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.

Full Moon – Apple Moon Crests (and Wains) – #Mabon / #AutumnEquinox

Red Flesh Apples mid-prep for apple butter. Left of frame: Small cutting board with a sliced apple whose insides look like a red and white bullseye. Center-top of frame: apple cores. Right of frame: crock pot already half full of diced apples. Photo by me.

 
I’m writing the last of this on Autumn Equinox, when Apple Moon is in its last quarter and we’ve just, just slipped into Libra Season.
It’s been, shall we say, a bit of a time around here.
As you know, things have been a wee bit fraught around here of late, although I’m relieved to report that we seem to have nipped that particular problem in its embreonic stages. Hallelujah. Also, I now have five 1-gallon tubs (with ill-fitting lids) hanging out in my kitchen, and I’m thinking that grabbing some builders’ sand from the local hardware store might be a good idea, because it would mean I could store my carrots and beets (and maybe potatoes?) in sand-buckets which, I gather, is the right way to do it).
 
I can’t tell for sure if it’s second-chance summer or not just now, but it’s above 20C, so I’m enjoying it while it’s here.
I’m currently steaming zucchini (the “naturally imperfect” stuff from the grocery store[1]) for the freezer, having already rough-chopped and blanched a few bell peppers for the same reason (they’re just all heaped on a plastic plate, though, rather than going in muffin cups).
I’ve got the steam-juicer home from the tool library (finally) and will be juicing choke cherries (because it turns out I didn’t miss the whole season AND was able to harvest a little bit of mugwort while I was out there). My plan is to do the choke cherries once the zukes are in the freezer, and then cool the juice on the counter, and then in the fridge. I’ll make chokecherry curd on… probably Monday.
 
What I haven’t done (so far) is harvest apples. Part of me is making mental notes to pick some on my way to a modeling gig in the Glebe early next week. Make a batch of crab apple jelly (probably by freezing the apples, and then borrowing the steam-juicer from the tool library again in another couple of weeks). Another part of me is just going “Don’t worry about it! You’ve got buckets of apple butter left over from last year AND you’ve still got some crab apple jelly, too! Focus on harvesting rhubarb and chard! That’s a better idea!”
And… that’s probably what I’m going to do.
 
Between that and the meals I’m making for a friend (who’s working on a couple of NDP campaigns), I’ve got my hands full in the kitchen, which feels pretty good. I feel accomplished when I cook up a lot of food for people, make a really nice meal for us, and/or pack the freezer with produce from the nieghbourhood – or even just the province. It feels like I’m… Okay, this is going to include some negative self-talk here, but: It feels like I’m not being a total free-loader, even though I’m not making a whole lot of money right now. (Which, fuck capitalism, obviously, but here we are). I’m still looking for flexible, part-time office work – applied for a 15 hrs/wk job with the Friends of the Experimental Farm organization, which I would love to get, but who knows when, or even if, I’ll hear from them. So I’m still looking.
 
Listen. I have a confession to make.
Remember back at the New Moon when I followed Liz Worth’s spread for Virgo? How I chose a tarot card to meditate on specifically to remind myself to prioritize my health and my creativity? Remember this?

If all of my bits, from my Deep Self to my literal/physical self are saying “make time to prioritize what matters to you” + “have some confidence, already”, they are also saying “Remember you are worthy. Stop selling yourself short and putting your health and your own goals and priorities last”.

 
I lasted all of one week before a short burst of Bad News hit and an uptick in both anxiety and body-pain came with it. “Guilt and anxiety and despair”, you say? Yeah, kinda.
So maybe my Nine of Swords wasn’t entirely poorly chosen. >.>
I took some time, yesterday morning, to do some extra yoga – which has helped my lower back and hip pain, somewhat – but there’s been a lot of crying and stress-dreams and I’ve been clingier than usual (which is saying something).
Anyway. The end-result of this is that I’ve written a couple of poetry drafts, but I haven’t been doing a lot of writing in the past three weeks that hasn’t been fretful diary entries.
 
My tarotscope – the very last one, since they’re not happening anymore – over at Radical Tarot made a point of reminding me (and all the other Scorpios) that, despite (housing) worries and money fears, “[I’m] okay and [will] be taken care of”.
Which was a good message to have come my way right when ALL of my worst-case-scenario buttons were being mashed.
 
