On Black Swans.

When I first started out in the blogosphere, it took me a little while to get introduced to Gordon, but one night Jow was laughing while reading a magic blog so I was immediately interested. I then started reading Gordon and launched a one women campaign of desperate devotion. Eventually, Gordon was unable to resist my assault on his blog and my dogged fan girling and gave in. It soon became apparent that we likely shared a wine addled brain and had similar views on magic and weeknight drinking. Both of our partners have been indulgent about our marriage of the minds and I have come to refer to him as my PEH (Platonic European Husband).

I love all of my other blogosphere buds, and they're always really good at making me think about various things (especially RO, Jason, and Kenaz) in different ways, but Gordon has always managed to articulate the habitrail that makes up my brainmeat into succinct, concise English. More over, he makes it into a plan.

Sometimes our little corner in the blogosphere gets into a hivemind. In late April, we all got crazy about LifeHacking and who wrote books that were good about it and who wrote books that weren't and what did it really mean to have the perfect day. I was new, I needed shit to blog about anyway, so I jumped in as desperately wanted to smoke with cigarettes with the cool kids.

Then things started to get weird. Or wyrd for those of you with a spelling fetish. My boss started talking about cutting my hours and somewhere in there, Jason was talking about not forcing things to happen a certain way as in, yeah, I could be focusing all my mojo into getting more business for my boss's company or I could say something along the lines of, oh hey, I'll bust my ass, I'll write, I'll craft, I'll hustle/whore any kind of project that's in my realm, I'm trusting You (collective You, my gods who are kind about my dilettantism and how I couldn't contain my Pokeman tendencies in my baby Pagan days) to not let terrible things happen to me.

I love my day job. Not because it's particularly awesome, but it's mindless, it pays v. well, it has kickass hours, a really kind boss and a window. I would honestly stay here until my bosslady retired or dropped dead. Security is indeed the whore in me as Heather Nova sings. But it's a tiny company, just me and the bosslady and we're affiliated with the pharma industry and . . .everyone's merging and downsizing and tanking so it's been pretty barren.

I love Jason's explanation of doing magic, with the three levels and all of that and I see it working super amazing awesome. On an intellectual level, I would think, yes, this is the way magic should be done. Jow does awesomely with it, people get awesome results and who doesn't do magic to get results? But in reality land, my brain is a mess of tubes and wheels and many Hyperbole and a Half moments where I can never manage to think about the three levels when it's go time.

In early summer, bosslady and I started talking about cutting my hours and I felt That Moment. And . . .I didn't have all the pretty words that Gordon has or a way to articulate it right because I didn't even realize I was doing it. But I had a Shrödinger’s Cat moment and I started shoaling like whoa. I didn't know I was doing it because I didn't have the words, though I had the actions.

So I started thinking, okay, if my hours get cut, I can collect a little bit of unemployment, we can cut off our delicious delicious tv for a while and use the farmer's markets to eat more produce and it will be okay. My boss never cut my hours, but I immediately started working on other projects in a slow steady manner. I managed to land a respectable freelance writer gig that pays decently well for writing and allows me to work as much or as little on it as I can manage.

When shit started getting real around the office as we say in Jersey, my boss let me know that unless something major changes, we're going to be out of business by the end of the year. Gordon in his infinite kindness when this all started to go down, said, you should write this. Make your blog into a book, make it happen. And a few weeks later, it went from shoaling to a black swan moment. All the while, I had been doing magic - japa, candle devotions, mojo bags and hands, a honey pot. I had been trying to write a kitchen witch book for years, but it never came together right. One day after work, I went home and wrote enough notes to see that it could be a book.

Since then, things have been happening fast. I calculated my potential unemployment with a little freelance writing and realized I could easily take a couple months off, perhaps three. During that time, I can write my outline and really get down to brass tacks in making magical supplies for Trevia. I can write a few fiction outlines (though, to be honest, while I had always thought I'd be a fiction writer, most of the gigs I'm getting are nonfiction, so perhaps not or perhaps not as a staple). After the three months, I would be able to do enough content writing with a bit of freelancing to make approximately what I am making now.

