Sunday, October 30, 2005

THAT'S "MISTER" SAM HAIN TO YOU

Mister Sam Hain is alive and well.
He was last reported seen driving around
Schenectaberry in his cruisemobile
listening to his favorite group,
"Smashing Pumpkins."

Any reports of him being none-existent
or dead are ill-founded.

SAM HAIN LIVES!!!

-sapphoq

Friday, October 28, 2005

DOROTHY C.

DOROTHY C.

And if there be malice
clutching to my soul with murderous intent,
how then shall I strive
to release myself from the mire
of your poisonous love?

Wherever I ran to, you were there
like some dammed omnipotent hag
cackling far into the night,
even invading the relative safety
of my feigned dreams.

Why then
must each of us pay
for what others do?
Why then
does the burden of your being
haunt me still?

-sapphoq 10/28/05

Monday, October 24, 2005

BOTCHED EXECUTION

* from the cd Pagan Clip Art by Reverend Don Lewis*
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

BOTCHED EXECUTION

Isis was a little girl with a big name.

Raised in gardens and hunted with falcons,

she found comfort only in bloody dreams.

Her mama tried to kill her with love.

Isis escaped into myriad rainbows

of dripping chemicals and gasoline. Hatred

would have been a far easier burden to bear.

-sapphoq

Friday, October 21, 2005

I AM THE WITCH DOCTOR 10/21/05

Why I name myself a pagan solitary hedge witch.

Because traditional services, gatherings, and covens do not work for me.
Because I don't believe that magick is stronger in large groups.
Because I fail to see why I have to be formally initiated by another witch.

Because I have been called to walk my own path.
Because I recognize and put on a particular mantle of power.
Because I walk between the worlds.

Because I don't feel a need to be dictated to by others about when and how to make a circle.
Because I don't feel compelled to recognize both a god and a goddess in every calling.
Because I dislike having to buy the latest witch book or the latest must have overpriced "tool" or engage in witch wars.

Because I talk to the animals and they talk back to me.
Because I talk to plants and they talk back to me.
Because I talk to the sky, the moon, the earth, and the galaxies, and they all talk back to me.

Because I refuse to be bound by any tradition.
Because I embrace all people walking all spiritual paths.
Because I know that contact with the divine cannot be taught in books or in courses.

For these and many other reasons, I name myself a pagan solitary hedge witch.

-sapphoq

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

IF


http://www.pdfoto.com


If I am only I.
If you are only you.
If there be more than love.
If nothing is all.
Then we are done for.

If you and I can find love.
If together we are all.
Then there are rivulets of hope.
Everywhere there is breath.

-sapphoq

Monday, October 17, 2005

SPIKE's INTERVIEW WITH DEATH

*picture taken by Jon Sullivan. posted to http://www.pd.foto.com . all photos on that website are in the public domain and a great place to get legal jps.




*********************

SPIKE's INTERVIEW WITH DEATH

SPIKE Q: So Death, what brings you to these parts?

DEATH: Searching, searching.

SPIKE Q: Okay--- next question. Are you male or female?

DEATH: I am androgenous and ambigendered.

SPIKE Q: Care to explain that?

DEATH: No.

SPIKE Q: My friend Marie is dieing and she is unhappy about that.

DEATH: Happiness and unhappiness are not within my realm. People live and people die.
It may be everything to you but it is nothing to me.

SPIKE Q: Uh, okay. So Death, what do you do in your spare time?

DEATH: I play strip poker with my best buds-- Anubis, Kore, Kali, and Hecate.

SPIKE Q: STRIP poker? But you're not wearing any-- oh never mind. So who is the best at it?

DEATH: Kali is a real cutthroat. Hecate cheats. Kore is distracted depending on the season.
Sometimes Anubis picks a fight with Hecate's hounds. Kali does win most of the time.
Hecate and I are about evenly matched.

SPIKE Q: Your fellow poker fiends are almost all women!