I shuffled my Next World tarot deck, and the following three cards flopped out and onto the floor:
Five of Wands (face up, so that’s my “focus” card)
The Messenger / Heirophant + The Empress (both face down, so I’m treating them as “overarching” and “underlying” cards).
The Ace of Wands (which didn’t fall out of the deck, but was the card on the bottom of the pile when the other three went flying, so I’m paying attention and calling it an advisor).
 
I want to take this as a message of “Don’t let scarcity govern your thinking” and “Take that leap of faith” (The Five of Fire), a message of “Stick to your values” (The Heirophant) and “Keep aiming for what you really want” (The Empress). A message to stay the course and have faith in my path, even when everything feels so fraught and impossible, because I’m going the right way, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, and becoming my fullest, most integrated, self.
I want that to be what this means.
I hope it does.
 
~*~
 
Movement: Haaaaaaaa… I managed to hurt myself doing the most basic of crossfit-esque exercises (the “walking lunge” without any weights or anything to make it harder), so I haven’t been doing a lot of movement in recent days. Which doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a LOT of yoga (to try and help my back – which it’s done) and walking, but which does mean that I’ve been moving slower and a lot more carefully for the past few days. I was relieved to wake up in “normal pain” this morning, rather than the “extra, bonus pain” I’ve been, uh, “enjoying”, for the past few days.
 
Attention: Watching my L4 and L5 like a hawk in case of relapse into “extra bonus pain” territory. Trying to focus, every day, on “What do I want to accomplish, and receive, today” – this is a very recent thing, but it’s seems like it’s worth a try – in order to both get my To Do List actually done, AND to send some thoughts and receptivity out to The Universe Herself and all my Gods and Ancestors, in case they want to give me a hand with anything. Thinking some thoughts (at the invitation of a friend) about how kink and polyamoury relate to the imagery of the tarot suits. Attending – just a little bit more – to my Glamoury, such as it is, trying to remember to wear my Crown Of Light and bring little bit of ritual focus into my creative work and my self-care practices. (I mean, we’ll see how that goes… but try, try again, right? Right).
 
Gratitude: I wrote two poems, and I’m so happy and relieved and grateful that The Poetry is still there! 😀 Grateful for the Tool Library membership that lets me access tools – the steam juicer, the pressure canner, the enormous garden sheers and the pitch fork – without having to find a place to store them. Grateful for poetry acceptances (and getting paid for them, no less!). Grateful for modeling work and (tentative) temp work this coming week. Grateful for partners who love me and make time for me. For an hours-long date with my wife, riding the motorcycle on a bright, gorgeous day, eating ice cream in a little town before heading home the long way. For sexting with my girlfriend and the knowledge that we’ll be in the same place again, in just a couple of weeks. For time to spend with friends, catching up, chatting, and sharing stories. For productivity dates with fellow writers. For knowing my poetry resonates with, and matters to, other people whose histories overlap with my own.
 
Inspiration: Windfall apples and heavy clouds. The clover sprouting (fucking finally) in my front garden. The poetry in Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, which arrived recently and which I’ve finally been able to sit down and start reading. The kids doing Climate Strike actions, and the adults who are joining them. The Wheel of the Year and the tarot suits (as per usual).
 
Creation: I’ve been feeling really tapped out, tbh, for a while now. But this morning, I took myself out and sat myself down, and I wrote two poems and I’m feeling pretty good about both of them. One is going in my chapbook (taking the place of a piece I don’t like that much). The other is the first poem in what I hope will be another chapbook-length project. I have the beginnings of a third poem, though I’m not sure it’s that great (yet). With any luck, it’ll fit into the same new project, and I’ll be able to take it somewhere good.
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] Okay, full disclosure? There are a LOT of reasons why I don’t like that my neighbourhood is gentrifying, not the least-of-which is that, when our landlords sell the building (which they are currently trying to do) we’re not going to be able to stay here because the rent will be too high for us to find a 2-bedroom we can afford.
BUT
One thing I do like is that the fancier the local grocery store gets, the more I’m able to get aesthetically “imperfect” but otherwise totally fine produce at reduced prices. Meaning: The less I have to rely on stuff that’s already a little bit moldy and/or rotten on the quick-sell cart.
I appreciate this a whole bunch, let me tell you.

New Moon – Slush Moon Begins

“View southeast along a slush-covered Errecart Boulevard from the Humboldt River Bridge during a snowstorm in Elko, Nevada” – Photo by Famartin via Wiki Free Images.

