On Showing Up for Yourself

Thorn writes awesome blog posts on the regular, but her latest one struck especially close to home for me: Self Respect: Come to Your Success. You should read it immediately because it's frankly life changing and also the rest of this entry won't make sense without it.

This part really struck me:
When are we not showing up? When are we avoiding our success? We aren’t late to meet friends for dinner, so why do we put off working on our novel? We aren’t late to our jobs, so why do we not get out of bed when it’s time to meditate?

I suck at showing up for myself. I really do. I'm more motivated than the average bear- if there is a strict deadline, other people involved, or it's money related, I have my shit together like 95% of the time. But when it's something non deadline related (my hearth witch book) or something that strictly benefits me (a regular magical practice, going to the gym), I suck super hard.

I'm not sure why that is or why I do this to myself. I am honestly and truly so close to becoming the person I want to be and when I get to the part that I'm just about to tip over the edge, I freak.

It's true! You can ask Jow, Jason, Gordon or anyone who knows me in real life. Freaking sounds so . . .cavalier. What I really mean is I have an actual full on panic attack which renders me useless. I will often self sabotage in exciting ways like messing with my schedule which always gets me crazified or taking my pills late or skipping breakfast or a host of other not helpful behaviors which I work really hard at not indulging.

But there's something about showing up for myself that has been problematic for a long time. I think fear is a big part of it for me. What happens if I accomplish everything I've been trying to accomplish and it changes me? What happens if it's not what I've always thought it would be? Like it or not, I've been hurdling towards this for quite some time and I've been fairly successful in my efforts so far but I'm also struck with mind killing fear.

In Dollhouse, the dolls always ask, "Was I my best?" And we use that as short hand in our house because in like everything else, that is my perfectionist, apple polishing modus operandi. I want to be my best at everything right up until it's about being my best for myself.

I saw this really amazing play recently with J. called Sleeping Beauty Wakes which is about what would happen if Sleeping Beauty has been sleeping hundreds of years and then taken to a sleep clinic and there's this really awesome song that Beauty sings that's called "Good for Me" which really describes my struggle with myself, Whatever I like you take away/ you drag me back from where I go/ you never listen to what I say/ whatever I want the answer is always no/ for my own good/ you lock me up in a padded room/ so safe I never feel a thing/ you tie me down in a silken tomb/ a perfect little princess puppet on a string/ for my own good/ I have a will that will not be denied/ I will be the one who decides what's good for me/ you're gonna see just what I'm made of/ I'll find the thing you're most afraid of/ Because I would rather die than live this way . . .

I need to ride the tiger and not let the tiger ride me anymore and I need to wake the fuck up. I think today after I do my magical household cleaning (which I have been a total slag about), I'm going to make some vows in front of my gods about showing up for myself, which terrifies me as I was taught through ADF/GoG that the gods do not fuck around about vows so you better mean them.

I need to.

Building a Dilettante

My approach to magic can at best be politely be called eccentric but there are a lot of sources that helped me get to where I am as a third wave riot girl hearth witch. Should you ever be curious about how I got here.

Reading List for the Dilettante Hearth Witch

Our Bodies, Ourselves - I'm not going to lie, it still appalls me how many women don't know their birth control options or how their bodies work or anything.

WomenSpirit Rising - Just blew my tiny brain open about religion and started me thinking about how to be a riot girl in religion.

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle - This is When Shit Got Real for me as a Women's Studies major.

The Spiral Dance 20th Anniversary - Because you always remember your first, because she still updates it with new info and changes in philosophy. Also I'm mad at Z. and she knows why.

A Subscription to Real Simple - It's the perfect hearth witch mag imo - realistic recipes, how to clean just about anything, financial planning, realistic planners, gardening and essays about various real world stupid motherfucking problems. The real world guide to being a motherfucking adult.

Old Style Conjure Podcast - Oh man do I love me some Momma Starr, she just is the cat's pajamas. I'm going to butch this horribly but when someone essentially says on a hoodoo podcast, "But you don't just want him back, you want his money. So you're going to Bend Him Over in Jesus' name!" I'm going to love you forever.

