Here, have an entry that’s not about the Sobek Devotional

Gods, it’s been a good, but crazy year. A lot’s happened. Like A LOT. I guess this is what I get for picking ‘courage’ as my word of the year. I can’t remember the last thing I talked about, but it’s been a relatively quiet end of the year, in terms of spiritual stuff. There’s a lot of ongoing internal work, and a lot of plans and other things that are taking time to develop and grow.

Things I have been focusing on lately are self-love and self-care. I don’t know if this would’ve come up had I not been shifting into a femme mood all year, but perhaps. Perhaps this is just the mindset I need to really dig into this work and make it happen. See, the problem with being a well-adjusted and functioning human being is that you don’t think you need self-care because what the hell, you just get by. I’m resilient. I can handle this. And yeah, most of the time, I can. But this is something that goes deeper, and in a lot of ways, it’s hard to express. But it’s part of that thing, you can’t love others if you don’t love yourself, yeah? It’s to do with that.

My Ritual Books

So I originally posted this over on my Dreamwidth journal, just to get it all down, and now I’m posting it here, with a lot more formatting and organisation so it doesn’t just read like a rambly rambly mess about books with a bunch of pictures and videos in it. That, and I missed a couple, so. This is a better version of that post, so apologies if you’ve seen this before.

So. I have *counts* 13 books currently in use that I’m working on. This… seems excessive, I know. Even I’m shocked that it’s that many. But there you go. If I’m being honest, most of them are of the journal/notebook type, rather than Proper Witchy Grimoires or Books Of Shadows. A lot of it is just notes and meditation logs and other boring things. They’re not pretty. They’re not arty. They’re just my terrible handwriting and sometimes, I might use two different coloured pens. I know, right? Radical.

But then I am very practical when it comes to my books. I don’t care for fancy layouts or pretty pens or anything like that for my notebooks and journals. All I care about is getting the information down. Anything more gets in the way of that becoming habit.

Also, this post is going to get Very Long, and there are photos and videos involved, so. Bear with me. And I will post in a lot more detail about two of them over at the Grimoire, so keep an eye out for that. But for now, here are my thirteen ritual books!

Solstice Blessings!

Hello. Yes, I am still alive. So, summer solstice on Wednesday here in Perth was 42C/107F, which was just the best day (not) and why I hate summer this heat is appalling. So I didn’t do any ritual because who has the energy to do ritual when it’s that fkn hot? Not me. But I did ritual yesterday morning, with a bunch of other ADF solitaries, watching a livestream of a winter solstice ritual, so that scratched my ritual itch for now.

I’m still in that stage of figuring stuff out, but I’m closer to done than I was before, and I’ve done morning ritual to Sobek-Heru today for the first time in a long time. I also built a shrine for Isis, and it sits on the southern wall. I’ll do full shrine postings and photos at a later date, probably in January once the dust has settled. Maybe I’ll even do a full room tour, though I’ll have to do some cleaning first, I have stuff everywhere right now, and that won’t change once Christmas and my birthday hits. But that’s a job for later.

High Day Blessings!

Happy Hallowe’en/Samhain/Beltane/NaNoEve, for those celebrating. It’s been a quiet day, but a good day. I did most of my ritual yesterday, to be honest. There was a live broadcast of an ADF Samhain rite I followed along with in the morning, then did some Hekate devotions, and then followed it up with the Deipnon in the evening. And because of Female Things, today is my Scheduled Day Off, so I have done nothing really. Except buy chocolate for non-existent trick or treaters who decided to pass by our house (which I now get to eat mwahaha), went to the library and took out all their witchy books, painted my nails black, and … that was really about it.

I wanted to get more NaNo prep done today, but other things beckoned. I would start writing at midnight, but I have work tomorrow, and midnight is bed time, so, it will have to wait til I get home. I will probably begin handwriting if I get bored, though, just so I have somewhere to start with and not have to think off the top of my head. But the parents will be out at choir tomorrow night, so I’ll have the evening to write in peace, which will be lovely.

