New Year New You 2020: Week 23 – Mirror Mirror

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: As this is the last week, please take some time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve learned, and where you’re going to go from here.
 

Wildwood Tarot – The Mirror (MA 12) – The Lady of the Lake, with a serpentine lower body, and flowing dark hair, holds the full moon in one hand and a mirror in the other. A heron is in the foreground. In the distance, a boat carries a corpse to a tiny island

 
Tarot Card: The Mirror
It was a toss up between this card – more traditionally known as The Hanged Man – and the Six of Swords, itself a card of transition, reflection, and pause.
 
I started writing this roughly a month and a half ago, back when things didn’t feel particularly finished in terms of my Empress Project. A month ago, right at Summer Solstice, I took a crack at it again because things were feeling a little more Done. So maybe third time’s a charm?
There are absolutely Goals that I haven’t entirely achieved yet. Stuff around integrating better habits around self-talk and relationship building, for example. But I do feel like I’ve leveled up in a lot of ways.
Summer Solstice felt like a closing ceremony – literally – for this project because I did the bookend ritual to the Big Magic I did just after I turned forty. A month later, maybe I can do some reflecting on things and see where I’m at.
I have a new place to live, in a neighbourhood that I love – mostly because it’s quiet and right near the river, and has wild fruit trees within easy walking distance, but also because I have friends nearby.
I feel like I’ve got better boundary-skills, and am braver when it comes to talking about what I want and need i my relationships. (There is, I recognize, absolutely a danger of slipping backwards on this front, though, and part of what I’ve been dipping my toes into, recently, is how to make sure that doesn’t happen).
While I (still) haven’t found a publisher for my chapbook, I have received a grant(!!!) to help me complete my Femme Glosa Project, and I have a publishing history that I 100% did not have when I started this project at the end of 2018.
I’ve managed to land a couple of small, flexible, from-home jobs that are helping to keep the bills covered even in These Uncertain Times.
I feel more centered and comfortable in my sexual body (that is not a euphemism for my genitals, I actually mean my whole body as sexual being) – although that continues to be a work in progress.
 
I’ve met a bunch of my goals, and I’m proud of myself.
 
Something I’ve definitely learned about Magic this year – and I mean since January, 2020 – is that having a SMART Goal for your magical working is going to get you more obvious, tangible results than not having one will. If only because the goal, itself, is “measurable” and “time bound” and so-on. The Big Magic I did to get our house? I specified a *when* as well as a what. And it happened. The magic I’ve been doing to secure a couple of anchor incomes? Ditto.
 
So that’s something to keep in mind as I continue to do Magical Stuff for self-improvement purposes. And I do intend to keep right on doing Magical Stuff for self-improvement.
Where do I want to go from here?
 
TBH, I’m feeling kind of split on this one, and wondering how to integrate some things.
 
I did a tarot reading recently and this is what I got:
Me as I am: The Empress (U)
Am I on the correct path: 9 of Water (U)
What’s my main obstacle: 6 of Water (U)
What is helping me: Page of Air (R)
How can progress be made: King of Earth (R)
 
Which is pretty positive. I mean, getting the nine of cups for “am I on the right path” is a pretty solid YES, which is very nice to hear.
Seeing my “Where am I right now” as literally the card this project is named for, is reassuring and encouraging.
My “obstacles” card… tracks. The six of cups is all about nostalgia. Nostalgia in the sense of “wishful thinking or dreaming in technicolor without actually doing the work is… not going to help you here”. But also like “Don’t slip backwards now that your goals are within your reach”.
So: Okay.
 
As-you-know-bob, I read reversed cards specifically as “my relationship with myself” (as opposed to upright, which is “my relationship with literally anyone/anything else”) and when I look at the Page of Air – their logic and structure, their thinking of things through, their self-examination and deep digging – and the King of Earth (who, as a King Card, thrives on structure) and I start to see what needs doing.
So. What is helping me (move through or past that obstacle): Structure, self-awareness, honesty and accurate communication, curiosity, interest in learning and trying new things.
How can progress be made (towards the goals that remain in my Empress Project, towards the next step beyond this): Solidifying my material/financial well-being so that it’s more permanent and reliable. This is a card about achieving success and feeling confident and happy about your home, your finances, and your body. So it ties fairly readily into a “next steps” post Empress Project.
 
And also.
If my Work is to learn through joy and play, and to make deep loving connections with people, how does that fit with what I’ve been interpreting as a “get your finances together” card?
Presumably it can be a Both/And. But, just at the moment, I’m a little at a loss for how to integrate the two of them or pursue them at the same time.
I will be chewing on this for a while, I suspect.
In the mean time, and as I’m chewing, I’ll be doing the following:

Working on my poetry manuscript
Continuing to submit individual poems and smaller manuscripts for publication
Further exploring Sacred Sexuality Stuff
and, well…
Looking for further from-home work, since my modeling career is unlikely to be a thing this year.

 
But yeah! That’s where’s I’m at with this project. I think I’ve made some progress, and I’m proud of what I’ve done. I look forward to taking it further.
 
 
Cheers,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

New Year New You 2020: Week 22 – Last Push (Make All the Work Worth It)

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: I do this because I have to believe that this has all been worth it. All this work, all this stress, all these sleepless nights, all this anxiety, everything!So, let’s make sure it is! Push harder than you ever have this week. Push harder than you ever thought you could and then just a little bit more. I believe in all of you. Let’s make magic this week, kids.
 

Wild Unknown Tarot – Wheel of Fortune – A ring of birch branches bound together with wild, colourful loops of ribbon. The sun, a crescent moon, and an own are all present.

 
Tarot Card: The Wheel of Fortune
I chose this card because… it feels like this is a big, leveling-up level Change. That’s why.
 
Okay. As last pushes go, this is a pretty literal one. We’re ten days into our move to the house I did A Big Ritual to be able to secure. The big push is to get the house entirely cleared out this weekend, with the garden being rescued and transplanted during the last week of May, when it’s had a chance to come up from underground.
 
And, yes, I absolutely decided, part-way through this two+ year cycle of NYNY, that I needed to focus specifically (or at least a lot MORE) on the material elements of The Empress, in order to get myself some secure housing plus a reliable income to supplement my gig-based career as an art model. So. Mission (somewhat?) Accomplished?
Go me!
But I also find myself looking at my original goals.
See, a long time ago, I said:

This project is about opening myself up, rooting myself solid, and becoming my fullest, most integrated, femme self.

