Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) emerges soon after the Snowdrop. Although not a true aconite, it is closely related to them, being also a member of the Buttercup family. As with true aconites, all parts of the plant are poisonous, however ingestion would mean enduring a bitter taste sensation.

Aconites are sometimes referred to as Wolfsbane ~ plants that were said to repel werewolves and also said to cure lycanthropy, the cause of the shapeshifting condition.

It is said that these plants grew from the saliva of Cerberus, guardian of the Gate of Hades. Cerberus was said to be a three headed dog, or a beast with the head of a lion, lynx and sow, or even a fifty headed beast with the tail of a dragon and a mane of writhing serpents. He was the offspring of the giant Typhoeus and Echidna, and is siblings were Hydra and Chimaera.

It is said that when Hercules wrested Cerberus from the Underworld, the beast turned his face from the light and his rabid barking sprayed saliva over the woodland floor. The plants that grew there carried his poison and would open the gate to the underworld, and death.

Aconite is said to have been used by Medea in her attempt to poison Theseus when he arrived in Athens to join his father, Aegeus.

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Winter Aconite Spittle of Cerberus originally appeared on Taexalia on February 24, 2010.

"While the cause of much human suffering can be traced to negligent fostering, there is also within the psyche naturally an innate contra naturam aspect, an "against nature" force. The contra naturam aspect opposes the positive: it is against development, against harmony, and against the wild. It is a derisive and murderous antagonist that is born into us, and even with the best parental nurture the intruder's sole assignment is to attempt to turn all crossroads into closed roads."

"Bluebeard represents a deeply reclusive complex which lurks at the edge of all women's lives, watching, waiting for an opportunity to oppose her."

~ from Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

Bluebeard is an archetype I have spent quite a lot of time with over the years. He is portrayed in story as a failed mage but he is an adept shapeshifter. It is said that Bluebeard is an aspect of all our psyche's but sometimes it is easier to see someone outside of our selves as the Bluebeard who needs to be vanquished. This can be helpful in protecting ourselves from toxic relationships, but I tend to believe that the Bluebeard acquaintance is merely the activator of our own shadow lurker - the key to the blood-stained room.

Bluebeard is a force that seeks power-over and control and when we meet a person who wants to control us or stop us from being ourselve or meeting our own needs, we may find ourselves strapping on a pair of red shoes and dancing to someoone else's drumbeat. A codependent dance of what goes around comes around, giving as good as one gets and focusing so much on not being over-powered and controlled that we mirror the intruder and become him. We give our power away which of course means we find ourselves feeling disempowered.

As the red shoes crafted by another spin us out of our own centre, we lose sight of the light and get tangled in shadows and become disconnected from our Wildish authentic self.

Dear Bluebeard, I am too busy hand-stitching myself a new pair of dancing shoes to accept your invitation to distraction. I will be dancing where there is no path and leaving footprints. You may choose to follow, to lurk and to try and throw me off course but you will never stamp out my light.

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Dancing With Bluebeards and Red Shoes originally appeared on Taexalia on March 25, 2009.

Some of you may know that we replaced our entire central heating system in the early months of 2007. What none of you will know is that after I had pulled up all those nails and lifted the hardboard that lies over the floorboards (definitely not the most bizarre flooring combination in this block I can assure you!), and after the lovely men had performed noisily for an entire week... a decision was made that the hardboards would henceforth be attached to the floorboards with screws instead of nails.

This decision was made by @, who also decided it was his responsibility to buy the screws and do the screwing.

Last week @ bought the screws.

Yesterday he finally got down to screwing.

Whilst he was doing this there was a knock at the door and I opened up to be greeted by a Bobby. Said Bobby was enquiring if I knew the woman who lived in a flat across the street. I don't.

He said "It's nothing to worry about, we are just trying to find her."

I closed the door again and filled @ in on what he might have missed.

A wee while later @ said:

"Do you think it looks at all suspicious that I was screwing the floorboards down when the copper was trying to trace a missing woman?"

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It is all in the timing originally appeared on Taexalia on February 6, 2009.

I was standing in the bath, post shower catching the drip with a towel, as you do, when the white oval bathmat on the floor caught my eye. It's a really insignificant bathmat usually, but on Sunday it appeared to have acquired a strange pink footprint pattern.I was bit puzzled as I hadn't noticed it before and I looked at my feet, and the bath, to see if I had somehow walked through a tin of paint, as you do.

Nothing.

I finished drying off and stood in the hall getting dressed, still eyeing this pink oddity. My eyes strayed to the sink where I spotted a sliver of the same pink substance, and then another streak this time on the bathroom light switch.

