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The Forest Troll by Theodor Kittlesen, 1906

Sean Combs is a dead man in more ways than one. Not only is it highly likely he will be Epsteined soon; he has been mortified to any pursuit outside the lower astral plane for a long time. Sean Combs has managed in one short lifetime to run away from every possible instinct of human decency. Self-realization is not something he has ever tried to do. Combs is a parody of the demonic, managing Luciferianism and Ahrimanism in equal measure. In his slack jawed, dead-eyed expression, we can glimpse a reign of terror that has ruined countless lives. Like a perverse form of the Midas touch, Combs's influence has sullied whatever it could reach, including billions of ears that never got to hear beautiful, meaningful music because Sean Combs and his henchmen stood at the threshold of mass distribution. Combs was the troll that sat under the bridge, demanding flesh, blood, and tribute from all who passed.

Sean Combs represents death in yet another way: he is the endcap of a long, sordid era of what has passed for entertainment for the last 50 years. Like the former planet Pluto, Sean Combs was worshiped when he first arrived upon the scene. His rapidly shrinking clout has diminished into a descent to lowly status in a remote and warped orbit.

Omigod, Who Cares?

As someone who never cared for hip-hop, I did not know Sean Combs‘s past. Sources say he was born in the late 1960s in Harlem, making him a Gen Xer. His father was a low level drug dealer who died when Sean was two years old. His mother, who was not a woman of means, allegedly sacrificed and hustled in order to put her son into an elite Catholic school. Between his grandmother and his mother Janice, legend has it that the two were able to see Sean through to Howard University. Combs quit Howard U after two years, when it became apparent he was destined for success in the entertainment industry. Like his father before him, he became involved in drugs and drug deals. He always had a flair for predatory capitalism until the day it circled around to royally bite him in the ass.

From the very beginning, it seems Sean Combs had a monstrous ego. He earned the nickname Puffy supposedly because he puffed out his chest in order to appear larger. Anger is often the marker of subconscious fear, and I hypothesize that Sean Combs has lived a life of suppressed terror. In the early days, his ambition to become popular was such that he hosted college parties that regularly drew 1000 people. He was very good at posturing. Via elite trappings and compulsive name changes, Combs managed to convince himself and others that he was a star. He won three Grammys for absolutely nothing, with his most famous number featuring him whining/mumbling to the riff from the Police's Every Breath You Take. One listen to any of Combs's "songs" at it becomes apparent that his intelligence is mostly entrepreneurship, theft, and low cunning and not music in any way, shape, or form. It hardly mattered; he had thirst, and in the late 20th century, thirst mattered a great deal more than musicianship... Example A, Madonna. Driving his stardom was a pathological need to spread himself around and the urge to run like hell from the terror of honestly facing and processing his own sins.

Combs himself once said the only end for a drug dealer was either death or prison. He has ended up with the letter option. For Combs, being reduced to lowly prisoner status was a fate worse than death. I speculate this little chunk of jail time only the first consequence in a banquet that will spread across multiple lifetimes for him, but of course I could be wrong, and I cannot bring myself to care about his suffering. He made his 50 foot bed. There are rumors that his prison guards chuckle as the once high and mighty mogul has to make the awful choice between eating feces-laden food or starving to death. It’s a known fact that pedophiles and rapists are shown no mercy in prison, and Sean Combs apparently ticks both boxes.

So how did he get here? Well, it did not happen quickly. Combs was untouchable for 30 years. He became a household name in the 1990s, when a much younger Jennifer Lopez, who had yet to take on the obnoxious J Lo moniker, clawed her way to Hollywood relevance by riding around as Sean Combs’s arm candy. Combs made a splash by exploiting artists who had what he lacked: talent. Combs used the power of rivalry, exploiting gangland scandals in order to inflate his own image and to create free publicity. When Combs was unable to use the talents of artists who he wished to subordinate, he (allegedly) had them assassinated and then bragged about it. To an outsider like myself, the assassinations of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. looked like the typical Chicago gang crapshow only writ larger and with more money. Such things would have merely been a blip on my personal radar, but Combs was so good at what he did, he managed to infect every single part of musical entertainment with his own personal vision and model of fame. Not for a minute did hip-hop and its extortion/gangland business models stay within its lane. Anyone who remembers hip-hop and rap from the 1980s probably recalls how humorous, witty, and downright intelligent it was, despite its cheesy sounds and low budget origins. Fossils like myself remember when musical entertainers knew how to be humble. Sean Combs's vision ended all of that. Hip-hop and wrap that brought over the top egomania and drama to the most average of artists.

He Interrupted White Female Artists Before It Was Cool...

I remember when Ol' Dirty Bastard interrupted folk pop singer Sean Colvin's time when she won a Grammy for Sunny come home. Colvin, crowded out of her brief accolade for her one hit wonder, was forced to defer as the entitled, drug-addled ODB stole the spotlight, mentioning that he deserved the award more than Diddy who had won moments before. Before Kanye commandeered Taylor Swift's award in 2009, the dead-in-2004 ODB preceded him to mutter and grumble about whatever boring inanity was going on in his own flustercluck hip-hop world world.

White girl Colvin’s stolen moment became a microcosm of American music, which morphed into an extremely specific set of images depicting a warped version of dominant American blackness. Just as American movies came to be inundated by overblown production and superheroes and princesses rehashed for the umpteenth time, American music became ALL BEYONCÉ ALL THE TIME. The foundation of this so-called black culture was a propensity to whine. Black genres that had once proliferated a variety of styles from heavy metal to old-school wrap to ethereal jazz, narrowed down to a constant regurgitation of three to four pet themes:

1) Narcissistic sexuality.
2) Narcissistic unneeded wealth.
3) Narcissistic egomania/ I’m better than you.
4) Narcissistic drug use/drug violence.

Every single song by every single rap or hip-hop artist for 30 years revolved exclusively around these three or four themes. The syndrome was so pervasive, it infected songs well outside of its genre and is still robust to this day. One only needs to examine the pop crews of lily white banker's daughter and billionaire Taylor Swift to find at least three out of four of these themes at work in every single heavily co-written and co-produced song.

Ironically, it is said that Beyoncé is so insecure that she demands tribute from other artists whenever they win music awards. The artists must say "this award is owed to Beyoncé" while onstage accepting their Grammy/MTV Music Award/Whatever or she will have a hit put out on them. Conspiracy theory has it that the insufferable wretch was responsible for the premature deaths of Michael Jackson and Aaliyah. Neither artist thanked Beyoncé for their various accolades, at least not publicly. It does seem kind of odd that many artists, including Adele and Lizzo, randomly thanked Beyoncé at awards shows as if she was some kind of deity. Who's the fairest of them all????

Little did I or any normie know that Sean Combs sat atop one of the mightiest and worst astral pyramids: the popular culture casting couch. I labored under the delusion that entertainment still contained some remnants of meritocracy until I was at least 40. Boy, was I wrong.

There is no merit left in any form of mass media entertainment. None. Zero. The reason is simple: all of Hollywood, all music moguls, all politicians, and all media pundits are either sick, murderous pedo perverts or have been compromised at events thrown by sick, murderous pedo perverts. The entire system is based on honey traps, blackmail, and debasement. There is no getting around it and becoming a household name: these two things do not coexist.

Sean Combs had no musical talent. His expertise was in blackmail. Sean Combs is like his friend and likely romantic partner Jay Z -- neither have the musical talent the gods gave a vacuum cleaner. All of the king's horses and all the king's men could not convince the world that Sean Combs and Jay Z had any artistry between them. Their creativity seems to have been confined to coming up with clever ways to overpower and rape other human beings.

Float Like a Butterfly

Case after case continues to surface as avenger-lawyer Tony Buzbee cherry picks from likely thousands of choices of Sean Comb's horrific assaults on women, men, and children. The stories are beyond grotesque. Sean Combs allegedly promised a 9 year old a record deal and then raped him in the recording studio. He drugged and violently raped a woman with a TV remote control for daring to insinuate in an overheard phone conversation that he had some other rapper killed. He then proceeded to have his goons gang rape her until she almost died. Rumor has it that Sean Combs lusted after Justin Bieber shortly after his adolescent Youtube debut. After allegedly grooming and serially raping Usher at the age of 15, Combs orchestrated the grooming and eventual capture of teenaged Bieber, eventually brutally initiating the naive kid in a 48 hour marathon session of depravity.

All of the above seems like conjecture until one realizes the mammoth pile of evidence, including no less than 120 plaintiffs in Buzbee's stable as the onslaught against the former Diddler mounds.

Combs has a pattern that involves drugging with spiked drinks and trank-laced baby oil, assault and gang rape, and either leaving the victim for dead or so brutalized they require an IV drip from loss of bodily fluids. The woman he raped with a television remote lost all bowel and urinary control according to her affadavit. Combs also likes to threaten peoples' families, and he does this in retaliation to hurt fee-fees.

One wonders where Combs possibly got his mostly homosexual rage. He is still a momma's boy, and it is interesting as well a bit suspect to witness his ongoing relationship with his mother Janice, who defends him as innocent. I suppose if I was a mother, I would not want to face having given birth to an alleged psychopathic rapist. I believe Combs was abused during his education at the Bronx all boy's Catholic school Mount Saint Michael Academy. The school had its fair share of pederast scandals in the 1980s, plus one Reverend Bernard Lynch who was brought up on charges of molesting a student that he claimed made a pass at him first. Gross. The school has had various complaints since then, including a priest named Brother Lee who allegedly abused a 15 year old boy and an assistant principal who was thrown in jail for his large kiddie porn collection. Overall, there seems to be no shortage of scandals at Mt. St. Michael. Perhaps Combs was diddled at the Academy. Maybe he was diddled elsewhere. Or maybe his rage sprang organically with no origin story at all. At any rate, Sean Combs was a sick, twisted serial rapist and killer with no sense of proportion.

Chicken or Egg?

When a man sits atop a great astral pyramid, there is the question of who exactly birthed that pyramid. Combs did not originate the casting couch/kompromat model even if he did perfect it. The casting couch/kompromat pyramid was not new in the era of Babylon. The novel part here is the discovery of the type of person it takes to begin such a pyramid: the non-artist. The non-artist may be good at many things, but art is not one of them. Most non-artists are content to appreciate and consume art. The sweetest and most earnest of non-artists are the fans who use the artist's oeuvre to study and eventually become great artists themselves. Not every non-artist can show that kind of patience or discipline, and of course humans being human, you are always going to have some non-artists who allow their jealousy of artists to make them insane. In the case of a Tony Mottola, Clive Davis, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, or Sean Combs, the jealous non-artists uses their clout and massive unearned wealth to lord over the artists as gatekeepers. On the surface, the trade might look like a simple one: the artist trades sexual favors (and potentially marriage) for great commercial success. If only it were that simple! The jealousy of non-artists is so horrid, it regularly drives the ones with money and power to enslave and destroy the artists they keep. For Sean Combs, it was not enough to roofie a young person and rape them a la Bill Cosby or Roman Polanski. No, from the looks of things, Combs drugged his guests and then had pedophile orgies that involved animals, the ingestion of vomit, blood, and feces, foster children supplied by CPS as "party favors" and infant sacrifice. Epstein may or may not have gone as far: he seems to have had a Peter Nygard/John of God style baby farm at his Zorro Ranch location.

