Darkness Descending

This is, by far, my favourite time of year.

I am a bit sad to see the sun start to wane earlier and earlier - especially on my current work schedule - but I love the gathering crispness of the air. And Hallowe'en is an all-time favourite from long before I knew it as Samhain. All the kitschy, spooky pumpkins and ghosts, orange and black, dark purple and lime green, witch hats and spiderwebs. I love it all. A lot of my witchy/pagan friends joke that Hallowe'en is the time to "buy all the decorations we'll use year-round".

I spent most of my morning out with my wife and a good friend, walking in the woods, chatting about things, exploring off the beaten path. I have a little cozy spot near the ocean in one of our local parks, and I was finally able to take them there and show them. I collected acorns, and periwinkle shells and beach glass to decorate with, and left handfuls of birdseed as an offering in thanks. 

When I got back, I did some tidying, then took a cleansing shower with soap I bought from the new withcy store that just opened in my City. I dressed in clean, fresh pyjamas, and got to work.

I set my Samhain altar up this year and things are a bit more grim than normal. The main altar which has been decked out for Samhain has a rather strong focus on the "death" aspect - in the tarot sense, of big change coming through.

Except the spoopy little pumpkin. <3

Don't mind my toes.

I took the time to completely dismantle my summery altar, clean and dust, really go through everything carefully. I had Wardruna's "Helvegen" playing on loop (it is a funeral dirge, technically speaking) and burned Kyphi on charcoal. I chose some items from my collection of altar baubles I am no longer using -  to pass along to someone else--sacrifice and letting go.

As I got started in arranging things, I took note of the wind picking up outside - it was supposed to "shower" this afternoon, and never really did - but as I got into my altar working, a sudden clap of thunder startled me, and the rain came down hard. Can't get much better than a passing thunderstorm when doing something a little sombre, but a little grand, too.

I have had visions over the summer, of an owl bearing a lantern, leading a processional of ghosts, essentially - so I made sure to factor both my little tealight lantern, and my favourite owl figures, into the altar, emphasizing that role as a psychopomp. My stag sculpture, chestnuts, pine cones, are all symbolic to me of the change in nature - the "death" of the natural world as winter draws near.

After all was set up, I snuffed the incense, and lit my candles. I shared a little bit of fudge as an offering to my ancestors and deceased relatives (we all have a huge sweet tooth), and asked for their guidance and aid during the big changes coming in my life over the next little while.

I then did a small small blot to my gods with a bit of whiskey, and rounded up all of my old herbs, sand, salt, incense dust, old charm bags and everything that is past its time - to "libate" outside.

It feels good to be back.

Chasing Ghosts

It's been a rough few weeks.

And a weird, busy summer.

I've been holding off writing (for too long) waiting to find the inspiration to talk about what's been going on with me, spiritually, but I'm having a hell of a time putting it into words.

Autumn is the season of the Pagan New Year. Of Samhain, of the growing dark, becoming introverted and introspective as the sky darkens, the air cools, our schedules start to wind down.

My practice has not been as active this summer as I would like - it happens every year, and I always feel like I am "missing out" on the season when everything is most vibrant, most alive, most buzzing with energy. But I haven't been, really. I have been vibrant, and alive, and buzzing with energy - albeit frequently exhausted. I suppose in some ways it does mimic patterns of the older ways of living - summer would be a haze of activity, planting, tending crops, working on house and homestead in fair weather,  the first work of the early harvest.  When the first whispers of winter wind around us, the days have come when we can settle and turn inward until the coming of the spring again.

I have felt a fair and odd amount of discord these days. Things are shaking loose, shaking up, stirred around. I am standing firm in some ways, and standing aside in others that I thought I would not. Miscommunication has been a bastard dog at my heel, and I am learning to separate things I must own as my doing from things that are not.

I once apologized for everything. And then, headstrong and mighty, apologized for nothing. Now I learn the hard lessons, that sometimes I must apologize for some things, but sometimes I should not - will not - will never - apologize. Learning to intuit the difference makes me mightier still.

