The Slippery Spirit

A recipe for powerful Hoodoo work, this medicinal remedy has four thousand variations. It was allegedly developed during the second wave of the Plague in Europe. I got curious about its origins and so I started looking backwards into the records of the Plague. Here's what I discovered and the opinions that I generated. Since there was no pharmaceutical industry as it exists now, nature was the people’s pharmacy throughout the middle ages. Plants were adopted into in use by the medical community, having borrowed such knowledge from wise pagan men and women healers. During the second wave of the Plague in Europe , four individuals allegedly made it their business to rob the homes and very bodies of those who had died of the Plague, but did not contract the infection themselves. When questioned by the courts upon their capture, they revealed that they crafted a medicinal vinegar, which they regularly drank and wore on their clothes to protect them. To allay a sentence of exec...

We have all encountered obsessed Christians. (I don't write this post to be anti-Christian. The Christian doctrine of proselytization makes the obsessed, pushy kind very visible and annoying, which helps me make my point in this post.) We have all been trapped by the awkwardness of their guerrilla preaching. They have backed us into corners, trapped us at supermarket checkout lines, caught us at the mailbox or on a subway. They always have something to say about their own spirituality. The feeling I get from them is not unlike being solicited by a panhandler, except I am willing to offer my coins to one in need. For the proselytizer, I have nothing to offer but the grumpy feeling that my own faith is being insulted and belittled. Unfortunately, that obsessed spirituality isn't unique to Christianity; in fact, it extends itself into paganism. There are those who don't just live their paganism, they obsess over it. Every trip they take is a "pilgrimage." Every chi...