The jealous non-artist is a type of vampire who seeks to feed on the artist's etheric energy. The reason vampires of this sort like them young is because young people skew etherically male and so do artistic types. Artists are often stereotyped as long haired and girlish because long hair and femininity are both outward signs of etheric maleness. Physically, we are usually the opposite sex of our etheric bodies. By building an empire on the etheric, the vampire becomes physically stronger and far more empowered to amass wealth by hijacking the artist's charisma. By taking the artist's etheric maleness, the vampire creates the glamour of having the astral equivalent of a big dick.

Though I fully intended everything Diddy to fit in a single essay, it is clear to me that I feel compelled to take a deeper dive into the rabbit hole. Thank you for your patience as I look forward to sharing my further meditations upon this subject with you.

I am happy to read your Ogham free of charge -- that's how I hone my divination skills. Please limit your reading request to four or fewer Ogham cards: though this can take many forms, here are some common ones (all of them are basically combos of 4 cards):

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

-four questions about four separate items that require one answer (card) per item
-a one card reading to answer a specific question and a three card for a more nuanced question
-Two separate readings, two cards a piece exploring the positives and negatives of two different choices

I am happy to do Ogham readings confidentially via email -- just email me at k steele studio at gmail during the allotted time/before deadline. I cannot answer health questions. If you have a question about health or another sensitive, private matter, provide a bunch of non-identifying information and the Ogham will be able to figure it out even if I don't. I'm serious... the Ogham actually tend to "know" things without me being privy to what is going on.

Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break.

My next planned break is from Saturday, December 21, 2024 - Friday, January 3, 2025.

I take reading requests from whenever this post goes up on Friday night until 8pm US Central Time Saturday.

For a more in depth look into how I read and interpret the Ogham's symbols, please visit my website druidogham.wordpress.com.

I am currently trying to minimize my use of PayPal. If you'd like to make a donation, I would be grateful if you did it here:

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

I once knew an old, married couple who fought bitterly. The man was constantly down-dressing his wife, calling her stupid, fat, and ugly. She did not give it back all that frequently, but every now and then, I would hear her sass him back and the fights would escalate in tone and volume. Misery radiated from the two of them as if they were nuclear waste. Anyone who overheard their bouts would think both parties would be better off alone... or would they? The miserably married who get divorced often find themselves married again and divorced again. If they do not seek to remedy their status, they go to a lonely end of sorrowful, decrepit singlehood. For women, who obviously live longer than men, going it alone can be wonderful, but it can also be terrifying. Those of us who are not rolling in dough and who lack essential skills when our homes demand to be maintained are in a precarious situation. I had two single aunts, one rich and one poor. The aunt with money died in a far better set of circumstances than the poor one. As much as it is fashionable to believe in the independent woman who can kick ass on her own behalf until the day she croaks, I have seen for myself that sometimes elderly women become extremely dependent, usually through no fault of their own. Senility happens. Old men aren't the only ones found wandering on the side of the highway, forgetting why they left the house to begin with.

Old men without a woman (or a gay man who is an etheric male) to take care of them quickly suffer extreme etheric starvation. Most women and girls are etheric males, which is to say that their energy signature is male. I discussed this in a couple of posts here and here. Old people in general are skewed toward the etheric feminine or yin energy. The energy of homemaking is male on the etheric, which is why women and girls tend to be the best homemakers. When an old man does not have an etheric male influence in his life, he becomes the stereotype of the codger rotting away in a destitute heap, slumped over his table and drooling on a pile of yellowed papers. This is classic etheric starvation and it is not a pleasant way to die.

The lesson here, I think, is we aren't always better off alone. It is horrendously difficult to know where to draw the line of what constitutes abuse. In the case of the married couple I mentioned above, the man was abusive and to my mind, the choice was clear: she needed to run away from him and never look back about 30-50 years ago. Other cases are not quite so clear. I knew an old man who liked porn long before it was cool; he and his wife still stuck it out until one of them died and they were not worse off for it. There were and are a great many couples who got divorced who probably should have never split. There is also the disturbing statistic that children are 100 more times likely to be abused if one of their parents is a stepparent known as the Cinderella Effect. In the Cinderella Effect, we have a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" situation where people who divorce already have a propensity for distancing themselves in family relationships are unable to reconcile the distance between themselves and someone else's child. The result is a rate of child abuse several orders of magnitude above what tends to happen in marriage between biological parents.

They're Not Helping

Far too much of relationship and marriage counseling amounts to making lists of grievances and then coming up with baroque labeling and procedural terminology for addressing those grievances. Yes, it does help to put names to phenomena, but it is a classic cart before the horse strategy to put so much focus on the negative. Allow me to save any couple in marriage counseling hundreds if not thousands of dollars (and not by switching car insurers) by saying if you focus on the negatives more than the positives in the relationship, YOU ARE GOING TO SPLIT. As much as ostensibly well-meaning professionals think their credentials, degrees, and professional status help them to help others, the bottom line is that they are not helping if:

1. They do not live as they preach/advise
2. They do not find the positive within the person and situation and encourage it

All too often, counseling is a blame game where one partner is made into a scapegoat and the other luxuriates in endless lists of why breaking the union is justified and necessary. In other words, counseling is often a funnel into the divorce attorney's office with some pit stops at the drug store for psychiatric medications. Can't leave Big Pharma waiting beside the gravy train!

There are plenty of abusive women and men who deserve nothing less than to be shoved rudely to the curb and if they die Forever Alone, that is their just comeuppance. Some relationships and people are not worthy of being saved. But in many cases, society and perhaps our civilization itself has made it all too easy to burn down the marriage house with everything in it, including the kids. We have arrived at the statistic that more marriages end in divorce than death do us part. Kids are the sacrificial lambs on the altar of divorce. Even in so-called amicable divorces, I have seen kids utterly destroyed and their worlds torn apart. The following is merely my opinion: most people should stay married for the children's sake and try to work out their problems by focusing on the positive. Once the children are out of their teens, then it is the proper time to begin the process of divorce if the relationship has not been saved. Children need two parents, preferably a man and a woman or at the very least two people who adequately represent those opposite roles.

There is a great deal of false transcendence around divorce, especially among women, who frame it as the inevitable consequence of a series of oppressions dealt to them by their marriage partner. Never is divorce considered as the potentially avoidable outcome of a failure to communicate and heal. Yet we all want to heal; that is why Aphrodite, the goddess of healing, is also the goddess of love and marriage.

I have known plenty of happy divorcees. I have also known my fair share of unhappy divorcees who refuse to face the music of "wherever you go, there you are". Those who keep running from personal culpability and lack of gratitude in relationships will come head to head with those things in other situations and relationships. Yes, men take women for granted, but women do the same thing to men. I speak from experience as I am 100% guilty as charged of taking my man for granted. I am trying to turn over a new leaf and avoid taking him for granted because I myself don't like being taken for granted. If I want to be valued, I need to recognize others for their value while appreciating my own worth.

The moral of the story is sometimes we are better off sticking together. Not always! One size definitively does not fit all. However, if you can take anything away from my 24 year marriage to a poor man and my parents' nearly 60 years together until my father passed through the Gates in 2023, let it be to focus and be thankful for the good in all around you instead of dwelling on the bad. The bad needs to be acknowledged and addressed for sure; just don't make it into an obsession. The gods want us to love and cherish each other. They encourage us when we encourage each other because like attracts like. I believe that to no small degree, our self-realization as human beings involves deliberate ignorance of our fellow human's annoying traits and an amplified focus on good deeds, sweetness, goodness, and inner beauty.

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

There are plenty of lists of things to exclude from this short lifetime in the name of minimalism. I’ve done it, and others have done it so reliably often that it is a genre on Youtube called “decluttering”.

Though I make do without doctors, dentists, and health insurance in general and I have the added eccentricity of eschewing all travel outside a seven mile radius of my home (this is a product of not having a great deal of money and owning multiple cats), there are things I have decided are essential for living, minimalism be damned.

