Mansplaing

Mansplaing 

I am 36 years old today I finally got something. Something so sad, and also oddly freeing. I grew up in quite a misogynistic house hold (farms tend old fashioned by nature). There was "woman's work". There was "man's work". Sexist and sexual comments were everywhere. Yet not once did I feel anything accept mad and entitled to equality. I never backed down. I said what I thought, mostly when I thought it. I did what I wanted, when I wanted and somehow made me determined to be so smart, so right, so strong, they would see I was their equal. One day. They would see. 

I lifted and carried with the boys (who still got stuck making the tea too). It didn't matter because I was going to show them! All of them!

My Dad, though he wouldn't say it had always wanted a boy. One he didn't get. It some how made me more fierce that I would be "as good as a boy" or screw that, better.

Today, before I was even caffeinated I got mansplained at. It happens a lot.

I couldn't really know what I am talking about. I have tits, so duh. 

Normally I will argue passionately. Put across my clever, logically rhetoric and reasoning, drawing on my years of knowledge and experience. I made one short post and then the thread was swamped.

That was the moment.

Right there.

No matter how smart I am, how clever my reasoning, or even, how right I am. It doesn't matter a spot. Not the tiniest smidge. 

I have never had "penis envy". Never wanted to be a man. In fact I thought the very idea was ridiculous. 

Yet maybe all women have this moment.

I am a woman, smart, proud, fierce and I will never be taken seriously, thought of as important because I female. I can't win.

I can't be enough, not because of me. There is nothing I can do about the "me" bit. If the singer reaches perfection it doesn't make a difference to someone who is deaf. Or worse, doesn't want to hear.

How do I make a difference in the world that doesn't seem to want me in it?

I always thought if I fought long enough or hard enough we would win. That there would be equality, that being smart enough, talented enough and pushing would win out.

Bind our feet, twist and burn our bodies, torture us, rape us, abuse us. Nothing hurts like this pain.

Nothing hurts like denying our voice, which is of course why it is done.

It doesn't seem as important as physical safety. It's only Instragram, Facebook censoring, talk about Western woman privilege.

No. NO NO! It is her voice. It is her expression; remove it, dismiss it, mainsplain it away and you destroy something. Bodies heal, sexual scars heal. Take away her voice and all she can hear is the echo of how she is not good enough, over and over and over again.

I am reminded of the last speech in The Taming of the Shrew. Kate has been staved, dressed in rages, made to say night is day, with very little sympathy from the women around her. She was too difficult, refused to play the game. Didn't make nice.

She stopped fighting. For if she is not his equal then she might as well be his docile slave, much to the horror of the women around her. That is the truth now as it was then. 

We women who carry around light, and beauty and knowledge and hope; are nothing but a lump of meat to stand on to make yourself taller while you thump your chest.

I am tired of my body and being bearing nothing but the foot prints of men.

I am so tired.

With Teeth

With Teeth

All Hail the Baba Yaga, the Crone, the faery God/dess Mother,The Bone Mother, The Great Queen who may eat you, yet saves you. She is not the Milk Teeth mother. She is not only soft in word and deed and touch. No her rules are tough because the dangers are everywhere, and they are real.
There are two kinds of animal that are the most dangerous in the wild, especially predators with eyes that mirror our own. They are adolescent males and females with young.

While this fierce quality is frowned on, pushed out of "mother"and "mothering" She is there and She has teeth.
"How can Baba Yaga be a mother AND be fierce, pushing and even destroying, destroying with light and fire?" The historians and academic wail!
Mother is warm milk and endless affection, except when we venture into the world it is leaving the cubs to eat for ones self. It is in teaching to hunt, to climb, to run, to eat, and when to back down.
What is poison, what is medicine, how much is too much? What is good dirt? What good grain?
Oh what is good life? What is good death?
The devil, they say is in the details, and She is all in the details.
How can She be good She destroys people? Yes but not you, your enemies, funny how they often dress as "family".Were She a friendly wizard, or charming knight we would applaud yet She give you the skull on the stick and says, turn your sight on the dark, negative hurtful parts and turn them into muck for the flowers to grow. The trees are hungry, and restless after all.

How can She be fierce and good? How can She be ugly and good? How can She destroy and be good?
Once She was one. Once she was soft in the belly, full in the lip and only her back showed she was also death, dying, knowledge. Then a male didn't like the way She looked at him, through the Wolf's eyelash and cut her in two. (She was right to be wary after all). Suddenly Mother was just milk, no blood and being wild off She danced into the dark to haunt his nightmares. Yet every woman remembers. Every woman remembers when she bleeds.

If we are lucky, if we seek Her out and find Her, She is the best teacher, the best friend, the best knowing, the best ally.
Only She can give you the medicine to make you complete and whole, and I know She will have you learn how to make your own, for it is the best. While She is flying and Her house is dancing on birds feet. How many ancient Goddess had bird's feet? Oh so many!
Medicine is often as bitter, sour and smells bad, but it does you good. It is not it's job to "taste" nice.

So take the medicine. Better yet find your own. Be fierce and wild, be ugly if you must.
For a long time ago I wandered in the Dark and found Her waiting for me under the trees.


Bright Blessings xxx

The Closet.

The Closet.

The odd thing about being in a closet and I am with Hannah Hart on this one, that everyone has closets. They can be broom closets. They can be almost anything. Maybe you are the Don't Ask/Don't Tell kind of closeted.
A lot of my students have for their jobs (from teachers, nurses, working with the police) kept their faith and practice on the down low, or even totally locked down. Primarily having been abused by neighbors, work situations and even people I thought were friends for my beliefs, I slid back into the Don't Ask/Don't Tell place. I never judged my students and friends because I know that being out and proud is wonderful until your boss makes up an excuse to get you fired.
I find it weirder when folks are still in the closet to their family because that must so exhausting, but I have never had the "conversation" with my family as I couldn't give a fig what they do or don't think of me. The pivotal moment for me was when I chose to go to the Pagan Pride march with a then closeted (now ex-student). It wasn't my city but their were faces I knew.
That traffic stopping march was mind blowing and if I am going to get abused, have difficulty working at jobs because of discrimination and be subject to hate;

I am done apologizing for being myself.