I am sure my brow furrowed as I imagined I had been transported into the world of Stephen King Does Barbie, and awaited the appearance of a slithering, one footed pink denizen.

I caught sight of a series of pink blots on the kitchen floor and it was only then it dawned on me..

Whilst making lunch the previous day, I had wanted a portion of the contents of a newly purchased jar. I had tried everything to open this jar with no success. The only thing I hadn't tried was an elastic band because I couldn't find an elastic band. I am sure there are four million elastic bands languishing in our storage pod, but the Cailleach only knows when we will be unpacking them, so the jar remained sealed.

I even tried stabbing the lid with a fork, which I hate to do because I like to re-use jars, but it seems the lid was not only attached to the jar with superglue, it was made from kryptonite and showed nary a dent in response to my frantic attack.

Eventually I decided that I will only work so hard for a lunch ingredient, and I gave in to the idea of asking a manly thing, or in this case @, to do it for me when he got home from work. He promised he would see to it and I wandered off trying to fix the dent in my feminist pride.

Many hours later (around 4am), @ was getting ready for work and remembered my request that he open this jar for me. It was 4am, it was dark, he was naked, our flat remains in a state of freshly decorated pristine For Saleness - and @ began to work the jar....

I was a little groggy from disturbed sleep that morning when I made it to the kitchen to not have a cup of coffee. Propped up against my porridge oats was an envelope with a love note from @ which read:

"Beetroot is opened! (Slight spillage though. But I cleaned it up)" xxxxxxx

When opened the fridge to investigate house slight the slight spillage might have been, I found the jar half empty with very little juice in it. I am still finding stray spatters of pink.

I am installing webcams.

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Pink in Places originally appeared on Taexalia on January 12, 2009.

I decided to have a late afternoon shower, as those of us who are self-employed can choose to do. So I did the whole naked and soap thing and once I was nice and shiny I pushed the shower curtain back and as I reached for the towel to wrap my hair, I caught sight of a small brown mark on the floor. It was about an inch in diameter. I thought "What is that, I'm sure that wasn't there before..." (it should be noted that I do not wear my glasses in the shower).

As I wrapped my hair in a towel, it slowly dawned on me that the brown blob mark on the carpet had a tail. But it continued to sit there stock still as I dripped all over the place.

The bathroom door was closed and it seemed to be patiently waiting for it to open.

I looked around the bathroom for *something* and the only thing I could come up with was the empty loo roll tube sitting on the bin. Hooray for the person who didn't bother to take it to the recycling box!

I picked it up and plopped it over the wee moose and then stood there thinking "OK what do I do now?"

I am still dripping with only my hair in a towel but I go out into the hall and locate a plastic storage box that has been waiting for a purpose. I shoogled the wee thing and the tube into the box and as the moose came to life and started jumping I slapped the lid on.

I am not an experienced mouser - the last one we had didn't bother us much, ignored the humane traps and was eventually found dead on my kitchen floor. I imagine it was the same mouse just as I imagine that someone else in the building put down the poison that got her. So with a box with a baby mouse measuring little more than an inch, I wondered what to do next.

I phoned Allan.

He was not far from home on a bus and arrived soon after to hold the lid whilst I took a photo:

Baby House Mouse

We decided to take it to the park a little later in the evening and let it go. I popped some breadcrumbs into the box and chattered to it a bit.

About 10 minutes later, Allan yelled from the lounge that he saw another one go under his desk. I offered various implements but the hero decided to catch it with his BARE HANDS! He caught it like you would catch a kitten, by the scruff of it's neck, and carried it through to the box in the hall - it screamed blue murder, quite a tantrum for such a tiny beastie.

They seemed to know each other and huddled up together for a while before they started to go inside the tube and roll it about - at this point I considered getting a cage!

Allan later saw another mouse but wasn't quick enough to catch it, so it seems we have a nest of tiny babies. Hopefully we will catch them all!

We took the intrepid two up to the park and at first, when I opened the box, they hid inside the tube and didn't want to go anywhere. It was so cute! Then they realised they were free and skittered off into the undergrowth.

I did think of Misssy M and her snails and wondered if I should number the mice, but I decided that the idea of *knowing* they were homing wouldn't really placate me in a situation where I was feeling over run.

A situation which is not going to arise, you understand, oh Universe.

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What Is That Mark On The Carpet? originally appeared on Taexalia on July 4, 2007.