 
And I know I have further to go on that front. I mean, yes, sure, There’s A Pandemic and, yes, I’m still in my second month of my new (year-long contract) job, and, yes, I’ve been moving for the past three weeks, so maybe it’s not that odd that I haven’t been churning out a new poem every week or staying on top of my January-era (pre-pandemic era?) goal of submitting poems to three+ paid markets every other month. But I look back at my goals, and I can see how well I’m doing with them. I have an idea of what my next steps are – even got confirmation of them via A Dream, which was pretty cool.
 
My wife said to me, last night, that she feels like this isn’t just moving into a new house, it’s moving into a new life.
We’re both experienced enough to know that “new life” doesn’t just happen. That you don’t change your behaviours without putting some work into it. But I have to agree that this feels a bit like that’s what’s happening.
 
In my recent Full Moon post, I wrote a little about wanting to do a Closing Up the House ritual once the garden is potted up and the house, itself, is empty. I think this is a good idea, and I have the symbolic items that will be involved in the ritual itself.
But, magically speaking, I’m still a little blurry on what I’m trying to accomplish.
The Cheat Codes Course I took with Ms Sugar (registration for the quite affordable second cycle closes TODAY, so you’ve got a couple of hours to still get in on it – RECOMMENDED) actually brought home how important that bit is. Most of my magic, over the course of ~25 years of doing the work, has been about changing things inside myself (Changing Consciousness At Will, to quote ye olde Starhawk), so when it took a LONG time for my magic to get anywhere, I thought it was because it was Slow Magic, rather than, say, me doing the physical/psychological work without getting the spellcraft to actually be effective.
But I would seriously prefer to not be closing up a condemned house (because: bought by a developer, it’s actually perfectly sturdy and good), with magic afoot, without knowing what I want to accomplish.
 
Because that’s part of the Last Big Push.
 
Am I giving the spirit of my condemned house permission to go, to let its body die early?
Am I asking its spirit to come and be the spirit of a birdhouse hung up in the big cedar tree in our new yard?
Am I offering it some bit of vestigial life in this fleece, these petals and feathers, this bone and hoping it can hang on a little longer?
What am I doing?
 
And, depending on what I’m doing, what else am I doing?
Am I asking for a last favour from the place that sheltered me for more than five years?
Or am I burying old habits with this handful of other dead material, and hoping they die with the house that deserves so much better?
What am I doing?
 
I have until Saturday to figure it out.

New Year New You 2020: Week 21 – Glamour In the Apocalypse

I’m (once again) doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. It’s a good mix of practical, magical, and thought-based exercises to help accomplish specific and significant change in your own life. If it’s relevant to your interests, give it a try!
 
Instructions: You laid down the groundwork for the goals you wanted to accomplish. Do you still feel like they’re just out of your reach? It’s time to start faking it ’til you make it, kids. In other words, start acting like you’ve achieved your goals now to help you actually achieve them.
 

Next World Tarot – Nine of Cups – A femme in a one-shouldered mini dress and studded ankle bracelets noshes on grapes while siting on a big cushion amongst the ruins of capitalism

 
Tarot Card: The Nine of Water
I chose this card because (1) it’s aaaaall about Wishes Coming True, but also (2) this card, in this specific deck is literally a reminder to Stay Glamourous which, in these days of “business-casual on top, pajamas on the bottom” (why, yes, my new remote job does involve weekly zoom meetings, how did you know?) and avoiding leaving the house unless you’re out of milk and toilet paper, can be a very helpful reminder. Perhaps you, too, have joined the Plague Couture facebook group or are posting Hawt Apocalyptic Lewks on Instagram.
 
As-you-know-bob, I’ve been having a LOT of wishes come true of late. A LOT of big magic that I did earlier this year, or late last year, has started coming to fruition which is as exciting as it is validating, let me tell you.
I had originally expected to write this post much earlier in the year, while Ms Sugar’s latest course was still running. The Plan had been to save up enough toonies to march into Sephora and buy a fancy lipstick that reflected my goals in more than one capacity, and was a colour I would actually wear on the regular (this is key), and then enchant it towards those goals.
But, HEY! We got a global pandemic, all my outside of the house gigs got canceled, and I hadn’t landed that second remote job yet, so I did an Austerity instead, and here we are, nine days before Beltane, and the question of “What do you see yourself doing in your picture of success?” …doesn’t look different, but a lot of things feel more concrete.
 
I imagined wading into the Atlantic while at my brother’s (now zoom-based, yes actually) wedding and, instead, I jumped off a curb and felt the asphalt ripple like water when I landed.
I imagined walking to various different jobs most days and, instead, I’m doing very-part-time remote work (Woo-hoo! Success!) and anticipating taking the bus – or maybe riding a bicycle? – to get to my modeling and (occasional) reception gigs once things eventually (fingers crossed) re-open and we’ve all been vaccinated against the Rona.
I imagined wearing Fancy Lipstick to signal The Universe that I’m ready to receive and, instead, I’m using my sewing and mending skills to turn donated t-shirts into a modern-day palla and scrap cotton into four-layer face masks, while rejoicing that I – with my remaining remote income – am finally eligible to apply for the Emergency Benefit (and tithing 10% of it to various local emergency funds and charities, because I’m miraculously able to do so) and prepping to move into a house that arrived via a friend of a friend and is miraculously actually within our price range.
 
Right now, “dressing for my future” looks like wearing protective clothing when I go outside, because I want us to have a future. But it also means recognizing (again) how much I love being able to spend all day in my bathrobe and so deciding ( reminding myself) that my “outside clothes” need to include more wrap-dresses, flowing gowns, shifts, shawls, and flannel.
Right now, imagining what I’m doing in my Fabulous Art-Sex-Magic Life means planning what to pack, when, and where to put it in the new place. It means saying YES PLEASE when friends offer us packing boxes or big, garden-moving flower pots, even though we have nowhere to comfortably put them yet, because we’re going to need them nine days from now. But it also means dreaming the sewing corner in the future Spare Bedroom where my dress-maker’s dummy and Janice (the domestic sewing machine) will have a permanent set-up, and how the extra book cases and basement storage unit that we’re getting with our new place can be used to give all of our stuff a proper home to go to that’s Away.
It means finishing my Austerity so that, when Beltane comes, I can look into a home-delivered CSA to help keep us in veggies while I figure out how to food-garden in the shade. It means dreaming the dry goods I’ll be restocking on and imagining the kitchen of our new home as one that features home-made yoghurt, half a pig in our chest freezer, jars of dried and tinctured herbs from our garden, jars of choke cherry jam from the trees I plan to stealth-plant in our shady back yard and fruit butter from the wild apple tree that multiple people have already told me is growing in my soon-to-be-neighbourhood, bags of seasonal baby greens augmented with sorrel and nasturtiums from the front yard, bags of flour and barley, lentils and rice noodles, lining our pantry shelves, and both a nicely stocked wine shelf and a fridge-&-freezer featuring good cheese, smoked fish, and trout fillets, mackerel steaks, home-frozen local veggies, good quality ice cream and wild-harvested berries.
It means showing up for my remote jobs and checking in with my modeling clients, and using as much of that Emergency Benefit money as I can manage to pay down credit card debt so that, when I’m dressing for my future, that future doesn’t involve three-figure minimum payments and money anxiety.
 
