Unveiled Limited Edition Oil

Since everyone was most interested in a fragrance oil to help lower the veils, I will be making 10 Limited Edition Oils called Unveiled.  I will be consecrating them on the New Moon (April 21st) and releasing them for sale on Monday, April 23rd.  If you pre-order, I will ship your oil on Monday, April 23rd. 

This will be a unisex fragrance with notes of loamy juniper berries, fresh green grass, earthy cedar, exotic saffron and sensual absinthe.

If you would like to purchase this as a presale:

The oil is $15

Shipping costs will be:


$3 USD - US

$5 USD - Canada

$7 USD - Europe

For pre-ordering, go to Paypal and send payment and shipping to corvaxgirl@gmail.com with the subject line "Unveiled".
 
My Limited Edition Oil Man in Black has (1) left.  There are (6) Goddess of the Hearth Limited Edition Oils left.  My regular oils Lucy's Lavendar Healing Oil, Rowan's Rose Love Drawing Oil, Britana's Basil Money Drawing Oil, High John and  Aurora's Mojo Hand Oil are now labeled in a similar manner to my Special Edition Oils but I haven't had a chance to put new pictures up yet!

Emotional Cutting, the French and Your Magical Practice

Because I'm an emotional cutter, nothing says trying to unwind from a hectic schedule of nannying and a terrible fibro flareup like reading books about French women and why everything they do is awesome including, probably, pooping. 

And of course the French seem to be unbearably smug about everything from how easy it is for them to parent to not needing close friends to never getting fat to all their food to always being fashionable and having sex all the time and work life balance?  What is that?  We don't even need to worry about that.

So as always, upon completing a French aspirational book I'm torn between equal parts frothing jealous hatred and desperate desire to be like a French woman.

I was talking to Gordon about how there doesn't seem to be much in the way of magical practice on how not to be heavier than you would prefer.  We both have theories about this, mine is a lot of blahblahblah the gods from Pagan cultures don't really understand the concept of having too much food and not enough exercise so when you're like, PLEASE YEMAYA, I DON'T WANT TO BE FAT ANYMORE, HALP HALP.  She's like . . .explain?  And I'm like, NO MORE FAT!  NOT HAPPY!  And She's like, you're unhappy because of your incredible access to any food whenever you want and your ginormous boobs and hips and ass that means that you'd be a good mate and mother?  And I'm like. . . .yes.  And she's like, girl I don't even know where to start with that.

So I've been thinking a lot about the French, living well, magic, appearance, glamour and charm/Charm. 

Naturally, the French look down their nose at what I'm doing right now (working like a psycho).  Jason wrote about how sometimes you just need to accept things are going to suck in order to get the things you want.  And I agree with that as well and it's been what I've been doing so far this year.  But I'm not good at accepting a never ending suck without end for a year.  It makes me depressed and aggreviated and irritated. 

So last night I called a meeting with all my personal pantheon and just made a tearful plea to help me figure out how to not be fat, how to be happy and how to still accomplish my goals. I woke up this morning ready to take on the world a little better.

What I'm Doing (and You Can Too):
1. Glamour correctly.   My previous glamours weren't working right because as one of my mentors told me, I'm fishing in the wrong pond.  I don't want someone in particular attracted to me, I'm not looking to get down really and I don't want anyone getting all "I must have you" and I must have mace or a restraining order.  I'm looking more for light flirtation and people  to think I'm charming and attractive.  To this end, I'm making a mojo hand for this working (and I'll make them available if I like the way mine works) and I'm getting a new TAL oil.  I'm going to contemplate new sigils as well.

2. Do you feel good about how you look on a random Tuesday?  First off, I needed to get a good hair cut, so I did that.  But I don't have time to flat iron at 6a for only a baby to see it.  But I could get really cute hair ties to jazz up my ponytail and use a few bobby pins.  I needed to figure out how to look cute while still being vomited and shat on.  I got inspired from a few place to figure out what I should be wearing and created a Pintrest board to really pull my week day look together as well as figure out some pj wear and going out clothes.   It really helped to focus me for what I was going for.  I also developed a quick make up routine as well.

3. You Are Not Alone  Besides Charmers working on their Experiments, people are working on unfucking their lives mundanely on Tumblr.  I am especially fond of Cat Valente's Girl Unlocked because she's a writer too and has similar issues to me. Also she's super funny and has a great makeup routine.

4. You Don't Have to Like It, You Just Have to Do It.  This motto has helped me start to get my ass to the gym three times last week.  It really helped me shut my brain weasels off by going straight to the gym as soon as I got up.  For me it also helped to hear that it was okay to have more pain than usual with the fibro, it was better to do it. (My current flare started on Wed due to weather changes verses gym changes.  30 degree change in a day knocks me flat on my ass every time)

5. Small Changes.  Okay so the French would probably not be into us eating the same thing practically every night as we've been doing.  So I just looked up some crockpot recipes to jazz things up on my Tues/Thurs which is my longest night.  We just got a cleaning service because with both of us working 40+ hours a week, it was becoming ridic.  A cleaning service will also keep us on top of things they don't do - decluttering, laundry, etc.  I'm tired of our tea kettles always getting gross.  I just ordered an electric kettle (and some fancy tea and okay, another French aspirational book because again, emotional cutter).  

6. Petition the right gods and spirits.  I'm working on a project that might bring me closer to the right spirit/Egregor but it's still in its baby stages.  In the interim, consider Durga.  Durga may not be overly invested in your weight loss per se, but She can relate to a person wanting to be as pretty, charming and smart as She is.  Puja and mala work works for this.

7. How Important Is This to You?  Really.  I keep crying and whining about being fat, not tending to my inner garden (the French are apparently big on this), not feeling sexy, etc., etc.  But what am I doing?  To the French, it's apparently more important to look good than to eat that donut.  So I'm going to change my eating habits and try to think more about what I'm eating and why.  Daytime eating tends to be boring anyway so I have a new plan for that.  I'm also going to cut down on snacks.  I am a huge snacker.  The French don't do that.  So . . .we'll see.

New Year, New You: An Experiment in Magical Radical Transformation

Yeah. . .She's not this classy.  Trust me.

My muse and I have an on-going disagreement of sorts.  Well.  I do.  She is indifferent as usual to my thoughts and feelings.  She clomps into my bedroom, heels in hand, cosmo and cheese fries on her breath.

She (poking me hard):  Hey.  Get up.

Me: What?  It's bedtime and we're not talking friends --

She: Whatever.  I have an idea.

Me: Your ideas are disorderly and often inconvenient.  I'm going back to bed.

She: No, you're not.  I'm going to keep poking you in your brain pan until you listen.  Are you listening now?  Are you listening now?  Are you listening now?  Are you listening now?  Are you listening now?  Are you listening --

Me: JESUS CHRIST, I HATE YOU!

She: So it goes like this.

So, you're supposed to be, like, magicians, occultists, witches in the woods and the kitchen and on the soccer field, right?  Workers of wonder.  Dream weavers.  People who get shit done.  Isn't this the year to make your own luck?  You're feeling especially awful with the nights that never end and run over by the holidaze and you can't drink joie forever before needing a meeting.  So now's the fucking time.  Don't wait until that stupid glitter ball drops and you're already making drunk and/or sentimental mistakes, start now.  Start now when it's hardest.  Start now when you feel so weighed down with emotions better left to glittery and not so glittery vampires and when you feel like you could sleep forever.  Now is the time you need to wake up.  Get up, get up!  Don't miss this moment.  Create magics great and small, mundane and mystical.  Find everything you've been looking for, mysteries revealed in every form of divination and song and when you fuck it up, when you are too tired to try, bring each other up from bloodied knees to get back up smiling.  You are all made of stars and you have stardust in your veins.  Do something about it.

