So. Full disclosure. I received an ARC on the expectation that I’d give an honest review of Deborah Castellano’s Magic for Troubled Times, AND I’ve been following Deb’s work for 20 years. She’s the Ms Sugar whose New Year, New You blog challenge of yore continues to be a go-to for me any time I need to kick my own ass. So it’s safe to say I was expecting great things when I opened up my eBook and got reading.
More accurately, what I was expecting was a book-length version of the “failure” chapter in her previous book, Glamour Magic. Something that recognized with warmth and sardonic humour that failure is always an option, and then gave you the kick in the pants you needed to take action rather than wallowing in self pity.
That’s not what this is.
The warmth, the sardonic humour, and the Grind ‘Til You Own It are still there. But the magic presented is shadow work (not as sexy as it sounds) and refuge work. It’s creating your own sanctuary, making allies by showing you’re serious, and spinning the thread that will lead you out of your personal labyrinth.
Magic for Troubled Times is a book to help you find your way through your own personal underworld (and maybe make things a little easier on yourself while you’re stuck there).
Deb shows you how to ground when the ground under your feet is shaking, and how to shield when your rights are under attack, with stops along the way to talk about doing money magic (because so many people’s Troubled Times involve job losses, health crises, and unexpected bills) and literally hexing the patriarchy to create social change at will.
Having done my initial read-through, I’m looking forward to digging more deeply into the rituals and practices she suggests, joining the associated Workbook group, and seeing what magic I can cook up to help improve my general life situation.
I chose this because, yeah, its root meaning is “long term material security” (and because the lack-there-of stresses me out). But also because I’m forty-two, rent in my city has literally doubled in the past five or so years, and I’m scared to death of Never Being Able To Retire. If I have a beyond-this-project long term goal, it’s To Have A Home that my loved ones and I (a) can’t be renovicted out of, and (b) can happily and comfortably share (this may mean multiple small units on a large, super rural property… I don’t know yet).
I talked a little in my Week Nine post about how I can’t hit what I don’t acknowledge I’m aiming for, and about how feeling stuck between multiple people’s wants and needs is making it hard for me to really focus on a long term goal. I pulled three oracle cards at High Summer, two days before I interviewed for yet another job for which I was a good fit and super qualified, and three days before I – yet again – didn’t land the job.
What I pulled boiled down to “TRUST US. We have a PLAN. You’ll see where it’s going in a minute, just stay the course and you’ll get there.”
Which: Okay? I guess?
But I’m also over here having exactly the same trouble I have with more mundane, human situations which is: If I don’t know what The Plan is… I will simultaneously freeze right the hell up AND run around in circles like Chicken Little, frantically and ineffectively trying to manage every outcome (mostly by trying to hold still and not get noticed which… doesn’t help thing, I do realize).
I was saying to my friends, over on Ye Olde LJ (DW, but regardless: Yes, really), how landing this job – or any third job that was 100% remote (and therefore 100% portable) and paid the same wage for the same number of hours – would let me start shunting money into a house down-payment fund (which: It wouldn’t be much, relative to local housing prices, even if I worked at it for 10 years. But it would be something) and maybe start throwing cash into an RRSP, too.
I don’t regret leaving my previous third job. It was stressful enough to be messing with my health, and having to negotiate about vacation time (not even vacation pay, just time away) with somebody who didn’t know about, and wouldn’t have approved of, my Family Situation was… not something that I wanted to stay in, either.
And don’t get me wrong. I’m loving having two days per work week where I can spend all day working on a novel (which: I am working on a novel, y’all), along with doing the occasional rack of dishes and running errands without having to fret about how many hours they require me to be away from doing paid work.
But.
But. I sure do miss the extra cash. And I sure did think I’d have found something to mostly, if not entirely, replace that cash source by now.
So I’m feeling a little discouraged.
I think this is one of those situations where I’m thinking about “What can I realistically get” rather than “What do I actually want”. Because what I actually want is for my cost of living (but not my quality of life) to drop substantially, and for my 20-25 hours of already-secured work per week to pay me better so that the money I’m making already will let me secure all the things I want to secure – writing time that doesn’t interfere with family time (much), a house that is ours free-and-clear, a retirement fund, an adventure fund and the free time to put it to use, and being able to pick up whatever we want at the grocery store, and whatever we want (within reason, and potentially with some budgeting, but still) at the department store that is online shopping.
