White Scarves and Frozen Toes

It's seriously January in New Jersey and there's me, showing
common sense is for suckers.

As many of you know, one of my patron deities is Yemaya.  Ten years ago I was a v. young twentysomething with stars in my eyes and fanaticism in my blood.  I don't know how it came up at the time, but somehow I managed to talk my ADF Grove into giving the traditional New Year's Day ritual to Yemaya a go.  Naturally we don't do it on New Year's Day proper as I would have been far too hung over to drive an hour down to the beach.

Somehow, despite the complete lack of appropriately similar climate and the fact that Yemaya is neither Indo nor European (as are the traditional ADF deities - all our main eight holidays are I-E), this ritual has managed to stick for our grove for ten years this year.  Sometimes it's a lot of people joining us, sometimes it's just a few.  Sometimes when the weather is good, it's a longer rit.  Sometimes when there's say snow on the beach it's more of what we have called "chuck and run" style ritual.  Every year though, even though the weather is no where near the Caribbean, our usually gray/green Atlantic manages to be a soft blue with a lacy pink and blue sky to match.

It's become so second nature to me at this point that it's hard for me to realize how much ritual goes into the ritual.  I always try to wear as much as white and blue as possible, usually a sweater and underthings as well as a scarf.  I always wear Uggs.  I always wear my BPAL Yemaya oil.  I always wear peals or some sort of seashell or other sealife jewelry.  I try to remember to bring an extra pair of socks and a towel.  I always go shopping for some of her favorite things - melons, flowers, soaps, french pastries, rum.

We always start at E. and N.'s house where we cut open the melons to act as boat vessels for our wishes for the new year.  We decorate them with flowers and candles and other sweet things and write our wishes on joss paper and tuck them into the boats while I tell some of Her stories.  We drive down to Point Pleasant, stopping on the way at a Dunkin Donuts for hot chocolates and coffees and donuts.  When we get to Point Pleasant, I always get excited when I smell the beach.  We tromp out with our boats and I make the invocation, spilling rum (this year Black Heart) out for Her as I speak.  I take off my socks and shoes and roll up my pants, partly because it's a traditional thing to do and partly just because I know I'll wind up in the ocean because if you're really invested in seeing your wishes come true, it's good luck for your boat to go out with the first wave which means you need to wade in to make that happen.  We hang out on the beach, floating our melon boats out to sea and watch to see what She does with them.  Depending on how cold it is, I may dip in and out of the ocean a few times during this time.  It's always v. v. v. cold as it's January but some years are far colder than others.  Then we feed the seagulls and I put on new socks and shoes back on and try to get feeling back into my feet. We may play some Skeeball because even God likes that now and again to relax.

We've had some interesting omens through the years, but the most telling one was after Katerina when a family from New Orleans was staying with family in New Jersey and knew exactly what we were doing and asked for boats.

It's not a Jersey rite though unless it concludes at a round table at The Atlantis Diner where I always get  a Taylor Ham sandwich on a hard roll with fries and gravy on the side in deference to the Lady as She favors pork.  We talk about Pagany things over a late lunch and then make the trek back home.

Every year, like clockwork.

Omio Yemaya!

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.

On Samhain, Drawing Down and The Morrigan, Namely Nemain

Maybe it's just gone out of fashion, but no one seems to talk about Drawing Down anymore. Is it too touchy-feely? Too difficult to validate? Not a srs magikal practice? I think it's actually a strange middle place - it's something that requires a lot of time and energy and attention and will kick your ass, which makes it difficult for your average kitchen witch to do, as s/he has enough to deal with in working, keeping house and keeping the children from getting too Lord of the Flies-ish. I think there's a certain sheen of Reclaimist that makes a lot of srs practitioners turn their noses up and/or they've got better things to do like meditate towards enlightenment instead of basically wandering around god-drunk, which is frowned up.

Luckily for you, (I have no problem looking completely batshit crazy to you, darling readers AND I'm in some weird holding pattern between frantic kitchen witch (I have no children and don't work for a big corporation or anything) and srs practitioner (we all know how I feel about meditation).

An ADF druidic ritual is celebatory, at least the way GoG does it. There's a basic frame work that all ADF rituals need to follow, but there's a lot of room to turn it on its head. My grove is one of the largest in the country and our rituals tend to be . . .different than most ADF rits. We're sort of the backwater snake handlers of the group. We're called Grove of the Other Gods for a reason, after all.

So we've now laid the ground work: this is a celebratory ritual where we are honoring our kindred and a guest of honor (in this case, The Morrigan) and no targeted magic is done. I like a good beer buzz early in the morning as Sheryl would say and have enough time and energy to prepare for a drawing down while also having no shame or filter to keep me from sharing my experiences with you. It's the perfect storm really.

I demurred about the likeliness of drawing down to Jow, but I think in the back of my head I knew that as soon as I got close to the other two chicks (which was strange for GoG, we don't gender police by any stretch, but that's who was interested in the other two aspects) at the rit, it was going to be on.

Jow wrote up his experience with GoG Samhain as a congregant.

Before getting there, I was more . . .lightly shadowed. Usually I'd be a completely anxious mess beforehand for a variety of reasons, but when I would start to get nervous, she had a calm answer (Oh! My pumpkin is v. roasted! It may fall apart! *fret* She: You're worried that your food looks like food?). She understood the need to look just so and was fine with things like makeup (woade correspondence), bra (armour correspondence), etc. but everything needed to be useful, everything needed to have a purpose. And I was at first confused about her OCD like need for cleanliness (clothes constantly lint brushed, washing my hands as much as Lady MacBeth, etc.) because I was like, ummm warrior Goddess? Blood, gore, etc? And then I remembered Her main job - washing the blood out of the clothes of people who were about to die in battle. Right then.

