Wendy Baroli and BellaOnline article on Artemesia

Back in January I snipped an article from BellaOnline about the herbal Artemesia.  I just heard from the author so I’m finally able to give credit where credit it due.  The article was written by Wendy Baroli  and the photographer was Pamela Haberman. 

 Wendy and Pamela…if you would like to provide an EMBED link/URL I’d be happy to insert that here instead of clipping.  Otherwise…click to get to Ms. Baroli’s site to learn oodles of more stuff.  Herbal Etymology Artemesia

Goodbye New Orleans

In the New York Times… a decent article on how those people who love NOLA, are choosing to leave…because it’s not getting any better. Makes me sad…but I understand. I just wish I could do something to make it better.

New Orleans Really DID Disappear by Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist

posted on Sun, Jan. 28, 2007
New Orleans really did disappear By EUGENE ROBINSON, Washington Post columnist More infuriating than anything George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address last week was what he didn’t say. Congress and the nation heard nothing, zilch, nada, not a single, solitary word about New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and the devastation that remains from the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. A disaster that happened on his watch. How nice that the White House has been able to move beyond the trauma of September 2005 — wind and water, death and destruction, poverty and race, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Too bad the people of New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish, Pass Christian, Biloxi, Miss., and the rest of the coast will never have the luxury of forgetting. They can’t forget that, days after Hurricane Katrina made its tragic landfall, President Bush stood in New Orleans’ historic Jackson Square, while most of the city still lay beneath brackish floodwaters, and said that nature’s trials “remind us that we’re tied together in this life, in this nation — and that the despair of any touches us all.” Must have been a very light touch. That night, Bush promised that “we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities.” He vowed, “This great city will rise again.” Then, as usual, he acted as if saying something were enough to make it so. Bush said there was “no way to imagine America without New Orleans.” No imagination is needed — the New Orleans that we knew before the flood no longer exists. The remnant of a city that survives between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain has less than half the population of the New Orleans we used to know. Vast neighborhoods are still full of houses abandoned to mold and decay. Hundreds of thousands of residents still have no way to come home — or no home to return to. Vicious hoodlums have returned, however, and are preying on the diehards who never left and the pioneers who are doing the best to help the city rebuild. Yes, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have bought a house in New Orleans and say they will make the city their new home. But they’re likely to have better security than their neighbors. New Orleans was doomed not just by Hurricane Katrina, but by the failure of levees and flood walls that should have provided ample protection. The Army Corps of Engineers has worked day and night to patch the flood-control system, and if Katrina hit again tomorrow, most of the city should stay dry. But if a similar hurricane hit from a different angle — or, heaven forbid, a stronger hurricane hit from any angle — then what’s left of New Orleans likely would be destroyed. The man who inspired Bush’s immortal “Brownie” remark, Michael Brown, will go down in history as the Federal Emergency Management Agency director who botched the federal response to Katrina. But he intends to take others in the White House down with him. Speaking recently to a group of graduate students, Brown claimed he advised that the White House assert federal control of the disaster response in the whole affected area. “Certain people in the White House,” Brown said, wanted to “federalize” the response in Louisiana in order to embarrass Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, but avoid taking any steps in Mississippi that would cast Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, in an unfavorable light. Brown did not name the White House officials who were behind these alleged machinations. A White House spokesman denied Brown’s claims. I’m about as cynical as anyone about George W. Bush and his administration, but what I mostly saw in the days after Katrina was incompetence, not political gamesmanship. The scale of the disaster was almost unimaginable, and even if the federal government had done its job, lives would have been lost and the Gulf Coast left in ruins. What is unconscionable is that a president who fundamentally does not believe in government has allowed market forces to take the lead in the reconstruction effort, which ensures that the New Orleans he promised to rebuild is gone forever. A logjam of insurance claims, construction permits, flood maps and levee projects keeps things from moving forward. Business can’t function without workers; workers can’t come home if they have no place to live. What kind of president can see one of the nation’s greatest, most historic cities ruined, and not make its rebirth his highest priority? What kind of president gives a State of the Union and doesn’t even mention New Orleans? Robinson is a Washington Post columnist.