I suppose it shouldn't shock me - a certain deity who likes dramatic change and transformation and kicking rocks at hornet nests approached me, and I have tentatively agreed to work with him. His energy is interesting to me - warmer and friendlier-seeming than the Alfather, but bouncing and giddy and a bit mad, and tugging at the corners of your mouth into a wry grin but you're not quite sure what's so gods-damned funny. I don't trust him any more than I trust Odin - but oddly have come to determine I also don't trust him any less, either. I'm still working out my thoughts on the matter.

I finished reading RitualCraft - such an easy read for such a massively thick, heavy, fine-print book. I was pleasantly surprised. I learned a lot (including that I love high drama and formal language in ritual...) I'm not a fan of the tendency to list gods by what they can be summoned for - a "correspondence" chart listing deities alongside herbs and crystals for specific wants or problems, rituals where every god fitting a certain archetype is called.... But I think (correct if I am wrong) that that is a pretty Wiccan thing, and it is a Wiccan book, so...  I guess I'm a "firm" polytheist - the gods may ultimately draw from shared wellsprings of human history and consciousness, and so overlap somewhat, but they are not merely symbols that can be interchanged with one another and called on for everything when there has been no working relationship established.

Once things settle down, since I finished my first year's worth of post-initiation reading for IDGAF, my next "learning project" will be taking time to really devote and properly commune with my gods. Most of my work I've done with Odin - I would like to take the time to learn the others who have approached me, or that I've made entreaties to (with proper thanks and agreed payment given after) , and form proper relationships with those who plan to stick around.

I have more to share, so much more, but I have not the words for it all. But change has been wrought, and is being wrought, and I cannot wait to tell about it.

Welcome to the new blog.

Welcome to the new me.

Hail and farewell for now. 

Still alive

So I've been scarce. I still have a lot churning in my brain I have to unpack before I can really tell much about it. 

I've been oddly disconnected lately. My altar sat in a mess for two weeks, I finally got it back in order, and realized (somewhat guiltily) that I haven't made any offerings to my gods in... Awhile. I at least haven't been begging their help either, so I'm not being exploitive or needy, but I need to get on that. 

Some of it is just business. After a few blissful months, work has been hectic because of vacations leaving us perpetually short a body. It's still nowhere near as bad as it was--but still a culture shock, and of course it's coupled with summer being such a busy time in the "real world". A few of my lovely IDGAF brethren pointed out that spiritual energy ebbs and flows like any other--and summer is a season of life and busy activity, so it may be somewhat natural that physical realm matters are keeping me tied and away from the otherworldly ones.

But I can hear voices, feel brushes of fire "out there" and I've slipped into old lazy habits of not making time to go see them. 

A new energy is approaching me as well, and I am 99% certain I know who it is--based on feels and readings and my Familiar's input. It's going to make things... Interesting. I can't even honestly question why he showed up. I know in my heart I called him, in my own way, without wholly meaning to, but simply in the way these things happen. 

I finished my fifth book since my Initiation (of 6 "learning opportunities" needed in a year). A Deed Without a Name by Lee Morgan. 

I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I have...a few issues with it. The author clearly has their own very specific definition of what a witch is--which is fair. I don't quite fit it, but still found s lot of value. That the book lends no real credence or credit to other ways of doing things, of other "types" of witches, may be bias or just "short book". The book seems to imply, for example, that carnal interactions with one's familiar or "fetch mate" are very common, but I don't know many self-described witches who've had encounters like that. The author makes mention of "the Master" but never really explains who that is.  Whether that is meant to mean "the devil" or some other force is never really clear. 

The author also lists several rituals at the back of the book--gives fairly explicit instructions (while stressing for some that this should only be done if you are already skilled in the area) and provides chants for them which she doesn't explain. Some are in English, but she never says anything about where they came from--whether they are made up or historical. There are also chants in some... Non-English language (they don't look like any language I'd be even remotely familiar with.) There is no info given about what language they are in, what they mean or where they came from. They could be made up nonsense words for all you can tell. Given the stress on being experienced before trying these things, giving mysterious chants in full with no context or background seems oddly dangerous a practice. 

This reminds me a lot of A Witch Alone, a book I found a lot of issues with--but still got a lot out of, in the end. I'd recommend it if the subject matter is of interest, but I took a fair bit of it with a grain of salt.

