Ground it out, you energy vacuum! Part I

10/14/10 Edit: gah, mentioned a link then forgot to put it in. It's there now. :P
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Take it or Leave it Category: Take what's useful...you know the tune. :)

One of the things we chronically ill folks will say in a heartbeat is that we will do nearly anything to treat our situations and get well. Of course, a generalization that broad would need clarification and individualization after all (no Santaria or Palo Mayombe, Briyumba or Kimbisa or anything in that category for me, for example). But if we can find something relatively safe with a reasonably good chance of working, we'll take a look at it.

Once I was able to concentrate solely on getting well, I jumped into healing with both feet.  I couldn't work full time at a paying job so I determined that I would work full-time every day at getting well.  I asked every doctor I had for all the recommendations that he or she could think of.  I work closely with all my doctors and wouldn't dream of doing anything that they would disapprove.

I pondered and prayed, and several ideas presented themselves.  I consulted an exquisite crystal healer and it changed the course of my healing.  It became apparent that I had problems with my energy bodies.  While prescription medicines and a couple of supplements did their things, I began work on my energy bodies.

I define my energy body as my internal nerve structures, spine, any and all nervous systems; and my external energy body such as aura, chakra system, and the weird energy fields I have no expectations that I'll ever fully understand in this life.

Donna Eden has developed a system by which people can use their hands to manipulate their own body energies (or the energy fields of others).  I approve of her system.  First, her system gets my thumbs-up because it teaches people to use their own energy and does not utilize the energy of anything or anyone else.  It does not resemble such systems as Reiki which call on "universal energy" which, in fact, does not exist.  But that part is for another column.  Second, her system WORKS.  Third, her system is easy to understand and remember.

So after working with her system and home rock medicine (wouldn't ever consider what I do as real crystal healing), I felt better but not sufficiently better.  I began homebrewing mead and medicinal beers, foraging my semi-wild backyard for healing herbs, and then I fell and broke my neck.

Yep, I broke a bone spur off my C-5 vertebra.  Come to learn that I've got spine problems from my C-1 all the way to my tailbone.  So, I added get spinal work done to my list.

I wasn't getting good results from chiropractics.  Every adjustment seemed to trigger every symptom I had so I gave it up.

Honestly, at that point I was stumped.  I made an appointment with Pam Oslie, a psychic in California.  She had very specific--Edgar Cayce-type specific--recommendations for work on my spine that I needed.  She cautioned me that I might need rods on either side of my spine if I couldn't get the problems fixed (yeah, I've got scoliosis too).  Anybody coming at my back with a knife will get what I'd give anybody attempting to stab me in the back.  So, just don't go there, docs.

Anyway, now I'm getting superb physical therapy treatments on my neck and back according to her recommendations--very good results!!  The treatments have tremendously improved the flow of nerve impulses throughout my entire self.  If the physical therapist I were seeing had less education and experience, I don't believe he would have been able to locate the problems solely by touch.  They don't show up on x-rays or MRI but do show up--ok, get this--Pam Oslie saw them and the PT can feel them.  The doctoral student who conducted the evaluation caught every single nuance in my (lack of) balance and the PT will help with it as well.

One thing that continues to trouble me is utterly perplexing sensitivity.  I'm not sensitive - I am the sensor itself.  I'm not a careful observer - I'm the Princess from The Princess and the Pea.  That was one of my late father's nicknames for me.  He'd say, "All right, Princess and the Pea..."

I can't innumerate everything I've done to combat this, fix it, reduce it, overcome it, bury it, obliterate it, embrace it, integrate it, dilute it, give it away--you cannot imagine what I've done to address this.  I have had absolutely no success at all, none, zero, zilch.  I am becoming more and more sensitive every day.

I've carefully read and learned about my astrological natal chart as part of my healing work - hell, I've about gotten all that's out there of pharmaceuticals and Western medicine so I plunged into complementary and more esoteric, metaphysical work.

In my astrological chart, I found the reflection of my sensitivity which was comforting in a way.  It said to me that for the most part, I had not caused it; however, it is utterly part of who I am and cannot be separated from my self-ness.  According to chart progressions, I can expect it to get worse, or to say it another way, I will become more intuitive, sensitive, aware of energy, psychic, and so on as I finish up the second half of my life.  My energetic vacuum will self-upgrade to industrial strength in about 10 years.  It's bad now.  I cannot picture what it will be like in 10 years.

