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.

It’s Time

… for the altar to be set up once more!

I’ve had all my pieces and items in a box since the move, waiting to have the right space in which to use them. I now do so – a large pine trunk set up facing North in my sitting room, empty so all the pieces can be stored away, and perfectly placed for the garden, so I can open the doors and sit behind the altar looking out.

I aim to work tonight, rededicating all my items in the service of the Goddess, and beginning my devotions afresh. Since Beltane, I feel as though I’ve landed; I’m home. Now it’s time to start working again.

Green Witch Chariot Race

At the risk of coming over all Ben-Hur this morning I’m going to talk a little bit about calls to action, and what they make us do and feel. Well, what they make me do and feel, actually; I speak for no-one but myself on this topic!

What constitutes a call to action? To me, it’s an irresistable urge to do something in the face of a larger problem. When the need to act, to move, to make a difference outweighs the need to sit, to be still, to be silent, I have to act, I feel compelled to.

This doesn’t necessarily come down to one felt emotion, one strand of reasoning either. It could be guilt. It could be the feeling of a job left undone. It could be anger, pity, empathy. It could be the realisation of a major injustice. It could be as petty as minor irritation. And in the end, it could be the fact that for me at least, action is always preferable to inaction, no matter if inaction would have proved the safer or more prudent route.

There’s nothing more draining or disempowering than chosing to do nothing in a situation of adversity. None of us think the close-the-eyes approach to problem solving makes situations any better; Churchill said that all that is needed for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing. How right he was.

I’ve a number of situations on hand just now that require action; they require me to be brave and take a stand and make executive decisions without the benefit of foresight. How I wish at times for a clear eye to the future! When I was young I used to play Fighting Fantasy rolegames; particularly the ones in book form where you read the sections and govern your choices though judgement and rolls of the dice. I always used to cheat, mildly; looking ahead to outcomes but preserving the ability to backtrack to the last safe point and select another route if things didn’t go so well. Clearly, this ability would benefit me greatly now; bitter, actually, to look around at some witches of my acquaintence who blithely claim the ability to see forward; can they? Would it benefit me to be able to do so? Who knows. I have a sneaking feeling not, actually.

Garbled Thinking

An interesting short conversation with a Christian in my family today highlighted to me the some of the facts regarding worship in Britain today. I quote:

Her: You’ll have to start going to church again if you want to get R into that school!

Me: I wouldn’t do that; it’s hypocritical and unneccessary. And anyway, I’m not sacrificing my beliefs to tick a box to gain an education for my child.

Her: Well, you don’t have to do you? You worship God, after all!

Me: Well, yes. In a way. But the Christian church worships Jesus. The clue’s in the question. I don’t believe in Jesus as a saviour or as the son of God.

Her: But all Gods are the same in the end!

Me: (thinks) Have you thought about that before you said it? It implies your One True Saviour… isn’t.

The idea that I would voluntarily retard my spiritual life and actively renege on everything I’ve worked for and earned in order to get my son into a particular school seems ludicrous to me, and will, I suspect, to many of my readers. But what is even more alarming to me is the thought that you can have any sort of moral excellence within such a system. One of the strictest proponents of Christianity I know, actively encouraging me to be mendacious and underhanded in order to achieve something worldly. Interesting.

It seems easy for Christians to be clear about what they believe and what they worship – they’ve got a book, a plan and a couple of thousand years of well-documented history. This all seems to go out of the window in situations like the above. Either you have a One True God or you don’t….

One of the things I get continually from those who ask me about my path is an accusation that I can’t be fully candid and straightforward about the doctrine I follow. The fact that I don’t have one with which to form a path seems to escape my interlocutor, nine times out of ten. We don’t get a book, a road, a threat of hell and a promise of heaven like the world’s heaviest-handed carrot-and-stick  approach. We don’t proselytise; we don’t advocate the worship of any particular goddess or god – we wouldn’t presume to intervene between the gods and the people they choose as their followers.

We get a braided channel, a map with no names on it, our wits and the clothes we stand up in. Who wouldn’t learn more this way?

Like a Cat

I’m sitting here feeling the strangest sensation, the equivalent of a cat unsheathing its claws, that rubbery, delicious stretching and flexing of a rusty muscle working again after a long furlough.

My mind is waking up. Outside all the clamour and jabber and jangling the last three months have roused in me, I’ve had flashes of intuition, ghosts of ideas, brief flashes of inspiration, and just never got up the impetus to write effectively. Like Andy at Somerset Pagan I have felt as though I should write; but chose not to, partly from inertia and partly from cussed bloody-mindedness. And despite all this, visitors to my blog have not deserted me, despite seeing I didn’t have anything to say; we hit 19,000 this morning and I thank the Goddess, plus I’m totally amazed. Where did all these people come from?!

Yule looms and I am reminded that Seshat and I began our journey together at this time last year. We are working together this Yule too – and will be celebrating our difference, our strength, our togetherness once again. The year always begins and ends here for me.

Now the Sparkly Season is upon us and things have loosened off; there’s room to breathe and to look around. I’m organised; I know what I’ve got to do and by when. Work is in hand, family are in hand; my home is three quarters organised and a paragon of whimsical efficiency and comfort. I am looking forward to Yule and to receiving guests and friends for wassail and cheer. I am going to give myself a break and enjoy the next few weeks without let or hindrance. This is my reward for dangers faced and a breathing space to prepare for whatever is to come.

OK, I’m just going to say this and then…

Then, dear people, you may shoot me or whatever!!!

