Seeking the Mysteries – Chapter 1 Activities

^{A Book Cover: Looking down a deep well. Tree branches and “the Moon” (actually the camera flash) are reflected in the water. It’s a good shot. The words “Seeking the Mystery – An Introduction to Pagan Theologies” – Christine Hoff Kraemer” overlay the image in blue and yellow text.}

So I got myself a copy of this book. It’s one of the ones that’s on the reading list for Cherry Hill Seminary’s Community Ministry Certificate. I figure, if I can’t take the courses (…yet), I can at least start doing the readings. So I’ve made a start of it. It’s absolutely an intro book – a bit of a light survey with a solid bibliography to go hunting up further stuff. Short, but it’s chewy none the less. I appreciate how the author has made a point of drawing on examples from a lot of different traditions, and from writers/thinkers/theologians who were both well-established (Starhawk, Graham Harvey, Carol Christ, the Andersons, the Farrars, Judy Harrow, John Casey, Margot Adler) and those who, at the time of this book’s publication (2012) were much more recent additions to the Pagan theological… canon? Can I call it a canon? Let’s go with that. Think Sarah Kate Istra Winter, P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, Katherine MacDowell, Raven Kaldera, Ivo Dominguez Jr, and Emma Restall Orr, if we want to split that particular hair at roughly the Millennium line). I’m hopeful that, as we head into 2022, she’s got a 10 year anniversary follow-up in the works. Time will tell.

Anyway. The book has Activities at the end of each chapter. And I thought I’d give some of them a go.

Chapter one, which is kind of an introduction of theological terms like “Monism” and “Animism”, “Process Theology” and “Polytheism” (both hard and soft), asks the reader to think on their own theological position(s) and how that position has changed, if it has, over the course of their life.

~*~

So:

I would start by saying that my theology was experiential before I ever heard the word “theology” let alone started using it in sentences. Part of why I stopped being christian is that… there wasn’t anything there. Or at least that who was there was definitely not answering my phone calls.

I was about fifteen when I concluded that “Christian” no-longer described me, and that it was time to figure out what I did believe, and ideally to find a faith that could match it.

I was sixteen when I met a God for the first time.

As the prophets say:

Then I saw Her face, now I’m a believer

Not a trace of doubt in my mind

I’m in love

I’m a believer, I couldn’t leave Her if I tried

And, lo, I became Pagan.

For the first few years – years when I was interacting with mostly Wiccan practitioners, mostly on the proto-internet of the mid-1990s – I probably qualified as either a soft polytheist or a duotheistic polypantheist (one of my profs used that term to describe the embodied, “all the gods are one god and all the goddesses one goddess” theology of Wicca, which she practiced). I’m not sure if I was an animist yet, though I knew that Ancestors were part of my reality pretty much immediately. I met my first (out) hard polytheist when I was in my very early twenties and that, as they say, Really Gave Me Something To Think About.

I think I was probably hitting on my own hard polytheism inside of five years later. Basically, I started meeting other gods (and then meeting other humans who had very specific relationships with specific other gods) and it felt increasingly… rude? to act like they were interchangeable. It was also around this point that I started thinking about the nature of souls and came to my own conclusion that there are multiple parts to a soul, or multiple souls, in a given person (not just human people, fyi, so: definitely an animist by this point). What I think is that, since reincarnation is a thing, and since ancestors who stick around and with-whom you can interact, are also a thing… There must be a spark that jumps from life to life, reincarnating over and over and picking up experiences, as well as a “self” or “memory” soul that develops over the course of a given lifetime and becomes an Ancestor (and sometimes a restless ghost, tbh) upon death.

That said: A lot of the theology I’ve read has been by Feri initiates, even if they were presenting stuff that was okay for laypeople to know. Lee Harrington. T Thorn Coyle. Starhawk. Gede Parma. Orion Foxwood. So maybe it’s not surprising that I’ve picked up.

Everything seems to be built in a series of nested layers – I am an entity unto myself. But I’m also part of the entity that is my micro-bioregion and, from there, my planet. I’m also made up of entities-unto-themselves that are the myriad folk of my gut biota, for example. My planet is made up of all those micro-bioregional entities, and is part of the entity that is my solar system.

And I think that souls must be a bit like that. I am an entity until myself – and so I go to the land of the Ancestors when I die. But I’m also part of the soul of All That Is – the universe has a soul made up of a zillion parts, because the universe is made up of a zillion parts. I think this is a little related to the Feri tradition’s Star Goddess. But it’s also a little related to the Vedic tradition’s Prajapati. It just seems to fit, given how the universe works (by our current understanding of How The Universe Works). All those land spirits, all those Gods of place. They are entities unto themselves. And I think, on some quiet level they are, like me, part of the All That Is.

