New release this week ~ Blackthorn’s Botanical Shadow Work: Healing Through the Dark with Plant Magic by Amy Blackthorn A deep look into the way we interact with plants and how they can help us release our trauma, fears, and personal stress. #Booksky #Witchsky

5 August 1962 On this day 64 years ago, French speakers awoke to the newspaper headline “Marilyn est morte.” Pictured: dramatic portrait of Monroe by Bert Stern (the series known as “the last sitting”), taken for Vogue magazine in June 1962 at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.

Iggy Pop, 2002 Bonnie Schiffman

"Those with feelings - wondrous kind - Can love with felines ever bind." BOTD artist Louis Wain 1860 #Caturday

"Eating is an agricultural act." “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.” "I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." BOTD Wendell Berry 1934 #Booksky

Marilyn Monroe by Phil Stern

'Sun Mad' by Esther Hernández 1982 serigraph National Museum of Mexican Art Permanent Collection Addresses the dangers and adverse effects of the various chemicals workers were exposed to in farm fields.

Happening ~

Nina Simone's Gum by Warren Ellis A story about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people, the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love. #Booksky

"It is not impossible to succeed as a social democracy, where business and free enterprise thrive, and not abandon the disenfranchised, poor, sick, and elderly." BOTD Richard Jay Belzer 1944 Belzer photographed for the Creative Coalition "It Starts with the Arts" Project

Louis Armstrong in his dressing room at the Latin Casino Philadelphia in 1958 Photo by Dennis Stock

Ellery Queen's Japanese Mystery Stories is a collection for lovers of great detective and crime fiction. The book features a new foreword by Japanese detective fiction expert Satoru Saito which places the stories within the context of Japanese society and modern Japanese literature. #Booksky

The Hierophant #5 in the Tarot 😸😸😽 #Caturday

“We wind up in cells of our own making when we're not generous, loving, compassionate, and forgiving. Without love we build dungeons in our hearts and fill them with our perceived enemies." BOTD Martin Sheen 1940

Boooooo..

“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.” ~ Giovanni's Room James Baldwin at home in Saint Paul de Vence, South of France, in 1985 #Booksky

Modern Lunasá Hex Sign Ricky Barnes Usually painted in bright colors, they were thought to bring luck, love, abundance, ward off misfortune such as fire & lightning. They were orginially called "sech circles," because the first ones included a six-pointed star in a circle. ~ Sigil Museum #Witchsky

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” BOTD American novelist, essayist & activist James Baldwin 1924 #Booksky

"You come into the world and then you go." BOTD Vali Myers, The Witch of Positano, 1930 She was an Australian visionary artist, dancer, bohemian and muse whose coverage by the media was mostly in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s in Europe and the United States. Art forms: Painting #Witchsky

"Write what should not be forgotten." "I'm aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic." BOTD Chilean novelist Isabel Allende 1942 #Booksky

Bless Your Cauldron ❤ There are many ways to bless / consecrate a cauldron. Some use the elements, some anoint with oil, others call upon deities or spirits. For general use, I like working with the elements: incense, flame, water, salt and herbs. Image & text by Laura Tempest Zakroff #Witchsky

The eggshells of wild birds vary in thickness and pigmentation levels depending on the species. These differences guarantee that the embryo gets the right amount of ultraviolet (UV) light it needs to develop. ~ Science Alert

Q. "You do not consider your statement a disloyal one?" A. "No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty." Q. "You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth?" A. "I am." ~ Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1951), Part I, The Psychohistorians #Booksky

Richard Avedon contact sheet of James Baldwin, born this day in 1924, with his mother Emma Burdis Baldwin, taken in New York City in 1962. #Booksky

“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.” BOTD Herman Melville 1819 Melville by Joseph O Eaton #Booksky

"I'm having nasty, nasty visions And baby you're in every one, yeah And I'm so afraid I'm gonna find you with A so-called smoking gun..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gQE...

Robert Cray - Smoking Gun

YouTube video by RobertCrayVEVO

youtube.com

"I don't see how anybody cannot be political in this day and age. There's so much going on and you have to be aware and you have to vote. Our lives are political." "All the blues greats took chances and developed their own style. They didn't copy." BOTD Robert Cray 1953

BOTD Henrietta Lacks, in 1920 in Roanoke, VA. Lacks was a poor black tobacco farmer who died at age 31 from cervical cancer, but whose cells were taken without informed consent continue to be used in medical research. #Booksky

"Nothing left to do but smile...smile....SMILE!" "America is still mostly xenophobic and racist. That's the nature of America, I think." BOTD Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia 1942 Garcia by Richard E. Aaron

"Politics: The systematic organization of hatreds.." ~Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra, A Life #Booksky