A Mantra

She is praying for peace and an end to the Covid-19 pandemic.  The hummingbird hears her chanting and it hovers near by after sucking sustenance from the flowers.  She starts singing, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.  The sixteen-word mantra is repeated to deliver peace and to free her mind.  The word Hare refers to the divine feminine potency of God.  Krishna means the all-attractive one, and Rama is the reservoir of all pleasure.  Chanting these sixteen names is supposed to be counteract the evil effects of the demon Kali.

At the dawn of civilization, when the human race was still under the spell of the powers and mysteries of nature, most human rituals were centered around pleasing the five basic natural forces.  Those being fire, water, sky, wind and earth.  Hearken to that which all Shrutis (the Vedas) keep secret and hidden, through which one may cross the Saṃsāra (mundane existence) of Kali.  One can shake off the evil effects of Kali through the mere uttering of the name of Lord Narayana, who is the primeval Purusha.  Kali is dark in color, she drinks blood, and is portrayed as evil.  Kali is a mysterious goddess of death and destruction with a very complex story.

The name Kālī first appears in the Atharva Veda, a collection of hymns and mantras published between 1200 BCE and 1000 BCE, however she is not a goddess but rather a fierce black tongue, one of seven belonging to Agni, the god of fire.  It is another 400 years before Kali is described as an individual in her own right, when she appears as a battlefield goddess personifying the wrath of Durga.  At this point, she has become a terrible skeletal and frightening crone, wearing animal skins and carrying the skull-topped staff associated with tribal shamans.

In Swami Vivekananda’s 1898 poem, Kali the Mother, he evokes the Night of Kali as a time of pitch darkness that blots out the stars, trouble comes from the souls of a million lunatics let loose from the prison, while on every side a thousand shades of Death blacken the sky perpetuating plagues and bringing sorrow which becomes a mad dance of terror and death.  In the poet’s vision, destruction follows her every foot step, for she is the relentless power, the All-Destroyer of Time, locked in a Dance of Destruction.

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See? Picture prompt Image credit- Stefan Keller – Pixabay.

Entering Oz

The house was swept up in a tornado and now it is falling with a sepia colored Dorothy landing safely in her bed.  She picks up her dog Toto, opens the door and steps out into the world of Oz, which is made up of vibrant colors exploding with gorgeous scenery.  This scene is what gave me the inspiration to create this new colorizer camera, which will automatically colorize black and white photos, pictures, and images.  The algorithm brings your old photos to life and it is simple to use.  You upload a photo to it through the USB port, wait for it to be processed and when the green light comes on, your grayscale photos are now in color.  Your photos are private and they will not be shared with anyone unless you do that yourself.

It is technology, not magic and you can purchase extra software that will allow you to adjust the colors, like for instance if you think that the photo that you took of Trump is not orange enough, you have the ability to adjust the hue, shade or tint and make him look more pumpkin faced.  You could also use this camera to create rainbow text effects for your blog and add new smiley faces to every sentence that you write.

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See? Picture prompt Image Credit- Pixabay- Ariadne-a-mazed.

She’s Not There

She is going through an emotional detachment having trouble identifying herself in the real world, not really knowing if she is here or there.  This psycho bitch with her lies, the way she breaks everyone’s heart and she would never even bother to apologize, is kind of spooky.  She exists in no particular space or time and she could be anywhere and everywhere.  She still feels certain things and when her feet got cold, she tried to slip into these sneakers, but to no avail.

Well, no one told me about her
The way she lied
Well, no one told me about her
How many people cried
But it’s too late to say you’re sorry
How would I know, why should I care?
Please don’t bother trying to find her
She’s not there
Well, let me tell you ‘bout the way she looked
The way she acts and the color of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright
But she’s not there
Well, no one told me about her
What could I do?
Well, no one told me about her
Though they all knew
But it’s too late to say you’re sorry
How would I know, why should I care?
Please don’t bother trying to find her
She’s not there
Well, let me tell you about the way she looked
The way she acts and the color of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright
But she’s not there
But it’s too late to say you’re sorry
How would I know, why should I care?
Please don’t bother trying to find her
She’s not there
Well, let me tell you about the way she looked
The way she acts and the color of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright
But she’s not there

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See? Picture prompt Reflections by Yunus Emre Uzun.

