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| Finally, I'm really in business |
| 08.14.03 (11:45 pm) [edit] |
I'm all giddy today. My Seller's Permit arrived in the Mail today. I can now officially open my costume and Accessories business! YAAAAAAAY! I'm a little scared too, of course. This is an entirely new phase of my life. All my life, with one abyssmal exception, I have worked for other people. But, as I mentioned in a previous post, I started my own business, and I'm working without the reassurance of a regular paycheck. But now, I have my business name, which is my name plus "& Associates." That was suggested to me by a neighbor who also runs her own side business. She said it was a way of having a business name without having to buy a DBA, which is a fictitious name for my business and costs a LOT. For example, say I wanted to open "YE OLDE COSTUME SHOPPE". That is a fictisious business name becasue it is not MY name in the title. So I would have to file that name as my business name, pay a fee to the county registrar, and THEN run an add for a few weeks in a newspaper saying that I am now runnign a business under the fictitious name, "Ye Olde Costume Shoppe", which costs a lot. See, only a few really big newspapers, in my area, run these kinds of DBA ads, and they charge so much I'd be asking, "Shouldn't you use some lube with that?" BUT I needed a business name to get a tax ID number and my seller's permit, as well as a merchant's bank account.
So now, I am doing business as "D. B*** & Associates." (I don't know why I can't get myself to put my whole name up on the unsecure internet, go figure.) I have a Seller's Permit now, and that's what I need to legally sell products. See, I have to pay sales tax to the state for everything I sell. Yes, it's the business that pays the taxes. Surprise surprise. BUT the law allows businesses to pass that tax on to the customer, lucky YOU. (This is in California at least.) NOW, if I sell to people out-of-state, I'm not required to pay tax in MY state. I might have to pay tax in some other states where I ship items, and my next step is to find out which states might require such an out-of-state vendor tax. OOOOOOOOOH my skin tingles at the thought of doing buisness nation wide, via the Internet. I'm a small man about to enter the BIG TIME, BABY!
I'm going to open at least three specialty stores - one for regular costumes; one for pagan needs; one for (teehee) fetish needs.. WOOHOO! Why separate them? So I can build each store individually to meet the needs of each market instead of trying to be so general that the unique natures of these products get lost. So keep watching, and I'll post the new stores addresses when they become (virtual) reality.
Beannachtai
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| Just another day...okay...two days |
| 08.14.03 (11:44 pm) [edit] |
Monday started off great; Ended rather blah. I really got very little accomplished. I did some work on various new costumes, and still more work around the house. But all three partners at Crystal Avalon started calling me on every phone I own. Their infighting has become terminal. Two of them are sisters, M and J. THEY want to get rid of the third partner, K. They believe she was out to defraud them from the start. That came, not from any evidence, but from rumors and hints left by other people. Try as I did, they made their decision. Then K calls me to tell me about her side of things, which I already know. There were so many issues that arose in this venture, and so many outsiders adding their two cents, that it became impossible to separate fact from fiction by talking individually to each. The week before, I had relayed a message I had perceived from the Spirit of the Land where the retreat is. I say perceived because I don't actually claim to talk to the Spirit of the Land. But that message was not to make any decisions until everyone who was talking in secret came out in a huge council and said out in the open all their little whispers and rumors. Only by putting things out in the open could all parties see where lies were told, and work on resolving issues that should not have been issues.
But instead of waiting for a council, each party split off on its own, got people on their sides, and now lines have been drawn. SO much was invested, financially and in effort, to make this place work. But no one was willing to let go of their own egos so the whole could work.
They told me they wanted to hold the council today, but I had court that day and didn't want to attend. I have this...thing...on ym record...that I have to shwo up in court everyso often to give a progress report about, until I'm off probation. That went fine, btw. Han them a report and get the next date. Anyway, I get hoem and call to tell M and J that I cant' make it, saying I have too much to do ,which was true, I had a lot of spider solitaire to play. That's when J tells me the only reason they are having the council is out of respect for me. Which means, to me, that it's totally pointless now. There's nothing int he world quite like being patronized, eh?
K then calls me to tell me more stuff, I tell her the meeting is on Thursday now, but she's pretty much made up her mind too. No one wants to actually talk to the others and I know why. It would require them to admit they are wrong about each other, and that means they don't know everything. The greatest knowledge we can have is to know that we know nothing. But they want to hold on to their anger so they can use it as an excuse to fail, and so they can blame anyone but themselves.