All of these things that I've wanted - to make my own hours, to work from home, to be able to have many small streams of income shoal together into one actual income seem to be coming together. If this were to happen and my book was to be accepted, I would be able to really hustle and promote it, unfettered.

And it's sped up even faster this week. Jow and I put together a really solid plan for Trevia on Monday while sitting at a posh bar in the middle of the day. And during this week, I used another one of Gordon's tricks, A Secret Spell Booster Enchant in Real Time. I'm scared to say it because the ink is not yet dry on the paper, but if one of the things I am working on gets final finalized, my freelance writing is going to be boosted into a whole new arena, allowing me to write lifestyle pieces in addition to content writing. I've also submitted four pagan pieces this week which would be really good on my resume for the book potentially.

I'm not going to lie, I'm exhausted and vomity feeling about all this. If my company does go under (and that seems likely) by year end, the potential to have the professional life I really have always wanted is right there in front of me. And I have been hustling hard for it. But right now, that's all it is, is potential. I could suck working from home, I could suck writing/crafting for a career, I could wind up having to work retail again. It's all just spinning right now and I don't know where the arrow will stop.

But dear goddess, how I am trying. And every bit of will I have in me right now is working to make my own luck and to be more than a barely published sickly secretary who can't work a regular 9-5. Every black swan moment since this started, there has been a constant devotional in the back of my head. Please just let me succeed as a career writer and crafter. Please let everything I've worked for and tried at and failed at and succeeded at be leading up to this.

My fingertips are holding onto the cracks in our foundation, / and I know that I should let go, / but I can't.

I'm not dead, I will be getting back to regularly scheduled posting soon.

Things that I am doing that you may or may not care about:

* Planning my sister's wedding rehersal dinner

* Going on vacation to Florida for a few days

* Getting my Maid of Honor dress/jewelry situated

* Planning my sister's baby shower in Oct

* Japa practice

* Writing articles for various Pagan publications to lay groundwork to have a good resume so I can write my kitchen witchbook when/if I get laid off in the next few months (I have a post about that eventually, Black Swans, my PEH, all the good things in life)

* Writing articles for paying venues

* Planning our pre-launch/launch/marketing plan for our magical supply shop, Trevia.

* Watching as much reality tv as I can handle when my brain goes to mush.

"I have to believe in a better world." - Giles, BtVS

RO asks a very good question in my last post, and my answer got so long, I decided to make it a post.

Why is it that when you or I have to grow up and be responsible, it's a spiritual quest with Super Spiritual ramifications? Is it just that we have a spiritual scapegoat? Or is it that we have a Helper, a "Supernatural Assistant" to guide us through what comes to most people anyway?

Well, I lean towards agnosticism even bordering on athesim on dark days which is another reason I'd make a bad godslave because in the back of my head I'm always like, hmmmm, how do I know this is You or that this is real?

So here is the my hand to gods truthful answer as to why I feel that way - I honestly don't know to the cockles of my heart if I am led by the gods or if it's just a chaotic universe that works out often enough.

On a good day, I can tell you because I feel it, I feel it when certain things happen and when the threads in the tapestry move around and that there are signs everywhere if I know to look for them. Also, I honestly don't claim trials all that often. I may have alledgedly been married to someone who thought every other day was a trial, but to me, I've only had trials during major life shifts - getting diagnosed with fibro, transitioning from maiden to mother, my divorce, etc. And it doesn't necessarily need to be called a trial, it could just be called a life shift. But as a shaman, that's how it's identified especially if you get some kind of confirmation from your totem who generally acts as a "Supernatural Assistant" anyway.

Here's the thing, we live in an incredibly uncertain world and I know in my heart I have no answers except there's a lot of mysteries. Having no answer, it's human nature to want to fill in the blanks. I fill in the blanks with what makes the most sense to the way I see the world - I want there to be one soul, I want there to be a guidence counselor at the end of my life to go over what I did right and wrong and to place me, I want to see certain people in my next life, I want there to be a next life here on earth because I love being a hamster on the wheel, I want suffering to mean something, I want to believe that when I "visit" my gods in meditation and They speak to me, They're speaking to me. All of these things don't cause anyone else harm, no spirit has told me to kill my family and wear cotton candy for clothes and the advice given, whether it's gods given or subconscious given is generally good, like in EPL, Go to bed, Liz. So I believe in them because honestly at the end of the day, no one can concretely tell me otherwise. Do I have doubts about all of this? Um, for sure.

