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!  

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.

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?

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.)