a Roman soldier and he was subservient to his maker's whims, which included sex with the endlessly virile Viking Vampire. He explained that he eventually accustomed himself to that aspect as he learned how to be a Vampire. This is very intimate for the Vampire Eric to tell Sookie about how he was made and I think on some levels he was telling her the story to show her that he has some little commonality with her as he himslef was forced into a sexual subservience much like she was when she was being mad handled by her uncle Bartlett.

Sookie comes home with lots to think about but like Scarlett, she always puts it off. Things seem to simmer down for a while until she has to kill a faery in her garden who was sent to kill her. She contacts her Great Grandfather who comes with Sookie's great uncle to clean up the faerie remains.

That evening, Sookie is visted by none other than Quinn, the weretiger. Bill shows up and gets into a physical altercation with Sookie ending up in the middle of it. Knocked briefly unconscious, she awakes to Eric mopping off her face with a very wet wash rag, her mouth full of Eric's blood and no clothes on. Eric figures there is no time like the present to restake(heh, heh) his claim on Sookie. Whatever it is that Sookie has, it makes Eric shout something positively exclamatory in foreign language.

I don't know how to love him

2009-05-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

I was speaking with my sister witch today on IM and I could tell that she seemed troubled, so I asked her what was wrong. She said that she had written a post on her own blog and she suggested I take a look at it.

In it she wrote of the Sacred Male, the God, and how she felt his robust and passionate energy. She likened him Wolverine in the X-Men movies and she expressed a longing for the sexual and passionate and sometimes violent masculinity of the God.

Now, I am not a Pagan, I have only one notion of God, but I respect the images of him conjured up by all people and creeds and trads. But I do see God in a way that is different from most all Christians. And I will try to explain here how I see him.

Early Christian thinkers were very interested in how to mold God's personal image so we could create an unique and special bond with him. They could not see God as the randy, lusty gods of the Romans and Greeks, nor could they see him as the other Pagans saw the sacred Male. So they did the unconscienable, they neutered God. Terrible thing to do.

And when folks go searching for some sprirtual other and they encounter Wicca, every third word is goddess. And I understand that. After being force fed this male centered religious dogma designed to strangle women from the rights to their own bodies and their sexual identities and from their material goods, any religion that praises the sacred feminine is a welcome change.

Unfortunately an imbalance occurs and when thoughts and hearts and yes, desires turn to the notion of the sacred masculine, there is a confusion and maybe even a sense of shame or embarrassment when desire and passion and need come to the surface and burn the body and the mind with that desire.

This is confusing especially to the Christian witch. God was always some one who was beyond our reach, who we could not understand as a sexual being. But, think about the Song of Solomon:

Song of Solomon

Chapter 1

The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.
Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.
I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?
If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.
I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.
We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.
While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.
Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.

Chapter 2

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

Chapter 3

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?
It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant?
Behold his bed, which is Solomon's; threescore valiant men are about it, of the valiant of Israel.
They all hold swords, being expert in war: every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night.
King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon.
He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem.
Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.

Chapter 4

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.
Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them.
Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.
Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.
Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.
Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.
Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.
Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.
Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.
How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,
Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

Chapter 5

I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.
I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.
What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?
My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.
His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven.
His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.
His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.
His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.
His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.
His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

Chapter 6

Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee.
My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.
I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.
Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead.
Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them.
As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.
There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number.
My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her, and blessed her; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.
Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?
I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded.
Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib.
Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies.

Chapter 7

How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.
Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.
Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.
Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries.
How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!
This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.
I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples;
And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.
The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.

Chapter 8

O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.
I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother's house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.
His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me.
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please.
Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee.
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?
If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.
I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour.
Solomon had a vineyard at Baalhamon; he let out the vineyard unto keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver.
My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.
Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it.
Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.

Did you see all those sacred sexual images. While we know the writer is praising an earthly lover, couldn't this also be an indication of God's sexuality? His romatic and passionate view as a Male God for the women who follow and trust in him. Think about the visitation to Mary. The Angel makes its announcement and God overshadows Mary and I believe, in his own metaphysical way he made love to her while he was putting Jesus in her belly.

So sexual love and desire is part of the God, whether he is the God of the Pagans or he is the God of the Cross, the Christian God, and deny that part of ourselves, the part that desires God and the intimacy he designed for us to share with our lovers and with him, it to deny the act of God's love for us.

Love ye one another

And Brightest Blessing Be

Aslinn

Dead and Gone

2009-05-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

So I lay here, all curled up, reading Dead and Gone and feeling a mixture of pleasure and pain for my poor beleagured Bill. I won't get into it yet, not until there are a few more days between the intital readings and rereadings of the book.

Let's just say there is nothing really settled for my favorite Vampire. :'(

Why I love the True Blood/ Charlaine Harris Stories

2009-05-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

I wrote this post for the True Blood forum I belong to in response to a thread entitled: Why do we love Vampire stories?

I have only fallen in love twice in my life. The first was a man who I loved but could not love me back. The second was my husband and he died of NonHodgkin's Lymphoma about 13 years ago.

I have always loved the story of the Vampire, the scary/ sexy creature who desires you more than any other creature on earth. But I never really understood the character of Vampires like Dracula and Louie and Lestat until I read those stories after the death of my husband.

I always knew that my husband was going to die of his cancer, he'd been living with it for 2 or 3 years when we met. I suppose he reminds me something of Bill. He doesn't look at all like Bill, though they are about the same height and build and they have that same deliberate way of speaking. And my husband was very courtly, like Bill, even though he was an old hippy.

I remember, after he died, that I reread Dracula for a Victorian Literature course and I had of course read it before. But I cried like a baby over the Count. He was so sad and lonley in his Vampiric existance. And then of course the film by Francis Ford Coppola, I was miserable for Gary Oldman and the way he played the Count.

I think the thing that I really related to with the Dracula character were the passages you mentioned, crossing seas of time and love that never dies and the way Mina Murray says "take me away from all this dead," when Dracula blood bonds with her.

My husband and I did not want to get involved with each other. He was a dead man walking, twenty years my senior and I was a young woman barely 21. A lot of what happens between Sookie and Bill is the way mine and Jimmy's life began: an older man, a veteran (Vietnam) and a young girl with a lot of social stigma on us because of our age difference, and a sort of doomed romance thing going on that made it appealing (Believe me, the doomed romance thing was not appealing at the time). We worked together as Bill and Sookie do in the second book and Jimmy's illness and the fact that he was dealing with his war time memories, like poor Terry Bellefleur, (and Bill).

I hadn't really realized just how much alike this whole experience of loving a "dead" man is like the books.

I have to go away for a bit and think about this.

Whew ???

And he was very needy, like Bill. Even for blood. No, he didn't bite me, but when he needed blood for surgery, since I'm O-, the universal blood type, I donated blood to him when he had surgery so, we had something like a blood bond.

It's funny how you read something and the story seems one way to you and then as you have experiences your point of view changes when you read it again, because of the experiences in your life. I'm glad I put this post up and you responded to it. It makes perfect sense to me now why I am so hyped up over Bill and Sookie's romance. It's the true love that will never die.

What I have Learned from Cancer

2009-05-01T20:05:00.000-07:00

What I have learned from cancer is pretty simple. The human touch is necessary. Not just the touch of nurses and doctors and chemo techs and radiation techs. But the touch of people who are not there to do a proceedure on you, who are not there to perform a chore or provide a service or any of the things associated with the disease.

My doctor, the one who sort of sounds like Stephen Moyer when I close my eyes, is a very proper Brit. I like him, though he is a funny doctor, and ordinarily,I am impatient with funny doctors, but today when he visited my room, he seemed down. I haven't any of my magikal energies back to any sort of level, but his aura was static-like and troubling.

He's had a "spot of bad news" as he said, in his very proper Queen's English. Apparently his brother was involved in a very serious car accident and will likely be paralyzed from the waist down. He is my doctor's twin brother. And my doctor is making the trip home soon to see him. I reached out and touched his hand. He has slender, delicate hands, the hands of a surgeon. They were very warm to me and though I think he felt uncomfortable with me touching him (I think this had more to do with his Britishness than with my being sick), he seemed to relax as I squeezed the hand that opened me up and birthed my little stranger. That seems so intimate, but I tell you, there was nothing more intimate than that moment, touching his hand.

And when he left, I thought how amazing it felt to hold another person's hand. How much energy I felt in the warmth and pressure of his hand. Then I thought about all the times that I was alone and afraid and I wished there was someone there to hold my hand. My mom did it for a while, and after a while she just couldn't bear to touch me anymore. And my dad was the same, though he chickened out sooner. And then there was my sister, who touched me like a nurse, perfunctory, like a professional.

Jaime and I used to hold hands when we were at club chemo. He had leukemia and he had even more pain than I did and sometimes I think he held my hand because he was in pain and he felt braver because he didn't want be scared in front of me. I was holding his hand when he died.

But to have a living person hold your hand, a healthy, well nourished, warm skinned person hold your hand is like lying in a warm bath, feeling the support and gentle pressure of the water holding you securely and holding you up at the same time. It is that cone of peace and normality that says there are still living creatures out there who will not shrink from your touch.

So, if you find yourslef in a situation where you are with the sick and you can't find anything to say, simply hold their hand, stroke their fingers and let them feel your living heat. It will be the touch of life for them.

Alchemy Lessons I have Learned

2009-04-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

So, here I am, getting better now, after so long in the hospital and so long sick. I have many miles to go before I am well and I still have challenges to face. But I am alive and I am hopeful.

Owlthena asked me if the Craft helped me in anyway and I have to say that it did. Understanding the history of modern medicine through the Craft and understanding not only the physical changes but the metaphysical changes in my body have opened me up in a lot of ways to the notion of healing through magik. And all magik really is the act of nature and the super nature coming together to cause change. Since I know how many of the chemicals they used on me in their basic form works on a chemical and alchemical basis, I internalized and ritualized my process of healing or letting go. It really could have gone both ways and it still can, there are no promises to me from my doctors or from the medical community that I will live to celebrate a single post-cancer year.

What it has done is shown me how to redirect my energies and be even more determined to teach others the Way of the Wise, regardless of creed. Anyone who wishes to dedicate themselves to the ancient and noble art can learn witchcraft and embrace it as a part of their lives. But I reiterate, the Craft is not for everyone and it does not solve all your problems. What it can do is strengthen you to face those problems and use the energy that might otherwise be a source of anxiety and channel it into the world as pure magik.

Even now I am preparing by meditation and contemplation and renewed efforts at study, now I am getting stronger. I am depleted but I know that energy can come back to me in the form of simply working the Craft, pulling its chi into me and replenishing the reservior of magikal energies that once flowed through me. I will create energies by being creative in my Craft life and my personal life.

And I will try to temper my outspokeness with gentleness. I will continue to speak my piece and speak it bravely with no apologies for who or what I am, but I will temper it with compassion. And I will not tolerate hatred around me, I will shun it and keep it out of my life.

So I wait. A little over a month I will be set free from this world into the world of the living and I will embrace my possibilities and I thank all of you who have written me and been my friends on this blog and in the world. I hope you will always teach me about compassion and empathy.

Te Dia Agus Anam
Aslinn

My Book of Shadows

2009-04-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may be interested, I have posted my Book of Shadows online through 4shared. Feel free to download it. It is free and I offer it as a gift to anyone who has been reading my blog and has been interested in the workings of a Christian walking the path of Witchcraft.

It is an Adobe document, so is you don't already have it, download one. It too is free.

Thanks to all who have been so supportive to me and Brightest Blessings Be.

http://www.4shared.com/file/100683406/d968be88/Aslinn_Dhans_Christian_Witches_Book_of_Shadows.html

Aslinn

Bully

2009-04-19T16:54:00.001-07:00

Sometime in my blog I talked about being a substitute teacher and how I was leaving the teaching profession, at least as a sub, and looking for other work. Of course I came down with cancer and haven't seen much in the way of a new job since I got sick.

But then I was watching the news and in the past couple of weeks two young kids, one of them eleven years old, killed themselves because they were being bullied in school. And the comments were primarily about how the school was responsible.

Let me tell you something. I want you to listen really close. For every one kid who is marginally interested in school, who sits quietly, who is polite, who does the best they can, who is a joy to have in the classroom, there are five who are absolute monsters. They talk to everyone like they are animals. Their every other word is either Fuck or Bitch and sometimes they are used together. They fear no one. They hate everyone and if you interfere in their activities, you can be guaranteed to be hit, slapped, punched or otherwise abused.

I am a 5'3" woman. I was a chubby woman when I was diagnosed but I was never a bruiser. There were kids who would stand over me and tell me what I was and was not going to do. They routinely told me to get my fucking eyes off their face and keep their name out of my mouth as I picked up the phone to call an administrator or the on campus police officer. I intervened on an obvious case of bullying and got got my right eye blacked, the socket broken and my nose busted. I was reprimanded for physical contact with a student. (I was pulling the bully off another child). The child got morning detention.

I had one young man stand over me and called me everything but a white woman and threaten to hurt me. When I complained that he did this not only to bully me but one of my students, the Principal said there was nothing that could be done, that he was diagnosed as antisocial and having a personality disorder and I should learn to put up with it because he was in my last class of the day and his meds were wearing off.

And let me tell you something else about your little cherubs. They cuss, they handle the foulest language, they have sex in school bathrooms, they smoke cigarettes, dope, and drink. They hate you, they hate school, they hate their class mates. They know too much about nothing and not enough of anything. They don't have feelings. They don't have empathy. They don't care about anything that does not effect them personally.

And the schools didn't make them this way. You did. You don't pay attention to your kids, either because you can't afford to take time off and be with them because you are too silly to use the seventy-five cent condom and you are working two menial jobs to support them or you are well to do and you don't have the desire. Your children are accessories, like those silly fucking dogs you carry around in your purses. Or you may be some mom who took dope during her pregnancy and you don't want to accept responsibility that you gave birth to a monster without the chemicals necessary for self control, behavior modification, even fear. Perhaps you are one of those parents who want to preserve little Susie's sense of self worth so you never say no, don't, stop it. You redirect, use positive emphasis, rationalize. Get a grip lady, life is not fucking fair.

I long for the days of special schools and paddling. I long for the days of parents being able to punish their children. If I were a parent today, and my child threatened to call CPS over the fact that they'd been give corporal punishment, I'd say go ahead, but first let me give you a reason to call them.

Not everyone should be in a school setting. It creates an unsafe learning environment for everyone, students and teachers. It becomes so unsafe that teachers, yes, teachers are afraid of your fucking kids. So don't blame the schools entirely. Our hands are tired much of the time. And parents, you were the ones who tied them.

The Passion of the Christ

2009-04-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

I can't attend good Friday services at my church while I am still in isolation. I am doing well, considering. I have a long road for recovery but each day seems to be a little bit better. But I miss the little things, a nuzzle from my dopey cat. To listen to the rain tapping on the roof of the house (at home, I live in my attic). A sip of cool wine and the sounds of the wind coming through my open windows.

So, since I could not be at home for the Easter services I got a copy of The Passion of the Christ.

Please don't write to me and tell me how bloody and violent and gruesome the movie was. Don't write to me and tell me Mel Gibson is a Nazi. If you don't want to read my blog, move along. Those of you who do, please stay, and listen to what I have to say about this amazing movie.

I was raised watching all those technicolor Cecil B. DeMille movies that came out of Hollywood. Jesus was so perfect, with his beautiful skin and his long hair and usually cool blue eyes, those beautiful Anglo-Saxon Jesus who were so handsome but looked nothing like the Jesus of the times or the race that saw him in the flesh.

I still love those sanitized movies with scenes plucked right out of a Michelangelo painting where the image of Christ is super glorified even in his suffering. Maybe the painter was too afraid to paint the way Jesus would really have looked on the cross.

For one thing, Jesus was brutally beaten. Isaiah wrote in prophecy that the mob tore his beard from his face. I had a husband who had a beard and I could never imagine tearing out a patch of his beard. They brutalized him, forced him to carry his own cross and then stripped Jesus naked. No, Jesus did not have that modesty cloth around him when he died. Jesus was naked. Jesus was naked because the Romans knew that the most shameful thing that could happen to a person who considered himself a rabbi would be to appear nude in public, in front of both men and women.

Interspersed with the brutal and violent scenes of Jesus arrest, trial, torture and crucifixion, we see Christ as he was, a carpenter, making a table for a wealthy customer. We see Christ as the rescuer, rescuing the fallen woman from her persecutors. We see Christ as a little boy being rocked in his mother's arms. We see Christ as the teacher, the servant, the preacher, the forgiver of sins.

We also see Christ making affirmations: "Mother, behold, I make all things new," he says thickly, his face misshapen and bloody. We see Christ as the suffering and condemned prisoner being comforted by a woman who removes her veil and wipes his face with it. A primitive Kodak moment.

We see the Devil, mocking Jesus "No man can take on the sins of the whole world. No, No one, it is too much," We see the Devil mocking Mary, the Devil mocking her virginal birth and her holy infant by being the Infernal Mother and her Imp child.

And then Jesus does something amazing. He gives us his mother. John is standing there with Mary, his mother and Mary the Magdalene and he tells John that Mary is his mother now and we are told that he took her into his house from that moment on.

Christ dies, bloody and beaten and torn. A giant tear (or is it just a drop of rain, like so many that have fallen upon the earth) falls at the moment of Jesus death. The temple shakes and the curtain that separated the people from the Holiest of Holies is rent in two and the ark is depicted as gone.

And then the scene changes to a dark tomb being opened up and as the light of dawn rolls over the walls it washes over my super hero, an unblemished Christ, perfect in his wholeness, perfect in his resurrection, showing only the holes where his hands have been pierced and he rises naked from the tomb.

We look for the face of Christ in the imprint of the Shroud and on the veil we call Veronica's. These smudgy pre-technology Polaroids are the sign of faith, even if they are not real. They are expressions of our willingness to believe in the King of the Most High. We are looking for His face everywhere, from drawings and art on cave walls, church walls and statuary, on humble pieces of cloth, even on the trunks of trees and in pieces of bread.

Shall I tell you where the face of Christ can be seen? The face of a tired nurse who bent over me and wiped my brow when I had pneumonia, the face of my doctor who held my hand and gave me bad news and good news. The face of a lover who slept peacefully in the night beside me.

He is the faces of children, "Suffer the little children to come unto me for such is the kingdom of heaven." He is in the faces of old people you pass on the street. He is in the face of your fellow man. He is in the face of even your enemy "For I say unto thee that thou shall love your enemy and pray for those who do evil for they are poor in spirit."

For those of you who do not believe in some form of God, no explanation will suffice. For those who believe, no explanation is necessary.

God Bless you on this Good Friday.
And remember, God is in the rain.

Miss March

2009-03-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

My Lilies

March is fickle, so they say.

I think of March as an elder woman, going through menopause, hot one minute, cold the next, who pees when she sneezes. Don't be offended, I mean no disrespect to the last month of true winter and into the first month of earliest spring.

March, as they say, comes in like a lion. She huffs and puffs and brings the sudden, unexpected snow shower, the damp rain, the first fogs and the first warm days. March is when you prepare the earth and get it ready to grow flowers and herbs and vegetables. It is the mucky month, as liable to be muddy and soppy as dry and frozen. Mom called and said that she saw a big black cricket, the fiddler of the field, hopping about in the leaves she was raking, leaves that had fallen down behind the huge saw blade I painted last spring just before I went to Virginia. She planted my multi floral lilies on each side of it. I wish I could see it. I wished I could put my hands in dear old mother earth and smell her richness and feel the dampness of her on my hands as I prepare her for the fertility of the season.

I long for the early morning symphony of the mockingbirds that nest in our holly tree, the repeating call of the south fat robins and watch the cocking of their heads as they listen to the minute traffic of the earthworms below the ground. I want to watch the swallows shopping the several bird houses trying to pick the right one where their young can be hatched and raised and finally fly away. I want to sit still in the evening and watch the starlings squabble over the bird bath. They come in a large group and I imagined them, like little vacationers. I could see them with little beach towels around their necks, one of those tiny inflatable float rings, little ray bands on their heads. Now I'm getting silly. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a tiny beach ball floating on the tiny ripples of the bird bath.

But March is the promise of spring.

The Ides of March

2009-03-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

Well, you know the old saying "When it rains it fucking pours" (or something like that). Well, my doctors came in and closed the Pella blinds. The cute doctor that sounds like Stephen Moyer came and sat on the end of the bed to let me know it looks like the bone marrow is dying. I've been placed on the bone marrow list as a top priority.

I sat there and I just couldn't believe it. I had slept late today and drank most of my ensure milkshake and watched Empathy on line and wrote some on the forum about Alex Skarsgard maybe getting the nod to play Thor (he plays Eric on TB) and wrote for a while in my journal when the doctors came in. Dr. McWilliams, my oncologist and Dr. Havers (the Brit) held my hands (something they have never done) and told me that I had the fight of my life ahead of me.

They say it is fairly rare and I am going to be sick for a long while or until my blood marrow can be rematched. So, because I have no immune system to speak of, I will be kept in even stricter isolation, put on broad spectrum anitbiotics and be placed on the stem cell research list in case there is a chance stem cell theraphy can be of any use. God Bless Barack Obama.

Okay God, can I quit now?

Mythos

2009-03-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

So, I am on this forum, True-Blood.net, and I have never met a greater group of folks. We spend a lot of time talking about the books and the show and just talking to each other. They know that I am sick and they are really supportive and they get a kick out the stuff I write and post on the forum.

One of the threads that I have posted on the forum is about the mythology connected to the Vampire and Werewolf and shifters in the world of Bon Temps. I have a gotten a few comments, but I think most people are afraid to post because they don't want to cite their sources, which is something that I asked everyone to do with this thread so folks can look things up on their own. Mostly I wanted to see what other things I might learn about werewolves so I can add it to what I have already learned about werewolves and shapeshifters.

Though they don't contribute, there are a lot of hits on the thread so I know someone is reading the thread. So there is some interest there. I like teaching, I miss it very much, so this is a real outlet for me.

One thing that is interesting is that I get to see just how much I actually know about the whole topic of the supernatural myself. And I must seem freakish because I know an awful lot about the creatures of the night. And this was long before I became Witch. I have always felt an affinity with the world of Other. Ghosts, Faery folk, Vampire, Werewolf, Witch, they are joined in my world view.

And I know that the monsters of old are mythology or primitive attempts at understanding mental illness. But I do know that there are real Vampires, not the allergic to sunlight/garlic sucking your blood animated dead guy Vampires, but there are psychic Vampires. And there are no real Werewolves who turn into wolves on the full moon and howl and slobber over poor girl on the moors, but I know there are people who are very in touch with their animal side, their totemic animal of protection or affinity.

I think it is strange that I didn't get a degree in folklore and anthropology. I guess I don't like the notion of science and history being melded together but I enjoy the stories and how societies and civilizations tweaked the elements of the tales as they evolved with man's view of the monsters that lurked in the night.