I’ve met my Godself, my Deep Self, my Shard of the Universe Herself – to use three different ways of referring to Her – I know She’s real, and is an entity unto Herself. But I also know that She is, at the same time, both part of ME – this human body, this human life enlivened by a leaping, experiencing, ever-renewing Spark (is this Fetch? Maybe?) and remembered by/as an Ancestor (is this Talking Self? Maybe?) in times to come – and part of the swimming, blending, universe-soul, All That Is.

So… my Hard Polytheism and my Animism are underpinned by something like Pantheism? Maybe? But it’s a quiet, background pantheism rather than the Pantheism or Panenthism that my Unitarian clients, or the uh… Pananimist Nontheism(?) that my Buddhist clients for that matter, tend to lean towards. It’s what I lean into when I’m trying to find points of theological relating with people who are just weirded out by the reality of “Gods, Plural” and give me funny looks when I want to talk shop. It’s fine, but it feels a bit like hitting a wall, sometimes. It’s much easier to tell people that “my church is in my back yard” or “I take a walk in the woods when I need to commune with the divine” because that sounds hippie-pantheist enough to be non-threatening (I say, presuming that people are likely to be off-put by polytheism and hard animism) than to get into the nitty-gritty of seasonal offerings, deities turning up in the living room (and the bedroom), messages being passed along through humans who are More Sensitive To This Stuff than I am, using an imaginary legal pad to talk to my Godself, and how old an appliance has to be before it starts talking (I think the youngest machine who every told me her name is Janice, my wife’s the sewing machine who would have been… between 40 and 45 at the time? So younger than the Tsukumogami by a substantial margin. I’m kind of… trepedatious about what will happen in 10-20 years when my library starts hitting that age…)

~*~

… And that’s kind of where things stand right now.

I’m sure things will continue to evolve – particularly around Animism regarding things like “I am a mammal that eats… at all” and “So much plastic packaging… What do I do with this??” – but I like where my cosmology/theology are at right now. I think, at this point, it’s more likely to deepen than to change direction. I hope that’s how it goes.

Cheers,

Ms Syren.

New Moon – Long Nights Moon Begins

^{A waxing crescent moon, craters visible, hangs in the lower right quadrant against a black sky. The words “Long Nights Moon” overlay the image in white script.}

 

Early December. The Season of the Hag starts today and, right on time, a snowfall. Just deep enough to cover the ground, but light enough that I can sweep my neighbour’s steps rather than getting out the shovel just yet. My wife is away for the weekend, with her girlfriend, and my girlfriend is due to arrive this coming Wednesday for a couple of weeks. She’ll still be here when this barely-new moon is full, and for a couple of days beyond that.

This weekend is going to be a mix of Trying To Relax combined with doing a lot of dishes, getting the second bedroom ready for her arrival, and probably doing a big grocery shop for thing like romano beans and veggie sausages and tempeh.

But it’s also the weekend I make a libation to the Hag of Winter, change the wreath on my front door, and put up the holly garlands by way of seasonal decorations.

Sadly, I didn’t get the extra hours from one of my comms jobs that I was hoping for. I’m not saying it won’t happen eventually, but it’s not happening going into 2022, so: Plan B is in effect. We’ll make it work. I’m looking forward to the day – 7-8 weeks from now – when I’ll have more time on my hands to do things like “stay on top of my kitchen” and “make things from scratch”. I still have a list of things I want to make – jars of romano beans and chick peas and stewing beef, honey-almond-cinnamon ice cream, apple butter, bread (it’s been AGES!), but also skirts, sweaters, button/lacing additions to the slippers I made 2 years ago – that will require time and focus that I haven’t (confession…) wanted to devote to “work” when the other kind of work has been so exhausting.

I’m looking forward the slow turning of Winter into Spring 2022 as a time – I hope – of welcoming my creativity back to wakefulness and finding a better balance between “work that makes me money”, “work that makes me HAPPY”, and “Actual LEISURE, Thanks”.

The voice at the back of my head – which is probably just plane old me and not the whisperings of Angler Fish June Cleaver (but who knows) – asks “Okay, so how are you going to make that happen? You’re still going to be working on Mondays and Tuesdays, just doing a different job. What’s the plan here, Me?” And, mostly, it just means getting out of bed before 9am and doing some of that Productive Home stuff in the hour or two before starting my money-making work day. Sewing or knitting while I chat with my girls and drink my morning coffee. Taking myself out of the house for a walk every Saturday morning. Making a point of shutting down work and reading a book for an hour once dinner’s on the go. Staying off social media more than I do (I say while blogging, um…) Just getting my priorities sorted in a way that makes me put the money-work away, deliberately, every day and that helps me avoid Mindless Scrolling.

Right now, there’s a grey squirrel eating birdseed on my window. A couple of crows have flown over the house – one of them just landed in the tree across the street). And my own little birds are preening and waking up now that there’s some afternoon light coming in through our north-by-northwest-facing window. I need to take myself back up the street and pick up some birdseed for them, I think.

