mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Fumigate Congress
December 2, 2012
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Greek Senate
I watched an excellent program on the history channel about the use of drugs in history. During the discussion of ancient Greece they showed the Senate (from the same word as senility) being fumigated with herbs before they met to discuss matters. The Greeks hot boxed the lawmakers in the chamber with hallucinogenic herbs to make them cordial. How have we not thought of this? How did this practice ever disappear? These people invented classic. Why has the CIA not been given a mission to find the fumigation recipe they used?
We know they are all on a number of pharmaceuticals, mind and soul altering drugs with disastrous side effects. We know that they can not distinguish between health care and wellness. We know we do not trust them with our money, and they have our money. I say we dose them, gentle readers, and NOT with their own medicine. It is time for a major toga party on the hill.
Choice and Awareness
November 29, 2012
What choices do you make all the time?
Free will is the ability/responsibility to choose. It is not something that we have or have not, but something that is always there to varying degrees. Choices are realized through awareness. These choices are enabled or hindered by situational variables. These situational variables are very much a product of choices made in the past. The variable that determines the choices made is self awareness. This is because most of what we choose is based on who we believe ourselves to be. Think; “what would I do in any given situation” and you will see that it depends on who you understand yourself to be. Therefore, it matters less to the well being of the situation, how many choices you have to choose from, than it does the ability to discern between those choices. Focusing on self awareness seems to be the optimal way to bring about a collective existence which…
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Twelfth Month
November 26, 2012
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Twelve is a perfect mathematical way to look at everything. There are twelve of everything important because this is a simple, even way to divide any whole. The twelve astrological signs are found in twelve houses that represent different aspects of life and parts of the heavens. The twelfth house is the one that rules the unconscious. By keeping the public from seeing the contents the owner of this house reviews the risks and benefits of the unknown parts of the self. In the heavens, the twelfth house is the one just above the horizon at sunset, the last one visible before darkness. There are twelve Chinese animals that rule the years and hours of each day, passing in a slower, but even pace. These animals rule a year rather than a month, but it is all still divisible by 12.
We have a practice of creating a list for the first day of the first month known as resolutions. These are widely discussed and abandoned in short order until the following first month of the next year. By observing the universal failure of this practice I have devised a new one. By using the last month of the year to review and discover the deep, unconscious meaning of the 11 previous months, we may be able to make significant progress. By facing the shadow, the unknown, the undiscovered that we glaze over with overactivity on a regular basis, we may find wisdom and useful knowledge. You do not need to analyze all of your past to know that important emotions and facts have been swept under a big busy rug of quotidian fuss. You don’t need to meet all your demons, addictions, or delusions of actions past to make progress on taking good care of yourself. You simply have to be willing to consider that the darkness of your own heart may be the only thing blinding your vision. You need to be able to reverse all your assumptions for a while.
Saturnalia is the party time dedicated to Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, and therefore part of December. Romans reversed all rules and authority during the celebration. After the darkest day of the year, the light returns, reversing the visibility available each day until the summer solstice. The celebration of the darkest time when the world is reborn in the form of seeds and saplings is a universal need through all of history. Here we have some present day Brits dressing up like Romans and getting down for Saturn in December. The beat goes on.
Krampus, Shmutzli, and St. Nick
November 26, 2012
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The 6 of December is St Nicholas Day. In Europe the popular Krampus, also known as Shmutzli in Switzerland, is St. Nick’s full time side kick. In Austria Krampus is much more popular than the saint, representing old time winter. I have been in Vienna on Krampus night, when people dressed more or less like gorillas run around with big sticks frightening pedestrians. I also saw 6 Krampuses on Austrian television creating a hexagon with the big sticks and circle dancing. The Euros are not afraid to link the ancient religions to the present day. In fact, that is what makes them Euros. They may not know the enitre history of traditional local customs, but they have an strong affinity with preservation of provincial attitudes and ancient practices. The ancestors make them do it.