What's neat about the "fill in the blank" system for me is that it can be extended into psych issues too (as per my friend with a Masters in Psych!). My life sometimes has illogical emotionally charged issues presented to me by people I am not on good terms with. And . . .I search for reason. Why would they do these things? Once I knew them and loved them, I try to guess at their motives by outdated information I once had and I chase and gnaw at my tail until it's a bloody thing and I'm exhausted. It's a function of my anxiety disorder to do this. Since I will never really know their motives (and honestly, at the end of the day, if you really want your ant farm shaken up we don't *really* know anyone else's motives but people we love generally follow reasonably predictable patterns unless they have drug/unassisted mental health problems and when they don't, we can talk to them about it) and it's not like I'm going to talk to these people I'm no longer speaking to about it though they may be doing shady things to disrupt my life, I may as well assign a motive to them that seems reasonably logical to my brain from what I know about them and move on. Even if it's Y person is doing X because Y is a bag of dicks, it's a reason and then my brain can move on to worrying about something more pressing or settle the hell down.

On Trials and Transitions

I was talking to a friend about his current trial he's going through with Coyote and he suggested other totems (such as mine, Crow) may be gentler. I said, All totems can be complete and utter dicks if they don't like what you're doing. I'm pretty sure even rabbit can be a dick. It's more a shamanic trial/rite thing verses an individual totem thing
but what they take will differ and what they want you to learn will differ. The point is to communicate in a way you understand and if it appears you don't understand, they'll hit you harder and harder until either:
a) You change
b) they get bored and wander off
c) They kill you

And then I thought, whoa! That's some godslave kind of talk like what's been going on in the blogosphere. I suppose, first off, the (c) part should be caveated with, if you don't do something with perhaps other deities to stop Them.

And I thought about my recent entry that forays into that whole mess. In there, I think I was mistaken for having no self esteem because I think the gods won't care enough to make dramatic forceful efforts into my life but what I was trying to convey was that I am realistic about my place in the universe. I may or may not write some books. I go to work. I love a lot of people. I try to be a good person. I don't really feel I have an earthshattering impact on this world but I also think like 90% of the populous is like that too to varying degrees, so I'm not really downing myself, I just don't think many of us are all that special though I love you just the same. My gods could totes kill me but . . .why? I mean, if I'm not picking up what they're putting down and/or resisting killing me is going to do . . .what? It's not like I'm a demon or doing evil, I'm pretty sure if I had a DESTINY I'd know by now and so far, not so much. Killing a worker bee to prove a point seems pretty silly . . .and not a trait I'd want a god I'm in a worship/parental/love/devotee/whatever relationship to have.

So, I've been thinking about that, what all that means. Part of it is about faith and part of it is about proof, imo. I'm not going to lie, when Crow gave me my last trial that I now lovingly call, It's Time to Grow Up, No Crying, my first thought wasn't omg! This is a trial! This is what's happening! It took a few weeks to sink in. But as Heather Nova sings, Security is the whore in me/ she never lets me fly, that was my theme song for most of my twenties, so needless to say when Crow essentially stated through action, "I'ma going to take away everything that's made you feel secure, what?" I knew how this would work.

I mean, my husband (who was a big source of my security, we spent our whole "grown up" life together) walked out on me with no real warning, leaving me to flounder for food and rent as he overdrew our bank account by a ridiculous amount, my healthcare was going to get cut off, my car died and then by the time it got broken into (with Christmas presents stolen), I was like oh shit. I know what's happening.

And I was mad, man! I was super mad! I didn't want all this shit taken away from me! I didn't want to have to borrow money from the Bank of M&M (mom and my sis), I didn't want to be a zombie for several months, I didn't want to feel like my heart had been broken in a million pieces and I really didn't want to be completely self sufficient to be honest because I hadn't been my whole adult life. I was mad enough that I wouldn't speak to Him for a couple months.

