Here is part two of the "Mounds and Deo Pavo Work"

( Read more and see pictures beneath the cut... )

Part one is linked here.... Part three coming soon).

This is the first of three posts about a recent spirit working. Much of my magic nowadays is very intuitive and is prompted by the relationships I have with Ancestors, Allies and Gods. My methods use the rational mind, but the work itself is something different. I feel that such work works on me and on the world. Altars are immanent, resonant, willful prayers and draw Spirit into our ken and into expression.

This prayer/spell started with a request for an all-white altar with an offering of flour and egg, worked its way into the building of a small outdoor mound intended to be a first step in the mysteries of practical earthworks as well as a spell/prayer for the protection of the Appalachian mountains and the restoration of the American Chestnut tree. There were also some vague dreams about Mounds and about my past visits--they were more promptings than sources of information. Deo Pavo/Peacock Angel took over, weaving in my Wyrd allies, especially Meher Baba, and fire worship, and reached a stage of completion concurrent with Iranian elections and subsequent unrest (a surprise resonance that didn't factor into my timing, but which probably isn't utterly irrelevant given the political foci and the Irani connections in my background).

So the energies that emerged in this working started with a Damballah/Paga Legba flavor, threaded through contemplation of the ancient Appalachian mounds I've made pilgrimage to in the past (including two in West Virginia and the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio) and moved into the court of Deo Pavo, who manifested with a very Irani/Zoroastrian flavor and brought Meher Baba and other Allies along with Him (adding some clarity to that nexus of spirit energies and refining my sense of what's going on with them). So the effect is to honor and grow closer to Spirits, though the intention remains connected to the spirit of place and the need to protect our mountains and restore the nearly extinct Chestnut.

After some interest in mounds and making a mound emerged in discussion on Facebook, I also started a group there called "Appalachian Earthworks". Below are some links to historic mounds in the Appalachian region; on the Facebook page, I'm also posting links to folks using earthwork sculpture as art or ritual.

I am partly exploring it as a parallel to the "Dragon's Nest" (a ring of organic material) as an organic ritual form, one perhaps well suited to work with spirits of place, the ancestors, and spells to stop mountain top removal.

Here are pictures of outdoor phase 1, begun last Dark Moon.

( Ritual Description, Photos and Mound Links )

Part Two coming soon.

From Koyambedu Sri Vaikundavaasa Perumaal Temple (Chennai)

There are 3 trees uniquely grown very close to each other. There is one Vilvam tree between 2 neem trees on both of its sides. It is said that Vilvam signifies Lord Shiva and one of the Neem tree represents Sri Parvathi and another Neem tree signifies Her brother Lord Vishnu. It is believed that it is like the wedding scene of Lord Shiva where Lord Vishnu presides over their marriage by joining their hands together. A Vilvam and Neem tree inside a Vaishnavite temple is a very rare sight.

KARNATAKA, INDIA, January 31, 2009: In India’s southern Karnataka, a monkey prevented the authorities from demolishing a roadside Hanuman temple by attacking any officials who venture near the temple premises.

The monkey fiercely defended the temple dedicated to the Hindu monkey God, Hanuman. Locals said the monkey normally is docile, but surprisingly turned hostile towards the officials who came with the intention of demolishing the temple.

See video here

The other problem with the West is that in recent generations, it has attacked the principles of similtude and correspondence and attempted to eradicate the traditional languages of magic, religion, poetry and symbol.

The West has said that resemblance is superficial or accidental and by itself is meaningless.  (That it has done this even while discovering evolution is a bizarre contradiction that I can't account for).  It has done this in spite of the fact that our brains are wired associatively, and we are in essence associative and symbolic beings, literally constituted in self-awareness by a very rich corpus of symbolic associations growing only through resonance.  It has done this in defiance of all that is organically human, and has precipitated more alienation from nature and the body than the 1500 years of Christianity that preceded "the West".

I am experientially confident that Western causality is a misperception of reality, and that similitude and correspondence (resonance) are generally more logically valid than causal perception.

I am analytically confident that linear causality is a limiting and unsustainable misperception.  I strongly suspect that the epochal crash of such thoughtforms is the force behind conscious and bodily evolution, and is the psycho-spiritual reality behind the nearly universal mytheme of apocalypse.