Full Moon – Meltwater Moon Crests PLUS Ostara Activities

A grey sky full of heavy clouds hangs over the equally grey Rideau River. Photo by Leslie Mateus, via Wiki Free Imageshttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rideau_River.jpg

Whelp. To the surprise of nobody, it’s raining today. Spring Equinox was last weekend. I finally (finally) took the Midwinter garlands down and put them away. The snow is gone (for the moment – I fully expect to get dumped on during the first half of April) and things – crane’s bill and, probably, solomon’s seal – are starting to come up in the front yard.

Happy Spring!

Most of what I did for Ostara – beyond cleaning my altar (finally, and with wet-wipes rather than anything fancy) and burning some Root Chakra incense while doing remote-online-Ritual with my adopted circle down in DC – happened “by accident”.

I made candles (twice). I made bread (also twice). I took myself out and bought myself the first ice cream cone of the year. I’ve taken a few walks down to the river to watch the ice melt and the sun set and the water levels rise (they’re still nothing like flooding – which is a nice surprise, given what things looked like this time last year and the year before).

I’m reading the “Power” chapter of the Magic of the Iron Pentacle book (Gede Parma and Jane Meredith) because that remains an area where I need to get stronger. I really like both the idea of power as responsibility (yes, I watched that decades-old Spiderman movie in theatres, how did you guess) and the idea of power as something you are rather than something that you do. I particularly want to chew on that from a D/s perspective, so… that might end up being a post on ye old kinky blog. But we shall see.

In other news, having just (just-just-just, like a couple of days ago) signed up for Laura Tempest Zakroff’s patreon, I got to take part in her monthly Sigil School for Patrons zoom call, and spent an hour work-shopping a sigil with a few people who Actually Know What They’re Doing. Which was pretty sweet.

Background: Most of my experience making sigils at all has been more like making bind runes. Which, as someone who’s not Heathen, making a sigil out of a preexisting magical alphabet I would almost say it’s like… Me making “bindrunes” using the elder futhark alphabet and all it symbolizes, is sort of like me writing fanfic. Because I’m using someone else’s characters and setting and so-on.

NOTE: This works just fine. T Thorn Coyle’s Sigil Magic: for Writers and Other Creatives, along with just about every chaos magician I’ve come across, says that an easy way to develop a sigil is to write down a succinct and specific sentence detailing what you want, then cross out all the vowels and all the repeating consonants, and then take what’s left and turn them into “magical-looking squiggles” that you then combine into a single image. It works.

I my particular case, though, I frequently ended up with a lot of blocky, boxy things that all looked the same. So I tried using a magical alphabet that came ready-made with a bunch of symbol sets and a built-in means of combining them into more complicated/specific directions.

My little charm helpers are made from runes, and they know what they’re doing and do their respective jobs very well.

AND

I still wanted to try making something entirely “from scratch”.

What I made is… a little big and complicated to be something that I would, say, write on my own body in hand-sanitizer or embroider onto the lining of a wallet (bind runes – being comprised of straight lines – are kind of great for embroidery and cross-stitch, if you’re not great at those things, fyi).

It looks like an art piece. The kind of thing you’d tag on a wall or pain onto a ceramic tile.

Which is fine, because it’s meant as a protection offering to the local river.

I’m thinking I might tape it onto a south-facing window and charge it with sunshine for a few days, since I’ll be chalking it out-of-doors when in actual use. You’d think I’d be using rainwater, but I’m not sure if that’ll do what I want. Maybe?

I’ll have to chew on this a little more, I think.

~*~

Wildwood Tarot – King of Vessels – A great blue heron stands in the middle of a creek

Given how literal my decks can be – especially this one – it’s probably not a shock that the card I pulled for my Tarot Card Meditation is a cups card.

This particular card is one that talks about tenderness and community.

The Wildwood’s own Little Book treats the King of Vessels as a gateway guardian, someone who stands at the balance point between life and death. Not an inappropriate card to have jump out of the deck at this time of rushing water when winter’s dormancy is just-just-just starting to tip over into spring’s quickening wakefulness.

But, beyond that, the King of Water is a card that speaks of responsibility to one’s arts and creative purpose. I made a promise, at Imbolg, not to abandon my writing. And I see this card as a reminder to keep creating and – because this is a King – to keep engaging with my artistic community, as well.

