The long dark tunnel that is depression

I'm coming out of the long, dark tunnel I've been trying to get through these past few weeks.  Depression hits hard and fast and can debilitate a person to the degree they can no longer function.  I do manage to function but just barely.  I've learned to just ride it out and not push myself.  It eases up quicker that way.

I will be posting again...soon.  But not today.  Today I'm catching up on housework and cooking and errands.  And that mountain of laundry in the basement.

And trying to warm up.  It's unseasonably cold the past couple of weeks with no sign of warmer days in sight. 

Brrr.  I hate to see the utility bill this month.

Battling the crud that is going around

Battling a cold right now and feel like crap so I don't have much to post about.  We voted today, of course.  Abso-fragging-lutely we voted. 

Zach's no longer working but he's planning his return to college.  The pain in his feet and his short arms and little hands made it hard for him to keep up with everyone else.  Not to mention the huge blisters on his heels that made walking a living hell. He's still hobbling around but is planning on getting some things done for me tomorrow.

I finally slept last night after a few nights of all-night cough-fests.  I slept 14 yours but I seriously could fall back in bed right now.  I hate getting sick.

I have to fix supper first so I'd better get started on that so I can go to bed.

No knitting for the past week because I feel so cruddy.  Not much in the way of spirituality either. 

I'll get through this.  I will.

Pain isn't a switch you can turn off because it makes other people uncomfortable

I've been mentally writing a post for this blog for several days now and still don't have anything to put down in print.  The content has become incredibly painful and I find myself going further than I intend to so it's taking a lot longer to write.  It has to do with Samhain and my mother.  The more I delve into my relationship with her the more I find deep pain. Both with her and with my still-living father.

And the pain isn't just from my relationship with them but from peripheral relationships that have determined that my perspective on my pain is "wallowing" and that I should just let it all go.  I don't know why talking about pain has now equated wallowing.  In fact, I know it hasn't.  My mother's death is still raw to me.  It's been a year and half since she died but I still haven't process the grief.  I guess I didn't grieve at the appropriate speed.

In pondering all of this, I've also had to deal with my departure from Christianity and all its rules.  One being that one must forgive.  It's mandatory.  Some of the more liberal denominations say it's for the health of the forgiver but what if forgiving isn't healthy?  Why has no one admitted that blanket forgiveness isn't healthy for everyone?  Forgiveness that is forced is far from the panacea we're brainwashed into believing.  The notion that we must "get over" or "let go" of things doesn't always heal.  Sometimes we need to process those hurts until we understand them and can move on with our lives.  Even if that means we never let go of them.  People who tell you to let go of your pain aren't experiencing your pain.  They are not empathetic to your anguish.  They only know they got over theirs (or suppressed it successfully).  And quite frankly they don't really care about yours.

Also, I've noticed that people who want you to forgive do so because they're bored with your pain.  No one really is interested in your story.  While you're trying to explain your pain they're busy thinking about what they're going to say to you to "fix" you so they don't have to hear it anymore.  And maybe, just maybe, the person in pain is talking about it so much because no one ever listens to what they're saying.

Maybe I'll forgive someday.  But if I do it will be because I can.  Not because I'm pressured to.  Or because I'm shamed into doing it.  Or maybe I won't.  But either way, it will be for my health.  Not forgiving isn't wallowing.  Sometimes it's protecting.

Telling someone to get over their pain is the same as telling someone with depression to just get over it.  Come to think of it...I've had that said to me, too.

Pictures!

My altar.  Cernnunos and Ceridwen on the upper shelf, Dagda in the picture frame on the lower shelf and the statue is Danu.  My Animal Oracle cards, a box of my crystals and stones behind everything in the raven box.  Tunes to the side (Damh the Bard, of course.)  My incense in the cauldron. Sticks of incense in the eagle statue.  Chalice and bowl for offerings.

I need to work on my photography.  I don't hold still as well as I should so a lot of what I take is blurry.

The wall above my altar.  The Sun and Moon, my mother's picture, Gwyn ap Nudd and Airmid.  The plaque is Mannanan mac Lir.  Briganti is on another altar but I'll have to take that picture later. That altar needs cleaning.

Zach and I have started on The Book of Celtic Magic by Kristoffer Hughes.  Some authors I click with and others are a bit difficult to make that connection with.  Kristoffer Hughes is one I really do connect with.  Another one is Alaric Albertsson, but while I love his books, my path is firmly in another direction now.  Still, there is much to glean from his books as well, especially To Walk a Pagan Path, which is beyond excellent.  It's generic Pagan so any path can benefit from it.

I also have from the Cauldron Born by Kristoffer Hughes as well.  That one I'm doing by myself.  I really feel drawn to Ceridwen and this book is helping open up that connection.

Also...Damh the Bard just really rocks!  It took a while to find the missing part of my spirituality:  music.  But having done that I am discovering the electric connection between the music and the gods.  It's amazing how that is working for me.  I love that his songs are so demonstrative of what a bard really is.  I finally feel complete now on my path.

I do have a lot of organizing to do yet, clearing up the back yard so our Samhain ritual will be in a more peaceful environment.  The chaos off weeds and clutter back there is really distressful but I haven't had the energy to work on it.  Plus the chronic pain I have to deal with.  It has been a lot better now that I'm taking turmeric but I'm having another flare up of the sciatica which not even the tramadol will help so it will be next week before I can get out there and work on the yard.  Meantime I'm knitting some socks for my sister's husband and I think one of his young relatives.  Not sure who the boy belongs to, but he's getting orange socks.  As per request.  Actually, more like pumpkin.   I got the yarn for that today so as soon as I'm done with the bil's socks (tonight) I'll start on the boy's socks.