Also, I blame Hekate for how much this month has felt like Samhain, and not Beltane, and also possibly because I just don’t connect with Beltaine. But, seriously, I have not felt the Samhain-y-ness to this extent before, so perhaps that’s why I didn’t mind participating in a Samhain rite yesterday, and making offerings to our queer ancestors, and to my blood ancestors. It was a powerful rite for me, even though I was watching it and following it online.

Anyway. It’s late, and I have a million other things to do before bed so I will leave this here. Many blessings of the High Day to you, and peace to the blessed dead, and to you. ❤

Happy Solstice!

I had a lovely ritual tonight with Hekate Kourotrophos to mark the winter solstice. I’m beginning to understand why the blade is important to me, but it’s just niggling thoughts at the moment. Hekate Kourotrophos is very … blunt. But I like Her. And I do volunteer for Save the Children here in Australia, which is right up Her alley. So donations in Her name were suggested, which makes sense to me. I’ll write up the ritual on my DP blog later, but for now, have a little dodgy phone camera video of my shrine from tonight’s ritual.

I wish you a blessed and peaceful Solstice. May the gods be with you. ❤

A blessed High Day to you all!

In which I am terrible at taking photos. /not my natural talent. /lookit that blurrrrr. 

Whether you’re gearing up for Beltaine or Samhain, or for no festival at all, I hope May brings you good tidings and blessings and not!terrible things. I admit I did rather pull this High Day ritual out of my arse in terms of preparations, but it turned out well enough, I think. I did a simple one in honour of Hekate and the ancestors, and that seemed to work well. I wanted to get the rite done before May began because that’s when the Mysteries of Wesir begins for me, and I didn’t want them crashing into each other.

I offered grains, water, and honey rum. I mean, ‘grains’ is something of a misnomer, because it’s a mixture of garlic granules, sea salt crystals, barley, sesame seeds, and rosemary, but hey, grains! It’s easier to say idk.

Also, you might notice two boxes on the main shrine between the statues/behind the taper candles. They’re painted up cigar boxes. The one on the left is for tools, and contains my knife, bells, prayer beads, oils, and salt. The one on the right contains the incense I use for my daily rites: sandalwood (Heru), lotus (Isis), daphne (Sobek),  and a white sandalwood, ginkgo, and agarwood blend (Wesir). It’s internally divided with cardboard, and the glyphs are bodged together from dictionaries and drawn with not a great amount of skill. But there you go.

Anyway. I wanted to post here about the High Day tonight, and I’ll post the proper write-up over at the DP blog later. Not sure how much Mysteries of Wesir I’ll post over here, but we’ll see. I hope your festivals go well, if you are having any. Otherwise, have a great weekend.

Mysteries of Wesir preparations

This year’s Mysteries of Wesir shrine. It’s very pared back and simple, but I think it gives it a strong focus. How much of the stuff I removed will go back afterwards, I don’t know, but we’ll see.

The full moon is coming up, and I have some tools to consecrate. So it seems like the time to set up properly for the Mysteries of Wesir. I also redid the druid shrine for the coming High Day, which I still haven’t settled on yet, but it’ll be about Hekate if nothing else, so. I’ll probably do it a day or two before May 1, just so there’s space for both. I think the only thing I’ve needed to get is some more black taper candles, which I just ordered on ebay, because this is Australia in April, and black candles are hard to find at the best of times, so.

It’s been a strange week, in many ways. My daily devotions have been ad-libbed, and the gods I mention almost all the time are Ra and Wesir as I light the candles. It’s strange to do that after having such deity-focused devotions for so long, but I find it refreshing. A lot of my words have been about purifying myself; I find I’m censing myself, and purifying myself with the water offerings, and drinking in the light from the flames and letting them wash over me. It feels like it’s been a week-long ritual purification, but I’m okay with that.

There was a bit of meditation with Sobek this morning in my half-asleep state, so I’m tempted to feel like this is when things are slowly coming back to normal. The full moon ritual tomorrow, when we consecrate the heka knife, the heka snake wand, and Hekate’s knife, will probably be the start of the preparations proper for the Mysteries and the coming High Day.

