Kate Braun : (New) Moon Musings

New moon and solar eclipse. Photo by maharani_r / photobucket.
Moon Musings:
New Moon and Solar Eclipse
(Sunday, July 11, 2010)

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / July 5, 2010

[I have been researching, gathering data, putting the data in some sense of order, and pondering the moon’s affect on Planet Earth and its inhabitants for some time. The result is a collection of lore, facts, suggestions, and recommendations that come to you under the title “Moon Musings." I trust you will find these messages interesting and informative. If you have any moon lore you would like to share with me, please send it to kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.]

A new moon is a time of beginnings, making plans, and setting forces in motion with the goal of achieving your purpose by the next new moon. Eclipses, whether solar or lunar, represent a perfect union of sun and moon (also masculine and feminine energies).

We can also see balance in the combination of day (Sunday, the Sun’s day, much masculine fire and action) and astrological sign (Cancer, a water sign, with feminine characteristics of nurturing and caring). It is good to think of each new moon as a time to start making things happen!

Focus your attention on security, affection, family, and children, positive growth in all aspects of the word “growth." Part of this focus is recognizing the things in our lives that are no longer needed or useful. This can be as simple as cleaning out a closet or as complicated as deciding to change patterns of behavior.

Since this moon phase acts as a doorway between our past and future, it can be helpful to ritualize the clearing out and the bringing in. Invite close friends to help you celebrate; you do not need to emulate the Cherokee women who dance from the first sighting of the New Moon until it sets to have a magickal time.

New Moons always rise at sunrise, so anytime during the day is good for action. Just be sure to finish your activities by sunset. Start with what you choose to eliminate; finish with what you want to bring in.

Some examples of what you might choose to release: unhealthy eating and drinking patterns, putting off until tomorrow what you could have done today, buying new before using up the old. Some examples of what you might choose to start: an exercise program, enrolling in a class or seminar, reorganizing kitchen drawers and cabinets.

If you are a recent parent, consider holding your newborn child up to the light of the new moon as you give thanks for the new life you are now blessed with. Lore says this is a ritual that brings luck and long life to the child. Other Lore says it is considered lucky to move into a new home during a New Moon as prosperity will increase as the moon waxes. This does not mean complete the move in one day; New Moon energy may be utilized for 3½ days after the first appearance of the New Moon.

Edgar Cayce said “Mind is the builder." This is another way to say that things begin with ideas. Each New Moon brings you the opportunity to turn an idea into an action. Your ideas can make a powerful impact on your life, if you choose to let them.

[Kate Braun's website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.]

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Kate Braun : Summer Solstice Seasonal Message

Summer Solstice celebration at Stonehenge, 2005. Photo by Andrew Dunn / Time Machine by Heather Pringle.
Summer Solstice:
Mother Earth's balancing act

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / June 21, 2010

“Summer breeze makes me feel fine,
blowin’ thru the jasmine of my mind.”

Monday, June 21, 2010, marks the Summer Solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the year. This season is a time for contemplating the balancing act Mother Earth performs year-round: light brings activity, growth, expansion; dark is for withdrawal, to rest and renew. This year the Summer Solstice comes at the beginning of a week that culminates on Saturday, June 26, 2010, with a Full Mead Moon and a lunar eclipse. Magick will be afoot for the entire week.

This is a fire festival that prohibits sharing fire, so candles would not be good party favors. It is also taboo on this day to sleep away from home (out-of-town guests have a temporary “home” wherever they are staying) and to neglect animals.

Decorate the celebratory area using the colors white, red, golden yellow, green, blue, and tan. Use light blue, green, and yellow candles on your table and altar. Yellow is the color for prosperity, so use lots of this color in all its hues. Sunflowers, seashells, sun wheels, summer fruits and potpourri may be used as you choose to enhance the decor.

Any herbs gathered or harvested on this day are said to be exceptionally potent. You may consider sharing your herbal harvest with your guests: small bunches of herbs tied with a yellow ribbon make lovely party favors. Herbs favored for this celebration include: chamomile, fennel, hemp, lavender, pine, roses, St. John’s Wort, wisteria, verbena.

Create a menu featuring yellow or orange food, fresh fruits (especially lemons and oranges), veggies (especially summer squash), and pumpernickel bread. Flaming foods are also appropriate. Traditionally, ale, mead, and fresh fruit juice, in addition to plenty of water, are the appropriate drinks to provide or ask your guests to bring.

The Goddess is now matron, ripe with pregnancy. This is a time to celebrate vitality, creativity, health, abundance. It is a festival of Light, of energy, of fertility for crops and animals as well as humans, a time to celebrate both work and play.

If you are able to build a fire outdoors, do your best to use some fir and/or oak as they are traditional woods for this season. Throw some herbs onto the fire and, using a feather, waft the smoke about yourself, your guests, and whatever pets may be present. You may use whatever herbs are readily available, but preferred herbs are: mistletoe, vervain, St. John’s Wort, pansy, lavender, mugwort, hemp, thyme, pine.

Pluto is retrograde until mid-September and a Pluto retrograde is a good time to catch up unfinished business; therefore, amulets which have lost their usefulness should be destroyed on this day by casting them into the ceremonial fire. When cool, these ashes should be scattered, an activity which brings blessings to the land.

Field and Forest elves, sprites, and fairies are more present at this time, so be sure to include them in your plans and set out a bit of food and herbs for them.

[Kate Braun's website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.]

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Kate Braun : Beltane Seasonal Message

Beltane. Image by Janna / deviantArt / Kuoma-stock.
Fire and fertility:
The Goddess is receptive to Lord Sun

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / April 23, 2010

“O doo not tell the priest our plight,
For he would call it sin,
For we’ve been out in the woods all night,
A’conjuring summer in.”

Friday, April 30, 2010, closely following the Full Planting Moon on April 28 is Beltane, aka Roodmas, May Day, Walpurgisnacht, and May Eve. Lady Moon starts her 3rd Quarter, in Scorpio, a Fixed Water Sign. Friday is Freya’s day and Freya is a goddess of fertility, among other things, so the emphasis on planting and generation is interesting.

In the Long Ago, Beltane traditionally marked the beginning of Summer. “Bel” is an ancient Sun God name and “Tan” means Fire. This is a fire festival as well as a fertility festival. If possible, celebrate outdoors. The Goddess is now Matron, ripe and receptive to Lord Sun’s attentions, and as we celebrate the changing season we also celebrate the new life to come from their union.

Decorate with flowers, especially roses. Use mirrors to reflect Lord Sun’s light. Representations of honeybees will indicate the fertility aspect of your festivities. Braid your hair and/or beard and wear braided ribbons or cords as part of your attire. Macrame work is also acceptable: the joining of two strands to create a third is another way to represent the union of God and Goddess. Dress yourself, your table, and your altar primarily in white, dark green, and red; use other colors of your choice for accent colors. At this celebration, all colors are appropriate.

Let your menu include dairy foods, sweets of all kinds. breads, cereals, all red fruits, green salads, and honey. As it is taboo to give away fire or food on this day, if you host a pot-luck party, please ask that any leftovers be taken home by whomever brought the dish.

