Ironwing study group: Information: minerals, rocks, fossils, creatures, bones, plants

This is a sub thread for the Ironwing Tarot study group:

Loadstone:
also called Magnetite is a natural magnet! Part of a mineral group called the oxides, magnetite can usually be identified by its strong magnetism and dark color.
Magnetite is not very abundant, but it can be found in many different types of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. It can even be found in some meteorites. Most igneous rocks that form deep underground contain a small amount of magnetite crystals. Magnetite can also be found in metamorphic rocks that formed from iron-rich sedimentary rocks.
Black sand grains at beaches and elsewhere are often made of magnetite. If you find a beach that has black sand, try running a magnet over the surface and see whether the little black sand grains stick to it. Over time, those sand grains may cement together forming a sedimentary rock.
Why is magnetite so magnetic?
Any magnetic field is caused by a flow of negatively charged particles called electrons. In magnetite, electrons flow between two different types of iron that have different changes, to even out the changes. This flow of electrons within magnetite generates the magnetic field.
Shape: Cubic (typically forming octahedron shapes)
Luster: Metallic to sub-metallic
Color: Gray, brown to black
Streak: Black
Hardness: 5.5 to 6.5 on Mohs Hardness Scale
Cleavage: None
Fracture: Conchoidal

Meiolania The Giant

In the text for the Ironwing High Priestess we find mention of the meiloania Turtle:
Here some Info about it:
Meiolania were the largest land turtles ever to walk the face of the earth. Becoming extinct only recently in comparison to the dinosaurs, Meiolania trod the earth during the Pleistocene Epoch and disappeared around the same time humans arrived. Although the Pleistocene is widely known as the Ice Age, Meiolania's home ranges of Australia and South America were not as quickly and dramatically altered as lands in the Northern Hemisphere. This probably allowed Meiolania to flourish as a species for longer than many of its early contemporaries.
With a head two feet across in width and an overall length of over eight feet, Meiolania was very impressive based on its size alone. There is more to Meiolania than just size, however: two large bony horns jut out from its head, and its tail was covered with spikes. The spikes were something of a tradeoff--while they might discourage some predators, they also prevented Meiolania from drawing its head in under the protection of its massive shell as modern turtles do.
As might be expected, Meiolania spend the many decades of its life at a slow and easy pace. Occasionally munching on low growing plants, Meiolania was able to survive for long stretches without food or water if necessary.

Stromatolites

Also in the book under the High priestess card we find mention of Stromatolites:
I had never heard of them but guess what, here they are:
see picture:

And then one can get REALY smart by reading this website:
http://www.fossilmall.com/Science/About_Stromatolite.htm

Confrontation with the Devil

Now, this one is not for the faint hearted!
Talk about a creepy-crawly feeling up my spine.....!!

The Ironwing Death Card features my newest nightmare!
Scolopendra Heros!
the beautyful giant sonora desert Centipede.
Here is some "dirt" on it:
These fast moving and aggressive titans are among the largest of the many-legged centipedes and millipedes, the group collectively known as the Myriapoda. Centipedes are distinguished from millipedes by the presence of only one pair of legs per body segment, and their legs are attached to the sides of the body segments rather than near the ventral midline. They comprise the Class Chilopoda, which scientists divide into four orders. Giant centipedes are in the Order Scolopendromorpha, which is distinguished by having 21 or 23 pairs of legs and, usually, four small, individual ocelli on each side of the head. The closely related Geophilomorpha lack eyes. Most Scutigeromorpha (of which there is only one North American species) and Lithobiomorpha have eyes similar to the compound eyes of insects, each consisting of up to 200 optical units similar to ommatidia, and adults in these two orders have only 15 pairs of legs.
Giant redheaded centipedes are not frequently observed or collected, but those that make themselves known attract a great deal of attention because of their size and fierce appearance. Specimens average about 6 ½” in length, and they may reach nearly 8” in some instances. They have been called “giant desert centipedes,” but this appears to be a misnomer because the centipedes are often collected in rocky woodland in Arkansas. The species is also known to occur at least in Arkansas, southern Missouri, Louisiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and northern Mexico. Within Arkansas, we have reliable reports of this species from Benton, Carroll, Washington, Crawford, Sebastian, Perry, Pulaski, Garland, Hot Spring, Pike, and Howard Counties. The easternmost record for the species comes from Little Rock, Pulaski County. In the 1920s, William Baerg, head of the Entomology Department at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville), regarded the giant redheaded centipede as rather common near Little Rock and in Northwest Arkansas. His limited experience with the species indicated that it occurred “in certain more or less restricted localities, where it can be found, at least during the warmer seasons, under stones and logs.”

