Full Moon – Ice Moon Crests (Blue Moon, Super Moon, Lunar Eclipse)

Image from BBC Science (Sky Watch). Full moon turning red during a lunar eclipse.

 
Whelp. The sidewalks are covered ice. Crusty, uneven ice. Super-sheer black ice. All kinds of ice.
And now the ice is being covered by snow.
I am very, very happy to be staying indoors today.
 
It is, of course, the day of the second full moon in January. It’s a blue moon! It’s also a super moon! It’s also a lunar eclipse (that, apparently, won’t be visible from my area, but that doesn’t matter when we’re doing lunar magic! Pro tip).
 
According to Liz Worth, “full moons bring things full circle and lunar eclipses awaken new things within us”. Because this full-moon/eclipse is tied to the eclipse that (apparently? I totally don’t remember) happened in August of 2016, she suggests looking at where you were then and what’s come to fruition since.
So I did.
I hunted up my August 2016 full moon post and read it over and… I’m still here. Yes, the poetry manuscript I was working on then has been put on hold while I edit my third chapbook and get my Femme Glosa Project manuscript finished, but I’m still writing Feelings Poetry[1]. I’m still working my way into embodying my Whale Heart – a metaphor I developed during the life coaching sessions I’d only just started in August of 2016 – and am I’m lacto-fermenting things on the regular, which is a skill I’d just picked up when I wrote that 2016 post.
 
But what jumps out at me is just how demoralized I felt at that time. How deep in grief I was on a bunch of fronts, and how unworthy and unloveable I felt. How stuck.
And I don’t feel like that right now.
Like, yes, I have plenty of lousy days where I’m stressed and sad and jittery and can’t name why. I just about cried in the LCBO yesterday because I wanted to get a bottle of wine to make dinner Special and Fancy and it hit me just how much my wine selection was governed by the question “Does this cost less than $10?”[2] I still chase my own tail when it comes to both looking for dates and looking for work. But I don’t feel worthless and pointless the way I did a year and a half ago, and that is a big relief.
 
Sarah Gottesdiener, over at Little Red Tarot, says:

The shadow of the Earth moving across the screen of the Moon highlights our own shadows more starkly. This can be a messenger bringing deeply needed endings. […] If it is time to break patterns around self-hatred and self-loathing, or other emotional stickiness, this is the Blue Moon to do it. If it is time for you to shine in brighter ways than ever before, put your focus there.

 
Which fits.
It’s weird (maybe not particularly surprising though), that I keep thinking “Oh, hey, if I just do a healing ritual during this [cosmic planetary event] and if I do it right, I’ll be FIXED!”
Which I know is ridiculous.
Healing works in spirals.
And magic builds in thin, thin layers.
Willpower Fatigue, like decision fatigue, is a real thing and trying to draw yourself a road-map of a place you’ve never been and can’t even imagine in more than the vaguest detail is hard, to say the least.
Which I suppose brings me to:
 
Tarot Meditation Card: Knight of Pentacles “The Methodical Approach”.
The Knight of Pentacles is slow-and-steady, methodical, quite different from the madly-off-in-goal-all-directions drive of most of the knights. Where the knight of swords has her earrings off and her fists up at the first hint of injustice, the knight of cups ( Oh, hai…) will offer you everything with her heart carved into her arm, and the knight of wands is charming, cocky, and dares to act without necessarily thinking things through… the knight of pentacles puts one foot in front of the other and moves carefully but consistently towards her goal… when she’s not getting caught up in risk-aversion and self-sabotage.
It’s a card that I associate with my wife, who’s a “measure twice, cut once” kind of woman, steady and reliable, albeit a bit of a workaholic (welcome to running your own business…).
And, sure, this card might be a heads up to give my girl some extra attention, focus on our relationship, make sure we do something fun together.
 
But I draw these cards to ask what I need to pay attention to inside myself, and the notes this card is pinging for me right now are:
Keep at it, keep doing the thing, slow-and-steady gets it done.
Be realistic. That is NOT the same thing as listening to your jerk-brain!
Be patient, be generous, be kind. (This fits really well with the Leo Full Moon’s push for me (us) to be “big-hearted and bold”, so that might be The Thing for this card, right now).
“What are the things that you want in your life, and how are you going to achieve them? And are you being true to yourself while doing so?”
 
~*~
 
Movement: I hurt. So while I’m doing my usual movement stuff – modeling work, walking places – I’m sore a lot and it’s not a good time.
 
Attention: I have been diving into Seanan McGuire novellas of late, and they are lovely. Painful. But lovely.
 
Gratitude: A friend bought me an instant pot. For real. Experiments in yoghurt-making will ensue. I got to meet an adorable young queer and have a conversation about kink community while volunteering at a local fix-it event. I am probably able to pay the heating bill! I have a friend from out of province coming to visit for a week. I got to make out with my wife. ❤ My life is pretty good. 😉
 
Inspiration: The work of other (mostly) femme poets. The chapbook (see below) is inspired by moon-centered and moon-adjacent poetry found on my queer-poets book shelf.
 
