New Year's Resolutions for 2006

I'm not gonna do "Statements of Will" like I did last year, it was pretentious of me and placed too much pressure on myself to be even more spectacular than I already was, so getting fancy like that is out.

Did I do the things I resolved last year?

Did I "stir more meat" into my literary pot with this blog? Um, not really. I got some stuff written, but I still have to edit it into a coherent body of stuff.

Did I become a "raging health machine"? I didn't become Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 like I wanted to, but I was going to a gym for a while, and I stopped hitting the chocolate quite so hard.

Did I keep a magickal diary? I did, but mostly not online. I have a notebook where I check off everytime I remember to do LBRP and one where I keep my Tarot readings.

Did I become a digital camera expert? Well, I got a new camera that works a lot better, and will be learning more about how to use it.

And now, a list of things I would like to do in 2006:

Clean up the Grotto and put up a couple more articles there.

Mo Tarot! Mo Tarot! Mo Tarot! I need to get back to my pathworking and qablalistic studies, one of the ways I am going get qabalistically in tune is by using a method outlined by a friend, using the 1 - 10 pips in my tarot deck, and a combination of Duquette's Chicken Qabala, Godwin's Qabalistic Encyclopedia, Regardie's Garden of Pomegranates, Crowley's 777 and Bk of Thoth, and anything else that seems good that I can get my hot little hands on.

I would like to either get a job down at Petco, or continue dogwalking and supplement it by starting a small Ebay business.

And finally, I have decided to go vegan!!! You heard it here first, folks. I may have a transitional period where I am lacto-ovo, but I just watched "Meet Your Meat" with Alec Baldwin, and had a good cry, and I can't in good conscience touch anything made by the butchers anymore. I am an animal lover.

Books on My Shelf

I posted this on the Thelema.nu site (I was on there before it started sucking), thought I'd let my blog buddies read it.

This is a great topic for me--I absolutely love books--I have worked at three bookstores in my life, and about 75% of the wall space in my room is filled with books

First of all I have a lot of fiction--Saul Bellow, Hemingway, Richard Brautigan, the Beats--Kerouac, Burroughs, Diane di Prima, etc.

Typical stuff like Stephen King, Jonathan Kellerman, Clive Barker, Thomas Harris, etc.

Business motivational stuff like Cluetrain Manifesto, Tom Peters, etc.

Then I have stuff like the Collected Works of Antonin Artaud--one of my literary idols. The edition that has an intro by Susan Sontag is really good, because she talks about gnosticism. Like Crowley, Artaud was an insane(?) drug addict. Like Crowley, his ideas went on to shape the second half of the twentieth century.

I also have a bunch of antique books I inherited from my grandmothers. A set of Dickens, a set of Balzac, a series of children's fiction and history.

A huge passel of pocket paperbacks, with stuff like Nietzsche, H.P. Lovecraft, Pat Conroy, Jackie Collins, and Ayn Rand. I find the Ayn Rand a little embarrassing, but I keep it in there because it tends to weird out & intimidate people who don't read much.

There are also things from the fifties, like Bob Hope's "I Owe Russia $1200" and "Barbara Owen, Girl Reporter".

Tons of Complete Idiots Guides and for Dummies books.

An embarrasing amount of Llewellyn books--They were shiny, happy, pagan books that were about three bucks apiece at one store I worked at.

Tons of books on yarn crafts.

Tons of books on Tarot (my current favorite is the Complete Idiots Guide to...")

Some Hippie dippy type stuff like Ram Dass "Be Here Now" and Timothy Leary "Confessions of a Hope Fiend" and also that book he did with R. A. Wilson, the title of which escapes me now. I also have tons of R. A. Wilson, except for that one about Bob & Slack (post-modernism kind of gets on my nerves.)

One of the first books on metaphysics I ever read was Colin Wilson's "the Occult".

I also have some stuff on Gnosticism, like Pagels & Steiner.

I also have a lot of Ouspensky/Gurdjieff--but the only Ouspensky book I even got halfway through was New Model of the Universe, and that was because I really dug the parts where he talked about his disillusionment with society through his newspaper job, and subsequent search for wisdom. "There are enough lies in the world without mine." There is a very cool book about the 4th Way community called "Struggle of the Magicians: Why Ouspensky Left Gurdjieff" by William Patrick Patterson, which reads like a spy novel. You should check it out if you're into them.