Scolopendra heros has many color variants, but Arkansas specimens have the so-called castaneiceps pattern in which the head and first two body segments are chestnut red, the trunk is black tinged with green, and the first 20 pairs of legs are yellow. The enlarged legs of the 21st pair at the posterior end of the centipede are black with yellow tips. This bright coloration is known as aposematic coloration or warning coloration and it is presumed to function in warding off potential predators by advertising the centipedes’ confrontational character and poisonous qualities while it goes about its daytime activities.

All centipedes are believed to be predators. Their diet is composed primarily of small arthropods, although some scolopendromorphs have been found feeding on toads, small snakes, and other vertebrates. Moths are a preferred diet for captive giant redheaded centipedes. The prey is captured and killed or stunned with the poison claws. Poison glands are located in the basal segments of the claws or fangs, sometimes called maxillipeds. Each gland drains its toxic contents through a small opening near the tip of the fang. In the mid 1920s, Dr. Baerg tested the effect of the venom by inducing a centipede to bite one of his little fingers, leaving the fangs inserted for about four seconds. The bite was followed by a sharp and strictly local pain, which began to subside noticeably after about 15 minutes. In about two hours the pain was only very slight, but there was a general swelling in the finger. Three hours after the bite, most symptoms had disappeared.

Scolopendra heros is purported to make tiny incisions with its legs while walking across human skin. When the animal is irritated, a poison is supposedly produced near the base of each leg and dropped into the wounds causing inflammation and irritation. According to one story cited by Dr. Baerg, an officer in the Confederate Army, while sleeping in his tent, was suddenly aroused by the creepy feeling of a large centipede crawling on his chest. A number of spots of deep red, forming a broad streak, indicated the arthropod’s passage across the man’s chest and abdomen. Violent pain and convulsions soon set in, accompanied by excessive swelling in the bitten area. The victim fought with death for two days and then succumbed. The agony suffered by the bitten officer was described by an eyewitness as the most frightful he had ever observed. The famed arthopod scientist J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson once explained that “centipedes seem to exert a weird fascination on the morbid appetites of the hysterical and insane.”

Scolopendromorphs lay eggs, often in cavities hollowed out in pieces of decayed wood, and then they watch over them and the juveniles that hatch. The female winds herself around the egg mass, her legs directed toward the eggs. Scolopendromorph and geophilomorph juveniles possess the same number of legs as do the adults. Juveniles of the other centipede orders have only seven pairs of legs on hatching. S. heros are nearly colorless when freshly hatched, but they soon turn brown, and they eventually take on the distinctive color pattern of the adult.

A little bit of information on the extinct Pleistocene Giant Elk, the
antlers of which adorn the Ironwing's Seven of Spikes, shaped on
this card as an iron comb-

The Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus or Megaceros, more properly a subgenus is a huge extinct deer (the largest species of deer to have ever lived) that lived in Eurasia, from Ireland to China (where it underwent a speciation event), during the Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene epochs. It is famous for its formidable size (about 2.1 meters or 7 feet tall at the shoulders), and in particular for having the largest antlers of any known cervid (a maximum of 3.65 meters or 12 feet from tip to tip). Its name is misleading: although large numbers of skeleton have been found in Irish bogs, the animal was not exclusively Irish, and neither was it closely related to either of the living species currently called elk; for this reason, the name "Giant Deer" is sometimes preferred.

The latest known remains of the Irish elk have been carbon dated to about 5700 BC, or about 7700 years ago.

