“Give it rhythm, make it rhyme, they’ll remember every time.”

Do you like secret codes, ciphers and riddles? I do, too. And long ago, when common knowledge was banned and people who practiced natural medicine, especially with plants, were called witches and sorcerers and severely punished or executed, the common folk adopted a practice that is part of what is called “oral tradition”, in order to protect themselves and preserve and hand their knowledge down.

Witch’s Runes-The Nine Children of the Green is a two part e-book that offers an entertaining short story demonstrating the practice of oral tradition and a detailed explanation of the secret knowledge embedded in the little rhymes in the story. (an archaic meaning of the word “runes” is “an aphorism, poem, or saying with mystical meaning or for use in casting a spell” according to Dictionary.com.}

wr-smAvailable on Smashwords.com for $4.99

It may inspire you to create your own oral tradition to add a little fun to your herbal practice, or perhaps re-explore those stories and nursery rhymes from childhood to discover whether there are secrets buried within!

Getting Old

Bill says we need things pulling us toward life, into life, toward tomorrow. I know for me, that’s true. It may be more important as we grow “older”, simply  because we have all been taught to believe in decline and death. We have been taught to fear, even think in dread anticipation, a day when something will be “less than par” and to expect the worst. And the more we see this around us, or even just in our own minds, the more references we have for it…and the more references we have, the more likely it is to become a belief.

Yet, I simply can’t be the only person who grew up with references for people growing older and stronger, older and wiser, older and happier. I believe a lot of our problem is purely how we interpret what we see.

For example, in my early 30‘s no one would have suggested that it was “old age” that caused me to spend nearly a week in bed after each all-day outing two or three hours driving or riding. No one even suspected that it was “normal and natural” to be that tired and achy. Yet, when my 70 year old husband goes out and has a great day shopping, riding around and enjoying the scenery, he sometimes feels tired the next day and goes back to bed. He’s not at par, his thoughts not so clear…he needs rest. And the general consensus is that “it’s normal and natural” because of his “age”. If he buys into that, what will be the result?

Maybe it has a little to do with what Bill said? In my 30‘s, I had very little drawing me toward “tomorrow”. At least, I felt I had no guarantees that a happy time would occur. Back then, I was surrounded by negative people who bickered amongst themselves, argued, nay-sayed every project I put on the drawing board and whined about everything from their health and finances to the way the neighbors lived. I always felt better in the evenings…when my children were home from school…children who were full of the excitement of life, play and “what’s next?”. Then something “big” would come along, like visiting a friend in Nashville, and I felt better…until after I got home. Would life have been different if I had budgeted for a visit every month? Would life have been happier if I removed all the negative elements and replaced them with positive ones?

And maybe it’s “normal and natural” at any age to feel tired and/or “under the weather” after you have a great day, then come home and realize there’s not a lot going on. Or if you feel there are not enough resources to create something good. And isn’t it a sad thing when all we can manage to do is sit, look around and think about good times past and how the acquisition of money to have more good times is taking away the time we must have for those good times? When we reach “a certain age” we begin to be left out at times by well-meaning people who simply cannot see what’s right before their eyes – that our vitality has not lessened, our knowledge and experience are valuable, and our sense of humor (if we have one) is quicker, more intense and more twisted than anything they have yet experienced.

I wonder how much of our own thinking and expectation contributes to our individual down-fall? If Smiling Joe comes home from a great day and expects to spend the next day alone because his favorite hang-out has shut down their morning hours and his new bride works nights and has to sleep late, then leave for work, instead of enjoying companionship, leaf-raking and laughter, might that be the cause of needing to go back to bed? (Especially since the need for more rest doesn’t happen every time he goes out!) And if I have a wonderful day, riding twelve hours on the bike with him to Kentucky and back, could it affect me physically if I come home and feel down because we don’t have any real plans for our next ride?

