Olly olly oxen free

Old Kingdom Egyptian alabaster jar

Image Credit: Medusa Ancient Art Gallery

Chaucer was the first English author to use the word alabaster: in the Knight’s Tale (1386) he writes of ‘alabaster white and red coral’. It comes, via Old French and Latin, from Greek alábast(r)os, which may be of Egyptian origin. Scottish English used the variant from alabast until the 16th century (indeed, this may predate alabaster by a few years); and from the 16th to the 17th century the word was usually spelled alablaster, apparently owing to confusion with arblaster ‘crossbowman’.

The use of alabaster for making marbles (of the sort used in children’s games) gave rise to the abbreviation alley, ally ‘marble’ in the early 18th century.

Olly olly oxen free (and variants: olly-olly-ee, ally ally in free) is a catchphrase used in such children’s games as hide and seek to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game. It is thought to derive from the phrase “All ye, all ye ‘outs’ in free;” in other words: all who are “out” may come in without penalty. However, this may not be the etymology at all–“Olly olly oxen free” is suspiciously close to the German phrase “Alle, alle auch sind frei,” meaning “everyone, everyone is also free.”

The phrase can also be used to coordinate hidden players in the game kick the can, in which a group of people hide within a given radius and a “seeker” is left to guard a can filled with rocks. The seeker has to try to find the “hiders” without allowing them to sneak in and kick the can. In many areas the phrase used is “All-y all-y in come free” which is a way to tell the remainder of hidden players that it is time to regroup in order to restart the game. The phrase is announced by a hider who successfully sneaks in and kicks the can. ~ Sourced Wikipedia

You just acquired a magic wand. What will you use it for?

Grevillea Magic Wand

Image Credit: Australis Plants

New Directions

I want to travel as far as I can go,
I want to reach the joy that’s in my soul,
And change the limitations that I know,
And feel my mind and spirit grow;I want to live, exist, ‘to be’
And hear the truths inside of me.

Doris Warshay

Rhodonite Bowl, The Hermitage, St Petersburg

Rhodonite is a stone of Grace and elegance. It decreases anxiety while increasing attention to detail. It works beneficially on the heart chakra, opening one to unconditional love and increased service to mankind. It is a stone of inner growth as well, and helps with self-love. It is also a calming stone, with energies used for easing anger. It is said to bring emotional balance, and as such bring confidence in one’s life in many areas. Rhodonite is also a stone of contrasts. The bright pinks indicate energy that enhances passionate love, and is used in metaphysics to attract a good mate. This stone can help one have a passionate love that is also grounded, or help mend a broken heart. Rhodonite is a stone often used in crystal healing for healing trauma and abuse issues. Physically it has been said to help with emphysema, joint inflammation, ears, heaing, immune system, the pituitary gland, thyroid, light sensitivity, strep throat and heart disorders.

 

Dog Days Are Over

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is visible on the far left of the above photograph, to the left of the constellation of Orion and Comet Hale-Bopp

Image sourced from  http://www.oocities.org/dwhartnett/hazlitt1.html

Happiness, hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her, stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with a drink
and washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming so you better run

Run fast for your mother run fast for your father
Run for your children and your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your loving behind you
Can’t carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
the dog days are done
Can’t you hear the horses
Cuz here they come

And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had
and what was left after that too. oh.

Happiness it hurt like a bullet in the mind
Struck from a great height
by someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over
The dog days are gone
can you hear the horses
Cuz here they come

Run fast for your mother and fast for your father
Run for your children for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your loving behind you
Can’t carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are gone
Can you hear the horses because here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are gone
Can you hear the horses because here they come.

~ listen to Florence and the Machine on Youtube

"Arearea (The Red Dog)" by Paul Gauguin, 1892

In Ancient Rome, the Dog Days extended from July 24 through August 24 (or, alternatively July 23-August 23). In many European cultures (German, French, Italian) this period is still said to be the time of the Dog Days.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists the traditional timing of the Dog Days as the 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11, coinciding with the ancient heliacal (at sunrise) rising of the Dog Star, Sirius. These are the days of the year when rainfall is at its lowest levels.

