Catching Up!

So last year I focused on The Sisters of Fierceness Sabbats.  I missed posting on the last one, the Solstice of Rebirth and Renewal. We're off to a fabulous new start with a few new members this year and our Call to Adventure ritual at the beginning of February was an inspiring start to the year! This coming weekend, we're already on to celebrating our Equinox Rites of Discernment (Refusal and Acceptance).

In the meantime, with all that going on, I initiated into the Wildflower Collective at the PDX Sabbat of Prophecy and Initiation! I couldn't be more delighted! Lots ahead of me to work on, and such lovely people to work on it all with!  In the coming year, I hope to track my thoughts more along the lines of what I started out doing.  Last year went fast and while I was having all sorts of thoughts as we fleshed out the Sisters of Fierceness, I didn't always think to track them except in relation to the sabbats as they moved through the year.

March is when we start talking about the importance of Daily Practice. I do my daily practice at night before bed. Because of the time of night that is, it's really almost the first thing I do in a day.  Connecting each day with the sacred, the divine, my community in shared practice, is really grounding.  I can count on one hand the times I've missed my daily practice, and generally it's been because I've been so unwell that I could hardly stand, much less have the brain space to remember words.  Fortunately I'm not in that place too often because that's a miserable place to be!

So not going to try to hit all of the things right now, there's time, there's time, there's time. :)  But before I go -- happy International Women's Month, and o hai, today (since it's past midnight) is International Women's Day!  I'm looking forward to seeing how it's celebrated this year!

Observations

On a less personal and more observational note ~ So aside from being in the front row and a little bit nervous about that because the majority of the appropriate congregation ritual response was happening behind me, having a front row observation point for the (very Catholic) ceremony was really interesting from a theoretical perspective (brought up Lutheran, have identified as witch since the mid/late 80s).  Very hard, of course, from the personal perspective, I ended up sitting where it felt like the giant photo of my nephew at the front was looking right at me, which was very eery.  

But back to the theoreticals -- since we're talking about elements, in an effort to keep somewhat grounded, I was looking for how the elements appear in the ritual.  

Fire is obvious in the candles. And it being the Catholic church, of course they had the little place that probably has a name I don't know where you can light a candle.  Outside, there was a huge 'cave' with Mary, and there were candles you could light out there too.  M2 lit one out there, but was too nervous/teary eyed in the church to leave my side.  For context, this is all happening on the campus of a Jesuit university and everything that goes along with that.  So, there's fire.   

Fire and air mix with the charcoal and incense.  So, counting that as air, but the church was ginormous, so it also had a very airy feeling generally.  Lots of space.

Water too was relatively easy to find, in the water shaker thing, that probably has a name I don't know, as well as the holy water at the back of the church, baptismal font, etc.  

Earth stumped me for a bit, but then I saw all kinds of earth.  Marble, flowers (so many flowers)... Not so much "earthy" earth stuff as solid forms.  The altar was very solid appearing.  The architecture was very solid around the edges.  So that was a fascinating exercise. 

The priest did a good job of recognizing that there were a lot of non-Catholics present and explaining parts of the ceremony in a way that was both informative but that melded beautifully with the service itself. He did a really nice job of 'here is why and how we do this' providing context and meaning to something that might have been otherwise empty ritual.  "In the Catholic funerary tradition we bless the remains because all humans are special and sacred in God's eyes," etc. 

There is a deep deep beauty about much of it, but the layers of patriarchy & 'you are sinful and you should feel really really bad about it' that are present almost overwhelms any of the potential for joy around the life everlasting, the generosity of willing sacrifice and love, and the grace and appreciation of having those sins absolved.  It's quite a conflict to hold in oneself.  Two such disparate spaces to maintain -- 'I am not good enough, but I am so deeply loved that... I'm good enough'?   And perhaps that's a fundamentally necessary part of the mystery component of the personal gnosis of the Christian faith, the transformative core.  

I will likely be an observer of the Christian church for the rest of my life as the dominant religious paradigm of the larger social networks within which I live.  I cannot subscribe to the faith in good faith for more reasons than I wish to go into here.  I feel like my thoughts here are being left unresolved, like I should have a summary about what it means to be observing these things from the outside.  But I don't have the words to articulate it right now. Perhaps another time.

....

