Persephone emerges from the Underworld…

You may have noticed it has been a long time since I posted. I wish I had better news to report or a more pleasant reason, but unfortunately last year was the worst year of my life, so let me explain what has been happening:

The first and lesser blow was that my lover of almost two years left me at the beginning of July to take a job in Japan. I spent most of June helping him get ready to go, and was understandably depressed when he left; I was also planning a vacation for the last week of July with my niece, in MA. Unfortunately, the day my niece and I got back from our vacation, on August 2nd, her brother, my 15 year old nephew, committed suicide. We got the news as his mother, my sister, was driving my niece and I home from the airport. I spent the following weeks helping my sister and niece deal with the fallout, and dealing with my own grief.

Fall faded into winter and I started feeling somewhat better, and had a brief spurt of activity as I tried to get back into the swing of things. I twittered here and there, dabbled on Facebook… and then the cold weather came, even here in Florida. I do not know about the rest of you, but I do not do well in cold. I have arthritis in my neck, and this year it was made much, much worse by the unrelenting and unusually cold weather, to the point of crippling me — it has been all I can do to go to work each day and sit at the computer all day, and I have had nothing left over when I go home. I have been spending most every evening and weekend flat on my back, and even simple pleasures like needlework and reading have caused me so much pain that I would have to take frequent breaks. Working on the computer in my off hours on my own personal projects has been impossible. Now, I tend to hibernate during winter months anyway, and go into hermit mode. The cold weather makes me feel very sluggish and sleepy and sometimes depressed, and I do not feel up to talking to anyone or doing anything except quiet, passive activities like reading and crafts, snuggled up with my kitties. This year, after everything else that happened, and dealing with crippling pain, that period was much worse and lasted much, much longer than it has in the past.

Now, at last, I am beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. This week has seen the return of some warmth and spring-like weather, and unlike previous weeks, it did not hit just for a day or two and then plunge back into the 30s at night. I have been in much less pain this week and therefore in a much better mood, and have been able to manage a few hours sitting up in the living room working on my counted cross stitch, rather than ensconced in my bedroom with pillows under my neck. I got a Care and Feeding of Spirits Newsletter out for the first time since November. I booked another speaking engagement for our local Wiccan Meet Up at the end of May (I am speaking about modern day vampires again). And at the vampire meet up last Friday I asked everyone how they would feel about trying to make a book out of the recordings of our last two years worth of meetings. In other words, I am starting to feel up to being productive again, and the urge to write is creeping back into my veins like a caffeine IV. It is amazing what sunshine and a little warmth will do.

I have hopes that we have seen the last of Jack Frost for this season, at least here in Central Florida, and that my neck will therefore also continue to improve — though I worry what next winter will be like for me, as it has never been this bad before, and arthritis only gets progressively worse — there is no cure and there is no reversing the damage that is already done, we can only try to slow it down.

It is times like these when I really resonate with the story of Persephone, spending the winter months in the land of the dead and finally emerging to great celebration and happiness in spring to the land of the living. I hope I will be able to make up for my hiatus with extra productivity over the coming summer months and get some good material written here for you — I can definitely feel myself going into teaching and writing mode. Maybe it is just because it is spring, but I want to create something again, and that is always a healthy and joyous feeling!

Happy spring everyone.

BB,
Vivienne

To help out my students and readers …

… over at CareAndFeedingofSpirits.com, I’ve added all the books that I referenced when writing On the Care and Feeding of Spirits to the Persephone’s Haven bookstore: click here to check out the books from the On the Care and Feeding of Spirits bibliography!

These cover memetics, psychology, paganism, magick, psychic self defense, spiritual cleansing, and more, and make a great resource for further study to supplement On the Care and Feeding of Spirits.

Happy reading!  If you have any questions about any of these books or the topics they cover, please do not hesitate to ask, either by commenting here or emailing me at vivienne at persephoneshaven.com.

As always, if you find this post helpful, please spread the love by clicking on the “share” button below.

Thanks so much!

BB,

Vivienne

tarot and psychic development books offered for auction

It’s been a while since I put anything up for auction at eBay, but I just loaded 5 more books starting as low as .99.  They cover tarot, psychic development, and pathworking.  Click here to check them out.

Happy reading!

BB,
Vivienne

Great products, from Hoodoo to ebay to internet business, check ‘em out!

There are several products and companies that I use on a regular basis, and L-O-V-E, so I recommend them quite often. Since I send so much business their way, I figured I would sign up for their affiliate programs. There is now a new tab on the home page entitled “affiliates,” where I have put links or buttons to these companies, along with a brief description of what I use them for. Amazon is there, of course, but you can already access that by clicking on the “bookstore” tab. My web host and the site I buy my domain names are there, an ebook that helped me with ebay, and some podcasts by Catherine Yronwode, who does a kick ass hoo-doo correspondence course that I keep referring to again and again.

