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I have my very first booksigning this Friday at Magus Books in Minneapolis. They are the biggest occult store in the Twin Cities and one of the biggest on-line ones, too. It's owned by a man who is originally from England and has a marvelous British accent and charm. He really knows his stuff, too.

I'm planning on bringing treats to the event and am thinking cookies and mini-scones. It just crossed my mind to bring napkins, as well. Since the bookcover is greenish, maybe I should bring green napkins to match. :)

Has anyone read The Crooked Path Journal issue #1 yet? I just got my copy and haven't had time yet except to flip through it. Lovely cover, though, and nice layout.

What with the signing, I'm wondering how to begin the little talk that will go along with it. Beginning with the beginning sounds like a good idea, but I'm open to any suggestions. Currently, that would mean starting with when the Goddess of the North, Ardwena, first showed up and began teaching us about all this. It does have a nice story attached to that, so I'm leaning towards that thought.

Hm....yep, Ardwena was the first to show up and, shortly thereafter, She woke up another Goddess, the Goddess of the East and of the Fey. Some of the Gods and Goddesses had been awake already, but it kind of went like that with the ones who weren't. One Goddess woke up another and one God woke up another. The whole thing snowballed and we ended up with over 20 of them (and its still growing so far as I know).

Was just reading a book about Jean Houston wherein she recounts a meeting with Huxley (who wrote Doors of Perception, which is where, I believe, Jim Morrison got the name for his band, "The Doors"). They talked about visions and altered states of consciousness, in particular regard to visionaries traditionally seeing these extraordinary flowers in their otherworldly visits.

It very much put me in mind of Benevento/The Valley of Josephat, where you smell flowers/see flowers in the great meadow (roses usually) that I talk about in the book. Definitely, there is also a connection to the strange and otherworldly experiences that people have around Roswell, NM. Roswell also takes its name from roses. Roses were also used to make rosaries (hence the name) and originally they only had 5 petals, what we tend to call the wild rose or eglantine today. Roses were also symbols of some powerful families in old England, giving rise to the "War of the Roses." Roses are also related to secrets.

Essentially, roses have a very long and very old Craft/occult history, which leads one to wonder if that is why we see them in the Otherworld or if we saw them in the Otherworld first and that is why they have occult/mystic significance?

Flowers bring to mind many things, including attraction and beauty. A flowering of the spirit, of creativity, of life itself. We "blossom" as we enter puberty and begin to become young men and women. So what might the meaning be behind seeing such vibrant blossoms in going to the Otherworld? Are we seeing the first blossoms of ideas? Are we the fruit of such blossoms?