This is actually kind of interesting:

OKCupid Charts America

According to their charts, I am a typical Nevadan.

Huh.

I got a cute little embroidery kit today (I could not, for the life of me, find any sidewalk chalk except for some 3-D stuff in funky colors). It's got retro patterns in it like a hula girl, cherries, funky cats & a tiki statue. It's also got electric guitars, a skull, a heart w/a dagger through it. It's very cute.

I started thinking, though - I could get some plain cloth bags & embroider runes, ceremonial magic sigils or Vodou veves on them & sell 'em on e-Bay. You can embroider with all kinds of stuff - ribbons, metallic flosses, foil threads, fishing line (which comes in some funky colors & even glows in the dark), horse hair... In other words, if it's stringy & can be pushed through fabric, you can embroider with it. I used to do embroidery when I was a little kid, but I kind of lost interest in it along the way. I've got an embroidered pair of jeans & Robert at my job asked me if I did the embroidery myself - which, no, I didn't, Lane Bryant did it, but it made a huge lightbulb go off in my tiny brain. I very well could have embroidered those jeans.

It's hard to find embroidery pattern books anymore. People have gone to cross-stitching instead. It's the same principle, but a different technique. Personally, I think embroidery is a little more free-hand and versatile. I embroidered a million pot-holders when I was a kid. One had pumpkins & black cats on it & I gave the cats fishing-line whiskers. Not the most practical potholders, but they were decorative. I gave them to one of my teachers. At the time, I didn't know how to make patterns for them, but now I do, which means anything I can trace w/a heat-transfer pencil, I can embroider. Something embroidered with the serpent priestess of Minoa, anyone? Or Tarot card designs on Tarot cloths?

My biggest hurdle is trying to remember the stitches. Ack!

Breaded oven-baked tilapia fillets, shrimp & bell pepper skewers & lima beans. Nom! The tilapia came out fantastic - it was tender and moist, but not wet & it held up to cooking really well. I remembered why I don't cook skewer food much - it's labor-intensive.

Is there seriously a market for this?

Plural Clothing

Especially this:

I'm not the most patriotic person on the face of the planet, but I do enjoy fireworks.

I feel like taking a moment to reflect on the fact that even as much as our government and foreign policies suck, I am incredibly lucky to live in America. I am also incredibly lucky to be an American woman.

I am free to criticize my government without fear of going to prison or being executed.

I am free to work pretty much where I want to work, negotiate a salary to some extent, and enjoy benefits provided to me by my employer.

I am free to control my reproductive health.

I am free to read what I want to read, listen to what music I want to listen to, view whatever art I want to view, and access the internet without extreme censorship or censure.

I am also relatively free to create whatever art I want to create so long as it falls within America's legal code. I can't exactly make a display out of dead body parts that I collected myself from unwilling participants, but I could paint a bunch of dead body parts, or write about cannibalism and necrophilia if I so desired. (Sometimes I do, but the urge hasn't been as strong since I stopped taking Ambien.)

I am free to live where I want to live, and go where I want to go.

I am free to choose my own doctors and health care options.

I am free to follow my own religious path.

I am free to marry whom I choose or divorce whom I choose.

I am free to shop where I want to shop and have many, many options available to me.

I am free to own my own home and property.

I am free to spend my money where and how I choose.

I am free to dress how I want to dress.

I am free to talk to people that I want to and talk about people.

I am free to bear arms (and free to arm bears).

I am free to hold protests and petition my government to right wrongs.

I am free from having to provide housing to the military.

I am considered innocent until proven guilty, and I am free to ask for a jury of my peers to judge me should it be necessary.

All of these things, of course, are limited mainly by our fairly liberal laws, my own desire and financial means, but I'm free to be in debt up to my eyeballs, too, if I want to try to live beyond my means.

So thank you, America, for trying to live up to a 230-year-old ideal that all people are created equal and we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I like it hot...

My current fantasy is picturing myself laying on a sandy beach while a tall, dark-haired not-so-stranger massages sunscreen into me, dozing off listening to the waves, my muscles all relaxed and spent from romping in the ocean.

Ah, yes, that's the spot!

Nope. It's just kind of rude.

I ponied up the nerve & sent E a little 'howdy'...

He replied, "You can touch base anytime you want."