The size of M. giganteus' antlers is remarkable, and several theories have arisen as to their evolution. One theory was that the deer's antlers, under constant sexual selection, increased in size because males were using them in combat for access to females; it was also suggested that they eventually became so unwieldy that the Elks could not carry on the normal business of life and so became extinct. However, Stephen Jay Gould's important essay on Megaloceros demonstrated that for deer in general, species with larger body size have antlers that are more than proportionately larger, a consequence of allometry, or differential growth rate of body size and antler size during development. In fact, Irish Elk had antlers of exactly the size one would predict from their body size and no special theory of natural selection is required.

The antlers do seem to have played a role in the animal's eventual extinction, however. Recent research has determined that due to the high amounts of calcium and phosphate compounds required to form these massive structures, the Irish Elk males had to deplete these compounds partly from their bones, replenishing them from foodplants after the antlers were grown. Thus, in the growth phase, males were suffering from a condition similar to osteoporosis. When the climate changed at the end of the last Ice Age, the vegetation in the animal's habitat also changed towards species that could not deliver sufficient amounts of the required minerals. Thus, the delicate balance between the animal and its environment was broken, the probable cause of this animal's extinction. Some have suggested hunting by man is a contributing factor in the demise of Megaloceros giganteus.

A significant collection of M. giganteus skeletons can be found at the Natural History Museum in Dublin.

(the Denver Museum of Nature and Science had, or used to have, a set of gigantic antlers on display. It's been a dog's age times two since I have visited the museum, but those antlers, of all things in the museum, were always a fascination to me, and I always made a point to stand beneath them and gaze up, awestruck by the size of them)

Megaceros,

What a magnificent animal that must have been!
Here is a pic from a dioram from a museum:

Thanks, Mi-Shell, for providing a picture link.

I don't think I understand how to post picture attachments..

Here is a nice page on brittlestars (as seen on the 5 of coils), and
other echinodermata species

http://tolweb.org/Echinodermata

an excerpt from the introduction:

Echinoderms form a well-defined and highly-derived clade of metazoans. They have attracted much attention due to their extensive fossil record, ecological importance in the marine realm, intriguing adult morphology, unusual biomechanical properties, and experimentally manipulable embryos. The approximately 7,000 species of extant echinoderms fall into five well-defined clades: Crinoidea (sea lilies and feather stars), Ophiuroidea (basket stars and brittle stars), Asteroidea (starfishes), Echinoidea (sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea biscuits), and Holothuroidea (sea cucumbers).

ooh. look. an ever better page with many way cool photos of things:

http://www.starfish.ch/collection/seesterne.html

moth

a plant close to my heart

The sacred datura, illustrated on the Ironwing Tarot's 5 of bells.
the species for the illustration is not specifically indicated, but I don't
see that as any kind of particular drawback.

In Native American tribes of the southwest, as is often the case with tribes elsewhere, in rites of passage, a young person coming of age would fast and pray for days in order to purify himself. In some cases, the initiate might be isolated or left in the wild alone. At the appropriate time, a Medicine person or tribal spiritual elder that would nominally be called by others than Native Americans, a Shaman, might accompany the initiate to a holy place, possibly a mountain top or cave, and a tea would be made from the roots, leaves and even the seeds from the prickly seed pod of a plant called Sacred Datura. The individual would drink this tea and wait for visions, and the initiate would definitely have visions.

Besides those sacred rites of passage, Datura, which is refered to in some cultures as la Yerba Del Diablo, but known to the Chumash people of California, the Mohave, Yuma, Cahuilla, Zuni and others as toloache from the Aztec toloatizn, "to incline the head" (and the person adminstering the Datura as a tolachero), has been used to hex and to break hexes, to produce sleep and induce dreams, and for protection from evil. It has also been used for Divination, to find one's totem animal, to allow one to see ghosts, for communing with birds, for long hunts and strength, for sharper vision, for sorcery and to increase supernatural powers. Like other tropane-containing plants that have been used historically for so called Flying Ointments, Sacred Datura has been used in certain rituals related to inducing the ability to fly through eating or drinking and sometimes an ointment (see). Datura is still widely used in the Caribbean for the same or similar reasons as well, and called there "herbe aux sorciers" (herb of the sorcerers) among the various French speaking islanders. On the English speaking islands, Jamaica for example, those who practice the spellcraft Obeah are also known to incorporate almost interchangeably with Datura another Nightshade herb they call Branched Calalue.