Isolation

2009-03-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

So here I am in isolation. It is so weird. I am in a self contained room with it's own foyer where I am protected from other people's germs. They have to get suited up to visit me. They all look like advertisements for really safe sex.

My room is in the ICU. I have these glass walls in the front of my room that are made private by these blinds, like the Pella blinds that are enclosed in two panes of glass. When they do medical procedures on me, they close those blinds and do whatever it is they are going to do me, whether it is check my catheter or give me a bed bath or draw blood. I like the blinds open during the day. I sit and watch the doctors and nurses and aides talking to each other. I can't hear them so I make up dialogue for them. My sister and I used to do it when we sat in the restaurants at home when we watched passers by walk on the street by the windows.

I have assigned special names for the ones I don't know intimately. There's Dr. Needle Nose, Nurse Piggy (she isn't fat but she does have a snout and when she laughs, which I can hear through my bloody double glazing, she does sort of snort and grunt), The Goth Nurse (she's pierced on her face and has black nail polish and black hair. How does she get away with that? She must know some evil dirt on the administrator), and Elvis, the orderly (who does look something like the King and tends to lead with the hips when he walks, like he has a terminal boner).

See, I'm a people watcher, always have been. I like to sit in crowded bars and restaurants and watch people. I see you do everything. Girls, I see you pull the panties out of your butt, scratch your itches, pick your noses and fondle your boyfriends under the table. Boys, I see you pull your balls away from your body, pick your nose, spit, pick your teeth, and cop a feel of your girlfriend's tits. But you never see me. It's because I don't stare. That's essential for the people watcher. Your eyes flick from person to person like a hummingbird, stopping only long enough to look but not to stare. I also listen to your conversations. Especially when you are on the phone. I listen to you giving your address out, your phone number, even your social security number on the phone. Stop it, someone less honest than me will someday hear you.

One of the things I notice is that people are inarticulate. They barely speak English. They don't have enough vocabulary to speak to someone else unless it is littered with obscenities. I'm no prude, I like to use good strong words from time to time, especially four letter words. But to salt and pepper your language with those words doesn't make you sound tough, it just makes you sound stupid. Stop it and buy a word-a-day calendar and brush up on your vocabulary.

One of the things I have done is downloaded the Sookie books from a file sharing place and I read them as a PDF. It is better than a book and passes the sanitary test. I still have my calendar but it is enclosed in a plastic sleeve. It's that picture from Fangtasia of George Bush as Vampire biting the neck of Lady Liberty. Bill is April. I love April.

I get out the last of May.

I watch the VCR, watching True Blood. I know there is a website that you can use to watch the show as a bootleg but it has Japanese captions running underneath it and it gets on my nerves. I notice that the nurses on the late shift like to watch it through my window at night. If I am awake, they write things on the dry erase board and ask me questions about the show. I write them back on my dry erase board or use my call button.

I actually got eat something. It was orange jello. It tasted bizarre and tangy on my tongue. I kept it down too. I miss my cat. Ishee is not a friendly cat, but he loved me above all my family. He sleeps with me and lets me pet him from time to time, mostly he just bites me. I wonder if he remembers me? Mom said that when I first went in the hospital that he went upstairs to look for me for a long time.

I have insomnia. I think it is because I'm bored. I'm ready to be out of the hospital. I hate it here.

Fewer Believers in Fox Holes

2009-03-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

Are there fewer believers in the world today? You better believe it. There are many reasons for this, but I suspect that the biggest reason for this trend is the fact that church services tend to be an hour long infomercial explaining to believers why they need to cough up their money and give it to the church.

Jesus tells us that we are to go out into the world and tell people the good news that all men are redeemed through his sacrifice and heaven awaits those who believe in this salvation. He also says that in the end of days, there would be no physical place called the church, that not one stone would rest upon the other. We are told that those who are left behind will have to find the church in their heart because there will be no physical building, that the kingdom of God will be the people of God, not the churches.

In the film Jeremiah Johnson, this crazy man Jeremiah encounters tells him that the hills and the forests are the cathedrals of God, that the mountains bear witness to his glory, that the prairies are the great gathering places of the angels. This is the cathedral I believe in too. Not some ugly square building. The magnificence of the sunrise, the solitude of a starry night, the choir of the winds and the thunder of God's sermon and the baptism of the rain. No sacrament is greater than the sacrament of one's own presence in the face of such beauty and power. No virgin so sweet than the unsullied stand of great cedars, no child so wondrous as a new born fawn rising up to take suck from it's mother, no saint as holy as the solitary mountain raising itself up to the glory of heaven.

If I die, I want to go to the creator of the seas and the storm, the winds and the rain, the warming sun and the "dark, sacred night". I want to go to the God that makes personal covenants with each of us when we put seeds in the soil, causes the robins to break into song, and blessed me with the love of a man who covered me in the darkness and held me close to him afterwards, under the blankets, making me feel small, warm and cherished and contented.

And this is from a woman standing at the valley of the shadow, on the edge of the jumping off place. How can you, the whole and the living, doubt the glory of God? I understand about religion. Religion is a construct, faith is your inheritance. I never asked you to believe in a religion, kneel in no chapel, partake in any sacrament, but I ask you, when you behold the glory of creation, how can you deny the presence of the Creator?

Hospital Haute Coutre

2009-02-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

If you have ever been in the hospital, you know what I am talking about. The hospital gown. It is designed for easy access for nurses and is the (excuse the expression) butt of many a joke.

I haven't had a proper sit down bath in weeks. I can't submerge completely in water because of radiation burns and now my surgical incision. And I'm one of those people who shower in the morning and then at night, I enjoy being submerged in boiling hot water to my chin with a good book and when I was healthy, a glass of wine and soaking until I was done to a turn. I resembled a very done lobster when I emerged in a cloud of steam from the bathroom about an hour later.

But back to hospital fashion. So here I am in this hospital johnny. My sister who is a nurse, usually comes in of the evenings and gives me the ubiquitous bed bath, changes my sheets, and dresses me in a gown she constructed of two of the johnnys., snapping up the shoulders and tying the sides. The hospital would really prefer she just use one, I am the skinniest person in the world right now. But I suppose she wants to preserve as much of my dignity as she can. It is a running discussion she has with the nurses to make sure that if I am not fashionable, I am at least decently clad.

To pass the time, and believe me when you are a patient, you have plenty of that, I began to concoct a tale of the man who invented the hospital gown. Here it is for your perusal.

Hospital Haute Coutre

By Aslinn Dhan Dragonhawk

In the late 1800's in Paris, a struggling fashion designer was trying to find his place in the annals of fashion design. He worked feverishly to create clothes that would set trends and cause a stir in the fickle and often vicious world of Paris haute coutre. He entered competitions, went to all the top design houses and begged anyone who was anyone to allow him to cut their clothes. No one was interested in his work. So he went to work for the French government designing uniforms and other apparel for the military, the gende d'arm, prisons and the like. It was a living, but he was uninspired. He knew this was just a way to make a living and he would simply be an anonymous government employee.

Then there was a post on the bulletin board that the Paris hospital needed a simple design for gowns for patients that would fit most any body shape and be simple to put on and take off and leave the patient easily accessible for any and all medical proceedures. It wasn't difficult but it would at least relieve some his boredom. He went to work and created his design and made a gown and had it shown at the hospital director's meeting. They praised it's simplicity and it's utility and before he knew it, most every hospital in the world would use it.

Of course the patients would never really appreciate it's design and helpfulness. They complained that it was too big or too small and it left your derriere hanging out in the breeze. All the easier for nurses to give you shots, enemas, birth your babies, or secure your diaper. But woe unto the absent minded ambulatory patient who forgot about the opening in the back as they took their stroll down the halls. Everyone had the chance to make you the butt of their joke.

So now, the decades have passed and we still use that wonderful, simple hospital gown today, but the name of the man who designed it is still a mystery til now. The name of the designer: Pierre Buttzout.

Thank you Pierre, you have made my humiliation complete.

Surgery Tomorrow

2009-02-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

So, today, I have been going for tests, a final MRI and an intense discussion about my little stranger. The doctors have been giving me the blow by blow about that they may be doing to me during the surgery. They orginally wanted to do it laproscopically but they have decided to do it open, along the bikini line.

I have heard stories about the myths surrounding air reaching the tumor causing spread of cancer. I have been begging for a closed proceedure, but they felt that I would not be assured that all the tissue would be taken out that is effected by the cancer. They explained that the myth comes because most people ignore symptoms til it is too late and that adds to the notion that exposure to the atmosphere causes immediate spread. They promise me that this is not the case.

My dad has been donaing blood for the surgery and I have been doing a mix of synthetic blood and true blood to build up my count, and fight the anemia that I am experiencing. I will have two more rounds of radiation then they will do the bone marrow transpant and I will be in isolation.

I'm scared, I don't mind to say it. My priest is coming to anoint me and give me Communion and he will even do the ashes, on a little card to post on my window because I will be in a protected environment. I will be fully ready to go through whatever it is I will be going through, at least spiritually.

Mom and dad came to see me today. They still don't like to be around me and they are glad I'm about 30 minutes away and the weather has been on and off again so they have an excuse not to be around so much. I understand, though it does hurt.

My sister and her wife come to see me for a few minutes every day, which is nice. I like my sister in law. I can't see my little "niece" because she is seven and little kids are notorious little petri dishes, but she draws me pictures and writes me letter. I always email her a little note, just for her. She wants to know what the boo boo looks like. I told her it was a little man that was kind of ugly and the doctors were going to trick him out and grab him.

They give me about even odds, because the chemo and radiation didn't do everything they expected it to do, namely shrink the tumor. But it did stop growing and is in stasis. I hope they can get it out.

Geronimo's Bones

2009-02-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

As I lay here in my hospital bed, trawling the Internet, trying to keep my mind off what is happening to me, yet trying to decide how much further I am willing to go, I ran across this article about the descendants of Geronimo seeking the remains and funerary pieces of the great Apache warrior to give them an honest burial so his spirit will go on to the land of the dead.

Being Cherokee and Iroquois, I have a profound empathy for the Native people of America. I know that aboriginal ways are not always Christian ways but their belief structures are just as legitimate as Christian ways of dealing with the living and the dead. I would hate to think that here would be someone in the future that would dig up my ancestor's graves or even my grave, to study and keep in a cardboard box in the dark bowels of the Smithsonian or some college. I would rather think that my remains would remain in the earth to become a part of the Great Mother, who allowed us to spring up and walk on her great body and then cradles us in the arms of the soil to nurse us in our death sleep as we wait for the time of rebirth and reunion with the Creator.

To honor the dead, whether they share your world or religious view is a human responsibility. To treat with respect the most basic thing left of us, our earthly remains is the last request any of us could make of our brothers and sisters.

As one chief wrote: Deal kindly with my people for the dead have a power, too.

And for the sake of the great spirit, go to Mount Rushmore and blow those President's faces off the side of that mountain. The Black Hills Mountain range, of which Rushmore is a part is the home of Wakontanka, the Creator God of the Lakota Sioux. Those carvings are the equivalent of drawing a moustache on the Virgin Mary. It is a sign of dishonor and respect. Those mountains are the Sioux' cathedral. Give it back to them.

My Own Sheets and Blankets

2009-02-16T18:10:00.000-08:00

See, no one really knows what is like to be in a hospital for a very long time. And as I am going to be in the hospital for a long time, I miss my old room in my mom and dad's house. My own bed and matresses with that familiar divit in the spot where you lay the most, the smell of your own pillows, that mix of clean skin and hair and your favorite cologne, the favorite flowered sheets and the old blanket that is warm in winter and somehow cool in summer that has the little hole in it that that you finger when you read or just before you fall asleep.

So, although I am in a rather sterile hospital room, with my little True Blood calendar the nurse Sherri made for me pinned up on my bulletin board. (I'm currently staring at Eric, sitting on his throne, looking sexy and bored. Obviously she doesn't know about my Bill fixation.) I was surprised by my mom bringing my pillows and and one of flowered flat sheets and my favorite blanket to put on my bed. Hospital pillows suck anyway.

After she and dad left, I snuggled down in my hospital bed and pulled my sheets and blanket up around me. I could smell the fabric softener she's washed them in. Lovely smells of home.

They take out my little stranger (I hate funny doctors, even though he is English and sounds a little like Stephen Moyer when I close my eyes) on the 24th. They say it roughly the size of an IHOP pancake and twice as thick and sort of kidney shaped. I asked them if I could look at the little bastard (that's what I call it) when it is "born". I don't think they have ever had anyone ask to look at the thing the thing that has been held in stasis for the last eight months. That's just a fancy way of saying they have managed to make it stop growing, though they hoped it would actually shrink.

I want to see the thing that would have loved to eat me alive, that may still kill me, that made me puke, undergo alchemy, undergo the burning times, made me cry and despair, made me ugly and bony and pale. Made me lonely. Made me Other. I want to look at and say "Well done you little fucker. Even if I don't make it, I know you didn't either."

But, I like being under my own sheets and blankets.

Simplicity

2009-02-13T00:07:00.000-08:00

Some of you will have noticed that I have changed my blog some. I wanted to change it to reflect not so much a change of heart but a change for myself. To open up this blog to creativity and a change of spirit. I want this blog to be about me, not just the occult side of me, my dual naturedness, but my human side, my frail and failing side, my creative side.

I am tired of seeing myself as just one way, for like a jewel, I have many facets. If you are looking for my magik, it is still there, just look for it in the guise of other things, in the hidden nature of art and thoughts and commentary, of meanderings and of fantasy. The spells that come from poetry and prose, the praise of God in the desire for life. The exploration of life through fantasy and fiction, to find truth in simple thoughts.

All Things in the Night

2009-02-12T20:19:00.000-08:00

I was perusing the internet, like you do when you are bored and I saw a video for the Northern Lights and had a sudden streak of inspiration:

The Viking Vampire stepped out into the night and looked up into the black sky. How long had it been since he'd seen the sun? He thought hard, trying to remember, something Eric did not like to do because it reminded him just how long it had been since he was human. Still there were some things he did remember. Like the way the Northern Lights would light up the midnight skies and make the snow covered mountains seem to be blooming in the thousands of shades of green that could only been seen in the light of day. But then, as the night began to melt away, the colors would fade and disappear and the mountains would become dark with the coming of the sun rise behind the mountains. But in that brief instant, the ancient dead man with his ice blue eyes could see the world in false daylight, not under the killing orb that he now avoided since being made Vampire.

These things of nature, of the night days he now lived, did not trouble him. He was leaving soon, to America, and he would not see the green fire that danced and showed him the Valhalla he would never know. The gods were dead to him now, as dead but not as eternal as he. Eric had lived too long in one place and new vistas called to him. He stood there in the cold he did not feel, he saw the symphony of green and blue light which would be the only day he knew. Would the American nights be as beautiful? Or would they simply look like the velvet blues and blacks of a thousand other human places. He once killed a jeweler in Germany and scooped up a piece of velvet with a small mound of diamonds on it as he left. In the privacy of his nest, he spread the cloth on a table and spread the diamonds across the soft silky pelt of the fabric, and though he was not given to metaphoric thought, the Vampire mused how the diamonds looked like stars in an inky black sky.

The female, his second in command, eternally young and beautiful with her long blonde hair on her shoulders stood next to him.

"Everything is ready," she said.

"We leave tonight," he said. But he stood there a moment longer to watch the lights.

Love and Betrayal

2009-02-09T18:24:00.000-08:00

So, here is something I want to talk about as I have taken the time to read and reread the Charlaine Harris books. I'll warn you now there are BIG TIME SPOILERS here so if you don't want to know, back out now.

Being that I am in the hospital and likely to be here for at least another two months, I have read the Charlaine Harris books multiple times. I had really stopped reading them thoroughly after book three after she so uncerimoniously broke Bill and Sookie up. I just wasn't that interested in reading about Sookie or Bill sleeping with other people. It's because I loved the love story and the notion of true love, every bit as real as true blood.

So, in Dead to the world, Sookie goes to clean out her cousin Hadley's apartment. Cousin Hadley was murdered and, unbeknownest to Sookie, Hadley was Vampire. In the course of her activity, she is attacked by the same people who killed Hadley. This is what Sookie discovers.

Sookie discovers that Hadley had been the favorite of the Vampire Queen Sophie Ann. In the course of their relationship, Hadley tells the queen about Sookie being a telepath. The queen is intrigued. She then forms a plan to draw Sookie into the world of Vampire politics by sending someone to seduce her. You guessed it, Bill Compton.

It's terrible. It's an idea so loathesome, that even I, a Bill Compton devotee, feel my skin crawl. There are a lot of reasons for this. Bill is so courtly, so gentlemanly, so sincere and he did take Sookie's virginity. (Some of you might say "What difference does that make?" It makes a lot of difference if you cherished your virginity and wanted to give it to that special man as the gift you can only give once.)

But then I took some time and thought about it. What choice did Bill have? None, under Vampire custom, he has to follow the orders of his queen. If he hadn't, someone else would have been sent who perhaps would not have been as patient. Did Bill really love her? Absolutely. That was something the queen and Bill didn't bargain for. He was sent in to bring Sookie into the world of Vampire, and James Bond, Bill is not. He ended up falling in love with a mortal. Is Bill a victim in this, too? Sure. Maybe not on the same level as Sookie, but he is. He even suspects his descendant, the person he inherited his home from, was murdered to make room for him in the world of Bon Temps.

I still hold out hope for the romance. In Dead to Worse, he declared his love for Sookie and the declaration of his willingness to die (for good) for Sookie. I will know the entire story in March when the paperback comes out and I will know in May when the newest book comes out. I won't buy the hard back edition but I will sit down in the local book store and read it through right there so I will know if there is the hope of a Sookie/Bill reunion. I have to believe in the possibility of true love. There is so little of it out there.

The Snow

2009-01-26T10:56:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning and eased out of bed to sit for a few minutes in chair and let the cna's change my bed. It felt so good to hobble about and stand at the window and look at the snow that had fallen during the night. I am pretty tired, but I actually feel less bad than before.

Snow is my favorite type of precipitation. I love the winter. While everyone is hopping about wishing for spring, I actually love the idea of snow on the ground til April. I loved snow even before I was sick. It never gets cold enough to suit me. I love the changes in weather.

But after a few minutes, I was ready to get back in bed. Dad hooked up the little VCR to my TV and I run TB almost constantly. I feel not so lonesome now that I can look up at the tv and see my favorite characters and hear their southern accents. I suppose they sound funny and contrived to those who actually live in the deep south, but I love to hear them talk. Especially Bill. And the actor portraying him isn't even American. Stephen Moyer is British, from Essex, just north of London and he has the most delightful Queen's English accent. I have been watching him on youtube in the British soap NY-LON and in the Brit-Flick Empathy. He's really a very good actor. He does well with both stories though I think the stories themselves are little under developed. I loved him in Restraint. After seeing him play Bill Compton, a sort of vicious Vampire with a heart of gold, it was tough to watch him play Andrew, an agorophobic art dealer with a dark and definitely insane side to him. In the beginning of the movie, he is so vulnerable, unable to defend himself, but in the end, you discover that he is filled with his own sort of evil, darkness. You feel less sympathetic towards him, but you are intrigued by him.

I am glad I have True Blood to distract me. I feel as much a part of that world as any of the characters there. Kinda sad really, but as some of my mates on True Blood.net have said "Whatever it takes,"

I'm sleepy now.

My Will and Testimony

2009-01-24T07:26:00.000-08:00

Everyone makes one of these, sometime or other, so here is what I call my Will and Testimony. It is not a declaration of what I will share in my death but what I have shared in my life. My possessions are so few and pitiful that this is all I really have.

To my Family:

I have tried to be the best person I can be. I always tried to be a good daughter and sister. I have tried not be an embarrassment or a burden. If I have been those things, I humbly apologize and beg your forgiveness. I have devoted myself to every family endeavor and cause and have tried to champion you in every public and private forum. I have tried to honor you and respect you and I have always loved you from the bottom of my heart. Do not look back on my life and pity me. My life has been an adventure and I cherished every moment of it.

To my friends, living and dead:

I have always tried to cultivate my friendships with a few people who deemed me important enough to call me a friend. I have appreciated your intimacy and trust. You have seen me at my very best and my very worst. I have tried to protect and serve you with all that is in me and though I sometimes failed, your acknowledgement of my endeavors have been reward enough. You accepted my eccentricities and embraced me when no one else would.

To my lovers, living and dead:

To my husband, who is dead now more than ten years, I tell you you were not my first heart love, but you were my first lover. You claimed the only prize I had to give you. I surrendered to you as well as I could and loved you to the best of my ability. You claimed me for only a short while, but I was yours completely. All men who came after could never claim the one part of me I could only give once.

To my heart's love, you loved me as well as you could but I have always and will always love you. I wished that you could have loved me as much as I loved you, but you couldn't. I hope that where ever you are, you are well and happy and healthy and loved.

To my God and my Church:

I am a sinner as you well know. I have many times failed you, but I have never fallen from the palm of your hand. You forgive my weaknesses and make your presence known to me by the people you have placed in my path.

I was accepted by my church when no other church would have me. I have not always agreed with you and sometimes I have disobeyed you, but I have never strayed from you. You are my mother and you nurture me and give me peace.

I found my spiritual path to magik not by the straightest of lines. I discovered the innermost heart of God by understanding the special energies flowing through all people and all things and I have always tried to respect all people and all creeds and all practices so that I may learn of all the world the will of God in my life.

To my Students:

I was not a great teacher, but I worked hard to try to be one. I hope you will forgive my failings, my shortcomings and celebrate the precious times we had together. I tried to reach those who others gave up on and tried to embrace the ones no one would embrace. I loved you all. You were my childen.

To my Idols:

U2: Thank you for your music and your poetry and your beauty. Thank you for helping me through heartbreaks and lonlinesses and my sicknesses. Thank you for being the soundtrack of my life, the rhyme in my heart, the passion of my soul.

Mel Gibson: Thank you for your beauty and your humanity. Thank you for Braveheart, The Patriot, Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, and Apocalypto and The Passion of the Christ. Thank you for your failings and your triumphs. Thank you for your Vision.

Dog the Bounty Hunter: Thank you for being street level, for your big heart, for your story, for your pain. Thank you for being foul mouthed but soft hearted. Thank you for your bravery and your justice. Thank you for your mistakes and your successes.

Stephen King: Thank you for scaring me, for creating characters I loved because they had a part of me. Thank you for your subtle wisdom. Thank you for your words. You made me think I too could be a writer and you inspired me to put pen to paper.

JK Rowling: Thank you for Harry Potter, thank you for magic in my life, thank you for vindicating Snape, though I had him pegged as the eternal villian.