^{Mary El Tarot Deck – The Tower (a burning image of something that looks a bit like the statue of liberty), reversed; The 10 of Disks (a winged, black horse whose rider is a white goat with numerous, spiraling horns, carrying a stylized set of scales), upright.}

Behold, the tarot cards I pulled today. More specifically, I pulled The Tower, Reversed and then, because landing on the tower isn’t strictly FUN even when it’s not scary, I basically said, “Okay, but then what?” nd shuffled until something fell out of the deck. Which, thankfully, was the very positive and reassuring Ten of Earth.

I’ll expand on this a little elsewhere, but my basic read on this is:

1. That which falls apart wasn’t meant to last.
2. After the struggle, you find your feet (your security, your sense of home and safety, your material well-being) again.
3. Don’t freak out.

I mean… I’ll take it. This is fine.

~*~

Movement: I went for a walk this morning, through the little bit of succession woodland near my house while the snow was falling.

Attention: Right this second? I’m paying attention to the stiffness in my back and neck, and to the smell coming from my oven so I don’t let my lunch/dinner burn by accident. Also hunting up new tunes to add to my Winter Solstice mix, and keeping an eye on the snow outside, which seems to have let up for now.

Gratitude: Thankful for an exit strategy, new-to-me clothes (hand-me-downs from my Mom, because I’m at the age where my style and my mom’s overlap enough that this works out), a quiet day, a walk in the woods, delicious lunch (lupper?) in the oven, clean mason jars, a video date this evening, my wife getting some Enforced Down Time, my girlfriend coming up to visit very soon(!), my friend continuing to make a swift recovery from her health scare, beeswax candles, just enough snow to be pretty without being difficult the move through, pretty music playing while I write this, having options that allow me to leave a job when I don’t like it. Grateful for love and support, and for being able to experience and accept those things as true.

Inspiration: Moon phases and astrological positions, weather, seasonal changes, local birds, the wind.

Creation: As I mentioned here, I’ve been drafting a poem (sometimes more) every day since the last Full Moon. It’s felt good to do, without being arduous. I may want to keep it going for longer than my one-lunar-cycle duration but, for now, I’m sticking with that and am at roughly the half-way point. Some of them are… mediocre at the absolute best. But some of them have some good bones to work with, which is nice to see given how long I went without reliably poeting for a while there.

Some is Better than None – Electricity Edition

So, I (finally) signed up for Bullfrog Power. Contrary to advertising, it’s not an alternative electrical company.
It’s more like a subscription service.
I’m officially now paying ~$45/month to help increase green-energy infrastructure (wind and water power) in Ontario. And, like, yes I know. Hydro Ottawa is called Hydro for a reason (Portage Power is a subsidiary of Hydro Ottawa that specifically handles green energy generation). But still. For now, this is my latest “next step” in cleaning up, or making amends for, my household energy footprint. This is very much like the whole thing where I “plant” (sponsor the planting of) trees to offset my household carbon footprint. I’m essentially throwing money at a problem – because I have enough money now to actually do so – in order to “cancel out” said problem, rather than doing something to actually solve the problem itself.

I was having a conversation with my relatives… I guess about a week ago. And I always feel really out of place when I’m talking to them. My household is still pretty low-income, whereas they’ve all got money in the form of pensions, investments, and job security. My household is queer, polyamourous and child-free, and theirs are… none of the above. We’re renters, and they all own their own houses. We are definitely the “them” to everyone else’s “us” in those conversations. That said, we’re all various degrees of Lefties, so it’s not a disaster. Anyway. We were having this conversation about how to get people off oil. And some of what I was thinking was “I’m a renter. Even if I had the $100K it would take to install geothermal heating (if that’s even an option around here) and solar electricity directly in my house… I don’t own my house, and so that’s not an option for me”. I can’t Get Off Oil until there’s another option available for heating my house that doesn’t first require me to own said house. Even a lateral move like switching from fossil natural gas to, like, landfill gas (which is still pretty-much all methane, it’s just more renewable) isn’t really an option at this time.

So, sure. One reason I take steps to “cancel out” my carbon footprint is convenience: It’s way less exhausting and painful to fly to visit my girlfriend than it is to take a 22-hour, two-transfers train trip that starts at 6am, so I fly, and do carbon off-setting. But the other reasons is because, in a lot of cases, I literally can’t take steps to not cause the problem in the first place. I figure – I hope – that, by signing up for Bullfrog, I’m also managing to contribute in some small way to shifting the local infrastructure – when that infrastructure is my only option – to something more sustainable and less greenhouse-gas-producing, to something that’s more respectful of, and more in concert with, the rest of this whole wild world.

New Moon – Cold Moon Begins

Winter Exercise in Light and Shadow – Via Wiki Free Images – A frost-covered shrub casts a shadow over the snow.

 
New Moon was yesterday – and a Solar Eclipse with it, although it happened a solid four hours after sunset in my part of the world. New Moon. And a solar eclipse, which Lisa Stardust (over at The Hoodwitch) says is rather like a new moon, energy-wise, with regards to new beginnings and new life-chapters kicking off.
 
