Update on my nephew

Well, my nephew is still wrapped in bubble pack. They actually wrap them in bubble pack in situations like this.

He has a subdural hematoma, which is a swelling in his brain. When they got him to the hospital, he was unconscious, then went into a coma. Then they put him under drug-induced coma so that he wouldn't wake up suddenly and jar himself. It is very important in these cases that they remain completely still, so that the swelling can go down.

In the next 24 hours they will learn more. They will be slowly taking him off the drugs and said that they may need to peel back the top of his head to relieve the swelling.

So basically, no good news yet, but no bad news either.

Hermgirl's Excellent Tarot Adventure

I've been computerless for a couple of weeks, and a couple of days ago I got my computer back from the cleaners (I have it on good authority that it is now clean as a whistle.)

So I wanted to share with you all about my weekend.

I went to Divinationfest on Saturday, which was presented by Daughters of Divination, as was Thoth-a-palooza on Sunday, which was a talk given by the lovely and talented Lon Milo DuQuette.

I had expected a larger "psychic fair" type of thing, but was pleased to note that it was a more intimate gathering, not the cattle run sort of thing I had been to before a couple of times (in my teens I went to one where I met a man who became my "Tarot teacher" for a couple of months, the upshot of that being that I've been reluctant to go to any Tarot/psychic type functions til now for fear of bumping into this person again, but that's another story for another time.) Of course, it would be nice to see more people go to these things, hence my plugging of the appropriate websites.

Anywho, I got there on Saturday and it was set up like a classroom or a church meeting. I sat down, right next to Mr. DuQuette, and proceeded to gush at him like a teenager. Sometimes I am overly enthusiastic--I have to cut that out.

Then things got started, with Thalassa, the Mistress of Ceremonies (who, in the words of Will Farrel channeling James Lipton, is "Scrumtrelescent." Anyone who lives "with a herd of feral dust bunnies and too many Tarot decks in what looks like a fortress made of books" is my kind of person), holding an Intuition shaver over her head. The theme of the fest was to get ourselves to think oracularly by listening to what was going on in the universe.

Joseph Ernest Martin was there, creator of the Quest Tarot, talking about what makes a good psychic. Then he led us thru an exercise in which we tried focusing in on a picture he had in an envelope and seeing how close we could come to what was inside. There was also some discussion about how the military investigated what kinds of personalities make a good psychic. They got a bunch of these people together, trained them, and used them for their psychic skills, didn't give them any kind of support when they got burnt out, and then threw them away like toilet paper. I'll just let everyone mull that over for a while.

Then Lon Milo DuQuette gave a talk entitled "Psychic Power? YOU'RE FULL OF IT!" in which he told some great stories and even recited stentorially from Shakespeare's The Tempest. I'm a sucker for a great speaker.

Then there was an interesting divinatory technique demonstrated called Aura Soma. We were lead through a chakra tune-up, instructed to ask a question, then choose from about a hundred bottles with colored water and oil in them. Each bottle was half filled with tinted water, then filled to the top with oil of a different color. Each was keyed to a Tarot card. The interpretations were very poetic, like, "This is the bottle of the Jade Emperor," "This is the bottle of the Guardian Angel", it was extremely interesting.

Then there was a woman teaching on palmistry, which doesn't really excite me too much, so I stayed in the narthex, listening like a fly on the wall, perpetrating like I was reading the books and flyers. I found it quite educational to listen to the event facilitators share their troubles with each other.

Then there was a raffle (I won a prize!) Then it was over. It had been an extremely good day, I even made a new friend and we had lunch together. I walked down to the BART station, stopping in front of the Diva hotel, where I stood in the square that had Chita Revera's handprints.

Sunday I had a little trouble getting there on time (those busses in the city are not easy to figure out.) When I arrived Lon Milo DuQuette was talking about the life of Aleister Crowley. He interspersed this with stuff about his own spiritual journey. Then he talked about the Book of the Law (thereby rendering himself a center of pestilence.)

