Again, I return after a long absence.  Things have, as they do, have taken a turn for the worse.  My husband was diagnosed with diabetes in March and then the day after Easter he was let go from his job.   We’re in a bad place financially but I have hope that this means that the rest of 2012 has hidden treasures waiting for us.

What have I learned?  Be true to myself.  My poor husband was bending over backwards to be who his company wanted him to be.  I was doing my best to fit into a group of people where I wasn’t really meant to be but I wanted companionship.  We were both being square pegs in round holes and then the Universe decided to tell us to stop it.  And as usual it was done in a dramatic manner because I don’t always catch the small hints.  Even when I do catch the small hints, I sometimes ignore them because I think I’m right, dammit!

I’m taking this setback as a time to assess what I’ve been doing, to make sure I’m staying true to my ideals and that I’m doing what I want with my path.  I tend to feel lonely at times so I’ll join a group and try to make myself fit in there, even if I don’t have the same beliefs or goals.   I’m not Wiccan even if I did come from a Wiccan background.  It’s silly to try to force myself into that belief system.  And yet I do try.  Why?   Because I don’t want to be alone.  So I’m sitting down and I’m going to write out where I’m at and where I want to be going.  I may or may not put it on here, I am a lazy typist and I don’t like copying what I’ve already written out.  Meh.

Candle magic has been done to help us get assistance financially and for the hubby to get a job that he likes and is in his field.  Or at least one that pays the bills and he doesn’t detest.  We’ve also been working on his resume and finding jobs that he’s qualified for, applied for the unemployment and hoping that his old company doesn’t contest it.  If they do, it’s to be vindictive which is why he’s in this situation to begin with.  It’s a company of finger pointers where no one takes any responsibilities for their own mistakes.  It’s always someone else’s fault.

In order to keep my hand in the spiritual pie, I’m going to be working on ‘Be A Goddess’ by Francesca DeGrandis.  Then moving on to ‘Goddess Initiation’ and ending with ‘Share my Insanity’ (all by the same author).  I love her work, it’s grounded and full of wisdom with a quiet strength.  She’s one my very top favorite pagan authors, her works really resonate with me.  I’ve been lucky enough to have some small interaction with her online and she’s an amazing soul.  I have the highest respect for her.   I’ve been feeling drawn back to her work and am giving into the feeling while I also explore where I think I’m going.  I feel like there is something in Francesca’s work that I have to learn. Or maybe I’m just so bad at my spirituality that I can’t move forward without tripping backward.  Whatever the reason, I feel the pull and I’m going with it before something drastic happens.

It may not be necessary, but I’m going to talk briefly about what cosmology is in case anyone reading doesn’t know.  If you do know, feel free to skip this paragraph. Very briefly, it’s the way a religious tradition explains how the universe and world came to be and usually you’ll find that the process was done either by a deity or a pantheon of deities.  Simple, yes?

So, what is my cosmology?  Well, Lucifer is involved as Creator.  Some traditions call him the Blue God, a title I sometimes ascribe to him.  It also involves Nyx, but most of the work belongs to my darling Lucifer which you don’t normally see in pagan religions.  Usually the Goddess is more active in the creation of the world.   So, without further ado – my creation myth.

First there was Khaos, the nothing-ness, the darkness, the divine Androgyne.  From the darkness came darkness, and the Goddess Nyx emerged to create the Universe and fill it with light.  That light was Lucifer who sprang forth from the egg that Nyx had in the darkness and the first thing he did was fan his wings to dry them.  As his wings moved they made a sound, which echoed and bounced through the darkness of Khaos.  Faster and faster Lucifer flapped his wings, filling the void of Khaos with sound.  The noise woke bright pinpoints in the darkness and set them to dancing.  They whirled around in the darkness, sparkling and shining as they set their courses.

By the light of the new stars, Lucifer could see other things in the darkness.  He reached out and snagged a piece of clay, which was warm and soft, and began to shape it into a ball.  His fingers created a crevices and little mounds that he didn’t fully shape away, these became valleys and mountains.  Nyx wept tears of joy at seeing what Lucifer had created, and he took her tears and wrapped them around the ball, creating the seas to cradle his new Earth.

