New Year New You 2021 – King of Coins Project, Week 6: Looking for Omens

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!

Instructions: “The point of this prompt is more about being open to an experience and relaxing your mind and seeing what kind of revelations you come to.”

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.

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.

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…