From there he talked about the Quabalistic progression of the creation story, working his way into a slide show discussion of the trump cards and the minor arcana.

On the whole, I was very glad I attended this, I feel as though I have a better handle on the cards after this weekend. Plus I bought lots of books, yay! So I will have lots of homework ahead of me.

Update in Library

Seven minutes to go--comp totally down at home--will check in tomorrow when I have two hours.

Comp being taken in for repairs.

Recently caught up with the KAGC--much intense awesomeness to follow.

A couple of things:

I am currently experiencing technical difficulties with my comp, so I may be offline for a while. Will attempt to use library comp.

And in other news: If you are within the sound of my voice, live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and are interested in Tarot and other forms of divination, please go to . I am hoping other pagan LJ people in my area will be interested, and we can get together. I am so definately going to this.

Will attempt to check back tomorrow and the next day.

First real post in a long time, I would be greatly remiss if I didn't share what happened a few days ago.

As most of you may know, I am a dogwalker by trade. This day I was walking my latest charge, a miniature schnauser by the name of Sunny. She is very small and has a good temperament, which sort of lulled me into a false sense of security. Big mistake not to think I should have been watching her like a hawk.

Unbeknownst to me, her owners had her collar adjusted just a tad bit loose. I had her on one of those leashes that feeds out from a hand held unit, the kind that lets them get pretty far away. Well, of course, she slipped right out of her collar and was a block away before I could do anything about it, and the chase was on.

I saw a group of teenage boys ahead of me, all dressed in gym clothes, looking like they were out for a jog. Perfect people to ask for help, right? Wrong. They kind of danced around like chickens, and in the end did nothing--they could have been making fun of me, I wasn't sure. Most teenagers, not all teenagers, but most teenagers are about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine.

Well, Sunny was zigging and zagging and getting further away. I lost sight of her, then spied her again, at an alarming distance. We were now by the high school, and I sort of hoped she would run in there, because it might have been easier to catch her in the enclosed yard. But no! She decided it would be fun to run all the way down Park Blvd., zigging and zagging as she went.

She was now at least four blocks away, a tiny grey dot going back and forth. That was it, she was going to get hit by a car and I was going to have a heart attack. I was so not prepared to run this fast--I mean, this little doggie was fast.

I reached the intersection by the front of the school and started to panic. The dog was nowhere to be found. The direction she had been running in, where I last saw her at this intersection, led up to El Camino just a couple blocks away. This is a major street where there are tons of cars going fast, very few of them likely to stop for a little grey schnauzer. All I could think was that she was going to be smushed.

Thankfully, the direction she was going in was also East. As I ran, I started doing a Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram, turning each direction as I went. After I traced the pentagram in the direction of the Archangel Michael, I stabbed it with my fingers and shouted, "Adonai!" Cars were going by, I didn't care if anyone saw me.

After I finished, I returned to screaming the dog's name. A man down the street waved, "She's here!" he yelled. Praise be to the Divine Current, some nice people had gotten Sunny's attention and kept her from going any further. A woman was holding her in the corner of a driveway. I thanked the people and sat down with the dog in the shade of a minivan in the corner of the driveway.

I put Sunny's collar back on and adjusted it a little. I had a little talk with her while I caught my breath, and petted her.

When I got back up to take her home, behind where I had been sitting, I found a lucky penny. A reminder that god is always with me.

