Back from the Isle of Winds

Ibiza again; and the magic and majesty of the island refreshed and amazed me anew. I have posted pictures which might tell you all you need to know about this amazing place.

Ten days in the sun and breezes, walking in the campo, looking at the flora and fauna, smelling the juniper scrub and the pines, listening to the sea and the trees, eating the generous, hearty food so customary on the island. Feeling the weight of the history, the invaders who came, were seduced by the softness and the welcome of the red land and stayed. Imagining the unbelievable relief of making land on the Isle of Pines; salt-struck and half-blind from the sun, to find a place where water runs, fruit trees bloom and the ground bears crops unstintingly.

And over all, Tanit, goddess of the Moon and of the flesh. Beating Her path over Tagomago to the inland waters and the shore.

Divergence and Laziness

There’s a very great deal to be said about the power of the urge to do nothing. It’s closely allied to the conviction that there’s no time to do x, whatever x happens to be. In some people, this could be characterised as a conscious decision. In me, I’ve seen it as simply laziness and inattention.

I was looking round my rooms the other day, and saw all the books lining the walls for the first time in a long time. In many respects, books, moveable press, are a form of interior decoration to me. Not, as I saw once, a way to add colour to a room – when I asked the owner of the house if she’d read any of the books in question she gave me an extremely funny look and said no, of course not; she’d bought two tonnes of green-spined books from a wholesaler and was using them as decoration. No, my definition of decorative goes more toward Rennie Mackintosh – both beautiful and useful.

I’ve got books in every room and some of them are unread, the bindings uncracked. Most of the books in this category are regarding pagan studies. I realised concurrently with my musing over the number of books unread that I haven’t done a really meaty book review (read: hatchet job) on anyone’s work for a good long while. And as I am going to be absent from the Ludlow Symposium this year, and therefore unable to provide a digest of the day, I should get reading and noting.

One of the downsides that we all acknowlege about practising solitary witchcraft (if we do; you might not!) is that sometimes, and sometimes for extended periods of time, life supervenes or you lose your way or your thread or your enthusiasm, even, and everything stops. I’ve had six months or more of this, feeling like there’s no energy or will in the pot for anything other than dragging myself out of bed, getting Rowan ready for nursery, keeping the house straight and trying (and mainly failing) to keep up with my friendship commitments.

One of the things I always do in this situation is believe that the false dawn of returning energy is the end of the problem. I forget every single time that it’s just a burst, a sprint for the tape, a momentary second wind. I become part of the problem, by forcing myself back into the fray. This tendency has an unfortunate side-effect – it seems to make other people doubt me when I say I’m fine (or maybe it’s the edge of hysteria on my voice. ‘I’m fine. No, I’m fine. FINE!’

I don’t think I’m fooling anyone, though; least of all me. I’m getting too old to be constantly hauling myself up right and soldiering on if I’m down. And I am down; why do women like me never give themselves credit? I’ve left and divorced my husband in less than a year, moved house, become a single parent, dealt with crises at home and at work, held down a full-time job, done a good job as a parent and haven’t actually gone insane or become emotionally incontinent in the process. That’s quite good going.

So to get irritated at myself for not continuing my observances, work, writings, visits, pilgrimages and dedications seems specious to me. None of these things are dispensible in my life, but neither is my son, earning a living or having peace of mind and heart. So, not indispensible; but slightly more dispensible than the things I kept up with.

I’m here, Goddess, I still hear You. I worship You. I think the life you’ve given me should be lived well; and so I dedicate all my efforts to You. By doing my best I give my best to You.

Noisy, Sacred, Profane and Cheerful

To Seshat’s house last night – or should I say Seshat’s ex-house! – to assist her in packing up her valuables and moving them across to 55. Her old place seems less and less like the right place for her to be, and in so many ways. She strikes me as a butterfly, breaking loose from her chrysalis, emerging to the air and sunshine and spreading her wings to dry.

Once she’s out of that confining, womb-like and dark space, there can be no going back. Happily, there is no wish to go back, not even the smallest one. I have watched Seshat grow into a new, strong, loving, able, capable and beautiful woman in the time that I have been privileged to know her. She has met her gods, she has advanced and refined her magic, she has chosen her path and laid her hand to the staff of her life. Her planets revolve around her now, not the other way about. She walks tall and free.

When we are together, we spend a large amount of the time laughing. We did so last night. That laughing was too big for the flat, echoing and rebounding from the walls as if it would try to push the walls back and away. It only sounded right when we were hyaena-ing our way up the street, trying to balance boxes on our wheelbarrow and drawing looks – and beeps! – from passing cars. Nothing dented our bonhomie, though. It’s times like these that allow the spirit to fully fill the frame; we know we can say whatever we like, discuss whatever we like, laugh, sing, dance…. and we will have a partner.

New Boundaries

I’m beginning to realise what a total blessing it is to have decided to move on from my old life, and to have redrawn the boundaries much more firmly.

