The idea really resonated with me, as I have been engaged in a running energy-battle over the last year with wraith-energy that was left behind in my house after my husband passed away suddenly in 2004. I had been trying to figure out some way to control and corral it in the back bedroom (the room in which he died) so that I could finish cleaning out the piles of stuff he had collected and stored there. Every time I would go in the room, I’d get hit with major physical energy drain, as the wraith-energy was clinging to the piles and was/is bitterly resentful that I was/am moving things around and donating stuff. Every time I’d go into the room I’d get zapped, but upon leaving, I’d feel perfectly fine, so I knew I needed to cleanse the space with more than a bowl of salt and a smudge, as the energy has been both obnoxiouly impervious to these things as well as aggressively attached to my husband’s books and other personal possessions that are in that room.

When I ran across the sponge-idea, I checked it out with my Turtle Spirits, and they were the ones who told me to make bunches of them cut into turtle-shapes for every room in the house. There is something about the water and the salt in the sponges that works better than anything else I have ever tried with regard to cleansing negative vibes. I wash them out and refresh them once a week, and the change in the energy– especially in the back bedroom– has been dramatic. As a result of using the sponges, I no longer feel tired at all when I enter the room, plus I have been able to get a bunch of stuff cleared out and donated, which further weakens the wraith-vibe.

I use plates of three or four sponges in all the rooms of my house, except for the back bedroom, where my Turtles told me to use at least 12 sponges on a large platter. They look very jolly, as I bought a bunch of those multicolored kitchen sponges to make the shapes out of.

I would also imagine that one could cut the sponges into whatever shapes are most in tune with one’s personal energies– like making cat-shapes instead of turtles if one was more ‘kitty-oriented’, and so on. Anyway, it just blew me away that something as goofy and simplistic as a plate of rainbow, turtle-shaped kitchen sponges worked when all the ’standard’ space-clearing stuff like sage-smudges, birch-whisks, and rock-salt had no effect whatsoever. I think it is the playfulness of it that tickles me the most.

My husband was an interesting fellow, but could be very stubborn (Sun in Taurus, with a Virgo ascendant), and the wraith-energy he threw off when he passed has clung to his belongings like the proverbial limpet. It has seemed to feed on the smudge-smoke rather than be dispelled by it, but the sponges are doing both a literal and Magickal ‘mop-up’ with no trouble at all.

I would be interested in getting feedback on this spell, as I suspect that it might work very well in a variety of circumstances where rotten energy needs to be dispersed. Anyway, use it and/or amend it as you see fit!

Akkarri

In a word, YES. And besides showing some backbone by not being a ‘consumer on autopilot’, you also need to sit your butt down and write two letters. The first one is to Sony, telling them why you will no longer buy your favorite music from them, and the second one needs to go to the Indigo Girls, informing the group that although you like their music, you will not be buying any more of it until they ditch the Sony label. Life is made up of choices, and the Indigo Girls chose Sony, probably due to being offered wads of cash to do so. Of course, if you like being a corporate-compliant amoral git, by all means keep buying those CDs…

There is just SO much wrong on SO many levels with the advertising, that it’s kinda hard to pick a place to start deconstructing it. I mean, with such a smorgasbord of depravity laid out in plain sight and with no excuses, where and with what does one start?

For me, it was a toss-up between slaughtering an animal solely for advertising ‘effect’, and the bare-breasted slave-Women. I’m thinking that the red paint on the bare breasts of said Women was probably supposed to stand in for goat’s blood, which ties in the whole Women-as-so-much-meat porn angle, etc.

The other thing that pissed me off royally was Sony execs looking to lay off the blame on ‘advertising subcontractors’ as if they had no idea stuff like this was going on in the corporate name. So not only do they insult us with disgusting, morally bankrupt advertising, they insult us a second time with their protestations of innocence. Since I have way more than three functioning brain-cells I am not fooled…

I was absolutely shocked to read about this - thanks for bringing it to everyone’s attention. Another company for the boycott list.

I’m also ticked off by the Daily Mail (although I’m not surprised) & their focus on the fact that the only thing wrong with the event was the dead goat (even going as far as pixellating it). Yet the naked women? Oh, they’re fine - everyone can see them. GRRRRR! (I ranted about this on my own blog so as to not take up too much ‘anger space’ on yours!).

Welcome to the First Carnival of Radical Feminists!

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Also, I don’t hold Sony rank-and-file employees responsible for this. It’s the company’s management that decides what Sony produces and how it is made and marketed. That’s why I horse-laugh over that ‘it’s not us, it’s our advertising subcontractors’ BS. I don’t care what company it is, management at a very high level ALWAYS signs off on advertising, because it involves company image and marketing strategy/success. Therefore, it is a given that they had meetings about this very idea in a big boardroom somewhere, and Sony execs gave it the thumbs-up.

In my opinion, the possible ‘deniability-because-it-was-part-of-the-menu’ angle makes me think that this was well thought out and approved by corporate big-wigs. Sony is now supposedly ‘investigating inappropriate actions on the part of advertising subcontractors’, which is basically nothing but standard corporate-speak for ‘we were fully on-board with the decapitated and bleeding goat carcass, but now that people are pissed off, we need to save face and blame somebody else’. The only reason that they are doing this now, is because the publicity backfired and created a huge flap in Britain. People are asking questions about the content of a lot of Sony products, and the possibility of banning certain vid-games in Britain has been raised again. I don’t think Sony wants the upset to spread to the U.S., hence the finger-pointing which does not fool anybody with more than two brain-cells to bang together.

If no one had raised an eyebrow about this, you can bet that Sony would have probably done more of this kind of thing to launch the game elsewhere, but now they most likely won’t.

All I can say is, sorry, Sony brass, but you-all do NOT get a ‘get out of jail free’ card on this one! You are peddling ultra-violent vid-games with ultra-violent advertising, and the content of the crap you sell shows that you are already quite comfortable with injury and death as entertainment, as long as you get your money out of it. The fact that you are also ready and willing to couple a dismembered goat with topless women whose breasts have been painted red, and who are feeding male reporters grapes in a kind of pseudo-slave act shows CLEARLY that Sony gives the ‘knowing nudge-and-wink’ not just to violence, but to porn as well.

This is technicolor-baboon-butt antisocial maleness at its worst, and I do not intend to support it fiscally in any way, shape or form. I think people ought to reduce a bunch of Sony products to rubble and mail the wreckage to Sony corporate headquarters with a note saying that because of their love of wanton destruction and havoc (as per their own video games), they should not mind the public trashing Sony products wherever they are found, as well as gutting the company’s bottom line with a boycott. If there is a way to send the junk back to them postage-due, that would be even better.

May Gaia strip these boors of every last penny they have made pimping hatred and bodily harm to the children of this planet!