Just got stranger. . . new cup!

Mabon came in with a bolt of lightening and turned things on their head. Including me. Everything is still facing North but it is all upside down, if that makes any sense at all. I must be feeling the season settle in or some strangeness indigenous to Odd, but I feel a calm even as I know there is a storm coming and it may not be pretty. That is the most Odd thing of all. I am usually spun up emotionally and tempest tossed by the current. Am I sitting on my surf board well finally? I don't know. I just know that now, more than ever I feel compelled to watch carefully everything. I can feel my inner self smell the shifting winds and even though there is a calm hand upon me, I feel a dreadful purpose and it draws closer to us all. I am not left with out hope. Quite the opposite, it feels like grim focus on what it is I need to do to make things right with me and mine.

Three words have been spinning around in my head:

Love
Honor
Order

It rolls through my head like my reiki mantra does while I am working. I feel like I have been struck by lightening as I am going through my daily rituals. Each one has had an added dimension to them with subtle shifts that have shifted some of the meanings of things I grew up with in my pagan witchy career. I still trying to absorb everything in an organic gentle way. I know better to push something like this. Butterflies must open by themselves lest harm comes to them and prevents them from flying.

I have been quietly witnessing the shifts I have seen happen in the online pagan community. Once respected voices have fallen away in either frustration or disgust. There is behind the scenes gossip girl  behavior that makes my bottle of gossip girl gag want to find bottom. Name calling, finger pointing, personal attacks. . . blah blah galah. AAAAAAHHHKK!


NEW EFFING CUP!

I am sorry those voices have felt compelled to leave the general online pagan community. Those voices will be missed, but I understand the need to step back and gather oneself. I wish them fair travel winds and sweet water enjoy your journey and come home when you are ready. I will be waiting patiently for you at any rate.


I don't know how close to the surface I am going to be this year as the Samhain Gods come to call me to my work. I feel some thing very deep below calling my name and I am compelled to respond. I will try to be in touch with the world via twitter, but you all know how my blogging becomes at this time of year.

One more thing to remember:

She who stirs the cauldron is not the slave.

Names have been called. The Land of Odd just got stranger if that is at all possible.

Brass sun tool.

I didn't really understand what it was I was missing when I decided to start working with a large brass tray in my magic. The desire for this type of magic came during a time when I became sharply aware of how my SAD affects me. Our landlord had decided that everyone would be getting solar blocking screens on their windows. I had to get a note from my dr. to have the manager remove them. I remember seeing a picture of an altar somewhere on the web that displayed a working within a brass tray and fell in love with how it made me feel. I realized that it was the same warm, radiant solar energy as soon as I stepped outside into the heat of the day. I remember staying int he Midwest during the winter and how I craved to get in the car and sit in the sun to get that radiant warmth feel.Those memories and thoughts forced me to re-look over the properties of brass. Ok: fire and the sun. . . well sheesh there you have it. I was getting a tray!

I didn't spend a lot of money on my tray. I paid $7 at a thrift shop. There were even several brass trays to choose from. Everything just fit all together from the moment I decided to get a brass tray to the moment I brought it home and cleared it. For a while, I had to convince Nike that it was not her sleeping bowl. She actually leaves it alone now that I have had it seasoned and put it to full use.

Over the last couple of year wheels of working with my brass tray, there are things that I have noticed.  I have used it to help project out workings, I have used it as a healing platform. I have laid out almost all of my spells and craftings upon it. Somewhere during this process, I developed a tool that is as much the Sun as my mirror is the moon. Literally, I have put the power of the sun upon my altar.

Part of the ritual I perform while setting a new altar, is to recharge the brass tray. I take it out in the bright of the day and hold it to face the sun until the tray is hot and humming. There is this moment during this process that never ceases to fascinate me. It is the moment the metal starts warming in my hands as I am holding the tray aloft, standing in its shadow. I can feel the cool of the shadow protecting my face, but all the sun's rays seem to start dancing around the out line of my body. I feel like a mirage appears during that moment. It grows in pitch and I break it before I think I may go numb from standing still for so long. Each time I did this I could feel my stamina come back. I had been on a cycle of being under the weather off and on since we moved into the new house. I mostly attribute it to change of life stress, but I do know that the brass tray magic has contributed to my healing processes either through  energetic properties or how those properties cause me to think and act in my own interest.

While casting and blessing at my altar, there is another thing I grew to appreciate. I love setting my hands upon the brass edges of my tray and pour energy into the working laid upon it. In my mind's eye, I could see the energy snake through it, following the designs until the entire tray was engulfed and saturated with power. Then at the right moment, shoot it off like a rocket in the correct direction. It enabled me to improve upon my long term workings. I discovered that even if I was not doing a working for healing, prosperity, or protection, the tray was well worth using for just it's projective tendencies.

I will not begin to dictate how a brass sun tool as such should be honored and blessed. I will only relate to you that through ritual blessings on solar holidays and enlivening before working with the power of the noon day sun *or any other property/timing of the sun you wish to harness. ie. twilight.* has its rewards, most of which I will allow for you to discover yourself.   ;)

I am only a couple of years into my work with this tool. I do not claim that I know everything there is to know about this sort of work. I am looking forward to discovering more about this tool and how it interacts with my own self discoveries. What I do know, is that bringing the power of the sun within my temple space has made large, positive differences in my life. I think I am seeking a balance between the powers of the moon, which I have spent so of my magic career under, and the power of the sun. It is only in the last 5 years that I had started to work more with male divinities as a Feri student. It seems only proper that they have asked for a greater influence in my magic, or maybe they just wanted me to have a beneficial tool. Who knows how the gods really think. I don't.