To drag my narrative back to Week Ten’s subject matter… It’s less that I’m afraid of getting what I want, and more afraid of having wanted, and then gotten, the “wrong thing”.
None the less. I’ve said it multipletimes before: What keeps me going is success. Every time I write a thousand words, I feel more confident about writing the next thousand words. Having a map for a story helps me get through those chunks and feel like I can keep going.
Every time I get a job interview, I feel a little less stupid for bothering to try, even if every tie I don’t get the latest job I’ve interviewed for… I get discouraged. At least I know I’ve got the experience to get people’s attention. Which is still something.
I’ll need to spend some time looking at want adds tomorrow morning, but right now I’m going to take a couple of hours and work on my next thousand words. I’ll talk more about that when it’s time for me to do the write-up for Week Thirteen: Sacrifice. But for now, I’ve got another scene to write.
This card feel appropriate for its “pause and reflect” characteristics – I’ve literally heard it described as the “interim report card” of the deck – and also because this Project is based in the suit of Earth. I know this card best as “Patience”, from the Osho Zen deck, where it stands, just before the second “plateau” card of the suit of earth, as a reminder that Things Take Time, and only slightly less well as “Healing” in the Wildwood deck, where it’s a call for rest and pause. It’s a very (g)Lammas card for those reasons. But it’s also a card about sowing and cultivating – as Oliver Pickle writes in She Is Sitting in the Night – and about results that come from labour and putting in the work.
I harvested rhubarb from my garden for the first time since we moved here, three Beltanes ago. It took three years, and annual top-ups with manure and compost-heavy top soil, for the sand-and-gravel of my front yard to become something that will let a deep-rooted plant like rhubarb thrive. My irises bloomed for the first time since we got here, too. The seven sisters roses are more covered in flowers than ever. My recently transplanted raspberries, from a neighbour, are rooting successfully and putting out new growth. It’s so good to see them thriving. Later today, I’ll be making peony soul cakes – for offerings and for a midsummer barbecue we’ve been invited to, down by the river – using petals from the peonies in our yard. All of this is wonderful, but it didn’t happen by accident.
I wanted my garden to thrive, so I put in the work and the time and, frankly, the money, to help it do so.
Which brings me to my reflections about where I’m at with my King of Coins Project goals.
I’ve said this multiple times, over years and years of writing this blog. I can’t effectively aim my Will if I don’t know what I want to hit.
There was a point, back in mid-May, where I talked to my Godself about the things that needed to happen in order for my household to be able to thrive. And very shortly thereafter, things started Coming Up that were pointing me in the direction of what I’d said needed to happen. And yet, at the same time, I started digging my heals in because there’s more than two people worth of needs in my household, and I was feeling noticeably trapped (between sets of wants/needs) and resentful about the extra costs associated with prioritizing one set of needs and wants over all the others.
And, big surprise, I have landed zero of the jobs that flooded my way at that time.
Oof. One of the other things that the Seven of Pentacles relates to is a fear of failure, a fear of making the wrong choice. And I have that fear is spades, let me tell you.
It’s definitely stopping me from “picking a direction” because I don’t want to find out, in the long or short run, that it was the wrong one.
At the same time, the Seven of Pentacles is an opportunity to both (a) celebrate your achievements, and (b) make changes and tweaks to one’s long-term plans.
First and foremost: I’m out of debt. It’s potentially going to be a bit of a battle to stay that way, but I accepted the help I was offered, and I’m no-longer throwing hundreds of dollars at a credit card bill that seems unending. I have automatic payments set up to (a) make sure my monthly automatic charges – patreon and some charity donations – are paid off, (b) to add a tiny bit to my savings fund every week, and (c) to put towards my 2022 income taxes, when that bill comes due next Beltane. So I’m feeling good about that.
I have definitely ridden the hedonic escalator up a few steps. I don’t generally feel like I’m going to be punished for buying new clothes, and I’ve invested in some Nice Items (like an Actually Leather day-to-day-use handbag, and a bunch of flowing, light-but layerable 100% cotton dresses) that should serve me well for years and years to come. Needing to scale back the consumerism, when I quit my Very Stressful Job just before Imbolg, was An Adjustment. But it’s worked out and the thing I spend the most money on, tbh, is “emergency preparedness food” (couscous, orzo, green lentils and mung beans for sprouting, tinned and home-pressure-canned beans, vaccuum-sealed dry sausage that can be stored at room temperature until it’s opened, and then eaten fairly quickly, crackers, peanut butter, nuts and dried fruit, that kind of thing) in case there are more power outages in our near-future.