I don't talk to them about this, primarily because it wouldn't help, but when I left my last job, ostensibly to start my own business, I was really quitting because these three said they were ready to hire me immediately thereafter, at $11/hour, to be the manager of the retreat. I was rather counting on the money from that to fund my business. When that didn't happen, well, I'm really sunk. Of course, I DID get my business started, but I have no "day job" to rely on until the business really gets going. SO now I get to actually live without a net for a while. Not a truly bad thing, it gets me motivated. But bridges are burning, and I'm not sure I'm going to try and save any of them. And what's worse is not only is one of the partners now deeply in financial debt, but the retreat is doomed. The negative spirit left in that place is going to ruin it for any kind of healing or ritual, which was it's intention as I mentioned before.
I am asking for inspiration from Brighid, Lugh, Nuada, Odin, Freya, Tyr, Dagda, you name em, I'm asking. There has to be a silver branch out here somewhere that will just calm them down.
More to come later.
Beannachtai
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| The Hunt that Went SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! |
| 08.14.03 (11:41 pm) [edit] |
(Originally posted on 8/8/03)
Thursday night I entered the premises at Crystal Avalon and set up some very limited and crude equipment for an amateur ghost hunt. (See previous entry for details.) I did not have all the equipment the various paranormal investigators recommend, but I did have
Video camera and blank tapes
Tape recorder and external microphone
Compass
Thermometer
Flashlight
Fine thread and Blue Tack
Digital camera
Pendulum and Dowsing rods
Runes and Tarot cards
Pen and notebook
Three small oil lamps with glass chimneys
And I also had a few other magickal items in case a house cleansing was needed. You can guess what most of the items were used for, liek the cameras and tape recorder. The thread was stretched across several doors and drawers in the places where activity was reported to be concentrated, and the blue tack held the thread in place. (It's a sort of sticky rubber gum.) I set up the video camera in the room where everyone felt the entity was most liekly to manifest, and that is where I set up my base of operations too. And when I arrived, I as told the PAR group had decided not to investigate, probably since it is mostly volunteers who do this work and they couldn't find the time. I took temperature readings in all parts of the room, and made special note where people had seen shadows or even the green critter. The compass was mainly to detect where any magnetic field fluctuations might be found. It should spin randomly if the earth's field is disrupted. I got out my pen and notebook, and changed into my comfortable, black, ritual robe and began the vigil.
The house was VERY active, but not with spirits. Just about everyone who had experienced anything was walking around, talking, the dogs were in the house, and there wasn't a minute that went by that I didn't have to make a comment on the audio tape or video that some noise was caused by one of these. Fortunately, A, K's husband, wanted EVP sounds, so I mentioned to them to keep it quiet so anything unusual might be heard. HAving watched the video tape, I know they didn't heed my advice while I was outside, walkingthe grounds. I could actually hear them washing dishes.
After an hour, with nothing happening...not even a flicker from the lamp flames. (I hoepd they's act as a sort of motion detector.) But outside, the motion activated floodlight by the stables kept flashing on and off. NOt entirely unusual in a country area, but so frequently I thought I'd investigate. I took my camera and had A lead me around. I forgot my flashlight inside though, silly me. Fortunately, the backlight on my camera was bright enough that if I shone it on the ground, I had a fairly good lamp for my feet. A. used his dowsing rods to detect where some activity might be seen, and we snapped pictures wherever he pointed. When we arrived at the stables, the light wouldn't go on no matter how much we waved our hands in front of it...but as soon as we were halfway up the hill, going back to the house, the light went on. So I snapped away.
A really impressed me. He had gone from a total non believer to finishing just abotu every wish or prayer with, So Mote It Be.
I looked at the photos the group had taken te night ebfore, and they kept pointing to what they called "orbs", but which, as has been proved by other PAR teams, as dust caught in the flash: Hollow centers with clearly defined edges, like looking at cells ina microscope.
Back at the house, inside the room, still nothing happened. no thread was disturbed, and everything was as I'd left it. Then the dogs started barking at thin air around where the store's music shelves were, and T said he felt somthing move right through him. Snap-snap went the camera, and I did the best I could to record temperature and magnetic variations, but there was no change. I then had each person, there, come into the room, individually, and give me their impressions. Now, I have felt and been contacted by other presences before, and I was wide open, both intuitively and rationally. I was almost begging for something to happen. It was unusual, but the only people at the place, that night, were the ones who reported activities, and myself. No others who worked there and were concerned showed up. And sure enough, while I felt absolutely nothing, these three, A, H, K, reported sensing something. A felt it in the southeast corner of the room. H said it was crouching in the closet, hiding. H had the strongest reaction, cold hands and goosbumps and all. K felt something had been there before, but had left. T refused to enter the room while the cameras and tape recorders were running. In the instances where someone felt something I took readings as best I could. Nothing was physically manifesting.