My car. For the time being, I own a car because I feel I must own one. I live in a large American suburb. Trains and buses here leave much to be desired. I use my car mainly to commute to work and to go grocery shopping. This is how the car has fewer than 100,000 miles on it despite it being 18 years old. I don’t like driving. I drive like a putz. I won’t get on the highway. I will make 3 right turns to avoid a single left hand turn. There are plenty of minimalists who insist that getting rid of one’s car can and should be done. I beg to differ. If you can afford to live in the same neighborhood as your loved ones and your job and/or there is good public transportation that doesn’t involve five miles of walking through snow and rain, getting rid of the car becomes feasible. For the rest of us, car ownership is non-negotiable.
Pets. There’s a book about Swedish death cleaning whose author makes light of getting rid of her dogs because they were “too old” or wouldn’t be able to successfully transition to a new home. I remember how disgusted I was when I learned a woman I knew gave her cats up to the kill shelter because her new apartment did not allow pets. My cats are my kids, full stop, and I would sooner eat a gun than let them go.
Plants. I absolutely love houseplants. I believe they improve the etheric and deflect negative energy.
Books. Minimalist purges that involve getting rid of entire book collections are stupid. They will regret it. They will look back in the same way kids who owned Action Comics #1 regretted not buying a second one for 10 cents in 1938 and stashing it away. Books, especially non-fiction books and books with illustrations, are priceless treasures.
Perfume. I like scent. I use incense in my home and I spray objects in my home with perfume. I tend not to wear perfume though as I don’t want to give anyone a headache.
Candles. I love candles and fire in general. They add a great deal of positive energy to a space and are well worth the fire hazard. I also do my fair share of candle magic.
Old cards and letters. I keep sentimental ephemera. My mom makes special occasion cards and I am glad I have kept most of them.
Old photos. No, a digital snapshot kept on a hard drive somewhere is not the same. I come from an age when the camera required a darkroom.
Caffeine. If I don’t have 12 ounces of black tea in the morning, I wind up with a headache so bad, it causes temporary blindness. I have tried it and it is not fun or safe.
My rice cooker. I have a Zojibushi rice cooker that my husband gifted to me around 2008. Yes, I could cook rice in the pressure cooker, but the Zojibushi makes perfect rice every time. No crunchy bits or accidental over/undercooking.
My pressure cooker. I’ll never go back to boiling beans on a stove top again. Mine is one of InstantPot’s competitors. It is very safe and easy to use. I am convinced it saves energy too.
Streaming services. Sometimes I want to watch a movie or TV series. It has been known to happen even though I got rid of TV years ago. I typically watch the occasional movie or TV show on my computer.
Paper towels. I don’t use many of them but I do like them, especially for cleaning the toilet. Speaking of that…
Cleaning my toilet every night. There’s nothing better than waking up and using a toilet that is sparkling clean. To be brutal, whether you’re manor born or poor, it is a mark of ignorance and low class to allow your toilet to become filthy and disgusting.
An empty sink. I won’t go to bed without the dishes being done.
Sweeping my floor every morning. Luckily for me, I have a tiny house and not much surface area to sweep. Sweeping not only keeps debris off of my feet, it also keeps me humble and blessed.
Wall art. Blank walls are boring.
Black clothes. I may love color on my walls and floors, but when it comes to clothes, black is my favorite color. I feel put together in black. It also does not stain or show wear as fast as lighter shades.
My mobile phone. I don’t have a landline. I use my phone for my job as a music teacher — the metronome app alone is worth its weight in gold. I also record videos demonstrating what my students are playing for the week. It’s very nice that some people can do without a mobile phone. Good for them and more power to them. Personally, I need mine.
Handwritten notebooks and journals. I like writing out my discursive meditations by hand. I also keep track of my daily divinations in a handwritten spiral. Sure, I could upload it all to the cloud. I don’t want to. I like holding my journal in my hands.
Solitary walks in the forest preserve. I love people but I often need to get away from them so I can talk with both my own ecosystem and my tree friends.
Bathing every night. I can’t sleep unless I take a bath.
Polyester. I like wearing it and using it. I know it’s technically plastic. I don’t care. I have polyester clothes, polyester blend curtains, a polyester carpet, polyester stretch pants, polyester scarves, polyester cleaning cloths.
Bath and Body Works body wash and lotion. I use Bath & Body Works stuff despite it being owned by an evil corporation and generally being considered terrible, awful, and tacky by many. I like smelling like a middle class suburban woman because that is a not-small part of who I am.
Command strips. I love them. I especially love the 3M broom-hanger-gripper. It is much better than hanging the broom from a nail on the wall.
The breadbox. I don’t want to store bread in the refrigerator and if I leave it on the counter, the cats try to get at it.
Christmas lights. They are wonderful. They make me happy. I wish people would leave them up until Daylight Savings Time in March.
Gardening. Gardening keeps me sane. I am fortunate to have my own garden. If I didn’t have one, I would try to rent a public plot.
Processed food. We live in a time of glorious excess. Everything in moderation means that going full on into health-food mania is just as psycho as throwing caution to the wind and eating Cheetos as breakfast cereal. I am healthy enough to withstand an Oreo here and there.
Seed oils. There are whole factions of seed oil pearl clutchers who have turned canola grease into the new Hitler. Whatever, Karen.
Over the counter pharmaceuticals. I take no prescription medications, but every now and then, an OTC does the job better than my usual herbs and supplements. I have been known to take a generic Tylenol. When I have a bad case of the sniffles, I take NyQuil.
Gluten. There’s another whole faction of pearl clutchers who reach for the fainting salts whenever they see someone carrying a baguette through the grocery store. Unless you are freakishly allergic, just eat the bread.
Carbs. I have yet to meet someone avoiding carbs who wasn’t a bit on the heavy side. Asians, including half-Asians like me, usually don’t make the mistake of avoiding rice.
Soy. I eat it at least 3x a day, often in the form of tofu.
Nightshade vegetables. Again, unless one is violently allergic, what on this green Earth could keep you from eating a homegrown tomato?
Makeup. I do wear some. I like presenting myself a certain way.
A four season climate. I like all of the seasons, including winter.
Tacos. They are the most amazing and versatile dish that exists. I pity those who do not have them regularly.
Facial tissue. Handkerchiefs are gross.
Long hair. I will wear my hair long until I die, gods willing.
Battery powered puck lights. They are amazing. I mainly stick them in closets.
Herbal supplements in pill form. Sometimes I make tinctures and tisanes, but nothing beats the convenience of herbal pills. I take stinging nettle, cranberry, and uva ursi in pill form every day.
Zinc supplements. Zinc has been a lifesaver for my immune system. I have avoided countless colds and flus, which of course usually come from my work in the form of my students. The main caveat with zinc supplementation is you absolutely must eat a full meal — never, ever take zinc on an empty stomach!
Incense. Incense intensifies ritual work and helps me focus. It also provides a lovely, lingering, subtle scent in my house.
Musical instruments in the house. A house without musical instruments is not a home.
Discursive meditation. It’s the key to absolutely everything.
The Sphere of Protection banishing ritual. The SoP is the Swiss Army Knife of magic.
Daily divination. I have many, many questions… luckily the gods are patient.
Prayer.
The internet. I am grateful for the internet and this crazy time we live in, warts on all. If I didn’t have it, I would never have met YOU, dear reader.

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

I was an atheist ten years ago. Atheism worked well for me in some respects. In my own case, it was a life lesson to absorb certain forms of pragmatism. Atheism helped me sort through religious and superstitious claptrap with a keen eye. Later on, as I put my atheism behind me, the skepticism I cultivated as an atheist came in handy when I had to judge whether I was talking to myself, to an angel, human ghost, demon, or none of the above. I have always talked to myself; the trouble with atheism is that it taught me that all voices ultimately were versions of myself. I now know the voices in my head to be an ecosystem just like any other -- a collection of selves and outside forces. Atheism taught me that I could create my own reality. Atheism's fatal mistake is its presumption that any human can create his or her entire reality. We most certainly cannot.

The concept of applying shrewd, skeptical discrimination to the various voices in one's own head leads me to today's conversation about the current victims of Hurricane Helene. It is fitting that the bitch's name begins with hell, because Helene has brought hell on earth for both the people and animals in her path. It began a little before the weekend of September 27, when an airborne tsunami was dumped on Florida, the Carolinas, and some parts of Tennessee. The Appalachians and Western South Carolina were especially hard hit. Some hurricanes can be ridden out, but the people caught in Helene have either died or are currently at extreme risk of dying from lack of food, lack of clean water, crazed looters, or if all else fails, drowning.

I Heart Conspiracy Theories

Rumors are flying about that the Great Flood of 2024, a.k.a. Katrina on Steroids, may have been geo-engineered. If you'll don a tinfoil hat with me, it is highly coincidental that this disaster happened near a defunct lithium mine that will likely be quietly bought once the rubble stops bouncing/sinking. It's also rather funny that Helene happened in election season and specifically concentrated itself in Trump-supporting places where it is more common to see a pickup truck than a Tesla. Another uncanny coincidence is the mainstream media's scanty coverage of the disaster, placing it somewhere behind Gaza and Ukraine. You may know about Sean "Diddy" Combs gay rage and his immense dildo and baby oil collections, but I'll bet you did not know the Biden government deployed 700 National Guardsmen to Kuwait the same weekend the people of Asheville, NC waited for rescuers that never arrived. Only on TikTok and Twitter could we see them as they floated down the flooded street on air mattresses and sinking, crumbling roofs through electrified water.

As usual, there was nothing you or I could do, or that is how it seemed. Our literally senile leaders who cannot manage to get through a single coherent sentence of a speech they did not write aren't about to grow the capacity to handle the nation's problems. A flood of a different sort inundates the country, bringing with it entire new nations of child traffickers along with a stupid way of life that does not deserve to exist. Meanwhile, the elite salary classes in my neck of the woods think that now is an appropriate time to go on tropical vacations that cost more than the full purchase price of my suburban house. In their clueless bubble, it seems like a good idea to construct hulking luxury homes with multiple $12,000 range tops and outdoor patio setups that dwarf the costs of sending a young adult to college. They're not worried. I guesstimate that this sort of unearned wealth-wallowing will earn them multi-lifetime stints earning it back, fair and square, and that's why you'll always find me running for the nearest exit when unearned wealth beckons in my direction. But what do I know... I could be wrong!

I feel helpless in the face of my fellow humans suffering and I do not like to feel helpless. I feel grateful and guilty for my own comparative privilege, sitting here well-fed in my dry room. I wish it was different, therefore I pray. When I was atheist, I dismissed prayer as useless. Prayer was a way to think of oneself as virtuous and helpful while remaining a couch potato.

Those Angry Atheists

Atheists inherently believe they are the smartest beings on Earth. A refusal to believe in God is often a statement of inherent intellectual superiority. To the atheist, the only type of being that can exist must by default be perceptible by human senses. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no human to see and hear it, the tree did not exist. I once suffered through an atheist's animated speculation about the end of time. The hypothesis, presented as a theory, included a scenario where humans learned to jump universes in order to escape the human race going extinct. It is blackly hilarious how hard atheists cling to human incarnation, especially considering how many of them seem to hate this world and the people in it.

As the self-proclaimed smartest beings in the Universe, atheists insist no being could possibly have the power to alleviate suffering, because if it did, it would not have created suffering to begin with. The notion that Meatworld may be a particularly brutal set of tests meant to beat lead into gold terrifies them. He won't admit it, but the alchemical prospect of being tested for his character causes the atheist to shrink from the yawning abyss he thought he was proud to surf.

Part of Meatworld's hideous testing process seems to involve individual choices of what to do and how to act when others are suffering. As the Rush song goes, by not choosing, you still have made a choice. You and I cannot help by physically going down to flooded areas unless we can fly helicopters. If not, we merely add ourselves to the hungry and waterlogged.

Here Come the Celebrity Shills

Donating money -- well, you have to be careful. I am seeing reports of people clearing dangerous roads, taking each other in, and sharing what little they have while church doors remain locked. Christ consciousness is apparently alive and well, just not among Christian priests, pastors, or reverends. If there are any churches that are honest down there, maybe I will donate to them. The Red Cross proved itself to be a disaster just like Katrina where it was enlisted to "help". Red Cross helped itself to people's donations just like Hillary Clinton (allegedly) helped herself in Haiti.

Soon, multi-millionaire and billionaire celebrities will take a breather from adrenochrome partying to shill for disaster donations. Never will it occur to them not to ask for money from a population that can barely afford groceries, let alone a single family home. Never will it cross a celebrity's Monarch-split mind that true charity starts at home.

If going to Western South Carolina will not help and if monetary donations merely trickle up towards that same elite class that may have geoengineered the hurricane, what should we do?

We pray. Prayer is an act of trust. To pray is to imply deference to beings who are smarter, kinder, and better than humans. I like to generally call these beings Divine or The Divine. Calling these mysterious mentors does not always yield perceptible, understandable results. God works in mysterious ways. Meatworld sucks and the truth is sometimes nothing can stop it from sucking in the way it is going to suck. By praying, we may not be able to re-orient the world, but we can re-orient ourselves. I guess in this way, the atheist condemnation of prayer as selfish is correct. Prayer is an act of changing the self when it is sincere. Unfortunately, a great deal of prayer is not sincere, especially in its Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim forms. When prayer is one-sided and makes a laundry list of ways God is supposed to act from a badly-remembered dogma, it quickly turns septic. Sincere prayer rests in the acknowledgement of the Divine as superior, despite the Divine not materializing and outright stating its superiority. Asking such a being for help does not guarantee help. Dismissing the Divine ecosystem for your own narrow concept of what the Divine is supposed to entail according to a book or a powerful human being is not prayer, because prayer is a two-way street.

The genius of prayer lies in Hermes Trismegistus's old statement "as above, so below." If you orient yourself towards helpful beings by acting like a mini-helpful being in your mundane life, you build an astral pyramid that joins to those who also want peace and prosperity for all humans. The small reflects and refracts the large; the large reflects and refracts the small. For instance, if you want to encourage people to heal from addictions, you must embody sanity and temperance in everyday life. If you want to lead others to spirituality, it makes no sense to compel friends or family members into your particular church. What does make sense is to live a life according to the Word and to embody gratitude, which soon draws people to you like honey.

