Real Castles

Today was a lazy day for the snakes. Since most of them ate yesterday (cough cough CocoRosie) they spent most of the day basking under their heat lamps, full and happy. It's interesting that Coral, unlike the other babies, likes to lay inside her water bowl while digesting. A bit strange, but I guess she knows what she is doing.
I wasn't able to get Barbossa's mice today from Petco, so he gave me the evil eye when I came home empty-handed. Clearly he was disappointed in me.
I, however, had a lot of fun today. I went to the Coral Castle here in Miami, to take part in a pagan gathering called Moonfaire. They host it there four times a year, and it's a good way of seeing some pagan lecturers and hear some drumming from the impromptu drum circle. I'd always heard good things about the festival, so I decided to see for myself. It was pretty good, there could have been a little more organization and some better vendors (at least more of them) but all in all not a bad experience.
The highlight, however, was the Coral Castle itself. It was built by Edward Leedskalnin, as a monument to his love for Agnes Scuffs. She was supposed to marry him in his homeland of Latvia, but the day before the marriage she backed out. No one is sure if it was because he was older (by ten years) or if it was because he was poor, or both.
Instead of hating her very existence, he built this incredible monument for her. It is built completely of, you guessed it, coral and carved by very rudimentary tools of his own invention. He was a master craftsman and a brilliant engineer, who was able to move tons, and I mean tons, of coral by himself. No one has yet been able to provide the answer as to how he managed to do it. He was a diminutive man, standing at 5 feet and weighing 100 pounds. Even if he had been a 6 foot tall wrestler it would be an impossible thing to do. He still has scientists baffled.
To read more about him and his creation visit http://coralcastle.com/
Below is a picture of Ed's bedroom. This was my favorite part of the exhibition. It was on the second floor of what he called "the tower".


This is one of the many tall, huge, stone sculptures that make up the Coral Castle. This serves as a wall to protect one of the most important things for Ed, his privacy.



One of the workshops today was about astrology. It was a beginner's guide to reading astral charts. Really interesting stuff and very complicated, with tons of data to analyze.It mainly dealt with interpreting the chart, not necessarily creating it, since that is an even more complex process that requires a LOT of math. I won't be doing that any time soon, but nevertheless, an instructive lecture.
Then we had one about sex magic. The presenter made her own set of Tarot decks, with doctored famous classical images and added her erotic touch to each image, changing it to represent the Major and Minor Arcana which we use to make our reading. It's probably not everyones cup of tea, but it does open some doors in our uptight world that are extremely important to keep open for our well being as animals in this planet.