caving in imaginary gardens with real toads

(untitled... for now)

Brave the wailing fires and a stony mouth,
I'm bigger on the inside;
Walk among my teeth, dripping
in a rush of life
flowing
through earthen arteries;
I am your forgotten womb.



I'm really getting into these writing prompts growing in the imaginary garden. They're striking quite the melody on my creative bones. This one, about a gigantic, wondrous cave in Vietnam, gave me something to chew on all day, as I saw it this morning right before I left for work. Tasty. 

I'm a bit lost on what to name it. I'd rather not go with the name of the cave that inspired it, because I think this could be representative of many caves all over the world, and I'd rather not narrow it unjustly. 

Crafting Blooming Howls with Magaly Guerrero

I first met Jorg and Naylee in a deam last June. In the dream, I was Jorg. I suppose that's beside the point.

So anyway.

No shit, there I was, neck-deep in smoothies and dishwater, when all the sudden -

...I don't know where that was going.

So. Anyway.

Magaly Guerrero over at Pagan Culture has this annual blog party in October, and it's awesome. You should totally check it out.

My contribution will probably be another chapter in the J&N story. I wasn't sure, at first, that I would be able to do that. I wasn't sure I knew where that story was going at all, or even whether or not there would be anything truly witchy or magicy about it.

My backup plan is to blog about my first Samhain as a dedicant of Hel, and my first Samhain without a coven. That's this year, by the way, not something that happened in the past. It's happening Right Now. Cool, huh?

As it turns out, I think I'll start work on the J&N story. I was at work today (in a cafe, making smoothies and washing dishes, but not both at the same time), thinking about writing. And thinking about J & N as characters. I really don't know much about them, but today I got some hints.

I'll be shaping Jorg's fecund howl long into the night, just the way he likes it.

"Goddess Spirituality Teaches Social Justice" ... wait. What?

Any time I hear an absolutism it makes me cringe.

Nothing is absolute; all things in moderation.
The irony of those statements, I think, proves them.

So the headline "Goddess Spirituality Teaches Social Justice" really hurt my reflexes. I avoided reading it for two days hours minutes while it sat there at the top of my blog feed, taunting me with its ridiculousness. Then I succumbed.

I started the first paragraph prepared for some sort of explanation of the silly headline - and had to step back and skim the whole article. The author starts the article with the word "so."

As in, "so here's a bunch of examples of this idea I haven't explained, but obviously since I have these awesome examples (*ahem* anecdotes) that obviously indicate how right I am about this unelaborated idea, you have to agree with me. Because examples."

No, that's not an actual quote. I made it up. That's just how the article  made its first impression in my head.

Seemed a little pretentious, in my haughty opinion.

It all went downhill from there. The author rails against the patriarchy, claiming the world would be so much better if women were in power and the world focused on a female deity instead of a male deity (as if the WHOLE WORLD follows Abrahamic religions... ugh, don't even get me started), and if we just put women in power over men then everybody would be equal. Because that's logical.

It made me wonder where genderqueer and transgender folks exist in her world.

Don't get me wrong: I'm no anti-feminist. I think the post-modern feminist movement is doing great things. I also think putting men below women - as this author does - isn't equality. That's just flipping the power binary, without even acknowledging that almost nothing in human sociality is actually binary, and power structures are not an exception to that.

At some point, I realized that the article seems to be an excerpt - or rather, a collection of excerpts - from a book. I came to this realization because the image heading the article looks very much like a book cover. There's no text confirming this, but it's probably a fairly safe assumption. I'd rather think these paragraphs were taken out of context than believe the author really intended to begin, "So...," or that the author really thinks no explanation of the title is necessary. Because the explanation never comes in the article. I looked. Twice. And it was painful.

Bad writing is nearly as painful as bad logic. This was very, very painful.

I'm going to skip over all the really insulting crap - like the implication that if you're a woman who doesn't like having menses, you only feel that way because the patriarchy forces you to - and skip straight to the author's summary of their point. Mostly because it was the most coherent paragraph I found.

"In conclusion, I’ve touched briefly on but a few ideas showing how Sacred Feminine herstory, metaphor and  mythology might be reclaimed and reinterpreted to provide a roadmap toward a more sustainable future.  We have in the feminine images of divinity deities, archetypes and ideals to show us the way.  It is up to us if we want to move away from or temper the “authoritarian father” idealogy that shapes our religions and culture and instead heed the advice of the Great She and her Sacred Feminine liberation thealogy as our role model."

Right, because all our religions are masculine-monotheistic, and feminine-monotheistic is the only possible solution!

Ugh.
I'm so done.

Incidentally, I've enjoyed most of the posts I've found on pagansquare.com.
This one just happens to be irresponsible.

Seriously. Children could be reading this crap! This is modelling very bad writing! And logical fallacies being presented as truisms! That should be sacrilegious.


And to make it worse, I never even got to talk about whether or not Goddess-centric spiritualities could possibly teach social justice any more or less than any other religion, because the article had nothing coherent to discuss! So annoying.

I'm watching you, pagansquare. 

Damn, I got so irritated I forgot to include the link. Sorry about that. Here it is:

http://www.witchesandpagans.com/sagewoman-blogs/her-sacred-roar/goddess-spirituality-teaches-social-justice.html

October to the Trees

sneaking
snaking
snuck
up on you -

You who thought
September pretties
could come alone,
without me on their heels.

Silly.

Dance with me
- shake your leaves -
I'll bring them down

all fluttering
stuttering
crumbling
to the ground -

The carpet
to be mauled by
nimble toes
dancing to your
winter's death.

I got inspired by Magaly Guerrero, who got it from a lovely Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. 

I highly recommend seeking them out, if ever you lack inspiration.

