& NOW FOR A SHORT DIGRETION INTO POLITICORELIGIOUS HISTORY

Greetings, weary traveler! Welcome to another edition of the exciting new blog everyone's talking about! Oh wait. No, welcome to Azule Blue Dragon instead. Well, I have been hard at work, making cards, friends on facebook, and trouble in general. My facebook fanpage; known as bluedragon connections, if you aren't near a link, has 85 fans so far, but I went from getting a four star rating to zero to one. People click "like" and then don't interact anymore than that. That doesn't bother me, but I still have made only two sales on cards and I have to figure out a way to market my cards to people who are looking for them.

Well, I just keep moving forward; or as fish savant Dory would say, "just keep swimming." I post at least once a day on all three facebook walls, make new cards, examine what I think makes other people's cards good or interesting, and researching new subjects and marketing strategies.
I'm exploring the various theories on "search engine optimization", which is why I've done all the things I've done so far, but clearly more needs to be done.

More interesting to me is the new cards I've made. A few utilize a new painting I created combining my favorite deep space object: the cone nebula, with pictures I found of witches celebrating Halloween, which they call "Samhain" pronounced "Sowen". When I was younger, I became interested in this phenomena and did some research. I had a real "through the looking glass moment" when I realized that real witches don't worship the devil. The religion, now known as "Wicca", predates Christianity. When Constantine; a Roman Emperor, converted to Christianity, Christianity took on many aspects of Roman Culture; centralized authority, and conquering the world. To this end, whenever opposition was found that couldn't be overcome with a sword, God was used as a weapon. In this way non Christians were made to convert to Christianity or be killed, usually after torture. To justify this, the deities of other religions were made to be the devil, and the followers of these other religions were said to be devil worshipers. That would be like making a Hindu or Buddhist out to be devil worshippers today (which some people do) The funny thing is witches don't even worship a male god; they worship a Mother Goddess. Her consort is the "Horned God", and the patriarchal early Christians mistook him as the main Deity of the wiccans. They said he was the devil. This is one of the primary sources for the modern view of the appearance of the devil.

Anyway, I try to have respect for all religions (including Christianity) but I feel the need to explain my affinity for the Wiccans.
In fact, I have also made cards utilizing prayers from the Catholic Rite of Mass. Specifically "Gloria" & "Sanctus".


Finally, I have crafted an ink and brush rendering in Sanskrit of the word "yoga". The word means "Union with God" and, being indo-european etymologically speaking shares the same root as the word "yoke" in English. I hope to create many more cards using Sanskrit calligraphy.