These mandalas were made from photos of various plants that were blooming in Connecticut when I was there last weekend to visit. The Mountain Laurel in particular was especially stunning and I was lucky to see it because it blooms for about a week and then goes away until next year. The hill behind the house was covered with it.

Fox Run

Fox Run Sun

Mountain Laurel Mandala

With these beautiful blossoms as role models, my fledgling little dahlias should do very well.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 1:31 PM | Comments (1)

Yes folks, I'm back in the mandala making business.

This mandala is made from a photo of one of the dahlias I planted a number of weeks ago during my first foray into gardening. Most of the dahlias I planted are sprouting, but this one is flourishing far beyond the others. I'm convinced it's because of the fairy bath I put at it's base. Let me explain.

This dahlia and all of the gladiolus I planted are along a fence at the edge of the yard. The landscaper who comes to mow would have no way of knowing that the tender shoots coming up there were anything different from grass until it was too late, so I took some rocks from the surrounding woods and indicated where the edges of my "garden" are. The center seemed to call for a keystone, so after I planted one of the dahlias there I took some broken pieces of a birdbath that was decorated with cherubs and other rococo-inspired details and more or less reassembled them in front of my dahlia, hoping the fairies might come to use the bath and keep my dahlia safe. I would say my efforts are working.

This act of planting flowers, creating a fairy bath, and delighting in the progress as the sprouts of my labor are actually showing progress is the first I've come to feeling like a good witch in a very long time.

When the dahlia blooms, I promise to share.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 8:41 AM | Comments (3)

I had no idea there was going to be one but the other day I found at the bookstore the sequel to Chocolat: The Girl with No Shadow. How exciting! I bought it on the spot and once I started reading, couldn't put it down. Since Chocolat, I've gone on to read as many of Joanne Harris' books as I can get my hands on; not all of them have been published in the US (she is British) and are often difficult to find. The Girl With No Shadow has become my new favorite.

Joanne Harris is one of those writers who infuses her stories with real magick, as well as the kind of literary magic that makes for delightful reading. She either is a witch herself, or witchcraft and magick and mysterious people are favorite subjects of hers, about which she has extensive and detailed knowledge. More importantly, perhaps, as a reader of her books, she is a very talented writer and she writes precisely the kind of fiction I love to read: clever use of language, compelling characters, rich in detail and location.

The Girl With No Shadow is probably the most overtly magickal of Joanne Harris' books yet. One of the characters refers to herself, Vianne and Anouk as witches. Magick is performed and things are discussed that in Chocolat were only hinted at. Even still, the book's strength lies in its craftily created characters and well-developed story line. I was utterly captivated, not because of the magick, but because of the writing.

I know there is an entire genre of fiction about magical worlds to which rows and rows of shelves in any local mega book store are devoted, but fantasy fiction is not what I'm talking about. With all due respect to fantasy writers and fans, what I'm talking about is literary fiction that manages to include magical themes, characters, realms - entire plot lines even - and yet first and foremost remain well-written works of literature. Alice Hoffman's books falls into this category. So do Susanna Clarke's. There's the magical realism typical of Latina literature in The Hummingbird's Daughter and Like Water For Chocolate, the quirky and comic The Good Fairies of New York, mystic Paul Coelho's latest The Witch of Portobello, and a fascinating British book that I loved, Season of the Witch. Of course, now that I tend to look for them, I find these books more often.

Yesterday I bought Alice Hoffman's latest offering, The Third Angel. I look forward to jumping in over the weekend.

For more of Joanna Harris' books and a variety of my other favorite works of magickal literature, check out the last section of the Blogickal Bookshelf.

Happy reading!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 8:12 AM | Comments (2)

Thalia, my partner in blog mandala crime, had the excellent idea of taking photos from nature to chronicle the seasons and she has another amazing series of mandalas made from recent photos of blooming crocus. Here in Boston, Spring appears to be a bit more shy in making her appearance than she is where Thalia lives. Nevertheless, I went out this grey first day of Spring to see if I could find any evidence. I did.

This is what the first day of Spring looks like in Boston:

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 12:26 PM | Comments (2)

As we all know, The Color of Happiness is yellow.