I understand that sometimes we want the quiet life. The easy life. If we don't fight the ignorance today my daughter will face the same crap I have.  She has the right to do her thing if she is not hurting anyone else. If we don't stand up for ourselves, if we don't stand up for each other we are so much easier to hurt, discriminate against and bully.
If we stand together. If we can fill our lungs and shout WE ARE PAGAN. WE ARE PROUD. Then we can do anything.
I went from talking about it with people who know me, to making video's on Youtube!

I have been disowned by my family. Trust me it was painful but it was by and far the best thing that ever happened to me and had nothing to do with being bi-sexual or a witch.

If your family don't love and support who you really are, is that really a family?

Right now I won't tell you who you must be, or for whom. You do what you have to do. Yet know that you have rights, you have a system that will back you up and you will never change anyone's mind, but you might make a big difference in the life of someone you know. Some who is closeted and in agony with not being allowed to be themselves.

I can not imagine not being allowed to read certain books, watch certain TV shows because some tells me I can't. I can not imagine not being able to wear what I want, say what I want to say or to whom.
I am free. Utterly.

Are you?

Bright Blessings xxx

Open As Flowers

Open As Flowers

I was not expecting to tread the deep moss this morning. I was not expecting you sound of water dripping on rock. I was not expecting to be reminded that I know who I am. I know who I am. 

As open as flowers.

A very long time ago my "sister" had a poetry project (something she sucks at) and she had to write a poem from the words,

"There's a dark, dark wood inside my head.."

It became a "family" project and a by phrase but it stuck with me. It lost all meaning and when was free from the constrains of what words came after. I have no fear of the dark, dark wood, inside my head or otherwise. For trees know me and we sing in silence, but not silence to each other. 

If I had never spent a day with shoes on, if I had lived under my Holy holy tree with only my fire to warm me, that essence, this me would still be me.

What beautiful gifts She sends me. Always what I need, when I need it. Always my strife comes from other people's ideas of me having to fit in a small square box and when I don't they get angry with me.

I will wear those blindfolds on my feet. I won't climb into those strong growing arms any more that reach, reach towards the light rooted in crow, in the dead and dirt but only because I need only brush their cheek with my fingertips and speak. To listen.

I had such sensible plans today, about those who choose to stay in the Broom Closet or do the Don't Ask/Don't Tell stance on who they are. How oddly most of my students had fallen into that category and how I had slipped into the Don't Ask/Don't Tell mode myself for a while.

Yet the poetry is calling me. I have to sew today (someone wants a Goddess) and that seems right. Sat by the fire, praying and stitching, mixing herbs, the magick in my body and voice. I am glad of the rain, it's drumming woke me.

The trees are beginning to blush with spring.

The rising sap and the old birds sing.

The streams and rivers, full and fast.

Clearing the fallen, from winter's past.

The Birch is shedding it papery skin.

Forest maiden quiet, naked and thin.

Sleek and quick the ivy grows around

The Oak and Ash without any sound.

Sleep is shaken from slender fingers

In slumbering hollows dreams mist lingers.

The Yew grove flicker's in anticipation.

The winter's silences springs into conversation.

The taste of thunder is in the air.

Broken with sunny spells, here, and there.

The Whispering of the the Wild Wet Wood.

Lost, and forgotten, not yet understood.

 It is an old poem, one I had to dig to find in my Book of Shadows. Yet today it speaks to me.

Bright Blessings  xxx

Spiritual Cleaning

Spiritual Cleaning

 

Nevermind your broom, get your mop out!

(The above statement is silly because you always sweep first, but it made a good joke). Rocking my Friday night by...spiritually cleaning. This is the same as regular cleaning but with herbs, salt oils and intention.
I have two halves of myself and one is an messy artist, and one is a neat freak. Mostly the messy artist wins and then my inner neat freak wails about the mess.
I also happen to live with some really not fussed about mess people. That is not to say that witchling (I can not call her mini-witch any more she is almost as tall as me) and TK don't clean. They are quite good at it. What they are not great at is consistency. They will do it...eventually. 
When it was just me (and the psychotic cat) at home I would spend about 3 hours a day cleaning and doing laundry. I tried to impressive this ethic on my lovely family and they really looked at me like I had grown another head.
Then I got sick. Well I had been sick for a while but I sucked it up and kept going until I fell over. After a year of pretty much not being able to get out of bed while the clean freak part of me wanted to let rip and scrub all the things, the artist part of my brain was like WHOAH there lets not waste the only good energy you might have today cleaning stuff. It will still be dirty tomorrow! The whole almost dying thing underlined the point and I stopped doing anywhere near as much.
Still old habits die hard. I got witchling to salt and vacuum the floors today and I steeped some of the blend to wash the floors with. Unfortunately (or yay naps) happened (blood on the moon) and that is how I ended up scrubbing my kitchen and floor on a Friday night.
While cleaning is a never ending task it never fails to make me feel more settled and harmonious inside and in my space. It is quite medative too singing my heart out as the mop or clothe move back and fro.
My salt blend was rock and sea salt, with herbs and essential oils (the space feels better as soon as it simmers of the stove). It is an intuitive process for me what herbs go in, but the woodier they are, the earlier they go in (cloves, star anise and the like).
I may not be using a scrubbing brush on the floor boards once a week any more but I keep my wards sharp, my space clean and healthy because it is a sacred space and it deserves respect and some care.