If you have an outdoor fire, when it is reduced to embers toss healing and protective herbs and incense such as rosemary, frankincense, and vanilla on the embers and use a feather or a feather fan to direct the smoke around all your guests. If this is not possible, light a charcoal disc and put it in a safe container such as a cauldron, adding the herbs and incense to the charcoal when it is ready, then fanning the smoke around the room and all those present.

As at Samhain, Beltane is a time when the veil between worlds is very thin. It is a time of Great Magick, The powers of elves and fairies are growing and will reach their peak at the Summer Solstice. Keep these entities content and happy by planting (or allowing to grow) clover, lobelia, red carnations, heliotrope, foxglove, and mushrooms.

Creating a garden shrine by decorating a living tree or bush with bells and ribbons will please fairies and nature spirits who, in turn, will protect your garden and outdoor spaces. This is an activity in which both you and your guests can participate; leftover ribbons and bells may become party favors your guests may take home and use to decorate their own gardens.

[Kate Braun's website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.]

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Kate Braun : Vernal Equinox Seasonal Message

The egg and the emergence of Lord Sun: Egg tulip image from uphilldowndale.
Vernal Equinox:
Honor Eoster, the goddess of Spring

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / March 11, 2010

Every day’s another dawning/
Give the morning winds a chance/
Always catch your thunder yawning/
Lift your mind into the dance.

Saturday. March 20, 2010, is the Vernal Equinox/Ostara/Lady Day. Lady Moon is in her first quarter, in Taurus, the fixed Earth sign.

The name Ostara comes from the Indo-European root “aus” which gives us Eos (the maiden aspect of the Goddess, also the name of a Greek goddess of the dawn) and Aurora (Roman dawn goddess, also the name of Sleeping Beauty). Taurus’ energy bonds us with the earth, enforces our connection to the earth, reminds us we are dependent on the earth. I recommend that your Ostara celebration acknowledge this deep, stubborn, earthy aspect of the season.

We are still welcoming Lord Sun and encouraging his continuing growth, so burning candles and/or a fire is appropriate. However, since Ostara honors Eoster the goddess of Spring, a balance of masculine and feminine energies is required in your celebration. Using a solar cross (one with arms of equal length) in your decorations will do nicely in this respect.

Pink, light yellow, and light green are your first color choices for your dress and decoration, with all pastel shades being appropriate as accent colors. Other decorations may include living plants, eggs (both real and artificial), and rabbit images.

Eggs are an important part of this celebration as the Earth continues to be reborn and the egg is a symbol of rebirth.

An activity you and your guests may care to pursue involves egg imagery. Let each guest pick a hard-boiled egg from a basket serving as a centerpiece at your table and share this lore with them: the yolk and white of a hard-boiled egg represents the Sun hidden in the worm of the White Goddess.

We crack the shell (all crack shells), symbolizing the cracking of winter’s ice. We peel the white (all peel away the white), symbolizing the melting of the snow, freeing the golden yolk that represents Lord Sun emerging from his wintry seclusion. We share bits of egg (each guest gives a bit of egg to his neighbors at the table), sharing in Lord Sun’s rebirth as we eat (all eat the bits of egg).

Another ritual associated with this celebration is to bury a real egg, cooked or raw, in the east corner of your garden. This is said to bring fertility to the garden.

Put eggs at the center of your menu. Serve quiches, custards, egg salad, deviled eggs; accompany them with ham, cheeses, toasted pumpkin seeds and/or pine nuts, sprouts, leafy green vegetables, and hot cross buns. And don’t forget some chocolate for dessert. Eoster is fond of chocolate; eating some honors her.

[Kate Braun's website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.]

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Ray Reece : A Luddite's Prayer to Gaia

"Space Junk" by Todd M. Bacastow / academics.uww.edu.
Stop the (lunar) madness:
A Luddite's prayer to Gaia

By Ray Reece / The Rag Blog / February 16, 2010

In the New York Times Online of 11 February, columnist Ross Douthat writes disapprovingly in his blog of his suspicion that Barack Obama is hellbent on terminating the U.S. "manned spaceflight" program administered by NASA. He quotes a chap named Christopher Caldwell to the effect that the "decision to abandon moon exploration has 'decline' written all over it." Meaning the decline of the American empire.

Douthat bitterly adds that "the decision in question belongs to all of us, and not just to Barack Obama. The administration wouldn’t be cutting the manned spaceflight program if Americans were still enthusiastic about going to the stars -- if space exploration still occupied a privileged place in our imagination, if our jocks still wanted to be astronauts and our nerds still wanted to build rockets. Obama is simply bowing to our culture’s priorities."

I was so thrilled by this speculation that I fired off a comment on Douthat's post. I saw the next day that my comment was #83 out of 87, and not a single reader had "recommended" it. Thus did I taste oblivion again as a sender of dispatches to America's media paragons. And I asked myself: Is it not for such reasons as this that we freethinkers and malcontents have brave new alternatives like The Rag Blog? I offer herewith my slightly edited comment on Ross Douthat's post that day.

A few months ago, when NASA divulged its intent to resurrect its manned lunar program, indeed to establish a permanent humanoid "colony" on the moon, I gnashed my teeth and rent my clothes. I had the same reaction to photos I saw of a dust plume rising from the spot on the moon where NASA deliberately crashed a toxic rocket, ostensibly in search of ice on the moon, i.e. water, wherewith to quench the thirst of the future colonists.

The prospect of NASA's humanoids setting their leaden feet on Mars is equally repugnant to me. I pray to Gaia, the Greek goddess of the biosphere, that Ross Douthat is correct in his assumption that the U.S. manned spaceflight program is now in its death throes. I pray to Gaia that Russia and China don't scramble to fill the void. I pray to Gaia that the "space tourism" enterprises of ego-maniacs like Richard Branson crash on the rocks of global economic contraction.

The launching of humanoids into space, starting with Sputnik in 1957, has always been above all a manifestation of Homo sapiens' insatiable lust to dominate, intimidate and conquer. Likewise, most of NASA's criminally expensive efforts in space have simply been extensions of the same American imperialist impulse that wiped out the Indians, enslaved the Africans, incinerated the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killed 2 million Vietnamese a couple decades later, invaded Iraq on the warpath to oil reserves, and led the way in laying waste to so much of planet Earth and its biosphere that the survival of Homo sapiens itself is now in question.

Withal, I pray to Gaia that Barack Obama's attempt to phase out NASA's manned spaceflight program, if that's what he's doing, will be but the first of many steps toward a healthier, saner, more civilized world. Instead of gigantism, like the idiotic "space shuttle," let there be human scale. Instead of arrogance, let there be humility. Instead of bluster and hubris, let there be quiet reverence for all living things. Instead of competition and conquest, let there be fellowship, let there be sharing, let there be love and peace in the universe.

[Ray Reece is affiliated with the World Coalition for Local and Regional Self-Reliance. He is a former columnist for The Budapest Sun and author of The Sun Betrayed: A Report on the Corporate Seizure of U.S. Solar Energy Development, among other published works. His most recent book is Abigail in Gangland, a novel. He is currently based in Cagli, Italy.]

