If you're pagan (and even if you're not) try and make time for this Massive Medicine Wheel Ceremony on Saturday May, 8, 2004. The Earth needs all the help it can get.

While dwelling amid the high mountains along the North American Continental Divide, Bennie LeBeau of the Eastern Shoshone tribe began to experience a torrent of dreams and visions, especially in 1999. The visions directed him to set in motion the plans for a massive Medicine Wheel Ceremony.

Over the last year Bennie has become aware of many sharply distressing changes in both land and animals at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. These changes are becoming even more ominous right now, he says, and they have prodded him into direct action to bring his visions alive.

The huge Medicine Wheel Ceremony that Bennie envisions is intended to be a mass spiritual event. The ceremony is set to take place at High Noon on Saturday, May 8, 2004 at more than 20 sacred sites in the American West, and at many other sacred sites elsewhere around the world, including Australia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Ireland, Germany, and the Middle East.

The Grand Teton peaks in Wyoming -- The Four Grandmothers Standing Tall -- will serve as the center of this Medicine Wheel. The long spine of the Rocky Mountains runs roughly North and South in the Wheel; and the circumferance reaches from California deep into America's heartland. Simultaneous prayer ceremonies at other sacred sites around world will help to re-attune the web of subtle energy pathways that envelop planet earth.

"All nations, all peoples are invited to participate," Bennie says, adding, "all nations, all peoples are needed to work together on this -- the black, white, yellow, and red nations of Mother Earth."

Namaste
Doug

In the interests of preserving the life and sanity of those new to paganism I present the following rules for casting spells on and in general just plain surviving Samhain (Halloween). Please remember that this day aboveall others is when the veil betwen the worlds is at its thinnest and spells are both more powerfull and more apt to go wrong, dreadfully, fatally wrong.

1. When it appears that you have killed the monster, NEVER, EVER go check to see if it's really dead.
2. Never read a book of demon summoning aloud, even just mumbling to yourself, if you can't read silently you have no business with such a thing anyway!
3. If your pets speak to you in Latin or any other language which they should not know, shoot them immediately. It will save you a lot of grief in the long run. However, it will probably take several rounds to kill them, so be prepared. This also applies to people who speak with somebody else's (usually deep) voice.
4. When you have the benefit of numbers, NEVER pair off or even split up and go it alone.
5. As a general rule, don't try to solve puzzles that open portals to the netherworlds.
Never stand in, on, or above a grave, tomb, or crypt. This would apply to any other house of the dead as well.
6. If you're searching for something which caused a loud noise and find out that it's just the cat, GET THE HELL OUT!
7. If appliances start operating by themselves, lights go on and off, a fire just appears in the hearth, or doors open and close by themselves - do not check for drafts, do not check for short circuits; just get out!
8. If you are experiencing the last point, why, why, why would you even think of sleeping in that house if that happened?
9. Do not take ANYTHING from the dead.
10. If you find a town which looks deserted, there's probably a good reason for it. Don't stop and look around!
11. Don't fool with recombinant DNA technology unless you're sure you know what you're doing. And even if you're sure you know what you're doing, just don't fool with it!
12. If you're running from the monster, expect to trip or fall down at least twice. Also note that, despite the fact that you are running and the monster is merely shambling along, it's still moving fast enough to catch up with you.
13. If your companions suddenly begin to exhibit uncharacteristic behavior such as hissing, fascination for blood, glowing eyes, increasing hairiness, and so on, kill them immediately.
14. Stay away from certain geographical locations, some of which are listed here: Amityville, Elm Street, Transylvania, Nilbog (you're in trouble if you recognize this one), the Bermuda Triangle, or any small town in Maine.
15. If your car runs out of gas at night on a lonely road, do not go to the nearby deserted looking house to phone for help. If you think that it is strange because you thought you had half of a tank, shoot yourself instead. You are going to die anyway, and most likely be eaten.
16. If you find that your house is built upon a cemetery, now is the time to move in with the in-laws. This applies to houses that had previous inhabitants who went mad or died in some horrible fashion, or had inhabitants who performed satanic practices in your house.
17. If you are stupid enought to stay in the house and the exorcist/whatever declares the house is "clear", your troubles have just begun.
18. Never look under the stairs. or the bed. or in the closet. or the cellar, attic.....you get the idea.
19. Don't take anything back to the lab that looks like it might hatch real soon - especially if it is transparent, something inside is moving, or it appears to be lighted from within. In the same vein, never bend over to look into anything that looks like an opening egg.
20. If you don't want to be chased by the monster (or serial killer, shark, alien, giant snake, radioactive ants, etc.)...don't wear skimpy clothes or wet T-shirts.
21. If you are being chased by a car, don't run into the building, the car will corner you and rev it's engine menacingly before destroying the house, business, police station, etc. Whereas, if you just run down the road it can't catch you.
22. Never unwrap the mummy. (See........Always good to have duct tape on-hand just in case something unravels)
23. Going faster than some barrier: sound, light, gossip...is generally bad news for someone somewhere.
24. When flying on an airplane, at night, in a storm, don't raise the shade to see what that noise out on the wing was.
25. Don't talk to sheriffs wearing reflecting sunglasses in towns that are so small the gas station has one pump.
26. Silver works - garlic doesn't.

