Matador - Juniper (Original Mix) [Rukus]

did you know, the more practical uses of, "juniper", (an evergreen shrub or small tree that bears berrylike cones, widely distributed throughout Eurasia and North America. Many kinds have aromatic cones or foliage), have been known to people for several millennia, it features only sporadically in ancient mythology. Juniper was a symbol of the Canaanites' fertility goddess Ashera or Astarte in Syria. In the Bible's Old Testament, a juniper with an angelic presence sheltered the prophet Elijah from Queen Jezebel's pursuit. Similarly a later apocryphal biblical tale tells of how the infant Jesus and his parents were hidden from King Herod's soldiers by a juniper during their flight into Egypt, and From the point of view of witches and occultists, the juniper's most common use is in the making of incense, for which both the dried berries and needles and the essential oil are used. The berries, having a relatively high oil content, tend to burn with a good deal of smoke and any incense containing them is likely to produce a good fug if that is what appeals to you, Manifestation - for incense intended for use in rituals where manifestation is an important part of the working, IE evocations, where oodles of smoke are helpful to the working. Purification - as an incense or smudge in most rituals of purification, including the blessing of houses and other buildings and for dedicating new working areas and temples; for animals, (eg welcoming and dedicating new familiars); and for purifying people, for example baby-blessing ceremonies, initiations etc. A small bunch of twigs or a few berries in a pouch can also be hung in the rafters of a building or over the lintel of the doorway as a longer-term protection, in the Scottish Highlands on New Year's morning, juniper was burned in both house and byre to purify buildings and inhabitants. This is echoed by the tradition in some parts of Cornwall and Brittany of using juniper wood in the Beltane fires, between which cattle and other livestock were driven as a means of purification, throughout Central Europe there was a custom of burning juniper berries in the house in the three days leading up to Beltane so as to fumigate the house and welcome summer, while it has also been reported that in Aberdeen-shire in NE Scotland and in what is now Czechoslovakia juniper berries were used to fumigate stables to expel demons and other unwanted guests. also a folk medicine custom in some parts of the South West of England of burning the wood and needles close to a sick person. This practice is closely allied to the above New Year customs and presumably recognises that the vaporised oil released into the air had some beneficial purifying effect to dispel infection, Like many plants, there was a definite ritual which had to be followed when pulling or collecting juniper so that the power and essence of the plant was not lost. In the case of juniper, it had to be pulled up by the roots, the branches made into four bundles and held between the five fingers while intoning the appropriate incantation, I will pull the bounteous yew, Through the five bent ribs of Christ, In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost Against drowning, danger and confusion,Folk tradition records a divinatory significance to the appearance of juniper in dreams, for: "it is unlucky to dream of the tree itself, especially if the person is sick; but to dream of gathering the berries, if it be in winter, denotes prosperity. To dream of the actual berries signifies that the dreamer will shortly arrive at great honours and become an important person. To the married it foretells the birth of a male child, The largest body of folklore concerning juniper comes from Iceland where it was traditionally believed that juniper and rowan could not grow together because each creates so much heat that one or other of the trees would be burn up. For the same reason it was considered not a good idea to bring sprigs of both woods into the house together unless you particularly wanted your house to burn down. Another Icelandic belief has it that if you are building a boat, you must either use both juniper and rowan wood or use neither of them in the boat, otherwise it will sink, In Wales it was said that anyone who cut down a juniper tree would be dead within a year, while in Newfoundland it was believed that wolves and bears are repelled by juniper wood and for this reason people who kept stock would ensure that juniper wood was used in building enclosures or stockades in which livestock would be kept. Also in Newfoundland it is believed that you will always find water under a juniper tree, though this seems to contradict the natural history of juniper which, as mentioned above, generally grows best on limestone or chalk soils which are usually well-drained, The juniper also features in one of the most horrific of Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Juniper Tree, (10), in which a pregnant woman eats the berries of the juniper tree, which grows in the garden of her house, as a result of which she becomes ill, and lives just long enough to give birth to a son. She is buried beneath the juniper tree, and after a period of mourning, the father remarries; in time a daughter is born, and the stepmother becomes jealous, seeking to gain, all of the father's wealth for the daughter. She first physically abuses, and then kills her stepson, (by beheading him, with the lid of a chest as he chooses an apple, from within), and feeds his flesh in the form of a stew, to his father. His half-sister collects his bones, and lays them beneath the juniper tree in the garden, below which the boy's mother, had been previously buried. Amidst a magical mist and flames, the bones are transformed into a bird, who is able through his song, to reveal how he was murdered. By singing his song to various enchanted listeners, he is able to gather to himself, the things he needs to dispense justice. He is clearly intended to be seen, as a magical bird as his plumage is described, as being beautiful and he is able to lift aloft a huge millstone, which he subsequently drops, onto his stepmother and kills her. Once justice has been dealt out, to the stepmother, the bird is transformed once, again into the child, and normality is resumed. However, the shamanic initiatory elements, within the Grimm's story are unmistakable. The sequence of events may be summed up as: initial death,(by beheading, IE dismemberment), the return to the cauldron/womb of transformation, (IE the cooking pot), the stripping of the traveller's flesh, from his bones and the consumption, of that flesh, by the traveller's life guide/father, the return of the stripped-down traveller, to his ancestors and the world tree, shape-shifting, subsequent re-integration and return to the normal world. and that The Juniper tree's name is derived from the Latin word juniperus. In Latin, juniperus is combination of the word junio, which means young, and parere, to produce, hence youth producing, or evergreen as, standardz, hahahahahahaha, :) #edio