When we earnestly pray to higher beings, we invite their grateful, harmonious, balanced spirits into our lives. We grow into the only kind of force that can topple the opposition. Consider the opposition has nearly all of the money and power. When we lust after their money and power, hoping to kick them down where they belong so we can take it, we become them because we become just like them. When you pray and wish well for your fellow human beings, it makes you into the kind of person who wishes to raise up the whole rather than the sort who hopes to climb a ladder built of the corpses of the defeated. When you choose to pray, it is a choice to become better than you were yesterday, if only by the slightest bit. When you choose to live simply even when you have the choice of taking unearned wealth, it matters, because you save a group of people for earning your wealth for you.

So please send prayers to the deity or deities (especially Earth goddesses) of your choice for Helene's victims. May they have help from gods, angels, and saints. Every little bit counts.

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

Happy Fall Equinox! Here in northern Illinois we were blessed by Hera with relief from a weeks-long drought in the form of cool, gentle rain. I was planning a darker essay talking about the sorry state of medicine this week but I'm just not feeling it, so instead, I wanted to share about some of my better decisions in the arena of minimalism. I am a natural contrarian, so this list is going to be followed in the near future by a list of 50 Things I Refuse To Do Without or something along those lines.

For now, this is a list of things I have cut out of my life sans regret.   The suggestions below are not to be taken as any kind of gospel. Do your own thing, by all means. This is just how I do it. If you have things you have cut out of your life with good results, I would be delighted to hear about it in the comments. As usual, my only request is that profanity be kept to nothing worse than "bitch".

1. Television

One of the best decisions I ever made was to get rid of the TV two decades ago. I was living in a two bedroom apartment when I heard a bunch of squawking birds and yelling from the other room, a scuffle, and gunshot noises. If you guessed Duck Dynasty, you guessed correctly. I was paying the cable bill at the time and I put my foot down and said I would no longer be paying for it. To anyone who wants to be a writer, musician, parent, or productive person in general: get rid of the TV. NOW.

2. Video games

Yeah, this is going to hit a lot of people where they live but there is no greater time and mental energy suck than a video game. The saddest thing I have ever seen is the current crowd of children who barely spend any time outside in unstructured play but who know every obscure Roblox horror game down to its theme song. When my own vocal rendition of I Am Stretched on Your Grave was used for a popular Skyrim mod, I had no clue for several years because I don't play video games, nor do I follow any of that stuff.

3. Multiple handbags

Why anyone needs more than one handbag or tote is beyond me. Especially ludicrous is Marie Kondo's suggestion that one must empty the entire contents of the bag and lay it all out (presumably in a drawer?) to allow the handbag to rest. Handbags are particularly difficult to store because they are so floppy. Honestly, carrying a handbag is annoying and I would like to figure out how to avoid carrying one altogether.

4. Multiple winter coats

Unless you are some kind of professional snow sportsperson, I don't know why a second coat would be necessary. The one exception I can find here would be a dress coat in addition to a more practical cold-weather coat.

5. Rain slicker

I don't own one. Maybe if I had a job downtown or had to walk to school, I would.

6. New clothes

80% of my wardrobe is thrifted and the other 20% is underwear, socks, or gifts from family. I also refuse to buy brand name clothes or accessories with obvious logos. I am far too cool to be anyone's free advertisement.

7. High maintenance clothing, including anything white, pastel, or dry clean only

Maybe someday I will wear white if I am guaranteed not to have to eat or sweat. Wearing white is a pain in the ass. Also, I am tired of shoes that are too precious to walk anywhere in. I can walk in heels but I no longer care to do it. I have made my peace with being short.

8. Suitcases and travel in general

One of the hidden perks about lower middle class life is not being expected to travel. Every time I have traveled, I have not felt rested during or afterwards. I would much rather stay home. I am not fond of long drives or plane rides and I have enough going on inside my head not to need extra stimulation. Travel, especially plane travel, is terrible for the environment. It costs far too much, it is inconvenient, and personally I find most of it to be boring. I do not own a suitcase. The last time I got on a plane was 20 years ago.

9. Paper bills

Paper bills are annoying. I would rather pay stuff online despite the security risk.

10. Breakfast

I have never liked breakfast. Wolfing down a meal within an hour of getting out of bed does not appeal to me and often makes me nauseous. I did not like breakfast as a child, teen, or collegiate, yet I ate it every day because it was either that or starve until noon/1pm. Nowadays, I never eat it and I don't eat cereal, oatmeal, or cream of wheat at all because I associate them with bad memories.

11. Extra knives

Who buys all of these damn knives? I own one kitchen knife and one paring knife. They are all I need. My husband bought a ceramic knife and a serrated knife. So four knives sum total not including butter knives.

12. Extra flatware

I don't entertain more than two guests at a time -- my house is very small. There is no way that I need a ton of flatware. If I had my way, I would own only two spoons, two forks, and two butter knives. I own more than that because my husband would complain. Nevertheless, if we only had two of each, there would never be a bunch of forks, knives, and spoons waiting to be washed or left in the sink rack because they would always be immediately washed and put away after each use. Or at least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

13. Extra plates

I have one large plate and four small ones. That is it. Two of the small plates are sushi plates. My husband has four or five microwave plates that I don't use.

14. Bottled water

Another one of the best decisions I have ever made was buying a Berkee water filter. Once again, there was a situation where I was paying for those giant bottles of water and hauling them around. It sucked. Berkee is one of the best water filters money can buy. It paid for itself many times over. They are not sponsoring me but they are welcome to do so.

15. Old ass food

Just get rid of it. Old food brings foul etheric energy into the kitchen. If there is any doubt or question, into the compost pile it goes. Feed the possums, skunks, and raccoons. They happily take what you reject. Condiments that are a year old need to go. The only thing I keep over a year is canned tomato paste and sauce, coconut milk, sugar, salt, and pasta.

16. Microwaves

Speaking of bad energy, microwaves devitalize the etheric both in and around the food they cook. I cannot prove that microwaved food is bad, but this is my sincere belief. My husband has a microwave that I do not use. I prefer to reheat things in the air fryer or on the stovetop.

17. Bought flowers

They are lovely but there is no way I can afford to buy them. Every now and then, my husband or my students buy me flowers. If I get roses, once the blooms fade and droop, I cut them off and at least try to propagate them from the stems.

18. Food delivery, including pizza

There's no way I can afford to do this, plus if some person is going to come all the way to my house I am going to tip them handsomely.

19. Fancy cookbooks and recipe

Fancy cookbooks piss me off because they presume I have infinite leisure time and secondly that I would spend that leisure time crafting exquisite meals with exotic ingredients.

20. Scent diffusers

These inevitably either dry up, leaving a thickened goo at the bottom or they get knocked over and spill scented oil over the toilet or sink. If you want to get rid of the crap smell, keep a box of matches in the bathroom so you can light a few matches when you've had a debacle over the throne.

21. Bathroom scale

I don't need to know my weight. I can see when I am out of shape and if I did work on building more muscle as I should, I would weigh the same because muscle weighs more than fat. Weighing is a toxic practice unless you are a professional wrestler or a doctor.

22. Curling iron

I have giant hair. When I want to enhance my natural waves, I use my straightening iron to do it. There are online tutorials for this.

23. Blow dryer

If I want a blowout, I will go out and get one. I wash my hair once every two days and I wrap it in a towel. Then I wrap it in another towel to sleep in. It is mostly dry by morning.

24. Shave cream

I am lucky that I do not have to shave my legs. Most likely this is due to my half-Asian genetics. I do have to shave other parts and my husband shaves too. We both discovered hair conditioner works far better than shave cream. Maybe it works because it is NOT foamy. I don't know, It does work.

25. Most cleaning products

Oddly enough, Windex and glass cleaners like it make the cut. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was right about Windex. Windex is good for everything. It is the only thing that cuts through bathtub ring. Other than Windex, most cleaners aren't all that necessary. I prefer to use a mixture of white vinegar and water in a spray bottle for almost everything else. I even spray my wet hair down with it after washing it as a leave in conditioner.

26. Air fresheners

Most of them are toxic and they smell fake as hell. For one, don't bother trying to freshen air in a dirty or dusty room -- that's like wearing cologne when what you really need to do is take a shower. I vastly prefer the smell of incense. Burned often enough, good incense leaves a lovely, subtle smell.

27. A mop

I don't own one. I have hardwood floors and mopping would ruin them. I prefer my broom, vacuum, and Swiffer, which is basically a cloth on a broomstick.

28. Iron and ironing board

Who has time to iron anymore? My husband works from home and I have the good sense not to buy 100% cotton or linen. If something needs to be un-wrinkled, there are handheld clothes steamers that cost 20-30 dollars that work better anyway.

29. Pet chew repellent

Body spray works far better and smells better too.

30. Free standing cat trees

I gave away two of them once my husband built climbing shelves and a built-in PVC cat tree.

31. Uncovered litter boxes

Kitties miss. An uncovered litter box resulted in some nasty cat pee smells because it soaked into the floor. Luckily my cats are fine with their enclosed litter boxes.

32. Craft supplies

I am done with crafting -- I don't have time because of all the other stuff I do: music, writing, teaching. Maybe in my future lives I will have time for handicrafts. I have thrown in the towel for this incarnation.

33. Most makeup

Makeup is for younger women than me. I wear it but I don't go far beyond the "enhanced natural" look. I have gotten rid of the creative eyeshadow colors, the bright lipsticks, false eyelashes, and contour. I don't have time for it for the same reason as the whole handicraft issue above.

34. Hair spray

I use simple syrup, which is sugar melted in water. I mix in some eucalyptus oil for scent and to preserve it and store the spray bottle in the fridge. Hairspray is stupid expensive.

35. Botox, fillers, and other anti-aging treatments

Every person who gets this stuff ends up looking like an uncanny freak at some point. I would much rather look like Betty White than Jane Fonda.

36. Tights

Stretch pants with socks are better than tights.

37. A couch

I don't have one, there is no space in my house for it. I have thrifted bench storage ottomans with blankets on them. I actually wish I had room for a couch.

38. Blinds

Gods, I HATE blinds! Cats destroy them in five minutes. Blinds deserve it for being so damn ugly. Blinds turn every room into a florescent lit office from the worst part of 1993.

39. Plants and plant pots

You can thrift almost any plant from online plant groups or get it for free. Any container can be transformed into a plant pot by drilling holes in the bottom. If the container is ugly, house it in another container or cover it with paint, rope, or whatever. As for the plants themselves, experiment! Onions, potatoes, and lettuce can be regrown into new plants. I have several lemon trees I started years ago from grocery store lemons with seeds in them. Don't buy, re-use and propagate!

40. Cacti

I have no luck with cacti.

41. Haircuts and dye jobs

Both of these are like taking money and flushing it down the toilet. I cut my mom's short, fine hair every few weeks and for about a decade before my father died, I cut his hair and trimmed his eyebrow hair. As for my own hair, I do the wolf cut, also known as the butterfly cut, which involves putting hair into multiple ponytails and always bears good results. My hair is going gray and there is no way I am going to try to cover it.