I won’t be able to do the full 6 hour night vigil, though. I’ve got some paid work to do the day after, so staying up all night is not an option. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do; it’ll either be a day vigil instead so there are still 6 hours done, or it’ll be a shorter vigil in the evening, perhaps 8pm til 11pm. I’m tempted to do it during the day, because I haven’t done a full six hour vigil for a long time, and even though it won’t be quite the same during the day, it’s better than cutting it short again. But we’ll do some divination and see what the gods want.

Anyway, I have rituals to prepare and write, so I’ll leave this here. I’ll post photos of the tools later once they’ve been consecrated so you can get a better look at them and what I did with them to decorate and consecrate them.

Sometimes, inspiration fails you

I swear, I’ve been trying all week to write something up here, but it hasn’t happened. I’ve had thoughts about all sorts of things, but they’ve come to nothing. It’s not a huge issue, it’s not like I have a set posting schedule, but I am trying to keep the posting as regular as I can, just to keep things ticking over.

But things have happened. I have spent the past month working on a short story about Hekate for one of the Covenant of Hekate’s creative projects, and there was the option once it was done to submit it to Askei Kataskei, which I did. And apparently it is good, so there’s that. I’ll let you know more on that later when I have a firm idea of what’s happening with that.

I’ve caught up on my DP High Day stuff. I had fallen behind on my essays and such, and at least I now have all my High Day essays and ritual notes done. Check out my DP blog if you’re interested in following along. I will, at some point, sit down and redraft them into proper essays, and not just collections of notes, but that’s for later. The liturgies I used have also been posted, as well as the essay notes for the May High Day, because if I do it now, then I don’t have to worry about it when the Mysteries of Wesir are taking over my life. All I will have to do is write up the ritual, and then it’s done, and I can worry about Wesir.

And now, the Noumenia

With the deipnon, comes the noumenia. It was quite a peaceful rite. I used a new liturgy I’d adapted from a couple of other noumenia rites I’d found online, and gave it more of an ADF structure, and I think it worked well. I offered honey liqueur, which I poured across the back gate after the rite. I am also drinking half a shot of the same in some ginger beer, and it is great.

I did try to do some meditation, but my brain was too fuzzy to focus on it, and I never dipped below into the landscape. I saw flashes of it, but I never went anywhere with it. But it’s okay. It happens every now and then.

Also, you can see the new Shedety shrine coming together in that photo above. I’m not entirely 100% settled on it, but it’s probably closer to done than not. Part of the fun of working with that space is that it also functions as a working altar for the druidic shrine above, and so it can’t just be a shrine. I’ve been trying to focus on everything that’s on there, and trying to decide if it should be there, or if it’s just taking up space. So it’s been stripped back a bit, and I’m trying to get as much space out of it as I can, because I like having space to work on.

I’ve also been putting the Sobek book together, gathering all the information and writings I already have, and it comes to about 77 pages or something idk. I’m not editing yet, I’m just gathering, and seeing what I’ve already got, and what I still need to get. Some things may get culled, of course, but we’ll see how it all comes together.

Anyway, in case anyone’s interested, I’ll post my nounenia liturgy below. Feel free to nick it for your own purposes, if you’re looking for something like this. I’ll add in the sources for this when I post it under the House of Life pages, but I know one was the Neokoroi (sp?) rite, and another was a blog somewhere idk. But I will chase those up, and add them in later, because I think I kept some of the words, and wrote in some of my own, and I care too much about citing my sources.

The first Deipnon

Shrine set up for Hekate’s deipnon. Sans offerings and such as this was taken after I’d disposed of everything because I forgot to photograph it before then. Black bowl on the left was for libations, the orange/gold bowl was for the deipnon itself.

So I finally got over that mental thing in my head that was all, ‘how can you do deipnon without a crossroad wtf’, and have again tried to follow the advice of both Isis and Hekate, and that is to just turn up at shrine and do ritual and be there with them, and stop worrying about the details. So that is what I did.

I decided to dispose of my deipnon into the compost bin outside, because recycling bad stuff into compost to feed the garden seems appropriate for deipnon. So I did that instead of leaving it at a crossroad. Which solves my ‘I don’t want to leave food out in a public place’ issues that had stopped me doing deipnon before.