Winter

I've been so quiet!

I got an indigo giftcard from work - I'm going to be ordering some books, getting back on track with my reading.

I had plans for a post delving yet again into the powerful death-vibes of 2016. The darkness swirling in the world, the realizations and understandings I've come to over the past several months. I was going to write about emotional abuse and gaslighting, about my stepping away from a toxic environment and how long it took me to wake up from that.

But y'know what? Fuck that. The world is in a hellhole right now and I can't bring myself to feed the yucky feels any longer.

So I'm going to quickly sum up some of the awesome fucking shit that's been going on.

I've been celebrating every sabbat/esbat/etc in style. My group of four (myself included) have made a point to get together. Our rituals are loose, informal affairs, but our energy is wonderfully in sync, so even if we allow ourselves to be casual and silly, we still have great synergy and I can feel that we are connected. The love in our little group is unbelievable. My wife, is of course, my wife, my best friend, the love of my life. Garm has come to help in the yard many times, we feed him supper, he took my wife to the emergency room the other night to get some stitches looked at, while I was stuck at work. (She's absolutely fine by the way.) Nootls has helped us around the house, we've hosted her on the couch as she has quite a drive to get home, we've babysat her dog. She just hooked us up with Reindeer hides, mine I'm using as a throw on the couch.

Mabon

I managed to source a suckling pig - Yule is in the middle of the week and I have no time off, so we'll likely do our great Yule feast a little later - but I am so beyond excited.

We got our yard cleaned up, and a few things planted - it snowed today, and I still have raked leaves to bag, but come spring we can start fresh on much better footing than this time last year. We got to harvest some garden sage and lavender from our herb garden.

I finished reading the first half of Taking Up the Runes - I have the elder Futhark memorized, and their meanings, and finally made myself a set of runes. 

I have other rune books to read and more study to do - the runes are a lifetime journey, I feel - but I'm beyond happy to understand them even at a baseline now.

We bought a sewing machine - my wife and I - and we each made a cloak. I'm madly in love with mine. I then made a viking style apron dress and tunic to go with it. So I finally have real, handmade ritual garb!

Stylin'

I did some major altar work as well. My current altar I inherited second-third-?? hand, and it was battered and covered in sticky tape residue. I did love it despite (or because of?) it's well-loved look, but I wanted to refresh it. I attacked it with sandpaper, sanded parts of it down to bare wood, others simply deep enough into the finish to smooth over the gouges, the old adhesive gunk. I then refinished the whole thing with a more matte-paint-like stain and replaced all the hardware. It has a fresh new look now and I adore it. <3

 

 

Looks good as new!! There are "before" pics back in my blog somewhere I'm sure...

I also worked at making a small Odin and Sleipnir statues for the Alfather's altar. Sleipnir I felt was particularly genius. I bought two paper mache unicorns at a local arts n' crafts store...and murdered them to make a hybrid 8-legged steed.   

I mentioned snow.

Well that was a shock! I can't remember the last time that the first snow I saw in the year was an actual "snow storm". It's not quite cold enough to stick here as we're near the coast, so we got mostly wet slushy snow and rain - but still more than flurries. The wind was intense and COLD this morning.
I need to get those damn leaves bagged up before they get buried. It's supposed to be another rough winter.

Secretly I'm excited? I love snowstorms and snow days and being curled up with a warm drink listening to the wind howl outside. It's a bit scarier when you own a house vs. an apartment, but damn, it's still so comforting.

I've been busy-busy the last few weeks, but feeling very driven. I have a new gorgeous leatherbound book to make into a proper BOS - I have plans to use pressed plants, colour, polaroids - and make it a mishmashed work of art. I'm ready to bring back the activity into other parts of my spiritual life - not just rituals, but meditations, real practice, get reading and blogging again.

Here's to the rapidly approaching end of this majestic shit-show of a year!  

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.

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.

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!!!

Long awaited (maybe) long overdue (very yes) pictures

Woo! I've only been promising to do this for...uh...how long?

Photos!

First is my current progress on my staff:

I have a crystal to set in the "fork", and I want to woodburn designs into it before I oil it.

I reworked my altar, using a cloth I got at Little Mysteries, and a statue of my guide Ayla I just finished painting. I took the fertility phallus down, and replaced it was a vase of wheat stalks, since we're into the early part of harvest season now. I have also reworked my corner altars, but I'll get photos of them next time.

You may notice in that photo that I have a new athame-- and it's pretty sparkle-tastic. I bought it, and then realized the package warned it might contain lead (more than likely in the brass pommel and guard.) So I coated it with a rustguard varnish, paint, glitter, and more varnish, one, to make it feel more unique to me, and two, to protect myself. I know handling lead itself isn't too bad, but I'm super paranoid about that stuff and don't want to be constantly running to wash my hands after handling it.