Bright Blessings xxx

Bias and Misunderstanding Our Past

Bias and Misunderstanding Our Past

I am a history buff. My hubby is an amateur historian (ancient languages are his thing, from hieroglyphics to Anglo-Saxon poetry) and while I tend to enjoy history programs and books I have a couple of big problems a lot of it.

They couldn't have done that.

The assumption that technology is linear, or that people from the past grunted and poked each other with sticks is insulting for so many reasons.There is also the idea that indigenous technology is "simple" or "primitive". Whether the indigenous people are people living in Ireland, Africa or the Americas there is a Romanic/Greek bias as a hangover from the Victorian gentlemen who "invented" archaeology; as well as the male Greek and Roman scholars many of whom often negatively colour our view of  people far long than the evidence to the opposite of their view comes to light. Speaking of which...

Evidence in Boxes Shut Away.

The sheer scale of Goddess statues and "rude" and "crude" artifacts that are hidden in academic boxes deemed "unworthy" of study is disturbing, disgusting and speaks volumes about the sexism still very much present in the academic circles that curate and restrict access, or fail to even examine or uncatalogued this priceless pieces of our history. Speaking of which...

The Huge Amount of Stolen Artifacts 

These treasure very often taken from "exotic" and "foreign" lands, even simply to "better museums". A museum becomes "better" when they can make revenue from local exciting finds of course.

A good example of this was the Staffordshire Horde. This amazing treasure was found in Staffordshire. It gives an exciting window into a culture we still struggle to understand because they left so little, the Anglo-Saxons. Yet only some of it remains in the local Museum, that paid a hefty price to try and keep it there. Most of it is in Birmingham now.

So who does it "belong" to?

Let's not even get started on the Egyptian, Greek and Roman artifacts stashed around this country (or being sold with little to no money going to the poor countries that their history was robbed from). I wonder if Greece made all the countries that now have their artifacts pay them for the privilege if it would be "in debt"? 

But they don't have the facilities to preserve them properly, some cry.

Well they would if people had to pay to see the artifacts, or back date a percentage of the revenue they gained from them.

Princesses and Warriors.

Up until recently the grave goods you were buried with were the pigeon hole your were placed in. Sword. Male. High status young woman, Princess. 

The fact that site of importance are routinely ascribe a function by the gender of the bodies found is wrong. Wrong, wrong and more wrong. It uses the facts to makes assumptions and then uses the assumptions to "create facts". Life is not neat little boxes. People are not neat little boxes and they never have been. 

My best example of this glaringly sexist ideology was the recent excavation of Stone Henge.  The guy running it claimed that it could only be a religious site if a single gender was found there. (This is not of course how people in the past thought, this is quite a modern idea.) They found bones of many different people of all ages. They deemed it a Royal Tomb. This is based on our own Western ideas of royalty, status and importance, and has not factual base in the distant past. Do bear in mind that West Minster Abbey (also a royal tomb) is also a place of worship, and also has the bones of people like Charles Dickens and Joseph Addison as well as Hugh and Mary Adams (who paid for the privilege). This dichotomy of this or that, that is far from true now, is just as likely to be false in the past as it is now. The sword=male is now conceded to be wrong but the mindset persists. If a woman has a sword it must have been her father's or her husbands, or an honour given by a male leader! What utter rubbish. It makes the so many assumptions and uses them as fact. 

Likewise the princess idea again makes her fall into the category of daughter of someone important, wife or girlfriend. It reinforces the Patriarchal rubbish that "it's always been this way". Which it hasn't. If she is important it might have more to do with a skill she has, a gift or even "disability" (often seen as marks from Divine forces) than who her father, lover or husband was.

Likewise if important men in MesoAmerica remove their penises and let the blood flow, it might have a lot more to to with wombs and menses and much less to do with penises. 

I believe I have had many past lives, most of which I have been female (just seems the way of it). People are people. There never was an ideal past. Nor was there a time when people were stupid or uncomplicated. People have always been weird, ruled by situation and imagination. When we look back and assume these people knew less than us it simply isn't true. Could you track a deer or animal for 4 days with no food? Could you build a home, a boat, know every plant and shrub? Build your own tools, make your own rope and medicine?

The past is another country or so they say and far too many people who study it, write about it and teach it have pretty prejudice things about it.   

 

Teachers

Teachers

As a kid I had many teachers. Not always the ones you would expect. The ones I had at school weren't that important bar one or two. The first was the holly tree in my "garden"* and the second a standing stone "down the yard".

The holly tree was a circle of holly trees under and around a huge old tree. It was tall (I know everyone is tall to me) but it was over 25 feet tall. I made this "my den" and even built a fire pit from old breeze blocks  carefully clearing a circle free of dropped leaves and keeping a bucket of rain water near by. Even when it rained most of the water would fall outside the dome of it's leaves. There was something about this place even my "family" recognised because all our dogs that died were buried on the edge of this tree. It wasn't like we didn't have space for them to be buried elsewhere. The tree had a male quality to him. When he appeared to me infrequently he was a thing wizened old man with a long grey beard made of semi solid blue smoke.

He was a comforting presence. Never intrusive. I made my first staff out of his body. I recycled a sun and moon earrings and tied them so they hung above my fire for a year and a day before adding them to the staff. They eventually fell of but I had the staff until someone's small child broke it while we we walking. (Oddly enough we are not still friends).

Mostly he would just nudge me in a certain direction about things, though I would also make marks and channel on occasion (one being a semi circle with an V or arrow shape through it with symbols at the end). This was something I had never seen but drew a lot, only to see it again in some Pictish designed jewelry but they meaning is still "unknown"  

The standing stone was a boundary marker and rather than move it they had built a pig pen sort of around it. 