According to The Book of Common Prayer (1552), the “Dog Daies” begin on July 6 and end on August 17. But this edition of the Book of Common Prayer (The 2nd book of Edward VI) was never extensively used and never adopted by the Convocation of the Church of England.

In the lectionary of the 1611 edition of the Authorized Version of the Bible, commonly called the King James Bible, the Dog Days begin on July 6 and end on September 5. Note how this roughly corresponds to the July 4 to Labor day (in the United States) span of secular holidays.

In the lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer 1559 shows “Naonae. Dog days begin” with the readings for the 7th day of July. The end of the dog days is noted as the 18th of August. But this is noted as a misprint and the readings for the 5th day of September have “Naonae. Dog days end”. This corresponds with the lectionary in the Bible. The 1559 edition of the Book of Common Prayer would have provided the official liturgical calendar for Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and years following. So the dogs days were at least officially noted in the new world. A recent edition of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer makes no mention of the dog days in the corresponding place. ~ Sourced Wikipedia

It’s mine, you understand? Mine! All mine! Get back in there! Down, down, down! Go, go, go! Mine, mine, mine! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

THERE ARE NO OTHERS

 

Despite the truth of the claim that there is no reality but reality, and that wherever we look we see nothing but God or a manifestation of the universal divine consciousness, often in this weird universe we find ourselves with the unmistakable impression that we are faced with somebody else.

 A guru might say, “I am you and you are me,” and you might reply, “No, I am here and you are there.” But if all pronouns are abolished there is only one god in the bouncing universe.

No name. No packdrill.

After nine days I let the horse run free
‘Cause the desert had turned to sea
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
there was sand and hills and rings
The ocean is a desert with it’s life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love ….

A 1000 Bars Create Amaze

My Native American teachers tell me that we are in the midst of earth changes that will culminate around the year 2013. They say the earth changes will bring heat, and floods, and upheaval on an enormous scale. I am struck by the fact that 50 million women will have achieved menopause by 2013. Since we, as women, are one with the earth, is our massive, collective change Her Change as well? Can we moderate her hot flashes? Give her ease from flooding? Soothe her emotional uproar? Emerge transformed together after our changes? How will we do it? With drugs, against the problems? With nature, blessed by all we are given? Will it matter to the Earth, Gaia, what choices I make in my menopause? What stories I tell myself? What I tell other women? ~ Susan Weed New Menopausal Years ~ Wise Woman Way

From The Muse

Well….if Gaia’s Change is going to be anything like mine has been……we are all so in trouble.  Seriously, just throw the booze, cigarettes and chocolate through the door and rrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn. 

May as well, get some exercise cause there’s going to be no place to hide.

Achieved menopause…..yah, I gotta put that on my next job application.

Relax and enjoy your hot flashes. Ride them like waves, feel them in your spine, ski the edges of your flushes, honor the volcanic heat of your core. ~ Susan Weed

 STFU Susan!  Really.  Did our Grandmothers have to put up with this crap?  NO. They got on with it.  In corsets!

Postcards from the Sedge & Bee

Image sourced from Ruawai Library click here for review of the book

Egeria or Aetheria (often called Sylvia) was a Gallaeci or Gallic woman who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land about 381–384. She wrote an account of her journey in a long letter to a circle of women at home which survives in fragmentary form in a later copy. This may have been the first formal writing by a woman in Western European Culture.

Much of the surviving information about Egeria comes from a letter written by the 7th century Galician monk Valerio of Bierzo. He praises Egeria and identifies her as a nun, perhaps because she addresses her account to her “sorores” (Latin for “sisters”) at home. However, others (including Hagith Sivan, 1988) have pointed out that during Egeria’s time it was common to address fellow lay Christians as “sisters” and “brothers.” Valerio may also have believed her to be a nun because she went on such a pilgrimage, although lay women of the time are known to have engaged in such religious tourism.