Plus, I think it looks badass.

I should also share, thanks to a friend who works at a leather/dead-animal-bits store, Renee and I now have a steer horn apiece, to clean and cure to use as drinking horns.

So stoked.

On Wednesday night we had a bit of a misadventure with a friend and a hanger-on she had been dragging about for awhile. It was probably one of the more formal and intense workings I've done...ever, really. The next night, I felt it prudent (since it's that time of year anyway, and because of everything that went down) to refresh, bless, and ward the apartment. All of the sigils have been renewed, and every means into and out of the house, including fan vents, taps, drains...have all been blessed.

I'm also happy to announce I'm almost done my IDGAF reading! I chose Essential Asatru by Diana L Paxson as my final book, and I only have about 30 pages left to go! I'll talk about it in greater detail once I'm done... This was only meant to be a quickie!

Night all, and enjoy the supermoon tonight!

Progress

Oh gods guys, it's scary to think there's like, a month and a half left of this. I am so behind on reading, like, I can't even.

But I did finish A Witch Alone. Final thoughts? Really good ideas for meditations, rites, etc. Super fluffy, somewhat preachy, and maddeningly contradictory otherwise. Still perma creeped by her very love n' light approach to deities. But I did take some things from the book, to be sure.

My next book is The Practical Heathen's Guide to Asatru by Patricia M. Lafayllve. Despite starting it less than a week ago, I'm over halfway through it. After reading that other Norse Mythology book at the start of my IDGAF process, I've been wanting to get into a more modern pagan aspect of looking at Norse mythology, deities, and associated practice. I'm not necessary looking to get into Asatru specifically, but I am finding a lot of what I'm reading already meshes pretty closely with my worldview, beliefs, and things I've been doing as part of my practice for quite awhile. I think the fact that I've been specifically looking forward to reading about this is part of why I'm burning through the book so quickly. It also made me go buy a bottle of mead, because mead is mentioned in the sense of use in ritual a lot and I haven't had mead in quite awhile. There is only one kind buyable here, and it used to be awesome but the last few times we had it, it sucked pretty bad. Bum batch, I guess. Ours wont be ready for awhile, but I thought I'd give theirs another shot...this bottle seems better. Maybe just because I really wanted it?

Our local pagan book/goodie shop is closing at the end of next month, after nearly 20 years of business. Our good friend Renee will be out of a fulltime job, and my wife will be out the occasional weekend of part-time casual work. She and I met in that store, and most of my tools which can't be handmade, my crystals, and incense, and candles, are from that store. There is nothing that compares with it in our city, so I'm pretty... sad, and bummed. I went last week with Amy, Visa in hand, and dropped an amount of money I would normally never spend all at once. But I figure, they were things I will not be able to easily get once the store is gone--and since I had the means to get them, I'd rather have them now than pick through leavings once they start selling out of things. I was too late to get a little cast-iron cauldron, which is something I'll have to source elsewhere since I've wanted one for awhile.

I'm going to be updating my altar tonight, and we're doing a full moon consecration ritual. I haven't forgotten I said I'd post a photo of my staff--it's coming along well, I have the sanding done. Now for woodburning, and then oiling, and then affixing my crystal I picked out to go in it. It'll be awhile yet, since I'd kinda like to woodburn some runes into it, but haven't the knowledge to make a sound choice on which to use. I have a book to read called Taking Up The Runes by Diana Paxson, but it'll have to wait until I'm more secure in being able to finish my IDGAF reading.

Cheers for now.

Beltaine

This is a big picture dump upcoming, since photos are worth a thousand words and I really think I am too sleepy for that many words right now. Like man.

Our coven had our Beltaine ritual tonight, which was "my" ritual to host/run, and part of our monthly ritual for IDGAF. We used Gods Be Praised's dad's yard, with a firepit, so we had a decent fire going. Before the ritual we roasted hot dogs, and afterward made S'mores.

Since none of us have a "hearth" to relight from our Beltaine fire, we each took a lantern with a tealight, and lit it in the fire, after tossing in pieces of parchment on which we had written things that sparked our creativity, passion, inspiration, or excitement. The candles can be relit, and used to light other candles and thus share that energy around our homes.

(These lanterns were $5 at a local grocery chain and are metal. The little silver one is Jackalope's, and was from walmart since she didn't have one. Mine is the red. Hee.)

Good times.

One thing I've definitely had to coax myself into has been altar remodeling. I used to leave my altar largely stagnant unless I got something new. I've been having a LOT of fun changing it around for the sabbats, even if there's only been Beltaine and Ostara so far that I've really changed it up for.

For my altar for Beltaine, I really had planned on sticking more with "fire" than "fertility, so I added a dragon statue, and a wooden piece I painted to look like a salamander. I did end up adding a small "lucky frog" figure for fertility.

