She Is The Daughter Of The Witch Mama Omida

Human Ashes Used to Create 3-D Art

hearaldsun - A Dutch artist is using the ashes of dead people to create common household objects using a 3D industrial printer.

The donated remains funnel into the unit - usually used to create solid prototypes of manufacturing parts - and come out as a bizarre memorial.

Artist Wieki Somers said the project demonstrates the fragility of life and questions our attachment to inanimate objects.

"We may offer Grandpa a second life as a useful rocking chair or even as a vacuum cleaner or a toaster," she said. "Would we then become more attached to these products?"

More than 465,000 litres of human ashes are produced every day worldwide and Somers' experiment is the latest in a growing list of alternatives to the traditional scattering.

In recent years cremated remains have been used to create memorial diamonds, ink for commemorative tattoos and even paint before it goes on the canvas.

Other items include "remembrance spheres" - glass globes that contain a tablespoon full of a freshly cremated body.

Somers 3D ash models are on display as part of the "In Progress" exhibition held at gallery space Grand-Hornu Images in Belgium.

She has previously won Denmark's prestigious Golden Eye design award and her projects include the quirky Merry-Go-Round Coat Rack featured in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Arizona Wiccan Gets Five Days in Jail For Expressing Free Speech

In a scrap with her next door neighbors that drove both sides to seek relief in court, Stacie Brown was ordered to stop bothering them with vulgar or inappropriate words or pictures on the back of her barn.

She thought she was still well within her First Amendment rights to display an upside-down pentagram, a five-pointed symbol familiar to Masons, magicians, Wiccans, Satanists and others.

The judge, however, was not amused, nor was he interested in debating the limits of Brown's free speech and religious freedom rights. In a May 26 hearing on Brown's injunction against harassment on her neighbors, Superior Court Judge Pro-Tem Craig A. Raymond told her, "this isn't a free speech issue.... What we have here is a continued and repeated series of harassing acts by you culminating in a violation of a specific order."

Raymond sentenced Brown, 25, of Cactus Forest, to five days in jail for contempt of court. She was further ordered to pay 550 in incarceration costs no later than July 30.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona commented that the judge's decision was probably correct:

"Without reviewing court transcripts, it's difficult to assess whether Ms. Brown raised legitimate First Amendment concerns, especially considering the allegations involve disputes between neighbors. However, we're a nation of many religions and political perspectives. I'm sure the judge took this into consideration before ruling on whether her constitutional rights were being threatened," according to Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU in Phoenix.

But Brown has no doubt her constitutional rights were violated. "If it was a cross, this would've never come up," she said this week. Continued at trivalleycentral

Witches and Miracle Healers Still Rule Roost in the Balkans

novinite - It might sound weird, but even in 2010 the brooding Balkan countries can't shake their addiction to psychics, clairvoyants, soothsayers and assorted 'white witches', all of which are still doing a roaring trade, from Bulgaria to Translyvania.

Clairvoyants and soothsayers ply their ancient trade around hospitals in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, reassuring anxious relatives with visions of a rapid recovery for their loved ones. They market 'miracle cures' and love potions, and in newspaper columns advise lovelorn women on how to land a man.

Some claim to be able to read, from coffee grounds, the fates of their fearful customers, while others predict the future from the stars. Their clientele pay handsomely for every divined word. Old women from the countryside tout herbal cures for everything from frigidity to erectile dysfunction and cancer, and claim that their healing craft extends well beyond traditional medicine. Credulous Bulgarians are the world's biggest spenders when it comes to the miracle cures market.

Every second Bulgarian who took part in a survey for the Sofia television channel BTV said they believed in supernatural powers, and especially feared a curse being put on them. Professor Ljubomir Halachev confirmed in the programme that "trust in psychic powers and second sight is widespread in Bulgaria".

At the upmarket end of this booming business, savvy younger 'practitioners' use state-of-the-art tools - internet websites, blogs and chatrooms - to spread their psychic messages, and give their readings a techy edge. Soothsayers' most sought-after services include the lifting of curses, countering havoc wreaked by an evil eye and turning bad luck to good.

The apparently unchallengeable claim by Bulgarian clairvoyants and psychics to paranormal powers rests on the world-renowned reputation of their late peer, the seer Baba Vanga.