Before I spoke with Pam Oslie, I had read her book Life Colors: What the Colors in Your Aura Reveal and taken her online "aura color" test.  I had done my little thing and determined that she would be a good fit for what I needed to know.

She told me that, in her system, I was a "life color" that she doesn't see often:  Crystal.  Well, "Crystal" was tied for second place on the online test I took but once she described "Crystals", I was convinced that she was right.

Crystals, one might say, are no one until we're with someone.  We don't have much energetic personality so to speak until we come in contact with another person.  When we do, we suck energy from the other person and fill our aura out with the "color" of the other person.

When I'm with a "yellow", I'm yellow.  When I'm with a "blue", I'm blue.  On page 155 in her book, Pam Oslie says

Crystal is a rare Life Color.  Crystals have clear auras and are known as the "aura chameleons".  Like chameleons, their auras will change colors to match those of the people they are connecting with at the time.  They then take on the characteristics, emotions, and thoughts of that color.  Consequently, in power Crystals can get along quite well with almost anyone.  Yellows, for example, feel they can relate to Crystals who, when they are with them, act and think like Yellow.  Later when the same Crystals spend time with Sensitive Tans, the Tans feel as if they have found kindred spirits.  However, Crystals' inconsistencies can also confuse people.  One minute Crystals think and behave like Greens.  Later they can act like Blue.  The more they bond with others, the more their personalities change.  Because Crystals tend to absorb the colors of other people's auras, people can, at times, feel an energy drain when they are in the presence of Crystals.

Yep, she's got that right.  I'm a pure energy sucker and until I started working on healing my energy body, I wasn't even aware of the extent to which I was vampiring others.  If I get low on energy, I'll start looking for energy wherever I can find it.  Here I discuss the results of a test the chiropractor ran on the energy levels of my two daughters and myself, same day, same technician.  It seems I run half a tank low on a regular basis.

She doesn't have as much about Crystals in her book as she does other Life Colors.  Her best recommendation for my Crystal problems is to immerse myself outside in Nature which, to me, is only the most wonderful thing next to sex... :D

Next, more on my Crystalline self and the various Nature things I'm doing to solve my issues.  I've gotten a piece of more specific, concrete advice to chew on so to speak.

So, I'm consulting psychics and learning to read astrological charts, working with rocks and herbs and foraging wild plants from my backyard along with taking prescription medicine and going through physical therapy.

Still think there's anything I won't do to get well?  Within reason, of course?  :)




Copyright 2008-2010 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission. Use the ShareThis link if you want to share this. Nothing in the above article is remunerated content. Remember that if my work gets published anywhere else without proper citation, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

Sharethis: Stare at boobs for longer life: Study | TheMedGuru

Ever on the look-out for ways to improve men's health, I saw this article and felt compelled to share it.

Men, you know what to do. LOOK AT YOUR WIVES. Sheesh.

It's been a long 19 years since I divorced my boob-starer. Sad times for me. :/

Wives, do you part to increase your husbands' longevity. Better he look at you than some other gal, eh?

I'm going to barricade myself against the solar storm set to hit the Earth tomorrow, 8/3/10. Check out spaceweather.com to read about the neat but odd solar eruption that occurred on 8/1. I'm feeling it now.

Stare at boobs for longer life: Study | TheMedGuru Source: themedguru.com
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Sharethis: Kava Kava - What is Kava Kava

One of life's joys is to experiment! Try new things! Expand your horizons!

I'm a huge experimenter.  Sagittarius Sun in 8th House, after all - the eternal quest to experience quests.  I most assuredly experienced a quest recently.

I've been battling depressive dips as part of Migraine prodrome for a few years.  They've not always been present.  No idea why suddenly they suddenly appeared.  Maybe they'll disappear.

I already take a therapeutic dose of a marvelous antidepressant, Effexor XR, every day.  It's part of my Migraine preventative regimen which also includes verapamil and Keppra.  Other than the regular "blues" that everybody contracts, I shouldn't feel depressed.

These depressive dips don't cause me worry anymore, not like they did when they first started.  Still, I don't like them.  I never want to have another one.