I’m not sure about “changing my baseline”. I did feel “weirdly exposed” when I made that final payment on my credit card and saw it balance out to zero. I did have to majorly fight myself on “I can buy so many things!!!” (Which doesn’t mean I didn’t buy “so many” things – I did. I just paid cash for them, and bought them over multiple weeks instead of just a couple of days. And, yeah, that emergency flashlight/charger and a bidet widget for our bathroom were among them). Still. The thing I was afraid would happen if I “let” myself be free of debt… happened.
And it wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t a Terrible Situation with No Way Out where I ended up “right back where I started”. And it wasn’t even very long-lived. It was a managable, and managed, situation where I equipped my house a little better for a particular kind of Bad Situation and gave myself presents that I’ve been wanting for years (a rhodochrosite ring to complete my Bi Pride ring collection; a black felted hat with a broad brim – yes, I DO feel very American Horror Story when I wear it, sorry not sorry; a book about Feri witchcraft), and then I chilled the heck out and went back to reading library books and doing home-canning.
Have I “raised my baseline”? TBH, I don’t think so. Doing that requires (A) a third remote job (or a massive raise from both my current employers – unlikely but maybe?), and (B) the opportunity to save up for a house down-payment, rather than having to pour all that extra money into rent. But I spent a year living with “owning a house” as a distant, but at least possible, dream, and I would like to have that again.
As far as changes and tweaks go:
I have my name in for another possible third job. One that would require more hours than I want to give over to working-for-others, including some weekend hours that I’m absolutely not thrilled about, but that I’m eminently qualified to do and would be good at. And I kind of think I need to take a moment today – because it’s Solstice, and it’s a good time to do this – to sort out what I actually want. What my Ideal Situation is and how to work my will so that it happens.
Six months ago, at Winter Solstice, I put a handful of squash seeds on my tiny desk altar. I think it’s time (past time – would have been better at the new moon, three weeks ago) to collect half a dozen of them, and charge them with goals.
·New, possibly short-term, upstairs neighbours who are clean, quiet AND away a lot of the time
·A new third remote job with good, ultra-flexible hours, a fun task list, and better-than-current-expectations pay, plus raises at my other two jobs
·A publisher for my still-on-sub chapbook
·Great sex + a happy, loving polycule
·A growing bank account and savings funds including a down-payment fund
·A spacious, tidy, very affordable home with native fruit trees growing all around the edges of the yard and enough time, energy, and focus to both tend and harvest said yard as needed
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!
This project is tied to the suit of earth. And this prompt, combined with… some stuff that’s going on right now… definitely has me thinking about debts vs redistribution and other related Very Loaded Topics.
I had a visit to my Luxury Astra Sea Cave and talked to my Godself about… steps that need to happen and things that need to be in place before I can Do A Thing that would make my wife a lot happier in a way that can make me a lot happier, too.
And things started happening.
And, like the weirdo (this is not actually that weird, but you’d think I’d be less freaky-deaky about it by now) that I am, I’m digging my heals in, hesitating like heck, and basically going “Wait, wait, wait… is this really a good idea??”
And… it’s not NOT a good idea. It’s what I said I wanted.
(And, yeah, it’s not the only thing I want. Maybe I need to fine tune things or something).
But being offered TWO ways to achieve Goal #1 of this project MUCH faster… on the same day??
When my Girls move, they move.
O.O
But it does mean that I’m kind of hung up on thoughts of “owing” and “being beholden”. Somebody offered to help me. Somebody offered to help me. I didn’t even have to ask.
And I’m super uncomfortable with the thought of saying Yes – because I don’t want the potential scrutiny that I might be signing up for by doing so- AND kind of kicking myself for wanting to say No? Like… “uncomfortable” is still not “pissing hundreds of dollars into the debt hole every month for another year”.
The six of pentacles is basically about wealth disparities. In some cases, the focus is on sharing, “each according to ability and need”. For example, the Next World Tarot calls this card “Redistribution”. In other cases, not so much. In the Wildwood deck the 6 of Stones is “Exploitation”. The Osho Zen deck interprets this card as “compromise” and it’s about meeting everyone’s needs even if nobody gets everything they want. But mostly they seem to lean towards mutual aid. The Simple Tarot literally calls it “Giving and Receiving Financial Prosperity” and codes it as generosity.
