Midsummer PBP Week 26

Pagan Blog Project Week 26

Midsummer

Rather than try to catch up from behind, I'm going to carry on from current and then just back post as I can until I'm caught up on the several weeks of posting I've missed. I've decided not to beat myself up about it, I'm just going to hike up my proverbial britches and carry on.

So. Week 26 it is.

June 21^st is considered the first day of summer in this part of the world. To me it is the middle. To each their own of course, but I shake my head (mentally) when I hear people going on about it being summer's beginning. I think of it as the top of the climb up and out of winter. The apex and summit of the roller coaster of the seasons. The longest day of light and the beginning of the slow slide back into darkness. I like the longest day and appreciate it, but I get a little sad too. I'm weird that way, I guess.

As I've written before I love fall, but I really don't care for winter. I live in an odd state to feel that way too. Colorado may boast 320 days of sunshine a year or some such, but winter is long here.

I lit candles on Midsummer and relished the light and warmth. I will light them again come mid-winter at Yule and miss the light and warmth.

One belief set holds that the twin kings, Oak and Holly share the year, with one ruling from mid-winter to mid-summer and the other ruling from mid-summer to mid-winter. Most of the stories I've read on it have them battling for dominance in an eternal struggle. I don't really prefer those. I like to think of it as their job, their task. One rules and the other rests. My opinion only. Every one's mileage varies.

I recently saw an article/blog post that stated that the Oak King and the Holly King were both different faces of Cernnunos. I'm not sure how that sits with me. I tend to dislike mixing my deities and making their names and faces interchangeable.

edited to add missing word

Getting all natural Week 14 PBP

Getting all natural (Or at least as natural as is feasible)

I was going to do this entry on Green Witchery, but I would rather only blog about things that I know anything about. I’m interested in natural living and natural magic...so getting all natural became my topic.

I grew up blissfully unconcerned about all the chemicals in everything. I spent most of my adult life equally unconcerned. I even thought real butter tasted funny. I was a chemical devotee of the lifelong persuasion. 

Somewhere along the line that changed. I’m honestly not sure when that happened or why. It came about in the last couple years though, I know that.  If I had to guess I would say it was probably discovering the blog for Cold Antler Farm. One step leads to another and the more read about this crazy woman’s farming adventures the more I started finding other farming types and reading about their ways of doing things and why. Over time their ideas must have taken root (heh) and bloomed into this desire I have to surpass my lazy self and get busy being better.

For the last year or so, I have been getting more and more into cooking from scratch and slowly phasing out the processed foods and learning to make healthy natural recipes instead. We backslide at times; it’s very easy to do. Being hungry and in a rush will do it to us every time. But we are definitely making progress. Thanks be to every god for the internet and the billion and one recipes online. It really helps with everything I want to do.

In addition to switching to natural foods, I’m also researching ways to replace all (or as many as is feasible) of the chemicals that we use in our day to day lives. I’ve started with toothpaste. Actually I started with baking soda and water for shampoo, but that was just icky. I’ll keep looking for a good shampoo recipe. The toothpaste is working out pretty well. I’m on my second batch and so far so good. 

My husband is such a good sport about all this. He eats anything I make and likes most of it as long as there’s meat somewhere in the dish. Such a carnivore. (grins) But then I am too, so it’s okay.

The journey is long and it has to be done mindfully. I love creating these things that normally have to be bought in a store or come from a box and having it be just as good. 

It’s really cool.

Feelings Week 12 Pagan Blog Project

Feelings

I have always been incredibly sensitive to the moods and feelings of others. Based on reading I have done over the years I believe it to be a survivor mechanism left over from an abusive childhood. I have been asked (several times) if I’m an Empath before, and I usually shrug and say maybe a little. The truth is, I don’t know. Whether I am or not doesn’t change how I feel buffeted and blasted raw by other people’s emotional tornadoes most days.

Lately at work, it has been hell. Everyone seems to be about two steps away from losing their shit and throwing knives around. (I have been helping out in the restaurant as a server, so that knife part is quite literal).

I’ve always been sensitive, but I have never learned how to shield properly. I can do it (somewhat) when I focus on it, but during a busy breakfast shift that is impossible. For me, self is obscured by the automatic and the running list of pending tasks. The coffee is low—start more on the next trip back/Table 11 wants more toast—drop it in the toaster on your way to get more cinnamon rolls/Table 14 left—get that bussed so the wait goes down/Did you enter the order for table 13?/Crap, their food is up and you haven't gotten their drinks yet....etc. So it’s hard to remember to shield against casually negative people while all that is flying across your brain, harder still to actually hold a shield against them.

I’m exhausted by the time the shift ends and some of it is physical, yes, serving is hard work, but a good chunk of it is emotional. For me it’s like being constantly bombarded by a howling wind full of sand and rock. Each little stinging hit is annoying, but taking all together it wears me down. There’s no good response to the flying barbs. If you play along it just encourages the behavior, if you sink to their level and bitch and snark back to them it just pisses them off and gives them more ammo, if you ignore it then YOU are the one with the problem as far as they are concerned because obviously you are a snotty bitch. 

It’s such a drag.

I’ve spent years sorting out my feelings and my emotional baggage and I’m on a fairly even keel lately. If anyone who knows me snorts in disbelief reading that, well, trust when I say it used to be a lot worse.

I’m tired of being a victim to everyone else’s emotional storms. My feelings are enough, I don’t want to feel anyone else’s.  I need to learn to shield better while I work even harder to find the escape route from the casino that won’t leave us floundering financially.

In the mean time, I have to fight off the growing anger and negativity that being there plants in me. I can’t say the things I think (who can?) and I can’t change who they are and how they act. But dear gods, I wish I could shield myself from the psychic miasma that drips from the walls. It’s an act of will every time I have to go there and I’m so tired.