I read it & got all twitchy inside. Man, I have got to lose some weight! Fast!

I don't think I've ever felt quite this way about anyone, not even Eric. It's been pretty persistent, too. E's one of the few people whose name I remember from high school. I feel stupid about it, don't know why I've spent the past decade periodically searching for him. It's like, what was I going to do if I ever did catch up to him? Now that I have... I know all the things I'd like to do, but it feels bigger than just another one night stand for old times' sake.

It's going to be a long weekend - Rob's got a colonoscopy on Monday & he can't take his tranquilizer til about 72 hours after the procedure, since it's general anaesthesia. It's Chelsie's first 4th of July, so we may end up needing some doggy tranquilizer... and the house next door to us is a tinder-box due to all the dried grass in the yard. We've already been finding dead bottle rockets in the back yard of our house.

Something I'm going to do, just for shits & giggles, is get some sidewalk chalk & color my back yard walls this weekend. I'd really like to paint it with bright Minoan-esque mosaics, full of dolphins & octopi and bull dancers, but Rob keeps whining that the walls are community property & we can't modify them. He can't whine too much about sidewalk chalk.

Yeah, I'm fucking tired of my husband. Running off to be with another man is not a viable solution to me. I'd rather run off & be with myself, but I'm broke & I can't drive. I'm aimless, directionless & 35 fucking years old... and I'm really, really tired.

I'm not an initiate and I currently do not practice but I've been studying Vodou and Santeria since I was 12. I don't go further than what I'm doing because honestly, the lwa have indicated to me that they would really like me to be more dedicated and I just don't have the kind of life where I can offer myself to them. If I'd stayed single, I would probably be an initiate, and maybe someday if I get a divorce or become a widow, I'll put myself out there. But in the meantime I can further the cause of Vodou by being a PR agent :D

This is just the most basic stuff, which is probably widely available online and in bookstores, but why crawl the internet when I can put it all in one handy-dandy location?

A Brief Introduction to Vodou

Vodou is probably the most well known religion that developed from the African Diaspora. The African Diaspora was the dispersion of African culture created by the slave trade, and the African Diasporic religions are the ones that developed from the traditional African religions as the people settled and integrated into their new locations. Many people classify the African Diaspora outside Paganism, and they are not widely understood or accepted. They seem so interlinked with Catholicism as to be some strange offshoot of Christianity. Some of the other African Diasporic religions include Santeria or Lukumi, (Cuba & South America), Candomble or Macumba (Brazil) and Obeah (Jamaican). Vodou in its original form is still alive and well throughout Africa and has been declared the official religion of Benin.

Even in our age of communication and rapid access to information, Vodou is glamorized beyond recognition in the media and feared by many people. Many people, especially animal-rights activists, are uncomfortable with the role of animal sacrifice in Vodou, and I’ve met many Wiccans who decry it for that same reason, quoting ‘an it harm none’ Vodou is a beautiful and living religion steeped in centuries of culture, tradition… and to be fair, blood - the blood of slaves.

Vodou is monotheistic, but the Creator God, known by many names, most commonly ‘Bon Dieu or Bondye, is distanced from His/Her/Its creations. It is up to the spirits of the ancestors and the lwa (also Vodu, loa or Les Mysteres as lwa means ‘mystery’) to be the intermediaries between God and humankind. It is a practical, down-to-earth religion, more concerned with solving problems than enlightenment and union with the Divine.

Most of the information available about Vodou in America is New Orleans Voodoo. N’Awlins Voodoo is distilled from traditional practices of Central & Western Africa, primarily the Fon, Benin and Yoruban people, during the 17 & 1800s, carried across the ocean to Haiti, where it became syncretized with Catholicism and the indigenous Haitian native practices, and finally dispersed into the teeming port city of New Orleans where it picked up practices found in European witchcraft, local folk magic and shamanic practices of the southeastern Native American tribes. Haitian and New Orleans Vodou are more focused on magic than their older African relatives.

