We need Pagan thrift shops

So this post is a bit rare for me. I don’t normally do stuff like this, but all afternoon, I’ve felt strongly that this is something I need to write, and write now, and post it, because I can’t keep it to myself. This needs to be shared. Whether anyone agrees, I don’t know, but I’m putting this out here anyway, even if only I end up caring about it.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about stuff. Our paganisms, and our polytheisms, are religions of stuff. Pick any book about how to do a paganism and it will invariably have a chapter on all the stuff you need. Tools, statuary, robes, books, whatever. You can also search for witchy room tours on youtube to see just how much stuch we like to hoard away. And there is nothing wrong with stuff! Many of us find them useful for our practice, and I don’t think we should abandon our stuff if it helps us do our religions well.

Of course, getting said tools isn’t always cheap, and sometimes, you can’t just get any tool, you need to have the right one. Some of these things, like libation bowls or dishes or candles or other stuff, can be found in ordinary thrift shops, or bought cheap elsewhere, but some things, like statuary, are harder to substitute, particularly if you don’t have the money for them. Australian pagans might understand how hard it is to not spend a lot of money on deity statues; if I can find one for under AU$100 with shipping, I consider it a bargain.

Hibernation

It’s nearly time for the Spring Equinox, and I feel like I might finally be coming up for air. Or, at least, emerging from the dark time. It’s been a very deep and introspective time. Not quite a Fallow Time, but more … introverted. Lots of internal stuff going on, as well as being busy with things in the mundane world. Trying and failing to write things, trying and failing to find a job, trying not to go mad and smash things because politics, the usual. It makes for a strange disconnect, sometimes, when I try to reconcile the normality of life, with all the other spiritual stuff. A lot’s happened, and I’m alright. It’s still been a weird winter, but it’s time to re-emerge, and I’ve felt that urge to write again, and re-engage with the world.

So, er, bear with me, if this post gets a little long, and rambly. I will probably need more posts to go into things in more detail, if necessary, but this is what’s on my mind at the moment. I hope this all comes out coherently. It’s still a little muddled in my head.

Reflections on Polytheism

My spiritual life is a bit of a shambles at the moment, too. I’m doing my daily devotions to Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset, and that’s about it. And it’s not that I don’t mind that, because simple and ‘able to be done when half-asleep and just out of bed’ is what I like, I feel directionless. It may be that I am overthinking things, and trying to make things more complicated than they need to be. Wouldn’t be the first time. But IDK. It’s crashed into the chaos that has been the past two months, so I’m just feeling overwhelmed by it all and uninspired, and I just need some clean, fresh air to sort all this shit out.

I don’t even know what I am anymore, except a polytheist and Sobek devotee. Which is fine, but. Not recon. Not not-recon. Not Wiccish. Not, well, I don’t even know anymore.

General Shortform Solitary Kemetic Rite is done!

Had a bit of inspiration at last, and have written up the short form of the general solitary Kemetic rite I did a while back. I haven’t tested out the short form ritual yet, but I’ve tried to make it as short as possible, while still containing the basic elements of the longer rite. I wrote up a very short and simple purification sequence, just so there’s something there to begin with.

I wanted the short form to be useful for daily devotions, still with traditional elements, but without the trappings of a State rite, so someone who’s just starting out could use it as a base to work from as they start getting used to Kemetic ritual style. I can’t really vouch for its effectiveness just yet, because I haven’t tested it out, and I don’t like putting rites up I haven’t done yet, but I’ll do that sometime in the next week and modify it after that, if it needs it.

I have also edited the long form rite, as well, just a little bit. Mostly formatting, and a couple of optional additions.

Queer Wheel of the Year – Draft

Okay, so I thought I’d posted this somewhere – either here or Dreamwidth/LJ, but apparently not. Because I apparently got as far as writing it up, and then not sharing it with people. I know I meant to do that though. My approach to the Wheel was both finding a cycle that works for my particular path, and then a more generally and better adaptable queer version for public consumption for those who like using the Wheel as a festival calendar. If anyone has any input or thoughts, I’d love to hear them, and feel free to pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

To make a tl;dr post shorter, I’ve been reading over the Sabbats, and trying to figure out possible themes to work with for each one that aren’t dependent on heteronormative biological reproduction. I wanted them to be more abstract and inclusive, as well as adaptable for different paths or for people who work with different Deities. I wanted it to be asexual-friendly as well as queer-friendly, because I think the traditional Wiccan Wheel doesn’t do a good job of catering to those two camps.