Mötley Crüe kindly organised a gig at the Manchester Apollo on the 12th. Perfect timing as a bonus detour on our way to Denmark, and a perfect gig too. We were warmed up by Papa Roach who pounded from start to finish and got my booty shooglin.. They left us wound up for more and after a (too long) interval I caught a movement offstage and spotted Mick making his way through a door - within seconds the edgy mood of the impatient audience erupted into a frenzy as the band finally blessed us with their presence.

I re-read that last bit and realise I sound like a really bad music journalist. I am not any sort of music journalist and none of my words really matter because if you weren't there, well, WHERE WERE YOU?

Word had circulated on motley.com that Tommy had not played at the Hammersmith Odeon during their previous gig due to a shoulder injury, and we had noted that the kit onstage didn't look like his. It was immediately obvious that it wasn't Tommy clambering behind the drums - too many clothes - and after the first tune, a bon bon shaking (yes *my* bon bons were shook) Dr Feelgood, Vince explained that Will Hunt was keeping the beat for us all. He then called Tommy out onto the stage and there was much screaming, a lot of it from me, and Tommy apologised on behalf of his tendonitis.

It seems he didn't hear me offer to rub him down.

I bounced and danced and screamed and whooped and sang and clapped and gave the horns and wiggled and shoogled and, frankly, sweated a lot as the delectable Nikki Sixx and the alluring Mick Mars did their stuff - and may I say Vince was looking rather hot and I *never* think that!

Tommy popped on and off and he even managed to play the last song, Kickstart My Heart, for us (although there seemed to be some confusion over who was supposed to play what between Mick and Tommy).

Only 90 minutes and no encore but I'm not complaining - I felt like a hormonal teen, nearly screamed my voice into oblivion and loved every minute, including the pyro and fireworks. Sexy sexy sexy.

Afterwards we enjoyed the cool Manchester breeze as we made our way back out to the airport Travelodge and slept soundly before making our way to Denmark on a silly SAS plane that wanted to charge passengers for a glass of water.

Pillocks.

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A Sixx And Lee Sandwich Will Do Nicely, Thank You. originally appeared on Taexalia on June 20, 2007.

So I'm sitting writing my Morning Pages in my bed and two or three times I think I see movement out of the corner of my eye. Every time I look across to the doorway there's nothing there, but I say good morning to the ghost cat

Something catches my eye again and as I look up a small dark beastie looks back then darts away up the hall!!

I jump out of bed and run after it but there's nothing there.

I send Allan a text "there's a moose loose aboot this hoose" and he replies "where?"

My sense of humour is intact and I am typing him a suitably dry response when he phones me. He goes through all these scenarios - like getting a cat when we come back from Denmark (me - "but Denmark is JUNE the mouse is here NOW") and "what's really odd is that you usually see *evidence* first" (me - "so a whole mouse dancing a jig in the hall whilst I write doesn't count as evidence?")

Mostly we are amused, philosophical about the fact it probably found access since our building and our flat has had a lot of *work* (disruption) in the last few months.

When I go to make coffee I find *evidence* - it appears that moose is using the hole in the counter where the new boiler pipes went down - I get a little sweary because I know that if the bloke who is replacing our kitchen was here, you know, closer to MY timetable of life - then there wouldn't be a bloody hole.

Then I apologise to mouse if it is listening.

So I've cleaned up the kitchen counter and everywhere else really - and there's no sign of it getting into any of our food. Then I go to the loo and when I come out the moose is sitting on top of the microwave twitching it's huge, very cute ears. Bold as brass!

So I figure this moose can only have arrived in the last 24 hours because I would have seen it (and the *evidence*) before now. Has it heard me conversing with Crow and tuned in to my Doolittle tendencies?

I have to explain - ever since the Kit Kat advert with the moth and the lightbulb I am traumatised when a moth gets stuck inside and I clamber around with a glass jar until I catch it and take it outside. Fair doos - it's usually back through the window within the hour. I carry spiders outside - and if I ever get a good enough picture of the house tarantula we re-home every September you will be in awe of my fearlessness - those things can RUN!

Now, moths, spiders, the odd beetle and even lady caterpillar are one thing, but a Mouse is a whole different kettle of fish. There is no way I can even contemplate murder - but before I've even acquired a humane live-catch trap I'm running a drama in my head... "What if I find a nest?" or "What if I catch the mouse and take it to the park and there is a nest somewhere with starving baby meeces?" Can I interfere with nature in this way?

You can imagine - my Inner Drama Queen is having a ball!

I have written a note and stuck it on the fridge - "Dear Mouse please find somewhere else to live before the new cat arrives." I assume it is only intelligent and can't read minds as well.

Mouse Medicine teaches about attention to detail - am I paying attention to the small details? Am I paying too much attention and missing the bigger picture? Mouse teaches about progress in small steps, of being organised. Mouse also teaches about destruction...

