Winter Sun

Energy Interactions

"Energies are constantly transmitted and received in a kind of universal Ping-Pong tournament.  Energy is information and it’s swirling all around us.
Energies intersect and sync up all the time.  One form of energy may be more influential than another but usually when energies collide both are changed in some way.  We know that heart and brain wave patterns as well as magnetic fields sync up among humans and across species.  We can measure this now.  Energy exchanges happen all the time, mostly below the level of your awareness.  Yet they still impact you."

From: http://blackcoffeepoet.com/2013/07/15/op-ed-laughter-and-orgasm-is-mainstream-science-catching-up-to-indigenous-wisdom/

THE SONG OF THE WITCHES ROUND THE WALNUT-TREE OF BENEVENTUM

An old poem that appeared in: BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY. VOL. XVII. (1845).

Shared by Raven Grimassi. Thanks Raven.

 

Hail to thee,
Weird walnut-tree!
All hail to thee ! all hail to thee !
We are come, we are come, we are come from afar,
By the glancing light of the shooting-star ;
Some from the south, and some from the north,
From the east, and the west, we are all come forth,—
Some o'er the land, and some o'er the sea.
To hold our sabbath 'neath the weird walnut-tree,
That tree of the awful and mystic spell,
Where we dance the roundels we love so well.
The gentle witch of Capua, who comes of a gentle kind,
Hath floated softly hither on the wings of the western wind ;
The gentle witch, whose witcheries the Capuan youth beguile,
With her arching brows, and her cherry lips, and'her everchanging smile :
But, though beauteous, and fair, and gentle she be,
She must come and bend to the weird walnut-tree.
And Medea is here from her Colchian home,
A dragon she rides through the white sea-foam.
Look at her eye with its cold blue glare ;
As lief rouse a lioness from her lair.
But, though murd'ress and fratricide she may be,
She must come and bend to the weird walnut-tree.
And who is the seer with the locks so white,
The wrinkled brow, and the eye so bright?

His tottering limbs have been hither borne
By a magic staff of the wild blackthorn,
And from Vetulonia'a halls wends he,
To come and bend to the weird walnut-tree.
Perimeda is here, with the golden hair,
Beauteous, and blooming, and buoyant, and fair;
She has come in a car drawn by peacocks three,
To bend at the shrme of the weird walnut-tree.
And the fairy Calypso has sped from her home ;

She has left her grotto and hyacinth flowers,—
Her fruit-trees, and birds that sing all the day long,—

Her gardens, and violet-scented bowers ;
In a nautilus-shell, so pearly and clear,

She has sailed from her isle in the Grecian Sea,
To join in our mystic roundels here,

And bend to the wondrous walnut-tree.
Hecate, hail! Hecate, hail!
Far hast thou travell'd o'er hill and dale;
By the dead man's tomb thou hast stopped to alight,
Where the Lemures gibber the livelong night,
And the ghoules eat the corpse by the wan moonlight,
For such arc the scenes where thou takest delight.
Hail to thee, Hecate, once and twice!
And hail to thee, Hecate ; hail to thee thrice!
The Queen of Hades' realm is here,
Bow to her, wizard, and witch, and seer!
But, though the Queen of Hades she be,
She must come and bend to the weird walnut-tree.
And Gerda has hurried from far Iceland,
She of the ruthless and red right-hand ;
A kraken has carried her o'er the sea,
To come and bend to the weird walnut.tree.
We are come, we are come, we are come from afar,
By the glancing light of the shooting star ;
Some from the south, and some from the north,
From the east and the west we are all come forth ,
Some o'er the land, and some o'er the sea,
To hold our sabbath 'neath the weird walnut-tree.
Then a song to the tree, the weird walnut-tree;
The king and the chief of trees is he ;
For, though ragged, and gnarl'd, and wither'd, and bare,
We bow the knee, and we offer the prayer
To the weird walnut-tree on the mystic night,
When we hold our sabbath 'neath the pale moonlight.
Hail to Taburnus. that mount of power,
And to Sabatus' stream in this witching hour !
And hail to the serpent who twines round the tree,
Whose age is known but to wizards three,
Who was brought from the land of ice and snow
By Saturn, in ages long, long ago,
And who sucks the blood of one of our band,
Whene'er 'neath the tree we take our stand.
Hail to them each, and hail to them all <.
Ho ! come with a whoop, and a shout, and a call!
Join hand in hand, and foot it full free,
Let us bound and dance round the walnut-tree.
Elelen ! Elelen ! Evoe ! Evoe !
For the witches who leap round the weird walnut-tree.

