spinning spinning

And my thoughts they spinand I am left off balance, gasping waiting for the room to stillall those moments dancing by. lightning fast too swift to seeall jumbled. separate. melted. apart. turning ever more inwards towards that still. quiet. center towards the raucous celebration

The wheel keeps turning on and on and waits for no one to get their act together no matter what may be causing the detours. Looking back at the last year it's all a blur. but that's how it goes when you introduce a new human into the family they take up time and attention and then before you know it the harvest is in the days grow shorter and Samhain passes with the barest of attention and then it's Yule and time once again to plan for the future.

Once again I head into the lengthening days with the best of intentions and the knowledge that I will approach them with an open heart and mind. 

The above is an Etsy Treasury that I've just made. It illustrates how this year has seemed to go for me. The verse is my own also a little bit about how I've felt over the last twelve months. A little muddled, ecstatic, in control, out of control, loud, quiet, dancing, singing, crying; for there has been loss (I will miss you terribly Gran, every time I think to reach for the phone to have a visit the loss hits again) and laughter; for life goes on and it is impossible nit to laugh with two funny girls in my care.

On this longest darkest night I bend my thoughts to what I want to discard, burn in the flames that will light the dark tonight:

my tendency to over analyze and talk myself out of opportunity

And what I want to get out of the coming days:

a garden more abundant than last year, more art, more singing, more dancing, a re-entry into employment...

Lammas/Lugnasadh

Keeping with my commitment to observe the Sabbats today we celebrated the first f the three harvest festivals by enjoying a meal together. On the menu was a homemade chicken soup flavoured with some of our garden herbs and some corn bread. We toasted to a fruitful harvest and enjoyed our meal.

Simple and easy which worked well since my Bean is teething and has her sinus working overtime. This means my early evenings are filled with trying to get her settled and not in pain. Not a great place to be doing a lot of ritual work but that can come later.

What I did do was spend some time in my garden (something I have been doing almost daily so far, if only to pick berries or harvest some lavender) and really look at where we are in the growing season and doing a little planning for the next few weeks. This is only our second year planting a garden and I find that my main concern other than weeding, ant control and slug trapping; is that I want to plant more next year.

Our growing season is pretty behind right now, so far raspberries, lavender and a handful of pea pods have been the only things coming out. My basil is not doing as well as I'd like, Tomatoes are flowering but not showing any signs of fruit, and broccoli and the lettuce is starting to show heads but my carrots, and onions are dead in the ground, the carrots flopped last week and the onions didn't even make a show. I'm learning and have plans to start from seed in the coming winter.



If I can get to it I'll post a little about what Lammas and Lugnasadh is another time. Until then I've got these images from our dinner with the lemon Balm Tiger Lily arrangement I put together for the feast.

Magick Everyday, Everywhere

Over at the Balanced Witch, the second assignment (for lack of a better word) is to consider supposed “coincidences” and to try to look at it from a magickal point of view. I've written about my views of magick here, and here and I still believe that our intentions, the energy that we put out into the world we live in comes back to us. This is magick. Like quantum it's all around us.

I've been pummeling my poor little brain to think of other examples of how magickal energy works. My introduction to both my daughters jumped to mind but at first thought, both of those seemed to me to be less about active energy than passive.

For the Peanut I "met" her spirit on a Summer Land meditation during Samhain. As I was getting ready to leave that place I felt a hand resting in my right hand a sensation that has repeated over and over since she became a part of our little family. During the Summer Land meditation we meet with our beloved dead and the spirits of those who are meant to be in our lives in the future can introduce themselves. At the end of the journey they sometimes follow us back. The Peanut followed me back and I invited her to stay.

Before the Bean made her presence known last year (with a combination upset stomach and an uncontrollable desire for frosted croissants and poutine with dill pickles) we had come to the conclusion that the Peanut was going to be an only child. We'd been not not trying for a second child for three years and with no signs of pregnancy, we reluctantly decided it wasn't to be. Both the husband and I felt that if we were meant to have a second child it would happen, if not it wouldn't, no pressure.

