A little chat about a thing.

So, someone decided today to shove their nose into something that's none of their business.

I have mentioned (only briefly) that I started tentatively working with Odin since he approached me in October 2013. Honey Badger now works with him as well.

Someone in our local community thought hey were the authority on Odin and who he does and doesn't work with, and thought they ought to run their mouth on the subject to a mutual friend who at no point asked to be involved.

We are not friends or acquaintances with the person who wrote this email.  We aren't (or weren't) enemies with them either. This is not a new step in a long and drawn out war with this individual. They are a member of the local community but really not on our radar whatsoever.

I'm not sure what possesses people to make them think that judging and attacking the paths of others is OK. It's not. Ever. This is an "inside voice" moment--you can have opinions and thoughts about what others are up to, but it's none of your business, so keep your effing mouth shut.

Nothing we have done is "disrespectful". Nothing is harming anyone. And I don't need to justify my experiences to anyone, but in case you're curious: I never asked for this. I did not go seeking a deity to work with. I never wanted to work with any. The Alfather chose to insert himself into my spiritual life in a very unexpected way, sans warning or preamble (which I have read is not uncommon for him...) and I decided it was a call to something new, and not to ignore it. I have done a lot of reading, books on Heathenry, books on Norse Mythology, the Eddas. I don't call myself Heathen because I'm not, but I want to learn and grow and if Odin sees something worthy in me, who the fuck is anyone else to say "No!"? That is between me and Him, not you. You may choose to think I have rushed into this blindly--but there have been many steps along this path and I choose not to share most of them.

This person is a semi prominent member of a prominent local group that hosts events and rituals and claims to be open to anyone's path or truth and to exist to foster the growth of others.

Right.

Maybe they ought to know the true opinions of some of the company they keep? Certainly means I wont be promoting the group to anyone any longer as long as I know this person is involved.

Edit: I removed my rather acerbic video, as funny as I found it, it didn't really say anything new and was just angry spewing.

My friend the Honey Badger (to whom this email was primarily directed) has since received three more attempts at direct correspondence from this person. They're basically trolling now for a reaction, I suppose. They seem to think they have the moral high ground here--that because (in their opinion) we are "doing it wrong" we are "pissing on her ancestors" and everything she said is justified. She's missing the point alarmingly -- no matter how right she thinks she is, attacking the beliefs of another is wrong. We all walk our own path - she has no right, nor does anyone, to dictate that one path over another is delusional or untrue or "wrong". Unless there is actual abuse or harm taking place, you keep your nose out because it's none of your business.

The more you talk, the more your stupid shows. Keep it up.

Riptide

One of the things I read early into By Land Sky and Sea was Parma's mention of dance as a means to raise energy and celebrate the body.

I will confess, I love dancing, but my dancing skills are on par with Mass Effect's Commander Shepard - laughably bad. So I generally don't dance in public any more. (I had a brief spell in my early twenties, of acting "my age", going downtown to bars and getting mildly drunk on a semiregular basis. Amazing what a few shots of tequila will do with "I can't dance.")

This week has been a particularly hard one.  I had some depression issues weaning off the steroid, and a reaction to my migraine pills which had me at the ER unsure of what was happening to me. I spent most of today being gloriously lazy, doing a bit of homesteading, cooking, and playing videogames, trying to recover from the week. 

A song popped into my head.

A silly pop song.  With a fun rhythm.

I put it on youtube and tapped my toes.

I bought it from iTunes and put it on my phone, and put my phone in this cardboard tube that makes a great makeshift speaker.

And I started to dance.

I think I played it a good 20 times, resetting each time it came near the end. I danced like a little crazy person, arms flailing, feet kicking, no real rhythm or method or choreography and not a single sweet blessed fuck given. This was not my living room, I was not in pajamas on carpet, I was under a bright full moon in a summer sky, in a swirly dress and bare feet, stamping out splashes in the shallows of a pool. Partway through, I felt the weird exhaustion in my limbs, the realization that this is some sweet exercise, damnit, this strange buzzing feeling that was part breathlessness, and part...something else. And I thought back to Gede Parma and the mention that dancing can be used to raise energy for ritual and spellwork.