So little lady, thanks for the visit - if I promise to be tidy at all times will you find somewhere else to live?

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Of Mouse and Woman originally appeared on Taexalia on May 2, 2007.

Diving In

When I was in primary school two things happened that I am remembering today... Actually I'm not sure about the first one because I might even have been in nursery still...

I painted a train and I don't remember all of the details, perhaps I should phone my Mum and prod her memory, but my painting somehow got entered into a competition. I don't remember painting the actual train but I remember we had to find our way to Hazlehead Park for the final. I believe the event was a Traction Engine Rally and I remember lots of big old brightly painted engines showing off their mammoth proportions.

Hazlehead Park was a million miles from home in those days - you know how distance seems to shrink with time? Well it seemed like a very long way from home - perhaps it was because we were still in the age of the corporation buses...

Well, my painting won a prize. I cannot tell you if it was first prize for my age group, or just a prize, all I remember is being a little stunned and a little chuffed and a little not really sure what it all meant. Then I remember being excited about getting a prize that might be a big set of paints and some brushes because such things would be a luxury in those days. When the prizes were doled out I could not figure out the logic of giving a budding artist a set of wooden cubes that made a picture if your spent thirty seconds looking at the shapes.

Where were the paints so I could make more art?!?!?

Well today I have been painting all day and my nose is full of oily paint smells, safflower oil and stinky distilled turpentine. I started out the day by heading into town with Allan to attend a workshop on Celtic Knotwork - part of the Beltane Fire Society's 20th Anniversary Festival. We were given a large piece of calico and a large selection of photocopies of various designs and some guidance and off we went. I have never drawn Celtic knots before. I have attempted to re-create a Pictish Crescent and V-Rod in a polymer clay cane, with a striking result that looked great - just not like the Picts carved it.

I got stuck in with my ruler and soon became engrossed in trying to replicate a sort of square pattern with eight triquetras. I loved the way my mind let go of every other thought and just followed the design - and once I got all the way round it even joined to the beginning strand! We started painting them up but, as is always the way with creative workshops, we ran out of time.

On our way home we popped into the art supplies shop on North Bridge and picked up some acrylics so that we could finish our designs. I also splurged on some oil paints, brushes and things because I had a plan...

The photo of the crow I posted the other day is now being used as a reference for a painting. I have not played with oil paints for about a million years. Perhaps I'm old enough to say I haven't painted with oils for 15 years. But I've had these blank canvasses sitting around with the intention of making art for the TSLO exhibition in Odense and I've been dreaming this crow painting for weeks.

Now I have begun... I think I will leave the second thing I'm remembering for tomorrow because I want to write here every day and I fail miserably at that - so now I've got a ready made topic.

Hopefully I'll get some time tomorrow to catch up on the blogs I love reading - I'm thinking of you even if I haven't popped by of late xxx

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Diving In originally appeared on Taexalia on April 28, 2007.

*sigh*

It's been a down and up week for me...

Last Friday I got my annual migraine as I was travelling to the storytelling workshop "Animal Magic". Despite the fact I couldn't see, I managed to get some pills from a pharmacist and take them before the pain set in - I was absolutely NOT going to miss the workshop. My vision cleared soon enough and although I felt a little spacey, I was able to participate and I got a lot of food for thought from it.

Afterwards I asked to book on the next workshop, Fairy Tales, but was disappointed to learn it was fully booked... So I went home and then the migraine took hold. It seemed to last for days and I haven't felt so depleted for a long time. I've since heard from another woman that it may not have been the migraine that caused me to feel like I couldn't move for four days, but a bug. Whatever it was, I'm glad it has gone.

The good news is that on Thursday I got a phonecall to ask if I was still interested in the Fairy Tales workshop - obvious answer! I'm so tickled with the Universe - every day I said "I will enjoy the workshop on Fairy Tales this Friday", and despite being fourth down the waiting list I got a place.

It was excellent, a really magical couple of hours and the only fault was that it was too short. Ruth Kirkpatrick, who led the workshop, was a woman after my own heart - and it was no surprise to me when, near the end of the workshop, she produced a copy of Women Who Run With the Wolves as part of her recommended booklist.

I'm afraid I haven't picked up Finding Water for a fortnight. I'm doing my Morning Pages every day without missing a day, I'm considering the workshops to be artist dates and I have been walking once or twice a week without fail. But I just don't want to deal with Cameron's moaning - I began to feel like I had paid to become her therapist or something! "Wait a minute - YOU are meant to be inspiring ME..." So I've decided that I've already found the water and I'm swimming well... I may pick it up and do some Divining Rods, I may not...