DEATH: It would seem that way, yes.

SPIKE Q: What are the stakes?

DEATH: Why do you ask? Are you planning to join us anytime soon?

SPIKE Q: Nooooo.

DEATH: Just checkin'. Somehow I didn't think you would scare so easily. After all, you have
looked in my face and laughed a few times over the years.

SPIKE Q: Please don't hold that against me. It was all nervous laughter at finding myself still
alive.

DEATH: You have to admit you've done some pretty stupid things. Well, the last time wasn't
your fault. That was the time you refused to die, you know.

SPIKE Q: Uh, thanks. I think.

DEATH: You're quite welcome my dear. I perceive that you are thinking of a bus or an
airplane. I suppose you are thinking about the terminal of death being the end of the
line. Or perhaps you are wishing for a speedy exit.

SPIKE Q: Actually, I was thinking about Emily Dickinson. Did you really stop for her?

DEATH: Emily and I were rather well acquainted during her earthly lifetime. Most poets of a
melancholy nature are well acquainted with me, you know. You've written some deep stuff yourself, come to think of it.

SPIKE Q: Thanks. Sort of. Care to talk about Sam Hain or seances?

DEATH: Sam Hain. When the veil thins. My favorite time of year....

SPIKE Q: Uh, Death? Death?

DEATH: Sorry my dear. I was pleasantly distracted. Oh, that's right. I remember your first
seance.

SPIKE Q: You do?

DEATH: Oh yes. You were such an odd kid. Reading the Sunday obituaries was one of your
hobbies. You and a couple of other vacationing kids were under a boat on the beach
one night. Someone had the bright idea to call back John F. Kennedy.

SPIKE Q: Yes, the candle blew out and we all spooked.

DEATH: JFK is not really interested in coming back to talk to the public, you know. Better you
should have tried to dig up Sylvia Plath. Now there was a fine melancholy soul. Since
the advent of psych drugs, there are less melancholy souls around. Such is progress.

SPIKE Q: You would rather have people be miserable and kill themselves?

DEATH: Now just who do you think I am, Spike? I take no position on suicide. None. Nor on
misery or content. I am nothing if I am not---

SPIKE Q: Yeah, yeah. What about reincarnation?

DEATH: What about it?

SPIKE Q: Well, is it real or not? An awful lot of witches and hindus believe in it.

DEATH: I take no position on that. I will say one thing though. Karma has been frightfully
misinterpreted. So has power for that matter.

SPIKE Q: Death-- uh, you are, uh-- vaporizing.

DEATH: Sorry, Spike. I gotta go. Seems the jig is up for some old guy in the nursing home up
the street. Shall I save you a chair at our poker game?






-sapphoq

Sunday, October 16, 2005

The Razor 10/16/05

*taken by sapphoq, Crow and Goldfish on Beaver Pond. Mont Royal Park, Montreal Canada. may be used as long as you provide a link back to this site. *







The Razor


A Found Poem from
The Apocryphon of James




Holy secret revealed by you.
Saints wish to discourse another.
Twelve appeared and five departed.
You called the rest drunken.
They consorted with life. Space,
empty, mock[s] want. Hence reason
follows evil. You persecuted love.
Life spares death and seeks spirits.
Prophesy hypocrisy and wither!

translated by Francis E. Williams, pp 30-33.
from the book:
The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. James M. Robinson,
Harper, San Francisco, 1978.


poem "found" by -sapphoq

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Death Calling


*taj mahal, from a private photo source*





My friend's sister is in a hospice dieing. She is 44 years old.
No one knew she had cancer til 7 days ago.
She is not expected to live another 14 days.

She was always very connected to India, a place where she had never been to but was most definately in her heart of hearts.

I wrote her a goodbye letter and sent it out yesterday.

I hope that she will die soon. May Kali take her swiftly,gently, and drugged.