In the midst of writing a more serious post for Ostara, I wanted to see if I could replicate my earlier success with the thirteen-section mandala. With the intention of making myself happy, I chose another photograph from my old neighborhood in San Francisco, a place where I was very happy, and had at it. The result? A beautiful mandala, a personal and mathematical success.

Let's not forget that the iconic smiley face is yellow. And a circle. Happiness is a yellow mandala.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 7:37 PM | Comments (2)

I finally did it - caught the elusive dream of creating a thirteen-section mandala. I figured out how to do it after a number of frustrating disappointments. How did I do it? I stopped being stubbornly insistent on following the rules and made up my own way. That is the lesson to be learned for the day - and the importance of my Thirteen Eye Mandala.

The image I used to create this mandala was a photo I took in Dublin of a cool, mysterious bronze eye embedded in a curb in Temple Place.

Thalia this one is for you.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 12:07 PM | Comments (1)

Mandalas have been described as everything from an artistic representation of the cosmos as a focus in meditation, to the depiction of a particular deity, to a diagram of one's inner mystical state and a symbol of the innate harmony and perfection of being. With some important shared basics, the many interpretations of and definitions for a mandala differ depending on who you're asking. When I turned to The Mandala Project's page on "What is a Mandala?" to provide a post on the background of mandalas, I found this definition:

Representing the universe itself, a mandala is both the microcosm and the macrocosm, and we are all part of its intricate design. The mandala is more than an image seen with our eyes; it is an actual moment in time. It can be can be used as a vehicle to explore art, science, religion and life itself. The mandala contains an encyclopedia of the finite and a road map to infinity.

Over the last few days, I've been furiously making mandalas and filling this space with some examples of my work, and I started to wonder why. Why I am I so fascinated by creating these intricate circles of color and image? Is there some deeper meaning here for me than just a way to procrastinate on a boring work project? What am I chronicling for the encyclopedia of the universe? If there is something I'm exploring here, what is it?

If my mandalas are a diagram of my own inner mystical state, then I could examine the images I chose to make them as a place to start to answer these questions.

Lately I've been reminiscing about a time in my life that is in the past; my first mandala was from a picture I had taken at some point back then. It's not difficult to see why my subconscious went there. But then I was just playing around with pictures - there was no intent behind creating that mandala as a spiritual expression of anything in particular. I wasn't intending to create an image that would represent that time for me, upon which I might meditate to sort out my feelings or that I might release to the universe as a means of letting go. Perhaps I can see it now as such, but that was not what I was trying to do when I made it.

Carl Jung said that a mandala symbolizes "a safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness." It is "a synthesis of distinctive elements in a unified scheme representing the basic nature of existence." Jung used the mandala for his own personal growth and wrote about his experiences.

In fact, there is quite a lot of writing by Carl Jung and a number of other psychologists on mandalas and their place in psychotherapy and in personal explorations of the emotional and spiritual realms. If I think about my first mandala in the context of Jung's ideas, then I see a strong argument for my subconscious guiding me to make a mandala from that image from my past because I needed to in order to process the things that had been preying on my mind. Perhaps I should make other mandalas from other images that relate to that time and meditate with them to see what happens. I certainly could use some "inner reconciliation and wholeness" on that particular subject. In fact, there may be other things going on my life that I could address through combining the creative act of making a mandala with images relating to something specific and then meditating on the resulting mandala.

There also is another way to consider making mandalas.

My most recent mandalas have all been with the same image of a tree blooming in my neighborhood here in Boston that I took on a glorious Spring day last year. I'm so tired of Winter; I so desperately want it to be Spring. Again, it's fairly easy to see why I might choose an image of Spring to inspire me to create mandalas.

Ostara comes this Thursday, heralding the return of Spring, the quickening of the Earth, and the turning of the Wheel of the Year. In times past, both ancient and not so ancient, many witches and other magickal people believed that they actually were responsible for making sure that the wheel did turn, ensuring that the seasons changed. It was through their work that life continued. Maybe making a mandala for Spring is my contribution to turning the Wheel and making sure that Spring arrives. With her beautiful Spring mandalas, Thalia at Audacia Muliebris could nearly bring in Spring all by herself!