Creation: I’ve written a LOT of poetry in the past two weeks. A chapbook worth of poetry plus a re-write of a five-poem cycle (originally an attempt at a ghazal, but it works better as something else). I’ve also sent submissions out to three magazines which, while not “creation”, is tangentially related and relevant to this as far as I’m concerned.
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad, the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] This is not a problem. I write about relationships and feelings. I can handle this. 😉
 
[2] It’s not that you can’t get Nice Wine for cheap. It’s that if what I want is “something that makes me feel fancy and special” and, through circumstances and habit as much as anything, what I end up getting is “something that makes me feel broke and embarrassed” instead? I’m probably kind of undermining my own ends here. Long story short, I bought the wine that cost (slightly) more than $10. I had some Feelings about it, and it’s fine.

New Year New You 2018: Week Two – Goals

I’m (once again) doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. It’s a good mix of practical, magical, and thought-based exercises to help accomplish specific and significant change in your own life. If it’s relevant to your interests, give it a try!
 
Instructions:Determine what you want to accomplish in 2018 using both magical and mundane means, then break it down into magical and mundane steps that you can take.
 
Tarot Card: The Empress.
 

The Empress (Wild Uknown Tarot)
A flowering tree with a waxing crescent moon overhead

 
In the Next World Tarot, The Empress is a black femme with pastel purple hair holding a torch in one hand and a potted plant in the other. She’s wearing a flowing yellow skirt (probably not an accident that her skirt is yellow) and no shirt, hanging out on a rocky shore where earth and water meet, with a huge, “everything blooming, coming to fruition”, full moon in the back ground. In the Osho Zen deck (link goes to picture), she’s rising out of the place where the flowering ground meets the river’s edge. Her roots are in the water, she’s crowned with stars, and she’s reaching for the waning moon.
 
The Empress is all about the important stuff: Connections, interdependence, mutual care, abundance, sensuality, pleasure, and creativity. She’s all about making things happen, helping people grow and bloom, and making yourself grown, bloom, and happen, too. She’s the integration of all the queens: the hard-won wisdom of arrows and the water’s willingness to open and trust; the bones’ roots-home and rock-steady preparedness, and the adventurous energy and drive of keys.
 
This project is about opening myself up, rooting myself solid, and becoming my fullest, most integrated, femme self.
 
Which, tbh, is very similar to my over-arching goal during my first go-round of this project. But ANYWAY.
This year’s NYNY Project is very-much tied to the Glamour Practice that I’m doing via Miss Sugar’s Glamour Magic (yes, that’s a sales link), and a big part of that particular project – only slightly to my surprise – is getting it through my own head that my “scary” (physically and emotionally intense, powerful and confident, sexually voracious, innately sensual, in ownership of my own skills and talents and competencies) side is a feature of myself, not a fucking bug. Which brings me to the over-arching goals of my Empress Project.
 
A thing I noticed: When I first wrote down some of the major elements of my Empress Project, they were a lot of “stops”. “STOP doing X”, “STOP doing Y”. And I gather from… I don’t even remember where… from somewhere that phrasing things as “do not do”, as a stop rather than a go-ahead, tends to make them harder to accomplish, if only because you’re not actually giving yourself a road map for what to do INSTEAD of the thing you want to stop doing.
SO. Let me try this again:

I want to let my creative lights shine more publicly and receive more public recognition for my creative work.
I want to find and engage with even more people who are a great fit for both me socially and romantically.
I want to let go of relationships, activities, and (in particular) behaviours that aren’t good for my head or my heart while inviting and actually recognizing relationships, activities and behaviours that ARE good for my head and heart.
I want to focus on the good things already in, and being invited into, my life and to recognize how to maintain those things (those relationships, activities, and behaviours) while still presenting my whole, fully-integrated self to both the mirror and the rest of the world.
I want to recognize and know-in-my-bones that my “scary side” isn’t actually scary to people who are good for me.
I want to recognize and know-in-m-bones that all of me is worthy of love and belonging BY/WITH people who are good for me.
I want to recognize and know-in-my-bones that I have permission to ask for the experiences, care, and pleasure that I want and will really enjoy.

 
Okay. So those are my goals.
How do I make this stuff happen?
 
In the original run of this course, the project only lasted a couple of months. From early December until mid-February. It’s now a 23-week run and lasts just shy of half a year, but the original question remains: At this point in my project, what I can I do BY VALENTINE’S DAY – so in the next four weeks or so – to get this particular ball rolling?
 
Honestly, the first task is the easiest. I can just send my poetry out for submission, and see if anyone decides to publish it. I have four magazines and a selection of poems to send to each of them, and all the deadlines are before (or one day after, but I like to get things in at least a little bit early) V-day. I can keep writing glosas and blogging about it. I can push myself today and finish the remaining poetry drafts for my impending self-published chapbook, “A Lantern to Scry By: Seventeen Poems Inspired By The Moon”, and then edit that stuff ’til it shines. I can decide to drop the $25 table fee and set up shop at the Moon Market (February 13th) with bath kisses and poetry-inspired jewelry and my hot-off-the-self-publishing-press new chapbook about Relationship Feels and New Beginnings, then drop off a few copies at Venus Envy to put on their zine wall.
 