Here is what you'll do.  You'll write prompts.  You'll explore.  You'll fall down.  Sometimes you'll lay there awhile, finding things under rocks that you never wanted to know.  They'll pull you back, using yarn, glue, cajoling and stern words.  You'll keep sewing yourself into who you'll want to be and you'll tell them, sometimes too much, because that's your way and what's needed.  You'll find how far you can really fly when you've made wings to carry you and be breathless from your accomplishments.  Besides your words, you'll give something made from your hands.  

Here is what they'll do.  Form a community of tealight hearths and stories high bonfires.  They'll whisper their stories, spirials of success and failure.  You'll learn from each other, make each other laugh, piss each other off.  You'll get things done together and alone.  You'll be afraid together, so knees up.    

Here's how it will work:

There's a prize.  Of course there's a prize.  I will do a random drawing and whoever wins can chose  one item from my shop and I will ship it anywhere in the world for free.  The Drawing will take place on Valentine's Day.  

I will put everyone's name in a hat and have Jow chose a name from the hat.  If you are a fiber freak (yarn, Dream Ambassadors, felted soap), I will even hand dye that item in the color of your choice.

You get one entry when:

* You add the "New Year, New You" button to your blog

* You blog about the "New Year, New You" experiment to spread the word about it

* You blog in response to any of my "New Year, New You" prompts (one entry each time you do so!)

* You blog about your own "New Year, New You" experiment (one entry each time you do so!).  You are captain of your own ship, if you're ass deep in your own experiments in making yourself stronger, faster, braver and more magical, that certainly counts.

You must leave me a comment with the appropriate link so that I know you have done these things.

Outsiders: What Like It's Hard or Something?

In ADF Druidry, there's a whole section in the beginning of the rite on Outsiders which is actually one of the more hotly contested aspects of the ADF ritual between ADF groves, the contested aspects tend to focus on 1. Who are the Outsiders? 2. What should be done with the Outsiders? Some groves think certain gods and attributes should always be Outsiders and Outsiders should be banished. Well, as I've mentioned, my grove has more in common with tent revivalists than with High Episcopagans generally, we take somewhat of a different stance than that.

Our grove generally feels who the Outsiders are depends on the ritual. If you're doing a ritual to the Furies for example, the Olympians are likely to be Outsiders. Eris' Outsiders are going to be different than Hera's Outsiders. We also don't banish as that should (theoretically) be permanent and not for nothing, living in NJ, you need your crunchy shell of cynicism, wariness and snarkiness to get through the day. But. They're not the most helpful aspects to get through a ritual that was basically started by drunk college kids in the 60's who wanted to break Berkley College's administrative brains while invoking gods from cultures that were and are pretty far from America in someone's living room in New Jersey. So we basically ask those aspect and those Gods and ghosts and whatnot who wouldn't be comfortable for the rit to go sit on the porch until the ritual is over and watch the college kids and cars go by until everyone comes and collects their Outsiders after ritual. We also make offerings to the Outsiders as well (generally with a carefully worded, Please accept our offering, not the offerer. . . the Outsiders tend to like to linger with the offerer and will often try to persuade the offerer to go on a fun adventure with them instead of sitting through boring ritual). Sometimes, people attending the rit feel like Outsiders themselves which can be for any reason from it's a pantheon they're not comfortable with, the rit itself isn't where their headspace is at or what is politely referred to as "the weather in your head" (which often is a euphemism for having High Drama with someone(s) in the grove or just life shit that you're going through that has nothing to do with anyone there but puts you in a sour mood) and I can tell you from experience, when the Outsider invocation is made and you feel like an Outsider, it's hard not to follower the offerer outside (I think at the Pagan picnic with the other grove invoking and it being so different than how we do things that when they did the Outsider offering I saw everyone from my grove visibly twitch not to follow but . . .manners).

Where I'm going with all of this is that I think it's very possible to feel like an Outsider even here on our beloved blogosphere. I've spoken in the past about being fretful about not fitting the "kitchen witch" mold closely enough and how sometimes that's hard for me. This year, while I love you all, it's been hard with the never ending High Magic Grimoire Club that has taken root in much of the blogosphere. I dutifully read and I'm happy that it works for y'all but it doesn't do a whole lot for me. As it doesn't do a whole lot for me, it's taken me out of the conversation for the better part of a year. Which is nobody's fault! I'm not casting blame or anything, it's just not where I fit. I mean, I even live with one so I harass him with a never ending stream of questions hoping that something will click at some point which inevitably essentially disintegrates into an exasperated "because that's the way it is, that's why!". We finally got to a place where I got it when he explained that you can't just date High Magic, you have to at least go steady or get engaged and get into a super srs arrangement straight from the gate. Man, I cannot commit to anyone or anything like that, I want to have an awkward first date where I can ask some questions and see you do something charming and cool and then make my decision from there. You can do that with Hoodoo, Wicca, ADF Druidry and even layperson Hinduism.

So I've been marinating a lot about where I fit. I've been thinking a lot about Gordon's post on little magics everywhere which is my jam along with radical practicality. For some reason for a long time I've hesitated to call myself a Chaos mage. Maybe because the first time around, it was this super cool 90's phenomenon that felt super alterna and punky and everyone doing it was way cooler than I was. To me it was like the first Matrix when that was impressive at the time or like Hackers or whatever else that was going on that had only a vague basis in reality but everyone was really excited about it anyway. The two girls I know locally who id as chaos mages are kind of like a modern 2011 version of that which is why I've also hesitated about the label which is super stupid because they're also close friends who I've done magic (awesomely) with and they are super down to earth and awesome with real problems. I guess I felt like I didn't fit the mold there either exactly? So besides the obv revelation that no one perfectly fits any mold, I had another revelation when talking to Jow:

Me: I don't know! I just do stuff! And people seem to relate to it even though I don't feel like I have an orderly manner in doing it and I feel like a toned down version of Penelope Trunk with my apparent pathological need to spew out all my fucked upness and flaws to the internet.

Jow (patiently): But you've been published, you have thousands of people reading your Witchvox articles and sending you emails--

Me: What? Like it's hard or something? Ohmigod! I've got it! I'm the Elle Woods of the occult world!

Jow: Hee! Actually, yes. People underestimated her a lot but she got into Harvard law school and graduated at the top of her class and she has a big heart and she sort of marches to the beat of her own drummer. Even though people at Harvard thought her clothes was crazy, she didn't care, she wore what she wanted anyway. She didn't change herself to fit in.

Me (dreamily): I love her clothes.

But it's funny, I was really thinking about it, much like Elle didn't fit in with stereotypical Harvard students, she still carved a place for herself and did it her way. I'm always going to be a fashion dork which tends to not be the norm with Pagans in my age group locally, I'm going to see and interact with the gods through clothes and music because that's what makes sense for me. I'm never going to want to do much high magic, I'm always going to want to do little magic everywhere and I'm just . . .going to be me and not worry about being whatever enough. I think that's where I struggle in writing my book, I feel like I'm not mommy enough for a kitchen witch book but not alterna enough to take more of a super srs approach. So whatever. I'm just going to write the way I write and do things the way I do things and stop worrying so much.

Bend and snap, bitches.

Fantasy Rooms and Initiatory Experience (Sleep No More)

Okay, first, OMFG, Earthquake! When you live on the east coast of the US that's not even supposed to be *possible* let alone a 5.8. Role playing games have apparently taught me nothing, I botched my initiative roll. Everything was shaking and I vaguely wondered if it was the quarry (What!) and by the time it sort of occured to me to find a doorway, it was over. All I kept thinking was this couldn't *possibly* be an earthquake. Then it stopped so I was like, *ignore*. Until everyone confirmed what it was and that there are probably aftershocks to look forward to and now I'm anxious about it again.