C. H. L.

Ancient Culture

I know it looks modern.... but the video is anything but...... just listen

A good dog's last morning and the comforting power of nature: Oliver Houck

A good dog's last morning and the comforting power of nature: Oliver Houck
published in The Times Picayune

"My dog died Thursday morning. We'd found her 17 years ago on the side of a dirt road, coming out of the Atchafalaya swamp. The vet said that she was 5 or 6 weeks old. She was the size of a squirrel and all scab and mange.

I tucked her in my lap behind the steering wheel figuring I'd give her to one of my students, who were waiting at another landing. But in the period of that short drive, maybe 20 minutes, I became aware that I wasn't going to give her to anyone at all.

 

We'd since done many things together, roaming the batture, me looking for berries and she the sign of rabbit. Once paddling out of the Pearl, Ms. Bear up in the bow like a hood ornament, we passed a fisherman who looked over at us and asked, absolutely straight faced, "don' he paddle?" There is a lot to remember.

 

Thursday morning was something of a miracle, indeed two of them. They say that a dog will tell you when it's time to go, and we had been getting signals through the week. At this point she'd lost motion at the rear end, and her eyes were vague.
Still, I held out hope. But her last night was turbulent. The dog who never complained whined for hours, nothing was comfortable, so around 4:30 we got up, and I took her out onto the grass. Miracle No. 1, she quieted right down, and I held her, and we saw the dawn together in peace.

The first cardinal, a crow flew over, a mockingbird started up, my neighbor David dragged his trash container to the street, a junker car chugged right through the stop sign, the driver drinking coffee at the wheel.

Looking back on it, Ms. Bear had told me it was time to go. And we found the perfect place to wait it out, under the morning sky. What she was thinking out there I cannot say, but I'd say she felt wired to something huge and beautiful and that was enough. It is also enough for kids in trouble, for adults in pain, for all those folks walking along Bayou St. John and the oval at Audubon Park. There doesn't have to be much nature. But it can do so much.

The vet came later in the morning, and we put her down. It was the kindest thing we could do.

Then the second miracle happened. Lisa and I went back inside to gather ourselves for the day. Neither of us had gotten much sleep. Lisa was still on the porch when I heard her calling to me. When I arrived, she was pointing to the neighboring yard where a tall white egret was stalking the grass. It went very carefully, a slow ballet, cocking the head, leaning the long neck down, zapping something, a quick swallow and then on.
It is still out there, as I write. I have never seen a white egret hunting in this neighborhood, ever, and it's been nearly 30 years. It came this one morning.

My mother died a few years ago. She was 101, and it was her time too. We took her ashes to a field she had loved as a girl and stood in a line, facing the trees, while a minister said a prayer. As the minister was finishing, behind his back, a large falcon darted out from the woods and flew the entire tree line, wheeled, flew it the other way, and then was gone. I saw my mother leaving.

I am not a spiritualist. I do not worship birds and trees. But there is a connection between the peace Ms. Bear and I found early Thursday morning outside in the dawn, and the egret, and the falcon. I do not know exactly what it is, but it is."

Oliver A. Houck is a professor of law at Tulane University. He is the author of "Down on the Batture."

Full Moon Rising

It's enough. It's plenty

Dear Human:

You’ve got it all wrong.

You didn’t come here to master unconditional love. That is where you came from and where you’ll return. You came here to learn personal love.

Universal love. Messy love. Sweaty love. Crazy love. Broken love. Whole love. Infused with divinity. Lived through the grace of stumbling. Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up. Often.

