By Fire Well and Tree

 I hope the Leo Full moon Sunday night had you find your creativity!   I ended up leading an Imbolc rite at  the store , but before that managed to sneak in to a workshop by my friend, Forest, on Astrology for Manifestation.   I'm not going to give any spoilers, but I'm TOTALLY going to plug her workshops. Her approach to astrology is as a tool for self-knowledge and self-actualization (my interpretation, anyway) rather than a determination of your fate, and it's at the down to earth and accessible, and at the same time well-researched and in-depth. She knows her stuff. Take her classes, get your chart done! End of commercial. What it got me thinking about was how astrology fits into my current path. I like writing about suns and moons (as you can tell) but I'm never sure how it "fits." The way Druidry has developed (at least my order), there's very little call for astrology in any formal way. I remember as a baby-pagan reading about houses and signs and p...

If you are one of the two or three people who read my stuff, you'll know already that I don't find calendar dates to be particularly useful for anything besides making sure folks are on the same page to do stuff.  As far as the natural world, and the spirituality I find there, I prefer to let nature tell me stuff.   Of course, if I had the time to devote the equivalent of a full-time job to studying these things, I wouldn't need to avail myself of Googling stuff, although I definitely appreciate the  astrology website I use.   (Really wish I paid attention in geometry class...if I'd have only known...) The solstice and equinoxes, moon going from dark to full and back again.... none of that cares about the date on a page.   BUT, the cross quarter days are a little harder, so I look to my land. We haven't had much of a midwinter thaw. We got lots of cold and snow around Yule, and then we've been somewhat consistently in the 40s-ish.  MAYBE we dipped...

  Special guest appearance by Taco towards the back  I am not 100 percent sure how I came to be so...YULE!!!  When I first became pagan, I felt like I was all about the Samhain, the spooky. And heck, yeah, I still love it.  But somehow Yule took hold and now I plan Yule Lad visit to my grove's kids, and Solstice eve vigils, and a Yule Along for the 12 days, and then Twelfth Night sumble.... Anyway, here we are again. The last two years there's been Yule-A-Long and Yule Lads, but that's it.  In 2020, we tried to have a Zoom Twelfth Night. I get that Zoom has been a godsend for many, and we certainly used similar technology (Blackboard Collaborate), but as much as they can help people with some anxieties, they do the exact opposite for mine. So in 2021 I didn't even bother, and was mostly too full of Seasonal Affective Disorder to even care. We didn't even decorate those two years.   BUT, this year is all... well, different. Not normal, but close. (I des...

 ... I mean, it is THE pagan holiday... The first one I ever celebrated WITH people. I think it was 1992, and my roommate and I went to the now-defunct PCCO's "Take Back the Rite" Samhain gathering at what is now Bicentennial Park (maybe it was then?)  The Faith Mission bus was there to pick up homeless since it was cold but decided to attempt to disrupt our rite and then stand in a circle around our circle lobbing prayers at us. Yay. There are probably Neopagans out there that don't like Samhain... But I don't really know them.  I try to explain it to non or new Neopagans as a combination of Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and New Year's Eve.  In reverse order, the connection with the Celtic New Year and fire festival of the same name has many groups (including one of mine) marking the end/beginning of their liturgical year.  And if you have a hard time with resolutions, this is one of the many cultural new year celebrations that you can get a do-over (if you phr...

 Well, of course I got behind. But instead of giving up (as I am so close!) we'll just get caught up um...soon. :)  Cheating a BIT today, and using my "standard" daily devotional prayers, maybe punching them up a bit.  On most days it's a quick saying of the last two lines (bolded), but if I have time it's the full thing.   Nature Spirits Spirits of Rock and Soil of Leaf and Stem Of Skin and Blood Of Light and Shadow of Hearth and Home Natures spirits I give thanks for the night And ask your blessings, protection, and wisdom for the day.

 I keep needing to double up... LAST night was the first-quarter moon.  I saved some notes for that on an earlier post (to be edited out), but I need to refigure out something.  I'm going to just abandon that for now I think. So.... I owe two prayers tonight, and I think I'll continue through the Core Order but also my home practice.  Home practice first :) In my "perfect world," Saturdays are dedicated to the spirits of my home and my land.   I say "my," but I have gradually come to think of it more as a partnership.  I (try) to keep things tidy and orderly, in and out, and my land and house spirits protect and ward.   (picture of stuff) Saturdays then are "dedicated" to the house and land spirits. That's the day I generally have more "free" time to do yard work or catch up on house work.  I don't always have that time, AND I don't always do it when I do have the time, but the intent is there.  I light a candle in a holder on...

Well, not that  new. More like a new emphasis. The strength of polytheism, or one of the strengths, is that as one's focus changes, one can adapt one's practices.  We learn, we grow, we change, we revisit...it's not so much a path like a free way, but a rambly walk through the woods.  I am reminded of this.... Not enough doubling back, though. Anyway, recently I've become kind of intrigued by a couple of things. First, I've become more enamored of making the path of the Sun a focal point of my liturgical cycle. The Equinox and Solstice multi-day devotionals are the most obvious example of those, but I also have downloaded an app to the phone that tells me when sunrise and sunset are. I've gotten pretty good at predicting sunrise time, but a little less so of sunset.  Still, it's interesting to go "Isn't it about sunrise?" only to hear the alarm sound a few moments later. More on that later.... What I've been more  interested in,...