-sapphoq

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

TODAY I FREAKED SOMEONE OUT




*from websites which offer these things with no strings.*


today i freaked someone out without meaning to.
this guy i know who might be a bit zenophobic began talking about how he likes to "eat twinkies (r)".
i started giggling and i told him that sounds dirty and then he wanted to know why so i told him why.
older gay men who like younger men refer to them as 'twinkies' because the younger gay men are "blond on the outside and fluffy on the inside."
the guy said, "oh well i mean i like to eat (r) HOSTESS TWINKIES."
he then began to talk about how he is a 'real' man and all that.
i informed him that some of the gay men i know could certainly give him a run for his money on the 'real' man thing.
the rough and tough John Wayne stuff.
finally i told him i just didn't want him to get a proposition he couldn't handle.

-sapphoq

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Silent Wonder


* from http://www.feebleminds.com















Silent Wonder

We soar silently above the clouds,
you and I. Your broken heart
forgotten in the wonder of it all,
silently we soar above the clouds.
Our words fall silently back to earth
where morning awaits my return.

We soar silently, forgetting words
and brokeness in the wonder of it all.
You soar silently above the clouds,
your heart healing. My heart broken
anew, I fall silently back to earth.

-sapphoq

Friday, October 07, 2005

WE WHO ARE WALKERS


* from http://www.feebleminds.org


We who are walkers
between the worlds
know what it is
to seek light
and find darkness.

We who are walkers
between the worlds
no longer fear darkness.

For darkness carries light
and light carries darkness.

We who embrace the darkness
also embrace the light.
We are the darkness
and we are the light.

We who are walkers
between the worlds
carry the healing
to all who fear.

-sapphoq

Introducing ANTHONY CANTONS!


*Anthony Cantons, "Fantasising Over Yesterday"*
see more at: http://www.anthonycantons.com

Anthony Cantons is a very talented artist with a strong internal vision. He has exhibited his paintings in his native Poland, in the U.K., and elsewhere. He will be coming to the Untied States to exhibit but the date has not been set up yet. I hope to meet him when he does exhibit here.

Collectors should contact Anthony Cantons for more info.

-sapphoq

Thursday, October 06, 2005

we have come to this place

we have come to this place

seeking healing.

in this place that is our circle,
in this circle that contains all,
in this all that extends beyond,
in this beyond that is also this place,
we have come for healing.



from many places
we have come
to this circle of healing.


our place is everywhere
and beyond.
that
is
our
healing.

-sapphoq

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

EARL 10/5/05

*clip-art from off the web. please e-mail me if you know who it should be credited to. thank-you*


I took a collage class at a community college a long time ago taught by my friend Ernie. It was a fun class. Most of us knew each other. I was able to bring along a boy that I knew named Earl.

Earl was a bright child who was always in trouble in school. Earl was fascinated by horror films and cult classics. He knew lots about them. He knew when they were produced, the actors, story lines, dialogues, and directors. His teachers only saw a kid who wrote and drew his own horror stories-- which were, to say the least, bloody and unsettling to the average schoolmarm.

Earl pushed the limits. Earl was kicks. To me and the rest of the adults in the class, Earl was brilliance in the making. Earl at the age of nine was full of ambition. He knew that he was going to be a movie director of horror films. It was a genre that he loved.

I know that one day I will be watching a movie directed by Earl.

-sapphoq

Monday, October 03, 2005

CELTIC NEW YEAR "satanic"???

* borrowed from an anti-halloween website which did not credit its source. if you know who should be credited for this image,
please send me an e-mail. thank-you*


I belong to a PAN group on yahell. One of the other members of the PAN group who is also a blogging buddy on " the other blog " sent me some links from d-moz. The links were all to anti-halloween articles written by literalistic christians.

Y

I am a witch. Although I respect the rights of people to write such inacccurate nonsense, I also reserve my right to freedom of expression. Thus, I will point out some of the fallacies that the d-moz articles portray. I will also give a more accurate representation of my beliefs and the beliefs of many of my witch and pagan friends.

