Familiars

"In European folklore and folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits (sometimes referred to simply as "familiars" or "animal guides") were believed to be supernatural entities that would assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic.  According to the records of the time, they would appear in numerous guises, often as an animal, but also at times as a human or humanoid figure, and were described as "clearly defined, three-dimensional… forms, vivid with colour and animated with movement and sound" by those alleging to have come into contact with them, unlike later descriptions of ghosts with their "smoky, undefined form[s]".^[2]
When they served witches, they were often thought to be malevolent, while when working for cunning folk they were often thought of as benevolent (although there was some ambiguity in both cases). The former were often categorised as demons, while the latter were more commonly thought of and described as fairies. The main purpose of familiars is to serve the witch or young witch, providing protection for them as they come into their new powers. ^- Wikipedia  

Black cats were thought, in medieval times, to be witch's familiars but always, whatever culture linked black cats to mystery, magic and occult.  It is believed that ancient Egypt was first to begin the black cat myth.  They worships cats who they believed were gods, then Greece, then Asia, then the rest of Europe bought into the myth that black cats and evil /devils s were synonymous and  used by witches.  It was thought that black cats helped witches do their evil magic.   

In America, it flourished, as did the concept of witches.  And, there were women who chose to be called witches and they believed if they found a black cat, that they had to ask the cat's permission to use it, then the cat was brought to the witches home and if the black cat liked the home, they would stay and help her.  This is believed, even today, by women who choose to be witches. 

Because cats are said to have nine lives, can fall and always land on their feet, etc., they are considered carriers of magic.  Their personalities are ones of mystery.  They tend to like to be solitary and tend to be serious and tend to keep us from knowing exactly what they are thinking.  They are very "ME" oriented.  Cats, ass well, are known to know when there is something 'off' and will react by raising their hackles and arching their backs when something seems to be amiss...and sometimes we do not even know what is amiss but it is hair-raising to see a cat suddenly do such.  Witches believe that cats have a sixth sense and see between two worlds and the myths have built up and, even today, witches will have a black cat ( of course, not riding on the broom with her) but there is an uncommon deep bond built up with their familiar.

  We all know some of the myths and some of the facts about cats, and some myths have seemed to become fact.  Here are a few that I know of:

If a cat sneezes, rain is coming.  To kill a cat is to have 17 years bad luck (whereas breaking a mirror only gives us 7).

To have a black cat cross in front of you is bad luck.

Never stare a cat in the eyes as they can hypnotize you.

If a black cat brings you bad luck, walk backwards around it thirteen times to undo the bad luck spell.

Just know that there are many facts and fictions about cats and these things are believed by many.  You may know a witch and not even know it.  Some believe some are born with the gift.  I simply believe in cats making my eyes water and my nose plug.  I have been afraid of cats.. not since I was a child, but later as an adult when my sisters two Siamese cats clawed up and down me when I was on the phone and an electrical storm came.  It has taken me decades to not feel seriously uncomfortable when I knew a cat was close enough to jump on me.  Silly, I know, but something in me got stuck at being afraid of cats.  The fear is gone, now, of course, since I am stronger than my reactions.  I do not believe in hexes and spells and black cats being bad news.  I do not know about you.

Challenge:  Do an art piece with a black cat in it.  Your choice of environment or theme.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.5.19

Skulls

" Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is not a Mexican version of Halloween. Though related, the two annual events differ greatly in traditions and tone. Whereas Halloween is a dark night of terror and mischief, Day of the Dead festivities unfold over two days in an explosion of color and life-affirming joy. Sure, the theme is death, but the point is to demonstrate love and respect for deceased family members. In towns and cities throughout Mexico, revelers don funky makeup and costumes, hold parades and parties, sing and dance, and make offerings to lost loved ones." - Logan Ward

November 2nd is Dia de los Muertos, not October 31 but, because we see so many skulls during Halloween, I thought I would jump the gun here.

