Moving!

All right, all two potential readers who find this! I'm moving virtual space! If you want to keep up with me and The Pantheon and all our craziness, check out my new website at http://musingsofmagick.weebly.com/

Last night I ordered new business cards. This may not seem that exciting or that spiritual until I mention that these cards are specifically for my spiritual practice. For my reiki/intuitive healing practice that's slow developing, and for my new business project--PaganStitches, a little Etsy shop where I'm going to sell handmade spell and herbal pouches. I hope to have the shop up and stocked with the first wave of pouches and pillows by the end of the month! And I need to find a place to set up shop for my energy healing, but I've already got some brilliant trades set up with friends who are also energy healers. It's going to be amazing! I'm so excited!

I'm off to sew and write like a madwoman!

Bubble Shields are Friends, Not Food

After over a month of neglect (oh my gods, I'm so sooooorrry), and a week of being sick, I'm ready to try my hand at this blogging thing once more. I know I've said I want to be better at it before and failed miserably, but I really do want to try to get some sort of rhythm or pattern or something going here. I just need to keep myself on the right track.

So! Here we go! I guess I want to take this time of not-quite-100%-better-yet to talk about shielding. More info and a basic shielding technique below the cut!

Peace

I finally performed my dedication ceremony tonight, and it was possibly the most profound thing I've ever experienced. I won't record most of it here, out of respect for my gods, but suffice it to say that Odin and I have finally made up and I feel like real witch now. It was a super simple ceremony, but extremely poignant.

I hope that I will be exploring my spirituality more and posting those results here more often as a result. Who's excited? Just me? Oh...oh, well! As long as someone is!

Feelings of Initiation

I have done some more soul-searching, between bouts of furious writing, arguments with Odin, and mundane work, and I have come to a conclusion. Inspired by a feeling of...lack and confusion, and a conversation I had with another absolutely lovely witch I met last week, I have decided I need to initiate. I don't have a Wiccan tradition I'm drawn to, but I know that those that emphasis long, drawn-out ritual magick over everything else is not for me. Ritual magick has its place, as does kitchen witchery and gypsy magick, but that place, for me, is not a very big one. I do not wish to be confined to a tradition that that requires me to worship only a specific set of deities, or tells me not to interact with traditionally 'darker' gods like Loki or the rest of the Jotuns, with whom I work almost as closely as I work with Brigid or Artemis.

And yet I still feel the need for that formal initiation, that rite of passage, that is currently lacking in my life. Theoretically, I performed a half-hearted self-initiation when I first found the Craft. I wore long, flowing clothes to school on Mabon (I was a sophomore in high school then), and danced outside during lunch and talked to the gods and the faeries and called it done. Then I neglected my studies and, indeed, my spirituality for six years. This is a new point in my life, a new turn in my path, and I feel the need to acknowledge it.

So, with Mabon coming up once more, I plan on self-initiate into an eclectic pagan tradition. Call it Wiccan, if you like, or call it something else. The name doesn't matter to me. I already know it will incorporate pieces of Buddhism, Wicca, Asatru, Shamanism, and the Faerie Faith. I already know it is what I believe right now and what I have been working on for the last year.

It is simply time to sit down and formalize it, dedicate myself to leading a spiritual life, and give myself a rite of passage I have never had before. It will also be the first full-fledged ritual I design and perform on my own. I would like it to be more formal and more sober than my previous magickal workings (in which I basically did everything off the cuff and laughed a lot, which is good, but not the right tone for this, I believe), and I realize that performing it during/around a harvest festival is not traditional. But it feels right. And that's what the pagan path is all about, isn't it? Finding what's right for us?

Masquerade

Good morning, big, wonderful, divine world! I've found myself lacking in intertwining my spiritual and mundane lives as much as I'd like, despite the fact that I'm now surrounding myself with the most fantastic spiritually-minded, enlightened people you'll ever meet. I feel like I'm playing the part of a spiritual person: when I'm with all of these amazing people, I've got my mask on, but it comes off as soon as I'm by myself again. And that is not what I want at this point in my life. It just took me forever to realize it. But that's okay. It's all part of the journey.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to actually solidify some morning and evening routines/rituals to try to do every day. I want to try to start praying more often, over meals and in thanks. I want to start meditating more, and actually upholding a conversation with The Pantheon. The poor gods probably think I've abandoned them at this point. I promise I haven't! I've just been struggling with Odin for a while, I think. But we've finally come to an agreeable settlement, and I suppose that makes him officially part of The Pantheon. But back to what I'm going to do! I'm going to consciously repeat my affirmations throughout the day, attempt to work a little magick every day.

And I know I'm going to be overwhelmed every time I look at that list. So, small chunks! What am I going to start with? Morning routines and affirmations. I think I'm going to try doing those on a regular basis for the rest of the month, then move onto adding evening routines and meditation. That's the plan, at least. Take things one step at a time.

The card I drew today from my Goddess Inspiration Oracle deck: Sarasvati, goddess of knowledge. "Enlightment awaits you. Prepare for it."

Show and Tell

Did you know that cats are rather fond of laptop keyboards? No? Well, mine are. The little one (read: youngest, not actually that little at 15 pounds) likes to sit on the keyboard while I'm trying to work or write, and the eldest attempted to lie down on it yesterday when I refused to move it for his highness to sleep on my lap. Must be something about the warmth, I suppose. That would explain why my little spirit guide dragon also likes sleeping on it. Or at least cuddling up next to it while I work. Occasionally she'll even bat at my hands while I'm writing. Goofy little thing, she is. Does anyone have a good name for a tiny blue dragon, by the way? She soundly refuses to tell me her name (I'm actually not sure she's learned to speak yet, as she's still rather young), and I'm getting tired of calling her Little Snot. Though she's definitely earned that name.

Ah, I'm rambling again. I had a goal today when I set out. Something about sharing the amazing websites I've found recently. And then I realized it was silly to devote an entire post to, basically, a list of sites, when I can link to them in the sidebar (please check out the amazingness, especially of The Goddess Guidebook and Quado's Garden). So there's my little plug. Lots of fantasticness out there, just as there's a lot of--forgive my language--crap. Just have to sort through all the stupidity to find a gem of honest to goodness amazing support and information.