Anyway. After my last blog post some stepped in to defend Jow's right to books (also I think we can blame Jow for the earthquake as he *is* prepping to sell some). As I scolded in the comments, I'm an occultist/witch/sorceress/magicsprinklepony too and I have my weaknesses as well. I'm personally a component junkie which is why I love Hoodoo so much - herbs, candles, incense, circle equipment, I love all that crap. However all of my components reside neatly in two small bins under our altar (okay maybe three) and his books take up four Ikea Billy sized bookcases. When living in a small domicile, it's important that division of space should be equitable. I have a slightly larger clothing closet, he gets more bookshelf room, equitable.

But. If we weren't being fair, one of the rooms in my house would look like the picture. I didn't get to see that room in person when I went to Sleep No More, I had heard about it. Which brings us to initiatory experience, magic and theater. Let's talk some truth talk here, to get any kind of Pagan/Occult experience to have a certain level of theatricality, you're still dealing with your regularly practicing group and you're probably in someone's living room. It can still definitely be a super powerful experience but if you want to have an experience like out of The Craft or that one episode of Bones or basically any kind of awesomely executed movie scene . . .good luck. It's not going to happen. Why? We're not actors. We haven't practiced that scene six times or whatever. Neo-Paganism, like it or lump it, has more in common presently with coming from the sixties radical movements than when theater and religion used to mesh together in Greece.


The closest to that Greek theater/nitiatory experience that I've gotten is seeing Sleep No More. Firstly, you're wearing masks and you're not to speak. Secondly, each room is amazingly detailed as it took over 400 volunteers to put together the rooms. Thirdly, they separate you from whomever you came with so that you can have a solitary experience that is exactly what you want to do at all times.

Mush a silent super sexy dance version of MacBeth with Rebecca and Vertigo and put it in a huge warehouse that you've turned into a hotel out of the 30's/infirmary/insane asylum/graveyards and woods and you've got the play pretty much. Each performance lasts about an hour and then (sort of)loops three times to give you a dream like experience. There are smells everywhere (like the hospital wing *shudder* I'm still getting that out of my nose) and music and lighting and you're allowed to follow whatever characters you like and ransack the rooms at your leisure (they have guides watching you, masked and silent). If it gets to be too much you can hang out at the bar which looks and sounds like a club in an old movie where they have actors and musicians singing and you can text and not wear your mask.

Everyone from Amanda Palmer to Dita Von Teese to Adam Lambert have been, why not? You're masked, no one knows you. And all during the production, rooms are opening and closing (and locking and unlocking) so you're never sure where you've been or what you've seen. And if that wasn't enough, there are rooms that only a few people will get to see because an actor takes you to it (Inside the nurse's hut where you possibly get pricked on your thumb for blood, the three people who get to see Lady MacBeth's chapel a night, Lady MacDuff's private room, becoming one of the dead king's dead sons). It's been estimated that anyone who goes only sees 1/16 of the show in a night.

It's an experience unlike any other magical or theatrical experience I've ever had, it's out in the middle of nowhere Chelsea and has a real hotel plate, you don't give your ticket at the desk, just your name. It felt like being part of a secret occult society that I wasn'/t even allowed on the inner circle of. It was like a dream I can't quite describe to anyone but remember vividly - eating candy stealthily in the candy shop, still nervous about touching things, going into a coronor's office through a funeral parlor for four and finding that the dead girl wasn't dead after all and finding my way to a blood orgy/ritual in an abandoned club with strobe lights and a half man/half goat and naked witches making out with MacBeth and the animal/man and breast feeding a fake baby under Hecate's blood curdling cries, slow dream like dance movements as I watched scenes familiar and unfamiliar, the debutante's ball, getting into a four minute staring contest with a silent bellhop, dialing phones, trying to peek into the nurse's hut in the woods through the cracks on the outside of the hut, the room covered in tiny chalk words in strange patterns, the serial killer boards all over the place, watching things be buried and dug up in the cemetery, the Catholic idolatry everywhere, shaking presents and going through drawers and files, finding the bloodied torn apart padded room I was too afraid to enter, being splashed with Lady MacBeth's bloody bathwater in the room full of clawfoot tubs and everywhere you went, you were surrounded by a tableau like this one (attendees are masked, actors unmasked).

And after a certain point, it's hard to tell where you've been and what you've seen and things that are similar but not exactly the same and who is observing who and the fatigue that starts to give over to the ecstatic experience as it becomes harder and harder to tell what's real and what's dreamed. The *only* way you can ever experience such a ritualistic immersive experience is this way - to pay for your ticket and for there to be a cast of nearly a thousand people who have put this together to be so detailed and choreographed and the cast of thousands of devotees who have started their own strange rituals (like leaving their own hair samples in the room full of the four hundred volunteers' samples) happening under the sanctity of the production, just like it's happened in religion since religion started.

It's an ecstatic, spiritual experience that is not like anything you'll ever be able to experience again (and even people who have gone five or seven times have different dreamlike experiences each time) so as Ferris once said, If you have the means, I highly recommend it. If it gets extended until the end of the year, I'll sell whatever organ I have to so I can go again. It's been two weeks and I'm still dreaming and thinking about it.

Oh Lordess, Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood: White Girl Suburban Shamanism

Dear gods, why did I agree to give a class on Animal Totems for my local Pagan Picnic?

It started out innocently enough, I wanted to start publicly speaking again, I'm entertaining enough and I know enough to be glib and also enough to say "I don't know" as many times as applicable. If I ever stop fucking around and learn to juggle the chainsaw mess of nannying/freelance writing/crafting/dropping it like it's hot/social obs/religious obs/crafting/blogging and oh yeah going to the gym and writing (. . .sigh) and get published and whatnot, book touring is super necessary and having pagan workshop experience is helpful.

Well. My local pagan picnic is having a 'arry Potter theme for the obv reason so all the classes have to be themed after the Hogwarts classes. I tried in vain to get an easier one but one of the few open was Transfiguration, which I pitched as:

Transfiguration 101: Learn about what a totem spirit can bring to your life and participate in a meditation to find your own totem, hear what s/he has to say and experiment with meditational transfiguration yourself!

Of course they accepted that one. Of course.

This is what my process has looked like:

1. Ignore. That was easy until I started getting gentle notes about my bio/abstract.

2. Panic. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawd, WHAT WAS I THINKING! Why do you want to open up this old wound that's covered in exhusband cooties and remember what you figured out? That you don't know anything about anything? Remember how you decided to stop calling yourself a shaman post-divorce and you've been (as the LBGT comm kindly says) "questioning" since then? Remember how you've been working suuuuuper hard not to be a misappropriating asshole? WHY THE FUCK DID YOU PICK THE SOFTEST SQUISHEST MOST DIFFICULT ASPECT OF YOUR SPIRITUALITY ON DISPLAY THEN?

3. Realize there is no way out. You've agreed and need to keep your grown up commitments like a grown up.

4. Research. Look to people you trust who have written books and come from a similar background (in my case, sub/urban American and Euro mutts). Start with Lupa because you met her once at a festival and she was nice to you.

5. Spend some time retreating back to panic.

6. Ponder. Figure out where you still fit in the whole shamanic world. Resolve not to put myself out there as anyone other than me while still somehow not discrediting myself as being a trustworthy source by going too far the other way.

7. Outline. Write it all out. Send in abstract/bio. Look at outline. Feel momentarily pleased as I realize I've made it make sense in my current personal cosmos while managing to not turn it into an eclectic mess. Pleasure quickly gives way to:

8. Panic, obvs.

9. Distract self from panic by focusing on other things I can control. Reorder Uncle Ted's Animal Speak as it got lent out at some point. It's a Harry Potter theme! Luckily I'm already a HP dork so I have some stuff I wear for Arisia that can be used and summer-rized (knee length grey pleated skirt, drape-y black t shirt, time turner, green tie, legwarmers if it's not ungodly hot). Try on ensemble. Make note to self to order a Slytherin patch. Do so.