A long time ago, Ms Sugar wrote about Glamour in the Apocalypse and how it only works if you’re bringing your whole self to the table. The Scorpio Sun that needs intensity and sensuality and Go Deep or Don’t Bother Me, that’s been driving for this weird art-sex-magic life for the last twelve years and the Cancer Moon that needs safety and stability and a reliable home base to return to and hole up in.
Right now, my Empress Project goals – that I laid out more than two years ago – as well as the more material/finance-specific elements of the Empress that I started focusing on (relatively) more recently, feel very-much within my reach. Some of them are being achieved right now, others are… okay, still a work in progress, but there IS noticeable progress, and others are solidly on their way (my two remote jobs are contract jobs – one might end at the end of May – though that seems unlikely – and the other is covering someone’s parental leave and so is temporary, even if it’s a long version of temporary. So I’m not out of the woods. But I’ve got some reprieve and a chance to develop some extra bonus skills while I’m at it, so).
Even sitting here, surrounded by moving boxes, wearing a fluffy (but jewel-tone turquoise) robe, and with a half-finished sewing project taking up the other side of the couch, it feels really good to be where I’m at right now. It feels SO good to see this stuff coming to fruition.

New Moon – Flower Moon Begins

Siberian Squill Flowers – Tiny, blue lilies that are among the first flowers to bloom in my area – Image courtesy of Wiki Media Commons and Rosendahl

 
As-you-know-bob, I’m a Scorpio sun. Which means that the lunar cycle we’re in right now is happening about six months into my own annual cycle. You may recall that I did some big magic back around my 40th birthday but, even if I hadn’t, new moons in a given sign are a good time to plant long-term goals that might only come to fruition when the moon is full in that same sign – e.g.: about six months later.
Liz Worth – whose post about the Taurus new moon is going to be informing at least some of this post right here – routinely reminds me (and/or all her other readers) that the full moon in a given sign is a good time to check up on how goals made during the new moon in that same sign are shaping up, but I think it goes both ways.
 
So how are things going on that front, you ask?
I have a couple of super-part-time jobs that I’m settling into.
My romantic relationships remain solid and wonderful.
My wife and I have a lease on a new place, and we start our move on Beltane.
So I would say that things are solidly coming to fruition.
I’m looking forward to being finished The Austerity, so that we can properly feast the house we’re leaving AND properly feast the one we’re moving into, and make some good offerings while we’re at it. I’m thinking pickled herring, smoked fish (candied salmon or smoked oysters, both if I can swing it), maybe some kind of shortcake featuring last year’s frozen service berries plus some fancy ice cream from a store. And some Hidden Temple gin. This all being subject to what’s available in the grocery store at the time.
 
Liz Worth points out that New Moons are seeds, and asks what we want to plant in our (metaphorical) garden this lunar cycle, but I have to answer that question literally. I have a friend (who lives in my new neighbourhood!) scrounging her own yard for big flower pots to send my way, so that I can literally (re-)plant my garden at our new home. I have a friend (who lives in my current neighbourhood) who is willing to take my compost heap and bring its contents to her own house.
When Liz Worth asks “Where do you want to create a stronger sense of security or stability for yourself now, and in the future?” that process is happening right now.
When she asks “Where do you feel lost right now?”… I don’t. I’m not sure how to handle one or two specific things, and I strongly suspect that the actual process of moving is going to feel overwhelming and very stressful, but I don’t feel lost. I feel like I actually know what my Next Steps are, on a grander scale than I’ve been able to see for quite some time. It’s kind of a relief.
When she asks – because this is the new moon in Taurus – “What kind of nourishment, rest, or care does your body need right now?” Okay, now that’s a question. Because of the physical distancing situation, we’re actually getting TONNES of rest. I’m reminding myself to move my body more than I might normally do while at home because I’m not walking for an hour or more most days of the week, and I’m not doing “three hours of power yoga” a few times a week at my (now-canceled) modeling gigs. On a related note, the Explore More Summit (free online conference) started earlier this week, and I’m once again attending and seeing what there is for me to learn and dig into in terms of my own embodiment. I’m also making a commitment to myself to let myself just be in my embodied experiences, whatever that happens to be.
 
Unsurprisingly, ritual plays a role in this. My nightly Moon Salutation practice remains an opportunity to connect with my Lady of Music and the Moon, but it’s also (and began as) a way to strengthen my lower back and lumbar-area muscles in a way that didn’t risk exacerbating my back injury. Running energy through my chakras when I prepare myself for magic and connection with the gods, with my Fetch, with my Godself, it’s also an opportunity to notice where that energy gets stuck, what might be prompting/triggeirng that to happen. Singing as a way to allow energy to move freely through/in myself. Somatic bodymind work as ritual work as holy work. It’s consistently good for me so it’s something I need to continue to engage in and to dig into.
 
On a side note, I visited my Fetch the other day, and she now has a little bronze boar figure – much like this one, minus its rider – hanging out in her nest area in the equipment room of her gym. She also, by the looks of things, has a few more cozy blankets. Both of which are nice to see, and to be invited to see.
 

Wildwood Tarot – Six of Stones “Exploitation” – Two figures surrounded by torn open bee hives, while wild fire rages in the distance.

 
For my tarot card meditation while this moon in Taurus waxes, I pulled (twice!) the Six of Stones.
This is a card about sharing (and failing to share), it’s a card about wealth redistribution, and it’s a card about mutuality. In the Osho Zen deck, it’s called “compromise” and it’s a promise to have each others’ backs. In the Next World deck, it’s called “redistribution” and – along with, ha, being located in space-and-time as “Moon in Taurus” so the Wildwood deck continues to be seriously literal with me over here – it’s about showing up with what you have to share.
Michelle Tea, in Modern Tarot, talks about how this card can indicate an incoming positive change in your finances – which… I have finally been able to apply for income supports, thank all the gods, so that’s actually in the works right now plus, see above re: Big Magic coming to fruition – but it’s also a reminder to share when you’re able to share. Give gifts not loans. Recognize that when you give something to someone, it’s theirs now and you’re not the boss of what they do with it.
Given the stuff I’ve been working on – magically and psychologically – around Money and Energetic Exchanges of all kinds, this is relevant to me more broadly as a reminder that “Having financial/material security – all that Empress Stuff – doesn’t automatically make you bad. It makes you responsible for how you behave towards people who are less secure than you are, and it makes you responsible for what you do with your improved situation”.
I take it as a reminder to, when that Emergency Benefit money comes in [UPDATE: It came in the day I was writing this], use some of it to help people who aren’t eligible for the same supports. If you’re wondering, I’ve opted to do a standard tithe – 10% – and donated to my local food bank, an emergency fund for local sex workers, and an emergency relief fund for minimum-wage workers. There’s one more donation to make, which I’ll figure out when I have an extra ten minutes to get it sorted.
 