Not too difficult, although having a plan for how to be nice to myself when I get rejection letters, or in case I don’t sell a lot of stuff at the craft fair, might be a good idea.
 
A lot of the rest, though, is just… developing new habits:
Setting intentions at the New Moon for calling in new behaviours and releasing the old ones.
Remembering to put on my crown of light (see comments section) and my Witch-Queen Bombshell energetic, but sometimes literal, regalia before I go out.
Singing to the Full Moon and taking a bath in her light, calling healing into and out of my cells.
Making a point of being open about what I actually want, what actually will make me happy, and then…
Paying attention to who steps up and offers it vs who doesn’t, and teaching myself to stop chasing the people who don’t.
Taking myself out dancing and Wearing big heels, low-cut tops, and my hair down when I do.
Practicing honesty by stating real boundaries and noticing when that feels terrifying vs when (if) it doesn’t.
Smearing perfume oils across my delta of venus, or my sternum, adding rosewater and lavender and pine essential oils to the bath.
Breathing through the clamor that comes with sex and staying engaged with my partner, saying what will work better or what I need right then.
Practicing honesty a different way, by treating questions about my day, my life, my creative process as though the person asking was actually interested in the answer, as though the answers were actually interesting.
Scribbling affirmations on my body in hand sanitizer and onto my mirror in enviro-cleaner infused with calendula (good luck, constancy, love, respect, and all things associated with The Sun).
 
The things that stand in my way here are the things that always stand in my way. Self-sabotage, over-thinking everything, a tendency to dwell on what didn’t work before, rather than on what might work yet, a bad habit that I think I still have of giving up, or retreating to my hermit shell, when things don’t obviously work the first time.
A lot of the magical stuff in my above list is ways of dealing with those personal obstacles, teaching myself how to see, make, and pursue the ways around and the ways right on through.
 
Wish me luck.
I’ve got poetry to finish.

New Moon – Ice Moon Begins

Last Friday I got to watch the temperature plummet from a distressingly high and seasonally bizarre +12C to something closer to -19C (which kept right on falling. It’s only “warmed up” back to -19ish today). I’m just glad things dropped fast enough that the pouring rain turned to ice pellets before it hit (and therefore froze to) the ground.
Ice Moon indeed. O.O
 

“Winter in Parry Sound B” (Photo by Jennifer Aitkens via Wikimedia Commons).
Thick, heavy layers of icicles formed on a rock cut outside Parry Sound, Ontario. Snow in the foreground.

 
Liz Worth reminds us that:

New moons are invitations, times to set intentions, to focus on moving forward, to take a step towards a new reality.

 
She says that, because this is the first New Moon of the calendar year, it’s a good time for big-picture stuff, and asks people to think about where they would like to be by the time December 2018 rolls around. Maybe it’s that Earthy Capricorn Energy, or maybe it’s the “EEEEEK it’s the middle of the month and next month’s rent is not yet in the bank!!!” scramble, but my Very Immediate Answer was “Financially Stable and also Published Multiple Times in Various Places”.
Both Liz and The Hoodwitch point out that Earthy Capricorn is an extra-excellent time for “planting seeds” and intention-setting, for focusing on, and inviting in, what you Really Really Want. A good time to do workings for stability stuff, money stuff, abundance stuff, and career stuff. But also for security stuff. Worthiness stuff.
…Basically all the STUFF that I, personally, have a heck of a time with.
 
A case in point:
When I pulled my Meditation Tarot Card, what I drew was the Page of Swords.
In the Next World deck, whence I drew this card, it’s called “The Home of Action” and features a young person slicing through a chain-link fence. Decisive. Sure in their rightness, even as they’re looking for something.
In the Collective Tarot, this card is the Seeker of Feathers: watchful, eyes on the sky. In the Slow Holler deck, it’s the Student of Knives, and our page is taking a good, long look in the mirror. In the Osho Zen deck, it looks like this:
 

Osho Zen Trot – Page of Clouds (air): “Mind”.
A portrait of a person whose distressed eyes and stress-set mouth are fixed in a mess of over-worked gears, smoke stacks jut from their head, pumping out exhaust. Their neck and shoulders are fractured 2x4s, suggesting boarded up buildings, abandoned factories and homes.

 
This is so very much the card of “overthinking it”, which I tend to do.
Except when it’s the home of making a damn decision.
 