Those who suggest that Egeria was not a monastic claim that there is much to suggest that she was not a nun, including: her freedom to make such a long pilgrimage and to change plans as it suited her, the high cost of her pilgrimage, her level of education, and her subject matter which focused on the sights and not miracles like letters we have by monks at that time. Realistically, however, considering social constraints on women at the time, these points make it equally likely that she was a nun, since such social freedoms were not as available to middle-class women within their households, and such lone pilgrimages were rare among lay women at the time and miracles may well have been recorded in other parts of the texts. Ignored by those who argue that Egeria was a layperson is the fact that she spent over three years and was in no rush to return home, which would indicate that she was not middle-class, but either financially self-sufficient alone, or more possibly a monastic such as a gyrovague, or “wandering monastic” as described in the rule of St Benedict, who travels from monastery to monastery.

Egeria wrote down her observations in a letter now called Itinerarium Egeriae, or the Travels of Egeria. It is sometimes also called Peregrinatio Aetheriae (the Pilgrimage of Aetheria) or Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta (Pilgrimage to the Holy Lands) or some other combination. The middle part of Egeria’s writing survived and was copied in the Codex Aretinus, which was written at Monte Cassino in the eleventh century, while the beginning and end are lost. This Codex Aretinus was discovered in 1884 by the Italian scholar Gian Francesco Gamurrini, who found the manuscript in a monastic library in Arezzo. Egeria describes the monks, many holy places and geographical points in her travels and even the early details of the liturgical practices of the church at Jerusalem.

The manuscript has been translated several times, but perhaps the most recommended translation for the average reader is John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels: Newly Translated (1999), especially since it includes supporting documents and notes. Another translation of Egeria’s writing for the average reader is the Gingras edition in the Ancient Christian Writers series.

The Itinerarium Egeriae has provided scholars with valuable information about developments in the grammar and vocabulary of Vulgar Latin. For example, expressions such as “deductores sancti illi” (“those holy guides” meaning “the holy guides”) help to reveal the origins of the definite article now used in all the Romance languages (except Sardinian) – such as French (“les saints guides”) or Italian (“le sante guide”). Similarly, the use of ‘ipsam’ in a phrase such as “per mediam vallem ipsam” (“through [the] middle of [the] valley itself”) anticipates the type of definite article (“péri sa mesanía de sa bàdhe”) that is found in Sardinian (“sa limba sarda”) – at least in its standard form.

Egeria’s record of her travels to the Holy Land also provides a late 4th century account of liturgical worship in Palestine. The liturgical year was in its incipient stages at the time of her visit. This is invaluable because the development of liturgical worship (e.g. Lent, palm or passion Sunday) reached universal practice in the 4th century. Egeria provides a first hand account of practices and implementation of liturgical seasons as they existed at the time of her visit. This snapshot is before universal acceptance of a December 25 celebration of the nativity of Jesus; this is very early and very helpful in cataloging the development of annual liturgical worship.

~ Sourced from Wikipedia

Want More?

The Palestine Pilgrim’s Text Society translation of The Pilgrimage of S. Silvia of Aquitania to the Holy Places.

She Who Holds Nuts Between Her Toes

Psalm 23

The Earth is my Mother.
I shall not want.
She embraces me in her green pastures,
She enfolds me in the still waters of her womb.
In her, I am reborn.

She guides me with her gentle wisdom
For hers are the mysteries of life and death.
Even as I descend ever into her depths
I shall not fear the darkness
For she is in me, with me, and all around me.
She is my light, my guide,
My soul and my deliverer.

She is the wheat field that sustains me.
She is the gurgling stream that washes me clean.
She kissed me with dew underneath the Moon.
Her anointings mark my soul forever.
My cup of joy overflows.

Surely the Lady of Love and Light
Will carry me all the days of my life,
And when my time has come to return to the ground,
I shall dwell nestled against her bosom forever.

Orignially published in “A Philosophy of Wicca” by Amber Fisher.

Name something you wish you had never thrown away.

My Boomerang

Daughter of Persephone

Artist: John William Waterhouse

Daughter of Persephone is a term for daughters who grew up with a  ‘mentally ill’ mother, a medicated mother, a collapsed mother.  Consider the Mother archetype and the ‘drop-down menu’ of these other aspects, and you may get an idea of the layers of splintering to the Mother/Caregiver archetypal energies.