~*~
 
Movement: Dancing and doing squats because I’m not getting much other exercise and moving around helps keep my joints from getting stiff. Doing my nightly Moon Salutations. Body check-ins (not movement, exactly, but within that realm) with my girlfriend. Fooling around with my wife.
 
Attention: Perhaps understandably, a lot of my attention has been on my bank account lately. Soon, it’ll be on our move and how it’s coming along, how many boxes we were able to pack and/or unpack on a given day. Also trying to connect with my body, and its desires and pleasures, more since I seem to be needing a boost in that area.
 
Gratitude: For the freaking Emergency Benefit coming in, OMG. For a new, bigger place to start moving into in just over ten days. For polyfamily who help us out with the bills. For small part-time jobs that I’m still able to do from home. For shade-tolerant and shade-loving plants that I can bring with me to the new garden. For friends offering us packing boxes and flower pots to help with the move. For bread in the oven and how good it smells. For bright, clear, blue skies and sunshine. For moments of connection with my wife. For video dates with my girlfriend. For online hangouts with my friends. For my introversion that makes Social Distancing easier to deal with. For borrowed books. For gods who listen and decide to help. For kitchen experiments that work out (and the ones that don’t, because at least I get to learn from those). For poetry that still comes when I call.
 
Inspiration: The major arcana, because when is that not the case? Essays about power exchange. The videos that make up the Explore More Summit. People helping each other out and being generally kind to each other.
 
Creation: I wrote a poem based on a ritual I did back in… February, maybe? And have been continuing with the sewing. Also some experimental baking (though what I have in the oven right now is super-basic yeast bread with a little rye and oat flour kneeded in for flavour and colour). Planning a berries-and-roses style tea cake, I think, as well.

Full Moon – Leaf Moon Crests

My perennial bed, still messy with deadfall, but the rhubarb, nettles, and crow garlic are reaching for the sky.

 
This picture was taken about ten days shy of a year ago, and the rhubarb and crow garlic are… yep, about ten days shy of where there are in this photo, growth-wise. There are bleeding hearts and day lilies starting to poke through the soil in the front yard. We are, very possibly, in our last few months in this house, which is sad and exciting at the same time.
We may, just maybe, have found a new place to live.
It’s not downtown. Which is sad. And being this house’s last family is sad, too.
But the place we found – other than the “not downtown” part and not having a dish washer – is pretty close to perfect. Perfect enough that we’re excited about it.
 
You may recall that, not too long after my 40th birthday, I did a big ritual with the goal of manifesting abundance, pleasure, and security (as per both The Empress AND the then-recent full moon in Taurus).
The full moon in Libra (also ruled by Venus) was just last night and some of the big stuff seems to be falling into place.
I have two little anchor-income jobs that – while they’re nowhere near enough to live on alone, and they may or may not end up preventing me from accessing Emergency Income Supports (we don’t know yet because Who Is Eligible keeps getting expanded – hopefully at least one of us will be able to access these funds) – are also providing enough cash annually (in theory) to raise our household income by more than $9000. That will make a significant difference in our quality of life.
 
Likewise, a few days ago, a friend in the neighbourhood pointed us to a friend of hers who is looking to move and whose rental will be available in the next month or two.
You guys. It’s a three-bedroom with LOTS of space (and closet space), a yard to garden, a big driveway with lots of parking, and a big kitchen with room for the chest freezer and some extra shelving. And the (shared) basement has a high enough ceiling that we could actually stand up in it. There’s a possibility that there will be washing machines available, but if not, we’ll have to spend some money on laundry machines as there are zero (0) laundromats within even a half-hour walk of the place. But… $200 for a second hand washer-dryer set off kijiji is still going to pay for itself inside of one year, so. Not really upset about it, especially since it means not having to hoard coins, schedule the availability of clean socks based on the weather report, or drag 2-3 loads of laundry around outdoors during the winter (or, y’know, a pandemic…). Plus we have friends in the area already, including one of my wife’s partners (who is Older and my girl is very happy/relieved to be (potentially) moving to within emergency sprinting distance, basically, if something bad happens).
We’ve talked to the landlord on the phone, and we sent our application off earlier today.
So keep your fingers crossed for us on this one.
 
The sourdough bread situation is… going about as well as it usually does. I think I need to remember to – at the very least – only give it one rise before putting it in the loaf pans and prepping it for baking, as that seems to help.
I’m doing a Kitchen Sink stew in the slow-cooker today. Using up odds and sods from the fridge and freezer. It’s making the house smell really nice, which is great since it’s grey and chilly outside.
I finished a pair of slippers – for future use as “house shoes” when visiting other people – and I’m continuing to work on my t-shirt dress. It’s slow going, and we’ll see what the end result is like. But it’s good to have a project on the go. I’m taking it kind of one step at a time and hopefully I won’t mess something up so badly that I have to redo it entirely. We’ll see what happens. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve also started hunting through my fabric stash for 100% cotton scraps that I can re-purpose into masks for those rare occasions when we have to be out and about. Lastly, I’m working on a stocking extension. It’s been in progress for years, and is basically something I pick up when I want to knit a thing and don’t have a more pressing project on the go. I’m a long way from done on that one (and there’s definitely a whole other extension to do afterwards), but it’s nice to have something to knit.
 
Yesterday, I went to (virtual) Full Moon Meditation courtesy of Connect DC and Two Rivers Sanctuary again. While I didn’t get any Big Huge Messages this time, I did have an unexpected energetic experience. I’m not sure quite how to talk about it but… it was a thing, and one that’s apparently happened before (though I only knew about it because somebody who can See That Stuff told me about it after the fact).
The meditation was very comforting. Which I gather is kind of Their Deal when they’re doing Full Moon ritual.
New Moon rituals, if they have them, can potentially be focused on stuff like providing a container for catharsis, but Full Moon rituals – based on attending exactly two of them – seem to be very focused on love and receptivity and belonging. Which is pretty great, and something that I find really helpful, especially in stressful situations where I might (maybe, possibly) be telling myself that I shouldn’t be getting my needs met because other people need more and/or I don’t deserve it, or whatever.
This ritual was very actively pushing back against Scarcity Feels, and I appreciate it, and am glad I was able to take part.
 

