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Skeptical Surrealist Posts

10 Years of Plan A with Fran

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.

A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.

Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.

A woman who listens to her needs and desires.

Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past’s influence on the present.

A woman who has walked through her past.

Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.

A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.

Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.

A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.

Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.

A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.

Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.

A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.

Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.

A woman who sits in circles of women.

Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

– Patricia Lynn Reilly

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Visiting Richmond Va in Post Statue Era

Revisited Richmond Va Fan District this week, 12-2022, arriving the day they took down the last Confederate Statue on Monument Ave.

Psychic landscape report– the Unquiet Dead of Richmond are Happier and less Traumatized now. Humans have acknowledged their issues actually existed. That Richmond was a center of forced breeding of enslaved people, and trafficking in children is now broadly acknowledged, and when they celebrate the Confederacy, that is what they are celebrating, ultimately.

And I would like to address the unmitigated nonsense of believing ‘nobody knew slavery was wrong.’ The presumption is revealing that ‘everybody’ in the sense they mean it, never included enslaved people themselves, or the other poor people, who saw the enslaved as a threat to their status and wages. I venture to say EVERYBODY knew that Enslavement was ‘Wrong,’ in the sense that moralists and women had issues with it, but that most everybody was powerless to stop the Very Rich from doing exactly as they pleased, legal or not. Importation of slaves continued only little abated after it was made illegal. The US fought a War against England partly over the right of American-Flagged ships not to be boarded and searched by the British Navy, so they could keep smuggling slaves and other contraband, as they always had. (Read _Smuggler Nation_) But nobody thought it was ‘right,’ even those who relied on it indirectly for their wealth and position. A few of them advanced the position that slavery had been the basis of Civilization back to Athens and Jerusalem, but they HAD to advance that position. It was anything but obvious to ordinary folks.

Still, I can imagine what it’d be like to talk with residents of Monument Ave now. Their addresses don’t mean the same thing, nor feel the same now. I imagine they feel like Victims, like people somewhere else got this whole Hating Wyt People thing going, and that got a crowd all nasty at THEM because, what, they had the money to buy a Nice House, with a Prestigious Address? And they bought some historic Home, and assumed its Expenses? That is their Great Sin? THEY never enslaved anyone, nor went to war against America. Why is everyone all hating on THEM? Still, their idea of the Nice House, that would please their friends, family, bosses, clients, etc, was to buy one on the First Street of Confederate Sympathy in the US, the veritable Ground Zero of Wyt Supremacism. So while I am sure they are blind to any guilt on their part or to deserving the hassle and cost they have absorbed, I am not blind to it. Seems about right.

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Winter Solstice Themes from Larry

Lawrence Cornett III

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WINTER SOLSTICE THEMES

I. Aspects:

A. Shortest Day of the Year

B. Rebirth of the Sun

C. Shift from waning to waxing Sun

D. Great Mother gives birth to Sun-child-the bringer of hope and promise of Summer

II. A time to:

A. Celebrate the Rebirth of the Sun

B. Give and receive gifts

C. Make choices to leave negative patterns to darkness

D. Give birth to new projects, dreams, and aspirations

E. Do magical oaths

III. Special Tools and Symbols:

A. Holly Wreath, Mistletoe, Ivy

B. Oatcakes (Bannock)

C. Bayberry Candle

D. Orange with candle and skewers with nuts and fruit in cross formation (solar cross)

E. Yule Log

G. Burning Cauldron

H. Solstice Tree

I. Gifts

IV. Ritual Actions:

A. Send into paper what want to wane and burn it (or send it into the dark) then charge something you want to Wax (or charge a talisman on what you want to wax – maybe burn it to send it)

B. Build a solar beacon cone of power

C. Do magic to help a charity including collecting & charging a donation

D. Calling down the power to read the present through understanding of the past and vice versa

E. Mystery play, symbolic death and rebirth of the Sun, Dark King transformed to infant of light, Oak King kills Holly King, etc.

F. Mithraic ritual

G. Magickal Oaths

H. Saturnalia feast, etc.

H. Solstice biddings, drinking bouts, etc.

I. Kindle Yule Log

J. Light candles-place in center of circle as symbol of reborn Sun

K. Hang a symbol of something you want to happen on Yule Tree

L. Potlatch-gift giving

V. Chants:

A. Solstice Fire, burn away, Relics of a bygone day

Solstice Fire, burning bright, Come to us on Solstice night

B. Flying undying swift-horsed Sun (repeat 4 times for elements),

Ahura-Mazda (3 times while spinning and arms out stretched)

Shine, shine, shine (3 times arms forward channeling power to center). Repeat above, building power in center

C. Honor to the Winter Sun, Child bringer, Wind, dark current, The comforter, the consoler, hearts end and sorrows end.

D. Children of Earth, Await the Rebirth

Return of Light, Push back the night.

E. Light is returning, even though this is the darkest hour. No one can hold back the dawn.

Let us keep it burning, let us keep the light of hope alive. Make safe the journey through the storm.

One planet is turning, Circle her path around the Sun.

Earth Mother is calling her children home (by Charlie Murphy)

F. Various Solstice Carols

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Putting it all in one post… Dinosaur Mating Season

Holding the line on Climate Change means the US Govt still officially denies it’s even an Emergency, for another 2 years. Then if the Dems win, they can congratulate themselves for not stepping Backwards. If not, then the thing called ‘America’ steps Backwards.

Holding the line on Immigration means basic human rights are still being denied, and the border is still on a War Footing. It means kids are still taken from their families and given to nominally Christian orphanages and homes, or left to live on concrete, in cages.

Holding the line on Justice means Police are allowed and encouraged to murder citizens if they feel any fear whatsoever, while boldly thrusting themselves deep into everyone’s Business. Their very Presence is a Threat of Violence. (Courts have determined Cops do not even have to warn us. Their very presence is supposed to put us on notice they might shoot us for any reason, or no reason at all.) And we are all supposed to show extra submissive anytime the Law is around, or they will make Examples of us.

Holding the Line on ‘Campaign Finance’ means guys who rode the Gravy Train of Bribes to high office will keep collecting money from all sides of every issue, as the price to even talk to them. It hardly matters on substantive issues who is in office at all, because they are both bribed by the same people, with the same goals.

So when Dems try to get you excited about ‘Holding the Line’ for 4 whole years while the planet dies and lives are destroyed, and ALL the media seem together selling this story that this is somehow the Dems idea of Winning, or it should be OUR idea of Dems winning, it means they want you to think this is doing pretty good, instead of the abject failure this represents. American institutions have shat the bed, and most of us are still saying we don’t smell it, while the clock is ticking.

The time to invent a New Way of Life is Now, or 20 years ago. The heroic effort to ‘Save’ the Privilege we enjoy is a total Waste, in the big picture.
My opinion, 11 11 22

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Herbie Hancock about Jazz

Why is jazz not part of the pop scene anymore?

Herbie Hancock: “Because it’s not the music that matters anymore. People don’t care about the music itself anymore, but about who makes the music. The public is more interested in celebrities and how a certain artist is more famous than music. It changed the way the audience relates to music. He no longer has a transcendental connection to music and its quality. Just wants the glamour. Jazz doesn’t want to be part of it. Do you know why? It’s not about humility, or arrogance, a posture ′′we don’t want to be famous, we’re underground”. None of that. Jazz is about the human soul, not about the appearance. Jazz has values, teaches to live the moment, work together, and especially to respect the next. When musicians gather to play together, you have to respect and understand what the other does. Jazz in particular is an international language that represents freedom, because of its roots in slavery. Jazz makes people feel good about themselves.”

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