full euphoric spiral with the jun

Had an unexpected arrival in my life recently.  For many years I have mostly refused to drink any kind of alcoholic drink because of the mood drop compared with how I generally feel.  Sometimes I would wonder if I was missing out on something but I just wasn't willing to experience the unpleasant side that wine, beer or spirits would have for me.  For the most part I haven't been bothered though as feel so good on what we are doing.  So it was a really nice to surprise that the very small amounts of alcohol in the jun we have got going along with the other mind enhancing compounds in there are giving me a lovely tipsy and actually euphoric but still mentally functioning feeling at the end of the day.  Admittedly it doesn't take much for me.  Anyway, unexpectedly I've got the opportunity for an evening tipple back.  The feeling is very similar to then one I remember as a youngster drinking the amazing concoction my Dad used to ferment from orange juice, when I started to go out and drink commercial beers I was shocked out how deadening their effects were compared to the almost psychedelic effects of my Dad's magical brew.

Years ago, getting healthy was purported to mean abandoning chocolate, cheese, nice cups of tea and alcoholic drinks.  And I was willing to do it.  Bit by bit it has all come back unexpectedly and delightfully in upgraded, more natural form., raw chocolate, raw dairy products such as raw cheese and kefir, herbal teas and elixirs and now the jun.  Jun works for me much better than kombucha because you can drink it without it being fermented to a vinegary state.  If kombucha isn't fully brewed out to this state then there is a residue of sugar which I really don't get on with and also, from a technical point of view, stops the immune system working to full capacity.  Jun is quite like kombucha but it can digest honey so you don't need to make it with sugar.

The tea we are using is chaga.  Brewing the tea extracts many of the medicinal factors out of the chaga whilst the alcohol in the jun extracts the alcohol soluble triterpenes (Betulinic acid) that are well known for their amazing healing properties in Russia.

I have actually been enjoying our ginkgo version even more than the original chaga jun in our range, it will be on sale very soon, just as soon as the labels get here.  Ginkgo is a long time favourite of mine, it is a very magical tree and boosts circulation and brain function.

So life has come full circle or maybe full spiral, in many other ways too, feel like finding many of the real versions of things that I had let go of.  Real sky astrology is a prime case in point.

our fermentation fetish class in meare

We are really enjoying teaching these classes and the very appreciative feedback.  Yesterday we made lacto fermented Mexican salsa

basil kefir cheese pesto

lacto fermented pineapple papaya curry chutney

coconut kefir ginger beer

kefir breakfast pudding

chocolate kefir cheesecake

We also demonstrated kraut made easy 

and the ins and outs of making kefir.

These classes are also a great introduction to making raw food work for you.

Next one is on 22nd February,  Meare is in Somerset, about four miles from Glastonbury.

Thanks to Anna Middleton for fabulous photos.

language of destiny

The words desire and destiny when broken down into their parts literally mean that which comes from the constellations (stars).  Our desires are given to us, it is up to us how we handle them.
"What you desire in life does not belong on the realm of needs....when reading real sky zodiac we are reading our desiderata (destiny), our destiny is written in the stars, it cannot be read in conventional astrology....  Conventional astrology is  a psychological profiling tool...[It] ignores the stars, for our ultimate purpose we need to look at the real stars."  John Lash

http://www.metahistory.org/SkyLore/skyloremp3/CT%205%20The%20Language%20of%20Destiny.mp3

nature improves happiness

"...Not only does direct exposure to nature increase happiness, but simply imagining yourself outdoors or recalling previous outdoor excursions has been shown to increase serotonin levels, thus boosting mood, decreasing exhaustion and improving overall health..."

http://www.naturalnews.com/043518_happiness_nature_mental_health.html

laying my cards on the table

I have decided to lay my cards on the table.

Personally I have got to the point now where it just doesn't seem possible to dance around any longer the central issues that face us as humans.  The issues we face in the world now are just too big and complicated to unravel or deal with by previously known methods.  And the little issues too seem unresolvable unless we look deeper to the root causes.I sometimes remark to friends that what shocks me and hurts me the most is not the ecological crises - like many others - I saw them coming; not the epidemic of health problems - like many others, I saw them coming, not the wars - I saw them coming; what shocks me is that rather than facing them harmoniously and together, there is bickering even between people who are close or even claim to hold to the same ideals, in fact the bickering is sometimes the most intense between these people.  So, what to do?

From what I can make out, from experience of living and listening to people who have thought and researched deeply and make sense to me, that along the way, in some way humans have  (hopefully temporarily) lost much of their innate capacity for feeling i.e. for being energetically aware of what is going on in real time.  This manifests as loss of sense of connection to each other, the Earth, other species and beings, our intuition, divine intelligence and so on.  Deprived of these innate faculties we attempt to cobble our way through life with a set of rules and dogmas as an approximation to the guidance we would otherwise receive from the source of our lives.  Inevitably these rules clash, but as we perceive them as our lifeline to divinity we are willing to fall out with real other humans over them.