My Spring Mandala. This was my first successful nine-section mandala using Thalia's template.

So far, in making mandalas I've mostly been playing with pretty pictures and honing my skills in Photoshop and math. (Thalia's new templates for nine- and thirteen-section mandalas are tricky.) With the exception of the two that I made specifically as "gifts" to friends, none of the other mandalas I created were originally made with any particular intention behind them. But we witches are all about intent. Our magick requires it. We strive to live our lives by it. So, like creating sigils, creating mandalas could easily be the literal crafting of a spell, choosing the image and going through the steps of making the mandala with a particular intention held strongly in the mind so that the image in the end stands for the spell itself.

Choosing the mandala as the physical representation of a spell strikes me as being one of the most potentially powerful things you could do. Think about that for a moment. With the entire cosmos behind you and the energy of people all over the world and throughout literal millennia of history pouring into the shared web of existence via the creation of mandalas, that's an awful lot of power supporting your mandala spell. Such wonderful, awe-inspiring potential! If you do a mandala spell, as in all spell crafting, be careful what you wish for! My guess is you will get it.

In the case of the Paint-It Pink Mandala Project, not only do I hope this is true, but I believe that this is a cause that we witches and magickal mandala makers could contribute to in a very meaningful way.

During times of transition mandalas serve as visual guides that gently lead us to a place of wholeness and healing self-reflection. They represent a microcosm of the self, harmony and sometimes, the act of divine powers at work. As breast cancer brings powerful emotions of transformation to the surface, creating mandalas can make the journey both more meaningful and more manageable. The cultural icon of the pink ribbon and organizations such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation have worked to make pink the unifying color for all who seek a cure for the disease, one that still affects one in every seven women and many men.

Beautifully, the Paint-It Pink Mandala Project incorporates both symbols--mandalas and the color pink.  Together they represent a growing body of art supportive of healing transformation and a hopeful cure. Each year the entire, on-going collection is presented for national exhibition. All donations and proceeds from entrance to the exhibition are given directly to the Barbara T. Sabo Scholarship Foundation.

Can you think of anything more beautiful, more powerful, more giving to our sisters in the universe than creating a beautiful pink mandala charged with the intention of healing breast cancer?

The Paint-It Pink Mandala Project has a cybergallery where you can view images from the collection, and on their "web page you can download a form to submit a mandala of your own. I'm thinking of sending my pink Spring flower mandala.

Mandalas seem to me an interesting lesson to have stumbled upon - as a person, as a spiritual being, as a witch. I will continue to ponder what mandalas mean to me. I will keep making them, choosing my images with more care and intent. I may even try a mandala spell. I will certainly remember one important message from this recent experience: "Where there is no you, there is no mandala."

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 1:05 PM | Comments (4)

This morning I tried to create one of Thalia's thirteen-segment mandalas. I must not be as talented a mandala maker - or as good at math - as she is, and I just couldn't figure that one out. However, I really liked the photograph I was using so I stuck with what I know and made an eight-segment mandala from it. This doesn't have quite the same effect that it would have in thirteen, but is pretty nonetheless.

Okay, ma'am, just step away from the computer. That's it - nice and slow.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 12:24 PM | Comments (3)

All of my mandala making has actually served a purpose. I told the story of how I was reading Thalia's blog, was inspired to make mandalas, and explored the deeper meaning behind these beautiful circles. And I made someone's day. How apropos.

I'm about to take off for a wine tasting with a friend. My favorite neighborhood wine store is pouring Ridge, one of my favorite California wines. But I couldn't go without creating one last mandala. This time I decided to try a pentacle.

The photo I used is one I took in my old San Francisco neighborhood - some flowers on Dolores Street. I'm calling this my Dolores Pentacle.

Where there is no you, there is no mandala. Love and blessings.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 5:28 PM | Comments (1)

This one is for Luna at Stars for Eyes. I made it from a photo I took of a Full Moon shining through clouds and trees in my neighborhood.

This one is for Lisa at Adorn + Cherish. I made it from a photograph I took of some of her jewelry designs.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 1:20 PM | Comments (1)

Sorry everyone. Thalia has created a monster and I guess you'll all just have to indulge me until I get it out of my system.