10. Blog about it.

I feel like this is going to shake up my internal antfarm even if no one comes to my class (which is always possible). I remembered that my dianic circle has always said I'm super good at *leading* meditation which is a good workshop transferable skill if not awesome for personal enlightenment.

I'm beginning to seriously co-sign on Penelope Trunk's theory on being happy or being interesting.

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.

Finding Your Pagan Moral Compass: On Forgiveness

Sometimes being Pagan is challenging. We have a much murkier moral structure than many other world religions, especially if you're more of a “freelance” Pagan like myself. There's honestly not any one-belief structure I subscribe to in its entirety, which makes for days where I miss being Catholic in my own way. While it wasn't always easy to adhere to the belief structure, there was a structure to follow for everything. You could expect Mass to go a certain way, you could expect sinning to go a certain way and you could expect forgiveness to go a certain way and you could expect death to go a certain way. As a creative of habit and structure, I miss those certainties even if they weren't always necessarily certain in my own head as a Catholic.

Read the rest here at WitchVox

We're Not Past This Yet

As many of you know, Mrs. B has been kicking ass and taking names in this Moms of Faith Top 25 Blog contest, which also means that you're probably aware that some other bloggers don't think that Pagans belong in the contest (not just Christians now, kids! A Jewish blogger took up the cause too today). Mrs. B blogs about all her experience here.

I have to confess something. I thought we were past this. I really did. There are Wiccans represented in mainstream television, most people don't bat an eye anymore if you say you're a Wiccan (which I tend to do to with strangers frankly, I'm not interested in giving an eclectic Pagan 101 every time I meet someone), my mother begrudgingly will acknowledge it as a faith, albeit through the filter of Charmed but hey, I'm not picky, I'll take what I can get.

It wasn't always like this of course. Even here in liberal New Jersey when I first started I knew to keep my trap zipped about my beliefs. A friend had her car keyed because of her bumper stickers and had been pulled over by the cops for them on occasion. I keep my pentacle under my shirt under most circumstances and my altar was an altar to Mary, Mother of the Sea as far as my mother was concerned. But that was fifteen years ago and I guess I've gotten spoiled living here.

I don't think it's just about living here though. My oldest and dearest friend is born and bred from Kansas and I would consider her a Conservative Christian. B. can party like a rock star, she can toss back shots like a champ, she's the first one on the dance floor and she has a wicked sense of humor. She is also one of the sweetest people with the biggest heart and capacity for joy wit a strong sense of faith. She also doesn't take any shit. B. has never once so much as made a "well, I don't agree but that's for you and the big JC to take up later" noise. She's happy I have faith and believe in something and try to be a good person. When I'm struggling with a moral dilemma, we're often on the same page together. She and my mom are who I think of when I think of good Christian women.

This. . . .debatacle is not what I think of. And I know most of the women in the faith aren't like this but I thought we were past this and it makes me sad and feel gross that there are people who think we're bad people going to hell because of our faith. I mean I guess it's the same bubble around here about the LBGT community, I knew girls who got beat up for holding hands and now it's more, "I'm gay." "And?" (coming out is still a thing for some of course, ymmv).

Alix Olsen once said "And I think/post-feminist is presumptuous" and I agree, we're not all equal yet, sorry. I had thought with Pagans in the military that maybe we were past religious bigotry against Pagans and . . .we're not. And it makes me sad, just like the bigotry against Muslims makes me sad. It also reinforces why I'm frankly never moving. I need to live in a place where it's okay for me to be different in all those fun and interesting ways I'm different and I need a community, preferably a large one like I have in New Jersey. And I'm grateful for all the community I have and accepting people I have in my life.

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.

On Doors, Magic, Success and Failure

Of course that I have now smugly tweeted about going to the the Motherfucking Post Office Like an Adult, I need to do what I can to sabotage that effort for myself.

So, let's talk about doors. This particular door started opening when I started having conversation with Gordon because I don't think we're really happy in our platonic inter-continental marriage unless we're blowing each other's minds. I wanted to show him my kitchen witch book outline and as I was summoning the courage to do so, the old computer died. Like dropped dead, no hope. I thought I had backed it up but no, I had instead three versions of the outline forcing me to make a whole new one using the old ones and then adding in stuff as I saw fit. After all that work, I hastily forced myself to push "send". Gordon was completely awesome about it as per usual and had a lot of great advice about that and my crafting business which my fear of success has me currently too afraid to fully absorb so I owe him an email.

Prior to this, every Tarot card reading I've done for the last few months have basically warned me that if I get successful, I have to be careful to not let it be my undoing a la Lady MacBeth which is always lurking around my subconscious.

Additionally, I got my first request on how to deal with a magical situation from a stranger.

On Monday, Jow and I went to New Hope which is a alterna friendly/pagan friendly town and it's always had a special place in my heart. As my friend Sarah once said, It was named right. New. Hope. We went to a winery and drank all sorts of wine with cute boys playing Fiona Apple on the stereo and then to a local store where I bought a new drop spindle and they invited me to their "Spin in"s. Then it was onto the town itself where we had one of the best meals we've ever eaten, period at Havana's with bacon wrapped dates, thick heavy yummy risotto, chicken roti and plaintains mole with Dead Guy ale. We were feeling pretty good about things and food drunk when we stumbled into Mystikal Tymes, the first witch shop I've ever been too. I could tell as soon as we got in that the woman (who I didn't recognize) working there wanted to see my eyes so I took off my sunglasses. We bustled about getting sage, charcoal and candles and then got to the counter and asked for John the Conqueror and lodestones. The woman showed me how the stones worked (I had never seen them in person) and then sort of eyed me and finally said, I don't know why I'm being told to tell you this but if anyone is giving you a problem, do the following thing. It works. (silent understood: this is not strictly "positive" magic). I was floored because it was the beginning of tourist season (though we were alone in the shop) and getting that kind of information is typically a strictly after hours sort of business generally. I replied, thanking her and saying carefully that I appreciated the information and I *always* thought *very* carefully before using this sort of magic. She nodded, satisfied.

We got into the car and I was sort of reeling when I shuffled my iPod for some radiomancy and Fiona Apple's "The Child is Gone" came on:
Honey help me out of this mess
I'm a stranger to myself
But don't reach for me, I'm too far away
I don't wanna talk ''cause there's nothing left to say
So my
Darling, give me your absence tonight
Take all of your sympathy and leave it outside
'cause there's no kind of loving that can make this all right
I'm trying to find a place I belong
And I suddenly feel like a different person
From the roots of my soul come a gentle coercion
And I ran my hand over a strange inversion
As the darkness turns into the dawn
The child is gone
The child is gone


At that point, I felt . . .look, my general ability to sense magic is roughly on par with a sack of potatoes so any kind of "sixth sense" stuff going on without intent is sort of startling but I felt a door inside me open which was really freaky. I feel like I'm being pushed (if by pushed we mean given a good hard shove) towards something dealing with my magic stuff and my writing and it's an even harder shove than when I did SalonCon which is pretty terrifying honestly. I feel like I'm going to be coming into my own and that's difficult to digest because frankly I went from seeking my magickal DESTINY!!!11111!!! to just sort of well . . .ignoring it. I say sort of because I became v. comfortable with who I am and what I can do and I wasn't looking to do more than that anymore. I've also toned a lot of aspects of myself down a lot post divorce because I didn't really care for how broken those aspects left me - ambition, drive, the spotlight, they're all v. cruel mistresses that can come at a big price. I lost my marriage (oh for a ton of other reasons too believe you me, but it was a factor, wasband didn't exactly care for "holding my purse" so to speak), I lost a lot of money and I was never comfortable with occasionally being recognized on the street. And now I see that door opening back up, this time with even more possibilities and more wisdom and . . .I'm frozen like a deer in a headlight. I am way more afraid of success at this point than failure. Failure is easy, you get knocked down and you get up again. Success comes with murky problems that are difficult to navigate.