• Also see"Surrealist Group : No War on the Moon!" by The Surrealist Group / The Rag Blog / August 20, 2009.

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Kate Braun : Candlemas Seasonal Message

Candlemas. Image from Judeness's Weblog.
Candlemas:
We focus on Mother Earth

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / January 31, 2010

“Keep on the Sunny Side, always on the Sunny Side, Keep on the Sunny Side of Life...”

Tuesday, February 2, 2010, is Candlemas, also called Imbolc, Feast of Lights, and Brigit’s Day. February 2 is also Groundhog Day, when we are accustomed to search for assurances that Lord Sun is continuing to grow in strength and power, with promise of a fertile earth and survival assured for another year. Lady Moon is in her third quarter in Virgo, a quiet and passive participant in this season’s festivities.

The seasonal focus is on Mother Earth awakening, is about rebirth and fresh starts; many of the activities associated with Candlemas promote that message. Polishing all the shiny surfaces (mirrors, windows, tile, porcelains, and metal), sweeping out dust bunnies, and doing some general “spring cleaning” makes it easier to reflect the lights you display, which, in turn, strengthens Lord Sun’s emerging energies.

Tuesday is Tyr’s day. Tyr was a mighty warrior, a fierce fighter, and some systems associate him with Mars. Mars is retrograde at this time, not going direct until March 10. Do not be surprised if differences of opinion escalate into more energetic exchanges, but do what works best for you to ensure a calm and peaceful environment for your celebration. This could be as simple as using a smudge stick that includes lavender before your guests arrive.

Dress your altar, your table, and yourself in white, pink, and yellow. White for maiden, pink for matron, yellow for crone; the triple goddess is honored. White is also for milk, pink for the skin of new-born lambs, and yellow for the emerging Lord Sun who will nourish not only the lambs but also the Earth. All pastel colors may be used in this celebration, but they should accent, not replace, white, pink, and yellow.

One activity you and your guests may plan is to go through the entire house, starting at sunset, at the front door and moving clockwise as you open every door, window and drawer and shine a flashlight into the closets, bins, hampers, drawers, under beds and chairs. This symbolically welcomes Lord Sun into every nook and cranny and promises growth and prosperity for the emerging year.

As you begin your celebratory meal, be sure to drink a toast to Brigit, patron saint of Candlemas. She is also patroness of poets, artists, blacksmiths, and midwives, and is honored by shepherds and cattle herders. She is a fire goddess and a sun goddess. Feed your guests spicy foods (they add to Lord Sun’s fire) and milky foods (for the milk filling the udders of ewes) as well as seeds, meat or poultry, herb teas and wine. If you like, make a Brigit’s Wheel to use as part of your decoration.

Another activity you may enjoy is to hang a silk scarf in an open window; the breeze moving through the scarf charges it with positive energy. The scarf may then be used in rituals and spell-work throughout the year. If you have been gifted with more silk scarves than you need, consider performing this ritual using your “extras” and then give them as party favors to your guests, being sure to explain the action and intention associated with this gift.

[Kate Braun's website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.]

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Avatar : Contradictions of Cameron's Animation Masterpiece

The contradictions of capital-intensive history:
James Cameron's animation masterpiece

The stunning experience of nature, culture, and politics does achieve an important spiritual reversal of the Cowboys and Indians plot.

By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / December 28, 2009

"I'll sell it to you for $12 what I paid," she says to a man holding a pale sign that says "Needed, 1 ticket." Cheery thankyous move the long line forward, one step closer to Avatar on the last day of this box-office- busting Christmas weekend.

Inside the IMAX theater, just before the house lights come down there will be two more tickets to exchange. Mother and son pay cash at the door to strangers and locate a small, impromptu space where they can sit together against the wall, giving the rest of us the chance to see what we look like with our 3-D glasses on.

The one and only preview belongs to the Disney-branded Tim Burton edition of Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp. Everything about it looks brilliant in IMAX 3-D. The Mad Hatter does not fail to chuckle. Imagine seeing all of us from his point of view, looking like a wall of human flies on flypaper, all bug-eyed.

As for the main feature, which opened Dec. 18, 2009 worldwide, it is true what the fan said who chased in vain after James Cameron's grumpy autograph at LAX: "The plot is so simple a three-year-old could follow it." Yes, okay, the formula of colonial imperialism is a cosmology that every preschooler can comprehend. It used to go by the name Cowboys and Indians.

Something about Cameron's capital-intensive mythology is laudable for a Hollywood Blockbuster. The stunning experience of nature, culture, and politics does achieve an important spiritual reversal of the Cowboys and Indians plot. The audience is skillfully maneuvered into anti-imperialist sympathies so that we can tearfully commit to an improbable reversal of the kind of history that any three-year-old knows.

I came away thinking that I might like to try the Xbox version of the Avatar adventure, with opportunities to win battles of liberation using fantastic weapons upon exotic landscapes. Of course, I realized as I was pulling out my car key that a more effective spiritual reversal would have me renouncing all my capital-intensive desires and the battles they advance.

A truly improbable Avatar reversal would produce a global back-to-nature movement liberated from plastic 3-D glasses because something like "real nature" was being returned to its sacred center of attention. "I see you," we would say to all living things. Cameron's deeper vision suggests that all living things would be able to sigh a biologically verifiable response of collective awareness: "And I see you."

At the high point of the plot's arc, a masculine body of "skin" touches the feminine surface of a producer's fantasy. In that very moment, the saturated hues of Avatar’s animation affirm what the plot renounces. Experience moves relentlessly toward the desire to be more immersed in the jungle of technology than we already are.

At any rate, the contradictions of the Hollywood Blockbuster are not proprietary to Cameron. They are the contradictions of capital-intensive history itself. With few exceptions here and there, audiences have not failed to purchase their Avatar tickets in advance.

[Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at gmosesx@gmail.com.]

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Kate Braun : Yule Seasonal Message

Yule: Lord Sun emerges

“What you envision will bloom in the pale moonlight...”

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / December 15, 2009

Monday, December 21, 2009, is Yule, the shortest day and longest night of the year, when Lord Sun once again emerges from The Time That Is No Time. Lady Moon is in her first quarter; first-quarter moons are an auspicious time to make plans for rituals that will be implemented in the second quarter and completed by the full moon.

This year the next Full Moon in December (called a Wishing Moon and also a Blue Moon because it is the second full moon in the month) coincides with New Year’s Eve, a traditional time to consider what the coming year’s focus shall be for you. I recommend scheduling some time during your Yule celebration to visualize what you want to manifest in 2010.

You should write these goals on a piece of paper, twist the paper into a spiral, hang it on your holiday tree until New Year’s day, then bury it under a living tree in your yard (your guests will take their spirals with them and perform the rest of the ritual in their own homes). As the living tree grows, so will your plans for the coming year.

Yule is a fire festival. In the Long Ago, people went into the forests and cut their own Yule Log, using the saved remnants of the previous season’s Yule Log to help ignite it. This is not as easy as it once was, and part of the Yule lore is that the log must not be bought. If you have a fireplace or outdoor grill, you may designate any branch that has fallen into your yard or been pruned from any of your trees as your Yule Log; if you are not building a fire, try to incorporate some dry wood from your yard into decorations that surround the red, white, and green candles you light on your altar and table. The intent will serve just as well.

