The Field of Folk Pagan Dreams II - "The Vehmic Mountain Altar"

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Neopagan Revival

In the film 'Field of Dreams', the symbolic approximately one-third "circle altar" was the baseball field. The phantom baseball player came and went from different realms from the vast ominous cornfield. Since we know that the unusually geometric game of baseball was invented by a Freemason, is it a stretch to ponder whether or not this film from hyper-occultic Hollywood was a further take on the game's likely occult roots? It would seem to play upon many ancient spiritual traditions, including perhaps a Proto-European one. It's ironic, from my own intrinsic point of view, that I got part of this inspiration from literally a baseball field.... a "mountain baseball field" no less!

As stated in the previous posting to this, baseball is unique in that the field of play can extend beyond the fencing. In theory, an outfielder can run into the stands to catch the ball... or out to the parking lot! That "one-third circle" fans out wider and wider, longer and longer, symbolically... forever. As long as the ball doesn't actually bounce off of any object, the outfielder may catch it for an "out." Was the cornfield a way of expressing that ominous "forever" concept? Also, the game of baseball is set up in such a manner that it simply does not change. Football is constantly evolving. The three-point line in basketball has obviously changed that game. Therefore there is a somewhat ghostly aspect to baseball and it's unusual geometry.

I feel that I discovered something on that clean and warm night last September. I wasn't in any way trying to discover anything. I was just walking out onto the dark outfield to gaze at the high mountains on the other side of the valley while sipping a sweet iced tea. I felt a powerful sensation as the characteristics of the field, mountains, hills, valley, and sky slowly came into focus as something from my ancestral memory was jogged and recognized. I have stated on here many times of the folly that many people have made over the years of mixing synchronicity--even enhanced and complex synchronicity--with a mystical experience. Synchronicity is simply a connection to the universe, and it does not make anyone special. Synchronicity is an affirmation from universal consciousness that "you're on the right track." A mystical experience is usually something more than that.

 
As late as four centuries ago, groups of "native believers"--from what I could call "the six clans" of the east Lombard Alps--would travel eight times during the year to a particular mountain pass near where the Orobi Alps meet with the northern Val Camonica and the southern Valtellina. Of course, everyone didn't all go each time. Perhaps they would make the trek one of those times during the year. At least some folk pagans from each of the six valleys--the Valtellinesi, Camuni, Chiavennaschi, Orobianesi, Triumplini, and Sabbini--were present for each seasonal ritual. It was like a larger family coming together on what we now know was the last days of their traditional way of life. It was passed down to them from their Proto-European ancestors from clear back into prehistory. However, don't allow this one good example keep anyone from seeing expressions from their own Proto-European ancestors. There are examples of this from anywhere in ancient Europe; for example the Basque Country in the Pyrenees. Even in flat country, there were foothills and small mountains, for example in Poland there's a particular small mountain in a flatland region which is a central location for paganism... going back centuries. We don't know how long.


Vehmic Mountain Altar

Valleys, including the smaller valleys, are common all over in some form. Very often there is one peak or set of peaks, which stand on one side, with smaller foothills on the other. One side is at least higher than the other in most cases. It would not take too much effort to find a place such as this close to where you live. On the "foothills" or lower elevation side, a half-circle altar may be fashioned using a few modest stones on some clearing along the midway point of the hills. The half-circle represents "the circle of nature" conflated; half of it within the earth itself, and half of it within our lives. This "half-circle altar" represents "fire," as they used to light a fire pit there. However, unless there's a large clearing that you have access to, where you can create a safe fire, you own the land, or where there's a safe place to light a tiki torch.... then this is not necessary.



Any time of the day or night is fine. I think of the night a little more. The night is magical when the weather allows. The valley below represents "water," as it is where the rainfall naturally gravitates towards. There may even be a river, stream, creek, or small body of water down there anyway. Hopefully many trees and animals as well. The "high point of the foothills," behind the altar," represents "earth." It symbolizes the ground beneath your feet; the "earth" where half of the altar symbolically is rooted. The mountain peak(s) on the other side of the valley represent "spirit," as they are earth's marvelous sculptures. They are the spiritual antennas which may interact with the moon, which in turn allows a connection with the other side.... the great vast Ur where our ancestors exist.