Some of the more misunderstood aspects of Vodou include:

Possession
o Vodou is an ecstatic or ‘charismatic’ religion. The rituals involve extended drumming and dancing that induce altered states of consciousness. While in these states, the participants often play host to the spirits of ancestors and the lwa. During this time, it is said they are being ‘ridden’ by the lwa. It is usually full possession where the spirit subsumes the personality of their ‘horse’.

o Other participants will know which lwa is riding the horse by their mannerisms or by things they ask for – a lwa associated with love, romance and prostitution may mount a man & want to be doused in perfume and wear gold earrings and a dress – that’s Erzulie; the Ghede, a family of lwa also called the Barons, will want a top hat, a cane and make lewd jokes for they are the rulers of death and sex. The horse may display feats of unusual strength by lifting other participants into the air and tossing them around, placing hot coals in their mouths, firewalking, drinking strong rum (clairin) that’s had hot peppers steeping in it (sometimes, when possessed by certain lwa, the horse will pour this mixture into their eyes or onto their genitals). Generally, the lwa does not harm the horse, but may pass messages to other people to give to the horse when the ride is over.

Voodoo dolls
o Voodoo dolls are not a part of Vodou at all. In some African traditions, a doll is kept as a pwen, nkisi or bocio, which is closer to a fetish or power object. A twin who has lost their brother or sister may also carry a doll as an effigy of the departed, since in many of those cultures it is bad luck to be separated from one’s twin, even by death. It is generally believed that Voodoo dolls became associated with Vodou after African slaves were exposed to poppets used in European folk magic. The dolls may also have been used to make threats towards or intimidate plantation slave owners but were not a normal part of magical practices.

Animal sacrifice
o Yes, there is a lot of animal sacrifice done at Vodou rituals. It is not a murderous destructive rampage, though – all the lwa are hungry and want to be fed. Once the lwa are fed, the community is fed. Animals are not left to rot – this is a religion from poor people who certainly would not waste food in this manner. The only exception might be if the animal was sacrificed to aid the curing of a bad disease or remove a particularly malignant hex, in which case it might not be spiritually safe for people to consume.

o The lwa are picky eaters. Damballah (he is the ‘Serpent’ of ‘The Serpent & the Rainbow’) is almost as old as Bondye, and very pure. He will accept only the cleanest, whitest foods like rice, pure white flour, a white egg, a pure white hen. Other lwa want black goats, or red chickens… Papa Legba, who is a child and an old man all at the same time, prefers candy. Almost all the lwa like a fine cigar and rum.

Bokors
o Bokors are the black magicians of Vodou. These are the people you pay to kill your enemies, dry up your rival businesses, harm your competition, make zombies out of your least favorite in-law… and yes, they do exist. In traditional Africa, the bokor had an important social role to play – the bokor could safely carry out revenge and justice, which often involved violating taboos, without worrying about becoming tainted. The bokor could freely speak with the recently deceased as well. As Vodou carried over to Haiti and politics invaded Vodou, the bokor’s role became less altruistic and the modern version of a bokor is that of a magical (and often not-so-magical) assassin.

Secret Societies
o There are numerous ‘societies’ associated with Haitian Vodou, not so much in New Orleans Voodoo or African Vodou. Most of these societies took the form of vigilante groups and gangs, and only had loose ties to the religion itself. The more benign societies acted as underground railroad stops for slaves and political prisoners escaping from Haiti, and mothers could use them as a threat to bring unruly children back into line. Some were also ‘neighborhood watch’ groups who used anonymity and social status to bring unruly community members back in line.

o The Ton Ton Macoute was a militant secret society that were most well known for their role as a corrupt public militia in the dictatorship of Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier.

Zombies
o Probably some of the greatest misunderstanding has arisen over the creation of zombies (nzambi or zombi). Zombis are not people who have died and then been resurrected by a bokor. In more traditional areas, they are people who have committed a wrong against their community and are forced into servitude through careful use of social conditioning, drugs, torture and brainwashing. Sometimes these people are either forgotten by their families or forgiven, but they usually cannot reintegrate back into their communities once released from their servitude. In a strange twist of charity, some families will adopt a stranger who is possibly schizophrenic or otherwise mentally disabled & unable to care for themselves, claiming the person is a zombified relative who finally returned from the bokor.

o Two of the more famous zombies who ‘returned from the dead’ are Clairvius Narcisse & Ti Femme, popularized by Wade Davis’ Serpent & the Rainbow. Much of Davis’ research on the drugs used for zombification has been called into question but it is not the drugs alone that create the zombi.

