Thank Goodness It's Raining

ALOHA, FRIENDS!

Thank goodness
it's JUST raining!

Hurricane Ana 

is lingering

 in our neighborhood
as it brushes our islands
with Rain Rain Rain.

Very grey and unsettled.

Kitty has taken to her cave
under the bed.

My feelings are Gratitude 
that the hurricane 
stayed offshore,
accompanied by
 a sort of 
storm exhaustion.

    "Anyone 
who has ever built 
a new heaven 
acquired the capacity 
in his own hell." 
                     Nietzsche  

]\[ 

Your visit
-Your caring-
is a ray of sunshine
on this grey day-
Thanks!  
                     Fondly, cloudia

In Which I See a FOX

A  L  O  H  A !

No foxes in Hawaii, but is that. . . . ?

“ A fox 

passing through the wood

 on business of his own 

stopped several minutes 

and sniffed. ” 

                      J.R.R. Tolkien, 

                                      The Fellowship of the Ring

Bushy tail, pointy snout, ears pricked-
Ready to bolt at their approach

“ Hungry for beautiful words, 

the fox comes rooting 

around in the hedge. . .

 He reads my mind 

with one glance and is 

gone. ” 

                  Jay Woodman

Beguiled by a Kitsune!

“Nothing's perfect," 

sighed the fox. ” 

 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 

The Little Prince

" When a fox is fifty years old,

 it can transform itself 

into a woman. 

When it is one hundred, 

it becomes 

a beautiful woman 

or a shaman; 

Some become men

 and have sex 

with women. 

They can know events 

from more than a thousand li away 

and are good at witchcraft, 

beguiling people and

 making them 

lose their senses. "

                           Guo Pu, 

                                   Records from Within the Recondite

]\[

Thank You

for magically
appearing here!

               Warmly, cloudia

Books and Theses on Spirit Foxes:

Bathgate, Michael R. The Shapeshifter Fox: The Imagery of Transformation and the Transformation of Imagery in Japanese Religion and Folklore. Chicago: The University of Chicago, June 2001. Doctoral thesis.

Blacker, Carmen. The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Japanese Shamanistic Practices. Routledge Curzon, 1999.

A thorough description of Japanese shamanism that includes an entire chapter on magical animals, including kitsune.

Davis, Winston. Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980. 

A study of the Sukyo Mahikari sect, a religion that believes in possession by spirit animals and the dead. The author describes several cases of fox possession and exorcism.   Link