White Wolf Mage: The Ascension Role Playing Game Books: Dreamspeakers, Cult of Ecstasy and Spirit Ways - As long as you understand that they are *fiction* for a *pretend role playing game*, they're helpful as they're well researched.

Animal Speak - a great primer on some basic Native American Shamanic concepts

Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic: A Materia Magica of African-American Conjure - Super helpful hoodoo reference book.

Compendium of Herbal Magick - Really helpful Euro magical herb compendium

Rules of the Game - teaches basic NLP techniques and I find it helpful in my glamoury work

Eat, Pray, Love - it really encapsulated my post divorce spiritual journey and helped me focus on what I'm trying to accomplish.

Evolutionary Witchcraft - This book really helped me come to terms with being a Reclaimist. The Iron Pentacle meditation has changed every group I've led it for, it's that amazing.

Rune Soup - Because magically speaking, Gordon really is my better half.

How May I Service You Today?

Today Thorn Coyle blogs about Service is Power which is something very near and dear to my heart. I've considered myself a v. service oriented person and all wink wink Secretary references aside, it can be challenging to explain how and why this is part of my spirituality.

I think service can be a difficult concept to our community because there are obvious services that many of us do not do. Helping at a soup kitchen or a domestic violence helpline, volunteering in Haiti, etc. If you do those things, you are truly an angel. But many of us get too bogged down in our daily lives and it can be challenging to get involved in a larger more global cause. To that I say two things:

1. Think globally, act locally.

2. What do you give a fuck about?

The first one is to indicate that you need to think about all the things you hopefully do for your more immediate family, friends and community. Maybe you don't volunteer at a shelter, but unfortunately, most of us have known friends who got themselves into a situation they can't get out of. And sometimes, for some of us, there is a light of some kind that we happen to be in the right place at the right time and the other person is in the right mindframe so that when you say, Honey, this has got to stop. Right now. The other person replies, You're right. And it's going to, right now. Maybe you don't volunteer at a soup kitchen but you take your unemployed friend out for dinner. Or maybe you volunteer your time and energy into your local pagan community and you make the feast or offer to do registeration for a larger pagan event. Think carefully about all the small kindnesses you do in a day - when you listen to a friend cry, when you help a sibling move, when you watch a cousin's baby for an hour, all of those services big and small that you do. And ask yourself, could I do more? Because . . .you probably could. Make your mom dinner one night, buy your friend her coffee for no reason, watch a coven mate's kid for two hours so she can sleep, all of those things that we do out of love and out of kindess are some of the best human experiences there are. And if you grit your teeth and do something nice anyway when you don't feel like it? The Jewish faith calls that a mitzvah and it counts even more. I believe that, I really do.

The second part is what my first year women's studies class professor very exasperatedly said to us when she had enough of us that day. And I find it guides my life. What do you give a fuck about? What is more important to you than anything? What do you believe in more than anything? What is your driving force? What gets you out of bed in the morning? It forces you to cut through the bullshit and focus on what is really important. You can't save all the starving orphan nuclear whales in Africa. So what is more important to you than anything? For me it was Hurricane Katrina. So important that I signed up for the Red Cross and was willing to go, even though I was shit scared and didn't know what to expect. I went to my training, I got all my paperwork done and I was ready to do it. I talked a lot to my exbf who was home from Iraq briefly and I felt stupid about being scared, I wasn't even going to leave the country. But he said there's always someone who got there before you, who managed to make an IV out of duct tape and a ziplock bag. That's okay. You'll be there when you go. I didn't get called, but I did fund raise for Katerina. And if abortion became illegal, there are a lot of things I'd be willing to do there. Where will you lay yourself on the line?

