FOLKLORE MONDAYS! YEAH!

Hey sportsfans! It's folklore mondays! For your enjoyment only, I'm going to be running through eight spiritual entities and doing a brief synopsis on what they are about. You can do this too with a little bit of wiki/google/godchecker.com work. Or you can just read my blog and hope for more entries like this .Tamamo No Mae
First up is the popular figure from Japanese Noh dramas, Tamamo No Mae. She is a kitsune (japanese shapeshifting fox spirit). Her whole bag is that she seduced an emperor in an attempt to bring down his empire. She was found out, turned back into a fox, and ran off. Only to be murdered and imprisoned in a death stone which has it's own story. Personally I think she was a revolutionary and as with most tricksters was misunderstood.

The next god I have, doesn't really have a picture. And the only reference to her I can find is from Neil Gaiman. But supposedly she is a slavic goddess.

Zorya Polunochnaya

She's the third of the Zorya sisters. The one in charge of midnight. As with most lunar goddesses she is associated with magic, death, rebirth--yada yada. She's kind of a tragic figure in that every night she has to watch the sun die in her arms. But then comical because every morning she sees it resurrected. So maybe she is used to it by now? Other neat tidbits is that she doesn't lie, is a bit wise, pretty generous, and generously pretty. Which makes it so strange that there's no picture of her on the internet that I could find, beyond weird role playing pictures. There's actually some debate that she's not even real. I say she is, even if Gaiman made her up. I should email him and see if he'll drop some knowledge on me. I promise I will have my own drawing of her if nothing else happens by sometime in the future. Just you wait.

Eshu
Next up is Eshu. Pictured above. Eshu is a pretty cool dude. He's basically a god of the crossroads. He is from the Yoruban mythology. Which makes him an effective vodoun diety to evoke. He's in charge of a lot of things ranging from fortune, misfortune, life, death--and all points in between. He's also a really good messenger between the human and spiritual realms. So forget your priest and learn to pal around with Eshu, and you should be in good shape. He is a trickster god though, and he delights in bringing people trials that eventually strengthen their character. So in that way he's kind of like your dad.
Baba Yaga
This scary lady is Baba Yaga. Who if you aren't hip is the wrong lady to mess with. She's the wild witch in the woods all the fairy tales scared you about. She's magical, maniacal, and a child cannibal. She'll definitely be interested in swallowing your soul if she has the chance. That's one way of looking at it. The other though is that she's had a lot of annoying guests and heroes bugging her over the years when all she wants is a little piece and politeness, and that's what has made her mad. Who really knows? I actually kind of dig her. Nobody is all bad, and if you treat her well, you'll probably be the first to do so.
Bamapana
Bamapana. This is an aboriginal trickster god, who loves foul language and lewd offensive acts. Think of him like a dirty construction worker with too much time on his hands and a hefty porno collection. Bamapana is hard to get ahold of these days because ever since Grand Theft Auto came out he's had no reason to leave his home.
Loki
The original trickster. Loki. Some people think Loki is the Norse Satan. But if you look at all of the tricks he has played, in the end almost all of them resulted in benefits for the gods. I think on the whole he's actually done more for the Norse Pantheon than any other god there. Which is probably why he was tolerated for so long. My favorite Loki story is when he shape-changed into a female horse to tempt a giants horse away from pulling boulders and was then impregenated by said horse, and gave birth to Odin's mystical horse Sleipnir. So in a way Loki predated Thomas Beatie as the first man to be pregnant. And as with Thomas Beatie it didn't make him less of a man, no matter what Bill O'Reilly says.
Coyote
No, not Wile E. Coyote. Just Coyote. The native american trickster god, whose annoying antics led to the diversification of mankind, the milkway, and lord knows what else. My favorite story involving him is that he loves to impress girls by juggling his eyeballs, and one time he tossed one of his eyes up so high that it got stuck in the sky and became the star Arcturus.
Manabozho
Amazing how many Looney Tune representations of native american dieties there are. Anyways, this is for Manabozho, who I may write a lot more about on Bunniesz. He's the great giant rabbit trickster god of pretty much every rabbit mythology ever done. He's the originator. He's actually the basis for the Brer Rabbit stories. There's not much to really say that you don't already secretly know about him. Basically take all of the Bugs Bunny cartoons you grew up on, and put them into elaborate creation stories, and you're most of the ways there.

If you would like to make your own blog about folk dieties, here's a fantastic link to start with (best site ever? MAYBE!):
Godchecker.com

You Can Squeeze Water from a Mayan Relic: Or get an Internet Connection Off It

Here's one for the water folks out there:
"Thirsty Southern California cities are turning to water-rich farmers on the eastern edge of Riverside County for additional supplies to make up for the ongoing drought and other restrictions on the life-sustaining resource.

Starting this summer, farmers in the Palo Verde Valley along the Colorado River will forgo planting crops on nearly 26,000 acres, the most land yet under a little-known fallowing agreement with Metropolitan Water District. The pact will double the amount now being sent to MWD and its 18 million urban customers. In exchange, MWD will pay the farmers $16.8 million each year for 115,000 acre-feet of water -- almost 37.5 billion gallons."

You don't think we'll be killing each other over water in a few years? Think again. People want to talk about the oil crisis. The water crisis is what's going to do people in. Yeah it sucks not being able to drive to work, but imagine not being able to get a clean glass of water for a few days?

Stinky butt town for sure!
____________________________________________________________

Here's an interesting bit of news courtesy of cnn.com:
"One in five respondents to a new survey in the journal Nature say they've used drugs to boost their brain power."

I'm not good at math, but I do wonder how this number corresponds to the percentages given across various religions when it comes to how many people are going up to level 9? Because you figure this percentage of people are also probably going to most likely to upload their consciousness as that possibility continues to open. And then hosanna be the king, fullfilled prophecy!
______________________________________________________________

Apparently in Russia they have Mayan gods just milling around....can you subconsciously be immaneatizing the eschaton? I mean let's just give those 2012 bastards access to all of that black market uranium, hey? See what happens...

This courtesy of the very fun English Russia blog:

The story of them appearing there starts in 19th century when Academy of St. Petersburg sent a group of explorers to Middle America. They visited through all of Yucatan, collected different things for St. Petersburg’s museums. By the way they noticed and bought a set of Mayan idols from Chichen Itza ruins. Upon the return of expedition smaller objects were placed into museums but nobody has found a good place for those Mayan statues and they were left all by themselves in the back yard, dug into ground.

A few years passed and Soviet Revolution happened, all the museums were messed up, all the buildings were nationalized by Soviets and were used for a totally different purpose then before. In many churches warehouses were founded as the result of total atheism of new Russian authorities, and many museum were turned into something else as a result of ignorance.

So hundred years passed and those 1500 year old Mayan deities stand, abandoned and not worshiped by anyone except accidental Russian teens searching for a place to have a beer outside in some public backyard."