Tarot Spread 011707:2217

Just did a general tarot read on my current status. This is how it came out!

Q: Card that represents me (I allow the deck to pick it. I don’t select it myself beforehand) High Priestess, reversed. Meaning: False Knowledge/Shallowness/Conceit

2: Cross card. What is currently crossing me or creating obstacles. Luna. Meaning: My “femaleness” is crossing me. “Drowning in this blood” I love being female, but my being female has contributed to my bondage and hindrances.

3: Above Card. What is in near future or higher-powered: The Devil. Meaning: Bondage. Fetters. My femaleness has created fetters on my creativity and magickal life.

4: Below Card. What is in my subconscious or foundation. My id urges. 3 Cups, reversed. Meaning: I have a tendency in my foundation to overindulge and want to escape.

5: Left Card: Past influences and left pillar stuff: Pillar of severity and judgment: 4 Cups. Ennui. Meaning: The sensate world holds little satisfaction for me and I’m not free enough to find that satisfaction at the moment.

6: Right Card: Future influences and right pillar stuff. Pillar of Mercy, Emotion. King of Questing (Wands), reversed. Meaning: Severity, Honesty, Subordination. Acceptance of the fatherly aspect of my life.

7: Inner Consciousness. 5 of swords, reversed. Meaning: I worry about my own bitterness and anger over my own situation. I have concern that my heart will harden if I voice too many of these thoughts. I experience (or fear experiencing) menacing and threat from others as a result of expressing my perspective on the spinelessness of the current generation of men.

8: Outside Influence. Judgment. Death, disillusionment, loss, criticism. Meaning; loss of support. Experience outside criticism. Becoming disillusioned to my own perspective or life?

9:Hopes, Ideals, Desires. King of Cups, reversed. Violence, scandal, injustice, weakness. Meaning: Not sure. I don’t think I hope or desire violence, scandal, injustice or weakness. Not sure how this figures into the spread. I’ll meditate on it later this evening.

10: The sum total of the spread. The Hermit. Meaning: Guidance, contemplation, revelation, integrity, respect.

Put it all together and what do I have? My female experience sometimes has me “drowning in the blood”. Binding me by my own biology, hormones and fertility. My foundation has a tendency for escape and excess. My left pillar of severity is a loss of satisfaction found in the sensate world, my right pillar of mercy and emotion is ironically, the card representing the achievement of the “father”. I think this means that I’ve emotionally and maternally accepted the role of “the father” in my life. My inner concerns are will others perceiving my honest feelings being posted to a blog being countered with treats or menacing. I can’t figure out how the card representing my hopes, ideals and desires being one that represents violence, scandal, injustice and/or weakness, but I’ll meditate on that this evening. And finally the Hermit is my sum card illuminating the guidance and integrity while using introspection to achieve revelation. I am now aware that a moments revelation and honest expression is often just one sliver of the iceberg and that judgments and generalizations can be good to vent, but often need to be reviewed so that they do not harden the heart and close down the mind.

Namaste y’all. We are not saints, but seekers.
China

Three Generations of Spineless Men and the "Little Red Hen" Effect

Sometimes I like the idea of having a boyfriend, but the few times I’ve ventured into that arena since my daughter was born, I’ve found I like the idea more than the reality. I know this is a gross generalization and I’m fully prepared for the onslaught of angry men to tell me how crocked this post is, but this is just my perspective and I’m entitled to it. I know there are great guys out there. My stepfather, Bill Michaels, was one of them. He restored my faith that there are good guys out there. This post is just an observation and a personal perspective on why women often choose to “go it alone” into the realm of family foray!