Here is mandala number two:

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

First, my mandala, of which I am most proud, it being my maiden one and all.

And now all inspirational credit must go to Thalia at Audacia Muliebris, oh she of the wondrous fractal image making, who has turned her talents to making mandalas. After trying her hand at some free-form mandalas, Thalia was introduced to detailed instructions for making your own mandalas at a site called Earth Mandalas. My guess is that Thalia's latest spate of mandala-making is a combination of her photography with some fractal action in there as well. Her mandalas are truly stunning - some of them are pentacles. You should check them out.

I know what I'm going to be doing all day! As if I didn't need something else to help me procrastinate. But thanks Thalia. Really!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 8:57 AM | Comments (5)

The opening quote to the introduction in Sera Beak's book is this:

When sleeping women wake, mountains move.

- CHINESE PROVERB

I discovered this book around the same time that I realized my spiritual path diverged in a wood (okay, it turned a street corner) and taking the road less traveled by (the shortcut through the alley) has lead me into Faery. Pursuing a tradition of the Craft that emphasizes the development of personal will and power, ecstatic experience and joy in the practice of magick has become increasingly important to me, and Sera Beak's approach to finding one's own divine spark fits perfectly into that paradigm. "How intensely do I want to exist?" she implores her readers to ask themselves.

. . . what's a smart, gutsy, spiritually curious young woman to do nowadays? Well, how 'bout taking spirituality back into your own hands? How about finding out what it means for you, through your own explorations and experiences and expressions? You know, all this spiritual stuff doesn't have to be so esoteric or traditional or weird or dorky or intimidating or holier-than-thou. Spirituality is not separate and distinct from you and your everyday life. Igniting your divine spark is a simple perspective shift. An internal nod. An expanded relaxation into All That Is. It's about tuning up your senses, cranking up your antennae, generating conscious living. It's about becoming your own spiritual authority.

I don't know how old Sera Beak is but I know I have a number of years on her and yet I stand in awe of the experience and study that she put into leading the life that lead to the publishing of this book. She is my new heroine. I most certainly would suck as a book reviewer because all I want to do is quote every word of The Red Book that I've read so far and turn all blushing and giggly and use words like "awesome" to describe how wonderful I think it is. One commenter on the book with more discipline than I can muster said: "From gentle meditation to bouncing sexuality and much in between, the path to personal rejuvenation through the enlivening of the heart, mind, and spirit is laid out in such refreshing, sparkling, effervescent words that what results is a psychic shower for the soul." Amen brother.

This self-proclaimed Spiritual Cowgirl has traveled the world and is pushing the boundaries of feminist spirituality, ultimately writing The Red Book and starting a whole new movement - a REDvolution. The fact that she lives in San Francisco and is friends with Mark Morford, my favoritist columnist of all time, is just icing on my RED velvet cake.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 7:16 PM | Comments (0)

With nothing brilliant sparking in my head this morning, I offer instead a little something from Yeats:

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
And thine own sadness, whereof stars, grown old
In dancing silver sandalled on the sea,
Sing in their high and lonely melody.
Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

Come near, come near, come near - Ah, leave me still
A little space for the rose-breath to fill!
Lest I no more hear common things that crave;
The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,
The field mouse running by me in the grass,
And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;
But seek along to hear the strange things said
By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,
And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.
Come near; I would, before my time to go,
Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.

TO THE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIME
William Butler Yeats
The Rose (1893)

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

A number of years ago I dated a man who kept copies of an obscure trilogy of children's books in his nightstand. He said that they were magical and spiritual and had changed his life. He offered to loan them to me. I said no thanks. Silly girl.

Here I am all these years later, having discovered my own magickal spirituality, and everyone is talking about His Dark Materials, the very same books my friend found so inspiring, the first of which has been made into the movie The Golden Compass.

Anne Johnson writes about them in her post Banned Books Day!

One of my favorite columnists, Mark Morford, writes that Jesus loves 'His Dark Materials'.