At the same time, I stopped struggling and did what I was told and started working on being a grown up hardcore because honestly? I didn't want to see what the next party trick was. This is where faith comes in. I had to believe that becoming an actual grown up was in my best interest, that's why my deities (who have parental power over me) took shit away from me, just like parents take away naughty teenagers car keys and iPhones.

And it was in my best interest, in about six months my life got much better and in two years it's like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than it was. I'm self sufficient, in charge of my own health care, a homeowner, have a stronger spirituality, stronger relationships all around, have had things published and am getting a decent sense of self and learning to love my body and stop being mean to it as well as cultivating a feeling of gratefulness and thankfulness for what I have and working on fixing some things that weren't good about me.

But bad shit stopped happening to me when I stopped saying LALALALALALALALALA!!!!!!! I'M GOING TO KEEP DOING STUPID SHIT!!!! When I stopped doing stupid shit, there were cookies. I guess at the end of the day, that's what defines a non-godslave relationship to me. If your parents are mad at you for flunking algebra and take your car keys and iPhone so you get your shit together and get an A and their reply is to smack you in the mouth, that's abuse. Because, wtf? That reaction makes no sense, you did what they asked, not failing algebra was in your best interest according to your parents and you want to go to college and all so why would you get punched in the mouth for that? And no, your parents aren't always going to buy you a car for a good job, sometimes it's just a pat on the head and a good job, sport but it shouldn't be a smack in the mouth either.

Quid quo pro, Clarice. If I am doing what you asked of me, I expect *something* to get better, especially if I'm trying with all my heart. As we say in my grove, I have a bottom feeder relationship with my gods. I don't expect things to be good all the time, but if I'm working my hardest and praying my hardest, I need *something* whether it's surprise pizza dinner party or a change in perspective. I can't get crapped on forever and just take it. It may not happen tomorrow, or next week or next month, but it should be something that you can see progressing after a few months of shit or you need to get the fuck out.

It's not an equal relationship. At the same time, don't let Them make you Their bitch.

But business is business and business runs in the family/ We tend to bruise easily, mad in the blood . . .

Yesterday was a bad day for my mother, sister and me. The details are personal, but most of the time we fight like typical Italians do - fast, hard, loud, mean and with forgiveness quickly following. Yesterday for a multitude of reasons, I think we all saw how fragile even the strongest threads could get. I was miserable, I left work early, I had been crying all day and felt sick to my stomach worried that some of the things said just . . .couldn't be forgiven.

Then where would I be? The idea of being untethered from my mom and sister was unbearable, we had been through so much together and we always loved each other through it, even if we didn't agree with each other. The amount of love and support I received from them was unmeasurable, to be without that was unthinkable, there would always be a huge gaping hole in my heart. While for once the issue wasn't about me per se, I could see things unraveling and while I tried to have the conversation reasonably, too much flew out of my mouth when I got heated and while I apologized to my sister and then things managed to escalate further, I was feeling cast adrift.

Jow and I went to the grocery store, one we didn't usually go to. It had an impressive amount of candles to all sorts of saints and the big JC and Mary. I had privately thought I would have liked to have done all sorts of spellwork to remedy the situation in a way I found favorable but I knew I was mad and hurt and that this mess was so deep, I knew in my heart I wouldn't even *know* what the right outcome was. The candles were on sale, only a $1.15 each, I grimly asked Jow if any of them could do :::lots of unnecessarily snarky suggestions::. While there was a Certain Saint who probably could, She and I don't have a great reaction to each other and she doesn't get along overly well with one of my patrons.

I stared at the candles dumbly and I thought about how I wasn't Catholic anymore, my sister was lapsed, but my mom still was devout. Who would be interested in hearing my family problems after I had left the Church anyway? I couldn't even manage a relationship with St. Expedite. Jow pointed out how Mary loves everyone and doesn't seem to care much if you take up with pagan gods, She just wants your family life to be good. And I thought about how dysfunctional and difficult her family life must have been ("Sooooooo. . . .um, there was angel and not only did He have something to tell me but . . .") and how faithful and calm She had always been. I thought about the GoG Crowning of Mary and how I still felt at home there. I thought about my mom and how she tried to emulate Mary in raising two hellion daughters as best as she could. I hesitated between Traditional Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe. I liked the prayer on OLoG candle better and Jow pointed out that She is the Virgin Mary of the Americas. I also figured the current family drama was a lot of Standard Ethnic Drama so the "translation" wouldn't be hard. I later learned that She's associated with being somewhat of a riot girl and synchronization with other previous goddesses which is a good fit for me.

