Blessings!

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Yuletide season. 

I hope that there are winter roses, hot buttered rum 

and many loved ones who are bring much cheer!

Blessings 

Mrs. Oddly

Holy Supper . . . almost here!

Holy Supper is coming up pretty quickly so I want to post about that before I continue with the possession series. I WILL get back to that because I feel it to be a very interesting and important subject.

As most of you know by now Ms. Graveyard Dirt has invited us to participate in Sviata Vechera which simply means Holy Supper. I have been digging into my own roots to figure out how to best invite and celebrate the season with my ancestors. My Grandfather was a Finn born man who later in life immigrated to Russia. From what I can gather, those days the border between Finland and Russia was non existent. It sounds like, from the conversations I have had with my Father, that you could at that time live in Helsinki and work in Kiev. I figured many of the traditions that my Grandfather grew up with were Finnish in nature until I found out that my Grandfather's mother was Ukrainian! So he probably grew up with a mish mash of many things blended into one large snowball.

However for the sake of focus I decided to continue with the Finn side of things. I found myself a nice ham that is sitting in the freezer still ( note to self: take it out of the freezer to thaw.) I found a recipe for glogg, I found a traditional recipe for ginger bread cookies, and got cracking on the sugar plums! Which by the way, are very good. I can see why visions of them would dance in the heads of dreaming children in the depths of a cold night's sleep.

There are loads of things going on in Finnish culture when the nights get long and dark. The emphasis being on gathering of family and friends to bring in the light and warmth.  Being in the way up North of the planet makes for a harsh winter and it's all about keeping up the spirit of things. Of course, gifts were made and exchanged and at least one of those gifts were either new boots or an article of clothing.

The whole season kicks off with Kekri. The last of the harvest is brought in and the hearth and home is literally scrubbed from top to bottom. A Kekri beast is fashioned with the last of the grain harvest and left out as an offering. There is a whole row of chores to complete before Christmas arrives including the care of the animals. They are feasted well and settled into warm barns. Unless you happen to be the sacrificial piglet, whom lives in the smoke house and is treated very well. As the season progresses there are gatherings of glogg parties until the actual day which had been declared a national day of peace. Most of the streets are empty on that day as everyone is quietly celebrating indoors with kith and kin..

So I had to decide how I was going to take these celebrations of my ancestors and weave it together into one celebration. I have been doing things one piece at a time starting with breaking down the house and cleaning it. I have also gone through with my own heath magic and blessing it as I cleaned. I also decided that it would be a good time for ancestor magic. I decided an ancestor mojo was the best way for me to make a good connection with the only Finnish ancestor I know: Grandpa. I took one of my empty decorated match boxes and filled it with my ancestor incense that I had been using all season before. I thought that it would catch his attention. I placed a couple of charms in there to protect the and strengthen the working. I didn't like the way the match box slid opened and knew that it needed an envelope of sorts to keep the contents from spilling out all over the place. I drew circle and invited Grandpa in when the work on the mojo was complete. Interesting things have happened since this working and it has all been very positive.

My ginger bread cookies turned out very yummy, however there was a price to be extracted. As I was placing them in the pantry for later, I literally ran over my toe with the door. I thought at first the damage was far worse, as it turns out I only peeled off the top. Whew! I'm telling you, they had better go well with glogg and a bonfire! Those cookies are now worth a million magic points!!!!!

Of course as I have been baking and making treats to go with the Holy Supper I have been leaving a bit of what I have made out for offering to the faeries. I hope they are happy with the little treats! As far as being able to leave my Holy Supper out all night, that's not doable in this house. It is guaranteed to be disturbed by little furry babies. Instead of leaving it out all night, I plan on opening the invitation for my ancestors to join the celebration and then leaving a meal in a place where it won't be gotten to overnight. I think I really want to make it a time where the living, dead and fae mingle to enjoy the season. As much as I like the eerie feeling and look of a feast sitting in the dead of night, the last time I did something like that the house was a disaster!

In the mean time, before the feast I still have nine linen skeins of work to do. Ok maybe it's closer to three or four left, but there is still work both magic and mundane left. Hopefully come the new year my shop will show for the work.

Blessed Holidays to you and yours. I hope that it is warm and bright!

Short note from the land of Odd

I know I have been MIA. My little one has been ill and when he gets ill all hex breaks out and so do the breathing treatments, all nighters and fever checks. I have been pretty much living on caffeine the last few days.

