Glamour Rites

So I've been crying and whinging endlessly to anyone who will listen about being old and fat and no fun.  But at the end of the day, I'm a do'er.  I can't just roll around in the muck endlessly, I need to change things.  I've been trying to change things using boring, non magical means such as Pinterest boards to figure out where I'm going, not eating like my twenty year old self, going to the gym and changing my wardrobe.

But still.  There was inertia.  Then I read my PEH's soon to be seminal work, Sigils Reboot.  And I started thinking.  And planning.  I thought I would have done this rite like two weeks ago but shit kept happening.  So instead I spent my Good Friday (which I happened to have off and was both a Friday and a Full Moon) avoiding my family and practicing witchcraft.  Like you do.

You can't do a Glamour Rite without Beauty
Regime.  Pictured: Lucky 13 Soap (Lush),
Sephora Full Effect Mascara, Benefit Lipstick in
Miss Behavin', Coconut Milk Frangipani Face Mask,
Clinique Moisture Surge Moisturizer, Kabuki Brush
and Evian Mister


  

Ritual Attire

Ritual Altar: St. Germain, Fruit Tart, Mixed Dried Flowers,
My Ladies, Rose Absolute Essential Oil, Twilight Alchemy Labe
Milk and Honey, Stang and Cauldron propolis resin, Beeswax Candle
made by myself in French Hussy, vintage salt cellar with black salt

Post Ritual

Cherry Blossom Tree 

Daffodils

Primped from my nose to my toes

It was mandated by my Ladies that I go out post-rite to celebrate.

Grey Goose Pear Martinis for Everyone!

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.

Cussin' for College: Your Moral Compass

You're Thirteen Now!  These Margaritas Are for You, Becky! 

So, thanks to that book Mastering Witchcraft that everyone else including Jow seems to have read at a formative age but me (I was reading Spiral Dance and um Bridget Jones' Diary and here we are), everyone's talking about morals and looooooove philters which is totes exciting for me because while I have not read the book and am incredibly unlikely to, I have opinions about morality!  I've even had articles published on the subject matter! Thanks, blogosphere!  I'm socially relevant again, snowflake queens!  So, there's a story I've been meaning to tell you all that had both my Platonic Euro Husband (PEH) and Husband-to-Be laughing and telling me that I'm like the liberal parent who lets their kids drink in the house because it's better than on the streets!  Remember a while back how I foolishly agreed to teach Hoodoo 101 to the kids in the Pagan club at my alma mater?  And how I, like, promised the president that there would be absolutely no discussion on curse work whatsoever?  

About that.  So I'm droning about the history of Hoodoo and the differences between Hoodoo and Voodou and how it came to our country and frankly even boring myself as the kids all were visibly twitching to have to listen to me and not text or be boning each other out while their roommates watch rolling on E pills or whatever they're doing now but we all brighten up when I get to the practical applications that I carefully redacted to be both appropriate to college kids' needs and not discussing The Dark Arts.  We chatter about fast luck and how to do well in an interview blah de blahblah.  They get interested and ask about source books.  Of course I recommend cat yronwode's seminal work, but there's not like a redacted version of it so I say vaguely that it's not all positive work so keep that in mind and keep it moving.  Much like my lazy fat house cats they went from only vaguely aware of their surroundings to HIGH ALERT!  BUG!  BUG!  IT'S A BUG!

Them: What do you mean?
The President: (suspious side eye)
Me: Um.
Them: No, we're totes awake now and ready and willing to push back our E pill orgy and pizza dorm room party for this.
Me: The President and I spoke on this issue and it's specifically against your club's charter for me to discuss this.
The President: (approving to me, apologetic to them)
Them: You have said the words we have longed to hear!  Forbidden knowledge!  It's why we came to college!  That and getting away from our smothering parents!  (closes the door and shuts the blinds like a real sekrit society does!)
Me: (oh Lordess, I'm boned) (looks to The President)
The President: (nods)

I had a real moral quandary that I thought I had shielded myself from - do I tell them or do I let them learn about it on the streets the internet where the information will be just that - information coming from a source they've never met and has no stake in their lives or even a face to them?  They are adults but they're still young and impressionable in American society and frankly have probably hereto forth never even read a book yet that even whispers about The Dark Arts, it's most likely been mostly beginner Llewellyn stuff.