 
“Slush Moon”? So appetizing, right? I know. But it’s that time of year. The temperature is going to be zig-zagging back and forth across the frozen line for the next few weeks, melting the winter’s vast store of snow during the day and then freezing the run-off into ice over night.
I am deeply, deeply not looking forward to this, but I’m also seriously hoping for a slow melt-season, because this much snow turning to water all at once would spell flooded basements for just about everyone I know who has one.
So here we are.
 
Two weeks ago, I put away the Solstice decorations. Two weeks from now, it’ll be Spring Equinox. I’ve spent this past week essentially going to ‘Sexuality School” online and miraculously staying somewhat on top of my ten-minutes-a-day of exercise stuff, albeit by the skin of my teeth.
 
Ms Sugar wrote something the other day, and I find I’m relating to it a little. I’ll be forty before the year is out, and I feel like I’m “running out of time” to make changes that’ll stick. Some of those changes are the sex-related stuff I’ve been talking about over on Syrens. Some of them are more basic. Eat more vegetables. Become a better gardener. Stave off arthritis and help my body get stronger. Figure out how to parlay this university-funded casual-hours contract into a sustainable, long-term, but still casual-hours, income stream[1].
 
I feel like I’m constantly starting over, picking up the dropped threads, trying to find a way forward where I get to take care of myself, long-term, and get to have the freedom I want when it comes to how I spend my time, energy, and attention.
 
~*~
 

Silicon Dawn Tarot – High Priestess – “[… The] High Priestess get things *done* because she is *connected* in a way that few of the others down in the Earthly half of the Majors are. […] The Priestess is busy consulting her Higher Self *right now*”.

 
I chose this card for my tarot meditation.
Maybe it’s an odd one to choose, or maybe I’m pulling it because I know I’ve got a little ritual planned for later today – one that I’m nervous about, but one that I hope has some effect – and I want as much help as I can get.
The High Priestess – The Seer, The Inner Voice – is the conduit between the word-using mind and the deep ocean space of everything else in you. The connection between conscious and unconscious. The union of opposites.
As I try to get back into doing regular glamour work again (again, again… even as I type this while wearing a fuzzy bathrobe and flip-flops), as I keep trying to put myself back together again, I think it’s relevant to think of the High Priestess, how she can be in and of two (or more) worlds at once while keeping everything connected.
 
~*~
 
Movement: Some yoga. A couple of long walks (commuting, basically). Some weights-work. Some dancing.
 
Attention: Root chakra stuff. Where I am, and am not, holding muscle tension. What feels good. What makes me nervous.
 
Gratitude: Afternoons spend with pals. Time for long baths. A new Toby Daye book to devour. Sunny days, even if they’re cold. Unearthed summer veggies filling my freezer. A writing date planned for the end of the week. Kisses from my wife. Catching-up chats with my girlfriend.
 
Inspiration: A lot of what I’ve been reading in Come As You Are and Ecstasy is Necessary and a lot of what I’ve been watching/hearing during the Explore More Summit.
 
Creation: A lot of personal essays. One ritual (that’s, admitted, still kind of being done on the fly). Plans to start turning all of the above-mentioned inspiration into poems (or at least drafts of poems) later this week.
 
 
Cheers,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] I have some leads on this one, at least.

New Moon – Snow Moon Waxes (Winter Solstice)

Happy (belated) Winter Solstice to you all. 🙂
 

A stack of eleven beeswax tealights, with one tealight lit and burning in the foreground (in a small dark green and gold-flecked holder).

 
Tonight, I am drinking left-over red wine and snacking on cookies – rather than doing something sensible like eating left-over pâté on crackers or otherwise diving into something that contains actual protein. My lovely wife (we celebrated five years of marriage on Winter Solstice, btw) is spending the night with her partner and I’m, uh, procrastinating… after spending a day fixing security problems on various social media accounts. FML. At least things seem to be sorted out now, which is a relief.
 
New Moon was a solid week ago. If I were to look out the window, I’d see her – almost half-full and almost half-way up the sky – right now. Only a few days ago she was a hooked crescent, hidden by cloud banks, following the sun towards the western horizon while snow slowly piled up on the steps and I lit candles and poured offering libations inside my cozy house. We started our annual party an hour later than usual (and on the Friday, rather than on Solstice Proper, because it’s hard to get people to come out for a late night when they need to get up for work the next morning) and… it helped. Everything was out and ready (and tidy) with enough time to spare – whether because I gave myself that extra hour, or because a friend came early to help set up… thanks Mercury-Stationing-Direct for that stroke of luck – that I actually had a chance to throw on a nice dress and some party shoes before people started piling through the door.
 