You didn’t come here to be perfect. You already are. You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous. And then to rise again into remembering. But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.

Love, in truth, doesn’t need ANY other adjectives. It doesn’t require modifiers. It doesn’t require the condition of perfection. It only asks that you show up.
And do your best.
That you stay present and feel fully.
That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.

It’s enough.
It’s plenty.

- Courtney A. Walsh

Mardi Gras Links And Lupercus

This opinion piece was posted in 2012 by a local New Orleanian  C. W Cannon. It contrasts the "rich person's Mardi Gras" with the Mardi Gras that developed in the past 20 years since the old line Krewe's were forced to integrate.  The Mardi Gras we have today is better than the Mardi Gras of 20 years ago because we New Orleanians have begun to move back to smaller scale groups of individuals who costume and parade without enormous budgets.  'Tit Rex is a parady of the old line monied Rex and pays tribute to the shoebox float that ever New Orleanian school kid has made at least once.  Krewe du Vieux makes fine art of satire. I will love them forever for the 2006 Mardi Gras "Corps of Engineers we hold nothing back" and "Meet me at the Breech" displays.  Carnival is where we turn our ordered patterned world on it's head. Where we break loose and, as Cannon says, "the cultural concept of Carnival is to turn against, invert, or critique the broader culture in which it is enveloped."

And Mark Folse a local blogger posted about another blogger who wrote extensively about France's Occtican Carnival.  (One of my favorite parts of the world).  This talks about how Carnival prepares us for the shift between Winter and Spring. How we revel in the wild and cleanse the old year away.   If the pictures of "Spring's Wild Forces" doesn't make you think wild thoughts, nothing will.

I have always said that Mardi Gras was perfectly aligned with Lupercus these posts reinforce that for me.  So please take time to howl for Lupercus and this carnival season.  People have known for centuries that it's good for the body and the soul.

THE WHITE WITCH - Charles Grant

THE WHITE WITCH

"O What have you seen, my son, my son,
That your eyes are so wild and bright?
Or what have you heard in the eerie woods,
'Twixt the gloaming and the night?"

"I have met a witch, a white white witch,
My mother, mother dear;
The glamour of earth is on my eyes,
And its music in my ear.

"For we are deafen'd by angry words,
Are blinded by tears of woe,
But she has garner'd the secret joys
That only the genii know;—

"Has learn'd from the voice of the fern-hid stream
Where all sweet thoughts abide,
And the violets have told her how they dream
In the quiet eventide;

"And they fancy, mother, the world above
Where the baby cloudlets play
Yearns down to the earth in mystic love
That shall never pass away.

"The greenwood knows it; of this sweet thought
Its murmuring tunes are made,
And the strange wild tale that is ever wrought
Through its sunshine and its shade.

"And the holy moon, as she moves along
From star to star on high,
Pours forth her light as a bridal song
And a tender lullaby.

"O mother, my mother, mother dear,
Who may the white witch be?
She has heard the things we cannot hear,
She has seen what we cannot see;

"The beauty that comes in fitful gleams,
That comes, but will not stay,
The music that steals across our dreams
From a region far away;

"What vainly I sought in pain and doubt,
The light, the form, the tone,
At a single glance she has found them out,
And made them all her own.

"And with all the music we cannot hear,
The beauty we cannot see,
O mother, mother, my mother dear,
She has wrought a charm on me."

[from Studies in Verse, by Charles Grant. London: John Pearson York Street Covent Garden 1875]

with thanks to Raven Grimassi for sharing.

Carnival & Lupercus

Lupercus is a celebration of the power of wild, of freedom, of being purified of the trappings of civilation. It connects us to Nature, the Great Teacher.  It is not Imbolc and lambs and milking. It is the polar opposite of Imbolc. 