So: I guess I have another chapbook submission to send out.

On it, Gods. On it. ❤

~*~

Movement: Long walks, moving slowing, taking time to enjoy to warm, spring air on as much of my skin as I can offer (still not a lot, but hey). Weeks ago, I know, but a lovely dance-party-for-two with my girlfriend in our respective living rooms. I lit my alter candles and got to dance with my Baby for an hour+ and it felt really good. Moon salutations before bed.

Attention: The local birds – cardinals and blue jays, chickadees and sparrows, the returning robins and starlings and geese, the ducks and the wheeling crows. Watching one of my squirrel neighbours peel long strips of cedar bark off the tree outside my window for – I think – anti-microbial and anti-parasitic nesting materials in prep for impending babies. The perennials that are starting to green up and sprout again in the sunnier parts of my (largely shady) front yard. The river and the clouds and where the moon is in the sky. The way the temperature fluctuates up and down across the frozen line, the way it always does at this time of year.

Gratitude: Warm spring air, maple flowers, returning geese, cardinals and blue jays on my window sill, a story acceptance, a chance to submit my chapbook to another publisher, a shiny new job doing social media for a lefty church and the continued economic stability that brings me, long snuggles with my wife, internet-dates with my girlfriend, new (library) novels. Witch books that I’m finally making time to read, singing along with my wife while she plays her guitar. Hanging out in the back yard with my mom. The first ice cream cone of the year. My tiny blue bird and our other house birds. Green things coming up in the garden. Above-freezing temperatures. Sunshine. Rain. Spring.

Inspiration: Look. I would love to say that I’m being inspired by all those folks I mentioned under “Attention” but that’s totally not what’s happening. I’ve been looking at tiktok and thinking “I could totally post poetry on here…” So maybe there will be some low-budget-artsy “spoken word” videos going up in the near-ish future. We shall see.

Creation: Hahahahaha. But seriously, the most Creative thing I’ve done in the past two weeks – beyond making that sigil – is rejig a story so the ending wasn’t so abrupt. (It has now been accepted by the publisher, tho, which is pretty great news!)

New Year New You 2021 – Week 2: Goals

Crystal Visions Tarot – King of Pentacles – A woman with long, brown hair and an antler crown, green greaves, and a staff topped with a big crystal, sits enthroned under a spreading oak. Crystal points poke out of the ground at her feet.

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: “What do you want to accomplish using both magical and mundane means?“ Figure out your SMART Goal and the magical and mundane actions you need to take to achieve them.

Tarot Card: The King of Coins. I mean, obviously.

Next World Tarot – King of Pentacles – Someone with blue and black hair, motorcycle boots, and a pink mini-dress scatters jewels on a Hollywood Walk of Fame star labeled “Daddy”.

Okay. I know. It’s been three months. I still feel really uncertain. Like I don’t really know what I’m doing. Like this project was done before I even got it started – I’ve been working one new job for, y’know, about three months, and have signed the contract for a second new job, even if I’m not going to see work from them (I’m VERY okay with this) until my current UU contract wraps up.

That’s what I wanted, right?

So I find myself… kind of flailing. What are my goals beyond the immediate one of “be able to pay the bills”?

And that’s a REALLY relevant question to be asking when you’re focusing on the King of Coins. This King is a character who (a) is a Navigator – she knows how to work, and how to make money work for her. But she’s also (b) someone who knows her own worth and doesn’t succumb to workaholism or forget about pleasure. Pentacles are the suit of embodiment and that’s important to remember.

So. Beyond the basics of the Four (tenuous shelter) or the Six (I’m okay, but someone has power over me), where do I want to go?

