Sunday, July 12, 2009

Dumber Than A Stump, Pagan Rites

When my kitten all those years ago pounced on a wasp, I bet he felt like this looking at his stung paw. He of course never pounced on a wasp again. But we thought he might die, he got so sick from the venom. He was better the next day.

I bet I am not the only one who has felt

Dumber Than A Stump

The sign says turn right,
Hard right by the looks of it.

I'm going too fast.

Feels like I'm gonna
Be rolling this damn bucket
Of bolts I'm driving.
What am I doing
Out here in the snow and ice
Anyway, dumber
Than a stump, dumber
Than that brace of icy trees
That I would've passed

Had I made the turn.
Shit.

January 26, 2009 3:47 PM

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My good blog friend Lucy at Box Elder published a post on old statues of saints found in the countryside in Britanny, in France. Lovely photos. I felt like I was actually looking at pagan statues even though the subject matter was Christian. I stole them. I am here to say even thieves have principles.

Pagan Rites

I'm a holy thief
Stealing little saints
When nobody looks.
I've kept them in caves,
Come and dance before the flames
I set down in front
Of the half circle
I made of them, tall to short,
But I left behind
Eugenie, not mine
To take, so strong her magic.
I have principles.

January 26, 2009 4:25 PM

12 comments:

  1. At least you saw the sign.
    And knew not to steal Eugenie.
    I often don't see the signs an do tell me who is Eugenie.
    Lucky for most of us we are like your cat and no matter what, we do get better, somehow...
    :)

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  2. Reminds me of the time as a new driver that I completely past a stop sign, because the other little streets before it didn't have stop signs... why should that one have a sign and not the others. OI' Talk about stupidity!!

    The idea of dancing in a cave is quite appealing... (no one can see ya' then). ;D

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  3. Your last lines are always gems!

    Pagan Rites reminds me of a line in EB Barrett's "How Do I Love Thee?" I know, weird connection, but part of the answer to the question is..."with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints." Maybe you were lurking nearby?

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  4. I love them both! :)

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  5. Yikes, by not making the right turn what was in front?

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  6. Jozien, Eugenie is a small sculpted stone saint. She is a French saint and you can google her. Like so many old French religious things, these statues have pagan overtones. I have tried Google today but been kicked out. That wasp sting really hurt my kitten. You could tell. Broke my heart.

    SG, Heh. Reminiscing early driving escapades is a humility check.

    Indeed, Karen, just waiting for a distraction so's I could wander off with a saint or two.

    Thank you, Joseph.

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  7. Techno, I didn't make the right turn, what was in front??

    The wrong way.

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  8. It's all in the intention. If you're stealing saints to practice faith, it sounds lovely to me.

    Sometimes we're driven by things that don't make sense. Lacking sense doesn't negate everything though. That absence might be filled with something else. (Reminds me of a drive I took last November up a narrow dirt road after first heavy snowfall. La-ti-da Ohhhh beautiful, and then a transport came outta nowhere and jack-knifed. I ended up in a ditch. You know what? I got out with my camera, took a picture, and it was the first photo I ever got published in a magazine. My lack of sense got me a pretty nice photo...one I'll never forget the context of.)

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  9. Uh oh, Erin, that's the creed of the magician. The focused intention is the source of the power a mage evokes in his practice. There are no spells and rites that stand alone. I make no apologies for thievery. Hermes is a thief. In other words there is a divine form of outlaw. In the myth Prometheus steals fire from the gods and is punished but we now have fire, all fire, inner fire. There it is. Even the Fall is sourced in stealing from God.

    And it's a revelation. There is a kind of thieving that only women can do. Men steal fire. Women steal knowledge of good and evil. There is no accident that Wisdom is Sophia, and that the Goddess of civilized knowledge is Athena.

    Universal knowledge may be the province of men, backed by Apollo, but the knowledge that applies directly is Athenian.

    God blesses you, woman. In tantra, men need women in an essential way, for there is a way that women swim naturally in the power that men need to ascend. This is simply true. Men need to achieve and then wake up. Women need to simply wake up.

    Simple but not easy.

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  10. That last comment Christopher is so profound, it makes me want to study Mythology (well, makes the desire stronger anyway)...

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  11. That was a wonderful response to the saints. I love how you've made it something abstract and mythic, Eugenie could meanmany more things now.

    And I like the little fable of the first one too. Glad the kitten got better.

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  12. SG, If you want to get this kind of mythic sense, then I recommend Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and in realms nearby Jacob Needleman and John Michell, among others.

    Lucy, thank you for giving me the saints, their location so that I could enact my pagan rites.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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