Frost Moon

 As I was walking home from Seshat’s last evening, the Frost Moon came sailing through into a clear sky. I followed Her and Her scudding cloud hounds, shivering and wrapping my scarf around my head, pushing my hands deep into my pockets. When it’s that cold, the air smells dry and ancient and full of electricity. You can hear the wind building up static in the trees overhead, the constant sussurus like gossip half heard.

Seshat and I had a wonderful evening, eating chips and fish and bringing each other up to date with days and doings. We talked most especially about the blocking of will; when we have the will and the energy and the desire to move forward, but when the circumstances and situations just won’t support the moves we want to make, and in some cases need to make. It’s extremely frustrating, and has the power to bring one very low. I suppose the trick is to keep battling away, not looking for the solution, just resting with the idea that there is one out there, which we can’t see yet. Or, perhaps, that there’s no final solution as such; simply a route through. The equations might not balance in the end, but by then the game might have changed in any case.

All that Full Moon light and not enough to see by! Praise the Goddess, we both need maps!!

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.

Of Interest!

You’ll note a new tab on the header bar; I’ve posted a schedule for a lecture series by Ken Rees which will be taking place at educational establishments around London during the Autumn and Winter of 2008-9. Any interested parties should contact Ken directly on the numbers or email address provided!

I have heard Ken speak – he is lucid, informed, entertaining and academically challenging. Recommended.

Clear Water

In ‘Joy of the Waxing Moon’, Seshat talks about our ritual last evening; as you see, she found it amazingly helpful. The ritual was so powerful and transformative that I don’t think I can be coherent about what it means to me.

When one explores the concept of perfect love and perfect trust it has the capacity to frighten; it means a great deal, and can’t be removed once given. Perfect trust in another confers power; without the perfect love, you have the possibility for abuse and for advantage to be taken. However, the ability to step out onto the cloud and see that it will bear you sets one apart. Things may be accomplished in this state that would be unthinkable in mundane life.

Seshat and I were able to see far across our own experience last evening; we were given an overview, as if we were standing on a high tower looking down on the map of our lives at present. We were able to see what was true, say what was true; we were able to listen. Many things were made clear.

We were able to know what to ask for – this is an underrated ability, and rarely comes right. Seshat is far better than I at framing a well-turned request – mine are fancies and feelings more than actual facts, strangely for one so decisive in regular life. We asked for the things we needed, and we feel we were listened to and answered. The ways are open.

Thanks be to the Goddess and the God.

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?

Typing like a maniac

I’d been talking about good motivation; I seem to have found some energy and application that I’d lost since university days. It hasn’t diminished or got any less vigorous; it’s just been sitting there, in suspended animation, waiting for me to remember it.

An avenue of study has opened up over the last few weeks and I’ve been dipping my toes in the water, no more. It’s warm. And I want to throw myself in and go wallowing around in all the wonderful images, ideas, theories and strategems and then swim off down the little rills that lead from this pool to other pools and to yet other pools… it feels like C S Lewis’s Wood Between the Worlds from The Magician’s Nephew. Actually, that’s a really good and coincidental analogy, come to think of it…

In any case, here I am in this pool of knowledge and I hadn’t looked for it – had never expected it to come my way. I’d been wishing for it without really knowing what I wanted, and now I have it. I am spending my evenings reading, making notes, typing responses, putting together ideas, testing them, reading reading reading. Thinking critically and in an organised fashion, for perhaps the first time in ten years. Frightening, exhilarating, astonishingly beneficient.

Why frightening? Because when my mind takes over it rules me completely, and nothing else gets a look-in. But it’s also frightening to note the difference between my mind now and the excuse for thinking I’ve made do with in the recent past. No comparison. I love to think, and to stretch my mind. I feel like a cat waking up from a long nap.

Birth, rebirth

I remember when I was first called along this path, I felt the most amazing depth of attunement to Them; there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the path was there for me if only I would take it. Similarly, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I was taking the right path, the only path for me.

There was a time at the start of the call that I felt exactly like Seshat describes in her post, Hieros Gamos – an unbelievable synergy, a totality of union, a sexual, spiritual and visceral thrill, a psychic alarm and awakening, like ice-water through your bones. There was power, as much power as anyone might ever need; compressed, restrained, separated from me but still there, latent, available at some point soon, promised. Set aside for me alone.

Since that time I have come a great distance; rocky ground, at times. Stopping off along the way to take detours and to see new things; doubting, rechecking, re-reading. Going back and springing forward. Getting lost. Getting profitably lost, which is something altogether different. But at no point have I decided against this path; every day has only reaffirmed the rightness and correctness of the way I’m going.

I don’t have a destination, so the path I take is not relevant. It doesn’t have to be the shortest or most direct route between two points; and if there’s forests, bears, palaces and wonders along the way,the journey is just that much richer.

Commitment grows the further away from port you get. When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships, ensuring his men were well-motivated. Mine have been smouldering awhile – now they’re blazing and I’m chucking on oil. Commitment is the force that breaks the barrier between you and Them; which releases the power held in trust to your service. I have realised in the last months that as my commitment and effort increases, so do the rewards. And this is happening now, here; not in some indefinable point in the future, not in the Next Life; my efforts, such as they are, are being rewarded or answered in kind. I feel as though I am actually being reborn.

I want the Hieros Gamos; I had it, misused it and misinterpreted what it meant. I may never get it again – but I had it, and should I ever be so graced again I would recognise it for what it was.

I feel now as I felt then;  like John Duncan’s St Bride. Borne above the water with no fear of falling.

Enforced Rest

Given that I am immobile, temporarily, after a brief visit to the hospital yesterday (wisdom teeth – there went my extra IQ points!) I thought I’d settle in for a real good rant today. It’ll help take my mind off the aggers and torters.

I may be being highly uncharitable, but there’s a great deal of garbage out there in book form. I spend a good proportion of my yearly disposable income on books, and with noted exceptions I might as well have burned the money. Now, even a bad book can be instructive; even a rehash of some old bull-hockey can tell you something, if only about yourself. However, for personal discovery I have other methods, cheaper methods, than finding myself at 10pm with a book newly purchased and already about to be luzzed across the room bin-wards.

I find myself losing both patience and the will to live.

Don’t get me the wrong way, here; I haven’t seen the world and decided that I can do better. No. This elementary mistake can be someone else’s to make. I could write a book, but really, where’s the inducement, when the book-buying public in witchcraft and associated paths (self included) seems to be so undiscerning?

OK, deep breath. Go take a pill.

I’ve dedicated the rest of the afternoon to attempting to read, for the third and final time, a newly published book, a book which should be supremely important to the readers out there, given its subject matter, which has made only the slightest and least favourable impression on me. If I haven’t got it by the end of this read, then its time is up. I’ll let you know.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

21:31hrs. Straight to the back of the shelf. NEXT!!

Litha Blessings

The ceremony that Seshat’s Voice and I cooked up for Litha went wonderfully well. I certainly gained a lot from it, and I really felt listened to…. we did some serious work. 

I hope everyone’s ceremonies were as fruitful, revitalising and fulfilling as ours turned out to be!

Bright blessings! 

…aaaand on Midsummer’s Day….

… We give thanks for wellington boots, thick sweaters and hot flasks of tea!

Today’s planned excursion to the woods is going to be interesting. As I sit typing, the rain’s coming down like stair-rods outside the window, from clouds that look to be sitting somewhere near the chimneypots. My dear LB on WW lamented that we never get a decent Midsummer sun these days – how right she was!!

But, we make the best of what we get – at least we won’t be worried by inquisitive dog walkers!