New Year New You 2016: Week Six – Maps (Wait, They Don’t Love You Like I Love You)

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: “[G]o some place that is sacred to you and to use the experience to guide you in your work[…]”
 
Tarot Card: Ten of Cups + Knight of Earth (specifically the one from my Osho Zen deck, called “Slowing Down“, though the Wildwood’s Knight of Stones has some personal relevance as well).
 
Thoughts:
So, it’s been over two months since I did the previous prompt for the NYNY Experiment. Put that down to trying to regain some equilibrium after waiting to see how the cards would fall out.
Ha. On that note: Trying to do tarot readings when you have exactly one thing on your mind? Is simultaneously devastatingly accurate (whether you like it or not), AND massively annoying because you can’t get information on anything else.
Eugh.
 
But I’m back!
 
So. Most of my sacred places are inside my home. They’re my kitchen, my altar, my garden, my couch and my tiny dining table (especially when I’ve got people over who I can feed). But I’ve been feeling weirdly (or maybe not-so-weridly, what with Winter’s Last Hurrah having hit but a few days ago[1]) stuck when inside my home of late, so I was hesitant to try and trance out while chopping beets in the kitchen (for example – though it works quite well with apples, as long as you don’t lop off a finger in the process). All that being said, I did keep my eyes and ears open to see what would pop up and… I got something. I wrote about it a little bit in my most recent lunar post, but the majority of this message came, not from my home-base, but from my extended leather family at Queering Power.
 
The message was: SLOW DOWN!
 
Not “slow down” in the frantic, you-are-about-to-drive-off-a-cliff sense of the word, but “Slow Down” in the sense of:
When you are Triggered (yes, I’m talking about PTSD), everything starts to rush.
When you’re drowning in shame, you run around like a chicken with your head cut off, trying to “justify your existence”, when you need no justification, you just need to BE.
When you are in that spiral of “I am Too Much” (too demanding, too slow, too needy, too big, too complicated… you name it), you tell yourself that you must rush through things for the benefit of someone else – don’t tell the whole story, don’t savour that meal, don’t sink into exactly as long as it takes you to get turned on, get into it, get off – instead of being really present, really authentic, really enjoying life’s pleasures.
When you are freaking out and trying to numb yourself, you rush through experiences without really experiencing them – eat a chocolate without even tasting it, skim a poem and feel frustrated by the (unfindable, in this state) meaning you didn’t give yourself time to catch.
When you are frantic, you make decisions that hurt people you care for, and also that hurt yourself (whether you are able to care for yourself in those moments or not).
 
So that’s the big one.
The thing is, it’s not the only one.
Possibly because all the Brene Brown I’ve been reading has been bringing home what Glamour is really about (not what I would have expected), and possibly because Glamour has been feeling kind of hard for me lately, I’ve caught myself thinking a lot about Miss Sugar’s Glamour Pop Quiz questions, particularly the one about What You Really, Really Want, and… what I really want, when I think about it – what this whole Queen of Cups project is supposed to allow me to access – is this. Nothing more, and nothing less, than the Happiness & Home embodied by the Ten of Cups.
 
When it first came to me, I sneared.
 
Really, Meliad? Happiness?? Is that all?
 
Shouldn’t I have been more ambitious? Isn’t wanting a steady, caring home, and a big, queer, chosen family to love and be loved by… isn’t that Not Much At All?
And then I thought: Am I greedy, to want so much? Is it too much to ask that my heart overflow with love and joy instead of sadness and yearning?
 
And then I had a dream.
I dreamed a house that was a weird combination of the house I once owned, a house I didn’t rent when I was in my 20s, the trailer-park home of a friend’s mom near Quebec City where I was made so welcome, the imagined architectural layout of The Cloud Club[2], my ex-partner’s apartment, and the second-floor walk-up of the Toronto friends who played host to me at the end of March and who have a huge, old, fruitful pear tree growing next to their balcony.
I dreamed this house, with the backyard I have now, and the neighbours I have now, except that the hella-gardening Vietnamese lady now looked suspiciously like Shine Louise Houston[3].
I dreamed this house with potted plants outside the balcony door, and garden ready to grow its next season of fruits and veggies. I dreamed my wife and I joking together while getting the balcony in shape. I dreamed C holed up in a messy nest of a room, healing and feeling safe and still part of my heart’s family. I dreamed a friend of my neighbour (she looked like Snow White, if Snow White had the kind of hips and ass normally associated with Fertility Goddesses and the kind of asymetrical bob currently associated with queers of a whole slew of genders) flirting with me, calling me “Hey femme,” and telling me she liked my legs.
I dreamed love and hope. I dreamed relationships that last. I dreamed joy in ordinary moments. I dreamed fruitfulness and abundance and having Enough, feeling Enough. Not Hungry. And not Overwhelming.
I woke up and knew that this was plenty “good enough” to be a Great Work. I woke up and knew it was not Too Much to ask.
 