Finally, as Pagans and magic users, I think service can be sort of . . .pushed aside. It's not cool, it's not cynical, it's not furthering whatever your Master Plan for World Domination (tm) is, it's not something you can really sneer while doing. We're all adrift anyway, man. Service forces us to look beyond ourselves. Service forces us to wear our hearts on our sleeves. Service forces us to be sincere. And frankly, as a whole, these are things we are not good at. And we need to be. Service isn't v. glamorous, it's generally doing shit work that no one wants to do, but man, it recharges me way more than anything else, way more than ten episodes of Degrassi, way more than Drawing Down, way more than High Priestessing, way more than meditation. I would really honestly and truly rather be washing dishes in the back than leading a rite. Service really and truly is where my heart is, I feel like I am as close as I possibly can be to touching the gods when I am serving others. Honestly, I think at the end of the day, service is what binds kitchen witches together because it tends to be something we all do, no matter if we're a witch in the woods or a soccer mom with 2.5 children and a white picket fence. What's more beautiful than that to bind us all together?

On the Sundering of Feri: The stars/ the moon/ all have been blown out . . .

So, I'm on the fringe of Feri. Just in deeply enough to have a friend basically say holy shit there is so much going on right now it's *crazy* and people are acting *super crazy* to each other. I neatly filed it away in my gossip folder but didn't really venture further in until just now when I read T. Thorne Coyle's article The Sundering of Feri. While I don't really feel much more confident on the specifics of what happened and was surprised to learn Thorne isn't teaching Feri anymore ( . . .again, see fringe), this part was really meaningful for me:

It has been said that we are moving from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age. Pisces wants to hold things close and in reclusion, within existing structures, striving for a beautiful purity. Aquarius wants to open up the windows of the Witch's hut—or sometimes bust down the walls - and let in some fresh air, while figuring out how to build something new. While I have great sympathy for the Pisceans, and think that likely there will always be those needed to hold that polarity, my work is firmly on the side of the non-conforming Aquarians, even when we vehemently disagree. The world needs us.

This, this, a thousand times this. If ever there was a full mission statement on my feelings about Paganism and Witchery, it would be this. As an actual Aquarian, I am always doing that, sometimes to the chagrin of those around me. I always want to bust down the walls and see the inside of your hut, I want to show you mine. I want us to build something together and when it doesn't work anymore, go down to the river and throw it in and start again.

It's also my deepest fear. That I'm not . . .whatever enough to be an expert in my own right as a hearth witch. That I lack children and a full time job with no duties of a traditional soccer mom, that I'm not witch in the woods enough as I only have a vague connection to the land and don't take awesome midnight journeys for wood and roadkill. And there are women I admire greatly who fit reasonably in either of those categories and sometimes I start to feel lost because I'm in this weird in between place. I feel sometimes not enough like anyone else I know in this blogosphere until Jow reminds me of my darling PEH, Gordon who keeps me grouned by just being him across the pond, thinking some of the same random stuff I do about magic and other things, putting things together in a way that makes sense and travels and drinks too much wine and I think, there is still a place for me. (Sister will you follow me/Sister will you dance with me/ like a flame you must be wild . . .)

I'm always going to want to bust down the walls, even models have limits, as Jason reminds us. So whenever a tradition breaks, I can't help but be excited in a weird way. Because . . .then the walls are busted down, we can rethink *everything* and *anything* and what really works and what doesn't work and when we can put aside our egos enough and show each other our soft squishy bits, our broken bits, the bits that made mistakes, that's when shit gets real in the best possible sense. We're not united in one shaky illusion, we're a dozen nations, strong in our sense of self and our vision. At the end of the day, more than anything, that's what we are as hearth witches, dozens of tiny nations threaded together by our hearths however big or small, permentant and temporary and we get to be woven together here on the world wide web, whispering our secrets and magic and joys and sorrows to each other here in the ether. And I'm honored to be part of that, our bouquet of nations that florish here. When I am restless and fretful, I forget about that, the beauty in being bound together by words. I'm honored by all of you who visit here and there will always be a place for you in my nation. Always.

Checked off my list . . .