Then, yesterday, I ended up at a local store called the Black Market, which sells a ton of stuff...including carved wooden penises. Honey Badger had already bought one, and wanted another. I thought perhaps this could be my more "traditional" fertility symbol for my altar. But I gotta admit. Not a big fan of penises. Even wooden ones. Mixture of being really gay, and also maybe a bit immature at times. So I thought, how can I make this dick less awkward to have on my altar?

Glitter.

This ended up turning into a pretty hilarious kitchen-party-for-three, my wife watching Honey Badger and I paint and bedazzle our wooden phalli. In the end, I decided to make mine a mushroom.

 I am so stupidly happy with how it turned out. It is glittery as fuck in person and the spots on the top glow in the dark. Mission fucking accomplished.

So I reworked the altar again to include it:

And replaced some stones in my leaf bowl with some acorns.

I definitely have some post-rit exhaustion, but it was an awesome night, and finally the first real day of sun and good temperatures. Maybe, hope to the gods, spring is finally here?

My Altar--April 2014.

Filler

So this is way overdue. I was going to blog, but I feel like I haven't been home for days. So I thought last night that I would do a vid instead, but ended up feeling horrible. Lack of sleep and barometric pressure were giving me the headache from hell and I was feeling kinda sicky. I'm better today, so fingers crossed that I dodged whatever it was.

So, BOOK. Still plugging away at the Norse Mythology monster. I only have about 100 pages left, which means I'll be done still behind schedule but sooner than I was hoping for, which is good. I grabbed a copy of The Way of the Hedge Witch, which isn't on the initiation list, but The Way of the Green Witch is, and they're from the same author. I will read it as a treat since one thing I did get done last night was a mother load of reading. I started it at work earlier, and am about 15 pages in. Interesting so far.

My plan was to rearrange my altar again, since I had acquired some new bobbles, but headache killed that plan. Later in the week I'll be getting some goodies I painted at the clay cafe, (you buy and paint bisque pieces and they fire it for you) which will be good altar pieces. There is a small leaf bowl, a small oak leaf, and a little cup/bowl in the shape of a drawstring bag. So I'll pretty it up once I have my new goodies, and hopefully by then my head will stop being a dbag. 

We went back to the clay cafe tonight to finish up some shot glasses Amy didn't have time to finish on Sunday. The plan was to pick up a small leaf, to go with the others, to give me something to do while Amy finished her stuff. Somehow that turned into a leaf, a small disk, and Amy and I split a pair of ceramic antlers, which I painted to reflect the four seasons: (oops...$30 later)

If you've never painted bisque before, it will look quite different once it is fired, so consider this the "before" shot. The stuff from Sunday will be ready tomorrow; we'll probably get it Friday. The stuff from tonight sadly won't be ready until next week. Can't wait to set it up on my altar!

My Altar

Wooo, first post! As part of a project involving some friends of ours, I started this blog. It's going to basically be a journaling of my witchcraft/pagan learnings,  and a record of my growth.

I thought a nice first post would be to show off my current altar. It's tucked neatly in the corner of the bedroom, and above and to the right are two corner shelves, one of which is another altar of mine (That's currently mostly empty) and the one below it belongs to my wife.

As of yesterday, my altar looked like this:

I moved things around a bit. I also (tried) to redye my altar cloth. It's literally just a piece of cut broadcloth which I dyed once already with old tea bags to make it more of an off-white colour with a mottled pattern. I was trying to dye it blue, using dark blue food colouring...

And now it's pink. (It's much more vibrant in person.) Urk. Not terribly pleased. Not sure how blue dye turned something pink, but I guess it's at least a nice colour for spring. I'm not finished; it's "missing" something. But what I have on there right now:

-my athame
-my bell rattle. The wooden handle used to be the end of my old wand. I use it as a "smokeless smudge" when burning sage is either unavailable, or I want something more physical. (I can shake the rattle harder for emphasis.)
-shells, moon snails, and sand dollars in a big mussel shell (to represent water)
-a wooden sculpture of three birds, and
-a tiny wooden owl (to represent air, and also birds in general)
-a teeny little dragon (fire, and dragons)
-The pale green up with the red ribbon, to the left of the black bowl, is full of forest things-it has an acorn, several chestnuts, and a piece of bark.  (earth and forest)
-the black and red bowl is used for offerings, or placing stones, or anything where I need a shallow container
-the wooden plaque is painted with a pentacle in the centre, and with representations of all four seasons around it.
-the blue and white candle holder is handmade, and is supposed to be a wave (I guess...)
-there's a little owl shaker, sitting in an owl candle holder. He serves the same purpose as my bell rattle.

It's still a work in progress. But it's a start!