It was so good to have a house full of people again!
 
It’s not that I forget. It’s that the amount of prep that goes into officially Hosting a thing leaves me wondering how much clean-up I can reasonably handle – both before and after the fact. But having people over makes me happy, it stirs up the energy (and forces me to vacuum, which ALSO stirs up the energy, and helps it cycle through rather than stagnating), makes me smile, and helps me bring my Queen of Wands side – the fabulous femme hostess with the mostess – to the fore. I need to make time for more of this in my life.
 
On the glamour front, I’m working at presenting myself a little harder. I’ve talked about using pinterest to show myself what “glamourous” looks like to me, and it’s… a lot of viking/”viking” warrior women, witchy moon goths, queer pin-up babes, sleek film-noir/office-domme outfits, iron-age and early medieval English & Scottish queens, Russian fairy tale pics, and pop-apocalypse/neolithic “shaman” type imagery. Which you’d think would be difficult to boil down into one cohesive whole.
At least I thought it would be.
But the thin line of makeup that follows the curve of a pop-apocalyptic warrior’s cheekbones and spans the bridge of her nose? Is the same line taken by the pin-up librarian’s rhinestone cat-eye glasses or my own oversized witchy-rocker shades. The rockabilly femme in the vintage-style mermaid skirt wears hair flowers that echo the flower crown of the Ukrainian fairy-tale character and the ATS bellydancer’s head piece. The glittering haute couture kokoshnik and the Queen Mum’s tiara are also the spiked hairband worn by the nu goth princess, the Rosy The Riveter kerchief, the band of the hand-knit toque I wear every winter day I leave the house. The mermaid’s tail is the leather scales down one arm of the contemporary turtleneck and the lace-pattern on the hand-knit wiggle sweater. The heavy woolen Ruana of iron age Scotland is the elegant shawl (and the chunky infinity scarf) of today. The Neolithic skin dress of a reconstructed Magdalenian Woman is the fur collar on a film-noir-inspired leather trench, the fox-pelt draped around the shoulders of a forest fairy, the stole – from my great-grandfather – that my grandmother passed on in her nineties. The horns on the forest elf are the ornaments crowning the neolithic regalia, are the chunky, multi-point antler hair sticks in the contemporary updo.
The shapes are becoming clearer, and it’s something I’m mindful of when I put my every-day clothes on.
Whether it’s doing anything to make me shinier in the eyes of anyone (or Anyone) who happens to see me… that remains to be seen. But this is still a thing.
 
Tarot Card Meditation:
I’ve heard (recently, though I can’t remember where… sorry) that New Moons are good for magic and intention-setting and Full Moons are good for healing work and deep-diving. On that note, as the new moon waxes towards full, the card I drew for my meditation is:
 

Tarot of the Silicon Dawn
Nine of Cups
A woman is stripy fetish gear takes a selfie. Nine cups are arrayed around her.
The is the “Wishes Coming True” card, and I kind of love it. 😉

 
This is… relevant on more than just a “what do you wish for”/”what makes you truly happy” level, given what I spent a chunk of my morning getting re-set-up to do, but it also ties into my own questions about what makes me happy, what internalized Stuff do I need to free myself from in order to get the sex life (which, for me is SO tied to my heart and my relationships and all those watery cups subjects) I want.
Capricorn Season is all about showing up and doing the work (to quote the Hoodwitch). Chani tells me to fill my days with rituals that help me break bad habits (Scorpio) but also reminds my Rising sign (Gemini) to be mindful of the energetic exchanges (such as flirting, first impression, and interpersonal collaborations, all-of-which which your rising sign handles) and to figure out what you actually need, want, and have to offer in those situations. She tells my Moon (Cancer… to the surprise of absolutely nobody) that “love needs a home” – which, duh, got me all weepy, because: yeah – and that for the next three years Saturn-in-Capricorn is going to show me what I need to build and be honest about in order to make that home, with all its many chambers, a real one with solid foundations.
I think the nine of cups ties into this one hard.
Help me to know what I want.
Help me to acknowledge what I want.
Help me to seek what I want.
Help me to invite it in.
 