Perhaps it is this:  our challenge as spiritual people, whatever our non/denomonation, whatever our personal and community practice is, our challenge as priest/ess/ex (or dedicant, or aspirant), is to identify what is good, what is right, what is beautiful and with care and love incorporate the *essence* of what works (care and love preclude inappropriate appropriation -- the difference as the Dali Lama notes is that you *pick* a flower you like, you *water* a flower you love.  Just because you like something doesn't mean it's yours to practice...).  It may be beyond my capability to articulate this message of inclusion of The Good, while making clear the boundaries where Good becomes Bad -- but they're there.  There is a deep spiritual yearning, and it is the role of the priest/ess/ex to help guide people to and through that yearning.  

From a Conversation with P

Increasingly my understanding of magic is that it's the clarifying and articulation of intention. If that intention moves forwards and backwards in time, if it changes vibration of the currents of the universe, who knows... The critical act is in the act itself of clarifying and articulating the intention.  

There are a lot of ways one can do that, some resonate with one more than others, but it's always extremely personal. The variety in approach is fascinating. There is and always will be more to learn...

Ultimately, if you don't follow through with elbow grease and appropriate work, shit doesn't happen though. The clarification and articulation make the path forward more obvious -- part of planning out the crafting of a magical act is understanding what concrete actions happen afterward to bring the intention to fruition.

The Ancestors

Ancestor stuff is complicated, especially when one starts taking into account shadow sides, and recognizing them as whole, complex people.

On Death Rituals

We tend not to be an overly sentimental family.  We've waited months to bury cremated relatives, they aren't going anywhere, and we've had other things to attend to. Maybe sentimental isn't the right word.  There is a time and a place for all things, and while Death itself may be inconveniently timed, ritual around it unfolds as it needs to.

In the cases where we've waited, technology has made it possible for us to take care of the life stuff that continues until such time as we could make and hold appropriate space to recognize the passing.  It is more respectful, in some ways, than a rush to get the shell in the ground that sometimes happens.

Sometimes the ritual emphasizes the event of a life lived with a peaceful closure, often this is the case with those who have lived a full, long life.  Often for those who are cut short, while consciously attempting to emphasize the event of the life lived and peaceful closure, the unconscious impact is that of deepening the shock of life lost too soon. There is no way around this, and it can be handled better or worse, the processes will unfold as they do.

As part of this Graveyard Moon, M2 & I went and wandered about a cemetery. In order to get there, I drove past the one where my paternal grandparents are buried.  It was a moment of conflict for me, why?  My initial, impulse thought was, "They are not there."  Wait -- what?  What I gain from going and walking among the stones and the dead is more to re-ground, re-center.  Wandering out there, I can feel the hinkiness of the day-to-day miasma and cluttery energy drain out my heels.  The perspective that we are on this unlikely tiny blue planet for a blip in time and when it's done, only memories are carried by those you impact.

Ancestors

So we carry the memories of those who have impacted us forward. That which is remembered, lives.  I think it will take me some time to figure out how The Ancestors fit into my practice.  They are not where I turn for advice, or divination, or posthumous blessings, and yet it seems appropriate to remember the gifts they provided, through traits, experiences, etc, with gratitude and appreciation, while recognizing and acknowledging their potential shadow sides as well.

'... we therefore commit the body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust...'

Witching Hour of the Graveyard Moon

And now it's The Witching Hour, my pretties!

Dammit, why is there no cackling Witch riding off into the night on a broom! Or at least a hair pin emoticon like the hilarious Witch Hazel on Bugs Bunny! I love Witch Hazel...

 

A key, it's a gift to us all from Hekate! May it unlock the secrets we need to hear tonight, and may she light our way through the darkness we encounter in the world with her torch! May she and her blessed dead and our blessed dead and her big black dog guard us and protect us. 

Burn, baby, burn, disco inferno! 🔥

Moon in my backyard!

All The Incense!

Happy Full Moon, my witchy friends!

Storms

Tonight is the first big Storm of the season. I love them for being big and furious and windy and rainy, but sometimes that love is in retrospect as in the moment I'm hearing what's landing on my roof and realizing that we are surrounded by trees many many times the height of our house.  It is occasionally of small comfort that the house and trees have lived together for the last 50ish years without incident, but having had a tree miss a house I was living in when I was young, but taking out the deck not five feet away left an impression! Though being me, I slept through the event...

Sipping a glass of whiskey and seltzer on the rocks, thinking it's probably time to do my refresher reading before we meet tomorrow. I have a tendency to read through things and by the time we're supposed to discuss, I've read so many other things in the meantime, I can't remember if the thing that comes to mind to discuss is from the reading our something else any more.

