Hogmanay...

A New Zealand New Year!!!...

New Year Candle Spell...

For The New Year!!!... ;)

The Moon Smile... ;)

Bat Blessing At Yule!!!...

A Yule Spell...

The Holly King...

Happy Yule Blessings To Everyone!!!...

Mother's Night..

The Green Santa...

Je'Amour P. Matthew December 14 at 12:39 PM · Who Is the Green Santa? Before the bright red suit became famous around the world, Santa Claus had another form — older, wilder, and deeply connected to nature. This was the St Nicholas or Green Santa or the Midwinter Greenman, a figure rooted in ancient winter traditions and the spirit of the earth. In early European folklore, the Green Santa — often known as Father Christmas — was not just a giver of gifts. He was the embodiment of winter’s magic, the turning of the seasons, and the quiet promise of renewal. Clothed in deep green robes, he symbolized: • the life hidden beneath the snow • the evergreen trees that survive the cold • the return of sunlight after the longest night • the sacred cycles of nature Long before modern celebrations, people honored the winter solstice through Yule, lighting fires and decorating with holly and ivy. During this time, the Green Santa appeared as a guardian of warmth, joy, and rebirth — a gentle reminder that even in the darkest days, life continues. It was only in the 20th century that the red-suited Santa became popular, replacing the older green-clad spirit. Yet the Green Santa still lives on in folklore, pagan traditions, and the heart of winter magic. He is the spirit of nature, renewal, and ancient festive joy — the Santa of the forests, the evergreens, and the old ways. - Ann Brigit Waters

Do you remember the way Nala looked at Simba???!!!...

The artist that made this saw this and I'm ecstatic Hello Star! Thank you for creating this beautiful work of art!. I love this so much. :Jólakötturinn" (Yule Cat) by Star Williams - Oil on Masonite "...The Yule cat (Icelandic: Jólakötturinn, IPA: [ˈjouːlaˌkʰœhtʏrɪn], also called Jólaköttur and the Christmas cat[1]) is a huge and vicious cat from Icelandic Christmas folklore that is said to lurk in the snowy countryside during the Christmas season and eat people who do not receive new clothing before Christmas Eve. In other versions of the story, the cat only eats the food of the people who had not received new clothing. Jólakötturinn is closely associated with other figures from Icelandic folklore, considered the pet of the ogress Grýla and her sons, the Yule Lads." https://www.artspaceshreveport.com/cm10-visual-star-williams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_cat

T'is A PLEASIN' Season!!!

New 2026 "Van Helsing...

"Van Helsing: The London Assignment," --- Hugh Jackman talks about it... ;)

Loki & The Deadly Mistletoe...

Christmas In The Coldest Village On Earth!!!......

Reindeer!!!...

The Origin Of Santa...

An Icelandic Christmas...

The Yule Lads...

The Yule Cat...

The Yule cat (Icelandic: Jólakötturinn, IPA: [ˈjouːlaˌkʰœhtʏrɪn], also called Jólaköttur and the Christmas cat) is a huge and vicious cat from Icelandic Christmas folklore that is said to lurk in the snowy countryside during the Christmas season and eat people who do not receive new clothing before Christmas Eve. In other versions of the story, the cat only eats the food of the people who had not received new clothing. Jólakötturinn is closely associated with other figures from Icelandic folklore, considered the pet of the ogress Grýla and her sons, the Yule Lads. --- "Wikpedia".

Yuletide...

An Addams Family Christmas...

Hugh Jackman As Gabriel Van Helsing, --- the handsomest, sexiest hero I've ever seen!!!...

Velkan is almost as handsome as Van Helsing. The actor was a ballet dancer, which explains his great contrortions... Love Carl's line: "Why does it smell like wet dog in here?" Hugh Jackman in his prime, at 35!!!... I was amazed at how fit he was. He did many of the stunts himself, --- lying on his back on a rig of galloping horses, pulling his whole weight up a 50 foot chain just with his hands in a minute, leaping to his feet after being rolled in a huge bell... It was filmed in the Czech Republic at a cold time of the year. Kate Beckinsale and the vampire girls were freezing, but Hugh, in a black turtleneck sweater and all that black leather, including black leather gloves, was quite warm. The hat he wore was one of a kind. As it got wet they kept drying it with a hair dryer. Richard Roxburgh was my favorite Dracula. Yes, there was considerable chemistry between Hugh and Kate. We later learn that Gabriel Van Helsing is actually an angel, --- "The Left Hand Of God," and Hugh Jackman is left handed. ;)

A Black Cat & A White Cat...

