Throwing Back Poopgoo

“Kittenwhiskers” is a series of posts where I go wildly off-topic and indulge in a little unabashed fangirling over somthing or the other. This summer I went a little mad scientist over natural hair color and it turned out to be one of the most-liked posts of 2021. I now bring you…

THE GREAT POOPGOO EXPERIMENT

Over the past few years, between the pandemic and weird schedules, our family has become world champion at-home staycationers. I’m not complaining. I like it because it usually is a good excuse to treat ourselves to our favorite local restaurants, but that’s another story.

Believe it or not, I have a doctorate degree that relates to this. Not a doctor of vacationing. I have an online remote study Ph.D. in Natural Health from back in the day before online colleges were a common thing. Move over Doctor Doofenshmirtz. Summer hiatus is a good time to put that information into actual practice and take the time to tinker with new things. Call it experimental research.

Genuinely natural alternatives (as opposed to unregulated marketing claims of “natual”) are just as effective as their mainstream counterparts, but they are also more time intensive. Natural things work, but they takes more time and effort than most of us are willing to put into them – myself included.

This year’s experiment might be my new pinnacle of whacky in my alternative tinkering – at least so far. Being middle aged and freshouttafucks, I’m usually not much for hair and beauty stuff. I am, however, getting ruthless about cutting our single use plastic consumption and using more eco-friendly products in general.

I don’t totally like my natural hair color and inherited a forehead adjacent early gray patch a la Bride of Frankenstein, thus Miss Clairol and I have been friends for a loooong time. But it is time for a change because chemicals, plastic, and thinning old lady hair. Enter plant based hair color. No more little non-recyclable plastic bottles and no more slap you in the nose chemical smells. With plant powders, the little plastic bottles are replaced with a bowl from the kitchen (or washed up from last night’s take out.) The eye watering smell (or the gag inducing froofroo fragrance they add to try and cover it up) is replaced by – you guessed it – the smell of plants. Think mowing the lawn or a day in the garden. Or, in this case, freshly mown hay on a sunny day with a giant pot of creamed spinach dumped on top.

This particular plant, cassia obovata, or “neutral henna” as it is marketed, comes from the Ayurvedic tradition and is actually healthy for hair and scalp. It’s been used for centuries for dandruff and the like. Lots of plants have dyes in them. That’s where dyes for cloth and inks originally came from, not chemicals. Thankfully the old recipes and what-plant-makes-what-color knowledge is still around. It is a day long project, but I wanted to give the old school plant based hair color a try.

It’s true that cassia is mainly a conditioner and won’t touch the color of darker hair. Not. One. Bit. I was genuinely surprised that it did anything for my lighter hair, but it really does end up with a nice, warm toned golden blonde, including the grays. Another tidbit I had read proved true…pure cassia obovata is not a good choice for anyone who wants or needs cool or neutral blonde tones. I actually dig the end color because I was aiming for warm tones. I’ve been paying for warm tones for years. This ended up being about the same price as a decent box color at Walmart or something. Certainly it costs WAY less than a salon visit.

The other thing that proved true: it’s volumizing. The old-lady thin texture is normal again. I’ve read that cassia can relax curl, and that adding amla (Indian gooseberry) power does two things: It preserves the curl plus provids the acid that releases the dye molecules from the cassia. If you don’t use amla in the mix, add a splash of lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. I don’t think it takes much acid, but as I understand the chemistry, it is necessary. I used amla 15 gms to 50 gms of cassia powder. I also added a splash of aloe, which was suggested to enhance the conditioning effect.

For this project I used 100% pure Cassia Obovata powder (if you use lawsonia aka true henna, indigo aka black henna or anything combination other than pure cassia, it’s a whole different kettle of hair goo. Do your research!! ) Pure cassia is the only way to get the color I was aiming for, so I didn’t really research the other stuff.

To start, measure & mix the powder(s) in your chosen bowl. Add hot water and and about a Tbs of aloe until it is the consistency of pancake batter or a runny yogurt. Let the now brown & disturbingly baby poop looking mixture sit for 4 hours. Yes, hours. This is natural and plastic-free (the powders came in foil pouches) not modern and convenient. You don’t have to stand there and watch it. Just mix it and leave it. If it goes longer, no worries. For a dye effect and not just conditioning, word is that you have to use it within a 4 – 12 hour window after adding the water. Beyond that, and it supposedly works as conditioner but the dye degrades so much it isn’t useful even on light hair.

When it comes time to apply the poopgoo you might want gloves, or you might not. Lawsonnia, the real-deal red hair henna is also used for mehndi, the temporary (and gorgeous!) skin art that originated in India and will obviously stain. But like I said, this is about a pure cassia conditioner / gold-blonde spinach smelling poopgoo hair color experiment. I didn’t have any problem with staining at all.