In Switzerland Santa is paid by neighbors to come to your house and scare you on Dec. 6. Your parents give him alcohol and tell him all about your worst behavior. Shmutzli is with him carrying a sack of ashes. My friend Edith lived at the end of Santa’s route in her village, so he was pretty schnockered on schnapps by the time he arrived at her home. She remembers he smelled like alcohol and pretended to put her in his sack to haul her away from home for bad behavior, of which he knew every detail. She was really scared of St. Nick. During the three weeks between 6 Dec. and 25 Dec. the kids conspicuously make efforts to amend the problem disobedience chastised by St Nick that frightening night. On Dec. 25 the baby Jesus will fly through the window to leave oranges and walnuts to well reformed children. The customs vary from place to place, with the Swiss love of regional tradition and language. What is the same about all the places I have visited during the dead of winter in Europe is a community effort to scare away the winter blues and share light. They still have plenty of real fires on the streets roasting real chestnuts and warming up the spiced hot wine they serve in seasonal huts set up for the purpose. These pop up specialty bars often sell a regional specialty they make each year at the time. There is a big effort to create warmth outdoors with food, alcohol, festivals, fires and lights. These efforts are less personal and more spread across the community, with less focus on the large material haul (or obligation if you are the parent), more on the party atmosphere shared with neighbors.
We Americans may be overlooking some important lessons about stress, greed, and balance that Krampus represents. By teaching kids that a never ending stream of new material objects flowing steadily, but gushing and flooding the world in December, is the key to satisfaction and fulfillment we may be creating a new kind of Christmas monster. I am in favor of importing Shmutzli to the US, as a new superhero action figure and video game.
Heaven on the Ceiling
October 21, 2012
When we identify ourselves we use memory and words to describe our personalities. We play different roles in our lives, which can be broken down into archetypes. Understanding the ancient pantheon or modern breakdown of archetypes at work will reveal your true motives and those of others. The use of astrology in art is a way to place different aspects of life in alignment with different personality traits. In the Renaissance it was suggested that by painting the gods and goddesses that rule each planet of the birth horoscope on the bedroom ceiling as a reminder of the many forces at work, a student of magic/medicine would be well served. The plants and medicines were ruled by planets, and the maladies each had a planetary influence as well. To practice medicine was to be in tune with all that science could offer and all that folk medicine could prove empirically. Symbols work directly in the healing arts just as they do in religion. Beyond words, meaning conveyed through amulets, talismans, astrological paintings, and other magic objects goes to work at a subconscious level. What is your environment saying to you?
To unplug from our own daily delusions through meditation and retreat is healthy. Carl Jung built his stone tower to surround his soul with art that directly symbolizes his inner being. To be fully individuated was the intention behind building the tower by hand in Bollingen and living/decorating it with the symbols that had meaning to him. Living off the grid, and on the water Jung was able to create a retreat that embodied his own psyche. Using his own nature combined with the spirit of the place Jung built a living evolving hermitage. He was interested in alchemy at the end of his career. He was an esteemed shrink with many followers, yet when he went symbolic alchemical on them they did not appreciate the work he had decided to pursue. He was in a position to do as he pleased. The publication of The Red Book after his death has revealed how much he did exactly that.
If you had a place on the water with funds devoted to your building of a retreat what kind of temple would you construct? If you had your choice of materials and colors how would you design your surroundings? If there is no lakeside property in your holdings, do you have a corner of a room, or a space on your window sill to set aside as your own altar or sacred reminder? Is there an inherited item that belongs in the spot, or does it need some art created by and for you? Do you successfully use your gifts as they arrive, while always developing a deeper, more confident, content sense of yourself in this world? Do you have a big backlog of inherited symbols that do not belong with you at all, but are still hanging around in your life? How much of your environment feeds your soul? Can you find a place for personal art and meditation, whatever that means to you? Do you have a few minutes each day to be still and know? These small steps can be a change in direction toward a full happy life. Find a space and a few minutes. See what you can do with them.
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