So I stand here, poised. We'll see what happens.

Eat, Pray, Love and My Quest for Meditation

EPL is a very all or nothing sort of situation. As they used to say, you're either on the bus or off the bus, it's a very all or nothing polarizing sort of book. Some people love it with all their little hearts and others hate it with the firey burning of a thousand suns. Now, lest you think I am uninformed, remember, I'm a Women's Studies grad/dork so believe me, you're not going to really rock my world with cries of ZOMG! Privledge! I know, I got the memo, I get it, I agree. . .sort of [soapbox] look, she got paid as a writer to go on her globetrot to self improvement, I don't know that that's privilege so much as the paid writer's wet dream, I get that she's a white American woman with privilege but, that's my life too. It is what it is, people's stories shouldn't be suppressed due to their race, class, gender, religion, whatever, period. I get that it's easier for privileged people's stories to be told and I support the fight to even the playing field [/soapbox] but at the same time it doesn't stop EPL from having profoundly affected me in personal and life changing ways.

Anyway. The first time I read it, I was still smarting from my own divorce so I really related to the anguish, angst and general feeling of being lost. I really got what she said when she said, The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I too had my share of 2a bathroom sobbing and distressed conversations with god/dess/es. She gave me permission to figure out wtf I was doing with my life and her trip to India inspired me to really start my japa practice and start a regular personal practice in my life.

I'm re-reading it now and I just got paid for the privilege by AOL in the form of being paid to write a short summary for it for the honestly truly luxurious price of .10 a word (which is a lot for those of you who don't write for a living, bottom of the barrel writing pays less than a penny a word, on average I make about .07 a word which isn't bad) which will be out soonish. Now that I'm not a mess from the divorce/house buying process, I'm taking different things from it. Firstly, I love the Italy part, the idea of going to a country and speaking the language and just really enjoying the food, that's my jam. I would like to get to do that with France at some point. It gels very well with my efforts to enjoy food fully and to be present in the eating experience (which is a challenge for me) and for me I take it a step further and try to be mindful in my eating in terms of feeling how my body feels about it . . .which I suppose is a meditation in and of itself.

But it's her struggles with meditation that really resonate with me. It's really hard for me to sit with all of those anxious, crappy feelings and to really be present in those moments. I'd really rather jam some food down my throat, not get dressed and eat a metric ton of crap, thank you. But I'm trying to move away from that, as much as I can (and it's pretty uphill). I'm afraid to meditate completely solo at this point, there's too much stuff there that I don't feel comfortable exploring completely unsupervised. My methods by Buddhist standards would likely be considered "cheating" as one is supposed to stick your whole face into the experience without crutches. Luckily, I'm not a Buddhist and not interested in getting a rainbow body.

Deb's Method of Meditation:

1. Keep it short. This is not an endurance test, you're not getting graded, champ.

2. Put on sound machine, which is set to ocean.

3. Get in bed at bedtime in pjs. This is the time of day where my hamsters/monkey mind are going buckwild so it's when I need it most.

4. Do japa practice (which is technically meditation anyway)

5. Close eyes. Go to my night time beach in my head. Sit down next to my totem guide (who is in person form), Crow. Watch the waves for a minute, see Yemaya in the distance. Put head on Crow's shoulder.

6. Start counting breaths. Only go to ten and then start over. It's harder than it sounds for a spaz like me. Try to let thoughts drift naturally and not judge them. Likely fail at that part and start to get torqued. Crow will offer gentle guidance* or gently bring me back to breath counting.

7. Do until sleep.

8. Sleep.

Fin.

* Crow is not a gentle spirit totem per se but generally if I'm getting "schooled" it's more like: Him: Don't do that dumb thing. Me: WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU BECAUSE I'M DOING THAT DUMB THING! . . .oh shit, things are not going well. Halp! Halp! I will stop doing that dumb thing! Him: I told you so.

Pizza and Dead People

But first, real life. My uncle is in the hospital in ICU right now. This has been difficult for my family for a lot of reasons. a) If he passed, that would leave my uncle fatherless at 19. No one I knew who is part of the "dead dad" club who lost their father around that age came out unscathed. My cousin . . . is troubled would be the kindest way to put it and he has a lot of things working against him. He *just* started to pull his shit together a month ago. If my uncle passed, it would be a one way trip down the spiral, hard. We all can see it. (b) For Italians, we're a small family. We're still rocked from losing half of M.'s family two years ago unexpectedly. We only have (1) baby on that side. It would just . . .make us that much more inconsolable. There's only like 14 of us now total.

When we first got the news that he was in ICU, we had no information. Generally I take point in these kinds of situations, but my sister wanted to go and she's an adult now so I wanted to give her the chance. I wanted me to have the chance to stay behind and tend to the home fires and take care of her kid. I could be patient and calm and wait.

Wrong.

Apparently family roles exist for a reason. If it was a movie, it would almost be comical, me at home with her child screaming and inconsolable, me looking stricken and gasping in panicky breaths, pacing and pacing, at a loss with nothing to do but sit on my hands and try futilely to get the baby to calm down. She at the hospital, stricken and overcome by the sight of my vibrant uncle, hooked up to so many tubes and machines that she didn't know how she would handle it and didn't know what to do with my mother or the situation. Both of us whispering to each other through text we chose wrong, this isn't what we're good at, not at all.

Since then, we've gotten a routine. Every other day either she goes with my mother to the hospital two hours away and I stay home with her kid or vice versa. I grill the nurses, nag my mother. She does my uncles laundry and replaces household items.

We're getting there. He's getting better, little by little. We're not out of the woods yet but the outcome looks promising at least.

My sister and my mother are troopers. I'm not strong like they are, I've been sleeping til noon, exhausted. My sister cares for her kid, my mom goes to work. But I hope that when I take a little time to breathe and recharge, I can help them do the same, have a clear head to help find answers, make them take breaks, etc. The days are long, going til midnight every other day.

I haven't been able to light a novena candle yet, but I think about it a lot, Our Lady of Guadalupe sitting serenely on my altar and I think about Her prayer that I don't know by heart but know the gist of and lighting the candle in my head and hope that it counts, almost as much. My japa practice has become erratic, but I think about that a lot too and say a few mantras when I can remember. I think about the rosary in one of my uncle's mittens, prayed on by so many of my ex-aunt's family members. I try to pray before bed, try to go to my internal meditation space and clean that out since I haven't had the time to in my actual home. I think about asking to go to Umberto's tonight, my father's favorite pizza place out in NY. So much so that when he passed, a cousin ribboned a box beautiful and displayed it at his wake. We go there, whenever we go to the cemetery, whenever we go to a wake, sometimes when we're leaving the country out of JFK, sometimes just when we're visiting my uncle and we can be happy as a family. But mostly I think about pizza and dead people and how it's a part of our pilgrimage to visit our beloved dead, just like the shitty diner in south Jersey we go to when we visit my dad's grave where we always order pancakes and burgers.

My mom is my family's keeper of the dead, I guess that's where I get it from but she's hardcore. She specializes in what I call "drive by cemetery visits". She's got a wreath in her hand, twine, scissors, whatever she finds around the cemetery to help hold up wreaths, flowers, palms, she's the MacGyver of the Cemetery. She knows where everyone's buried and has inscrutable markers in her brain that helps her find whoever. She does drive bys because she'll decide on a day's notice that that is what she's doing and then gets put out when I can't decide on a whim (and really, who decides to drive two hours to either cemetery on a whim? Fran [our last name], that's who.) to go visit all of our beloved dead. Sometimes I think I'm too soft and squishy because I get all emotional and shit about this kind of stuff, but when it comes down to doing, I can get through it all nice and neat like my mom does, once I'm there. It's just getting there. But I'm learning, or at least trying to because some day this will be my job. We have the same organized brain though and the same black humor. We talk about where everyone's buried like normal people talk about files. I explained my eventual plan to get everyone in one general area in a mausoleum all nice and neat and she laughs ("We'll just move Dad and put him like across the street from Grandma and Grandpa and then everyone will be organized, right Ma? Keep everyone close and nice and tidy!"). So I go with her and she tells me family secrets off handedly (it's the only way to get them out of her) and I try to figure out the bunny trail of our beloved dead. I'm learning. Slowly. And then we get a slice of sicilian and try the Arancini di Riso and head home, back to central New Jersey, back and forth between life and the dead as sure as an abacus.

