Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy

I managed to stumble across an album by a band called Mindless Self Indulgence- I'd recommend it, if you're into that kind of thing. Billed as "industrial metal", whatever that is, they sound more like a cross between The New York Dolls and The Cure, with a dose of Slayer thrown in for good measure. Always good to expand your horizons, I figure. I'm glad to see, as a longtime fan of heavy metal, that there's still hope for the genre. The 80's, I think, were in many ways a heyday of big hair and bigger guitar tracks, and from there we went into the 90's, and the doomed-from-the-start 'grunge' bands. Noble origins, stemming from punk, that had been around a good deal longer, but far too easily commercialized, I thought. And remember, as Peter Steele (of Type O Negative) once noted, never mistake lack of talent for genius. Besides, the album art cracked me up the first time I saw it.

And now for something completely different. I unearthed a Tarot spread I haven't used or remembered that I knew how to do in quite a while, and it got me thinking. It's called a Hecate spread, after the pagan goddess of the same name. Here we have reflected the three stages of women, in a general sense- maiden, mother and crone. First, the maiden represents potential, not simply of motherhood, but of learning and developing; the mother represents both a sustaining force, and also a teacher- someone a little more well-versed in the world, but still growing and finding new life experiences, and finally the crone. Crone often has a negative context in the modern day, meaning an old woman. This is true, though the meaning here is the female equivalent to sage- a wise old man, and both terms imply someone to be respected and listened to, someone who has been there, done that and lived to tell the tale. From this, it seems we should listen to the experiences and wisdom of this person, who has been in a situation similar to what we may find ourselves in, and can offer advice and counsel.
So though this has only a tangent to the reading and spread, it made me wonder- is there a male equivalent to these stages of life? Keep in mind these are largely symbolic stages, one does not need biological children to be in the mother stage. There probably is a male equivalent, though perhaps a little bit different; men are a bit different than women, though a rough approximation would be apprentice, father and sage. Although both for men and women, this would be only one possible way of looking at the course of our lives, and things are rarely if ever so simple. There are a number of archetypes, that is, universally recognized symbols, both in the world around us and within ourselves- relationships, roles we play and aspects of ourselves.
Well, today is Sunday, staring down the barrel of another week, although this should be a quiet one, Hope all the Christmas shopping goes well, and during this strange time more than ever, stay sane inside insanity,