I'm thinking today about Robert Moss' concept of the Waking Dream (I think that's what he called it)... Looking for connections between dreams and waking, symbols that can give guidance...

I've been looking for a story to tell at an up-coming storytelling circle because of course I need to get out there and tell stories to get the real experience I need... am I a workshop attendee or a storyteller?

Yesterday I was browsing through my book collection of folklore waiting to be grabbed by one when I came across a story about a horse that I had never noticed before. I read it, liked it and added it to my shortlist. But during my Morning Pages today I realised that of course this is the perfect story to begin with!

Several years ago, when I was attuned to Reiki I, a guide came to me in the form of a black horse and he has been with me ever since. So It fits that my healing guide would want to lead me into a new adventure...

So after a week of bleuch and no energy, I am revived and I have my story to work up.

Oh, and I did manage to tidy my desk!

Yay!

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Feeling Alive Again originally appeared on Taexalia on April 15, 2007.

Liminal Spaces

Saturday definitely goes down in my story as a pivotal day. I'm still reeling from the whole thing - it was awesome in so many ways and I was awesome in so many ways that I think I'm still floating Way Up There... Although the floaty stuff came after the workshop as I managed to remain as present as I needed to be throughout..

David Campbell is a genius! He crafted a workshop that gently initiated people into Storytelling and the Celtic traditions. For me it was a very validating experience because instead of feeling like a newbie, I felt that I was bringing my own body of knowledge with me and that I could hold my own amongst a group that ranged between other first-timers and professional storytellers. Afterwards I sat with David in the pub and when he discovered that this was my first workshop and a first attempt at storytelling in front of strangers he nearly fell off his chair - it's rather empowering to have a world famous master tell me how magical he found my input!

One cool thing, on a personal level, was that from the time I woke up I felt very cool about going. I didn't get the or suffer from any delaying tactics - the night before I laid out all my clothes and packed my little bag with everything I would need for the day, I set up my eBay listings and packed up all the evening's orders ready to just go in the postbox. I was prepared so that in the morning I didn't have to stress or rush and I walked from my home to the Canongate and arrived around 20 minutes early. There was another woman signing in for the workshop at the same time so conversation broke out before I was even in the room and I was soon introduced to other people - this is a community I think I will feel at home in

One thing that I REALLY liked was that David didn't do any of those usual workshop routines where you have to stand up and say "a bit about yourself" - he simply treated our circle as if we already knew each other and it really fostered an intimacy, I think. I commented on this to him afterwards in the pub and we talked about how the "introduce yourself" routine encourages people to put others into boxes - "that guy over there is an economist" - "Wow I would never have pegged him for that - for some reason I guessed he works with children". We also mused over the fact that we only had 6 hours, such a thing would eat into time and most folk either don't remember or remember too much from learning about people that way. He's a very wise man and an incredible people person.

The first thing that we did was to leave the workshop room and go outside to the High Street. He intended to take us out to a small garden behind the building but the gates were still locked, so we simply had to do our thing amongst the tourists and other folk milling about... Before we left the room he had given us a form to follow - "May the diddly diddly diddly.... Bring us diddly diddly diddly..." We had to find a sight, taste, smell, texture or sound - without thinking too much - and create a small blessing for the circle.

When I got outside, before we even discovered the gates to the garden were locked, all I could here was this crow bantering. I remember thinking "yes I hear you crow now let me be whilst I find this blessing." Crow kept cawking.

Of course!

"May the impudent crow bring us a raucous voice."

When we were back inside tossing our blessing into the circle for the work we were going to do that day I was struck by all the pretty things people were saying and then I stepped in and gave mine and David jumped in glee At this point I really knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be...

The last part of the day we got into groups in a very free-form way - going by who had fallen in love with what story... One group had five, one had two, another had three... We went off to do a few different things with the story and then everyone got together again to hear and tell stories. David commented that he loved the way I used my arms to tell my part - "you had your hands clasped behind your back throughout and then suddenly these great powerful arms appeared to tell of the birds and it was as if all the birds could have landed there - or that you were a bird yourself". I thought this was really funny because I stuck my hands behind my back to stop from fidgeting with nerves or crossing my arms in "self defence" - to the audience it looked like a planned part of the drama haha!

Recently I've been having prominent bird dreams and so when Crow blessed me it was a confirmation - but birds and especially crows kept popping up throughout the day and that in itself was a message for me. I'm still digesting the whole thing. I think I have found my calling.

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Storytelling Workshop originally appeared on Taexalia on April 3, 2007.