Wednesday, May 30, 2012

June: Holidays & Days of Note

June 1. Children's Day (China, Laos.) / Navy Day (Mexico) / Festival of
Carna (Roman) / National Day Against Homophobia (Canada) / National Doughnut Day (U.S.) always held on the first Friday in June. / It was 45 years ago today that the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, meaning I guess that it was 65 years ago today that he taught the band to play leaving the question will we still love them when they're past 64?/ also Happy birthday Oscar the Grouch

June 2. Rice Harvest Festival (Malaysia) / Juno Regina's Day (Ancient
Rome) / Queen's Birthday (New Zealand) / Shapatu of Ishtar (Babylonian) / Mother Shipton Day matron saint of working women. / In 1924 Congress granted citizenship to all Indians on this day, however it was not until 1993 that their religions practices were no longer illegal. / St. Elmo's Day. (Catholic) They've made that little red gremlin a saint now? It was bad enough when they gave almost the whole of Sesame Street other to him! / As of today radio is 118 years old.

June 3. Memorial Day for Broken Dolls (Japan) Buddhist observance when broken dolls are enshrined by a priest. / Festival for Bellona (Ancient Rome) Bellona minor Roman war goddess. / Second Festival of Pax (Ancient Rome) A festival for a goddess of war and a goddess of peace both on the say day… oh those daffy ancient Roman!

June 4. Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 memorial day. / On this day in 1070, in a cave just outside the town of Roquefort France, the first example of the cheese we know today as Roquefort was discovered, who made the blend? Why was it abandoned in the cave? Unknown, now THERE is an idea for a conspiracy! / Ford made his first operational car on this day 117 years ago.


                                               World Environment Day

June 5. World Environment Day (U.N.) This year's theme “Green Economy: Does it include you?” / National Gingerbread Day (U.S.) / First flight by balloon by the Montgolfier brothers, 1783

June 6. Teacher's Day (U.S.) Yeah... You folks in the holiday naming biz
DO know that most schools are out for the summer in the U.S. now don't you? / Queensland day (Australia) / Anniversary of D-Day. / Crossroads of Artemis (Ancient Greek) / First drive-in movie theater ever opens In New Jersey in 1933, The first film shown was the Adolphe Menjou film Wives Beware.




June 7. Unionsopplosningen (Norway) / first day of Vestalia (Ancient
Rome) held in honor of Vesta. / National Chocolate Ice Cream Day (U.S.) So what's with all the chocolate themed days this month? / National Moth Night (U.K.) night for Britain to celebrate moths and moth recording. / Vatican City becomes nation in 1929.

June 8 Milad-un-Nabi (Islam) Mohammed dies or ascends into heaven in 632. / World Ocean Day. / Lindisfarne Day (Odinist)

June 9. Trooping the Colour (United Kingdom) Military celebration of the monarch's official birthday held in London on the second Saturday of June. / Sigurdsblot (Norse) festival honoring Sigurd (Sigifrith or
Siegfreid),the great hero who killed the dragon Fafnir and won back the treasure of the Rhine. / Queen's Birthday (Australia, except for Western Australia) Huh? / Donald Duck's Birthday, 78 years young, not bad for someone with such rage management problems.

June 10. On this date in New Haven, Connecticut in 1682, the first
tornado was reported in America, many years before the first freight train so I have no idea what they said it sounded like. / National Yo Yo Day (U.S.) Do they even make those anymore, or do they just have a "yo-yo app" for cell phones now?


                                                            FORTUNA


June 11. Feast of Fortuna (Ancient Rome) Day for the Goddess of fortune, chance and luck. / King Kamehameha I Day (Hawaiian) It was said that he was so strong he could brake open a coconut using one hand. / Davis Day (Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada) held in remembrance of William Davis

June 12. Araw ng Kalayaan (Philippines) Independence Day / Russia Day (Russian Federation) Independence Day / Dia dos Namorados (Brazil) Lover's Day; similar to St. Valentine's day / World Day Against Child Labor (International)

June 13. Feast of Epona goddess of horses (Celtic) / Athena's Day (Greek) / Quinquatrus Minusculae (Ancient Roman) Day for Minerva. / The space probe Pioneer 10 has been outside the solar system for 18 years now, and yet still not a full light year out.

June 14. Birthday of the Muses (Ancient Greek) / Poson (Sri Lanka) Day
to celebrate the introduction of Buddhism to Sri Lanka in 256 B.C.E. /
Flag Day (U.S.) / It was on this day in 1954 that Dwight Eisenhower
signed an order adding "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. The
Theory being that all those Commies hiding under all those beds in the
50's would melt away in fear on hearing this.