It is my experience that men are an incomplete species. Don’t think so? Name a species in which the males will reproduce by parthenogenesis if there are no females present to copulate with? You can’t! But right now there is a komodo dragon who has never been introduced to a male and she’s pregnant. Read up and it’ll tell you of more than a few species in which the females will reproduce by parthenogenesis if there is more than one generation in which sexual reproduction isn’t possible. When this happens, all of the offspring are male, making it possible to repopulate whole areas. That rocks!!! I think women are slowly creeping towards this option since our men have three generations of selfish and cowardly behavior behind them.

It wasn’t always this way, but the past 40 years have made many men eunuchs in the family arena. This started out as their “choice” when, in the 60’s, when boy and girl would get jiggy together and then unplanned pregnancy would occur it was really the first time that society condoned the man 1) denying that he was the one responsible for the pregnancy and 2) abandoning the woman and going on his merry way, leaving her to hold the bag. I’m sure this wasn’t the first time this happened, but it was the first time it was condoned by the generation and accepted as an option.

In the 70’s, we (meaning feminist women) added to the problem of the selfish men by insisting we didn’t need them and even escorting them out of our lives. Now, not only were they not sticking around to be responsible but we were establishing ourselves into the male-dominated workplace and giving them permission to abandon the children they helped in creating, and we told ourselves that we were capable and better off without a partner that didn’t want to be there.

And we became both mother and father to our children.

Then the 80’s happened and the American world got greedy. It was fashionable to overwork, be material and leave those children to raise themselves, convincing ourselves that we’d done such a good job and we had such complete, level-headed kids who would make good choices.

In the 90’s those kids came of have and were beginning to have children of their own. With greedy, absentee parents we became nihilists and decided to embrace the “live for today, for tomorrow we may die” philosophy. Like our parents we fucked each other and fucked each other over, knowing we could cut-and-run if it went bad or got serious.

In the 2000’s a substantial percentage first births happen to single mothers. After 40 years of spineless men, we are finally getting our stride at doing it all and it is becoming les of a burned that we can’t bear. Fewer of us are in poverty situations with our children.

And now countless men, who insisted their past girlfriends had multiple abortions because they wouldn’t use birth control and they weren’t ready to stop playing with the world, are asking why they can’t get a slice of the family pie?

Men, who have ignored their children for decades or more, can’t figure out why their kids won’t return their phone calls?

Good men, who aren’t flawed by multiple-generations of cowardice by men, don’t know why a woman would choose to go ahead and have and parent a child on her own, rather than wait until he decided he’s ready.

I’ll tell you why.

Women got tired of waiting for men to grow up, to wake up and to become men. So we became men for them. And like the little red hen who planted the corn and watered the seed and tended the sprouts and harvested the wheat and milled the grain and baked the bread…

Now that the hot bread is on the table, the little red hen who did it all says;

“Step the fuck off, because this is the table that I built, in the house that I own and the family that I made…all without your help.”

See if a couple of generations more and I bet we get the hang of that parthenogenesis thing.

Response to a post on the Use of Drugs in the OTO Order.

Original Post Here

I’m not in the O.T.O. but I am a student of Thelema. Thelema, the law. The “Love is the Law, Love Under Will” law. I’ve studied Crowley’s writings for the past, shit it’s been a long time…23 years. It doesn’t seem that long. But no means am I an expert. I have been involved with membership in two Orders, but I find there to be this rift between alliance to the praxis and alliance to the order. I have been taught that spiritual principles are NEVER in conflict, and on meditation I had to realize that the nature of the conflict, both times was not in my practice, but in conflicting guidelines from the Orders.

Of course and Order, is concerned with the laws governing the community with which it resides. And a general reading of “Diary of a Drug Fiend” will show that initials use of mind-altering substances often provides an expansive experience. Continued use almost always closes down and impairs the Will. Continuing to read allows the reader to know that awareness of this usually brings some sort of humiliation and a need to re-commit oneself to their Will. Taking the necessary steps to eradicate any behavior that will distract from their Path.

