Finding Lost Things

A few years ago my mother gave me a nice knife set for Yule. Pretty much everything I have in my kitchen has been garage-saled, gifted or purchased in a moment of need (i.e. probably a cheap big box store buy). My dishes are serious older than I am. I keep thinking that as a 30 year old, I should probably go out and buy some new things, that its OK to let go that broken kitchen thing that is probably on its third, or even fourth owner, but…sometimes I just have a hard time letting go.

So with the things like the knife set, that have been gifted to me, I try to take extra care so that they last me a long time.

There are four knives in this set and I keep them in the nice box they came in. About a year after I first received the knives, one of them mysteriously disappeared. We looked everywhere for that knife! I have people over to my house fairly regularly for dinner and I checked with them…did you accidentally take one of my knives home? (We all have kitchenware at this point that goes back and forth between us, so what would one little knife be?) Nope. Nada. Zilch.

We were baffled. Where was the knife?

It wasn’t in drawers or cabinets. It hadn’t fallen behind anything. It wasn’t left in a dish. I checked high and low! It wasn’t in the living room, the studio or even the bathroom!

A few days ago, the SO did the dishes. I had used one of the other knives the night before in making lemon pepper chicken. He goes to the drawer and takes out the box to put the other knife back where it belongs, and…

Guess what had returned?

That’s right! The other knife! *cue the spooky music*

Suddenly, after nearly two years, I had a full knife set again.

Usually when I lose something, I ask the multiple spirits of my house very nicely to bring it back. I live with someone who is so fey it hurts, so usually turning to the fairies that live in the house is a good first bet. This is one of the easier little spells/exchanges that you can do to find lost things and it creates a good relationship with anything else mischievous that you might have in the house with you.

Take something pretty, like a marble or a small piece of jewelry and put it under a jar out in the open. Politely ask that if whoever knows where the thing (car keys, hair brush, knife…ect) that you’re looking for is or if it has been taken, to be returned. In exchange, offer them whatever you have left under the jar when it’s returned. When the thing you lost appears again, as it mostly will, take the thing out from under the jar and leave it in a corner. Don’t pay attention to it and leave the room. A fair exchange.

Usually this works.

But for the knife, nothing I tried did.

So how strange that the knife suddenly reappeared again after so long.

After being somewhat paranoid and running through all the various scenarios in my mind where a murderer snuck into my kitchen, stole the knife, used it to kill multiple people across state lines (quite the feat for a small paring knife) and then snuck it back into my house covered in the resultant DNA…

I took a deep breath and decided it must have been Gremlins.

Most of you hear Gremlins and probably think of that terrible 80’s movie, which gave me nightmares as a small child.

But in reality, Gremlins are small, mechanically minded creatures from English folklore. They like mechanical things and they like to take things apart and put them back together…though not always back together in a way that works. Ever hear the story of the cobbler and elves…very similar to Gremlins. Many people think that they were instrumental in helping people develop modern technology.

But they are also delightfully destructive.

From the US National Archives and Records Administration

Pilots in WWII were terrified of Gremlins getting in their planes and causing issues. In the midst of battle, Gremlins would gleefully help the destruction along. One famous female WWII pilot, Pauline Gower, even went so far as to refer to Scotland as “Gremlin Country” and there are multiple reports of other WWII pilots who saw them.

Listen to an Orson Welle’s radio program about Gremlins here: http://www.richlabonte.net/eps2/orsonradio/421221_Gremlins_64kb.mp3

Roald Dahl, famous author and also a serviceman in the British WWII air force, wrote a famous book about Gremlins after the war was over that became a big children’s hit.

Even Bugs Bunny encountered Gremlins!

There are multiple arguments over where Gremlins get their names, but my favorite is the explanation that it comes from an old English word that means “to vex.”

In this case, I was definitely vexed by the loss of my knife!

I still don’t know what they needed it for, but hopefully as a tool to do something fun (and you know, not stabby…).

I’m just super glad to to have my knife back! And in the future, I will remember to acknowledge and appease these unusual creatures that are often easily forgotten.

 

No airplanes were harmed in the writing of this blog…

 

An Offering to Charon – Guest Blog

My dear friend E is a rather eclectically minded kitchen-witch. She’s been struggling with huge life changes recently and has been going back and forth with me about offerings and ritual ideas to help her move forward. I love how she thinks and I thought you might be interested as well. Her thought processes, rational and creativity in how she approaches her work always puts things in a new perspective for my own work and inspires me further. I asked her to write a guest blog about this particular experience for multiple reasons, but I love Charon and think that he doesn’t get a lot of love these days. I also think that the mid/post divorce period is often ignored. I love her approach and hope for what she wants to accomplish here. Enjoy! ~Lauren

Charon by Vikkki

An Offering to Charon –

Charon the Ferryman is a figure from Classical (i.e., Greco-Roman) mythology. He brings the souls of the dead across the rivers Archeron and Styx and into the underworld, provided, of course, that the soul was buried with a coin to pay for the ferry ride. Charon is hardly the first or only such mythical figure, since cultures prior to the ancient Greeks also buried the dead with coins to ensure passage to the other side, but he is the one that was passed down to us via the Hellenic writings.