SACRED DATURA: Nightshade Family [Solanaceae] is found in western Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, southern California, Mexico, and the West Indies and grows within an elevation range between sea level and 6,500 feet. The name Datura, its generic name, is from the Hindu Dhatura (dhat=the eternal essence (of God)), which was derived from the Sanskrit name D'hastura. Sacred Datura bloom at night starting early evening and typically closing around noon the following day. They are pollinated by nocturnal visitors, usually sphinx or hawk moths.


The tea from Datura is extremely hallucinogenic. The hallucinogenic effects are reported to be stronger than Peyote, Psyillicibin, or LSD. However, Datura is also very toxic and can cause permanent psychosis. Solanaceous plants such as Sacred Datura contain relatively high concentrations of tropane alkaloids, primarily Atropine, Hyoscyamine, and Scopolamine, the primary alkaloid being Scopolamine. It is apparently Scopolamine that produces the hallucinogenic effects. It induces an intoxication followed by narcosis in which hallucinations occur during the transition state between consciousness and sleep.

When Datura is used in a Native American ritual, it is always under the guidance of an individual of certain tribal spritual resolve such as a Medicine person or tribal elder. These experts on the use of the plant know what other plants to add in order to neutralize the harmful effects. They also know how much to adminsister and when and where to pick the plants, such as age, season, time of year, whether under a full moon or no moon at all. Chemical constituents and levels vary greatly from plant to plant, time of year, and from one area to another just generally, but especially so if the plants are obtained through ritual or from a spot known for having special powers like the Sun Dagger site on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, holy places of some sort such as Vortexes, or sacred grounds. The plants are very toxic, poisonous and lethal, especially if consumed in quanities unmetered by someone not versed in their safe administration. They can, however, when properly dealt with, produce the end result sought after, and quite adequately so, in the spiritual realm.

Although typically connected with Peyote in the minds of the general public, one of the formost users of Datura was Carlos Castaneda who claimed its use as an apprentice to a Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer named Don Juan Matus that is said to have studied under a Diablero.

In that there are a number of species of Datura there is some confusion as to what Datura Castaneda may have used. According to Castaneda in THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge a shaman-sorcerer has an ally contained in the Datura plants commonly known as jimson weed. Don Juan called that ally by one of the Spanish names of the plant, yerba del diablo (devil's weed). According to Don Juan, as he related it to Castaneda, ANY of the species of Datura was the container of the ally. However, the sorcerer had to grow his own patch, not only in the sense that the plants were his private property, but in the sense that they were personally identified with him.

As for the "separate" Daturas, more or less on an official basis --- but not necessarily on a common basis as the names, species and terms are usually intermixed (although it must be said, even plant taxonomist disagree amongst themselves whether D. stramonium and D. inoxia are different species while D. inoxia and D. metaloides are considered alternate names for the same species). Usually, D. stramonium is most often the Datura species refered to as jimson weed, while D. metaloides (also sometimes D. wrightii) is usually applied to Sacred Datura, and D. inoxia is Toloache.

all that information lifted wholesale from this page:

http://www.angelfire.com/indie/anna_jones1/datura.html

and children, pay particular attention to the point made about the chemical
constituents of this genus being highly toxic and dangerous. the point bears
repeating: "can cause permanent psychosis".
No modern psychedelic shamans would choose undergoing the ordeal of
ingesting this substance as a recreational high, and *few* are qualified
to endure it or benefit from it, in the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment.

Wonderfull information, Sphinxmoth! Thank you!
I have seen Sacred datura used in a ritual once in Arizona...
I can't talk more here since I do not have the permission of the leader of the ritual. He was Inde' (= Apache)
Here is a picture of the plant:

symbols in the shamans

I find many of the symbols in the Shamans rather difficult. Shaman of Spikes is the easiest of them to understand, and I can figure out most of the symbolism in Shaman of Coils. But the remaining two are tougher..

In the not-so-LWB it says of the Shaman of Coils: The manta´s eyes stare into the eyes and tentacles of a giant squid.." I don´t get that..And where are the Spirula cephalopods? And what does the last sentence mean? It doesn´t make much sense to me.

Shaman of Blades:"she burns a piece of reindeer antler under the horned moon.." Where is the horned moon in the card? Is there a moon somewhere?