I got home and I said the prayer and lit the candle on our altar. We went about our business making dinner and a few hours later, my mom had spoken to my sister and my sister had texted me and my mom called me and in the typical dysfunctional round robin my family uses to solve problems, things were better. Sincere apologies were exchanged and laundry was aired. We're on the same page with Mary burning brightly in the background of all of it and I feel whole again and I felt my heart open up to be more compassionate, to be kinder. I shyly told my mom that I had lit a novena candle to Mary and said a prayer to her and now things were better. She sounded happy when she said, prayer always works. I think she understands that she doesn't understand how my faith works, but somewhere in there there's still a piece she understands.

All of this for $1.15 at the grocery store reminds me sometimes all you need is your heart on your sleeve for magic to work.

Little altars everywhere

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I got distracted by something shiny and Jenna being preggo on Degrassi. Previously, we had tiny altars everywhere taking up just about every conceivable surface of our house. Jow pushed for consolidation but I resisted for a while because I didn't know how it would work out and I fear change. But the promise of easy accessibility to our magical components won over my lizard brain. Also, we didn't consolidate everything everything.


First, let's start with some failure. Like many things, our wealth altar started with really good intentions and being all excited from Jason Miller's lecture on wealth. But we soon came to realize:


a) As neither of us are Catholic anymore and also lazy, we sucked at starting a new relationship with St. Expedite.
b) We also aren't terribly good with Chinese deities.
c) Perhaps the wealth altar facing a wall and often forgotten because of its shitty placement in the house is not the best.


Behold! Our failure!



So we decided to keep using the money box which had been working well and is on our new altar, continue using the money hand Jason had made for me (I named her Ali 'cause she is part alligator hand), remember to water our prosperity plants (desert roses) and utilize additional spellwork (honeypot, mojo hands, etc) and um . . . comment dit-on hit up the deities we already have relationships with for money as needed.


We have at the tippy top of one of our bookcases a place we call Skull Head Island, for reasons that should be readily apparent. Death from Sandman lives there, Creepy Doll recently took up residence and the two clay sugar skulls we won at GoG Samhains live there as well.


My altar to Yemaya remains a full altar as she is one of my main two patrons (Crow has His own too, but I didn't take a pic for some reason). Ali lives downstairs from Yemaya on the saucer holding the table together/pied-à-terre.


On my vanity table, I have a small v. pink altar space for my charm/Charm bracelet which also houses one of my personal demons (she's a Gluttony demon) that I work with.


My altar to the Goddess remains separate because Her statue is huge!


The window sill in Spare Oom is where the nature spirits/house fae hang out.


I have a little bedside altar which has super important religious texts as you can see, and a mini shrine to the Holy Family, teeny Crow and Goddess statue (I have a Yemaya one on my window sill).


I also have a little part of my kitchen counter space dedicated to kitchen witch work with the cauldron I co-opted from Jow and my housewives tarot deck. In this pic, I was burning my candle for my honeypot.


And finally, the new and improved central altar! It's actually a baker's rack and working out super well. The top shelf houses our Hindu deities we work with, middle shelf is the Greek deities we work with, third shelf is our working space, bottom rack is our ancestor altar and then the two baskets hold magical components.

Your Magic and Your Washer Machine

When speaking with Jow, I realize I often feel uninspired and unintelligent compared to the rest of the Mad Boy Scientist Club (MBSC).

I have to admit it very plainly, I don't take shit apart just to see how it works and then attempt to either: put it back together or put it back together BUT BETTER. Let's talk about my washer machine. It does wash. I don't feel like I need to take it apart and know it intimately to validate its ability to do my laundry. I put my clothes in, they come out clean, fin. I don't really feel the need to upgrade it to be a thermonuclear reactor too.

