The power of symbols and myth

I know pagans and football fans, strange bedfellows.

But in case you haven't heard the New Orleans Saints are going to the SuperBowl. For the first time in the teams 40+ year history. The dichotomy between the New Orleans world of 4+ years ago and today would have to be measured in light years. Our New Orleans Saints football team has been a symbol of our PostKatrina journey. The arrival of Sean Payton and Drew Brees the year after Katrina and team's journey to the SuperBowl has, for the people of this city, been traveled in lock step with our city's recovery. The football team loves the city. The city loves their football team.
When New Orleanians were spread across the globe and yearning to be home. The Saints didn't have a home either. There was the talk of the team not returning and finding another permanent home in another US city, say San Antonio. But the repair of the Superdome and the teams first game in Home Sweet Dome put that talk to bed.

We've (the Saints and the City) had our ups and downs since then. But these past 4 years have been mostly good. The Saints fans, who attended games with bags on their heads, but attended! even then the team was loosing, pitifully and painfully week after week, year after year have responded in larger and larger number to this years powerful show of drive, hard work and tenacity.

Now we layer on the fact that the SuperBowl and the New Orleans mayoral, city council, assessor and other election IS THE SAME DAY as the SuperBowl. We have a chance to change the things that haven't worked for us these past 4 years and the Saints have another chance to change franchise history. The mythic bonds between the Saints and the City weave more tightly together.

Now with these bonds of mythical portions associated with a city and a team the NFL decides that it is going to try to be the biggest dog and get their lawyers to say that the chant used by New Orleanians to support their team is trademarked and can't be used by small businesses or others. Who Dat! is part of the local lexicon and has been for longer than there has been a Saints football team. But the NFL, in the throws of SuperBowl sales greed, decided that they were going to claim not only a part of the local lexicon but the Fleur di Lis. Seems they forgot about the French Court or the mythic proportions this symbol already has for New Orleanians. New Orleans is a lot of things but the one thing it isn't is like other places or more specifically in this instance like other NFL cities. The NFL had no idea what it was stepping into. Senators & Representatives came out against the NFL. The ever creative Locals started purchasing what they needed to make their own Who Dat paraphernalia. Then there were the endless letters, eMail, phone calls, and blogosphere buzz about how greedy and ogreish the NFL was being. The hose was turned full force on the big dog and it seems they have backed down a little.

And the mythic proportions of the New Orleans Saints Football Team and their fans and the recovering Greater New Orleans and Gulf Coast Area grow larger. Which brings us back to the power of symbols and myth. Pagans love their myths because myths speak to many people many ways. Myths serve to unify and guide us and give us strength in adversity. The Saints and the City and the Recovery are bound together forever. Ours is a story of devastation and loss, of hope and unity, of family of blood and beyond blood, of the power of the people, of tenacity. It's David and Goliath. It's The Little Engine That Could. It's Persephone rising from the underworld. It's the complex story of Lupercus. It's the power of myth and the magic of a little place called New Orleans.

Not how I roll

Via a letter to the editor of the (Minneapolis) Star-Tribune:

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action.

But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher.
The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake.

Haven't you seen "Crossroads" ? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll.

You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad.

Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan

****
Nola here. There is no Satan in Stregheria. BUT this letter to the Editor was too good to pass up. One more reason why the Words of Aradia on Christianity are important to understand and apply. Let the Christians believe as they wish. Follow your own path. But be CAREFUL.

You also might want to read this bit of research on the history of the legend refered to by Pat Robertson.

Global Climate Change

Map above shows the difference between the Average September temperatures (recorded since 1880) and the Average September temperature in 2009.

Granted NOT all places are warmer. BUT much of the globe is warmer.

When you think about how much of the surface of the earth is water (~70%) and look at how much of the water area is red, meaning hotter... It's hard not to say that the earth (on average and on the whole) is getting hotter.
Even as the much of the US is covered !to the Gulf of Mexico! with a winter blast from the artic.

I suggest taking another look at the Words of Aradia on Nature.
with special emphasis on this phrase:
Therefore observe the ways of Nature around you both great and small. Everything has a purpose and reason. Be not confused by its seeming cruelty, for there is a duality in all things.