While Lucifer was busy creating the Earth, Nyx was birthing Hemera, the Day.  Together these goddesses raced around the Earth, giving day and night to the planet.  The sun was so bright, Lucifer couldn’t be seen and he worried that the Earth would forget him.  Pushing aside his fears, Lucifer scooped up more wet clay and created the moon, a silver crescent that was still filled with water from the new seas.  Water dripped from the moon’s horns, creating rain and as the moon waxed and waned the tides began to beat against the earth like a drum.

The earth was lovely to look at in the moonlight and Lucifer leaned down and kissed the Earth, where his lips touched forests grew and spread outward to cover the land.  The new forests reached upward toward Lucifer’s light waiting for the gentle rain of the moon.  So the trees would be able to grow, Lucifer pulled some of the heat of the sun to wrap around the center of the earth to warm them.  The heat was so intense, it burned his fingers and he dipped them in the cool water at the top and bottom of the globe and thought about cold and freezing.  Ice began to grow to soothe his painful fingers, it was a fair balance to the warmth of the equator.

The world was almost complete, but Lucifer knew that more was needed.  He blew across the face of the earth and as his breath swirled between the earth and the water of the moon, clouds were formed.  His breath continued to race around the globe, creating the four winds. Lucifer  named the gentle Western wind Zephyrus,  who rose with the setting of the sun.   From the frozen north came Boreas,  brining with it the chill to turn rain to snow.   The strong East wind was named Eurus, who brought warm rains to nourish new plants.  Finally there was the lush, playful wind from the South.  He was called Notus and brough with him fog and mist.  When all four blew together to the same point on Earth, they would argue over territory so fiercely that Lucifer would use his voice of thunder to quiet them.

Now that the world was complete, Lucifer looked to the sparkling aethers in the sky.  He reached out and several stars danced into the palm of his hand.   As he looked into the dark cavern made by his hand, their dancing and flashing made him think of life.  He breathed over them and they began to change, growing wings and legs, fur and scales, fins and feathers.  Each evolving and continuing to evolve until the land, the seas, and the winds were full of living creatures.  In honor of Lucifer, they all made different sounds and noises to imitate the first music that Lucifer created with his golden wings.

Eventually Lucifer wanted a creation that was more like him and Nyx, people who could enjoy the beauty of heaven and earth that had been created.  He asked the Goddess’ advice on how to create a new race that was different, that was more than birds and beasts.  Nyx, ever wise, asked what he would do with such a race?  Did he expect the to worship Him for what he had done?  Lucifer thought about it and finally answered: no.  He wanted a race made in the image of God and Goddess, to rejoice in the beauty of earth and sky, to dance and sing in honor of their beauty and freedom.  Nyx smiled sadly and warned him that creatures with such absolute  freedom would eventually vilify him for what he had not done, instead of seeing the blessing in what he had.  She warned that to create them, they would need to have a spark of deity within them, so every pain in the heart of mankind would be a pain the heart of God.

Lucifer shrugged, so be it! And they created woman and man.  Just as Nyx predicted, eventually they turned their back on the Gods for what they had not done for man and Lucifer wept as he was relegated to a place in hell.  This is the story of the Fall, not brought about by  sin or evil pride, but by divine love who knew the outcome but loves us anyway.

Now that I’m moved and unpacked and back to work, I can start on this again.  Oh, my!

The other parts of my path are made up of an odd conglomeration of shamanism, zen, alchemy, Shinto, herbalism, dragon magic, and whatever I find that works.  Many of the things I have listed there all sort of cross-bleed into each other which is why they don’t get their own headings, the only one that really sort of sticks out is zen.

Yes, it is usually attached to Buddhism and no, I’m not a Buddhist.  I’m not a master and am still learning through baby steps, but as far as I understand Zen doesn’t have to be attached to any specific religion.  It’s about being fully aware, of being mindful, of taking in everything around you through all your senses and finding the still beauty that is there.  I love the idea of Zen because it says that you don’t have to multi-task to be productive, you just have to be mindful and put your all into your work.  I’m a terrible multi-tasker, so I like anything that tells me that it’s OK if I can’t multi-task.  *laughs*  Zen is also about stilling yourself so you can be aware of yourself.  Going inward to go outward and vice versa.  It’s about taking time to appreciate yourself as a part of this great big, grand Universe.  It teaches me to take time, quality not quantity.  It makes me more aware of why I’m doing things as well as showing me that taking the long way can sometimes be more efficient.

