Thursday, October 30, 2014

Celtic Coral - Faery Dance

to Awaken She who Sleeps


To Re-Enchant and Heal the World, the Everyday world around us. Herbalists, Witches, Alchemic Baristas; Send Good Energy to Yourself, Do not Allow FEAR into your Energy Field.

"As Halloween approaches, images of scheming witches have started popping up around New York City — weird sisters stirring their brews over caldrons, conjuring toil and trouble for those who drink their potions.

And yet in Brooklyn, real-life good witches are concocting much friendlier brews for public consumption: a group of devoted young herbal healers who are less concerned with casting spells than with helping people feel better from the inside out. Think of them as alchemical baristas, serving up individualized elixirs to treat all kinds of urban ills.

One hub of this new movement is Botica & Co., a brick-and-mortar apothecary in Greenpoint created by Adriana Ayales. Ms. Ayales, 27, is an herbalist who learned the art of herbal distillation and healing from her grandmother, a medicine woman and shaman in her native Costa Rica. She opened Botica & Co. early this month with the hope, she said, that it will become “a healthy version of the bar on ‘Cheers.’ ”

A silk and mousseline mourning ensemble from the 1870s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new show “Death Becomes Her.”The Subject of Death Plays a Part in Popular Culture OCT. 17, 2014
“I want everyone to come in and talk to us, tell us their problems, and we will whip up the perfect cure,” she said. “I want to bring back the intimacy and personal attention of a vintage pharmacy, but instead of aspirin, we are prescribing yerba mate or ayahuasca flowers.”

Above the bar are dozens of large Mason jars filled with dark, smoky liquids — Ms. Ayales calls them “tonics” — potent, concentrated mixtures of herbs, many of which Ms. Ayales sources directly from the rain forests of Costa Rica, where she works with “sustainable, certified wild-crafters.” They are meant to be consumed at the bar, diluted inside fresh pineapple or Concord grape juices that she keeps on tap or taken as a single shot, like espresso, on the go. She also sells a line of cold-pressed juice and coconut water called Pura Fruta.

Ms. Ayales’s best-selling formulas are Love Handles, a tonic said to help blast fat with ginger, Himalayan pink salt, green coffee bean and a rain forest tree berry called cha de bugre, and Lucid Dreaming, a pungent cocktail of kava, ashwagandha, rose and passionflower that addresses anxiety.

Also popular? Eros, a quick shot of aphrodisiac stimulant containing night-blooming jasmine, hibiscus and Costa Rican ingredients like catuaba and muira puama. “I get a lot of men asking for that one,” she said. “On opening night, we poured a bunch of it into a vat of red wine. Things got ... crazy.”

Should you be looking for an even witchier apothecary experience, head to Bushwick, where the hip occult store Catland is celebrating all things magical, from tarot cards to crystals to local covens (who hold gatherings around a fire pit in the backyard).

The real attraction, however, is the private apothecary in back, where Joseph Petersen, the 26-year-old co-owner, creates custom oils and incenses to fit the daily needs of his customers.

“Part of our mission here is to find ways to re-enchant the world,” Mr. Petersen said. “And what is more enchanting than coming in, telling us what you’re going through and working together to make something?”

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He acknowledges that some people are skeptical of “herbal magick” as a remedy for ills, but he says that you do not have to believe in the occult or speak spells to experience the healing powers of his potions. “I got into magic when I was 18,” he said. “And what I found was, it’s all about the power of conviction. If you believe something works, and you intend for it to work, then usually that’s all you need.” 

If that sounds like a placebo effect, that’s because that may be exactly what herbal healing is.

“Most of the big N.I.H. studies on herbs have shown that while they are not harmful, except in extremely high doses, they don’t do much either,” said Dr. Pieter Cohen, a professor of medicine at Harvard who studies herbal supplements. “That said, the placebo effect they have is powerful. If you believe a supplement is healthy, it can actually make you healthier.”

Catland’s stylish patrons — think less bohemian witches in tasseled shawls and more young professionals in flannel and leather jackets — ask Mr. Petersen to help with a variety of ailments, from insomnia to acne to attracting a mate.

His most powerful remedy is a ritual bath concoction, which he mixes from his arsenal of herbs and minerals in a hulking mortar and pestle.

The potions, which contain ingredients like benzoin, galangal, lavender and mugwort, come with a canvas pouch that one steeps in boiling water like tea and then pours into the tub. Mr. Petersen also includes a candle, onto which he carves a tiny image of whichever pagan deity he thinks will most help his client.