My next book... Since I'm apparently feeling both brave and crazy, will be RitualCraft by Azrael Arynn K and Amber K. It's... Huge and fine print and oh god I might be crazy.

Hope to have more soon.

What is witch?

What is witch?

What is witchcraft?

What is magic? 

 The warmth of the new sun at 7 o'clock on a July morning.

The silence, the din, the stillness, of the birds and the insects rising at dawn.

The smell of newly-thawed earth in spring.

The first bud on the tree. 

The curl of the fiddlehead spiraling open.

The morning fog glimmering on the strands of the spider's web.

-

The pitch and toss of the sea when the wind howls wild. 

The blue-grey and white foam and the smell of salt stirring in the air.

The rumble of distant thunder and the pale yellow glow in the sky as the storm closes in.

The exact moment the gathering shadow breaks open, and it starts to pour rain.

-

The play of moonlight piercing the pitch-black of the forest at night.

The heady smell of dew-damp earth.

The close comfort of the darkness wrapped around you like a shroud.

The sweet tingle of instinctive apprehension, when you hear the rustle-crack of wildlife stirring in the black around you. 

The feel of watchful eyes from the shadow, out of sight.

Soft earth, sharp stone, and cool grass beneath bare feet.

-

The flicker and play of flame licking hungry at the air.

The heat rushing over you like water as you stand in a circle around the bonfire.

Sweat on your brow and a chill at your spine. 

The fluttering sashay of robe and gown in the dance of candlelight. 

The silhouette of a figure outlined against the firelight, surrounded by velvet night.

Life force tingling in your fingertips and toes.

-

The thud of footfalls against the ground in steadily quickening rhythm.

The bite of exhaustion in your muscles as you swing your arms over your head with the dance.

Letting your wild soul take form around you, feathers and fur and claws. 

Howling at the moon as her light casts pale silver light amidst the murky blue-black.

-

The quiet thrill of old, forbidden knowledge and long-forgotten secrets.

The small spark of mischief in you, the quirk of your lips in a small grin. 

-

Feeling the pulse of blood, thick and dark and sacred in your veins.

Feeling it change. Feeling it slow to match the cadence of the drums.

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

-

Tarot

I used to have a temperamental relationship with tarot decks. My first was a hand-me-down from my mother, who was into tarot cards back in the early 2000s but never did much with hers. They were decidedly hideous, I could never get them to "work" and they turned me off to tarot for quite awhile. I still have a hard time with traditional tarot decks, or decks with the traditional art style. I sometimes wonder if that first horridly ugly deck turned me off to them forevermore.

My second deck was a (in retrospect, no less hideous) "dragon tarot" I found for $15 at a local Chapters. I found I had ultimately the same difficulty with it - I seemed to have no connection to the deck, and trying to do readings was an excercise in futility.

I tried again with the more well-known Dragon Tarot, which is still pretty damn ugly. (Noticing a trend?) and had only moderately more luck.

The first deck I had that I spent a goodly amount of money on, and finally felt that connection with, is the Shadowscapes tarot. I love the art style, and I find the artist sneaky - a lot of the traditional symbolism of tarot is there, but she's hidden it in metaphor and used different ways of including it. It seems finding a deck "pretty" in some way, connecting to it artistically, is important to me. The symbolism and "traditional" measure of a deck is no good if I don't enjoy looking at it.

I have a second deck I was gifted from The Honey Badger, which is the Pagan Cats Tarot. I adore it, though I don't use it as often.

Through an interesting twist of fate, my friend ordered a deck called The Wild Unknown Tarot and ended up having a second one sent due to a shipping kerfuffle. Rather than have them pay to send the other back, she sent the money for the second deck (from me) so I could keep it.

So now I have another new deck I can't wait to use. It's almost the opposite in a lot of ways, to the Shadowscapes deck. Shadowscapes has a lot going on -  bright colours, complex images with tons of hidden bits and pieces to find. This deck is black and white with pops of colour, and very simple by comparison. I can't wait to get a feel for it.

Do you use tarot decks? Do you prefer traditional ones, or nontraditional? Bright and wild or simple?

For the Birds

Spring has finally sprung, perhaps a little bit.