I'll get caught up one of these days. lol

I hope that everyone is happy and healthy and hopefully I can get back on track very soon.

Blessings

Possession, Demons and Exorcism part 1

This subject cannot be discussed in full in one post. So, I will be breaking it up into several posts. I promise you I will discuss this thoughtfully in full. It is fearful subject here on this page. I may even get frowns from certain quarters. Possessions, exorcisms, demons and the reasons they squat within. I guarantee you that it's not Harry Potter's fault. The reason for possession lies within the individual. It is something that most spiritual people will tell you that only you can hunt down and command.

I am not going to say that demons do not exist or that they are a figment of your imagination. However, I will say that not all demons have their origin from the outside world. Some of them are created by the possessed. In fact, a majority of them are. These internal beasts are generally created during a time when there is no real command of your own life as a self defense mechanism. Childhood issues are generally the dominant sector in this phenomenon.

These demons created out of self defense as a child do not leave you when you grow up. You must go within, hunt them down, and face them or they can and will manipulate your life in a manner that suits them. You must in a sense become your own exorcist. This is something that my tradition teaches. We must learn to recognize our demons and dispatch them properly before anything else larger can happen. Before we can commune with our Gods fully, our skills as an "exorcist" must be strong. A skilled exorcist has one sole requirement: confidence in their faith.

In my tradition, we don't call it exorcism. It's actually closer to shamanism. We don't just purge the internally born demon. We find out why it came about and why it is currently acting up. We thank it for it's original intent, heal it and ultimately, reintegrate it back into our personality. That is all it is after all, a splintered off piece of our personality and being. Shamans most frequently call this soul loss.

As far as possession as defined by the Catholic Church is concerned, these outside demons come in because they were invited by the residing demon. Demons are like people in the manner that they like to have friends over to party. These demons find a vacancy light on and they are attracted by it. They sit within and gain power over time. Most don't even recognize that this event has occurred until a crisis point has been reached. This is the point when people cry out to the Catholic Church for help because they feel as though they have been stripped of power to deal with the situation and they are overwhelmed with fear.

I think this is where the Church has does humanity a great disservice. They had made people to bow and turn their Gods given power over to an outside entity. People have been saddled with the belief that their relationship to the divine must be facilitated by a qualified priest and that they have no direct contact with God. Therefore, any demon that may attack them must be handled by a qualified person.

Demons are not necessarily evil. They just are. Demons do what demons do because it is in their nature to do so, sort of like ticks and leeches. Demons are not invited by the reading of Harry Potter or any other thing that the Church feels to be objectionable. They ride on our beings because we have made it easy for them to do so. The reason for the outbreak in possessions in this modern time is because we as a people are under immense amount of stress coupled by the fact that most of us have not dealt with our own personal demons that have haunted us since childhood. It is a truth of the situation. The whole Satanic Panic of the late 70's and 80's was based upon the fact that we were under a whole bunch of economic and personal pressure and the dominant religion of the time swore up and down  that we were under attack by the devil and his legion of demons. Well they were sort of right. . . but for the wrong reasons.

I feel that if you are going to train exorcists, you should at least have the understanding of why these things REALLY happen and not spout some dogmatic mumbo jumbo designed to retain power for the elite.

So I ask you: how are you going to command and master yourself?

Articles of interest:

Bob Larson: Wikipedia
A Wolf Preying on the Victims of Economic Recession
Something's Gotten into Johnny
Meet the Exorcist School Girls

A bit of a churchy rant. . .

I don't consider myself an activist. I am just one witchy mom with a blog. However, there are things that I just feel have to be discussed, for example this and that. I don't agree necessarily with the headline that reads Children have rights too! I grew up in a household where my parents would tell me I have only the rights they grant and guard for me until I am of age, but I digress.

These particular subjects hit a couple of sour notes for me. 1.) No child should go to school and be told that the faith that they hold is either not a real faith or the wrong one. 2.) I find it absolutely ridiculous that the adults in these cases are nothing short of bullies.

In the First case with Christopher Turner, as far as I can see this particular child does nothing in particular to bring attention to himself except celebrate Samhain. He even attends church. In fact, it is his teacher who brought the whole thing to light with her lecturing about paganism being a false religion. She went as far as to corner the child and humiliate him in front of his peers, actually she persecuted him and then demanded that homework be centralized around her religious convictions. She drilled him about paganism, and as friend brought up, it is a federal law that School Officials can not ask anyone about their religion in this manner. Things from there went down hill for this child for crazy little things that have absolutely no meaning. I mean, really, since when is it a schools business to punish a child for speaking Spanish on a bus with other Spanish speaking children? Really? He got in school suspension for that? What about the other children who were speaking Spanish on the bus? Were they suspended as well? Or was this just all about bringing as much suffering to someone who was different as possible?