The cats were really confusing and slightly disgusting to Her as they seemed to serve no purpose- they don't catch mice, they live inside and all they seemed to do was shed and vomit. She was somewhat mollified when She was told that they were both gifts at one point and while she was confused that someone would be given something that was a lot of work and served no purpose to show appreciation, a gift was a gift after all.

Once we got there, K., who was invoking Macha came shortly after. I had intentionally put the aspects of The Morrigan as v. separate entities in my head, and the slidy thing that some deities that aren't quite separate from each other was a v. intellectual vague concept in my head. Until we slowly and unconsciously sliding energy between each other. K. and I are friendly, but not close friends, so it was a v. strange experience. Stranger still that I felt literally sick without P. who would be invoking Badb. I like P., she's cool people too, but I am no where anywhere *near* being close enough to her to feel sick without her. But I was. In my head was a constant fret of, When will P. get here, when will P. get here?

I knew K. and I were getting really slidy when I tried to walk through the door with her at the same time and nearly busted ass in the process. She did my makeup in the picture above while we waited for P. I've always wanted really hardcore gothity eyes but whenever I would try to do it myself for a club night, I would fuck it up. Luckily, K. is an artist so she had a v. good hand.

Finally P. got there and K. and I slowly started to synch up with her too. We were literally laughing and braiding each other's hair which seemed to creep everyone else out. In fact, most people gave us a wide berth and would not make eye contact with us.

All our SOs made grumbling noises about what pains in the ass we were that day, and commiserated together which they seemed to enjoy.

We sat down for the ritual, and poor K. got stuck on the other side of the room (after rit, she beelined for P. and I because she was getting nauseous without us). P. sat next to me and had her iPod in her ear, full of awesome Celtic music. Like school girls, we listened together through the other ritual invocations, one headphone in each of our ears, as we swayed in time to the music as we watched the ritual.

Jow said when I invoked, it was somehow less scary then when I was sitting quietly. When I was sitting quietly, apparently I had a v. feral air about me, my eyes were constantly darting all over, taking in the room. When I was invoking, I read what I had written and focused on that.

I had never been to a GoG Samhain like that. Even on the not sad years, it seems impossible to not slide into the river of sadness, at least for a moment. It's the first Samhain where . . .we didn't slide. Not for a moment. After the ritual, when we read the Book of (our) Dead, there were tears which was natural. Our senior druid was what we call "DiC'ing" (Druid in Charging) which means she acts as the priestess of the rit and keeps it going and steers it. She said when there were points where it could have gone to sad, we all collectively would say, No! That happened, goddamnit! Which has become my unofficial motto, btw. All of the invocations came from a place of power and it was amazing and beautiful and gorgeous and there was not one dud among them. When we could have gotten sad, we reached down and pulled up our power and drew from that. It was punk rock and amazing.

As for, P., K. and me, our invocations slide together just so and it was perfect, in my v. biased opinion.

In our rituals, we try to keep the pathway of communication two way. We speak by giving the ritual and then we ask for the gods to speak back by giving us an omen. Did They like it? Is there anything they need to tell us for the upcoming future? We used The Celtic Book of the Dead: A Guide for Your Voyage to the Celtic Otherworld deck and apparently, there are some really really nasty cards in there. We got one of the most positive possible readings from it. Judging by the cards, it meant one (or more of the following)

a) Hey! Good job! We dug it!
b) Hey little boys and girls, don't be afraid of us, we can give you nice things. Come inside, we have cookies . . .
c) Liked this rit? Perhaps you would like to join grove in honoring another one of our fam, Mananon next week!

Even though we aren't really super close, after rit, P., K. and I started speaking in unison and laughing at things that were only funny to us. We went outside and opened the bottle of Warrior's Port with a Bean Sidhe cry between the three of us and started slugging straight from the bottle, laughing and doing that thing that only a group of three sisters/best friends can do - when you're teasing the hell out of each other, two ganging up on one and then flipping the table and ganging up on the other. Mostly bawdy stuff, mostly sister teasing. A little friendly sisterly pushing and shoving. Again, no one wanted to get close to us and one gentleman who we're all friendly with, flinched when we noticed him and called him to stand by us. He would not make eye contact. Jow tried to feed me. My reaction: Ew! Food! Gross! P&K: Ew! A boy! Gross! He scurried back inside as quickly as possible.

P's gf, T. was the only one who wanted to put up with us and found much of what we said hilarious (K: More yelling! Me/Nemain: No! Norma, the woman who lives here will be v. cross with us! It's already been thirteen years since we've been invited back! T. (amused): Norma, who lives here? Me/Nemain: It's true, she does.)

Norma lured us back to the group in the backyard by showing the lamb she got for The Morrigan which was put in the fire as a burnt offering.

Usually, Norma is trying to lure me out for the midnight pumpkin parade (we . . .do what we do, it's a college town) but this year, P. and I were not allowed out, K. was only going to be allowed out without us. K. didn't want to be too far from us, so she stayed. We made sure to tell that loudly and indigently to anyone who would listen that we were not allowed out to play because they kept thinking we'd start *fights*. A few people stayed behind to mind us and we had a super fun time throwing cream puffs into cleavage.

After that, it was sorrowfully decided that we needed to eat. Food tasted awful, I really wanted a bloody piece of meat but there wasn't any to be had at grove, but pork was good enough. We complained that there was only one bottle of wine to be had between the three of us for SOME reason.

And we all slowly slid back, K. whispering in my ear you're on your own now as she squeezed my arm.

