Available only for another few days, Burdick Chocolates is offering Chocolate Honey Bee Rounds:

These beautiful gold rounds are filled with our limited selection of chocolates celebrating the sweet themes of honey and roses. They feature our scrumptious Honey Bee, piped from a honey ganache and finished with dark chocolate, almond almond wings and white stripes. Our Bee Truffle is a rich honey, sauternes wine & dark chocolate truffle, hand-piped and finished with an edible gold bee. Scattered throughout are Rosehip Tea bonbons topped with candied rose petals.

I can scarcely imagine anything that sounds more delicious! And the lucky person who finds one of two Prize White Honey Bees will win a monthly delivery of Burdick Chocolate for a full year.

Let's hope that the honey bees stay around longer than these chocolates.

Luna turned me on to this honey of a site: Help the Honey Bees.

Here you can learn all about the plight of our honey bees, how to save them, and even create a honey bee avatar for yourself. You can make bee portraits of your friends and send them via email, which in turn alerts them to the plight of the honey bees. See how nicely that works?

When your friends receive their Bee-mail, they will learn:

1. Honey bees are responsible for pollinating one-third of all the foods we eat, including many of our favorite fruits, nuts and vegetables.

2. Alarmingly, more than 25 percent of the Western honey bee population has disappeared over the last several winters, threatening our food supply and our way of life.



3. Many of the honey bee deaths are being attributed to a mysterious threat called Colony Collapse Disorder, which causes bees to suddenly leave their hive and die. Unfortunately, not much is known about this new threat.

4. Researchers are working to find a solution to Colony Collapse Disorder, but there are ways that we can all help the honey bees today. Learn more about bees and what you can do to help at helpthehoneybees.com.

I've seen lots of websites about bees and how we need to save them, but never before has one been so much fun. This site so appeals to my sense of aesthetics - I love everything about it - from the pretty graphics to the cheerful tune playing in the background (and I usually hate music on websites). And, of course, the adorable bees! You can download the homepage graphics as a screensaver and listen to the gently blowing breeze and the buzz of the bees right from your own computer. I'm such a geek for this kind of stuff.

So, have some fun. And help the honey bees!

Thorn Coyle says: "Sex and death, the cycle continues. What is remembered, lives."

While it turned out that now was not the right time for me to begin training in the Feri Tradition, my own feelings about spirituality have definitely taken a turn in that direction. As is often the case with those of us who are young or simply new to our practice, we come to it without the honor of knowing some of the great teachers who have come and gone before us, yet whose work and wisdom guide us as we travel our path.

As part of a three-day vigil planned for her, everyone is asked to light a candle to aid her spirit and in her memory. Even from this place so far removed from her in person, I hope it honors Cora Anderson that I add my own blessings to those being offered by those who knew and loved her.

"Naked pagans of the Beltane Fire Society celebrate warmer days and nights on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, Scotland. The group's procession marking the end of winter, a revival of the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane, draws about 12,000 spectators."

Wow, that's some party!

Where my head - and seemingly every other part of me - is today is making me feel very Red, the Sera Beak sort of Red, celebrating "The Golden Age of divine booty calls." In addition to her delicious Red Book, Sera has lots to say about getting your spiritual groove on at her blog, Spiritual Cowgirl. If you need some inspiration to make your day Red, turn to her.

What potent blood hath modest May.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Indeed.

