Ghostly Dandy And The Lilacs,Pagan Pride And The Pippins, Plus Two New Poodles Join The Line-Up

My sister used to have a couple of poodles called 'Poppet' and 'Chico'. Poppet was a small miniature poodle and Chico was a large toy poodle. They were very lively dogs.

I was also reading about a little poodle called Dandy, who in the mid 1940's lived with his owner, a woman called Virginia Copeland, who was an actress by profession, at number 13, Gay Street in Greenwich Village, New York. In the basement apartment below her lived Virginia's friend, the author Elizabeth Byrd.
They use a Ouija board to find a new husband for Virginia as her first one was awful and basically Dandy the dog welcomes a ghost like-stranger and gets covered in lilac which doesn't grow in their garden.
Virginia holds a cocktail party and a man turns up who Dandy jumps in to the arms of and he drops his gift of lilac. The man is called 'Cappy' or Major Capostosto. Virginia marries him and goes to live in Manilla, Philippines, as predicted by the Ouija board. I did look them up and found evidence of their son still being very active at a yacht club in Manilla. Virginia  appears to have had ties with a theatre in Manilla too.

Dandy the poodle went with them to Manilla and was buried there. Elizabeth Byrd went back to her old Greenwich village address at 13 Gay street around 1964 and meets another lady now living in her old basement apartment - an actress with a poodle this time called Misty. They go to see the woman upstairs who lives in Virginia's old apartment and find that the woman who now lives there says nothing at all will grow in the building or the shared garden, except a plant native to the Philippines. so I think the gist of this was meant to be that Dandy was still around somewhere....

Working With The Energies Of The Dark Sun

This is a basket full of dried plants and small crystals - all magically prepared to correspond and work with the dark side of the sun. That is the sun in the shadow aspect. A person's shadow self hides a lot of true information about them and there can be a lot going on under the surface. The shadow self is the true gateway to the soul.

Extra Terrestrial UFO Occult Direct Call Up

The photographs depict ritualistic Extra Terrestrial UFO calls for tapping in to the power of the cosmos and beyond. They were carefully set up to contact alien life forces and channel their energies. There is great energy to be found in the most unusual places.
See also:
The Kirk of Ufology

Baskerville, Misty, The Pippins And Empress Of Fur

I came across the band 'Empress Of  Fur' in early 2016, Before this I had never heard of them. I was looking at one of my favourite urban exploration sites to see if any new explore properties had come on. Urban exploration suddenly got picked up by bored journalists wanting a piece of the pie a few years ago.
The unwanted attention attracted a different sort of explorer, not the photographer wanting to capture a piece of the past and move on, but instead the sort of persons who want to pick up the items and take the past home with them.

For example, once the papers got hold of 'Red Dress Manor' in Wales, the iconic red dress left by Ms Jones and photographed by many an urban explorer - went missing along with her handbags.Alas, they could be photographed no more and probably ended up at a boot sale.

On the particular day I came across 'Empress Of Fur' I had the treat of seeing a new exploration,on a much frequented urban explore site on the web. A murky farmhouse somewhere near Norwich, packed full of the former owner's possessions, covered in spider webs. At the top of the house, the photographer had captured a soundproofed attic, jam packed full of musical equipment from the 80's and 90's, but mostly 90's.

There was even a 90's kettle set on a tray. It was obviously a band practice room and whoever had practised there took music very seriously. A pin board was tacked to the wall displaying pictures and posters of the band 'Empress Of Fur' and Uma Thurman from 90's film, 'Pulp Fiction'. Obviously whoever had played music and practised there liked brunettes!

Next day I clicked on to the Urban Explore site to have another look and the whole post containing the pictures I had been viewing the day before had gone. The photographer had removed them. So I looked up 'Empress Of Fur', a Fenland band and saw they have one very iconic track 'Johnny Voodoo' from 1994.

The doggies have all said they want a tiara like the one worn by lead singer Venus Raygun in the video.

Bite Me Magazine,The Pippins And The Scary Bitches

We came across a really funny Goth-rock style band,called the 'Scary Bitches' whilst leafing through old copies of former vamp lifestyler magazine 'Bite Me'. This is not to be confused with a much more mainstream magazine called 'Bite Me' that has recently appeared on the scene.

The original 'Bite Me' magazine ran from the late 90's to the late noughties and  sort of suddenly disappeared although its website is still on-line with many broken links.It was produced in Scotland by a journalist called Arlene Russo.

What I like about 'The Scary Bitches' is that they are obviously much older women. Usually it is only  men or specialist guitar fan women who are seen working the frets. And you don't get many older lady rockers who are not dolled up like waxworks or Cher - that actually seem to be enjoying what they are doing and so 'The Scary Bitches' are indeed very refreshing.

Another band we found in the pages of 'Bite Me', are 'The Beautiful Deadly Children'. Again, this group, lead by a couple of aristocrats apparently, don't seem to have done anything past 2010. 'Gutterfly' and 'Every Night Is Halloween' are our favourite tracks from this band, in fact we were listening to these particular songs earlier on. 'Every Night Is Halloween' Good motto!

The Pippins love all of it of course - they are a couple of Goths in disguise!