I need to bake a couple of pies and finish a sewing project so… no more procrastinating for me.
 
Happy Solstice all.
 

 
~*~
 
Movement: All I want to do is sleep. So not a tonne of movement going on, and what IS going on has resulted in my left hip swelling to twice its usual size. (It came back down again, but… Winter + long walks + carrying heavy loads in an unbalanced way + even the tiniest of high heels… did not do me any good in recent history. So I’m being careful with myself while I have the option).
 
Attention: Right at the moment? Chani’s pointed reminder to pay attention to how I spend my time.
 
Gratitude: Five years of marriage with my lovely wife. Polyamoury that works, even if it’s always going to be a learning process. Generous friends who bring us fancy food, who help me get things set up for company coming over. Company coming over and filling my house with warmth, light, and laughter. Sweet young folks who trust me. Extra garden space to look forward to this coming summer (maybe, possibly). Warm blankets. Sewing skills. Lazy days. Helpful tech support staff who are working on xmas eve and still willing to go the extra mile to help me out. Perfect clear nights that aren’t too cold. The chance to stroll home, looking at pretty lights, with my wife. ❤
 
Inspiration: Easy but fancy-looking up-dos. Moonlight. Iron-age fashion. Winter fairy tales. The hearth inside my heart and how I want to bring it into the solid world around me.
 
Creation: A lot of sewing, some knitting. Not a whole lot of anything else. Poetry is having a break until January while I spend some time with my wife (who is officially on vacation as of last Friday).

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

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

New Moon – Leaf Moon Begins; Beltane 2017

New Moon in Taurus was on Wednesday. Beautiful green things are leafing out all over. The hyacinths are blooming, even in my shady AF front yard. My wife’s Dog Harness contract is over-over-over (beyond doing some management stuff, which is fine and won’t take too much of her time) and she is back to doing actual LEATHER work at her workshop. Chani is telling us all about how New Moon in Taurus brings love and solid commitment to accomplishing good things, how Venus (which is finally stationed direct, and which rules Taurus) is being a little more gentle with her lessons while still effortlessly getting thing done as she moves through compassionate Pisces. The HoodWitch informs us that this particular New Moon touches on, well, a whole lot of stuff that’s in my personal “Oh, gods, do I really have to deal with this???” house – money, work, emotional patterns based on security – all that Job Stuff, not to mention the “too cautious to move, too incautious not to leap” stuff that’s been asking me to find a behvioural happy medium that will actually let me get stuff don – like body, sensuality, home-and-family STUFF – without a lot of hand waving and/or skipping over (or right back into) my own shit in the process. The HoodWitch horoscopes for this week are ringing a lot of bells, on that front, too. Handily, she has some lovely, appropriately sensual, simple rituals to help me (or you, for that matter) focus intentions and, frankly, put a call out for help or support on dealing with my Feeeeelings And Stuff around these subjects & situations.
On an only somewhat related note, Ariel, over at Siobhan’s Mirror, has handed me a tarotscope that’s all about recognizing that wishes can, and have, come true. The tarot reading I gave myself at New Moon said much the same, with the Nine of Cups featuring prominently and a heap of signs pointing to All That Struggle being behind me (well, mostly – my Present includes the 3 of swords crossed with the High Priestess, which suggests I’m still Processing) and the need for me to realize that, rather than all this good stuff I’m starting to step into being just “wishful thinking” and me kidding myself, I’m actually shifting towards the more playful, well-boundaried, pleasure-achieving open-heartedness that I’ve been striving for with regards to my Queen Of Cups project.
All of which is fantastic news. I mean, seriously. LOOK at this:
 

 
Beltane (today) dawned rainy, grey and cold. Which is pretty par for the course, in these parts, even if we were having gorgeous, gorgeous super-warm weather earlier in the week.
I’m home today. Planting sorrel and collards. Doing multiple loads of dishes. Vacuuming. Baking bread. Baking a lot of things, actually, mostly to use up the kefir in the fridge and make room for the next batch. >.>
We hung the ancestor photos (all but two – we ran out of screws) – FINALLY – over the weekend, and I’m feeling a whole lot better about that whole situation.
 
New Moon plus the Year Gate swinging into Spring and towards the rapidly approaching Summer (that’s Ottawa – Three weeks between grey-and-mud-and-near-freezing-temperatures and flowers-and-flipflops-and-30-degree-highs), no wonder things feel like new beginnings.
 