Hoodoo
o Hoodoo is the folk magic practices of Voodoo – at least here in America. Hoodoo usually involves the use of charms and fetish items like herbs, stones, feathers, etc. & pouches imbued with energy or ‘power’ called gris gris (gree-gree) bags. Juju is beneficial, mojo is generally self-serving or malignant. Both juju and mojo is the power driving the spell or enchantment that the gris gris holds. Another word for hoodoo is ‘conjure’ – there are conjure men or conjure women, and also ‘those who work the root’. Having your mojo working is a good thing; if someone puts the mojo on you, it is a bad thing.

o In American & Haitian Voodoo, anyone can work hoodoo because it does not involve any of the lwa. In the Vodou religion, eclecticism is a good way to piss someone off – you can only really work with the lwa who adopt you and become your patrons. Some people only have one, others may have quite a few. Some of the lwa are jealous of one another and fight over their ‘children’.

o In Africa, hudu is an integral part of traditional Vodu worship and cannot be separated from the spirits and ancestors who are called upon for healing, protection, fruitful harvests, healthy cattle and babies, vanquished foes or luck in gambling or love.

A priestess is a Mambo and a priest is a Houngan (in New Orleans, they are Kings or Queens, and men are also referred to as Doctors). The assistants are hounsis and the temple (which may be simply a pole erected in someone’s yard) is the hounfor. There is no strict hierarchy in Vodou, and it is not matriarchal or patriarchal (Santeria, by comparison, has a very strict hierarchy and is generally patriarchal). A man or a woman can serve the lwa, and most followers of Vodou are not initiates, as initiations are elaborate and expensive affairs. Most adherents will go through the necessary divinations to determine which lwa ‘rules their head’. Even though a child of the lwa only pays heed to their patrons, worship given to one lwa is seen as worship and energy given to them all.

Decent Beginner Resources:
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Voodoo by Shannon Turlington

The Serpent & the Rainbow & Passage of Darkness by Wade Davis

Tell My Horse – Zora Neale Hurston

Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti – Phyllis Galembo

Mama Lola – Karen McCarthy Brown

Divine Horsemen – Maya Deren

'Gimme!'

Heh.

:)

Presenting Zia's Summer!

If I happened to gift anyone with my old Rider-Waite tarot deck, could you please let me know? I can't remember if I did give it to someone, and if I didn't give it to someone, then I've lost it.

I can't even remember the color of the bag the cards were in.

I started thinking about my teaching post, and how I should be more willing to share my experiences and things I've learned.

So, on the pagan forum I frequent...

I pm'd a mod & volunteered to start an 'Ask a Student of Vodou' thread.

She said 'go for it!'

Now I've got to like, write an introduction and whip out my resources.

Crap.

I've been finding it harder and harder to define values that are a part of my spirituality, a part of me being Pagan. Most of my values have developed independently of my faith.

There is one value that has everything to do with my faith and very little to do with my mundane life.

When I speak to the Gods, spirits, elementals, spirit guides, totems and assorted and varied entities that surround me, I speak to Them directly. I have no need of a priest or intermediary to speak to my Gods for me, or on my behalf. I have not met a theistic Pagan yet who felt they needed a priest, priestess, clergyperson, minister, reverend, or any other person to translate their words to their Gods. The only exception to this has been when the person is possessed. It's kind of hard to talk to your God when your God is wholy in you and whatever is you is subsumed by that greater entity. It's why the lwa tell the attendees at a Vodou ritual, "Tell my horse!" when they have something important to tell the person they're riding. Of course, no one at a Vodou ritual would dare misinterpret the words of the lwa to the one the lwa possessed. The lwa also have the modern gift of speaking in relatively plain English (or French or Creole or Haitian).

It is a great feeling to know that when I pray, I am not praying to some guy in a funny hat who is then passing my words on to whatever deity it is to which I'm talking. There is no confessional, either. If I transgress (which is relatively hard to do, considering my deities haven't handed me any rules), I pay for it in karma, not by counting little beads or flogging myself. If I do step on toes, the entities Themselves let me know, and it's usually quick and unpleasant and not soon forgotten.