I was battling one of them the other night.  St. John's wort, a safe mood-enhancing herb, isn't something I want to try to combine with Effexor.  So I started hunting around for something else to try.

I found again--kava kava root, also called simply kava.  I've tried kava capsules but of all things, they make my head hurt!  Still, I've used them for social events.  I can speak to and perform for 3 people or 3 million people, live or taped or by tin-can telephone if you like.  Show biz is a breeze.  But please, never ever ask me to go to a grown-up party where I don't personally know and deeply love at least 85% of the folks in the room.  Rivers of glow streak my makeup and soak my underclothing.  I throw up.  I dream of death and it would be easy and welcome.  Groan-and-throw-up parties are what I consider hell to be like.  Kava has made it possible for me to discharge social duties I'd otherwise never be able to handle.  Kids parties?  Love'em, threw them for my daughters regularly.  Kept me out of the groan-grown-throw-up parties.

But I can't deal with anything else that makes my head hurt.  So kava stays in the bottle on the shelf for emergency social appearances.

I have absolutely no idea what possessed me to order shredded kava root a while back.  I've amassed a mass of herbs from Frontier Co-op and Mountain Rose Herbs and a couple of other places.  I've been reading Susun Weed and Rosemary Gladstar and remembering things I used to do with plants when I was younger.

Anyway - so I remember I've got these shredded kava roots.  You shouldn't heat water to make kava beverages because some of the active ingredients are destroyed at 140oF and higher.  Capsules would seem like the perfect alternative but many of them contain kava stems and leaves which have been linked to liver damage (and they don't have any good relaxation benefits either - they just fill up the capsules with less of the active root powder).  Worse, some capsules are doctored with various kava extracts prepared with chemical solvents that should never be used in the preparation of anything intended for a human body.

So, I've got these shredded kava roots.

I've watched the shows on TV describing traditional methods for preparation of kava beverages.  Seems that the roots are never eaten or fermented in any way.  They're just powdered, chewed, or ground and mixed with water.  Then they're either kneaded or blenderized, strained, and then drunk.  Straightforward, really. 

Blame it on the Lunar Eclipse that hit my Sagittarius 8th House.  Blame it on my own curiosity.  Blame anyone but me for wanting to try CHEWING SHREDDED KAVA ROOT to see what that segment of traditional beverage preparation would be like.  Mastication seems to make the kavalactones more easily accessed.  And it would be FUN.

I had been reading accounts of poor virgin daughters of Pacific Island tribal chiefs who would elope to avoid the chore of chewing kava root for the whole tribe.  Poor things!  Sexually pure virgins were considered to have what it took to make the perfect kava bolus.  Girls have left virginity behind for less than kava roots, it seemed to me.  Surely if I was making just a serving for myself (half the average quantity as always at first, to gauge my sensitivity), I could do it. 

Chewing shredded roots!  I eat carrots all the time!  Surely I was up to chewing dried kava!  I closed my eyes and dove into a nice pinch of the tablespoon I had settled upon for the 2 cups of water I wanted to use.

Three tablespoons of kava root it took me to decide that this was fun to do--once.  The taste was fairly pleasant as dried roots go but the resulting goo was disgusting to look at before getting stirred into water (figured out on the second serving to just put the chewed pinches directly into the tap water), and once I got a small splinter in my throat that wouldn't go up or down for a minute.  The blenderizing didn't smooth out the chewed pinches as much as I expected but that worked out well for the straining step.

All in all, it was an adventure in libation.  If you shoot the drink it hits faster but wears off quickly as well.  If you sip it, you may never know you've had any.  But so far, no head pain. 

Best of all, this delightful little adventure got me out of the Migraine dumps.  Chewing shredded kava roots is like chewing toothpicks soaked in Novocaine.  I imagine they'd be splendid for a sore throat or if you bit your tongue or something like that.  Once I finally make it through what I've got left, I'm going the powder route which, I understand, is the preferred method nowadays in the areas where kava grows.

If I ever decide to do this again, that is.  I'm not convinced that the benefits are worth the effort and besides, next time it won't be a first-time adventure.  I'll have to go through this ritual several more times before I decide for sure.  There are a couple of things to be aware of so take a minute to read the attached article, please, before embarking on kava.