And yes, October really did sneak up on me this year.

I really thought September was longer.

Wasn't it longer last year?

equinox reflections on Hel, and death as duality

"If there is spirituality in nature, it is in the sublime purity of wild roses and wild mushrooms in mossy woods and the vitality of deer nibbling kelp on the beach and the violet light of an oncoming storm and, equally, in the anarchy and filth of the spawning grounds, in the undoctored real of the ever-dying world...

Nature is not simply done to. Nature responds. Nature talks back. Nature is willful. We have no dominion over the wild darkness that surrounds us. It is everywhere, under our feet, in the air we breathe, but we know nothing of it. We know more about the universe and the mind of an octopus than we do about death’s true nature. Only that it is terrible and inescapable, and it is wild."

Read more: http://www.utne.com/mind-and-body/facing-death-zm0z14fzsau.aspx#ixzz3E4HtAHLc



Some things, we know.
Some things, we know as pagans.
Some things, we know as pagans who follow Hel.

The two sentiments quoted above are both from the same article. The author is facing the world knowing she has very little time left in life. Soon she will cross over to wild death's hands.

Roxy, my ancient boxer, is approaching that same door, though I'm not sure she knows it. I'm not sure she doesn't know it, either. Maybe, like the salmon in the article, she seeks it instinctively and defiantly. Mostly, she seems very tired.

Equinoxes are balancing times; the Autumnal Equinox turns our faces toward death. The natural world becomes darker and more deadly, and living things prepare for the cold wait til spring. This is the turning point in the year's balance. Life and death hold equal sway, today.

Hel is spoken of, almost entirely, as a 'goddess of death'. We discuss how death and life are entwined and interdependent, and we comment on Hel's appearance as being half alive and half dead, all in various terminology. Then, we name her Death. This is not inappropriate, as long as we recall that death is life, and life is death. When she collects our souls in her realm, she does so at the time our wyrd dictates, never early, never late. Her timeliness - her balance - marks her as a preserver of life, until that moment when death holds more sway than life. At that moment, she preserves death. Always, she is both. Ultimately, she is a perpetual equinox, inescapably balanced. 

coming home to Hel

During the lunar eclipse last spring, I dedicated my home to the service of Hel. Then I decided to move. The two events were not causally related. 

In the weeks before moving, dead things began appearing on my doorstep. I mean that literally, and no, I do not have a cat. A hummingbird, perfectly preserved in flight-like posture, was laid in the center of my back step one morning. A bumblebee curled hollow on my windowsill, outside after a rainy night. Et cetera. 

I thought it an odd coincidence.

I - we, the denizens of my new home - have not yet done any sort of ritual blessings or dedications for this new house. 

Lately it seems that "death's door is flung wide open" - a quote I'm stealing from a friend of mine. And probably these many deaths - in my presence, in my community; our small town has lost so many over the past few months - are nothing to do with my springtime dedication to Hel. 

Regardless. 

I feel myself called back to Hel. 

Not that I had ever left, but I have been focused on other things beside my spirituality - moving, for instance. The pull of my spiritual path has been strengthened by a tie recently cut, that held me - somewhat - away from pursuing my faith in the manner I would chose for myself. That is, I've cut ties with the coven I was a member of. 

Technically speaking, they cut the ties. They sent me an email, addressed to the entire coven, that detailed a list of complaints about my lack of attendance. I hadn't made it to all the meetings during my move. ...Before I allow this to devolve into sarcasm, I'll just say that it's for the best. The coven's spiritual path had never truly been my path. 

Mostly because I'm not Wiccan, and they were (they don't call themselves that, but they use all Wiccan books and rituals and believe that all gods are essentially the Consort and all goddesses are essentially the Lady. As a result, they don't bother getting to know the gods they call on, beyond a cursory internet search for relevant myths. So, yeah. Duo-theism. Is that a word?). Anyway, I'm a polytheist. My gods are separate entities. I anthropomorphize them like crazy, because it makes it easier to think about them, but really - if I really get down to it - I think of each as a separate energy with its own traits. So anyway, tangents aside, my reverence of Hel, or any other of the individual gods I work with, doesn't mesh well with their 'all goddesses are one goddess, who is the source of life' thing. 

So anyway.

I'm not in a coven anymore. 

This gives me more time to pursue my personal spiritual path. And ironically, will leave me more time to mentor my mentee from the coven. But that's another post. Is 'mentee' a word? I'm out of writing practice... 

And now I've circled back around to Hel. 

I'm not quite prepared to establish an altar in the new house, mostly because I don't know where to put it. So my house does not yet have a sacred space. My old house had become a sacred space in its entirety; I'm still searching out even one altar surface in this house. 

Patience. 

The house is still coming together as a living space. I have to be patient.  

For the moment, it's enough to know where I'm heading: home to Hel. 

on living with another adult

I had never really lived alone - without another adult - for more than a month or two until my second husband left, about three years ago. [Ew, saying "my second husband" makes me feel gross.] I have always hated living alone. I hated the loneliness.

Over the past couple years, I realized that 1, my primary relationship was with a person who had an aversion to co-habitation, and 2, I wanted that relationship more than I wanted a roommate. It took some internal work to come to terms with what that all meant for me. I considered whether or not I would always need another person living with me to be happy. Now I'm facing moving in with Archer, and I'm concerned about whether we'll each be able to adjust to living with someone. He has long been clear on his difficulties with cohabitation; I'm just becoming aware that I will have these difficulties. I've become used to living without someone else. I've started enjoying it, even.

This isn't a question of whether or not I want Archer to live with me. Always, I'm happier when Archer is near. This is a question of adjustment. I'm not sure exactly how it will happen. We'll get creative, I'm sure.