Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Words of Aradia: Concerning the Astral Plane

These words are taken from Italian Witchcraft by Raven Grimassi:

The Astral World, through the Plane of Forces, receives the thoughts and vibrations of actions from the Physical World. Just as solid materials are used to create objects in our world Thoughts and vibrations create etheric object on the Astral Plane.

Therefore, what people strongly believe in enough can be created astrally. This is one method by which ritual Magick is performed. Energy is first raised with a specific purpose in mind, then it it given up to the Plane of Forces, where it it drawn and channeled to the Astral Work, and so obtains a thought form.

The true purpose of the Astral Plan is to prepare us for future lives and existences by burning out (purifying) or exhausting, all of our fears, desires and false concepts. These bind us to the lower worlds. So it is our afterlife experiences in the lower astral world which transforms us.

The Astral World is under the Divine Law of Cause and Effect, action and reaction. It is the essence of the Three-fold Law.

The Astral Planes contain all the heavens and hells which followers of all religions believe in. They will experience what they believe awaits them.

On the Astral Plane, thoughts are things. As you believe so shall it be.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Making the coast a priority

Making the Louisiana coast a priority: an editorial
By Editorial page staff, The Times-Picayune
October 25, 2009, 6:00AM



Nancy Sutley, the White House's point person on the environment, got an airboat-level view of Louisiana's eroding coastal marshes Tuesday. In a photo from Big Branch Refuge near Lacombe, the boat appears to be in open water, but there is a small strip of green marsh grass in the distance.

Louisianians who have fished and worked the coast for decades can point to broad expanses of water and describe the stands of trees and fields of grass that once grew there.

Byron Encalade, a fisher from East Pointe-a-la-Hache, talked recently about the dramatic loss of land. "I used to travel at night on my boat from St. Bernard all the way across the Mississippi line with only a compass, because we had landmarks we could navigate by," said Mr. Encalade, who fishes for oyster and shrimp. "You can't do that anymore. All the small islands, all the passes, they've all washed away."

Mr. Encalade said he wished that President Barack Obama would tour the marshes by boat during his stop in New Orleans a week and a half ago. That didn't happen, but Ms. Sutley and Jane Lubchenco, the undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, should take what they saw on their boat ride back to the White House.

Even before the airboat excursion, Ms. Sutley said she understood the urgent need for coastal restoration. Viewing the erosion first-hand surely reinforced that message.

Rusty Costanza / The Times-PicayuneWhite House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley speaks with Col. Al Lee, District Commander for the New Orleans District for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, during a visit to the Bayou Bienvenue Coastal Restoration Site in New Orleans' lower Ninth Ward on Thursday, October 15.The boat tour came a day after she, Ms. Lubchenco and several other Obama administration officials listened to three hours of testimony in New Orleans on developing an oceans policy. Most of the comments concerned Louisiana's coastal land loss. That is no doubt partly a reflection of where the meeting was held.

But it also is an indication of the importance of the issue to a broad range of people.

"The nation cannot continue to watch Louisiana disappear," said Robert Twilley, associate vice chancellor for research at Louisiana State University and a professor of oceanography and coastal sciences.

"We have watched as our coast has disappeared," said Tracy Kuhns, who runs the coastal advocacy group Louisiana Bayoukeeper. "It's not just wetlands, it's not just a swamp out here. People live there. When we lose all that we lose our culture and our livelihoods."

That is crucial for the White House to understand. Ours is a working coastline, not a vacation-land dotted with high-priced condos. And the work that is done along our shores is vital to the U.S. economy. Ms. Sutley and Ms. Lubchenco no doubt saw fishing boats and oil and gas pipelines on their marsh trip last week. Our fisheries supply 40 percent of the seafood consumed nationally, and 34 percent of the country's natural gas supply and 29 percent of the crude oil comes through coastal Louisiana.
If nothing else, the federal government ought to help rebuild our coast out of a recognition of its immense economic value. In addition, restoring the state's protective marshland will help protect the government's investment in the region's recovery.

President Obama should remember, too, that South Louisiana has paid a price for oil and gas exploration. A federal Minerals Management Service study released recently found that oil and gas production has taken a significant toll on Gulf Coast wetlands and contributed to this state's land loss crisis. The report also pointed out that destruction caused by pipeline and navigation channel construction could be avoided or reduced by using the least damaging and most easily mitigated construction method.

