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BLOOD MOON
In October, the crop harvest has past, and all hands turn to the Hunt: the third and final harvest before winter. Blood Moon shines over huntsmen as they ride over reaped grain in pursuit of their prey.
In Christian mythology, Blood Moon may have a darker significance:
"And I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind." -- Revelation 6:12-13
The feral scent of the heat of the chase, deep woods, undulating musks, brushed by forest herbs, crushed grains, and touched by blood-dimmed lunar oils.
Oh, I just really don't know about this one. Not at all what I was expecting, obviously. I do get a bit feral during my period, and wood is strengthening and grounding, and I do enjoy SOME musks... but probably not these musks. I tend to like white/crystalline musks, not... er... undulating ones. But it's sort of fitting: musky, genital. Grain, I dunno what that might smell like, hopefully not a haystack. Although it's oddly appropriate because dry whole grain toast is pretty much all I can choke down on the first day of my period when I'm cramping badly. :-P I'm suspicious of "forest herbs," or unidentified "herbs" in general, because hello, peppermint is an herb and so is oregano and so is sage, and they don't smell at ALL alike, so it's kind of like saying "fruits," or "flowers," which Beth is not above doing either, but I don't like it. And "blood-dimmed" doesn't really shed any light at all on what sort of blood she has in mind-- dragon's blood, would be my guess, although I do hold out hope for a red-wine note. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't describe any sweet fruit note as "dimming."
Plus, meh on the whole Revelations angle.
Revelations makes me mad. Not the book itself, which is actually rather awesome in a trippy, fever-dream sort of way, and has some absolutely kickass imagery, and pretty watertight theology to boot. But the whole mythos of it, the fact that any adult human could be pinheaded enough to base an entire damn mythology on bizarro interpretations of a fever dream, when it's clearly open-ended enough to apply to pretty much any political situation at any time in history anywhere ("And lo, I saw a bad person in a position of power! And then, BEHOLD, there was this one country that was really rich, but the people were lazy and licentious! Also, some people were oppressed! AND THEN THE UNIVERSE EXPLODED!" You'd think that after two thousand years or so people would stop going around shrieking, "LOOK, A BAD PERSON! As it is written, THE UNIVERSE WILL EXPLODE TOMORROW!") And I will never stop being irked by the ending. Again, not the ending itself, but the way it's used. The almost-last verses of Revelations, except for a couple of stock closing things about "yay, Jesus" and "peace be with you," are as follows:
I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the plagues which are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.
Like, okay, honey, that's a very cute little tinfoil hat of a copyright. It's like the fourteen-year-olds who write their poetry on OD and then type in all caps and blinking text "THIS IS MINE!!!! DO NOT STEAL OR YOU WILL BE SMITED!!!!" Which, is kind of adorable really. But not only does your common or garden fundie take this part in all dead seriousness, he also takes it to apply not just to Revelations, but to the ENTIRE BIBLE, which DID NOT EXIST at the time that this feverishly paranoid little postscript was written, and even if it had, the postscript rather clearly refers to "this book of prophecy," which ought to cut the other books of the Bible right out, especially the non-prophetic books, of which there are actually several, though you wouldn't know it by the fundamentalists, or by Paul either, come to that, since he's obsessed with interpreting every single thing that ever happened in Torah-history as an allegorical foretelling of his weird theology. And it's not an innocent mistake, because you just KNOW the people who put the Bible together disingenuously decided to put Revelations last so they could get in the punch of that ending. It's as if I put together an anthology of children's literature that I had decided was going to be the definitive be-all end-all anthology of children's literature, and so I decided to put Madeline last so that the very last words in my anthology would be "And that's all there is, there isn't any more," and then if anyone ever tried to make another anthology I'd be all "Bitch, what does my book say, right there at the end?" and they'd be all, "Buh!" and I'd be all, "That's what I thought."
Where was I? Oh yes, Blood Moon. I don't know if I want to get it or not. I'm actually... thinking not. Yeah... wood amps on me like mad, and I'd probably lose everything else in it. And musk, meh. Okay, probably not. Which gives me more time to plan my next order, which is good, because knowing me I'll plan for the next five months and have all the fun of planning and spend none of the money of actually ordering. Win-win. No, actually I'll definitely place an order in December, because the January moon is a) my birthday month moon! and b) called Holiday Moon, and I cannot possibly resist such, unless it has, like, notes of "mildewed garbage" and "appalled skunk."
I just had a nice realization. I used to be so easily spooked in the dark. Like, I remember one time reading an Orson Scott Card horror novel late at night, and being literally paralyzed by terror... I couldn't move, my heart was racing, and I just lay frozen in my bed thinking, "That was just... uncalled for. Nothing should be this scary." And after I saw The Ring, my junior year of college, I could not sleep at all that entire night because I was afraid to close my eyes for fear my television would come on by itself and eat my head. I could read or watch the same thing in the daytime and not be scared at all, but at night-- even with lots of lights on-- I was terrified, and if I got to thinking about things at night, I could definitely not sleep without lots of lights on.
But now... I just don't get scared like that. For one example, the other night I watched The Grudge alone in the house after dark, and I wasn't spooked at all, even by creaking noises in the house when creaking noises in the movie presaged some sort of horrible haunty type death. And I'm reading Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin, in which a house is haunted, and a girl is in her bathroom late at night and hears weird little chittery voices coming from behind the bathtub, and when she says "Who's there?" they burst out into shrill, vicious giggles, and then she sees shadows skittering past her and away... and I actually read this in my bathroom late at night, and I was all, "Huh, freaky," but not "aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaahhhhhhhhh..." And it's not something I grew out of-- it's something that Haven Kimmel's story "Revelations" (Revelations again! I sense a theme in this entry) actually fixed in me, just like that, like an antibiotic, or Jesus coming into one's heart. And it's still fixed. I'm cured. I'm good. I'm not afraid of the dark. Which... wow.
I have made some new icons, and deleted most of my House ones, I was that disappointed in the season premiere. Assholes.