The energy is right.....

I just glanced over at my calendar and realized that the new moon for November falls on American Thanksgiving this year. Neat! Coincidentally, the previous day will have been my last day at my job. I could not have planned this better if I tried! I'm glad that I realized this now, so I'll have some time to think about how best to utilize this energy. We'll be visiting family, but I may be able to get away for a while and do an outdoor ritual/spellwork depending on the weather. Of course, relying on pleasant weather during the end of November in New England is not a wise idea, so I will want to come up with some alternate plans.

************

Last night's spellwork does not seem to have protected me from another crappy day. However, one good thing did happen today - I got positive feedback on my first sale on etsy! Yay! And I made progress on one of the Major Problems that had come up. I think that this means that I need to keep repeating the cleansing stuff, but that it is chipping away at the muck.

Luck cleansing

As you may remember from yesterday's post, I wanted to do a bit of magic to deal with a run of murky luck I've been having. I'm glad that I took the time to think it over today, rather than rushing into spellwork last night. Things went much better for having had that time to mull it over.

Simplicity being the soul of effective magic, I decided not to do anything fancy. Instead, I combined a number of techniques which I have utilized to good affect in the past. I started with a nice hot shower and my favorite scrub: sea salt, just enough oil (usually grapeseed) to moisten it, and essential oils of choice. My favorite cleansing blend is lavender plus peppermint, but today I added rosemary to the mix. I put in a great deal in order to get a very strong fragrance. This combination is fantastic for doing an energetic cleansing. Muck is no match for this stuff!

After the shower I moved straight to my altar, where I used a technique which I seem to have developed, though I no longer remember when I first started doing this, or where the idea came from. I just start singing a wordless chant that seems to somehow channel my feelings, and wait for it to change. Sometimes it takes awhile to settle into a tune, but today I found one on the first try. Instead of waiting for it change though, I spontaneously stopped at the point that felt right and said a few words (something along the lines of "The past is in the past. From this moment forth I carry forward only positive energy. I leave behind negativity, ill-will, and malaise. I am filled with positive, clean energy"). Then I started up the chant I sing every morning to center myself.

I don't feel markedly different, but I do feel somewhat cleaner, energetically speaking. I may need to repeat this a few more times in the coming week in order to effect a real change, but that's ok. I think that ongoing magic is more effective most of the time anyway, because it makes me return my focus to the same thing multiple times. Though I will use a lighter touch with the essential oils in the future --I have an all over tingling feeling that suggests that I may have overdone it. I just hope I don't break out in a full body rash or something!

I also took out my White Light oil from Twilight Alchemy Lab. I'll put that on in the morning to try to keep the cleansing energy going through my workday. I generally prefer to make things myself, but that stuff really works!

Bad luck

This week sucks. I'm not comfortable revealing all of the details on a public forum such as this, but in the past four days I have gotten my first speeding ticket and been told that I am very overdue paying a bill for which I never received a bill of any sort. And I had a really bad day at work today. None of this is likely to be terribly dire, but I am feeling the need to do some sort of spell work to banish this crap. I probably ought to do it tonight, but I am tired and cranky and really ought to try to be in bed right now.

My current rough outline is to use rosemary or clove essential oil and some singing to do the banishing (either tonight or tomorrow), and then try to invoke some better luck at the next full moon. I'll post details once I've done the spell.

Why you should always follow through on promises made to a deity

When you make a promise to a deity, it is important to follow through on it. Likewise if you take a temporary geas upon yourself to bond with a deity, it is very important not to break it. This is basic stuff; anybody who's ever read the Brothers Grimm or a single myth from any culture could tell you as much. Which just goes to prove that I am a massive idiot.

One of my yearly traditions is to give something up for the time between Samhain and Yule. I've found that giving up some food item is usually the most effective for me. The idea is that every time I unable to eat whatever tasty treat, I remember my connection to spirit, and thus to my patron goddess, Freya. It can be difficult to find something that I eat enough of to be effective for this, but which I can reasonably give up nearly two months. This year I gave up mass-produced sweets. This means that I can eat desserts which are homemade by myself or friends, or which I know were made by the people I am purchasing from (thus locally made ice cream and hot chocolate are safe), but nothing else. So far I have already broken this vow three times. The first time was an honest mistake, though still stupid. The second two times, however, I knew exactly what I was doing. I tried to make excuses for myself, but I knew that what I was doing was breaking the temporary geas.

Not surprisingly, Freya is strongly displeased with me. To make it up to her, I have been asked to take a second geas on myself. Since both of the times I broke the vow consciously were related to chocolate, I am now limited to only eating chocolate items which I have personally baked myself. No locally made hot chocolate. No cookies baked by friends.