I'll have to find something else when the depressive dip rolls around again and only an adventure will solve it.  Need to make friends with an ethnobotanist, maybe try smoking mugwort or snorting sneezewort, something legal, safe, and new.

I made it through this time better off than I had been before.  That's a good goal for next time.  Now pardon me while I floss out a Novocaine toothpick.   :)

Kava Kava - What is Kava Kava Source: altmedicine.about.com
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But it's fun...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Holiday Cheer - Sharethis: Dark chocolate prevents wrinkles, skin cancer

Just in time for Christmas...MORE GOOD NEWS FROM THE CHOCOLATE FRONT!

Fear not that high quality, high cocoa solids chocolate is nowhere to be found. World Wide Chocolate is one online purveyor who will bring such Elysian delights to your house, your very abode as it were. They are an online business I recommend. I do business with them and have been very pleased with all transactions.

Right now, yea at this very moment, Callebaut Belgian dark chocolate batons boulangers are melting in my mouth, smooth as liquid black gold.  This particular baking formulation has only 44% cocoa solids but I've got chocolate with 80% cocoa solids in the cabinet.  HELL yeah I eat baking chocolate!  And every sort of bonbon and confection, bakery item and savory dish containing Theobroma cacao that I can think up or find.

There may be some who consume greater quantities of chocolate than I do but I'll put my Theobroma cacao tastes up there with the biggest eaters any day.

Want to know why I don't eat Hershey's kisses?  Scroll down to the blog entitled "The Sweet Life" and look for the entry dated Friday June 5, 2009.  Read the comments.  Yep, there's one from ME.  I recommend The Bee Folks.  They carry bulk and varietal honey, some nice beeswax products, and Lori had TRIPLET BOYS last Spring.  They're good people to do business with.  I go through a lot of honey.  Lori sells half gallons, gallons, and even larger sizes as well as 8 oz and a couple of 4 oz sizes of premium honeys.

I hope to pull together some Theobroma cacao recipes and projects for the next article.  Preview:  That last swallow of sediment coffee in the pot that no one wants?  Add cocoa powder and another couple of ingredients to make a nice scrub for stretch marks that will tickle your spouse's tongue as well.  Ohhhh...yeah...

Chocolate is a Migraine trigger for some people.  It appears it may have something to do with endothelial function and production of nitric oxide, which expands blood vessels.  [Disclaimer:  I have carefully recorded my physical responses to chocolate over the many years I've dealt with Migraine and found one correlation:  The craving for chocolate is a sure sign that Migraine attacks are imminent.  Eat chocolate, don't eat chocolate, no effect on whether attacks occur in me or their intensity.]  Read this interesting article from--Hershey's--about some of the nice things chocolate does for people.  The article includes citations but frankly, I'd consider Hershey's Chocolate an expert in chocolate in their own right.  They're not my chocolatiers but I'll count on their information any day.

Eat high quality, high cocoa solids chocolate.  And honey.  Every day.  The Sparkling Mother is glad it's good for you.  :D
 

Dark chocolate prevents wrinkles, skin cancer
Dark chocolate prevents wrinkles, skin cancer Source: presstv.ir
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When Enjoyment is Nowhere on the List

"Yes Mother, but how will you benefit from all this?"
Recent observation by Libchik


Happy Full Corn Moon! I'm full of Migraine meds and about to get horizontal but I wanted to share some thoughts first. Once I hit the sheets I might not get back up until Sunday.

The other day, Libchik and I were making some plans. She and I worked and talked, planned and compromised, and reached a viable solution.

At the end of our discussion, she commented that everyone would be pleased with the solution we reached--except me! She said that I had not included myself and my own needs anywhere in the complex. She also scolded me for never including myself. It's nothing new.

I'm hearing this EVERYWHERE. People keep telling me that I should begin to consider myself before I consider others. It is foreign to my nature though. And that self-denial is my nature is borne out through my birth chart. I was born so "others oriented" that I have no internal mechanism for self-promotion even when I need it.

The ability to deny myself serves me well in my belief system. I was a Secular Discalced (meaning Barefoot) Carmelite for some years, and Discalced Carmelites are a penitential order. We thrive on penance. A Carmelite who doesn't might reconsider his or her vocation.

