Review: The Honeymoon Effect - Heaven on Earth

I asked Hay House if I could have a review copy of a new book The Honeymoon Effect: The Science of Creating Heaven on Earth.The publishing company kindly sent it to me, but after it arrived I was unsure why I was so keen to read it. The book is aimed at people who don't have a lot of success with romantic relationships - yet I've been very happy with my partner for over a decade.

Then I realised - my relationship might be good, but I'd be kidding myself if I said it was quite so passionate now as it was 10 years ago, when we first started dating. I wondered - is it possible to keep that honeymoon feeling going past the first few weeks, months or years? Author Bruce H. Lipton says it is, and that was why I wanted to read his book,

Publisher Hay House describes the meaning of The Honeymoon Effect on its website: "A state of bliss, passion, energy and health resulting from ... love."

In the book, Bruce asks readers to think back on the most spectacular love affair of their lives. "It was a time when they were exuberantly healthy, when they were overflowing with energy, when they were loving their lives so much they couldn't wait to bound out of bed in the morning to experience more." He goes on to explain that this 'Honeymoon Effect' was not a chance event but a personal creation, then explains why honeymoons are so often short lived - and what we can do to get that feeling back.

Bruce looks at the science of love, including the physics behind feelings of "good vibrations", the biochemistry of our body's own "love potions" and the psychology of how our conscious and subconscious minds need to work in harmony to get what we want from relationships.  Then he goes on to describe techniques to put this knowledge into practice, including mindfulness, hypnosis and subliminal tapes, as well as ways to avoid destructive arguments.

What I liked about the book was that it offered a whole variety of ways to improve relationships and help individual personal development without being dogmatic. Some things will work for some people and not for others. You can just pick out that bits that appeal to you. Even though I consider my relationship with my partner to be good, having read The Honeymoon Effect I can see a few ways that it could be even better.

Author Bruce H Lipton, Ph.D is also the author of The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles.

Links and previous related posts
The Honeymoon Effect: The Science of Creating Heaven on Earth
http://www.hayhouse.co.uk/books/1781800952/the-honeymoon-effect
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2011/11/review-medidating-for-fearless-romance.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2012/05/soul-centred-transform-your-life-with.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2011/02/tarot-lovers-card.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2012/02/ethics-of-love-spells.html

Bees and History: A Taste of Honey...

I took this photo of bees on a honeycomb back in the summer of 2009 at an open day of the Kent Bee-Keepers' Association.

One of the bee-keepers had a frame of honeycomb in a glass case, in which you could see the bees busily working. He kindly took it into the sunshine for me to photograph. I promised I would write about his bees - and then I didn't - until now. Oops.

Actually, I did start to write about bees and honey. I began to research the history of bee-keeping and look into the folklore associated with it. I found it was such a huge subject that I felt overwhelmed with the task of trying to summarise it in a single blog post. I made a start, but didn't get very far and it remained as an unfinished draft.

The other day, while I was looking through my old files, I came across the picture I'd taken and the research I'd started and decided that I should publish it on my blog as a short introduction to the subject - a little taste of honey rather than the whole jar!

The history of honey goes back a very long way. Archaeologists have found evidence that humans were eating honey in paleolithic times, and were probably doing so much earlier. Ancient man discovered that it was healthy and could also be made into alcohol - in fact fermented honey was probably the very first alcoholic drink.

According to The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore by Hilda M Ransome, bees have been considered sacred ever since man discovered honey. The book says: "It is impossible to overestimate their value to man... He came to regard honey as a true 'giver of life'... He held the bee to be a creature of special sanctity connected with those things which seem to him most mysterious - birth, death, and reincarnation."

Folktales and customs relating to the importance of bees have arisen in cultures all over the world, including the belief that one should always tell the bees about important events, otherwise something could go wrong.

The bee was the symbol of Lower Egypt for thousands of years, and the Bible describes Egypt as a land "flowing with milk and honey". Honey production was an important industry in ancient Egypt. As well as being a popular food, physicians and magicians used honey for its healing properties.

Honey was important in funerary rites and sometimes the dead were preserved just in honey. One story tells of grave-robbers finding a large jar of honey in a tomb near the pyramids. They opened it and started eating, before noticing that the jar also contained the body of an infant.

Priests baked honeycakes to feed sacred animals in temples in Egypt and Greece. Sorcerers of the era also used beeswax to make images of creatures or people in order to perform magic on them.

The belief that a magician can heal or harm a living person by manipulating a wax image of them was common in Babylonia and India as well as Egypt. The practise passed from Egypt to ancient Greece and Rome and was used in many religious ceremonies. Witches today still sometimes use wax dolls, called "poppets", for sympathetic magic.

In Babylonia, offerings of wine, honey and oil were poured on temple foundations, honey was also a common offering in religious ceremonies and as part of rituals to exorcise demons.

Today, honey might be used less for religious purposes, but toast with butter and honey, and a cup of tea, is still the breakfast of the gods in my opinion. There are 44,000 bee-keepers in the UK, with about 240,000 hives. Although they produce 6,000 tones of honey per year, about 80% more than this is imported from abroad.

You can find out more about the Kent Bee-Keepers' Association, including details of events taking place this summer, at http://www.kentbee.com/

Links and previous related posts
The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and (Dover Books on Anthropology and Folklore)
http://www.kentbee.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/13/wildlife.endangeredspecies
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2010/03/first-bumblees-of-spring.html

http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2010/08/bees-and-hollyhocks.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2010/09/buddleia-for-bees-butterflies-and.html
https://www.jenreviews.com/honey/

Magical mead

I was watching the BBC's adaptation of Lark Rise to Candleford last night. In it, the Lark Rise matriarch Queenie Turrill, played by Linda Bassett, brews a luck potion from mead.

We didn't get to see how effective the potion was in the episode because much of it gets spilt before it is drunk, but mead is said to have many magical properties - particularly associated with love and good fortune in marriage.

Mead is made from honey, water and yeast, although it is sometimes flavoured with fruit juices, and tastes like a rich wine.

The term 'honeymoon' comes from the ancient tradition of drinking mead at weddings. It was supposed to be a potent aphrodisiac and boost fertility as well as increasing the chances that the first child would be a son.

With Valentines Day approaching, why not get a bottle or two? You could also have a go at making your own, although it won't be ready for drinking in time for this February 14.

Here are some links on the history and magic of mead, mead recipes and where to buy mead:
www.wyrdwords.vispa.com/heathenry/mead/index.html
www.empathys.co.uk/197.html

www.kernowharvest.co.uk/subprod/ninemaidens-cornish-mead-0001484.aspx