I took a deep breath and I dove in:

Okay.  This is where your moral compass that we keep talking about becomes incredibly important.  Karma doesn't work the way that most Americans think of it; it's slow, it's accumulated over lifetimes and it represents both the good and the bad.  And while the Law of Three is a nice idea that's meant to keep you from getting involved in some seriously dumb shit, it doesn't work in a way that's observable, if it works at all.  I can't tell you what the right thing to do is going to be for you.  We don't have a manual or a list of rules to follow as Pagans like a lot of religions do.  As young adult Pagans it's critical that you start figuring out what you think is right and wrong now.  What are you willing to do magically and in life?  Where is your line in the sand that goes too far?  Whenever you work magic, you're thrusting your will over something.  Do you need consent for you to do magic for another person?  You need to decide that.  You need to decide if you want to get involved with exerting your will over other people specifically.  A mentor of mine once told me that some of the worst things she's done magically have been with good intentions and some of the best things she's done have been with bad intentions.  

You also need to understand that in Hoodoo curse work is called a mess for a reason.  Do not get yourself into a mess that you can't get yourself out of because I'm sure as hell not going to rush in to help you.  Don't ever rush into curse work.  If you're angry and not being sensible, it's not a good place to do curse work, you will likely do something you regret.  Always give it at least three days to see if you want to tie yourself up further with the person you're angry with because make no mistake about it, you will be tying yourself up closer with this person.  Sometimes it will be worth it.  Sometimes it won't be.  Sometimes your magic will work in a way you won't expect it to.  Oftentimes it will in fact.  Sometimes it will work better than you wanted it to.  Love spells are all fun and games until you need to get a restraining order on someone.  You need to think about if you want someone to be with you because they feel compelled to be.  You need to make sure to do omen/divination work before you get involved with cursing.  Bottle spells can work like this.  Love spells can work like that.  Make sure you are mindful about your personal concerns.  Make sure you are mindful about others' personal concerns that may behoove you to have.  When I once asked a Witch what to do if you don't have them, she calmly remarked, 'But why wouldn't you?'  If you're not willing to do what a curse work asks, you're likely not really ready to take that step.  And that's okay.  It's okay if you never work a curse in your life.  But make sure you know if someone's been working you.

And . . .that's where I stand on the whole morality issue.  It's personal.  That's part of what's both great and terrible about being part of a group of people who don't have a list of specific rules to govern us, some of us are on board with things like love philters and some of us are appalled by it.  Some of us say, well, it depends.  But you need to know where you stand, you need to know where your conscious is and only you can really dictate that for yourself as an Occultist/Pagan.  It's thrilling, scary and uncertain for us, like Death. 

you know I live in a world full of hope
not a world full of hype
I ain't no saint
I help myself to what I need
but I help other people too
y'know I sleep soundly - Ani Difranco

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.

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.

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.

Thanks to Jason Miller/Self Improvement May Lead to Sleeplessness

Firstly, I want to thank Jason for writing Sorcerer's Secrets, because it is thanks to him I'm sleeping again. Now that sounds like some kind of backhanded bitchy compliment, but it's not. It's v. v. sincere. His book lays out theory and tech in an orderly manner that makes me feel like I can accomplish what he suggests to do, that even a half ass dilettante like myself is capable of not just complicated workings, but using his ideas and funneling them into Deb-Speak and making them my own and making a frightening towering cake of a working covered in pink glittering sparkles and layers upon layers of magical fondant. So I can read a chapter, feel good about my place in the world and my capability and just. go. to. sleep. Herbal compendiums are good for this too.