But a prime directive for us is to never take on penance of our own volition in the absence of approval by a spiritual director who understands the penitential vocation. I haven't had a dedicated spiritual director since my friend and formation director died. I was so crushed by her death that I voluntarily withdrew from Carmel.

All that to say: I should probably listen to all the people in the last 3 or 4 years who have told me that I should loosen up and get my mojo back. It was surreal to hear my adult daughter adjuring me to think of myself, when I know I've spent the last 42 years thinking of her and her sister, and my parents and ex-husband, and the job I retired from on disability pension, and the showbiz public, above all else.

I've said this several times over the last 8 or 9 months, that I must learn how to relax and let my hair down. And for sure it will be a learning event because I don't know what I like to do. I have no idea what I enjoy. Not a clue of what's fun to me.

Well, I know I feel gratified by a number of things but Libchik told me that gratification wasn't the point of pleasure. Experiencing enjoyment is the objective of pleasure. If I'm knocking myself out to solve problems and plan events for others, it's nonsensical to omit myself but I do it anyhow.

Baking that poppy seed cake and feeling the satisfaction after so many years of not having the capability to cook triggered a confusing cascade in me. Honestly, I believe I did feel pleasure. I was proud that I had come far enough to make the attempt to bake again. The cake turned out just fine and it was delicious. My mother enjoyed it. I was gratified that I could accomplish it but there was more to how I felt. I may have--enjoyed it?

What else does one do to figure out what's fun? I won't be climbing aboard the Great American Scream Machine roller coaster at Six Flags, that much is certain. But what other things are fun for a person with no vestibular function whose chronic illnesses are triggered by so many things she can't keep up with them all?

Growing mushrooms? Reading a sensual piece of fiction (or non-fiction for that matter)? Getting hot and sweaty with an agreeable guy? Where do I find an agreeable guy who is ok with my chronic crap?

I'm so trained to perform music that I never learned to play for fun. I was quite glad to find that I could still knock out songs on my new guitar but I can't say it was entertaining to me. My mother asked me to plan a time to play the piano for her sometime soon. It will certainly be gratifying to see her enjoy it but it won't be anyone's idea of fun but hers.

I'm going to cry now. I have to find pleasure but I don't know where to look. Actual me-oriented pleasure and not gratification from service. Maybe that's a start--have I been substituting gratification from service for self-indulgent pleasure?

I wonder if anyone has published a workbook to guide the servile back into the real world? How would I even look that up on Amazon?

Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission. Use the ShareThis link if you want to share this. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else without proper citation, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

Venus in Aquarius in 10th House

Not back from break yet.

I need to do something about my poor, highly afflicted Venus. I'll never solve my 8th House Sun and Hades/Scorpio Moon unless I do, I'm about of the opinion.

A terrible rhyming couplet popped into my brain just then, but I won't share it. XD

Back soon. :-*


Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission. Use the ShareThis link if you want to share this. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else without proper citation, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

New interpretation of my Sun in the 8th House of Death and Sex

Edit: unreal--I just discovered that my Venus conjuncts my Mars today. No WONDER! XD
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Heeheehee! This is funny! And accurate too!

There are men out there doing gymnastics to get my attention. In vain, and I'm sorry. That's not what's funny or accurate. It touches my heart. Men touch my heart. Men, touch my heart. Or my hands. Or my ...oh never mind... XD

I recently received a new interpretation of my Sun in the 8th House of Death, Taxes, Sex, and other Metamorphic Processes. In my birth chart, that's the House where my Sun appears with my correct birth time. With the wrong birth time it was in my 7th House (and I believe I've figured out where the wrong time of 3:15PM instead of the correct 2:18PM may have come from--my dad the Navy CPO and our resident timekeeper. He always considered Daylight Savings Time to be the more accurate method of timekeeping--he called it "sun time"--and would frequently comment on things happening in "sun time" compared to Standard Time. He would have thought nothing of telling me that I was born at 3:15PM because it would have been what he considered accurate "sun time". Just a thought but I'll bet that's why. Of course, the 3-minute difference is another mystery. Maybe it was 3 minutes before I started breathing?).

Anyway...