Use the colors red, white, and green in all your decorations, dress, and party favors. Red for Lord Sun; white for the snow his fire will melt; green for the new growth that will emerge when the snow melts. Use holly, ivy, and mistletoe as well as fir boughs in your decorations. These plants invite the Nature Sprites to join the celebration.


A sprig of holly near the front door invokes good fortune for the coming year; a piece of mistletoe hung over the front door prompts the ceremonial “kiss of peace” that is given to each guest as they arrive. Other decorations may include pomander balls and eight-spoked wheels (and since the eight reindeer that pull Santa Claus’ sleigh represent the eight-spoked Wheel of Life, reindeer statuary is also appropriate to incorporate into your decorating scheme).

Your menu should include roast root veggies (potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips), roast meats (pork, beef, turkey, goose), nuts, apples, pears, Wassail, ginger tea. Make toasts both remembering the passing year and welcoming the coming year.

Please remember that there are two retrogrades starting during December that could interfere with your pleasant plans: Mars retrogrades from December 20 to March 10, 2010, and Mercury retrogrades from December 26 to January 15, 2010. A Mars retrograde makes us get angry more easily; a Mercury retrograde creates problems with communication, transportation, and all things electronic, including the brain. During the Yule season, therefore, it will be easier to misunderstand/misinterpret what you are hearing and/or reading and/or seeing as well as to get angrier as a result of the misunderstanding/misinterpretation. I strongly urge each of you to do your best to prevent molehills from growing into erupting volcanoes! This is a time of peace, not war.

This season is about rebalancing, frequently symbolized as a ritual dance between the Holly King (king of the waning year) and the Oak King (king of the waxing year). Neither king can exist without the other; they are interdependent, and the steps of their dance weave a pattern older than time. You and your guests may choose to incorporate dance into your festivities as a gesture of the rebalancing we all do at this season.

[Kate Braun's website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.]

Reminder: The first local Metaphysical Fair of 2010 is on January 9 & 10, 2010, at the Radisson Hotel, 6000 Middle Fiskville Rd., Austin, TX (between Highland Mall and Lincoln Village). The annual Prediction Panel that is part of this fair will be on Friday evening, January 8, 2010, at 7 p.m. in the lecture room at the Radisson. The Prediction Panel is free. For more information, go to the Out and Above with Kate page of my website.

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Greg Moses : Thanksgiving and the Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh Series, Number 5, 1943, lithograph, Carlos Merida, from Art Museum of the Americas.
A Thanksgiving day well made:
We remember the Popol Vuh

By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / November 26, 2009

Crawling down below Meauan Mountain, where ground meets sea level, the first grandson of America whispers a plot that will bury a bad god forever. The crawling insurrectionist is Hunahpu, Jr. and there on the whiteness of a giant pyramid stone at Mirador, Guatemala, you can see the young genius at work, with the head of his father strapped tight to his sash.

If Hunahpu, Jr. does not get the words exactly right, if the crab that he conjures from flagstone and bromeliad does not obey precisely, then the arrogant clan of old gods will persist one day longer. Zipacna, who calls himself the mountain maker, will not be buried under the weight of his own prideful production. Hunahpu’s grandmother will have to mark the day wasted.

Because it falls now to the grandson to conquer the wicked gods in grandmother’s name, we watch this subterranean subterfuge through grandmother’s x-ray eyes. That dirty god Zipacna must be teased into submission and buried face up. Since this is the fifth time the good gods have experimented with the creation of humankind -- if we count the chattering creatures, the mud people, the stick people, and the decapitated generation of Hunahpu, Sr. -- we can see how grandmother is running out of options.

Of course we also know that Hunahpu Jr. is the star of a long and proud story that ends happily with our corn-fed existence above ground. Like some 2,300-year-old serial drama, the story of the Popol Vuh wraps around the base of the Mirador pyramid, its images of hope reflected across the surface of a memoried waterwork. Onward and upward the story unwinds, until life triumphs over death. The ball-game episodes would play well on ESPN.

CNN dramatizes this year’s archaeological sensation by raising a specter of suspicion. "Some say" that the Popol Vuh was never really handed down to us by Mayans. "They say" it could be a post-conquest corruption. True enough, Christian officials of Yucatan burned all the Mayan libraries during the 1570s. Why would they not attempt to displace Mayan memory with fraud? But there are all kinds of Christians making history, and the carving at Mirador seems to prove that the priest who made it his business to preserve the Popol Vuh circa 1701 wrote down authentic words.

Conflict and suspicion are good for a story and serve to sell the pictures that come with it. But in the case of the Popol Vuh there was no need to worry very much about the authenticity of its ancient genius. Raphael Girard after three decades of experience in the Mayan regions learned to see the Popol Vuh everywhere he looked. It is the classic text of America and its heart beats behind the life of native cultures up and down the Western Hemisphere. Corn, beans, tobacco, rubber balls, and spirits coming at you from six directions of every crossroads -- don’t forget up and down.

In 1948 Girard argued that the Popol Vuh is like the Mayan encyclopedia of everything: astronomy, mathematics, zoology, agriculture, history, comprehensive sex education, and the ethics of The Hunahpu Code. Get on the bus tomorrow at 5:30 a.m. and see the industrious man of America for yourself -- hombre trabajador -- still growing the world against sinister odds. On Thanksgiving we remember authentic words that refused to be forgotten. And we try to remember how to be grateful for them.

Based on the plants and animals named in the Popol Vuh, Girard argued in 1948 that the epic must have been composed along the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. In 2006 at La Blanca, archaeologist Michael Love unearthed a scooped-out four-leaf clover which he dated to 900-600 BCE. Old as the books of Moses, that clover basin would have been filled with water six feet across for ritual re-enactment of the first creation when Heart of Sky conferred with Plumed Serpent and conceived the possibility of an existence that could count the days and keep them well: grandmother’s Hunahpu.

Therefore, we mark Thanksgiving Day to rebury the gods of arrogance under the very stuff they claim to control. We drink to underground genius that makes a day well made. Messages in stone unbury themselves to whisper spirits unconquered. We remember the Popol Vuh.

[Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at gmosesx@gmail.com.]

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Claude Lévi-Strauss : 'La Pensée Sauvage'

Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss: dead at 100.
Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss:
Making sense of la pensée sauvage

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / November 4, 2009

In French sauvage means wild, not necessarily savage. In our language savage means aggressive, a value judgment left over from centuries of exterminations.

Heathens, savages, primitive people, natives. All these words describe a certain section of humanity, but they all mean something different. If confusion about our ancestral past is the price we pay to be modern, then so called “primitive man” will always be a source of much uneasiness. After the period when natives must be displaced and killed off, what do we derive from our relationship with them? Do we try in sad little ways to imitate their rituals at Boy Scout camp or on a football team?