It hadn't happened and we had no sooner acknowledged this to each other when I dreamed one night of kicks in my belly. I took this dream as my subconscious' way of mourning the loss of a second child; I'd mentioned to the husband that I would miss feeling the quickening of pregnancy. Little did I know, that the Bean was and is a real kicker. She spent a good portion on the inside working her leg muscles into the big juicy dumplings that still kick out at all hours of the day and night. Once we learned that we had a bean the dream took on a whole new meaning.

Both of those experiences were amazing and magickal, but not based in any overt active pursuit of a goal. As I mentioned, even though we had made the decision to have a child (and once the Peanut was thriving; children) we didn't do much more than stop practicing to have a baby. We weren't not trying to get pregnant. Of course we put our intentions out into the universe but only in as much as we wanted it to happen if it was supposed to happen.

Intention

I'm back at it, but taking a simpler route. Gone are the grandest of plans but not my desire to fulfill them (visions of copperplate handwriting with gorgeous Pre-Raphaelite like images in a hand bound book of shadows anyone?) I will one day create a book of shadows to rival any movie art department creation but to try to do so now is just asking for a project that will never be finished.

So I'm starting along my path again traveling towards the divine. I've got my stack of books, my reference web pages and it's a full moon what better time to begin? You know other than in November? But I'm impatient to get going so...

One of the web pages I'm using to follow on this path is The Balanced Witch she has a section titled 366 days of Magick which is exactly the type of book I was looking for when I decided to travel the road to dedication last year. I'm following along there and will be linking there as often as I can.

I know that keeping focused is going to be a challenge (for example: with my Momma brain I just spent three minutes trying to remember that "challenge" was the word I was thinking of there) I've got the Jelly Bean taking up a lot of time and energy on one side, The Peanut is on another side with her needs (she's starting school in the fall and she's been very gracious about the whole new little sister thing). Getting the time to study and put in the amount of work that this path requires in order to make it worthwhile will mean that I'll be going slowly. The wonderful thing about connecting with the divine is that it is always there, waiting for you. So step one is a statement of intention:

I am entering into a period of learning (and refreshing my knowledge) about witchcraft and connecting with the Goddess and the God through this period of re/education with the creation of a Book of Shadows in blog form. At the end of this journey I want to feel more in touch with deity and the faith that feels right to me; to have built a foundation on which I can make my faith an integral piece of my daily life.

Restart

It's nearing a year since I began doing a year and a day's worth of study. Of course that journey was derailed by the simultaneous journey of welcoming the Jelly Bean into our lives. For whatever reason the Bean was conceived in the same week that I started my studies and as the pregnancy went on with the morning sickness and tiredness and then the uncomfortableness of carrying a lot of extra weight and the aches and pains on top of all the extra appointments with doctors and specialists and personal emotional and family dramas; study took a backseat and then just exited the car all together.

While I'm not looking to take a year and a day (more like as long as it takes to get it done) I'm going to restart the journey. Fortunately for me there are a few more online resources to help out and I'm going to take full advantage of them. My goals are still the same, I'm looking to incorporate creativity into my practice and with my hands full of Peanut and Bean things I can't be doing things with hard and fast deadlines. I'm just looking to get it done in my own time.

Now, working without a specific deadline will be a challenge. I'm hoping that sharing my journey here will help spur me on.

So here's to a new beginning and many more posts to come. Soon.

Welcome Welcome!

Sixteen days ago we welcomed our Bean into the family fold. She was born weighing 9lb 2.5oz with a beautiful thatch of dark hair and very munchable chubby cheeks.

Yule

Happy Yule!

What do I have planned? I'm afraid that it's not much. This pregnancy is getting to the point where I ache all over and where I'm not aching I'm being pummeled from within or experiencing lovely Braxton Hicks contractions from the time I go to be until roughly 4 each morning. So any ritual or magick that I participate in will be the barest of the minimum. Perhaps a shared cup and a sun shaped cookie to offer the goddess and the god. As for the lunar eclipse tonight, we'll see how things go.

I wish you all a most beautiful celebration tonight.