I stayed for quite a logn time, until I ran out of tape, audio and video, and disks for the camera. Nothing happened that whole time. I felt like a the whole affair was a ballon losing air....squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
The Video record is remarkably boring...just me pretending to be an investigator. But it DID reveal that I need a new camara. THe lens on this dinsoaur of a vid cam seems to be permanently scratched. there was a slight fuzzy halo around just about everything it filmed. SO at least I know THAT much.
Beannachtai
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| A-ghost hunting we shall go |
| 08.14.03 (11:40 pm) [edit] |
(this is a catch-up post since I'm tired of waiting for Xanga. It was originally posted on 8/5/03)
Well, today ended rather mysteriously. I'm going on a ghost hunt, and a house cleansing.
Some background information is in order.
Since July 1, 2003, I have been helping three friends of mine set up a new pagan retreat, publicly called a holistic retreat, called Crystal Avalon. there is a small store with spaces for reiki, massage, and psychic readings. BUt it's purpose is really to pay the mortgage so the property can be used by local pagans as a meeting place, a retreat. They can hold circles there if they want, or meditations, etc. there is goign to be a labyrinth on the property, and a permanent space of worship that will be structured like a wood henge, and evnetually be a stone henge. But there have been challenges to overcome. My three freinds are the partners in the business, and co owners of the land. K, her name has been shortened for privacy, found the place when she was driving with her son, J, and he heard the land call out to him. Being druidic, I found this a very important thing. :) We dowsed the property and found places where two minor ley lines cross. One is between two eucalyptus trees, so it became the more intimate sacred grove space. The other is at the entrance to a small grove of willow trees that grow by a brook. Some have reported seeing various magickal beings on the property, including one resident dragon, several visiting dragons, and one grandfatherly figure the partners have decided is Merlin. /:| ( I believe in Merlin as a person, Myrddin the Bard as he was known in Wales, but why is it every time one of us pagans sees an old wizard in a vision it's always Merlin?) Needless to say, the place came alive magickally when it sense we were going to do things the way it wanted.
K, and her partners J and M, brought in quite a few other magickal peopel to get thigns started, mysel fincluded. I was goign to be the manager, but that's on hold. Right now I do my costuming work from a studio they provided for me. Of course the place needs a lot of work so we are all getting down and dirty doing a lot of physical work. But sinc ethe place is a residence, a house, they decided they need a caretaker to live there to satisfy any questions that might come up about residency.
two weeks ago, thing sstarted happening aroudn the house that were troublesome. H, the caretaker, started seeing little darkling things flitting aroudn the house, and even K's husband, A, who is NOT paga, saw things start to happen. They reported that by 11 pm one night, a being manifested in the house that they describe as pure evil. And they thought it was anchored to the possessions of one of the psychic readers, one who actually calls himself a Druid, and they threw his stuff out and, sadly, without a hearing banished him from the site. I knew at once a big mistake was made. When they banished CJ, they told me he had actually DONE something, and I had no time to get a balanced report from him. I stood by, trying to get a sens eof things, when the partners had the men on the site inform CJ of his banishment. I sensed nothing comeing from him, but the other men werw all saying they felt severe violence from him. That was when I knew what was happening. I knew that, after he was gone, things were goign to still happen, and even get worse. and they did.
Infighting started between the partners. Petty things that grew into major shouting fights, accusations and backstabbing. Lo and behold, two nights later, the same being manifested again. This time they gave me a description, a green, reptilian creture with green skin, bat wings, and red eyes. The same day, one of the men, AT, decided that Spirit had told him to shut down all the vortices, where the ley lines crossed, and not open them until one of the partners got her way on an issue. And had no qualms about tellign the other partners that he was, basicly, holding the business and land hostage until they met the one partners demands.
That's when my OWN personal dragon spirit roared. I got up and went aroudn the propertry to see if he had actually done any damage, and he hadn't. Others who visited, and who had no idea about the vortices, also could sense them without being told where they were. So I entered the sacred grove space, cast my runes and meditated to contact the spirit of the land. IT showed me what was going on.