“You can say a prayer to it if you want, or not,” he said. “It’s more important, when you get into the bath, to send the good energy back to yourself. That’s where the healing is.”

Source
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/fashion/halloween-brooklyn-real-life-good-witches-concoct-herbal-brews.html?_r=2

"For the roots of Salem witch hysteria, look at the next town over" Many came to America to escape British, Italian and other Witch Trials and Keep the Tradition Alive.


"Some descendants of accused witches in Danvers, once called Salem Village, say they are ready to address their legacy"

"SALEM, Massachusetts — Three centuries after America’s first recorded witch hunt, Salem no longer hangs its witches; it applauds them as a mainstay of the local economy.
In the last two weeks of October alone, Salem businesses selling palmistry and “Bewitched” memorabilia will make 80 percent of their annual income in what has become a $100 million a year — and rapidly growing — industry, according to local tourism authorities. 
While many of the Witch City’s neighbors are mostly commuter cities for those working in Boston, Salem has established a tourism industry that employs over 700 Witch City residents.
That’s all thanks, of course, to the legacy of 24 accused witches who died amid the hysteria of 1692. But not many tourists to Salem are aware that there are more homes, graves and artifacts of the witch trials in the next town over — sleepy, relatively conservative Danvers, known until more than half a century after the trials as Salem Village.
There is no direct public transportation line from Boston or Salem to Danvers. With the exception of a few special events, none of the Salem tours go there, even if it’s only a 15-minute drive away.
Descendants of accused witches in Danvers said that many of those who were murdered were deeply Christian and would have strongly disapproved of the annual Haunted Happenings events throughout October that draw American and international tourists for a celebration of the occult.
“I don’t think the other communities want” witch trial tourism, said Kate Fox, director of tourism authority Destination Salem, referring not only to Danvers but other neighboring cities linked to the trials, like Andover and Beverly.
Scores of Andover residents were accused during the trials after Danvers residents were asked to identify witches believed to be living secretly in their community. Six years after the conclusion of the trials, Beverly’s pastor Jonathan Hale penned “A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft,” which blamed Satan for causing hysteria that led to the death of innocents. But like Danvers, neither community appears to be cashing in on its history, some say out of shame.  
“That’s why Danvers changed its name,” Fox said. Roughly 60 years after the trials, what had been Salem Village changed its name to Danvers, after a long bid by the village’s farming community to not share taxes with the culturally and socioeconomically distant fishermen and maritime merchants of Salem Town, now Salem.
Danvers historians say residents had also hoped to forget the witch trials. 
“They were trying to get rid of the legacy,” said Richard Trask, Danvers’ archivist. He said that just a few decades later, Salem started selling its connection to the trials — largely nominal, with the exception of the only space still standing that is directly related to the incident, the so-called Witch House, which belonged to one of the judges in the trials.
Salem Town “metamorphosed the witchcraft. You began to get the idea that a witch is a cutesy character on a broom with a conical hat,” Trask said. The Witch House now sells chocolate lollipops shaped like witch heads.
Fox said that in 1891, a Salem jeweler, Daniel Low, made the first souvenir "witch spoon" and other witch-related novelties. Danvers’ disavowing its legacy and Salem’s starting to cash in on its role in the trials created what Fox called a “perfect storm.”
Nowadays in Salem, taxis, local government offices and even the local newspaper are adorned with witch silhouettes and pointy hat insignia. In Danvers, even as people decorate their homes for Halloween, one finds ghouls, goblins and ghosts — but few witches. 

Keeping quiet

Richard Trask
Danvers archivist Richard Trask reads the original church record of the Rev. Samuel Parris, which describes the witch trials in vivid detail.
 Massoud Hayoun
Some said that until recent years, Danvers residents did not speak of the trials in polite society and have vehemently opposed attempts to conjure bitter memories of the kind of guilt that iconic author Nathaniel Hawthorne describes in his book “House of the Seven Gables.”
“In so much of his work, [Hawthorne] tried to expiate the guilt he felt for being related to John Hathorne,” a magistrate in the trials, said Katherine Howe, a Cornell University American studies lecturer and the author of a comprehensive history of European and North American witchcraft“The Penguin Book of Witches.” Howe is the descendant of three accused Salem witches, one of whom was hanged.
Emotions are still raw for some, even centuries later. Recently at a book reading, Howe said, she “had a woman come up to me in tears. [She] said, ‘I have to tell you, I’m so sorry.’ It turned out she was a distant relative of one of the magistrates.”
“It was and it wasn’t ridiculous to me,” Howe said.
There are some indications that being descended from an accuser is something of a scarlet letter.
The singular mention of the Putnam family on the Danvers Historical Society website is of Joseph Putnam, who “spoke out against the witchcraft hysteria gripping the village.” There is no mention of Ann Putnam and her daughter of the same name, two of the chief witch accusers, who are buried in Danvers. Trask said there are several Putnams residing in Danvers.
“Not all the Putnams were involved,” he said, not directly addressing the society’s website. “But a good portion were, and it turns out they were on the losing side of history.”