More on Songs and Spells

I was going to try to write two entries for the next two weeks, but somewhere along the way on the way home to do so, I got distracted by Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire. I couldn't figure out the words but I really liked the beat and the voice, it was sexxxxy. So, coincidentally are the lyrics. Naturally, I was then curious about the video. Dear lordess! Why was I not sent the memo on how dirty/sweaty/sexy hot the lead is, all writhing around on a mattress? (I'm looking at you, Gordon, you're remiss in your platonic husbandly duties, they're super popular in the UK)

So, um, yeah let's pretend this is a legitimate magical entry and not an excuse to stare at my new pretend boyfriend. Right then. A while ago, I talked about Songs as Spells which also was totally not an excuse to listen to more Florence and the Machine. In case my entry titles and general rambling doesn't make it obvious, I'm obsessed with music which is sort of funny since I as only passable in playing the flute and my voice resembles my totem, Crow (which is why I think the story about the crow and the cheese I read as a child resonated and my first memories are of crows as well as my unrelenting desire for cheese, but that's neither hither nor thither). My senior druid noticed I seem to see ritual through popular music a lot. I thought everyone did that, but apparently it's weird enough to notice in a grove full of weirdos. I make mix cds for the gods and rituals (I know other people who do it too so that part is less weird) and significant others.

In my other sekrit life, I'm totes a smut riter (digression: writing the pr0ntastic parts after the first few times is totally a drag fo' real. People who don't write smut think that opinion is strange and means I'm in the wrong field. People who write smut Get It because basically it's like trying to have sex while whistling the entire time. Yes, it's still sort of sexy but it's also about choreography, making sure if the skirt came off it stays off, word choice, how many synonyms can you find for "hard" "vagina" "pleasure" "cock", do men wear buttons on their trousers at that time do women wear panties, etc., etc. So I dread writing them like a dreading thing and put them off like whoa but once I successfully execute it, I'm like, I'M THE QUEEN OF THE MOTHERFUCKING WORLD! I PWN ALL OF YOU! ALL OF YOUR ORGASMS BELONG TO ME! Like normal writers do) and I knew I wanted this scene to have a certain feel to it, like Florence's Drumming Song so I played it over and over again on repeat while writing it and now I have a completed Steampunk romantica (which is super popular right now for the curious) to submit for an anthology with plenty of time to edit again just to make it perfect before submitting it.

So if music can work as spellwork and getting one through porn writing, wouldn't it stand to reason that it could also be integrated into one's serial killer board/transformative process? I mean, Grant Morrison manifested some truly freaky shit when working on The Invisables even by freaky shit standards and now he has hordes of fangirls throwing panties at him, partly due to his work where he told himself he was as cool as James Bond. I've been trying to tell myself I'm as cool as Joan Holloway with only marginal success. So I started thinking today when I was inspired by another song, maybe for me, a theme song would be more helpful. I have decided on Cake's Short Skirt, Long Jacket because of these lyrics:

A girl with/ the right allocations/ Who's fast and thorough/ And sharp as a tack/ she's playing/ with her jewelry/ she's putting up her hair/ she's touring the facilities/ and picking up slack/ a girl with/ Uninterupted prosperity/ who used a machete/ to cut through red tape/ with fingernails that/ shine like justice/ and a voice that is dark/ like tinted glass. . . .

Which basically describes a modern Joan Holloway. So that's going to be my theme song and we'll see where that takes me. This is a Charmer experiment! Pick a theme song that describes what you want to be as a person, something you're trying to achieve, about rabbits, whatever, play it semi regularly and see what happens in addition to your other magical workings.

Which song are you going to use?

Popping Pills and Practice

Since writing my latest article for WitchVox (btw, I tried to write back to you, Carol but it bounced! Hopefully you'll see this instead?), I've actually been getting the same question a lot which makes me think it's on a lot of people's minds:

Do you think that taking medication affects your magical practice?

For the TL;DR crowd, my short answer would be: no. For those of you interested in a discussion, I will share my thoughts with you here. Firstly, I'd like to say that I really dislike it when people are made to feel like they need to engage in secrecy and shame. If that happens, something has really gone wrong in my opinion and the fact that apparently a lot of Pagans/Magical Practitioners feel that they can't talk about taking prescription medication and need to hide that from the community makes me really sad. Taking care of your health and taking advantage of modern medicine shouldn't be something you have to feel shame about in spiritual circles in my opinion.

So let's start kicking down some walls and lay it all out there. I have depression, anxiety, anemia and fibromyalgia. I currently take the following medications to make it so that I am a productive member of society: Prozac, Xanax, Remeron, Savella, Celebrex, Vitamin D, Multi-Vitamin and Birth Control. In the past, I have: gone to therapy and tried Kava and St. John's Wort to help. The therapy helped immensely, the Kava and St. John's Wort significantly less so. In addition to my medication I use yoga, stress management techniques, japa/self guided meditation, massage, journaling and talking to loved ones to manage my conditions. I see my doctor regularly. She is v. tight fisted with all the "fun" meds and I don't think I could get a Vicodin out of her if it meant she could retire on a island of her own. But at the same time, she treats my conditions very aggressively.

Even with good coping mechanisms, good medication and a good support structure, I still have days where I'm anxious and can't sleep and occasionally have days where I am depressed for no reason, sometimes my fibromyalgia causes me so much fatigue and pain still that I can't get out of bed. Despite these aspects, I still feel the normal human range of emotions and generally only feel sad or stressed when I'm "supposed to". I've worked since I was fourteen, I pay my taxes, I write, I ran a con, I go out and have fun doing all the things early thirty-somethings like to do, I have loving relationships and I own a car and a condo. My medication makes it so that instead of being too depressed to be motivated or paralyzed with inexplicable fear and anxiousness or too bedridden with pain and fatigue on the regular, I can lead a fairly "normal" life.

Which is why at this point I get confused about why shame needs to be implemented for taking advantage of first world medical care in order to lead functional lives. Are there people who abuse prescriptions? Um, yeah. They're addicts like the people who are alcoholics and have other drug abuse problems. Is that the majority of people who take meds? No. There's this idea that bugs the shit out of me that there are all these people who take medication they don't really need and this medication *magically* takes away all of their problems and they don't need to deal with them. Last I knew, you needed to take like a fistful of Xanax or are shooting H to get that effect. Which . . .see: addict.

Medication (and therapy) helps get you to the point where you're not in a full blown chemical freakout so you can effectively solve your problems and live your life. If you can do that for yourself without meds, rock out, you have an awesome immune system and brain chemistry. If you can do that solely with homeopathic methods, rock out. If you feel taking meds makes *you* a lesser person somehow then that's your business. But I start to get *real* touchy when you try to lay your trip on me. I get *even more* touchy when you start to try to tell me what to do with my body because I have a real problem with that. Control over my body goes way beyond whether or not I decide to have an abortion, it's also about having agency over the decisions I make regarding my health care.

And this bullshit that some people in our community put on others about how taking prescription medication is selling out, supporting corporate evil and bringing our community down and how you don't "believe" in the pharmaceutical industry so neither should anyone else and positive energy/crystals/herbs/alternative therapies would work for everyone regardless of their brain chemistry and body systems and personal desires is just that- bullshit.