I love how I can incorporate my crafts, my creativity and the music into my spiritual path.  I love that about Druidry.  Mostly though, I just love the gods.  I finally fell in love with them.  It's another part that has been missing for me.

Post-weekend report...surviving Zach's new job

The weekend was a bit of a blur.  Zach started his job and I had laundry and driving to do.  Lots of laundry.  I got behind apparently.  Meals to prepare (Zach prepares his own lunch box, of course) and errands on top of the chauffeuring.

I didn't knit as much as I would have liked to.  I'm a bit achy and knitting sometimes just hurts.  Around the shoulders.  I use circular needles mostly because they help in that but with the weather changing and rain off and on, I'm achy.  But at least the sciatica is at an ebb and the fibromyalgia is better with the turmeric.  Still, the achiness of the fibro wears on me physically and emotionally.  Chronic pain beats you down.

I'm nearly done with my brother-in-law's socks.  My sister wants me to knit some socks for a young boy so I ordered the yarn for that.  I had hoped to find it in JoAnn's but they didn't have the color I needed.  Shipping and handling have eaten up any profit but that's the way it is.  I don't like to charge much for family anyway.

I haven't done any studying but I have spent some time in meditation of sorts.  Not long, given my inability to concentrate when I'm dealing with pain, but I do feel it's helping.  I'm making connections I hadn't made before.  The music is helping as well.  As Samhain approaches I can feel the veil thinning.  When I drive past the country graveyard, I can feel something growing.  Just an energy, nothing malignant.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do as far as the ancestors go.  This is the second Samhain since my mother died.  I didn't do anything much last year as far as honoring it.  I hope to this year.  I plan on using my fire pit on that night.  Having a small ritual outside.  Before we always used just candles but I'd like to make it a bigger event this year.

Zach's birthday is coming up this week.  Unfortunately he has to work that night so we won't be going out to eat this year.  Maybe some other day we can do that.  We already got him his birthday presents.  The complete set of The Iron Druid Chronicles.  He loves those books and already finished one the night we gave them to him.

I've read a couple of them but I'll wait to read the rest.  Give him time to enjoy them first.

Have to go get him some new shoes tonight.  His feet are very wide and he has a high instep in addition to having flat feet.  So walking around all night is very painful for him.  The shoes he has right now are just cheap shoes with no arch support so we're going to try to find something that is comfortable.  Very hard to do with all his feet issues.  And gel insoles don't fit inside his shoes because they leave no room for his feet.  It's very painful to wear them.  Tall and wide feet are a difficult combination.

I hope we can find some.  Last time we were there for 3 hours and walked away with nothing because there weren't any shoes that really fit him.  I'm taking a book to read this time.

Listening and looking and learning...the road to my intentions

I think I've come a long way spiritually in spite of the difficulty in finding a way that speaks to me.  I don't feel as torn or confused as I did before and Iknow with certainty that I am being led.   No matter where I look, Cernnunos is there.  Cerridwen is everywhere I turn as well.  I feel them, hear them.  Sometimes I think I even see them...and not the statues on my altar.

I don't think I stopped long enough to let them make themselves known to me.  Or maybe I just had to get the others out of my system so I could concentrate on who was really out there.  Or maybe both things had to happen before I could open myself up to the gods who were calling to me.

I feel much calmer and more assured of my own worth.  I haven't felt that way in...well...never.  Makes me think of the song from Hairspray:  I know where I'm going and I know where I've been.  I feel like that.  Yeah.

My back and leg are feeling better although I did go back to bed with the heating pad this morning after taking Zach to work.  It's fast becoming my best friend.  Pain interferes with my concentration and the exhaustion from a bout of pain leaves me completely unfocused.  I didn't sleep well last night because of the fibromyalgia.  Aching like I had the flu.  But I didn't take a tramadol because while painful, it wasn't PAINFUL.  If you know what I mean.  Besides, I don't think the tramadol really works that much for me anyway.

I'm hoping, now that Zach's schedule has normalized, to better manage my time and get some organization going on here at home.  De-cluttering, putting things where they can be accessed more easily.  Organizing my spiritual tools and supplies, crafts, books, clothes.  I'd like to unload the piano so I can start playing again.

I just hope this time I have follow-through.  Another problem I suffer from.  I have the best of intentions but no energy to fulfill them.

Maybe managing the house energy better will help.

Ouch!

I'm still here.  Lots going on because Zach got a job and since he doesn't drive, I've been the chauffeur getting him where he needs to go.  He's going to try to drive again but first things first.  Let's get him going with the job.  Then worry about getting him behind the wheel.  If I can get him behind said wheel without him passing out from hyperventilating, that's a huge step forward.

OCD.  Not a joke at all.

I'm battling sciatica right now.  This is the worst it's ever been and has switched sides apparently.  Makes fibromyalgia seem like a walk in the park.  And it's definitely not.  The turmeric I've been taking has really diminished the pain from the fibro to the degree I'm only taking a couple of tramadol a week as opposed to a couple a day.  But this...tramadol didn't even put a dent in the pain level last night.  I spent the night in excruciating pain.  Which for me is a lot as I have a high tolerance for pain.

After a day of racing around getting Zach's uniforms, DMV and the credit union, I grabbed some tylenol, valerian and a heating pad and slept for 2 hours.  The pain is down to around a 7 on the pain scale.  It was up there at 9.  Unfortunately couldn't cook.  Standing or sitting makes it start creeping up there so I'm off to bed here in a minute.