I felt bereft after, like I was missing 2/3 of myself, edgy and unhappy. It was difficult, making the transition, losing not just Nemain, but Macha and Badb too. I took some pictures and washed the make up off my face and got into comfy clothes. I went to sleep.

The next day I felt more myself again, we went to Skylark for brunch and I thanked Nemain by cleaning my house thoroughly. I was myself again, though perhaps missing two (small) pieces of me I haven't seen.

God drunk is awesome, the hangover is awful, but still, once in a while, it's empowering to remember what it's like to fly so close to the sun.

Bean Nighe

This Samhain is particularly significant to my grove as it will be the last one our Senior Druid is heading. She's headed the last 13 and is ready for a break from that part of Senior Druid'ing at least. She started with The Morrigan her first Samhain that she led and is ending with The Morrigan. In addition to bringing my usual stuffed pumpkin, I have been asked to invoke Nemain, the bean nighe warrior maiden aspect of The Morrigan.

The Morrigan has been explained to me as being similiar to Cernunnos in so far as it's not that The Morrigan is one deity/person or even a triple aspected deity/person, it's a job title. So it's more like a bunch of women who work for MorriganCo. which is a little difficult for me to wrap my head around but makes sense.

There's been a poem/invocation in my head for the last few weeks for the Nemain. Going with the idea of MorriganCo, all of the things "she said" were said to me by different "shes", and the last three paragraphs are what my Nemain faction has said to me. I will be doing a small altar for her as well, she's requested the picture I like of her and warrior port which is simple enough.

Nemain

She appeared to me in a dream
She said
Her face a canvas of wode
She handed me a feather
and told me to give it to you
She said you'd know what it meant

Whenever there is a battlefield
She is there
She said
When you are able to put your hands
into the river of black oozing sorrow
and not fall in
Instead grow a pair of wings
like hers
that will hold you up
when you can't stand
and make your spine a thing
of steel
that's when you've won

I know you said this is the
worst day of your life
since daddy died
She said
But
It got better

Each day a little at a time
She said
Moment by moment
Breath by breath
She said

I'm proud of you
She said

It's impressive
How much you've
Metamorphosized
Became you
But better
Unfettered
She said

Stand your ground
Dig your heels into
the mud slick with blood
and battle
Whispered words do more than
swords most days

Never give up your power
Steal it back
Eat it whole

But don't mistake your power
as freedom from the river
Your wailing and tears
Crimson soaked cloth in hand
Some things can't be forgotten.

Rabbit Hearts and Revelation

So, I've watched Florence + The Machine's Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) about um five billion times this week.

Revelations:

* Why am I never invited to parties like this? RO, could we combine our Big Blogosphere Meetup Jamboree for this to be the day portion? Formal fae attire will be required, dancing and human sacrifice optional.

* I have wanted a chemise a la reine for quite some time because I have a secret Marie Antoinette fetish (really, that shouldn't be surprising), so I'm going to have one made for me on Etsy because I'm going to two fairy events this year I can wear it to and I hold out hope for our Jamboree.

* I don't want to call this video, like, a guaranteed ecstatic trance experience or anything mostly because I don't want to be bothered by whiners, but for me, five times in a row in and . . .I'm out like a trout.

* Despite this promising information, Jow is totally trance resistant, even though I came to this revelation at work under the influence of no drugs, alcohol or even a fun environment.

* I think it says a lot about us that I'm mediation resistant (Oh man! Rules! I have to fucking schedule this in! I'm supposed to just, like empty my brain even though I've taken a lot of time and energy to fill it with important information about who's banging who and who's mad at who both in real life and on telly, uck! I don't even think I want to be enlightened. Boring. I've banged my head against this for like a full year in the ADF dedicants program to find that hey! You know how you have a generalized anxiety disorder and you take meds for it? Remember all those terrible things that you've been through that you went to therapy for an extended time to work through to continue to function on a daily basis so you can go to work and be a working member of society? Remember how you don't really care about being enlightened or Getting to the Next Level? Hey, maybe you should leave that shit alone and not stir it all up again for a v. nebulous to you purpose as you can do magic just fine without an extended meditation practice) but pro-trance/ecstatic experience and Jow is exactly the opposite (what! I have to depend solely on my own experience? There's no empirical data to give me an exact blue print? It just happens? I have to do any number of things like dance, drink, drum, sweat lodge, use kava, go to a festival or listen to Florence + the Machine until I want to bang my head against the keyboard repeatedly? I said good day, Sir!).

* I do trance experiences before bed most nights before going to bed to go to my internal hearth. When I am super sick and cannot clean my actual house, I clean my internal hearth. When I don't have much money (which is always), I can make elaborate offerings to my gods on my beach and hang with them.

* I like trance because . . .sometimes I get performance anxiety pressure about random things, like I can't feel feelings on command, which was an issue about my wedding which was to be THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE OR ELSE!!!11!!! If I am dying for a trance experience and want one on command, I can do one of two things:
a) Attend a sweat lodge because for me, it's going to happen there as . . .that's what it's designed to do.
b) Go to a goth club, drink three shots of tequila or goldschlagger and start dancing. I will feel the booze burning in my blood and if I dance until I get to the woozy is this a good idea or bad idea, who cares keep dancing, it will happen.

* Otherwise, it happens for me when it happens for me. I don't have to plan for it, it's usually when I push myself as far as I can go and then push myself just a little further. This tends to happen for me when: massively housefraus'ing, dancing, parties at my house, drinking just slightly past my comfort zone, cons, and festivals. I enjoy the happy surprise aspect of it.

