I just need to breathe

Life, hey? I’ve been seriously busy these past few weeks and it’s thrown out many of my plans for posting here. Kept drafting them and then deleting them, or being too tired to think about what to write at all. I don’t mind, of course, because surprise visits by my brother and his family are always great, even if they drain my introvert spoons quite a lot.

I mean, even today, I had wanted to spend most of it writing. Instead, I spent the morning building IKEA furniture, and then part of the afternoon organising and rearranging and putting things away and tidying and rearranging shrine things. I mean, srsly, I didn’t even get time to do my morning devotions, and I didn’t turn on my computer until 3pm. Go me!

I mean, it’s great, because things are much better organised now, and it was work that needed doing. But, man, I had a Hallowe’en fic due today(ish) that I need to finish, and that hasn’t happened yet. Brain needs time to settle before I can get around to that.

I had all these grand plans for a nice shiny dedicated launch of my Etsy shop, Shedety Scriptorium, but that hasn’t happened yet, because busy! and not enough brain to make it happen. But hey, there are a few things up there already, and I won’t complain if you buy them, either. :D? I still have a few things I need to add up there, too. Some I’ve taken photos of, others I still need to photograph. They haven’t gone up yet because, well, see above. But yes, I have a shop now, because scribe, and books, and prayer beads and whatnot. Plz go and take them off my hands so I have room to make moar things!

Under the cut:

– Sobek things

– All the shrine update photos etc.

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.

Hekate and runes

I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of things, and not paying enough attention to writing it all up. The Covenant of Hekate have had this month-long daily devotional thing going since the beginning of the month, which I thought I’d do, since the focus was on improving meditation and visualisation skills. And it’s been good, if intense. I don’t mind a bit of visualisation here and there, particularly since Sobek finally told me how to do it in a way that would be effective for me, but it’s quite trying on my brain to do it every day, and I will admit to skipping a couple of days, or just doing the breathing meditation instead, because I haven’t felt up to the visualisation. Since I need to do some visualisation work for Sobek tonight, it’s breathing again for Hekate. I don’t have the spoons to do visualisation work on a constant basis, but at least I figured that out sooner rather than later.

The visualisations have been quite productive though. Lots of tarot imagery, and some runes as well. Artemis showed up as well, in connection with Yr, but there you go. That was hardly surprising, to be honest, since the rune is signifying the bow. It did make me want to take up archery though, which I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. I have always loved archery. I blame Disney’s Robin Hood movie. That is burned into my memory from since I was a child. I spent a lot of time as a kid making bows from sticks and lacky bands, and making arrows out of whatever I could find. I dunno how good I’d be at archery, since I have shitty eyesight and all, but I guess I won’t know unless I try.

Di Wep Ronpet Nofret!

Wep Ronpet shrine for 2014. Set up under the patio.

(For you northern hemisphere types, consider this a ‘Christmas in July’ equivalent.  Wep Ronpet in February! Woo! :D)

It was a good day, actually. Nice weather, if a little windy, hence the lack of candles on the shrine. Also, apparently I cannot simply set up a shrine outside without bringing EVERYTHING with me, so. EVERYTHING came outside, and then had to be taken back inside. To be fair, this was partly because I needed to nick the shrine cloths, and that meant taking everything down. But it did give me a chance to tweak the shrine layout when I was putting it all back together.

Had the house to myself today, so that was also why I wanted to do my ritual outside. I get weird about doing ritual outside of my room when others are around. I like my privacy. And I feel like I can run around setting things up without having to explain what I’m doing. Its just easier all round. So it was nice to have the time to do that today, even though I am behind on my noumenia rites now, and will have to do them tomorrow night.

A new year beckons

I’ve spent today’s noumenia cleaning and reorganising Hekate’s shrine, amongst other things. I was going to do rites, but fuck me, I’m buggered now, so I might just leave it at that. That said, it might be the one time I can comfortably light candles without having the fan on, given how cool it is right now. Summer, where are you? I think it’s still stuck in Spring. Not that I’m complaining. 25C is infinitely much nicer than 37C.

Though, it is hard to get into the mood for ritual when you can’t light candles safely, you don’t want the extra heat anyway, and incense is just a pain to bother with even when it doesn’t trigger migraines. Can’t find decent oils to burn that smell good, but can’t justify buying every different brand of frankincense because expensive! The current bottle I have doesn’t smell right, but I can’t find the one I do like, so. /stops burning oil. /even though I miss the beautiful scent of it. 😦

The result of the lack of incense has mostly just made me dream about it, and catch the scent of it on the breeze. It’s really quite infuriating, and all it does is make me miss it so much. I’d love to start burning my frankincense cones again, but I hate migraines more than I care for incense, so. I’d rather not risk it. I think the only way I could get away with it is if I set my Sobek/Heru shrine up in front of the window, so I could set my incense burning right next to the open window to hopefully ventilate it to the extent that I could cope without getting triggered. But that’s a pain in the arse I don’t want to deal with. I like my shrines where they are. Incense isn’t necessary, I know, but ritual isn’t quite the same without it. Damn me and my migraines. 😦

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.