The biggest misconception is that witches worship satan. Almost all of us don't. Almost all of us don't believe in the personification of evil.

I have at least one man of my acquaintance who is a satanist. He has the right to believe in satan and to practice his religion as he sees fit. In spite of the objections of many witches and pagans, he also has the right to call himself a satanic witch if he wishes to. We do not hold the copyright for the word witch.

None of us sacrifice children or babies to any divine icon or deity.

Some people I know who practice ifa, yoruba, or santeria do sacrifice animals. The animals they sacrifice are cooked and feasted upon afterwards.
Say what you wish about sacrificing animals. I hasten to point out to you that it is far more honest to look a chicken into the eyes and say, "I'm going to eat you," than to buy packaged meat from the supermarket.

Y

Samhain is the beginning of the celtic new year. We celebrate the seasons and mid-seasons because our lives are intimately tied up with the cycle of nature. Because we hold life as sacred, we become intricately woven into the web of life. Because we cherish the memories of our physical and spiritual ancestors, many of us recall the legacies that the ancestors have left us during samhain.

Y

Many of you believe that halloween was first a pagan holiday. Many holidays that christians today celebrate were in fact pagan holidays. The unholy roman empire and the missionaries combined our holy days with yours, in order to make christianity (the new religion) more palatable to the common people.

Your ancestors burned down our sacred groves and built churches there. That is where the saying, "Everything under the altar is profane" came from. I mourn the burning of the sacred groves. I also mourn the inherent trechery of intellectual dishonesty.


You co-opted many of your so-called christian holidays from our people. Having co-opted them, you spread lies about our beliefs and practices. You condemn us with one breath and then christianize our holy days with another. Of
course, you are free to celebrate these holidays or not as you choose. That is neither here not there to me personally.

Please DON'T teach your children to hate what they don't understand. DON'T teach your children to judge our children by allowing them to post names of the 'unsaved' on a large cross during a prayer meeting held on public school ground. DON'T teach your children that our childrens' lives are less valuable than theirs. This hate has got to stop.

No longer will we tolerate being left out. No longer will we passively accept the suicides of our pagan [and g/l/b/t -- pagan or non-pagan] teens. No longer will we sit back while the rest of you attempt to dictate your belief in one god or in a christian nation to us. Even if the untied states started off as a christian nation [which she most assuredly did not, as our founders were deists and not christians] that does not mean that we should be a christian nation-- or a theocracy-- today.

Y


We don't seek converts. We don't want your children. We don't expect to be subjected to harassment for our beliefs or our way of life.

Y

All of us are human beings trying to live on this battered planet without killing each other. Please take that thought with you to church this sunday.

-sapphoq


Sunday, October 02, 2005

CRABBY? WHO'S CRABBY? 10/2/05

* from http://www.clipanimations.com *



Funny how many people think that our human ancestors spent lots of time running after or cowering from the dinosaurs. The fossil record shows that they did not live during the same time period.

It's easy to blame the media-- unrealistic cartoons, movies, and other teevee shows, or even schools and science classes. And now even our president wants children to learn about "intelligent design" in science classes and disdains evolution as "only a theory." What we need most of we don't often get taught in schools or even at home. And we have become lazy -- we no longer wish to be bogged down by doing our own research.

And what is that thing that we need? Critical thinking. Critical thinking might teach us that styrofoam cups of coffee from the drive-thru usually [and hopefully] contain H-O-T liquids. Critical thinking might also teach us that if something is too good to be true, it usually is. And it might even teach us how to examine various claims for how tenuous a hold they have on reality.

Reality-- now there's a word. Some of us were "taught" that reality is subjective, that no objective reality is possible. Some of us were taught that "it's all good" and that "all paths lead to onegod" or even that "all the gods are one god and all the goddesses are one goddess" [that would be "all paths lead to onegod" with a pagan bent].

We have become a nation of non-thinkers.

Me-- crabby? No way.
-sapphoq