I think I'll just say thank you for the great tool.

Opening doors

 I know that I have missed out on all the hub bub with Pantheacon ( again.) I have deliberately tucked and rolled then slid into my own private thinking space for work of my own. I have one suggestion for those like Z who wish to hold a birth woman only ritual. Hold three rituals: birth women only, transgender only, mixed. End of story. Everyone gets what they want. There would be no one feeling left out, they would all have something that is their own.

Time has skipped by me this last 9 months without so much as the courtesy of a squeak as it did so. Moving into a new place has literally uprooted my patterns and shook my little sandbox around burying some things, exposing others. It's not like moving from one apartment to another where things sort of resume where they left off. There are new chores to dole out and do, there are future repairs that must be planned before a thing completely becomes an emergency, improvements to dream about, and a community to get to know. It was nice to slow down this week without being sick.

In the strangeness of my own private portal to faery, I delved into my own self and dug up some answers I was expecting to hear and some that took me completely off guard. I knew there were things I needed to pick back up since my thumb was injured. Being healed now, I am ready to pick those things up again: yoga and mudras. It is easy now to see how much of an effect mudras and yoga has had upon me. Settling into my mudra reminded me how much I missed it. There were things that I was able to note, the flow of energy as the mudra took effect was interesting. It was like someone had poured peppermint oil on all of my nerves following the path through my body as it was being activated. Each moment the mudra was held was like the electricity in my body was being elevated, like a dimmer switch being turned.

My dreamscape has been very active. Most of the characters there were familiar faces and beings I have worked with for quite some time. There was a new surprise. I found myself in front of a mirror with the Ice Maiden. She was giving me mirror scrying tips. Upon waking, I made a mad dash for my journal to write them down before they receded back into my dreaming mind. This experience lead to questions about the nature of mummification and its effects upon the energetic body. I don't remember being contacted by the Ice Maiden quite like this before. She has shown up in places like a daemon would in my past, but never has she actually shown up in my dreamscape and spoken the way she has. Did the fact that she was so well preserved have something to do with her reawakening upon being unearthed? Is there something about being preserved that allows your soul to hold a space in time, possibly to skip through generations to pass secrets of the ancient practices necessary to that Shaman Thread I spoke of earlier? Were the ancients oblivious to this or was this something they understood? While things in my life seem to make more sense there are new questions, some of them I may not have answers to until it is my turn to pass through the forbidden mysteries.

While the ritual I conducted on my own behalf has shown to be effective, they ( my guides) have added aspects to it: part two and part three are coming around soon. I can now see why my friends and guides were giving me vexing half answers before. I am understanding the necessity of certain events that were unpleasant for me. Sometimes while you are content to stay where you are, you are needed to perform a different task. That will require you to shift and give up certain things that interfere with the new things coming your way. You have to wait for the door to open before you can enter the threshold. And some doors are best not forced open.


I am feeling calm and peaceful today. It is a sensation I have not had in quite sometime and I have missed it. I have a feeling that mirror magics and lessons are in cue for me. Curiouser and curiouser.

The Blade's Other Edge.

It's been rather dramatic lately, with a capital " D." It's not the sort of petty drama that is easily backed away from, but a real issue that drew heat, anger, despair and at the end genuine dislike. It's taken me awhile to get the anger out of my body once I decided to leave the situation to it's major players and move in my own direction. I knew it had finally left when I woke up yesterday morning to realize my altars weren't right. They were no longer working with me. Something had shifted. Turns out it was me.

As I pulled out the key to my sea chest where all of my magic tools are stored, I could hear my mind turning around on itself trying to best fit the pieces that I would need. Once the lid got lifted and I found the pieces I thought I wanted,  I realized they are not indeed what I needed. I kept digging rediscovering things I had forgotten; some of them tools, others reminders of workings gone by. . . a champagne cork with a date on it, a bag full of acorns, red velvet, black velvet, muslin and a collection of old pennies kept for their date. It was literally Mrs. Oddly's magic past. Under all of these things sat a crystal candle holder I had forgotten about. It rang as I unwrapped it from its silk. I put away the other candle holder I thought I wanted, washed the one I had been using and pulled out the remains of the shiny objects in my trunk to build a new altar.

I noticed immediately the direction the shift in me had taken. Once I decided to move in my own direction I required less of a warrior's touch. My altar went from leather, shielded flames, rough Spartan practicality to a soft, sensual invitation. Even the great skull on my altar looked more comfortable and less aggressive. As I was putting this altar together, my thoughts turned to the witch family closest to me: how much they are trusted and loved. These are the people I had chosen to be a large part of my life. The more I thought of them, the more soft and comforting my altar became. 

As my altar went together, there were other things I noticed. Things that had been there the entire time. Things that I would never had associated with my connection to the fae before I began my training in the Feri tradition. Now as a Feri Priestess looking at these things, I recognize that, indeed, Hekate had been walking me here the entire time. You see, all of the pieces that I pulled out were pieces that I had picked up in Her name or were gifted to me before finding Feri. I had to laugh because when I noticed that my altars weren't working for me I had thought at first that something in me had became damaged in my angry conflict. As the new altars went up I realized that I was not damaged, I had merely danced to the other edge of the blade.

I feel more settled now. I was actually able to get some work accomplished that I had been struggling with. Things flowed instead of dumping. I feel more ready to handle what is before me.