Most of the time it didn't "do" anything. Yet sometimes I could feel it "calling me", often waking me before dawn. I would go and watch the sunrise with it. Then walk a lap around the farm making sure everything was okay. I would leave it small stones, or flowers, or even flower knots I was always making. 

I had my "imaginary" friends in the house too. Mr Brown (he wouldn't tell me his name until years later) who was squat, robust and brown. Brown leathery weather worn skin, brown cap, brown clothes, brown boots. He was fine, but surely, but got me into trouble bringing me things,or moving and hiding other people things. Anna was the ghost of a serving girl who died. I will forever remember her very cold feet as she would lie with me sometimes to "get warm". I am quite she it was her that threw around my sisters things when she was vile to me. She would talk to me when I was doing house hold chores and show me what to do. Sometimes I would pretend we were sister, which we both found comforting.

My "mother" was a teacher too. A music teacher mostly. She had only a few ways of being around me. One was her "teacher" mode. Authority, repeating phrases about practice layering guilt and disappointment or sudden flare of barely contained rage. Then she discovered "therapist" where she had her "listening face" and "unconditional positive regard" (which was not warmth, authenticity or care). Over the years I have made countless excuses for this. She was an un-mothered mother, she was terrified of losing her status and acceptance of "the Farm" community and household if she stood up for me, she was barely coping herself; but all these are half truths. The truth is she never wanted children. The truth is I was "Daddy's girl". The truth is the more she withdraw her care (I don't know if she could have loved me) the more I looked after myself and I didn't need her. The more I didn't need her the more she withdrew. While the abuse I suffered at the hands of her "real family" was awful, that utter neglect of my well being , that I failed to see as abuse, was so much worse. So much more invasive. So much more damaging. 

People and friends sometimes comment on how strong I am. I am steel and boot leather. I am tough. It comes easily to me. Being strong was the only choice for me. Being soft, being open and vulnerable, loving and kind is a choice I make every single day.

In my teens and late twenties I found some teachers of the Craft but most were disappointing to me. I wanted this mythical supportive figure, a Sensei, finally I decided to embrace myself as teacher and students flocked to me.

I found this weird. I was so young after all. Yet in finding was to explain what a standing stone taught me, having to put it into words I learned, and still learn a lot. I will re-read, read around a subject I think I know and I always learn something.

Of course I had no idea caring about your students is a big no-no. I loved them, feed them, took them to my hearts and they often broke them when they left (all students leave, it is their nature). I thought at first I was doing something wrong. Yet it turns out it was the opposite. The moment when a student sharpens their tone and say "I know" they have lost ears to hear with. Their time with you is over. Like a sponge at saturation point. Sometimes I am suprised. Sometimes I am saddened. Sometimes relieved. Teaching is very hard work. For every hour a student puts in I put in two or three.

Often they don't understand how it used to work. They often have little discipline, that makes me "the bad guy". I feel moments like that because I see flashes of my "mother's" rotes. Sometimes people don't "see the point" and I don't want to explain I want them to discover the reason when they do it. Me telling someone something is never as powerful as them learning it directly for themselves. 

I love teaching. I love being a teacher. Nurturing someone's spiritual growth is easy for me.

I think I will open a circle or school and teach the Key soon. I have no idea how it will happen yet. Yet I know it will.

*Think meadow with large tree which got mowed twice a year 

Bright Blessings xxx 

Magickal and Ritual Context

Magickal and Ritual Context

"So if magick happens everywhere, even when you are not paying attention why is ritual important, why bother at all?"
So in other blogs I talk about the Laws of Magick and Accidental Magick, about how what you think, what you feel and do radiate all the time. Then recently I spoke about Ritual and what it is.

So if everything is magick why do you need to "do" anything? Well it's some people's belief they don't. I am not one of those people.
Ritual is a deliberate, physical, mental, and spiritual process that by it's nature is outside of the conventions, rules and even logic of the none ritual world. You create a space (which is important and defined, and often sacred) in which dreaming, symbols and symbolic become the dominant way of thinking.
This often changes the context of every day items, from stars to cups or wands. This is the ritual context. What you think, say and do is important where every you are but against this backdrop your actions are magnified, your process and energy dilated. A spot light shines on you and your shadow seems larger, and your flaws melt away in the glare.
So meditation in this context is "waking in the dreaming" or "dreaming in the dream".  Dancing, eating, singing all become symbolic acts.
What you wear. How you wear it. How you decorate your space and body all become even more important. Ritual is a transformative process much like dreaming.
This is why some rituals seem so structured and solid, it is to allow the participants to know exactly what is going to happen so they can relax into the mindset, much like a tai chi pattern or a dance. Once you know the steps you can stop thinking about it and relax into and be in the flow beneath.
Rituals like dreaming are important because they mend the body, spirit and mind. They can even mend the group as well as the individual. This balance of "play" as well of "doing" is not just healthy for a person but allows groups to play out other ideas and structures and and release them without harming the group.
As a teacher I am always drawing back to a few simple/difficult questions.
What did it teach you?
What did that mean to you?
How would this change in a ritual context?
This is not because I am "mean" and like to trick anyone, but because looking at what things teach you, what meaning you give and how in a dreamscape, The Veil, Anwen, the same idea, movement or thing changes, morphs and reveals it's self is a magickal awakening.

Bright Blessings xxx

Amethyst: Crystal Healing

Amethyst 

Crystal Healing

Amethyst has been used to heal for a very long time. As with all crystals (especially quartz based ones) it can be programmed. For me these two big hunks of solid sobriety (amethyst was worn and even used to make cups to prevent drunkenness) both recharge the crystals I have been wearing in the day, cleanse them and radiate a peaceful vibration while I sleep.

