Precious Bodily Fluids

Good news. Leechblock is working, and as a result, I've submitted a story to a market today (instead of endlessly checking my e-mail and Facebook).


Speaking of e-mail, the other day I saw a forwarded message attributed to Vicki Nobel, the creator of the Motherpeace Tarot (a round tarot deck). In it, she revealed that two of her students had come to her on separate occasions with visions of using their menstrual blood in ritual to lessen the ecological damage of the BP oil spill. The ritual did not involve traveling to the Gulf of Mexico to provide food for bird washers or help run an oil skimmer, but instead using meditation and visualization techniques to lessen the ecological damage.

Whenever I read missives like this, my first response is to imagine the public and Neo-Pagan reactions if seminal fluids were used instead of menstrual ones. (Pause to consider a circle of gay men: "Brothers, tonight we will summon our precious bodily fluids to clean up the streets of Eugene... "[cue disco music]) Then I am filled with astonishment that Neo-Pagan women still do these kinds of rituals; didn't this gyne-chauvinism go out of vogue in the mid 1990's? (At least it appears that ritual provisions for non-menstruating women and men were appended to the original call to ritual.) Finally, I always wonder why prayers and visualizations for disasters seldom are accompanied by positive, practical actions one can take. (And, yes; sometimes the only thing one can do in certain situations is pray...)

So. Here are some suggestions (what boundaries to push with bodily fluids is left as an exercise for the reader).

Short term suggestions for action break down into A) physically providing support or aid in the gulf states, OR B) sending money to various ecological organizations. I suppose that C) supporting local nature preserves funded by national ecological organizations might free up more funds to go to the gulf, but that's a supposition on my part.

http://www.serve.gov/oilspill.asp

https://give.liveunited.org/page/contribute/gulf

http://www.nwf.org/Oil-Spill.aspx

http://www.nature.org/multimedia/features/art31637.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/deepwater-bp-oil-spill/


Various long term suggestions break down into A) driving less specifically and using less energy generally, B) switching to "green" energy, and C) working with government to enact ecological policies.


And for Eugenians, here's a local nature preserve:
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/oregon/preserves/art6812.html


Ready? Let the ritual begin.