WW: Catnip

(If you've been there, you know.)

Hermit Rules 6 & 7

6. Be quiet in body, mind and spirit. Don't hurry either in speaking or responding, distrustful of your own urgency.

7. Be firm in your convictions, but be always willing to embrace the truth.

– A Franciscan hermit in my Bluesky sangha.

(Statue of St. Francis meditating courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Thrift store moktak

(Another Buddhist thrift store find. This time it's a Thai frog rattle – essentially, a moktak-style percussion instrument with added sawtooth ridge. This last produces the familiar creak of a frog's call when the chukpi [the striking stick, meant to be clenched in the subject's jaws, but absent here] is run along it. Frogs are a common theme in Asia, where they're a talisman of good luck.

Though not a uniquely devotional object – despite clear parentage with doan paraphernalia, children often play with these, too – I'm always bemused to find this sort of thing amongst the rummage in such places.)