About crafting

   Lately I find myself wandering around the internet, usually just passing time while I finish my coffee or digest my lunch.  I used to idly look around Facebook, sharing posts and pictures, but lately I find myself browsing Ravelry more and more.  For those of you who don't know, Ravelry is a knitting and crochet community online.  On Ravelry, I can keep track of what patterns I have in pattern library by recording my books, magazines, downloads, and printouts.  I can keep track of what needles and hooks I have, what yarn I have, and I can record a queue so I can decide what to knit next, because I have a list of things I want to knit.  There are also forums and groups.

   What does this have to do with my religious path?  Everything!  Crafting, from the day I learned to crochet when I was seven, has always had a magical feel to it.  I mean, come on!  By waving my hands around holding a stick or two, in just the right way, fabric appears!  I love the feel of yarn, and I like to think about how the animal grew up, what it liked to eat, how it interacted with other animals on the farm.  I especially like a yarn that I spun out of wool I bought at the Midwest Fiver and Folk Art Fair two years ago.  The farm that sold the alpaca roving to me had put the names of the alpacas on the bundles of roving.  One alpaca was named Nacho, which my friend Meg and I found so hilarious she even named her (then newborn) son's favorite toy (a small plush alpaca) Nacho.

   What I'm getting at is connection.  This is only one of the many ways I have not lost my connection with The Goddess.  I find that little bit of magic and I hold on to it, even when I'm sad or I've drifted away from my path.  I have to remember that, when I think about how I'm struggling to reconnect sometimes.  I always had that one connection that led me to the Great Divine.  My connection with my crafting has always been a lifeline, a way to show me how much I really do connect day to day with the Goddess.

Everyday Magic

   I have a hard time sometimes, finding the magic in my everyday.  It should be second nature, but due to where I live (an overcrowded, overbuilt apartment complex near a college and a shopping mall) I feel like its tough for me to connect with nature.  There are trees and small fields between buildings, and nature all around, but there isn't silence, and despite knowing I shouldn't need silence, I have a hard time when I don't have it.  The worst part is I can't even get that connection in my own apartment.  This time its not because of the silence, but because of the environment. 

   The people below us smoke, and that smell seeps through the floors and in to our place.  The hot summer air rises right up in to our place so even on the nice days, its pretty hot.  One of our neighbors slams their door a lot and it shakes the whole place.  Most of all, I don't want to live in an apartment.  I want to live in a house, or rather a home.  We appear to be several years away from this, and that despair has caused a depression, which has caused apathy, and apathy is the enemy of all things, including faith.  

   I don't want to be apathetic in my faith.  I want my faith to bloom, to fill me and fulfill me throughout my every day.  If I keep thinking "It'll get better when we own our own home" then I'll be miserable here for two, maybe three years. I have to take each thing that bothers me, starting with what is out of my control (not being in a position to own a home) and I have to work through it one by one. 

   So I have taken to lighting candles everywhere to combat the cigarette smell and to make my home feel magical again.  I have decorated a corner of our office desk (our office being the corner of our livingroom) with signs of my faith.  Its like a mini altar.  Here, I'll show you. 

   Making this corner a place just for my faith gave me a sense of completion.  I have a prayer candle, the ribbons from our handfasting in the handmade box from my friend Ben, cleansing liquid (vinegar base) I made with the group I practiced with before we moved, the stained glass Pentacle from my step mother, my cauldron, some matches, a glass bowl with sprigs of evergreen plants from the floral arrangement from my father in law (he put "Happy Yule" on there for me, which I was touched by since my husband's family are all Christian.  It made me feel very accepted), and incense.  Everything an altar needs.  There's even a little sandcastle figurine, to represent that I'm a water sign without leaving water my cats will knock over out.

   Its a small step, but an important one, if I'm going to make myself feel better.

The Book of Shadows

The Book of Shadows 

  I was looking at my Facebook today (a pastime I think I need to cut down on significantly if I’m to become more productive and achieve my desires of being a better person), when a friend posted a picture of these leather bound books.  They came in a variety of colors, the leather was molded to look like skin, with contours and wrinkles, and in the binding on them had a single glass eye set in to a spooky looking mound of leather.  It was pretty amazing work, and all I could think was “I’d love to make one of those into a Book of Shadows.”

   The goth kid in me, long since retired, had a fit of happiness at the thought.  Opening that book during ritual, having it sitting on the shelf with all of my other books on Wicca, showing it to my pagan friends; it all sounded so cool.  But then I realized I have a BoS and I like it.  I’ve had it for some time.  In fact, due to my addiction to pretty journals, I think I have about a half dozen books dedicated to becoming a part of a many section BoS, because I was convinced one book would never hold everything I thought I could write about the path I walk.  One book was going to be for herbs, one for spells, and one for rituals.  One was going to be filled with Goddesses, prayers to them, offerings, notes, and correspondences.  It was all so grand an idea.

   However, I’ve come to realize that a Book of shadows is more than just a random collection of ideas you try to organize.  It isn’t a collection of every little thing you learn on your journey.  It is more important than that, and less precise.  You should choose carefully what you put in your BoS because its something you should cherish and fill through your whole life.  Maybe it will spill in to another book, or maybe it won’t.  Maybe it’ll be on a computer (sometimes called DoS or Disk of Shadows, back when disks were used.  I guess now it’d be a Thumbdrive of Shadows?) or in a lined journal, or on a collection of hole punched pages.  Maybe you’ll illustrate it or maybe it’ll be written almost completely in poetry.

   There is no real structure needed to make a BoS that means something to you.  It doesn’t need to look impressive, or be enormous, or have any special organization.  You’ll know where each article you write in it is, and over time, using it as a ritual tool will become second nature.  That’s what’s important about a Book of Shadows. 