VERY BEST Krampus Parade: Seida Pass, Austria, --- 2016...

They're banging on old radiators!!!... Lol. ;)

December 6th Is The Feast Of The Krampus!!!...

On the Feast Of The Krampus I always eat beef stew and drink red wine.

The Krampus (German: [ˈkʁampʊs]) is a horned anthropomorphic figure who, in the Central and Eastern Alpine folkloric tradition, is said to accompany Saint Nicholas on visits to children during the night of 5 December (Krampusnacht; "Krampus Night"), immediately before the Feast of St. Nicholas on 6 December. In this tradition, Saint Nicholas rewards well-behaved children with small gifts, while Krampus punishes badly behaved ones with birch rods. The origin of the figure is unclear; some folklorists and anthropologists have postulated that it may have pre-Christian origins, although historians generally consider this unlikely, as it is not attested until the 16th century. In certain traditional parades and in such events as the Krampuslauf ("Krampus run"), some young men dressed as Krampus attempt to scare the audience with their antics. Krampus is featured on holiday greeting cards called Krampuskarten. The figure has been imported into popular culture around the world, and has appeared in movies, TV shows and video games. --- Wikpedia. THIS YEAR'S KRAMPUS PARADES... The Best Krampus parades from years past...

Fascinating 1944 Noir Movie: "Laura"...

The Real Story Of Lilith...

Sunrise Over Stone Henge...

Sunrise over Stonehenge — 07:49 AM, November 30, 2025 ☀✨ This morning, the world aligned in perfect harmony. At 7:49 AM, the rising sun slipped through the ancient stones of Stonehenge with breathtaking precision, igniting the horizon in gold and carving a luminous path across the frosted earth. 🌅 This beam of light is no trick of the eye — it’s the sun lifting over the horizon at the exact angle its builders anticipated more than four thousand years ago. They placed every stone with intention, crafting a monument that greets the solstice sun with a spectacle that still feels almost otherworldly. An ancient design meeting a new dawn. Human hands and cosmic timing working together across millennia. 🌍✨

"Kate & Leopold," --- One Of My Favorite Movies...

Most Beautiful Men From The Past Brought To Life!!!... ;)

...By the way, that's Mozart's 21st Piano Concerto, --- one of my favorite pieces!!!... <3

Oooo, --- Marguerite!!!...

Marguerite & Company: An Outrageous And Vile Tale Of Montmartre In The Early 1900s, ~ Part 1... Marguerite was "un enfant terrible," ~ a terrible child, but she was never really a child. (You know what I mean.)

Well, of course, she was small once, and when she was full grown she was still tiny, being no more than four feet, ten. But, she was abnormally advanced in mind and spirit always, with a sly cunning, like an exquisite and seductive vixen fox.

But, her hair, rather than being fox-red, was a satiny light honey blond and it stayed that way, even when she was an adult. Her eyes were as golden as a hawk's. (She was such a diminutive beauty.) Marg, as she liked to call herself, said she was born on a murky Spring night under a streetlight in Pigalle, in Paris, but if that was true who could say? Her father was a grifter. Her mother was a streetwalker of the lowest and scrappiest type, picking fights with other soiled doves, continually, even when she was in labor with her baby. That Marguerite survived her birth was practically a miracle. She was taken under the wing of another streetwalker, a heart-of-gold type, who was nursing her own baby at the time. (Yes, Marguerite's mother rejected her, calling her "a squirmy little rat".) When Marguerite was twelve she delighted in dressing in adult clothes and charmed the son of a baker, who was eighteen. He wanted to marry her, but Marguerite would have none of that. However, she did develop a liking for chocolate eclaires. [To be continued.] --- Copyright by Antoinette Beard, 2023.

My Favorite Agatha Christie Story & Movie...

What A Gentleman Is, --- Always...

...A gentleman is kind. That's it. Kindness modivates all of his actions. Being a gentleman is cool. It has never gone out of style and never wiil...

>>> A gentleman knows how to act because he has empathy. It gives him pleasure to show his humanity. ...The opposite of a gentleman is a brute. A brute would never think of giving up his seat on a bus to a pregnant woman or an elderly or disabled person. ("They can stand. I deserve to sit here!") A brute would never think of offering his jacket to a woman who's cold. ("Stupid bitch should have thought to bring a coat! I'm not going to be uncomfortable because of her!") A brute would never think of opening a door for someone, or offering his arm to a girl who's walking on high heels on ice. ("People can fend for themselves!") A brute would eat the last little bit of food, never thinking that others might be hungry too. ("First come, first served!") A brute would never think of helping an old woman plant a tree in her yard. ("I don't like getting my hands dirty!") A brute thinks real men are rough and tough and mean, and that's why everybody respects them. To a brute, fear equals respect. A brute never goes out of his way for anyone. He's too selfish for that. ("Gentleness is for weaklings!") >>> A brute is a jerk and everyone despises him, while he goes along thinking everybody is admiring him because he has the stuff it takes to be a "real man".

