Twisted Statistics
 https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/113621697602518150080
There are problems with statistics like these that it may be showing a trend that unrelated to the variable being tested. Often food studies do this. People who tend to eat more than X are healthier than those who do not. The problem is that those who eat X are often living very different lifestyles than those who do not. Poverty, healthcare access, jobs that expose people to different toxic environments are variables that are not mentioned or tested. Assessments into autism vary because in other cultures due to misdiagnose, or the lack of desire to diagnose at all children who are different are not subjected to medical intervention. Most often other disabilities (such as learning difficulties/deafness/anxiety disorders) are diagnosed. When comparing vastly different cultures.
In America a child is likely to go to kindergarden at 3 years old. If he is different from his peers in anyway it is noted and sent for tests (often children may be in childcare WAY before 3 years) medical testing is recommend. The parameters for "normal" in this setting are vastly different than those say in Cuba. Children go to school later and tend to be part of large families, with many family members looking after children. Only children vastly different from siblings would be worthy of note and then tested. This would reduce people seeking tests for autism.
My husband is on the spectrum and it is our belief it is genetic. His mother was "deaf" except her inability to deal with people, basic social situations and vivid temper, in our conclusion put her squarely on the spectrum.
While extremes on the spectrum can make life very difficult for parents, their wiring is a blessing as well as a curse. I think in years to come we will look back at Newton and see someone with aspergers, the same way dyslexics do with Einstein.

What is "Wiccan"?

What is "Wiccan"?
 I always find the concept of "core laws", concepts, rules and commandments abhorrent, especially when it come to what is and is not Wiccan. What is and is not magick. While the search to define and understand is laudable, it often seems to miss the point. While a tree is subject to the laws of the universe, like gravity and entropy, giving it a long list of what you think it should or should not be, does not change the tree.You can cut it, even chop it down, but it will persist in being as it knows it's self to be.
Wiccan "commandments" were set down a long time ago in The Charge of the Goddess. It doesn't need simplifying or making into commandments.(Granted I dislike pseudo Shakespearean text that is sometimes used and a I have a version with such, ye, thee, thoust, removed but the core meaning in modern English persists).
Writing "new rules" to make it more comfortable for yourself or someone else, or to make it more palatable for "marketing" again misses the point.  These new yardsticks to measure and contain something that can not be measured or contain are at best a joke, at worst very damaging. You can not measure "goodness" or faith. You can not measure how magickal someone is. There is no standardized test.The young, and the inexperienced want and are used to tests like this. Yet the world in which magick dwells is and should be beyond defining. It is in that place between, where poets and seers dwell. It is in kind hands. It is in comfort and mercy. It is love. In the words of The Charge
"My law is love unto all things."
No clauses.No get of jail. That doesn't mean it is "weak" or "fluffy", tough love is exactly that.
The more you try and standardize Wicca, the more boxes you want it to be in the less you understand and respect it's true nature. This isn't a Disney version of love, some movie version were everything is peaches and roses. It is in hardwork. It is is long sighs. It is in mud, and shit and puke and it is real. It is in a thousand tiny and marvellous things, in ways that change the world for the better. It is the kindness of strangers, in manners, and respect. It is the compost pile, and the dishes. In how you speak to your children. How you speak to your friends, and how you treat those who wish to harm you.
I do not believe I can know all there is to know. Nor would I ever imagine that I had the right to tell people what and how their faith should be measured. What should or should not be "in the box". I find it disturbing and frightening that there are those who want to try.
I never, ever tell people people what to believe. I show them how I do it. It show them how and why, what and where, yet it I have never told someone what to believe. That is theirs and it is sacred.

In that vein, my faith, my belief is sacred, please use your stick else where, or put it down and climb a tree.

  
 

Holy Days


So I have had some time off blogging. In fact it is fair to say that I have spent a goodly amount of time celebrating, feasting, making and giving gifts and sleeping. Quite a lot of sleeping.
On the Friday, Yule-eve, we had some lovely pagan friends of our pop over for mince pies, coffee and mulled wine. We had lovely chutneys (she makes them so well) and lots of other goodies. We promised we would all get together soon to celebrate our birthdays as P and M have birthdays like TK and myself in January. It had been a tough week and an pretty tough day too; so it was a wonderful relief to feel relaxed and happy.
We had gotten the tree all sorted the day before and smells so good.

 
The day it's self mini witch got up late, and we had a lovely brunch. TK had to brave town to pick the duck and some other bits and pieces. Slowly we cooked and prepared for the feast. In the UK went tend to try and make the Christmas meal happen at lunch time and we had tried that before. My dear American friend taught me the error of my ways and we have big feast as evening meals which makes them MUCH more relaxed and chilled out.
We sat down to our feast.