It is a good healing stone as it calms the troubled mind and heart, soothing both. It helps promote all clairvoyant gifts and psychic abilities while drawing your spiritually towards your higher "god/goddess" self.

It (like quartz) can draw away energy, or redirect it, like quartz. It helps lessen pain of all kinds and cleanses all the energetic and and physical systems of the body.

This makes it great at helping to allow the body to heal it's self, from headaches and insomnia to congestion of the lungs, skin or digestive system. It makes great elixirs and oils because it is none toxic and a great cleanser.  

While a gentle wash with hand warm water and soap can clean you crystal well and it can even handle salt water, amethyst doesn't like direct light and will fade quickly on a window sill or if you wear it every day.

While gently re-energizing (like a good rest or meditation) I have never know it to be over powering.

Natural points make fantastic healing wands as they transmute your energy into something more gentle and easily accepted by person, animal or plant being healed.

As it is a type of quartz it has many of the same amazing features, especially in points.

Record Keepers. 

A record keeper is a quartz (or amethyst point) with tiny regular pyramids or triangles naturally occurring along the point. Opening great spiritual knowledge and truth from within and from without they are a catalyst of great change.

Etched.

A natural point that appears to have cuneiform like lettering along it's surface. Said to only truly belong to one person, and a past life healer par excellance.  

Scepter quartz

These large phallic crystals are great at treating...fertility problems, balancing "male" and "female" energies as well as being a powerful healing force, especially for healers themselves.

Soul mate Tantric Twin

Two crystal points have grown so closely together they are now one crystal with two points. Drawing not only sexual but soul partnerships into the life of the person working with and connecting to and strengthening and healing all kinds of relationships.

If you want more of an over view you can read my earlier blog.

There is so much more to say, but I have to stop somewhere and here seems right. When working with crystals please do try and get ones from ethical sources that have not been blasted out or other equally horrifying practices.

Bright Blessings xxx

Star Magick

Star Magick.

Last night I (TK was clear he wasn't helping, but he helped do it all) do a simple and beautiful out door ritual under the stars.
I made a simple copal/frankincense/lavender incense, and had my equinox/spring blend on a saucer.
I used my big brass incense burner and used two coals (I find you just need more outside).
The fire pit was simply set and the star blessings were burned over more coals.
I used a sky blue altar cloth (which could have been made for my ad hock altar).
I mixed a blessing salt mixed with ground eggshells. Which I cast around the space on the ground I knew I was going to be working on. Then a simple rug so my bare-feet would freeze less!
I was wearing my big green robes and nothing else, but some blessing oil. This was great outside I barely felt the cold but while to-ing and fro-ing taking lanterns and such I was practically melting inside!
Lit with beautiful lanterns and the bright still sky I enchanted the whole ritual (I sang it) calling on spirits and fey and Goddess alike.
Then I (well we- TK was there to help) released the written spells onto the fire pit and watched their light burn brightly and quickly turn to ash.
TK collected the ashes carefully and I gave offering to the fire (the last of my "good" lavender) and poured the spring blend onto the coals in the incense burner and blew the  smoke around my garden, singing welcome to the spring.
There was no set tune, I just opened my heart and out it all came. The smokes behaved so differently from each other. The first made a sphere of smoke around the circle and was like owl's wing. The second spiraled around the circle then was draw upwards like starlings in flight.
This rush was followed by an intense and profound emotion of connectedness. Of comfort, and safety.
Then I needed to clear everything up. Put it all away (except the fire pit) and have some Horlicks and a bath.
I had the sweetest dreams (as did TK).

Bright Blessings xxx


  

Busy Busy Bee

Busy!
 

I am currently working not one but two books, as well as marketing The Key, (buy it, it is really good) and trying to keep up with my feasting and practice!
I have been planning this loaf for a while and it has a LOT in it (13 eggs for a start).
Now I do everything by hand. So it is really hard work. My biggest bowl was almost over flowing with this yellow (it was really bright) fruity goop. I even baked a separate little pot for my house fey, as an offering. Mr Brown's came out perfectly, of course! I called it my pagan equinox bread and I research breads like hot cross buns, paska (it even has a splash of run on the dried fruit) kozunak (it has a layer of sugared almonds that looked like eggs) and passa brood (it has marzipan chunks)  and kulich (saffron and cardamon), as well as bara brith.

It is a big bread!It is tasty too. We ate chicken and salad with dips as a ritual feast and then had the bread. At first I thought it was underdone, but it was just the molten marzipan!
I have so much to be grateful for.
So much joy and good in my life.
Yes it does appear my ex-student has gone crazy stalker weird on me (another one??? that makes 4 stalkers Lucy, you are not Maddona). Yet the more successful I become the more cray cray will want a piece of me.
I have a friend (also a writer) who says "If you have enemies you are doing something right."
I have tried my best to focus on myself and my work. On having fun with my beautiful family and friends. If imitators and weirdo leave a bad taste in my mouth I have some new Ayurvedic toothpaste that can get rid of anything! I am even beginning to like it. Okay that is a stretch, the minty clove grout (it really looks like you could tile a bathroom with it) works amazingly and I can live with it.
I am just happy enjoying the sunshine. After all no-one can do what I do, how I do it. Even the weird stuff.
Okay especially the weird stuff.

This is just a regular, store bought bird food ball. (I had seed I scattered on the grass but they just grew too). I though maybe it was the ground...nope. Just me!

Bright Blessings xxx

The Growing light.

The Growing Light.

What is light but that which extinguishes darkness, in a instant. For light like love moves time, stills it, bends it, creating a moment. There is peaceful darkness. Stillness of soft night and dreams but ignorance, cruelty, malice of thought, and word and deed that spreads like a disease is also called "dark". This toxicity has it's roots, it's spore blown on the wind and can grow if unchecked. It is in our own hearts we must fill with light. In our own words and deeds. For doing what is right may be as fleeting as the beam breaking through cloud, just it touch always felt.