He transitioned more or less intact into modern Christian culture thanks to Dante. In Dante’s construct of Hell, Charon presides over passage across the River Archeron (the River Styx is an internal river that separates inner and outer Hell rather than the division between Earth and Hell) with essentially the same function and fee structure as in the Hellenic myths.

Several Greek and Roman heroes use Charon’s services to cross in and out of the underworld while living. The instance I am most familiar with comes from “Cupid and Psyche.” Psyche is given specific instructions on how to deal with Charon when she is sent to the underworld to retrieve a package from Persephone on behalf of Aphrodite: carry a barley honey cake in each hand to distract Cerberus (the three-headed dog) on the way in and on the way out, and carry two coins in her mouth to pay Charon for passage each way. According to Wikipedia, Charon gives all the male heroes grief about crossing while alive, as he does in Dante’s narrative; Psyche having no trouble could be read as the old seaman having a soft spot for beautiful young women, or as him not wanting to stand in the way of another god’s quest.

The instructions for crossing on Charon’s ferry are always essentially the same, namely, pay him his coin and don’t dawdle. Those rules make for a simple translation into modern ritual: pay Charon his fee when it’s time to make your crossing.

The only questions are how much to pay and how to offer it up to the ferryman?

Passage by eilidh

I will come back to both questions in a minute. First, some context for what I need to do and why.

I am on the brink of divorce, after 5 years of marriage and seven months of separation. I have been saying since we separated and I learned this fundamentalist state requires a long waiting period between filing and granting of divorce, that I was in Limbo. When I started really working through the failings in my relationship, I realized I had been in a Hell peculiar to my own needs and wants and nightmares. The idea, then, of paying Charon to ferry me back across the River Archeron (I am using Dante’s construction of Hell, where Limbo is the first circle) was fairly obvious. I would do it the night before my court date, so there would be no impediment or delay in getting me back to the land of the living.

But then I realized: if I had been in Hell, I got there somehow in the first place – and I never specifically payed Charon for that journey. So I owed him a separate fare and an apology, which would need to be presented before making my simple payment for the ferry ride out of Hell.

Psyche by ryanjpedersen

The (chronological) second fare, the one that I am paying right before court, was an easier one to work out. I tend to look for modern analogies to ancient figures when seeking a ritual structure. Lacking true ferrymen (yes, I know we have ferries here, but they are run by golems of the state, and I know from experience that there is no paying them anything but your exact fare and only your fare), I decided taxi drivers are the closest modern equivalent. After all, they take people from one place to another for a fee, and the verb “ferry” has been expanded to include being driven in any type of vehicle. Taxi drivers are also individual businessmen and often self-employed; they can exercise discretion in their payments in a way a government officer cannot. My analogical thinking went like this: if I need to pay Charon his fare, then I would need to pay a taxi driver for a ride I won’t take. I can’t just give a driver a big tip – that’s not a fare. To me the obvious solution is to give a driver a second payment and ask that he put it toward his next passenger. Obviously I can’t control whether he pockets the money or puts it on his meter, and even if he does put it on his meter in the real world someone is taking that trip. But not ME. Symbolically, metaphysically, I am paying fare for the journey I will metaphysically be making in the courtroom rather than a taxi ride.

As to how much – I decided $20 was a good number. Low enough that most people would be able to afford to bury a loved one with it to ensure passage, but high enough that it is substantive and represents a sacrifice. The only discussion I have seen about Charon’s fee structure in a modern pagan sense can be found here, and one of the interpretations supports the number. I am a mostly intuitive ritual-caster, and my instinct here is that $20 is the right number, so while I was happy to see an argument for that, ultimately what decided me was my own sense of rightness. For me I think the rightness is deriving from the sacrificial aspect. Yes, $20 is an affordable sacrifice, but it still represents something substantive that I will have to forgo off of that paycheck in order to offer it to the god.