June 15. Feast of Saint Germaine Cousin (Roman Catholic) Patron of
shepherdesses & victims of child abuse. Would somebody kindly poke him and tell him to stop slacking off? No, no, just about the latter part,
as far as I know things have been going just dandy for shepherdesses
lately.

June 16. Night of the Teardrop (Ancient Egypt) Festival where
Priestesses of Isis were said to control the weather by braiding and
releasing their hair. For related item see Grimm's fairy tale The Goose
Girl. / Bloom's Day (Dublin) You know from the novel Ulysses by James
Joyce that you haven't read, or if you have read it didn't get all the
way though, or if you did read the whole thing didn't get it. /
National Fudge Day (U.S.) I guess this puts America about neck and neck with the ancient Romans and their seeming endless list of festivals, I bet if they had had chocolate there would have been a goddess for it, and this could have very well have been the day for Fudgata, works for me.

June 17. Father's Day (U.S., Canada, Brittany, Ireland, Northern Ireland) Stated in 1910 in Spokane, Washington. While Mother's Day has been adopted by a lot of other countries, it seems far fewer have taken up Father's Day. What, other countries' dads don't need socks and loud ties? / Marriage of Orpheus and Eurydike (Ancient Greek) / Watergate Day (U.S) / Eat Your Vegetables Day (U.S.)

June 18. In 1885 the Statute of Liberty arrived in New York aboard the
Isere. / It was on this day in 1978 that we got the first appearance of
Garfield the Cat in the comics section, 34 years old, which in cat years
would make him, gets out calculator and does some figuring, ….. Dead.

June 19. Juneteeth (U.S.) The oldest known celebration of the end of
slavery in America. Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. / World Sauntering Day. I wouldn't now how to "saunter" if you paid me.


June 20. Summer Solstice / Bald Eagle Day. (U.S.) / Kuan-Yin becomes a Bodhisattva (Chinese) / World Refuge Day. / Ice Cream Soda Day (U.S.) Call these invisible holidays pointless if you want to, this one I can get behind.

June 21. Alban Hefin (Druidic) / Day of the Green Man (Northern Europe) / Day on which many Slavic people celebrated the marriage of the Sun God Dazbog & Moon Goddess Myesyats. / National Aboriginal Day (Canada) / All Hera's Day (Ancient Rome) / Ishtar's Day (Old Babylon) / Astarte's Day (Canaanite) / Aphrodite's Day (Greek) / Yemaya's Day (Brazilian) /Aine's Day (Irish) / National Go Skateboarding Day (U.S.) To be followed I assume by National Go to the ER Day. / Vinegar Day (U.S) Vinegar, really? Vinegar. Why? / Litha (Wiccan)

                                                                   Litha

June 22. National Chocolate Éclair Day (U.S.) Roses and chocolate? It's like the day the spirits of Valentine's day take the day off. / Anti-fascist Struggle Say (Croatia) / Stupid Guy Thing Day (U.S.) A day for women to make a list of stupid guy things and pass it on to other women to share. How sexist, just thinking about this is going to put a crimp in my attempt to hang-glide from the highest mountain in my state with a skateboard tied to my shoes so I can ditch the glider close to the ground and land on a highway to see if I can get it over 60 miles an hour, it's perfectly safe… there's hardly any traffic on Sunday.

June 23. In Ireland & England it was once thought that on the 23rd or
`St. John´s Day Eve´, the souls of everyone left their bodies while
they slept and found the place where they would die (can you say that? Morbid? Sure, I knew you could). Now doesn´t that make for a perfectly creepy sounding holiday? What will you dream about?

June 24. St. John's Day. Use to be a big deal, as big or even bigger
than Christmas in some places, day for lighting bonfires for St. John
the oldest of the saints' days in the Greek and Latin calendars.
/ Feast of the Sun (Aztec) / It was on the 24th in 1717 that the Masons
went public in London. / This is the day on which Shakespeare's
Mid-Summer's Night Dream took place, it is also the date that people
thought Fairies were most likely to be active. / Festival of Mati-Syra-Zemlya & Zemlya's Night (Slavic Lands).
                                         
                                             Mati-Syra-Zemlya




                       Also

The 24th is the Day King Edward III founded the Order of the Garter in 1348, which some believe was secretly tied to the pre-Christian Pagan beliefs of Europe.

By tradition this is the day the Pied Piper lead 130 children out of the
town of Hamlin and into a mountain.

It was on this day in 1694 that the Utopian community known as Woman of the Wilderness (which was all male) made up of Primitive Christians, alchemists, & mystics landed in what would come to be known as Germantown, Pennsylvania.