42. Dentist appointments, including routine cleanings

Dentistry is a racket. Oral health comes from the inside, not from someone poking and prodding molars. Teeth are bones. They can be regenerated. I pack the cavity-prone parts of my teeth every night with the contents of a calcium pill. This can also be done with calcium powder. If my teeth start hurting, it means my diet needs to improve and that I need to supplement with bromelain, preferably in the form of fresh pineapple. All the brushing, flossing, and cavity-filing in the world cannot stand in for a clean diet and moderate exercise. My teeth have always been at their worst when I was seeing a dentist on the regular and not paying attention to my diet.

43. Doctors

I don't trust any of them as far as I can throw them. If I get sick and die, so be it. I'm not afraid of death. The only way I see will ever see a doctor is if I break my arm or some other form of triage.

44. Health insurance

I cannot afford it and I don't want it. It is a racket. If I sicken and die, oh well.

45. Eye doctors

I get my glasses from an old prescription with Zenni. I deliberately wear a weaker, non-bifocal prescription than I allegedly need to strengthen my eyesight. I only use my strong glasses when I have to drive at night.

46. Fitness clubs

If it cannot be achieved without equipment via natural bodily resistance, like squats or pushups, I don't want to mess with it. Fitness clubs make money by people who never go, and unfortunately I have always been one of those.

47. Watches

I have not worn a watch since I was 20. The last thing I want is a watch that is essentially a mini-cell phone. It's just another status symbol that is easily stolen.

48. Electronic tablets and e-readers

I may end up getting one for sheet music but for the time being, no thanks.

49. Land line

As long as I have to have a cell phone, I won't have another line that needs to be paid for as well.

50. Perfectionism

I am so over it! The worst kind of perfectionism is when you see yourself as closer to perfect than other people. I don't do that anymore -- what is right for me is not right for someone else, nor should it ever be. You do you, I'll do me, and we will both be as imperfect as the gods will allow!

In the study of music, there is the concept of tonic or the root note of every scale, chord, and tune, whether it is a two bar ad jingle or a symphonic poem. When I talk about tonic to my music students, I tell them to think of tonic as the home base of the scale, song, or sonata. Tonic is the star of the show: if the song is a sports team, then tonic is the captain. If the song is a movie, then tonic is the title character. Tonic is the most important component in every piece of music with only one exception: atonalism. Atonalism deliberately avoids tonic and perhaps that is the reason it is garbage and always has the same menacing, clangy, abhorrent vibe no matter what the instrumentation or ostensible style of the work. Tonic is the center of any song's universe and the sun to its planetary system. It is that important. When I ask any given student out of the blue "What is tonic of C?" they often don't know because the public school system teaches them to believe every question posed by an adult is either indirect or a trick. Tonic of C is C -- it's an answer that is stated within the question. To get them to remember what tonic is and how important it is, I ask them who is tonic of themselves. Meaning, Kimberly Steele is tonic of Kimberly Steele and you, dear reader, are tonic of yourself. I ask the students who gets them up in the morning, and if they say "my mom" or "the alarm clock" I disagree and inform them that they and they alone get themselves up in the morning. They are tonic of themselves and ultimately the decision to get up, to get dressed, to insert food in mouth and chew and swallow, etc. is solely theirs. We are all autonomous beings, and though some of us enjoy much greater freedoms than others, in the end, nobody can force you to be. That is what makes the human will so dangerous.

There are three facets to healing an addiction. If any one of these three factors are not addressed, and most of the time they are not addressed at all, the addict will have the odds of a snowball in Death Valley in July of staying clean. The three factors that must be present to heal an addiction are these:

1) The addict must have the sincere desire to live without addiction
2) Strength must be built more than weakness is defeated
3) Etheric depletion and starvation must be recognized and treated

1) The addict must have the sincere desire to live without addiction

Any addict who is going to recover has to sincerely want to recover, full stop. An addict who refuses to see she has a problem is never going to solve the problem. I am from Gen X. I grew up with dozens of friends who had addictive behaviors. To this day, they still have those behaviors because they have never had the honest, genuine desire to change them. Don't confuse whining with genuine desire for change. Humans love to whine and addicts are often top tier whiners. Unfortunately, whining does not alleviate pain; it only spreads it like an infectious germ. I have known many addicts who enjoyed whining nearly as much as whatever group of substances or negative behaviors represented their addiction. Don't believe the hype!

Addiction and infection have a great deal in common. All of the addicts I have known were literally and metaphorically infected with more than the usual load of bugs. Addicts are infected and the will of an infection is to spread. Gossips want you to be fascinated by the same petty dramas that hold them in thrall. Drunks want you to have another round. Everybody must get stoned, according to potheads. Addiction takes many forms: rage addicts will do anything and everything to enrage others, and when they are ignored, it is far worse for them than being physically fought and getting their butts kicked. Addiction wants polarity and it wants reaction -- when it is ignored, it cannot spread.

I have walked away from addicts when it became abundantly clear they loved their addictions more than they could love me or anyone else. As painful as it is, I suggest you do the same. I think we must leave addicts out in the cold when they clearly demonstrate through actions and not words that they do not want to be helped. The complications arrive, of course, when you feel responsible for the addict or when you feel it is somehow your fault he or she became an addict. No matter how the addict became an addict, please keep in mind we are all tonic of ourselves and the devil on our left shoulder has the same amount of influence as the angel on our right shoulder. If the addict only wants the kind of enabling help that perpetuates her disease -- I know one addict whose father bought her a house and car and she still ended up dead in a gutter -- in my opinion, the only choice is to walk away and cut and clear her from your life.

When the addict truly wants to stop for good and avoid whatever seedy banquet of consequences addiction has in store for him, you will know. You will not have to stage an intervention or walk in on some grotesque scene of self-destruction. The addict will show up at your door and it won't be to debase himself for cash or to steal from you when you go to the bathroom. He will be repentant, humble, and genuine. He will be ready to change. Until that happens, I don't suggest helping addicts at all. Again, if you had a large part in creating the addiction, for example let's say you were an indulgent, absentee parent, well shame on you, but there isn't much you can do about that now outside of examining your issues in discursive meditation. Sometimes the only thing you can do is to fashion yourself into the kind of role model you should have been years ago.

2) Strength must be built more than weakness is defeated

For the addicts willing to put in the daily work of overcoming addiction, the strategy to heal them needs to be one of restoration and rejuvenation and not amputation and prosthesis. The trouble with modern allopathic medicine is that it takes the latter approach. Modern medicine is not medicine. It is a racket of trickery and obfuscation haphazardly designed to squeeze desperate and misguided people for their wealth. When modern medicine tries to heal addiction, it immediately jumps to amputation or drugs as a strategy just as it does with routine illnesses such as cancer or anxiety disorder. In the case of cancer, slash and burn is not just a method of clearing rainforest for cattle grazing -- it is the primary way allopaths attempt to bring cancer patients to wellness. It is tragicomic in its naivete and misunderstanding of the way nature actually works. In the case of anxiety disorder, look into benzodiapene withdrawal if you're in the mood for horror stories to keep you awake at night.

Healing seldom involves the removal of a failing organ or limb or burning out what "doesn't belong", that's triage. Healing is the much slower process of building up the patient's strengths across the planes by support, work, therapy, and encouragement. Eventually, the patient's strengths defeat her weaknesses by their naturally accumulated force. Ozempic will never cure diabetes or obesity because it is the drug form of stomach amputation (otherwise known as gastric bypass surgery). Both work by disabling the working digestive system so it cannot do its work, treating nature as the enemy instead of the weak will of the tonic self within.

People used to go to bucolic retreats in the country to heal their ailments, hence the old tradition known as "taking the waters" at a beautiful lake or hot spring. Being surrounded by natural beauty is healing and encouraging. Sunlight and fresh, clean, flowing water are healing and encouraging. Triage is fine and good, but it is not healing. Healing must take place in a pleasant and gentle environment with increasing tests of strength. The soon-not-to-be-addict who is willing to work towards healing needs to have his best habits, hobbies, and interests buttressed while negative ones are eschewed and ignored. For instance, if the recovering addict was the sort who liked to read before the addiction took over, her healing should involve being surrounded by books. She should go to the library at least once a week. If the recovering addict has an affinity for dogs, we should arrange for him to spend time training or caring for dogs. If she is a workaholic, we need to arrange meaningful, fulfilling work for her, even if it means she will spend the rest of her existence carrying buckets of water uphill in a Buddhist nunnery.

Addicts are often encouraged or forced to talk it out with a psychiatrist, psychologist, or group of addiction sufferers in regular meetings. I don't know if this is helpful. When I voluntarily had myself hospitalized for depression in my teens, the psych ward herded us into regular venting meetings where we aired our sob stories in an effort to get to the bottom of our melancholy. For thousands of dollars per week, it seemed very odd to be engaging in an emotional circle jerk with a group of near-strangers. The reality show had yet to be invented when I went through the psych ward but that is exactly what it felt like. If I had an addiction problem, I don't think going to meetings would be the way out for me. Of course I could be wrong and I hope I never find out.

Again, if the will of the addict is not driving the recovery process, all efforts are useless and should be abandoned along with the addict. Yes, I am a hard ass and abandoning an addict to die from being shut out is cruel. I have also always been ahead of my time in the most unfortunate sense of the term. In civilizations in the future, I am confident that the kind of addiction that is routinely tolerated now will be grounds for expulsion into the harsh wilderness. Society's resources will not be wasted on futile people. Just as infanticide used to be a brutal reality in lands where the winters were hard and too many mouths to feed meant starvation for all, unrepentant addicts will receive as little mercy as Icelandic utburds.

3) Etheric depletion and starvation must be recognized and treated

Etheric depletion is typically the root cause of most addictions. It follows that we must address the etheric plane if we are to have any hope of helping addicts climb out of their Earthen hellholes. Addicts have the feeblest etheric bodies of any mortal being, and that is truly saying something in this era of endemic etheric starvation. Addicts often act like vampires for this very reason, stealing and pilfering the actual and etheric wealth of others in order to survive. It is telling how many addicts treat their surroundings: trashing their rooms, apartments, and houses and leaving wakes of visual and etheric chaos. Their outside state is the same as their inside state: disorder.

The very first thing I would have a recovering addict do is to make the bed immediately after rising from it, no matter how badly he or she slept. I would then instruct them to thank the bed for the comfort it provided or at least tried to provide. Addicts suffer from dulled etheric senses -- I have yet to see an addict who had any reliable psychic ability or the capacity to talk to land spirits. By learning to talk to their mundane environments, the recovering addict can begin to sense what she was missing and what most modern people long for and cannot name: a connection to the world around them. There is also the power of gratitude to heal. By tasking the recovering addict to recognize and respond gratefully to simple, taken-for-granted objects such as beds, pillows, blankets, and sleeping quarters, we introduce her to the subtle language of cooperation that links every one of us to the pulse of the Earth itself. Addicts need to clean up their acts in every way, and if this orderliness starts on the physical plane by tidying the bed, so be it.