I finally – ha, I usually do this as soon as it arrives in the mail – looked up my 2019 year-at-a-glance horoscope in my date book. It literally starts out with the following:
 

In the beginning of 2019, you may be feeling anxious and riled up.

 
Ha. No kidding. I’m due to get on a plan in 25 days (yes, I’m counting days) to go visit my girlfriend, and my anxiety-brain is chittering away in the background about how “I’ve done something bad” (I haven’t) and “Someone is going to be mad at me” (highly unlikely).
Look, I’m just going to say a thing: My anxiety isn’t bad. I don’t have panic attacks – or whatever high-anxiety freak-out thing I have that I’m currently labeling as “panic attacks” – very often, and I can manage this stuff with breathing patterns and other non-meds-based ways of calming myself the heck down when I do start getting wound up.
But there’s a pretty constant attention-dribble, if I can call it that, that goes to keeping track of why my brain is telling my adrenal glands, and what-not, so that I can catch that stuff when it’s still in the “low-volume high-pitch note played on a violin” level of anxious background noise, before I’m irritably snapping at my wife, seething under my skin, or jumping at every unexpected noise. But it still gets ahead of me sometimes and I feel my chest getting tight and all the rest of it.
And, since it all seems to be stepping up a little right now, I’m noticing it. It’s tiring. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s tiring.
 
Anyway. So, yes, Rhea Wolf, I’m definitely starting 2019 feeling anxious and a bit riled up.
That said, I’m hoping she’s not wrong about the hypothetical influx of (Jupiter-related) greater security that’s coming my way. I admit, I’ve started listening to Gabby Dunn’s podcast with that in mind.
I’m still doing glamour work, still doing Miss Sugar’s NYNY cycle (even if we’re into the second year of this particular project). Keeping my fingers crossed for more transcription to follow the work I’m doing right now. A little bit of on-going steady-ish income would be really good, and this work is interesting and well-paid, too. So… it would be nice to keep that going. 🙂
 
Egregors being what they are, and Miss Sugar’s long-ago NYNY thoughts about resolutions being on my mind, I’m actively trying not to make long-term plans or year-based goals right now. But that doesn’t mean they’re not in there. Not-so-vague plans to finish my third chapbook (finally), write another dozen or more glosas (and get myself that much closer to a finished first draft of a full-length manuscript), keep sending my poetry out, ideally to more paid markets this year… They’re all in there, stewing around and percolating away, along with all those good intentions about more physical activity, more vegetables, and less social media that, tbh, I just want to keep a damn lid on for now lest I start thinking of them as things I can just abandon as soon as Imbolg turns up.
 
ANYWAY.
 

Knight of Cups – Mary El Deck – A person with long blond hair, a red skirt, and silvery armour with an eye over their heart, holds a chalice of blood out-of-which a lotus blooms.

 
I thought I might shuffle my Mary El deck until four cards fell out, just to see what chance might bring to my attention with regards to the New Moon spread suggested by Liz Worth. But, no surprises here, I had three fall out, one at a time, and then got three all at once, then two more, then one. Which is not what I had in mind – even if I did, in theory, get the three of cups in the “what can stabilize for me this year” slot, which is definitely not a bad thing.
So I said “screw it” and decided to call the first card that fell out of the deck my meditation card for this half of the lunar cycle.
It’s not a bad card to have drawn. In the Next World deck, the Knight of Cups is “The Love Song” and wears their heart on their sleeve. (The is the card of NRE, or so it would seem). Michelle Tea – who, like everybody, interprets tarot through her own experiences – has a lot of (negative) stuff to say about the swept-away feelings that the Knight of Cups can bring but she also says that, if the Knight of Cups shows up as a situation, then it means “something glamourous” is on its way, and you should go for it – use that burst of artistic inspiration to churn out a LOT of rough drafts for new things, or say Yes to that invitation from a pal to attend an event you might otherwise have skipped. Take some chances. Explore some new things. Julia Cameron would call this “refilling the well”, creativity-wise, and Michelle suggests a “be the knight of cups” activity/ritual that sounds a lot like the Ideal Day exercise, but with added mood-lighting, in order to get an idea of where the wells are that need refilling and where to direct all the intense, passionate energy you (in theory) have available.
 
~*~
 
Movement: Nowhere near enough. I’ve got some modeling work tomorrow, which will mean a good solid 1.5-2hrs walking, plus three hours of modeling, but I don’t know if this will be short or long poses or what, so we’ll see. None the less, getting back on the “ten minutes a day of yoga/weights” train would probably do me a lot of good.
 
Attention: Cat paw-prints in my back yard. Where the icy spots are on the steps and the sidewalk. What we have in the fridge that needs to be eaten up (we’ve been eating Solstice leftovers for a while now, and I’m starting to forget what we’ve got, beyond that.
 
