mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Royal Coat of Arms
October 18, 2012
An armiger is a person who has the right to bear heraldry. In the United States there are no legal limits to bearing or designing your own coat of arms. In UK, Spain, Ireland, and Canada, places concerned with historical authenticity and royal ancestry, the use of the heraldry is regulated by law. I am not sure what would become of you if you went out with heraldry that was bogus to you, but it is against the law. The rest of us are free to create coats of arms for any occasion, on the fly.
When the Mayflower sailed to Plymouth the Pilgrims left the religious restrictions they had known in England. They took extreme risks to pursue religious freedom. They had their own costuming and strict code that bound them together in this adventure. They originated near Sherwood Forrest, fled for Amsterdam, then Leiden, arriving in 1609. The trip to America began there not only for the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, but for many branches of my family tree. It appears that almost all of my ancestors were anxious to high tail it out of Europe in the early 1600s. There is much research to be done, but it seems that they all took these risks sailing across the Atlantic because they had extreme convictions of various sorts. Some believed as traders and planters they would prosper and thrive. That seemed to be enough for the Dutch ones. The Brits and the French who sailed out of Leiden were all on big religious trips. As Thanksgiving approaches I am pretty obsessed with my Pilgrim ancestors and all their deets. I truly enjoy living vicariously through the discovery of the actual history of my ancestors.
After about three years of working on my family tree I have collected many coats of arms from my branches. The tree grows ever wider as it goes backwards in time. Some have heraldry. I was thinking about making a piece of art with some of them, and one that I make myself. The real ones have symbols that were meaningful to the family. Mine will have symbols that are enchanting for me. The Queen of your Own Life book includes guidelines for creating one’s own coat of arms, as well as a coronation ceremony to claim sovereignty over body, mind, and spirit. I adore the positive and contemporary way Queen Cindy and Queen Kathy present alchemy, ceremony, and magic. To eliminate the negative is to create space for the essence, the distilled spirit, the powerful talisman. I am pleased to live in a country where I can, as a queen wild and free, create and fly my own royal heraldry without fear of retribution by authorities. I plan to make use of this inalienable right. Have you thought about the symbols that you would use to express the essence of you?
Birth of a Blogger
October 12, 2012
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I play the part of Auntie Mame to three kids who live in California. I am not grandmother, aunt, or even Jewish, which gives me a distinct place in the family order. I have creative freedom that the other players do not have. I can be indulgent, which I am. I can go home and ignore them, which I do all the time. I feel a responsibility to model for and with them a fair and loving friendship between kids and an adult. This means the authority card can not be played unless there is a dire emergency. We are equals. Of course if I lived with them full time this would collapse quickly, because adults do need authority in order to hang out with kids at all.
They each have distinct talents and abilities. If I have a favorite it would be Max because we share similar interests in technology. This is the child every Apple share holder wants to meet. I think he wants to marry Siri. The kids inherit my old Apple products and are now officially hooked. The issue is that when a boy is alone with his computer, he is likely to just play stupid games and become addicted to it like to the TV. They need restrictions in order to have balance, so mom has very reasonable rules for tech use, which is a powerful force in discipline. To loose privileges to be with the electronics is severe for these guys, so they do behave in order to avoid it.
Yesterday I negotiated the permission for Max to start a blog. He quickly set up his WordPress page and published a picture of himself from the morning as his first post. I convinced mom that the archive will be her most precious possession that she will not need to file or protect. It will be there. Now comes the fun. He is extremely enthusiastic and interested. Mom is happy too because now he does not like to write. I have urged him to be consistent and thoughtful about his content. We talked about technical quality and how to develop interesting posts others want to read. I am curious to see how this will develop. I wonder if his enthusiasm can be maintained, and if he will use this practice wisely. Do you know any kids who blog, and how they got started blogging? I am very interested in finding other youngsters who are involved in this world.
It is with great pride that I present to the blogiverse the talented, the witty , and the very young Mr. Max Levy:
Max in front of his house
I ripped off his first post, which is this picture. Please join me in wishing him blogging success. We may all learn a lot from this young man. He teaches me all the time. Go Max!!!
Asteya
October 4, 2012
Honoring what belongs to others is a yama, or social restraint, set out by Patanjali in the yoga sutras. To practice asteya is to understand that being satisfied with what I have is essential to my contribution to society. It also requires that I honor the time, accomplishments, and possesions of others. The yamas are simple and straightforward, designed for endless practice. They provide an ethical framework for living in this world while seeking enlightenment. Asteya has the effect of priming the pump by a mindset of coveting absolutely nothing. It is to be satisfied. It is to respect everyone’s boundaries and belongings. The most precious belonging anyone has is time.