Basically, I’ve spent most of the past week whinging and Having A Lot Of Feelings about accepting financial help – and, don’t get me wrong, it would HELP – from someone whose love-language is gifts, but whose gifts can come with strings or other uncomfortable things.
But boundaries are a thing, and a thing that I’ve been practicing, so…
So. I guess this is my call to be less of a prideful bitch, and say yes to the help that’s been offered?
<*squirms*>
Okay.
I did the thing.
We’ll see if the offer’s still open, but I did the thing.
Will be following up on the job – because the other Thing That Happened was I got a job interview – in a few days, if I haven’t heard from them yet. Hopefully I get it, and can continue, full steam ahead, to get Goal #1 locked down.
So I got back from visiting my girlfriend just a few days before the full moon in Scorpio. Beltane’s this coming weekend. It’s – yet again – That Time of Year.
I mean, “that time of year” happens multiple times, so do as you Will, but:
I spent this morning doing Actual Laundry (towels and other non-sheet household linens) + putting clean clothes away, an energetic sweep of my house (dragon’s blood incense), and some sigil magic. Plus a light-weight offering of boiled water (per long-ago request) and a cup of orange pekoe tea[1]. My windows are open to change out the air – and because I’ve got a friend coming over – and it feels pretty good in my house right now.
The plan is to do a Magical Scrubbing Bubbles later this afternoon, as well as to hit the grocery store for a few odds and sods. One of my wife’s partners may or may not be coming over for dinner, so it’ll be a full and pleasantly social day.
Anyway. The whole point of posting about this is to make a bit of a note about charging things magically.
Basically… charging something (if you use the “sustain” rather than “destroy” method of charging a thing) is telling it how you’re going to feed it going forward. So if you’re putting a sigil on your laptop to help you hit your writing and editing deadlines, you might want to charge it off your laptop’s motor. Or your car’s engine, if you’re doing a safety-while-driving ward. If you want to draw things into yourself, use your own spit (provided it’s charm that’s safe to lick – don’t do this with anything made of malachite, for example) both because it’s YOURS and because it comes from an orifice that is specifically designed to bring things into your body for the purpose of sustenance and growth.
I use my own breath a lot. Partly because it’s effective – words are how I’ve done magic since before I really knew how to do magic – and partly because a fair chunk of the magic I do is about either communication (job stuff where I do social media, creative writing with an eye to getting a publisher, etc) OR it’s about some variation on the theme of Boundaries, and the suit of air covers both so charging with breath is… “thematically consistent” with my intentions.
Anyway. I’m off to get the rest of my day finished.
TTFN,
Ms Syren.
[1] Because most of my ancestors like it – though not all, as was made clear today. I’m now on the hook for a very sweet vidal/muscat if I can’t find plum wine which… not likely. It’s never been A Thing up hear. So vidal/muscat should do the trick. Still not sure what my paternal grandmother wanted. She might like the chocolate hazelnut tea, or something a little fancier maybe? But she might also want coffee? Unsure…
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!
But also I’m at a point where I’m counting days to when I’m finished my ONLY leaving-the-house-required job and I kind of feel like I’m at a pause-and-evaluate point when it comes to how I present myself.
Also: Look. We’re closing in on two years of Global Pandemic, friends, and I just shaved my legs (badly) for the first time in months. It’s possible this prompt has come up at a really good time.
The Lady of the Lake is Not To Be Trifled With
I’d figured out by April 2020 that, oh, hey, I would do well to have a wardrobe filled with one-and-done dresses, long flowing cardigans and shawls, and ankle-length skirts, because it turns out I like wearing a nightgown all the time, but also that if I actually do that I end up feeling terrible and like I’m not getting anything done, even if I’ve been working all day.
So I’ve used some of this past year of unprecedented income (and stress levels) to get myself a few light-weight, 100% cotton summer dresses that I can (and do) throw on over maxi skirts (most of-which I’ve made myself, using solid colour, cotton bed sheets for fabric) when I want to feel warm, comfortable, and vaguely medieval all at the same time.
I’m glad I did, and I’m glad that I can use them, essentially, as patterns for future dresses that I can DIY. I’m glad that most – soon to be all – of my jobs are the kind that I do from home so I don’t have to worry about being On or presenting myself in ways that require me to look more Office Drone than I want to.