Gratitude: Thankful for a warm day that let me chip the ice off my steps. For a haul of library books that are, so far, proving to be a tonne of fun. For having a few modeling gigs and a few days of temp work already lined up for the next four months (fingers crossed for lots more, but here we are). Thankful for a girlfriend who’s looking forward to seeing me, for a wife who misses me when she’s visiting her partners, for morning snuggles and date nights.
 
Inspiration: I just read The Black God’s Drums, a novella that I wish had been a full-length novel. It’s been a reminder that you can sketch out a whole story in just a few thousand words and, from there, see where the fleshing out needs to happen.
 
Creation: I drafted one poem. It’s a terrible draft, but it’s got some usable lines, so I’m calling it a start. Sock-extension continues apace, and seems to be doing what I want it to do, so that’s something. Unlikely to be done by the time I get on that plane, though. Oh well.

New Moon – Leaf Moon Begins

“Leaf Moon” might be a bit optimistic. It’s freezing rain right now.
Mercury is technically stationing direct today, but won’t be moving “forward” for another couple of days. Things are maybe feeling like they’re in a bit of a holding pattern ( Oh, hai, everything covered in ice, winter not getting the f out the door already…).
Jessica Lanyadoo, over at Hoodwitch is telling me to “Be patient, Scorpio. Trust that you’ll get where you need to go, and recognize that shoving won’t get you there any faster”. Which is relevant, in terms of my needing to keep myself moving but also needing to motivate myself in ways that feel like joy, like pleasure, like worthiness, rather than like punishment. (Sort of like this, but for everything).
Spring cleaning continues to happen. It feels like two steps forward, one step back, and it’s definitely a team effort over here, but things do feel a little bit airier, a little less close-in-on-us cluttered, a little more comfortable and clean, and that’s making a big difference. The rhubarb doesn’t seem too frost-struck (yet), and the Vietnamese garlic is poking green shoots out of the ground, and those, too, are both worth noting. My wife went out and turned the compost again. The earth is rich and black, and she says the worms are thick as fingers in there, which is wonderful to hear.
Life continues, even thrives, while the cold hangs on and the dust bunnies push me to my own snapping point.
If there’s a theme to the past few days, to the “open door” of this new moon in Aries, for me it’s find the wonder in all the little things that I have to do each day, that I choose to do each day.
(Yeah, I know. I’m talking big right now, and working for it, but we’ll see how things look in two weeks, a mo(o)nth, and when Harvest rolls around again…)
None the less, that’s my intention, my Capital-I Intention even, for this new moon: To find the wonder in the every-day, and also to charge/imbue the every-day with wonder, with magic, with holy intent. (This is maybe a tiny bit like Mother Noella Marcellino making cheese around and between calls to prayer… except also not really, but go with it).
My vacuum can still be a Besom when the new moon is in Aries, rather than Taurus. 😉
Cleaning the bathroom and doing the dishes can be the kind of kitchen magic I so often neglect (in favour of doing stuff on the stove), banishing the gunky vibes that can clog the airways in a house, or using them as a moment of calm or centering or focus, an in-breath that will move to the out-breath of social web-tightening, generative creativity, and joyful connection of one sort or another.
Find the wonder. Make it happen.
Which brings me to:
 
Tarot Card Meditation: Page of Earth

The Page of Wands from Egypt Urnash’s Tarot of the Silicon Dawn.
In this deck, “wands” in the suit of Earth, while “pentacles” is the suit of Fire.

In the Silicon Dawn deck, “wands” in the suit of Earth, while “pentacles” is the suit of Fire. Typically, it’s the other way around, which makes it a little confusing to read with, and… tbh, straight-up annoying to work with as a translator deck when I’m looking for alternate perspectives on a given reading (like the way various sixes of cups put the emphasis on such different aspects of the card). However, I still quite like the deck’s cartoonish, futuristic art work, pop-culture references, and overt sexuality, so here we are. I tend to try to find points where wands and pentacles overlap or dovetail when I’m reading with it, but put the emphasis on earth-interpretation, rather than fire-interpretation, when a wand card from this deck shows up.
Onwards!
This card, the Page of Wands Earth, is very much a “make something” kind of card. A “go exploring” / “grow and expand” card (two places where it can intersect with the playfulness of the traditionally fire-coded page of wands). It’s a “trust your process” and “trust your body” card. Which means it’s very, very relevant to all the stuff I’m trying to do, trying to remember/re-member in my day-to-day actions, trying to bring back and increase in my life.
Good job, tarot deck! Definitely noted!
 