Carnival in New Orleans is a season perfectly aligned with Lupercus. 
Tonight the Krewe du Vieux parade will roll in New Orleans

"The Krewe du Vieux is a non-profit organization dedicated to the historical and traditional concept of a Mardi Gras parade as a venue for individual creative expression and satirical comment. It is unique among all Mardi Gras parades in the city because it alone carries on the old traditions of Carnival celebrations, by using decorated mule-drawn floats with satirical themes, accompanied by costumed revelers dancing in the streets to the sounds of jazzy street musicians. We believe in exposing the world to the true nature of Mardi Gras—and in exposing ourselves to the world."

Looks like this Krewe took the lessons of Umberto Eco to heart.
"Carnival, in order to be enjoyed, requires that rules and rituals be parodied, and that these rules and rituals already be recognized and respected. One must know to what degree certain behaviors are forbidden, and must feel the majesty of the forbidding norm, to appreciate their transgression. Without a valid law to break, carnival is impossible. During the Middle Ages, counterrituals such as the Mass of the Ass or the coronation of the Fool were enjoyable just because, during the rest of the year, the Holy Mass and the true King’s coronation were sacred and respectable activities. The Coena Cypriani quoted by Bachtin, a burlesque representation based upon the subversion of topical situations of the Scriptures, was enjoyed as a comic transgression only by people who took the same Scriptures seriously during the rest of the year. To a modern reader, the Coena Cypriani is only a boring series of meaningless situations, and even though the parody is recognized, it is not felt as a provocative one. Thus the prerequisites of a ‘good’ carnival are: (i) the law must be so pervasively and profoundly introjected as to be overwhelmingly present at the moment of its violation (and this explains why ‘barbaric’ comedy is hardly understandable); (ii) the moment of carnivalization must be very short, and allowed only once a year (semel in anno licet insanire); an everlasting carnival does not work: an entire year of ritual observance is needed in order to make the transgression enjoyable.

Carnival can exist only as an authorized transgression (which in fact represents a blatant case of contradicto in adjecto or of happy double binding — capable of curing instead of producing neurosis). If the ancient, religious carnival was limited in time, the modern mass-carnival is limited in space: it is reserved for certain places, certain streets, or framed by the television screen.

In this sense, comedy and carnival are not instances of real transgressions: on the contrary, they represent paramount examples of law reinforcement. They remind us of the existence of the rule.

Carnivalization can act as a revolution (Rabelais, or Joyce) when it appears unexpectedly, frustrating social expectations. But on the one side it produces its own mannerism (it is reabsorbed by society) and on the other side it is acceptable when performed within the limits of a laboratory situation (literature, stage, screen …). When an unexpected and nonauthorized carnivalization suddenly occurs in ‘real’ everday life, it is interpreted as revolution (campus confrontations, ghetto riots, blackouts, sometimes true ‘historical’ revolutions). But even revolutions produce a restoration of their own (revolutionary rules, another contradicto in adjecto) in order to install their new social model. Otherwise they are not effective revolutions, but only uprisings, revolts, transitory social disturbances.

In a world dominated by diabolical powers, in a world of everlasting transgression, nothing remains comic or carnivalesque, nothing can any longer become an object of parody."

Umberto Eco, “The frames of comic ‘freedom’,” _Carnivale!_, Ed. Thomas A. Sebeok. Berlin: Mouton, 1984

Deep Time .... is Slow

Still ruminating on this Article from Mother Earth News

"...German environmental thinker Wolfgang Sachs <snip> believes that speed is an under-recognized factor fueling environmental problems. As he puts it, “It’s possible to talk about the ecological crisis as a collision between time scales — the fast time scale of modernity crashing up against the slow time scale of nature and the earth.” In his view, genetic engineering, with all its potential for ecological havoc, is an example of how we interfere with natural processes in the name of speeding up evolution."
The geologist in me LOVES this. It is only this view of "deep time" that will save us from ourselves.

Lord, I love this city!!!!

We talk to strangers like they are our best friends.