I have spent a time in rituals, and prayer with a host of fey and spirit these last few days. Channeling light and power into my life and work (with the help of others).

It has been uplifting, healing and inspiring. It has been wonderful to connect to new people magickally and to reconnect to those from the past.
I am so clear on my path. So deep in my knowledge of where I am to go, yet not fixed on what may or may not happen.
I had a lot of fun today doing affirmations and spell work with TK and Mini-witch (she is now almost as tall as me). We also made a video for TK channel (it won't be up just yet it needs editing and music and so on).
 Gratitude

My cup of life runs over

Goddess I thank you.

I am so blessed

I have the things I want

I want the things I have.

Thank you

Happiness is reverence

To the abundance of your love.

Thank you.

I have so much more to learn

And so many teachers

Thank you.

Though my life has not always been easy

You have shown me the way.

Thank you.

Blessed be.

Copyright 2014

Bright Blessings xxx

Please hear this Blog with a slight Welsh tint.

Please hear this Blog with a slight Welsh tint.

It is important to understand two things when you read this blog. One it is a sarcastic, and also you need to hear it with a slight south Welsh lilt. (This only happens when I am peeved or drunk, my "mother" was from Bleanau after all).

Don't I love you? Do I give you lovely things like videos and blogs? Don't I work hard? Well I have worked my arse off this week, I mean proper worked my arse off, and what I have to show for it? Nothing you ungrateful buggers!
I have done radio interviews (alright they were a lot of fun) I have made video's (I know TK did all the hard work of editing and waiting FOREVER for it to compress and then upload) but you know how hard talking is for me! I mean. Shh you!
My book turned up all shiny and great and ready for me to sign and post to you. Have you ordered one? No you lazy 'orse!
I mean it has fablas reviews by everyone who has read it, even other writers like Kevin!

I mean who wouldn't want this book I made for you? I left spaces so you can make notes (we all know some of you are terrible at journaling) and added pictures so you can help visualize what's what. I made meditation as easy as anyone can without doing it for you, and like wiping your arse I'm leaving that for you!
I know it asks you tough questions, one without easy answers in and can be challenging (find me another way to really grow and I'll let you off), but all the best teachers do.
All those lovely places to explore inside you Mind, and Body and Spirit, just waiting to for you to find your own magick!
But No. You clearly need to pick your teeth, or buy another crystal (because they clearly fix everything). 5 star reviews and your just sittin' there?
Go on. I can't even look at you.
I'm not angry. No just disappointed. I mean how could you? After working my poor finger's to the blutty bone. No no. Don't put yourself out or anything.
Don't you dare do me any favours.
I'll be just fine thank you ta very much.

I'm sure your arm fell off, or your internet was down or something. I mean it's only on blutty Amazon!
What about if we aren't in the UK, well it's on their BLUTTY Amazon too! Look 5 star reviews!

Well you take care for now, and put your blutty coat on it's bitter out there.


Okay.
Back to me now.


Bright Blessings xxx
(More blogs of the usual nature next week!)

Goodbye my Friend I Never Knew You

Goodbye my Friend I Never Knew You

Of all the writers I have read, pagan and otherwise, it would be fair to say none of them had the impact this man had. Maybe because I found my path "proper"picking up a book by Stewart Farrar the same time (and on opposite book shelves) at my library (Equal Rites was my first).
I have more of this author than any other, only my herbal book collection competes.
Some years ago I started to try and collect all the books (the rules were charity shop only) and then you went and starting writing books mini-witch would enjoy (The Wee Free Men Tiffany Aching series being on of your very best).
While I adored your witches, of course, I did not only follow their stories. I was moved by Death and Susan as profoundly as I was Sam Vimes. The person you reminded me of the most.
The Monstrous Regiment was a "side book" and yet was one of the best books ever written about the pointlessness of war and how deeply it affects everyone. It was feminist and silly. Too rare a treat.
I loved how textured this Disc-World was. I know the smell of the Ankh. The feeling of the black petals against my hand in Deaths garden. I even must have a touch of wizard in me (I suffer from auto-condimentia something chronic).
As Moist and Arabella I found new characters to love in a city I knew but had never been to.
You shared my belief in the power of words and the emotion behind them.
I have been called a Weatherwax witch more than once and while still in my twenties I was impressed! I would have liked to have been a bit more Ogg. Yet I agree that I hard, practical, stronger than steel and more frightened of myself than anything else (even Death).
I think that is what your witches taught me about witchin' was that is not about how many sigils you wear, which Gods or Goddess are watching, it is about helping mostly ungrateful people because it needs to be done. I am Ogg-like in my desire to have fun (I have been know to sing and dance on tables) and took my babies everywhere while witchin' with the best like Magrat. 
I come from a long like of women like Weatherwax (Esme), some good, some...not so good. My Black Alice is spelled Alys but she was a wrong 'un and no mistake.
I am a better witch, a better woman and mother for your books. 

“...Granny Weatherwax, who had walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was...”
"All witches are very conscious of stories. They can feel stories, in the same way that a bather in a little pool can feel the unexpected trout. Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle. For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says 'How do you play this game, then?', someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out."

"Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards."

So tonight as you cross the desert of black sand that makes no sound. Know you lived well. Made the world better and were loved and admired by those who never knew you, accept as Death, as the wizard, as the con man, as the simple law man made good, or a the governess with a poker. 