~*~
 
Movement: The last week and a bit has involved a lot of not very dynamic sitting down. At a desk, while answering phones. My daily commute-walks were only about 15 minutes each way, which isn’t a lot when I’m used to 45-minute walks to and from modeling gigs (which, often as not, are roughly equivalent to 3-hour yoga classes, as far as physical activity goes). That said, the fire alarm went off on Friday, just before my temp job wrapped up for the week, and (after the all-clear) I walked up five flights of stairs and… was a little out of breath, and could tell my thigh muscles had been working. But that was it. I wasn’t gasping. I didn’t feel like my knees were going to give out. I didn’t feel like I was going to keel over. I felt pretty good. Which I was seriously not expecting, since I get winded walking on flat-but-icy sidewalks or taking a single flight of stairs. I think it’s because I have a bad habit of holding my breath. I have to remember that breathing deeply and steadily means that I can do more because I’m not stressing my heart and lungs. Relevant to know! Beyond that… I’ve been doing squats and side-lunges, using my upstairs banister as a support because I tend to stop myself from going as deep as I might be able to when I’m afraid I might pull something or hurt something. (Ha… There’s a metaphor in there somewhere). I also went dancing last weekend, which was lovely. Looking forward to doing more Get Bendy stretches in the morning and to this week’s modeling jobs, which should help me feel a little more limber.
 
Attention: Have to admit, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the weather. This Unseasonable Storm we’re having, while it isn’t hitting us too hard (er, yet…) is probably going to be here for a little while. Like, for the better part of a week, even though the temperature should start rising in the next day or two. Beyond that I’m paying attention – or at least resolving to pay more attention – to finding the sacred in the every-day, and finding ways to make magical the step-by-step of putting one word in front of another, putting one foot in front of the other, and generally moving forwards in all areas of my life (see Inspiration for more on that subject).
 
Gratitude: Thankful for new poetry coming in at the library (need to pick that up tomorrow). For playful, giggly shenanigans with my wife. For friends who want to talk tarot or wine tasting or areal hooping at the drop of a hat. For little birds who trust me. For sewing skills and cooking skills. For a plentiful larder, pantry, and freezer. For central heating. For the clean bathroom. For muffins. For a wife who makes me coffee and breakfast and gives me a clean kitchen to work in. For seeing someone light up when I tell her that I can see her queerness. For steady feet in high winds and on icy roads. For new sheets fresh on the bed.
 
Inspiration: Becoming Dangerous: Witchy femmes, queer conjurers, and magical rebels on summoning the power to resist arrived in the mail earlier this week, and it’s hitting so many relevant notes for me about body-consecration, glamoury, sex as holiness, trash magic, and self-sufficiency. I mean, maybe that’s not surprising, given that it was written by a bunch of witchy femme queers (mostly women, some non-binary). But it’s lifting me up and getting me kind of weepy at the same time. (I talk a little more about that here). It’s giving me directions to go in. Landmarks to get myself re-oriented, so I can re-find that path I was already on. It’s a huge big deal.
 
Creation: Not the fuck much. I wrote one (1) poem this past week. I mean, it’s a decent poem. Need’s some polishing, but the bones are there and it’s a place to start. But I’m taking myself on a writing date in the next 48 hours because I need to put some words on the page. Probably do so when I go and pick up my library books.

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.

New Year New You 2016 (…and 17): Week 22 and Week 23 – Last Push / Reflection

I’m doing finishing up Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation (again) because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. You should try it!
 
Instructions: “Push harder than you ever have this week. Push harder than you ever thought you could and then just a little bit more” + “please take some time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve learned, and where you’re going to go from here“.
 
Tarot Cards: The Moon. Because healing happens in spirals, because this whole project has been bringing up All The Feelings around meta-naratives that have been part of my (very unhealthy, generally mean-to-me) personal cosmology for a very, very long time. Like 3/4 of my life levels of “long”. And also the Seven of Stones… for much the same reason. All of the sevens are linked to both The Chariot’s get-up-and-go action orientation and to The Star’s call to find your own True North and set a course for it, but this particular seven is also about healing, about patience, about recognizing how much I’ve accomplished but also about realizing that the project I set for myself is going to take some time.
 
It’s not a “last push” kind of project.
 
2016 was a hard year, and the ‘hard’ extended well into the first third of 2017. The pep-talk I gave myself way, waaaay back in November of 2015, when this project was barely an embryo? That was challenged on a couple of fronts. I spent a lot of time wrapped up in – and trying to climb out of – some pretty deep hurts and resentments, trying – with help and on my own – to figure out Boundaries 301 (which is still a work in progress, but I have a better idea about it now).
 
 
Things I Have Learned
 
Being open and receptive to what’s being offered also requires (somewhat counter-intuitively) having enough personal boundaries in place that I don’t over-offer in return but can meet people where they are.
This is hard, and I’m very much in the part of this where I have to hash everything out really explicitely from the get-go:
– Yes, I can do X, but only under Y circumstances.
– I can’t do QRS without unwanted results in this situation, but I can do MNO just fine.
– DEF isn’t happening, so it’s not right/safe/appropriate for me to offer GHI yet, or maybe ever.
It’s exhausting, but it’s also relevant, necessary, and worth it.
 
