WTF

That's a fucking sled over on the right hand side, isn't it? SCARY.

[eta] HE NOTICED.

Skulls.

I had a dream last week.

In it, I was walking with my sister and a friend - sometimes one, sometimes the other - and we happened upon a graveyard. It was also a park, and a playground. Sometimes it was covered in snow, and other times it was raining as it usually does in Vancouver. There were tombstones and above ground graves, and large moss-or-snow-covered skulls.

We played in the silent fields of the dead.


I'd like to take a moment to shout-out to Cory of New World Witchery, who did a reading for me not long before. I won't get into details, but suffice to say he pointed me in a direction that I now understand. Anything interesting that comes of all of this will surely be reported here on the blog.


In unrelated news, did I mention I chopped my hair off? I am rocking what one of my stylist friends calls, "a statement bob." I actually have had short hair for most of my adult life - it was only when I started burlseque that I really decided to keep it long. My sister and I had a conversation about it before we both went and got new haircuts (Voodoo now has the Mia Farrow Vidal Sassoon cut) that was brougth about by another conversation she had with Jungle Cat. Jungle Cat has long dreadlocks - they actually look very cool. But she confessed to my sibling that she felt maybe she should instead get her hair done in a vintage style.

I've kept my hair vintage for a few years now, as shocking as that is to me. I've pin-curled it, slept on rollers, twisted it into victory rolls. I certainly don't regret it - I loved the way it looked. I did notice that in recent months I'd started to get lazier - I'd flat iron it more often, or roll it up into the sock bun. One day my own sister actually didn't recognise me because I had my hair in the sock bun and my glasses on. "I thought you were a hipster!"

So I had my hair cut. And the second after I had it done, I wondered why on earth I'd bothered keeping it long. I did no cry or have regrets. This is something I've never understood when I watch makeover shows - bitches always be crying when the hairstylist comes at them with scissors. Nevermind that they look like they have Mormon-wife-hair with split ends.

It stems, pretty clearly I think, from the idea that long hair is more feminine. At the last Taboo Revue, my sister and I preformed a little skit in which I read actual stripping tips from Cosmo's website and she acted them out. To quote:

"If you have long locks, play with them and flip them around whenever you have the chance. Guys go berserk for this, because flowing hair is such a feminine attribute. They’ll imagine it brushing against their skin, and running their fingers through it."

 Oh, Cosmo. You with your man-pleasing focus. Anyway. Voodoo has... no hair now, so she clipped fake hair to her head and whipped it like a helicopter. 

I'm not going to rag on women with long hair. If you have great long hair, more power to you. Mostly what I'm getting at is that I'm surprised at myself that by simply getting into a subculture I felt I should look a certain way. Granted, it was a nice way to look, but it could sometimes feel a bit limiting. 

New hair. New apartment. New job contract. New magical and spiritual happenings. 2013 seems pretty bitchin so far.

If you have long locks, play with them and flip them around whenever you have the chance. Guys go berserk for this, because flowing hair is such a feminine attribute. They’ll imagine it brushing against their skin, and running their fingers through it. - See more at: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/tips-moves/how-to-strip-for-your-man?click=main_sr#slide-6

If you have long locks, play with them and flip them around whenever you have the chance. Guys go berserk for this, because flowing hair is such a feminine attribute. They’ll imagine it brushing against their skin, and running their fingers through it. - See more at: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/tips-moves/how-to-strip-for-your-man?click=main_sr#slide-6

If you have long locks, play with them and flip them around whenever you have the chance. Guys go berserk for this, because flowing hair is such a feminine attribute. They’ll imagine it brushing against their skin, and running their fingers through it. - See more at: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/tips-moves/how-to-strip-for-your-man?click=main_sr#slide-6

D is for Dzunukwa

Pagan Blog Project

When I was a little girl, my father would take us into Vancouver whenever he came to the Lower Mainland to visit. We would go to the aquarium, the planetarium, or the Museum of Anthropology at UBC.

The MOA is set back from the university campus - it overlooks the ocean and is partially obscured by large cedar trees. If you visit on an overcast day - which is likely, since, you know, Vancouver - as you walk toward the entrance you feel the damp of the forest and smell the salt of the ocean. After paying your admission fee (Tuesday is cheap night!) you enter a long hall where you're flanked on either side by Pacific Northwest First Nations lodge doorposts and ceremonial boxes.

Image: LeLaLa Dancers

The hall opens up into a room with high ceilings, with one huge windowed wall that looks out towards the water. There are more doorposts, and some totem poles rising high overhead. It was in this room that I first laid eyes on Dzunukwa.