Bright Blessings xxx

Herbs for Spring Equinox

Herbs for Spring Equinox

When I read a lot of books and now blogs about herbal correspondences for this time of the year I notice a couple of things.
Firstly they are going to be last years herbs because lavender, is not a spring plant. Nether is lilac (though I dry what I can from my bush in the garden). Even the lemon balm (which is growing in the front garden already) is a late summer herb. In fact most of the herbs do not scream "spring" to me.

Secondly some of them are poisonous in whole or part too. No-one should use lily-of-the-valley. Ever.

For me this equinox has a hint of the dark equinox (and maybe a pinch of that incense blend in the mix.)
It is rather low on dried flower petals because they tend to smell like burning paper. More resins and oils and woods like myrrh, copal, birch resin, rose wood, willow, cinnamon and the like.
In truth I think of the smell of fresh cowslips and primroses, I think of pussy willow, catkins, damp green spaces as well as baking of sweet bread and buns full of saffron, cinnamon, cardamon and plump dried fruit.

While reading and researching is a key part of pagan and witchcraft practice, it does really need not to be dogmatic. Putting in herbs or plants that can be dangerous without warning can be harmful to yourself and others. 

Just because someone wrote it somewhere doesn't make it fact.

For The Mighty Isle our customs are more black morris, boxing, egg rolling, running, people clean and clear family and loved ones graves and put fresh flowers, walk bare foot, watch the sunrise on top of the mountain, make cakes (simnel, hot-cross buns and tansy seed cake) and pies (pork, cheese and ham).

Fresh green salads and fish were plenty (though at different times different folks could afford different fish) but fresh meat was not so much.

It was a time of charity and giving, as well as partying, drinking and courting (counting how many seeds were in your cake was how many years it would be until you wed).

 Spring equinox is coming...

Bright Blessings xxx

Little Dreams and Big Lies

Little Dreams and Big Lies

I have had a hell of a week. I have been to some dark places in my soul but it has taught me I am on the right path.
It has made me look at myself and give myself some more healing. I look at the lies we tell to ourselves and our children and each other and it makes me so sad.

Get a "proper" job.

There seems to be this idea of "proper" work, and not. Now what constitutes "not proper" changes. Yet the driving force is for people to settle for something "stable" (in this economy?). This is not to say I endorse poverty, but I do believe that spending all your time and energy on something that DOES NOT BRING YOU JOY is a waste of your life. It doesn't matter whether your job is "proper" or not. If you work hard, love what you do and can (in theory) make money doing it (or even if you can't), do it. Whether it is raising your own children (the hardest job I know) or being an artist, or anything else, it hurts your soul not living your passion.

My life will be perfect when I find Mr/Miss Right

Life is like homemade bread. The imperfections let you know it was handmade with love and care. There is this great Hollywood myth that a man/woman comes along and "fixes" everything. It is total garbage. Most relationships mess things up, challenge us, shake what we believed was possible. They don't "fix" anything. A good relationship (romantic or otherwise) is about enjoying a much as you can with this person. About having someone to tell you "I love you but your being an asshole" especially when you are being an asshole. They are to eat dinner with. Wait in doctors waiting rooms with. Talk in looks and faces no-one else understands. Sex is part of this but it is not the be all or end all because intimacy does not begin or end in the bedroom. You make your life. You make it with your thoughts and choices and actions every day. Ladies (you are particularly spoon feed this lie) a man is not going to come and rescue you. You don't need saving by anyone but yourself. If you look for a idea, an ideal, be it a knight in shining armor, a handsome doctor, or a hundred other tropes, you will always be disappointed.

Knights in armor are a violet guy in a tin can suit. That armor stops people from getting in, and no matter how shiny it is, there is a sweaty guy who enjoys smacking other guys with a weapon inside.

This idea stops you from being your own hero. Be Herminone, or Katniss, be your own hero.

This idea of perfection if they don't meet up to this unrealistic and frankly warped ideas about people means that people ether date, fall in love, fight and fail, over and over, or they settle after finding out someone was human. 

You should look like....   

Your body is yours.No-one else. Not your children. Not your partner or lover/s. It is yours and you can let it look however you want. 

A long time ago (when I was a kid) I was tiny and skinny. I grew up very active, for lots of reasons. I was a size 6-8 (2-4 US) until I hit 17 and I quit ballet. At which point I filled out to a 12-14 (8-10 US).  

People were mean when I was slim. People were mean when I was bigger. People are mean. Period and you will will always fail to meet someone standard of beauty. My "mother" is the worst. It was (when we saw each other) the first thing she would comment on. Again after having two babies back to back and being sick in bed, I gained weight. I then lost a lot by training and got back down to a size 10 at which I was told "don't lose more you look ill".

You can win. Just please yourself and have fun with it. I know people who are big who are super fit and super skinny who are not. Love all of who you are and don't let people get you down. Wear what you like.

Bright Blessings xxx

The Scribbler

The Scribbler.

Ink on my fingers

I have been a scribbler all my life. Note books and journals (though bad at a plain "Dear diary") and winning awards from my poems at 11 years old. My English teacher at high school actually stole my poetry file, which I submitted as course work. I did an adult script writing course at the big theater too. At college I studied writing and was more consistent about keeping a notebook with me and writing everything down. I still have those poems and fragments of thoughts. University felt like (and was) a giant leap backwards in writing but it made me discover that I could paint too.It shook my belief in my own voice. 
Then I became a wife and a Mum and I wrote again. I would teaching Craft (and learning) all this time too. My notebooks became full of charms and spells, poems, ideas, drawings of what I had seen and experienced. Then lesson plans and complex interweaving of lessons, meditations and so on. 
I started writing about me, my life and my magick as a cathartic experience. It was very healing. Some how after after a week in Scotland alone in a cold holiday let with a notebook and pen I cleared my channel and started writing "proper" again. 
I started writing my first book The Key after I found I was teaching long distance and having to send huge long emails explaining things. This became, eventually, The Key. After writing it I set about getting it published and in the end self published on Amazon to get the damn thing out (publishing is like labour, only more painful). Almost as soon as it was out I could see ways to make it better. I swiftly then published my next book, one of poetry call Litanies of Grief and Inspiration. 
I started work on my next book and the one after that! As I was writing the next book I got to a section and was like "this should totally be in The Key...) so over 9,000 words in I left it my embryonic book and have spent the last 6 months re-working, reformatting, painting, drawing and waiting on art work from an artist who let me down, and a friend who never does. Birthing was difficult, (publishing, phew NOT fun) but yesterday The Key (second edition) popped into the world on Amazon. I am yet to even hold it myself yet. Smell it's pages. It feels such a relief.  Now I can go back the the current book/s (pagan baking? Do I really know enough about bread?) 