Given my Two of Swords card, which I pulled on New Year’s, I’m inclined to read this as a little bit of both. “Don’t over think it, just make a move”.
So.
What am I doing?
I’m currently going through my backlog of poetry (like upwards of ten years of poetry) deciding what stuff I’m up for sending out and trying to get published. I have specific magazines that I’m targeting, and each of them has a theme they’re working with for the issue I’m submitting to.
There is a liiiiiittle bit of over-thinking going on? But not a lot. It’s more “Are these specific poems (a) good enough, and (b) on theme enough for them to be READY to send out”. But I seem to be avoiding most of the angsty “What if they’re (meaning “I’m”) not good enough????” stuff that I tend to hampster-wheel on, so at least there’s that.
 
Hoodwitch says to dream big, and carry those dreams with you as you do the work of feeding them.
Time to do some more writer magic. 🙂
 
~*~
 
Movement: Walking to modeling gigs, shoveling snow. (I finally did the back walk today, since it warmed up enough to do it). I think I need to do more (or any) lifting, since I get out of breath when doing shoveling short-burst shift-and-haul stuff in a way that I don’t when I’m doing low-impact, long-duration stuff (whether that’s carrying 20lbs of groceries home on a half-hour walk, or going dancing for a couple of hours). Not sure how much of that is holding my breath while I shovel, though. Not sure why I do that, but it’s definitely a thing that I’ve noticed.
 
Attention: The baby queers who take the art classes I model for. ❤
 
Gratitude: Getting paid. Friends who hire me. Ancestors who look out for me in really concrete ways. Encouragement. A wife who likes to hang out with me. A tiny bird who likes to hang out with me, too. Modeling work that is fulfilling and makes me happy. Friends who want to spend time with me. People who trust me with their mailing addresses. Wine and cookies and a roast with my wife. Friends from out of town who make a point of staying in touch. Sunshine sparkling on snow. Butter and cheese both being on sale. Knowing how to spin and bead and otherwise make pretty things from hella scratch. My wife’s laugh that she shares with me. ❤
 
Inspiration: Crows. Magic. The contents of my herbs-and-spices cupboard. The phases of the Moon.
 
Creation: Very little right now. I’m working on edits rather than writing new stuff this week. However I do foresee some hand-spinning (with a drop spindle) in the very near future. 😉

Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble – A “Productive Home” Post

Erica, over at NWedible, is doing a Productive Home Weekly Report thing (or was – it’s been a while for her, just as it’s been for me), and has invited people to chime in with their own productivity reports.
I’m… not totally fussed about tracking productivity (as you may have noticed). It feels a bit like giving myself a performance review. BUT, if I think of it as an opportunity to brag about the awesome-fun-cool stuff I’ve been doing/planting/harvesting/cooking/baking/canning/fermenting/etc chez moi that I’m really excited about… it gets a whole lot easier.
So here we go.
 
The thing I want to show off? I recently tried fermenting apple cider.
My sister sent me a fancy fermentation crock for making sour kraut and other brine-pickled veggies. The crock itself broke in transit – as happens sometimes when you ship something by bus across four provinces – but it came with an airlock which, tbh, I’m rather more excited about than the jar.
I had a whole jug of grocery store sweet cider left over from Winter Solstice, a recently acquired package of bread yeast, and NOW a shiny airlock! 😀
What could go wrong??
 
Remarkably? Just about nothing. (I feel semi-confidant saying this, for reasons you’ll learn shortly, but I’m still knocking on wood about it).
 
So. I know that, when fermenting beverages, it’s ideal to use something like champagne yeast, which can survive a high-alcohol-content environment and keep right on eating sugar – which is what you need if you want to get wine-levels of alcohol in your drink (12%-15% – I have no idea what the right fermentation terminology is on this one, so I’m just going with what tends to be written on the bottles). However I’ve had “apple wine”, and it tastes like apple cider with too much alcohol in it (easy alternative: Heat some up and then add a shot of spiced rum or cinnamon schnapps or something).
I was going for something more like “what people drink when they don’t like the taste of hopps”. Something with the 5%-ish alcohol levels of “alternative-to-ugh-beer cider”.
Which bread yeast can do just fine.
 
So I tipped half a teaspoon or so of fine bread yeast into the mouth of my cider jug, filled up my airlock with water, and packing-taped it to the mouth of the jug (they are the same size, and this is way easier than drilling out a hole in the middle of the lid, so that’s what I did).
I sat the already-starting-to-bubble cider in a glass baking dish, so that if/when things spilled over a little, I wouldn’t have a mess on my hands (this was a good idea – there wasn’t much spillage, maybe a teaspoon or two over the course of a couple of weeks, but it would have been sticky and gross if I hadn’t given it a spill-dish), and put the whole thing somewhere out-of-the-way.
 
And then I waited.
 
While I waited, I did a few other things on the Bubbling Cauldron front. Namely, I reorganized my chest freezer and, in the process, pulled out the leaf lard and the stock bones that came with Sir Francis Bacon, our (half of a) Large Black pig whom we put in the freezer in 2015.
 