I still dream that we will regain our innate faculties, natural capabilities that have come to be seen as supernatural and I think there is a lot that can be done to start to re-establish them, that is what 'food for consciousness' is about.  Meanwhile we somehow need to get along in the understanding that we will, in our current state, inevitably tread on each others toes.  One of the most painful things we can experience is disconnection between human hearts especially, with a dearly loved one, and it is one of the things that interferes with our functioning and happiness the most.  One of the most empowering things we experience is the love and acceptance of another human being.  I am trying, as fas I can with my own limited abilities, to accept the human situation and the inevitability of us treading on each others toes and am endeavouring to learn the art of not taking offence.  The main thing is this: let's get over it together.

There is so much that could be said on this subject.  For now I just want to voice my perspective on this central issue which is basically this.  As humans have lost their feeling capacity, they have lost some of their capacity to actually feel good, so are now trying to 'be good', i.e. to 'be right' as defined by mental programs.

In some recent audios John Lash has been discussing the 'righteousness' virus and how it has infected us all. He comes from a mythological and metahistorical perspective.  There is a link to a recent audio below. My other favourite resource is Tony Wright's research on the biological aspects of our loss of faculties outlined but not fully explained in his book 'Left in the Dark'. I think we've got to the point now where the roots of the problems have been pretty well identified, at least enough for us to start to engage in solutions. As we do this the nature of the problem will also inevitably become clearer and yet more aspects of the solution will emerge.

http://gaiaspora.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Nav-Briefing-104-Pristine-and-Copacetic-Part-Two-14-January-2014.mp3

quest for the zodiac

John Lash has begun a new study course on Celestics or forensic astrology.  It is star based i.e. based on the actual positions of the constellations in the sky unlike other modern versions of astrology, surprisingly.  It has been a long time dream of mine to study this subject matter with John Lash and here it is! and free and online. I can study in the comfort of my own delightful home and even have stellarium to assist when it's too cloudy  here in misty Avalon to see the starry sky.  He starts from the beginning and carefully takes us through the language and concepts so that we can think about it for ourselves.  It's also very entertaining.

There are three genres of Celestic Science:
astronomy or the naming of stars
astrology or the language of stars
astrolegy or divination by reading the stars
I studied astronomy of sorts at university as part of a physics degree and also astrology for years but never felt that I was getting the knowledge I was looking for, now I feel that I am on that journey at last.  A lot of threads are quite suddenly coming together, it's a very exciting moment to be in.

the thirteenth constellation

"Drawing the thirteenth constellation was the crowning moment of my long artistic experiment with the zodiac. This is Ophiuchus, the Charmer of Serpents, or Snaketamer, the figure that had to be excluded in order to introduce the new paradigm of psyche-cosmos mirroring, using the 12-sector format without stars. Its exclusion signals one of the more devastating turns in the history of our species, a very bad turn, indeed. By a striking coincidence, the starless Ptolemaic zodiac was proposed in 150 AD, the same year that Justin Martyr came out openly and attacked the Gnostics of the Mystery Schools. But this is no coincidence, because the suppression of the Mysteries has everything to do with the loss of the Snaketamer and all he represents: namely, the millennial tradition of indigenous shamanism in Europa, the Levant, and Egypt.

When it finally came to formatting the entire round of thirteen figures, I had to make an artistic decision about which side was up! Many factors went into this decision, far too many to elaborate here. But the principle factor was simple: I chose to put the galactic center uppermost, front and center, in the Rimsite. The direction toward the galactic center, let's recall, is a point near the tip of the Archer's arrow, above the sting of the Scorpion: designated by the oblique black triangle above the Archer's left hand. This puts the Fishes and the VP, 1 degree Aries, at the nine o'clock position, the summer solstice at six o'clock, the autumnal or fall equinox (in the Virgin's face) at three o'clock, and the winter solstice at midnight. Positioning the Rimsite in this way works for precessional timing, and other purposes. It emphasizes the coming of the midnight hour, when the winter solstice aligns exactly with the galactic center, around 2216 CE. It also highlights the largest interactive tableau in the zodiac: the Scale-Scorpion-Snaketamer-Archer scenario. This tableau carries an important lesson for our species, perhaps the decisive lesson: cosmic balance in the symbiotic web of life (Scales) depends on a clear intention of how to use destructive force (Archer) and ..... of our own inner powers (Snaketamer)."
John Lamb Lash
http://www.metahistory.org/SkyLore/starbase/primer3.php