Styx by dalisacg

The apology ritual required a little more thought. I didn’t want to just do the taxi thing twice; it seems lazy, first of all, and second of all, it’s not much of an apology, is it, to simply perform the ritual I should have in the first place. No. Lauren mentioned that she intended to make a new moon offering at the river, with a quick-and-dirty explanation that new moon offerings represent changes and things that are building, and that making offerings at the river is basically mainlining them to a god’s ear. The new moon occurs a couple weeks before my court date and therefore well before the night I would be making my fare-pay offering, and it coincides with the date on which I got married – which seemed a fortuitous alignment for my work!

I decided that an offering closer to the original style would make for a better apology/back-payment. A coin, I thought, would be a good choice as a physical representation of his fee rather than the modern monetary value. And since I like to go for symbolism where it’s available, I decided one of the coins left from our honeymoon trip would serve very nicely as metaphysical reference to the actions previously taken. So that took care of payment. For an apology, I personally tend to offer food, so I procured some oil-cured olives and Italian red wine. Then, for ritual representation of Psyche’s successful (and unchallenged) crossing, I decided to bring cakes for Cerberus. Barley-cakes are what she brought, barley being the ubiquitous flour of the time and place. Here in Louisiana, cornbread is the go-to quick-bread, and I would rather acknowledge the time and place where I am than waste time hunting down barley flour and testing recipes. Thus, one tray of fresh-baked cornbread mini-muffins later, I had everything ready to go (my mini-muffin tray makes 6 cakes…Cerberus has 3 heads, one cake per head per ride…).

When it comes to words in my offerings/rituals, I generally prefer to speak extemporaneously in order to be sure it’s from the heart – that intuitiveness again – with at most an outline of what I need to say in mind going in.

My words to Charon needed to essentially be that five years ago I had snuck into Hell behind his back, and I was sorry for not paying him honestly up front, and would he please accept my payment now, along with my apology. Basically I just wanted to square up my account with him, monetarily and morally, so that I could offer payment at the appropriate time for my trip across the river to get out and have a reasonable assurance it would be accepted.

Fini

Sunset on the River Styx by Dustin Panzino

We’ve all had moments where we wandered into Hell without realizing it. This struck me as an amazing way to end this cycle, make sure due has been paid and that one can bring themselves back to life. Charon is not unsympathetic to those who make the journey with him across the river and he knows that the living can’t stay in the land of the dead forever. But your must have your coin and you must acknowledge his role in this journey and when you’ve found yourself on the wrong side of the river, who else can bring you back?

St. Anne’s Parade

In 25 minutes, Mardi Gras will be officially over. The Catholics will be in church, Lent will be starting and the rest of us will spend the next few days recovering. I went out today and walked through the Bywater, the Marigny and ended up on Frenchmen St, which is where all the locals go for Mardi Gras. I followed the St. Anne’s parade, a DIY walking parade that starts in the Bywater (right by my friend’s house!) and grows as it walks. People join in and walk together to the French Quarter to start off their MG celebrations.

I am completely exhausted! Enjoy some of the photos I took!

 

From happily tucked into bed…Happy Mardi Gras All!

 

All photos copyright of Lauren DeVoe, please don’t use without permission!

Krewe du Vieux and Krewe Delusion 2016

Most people outside of New Orleans and Mobile think that Mardi Gras is just a single day. In reality, it is a full season, which starts on January 6th. In the Catholic calendar this is the Epiphany. Carnival, as the season is known, runs from the Epiphany to Fat Tuesday; the duration of Carnival depends on the year and when Easter falls (which is based on a complicated formula involving the vernal equinox and the full moon).

The full moon the night of the parade!

So while the rest of you recover from the winter holidays after New Years has come and gone, those of us down here still have at least six weeks of feasting, partying and parading to endure. The Winter holidays and the New Year is really just how we warm up for Carnival.

There are several early parades, like the Joan of Arc parade, but the first big parade night is Krewe du Vieux and Krewe Delusion…two parades that are still completely DIY and mule operated. Before mechanical engines were created, mules pulled all the floats. While the other parades now have tractor pulled, professionally created floats, Krewe du Vieux and Krewe Delusion use mules and hand make everything. (There are other DIY parades, but they are smaller parades and not considered to stand amongst the major contenders).

For me, these two parades are the best representation of the spirit of both Carnival and of New Orleans herself. They always satire the politics of the city and the state and are completely bawdy, inappropriate and risque! They have some of the most amazing costumes, and when you watch them march past, it’s like watching a mile long procession of chaos and noise. These parades mean so much to those of us who live here.