For Dia de los Muertos, the skulls, ( think sugar skulls) are symbols of love and happy memories of loved ones.  If you have not watched "Coco", please do yoruwelf a huge favor and watch it.  It is powerful and beautiful.  The holiday, for Spanish Americans, is all about celebration.. like a birthday party in heaven.  It, along with Halloween lsot its traditional sacred meanings and is in danger of becoming totally forgotten the WHY of it in the first place.  We so struggle with death and grief and revel in sadness and mourning when, if we lived what we believed, wouldn't we celebrate too?

My middle daughter loved my father.  Grandpa loved Lainee to the moon.  He died when she was three.  She wanted to know where he went.   We simply told her he was sleeping... we should never have told her that.  She would not let any of us nap after that.  I realized we had done her a great disservice.  So, then, what do we tell her.. that God took him? and then have her hate god and ask him to give Grandpa back.  Bad God.  Do we tell her he went to heaven and then know we have not told that truth either because I know we go to a great sleep first... do I know why?  No!  Just what I have heard.  When my sweetheart died, I wrestled with the idea of heaven and where Man Hands went?  I had to ask my religious son.. .if we go directly to heaven or if there is a long sleep first.  He stuttered a bit and then said, we believe that there is a long sleep before resurrection of all.  Now, this did not sit right either.  So I had to just settle the idea in my own head.  I believe there is a great long sleep and that we do not stay with our loved ones who have gone before... it is all a kerfuffle if you ask me.  Why do we mourn if we know our loved one is out of pain?   Why do we mourn if we think they even went directly to heaven?  I, eventually, came back to a beautiful story I had heard.  It gave me some peace.  Perhaps it did not give me an answer, but it felt right to my soul.  I share it with you now.

"In a mother’s womb were two babies.  The first baby asked the other:  “Do you believe in life after delivery?”
The second baby replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery.  Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery.  What would that life be?”
“I don’t know, but there will be more light than here.  Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.”
The doubting baby laughed. “This is absurd!  Walking is impossible.  And eat with our mouths?  Ridiculous.  The umbilical cord supplies nutrition.  Life after delivery is to be excluded.  The umbilical cord is too short.”
The second baby held his ground. “I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here.”
The first baby replied, “No one has ever come back from there.  Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the twin, “but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us.”
“Mother?” The first baby guffawed. “You believe in mother?  Where is she now?” 
The second baby calmly and patiently tried to explain. “She is all around us.  It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world.”
“Ha. I don’t see her, so it’s only logical that she doesn’t exist.”  
To which the other replied, “Sometimes when you’re in silence you can hear her, you can perceive her.  I believe there is a reality after delivery and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality when it comes….”

- Pablo Molinero, The Parable

And so we struggle until we find a settlement to our giref, our reason for sadness, and pray it does not take too long nor be too debilitating.  I was debilitated with the loss of Richard.  I have never felt that depth of sorrow;  not at the loss of my father, my mother, my birth mother, my brothers and sisters, nothing.. no one had I loved and felt more loss for.  I broke.  I did not break because I did not believe in heaven, no, I broke because I had never been so thoroughly loved before in my conscious life.  I grieved for myself, my loss, my pitiful life to come without him. 

My page is so unfinished and it is apropos that it is so.  I have not figured out what death is, means, yet.

 

Challenge:  Do a page on skulls for Halloween...  Or for Dia de los Muertos

©Carol Desjarlais 10.4.19

Fear of Spiders

**Done by drawing with a glue gun onto a piece of waxed paper, adding little plastic spiders, and then letting it dry.  When cool, adding glitter glue.  

Psychologists believe that one reason why people fear spiders is because of some direct experience with the arachnids instilled that fear in them. This is known as the “conditioning” view of arachnophobia. - American Psychiatric Association

Arachnophobia is real to some.  The fear is said to come from being genetic to being conditioned. Some, as children, realized they got attention for pretending fear and then it stuck.  It was 1950 when the movie industry decided that doing many many horror films including spiders, making money on people's fears and things that creep them out, commercialized and conditioned many more people of being afraid of spiders. 