I'm usually a pretty methodical person when it comes to a lot of things, especially witchcraft, so it's significant to say I threw down a circle right there in the middle of the most random bit of floor, just enough room to dance, to get at my phone to keep the music going. I just went with it, grabbing the energy flowing through my body, through the air, through that half-imagined moonlit summer sky.

What I chose to cast, to release, is for me to know alone. But the experience is something new I had never thought I'd embrace. If nothing comes of my impromptu spellwork, I got a good workout and blew off some much needed steam doing it.

Interesting how these things come to you. 

Illness, Books, Mead and Horn

I've been a bit under the weather as of late--almost literally. The climate this year is fubar, and it's not uncommon for us to swing from temperatures in the positives--as high as plus 6 or 7 (Celsius) to minus 20 or more with windchill. This has been screwing with a lot of people health wise, since nobody can get adjusted to the climate. We're also finally entering the stormy weather part of winter. This has never really been an issue before the last few months, but I've been getting headaches, which my wife and my doctor both think are migraines, sometimes lasting DAYS before a weather event. I'm not sure if it's age, or stress, or what brought this new thing on, but man. The pain isn't debilitating alone, but after that long, it drags on me. I've also been having bad breathing the last few weeks, despite taking my puffers pretty steadily. I now have a script for an oral steroid to help my breathing, and for migraine abortives to help the headaches, and I'm going to be sent for a CT scan to make sure the headaches have no worrisome underlying cause. Prednisone spent most of the day fucking up my guts and making me feel like general poop. Bleh.

I just wanted to share that, since I'm actually kinda proud of how much I've accomplished in the last few weeks despite feeling like shite so often.

I ordered four new books with giftcards I got at Christmas (we jokingly coined in Bookmas). The Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda (translated) a book called "Elves, Wights and Trolls", and "By Land, Sky and Sea" by Gede Parma. I finished the Prose Edda and moved on to Gede Parma as a change of pace before I tackle the Poetic Edda. I'm enjoying Gede Parma's book enough that at some point when I get all of this sorted, I want to read Penczak's Shamanic Temple.

Once I'm done all four of these books, I'll have 4 of my 6 required "further learning experiences" needed for the year, to maintain my IDGAF Initiate status. I need to catch up on my Land Stewardship--with the weather so up-and-down, it's been hard. I have a suet cake to put out for the local birds, but whenever we're due for cold temperatures and snow, we're scheduled to get pouring rain within a day or so, which will melt the suet. I've been trying to wait for a bit of consistently cold weather, and it just ain't happenin'. I want to get it out there, too, because the mild temperatures at the start of winter meant that a lot of birds who would normally migrate stuck around late, and are now struggling in the colder weather. (Birdwatcher. I know these things.)

We bottled our sweet mead batch this Tuesday, as I was home from work due to severe weather. It's been sitting for months while I waited to make sure it was ready--and it's actually drinkable now, not needing to be aged longer in bottle. It has a sweet honey finish that is somewhat floral. I like it.

Last, but not least, I finally finished the cleaning and fancying of my drinking horn. It took a lot of work to get it clean, and for awhile I despaired actually getting it clean enough to drink from--it had a horrible smell that wouldn't go away. I finally soaked it with rubbing alcohol, and then scrubbed it before curing it twice with Guiness. Now it smells like nothing when dry, and a bit like CowBeer when wet. To make it more "mine", I dressed it up with some leather (which I cut, stamped/carved, and dyed myself) and a small carving.


A shot of the carving and stitch work in the back...  The carving was "darkened" slightly with plain old brown colored pencil (Prismacolour, which are wax based) to help it stand out since I couldn't really get it deep enough with the tools I had to make it "pop" on it's own.

 And the leather work on the front! The dragon is (in case it wasn't obvious) a pretty important personal symbol for me, hence why I added one.

I have been "informed" that to consecrate the horn, I need to use it in a blot to Odin when we do our Imbolc rite, (which we are waiting on for the weather to be more "end of winter in sight" than it is now;) using our own home made mead. 