I have recommendations now in the astrology department: Book called The Inner Sky by Steven Forrest, copyright 1988 Seven Paws Press, PO Box 82, Borrego Springs, CA 92004 (yeah, ninth printing!), and his online mostly computer-generated "The Sky Within" report. Get the report directly from his website www.stevenforrest.com. It's available other places but for more money ($20 at his website) and you'll get it by email much more quickly from his website.

I've ordered it twice, once when I thought 3:15PM was correct and now with the correct 2:18PM time. Some of the information didn't change (outer planet houses weren't affected by the time change). The most interesting change was how Venus, my correct "chart ruler", affects my 8th House Sagittarius Sun (before with the wrong time, my chart ruler was Mercury since I had Gemini Ascendant. Now, correctly, I'm Taurus Ascendant).

Steven Forrest's report suggests that sex is more important to me than perhaps I ever knew. Well, no one knows how important sex is to someone who has been a sworn celibate since March 15, 1991, at 7:00PM [but who's keeping up, right? ;) ].

Here's a quote from his report:

You have lessons here. Let's consider them.

With the Sun in the Eighth House, you can't learn what you've come into the world to learn without the catalytic effect of a lover upon you... and whether or not you and that lover are married is irrelevant. The point is that many of your deepest lessons lie in the steamy realm of committed sexual intimacy.

Hmmm...really?

Somebody else has been trying to convince me of that for not quite 2 years. Have I really got a "Somebody screw me PLEASE!! Right now!!" sign on my back?

I've indeed defined myself by sexual boundaries, but by being a sworn celibate. I've got a civil divorce (man, what an oxymoron) but in my belief system, I would need a Church annulment before I'd be free to present myself as "available".

I know I've been hiding behind that need for an annulment all these years. I wonder if I'm ready to look into it now?

What a scary thing to look into, getting back into the dating game. Can't think about it right now. Head is hurting way, way too bad.

There was a thread on a bulletin board about how a person "cured" his/her Migraine Disease by "getting laid regular". Sheesh. If that's all there was to it, no married folks would have Migraine. My ex and I were three-times-a-day folks and it didn't cure our Migraine--we're both Migraineurs.

If you have any interest in astrology and how your birth chart might shed light on your life situation, consider checking The Inner Sky out at the public library. Heck, public libraries are free. Free is good.

I'm not free. But I'm worth it. ;-*


Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission. Use the ShareThis link if you want to share this. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else without proper citation, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

Deep in transpersonality

"You know nothing of hell."
Koehler, POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl

May has been a rough month. It has taken a lot of out of me and I couldn't have told ahead of time that it was going to be so difficult. May marked one year since my father died here at home.

Fairly easy Migraine month, though. I've now gone for three complete weeks without a Migraine attack of any sort. Three-week-long prodrome still going so whenever the attack finally progresses, it's liable to be a huge one. Quite pleased that I've needed no meds other than daily preventatives in a nice long time. Clear quartz and dioptase-charged water, that's the secret.

Not a good month for Meniere's. One minor attack after another and one major attack, first major one since February. My ears feel like they're about to explode right now. My hearing in my right Meniere's ear is down. My mother had to raise her voice yesterday just to talk to me.

If I can ever get all my situations calmed down, I do want to go back to school to study transpersonal psychology. It's a complex subject by itself, psychology is, without the addition of things like shamanistic healing techniques, astrology, and in-depth dream interpretation. Transpersonal psychology is a form of depth psychology. Going into the deep places of the human psyche to heal the most frightening, disturbing, and supra-personal topics and doing it through transpersonal techniques that take a person outside themselves and into the extra-dimensional realms--I cannot wait. Soul retrieval, hypnosis, energy work--all right down my alley.

Seems I'm suited for it, if my birth chart with the new time is correct. It appears I've got the chart of a witch--or midwife of the soul, as it has also been put to me.

I've figured out a way to do a bit of studying. I can use my laptop in bed and when vertigo hits, I slide it to the edge of the bed and stretch out. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time horizontal this month. I'm vertical right now borrowing Libchik's computadora whilst I wait for mine to come back from warranty work. Feels good to be upright.