Now, this being New Orleans and, especially, this being the Rouses on Carrollton, the gentleman didn't just unload his basket.
No.
He started a conversation with anyone who would listen about why he had selected said items in his basket. Turns out he was having foot surgery (right foot, in case you were wondering) and was about to be laid up for about five days.
"I don't got nobody to take care of me, so I thought I'd make my first pot of red beans and rice to eat on."
Just as he was asking the cashier to help him make sure he had all the right ingredients, a woman standing behind me chimed in, "Why would you make red beans and rice? Just go to Popeyes. They have the best."
Well, that did it. All hell broke loose between checkout lines 5, 6 and 7. Right there at the Rouses on Carrollton.

Read the rest here:
http://nolavie.com/2013/01/love-nola-to-popeyes-or-not-to-popeyes-50639.html

Food Inc & Small Moves

Our modern American lifestyle is at complete odds with living in harmony with the Earth and Nature. Living in harmony with the Earth & Nature starts with "awareness" and a willingness to try to change, a willingness to make the small changes that build up. As Streghe, pagan, the spritually eco-aware, we are swimming against the tide. And it's a corporate tide and a powerful one.

Take the time to watch the movie Food Inc.   Become aware of the corporate tide that affects everyone because it affects the very food we eat to survive.  Watch how Monsanto strives against the forces of Nature.  Realize how foolish this is and then with this awareness, begin to make changes in your life.  A new awareness can be overwhelming. How, with a problem that large and complex, can one person make a difference?  The only way to "eat an elephant" is "one bite at a time".

Which brings me to Small Moves. Contact (1997) is one of my favorite movies and "Small Moves" one of my favorite quotes. Yes Nature has "big events": Hurricanes, land slides.... but most of the time Nature is slow and steady and subtle. Evolution. Geologic ages. Human maturation....


So become aware
and then choose your own "Small Moves".

Slow Down... reconnect with Nature

Still reading and ruminating on this Mother Earth New Article

Environmental activist Jeremy Rifkin was one of the first to raise questions about the desirability of speed in his 1987 book Time Wars:
"We have quickened the pace of life only to become less patient. We have become more organized but less spontaneous, less joyful. We are better prepared to act on the future but less able to enjoy the present and reflect on the past.
As the tempo of modern life has continued to accelerate, we have come to feel increasingly out of touch with the biological rhythms of the planet, unable to experience a close connection with the natural environment. The human time world is no longer joined to the incoming and outgoing tides, the rising and setting sun, and the changing seasons. Instead, humanity has created an artificial time environment punctuated by mechanical contrivances and electronic impulses. "

Pagans go out of their way to be attuned to the solar cycle, be that the daily or yearly cycle, or the the cycle of the moon and the wheel of the year. And that is what makes Pagans "Radicals", even if they don't think of themselves in that way.

If Nature is the Great Teacher then how can Streghe not work to stay "in touch with the biological rhythms of the planet"?

This is taken from the Summer Solstice Ritual
in Italian Witchcraft by Raven Grimassi:
“O spirits of the Elemental forces, hear me. And receive our blessings. O spirits of the earth. O powers that be, hear me and receive our blessings. Assist us on this sacred night to maintain the natural balance which keeps vital the essence of the earth. Let there always be clear flowing water, freshness in the air, fertility within the soil and abundant life within the world.”

Can we talk about Global Warming now?

Information below taken from Wired.Com
Click the link for more information
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/australia-temperature-map/
"What happens when a changing climate exceeds the operating parameters of the stuff we own? While we in the northern hemisphere make jokes about indestructible snow forts, it is getting hot in Australia. How hot? So hot that Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology had to add new colors to its weather map. Now, those unfortunate parts of Australia that achieve temperatures above 122ºF (50ºC) — temperatures that were, until recently, literally off the scale — will be marked in deep purple and terrifying hot pink. It is an interesting moment in data visualization history when climate scientists find themselves in the position of revising the upper bounds of temperatures they ever expected to depict."

And if you think it can't happen here, Listen to this NPR Story.
"A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998.
Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so."
And read more here.

Slow Down.... pare back...

The long days of Winter are times when our lives should naturally slow down.