My wonderful thesis advisor, Dr. Catherine Loomis, shared a story with me about why KdV is so important to her. I think her story shows you how the locals see and feel about this parade and why its such a beloved and well attended event:

In 2006, which you might remember was a very precarious Mardi Gras, we were waiting for the parade to start, and we all knew if it didn’t go well, that was it: the city was finished. So there we are, cocktails in hand, and the first float comes around the corner. And it catches on the bumper of a car, and the mule panics, and rears, and falls over dead. And all of us just lost it. It was everything that had gone wrong in nola in visible form. So we’re crying, and the mule’s owner is crying, and the police are calling for the horse removal machine (every parade has to have one on call) and the horse removal machine arrives—and the mule stands up! He wasn’t dead! And that’s how a bunch of English professors figured out that the city was going to be alright.

These were the first parades I ever attended, and each year they just get better and better. I wanted to share some pictures I took to give you a glimpse into the beauty and hilarity of Krewe du Vieux and Krewedeulusion! Enjoy!

This year the theme of KdV was XXX! KdV said of their parade: “Hoping to XXX out at least a few of the bad guys and bad memories, the extroverts, extremists, extra-terrestrials, expendables, sexplorers and sexperts of Krewe du Vieux will take to the streets of the Marigny, French Quarter and CBD on Saturday, January 23 at 6:00 PM (coming early this year). Spectators are advised to exercise extreme caution as exuberant exhibitionists!”

Blessed Samhain!

Today of course starts one of my busiest weekends of the year!

It might be a little cliche, but Samhain is my favorite sabbat and I go out and participate in numerous Halloween activities around the city.

This year, for our costume day at work, I decided to go with Miss Argentina from the movie Beetlejuice. Miss Argentina is literally on screen for about 10 seconds, but she has always been one of my favorites.

Miss Argentina is the receptionist in the Underworld. I think that would be an amazing job to have!

Hades…Arawn…any Underworld Gods/Goddesses out there…I have excellent filing and customer service skills! (Or maybe I shouldn’t tempt that one…?)

Blessed Samhain All!

Miss Argentina

Proteus and Orpheus 2015

Muses may be my favorite parade, but I think that Proteus and Orpheus have some of the most beautiful floats. They’re always a little bit Pagan themed as well. I loved this year’s Proteus floats and while I didn’t stay through most of Orpheus due to the rain, their floats are still pretty spectacular as well…

Proteus always starts out with…well, Proteus. Proteus is the Old Man of the Sea, said to be ever changing and therefore able to tell the future.

I loved the elephant in this one…

This was my favorite float for multiple reason which are probably mostly obvious…

Orpheus always pulls in the celebrities and the flashier floats. I didn’t stick around, it started to rain heavily, but I was impressed as usual with the start…

Instead of the usual knights, Orpheus has charioteers.

*All Photography copyright Lauren DeVoe, please don’t use without permission

Turtle

We were out walking last night when this fellow showed up.

 

Reminding me that slow and steady wins the race.

 

 

St. Joesph’s Night 2014

Tonight was St. Joseph’s Night and that means Mardi Gras Indians! We live right on the edge of Central City, the heart of Mardi Gras Indian territory. Lasalle Park is the central meeting place every year for all of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian tribes…which just happens to be about 3 blocks from my house.

I’ve already written about the Mardi Gras Indian culture here in New Orleans (you can read about it here), so I won’t regale you with a long explanation now.

But this year, I got something a little special. Just as we left our house, we ran into two tribes meeting on their way to Lasalle Park.

When two tribes meet, there is an complex ritual of greeting. A great deal depends on whether or not the two tribes are friendly with each other. Even when the tribes are friendly, the ritual of greeting is an elaborate dance and contest of wittiness. This tradition comes from “Playing the Dozens,” a contest of insulting each other in witty ways.

Luckily, these two were friendly tribes. When the tribes are enemies, onlookers back away and the underlying violence of the Mardi Gras Indian culture comes out in a much more hostile interaction. In the past, unfriendly tribes would have reacted with violence, but since Hurricane Katrina, each tribe has worked hard to bond together, which helps the community as a whole. While there are definitely tribes that still don’t like each other, they generally keep their violence to their song and dance.

These two tribes were a lot of fun to watch! Enjoy!

Happy St. Joseph’s Night!!!

 

 

Proteus

Today is Mardi Gras and unfortunately, it is a very dreary, rainy, wet Mardi Gras. While Kenny and I wait to see if the rain will let up a bit so that we can proceed on our usual jaunt through the Quarter, I thought I would share some pictures of my favorite parade this year.

Usually Muses is my favorite parade. It is one of the only, all female krewes to ride the Uptown parade route. (The Uptown parade route is the main one. My house also happens to be right on it). This year, Muses wasn’t as great. This was probably due to the drunken parents we were standing with that kept forcing their children over and under the rest of us to get throws. So…for the first time in three years, I did not get the coveted Muses shoe. (I wrote a guest blog for Kenny last year about Muses, which you can find here. I got some great pictures last year!)