I have got one hell of a skewed view of what is and is not okay to want from/with other people. Like, it’s pretty messed up and I’ve got a lot of… sorting out… to do on that particular front. Worth it to look back on the exercises I did during my life-coaching sessions and try to move further in this regard.
 
I can’t actually “open up and be receptive” to something that isn’t there. It takes two to tango (or whatever it is I’m trying to do with someone) and if words and actions aren’t matching up, I need to look at the actions and re-adjust (a) expectations, but more to the point (b) availability/openness accordingly.
 
The tarot study that I did right along-side this project? I have a bad tendency to read cards in ways that (a) give me news I don’t want to hear, but – at the same time – conveeeeeniently also line up with the meta-narratives that tell me I will be punished for wanting things or that I’m never going to get what I want. Easy example: I tend to read the 6 of Cups as “wishful thinking” or “you need to get a reality check” rather than the equally likely “get it, girl / claim what’s yours” or “you are surrounded by blessings / opportunities for play and ease” reads.
Opening myself to new possibilities means making space in my head for those possibilities to be options. I think my next step here is to do a “best case scenario” reading alongside my default read of any given spread. Doesn’t mean that the best case will happen, and I hope I won’t end up wishful-thinking my way through stuff I might be better off facing head-on, but… it can’t hurt to try this, right? Right.
 
 
Where Do We Go From Here?
 
My Queen of Cups project is going to continue. I’m far enough in that I can see that more needs doing (I can even see what some small parts of it are!), so… onwards we go.
It’ll probably inform how I work through the exercises in Miss Sugar’s new book, Glamour Magic, which I’m quite enjoying reading already.
 
Wish me luck, kittens.
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

New Year New You 2016 (and 17…): Week 21 – Dressing For Your Future

I’m doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation (again) because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. You should try it!

Instructions: “What do you see yourself doing in your picture of success? What are you wearing? What are you eating? What are you drinking? Where are you going for fun and for business? What do you smell like?Start doing those things!”
 
Tarot Card: The Magician, for sure, given all the associations with being able to call things into being (and also, a little bit, the stage-magic version where you can weave illusions as needed), but maybe also The Mirror (the “reflection” aspect of the Hanged Man).
Drawing on the work of a few Little Red Tarot contributors, Cassandra Snow says, of the Magician:

“The Magician represents being able to use the skills and resources at your disposal to create change in your life and the world at large. Delving a little deeper, this card also indicates creating through the law of attraction the life you desire.”

Likewise, Beth says of The Mirror:

“The Mirror asks us to surrender our will and be led by our deeper, more mysterious urges. This is a journey of self-discovery, with the mirror reflecting our inner selves.”

I think the High Priestess (this version touches so hard on my own understanding of my Whale Heart, you guys…) bridges the two quite nicely – being as she’s the one capable of traveling between those “deeper, more mysterious” parts of ourselves and the part of us that can interact with, and thus effect change in, the wider world – so maybe I’ll throw her in here as well.
 
ANYWAY. This prompt is… a weird one, given my Queen of Cups goals.
How does one dress to be more receptive? How does one dress to be vulnerable (open, willing, curious) but well-boundaried (protected, not being stupid about this).
I mean, my personal style has been pretty dialed in for years now (strictly speaking, it’s been dialed in since the 9th grade, it was just a matter of figuring out how to do it and pull it off), so I’m not going to kid myself about doing a complete overhaul now that I’m way closer to forty than twenty. As such, my approach to this is going to be more about tweaking things than about radically changing things up.
 
When I think about “dressing receptively”, what comes to mind are:
Negligees and possibly other soft, touchable things (diaphanous stuff, velvet stuff, stuff that invites touch, stuff that – important! – feels good against my skin, stuff that’s easy to undo)
AND
Hand-me-downs (e.g.: I’m wearing a skirt that I think used to be my mother’s, and a grey-and-black striped cowl-neck tunic that used to belong to a friend, and me being able to wear these items and make them mine involved an act of receiving, but also a willingness to be curious and opening to seeing what was in this or that bag of cast-off clothes, so)
 
But when I think about how I dress, and how I dress-in-my-day-dreams (see “personal style” link, above), my clothes fall into one of two camps:
EITHER
Yummy Mommy – full (circle/A-line) skirts, cropped cardigans, cleavage, hair flowers, up-dos, lipstick, and the strong potential for aprons if I’m at home
AKA
Earth Mama – cotton maxi skirts/dresses, messy braids, sandals, crystals, halter/cowl-neck tops, shawls, and probably an arm-load of fresh produce
OR ELSE
Office Domme – leather pencil skirts, ankle boots (with heels), pinstripes, intense accent colours (and lipstick), leopard print, fitted tops (not corsetry at all, but stuff with really good shaping), partial up-dos, and cropped jackets
AKA
Grown-Up Goth – leather jackets, black and grey palate, stripes and solids, loose hair, various boots, thigh-high socks (with visible skin), short skirts (or, sometimes, very long skirts), unfinished hems and other “ratty” details, eye-liner crayon, dangly metal earrings often featuring chains, spikes, or other hardware
 
And the thing about these is that… none of them are particularly “receptive”.
 