The bare days of Winter are time when we should be able to see the structure and bones of our existence and be better able to see what is worth our efforts when the the world warms up and the trees leaf out.

Take your time and read this Article from Mother Earth News.
The italicized quotes below are from the article.

"No matter how fast we go, no matter how many comforts we forgo in order to quicken our pace, there never seems to be enough time."

"Curiously, there has been scant public discussion about this dramatic speed-up of society. People may complain about how busy they are, how overloaded modern life has become, but speed is still viewed as generally positive — something that will help us all enrich our lives. "

This is so much like my day:
"The alarm rings and you hop out of bed. Another day is off and running. A quick shower. Wake the kid<snip>. Down a cup of coffee. <snip> Hurry out to the car, <snip>. Reaching work, <snip>. You take a couple of deep breaths, then remember that the project you didn't finish last night must be <snip>. Meanwhile, you've got five voice-mail messages and seven more e-mail messages, two of them marked urgent."
Until I got to the seven more email messages! Seven! Seven! Only Seven!
And what about Instant Messages? I stopped taking voice mails a long time ago. People ramble and you just have to call them back anyway to figure out what they really want.
And 1 project due! Please. I never have fewer than 7 project going, any 1 of which might need special handling on any given day. And then there are the walk-ins. And the meetings. The meetings you go to only so that either your time is wasted or you end up with more projects.

Americans have become more productive but I'm not sure how much more we can really take.  
“The major cause in the speed-up of life is not technology, but economics,” says Schor. “The nature of work has changed now that bosses are demanding longer hours of work.” Harvard economist Juliet Schor,Author of the 1991 best-seller The Overworked American
I too have found that without concerted effort that it is too easy for anyone "working for corporate america" to end up with a life that just gets faster and faster until it spins out of control. I can speak from experience as I work for a Fortune 500 company.

Then there is Neighborhood Organization stuff which is important and rewarding in that I now have a cadre of amazing friends who care about our city its future... but it's time consuming. Taking photos, posting photos, tracking issues: water leaks, blight (yes we are still recovering from Katrina), potholes, the grinding impracticality of some city services, crime. Tracking successes: Trees planted, streets & sidewalk repairs, Houses renovated and or sold, ....

And then there is my commitment as 3rd degree to the Tradition, the Ways, the spiritual path I walk and an obligation to ensure that it stays alive, is passed on. Which happens to be the primary reason for this blog.

In the Spring of 2012,
after being interviewed and providing documentation for review to someone who was working on his PHD at Oxford (yes the one in England),
I read the draft of his PHD and realized that,
in addition to some very interesting ideas about collaborative government,
this doctoral student had put his finger on my personal issue.
Like many of the other individuals who picked up the neighborhood recovery torch PostKatrina, I was burned out!

Everything I was doing was "Good":
Job=$ to provide for my family and there are days when I really like it,
Neighborhood work = better environment around me, great new friends
Blog = true to my spiritual path
But I couldn't continue the ever quickening pace and ever increasing responsibilities.

"Yet it seems that the faster we go, the farther we fall behind. Not only in the literal sense of not getting done what we set out to do, but at a deeper level, too."

"But it has gotten to the point where my days, crammed with all sorts of activities, feel like an Olympic endurance event: the everyday-athon."

Yes.... I needed a break. Not total abdication but a break.

So I "took a break" in 2012 from some of the responsibilities with which I had burdened myself.

I lightened up on the neighborhood work and either let others take the lead or let go of the need to "participate' as often as requested by city government leaders or non-profits. And as a result some folks stepped up and some things slid by and all in all it all worked out. And I have a better plan for how I encourage others in 2013.

I "took a break" from "StregaNola". I took vacation time with my daughter and visited with my teacher. I set some blog posts up to post intermittently throughout the year and then logged off as StregaNola in March and didn't log back on until 2013. And surprise. It's still hear. Just like I left it.

My pace at work is something I'm still working on ... but everything starts somewhere.

So while we are still in what should be the slow, dark, part of the year, ask yourself:
What can you pare back? What do you want to focus on? What do you value enough to keep and what can you let go?