I will mention a little bit about my decision to engrave the horn with the Valknut. I have seen a million and a half explanations of what that symbol supposedly means, the only historically accepted one is "knot of the slain" and "something something Odin" (It's seriously really vague and not seen much.) I've seen some modern heathen takes on the symbol, ranging from "Odin can take you (ie. get you killed) whenever he wants to be Einherjar--and you're cool with that" (I haven't been able to find any source for where this came from though) to "sworn to/works with Odin". My take is more the latter - I associate the symbol with Odin, he has given me things in meditations bearing that symbol, and I accepted the challenge of taking and keeping these gifts. He was willing to allow me to put the symbol on this horn, provided I consecrate it in the manner described above.

(In case anybody who stumbles on this needs it clarified--the Valknut is not a racist symbol. Some skinhead groups have appropriated it, along with other Norse imagery, but nothing about the symbol itself or it's Pagan/Heathen uses is inherently racist. Just wanted to clear that up.)

Man guys, I used a lot of parentheses tonight. 

What was that line about the road to hell and the best intentions?

Whoops.

Ok yeah I suck.

I have only really slacked off on the blogging, though.

No, honest.

Three of the founders (My wife had to work) and one of our dedicants (Who I am mentoring) sat down to chat on the local independent radio station on Friday night. A show runs there every week called "The Witching Hour", so we went to talk about who we are and what we do (which we had done once before shortly after starting up), to try and dispel some rumors we had heard about through the grapevine, and to talk about our journeys through our own initiations, and to check up on my "pupil", at his halfway mark, and get the input from a non-founder. You can listen to it at our website, www.idgaf.ca, and a link is there.

We've also been doing guided meditations on a semi-regular basis from Christopher Penczak's Inner Temple of Witchcraftv using the audio tracks that come with, (and then a generic meditation from the Shamanic Temple, which counts you down and then just plays a drum beat.) My inner temple has undergone some interesting... renovations, once because of a certain deity more or less blowing it up. (Don't be lazy with change when dealing with Odin. Protip.) The second time, me "blowing it up" in preparation for another period of change. I haven't been back yet. It'll be interesting to see what awaits me there now.

Work is wearing me down pretty thin, these days, and I had actually intended to write a way more interesting blog post two weeks ago--but I spent the whole weekend fixing my stepmom's computer, and then my own, which both hilariously/not at all hilariously suffered hard drive failures within the same 24 hour period. (Both macs, hers 8 years old, but mine not quite a year and a half.) Bleh. Naturally, I have no sweet clue what the hell I was going to write about then.

I didn't get a chance to blog, but I got my athame I had commissioned from a local blacksmith. It ended up being more affordable than I had hoped, and I am madly in love with it.

That's all I have for now!!!

Turning the Wheel

We celebrated Samhain with a bang this year. We always do something, if we're not away, but this year we did a fairly planned ritual, and invited a bunch of good friends to join. We made poppets, and buried ourselves in effigy to "lay to rest" a part of ourselves that no longer served. My coven dressed in robes with eerie face paint to play spectres of death, silently joining us on a winding path into the woods and our spot there. We celebrated afterward with a feast of finger foods and snacks. All in all, it was a lovely night. I feel like my focus was more on "running" the ritual and keeping to my part, more so than participating in the intent of the ritual, but that's OK with me. I think of it as a worthy small sacrifice, that maybe this ritual was more for others than for myself. It was a ton of fun and looked awesome, and went off mostly hitch-free. Can't say fairer than that. 

The clocks went back Sunday morning (we observe DST here). The change is an abrupt and jarring one, going from dusky in the morning when I leave for work, to sunny (for now) and it is now dark when I leave. This means I take the bus in the evening now rather than walk, which sadly robs me of a good chunk of my physical activity every day. (My walk takes me through a less than great neighbourhood. I won't travel it alone after dark.) 

The change is a forced reminder that Samhain is the end of fall, that the darkness we celebrate is not just death, not just the memory of those who have gone before, but the coming months of dark with the turn of the seasons.

I have a love/hate relationship with winter. 