As far as things stand with this particular case right now, I find to be completely out of line. A parent who has a child in school who is being bullied like this should not have to do anything other than call the school principle to get the situation resolved in a timely and fair manner. It should not take an entire spiritual community to flood officials with phone calls and emails for the right thing to happen. The right thing for the right reason should not have to be pressured into manifestation like this. Last I heard there is going  to be a meeting about this situation between school officials and this family. I hope that this situations resolves well without lawyers.

On a personal note, when my eldest was in first grade, we experienced this sort of persecution. It came about innocently enough. They were having a discussion on Harry Potter and the teacher made a point to tell the kids that witches were not real. Well my little one stood up and said: " that's not true! My mom is a witch!" Yup my little one outed me. From that point in time he was picked on by other students  over my beliefs and it was blatantly ignored by the adults. I didn't know about this until my son started crying in the back of the car on the way home and by that point in time it had been going on for weeks! When I asked the school principal and his teachers about this, they became hostile and suddenly ignorant of the situation. The thing you have to understand is that this was a small charter school. Literally, a one room class environment. How can five adults not hear forty children taunting one child about his mother's faith in a small building? I can't believe that nearly ten years later, this sort of thing is STILL going on and being ignored.

As far as Church being brought into the school. . . that's a big no no in my book. In my mind, school should be a place where we teach our children how to think. School should not be a recruiting ground, not for religions, not for the military and heck not even for Boy/ Girls Scouts. NO one should be placed in to an environment of learning and made to be a second class citizen because their faith is different or for any other reason.

In the second case, are we to stand by and accept the hypocrisy of this whole anti bullying campaign??? When my daughter was in elementary school, there were anti bullying posters all over the place, yet some of the biggest bullies in that place were the teachers and staff themselves! How are we to teach that bullying is unacceptable if the adults themselves can't lead by example? Do these adults even realize that they themselves are engaging in bullying? Are they really that truly fearful of that which is different that they forget that they are supposed to be setting a good example? Or are they counting on us being a meek little minority faith that we won't stand up and fight back?

On a personal note: Dear Gods, please help us save ourselves from the fanatics and fundamentalists. Give us strong spines that we may stand up and do the right thing for the right reason without becoming bitter or jaded. Let us be strong willed and even tempered.
Thanks and Love you muchly.

And the Winner is. . . .

Kestrel! Congratulations sweets! Email me your address so that I may send to you your Yule incense! Thank you to everyone who played along and wrote a grinch haiku!

Blessings
Mrs. Oddly

Making friends with backward

Yesterday felt like a silent magic day from the moment I cracked my eyes open to the dark room. Normally, I would have settled into the ritual of blogging, hearth chores, then magic chore whoring, but I kept feeling a tug to do other things.

While setting up to bless the harvest that I have finally called over ( it has officially hit freezing temperatures at night ), my mind kept turning inward to the last few weeks. Every odd thing that happened, movies, music and imagery that I had witnessed wove a telling tale about what I am doing right now with my ancestor research. Everything in those silent moments fell into synch and I began to realize that this is the right thing to be doing for me and I am indeed on the right track. I even received a phone call from my Oath Mother who reminded me that I do indeed have someone out there who could help me with things should I get stuck on something or need help filling in the pieces with my ancestry, their mythology, and fairy tales. I may drop him a line later and ask pretty please.

I could feel the lines being drawn between the scattered dots into the crooked path I know it to be. . . sometimes that path even circles on itself, but not this time. I got a very clear picture of what I need to do and accomplish in the near future. I could even feel my Grandfather standing by my side with his silent, observing eyes focused forward and his head nodding the entire time.

I was glad that I took Mercury's cue and held my silence at the end of the day. I stared out into the night sky and let everything wash over me. I had learned so much in that time and spent most of the day with the journal open making random scribbling about what had happened and what I thought about it. Actually, I think it was more of all the little lessons coming together from the last few weeks coming together to make a larger point.

Maybe, just maybe, I am learning to make friends with Mercury's backward dance.