The findings, which went unpublished for two years, bolster Louisiana's argument that the federal government ought to shoulder a greater share of coastal restoration costs.

For decades the federal government refused to give Louisiana a share of royalties from oil and gas harvested off our coast.
Not until 2006 was the state's congressional delegation able to get Congress to pass a revenue-sharing bill -- and even then only on new wells. In the first decade, very little money is being realized for the state.

Louisiana will receive about $7 million this year, and that amount will stay between $7 million and $10 million per year until 2017. New federal Minerals Management Service estimates now conclude the state's share will only grow to between $100 million and $150 million a year, which is substantially less than predicted when Congress approved the revenue-sharing measure.

To help jumpstart restoration projects and pay for land needed for levee construction, the state has put up at least $800 million from its budget surpluses since 2007. That ought to signal Louisiana's commitment to the coast. Gov. Bobby Jindal said he used his time with President Obama to press for funding for the backlog of flood-protection projects that are ready to go and for which the state has already put up matching dollars. The state is hoping that the president will include $500 million to $1 billion in his next annual budget to pay for four major restoration projects.

The governor should continue to press the state's case.

Denise Reed, a coastal researcher at the University of New Orleans, described the situation well. "Louisiana is undoubtedly in a crisis, and we don't need short-term fixes, we need deliberative thinking about what the next century holds."

Louisiana loses the equivalent of a football field in land area to erosion every 38 minutes, which leaves everyone here far more vulnerable to storms. That threat has a cost not only to us but to the nation.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Children denounced as witches tortured in Africa

My degree is in Geology.
In geology we have a tenant which says the present is the key to the past.
What this means is that if you can see a process happening today, its a pretty good bet that it has happened in the past, and will happen again in the future. Now with this in mind, read the article below.

Churches denounce African children as "witches"
By KATHARINE HOURELD (AP) – Oct 17, 2009


EKET, Nigeria — The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

A month later, he died.

Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of "witch children" reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files.

Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

"It is an outrage what they are allowing to take place in the name of Christianity," said Gary Foxcroft, head of nonprofit Stepping Stones Nigeria.

For their part, the families are often extremely poor, and sometimes even relieved to have one less mouth to feed. Poverty, conflict and poor education lay the foundation for accusations, which are then triggered by the death of a relative, the loss of a job or the denunciation of a pastor on the make, said Martin Dawes, a spokesman for the United Nations Children's Fund.

"When communities come under pressure, they look for scapegoats," he said. "It plays into traditional beliefs that someone is responsible for a negative change ... and children are defenseless."

___


The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria's 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children's Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.

Church signs sprout around every twist of the road snaking through the jungle between Uyo, the capital of the southern Akwa Ibom state where Nwanaokwo lay, and Eket, home to many more rejected "witch children." Churches outnumber schools, clinics and banks put together. Many promise to solve parishioner's material worries as well as spiritual ones — eight out of ten Nigerians struggle by on less than $2 a day.

"Poverty must catch fire," insists the Born 2 Rule Crusade on one of Uyo's main streets.

"Where little shots become big shots in a short time," promises the Winner's Chapel down the road.

"Pray your way to riches," advises Embassy of Christ a few blocks away.

It's hard for churches to carve out a congregation with so much competition. So some pastors establish their credentials by accusing children of witchcraft.

Nwanaokwo said he knew the pastor who accused him only as Pastor King. Mount Zion Lighthouse in Nigeria at first confirmed that a Pastor King worked for them, then denied that they knew any such person.

Bishop A.D. Ayakndue, the head of the church in Nigeria, said pastors were encouraged to pray about witchcraft, but not to abuse children.

"We pray over that problem (of witchcraft) very powerfully," he said. "But we can never hurt a child."

The Nigerian church is a branch of a Californian church by the same name. But the California church says it lost touch with its Nigerian offshoots several years ago.

"I had no idea," said church elder Carrie King by phone from Tracy, Calif. "I knew people believed in witchcraft over there but we believe in the power of prayer, not physically harming people."

The Mount Zion Lighthouse — also named by three other families as the accuser of their children — is part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. The Fellowship's president, Ayo Oritsejafor, said the Fellowship was the fastest-growing religious group in Nigeria, with more than 30 million members.

"We have grown so much in the past few years we cannot keep an eye on everybody," he explained.

