Friday Night Miscellany

Hola Darlings! The weekend is here, yippee! I don’t care if it’s cold and damp outside, tomorrow I’m going to rake up all the branches and twigs and leaves blown down by the nor’westers that blew threw here last week and sent the temperatures plunging to "seasonal." The holidays will soon be upon us and I’m feeling the need to spruce the place up – first finishing up the work outside and then tackling the inside, which has been sadly neglected all summer! Goddesschess' Isis is a member of the Cherokee Nation. When he was alive, The Chief sometimes called her Pocahontas. He called me Patton – go figure. LOL! It does seem to be the case that the monument-building civilizations in Central and South America have garnered the most attention from archaeologists, historians and anthropologists. But we’ve always been interested in things Native American in North, Central and South America. One of these years (ahem) I WILL finish my articles about some very interesting Native American board games that Stewart Culin and other ethnographers wrote about around the turn of the 20th century. I’ve only been working on them for the past two-plus years. Patience is a virtue… In honor of Isis/Pocahontas, here’s an overviewish article about Native American Mysticism. Anyone out there read Carlos Castenada in college? I did. I don’t remember what class it was – Comparative Literature? Creative Writing? I had a TA who had us read the strangest books, including Castenada. To this day, I don’t know if he was full of baloney and making most of it up, or fully in-tuned with the "other world" – or whatever you’d like to call it (the part of existence we don’t see with physical eyes, the part that is dealt with through the prism of religious and metaphysical beliefs). I don’t remember most of what he wrote about, except there always seemed to be a crow hanging about (they hang about here at my house too, but I think it’s because I feed them) – and I DO remember this. He wrote about what he called "the Will" – which was centered in the gut, the belly above the navel. What he had to say about that being the place from which one could manifest things into the physical world by concentrating intent – "will" if you will (okay, bad pun) – through that center gut area – well, that just struck such a chord with me. I felt instinctively that this was truth I was reading. I still remember my reaction when I first read his words about "the Will" – I got shivers up and down my spine! That’s always a sure-tell way for me to know I’ve smacked into something real, in a sort of surreal way. Doesn’t make much sense, I suppose, but I know it’s true nonetheless. Anyway, I believe that "the Will" Castenada wrote about is the same concept the ancients were talking about in the metaphor of a "golden chord" which issued forth from somewhere around one’s belly-button. I also believe that during Medieval times the concept was rediscovered – but a bit miscontrued – and that is where we can see drawings of people "floating around" with golden chords issuing forth from their navels. Ohmygoddess! Just saw this one over at The Daily Grail. We’ve all heard about the "Curse of the Pharaohs" which actually WERE curses placed upon the tombs to protect them from violators - unfortunately, purely ineffective against ancient tomb robbers but seemingly amazing effective against Carter’s crew 3000 years later, LOL! Here’s a new curse – the curse of – OZTI THE ICEMAN. Hey hey hey, The Iceman Cometh… Tunguska has been in the news off and on for the past year and more – not your run of the mill news that everyone SHOULD read (but do not); nope, I’m talking about the kind of news I read, LOL! Well, the venerable National Geographic has now published a fascinating story about the discovery of the actual crater which is – surprise surprise – a LAKE with a cone-shaped bottom. Ooooh la la!