Please visit my affiliates page and purchase the products that will be most helpful to you.  If you have a product or service that you would recommend, please post a comment here and let me know, and I can look into becoming their affiliate, as well, and be a one-stop-shopping source for all your needs.

As always, if you find this post helpful, please spread the love by clicking on the “share” button below.

Thanks so much!

BB,

Vivienne

I’ve added a new “Articles” page

I’ve added all the articles I have up so far at Article Base, and hope to add some files here at the site.

If anyone has suggestions for articles they would like to see, please add your comments to this post, below.

Happy reading!

BB,

Vivienne

NEW!!! Get a FREE 5 part mini-course: “Novel ways to work with your aura and boost your magickal abilities,” when you subscribe to the blog

This is a very meaty email course with lots of links and book references, so you can go deep with your research.
Part 1: Review of visualization and aura basics

Part 2: New cleansing techniques – Creating Sacred Space Wherever You Are

Part 3: New Cleansing Techniques – An Aura Cleanse

Part 4: A Morning Meditation

Part 5: A Magickal Larder
Sign up for this great 5-part course, and the Persephone’s Haven blog, here:

You will receive Part 1 of your mini course as soon as you confirm your subscription, and you will also receive the Persephone’s Haven blog posts as a regular ezine, direct to your email inbox! Stay up to date on our news, reviews, and articles automatically.

Looking forward to getting to know you here at Persephone’s Haven.

Blessed Be,

Vivienne D’Avalon

P.S.: If you enjoyed this post, please share it by clicking on the “share” button below. Thank you!

Books by vampires, for vampires

I’ve added some more books to the “non-fiction: vampirism” section of the PH bookstore. I figured I would make a list of books by vampires that might be a helpful resource, especially concerning awakening and turning.  I have not read all of these, so it’s up to you to discover how useful they are or whether you agree with the contents:

Practical Vampyrism for Modern Vampyres
by Lady CG

V Special Edition
by Father Sebastian

Of course, I had previously listed:

The Psychic Vampire Codex
by Michelle A Belanger

and

Vampires in Their Own Words
by Michelle Belanger

I’ve also added:

The Ethical Psychic Vampire
by Raven Kaldera

Vampires: The Occult Truth (Llewellyn Truth…
by Konstantinos

and

Emotional Vampires
by Albert Bernstein

Happy reading!  And as always, if you have any opinions about any of these books, please post a comment.

BB,

Vivienne

P.S.: If you enjoyed this post, please share it by clicking on the “share” button below. Thank you!

Free Report now available at Care and Feeding of Spirits website

I’ve revamped the website for my ebook, On the Care and Feeding of Spirits.  Among other things, I’ve switched out the bonus materials again, so there are two new white papers available on Santeria, in addition to chapters from my upcoming book, Qabala: Secret Code of the Universe.  Please take a look and give me your comments and suggestions for how to improve the site.  (I understand there may be some issues with the middle column, which may be fixed by expanding the window size to full screen; I’m working on resolving those coding issues — hey, I’m just learning html!).

I’ve also now made a free report available which can be accessed through the web page, www.careandfeedingofspirits.com.  It’s got a lot of good information.  Please give me your thoughts and suggestions so I can continue to improve the quality of the package for you.

BB,

Vivienne

new vampire fiction in the PH Book Store

Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow

I just posted about these books to my ile mailing list (an ile is a household in Lucumi (Santeria).  The one I belong to meets at my padrino’s (godfather’s) house).  They are new additions to the bookstore here at Persephone’s Haven.
I just finished the first one, Working for the Devil.  The main character, Dante Valentine, is a necromancer who works with Anubis and the Egyptian pantheon.  During the course of the novel she travels to Nuevo Rio, where there are many shamans practicing Santeria and Voudon.  In one scene, she sees a woman has a drawn a veve (a voudon symbol) in the street.  She describes how the chicken that the woman sacrifices keeps twitching after its dead, and as the blood pours onto the veve, Dante feels the rush of power flowing in.  A few moments later, she sees someone resembling Baron Samedi (one of the voudon loa (spirits)) coming through the crowd, but she leaves the area after that.

I haven’t yet read the other books in the series, so I don’t know how much these traditions come into her story lines, but I was quite interested with her treatment of them in this book.  If anyone else here has read any of them, please let me know what you think.

BB,

Vivienne

P.S.: If you enjoyed this post, please share it by clicking on the “share” button below. Thank you!