The sky above represents "air," as it is the wonderful ethereal glue that holds the universe together. That sky where we may humbly observe the Almother Moon, Alfather Sun, the planets of our solar system, and of course all the stars. In conclusion, there are five levels to this configuration. From top to bottom: 1) Sky and universe; 2) Tall peak(s); 3) High point(s) of the foothills; 4) Half-circle altar at the midway point of the foothills; and 5) Valley below.


Five = The Sacred Vehme (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit)

Earth - High point(s) of the Foothills, behind the altar
Air - Sky and universe
Fire - Half-circle altar
Water - Valley below
Spirit - Tall peak(s) at which the altar faces


While becoming, we discover, we already are


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'Carmina Burana' - Largely based on eclectic European pre-Christian spiritual folk traditions... and possibly of South Tyrolian origin: Part 4

Codex Buranus

When I first posted on this subject, I had no idea what I was getting into. This is a long-term project for the Neopagan folk-collective. For one example, a Neopagan musical concern could sift further into these works and find something related and--in some sense--become the next Carl Orff by using the poems for a musical piece! I mean, why not? This work is not copyrighted; it's very relevant. Perhaps someone has already done this; I don't know. Of course, I would like to see someone accomplish this who has some true talent and do it from a Neopagan perspective. Orff selected a mere twenty-four works from the Codex Buranus; there are many more works contained within it.

Themes

Generally, the works contained in the Carmina Burana can be arranged into four groups according to theme:

1. 55 songs of morals and mockery (CB 1–55)
2. 131 love songs (CB 56–186)
3. 40 drinking and gaming songs (CB 187–226)
4. Two longer spiritual theater pieces (CB 227 and 228)



The Old Abrahamic Devil

"It's the Devil !"

'Carl Orff’s “Carman Burana”, Is it demonic?'


The New Secular Devil

"It's the Nazis !"

'Secret of the White Rose'


Folk Pagan Origin

"It's the Witches !"

'The Original Sound of the Carmina Burana'

Medieval poetry is filled with images of fate and destiny, reflecting the Christian’s morbid fascination with the terrifying power of an implacable pagan goddess. (regarding 'O Fortuna')






Fortune Plango Vulnera - Carmina Burana

madprofessor

Fortune Plango Vulnera from Carmina Burana - Carl Orff


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Carl Orff: Fortune Plango Vulnera/en Lyrics

The Latin title of this song is "Fortune Plango Vulnera". The English translation is "I Bemoan the Wounds of Fortune."


I bemoan the wounds of Fortune
with weeping eyes,
for the gifts she made me
she perversely takes away.
It is written in truth,
that she has a fine head of hair,
but, when it comes to seizing an opportunity
she is bald.

On Fortune's throne
I used to sit raised up,
crowned with
the multi-coloured flowers of prosperity;
though I may have flourished
happy and blessed,
now I fall from the peak
deprived of glory.

The wheel of Fortune turns;
I go down, demeaned;
another is raised up;
far too high up
sits the king at the summit -
let him fear ruin!
for under the axis we may read
"Queen Hecuba."

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'Carmina Burana' - Largely based on eclectic European pre-Christian spiritual folk traditions... and possibly of South Tyrolian origin: Part 3

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Father God and Mother Goddess

The above image: Set design by Helmut Jürgens for a performance in Munich in 1959. Is the sky scene depicting the Proto-European Alfather (Sun) and the Almother (Moon)? Were Orff and Jürgens part of some occult network? Alone, I would doubt all of these clues pointing towards a pre-Christian aka "Witch cult" tie-in. However, all together, it appears that way to me. The clear lyrical tie-in, the wheel of the year, references to the seasons, and this set design. Masons like to use this type of occult symbolism, most often in esoteric reference to anything non-Christian. The selection covers a wide range of topics, as familiar in the 13th century as they are in the 21st century: the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling, and lust. If this was all just a satire in reference to the Catholic Church, then why the cryptic references to the Old Religion? I suppose that it may have been just another aspect of the mockery, but I'm not so certain. It should be noted that there is no evidence that Carl Orff was a Freemason or had any connection to any occult society. He was a Roman Catholic.