Shinto is a form of shamanism at it’s heart, of being in tune with the natural world in a spiritual way.  Of connecting with and honoring the spirits all around us, whether they are divine, ancestral, or spirits of place or animal.  And for me, shamanism is about the journey; not  just trancing with your spirit guide animal, but also about how we approach and follow our path.  Paganism isn’t just about me-me-me, even if we do work magic to make ‘me’ more comfortable.  Paganism, for me, also connects us with the past as we create for the future.  I don’t believe that time is linear even though that’s how we follow it, I feel that we can connect and work with energy now and in the past and in the future.  All time is ‘now’ for us and there is a magic in that all its own.  Shinto and shamanism remind me that all things are divine, everything is touched by God.

Herbalism is a healing modality and a way to connect with spirits that aren’t animal based.  For me herbalism isn’t just working with plant spirits but with the spirits of earth, stone, and clay.  Without that plants can’t grow.  Sure, they need more than just earth and some don’t even need that, but as a broad generalization – you have to put a plant in soil before it can grow.  I also feel that herbalism connects me with my family more, wise women (and men) who knew how to coax life and health from everyday, often overlooked, items.  Herbalism is also a form of alchemy, transmuting something simple into something life altering.

Alchemy is a side study for me, I can see where a lot of modern paganism and modern Wicca came from in the study of alchemical arts.  To me, alchemy is distilling something down into its purest form, of transforming the simple into the spiritual.  Alchemy is scientific magic, a way of creating a formula that works the same way every time for something that can’t be formulated or controlled.  It is about spirit and soul, of finding and connecting with that purity and remaking ourselves into something better.  In this too, I am a novice but I am drawn in by the way alchemy links past with present, spirit with matter, and the complex symbols that encompass it.  As much as I try to simplify, I still love complexity and mystery.  There is also a patina on alchemy that it makes is both more and less mystical, a question about  it’s validity and how it was used by medieval con men.

Last, but not least, is dragon magic(k).  This is something that I’ve been incorporating into my path for more than a decade and I feel that it has been a rewarding backbone in my path.  There is nothing religious about this path, it’s purely spiritual.  There is no worship, there are no priests, no specific rituals.  In this path there are healers, mystics, and dreamers.  There is a laid back quality to the path since there are no holy days that have to be added to my calendar, there are no new tools that have to be added, and I don’t have to choose between my gods and the dragons.  The hard part with the draconic path is paying attention to my intuition and keeping in mind that the dragons don’t know everything.  They’re not infallible, they may know more than I do about some things or be able to better see what consequences will be, but ultimately I have to be the one to make the judgement calls.  I also find that this path is incredibly rewarding, working with my companion dragons and learning to use and work with their energies is something that is always interesting and engaging.

Everything else kind of wanders in and out of my sphere of influence as needed.

We recently moved and through all the chaos and confusion, Inari had begun to dominate my living room.  Her statue took a prominent place on the ledge between the kitchen and living room.  Her paining is displayed proudly on the wall near the dining room table.  I was very much feeling her energy all around me.

Then, I got a small wall shelf and one of my statues of Lucifer took pride of place on it.  It’s DC comics version of him, but in the move his martini glass was lost.  I stared at him for a few days, and he seemed to be reaching for something.  Holding his hand out, waiting.  I ignored the feeling.  Then that itchy, uncomfortable feeling made me feel like my skin was crawling.  So I found a small sphere of rock quartz that normally sits in a cup on my altar that fit perfectly in the palm of his hand.  And the itchy feeling crawling around in the back of my brain disappeared.

We’re still in the decorating phase and by our tv I found the perfect spot for the framed poster of Lucifer.  In it he stares out insouciantly, swirling his perfect martini and surrounded by snakes.  His golden wings trail behind him, full of light.  I love staring at it and it finally feels like the living room is balanced between my main patrons. It’s comfortable and I’m glad that they’re a little more integrated here than they’ve been in any other place that we’ve lived.