To that end, I put up about a gallon (only a gallon – I didn’t use all the bones, because I want to be able to do this again sooner rather than later) of soup stock earlier this week and, more recently, finished putting up about three litres of rendered lard.
Re: Lard: I put the rolls of leaf lard into my slow cooker and heated them up on the “keep warm” setting. once it was warm enough to melt, I ladled the liquid fat into silicon muffin trays and let it solidify in the fridge (or in a snow bank, outside) before putting it into tubs in the freezer. We’ve still got some spicy shmaltz (uh… chicken fat for cooking with, it’s a Yiddish word, iirc, the same way English has tallow and lard and maybe lanolin – although I’m not sure if lanolin applies to ALL sheep fat or just the stuff that comes off the wool) in the fridge right now, so it’ll be a minute before I start using this lard to fry onions and otherwise cook savoury stuff on the stove, but it feels good to have it done.
 
I’ve also topped up the salt water in my sunchoke and beet pickles (and skimmed the mold off the surface of the water – it’s fine, that’s the whole point of keeping everything submerged in saline, the mold can’t actually grow in that salty & airless an environment), and decanted my kombucha (which I’ll have to do again later today, along with checking the sour kraut in the fridge and… doing something… with the kefir grains, because the cream they were in is definitely kefir cheese by now, and I’m not at all sure what to with it at this point).
 
Anyway. A couple of weeks have gone by, I’ve done some stuff – making stock and rendering lard – that make me feel resourceful and competent and, incidentally, give me extra free stuff with-which to cook. The boiled bones and the crackling left-over from making lard will go out to the compost heap for feeding the crows and/or anyone else who happens to come by.
It’s been long enough that I decided that today was the day to transfer my somewhat fermented-smelling cider to a different jug.
 
I’d hung onto the plastic jug from the sweet cider I mulled and served at Solstice, originally with the plan to use it to make mead (in much the same way, fyi, and that’s still the plan, even if I end up decanting it into old wine bottles that I re-label with a sharpie), so it was definitely the right size to take on a jug’s worth of the same stuff, only recently fermented.
 
I strained it through the sieve I use for decanting my kombucha – which probably means the whole thing is still full of dead yeast, even if I think I managed to keep most of it from sluicing through – and it was quite fizzy going into the new jug.
 
I haven’t tried any of it yet. I want to give it a month or two[1] in the fridge for a second ferment, I think it’s called, much slower (and less-likely to overflow for that reason) and a little bit gentler. I’m hoping it will clear the Slightly Funky smell underneath all the apples and sparkles – I’ve done a slightly-fermented tissane drink by filling an old wine bottle with sweet hibiscus tea and dropping a few grains of bread yeast in, and then letting it sit in the back of the fridge for literally a year. It works. AND there’s a Slightly Funky smell that happened at around the six month mark, so I’m not worried about catching that scent in my cider right now. I just know I need to give it a little more time to even out.
 
Anyway. That, right there, is what I’ve been doing for the past two weeks. I’m excited and hopeful, and looking forward to trying to make mead (ideally with a little bit of pomegranate molasses and some choke cherries thrown in – for tannin, in the second instance – and in time for me to be able to serve it next Winter Solstice).
 
Time to put laundry and books away.
 
TTFN,
Meliad.
 
 
[1] Or more, we’ll see. This might be the kind of thing that waits until Beltane, rather than Ostara, to hit the table, though wouldn’t it be great to serve apple cider pressed at Autumn Equinox half a year later when the days and nights are hanging equal again? I think that would be a lovely connection-point, like summer-honey wine served at Midwinter.

New Year New You 2018: Week One – Making Way

I’m (once again) doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. It’s a good mix of practical, magical, and thought-based exercises to help accomplish specific and significant change in your own life. If it’s relevant to your interests, give it a try!
 
Instructions: “You can’t start putting all this awesome new crap into your life and body until you get rid of the old crap. Old crap here is defined as many things such as relationships that are no longer working, old crutches, clutter of the mind and of the house.”
 
Tarot Card: Two of Swords.
 

 
Why am I choosing the two of swords?
Well… Firstly, it was the card I drew at midnight on New Year’s, so it’s kind of sitting with me right now as a Thing To Think About, and secondly because the “two” cards are all cards of “just starting out”. The Aces in tarot are “high” – if we want to mix this with, like, poker metaphors – less like “let’s start at the very beginning” and more like the distillation of a given suits essence. Two is where the journey begins, when you’ve taken your one foot and put it in front of the other for that first completed step. So a “two” seems fitting here, as this is both “promt #1” and the second week of my current project.
Beyond both of those things though, I chose the Two of Swords because one of its messages is “Get out of your own way!”
 
Because, yeah, I get in my own way a LOT. I dither. I second-guess. I straight-up self-sabotage. I run through endless lists of why Trying The Thing is a bad idea that will put me in danger and not result in any pay-off. I’m looking for work right now, and a friend of mine suggested I start a Patreon (or similar) to help fund my poetry projects. The very idea terrifies me. Being vulnerable. Asking for help. O.O
So, naturally, I’m looking for part-time admin work instead.
 
