The Schedim

According to the Kabbalah, there are, besides the angels, a middle race of beings  which men usually call the elementary spirits, but they  known to the Jews under the general name of Schedim.  These are spirits of the elements, who, although not visible to men, are well disposed towards them, and who can both see and aid them. They are connected with the angel world, and understand the laws of good and evil; they also possess many secrets of nature. Solomon made use of them, as did all those who sought to attain their desires by the aid of magic and the occult sciences.

These spirits of the elements are divided into four principle classes, the chief of whom is Asmodeus, a demon concerning whom Jewish tradition oflers various conflicting accounts. He is sometimes identified with Samael, sometimes with Apollyon, and sometimes he is called the prince of demons and confounded with Beelzebub. According to a Jewish legend he on one occasion dethroned Solomon, but that monarch eventually triumphed over him, loaded him with chains, and forced him to aid in the building of the temple.

The first class contains the spirits of the fire; the second of fire and water; the third of fire, air, and water;the fourth have a mineral ingredient. The spirits of the two last classes are possessed mostly of evil natures, and are fond of causing injury to man. The other two are possessed of greater wisdom, and knowing many of the secrets of nature, willingly disclose them to man. The first class, Fire, willingly help and support men. They are white, and understand the Torah or law because stand in connection with the angel world. They possess many secrets of nature.  The second class, formed out of fire and air, is lower, but yet good and wise, but invisible to human eyes. Both classes inhabit the upper regions. 

The third class consist of fire, air, and water, and are sometimes apparent to the senses. Their soul is of the vegetable nature. They are sometimes visible to our senses. The fourth class, besides the former elements, has a component of fine earth, and their soul is of the mineral nature, and can be fully perceived by the senses. All these spirits of the elements eat and drink, propagate, and are subject to dissolution. The greater part of the two last kinds are of wicked disposition, mock, and deceive men, and are glad to do them mischief. Some of them live in the waters, some in the mountains and deserts, and some in filthy place.

According to the  Kabbalah , everything that exists, whether great or small, stands in a magical union with the rest of nature. Everywhere is the external the operation of the internal, and the external reacts upon the internal. Thus, the stars have as great an influence upon man as upon the whole of nature because the constellations presiding at the birth of a child determine its physical and mental qualities. Magicians obtain instruction from them through the elements to which they separately belong.

Nuriel

Nuriel, 'fire of God,' an angel in Jewish mythology, is sometimes called the angel of fire and hail. His name stems from nura, the Aramaic word for 'fire'.  His time is from midnight to dawn. A prominent angel in Jewish lore, Nuriel is honored as being one of the tallest of all beings in heaven, declared to be approximately three and a half miles tall. He is a strong force against evil and is seen in Jewish lore as one of the great angels who is a 'spell-binding power'. His name is found engraved on oriental and Hebrew amulets, notably those worn by pregnant women.

He lives in the Second Heaven, and, according to Jewish legend, it is in this heaven that Moses encounters, during his visit to paradise,  the angel Nuriel, standing with his retinue of fifty myriads of angels...all of which were fashioned out of fire and water, and all keeping their faces turned toward the Shekinah as they sang a song of praise to God. Metatron explained that these were the angels set over the clouds, the winds, and the rains, who return speedily, as soon as they have executed the will of their Creator, to their station in the second of the heavens, there to proclaim the praise of God.

Song in the Night

I

Born from the shadow of a breath 

We wander in abandonment 

And are lost in the eternal, 

Like victims ignorant wherefore they are consecrated.

Like beggars nothing is our own, 

We fools at the locked gate. 

As blind people we listen in the silence, 

In which our whisper is lost.

We are the wanderers without destinations, 

The clouds which the wind blows away, 

The flowers shaking in death's coolness, 

Which wait, until one mows them down.

II

So that the last torment becomes complete with me, 

I do not defend you, you hostile dark powers. 

You are the road to great stillness, 

Upon which we stride in the coolest nights.

Your breath makes me burn louder, 

Patience! The star dies down, the dreams glide 

In those realms not named to us, 

And which we may only walk along dreamlessly.

III

You dark night, you dark heart, 

Who mirrors your holiest ground, 

And your malice's last abysses? 

The mask stares before our pain -

Before our pain, before our lust 

The empty mask's stony laughter, 

On it the earthen things broke, 

And ourselves not deliberately.

And a strange enemy stands before us, 

Who jeers, about which we struggle dying, 

So that our songs sound cloudier

And what weeps in us remains dark.

IV

You are the wine that makes drunk, 

Now I bleed in sweet dances 

And must wreath my suffering with flowers! 

So your deepest mind wills, o night!

I am the harp in your womb, 

Now your dark song struggles

For the last pains in my heart

And makes me eternal, unreal.