I’ve gotten used to not ‘hearing’ them, my gods. I’ve gotten used to paying attention to my feelings, listening to my intuition, and noticing odd patterns with numbers.  I try to figure out what my dreams are telling me without taking their content as absolute truth.  I understood that the distance was necessary, not only for me but probably for them as well.

And then, as I was dusting Lucifer’s statue, I heard him.  Clear as a bell, just like I used to.  His voice was like silk in my mental ear, soft and full of depth.

“Everyone wants choices, even though they deny them.  Even though they want to pretend that their fate is a coin toss.

What better way to hide your light than to cloak it in plainness.  You shine, especially in the dark.  The problem with darkness is that you can’t see your own light, only the light of others.  The problem with light is that everything shines, everything looks the same.  While you can’t turn brightness into darkness, you can tarnish it. But with work you can always reveal the hidden light.

People believe what they want to believe.  Having light, having knowledge, is more than some can handle.  Holding a candle in the darkness of ignorance can be tiring, especially when people willingly blindfold themselves.  Finding the light isn’t for everyone, but those who do find it and choose to add to the brightness are the ones we look for.  What is your choice?”

For a while, as a child, I tried to hide in the darkness.  To segregate myself, to find quiet hidden places, to be lost from view.  But that turned against me, being alone meant being unseen and when something bad finds you there is no one to help.  So I learned to hide in the light.  To be in everyone’s sight as much as possible so that what was wrong couldn’t get to me under the watchful gaze of so many people.  But that only worked to a degree.

Now it’s time for me to come out of hiding.   I’ve been using the camouflage ability of Fox for so long, I’m not sure I know how to discard it completely.  But I feel like Lucifer’s words are telling me to stop being that scared little girl.  To stop hiding in either darkness or light and embrace myself, my fears and flaws as well as my bright spots.   I may be tarnished, but with a little hard work I can be polished and look like new.

I hope I’m understanding him correctly.  I’m also pleased that he has chosen to speak again and I’m curious if he’ll continue to do so.  This post didn’t quite turn out how I thought it would, I had half-formed ideas that this would be more about him and less about me.   Maybe I’m too self-centered?  Or maybe he is finding new ways to make me look within and with out.

Hail and blessings to you, Lord of Light.

I’m sure you’re scratching your head and looking at me funny thinking ‘wait, isn’t paganism and witchcraft the same thing?’  If this were any ordinary day, I would probably say yes – on most days when talking to most people those two words are fairly interchangeable to me.  What makes today different?  Well, for one I have to write about it.  For two, there are differences.  I think witchcraft is a part of paganism, so when talking to people who don’t understand either I let one be a blanket term for the other.  However, where paganism is about the spiritual path and learning about the self; witchcraft is the mystical part.  It’s where the magic comes in.  Paganism has ritual and worship.  Witchcraft has the spells and the get-your-hands-dirty kind of magic.

Witchcraft doesn’t have to be spiritual.  Paganism does.  In a way, I see paganism as more passive and witchcraft more active.   That doesn’t make one better than the other, it just means that I feel that witchcraft is where I have to engage ‘me’ more.   And by that I mean I have to examine my motives, I need to know why I’m doing the spell I’m doing,  and I need to be willing to accept personal responsibility for what I’m doing.

For me witchcraft is all about weighing your actions, what are you planning on doing magically, are you willing to accept the return energy for what you are sending out?  Are you willing to accept the consequences of your actions?  If I need to do something to protect me or my family, will I do a binding or a hex?  Is that something I’m willing to accept the karma for?  I also need to decide why I’m doing it – do I have a legitimate reason or am I turning to magic as an equalizer because I was butt-hurt?

I will admit,  there are times when I take a while to contemplate these questions.  Aaaaand there are times when I  decide that I don’t care what the consequences are, I’m ok with doing it.  Does that make me a good witch?  Maybe not.  But as long as I’m willing to accept the repercussion then I am working within my path.  Do I do things that are harmful negligently?  No.  But if I feel that is the last route open to me then I ponder it very carefully before going through with it.  I can count the number of times I have felt that it was truly justified on one finger.

My final thoughts, today, on witchcraft is that it is a path where you really have to be willing to know yourself.   It requires not only introspection but understand and acceptance of what you find there.   It isn’t something everyone would be willing to do, but it is ultimately rewarding.