Born Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova in 1911, this blind clairvoyant and herbal healer is claimed to have predicted, before her death in 1996, a number of world events, including the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the death of Princess Diana, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US - "two American brothers would fall under attacks by birds of steel" - and the sinking of the Russian nuclear cruise-missile submarine Kursk.

Then there was her 'chilling' prophecy of the date for the outbreak of the Third World War - December 2010. Enigmatically, she said this would be the result of "attempts on the lives of four leaders following a conflict in Hindustan".

Of course, 'Hindustan', in the parlance of an illiterate Bulgarian village clairvoyant, could well have covered the entire Indian sub-continent. And, as the slayings of Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh among others bear witness, the sub-continent is no stranger to political assassinations.

Asked, when she was quite elderly, about her psychic sources, she became shrewdly vague. Her words were -especially difficult to decipher because she had spent her entire life in the Rupite region of the Kozhuh Mountains, and spoke with a heavy local accent barely comprehensible to outsiders. Her television interviews were always supported by subtitles.

She spoke of "creatures invisible to people with ordinary sight", who told her about the fate and future of many people.

In the good 'white witch' stakes, Romania has the edge on the rest of the Balkans - even on Bulgaria. While keeping their ancient craft traditional, Romanian white witches use websites, blogs, email messaging and chatrooms to reach their clientele.

To judge by the claims of her website, Rodica Gheorghe is the leading 'white witch healer' in the country. Her credentials are based on her family tradition of witchcraft. She is the daughter of the witch Mama Omida and granddaughter of the witch Sabina. Some joke that her family are well on their way to having enough for their own coven.

But in the competitive cut-throat witch business, nothing is lasting, and in Romania's Transylvania province, 'black witches' have muscled in on the lucrative evil eye and funerary markets. Proven spells to keep a newly widowed man from remarrying, and thus depriving his children of their inheritance, are especially well paid for.

After any death in the village of Camarzana, a witch is called in to smear the udders of cows with garlic to prevent 'revenants' - vampires returning from the grave - stealing their milk.

As long as the ancient Balkan superstitions rule ordinary lives, witches, clairvoyants and miracle healers will do brisk business, with or without the internet.

Ohio Paranormal Group Prays to Christ For Support in Investigations

If Christian methods are not used to chase away demons, members of Shield Investigations believe the fix is only temporary.

Founder and investigator Mark Robey, 27, said the goal of the Mansfield-based paranormal group is to rid areas of demonic presence. But their methods may not be traditional.

"There are a lot of groups who don't mess with demonic things in the home because of the repercussions," Robey said. "We're all Christians and the Bible says we have authority over demons. We use our authority in Jesus' name."

Robey said there are different explanations as to why a home or area may become demonically possessed, including generational curses, misuse of a Ouija board and Satanic worship.

"The ghost side of it, that's still up in the air," he said. "There could have been a tragic death causing a spirit to stick around. Either way, we go in and try to figure out what's in the building. We want to know if what's in there is demonic or angelic."

The next step is a lot of communication with the home or building owner.

"We have constant phone calls with the client," Robey said. "We're counseling and ministering to them any way we can -- before, after and during the time we're there."

The rest is mostly dealt with through prayer and fasting.

Robey said the company's 12 investigators come from all over Ohio. He said they will travel just about anywhere and charge nothing for their services.

"There is no real qualifications to do what we do," he said. "It just takes anyone with an interest who is willing to learn. As long as they have integrity and they're a Christian, that's about all it takes. Demons will go after the weakest link, so a strong faith is so important."

"We feel like a lot of people are afraid to share what's going on in their homes," Robey said. "What we're doing is a ministry and we want people to know that we're here to help."

NOTE: Personally, this opens up a big can of worms. First off, I don't have any association with organized religion....but, I do consider myself as a spiritual person. Now...I have been on investigations where individuals have used prayer. Honestly, I don't have a problem with that. There are some cases that involve possession by malevolent spirits that require other means to rid them from a victim or residence. I have been on cases where priests and demonologists have been present and used...successfully, I might add. I'm not saying that a divine being was responsible for removing a malevolent spirit but I feel that the suggestion that a divine being may somehow have an affect on the victim and/or spirit (or demon, if that is what you feel it is) on a psychological or 'belief' level. That begs the question...Do spirits have a 'mind' or psyche? Perhaps that's a question that needs to be discussed...Lon

Fortean / Oddball News - 6/27/2010