Words of Aradia: Arranged for Teaching

The Foundational Tenants:
Concerning Nature
Concerning the Earth

The Cycle of Being:
Concerning Life
Concerning Death
Concerning Rebirth
Concerning the Act of Rebirth
Concerning Luna

The Gods and Worship
Concerning the Gods
Concerning the God
Concerning the Goddess
Concerning the God & Goddess
Concerning Worship

Love and Freedom
Concerning Freedom
Concerning Love
Concerning Sexuality
Concerning Marriage

Worship and Magick
Concerning the Law of Return
Concerning the Astral Plane
Concerning the Elementals
Concerning the Grigori
Concerning Magick

Parting thoughts
Concerning the Prophecies
Concerning Christianity

Lavender Rosemary Dragons

For all you folks covered in snow


There's a new digital camera in the house, which officially belongs to my daughter, but that I occassionally am allowed to use. This is one of my first attempts to use it and figure out how the macro function works. The folks who cut my neighbor's grass whacked the rosemary bush this weekend. So I took a closer look. Who knew the lavender flowers looked like dragons. Well they do to me. Look at how cute the fuzzy, puffy, little rosemary flower buds are. Who knew? Now I do. Now you do. Enjoy.

Babylon Rising - Amanda Boyden

Part of my commitment to New Orleans recovery and greener living is to support local businesses. So it seems fitting that I start the list of books read in 2010 with a novel by a "local" author.

The author's bio in the beginning of the book states that "Amanda Boyden was born in Minnesota and raised in Chicago and St. Louis. Formerly a trapeze artist and contortionist, she earned her MFA from the University of New Orleans, where she now teaches writing. Her first novel, Pretty Little Dirty, was published in 2006."

Some would argue Amanda is not local. Read her book. Yes she is. She has captured the complexities of life in a complex city. Nothing is easy. Very little is exactly as it seems from the outside. The good are not so good. The bad are not all bad. Everyone struggles to survive in their own way.

Amanda also captures New Orleans street speak. I had read her brief bio and wondered how a gal from the north could capture then re-read her bio and realized that any one who teaches in the English department at the University of New Orleans would get a far dose of a wide variety of street speak. I say this as a UNO graduate and as someone who has a typical 9th Ward accent and who was told by her professors that she needed to "clean up her accent". I claimed it was part of "ma culcha" and that I'd keep it thank you and then managed to get a job with a very large corporation out of New York and fit right in because I sounded a lot like a New Yorker. Think about a New York Brooklyn accent and then don't say your R's and you get real close. Even the pace of 9th Ward and most of New Orleans speak is faster than any other "southern" accent. New Orleans is really not the south, we're the northern most tip of the Caribbean. But I digress a bit if only to justify my capacity to vouch for the accuracy of Amanda Boyden's representation of New Orleans. She gets it. She really gets it.

The back cover of the book (purchased at a local, independent book store) captures the story like this: "Ariel May and her husband, Ed, have just moved to New Orleans with their two small children. Their neighbor, Fearius, is a fifteen-year-old newly released from juvenile detention. Across the street, an elderly couple, the Browns, try to pass their days in peace, while Philomenia Bouregard de Bruges, a long time resident and "Uptown lady" peers through her curtains at the East Indian family next door.
With one random accident, a crash across front lawns, the whole neighborhood converges. Together the offer help and cast blame and the lives of these five families intertwine, for better and for worse."

New Orleans neighborhoods are very much like the one portrayed in Babylon Rising. This book is a complex gumbo of people and the lives they live and at only 301 pages an interesting, inherently human and introspective first read of the new year.

Paper, Plastic, Cloth, Ritual and Yoda

I'm going to betray my age. When I was a little girl the only option we had for taking groceries home from the store was paper. Large, brown paper bags. Later when plastic bags became common, I would ask for paper because the plastic bags were so weak that they always ended up with breaks and tears. Either you used paper or you had to double or triple bag the plastic bags to ensure that you didn't end up with your stuff all over the ground. Somewhere between 1977 (when plastic grocery bags were 1st introduced) and ~2003 or 2004, paper all but disappeared and plastic became the norm. The only good thing about the plastic bags was that if I strung multiple the bags over my arms, both arms, I could carry more in a single trip up the stairs than I ever could with paper. This gives me grocery shopping as a form of weight lifting aerobics. With repeated use and over time, plastic bags became an accepted part of American life. And we stopped thinking about it. Now, paper is back as an option too but more importantly there is a large, global push to eliminate plastic bags and move to reusable bags.