~*~
 
So thats what my sacred spaces have had to tell me.
Onwards and upwards, campers!
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] Today, on the other hand, the sun is out, the snow is pretty-much GONE, the crocuses are blooming, and the leaves are starting to stretch and open up. My rhubarb survived the winter! (At least one did – we’ll see about the other two, which got planted waaaaaaaaay later and may not have got themselves established before the cold hit for real). So things are looking up. 🙂
 
[2] Where Amanda Palmer lives, fyi.
 
[3] Yes, the Shine who runs Pink and White Productions.

T is for Trance – Pagan Blog Project 2012

One thing I want to try doing – or doing more frequently – as I (try to) deepen my practice and connect more with ecstasy and [sacred sexuality] is to go into trance more often.
I admit, I’m not entirely sure why I want to do this.
Partly, I know, it’s that It Sounds Cool. As in: all the cool (experiential hedge-witch/spirit-worker) people are Doing It, so…
Yeah.
The other reason is because, in those situations where I’ve gone into trance, or gone into Energy-Aware Headspace (perhaps a more accurate term?), I’ve been able to pick up on the presence of People; the energetic/physical needs of the person(s) I’ve been with[1]; have been a better, more powerful singer; and been generally more aware of and able to interact with and alter/shift the flow of energy in the space, in the person’s body, or whatever.
And that, I think, is a good reason to want to get the hang of this, to be able to slip into that headspace – what I call trance but what might be better described as “energy-aware headspace”… or something – easily and quickly and reliably, rather than on a wing and a prayer and a whole lot of maybe, after an hour of trying to get myself there.
 
I recently picked up a book – Trance-Portation: Learning to Navigate the Inner World – which, going by the reviews it got and also by the table of contents, appears to be a good step-by-step introductory guide for the kind of stuff I’m looking to study and try. I’m hoping will have some Excercises that I can Do At Home (ideally safely, ideally without walking too far outside my own body… or going too deeply into my own oceans, as the case may be[2]) in order to start working on this in an active, practicing, and reasonably[4] regular way.
 
Anyway. That’s my plan for trance work and making an attempt to do it and get comfortable, maybe even good (decent? competant?) at it.
 
Wish me luck! 🙂
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] In a scene, during sex, when supporting/calming someone who’s in distress, while doing massage.
 
[2] I think my Inner World – at least a particular, slightly scary but (I suspect) very powerful, part of it – is down past the blue and into the black of ocean space. My monster lives there, if I go deep enough. I think my power lives there, too. Worth exploring, but I can’t help looking at it with a LOT of trepidation[3].
 
[3] What’s that thing from Joseph Campbell? “The place you’re scared to go, that’s where you need to go if you’re going to clame your power”? (Not actually a direct quote. Possibly an interpretation of something he said, though).
 
[4] At this point I don’t know what “reasonable” means, and I’m thinking it might be a cop-out word. At the same time, I don’t think it’s likely I’ll be doing trance work every day… Unless I should be? I don’t know. The plan is to read the book, do what excercises there are (or find/create some if there aren’t any in the book – suggestions welcome, folks), and see where that gets me. I can do it. I can do it. I can.

Bat(s), Dreams and Candle Magic (initial prep)

I have a tealight holder. It’s one of those black, dollar-store things that show up around Hallowe’en – in this case, shaped like a bat.
Yes, a bat.

Kind of like this, but on a long, narrow pedistal/stick stand instead of two little feet.

I picked it up in my early twenties when I was setting up my first (disasterous) apartment and was very much trying to do Gothic Miss Martha on a budget of $0.00. (There were a lot of fairy-lights and Pre-Raphaelite prints involved as well). I go back and forth as to whether or not I should get rid of it, and it’s landed in my “to the thrift store” bag on more than one occasion, only to be pulled out again for one reason or another.

Most recently (as in: this morning) I rescued it from my latest good-will bag because it occurred to me that, given my nervous interest in trying to get in touch with Big-B Bat (is this a date, or is this Just Coffee?), it might be an appropriate tool for doing so.

What I’ve done:
1) Lit up all my altars + lit candles on my two honey pots. (This is not strictly necessary, but it lets everyone else know I’m thinking of them – and, hey, feeding the honey pots is always a good idea, particularly when the Hustle is on and I’m also trying to write (another) steampunk-erotica story).

2) Cleaned up my bat-shaped tea-light holder.

3) Sprinkled the inside of the tealight cup with coarse salt and set a (very small) bay leaf inside it.