I have some things like Godwin's Cabalistic Eycyclopedia, Regardie's Golden Dawn and Garden of Pomegranates.

Of course I have a lot of Crowley books, one of my favorites being an edition called "Portable Darkness: An Aleister Crowley Reader" edited by Scott Michaelson, which provides a nice introduction to his work. I have the Confessions, Laurence Sutin's "Do What Thou Wilt," The Law is For All, Holy Books of Thelema, Book of Lies, Magickal Diaries of AC, 777, Book of Thoth, Magick W/O Tears, Tarot Divination, Magick in Theory & Practice.

Pink Floyd goodness--complete with Syd Barrett!

Go here, buddies!!!

The Coffee Table

The Coffee Table
Originally uploaded by Hermgirl.

Just testing things here--this is my coffee table.

So, what *is* "The Secret"?

A new marketing ploy has been launched upon the masses. In the wake of recent tragedies in the headlines like Katrina, the London bombing, AIDS in Africa, etc., humankind is naturally looking for answers, help, something.

Along come people with a tv show, (which will likely be riddled with interesting commercials!) to tell us about a wonderful secret, which great people throughout history knew. And they are going to share it with us!

They are already gearing up with banner ads interested folk can use, ipod tie-ins, etc. The mind boggles at what future media bonanza will await the creators of this television event.

The most interesting part of the Secret's blog are the comments, complete with some seminar wonk, salivating at future marketing opportunities, sending the same comment over and over again. This could be bigger than the Kabbalah--what WILL Madonna do?

Um, Ok, but, what would * I* use one for?

In the year 2006 I resolve to: Start using a condom. Get your resolution here

Weird Dream

I hardly ever remember my dreams, but when I do, they are usually interesting.

This one had creepy trenchcoat Vince Vaughn in it. Everyone in the dream was a creepy goth trenchcoat type person, and it was kind of like a movie. Vince Vaughn was a detective or something, and we were looking around this weird skinnny house with many floors that had six or eight siblings living there, most of whom wore glasses. I think one of them was James Woods.

Anyway, there were these two rats helping us find a person and we would look in each room and the rats would go through it. One time a rat ripped the corner off a woman's purse and took it outside.

Was there a movie with Vince Vaughn about rats that I saw and forgot about?

Hello world! And Happy Holidays!

So, I had a nice Christmas, I spent time with my mom and sis and her two kids. One of my dogwalking friends gave me a Barnes & Noble giftcard (yay!)

Also, a couple of days ago, I was Googling myself and I found out that I'm on a blogroll for the local news. So, hello out there, I'm just checking to see if this entry shows up. Hopefully soon I will have some interesting stuff to post (I am still working on that series of essay entries, maybe in the next couple of weeks it'll be here, stay tuned.)

My dad the collector...

My dad has developed a habit of sending away for knives and swords from cutlery catalogs. He has so many now, he could almost start his own shop.

I'm waiting for the F.B.I. to come busting through the door, thinking they have the latest terrorist on their hands, when all it is is a 71 year old man.

LJ Interests meme results

1. birth control:
   The best form is the pill. You hold it between your knees...
   On second thought, I shouldn't be so flippant about this. This is a very important issue in every woman's life, and the fact that in America they are slowly rolling back the ability to teach about this in favor of that "Abstinence" crap is indicative of the war on women.
2. creative visualization:
   by Shakti Gawain--the best book for anyone beginning their magickal journey, IMHO. Yeah, so it's a little New Age cheesy, so what?
3. feminism:
   I used to think it was presumptuous of Gloria Steinem to say, “In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: either she’s a feminist or a masochist.” But the older I get, the more it rings true.
4. index cards:
   They're not just for breakfast anymore.
5. kids in the hall:
   "I'm your cousin, Jerry!"
6. middle pillar:
   http://tinyurl.com/bk85h
7. quentin tarantino:
   JIMMIE: "I'm not a cobb or corn, so you can stop butterin' me up. I don't need you to tell me how good my coffee is. I'm the one who buys it, I know how fuckin' good it is. When Bonnie goes shoppin;, she buys shit. I buy the gourmet expensive stuff 'cause when I drink it, I wanna taste it."
8. soundgarden:
   "Everything I've held is what I've freed
   Everything I've held is what I've freed
   Everything I've shown is what I feel
   