Got several things in my head that I want to write about: new information about the role of estrogen in brain's processing of hearing (which MUST include the study about the relationship between cochlear dysfunction and Migraine which is also affected by estrogen and hormones), something that struck me about the relationship between Neptune birth chart aspects and "permeable" people like me related to body energy leakage (I cannot afford to shed energy under any circumstance that I don't initiate), and how birth chart analysis seems to provide clues to help distinguish between learned behaviour and innate, inborn character traits. Learned behaviour is more difficult to modify than inborn characteristics, and any help in sorting it out would give a psychologist an edge in treatments.

Before I write any of those columns, though, I'm going to write about what I'm reading right now: The Hades Moon by Judy Hall, (c) 1998 Samuel Weiser Inc, Box 612, York Beach, ME 03910-0612. Judy Hall is a UK karmic astrologer/astronomer (Master's Degree level) who has counseled people who have a particular chart aspect connecting their Moon and Pluto placements. It seems that we Hades Moon sorts have unique problems such as energy vampirism and other such issues from the depths of hell that transpersonal work appears to succeed especially well in adjusting. My Scorpio Moon sextile Pluto in Virgo is what Judy Hall calls "doubly Hades Moon". So, to everyone I've put through hell since the day I was born, I apologize. Now I'm getting a handle on it. Glad my belief system contains a method for addressing wrongs. Hope you all begin to feel better soon. :)

Right now, I've got to get horizontal again. The good vertical feeling has worn off.

Feels good to be feeling again. Speaking of feeling--did I mention that some people with Hades Moons have a higher libido than others? Add that to my current 20% increase due to Migraine and...dadgum...gotta find a way to solve this...

With my Venus in Aquarius squared Neptune in Scorpio plus my doubly Hades Scorpio Moon, it takes an extremely strong, handsome man on the darkest side of the Force to achieve perfection in my eyes. But, he'd have to prove trustworthy first, and I don't believe that's possible for any man. Love you guys, but you'll tell a girl anything. Especially you dark-side and handsome types. :-*



On Twitter--Parin Stormlaughter

Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

Magic Pill! Magic Pill!

Doesn't exist, I'm afraid. It is a genuine myth.

Some myths are in fact real. Magic wands do exist. Magic music is real. Magicians are real. I will forever be in love with the world's most fantastic magician, my walking god. Not to scandalize anyone but that's what they call him, his friends do. Someday...

But a Magic Pill for chronic illness is a myth.

I read an article on About.com's Adrienne Dellwo's Fibromyalgia & CFS Blog about the mythical Magic Pill. About.com doesn't participate in free linking to articles or I'd point you there.

It caught my eye because I'm again looking at the real possibility that I may never get well, healthy the way I was Before. I wrote here about discovering that my energy frequently flows in a homolateral pattern and backwards from the normal way it should be flowing. Energy flows and moves around just like blood circulates and air is respirated. If an energy body establishes an incorrect flow as a compromise to keep the rest of the bodies going then making a lasting correction is difficult, the way Donna Eden explains it.

I'm on a clear quartz diet for now. Clear quartz is what the Crystal Healer told me to start with and it always makes me feel better. He told me to keep clear quartz with me at all times. I'm drinking clear-quartz-charged water, wearing clear quartz, and only adding wearing labradorite because it really, really helps my thyroid.

After September 11th, the news media reported that everyone was going to have to learn to live in the New Normal. New security rules, new awareness levels, new ways to be.

I'm going through another phase of finding my private New Normal, I guess. It's discouraging. I had another combination Meniere's/Migraine attack yesterday along with the tornadoes and cold front. Still dealing with the depressive dip that I get with Migraine attacks.

Chin up! Clear quartz is really, really pretty and sparkly and inexpensive. The cluster at top of this page is quartz. Quartz clusters are beautiful in the sunshine.

Someday I'll be beautiful in the sunshine again.




On Twitter--Parin Stormlaughter

Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission under any circumstances. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, or Are you the real thing?

"Are you for real?"
The question guys most frequently ask Yours Truly.


It appears that Oprah Winfrey is going hormonal again. If you missed the recent episode with Suzanne Somers (and I did--I've missed every episode of The Oprah Winfree Show ever shown!), then you might be interested in the Newsweek review of it. Unfortunately, Newsweek isn't offering free linking to online articles or I'd point you there. But, I've read it and it was interesting.