Charlaine Harris and the cast and crew of True Blood: Thank you for being my refuge, for the chance to contemplate my humanity, my feelings of Other, and for helping me recognize my levels of tolerance and intolerance.

Thank you for the love story.

This ends my will and testimony. Brightest Blessings Be to all I mention here and may you all shime on in this world and the next.

Aslinn Dhan Dragonhawk

Creepiest Places on Earth

2009-01-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

Excuse the Vampire. He isn't pertinent to the discussion, but he has the cutest smile, don't you think?

Ever see that show? I liked that show. They pluck some suburban American family from their comfortable lives and drop them down in the most creepy old places in the world, usually somewhere in England, and attach those back and front cameras onto them so you you get this strange coming and going feeling when you watch them sneaking around in this dark old house.

But I can tell you what the creepiest place on earth is, hands down. A hospital at night. Yeah, pretty damned spooky. I think it is because it's not like a hotel room. You can't close the door and lock it. Anyone can come into your room. And there is nothing like waking up to someone taking your pulse in the middle of the night, or changing one of those IV bags. And they are creepy because they are very quiet. Like Vampires that way. One minute you are lying there, staring at the ensure milkshake they made up for you (Drink it all down Miss Dragonhawk, every last drop) and the next minute there is one of them and they want to check your sugar (Oh no, they are Vampires LOL) Which finger you want me to prick Miss D.? I always show them my middle finger. You know they have seen that gesture millions of times from millions of patients but they all laugh like they'd never seen it before. I bet they are taught to do that, to keep our spirits up so we don't get down in the dumps. Too late.

Pneumonia...that's what I am in for. Pnuemonia. Went my whole life without pnuemonia and now I have it. Bloody infections. And I still have to go for my nuke sessions. I thought "Oh goody, a week off from nukings, I work on my radiation burns and rest maybe break that fever" But no. Not only am I sick from the pnuemonia, I have more burning to deal with.

You know why I think hospitals are so costly? I'm not reaching here, I know. I was admitted for pnuemonia while I was here for a nuke session. I wear this bracelet with a bar code on it. Supposedly, they are supposed to be able to scan me and pull up my records. What I discovered is I am in another department and I have to fill out all my paperwork again. Here I am dying and they want me to sit my fucking SATS. I didn't do it. I called my oncologist to send photocopies of my records to ICU so I wouldn't have to do them again. I then sent my dad out to KINKOS and smuggle my records out so he could make a couple of copies so incase I have to go again or go to a strange hospital, I would have them. Let some RN fill them out. LPNS are the ones who do all the work anyway.

So, anyway, it's always funeral home quiet here. Depressing. They have TV but no HBO and no VCRS so I can't watch True Blood. More depressing. I have my laptop though and so I am writing in my blog, getting ready to watch Stephen Moyer in NY-LON on youtube. Checking in with my TB buds. I wonder if that VCR in the closet still works. I may be here for two weeks. I may have dad bring it and hook it up for me so I can watch TB. I could probably watch it online somewhere.

Depress, depressed, more depressed.

Dear Mr. President

2009-01-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

Today is inauguration day and we are swearing in our 44th president. This is a momentous time in our history. You see, our president, Barack Obama is black.

Everyone wants to know what black people are feeling right now, and it's important, but I have to say it is important to me too. I am not free from the shackles of racism, I still fight with the seeds of intolerance and hate within my own self. But I voted for Obama, not assuage my guilt but because he is the best man for the job.

I will tell you a little story. Know the movie Deep Impact? The asteroid movie with Morgan Freeman and Robert Duvall in it? I loved that corn ball movie, it had a depth to it that I enjoyed with Tea Leoni and her conflicted feelings with her dad, the young kids who were just kids in the neighborhood who let us see the world through their eyes and the astronauts who were preparing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the world.

It's all there in this improbable plot, the plan to send the Messiah up to break up the asteroid, the Ark rescue plan, the moral dilemma for ordinary people over fifty excluded from the chance of rescue. But the most improbable plot line in a movie filled with them, was the notion of Morgan Freeman as president of the United States. I told my mom that that was the only thing that really stands out as improbable. "There will never be a black man in the White House in my lifetime."

Now, history has made a fool of me. That's okay. It's time for Barack Obama to come into his own and change history, opening up the door to all hues, just as Kennedy broke the barrier for Catholics, Obama will break the barrier for people of color. God Bless Barack Obama.

Do your best Mr. President, work hard, you have been left a country in shambles and a world on the edge and white people did that. Sorry it is in such a mess. And Americans, be patient. It took eight years for America to be made a shambles of. It will take far longer than that for America to be put to rights.

I'm white, 42, a woman south of the Mason Dixon line, a Roman Catholic and a practicing witch, I am over educated and underemployed and uninsured and sicker than hell. I am fighting a system that would sooner see me in the grave than well and working. But I voted for you Barack Obama and I wish you well. Good luck, you are gonna need it.

Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Acceptance

2009-01-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

This chick named Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book about the stages of death. Being that she was living at the time, I wonder if she had the neccesary qualifications to really write a book about what it was like to meet the notion of mortality. Now that she is dead, there is no way to know what she thought about her own death process and whether or not she felt she was correct in her assumptions.

So, now that I am facing the possibility of my own mortal coil, I want to see what she means by the stages of death.

Anger- Am I angry? I am. But I don't think I am as mad at my own human weakness and the possibility of my own emminent death as I am of other people around me. Everyone says "I'm praying for you" or giving me those little yellow bracelets or giving me cliches about how God doesn't put a burden on you that you can't handle. I wished God wouldn't trust me so much. This is one burden that is just too heavy. I know their reaction is just an inablity to cope or relate to what is happening to me. I feel sorry for them on some levels because I know they are afraid. I am living proof of everyone's eventual demise, their own human mortality. And they are afraid of what they see. I know they are saying "Damn, that poor bitch is wasting away, I hope I don't go like that," If you can't say anything besides those old worn out chestnuts, just don't say anything at all. Just come and sit with me and talk about all the gossip or bring me a magazine or a good book to read. You don't have to comfort me because you can't.

Denial- There's no denying that I might be dying. I don't deny it. I think the people around me are denying it. They don't want to believe that I and they will eventually die. I think it is more about them than me. It's like, if they don't believe that I might die, then they won't die. Which is such a load of shit.

Bargaining- "Let's Make a Deal" remember that show? I am not playing that game. I have nothing to bargain with. I'm God's to dispose of as He sees fit. But the doctors like to make deals "Hey, Aslinn, the hospital would really like to put you through this drug trial. If you do, they'll knock off that fee that the state says it won't pay," What is it doc? "Well, we'll have to take you off the morphine and put you on this new non-narcotic nsaid, sort of a super aspirin, thing is, once you start it, you have to stay on it, even if your pain increases and it may cause ulcers and bleeding." No thanks doc, I'll fight the system and keep my morphine.

Acceptance- I have no fucking choice but to accept that I may die from this. To not accept is to play a vicious game with myself of being high and low. That doesn't mean that I like it, I don't, but what can I do? I have already done more than I thought I would. I always swore that I would never do chemo, never do radiation, but here I am, I'm doing it. And I have to accept what it is doing to me, I have no choice.

So, is Elizabeth Kubler-Ross right? Maybe she is, but not for the person who may be dying, but for those around them. See, I have no choice but to be where I am. Those around me? They are the ones going through the stages.

The Mirror

2009-01-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

I haven't looked at myself in the mirror in a long time. Long before I had cancer I stopped looking in the mirror because I was a fat girl and I knew no one would want to look at me, not even myself. Now that I have cancer, I don't like looking at my reflection because I know no one will want to look at me, not even myself.

But I looked today as I dressed to go to the hospital on this desperately cold day to be nuked. I had stripped down of everything. I stood there in front of the long mirror. I look like Jack Skellington from that wonderfully gothic The Nightmare before Christmas. My breast are empty and shrunken, my ribs show, my hip bones are too sharp and I am white (Momma, she's so white. We're white baby, she's dead) except for the bruises that are evident on my arms and legs from the ports they keep trying to maintain for the drugs. The doctor says that if I don't start eating more I will have to have a feeding tube. Damn it, I said no and I fucking mean it.

I dress in clothes that a few weeks ago fit me. Now I have to cinch them around me. I put on my black tee shirt that reads "My giveadammer is broken" I could almost wear it as a dress whereas before it was almost too tight. I snug my silk cap over my head and then pull on my boggan with the skull and cross bones on my head. The silk cap protects my head from being irritated by the fibers of my boggan. I pull on my pleather black jacket and slide my feet into my tennis shoes. I have to wear two pairs of socks now so my feet don't just slide out.

Dressed I still look like a boneyard. I put make up on the other day. I thought I might look more human and all it did was make me look like a tarted up skeleton. Fuck it. I kinda like scaring little kids who stare at me like I'm a freak. Watch it kid, but for the grace of God goes you. Mothers stare at me too, as if I could help it. Fuck you and your little kid lady. What do they want me to do? Wear a canvas bag over my head with eye holes in them and mutter to myself "I am not an animal, I am a human being." If someone hands me another one of them live strong bracelets I'm gonna strangle them.

Yes, goddamn it I want to live. I don't need some over paid, over hyped steriodal bicyclist who dumped his wife the moment she came down with breast cancer to tell me anything about living with this disease and the things it is doing to me. Or the things it did to my husband as he died in my arms, screaming for me to stop the pain. I let him down, I couldn't put him out of his agony and I think he hated me in the end for it. And I wish folks from my church would stop bringing me St. Jude medals, pictures, statues. They all talk about how holy my suffering is. I don't feel holy.

What I am is mad as hell. I hate what is happening to me. I cry when I know it is time for my dad to carry me out to the truck because I know he finds me repulsive. I touched his hand the other day and he jerked away because I look like a skeleton and it creeps him out. My sister is a nurse and hates to come to bathe me in the evening in the bath chair while my mother changes my sheets and puts on fresh ones and lays down the chucks pad in case I wet the bed in the night. Even my sister is disgusted with what I have become and she washes the old, the infirm, the eternally lost in that long goodbye. Maybe it is because she pities me and she knows I can feel the pity rolling off her and it stinks like chemotherapy and radiation sickness.

So, I retreat into the world of the south. I go to Bon Temps and I am courted by a beautiful Vampire who sees me, not as I am but as Other. Sometimes he has dark hair, someimes he is blonde, somes he is not a man but a woman, but they know me because I am like them. Undead, Other, hated and feared.

I won't see myself in the mirror anymore.

Nagasaki/Hiroshima

2009-01-06T17:40:00.000-08:00

I had my first visit to Nuclear Medicine today for my first radiation treatment. It took all of ten minutes and left me with a sunburn from the waist down (not much of one, but still)

As I lay under this massive bit of hardware that glowed with some sort of infrared light, I meditated so I would not move around much. I have to be careful about meditation or I put myself too deep and my BP drops. But as I meditated I kept seeing this miniature mushroom cloud where my uterus used to be. What was it in that U2 song Bullet the Blue Sky "Plant a Demon Seed/ Raise a Flower on Fire" Well I think that is what is happening to me. I think the bowing lilly that was my uterus (now a wierd globbulous mass I am hoping will shrink enough to be removed) is now the flower on fire.

I am still running a fever, though some of it may be from the radiation. They say my infection is clearing up but I can't tell, I never really feel good anymore, just some days I am less bad.

Meds are kicking in.
Goodnight

Would I be Vampire?

2009-01-03T11:50:00.001-08:00

I asked this quesion to the forum and I have had an astounding resonating no. Many of the people who answered said they would do it if they could have some conditions like being able to move around in the day and not having to drink human blood. This is sort of like saying "I'd be a racial minority (black, brown, red, yellow, whatever) if I could wash it off at the end of the day.

So, before I answer my own question on the forum, I will answer it here.

Yes, I would be Vampire. I suppose you might say "of course you would, Vampires don't die of cancer" And I suppose that you would right to an extent. I would want to be Vampire and all that entails because of the fredom it entails. I would have the freedom to be a part of the mysteries of the night, to know it's loves, lusts and hungers. To live without a lot of fears (of course Vampires do fear being found in the day or being staked). To have superstrength and senses. To seek out evil and kill it and to protect the innocent and to hunt. I believe I have a bit of blood lust in me and a disposition to living solitary. To walk through history and see it unfold all around me. To be disengaged with others unless it is my will to engage them.

I would be Vampire

Goodnight Jaime

2009-01-02T16:35:00.000-08:00

One of my friends and fellow member of Club Chemo died of leukemia today. He was 16.

A fellow True Blood fan, we watched each episode at home, then I brought the tape in and we and the rest of the baldies watched it as we were having chemo. After a few episodes, he told me that I had big brown eyes like Sookie and he had lovely blue eyes that I said were like Bill's. So, as a matter of course we called each other Bill and Sookie (we look nothing like Anna and Stephen, eye coloring is the only thing we share with those two).

We would meet in Club Chemo "Good morning Sookie," "Good morning Bill," and we would settle in for our daily catheter flush, B12 shots, blood work and then be hooked up to our alchemy. Then, when the techs would leave the room (they always leave the room, they don't like the living dead) I would use the remote and run tape.

Yesterday, Jaime's mom called me and told me to come to the hospital, Jaime was dying. I came in, wrapped up in my cloak with my boggan on with the Jolly Roger on it and sat down in the chair. We were so happy that at the end of season one we were both alive. We spoke with excitement of season two, went on line, argued over the plots of the books, pouted over the romance of Bill and Sookie. Now Jaime was dying. He looked up at me with his big round blue eyes, too big for his pointed face, a face whiter than Bill's ever was, his bony hand like a huge white and pink spider slid from under the sheet and took my own thin white hand. His heat was enormous.

"Hey Sookie," "Hey Bill," He told me that he guessed I would have to find another True Blood BF cuz he was "greeting the sun". I told him there would never be another "Bill" in my life. I told him "I am a one Bill woman" He laughed a little and drowsed off in a morphine haze. He died there.

Goodnight Jaime.

A Purpose for Everything Under Heaven

2009-01-01T06:10:00.000-08:00

As I was rewatching the episodes of True Blood last night, I was struck by a conversation that Adele Stackhouse (Sookie's gran') had in episode four. It seemed to answer a few questions that I have asked about the existance of the soul, and whether or not Bill and indeed anyone thought of as Other had a purpose in this world and whether or not there was evidence of the soul.

Sookie is confused about her feelings about Bill, that mix of desire and fear and admittedly a certain amount of disgust for Vampire mores. Gran tells her that God has a purpose for everything, whether it is a special gift (her telepathy), or an over priced cup of coffee or a Vampire, that God will reveal His purpose in his own time.

So as I pondered this, I thought about how Vampires are thought of as Evil. Bill tells the members of the Descendants of the Glorious Dead that he can "Stand before a cross, or a Bible or in a Church, just like any creature of God" and that is where it hit me. How could I have been so ignorant (a real Homer Simpson "Doh" moment, complete with forehead slapping). "We Vampires are not the minions of the Devil" he goes on to say.

If we discuss this on the premise there are real Vampires, then we have to ask the question, if they are a supernatural evil, why doesn't God just destroy them? I mean, we read in the Book of Job that God gave Satan the power to do whatever he liked to Job except kill him. On this premise alone, early Church fathers who wrote about the occult developed the notion that Satan had limits placed on him by God. I don't think God would have allowed Satan the power to create other demons, including Vampires. (Again, working on the premise that Vampires are evil minions of the Devil) So what purpose would a Vampire serve under heaven? What purpose would someone who is Other serve?

Being Other can be seen as both blessing and curse. Imagine having boundless strength and energy, being able to heal the good or kill the evil, imagine having super senses to sight, smell, taste, feel, and hear. Imagine being able to create a blood link to someone you love so you can feel them and know if they are safe or well or in need?

Now imagine it is you and people hate you because of what and who you are? It's the root of the stories I write about werewolves, they are the heroes, the Other, the beast in the field, the hunter under the moon, the Justifier and the Protector. I think this above all is the lure for me to this story. The notion of Other as a servant of God.

But does Bill believe in God? I don't know, but it doesn't matter. If this story were real, and he were real, I think you could best answer it with a line from Stephen King's The Stand: "It don't matter...He believes in you."

So perhaps there is a purpose for a witch, or a werewolf, or a Vampire, or just a woman with cancer. A purpose for everything under heaven. And God will reveal that purpose in His own time.

Bill Part Two

2008-12-29T18:31:00.000-08:00

I have a fever. Apparently I have an infection somewhere. They think it may be from my catheter in my femoral artery. I am on broad spectrum antibiotics. You know what I wish more than anything?

Charlaine Harris describes Bill's body as cool, in fact Sookie says his body rarely gets above tepid. I would love it if Bill were to appear at my bedside and undress and get in bed with me and hold me against his Vampire cool body. How wonderful it would feel. And he would like my radiant heat. He loves to lie in a warm bath. I would be so warm to him that he would enjoy the fever and he wouldn't have to mess around with getting wet.

I told mom about my stray desire and she said that lying in bed with Bill must be like lying with a big lizard *smirk* beside you. Who cares what she thinks. I know it would be wonderful. Of course he could turn me, but I wouldn't let him drink my blood. Tainted and poisonous as it is, I probably would taste terrible. He might offer to let me drink his blood, but I wouldn't deplete him to be healed. I'm too far gone. Maybe, later.

Ah Bill, come lie down beside me and cool me.

The Immortal Soul

2008-12-25T08:57:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Christmas Day and I have lived to see it. After Christmas, I have fourteen weeks of radiation to get through, so I still have my hands full.

I have been contemplating the existance of the soul. Of course I would. I have of course been watching True Blood On Demand and now on tape. I keep thinking about the soul as it applies to others and I think it is because if I can prove the existance of the soul in other beings, even if they are mythological, then I can confirm that I have a soul, even in this wasted body.

Anyhow, let's chat.

I remember once that I heard a preacher say that humans were the only living things with a soul. He said it was because we are the only creatures who were aware of God and other living creatures and we had a capacity for love. I go with that to a point.

I read that one Saint or another wrote that humans have a soul because we can dream of God and through our dreams be more open to His consciousness. But I have seen animals dream. My cat, the irrepressable Ishee, as wicked as he is, dreams and seems to appreciate it if I wake him from a dream in which he snuffles and cries and runs. So, does that mean my cat has a soul?

If Ishee has a soul, though he is innocent of the Great Sin of Adam, does he get to go to heaven? I hope so. He might try to bite and angel or two, but he is nice in a befuddled sort of autistic way.

If dreaming is evidence of the soul, does Bill have a soul? You remember Bill? Bill Compton, my fictional Vampire with a heart of gold? Bill dreams, does that mean he has a soul? I would like to think if there were Vampires in the world that they too might have souls, though I doubt Malcolm, Liam and Diane still dream. I doubt Eric dreams. In the book, Bill doesn't dream...in fact he has no sentient consciousness when he goes to rest...Bill simply dies. But on the show, Bill sleeps, more in the way of humans, he even has a couple of books with him under the floorboards of his house so he can read himself back to sleep if he is wakeful. And Bill dreams. He dreamed of Sookie when her gran died. So does Bill have a soul?

If Vampires can have the ability to dream, then can they pray? Bill certainly seemed to pray when he discovered that Sookie was fine, sleeping with Prince Valium. If he prays, does God listen to his Vampire's prayers? Is being a Vampire a curse? Bill says "We Vampires are not minions of the devil, we can stand before a cross or a Bible or in a Church," Bill, of course does not live like other Vampires, he doesn't nest, he doesn't make until he was forced to, and he seems to try to be both Vampire and human. But can he? Does he have to have a soul to do that? He says "I am not human," But if humanity is defined by the soul and dreaming evidence of the soul, isn't he, on some level, human? And therefore possess a soul? If not human, then some Other? Because I feel very Other right now. All of my hair is gone. I am so white I seem to be without pigment. My eyes are hollows and large and glassy. My lips are obscenely pink. I weigh in at 89 pounds where once I was...well...considerably larger (size 18). I went to Walmart, the first place I had been since I got sick. I had on a hooded cape one of my circle sisters made for me with celtic knots embroidered on it. I was in a wheel chair. It was very early in the morning, so I could enjoy the store without a lot of people staring at me, but the few people who were there saw me and I could hear them whispering "She looks like an alien," "She looks like a Vampire," One even said "Fuckin' Halloween is over, Vampira" And it didn't help when I fell out at home and had to have a blood transfusion. Well, at least it's Vampire Bill's favorite type O-.

I had planned on going to church, but I decided not to after that. While my friends at church would never have said those things, I know they would be looking at me, pitying me, maybe loathing me, hoping I don't drink from the same cup they will have drink from in case I am contagious, as if you can catch cancer from mouth to mouth. So, I asked my pastor to bring me communion.

I am Other, at least temporarily. Do I have a soul?

The Grief of Angels

2008-12-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

When true love dies
Angels bow their heads
Crying out into the storm
Their tears fall and cover
My face

I walked away from you
And you turned away too
And my tears mingled
With the cold December rain

The grief of angels
Mourning the loss of love
Hell on earth
Brought from heaven above

Eric

2008-11-29T18:57:00.000-08:00

So everyone wants to talk about Eric the Vampire Sheriff.

Eric is a Viking, about a thousand years old and he is a real Vampire with a capital Vamp. He has no human emotions and is really more than a little disgusted with Bill, who wants to recapture his humanity in the form of a love relationship with Sookie.

Eric mainstreams only because it is lucrative. He can have sex and blood from willing Fangbangers (indiscriminate sex groupies) and charge them at the bar for their drinks. He sees humans as a source of wealth and Vampiric pleasure. This Southern Vampire is no gentleman.

But why are there some women who are interested in Eric? It is because some human women are little less than Vampires themselves, they have no human feelings and sex is extremely casual. While I have no illusions about Bill, I think he puts women in two categories as all men do: bad girls that you screw, and good girls that you date and fall in love with. The difference between him and Eric is that he would be a gentleman with either.

Though, allow me to say this: In the book Dead Until Dark, Sookie tells Bill that her co-worker, Dawn, has been murdered and he tries to place her "The red-head that has been married so many times?" and Sookie says "The brunette who kept bumping your chair with her hip." He says "Yes, she came to the house after you left the night Liam, Diane and Malcom were there and she seemed very confident. It was a good thing the others were gone," Sookie then says "Wouldn't you have protected her?" and he says "No, I don't think so," Sookie asks why. Bill says "Vampires don't automatically care about humans," So Bill is still Vampire, but, he isn't so Vampire that he can't invest himself in someone he likes or cares for.

Eric, would have done nothing to protect any human unless he was forced to, either by a higher up or to serve his own purposes.

So, all you ladies swooning over Eric, remember this, he is one Vampire who would not face the sun for you.......

Finale

2008-11-27T16:21:00.001-08:00

Well, the first season of True Blood is over and I already miss it and wonder what I will do now Sundays at 9:00.