V

Deep rest - o deep rest! 

No devout bell rings, 

You sweet mother of pain - 

Your death-widened peace.

Close all wounds 

With your cool, good hands - 

So that inward they bleed to death - 

Sweet mother of pain - you!

VI

O let my silence be your song! 

What should the poor's whisper be to you, 

Who is separated from life's gardens? 

Let you be nameless in me -

Who is dreamlesslybuilt up in me , 

Like a bell without tone, 

Like my pain's sweet bride 

And the drunken poppy of my sleepings.

VII

I heard flowers die in the ground

And the wells' drunken lament 

And a song from the bell's mouth, 

Night, and a whispered question; 

And a heart - o death-wound, 

Beyond its poor days.

VIII

The darkness extinguished me in silence, 

I became a dead shadow in the day - 

Then I stepped from the house of joy 

Outside in the night.

Now a silence dwells in my heart, 

That does not feel the dreary day - 

And smiles up to you like thorns, 

Night - forever and ever!

IX

O night, you mute gate before my suffering, 

See this dark stigmata bleeding to death 

And completely inclined the staggering chalice of agony! 

O night, I am ready!

O night, you garden of oblivion 

Around my poverty's closed-to-the-world shine,

The wine leaves wilt, the wreath of thorns wilts. 

O come, you grand time!

X

My demon once laughed, 

When I was a light in gleaming gardens, 

And play and dance were my companions

And the wine of love, which makes drunk.

My demon once wept, 

When I was a light in painful gardens 

And humility was my companion, 

Whose radiance shines on poverty's house.

However, now my demon neither weeps nor laughs, 

I am a shadow of lost gardens 

And my death-dark companion is 

The silence of the empty midnight. 

XI

My poor smile which struggled for you, 

My sobbing song faded away in darkness. 

Now my path comes to an end.

Let me tread in your cathedral

Like once, a fool, simple minded, devoutly, 

And stand adoring mutely before you.

XII

You are in deep midnight 

A dead shore at the silent sea, 

A dead shore: Never more! 

You are in deep midnight.

You are in deep midnight 

The heaven in which you glowed as a star, 

A heaven from which no more God blossoms. 

You are in deep midnight.

You are in deep midnight 

An unbegotten in sweet womb, 

And never existing, unreal! 

You are in deep midnight.

Georg Trakl

La Santisima Muerte

Santisima Muerte (Most Holy Death) is a sacred figure venerated in Mexico depicted as a skeletal figure, clad in a long robe and carrying one or more objects, usually a scythe and a globe. She is the beloved goddess of death whose origins date to the pre-Christian beliefs of Aztec Indians. She is a very popular religious figure, who receives petitions for help with matters of daily living such as love, money, protection, health, luck, protection, and the recovery of stolen items. She is sometimes associated with marital fidelity, and many include her in love spells. In art, skeleton brides and grooms are depicted dancing, indicating a joyous life together and love until death.

In Mexico, death is often regarded with awe; hence, Santísima Muerte is honored year-round, with many candles, statues, and even jewelry honoring death. The Santa Muerte cult itself can best be described as a set of ritual practices offered on behalf a supernatural personification of death with traditional offerings including roses and tequila. Public shrines to Saint Death are adorned with red roses, cigars, and bottles of tequila, and Saint Death candles burn in her honor.

Condemned by the Catholic Church in Mexico, the cult has become firmly entrenched among the lower classes and criminal worlds. In fact, drug traffickers often tattoo her image onto their skin and fill their homes with her likeness. Until recently, most prayers and other rites are done privately in the home. However, for the past ten years or so, worship is only beginning to emerge in public, especially in Mexico City where shrines dedicated to the Saint have now begun to appear throughout Mexico.

Oh Santa Muerte beloved lady of silence

you know the darkness of my heart and accept me.

Oh sweet accomplice and protectoress of lost souls

Shield me from my enemies, 

season my life with sweetness.

You who have dominion over all living things, 

do not forsake me!

In the temple of your arms I will lay me down.

Oh desired death of my heart, I place my faith in thee.

Ghosts of the Studio

On the witching hour of midnight, 

While fair Nature lay asleep, 

And the Studio was bathed 

In a silence soft and deep, 

Came a rustle through the stillness, 

And the sound of moving feet, 

Moving to the strains of music, 

And the hum of voices sweet. 

Stealing through the misty darkness 

shone a beam of silv'ry light, 

And the weary artist started

As he saw the wond'rous sight— 

Floating shadows circling 'round him; 

Peering faces; waving hair; 

Priest, and actress, statesmen, sages, 

White-haired men, and children fair. 

