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how's your holiday season going, and how are you? It's been a while

Thank you for the invite. I am a kind of bastard child of America. My Mother and her people are Melungeon. Perhaps a myth, certainly not a recognized tribe in spite of its association with the Cherokee of the Carolinas and Virginia. According to legend, when the first Scotch/Irish settlers came to the Appalachian Mountains they found a tribe of "White Indians" who rang a bell daily at sunset and sunrise and stopped to pray to the Sun/Son. They were, again, according to the stories, descendants of the original Portugese explorers of this hills...sailors who thought their chances in the woods were better than in making the perilous journey back across the ocean to a life of poverty and early death in Europe. They learned their ways...and took their wives...from the Cherokee. In the dark years of the Colonial period, their numbers were swollen by runaway slaves and indentured servants who, rather than bend the knee to their white masters, preferred to risk their lives for their freedom. My mother was the role model for the Kentucky author Jesse Stuart's heroine in his novel about the Melungeon's "Daughter of the Legend." My Great Grandmother came to me in the Dreamtime and gave me the Runes and my Book of Shadows. I am Benandanti, a kind of European shaman written about in the Italian historian Carlos Ginzburg's book "The Night Battles," a Goodwalker...one who Walks the Night...goes out-of-body spontaneously in his sleep. And I'm an Ex Fundie/Charismatic with the scars to prove it. I worship Goddess because when I came to a point in my life that I said "I'd rather have no religion at all than keep on going through this madness" I thought I was declaring myself an atheist, agnostic at best. The last prayer I prayed to the male God was to "see things as they really are." And I saw Her...or She found me like a long lost lover and the mother I never had. After all the times I proudly declared I had been Born Again, I discovered that I had yet to go back to My Mother...and, as Nicodemus so elegantly put it..."How can a man be born again? Can he go back to his mother a second time?" to which Mariam's son and the Magdala's Man replied "With Her, all things are possible."

You are officially my first B-net friend. Now there is meaning in my [Beliefnet] life. Are you really lonely? It looks like you have lots of friends in heaven and on earth. Anyways, feel free to send me a message anytime for any reason. See ya round!

Hi Chrickett, Good to hear from you. I have a perminent circle in my yard with the cardinal points marked by standing stones. I invoke father sky and mother earth and the old ones to guard the corners when I cast my circle and do my spiritual work. I can see the old ones standing in place of the stones, and feel an unwavering and everpresent power from the east. I hear drums and singing. I speak to my ancestors, or the old ones, and I ask questions. the answers come to me in vivid dreams wich are always easily under stood. Ravens are atracted to me and speak to me with looks, wing dips, and vocalizations. They hang around me all day, some times in groups of three or four, there is always at least one. One of the best books on native spirituality I have found is "Seven Arrows" by Hyemeyohsts Storm, it has in it a great deal of wisdom from the elders. I live in southern California near several reservations, and I employ native americans. I have asked about spiritual elders and have encountered only Christan bucherings of our beliefs. I was told by one very old man that "THEY" killed all the wise ones long ago with alcohol. I already know that I don't spell very well, and I haven't found the spell checker for this site yet, More later, Halfmoon Raven

may the gifts of our grandparents of the four directions fulfill your life with all it's needs

Merry Meet!! Thanx for the add. I do hope we can be great friends. May the Love & Light of the Lord & Lady,be ever present guiding your path,Blessed Be.

Hi Chrickett, I am pleased to have you as a freind.I am an old soul and a born whitch, I have Sioux blood, and crow medicine.

thanx, i did the henna on my hand myself and the others pics i found on google images, and the pic of th e eyes and hand is the logo for the belly dance troupe in my town