Something to tide you over till my next real post

Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says.
Herman Hesse's Siddhartha: "There still remains much to learn."
Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?
A floppy disk with my resume on it.
What is the last thing you watched on TV?
Judging Amy.
WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is.
4:00 pm
Now look at the clock; what is the actual time?
3:29 pm
With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
Dad running the water.
When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
1:30. Took the dogs out--I now have three (soon possibly four) dog-walking clients--Yay!
Before you came to this website, what did you look at?
Checked email.
What are you wearing?
Nothing but a bathrobe. Don't all get exited at once.
Did you dream last night?
I'm sure I must have but I almost never remember my dreams.
When did you last laugh?
Probably the other night watching tv--I sit in the den & watch funny stuff & laugh out loud, I'm goofy that way. At least I'm actively participating in it.
What is on the walls of the room you are in?
Bookshelves full of my dad's stamp albums--I'm in the den.
Seen anything weird lately?
Does the funeral afterparty I went to yesterday count?
What do you think of this quiz?
S'pretty good--it got me posting again.
What is the last film you saw?
LOTR--I hardly ever go to the movies.

If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?
A big plot of land somewhere around Half Moon Bay or San Gregorio where I could build a straw bale or cob home. Such a hippie chick, I know.
Tell us something about you that we don't know.
When I was a kid, from age twelve to about 16 and 1/2, I was the biggest Doors fan evah.
If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
Have all of the liberals secede from the US so the damn conservatives could have their own place and we could have ours. Although, I wonder if that would be a very good idea?
Do you like to dance?
Yes, and I do so divinely.
Would you ever consider living abroad?
If I found a place I liked, yeah.
Will you pass on this survey?
Consider it passed--or as Ziggy said, "...I'm sure one of my many LJ friends will steal it from me."

I will soon have a real entry, but it doesn't seem to want to get written.

Couldn't resist this...

Haven't posted in a while, hope this will tide everyone over--will have a REAL entry soon, promise.

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	hermgirl
Your haiku:	there close enough to get high it wasn't worth eighty bucks of my crochet
Username:
Created by Grahame

Fleetwood Mac Goodness

Fleetwood Mac is BIG Love.



And some SNL wonderousness:



SNL is love.



It's a seventies thing, fellow babies.
And to think, I was a kid during this awesome era...

Mars Trines Jupiter

So I am really feeling good, yesterday and today.  I am making lists, getting my life and plans and goals in order, and generally taking advantage of this time.

Of course, when I get up today, my dad has not been having such a good time.  In an inexplicable foul mood, tells me he had a gross nightmare that he can't even explain.  This is an odd phenomenon, whenever I am feeling on top of the world like this, he is often extremely down in the dumps.

Oh, well.  Mine is not to puzzle or worry over this.  Mine is only to Do What I Will.

You are Shetland Wool...

You are Shetland Wool.
You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a
little on the harsh side. Though you look
delicate you are tough as nails and prone to
intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are
widely respected and even revered.


What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Two Friday Fives, since it's Sunday afternoon...

1. Are you superstitious?  No.  Superstition:  1 a:  a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation   b:  an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition    2:  a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary      My beliefs do not come from ignorance or fear.


2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstion?     I remember seeing people pay extreme amounts of money to go listen to people teach them superstitious ideas at seminars.  This is when I was in the Xian church.


3. Believer or not, what's your favorite superstition?     In light of question #1, I don't know if this is an answerable question.


4. Do you believe in luck?   Yes.   Do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ ritual?     Now this is something I do do more irrationally.  Whenever I see pennies, I pick them up, so all day long I'll have good luck.     As far as lucky clothing, I have this one orange teeshirt that I always get good responses from the menfolk (I will always remember that I was wearing this when I had my 30-second meeting with Counting Crows guitarist David Immergluck.  Much heat was being generated, my friends.  It was da hotness.) when I wear it.   Again, this is no irrationality, since the color orange is keyed to the second chakra, the chakra of sexuality and pleasure.  Oh yes.


5. Do you believe in astrology?  Yes.     Why?   As a Gemini with Venus in Taurus (and that is all I remember about myself, astrologically) I feel that it is a good general indicator of personality.

 

 

When was the last time you...

1. ...went to a doctor?   Twenty years ago, when I had coverage.


2. ...went to a dentist?   Same answer.