It's sort of how I feel about magic. If it's working, it's working and . . .I don't feel like I need to be knee deep in its viscera to believe that. However! If my washer machine stops working right or starts making alarming noises, you can be damn sure that I'm googling "what the fuck is wrong with my washer machine" and trying to figure out how to fix it. Perhaps, this is a *reactive* approach to magic in general verses a *pro-active* approach to magic and naughty and whatnot but . . .it's how I am. See: The World is My Poorly Fed Seamonkey Tank. I just . . .don't care enough most of the time to get deeper in. I mean, I have to be honest, my brain needs plenty of room to be occupied with the latest friend scandal and what's going on in Degrassi.

I honestly didn't think I had what one would call strong . . .faith in general. I'm a suspicious, cynical person and my generation was taught first that it was cool to be that way and then that it wasn't. Like, last year someone sent the memo that it's not cool anymore to be jaded. At 31, I can only do so much to fix that. But I guess in some strange ways, I do have faith. I believe in my washer machine and my magic enough that I don't really need a complicated system for shit to work. But it's interesting to see these differences in a scientific approach verses a faith approach, Jow and I gently butt heads about this all the time. He gets all excited to learn some kind of random minuta about something that frankly he'll likely never use and I know more than I ever really needed to know about The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

And . . .I guess, that I have enough Catholic programming that I don't feel like I'm constantly in this antagonistic GM/player relationship with God Herself. I don't need to constantly be getting one over on Her due to some kind of paper pushing error that allows me to do so. I don't collect my arete that way, I just don't. And . . .it bothers me when something sacred is treated like a party game. I'll never forget an occult event afterparty I was at where someone had managed to get the ability to ordain through some kind of loophole and he came in with a bottle of beer in one hand and a bottle of olive oil in the other and gleefully said, Who wants to get ordained tonight!

Yes . . .we were at an occult party but let me be frank. Just about everyone there was three sheets to the wind and waaaaaay more concerned with who they were bedding that evening than receiving sacred orders and watching the barrage of giggling drunk girls go to receive theirs just made me ill inside. Because, knowing a good number of those people in question, it didn't matter to them (with a notable exception who did treat it seriously, he knows who he is), it was just another merit badge to collect. It wasn't about what to do with it afterwards, it was about sticking it to The Man.

I received my Reiki training from two renegade Reiki masters who didn't believe that Reiki should cost you a small fortune to receive, though they both paid their dues for it. I thought about it strongly both times (receiving first Reiki I and then II). It was almost a year in between I and II for me. I used it, I thought about what it meant to me to have it, what I could do with it. Admittedly, I didn't follow up with getting formal training as I always meant to, but I use both all the time. Both initiations were deeply meaningful experiences to me and though *technically* I did receive Reiki III, I would never go to a party and randomly pass out attunements.

I don't have a lot of the baggage with Catholicism that some others do. I think coming from a practice that started as a very small child and then making my peace and breaking off from the Church, I don't want to try to find loopholes to get at their tasty Catholic magic because . . .I'm not Catholic anymore. JC as much as I do revere Him is not on my altar. When I left, I left which meant leaving behind everything that could have happened for me magically with Catholic magic. For some people, the line isn't so clear in a good way, they can use both a more pagan magic and a Catholic magic together (as santeria sometimes does) but I haven't been able to meld the two. And if I can't make my washer machine won't wash *and* dry my clothes, I need to move on and let it just wash my clothes.

I don't want to put in the time, energy and sacrifice to become a saint to get a saint's powers and frankly I don't expect to get them by finding a loophole to get at them. For yet another dig at Tim Ferris, his pleased recounting about how he got better grades in college because he would wear down some poor barely paid teacher's assistant until s/he acquiesced to him makes me ill. Maybe that's the way the world does work, but I don't want the things I've earned to come to me that way. I don't want to bully my way into blessings at other people's expense. It's gross to me and I just . . .won't. When I ran my own business, I had to make a lot of decisions about what would happen at my events and I am incredibly proud to say that I never compromised my integrity and what I believed in along the way.

For me, I see magic as a simple input output. Sacrifice = power. How much are you willing to sacrifice for your power?