I coated my hair with this deeply weird muddy stuff, covered it with a shower cap, wrapped that in a towel, and warmed the whole thing with the hair dryer.

Did I mention it felt deeply weird, like mud-clay wrapped in plastic wrapped in a towel, part ceramics class, part Laura Palmer Twin Peaks reference?

I tooled around the house with the spinach smelling poopgoo contraption for four hours. Yes, hours. I didn’t want to do much wearing a big wobbly towel turban, so instead I spent some quality time with my knitting needles and a copy of Matt Auryn’s excellent book, Psychic Witch. The final step is to rinse out the drying-clay-feeling abstract sculpture on my head with warm water and no shampoo, followed by air-drying. For the first evening, it felt like hair that had been caked in mud, but look at the mirror! Good color and better gray coverage than the store bought semi-permanent color. This is temporary too, which is why I was expecting the big fat nothing I’d gotten before from another instinctively “natural” store brand I’d tried in the past. By the next day, the recently caked-in-mud feeling was gone with soft and volumeized texture left in its place.

And look! Color! It worked! Cassia obovata spooged out its crysophanic acid and coated my gnarly looking Lily Munster streak with pretty blonde-ness. This poopgoo is the real deal!

via Giphy.com

Kitten Whiskers is a series of posts about some of my favorite things, even if they are a little off-topic. I hope they spark a little delight for you the way they have for me.

Just a quick non-throwback reminder: email Tarot readings are open all holiday weekend. Order yours HERE. The “year ahead readings are always in the special layouts section, but are on the home page through Lunar New Year.

A private year ahead reading by email is included when you join the TaoCraft Tarot Table on Ko-fi. For $5 per month you receive

  • One time private Year Ahead Tarot reading by email
  • Member exclusive Pathway Through The Month three card reading on the ko-fi edition of the blog
  • Member exclusive newsletter on the ko-fi blog that includes random special offers and discounts.

And lest you think it odd to start talking about Tarot right under a .gif of Bill Nye, remember that my style of Tarot reading doesn’t do any of that oogie boogie predict-the-future stuff. My readings are all about understanding, making choices, and laying a foundation so that good old scientific cause and effect can carry us forward on a better path. Think of it as a sort of witchy jazzed up social science that is actually FUN to do.

Quiet Night

AKA taking my own advice, Hermit edition

Today’s energy, like yesterday is very quiet, introspective, low key, low (ahem) energy.

The year-ahead reading for everyone and the month-ahead reading for members will post later this week here and on ko-fi respectively. I keep getting the hint to “play things close to the vest,” to shush up a bit an be in my own present moment. Going to gratefully take that spirit energy advice.

Talk to you later, probably Friday sometime.

g’nite

TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot: Silent Light

Thank you for watching, reading and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your favorite morning drink.

Today’s Card is the Hermit from the major arcana

Light is silent.

The thing making the light might make a sound, like a crackling fire or humming street light, but the light itself is utterly silent.

Most, if not all, Hermit cards have a lantern or some symbol for light on them. Hermits choose to be alone. This combination brings to mind classic tropes like the candy suggesting guru on a mountaintop or the tea plucking wise master in a bottled tea commercial. It also brings to mind the mythic association between silence, solitude and enlightenment. Gautama Buddha meditated alone at night under a bohdi tree. Bohdidharma meditated alone facing a cave wall. Micheo Usui meditated alone to realize the Reiki symbols, and so on.

Enlightenment is a quiet thing.

Evangelism is, however, not. It is a normal human thing to be noisy and enthusiastic and want to tell everyone about this nifty new thing you found so the people you care about can benefit from it too. It’s primal. It makes evolutionary sense to put up a screech when you find the clear water stream or the full fruit tree. That’s great that you care enough about people that you want to share your best found treasures with them. But at some point it has to grow up beyond that. At some point it has to ripen from the joy of discovery to the depth and security of lived experience. At some point, deep truths become a silent stream of light lest they be reduced to pearls before swine or gnats around the heads of others.

Some days it is a service to shout to the tribe about the good that you have found. Lights are a signal in the dark as much as a shout. Sometimes the best signal is a silent light.

Throw Back 2021: Ogres

It’s that retrospective, year-in-review time of, ahem, year.

I used to think it was fun and sentimental. You know, reflection, introspection, personal growth and all that. But now I’m older and wiser. It’s also easy content. Who am I to argue with that logic? (She says as she shuffles off for another cup of spiced coffed and a cranberry scone for breakfast)

Today we’re throwing back to April. If you are more in a mood to look forward, “Year Ahead” readings are available by email on the home page. Memberships get both an exclusive “month ahead reading” on the ko-fi blog and a private year ahead reading by email when you join.

That being said, here is “Growing Ogres” from April 2021.