I really like this description: it is  a potent archetype to connect to, for it sumons the healing energy of the pre-dynastic Egyptian Hekat:

It is believed that her powerful position was derived from the Egyptian mid-wife goddess Heqit, Heket, or Hekat, who in turn evolved from the heq or tribal matriarch of pre-dynastic Egypt, who was a wise-woman in command of all hekau or “mother’s Words of Power.” 

Festivals and Celebrations

• On August 13 in Greece at the House of Storms and Fertility. It was held to aid in keeping the harvest storms from destroying the harvest.
• In Italy by the lake of Avernus, there was a scared dark grove of Hecate. In private worship to her followers were offered Hecate’s suppers. The leftovers were placed outdoors as offerings to this goddess and her hounds.

~Sourced from Sibylline Order of Wicca

Love it~ a scared dark grove!  That’s a typo by the Sibyllines.

mother’s Words of Power ~ think about it. The things our mothers say to us that sting, rankle, rub and wound.  Hecate’s mojo is the antidote ~ hair of the dog!

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”

Well…..I guess that depends on if your name is Shirley

Shirley Ardell Mason "Sibyl"

The life of Shirley Ardell Mason was chronicled by Arthur Flora Rheta Schreiber in the book “Sybil”. It was published in 1973 and then made into a television movie in 1976, starring Sally Field. Mason’s real name was not used in order to protect her identity. In the early 1950s, Mason was a student at Columbia University and had long suffered from blackouts and emotional breakdowns, and had started therapy with psychiatrist Cornelia B. Wilbur. It was their psychotherapy sessions together that was the basis of the book. Wilber diagnosed and treated her for multiple personality disorder, with, reportedly, up to 16 co-existing personalities.

According to Wikipedia, Shirley Mason had at least 16 different personalities:

• Sybil Isabel Dorsett: a depleted person; the waking self.
• Victoria Antoinette Scharleau: nicknamed Vicky; a self-assured, sophisticated, attractive blonde; the memory trace of Sybil’s selves.
• Peggy Lou Baldwin: an assertive, enthusiastic, and often angry pixie with a pug nose, a Dutch haircut, and a mischievous smile.
• Peggy Ann Baldwin: a counterpart of Peggy Lou with similar physical characteristics; she is more often fearful than angry.
• Mary Lucinda Saunders Dorsett: a thoughtful, contemplative, maternal, homeloving person; she is plump and has long dark-brown hair parted on the side.
• Marcia Lynn Dorsett: last name sometimes Baldwin; a writer and painter; extremely emotional; she has a shield-shaped face, gray eyes, and brown hair parted on the side.
• Vanessa Gail Dorsett: intensely dramatic and extremely attractive; a tall redhead with a willowy figure, light brown eyes, and an expressive oval face.
• Mike Dorsett: one of Sybil’s two male selves; a builder and a carpenter, he has olive skin, dark hair, and brown eyes.
• Sid Dorsett: one of Sybil’s two male selves; a carpenter and a general handyman; he has fair skin, dark hair, and blue eyes.
• Nancy Lou Ann Baldwin: interested in politics as fulfillment of biblical prophecy and intensely afraid of Roman Catholics; fey; her physical characteristics resemble those of the Peggys.
• Sybil Ann Dorsett: listless to the point of neurasthenia; pale and timid with ash-blonde hair, an oval face, and a straight nose.
• Ruthie Dorsett: a baby; one of the lesser developed selves.
• Clara Dorsett: intensely religious; highly critical of the waking Sybil.
• Helen Dorsett: intensely afraid but determined to achieve fulfillment; she has light brown hair, hazel eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips.
• Marjorie Dorsett: serene, vivacious, and quick to laugh; a tease; a small, willowy brunette with fair skin and a pug nose.
• The Blonde: nameless; a perpetual teenager; has blonde curly hair and a lilting voice.

Interesting archetypes there.