* Look. I know I'm supposed to be, like, above the buzz but while while I do agree with Jason that if your goal is target driven, the less buzz, the better. However, if it's just celebratory, game on, in my opinion. My practice is distinctly Hollow One, my life tends more towards Cultist of X/mermaid/nymph. So, This was really difficult as I was leaving my maidenhood which was more conducive to such practices. As a mother (not literal), I figured out:
a) It's a party when I say it's a party, bitch. Meaning, anything can be with the right attitude
b) I channeled some of the energy into creating a hearth, fashion, cooking, a magical practice, writing and crafting
c) I throw a lot of parties
d) The booze at my house is always top shelf which is a big plus
e) I need to get my buzzy ya-yas out at least quarterly or I start to get antsy and then I start looking for trouble. This is easy enough to head off. Arisia con gets my kitchen witch yayas out *and* the after parties get my CoX bits out. The Fairy Festival is all about soaking in the glamour during the day and making poor drinking (and sometimes otherwise) decisions with friends in a field in a farm in the middle of nowhere with a big bonfire.

* When I am tranced out, I can generally see into the squishy insides of people and because I'm tranced out and my filter is zero, I NEED to make these observations OUT LOUD to the person. It's a dice roll as to how that's received. It's also why I'm not tranced out for like 90% of my life.

* But generally I try to keep my trance revelations introspective so as to not alienate everyone around me (well, for that reason at least). Rabbit Heart, both the lyrics and the video describe exactly how I feel inside right now.

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

I must become a lion hearted girl
Ready for a fight
Before I make the final sacrifice

We raise it up, this offering
We raise it up

I'm getting exactly what I wanted in my life and I'm becoming the person I've worked really hard to be my whole adult life, but it doesn't come for free all of these things. In the video, she's the guest of honor at this wild fairy party but, like so many of our myths, she's the one who's sacrificed at the end (v. prettily of course, which is what I too would demand, if you're going to out, go out like homegirl Ophelia) which I've sort of interpreted for my own life that yeah, I've got all the things I've wanted - home ownership, a hearth, good relationships, lots of loved ones, a blooming writing and crafting career, a blooming kitchen witch practice, love for my body, forgiveness for my past, comfort in my own skin. But it won't always be easy, I'll be plagued as I always am with self doubt, I'll have to work really hard, I'll have to make sure I can *keep* these things and I will have to fight like hell to be the person I want to be and have the life I want to life, I need to not get too bogged down by material things and be fierce with all my heart.

Before I too am floated out to sea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little altars everywhere

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


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


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


Behold! Our failure!



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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

I don't know what he meant to me/ I just know he affected me/ an affect not unlike his art/ I believe . . .

ADF has confirmed that Isaac Bonewits has passed this morning. I didn't know him well, but I did know him a little. I attended his lectures, etc. Years ago, when I was a much more nubile young pagan, my grove decided it would be fun to have him sign bits of us like a rock star at a pagan picnic. He signed my side. I think that picture will be resurfacing shortly, at my grove's Lammas if nothing else.

I have been away a lot in the last couple weeks, I need to catch up on the blogosphere. I've been dealing with a lot of stressful life stuff, I will likely blog about the magic aspects of it here in a separate post.

I'm leading Lammas for GoG which is part of ADF. In January, the idea was to do something fun, a carnival theme, it was before things started going awry. When speaking about it again a month or two ago, the senior druid (SD) and I started talking about the theme being A Carnival of Sacrifice with the tagline being, Sacrifice, hooray! As it got closer and Isaac got worse and the general weather in many of the grove's heads got cloudier, we quietly packed up the carnival idea.

I started getting instruction from a deity I didn't recognize. Usually deities show themselves in a dream or I get enough cues that I could put it together. He (I was at the time pretty sure he was a he) had specific requests: lots of bread, cheese, branston pickle, and sacrifice. I was like, um, that's not a ritual per se with a v. small hot kitchen. ::radio silence:: Hoooooooookay.

I started researching sacrifice from an ADF standpoint and while it was informative from a historical standpoint and why we're not supposed to do public blood sacrifice/juggle hedgehogs, it wasn't helping me until I got to the wicker man part.

I started thinking how lots about how festivals do huge wicker men (like Burning Man) and I started thinking about how we could maybe do tiny handsized wicker poppets symbolizing the sacrifices we each made through the year and then ask for something back from our gods.

I wasn't sure if my SD would go for it. I insisted on Jamaican food for our pre-planning meeting because I felt we needed to eat at a place that serves goat for this rit. We talked, we figured out that the god in my head was Cernunnos which she found pretty funny on a lot of levels:

1. My Wiccan experience is strictly *not* dickly - Dianic. So we really always glossed over the whole Great God aspect as in, we ignored Him. So I've always expressed curiosity about the whole Great Rite/Stick in Cup/Co-ed Circle thing, but have never managed to make it one. My Dianic circle's crone and my SD think it's funny that it's honestly a product of being third wave/never having to fight The Man in a Wiccan context that I only have the vaguest idea about all of that, so it makes me a pretty blank slate when it comes to Cernunnos.

2. I'm vague at best when it comes to Celtic stuff. I can't keep who's who straight in my head, how to say the names, what story is what. The only thing that has stuck at all is The Morrigan and it's still a pretty foreign concept, this idea that Cernunnos and The Morrigan isn't (1) deity per se, it's more like a job title and it's a bunch of horned deities and battle chicks who work for Cernunnos, Inc. and The Morrigan-Co.

