Hey everybody!
I know it's been awhile - our Samhain was lovely, and I've been feeling a lot better since the summer. My mental health went through a rocky patch, but I spent a few sessions with an amazing psychologist and have myself back on track.
Mental illness is truly a chronic condition, that will always come with ups and downs - I am proud to say though that I am in a place where I reach out for help readily when I know I need it.
I've also been reading, a lot - I missed it so much it's not even funny. I finally finished reading American Gods, and read a totally out-of-the-norm for me book called The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, on suggestion of a book club I've followed for awhile on Instagram/FB.
I hope to pop back soon with a longer post, but I wanted to share some exciting news - I now have an Etsy Shop!
Back in the early fall I started making sets of little leather pocket runes, and I finally have them listed for sale!
There will be more goodies to come, so please keep an eye on it :)
My Shop
Sunday 5 November 2017
Wednesday 5 July 2017
Season of Spirit - Part I
Hello friends!
I meant to check in before this, but...well. I guess I can commit to being good at at least one thing at a time.
For anyone following me on Facebook, I committed, back on June 21st, that I'd do one spiritual activity once, every single day, from Midsummer to Lammas.
So here is my first checkin, of sorts!
I am LOVING this so far and am so glad I've been pushing myself to it.
I did miss one day, very shortly after I started. I had been working in the yard all afternoon, and come 10:30PM, went to do something and just was so damn exhausted I couldn't even dream of it. I know myself well - I would have fallen asleep the minute my ass hit the meditation cushion. But I did spend the day working my land and my garden, so I gave myself a pass that day.
A few things I'm taking from this experience:
- I can very so varied in the types of spiritual experiences I have. I have done meditations, I've done offerings of water and smoke to the gods, I've done brief meditations at work. One night I sorta forgot until it was almost bed time, so my spiritual practice for that night was to try and induce a specific sort of dream as I was falling asleep. (It didn't quite work, but I'd try it again!) I spent some time polishing my drinking horn, decorating its wooden stand and fancying up the leather adornments on it. There was a day at work that I also spent outside, staring at a patch of grass and weeds, trying to pick out how many different species I could find among the plant life. (A LOT)
- I've known my guide most of my teen/adult life, and yet there are things I've never known about her, things I never noticed. It was wonderful to take some time to reconnect.
- I've been smudging SO SO MUCH. One of the first things I've been doing at the start of my meditations is a quick Smudge of myself, my altar space, I let the smoke waft over my deity spaces, etc. It's nice to feel so energetically clean!
- I met with an old friend in a space I used to know very well. It made me sad to know it's been left abandoned, like an afterthought. We cleansed and healed the space and it felt worlds beyond better.
Tonight I got a random phone call from someone looking for members of my family for a family reunion - he lives on the land my ancestors lived on when they came here from Germany in the 1700s. I'd love to go if somehow that can happen - and maybe it's a sign that tonight's practice should be an offering of sorts to my ancestors.
I meant to check in before this, but...well. I guess I can commit to being good at at least one thing at a time.
For anyone following me on Facebook, I committed, back on June 21st, that I'd do one spiritual activity once, every single day, from Midsummer to Lammas.
So here is my first checkin, of sorts!
I am LOVING this so far and am so glad I've been pushing myself to it.
I did miss one day, very shortly after I started. I had been working in the yard all afternoon, and come 10:30PM, went to do something and just was so damn exhausted I couldn't even dream of it. I know myself well - I would have fallen asleep the minute my ass hit the meditation cushion. But I did spend the day working my land and my garden, so I gave myself a pass that day.
A few things I'm taking from this experience:
- I can very so varied in the types of spiritual experiences I have. I have done meditations, I've done offerings of water and smoke to the gods, I've done brief meditations at work. One night I sorta forgot until it was almost bed time, so my spiritual practice for that night was to try and induce a specific sort of dream as I was falling asleep. (It didn't quite work, but I'd try it again!) I spent some time polishing my drinking horn, decorating its wooden stand and fancying up the leather adornments on it. There was a day at work that I also spent outside, staring at a patch of grass and weeds, trying to pick out how many different species I could find among the plant life. (A LOT)
- I've known my guide most of my teen/adult life, and yet there are things I've never known about her, things I never noticed. It was wonderful to take some time to reconnect.
- I've been smudging SO SO MUCH. One of the first things I've been doing at the start of my meditations is a quick Smudge of myself, my altar space, I let the smoke waft over my deity spaces, etc. It's nice to feel so energetically clean!
- I met with an old friend in a space I used to know very well. It made me sad to know it's been left abandoned, like an afterthought. We cleansed and healed the space and it felt worlds beyond better.
Tonight I got a random phone call from someone looking for members of my family for a family reunion - he lives on the land my ancestors lived on when they came here from Germany in the 1700s. I'd love to go if somehow that can happen - and maybe it's a sign that tonight's practice should be an offering of sorts to my ancestors.
Monday 19 June 2017
Glorious Staycation
Our Beltane ritual went a little...off. My wife took a tumble down our back stairs and sprained her ankle, so our ritual was set aside for something a lot more simplistic.
After Beltane, the weather was largely chilly, wet, constant rain, and I've been a bit blah.
But this past week was hot (HOT!), sunny, and a wonderful time to get out and work in the garden.
Over the long weekend in May, I got out and built the first of our raised vegetable beds.
After Beltane, the weather was largely chilly, wet, constant rain, and I've been a bit blah.
But this past week was hot (HOT!), sunny, and a wonderful time to get out and work in the garden.
Over the long weekend in May, I got out and built the first of our raised vegetable beds.
Finally working the earth in our yard - not just cleaning, raking and fixing, but actually getting in there and adding, building, planting - is such a wonderful feeling.