The other night I actually got out my incenses and burned a bunch of it. There's something about sitting and watching the incense smoke drift and curl and flicker in candle light. Easy to trance out on. Sometimes in those moments it becomes clear what is the work that must be done. In addition to some thank you offerings, I took care of some other stuff too. Am thinking what I did might be useful to repeat a few more times as well, though it's more involved than what I usually do.

The rain is coming down so hard it's steamy in here. Perhaps because the heat's on downstairs. And they're calling to me from down there, so perhaps I will take temporary leave from the immediacy of this storm and rejoin it later. Reading can wait, sort of like the henna I was going to do tonight... But mud and no power can be a problem and the lights have been flickering too.

Various Thoughts on Homework Questions

1.) Coven size -- benefits of a large coven is that the likelihood that you'll have enough people to make for a nice sized gathering for any particular even is better.  Also, folks can break into smaller 'affinity' groups for the smaller group experience (men/women, folks interested in specific areas, etc).  In my experience, a certain number of people are required to get and maintain a certain level of community momentum as well.  Drawbacks can be that it's more difficult to get to know everyone (sometimes even find conflicts with some).  With really huge groups, there is the possibility of getting lost in the crowd as well.

2.)  Jaina Bee and I have been friends since we were 16 and I'd been following along with her process here and elsewhere.  For a long time, this aspect of my life had slipped under.  We moved into new space and it's... there's a lot going on here, and I started feeling like it was time to dig out.  I was sort of mucking through a reintroduction, having lots of thoughts and questions, and when Jaina said, "hey, we're going to give distance aspirant a try", it seemed like the perfect thing to give the digging out a sense of focus and process.  Honestly, the distance  piece was a big piece of the draw for me.  Between kids and work, I haven't got a lot of social energy or going out and doing things space, but I'm a night owl and tend to find that when I have space for thinking and through stuff is after most reasonable people are asleep.  Also, initial forays into not nearly as well established attempts similarly made me think perhaps I would like to keep the 'safety net' of interaction online, at least initially.  Now I sort of wish y'all lived a lot nearer, but I like feeling connected to people all over the place too, so it's all good.  :)

3.)  I schedule my time commitments as soon as have confirmation, and often significantly ahead of that if I think something might be coming up.  Two kids with school events and swim team makes this imperative.  I am pretty rigid about keeping scheduled events -- I flex my weekly gyrokinesis class  once or more a month in part because I have teacher training and can (and should more regularly) do it on my own, and in order to fit CAYA in, that's the only way it was going to happen.  In the absence of pretty compelling reason, I will be where I say I'm going to be, if it makes it on to my calendar though.

4.)  Ritual -- Chrystal mentioned as part of ritual a potlatch that we both experienced at different times.  Potlatch in the big house was SUCH a formative experience for me. And listening to Bill and Carla and Karen's stories around the campfire, and the big canoes. I miss them all so much. Jaina and I bonded at sixteen on the Indian canoe trip, the canoe that was taken out by the ancient madrona branch a few years ago. I still sing a mangled version of either a canoeing song or it might be a lullaby that Karen taught us. Such a tremendous honor that Bill was given these dances to share with us all. Such an amazing experience.   I watched on the sidelines from 10-16, then participated in a couple when I was older.  Cedar burning still triggers really strong, good memories for me.  Deep soul food.  And the art of the coastal tribes too.  But ritual.  That was a huge summer ritual, between the dances, the canoes, the salmon baked traditionally staked up around pits of cedar bark.  There was the Sunday ritual of going to church (Lutheran) with my parents where I learned some sense of structured religious ritual, both in complex ritual, as well as how simple and stripped down the ritual could be and still be fairly profoundly meaningful.  Now I have my daily practice, parts done in the morning as soon as I'm coherent enough to remember where I am in the recitation and parts done in the evening as part of my getting ready for bed, cleaning off the day, sending love, best wishes and gratitude out, and checking in/grounding.  I do the Mothers of the New Time at full moon.  I clean and sweep with intent at new, and burn down the remains of candles that are too far gone for their candle holders in a big ceramic plant dish.  Sometimes I plan rituals, sometimes they happen spontaneously.  Sometimes daily acts (cooking, cleaning, etc) are ritual acts, and sometimes they're just getting stuff done...  Ritual is such a state of mind thing -- it sometimes seems anything in the right mind set can be ritual.