With all that out of the way, let's get to the nuts and bolts of the question asked. While I haven't been completely unmedicated in roughly ten years, there are times where I have a little time in between prescriptions due to various reasons (mostly due to the length of time it takes for my prescriptions to arrive to me via mail) where I am in a quasi-unmedicated state and/or if my fibro-flare is that impressive that it punches past my meds that I feel able to give my own take on whether or not my medications have affected my magical practice.

When I was unmedicated/quasi-unmedicated, it was significantly easier for me to be in touch intuitively. What that means to me is that Tarot reading was easier to "pull", getting random psychic impulses and having an easier time seeing what's going on with what I call The Tapestry. The Tapestry refers to everything that's happened in the past, everything that's happening right now, everything that will happen and everything that never happened. To me it looks like a huge tapestry constantly weaving and unweaving itself in bits and pieces. Typically I could see about like one billionth of the whole tapestry, it was mostly my little corner of the world.

However. And this is a big however, my magic has significantly improved since medicating. My spells are much more effectively, I have the focus to have a personal practice and my rituals are more effective and meaningful.

So while yes, my general fuzzy random psychic ability was better unmedicated, having the ability to cast better and have a better personal practice *to me* (and YMMV) far outweighed my unmedicated abilities. While yes, my unmedicated abilities were more "traditional" psychic aspects, the ability to get the perfect condo through my targeted magic work far outweighed the benefit of being able to say, "Gordon! I think something is going to happen to you on Wedne- Thursd- No, definitely Wednesday. No idea what though. Cheers!" So for me, being more functional in my daily life and being more effective in my targeted magical practice far outweighed being unmedicated.

Discuss among yourselves.

The Secret, Serial Killer Boards and You

So, as usual, Gordon and I are thinking about the same thoughts across the pond, though perhaps coming to different conclusions (don't worry, I bought the Cupcake wine today so I'll be safe during the latest snowocalypse). Today he's pondering The Limits of Visualisation: Why You Still Need Magic. A lot has been made of The Secret's many flaws and issues. As Kathy Griffin said when her assistants made focus boards and then attributed her recent uprising in success to said boards, "I'm so sure it was the two of you and your Secret boards that did this, not, like, my many years of constant work." So besides taking away that you should never get into a sweat lodge with these people, as Gordon said, visualization is not enough.

So don't do that. Instead, as Gordon advises in a previous post, create a success map.

Or as I call it, a serial killer board. I watch *a lot* of crime procedurals and inevitably, a serial killer has a board that looks like the picture I have in this entry. At first, Jow desperately tried to get me to stop calling it that. But he eventually succumbed to my irrefutable logic. A serial killer, at least a tv fictional serial killer, has a Miss Martha level of organization and attention to detail. A tv serial killer takes a long time to catch (usually a whole season at least) by a crack team of one of the best groups of CSI agents/detectives/forensic anthropologists that can usually solve a case in about 35 minutes but s/he manages to stumps them for 25 episodes and generally can even up the ante by becoming personal and killing something that this said team loves and *still* not get caught for 25 episodes because of their drive to succeed and attention to detail. This fictional serial killer has an implementable long term plan. Is that or is that not the point of a focus board/success map?

Now, I am definitely not telling you to become real life serial killers. Real life serial killers aren't anywhere near as fun or cool as the fictional ones because of the whole morality/hurting people/having massive psychological issues/winding up with a needle in your arm and the long sleep issues. But a fictional serial killer is written by a team of writers, very carefully so as (if written correctly and no one is asleep on the job/phoning it in/being super half assed about it) there are no plot holes for the show.

And that is actually the point, Charmers. There should be no plot holes in your magic. There should be measurable goals, magical work and mundane work to make sure that your magic is doing what it's supposed to be doing. If it's not, you need to re-evaluate what you were doing and who you were working with and if your goals were reasonable and achievable magically and mundanely.

A focus board is not going to do this for you.

But what it *will* do is keep your eye on the prize and in my opinion, that's the real purpose in having one. You might be easily distracted like myself and get sidetracked from all the important shit you're actually supposed to be doing and instead watching back to back episodes of Bridezillas in your pajamas and/or drinking French Greyhounds and getting sucked into Facebook for nine million hours or maybe you're reading too many self improvement books and can no longer sleep like a grown human adult. It's easy to get completely and utterly off track.

That's why you need a serial killer board.

How to Be as Organized as a Television Serial Killer and Keep Your Eye on the Prize

1. First, think about what you're trying to accomplish in your life. For me I started by thinking of words because my brain sees words before pictures. My words are: Aspire, Create, Live, Serenity, Serve and Want.

2. Now find pictures that you feel are good representations of what you're trying to accomplish. Mine are:

Aspire: Joan Holloway (Mad Men)(she is curvaceous like whoa and Queen of the Secretaries), black and white picture of the Eiffel Tower (to remember to find my inner french chick) and Erzulie's symbol (to remember to drop it like it's hot)

Create: Typewriter (i is a riter noaw), a spinning wheel (I spin yarn as part of my income) and Mnemosyne (she's the mother of the Muses).

Live: Rolling pin and cookies (making things from scratch), a bedroom from anthrologie (keep my house in a way that I like) and a champagne cork (enjoy the good things in life)

Serenity: Crow Yoga position (yoga helps me feel centered), candles (make me feel calm) and roses (remember to find beauty)

Serve: Parvati and Shiva (remember to be a divine housewife and be present romantically) and Leigh from Secretary (draw your own conclusions, Charmers)

Want: Bank vault (to have money saved), a Saab convertible (I really want my next car to be a convertible and I could afford a used Saab and they're supposed to not be horrific to work on or horrifically expensive to repair and they're safe), passport (to keep traveling)

3. Get a smallish cork board and push pins. Pick a font if you want to print words, I find Fiolex Girls conveys the fictional serial killer intensity I'm trying to go for. I also used good quality heavy paper for my pictures and scrapbooking scissors to cut out my pictures so they had pretty edges.

4. Arrange. This is an awesome meditative stage where you get to play god of your own life and arrange all the pictures in a way that makes sense to you. I grouped my pictures according to each word.

5. The finishing touch. All serial killer boards have yarn connecting pictures and articles together. To be completely frank, I have no idea why that is. It looks cool? But magically speaking, it's useful as weaving the yarn through the push pins and connecting them together can be a magical act if you use your intent. You should also think carefully about which pin to connect to which pin. For me, It was even more magical because I got to use the (pink) yarn that I had spun myself for this.

6. Place in a position you will often see. If you're constantly glancing at it for a quick second at a time, I think then putting the pieces together internally is more of a subconscious versus conscious act. Mine is in my office, just out of direct eyesight which helps too. Plus when I get bored working, I tend to look around a lot so that adds to the occasionally seeing it but seeing it often aspect.

Honey Badger as Your Emergency Totem: A Kiss With a Fist is Better Than None

So, my friend DonCoyote suggested that all of his circle of friends take up the Honey Badger as their new totems (he's sort of shamany by way of White Wolf). My first thought was, a badger? WTF is a badger going to do? Chew on things? In my head, badgers were in the same vague category as a beaver. Oh no no no no, bear as a small child I once knew would say. Watch the video. For real. I'll wait.



Honey badgers are straight up frightening. Their bravery shoots way past stupidity and right into terrifying. ARE YOU TRYING TO START SOMETHING WITH ME, LION? HUH? HUH? I WILL END YOU! SNAKE, JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE VENOMOUS DOESN'T MEAN SHIT, BRO! I'MA BITE YOUR HEAD OFF, PASS OUT FOR A LITTLE WHILE AND THEN WAKE UP FRESH AS A DAISY TO FINISH EATING YOUR CORPSE!