3. ...filled your gas tank?  I've never had one.


4. ...got enough sleep?   Enough sleep?  What's that?  I don't even know how much sleep my body needs.


5. ...backed up your computer?  Uhh, all I ever do is clear my cookies and defrag occasionally.  I do have Norton Antivirus sofware.

This last Friday Five made me feel like a homeless bum...

All things just keep getting better...

Ted: Food & Wine Connoisseur


Which Member from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is your type?
brought to you by Quizilla



If Ted, Carson, or Jai were straight, it would be game on...

We love you, man, but please sit this one out.

Ralph, don't run.

It does matter.

I guess I'll have to read this now...

You're One Hundred Years of Solitude!

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Lonely and struggling, you've been around for a very long time.
Conflict has filled most of your life and torn apart nearly everyone you know. Yet there
is something majestic and even epic about your presence in the world. You love life all
the more for having seen its decimation. After all, it takes a village.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

"Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love!"

Do What Thou Will Shall Be the Whole of the Law.

Love is the Law, Love under Will.

Another reason Bush is an asshole...

As if we needed any more fodder.

Ok, I don't think the president, his cabinet, the constitutional amendment people, the people in the supreme court, or anyone in the federal government belongs saying or doing anything about this issue. 

This is a lifestyle issue.  You have no right to legislate or amend anything having to do with lifestyle.  It just makes me so mad that Dubya has taken this country which was in pretty good shape when Clinton left, ruined the economy, gotten us into a war, and now he wants to turn the clock back and add more discrimination into the mix. 

The Law is for All

The Book of the Law is adamantly against the rule of mass man. We shall witness many disturbences in the years to come as their bad taste in social organization, religion and politics gradually increases and diminishes._{--Israel Regardie, The Law is for All}

So I had a lot of time on my hands and I've been reading my books. The more I read of Thelema, the more I am convinced I am on the right road. Being self-oriented is better, IMHO, than self-sacrifice or living for others. How can one make a real contribution to society unless one first deals with oneself? Living to please others can be a never-ending job. And then, so many different people with so many different ideas about what is important, what is urgent, what is needed right now, and what can wait. To comply with them all would be impossible, and who would want to? As we have seen with our current American president, some people have the most ridiculous ideas.

Current laws relative to homosexuality will have to be modified or repealed as they have already been in Great Britain._{--Israel Regardie}

I heard something interesting today. One of my gay brother's friends that we used to party with is one of the people that went up to San Francisco City Hall to get married. Today they only let fifty couples get married. I was hoping ther would be a constant influx of gays that wanted to get married. I hope they don't stop.

I support gay marriage.

Friday night was a party for the people across the street, it was the husband's 60th birthday, there was a belly dancer, lots of crazy fun ensued. I walk dogs for these people, but I am not very close to them. Their oldest daughter (my age) and I did not get along at all when we grew up, and though now we both seem to be able to communicate and be pleasant with one another (I was even showing her some of my crochet work, and she showed me some of hers), there is definately a sense that we have very different values and perspectives on life, and therefore must interact on only a mundane level. Anyway, I left early as I always do from their gatherings.

My nephew came over yesterday, and had been with us a full hour before any of us remembered it was Valentine's day. That's how much we care. It was nice to have his Leo sunshine here for awhile.

I also spent some time knitting. I am almost through with a scarf that has taken me about TWO YEARS. One of these days I will have a digital camera and be able to post my work.

The Latest in Hermworld

Warning:  This entry is probably going to be very pissy/moany.  What can I tell you, I'm a curmudgeon... 

I'm walking the dogs today and I enter the park.  Just ahead of me was some guy getting out of a city parks truck.  He walks in ahead of me and then turns around, blocking my way.  Apparently, we are not allowed to walk dogs in the park--at all, even with a leash.  The guy was very nice about it, saying that basically it was a case of a few irresponsible people ruining it for everyone else.  Walking their dogs without leashes, and when asked to leash them getting belligerent.  There had been a couple instances of dogs knocking babies over.