If it turns out to be true that the body “gives out”, I cannot help but wonder just how much of that is solely due to media, culture and rejection/isolation from the lively group we were once part of? Each thought and feeling we have creates a chemistry and an energy. Every belief we have is based purely on thoughts and feelings, and we created those beliefs solely on interpretation of references. How much of our own “planning for old age and decline” is merely sensible and how much is creating that decline?

Yes, I strongly believe Bill is right – we need good things drawing us toward tomorrow, the future, into life and the living of it!

It Took a Minute…

but I might have found it…my mind, that is. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to start completely over in my life, but I will ask you one question; can you imagine doing it at the age of 51…without a penny to your name…without a roof over your head…without working transportation or a job…and without any advance notice that this was about to happen?

I am still alive.

Of the many important messages I’ve been given over the past 9 months, the most important may have been,

“Love yourself enough to live.”

~Salem

Oral Tradition & the Sharing of Life

Historically, magick, medicine, genealogy and spirituality were all oral traditions. When I was a child, we often sat in front of the fireplace or on the front porch and listened to stories of every possible kind…yet they encompassed all the history and tradition of my family and connected families and friends. Each time you tell your child about the day she or he was born, (how you felt, all the anecdotes), you are following oral tradition. When you tell somene how you learned to make chicken and dumplings and how that was your mother’s method, and her mother’s and her mother’s before her…you are following oral tradition. When an older man tells a younger man the timeless secrets of charming a fish out of the water or a lady into his arms…he is following oral tradition.

Oral Tradition is, quite simply, keeping an energy, activity, belief or other valuable, in the living now by passing that valuable and its value to someone you believes will hold it just as dear, special, secret or sacred.

In this modern life, although we may “know”, literally, hundreds of people, there are often very few or none we know well enough to share these deeper valuables with. It often feels as though any subject we address has the ability to “offend” someone, and if not the subject, then the way it’s told.

We need our traditions. At their finest they connect us with all that is valuable to us, and in sharing our traditions and their meanings, they connect us to each other in some of the deepest ways possible. When we are alone, we can call to mind our shared stories, our laughs and our tears, our in-common ways of feeling…and we are not alone anymore. Shared stories, shared traditions initiate new individuals into existing families.

Our shared histories, traditions, and our shared feelings about them, are one way we nurture each other and remember that, while there is strength in diversity, we are still just one specie, on one planet, in one universe…together, after all.

~Salem

Read me 🙂

A Heart for Valentino

An excerpt; “I’ve been told that, at times like this, you’re supposed to pray.  I sit here on the floor, clutching my belly and my unborn baby, watching my bedroom door.  At this moment, I am grateful for oak doors. Every beat against the door by Genevieve, every scream from my baby’s father for my life, I am grateful.”

And that was just the opening line in Chapter 1! If you love reading in genres of suspense, horror, paranormal romance, witchcraft, demons, intrigue, thrillers…this is the book for you. I enjoyed helping edit and format and you know, it may not be your normal couple activity, but we’ve had the most fun doing this over the summer!

I’m glad he’s doing a sequel!

Here’s the trailer;  A Heart for Valentino Book Trailer and there are a couple places where you can download a portion of the book to read for FREE <g>;

On Smashwords!

On Amazon!

and here’s my handsome hubbies profile page! This time you get more than just “Joe’s Nose”!     Author James J. Lester

And don’t worry about expensive reading devices…on Smashwords you can read online or on your PC (personal computer) when you go offline.

Happy Summer Folks!

Salem

 

 

Thirty Years as a Social Hostage

On November 22, 2008, (a Saturday), at approximately 10 A.M., my knees buckled, my whole body trembling as I crumbled to the floor, flooding tears and hysterical sobbing laughter suddenly flowing freely down my face. My sons were alarmed, my husband reached to grab and support me, “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”, anxious questions seemed to be coming from every direction.

“They can’t do it! They can’t ever do it again!” I managed to stammer out, still trembling as if in light convulsions. “We’re free! We’re free! I’ll never be a hostage again!”