De-Cluttering

There’s something to be said for the power of de-cluttering. I’ve been slowly starting to go through my accumulated mass of possessions in a bid to get rid of things I no longer need. I’ve done clean-outs before, but I feel this one needs to be much more significant, because I’ve run out of room, and I can’t just rearrange a few things and throw out a bag of rubbish.

I don’t find it surprising that this has come at the same time that I’ve stripped back my practice to the bare essentials. In some ways, it’s sort of a symptom of it. I’ve spent the last week or so thinking about my practice, and what I really need to focus on. What’s important, what needs t be let go. So with religion, as with real life. So things are being let go of, and either passed on to op shops, or thrown out.

I also think this is a significant change because I think now is the time where there is more of a requirement/necessity/obligation to focus my path solely on Sobek and the work I am meant to do for Him. It didn’t matter a couple of years ago, because I was exploring, experimenting, and learning things I needed to learn. But I’m His, and this is where the work really begins. And so my practice must duly be focussed on Him.

Back to Basics

Newly-redone shrine. Icons are on top of the shrine because the big ones don’t fit. Apologies for the flash glare, too, but it’s late, and it’s the only way to take decent pictures with my shitty camera, since I can’t find the good one. I will do a more full proper shrine post at a later date so you can see where everything has ended up, but for now, admire the new set-up. And yes, that is a Feraligatr between the two horses. I regret nothing.

I think it takes a lot to go back to the beginning, particularly on any kind of spiritual path. Once you get so far along, you kind of feel like you know what you’re doing, and don’t feel like you need to teach yourself much. But, I don’t know, perhaps it’s the lot of a polytheist, but I feel like I’ve been collecting too much lately. My path and practice has become too full of thing, too full of festivals and gods, that I have come to feel burnt out. And I didn’t even recognise the fact that I was burnt out until today. But that’s what I am. I’m burnt out, and I need a rest.

It’s not just the subtle proddings by Woden (and possibly some ancestors) to look into Anglo-Saxon paganism (because apparently that might have been what the ancestors actually meant when they were talking about ‘The Old Ways’ they wanted me to bring back, rather than the Welsh polytheism I assumed they meant), or the calendars, and the SDF rituals I’ve been doing, but I don’t know. Somehow, it’s all felt like … too much. I’ve got to the point where I just need to stop, and evaluate just what is really important to my path, which gods I would be willing to spend time with on a regular basis, and what needs to be left behind. And also how to fit said ‘Old Saxon Ways’ into my path in any kind of meaningful way, if that’s what is being asked of me. (Though, I have just started Wyrdworking by Alaric Albertsson, and my reaction thus far has been, ‘Oh, so his definition of magic is pretty much heka, but in a different language. /finally understands the point of runes’. So. /ponders.)

It’s entirely possible this is related to my nearly 30th birthday at the end of the year, but that might just be a coincidence. Either way, I’ve decided to start again, right from the very beginning. I’ve stripped back all my shrines and redressed them. I’ve set Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset on my old festival shrine; They are the only gods on that shrine now. I’ve also kept Hekate’s shrine, because She has a tendency to help me when I get to these crossroads moments. The rest of my icons are on Sobek’s old shrine by my bed. It’s still a shrine, but it’s not one I will use (yet.)

Kemetic Round Table: How To Survive Fallow Time

This is the latest in a series of posts that is part of a (new) Kemetic blogging project called the Kemetic Round Table that aims to provide practical, useful information for Kemetic practitioners of any stripe from beginners to more experienced practitioners. Check the link here for more information.

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I must admit this topic threw me a little. It’s a fairly new concept to me, and trying to relate it back to my own experiences that I may not have coded as fallow time is an imprecise artform. So you will excuse me if this post is perhaps not the best, and may wander into strange territory, given my not-so-great understanding of the concept.

When I saw the topic, I first thought it was referring to that time between Samhain and Yule. It was only when I thought about it a little more that I connected it to those periods when gods don’t talk to you, and you feel somewhat disconnected from your path. I also understand this is a different thing than a ‘dark night of the soul’? Though I can imagine that both may overlap to some degree, though more in a Venn diagram kind of way than anything more significant. I can’t say it applies to every experience, though.

The Call To Serve

(Revised slightly and reposted PBP post for this week, because I felt it was Relevant To Your Interests. And to this blog, ngl. Apologies in advance if you get two notifications of this one.)

I don’t think I’ve done much on this topic, now that I think about it. I feel like I’ve skirted around it, or not really mentioned it. Sobek did wait six years for me to finally figure out that’s what He was asking me to do, though. Perhaps it deserves more of a contemplation.

…Ohwait. I did talk about priesting, but that was on my private blog, rather than my public one. WELL THERE YOU GO THEN. Maybe it is time to talk about it publicly then.