The partners and their henchmen were ignoring the Wwill of the Land, AND were trying to impose their own will instead. The manifestations were not attacks from outside, but from within their own selves. Once they got the idea that somethign was wrong in the house, they created a knot of negative energy, and as each individual grew more fearful, and their expectation of an evil being showing up grew, they fed the negative energy with their own will. onc it grew strong enough, they all began to experience it as if it was a separate entity, and in a sense it was. they gave it life after all. AND, when one person finally "saw" it, and described it to the others, they ALL saw it and it became real to them in their own minds, and so became real in the material world. This is the negative side of Working your Will.
The rest of the week went downhill. Healers couldn't summon the energy to heal, readers were confused in their readings, and work on the renovations stopped. recriminatiosn were bandied back and forth, and sides were being drawn up. It had to stop.
So I told them what the Spirit of the Land had shown me. That their own doubts and insecurities had taken form in this "soul devourer" because they focused so much on what could go WRONG that it finally did. The soul devourer is a description I use, a label and it's not right to make labels, to help people see what its function is. They were ALL, K, J, M, AT, and A, projecting their fears of losing control, losing money, losing the land, all their worries, onto each other, and once they thought they had been "hexed" by CJ, they projected all that negativity onto him. Being innocent, the Law of Return took effect, and all that negative thought energy returned to them, in the form of the little shadows in the corner, the whispers, and finally the vision of the soul devourer. they were devouring their OWN souls with it. I also told AT that it would be presumptusous of ANYONE to think they could shut down the flow of Spirit int he Land, and hold it hostage until some human-made scheme was accomplished. The bickering and infighting and control issues had to cease immediately, and I told them so. They had to once again start working WITH the Land, not impose their will onto it. They had to re-attune to the purpose the Land had for itself, and so let go of the selfish desires they were focused on. To do this, they had to first gather everyone together and hold a council of elders, a THING as the odl norse might have called it. There, they would tell their sides, and then be TOLD what was supposed to be done. those that could not give themselve sover to the Will of the land would be asked to leave. The LAND did not care about legalistic paperwork, which was one of the issues between the partners. Unneccessay papework really. It could have waited until things had settled. That the one partner who used AT to try to shut down the vortices was herself damaging the Dream. After talking to all the partners, and AT as I said, they got together and decided to hold a council, and chose their mediators. Thankfully, I was not one of them. It frees me to me completely frank and honest.
OKAY. Once they made that decision, the work resumed. The Council is still pending, but things lightened up a LOT. Until last night.
Another manifestation in the house, and this time there was a remote manifestation in the home of one of the partners. She saw a dark-skinned mand in red ritual robes standing in her kitchen, andthen saw apool of blood on the floor where he stood. On the property, one of the formerly pleasant spirits in the house became volatile, angry. This one thay named Tilly, because the night of the first manifestation, they saw her runnign around too. And when they burned a black candle to absorb the negativity, it burned down in five minutes and in the wax the name Tilly was scribed. Tilly, it was learned, was a girl who had been abuse in a house that USED to be on that plot of land. SO they tried to guide her into the light, and thought they succeeded. But she came back. SO NOW, they have asked PAR group to come and investigate the place. (Paranormal Activity Research) They actually have pictures of some manifestations, which I have yet to see.
SO all of us get to join in. but I asked to stay the night at the house alone myself before the PAR group came to see if I could experience these manifestations too. SPOOOOOOOOKY. It's my first ghost hunt. I'll bring my magickal tools and various recording equipment. I'm gonna bring my teddy dwagon too. I'm doing a little researchinto the history of the property too. I know there were mystical and magickal beings already there, I want to see if anyone else had the same experiences.
All for now.
Beannachtai
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| Me, me, me. It's all about ME |
| 08.14.03 (11:34 pm) [edit] |
I guess the first thing I should do is set down who I am right now, and what I do and like. Easy enough to say it, harder to do it. I can start with the basics. I live in California. I am also rather a heavy-weight person, which rather interferes (sadly) with me changing my bachelor status. I own my own business making clothing and costumes for theater, Renaissance faires, which are popular in my country, and individuals who have a theatrical flair like Goths, fellow pagans, etc.