However, the other side of this particularly excellent leaf is… less ideal. Yes, seeing my boss once a week on zoom – and, as such, looking Professional just by adding earrings and mascara to the outfit (dress) that I’ve been wearing for three days straight – is easy. But I wouldn’t say it’s glamourous. It’s not exactly something that makes me Fascinating to the people I want to impress and/or connect with, even if it is a tactic I’m taking specifically to make myself look like a member of “us” within the context of my various work cultures.
Much like it’s hard(er) to demonstrate to one’s Godself that one is ready to Let New Things In by deliberately going somewhere you haven’t been before, or experiencing something deliberately unfamiliar, while you – and the rest of the planet – are kind of avoiding leaving the house unless you absolutely need to, it’s hard(er) to invoke or embody one’s personal Fascinatingness while on day I’ve-Stopped-Counting of staying indoors unless you’ve run out of milk.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t do it.
I give my partners matchy-matchy jewelry and, sometimes, clothing as a way of saying “we are part of the same group”, an act which is cutesy and maybe silly, but which fills me with delight – and which I didn’t think was an “attachment thing” until my girlfriend pointed out that “When your attachment needs are getting met, they aren’t a source of anxiety, they’re a source of joy and delight”.
When my wife and I had our anniversary dinner, we both made a point of getting dressed up in order to make our dining room table experience a special one.
I put my Crown Of Light on before I go on a zoom call, or to the grocery store.
When I gave my six weeks notice at my soon-to-be-former job, I wore big, chunky black pearl earrings to remind myself that I’m dangerous and powerful – because pearls and shells are my “office-friendly shorthand” for wearing bones and teeth, a subversive note to myself (if nobody else) that my most divine self is a deep sea predator.
And I can push those elements harder. I can wear more home-made clothes to the nieghbourhood grocery store where one of the staff chats me up about hand-sewing, and charge it up with the same kind of generalized “like me and give me things I want” glamour that I have on the rosequartz I carry in my wallet. I can enchant my matchy-matchy jewelry – my very Venusian pink tourmaline and pearls, in particular – for love and connection. I can enchant some of my Very Conservative Looking pearl necklaces and earrings with Big Domme Energy or with some kind of direct link to my Godself. And all of that is great. Let’s do it.
But:
How can I use glamour to game the odds in terms of getting my King of Coins goals met, particularly in light of my impending job change?
My goals – along with finding gainful employment in 2021 (success!) – included Getting Out of Debt (I’m just over half way there) and changing up my Expectations so that I (a) got used to having Nice Things, and (b) wouldn’t feel weirdly exposed once my debt was paid off.
TBH, just shunting money into saving funds has gone at least some of the way towards managing any “money crazies” that might crop up, but we’ll see how that goes over the next few months as my debt continues to shrink AND I’m in a situation where I have less disposable income than I had during 2021.
I think my best bet, in terms of straight up glamour magic, include things like:
Enchanting the contents of my closet so that I feel excited (and exciting) when I’m wearing the pieces I already have (rather than wanting to go shopping all the time)
AND
Making a point of “shopping” in my closet, and using my fabric and yarn stashes (still plentiful) to make myself new items if I do want to add something new (most likely a slip and maybe a light weight, knee-length bath robe, tbh) to my collection.
Beyond that… Beyond that, I have to ask myself what is my kind of glamourousright now?
Because, between the winter just being cold and my tendency to lean towards the “dark mori” end of the Witchy Goth spectrum, it’s “nazgul but make it fashion”, and I’m not sure what message I’m sending with that vibe[1].
I kinda want to lean into it though. >.>
Cheers,
Ms Syren.
[1] No, but seriously. I am giving off “Vaguely Romano-Celtic Nobility” vibes? “Dramatic and Artsy yet Approachable”? Or do I look like a walking laundry heap? Send tweet.
I’m (once again, still) 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!
Tarot Card: This is a toss-up between Home and New Vision, but in the end I went with the former, for reasons that will become apparently shortly.
“Home” the Wildwood Tarot’s Ten of Stones: A traditional roundhouse with a deep, thatched roof, its doorway flanked by tall, carved stones, and a mature tree growing through the roof as central post, is seen through a stone archway.