I belong to a birdwatching group/organization on facebook. A few weeks past, a large number of people started commenting on a funny little bird everybody was seeing that is normally a rare sight in the province.

It's called the American Woodcock.

Woodcocks are native to Nova Scotia but normally shy, nocturnal, and live in deeper wooded areas away from common sight. They use their long bills to probe for worms in the ground.

When they got back this year, the ground was still frozen solid and snow-covered. They were showing up in unlikely places, desperate for food, starving, dying.

Somehow, the tale of their plight became a widely known thing, and the plight of all the other migratory birds arriving back after a long journey to find the landscape looking nothing like spring.

The response was amazing.

I've never heard local and national news talk about the plight of migratory birds. I've never heard so many mass calls for people to put out a little something, anything, to help.

My walk to work in the morning takes me through a pretty sketchy, very urban neighborhood. I saw piles of cracked corn and bird seed out in piles on the lawns of apartment buildings. Someone was back in our spot in the woods leaving piles of seed and chopped fruit. (We did as well.) People bought up nightcrawlers and fishing worms at stores to put out in dishes in their lawns. A local store owner bought massive bags of bird feed--and gave them away for free.

It was inspiring to see so many people doing what they could.

Spring is coming slowly now--weeks later--there is a lot more bare ground, green growth, but still so much snow. Things are not as dire, but they are still not great for mid April.

I had placed a handful of peanuts out on the deck one morning, just after (yet another) several inches of snow. I thought perhaps some crows would find them. They went uneaten, until several days later, when the snow had melted away. A pair of Blue Jays came and grabbed them up. I gave them more, they came back.

They're starting to trust me now, and they have me trained--in the morning, I hear a scream or a squawk, around 8am, of a blue jay on the deck wanting his breakfast.

We also keep a feeder out in our spot in the woods. We were there yesterday and saw it was empty. This afternoon I went out with my wife, and my dedicant (who was visiting) and filled the feeder. It took five minutes at most for the woods to come alive around us. Goldfinches, chickadees, juncos, song sparrows, fox sparrows. They were obviously needing the food. It made me beyond happy to see them all, so suddenly, and know that this is helping them even a little. If one more bird survives a miserable winter and this slow awful spring, it's worth all the money on birdseed and the wet feet and traipsing through melting slushy deep snow in April to fill that feeder even once in awhile.

And now it feels and smells and looks like spring is coming.

We'll be all right.

Spring has not sprung at all really.

I changed the name/URL of this blog. I wish it felt less like hiding.I'll be doing something a little more colorful and productive with it shortly.

Ostara took place as a very informal ritual, an indoor picnic and we painted eggs.

The whole foul mess with the nasty email sent me into a sneaky hate spiral more than I care to admit.

I am a person very heavily centered in logic, and also in self doubt, so it's hard not to take attacks of that nature to heart. It's also hard for me to acknowledge that whatever hope we ever had of returning to the community, ever, is squashed now. We're clearly not welcome. We had a small number of people support us--some in private, who then denounced us in public to save their own ass, which is ridiculous. We never called out the person responsible openly--they must have owned up to it, and spun it in such a way as to make them come out on top.

Lesson learned. Next time no prisoners are taken.

I've been trying, largely unsuccessfully, to get out of this winter funk. While the rest of the country seems to be creeping into spring, we're mired in snow, endless snow and more snow and more freezing temperatures. Birds and wildlife are starving to death. Returning songbirds are starving. No trees have even begun to bud. The other day we had a warm flash of 11 degrees, and I only then managed to get most of the 6-inch thick ice off the deck. My plant pots are still stuck in it. Snow banks in places are still over my head.

My dedicant (who initiates in a month!) keeps saying not to suffer the weather, but my god this just drags on me.

But I redid my altar for spring, covered it in silly glitter from my mother-in-law's easter card, sparkling butterflies and ladybugs and bees - and made orgami cherry blossoms to decorate it with, too. I kind've like having things scattered haphazardly on my altar, like they fluttered there.

It is, at least, colourful, to counteract outside still being varying shades of white and grey.

The blue/striped square of cloth behing my keyring on the "Norse" altar was an offering I made for Frigga. It was woven on my little board loom--she wanted one done in blue, and I was to use the striping yarn when the blue ran out, so I did as instructed. I think it suits quite nicely.