But, I got a similar signal as Buffy did in the original movie, when Cernunnos' name came up as a possible deity to work with, everything inside me heaved. I don't typically feel a damn thing or see anything magically, it's not where I excel. I wanted to be more visceral in my magical pursuits, I guess He figured it doesn't get more visceral than that. I felt the light bulb click on as I felt the oxtail move in my stomach, so victory I guess. We decided on the likely course of action for the rit would be to make a traditional bread man with a hole inside him for all of us to put joss paper in for the holiday/sacrifice/asking something of the gods/etc and then burning the breadman vessel. It will be much less time intensive than making a bunch of small wicker people and safer for the fire.

I found it interesting that the SD shied away from the idea of sacrifice some, probably due to a lot of unpleasant mandatory connotations in a bunch of religious context. I don't want to make anyone do anything they don't want to and I am a *huge* fan of the "pass" option in a religious context but I also don't want to water down what the intent here is. I'm not going to make anyone do anything, at the same time "sacrifice" is a very large concept. You sacrifice just to show up, you know? I'm not going to make this a druidic holy roller drag of a rit but sacrifice *is* part of the ADF rit and we've been downplaying it in my grove for a long time. It will be interesting and there will be a group planning meeting for the rit this Sunday, so that will help get a stronger grasp on everything and where the larger group's collective head is. If you don't care enough to show up for the planning meeting then don't bitch about the rit is our grove's unofficial motto.

On a more personal level, there's been a lot of stuff going on in my personal life that has brought up a lot of personal baggage for me, mostly stuff to do with being comfortable in the body I'm in. Since the divorce, my self confidence and my self image have plummeted a lot and I haven't fully recovered.

I didn't really need to get into a whole post-divorce slutting around phase, it wasn't anything particularly new or interesting to me. So I didn't get a lot of sudden stranger validation like a lot of new divorcees get (Jow said my reaction was to hiss and basically be like, YOU'RE ONLY INTERESTED BECAUSE YOU THINK I'M VURNERABLE AND LIABLE TO MAKE BAD CHOICES RIGHT NOW BY SLEEPING WITH YOU! BACK OFF!),

Also, I'm trying to get rid of my post-divorce baggage hardcore. Because, I still have a version of myself that's keeping me down - The Bad Wife Who Did Everything Wrong and Drove My Wasband to Madness and Divorce. And fuck a whole lot of that. I took responsibility for the things I did wrong in the marriage and how to become a better person, as the always lovely Sars said, just because someone hands you a bag of rocks doesn't mean you have to carry it. And I've been carrying that bag of rocks for almost two years now. I'm going to make a small wickergirl dressed as The Bad Wife Who Did Everything Wrong and Drove My Wasband to Madness and Divorce. Then I am going to mother. fucking. burn her in my cauldron and keep moving. I'm too fabulous for this shit.

On Blood and Sacrifice

As we know, I can't be bothered to read a lot of heavily theory based books because I get bored and tap out. So don't expect a well referenced article here, just my personal experience.

Starting out as a Dianic Wiccan, the blood of choice to focus on was of course menstrual. While myself and the younger prissier witches among us turned our noses up at the idea of doing rituals involving menstrual blood, we were regaled nonetheless about the ye olde 70's by the older witches and their menstrual blood rituals.

As I aged some, I was less prissy about it and invested in a diva cup which I use on the regular, to the dismay of the triumverte. The cup was handy in also being able to neatly pour menstrual blood into my watering can into my garden. When I had my little container garden (I do have plans to resume that next year), I did feel a closer connection to the land. It made me feel like I was doing something sacred, something important by tending to my tiny pots (complete with tiny garden gnome) in my bare feet on my balcony. Watering them with my blood strengthened that bond too I suppose. It didn't feel all rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh POWERFUL!!!!!!!1111!!! It felt nice. I don't know how else to describe it. Nice. Peaceful. I suppose theoretically, I could have used my garden to bind everyone who stepped foot in my house to me in some kind of crazy Sicilian Marinara Vaulderie Ritae, but that wasn't really my intent. I liked feeling like something that came from me could grow something else, it made me feel linked to the land strongly and it felt, I dunno, v. circle of life somehow.

Of course, let's be real here. We all went through a phase where we wanted to be taken supersrsly in the magical community and to prove how badass we were. What's more bad ass to someone likely under the age of 25? Blood magic. Menstrual blood is a good starting place if you're a lady-type, but really it's not like you have to work for it, it just happens. No, there needs to be stabbity and teeth gnashing, and I don't know, whatever other tough poses you undergo when you get your finger pricked at the doctor's office. Because! It's not like it's all that easy for many of us to get serious needles. Lancets, sure. Needles, not so much. And if you're cutting yourself with a knife, well, that's a problem in most cases that many people seek help for. So, you know, once you realize that finger pricking is likely to be the extent of your practice and that your super manly six year old cousin Andy can handle it with a Hello Kitty bandaid and a lollipop, you need to stop and ask yourself what you're hoping to get out of it.

At the time when I first started investigating, the general view of the more . . .god, is White Lighter a nice term? I mean it nicely, I don't know why people get all bitchy to them, they make all of us in the occult community look at least relatable to non-Pagan/Occultist/Whatever kind of special snowflake you are, most of us at least started there. When Mothra is feeling benevolent, she calls me a Wiccan instead of a godless atheist so I pretty much take it and like it. Anyway! WL'ers tended to see using blood magic as an atom bomb. Which. . . .I suppose if you're sacrificing maidens in your backyard, it would be.

If animals are killed in ritual, it's kinder and more gentle than the American meat industry and the animal is eaten and its parts are used, so I have no qualm there. I have not as yet participated in any kind of animal sacrifice rite, but I would like to fish and hunt my way up the food chain. I figure it's the least I can do with a quasi-Shamanic background. It's all well and good to eat meat that comes wrapped all nice and neat, it's another to do the work. I want to make sure I can handle the process, if I can't I should be a vegetarian in my opinion. Luckily, my gf grew up on a farm so we have plans eventually in that general direction.