The, er......brights certainly don't like it but then agaim they can't explain it either :-) From the Sydney Morning Herald via The Gamers Nook

Druids have been brought in to reduce the number of accidents on Austria's worst stretch of autobahn.

The Druids have put up huge roadside monoliths to restore the natural flow of "earth energy". After the one tonne pillars of white quartz were erected beside a notorious stretch of road during a secret two-year trial, the number of fatal accidents fell from an average of six a year to zero.

Gerald Knobloch, who describes himself as an archdruid, used a divining rod to inspect the 275-metre stretch of the A9 in Styria and restore "earth energy lines".

"I located dangerous elements that had disrupted the energy flow," he said. "The worst was a river which human interference had forced to flow against its natural direction. By erecting two stones of quartz at the side of the road the energy lines were restored."

The pillars had a similar function to acupuncture, he said. "Acupuncture needles also restore broken energy lines. What acupuncture does for the body, the stones do for the environment."

Harald Dirnbacher, an engineer from the motorway authority, admitted that they turned to Mr Knobloch as a last resort.

"We had put up signs to reduce speed, renewed the road surface and made bends more secure but we still kept getting accidents," he said. "At that point we couldn't think of anything else to do and decided we might as well try anything.

"I admit when we first looked at it [energy lines] we were doubtful. We didn't want people to know in case they laughed at us, so we kept the trial secret and small-scale. But it was really an amazing turnaround."

Scientists are sceptical of the claims. "Natural sciences need evidence. Whatever can't be measured, does not exist," said Georg Walach, a geophysics professor at Leoben University in southern Austria. "These energy lines and their flow cannot be grasped or measured, and their existence is therefore rejected by scientists." But the motorway authorities are extending the Druids' role across the country, paying them about $A6300 for each investigation - a fraction of the cost of resurfacing a road.

I just discovered this little outing today. Hopefully I'll be in a position to join them next year. These are my kind of people. Check out Drowning Rat

Inside the Spiritual Jacuzzi:What JewBus, Unitarian Pagans, and the Hot Tub Mystery Religion tell us about traditional faiths¹ is a wonderful essay that looks at howwe transform our faiths to fit our lifestyles and evolving beliefs rather than the other way around. It is also one of the best desriptions of what is going on in the neopagan world I've seen, most impressive is that the writer is not neopagan himself. Well worth a read, particularly if you are one of those people that believes pagans are nothing but 8 parties a year flakes :-)

Found via The Cynics Teaparty this great little pagan ditty :-)

T'was the Eve of MidWinter and all thru the coven, The Witches were cooking strange things in the oven. There were mugwart frittatas and dragon's blood stew And mescaline eggnog and mandrake fondue There were hot mountain oysters and road kill pate` And spotted owl kidneys and wombat flambe`

The circle was cast and the herbs had been smoked In hopes that the Goddess would soon be invoked When out by the hot tub arose such a clatter I jumped off my broom to see what was the matter And what should I see in the blackberry thorns But a soaking wet Goddess and eight unicorns!

"I was just sitting down with my vibrating phallus And a good book," she muttered "You bitches are callous! I came when you called over all my objections And got lost in the woods - you give lousy directions You turkeys invoked me, now look at my dress, My period's late and I've got PMS!" She cursed as She muttered; She looked like a wreck, The unicorns wimpered and shat on the deck.

We gave her some weed and we got her some grub We brought her clean towels and She soaked in the tub Then She rose hot and dripping and gave us her blessing And jumped in her chariot without even dressing! "On Isis, on Eris, Oya and Astarte On Ishtar, Inanna, Kali and Hecate!" We heard her exclaim as She climbed thru the air, "Thank goodness, there's only eight sabbats a year!"