Bright Blessings xxx

Can we ever know the rituals of the past?

Can we ever know the rituals of the past?

I read some blog recently that talked about the uncertainty of ancient rituals and our unending ignorance of them because we can never know exactly what was done. We will never "really" do Celtic rituals apparently.

While to an extent that is true I think that is both missing the point of ritual and not understand what a ritual actually is and why they are important.

I have quite a deep understanding of ritual practices of many kinds and have studied the processes of cultural ritualization in all kinds of contexts.

In some histories we have the words but not the movements or the physical symbolic context that was/is important to understand the ritual as a whole (The Mabinogion has much text and words, as well as stories and themes that speak to ritual, ritual context and ritual behaviour for example).

In other places we have oral and folk customs still practiced but not always full understood in terms of their ritual symbolism or context (Mari Lwyd).  

While I would suggest that Rhiannon and Mari Lwyd and Pwyll clearly have a connection and a ritualized context we can not easily historically marry them together in the present.

Yet if we understand the process of ritual behaviour we can see themes and modes crystallizing like salt solution. 

Ritual is where new ideas, symbols and structures are formed, born and sometimes die. It is a liminal space. Outside of cultural norms and rules and governed by dream logic and intense emotion people are beasts, and gods, and the dead, and themselves. 

A ritual is transformative. It changes those within it's ethereal confines, acknowledges the changes in the wider world (seasons/wars/peace/death) and gives expression to the sublimated, the repressed and unspoken.

Knowing this I can watch, participate or write a ritual for while some of the local nuances might be missed, I understand the deeper cross cultural symbols and the energy flow enough to understand what the ritual is doing. What the ritual is for. The tools may change. The costumes too. Yet underlying that is a process which I can follow in any language. Symbols are the nuts and bolts of a ritual, and from their placing I can tell what the ritual is doing.

If a ritual is about a change of status for an individual or a group it is a Rite of Passage ritual. It has three clear phases. Separation. Transition. Incorporation. (Interestingly quest stories as well as stories of people being changed into animals or the dead often follow this ritual pattern, as this being classed as animal or dead was and is often the first part of this process.) The length of these stages varies dependent on the focus of the particular Rite of Passage. Separation is the focus of death or leaving rituals, transition for birthing, marriage and initiation and incorporation.

Season rituals are about reconciling differences as a community, touching something deep as a collective and conscious act. This does not mean that many of the same symbols will not be present as they are in the Rites of Passage rituals. They may well even be a ritual within a ritual. Yet the focus is not a personal liminal space. 

I may never "perform" a ritual exactly like on my ancient ancestors did. Yet the thread, though thin is not completely cut. They would watch a ritual of mine, with curious and dark eyes and understand the symbols, the process, maybe even the story. For they had no word for internal psyche, or psychic landscape, or psychological construct. Their language for that place of dream and magick was Anwen. Was in The Dreaming, in this world but not of it. If I didn't say their words, if I didn't dance they way they did, but I gave them my cup filled with deep red liquid they would know what to do. They might drink it, anoint themselves with it, pour it over their bodies and the ground and it would all be RIGHT and correct for the ritual.

Ritual is a social, cultural and magickal tool. If you know how to use it, construct it, de-construct it then you can never get it wrong. While there are no doubts in my mind that our rituals would be different what makes them similar is far far more important.

Bright Blessings xxx

WARNING RANT #Jubilee2HateWomen #NotOneTampon

Warning Rant!

I go swimming once a week on a Sunday morning at my local council owned and run pool Jubliee2.
I can't do a lot of other exercise because of my other medical conditions make my feet, ankles and knees retain fluid.
Today I had something pretty humiliating happen.
Out of the blue (about 3 days early) I came on my period at the pool. If that wasn't bad enough, there was no tampon machine in the poolside toilet. I asked the female lifeguard if there was one somewhere else (there are more public toilets around the building). She refered me to her female superviser and I was told they don't have a tampon machine on site. #NotOneTampon.
So then I am stuck. Bleeding. Having spent money to swim and not being able to get in the pool. During this my daughter and hubby have managd a couple of laps.
At this point the temporary duty manager comes down to speak to me.
"Nothing I can do."
"I'm only filling in."
I hear these phrases about 50 times. Hubby and daughter get out of the pool. I (still in my bikini) grab a wrap from my locker and have to wait outside in the lobby as this manager gets me a refund for us swimming. There is a large queue and I am in a bikini and a wrap. Bleeding.
I am both humiliated. I am livid with anger.
How is it possiblle for there not to be ONE tampon machine in the whole building?
I am a grown woman with children and so on. I don't embaress easily. This kind of thing would happen, and probably does happen to younger girls all the time and they are too upset to mention it or undertand that they do not have anything to be sorry for.
How in a public use building,one many women work at and use can there be NO tampon machine of any kind?
As the burning sting is wearing off my desire to protest by handing out tampons is now fading but this whole thing is wrong wrong wrong.