The 1st step in any Magic, before you ACT, is to meditate on your intent and idea and to listen to the feedback the Universe will give you.  But to really do this you have to slow down. 
And if you are working with the Gratitude Jar and a Yearly Jar of goals take some time to slow down and pare back and before you just start filling that Jar up with things you want to accomplish this year.

2013 Gratitude Jar & the Magic of intentions.

After a bit of a hiatus..... I logged back into Facebook and reviewed the blog in preparation for setting up 2013 posts. And bumped into what I am calling the Gratitude Jar.  It's a fabulous idea and one that I'll try out myself this year.  

But it got me thinking about alignment and intent and magic. 

The wonderful thing about the Gratitude Jar is that it helps teach mindfulness.  If you have the Jar and you are thinking about what you can put in the Jar then you focus and are mindful of daily blessings, and experiences worth savoring.  You also align with the beauty of nature.  One of the things my Jar will have on it "Nature as the Great Teacher Moments".

Then there is the alternate approach to using a Yearly Jar.  One that is aligned with the secular tradition of New Year Resolutions.  It has been said by many (even non-pagans) that writing down your goals makes a difference. 

Few have said it better or to as many people as Stephen Covey:
"All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation of all things. You have to make sure that the blueprint, the first creation, is really what you want, that you've thought everything through. Then you put it into bricks and mortar. Each day you go to the construction shed and pull out the blueprint to get marching orders for the day. You begin with the end in mind."

The "all things are created twice" concept is the essence of all magic work.  You build the idea with your energy and mind. And then you free it on the Astral Plane (or release it into the universe if you prefer) and then you work on the physical plane until it manifests. As you write your goals down and place them in the Jar imbue them with your intent. Then release them by placing them into the Jar. 

At the end of the year (or Cornucopia) you can open the Yearly Jar, reassess or renew your goals.

I can promise you this: The more aligned you are with the ebb and flow of the universe, the more mindful and aware you are (and the Gratitude Jar helps with this) the easier it is to "make magic".

New Year's Day and January and Janus

January 1st New Year's Day.  Some say this is the only World Wide Holiday.


January is named for Janus God of 2 faces, the God that looks back and the God that looks forward.
The symbology of an Old Man representing the old year and a baby representing the New Year weaves seamlessly into the pagan Solstice and Stregheria rituals and celebrations, the ever changing, ever dying god. Janus encompasses both Lupercus the Wolf God who rules this time and Kern the Stag God whose rule begins at the Spring Equinox and ends at the Fall Equinox. Janus is the God who is present when the Child of Promise is born at Lupercus.

According to Wikipedia: "January is named after Janus (Ianuarius), the god of the doorway; the name has its beginnings in Roman mythology, coming from the Latin word for door (ianua) – January is the door to the year."
Again according to Wikipedia January has been the first month of the year for Romans since at least 153 BC, perhaps as far back as 450 BC or 713 BC depending on which account you prefer.
I prefer the 713 BC account which credits Numa Pompilius because I like his affliation with Egeria and Egeria's affliation with Lake Nemi.  But I digress.

There is a great site that talks about how the Romans tracked days based on the Moon before they settled on a Solar Calendar.  The excerpt below is taken from this site.
"January was named after Janus, a sky-god who was ancient even at the time of Rome’s founding. Ovid quoted Janus as saying "The ancients called me chaos, for a being from of old am I." After describing the world’s creation, he again quoted Janus: "It was then that I, till that time a mere ball, a shapeless lump, assumed the face and members of a god." A Lydian named Joannes identified Janus as a planet when he wrote: "Our own Philadelphia still preserves a trace of the ancient belief. On the first day of the month there goes in procession no less a personage than Janus himself, dressed up in a two-faced mask, and people call him Saturnus, identifying him with Kronos."
Early Romans believed that the beginning of each day, month and year were sacred to Janus. They thought he opened the gates of heaven at dawn to let out the morning, and that he closed them at dusk. This eventually led to his worship as the god of all doors, gates, and entrances."