If you missed it, I can tell you that whatever doubts Sookie had about Bill's feelings for her should now be vanquished. He has proved his love for her. But let me back up. I think I left off my commentary with Bill, being a dollar short and day late with Sookie.

Poor Bill is called in by Eric, the Sheriff of Area Five, to bring Sookie to help him find a thief at Fangtasia. Turns out Longshadow was the thief and he tried to kill Sookie but Bill stopped him (it was so cool too, he broke off a beer pull on a tap and staked him with it). Longshadow virtually melted. But for whatever the reason, Bill is now in trouble because he murdered another Vampire and worse, he murdered a Vampire to save a human. Eric offers to ignore the whole thing in exchange for Sookie, but Bill refused, and it appears that Eric is not above tormenting Bill for his peculiar attachments to humans, attachments that Eric doesn't have at all.

A few nights later, Eric, Pam and Chow (Longshadow's replacement) comes to call on Bill, interrupting a rousing game of wii golf. Bill has been summoned to face a Vampire Tribunal. Bill reminds Eric that Sookie was there to help him and this was how all this started. He also tells Eric that he has to see Sookie at Merlotte's so he can tell her that he will be away. He also wants to see Sam and ask him to watch over Sookie while he is gone.

They come to Merlotte's and Bill first goes to Sam's office (Chow in tow) and tells Sam that he must be away and that he wants Sam to watch over Sookie. Bill also tells him that he knows how Sam feels about Sookie and he doesn't like it but he also knows that Sam is the only one who can protect Sookie while he is gone. Sam agrees.

Bill then takes Sookie outside, Eric, Pam and Chow some distance away and tells her that he has been charged and that he has to go and stand trial in Vampire court. She offers to go and testify on his behalf but he tells her that she would not be welcome there. She tells him that he lied to her, making light of what his punishment would be and she begins to cry. Bill kisses her goodbye, with Eric ordering him to get a move on.

At the trial, the Magister, a very old Vampire, hears Bill's defense, that Longshadow was choking the girl, and she was his (Bill's) and that he would have killed her and fed from her. The magister is not impressed, in fact he says that Bill basically killed another Vampire for the sake of his pet. The usual punishment for such a crime is five years in a coffin chained with silver, where he would starve to skin and bones and go insane. But then he hears that Sookie was called by Eric and she helped Eric protect the Vampire's wealth by uncovering the thief. His punishment therefore is reduced. As Bill is a civilized Vampire, a more human Vampire, who does not live in a nest and longs to mainstream, the magister decides that Bill's punishment should be turning a human girl named Jessica into a Vampire. Of course this a repellent idea to Bill, who has never been a maker in the whole of his 170+ years of being Vampire. Bill does it reluctantly. When Jessica wakes as a new born Vampire, all I want Bill to do is stake her and get it over with.

Meanwhile, Sookie is about to find out who the Bon Temps Killer is. She and Sam investigate the murder of a waitress in a nearby town. She was involved with Vampires and was strangled like Maudette and Dawn were. On the way back, Sookie confesses that she does love Bill but she thinks he's too involved with Vampire politics (stoopid) to care what happens to her.

Back at Fangtasia, Bill brought Jessica to Eric because he is at a loss at what to do with her and Eric agrees to take her after extracting a deal with Bill. (Paybacks are a bitch Bill)

Sookie and Sam are back at her house and he leans in for a kiss with Sookie and Bill, just returned, comes in. They have a fight and Sookie recinds her invitation to Bill.

The next day, she finds out that her brother has been arrested for the murders because he woke up and found Amy dead in his bed. He thinks he did it but the Bon Temps killer actually came into his house while they were blissed out on V and killed her.

The day is terrible for Sookie because everyone thinks that Jason did it and of course Sookie can hear everything people think. She goes out to her car and finds it won't start and is offered a ride home by Rene, who is the Bon Temps killer. She hears his memories of his murdering Sookie's grandmother and she runs out of this house. This is where it gets hard for me, though I admired Bill's love for Sookie. He senses her fear and though it is in the middle of the day, he leaves his resting place under the floorboards of his house and faces the sun to try to help her.

Luckily, Sam, in the shape of the Merlotte mutt saves Sookie's life and they see Bill smoldering away and Sam even saves Bill's life by burying him in a fresh grave. Sookie holds out no hope for his survival as Sam covers him with dirt.

Later that evening, Lafayette is behind the bar, cleaning up some garbage and something fast attacks him. He had been involved with a V doing senator and he threatened him because in addition to being a Vampire hater, he is also a closet homosexual who touts anti-gay rhetoric. So I believe that the senator had Lafayette murdered, but by who or what is unknown.

Sookie is alone in her house when the doorbell rings. She opens the door and it is Bill, healed. She says: "You're alive!" and he says "Well, technically no, but I am healed....I fed," Now there is a lot of speculation about what this means. Did he kill Lafayette? No, I don't think so because when he is found, he is naked, Bill wouldn't undress Lafayette to feed from him, and I don't think Bill would feed from Lafayette anyway because he is Sookie's friend. And even if he did, no one would have ever found him. They never found Sookie's uncle after Bill killed him.

I think Bill's admission "I fed" is something confessional. He's trying to mainstream and aside from love bites from Sookie when they make love, Bill is subsisting on Tru:Blood (O negative please and microwave it to 98.6 degrees) But these were extraordinary circumstances and though the Vampire was not pleased to have to feed on a human, he did it to heal so he could be with her.

So grow up Sookie, Bill has proved his love to you.

And by the way, Bill's a daddy. Apparently, Eric couldn't stomach Jessica either.

Stake her Bill, stake her.

Sookie

2008-11-13T06:45:00.000-08:00

As much as I love the love story between Bill and Sookie, I am getting a little tired of her childishness. I understand that she has never been in relationship before with a man, human or otherwise, but she has to brighten up that she and Bill are not a conventional couple.

She expects human things from Bill he can't possibly give her, and she takes it out on him when he can't. Bill's not blameless, but she never pays attention him and she doesn't have the insight to wait for just a moment to see what is going to happen next. She doesn't ask what is next. She doesn't talk to Bill about being Vampire and what the rules are for her in a relationship with him and how she fits or does not fit in his world.

Communication is the corner stone of any relationship

The Cold Ground

2008-10-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

Poor Bill and Sookie,

Sookie is discovering the hardest part of dating a Vampire. It's that whole night time, no sunlight, no curling up together on a cold night and being warm through the night and through a lazy morning with nothing better to do than to lie together, make love as if there was nothing better to do.

And Bill is trying to hard and often a day late and dollar short. He brought her flowers when he was taking her to forceably work for Eric, he is too honest when he doesn't have to be, and not honest enough when he should be.

And Bill is scared to death that Sookie will get killed because she doesn't know the Vampire rules and system and how she works or doesn't in his world.

I like to worry for all young lovers, even if one of them is 170 years old and Vampire

Stolen words

2008-10-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

X
I dreamt we slept in a moss in Donegal
On turf banks under blankets, with our faces
Exposed all night in a wetting drizzle,
Pallid as the dripping sapling birches.
Lorenzo and Jessica in a cold climate.
Diarmuid and Grainne waiting to be found.
Darkly asperged and censed, we were laid out
Like breathing effigies on a raised ground.
And in that dream I dreamt—how like you this?—
Our first night years ago in that hotel
When you came with your deliberate kiss
To raise us towards the lovely and painful
Covenants of flesh; our separateness;
The respite in our dewy dreaming faces.

Seamus Heaney

I used the phrase covenants of flesh in one of my essays and I couldn't remember where I had heard them, for I knew they were not mine. They come from this lovely poem by Seamus Heaney.

I sleep more now. My mom puts in my tape of True Blood when I settle in bed and I watch it from the beginning til I fall alseep. I sleep all day and most of the night, most of it. Then I wake and I admit, I pray sometimes for the profound peace of the grave (my words this time). Ten more pounds I have lost and the fevers and weakness are worse. How nice it would be to have some cool skinned thing, some dark angel to take me in his arms and gasp at my heat, but embrace me anyway and give me relief. My hair is thinning. I cried a little over that.

Pot and Kettle

2008-10-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's get down to it. I really liked the character of Lafayette until last night. I sat in the chemo room and thought about it for a long while. This is what I came up with.

Sookie made love to Bill and he bit her. Fine, sounds like tit for tat, fair exchange. Sex is always better for Vampires when they have a bit of blood. And if you are falling for a Vampire, it sounds reasonable that you want them to have as much fun as you are.

Now Lafayette is a slut, with a capital SLUT, and he uses V, which is Vampire Blood. But he had the gall to call Sookie a skank when she told him about Bill. How does that sort of prejudice work? You'll have sex with a Vampire, you'll drink their blood, but you won't let them drink from you? And Jason Stackhouse is just as bad, he hates and despises Sookie for having sex with Bill but he uses V so much he's strung out on it. It's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Don't Believe what You See

2008-10-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

Oh man, I'm telling you, I am determined to live long enough to see what is next for old Bill and his woman Sookie. I loved the extended love scene, where Bill deflowers her. I remember my first time, and it was no where near as erotic as the scene I just saw. I wished my husband had been as aware and awake to my virginity as Bill was to Sookie.

And I loved the revenge scene with Bill feeding on Uncle Bartlett, at first I thought it was disgusting, but then I remembered what Bill said, that he had been a good man in his human life and he fed primarily on evil people. I would be eternally indebted to a man who revenged me. Especially for a crime against my innocence. Too bad about Malcom and Diane and Liam (not) they got what they deserved. But fear not for our Bill, he is safe and sound.

Chemo session number five tomorrow, at least I have something to think about.

The Little Death

2008-10-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

I read in a psychology book that spoke of the petite mort the little death of orgasm. I never knew what that was until I was with a man the first time. I was in the arms of the man who would be my husband and I could feel him inside me and I had an orgasm, so clear and strong that I lost my breath and felt faint beneath him. If I could have died at that moment, I surely would have, because that first time, there is just nothing like it.

Some of you may think this topic is inappropriate to speak of, but I can tell you that the sick have blushingly real dreams of fevered sex and long for that moment when you hover between the worlds of concious and unconcious when you have a climax. Afterwards there is an emptiness that only women can feel, male orgasm being so much more a physical release. I sit in a reclining chair covered with a hospital issue sheet under me and I watch that damned drip doing its alchemy and I dream such dreams from my fevered brain that would make even a seasoned pro blush. I go into the treatment room pale as any Vamp and I come out indecently rosy. And at night I dream of my lovers, relentless, passionate, cruelly so and I awake in the fevered sweat of chemotheraphy and pure desire.

In the 1800's TB was considered the wasting disease and even thought of the Vampire's disease, when the dying were rose pink and full of the lust of nature, the animal drive to reproduce before you disappear all together. But not long after my treatment, I am sick and I vomit and gag and the last thing I want to do is have sex. But in those moments, I hunger, I desire and I burn with more than chemically induced fever.

I have lost twenty pounds already. My doctor wants to put in a NG tube to feed me, but I refuse. Everything on my stomach comes up anyway and it interfers with the speed of the central line delivery of my pain drugs. I will take the sleeping cure and sleep in the day and rise and walk, or at least sit with my lap top on my lap, at night.

Come to me lover, I am hungry

Sacraments of Flesh and Blood

2008-10-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Sacraments...when you are a Roman Catholic you hear a lot about those. Baptism, Extreme Unction, Holy Communion. I think the notion of sacraments were the things that attracted me the most about the Church. Prods make such a big deal about Communion being a symbol, but it isn't just a symbol. It's real.

I became more intimate with the notion of communion when I read Memnoch the Devil, by Anne Rice. Now, I only liked two of her books, this one and Interview. In Memnoch, Vampire Lestat is taken on a sort of Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost sort of voyage where he sees heaven and hell and the death of Christ. Lestat, being Vampire, is transfixed by the divine sacrifice of Christ's crucifixion very much for the same reason that we should be. It's the blood. The promise of everlasting life and salvation from death. The juxtaposition of life in the midst of death and for Lestat, death before the Ultimate Life is fascinating. The Vampire's promise, if there is such a thing, is everlasting life, as a walking undead. Christ's promise is the everlasting salvation of the soul though the body dies and fades away. It will be resurrected, of course, but til the judgement trump our human presence is erased.

In Dracula, the Vampire promises eternal life and everlasting love, to walk in the shadows and to control the beasts and the winds. Mina joins in this other communion with the Count, as Sookie did with Bill, as all female Victims do in the arms of their Vampire. Love and sex and religion and sacrament become entangled as their bed sheets as they embrace the ultimate "human" love. Are the Vampires, when they share their own sweet stuff, imitating the (not blaspheming) the act of Christ on his Cross? To have a love who will not die, immune to all disease except those particular to the Vampire? To embrace the sacred love of believer and God, the ecstacy that St. Therese felt in the presence of the angel.

So, is this the root of the tale of Vampire, denied the sacraments of Church, so they go to those who can fulfill the promise in covenants of flesh and blood? And is not their dark kiss the gift of salvation from earthly death. I don't know, perhaps I seek a cure from all my pain, a body that will never sicken, never die and a lover who will always walk with me through the centuries. But what of the soul?

Indeed

The White Chalice Dress

2008-10-15T14:52:00.000-07:00

All the folks at trueblood.net were snarking on Sookie's beautiful white chalice dress. Well, here is my observation.

See I read the book, and the love scene and what she wore to bed briefly that night are completely different from the show, and to be honest, the book version of the love scene is far more complete. In the book, Bill doesn't really understand the extent of Sookie's experience or lack there of with men. When he begins to make love to her, in her grandmother's bedroom, he discovers her virginity and he is very considerate (compaired to the raw, rough sex of Liam, on of the evil Vampires) of the fact that she will feel discomfort when he finally has her. He listens to her and gages his own reactions based on her pleasure or pain. I wished there had been more to it on the show, not neccessarily more explicit, just more interaction.

Now, the show was very good. It begins with the white chalice dress, and there is a reason that she wears this dress. In the book, during the moonlight walk, he comments on her dress, that it matches the color of her eyes (in the book, Sookie's eyes are blue, Bill's are black) and that there isn't a lot of it. He continues to tell her that he finds her pretty but he still liked the long skirts that women wore in his early life, especially, the petticoats and lacy underthings. I think the show was trying to pay tribute to Bill's old fashioned taste for long dresses and skirts and what may be under them. So take that all you snarkers.

Suicide Solution

2008-10-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

Don't get excited constant reader, I am not contemplating a final solution for my situation. I feel terrible, my throat hurts and I have blisters on the inside of my mouth. Yeah, I feel real attractive.....

No, I wanted to write something about someone I met a long time ago. This was before the time of my using a computer, and I met this person through U2's Propaganda magazine. I was just wanting to meet someone else out there wh liked the band as much as I did and it turned into a fairly intense letter writing compaign between us. His name I will not disclose for obvious reasons. It was short lived. A few months, but suddenly he stopped writing. I never really knew why. He was a writer and he'd self published, but what I didn't have an inkling of until the very end was that he was a troubled soul.

Years later, I googled him and discovered he'd committed suicide. He jumped out of a window in front of his friends. And I still don't know how to feel about that, you know? He did it a couple of years after we stopped writing, so I don't really feel like it was anything I was responsible for. It just gives me an oogie sort of feeling, you know?

Can the Dead Love?

2008-10-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

In True Blood, Tara asks Lafayette a question: Do you think they are capable of loving a person? Lafayette says "Who knows what they are capable of doing." So I ask the question, do the dead love?

I don't know and I suspect this is what Bill is trying to discover himself. If he can love Sookie, he might be able to salvage his bit of humanity and his soul. But what about in real life? Is that what melancholia is, when the living feel the yearning love of the dead?

Gaelyn came to see me today. I didn't know he was coming in, though I suspect mom and dad knew. He was lovely as ever but I couldn't stand to feel his pity and love. I turned my back on him and refused to speak to him. I breathed a sigh of relief when he left my room. Mom came up and railed on me until I began to cough and puke.

I love Gaelyn, but I can't stand to feel his pity. I hate him for it. Is that what Bill feels in the book when he knows that Sookie is pitying him? I don't think the dead love like the living. I'm tired.

A Cool Dark Place

2008-10-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

I was sick all last night. Vomiting (though there isn't much there), fever, headaches. The light hurt my eyes and sound drove me insane. I lay there in my bed, waiting for the morphine to kick in before I vomited the tablets up. The doctor said that I might have to use my central line catheter to begin pushing the morphine, God, please don't have him suggest the morphine cocktail, the Deadman's cocktail. I would rather have the pain than have to drink it. Everyone I have ever known has had to drink it just before they died.

But dawn came and I felt better. I always feel good in the morning (comparatively) and I laid there in my bed, sweaty and smelly because the chemo runs out of my pores and turns my sweat sour. I lie there in the dark and begin to day dream and let my spirit relax. To die, to sleep, perchance to dream. What dreams may come.

Did you ever see that movie? It's about a man whose wife dies in a car accident and he commits suicide and he travels to the underworld and sees certain truths about life and death. I hate that movie, not because it was a bad movie or because it isn't well made, but because it tells a simple and unforgivable lie. That we can redeem the dead and find happiness there. To live among the dead and recreate the life that they never had in their living days. You can't do it.

I lived for a long time with the shades of my past, the relentless and painful act of love and hate and mourning. The fact that though I love Jimmy, I hate him too because he died and no longer walks the earthly plane, the fact that I love Amber and hate her too, because she made my failure complete. All the people I loved are dead and I couldn't save them and now they haunt me, filling up my fevered brain with their phantasms.

Go away, all I want is a cool dark place.

Love and Trust

2008-10-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

Well, Sookie and Bill made love, I think it was the most anticipated love scene between a mortal and Vampire ever. But let's back up for just a moment.

Sookie's gran was murdered and Bill comes to her like an answer to prayer. He holds her and senses the approach of another human and turns with his fangs out, but it is only Sam, whom Bill grabs by the throat and puts against the wall. But Sookie and Bill's reunion is truncated as dawn is coming and Bill must leave for his resting place. (In the book it is the earth of his own grave, in the show, it is under the floor boards of his house)

Then there is the obligatory wake. Sookie is in deep shock and mourning and cannot shield herself from the uncharitable thoughts of the people moving around in her house, eating the equally obligatory grief buffet. She screams at a woman to leave her gran's peacan pie alone.

After she loses it, Tara and Lafayette takes her upstairs and gives her much needed consolation. When the two girls are alone with Layattes gift of a valium (V to me), Jason comes up and slaps Sookie and blames her for the death of her gran becuase she's screwing Vampires. Of course he is strung out on another V, talk about your pot calling the kettle black. Tara gets between them. And Sookie finally takes Lafayette's valium.

As she rests, someone comes into the room and begins to strangle her. She calls out a choked "Bill!". Of course it is a dream, being had by our resident Vampire, trapped in his resting place until he can leave it when the sun goes down. His fear and anguish and frustration is palitable as he turns on the light he rigged for himself and looks at his watch.

Tara sends everyone out of Sookie's house and they leave. She and Lafayette clean up the house and the left over food from the grief buffet. When darkness falls, they hear the door being slammed open and see a shadow running up the stairs. It's Bill. He runs to Sookie's bedroom and shakes her calling her name over and over again til she rouses herself. She wakes to the anxious face of her Vampire and asks him what is wrong. He tells her he had a bad dream and was worried about her. He tells her to go back to sleep and she does, curling around his arm. Bill kneels at her bedside and looks at her in an attitude of prayer.

Later Tara is looking out at the darkened yard at Bill who stands sentry under Sookie's window, drinking a bottle of TruBlood. The collie dog (Sam)
joins him. Tara asks Lafayette "Do you think they can really love a person?" Lafayette answers "Who knows what they can do,"

The day of funeral is traumatic because of the voices of the townsfolk around her, her brother withdrawing from V beside her and the appearance of her Uncle Bartlett. She tries to give the eulogy but is stopped by the voices in her head. She curses the crowd and runs off to the older part of the cemetery and there finds the memorial grave the family erected for Bill.

She returns to the grave side after everyone is gone and Sam walks her to her door. She sends him on his way and goes in and eats the rest of her grandmother's pecan pie. She then goes up and changes her clothes into a lovely white chalice dress and waits for sundown. As soon as the shadows of night fall bleed away the day, she runs out, across the property between her and Bill's house. Bill comes out, flinging open the double doors, a Vampire with a purpose. Remember, Bill told her that after she drank his blood he'd always be able to feel her. He closes his eyes and senses her and comes off the porch at the first sight of her. They embrace and kiss and he picks her up and carries her in the house, like a bride to the bridal chamber and there they make love in front of the fire in his parlor. As the scene developes, so do Bill's fangs. He fears that this will frighten her but instead she pulls him to her and as they begin to reach fulfillment he looks at her, he's so hungry for her and Sookie says "Do it, I want you to," and he penetrates her in a more Vampiric way.

Well, it gave me something to think about while I had my chemo, anyway.

Dawn changes everything

2008-10-12T02:21:00.000-07:00

The house is quiet and the cat is sleeping in the floor near my bed, his piggy little snores come to me and I am awake. I have never really been a morning person but here I am, at 5:30 in the morning typing away.

I light the first cigarette of the day and watch the smoke rise from the tip. A dirty habit, I know, but I feel relaxed, more so than when I have that evil drip in me and I tense up anticipating the effects of my alchemy experiment. I know that I will begin to have more side effects. I have only been nauseous so far.

Drugs are bizarre aren't they? I mean really. They heal, they kill, they reduce pain and they cause it. I never was one for drugs except a little pot in my youth. Now there are drugs that they give people that can cause them to have a psychotic break, even antismoking drugs can give you suicidal thoughts. Hell, give me the smokes any day.

And we routinely drug people, especially young people all of the time. They drift around through their day, only to be hyper and obnoxious at the end of it, unable to cope with the short circuits in their head. There is no talking cure anymore and insurance companies are more likely to pay doctors more to prescribe meds than to actually talk through their troubles and learn to stabilize themselves.

I understand there are some mental illnesses that are organic and have to be treated with meds, but we over look the blessings of simply talking to someone, anyone. I think this is why online communities are so plural. We long to connect with people who think and feel as we feel, to feel not so alone in the world. We make the world a lonely place by ignoring others in real life and connect only in the virtual lives we create for ourselves online.

We cannot embrace what we do not understand if we don't make eye contact and feel the energies we pass forom one person to another when we speak to one another directly. Our eyes are closing to one another and we could be lying beside a lover and feel disconnected them, swimming in an alien sea of numbness caused by inability to connect on a one on one level. I think that is why we go from bed to bed, partner to partner, trying to make that connection but we don't know how. And whatever feelings, fears and doubts we have, we medicate until we are like the Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb"

So in the silent morning of my house, I feel that sense of dawn breaking, changing everything from dark to light but I know that mankind lives in his own twightlight world where we are mute and blind and deaf to one another. We grope in the darkness of our insularity trying to make connections, to feel something for a change, but how much can we feel if the new day does not bring new dreams for us to experience and people to share it with?

