Ozark Superstititions: Passed down generations

The traditional Ozarkians were among the most superstitious group of people in American history.

Many of these superstitions were recorded and preserved in Ozark Folklore and Magic by Vance Randolf. Superstitions, generally, were not specific to any particular events. Superstitions recorded by Randolf included:

• If a woman drops her dishrag, company is coming
• If a woman's nose itches then unexpected company will arrive
• If your right eye itches then bad luck will follow
• If your left eye itches then good luck will follow
• If your ears burn then someone is saying something about you

The superstition get more complicated when the superstition involved a sneeze:

• Sneeze on Monday--kiss a stranger
• Sneeze on Tuesday--a letter will arrive
• Sneeze on Wednesday--good luck will follow
• Sneeze on Thursday--bad luck will follow
• Sneeze on Friday--sorrow will follow
• Sneeze on Saturday--you will find a new friend
• Sneeze on Sunday and the devil will be with you all week

If you run out of salt you will suffer a whole years poverty
It is bad luck to return borrowed dishes unwashed
If two friends are walking and a third party walks between them then the two friends must turn their backs to each other to avoid a quarrel
You should always leave by the same door you came in from
A rock with a hole in it is very good luck
It is bad luck to pick up a black button

Abramelin Benchmark

I have been curious about AbraMelin and all his profession leads to for several years and want to benchmark my progress.  Starting from below zero playing field whereby six years of our life was ripped away (our home, our website, our phone, our internet, Larry's auto shop, our ducks, chickens, fish, and our health).  Considering that last February all that lose was ahead of us; this February it is behind us.

Ironically, it was done by my mother and brothers and all because of some misunderstanding.  Since 2005 after Mom's near-death experience at St. John's, Simon (stepfather) and I never left her alone.  I came over once a week and deep-cleaned their house because I knew that would make Mom feel better.  I changed and washed sheets so the beds were fresh.

Larry and I both drove to the store for them, mowed the yard so Toby, Mom's Maltese, never had to have high grass on his belly.  Larry and I had Mom and Simon's welfare above our own and felt 100% responsible for their well-being for three years 24/7. Only someone who has experienced Care Giving of Parents could understand how exhausting that is.

Then Simon passed away.

And a whirlwind of family hatred came down on us and blew our life into little pieces; I believe the ones doing this would have utterly destroyed us both if they could have. I have always lived right down the road Mom; the brothers have always lived in other far away states.

Abundance: Bring it On!

Abundance is something most of us are conditioned not to believe we should have.  I know that I, as a Kansas girl, was raised believing having abundance of anything was almost a sin and to be shied away from.

I am still trying to believe in abundance; that it is all right to have plenty of something.  That made me question how so many of us are so convinced in scarcity; that struggling is lordly.

Samuel Mathers and Abramelin 388

Samuel Liddell Mathers (1854 – 1918), founded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and translated Abramelin's ancient French manuscript and published it as a book. The book I own by Liddell-Mathers warns the reader of his book do not even glance at the squares without knowing what you are doing.

 I didn't even open the book for months, apparently the warning had an effect on me.  I believed every word of it.

But months later I found out Mather's translation was weakened severely by these things:

One of the four books by Abramelin was left out of the French manuscript with which he worked.

... possibly due to a mistranslation, Mathers changed one of the ingredients within the recipe for Abramelin's oil, specifying galangal instead of the original herb calamus. The oil in the German manuscript sources also contains cassia and is nearly identical to the biblical recipe for Holy anointing oil.

The differences between the recipes cause several notable changes in the oil's characteristics, including edibility, fragrance, dermal sensation, and spiritual symbolism.

Slso, there are 242 word squares in Mathers' translation, while the original German has 251. Most of the squares in Mathers are not completely filled in, and those that are differ markedly from the German sources.

A German translation, credited to Abraham of Worms and edited by Georg Dehn, was published in 2001 by Edition Araki. 

NOTE: In the Dehn version, the fourth book is included and Mathers' galangal substitution is reverted back to calamus (though not in the English translation — see Abramelin Oil). All 251 of the word squares are completely filled in. An English translation of Dehn's edition was published 2006 by the American publisher Nicholas Hays.

St Valentine Beheaded; Left a Note

My media experience with Valentine's Day history has always been watching or seeing photos of a bloody massacre in Kansas City on February 14.  Not romantic and insulting to our intelligence.  I'm sure it will be played out many times today as well.

Here is the true history of Valentine's Day and it is very romantic and as far as I can tell, it is a true story.  I will be paraphrasing and summarizing a lot but you'll still get the whole picture if I'm any good at this.

Timeline: about 300 years after the death of Jesus.

Place: Rome

Ruler: Claudius II the Cruel

Status of Rome: many unpopular wars were spurned on by Emperor Claudius.

Claudius' Problem: men did not want to go to war, they wanted to stay home with family

Summary:  During this period a kind priest by the name of Valentine went about his daily duties and really didn't stand out from the crowd much at all, other than the villagers considered Priest Valentine the one to go to if they wanted to get married.

Claudius reasoned that if men could not get married, there would be nothing to hold them back from going off to his wars so he simply banned marriage and engagements in Rome.  This shocking edict from an unpopular ruler did not go over well.  Even the Holy Priest Valentine disobeyed the edict and continued to marry young couples as usual.

Claudius was infuriated by this disloyalty and ordered the priest arrested.  He sentenced Valentine to be beaten and beheaded on February 14, 270 AD.  While in prison awaiting his sentence, Priest Valentine, who was treated very well by the jailer's daughter, wrote her a note and signed it "From Your Valentine."

Over the next two thousand years, that incident has evolved into what we celebrate today as Valentine's Day.

Killing Men Witches Routine in 1950s

In the 1950s, Manning Nash, an anthropologist, spent a year in the southeastern highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, a humid, tropical climate close to the equator but in Mexico.  (the engraving to the left was done by F. Catherwood around 1914. I found it on Wikipedia, copyright free).

Manning Nash found that witchcraft was alive and well in this country even in the 1950s.  He said that in the nine months that he spent in Amatenango, every two months a man was murdered for being a witch.

The people in this region believe some men have animal twins called nawales.The nawal is the source of power in medical practice and all curers must have at least one nawal in their possession.  A man's nawal is revealed to him in a dream later in life, however, he has possession of one from birth.  These men use their power, which is essentially a medical and curing power, to keep the pueblos free from sickness.

However, as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, at least one man was murdered every two months or so for misusing his power to heal.    A nawal that turned vicious injected illness and ate the souls of the victims. A man's nawal assisted him in healing others, but when the nawal turned vicious, the man had to be put to death.

clipped from www.monstropedia.org

Within anthropology, Nagual is most commonly used negatively to refer to a person who has a particularly strong animal companion and who uses this companion to cause harm to others, or who himself changes shape into animals in order to cause harm to others. The normal practice is to refer to the animal companion itself as a Tonal, following the Aztec practice.

My Tree of Life Doodle

I doodled this tree back when my children were small and keep the drawing through many moves and tumbles.  My life experiences resemble this drawing; back when I drew it I was afraid my life might go like that.  Well, oh well.