Mary El Tarot – Five of Cups – A white unicorn lounges on the lip of a well. Behind it is a waterfall. Water cascades out of the sides of the well in four directions.

 
For my tarot card meditation I used a random one-card generator and got the Five of Water.
I know this card best as the Osho Zen deck’s “Clinging to the Past” but, with the occasional exception, it is reliably a card about grief regardless of which deck you’re using.
The Next World Tarot describes this card as one where “hope is nebulous” and grief (disaster, abandonment, failure) feels familiar, reliable and navigable. I know a lot of people who don’t know how to handle it when success comes calling. Right now, I’m personally in a situation where it looks like, maybe, some Big Magic of mine is about to get results, and I’m trying not to get too confident about it Just In Case things don’t work out as well as it (currently) looks like they might. Using the Conditional Tense when I talk about our (potential) new house. Continuing to ask all and sundry to think good thoughts for us. Putting all of this stuff in brackets to essentially keep saying “this is still a big IF and I don’t want to jinx it by Hoping”.
But I AM hoping!
And I’m aware of the grief (and stress, because moving is not a fun time) that will come with a Yes, too. Like I said, further up the post, we will be this house’s last family before it’s demolished, and our beloved shelter deserves better than that. We’ll be leaving this neighbourhood – that we both love – in order to receive/accept this house that is otherwise utterly perfect for us, and there’s going to be some sadness around moving away from so many of our friends.
…And I’m still hoping. I think this will be good.
 
~*~
 
Movement: Continuing to do my Moon Salutations. Which is nice. Going for very short walks. Dancing in the street when the street is marvelously empty at 10am on a Monday morning. The up-coming Stay Homo and Dance video dance party scheduled for this Friday. Pulling last year’s dead stalks out of the garden to make room for this year’s new growth.
 
Attention: I’m kind of glued to the CRA website right now, in the interests of finding out whether we’re either Completely Fucked or actually Probably Fine with regards to income supports (Bougie Welfare, basically) from the government. Beyond that? Paying attention to the plants waking up and the baby squirrels and the amorous, courting birds of all kinds flitting about the neighbourhood.
 
Gratitude: For a metamour who turns up with a care package that includes chocolate and wine. For postcards from my neighbours. For the rhubarb and the crow garlic and the sorrel waking up and growing again. For the grape hyacinths starting to just barely hint at flowering. For the friend who’s offered to bring us pizza. For the people (mostly relatives) who have reached out to ask if we need money, explicitly. For the friend who pointed us towards this house. For video chats. For video dates with my girlfriend. For my DC metamour getting safely through COVID19 without having to go to a hospital(!). For stay-in-your-house shows done via live stream. For remote work that means we have a little bit of income. For my sewing and cooking skills. For my wife’s Official Layoff that will make it easier for us to access government supports. For a (potential) summer move that will let me rescue my garden and bring it with me. For the borrowed-for-the-duration work truck that will let us move without help, if that’s how this goes. For my over-stuffed pantry that’s been feeding us, with limited inputs, since mid-February. For Beltane (and the option of restocking said paintry) on its way. For my wife having time off to rest her body and tinker on her projects.
 
Inspiration: SPRING! The whole ideal of “Make do and mend”. The culinary experiments of #IronChefCOVID19 and everyone who is trying their hand at sour dough bread (it’s such a thing right now, and I totally get it, and also I can’t blame the people who are looking at this and going “Okay, but why THIS specific food? Why now?” Answers: Because yeast is surprisingly hard to come by right now. Because making sourdough bread (successfully) can help stave off feelings of helplessness and/or scarcity. Because, hey, maybe nurturing a starter along will help some people remember that Not All Microbes and we can actually have relationships with same that don’t involve us actively and desperately trying to murder one another, so there’s that, too).
 
Creation: Working on a sonnet. Lots of sewing. Lots of cooking. A very small amount of prose (like maybe 650 words in a two-week period). I’m doing. But I’m not doing much.

New Year New You 2019: Week 20 – Hearth Appreciation Week

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 week, let’s focus on what is likely your disaster of a hearth.“
 
Tarot Card: Ten of Pentacles
 

Wildwood Tarot – Ten of Stones: “Home” – A traditional wattle-and-daub Round House, visible through a stone arch. The house is in good repair, and there is a great tree growing through the center of its thatched roof.

 
Well… She’s not wrong. My house/hearth is often a disaster, and now is no exception, especially having effectively gone from the dazed-and-full-of-cheese headspace of the Midwinter-to-New-Years period directly into a week in a different country, visiting my Young Lady.
So this prompt is coming at a convenient time for a bunch of reasons but primarily… it’s just Time, and having multiple Reasons that aren’t connected to the feeling of “Ew, my home is gross and I want to avoid it” or similar… really helps to get me to Do The Thing.
 
Shame is not a good motivator for me.
“Elevate your daily work to the level of spiritual Work” (to quote Katrina, from Two Rivers Sanctuary in DC) is a good motivator for me.
“You’re an animist, so treat all the people who make up your living space WELL” is a good motivator for me.
“It’s EASIER to Entertain At Home when the dishes are reliably clean and the fridge isn’t crowded with suspicious tupperware” is a good motivator for me.
“You will have better sleep AND better sex in your bedroom if the sheets are clean, the sex toys are readily available, and the room doesn’t smell ever-so-faintly of the eight million dirty socks in the hamper”… is a good motivator for me!
So having Ms Sugar telling me – in stereo – to tidy up my physical living space is… working well for me on a number of levels.
 