Personally I’ve run that gamut of drug use, abuse and addiction. There is just nothing left in the chemical world that would be of any aid to my Will. But initially it did open me up to other worlds. Worlds and states available by meditation and fasting and other spiritual practices, but a tab of LSD made it work much faster and without years of practice. It served its initial purpose. At that time it was in line with my Will and no order, or government would have kept me from it. I also was aware of the legal ramification so I tried to keep the experiences in places and with people that would minimize that risk. For them AND for me.

I think the Orders need to be mindful of their responsibilities WHILE being mindful of what they are there to support. The Law of Thelema. I’m sure there is some way of being respectful of the members’ ability to promote the Law and practice their Will, while not enabling those who would abuse the freedom of personal choice by hiding drug abuse behind the façade of immature Will. It is very easy for an order (or government for that matter) to become distracted by the outside world imposing, and forgetting that the order was designed to a protective place for Thelemites to practice their Will and the Law and to form a community of place and study with others.

Respectfully

As it is…so be it.
LVX 93

Chinagrrrl

Dangerous and Deceptive

Dangerous and Deceptive – there’s this woman who has been fighting the Gwinnett County Public Schools in Georgia from having the Harry Potter books on their shelves. She thinks that the Harry Potter stories promote children learning witchcraft and calls the stories “dangerous and deceptive” and “breaking families up.” The school board, has voted unanimously to deny her request….again.

This whole stink has been going on for years…since HP was released. But I’ve managed to ignore it for a long while. For some reason this time I was compelled to pick up the books for the first time. In the past two weeks I’ve managed to read everything up to book 6. The last three books I really enjoyed as nice stories, well written and able to easily slide into the stories. Were they terrible complex, not really. Were they in any way giving away the secrets of initiation? Not really. In fact, there were some “spells” that seem to not have much basis in reality, but really offer up a fine consolidation for that which a mage already understands. An example is the use of the word “Accio” to bring something to the mage. Now I’m not someone who can use what I call “POOF” magick, so I can’t yell “Accio [insert name-of-something-I-want-to-come-to-me here] and expect it to fly through the air to me, but I can affect whatever it is and make myself more “magnetic” to whatever it is that I want. I’ve taken to using “Accio” when I do that. It’s a focus for intent, and for me that is a lot of what magick.

But no. I’d say that Harry Potter may inspire kids to wear costume robes and buy wooden wants with “phoenix feathers” or “unicorn hair” inside and as those kids grow, they may take a look at what “witchcraft” and “wizarding” has to offer. So what. In my mind, I encourage my kid to take a look at the myriad of spiritualities available to them. Because I know that my Path is certainly not THEIR Path, and for me to deny their experience is again to abuse by spiritual amputation.

If you want to ban something…check of some of the advertisements and commercials available to kids during TV programming and kids magazines. That’ll really fuck your kids up and send parents to the poor house. But I don’t’ really want to ban anything. I want to raise intelligent, open-minded and curious kids that have a good self-esteem and positive world view that they can experience all the things they will find in the world without ANY of it seducing them into any sort of corruption of their own beautiful purity.

Currently reading : Harry Potter Paperback Box Set (Books 1-6) By J. K. Rowling Release date: By 25 July, 2006

Improvement

I had lunch with my cousin, Derek yesterday. It was the first time in seven years that I’ve seen him. It was a good lunch and we talked of many things, most of them relating to how we are doing in our personal and intrapersonal lives. Derek has always been the more moderate of my relatives. He did well in primary and secondary school, went to college, got good grades and worked in related fields for his employment. Within a year of graduation from university he married a lovely girl. To the best of my knowledge he’s never burned anything down, been to jail or knocked baby birds out of their nest. He’s never had to go to rehab, never gone bankrupt or had a house go into foreclosure or seen his name in the “crime page” of the local paper. He’s a good guy.