Addicts must have a daily ritual of eating at least two moderately portioned, home-cooked meals a day. Food is the most obvious way of healing the gut, which is the main organ where we process and sense etheric energy, hence the term "gut feeling". Cooking is another form of etheric healing, and any recovering addict who has any talent at all for cooking should be encouraged to cook.

Recovering addicts, more than anyone else, should spend time with trees. Whether you hug a tree, sit down under it, or walk in the woods, it becomes clear that trees and people have a symbiotic relationship that goes far beyond the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide. Every recovering addict should spend daily time with trees with the goal of learning to converse with them. Trees restore etheric polarity to humans and vice a versa. This is a phenomenon a human can only know by bonding with trees in real life.

Going back to the idea of building strength above and beyond tearing down weakness, daily exercise is essential to recovery. The tiniest amount of exercise, such as five minutes of chair yoga, is better than none at all. The best kind of therapy combines exercise with good habits and beneficial hobbies such as planting a garden.

Massage has amazing benefits for the etheric body. Many addicts become dependent upon drugs for pain relief, and often pain can only be relieved by treating the etheric body. Massage is often called "energy work" because it moves and transforms pain energy into healing energy. I believe the reason this happens is because the polarity of the masseuse's etheric body combines with the etheric energy of the person on the table and changes the pattern of flow into more benevolent shapes.

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break.

My next planned break is the week of Saturday, September 21.

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

I have a fairly freakish resistance to addiction, but even I succumb to it sometimes, usually in the form of scrolling mindlessly through social media feeds late at night or overeating.

The Plutonian Age brought extreme oil wealth, a glut of cheap food that increased world population to 8 billion, etheric starvation for all, astral sepsis, and profound spiritual retardation. We live in a Dark Age of the soul. Technological advancements have put humans into orbit and onto the moon. The internet is nearly everywhere. Meanwhile, humans have never been more blockaded from the source that created the world.

The discovery of Pluto ushered in an age of severe dependence upon material goodies and unearned wealth via petroleum "slaves". On this very day, there are humans on this Earth whose wealth dwarfs the paltry fortunes of Kublai Khan and King Solomon. Even a peon like me enjoys luxuries that Roman emperors never possessed: chocolate covered strawberries in the middle of winter spring readily to mind; so does air conditioning and my car.

The trouble with being born and raised where we have never had to grow or own food or chop our own firewood is that most of us take luxuries for granted. Compounding the problem is the twin predicaments of etheric starvation and astral sepsis, the Phobos and Deimos of our time.

Etheric Starvation

I have talked about etheric starvation a few times. I keep talking about it because we are all soaking in it; it is the most common condition of our time. The etheric is not a separate realm, nor are any of the other subtle planes. Instead, it is an unseen layer that overlays and infuses material existence. The etheric is the plane of energy. This energy is also called magnetism, the animus, orgone, vibes, chi, ki, and prana. The etheric is the energy of life itself: without it, there is no weather, fire, or gravity. As you can guess, it is pretty important.

If you've ever kept lettuce too long in the fridge, the etheric dimension of lettuce is what gives it freshness and perkiness. As the lettuce is forgotten to mold and mildew, its etheric vitality departs and the new energy of infection and decay sets in. Within a few weeks, the lettuce takes on a new form due to this shift in the etheric: it becomes a moldy, slimy mess.

The etheric plane is easily corrupted. Ugly shapes do the job with brutal efficiency. Modern, blocky buildings built out of human scale, fields of concrete, mini mall hellscapes, and fantastically ugly suburban McMansions have a deleterious effect on etheric energy flows.

Plastics in general give off bad energy from creation to destruction. There is no way of getting away from plastics in our modern world no matter where you live: microplastics have been found in Antarctic snow. Air itself is a medium for plastic pollution. EMFs or electromagnetic frequencies are another etheric scourge. They strip the etheric plane of its vitality like a perpetual acid bath. Steel and other forms of iron slice and dice the etheric in the form of cars, trucks, and airplanes. We humans gained the convenience of air travel and gave away ever feeling truly nourished or well-rested from cradle to grave.

Astral Sepsis

The astral plane is one level more subtle than the etheric. Like the etheric, it overlays and infuses everything and is not a separate place anyone goes. Nevertheless, the astral is more difficult to understand than the etheric because it is subtle. Like water, the astral is both within us (it is the world of images) and part of the collective. You are made of mostly water. Water also exists in the lake, in the air, and in your electric teakettle. Yes, I have one of those despite being 100% American. The astral is always here and now. Your imagination -- the very one that enables you to turn a collection of written symbols known as letters and words into meaningful concepts, is a wholly astral plane phenomenon.

Thanks in part to constant, endemic etheric starvation and never being able to feel truly nourished or well-rested, most people have trouble with astral sepsis, present company included. Despite being raised in a genteel, upper middle class suburb by loving, good parents and being trained and graduated from the school of Midwestern Nice, I have thoughts that would offend those who believe they cannot be offended and terrify those who believe they cannot be frightened. I don't share these thoughts for the most part. There is enough darkness in the world without me having to add mine.

In my own case, I blame a great deal of my own astral sepsis upon the TV and movies I grew up watching. Those with normal brains who watched the same shows and movies didn't twist the material into violent and abhorrent shapes, but I did. I largely stopped watching TV and movies about 20 years ago, though I still watch enough rom coms and musicals with my mother on the weekends to qualify as semi-Hollywood literate. Visual media is inherently poisonous on the astral plane, and just as some people become sicker than others when they subsist upon junk food, some people become sicker than others when exposed to trashy visual media.

Porn-Addled Apes

Porn is pure astral poison. It is more of a smoking gun in the current divorce crisis than the inability of the middle class to afford housing, and that is truly saying something. Porn and its close cousin, video games, create an astral dependence that mainly afflicts the male of the species. I need not describe how countless men are drawn into porn, but I will anyway. Maybe your origin story is different. A kid and his little buddy figures out how to get past Stepdad's passwords mainly for laughs and curiosity. Before they hit puberty, they dive into a self-pleasuring dopamine habit. With every year, the habit requires ever more extreme images to keep the juices flowing.

In the era of glossy magazines and VHS tapes, women were already unable to compete with the airbrushed hotties beckoning from the Victoria's Secret catalogue cover. Now we girls have to keep up with underage AI-enhanced bestiality. It is no wonder so many have chosen to drop out of the competition. The "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" aspect of dating doesn't exactly inspire womankind to search for the rare straight male who eschews porn for the real thing. He's the damn unicorn!

In the Ogham (a Celtic form of runes) there is a symbol that looks like an X with a vertical line through it known as Koad. I have named this symbol Confluence because it looks like the intersection of three roads. When I read Ogham, Koad symbolizes a situation that is both self-created and the natural result of factors out of anyone's control.

When we fall prey to addiction, to some degree it is our own fault and to some degree it is due to what we cannot help, such as genetics or environment. As I tell anyone who draws Koad when I read for them, it is the querent's job to figure out the factors he can improve. The others can only be avoided, ameliorated, or ignored most of the time.

None of us can help the current milieu of etheric starvation and astral sepsis. Anyone who thinks voting in a new set of leaders or farting off to live in a Unabomber-inspired doomstead will help is an idiot. The only thing we can change is the way we react to crappy circumstances, to badly paraphrase Marcus Aurelius.

Next week, I will talk about what we can do to help the addict in our life, even if that addict is staring us down in the mirror.

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break.

My next planned break is the week of Saturday, September 21.

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

We live in a time where the concept of magic has become foreign and remote. Magic, the materialists claim, is a figment of the imagination. It is confined to mind tricks. Any time it works, it must be a coincidence put forth in a random, chaotic universe. The most bothersome statement to the devout atheist is "As above, so below", because that bon mot, originally written by Hermes Trismegistus, implies an ordered universe where God the highest is reflected in everything. It also implies there are beings capable of understanding it or at least figuring out a small part of it. The atheist would like to believe he or she sees it all, because only what is obvious is allowed to be truth. Magic must therefore be relegated to the denizens of make believe worlds. Magic could not possibly be in everything and all around us at all times: that would mean too much is possible and it would also mean that everything has sentience. Nope: magic must conform to Harry Potter expectations. "If it ain't levitating brooms and bastardized Latin, it ain't magic!" cries the atheist. All that is not plain as the nose on my face and easily grokked by materialism-indoctrinated humans is simply not magical -- this is what the Scientism believers claim.

Yet anyone who has given the study of Western magic more than a cursory once-over knows there is more to magic than meets Harry Potter's bespectacled eye. For when you open yourself to the possibility that perhaps neither you nor any human will ever be the smartest being in any given room, a transformation occurs. You begin to listen instead of constantly gibbering about your own expectations and needs. If you do enough occult work (none of which includes killing animals, doing drugs, or chanting in retarded Latin) you may even become so good at listening, a message from better beings than you might get through your thick skull. You might find out these beings have been trying to get a message through your thick skull this whole time.

Mundane Magic

The magical is everyday and every day is magical. Mundane means "before the temple". It is no surprise that we have come to see our entire lives as one long, mundane slog of Eat, Work, Sleep, Die. There are large forces and astral pyramids intent on keeping as many humans as possible in a materialistic trance from cradle to grave. The cleverest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he does not exist. But the mundane is the magical. Magic is the inception, process, and reverberation of intention. It is not about Doing What Thou Wilt because Do What Thou Wilt is a grandiose assumption that human will comprises the whole (of the Law). Instead, human will is a drop in the ocean of wills. As mere drops in the Ocean of Intention, we humans would do far better to work with natural forces instead of the alternative. Go with the flow, baby!

If scient~~ism~~ists still believed in actual science and observed the world around them like they did in the old days, they might notice the world as we know it is ruled by seasons. As above, so below being what it is, we can presume the great is reflected in the small. Just as there are seasons that play out over the grand arcs of millennia, there are seasons in the year and seasons of the week. It is the seasons of the week I want to look at in this moment and how to work with them in daily, mundane life.

Astrological Rulers of the Day: Timing Really is Everything

Each day is ruled by two main factors: planetary influence and status of the moon. Though there are smaller divisions of gradation known as planetary hours, I am going to omit them for the time being to keep it simple and to the point. Each day has its own planetary ruler. "Planet" is a generic term for celestial body in astrology. In order to court beneficial planetary influence, we can make a daily study and devotion of our own mundane activities by tuning them to the planet of the day. By this form of subtle adjustment, we become human radios, combing through the noisy static so we can find the good music and vibe to it.

The second factor is lunar status. Is the moon waxing or waning? The moon rules water and tides. Humans are mostly made of water, and that means we are profoundly affected by the moon whether we realize it or not. When the moon is waxing, it is a good time for starting new projects, expanding influence, and doing active work. A waning moon is better for resolutions, endings, tamping down energy, and doing quiet, secretive work.

MONDAY

Monday is ruled by the moon, hence the Mon- prefix. The moon is generally passive and receptive. Laundry is the most basic and passive of tasks. It is tailor made for Mondays because it involves a great deal of water. Another lunar aspect of laundry: it involves repetitive sorting and patience. Sorting, cycling, patience, and repetition are lunar. Like the waves of the ocean itself, they ebb, flow, and repeat ad infinitum. If it is repetitive and requires a chill attitude, maybe save it for Monday. Monday is my preferred day for walking meditation.