The full-ish moon was lovely tonight but with this pain I can't concentrate on ritual.  I'm just going to light some candles and ask Cerridwen's blessings on me and mine.  Definitely not getting up before dawn to see the eclipse.  At least not on purpose.

Off to bed.  Zach and I are going to study a bit tonight.  I've discovered Kristoffer Hughes's books and love them. 

Filling in the empty places

No, I didn't get the socks done in time.  Not even close.  In fact, I didn't even finish one sock.  So now I'm back to a more relaxed knitting routine.  As if I'll ever finish anything any time soon.

I love my Damh the Bard cds.  I finally realized what was missing for me.  Music that was related to my spiritual path.  I feel really complete now with my gods and the music to celebrate them.  The rituals are important to me but not as important as the empty places being filled.

It's blustery today with temps in the 40s.  Quite a change from last week.  Flurries are predicted for tomorrow morning and I don't have the house ready to use the furnace.  I have to put the storm windows on, plastic on the older windows, replace the duct in the basement that rusted out last winter and is 70% duct tape at this point.  Get all the windows shut actually.  The basement windows are still open.  Not easy for me to do today because my sciatica is acting up.  Oh, joy.

I love autumn best.  It's when I start feeling like I'm coming to life.  I'm a child of the night, I think.  I prefer the night to the day, the dark half of the year to the light half.  Cerridwen calls to me from the night and I see Cernnunos in the moonlit forest when I focus on him.

I can't remember the last time I felt this whole.

Seeing more clearly

I'm feeling better today.  Clearer.  More focused.  Been a long time since I've felt that way.

I love the cds I ordered.  Damh the Bard.  Probably is helping me focus a bit when I read or try to concentrate on spiritual matters.  I told Zach today that this is the first time since leaving Christianity that I've felt hungry for spiritual content.  And it was long before I left Christianity that I had that feeling as well.

I really feel good.  I can't remember when I last felt that way.

Spiritually that is.  Physically I have a lot of room for improvement.

Although the turmeric I'm taking has diminished the pain so much that I'm taking about 2 tramadol a week as opposed to 2-3 a day.  I haven't had a tramadol since last week.  Friday, I think it was.

Now if I could just get the dog to sleep through the night so I can...

I'm feeling a very strong pull to Cerridwen and the cauldron.  I still have the same pull toward Cernnunos and now Zach has that same pull.  I would never encourage him one way or the other but it's nice to be on similar paths.  We meet each other more often.

I've also noticed Nuada on my path. 

It's rainy and cold tonight so I'm fixing chili for supper then an evening of sock-knitting.  My brother-in-law was so helpful with my mother's final days (I couldn't be there due to the congestive heart failure) so I had promised socks and since I'll be meeting him for the first time this Thursday, I'm going to try a near-impossible feat of finishing the socks in 2 days.  And since I haven't actually started them yet...

Won't be online much until it's done so see you on the flip side.

No more

I must be an old fossil.  Tumblr is hard for me to navigate.  Zach is going to help me with it but I'm not sure that's where I'm going to end up.  I don't do as well with change as I did when I was younger.

It's very hard for me to escape all the negativity in my life.  I'm sick to death of people telling others to just look at the positive things and to write down one good thing about each day.  When you're drowning in pain and emotional anguish, throwing you platitudes doesn't help you swim to shore.  To me it's nothing more than telling me to mask my pain and shove it where I can't see it anymore.

Yes, I know that negativity affects spiritual work.  Tell me how to find a way out of this black hole I'm in and I'll try to be more positive.  When I used to confide in people, I was told to shut up and do something about it instead of whining.  What?  Just what was I supposed to do?  Not one person offered any assistance.  Just told me to get over it.

I determined yesterday morning that I was going to be more positive.  I woke up feeling brighter than I have for ages.  Went to the store in the car I thought had been fixed only to have it overheat again on the way home.  On a remote country highway.  Headed back to town instead of trying to make it home since I was closer to Walmart than I was my house.  It overheated again on the way.  Fortunately a police officer stopped and gave me a ride to Walmart to pick up antifreeze so we could get home.  Several cars passed us by without even glancing in our direction.

So now my car is down again.  I was supposed to meet my sister and her husband in Madison on Thursday for lunch, on their way to Green Lake for a conference, but no way can I trust the car.  So we agreed to meet closer to home.  Only now I'm not sure the car will be done in time for that.

Tell me again how I'm supposed to find something positive about that.  Yes, I wasn't stranded.  But do you know how many times I've had similar situations occur?  Dozens.  I've had to take a taxi ($20), get Tom off of work, walk across Beaver Dam (took 3 hours...I'm arthritic and overweight) to get to a phone so I could call a taxi.  Each time I struggle to hold it together so I don't fall apart and embarrass myself in front of strangers.

There are things going on here I can't talk about for personal reasons but they add to the burden of struggling to just make it.

So don't challenge me to be grateful about something each day.

Ever since we moved here, we've had one thing after another pile on us.  There's no doubt in my mind that we are under a curse.  No doubt at all.

I'm tired of pussy-footing around.  I'm going to research it and figure out what to do but I'm fighting back.  No more nice guy.  No more believing that good wins out.

I'm going into battle.

Hoping my life is better after the weekend.

I really meant to write more but between my computer being as slow as mud and the car still not fixed (and Zach and me stranded on the side of a country road yet once more)  it's not looking like I'll be as consistent as I want to be.

Plus Zach wants me to switch to tumblr. 