Shrek: ….ogres are like onions

Donkey: They stink?

….

Shrek: No! Layers! Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. You get it? We both have layers

from “Shrek” copyright 2001 Dreamworks Pictures, quote via imdb.com

Layers mean complexity. Layers apply to all sorts of things that are actually more complex than they seem at first glance; ogres, onions, cakes and – you guessed it – Tarot.

Reading Tarot for yourself is actually quite simple. In a couple of hours I could teach you to do good DIY readings for yourself. (Related: PeaceTarot ebook)

Reading for other people is another story. High level professional readings are, like onions and ogres, more complex than it seems on the surface. That’s the whole point of them. A professional reading can gives you extra layers of insight and experience that you can’t get alone. Two heads are better than one. Two eyes give depth perception (related post: parallax) The two of us working together gives your reading another layer of understanding.

Sometimes layers talk about authenticity. Sometimes you have to peel back a few layers to get to the real heart of the matter. We’ve talked about authenticity and public Tarot practice before, after my Modern Oracle Tarot work was re-branded to TaoCraft Tarot (related: what’s in a name, Shakespear’s Roses, Spell Your Name)

That’s all well and good, but consider another aspect of layers: growing new ones. Interestingly, actual onions grow on the inside. New layers are added at the core while older outside layers get dry and thin and ultimately fall away. In this, onions give us another useful metaphor.

In the medical field, and no doubt many other professions, continuing education is a condition of licensure and employment. You have to keep learning and keep current if you want to keep working. Whether it is required or not, whether it is career related or not, lifelong learning is a respected mark of excellence. Learning isn’t just formal education. Learning comes from experience and experimentation and the living of life. Artists’ work evolves over time. Any person’s point of view can evolve over time.

And so, the “Modern Oracle” layout is evolving. I’m calling abort on the video / text hybrid format. It was an experiment that failed, and I’ve learned something important from it.

Remember how deeper layers are often perceived as more authentic and how old layers of growing onions turn papery and fall off? It’s time for the 5 and 7 card Modern Oracle layouts to evolve, to become more authentic, to show more of their inner complexity. The video hybrid isn’t the way for that to happen. The names of layout card positions are changing. It’s a tiny detail that you may not even notice from your side of the Tarot table. On my side of the table it is important shift in mindset. This allows me to fully and authentically follow what intuition and spirit shows me.

I wrote the initial layout meanings to create a bridge from old fashioned, predict-the-future, fortune telling layouts to a more modern advice, guidance and empowerment reading. I wrote the Modern Oracle layouts specifically to show the power of your choices over your future. Cards that once were called “past, present and future” in the old style became “lessons from the past, current situation, and moving forward.” Predicting the future evolved into making an action plan.

Now it will go one step further. I in my minds’s eye, I see a reading in terms of dynamic energy flows, not a concrete road through time. As Modern Oracle layouts become TaoCraft layouts, we will let go of time and predictions entirely. If the Modern Oracle layout was like GPS map for your path ahead, the TaoCraft layout is like a GPS traffic update with a weather report.

Card 1, lessons from the past, will become Fading Energies, symbolizing energies that are moving away from you. These are things that need less of your attention.

Card 2, current situation, will become Current Energies, the energies that are strongest, and deal with things that need your attention in this moment.

Card 3, moving forward will become Growing Energies, energies moving toward you, or gaining influence in the path you’ve currently chosen. It still isn’t predictive. It is still intended to guide you, help you prepare for possible conditions ahead. Think of it like a weather report. It doesn’t tell you exactly what will happen to you during your day, but it can give you the chance of rain or sun while it happens.

Card 4 will remain Choices. It is still placed under the current energies card and at the center of the layout because that is still the place of power. Empowering your choices is still the heart of the reading. The choices card will take on a more advisory tone than before. Instead of suggesting how to persist or how change your path, it focuses on whether changing or whether staying the course is the wisest thing to do.

Card 5 is still Alternative Path just like before, showing the most open alternative path you if you decide a change is needed.

Card 6 Helping Energies and card 7 Potential Challenges are the same as always, and speak to exactly what the name implies.

Long story short, if you are dead set on a specific “accurate” prediction, you aren’t going to like the new TaoCraft layouts. If that’s the case, you need the Zombie Cat yes/no readings like we did the other day. Even then, you have to realize it isn’t 100%.

,

The Founder of the Feast

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. Today: The Founder of the Feast with the King of Pentacles

Thank you for reading, watching and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee. Today’s card is the King of Pentacles

Saying thank you to the people who work so that you can eat and live is the best grace that you can say.

In A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit proposes a toast to Mr. Scrooge, the “founder of the feast” which prompts a room sized rant about how terrible Scrooge treats Bob. It’s a valid point and necessary to the story.