There’s a new clarity to my thought process. Before, when someone I cared about said or promised something, I would extemporise; I’d hear what they said, and immediately bolster it or pad it out with all the things I’d wished they’d say. I made the half promise, the lukewarm thanks,  the semi-devoted utterance do, because I thought I would get no better.

Well, that’s one way to live, and many do it every day; stretching threadbare, perfunctory regard from their other to try to cover widening cracks in their own self-esteem and mental health. I’ve done it. I hated it – and resolved with the Goddess’s strength never to do it again.

Nobody is worth that sort of abasement. Nobody loves you, if they love you so little that you’re at the bottom of the pile when their time is being apportioned.

One of the most valuable things we can give our friends and our lovers is our time. Unstintingly, generously, without running the clock. I needed help last night. My friends were there for me. I texted my friend, and immediately got a call. Another friend left messages for me overnight to ask if I was all right. This is what I do for my friends; this is what my true friends do for me.

So if people tell me they love me now, I listen precisely to what they say, and to nothing else. I measure their worth by their actions and I do not indulge myself in wishful thinking. Everyone has the responsibility to be excellent to their friends, to make the message of love they carry for them easily read and unmistakably strong. There is no room in this scenario for ‘perhaps….’. It should be a yes. A YES!

New Spring, New Hope

Yesterday, I caught myself actually thinking seriously about getting my fingers into the earth again. With everything that’s happened I’ve felt heartsick, totally unconnected to the ground, not even willing to go and look at the garden that was once my be-all. I managed to leave it behind me, ruined and uncared-for, at my old house. It is totally wrecked, a grande-dame once beautiful and now run wild and straggled, effort wasted. But I’ve relinquished it. It was dormant and unworked when I inherited it; we worked together awhile and now it’s gone back to the earth again… asleep and not dead, waiting for someone to love it and rebirth it anew.

My new garden actually has grass, an amazing thing. It’s also only the size of a modest room and has high fences and walls. I have a plan for it. I find myself leaning against the corner of the window of my room, staring down on it like a plan of itself, and whiling away time dreaming of it full of light and colour. In fact, the majority of the flowers will be white, in honour of the Goddess; they will glow in the dusk and fill the air with scent, and I will sit amongst them, and bathe under the Moon, and feel renewed.

A dear friend has given me a hanging basket full of the most beautiful begonias – one of my favourite flowers. They’re not up yet, but I know they’re on their way. Ready to hang outside my door as a constant reminder of the Summer to come and good times…

I know my heart is healing and becoming quieter now that I’m allowing the calm and the green sappy balm of plants to infiltrate and soothe me. Thank the goddess, it’s about time!

To Be Silent

The ways that humans forge bonds and channels of communication fascinates me. It’s almost as if the communication is a carrier wave, which can be used to transmit either clear speech or code. Let me expand.

My job requires exceptionally clear and concise communication; to individuals, companies and those within my company. There isn’t any room whatsoever for error, and the information transmitted has a high factual content which needs to be got across in as condensed a form as possible. Most of the transmission is verbal. Even in this highly regimented environment, mistakes and misunderstandings occur. If such is possible under such tight control, what happens when the main disruptive ingredient – emotion – is added? Absolute freakin chaos.

Come away from the professional environment and into the world of the regular guy and you’ve got a minefield. If you can find someone – anyone – whom you can have a sensible, mutually understandable conversation with on a serious topic for longer than 10 minutes, you’ve struck gold. Because so many people are incapable. They either shy away from emotional discussion, or refuse to ask questions either of themselves or the person sitting opposite; or if they do ask, they don’t listen to the response.

Listening is the difference. Listening makes the person into a human. Trying to empathise and understand is the way to really hear someone. Leaving your prejudices at the door is the way to make sure the words you hear will at least get past the first layer of consciousness.

The carrier wave exists as a clear channel and it’s filled with either gibberish or sense. I’d say that it’s a 50-50 split beween a desire to communicate and a genuine desire to listen that ensures the code is cracked. If either of the sides is unwilling to do their part, the enigma will never be broken.

As witches, being silent, listening, is one of our hardest lessons to learn. Perhaps this is why so many of us go into the listening game and become counsellors. Perhaps listening to our own interior voices, and the voices of our Gods and Goddesses, gives us the capacity to listen to the humans around us. We’re used to it.

Approaching the Full

Full Moon will be tomorrow, Tuesday 14th at 20:04 precisely. Working with the Full Moon has oftentimes been a bad move for me; I seem to do well with the rising power, and surprisingly well with the dark, badly with the waning, particularly the last quarter. The Full Moon usually sends me (no other word for this) loopy. All my work goes awry; the power slips the leash and heads off down its own path.

So this Full Moon I’m going to wrestle it down and contain it. There’s power for the using here, if only I can direct it. This wildness in the magic can surely be used for directed purpose. I’m feeling mad enough to try it; let’s see!