It was on this day in 1701 that the above community said they were
visited by a glowing white sphere while burning their St. J Day fires.

This is also the day in 1947 that Kenneth Arnold claimed he sighted a
number of crescent shaped objects "flying with a motion like saucers
skipping over a lake.

June 25. In 1876 the day that George Armstrong Custer died for your sins as he and the 7th Cavalry where are out. / National Catfish Day (U.S.) Day for the best eating of the bottom feeding fish, it's better if you don't think about that part. / The day in 1962 that the Supreme Court ruled school sponsored prayer to be unconstitutional. / Native American Independence Day

                             Native American Indepndence Day


June 26. National Chocolate Pudding Day (U.S.) / International Day in
Support of Torture Victims / Beautician's Day (U.S.)

June 27. Day of the 7 Sleepers (Catholic, however there is also an
Islamic version) know as Siebenschläfertag in Germany. / National
HIV Testing Day (U.S.) / Mixed Race Day (Brazil) Day that honors
all those who possess multiracial or multi-ethnic origins. / Helen Keller Day (Alabama) / Iroquois Green Corn Festival (Native American) / Joseph & Hyrum Smith killed by mob in 1844, leading to Brigham Young being put in charge of the Mormons.

June 28. Raggedy Ann doll introduced to the world on this day in 1917 / Paul Bunyan Day. (U.S.) Whom it turns out was not a real figure from folklore, but was made up by two advertising men hired by a company that sold lumber to create a friendlier image, making him no more an authentic figure of folklore than say Ronald McDonald.



June 29. St. Peter & St. Paul Day (Catholic) With those two together
who are you going to borrow money from to pay the other? / Special
Recreation Day for the Disabled Day (U.S.) / Runic New Year
/ Feast of Ogun (Santeria)

June 30. Burning of the Three Firs (France) / On this day in 1908 a
massive explosion took place in Tunguska, Siberia. More powerful
than a hydrogen bomb, no definitive explanation had been given for
it, theories have ranged from a comet or soft meteor, to it being
a tiny chunk of anti-matter, to a crashed spacecraft.

If April is the cruelest month then June must be the strangest.



Saturday, May 26, 2012

A Magickal Ritual where they served Hot Dogs?



In the four months since Super Bowl XLVI there has been, at least in some sections of the internet, a lot of fuse and fury about Madonna’s half-time show. With most of them calling it a “Satanic Illuminati ritual and blasphemy against the God of the Bible” or variations on that, over produced yes. Satanic? no.

First of all as far as I know, the Illuminati (if there really, really is such a thing) is pretty much an all-boys club so it seems to me if they were going to go for a spokes priest they would have gone with Lady Gaga (hey it’s what I’ve heard!) second it was more a Pagan / Pop culture fusion and sorry but the Pagans WERE NOT SATANISTS! Only Christians, and ironic Agnostic Post Goths can be Satanists, so cut that out.

Seriously though there was much meat for those looking for hidden meanings behind the symbolism used, references seemingly to Isis, and Anubis, a fusion of X O, what looked like runes, a guy really putting his nuts in danger on a rope, thigh boots, a 53 year old woman bouncing around like that! There was a lot to work with, but if it were a magickal ritual what of it? The theme, such as there was, other than selling as many copies of MDNA as possible, was World Peace.

I know the horror, the horror! Yes, a direct blaspheme against the last millennium and a half of message of the Big Religion, which has mostly been expressed by an endless parade of wars, pogroms, witch hunts, and heaping helpings of oppression, fear, hate and ignorance. I mean who in their right mind doesn’t want those good times to keep rolling?

Was it a magickal ritual? I’m betting almost certainly not, but if it was I’m also betting it was a good thing.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

More than 100 women perform nude worship of Goddess

To be sure the news picked up on the fact that the worship involved a large number of women grouping together out of doors in the nude, I however want to point out that the reason was to worship a Goddess.

This event took place about 60 miles from Tumkur in India. Which looks to be a lovely place to preform such duties.



Tumkur


For details see below

Times of Indian



                         Neem Leaves

Thursday, May 3, 2012

May 10th is for Mazu



When people talk about the major religions of the world today you hear nary a word about Goddess worshipers, but then why would you? They are at best a blip on the big “I believe” scoreboard right? What are they are few thousand? Perhaps very nearly a million if you fudge the numbers a bit?

Try over 300 million. Over three hundred million? Yes over three hundred million, you know the same as the population of the whole of the United States of America and that’s just the Goddess Mazu!

Also known at Matsu, Mazu is a Chinese Goddess of mercy and the sea and her main day of celebration is coming up this May 10 and May 23, good luck finding a card at even the largest Hallmark Card Shop at your local mall!