I’ve been harvesting my garlic plot and am about halfway through it now. It’s not that it’s so huge but that the garlic is of different varieties and so is ripening at different times. It’s very satisfying to dig up garlic with a garden fork. That said, I don’t know if I will grow garlic again unless I have a much larger plot. Garlic is easy to grow but takes a goodly amount of room for the amount of harvest. And where I live, good quality organic garlic is to be had without too much difficulty. Still, I was glad to grow it and thus learn a bit more about Martial influences. Mars is the old ruler of my sign, Scorpio. Being a very Watery person who has managed to cause flooding and other water problems in every place I have lived, I am glad to indulge in a Fire food like garlic. As the saying goes, anything that does not benefit from the addition of garlic will be helped by the addition of chocolate.
I also harvested spearmint today. The plants are beautiful, big and healthy, with fat shining leaves thickly quilted. I kept the leaves whole, just removed them from the stalks, and am drying them at a very low temperature so they keep their max potency. Spearmint tea is one of my favorites. It’s great for the digestion when one indulges in too much Fire food.:) Peppermint, in contrast to spearmint, has always seemed Fiery to me. It’s usually the mint recommended for digestion, but I cannot use it that way. It’s got to be spearmint instead.
I rarely write about my dreams here, but I had a dream the night before last that has not left me yet. It was long and involved, but the part I remember now involved me being in a sort of underground bar. I didn’t know the other people there, who were carousing, but not in an obnoxious way. A huge mirror hung on the wall–round and Moon-like, with a frame that gave it a shape similar to that of a mantel clock. It had black painted designs along its edges that meant something. No one else noticed the mirror, which I thought was odd. I grasped the edge of the mirror and tore off the first layer, which came away as a transparent membrane covered with black writing and symbols–it represented a door into another place. Below that membrane was another, with different symbols, to yet another place. I tore that one off too. I tore off more and more layers. The people in the bar mostly ignored me, although I was announcing to them what I was doing. Finally I was tearing off multiple layers at a time. And I got down to bare, plain Moon/mirror. It was no longer glass shiny but had become duller, almost metallic, like a sheet of polished, hammered aluminum. I decided that this would be the door I would go through–the door to the unknown, to what I thought was the quintessence of Moon. I announced this to everyone in the bar like they cared and then jumped up at the mirror, feet first. But I didn’t go through. I just banged into the mirror and fell to the floor. I tried it a few more times, but no dice. I had removed so many layers that getting through was no longer possible. It was just a mirror now, no longer the Moon or a door. I felt disappointed that I would have to remain in that world until I found another portal through which to leave it–IF I found one. I promised myself I would not be such a show-off if I did. By foolishly tearing off those layers, I had lost my chances to get out of that world.
No one even noticed my defeat. They had better things to do, like chatting and drinking and fooling around.
I left the bar to wander dejectedly in the crooked streets of that dark city.
That dream is the story of one who is trying too hard. To my way of thinking. I think it’s also about ego being broken down, which is interesting because you definitely don’t strike me as any kind of ego-oriented or prideful show-off.
The mirror was the trappings of illusion, tarted up with all the symbolic decorations on the membrane framing it. There’s a distinct possibility, given how you tend to function mostly within the gray area of things, avoiding such dualisms such as light and dark, that you don’t even need a portal, because you could always just find a crossroads and make such a decision about which way to go. The mirror was a distraction from what you can actually do if your intentions are clear.
And what else is a mirror? Well, it shares reflectivity with water. And because you piqued my curiosity with Mars (I always thought it was ruled by Mars?) I did some googling and found Pluto, and isn’t this an interesting pic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto2.jpg. Is it time to make friends with Pluto? Hm..
As far as garlic goes, yep, my ‘harvest’ wasn’t much of one, and I don’t have much reason to grow it, but it was worthwhile. Hekate likes garlic, too
I wound up with 7 braids of these slightly undersized heads, but they are so dang tasty, and I liked the process of pulling them up, trimming down the roots, peeling off some of the stalk, and braiding for further drying in the garage.
Holy cats, that image of Pluto is almost like the Moon mirror was at the end. I actually do feel some affinity with Pluto, the Roman god of the Underworld but also of the earth’s wealth (things dug up, mining). He has a lot in common with Saturnus that way, I think. Kind of that double-edged thing: the scythe that harvests and brings abundance but also death and the afterlife. The dark of death but also of birth/seeds germinating.
The thing you said about I only need to go to a crossroads, don’t need a mirror, that just clicked with me bigtime. OF COURSE! And even in the dream I must know that on some level, since I go out into the streets, which were narrow, dark, cobble-stoned, steep, and I am sure had many crossroads.
That is a good point about the mirror/water thing too, which I missed totally.
I didn’t know Hekate liked garlic. It seems I am being pushed in that direction also. I wonder if all of these spirits–the Dark Spirit of the Crossroads, Papa Legba, Hekate, Ploutus, Saturnus, etc., are not basically aspects of something that we can only begin to wrap our heads around by conceptualizing it as these separate gods/spirits.
If you’ve never seen it before, now would be a most excellent time to watch “Prince of Darkness” written/directed by John Carpenter.
It features mirror-portals prominently, and is most excellent food for thought. And also just a right-good horror-show.
You know, I think I have seen part of that movie. I’ll check it out. I very much enjoy horror movies, although not the slasher kind–the supernatural kind. I especially enjoyed, for instance, The Others.
Wait a sec… the bar was underground, yes?
Underground, underworld, dark spirit.
I get the feeling that the work you’re doing is being reinforced, somehow. Encouraged, nudged, exalted a bit. But maybe Pluto needed the introduction after what you mentioned about the water influence. “Keep up the good work with the seeds, and remember there’s more than the moon and sun, son…”
It seems to me that crossroads magic and approaching these deities of the crossroads are something which is actually a bit mundane and needs to be relearned in order to go further with the plant lore and soil gnosis, as it were. I mean think about it… the predominating religious traditions would have us raise our heads to the sky and disengage from the ground beneath our feet, which we have more in common with chemically and biologically than we have with the atmosphere, with the ether, with space itself. Earth-based philosophy and spiritual experience is being reinforced with these deities either residing in the dark places of the earth, or beneath its crust, or within it literally.
Even Airheads like me with Gemini overrepresented in their charts can apparently be drawn to this.
Eh, to bring back the water, maybe you could scry at a crossroads.
And insofar as Hekate and garlic, I do my offerings to her in my barrel with the garlics and a couple green onions planted in it. On the soil.
I think you are right about working with the crossroads having to be relearned. There sure is a constant emphasis on sky deities. I am still hacking away at Abramelin, which is very solar. I wanted to add a lunar “half” to it, but I realized that I would not be able to complete it at all then. At any rate, I am going to check out some areas in the next day or so–mundane crossroads.
I like your Hekate altar. It sounds perfect.
As far as the mints and digestion go, I have a client whose intense need for a carminative was only partially assuaged by peppermint. We tried wintergreen, and he experienced complete relief, was no longer wakened at night by the accumulation of gas.
I perceive wintergreen as very airy, and I also agree with your assessments of peppermint as fiery and spearmint as water.
Wonder if there’s an “earthy” mint out there …
I think you are right that wintergreen is very airy. For an earthy mint, what about pennyroyal?