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.

Beltane – New Dreams

As I sit here, listening to the rain pattering on the roof of the unit where I work, I cast my mind back across the last twelve months. Rocky roads, rocky times; not time to think or to feel. Things left undone. But here in the burgeoning Spring of 2009, there’s suddenly light and room to move and to breathe.

I have thought I was fighting my way clear of the ties in previous months, but had the wit to realise it’s like climbing a mountain – numerous false horizons and that the key is never to give up hope. Conserve your energy. Keep plugging away. Take breathers. Don’t forget to breathe!

I’ve been out meeting new people, exploring new interests, and simply enjoying my home and my garden. Balancing solitude and the comfort of relaxation and downtime with going out and enjoying myself in company. I’ve been travelling more, seeing new places. Taking small risks, small excitements and relishing them. Working on my physical fitness, and my mental fitness. In essence, echoing the process of fettling and greening that I see going on around me every day.

So here we are at Beltane, beginning of our Summer; the Goddess and the God meet in the birthtime of the buds; so it couldn’t be a more auspicious time for me to reconnect with my path once more. Beltane this year  is also at the time of the First Quarter of the moon, which is perfect for the work I wish to do; building, strengthening, affirming work, consolidating the distance I’ve come so far.

I find the witchcraft path is like this – we allow ourselves to  become distracted by quotidian vicissitudes, separated from our source and the spring of our power; perhaps one day I’ll learn the trick of keeping my hand on the unicorn’s rein! Till then, I come home again, happy in the knowledge that I can rededicate, resubmit, revitalise my work, look at it once more with a new eye, keep the good and prune the no-so-good and shake the dust from the raiment.

I am taking Beltane Day off work, for an extended meditation, reorganisation and prayer session. I am taking time, precious time, to do what is necessary, what is right for me here and now. I like this. It feels like being able to spread my wings for the first time in an age; I will spread them wide.

Thank Goddess for normality

I’ve faced my demons over the weekend, made my peace, made apologies where they were due, received apologies I know to be heartfelt, made promise of reparations where this is required, and let go my anger. And in the process I have come to understand the reasons for things, and to forgive, and to allow others to be different, act differently and feel differently to what I consider to be the norm.

I am grateful for the ability to be dispassionate. I am pleased to see I can be angry, but not let it drag me down to baser behaviour than is my wont. I am relieved that the anger can howl and storm, wear itself out and vanish. The working Seshat and I did opened my eyes, and released the pent-up well of emotion that was damaging me inside. I may be empty now, ashes where once I was fire, but I’m clean.

I shall be working for calm and for caring and contentment. I am reserving 2009 for myself, and my own concerns; personal development, counselling, enlightenment and learning. I’ve needed a year like this, of semi-enforced solitude, for more years than I can count and now I actually have the prospect of it I’m really excited. It just goes to show what it takes to get me to calm down, step off the merry-go-round and take some time for myself – it basically takes a bomb going off in my life to make me shut up and take stock. The wild internal yammer of other stuff, other people, other calls on my time  wears me out and has brought me literally to the brink of collapse. I’m back from the edge, now taking stock, and slowly and tentatively reconnecting with my inner Goddess, and those Goddesses, spiritual and embodied, around me. Painful. But necessary.

I add a postscript here to take into account the wise words by Marya at African Alchemy – isn’t it amazing how someone usually says what you’re thinking, but in such an elegant way it makes twice as much sense? Boundaries. Seshat and I have been discussing boundaries and I have work by her to catch up on at Star of Seshat regarding this very topic. If only I had set my priorities at formulating effective boundaries, I feel that the latest experience in my trial by fire could not have happened. Older, wiser, scorched round the edges and a rueful learner I am!

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.

Humph. Well.

My airy prediction that I would wrestle the power flat and tame it went slightly awry, and I ended up not getting past the first base. Blocked, well and truly, by all the *other* stuff flying around. Sitting there in  circle, trying to centre…. and thinking about work. Gah!

I know this sort of thing happens to all of us. There are just days when things will not go right, no matter what you do. For me, the Full Moon is utterly exhausting, and by 8pm last night all I wanted to do was curl up in bed with my music on in the dark and drift off to sleep. Pathetic!

It wasn’t totally wasted as an enterprise, though. I cast a Celtic Cross with my lovely Intuitive Tarot deck and studied it as well as I could in circle – I’ve left the spread out on a table in my room so I can go back over it tonight. There’s a great deal to listen to in this particular spread, with the situation in question, and I need to understand the results fully.

Sia’s excellent suggestion to work with the power of the balanced moon – half light and half dark – seems to me to be an elegant way out of the problem. I’m just not a Full Moon type of girl. We’ll call the Full Moon my ‘bad time of the month’ and look for good times instead!

I love working in the rising full, and the dark of the moon has great attraction for me also, perhaps because it feels like the potential contained within is similar to that of the seed, before it is watered and has sprouted. The waning moon, particularly the week after Full and the week before New, is an intensely draining time for me, rather like the tide going out. I think it is extraordinary that, since taking this path and beginning to pay attention to the aspect of the moon and my corresponding feelings and moods, I can see a clear connection. It would be like the tide, come to think of it. All that water inside us!

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.

Directed Rage

Anger as a positive emotion is not something we normally associate with successful witchcraft, but I’m starting to think it’s an untapped resource. Recently, a number of themes have been coalescing; and one seems to be anger; pure, white-hot, constructive, righteous, organised, intelligent, open-eyed fury.

I’ve seen this manifesting itself recently around the blogosphere – boleskine93 discusses it here while drawing a line in the sand, directing a ‘thus far and no further’ to himself and those who would seek to bring him down, an attitude I heartily agree with and second him on.

Seshat and I worked with it at the Autumn Equinox yesterday, and I think that a great part of the motive power behind the success of the ritual was anger. Beweaver thinks it through in this post about the terrible wrongs being done to the ecology of Alaska, now coming to light through scrutiny of the Palin woman’s dash for the White House.  Others I know use anger to great effect in their mundane and spiritual lives.

I myself have been making much use of anger in the last few months. It has got me up and out of the door many times beyond counting. It has helped me re-establish parameters on some of my most complex and difficult interpersonal relationships. It has kept my heart out of the doldrums. It has meant I have power and strength enough to support others who need me.

This is not corrosive, betraying, undermining, murderous anger; it’s fruitful, clean, bright, sharp, decisive and dispassionate. Directed, not emotionally directed. Calm and wide-eyed with knowledge and understanding, therefore effective.

Anger is an emotion much shied-away from by humans. We are frightened of hurting others with it, as well as ourselves; we turn it inwards and it manifests itself as illness, headaches, futility, depression, hopelessness and disempowerment. If only we could build with it, grow with it, understand and use it for positivity and good. It’s one of the most dynamic emotions, one of the most potent in power, one of the liveliest. If anger is the Achilles’ Heel of the human emotional range, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could transmogrify it into rocket fuel, a means by which we fly?

Well, what’s to say I haven’t done so already?

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.

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?