Of course, up until like three days ago, I wasn't doing this. I was reading life improvement books before bed. They are really, really good and really well written and really useful and will help me build my hello kitty themed empire. But it just makes me all crazy-like and unable to sleep when reading them before bed. I finished Rules of the Game and Entre-Vous. I tried 4HWW but that just made me angry versus feeling inadequate. I’m reading Linchpin currently and will be reading Crush It after. But it makes it so I have trouble sleeping because I worry I will never live my life properly and/or better.

It’s moments like those when you are staring at the ceiling thinking about how hard you’re failing in life because you haven’t done anything particularly awesome as yet and haven’t written a book outline yet even though you were supposed to asap during your unemployment, haven't written a damn thing really yet though you've hardcore re-org'ed your house and yes I'm projecting all over you and you'll just have to deal here, and often have doubts and difficulties even saying hello to strangers let alone cold reading them and then charming them and still have doubts about your wardrobe and your body because this time of year every commercial on television wants to remind you what a naughty terrible unforgivable slag you’ve been so you need to start their diet/exercise program/liposuction immediately and your house isn’t full of charming objects from antique shops and is more cluttered than artfully disheveled and maybe you’re not sure you even have what it takes to be an artist or linchpin or special ponyprincessfirefighterfarmer and maybe you’re just going to be a cog forever.

A cog who never will open a conversation and then hook and seed it, a cog who hasn’t listened to NPR in over a month but who has never missed an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras, a cog who sometimes just likes to be told what to do at work and collect a paycheck and go about her business, a cog who will need to go to the gym eventually even though its tedious and not enjoyable because there’s no Metro to dash to in heels and she’s not v. good in them anyway, a cog who blathers about her life to all comers on the internet and gossips incessantly, a cog who has yet to put together her spinning wheel or start churning out artisan crafts, a cog whose desk is still in the CRV in pieces so she hasn’t written a damn thing yet since starting her month sabbatical, a cog who may still be terminally shy around strangers at Arisia this year, despite running a whole track for it.

All of these doubts plague me before bed, making it so even my elephant tranq level of evening pills I take to smooth out doubts and fibromyalgia that used to, when I had a day job, made it so I drifted effortlessly to sleep every night but now they barely make a dent so that I’m starting to dread going to bed again like I used to pre-medication because I know what will happen, me and all my doubts staring at the ceiling, thinking about all the things I haven’t done.

And when it hits its peak, when you feel completely awful and powerless and useless, take a breath and remember all the people in your life who love you. Right now. As is. Craziness and all. Even if you’re a cog who never starts a conversation with a stranger or gets the hang of buying two good sweaters instead of ten that you’ll toss in a year and you never become an artiste and just collect a pay check and you never lose any weight and keep watching crappy tv, you are still loved and worthy of love. Right now, as is, and never *ever* let anyone tell you otherwise.

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?

Thanks for all the fish!

Being thankful is something I'm often thinking about. It started in college actually, when my friend Dylan and I were mopey gothity kids and the world was of course too much to bear as it often is when you're twenty. Somehow, in our correspondence, we decided we would list three things we were glad about in each email. At first there was much flailing and posturing, but we started to mean it. When I told my friend April (who was also a proper gothity child of the late 90's) she sarcastically said, What are you? Playing the Glad Game? And I said, yes.

Somehow, we went from Dylan and I playing the Glad Game to our whole circle of friends playing through email. Sometimes we'd play a lot and sometimes we'd add notes about bad things going on. When something bad was going on, people would reach out to each other, even if they were a friend of a friend of a friend. We were tied together by the Glad Game. There would be dormant periods of course, sometimes for a long time, even a year or two. But we started playing again on Facebook, though we were in a dormant phase again until like a minute ago when I restarted it. Usually I find when we are most stressed and least glad, we need it most. So I send inspiring little messages to my Pollyannas like, "Hey Pollyannas, give us a shout out! Something must be making your miserable asses happy!"

Jason's post about thankfulness of course made me think too. Before my divorce, in a lot of ways I was a very different person. I thought more, more, more would make me happy - I thought more shoes, more expensive purses, more jewelry, more thin, more achievements, more living space would all make me happy. And . . .it didn't. It just got me more debt. I wasn't happy, I was stressed and exhausted and miserable with trying to keep up the facade of being the girl with the most cake. When my divorce happened and my financial situation dramatically changed, I learned to be thankful for much simpler things. And here's the thing, I was genuinely thankful for those things. Really and truly. And I became so much happier and more appreciative for what I had.

