Alice in Wonderland Christmas
A free eBook especially for you.
A free eBook especially for you.
Apples are produce,
Until they drop on your head,
Then they are pondered,
Unless you are dead.
We are all “ghosts” or spirits driving “meat coated skeletons made from stardust,” and we don’t have anything to be afraid of. Our soul takes residence, for a brief and sacred time, in our fragile human body. It does this to learn, to grow, and will—like a hermit crab—discard old shells as they become too limiting and move on to new ones, to new lives that allow further growth.
This continues on until we become wise enough not to need our corporeal lives any longer. At that point, all the skulls and all the bodies that we had fall away into meaningless matter and what remains is what was always there: our immutable self.
Porridge is good for your bones,
Bones, bones, good for your bones.
Eat it up; it’ll do you good,
Do you good, good, good, good.
Look at it now; it’s so fine to eat,
It’s so fine and good, it is a treat.
The Iroquois Indians of the eastern United States have legends about a strange creature called the Flying Head. According to the legends, this creature originated from a head that was chopped from the body of an ancient tribal chief and thrown into a lake. Somehow this chopped-off head was transformed into a giant flying head more than six feet tall, with eyes made of fire, and fangs as sharp as needles. It flew by means of its long flowing hair which could spread out like wings to catch the wind.
The Flying Head would descend from the sky at night and devour both humans and animals. Although it was just a head without a body, it was still big enough to eat enormous amounts of meat. The people of the region were so terrified that many of them packed up their belongings and moved to other areas. But finally the monstrous head left the region and was never seen again.
As depicted in modern movies, zombies are re-vitalized corpses that have no souls and very little intelligence. They hunger for the flesh of living people, and they tend to gather in groups to search for victims. Because most of them can’t run, or even walk fast, they have to shamble slowly across the ground. But they pursue their intended victims relentlessly, and they can break through doors to reach a hiding place. If one of them gets hit by a bullet, it pauses for a moment but soon starts moving forward again. They can’t be killed because they’re already dead.
Modern film makers got their ideas about zombies from strange stories that originated in the country of Haiti. According to these stories, Voodoo sorcerers in Haiti can revive dead bodies and turn them into mind-controlled slaves to work as laborers in the fields. Some people in rural areas of the country believe that these zombie-slaves are still being created today using black magic. The people of Haiti use the name “Bokor” for someone who has mastered black magic, but outsiders usually call them sorcerers, wizards, or witch doctors.
Several theories have been put forward to explain the various beliefs about zombies. According to one theory, stories about zombies arose from observations of people who have schizophrenia or other mental disorders that cause them to be unresponsive and out of touch with their surroundings. Another possible explanation is that certain plant-derived drugs can put people into a trance-like state in which they obey outside commands. A third theory is that an unknown virus spreads a rare disease that causes zombie-like behavior. Another idea, used in a film called The Night of the Living Dead, is that an unusual form of radiation can turn corpses into zombies.
The modern Voodoo religion in Haiti developed from the beliefs of black people who were captured in Africa and transported to the island to work as slaves on sugar plantations. After they arrived, the plantation owners forced them to convert to Christianity. But they secretly kept some of their old beliefs, and they also adopted some religious ideas from the native Amerindian people. As a result, modern Voodoo is a mixture that includes elements from all of these religions.