Jaywick Bands Of 1993, Plus Possible Twinning Jaywick, Essex, With St Ives In Cornwall?

St Ives, Cornwall, wealthy holiday seaside town, buffeted by Atlantic winds, artists on each corner and cliff top, selling work to tourists from galleries and exhibitions at every opportunity. A little gem of a place - a barnacled brush stroke, attracting property developers from other counties, buying up holiday lets around the area and rented at high prices through comfortable looking sunny companies - their properties displaying sun, sea and sun decks in vast quantities. Last year there was a proposition that only residents of St Ives should be allowed to buy property there as so many people from other areas were buying up holiday homes in the vicinity.

 Cornwall has also been popularised by the re-emergence of the Poldark series on TV. Yet I was reading that at the other end of the scale,there is heavy unemployment in Cornwall and that some children living on landlocked social housing estates in northern Cornwall have never even seen the sea as their parents cannot afford bus fare to the nearby coast!

At the other end of the scale Jaywick, in Essex, featured on TV in various 'real life' fly on the wall shows, portrayed  how a town of  holiday chalets built in the earlier Art Deco part of the 20th century,
had fallen in to a town of slums, albeit slums with a great deal of character, after the demise of the holiday industry in the 1970's.

I came across this 1993 fanzine featuring bands from Jaywick and nearby Clacton-On-Sea, last year. I thought it complimented the St Ives tourist tea towel. The Pippins (also featured) loved the idea.

Calling Up A Mermaid

There are various rituals for calling up mer people. Some are very simple. One (not shown here) just involves using three cups of water. This is not such a ritual.

The pictures show sea themed workings which are always done in good faith and for helpful purposes and as a celebration of the earth as a whole.

Pagan Pride, Little Dolls, Austin Osman Spare And More Ritual Work

We are supporters of Pagan Pride and we take time with out rituals and spell crafting. We like to work outside whenever possible' but sometimes this is not practical. We used to give clients video spells which they could watch over and over to build up power, but because that is very time consuming we now tend to provide photos. The two dolls above are made and put together (by consent) to perform an astral marriage.

Austin Osman Spare is credited with bringing sigillation, as shown in the top picture, in to main use in magick. However, it is true that forms of sigillation have been employed for centuries in one way or another in magickal craftings.

The Pippins,Baskerville And Misty Play Guitar

The doggies just love playing guitar - they find it incredibly relaxing. Baskerville enjoys howling along in accompaniment. The Pippins take a slightly more laid back approach and Misty takes music quite seriously. She wags her tail to keep time.

We actually do musical spells for clients. Music is a powerful connector to the Otherworld and the spirits. .

The Black Flame Of Truth And Wisdom

Black candles are useful for burning away negativity. they are best used on a Saturday, working with Saturn, the lead planet. Saturn works in a non rushed way so he slows things down.

Black candles can also be used in protection rituals. Far from being sinister, their uses are actually quite benign - for most of the time anyway!

The photos show a black candle brining. Oils can be used to dress the candle and other items can be used with the candle also.

If rituals are done outside - ants love to run off with bits of herb, so this is helping the eco system too!

Baskerville And Misty - Two New Dogs Joining The Crew

Baskerville was myself and my then partner's dog when we lived in a flat in Manningham in Bradford, back in the late 80's.  Manningham was, at that time, full of arty people - musicians, magicians, artists and weird and wonderful folk of all kinds. It was a dangerous place, essentially very near to a red light district, but still it was always possible to meet or talk to someone interesting who was contributing to the beauty of the world in general. This was prior to the Manningham riots, when many pubs, including one I used to work in, were burned out.

Baskerville was half Alsatian and half rottweiler, but looked exactly like a Doberman. In fact, everyone thought she was a Doberman. She was a present from my mother for safety when walking around Manningham. In fact, people really took to her and even wrote her name on a park bench.

One day when I came home from work, she wasn't there. My then partner said he had let her out and some men bundled her in to a van and stole her. To this day I don't know whether that is true or not.

Misty, a bearded collie, was my late brother's dog. She lived at his family home in Baildon, Shipley West Yorkshire, together with his wife and young daughter. Sometimes my brother would bring Misty round and I would take my little niece (in a rather cumbersome three wheeled, one handled pushchair) and Misty the dog out for a walk, so that my brother could have a good chat to our mom, undisturbed by child and dog!

These two are a new Baskerville and a new Misty who are joining the crew of the Pippins who appear in this blog.

Little Boodge - David Hockney Calendar

With David Hockey's 80th birthday coming up soon, or so I read in the paper, there will be special events taking place in Lister Park, Bradford, West Yorkshire, the city where David Hockney was born. A new Hockney Gallery has opened in Cartwright Hall in the middle of Lister Park, to mark the event.

However there has been a Hockney Gallery in Salt's Mill, Saltaire, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is literally only a few miles from Lister Park, for over 20 years.

Last December 2016, when I visited the Salt's Gallery, one of the assistants suggested I might like to buy this 1995 David Hockney calendar where the days are the same as the ones in 2017. Because it featured Hockney's dog 'Little Boodge' which he got in 1993, I purchased a copy of the calendar which is shown here. I don't use it though. It would seem weird putting up a 1995 calendar in 2017.