4) Added a tealight and put the whole shebang on my nightstand.

5) Had a quick chat with Bat using the candle-holder’s “face” as a sort of telephone receiver, letting hir know that (a) I’m under the impression that some kind of contact was being made, and (b) if zi’s got something helpful or important to say to me, that zi’s welcome to come have a chat with me in my dreams but that zi’s not to bring anyone else along with hir. (… I’m so trusting…)

6) Lit the tealight.

It’s currently doing its thing in the other room, and we’ll see what my dreams bring me, if anything, over the next little while.

We’ll see what happens.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

Are You Receiving? (New Year, New You)

Sunday, January 22nd – Ice/Hunger Moon begins.

So, hey. Last night I performed a new poem inspired by minus-thirty (with wind-chill) temperatures and Norse apocalyptic mythology. It was short, but it worked and people liked it. I may submit it to Goblin Fruit in the hopes of getting it into a Winter issue a year from now or something (thense my not posting it here, actually. Sorry).

As far as Ice Moon and Hunger Moon go… they’re pretty apt for where we’re at right now. Meaning that the ground is one big, uneven patch of inch-thick ice and I’m about to end my contract and leap back into the wilds of All-Hustle-All-the-Time (although, to hear, well, everybody tell it, 2012 is going to be the year of give’r, get ‘er done, hustle, and other terms that typically mean “push for all you’re worth, because you’ve only got you to get through this”. Fitting? Yeah, probably. 🙂 Wish me (and everyone else) some good luck on that front, eh? 🙂

Anyway. On the looking for omens front…

Beyond my own house, I don’t have much of anywhere (okay, I can think of two places, but they are both pretty asleep right now, also: did I mention the minus-thirty temperatures? I am not Miss Sugar to risk frostbite for a ritual on the beach. I may love my ancestors, but my daddy didn’t raise an idiot and I don’t think he, or my various grandparents and great-grandparents, would be too thrilled if I lost my toes over a rit I could do in my house) that I think of as one of my Sacred Spaces. It’s pretty much hearth-all-the-way around here.

So. What’s been happening around here?

I had a dream the other night that there was a fire in my building and I had to choose which things (in a big cardboard box) I was going to save. There were a lot of things I’d made in their – mostly knitting (although that may have more to do with what I’ve been doing in my free time than anything else) and, for some reason, sheets of mathematical formulas. o.O I left the math – and the hat I’d made my mom – and picked… my old computer and the stuff I’d made for myself (wooly things to keep myself warm).
I’m not entirely sure what that’s about, but hey. Dream.

Also: I’ve been picking up on neglect of late. That could just be me needing to refill my own well of affection (needs to happen on the regular, so), but I’ve also been noticing it. As in: Feed your honey pots. Water your plants. Do the laundry and generally get the place back in order. (And, yes, my partner is also my servant. So a big chunk of that last one is more “stop neglecting your submissive and give her something to follow-through on,” but regardless).

So… Between the two of these, I’m guessing my Message from hearth and home is something along the lines of “You make things and can take care of yourself and are creative and have the ability to be self-sufficient. Stop neglecting those bits of yourself[1], get it through your head that this stuff is important, and it’s what you want to do with your life; and get on with it, already”.

So, hey. That’s what I’m picking up. (Alternative interpretations are welcome – will be doing tarot later (for a given value of “later”, I’m off to a photo shoot in an hour and we’ve still got dinner to do) to clarify and similar).

On a tangentially related note, have a link on how to make your own luck (or money, or fill-in-the-blank):
Cooking makes for a Magic-Ready Cupboard (to-which I say: No kidding. Every damn “easy, typical staple” ingredient in a kitchen cupboard seems to be good for love-money-sex-happiness… with some health thrown in for good measure, too. “Traditional” has multiple meanings everywhere you go and folk-magic ALWAYS relies on what you’ve got lying around. Because the Folk don’t have time or money to go out hunting up exotic ingredients – if we’ve even heard of them – between getting supper on the table and getting our kids off to school/field/bed/wedding. So. No surprises there. ;-))

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden

[1] I didn’t think I was neglecting them. But that could also mean (a) that I’m denying or pushing-away or not trusting those bits of myself, or those options, or something; OR in could mean (b) the “refilling the well” type of neglect that gets talked about in The Artist’s Way – I swear the cover of that book reminds me so much of both my 2-of-Fire and my 8-of-Fire cards, it’s not even funny. I wonder if that was intentional, given the suit of Fire’s connotations… Either way.

Looking for Omens (in all the wrong places…) – A Progress Report of Sorts

The trick with having multiple blogs is that you always feel like you’re neglecting one of them. I’ve been neglecting Syrens for what feels like weeks now ( about 10 days, actually), although it’s been getting a fair bit of input recently. But, of course, this means I feel like I’m neglecting Urban Meliad.
Figures.