Since no one I know personally ever reads my blog, and hardly anyone else out there is reading either, I'm considering it.  It may be that blogspot is old hat and time to move on.

I'm dealing with a great deal of defeatism right now so I'm going to take the weekend to ponder it.  I'm definitely going to be leaving facecrack though.  Even if I didn't have to deal with the complete slowdown of my computer due to that evil entity, any friends I had on there have moved on to other pastures so there's no point really.

I'll be back after the weekend to let you know.

You being the empty space out there.  Or anyone who does read this and it doesn't show up on sitemeter.  If you're there, I thank you.

See ya on the flipside.

Intuition and getting the mood right

I've never been one of those people who is completely aware of everything that goes on around me.  I tend to live within my bubble and sometimes sleepwalk through it.  The other day Zach and I were shopping and I never even heard the guy in the next aisle who was moaning loudly, according to Zach.  I was focused on my shopping and nothing else.  This leaves me completely out of the loop if the fae or the gods want to get my attention.

So now they're making loud noises in my house by virtue of breaking things.

A few weeks ago, even after I had determined that the Celtic gods were the best fit for me, I still had the Norse gods on the altar.  In fact I was arranging the altar to better suit them.  The Celts were on top of the entertainment center with a mini altar of sorts.  While I was setting things out, one of the Norse pictures fell off the wall and broke my dragon oil burner.  Now, there was nothing wrong with the hook I had it on.  Nothing wrong with the picture either.  It just fell off.  No vibration, no accidentally knocking it off.  Just effing fell off.

Even I got the message and put my beloved Celts on the altar and switched the pictures to Celtic deities.  Nothing untoward for a while...

...until last night.

Zach still is very fond of the Norse so I put them up on the entertainment center and they did look lovely.  I lit a votive candle on their shrine when I did my nightly prayers and ritual for the Celtic gods.  An hour later, the glass candle holder exploded, throwing the glass a distance of a few inches away.

I can take a hint.  They gods will go into the armoir in a nice place of honor for them.  Zach has decided to leave them in there and if he wishes to in the future, will just use that as the altar for them.  I had to sit with him and explain that I didn't get the sense that the gods were furious and trying to punish us.  Just get our attention.  After all, we weren't hurt, the house didn't catch fire and the oil burner can be glued back together again.

Maybe it's a case of be careful what you wish for.  I had prayed for more insight and using my intuition better.  I can't say I know exactly what it was all about, but I do know I feel a sense of peace with the Celts that I don't feel with the Greeks or the Norse.  Although I still love them all.

But nothing feels the same as the glow I feel when I interact with the Celts.

I had a chance to use my intuition in a more mundane situation today when I got a call about some topical pain relief this company wants to "prescribe" for me via an online doctor.  I wasn't feeling comfortable with it and the guy seemed annoyed with all my questions about the ethics involved.  Finally I agreed to go to the website to validate his company and the effing computer wouldn't go to the site.  I kept getting timed out.  That was enough for me.  I told the guy I wasn't interested and he hung up on me.

I don't know what I saved myself from, but I do feel like I dodged some kind of projectile.

I'm going to work more with my tarot cards and have ordered a book to go with my Druid Animal Oracle cards.  I've had the cards for a while but didn't really know how to read them.  I'll get the book tomorrow.

Got my birthday present today (from me, of course).  Two Damh the Bard cds.  I've wanted some for years and decided it would be a real benefit for my rituals.  Not to mention just the pleasure of listening.

I've got some Druidcasts on my mp3 player and am in the process of autumn house cleaning.  It's taking me a lot longer because of my physical limitations and the immense fatigue I suffer but I am seeing some progress.

All in all, spiritually I feel a lot lighter.

Who am I and how did I get to this point?

I didn't do a lot of soul-searching during my absence from blogland, but I did do some.  One of the biggest things for me was trying to figure out why I had such a hard time finding a path I could stay on.  I was feeling silly because I seemed to be all over the map.  So I thought two questions needed to be answered before I could find the conclusion I was so desperately seeking.

Who am I and how did I get to this point?

Who am I isn't that easy a question.  It's complex and a result of over half a century of trials and struggles.  Since leaving Christianity it's been the biggest question in my mind.  Trying to find my pagan place in the world was impossible because I didn't know who I was.  I had spent my life being whoever I was supposed to be:  wife, mother, daughter, Christian.  I never got the chance to be who I wanted to be.  In fact, I didn't even know who I wanted to be.

I regularly rotated pantheons:  Greek, Celtic, Norse, Greek, Celtic, Norse...ad nauseum.  And I couldn't figure out why the grass was always greener over that proverbial fence.  I had settled on the Norse before my sabbatical and did stick with them for a while until I realized I wasn't happy with who I was while worshiping the Norse gods.  I am fond of them but I didn't feel like myself while I was with them.  I'm extremely liberal socially and fiscally.  I lean more toward peace than war.  I want to work more for the environment.  The Norse gods seemed to have a lot of followers who were testosterone-driven, war-mongerers and into conservative politics.  Same with the Greeks.  Lots of rules, lots of conservative-leaning thinking.

So obviously the Celtic gods were a good fit for my personality.  Why didn't I want to go in that direction?

The answer to that was with the second question.  How did I get to this point?

When I left Christianity, I thought I wanted something authentic.  I didn't want to be lied to again or fooled into believing in something that was largely made up...again.  And yet, I recently realized that I was basing the authenticity of all gods from the bible.  I still looked at that book as reliable and credible, even knowing what I know about its origins.  To me, the Greeks had authenticity because of the antiquity of the books about the gods.  Ancient meant it had been around and stood the test of time.  The Norse came in second because there were written records, even if they were tainted with Christian revision.