But this means that we need to change. And we have established practices that work. We have grocery store rituals, decades of muscle memory in consumers and grocery clerks. I want to move from plastic bags to reusable bags. I have my zip into a pouch, reusable, holds a lot of stuff, Whole Food grocery bag. But each time I go the store it is still a struggle to avoid ending up with plastic bags. Those "zip into a pouch" Whole Food bags are so dang useful that I end up unzipping them for a grocery run and then using them for other things. So sometimes the bag I want to use is being used elsewhere. Or if I have the reusable bag, I have to remember to take it out and give it to the clerk. Even if I take it out and have it read I often have to interrupt the grocery clerk and stop them from putting things into the readily available plastic bags. Or if I have this bag and I remember to use it and I get the clerk to use it I still need another bag because my groceries won't all fit. So I acquire additional bags and keep them in the truck so that I always have one. Then I have to remember to take the bags, all of them, and get the clerk to use them and then return them to the truck to use them again. I've been at this for a number of YEARS now so I've established the necessary rituals to ensure that this happens. But it literally took YEARS. 2009 was the first year that I can say I succeeded in using reusable bags.

What I had to do, what anyone else who wants to change has to do, is to create a new pattern, to instill a ritual.

How do we change? Especially when it is so hard to get into a new pattern.
We change by committing to the change.
We change by acquiring the things that will facilitate the change.
We change by changing. If we want to be different, we have to be different.

For the plastic/reusable bag switch, we have to buy the reusable bags, we have to consistently remember to take the bags with us to the store or have the bags with us all the time. We have to take the bags out and insist the clerk to use our bag instead of the ubiquitous plastic bags. We have to return the bags to a spot where they can be used again next time. We have to have these rituals as a part of our life.

One of the things I was taught as a beginning Strega, was the importance of doing ritual. But as a solitary pulling together all the bells and whistles to do a ritual seemed more trouble than it was worth. I could just follow the cycle of the moon and the solar seasons. I didn't need a black altar cloth and a bell and elemental bowls and... It was a significant change from not doing the detailed ritual. It required energy be raised and consistently directed. I didn't have ritual muscle memory so it seemed hard. It was easy to do ritual whenever my group of eclectic pagan friends wanted to get together. It was easy whenever I met with other Streghe. But doing smells and bells ritual as a solitary required that I conquer the inertia I had not to do it.I was confronted fully by one of Newton's description of nature's laws: An object at rest, stays at rest unless acted on by another force.

So my guidance and encouragement to any one who is a beginning strega (or cloth bag user wannabe) is keep trying. Collect the necessary tools: Candles, bells, black cloth, God & Goddess Icons, ritual bowls, round altar. Now before anyone starts complaining about how difficult times are there are ways to do this inexpensively. Candles cost money. So I'll give on that one. But God & Goddess Icons don't have to be expensive statues. I started out with fossils. A cast of the inside of a clam shell is surprising erotic and goddess invoking. A cast of an ammonite shell with just the right curve was appropriately god invoking. These cost nothing. I already had them on hand AND I had acquired them via walks on the land during trips to the Texas Hill Country. But I'd bet that if you keep your eyes and spirit open suitable icon items will come to you from nature and your environment as well. Ritual Bowls... try garage sales or use small bowls you have already in your kitchen. Be creative. I bet if you dig around in what you have already that you have enough to start. My round altar was discarded spool used to hold wire that I spray painted white to clean up the edges and stop the altar cloth from catching. Eventually I upscaled to a circle bit of plywood that could be placed on top of the spool. Now I use the discarded bottom of a papasan chair and a round piece of glass from a local hotel surplus store on top of the plywood that I spray painted silver. When not in use the table looks like a mirror.

You have to commit to the change and gathering what you need to do the ritual is part of the energy you have to expend. As it says in the Myth of Descent "Nothing is given unless something is received." It is fully expected that you will have to expend energy. But you will also get something back.

With or without all the appropriate tools you still have to commit the time to do the ritual. The first few times you set things up you won't have it all right. And this is ALL RIGHT, specifically because you are committing the energy. You are doing it. This will highlight what you need to do next time and eventually you will have the ritual tools and the ritual memory. Each time streghe cast a circle we are recreating the universe. This in and of itself is a powerful experience, even if you don't do any ritual. But a full moon ritual is actually quite easy to do alone, once you get over the fact that you are doing it alone (or at least without other corporeal humans). Read the all the parts of the ritual out loud. Do all the motions. Read the Veglia, out loud. It never ceases to calm and center me and YES the experience is different IN CIRCLE, in ritual from just reading it out loud any other time.

I'm going to steal a line from my mother-in-law: "Fake it til you make it." When I first heard this I wasn't sure I liked it. Faking it? Really Fake it? That can't be right. But the essence was the equivalent of saying, Do it, even when it feels false, even when it feels like you're not doing it right. Eventually all the parts will come together and it will be fine. Or as Yoda says to Luke: "No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."

The sun has returned. It's start of the new calendar year.
What will you DO differently?