Saul Good

Raven told Saul to meet her at the wiccan altar and she would teach him the craft.  Even though many more women are drawn to Pagan religions than men are, Raven said that he could join her group, as long as he could master the art of fire bending.  Saul was an easy-going guy and a less than satisfactory outcome was always permissible for him.  Raven held fire in her hand and told Saul not to worry, as he has been bending air and water for his whole life and bending fire is just the next step up in control of the elements.  Saul replied, “I have not been bending anything.”  Raven said, “We all are surrounded by this mysterious gas, and life would be impossible without it, but we hardly ever give it a moment’s thought, because solids and liquids are much denser than gases and when you are walking through air, you are creating waves and all waves contain energy.”

Raven told Saul that it is nothing more than a trick and that she selects materials that can burn at room temperature and she chooses vapors that are denser than air, so they will sink and collect at the lowest point, allowing her to disperse flammable gas to ignite the fire.  She told Saul that he may get burned a few times while he is learning and that it might be a good idea to keep a bucket of water handy.  Saul smiled and said, “It’s all good.”

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See? prompt #13.

Midnight and Elmer

The rocks in the stream were perfect for the pretty playful little kitten to jump along on and hunt for fish and lizards.  Midnight was aquaphobic and he really did hate water, but he would dip his paws into the stream for prey.  Midnight saw Elmer the elephant and being curious like every cat is, he asked him what in the heck he was doing.  Elmer told Midnight that he was using his trunk to help him get a drink of water.  Midnight asked Elmer why he would drink water with his nose.  Elmer said that his trunk was a combination of his nose and upper lip and that he is able to breathe through it, touch, grasp and smell things with it, but he was only using his trunk as a siphon to suck the water part of the way up and then he would use his trunk to squirt the water into his mouth.

Elmer told Midnight that he was having trouble reaching the water because his trunk was a bit too short and he asked Midnight how he got down there.  Midnight said that he climbed down and that he loves to climb on everything.  He said that when he is not napping that he is most likely climbing.  Elmer said that he does not do hills and that he tries to avoid any type of sloped terrain ever since he heard about all of his ancestors that were lost crossing the Alps with Hannibal many years ago.  Midnight asked Elmer how he could stand being so fat and Elmer struggled to lower his trunk into the water and he sucked up several gallons of it and the he squirted Midnight and asked him if he liked being wet.

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See? prompt. Image credit: yo.

Aeneas and Pallas

Juturna the Roman goddess of springs, rivers, aqueducts and fountains played an important part in the history of the Etruscan ancestors that founded Rome along with Aeneas who was a son of Venus and a very strong and popular Greek soldier, who was a survivor of the siege of Troy.  He was a fearsome warrior and a great leader, that was able to motivate his men in the face of adversity, but he was also a man that was capable of great compassion and sorrow and he always showed respect for the will of the gods.  It had been prophesied that Aeneas would establish a race, whose destiny was to rule the world in peace and prosperity.

After the sack of Troy, Aeneas went to Carthage.  Dido the beautiful daughter of King Mattan left the land of Tyre when her husband was murdered by her brother Pygmalion.  Dido became the founder and the first Queen of the Phoenician city of Carthage and that is where she fell in love with Aeneas.  The queen of Carthage became an unfortunate pawn of the gods, in their struggle for Aeneas’s destiny, as her love for Aeneas proved to be her downfall.  Aeneas left Dido to travel to Italy, and after he abandoned her, she constructed a funeral pyre and stabbed herself to death upon it with Aeneas’s sword.  Aeneas knew of all the Greek gods, but when he arrived in Italy, he felt that he should create new gods in this new land.

It is important to know the lineal descent from an ancestor for these esrly Etruscans, so I will go over that for Lavinia, Turnus and Juturna.  They are all descendants of the exiled god Saturn, who fathered Picus the first king of Latium, who in turn fathered Faunus.  Picus and Faunus both became legendary kings and divinities of Latium.  Faunus fathered two mortal sons, Latinus and Daunus with a water nymph of Laurentium named Marica.  Daunus became the king of the Rutuli people, who lived southeast of Rome and he had fathered Juturna and Turnus with the nymph named Venilia.  Latinus became the king of Lavinium, a town south of Rome and he had a daughter named Lavinia.  When Aeneas and the Trojans arrived in Italy, Latinus decided to give his daughter to Aeneas, because of the instructions that he had received from the gods indicating that his daughter should marry a foreigner.  Turnus was outraged at this, because he was a suitor of his cousin Lavinia, so he decided to lead his people against the Trojans in war.

