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.

Let it begin with each step we take

Sunday night I attended the 18th annual Vancouver Reclaiming Spiral Dance. I've gone to this public ritual on and off for the last 11 years and I always get something out of it.

The first year I went was especially powerful for me because during the meditation portion of the ritual I was able to connect to my Dad, who had passed on 12 years before. It was a very healing and cathartic experience and I look forward each year to passing through the thinning veil to connect with my beloved dead.

This year was the first time I've participated in the Spiral Dance while pregnant; with the Peanut I was out of town for the ritual and held a private ritual where I felt and welcomed her spirit into my life. I can still sometimes feel her spectral hand inside mine; a sensation that stuck with me as I traveled back through the veil after my visit to the Summerland that year. At the time I thought I was welcoming her spirit to come within the new year; little did I know she was already nestled inside and her hand was there in mine to tell that secret instead. My trip to the Summerland wasn't as specific this year as with the Peanut or my first trip. I felt the pull of more than one spirit when I stepped onto the shore and instead of a one on one or small gathering I felt enveloped in joy which was exactly what I needed.

The spiral this year was very energized and energizing; our intentions as well as the greater work of bringing healing to our earth fed into the cone and I could feel the room vibrating at the end with the energy and joy that the dance had built up.

I'll be keeping my personal work simple as usual. I'll take a moment to honour my beloved dead again on Samhain night and I'll be working some divination to see what's ahead this coming year. I like to use the time between Samhain and Yule to consider what seeds and goals I want to give birth to over the new year. One of those goals is to start incorporating a permanent altar space. How do you celebrate the new year of the Witches?

The Veil Thins

This year (and last year too); I've noticed that my dreams this have been featuring some of my beloved dead. My cousin who passed last spring has been a frequent visitor as have grand parents and others. Last year the I could feel the veil thinning too. I've been trying to keep track of what is said during these dreams and to be honest; waiting to see my Dad in one or more of them. Samhain marks my annual meeting with him in the Summerlands, I look forward to sharing that time with him under the apple trees.

In the past; before we moved into a house and were living in an apartment building the thinning of the veil didn't feel so immediate throughout the month and any contact I had with my ancestors took place at the Samhain ritual. I have to say that I prefer the gradual opening to the one night approach since it reminds me that the year is a wheel that turns progressively through out the seasons.

What about you? Do you feel the veil beginning to thin too?

Sometimes all you have to do is ask

This seems to be the case with life these days. The universe just seems to be bringing those things that we are asking for into our grasp.

Take the husband for instance. For a few weeks last spring he was talking about how he wanted to get a bike. We talked about looking for used ones that wouldn't be so pricey, and other options to fit within our limited budget. Then one afternoon the neighbors across the street were cleaning out their garage. Instead of lumping all the things they wanted to get rid of out side their house they spread it out a little. With sign taped to each: a TV and box of random stuff to their right, an old fridge in front of their home, an old door in front of the house on the left and in front of our house a bike.

I just happened to glance out the window and saw the bike leaning against the tree in the front, went out to take a look and voila! bike for husband.

Now, with the Bean on the way we're talking about getting a dishwasher. When we moved to our current home we gave up the luxury of having a dishwasher and restarted the chore of filling the sink 2 times or more a day and scrubbing by hand. Not that I'm complaining but I know that when the Bean gets here washing dishes is going to be one of those things that will likely get away from me.

So, when we had my sister and her boyfriend over dinner with my niece on the weekend to welcome them to the lower mainland I casually mentioned while the dishes were being washed that we were planning on looking for a dishwasher in the fall. And then my niece turns to me and says, "you can have my portable one, we don't need it because we have a built in one in our place"

I know some people would call it luck but I prefer to look at it as becoming more aware of things and being open to opportunities. Now if only the lottery money that I've been saying would do the same thing...

have you had experiences where things just fell into place right when they were needed?

So now you know

what's put a little bump in the road I've been taking on my journey. And the bump is getting a little on the big side.

I haven't been completely idle over the last few weeks, I've been reading and learning here and there. Luckily for me, my fabulous second Mom (read Ma-in Law) has similar interests; and I like to pick up knowledge wherever I can. So when I noticed that she had a few books by James Van Praagh in her library stack I picked them up and started to do a little reading.