I enjoy a wide variety of hobbies and activities. I like sports in a general sense, and can enjoy and american football game from time to time, but I do not live for sports, or live vicariously through ports. I do not, generally, PLAY sports either. Since childhood, I found the concept of competing merely for the sake of competition distasteful. Activities and sports that challenge the individual ARE appealing to me. Anything where I don't have to prove anything to anyone but myself brings great satisfaction to me. Swimming, archery, hunting, hiking and camping in primitive conditions, are things I enjoy. Driving too. Being free to travel wherever I want, and explore places I haven't seen, even the act of learning the different routes and highways around my state is wonderful to me. If you lived near me, in southern California, near the border of Mexico, and wanted to know how to get to the northern California city of San Francisco, and where to go there, how to drive around and find places, I could tell you. But involved in that is a knowing where various medicinal and magickal plants grow wild, and how to find them. So my traveling is just as much for education as exploration. Such knowledge is important to me because of my spirituality.
My username is a reflection of who I am right now. The Lord of the Forrest, Cernunnos, was depicted as a meditating man with antlers growing out of his head, seven tines on each. And in his animal form, he is a stag with the same impressive rack. He feels like a Patron spirit to me right now. I actually have many names, each with a different purpose. THIS name is one I use in my online Magickal workings, and yes I do practice a form of Magick. I follow a path laid down by the ancient Druids, as my spirituality. I say I follow their path because I cannot claim to BE and ancient Druid, in as much as: I.) I am not one of the remaining Celtic nations. My late father was Spanish and my mother is descended from English colonists; 2.) Much of the ancient lore of the Druids has been lost or destroyed, and it was a complete knowledge of ALL such lore that defined a Druid; 3.) I rely on printed books to "remember" what lore we DO retain, rather than committing it all to memory. However, the underlying goals and purposes of ancient Druids is still very much alive, as is the source of knowledge they tapped to gain their lore. BY examining what we DO know about them, we can see HOW they learned to BE Druids: WHERE they drew knowledge and inspiration; the foundations of their knowledge, we can reconstruct what they knew, and how they would have applied that knowledge if they had survived intact through modern times.
Truth be told, a great deal of the lore of ancient Druids that dealt with laws and structures of specific lands would not apply to me anyway. I do not live in Gaul, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, or Manx, nor even Galicia of Spain. So it would be of little more than historical interest to me to know by heart the "Triads of Ireland" for example. Of course, a Druid WAS deeply involved in preserving history as a means of connecting to the past and keeping a sense of continuity in the Land. And for that reason, I DO study the triads of Ireland, and all the ancient knowledge we have, that I can acquire. But I also study the proto-druid teachings, which I consider to be found in the Vedic disciplines of Hinduism. The similarities between the Vedic teachings and the Druidry gives sufficient evidence, to MY mind, that they came from the same rootstock. The differences came into being based on the specific needs and conditions in each land where the Druids were active. So from that perspective, THEY were adapting even more ancient knowledge to THEIR circumstances, and so modern druids must do the same. I seek the knowledge upon which the triads of ireland were based so I can create my own Triads of America. And since the Americas already had living spiritual traditions before the arrival of European conquerors, much of the Triads of America would be drawn from those native teachings too.
Another area of research I, as an American on the Druid path, must conduct is to learn the Ogham of the Americas. The ogham were the ancient alphabet of the druids, but they weren't used for writing so much as memorizing. Most pagans know only one Ogham, the Tree Ogham, wherein the twenty sacred trees of the druids were represented. Each sacred tree had a mystical meaning, and its own lessons to teach. But there were HUNDREDS of ogham beyond the Tree Ogham. Oghams for birds, insects, animals, rivers and bodies of water, land formations, rocks, etc. That means for just about every aspect of the material world, there were twenty things of each type that were sacred, magickal, and had their own Ogham list. A Druid's training included learning them ALL so their meanings and lessons could be applied to their way of life. What would the Oghams of the Americas be? The trees that grown here are not ALL the same as those in Europe, and this is especially true in the desert climates of the southwest United States of America like Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California. Of course SOME things are the same, but many things are different. Where would Sequoia trees, Mesquite trees, or Manzanita bushes fit into the Ogham had the Druids migrated here before they were dissolved in Europe. What about the Saguaro cactus, Peyote, Sage, Tobbacco, or the tropical trees of South America? These are things I am seeking to discover in my path.
To do this, I follow the techniques of ancient druids, as much as we know them, and of modern witches to meditate and commune with the natural world, so that I can recieve its lessons.
That's all for now, more to come later...
Beanachtai
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