Riptide

One of the things I read early into By Land Sky and Sea was Parma's mention of dance as a means to raise energy and celebrate the body.

I will confess, I love dancing, but my dancing skills are on par with Mass Effect's Commander Shepard - laughably bad. So I generally don't dance in public any more. (I had a brief spell in my early twenties, of acting "my age", going downtown to bars and getting mildly drunk on a semiregular basis. Amazing what a few shots of tequila will do with "I can't dance.")

This week has been a particularly hard one.  I had some depression issues weaning off the steroid, and a reaction to my migraine pills which had me at the ER unsure of what was happening to me. I spent most of today being gloriously lazy, doing a bit of homesteading, cooking, and playing videogames, trying to recover from the week. 

A song popped into my head.

A silly pop song.  With a fun rhythm.

I put it on youtube and tapped my toes.

I bought it from iTunes and put it on my phone, and put my phone in this cardboard tube that makes a great makeshift speaker.

And I started to dance.

I think I played it a good 20 times, resetting each time it came near the end. I danced like a little crazy person, arms flailing, feet kicking, no real rhythm or method or choreography and not a single sweet blessed fuck given. This was not my living room, I was not in pajamas on carpet, I was under a bright full moon in a summer sky, in a swirly dress and bare feet, stamping out splashes in the shallows of a pool. Partway through, I felt the weird exhaustion in my limbs, the realization that this is some sweet exercise, damnit, this strange buzzing feeling that was part breathlessness, and part...something else. And I thought back to Gede Parma and the mention that dancing can be used to raise energy for ritual and spellwork.

I'm usually a pretty methodical person when it comes to a lot of things, especially witchcraft, so it's significant to say I threw down a circle right there in the middle of the most random bit of floor, just enough room to dance, to get at my phone to keep the music going. I just went with it, grabbing the energy flowing through my body, through the air, through that half-imagined moonlit summer sky.

What I chose to cast, to release, is for me to know alone. But the experience is something new I had never thought I'd embrace. If nothing comes of my impromptu spellwork, I got a good workout and blew off some much needed steam doing it.

Interesting how these things come to you. 

Illness, Books, Mead and Horn

I've been a bit under the weather as of late--almost literally. The climate this year is fubar, and it's not uncommon for us to swing from temperatures in the positives--as high as plus 6 or 7 (Celsius) to minus 20 or more with windchill. This has been screwing with a lot of people health wise, since nobody can get adjusted to the climate. We're also finally entering the stormy weather part of winter. This has never really been an issue before the last few months, but I've been getting headaches, which my wife and my doctor both think are migraines, sometimes lasting DAYS before a weather event. I'm not sure if it's age, or stress, or what brought this new thing on, but man. The pain isn't debilitating alone, but after that long, it drags on me. I've also been having bad breathing the last few weeks, despite taking my puffers pretty steadily. I now have a script for an oral steroid to help my breathing, and for migraine abortives to help the headaches, and I'm going to be sent for a CT scan to make sure the headaches have no worrisome underlying cause. Prednisone spent most of the day fucking up my guts and making me feel like general poop. Bleh.

I just wanted to share that, since I'm actually kinda proud of how much I've accomplished in the last few weeks despite feeling like shite so often.

I ordered four new books with giftcards I got at Christmas (we jokingly coined in Bookmas). The Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda (translated) a book called "Elves, Wights and Trolls", and "By Land, Sky and Sea" by Gede Parma. I finished the Prose Edda and moved on to Gede Parma as a change of pace before I tackle the Poetic Edda. I'm enjoying Gede Parma's book enough that at some point when I get all of this sorted, I want to read Penczak's Shamanic Temple.

Once I'm done all four of these books, I'll have 4 of my 6 required "further learning experiences" needed for the year, to maintain my IDGAF Initiate status. I need to catch up on my Land Stewardship--with the weather so up-and-down, it's been hard. I have a suet cake to put out for the local birds, but whenever we're due for cold temperatures and snow, we're scheduled to get pouring rain within a day or so, which will melt the suet. I've been trying to wait for a bit of consistently cold weather, and it just ain't happenin'. I want to get it out there, too, because the mild temperatures at the start of winter meant that a lot of birds who would normally migrate stuck around late, and are now struggling in the colder weather. (Birdwatcher. I know these things.)