Feeding the Dead Week 11 PBP

Between the crap going on with work and the new schedule I’m having to deal with there and trying to finish up my current class I have managed to fall TWO WEEKS behind! Ugh! So this is a short one and the next one may be too, but I want to get caught up. 

Feed the dead

While I am spending this year working through exactly what my beliefs are and how I want to live my Path, there are things that I am sure of within myself. Honoring my dead is one of those. 

I don't remember how I wandered into the thought of it, but I found an aside mentioned online about Feeding the Dead. It took some digging to figure out what they were talking about and how I wanted to adapt it to myself. But once I had it, I felt a real pull for it.

Typically done on Samhain, the concept is quite simple. You take an offering (I used the reddest and prettiest apples I could find) and bury it at the front and back doors of your home to feed the spirits as they pass through on their way back through the veil.

I'm sure there are other ways to feed the dead throughout the year, but this is my favorite.

I never realized how much I wanted to commune with my beloved dead until the day I was preparing fried potatoes and heard a quiet voice in my head/ear say "add some flour."

It didn't seem odd or out of place to me even though I was home alone at the time.  I wasn't even scared.  I simply added flour and lo, for the first time my fried potatoes didn't stick to the pan. In my heart I was completely certain it was my Great Grandma Johnson who had whispered to me.

Still am, really. 

What I wouldn't give to be able to talk to her again. But even if that isn't possible I still want to honor my dead and show them that they are loved and remembered. Two shiny red apples go into carefully dug holes every October 31^st.  

It's a wonder that I don't have apple trees poking up.

Connections Pagan Blog Project--Week 6

Connections

I do not believe that this life is all there is. I do believe in reincarnation, but I haven’t nailed down all the particulars of what feels true to me.  I remember flashes of things from other periods of time, other times that I knew the people I know in this life.

There are souls that are connected. Lessons to be figured out. Possibly enlightenment to seek, I don’t know and no one else does either.

But, what I do know, and it is the point of this post, is how I view those connections. Literally view. The first few times I saw it, I didn’t assign it much significance, (which is strange in retrospect) but when it kept reappearing when relationships ended or friendships soured or family infuriated me, I started to realize it was a thing.

So what am I talking about? A flesh colored ball with an uncountable number of plugs and wired cords emanating from it. It’s not remotely pretty to look at, but it’s not repulsive either. It’s a part of me, I’m absolutely sure. It is the metaphysical representation of all the connections in my life.

For example, years ago, I had ended a relationship with a boy and by extension, his toxic little circle of friends. One of these friends felt that since I was no longer protected by the “girlfriend of a friend” clause there was no reason why I wouldn’t want to have sex with him.

Ugh. Excuse me while I shudder for a moment.

I finally convinced him that I wasn’t playing hard to get and it was NOT going to happen, and he stopped calling and showing up and leaving me mix cd’s and such. But I knew it was only a temporary reprieve and I was still crawling out of my skin with the heebie-jeebies. Not because of the proposition, but the blackness the guy had around him. It was cold, clammy, and awful. I still felt it lingering, watching.

I remember going to bed one night and lying in the dark thinking about connections and how to cut them permanently. I saw darkness behind my eyelids as well, but a faint light was growing. I opened my eyes to check if a light had come on and there was nothing. I closed my eyes again and the light returned. I just drifted, somewhere between sleeping and being awake, and then I saw the ball of connections for the first time.

Acting on instinct rather than thought, I pictured the guy and the ball spun slowly around and revealed a thin black cord with a plug. It was plugged in to the ball...plugged into me. That was suddenly intolerable. I wanted it out and so I visualized it being unplugged. It resisted but I kept pulling and it came free finally. Just like an electrical plug, it had prongs coming from it, although these looked more like fangs and an icky substance oozed from the plug like pus or poison.

Once free, it became a living thing and writhed around like an injured snake. The menace that was coming off it is hard to convey. It didn’t want to be unplugged. I kept up my will and forced it away. Once it was a small distance up from the ball, it shuddered suddenly and burst into flames that raced away out of sight.

I was strangely calm about the whole thing. Thinking back, I must have been in a self-induced trance of sorts. As far as I can remember, I rolled over and went to sleep. He never bothered me again. Once, a several years back, he contacted me via Facebook and I politely told him I wasn’t interested. That was the last I ever heard from him.

I’ve had other encounters with the ball of connections over the years, although most of them happened in a time span around that one. Not every connection will unplug at my will—I find that interesting.

Once, years ago, I tried to pull out a plug of someone I had loved deeply. The relationship was over as far as I knew and I didn’t see any reason to be connected to him anymore, so I tried to unplug the cord that was associated with him. I pulled and pulled and it started to come out, but it was tearing rather than unplugging. Afraid of what I was doing, I stopped and attempted to smooth out the damage. I even visualized Neosporin to put on the torn and bleeding flesh.

I left it alone after that and, strangely, forgot about it for a long time.

The really interesting thing (for me anyway) is that the plug healed, but there is scar tissue around it now if I visualize it. Years from then and about a year and a half ago, I married that man. He’s the love of my life. This life definitely, and I have a feeling that we’ve been important to each other for several others in one way or another.

Not being able to pull out that connection even though I thought I had no further use for it tells me that there is Something greater than ourselves out there. I like that. Mostly.

The moral of the story (as I understand it) is that we are all connected to others in ways we don’t fully comprehend and for reasons we cannot know, but we are deeply connect nonetheless. Sometimes we have a choice about it and sometimes we don’t.

I’m very glad I was unable to unplug my husband from my life. I’m also very glad I was able to remove the toxic plug and get that out of my life.