But the Celts were all over the map.  Not only was there no set pantheon, the gods came from different cultures, tribes and continents.  The writings were nearly non-existent and the writings we did have were so mangled by Christian interference as to be unreliable...in my opinion.  It was difficult for me to commit to gods who seemed put together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Until I realized that I had as my standard an equally unreliable book.  I had discredited the bible in my own head years ago but apparently it was so embedded in my psyche that I still used it as the measuring rod to stand against everything else.  Realizing that enabled me to break from the artificial constructs I had created and be free to go with my heart toward the gods who fit me best.  The gods who respond to me when I call upon them in spite of me having shoved them in the armoir over and over again.

So...my path is with the Celts as it was when I first started this path.  I'm leaning toward Druidry once again although not necessarily following any particular flavor.  I consider myself a witch of sorts although as with the Druidry, it's not a part of my religion, per se.  It's just who I am.  And I am who I am because of how I got to this point.

I'll be back

I've been considering what to do and as I continually write blog posts in my head, I've decided to come back to writing them here instead.  My projected date of re-entry into blogland is my birthday...September 22nd.  Bilbo and Frodo's birthday as well as the Autumnal Equinox.  I don't do Mabon.

I plan to keep up only this blog so it will be a combination of both my crafts and my spiritual life as well as the mundane stuff.

Might be some other changes as well, but for now....

I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Good bye but not farewell

I've decided to stop posting to both my blogs.  The nature of the blogs no longer represent me so I'm going to start up one that covers my life and my spirituality in a more journal-like way.  I hope to have more pictures and post more often.  I haven't decided on a name or even if I will stay with blogspot so I'll have to provide that information later.

I loved doing this but the last year...not so much.  Thanks to everyone for hanging in there with me.  Hope to see you in the new blog but if not, have a really wonderful life.  Hugs!

Just rambling...and catching up

I do keep meaning to post here but I just can't ever think of anything to say.  Not that that stops me from saying stuff anyway.

I'm finding more and more heathen sites that are anti-racism, which is good.  Still not comfortable wearing my hammer out in public much though because public sentiment sees that hammer and thinks...white supremacy groups.  I wear my pentacle raven or my pentacle or my wolf pendant.  I don't care that no one knows what my beliefs are.  In fact, I prefer it.

A few weeks ago got bombarded with some Christian evangelical types at my front door wanting to discuss the state of the world.  I told them I didn't believe in their god and didn't really want to talk with them but they managed to get information out of me anyway.  I'm a wuss when it comes to keeping my mouth shut about personal things.  But I did refuse to get into details about my beliefs.  They kept asking as though they were interested but I know from personal experience, they're not.  They want specifics so they can go back to their group and "pray intelligently."  In other words...gossip about me. 

On another blog out there in the comments section, about the Hobby Lobby decision (which I hate, by the way) there was a woman defending Christians and their determination to force their beliefs on others by not letting them have the health care their doctors have decided is right for them because of erroneous information about abortion.  She was telling everyone that all Asatruar believed as she did, that the SCOTUS was correct...and yet...here I sit...not agreeing with her.  And I know many others who don't either.  Another reason it's difficult to admit publicly that I am a heathen. 

I know there are right leaning pagans out there.  I don't understand their reasons for being that way but they've got every right to be who they are.  As long as they don't claim to speak for all of us.  I know that heathens do tend to be among the right-leaning.  The two paths I had the most trouble deciding between were both right-leaning, but I'm definitely not.  I'm very much on the left.  Proudly so.

Ideologically I am more in step with the Celtic types but I really don't connect with those gods.  The gods I feel most connected with are the Norse.  But my idea of the Norse gods might not fit with other heathens either.  I'm a firm believer that the gods didn't stop having a life after the Eddas.  I think there are more stories out there that just haven't been told yet.  And I fervently believe that they grow and adapt, too. And they're perspectives change as well.  After all, as someone said online somewhere, all religions are UPG.

I'm also happy that more and more heathens are not ascribing to the philosophy that all of us are militaristic and testosterone driven.  The Viking era was a short period on the timeline after all.

I should stop rambling and get Tom's supper finished so I can crawl into bed and read some more.  Or watch tv and knit.  I haven't been knitting as much as I would like.  The fatigue gets to me and I can't even do that much. :(

Taking a stand. No more!

One of the biggest hurdles for me in committing to the Norse path has been the overt racism that exists in a loud group of Heathens.  I finally decided, after finding a group of people online who feel the way I do about it, that I won't let the bigots keep me away from the gods I love.  I also won't be silent about it.  They can justify it all they want but it's all bigotry and I won't have it!

Unfortunately I'm seeing racism creep into other branches of Paganism as well, not just the Norse and Anglo Saxon paths.  On a Hellenic board I've seen some fascism pop up with all the white superiority that goes along with it.  Celtic groups have seen their share of it as well.  I think it's mostly a response to the brazen racists who think it's okay to come out of the closet they've been hiding in for the past 50 years.  Well, not hiding so much as just not being as overt as they are now.


It's good that people are finally speaking out now and letting the racists know they're not going to be the only spokespeople for the path we're all on.  But that means I have to be one of those who speaks out as well.  I'm not good at confrontation and I'm not good at debate but I'm not going to let anyone else define for me the gods I believe in and love.