Several gods and goddesses got involved in this conflict, with Venus siding with her son Aeneas and Juno who was still angry for not winning the beauty contest because of Paris’s judgment which started the Trojan War, sided with the Latini against the Trojans.  The outcome of this conflict however, had long been foretold by the Fates, who predicted that a stranger from a land far away shall marry Lavinia and succeed Latinus as king.  When Latinus allowed his daughter Lavinia to be engaged to marry Aeneas instead of Turnus, her presumed fiancé, the goddess Juno, who hated the Trojans, started to drive Turnus mad, so he would fight Aeneas.  Turnus the warrior king of the city of Ardea and prince of the Rutulians went to the city of the Latins and declared that he wanted to fight Aeneas in one-on-one combat.

Latinus tried to convince Turnus to take another woman as his wife and leave Lavinia to Aeneas.  Turnus got his chariot-team ready and armed himself for battle.  The next morning, both armies were awaiting the coming battle between the two champions.  Juno expressed some fondness for Juturna, despite the fact that she had attracted Jupiter’s lustful attentions.  Juno watched what was going on and she told Juturna that she would help her brother as long as she could, but the Fates were against him.  Down on the plain, the leaders from both sides were meeting, and Aeneas prayed, saying that, if Turnus wins, the Trojans would leave Italy, but if he wins, he would not enslave them, but instead ask the Italians to join him as equal citizens in a new nation.

Latinus agreed to these terms and they sacrificed animals to formalize the deal.  Juturna saw that the Rutulians felt that their champion was not strong enough to win the battle, so she descended among them, and took the shape of a Rutulian warrior.  An eagle, considered to be the bird of Jupiter, swooped down and seized a swan, then a whole bunch of other seabirds attacked it in group formation and the eagle was forced to release the swan and fly away.  This was thought to be an augur for Turnus to win the battle, so a spear was thrown at the Trojans.  The spear killed one of a group of nine brothers that were all standing together.  The other brothers grabbed their weapons and raced forward for revenge, and both armies started fighting again.

Aeneas tried to stop his men from fighting, but then somebody hit him with an arrow, he was wounded, but it was not fatal.  Turnus raced forward with his chariot team and started killing many Trojans.  Venus healed her son Aeneas and he went back into the battle.  Aeneas led the Trojans in a counterattack and they killed many of their enemies.  Juturna did not like what she was seeing, so she knocked Turnus’s charioteer onto the ground and she took his place and started driving her brother erratically over the battlefield, keeping him out of Aeneas’s reach.  Venus told Aeneas to take a stand on a hilltop overlooking the city, and order his captains to level the city of Lavinium, unless they surrender immediately.  Turnus rushed back to the city to meet his destiny, ignoring his sister’s pleas, knowing in his heart that he must face Aeneas, as death no longer frightened him.

When Aeneas heard that Turnus was coming, he stopped attacking the city and went to meet him.  A space was cleared for them to fight, and soon they were throwing spears at each other and then they fought with swords.  While they were fighting, Jupiter raised a scale and he placed each man’s destiny in it, saying whosever’s sinks toward the ground will die.  Turnus gave Aeneas a mighty blow with his sword, but his blade shattered on impact, because it was no match for Aeneas’s divine armor, which Venus had her husband Vulcan make.  Juturna gave Turnus another sword and Venus gave Aeneas a spear and Jupiter forbid Juno to interfere with Aeneas any more.  Juno agreed as long as the Latins wouldn’t have to change their name after they lose to the Trojans.

Aeneas stood face to face with Turnus, they exchanged some hostile words, then Turnus picked up a huge rock to throw at Aeneas, but he wasn’t strong enough, and it fell short.  Aeneas threw his spear and it was able to puncture Turnus’s shield and ended up stabbing him in the thigh.  Turnus fell to the ground and asked Aeneas to spare his life, as he relinquished his claim to the hand of his cousin Lavinia.  Aeneas debated with himself what he should do, and then he saw what was hanging on Turnus shoulder, it was the belt that he stole from the dead body of his good friend Pallas.  Aeneas was enraged at seeing the belt of his friend being worn by his enemy, so he shouted that Pallas is taking his revenge, then he stabbed Turnus and killed him.  When Juturna failed to save her brother, she plunged into a stream grieving in despair.  Aeneas picked up the body of his dead friend and placed it on his shield so he could be carried off the battlefield.  A thousand troops were used to carry the corpse of Pallas back to his home and they all mourned at his funeral.

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See? prompt. Photo credit: Irishamericanmom.