A witch cottage industry

Rebecca Nurse homestead
The homestead of accused witch Rebecca Nurse, one of Trask's ancestors
 Massoud Hayoun
Trask himself is of accused-witch stock. The homestead of his ancestor Rebecca Nurse, hanged for witchcraft after refusing to confess and accuse others, can be found in Danvers and is open to the public three days a week this month and is run entirely by volunteers. The Salem Witch Museum, by comparison, is open every day and has a full-time staff of docents and administrators.
Just a few miles from the hordes of tourists clamoring for witch swag in Salem, the only sound at Nurse’s empty seven-acre homestead is a woodpecker, hammering its way into what had been the barn.
Like every museum in Salem, Nurse’s home has a gift shop. But Trask says visitors won’t find any of Salem’s witch souvenirs there but rather educational materials, like a PBS film on Nurse and her two sisters, also accused of witchcraft.
“You won’t find a witch on a broom there,” Trask said, with a triumphant smile. “We can be pure, lily pure. We can tell the story in unsensational ways, and we don’t have to be kitschy.”
He played an integral role in uncovering the foundation of the home of the Rev. Samuel Parris — the site of what some historians say gave rise to the witch panic. Parris’ daughter Betty and his niece Abigail Williams were two of the chief accusers at the onset of the hysteria. His slave Tituba, believed to have been from the West Indies, was an accused witch.
Schoolchildren on a field trip visited the site during excavation in the 1970s. “We had two old ladies living across the street,” Trask said, “The old ladies were shaking their fists, ‘Why are you talking about this? Why are you bringing this up again?’”
He said that animosity is long since gone, but it appears finances have presented another obstacle. John Putnam’s house has been closed to the public because of a “lack of funding,” he said, preventing the Danvers Historical Society from “conducting necessary repairs.”
Danvers’ Chamber of Commerce closed in the early 1980s, Trask said. There is no one to oversee the development of a witch trial industry there. 

A tale of two witch cities

Rev. Samuel Parris house foundations
The foundation of Parris’ parsonage, the site of what some historians regard as the beginnings of the Salem witch panic
 Massoud Hayoun
Destination Salem’s Fox says that tourists to Witch City get what they are coming for. “You can get a lot in Salem and feel like you don’t have to go farther afield,” she said, adding that Danvers still hasn’t “really reached out” to be a part of the Salem tourism boom.
But Howe believes bringing the two Salems closer together could be a fruitful enterprise.
“There is an opportunity for more. I think a lot of people come to Salem expecting to see more historic stuff … There is that hunger,” she said. “There is an opportunity to supply that. The Witch House does that. The Rebecca Nurse homestead also does a good job of that. Maybe there should be two threads: A fun and fantastical side and the history.”
For Trask and his two colleagues at Danvers’ archives, manpower might prove problematic. At present, “we can’t handle” hordes of tourists, he said.
For every 100 tourists to Salem, he estimates, just two or three make it to Danvers to see the sites mentioned in Salem's museums. But Trask is hopeful. “More and more people understand who are coming to the area. And they’re not your casual tourist,” he said."
Source

Monday, October 27, 2014

The Three Witches or Weird Sisters; "the Fates"

"The Three Witches or Weird Sisters are characters in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth (c. 1603–1607). Their origin lies in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland and Ireland. Other possible sources influencing their creation aside from Shakespeare's own imagination include British folklore, contemporary treatises on witchcraft including King James I and VI's Daemonologie, Scandinavian legends of the Norns, and ancient classical myths concerning the Fates, the Greek myths of the Moirai and the Roman myths of the Parcae. Portions of Thomas Middleton's play The Witch were incorporated into Macbeth around 1618.


Shakespeare's witches are prophets who hail the general Macbeth early in the play with predictions of his rise as king. Upon committing regicide and taking the throne of Scotland, Macbeth hears the trio deliver ambiguous prophecies threatening his downfall. The witches' dark and contradictory natures, their "filthy" trappings and activities, as well as their interaction with the supernatural all set an ominous tone for the play.

