Monday, 15 October 2012

War on Terror or War on Terra?

Aion-Uranus and Tellus with four children, perhaps the personified seasons, mosaic from a Roman villa in Sentinum, 200-250 CE, Munich Glyptothek

The war is really against Terra
The so-called "War on Terror" that we keep hearing about in the media would be more aptly named the War on Terra because there are constant attacks on all parts of the environment and Terra is another name for Mother Earth.
According to Wikipedia: "Terra Mater or Tellus was a goddess personifying the Earth in Roman mythology. The names Terra Mater and Tellus Mater both mean "Mother Earth" in Latin; Mater is an honorific title also bestowed on other goddesses."
Just think about how many forms of destruction to natural habitats and the flora and fauna you can think of!
Habitat destruction
There is an ongoing attack against the forests, the countryside, the oceans and the air. Trees are being felled, the land is being given increasingly over to mono-culture genetically-engineered crops, the waterways, wetlands and oceans are being polluted and so is the very air we breathe.
Animals and plants are becoming extinct daily with many species not even yet known destroyed before they have been discovered. Destroy a rain-forest or a coral reef and many species dependent on these habitats are gone, and some for ever if these places were their only habitats.
In the UK, once common animals and plants are now becoming rare or endangered. It is shocking to think that the European Eel that I used to see in their millions as elvers climbing up river weirs are now vastly down in numbers.
Once-common moths like the Garden Tiger Moth are vanishing fast. The Common Lizard isn't common any more, and even the Starling that used to form flocks that blackened the skies is way down in its numbers.
Many butterflies that were commonly seen are becoming scarce. The wild flower meadows and food plants of many species have disappeared from the countryside and so too have gone all the insects that depended on them.
And that is just the UK. This pattern is emerging all over the world. There is what has rightly been called a "mass extinction underway" (see link in links section below to see how really serious this is).

The Great Extinction

Imagine what it would be like if there were no song-birds! This terrible scenario was predicted by Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring but it is becoming a reality.
Honeybees are dying off from what has been termed "Colony Collapse Disorder." Many people feel that pesticides are to blame.
In America, the once commonly seen Monarch Butterfly is vanishing fast too. It is known that pollen from genetically engineered crops created by Monsanto are killing caterpillars of this beautiful insect. The pollen is blown onto the MIlkweed food plants of the Monarch caterpillars and they die after eating the leaves.
The oceans are being filled with plastic and it is killing turtles, sea birds and whales that swallow this rubbish. Of the 22 species of albatross, 18 are now seriously endangered, and most of these birds have eaten plastic they mistook for sea creatures.
Large jungle animals such as the Tiger, and Great Apes like the Gorilla and the Orangutan are also disappearing fast. Habitat destruction is killing off animals and plants worldwide.
The oceans are being over-trawled by fishing boats that throw away a lot of the unwanted catch and rip up the sea-beds as they work. Acidification of the water is killing off species fast. "Dead zones" are becoming more and more common in the once teeming seas.
And if all of that wasn't bad enough we have now got the BP oil spill catastrophe that has killed most of the life in the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes that border it, as well as bringing ruin to the once-thriving fishing communities there.
Meanwhile the media bombards us with news stories about police hunting for "terrorists" and more and more laws and regulations are drafted to "increase security" because of the "War on Terror" that politicians parrot!
How many terrorists do they actually ever catch? Who are the real terrorists?
Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.
War on Terra links

Saturday, 6 October 2012

Royce Holleman talks to Steve Andrews about Herbs Of The Northern Shaman

In this video, Royce Holleman talks to myself, Steve Andrews, aka The Bard of Ely, and interviews me about my book Herbs of the Northern Shaman for his Paranormal Palace Radio show.
Besides discussing the mind-altering plants described in this 2010 O-Books/Moon Books publication we also talk about edible plants, foraging, raw food, St John's Wort as an anti-depressant, flying ointment, the law and legal status of many plants, magic mushrooms, herbs in the Bible, Moses and his use of Calamus, artistic inspiration from hallucinogens, hummadruz, UFO author Jenny Randles, Arthur Shuttlewood and UFOs, Magic Saucer UFO magazine, Warminster, Atlantis, David Icke, ayahuasca, Prof Arysio Santos and Atlantis, the Vedas, tribal ways, Christopher Everard, Rastas, soma, Shiva, ancient religions, religious experience, Essiac cancer cure, Hulda Clarke, absinthe, Fly Agaric, and much more.

Edible plants like Dandelion are recommended as ones that can be found around the world and are one of several plants thought of as weeds that grow in lawns but are actually good to eat. Clover and the Daisy are two other edible weeds.

We talk about the late Professor Arysio Nunes dos Santo and his website and theories about Atlantis. I point out that Prof Santos believed that many psychoactive herbs, such as Salvia divinorum, were selectively cultivated and created by the people of Atlantis.  The professor also believed that Atlantis was located where Indonesia and the South China Sea are today.

I explain about my Amazon Kindle book Hummadruz and a Life of High Strangeness, and how I learned the term Hummadruz from Jenny Randles the UFO author. My book is an autobiographical account of my paranormal and spiritual experiences in the past.  Jenny used to write for Magic Saucer magazine, a publication intended for younger readers and published by Crystal Hogben.  I had a regular column in this too entitled Eco-space. 

Warminster and UFOs
The late Arthur Shuttlewood, who was the editor of the Warminster Journal and an author of several books about UFOs, was also a writer for this magazine. I talk about how Warminster in Wiltshire was once famous for being a place UFOs were frequently seen.

We discuss mind-altering plants mentioned in the Bible and how the prophet Moses was said to have used a “holy anointing ointment” that contained Calamus, a herb that is both a stimulant and a hallucinogen. I talk about how Chris Everard, the film-maker for the Enigma Channel and publisher of Feed Your Brain magazine, claims in his book Stoneage Psychedelia that religious books like this were inspired by ancient people who used hallucinogenic herbs for inspiration and visions. We go on to discuss ‘Soma’ and I point out that this was thought to be the Fly Agaric toadstool.

Royce asks me about herbal cures for cancer and I describe the Essiac herbal cancer cure and the very controversial late Dr Hulda Clarke and her treatments which involved the use of Wormwood. I also point out that this potentially dangerous herb was the main ingredient in Absinthe, an alcoholic drink that many great authors, poets and painters drank.
The video interview was intended to be just one hour but because I had so much to say it went on for nearly two.