Dzunukwa is a creature from Kwakwaka'wakw mythology - a giant cannibal woman  known for stealing children. She has scraggly hair, pendulous breasts, and bright red lips. Why red? From the blood of the children she's eaten. In masks and carvings, her bloody lips are pursed; Dzunukwa would make a whistling noise as she moved through the woods that people would mistake for the sound of the wind in the cedars. 

That's the story I remember being told by a tour guide. It's one that has never left my mind. 
  Cannibalism is a taboo subject that inevitably comes up if you study the Kwakwaka'wakwa in any detail; there exists a secret society called the Hamatsa which is said to be a cannibal society. (Unless you're Kwakwaka'wakw yourself, good luck in finding out if the cannibalism is/was purely symbolic or not. The Hamatsa dance is known, but there's not a lot of detail on the ceremonies or duties of the society.) The myths surrounding the subject are rich and complex; Dzunukwa is not the only cannibal creature in the cosmology, but on a personal level she has always been the most arresting. 

Dzunukwa is ugly. She's huge, hairy, and prowls the forest naked. She devours people - especially children - but seems fairly easily outsmarted. She is said to be both a bringer of nightmares, and of wealth. In fact, her mask would be worn during potlatches by the chief of the tribe, usually to signify the event was over.

Dzunukwa devours youth. She is an incarnation of the fear of the woods at night. In both those ways, she reminds me a little of Baba Yaga - the fact she can also be fooled and bestows wealth are further similarities. But for me she has always seemed more immediate, and somehow more primal.

I'm as white as the underbelly of a fish - I can't lecture on First Nations spirituality. It would be insulting if I did. I was brought up to appreciate the artwork and mythology of different groups of the Pacific Northwest - my father had books dedicated to the artwork especially, and it was from these I started to recognise the difference between Coast Salish, Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw - but I cannot begin to lay claim to the traditions at all. 

Still. Dzunukwa haunts me. She probably always will.

Good Times!

I can't stop watching Hotter Than My Daughter.

I could say something about how it highlights the  pressure on women to stay young forever and conform to rigid beauty ideals... but the truth is I just like shitty TV.

I also just got back from a Marilyn Manson concert. My friend Sweet Pea McGee got free tickets, so we hung out at her place drinking red wine so as to avoid the terrible opening band. (It was Fake Tits McAngry.) It was like, an hour show that seemed to showcase the fact that Manson just really wanted to lay down. I had a marvellous time laughing my ass off.

C is for Cauldron

Pagan Blog Project

"The womb of twansformation? That sounds a widdle sexy..."
- Penn Jillette

The symbolic meaning of the cauldron is not particularly difficult to grasp. Anyone with a cursory education in neo-Wiccan or Grail mythology understands what a cauldron represents. Largely the result of Celtic legends, the cauldron represents the womb of the Divine Feminine - a place of rebirth. It signifies endless bounty and the process of transformation. It is considered once of the staple tools in a witch's arsenal, so much so that to this day it appears on Halloween decorations.

Mine's a mess.

My cauldron was purchased in the early 2000s from a shop with the frou-frou name of Crystals, Dreams, and Magical Themes (I hated the name then, and I hate it now. Why not just call it Unicorn Farts? Yeesh.) It's about five and a half inches in diameter, and made of cast iron. Much like the slate pentagram I purchased at the same store, it was at the time a luxury item for me and something I had to save up for.

Initially I considered using it solely for potions... which I never make. So naturally enough it instead became a place in which to set things on fire. Consequently the interior is extremely sooty.

In the ten-plus years I've owned my cauldron, I have evolved in both my spiritual and magical life. In the process of moving away from eclectic-new-Wiccan-101, I went through a period in which I shunned using tools associated with that practice. The cauldron was the first of those tools to be taken out of storage years later. Why? ...I needed a place to burn things.

As with most of my practical tools, the symbolic meaning behind the item was either something I never considered, or that I gently mocked. I no longer considered my ritual framework influenced by concepts of duality, four elements, or vaguely Celtic cosmology; the cauldron was as much of a womb to me as an ashtray.

With age and practice, I have found that things begin to synthesize - disparate elements gel in the mind and become a whole in which the stuff that resonates with you can exist without justification. I find that is the case with the cauldron and its symbolism. It's a tool often associated with water, and yet it's used most frequently for working with fire. Odd, until you consider its trans formative properties. ...which is where we came in.

The cauldron - MY cauldron - is both womb and ashtray.

Sin Bin

Tomorrow is the big day!

RELEVANT!

I actually got to, you know, see inside my apartment this week. It's lovely! Voodoo definitely got the better view and better kitchen, but my bedroom might actually fit a bed, so. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

So glad to be done all this bullshit, and out of this place. The next time you read a transmission from me, I'll be in my new digs. Wooooooooooohoo!


Also be on the lookout for a new - hopefully higher quality! - podcast soon.