It’s well-known that I’m a home-body. I call myself a kitchen witch for a reason, and I’m enough of an introvert that, after nearly two years of extremely limited socializing, I’m… fine, actually. Most of my Places of Ritual Significance – with the exception of a night club that I haven’t been to in decades but of-which I hold a lot of fond memories, a kink party that doesn’t happen anymore, and a few spots in DC – are literally inside my house. The slow, wonder-inducing walks that I take through local nature preserves are… mostly within 10 minutes walk of my front door. The river is down the street. Holy ground is right here, under my feet.
This absolutely fits with How I Do, and I kind of want for literally everyone to have that experience of deep magic and aliveness in the microbioregions that are their respective neighbourhoods. But it means that any situation where I’m magically Making Changes in my life (which: I am also a creature of habit who is scared of change, so) includes the stumbling point of “I also have to Do Something New” on purpose in order to show that I’m for-real game for those changes to happen.
I’ve been reading Lyandra Lynn Haupt’s Rooted – which I do recommend if you want to read some easy-to-follow ecophilosophy, it’s lovely – and what I read last Saturday morning, while drinking my reheated coffee, exhorted her readers to wander in a way that didn’t follow their usual routes around areas that they know.
So, between that and the snow and my stiff neck, I decided that I should get myself out for a walk.
I opted to head north-east to the little woodland nearby that – barring the couple of residential streets that cut through it – runs roughly between a small creek and a big park with a baseball diamond, across 3-4 city blocks.
The snow came down heavier. I saw what I thought were three crows, but which were actually two crows and a raven (which explained why the crows were so shouty about the whole thing). I admit, I made a “clock-clock-clock” approximation of a raven sound, at which point the crows headed further back towards the river and let the raven get on with their life.
I kept going north-northeast, rather than turning onto more familiar trails that would have led me down to the creek, watching my footing on the snow-slick, frost-hard, uneven ground, and noticing the beech trees (one of the few I can reliably pick out on bark alone). The little wood is full of foot bridges – which tells me how wet this place must be during melt season – and I crossed a bunch of them. Eventually I popped out on the other side of the wood (ha – and, as I type this, Madonna sings out “I made it through the wilderness” on my playlist…), still in familiar territory, just a part I’m not in that often. I headed home by a different road, and heard a familiar pip-pip. I looked around, and spotted the petal-red flash of feathers, a cardinal – probably in his first Winter – learning to fly, and navigate, through falling snow. Not a struggle, exactly, though it didn’t look easy. Definitely a learning process.
The red of his feathers made me think of the red of willow roots – red as paint – in the water of the nearby creek, all of a season ago.
I cam home, made hot chocolate, and pulled tarot cards for the New Moon.
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.
This is one of the reasons I opted for “Home” as my card for this prompt. Because the Ten of Disks fell out of my deck when I asked “Okay, then what?” after initially pulling The Tower. This is one of my “Everything will be okay” cards. Like Angler Fish June Cleaver, or my gods and ancestors, were just like “Relax. We know that your anxious as heck about this big change you’re about to make minus the safety net you initially thought you might get. But you’re not going to starve. You’re not going to lose your house. There’s going to be some struggle, but you’ll get the hang of your new normal, the way you always do, and everything will be okay.”
It made me think of the raven as a reminder of “You have back-up”. It reminded me of the cardinal, red as flame amid all that white, getting the hang of a reality that’s new, but for-which he wasn’t unequipped.
I admit, I want to skip the struggle. (Don’t we all). I want to skip the bit where things fall apart. At the same time, I think “things fall apart”, in this scenario, is the bit I’m in right now. The concluding that it’s time to leave. The awkward (hopefully not that awkward) part between handing in my notice and actually being done. The part where I try to tie up all the loose ends and, hopefully, don’t have to train my replacement before I go.
It’s possible that the Ten of Earth, the “what happens after” card, is literally “and then you’ll be home” – working from home, entirely – but I hope it means that everything will be okay, too.
I’m (once again, still) 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!
Specifically, the one from Thea’s Tarot as interpreted by Oliver Pickle: Someone who is “able to focus and achieve [her] goals, create art […] the Magician signifies your awareness of, or ability to, access this power.”
Okay. This post brings me up to date.
A year ago I spent November writing 10 porn stories for Nanowrimo, and offering that time, energy, focus, and dedication to June, my Little Helpers, and anyone else who cared to lend a hand in finding me a source of income to replace the mat-leave contract that was going to be ending five months later.