Of course, this is not unique to Pagan experience. Priests were once absolutely necessary in the Christian faith because of literacy. The common, average folk could not read, so their Bible was useless to them. They needed the priests, the learned men, to read the book to them and clarify the laws and tenets of their own faith. Nowadays, I've seen among Christian people that there is no longer a great need to attend church to have the bible read to them. They can read the Bible themselves, interpret the words for themselves and apply those words to their own lives. It is a blessing of modern times.

I think this is a large part of the reason why I've always been a solitary practitioner. When I was Wiccan, I tried to start a coven a couple of times, but realized that I didn't want to be a leader or constantly have to tell people what to do. I've also tried to get involved with covens, but it's almost impossible for me to hand over my autonomy. I was banished from a Wicca class for using an oil that was not ordained by the Priestess/instructor. Who was she to tell me I couldn't use an oil I preferred in a homework-assigned spell? If I wanted to follow rigorous and rigid instructions, I would have joined the military. And if I wanted a bunch of sheep blindly following me around, I would have started a cult.

Another part of spiritual autonomy means I don't have to go to a special building to worship. I don't necessarily need to be outdoors to feel the presence of the Divine. Sometimes it shows up in my kitchen, or even comes through the front doors at work (not my current work, but jobs that have been open to the public) to say howdy. I may, on occasion, build a shrine or an altar, a place to focus my attention while I pray or someplace to leave an offering, but I don't need the place to feel sacred. The world around me is sacred, every last bit. It is thoroughly infused with the spark of the Great Divine, the Great Mystery. It flows through everything, sanctifies everything. My backyard is no less sacred than a huge marble temple or a small wooden church. I remember going to churches with my friends when I was little, sitting in Sunday school. Sunday school always seemed to be held in a stuffy little room, away from the main church. It was, if nothing else, almost exactly like a school room. I remember looking out the smeary windows onto a rolling lawn that no one ever got to walk on, or play on, or pray on. I don't know why all the churches I went to had such beautifully manicured lawns. Funerals, maybe? I played in more cemeteries as a child than on church lawns. We never had Sunday school outside. The first church I ever went to that utilized its outdoor space was the Greek Eastern Orthodox church in Memphis. I almost converted because of sitting out on the lawn after Mass, eating barbecued goat, watching the men furtively pass around a flask of ouzo - which even crossed the priest's hands a time or two, watching the sun move through the trees that flanked the lawn and cast long shadows that never seemed to touch the church itself.

Even though Christians say God is everywhere, I get the feeling that some of them may not truly believe that. Why else build churches and temples? Why else expect to spend Sunday mornings cooped up in a building instead of going out and enjoying God in the wild places? Sometimes I wish I could be like one of the Christians who converted to Paganism, so I could more fully understand the whys and hows of the religion. No matter how many times I've read the Bible, how many Christians I've spoken with, it's still baffling to me. I probably confuse Christians, too - I mean, how is it possible for me to believe in their God but not worship Him? I always think of Him as "that God named God". I believe in their God because there are so many millions, probably billions, of people who believe in that God called God... but it is a privilege of my polytheism to believe without the need to worship.

/sigh.

I am a silly old woman.

I just saw a Trojan condom commercial that had someone miming putting on a condom.

I think that's the first time I've ever appreciated anything I've seen a mime do.

Oh, and E likes my tattoos :)

Ok, amidst much eye-rolling, I'll bite.

Yes, back in the 80s, in the dawn of MTV... the video for Thriller was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen in my entire life, all 10 years of it at that point.

But, honestly, I liked the duet he did with Paul McCartney - Say Say Say.

And Ben.

Give me a break, I was like, 5! That movie tore me up worse than Ol' Yeller.

Uh, working graveyard shift at the Excalibur... about a year & 2 months ago.

Gods, I miss graveyard shift.

Rob & I spotted a cougar today at the grocery store :D Cheetah-printed blouse over a tiny - and I do mean tiny black dreass & everything. I turned the corner in the water aisle & got a full thonged moon because she was getting water from the bottom shelf. It just so conveniently happened that we needed stuff in the exact same aisles as she did... fancy that!

I kind of wanted to tell her she was in the wrong neighborhood though. I mean, we kind of live in a ghetto/barrio. She needs to be shopping at a Vons in Summerlin. I don't know though - maybe there's too much competition in Summerlin. Or maybe she was slumming it.

Ah well, it's all in good fun. Me & Rob are probably too old for her anyway.