Eating Right...?

   I hear a lot of talk about eating organic, and many Pagans I meet have strict “organic” or “all natural” diets that they say helps keep their bodies clean and therefore allows them to work their magic and connect with the divine better.  I have noticed, over the years, that my experiences with the divine have been less intense since I started eating more microwave meals and preservative rich snacks.  In the last two weeks, though, my body has been forced to adjust to a better diet, one that minimizes pre-prepared food, maximizes my time in the kitchen, and will allow me to lose some much maligned weight.  This diet has been hard, because I had become very reliant on microwave meals (with all their sodium and preservatives) but I’ve also begun to feel not only healthier in body but healthier in spirit.

   I’ve been studying holistic medicine and kitchen witchery for a good ten years now.  Not non-stop, uninterrupted.  I have times where I spend more time working in the kitchen, getting a feel for the foods I’m using, and there are times I’m not so focused on that.  I know a bit here and there.  I can treat headaches and stomach aches with teas.  I can also treat broken hearts and curses with teas.  I’ve made soups that are shared with friends, infused with good will.  I know what plants protect the heart and kidneys and liver, and what plants protect the spirit.  I know the difference between stirring a pot deosil and widdershins and what that means to my patient, myself, or my loved ones I’m sharing this food with.  But I am no expert.

What I do know, is this: Everything we eat has energy.  It took energy to grow, it took energy to harvest or slaughter, and it takes energy to cook.  That winds up being a lot of energy.  Not all of us can have our own gardens, so sometimes that energy isn’t exactly positive or exactly what we want.  We need to counter the possible negative energy of the planters and growers away from the equation so all we have left is our own positive energy. 

   I don’t know where to begin sometimes.  I want to make everything in my life meaningful, from making an elaborate vegetarian dish to serve to my friends with only the best vegetables and spices, to poking that store-bought steak with a thermometer to make sure it is rare like my husband and I like it.

   And what of meat anyway?  Is a vegetarian, or vegan, or cruelty free consumption lifestyle right for me?  Right for my finances?  Right for someone else?  I was vegetarian for a very long time, and after that I was vegan.  Well I thought I was vegan, but these days it seems I was just a type of vegetarian that also doesn’t consume dairy or eggs.  I was on this diet as a part of my year-and-a-day study, which many pagans and Wiccans undergo.  I wanted to be able to soak up everything I was learning as best I could, and this diet was suggested to me.  I even was pescatarian for a while after that, eating a few servings of fish a week. 

With diet being a big concern for so many people, its hard to choose which diet is right for you  on your spiritual journey, or even if a specific diet is what you need to enrich your path.

Word on guided meditation.

   I love guided meditation as a way to connect with yourself, your environment, and the divine. However, unless you have an old fashioned tape player or something that’s easy to record and play back on, it can be a really tough thing to do on your own.  The one reason I don’t do guided meditation often is the only option I have is my husband, who, despite how important it can be to me, can get snarky and silly about darn near everything.  Asking him to read aloud a guided meditation is like asking Statler and Waldorf over for a viewing of Twilight.  You won’t get much out of it, but you sure will have a good giggle, unless you like Twilight.  Then you’ll just be angry.  

   So I read and re-read my guided meditations. I’m currently reading Goddess Alive by Michelle Skye and its very difficult to follow these meditations without reading them a dozen times and just winging it when you have your quiet time and place.

   I haven’t yet found a solution to my guided meditation needs, other than finding a friend who can help me out who shares my needs and wants regarding my spirituality, but finding such a person who is also able to meet regularly is difficult.  My best friend would love to, but she’s so busy all the time.  Local Pagan and Wiccan groups seem so closed off when I read about them online.  I live in a state where being Pagan is very weird outside of college towns and two large cities.  I don’t know what Pagans in the actual Bible Belt do, if its this bad up here. 

   I hope I can find a solution to this with time.  I have had some great success with guided meditation in the past.

Getting Back on the Path

   In the past few years I feel as though I have become very detached from my faith.  Part of it was depression, part was constant sniping and irritation from people I lived with who thought they knew it all, who thought their path was the only real, feasible path in all of Pagandom, and part of it is sheer laziness.  I’ve become apathetic to most things in my life, and that’s no way to go through life.

   Recently I’ve gone through many trials as far as my health is concerned, and it is very hard to focus on anything but living lately.  These health problems have caused me to come to the realization that I may not have children, and I definitely will not have them before I’m 30 (a date that is quickly sneaking up on me).  I feel like connecting with my faith, and with the Goddess, will help me work through my fears and accept whatever hand I’m dealt.  I feel like I need some structure, some faith, in my life.  I still believe in the Goddess, I still practice my kitchen witchery, I still walk a path that allows me to see the magic in things, but I’ve lost my way.  I’ve walked in the same direction endlessly, and it seems the lush forest of my early 20s has become the salt flats.  Barren and awful and hard to flourish in.

   So I’ve decided to turn in another direction, follow another path that still leads to the same place: a place where the Goddess and I walk hand in hand.  However this path means I need to switch my focus, for a time, to find my way back to a place I can flourish.  I need to look inward and find the piece of the Goddess who lays inside my heart, and embrace it with all of my strength.  I need to find the seed she planted in me, so I can carry it to fertile ground.

   Through this I hope I can also find the stamina to put up with my meds, the positive energy to get beyond this crippling depression, and the ability to find the place I’m looking for in life.  I’ve decided to make this journey public, because I need to know my story is told.  I need to share it so people can learn from it, and so if there’s another person out there who feels the same, maybe I can help them in some way,