It worked.
It worked so fast, and so well, that my annual income essentially doubled in the course of a couple of months.
Which is awesome.
And… me being me, I also took the first job I was offered, despite having a resume in for The Perfect Job (which… I also got, and also took), and despite going in with no experience on half of the required tasks.
Fast forward to now. I’ve been in that job for almost a year and I have not stopped hating it since I started. Over the summer, around the point where I was still working entirely from home but had more-or-less got the hang of the day-to-day basics, I had this thought that “Maybe I could just stay?”
And that’s part of why I put things off (see Week Three) for as long as I did.
I like having disposable income.
I like watching my debt go down (albeit more slowly than I’d planned), while watching my savings go up, while watching my mailbox fill up with all the new books, clothes, jewelry, and housewares I’ve been buying (with cash) now that I have money to do it with.
But September came, and I started working in the office one day per week, and… I have concluded that, while the stuff that was giving me nightmares, acid reflux, and occasional actual panic was… mostly, usually, under control, that I still don’t like the work, don’t like being closeted (it’s a conservative workplace and, while they know I’m a dyke, I don’t want to experiment with how they’re going to feel about having a hired a polyamourous witch), and don’t like working in-person, especially since I want to (eventually) be able to travel without having to negotiate time off.
So, in October, I got the ball rolling on my Exit Strategy and, finally, when the waxing moon was solidly Taurus on the 17th, and I had the house to myself for the evening, I did some magic to back it up.
I’m not doing Nanowrimo this year. Not pouring hours of each day into scribbling stories. But I AM doing another writing challenge with magical intent.
I started it the same day that I did the following ritual:
Drew myself a bath with basil (money), spicebush (luck), bay leaves (luck, money, creativity, and inspiration), allspice + cardamom (people saying good things about me) thrown in. Poured myself a big mug of mint-licorice tea (the stuff I’ve been using for close to two years for magical will-working), dolled myself up in shell beads and pearl drop earrings to encourage my ocean-soul/godself to do Her Thing, and to make it a special occasion.
I lit candles, cast my circle, climbed into the tub, did a little relevant iron pentacle work – Power comes to hand so much more easily than it did two years ago, Passion is still hard to catch, but is starting to show up tangibly, which is nice – and some lower chakra chanting.
And then I walked down the rainbow steps into my Luxury Astral Sea Cave and worked my will.
Between now and the Full Moon before Midwinter I will draft 32 new poems, rooted in this time and in this place, and offer that focus, dedication, time, and energy to my Godself, my Fetch, my Little Helpers, and any of my Gods and Ancestors who want to lend a hand, so that they can bring me new, reliable, desirable income doing 100% remote work that I’ll actually enjoy, with-which to replace the job I want to leave.
My plan is that, once I’ve got them all drafted, I’ll have enough “wood on the pile” to put together a new chapbook or two, too.
But what it’s for is finding me some new, reliable, and more fitting sources of income.
I’m (once again, still) 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!
And where I want to go next is: Ditching the lucrative (by my standards) but stressful and draining job that I do on Mondays and Tuesdays, in order to trade up for something more like what I do the rest of the week: relatively low-stress, fairly easy work that pays well and challenges me in ways that are fun rather than in ways that give me nightmares and make me want to cry.
About a month ago, I finally did Week Three.
Talk about putting something off!
But, when the opportunity turned up, I jumped on an opening-salvo from one of my other clients – “Do you have enough hours to do what we’re asking?” – and told them I’d love it if they could give me an additional 5 hours/wk so that I could move beyond the basics and not have to make trade-offs during busy periods.
I was upfront about what else that five hours would get me / require of me (AKA: quitting the job I don’t like) and the kind of timeline I’d prefer, which would give them the time to budget for it appropriately, if it was an option, and my boss – who doesn’t control the budget, but still – said that she’d bring it up with the people who could potentially make that happen.
I also got in touch with a contact – a friend of said client-community – who was looking for work like the kind of work I want to stop doing. I asked if she’d be open to part-time, and she was interested and asked me to keep her posted.
So: I Did The Thing, a thing that makes me nervous (telling an employer that I want something) and another thing that makes me nervous (contacting a stranger, whilst having an Ulterior Motive), and I got good preliminary results from both.
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!
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?
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.
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”.
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).
Urban Meliad 