We live safe lives, for the most part, and few of us, in the Northern Hemisphere, have occasion to run into dangerous spiders.  Some of our fear is disgust.  Some is real because we may have had a traumatic incident with a spider, or watched a film where a spider caused a traumatic event.. or... well, you get what I am saying.  They can be creepy if they are on me, but over there -----> they are fine.  Some people have forgotten why they are afraid of spiders, what event caused it, but the fear persists  and the creepiness sustains itself because one might land on us and that is beyond creepy. For most of us, fear of spiders is irrational but spiders are, in some areas, shrouded in mystery, and we have been taught that spider webs in houses equals dirtiness.  And since it is a fear to commercialize, Halloween became the time and place to enhance it all.  We were seduced into the occult of evil spiders we should fear.

Someone, early on in the world, when they made up the cult of witches, also decided that, if there were spiders, there were witches.  It waw believed witches used spider's web(s) in their spells.  Now, I do not know if generations of women, up to today, built on that belief and started using spider webs, but this is where it came from in medieval times.  I was taught to think if you had spider webs, you were not a clean housekeeper...so I seek out spider webs monthly.  See, haunted houses have spider webs because no one lives in them.. but spiders.  Spiders like dark places... for the most part.  And, First Nations have stories of Spider Woman as Creator and the teller of ancient stories.  I like this idea and make singing hoops and dream catchers to honor Spider Woman.

I do not know about you, but I will not kill spiders because it might rain.  And, someone must have been killing a lot of spiders because it has rained here for 17 days off and on.  And, on these rainy Autumn days, when there is fog in the mornings, the webs outside are simply stunning...

Challenge:  Do an art journal page with a spider's web on it.  I made my spider's web with a glue gun... easy peasy and I had some little spiders left from a Halloween bingo last year.

©Carol Desjarlais 10. 3.19

Haunted Houses

"Houses are not haunted. We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts." - Dean Koontz

All of us grew up, I am pretty sure, with the idea of a house or area being haunted.  That we believe in haunting at all begins from when the first person was on earth and realized most things were really scary; Mother Nature was scary. Being fearful kept our ancestors alive.  Now, we enjoy being frightened. Haunted houses are meant to scare you, they make money scaring you, and centuries of enjoyment from scary things exists even today because we make sure they do.

This is what a haunted house is supposed to do. They exist to scare people. The idea behind some of Halloween is the 1802 beginnings of Madame Tussand's wax sculptures of decapitated heads in her Gallery.  I might add that the very thought of death masks does not thrill me either.  Haunted houses hit America in 1915 fairs started having haunted houses (rooms/buildings) in 1915. It commercialized peoples fears.   During the Dirty Thirties, adults decided to dream up a night to distract kids who had little to do and time on their hands and, in order to stop kids from, say, turning over outside toilets (gulp, guilty!) was to set up a trick or treat idea where treats were a commodity and it paid the kids off so they did not do dirty tricks.  It became a tradition and kids are bought off.  Now, the trick and treating part is very sanitized with kids having their parties at clubs, schools, etc.  And treats have become healthier.  Kids will never know the taste of treats they do not get often and the candy apples, popcorn balls and homemade caramels and fudge. Why even have Halloween any more.. oh, yes, of course, it is big money!

 By 1937 mothers were encouraged, through advertizing, to design trails of terror. But it was Walt Disney that did more for Halloween than ever before.  His designers developed a series of Mystery houses and  Haunted Mansions in his films.  He was able to develop illusions that made the genre stick. 

I do not support the commercialized holiday, even now.  Yes, I went to the Pit and the Pendulum but after that,. I never ever went to, paid for, or supported anything spooky since I was a teenager, scared out of my wits.  I guess I had discovered life could be scary on its own.

Challenge:    Do a scene that portrays haunted houses.  These are awfully fun to do since the imagination can run wild. 

©Carol Desjarlais 10.2.19