Ice/Hunger Moon is coming up (on Sunday, by the looks of things[1]) and I’m trying to get my ducks in a row with regards to my take on the New Year, New You project.

On that note:
I dreamed, last night, that I was looking after an excitable little boy who – for reasons I don’t entirely understand (I think he was just unthinkingly enthusiastic and/or wanting to impressive by emphatically getting the answer right) decided to start throwing lit candle(s) around the place.
The candle he threw (a) broke, but (b) didn’t stop burning. Although (c) nothing else caught fire (thank goodness) and I was able to put the (still burning) candle back together. He got sniffly about it. I think he was afraid he was going to get in Big Trouble.

My “big accomplishment” today has been Actually Watering the Plants – which I’ve also been neglecting. And noticing that I’m avoiding being social with a lot of people. Huh… Can’t tell if that’s just a wintery desire for hibernation or what, but it’s there.

So that’s what I’m noticing, so far, with regards to Miss Sugar’s latest New Year New You prompt regarding looking for signs and omens. (I’m not exactly looking for Signs and Omens, but I’m looking for recurring themes. No idea if that’s the same thing…)

Anyway. Tonight I’m in a poetry show and, hopefully, also getting some knitting done. (I’m trying to finish a mostly-virgin-wool, partially-merino, partially-other-stuff, black and red beret for next weekend. Wish me luck!)

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden

[1] I confess, I rely more on my We’Moon date book than on the actual (frequently overcast) sky for this one, so…

Bear-Talking – Early Morning Daydreams

Ice fishing on some tour or other – the kind for beginners who have no clue what they’re doing (e.g.: me). Brown bear – awake (which shouldn’t have been) breaks into the fishing shack (we don’t have fish yet, so this doesn’t make a lot of sense) through the wall. There are a lot of teeth and claws (holy crap) and addrenaline and I stab the bear in the eye (seriously lucky shot, that is all) with one of the knives my Ghost gave me.
This is follwed by shaking and more than a little freaking out.
I killed someone. I killed a fucking bear. I mean, I went out there to catch – and therefore kill – at least one fish of reasonable size. But this was different. This was a mammal, and a really big one, and a preditor who could have done me a lot of damage.
We (I am the only woman on this trip, there is a tour-guide dude and one or two guys in big jackets and the winter equivalent of baseball caps) drag (don’t ask me how) the dead bear off the ice, hang it from a tree and butcher it.
This is important.
I think I did something with the heart – piled rocks over it or something – though the brain went home with me so my partner could use it to tan the skin[1]. We brought the meat home and ate it, and I cleaned up the skull. It sat on my (not very big) coffee table. The skin was draped over our love-seat (and pretty much covered the thing).
And then the bear showed up in my head while I was sleeping.

Bear: You killed me.
Me: Yes.
Bear: You ate me.
Me: Yes. That was important.
[Something. I don’t really remember. Apparently bears have seven options for gender and this one was one of the 4 or so that I don’t have a translation for].
Me: So how, exactly, did you end up in my head?
Bear: Anyone can walk in dreams.
Me: But how do you get home again?
Bear: You killed me and ate my body. I don’t have a home.
Me: But what about, I don’t know, Bear Country? Where do you go after you die?
Bear (giving the serious impression that zi intends to take up residence in my head): I came here.
Me: Uh… This is my head. Don’t you have people you can go to?
Bear : I was a very solitary bear.
Me : Hrm… Well… I have your head. You could live there. Or maybe I could make you a house to live in[2]…?

…I think it was determined that we’d do the clay house thing. Certainly, later that day, while at my mom’s place, I noticed a little green vase she was getting rid of and thought “That would be perfect!” And I think there was going be some sort of exchange going on wherein the Bear would teach me… something. Possibly the bit about how to walk in dreams. Not sure.
However, around the point of making the vase decision is when I actually woke-up-all-the-way, basically thinking “Huh. So that was a weird story to make up. O.o”

So, yeah. I put it down to (a) seeing a Groupon for ice-fishing tours some time last week and (b) reading this post at Root and Rock. I don’t think anyone actually turned up in my head and brokered a deal about housing in exchange for education/technique. Gods know I’ve never killed a bear. O.O

None the less. I’m keeping an eye on this. It might turn into something. Who knows.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

[1] She hasn’t done this for a while and, I gather, it kind of reaks. None the less.

[2] Meaning a clay vase, more or less, with a door painted on it and some dried blueberries and pine needles[3] and similar in it.

[3] The blueberries were obvious. The pine needles might have been for… bedding? There may have been very, very dried-out smoked salmon involved as well…?