This project isn’t about Receptivity, the way my Queen of Cups project was. But it is about connections and security just as much as it’s about pleasure, creativity, and desire. So it might be something I set up as an experiment, to see what, if anything happens. (<– This is me, telling myself there's not stakes here, no risks, so that I'll actually do it. Maybe. Maybe).
 
As for the questions in the writing prompt:
 
Where would I like to be putting my time? Modeling, writing, dancing, reading, cooking, entertaining with friends, going on dates with my wife and (fingers crossed) other cute queers.
 
Where am I putting my time? Modeling (less than I want to be), writing (slightly less than I want to be), cooking, looking for work, social media, fretting about money, some socializing and dancing, but not as much as I'd like.
 
How can I change this: Well. I can find other work, which would help with the fretting about money, and mean I could stop looking. I’ve contacted my temp agency and my modeling regulars and am sending out resumes, so there’s that. I can spend less time on social media and more time doing cheap/free things with my wife and inviting friends over for pot-lucks and cooking-dates. I can make myself go out dancing (a great thing to plan in January, I realize, but it could happen). I can watch for signs that people might be interested if I flirted with them, and then (if I like them) actually flirt with them and see if they’re responsive. Which might lead to me asking someone out on a date.
All possible. Some achievable entirely under my own power. Some is chance. But that’s why we do magic, right? To push the odds every-so-slightly more towards our own favour. So I guess I have a laundry list of what I need to do with this project.
 
Literal, physical cleaning of the house: At this point, I’ve mostly gotten rid of the stuff I don’t use – though there is a clothing/yarn/fabric swap coming up at the end of the month that I might be able to find a few things for. My house-cleaning is more about managing clutter and keeping on top of the vacuuming and the dishes. I’ve got a rack full of clean dishes, but another rack worth still to do. A lot of things to put back on shelves, clean laundry to put away. If my Saturday (today) tasks have included returning a library book, washing the pots & pans, and finish up the lard-rendering, then my Sunday tasks can be putting away the clean laundry and putting books back on shelves.
 
On a less physical level: Normally I would walk around the house burning incense, but it gives my wife a headache do… It’s been a while, but I think I can still remember how to magic-suds a place with The Elements, so I think that might be what I try.
 
As for emotional baggage… There is so much of it. This project, and the last one, are about letting go of that stuff. But here I am, and so much of it is the same stuff that was weighing me down six years ago. Aegirine stone is a good one for letting go of shame, for getting its hooks out of you, but I don’t have any of that, so I’ll have to make due with what I’ve got.
 
Labradorite – for the courage and power to own one’s gifts
Malachite – for help with making changes and with inviting pleasure and success into one’s life
Moonstone – for fulfilling desires and granting wishes (how very Nine of Cups)
Rose Quartz – for self-love and forgiveness
Charoite – for healing emotional fears
Bloodstone – for (re)aligning ones lower chakras with one’s heart
Carnelian – for waking up one’s root and sacra chakras
Black Onyx – for cleansing negative energetic gunk from one’s system
 
What I’ve been doing: Wearing my black onyx pendant and my cheroite ring in the hopes of pulling some of this nasty stuff right out of me and making room for better stuff (stuff I can call in with the labradorite and rose quartz I wear every day, with moonstone jewelry, with the malachite and bloodstone I have in my treasure box).
 
This post feels like it’s been one long sigh. But wish me luck anyway?

New Year, New You 2018: Week Four (technically – in place of week one) – Be Kind To Yourself

Here we go again, kids.
 
I’m (once again) doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. It’s a good mix of practical, magical, and thought-based exercises to help accomplish specific and significant change in your own life. If it’s relevant to your interests, give it a try!
 
Instructions: This particular prompt was originally written for Week Four BUT it comes with the caveate of “do it whenever you hit the first week of January”(or some other culturally significant New Beginnings and Goal Setting date, but mostly early January) regardless of where you are in the exercises. I’m just starting this off, and I feel a bit silly starting it on the prompt that says “Maybe just don’t?” but here we are. This week, the plan is to “give yourself permission to enjoy the fruits of your labor and to give yourself something nice“.
 
Tarot Card: Nine of Cups. I chose this specific iteration of the Queen of Cups partially because it’s from my latest deck – the Next World tarot – which I’m rather excited about, but also because the artist’s write-up in her Little Book says specifically that the Nine of Cups “reminds us to stay glamourous”. (I’m snickering a little because, the last time I did/wrote-up this particular prompt, I was Having The Feels about bad patterns and bad habits and wanting to have a Nine Of Water week and… not really succeeding).
 
I’m having an easier time saying “Nope. Nine of Bottles. This is the Time, this is the Hour” this time around but also am having feelings about bad habits and patterns that I’m spinning in.
I mean, maybe I’m spinning in those particularly well-worn tracks all the time anyway, BUT it’s been hitting me a little harden in the past 48 hours, so there’s that.
 