The following is related text, not my work.


Manuscript

Carmina Burana (CB) is a manuscript written in 1230 by two different scribes in an early gothic minuscule on 119 sheets of parchment. A number of free pages, cut of a slightly different size, were attached at the end of the text in the 14th century. At some point in the Late Middle Ages, the handwritten pages were bound into a small folder called the Codex Buranus. However, in the process of binding, the text was placed partially out of order, and some pages were most likely lost, as well. The manuscript contains eight miniatures: the rota fortunae (which actually is an illustration from songs CB 14–18, but was placed by the book binder as the cover), an imaginative forest, a pair of lovers, scenes from the story of Dido and Aeneas, a scene of drinking beer, and three scenes of playing dice, tables, and chess.

History

Older research assumed that the manuscript was written in Benediktbeuern where it was found. Today, however, Carmina Burana scholars have several different ideas about the manuscript's place of origin. It is agreed that the manuscript must be from the region of central Europe where the Bavarian dialect of German is spoken due to the Middle High German phrases in the text—a region that includes parts of southern Germany, western Austria, and northern Italy. It must also be from the southern part of that region because of the Italian peculiarities of the text. The two possible locations of its origin are the bishop's seat of Seckau in Styria and Kloster Neustift near Brixen in South Tyrol.




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Carmuna Burana OH FORTUNA

Alejandro Rendon


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A bishop named Heinrich was provost in Seckau from 1232 to 1243, and he is mentioned as provost of Maria Saal in Carinthia in CB 6* of the added folio. This would support Seckau as the possible point of origin, and it is possible that Heinrich funded the creation of the Carmina Burana. The marchiones (people from Steiermark) were mentioned in CB 219,3 before the Bavarians, Saxons, or Austrians, presumably indicating that Steiermark was the location closest to the writers. Many of the hymns were dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who was venerated in Seckau, such as CB 12* and 19*–22*.

In support of Kloster Neustift, the text's open-mindedness is characteristic of the reform-minded Augustine Canons Regular of the time, as is the spoken quality of the writing. Also, Brixen is mentioned in CB 95, and the beginning to a story appears in CB 203a which is unique to Tirol called the Eckenlied about the mythic hero Dietrich von Bern.

It is less clear how the Carmina Burana traveled to Benediktbeuern. Fritz Peter Knapp suggested that the manuscript could have traveled in 1350 by way of the Wittelsbacher family who were Vögte of both Tirol and Bavaria, if it was written in Neustift.


Rediscovery and history of publication

The manuscript was discovered in the monastery at Benediktbeuren in 1803 by librarian Johann Christoph von Aretin. He transferred it to the Bavarian State Library in Munich where it currently resides (Signatur: clm 4660/4660a). Aretin regarded the Codex as his personal reading material, and wrote to a friend that he was glad to have discovered "a collection of poetic and prosaic satire, directed mostly against the papal seat."

The first pieces to be published were Middle-High German texts, which Aretin's colleague Bernhard Joseph Docen published in 1806. Additional pieces were eventually published by Jacob Grimm in 1844. The first collected edition of the Carmina Burana was not published until 1847, almost 40 years after Aretin's discovery. Publisher Johann Andreas Schmeller chose a misleading title for the collection, which created the misconception that the works contained in the Codex Buranas were not from Benediktbeuren. Schmeller attempted to organize the collection into "joking" (Scherz) and "serious" (Ernst) works, but he never fully completed the task. The ordering scheme used today was proposed in 1930 by Alfons Hilka and Otto Schumann [de] in the first critical text edition of the Carmina Burana.[28] The two based their edition on previous work by Munich philologist Wilhelm Meyer, who discovered that some pages of the Codex Buranus had mistakenly been bound into other old books. He also was able to revise illegible portions of the text by comparing them to similar works.


Rota Fortunae

In medieval and ancient philosophy the Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae, is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna (Greek equivalent Tyche) who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. Fortune appears on all paintings as a woman, sometimes blindfolded, "puppeteering" a wheel.