It was a lot of food. None of it went to waste. It went for 4 and a half meals. The next day the duck and Stilton sandwiches with the bacon wrapped chestnut and mushroom stuff was particularly good.
2013 has been a great year for me. Car crash aside my health has been getting better and better (not that physiotherapy was good experience for me but it's only pain right?) My family and I have reconnected. I wrote a book and publishers are calling me. All good things coming.
I have a lot of love and gratitude for so many people this year. I have a lot of things I still want to do. A lot of things I want to learn and teach. Paintings to paint. Books to write. Places to visit. People to heal and tend to and maybe just maybe some asses to kick. I have a lot of joy and laughter coming, a lot of fun too. Some of it might be hard work, which I am prepared for, but the rest will be like breathing.
 

Spell work

Lots of spell work underway as well as the Great Mother healing altar which is taking up most of the big table today. Should really be doing real world presents and so on but I am happy splashing about in the magick waters today.
I had physio yesterday. It hurt. Like really hurt. I am rather tender and bruised today.

The rose thorns are part of my standard protection wards and they fell down this morning so I unwrapped them and burnt the last binding (it burned for ages on the outside of my window sill). I then rebound them with three different charms. I sealed it with crayon wax and used TK pentagram ring to seal it tightly.
Then I added the hanging (so it sits in my front window) of white satin ribbon enchanting it with a Goddess blessing.
I like the sealing so much I experimented on the spell candle someone asked me to do today after I dressed it in oils.
When I find the motivation I will clean and cleanse so I can work "proper" later.

Healing Rites

Gramar nazi's and spelling police, no comments because I am tired, dyslexic and on the computer with no spell checker.
So. As you may or may not know my spiritual evil twin (she claims I am her evil twin) is looking at the prospect of losing a child. Shai's beautiful daughter was in a car collision on the 9th of December (the anversary of my own daughters death.) 
I spent yesterday shopping and preparing herbs, oils and a drop of my blood in my cauldron simmering away.
I bought more candles and some herbs for incense. I got mini witch to clean and tidy the space and after a ritual bath and put on my robes I prepared the incense. It had many things in it, ground applewood, lavender, heartease and so on. I carved the main spell/prayer candle and painted it with the reduction of herbs and such I had simmered a few hours before.
After dinner (vegie stew) we set up the altar and TK unwapped our tools. Mini witch got changed and then so did TK.
I cast a circle, called the corners, and read the Charge of the Goddess. I got TK to read the Charge of the God.
We sang and clapped and drummed to power the circle. The we visualized stand around the hospital bed. We chanted and chanted. It was very intense and I know I could "see" Emily while we worked. When we were done I blessed the cup and we all had a sip. 
I release and thanked everyone from the circle and TK wrapped the tools and my books and put them away. The rest of the healing altar is still there and the candle is still burning.

Today I have been cleaning and looking after Pops. It isn't late but I am really tired.  

Healing.


 Listen
Oh Great Mother wrap your arms around Emily Rose Maria
Let your endless love comfort and support her.
Oh Great Mother may your Divine gentle Grace protect her.
May her head find healing release on your breast.
May she softly sleep, like a child in your warm love.
Then waken whole and healthy, bright and bold.
Oh Great Mother Emily Rose Maria hold.
 

Magick and the Land.

Growing up living in a freezing cold dilapidated old welsh farm house, I wanted out. I mean I loved the trees, the air, the mountains, but I wanted something. Something I couldn't put into words. Even though both my parents are welsh to say I was strongly discouraged from even speaking with the welsh accent (my Dad would clip me up the ear if and when he was around to hear me) let alone SPEAK welsh, would be an understatement. 
I have lived in England now for what feels like an age and yet it was this land that showed me my "welshness". The casual racism, the cultural jokes and utter ignorance of even basic welsh history can be trying, but it is the culture I miss. That and the land.

 My inner landscape is not rolling meadows and little streams, it is wild rushing waters and purple mountains streaked with livid yellow and black. It is filled the sound of the rushing wind. The smell of snow. The taste of water that makes all other water taste weird and wrong. I miss the weather. I miss how my feet feel when I have been walking on the land. I miss the way I am part of it and it is part of me at such a deep level I am at a loss to describe. I have been to other very very beautiful places all over the world, full of ancient magick and wonder. Yet I always have the strongest feeling that rather than Cymru owned me. I belonged to the land somehow.

