Dreamed...

of old friends, old spells, old covens. We never Circled in person, IRL, but this is what could have been had we known each other face to face for lengths of time rather than over distance ... this is what could have been had we all been witches. I think the Lady E was there. Old friends I don't remember having. We hung out at a place my mind identified as Metrocenter, I with a huge long wheeled cooler filled full of my clothes. I had to be careful, sleeping, because the Arcata police would bust me and tell me to move along.

Somehow the mall overlooked the willow field from my Alaskan home. We stood there under the stars, talking about brews. That one, someone, Kim's? Kim's??? mother had made up for us: we called it Black Magic. I think it contained lanolin? Only I had loved Shawn IRL. I think I was echoing Pyro, for the Lady E and I certainly never both loved Shawn.

The best way to cool down from an anger, I explained to them, was to start at the top and coast your way down like a roller coaster car, not getting off the tracks, stopping at the bottom.

Someone, my husband (?!?!?!) was entering drawings in the fair. The Fairbanks one, of course. Gave him some helpful hints on how to best coordinate a massive entry spree like the one he was going to do. Many childhood memories recycled.

Odd dream to have. Very odd.

Yay for family solidarity

Friend who was having the mother troubles is moving out of the city, with her mother's blessing. Hopefully this will go well. They drive down today. She's done some careful packing. Hope she does all right.

Adventures in Cooking

Not entirely sure that spearmint gravy is a taste sensation I entirely agree with, but it's at least interesting. We have a rather lot of spearmint, the same stuff that caused me what may wind up to be a budding reputation as a drug dealer at school.

Eyedrops

Nephew submitted to the 1300 eyedrop thing with little fuss. Perhaps Uncle marxdarx is just really good at it.

Bloody Fuck.

Sis? Cleaning frenzies are great. Just: some of the STUFF lying around was needed for rebates... any idea where it's at?

(no subject)

When intimidated, I take the coward's route: locked in bathroom with book.

Exorcism, Purification, & Cleansing Bath Salts

for 8 oz bath salt base:

---

2 shakes clove oil (appx 3-4 drops per shake?)
3 shakes cedarwood oil
13 drops frankincense oil
13 drops sandalwood oil
2 shakes rosemary oil
1 1/2 pinches dry carnation herb
1 pinch dry spearmint herb

---

Very good, powerful recipe. Good for relaxing and chilling out after a stressful day with the relatives.

Logical Outline of Religion with regard to Soulmates

This is a copy/paste of comments I left here, feeding off a discussion... I felt it deserved reproducing here, partly to keep from getting into too tangled a nest of replies...

I briefly went into soulmates here...

The Platonic version does have its merits, but that's far too narrow a definition. First, it's perfectly possible to function without soulmate and be complete. It's just nicer to have someone to share with who has a compatible soultype. Second, it's not just one soulmate out there.

If you subscribe to a system of theism, the usual definition for Deity is "All that there is." This is composed of the usual bits: Things which people know, things which people are going to discover, and things that people won't discover.

Given that Deity is the set All That There Is, and humans exist, therefore humans are a subset of Deity.

Given that All That There Is, if not infinite, is Really Fucking Big, and the current known human lifespan is somewhat short of infinite, humans should not be confusing themselves with gods anytime soon.

If Deity is infinite, to fully understand Deity requires an infinite understanding. Human is finite. Finite Human cannot contain an infinite understanding (at least not for long and survive sane to report back). Therefore, no one Human can, at this time, fully understand Deity. Every individual Human's understanding of Deity is incomplete in some way.

If Deity is All That There Is, each Human's understanding of Deity is based on their experiences, both internal and external, with All That There Is. Being of limited lifespan and understanding, no one Human can experience each and every aspect of Deity. No human occupies the exact same position in spacetime. By that alone, every human has a different experience. No human has the same understanding of Deity.

That's the background.

Am choosing to define Soul, the quasi-mythical portion of the person that has the closest relationship to the Divine, under the umbrella of "things that humans have yet to fully understand/may never understand" to avoid conflicts over that at the moment. Bad logical practice, but it's done. I can't map the whole Deity in one essay. Perhaps map Soul as "The part of Human that is closest to understanding Divine".

In any case, as all Humans are a subset of All That There Is, we may all be logically viewed as "Children of the Divine", if one defines "Children" as "Smaller offshoot of self that has the chance of growing up to full understanding".

Every human is related to every other human, on first the very most basic level of subsets of All That There Is, and then on levels increasingly more complex and debatable.

Now we refer back to the bit where we noted that each human's understanding of the Divine was subject to certain logical limitations, involving space, time, and the relative durability/distribution of the human body/mind/attention span. Each human's understanding of the Divine is incomplete.

In most belief systems involving religion, there's often the urge to become closer to the Divine.

I propose that one's soulmate(s) are those with souls who have an understanding of the Divine both similar and different. Similar, so that there can be communication, and different, so that the differences may be shared to form a more complete picture out of the two perspectives. A binocular vision of the Divine, or at least part of it...

Soulmates, to me, are the optimal tradeoff between similar soul for good communication, and different soul for better overall understanding. There is no practical limit on the number of soulmates one may have. The only limit is how closely the user defines "soulmate" -- how much of a narrowed perspective offered by the soulmate closer in understanding, how much of an increased difficulty in communication offered by a soulmate with more differences.

Oooh, shiny!

Anybody who's wanted to check out the writings of Lois McMaster Bujold, her novella "The Mountains of Mourning" is up in the Baen Free Library (under "T", for "The", she says). Baen main page: http://www.baen.com

I recommend. One of her (so far) four Hugo awards, and one Nebula.

I never knew...

Evidently I know Darkside's middle name and Votania doesn't. I might be getting to know him better than she does. That's a little eerie. They were dating.

I probably know her better than he knew her. I probably know him better than she knew him.

...I can read his expressions, even the ones he tries to hide from the rest of the world, about 90% of the time. He talks with me. We're friends. ...

...it still blows me away that I know him this well, and he knows me.

Wall-to-Wall Counseling

http://www.tertiary.net/mil-bs/walltowall.html

Hee.

crisavec, you rock.