Fanny Cerrito And Fortune Telling Goat

This portrait from 1844 shows famous Victorian ballet dancer Fanny Cerrito, in London wearing her Esmeralda costume. The most curious thing about the painting, I feel, is the fortune telling goat. I love the decorations the goat is wearing too!

Fanny's statement ballet dress is eye catching, with its lettering around the skirt and bodice. It seems designers in the 'olden days' knew their stuff rather well :)

I have just realised something. The goat is doing a form of Ouija or Talking Board type stuff, using the floor as the board. Whatever letters the goat picks out will be translated in to a message. what I suddenly realised and what made me log back in and add this was that as stated previously, the painting was done in 1844. So this was 47 years before Ouija boards were first patented. Yet, the portrait is showing a very similar thing in essence, masses of years earlier.

The Pippins Do Thanksgiving In Big Style

Big Pippin and Little Pippin enjoyed their Thanksgiving celebrations. Both Pippins gave thanks for their special namesake blog and were very happy to appear in it. They also gave thanks for finding out that they are very versatile and cute little doggies. Thank You!

Fortune Telling From A Brandy And Soda

This is a brandy and soda in a vacuum flask cup. The bubbles produce their own solar system and can be read probably more deeply than tea leaves. The bubbles show a high concentration of energy around the subject. Several hearts can also be seen in the bubbles forecasting romance and new pathways leading to exciting projects. It is a fascinating universe in a cup.

Proactive Pippins Show Respect On Poppy Day

Big Pippin and Little Pippin show respect on Poppy Day and on Remembrance Sunday and took part in this display. Grandad Fred, Great Uncle George and Second Cousin Alexander - love you guys wherever you are and hope you saw this from whatever cloud you may be floating on! We also did this for all the other brave soldiers too, past and present. The Pippins were proud to stand tall for the display!

Pernickety Pippin And The Haunted Houses

This is the original Pippin at his beautiful best. He has starred in a lot of photos so is getting perhaps a little the worse for wear, but we love him and his interesting antics. Here he is exploring a couple of haunted houses and he really looks like he is having a good time. Pippin seems interested in the green spider light and we thought that he really did enjoy himself in the slightly larger house with the pumpkin lights as well. You are a good sport, Pippin! :) :) :)

Buddha On Halloween 2017

We were actually doing some peace workings with Buddha on 31st October. We thought it was a bit different from the usual Samhain stuff and it was meant to create an ambient atmosphere. It made a nice change from ghoulies, ghosties and the like and it was good to work with different energies.  I once used to go to a yoga class with a difference. This was a mixed class of men and women, taught by a former Zen Buddhist man. It really was a 'let it all hang out class' No holding any muscles in - just let them go - no pushing oneself - just doing things in one's own time.

The class was the real deal, not just women showing off in fancy garments, but real spiritual yoga for everyone. Some of us attendees went with the yoga teacher to a Jiddu Krishnamurti lecture which was shown on a huge TV at a community centre in Leeds.What Krishnamurti  said seemed to make a lot of sense at the time - it was a recorded interview with him. Yoga is very different to karate which I also enjoyed doing at night school classes at one time too, after watching a lot of Chinese dubbed karate films which I really liked - they were big news then.

Three Pumpkins In The Grass - 2nd November 2017

We were two days late with our Halloween Pumpkins this year. Halloween is a busy time for us as we really do have to vroom up our brooms - no kidding. When the world and his wife are partying at Halloween with fake props we are doing it for real. That means lots of rituals and lots of work to do. In fact we were up all night 30 in to 31st October and went to bed at about 4pm on Halloween Day, getting up again just before midnight. So all of our own props had to wait until 2nd November before we could enjoy them.