In works of art defining the Wheel of Fortune, the various wheels/circles (circles of nature) are of four (solar cross), six (rosette), eight (wheel of the year), and twelve points (zodiac). How is that for occult folk pagan symbolism?

Carmina Burana

The Wheel of Fortune motif appears significantly in the Carmina Burana (or Burana Codex), albeit with a postclassical phonetic spelling of the genitive form Fortunae. Excerpts from two of the collection's better known poems, "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World)" and "Fortune Plango Vulnera (I Bemoan the Wounds of Fortune)," read:

Fate - monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
status is bad,
well-being is vain
always may melt away,
shadowy
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
bare backed
I bear your villainy.

. . . . . . . . .

The wheel of Fortune turns;
I go down, demeaned;
another is carried to the height;
far too high up
sits the king at the summit -
let him beware ruin!
for under the axis we read:
Queen Hecuba.


Hecuba

Hecuba was a queen in Greek mythology, the wife of King Priam of Troy during the Trojan War, with whom she had 19 children. These children included several major characters of Homer's Iliad such as the warriors Hector and Paris and the prophetess Cassandra.

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Remembering Evelyn Paglini: Part VIII - Evelyn on Art Bell in September 2010

Art Bell - Predictions and Natural Magic - Coast to Coast AM Classic

COAST TO COAST AM OFFICIAL


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Free Audio: Evelyn Paglini with Art Bell

Listen to this intriguing hour from a show we broadcast back on September 24, 2010 when Art Bell welcomed practitioner and teacher of natural magic, Dr. Evelyn Paglini

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Countdown to the Spring Equinox III - Ostara and Full Worm Moon on the same day!

Wednesday, March 20

Ostara (Spring Equinox) and the Full Worm Moon will both occur on March 20, 2019. Ostara officially is on Wednesday, March 20, although Neopagans may observe it between the 19th and the 22nd. The Full Worm Moon will occur at 9:43 PM ET; Wednesday evening/early Thursday morning. The moon has looked spectacular during the last few clear evenings here with it's horns facing upward amid the coyote howls of Owl Canyon.



The Old Farmer's Market 'Moon Calendar 2019'

Full Worm Moon

This full moon marked the start of warming weather, when worm castings appeared in the softening ground.


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Lunar Fun

Although advice varies, folklore often suggests that wood will last longest if cut between the last quarter and the new Moons. During the dark of the Moon, it was said that sap moved downward, leaving wood drier. Wood cut during a waxing Moon would be wetter and therefore more prone to warping, shrinkage, and other problems.

Cascadian Farm in Washington

Pacific Northwest farming

After reading about the huge wine industry in the Pacific Northwest, I wanted to try a Washington or Oregon wine. I saw one impressively labeled Washington red at Target--Chateau Smith Cabernet Sauvignon Red Wine--for about $23 that I passed on (https://charlessmithwines.com/). Finally at the Bargain Market I found a beautifully bottled Oregon white for five or six bucks--Elouan Pinot Noir 2016--although I still haven't opened it. Actually Elouan is a Napa company processing Oregon grapes, which apparently has some Oregon vintners unhappy ('Oregon moves to protect wine from false out-of-state labels'). I haven't looked specifically for Washington or Oregon wine yet at the larger wine stores like Beverages and More or Total Wine. They should be easy to find.


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Cascadian Farm - Rockport, Washington

Organic Leader

Since our founding in 1972, Cascadian Farm has been recognized as a pioneer in organic farming. We were organic before "organic" was a trend, or even before it was it was certified by teh USDA. Organic is who we've been, and it's who we are. Today our Cascadian Farm products still come from farming practices that work in harmony with nature and foster biodiversity and are grown without genetic engineering (GMOs) or synthetic pesticides. It's agriculture through nature, growing food just the way it should be.