I have no problem with any of this, I have no intention of going against a city ordinance.  So I leave, go around, go home and get the other dog, go around again (I actually live right next to this park.)  As I walk by the park again, I notice there are more city park guys just kind of hanging around and talking.  As I go by they quiet down and start talking again as I get further away.  There are an awful lot of city park guys around for some reason...

So this is just an example of the sense of entitlement that people have that just bugs me.  You have a park where it is illegal to walk your dog but they sorta don't care if you do, because  it's kind of agreed that if you want them to extend you this priviledge, you won't walk the dog without a leash.  So not only do you flout this law, you act like an asshole if someone asks you to comply?  I have no more patience for you my friend.

And you who are parents of a child who may be small enough to get knocked over by a dog, I have this to say to you:  Why are you not right there, close enough to the child so you can see what is going on?  Do we need to childproof everything so that you don't have to pay attention to anything?  That parental sense of entitlement really bugs me.

And the thing that really burns my onions about the whole issue is the amount of people who look at having a dog as an entitlement, when, let's face it, there are people out there that are just not responsible enough to have a pet.  I have been militantly pro-people-must-have-a-leash-for-their-dog since my cat was killed by an unleashed dog a couple of years ago.  Not only that, but you must be paying attention when you take them out in public.  I have heard horror stories about people just blithely going for a run with a dog on one of those really long retractable leashes and then getting out in heavy traffic with them, then being dumbfounded when the dog gets killed by a car.  You are not entitled to risk the life or limb of another sentient being.

A woman on a message board was whining about how her dog had killed a cat and she was bent out of shape that she was actually gonna have to go to court and have some kind of penalty.  I practically ripped her a new one.  I believe if your dog has bitten someone or killed another pet, you have basically made your dog as much a victim of your stupidity as the harmed party. 

Can you kind of tell I have a strong opinion about this?  And then I find out from my mom that they are also talking about making cosmetic changes to the park, building bathrooms, etc, and I realize, "Oh, that's why they were swarming the park today."  They haven't cared this much about the park the entire 37 years I've been living here, but since the city Beautification Committee wants a new project, this is how it goes.

To end things on a better note, I got my copy of Crowley's Liber Aba in the mail today.  So I now have something to stick my nose in to find surcease for the sorrow of growing weary of the ways of man.  I am being edified just thumbing through the thing, now I am going to settle in for a nice long read. 

Sigh, end of rant.

Serving up a plate of "I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

This entry is dedicated to Carlie Brucia, 1993 - 2004

Well, I watched Larry King tonight, I hope they string this guy up.  I just don't know anymore.  Where do these people get the idea that hurting kids is ok?  Where does a judge get the idea that a guy with a list of priors as long as your arm is a good risk to be let loose?

Being a thelemist, a person who is concerned with the ideas of Will, intention, and motivation, these are the things that knock me for a loop.  You see every man and every woman is a star, and each star in the galaxy has an appointed path to follow.   Here's Joseph Smith, a guy who is traveling down a violent road, and he's not ashamed of the things he's done, I think he thinks it's pretty nifty.  He's quite pleased with himself.  He keeps going down that road, and he doesn't stop himself until he gets to that place with the dead little girl. 

I saw that picture of the "alleged" killer, there is no capacity for remorse or compassion in those eyes.  And everyone deserves compassion, the word of the Law says:  "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law; Love is the Law, Love under Will."  Every human being is worthy of compassion.  Except possibly for those who have extinguished every ounce of humanity in themselves.  That's what I believe this guy is.  He is not human, he has made himself a creature.  Somewhere back there on the road behind him he set his intention to wind up here. 

I say show him no mercy, he had none.

 

Lastly, I think everyone should go to this site.  They deserve every bit of love and support we can give them.