When I put more links on this page online last night, I thought it was finally complete.  That's the second time this week that I've been wrong about this page.  A few days ago, I thought I only had four links left to do on this one.  Instead, once they were done on Tuesday afternoon, I unexpectedly discovered more than a dozen still untouched in my bookmark file.  Well, I thought, they'll have to wait until spring or summer.  Maybe I'll have more time then.  Maybe my eyes will be less tired.

But a curious obsession gripped me Tuesday night and yesterday morning: all I could think about was adding those links, finishing the page by the end of the year.  But why? -- I wondered.  Why should I want to complete this page when I have so many others demanding my attention?  Besides, my thoughts ran on, I honestly don't want to complete any particular page in these last few days.  I'm tired.  I just want to continue updating a few stray broken links and leave it at that.

I couldn't, however.  For whatever the reasons, I had to finish this one -- and so I did -- annotating the links much of yesterday until I could finally publish the page late last night with 50 KB more than when I'd started.

I only slept about 4 hours before I awoke and found myself still haunted.  Phrases of wishes and curses kept emerging as I fought to sleep.  I finally got up and scribbled a few down on the wrapper from a bar of herbal soap (I didn't want to wake myself up enough to go downstairs for notepaper).  Good, I thought, now I can sleep.  But this happened three or four more times before sleep reclaimed me.  During this process, I finally realized why this page was so important --- and why the implications of weather mythology hold such an important key.

As much of the human race measures off one millennium and prepares to cross the threshold into the next, perhaps we need to remember those old, angry, powerful storm-deities who destroyed entire worlds when humans lost respect for the sacredness of weather, land, and other species of life -- El Shaddai (the mountain storm god of the early Hebrews before his name became Yahweh), Baba Yaga, Odin, Thor, Sekhmet, Poseidon, and so many others from around the world.  Many of their stories are in the links on this page.  But the page itself won't be complete until I add my Crone's Curses and Prayers that emerged in the wee hours of last night:

In the new millennium, may abuse of the environment bring swift public humiliation, not power or wealth, to the politicians and CEOs of the world.  If logic and common sense fail to sway them, may unrelenting nightmares in the privacy of their own bedchambers "scrooge" them, sober them, exhaust them, weaken their resolve.

We are all part of a larger web of life.  May we live more wisely within our overlapping ecosystems.  May we fully awaken to the madness of overpopulation and greed.  May we protect the remaining great forests whose tragically decreasing numbers necessarily impact weather patterns everywhere.  May we respect the nature of floodplains and avoid pushing whole populations onto them.  May we build more skillfully and ethically in quake-prone regions.  May we not build in areas that are the natural habitats of species with as much right to live as we, if for no other reason than that in clearcutting or draining lands that are theirs, we again impact our global weather and create more disasters.  May we cherish anew the wonder of clean waters and winds.

May the powerful Storm Spirits of all lands and peoples show us their kinder faces as we come into a new balance with our Earth."

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For more Crone Papers essays,
please see the index on the Crone Papers Opening Page.

Crone Papers' logo adapted from the "Three Norns" by Sandra Stanton.
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This page created with Netscape Gold 3.01.
Technical assistance: William Weeks
Credits: background is from a now defunct site, Mermaid's Rest Graphics

Text and layout copyright © 1998-2002 by Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D.
Put online 13 November 1998 with the rest of MythingLinks,
but not really begun until my mother's birthday, 2 August 1999
Latest updates:
1999: 7 August 1999; 28 December 1999; 29 December 1999; 30 December 1999;
2000: 23 August 2000 (checked & updated all links; added new ones); 28 September 2000.
2001: 21 & 22 April 2001: moved sections on Northern Lights, Green Flash, & St. Elmo's Fire
to new Fire: Sacrality & Lore page;
moved "General Weather Lore & Science" section to new Air: Sacrality & Lore page;
12 May 2001: updated a link, checked all others.
22 June 2002: minor formatting changes; checked all links; excerpted opening mini-essay for CronePapers; updated Nedstat.