Anyway. On the subject of Stay Glamourous… You know that I’m doing the Esoteric Experiments in Miss Sugar’s book, Glamour Magic: The Witchcraft Revolution to Get What You Want (yes that link will get me tiny amounts of cash if you buy her book through it). So, partly I chose this card as a reminder not to let myself down on that front, even on Laundry Day. But this card is also about “the magic of self care” and how the sensory (touch, sight, smell) side of my femme-nicity matters a LOT to me feeling good in and about myself. It’s a reminder to be kind to myself by remembering that I’m worthy of pleasure, sensuality, “easy days and pretty things” (to draw on Kathryn Payne’s essay about Lineage in Brazen Femme) and that beating myself up about, or punishing myself through deprivation over, Bad Habits and Patterns isn’t actually going to help me stop perpetuating those things.
 
So.
Two Nice Things for me this week:
1) I upgraded the internet. With a discount, no less. This isn’t actually going to change until Monday, BUT it will mean that my lovely wife and I can watch movies-on-the-internet (and chill, or maybe even “chill”, wouldn’t that be lovely), and also I will worry less about “running out of megabytes” when it comes to uploading stuff as per this particular version of the Nine of Cups. It’s a practical thing, and it doesn’t only benefit ME, and I did it mostly because the internet-provider just happened to call and offer it to me today (which is why I’m aiming to do two things, rather than one), but I did it. I am allowed to have nice things and do not need to exist in austerity all the time.
AND
2) I haven’t entirely decided this one, but chances are good it will involve an afternoon – or maybe even a whole day – spent curled up with either a beloved old book (OR a fascinating new one) and a box of chocolates I got on post-new-years clearance. There will be lounging. I am allowed to do things that are pleasurable purely for the sake of pleasure and do not have to Be Productive all the time.
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad.

Full Moon – Snow Moon Crests (Mother’s Night, New Year’s Day, Super Moon)

Full Moon. In Cancer, which is the Moon’s territory. On Monday/Lundi, which is the Moon’s day. My shiny new date-books theme is The Moon (the tarot card, but also the giant ball of rock in the sky and all that she stands for. The date book being what it is, there’s a fair bit of Womb Stuff, too, which is… not as delightful for me now as it was 10-12 years ago, but that’s what it is).
 
I’m enjoying this post over at Little Red Tarot which includes a handy tarot spread that touches on the Moon (what are the gifts of this cycle, this full moon), the Queen of Cups (what does my heart need) and the Queen of Pentacles (what is the work involved in achieving/realizing my desires).
This isn’t a spread I’ve done today. Though it makes me smile because it kind of relates to the one I did do. (More on that in a second).
 
Liz Worth says of this full moon:

The Moon is water. It is an ocean, a heart that waits to swallow you whole.
What will you find when you swim to the bottom? Deep, nourishing love? Or tears? The sweat of pining, of longing for something that was once held dear?
These are deep thoughts for the first day of the year, I know. But this is the space that today’s Moon wants us to occupy.
It wants us to go deep. To get nostalgic. To take stock of what’s been lost and gained, and what hope we still hold for the future.

 
Which… I suppose is kind of happening.
 
A little over two years ago, I started my Queen of Cups project, with the Full moon swimming in Cancer’s ocean of emotions. I finished it all of four months ago, just days before September’s full moon in the healer’s territory of Pisces. Now the moon is full in Cancer again, and I’m looking at bridging my Queen of Cups project – a story about healing into receptivity that turned out to be about having healthy, consciously-fluid boundaries – into a new self-improvement/self-healing project that centers on the sex-and-sensuality, certainty, abundance, interconnectedness, and unapologetic embodiment of the Empress.
 
I did the Bridge Spread from Little Red Tarot, asking how I could bridge my Queen of Cups Project into my in-coming Empress Project and… what I got was actually really frustrating.
Like… You know how tarot is basically story-telling?
You know how everyone has meta-narratives and stories they can’t let go of?
You know how (well, maybe you don’t, but some of you do) I started my Queen of Cups project less than a month before a rather-messed-up relationship came to a very painful end, and that… mess… still feels like unfinished business to me, in significant part because it’s left me suspicious of my desires and uncertain around stuff like the difference between “wanting” to do something and “being willing” to do something. (There will be more on this later – either here, or on a different blog)…
… So it’s not surprising, but it IS extremely irritating, that the story I got from my bridge spread so easily fit the story of “My messed up experience with C and how I’m still dealing with the personal fall-out there-from”.
 
I want to tell a different story.
 