It would seem that the Christian thought police have taken it upon themselves once again to "protect" everyone from the dangerous influence of children's literature. One could spend time pondering why these people find fantasy so threatening - and I'm sure that many have - but it seems to me such a waste of time and energy and brain cells. Instead, I've chosen to think about what it is that makes these books so wondrous, so special that a grown man would keep them near him like another might his Bible. And I intend to find out for myself by reading His Dark Materials as soon as I can get my hands on the books.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 10:07 AM | Comments (2)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:18 AM | Comments (1)

One of the latest memes flying around the internets is to post a picture of the pile of books that you are reading, want to read, hope to get to some time this century. I first learned of this when Chas Clifton posted his and invited his readers to do the same.

Here's mine:

Now, books that I would be reading if I had the money to buy them right now. Well, that's another story. The Llewellyn catalog arrived the other day and these are the books I'm currently lusting after:

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 10:38 AM | Comments (4)

Drowning Peacefully ©2006-2007 Solkeera at deviantART

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 8:46 AM | Comments (4)

Devotion
by Robert Frost

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean -
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

from the collection West-Running Brook, 1928

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 8:43 PM | Comments (0)

Afterflakes
by Robert Frost

In the thick of a teeming snowfall
I saw my shadow on snow.
I turned and looked back up at the sky,
Where we still look to ask the why
Of everything below.

If I shed such a darkness,
If the reason was in me,
That shadow of mine would show in form
Against the shapeless shadow of storm,
How swarthy I must be.

I turned and looked back upward.
The whole sky was blue;
And the thick flakes floating at a pause
Were but frost knots on a airy gauze,
With the sun shining through.

from the collection A Further Range, 1936

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 1:13 AM | Comments (0)

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

From The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:27 PM | Comments (0)

We've all heard of it, but how many have actually seen the legendary Jean Cocteau version of this iconic fairy tale? I hadn't until today, when it aired on IFC.

This masterpiece by cinematic poet Jean Cocteau has enchanted audiences for more than fifty years with its surreal beauty and magical visual effects. Josette Day and Jean Marais shine in the definitive filmed version of the classic romantic tale, which has come to supplant the original fable in the modern imagination.

At the end of World War II, when France was reeling from pain and exhaustion, Jean Marais suggested to Cocteau that a welcome diversion might be a film based on La Belle et la Bête, the famous 18th-century fable of Madame Leprince de Beaumont. Cocteau leaped at the idea, since it revived his own childhood fantasies and promised to introduce a new genre: fairy tale on film.

from frenchculture.org

The Beast says, "All I possess I possess by the power of magic." Despite the hystrionic acting, the overwrought background singing and the melodramatic skulking through the hallways of the Beast's castle, I found the film to be magical indeed. Some of the set details were delightful - architectural details and sculpture that are real people - sconces of arms holding candelabra and fireplace finials of human faces who move as they watch the main characters move about the room. Belle cries diamonds. The Beast conjures a pearl necklace by calling it into his hands - the necklace later turns into a shank of smoking hair when Belle tries to give it to her sister. The oracular mirror that reveals Belle's nasty sisters to be an old hag and a monkey.

One detail that this witch didn't fail to notice was when Belle's sister, Felicity, threatens to turn her in for practicing witchcraft after the incident with the necklace. Usually, when an evil character does something, the film is making a statement in support of the opposite view. Cocteau's Beast explains his condition to Belle: "My parent's didn't believe in magical spirits so the spirits took their revenge through me." When Belle's brother and his friend, Avenant, try to break into Diana's Pavilion to steal the Beast's fortune, a sculpture of Diana comes to life, shoots Avenant with her bow, and transforms him into a Beast. With all of the magic going on in the film, it's certainly easy to draw the conclusion that Cocteau is pro-magic. It would be a fun exercise to explore whether he or the original author of the story, Madame Leprince de Beaumont, had any pagan or occult leanings. But I digress.

The film is completely over the top, fun and amusing in the way that such stylized old films can be. Belle's sisters work in the fields and do laundry in their finery. At the castle, Belle's brother says he's not scared, he's thinking, and Avenant retorts, "Same thing." The Beast himself is perhaps the best example, as this line from a review in the Village Voice suggests: "All breathy exhortations, he comes off like a lovelorn drill sergeant with laryngitis." The Beast frequently appears literally smoking. Is this a none-too-subtle metaphor for his lust for Belle or we meant simply to take this as evidence of his beastliness?