I often find that Pagan concepts are sometimes interchangeable with the concepts of other spiritual practices. Up to and including some Christian practices; although in the case of Christian and specifically some Catholic practices and rituals I know that this is because these religions picked up Pagan practices as a way to bring more people into their fold (the celebrations of Eostara and Easter for example.) What I found with Mr Van Praagh's books was that some of the things he does to get ready to practice his talents are interchangeable with what is standard practice for getting oneself ready for ritual; these things have just been fit into a shape that is more acceptable to someone who has been brought up within an environment that frowns upon (and sometimes even more than frowns upon depending on how open and loving a mind is) those things that fall outside of the norm.

Mr Van Praagh's background is based in Catholicism, (at one point in his youth he was training to become a priest) but when he gets ready to speak to the spirits he follows the steps of cleansing, grounding (imagining energy filling his body and spreading out beyond himself) and calling in his spiritual guides and Deity to protect himself and to bless his work thorough prayer and meditation.

When I get ready to do ritual I go through the same steps of cleansing, grounding where the earth's energy is drawn up from the core until is cascades out my fingers, toes and top of my head. I cast a circle by calling in the quarters and Deity as I cast a circle to help me with the work I wish to do. Looking at the two practices side by side they are very similar; almost interchangeable if you take out specifics regarding spirit and religion.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that once more my thoughts about Deity (whether Deity be a singular God or Goddess or a whole pantheon) and spiritual practice (whether it be Pagan or a more mainstream religious practice) are all about the same thing.

Healing the Waters

Spell work is all about putting your intentions out there for the universe to pick up and amplify. The thing about the universe is that we are all connected to it and all those things we send out there are felt and put to work in one degree or another through that interconnectedness.

So when a group of people get together with similar intentions it ripples out into the universe a little farther and faster than if the intention was coming from a singular source. This coming Saturday is the New Moon, a time for setting the stage for change. Hanna at Divining Women has an extraordinary idea for a New Moon spell work that will send energy and healing to the waters in the Atlantic where a gaping hole in our ocean's floor is gushing toxic oil and gas into our living waters, killing and damaging so much as it continues.

Like so many others I am sickened, enraged and so much more over this avoidable tragedy. I won't put any energy into finger pointing, there are a lot of other people better equipped to do that, people with knowledge that I don't have and the capacity to put into words what I am feeling and thinking so much better than I can. I want more than anything for the damage to stop and for the waters that have been poisoned and everything that that poison is touching to be cleaned and whole again.

So I will add my energy to the healing with a spell of my own on Saturday. I will send my intentions out into the universe with everyone else who has pledged to do the same on Saturday. As I lay my hands on the waters and pour my thoughts of healing and strength into our Mother I will feel the combined energy of those who are participating and feel the wave of energy as it pours into the water headed out to where the earth needs it the most.

Join us won't you?

Out of the mouths of babes

I wanted to write that sometimes I'm surprised at how children see the world but really what I mean is that I am amazed and in awe at how much truth they see and how they cut to the heart of the matter so elegantly. I read Any Mommy all the time. Her posts have opened my eyes to any number of hard, painful and beautiful things, also; she has the ability to make me laugh and cry in a single post.

Recently she posted a conversation she had with one of her children about what I refer to as Deity since I believe in more than one aspect of the divine and what she refers to as God. In the conversation she asked her son what he thought God was, his answer gave me chills with it's beautiful simplicity. It is the answer I would like to give to any one who ever asks me what I think Deity is. You can read it here:
Is There Any Mommy Out There?: Tell me all your thoughts on God

Talking religion and faith is a touchy subject, one that I rarely get into with people who don't know where my faith lies. In the case of talking to children about faith and religion, the subject itself is so immense it's hard to know where to start, how much to impart, what to leave alone. I come from a family that didn't really observe religion beyond Christmas and Easter and Church was never a part of those holidays for us. I want to raise my daughter to respect all aspects of the earth, her community and the divine. I'm doing this, as I do most things in baby steps, a little here and there, adding to our family practice as she grows older. We started with a night time prayer to the moon, an aspect of Deity that I feel strongly about. We've moved on to celebrating each Sabbat and Esbat in simple and fun ways. As we move onward we'll add more.

I believe, as I do with anything that has to do with parenting; that whatever is working for you and your family is the best thing for you to be doing. Taking into account the idea that no harm is being done of course.