I’m not going to do a full write-up of the spread I laid. Not here, anyway.
Instead, you’re getting the Advisor and the Overarching + Underlying Influences from that reading – the three cards I add to every spread that tend to offer a summary of what I’m supposed to get from it:
 

 
Advisor – Five of Wands (U):
The 5 of wands is about sticking to your convictions while picking your battles, dealing with (or living with) unresolved tensions, and resolving – or at least navigating – internal conflicts.
The Little Book that Cristy C Road wrote to go with her just-released Next World tarot deck (which is the deck I used for the initial spread, even though I also pulled the matching cards from the Silicon Dawn deck) has this to say about the Five of Wands:
It’s possible to do this healing work, and it IS work, in ways that are safe even as they’re a struggle. “What does collaboration look like? Are you co-conspirators able to meet you half-way?”
This is a card about challenging expectations. Maybe other people’s, sure, but in this reading? Definitely my own. (Weirdly, this resonates with the card I pulled at Midnight when the calendar turned over. The two of swords: Acknowledge why you’re guarded, but don’t let that stop you from making decisions and taking action).
 

 
Overarching + Underlying – Eight of Cups (U) + Queen of Pentacles (U)
Stuff about security and leaving the past in the past. Well, that’s… probably relevant.
 
Overarching: In the Osho Zen deck, this card is Letting Go. In the Wildwood deck, it’s Rebirth. The Silicon Dawn deck, as you can see in the picture above, interprets it as a “morning after” promise not to do that again. The folks at Little Red Tarot say, of the eight of cups, “There is great strength in walking away from something that just isn’t working any more. There is great strength in acknowledging the truth and, no matter how hard that truth is, acting from there.” Given that The Tower has shown up for me twice in less than 24 hours… I’m sort of resigned to this one, and hoping it’s something that won’t hurt too much to walk away from.
In the Next World, Cristy C Road calls us to “stay solid and true” (don’t ghost on anybody) but to “follow the path of rebirth with grace and dignity” and not to let your past govern your future.
+
Underlying: Flowering. Coming into your own. The protective bear in her cozy cave. The Queen of Earth is a “come on in, the door’s unlocked” kind of Queen. She’s solid and steady, secure in her resources, her supporters, and her resilience. She’s abile to back up her generous spirit with generous actions. Cristy says: Pursue your power, it’s well-deserved, but don’t lose your compassion.
 
On a related note, the card that fell out of the deck when I was doing this spread? The three of Earth. A reminder that, in whatever endeavor you’re undertaking, (a) you need to acknowledge the work, the labour, the skills, the effort that you bring to the endeavor, while also (b) recognizing that it’s not only on YOU to make The Thing happen or succeed. You are part of a team effort. Value you what you bring to that effort and don’t team up with people who will devalue you or expect you to do everything for them.
 
Anyway.
 
On that note, and with the spectre of The Tower sculking in my future, waiting to tear down whatever needs to go… I’m off to get ready for a casual New Year’s get-together where, hopefully, I be able to give a few readings that are less “resignation and gloom” and more “you got this” to other people.
 
Cheers, and onwards,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
~*~
 
Movement: Not a whole hell of a lot, tbh. It’s been -30 and worse for the past week, and I’ve mostly been holed up avoiding the cold, and grateful for the car rides I’ve been offered to various seasonal events. I even skipped Going Out Dancing last night in favour of board games and good lighting for NYE. Twenty minute walk in the freezing bloody cold coming up shortly though.
 
Attention: I admit to being thoroughly distracted, and prone to showing off, my shiny new Next World deck that arrived last week. 😀 The cards are HUGE (but I have big hands, so I can make it work), and the art is detailed and worthy of the large format. I like the deliberate social justice flavour and the write-ups that are designed with personal and societal healing in mind. Hers is the first Queen of Swords that didn’t rub me the wrong way, but instead looked like someone who might actually be on my side (even if she’s still prone to tough love).
 
Gratitude: Grateful for central heating. For friends who are hella generous with me. For a wife who loves me enough to say Very Clearly that when she asks me stuff, it’s because she actually interested in the answers (as opposed to because she’s monitoring my productivity, or something, which is what my Jerk Brain would suggest). For a mom who is getting the hang of my polyamoury. For being able to make things from scratch (even if I haven’t been doing so at ALL this week). For kindness. For welcome. For the optimism that seems to be hanging around right now. For tenacity. For the possibility that I might actually be able to finish my poetry manuscript this year AND start sending it out (it’s early, and I’m not more than half-done, but it kind of looks like it might be possible, so I’m going with it). For all the good people and things in my life. And for the friends who remind me that it’s okay to want even more.
 
Inspiration: Realizing that the “resolutions egregore” is probably not the best thing from-which to draw inspiration, I’m still doing so. I have at least one friend whose debut book is coming out this year. My wife is feeling happier, and like things have turned a corner for the better when it comes to her business. There’s a lot of optimism floating around my corner of the internet right now, and a lot of people making goals around being kind, pushing towards vulnerability, empathy, inclusion and mutuality. Things feel good right now, and I’m hoping I can grab that feeling and stretch it into something real and lasting. Wish me luck. 😉
 
Creation: Not so much. I’ve done a little bit of knitting, but otherwise? I haven’t really even cooked anything. I’m on vacation until tomorrow, at which point I’ll get back to work on the Femme Glosa Project, on editing poetry submissions, and on cooking actual meals. But today? Today, I’m still being lazy. With that? I’m off to be social. TTFN! 😀