When I feel stressed, I give thanks to my gods for all that I have, all my first world things. My list includes:
* Being a homeowner and for my Goldilocks space that's just right, more over a roof over my head
* Heat
* A car that works
* Enough writing opportunities for a career
* All my clothes
* Enough food in my mouth
* My phone and my laptop and tv (and dvr honestly) and internet access
* My couch, dining room table and bed
* My loved ones

Sometimes, it's hard to be grateful for getting what you asked for. I asked for money, ideally in the form of a severance (it's still up in the air, long story) and I got called back to my day job for a couple days. While I'm sick and it's a major headfuck and making me a complete and utter neurotic mess because I'm trying to adjust to my new life, it's money. And I need to be thankful for it. So I am.

Stuff and Things and Junk

Back from Rhode Island safe and sound! Did not get taken by an Elder god. The weather was v. Bronte esque which really had me thinking that New England is (duh) the England of the U.S. in terms of brooding moors and whatnot. I am currently marinading on a short romantica story to submit for an anthology that is looking for broody gothity romance. A lot of red wine was drank on the trip. The oysters there are seriously the best I've ever had in my life, I'm currently in withdrawal from them. We got a plate of 12 oysters from 4 local oyster farms, 6 clams and a whole lobster tail for under $40. I felt incredibly posh about it.

Soaking yarn as we speak, getting ready to launch my non-magical based Etsy store. Am going to ask for a spinning wheel for the holidays I think. I really need my wrist/hands/elbows for my work and excessive drop spindling and typing on a laptop has not helped per se. My family is both nonplussed and intrigued by this request. I have my eye on this wheel. When I start working from home, we are going to turn our Spare Oom into an office and we have our eyes on an old school style secretary desk.

Last night, Jow and I bought new coats. For me this is particularly significant as it means I will be donating my sad little matchgirl coat that I bought on a super sale two years ago when my Wasband first left and drained our joint. I had just donated my coat at the time and didn't known I was getting left, so it was a scary and real possibility that I might not have a coat immediately for winter. My new coat is super cute and a little Mad Men like.

In further cutting my fetters, I did a huge hack and slash on my old domain (which was described as "badass" by Dossy because he's cool like that and doing all the heavy lifting on this). I took down the SalonCon site as the con is defunct anyway and it's time (for the curious, info can be found on it on my general website), changed hosts to DreamHost, am moving my general site to be its own domain, streamlining my old Goddess Dollies site into a one page site and am giving my blog here a facelift with the help of Lisa and Dossy.

Last Hallowe'en, we were moving into our condo, it's hard to believe it's only been a year ago. We were too exhausted to do anything as we were moving on the day of. This year I'm sitting on the couch, happily munching on a breakfast sandwich made by Jow, blogging and drinking pumpkin tea. We'll go visit my mom for a little while and hopefully have J. over to watch SyFi's version of little red riding hood (Red! The werewolf hunter!) and Glee's version of Rocky Horror.

This Samhain season finds me wanting to continue to cut old fetters and make room for the new. I want to purge my closet again, clean out my hall closets, give the house a really good cleaning, set up some more small magics, start my Etsy store up, I had been wearing the Ugg slippers I got Wasband a few xmases ago (because they are warm and soft and hardly worn), hopefully I'll get a pair of my own in pink for xmas
and I can toss them. I definately want to start going to the gym and doing yoga again. Samhain is feeling like a Witch's New Year to me this year, for sure. I have the urge to clean like a coked up squirrel who has watched too many episodes of Hoarders.

On our way to and from Rhode Island, Jow and I listened to Mama Starr's Traditional Conjure podcast which is . . .beyond awesome. I love it.

My article that was based on my blog post In Your Hands, Ophelia is now up on WitchVox.

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.

A Patchwork Soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chop wood, carry water.