Also, fyi, I am using ‘queer’ here as a shorthand umbrella term for transgender, genderqueer, and other gender diverse people to save me writing that out every time. It’s meant to be for anyone not interested in a binary gender narrative, or one based in biological heteronormative reproduction and fertility, like the traditional Wheel. So that’s where I’m coming from and what I’m trying to address.

This is also just a draft of my thoughts for each of the Sabbats. I’m open to tweaking or changing anything that doesn’t quite work, as well as any suggestions for what else could be included. Because I don’t want it to be path-specific or pantheon-specific, I don’t want to assign Gods to each one either; if I did, it might only ever be as a suggestion for who to work with? Does that sound like a good idea? I have the Horned Goddess down for Beltaine, but that’s the only association so far, and I’m happy for that to be a personal association more than anything else.

N is for Nine Elements

This week’s topic is a bit of a weird one, but I don’t particularly talk about this system very often, so perhaps it’s not a bad time to revisit it. I still don’t know if there are any other existing systems of nine elements around. I haven’t managed to find one yet, but I never rule it out completely.

My system of nine elements came to me some time ago, and I still don’t really understand which part of my subconscious came up with it, but there you go. I’ve posted once about it, quite some time ago, but I think it’s time for a more cohesive and longer post that goes into this system in more detail. I’ve had a long time to ponder this system and its meaning to me by now, so I have many more thoughts than what I originally wrote about them.

My Complete Festival Calendar

I thought it was about time I posted about this, because I feel it’s settled into what it wants to be for the moment, and there’s no point in trying to tweak it. It’s light on Greek and Roman festivals, if only because I still haven’t figured out which ones I want to mark, so that’s more of an addition for later when I’ve had time to properly research those things. But the basic structure is there now.

It’s a fixed calendar, too, if only because it’s easier to integrate it with the Wheel than calculating it every year. I’ve also got a leap year version that adds in an extra day. I think I just added in another extra day leading up to Wep Ronpet, so the months were (mostly) in sync. I’ll still probably check it every year, just to make sure it’s still working. I chose Wep Ronpet as my starting point and gave it a fixed date in order to calculate the rest of the calendar from there. Somehow it’s all managed to work out really well.

There are no moons integrated into the main calendar here, though, if only because I’m just going to set those in every year because the dates change. That’s about all the additions I plan to do though, bar any tweaking I need to do. For me, my path is easier to manage using a perpetual calendar, because I don’t want to spend days calculating a new calendar every year. I’d rather do things this way.

I’ll also state my base Kemetic calendar is based on the Kemetic Orthodox one, if only because I already had those notes I could use to compile a complete year-long calendar. I’ve only included the festivals I plan to mark. I’m also making something of a daily prayer book, where I want to list every festival, so I can use it as a devotional aid for my daily practice.It’s my compromise between keeping track of the whole calendar without feeling obliged to celebrate every festival.

A few other things: My previous post on the Sabbats and calendar is here, which goes over my Sabbat configurations and whatnot, and the first of my L posts on Lammas explains my reasons for shifting Lammas into March. For some extra explanation I won’t repeat here.

Adorations for the Gods

I’ve added a new page for Adorations. I’ve currently got six sets up there, and I’m planning a few more. I’m planning to use them for my prayer beads, for something to start with when doing contemplative/meditative work.

Feel free to use them yourself, or mod them up to suit your own needs.

I’ve currently got adorations for Sobek, Heru-sa-Aset, Harpocrates and Suchos, Amun, Nit, and Temu.

I also have a version tied to one of my prayer bead sets, which I’ll share below. I wrote this first, actually, and from there, expanded what I had into individual adorations for the Gods. The concept came to me as I lay in bed with them the day after I’d made them, meditating on each bead to see what story they wanted to tell me. This is what they told me.

H is for the Horned Goddess

I know I talked about the Horned Goddess a little in my post on Gender, Queerness, and the Gods a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to expand on this some more and perhaps delve a little deeper into who She is and why She might be here now. I originally posted some of these things to my Dreamwidth journal a week or so ago, but I wanted to post them here too and expand on them, so that more people can read about Her. She wants me to talk about Her, to make sure other queer and trans* pagans know about Her. I can’t keep this to myself anymore. So you’re getting a post about Her instead of a post about Hekate like I had originally planned.

F is for Faith

So I’ve got faith down for this week, and in the interests of not faffing about for three days trying to think of something to write about, I’ll just go with it and see where I end up. I’ve done a lot of planning for topics I’d like to cover for this project, but it’s still always a work in progress as I keep up the regular postings.