DECK THE HOLIDAY'S

   Christmas time is a time of opening our hearts to everyone.  A holiday season of awe, spectacle and wonder.  Speaking of wonder, there is much surrounding Christmas, that many of us are not aware of.  Hold on to your sense of humor and remember, Christmas is a time for celebration and fun. Years ago in England, pigs throughout the country would run and hide, or seek refuge in churches, a few weeks before Christmas.  The traditional Xmas day feast, in jolly ole England, was the head of a pig.  Butcher shops, throughout the country always made sure they had plenty of pigs heads on hand, to meat the demand. In England, more than half the canine population of this pet loving country, has a gift tucked under the Christmas tree for fido. Ross Perot (he once ran for president and was an owner of an electronics conglomerate) tried to fly over 20 tons of medical supplies and gifts to POW's in North Vietnam for Christmas. Friday and Saturday, before Chr...

   Under the watchful gaze of crumbling saints and baby-faced cherubs, you hurry down a path lined with mausoleums.  Eventually, you pass crops of headstones casting long, narrow shadows in the moonlight.  Each engraved with the epitaph of the dead person's life.  You run past sunken graves and dying flowers, hoping that the sound you hear is just the wind and you're trying to shake the feeling that something is following close behind you.    Maybe you've never taken a  midnight stroll through your local cemetery.  But if you have ever set foot in one, you've likely felt a hint of fear and uneasiness that is their legacy.  Maybe you were attending a funeral of someone dear and close to you, touring graveyards or simply fleeing things that go bump in the night.    Whatever your reason for strolling among the tombstones, you probably felt something noteworthy about the experience-something different from all the other spaces a...

Ireland -An Owl that enters the house must be killed at once, for if it flies away it will take the luck of the house with it. Israel -In Hebrew lore the Owl represents blindness and desolation and is unclean. Jamaica -To ward off the Owl's bad luck, cry "Salt and pepper for your mammy". Japan -Among the Ainu people the Eagle Owl is revered as a messenger of the gods or a divine ancestor.  They would drink a toast to the Eagle Owl before a hunting expedition.  The Screech Owl warns against danger.  Though they think the Barn Owl and Horned Owl are demonic. Latvia -When Christian soldiers entered his temple, the local pagan god flew away as an Owl. Luxembourg -Owls spy treasures, steal them and hoard them. Madagascar -Owls join witches to dance on the graves of the dead. Malawi -The Owl carries messages for witches. Mexico -The Owl makes the cold North wind whilst the gentle South wind is made by the butterfly.  The Little Owl was called "messenger of the lo...

   The owl has attracted the fascination and awe of many cults and cultures, down through the ages and many different and contradictory beliefs have survived to the present day.  Many associations link the owl with witchcraft, medicine, the weather, birth and even death; thus, many superstitions and fears about the owl remain.  In the past it was thought to have been wise yet foolish, feared but venerated and despised whilst being admired.     The owl is a nocturnal, predatory bird distinguished by a large flat face, eyes surrounded by stiff, feathered disks, a short, hooked beak, feathered legs with sharp talons, and soft plumage which facilitates soundless flight.  Its large eyes are encased in a capsule of bone called the "sclerotic ring" which directs the eyes forward allowing restricted movement.  To enable a sideways look, the owl must turn its entire head.  Its neck, being relatively long and flexible, allows the head to r...

      During Halloween season, when images of ghosts and goblins start to inhabit our consciousness, it is important to remember that people are not the only ones who have been known to return to our world of perception as spirits, apparitions, phantoms or poltergeists.  Dogs, cats, sheep, horses, and cattle have been known to haunt human beings throughout the history of folklore.    Typically, parasychologists consider ghostly animals as those creatures whose deaths were unusually emotional in some way, and that their new identity of a ghost is a curse that never allows them to est.  Sometimes they are harmless, although frightening.  However if they appear colored dark black than usually they represent a premonition that something dire is about to happen.  In Trucker lore, the image of a black dog is usually the ultimate sign of dread and bad luck.    In East Anglia generally, whenever someone was o their death bed, peop...

   Lady Bathory, "Countess of Blood", the first female vampire, may have been the bloodiest of all.  She married into nobility and was the distant cousin of the vampire that started it all in modern time, Vlad Dracula, "Vlad the Impaler".  She lived a life of leisure and peace in her Hungarian castle home.    That is until, so they say, a servant girl spilled a drop of her own blood upon her while bathing and grooming her.  The countess noticed how the young servants blood made her skin seem rejuvenated and fell in love with its hypnotic effect.    Soon the countess was luring more and more local females to her mountain perch to be sacrificed to her.  When the local flesh started drying up, the countess started a so-called "finishing school" for daughters of nobility and continued her reign of terror until she was caught in the early 1600's.    She devised many ways to make this harvest of blood more painful and efficient, ...

   She adds that it is also very likely that hemlock might have been used by oldern day witches, who might have referred to it as persil,  which by lots of other practitioners is often erroneously taken to be parsley.  But even so, they'd already be pretty scarily close to creating rather poisonous substances.  "Aconite was one of the best-known poisons in ancient times; indeed it was so extensively used by professional poisoners in Rome during the Empire that a law was passed making its cultivation a capital offence.  Aconite root contains about .4 percent of alkaloid and one-fifteenth of a grain of the alkaloid is a lethal dose:, say Murray.    If adiministered, the drug is not immediately similar to recreational drugs, yet it slows you heartbeat or makes it irregular and can kill you.  If belladonna is added however, the effects are likely to be more druglike, creating delirious consciousness.  Far most poisonous of the ingred...