We were catching up on our various family dynamics. Because of my “not-so-moderate” behaviors, I’ve needed to take scrutiny on why some of my behavior was so self-defeating and came back to some (not all…some of it is just my own bad choices) of my family dynamics. I’ve found ways to “detach with love” and to find out how to love them, but maybe not their behavior. I’ve learned ways to watch them spin with denial or Machiavellian tactics and I can honestly and authentically throw my arms around them and say “I love you by NOT getting into this with you. It’ll go nowhere and it’ll just cause more suffering on both of our parts.”

But having done this, and listening to him tell his tales, I wondered….how did I get here? How did I get some balance in a life were I used to need to self-destruct every 36 months? Where did the Middle Path start to work on me?

I think it started in September of 2003, when I was about as hollow as I’ve ever been. I’d been living in Hell and not doing so well there. I had, for the past several months previous, stopped struggling with trying to mitigate and control what I was doing, and just let go. I believed that it was highly probable that I may die in that hollow, quarter-inch world of addiction, but I was going to try each day NOT to do what I was doing. It’s pretty humiliating after 200 days of trying to change, and failing each and every day. So I let go. And, to be honest I prayed. Now, anyone who knows me, know that I am anything BUT a Christian, but at this time I opened myself to ANY power that could hear me. Anything out there….do what needs to be done so I can stop this insanity for GOOD.

And that happened…but that’s another story. This one details what I practiced to change at a fundamental level, from someone playing a tragic and sick part of a family story into a strong and interdependent woman who has a healthy world view.

The first thing I had to learn was that I was just to do this for me. Not for my beloved daughter. Not to help change my family situation. Just for me. I was tired of being the scapegoat that others could point their finger and shake their heads. I wanted to break free of that. In that declaration, I learned that I didn’t love myself very much. I liked many things I had done, people I’d met, who others thought me to be. But if you took all that stuff away, I didn’t like just me. That had to change.

In order for that to change, I had to be soft with myself. I had to allow myself to make mistakes. Someone challenged me to treat myself in difficult situations, with the same compassion and tenderness that I would treat my daughter with. Allow me to try and fail and have support from within. That began to work. I allowed myself to make some new choices, and to not have much success and to just say “ok, that was a good option, but it didn’t work out, so we can scratch that off the list and try something else.”

That was the next thing. Make new mistakes. I know some of the OLD things I’ve done that don’t work, so it was outlawed for me to touch them again. Instead of trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, I needed to go outside my range of comfort and to try NEW things, without judgment or expectation. Then I needed to evaluate if that choice improved my life, or created more complication and suffering. If it fell into the suffering category, it went onto the “don’t do it again!” list. With this came the awareness that “crazy people make you crazy” and if I wanted to be free of that insanity I needed to stay away from people that would drag me into those situations. I stopped finding “bad boys” attractive. I stayed away from my weak point, the Puerto Rican dope boys. I didn’t drive on streets I’d find them. I didn’t’ return their phone calls. I stayed away from things I knew didn’t work.

Next, I had to realize my own personal limitations. I had to realize that I am the sum of my experiences and that I have strengths and weaknesses, places to shine and places I still need to grow. I had to realize that sometimes I just need to step away from a situation, and that’s not being in denial or running away from the problem. It’s saying that “this thing is too harsh or big for me to deal with right now, so I’ll step away and find a way to approach it so that we can find an improved solution.” I might need to work on myself. I might need reinforcements. I might need an alternative. I might just need to stay away. A good example of this was the winter holidays that followed my completion of a long-term, residential rehabilitation program. There was a family get-together at my mother’s house. My father was bringing my daughter back down there, from visiting them up at his house. The wine was flowing (with them, not me) and everyone traipsed down “memory lane” about good times they remember when they were happier, younger and together.