For years the details of primitive people’s lives were catalogued by observers, anthropologists. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that one of these anthropologists, a Frenchman working for the Rockefeller Foundation, began to draw parallels from all the studies that had been made worldwide.

Claude Lévi-Strauss in the Brazilian Amazon, 1936. Photo by Apic / Getty Images.
To Claude Lévi-Strauss, the mind of the “primitive” was not a disorganized collection of confused myths and superstitions, but was in its own way searching for objective reality like all the rest of us. And the vast collection of mythology collected around the world from these types of populations could be catalogued and searched over for commonalities.

Lévi-Strauss himself did some of this pattern work, creating a new school of Western thought known as structuralism. Of course what structuralism points back to is what certain philosophers, psychologists, and poets have claimed all along: the existence of a universal human element, an originating unified matriarchy, one source and one basic pattern for all disparate human myths.

What Claude Lévi-Strauss succeeded in doing was bringing anthropology as a science to the brink of being able to understand human origins. The fact that he himself backed off before embracing the full Rousseau (Noble Savage), the absolute Carl Jung (Universal Unconscious) or the mother of all mythbreakers, Robert Graves (White Goddess), tells you right away he went too far. Two steps further and Levi-Strauss would have been back in alchemy land.

So it was that structuralism was attacked as simplistic, finally superseded by, you guessed it, “post-structuralism.” All male dominant science is ultimately one big ego-driven pissing contest. Truth can never flourish for long if we are to have neverending “progress” and new succeeding generations of intellectual leaders.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, the father of the structuralist school of anthropology died this week. He was a hundred years old.

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Dick Cheney and The Curse of the Pomegranate Seeds

Image by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog.

No one is happier than Hades, chortling down in his dark homey hell while topside the earthly GOP, Guardians of Pomegranates, urged on by Hades' emissary, Dark Dick, pass out the fruit's sweet seeds to their dwindling hard core members. . .

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / May 17, 2009

There are emerging scholarly theories about former Vice President Dick Cheney's lifelong allergy to pomegranates which could be at the center of his secretive, imperious, angry and delusional behavior and his lifelong health problems.

Mr. Cheney is part of the estimated 1.24% to 16.8% of the population considered "at risk" for having an anaphylactic reaction if they eat, are injected with or even inhale one or more allergens. Anaphylaxis comes from the Greek, meaning "against protection." Anaphylactic shock can attack those severely allergic to a bee sting, or even a pomegranate, causing a serious blockage of the airway, an extreme drop in blood pressure and can lead to death in a matter of minutes if left untreated.

For this reason, Mr. Cheney has always had within arm's reach what is commonly called a "bee sting kit" which has a preloaded syringe containing epinephrine (adrenaline) to keep the heart beating, and other compounds to keep one breathing. Early in his political career a staffer, and more recently a Secret Service agent, has constantly been at the ready with the little zippered pouch in case a bit of killer pomegranate makes it down the Veep's gullet.

So with this bit of basic Mr. Wizard science background under our belts, let's look at why Dick Cheney might have been a nice guy with, say a peanut or bee sting allergy instead of the curse of the pomegranate. It all has to do with the Greek connection.

The pomegranate features mightily in the complex Greek story of Zeus's daughter Persephone who was snatched by Zeus's brother Hades, Lord of the underworld, and taken below to become his Queen. Now, when you get snatched and taken to the dark side, the deal is that if you don't eat, you can eventually return back up to light and goodness. Persephone's mother, Demeter, became so distraught at the loss of her daughter she neglected the earth which had droughts and became barren. It got so bad that Hades relented and called Hermes to take Persephone back home to momma.

But, just as Persephone was leaving, Hades gave her a pomegranate to eat. She knew the deal about eating and not being able to return to earth, but she was famished and ate seven pomegranate seeds. Well. . . you can figure out the ending. She got to return to the happy world to be with mom and dad, but poor Persephone had cut a deal with the devil. She wound up having to return to Hades four months out of the year. It wound up giving us winter and summer, but, those damned pomegranate seeds!

Actually pomegranate juice has powerful antioxidant properties and is used to treat a variety of maladies, most notably cardiovascular disease, stroke and heart attack. Medical researchers also claim great benefit in interrupting the process of atherosclerosis which is the clogging of arteries due to excessive fat deposits.

Mr. Cheney has earned the diagnostic title of "vasculopath" with an almost 30-year history of coronary atherosclerosis, with his first heart attack when he was only 37. No one is sure when he ate his first pomegranate seeds, or how many he ate, but clearly he was damned to the dark side early on, and as a result was not even allowed to have any more of the sweet, potentially health benefiting fruit. The deal with Hades was already made.

To many, it is clear that Cheney didn't get a short four-month deal like Persephone. He clearly spends lots more time down in the underworld's dark side than she did. Cheney's official press releases have conveniently described him as being in "an undisclosed location."

His buddy Hades has lately been giving Mr. Cheney more weekend passes than in years past so he can spend more time up here in the light to appear on radio and TV to spread his dark message. He has been reveling in his angry, convoluted attacks upon truth, transparency and change by America's new Democratic leaders and majority voters.

Hades and Cheney working together, make Machiavelli's schemes pale by comparison. They have even cleverly lured Speaker Pelosi into a torturous lose-lose series of public appearances and defensive statements where her political armor has finally been pierced. . . by her own spear.

No one is happier than Hades, chortling down in his dark homey hell while topside the earthly GOP, Guardians of Pomegranates, urged on by Hades' emissary, Dark Dick, pass out the fruit's sweet seeds to their dwindling hard core members, and unsuspecting malcontents.

Hopefully Hades will soon cut out the weekend passes, and Dark Dick will return to his undisclosed location. . . for good. But he mustn't forget his bee sting kit because there is always the possibility he will eventually finally even tee off Hades, who certainly will have his pomegranate waiting for him.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Hawai‘i : Runaway Technology Vs. the Good Food Revolution

Hawaiian taro patch. Photo by Kirk Lee Aeder / HVCB Image Library.
The Good Food Revolution

On Kaua‘i, too, there are people engaged in remembering and reconnecting. Unlike the dry west side of the island, the North Shore is a lush place of almost heartbreaking beauty with a vibrant, racially mixed local culture.

By Claire Hope Cummings / March 9, 2009

The lush landscape of Hawai‘i once offered abundant food. What can these islands teach us about food and sufficiency?

The island of Kaua‘i is one of the most beautiful and fragile places on earth. From above, it looks like a vibrant green flower, lush and pulsing with life, floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The Hawaiian tourist industry calls it “The Garden Isle,” comparing it to the Garden of Eden. The image of Hawai‘i has always been sold as a “paradise.” But there is another side to life on this island, one that visitors rarely see.

The west side of this tiny island is home to the U.S. military’s Pacific Missile Range and testing grounds, part of the longstanding military occupation of the Hawaiian islands, and to the headquarters of giant agrochemical corporations Syngenta and Dupont. These corporations test and produce genetically modified crops on former sugar plantation lands here and throughout Hawai‘i, along with toxic herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. It is the very worst of America’s “agrochemical military industrial complex,” imposed on the ancient homelands of a rich traditional farming and fishing culture, in the midst of some of the world’s most precious biodiversity.