What do I want to call into my life? Well, as Miss Sugar puts it, Butter, A Dress, and Travel.
Maybe, more accurately, I should say that I’m feeling hopeful on the heart front and, while there are still things to be sorted out, I don’t think I’m in the metaphorical dark woods anymore. I’m in the sparsely treed borderlands, at worst. (I reeeeeeeeeally hope I’m not wrong on that). But I’ve still got Scarcity Brain eating at me and, frankly, I’m thirty-seven. I would like my middle-age to look less like Catfood For Dinner Is A Real Possibility and more like… more like Wife and I (and anyone else we end up living with, because polyamoury) are both bringing in enough money, doing flexibly-scheduled, preferably part-time work, ideally in a creative field, that we each like and are good at, that we can cover our expenses, have an RRSP or two, go on an actual Vacation now and then, and share some of that cash with other people who are doing art and activism that we like and care about. I would like my old age (which feels a whole lot closer now than it did ten years ago) to be comfortable and gentle, rather than impoverished and stressed out.
 
Keep Calm and Carry Green Garnets in Your Wallet, I guess?
 
 
~*~
 
Motion: Went swimming yesterday (mostly this involved sitting in a hot tub, but there was some treading water in the deep end of the pool as well). Enjoying how easy it is to walk places these days, too! There’s a day-dance coming up in just under a week, which I’m looking forward to. Raking out the garden and doing lots of bending and digging in a friend’s flower beds, the other day, has left me with slightly stronger thighs (and also sore feet).
 
Attention: Paying attention to my boundaries, to the sprouts sprouting in my garden (some are wanted, some are most-like not, but I’m not sure what everything is yet, so…), to friends going through hard times, to my Feelings around money/employment and how I tend to see “wealth” (fiancial) and “abundance” (everything else) as two distinct categories that don’t have a lot of overlap and maaaaaaay be mutually exclusive (I gotta fix, that, you guys… it is not helping me out right now). Also throwing some more attention at The Novel.
 
Gratitude: Thankful for rain, for getting the ancestor photos hung, for lots of frozen veggies still in the freezer, for finding out (how did I not know this already?) that my wife actually LIKES tinned cream of mushroom soup! (Who knew?) For romantic canoodling. For people who want to hear my thoughts. For time to sit in a hot tub and relaaaaaaaaax. For flowers coming up in the front yard, and the slow spreading of my ground-cover plants. For a quiet week. For repeat clients calling and booking again. For kind friends who help me out with stuff I don’t know how to fix myself (take that however you want to).
 
Inspiration: Queer Femme Witches, and Queer Witches more generally, Everywhere. ❤ Spending time with other writerly chicks, nattering over plot-fixing and character development. Reading Black Wave (Michelle Tea) and Nevada (Imogen Binnie) and trying to learn how to make a self-absorbed character who doesn’t have her shit together likeable, or at least relateable, or failing that, enough of a train-wreck to be interesting. >.>
 
Creation: I continue to slog away at The Novel, as mentioned above. Trying to sort out how the hell the climax will work (which involves sorting out what the book is Actually About). Poking at the poetry of other femmes, choosing poems to gloss, and lines to build new poetry from. ❤

New Year New You 2016: Reflections So Far + Week 10: What Motivates 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!
 
Reflection Instructions: “[…]Reflect on the last nine weeks and talk about what you’ve learned” about yourself, your practice, your project, and where you want to be.
+
Week 10 Instructions: Do some navel gazing: What are your reasons for working on your goals? What makes you eager to work on them?
 
I’m combining these two prompts… for no real reason, except that I can? We’ll see if they wind up having common themes or not.
 
Tarot CardS:
Reflection: Ha, I’m half-inclined to suggest the Hanged Man because of it’s “pause” and (in particular) “mirror” or aspects, or even its “seeing things from a new angle” elements. We’ll see if I stick with that, though.
Motivation: Part of me wants to choose The Chariot (AKA: The Archer, Awareness) because it’s very much about “get up / wake up, and go!”, about finding and directing your energy. It’s a card about being motivated in general. But… In reality, a lot of my motivation – for this project, and also in life more broadly – is the 4 of cups + the 6 of cups. Dissatisfaction, self-isolation, the search for self-knowledge, sadness (all Four of Cups traits) combined with the Six of Cups’ yearning for something better, and re/connected to others (sometimes obtainable, sometimes… no so much, but either way)… that’s what tends to push me into action. A sense of “gotta fix this” combined (more frequently) with “I am sick of feeling this way”.
(Heh… actually, the “Turning In” aspect of the Four of Cups would work well for the Reflections part of this post, too…)
 
Anyway.
So, yeah. Via tarot cards, I’ve already talked about what motivates me, but let’s dig into that a little more with specific respect for this NYNY Project.
 