Things done today, post breakfast sandwich:

* Lisa finished the graphic, Dossy is tinkering as I speak. Lisa made me a bad ass mix of stuff that went into the "Charmed, I'm Sure" jar and made sure she had actual Master of the Wood for the jar. I intentionally chose each herb for this blog.

* Opened all the windows in the house to get the energy circulating again because I've noticed that Jow gets grumpy/cranky when the house energy is off.

* I've noticed in Hoodoo everything is in Jesus' name. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not for me. If I'm not doing work for a specific deity, what do I say? I do believe all the little-g gods are connected, like in the same way I believe all humans are connected in a vague quasi-Buddhist way, so after some conversation with Jow, I figured out that I feel okay with doing work in God Herself's name (a la T. Thorn Coyle). So now now I can do work that way.

* Put some Florida water on my magic broom as per Mama Starr's podcast suggestion, swept the house. Also put two lemon halves with salt on them on either side of the door, started a new money drawing spell with water, sugar and quarters and did a cleansing for Jow and vice versa using a Florida water blessed fan and sage, also per Mama Starr.

* Purged my closet, my purse, the bathroom and then had Jow purge his closet as well.

* Changed the salt in our Jhor bowl, cleaned the little skull in it.

* Watered our desert roses

* Lit up our altar and made water offerings.

* Saged the house


It feels much better in here now and I feel much better. My hands have been itching to purge the house for some time so now hopefully I can concentrate on writing! Just started watching Red and J. brought cider donuts, nom!

A Patchwork Soul

I generally will be open to discussion and debate about a lot of stuff ranging from politics to food to shit my mom wants me to consider and generally willing to change aspects of my opinion due to more education and intellectual discussion as well as said topics just rattling around in my head. This breaks down whenever we get into the idea of the soul not being one piece. Don't get me wrong, I think it's perfectly fine for *you* to have more than one soul a triple aspected reclaimist buddhist thing of wonder, I'm sure, but I'm not interested.

I tried the triple aspected soul thing through Thorne's Reclaimist theory and I really wanted to believe it. Jow would try to re-explain all the . . .stuff about a stickyself and I don't even remember the other parts to be honest and I would try to process it. But at the end of the day, I felt a resounding, nope.

I'm usually (despite strong opinions) pretty go with the flow and open to discussion, but this is like when the part of my yoga dvd tells me to let my mind be a distant observer, my brain just locks that shit down. Jow finds this curious as to why I'm so reluctant to consider . . .this soul being a patchwork of shards of different lives all converging to this one new soul or whatever.

I just don't believe it on a visceral level. I guess this is where my vague Shamanic training and experiences become less vague and more absolute. The way a Shaman sees a soul (at least as it's cobbled together in my brain) is that you have this one soul being that's the you that (for me) lives in my stomach. It doesn't need crazy amounts of enlightenment and book learnin' and meditation, it's going to sit there and be. And sometimes it does stuff - dreams, spirit walks, falls apart a little, etc. And when shit falls apart, you have specific ways of fixing it.

Maybe you go through a trial where the gods and your spirit guides throw shit at your stubborn head until you get what they're saying and that it's important. For me, a trial has never been AND NOW YOU WILL DO WHAT YOUR LORDS YOU GODS HAVE DEEMED AND I WILL KEEP HITTING YOU HARDER UNTIL YOU COMPLY.