And let's not be "tolerant" of others when that tolerance masks an ugliness no matter how pretty they've tried to dress it up.  Don't like it?  Don't read my blog then. 

No racism, no white supremacy, no white pride, no folk groups.  It's all code for racism and it's not welcome here or in my religion.

Still here

I don't know if anyone is reading this blog anymore.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue with it and having had a lot of health issues to deal with lately, just haven't had the impetus to do much of it.  I hope to pop in here regularly but if not, I'll be here from time to time.

It's odd how, when I decided not to focus on a direction, one was made apparent to me.  I seem to have no doubts now, and haven't had any for a while.  Signs and portents are lining up, making this direction a surety to me.

Still, I know so little and have so much to learn.  But the gods are patient and kind and give me all the space I need to discover them.

 One of my biggest obstacles has been the racism and white pride that exists with people who are on this path as well but I'm hanging out with the guys who hate it as much as I do so I feel a lot more secure.  Plus, they are getting more vocal in their rejection of the bigoted, which helps.  Still I don't like to wear my hammer out in public these days much.

Zach is also on this path with me so it's nice to have company on the journey.  Hopefully we'll get our shit together and get more organized so we can have rituals outside now that the weather is cooperating.  I really want to use my fire pit.

Blessings on this Sunne's day.

Stepping way outside my normal way of thinking

We had a short full moon ritual last night.  Winging it as I had no formal ritual to follow.  I thought it went well and so did Zach.

Still plugging along this eclectic path.  Not feeling overly excited about it but I think that's a good thing for now.  It feels normal, if that makes any sense.

Last night I put Bast on my altar but felt really uncomfortable doing that so I took her off only to realize she wanted on the altar but on the upper shelf, not below where I normally put my statues.  She's still there and it feels pretty right.  I've never seriously considered her before, mostly because my drawing has been toward European gods for the most part.  Now that I've opened up to any and all gods, I've discovered several out there who just want to stop in and say hi, including the spirits of some animals.

I've been drawn to the eagle for years, as well as the crow or raven.  Lately I've felt the wolf's presence as well and thought they might represent gods but now I'm not so sure.  I think they might just represent the spirits of the animals.  I did notice that our full moon ritual had some Native American influences.  I have a miniscule amount of NA ancestry but I never considered that path either, thinking my more European ancestors were more dominant.

I'm not sure where I'll end up, if I even end up anywhere, but I am discovering more about the environment around me, the aspects of Nature and the elements.  I seem to notice more about me, the influences of spirits and Nature on my life.

I also put a statue that has been identified as Frigg on my altar but I'm not so sure she is Frigg.  I definitely sense Persephone in that statue.  That might be why I never could connect well with Frigg when I was worshiping her in that representation.  I am learning that the gods manifest themselves as they choose and not how we perceive them.  The horned god is there as well.  I think of him as Cernnunos mostly but he might be every horned god out there.  I have no idea right now.

I really do believe that the pantheons are artificial constructs that we humans devised in order to define who our gods are.  Getting rid of the idea that the gods exist in distinctly narrow slots has really opened up the universe to me.

Insanity

I know it's insane to keep doing the same things over and over again and getting the same result so I've got to figure out just what it is I'm doing so I can affect a different outcome.  It's not that I don't love the Greek gods.  I do.  It's just that I'm not certain that they're all that different from the Norse or Celtic or Gaulish gods.  And pantheons are giving me a lot of grief.  Who really decides who is in a pantheon?  I mean, as people migrated, they took their gods with them, mingled them with the gods who were already there and new patheons rose up.

And mythologies?  Oh, dear.  That's my kryptonite.  Mythologies will turn me away from the particular gods I'm focused on quicker than anything.  I don't believe in them and yet since that's the only way we "know" the gods (before we get to "know" them) they seem to be an integral part of the whole shebang. 

So I figure I should take a break from the gods. Period. 

I'll figure out the spirituality first and then figure out the gods later.  This is hard for me because there is a void that I keep needing to fill where the gods are concerned, but as that seems to be the biggest problem for me, I think I should fill the void up with me rather than gods before I try to find gods to fill the emptiness inside of me.

It's time to take care of myself.  The gods will do fine on their own.

Doing it better this time around

I'm still doing well here so far aside from the debilitating fatigue and now my occasional sciatica acting up.  Spiritually, at least, I'm fine.  Physically it's like cascade failure.

I'm spending more time just contemplating the gods and meditating on them instead of reading about them.  This is working out very well for me.  I feel my relationships growing steadily instead of feeling like I'm battling an insurmountable obstacle.  While I haven't focused on a particular deity (I don't do patron gods) I've noticed that I'm not collecting rooster designs all over the place.  The rooster seems to represent Hermes and I can attest that he is definitely present in my life.  Last night I had a situation with the car on the way home that circumstances prevented us ending up in the back country roads stranded (temporarily)...in the cold and dark.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.  I'm inclined to think the god of travelers was there helping us out. 

This feels more organic this time around. 

I'm also seeing a definite division between my magical practices and my religious practices.  Perhaps that's another area I had been making mistakes in. 

Also, while this latest brouhaha in the pagan community...that is, the reference to Wiccanate as a description for those practices that have a Wiccan "flavor" to them...has caused some battle lines to be drawn, in our household, we've found the term beneficial.  It has resolved a lot of issues for Zach and has explained a lot to me.  Although I do wish pagans would stop the pissing contests.  They're behaving much like the christians we had hoped to leave behind.

Life is good here...at least spiritually.  With Spring waking up we feel like we're coming back to life as well.