Bill

2008-10-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

So now I speak of Bill

I wrote in to the True Blood site that the character of Bill is haunted by his war experience. Of course I understand that conundrum. I had a husband who felt the weight of his war time experiences that effected him all his life. I wish I could of reached out to him and comforted him, as I do wish that Sookie could comfort Bill.

Bill is a complicated character who lives in the shadows of his human life. He is a Vampire who lives in a haunted house of his past life. He sees the shadows of his former human self, a human self he thinks is the far past. The truth is trauma lives through him, as much as he would like to forget it. It is like he is suffering from PTSD. Imagine a Vampire suffering at all. I think he hates it that he remembers the bad times of his life as a human, and if he would only embrace these bad times, he would recapture that human part of himself he desperately wishes he could remember for the sake of his love for Sookie.

Sookie recognizes this suffering though she doesn't fully understand how they came to be. Isn't that like the real the real world. We desperately want to understand another person's suffering but we don't know how.

Interesting, isn't it?

Late Night Truth Telling: Out of the Broom Closet

2008-10-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

I come form a long line of people who were witches, whether they actually said the word or not. Among these talented people is my mother. Untrained and natural, my mother has been practicing witchcraft for years though she would never say that she was a witch, primarily because of all the bad press the word has gotten over the centuries.

I was lying in my bed and reading Dead Until Dark for the umpteenth time when my mother ventured up the stairs of my attic bedroom to check on me. She sat in the battered old recliner in my room, near my bed and put my book down and sipped at the single glass of wine I am afforded every evening.

We began talking of all sorts of things, including the paranormal. She spoke of her family and her intentions when she made things. She gave me a precious medicine bag and I slipped it over my head. After flitting around the topic for sometime, I finally came out with it. Just as it was put to me over ten years ago. I said, "Mom, you are a witch, deal with it," I said. She looked at me and asked me how I knew and that is when I came out of the broom closet. "I know this, because I am a practicing witch myself," I looked at her evenly, without wavering.

The revelation of both her and my being a witch was startling for the both of us. She looked at me and said, "I never thought about that because of the injunction in the Bible, suffer not a witch to live," I told her that God's command about witches were about being a witch that dishonors the God she believes in.

It was amazing, suddenly there was ease in the room. We didn't speak anymore on the subject but she was calmer and more relaxed and it seemed that the wall between us that had existed ever since I was made a witch over ten years ago stopped.

I don't know what will happen now, perhaps nothing, perhaps everything, but it is out in the air, and so close to Samhain.

Pity for the Vampire

2008-10-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in the doctor's office today after my treatment (happy happy joy joy) and some sweet old soul was talking to me like you do when you are in strange social settings. She asked me if I was a patient or was I waiting for someone. I showed her the hospital bracelet I always have to wear. There was that look of pity. I hate it when they do that.

So, it dawned on me as I read my book, that that is the reason Bill always warns Sookie off from pitying him and all he lost when he became a Vampire. When it is done to you, you feel this wave of "poor thing" wash over you emanating from the person you speak to. Being a aurist and sensitive to people's vibes and auras, my illness makes it worse. And with the sickness, I am more aware of their rainbow like colors in that sunburst halo. I suppose I have something in common with Sookie, in that I have scruples that tell me that I am unethical to just go about looking at people's auras. Thing is, I can't see my own and tell if I am getting better or not. But maybe it is better if I not know. But let's get back to Vampires, shall we.

Bill has lost a lot in his time for being a vampire. He lost his mother and father, his beloved sister, his wife and children, all because his being a Vampire made it impossible to go home, because now he is the stuff of myth and legend, a souless monster wandering the night looking for humans to feed on. He would place his family in jeopardy if he tried to allow his family to harbor him, even if they could accept that he is a Vampire.

And he walked through nearly two centuries, either alone or in the company of others like him, who I think that despite his declaration that he craves the company of other Vampires, he actually despises them, and himself a little. Maybe that is what is wrong in Bill and Sookie's affaire d'amour. He can't let go of that whole Vampiric arrogance because he sees himself as nonhuman, but he doesn't really like what has happened to him. Unlike Louis in Interview with a Vampire, Bill was forced to be a Vampire by the woman who made him and then forced again to leave his loved ones by this same female Vampire.

But Sookie is human, warm and alive, and she loves Bill and it hurts her to think of all he lost because she knows how she would feel if something bad happened to him. She understands loss, with the brutal murder of her grandmother and the deaths of her father and mother. She wants to show him compassion, and maybe that is what Bill is really afraid of, the compassion. Passion is different, it is hot and liquid and fun to play with and in. Compassion is a complicated, complex thing. It makes you vulnerable, even more so than passion. Once you lose your ability to be compassionate, you lose your soul to indifference. And on many levels, for a sensitive man like Bill Compton, compassion was something he could not really afford. Compassion, after all, requires that you feel things that are painful.

So does Bill or any other Vampire for that matter, have a soul? We play with the notion of a Vampire with a soul in popular culture, Louie, Angel, now Bill Compton. Even on the series Charmed Cole, the demon Balthasar, was half human and possessed a soul. Why do we want in this day and age to endow the Vampire with a soul? Is it so we will like them better? Is it that we hope that characters like Bill Compton can fall in love with their Sookie and live happily ever after? Is it so that we can believe in a redemption for them, that God might pity them? That's ironic.

Francis Ford Coppola's take on Bram Stoker's Dracula played on that notion, that Mina's love for the Count, albiet a bit glamoured, would free him from the curse that condemned him to his state as Vampire and give him peace, in otherwords, salvation.

Will embracing compassion and empathy make Bill feel and be more human? Will it help him with his angers and rages and hungers? If he does that, is he like the Children of Lir who were turned into a swans and when they were freed after a thousand years, they became old people and died? Will compassion and empathy kill our beloved Bill Compton and cause him to lose what he craves the most, almost more than blood and that is a normal life? We shall have to see.

Midnight is where the day begins

2008-10-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

It isn't quite midnight but is close enough. The house is quiet and Bono is sighing and fluttering through Your Blue Room. Ishee is asleep at my feet. It's strange how animals know when there is something wrong with you. Ishee isn't the nicest cat, more apt to bite than to purr. But he has been an angel since I got sick.

Have you ever listened to the silence of your house, late at night, just turn off your TV and mp3 player and listen to the silence coming from the house. Small creaks of the frame of the house settling, the sound of snoring in the other room, the ticking of the carriage clock on the mantel, and in my case the clack of the keys of my keyboard as I write this.

The house is so loud and busy otherwise. The TV's are playing and the phone rings or someone knocks on the door. The cat is complaining about the hair laid across his bunghole and you can hear the cigarette burn when you put it to your lips to take a draw.

I remember in college, I took this class about disablilities and one of our assignments was to cripple ourselves for three days. I went blind. I have these dark Bono sunglasses and I took water soluable glue and stuck cotton balls on the inside to keep my eyelids down. I normally wear corrective lenses, legally blind without them, but I wanted to see what it is like to be blind.

It's wierd. The outside is scary, because it feels like you are walking on the edge of the earth and you are about to fall. I went to the grocery store and I seemed loud and smelly, fruit and vegetables smelled gone over. Flowers feel like strange alien insects. I tried to sit in the kitchen while mom was cooking and it was too loud. So I got up and went into the living room for TV. The only shows I could watch with real meaning was Roseanne and MASH because the characters are as familiar to me as the people I live with. Other programs were like reading a book with pages missing.

The only time I would take the glasses off was to bathe. I turned out the bathroom light and lit a candle and bathed that way. It was very abstract, but as I lay in the water, I felt like the way the blind fetus must feel floating in it's amniotic seas. I have several books on tape and I listened to one of those. I recorded my journal every night before I went to bed.

Blind sex is bizarre. I was dating a boy and he took me to his house and we made love and it was strange because I had no reference point. Sex is so much about seeing and being unable to watch him moving against me and look into his eyes was distracting and I had a difficult time reaching orgasm. TMI? Tough, don't read this if you don't want to. One thing that was fun was exploring him with my hands, his face, his hair, his chest and legs, his penis, smelling every part of him, feeling his body hair. But when he did the same to me, it was as if my body was not my own anymore.

Food was fun though. My mom would fix my plate and then we said the plate was the face of a clock and the potatoes were at twelve, the corn at three, the meat at six and my bread at nine. Food tasted richer though. So there I was, in the dark, realizing that midnight is where the day begins.

The Vampire or the Victim

2008-10-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

I made it. Just some nausea but I made it. Tired, but restless.

Back to the Southern Vampires.

We were talking about humanity. Bill's, Sookies, Jason's, the Vamp's in Monroe, the ones at Fangtasia, all the people in this insular little microcosm of life encapsulated in Bon Temps.

There is a real representation in this tale, white and black, rich and poor, old and young, gay and straight, living and undead. I know Charlaine Harris explores the Vampire culture in other parts of America in her other books, but since I haven't read them yet, I will stick to this little middle of the road place where extraordinary people meet under extraordinary circumstances.

As I sat there in the treatment room watching the drip and listening to You Know Who, I began to think of what the world would be like if some humanlike alien were to land smack in the middle of ordinary human life. I know it has been treated before in shows like Alien Nation, but what if we had to relearn everything we had been taught for centuries about a certain tribe or race of people.

It has happened among our own human race with the various groups that flowed into the larger world, especially in America. Where there were once the Native peoples of the Americas, free to roam and live and fight and celebrate and die on this continent, now there is a melting pot. We have people here for reasons of slavery, war, some just looking for something else, maybe a little better than they had at home, some looking for freedom, for identity, for a life different from their own.

I think it is fascinationg that Harris makes her Vampire Bill a Civil War Veteran when now, he wants to have civil rights that were denied the slaves that lived in his father's house. Now Bill is the one looked at with contempt and suspicion. That her story is set in the Deep South, the unfortunate hot bed of so much bigotry is not lost on me and now Bill suffers because of the fears and prejudices that exist there. He is white, supposedly of the privileged class, but as one of Arlene's children observed, "Mamma, he's so white," Arlene responds, "No baby, we're white, he's dead," And when you are the object of prejudice, aren't you dead to the world of justice and equality?

Bill and the other Vampires do not see themselves as human. Why? Is it more than just Vampire arrogance for their race? Or is it that after being characterized as monsters and beasts they have voluntarily given up on their humanity, considered it not important enough to fight for because no one will change?

And doesn't that happen when you give up on yourself? Nothing left to fight for so you look at other people as smaller than you, less substantial. Don't we feed on each other's fears, like a Vampire feeds on his human victim? We twist truths and generalizations and we promote the notion that the people we hate are less human, less capable of values and virtues, mindless and destructive?

Today, we paint pictures of people we hate. Take Muslims for example. Don't we bestialize the Muslim people, characterize all Muslims as mad, vicious animals, blood thirsty beasts, demons who turn away from the True Faith? I admit to that, hell, confession is good for the soul. But when we turn to face that local enemy, the quiet Muslim man who loves America and is as insulted as I about September 11, don't we in turn become the slavering beast of horror? Don't we become the beastial creature who desires the life blood. Aren't we as the Vampires of old and new?

Let's hope Bill and Sookie and all the others discover this truth.

The Rain

2008-10-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to the rain. It was still dark outside and the rain was coming down in steady little patter. I lie in the dark and listen to it and think of how cooling it is. The nights and days have been cooler and i have had the opportunity to live without the air conditioner. The air conditioner runs all through the summer and becomes a sort of irritating white noise after a while, tricking my ears into thinking they can't hear things. But now, like Sookie in her cone of silence with her beloved Bill, I can listen to the night sounds, the crickets, the night birds, the wind.

I slept well last night. I didn't dream at all. I feel better, stronger, even. But today I have to go to the hospital for my first treatment. I'll take my mp3 player and my copy of Dead Until Dark and read it while I take the cure.

It's raining again. Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a melody, falling on my head like a new emotion.

Thoughts

2008-10-07T17:35:00.001-07:00

So, what shall we talk about? Chemo? Radiation? Southern Vampires? The night is closing in. Tomorrow I go for my first chemo. Such fun. Some of my friends complain that I have stopped writing about magik. But I haven't. I'm about to become a gigantic alchemy experiment. Arsenic, quicksilver, lead. Maybe I will be turned into gold. Makes me wish there were true Vampires who would bite me and make me immortal. I'm a night person anyway. Living the life of a Vampire would be an easy transition for me. Just wait until I lose another thirty pounds. I don't want go through eternity a fat girl.

I sound bitter. Maybe I am. Slept for a couple of hours and dreamed that this was all a terrible joke. What is it? The joke stops being funny when the joke starts being you.

I painted my fingernails black. I never thought I would want to that. I was never into the goth scene, not even as fashion. But there was something almost perversely satisfying about spreading three coats of black polish over my nails.

Mom is harping at me for smoking. She says I smoke too much. I think I should smoke two at a time. What do you think?

I'm still looking forward to Samhain. Giving out candy, watching horror movies. Gaelyn called and asked me if he could come and spend Samhain with me. I haven't said yet. Maybe I will.

Maybe I won't.

My priest came by to speak to me. He's a wonderful man, full blooded Italian, Virgo, 73 years old. He worries about my faith during this time. I have the faith of angels. He needn't worry.

I listened to U2 today and tried to talk to mom about what they really mean to me. I told her that no matter how many times I hear Bono growl and moan, Edge hit that E cord, Larry pound the bass drum like a heart beat, Adam give the music some sex, I still thrill to them. I sat there in the gazebo and felt absolutely stoned. Like that Nine Inch Nails song "Perfect Drug", U2 takes me higher than any dope I ever did. I will make sure I take my mp3 player to the doctors with me so I can let them hypnotize me while I go through this. Bono's voice is like the hand of a lover on my mind and soul. He makes love to me, and me alone when I listen to him sing. But Ali mustn't worry, it's only music love, not anything franker. I couldn't make mom understand it. When I say that I love U2, I mean I love U2.

Went to a friend's house today to help him with his computer. He's 62, a friend of the family. He'd like to be sexy but I think he's reaching. He wants to be intellectual, but he doesn't have the nerve. He's afraid of what he might discover about himself if he would let go. "Afraid of what you'd find if you took a look inside" See I knew it, U2 is the I Ching.

We all hide, don't we? I know who I am. Aslinn, the Christian Witch, Crone, unemployed teacher with cancer. Two of my most favorite students do not even write me. Well, they are young, they don't know how to deal with the situation my situation is in. I miss them.

I'll quit

Another Thread

2008-10-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

So, let's talk some more about these Southern Vampires. Let's talk about what the metaphor means when we see this strange coming together of species and what it is supposed to teach us.

I am fascinated by the fans of this show. Granted they are probably younger than I am, but I think I get it more than the average fan. Maybe not, but anything to take my mind off what is happening to me.

Allow me to speak of the book, Dead Until Dark, the 1st book of the series and the one the show is taken from. We are dealing with a lot of stereo types here. Racial stereotypes, gender stereotypes and regional stereotypes. For example, Mack and Denise Rattray are the quintiscential red neck white trash that makes Southern people want to cringe. Vulgar, rude, self serving, they deserved to be drained by Bill. Wonder what Bill thought he was going to do with them when he went out with the Rattrays anyway. I have the distinct impression that they didn't have enough brains to be glamoured by Bill anyway.

Then you have LaFayette. I like his character, though the book doesn't play him up as much as the show. He's a loud mouth, brassy queen who works as a short order cook at Merlotte's. He is wild and vulgar but in an amusing way we all enjoy when we see stereotypes of gay men. Along with that, you have Tara, his cousin, though she isn't in the first book. She is militant, pissed off because she is a smart black woman in this "podunc" town. I liked it when she said "College is for white people who want to read to each other, I thought I'd just save my money and read to myself," I really knew what she meant by that. I like it that she is pissed off for being named after a plantation. I hate to see people put Bill against the wall, but I kind of liked the scene when Bill was talking to Miss Stackhouse and she asked him if he ever owned slaves. Of course Bill is cool as a cucumber and admits that his father did. Tara isn't buying it.

In the show, there are examples of interracial trysts that simply don't exist in the book which would have put Sookie and Bills relationship in context. Tara has always been in love with Jason Stackhouse, and Tara sleeps with Sam Merlotte. LaFayette is a sort of hustler who has an overnight guest in his house in the form of a middle aged white man he claims is a state senator.

In matters of gender, Bill and Sookie's conversation during the moonlight walk is interesting. In the book, Bill notices that her dress is the same shade as her eyes, but then he remarks: "Not much of it, though," Bill shows his more conservative nature. Also, when he takes Sookie to Fangtasia he tells her she looks like Vampire bait. He thinks she is pretty but his masculine ego wants to cover her up, keep her to himself. He may be undead but he is still male, even if he doesn't consider himself human.

And then there are all those myths about Vampires, that they are evil animalistic creatures without a soul. Liam, Malcolm and Diane relish the notion of the old stereo types, they are quite arrogant about them. Even Bill is not above it. They play the part of Vampire that humans believe they are. When Sookie and Bill walk into Fangtasia in the show, Sookie remarks "It looks like a Vampire Bar if Disney made it an attraction," Bill says, "Don't feel to confident, it tends to become more authentic as the night goes on," When a man is rebuffed by Eric, the owner and oldest thing in the bar, the Vampires react very strongly. With a smug look on his face, Bill asks Sookie, "Still think you are in Disneyland?"

And if there is something I find absolutely distasteful about Bill is his attitude about Sookie's ignornace about Vampire culture, but he only teaches her after a crisis. I guess it is his own brand of arrogance, perhaps even distrust. Sookie doesn't really get him a lot of the time, he is 170 years old and he has a world of experiences, but he overlooks the fact that Sookie is a young woman in a Southern backwater and she is only 25 years old. Patience is not one of Bill's stronger points. But I suppose I have that same problem too, very little patience in matters of ignorance.

And of course, the story centers on those murders. It is based on prejudice as well, as it is apparently about someone who hates women who have sex with Vampires. It happened when white people and black people began to date each other, so it figures in the South there would be a built in dislike for Vampire/human relationships.

Then there is the notion of virus. In the book, the Vampires are believed to be victims of a virus that makes them allergic to silver, garlic and sunlight and crave blood. But on the show, Bill lays his cards down on the table. After the scene with Liam, Diane and Malcolm, Sookie goes home and Bill appears on her porch. She tries to read his thoughs though she knows it is an exercise in futility. "Why can't I read your thoughts?" she asked. Bill shrugs "Maybe its because I don't have brain waves," he answers. "Why don't you?" she asks. "Because I'm dead," he answers. Sookie tries to dance around that notion, arguing with him. "What animates you no longer animates me," says Bill. Bill may have a Longfellow's veiw of his own existance, but he should understand that Sookie just doesn't have the reference point to understand him.

I'll quit.

I would not stop for death

2008-10-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

I went to see my reiki healer today. I lie there as he directs me through the meditation process to put me in deep visualization and I can see the thing that would like to kill me. Like some evil alien child deep inside me, like Sigourney Weaver.

I have dreams during reiki, I shouldn't but I do. They give me a fever that the tylenol my mother gives as I lie in bed does not touch. I dream of my husband. He is dead, long dead, almost 13 years now. I would not stop for death, so death kindly stopped for me. I will fight it.

My mom and dad want to talk about it all the time. I can hear them whisper around the house and it makes me nervous. I want tell them to shut up about it, but I know it will upset them.

I broke up with the old goat, my Gaelyn. I can't have him nurse maiding me. He needs a whole person to live his very busy lifestyle with him. I am relieved on a lot of levels, but I do miss him. I'm selfish, I know, but I want to be alone through this, like an animal who is sick and wants nothing more than to crawl under the porch and sleep and maybe get well. Death, be not proud.

I have no doubt that I will live through this. I have willed it to be so, but I must fight the battle. My dad has scored me a half dozen joints and is keeping them for me for when I start chemo and radiation. The oncologist, using the vaguest terms suggested it since it is illegal. Funny thing is, he tells me I should give up cigarettes. Hell, doc, it can't hurt me now and might be the lone thing that will keep me from putting my hands around your neck and strangling you.

At night I lie in my bed in the dark. When was the last time I slept in the absolute dark? When I was married? Yes, I think so. Now I crave the dark, like those southern vampires I wrote about earlier today. It's like my coffin and I am for the time being one of the undead.

I got up last night and slipped out of the house and into the yard and walked barefoot in the drought dry grass and looked up to the cloudless night sky, but I have too many lights in my neighborhood and I can't see many stars. I lit a cigarette and smoked it to the filter and wished there was something I could do other than be poisoned nearly to death by chemo and radiation. I asked about surgery but they want to shrink it first and put another one of those damned nuclear discs in me. I had radiation burns on my suture site. My neighbor's daughter couldn't come see me because she was pregnant. I couldn't even go to Walmart.

I listen to U2's song Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own. Bono wrote it about his dad's last dying days and his efforts to be with him til the end. I love him. Bono. He is a loud mouth and he reminds me of a mix of St Peter and St John the Baptist. I listened to his voice all day and fell asleep and dreamed of angels and they were singing with him. I wish he were here so he could sing to me personally, or stand guard or something. I just personally believe that the angels fight on his side.

I feel like that guy in the Godfather, the old consiglieri, who is dying and he asked Don Corleone to stand guard so that if the Angel of Death sees the Don there he might pass him by. Bono's no Don, but I know he has the most wonderful blue eyes. I would love to just look into those eyes just once.

Darvocettes are kicking in and I am rambling. That's okay. I don't have a lot of pain so I get a little dopey when I med myself. The doctors say that will change after a couple of doses of chemo. Oh joy.

I wonder if I will lose my hair. I didn't the last time. I mean, it's sort of bummer because I used to shave my head and now I finally have my hair growing into something verging on a hairstyle and now I might be baldy. When it rains.....

Southern Vampires

2008-10-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it, I am hooked on True Blood, the new show on HBO. I have been sick for the last few weeks but I have decided to focus less on my illness and more on this amazing new show that has me entirely intrigued.

The show comes from Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire novels. It centers on a fictional town in Louisiana called Bon Temps and it is set in a post Katrina South where Vampires are the new racial flavor among the citizens of the USA. We meet Sookie Stackhouse, a bar maid with telepathic powers and the mysterious Bill Compton, the local Vampire, claiming his family's ancestoral home and trying his best to mainstream, a Vampire among humans after centuries of solitude beyond the company of Vampires who he says are more apt to be cruel and have less humanity in them.

I am fascinated by the growing relationship between these two as they struggle with their otherness and their inability to be completely comfortable among so called normal people. I think I identify with them because being a witch is a sort of otherness. I confess to a sort of soap opera mentality to a certain extent, but I am also very aware of the differences I have with other people of mainstream religion and the Wiccan/Pagan world of witchcraft. I love the notion that these two people, these two characters, will somehow create a safe haven for each other.