Since I have a major sweet tooth and am a known chocoholic, this next month will be interesting.....

Too many books, too little time

I'm thinking of starting to read more academic texts on paganism again. I used to be really into that -- I loved Drawing Down the Moon and Witching Culture, for instance. The friend I was staying with this weekend has an impressive collection of anthropological/sociological texts on the modern pagan movement, and it's rather inspiring. I've been meaning to finish reading Triumph of the Moon for ages, but right now I want to try Her Hidden Children. Since I'm an American pagan, I find studies of our brand of paganism slightly more interesting than studies of British witchcraft, even though they share common roots. I do intent to finish Triumph of the Moon eventually, though. Really! I was also enamoured of her copy of The Paganism Reader, which is a collection of excerpts from a variety of texts that have been important to the pagan movement. It looked fascinating.

And then there are the non-academic books I want to read! I just read a review of a new book about the elder futhark runes which sounds fantastic (Runes for Transformation - I found the review here), and I heard that Dianna Paxson has a new book out on trance states, Trance-portation: Learning to Navigate the Inner World, which also sounds interesting, though I haven't taken a close look at it yet. The Amazon blurb makes it sound like it might be taking a lighter attitude toward the topic than I would prefer, but you can't judge a book by its Amazon blurb! Or by the back of the book blurb, for that matter. So it still warrants a closer look.

With the holidays coming, I may find myself asking for some very strange books this year!

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Well, Jon Stewart was, in fact, awesome. It was less of a talk and more of a stand up comedy performance, which is just fine by me. He managed to make fun of the college's new mascot (which I am not so fond of either -- a bright pink pig in a tri-corner hat would never have happened in *my* day!), as well as cover gay marriage, what he will miss about Bush, why Obama will be a good president, the stress of parenting, and why computers will not save us, all the while keeping us in stitches. It was weird to be on my old campus again. It's just not the same place as when I was a student, because it doesn't belong to me anymore. What I miss is bound up in the people and shared experiences, which just aren't there anymore. When I visit campus it's like seeing the empty shell of what I miss. It's sad, but you really can't go home. I did see a few friends at the alumni reception beforehand, which was nice.

Now I am staying with one of my pagan friends from college, which is wonderful. It's fun to be able to share books (she has a TON of academic texts on paganism) and music (I brought my new chant CD along). I miss having other pagans nearby to chat with about spirituality. Email just isn't the same as a lively discussion in the same room.

Travelling

I am leaving now to hear Jon Stewart talk at my alma mater. Yay!

Expect a more substantial post tomorrow (possibly about spirituality, but probably about Jon Stewart. If we're really lucky, I'll manage to combine the two)

Tired

Today has been a decidedly non-spiritual day. After a rather long and crummy work day I got home and wasted the entire evening on the internet. I'm going to go try to turn my shower into a cleansing ritual, and then either go to bed, or watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'm getting it via Netflix. It's so amusing to see again after so long!)

Quartz = Moon

With a little lunar oil, it really is amazingly how well a clear quartz ball can impersonate the moon. It's sad that I can't see the full moon from my indoor ritual area -- I love the view during the warm months -- but my crystal ball does make an excellent ritual stand in. Now I just need to figure out why it wouldn't stay balanced in the shell I use as a holder. It always balanced perfectly well before.....

Magic of Alanis Morissette

The simple rituals are always the best, really. I just finished dancing my heart out to emotionally charged music (Alanis Morissette's "Incomplete" and "You Learn"; Jewel's "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland") in a candle lit living room, with my totems in attendance. Of course I sang along, too. Why do I always forget how wonderful that simple magic is? I feel so much better.

I remembered the joy of singing while I was making dinner and listening to Alanis Morissette (yes, this influenced my musical choices for the evening). I really do believe that singing is the most effective way for me personally to move energy. I have little formal training in voice, but I love to sing, and I do it with love and conviction. Life is better when I sing, whether while cooking, in ritual, walking down the street or sitting down to formally practice a song. This is coming as a revelation tonight, though I think I've been aware of it for years. Maybe it's sinking in on a deeper level.

While collapsed on a chair after dancing, I realized something else, too. Squirrels are always darting around from one thing to another. They have the collective attention spans of... well, of squirrels. But they manage to get enough done to make it through the winter. I may feel like I don't stick to anything long enough to make a difference either, but I do manage to get things done in the end. It just may take me a bit longer, since I cycle through so many projects/obsessions.