I have a moderately long fuse, but it has been tested almost to snapping point by the tag surfer here at WordPress this week. I’ve been quiet, largely; reading and mooching and listening and like always with me, it didn’t take long to find something to have a pop at.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The machinery of the tag surfer is doing its job as always – in fact, WordPress is so freakishly smooth and glitch free it scares me, touch wood, dodge a ladder, chuck the salt….

NO. The problem is the rude members of the ‘opposing’ side who insist on tagging their posts Wicca, Witchcraft, Paganism while either having a pop at the funny lookin’ witches over here, or nearly busting a gut fulminating on the evil in the world in general, or us in particular.

I have had two sensible conversations with Christian bloggers over the Hallowe’en / Samhain period; both had a point of view but were keen to share thoughts and we didn’t agree, but were polite and respectful and keen to hear the other side. And I’ve had three not so polite exchanges. The polite ones were men, and the impolite ones were women, but this may not be statistically significant.

I realise I’m tilting at windmills, but why shouldn’t I have a crack at this? There’s so much misformation out there! 

When I start tagging posts like this Christianity I’ll know I’ve really hit the bottom of the barrel. The only reason I’d do that is to get myself noticed by, well, Christians. And I don’t blog for Christians, or to bait Christians, or to engage Christians in debate. If I want to do that, I think I’ve shown I can find my own debating partners with little or no trouble.

So I’m left with the surmise that the Christians of this particular stripe, the frothy, Hallowe’en-is-the-devil’s-work sort, WANT to mix it up with us. Perhaps they think we need saving, or intervention, or a lifebelt.

Ps, you guys – for all we know, Hallowe’en may very well be the devil’s work – from a commercialism point of view, particularly in America, it takes some beating for exploitation, trouble and the creation of pointless purchasing opportunities. But don’t take it out on the poor pagans. We’ve got the curtains shut, pretending we’re not in, while thousands of small children hang on the bell wanting chocolate. We just want some peace and quiet to cast our sacred space and talk to those who have gone before.

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.

Being Brave

Both myself and Seshat have been battling both negative opinion, recently; and the rot hasn’t rested with us.

We find it takes proper guts and resolve to stand up to your detractors; it’s all too easy to be a yes-man, a people-pleaser, and to keep the peace and the general status quo intact by bending, breaking possibly; and for what? So you can be broken again, afresh, to bleed again from new wounds when the sacrifices made cease to be enough for the rapacious hordes at your gates? I think not.

Seshat gave me a present, yesterday. Along with the fun, the laughter, the companionship which is ever-precious to me, she gave me a thing she had made in circle. On it was a house, a tree, an armoured animal; it smelled good, it had substance. It is now under my pillow and I feel the strength, the stubbornness, the tenacity and the drive it contains from here, and I’m ten feet away from it. It is inspiring me.

I have been doing work myself with sigilisation; I’m really enjoying the elegant and elemental shorthand and the focus it requires. For me, the smaller and more intricate the sigil, the better it works. I use a draughtsman’s pen and thick paper, and I need to be in the right frame of mind, obviously; my palms burning to create. Once made, the sigil is admired once, for posterity, then burnt and forgotten. This on the priniciple that a cake won’t rise if you keep opening the oven door.

Revenge

Is the belief in heaven and hell an internalised wish for revenge on those who do us wrong?

I was thinking today about the terrible accounts of survivors of Srebrinice which I watched on the television at the time, and on the dreadful liberties taken by the Russian troops in Georgia, a sovereign state, just this month.

My particular attention was focused on those doing such unspeakable things to innocent people, who had done them personally no harm whatsoever. What made them continue with the attacks on men, women and children past the point of torture?

A man described on British television news how he had been beaten, and his sister raped, in front of their father, who had to sit and watch and do nothing, on pain of death. For what? They were civilian, and children at that. 

Brian at The House of Inanna speaks on this subject with force and clarity today, and I commented; I remembered then that I had begun this post and it was saved in my drafts folder. I want to finish it now, because I believe we need to try and face these things and to talk about them, in every walk of society. Darfur? Is this beleaguered region in the news much? No. And if what’s happening there was happening in London, how different the story would be.

Where do humans get the ability to fundamentally ignore the evil happening a world away? Nowhere’s very far from anywhere now; isn’t that what we’re told? 

I try hard not to make this an issue about violence against women, but really, it is. We are perceived to be weak both on our own account and on the account of our children, and therefore a target for special cruelty. Beatrice, in Much Ado, when faced with the disgrace of her cousin, berates herself, saying, ‘Oh, if I were a man!’. I don’t want to be a man. I think most men might disassociate themselves from men like these.

I want men of violence to stop using their sexuality against women and children in war zones, and against their fellow men by extension. 

So when we consider the Christian embodiment of Hell, is it that we want such perpetrators to burn eternally? Perhaps. I don’t understand the mad corruption that comes over a person to cause them to act so atrociously. They are truly the furthest from grace in such a state. In any case, neo-pagans don’t have a hell to which to condemn the guilty; so what then do we do?

Perhaps we ought to act here, now, in this life. One innocent life saved must be worth it – or am I being unbelievably idealistic?

Rising Full

Seshat and I are working tonight, with the rising full moon. This is rolled up with Lammas, and the theme is perfect love and perfect trust.

There’s an enormous amount of energy about at the moment, and I think we both feel it. There’s much afoot. The dizzying implications of some of the possibilities are astounding us both.

I don’t think we’re the only ones that feel this huge positivity; it’s like being plugged into the mains. Friends have said how much they’re achieving and progressing, and how positive things are looking for them too.

These breakers come rolling by quite regularly but you need to be suited up and ready to catch some surf. We’re going to hit this one right on the money.

I’m so energised and excited by the prospect that I’m jumping about hardly able to concentrate. Funny, I don’t remember ever feeling this enthused about going to Church. Interesting, no?