My oldest son’s face just softly began to glow with understanding. He sat back down and smiled, sharing with me, on a very deep level of soul-comprehension, just what was happening to his mother. Everything was alright-for the first time in over 30 years, everything would always, now, be alright.

Like the words of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., I heard so often in my childhood, I was almost shouting, “Free, I’m free at last!”.

I went on, “for over 31 years I have been held hostage, controlled by people repeatedly and continuously threatening me through my children, through the welfare and well-being of the three people I have loved more than my own life, and John is 18 today, and THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!”

I looked around confused, “Do you understand? Do you all understand what this means? I’ve waited for this day for over 30 years, I knew it was coming, but it’s just sunk in! We can be a family now, the way WE want to! No more shadows hanging over us, no more threats, no more hostages!”

My children were all now grown, all outside the grasping, mindless hands of governmental bodies set to enforce anything, however trivial, against mothers who do things the least bit “differently”, to make hostages of parents whose beliefs do not mirror the mainstream, despite the evidence of perfectly healthy, well-adjusted kids thriving in their homes, even when, at times, they know and admit (as in my case) “We realize there’s nothing going on here but a family feud, a relative who wants to be spiteful”, yet knowing it, will still take or threaten daily to take your children, place them with strangers whose only goal is an income.

If the articles below don’t mean anything to you, it’s because you’re living outside the experience of having anything like it happen to your family, and living inside your “beliefs” and opinions. Belief is often worthless without experience to base it on.

If I had a million dollars, right now I would give it all if it would correct all areas of government, at all levels, wherever they affect parents, children and families who need help, ask for help, do all they know and learn all they can, and are still harrassed, threatened and broken up. Before complaining about the divorce rate and it’s destructiveness to families and children; before calling home-schooling “neglect” of socialization of a child; before sitting down again because you’ve called to mind the situations of harm to children that do require intervention and (real fast now)-let your mind have a deep look at the other side of the story, because it is NOT rare, unusual or occasional, and it destroys families, lives, hopes and dreams.

Please join in supporting this mother, just this one, and see if taking that small stand makes a difference.

Police Use Assault Weapons and Tank Against Home-school Mom Wanting to Protect Daughter from Dangerous Medications

Justice for Maryanne Godboldo

Justice for Maryanne-Twitter

Legally Abducting Children by Broadening Definition of Child Abuse

~Salem

Stop – in the name of love

“I’m taking you hostage, in the name of love.”
“I’m pointing this gun at my head, in the name of love.”
“I want to be happy, even if it makes you unhappy, in the name of love.”
“I’m making you responsible for what I do, in the name of love.”

No. No, you’re not. And even though I want to be loved, I’m smart enough to know what love feels like, and this ain’t it.

I know what it feels like, because I feel it for you, and it goes something like this;

“I find you beautiful, fun, funny, nice, considerate, honest, generous and giving, loyal, protective and caring…those are qualities I love and qualities you express, right out there where the whole world (and I) can see them. Seeing that brings me joy, laughter, peacefulness, at times. You are someone I can trust because you demonstrate trustworthiness.”

So here’s the truth- if you’re that first person, the one who tells me I “made you” feel bad even though I’ve done nothing bad to cause you to feel bad, the one who does things that make me unhappy and keeps doing them knowing that – you don’t love me – you still haven’t learned to love yourself.

And if I found something in you to love, maybe you just aren’t looking at the good you got closely enough…look again!

Otherwise, I have to go, because I need me more than I want you!

I can feel love for you, and not be your prisoner, not stand by and watch you destroy yourself. I’m not the one destroying you. Just the fact that you want to hurt yourself proves you don’t love yourself. The fact that you are willing to hurt me too, proves you don’t love me either. I love me, though. And you can learn what love really is, too. Just love yourself and watch everything turn around! All you gotta do is count what’s good about yourself and the things you do, and if there aren’t any, well, just start making some – then there will be plenty to love about yourself…after all, I already found things to love about you!

March 23, 2011    5:33 PM