When I visited the west side of Kaua‘i in 2006, the local newspapers were full of reports of children from Waimea Canyon School who had been sickened by chemicals used on nearby test plots. As many as 60 people were affected, including teachers and staff. It happened again in 2007, with school children suffering nausea, headaches, and dizziness. In 2008, for the third time in three years, chemicals being tested for industrial agriculture sickened children and adults and sent them to clinics and the emergency room with tears in their eyes, holding their heads in their hands, or vomiting. The corporations responsible for the tests deny any role in the incidences. But the open air testing of chemicals and genetically modified crops is a now a persistent worry for people living in this small rural community. Local activists have suggested that the welcome sign at the Kaua‘i airport be changed to warn tourists of what is going on there: “Welcome to the Mutant Garden Island.” Instead of being a source of health and well-being for the land and people, the American system of industrial agriculture has become a source of problematic food and even fear.

The connection to the military is the key to understanding how this tragedy came about. Most of the toxic chemicals used in agriculture came from the implements of war, such as nerve poisons and defoliants developed during World War II. And our military has been repeatedly used to impose our system of industrial agriculture on other lands, depriving traditional farmers of their livelihoods and redirecting their natural resources to the use of U.S. business interests. American plantation owners used the military to force the monarchy of Hawai‘i out of power. The takeover of Hawai‘i—the imposition of plantation agriculture on Hawai‘i’s traditional system and the conversion of the Hawaiian people to a Western lifestyle—is a case history and a warning for all of us concerned about the future of food. We are facing an urgent problem: Given global warming, growing populations, and declining natural resources, how will we feed ourselves?

Before colonization, Hawaiians had a sophisticated system of land, water, and ocean resource use that fed populations equal to or even greater than those on several of the islands today (excluding the urban populations of O‘ahu). Now, residents of Hawai‘i import 85 percent of their food. The descendants of the first Hawaiians, like most native peoples who have been colonized, suffer from some of the worst poverty and diet-related health problems of anyone living in the United States.

The food being imported into Hawai‘i is produced, processed, packaged, and transported using enormous amounts of fossil fuels. By one measure, the current U.S. food system uses 10 times more energy than it produces in the form of food calories. Even if you like industrial agriculture, its built-in obsolescence is a problem. When oil production peaks, and prices rise again, as they inevitably must, food in Hawai‘i will become unaffordable. What will happen when the gas pumps and grocery store shelves are empty? This is a question all of us will face, sooner or later, since we are all on what David Brower called “Earth Island,” a small planet floating in a sea of space.

A Storied Land

Mythologists like Joseph Campbell tell us that many creation myths are stories about how a food plant or animal came to people, usually as a gift from their creator. But invariably, these gifts came with instructions about maintaining respect for and reciprocity with the sources of one’s food, to assure its continuing productivity. These stories are central to the formation of a culture’s core values. And they affect us now, not just in how we feed ourselves, but in how we relate to the natural world and each other.

A Hopi creation story, as told by Frank Waters in The Book of the Hopi, is a good example, illustrating the values inherent in the choices we make. As Waters explains, the continuity of the Hopi people comes from these values and the way corn forms the sacred center of their lives, kept alive in ritual and practices to this day.

Since the beginning of their existence, the Hopi have emerged through several worlds. Whenever they were overwhelmed by wickedness or corruption, their world would be destroyed. Later, they would emerge into the next world. At each emergence, the Creator would give them corn for sustenance. When the people entered the Fourth World, the one we are living in now, the Creator decided to find out how much greed and ignorance there still was among these humans. Many ears of corn were laid out of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. The people had divided into many races, and each was told to choose, according to its wisdom, the corn they would take with them into the Fourth World. They rushed forward and took different corn ears—long ears, fat ears, and ears of different colors. The Hopi held back and waited. All that was left for them was the smallest ear. But, they said, it was like “the original humble ear given them on the First World.” They recognized that this corn would be the best one to help them survive the harsh desert climate where they now lived.

Traditional people worldwide have developed long-standing symbiotic relationships among themselves, their homelands, and their foods. And their farming practices are intimately adapted to the places they inhabit. All over the Americas, people developed corn varieties that were finely tuned to local conditions. According to Boone Hallberg, a botanist and one of the world’s experts on corn, some of these varieties were drought-resistant; some withstood wind, crowding, local pests, and different soils; and some even fixed their own nitrogen. These plants are evidence of an incredible genius at work in the reciprocal relationships among people, plants, and place. New Mexican activist Miguel Santistevan describes how, in the Pueblos, each type of corn “drank” from its own river, producing seed that was specific to its own watershed.

One of the world’s most influential creation stories comes from the Book of Genesis in the Bible. It is often told incorrectly, without the warnings and prohibitions that are in the story—as if the children of Adam and Eve were entitled to control creation. Whether you read this story literally or metaphorically, it has had a powerful impact on Western thought. Many scholars believe that our current environmental conditions came about because our society interpreted this story as a license to dominate nature. When told this way, the development of our military-industrial system of agriculture makes sense. We can see the long arc of history, the search-and-destroy missions throughout the ages, including manifest destiny and the conquest of native peoples, their lands, and their well-developed integrated food systems.

And the good, no, the really wonderful news, is that all over the world, people are engaged in relearning traditional ways, weaving them into new life-enhancing technologies, and making essential ecological and economic reconnections.

We can see the gradual and painful dismembering of North America. Europeans brought with them a fragmented system of agriculture, breaking the sod, fencing, and buying and selling parcels of land. Piece by piece, they went about destroying the natural systems that gave this land its enormous fertility. Their ancestors had deforested many European countries, and they continued seeking sustenance by taking more than was returned, depleting the resources they used, and then moving on. After using up the larger landscapes, they now have turned to smaller frontiers—genes and molecules.

Genetic engineering in agriculture was developed as a way to squeeze more from corn, wheat, and rice, turning these plants into little machines. We demanded that these plants put out more and more for us, and pumped them full of chemicals and hormones. Now, almost 80 percent of corn grown in the United States is genetically modified. The rest is contaminated with GMOs, and the parent seed lines of corn are privately owned by the agrochemical companies. If we cared to learn, corn would have been able to teach us about generosity, adaptability, and resiliency. But rather than learn from nature, we still believe that our limited human imagination is sufficient and that we can solve systemic problems in mechanistic ways.

This approach is fundamentally flawed. Production-based solutions to hunger have failed miserably. And yet the urge to control nature seems unbounded. Farmers at the beginning of the 20th century could make a decent living. They saved and exchanged seeds, and bred their own crop varieties.

Then, in the 1920s and 1930s, a growing private seed industry used the new medium of radio advertising to heavily promote commercial hybrid seeds as the way to increase production. Hybrids can be bred to increase vigor, but they do not produce seed that is “true,” meaning that each year new hybrid seeds have to be purchased and planted. On-farm seed saving and plant breeding began to go out of fashion. Not content with just a good share of the seed market, seed companies began pushing for changes to the law, and by the end of the 20th century, farm-based seed saving and plant breeding ended. Now, sexually reproducing, living plants can be patented—a moral, biological, and legal outrage.