As an aside, going with the whole gods argument I've been vaguely following, I side with RO's general outlook on the matter and go a little further with, seriously? You think you are that important in the scheme of the world, you, ant #656 who lives in NJ that your gods are going to spend a whole lot of time FORCING THEIR WILL UPON YOU UNTIL YOU COMPLY oooooooor are they going to find someone who is more pliant and less of a pain in the ass and/or really focus on bothering people who are changing the entire chess game (here's a hint, that's probably not you)? I mean, frankly, I don't seen MY DESTINY as being important enough for my gods to have anything more than a parental reciprocal relationship - I make them mud pies and cry about what I want and say thank you for feeding me and sometimes as they are bigger and have more stuff they will then halp me or let me flounder if I need to be taught a lesson and/or irritated them a lot that week with my piddling requests and/or I dinged their car. I mean, what do I do in a day? I try (try) to be nice and not bite, I go to work, I make dinner, I spin yarn, I watch like five episodes of Degrassi, maybe a small magic working or creative endeavor and I call it a day. This . . .is not the stuff of need for EPIC GOD INVOLVEMENT really.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyway. So as my life does not require EPIC GOD INVOLVEMENT, neither do my trials. My trials can be painful, don't get me wrong, but I think it's more like, No. No, Marge. We are going to let her put her little hand in that hot water. It's not boiling and we've told her no a million times and tried giving her a little whack with a wooden spoon on the hand and saying no bad, but she keeps doing it anyway. Let her learn. And then I'm like, OMFG! OOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW! That's hot!!!!!!!! And then I think perhaps my gods do an I told you so dance. This usually translates more directly as, you're not headed in the right direction in your life, killer. Here are some signs so you can think about what you're doing. And being slightly older and slightly wiser by the second sharp whack across my knuckles with a wooden spoon, I'm like, okay, okay I get it. Stop hitting me! Jeez. And then I work really hard on figuring out what I'm supposed to do and get some kind of Scooby snack for my effort.

I'm not a great or even good spirit walker. I can do a little before bed but generally it needs to be spoon fed to me through my dreams where it's very, DEB! THESE ARE YOUR GODS SPEAKING! PAY ATTENTION! YOU NEED TO HEAL THIS THING/WRITE MORE/THINK ABOUT THIS. Sort of like when your mom gets on your case about buckling down about something. I can chose to not follow their advice, but typically it's at my own peril. Not because THEY WILL END ME FOR MY INSOLENCE but because they're usually annoyingly right and not following their advice ends up with me learning my lesson the hard way and the Told You So dance.

I also feel like, okay, if I have this one soul that's had many lives, maybe I have a shot at fixing some things this life. Not everythang, but some things and maybe next life I can fix a couple more and so on and such forth. It seems perplexing to me to attempt to fix like sixty shards' problems that hold like eighty past lives each. I like things linear and organized and frankly no one can empirically tell me otherwise so I figure if I want to believe we're all sort of like Daxes (or fine, a Doctor), only like . . .human and not a conscious continuous memory stream of past lives, it's my prerogative.

It also makes sense to me as U2 sings, "and you give yourself away" in terms of your soul. You give people big and small pieces knowing and not knowing it all the time. Sometimes you give people too much and you need to reconfigure and sew yourself back together, ideally finding the pieces you gave away and need back. But to me, as someone who also sews, it's sort of the difference between cutting up one piece of fabric and reassembling it and getting a stack of fat quarter quilting blocks and assembling that. As you can see, it's not the same fabric. This is where I find Thorne to be *extremely* helpful and I find myself back on the same page with her with the Iron Pentacle Meditation which has helped me immensely to piece stuff back together.

Right now? I'm piecing myself back together and it's a boring laborious process requiring magic, journaling, talking, more talking and a lot of exhaustion. But I know it will be worth it when I feel myself again and can go back to my usual Stepford wife/Courtney Love hybrid where I can smile at you while I'm cooking poison into your soup.

Chop wood, carry water.

Building an Amazon Bad Ass . . .Through Books.

My PEH, Gordon asked us what 10 books would we use to try to build a mage/witch/magic user/whatever of a specific bent. I decided to build an Amazon Bad Ass (specializing in Hearth Witchery). I liked that Gordon allowed for fiction. In the comments, as you can see, everyone (my Jow included) picked v. lofty books for their lists, I only really overlap with people on my choices for #2. and #6. I would be curious to see what would happen if the challenge happened (someone has access only to the books we've given them and no previous knowledge of what we're trying to impart onto them). I'm guessing she would be confused by my choices, probably. ;p But it's a sincere look into my brain and how I became the kind of pagan/magic user/hearth woman I am.