In the eighteenth century the witches were portrayed in a variety of ways by artists such as Henry Fuseli. Since then, their role has proven somewhat difficult for many directors to portray, due to the tendency to make their parts exaggerated or overly sensational.

Some have adapted the original Macbeth into different cultures, as in Orson Welles's performance making the witches voodoo priestesses. Film adaptations have seen the witches transformed into characters familiar to the modern world, such as hippies on drugs or goth schoolgirls. Their influence reaches the literary realm as well in such works as The Third Witch and the Harry Potter series."

Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Witches

the Moirai; the goddesses of fate

"THE MOIRAI (or Moirae) were the goddesses of fate who personified the inescapable destiny of man. They assinged to every person his or her fate or share in the scheme of things.

Their name means "Parts." "Shares" or "Alottted Portions." Zeus Moiragetes, the god of fate, was their leader,.

Klotho, whose name means "Spinner," spinned the thread of life. Lakhesis, whose name means "Apportioner of Lots"--being derived from a word meaning to receive by lot--, measured the thread of life. Atropos (or Aisa), whose name means "She who cannot be turned," cut the thread of life.
At the birth of a man, the Moirai spinned out the thread of his future life, followed his steps, and directed the consequences of his actions according to the counsel of the gods.

It was not an inflexible fate; Zeus, if he chose, had the power of saving even those who were already on the point of being seized by their fate.

The Fates did not abruptly interfere in human affairs but availed themselves of intermediate causes, and determined the lot of mortals not absolutely, but only conditionally, even man himself, in his freedom was allowed to exercise a certain influence upon them. As man's fate terminated at his death, the goddesses of fate become the goddesses of death, Moirai Thanatoio.

The Moirai were independent, at the helm of necessity, directed fate, and watched that the fate assigned to every being by eternal laws might take its course without obstruction; and Zeus, as well as the other gods and man, had to submit to them. They assigned to the Erinyes, who inflicted the punishement for evil deeds, their proper functions; and with them they directed fate according to the laws of necessity.

As goddesses of birth, who spinned the thread of life, and even prophesied the fate of the newly born, Eileithyia was their companion. As goddesses of fate they must necessarily have known the future, which at times they revealed, and were therefore prophetic deities. Their ministers were all the soothsayers and oracles.

As goddesses of death, they appeared together with the Keres and the infernal Erinyes.
The Moirai were described as ugly old women, sometimes lame. They were severe, inflexible and stern. Klotho carries a spindle or a roll (the book of ate), Lakhesis a staff with which she points to the horoscope on a globe, and Atropos a scroll, a wax tablet, a sundial, a pair of scales, or a cutting instrument. At other times the three were shown with staffs or sceptres, the symbols of dominion, and sometimes even with crowns. At the birth of each man they appeared spinning, measuring, and cutting the thread of life.

The Romans called the goddess Parcae and named the three Nona, Decuma and Morta."

Source and Full article
http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Moirai.html

4 HOURS | Long Native American Indians Spiritual Vocal Shamanic Music | Relax Music - Soothing Music

"Aradia in Sardinia:The Archaeology of a Folk Character; Sabina Magliocco"

"Who Was Aradia? Te History and Development of a Legend (2001).

As one of the peer reviewers for that paper, Professor Hutton gave me extremely valuable feedback, thus beginning what became a very fruitful cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas.

While Professor Hutton and I have different disciplinary specialties – history and Folkloristics/ ethnology, respectively – we are interested in many of the same subjects and broader theoretical issues; thus our perspectives complement one another.

Moreover, while my own grasp of history is weak and flawed, Proffessor Hutton’s mastery of anthropological and folkloristic literature is extraordinary for a scholar trained in a completely different discipline.

It is therefore especially fitting that my contribution to this volume once again take up the threads of that original paper, expanding them in new directions and adding to what Professor Hutton has himself written on the subject of Herodias and Aradia.

This work also provides an unexpected link between my early ethnographic research in Sardinia and my later interest in contemporary Witchcraft, bringing my research full circle in a satisfying way."

Source and Full Document
http://www.academia.edu/584599/Aradia_in_Sardinia_the_Archaeology_of_a_Legend

Threaten me with Heaven. Vince Gill. - Really Folks, do you fear man, woman? You don't answer to humans, you know this. What is the worst they can do to you? Threaten you with Heaven?

Oh Lord, Goddess, Mother God, Father God; You Never Let Go. If my Goddess is with me, Whom than Shall I Fear?

"Down in the River to Pray" Studying about that Good ol' Way. Good Lord Show me the Way. Oh Sisters let's go down to the river and pray.