American commodity agriculture has become a bloated industrial machine dependent on chemical inputs and government subsidies to survive. Commodity farming is not about food for people. It’s an extractive industry, often compared to mining. It mines the soil and pollutes the water and creates mountains and rivers of waste. Soil regenerates on a slow natural timescale, about one inch of topsoil in every 500 years. The United States is losing topsoil 13 times faster than it can be replaced, costing the nation an estimated $37.6 billion in productivity losses each year. According to a recent U.S. Geological Survey, the one billion pounds of pesticides that American farmers use every year have contaminated almost all of the nation’s streams and rivers, as well as the fish living in them, with toxic cancer-causing chemicals. Fertilizers pour off farms into the Mississippi watershed, stimulating algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico and creating a “dead zone” where nothing lives.

If science had remained publicly funded and in the hands of land grant universities committed to conducting research in the public interest, production-based innovations might have added another useful tool to farm technology. Instead, private commercial interests hijacked the research agenda and privatized its technologies. Corporations and a few foundations took over the social mechanisms for problem solving, leaving us with only for-profit solutions in the form of products. Government not only deregulated many toxic technologies; it abdicated its responsibility to protect our health and safety.

There are no brakes on this runaway technology train. The continual expansion of corporate power poses even greater looming dangers. Biotechnology, especially as used in agriculture, has been harmful enough, but nanotechnology and synthetic biology, now being developed for biofuels, promise to do far more harm than good.

Industrial agriculture contributes almost 17 percent of all greenhouse gases, along with accelerating deforestation, desertification, and profligate water use. A study released in January this year in the journal Science predicts that half of the world’s population will face food shortages by the end of this century as rising temperatures, drought, and loss of soil moisture depress crop production. Who, indeed, will be feeding us then? Monsanto, with its patented “climate-ready” crops, or the organic farmer who sells at your local farmers market?

As a Native American friend of mine used to say, “Here’s a little bit of native wisdom: If we don’t change direction pretty soon, we’ll end up right where we’ve been headed!”

Severing and Remembering

Another way to look at this rather dismal story is this: At every step of the way, we have disconnected and dismembered the intricate relationships that form the web of life. Recombinant DNA technology, for instance, cuts a genome, inserts foreign material, and severs the original evolutionary lineage of that organism.

The solution to all this severing and disconnection is re-membering, meaning “to put back together.” This is the fundamental lesson traditional peoples keep trying to teach us. They often say that they are minding the rituals that hold the world together. They say that if we want to save the places, peoples, and plants we love, we have to remember their stories. They know that the answers we seek are already available, once we begin reweaving the social and biological webs that sustain us.

Independent science supports this interconnected approach to solving problems. The biotechnology industry asked several major international institutions like the U.N. and the World Bank to study how best to feed the world. After a four-year global study, 400 experts prepared a peer-reviewed report, adopted by 60 countries, known as The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. Ironically, the report said biotechnology cannot feed the world. There is now a consensus in government and the scientific community that small-scale farming, traditional knowledge, and a focus on local economic vitality and adaptable agro-ecological methods are the optimal way forward.

And the good, no, the really wonderful news, is that all over the world, people are engaged in relearning traditional ways, weaving them into new life-enhancing technologies, and making essential ecological and economic reconnections. Young farmers, urban activists, cooks and chefs, teachers and students, community organizers, and faith groups are bringing local organic food, seed saving, and sustainable work projects into the mix. The values of the natural world—diversity, integrity, adaptability, and resiliency—are reemerging and re-entering the cultural exchange, just when we need them the most.

On Kaua‘i, too, there are people engaged in remembering and reconnecting. Unlike the dry west side of the island, the North Shore is a lush place of almost heartbreaking beauty with a vibrant, racially mixed local culture. There, the Waipa Foundation hosts a weekly farmers market selling organic local food to support its work reviving traditional foodways. Like many Native Hawaiian organizations, they have a Hawaiian-language immersion school that integrates traditional food, farming, and fishing into their curriculum. They connect local farmers with schools, which are getting young people out of the classroom and into the mud of the taro patch. Activists on the island and throughout Hawai‘i are working toward food security. They achieved a ban on genetically modified coffee and are bringing back the original “gift economy” of exchanging traditional varieties of taro.

Just up the road from the Waipa farmers market, Limahuli Garden is restoring the traditional Hawaiian land-use system called an ahupua‘a. Kawika Winter, an engaging young ethnobotanist, Native Hawaiian, and the garden’s director, says the name lima huli means “turned hand.” It refers to a Hawaiian proverb which, roughly translated, says, “If your hand is turned up, you will be hungry; if your hand is turned down, toward the soil, your belly will be full.” The up-turned hand, Winter says, is not a positive symbol for Hawaiians. It is a sign of supplication. The down-turned hand, however, represents the hard work of cultivating the land.

Winter explains that the work they are doing there is all about remembering that the land is our ancestor. “We know that the way to get through difficult times is to use what was left to us—our land and our traditional knowledge. That will carry us into the future,” he says. “This is also our gift to the world.”

[Claire Hope Cummings wrote this article as part of Food for Everyone, the Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Claire is an environmental lawyer, journalist, and the author of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds (Beacon Press, 2008).]

Source / Yes! Magazine

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Michelle Obama's Yellow Dress : Shades of Oshun

"Oshun" by Brigid Ashwood.
Oshun is an Afro-Cuban goddess of love, maternity and marriage.

By Karen Lee Wald / The Rag Blog / January 24, 2009

Since several people commented that Michelle Obama was wearing a yellow dress designed by a Cuban American, and that yellow is the color of the African and Afro-Cuban goddess or orisha, Oshun, I thought it worth passing on some information about Oshun, for whatever it is worth to you.

Specialists in the topic can add more, this is just from googling it:

Oshun -- with a nod to Wikipedia -- is beneficient and generous, and very kind. She does, however, have a horrific temper, though it is difficult to anger her. She is married to Ṣàngó, the god of thunder, and is his favorite wife because of her excellent cooking skills. One of his other wives, Oba, was her rival. They are the goddesses of the Ọṣun and Oba rivers, which meet in a turbulent place with difficult rapids.

Santería

In Cuban Santería, Oshun (sometimes spelled Ochún or Ochun) is an Orisha of love, maternity and marriage. She has been syncretized with Our Lady of Charity (La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre), Cuba's patroness. She is associated with the color yellow,

[Karen Wald edits Cuba-Inside-Out.]

Kate Betts wrote in Time:

First Lady Michelle Obama picked fashion insider Isabel Toledo, 47, to design her Inaugural ensemble. The glamorous, creamy yellow dress and matching overcoat were made of satin-backed wool guipure, a kind of lace used most often in French haute couture. Obama accessorized the look with a sparkling crystal necklace and green leather gloves and shoes. [...]

Cuban-born Toledo, who has been designing for 25 years and worked for a time at Anne Klein, is known in fashion circles as a "designer's designer" for her wit and whimsical sense of pattern, fit and fabric. The Manhattan-based designer also made the black tunic and palazzo pants that Obama wore to a fundraiser last June. But for her husband's swearing-in ceremony, Obama chose an elegantly sunny yellow, a color that for centuries has represented optimism.