I hate being cold, hate a runny nose and burning cheeks and everything hurting for 20 minutes after I've come inside as blood returns to chilled limbs. I hate dragging under the weight of boots and a heavy coat. I hate getting on the bus the morning to go to work on a day to supposed to storm, knowing I may get stranded, may not get home til 3 hours later than I should, knowing I should be home safe and warm. I hate Christmas, a new development. I hate commercial Christmas. Carols start playing here November 1, all the stores are already waving signs in my face reminding me that my love is quantified by how much I spend on my loved ones. 

But I love the pure silence and dark of a night where snow is falling, glittering on the grass, under the streetlights. I love the crunch of hardened snow under my boots. The clean white clinging to trees like they've been glittered with diamonds. I love seeing new birds, birds from the north seeking refuge where it's warmer, but not too warm. I love feeling drawn in close to home and my chosen family, celebrating with food and drink, honouring our heritage, our ancestors, and our bonds with each other. I love being warm inside and watching the wind howl and snow swirl outside. 

I love hearing the earth stir in her sleep.

When I was younger and my life was run by school time, the seasons seemed to have less meaning than they do now. Summer meant freedom, as did Christmas, winter meant the occasional snow day. Fall was the embodiment of evil, the unwelcome return to drudgery and boredom. I had no appreciation for the season itself and what it meant.

 Maybe it's something I'm growing into with age, or as I get closer to my practice and spirituality. I feel the wheel turn, feel the earth in her cycles and know in my heart that every time has a purpose, snotty mittens and all.

IDGAF Initation Update

I'm really so bad at this, you guys.

I'm pretty sure all of my updates are "long overdue" by the time they happen. Drat.

I finished Essential Asatru. It had a slower start, and there was a lot of history crammed into the first section of the book that made my head spin a bit. It almost felt perhaps too condensed? Otherwise, a lot of rehashing what I found in the Practical Heathen, but with some new insights which were nice to have. I'll have to apologize, as I've actually had the book done for weeks. ... heh. Which means, since we also did our Lughnasadh ritual last month...

I'M DONE! WOO!

I started on a book I wanted to read purely for the hell of it:

 Enjoying it so far! I started to set up my altar for Rune work, but I'm not terribly happy with it right now. It feels...cluttered and yet empty, and just not laid out the way I want it to be.

Luughnasadh was done very late into August, since we wanted to wait for it to actually feel like "first harvest" (one thing I read and agreed 100% with in A Witch Alone was that the sabbats were once based not on fixed dates but on seasonal changes and would have moved around each year with things like last frost and first harvest.) Here is the garden in it's heyday:

It is starting to peter out pretty badly now, partly due to colder nights, and partly because the plants are all far too big for the containers they are in. In some cases this is my bad--I was more successful than I thought I would be. In some cases, like the tomato from my grandmother, everybody who got one this year says they were painfully slow to fruit (and then to ripen) but got explosively big very fast. So now it's a bit of a struggle, keeping everything alive to ripen fruit as much as possible before things have to be picked regardless of readiness. My pepper plants actually have peppers on them, small and not red yet--I am hoping beyond hope that we get at least a couple before the frost sets in, but it's hard to say. Lesson learned for next year--start everything earlier, and buy bigger pots!

Our pumpkin is ripening--we technically have 3, but two are so little they're likely going to be decor rather than pie filling. The one big one though, is a lovely size and is ripening up gloriously. I can't wait to roast this little bugger.

 That's only about 3 days difference in ripening. It'll be ready in no time at this rate!

Tonight I started further work on my staff, did some of the initial woodburning. The "cords" at the top are to set a space for possibly writing runes, not sure yet. The spiral shells were just an idea I had which I liked.

 I have another big update/story to tell, but I want to do that separately, and probably as a video, as my wrists/arms are in a lot of pain typing right now because of work.

We're working now, Renee and Drew and Amy and I, on laying out the framework for the IDGAF Initiation ritual. which Amy and I and Renee will be taking part in at this time. We're also considering doing a coven initiation ritual for the four of us to take part in, since we have never formally done so.

Stay tuned.