But I wonder – who thanked Bob for working that awful job that let them put a flaming dessert on the table? Or thanked Mrs. Cratchit for cooking a big family meal in a nineteenth century kitchen?

When I was young, the extended family would get together for Christmas and my uncle, the evangelical minister would pray over the food in dramatic fashion for what seemed like hours when all I wanted to do was dive in to the ham and grandma’s cornbread dressing. To his credit, in the middle of the conspicuous baby jeebus rhetoric, he always managed to throw in a one sentence thanks to the “hands that prepared” the food.

To my mind that is where the real grace was said.

If you work and provide food and shelter – thank you. If you cook a meal – thank you. If you work in grocery stores, deliver the mail, give entertainment, or do anything to make anything work and help the tribe of humankind survive the longest night – thank you.

Effortless Holidays 2021

Effortless holiday 2021

Time and time and time and time again.

As time unspools and years have passed, Taoist philosophy matches my lived experience. Again, again and again.

I kinda love the secular version of American ‘christmas’ these days. It’s a giant yin-yang symbol of dynamic opposites. It can be a bright or as dim as you want – or need – it to be. On one hand it can be tinsel and twinkle lights and eggnog and excess and ebullience and pure joy of being alive. On the other it can be quiet and candle light and a warm blanket and music and curling up with a good book – also the pure joy of being alive.

The holiday doesn’t have to be any one thing all the way through. We of privilege have the privilege of sampling all aspects of the holiday season like a buffet. With it being a season rather than a day, there is enough time for us to be as raucous or as contemplative as our mood and means allow.

Time.

Time is an interesting thing in this part of the calendar year. As the year turns from one to another, people naturally seem to look both forward and backward at the same time. It’s a little like those little chameleons that can move their eyes independently of each other. Who but humans could invent a holiday that on some levels turns them into time lizards. Why not? We invented both holidays and calendars.

Time is a seamless whole, just like space. The universe is one big chunk of a thing. So is time. Christmas, New Year’s Day and the like are days like any other except for the meaning we hang on them like twinkle lights on Clark Griswold’s roof.

The beautiful part of having a holiday season instead of a holiday day is that those expectations and meanings can stay on the level of decorations and not become definitions, deadlines or stress.

Time after time, year after year, the holidays (solstice / yule for me, Christmas for my birth family) prove the Tao Te Ching is right: “nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Whatever gets done is fine.

Holidays are effortless this and every year. Telling the people you love that you love them is all that really needs accomplished.

Thank you all for reading the blog and listening to the podcast this year. I wish you – yes, YOU – a very happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous holiday season.

Solstice #Short: making magic

Thank you as always for watching, reading and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot. Email Tarot both short and long are open for the holidays, and your support is always greatly appreciated!

Today is something new. I wrote this layout inspired by both the solstice and a trend I’ve seen on Tarot Instagram. I’ve seen a variety of people suggest shuffling the deck then finding a particular card related to a particular topic and then reading the card or cards adjacent to it to get your particular message. For example, thinking of general guidance, you might shuffle then look through the deck for the Magician card, and look to the card right behind it for insight into what you are manifesting or transforming or calling to you in this moment. I’ve seen a half dozen variations of that. Here is mine.

Today where I am is the winter solstice. Dark moves away a tiny bit and the sun steps forward again. Of course, in the southern hemisphere it’s reversed where daytime has peaked and night will advance a bit. So when we get to the cards, read them according to your location. For your winter solstice, look for the sun card for energies moving toward you and read the card right behind it. At the same time, look for the Moon card and read the card behind it to see the energies that are beginning to move away from you. For the summer solstice, reverse the direction – use sun for energies moving away and the moon for energies moving toward you.

Whichever hemisphere you are in today, you can adapt the context to your location.

Since I’m in a sunny but frosty winter place, I’ll write this from a winter solstice perspective and leave it to our southern friends to adjust for their location.

Moon / Queen of cups: reliance on intuition and instinct

Sun/ Seven of Pentacles: results of labors, return of energies

I won’t belabor the point since this is supposed to the a Tarot short, but basically, intuition steps back and practical application steps forward, but only a little bit of each. It is the solstice, and the underlying foundation of the whole thing is, naturallly, a balance.

I see this as being the same essential message for BOTH hemispheres now that I think about it for a minute. The advice is to use, trust and apply intuition, but not too heavily. Don’t use intuition to the exclusion of practical action.

On the other hand, don’t just shotgun out a lot of hard work and effort without some degree of thoughtful guidance. It will pay off. You will reap what you sow, but you’ll reap even more if you take the time, effort and though to sow good seeds and care for the garden in a “work smarter not harder” sort of way.

It’s a balance of intention and effort. It’s a balance of making and manifesting. It’s solstice. It’s magic.