Bottom line: Newsweek assessed her TV show as not fair and balanced, but her concurrent Oprah magazine article on the same topic as far better.

But what were they about? Bioidentical hormones compared to conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) and synthetic conjugated estrogens (CSE) for women in menopause, either natural or surgically induced.

I am most assuredly not as studied-up on bioidentical hormones as Suzanne Somers and Oprah Winfrey. I wouldn't dream of giving anyone, male or female, any opinion about the state of his or her own hormones. I just learned from reading around today that even without hormone or estrogen replacement, a woman's body will produce a small amount of estradiol through her adrenal cortex tissue whether she has any functioning ovaries or not.

I'm writing this article mostly to gripe about--marketing and words.

I had a TVH-BSO (total vaginal hysterectomy-bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy) in 2004. Gone were the evil ovaries that patently and categorically refused to give me peace. In the month leading up to my surgery, I did intensive reading and pondering about post-surgical ovarian secretion substitutes. Only for my own self did I do this, so don't anyone run to a doctor and say "Well, Parin Stormlaughter said such-and-such was the best..."

Anyhow...

Conjugated equine estrogens are made from the urine of pregnant horses--mares. The drug industry calls them the "natural" estrogens. Synthetic conjugated estrogens are made from plants and plant extracts and the drug industry does not consider them to be natural.

Please take a moment to glance at this chart from the Premarin website. Notice the page is entitled "Common Alternate Estrogen Replacement Therapy Products in the U.S." Notice that in the URL string it's "synth". Is that short for synthetics?

Ladies and gentlemen (and guys, I hope for the love of the women in your life that you're still with me here), there is nothing synthetic about a yam. Or soybeans, unless they're genetically-modified soybeans and that's for another column...

In my opinion, there is nothing more naturally human or "real" about equine estrogen nor anything "synthetic" about plant-based estradiol. There, I've said it.

There are arguments to be made on both sides. One could validly point out inconsistencies between people who eat horse meat but refuse to take CEEs. One could validly point out that putting a yam through the processing necessary to conjugate an estrogen is about as far from the tuber as you can get.

I see both sides. I am repelled by the thought of putting anything derived from mare urine in my mouth, which is what one does when taking Premarin. I try to be consistent, though. I'm repelled by the thought of ever needing a pig valve for my heart for example, and someday I may be faced with that decision depending on how my mitral valve prolapse goes.

I don't use placenta products on my hair. There are all sorts of skin care products that use what they euphemistically call "DNA" in their products designed to be absorbed through skin capillaries. I'll eat a burger now and then but I could easily be a happy lacto-ovo vegetarian (and was for a few years).

I'm a true child of the land. Horse manure makes marvelous compost (although really, chicken manure is better if you can get it). My sister-in-law was a state champion equestrian in her teenage years. She and I used to ride, she on her rescued thoroughbred racehorse who had fractured his leg and would have been destroyed if she had not taken him in, and me on her old childhood quarter horse. The quarter horse retired to the loving home of a child with skeletal difficulties where he made the child's life bloom--that's a story I want to write someday. Love, love, love horses.

I guess I'm complaining that mare-urine-derived estrogen does NOT seem more natural for humans than plant-derived estradiol. Sounds like a marketing strategy designed to pull in people who otherwise have no opinion but feel like "natural health" is better than synthetic health. Gripes the left side of my behind to see marketing strategies of this sort.

I use Vivelle-dot, whose estradiol is derived from yams. I had nearly completed very early menopause when I had my surgery at 43 years of age. When I started Vivelle-dot, I was suddenly in a world that I never knew could be so...even. Any menopausal woman needing to feel better deserves to, and I'll stand right beside you on that.

And I won't criticize you for what you choose. We all have very important decisions to make about our bodies. I'm there.

Be aware that drug-industry generated labels may or may not conform to your own beliefs. Read, study, ponder, sift it all through your belief system, and be able to explain your decision if you are challenged. Keep up with the latest information.

And know that the Sparkling One will be here to share what gripes the left side of her behind. It's big enough for plenty of things to gripe it, that's for sure. :D

The answer to my most FAQ is yes, I'm very much as I appear to be. If you like me on the outside, you'll love me on the inside. Dadgum head in the beehive...must be Valentine's Day in the air.




Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission under any circumstances. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.