Order from chaos

I have the house torn apart trying to reconfigure my bedroom again, this time for the upcoming summer.  I have the window the air conditioner goes in blocked off and the way my room is situated, there is very little floor space as well.  It's a tiny room.  Originally, when this house was first built, this was a bedroom, then the original owners turned it into a living room but putting a couch in there was nearly impossible if you wanted any other furniture in there as well.

So when my knees went arthritic and the fibromyalgia became an impediment to climbing stairs many times a night, I moved into the living room and slept on the couch.  We bought a futon eventually and I would make up the bed every night but that became a huge burden as well with my arthritis and fibromyalgia.  So I just turned the futon into a bed all the time and the living room into a bedroom permanently.

Except when I feel guilty about not having a living room.  Then I try to make it convertible again.  It never works so I should just give in and let it be a bedroom all the time.

Which is what I'm working on now.

To be honest, the energy in there has been wrong ever since I tried to make it convertible.  I tried a few different approaches to it but nothing felt right so I'm working on putting it back the way I had it.  It's taking all day because I don't have the energy I used to have now that my heart refuses to work at capacity.  So I take frequent breaks and use Zach for the heavy stuff.  I have so far to go and it's nearly 5 p.m.  I'll be doing this at midnight when Tom gets home, I'm sure.

But another reason I need to do this is because I need room for spiritual things.  I like my altar being the focus of my room and not tucked away in a corner, which is where it is now.  I like looking at my altar, the pictures and even the statues, when I have them.  Not to mention having room to actually stand in front of the altar for ritual and prayer.  I don't even have that right now.

Well, back to work.  Unfortunately the room won't clean itself.

This, that, and the other

I'm feeling a bit rambly today...thoughts running though my head.  I'm not focused on a particular subject but my mind is full of all kinds of thoughts and word seeds. Might as well plant them here.

I don't capitalize the word god or the word pagan (most of the time).  I spent a half century capitalizing the christian god's name...which was just god...and capitalizing all pronouns and such because of christian privilege.  I just won't do it anymore.  I've seen it popping up more and more lately on pagan blogs, where the pronouns are being capitalized.  While I'm not one to insist people do things my way, I also reserve the right to be creeped out by it.  It seems a bit along the lines of christian wannabe shit.  I'm sure the people doing it aren't thinking along those lines but are merely honoring their deities the way they believe they should, but I'm still healing from the shit I had to deal with for over 50 years.  I'm going to feel that way.

I've got nearly all the deities up on the wall above my altar now.  Just pictures off the internet in cheap plastic frames, but I like it.  I like how it focuses my mind when I pray.  While statues would be icing on the cake, they're expensive and too big for my altar.  I had a few when I was on the Norse path but again...expensive and didn't leave me any room for anything else on my altar.  Now that I am honoring many more gods, this works better for me.  I have some decals of the gods but I like the pictures better.  Maybe Tuesday I'll take some pictures.  Tomorrow I have errands to run and bills to pay and tons of other stuff that needs doing.

I don't really have one particular god who is all-important to me, any moreso than the others, that is. I do love some more than others, but I haven't felt a pull in any one direction.  I love too many of them to single out just one or two.  I think part of my problem in finding my direction has been seeing what others do and thinking that's what I needed to do, too.  Maybe someday I'll have that intimate relationship with one or two gods, but honestly, I haven't felt that way since leaving christianity.  No reason why I should have to.

I'm looking forward to spring when I can get out and work in my yard, when I can get to the car without slipping and sliding or wading through knee-deep snow.  I used to love winter but this year has been particularly hard on me.  Not sure why although the sub-zero temps were definitely a factor.  That and the higher-than-normal heating bills.  But oddly I feel more nature-oriented on the Greek path than I did on the Norse path.  Initially I did have a problem finding nature while worshiping the Greeks but I feel a connection with Pan and the nature spirits now that I didn't feel last time around.  Or maybe it's just my longing for shirt-sleeve weather.

Zach's path has diverted as well.  He has also gone back to his first love:  eclectic witchcraft (non-Wiccan).  Odd how we often end up back where we started.  Even though many who worship the Greek gods believe that magic is hubris to the gods, I'm not one of them.  So I do intend to continue my work and study of magic.  Which puts Zach and me again on similar paths, studying together just like we used to.

I'm getting more and more excited about walking this path.  Or maybe that's just the promise of spring as well.  Who knows?  At any rate, the Greeks do inspire me more than any other deities I've honored.  I feel more creative, more aware of myself and my environment and more familiar with the deities I worship.

I hope this works out.  I do get tired of finding a path only to lose sight of the road ahead of me.

A god dream

Changes are happening here...again.  I don't feel bad about it anymore, now that I've seen people who have been settled for years in their path finding that their path has veered in another direction only to veer back.  It's the journey, after all...not the destination.

It was hard for me to articulate the problem.  I didn't want to post about my path, didn't want to study it much and was bored to tears with the mythology.  Still I feel an affection for the Norse gods and have statues on the top of my entertainment center in my bedroom where I can see them.

But the Greeks have always been my first love and I think I have to stay with them.

I have never had a god dream.  I've had dreams about animals before and thought that might be about the gods but it was never clear that it was.  This one,  however, was about the gods and no mistake about it.  In the course of the dream I told Zeus off and told him I was tired of the gods toying with me, playing with my emotions.  His eyes flashed but then he chuckled and took off to Olympus.  I still don't know what the dream means but it has stayed with me for weeks.  I tried resisting returning to the Greeks but I just got worn down.

I love them.  I don't just have affection for them; I love them.  I'm excited about them.  I want to learn everything I can about them.