~by Aurora Borealis Medicine Turkey

Oh my this is going to puncture a few of my acquaintences balloons. In particular, the ones that are going to behuffing and puffing and trying to ignore this work are those oh so devout followers of Gerald Gardener, Z Budapest, Raven Grimassi, Starhawk and theories like there were 9 million witches burned or killed, and, the Inquisition was reponsible for the majority of witch deaths, or the Catholic Church was behind the burnings, and it was a mysoginist plot to rid the worls of women healers. Yup those pagans, are going to be pissed.

Too bad. It's about time that some solid historical research was done by serious trained historians. People who do not go into the study with preconceived notions of what they should find, or, rather, have those notions as they are the prevailing beliefs, but are prepared to throw them away in the face of evidence to the contrary. It appears there has been considerable scholarly research going on and a lot of sacred cows just got sent to the butchers.

My heartiest congratulations and thanks go out Jenny G at Mellisa's Wiccan Site for putting this overview of the research together.

Hahahaha thanks Patrick for linking to the God of the Month Club. What a hoot!

A note to wish all my fellow pagan readers a great Samhain and for my non pagan readers Happy Halloween. Now go scare the little monsters at the door silly :-)

Samhain (that's Halloween for all you non-pagan types) is approaching and tonight and tomorrow night if you go outside and look at the full moon you will see the face in the moon more easily than at any other time of the year. last month's full moon was the Harvest Moon because in the days before electic lights farmers were able to continue the harvest by the light of the moon. This month's full moon is known as the Hunter's moon because once the harvest was over deer and other small mammals would come into the fields to glean the leftover and the light of the moon made them easy prey for the hunters.

There are many theories on the origin of the Jack-O-Lantern ranging from a story about a drunken irish blacksmith named Stingy Jackwho has a run in with the devil, mysterious lights in the marsh and an earthly representation of the face in the hunter's moon.

A beautiful story.

Oryx, once endangered, is back

Hannah Wettig Special to The Daily Star

Unicorns ­ in myth and fairy tales ­ lived in enchanted forests, frolicking under giant trees. Although no such shining white creature ever inhabited the forests of ancient Europe, the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula were once populated by white antelopes that looked an awful lot like the unicorn.

The horns of the oryx antelope are so symmetrical that only one can be seen from the profile, one of the many inspirations of the unicorn myth.

Some tales of the unicorn tell that it was hunted to extinction. So was the oryx, almost. The last wild oryx was killed in 1972 in Oman. Only a few survived in zoos. Now, after decades of captive breeding, some oryx are free again. This year 10 of them were released into their native environment in Jordan’s Wadi Rum National Reserve.

Operation Oryx started in 1961. The World Wildlife Fund and the Flora and Fauna Preservation Society of London launched a rescue operation when only about 100 were still alive in the wild.

A world oryx herd was established at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona, USA, with three animals from Oman, one from the London Zoo, one from Kuwait, and four from Saudi Arabia. These nine bred well ­ by 1984 there were more than 200....The Daily Star

Well i have to say the Green Lady Spirit Gathering was a big success this year. We had about 50 people attend, which is double last year's. We had people from Spokane (who say they are going to bring a crowd with them next year), Vancouver area, Vancouver Island, Squamish, and a bunch of West Kootenay regulars.

There was some good workshops, particularly Jay Twelvetrees Shamanism workshop, and the work done in the sweatlodge. Imhotep continued his tradition from last year by donating a wax seal (about 14" across - gold leafed on one side) to be burned in a dedicatory fire on Sunday night. Everyone was encouraged to inscribe on one side what they wanted to come into their life in the next year and on the other side what they wanted to get rid of. This year concentrated more on workshops than rituals but we all agreed at the wrapup meeting that next year the shift would be more towards rituals.

There was lots of good feedback on how we can improve things next year. We are going to take an outlaying picnic area and put BBQ's there so that anyone wanting meat can cook it there without offending the vegetarian/vegan crowd. We are also going to hold a community meeting before the opening ritual next year to set camp guidlines, address childcare issues, workshifts, and give a " group ritual 101" class for those who have been primarily solitaires and need help understanding the dynamics of group energy work (stuff like anchoring corners etc.).

All in aoll this was a very successful Gathering and everyone went away quite happy. If we continue to grow at the current rate I think we'll see between 75 and 100 people there next year. The site can probably hold 120 people with the majority camping. I think 75 to 100 would be about right.