Strictly speaking, I started my Queen of Cups Project because I was sick of feeling miserable all the time and wanted to get better at welcoming good things/people/feelings into my life. All the Brené Brown stuff (that I would end up reading in February 2016) about Preemptive Tragedy and Camping Out in the Swamp of Disappointment? I didn’t have words for it yet, but I knew it was a major problem. So my motivation was definitely about wanting to lift/shake myself out of my perpetual Four of Cups funk.
 
The dirty little secret, though, is that I also started this project because I was afraid my partner would leave me (…and she did) if I didn’t shape up and stop freaking out all the time. Lots and lots of stuff about “Is this in my head? I don’t know what to think” facing off against “This love is dificult, but it’s real…” and not knowing how much of my anxiety and spun-ness was due to my own self-inflicted meta-naratives (meaning stuff I could fix by myself) versus how much of it… wasn’t. A lot of yearing for the loving, second-chance, taking-care-of-each-other energy of the Six of Cups. Not a great reason to start a self-improvement project (although probably not an uncommon one, either).
 
Negative reinforcement can go a long way towards pushing me to do something.
But my other major motivator is success.
 
Which brings me to the “reflection” part of this post.
 
I think it’s going well.
 
I’ve been doing these prompts in order, but I haven’t been pushing myself to do them week-by-week. As such, it’s been a solid six months – rather than 10 weeks – since I started this project. There was a break-up in there, with a bonus sharp reminder that “fixing myself” is only going to work if I’m doing it for my own sake, rather than because I’m doing the desperate worthiness/shame dance and trying to “become someone worth loving” (yeah, I know. I know). But there’s also been time.
 
Listening to all the Slow Down messages I was getting meant giving my magic the chance to actually game the odds with enough time to get a run-up at things. It meant giving myself time enough to learn Handy Truths from Leah Horlick’s and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s poetry, from Brené Brown’s work, from Ms Sugar’s glamour guide blog posts, and from numerous queer, almost exclusively) femme, tarot readers (go give them some love), as well as time to let things fix a bit better in my marrow than they might have if I’d pushed myself to keep to the “Just Keep Pushing” time-frame established by the course. (Which doesn’t mean that the time-frame is bad, just that this is a deeper project than “change where my money comes from” or get this book finished”… or at least it is in my case).
 
Heading into “phase two” of NYNY (prompts 10 – 23), I’m going to keep the pace I’ve set for myself, keep working on glamour and self-glamouring, keep working on tarot, keep working on me and all of my Feeeeelings Stuff. (P.S.: The Help that arrived in Week Nine? I am having a preliminary consultation on Sunday. woohoo!)
 
And,with all that in mind, off we go. 🙂
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

New Year New You 2016: Week Nine – Asking For Help

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: “Asking for help feels almost like admitting defeat. And by defeat, I mean admitting that you’re not invincible. Well. You’re not. Sorry.“… So ask for the help that you need.
 
Tarot Card: I…honestly have no idea. Part of me wants to choose a Six card. The six of fire (abundance, success) or the six of earth (for its elements of checking in and touching base)… but neither of those is quite right. Part of me wants to name the Nine of Cups (for its “wishes coming true” aspect) and part of me wants to suggest the Wheel of Fortune, if only because of how much this seems to have relied on good luck and random chance. Lemme explain…
 
Thoughts:
I’ve been sitting on this prompt for a while, because I looked at it and thought “Who the hell do I ask for help on this one??” and then, this morning, help asked for ME.
As if by magic. >.>
` 
That’s what I mean by “good luck and random chance”.
 
Turns out, a friend of a friend is getting her Life Coach certification, and needs to practice on people (for free!). So I asked my friend to put me in touch with her friend, and have since sent off a note asking if said friend can help me with some specifics around my Receptivity.
At this point, I have no idea whether this is going to go anywhere. I mean, I hope it does, and I’ve given my possible Life Coach as much information as I can without just running on at the mouth, and we’re going to have A Conversation to see if my Stuff can be molded into something that her school of coaching can help with.
 