But Foxcroft, the head of Stepping Stones, said if the organization was able to collect membership fees, it could also police its members better. He had already written to the organization twice to alert it to the abuse, he said. He suggested the fellowship ask members to sign forms denouncing abuse or hold meetings to educate pastors about the new child rights law in the state of Akwa Ibom, which makes it illegal to denounce children as witches. Similar laws and education were needed in other states, he said.

Sam Itauma of the Children's Rights and Rehabilitation Network said it is the most vulnerable children — the orphaned, sick, disabled or poor — who are most often denounced. In Nwanaokwo's case, his poor father and dead mother made him an easy target.

"Even churches who didn't use to 'find' child witches are being forced into it by the competition," said Itauma. "They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism."

That's what Margaret Eyekang did when her 8-year-old daughter Abigail was accused by a "prophet" from the Apostolic Church, because the girl liked to sleep outside on hot nights — interpreted as meaning she might be flying off to join a coven. A series of exorcisms cost Eyekang eight months' wages, or US$270. The payments bankrupted her.

Neighbors also attacked her daughter.

"They beat her with sticks and asked me why I was bringing them a witch child," she said. A relative offered Eyekang floor space but Abigail was not welcome and had to sleep in the streets.

Members of two other families said pastors from the Apostolic Church had accused their children of witchcraft, but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

The Nigeria Apostolic Church refused repeated requests made by phone, e-mail and in person for comment.

___

At first glance, there's nothing unusual about the laughing, grubby kids playing hopscotch or reading from a tattered Dick and Jane book by the graffiti-scrawled cinderblock house. But this is where children like Abigail end up after being labeled witches by churches and abandoned or tortured by their families.

There's a scar above Jane's shy smile: her mother tried to saw off the top of her skull after a pastor denounced her and repeated exorcisms costing a total of $60 didn't cure her of witchcraft. Mary, 15, is just beginning to think about boys and how they will look at the scar tissue on her face caused when her mother doused her in caustic soda. Twelve-year-old Rachel dreamed of being a banker but instead was chained up by her pastor, starved and beaten with sticks repeatedly; her uncle paid him $60 for the exorcism.

Israel's cousin tried to bury him alive, Nwaekwa's father drove a nail through her head, and sweet-tempered Jerry — all knees, elbows and toothy grin — was beaten by his pastor, starved, made to eat cement and then set on fire by his father as his pastor's wife cheered it on.

The children at the home run by Itauma's organization have been mutilated as casually as the praying mantises they play with. Home officials asked for the children's last names not to be used to protect them from retaliation.

The home was founded in 2003 with seven children; it now has 120 to 200 at any given time as children are reconciled with their families and new victims arrive.

Helen Ukpabio is one of the few evangelists publicly linked to the denunciation of child witches. She heads the enormous Liberty Gospel church in Calabar, where Nwanaokwo used to live. Ukpabio makes and distributes popular books and DVDs on witchcraft; in one film, a group of child witches pull out a man's eyeballs. In another book, she advises that 60 percent of the inability to bear children is caused by witchcraft.

In an interview with the AP, Ukpabio is accompanied by her lawyer, church officials and personal film crew.

"Witchcraft is real," Ukpabio insisted, before denouncing the physical abuse of children. Ukpabio says she performs non-abusive exorcisms for free and was not aware of or responsible for any misinterpretation of her materials.

"I don't know about that," she declared.

However, she then acknowledged that she had seen a pastor from the Apostolic Church break a girl's jaw during an exorcism. Ukpabio said she prayed over her that night and cast out the demon. She did not respond to questions on whether she took the girl to hospital or complained about the injury to church authorities.

After activists publicly identified Liberty Gospel as denouncing "child witches," armed police arrived at Itauma's home accompanied by a church lawyer. Three children were injured in the fracas. Itauma asked that other churches identified by children not be named to protect their victims.

"We cannot afford to make enemies of all the churches around here," he said. "But we know the vast majority of them are involved in the abuse even if their headquarters aren't aware."

Just mentioning the name of a church is enough to frighten a group of bubbly children at the home.

"Please stop the pastors who hurt us," said Jerry quietly, touching the scars on his face. "I believe in God and God knows I am not a witch."

Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Papayas from seed - really

Papayas from seed

I think the plant looks a bit like Diana at Ephesus.