I am building a Bad Ass Amazon (specializing in hearth witchery)

1. Someplace to be Flying (Charles Delint) (fiction) - a must have for the urban shaman

2. Evolutionary Witchcraft (Thorn Coyle) - her Iron Pentacle Meditation is unbelievably hard core. An amazon needs some reclaimst in her.

3. Eat, Love, Pray (Elizabeth Gilbert)(memoir) - for her inevitable identity meltdown. It made me want to run off to an ashram and started me on my daily japa practice.

4. Palimpsest (fiction) (Catherynne M. Valente) - a book about a sexually transmitted dream city you visit in your sleep. Need I really say more? Okay. It opened my heart up in ways I can't even describe. I tell Cat she makes me cry more than anything else. It was a bit embarassing seeing her tour with SJ Tucker when they read a piece from the book about the opera and Sooj sang and I just cried and cried in a full room full of people. It made me see the world more magically again.

5. D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths (Ingri d'Aulaire & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire) (children's book) - This book made me a pagan, it planted the seed in the children's room in the library. Other pagans have said the same thing. Concisely lays out the Olympians.

6. Hoodoo Root & Herb Magic (Cat Yronwode) - A must source book for all of one's charms and hexes

7. Miss Abernathy’s Concise Slave Training Manual and Training With Miss Abernathy (Christina Abernathy) - Even if you're not kinked, it's a good primer on how to be service oriented. As someone who has kitchen witched for rituals, Thanksgivings, and funeral repasts great and small, it helps to get organized.

8. Real Simple magazine: A monthly magazine that teaches organization, budgeting, meal planning, etiquette, and other day to day life must haves. I cut out articles and recipes. You will need this for anything from knowing what to bring as a hostess gift to what to make for dinner on a Wednesday on a budget to how to start investing.

9. The Spirit Ways (Eric Taylor, Rachel Barth, Scott Cohen, and John Snead) (WW RPG) - How shamanism makes sense to me.

10. Spiral Dance (Starhawk) - You always remember your first. I *love* that she revises it every five years to be like, this was wrong, this was totally fucked up, I do this now, etc. It's also a really good Dianic primer.

What would you pick?

IP Meditation Week Two

09 December 2009 @ 11:36 am

I was curious to see what it would feel like doing the IPM the second time. I was feeling v. relaxed as I was having a nice date with Jow and this time I suggested he slow down at my difficult point (power) when he reads the meditation.

So when I was to sink down in myself, I did it super fast and super hard (Jow was like, it made a *whomp* noise when you did it!). Sex, self, and pride lit up just fine. Power was much better, though still a bit weak. Also I was fucking up what went where, so that was a little distracting (i.e. power is left hand? right hand?), but even with that, I was still way more into it this time. Passion was hesitant to light up which is no surprise as I'm trying to figure out what that is for me. Power, I was just basically hissing at myself to gather all my power bits that went away and they're starting to consolidate better. Sex bits got called back faster than you call a dog's name. Self was pretty easy too still. Pride, hesitated for a beat this time but still pretty solid.

I was drawing the circle around myself and I was just, like, vibrating with the power buzzing inside me to the point that for a second I went out of body and saw myself meditating on the floor (which like never happens to me) and all the energy was buzzing and blue with Feri light (the IP starts as red to me but inevitably becomes blue which is commonly used in Feri so it's not too surprising) and then my sister knocked on the door, unannounced. So I had to sit up real quick and ground pretty fucking fast. But I was pleased that I was able to do so.

Jow wants to start a triple self meditation daily, but I'm trying to just get used to doing this first. Maybe in another week or two.

I will try hard/ to be a spark of power/ I will, I'll never be your iron flower . . .

I took L's advice regarding trying out T. Thorne Coyle's Iron Pentacle meditation from her book Evolutionary Witchcraft (she's Feri/Reclaiming). I had been feeling like I lost my sexy like one loses one's keys and I only had nebulous ideas on how to get it back.