TUESDAY

Tuesday, ruled by Mars/Aries, is fiery and energetic. Tuesday is well suited to intense physical activity, strength building exercise, and reconnaissance of old skills via the defeat of one's own mental weakness. Tuesday is a day for facing your own regrets, debilities, and mea culpas, gritting your teeth, and overcoming them with stern determination. Invoke the fire necessary to torch your own bull**t on Tuesdays. Tuesday is excellent for take-no-prisoners cleanouts, especially of the type that involves heavy physical exertion. It is a great day to begin new, positive habits that require willpower to maintain.

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday is ruled by Hermes/Mercury. It is a day to contemplate, analyze, and communicate. Hermes is the god of communication and commerce. When you need to add power to your own written words, remember Wednesday is the premier day for writing and language. Buying and selling are also easier on Wednesday. Shopping online or offline, publishing on the internet or in paper, and engaging in discourse are a little easier and more productive on Wednesday. If you are lucky enough to be near a good library, Wednesday is the perfect day to visit.

THURSDAY

Thursday is ruled by Jupiter. It is vast, expansive, and fatherly. Anything legal or law-related is best done on a Thursday. If you want to have justice done (while being willing to accept the personal consequences) Thursday is the best day to pray for it. Thursday is a day of teaching, learning, mentoring, and being mentored. Tutoring is especially blessed on Thursday, whether you are on the giving or receiving end. Mediating conflict is easier on Thursdays, especially when you have made the Jovian connection. Thursday is great for encouraging your own will in daily practice. If you are in school, you might try implementing better homework habits starting on a Thursday. If you are a musician, Thursday is ideal for getting an extra hour of practice. For those who work with their hands, Thursday is perfect for extra work as well as cooperation. For instance, if you knit, sew, or quilt, Thursday would be a great day to host a sewing circle.

FRIDAY

Everyone looks forward to Friday. Ruled by Venus/Aphrodite, it is the sweetest day of the week by far. Friday kicks off literal and metaphorical shoes and gets footloose. It is a day for partying, celebration, and romance. Aphrodite is the restorer of the etheric body. She alone is the arbiter of true satisfaction on the material plane, as no physical urge can be satisfied without the cooperation of the etheric. Aphrodite is the most interactive of the gods. You can invoke her by simply keeping your living space clean and tidy and by thanking the items and spaces you use during and after their use. It goes without saying that single people are advised to do the majority of their exploratory expeditions on Friday night, preferably during a waxing moon.

SATURDAY

Saturday is a day of accounting and accountability, deliberate simplicity, and grace. Ruled by Saturn, Saturday is the true Sabbath and the week's blessed end. If I was Queen of the World, Saturday and not Sunday would be subject to blue closure laws. I would close everything on Saturday and give everyone the day off except for police, firefighters, and emergency medics. Saturday is for rest but it is also for closure. I have gotten decent results from scheduling my tax dealings on Saturdays during waning moons. Saturday is an ideal day for gardening and working with soil. It reminds us of where our food comes from and where are bodies go when they die. It is also a great day for paring down material possessions and either donating them or throwing them away. I prefer to donate to my local homeless shelter on Saturdays in hopes of gaining Saturn's potent blessing for the people I am trying to help.

SUNDAY

Sunday is the true beginning of the week. I always plan on working hard on Sunday, whether it is paid or unpaid. Ruled by Helios Apollo, who BTW bears a striking resemblance to one Jesus Christ, Sunday is a day of benevolence, understanding, and forgiveness for all. "Everything under the sun" is Sunday's motto. Of all the days, it is the most robust and varied in its activity and influence. Sundays are remarkable for their clarity: write down your grocery list, plan your projects, and contemplate the near and far future. Though I have often made Sundays lazy, I believe they should actually be full of activity and outings. If you need to travel, Sunday is the best day to do it. The Sun's influence is broader and more expansive than Jupiter's. Sunday is the finest day for friend and family gatherings. Sunday is great for its eclecticism. It is a "You do you" sort of day where you can be yourself and still enjoy your moment in the sun.

One word of caution... none of the suggestions offered here, or in anything else I have ever written, should be taken as gospel. If you do laundry on Tuesdays and found the love of your life on a Saturday, by all means full steam ahead. These suggestions are food for thought. Try them and see where they take you.

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break.

My next planned break is the week of Saturday, September 21.

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

A middle aged woman recently went viral on TikTok for an innocuous Get Ready With Me video. For those unfamiliar with the genre, a Get Ready With Me video is a casually-presented opinion or bit of information given by the video’s creator while putting on makeup. The woman plainly stated she had every intention of remaining single for the rest of her natural life. Her main reason for remaining single was the poor quality of men in the dating pool and the fact that most men her age and older were looking for a hospice wife. “Hospice wife” is the newest term for a woman trapped in a marriage of convenience for the man. This commitment entails the typically-younger wife providing the kind of in-home care one would expect from a dedicated, live-in elder nurse. The “hospice” part implies the wife will care for her sickly husband until he dies.

Comments sections are always the most fascinating part of social media and this one did not disappoint. The video’s comment section was full of older women declaring how transcendently overjoyed they were to be living the single life after being widowed or divorcing their insufferable, middle aged husbands. Every ten or so comments repeated the snarky phrase “nurse with a purse” in reference to to the suckers who were stuck caring for their aging husbands. Every twenty or so comments featured a hospice wife bemoaning her dire situation.

This hit close home for me because my husband of a quarter century is nearly a decade and a half my senior. To add insult to injury, I have been the primary breadwinner of our modest household since the early 2010s. As someone in relatively good health who has never been alcoholic, an abuser of food, or drug addict prescription or otherwise, I seem to be set for a vigorous old age. He, on the other hand, has a debilitating suite of chronic health problems that cause constant pain. Some of his health problems are genetic, some are the logical result of an adventurous and well spent youth, and some he caused all by himself via stupid habits and decisions.

When my father was still alive, my parents represented a more traditional marriage arrangement. My mother worked a few years after she married my father in 1965. She was a switchboard operator in downtown Chicago and she was very good at it. It was her seed money that bought the beautiful house I grew up in. After us kids arrived on the scene, my father took on most of the financial burdens until the day he died in 2023.

The single, middle aged women of TikTok and elsewhere are a group of disappointed souls. Men have let them down and now they swear they are done with men. The truth is that marriage — especially long marriages like that of my parents and my marriage — is not easy. I myself have often said that if my husband leaves me a widow that I won’t marry again because I don’t like people enough to marry a second one. This is a funny lie, however, because I love people. I am just extremely unsure that I could successfully match myself to a second one.

Taken for Granted Goes Both Ways

The number one reason driving divorce does not seem to be money or even cheating per se. I think it boils down to a lack of gratitude. For a long time, women in the industrialized West have been taken for granted. I coined the term etheric labor a few years ago to refer to the kind of mundane work both women and men do to keep a household up, running, and functional. Women tend to take on the lion’s share of basic etheric labor (think of it as a fancy term for housework) like cleaning, cooking, laundry, tidying, and decorating. Men tend to take on less frequent but equally crucial tasks like home repair, remodeling, and maintenance.

The TV and movie tropes of the last seventy five years led us to believe women’s work was replaceable and invisible. We are a long way from Disney’s Great Depression era Snow White, who cleaned up the seven dwarfs’ homestead in hopes they would put her in the role of house mother and allow her to stay. By the 1960s, Star Trek suggested that one day all cooking would be done by a replicator. The 1990s featured romantic comedies with sets by Nancy Meyers where characters wallowed in luxury. No character was ever seen tidying or cleaning the palatial, upper middle class rooms; that seemed to happen on its own. By 2016, Disney put out the animated film Sing!, which featured Rosita, an anthropomorphic pig with 25 children. In order to secretly audition for a singing contest behind her husband’s back and spend entire days away from home, Rosita constructs an array of clever machines to feed, diaper, and soothe her brood of piglets. If only it were that easy!

When a woman’s work is seen as soulless and essentially replaceable by unseen hands, hired help, or an array of machines, women feel taken for granted. Thanks to mass media of the types mentioned above, women have felt under-appreciated for nearly a hundred years. This kind of sentiment has built a powerful astral pyramid with nearly overwhelming gravity. Legions of women are remaining single after being married and bearing children or after being widowed because of this pyramid’s gravity. Many on the younger side are choosing never to marry or procreate at all.

The Marriage Trap

The old stereotype was to depict men as being reluctant to marry. Once the woman got the man to “put a ring on it” he was now settled into a role of long-suffering victimhood with the wife in the role of parasite to his host. In the television series of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, he was Ralph Kramden of the Honeymooners or Archie Bunker of All in the Family. The 80s and 90s brought Married With Children, with Al Bundy dreaming of a harem of suppliant blondes who looked suspiciously like his daughter. The Man Show and Sex and the City perpetuated kissing-cousin versions of the recalcitrant male stereotype. The pilot episode of Sex in the City featured women complaining they could not get a man to commit because they were considered well past their prime by the age of 41. The Man Show had its infamous Girls Jumping on Trampolines, with the girls in question being twenty-something young women wearing flimsy undergarments to the chagrin of cuckolded, age 35+ wives everywhere.

To say a great deal of resentment was built in women over the years due to these kinds of images would be a monumental understatement. Women are officially fed up, and they are slyly laughing now that the tables are turned and men are begging not to be left to age and die alone. Now look who is discarded because he is no longer youthful and vibrant! Why should a woman marry herself off at age 50, they ask, after a largely thankless couple of decades raising children and cleaning the house of men who never truly saw them? Why should they feel any obligation to provide for a sick and ailing man who wants a mommy but cannot afford to hire one? In this age of women being forced into provider roles with no attendant relief from housework, why on Earth would any “girl” take the sickliest and neediest of passengers aboard her sailboat if it wasn’t at literal gunpoint?

For some, there is no reason good enough to fall back into the marriage trap. My grandmother was widowed before she was 40 and she never remarried. She lived alone in a condo for the 15 years I was blessed with knowing her. I can understand the charm. If she hadn’t smoked two packs a day, her sunny, one-bedroom apartment would have been paradise: clean, compact, and orderly with no yard to worry about and a darling porch overlooking a lovely park with a lake. When I was nine, I envisioned a perpetually single existence for myself living in a condominium a hundred feet from the library. In this idyllic fantasy, I had a well-paying job in downtown Chicago as a typist/secretary. I came home to one or two cats and sipped tea among my books and houseplants. A man was not a part of the picture. Then puberty and the non-fantasy economy happened and that all went sideways.

The question I ask of myself is how my wonderful apartment fantasy would have worked in old age? Maybe quite well. I will never know. From what I have seen, not all elderly female singlehood ends as well as my grandmother, who died in a doctor’s office at the age of 79. She was gone in a flash due to a massive heart attack. She never suffered nursing home internment. I stopped taking my music students to play and sing in assisted living facilities because no matter how “nice” the facility, the student performers were beset with an array of pleas to “go home” solely from old, confused female residents. The sadness and despair of assisted living facilities reminded me of the foul, septic vibe of the casino where my husband used to work. Both had the palpable aura of desperation and tragic, lost gambles.