But what about the finger prick of blood? Well, ADF at one point STRONGLY discouraged it. My grove being the backwater snake handlers of the tradition of course rushed to make pamphlets discussing how we are strongly discouraged (but not forbidden) to do blood sacrifice or juggle porcupines (the genesis there is a little fuzzy). Now it seems we're forbidden to do it in ritual setting at least.

So when to use it? Okay, so it's not the toughest expression of sacrifice, and there are other expressions of sacrifice (hard work, things made from your hands, wine, etc.) but it is still an expression of sacrifice. You still have to take that little tack like needle and jam it into your finger. It still hurts. It's still a tiny piece of your life force, something that is uniquely you. It's still one of the preferred personal concerns in hoodoo. If you can manage to contain yourself from using it for everythang and keep it as a sometimes food (like cursing), that keeps it as a special kind of sacrifice. For me, I only use it when I really, really want something. I got my wasband housing many many many moons ago, and I got myself the perfect rabbit burrow condo using it. I can count on one handish the amount of times I've used it, I only use it when I am v. serious about something or making a v. serious offering to the land or a deity.

Some deities do like it, but if you make that an every day food for them, be prepared to go through a lot of needles and be prepared for them to not like the idea of you breaking up with them and taking away your delicious delicious life essence. Some deities really don't like it at all, so do your homework before starting a teeny dollhouse sized CSI blood spatter for your gods.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Catsup, catsup

I have a bunch of posts in mind, but I would like to follow up on some previous posts.

1. Unrelatedly, I just beautified Jow's blog. Go check out its glory. There was minimal orneriness on his end and when he disagreed with me, I just bit him to subdue him.

2. Secular Beltane - Mine was pretty pleasant. Wasband decided for reasons unknown to me to not show, tiny children managed to not maim each other in the traditional stick dancing, the maypole was performed, singing was done. I then passed out for a few hours when my mom called me to inform me my somewhat tiny cousin's communion party was that day not the following. I suppose it was appropriate enough to be at a country club, drinking vodka tonics, dancing with a baby on my hip and dancing with my mom and stuffing my face with expensive food. There were still tiny children in white running around as well.

Conversation with my mom:

Mom: What's Beltane? Someone asked me and I want to make sure I got it right.

Me (thinking: Oh . . .shit. Who's asking her about Beltane? Moreover, how does she know anything about it? Don't talk about gratuitous fucking and that it's okay to have a bastard child as long as the math added up right!) : Um . . .okay. Well, it's a holiday to celebrate winter being over and summer coming. There's dancing, people try to wake the earth up with sticks and making noise, singing. There's . . .a maypole which is more dancing but also . . .represents . . .fertility.

Mom (satisified): That's what I thought you godless heathens were doing.

3. Aphrodite - not a cheap date. Getting stuff ready for her altar for my grove's celebration of Beltane happening this weekend has not been what I would call inexpensive. In the further adventures of boundary settings with your gods, I did make it clear that when I ordered stuff for her (after checking with vendors about delivery dates) that if things were not received in time, there would be no "double buying", altar items would then be obtained from items around the house. But I got a lovely wine glass hand painted with a pink daisy at the bottom and some other things. I also decided, inspired by Mrs. B to have a board up for glamour bombing post its for Operation Beautiful which I too have enjoyed! It seems both Beltane and Aphrodite appropriate.

4. Trevia - Jow had gotten fixed on starting candle making soon. We're going to do a test run for Beltane, and thanks again to Mrs. B's great idea on herbal oil making, I'm looking forward to dressing our candles. It will also come in handy for mojo hand making too I think. Also, because I'm a planner, otherwise known as oh shit! Beltane is in T-5 days and getting to a witch store is nowhere in sight, I'm going to try my hand at making cone incense for my Aphrodite altar.

5. Hexing - I had thought my more moderate spell would suffice, but I had come to find that the issue I have on my mind was really, really starting to eat away at me. I carefully considered my "case" and decided to bring it to what I have started calling The Court of the Ladies which was held in our dining room (Jow scampered through there faster than a cat for several hours). When I called in one of the Ladies, a random storm rolled in which Jow told me was an indication typically of said Lady that she is present. I will likely post more about all this at a later date.

6. Perfect Day - I talked to my boss who nervously mentioned that if business did not improve, cutting summer hours would be necessary that I could likely collect partial unemployment on top of my reduced hours which seemed to be a relief to her. It's going to depend on a meeting she has next week. I find myself surprisingly open to either possibility. If my hours get cut, I just (as in today) got some more potential freelance writing, I could shop more at the farmer's market, make my own household products, reduce my consolidated credit card bill (most likely), cut cable potentially, even the intertubes potentially if need be, work on my kitchen witch book, work on more novels and short stories, craft more, etc., etc. I'm letting this roll and feel pretty zen about it which then in turn freaks me out and restores my natural internal order. So Gordon, feel free to take all the credit or the blame for this when it all comes down. ;)

7. Life hacking - Jow and I had an impromptu meeting at Starbucks (how professional!) about life hacking. We are testing out Leechblock which is pretty cool, you can set it however you like to keep you from massively wasting time on the intertubes. We are attempting to not watch telly before 8p. He helped me brainstorm for my steampunk story and we had a general state of the state meeting on what we would like to accomplish (for me, see Perfect Day). We figured out house cleaning (our levels of cleanliness actually match up pretty good and we share labor pretty well, but things weren't getting done the way we'd like. So we decided he would do the things that are hard for me to do with the fibro - dishes, cat litter, garbage, vacuum, and laundry and I would take 15-30 minutes every day to do general household cleaning). I also decided I'd like to be more active, and got out my yoga deck and came up with a routine and then promptly got sick with some kind of allergy/head cold/stinky cat syndrome thing that Jow got too, but it's a work in progress.