While I know this is going to take more than a week, even with me having a fair bit of time available to dedicate to it, this where I’m at so far (having started two days ago):
I’ve given the living room bookshelves their first once-over, weeding out books that I want to rehome, and am starting the (more difficult but not Actually Difficult) task of gathering up all the Random Objects currently blocking access to the books I want to keep, so that I can re-organize the book shelves in such a way that all the photos and pretty rocks and similar look like they’re there on purpose, rather than because they had nowhere else to go.
I have a PLN for how to get my Sacred Writing Area actually tidy (it leans heavily on putting a set of stacking trays in one corner, tbh, and is pretty easy to do once I get ahold of some stacking trays).
I’m about 1/3 of the way through dealing with “my corner” of the bedroom, having gone through the side table and removed the expired safer sex supplies, and having unearth the deacon’s bench – and, in the process, having discovered that MOST of the clothing that’s been heaped on top of it for months is actually CLEAN, folded laundry that just needs to be put away – cleaned it out, and put away (or re-put-away) all the kink equipment. There’s still lots to do – finish sweeping the floor, tidy the surface of my side table, do about four loads of laundry at the laundromat, and hang the giant mirror above the deacon’s bench so that I can dangle various floggers, crops, and cute hats off the hooks that grace the frame’s corners.
My wife and I have a “date” this weekend to organize the part of the kitchen that will most help get the rest of the place tidy and easy to use – we were gifted a second-hand, needs-some-work washer and dryer, and we’ve finally determined that we are never going to clandestinely do the plumbing it would take to make the washer a usable item, so they are going out to the scrap yard and we are putting a couple of industrial shelving units + a small drop-leaf table (the latter is less relevant, but will probably be involved) in their place so that heavy things like 10kg bags of flour, flats of mason jars, small appliances (and the cider press my wife got my as a Midwinter Surprise), containers of dry goods, and baskets of root veggies – BUT ALSO buckets of mechanics equipment, jugs of cleaning vinegar, and various garbage and recycling bins – can be shelved in an orderly and accessible fashion, freeing up the Tall Zone on top of the cupboards for less-frequently-used and much lighter-weight items as the dehydrator and the canning pots.
The floors have been swept and vacuumed (this is a weekly/biweekly thing already, at least), the bathroom has been scrubbed, and will be getting graced with a cute art piece once it arrives from New Zealand in… anywhere from two weeks to two months, and I have an appointment with myself to Magically Scrubbing Bubbles my home in order to sweep insomnia, apathy, irritability, and avoidance right of the place.
Time to keep some appointments!
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

New Year New You 2019: Week 19 – Small Steps Towards Changing My Baseline

I’m (once again) doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. It’s a good mix of practical, magical, and thought-based exercises to help accomplish specific and significant change in your own life. If it’s relevant to your interests, give it a try!
 
Instructions: “What can you do this week to change your life?“
 
Tarot Card: Ace of Earth
 

Ace of Discs – Mary El – A winged woman contemplates the ground beneath her feet. A green labyrinth blooms from her solar plexus. The alchemical sign for Earth is in the position of her third eye. Her head is that of a white cow (symbolizing Taurus, the sign of material comfort).

 
Oh, readers, this is where I witter.
I don’t know what’s going to change my life for the better.
I mean, I know: Getting a publisher for my chapbook (not 100% under my control, already under way, but waaaaay too early to follow up with my first – and first-choice – local indie imprint that’s already got the manuscript), submitting my work to paid markets, applying for PT jobs and landing myself an anchor income, booking more shoots in Renfrew[1].
 
But none of that is a new thing. That’s just the next step in a thing I’ve been doing for two years.
I’m looking at this writing prompt, reading it as “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten”, and wondering what DIFFERENT thing I can do that will SIGNIFICANTLY change my life for the better.
And… I’m not sure?
But.
I have a friend who’s offered me a free “therapy practice-session” (she’s training to be a therapist, and wants some practice hours before she starts her actual Practicum).
So my “concrete thing I can do this week” is to schedule that hour-long session.
My plan is to use it to talk through some of my Weirdo Money Feels which, I hope, will help me reset my “baseline” without feeling gross and ugly.
Seriously, I look up Suze Orman books at the library and I have a literal disgust reaction to titles like “The Courage To Be Rich”[2].
But, in the spirit of trying to change up my “money mind-set”, I’ve put a few of her books, along with a couple of similar “psychology of personal finance” books, on hold at the library which, in theory, I should be able to pick up before the week is out, too.
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad.
 
 
[1] Seriously. So much of what will change my life for the better boils down to “An extra $1000 per month in reliable income”, it’s not even funny.
 
[2] My reaction: “Oh, yes, because it takes such bravery to be a parasite“. So… clearly I’m having some feelings over here.

New Year New You 2019: Week 18 – The Sun Inside

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: She mentioned that she knew someone who took a moment in her cube every morning to empty her brain of the old crap so she had room to let new crap in. That made sense to me! So that’s what I am going to do. Why don’t you try it. too?
 
Tarot Card: The Sun (and The Chariot) – I chose these cards for their overlapping connections with confidence and success. The Sun touches on things like “knowing your worth”, “trusting your abilities”, “and believing you can succeed”, as well as “getting noticed” and “experiencing greatness”, while The Chariot pertains to “being successful”, “achieving goals”, and “getting your way”, as well as “using your will” and “feeling self-confident”.
 

The Sun – The Slutist Tarot – A witchy babe in a bell-sleeved mini dress, a broad-brimmed black hat, and sunglasses lounges on a red blanket with a book

 

The Chariot – The Next World Tarot – A femme in a pink cocktail dress, fur collar, turquoise boots, and with a crescent moon in her hair, takes her pet miniature elephants for a walk

 
Maybe there’s something kismet-y about deciding to do this right around Winter Solstice, but my attempt to breathe out the old stuff to let the new stuff in looks like trying to unblock my 3rd chakra.
A while back – six months ago, maybe? – I was at a party, talking to a druid (as one does), who commented that I was very connected to the world around me via my first and second chakras, but had some kind of blockage or stuckness going on that was preventing those connections from happening any higher up.
Like, no kidding. A significant chunk of this whole project has been doing root-chakra and sacral-chakra energy work (and yoga and dancing and listening to the related binaural soundscapes on youtube) to try to balance those areas in order to make it easier for me to bring material stability and (further) sensuality and eroticism into my life.
 
I know this particular prompt was about “let yourself be still for a while” but… I hold still all the time. Literally, for my job, but also in terms of being frozen with indecision – like “Oh no, what if I apply for this job, AND this other job, and one of them hires me and then so does the other one, and I have to say No to somebody” and similar.
It’s a tad ridiculous, you might say.
 
I’ve been talking with Ms Sugar, she who created this whole Experiment in the first place, about “jumping and living to tell the tale” and about how I’m simultaneously scared to death of taking any risks ever at all AND feeling like I’ve been taking (admittedly tiny) calculated risks every other week for the past eight years.
But even knowing that. Even recognizing that my poetry is coming along, and I’m getting requests for contributions (I mean, they’re paid with contributor copies, but still) and occasionally getting my work accepted in paid publications. Even recognizing that I’ve built a solid modeling career over the past 10 years. Even recognizing that I’m getting better at small magics (like charmed objects and honey pots) and energy work. Even recognizing that I’m a LOT more comfortable in sexual situations than I was when I started my Empress Project… Even recognizing all of that, I can see myself keeping myself small.
I can see myself going “Okay, but if I step into My Power and actually Take Up Space, and people not going to come after me with literal baseball bats to make sure I never do that again??”
Which… is at least somewhat unlikely to happen?
I can see that there’s some kind of a disconnect between my Wanting and my Will.
So my current attempt at breathing out the old crap to let new, less-crappy crap come in, is this:
 
I am visualizing a sunflower and/or a solar flare and/or this hypothetical Pictish tattoo in my abdominal region, while repeating “I am powerful and I am comfortable with my power” and imagining the flower/flare getting brighter every time I breath in, as though I were stoking a fire.
I hope this will help me develop the internal fortitude for sustained acts of Will and for putting myself out there and Getting Noticed in bigger ways.
 

