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!

Thought and Memory

A lot has happened.

I suspect 99% of the folks reading this will know a bit about why I've been gone so long. Long story short, we are now happy homeowners in a house that is finally feeling like home. I had a rough mental health spell - one of my worst ever - but I got the help I needed, and though it was a very hard time, I managed to keep going, get up every morning and go to work, eat, drink, sleep, so that is something.

And now I'm doing very well!

Our new home has a small third bedroom that has become our sacred/altar room - that is its only function, and it is so incredible to have such a space. No more altar crammed into a corner of the bedroom - I've allowed my altar to stretch out, giving me a good chunk of space to have my "seasonal" setup, and also a mostly clear space where I can "work" - and numerous shelves and nooks to give me gods and spirits space. Some things are still empty-ish, but it's always a work in progress, but it's been a lot of fun getting it set up the way I wanted it.

Our yard is incredible - again once we get it cleaned up, and get a privacy fence put in, it's going to be an amazing space for fires, drinks, parties, barbecues - and rituals.

I've gone through some pretty crazy spiritual changes and transformations - I'm working with a specific animal right now as a sort of "totem" and am feeling very strongly drawn to start looking into more shamanic practices. (I guess not a huge shock given my relationship with Odin.) More on that later!

My spiritual path and my personal life recently got shaken up a bit. Revelation comes sometimes for me in bursts - I realized a situation was no longer even remotely healthy for me, and in one of those deepthought flashes, I realized it had not, in fact, been healthy for a very long time-years in fact. It takes a lot for me to throw up my hands and walk away. But I will not be mistreated, held to unreasonable expectations, and taken for granted, either. The severing was not gentle or without blood, but it was necessary and beautiful in its finality.

I've felt better, been happier, less stressed, more social, more me ever since.

Our Ostara ritual was beautiful. There were four of us - myself and my wife, our friend the Wolf, and a fourth friend whom we haven't been able to practice with in awhile. She brought her dog, who found our ritual spot for us, then lay quietly within the circle and was on her absolute best behavior until we were done.

In case anyone was wondering, natural dyes do work *fantastically* on eggs. These are yellow onion skins (The dark red-orange) red cabbage (the blue) and beets (the soft brown).

My wife got me an amazing set of tarot cards for my birthday - The Animal Totem Tarot by Leeza Robertson. It's a new deck, just released in late March - unlike most of the animal themed decks I've seen, this one tries to still incorporate a good chunk of symbolism from more "traditional" decks. And the artwork is simply gorgeous, to boot.

The only downside to my days are that my grandmother is increasingly unwell. She's fallen prey to the only illness my family has a strong genetic predisposition to - Alzheimer's. Every week now she gets worse - she no longer knows my aunt, who's lived with her for more than 40 years. They are trying, finally, to get her into a care facility, but it could take years for approval and a bed to come up. It makes me heartbroken to know how much she's lost - this is a woman who was adamant she never wanted to be a burden to anyone,  and kept a journal every single day of her life so she'd never forget a thing. She'd write about my visits, what we did - did I help in the garden, did we play in the yard? She kept a separate logbook for her garden - what was planted, what worked, what didn't - what colour of this or that flower, what type of peas and beans and beet seeds she used. How many pints of raspberries she picked. To see her so far gone that she wouldn't even recognize those journals, now, as hers...it does hurt. But only time will tell now - in some ways I hope that she passes quickly from her illness, rather than linger for another countless number of years not remembering who she is.

I'll have more specific things to talk about soon - some of my spiritual growth, my changes, what I've learned. I just wanted to give everyone a big catch-up on where the hell I've been.

Ostara

A little late, I know.

We held our Ostara ritual on Sunday afternoon. We wanted to plant herbs, with the intention that they would represent things we wanted to see "grow" in the new season. We bought seeds, pots and soil.

We went out to the woods, to our spot there. We started a fire in the cauldron, and took turns writing on pieces of parchment paper our "wish" for the new season to come; then burning them.

While we were out in the woods, we noticed a LOT of tree branches were knocked down from the crazy amount of wind and heavy snow we've had this year. A whole tree trunk by our altar was downed, and there was a long branch from another tree laying on the ground. I was reminded that I want to make a staff, and that I was "instructed"--not sure by whom--that the bough I used for the staff should have enough extra wood at the end to make a set of runes. This had that and more. I got permission from the woods to take it, and we broke some of it off (because it was every bit of 10-12 feet long probably) and I carried it back.

We kept the ashes from our ritual fire, and I ground them in our mortal and pestle, to add to the soil we were going to plant the herbs in.

Grindin'

My pot with the ashes at the bottom.

I am growing peppermint, Amy lavender, Drew thyme and Renee is growing anise. It's too early to see signs of life yet I think, but I hope they all grow. (And only partly because I want fresh peppermint leaves for tea.)

Here's to spring, and new growth. I have empty places to fill.

(We are currently getting a severe blizzard. I was sent home early from work, and only avoided being stranded because someone gave me a drive. They pulled the buses. Irony.)