Beltane

So, Gordon (who I am becoming increasingly convinced is my seperated from birth twin blog brother) just posted about Secular Beltane, which is actually something I had been pondering this year for myself. Generally I would go to the Spoutswood Fairy Festival where I would run around in my box (heh) clothes, otherwise known as my gothity-goth-goth-goth stuff I rarely get to wear anymore where teenagers shyly tell me they like what I'm wearing, eat a metric ton of PA Dutch food, run around with my camp friends on a huge ass farm and then drink after hours around a bonfire until I hallucinate which seems about right.

Except this year my bff from Kansas is getting married over the summer and I need to attempt to be more frugal. So what to do? I mean, that was my personal/secular Beltane celebration. Sure, I would be celebrating Beltane with GoG, but what to do on Beltane proper that seemed . . .seasonally secular? I went through a few options, and this is what I finally came up with.

1. Beltane at Dawn in Princeton. This is where Morris dancers do the whole maypole thing. It's a bit more towards the religious side I guess ('cept the dancers aren't too pagan) due to the Maypoling and whatnot. But there is sacrifice too - the whole getting up at dawn thing (. . .seriously) and getting to play another exciting round of Stare Down the Wasband (because custody of grove and grove related events was not in the divorce decree, sadly. But it's a constant opportunity for personal growth or sticking my head in a blender, I'm not sure which yet, it's still too soon to tell. And no, we are most assuredly not on good terms).

2. Breakfast at a diner after. No, there won't be any lovely purple broccoli there, but it will be food that is natural to the NJ Human Habitat.

3. Seista!

4. Dancing and drinking either in my living room if I'm too tired to move, or dancing and drinking at Hotoke in NB.

It seems to me that Beltane means eating high caloric food, dancing, sacrifice, and drinking excessively. Chin Chin!

You started the Trojan War? What, like, it's hard?

I make it a point to try not to get tapped by any new gods or goddesses, even the number I work with is a little too much for me sometimes. But, as we all know, like thinking that last jaegarbomb was a good idea, sometimes things have a way of just happening.

I find that if I'm going to get tapped either by a new to me god or goddess or a god or goddess I don't work with very often, it tends to be due to a GoG ritual. In fact, that's how I acquired most of my personal pantheon (I'm looking at you, Eris).

Generally, there are signs that don't make sense until I'm clear on who's tapping me. Today's tapping was brought to you by the letter "A" and the number 13.

1. Why can't I stop thinking about boys* and lipgloss?

2. Why are the older ladies in my life suddenly obsessed with me looking youthful, but age appropriate? I guess it is time for an image overhaul. New hair, new clothes, new shoes, new make up, done!

3. Preen. Be admired. Drop it like it's hot. That's right, boys*! Take a good look!

4. God, why is Hephaestus Jow being such a drag about exbfs and random boy attention? You're not the boss of me! I demand a longer leash!

5. Decide to send an email to one of the GoG organizers for Beltane to see if they need halp. Immediately get a response back that the 12+ Olympian gods will be honored. Do I want to make a shrine, pick one? Super awesome! I love them. Who? Just did a rit to Demeter not even a year ago. Persephone, did a rit to her too. Hestia might get into a fist fight with Parvati for dominance over my kitchen and I'm not touching that with a 20 foot pole. Hmmm. Everyone's always ragging on Hera, maybe get to know her? But then, I'm going to be influenced at Beltane by Hera most likely. Ugh, that would be a drag. I want to reclaim Beltane! I'm the goddamn May Queen! Last year's Beltane was such a bummer for me, I was an Outsider for *my* holiday due to the divorce.

6. Aphrodite, is that you?

7. Sigh.

8. Okay.

9. Write the email.


This is not the first time this has happened (and a tiny voice says, and it won't be the last!), what happens now in my experience is there's either minor or major communing with said deity between now and the ritual. Luckily I had sort of worked with Aphrodite before. Things that help me relate to new deities:

1. Pop culture. For reals! A song will get stuck in my head that's relevant (which also makes all the Ke$ha and Lady Gaga suddenly make sense).

2. Research. Both "real" research (i.e. scholarly) and pop culture research. Dark secret of the day: I love the way the gods were portrayed on Xena/Hercules. I loved that it was a new, modern take on them. And I always *loved* their Aphrodite. Also, I need to check out Percy Jackson for some more modern takes on the greek gods.

3. I try not to fight it. This is a two week time period. I have dealt with the greeks before. In my head, they like to laugh a lot, they like puns, wine, eating well and flirting. It's seasonally appropriate anyway, may as well just give in to the experience for the next few weeks. I see oysters in my future. Mmmmm.

4. Because of the way I do magic (Jow pointed out that TRANSform Me is the most accurate way of describing my internal magic process because man, if you can flip genders as a hat trick and then help others change themselves to feel good, it's pretty awesome), glamoury in the form of clothing, makeup, hair, jewelry, etc. is how I can express a lot of things - confidence, shielding, my interpretation of a god or goddess, etc. So outfit planning will be pretty crucial.

5. Altar dressing, both in making a mini shrine at home that I can keep and altar for the rit becomes pretty important.

So I'll be meditating on all of these points and keeping myself open to whatever adventure pops up along the way between now and Beltane. I'll keep you posted!

* - and girls too!

She said, I don't know what She meant to me/ I just knew She affected me. . . .

15 July 2009 @ 12:10 pm

Usually by this point when I'm running a rit, everything is kicked into High Woo by now.