Papayas from seed

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Words of Aradia: Concerning the Grigori

These words are taken from Italian Witchcraft by Raven Grimassi:

Before the people walked upon the world, there dwelt those beings which we call the Grigori. Some have called them spirits or gods. Some have spoken of them as powers and forces.

The old legends tell us that the Grigori were once physical beings, but that they are no longer. It is said that they dwell among the stars.

They are the Watchers of the Worlds, and the entrance and exits to the Worlds. Once is was said that the stars were the campfires of their armies, ever watching over us.

The Grigori have set their towers at the four quarters of the world and stand vigil over the portals which lay between the worlds.

Once they were called the powers of the air, and so did they come to be linked to the winds. Then were they known by the Latin names of Boreas, Eurus, Notus and Zephyrus. Yet these are but their titles. Know now their ancient names of Tago, Bellaria, Settrano, Meana.

The Old Ones come to our rituals to witness our rites, for we have a covenant with them. So do they watch over our works and help us. Our covenant with them was established at the end of the Second Age, and from this time do we mark the years of our ways.

The Grigori observe our rites, protect us, and escort us to the Moon Worlds when we pass from the Physical World.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Beautiful Day

It's been raining.
It's been raining a lot.
Fall just can't seem to get here.

The plants are transitioning from summer to fall.
The camelias are setting buds. The red clover is coming up.
But Fall just can't seem to get here.

It's also been hotter than we'd like.
Warm and Wet is not our typical fall.
Granted we are happy to have had a mild hurricane season.
But it is time for the seasons to change.

Today as I drove over the bridge to the 9th Ward where the levees broke
there was, for a split second - just enough time to crest the bridge
come down the rise and go a few blocks,
a beautiful sunrise.

The clouds were dark purple shades of grey
the sun was a bright not quite day glow orange ball
there were wisps of grey clouds over the face of the sun
and the hole in the grey clouds was pale yellows, pinks and oranges like a Peace rose.

It was beautiful, surprising and surprisingly hopeful.

Come on Fall. We're ready.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Lasa/Lare Shrine Offerings

I am often asked what kind of things can be used as offerings in a Lasa/Lare Shrine. I like to use plants & flowers. But whenever I do ritual I make sure that I offer some of the same wine I drink to the Lasa. I also place some on my God & Goddess shrines.

Another favorite offering is Jordan Almonds. These are easy to come by at our local Middle Eastern grocery. Because they are often handed out as favors at New Orleans weddings, these favors usually end up on the Lasa Shrine. The offerings last a long time.

I have also successfully used Florida Water. I've seen this sold for more than $7.00 a bottle on pagan sites. But here in New Orleans this is so common item that it is sold at our local Walgreens, mostly in the summer so this is when I stock up. It is great as an insect repellent and it can also be used after the mosquito bites to stop the itching. Coaches & parents soak cooling cloths in it and store these in ice chests then use it on the back of the necks of their young athletes to help fight the heat. I like Florida Water's crisp scent. It has has been used to cleanse houses of negative energy in New Orleans for a long time. It is typically added to a bucket of clear mop water and then the floors in the house are mopped from the front door out of the back. Because the Lare can be spirits of the home or location, I find the use of such a historical liquid appropriate.

I have also used Dr. Tichenor's as an offering. This is linked more to my paternal ancestors and many summer weekends spent on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The key here is the link to my past and my ancestors and the heady smell. Scent is a great pleaser of the spirits.

You can also use fresh baked bread for this reason. But I tend to shy away from food offerings at my interior shrines as here in the deep south cleanliness keeps the critters & bugs away. And our tropical climate makes us more susceptible to these.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Shame on you Leonard Pitts

Mr. Pitts,

I am a fan of your columns, a BIG Fan.

I agreed with the spirit of you column
"When the witch-hunt finds witches". (which was how the column was titled in New Orleans)
Yet I was incredibly appalled at how you went about saying it.

"Kill the witches instead" is like saying "Gas the Jews" or "Lynch the Niggers".
It is appalling, inappropriate and offensive.

History records that many pagans (witches) and non-pagans have been killed in witch-hunts. Current history shows that pagans still suffer, albeit not as much, from discrimination. The use of the term witch-hunt should be limited to its use as a pejorative.

I know you can be more eloquent and can use better metaphors.

Sincerely,
Nola

a pagan, who does not advertise her spiritual path to protect her job and her family from the discrimination that still exists.