Lena West
At the TribeUpNY on the equinox we enjoyed the presence and the teachings of Ms. Lena West, social marketing historian/wizard/teacher cum laude. She made the excellent point that time is not money, as the trite saying would have us believe. She ably demonstrated that time wasted can never be found. Money can be leveraged. If one cares to increase the value and the impact of time it must be leveraged as well. Her point is that influence is real, is valuable, and is gained by leveraging ( focusing) time. It was not her intention to come off yogic. Her message was 100 % asteya. Do what you do well. Don’t try to digest the entirety of the world at all times. Make and respect boundaries that create value. When you focus on your own well, take care of it and set limits on it, flow happens. When your focus travels to distractions of any kind you loose the value of the time that is only given once. I think Lena Patanjali West is brilliant. Here is her presentation from TribeUp:
Satya
September 26, 2012
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ST Teresa of Avila
Truth and the relationship one has with it are both elements of discernment. Each person has a reality that is colored by the limits placed on observation. I have noticed that Americans have been trending toward believing what can be seen has value, whereas what is invisible has no merit or value. When presented with a choice of money or wisdom it would be very common for most to choose money as a solution to any problem. If we only consider short term solutions, money does come in handy. If we look at how the problem to be solved now has arisen we often find there has been misuse of finances. If no new wisdom arrives with new funding, this problem will very likely to expand to the extent that the new funding allows.
Some of you are naturally thinking of politics, but that is not my subject today. Satya, or the truth that is love, exists. It has no need to be believed in order to continue being true. The details, and the attention given to the infinitesimal either hide or make clear what is true. You are a detective in your own life. You not only choose your environment and the people you encounter, but you fill in all the details by focusing on some while ignoring others. When I loose an object in my office and start to hunt for it I never cease to be amazed by what I find while searching. The longer it takes me to find the desired object, the more I am able to sort, file, dump, and make clear what is in there all the time. Clearing away the outdated, the insignificant, and the garbage makes a new level of truth exist between my office and me.
St Teresa of Avila was a woman determined to see the divine in the details of life. Interesting to me is that her focus on every little tiny thing eventually brought her a big fat vision of Interior Castles. I take this to mean that when and if I finally clear out all the junk in my life I too will see my interior wealth. I already prize teaching over money, but St. Teresa is hinting at something even more elaborate and permanent. I am sure that the stern Teresa could never have allowed her office to become such a mess. She does give hope in her quote, “To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.” This is very good news. There may well be castles under all this junk.
Vitriol
September 9, 2012
Vitriol
I am studying the alchemist archtype in my life. I have used the word vitriol, but have not associated it with alchemy until I found it in my reading yesterday. I purchased a beautiful book, Signs & Symbols by Beryl Dhanjal. In this excellent art and prose work I discovered that vitriol is an acronym, just like OMG. It stands for Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem,” “Visit the interior of the earth and rectifying (purifying) you will find the hidden stone.” The motto originated in L’Azoth des Philosophes by the 15th Century alchemist Basilius Valentinus. Both Alchemists and Freemasons use this motto.
In chemistry ancient science referred to sulfuric acid is vitriol. I have a strong memory of the alchemist in chief in my life, my father, teaching me to make hydrogen bombs. I was probably about 8. We dissolved magnesium metal bits in hydrochloric acid, but vinegar works, or any acid, I think. The combination makes hydrogen gas that when ignited, explodes. At school in the 1950s we had air raid drills about hydrogen bombs. At home I got to make them. Both my dad and I liked the little ones we made in test tubes, so we went big one day. He put the acid and the metal in a gallon jar, which was somehow closed and directed into a plastic tube about 30 ft. long. My dad had no experience in the hurt locker, just in fracking and blowing up oil reservoirs underground. My mother watched from the upstairs window horrified as my dad lit the end of the hose, which I think was supposed to blow a can in the air. The tube with the gas in it flamed across my dad’s beloved lawn and the glass bottle blew to smithereens. I was thrilled, but my father was significantly freaked out. I think we went on a hiatus from explosion chemistry for a while after that. I am pretty sure that is when I had to build the crystal radio. I remember not being nearly as pleased with that radio as I had been with our explosive past. It is good to have an alchemist for a father. They combine things that other fathers do not.