1. I want to get out of debt – This is kind of a no-brainer, and being able to throw those monthly payments into a savings account is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more appealing that shoving money at a credit card company. This goal is pretty-much entirely a Mundane Means goal and, knowing that I’ve got at least six more months of reliable, more-than-survival income, it actually looks… fairly achievable if I just stick with it.
2. I want to change up where my “baseline” sits so that I don’t feel… weirdly exposed(??) when I’m not in a pile of debt. You guys, I’m not even sure where to start with this, but it’s going to involve what my lovely wife terms “Cognitive Behavioural Witchcraft”.
3. I want to ride the Hedonic Escalator up a level or two. I guess the best way to explain this one is that I want to re-program my brain to stop thinking that I’m going to be punished for having nice things, or for things going well, or – if I stretch this a bit – for recognizing my own skills and, qua the King of Pentacles, Knowing My Worth. I don’t particularly want to hit that point on the income scale where money stops “buying happiness” (more accurately: increasing emotional well-being) but I would like to continue this New Experience of being able to buy whatever I feel like at the grocery store, and being able to buy a few New Things (think: earrings, a book, a bra) in any given month without having to stress about it. It’s a hedonic adaptation – perceiving this as Normal rather than novel – that I really, REALLY like and would like to hang onto!

So let’s chew on this a little bit. For Goal #1: Easy peasy. Pay cash for all the things (which I’ve been doing for… roughly a year already – bless you, online retailers who accept paypal) and throw as much money as I can at my credit card debt in order to reduce it as quickly as possible. Super basic. Very straight-forward. Though admittedly not that interesting if I’m trying to write a post for my witchcraft blog.

Goals #2 and #3 however have some magical elements involved. Like, yeah, yeah, there’s mundane stuff – like throttling my panic and talking to my most-recent employer and asking for a better starting wage (which I GOT!) – and there’s mind stuff like journaling on questions like Why do I think a hammer of retribution is going to slam down on me if I have an RRSP instead of debt, or a CSA instead of a mental map of where I can most easily dumpster for produce? or Why is my relationship with money and/or employment so very much like anxious-avoidant attachment? But… there’s also a lot of room for ritual and spell-craft. Things like:

Using the Iron Pentacle meditation – maybe including, or building on, some of the ritual suggestions outlined in the “Power” chapter in the book of the same name by Jane Meredith and Gede Parma – to call back and reclaim my power.

Doing energy work with my three lower chakras (security, exchange/connection, and power/will), possibly in connection with my fifth chakra as well.

Continuing to feed and praise my Little Helpers at my tiny desk altar, and to light my offering candles and otherwise make offerings to my Gods and Ancestors at the big main altar in the living room (there’s whiskey on the altar right now, but I sure do owe them some fire. And probably a tidy-up.

Visiting my Fetch and my Godself in my enchanted astral sea cave / forest. This matters because: Building and Nurturing the relationships between your talking-self (The I Behind Your Eyes where we spend a LOT of our time) and the other parts of your magical/spiritual body is important just generally. But for my specific goals here, there are some pretty real actions that have to happen. (Which: Just a quick word about those…)

Fetch is your embodied, non-wordy, physical, sensual self. Fetch is the twig of YOU that’s part of a family tree two-hundred and thirty thousand years old, or older. She’s my skin-hunger. She’s my Trust Issues. She’s the stomach cramps, nausea, and persistent chills that show up when my anxiety gets bad. She’s connected hard to my lower chakras and showing up consistently for her – in magical as well as mundane ways – is going to go a long way towards convincing my physical body, my limbic and nervous systems, that I’m not going to die, frozen and alone, in the snow.

Likewise, Godself is the spark of YOU that is part of the unimaginably vast, wholly divine, thinking, feeling universe, the chaos-butterfly flutter that can make big changes way beyond your vulnerable, human body. Within the realm of this project’s specific goals: I can call on her help – or work magically inside the luxury astral sea cave where we communicate most directly – to rewire my own neural pathways. I can call on her help to send jobs, grants, and publishers swimming towards my nets. Heck, I can stock my astral fridge with smoked salmon and tuna sashimi to feed (and treat) my own divinity well.

So. Those are some areas where I can focus magical work in order to further my goals for this project. What are some bite-sized action I can take to further my goals this week?

Mundane: Update my spending spreadsheet, make a (small-but-additional) credit card payment, take some meat out of the freezer to thaw so that dinners for the next few days can be easier to deal with, and stay on top of my paid work.

Mind: Do the exercises at the end of Chapter One of my “money mindset” book. Spend some actual time on this, but don’t over-think it.

Magical: Light candles on my altar. Feed my tiny charms with breath and spit and whiskey. Take five minutes to run my chakras, put on my astral jewelry, and do some Listening. Make a soup for dinner and enchant it for prosperity (seaweed), security (carbs – in the form of rice noodles), and luxury (leftovder roast duck).

Wish me luck!