New Year New You 2019 : Week 17 – A Big Ritual

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: So now that you’ve done the small magics, I think it’s time to do a big ritual to further one or more of your goals.
 

Candle Magic in Progress – My working altar set-up, as viewed from the East.

 
As all of you know by now, I’m not a Big Rituals kind of gal. I put songs on repeat to help me enter something adjacent to a trance, maybe once or twice a year, and do little rituals (offerings roughly once a week, greeting my gods at the crossroads and as I see them, the first slice from a fresh batch of bread, stuff like that) fairly frequently, but Big Magical Doings that require a lot of prep and planning… are not typically My Bag.
 
BUT.
 
I just turned forty.
I love my weirdo freelancing art life, and I want to keep it.
But I am so, SO tired (like physically and emotionally worn out, but also “sick of this crap” tired) of the precarity that comes with it.
I marked my birthday with a week worth of fun and lovely events, which wrapped up just before the recent full moon in Taurus, and I wanted to harness that “manifesting abundance and pleasure and security” stuff that comes with the Taurus full moon and its major-major link with The Empress.
 
So I spent a day working out how to turn my Greatest Hits Wish List into a series of little doodles – not exactly sigils (except in the case of making a little glyph to represent my immediate polycule), but stuff along those lines. I planned out what I’d need, in terms of materials. I sorted out offerings and harvested the herbs from my (snowed under, so that was a thing) garden. I took a calculated risk in collecting one of the other elements of the altar and the magic to be made on it, and made sure to leave offerings and… I guess I could call them connections(?) in return. I took the time (and energy, and resources, and skills) to make bread from scratch, and on Moonday, which handily actually WAS the night of the full moon (and which I also, thankfully, had off AND which was overcast enough for it to get dark enough to light candles earlier in the day), I turned my coffee table into an altar space and got to work.
 
So. You know the thing “To Know, To Will, To Dare, To Keep Silent”?
I don’t actually know how many of the specifics of this I should be yacking about in front of the whole internet. So, in the interests of not screwing it up or pissing Anybody off, I’m going to be a bit vague on things.
BUT. The general gist is this:
 
First thing, as you can see from the photo, above, I was doing candle magic, just in a more intense way than I often do. Even when I go big, I’m still pretty basic in terms of what I do.
I wanted to have stuff that grew in my yard – my space, the place I have some kind of a friendly (uh, I’d like to think) relationship with – sitting in each of the quarters. I wanted the elements represented by things that I wanted and things that connected me to success and security. There’s a brick from the house my mom grew up in (among other things), in the North. The South is all sex toys and kinky equipment. The East is the various hard-copy books and chaps that I’ve been published in (why, yes, ALL of them). The West is the tarot cards I drew for my birthday, all those hope-and-heart cards, plus a piece of fancy stemware. The Centre was raised up on a fancy cake tray (40th birthday gift, also hospitality and fanciness), and has the Empress card that I used to kick off my whole Empress Project in the first place. The votive candles I used had been lit at my birthday party, and I treated them like Birthday Candles (as in “make a wish”).
 
I sang (just a little – the chorus of a song that I treated as a prayer), I gave offerings that were a little fancier than I usually do, and that included a little bit of pain, and a moderate amount of blood, on my part. But the big difference in how I did this whole thing is that, when I cast the circle, I got a little bit extra. I’m not usually one to call the guardians of the watchtowers of absolutely anything. But this time I reached out to the People of the four directions, and called the Above and the Below to run the world pillar through my spine.
And they showed up.
They came.
I hadn’t been expecting that.
Don’t go getting me wrong here, I’m very glad they did. But it was an optional thing for them. I’m… touched? That the Spirits of Place, the People who orient us in space and in… action? Is that a good way to put it? That they came and were willing to witness, and maybe even help.
 
Anyway.
I did The Thing.
I think my giant bag of soil is probably thawed out by now (it having had a week to hang out in the warm), so I can now take the last of the accoutrements off the altar space and do the last bit of the ceremony, at which point I can have my coffee table back.
 
In prepping for this, my wife asked me if it was going to come at a cost – because everything has a cost. She works with a goddess who takes payment in blood and pain (there are so many of these) and she was worried about me getting hurt, basically. So we ended up having a discussion about different types of relationships.
I talked about how I’ve been involved with my pantheon actively for a couple of decades, that I check in with them and say Hello often, and that I generally don’t show up with my hand out. I said “There’s wine on the altar right now” – wine that had been offered the previous Friday – and that while I didn’t give my Gods and Ancestors wine and cookies and bread and occasional whisky and other tasty things in order to, you know, manipulate them into feeling like they have to help me, the fact that I’ve been doing this for a long time – much as with more corporeal people – will get you a certain amount of trust and good will. If you show up for your friends, and want to hang out just for the sake of hanging out, they are more likely to show up for you when you need help with a thing. (This is, incidentally, one of the reasons I tend not to contract out and do transactional work with deities outside of my pantheon. I don’t know, and won’t necessarily be able to accurately discern, what kind of payment they might want. And I’m hesitant to offer any kind of tradesies when I don’t know what I’m getting myself into).
 
I did my ritual, my ceremony, made my offerings, around the themes of the Empress.
May it be, may it be, may it be. ❤
 
 
Cheers,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

New Year New You 2019: Week Sixteen – Little Magics Everywhere (A Retrospective on a Magical Visit)

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 is a good week to work on shoaling[…]. Make all your tiny magic fish into one big magic fish.
 

Tarot of the Silicon Dawn – The Magician – A busty, long-haired individual in a traditional witch’s hat and with a wand at her side, sits at a computer keyboard and points to the space above her head, where knives, a pentacle, a mug of coffee, a mask, and what look like a few chocolates(?) float and dance to her Will.

 
Tarot Card: The Magician
When I sat down to write this, I was debating going with the High Priestess. Partly because the High Priestess is frequently coded as “passive” and a lot of these little/”little” magics happened because I was presented with the opportunity to Do A Thing by someone else. But I wanted to emphasize the role of choice here, in so far as it comes to what I chose to do with the opportunities presented.
 
Ms Sugar talks about shoaling – about doing a bunch of little spells, for little things, that happen to all aim (more or less) towards the same goal.
That’s… not exactly what happened here.
Rather, over a month ago, I went to visit my girlfriend in DC, and it felt like a very magical (in the literal, although also just the romantic, sense of the word). So this post is going to be a bit of a retrospective on that one.
 