And more importantly...I know them.  They aren't strangers I'm trying to get to know.  Certainly I don't know everything about them.  Or even most things about them, but I have known them since I was in early elementary school.   

That doesn't mean, however, that I'm going to dive into reconstructionism.  I tend to believe that, as I said before, the gods didn't stop doing things when the mythologies stopped being written.  I think stuff goes on and while I can respect what the ancients did, I'm not an ancient.  I think the gods have moved on just as civilization has.  The things from the past that are good and helpful I'll keep.  The things that are oppressive, I'll discard.

But tonight I'm going to light my candles & incense and utter a few prayers and go to bed.  The past few weeks have been a blur of activity and errands and I'm finally done with appointments and hopefully all those errands.  I want to organize my house and my thoughts and concentrate on writing more.  Not to mention the knitting that hasn't been getting done.

So...here I am, a Hellenic pagan/polytheist, feeling the love again.  It's like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Trying to organize my thoughts

I am still here.  Dealing with post-holiday depression among other things, but mostly trying to organize my thoughts enough to write coherently instead of babbling.  Although babbling is what I do best.

I'm still very much on the same path.  I think this is something of a record.  Toward the end of last year, I was faced with some incredibly hurtful things out there on the internet that weren't directed toward me at all.  But still pretty painful.  Mostly by people I would deem rigorists in their beliefs.  Those who think there is only one way to think about things.

It was hard watching Teo Bishop's journey in his last months as a pagan.  I had told Zach way back in 2012 that he was going back to Christianity so it wasn't a surprise that he did.  It was simply that he wasn't done with it yet.  He still had those longings for the ritual and the community and the...well, privilege that exists within that world.  I know because I had similar feelings.  I never missed the deity the way he did though and I think that's why when he made that change in his life, it triggered a definitive decision on mine that I could never go back.  Although I do think he won't be happy with that path either.  But I could be wrong.

But the hate-mongering that went on toward him really disappointed me.  I had discovered long ago that pagans aren't really different from Christians in their attitudes.  Not really.  I nearly left paganism initially when I saw the rigorists that existed within this group.  I hung on because I had nothing else.  I couldn't go back to Christianity because I no longer believed in Jesus.  I don't even believe that he ever existed.  Most likely he is a compilation of many different messianic characters from that era, when you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a messiah, they were so numerous.

Still, it was bothersome that there were people within paganism that were as hateful and mean-spirited as the religion I left behind.  I felt abandoned by my new "community."  Until I realized it wasn't a community at all.  My attempts at joining up with other pagans in the area ended when I merely disagreed with someone in an online group..didn't get in a rage...simply disagreed...and was ripped a new one by the moderator for not letting her handle it.  She didn't like it that I said something to a friend on facebook, without mentioning her name at all.  She went there and bitched me up one side and down another because I didn't bow to her authority on the local group.  There was an obvious power struggle going on within this group and as that was the only group I knew of in my local area, I was pretty much shut out.  As this power-hungry person is in charge of the Pagan Pride thing, I'm pretty much shut out of that community as well.

That was years ago, but still...way to shut down someone new to the path.

I've pretty much decided my path is solitary because there is no real community out there.  I know that I suffer from social anxiety and it's hard for me to interact with people, even online, but I'm not inclined to get involved in a group that has "all" the answers and won't let me find my own way.  It took me a long time to find this path.  I'm certainly not going to let someone else tell me what my path entails.

I've been reading a lot about the Norse/Anglo Saxon gods in blogs and in books.  I've read that you can't combine the paths because they are too different and not to be merged.  Too bad.  I'm merging them because it's the path I've chosen and the path that I was drawn to.  I've read that you can't wear certain symbols because they mean something specific and it's "dangerous" to wear them if you haven't committed to that deity or if you're the wrong gender.  I've read that the gods are "dangerous" and not to be trifled with and if you can't dot your i's and cross your t's then your life can be a living hell.

Too fucking bad.

Quite frankly I don't get how the myths are still the main way we "know" the gods when the myths were written by men ages ago and not always by the same cultures of men.  And why do we no longer view the gods as still having adventures and things going on in their lives?  Why do we only see them as men saw them in the past?

I'm absolutely not about to charge in and devise a new religion.  But I'm also going to get to know the gods and rely on that more than I do old words written (and revised by Christian monks) ages ago.  I believe the gods change with the times, as they did back in ancient times.  I know there are people out there who hate the thought of someone seeing the gods in a different way from the way they see them.  For some reason they feel threatened by that.  Again...too fucking bad.

I don't see the gods as fluffy kittens and rainbows by any stretch of the imagination.  They're not my buddies and they're not going to relate to me on an equal level.  They can be frightening at times.  But they're not dangerous.  I lived with that kind of thinking for 50 years as a Christian...a god who "loved" me so much he killed his own kid and then sends people who don't love him back to hell for all eternity to endure torture and torment.  Yeah...not going to worship any god who thinks punishing me is for my own good.  Just not going to do it.

I'm totally going to respect the Eddas and the old writings but I'm basing my knowledge of the gods on who they are to me.  It's what we do in any real-life relationship, isn't it?  We don't base our relationships on what other people tell us about the person in our lives.  We base it on our relationship with them.

It's pretty obvious I still don't have my thoughts organized and ended up just babbling anyway.  Maybe next time I'll be better at getting my thoughts out there.  Fibromyalgia does mess with my concentration so it's hard sometimes to get it all out there.

Still, thanks for reading.  I hope to be more faithful about posting.