My friends and I at Muses this year.

So I was surprised when Proteus ended up being my favorite this year. Proteus and Orpheus role on Lundi Gras, the day before Mardi Gras, and are usually mostly attended by locals. All of the super-krewes, like Bacchus which had Hugh Laurie as the Grand Marshall this year, role the weekend before Mardi Gras. Kenny had a gig in Florida over the weekend, so we actually escaped the crowds and the lack of parking to go to West Palm Beach, which was very nice. But we were both very happy to get back home and jump back into our local Mardi Gras activities.

(The beach, however, was perfect!)

Proteus roles before Orpheus and usually I really go for Orpheus. Their floats are famous for using lights and they have a lot of big names. In the past I’ve gotten beads from Mariska Hargitay and Harry Connick Jr. This year they had Quentin Tarantino and James Roday of Psych.

Orpheus’ famous Trojan Horse float.

Quentin Tarantino in Orpheus. (I ran into QT in a bar one night. We think he meant to go to the Phoenix, a bar known for it’s super risque Bounce nights. Instead he ended up at the St. Roch, a traveling kid hangout which also has a bounce night. I didn’t even realize who it was at first because he had some chick bent over the bar, making out, all night long. He finally came up for air and I realized who I was standing next to. Only in NOLA….)

James Roday, who was just as cute in person as he is on TV!

But this year, Proteus really stole the show. Their floats were gorgeous, their riders were happy and excited and I was thrilled by their theme, which was “Ancient Elements of Alchemy.”

An important aspect of the very Catholic Mardi Gras is Paganism. Revelers become Pagan once more during Mardi Gras so that they can have something to repent for during Lent. Both Proteus and Orpheus (whose theme was “The Enchanted Land”) were very Pagan this year.

Proteus is the second oldest krewe in New Orleans. It started in 1882 and the krewe says of itself:

The Identity of the King of Proteus is never revealed to the public. His Parade float is a giant Seashell and very march part of the New Orleans Carnival scene for generations.

Proteus did not parade from 1993 – 1999 but returned to parading on Lundi Gras (The Monday before Mardi Gras Day, Shrove Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday) in 2000. The Parade of The Krewe of Proteus Follows the Traditional Uptown or St. Charles Route ending on Canal Street. The actual Krewe of Proteus parade floats are still using the original chassis from the early 1880’s.

The Mythical Proteus
The son of Poseidon in the Olympian theology ( Homer,Odyssey iv. 432), or of Nereus and Doris, or of Oceanus and a Naiad, and was made the herdsman of Poseidon’s seals, the great bull seal at the center of the harem. He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar from several cultures, will change his shape to avoid having to; he will answer only to someone who is capable of capturing him. From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective protean, with the general meaning of “versatile”, “mutable”, “capable of assuming many forms”: “Protean” has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.

Proteus is also known as a shape shifter and can assume the guise of anyone or anything he so chooses. When held fast despite his struggles, he will assume his usual form of an old man and tell the future.
The so-called Old Man of the Sea, is a prophetic sea divinity, son of either Poseidon or Oceanus. He usually stays on the Island of Pharos, near Egypt, where he herds the seals of Poseidon. He will foretell the future to those who can seize him, but when caught he rapidly assumes all possible varying forms to avoid prophesying.

Proteus [PROH-tee-us], like all six of Neptune’s newly discovered small satellites, is one of the darkest objects in the solar system — “as dark as soot” is not too strong of a description. Discovered by Stephen Synnott, Like Saturn’s satellite, Phoebe, it reflects only 6 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. Proteus is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) in diameter, larger than Nereid. It wasn’t discovered from Earth because it is so close to Neptune that it is lost in the glare of reflected sunlight. Proteus circles Neptune at a distance of about 92,800 kilometers (57,700 miles) above the cloud tops, and completes one orbit in 26 hours, 54 minutes. Scientists say it is about as large as a satellite can be without being pulled into a spherical shape by its own gravity. Proteus is irregularly shaped and shows no sign of any geological modification. It circles the planet in the same direction as Neptune rotates, and remains close to Neptune’s equatorial plane.

Anyway, here are a bunch of the pictures that Kenny took during the parade. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!!!

(This float was titled “The Great Work”)

Spruce & Dante

This is a short movie made by a New Orleans local. It takes place in my old neighborhood (where I still work and spend a lot of time). It has a supernatural twist to it that I didn’t expect! I thought it showed a lot of what makes New Orleans so magical!