I'll be the first to admit my spiritual life has been pretty slack, aside from the spiritual feelings of working the land and being a steward to our space.
This was meant to be a longer update - but I've got some pretty cool projects on the go and the starts of some plans to get this blog off the ground again.
Merry meet again!
Saturday 1 April 2017
Spring Ahead
Long time no talk, friends!
I am just coming off a lovely sushi dinner at our favourite restaurant for my birthday, surrounded by wonderful friends (and plum wine. Mmm....)
The latter part of winter has knocked me around a little bit. Our work has been bizarrely busy in a way I haven't experienced in a good few years - and that sort of constant balls-to-the-wall nonstop repetitive sort of business gets draining on me very quickly, and our team has felt splintered and not very efficient.
So my plan to get deeper into practice and into reading again hasn't really worked. Thankfully, even when I am not seeking the spiritual, it finds me, these days. So I haven't been bereft of my spiritual life, even when I'm not actively seeking it out as I want to.
Ostara was lovely fun, dying eggs like we did last year - and feasting on roast rabbit. Winter is still overly present, with snow and freezing rain all this past week, and miserable temperatures. I've had a cold, my wife has a cold, Garm and Nootl have been under the weather.
My fingers are itching to get out and clean up the blown in trash in the yard, bag up last year's leaves, get planting. But that has to wait until there's at least no snow!
Ostara is a sort of "new year" for me - it's the anniversary of my spiritual group coming together for the first time, as the four of us - and comes at a time where, last year, I purged my life of a lot of negativity and toxic influence, and learned how to breathe again. The past 12 months were spent in a glorious sort of lazy recovery period - wasting free time because I had the time to waste, in the best way. Just relaxing, playing video games, making art, colouring, making incense, taking strolls in the woods. Doing a lot of inner reflection, rediscovering parts of me that were buried beneath sickness and exhaustion.
But now I feel it's time to move again. Stretch out my brain and put it back to work. So I've taken up learning some things I didn't know. I asked my father to teach me a bit of guitar, since I miss making music and it gives us a chance to connect. I've got an ocarina ordered from a woman in quebec - I have a cheap one, but is severely out of tune and therefore hard to learn on. I want to be able to sit in the trees and play softly as a devotional to the wights and spirits around me and I've loved Ocarinas for years. I've been using DuoLingo to try to learn some German. Even just enough to have a foundation to take a class later. I'm loving it, though I've noticed when I don't know a word my brain wants to interject with French almost immediately - so I'm probably going to end up speaking "Grench" or something. I am going to push myself this year to get outside and be more active - get back into birding and shoot for a "big year" (2016 was the first year in several that my species count didn't increase over the previous year!) I got a new book and a couple of phone apps on mushrooms, fungi and edible plants, so I want to get out and learn more about the nature around me.
I'm trying to think of a way to set myself goals - and make sure I stand to them. That was one thing that was so good about being in IDGAF - held to a standard other than my own, I stick to things a lot more solidly.
For now, I am going to hope to rework my altar for spring energy shortly (even if outside feels like anything but..) and post with some pictures!
Speak soon!
I am just coming off a lovely sushi dinner at our favourite restaurant for my birthday, surrounded by wonderful friends (and plum wine. Mmm....)
The latter part of winter has knocked me around a little bit. Our work has been bizarrely busy in a way I haven't experienced in a good few years - and that sort of constant balls-to-the-wall nonstop repetitive sort of business gets draining on me very quickly, and our team has felt splintered and not very efficient.
So my plan to get deeper into practice and into reading again hasn't really worked. Thankfully, even when I am not seeking the spiritual, it finds me, these days. So I haven't been bereft of my spiritual life, even when I'm not actively seeking it out as I want to.
Ostara was lovely fun, dying eggs like we did last year - and feasting on roast rabbit. Winter is still overly present, with snow and freezing rain all this past week, and miserable temperatures. I've had a cold, my wife has a cold, Garm and Nootl have been under the weather.
My fingers are itching to get out and clean up the blown in trash in the yard, bag up last year's leaves, get planting. But that has to wait until there's at least no snow!
Ostara is a sort of "new year" for me - it's the anniversary of my spiritual group coming together for the first time, as the four of us - and comes at a time where, last year, I purged my life of a lot of negativity and toxic influence, and learned how to breathe again. The past 12 months were spent in a glorious sort of lazy recovery period - wasting free time because I had the time to waste, in the best way. Just relaxing, playing video games, making art, colouring, making incense, taking strolls in the woods. Doing a lot of inner reflection, rediscovering parts of me that were buried beneath sickness and exhaustion.
But now I feel it's time to move again. Stretch out my brain and put it back to work. So I've taken up learning some things I didn't know. I asked my father to teach me a bit of guitar, since I miss making music and it gives us a chance to connect. I've got an ocarina ordered from a woman in quebec - I have a cheap one, but is severely out of tune and therefore hard to learn on. I want to be able to sit in the trees and play softly as a devotional to the wights and spirits around me and I've loved Ocarinas for years. I've been using DuoLingo to try to learn some German. Even just enough to have a foundation to take a class later. I'm loving it, though I've noticed when I don't know a word my brain wants to interject with French almost immediately - so I'm probably going to end up speaking "Grench" or something. I am going to push myself this year to get outside and be more active - get back into birding and shoot for a "big year" (2016 was the first year in several that my species count didn't increase over the previous year!) I got a new book and a couple of phone apps on mushrooms, fungi and edible plants, so I want to get out and learn more about the nature around me.
I'm trying to think of a way to set myself goals - and make sure I stand to them. That was one thing that was so good about being in IDGAF - held to a standard other than my own, I stick to things a lot more solidly.
For now, I am going to hope to rework my altar for spring energy shortly (even if outside feels like anything but..) and post with some pictures!
Speak soon!
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