Naturally, I entertained the idea of soliciting the honey badger into my coterie o' spirits after learning this . . .for like a second. And then I thought about what a person who follows honey badger would act like. More cunning than Lady MacBeth, braver than Beatrice and crazier than Ophelia. In other words, Georgina Sparks (played by the awesome Michelle Trachtenberg) from GossipGirl who makes Blair Waldorf look like an innocent babe in the woods. Now, don't get me wrong. I loves me some Georgie. . .on the telly. I would never want to emulate her because while her crazy is awesome, it's also terrifying and hella chaotic.

Now. Our friend Jason Miller has managed to permeate the permanent fog in my brain usually taken up by reality television and gossip to drill into it the mantra for every magic user worth her salt, "Emergency magic is bad magic." This has managed to stick with me along with other important mantras such as, Guests of guests do not bring guests! and Time is not money, time is your life!

And he's right. When you're desperate, you're not thinking clearly, you're not planning properly and your casting is likely going to be somewhat chaotic. If you are often in need of money, you need to be constantly working on your income streams and doing magic to ensure everything keeps working right. If you're often love lorn, make sure you're trying different methods of dating, grooming and keeping up a steady stream of magic.

But. I also know that sometimes we all have the problem outlined in a song from Repo: The Genetic Opera, and none of us are free from this horror/ for many years ago, we all fell in debt . . .where our backs are up against a wall and either we hadn't been doing everything we could be possibly doing to prevent it or whatever we were doing simply wasn't enough. And we're in trouble.

This is where I would suggest using the Honey Badger as a *very* desperate *very* last ditch attempt to get your shit together. With the *very* strong caveat that he may change up your internal landscape permanently, he may change your life permanently and there's a chance you may pick up some mental illness along the way. Of course, there's also the chance that he may help you to become faster, braver, stronger and more cunning and bring abundance (honey badgers don't generally starve, even on the Savannah). Those are some hardcore dice to be rolling however, my friend so think *very* carefully before rolling them. If you do though - blog or it never happened!

Songs as Spells: I ain't got much book learnin'/ but I've got charms to win the race . . .

So, here's where my Hollow Ones methods really come to light. True confession time, Charmers (that's what I'm calling you from now on readers, hope it's cool!), my biggest stumbling point with Hoodoo is the use of Psalms. It . . .just does not do it for me generally speaking and really doesn't do it for me with the Psalms typically used. They just don't resonate with me and if it doesn't resonate then . . .how do I complete the spell?

Sure, as a writer I can occasionally come up with clever rhymes of my own but . . .it's limited to a certain extent. It can be hard for me to really raise energy that way sometimes to put into the spell and to focus since I don't have much of a meditation background. Well, you know what helps? Songs. Preferably modern songs. Think about things like Bards and how powerful their words can be. A really good song writer/singer/musical arrangement can be uberpowerful and really add a punch to your spellwork. It also really helps me focus because the song (I usually either "play" it in my head, actually play it or sing it, depending on the work) keeps my monkey brain busy enough to really focus on the work at hand. And as the words really crescendo, so does the spell. My suggestions are going to be v. based on what I'm into, you can substitute whatever you like and whatever works for you.

If you give this a try, drop me an email or a comment and let me know how it goes!

Trancing
Florence + The Machine: Cosmic Love
Relevant Lyrics: The stars/ the moon/ have all been blown out/ you left me in the dark/ no dawn/ no day/ I'm always in the twilight in the shadow of your heart/ but in the dark/ I can hear your heart beat/ I tried to find the sun/ but then/ I was in the darkness/ so darkness I became/ The stars!/ The moon!

Florence + The Machine: Raise It Up (Rabbit Heart)
Relevant Lyrics: The looking glass, so shiny and new/ How quickly the glamour fades/ I start spinning, slipping out of time/ Was it the wrong pill to take/ Raise up it!/ We raise it up, this offering/ We raise it up/ This is a gift/ it comes with a price/ Who is the lamb and who is the knife?

Money/Prosperity

Hole: Doll Parts
Relevant Lyrics: Yeah, they really want you, they really want you, they really do/ Yeah they really want you, they really want you, but I do too/ I want to be the girl with the most cake

The Tiny: Everything is Free Now
Relevant Lyrics: I could get a straight job/ I've done it before/I never minded working hard/ It is who I'm working for/ Or I could get a tip job/ gas up a car/ or try to make a little change/ down at the bar/ Every day I wake up/ Am humming this song/ and I don't need to run around/ I can just stay at home/ and sing this little love song/ for the love in myself/ if there's something that you wanna hear/ you can sing it yourself/ Cause everything is free now/ That's what I say

Love/Lust Related Spells

Florence + the Machine: Drumming Song
Relevant Lyrics: Louder than sirens/ Louder than bells/ Sweeter than heaven/ And hotter than hell/ As I move my feet towards your body/ I can hear this beat/ and it gets louder and louder/ I run to the river/ I pray that the water will drown out the din/ But as the water fills my mouth/ It couldn't wash the echoes out/ But as the water fills my mouth/ It couldn't wash the echoes out/ I swallow the sound and it swallows me whole/ Till there's nothing left inside my soul/ As empty as that beating drum/ But the sound has just begun. . . .

Fiona Apple: First Taste
Relevant Lyrics: I do not struggle in your web/ for it was my aim to get caught/ but daddy longlegs I fear/ That I'm finally getting weary/ of waiting to be consumed by you/ Give me the first taste/ heaven cannot wait forever/ Darling just start the chase/ but you must make the endeavor . . .

Rasputina: If Your Kisses Can't Hold the Man You Love
Relevant Lyrics: Every time that I hear a woman cry 'cos her man has left her flat
I just feel like saying, "don't be such a fool, you fool."/ Better dry your eyes, can't you realize/ You gain nothing by that/ Well, that's no way to keep his heart warm, baby,/ When his love grows cool/ Don't cry for him or chase him/ Just go out and replace him/ With some good looking Tom, Dick or Jack/ 'Cos if your kisses won't hold the man you love / Then your tears won't bring him back

Hexing

The Pierces: Ruin
Relevant Lyrics: I do not want for you to be happy/ I do not want for you to be happy/ All that I want/ is for you to come to ruin/ all that I want/ is for you to come to ruin/ I want you to come to ruin/ I want you to come to ruin. . .

April March: Chick Habit
Relevant Lyrics: hang up the chick habit / hang it up, daddy, / a girl's not a tonic or a pill / hang up the chick habit /hang it up, daddy, /you're just jonesing for a spill / oh, how your bubble's gonna burst / when you meet another nurse
she'll be driving in a hearse / you're gonna need a heap of glue / when they all catch up with you and they cut you up in two / now your ears are ringing / the birds have stopped their singing /everything is turning grey . . .

Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
Relevant Lyrics: He left no time to regret / Kept his dick wet / With his same old safe bet /Me and my head high / And my tears dry / Get on without my guy / You went back to what you knew / So far removed from all that we went through / And I tread a troubled track / My odds are stacked / I'll go back to black / We only said good-bye with words / I died a hundred times / You go back to her / And I go back to black

Dresden Dolls: Backstabber
Relevant Lyrics: you always struck me as the type to take it lightly /but now you’re gonna have to shut your mouth or fight me/ backstabber, backstabber/ show us what you’re good for / stick it to the noise board / come on join the bloodsport/ backstabber, backstabber, backstabber . . .

Spell Sealing

The Pierces: Sticks and Stones
Relevant Lyrics: Seven times I pierce my heart/ and now you feel the magic start/ bind thy heart and soul to me/ As I do will/ so let it be. . .

Evanesance: Bring Me to Life
Relevant Lyrics: Wake me up inside/ wake me up inside/ call my name and save me from the dark/ bid my blood to run/ Before I come undone/ Breathe into me and make me real/ Bring me to life/ wake me up/ Wake me up inside. . .

Thoughts? Additions?