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Elouan Wines - St. Helena, California (headquarters) and Rutherford, California (processing) - Grapes from Oregon

A New Style of Pinot Noir from Oregon

Elouan, the result of California winemakers venturing up to Oregon, one of the world’s renowned Pinot Noir regions. The goal: to produce Pinot Noir with depth of flavor, vibrancy and suppleness. For this wine we brought together fruit from three distinct terrains along Oregon’s premiere Western vineyards which harmonize beautifully when blended as one. The diversity of these districts along with a lengthy growing season create wines with intense structure, while maintaining a vibrant acidity that sets them apart from other wines.

The beautiful Christa Helm

Christa Helm Unsolved Murder A View On Hollywood Bloody Face

[This page contains summary information of Christa Helm Unsolved Murder A View On Hollywood Bloody Face].

http://christahelm.blogspot.com/

Growing interest in this case







19 Terrifying Animals You're Glad Are Extinct

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Facts Verse

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Project Blue Book

The 11-episode season one ended this past week, and I thought it was very good. I hoped that it wouldn't skirt around the real politics of it, and to my surprise it did not. The cinematography gave a real feel for that time period. The acting was good, and the characters were strong and set in their ways. There was always more going on than just the surface plot. J. Allen Hynek was a true skeptic and adherent of open-minded scientific research. He was a hero really.

Air Supply - All out of love - I'm so lost without you

Maci21i

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A Tale of Three Small Towns: Loveno, Hurley, and Brisbane

Tahquamenon River, Upper Michigan

I've gone into detail in past postings about family/DNA "energy stamps" across vast areas. The idea that we as individuals, families, and clans are tied to places in which we have never been; where out ancestors or relatives have lived in the past for long periods of time. Life's experiences---great and small, good and bad---form a geographic/meta-connection. These types of DNA energy imprints upon the earth form something of a DNA grid. Unless an individual is entirely materialistic with no folk spirituality at all, the places in which our ancestors or relatives have lived in the past means something! If we visit those places for the first time, we have come back home. This is a bit different than deja vu in which you experience something which you can connect to from a previous experience or perhaps even a previous life; either a literal place or somewhere which reminds one of a place, person, or experience. There's some conflation, but a meta-geographic connection is something different.

Ultimately, my own meta/geographic connections are only important to me/us. I'm just trying to encourage others, presumably chiefly folk-neopagans, to devote some thought to this in order to develop the concept further. This could take the form of storytelling for example. Even if a person is not directly blood-related, if they were of the same culture, they could still adopt--on a certain level--the "story" of another family... especially if that family followed a similar path... a shared history. This may sound like a funny thing to say, but I can say from experience that there are places where one could pull up a couple of fold-up chairs on a high point and tell another of a long family/clan history while literally "pointing" in the horizon at various related locations. That is if anyone could take some time out from their busy lives and the "sports and entertainment" culture to actually sit down and listen for a short while.

If the past, present, and future are not intertwined, then we have nobody to blame but ourselves. They are interconnected at all times, we just lose sight of it. One location which so much defines my family's origin is a group of small villages, the largest being Loveno. It's located on the edge of a valley and tributary river to the Val Camonica and the prominent Oi River.... called the Val Paisco. Part of this village-group connects to vast grassy hillsides from a high plateau on the Val Camonica side to the east, while another part of it lays on the edge of a much more closed-in, steep, and wooded Val Paisco to the west. Driving westward through the dense forested Val Paisco perhaps eight miles, the dense dark road opens up like heaven to a vast lowland surrounded by far off mountains. There you would see the the small beautiful town named Schilpario, which is actually in the Bergamo province (Orobie Alps) and they speak a slightly different dialect of the Lombard language than the Brescia province (Val Camonica).

Many of the words are slightly different despite the short trek. For example, on the Camunian side the word for family is "famia" (different than the Brescian "famija") while on the Orobie side the word is "famèa." It's like a subtle tribal affiliation, and we must look at it from the standpoint of history, back many centuries. For that long period of time, centuries, while they politically belonged to numerous different nations, small "tribal" differences remained in place, such as the difference in dialect. Certainly there were marriages between Camuni and Orobiesi, for example between people in Loveno and Schilpario, but the bride (in most cases) just adopted the subtly different ways of their new "tribe" so to speak. This is a place where time has stood still, and old ways remain in place. One paternal great-grandmother of mine, named Theresa, was born here in these relatively remote Alps at about 1870. Her parents were not born in "Italy," but in the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom... a colonial possession of the Austrian Empire.