What’s Good For the Goose…

The reaction to a huge astral pyramid that glorified single men at the expense of older women has now created its predictable mirror in a huge astral pyramid that glorifies single women at the expense of older men. Now instead of Archie Bunker, we have Barbie, who carefully avoids her abusive, incompetent, stupid Ken. Or we have the now-cancelled Star Wars series The Acolyte, which featured lesbian space witches who did not need men to procreate. This is not better; it’s actually more of the same. It’s like a novella where the same crew of actors switches roles. The same YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT narrative is the punchline and fundamentally nothing has changed.

I will likely catch hell for this, but I think we should stick together more are stay committed to our marriages and family relationships. Of course there are copious amounts of exceptions: sometimes we truly marry (and have children with) the wrong person. Sometimes the husband truly ought to be kicked to the curb. My aunt was married to a raging gambler who later killed himself in a motorcycle accident and my friend was married to a non-functional alcoholic.

Everyone ultimately dies alone, and this reality was directly stated in the viral Get Ready With Me Video. Nevertheless, it’s decidedly more pleasant to go that final leg before actual physical death in the company of loved ones. The saddest kind of elderly death is the one where there is nobody to care or mourn. Freaking elephants have the sense to mourn and gather around their dead, for heaven’s sake, and we as “smart” humans should be able to figure it out.

Maybe Trying a New Strategy

Some of the women gloating over their modern singlehood may not be seeing the big picture. My mother had bouts of disease during her 56 year marriage to my father that occasionally rendered her incapable of taking care of herself. My father always swooped to the rescue. The “in sickness and in health” part of marriage vows should probably be emphasized more.

I think I have enough married experience to say the only way to keep a marriage sane and healthy is to focus on the positive with at least three times the force that one focuses upon the negative. The negative exists and there is nothing wrong with that. Hiding it or burying it is counterproductive because it needs to be recognized as part of life. That said, the negative cannot be a primary focus in any relationship because it is a Wendigo and it will destroy that relationship. When I am angry at my husband for one of his many faults, I try to make an often-impossible seeming effort to recognize three or more of his good traits or deeds. The reason I do this is because I too have flaws and faults, but I would rather be recognized and seen for my strengths and not my weaknesses. I must be the change I want to see in the world, and in my case that does not involve changing my man or kicking him to the curb. It involves recognizing the good and amplifying it by being thankful for it.

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break.

My next planned break is the week of Saturday, September 21.

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

The US is immersed in some interesting times at the moment... like other countries aren't? I hear they imprisoned a thirteen year old in Britain for being in a riot. It's like January 6 except for middle schoolers.

As I mentioned in my most recent essay, despite my own non-pacifist worldview, going full Unabomber makes no sense at this point. If we all decide to act like Hezbollah after a cocaine bender and strap bombs on our chest, it will only prove to the other side we were not worth the powder to blow us to ~~heaven~~ hell.

There is very little we can do, however, I believe little things matter. I believe cleaning my own toilet keeps me humble -- that is why I do it every night no matter how exhausted I am. Cleaning my toilet is my way of saying "thank you" to a piece of porcelain that makes my life infinitely better and more comfortable. I thank my car, my cats, my husband, and my mom. I thank my computers, my iPhone, my weedwhacker, and my stove. I thank trees and lakes. It is the thankful life. I believe gratitude is powerful magic.

Long ago, when it was 1981 and Ronald Reagan was just starting out as President, we elementary school kids had to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag every school day morning. The Pledge is a short prayer originally composed by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army officer in the Civil War. Balch's poem was adapted by Francis Bellamy a year later for the 1892 World Columbian Exposition. Not long after, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited by schoolchildren all across America.

In order to say the Pledge of Allegiance, you stand near the American flag (or an image of the American flag) with your right hand over your heart and say:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag
Of the United States of America
And to the Republic for which it stands
One nation, under God, indivisible
With liberty and justice for all

And now the ask: I would like you to join me (in spirit) in saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning starting Wednesday, September 11, 2024 for an entire year, so that means until Thursday, September 11, 2025. There is no "point" or agenda to saying the Pledge except to strengthen the better parts of the US's astral pyramid. You can say the Pledge if you're Republican, Democrat, or neither. You can say it if you're not American -- this isn't a pledge of your eternal soul after all; it's a statement of support for the unity of a nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

May my nation and yours heal from within.

Here is the good news: Trump will win the 2024 election. Here is the bad news: Kackles Kneepads Harris and her team will steal it. America is about to get its first XX chromosome sort-of half-black President. She will prove once and for all that sucking and swallowing your way to the top is a viable strategy. What a bitter “victory” for women 2024 will be!

I truly hope I am wrong, but I agree with John Carter. The lunatic left did it once and they are about to do it again. They still have that kind of power; who knows for how much longer?

I am a solutions girl and though I have violent tendencies a plenty I enthusiastically do not recommend anyone take up the sword at this point. As John Carter foresees, the Demstapo will likely come after bank accounts and wage war on whitey (and black and Hispanic Trump voters) by drafting their sons to fight its foreign forever wars. I foresee new plandemics and new vaccines and an entire chunk of people who should know better going along with them. On the plus side, I also see the new plandemics driving larger and larger numbers towards homeschooling and the alternative economy.

I am angry, and don’t get me wrong: you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. Nevertheless, explosive anger does not build the system we are going to need when the Left’s Wendigo devours the last shreds of the economy trying to preserve its own salary class obsession.

Outside of building a nuclear bunker, hoarding toilet paper, dog food, and packets of freeze-dried fruit bits, there are things you can do right now, TODAY, to defeat the regime.

1. Generally accept where we are in the scheme of history. We are never going back to the prosperity of the 1960s - 2000s. It’s over. The US and other industrialized nations are in their Insane Roman Emperor phase. The common people are in the same situation as late 18th century French peasants, and unlike them, we don’t know how to survive a famine.

Dave Ramsey's house, most likely one of many. This does not seem sustainable in an unstable future. It also does not seem very Christian/Jesus-like to me.

2. Stop focusing on making more money and focus on skill-building. Everybody is good at something. Me? I’m a decent cook, I have a bit of a green thumb, and I am (with the help of the gods) fairly decent at writing/arranging music and doing Ogham divinations. None of these things is lucrative but all of them have been deeply enriching in a way that high rollers who live in palatial houses with five bathrooms will never understand. I am better off teaching myself to cook some new thrifty dish than I will ever be wringing my hands about how to get out of debt. Everybody except Dave Ramsey is in debt and actually I am not sure about him; he does seem to live beyond anyone’s reasonable means. Kim freaking Kardashian is in debt. Appearances are deceiving, especially the put-on appearances of others. Focus on skills. Focus on YOU.

3. For the love of the gods, STAY PUT. I understand wanderlust but holy hell, start investing in your local area by not flying or driving off to distant lands at every opportunity just because you can. The spirits of the land are PISSED because every single person, even ostensibly poor people, are obsessed with traversing the globe in metal machines to re-deposit themselves elsewhere. Illegal immigration, in large part, is driven by the compulsive drive of modern day humans to race to the other side in search of greener grass. To those rich enough to leave their houses for weeks or months at a time: what are you escaping from? Your nice house and yard in a crime-free neighborhood?

4. Touch the earth. Get outside, find a tree, sit with your back to it, and see what happens. Go to the forest preserve without headphones and listen to the sounds of birds, bugs, and wind whooshing through the trees. If you can find a way, garden. Even potted herbs or a houseplant can connect you with the rhythms of nature and are far better than nothing.

5. Stop buying new whenever it is possible and practical. Not only are you spending far too much money if you are buying new stuff, you are supporting the kind of outsourced, Chinese-made economy that killed the working class back in the 1970s and 80s.

6. Find your tribe and trade skill for service. As the economy continues to implode, the only people who are going to preserve any quality of life will be the ones who networked with each other to get what they need. This is the hardest thing for me to do, because my modest income comes from clients paying me directly as I do not work for a salary. That said, I occasionally swap services and gifts instead of money.

7. Extricate yourself from hate. Locking yourself into opposition with the runners of the s**tshow wastes your energy and time. Unless you are suddenly granted King of the World status, you will only spin your wheels by attending protests and rallies, ranting online, and busting ass to crusade for a “fairer” world. Let’s say you manage to slash your way into the regime’s caviar and pizza party: you can butcher all of the tuxedo and gown crowd you like… the ones who weren’t at the party will reconvene elsewhere after a few lizard-person/crocodile tears about the dearly departed before resuming business as usual like nothing ever happened. Your unabombing makes no difference. You truly are better off figuring out how to grow your own tomatoes.

8. Save your paper books and magazines. The internet is in a sketchy place. (Anyone who is thinking of taking up influencing as a career should probably think more long term.) We are going to arrive at a future not too far down the road where old books are worth a hell of a lot more than they are now. Did you know bookshelves make great insulation? If you have a wall that is cold in cold weather and hot in hot weather, putting a well-stocked, floor to ceiling bookshelf on it can solve the problem. Just be sure to anchor any big bookshelf to the wall because falling bookshelves are dangerous.

9. Take up religious practice. Personally, I am not a Christian and I don’t recommend taking up any kind of Christianity that involves a meaningless two-hour ceremony once a week sandwiched between the warblings of a worship band’s muzak while the pastor cajoles you into parting with money you don’t have. When I say religious practice, I mean reviving the idea of taking up the cross, embracing voluntary simplicity, earnestly trying to communicate with the Divine via prayer, and trying to be like Jesus at every conscious moment. If you have the lucky circumstance of being near a Catholic church practicing the old mass or an Orthodox church, you might want to join it depending on the vibe. In my own non-Christian case, I have an everyday routine of performing the Sphere of Protection banishing ritual, discursive meditation, and divination plus prayer that helps keep my intentions on the up and up. The new religiosity is not quite like the old one, but there are similarities. Do not join a religion where everyone is basically phoning it in and the “leaders” patently expect to be placed at the right hand of God for a trillion years after one lackluster human life.

Overall, there is always going to be a part of me that wants to go all in and make the parties who are spearheading the current predicament pay dearly for what they have done. Again, I am no pacifist and I would be highly satisfied to see heads roll into bloodied baskets, though when you think about it, well-placed wheelbarrows would probably be a better option.

There are limits to everything, including bloody revolutions waged upon the gaslighting brigade. One of the limits of torching the castle and forcing Kackles to walk the plank into a chamber of hungry crocodiles is that it means nice things come to an end for you and me. Revolution means no more avocados or chilled beer. Sure things will change and get better… eventually... for your grandchildren. Better, I think, to start building the post-revolution world before the revolution occurs, IF it ever occurs. Enjoy those avocados while you still can!

Whoops! I did it again. We are in the midst of a bit of a utility emergency at the Steele house and the excitement got the better of me. The deadline is once again extended until 10pm CST.

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break.

My next planned break is the week of Saturday, September 21.

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

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Kimberly Steele

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Kimberly Steele

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