Now, in terms of my magical practice, I (mostly) make circle and/or grove for most of the wheel of the year, I do little charms and spells when I need something, I try to remember to light up my altars at least somewhat regularly to give thanks, I do some vision questing/meditation before bed on occasion . . .in other words, I'm like a half assed Catholic in the pagan world.

I've been reading more. Thorne's book is full of careful book marks of exercises I should give a go. But once I was almost done with the book and realized I would now need to actually do said exercises, I stalled out. Needless to say, I stopped reading it and conveniently picked up another book to avoid doing any bothersome work.

Now that I'm moved into my condo, I knew I needed to start fulfilling all of those promises I made to myself about being a better magical practitioner, treadmilling, writing, etc. because frankly there's no excuse anymore.

So Jow and I got home a bit earlier than expected yesterday and we had thought to maybe do one of Thorne's exercises. We brought our stuff in and I flipped open her book to find the Iron Pentacle meditation. Jow protested of course because he's v. methodical about doing each exercise in order. I pointed out that the IPM doesn't build on anything from her previous lessons (which I'd read) and it's what I need to work on in myself so let's start there. He also was unenthused at the time about doing magical work as we had eaten at cracker barrel and couldn't go for walkies because rain looked eminant. I pointed out if we didn't do the exercise right then, as soon as the laptop came on and the tv came on, there was no way our lazy asses were going to do anything because that is how we are.

So I then nominated him to go first while I read the exercise 'cause I'm gracious like that. So you know the layout of the IP, it looks like this. So, Jow can tell you his experiences in his blog or lj, I will tell you mine. First off, Bella (the cat) wanted to crawl all over us when each of us laid on the floor. Max (the other cat) who is no stranger to magic, disapproved strongly of this and shooed her off every time she tried. So you lay on the floor, arms and legs out stretched like a star(fish) and each limb represents one of the aspects as laid out in the diagram and the meditation goes through calling each piece back to yourself (sort of Soul Retrieval style) and then you meditate on feeling each bit connecting to each other in a star pattern.

So, I have crap spacial reasoning skills. As I was reading it to Jow, I was thinking, huh. I have no idea how this all connects in an orderly fashion. But when I was on the floor doing it myself while he read it, I felt the lines of the pentacle connecting in an orderly fashion. Now I had assumed (ass out of . . .) that the sex energy itself was going to be problematic and this was going to be like pulling teeth the whole way. But funnily, the sex energy came just fine in my forehead, my self came just fine in my hand (also surprisingly to me). When I got to Pride in my foot it felt painful, but it came (which is interesting, because I have dreams where huge hermit crabs attach themselves painfully to my Pride foot, I'm still trying to figure that mess out) and when I ran the circuit between the three, it went just fine. So I started to think, yeah! Maybe I just needed to remind myself.

No. When I got to power, it fizzled so much it was ridiculous. It felt like the alternator in my body just gave out (come on, come on, I see you turning! Please!). Passion flared up slightly better but it was like trying to light a candle that was mostly gutted. Once I started trying to run power through, well, power it was faint at best.

It was really interesting to me because I assumed that my lack of feeling sexy came from issues with my sex aspect, but it seems to be stemming from my power issues (it's hard to feel power*full after the last year I had) and I'm so worn out from everything, my passion has taken a beating. So those are things for me to think about.

What I really liked about this exercise was: (1) It was short, like my attention span. (2) I really liked doing it with Jow because we can compare notes and read the exercise for each other. (3) It's something I can incorporate into my shamanic practice. (4) I feel like I respond really well to reclaimist stuff. I need to stop being a snob about it, Thorne doesn't make any wonky anthropoloy claims, there's no need to not use something that works for me. (5) I feel like this is something I can do for a while and see where it takes me. I'm going to try to do it with Jow whenever we can and really work on this chapter. When I'm ready to move on from it, I'll move on from it and pick something else directly relevant to my life.