"Doctor Zhivago": The Making Of A Russian Epic...

I don't care much for Puritans...

The Origin Of "Thanksgiving" (You may not like this.) ...

When Julia Butterfly Hill Saved An Old Tree Named Luna...

December 10, 1997. Northern California.>>> Julia Butterfly Hill was 23 when she climbed Luna, a massive ancient redwood tree in Humboldt County, and set up a tiny platform nearly 180 feet above the ground. Her goal was simple: keep the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting it down. She expected to stay a few days. Nobody imagined she would remain in the tree for more than two years. The old-growth redwood forests were disappearing, and Luna was one of the few giants left, believed to be between 600 and 1,500 years old. Logging crews had already marked it for cutting. Julia decided the only way to stop it was to live in the tree itself. Life in the canopy was anything but romantic. She slept on small wooden platforms, hauled up supplies by rope, endured freezing rain and violent storms, and strapped herself to branches when high winds made the tree sway wildly. Helicopters flew close to rattle her, and loggers cut down surrounding trees to intimidate her. She faced isolation, exhaustion, and constant danger. Still, she stayed. Through a solar-powered phone and later radio interviews, Julia began sharing Luna’s story with the world. She spoke about the damage caused by clear-cutting and the importance of protecting ancient ecosystems. Her quiet determination drew national attention, and the pressure on Pacific Lumber increased. Day after day, season after season, she refused to come down. She celebrated two birthdays in Luna. She endured two winters. She learned the rhythms of the forest and felt a deep connection to the tree she was trying to save. After 738 days, Pacific Lumber finally agreed to negotiate. On December 18, 1999, Julia climbed down from Luna. The company promised to protect the tree and the land around it in exchange for a donated payment from supporters. Luna was safe. Her return to solid ground was difficult. After so long in a constantly swaying tree, she could barely walk without losing her balance. But she had won. One person had saved an ancient redwood that might otherwise have been lost forever. Julia’s tree-sit became one of the most famous acts of environmental activism in modern history. It showed the power of nonviolent resistance and inspired people around the world to believe that individual action can create real change. Luna still stands today, protected and growing, even after surviving vandalism in 2000. Julia Butterfly Hill gave up two years of her life for one tree. Many would call that sacrifice unreasonable. She saw it differently. She believed that change begins when someone decides not to give up, even when the odds are impossible. One person. One tree. 738 days. And Luna is still alive because she chose to climb and refused to come down.

LOVE Walt Whitman!!!...

Habla espanol?... I do, a little. (Un poco!) Below, on "Doctor Quinn:Medicine Woman," Walt Whitman came to town, and then, some of the town's more rigid-thinking residents got all huffy about him, but some loved him for the great and loving man he was. >>>

Olga...

Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya (Russian: Ольга Всеволодовна Ивинская; June 16, 1912, in Tambov – September 8, 1995, in Moscow) was a Soviet poet and writer. She is best-known as friend and lover of Nobel Prize-winning writer Boris Pasternak during the last 13 years of his life and the inspiration for the character of Lara in his novel Doctor Zhivago (1957).>>> Early life Ivinskaya, of German-Polish descent, was born in Tambov to a provincial high school teacher. In 1915, the family moved to Moscow. After graduating from the Editorial Workers Institute in Moscow in 1936, she worked as an editor at various literary magazines. She was an admirer of Pasternak since her adolescence, attending literary gatherings to listen to his poetry. She married twice: the first time to Ivan Emelianov in 1936, who hanged himself in 1939, having one daughter, Irina Emelianova; the second time in 1941 to Alexander Vinogradov (later killed in the war), producing one son, Dmitry Vinogradov. >>> Relationship with Pasternak She met Boris Pasternak in October 1946, in the editorial office of Novy Mir, where she was in charge of the new authors department. She was romantically involved with him until his death, although he refused to leave his wife. Early in 1948, he asked her to leave Novy Mir, as her position there was getting more difficult because of their relationship. She took up a role as his secretary instead. Ivinskaya collaborated closely with Pasternak on translating poetry from foreign languages into Russian. While she was translating the Bengali language poet Rabindranath Tagore, Pasternak advised her, to "1) bring out the theme of the poem, its subject matter, as clearly as possible; 2) tighten up the fluid, non-European form by rhyming internally, not at the end of the lines; 3) use loose, irregular meters, mostly ternary ones. You may allow yourself to use assonances." Later, while collaborating with him on a translation of the Czech language poet Vítězslav Nezval, Pasternak told Ivinskaya, "Use the literal translation only for the meaning, but do not borrow words as they stand from it: they are absurd and not always comprehensible. Don't translate everything, only what you can manage, and by this means try to make the translation more precise than the original—an absolute necessity in the case of such a confused, slipshod piece of work." Pasternak acknowledged Ivinskaya as the inspiration for Doctor Zhivago's heroine Lara. Many poems by Yuri Zhivago in the novel were addressed by Pasternak to Ivinskaya. In October 1949, Ivinskaya was arrested as "an accomplice to the spy" and was sentenced by the Special Council of the NKVD to five years in the Gulag. That was seen as an attempt to press Pasternak to give up writings critical of the Soviet system. In a 1958 letter to a friend in West Germany, Pasternak wrote, "She was put in jail on my account, as the person considered by the secret police to be closest to me, and they hoped that by means of a grueling interrogation and threats they could extract enough evidence from her to put me on trial. I owe my life and the fact that they did not touch me in those years to her heroism and endurance."

At that time of her arrest, Ivinskaya was pregnant by Pasternak and miscarried. She was released in 1953 after Stalin's death. Doctor Zhivago was published in Italy in 1957 by Feltrinelli, with Ivinskaya conducting all negotiations on Pasternak's behalf. Ivinskaya was one of nine "prisoners of conscience" featured in Persecution 1961, a book by Peter Benenson that helped launch Amnesty International. In it, Benenson lauded her for refusing to cooperate with authorities and for willingly suffering to protect Pasternak. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of Soviet archives, some sources suggested that, like most torture victims, she had been induced to cooperate with the KGB. - New York Times mentions "Moskovsky Komsomolets" as a source. >>> Final years After Pasternak's death in 1960, Ivinskaya was arrested for the second time, with her daughter, Irina Emelianova. She was accused of being Pasternak's link with Western publishers in dealing in hard currency for Doctor Zhivago. The Soviet government quietly released them, Irina after one year, in 1962, and Ivinskaya in 1964. She served four years of an eight-year sentence, apparently to punish her for the relationship. In 1978, her memoirs were published in Paris in Russian and were translated in English under the title A Captive of Time. Ivinskaya was rehabilitated only under Gorbachev in 1988. All of Pasternak's letters to her and other manuscripts and documents had been seized by the KGB during her last arrest. She spent several years in litigation trying to regain them. However, those were blocked by Pasternak's daughter-in-law, Natalya. The Supreme Court of Russia ended up ruling against her on the ground that "there was no proof of ownership," and "papers should remain in the state archive." She died in 1995 from cancer. A reporter on NTV compared Ivinskaya's role to that of other famous muses for Russian writers: "As Pushkin would not be complete without Anna Kern, and Yesenin would be nothing without Isadora Duncan, so Pasternak would not be Pasternak without Olga Ivinskaya, who was his inspiration for 'Doctor Zhivago.'" Her daughter, Irina Emelianova, who emigrated to France in 1985, published a book of memories of her mother's affair with Pasternak.

Beautiful "Doctor Zhivago"...

Surely, one of the most beautiful movies ever made, and one of the finest books ever written (and I didn't even read it in the original Russian!): "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris Pasternak...

Beautiful Gems Have Power!!!...

..."Without knowledge of jewelry, is woman is lost!!!"

Maria Schell's Romany Dance...

Mozart's "21st Piano Concerto"...

"Lay Down"...

Midnight Rain"...

"Plasir D'Amour"...

Things Sacred To The Lady Hekate...

Things sacred to Hekate are: mandrake, nightshade, monkshood, crows, bats, toads. Whiskey is always a good offering to give her.She is the Lady Of The Crossroads, so go to the nearest crossroads, take with you an apple cut in half horizontally to show the 5 seeds in a pentacle-like shape. Leave the apple at the crossroads.

Hecate Night, --- Novemebr 16th...

Dogs are the only ones who can see her. If your dog barks and barks and BARKS on Novemeber 16th she may be passing by!!!... Be careful in your dealings with the Lady Hecate. She will see that everyone involved gets EXACTLY what they deserve!!!...>>>