At my girlfriend’s birthday party (where there was also live music, fire spinning, and poetry), one of her housemates ran an impromptu ritual – strengthening group connections through the Emerald Heart – that included all of us pouring our wills and heart-and-community-related goals into these little fuel-cube things that we fed into the fire to activate them.
I used the opportunity to do some magic about making poetry that serves myself while also finding the right audience for it – people who would also be served by the poetry, would see their own reflections more clearly by reading the ways I’ve written myself down.
It seemed appropriate, given that I’d been performing some of it earlier to a backyard full of exactly the kinds of people that I think of as My Audience. (Queers, kinky folks, trauma survivors, art freaks, sex workers, magic makers, dirt-worshipers, polytheists. Y’know. Us).
 
I practiced energy working a little bit, in a way that let me see if it was having any effect. Which it was! Amazing! 😀
 
We did a Museum Day where we went around and played tourist/tour-guide, and a couple of things happened:
 
We went to the Air & Space Museum – specifically to find Moon Landing goodies for my wife / her metamour – and, while we were there, we got to touch the moon rock. Which… I don’t know if the energy in that big chip of rock (about the size of the cuttlefish bones we get for our little birds to chew on) was due to me having A Religious Experience with one of my gods, or if this very hematite-like bit of rock – the moon has a lot of iron in her make-up – had just picked up and held onto the very human energy of thousands and thousands of people brushing their hands over it every day for decades. But either way, there was Something There that was strong enough for me to pick up on it. O.O
 
We also went to the Renwick Gallery, and the Temple Installation – “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man”, an installation by David Best and the rest of the temple crew – was unexpectedly still running. So I got to spend some time in a temporary – and made to be burned on the Playa – temple to grief and loss. What struck me so much about it was that in the writing that people had done all over the walls, the messages they’d left, the photos they’d brought to leave behind and be destroyed, the words that I saw repeated over and over were “I love you”.
 
And I left something there.
 
There were little wooden “cards” that you could write on – could take away and bring back with other items if you wanted to – and then tuck into the niches between the various layers of woodcut that made up the temple walls. So I wrote something.
Not long before I went to DC, someone on Twitter was doing single-card tarot readings – on the theme of “What you need for your love life” – for anyone who happened to ask for one during a specific time period, just because they were having a good day. And I was like “Sure, hit me up!” and the card this individual drew was Death. What they said about it was “Let the buried memories stay buried. You don’t need to carry them anymore”.
The grief I wrote about did not involve the words “I love you”. We’ll see if writing it down and leaving it there has any effect, but it was basically setting an intention, or maybe making a goal, around not defining my sexual and romantic self by my trauma(s?).
We’ll see what happens.
 
One other thing that happened on Museum Day happened when we stopped for lunch in a specific museum cafeteria. We sat by the window and looked out at the water feature, and we saw that there were four playing cards just… stuck to one of the rocks in the water feature, right were we could see them.
It felt a bit like radiomancy. Just this random chance that happened to include a message via the Language Of Metaphor:
The three of clubs (wands)
The ace of hearts (cups)
And, layered over each other, the eight of hearts and the joker (which can be either the Fool, specifically, or the sum-total of all the major arcana taken together).
 
And, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff in here about experiencing and fulfillment and expanding possibilities (3 of wands) around big-hearted love-intimacy-connection feels (the various cups cards) and I think that’s an accurate interpretation. BUT… I sort of see this as The Locals kind of just checking in, and I find that the land, in particular, tends to be very, very literal. So, given how ¾ of those cards have ties to traveling and journeys? Like, I’m inclined to read this as basically “Oh, hey, we see that you’re in a long-distance relationship together. Got it!” Which reminded me – in a really positive way – of that meme about how sometimes your tarot cards are just like “Wow, girl… you’ve been going through some really hard stuff” and you’re like “Yeah! Any suggestions on what I can do?” and they’re like “Just, wow… this has been really hard. Are you okay?”
Like, sometimes, it’s just The Family going “I see you and acknowledge what’s going on in your life”.
It was kind of delightful. 🙂
(That said, given that tarot draw, and the temple at the Renwick, I can read that 8 of Cups as relating to that, too, if I want to do a me-specific, rather than us-specific, reading).
 
Anyway.
So those were the little magics that I got to do/experience while in DC.
&bsp;
My girlfriend – who described me as being “all food, sex, poetry, blood, magic and religion”, which is not inaccurate – sent me home with T. Thorn Coyle’s book on sigil magic, which I started reading on the plane home (while hanging out on the runway for 45 minutes due to weather conditions, actually). A lot of it (so far) is about meditation and getting into the right headspace – for magic or creative writing work, either way – rather than being about making and working with sigils. But I’m finding it useful anyway.
 
My visits with my girlfriend – in significant part because we live far enough away from each other that we can’t do “every other weekend” type visits – tend to feel a little bit Time Outside Of Time anyway, because we’re both effectively on vacation when we get to see each other. Also, being both really woo, that tends to be a factor as well. But those periods where I have the time and the company that really, really allow for me to have religious experiences and long shop-talk about spirituality and our respective practices… they’re a reminder of how important this stuff is for me, how good it feels to be able to have these conversations and these experiences.
 
So it means that I’ve been pushing myself (just a little bit) to do that stuff more often. To do my Moon Salutations, with at least a little bit of vocalizations, every day. To finally make new beeswax candles for my altar. To light up some incense and do a little bit of energetico-spiritual tidying (and also some literal tidying, tbh). To follow Thorn’s directions and approach my writing as something akin to meditation (which, turns out, really helps me access the poetry-writing part of my brain). To take the time to put on my Crown of Light and write “worthy” on my leg in perfume oil. To start a couple of new poetry projects, one of-which is (so far) devotional in nature. To make a point of shifting my focus lower, to the permanent Ground that I always have going on, to actively try to run energy from those deep-set roots up to the crown of my head, to try to open up the top of my head when I’m reaching for connection with my Ladies.
And it feels good to be doing those things. Sometimes nervous-making, but still good.
I feel like this post connects pretty directly to the one I did for Week Five, almost a year-and-a-half ago, about making little magics in my life, every day. Re-enchanting my daily tasks in order to help me keep at them.
Because the challenge, for me, often is to keep at them, without feeling silly or just “tired” (but I did it yesteday…) or whatever, and deciding I can skip X, Y, or Z or “just one day” and then having “one day” turn into a week or a month or more than a month.
But even Granny Weatherwax was just starting, “every day, just starting”, so coming back and starting over every day is still worthy, you know? But it’s easier if I’m doing it all the time.
 
 
Cheers,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.