   Buying lies and stealing jokes
   And laughing every time I choke
   
   Biding all the time you took
   Now I know why you've been taken
   
   Now I know why you've been taken
   
   So bleed your heart out
   There's no more rides for free
   Bleed your heart out
   I said what's in it for me"
   
   --Slaves & Bulldozers
9. the who:
   "Happy Jack wasn't old, but he was a man
   He lived in the sand at the Isle of Man
   The kids would all sing, he would take the wrong key
   So they rode on his head on their furry donkey
   
   The kids couldn't hurt Jack
   They tried and tried and tried
   They dropped things on his back
   And lied and lied and lied and lied and lied
   
   But they couldn't stop Jack, or the waters lapping
   And they couldn't prevent Jack from feeling happy
   
   The kids couldn't hurt Jack
   They tried and tried and tried
   They dropped things on his back
   And lied and lied and lied and lied and lied
   
   But they couldn't stop Jack, or the waters lapping
   And they couldn't prevent Jack from feeling happy"

--Happy Jack
10. Θελημα:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will.

Ooohhh mahahan, is it late...

But I managed to get something done on my website!!! Just for my special peeps, here is the first gander at my first article on my website. Some of you guys may remember this from the blog, but I embellished it a little.

The page itself is perfect, but I have not yet placed the link for it on my main Tarot Page, so there is a link back to the homepage and a link back to the Tarot page, but not yet a link from the Tarot page to the article--I just want you to know that I know this, ok, but the HTML for the main tarot page is sooo fucked up, I have to redo the whole thing, which is gonna have to wait til later this week.

I neglected to pay tribute to Richard Pryor this weekend:

Back in the days of vinyl I had a copy of "Are You Serious?" and I used to do this bit from it for my friends, an old negro preacher bit (which is funny if you imagine a silly little suburban white girl doing it), that had a funny exchange between God and Richard:

"He walked up to me and said, 'Can I have a piece of yo' bread?'

I looked at Gawd, and I looked at Gawd good. Coz I was hungry!"

Thanks for giving us a piece of yo' bread, Richard. You were the funniest muthafucker around.

Well, it's been a stressful couple of days. Actually, I think I may be getting kind of depressed lately, so I hope I'm not too whiny. Maybe it's the onset of winter, maybe unemployment, something, I dunno. I think that's why I haven't blogged very substantively lately, I gotta get it together.

Thursday I went to go take a needlepoint class that turned out to cost more than I thought it did, I went down the street to the library and found a bunch of books on it and I'm going to teach myself.

Then later Dad and I were grocery shopping and some junkie beggar asked us for money. She was just skulking around the store, approaching people. I could tell she needed it for drugs, so it just really bugged me.

People that are obvious heroin addicts really squick me out. A couple weeks ago, I was walking the dogs in the park and one of them approached me. It was a girl that I had gone to Jr. High with. She started talking to me and I noticed the trackmarks on the backs of her hands and wrists, and how skinny she was. Later I saw her making a drug handoff to some other girl, who naturally came over and tried to talk to me--which is something else that freaks me out a little, why do these people always feel the need to talk to me?

What's up with that? And then there is the factor of the age of these people. I am noticing that an awful lot of them are my contemporaries. I'm like two months older than Kurt Cobain--is everyone trying to identify with him? Because frankly, I don't see the benefit. This is another reason why Morrisey is so awesome as a model for depression and antisocial feelings, he's in touch with all that, but you know he would never wimp out and shoot himself.

Anyway, Dad and I had a difference of opinion on the junkie chick, he got very passive/agressive about it. He occasionally tells me he worries about someone coming behind me and hitting me over the head with a lead pipe, but he's actually the one who doesn't have the ability to avoid certain types of people.

Then on Friday, I found out that Cole, one of the dogs I walk, passed away the night before. Wednesday, they had taken him to the vet, Thursday morning the vet called and said he had cancer in his lungs, and of course, that evening he walked up and layed down at his master's feet and expired.

I had just helped these people put their potbellied pig to sleep a few weeks ago. I also know that they will take some of Cole's ashes and keep them on a shelf somewhere, next to the ashes of every pet they've ever had.

Well, I felt so depressed on Friday I was exhausted. I feel better now.