The first two are very approachable, very giving, they both hint at endless wells of abundance and available care. Which is great. I like projecting that image. It lets me come across as a Queer Auntie rather than Gay Mrs Robinson. It lets me be non-threatening in my hugeness. But they also carry with them (I think) a significant amount of “I got this, I will take care of you”.
 
The second two are… not very approachable at all. Like, they might send the message of “do what I say” and so, maybe, by extension, “give me what I want”… But they’re both kind of aggressive and a little bit (maybe more than a little bit) armored. The image (I like to think) they project is one of competence, hard edges, and “don’t mess with me”. They don’t exactly say “offer me consensual affection and/or gifts” (although they might, just occasionally, say “offer me tribute”).
 
So… Dressing receptively is… not something I’m actually doing. Nor is it something I know how to do.
I’m open to suggestions here, folks. O.O
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

New Year New You 2016 (…and 17): Week 20 – Hearth Appreciation

I’m doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation (again) because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. You should try it!
 
Instructions: Do something nice for your home.
 
Tarot Card: The ten of earth, obviously. (This is one of my favourite cards in the Wildwood deck. It’s one of the ones that made me decided to get it, and it bears a certain resemblance to the “home base” of my psychic hearth, which doesn’t hurt).
 
So. This prompt. What Miss Sugar says about how it’s hard to keep all the chainsaws in the air? She’s right. And I can SO relate to the feelings of frustration, overwhelm, and unraveling that come with having a home whose mess has gone beyond my capacity to know where to even start.
I’ve spent a lot of the last year-and-a-bit doing the money-hustle (which has been going better over the past four months than most of the time previous there-to – so yay) BUT, no surprise, it’s meant that I’ve had a lot less time available to do hearth-tending than I typically like.
This past week, though, and the one coming have been blessed (uh… ish…) with less paid work than usual, meaning: yeah, less money, which is a problem, but also: MOAR TIME! I’ve been able to get out and work on my freaking poetry manuscript (thank you, gods!) AND I’ve been able to do some cleaning (beyond dishes) and canning (at all), which has me feeling a whole lot better. I’ve even managed to light my altars for the first time in MONTHS (bad pagan…) which, I gotta say, is SUCH a relief.
 
Tonight I’m cleaning my counter (dishes + a solid wipe-down of surfaces), prepping the first bunch of tomatoes for canning, lighting my altars again, and putting a bouquet of flowering apple mint out for the Ladies, because… I owe them some attention, frankly.
 
Anyway. Time to get on that. ❤
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

New Year New You 2016 (…and 17): Week 19 – Concrete Things

I’m doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation (again) because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. You should try it!
 
It’s been a little over eight months. I never, strictly speaking, finished my 2016 New Year New You practice, my Queen of Cups Project remains on-going. None the less, and even though a project like this is more likely to last years than to be easily wrapped up in one turn of the seasons, I still feel a bit like I’ve left a loose end flapping.
So here we are.
It’s been a whirl-wind of an almost-year. Body Time, to link back to the last post I made about this project, remains a work-in-progress BUT I keep getting better at it. I’ve pushed through tears and overwhelm and… actually been able to engage my body and FEEL THINGS, physically speaking, that I’ve been having trouble with for years. So that’s a big plus. 😀 Got a better handle (ish) on where my boundaries are and what I can do to feel like I’m taking care of myself, staying in control of a situation (not “driving off a cliff”, so to speak), and not just willfully setting myself up to get hurt.
Go me. 🙂
 
Instructions: This week’s prompt, over-due as it is, asks what (concrete) thing I can do to make my life better.
 
Tarot Card: I’m inclined to lean towards the six of fire, partly for its success connotations, for the boost of a (relatively) easy win, but mostly for its sense of abundance.
 
See, what I’m doing this week – this weekend, as it happens – is putting up 40 lbs of tomatoes for the winter. I’m just doing crushed tomatoes this year, nothing fancy, though I miiiiiight throw in some winter savoury from the garden (passion, sensuality, and sex, if you were wondering) and minced garlic (hella protection + more passionate, sexual stuff… I’m noticing a theme here). Assuming I boil off 10lbs worth of water, this should net me a little over 18 pints of crushed tomatoes, though it might be more than that. I admit, I hope so. The closer I can get this to $1/pint, the better. 😉
Canning tomatoes won’t change my life. I’ve done it too many years in a row for this to be earth-shaking. But it will make my life easier and happier in concrete ways – both right now (I like canning – shocking, I know), and over the next 12 months or so when a couple of days worth of effort (thank the gods for my food processor…) back in September will make the vegetables portion of our meals that much easier.
So that’s what I’m doing.
Wish me luck!
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.