Despite being a relatively short distance from major cities--such as Milan, Bergamo, and Brescia--the rugged, mountainous, and sleepy Val Paisco was much more in tune with the vast underpopulated regions of the east Lombard Alps. Again, a place where old traditions die hard. Metaphorically-speaking, I would compare the relationship between urban Milan and the east Lombard Alps with the relationship between San Jose, California and the nearby mountainous county of Santa Cruz. So close, yet so far away. Theresa eventually joined her children and grandchildren in Hurley, Wisconsin sometime in the 1920s. Hurley had a history of Lombard and Venetian immigrants going back to the late 1880s. She must have felt at home in the rural town and within the community surrounding the old St. Mary's Catholic Church. Although the Hurley-Ironwood (Upper Michigan) area would essentially be flatland in comparison to Loveno, the eighty-mile long Gogebic Mountain Range was right nearby.

Remarkably, the tradition of mining those mountains was the same here as it was in the mountains surrounding the Val Camonica. Also the same, the mining had largely diminished there just as it had back in the Val Camonica. Hurley had once been a major and wild "frontier town" in the late 1800s, housing many miners, and crawling with vice. Even Al Capone himself was impressed with the local operations, of which he wasn't able to penetrate himself; finally just agreeing to co-operate with the local black marketeers as they smuggled liquor down from Canada through Hurley and other locations in the Northwoods. With the decline of mining and the advent of Prohibition, the town started to dry up. Only the local long-standing community remained. However then (and even today), Silver Street, which had been ground zero during the old mining and vice days, still remained a haven for bars and topless dancing. There are tours for anyone interested in that part of local history.

Sometime in the 1940s, one of my grand uncles, Frank--a nephew of Theresa--moved with his family to Brisbane, California... which was something of a "mini-Hurley" back then. The vast majority of the residents were of California-Dust Bowl heritage. In other words, they were of the millions of people who had migrated to California from Oklahoma and north Texas during the 1930s. Brisbane was their real hot spot just south of San Francisco, wth many "country western" bars along Visitacion Avenue. One such bar/night club was the semi-famous 23 Club. That local culture was going strong as late as the early 90s. Frank's move to Brisbane was the start of a long-standing family connection to the town. As amazing as it might seem, Brisbane is surrounded by San Bruno Mountain, part of the major Santa Cruz Mountain chain; and there was a large mining company in the industrial part of town, quarrying stones along one part of the mountain. The quarry has largely slowed down, but there is still a company which operates there.

Although small, Brisbane had long been well known for heavy industry. For decades, materials were brought in on train tracks from the nearby railroad which ran along the San Francisco Bay. My great grandmother, whom I never knew, had actually visited Brisbane on at least a couple of occasions. Apparently she believed in keeping the family clan together, or at least not wanting them to lose touch. Not surprising when considering that she had come from a culture in which nobody ever seemed to lose contact, unless they migrated to some faraway location like Chicago, Toronto, or Buenos Aires. The meta-connections between Loveno, Hurley, and Brisbane---and strongly considering the strong circumstantial-similarities between all three locations---is overwhelming for me. The fact that one person--Theresa--was present in all three locations, only further bolsters this DNA-connection!

I would like to encourage others--Neopagans, folk-polytheists, Asatruar, spiritually-minded genealogists and ethnologists, etc--to take another look at their own family history with new eyes relating to this "meta-geographical" concept. This isn't about "me," but I think this example hopefully can give others an impetus to take that further examination of their own family history. What does your family's Meta/DNA "grid" map look like? Are there some almost-eery "circumstantial-similarities"--not necessarily directly related to your family--present between those locales? I would especially like to encourage Asatruar or Odinists, who have been the chief driving force behind the folk-neopagan movement in recent years. Many really impressively know their local and family history, so maybe we can raise the bar on this. I think those meta-geographical connections/grids are real. I can feel it. There are connections--between various seemingly unrelated locations--which are far beyond mere faded memories. Find them!