Fingers crossed. (I may or may not update this to tell you all how it goes, if it goes. Again: Fingers crossed!)

Full Moon – Leaf Moon Crests

So, in theory, this full moon is going to teach me something about Relationships. I’m not even sure where I got that, but it might have something to do with what Chani Nicholas has to say about this week. Or it might have to do with dinner + a possible drive to Montreal with my wife and my ex (aka: her partner) tomorrow night and just how that’s gonna go, given it’s the last time I’m going to see said ex for, well, a very long time. (They’re moving to Alberta in six weeks). I’m trying not to over-think it or get all worked up about it, or whatever.
 
ANYWAY.
 
I feel kind of like I had a penny-drop moment the other night, which was kind of a big deal and is something I’m hoping I can build on. The plan to see more people and do more social stuff (in a sustainable way) seems to be working out so far. I mean, it’s only been two weeks, but I’m still getting to socialize and also have down-time, so that’s a good thing. Dancing at Morning Jam last weekend was great (and I met a couple of people who remembered me and my poetry(!) from the Reading Out Loud show I took part in last year – awesome bonus!). I have Plans in the works for how to promote my chapbooks around town, and a birthday party to attend on Sunday.
 
I finally (FINALLY) made candles – beeswax ones, no less – for the altar (which – sorry, Gods – has been sorely neglected of late), and got a package in the mail, the contents of which will be put to use in various magical fashions. I’ve been poking at the tarot course I’m taking (slowly, but surely), thinking a lot about the 2 and 3 of cups, but also the Queen of Swords (of all things) – she has more to do with Death (both the Major Arcana card and its meanings, and the literal thing) than I was expecting. Who knew?
 
The seeds I planted (er – literal seeds in this case) in the Cold Weather Bed are starting to come up, and I’ve transplanted some self-seeded greens (mustard or rappini, not sure) into that bed as well. I’ve harvested sage and vietnamese garlic greens (and rhubarb) from the perenial/self-seeding bed and have a vase (well, jam-jar) of water on the kitchen counter, full of dandelion greens for dinner tomorrow. The plan is to spend a significant chunk of this weekend setting up the Squash Bed (which will have cherry-tomato plants and maaaaaaaaaybe eggplants and/or ground cherries in addition to cucumber, yellow zucchini/crookneck, Musquee de Provence or Sugar-Pie pumpkin, and Butternut squash) and maybe, if I can swing it, adding some showy-but-cheap annual flowers (and some Spiderwort and/or spearmint, if I can find them) to the front flower bed.
 
~*~
 
MOTION: Walking all over town. Still haven’t made it to a pool, but have started working one day per week (soon to be two days) at my wife’s shop, which involves a lot of being on my feet. Learning how to do that without screwing up my back/hip/knee… face?? (No, seriously, I’m having facial spasms again – that doctor’s appointment in early June can’t come soon enough) is… going to take a bit, but a good pair of insoles is probably a requirement. Hoping to get to another not-late-at-night dance in the next few weeks, but I have to find out when it’s happening first. (Turns out, I follow the organizer on twitter, so this shouldn’t be too hard).
 
ATTENTION: Looking for moments of sychronicity & good luck; watching the leaves opening, the (slow, due to lots of shade) flowers in my front yard start to bloom, and the cotlydons (?) poke through the soil in my vegetable beds. Trying to be an attentive wife. ❤
 
GRATITUDE: HOT WEATHER! I went out in flip-flops and only a sweater this morning, and felt great! Also, apparently wishes do come true. It may not be houndstooth, but I am now the delighted owner of a rich purple straight-skirt (not quite a pencil skirt, but close enough) that I got for free when my Mom cleaned out her closet (thanks, Mom). Also, tremendously grateful for realizing what That Feeling was, the other day, and being able to stay emotionally open in a situation where I might otherwise have shut down. Definitely a win, and one I hope to repeat. 😀
 
INSPIRATION: My wife, who is riding about 150km/week on her bicycle! Also: The Two of Cups, in its various incarnations.
 
CREATION: Right now, it’s all about the garden. Well, that, and writing Glosas. I’m slowly working through a bunch of self-sellected poetry excerpts by various femme poets and glossing all of them. It’s a bit of a break-up album, so far, but the plan is that it will eventually be chapbook #3, which will be awesome.

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.