The Queen’s Chronicles: SPOOKY GREETINGS

I extend all manner of spooky greetings for these three days of the dead:

October 31 Halloween
November 1 All Saints Day
November 2 All Soul's Day or Dia de los Muertos.

Halloween descends from Samhain, the most significant holiday of the Celtic calendar. Being a pastoral people, the Celts counted their seasons according to the needs of their cattle and sheep, rather than the agricultural seasons that farmers might mark. The year was divided
into summer, when the herds are led our to graze, and winter, when they were brought back home again. Samhain, the day when the cows came home, was considered the first day of winter and also the first day of the new year.

Samhain exposes a crease in time. A fissure between summer and winter. Between the old year and the new. During this period, the dead have easy access to the living, and are likely to pay a visit. Just as the herds returned home to the warmth and security of the hearth in winter, so too, must the ghosts of the dead want to be cheered by familiar surroundings and loved ones. Certainly one owes the same hospitality to the ancestors as one gives to the animals!

For hundreds of years Christian missionaries tried without success to suppress Samhain and convert the Celts. In the eleventh century, Odilo, abbot at Cluny, claimed this heathen death feast for the Church. Hallow Tide, Holy Time, is a three-day feast -- All Hallowed Eve, All Hallowed, and All Saint's Day -- during which prayers are offered for Christian saints and souls, and only for Christian saints and souls. All others, those doomed souls whose burials were not consecrated in Christ, return to Earth on the eve of All Hallow’s to haunt the living. Menacing demons and flying witches along with their trusty black cat sidekicks, the persistent practitioners of the pagan religion, were also thought to be out and about and up to no good.

The potato famine of 1846 sent a million Irish immigrants to the United States. They brought with them their ancient Celtic customs, among them the feast of Samhain, which, as good Catholics, they now called Hallowe'en. This shadow festival of soul survival struck a responsive chord in the American people who instantly adopted it. To this day, Halloween is celebrated in some fashion by practically every person in North America. Sales of decorations and goodies rival the lucrative Christmas season.

We modern Americans rarely -- if ever -- think about death if we can possibly help it. We like to watch it on a big screen well enough, or perpetrate it on innocent populations overseas, but in real life, we just don't do death. Which is why I think Halloween has become so popular. It offers us a way to engage with our natural fascination with death in a way which is scary yet superficial. At Halloween we get to acknowledge our fear of death while still having a good time.

All best blessings,

xxQMD


To read about Halloween in more depth, check out my book, Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles & Celebrations at: www.DonnnaHenes.net

The Queen’s Chronicles: EARTH ATTACKS MOON

“Of all the creatures who had yet walked on Earth, the Man-apes were the first to look steadfastly at the Moon. And though he could not remember it, when he was very young Moon-Watcher would sometimes reach out and try to touch that ghostly face rising above the hills. He has never succeeded, and now he was old enough to understand why. For first, of course, He must find a high enough tree to climb.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
2001 A Space Odyssey



Well, we Earthling Moon-Watchers built ourselves some really tall trees so that we could get to the moon. Rocket-propelled trees to carry us through space. And so we got to the moon.

No sooner did we land there than we set about trashing it. In the short time that we have been visiting our attendance upon it, we have left over twenty tons of debris — biological, atmospheric and manufactured — on the surface of our once pristine satellite.

Here are just some of things we left to litter Lady Luna: flags and dedication plaques from each moon mission, video cameras at the launch sites, sensitometers, the launch legs for the lunar module,
geologic tools, laser reflecting mirrors, the lunar rovers, a gold plated extreme ultraviolet telescope, a Tesco super market shopping cart, several Apollo backpacks, and three golf balls.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, we have reached new highs in our lows. At 7:30AM EDT on Friday, October 9, 2009 the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, will fire a Centaur rocket into a crater at the South Pole of the moon which will act as a “heavy impactor” crashing into the lunar surface at nearly 6,000 mph sending a debris plume of 300,000 to 350,000 tons of material from the crater floor over 30 miles high.

A second sensor satellite will then drop down into this plume analyzing its contents in the hope of finding water. The result of this search will ultimately determine how realistic a full-time base on moon can be.
After the booster rocket hits the crater, blasting out a hole 90 feet deep, the shepherd will follow through the plume. After analyzing the plume, the shepherd craft will itself slam into the crater four minutes later, creating a second hole 60 feet deep.
According to NASA, this crash will be so big that we on Earth may be able to view the resulting plume of material it ejects with a good amateur telescope. The operation will unfold live on the Internet, as well as under the watchful eyes of dozens of amateur and professional astronomers and orbiting observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Water on the moon has haunted us for years," said William Hartmann of the Planetary Science Institute. "It's all part of humanity's quest to understand our nearby cosmic environment." Yeah, right, understand it so we could rape it.


"Who (said the moon)
Do you think I am and precisely who
Pipsqueak, who are you

With your uncivil liberties
To do as you damn please?
Boo!

I am the serene
Moon (said the moon).
Don't touch me again.

To your poking telescopes,
Your peeking eyes
I have long been wise.

Science? another word
For monkeyshine.
You heard me.

Get down, little man, go home,
Back where you come from,
Bah!

Or my gold will be turning green
On me (said the moon)
If you know what I mean."
- Robert Francis


Yours with heartsick, heartfelt blessings for Mama Moon,

xxQMD