While becoming, we discover, we already are


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Since I seem to have adopted the 89-mile Tahquamenon River as sort've a sub-theme here, I wanted to just follow up on it a bit. Windows 10 started featuring an image of it just today. Somewhat coincidentally, it's located in Upper Michigan.

Tahquamonen River

Tahquamonen Falls




Lower Taquamenon River Michigan

Michigan Interactive

A tour of the Lower Tahquamenon River in Chippewa County Michigan by fishweb.com

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Stregheria, Goddess Diana, Aradia, and Evolutionary Struggle

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The one concept that I see that is sorely missing from Wicca and other similar religions or spiritual traditions is "evolutionary struggle"; that condition that very few of us are able to avoid in life to any comfortable degree. The struggle doesn't have to be something as overt as, for example, the film 'The Grey'. It could be fighting traffic to get to work, getting beat out've a job to someone for a bad reason (younger/better figure, the bosses friend, a major client's niece, etc.), betrayal, a false rumor, a health issue, someone unexpectedly interfering with your life, a bad neighbor, danger, a bad living condition, more month at the end of the money, the list could go on and on. It has been said that there are two types of people in the world, the predators and the prey. Certainly this would be true of animals and ocean creatures. I think for people, that statement is at least mostly true.

The below text are the words of the Goddess Diana, to her daughter Aradia, sometime prior to sending her to the earth to live as a mortal with a mission to fulfill. This text was translated by Raven Grimassi in 'The Book of the Holy Stega' (1981), from Charles G. Leland's 'Aradia: Gospel of the Witches' (1899). Clearly this would be in regard to the Catholic Church of the 14th century, and it's quite aggressive; some could obviously argue that's it's based on self-defense due to the Church's past actions and present conditions. Regardless of all of that, we all have enemies; there's no escaping it. Only the softest head-in-the-clouds suburbanite could possibly believe that they have no enemies. "Evolutionary" could be used in reference to many different considerations; however, probably chiefly the "evolution of the individual." We all "evolve"; for example, we may cringe a bit when pondering of some long-ago action or words that we offered.

The opposames called Capitalists and Socialists frequently brag about "progress" while engaging in their system-approved passive-aggression. "Progress" could be anything that anyone wants it to be. When Capitalists seek to obliterate a beautiful natural area or massively wipe out the view of mountains or a body of water for profit--forever--they would call it "progress." For that reason, I would argue that an individual or small collective keep their translation of the below text to themselves. Personally, I think it could regard numerous different things; along with a couple of personal items. It doesn't matter that much because evolutionary struggle (individual or a larger collective) is applicable to all. However, since this is a folk-based religion/spiritual tradition, it belongs to it's devoted adherents.

 

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"It is true that you are a spirit,
But you were created to become again a mortal;
You must go on earth
And become a Teacher,
To be a teacher to women and men
Who will receive your schooling
In the ways of witchcraft."

"You must not be like the ones of darkness,
And to the race that became
Wicked, infamous, because of their seed,
You shall not go among them."

"You shall be the first witch;
The first goddess to become a witch on earth.
You shall teach the secret knowledge of plants
To harm and to heal,
And you shall teach the ways of power
To bind and to slay the spirit of the oppressor."

"And where there is found to be a greedy peasant
That has come to wealth in this way,
Then you shall teach your witches, your pupils, how
To ruin all his harvest
With tempest, lightning and with thunder,
With hail and wind."

"And when a priest shall do you spiritual injury
By his benedictions, ye shall do to him
Double the harm, and do it in the name
of me, Diana, Queen of witches all!"

"And when the nobles or priests tell you
that you must believe in the Father, Son, and Mary,
answer them that serve only devils,
and say the true God is not your God,
and tell them to instead Diana,
The Queen of all witches!"

"You shall go on earth to teach this,
And to destroy the evil of these people.
Your poor people will suffer hunger
And work wretchedly,
And also suffer prison."

"But these are of one soul,
One good and true soul
And in the Otherworld they
Shall be happy
But their tormentors on earth shall discover
That an ill Fate awaits them in the Otherworld.

.