Wishing you many Beltane blessings!

~~~~~

And elsewhere in the Beltane blogosphere:

Luna finds a number of ways to celebrate a Happy Beltane

Anne Johnson writes a poem full of Beltane Blessings

Jason Pitzi-Waters wishes us A Merry Beltane at The Wild Hunt

Hecate has a few posts on Beltane

A decent overview of the history and customs of Beltane: link

Part of American Public Media's special series, Consumed, which explores whether the modern American lifestyle is sustainable in the long run, Consumer Consequences asks as series of questions about your lifestyle. As you play, it shows you how many "Earths" of natural resources it would take to sustain the 6.6 billion people on this planet if they all lived like you. The graphics that appear onscreen as you play reflect the waste you produce, the infrastructure you require, the energy you consume, and how your lifestyle impinges on forests and other undeveloped land. The program calculates your ecological footprint based on the information your provide, lets you compare your lifestyle with other players, and gives you a chance to modify your choices and reduce your footprint.

How did I fare? Terribly!

Look at that - it would take 4.2 Earths to sustain everyone if they lived my lifestyle. Yikes! For someone who lives in the city, doesn't own a car, walks everywhere for the most part and buys organic food, I certainly leave a big footprint. So what is this city witch to do?

Well, to start I found this article on How to green your life. I also searched for books on the subject and among the many available found these that appealed to me:

Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World

Wake Up and Smell the Planet: The Non-Pompous, Non-Preachy Grist Guide to Greening Your Day

Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying

The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time

And coming this summer: Llewellyn's 2009 Green Living Guide

It looks like I have some reading to do and some changes to make in my lifestyle! Kermit was right - it's not easy being green!

Unfortunately, this is a problem that I have experienced repeatedly on the site and my web host insists that there is nothing wrong. I have asked them to look into the issue again and hope that we can find a solution. Finally.

Do you think there is some sort of trickster cyber faery living in my code? I'm not sure technical support is prepared to deal with faery mischief.

In the mean time, I can share the trick I use if this happens to me when I am trying to respond to a comment someone has left. I switch browsers. I'm not sure if it is that Movable Type doesn't recognize you if you are commenting from a different browser, but somehow this works for me. (I usually use Safari and switch to Firefox to get around this bizarre comment problem.) If any of you have the patience to go to this length to leave a comment at Blogickal.

I certainly do appreciate when someone cares enough to comment! I will try to remedy this as soon as possible.

Love and blessings to you, my friendly readers.

UPDATE

My web host tells me that this problem is related to the Captcha password feature. For some reason, when the Captcha code isn't entered properly the error message one receives is this crazy thing about posting too many times. How stupid is that!?

See, there is a trickster faery living in my code!

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
- Dorothy Parker

My motto to be sure! Kisses all around!

Whatever meditation or ritual I usually do is at an altar in my apartment in the city, very much indoors. My experience on Saturday felt like the Pagan version of someone used to kneeling alone at bedtime, rosary beads in hand, suddenly finding herself praying in a grand cathedral with all the trappings. It really drove home how simple, and how important, getting a little Earth into my Earth-based spirituality is. And I was just planting flowers, talking to earthworms, leaving little rock altars to the faeries in hopes that they would keep the deer from eating the tender shoots when my gladiolii start to grow.

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!

While I did not participate in any of yesterday's organized activities, today I had my own private Earth Day because I literally got my hands in the Earth and planted flowers. Planting flowers may not seem like a very big deal to most people, but I can't remember the last time I had anything to do with flowers that didn't come delivered with a bow and a sentimental card. And actually digging in the dirt? Grabbing fists full of loamy soil and pushing it around plants? I'm a city girl - I just never did those things. That is why my morning of planting flowers and getting my hands in the soil and not caring a whit about how dirty my nails and my clothes got was such a monumental thing for me. And damn it felt good!

Today I was planting pansies. I had a couple of varieties, but my favorites were the tiny ones with cute purple and orange faces. Tomorrow I have some heather to plant, as well as some herbs and some vegetables.

Truly!

The Full Moon is a time of culmination and the promise of fulfillment of that which was started at the New Moon. It is an emotional time - a time of romance, fertilization, and relationships.