 Sometimes it calls to me in my sleep, sometimes when I am awake. It is this odd sensation of like the flow of water against the body, a tide or current with greater or lesser force dependent on where and when I am. At first it simply drew me back. As time went on and my odd exile continued I found I could draw strength and magick from the flows as well as expend it resisting. The lullabies I sang to my babies were in welsh. I would swear in welsh, and coo and sigh in it. 

For some people I am not welsh enough. Yet I am at peace because I am welsh enough for me. I am dreaming of living in Cymru again. This does not depress me, or leave me sad of where I am. It fills me with hope.  

 
I do not own the landscape images in this blog, all rights reserved to arts.

  No Tears:

This day, this date I lost someone more precious than I can express. I will not dredge up old pain. Old grief today. I have cried enough.

 Oceans

I cried oceans

I have cried sands

I have cried skies

I cried lands

I cried softly

I have cried loud

I have cried in secret

I have cried proud

I cried in bed

Alone in the dark

I cried in the garden

The street, the park.

I cried in the bath

So nobody would see

I cried on the train

The bus, in a car.

I cried myself sick

Swollen and blind

I cried myself angry

I cried myself kind

I cried without warning

I cried when I planned

I have cried oceans

I have cried lands.

So if today you see no tears

I have been crying

And crying

And crying for years.

 In Living

In living in remembering they live

In Shades and in half refelected light

The smell of hair: the warmth of breath

In living we are not utterly breft.

In living and in knowing

They live.

In the hazy warm of between

Gentle sleep and rude awake

We brave the day for their sweet sake.

Watching those who dare not speak

Press their grief and in darkness keep

To snuff out any warmth at all

Hot and burning tears might seep

Prize forgetting most of all.

I shall not ever shy away

From the warm memories, dreams that play

That turn to frozen dust in day

For in remembering they live.

Light.
How can there be darkness when I allow my own light to shine? It is never the light that is overwhelmed. Sometimes the light fades, sometimes it flickers or the wick makes spits and sparks but the darkness does not consume the light. I am going to shine today. I am going to embrace my joy. I am going to have faith in my light.
I am also going to be putting up new fairy lights and braving the crush of Saturday shoppers.
Wish me good luck.

Post Migraine funk.

My brain is not happy today and TK's is worse so...yay. Also everything I am looking at today is making me irritated that people who do not know what they are talking about are putting themselves out there as experts.

Here is where I would rather be today.

The Soul of the thing.

When someone comes for a reading sometimes they want to know about love. Sometimes work, or family. Then sometimes people come because they feel lost, a hurting ache that their path is withered away to nothingness.
Funnily something someone told me a long time ago rings true about this. If someone has a "sex" problem, it is usually and spiritual problem. If they have a "spiritual" problem it is normally about sex. Last night the readee wanted his life to stay the same, with the same people and the same everything else. Yet he had this sense of being "lost" on his path. All around him were coming new people and places and opportunities, there were also lots of endings. He didn't want this truth to be about his life, he wanted it to be about his "path" as though it was separate from his life.
It wasn't a "bad reading" but he was failing to accept the messages given because he didn't want them to apply.
Life and path are not separate. Path is just where you are going. When you look back you have made it into a path. Others might follow on it or not. How hard going it is is down to the choices you make today.

  This is not not to say that readings are pointless. As a means to have someone really look at your life and choices and see where they lead it is an amazing tool. One too few people use wisely but a tool none the less.

Life is change. This can be a tough concept because it can seem fearful. It is a joy, and opportunity, every day to be able to do amazing and wonderful things. Embrace the change.  :)

 Oh Dark Moon

Oh Dark Moon who gives no light
Your beauty is no less this night.
Crone I honor your gentle reaping of mine
I surrender that which has out lived it's time.
Sing over the loss of blood and bone
Return it all to dust or stone.
So I may rejoice and so too grieve
For the new to come and the old to leave.
The womb without and within
I honor my dance red widdershin.

Secrets.

So you may have missed me, or not! Any the who what with the projects I have in hand for gifts for people this Yuletide I have be away from the keyboard. (I can not type and sew.)
I always would love to share the joyous witchy goodness with you BUT some of the folks getting gifts READ my blog...
So, do forgive my absence and know that I love all my big and little fey and humans, but I am weaving and sewing my magick. I am baking and cooking up treats and sweets and I may even get round to making my (much coverted) chilli jam soon...
Also my hubby TK is working a lot on the laptop where my pictures are, and I am back upstairs on the PC, so no prettiness to even liven up this blog!!!