For me, that “memory lane” holds the time in my life most filed with abuse, pain and trampled self-esteem. It was the time that I transformed into a person who felt she has no worth other than to be a disposable, pleasure vehicle for another. It was the time I felt lonely and abandoned and patronized. It is the time that my 36-month time-bomb was implanted into mean and sealed in so tightly that I never thought I would get it out.

All of a sudden I felt like that tiny child again. The one with her knees drawn up to her chest and verging on tears as everyone laughed, and laughed and laughed. I knew it was time to go. I grabbed my keys and my kid and told her that I needed to leave, so pack up her things. She was having a great time with my dad’s ten year old son and didn’t want to leave. She doesn’t understand that mom sometimes needs to pack up and get out of a situation that is declining because it puts me in “bad space” that makes me want to escape, and escape to a recovering addict is a bad place to be. I marched into the happy, reminiscing group and said I needed to leave and would you please move your car. They laughed, and laughed and laughed…but no car was moved. I couldn’t get out.

I felt boxed in and trapped. But I learned a lesson. Now, when I go to a family get-together, I park down the street. Yes, we have to walk a little bit, but it’s better than being trapped and feeling new slashes digging deep into my soul. I’ve made a life where no one should be able to drag me back to those times, and if I find myself there, I should be able to remove myself quickly.

This all felt so foreign to me at first. As I extricated myself from a sick family-system it felt as if I were flaying whole parts off of my personality. I felt raw. Then I started to see the improvements in my life. The first thing I noticed was that I was no longer attracting the scammers, the lazy, the users or the abusers. Bad folks avoided me. They knew, from my behavior that I wasn’t buying what they were selling and moved onto better marks. The next thing was that I was becoming attractive to quality people. Friends and a couple of times, more than that. My “people” were becoming more solid, and with more to offer. I learned from this, that I sometimes hang out with low-lifers to look good. I always looked like the best, when I was around the pond scum, they looked up to me. Now, I have people I look up to as well.

Then next thing I saw was that I was beginning to be able to make a good choice. I had allowed myself to make new mistakes, and then treated myself tenderly when they weren’t so good. Now I had enough trial & error under my belt. That I was able to make a good decision and my life was reaping the rewards. I was improving.

But the place where I see the greatest growth is in dealing with my family. I have “detached with love” from the insanity and the counter-productive actions. I have been able to learn what my buttons are and then keep them away from those who like to push them. Over time, I have taken that power away from them, so that now, they no longer even have the ability to push those buttons. The buttons are gone! I laugh at myself and my mistakes, and know I’m not going to easily fall prey to the same ones again. I can love my mother and father, simply because they are my mother and father, and not much like their personality, or how they treat others. I can state my position without my ego being attached to it, so that if someone attacks, it doesn’t hurt and I can evenly observe my reaction.

Does it work all the time? No. There are still some infrequent times where I find myself sinking, or wanting to sink, to someone level after they have gotten inside my skin and rubbed me raw. But it happens much less often now, and my life has improved in a real and authentic way.

And I’m very glad.

Liber Librae

Wow…
I was catching up on some of the blogs that I frequent and the people who pen them this week and came across one Solis93 on LiveJournal who, while talking about un-Thelemic chickens who are raised in warehouses and pumped full of hormones and never in their whole life, see the light of the sun, quoted Liber Libre and stated:

15. Nevertheless have the greatest self-respect, and to that end sin not against thyself. The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and willfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.

And damn, but that hit me right in the pituitary gland! “And to that end sin not against thyself.” So easy to say…but once we grow up and get in the corporate workforce and have kids and are responsible for their needs and upbringing how easily we start the slide into the unpardonable sin. I have a few very close friends, whom I love endlessly, but they have stuck their heads into the sand about mollycoddling those around them and turning themselves into hollow shells of themselves. Then they delude themselves that they really arent’ hollow and return to ever encounter depressed, and angry, alone and bitter. “To fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.”

Having the greatest self-respect will help with the Great Work, but it won’t win you any popularity contests.