Toledo, who works out of a studio on Broadway and 28th Street along with her husband, fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo, was an unlikely choice for today's ensemble because she is not a mainstream designer. In 1998 the fashion maverick stopped presenting biannual collections, instead choosing to create on her own schedule. [...]

"I was so honored to hear that she's a fan," Toledo said after learning that Obama had worn one of her designs during the campaign. "She chose to wear a dress made by a Latina and made in the U.S.," the designer told the New York Daily News. "She chose to support the industry here."

And George Spyros, in The Huffington Post.

Questions of taste aside, we think it's great that Cuban-American Toledo did the dress for the first African-American first lady: it's an inclusive gesture to our country's latinos and a hopeful nod toward our neighbors in Cuba to the south.

And, to follow the tangent, more about Oshun, this from Lowell:

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar... but if the Cuban-American designer was thinking of or under the influence of Ochun, I'd like the add this: Ochun is the most powerful, most revered oricha. She was not married to but had affairs with Chango and Oggun, was married to to Orunla, Inle Abata and Babaluaye. Chango was married to Oya Yansan. Ochun was given the river as a domain by Yemaya and Aggayu. Ochun has the last word in all affairs, so she is ONE oricha you never want to piss off, she is the oricha who always wins. Annoy Obatala, but if Ochun has your side, you will come out alright.

One of my favorite patakins [stories/folktales] is when humanity had come to dishonor the gods and be lured into new ways. When death and drought came, the people prayed to the gods for relief; none took pity, having lost faith in human beings. Uniquely, Ochun, the youngest oricha, took her beautiful messenger bird to Heaven to speak on humanity's behalf. God heard her and brought rain and relief. The beautiful bird Ochun used was forever scarred by the journey so close to the sun: this is how the vulture came to look as it does. The vulture is one of her messengers, as are the partridge and quail.

The arts of divination were the sole propriety of Orunla, until Ochun studied after him with certain limits: so while babalawos may read the full range of texts, priests of oricha retain this limit. One of Ochun's titles is Apetiba Orunla, wife of Orula, who was a king and was able to spread his divination message thanks to his wife, Ochun's study. Iyalodde [the crowned woman] is another of Ochun's titles. Just as Orula would not have had success without Ochun, his priests, the babalawos, have a special place for Ochun in their worship ... Obama?

Ochun is the only oricha of LIFE and the FIGHT FOR LIFE. Ochun is the oricha of SOCIAL JUSTICE.

Fidel is from the region of Cuba where Ochun's basilica is located. When he started fighting, his mother took offerings to the basilica for Ochun [la virgen de caridad del cobre. The persistent rumor is Fidel is a babalawo.

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It's a Narnia Christmas : A Hodgepodge of History Bound Together by Love

Drawing by Jeffrey Fisher. Copyright 2008 / New York Times.
'Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.'
By Laura Miller / December 18, 2008

Every Christmas, I re-read C .S. Lewis’s novel “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” The holiday seems like the ideal time for an excursion into my imaginative past, and so I return to the paperback boxed set of “The Chronicles of Narnia” that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was 10. For me, Narnia is intimately linked with the season.

I’m not alone. In Britain, stage productions of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” are a holiday staple, for good reason. The book rests on a foundation of Christian imagery; its most famous scene is of a little girl standing under a lamppost in a snowy wood; and Father Christmas himself makes an appearance, after the lion god Aslan frees Narnia from an evil witch who decreed that it be “always winter, and never Christmas.”

That I’m not a Christian doesn’t much hinder my enjoyment of either the holiday or the book, but the presence of Father Christmas bothered many of Lewis’s friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien, whose Middle-earth was free of the legends and religions of our world, objected to Narnia’s hodgepodge of motifs: the fauns and dryads lifted from classic mythology, the Germanic dwarfs and contemporary schoolboy slang lumped in with the obvious Christian symbolism.

But Lewis embraced the Middle Ages’ indiscriminate mixing of stories and motifs from seemingly incompatible sources. The medievals, he once wrote, enthusiastically adopted a habit from late antiquity of “gathering together and harmonizing views of very different origin: building a syncretistic model not only out of Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoical, but out of pagan and Christian elements.”

Christmas as we now know it is much the same sort of conglomeration, and when people call for a return to its pure, authentic roots, they’re missing an essential quality of the holiday. Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.

Complaints about the corruption, dilution or fundamental impiety of Christmas have been made for centuries. The Puritans so mistrusted the holiday that its celebration was outlawed in 17th-century Boston. Around the same time, the German theologian Paul Ernst Jablonski asserted that Christmas amounted to a paganization of the authentic faith because the date, Dec. 25, had been appropriated from a festival for a Roman solar god.

(Some Christian scholars, including the current pope, have actually argued that the appropriation went the other way around, and the solar festival was in fact a heathen bid to co-opt the feast day of an increasingly popular monotheistic cult.)

On the other side, non-Christians who relish the holiday like to point out that many Christmas icons — the decorated tree, the Yule log, mistletoe — were originally sacred to Celtic and Northern European pagans.

Yet even the Yuletide customs that are supposedly pagan holdovers must be taken with a grain of salt. We have no written records of the cultures from which they supposedly derive; everything we know about them comes second- and thirdhand from Roman or Christian writers pursuing their own agendas and relying, for the most part, on oral sources.

For decades, historians and folklorists have understood that oral traditions are not very reliable when they refer to anything reputed to have happened more than 100 years ago. What’s presented as hoary legend is in fact more likely a justification of present conditions than an accurate account of the past.

Druids, for example, have over the years been refashioned as the descendants of Noah, as bardic romantics, even as sexual egalitarians; in fact, much of what people think they know about the ancient beliefs and rites of Northern Europeans was concocted by early 20th-century occultist outfits like the Ancient Druid Order and Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The British historian Ronald Hutton describes this sort of thing as indicative of “the power of literary fiction over fact.” We believe what we choose to believe, and Christmas is no exception.

In recent years, popular histories like “The Battle for Christmas” and “Inventing Christmas,” have shown that many of the holiday’s most hallowed rites, traditions we think of as extending back at least as far as C. S. Lewis’s beloved Middle Ages, were invented less than 200 years ago by such 19th-century literary figures as Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore and, of course, Charles Dickens. More than Christian or pagan, Christmas is a Victorian fabrication.

Is this, though, such a bad thing? The unifying principle of Narnia, unlike the vast complex of invented history behind Middle-earth, isn’t an illusion of authenticity or purity. Rather, what binds all the elements of Lewis’s fantasy together is something more like love. Narnia consists of every story, legend, myth or image — pagan or Christian — that moved the author over the course of his life.

Our contemporary, semi-secular Christmas is similarly a collection of everything yearned for: warmth, plenty, peace, family, conviviality. Like Narnia, the holiday is a fantasy, but there are times when a fantasy is exactly what you need.

[Laura Miller, a staff writer at Salon, is the author of “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia.”]

Source / New York Times

Thanks to Jim Retherford / The Rag Blog

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