One of the things that Sookie appreciates about Bill is that she can't read his mind, his thoughts do not intrude on her and she loves the silence he emits. Bill appreciates Sookie because she is at ease with him, unafraid of his being a Vampire and accepting of him when others distrust him and fear him. Both feed on each other for this emotional comfort. You have to ask the question, who is the Vampire and who is the victim.

In the middle of this unconventional love affair is a mystery waiting to be solved and this creates tension for the two, making their fledgeling relationship even more difficult. There have been two murders (so far) of women who have sexual relationships with Vampires and there are two suspects, Sookie's brother Jason and Sookie's Vampire, Bill.

Bill and Jason are extreme opposites in many instances. Jason is a womanizer to the "nth" degree, self absorbed and self indulgent. Bill is a Southern Gentleman, having lost his human life during the Civil War period of American history. He is courtly and gentle and polite and very charming. Jason is impulsive and inconsiderate and ignorant whereas Bill is careful and calculating, as a Vampire would be with an expanded history of experience as he walked through the decades to peer into human life. But there are similarities between the two men in her life, though the goals and aims are quite different. Jason seeks to control women for sex and pleasure and his own selfish needs. Bill seeks to control people for his one need, the desire to drink real human blood as opposed to the artificial blood developed by the Japanese (TruBlood) that may solve his nutritional needs but do nothing to kill his insticts. The Vampire himself must do that.

And not all Vampires want to mainstream. Take for instance Malcom, Liam and Diane. They are the stereotype Vampire, the sort of Vampires who don't want to follow the new directives from "Vamp Central". They create tension for Sookie and Bill beyond what tension there may already be. As Malcolm said to Bill during a confrontation: "Honey, what good is being a Vampire if you can't kill people?" They frighten Sookie, and they should because they are evil. But they do something insidious, they make her afraid of all other Vampires, and question her relationship with Bill who, when you get past the personalities are just as they, a hunter who loves the chase and the capture. Their behaviour taints her image of Bill as a potential suitor.

So how does she reconcile these things in her heart so she can fall in love and make love to this devistatingly handsome man whose thoughts she can't read? How does she loose herself and claim her own sense of her sexual self? Can Bill free her and love her without hurting her with his Vampire ways?

Who knows, but the tension is delicious.

Creation and Evolution: A Christian Witch Perspective

2008-09-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

I have to admit it, I was never that close to the earth and her seasons and her influences until I became a witch. Now, that doesn't mean I was a litter bug or anything like that, it just means that I was never that perceptive of the way the earth affects and influences the individual.

One of the things I have always believed about the creation of the earth is the notion that God took his own time creating her and the metaphors of time written in the Old Testament were simply that, metaphors. They were a way for early people to understand how God created the earth and how it became the way it is now.

So, for good or for bad, I will explain how I think the earth was created and remains the product of a divine hand. We are told through science that somewhere in space, particles were brought together and energy was produced that caused these particles to form a mass that eventually exploded, the big bang theory. These particles spun out from the center of the explosion but eventually stabilized into a slower pattern that now spins around the sun, the center of the universe and the source of the particles that are now our stars and planets and even other galaxies that created their own centers and systems spinning around them.

As the earth cooled, there were chemical reactions that created things like water, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, all of the things that comprise life. Life begins as simple forms of bacteria that evolve into plants, animals, insects and sometime or another an intelligent primate appears and that is the beginning of human existence on the earth. I know this is very simple but bear with me. I'm not a physicist or biologist and only a fair paleontologist.

This we are told by scientists was a very slow and complex process, affected by the changes the earth underwent. Animals lived, reproduced and and died by the whims of the weather and the earth. So it was for primitive man.

Sometime during the development of man, they begin to consider how they came to be, how they came to live in this place and what was beyond them, in this world and the next. They tried to puzzle out these questions by observing nature. They did not understand thunder and the lightening and the hurricanes and tornadoes and the tides and the volcanoes, so they believed they must be the presence of the gods and they studied and meditated on the gods and some believed because they were patient and prayerful that they were given revelations about the gods and how they came to be and how the earth was made.

And the writer of the first five books of the Bible was no different. Moses was a Hebrew, born among the slaves of Egypt but he was raised by the sister of the Pharaoh who thought Moses was a gift to her from her dead husband. He was raised among the other royal children and was taught the ways and cultures and histories and religion of the Egyptians. When he is exiled from Egypt, he goes out to find the people of his birth and he found the people of Midean, people who would eventually become Muslims and they told him the stories of their religious beliefs, which was basically Hebrew. As Moses gains authority in his own people, he decides to compile all the stories he heard (as they were primarily oral traditions) to make a permanent record of the stories he heard.

He hears that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, but we are also told that a thousand years is but a day unto the Lord. We hear fabulous stories of Methuselah who was well over 900 years old when he died. So, one of the things we as philosophers must accept is that God does not count time the same way as humans do. For us, time is arbitrary, we simply say one day is from dawn to dark. We count time in the most basic way.

So what if Day One of Creation is longer? Day One then is the period of the big bang. God pulls to himself all the energies that exist to him and in a clap of his hands, causes the big bang to create the planet we stand on. Day Two is the cooling period wherein the waters and the atmosphere is created. Day Three is the beginning of simple life and so on until we get to the emergence of man.

Now, I personally don't believe we evolved from apes. I think our genetic partnership with the great apes is one we share with all living things, break us down and we are all carbon. What man evolved from was a primitive, thinking creature that began to contemplate beyond his circumstance and as he evolved his understanding became more complex. We are still evolving. Americans look different from their ancestors who landed on the shores of New England, those folks look different from their European ancestors of 700 years ago, and those folks look different from their ancestors living not very differently from the aboriginal peoples of America.

Evolution means simply change over a long period of time. To deny evolution is to deny the very instrument of God. I read a book called Einstein's Universe. I thought that Albert Einstein would be so elliptical and difficult to read, but what I discovered was a man of faith. And don't confuse this with religion, because though Einstein was raised as a Jew, he had very little feeling for religion. One of the things he said though was that science can only answer so many questions and then you have to say "What next?". He said that that after you get to the Big Bang as you work your way back through time to the very moment, you have to ask, "What next?" He described the Creator as the Priam Mobile, the prime mover. He said that someone had to touch off the spark, the act that caused the big bang. He said that religion without science is ignorance, and science without God was folly.

As a Christian and a witch, I have begun to observe the earth and the planets and the moon. I have begun to observe the seasons, and the tides and the way things grow. I have begun to ask the question of how to leave a smaller footprint on the earth and make the earth a better place. Because though Fundamentalists dispute the notion of evolution, they ignore the sacred duty God gave them to care for the earth. They say God called the earth into existence by the mere sound of his voice but then they ignore the fact that the earth is burning up and being consumed and her inhabitants are being destroyed.

If you believe that God was a part of an evolutionary design or if you believe that the Lord created earth in a day, then you must believe that you owe a duty to the earth. After all, he commanded that we care for his garden and its inhabitants. Or are you doing what you accuse us of, picking out what we want to believe about the Bible and making the rest over to suit our needs.

Aslinn

Here are the Daughters of Eve

2008-09-12T09:22:00.000-07:00

I just read on the internet that there are places in the world that condones the "honor" killings of women who go against their families. Places like Pakistan and India and Saudi Arabia and Iran and Iraq and Africa where women are still considered chattles and according to the most extreme versions of their religions and cultures are not even endowed with human souls, unable to recieve the benefit of an afterlife because they had the nerve to be born women.

It sickens me, and not because I think that Christianity is unimpeachable in the matters of recognizing the humanity of women. I am sick because there are still places in the world where women can be forced to have their clitorises removed in savage, unsterile rituals, where women can be accused of lechery because she has the termerity to say that she loves someone outside her class, or that she doesn't love someone her fathers, uncles and brothers have chosen for her. Where women cannot seek out modern medicine because they can't disrobe in front of a male doctor and female doctors are unable to practice, so they must have painful births without the aid of medicine, and sometimes die from botched deliveries, babies who should have been delivered by cesarean, or are punished because their first baby was not a baby or cannot concieve at all.

There are places in the world where women can be sold as if they were a car or truck or even cattle because their families can't care for them. There are places in the world where men can and do cheat on their wives and give them the AIDS virus, and are then punished because they are accused of infidelity while their husbands walk away free to infect more. I read a story that there were a rash of rapes in small African village and one of the victims was a small baby baby girl of only a few months old. The local medicine man told the men that they could get rid of the AIDS virus if they had sex with a virgin girl. They could not find anyone but the small baby girl and they opened holes in the body of that precious child and raped her through them because her vagina had not been formed yet.

Here in America, women complain about everything, they think they have it so hard because they don't have a pair of Jimmy Choo's or if they aren't keeping up with the Paris Hilton's or the Brittany Spears' or they aren't like "Desperate Housewives". I see them, walking around half dressed, with glazed looks in their eyes as they talk non-stop on their cell phones carrying their scurvy little dogs in their hand bags. But there are women out there who would love to live in the poorest American home and work the hardest job if it meant that they would be safe, that they wouln't be raped and considered "damaged goods" by their families, or they could say no to a husband who wanted to have sex with them after working like a slave hauling water from a mile away while her husband sat in the shade with the other men because hauling water is woman's work and wouldn't dare do such a thing.

I don't just castigate these primitive countries, I point my fingers at the US. I have been in those fundamentalist churches where women are ordered to be silent, to obey your husband, even when he gets you with one child after another and forces you to home school them and doesn't lift a finger unless it is to raise your nightgown. I point my finger at the men in the US who go on foriegn trips to these countries so they can see exotic sexual practices and have a few practiced on them, sometimes by the children no one wants. I point the finger at my government who since the days of colonial expansion we wandered into these primitive countries and raped the land of their people and their valuable natural resources and then left them for the vultures in the form of dictators and despots. South America, the Congo, India, they were betrayed by the so-called Christian countries after they were exploited.

Women were created by the hand of God, to be a helper to Adam in the beautiful garden. Because she was taken from Adam's body, men are to love their wives because they come from them and they from women. We are all beautiful creations of God and to desecrate one another with violence is desecrate God. And not just the God of Christians or Muslims or Jews or Pagans. We are the reflection of the divine. You want to see the face God? You want to see the God Particle? Look in the mirror, look into the face of your sister, your wife your daughter and your lover, your father, your son, your brother and there is God. And the next time you rape a woman, or beat a woman, or deny the basic human rights of a woman, all of these things will be done to you. For you come from the Daughters of Eve.

Aslinn

There's No Place Like Home

2008-08-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

Gaelyn and I got back from Virginia yesterday morning and after a quick visit to my parents and a nap, I went to work doing our laundry and dusting Gaelyn's place and I have begun picking our lovely ripe herbs that my dad has been taking care of while we were away. I also had a tearful reunion with my cat Ishee, who promptly bit me and licked me at the same time. I missed my slightly autistic cat and have promised to come home after the long holiday and take residence in my room once again.

I finally finished my Book of Shadows and have it bound. It is more wonderful than I could have thought. I am sending a version on disc to my little witches and I hope they enjoy it as much as I have writing it and illustrating it.

I am now on a search for a job. Since I am not subbing, I have to redefine what I want to do. That is okay, each step in life is an adventure and I embrace it though sometimes I admit that I am a bit afraid. I am not like Gaelyn with his trust fund and wealthy parents and though he says that I should not bother myself, I know that I have to because I am one of those unruly women who wish to define my own life, not have it defined by others. I think he understands.

I was just looking at my blogs the other day. I have been writing this blog for four years now and I have been doing the Almanac for eight months and I think it is beautiful. It is a real enigma to see how times go by so quickly and how you change or stay the same. I can honestly say that I have come to a place in my life where the simpler things matter more to me. To work and draw a wage, to enjoy my loved ones, to pray and be close to God, to work the Craft and continue studying and to find new things about myself and others. To continuously redefine who I am and be the person I want to be. Sometimes I am afraid, being a witch doesn't stop that, and I do worry sometimes. But as Merlin said to King Arthur in Excalibur "It is good to be afraid sometimes, of the unknown."

And it is close to Mabon, that time to think about what we are grateful for, the second of the harvest sabats and I know that I am greatful for the experiences I have had, good or bad, and the challenges I now face and the people I have met and the loved ones I know. I am greatful for the love we have for each other and the talents we have and the dreams we share.

Brightest Blessings Be from Me to Thee,

Aslinn

Bits and Pieces

2008-08-22T16:58:00.001-07:00

Merry Meet

Gaelyn and I have one more week before we head home. We have had a great time here in Colonial Williamsburg. We have met some great people, eaten at some fanastic restaraunts, gone to all of the sights and worked hard at the store, ganing wonderful insight and experiences. We have had two of the best sales periods in a long while the folks who run the store are just tickled. They would like it if Gaelyn and I would just move there and open our own store, but we miss home, especially me, and we are ready to go on to the next part of our adventure.

While I was here I finished typing up my Book of Shadows and I am going to try to put it on online as an adobe document. I don't know if I will be able to but I will try to make it available. I am also sending my novel In the Pale Moonlight to two publishing houses and I hope they will make me an offer and publish my book. Maybe if I publish this book, I can publish my BOS.

I am still doing the Christian Witch Almanac and have just posted September. I have a lot of articles for October written by wonderful witches I met at witch conference and at the Medieval Faire and here at the store. Some of the articles may be two parters, if the first articles are any indication. If you haven't checked it out, take a look at it. If you wish to contribute just write me at aslinndhan01@yahoo.com and I will be happy to take a look at any writing idea.

Finally, I had a bit of a tiff with one of my young neophytes. Sorry about that mate, I wish you well in your endeavors and I have heard from all my little witches back home who are anxious for my return so we can resume our lessons and activities and from our circle who went on sabbatical during the summer and are looking forward to celebrating Mabon with Gaelyn and I and getting back into a regular study and worship routine.

Brightest Blessings Be from Me to thee,
Aslinn and Gaelyn

The Woman's Body: The feminine image of God

2008-08-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet,

There is a lot on the news and Internet about female body image. We are constantly bombarded with contradictory messages about weight and female beauty. It is so confusing, in one breath a news person tells about the rise in anorexia and bulimia and in the next breath, they are quarreling with some fellow news caster about calories consumed. There are these ads that tell girls that they are beautiful regardless of their size and yet we hold up rail thin, silicone enhanced models as the examples of perfect beauty.

I was a thin girl and teenager, my prom dress my senior year was a size five. But somewhere along the line I became a chubby woman, wearing a size 12/14. I have lost the weight once but to tell you the truth I wasn't any happier as a size eight. And I was a lot hungrier.

When Gaelyn came into my life after many years of thinking there could not be anyone out there for me, I told him that though I was happy as a chubby woman for myself, that I knew that men expected something completely different. He got up from the couch and pulled down this huge book called Images of God: Images of Women. He opened the book and laid it in my lap. In the book were pictures of all sorts of women, of modern times and antiquity. They were all shapes and sizes and hues, of all cultures and religions. He said "God made you the way you are now from the womb. Everything he does is beautiful. Why should I as a man not see you in the beauty and perfection he made you, why should I want someone who is made of plastic and poison (botox) and stains and dyes when I can have you. You are real, the symbol of the earth mother," Then he turned the page to the Venus of Willendorf, the mother goddess figure with the large belly and breasts and hips. "See, you are my Earth Goddess, you are beautiful!"

Well, he is as smooth as a baby's bottom, but he made me appreciate that not all men want what we see in the media. Some men will run with time warp speed to the woman with the fake boobs, but there are men who like the natural woman, thin or fat, short or tall, buxom or flat chested. We are all beautiful, and I don't need a bath soap to tell me that.

Brightest Blessings Be my beautiful sisters, love yourself for who and what you are and don't let some talking head tell you otherwise.

Aslinn

A Witch Shoppe

2008-08-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet,

Gaelyn and I have been running a witch shoppe for the last few weeks for some friends of his who are in Europe on a buying trip. In my area there have been a couple of witch shoppes but they don't last long. I don't know if they are hounded by trad folks or there isn't enough business, but I have always like the notion of a metaphysical store where you can go in and buy things and people don't look at you sideways.

The shop is situated just outside of Colonial Williamsburg. It is a double shop space, that is it was a building with two shops downstairs and two apartments upstairs. When the couple bought the building, they opened up the two shops into one shop and made the two small apartments one large apartment.

The shop has book cases and shelves all along the walls, large display windows and tables in the center to display things. In the back is a reading room for their thousands of reference books that they do not sell but make available to the public as a library. They can sit there at the tables or in the comfortable chairs and do research. Then there is a work room/lunch room and they have a small stove and fridge and a work table. Both sides have loos.

They sell everything the witch would need. Wands of different woods and crystals are in large round cardboard containers. On slow days, I have decupaged the containers with witch symbols and wands and made them colorful. There are assorted jars of herbs that you can buy by the jar or the ounce, and I spend a lot of time just measuring the herbs for the customers. When I encounter an herb that I haven't seen or used before, I ask the customer how they use it. I have gained so much information from various trads and pratices that I have filled a steno pad, as I do take time to jot down the uses.

There are of course new and used books and I have spent time reading them and taking notes on them in the apartment above at night. Gaelyn has bought me a couple of boxes worth and I have sent them home and cannot wait to read them. I make candles in the back, some the usual kind and some are made custom for one person or other who needs a special candle for a ritual or spell.

One of the things I do like very much and wrote one of my good students about were the brooms. They are hand made and some have detailed carvings of the celtic and norse style, some African and South American. They are well made and you could actually use them for sweeping if a muggle happened to pop in and buy one, for they are truely the most beautiful brooms I have ever seen. Some of them have rosemary and lavender and lemon grass woven in with the broom straw on the brush. A few are plain and the buyers can carve them anyway they wish. One little muggle lady bought a broom and wand for her grandson who is simply waiting for his Hogwarts letter any day.

To tell the truth, though, many people who wander in think at first that the shop is just a hippy shop because we burn incense and play celtic and pan flute music. When they realize that they have spent upwards of an hour in a witch shop they are amazed. I had one lady ask me "Are you really a witch?" and I said yes and she said "You don't look like a witch!" and I told her that was because witches look like everyone else.

I like to perch on the high stool with the padded back and look out the window. Gaelyn and I wear khaki pants and white button down shirts, nothing at all conspicuous. I suppose that there are many people who recognize the shop as a witch shop. I like to watch the people as their eyes go over the front of the shop and then just notice me sitting there, reading or sewing.

You can always tell when a muggle comes in and they know what sort of shop it is. They are wary, a bit nervous, and they are all eyes. They are there for a purpose. Most women, if Gaelyn asks if he can help them, say that they are just looking. Then they spot me. "Can I help you?" I ask.

Usually it is about love. They want to know if love potions will work. Sometimes it is about the future and I read their cards for them, free of charge. I always steer muggles away from magikal solutions. I wouldn't want them to dabble and I wouldn't want them to give up on themselves and always seek a magikal solution for everything.

I haven't had any bad experiences, knock on wood, except for one of those smudgy little Jack T. Chick tracts that fundamentalists like to hand out left on one of the shelves. I just threw it away. No sense in making my visit a bad one.

Boxes come in everyday and they have to be inventoried and put up on the shelves. We got a case of hand sized tarot cards the other day and I bought a few decks to bring back to my little witches back home. We close at five and I go out with Gaelyn to dinner or I cook something upstairs.

We have enjoyed our stay and have learned a lot and worked hard. I think we will miss the shop when we return home.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn and Gaelyn

Change of Title

2008-07-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

I have decided to change the title of my blog to Christian Witch so that more people will find me. Hope this doesn't confuse anyone.

Aslinn

Check out the Almanac

2008-07-18T19:08:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

Hey there guys, I have been working on the Christian Witch Almanac Blog for 6 months now. It is pretty good and very fun to put together. I have each day, the moon cycles and the days of the saints and special events in the witchcraft community as well as Sabat days. Hope you are enjoyingmy almanac and if anyone who is looking at it would like to suggest an added feature or would like to submit a five or six paragraph essay on the topic of your choice, email me at aslinndhan01@yahoo.com and submit your topic idea or the article as a word document or simply in the body of your email and I will let you know if and when it will be posted

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

America the Responsible

2008-07-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

We are feeling the pinch. There is no doubt about it. Gasoline prices are up and jobs are shrinking. Our resources are limited. But what does a witch do? We are supposed to be concerned with what happens to Mother Earth and I think we try to be. Not always but we try.

But this is not just a problem for witches, it is problem for us all. When gasoline was $1.50 we didn't care, we drove our big SUV's and trucks and gave not a thought in the world to the impact we are having on our world. Now we are in this damnable war and we are under more pressure to find what we can do to have plenty and not waste.

First of all, try to travel less if you have a big SUV or truck. Carpool to work, church or sabat. Shop together at the grocery store. Use fewer petroleum goods. Use and reuse. Donate to and shop at second hand shops, wash clothes in cold water, hang some things to drip dry, put kitchen scraps, excluding meat and bones, into a scrap bucket and compost it, turn up your thermostat and turn down your lights. And vote. You heard me. Vote and get people in office who have a plan to help your local and state and federal government get on the right track.

We can make it through this hard time we are having. We just have to think before we do.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

What is Patriotism

2008-07-01T18:41:00.001-07:00

Merry Meet!!

Most folk in the Craft community do not think of themselves as political, mostly because there just aren't that many witches in office. But, with the elections upon us and the debate over patriotism always used as a campaign platform, I just felt that I should stand up and throw my two cents into the fray.

First of all let me say that I do not speak of one candidate over the other. I think all Americans or any free people who have the right to vote should at least vote. If you don't vote you can't complain.

Second let me say that I never saw myself as patriotic. I was a rebel and a black sheep and something of an extreme liberal in my teen years. I joined groups like Green Peace and Amnesty International and I wrote to people like FW Declerk and demanded that he free Nelson Mandela and then give the black South Africans the freedom to vote and I joined in other sort prisoners of conscience campaigns but I never felt strongly about my country until I went to work for Vietnam Veterans.

But patriotism for me was less about saluting the flag and more about making sure that all Americans were able to enjoy their fair share the promises made to every American. I love my country, at least the ideals of my country. I understand fully that we have many injustices, racism, sexism, classism, creedism, but there is still the promise in America that does not exist in any part of the world.

Patriotism isn't about just about who served their country, or who didn't or who wears an American Flag on their lapel, it is about what you are willing to stand up for. Are you willing to stand up and say "Enough!" to social injustice in your country and other countries? Are you willing to help a person up? I say "Stand on my shoulders and when you get up there, hold your hand down to me and we will pull someone else up together" It is the rule of three in action.