I’m assuming that I’m supposed to talk about what paganism means to me and what I do with it.   I mean, I could go with the usual pagan = not Christian, but I think that route has been already done.   Paganism is a strong thread in my life because my family is Japanese and paganism is still strong and alive there through Shinto.   My heritage has always been important to me and the fact that some branches of paganism work with ancestor worship has always intrigued me. Part of my path is creating a chain of tradition that connects me to my ancestors and that will continue through to my descendants.

For many I think paganism in general is a hard path because there are no hard and fast rules.  Even among the reconstructionists I’ve known, they update their practices to work in the modern world.  Part of that is because you can’t really slaughter an animal in sacrifice in your back yard without freaking out the neighbors, but also because there are just some things that aren’t fully understood… so the blanks are filled in by educated guesses.   Throughout paganism is the idea that you take what you need and discard what you don’t, but there is also (for me) the all important need for responsibility.   I don’t think that self-responsibility is stressed enough in many traditions and I try make sure that I live up to my ideas of it.

For me paganism falls into the realm of  not only someone who worships multiple deities; but also those who work with nature spirits, ancestors, and other energy modalities.  Gods aren’t the end all and be all of a practice and I have known several pagans who simply eschew working with God/dess.   The backbone of my personal faith is balance, so as long as the witch is balanced upon her path, it is correct.  Gods can come or go, Goddess can work her way in as She will or not.

As time has gone on I prefer the label of ‘pagan’  because it is a little more of a blanket term and has less baggage attached to it than ‘Wiccan’.  Also, for me, Wicca means that you can trace your teaching lineage back to Gardner (or even to the Sanders).   I also feel that Wicca has become a little too focused on how harmless they are rather than on actually training their practitioners to know what they’re doing.  That might be my own disillusionment with it, but this blog exists for me to expound on my own opinion… so there it is. *laughs*

I see paganism being a path that will continue into the future and will grow and evolve.  I think that’s what makes it so attractive to me, as a spiritual path it doesn’t allow me to wallow in a rut. It breathes and changes and reminds me to keep moving forward.  I don’t like to remain stationary and paganism allows me to move forward and strengthen my bonds with the world and spirits around me.

While at work today an enormous thunderstorm rolled through. Loud thunder and bolts of lightening tore through the heavens. I’m terrified of thunderstorms and made a facetious tweet that I heard him and the noise could stop. Lo and behold – it did.

Thank you, Lord of Lightening, for listening to me.

Wow, that’s kind of a lot to sum up.  *laughs*  As I said yesterday, I started out thinking I was Wiccan but with a very strong Feri influence.  I guess that’s to be expected since my first ‘real’ books on paganism were Starhawk’s ‘Spiral Dance’ and Cunningham’s ‘Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner’.  When I started I was a very haphazard practitioner, a teenager with little training but thinking she knew it all.

I was pretty happy in the version of Wicca that I was be-bopping along in, it wasn’t until I had been seriously practicing it for more than10 years that I started to get disillusioned with it.  It was a combination of inability to progress in the religion, everything seemed geared more toward beginners and the ‘advanced’ information was basically a rehash of beginner ideas.  The other problem, for me, was the community… or lack there of.  There just seems to be too much infighting and people wanting to be ‘witchier than thou’.  The training is lacking and rather abysmal when students can’t verbalize even simple ideas about the religion.

From there I jumped into Druidry, but where Wicca has little to no training; Druidry was all training and very little practice.  I think it’s a good path but you really need to enter their dedicant program with a grove so you can get the intricacy of the training.  There was a lot there that I adopted into my personal practice and, to me, it makes what I do feel more authentic to what my ancestors would have practiced.

Speaking of ancestors, one aspect that hasn’t changed is that I blend Shinto into my path.  Which, to be honest, it very easy as it’s a current pagan religion that is still practiced today.  It works well with the hodgepodge my path has become and helps to give it some structure.  Shinto pushes me towards a more earth and spirit centric path that is heavily influenced by shamanism.   Shinto also keeps me in touch with my ancestors and reminds me to honor all those who have come before, the ones I know and the ones I don’t.

Into the mix I’ve thrown dragon magic.  It doesn’t help with structure, but it does help with keeping me in touch with the shamanistic side.  I like the symbiotic relationship that creeps up in it, where working with the draconic energy is something that grows and expands the longer you do it.  It’s very different from working with deific or elemental energy, but everything can be used together for a powerful effect.