Coincidentally, it will be my first working in my new room. This room was once my husband’s as well, but I have reclaimed it and smudged it; Seshat saw it over the weekend and says she feels it is truly mine. I agree, and hoped it was true, so I’m glad of the endorsement. There’s so much more room in there, spiritually and psychically. I can lay out a pretty respectable size of circle and work completely within it. The room itself is actually the extent of the circle – the corners are fairly well the compass points and there will be candles at each – so an ellipse, 20′ x 16′ to all intents and purposes. Fantastic.

I shall be working for clarity of vision, strength to stand alone, strength to spare so that my friends in need can be supplied unstintingly. By the looks of it, these themes will sit well with this particular Full Moon; always knowledgeable and informative, Starweaver’s comments add light here.  I shall be working to come closer to my Goddess. I shall be echoing the sentiments Seshat sent me in her worked item last week; and I shall be looking forward to Samhain, not long away. My dear friends Boleskine93, Naufragio and Seshat will be working as a team on that night; I will be working alone but not lonely. More on this to follow.

The Sum of the Parts

When we work together as pairs or groups, what are our expectations? It might be fair to expect a larger group to generate more energy, or better focused energy, but we know from our least experience that this doesn’t happen; quite often, the reverse is true. The politics and compromise of group work can dissipate the power potential, leaving us less than the sum of the parts assembled.

When you work alone, you deal only with your own limitations; your own fears and doubts and your own imagination. How big is the room? As big as you can envisage. Or as small.

When you work in pairs, especially if you find a good formula, the world is literally made small and you rise above it and can see the facts, see the truth; this happened again with Seshat last evening.

I find it consistently amazing that I can gather for a working and be stressed, insufficiently grounded and prepared, anxious, not calm, and Seshat can bring me gently down and park me in the circle. About halfway through our devotions last night, I came back to my body with a little bump and suddenly felt my calm running through me again like a cool dark river.

We worked for strength for the people in our lives, and sent out our love, and asked for strength for ourselves too; today I feel like a new person. After we’d given our river offerings and said our prayers, I leapt into the air and yawped, loudly, into the dark cold air, nose to the stars, and capered with glee.

I worked towards Hecate; goddess of the crossroads, anger, underworld, air and darkness, to lend me her fury and dispatch and knowledge of the Way.

So what do I make of this? I see that together we’ve a strength that is largely untapped as yet; I see that the parts of ourselves that we offer to the circle click together into a vast, shadowy three-dimensional object, the function of which we don’t understand, and which we’re not likely to.

Our gods and goddesses are different, our approaches are different, even our ideas about the Way are different. This difference brings diversity, strength, infinitude of opportunity for opinion and new horizons to open before us. It makes us think. We are not hermetically sealed within a system, trying to reach out; we’re already out, flying in the limitless cold clarity of the air around.

 So our un-understood machine – will it hurt us? Do we need to understand to have it work for us? I don’t think it matters – it might be frightening to imagine the wheels grinding into life, but we’ve accomplished great things so far, on tickover. Overdrive might be an interesting experience.

Sure

What a week. You confidently expect this sort of thing to be quite stressful, but in between keeping myself cheerful for my boy and organising my mental and physical division from my husband, I’m not sure I’ve got much time for myself in. That will come. I have been neglecting my devotions, and I’ll be glad to resume the programme with Seshat over the coming weeks. We got such a fantastic result from our last ritual that there’s only more ground to be covered, more depth to be explored there.

The moon rises towards the full over the weeks to come – totally auspicious timing. The power is there for the using.

I shall be away all of next week, from Sunday onward. This is for work, and should by all rights be a total pain, but actually I’m looking forward to some peace and quiet, my meals cooked by someone else, time to myself and some new faces. Hard work will keep me occupied, and I have a colleague and friend with me, so we can have a few quiet drinks and relax.

I have said this before, but I have been staggered, completely bowled over, by the strength of support and fellow-feeling shown me, especially here. It’s a wonderfully strengthening and life-affirming feeling. I feel entirely as though I am on the right path, at last, at last. I haven’t felt like this for at least 10 years.

Having not had this level of support in the physical world (long story!) except from a few very special and caring people, I can say you have honestly made the difference between failure and success for me. Without the strength, sanity, purpose and power you people have given, I’d have failed and gone back to my marriage with my tail between my legs. I had strength enough to make the move, but not quite enough to stick to the programme when the various ‘interest groups’ started applying the pressure. However, I was not alone. And my Goddess supported me too. Bless you.

The weeks to come may be interesting, but my life begins here, and I can’t believe the heady power of that thought. I feel like a lioness, once of a zoo, standing at the open door of a cage as the sun rises over the Serengeti. Time now to run for the horizon.

Lookin’ for a Goddess, Baby!

If any of you girls out there have got a voice like a duck, I may have a job tailor-made for you!

This article is fascinating. Can you imagine what it’s like for this girl after she’s made to step down from office?