Patriotism is not about saluting the flag and saying the pledge, but it is about standing still and silent when someone else does it. It is not about getting choked up when we hear the Star Spangled Banner, it is about understanding the words and emotions and feeling a part of the land of the free and the home of the brave. The song means nothing if the words do not ring true.

Patriotism is not about one nation under God if you cannot celebrate the image of God in your own way, whether your creed's symbol is a cross, or a cresent or a six pointed star or a five pointed star.

Patriotism is about being the best part of your nation, not her symbols, not her songs, not her military might. It is about seeing injustice and trying to right it, it is about lending a helping hand, it is about exercising the rights of any free citizen of a free nation.

So may God bless America, regardless of how you see the sacred and God bless Americans, regardless of your notion of patriotism.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

Medieval Faire

2008-06-30T09:32:00.001-07:00

Merry Meet!!

Gaelyn and I went to the Medieval Faire last week. I have been going for years with my circle sisters. Throughout the year I make shawls and tarot pouches with celtic designs and herbal candles and little spell books and decoupaged boxes and other witchy/ medieval goods. I make enough of a profit to stay at the faire for the whole week and enjoy being with my circle sisters and other folk who practice the way of the wise. Not all participants do, but there are enough of us to have a regular Craft convention.

These faires are fun. We have a tent, army style, fitted out with medieval and celtic hand painted patches over it. That is another thing I do, I cut out twelve by twelve squares and draw elaborate celtic designs and medieval shields and hand paint them and then sew them to the body of the tent. So the olive drab tent we started with now looks like a dramatic jousting tent from a fairy tale. I make about a dozen a year. My Gaelyn made some honey mead and brought some jars of honey and some of my sisters make wine, which is pretty good.

After the sales day is over, we have events, like jousting and sword contests and highlander games style exhibitions. We also have jugglers and magicians who perform sleight of hand and gymnasts and dancers. One outfit does various morality plays. This year they did a version of a Faustian style story. It was very good and in some parts rather scary.

When all of the tourists are gone for the night, we wise folk (aka Witches) get together and raise energy, dance and sing and share stories and magik. I met with a great little bunch of Christian witches from Pennsylvania and I am hoping they will be writing in and sharing some of their stories and articles for the almanac.

One of the things that did bother me is the amount of manufactured goods. I know that there are a lot of fine companies who make medieval apparel and I understand you might have to resort to them for leather goods and shoes and boots, but many of the dresses and blouses and skirts can be handmade and should be handmade. And there is the issue of simple things like pouches and bags and the like that came from retail stores and mail order like the Pyramid company.

But I had a great time and we made a few bucks to keep us comfortably at the faire and pay for our gas back home and keep us excited about the next faire. If you get a chance to go to a Medieval Faire, go, you will have a great time.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

Love Spells: I Called the Witch Doctor

2008-06-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

They call you late at night, breathless and a little apprehensive. They confess to you that they have met someone they could fall in love with but they don't know their secret love is crazy about them. Then with baited breath they say: "Couldn't you mix up a little love potion #9" They have their hopes and dreams wrapped up in a magikal solution.

What do you say to that person? How do you explain that it is against your ethics to try and control someone with a spell or potion? Is there a way to help this person?

There is a way and it is not to try to magikally control the person, but to enhance the person who is infatuated with the object of their desire. Most of the time the person who is the admiree is afraid of rejection from the admired. A short charm for them recite to give them courage may be all they need. A small talisman to make them feel desireable may do the trick. To enhance the one who is love stricken and make them more friendly and have more confidence is what that person needs. They would not really want that person to be fascinated with them just because of a spell, they would hopefully want the person to admire them for who they are.

You might also do divinatory work for them. You might want to see if they are a good match. If you practice astrology, you might want to see if their signs match up. You might want to do some tarot readings for them. There are other things you can suggest.

Remind them that not all desires are fulfillable and even if you do these for them, they may not get the person who is their focus. Tell them to keep in mind that fate may have a different partner in mind for them.

Blessed Be
Aslinn

A Petition for Wiccan Chaplains

2008-05-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

Here is a little something I wanted to let you know about. It is a petition for the US Military to provide for Wiccan Chaplains. Many Wiccan trads hold that at a ceratin level you are the priest/ess of your own trad, but to have a Wiccan Chaplain would ensure that the Wiccans in our armed services would be able to have some expectation of the ability to celebrate the Sabbats and have time to raise energy and pray with fellow Wiccans. Follow the links or paste them on your browser and sign the appeal.

FWD: Petition to get Wiccan Chaplains into the U.S. Armed Forces

Posted by: "~)0(~ Mishka" mishka.wytch@gmail.com hekate6164

Mon May 26, 2008 9:39 pm (PDT)

Petition to get Wiccan Chaplains into the U.S. Armed Forces

There are over 5000 Wiccans serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. However,
there are currently NO Wiccan Chaplains. This is a petition to get
Wiccan chaplains accepted. Other religions with small numbers are
allowed chaplains.

Among the nearly 2,900 clergy on active duty are 41 Mormon chaplains for
17,513 Mormons in uniform, 22 rabbis for 4,038 Jews, 11 imams for 3,386
Muslims, six teachers for 636 Christian Scientists, and one Buddhist
chaplain for 4,546 Buddhists.

In 2007, when a pentecostal chaplain turned Wiccan he applied to change
his religious affiliation to Wicca, and the Army railroaded him out of
Iraq and out of the Army. This is unacceptable.

Sign this petition and tell the the Army Chief of Chaplains office and
other government officials that Wiccans deserve chaplains and should be
afforded the same rights as other religions.

http://pagancauldron.com/modules/xpetitions/index.php?id=1

~Mishka

http://www.myspace.com/YaYaMishka
http://www.myspace.com/MishkaWytch
http://www.covenspace.com/MishkaWytch

Thanks to Chris and Mishkawytch for their information.

Blessed Be
Aslinn

A Christian Speaks of Wicca and Witchcraft

2008-05-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

This article appears on numerous witchcraft and Wicca sites and I love it so much, I wish to add it to my blog. Thanks www.wicca.com for having the article available. It is also on my links.

A Christian Speaks of Wicca and Witchcraft
by James Clement Taylor

I am a Christian and not a Wiccan. A Christian is one who has been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and who has made a personal, free-will decision to commit himself and all his or her life to our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Both of these things are true of me. I am a member of St. Mary's Eastern Orthodox Church, Calhan, Colorado. In this paper, I am not speaking as agent for any church, but I am, entirely on my own responsibility, speaking the truth in love, as we Christians are supposed to do.

A Situation of Strife and Shame:

There are many Christians today who believe that anyone who is not a Christian is doomed to an eternity of suffering in hell. Any decent person, believing this, would be compelled to try to save as many people from this fate as possible. But is this belief correct? Jesus Christ, having noted the faith and righteousness of a Roman centurion, a Pagan, proclaimed:

"Assuredly I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 8:10-12)

If we accept these words as true, and surely we should, then it is clear that heaven will contain many who are not Christians, and hell will contain many who are! Clearly, throughout the Gospels, Jesus Christ sets forth the criteria for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, and those criteria include love, kindness, forgiveness, and a refusal to judge others:

"For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (Matthew 6:14-15)

"For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you." (Matthew 7:2)

"But go and learn what this means: `I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'" (Matthew 9:13)

"Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven." (Luke 6:36-38)

Is it not clear? Anyone who fails in these things, will calling himself a Christian save him? Anyone who obeys God in these things, will being unbaptized condemn him? Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to Me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)

Yet it is not by good works that we earn our way into heaven, because there is no way we can earn the free gift of God's mercy and grace, which alone can save us. But it is clear that it is not by faith, in the sense of sharing the Christian faith, that we are saved, either. The faith which saves us is not faith in the goodness of our works, nor faith that we have the right theology and/or belong to the right church. Rather, it is faith in God, and in His mercy:

"So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy." (Romans 9:16)

But the Wiccans, you will say, do not have faith in God. Yet by their own theology, they certainly do. Those who call them Satan-worshippers are entirely wrong. They do not worship Satan, or even believe that Satan exists. Instead, they worship a Goddess and a God whom they understand as manifestations of a higher and unknown Deity.

Now if you are a Christian, this will sound familiar to you, and it should. In the Bible we find the following:

"Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, `Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, The One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you" (Acts 17:22-23)

The Wiccans worship the Unknown God, as manifested to them in the form of a Goddess and a God. Therefore, our Bible tells us they worship the same God we do; and if they do not know this, we should know it!

For those of us who are unable to simply stand on God's Word, and must prove to themselves the truth of what it proclaims the holy Apostle John has given us the method for doing this. You have only to attend any public Wiccan ceremony, and test the spirits which are there, to see "whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1). You will find that, while the power manifested there may be less than what you have experienced as a Christian, that power is clearly the power of God.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, these people of Wicca have been terribly slandered by us. They have lost jobs, and homes, and places of business because we have assured others that they worship Satan, which they do not. We have persecuted them, and God will hold us accountable for this, you may be sure, for He has said, "Assuredly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." (Matthew 25:40)

Let us, from this point onward, repent of our misdeeds and declare that henceforth we shall obey Christ our God, and not judge others or condemn them, so that He will not have to judge and condemn us for our sins.

Witch Hunts Still Happen

2008-05-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

Kenya mob reportedly burns 11 ‘witches’
Police say locals accused women and men of ‘bewitching’ their children

updated 3:37 p.m. ET, Wed., May. 21, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya - A group of up to 300 young men have burned to death 11 people suspected of being witches and wizards in western Kenya — in some cases slitting their victims' throats or clubbing them to death before burning their bodies, officials said.

The gang moved from home to home through two villages, identifying their victims by using a list with names of suspected witches and wizards and the kind of spells they were believed to have cast on the community, said Ben Makori, a local councilor.

"The villagers are complaining that the (suspected) wizards and witches are making the bright children in the community dumb.... These (suspected) witches are not doing good things to us," Makori told The Associated Press on the phone.

Deputy police spokesman Charles Owino said the gang hunted down the eight women and three men in the western Kenya villages of Kekoro and Matembe. Most of the victims were between 70 and 90 years old, Owino said.

Senior administrator Njoroge Ndirangu said the gang hunted down their victims Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
Victims slashed or clubbed in some cases the gang pulled the victims out of their homes, slit their throats or clubbed them to death, said a police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The victims were then thrown back into their homes, which the gang had already set on fire, the officer said. He said 36 houses were burned.

Another police officer, Mwaura Njoroge, said the body of a victim burned to death in her house was, "reduced to something so small, you cannot tell which is the leg and which is the arm."
"How can they (the young men) prove that a person is a wizard? It is likely that the people who committed these killings had personal vendettas against their victims," Njoroge said.

"These people identified who is to be killed by accusing their victims of bewitching their sons and daughters," said Ndirangu, the commissioner in charge of Kisii Central district, where one of the villages is located.

Ndirangu said that residents are superstitious and have often targeted suspected witches and wizards, but this week's attack was the most shocking in recent years.

The police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said investigators had little hope of making progress because the villagers have refused to identify the people who carried out attacks.

Amazing things Happen even in the midst of Prejudice

2008-05-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

Gaelyn and I are attending a witch conference this week and this was something that happened to us last night. It just goes to show that even negative things can turn into positive energy.

Boy what a night!!!! Let me tell you what happened, you won't believe this!!! Gaelyn and I went to dinner and went to our circle meeting and then went to the bale fire circle. While we were there, the local campus Christian folks were there. You know, I had never experienced prejudice before...a little harassment when I used to shave my head, but other than that, nothing I couldn't ignore. We weren't even wearing ceremonial clothes, just jeans and a white blouse for me and a white poet's shirt for Gaelyn. I had flower crowns for us to wear for the circle but they were in this canvas bag I was carrying.

This good looking kid with a white Campus Crusade for Christ came up and asked what the bon fire was for and I said it was a May fire and we were having a unity circle. He looks at me and says you know, hell burns hotter than that fire. I looked at him and asked him what he was talking about. He said that I was going to hell for being a witch and that it was a shame he couldn't carry out the commands of the Bible and suffer not a witch to live. There were little kids and babies going to the fire and they started shouting that we were all going to hell and that we were damned and the kids started crying. So I spotted this police officer and I told him that we were being harassed and we needed the people to move back because they were scaring the children who were coming to the fire celebration. So this cop calls in a few fellow officers and start to move the people back and they started throwing stuff at us!!!!! One lady had a rock hit her on the eye!!!! It really marred the night for us. We still had our bale fire and the High Priest who was leading it asked us to send our anger to the fire and to pray that their hatred and anger would be burned up with the fire, but it was awful!!!! After the fire, a couple of witches even got mad at us Christian witches. But the neatest thing happened.

The High Priest came over to the group and he told us that this was not the way to show unity in the face of challenge and that anyone who worked Craft were entitled to be witches regardless of their religion and any witch who thought otherwise were not true followers of the Rede and then he said something that I have fervently believed ever since I became a witch. He said someday the government would want all of our lives because we believed something that would someday be considered heresy. He said that included anyone who believed in anything, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca and the Craft. He then looked at us Christian Witches and said "You are my Brothers and Sisters in the wise way, and you are brothers and sisters of the Christ. That makes us all family and I fight for my family" and walked away....It was the most incredible thing.

So, we sort of stood there and looked at each other and the Wiccan and Pagan Witches apologized and embraced us and it turned into the most wonderful meeting of the minds. We got together and sat in this coffee shop until they ran us out early this morning and we found a diner and had breakfast together and we agreed this was the most amazing thing we had ever experienced in our Craft lives.....It was wild. And the magikal energy was so intense...it blew my mind.....

There are hidden blessings everywhere if we wait and be patient for truth to win out.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn and Gaelyn

The secret of Absinthe

2008-04-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!!

Well, the secret is out and they have the proof. 140 proof, that is. Absinthe is just a high powered alcoholic drink. There is no true narcotic style effect.

This is important to know. Many who follow a Goth life style tout its effects of producing hallucinations and dream and trance states. The truth is, absinthe is just rot gut, plain and simple.

I do of course believe in the powers and energies of wormwood, the primary ingredient. Wormwood is a great magikal herb used in small quantities but it is toxic and must be used carefully.

The reason I find this information so important is that the Goth community has latched on to it of late as a way to open up their minds and senses. All they are really doing is getting drunk. Goths also tend to dabble in magik and drunkeness and magik is dangerous folly. Dabbling is always dangerous but dabbling while intoxicated is doubly so. Remember, the first rule of witchcraft is to harm none,this includes yourself.

Beware and be well.
Brighetst Blessings Be
Aslinn

Beltane Approaches

2008-04-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

It seems like yesterday I was writing about Yule and talking about presents and wintertime. Now it is Beltane and I am planning my herb garden and my flower beds and waiting for that last frost and spate of cold weather to finally go away.

For witches of Wiccan and Pagan traditions, Beltane is the time of Mother Earth renewing herself in nature and gowning herself in the greens and riotous colors of spring. Spring is the season of renewal and witches renew themselves and their talents and energies. It is the time that they clean not just their cupboards but their souls, too, set new goals, rid themselves of regrets for things done and undone and look forward to the growth of living things.

Gaelyn and I are champing at the bit to busy setting up his herb garden and cleaning his herb racks. I have herbs growing already in little biodegradeable pots, sunning themselves by the light of a grow lamp. I can already smell the fragrances from their new leaves when I lightly stroke them. Lavender, rosemary, thyme and catnip, St. John's Wort and mint and sage fill the little house he is renting with the smells of nature and magik.

I will watch them grow and become full and in August they will be mature enough to harvest and bind with twine and dry out on the drying racks and when we use them in magik, I will pull a few precious dry leaves and smell them and remember them as they grew. But I will also know that these herbs, though they are dry, are still alive with the energy of the earth, the elements, and the love I gave them as I watched over them as they grew that whole summer. And they will carry some of that summer inside them, even in the snows and cold and wet of Yule.

Thanks be to God who empowers all living things and thanks be to Mother Earth for her bounties and the promise of new life. May the sacred spirit you praise and honor do the same for all of you who practice the Way of the Wise.

Brightest Blessinsg Be
Aslinn

Building the Christian Witch Altar

2008-04-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

One of the things that attracted me to Catholicism was a home altar I once saw in a person's house. It was a simple affair really, with a small statue of Jesus and Mary and a candle and Bible. Nothing to it. But resonated strongly with me and when I became a Catholic, I built myself a home altar. I love it.

When I became a Christian Witch, I found that the home altar was a integral part of witchcraft and casting. The home altar becomes your sacred space and this is where you gather energy to cast and create and work magik. Altars are very personal and can be as simple or as elaborate as you wish.

Now, there are a lot of witchcraft writers that wool you about directions you should have your table facing and the shape of the table and what you should have on it. And that is fine, if you want to follow a formula for a while until you get a sense of how you use sacred space. I follow only few rules for the creation of an altar.

Think about how much space you have and how you plan to use it. Are you going to have large pieces of art, a large Bible, and a big cauldron on your table? If this is your plan, buy a nice big table. I wished I had more room because I would actually have a eight foot table set up with the main part of the altar in the center and then work surfaces with my book of shadows and cauldron on one end and my Bible and Prayer book and candle array on the other. I would also have storage underneath for all of my witchcraft books and supplies. But as it is I force myself to work in a rather small space so I don't go crazy.

Next think about efficiency. Are you a frequent duster? Or do you dust about once a month or just before a ritual? Are you a neat nick or a clutter bug?

Next think about devotion. If you are a Christian, are you devoted to Jesus Passion? if you are, a nice Crucifix might be great as a central image. You might use pictures or plaques instead of statues to cut down on use of table space. Do you have a sacred fire? If you are like a lot of us, you might not have an actual hearth so a nice large pillar candle may be serving as Sacred Fire. You may also want to have your Bible on display. If you do not already have one, you may want to get a slimline style that is small, or use a New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs.

If you use a cauldron, it is fine to have a really big one, but if you are using a small table top, you may want look for a small one. And one of the things I use to actually cook potions is a simmer jar that is suspended over a tea light. We rarely cook large amounts of potion any more and you can cook it thoroughly and when it cools decant it safely. It also saves plenty of room for your work.

It is great if you have room for your book of shadows on your altar, but what I do is usually take the pages out of my book (my BOS is a three ring binder) and cast using the pages. It makes for easier reading and handling. You can also jot down the spell and take it to your altar.

Above all, have fun with your altar. Think of it as you magikal platform or room. Try to use your imagination and by all means honor who you are and express your best relationship with God

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn Dhan

What to say to trad Christians who condemn you

2008-03-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

You may have to accept that your Christian friend will never fully accept the fact that you are a witch. There is just no convincing them of it. They have read those verses in the Bible about not allowing a witch to live and they equate what we do with the descriptions laid out in the Bible of sacrificing children to idols and mixing poisons and superstition.

To understand the difference between what you do and what the Bible prohibits, you have to understand what witches do and why. We can say with absolute authority that we do not sacrifice babies to idols, we sacrifice nothing at all, which, I would remind any one who questions what I do, that early Jews and Muslims did and in some very orthodox communities still do. We follow the rede which commands us to harm none and the teaching of Jesus which says that God does not delight in the blood of doves and lambs for the washing away of sins.

We do not practice necromancy. That is the conjuring of the dead. This a practice done by sorcerers and spiritualists. If we communicate with dead people, like beloved relatives, it is because they communicate with us, we do not use rituals to force the dead to speak to us. Even Jesus, before his Ascension into heaven appeared to the disciples in a glorified, supernatural state.

We do tell fortunes, but we tell them for free and we use them as tools to enrich our lives, not as promotion of superstition. If I throw the cards for you and it forewarns you of say a relationship that is unhealthy, you can take that information and analyze the situation and get out of it. If I tell you the cards indicate that you are in danger of an accident, that does not mean you should cower under your bed, but to be careful, go about your routine and take no unnecessary risks. It is just a little more than telling you to have a good day at school or work and to be careful. It is the same with any form of divinations.

We do mix up potions but science confirms that herbs, spices and scents do affect change in us. Using natural methods to pep us up, calm us down, relieve depression, heal or to transport us into a meditative state is not a sin. If it were, God would have not ordered the burning of incense and sage and other spices and oils in the temple with the ark of the covenant. As witches, we do not poison or cause harm to anyone or anything.

Amulets, talismans and totems are nothing in and of themselves, it is the power and energy we give them. If there were true prohibitions, we would not wear the cross/crucifix, the star of David or saints medallions. These are all talismanic in that we transfer energy to them to protect us and keep us safe as we go through our lives. It also tells people who we are and what we believe in. To make them objects of superstition is the sin implied here.

Objects like wands, staffs, brooms, swords and athames are just that. For example, in the twenty third Psalm it says"Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me" The rod to me is my wand, and my staff is my sage staff. Jesus said that if you did not own a sword, to go and buy on for we are as sheep among the wolves. The athame functions the same way. It begins as the woman's kitchen knife. Your mother, I am sure, has a favorite knife in the kitchen. It feels good in your hand, it is the knife she looks for to chop vegetables or herbs or meat, the athame is just a dressed up ceremonial version of that. My first athame was just a sharp kitchen style knife for years. In the ancient times, when cutlery was difficult to make and find, the woman of the house carried her knife in a scabbard from her belt so no matter where she went she would have that useful tool with her. My cauldron is the place where warmth and comfort and food and drink are found. It is not evil. If I were cooking up toads and cat heads in it, that would be different, but I make potions and burn spells and candles and incense in it. I dry flowers in it. Brooms are just ancient women's weapons or tools that tie us to our Craft past, but I don't always use my broom (the last time was at a handfasting ceremony for two gay guys who wanted to have a commitment ceremony, so I officiated their handfasting, it was my first act as a Priestess, as a matter of fact, and it was a Christian ceremony)

There are mentions of certain woods that are holy to God and specifically ordered them for the temple. There are stones and crystals beloved by God and is a part of the old temple and new temple to come from the sky in the moment of the Second Coming. Numbers and animals have symbolic meanings throughout the Bible. It even says that young men will dream dreams and old men would see visions (or vice versa).

As Jesus said: "devils cannot cast out devils" "evil men cannot heal". We could do none of the things we do without the blessings of God.

There are gads of ways to look at those verses. The thing is, people have no clue how the Bible was written, how words were translated, even political agendas that effected it.

But listen,don't do anything if you think it will not honor God. If you feel that this is not the way to honor God, that is okay. Craft is not for everyone. But if you think you honor God and carry out the mission of Christ, if you think Craft helps you access the powers and energies promised to us to heal, cast out demons, comfort and bless, then do it.

There are tons of prohibitions in the OT. You are not supposed to cut your hair/sideburns, women aren't supposed to wear men's clothing, women are supposed to cover their hair, you can't have tattoos and piercings. We aren't supposed to eat pork, shrimp, lobster, or clams and oysters, women are supposed to be segregated from men during their periods and after childbirth. These are all prohibitions that would make you unclean and unable to sit in the temple, take part in sacraments, keep us separated from God. I'm sure most trad Christians doesn't adhere to all those things either. At any rate, whatever you do, do it because it is right between you and God. Do nothing to please anyone, not me, not your friend, not your pastor or your mother and father. Do it because it pleases God.