The Taurus-Scorpio polarity deals with the balance between all that is mine (Taurus) and all that is yours (Scorpio). It also emphasizes the concept of form (Taurus) versus transformation (Scorpio). While Taurus deals with matter, personal values, material goods, possessions, and security, Scorpio rules the destruction of form, shared possessions, change, and transformation. The Sun in Taurus wants us to be happy with the simple, tangible things in life, while the Scorpio Moon draws our attention to complexities, intangibles, and mysteries. Neglecting either end of the axis will surely backfire on us. Ideally, a balance should be found between the two energies, and this is what the Full Moon invites us to do. This Full Moon is about emotional declarations. Something has been building inside of us, likely of an intimate nature, and now is the time when the energy of the cosmos fairly demands that we let it out. Over the next two weeks, we will discover what this declaration means for us. For now, we can't sit on our feelings. We need to express them. The Full Moon illuminates this conflict between collecting and sharing.

This Full Moon is supported by both Saturn and Pluto, adding practicality and logic to an otherwise irrational state. The epiphanies we have now can be turned into something solid and real.

What has been building inside of you that feels like it's about to burst? What work have you been doing that feels like it is reaching fulfillment and can benefit from this energy that both encourages change and gives us a foundation to support us through it? What epiphanies have you experienced lately?

I particularly like the Taurus/Scorpio polarity. As a Taurus, of course I am comfortable when the influence of my sign is affecting what's going on in my life. It's a safe and cozy place. The energy of Scorpio, however, is thrilling and speaks to my shadow self - in a good way. When you've come to terms with your shadow self and welcomed it back into the fold (as I did during my shamanic training) turning to the shadow can be empowering. Sometimes it gives us more information than our sunny self is willing to see. And at this particular time, using Scorpio's energy to illuminate those complexities, intangibles and mysteries will be very useful.

As the eighth sign in the zodiac, Scorpio is associated with the Eighth House, which has to do with birth, death, transformation, sexual relationships, deeply committed relationships of all kinds, and magick and psychic abilities. With the Full Moon in Scorpio, there is powerful energy to support work in these areas of your life. Traditionally seen as being ruled by Mars - a planet with masculine energy that leads us toward desire and action - more modern astrologers consider Scorpio to be ruled by Pluto - which represents the urge to transform and regenerate. The tarot's Death card makes the perfect metaphor for a Full Moon in Scorpio, because it really is more about the emerging of the butterfly into its new state of being than it is about loss that made transformation possible.

Far beneath the many thick layers of indoctrination about who we are and who we should be lies an original self, a person who came into this world full of possibility and destined for joyful unveiling and manifestation. It is this person we glimpse in another when we fall in love or when we idealize a leader or romanticize an artist. This is the person who comes to life in us briefly as we get married, start a course in school, or try on a new job - before worry and cynicism have set in. Chronically trying to be someone other than this original self, persuaded that we are not adequate and should fit some norm of health or correctness, we may find a cool distance gradually separating us from that deep and eternal person, that God-given personality, and we may forget both who we were and who we might be.

from Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality by Thomas Moore

When we reveal ourselves to our partner and find that this brings healing rather than harm, we make an important discovery - that intimate relationship can provide a sanctuary from the world of facades, a sacred space where we can be ourselves, as we are . . . This kind of unmasking - speaking our truth, sharing our inner struggles, and revealing our raw edges - is sacred activity, which allows two souls to meet and touch more deeply.

John Welwood, quoted by bell hooks in All About Love: New Visions

I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

100 Love Sonnets: XVII by Pablo Neruda

This afternoon I'm playing shopkeeper, looking after a friend's jewelry gallery for her. As long as I don't pass out on any of the customers I'll be fine.

More later . . .

As a totem animal, the dove represents the feminine, peace, maternity, prophecy.

The dove is the embodiment of maternal instinct. She is connected to Mother Earth and her creative energies. Her mournful call speaks to our deepest self and stirs our emotions. The voice of the dove is a rain song and brings us hope of a new beginning.

The dove is the totem of "Between Times" and shows us the time of the thinning of the veils between the physical and the spiritual world. Listen for her call with your soul.

Source: Animal Totems