This is the second year for this pagan/wiccan festival held here in, unfortuately this year soggy, Rossland. The rain has been intense with scattered sun showers but it hasn't dampened the spirits of the approx 50 people (including younguns) attending this year. This is more than a 2 fold increase over last year's attendence so needless to say my wife Silverheart who started this festival is quite pleased. I much prefer these small festivals to larger ones like D'fest

It is quite an eclectic crowd with shamans, healers, Gardnerians, solitaires and everything in between. Last night just before opening ritual Silverheart and I were asked to be witnesses for a first degree initiation, which was quite an unexpected honour.

We have rented a Girl Guide camp for the weekend - 40 acres of forest with a main lodge, a dining hall and a half dozen or so cabins (yeah we're surprised they rented it to us too - but what the heck we left the place in better shape than we found it last year so maybe they were impressed. Lots of people are tenting though - good business for the tarp purveyors this year :-).

Today I held a paper lantern making workshop. I only expected two or three people at most would be interested but I ended up with seven and a lineup of about the same (I only had enough supplies for seven at a time). So tomorrow I'll hold a repeat workshop for those who couldn't participate today.

It should look really cool tomorrow night with a dfozen or so people walking the labyrinth with glowing paper lanterns :-)

One of the shamans has set up a sweat lodge so I may find the time tomorrow to participate in that. All in all a fun time is being had by all.

Tomorrow marks the summer solstice (Litha), the longest day in the year. Litha is one of the 8 major pagan festival dates (although a long standing European tradition holds it on the 24th). Litha, or midsummer marks the peak power of the sun god and the start of the decline in the sun god's power which culminates at the autumnal equinox in the battle between the Oak King (summer) and the Holly king (fall).

So happy Solstice!! Litha is a fire festival, fire festivals are high energy, so go have some fun :-)

Loren Webster wrote a wonderful piece on exerpts from Emerson's Nature over on her blog In a Dark Time. Her piece called Wicca Me Up made me, an unrepentent pagan, want to grab my copy and start rereading it in a fresh light (unfortunately it is packed away with all my other books awaiting the move). Go have look! Thanks Diane!!

I heard from an old friend, Kerr Culuhain, today regarding a new organization that he's involved in. I'll let him tell you about it in his own words

Officers of Avalon started as an e-group for police officers and expanded to include other people working in the field with cops. It was the brainchild of Officer Tricia Mullensky (Lady Kiara) of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth Police Department, who started the e-group in 1999. Gradually other Pagan officers like me joined. I'm the current spokesperson for Officers of Avalon.

Bright Blessings
Kerr Cuhulain, author
(aka Detective Charles A Ennis, Vancouver Police Department, Youth Services Unit)

Kerr is the author of the best book, The Law Enforcement Guide to Wicca, for shattering stereotypes people hold about Wicca. Kerr's latest book Wiccan Warrior came out in March 2000. It sold out in two weeks and was reprinted in a big panic by surprised Llewellyn staff. It went on to win the 2001 Coalition of Visionary Retailers award for best personal/biographical book at the International New Age Trade Show. It is now published in three languages: English, Portuguese (in Brazil) and French. His next book, Full Contact Magick, comes out this September. Two more books, one a safety book for field workers and the other, Blue Magick, an account of what it has been like to be a Pagan cop, are presently sitting on his agent's desk. Kerr has also been writing investigative articles for Law & Order Magazine.

Well there we were, we few, we happy few gathered in the snow to celebrate Beltane.

Snow! you say. Indeed dear reader I kid you not. While we had great weather the past few days - in fact t-shirt attired gardening weather - the weather gods turned nasty on us last night and it started snowing for the first time in weeks. We had just finished getting rid of all this past winter's snow too!

Oh well you have to be a hearty and brave soul to be a pagan in Rossland . We gathered round, cast circle, danced around the maypole and jumped the balefires.

A good time was had by all!

You know, as a pagan I am more than willling to believe in psychic phenomena and have had more than my share of such experiences - including those involving the dearly departed. However I am still a rationalist and my fakery radar goes off big tinme when I come across someone who makes extraordinary claims - remember a basic tenet, extraorinary claims require extraordinary proof.

I really hate fakes and in particular those who capitalize on the growth of "New Age" and paganism (no they are NOT the same thing)to con a seeking or grieving public. People like that make the study of paranormal activities much harder for everyone else. They bring ridicule upon all who walk the path.

When I first saw John Edward's Crossing Over show I knew the guy was a fake, his success rate was too high and it was no effort for him - sorry John it just isn't that easy. His spiel was no different than fake mediums down through the ages.

Click here for a good article on skeptic.com that totally exposes the sham that John Edward's is.