Magik is neither black nor white. Magik is natural, it works with the earth, the elements, and with the seasons and tides. The witch is who makes the magik negative or positive. Being a Christian and a witch means that we work under two very distinct sets of ethics, the Bible and rede. Jesus said that we would be able to work all wonders perform all miracles and sacraments so long as we do it in his name. The Craft is our inheritance. Jesus empowers my witchcraft and practice, and Jesus alone. The angels and Saints are simply his agents who work unceasingly for us on our behalf.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

How does a Christian Witch participate in a Wiccan/Pagan ritual?

2008-03-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

As the Craft community grows in number and variety there will be time when you may be celebrating Sabat or Esbat with Pagan/Wiccan circles. How do you participate when you may be the only one of the participants in a non-Christian circle?

Approaches differ. It depends on whether or not the circle will permit you to participate. If they do, this is how you might you might go about being respectful the circle while raising energy in the name of the Christian God.

Many covens or circles begin with a calling of the corners. Sometimes this is about calling the elements, sometimes it is about calling the watchtowers. This can be in the form of devas or faery folk. If this is the case you can call upon the archangels. The archangels tend to also be a part of Wiccan/Pagan practices as they are increasingly incorporating elements of the holy kabbalah. If they call upon their gods and goddesses, you may call upon the Trinity, the Blessed Virgin and or any of the Saints you are attracted to. Above all, be respectful. When other pantheons are being called, stand still, do not speak,and when your turn comes to raise energy call out clearly. Raise your arms or uplift your hands, palm up. Cross your arms at the breast when other gods and goddesses are invoked. It declares to the circle that you are being respectful to their tradition even if you do not call on upon their sacred spirits.

On the disposition of cakes and ale in formal circle cerimonies, you may wish to abstain. When the cakes and ale come your way pass it on to the next celebrant with a smile and a blessed be. After the cerimony there will be other refreshments, cakes and ale is not simple refreshment, it is sacramental and you may be uncomfortable eating food offered to the honor of other pantheons.

If the circle is celebrating in a way that is uncomfortable to you, you may absent yourself from the circle by quietly stepping out of the circle, opening and closing the circle with your wand or wand hand. Intone: I open this circle but the space remains sealed. or some other formula. If you leave the circle, do not re-enter it. You may disrupt the cerimony.

But do not simply join a circle and participate without discussing things with the high priest or priestess. This shows respect. We, after all, do not wish to be inconsiderate or intrusive. This is not the way to create a bridge between the Christian Witch and the Pagan/Wiccan community.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

Bell, Book and Candle: What to do when your church discovers you are a witch.

2008-03-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

I received an email from a young witch friend I know through numerous email conversations. The email detailed a situation I had never encountered before. This young 20 something witch had been practicing the Craft for five or six years. Recently, a friend of hers who had been Craft interested joined another church and got saved. She went to her pastor and told him that she was a little confused because she was a Christian but still wanted to practice Craft but felt conflicted. After much intense scrutiny, the person revealed who had been answering questions for her about the Craft. The pastor then took it upon himself to tell the witch's pastor that she was practicing witchcraft. The pastor dismissed her from her Sunday School position and then told her that if she did not "repent" from her "sin" of witchcraft that she would be excommunicated from the congregation, which eventually happened.

Of course this troubled her a great deal. I asked permission to discuss her situation with Gaelyn. This is what we came up with together.

It is difficult to follow the dual paths of Christianity and witchcraft. To do so means that often you must practice one part of your faith in isolation from the other. Of course this can cause conflict and trouble for the Christian Witch practitioner. You must be mature and strong enough to practice both, though one you practice in your heart.

Should circumstances arise that you would be discovered, you may have to make a difficult choice. Do you confess your "sin" and repent? Or do you walk away from the congregation and find another?
Both decisions are difficult and not to be made lightly.

Gaelyn and I recommend that you first search your heart. If you feel guilty for practicing Craft, you shouldn't be practicing Craft at all. If you feel good about your Craft practice, begin a spiritual journey to find a new congregation to be a part of. It may even be a new religion you seek. Take your time, do research, visit many churches and houses of worship. Consider it a form of spiritual quest. Try to see what you are supposed to learn.

Should you disclose your witchcraft? Why should you. If you are practicing it within the constraints of what we Christian witches think of as good work, then no, you need not disclose. There were things that even Jesus said were to be kept secret until his resurrection. (the transfiguration, for example) Witchcraft is not about converting others nor is it about setting limitations. Witchcraft is occult, secret, private practice, and as Jesus said, we should invoke God in private in prayer and confession and repentance.

The sad truth is that we have not yet been able to overcome prejudices people have held against witches for centuries, long before the Bible and not just within Judeo-Christian/Islamic circles but in traditional and tribal religions, witches have a tarnished reputation. It may be many lifetimes before we are accepted by any trad religions.

Do not let the closed mind of others tear yourself away from a relationship with God. If all fails, worship God at home, pray, read the Bible, sing songs of praise and do whatever you wish in the manner of prayer. As I have said many times that though I love my religion, I know that it is a human institution and the Kingdom of God is wherever you stand.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

Happy Dedication Day Tanith

2008-03-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

Listen Brothers and Sisters of the Craft. We have a new Sister in the way of the wise. Welcome her to our circle.

A poem for your dedication

Welcome thou Maiden of the Moon

The Night Orb rises high

Casting upon us the light of Magikal Benediction

For on this night, a sister comes

And adds to the tribe of the Children of God

Who raises energies, speaks to the trees,

And knows the wisdom of the ancients.

Born again soul, sister to the Christ

Daughter of the Maiden of the Moon

Witch and Christian, I charge thee:

Serve God, serve Jesus and his mother

In what image you find her

Learn the way of the wise

Know the ways of Mother Earth

Of her seasons, the elements, and all living creatures

You are a priestess, seer, healer and warrioress

It is your heritage and your birthright

Keep the Laws of God and the Witches Rede

And your own will and the goodness of your heart

Welcome Sister into the circle

Merry Meet, Merry Part, Merry Meet Again

And Brightest Blessings Be

Happy dedication day Tanith Luna Crevan

You may now consider yourself a named witch of the first degree

Brightest Blessings Be,
Aslinn and Gaelyn

When things seem to go wrong...what is a Christian Witch to do?

2008-03-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet,

Sometimes, despite everything we try to do, troubles come our way, no matter what. We are never promised the easy road, whether we are Christians or Christian Witches or Wiccans and Pagans, sometimes things just seem to burden us and trouble us.

We can do one of two things. We can become dispaired, and we all feel this way one time or another, or we can learn from it and try to understand what we are supposed to do now in our life. Sometimes, bad times are sent to us to try and help us see another path we should follow, look for different options, seek better or new opportunities.

I am a teacher. I am a substitute teacher to be exact. There are special challenges to be met in that sort of job. I don't know what is happening to young people today. Our young people are mean hearted and cruel to eachother and the adults in their lives. Sad but true. When I was in a long term sub position, I had troubles, and failings, none of us are perfect, but there are also times that I was a success and those were the best times and they were the most frequent times. But now that I am back in per diem work, I find that those moments of victory are far and few in between and i have made the decision to find other work.

Maybe some of my troubles are my own fault. I think maybe they are. But much of my troubles also stem from the fact that so many of my colleagues are indifferent to others and care only for their own securities and dislike any dissenters. At any rate, after so many years of pass and fail and worries and stress, I have decided to leave the situation as soon as I find more permanent work, outside of the educational system.

But what do we do when we are faced with life changing situations? Should we race to magik and try to heal ourselves with spells and incantations? Should we mix up potions and bless our homes and selves. Should we consider revenge spells?

I know you will be tempted to do all of these things but I suggest that you take some time and pray first. Ask for guidance and comfort and even forgiveness. Forgiveness for yourself, forgiveness for others and forgiveness to others. Prayer is the most ancient form of spelling and that is what you should do first.

Then you might want cleanse yourself and your personal space and cast charms that calm and ease you. Be proactive and turn back negativity with a protective shield. Call upon your sacred spirit and find peace from them.

I wish to thank my sister and my boyfriend Gaelyn and my parents for standing by me and for showing me support and compassion. I would also like to thank my Craft friends, my brother and sister witches who have shone their support.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

Remember, Holocaust is just a fancy way of saying Burning Times

2008-03-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

Merry Meet!

I know that those who are civically minded will want to know this is happening. Copy and paste this on an email and sent it to your friends. Don't let the burning times happen again.

EISENHOWER IN DACHAU

It is a matter of history that when Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead..

He did this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing'.

This week, a school in Great Britain/United Kingdom removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.

This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.

This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide! Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.

Don't just delete this. It will only take a minute to pass this along.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn Dhan

A Little Call of the Elements

2008-03-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

Merry Meet!

If there are any witches out there who are looking for a call of the elements or are looking for a new one, check this one out. It is from Tanith LunaCrevan and she is one of our newest sisters in the Christian Craft community. Thank you Tanith for your permission to share this sweet little invocation.

Elemental Call-

To the East, I call upon Raphael,
Lord of the Air,
Healer of the Earth.
To the South, I call upon Michael,
Lord of Fire,
Defender of Man, Slayer of evil.
To the West, I call upon Gabriel,
Lord of Water,
Messenger of God, Harbringer of the Divine.
To the North I call upon Uriel,
Lord of Earth,
Angel of Death and spiritual renewal.

Air, Fire, Water ,Earth,
Elements of celestial birth,
Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel,
Lords of heaven, joy and myrrth,
Join me in this Sacred Circle,
Protected from all blast,
Built to last,
Aid me in this spell I cast.

Bless me as I weave this charm,
Keep me from all pain and harm,
Help me follow the Three Fold Law,
Send me forgiveness for sin's fatal flaw.

As I will it, As God wills it, so mote it be.

Brightest Blessings Be and thanks again to Tanith,
Aslinn

Additional Links

2008-03-01T14:10:00.000-08:00

There seems to be some brand of trouble with the links element so I will do links here:

http://www.witches-tutorial.com/paths/cw.html

This is an interesting page, very straightforward, seems exclusive to Christian centered Witchcraft rather than Goddess Christian tradition.

http://www.geocities.com/tragicpixie/ChristianCraft.html

This interesting Saint magik....a bit on the gypsy/voudou side but good directions for the first time Christian Crafter.

http://www.foxygoddess.com/cwc/index.htm

Not all the links work but most of them do. An excellent directory to the Christian witch movement

http://arganteswell.tripod.com/id1.html

Pretty good website, deals with Christian Gnosticism primarily but full of interesting stuff

http://www.wicca.com/celtic/wicca/christian.htm

Many of you have probably seen this essay, but like they used to say in old Universal movies "A good cast is worth repeating"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A5407021

Excellent article acknowledging Christian Witchcrafts existance and explanation of the movement.

http://p075.ezboard.com/CAN-A-PERSON-BE-BOTH-A-CHRISTIAN-AND-A-WICCAN/fingodsimageaplaceforchristianpaganwomenfrm10.showMessage?topicID=4.topic
Good discussion group for Christo-Pagan women. My Gaelyn hipped me to this one. Thanks my old goat:P

http://www.thesistersthree.com/forums/showthread.ts3?threadid=3985

This a website very inspired by Charmed, but that is okay and my appeal to young women who are new to the Craft. Christian Craft oriented.

If anyone come across any other Christian Centered Witchcraft sites, let me know and I will check them out and paste them up...

Thanks bunches to the little witches (Pansy Faerieflower and Jacob Dragonheart and Little Rabbit) who found these on the web and emailed them to me.

Blessed Be
Aslinn

Who are Satanists?

2008-02-25T18:44:00.000-08:00

Merry Meet,

I planned to put this essay in my Christian Almanac blog but I think it is time to talk about this topic. As I told a young witch the other day, I wish I had a nickel for every time someone asked me if I worshipped the devil. If I had that money I could build myself a magik school.

Satanists are folks who believe in the notion that they will not live in the confines of the Christian religion. They believe that it is wrong for people to fight off their natural urges for pleasure and that it is natural to be self serving. Satanists do not even believe in a true personage called Satan. Satan, they say is a construct where they focus their mental and physical and magikal energies. He represents the natural struggle against control. But he is not real.

The first records of a true Satanic church come from Europe. Now, I ignore the fact that many covens were called Satanic, because as we all know, witches are not Satanists. They worship the gods and goddesses of nature, not the Christian devil. These first Satan centered churches were known as The Hell Fire Club for some. Rabelais spoke of a Satan Cult as the Abbey of Thelema, which inspired Aliester Crowley.

The first modern Satanic Church was started by hypnotist Anton Sandazor Levay. He had a circus and sideshow background and knew how to create an audience. When he formed his church, he carried out bizarre "rituals" for the tv cameras and dressed in a Devil costume, complete with horns. His black house still stands in San Francisco and is a landmark, though it has from time to time been abandoned and in disrepair.

What interests me is that there are people who foam at the mouth, howl at the moon and have fits over the devil and attribute to him all of these fantastic powers. When the truth of the matter is, he is impotent and has only the power we give him. Witches of the Wiccan/ Pagan tradition do not believe in the Christian Devil, so there is no way to empower him in this way. Christians who practice Witchcraft are not worshippers of the devil because we dedicate all we do to the good of God's kingdom on earth.

So, please stop asking me if I worship the devil, because I don't. (Now I've done it, I've probably messed up my chances for collecting more nickles for my magik school :() And don't harass my Wiccan/Pagan brothers and sisters because they do not worship the devil either. And stop giving the devil powers he never had. He has enough PR as it is with the Exorcist.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

Nature, Magik and the Christian God

2008-02-25T13:34:00.000-08:00

Merry Meet!

So many people talk about the ecology now what with global warming on the forefront and more emphasis on removing so much fossil fuels from our environment which makes us virtual slaves to oil producing countries. Politically and environmentally, it is best that we do search out alternative methods of fueling our cars and homes of efficiently and cleanly recycling plastics like this computer or the plastic bottles we drink from and the packaging on our food.

I remember there was a program on television hosted by William Shatner called the Gaia Project. It extends the various world myths of Mother Earth or Mother Nature and the idea that she is dying because her children were killing her with emissions and the green house effect and with toxins polluting every one of her elements. This program was decried by Christian fundamentalists who said that environmentalists were pagans in disguise trying to "convert" people to the notion there was no heaven and that this earth was all there was and that we must worship the earth instead of God.

The Gaia Project died a death, to say the least and we could have cared less when gas was just a dollar and a half a gallon. Environmental issues were the mainstay of old hippies, tree huggers and pagans of all stripe. And to be honest, I never gave it much thought until a strange thing nearly happened in our state.

The state I live in is very poor. Walmart is her biggest employer. But I was married and my Husband was still alive and we were renting a little house with a couple of trees on the lot. One day, our Land lady came to us and said that she may have to cut our trees down. I asked why. In the news paper there was an article that the governor was proposing a bill that said people who had trees on their property would have to pay a tax per tree. The proposal was very vague and seemed ridiculous to me when a tax assessor came by about six months later to count the trees on the property. I told him we rented the house and pointed to my land lord's house.

A week or so later, my husband I were watching the news and we saw where the Buddhists in Vietnam and Laos were ordaining the trees as Buddhists monks to prevent them from being cut down. I told my husband that he, since he was Buddhist, should ordain those trees out in the yard because then they would become a tax free 501c3, a church or member of clergy. The next day I mentioned it to my landlord and she at first laughed and then she said, "Can he really do that? Can he ordain the trees?" We didn't see why not. Fortunately for my landlord and the trees our state government decided not to tax the trees.

Christians believe there is no reason for us to try to preserve the earth because there will be a great tribulation and the world will be burned away anyway to make place for the new earth. I believe in the end times myself but I also believe we have an obligation to God that he gave us in the beginning. Man was place in the garden to tend it, to be a husbandman and this spouse was his help meet. Just because we believe in a new heaven and earth does not mean we should abdicate our job here on earth.

St. Francis of Assisi was a Christian mystic and naturalist and he wrote this poem in praise of God within nature.

Most high omnipotent good Lord.
All praise, glory honor and blessings are yours.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong.
And no man is worthy to pronounce your name
Be praised Oh Lord, with all your creatures
Especially Sir Brother Sun, who brings the day and give us light through him.
How handsome, how radiant he is with great splendor
Of you, Most High, he bears your likeness
Be praised , My Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars.
In the Heavens you have formed them, bright, precious and beautiful.
Be praised, My Lord, for Brother Wind and for air, for cloud, for all weather
By which you give your creatures nourishment.
Be praised My Lord, for Sister Water, she is useful, humble, precious and pure.
Be praised my Lord for Brother Fire, by whom you light the night
How handsome, happy and powerful and strong
Be praised my Lord for our Sister, Mother Earth
Who nourishes and governs us and produces the flowers and fruits herbs.
Praise and Bless the Lord and give thanks and serve him with all humility.

So Mote it be

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn and Gaelyn

Magikal Colors

2008-02-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Merry Meet!

One of the simplest ways we work magik is the wearing of colors. We know through research that color effects us emotionally and spiritually. One of the things that people who are Catholic or Anglican/Episcopalian is the change in colors with the various parts of the church calendar. For example, the colors predominately in our church now is purple. On Good Friday, a catafalque will be draped with black cloth. On Easter everything will be white.

So what about color in magik? First of all, take a piece of paper and make a list of the primary colors. Think about what they symbolize to you.Your attitude about color may be affected by culture or taboos.

From a western witchcraft perspective, the colors are thus:

Color****** Energy****************** Magikal use

Red***** Stimulant******** Sexual excitement, Courage, blood illness
Orange** Cheering *********Depression, mental illness, rheumatism
Yellow** Inspiration****** Detox, Hormones, Menstrual problems
Green*** Vibrant,Harmony** Antiseptic, balancing, money troubles
Blue**** Calm************* Insomnia, nerves, reflection
Purple** Leadership******* Self Respect, courage, protection
Black*** the Occult******* Protection, discipline, binding
White*** Reflection******* Purity, initiation, curing, release
Gold**** divinity********* supplications, gratitudes
Silver** Magik/Moon****** Emotional balance and strengthening powers

These are just a few and they be different from tradition to tradition. When you work spells you should try to use colors that correspond with the need or the person invoked. For example, if you invoke God, you should burn a gold candle. For Christ, you should use a gold or a purple or both if you desire. For the intercession of Mary, you might use white or blue or silver.

Some candles are tough to find, like black candles. You can sub them with either very dark blue or brown candles or with white candles. With Halloween becoming an even bigger decorating holiday that ever before, I stock up on these little black tea lights.

But think about color as you work your rituals and spells

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

When your coven hives off

2008-02-23T18:28:00.000-08:00

Merry Meet!

There are those times when you slap yourself on the forehead and wished you'd paid a bit more attention to the "Run Your Coven" chapters of all those Craft books that solitaries usually skip. Gaelyn and I never meant to have a coven, we just thought a few witches of various traditions would want to get together to chant the corners, do some spelling and have cakes and ale a couple of times a month. We didn't realize we were running the Coven of Eclectic Misfits with a handful of couples and one lonely person who was testing the waters.

Gaelyn and I were getting together with two other Christo-Pagan couples. One was a mixed relationship sort of like Gaelyn and me, he was a Christian Mystic but not a witch and she was a Christo-Pagan. The other couple were both Christo- Pagans. They brought the lone person in to observe and participate in our discussion group. The other four couples were Wiccans. But they knew we were primarily interested in blending Christianity and Paganism and would always include Christian worship in our rituals. At first they seemed fine with it.

Then there were a couple times when Gaelyn and I couldn't join the group because Gaelyn's beloved Grandfather passed away and we were splitting our time between here and there. When we were away, Christian segments of worship were ignored, even to the detriment of the Christo-pagans in the group. When we returned and were able to get back to our routines, there was a request that we remove the Christian portions of our rituals for private practice and perform only the Pagan/Wiccan portions of the worship since I would be the only one completely excluded.

Of course my old goat refused. It didn't matter to me, group ritual seemed more important to him than it did to me, anyway. But now, there has been a split and the circle has hived off. But not without bad feelings and that troubles me. So, I want to say in this blog that I am sorry to those who wanted to exclude me and I am sorry to my Gaelyn for being the root of aggrivation and to the lovely ChristoPagan pairs and the one lone observer for the upheaval.

What had been a lovely, lively group is now a little sad and I hate to think that there are bad feelings. But for the circle to work, we must work together and appreciate the energies that we bring with our uniqueness. We lost, all of us, by losing each other.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn

Women and the Church: Is there a women's priesthood?

2008-02-21T12:44:00.000-08:00

Merry Meet!!

As many of you who read my blog know, I am a Catholic, and while I write this I will be thinking in terms of the Catholic Church. This should not make any of you feel slighted because I know there are many churches who would not allow female priests. Not in the ordinary, anyway.

Women have a unique and sometimes problematic relationship with the Church. They are like Janus with his two faces; dual sided entities, the two faces of the same sexual coin. Woman is both Whore of the Devil(Eve) and Mother of God(Mary). Some of the apostles loved women, some admittedly did not. But I never thought of women's relationship to God as a popularity race and I never thought Jesus ever said anything to exclude the woman from her own priesthood.

The hearth was the center of the home for many millenia. It was where the family could find warmth, food, a face with softness to see into them and know what they needed. Here, the early Christian, particularly in the early days of the Church under persecution, would find the woman of the house cooking up a little unleavened bread, roasting a little meat and stirring a little soup. Before the meal, she would take the crisp little bread and a cup of wine, or maybe even water and sit it by her husband's place and he would say "This is the body of Christ";"This is his Blood" and the family would remember the Eucharist with each other. But what if she was alone? What if it was just her and her little kids? What if she was all alone?

Then she would take the bread in her hand and give God thanks and praise and break it and give it to her children and tell them to remember Jesus who gave up his life for them and she would do the same with the cup. Any Christian who does not feel empowered to remember Christ in the breaking of bread needs to examine their relationship with Christ. Not the Church. I love my Church, I would die for my Church, but I know that the Church is a human construct.But your relationship with God. Just as I am empowered by my sisterhood with Christ as I am an adopted Child under the contract of blood Jesus shed for me, so I may celebrate in the most profound symbols of Christ's sacrifice. It is not something for women to fight over and screech like scalded cats about. It is something for them to do when the time has come when gathering in houses of worship will be dangerous and the home becomes God's kingdom on earth and the hearth once again becomes the altar. That time has not yet come, but it may be in the future.

Ironic though, the hearth is also the place of worship and Craft for the witch.

Brightest Blessings Be
Aslinn