As he gazed in speechless wonder

At the empty oaken frames, 

Which, in daytime, held fair portraits— 

Youthful maids, and stately dames. 

Softer, sweeter grew the music; 

Pale and dim the silv'ry light, 

And the ghostly rev'llers vanished— 

Vanished from the artist's sight.

--K. E. Barry--

The Ghosts of Multnomah

There are ghosts in this land of Multnomah —

Grotesque ghosts and ghosts in their shrouds — 

There are ghosts in the brush and the woodland

And ghosts in the swift-moving clouds. 

In this land of Multnomah they're sleeping,

They sleep while the day is still light, 

But when the shades fall, they go creeping, 

Go stealthily, eerily creeping

Out into the shapes of the night.

There are ghosts in this land of Multnomah — 

Gray witches on galloping nags —

Fleet-foot from the Kingdom of Nowhere 

Sweeping low o'er the blue mountain crags. 

You can see them bear on to the Westward, 

Green, garish the sky is, and vast 

Is the host of the storm that is nearing — 

With mutter and rumble is nearing — 

Till its fury is spent in the blast. 

There are ghosts in this land of Multnomah

Their voices at night you may tell, 

Like the creak of a half-fallen timber

That rocks in the fork where it fell. 

Or you hark to their far-away moaning,

As form calls to form in the gloom,

Moaning and weariful, beck'ning — 

Tossing and swaying and beck'ning —

Like the dead who have gone to their doom.

There are ghosts in this land of Multnomah

Black, grimacing heads, between pale 

Diabolical skulls that go bobbing

 Along on both sides of the trail. 

There were stumps and white blooms of spirea

Just there where the katydid sings, 

But they never are there in the star-time — 

And the path that I take in the star-time 

Is fraught with most horrible things!

There are ghosts in this land of Multnomah 

That tangle of mummyfied hair,

How it droops from the spectre that wears it,

 Bent low like a wraith in despair.

There's a fir that stands there in the day-time, 

With bright clumps of green in the sun,

But the spirit that lurks in the moonlight —

In the haunting and dubious moonlight — 

Is always a sorrowful one. 

There are ghosts in this land of Multnomah —

And the living know not of their graves; 

Ghosts of the tortured, of chieftains,

Of infants and terrible braves. 

But I'm glad there are ghosts in this country, 

Although I don't like them until 

I can sit by our comfortable fireside — 

By our crackling and cheery, old fireside — 

And shake off the creep and the chill.

By Anthony Henderson Euwer

Pluto

The farthest planet from the Sun, the most desolate planet in our solar system is also called Pluto, so-named for a god in an old legend. In this legend, Pluto was the keeper of the dark and distant underworld, a cheerless and terrible abode, where no light was. His world was a dark wasteland, shrouded in mystery and was supposed to be reached by way of chasms, caverns, and gloomy openings in the earth. 

The Cypress tree was sacred to Pluto, boughs of which were carried at funerals. Pluto is usually represented in an ebony chariot, drawn by his four black horses, Orphnaeus, Aethon, Nycteus, and Alastor. And, because he was god of the dead, keys were the ensigns of his authority, because there is no possibility of returning when the gates of his palace are locked. Sometimes he holds a sceptre, to denote his power; at other times a wand, with which he beckons and awes away his subject ghosts. 

In astrology , Pluto is known as the great 'transformer'; whatever he touches undergoes a transformation. As the ruler of sex, death, and rebirth, he marks the beginning and ending of phases.  He signifies the milestones and hurdles that we all face in our lives. He is god of the dead so he often manifests as a shadowy figure, our shadow self, our subconscious. He is associated with our fears and taboos, everything we have hidden, repressed and denied.  He symbolizes not only death, but the rebirth that follows, the beginnings and ends of the phases in life.

Pluto is an outer planet. It takes 245 to 250 years to travel through the zodiac. Hence, it is what we call a generational planet. That means that every person in every country born within that span of ten years will show Pluto in the same sign. At the present time, there are people alive with Pluto in  Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius. 

I am a part of the Pluto in Leo generation.  (Pluto was in Leo from 1939 to 1956 and January to August 1957). We were the hippies, the 'war babies', the rebels who made our presence felt in the early sixties.  Our motto was 'Do your own thing'. They say we changed the world, but perhaps it was the world that changed us.  We were also the first generation go grow up under the shadow of the 'bomb' that changed the destiny of man.  Is it any wonder that we lived our lives as we did?  Many of us believed there would be no tomorrow.

Pluto rules power and, wisely used,  this power can help us to  overcome obstacles, eliminate unwanted habits, attitudes, and behaviors.  Pluto transforms. He breaks us down and then rebuilds.The placement of Pluto by sign and house in our chart describes the area of life where the greatest transformation can take place.