Dümènica potpourri: Part 1

The word "Dümènica" means "Sunday" in the Camunian dialect. I just wanted to put some various miscellaneous items together here under two postings. They won't follow any consistent pattern.

The following news item I found so bizarre: 'Prehistoric forest arises in Cardigan Bay after storms strip away sand'. The "Borth forest," a forest of legend, was unearthed by a big storm off the coast of Wales recently. More eery images of the forest, last alive 4,500 years ago, can be found on a Google search for "Borth forest." That is such a long time, and in just one day or so... there it is!

Just as the word "Israel" is an old reference to the Egyptian goddess Isis, the Egyptian god Ra, and the Phoenician god El ("Isis-Ra-El"); the Christian term "Amen" actually means "Amon-Ra," or "so be it Ra."

A huge pentacle upon the ground in Kazakhstan, and only visible from the air, is explained in the following article: 'Mysterious Pentagram on Google Maps Explained.' It's so curious that this relic from the Soviet era was fashioned after the pentacle, rather than a Soviet star. After all, five-pointed stars have many meanings, and a pentacle is a distinct one. Have a look at it in any case, on the article link.

The country music star Bobby Bare composed a song entitled 'Marie Laveau', from his 1973 record 'Bobby Bare Sings Lullabys, Legends and Lies', about the "Voodoo Queen" of New Orleans. It was a song done in sort've a silly, not-serious, story-telling style; but I like things like that.. legends and folklore. Marie Laveau was a native believer.



I don't like to go off topic much, but for me this is a crazy time warp thing. It never ceases to amaze me the types of things you can find on YouTube. I was a fan of hard rock/heavy metal music. Not a huge fan, but a fan of the culture of it as much as anything. Here is the entire concert footage of Van Halen in Sao Paulo, Brazil on January 21, 1983. I can remember in Junior High School and High School of them being usually at the Oakland Coliseum... probably on this very same tour. It was like a really big deal then. There are so many long videos now, you can just skip down to the end. Sao Paulo is at the south end of Brazil, and about five million Italians live in that province if you can believe that. The most prosperous part of that country. I remember attending a David Lee Roth solo concert in what was not much more than a garage in San Francisco in the 90s with two or three hundred people. Then when the band reconnected, they could pull a huge crowd again.

While I'm on the subject, I ran into a music video ('Buttercup' by Sinboy) that reminded me of when we used to go down around the LA metal/rock scene during weekends in the 90s, which was basically after this music genre was being fazed out by the big record companies. I remember two all-female bands in particular, Sinboy and Phantom Blue. A lot of times they would bounce around band to band because those gals didn't always get along and there wasn't the fame and big money to keep them together. I remember the late bassist Rana Ross, she was really good. Nice gal too. Another singer who could have, and really should have made it big, was Gigi Hangach. Sometimes they would talk to you, other times they would just sorta laugh at you.. but it was a fun time. One thing I remember that you never say to any member of any local scene band is to imply that "they're popular locally" or even "local legends." As far as they and their hard core fans are concerned, they're the best in the world!

I like the cable channel Investigation Discovery, and one program is about missing people--I think the name is 'Disappeared'--where it had one docudrama about the account of a woman named Tanya Rider. She went off the highway and crashed, and survived I think it was eight days severely injured without food or water. I thought one of her quotes was important: "No matter what life gives you, you have to embrace it and move forward." It's very true, although it's much easier said than done. I think one add-on to it is to, for-the-most-part, try to forget bad experiences of the past that just drag you down. Again, easier said than done! The head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, Jim Harbaugh, lives by something called "the Harbaugh rule." This "rule" is that no matter what happens, good or bad, forty-eight hours later you're onto the next thing. What's done is done. If you can learn from mistakes, fine, but "highs and lows" aren't helpful after forty-eight hours. It's true.. and pragmatic.

I have thought about devoting a post to bumble bees, probably mainly because I can remember as a young child playing in our backyard with trucks and things. There were several large bushes with lots of flowers, and I can remember playing on warm days with large bumble bees all around me. We paid no attention to each other. They were so big, and in hindsight I now perceive them as equally gentle. Actually, they were just doing their job collecting pollen. Just a couple of days ago I caught one who accidently entered the garage here. I caught him in a glass container and walked him outside. I stared at him for a moment, and then lifted the top, and off he went. A few times I have found a bee who was weak and vulnerable, probably due to dehydration. I  put a little water, and sometimes sugar, down for them to ingest.. and they eventually gathered themselves to moved on.

There are quite a number of fairly well known people who loosely fit into the category of "truthseeking." Whether referred to as researchers, activists, authors, academics, spiritual gurus, Christians, or those unlocking negative aspects of the occult at the highest levels, etc., they all loosely fit into this same category... and they rarely fit into the "right-left paradigm" which is always good and allows for honest interaction and open-minded study. Michael Tsarion and Mark Passio are two good examples in the latter category... which overlaps a little into the pagan arena that we cover here, but I could list one hundred off hand in a short time. Many over time have passed on, such as Ted Gunderson and Michael Ruppert.

One women within this truthseeking milieu is Nancy Red Star, who is more in the "spiritual guru" category, but also a native pagan, author, researcher, and activist. She stands out in some ways, to me, because she represents Amerindian pagan culture and occultism of the positive aspect of the word. Her work on native "star ancestors" is not totally unlike evidence of certain strange rock drawings in the Val Camonica, which we can cover at another time. It should be pointed out that a "native believer" is any person who believes in their own ancestral-spirituality, but I've sort've mixed the two definitions here a bit. I thought her name was worth mentioning because she is well known (she has been an expert on the tv program 'Ancient Aliens') and is a type of pagan leader of a sort for her culture. A lot of her lectures and interviews are on YouTube. What is really disturbing to me is how Nancy Red Star, or Steve McNallen, are frequently attacked online... usually by anonymous sources. Yeah, Steve McNallen and Nancy Red Star are "the problem" with the world... right!

I left the following comment on the Asatru Update blog a few weeks ago, and I wanted to place it here because I think it captured a certain idea well. The following comment was from an entry from Steve McNallen entitled 'The Gods and Goddesses Are Not Online' (3-26-14): "I am a non-Asatru folkish pagan. Yesterday evening, we took a time out from our busy lives for an unofficial "roundtable" with our fold up chairs on a trail at the base of the northern Santa Cruz Mountain chain. There, among the soft sound of crickets and an occasional hoot of an owl... only a few lights from the nearby business park and an occasional truck rambling by reminded us of the nearby urban sprawl. The darkness of the mountain even provided a window to view some of the stars. Through the break in the trees we could see the black mountain peak standing majestically amid the navy blue sky. A small caravan of racoons moved by at one point. Pagans and Heathens need to force themselves to get away, even if it's just a short distance. That was the best Sunday evening that I have had in awhile." I should point out again that I am not an Odinist/Asutrar.

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