It's different, for this rit. I feel mostly tired. Exhausted, really. I feel worn out by other people and find myself wanting a lot of time to lie on the couch and be left alone. It's . . .a dispiriting headspace for running a rit.

But . . .there have been meetings. The walk has been walked several times now. Key issues resolved, as best as possible. Cookies to bake.

Greek gods in my head have had a tendency to . . .not be the way I expected them. I expect them to be solemn and serious and instead they tend to be impish. They tend to love a good joke, a good smoke (offering), they want to feel things to the hilt - to love, fight, fuck, and cry.

I keep doing meditations before bed and I have strange fractured dreams. What I seem to be picking up is . . .Be awake, be aware, be conscious about the moments in your life. I'm constantly afraid of forgetting something important about . . .everything - prepping for this rit, doing this rit, etc., etc., etc.

I feel like things that are being transmitted to me are things I should already know or do already know . . .but don't do.

When I try to explain the ritual, I talk about being in the fullness of one's life. What I think I'm trying to say is that . . .there are mortgages and papers to drown in, bosses who are in a bad mood, ssdd problems with friends, family, and lovers, everything I want to accomplish in a day never happens, I may or may not ever loose the weight I want . . .

But that's not all there is. Those bits aren't even the important bits to being an adult, a grown up, a Mother. Yes, it's important to know how to cook, clean, pay your bills, do your laundry, show up to work more or less on time and you need those things, but that's not the point.

The point is, you learn to own yourself. You learn to not be everybody else's girl. You decide your goals, your hopes, your dreams. You're responsible for how they happen or not happen. You get to decide if you want to work 9-5, party 9-5, and then work 9-5 all over again. You decide what's important - marriage, children, career, art, music, love, whatever. You decide if you want to eat cannoli for lunch. You are yours and no one can take that away from you unless you let them. And if you do by chance, as we all tend to give ourselves away, you can take yourself back.

I have snapshots in my mind about what's been important in the last few weeks: the goldfinch who came to my balcony to talk to me, singing kirtan to Shiva, lying in a patch of sunlight in my underthings, straightening my room so it feels like mine, the way ricotta ice cream tastes, the smell of Water (BPAL) massage oil, the story about the rabbit in the moon who makes mochi, the memory of her with ivy painted on her face and me sobbing on my knees in her lap asking for absolution and being granted it and the ritual where we both called Her in, a bridge between us and now I will try to call Her, wishing she was there to help.

I just want this rit to be right. And I don't know what that means yet. And I won't until it's over. Fireflies. Bunnies. Fat Squirrel's cousin. The tower of longing. The smell of greasetrucks. The arbor where we all come together.

I try to open my heart. That's what She wants from me, to open my heart and to allow myself to feel everything I can feel that day. And I will try. Lady Demeter, oh how I will try for You.

Goddesses & Ritual Planning

01 July 2009 @ 02:56 pm

Sometimes at the beginning of planning a ritual, I feel like Cher from Clueless. I don't have a huge formal education background and apparently the language the gods feel I can understand best is music and fashion. I . . .feel sort of dumb about this but they're not wrong.

However! Since this rit will be about being in the fullness of one's life, the summer of one's life if you will, I have endeavored to try to be a grown up and read some source material instead of relying on being a reclaimist. I've been reading Mysteries of Demeter: Rebirth of the Pagan Way. I tend to trust authors more when they say what bits are sketchy, why there's conflicting information, and when they won't even attempt reconstructing something. Her rits . . .make me go blahblahblah because there's no way I use anything as formal as she does (though there's some v. small bits that are interesting) and there's double no way that it would fly in any of my religious groups.

Apparently, there was some kind of special drink involved with Demeter's rituals. What it is seems v. sketchy (and the author didn't try to recreate it which I dug. Sooo many authors would be like, oh it's this, I know it! Or, I have no idea so we'll just use mugwort-lime peel-milk!), but it's speculated that it's hallucinogenic. Also, I didn't know that there were many aspects of Demeter, though it does make sense.

So, I haven't felt like I have been totally in ritual planning headspace. It could be because I haven't had my pre-planning meeting meeting yet. So I've been thinking about it today and of course, the big questions is, but what will you wear? I had initially thought to do a chiton as it wouldn't be too difficult to make. But Demeter (at least the way I see her) seemed to turn her nose up at it. It's not modern. So, I thought, hoooookay. But I do see where she's coming from; this is a great season for modern interpretations of traditional greek fashions. Serena on GG is constantly wearing Grecian dresses, the Maxi dress is super popular . . .she doesn't want me to be her priestess for the holiday looking like a home ec project. She was thinking a green organic maxi dress. Well, those are $80 and while I would love to support small business and feel super posh-eco, there's no way I have $80 for a ritual dress right now. This seems to be a good compromise. Hair color will be Ruby Fusion. I can easily add laces to my ballet flat, etc.

She seems v. big on showtunes too. I . . .don't know.

But when I really started thinking about what she represents, I realized I *have* been in the headspace - getting my apartment in order, trying to buy property, planning my financial future, learning better spending habits . . .being a grown up. But, it's also about the quote that inspired me about her:

"In Terre d'Ange, one would say she was in the full summer of her beauty--past spring's fresh charms, not yet touched by the sere frost of autumn." - Kushiel's Scion, Jacqueline Carey

It . . .seems from the little bits I'm getting, that I'm supposed to have fun and play and be . . .more optimistic. Which for those of you who know me is going to be nothing if not challenging. I apparently (from what I'm getting) have the other bits down - the tenacity, the strength, the determination, etc. I need to work on the other bits. The next few weeks should be a trip.