The film, originally released in 1946, was re-released to theaters in 2002. The Village Voice didn't much care for the film, but I think the reviewer is missing the point. Miller writes, "What's both appealing and problematic is its visual opulence." I think whimsical frothiness was precisely what Cocteau wanted for his film, to draw people into its magic to make them forget the horrors of the war they'd just endured.

One of the enduring lessons from this fabled fairy tale is that love can turn a beast into a man. But we know that girls are always attracted to the bad boys. When the Prince, formerly the Beast, asks Belle if she doesn't prefer him to the Beast, she says, "I'll have to get used to it."

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 1:23 PM | Comments (1)

Piece of Winter, © 2005-2006 fangedfem at deviantART

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:34 AM | Comments (0)

This is what happens when you have homework to do and you are PROCRASTINATING (cue Carly Simon). You make up silly acronyms and blog. SAPP=Sunday Afternoon Pretty Pictures

On Friday night I was sitting in my living room while the sun set behind the buildings on my street. I looked over at one of my windows to see this - a series of reflections within reflections - and I had to do my best to capture it with my camera. I'm fascinated with the concept of reflections and how they can yield images within images. This also illustrates how wonderful abstract photography can be and why I find it more intellectually intriguing than abstract painting. With photography, by virtue of the fact that you are capturing the image a "real" thing, you know that what you are looking at is an actual something even if you can't figure out what it is from the way the photo is taken.

Starsigns: Taurus © 2005-2006 BloodyBabyBlue at deviantART

This image is a wonderful illustration I had intended to use for my Full Moon in Taurus post. As a Taurean shoe fiend, I couldn't have found a more perfect personal expression!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 4:20 PM | Comments (1)

Someone somewhere said that Woody Allen's new film, Scoop, is likely to be of little interest to anyone but tarot enthusiasts. Well, that person obviously didn't actually see the film before making that comment because, for one thing, tarot is a decidedly minor character in this story.

The plot, such that it is, revolves around a young journalism student (Scarlett Johannson) who is given the scoop of her life when the ghost of a veteran reporter visits her in the middle of a cheap disappearting act being performed by hack stage magician, Splendini (Woody Allen). He gives her the name of the Tarot Card Killer, a notorious serial killer, who just happens to be the son of a Lord, and tells her to go break the story.

Sound silly? It is. But it is my personal belief that not all movies have to be plot-driven in order to be good. And despite what a few reviewers have had to say about this film, it is. Good. And funny as all hell.

Funny like you walk out wanting to tell your friends its best lines. Funny like you're walking down the street and remember a moment and start laughing like an idiot. - Mick LaSalle, Movie Critic, San Francisco Chronicle

I'll say! This is one of those movies that you have to see at least twice because you were so busy laughing the first time you missed some of the lines. Like these:

I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to Narcissism.

You may be dead, but that's no reason to be disillusioned.

Hugh Jackman, as the suspect and love interest, is given little more to do than to stand around and kiss Scarlett Johannson, which was perfectly fine with me. I'll take eye candy like Hugh Jackman any time.

Now, let me go check to see when the next show time is.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:01 AM | Comments (1)

Proof, the play by David Auburn that was made into a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Sir Anthony Hopkins, is a wonderful treatise on the human response when faced with the unknowable. Intellectually unknowable. Personally unknowable. Spiritually unknowable. It's about trust in something that we cannot prove to be true, yet we believe nonetheless. David Auburn's story centers around a mathematical proof that becomes the test for the existence of faith and true love - between father and daughter, sister and sister, man and woman. It points to a greater, cosmic belief in each other as human beings. This is the very nature of belief in the divine.

We approach our magickal work "in perfect love and perfect trust" because without this perfect trust how can we know the Goddess and God? We can't. Despite St. Thomas Aquinas' mathematical proof for the existence of God, true faith in the existence of the divine stems from trust in that which is empirically unknowable. Spirit may come to us in many forms but ultimately we have no proof. We trust. We believe.

When we trust that the divine is possible in the world, we must accept that by extension it is possible within ourselves. For many of us this is the more difficult thing to believe.

Believe in yourselves. Blessed be.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 5:09 PM | Comments (1)

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

e. e. cummings

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)