We bottled our sweet mead batch this Tuesday, as I was home from work due to severe weather. It's been sitting for months while I waited to make sure it was ready--and it's actually drinkable now, not needing to be aged longer in bottle. It has a sweet honey finish that is somewhat floral. I like it.

Last, but not least, I finally finished the cleaning and fancying of my drinking horn. It took a lot of work to get it clean, and for awhile I despaired actually getting it clean enough to drink from--it had a horrible smell that wouldn't go away. I finally soaked it with rubbing alcohol, and then scrubbed it before curing it twice with Guiness. Now it smells like nothing when dry, and a bit like CowBeer when wet. To make it more "mine", I dressed it up with some leather (which I cut, stamped/carved, and dyed myself) and a small carving.


A shot of the carving and stitch work in the back...  The carving was "darkened" slightly with plain old brown colored pencil (Prismacolour, which are wax based) to help it stand out since I couldn't really get it deep enough with the tools I had to make it "pop" on it's own.

 And the leather work on the front! The dragon is (in case it wasn't obvious) a pretty important personal symbol for me, hence why I added one.

I have been "informed" that to consecrate the horn, I need to use it in a blot to Odin when we do our Imbolc rite, (which we are waiting on for the weather to be more "end of winter in sight" than it is now;) using our own home made mead. 

I will mention a little bit about my decision to engrave the horn with the Valknut. I have seen a million and a half explanations of what that symbol supposedly means, the only historically accepted one is "knot of the slain" and "something something Odin" (It's seriously really vague and not seen much.) I've seen some modern heathen takes on the symbol, ranging from "Odin can take you (ie. get you killed) whenever he wants to be Einherjar--and you're cool with that" (I haven't been able to find any source for where this came from though) to "sworn to/works with Odin". My take is more the latter - I associate the symbol with Odin, he has given me things in meditations bearing that symbol, and I accepted the challenge of taking and keeping these gifts. He was willing to allow me to put the symbol on this horn, provided I consecrate it in the manner described above.

(In case anybody who stumbles on this needs it clarified--the Valknut is not a racist symbol. Some skinhead groups have appropriated it, along with other Norse imagery, but nothing about the symbol itself or it's Pagan/Heathen uses is inherently racist. Just wanted to clear that up.)

Man guys, I used a lot of parentheses tonight. 

What was that line about the road to hell and the best intentions?

Whoops.

Ok yeah I suck.

I have only really slacked off on the blogging, though.

No, honest.

Three of the founders (My wife had to work) and one of our dedicants (Who I am mentoring) sat down to chat on the local independent radio station on Friday night. A show runs there every week called "The Witching Hour", so we went to talk about who we are and what we do (which we had done once before shortly after starting up), to try and dispel some rumors we had heard about through the grapevine, and to talk about our journeys through our own initiations, and to check up on my "pupil", at his halfway mark, and get the input from a non-founder. You can listen to it at our website, www.idgaf.ca, and a link is there.

We've also been doing guided meditations on a semi-regular basis from Christopher Penczak's Inner Temple of Witchcraftv using the audio tracks that come with, (and then a generic meditation from the Shamanic Temple, which counts you down and then just plays a drum beat.) My inner temple has undergone some interesting... renovations, once because of a certain deity more or less blowing it up. (Don't be lazy with change when dealing with Odin. Protip.) The second time, me "blowing it up" in preparation for another period of change. I haven't been back yet. It'll be interesting to see what awaits me there now.

Work is wearing me down pretty thin, these days, and I had actually intended to write a way more interesting blog post two weeks ago--but I spent the whole weekend fixing my stepmom's computer, and then my own, which both hilariously/not at all hilariously suffered hard drive failures within the same 24 hour period. (Both macs, hers 8 years old, but mine not quite a year and a half.) Bleh. Naturally, I have no sweet clue what the hell I was going to write about then.

I didn't get a chance to blog, but I got my athame I had commissioned from a local blacksmith. It ended up being more affordable than I had hoped, and I am madly in love with it.

That's all I have for now!!!