I also have been learning about alchemy and herbalism, there seems to be a lot that modern witchcraft and paganism owes to alchemy.   I’m hoping that herbalism will help with the shamanistic side of my practice, putting me in contact with plant energy and entities the way that typical shamanism does with animal energies.

Currently, I don’t identify with any one path or spirituality.  I tend to call my concoction Fox and Raven, for my patrons.  Why I identify the raven with Lucifer I’m not sure.  Other  than I vaguely remember a story about raven bringing light to the world… or he stole it.  My memory isn’t the best.  Anyway, in my current practice I do a blend of Shinto, shamanism, Zen, dragon magic,  and modern paganism.

Where I’m going?  Wherever my laughing Trickster gods lead me.  The show me the doorway, and it’s up to me whether I choose to go through it or if they shove me through.  *laughs*  I kid, I can choose to not step through the door.  But I do know I’m always growing, evolving, changing.  I always will.

Wow, that’s a long frigging title.  But I’m always looking for something to blog about and this will keep me busy for 30 days.  Aaaaand maybe it’ll bore some to tears, but I think it’s a good thing for me to do just to verbalize what I’m doing right now for myself.  I’m usually so involved in how I’m not doing anything and not going anywhere that I miss the very fact that I am.

I’m not sure if it’s an intro to the meme or to me, so I guess I’ll do half of one half of the other.  The meme is fairly self explanatory… for thirty days (well, 31 really) I take the given topic for each day and I run with it.  I write as much or as little as I feel I need to.  Then I post it here for the world to see and maybe shake their head at the poor misguided little pagan girl. *laughs*

As for me… I’m a witch in her late 30′s who has been on her Path since she was 13.  A very young and uninformed 13. I’d say that my real practices began when I was 19 and certain that I knew everything.  Just like every other 19 year old out there.  I started as what I thought was Wiccan but was really more Feri influenced, then worked my way into druidry, and from there I’m just your average run of the mill pagan who mixes different spiritualities into something that fits her own eclectic personality.  As for the rest, it will all get touched on later through the days of the meme.

So welcome!  I hope you enjoy!

30 Days of Paganism Meme Master List
0. Intro
1. Overview of my Journey
2. My Path: Paganism
3. My Path: Witchcraft
4. My Path: Shamanism & Other Influences
5. Beliefs: Cosmology
6. Beliefs: Reincarnation & The Soul
7. Beliefs: Sacred Sexuality
8. Practices: My ways of worship
9. Practices: Divination
10. Practices: Magic
11. Deity Gender
12. Patrons
13. Patron – Inari
14. Patron – Lucifer
15. Altars & Ritual Tools
16. Holy Days
17. Favoured ritual tools, and why.
18. The meaning of terms like “earth-based” and what they mean to this path
19. Community
20. Spirituality and Relationships
21. Paganism and my family/friends
22. Other paths I’ve explored
23. Paganism and major life events
24. Ethics
25. Priest? Clergy? One or both? Neither?
26. How your faith has helped you in difficult times
27. Places of spiritual significance
28. One misconception about Paganism you’d like to clear up
29. The future of Paganism
30. Advice for Seekers

I finalized everything with my school of choice, made the down payment and (hopefully) tomorrow I can start on my first class(es).  I’m not sure how it will work since it appears to be through moodle… which makes me smile because CoS was that way.  So thank all the little gods that I have some experience with it and won’t be totally lost.  Inari smiles upon me again.

Went out today and bought ‘back to school’ stuff for me.  Just some pens, a couple notebooks and a binder.  But it felt like so much more, like I was doing something monumentous.  I’m still a little scared, mainly that I won’t have the fortitude to finish this even though I’m paying a lot of money for it.   By March I’ll have my tuition paid off, but it’s a 3-4 year program.  The Husband is being super supportive and I am excited but unsure what to make of that.  This just doesn’t seem like something he’d be behind.  Once I finish the Master Herbalist course, I want to take the one on herbalism and aromatherapy for businesses.  I’m hoping that by then Gina and I will be ready to start working on getting a brick and mortar store together.

Now on to step two!