Category Archives: Spirituality

Solstice

What an incredible sunrise this morning. I’ll upload a photo later, once I’m back from dropping Liam off. It began the day very nicely. (Later: Uploaded! It’s blurry because I didn’t want to use the flash, but I don’t care because it still gives some sort of idea of how beautiful it was.)

We’ve begun a new tradition of allowing Liam to open a gift on Solstice morning. The one he’d been most interested in was the huge gift bag from his godparents, so we let him have that one. He is absolutely enchanted with the Fisher-Price farm. New word today: “pumpkin”. He’s already figured out how it opens and closes and latches (the farm, not the pumpkins). We have heard the word “tractor” a billion times already. Also, there is a little rabbit that came with the animals; I don’t think he’s put it down.

I had deep thoughts about Solstice and what it means to me last night while falling asleep, but I can’t dredge them up out of my allergy-sodden brain right now. I even talked to Liam about it, and have blanked on what imagery I used. I may be able to dig it up later, I may not. I don’t have a lot of energy, which is appropriate considering that the Solstice is all about the sun apparently ceasing movement, a still-point before motion begins again, and the sun is one of the traditional sources of energy and power. (Oh, look, something moderately insightful. Maybe I’m not as out of it as I thought.)

I leave you with a quote from Whaledancer that had me in tears of laughter when I read it, and almost broke HRH when I shared it with him:

[we] had a fire outside in the fire pit for […] adding its strength to the sun (spiritually… we are NOT idiots, just pagans)

Just so. We know that lighting candles and bonfires during the longest night don’t literally provide the sun with strength to begin its motion again. We do it because the symbolism creates a different sort of energy, both within and without us. It connects us to a natural cycle in a sympathetic fashion.

Gifts From The Fairies

I just came upstairs from turning on the dryer, and I discovered a beautiful birch-bark crescent moon hung on my front door where the harvest Indian corn originally was. I have no idea where it came from; one of my visitors over the past couple of days must have hung it there, or the upstairs neighbours, or even HRH without telling me. Or maybe it was fairies. Whoever put it there, it’s absolutely beautiful, and I love it completely.

I think I’ll find some red and green ribbon and sift the tiny jingle bells out of my sewing box to add to it, in order to make it even more Yule-specific for this season.

Witches Weekly: The Start

What with computer time being limited and most of my spiritual RAM being taken up by whatever book I’m writing, I’ve let my Witches Weekly questions slide for a long time. Also, a lot of the questions are already answered elsewhere on the web site, or in my books. But I think I’m going to start going back and answering old ones now and again, because I’ve noticed that I tend to not talk here about my spirituality a lot any more since I’ve been writing about it full-time in manuscripts.

November 10: When did you first realize that the pagan path was for you?

It was one of those by-accident things, as they so often are. (And here I will digress and say that really, what is coincidence? Is it noting a connection between two seemingly disparate things? If one subscribes to the everything-is-connected-by-energy theory, sometimes referred to as “the web” in Neopaganism, can one really argue that there exists such as thing as disconnection? Digression over.) In my mid-twenties I created a fictional character whom I decided would be a modern-day witch. And then, because I thoroughly research issues and backgrounds before I go on to develop a character, I proceeded to look into modern witchcraft in order to have a better handle on what it was.

As I read I started to recognise a sympathy within me for the central tenets and practices demonstrated in witchcraft — the honouring of Nature as an expression of the Divine, the acknowledgement of a feminine energy to deity, the belief that symbols hold energy, and so forth — and realised that hey, not only was witchcraft real (as in not fictional), but it was remarkably grounded in the expression of a spirituality that made sense to my heart and soul. And the more reading I did, the more I found out about different paths of alternative spirituality that encoded different cultural approaches and philosophies, and the more interested I became in the whole idea of cultural-specific spirituality and the revival/reinterpretation of pre-Judeo-Christian religions. My initial research into straightforward witchcraft had led me to the rich tapestry of alternative spirituality and modern religions, and I discovered as I went that a lot of the ideals and moral standpoints found in these religions were ones I already held.

I just kept reading, because what I read nourished something inside me. It all felt right. And eventually I got up out of a chair and started actively and formally practicing beyond living with awareness, being in the headspace, and honouring the world around me. And then I took a class, and then I started to teach, and then I wrote books, and here we are, a dozen years later. My spiritual work hasn’t always been easy, because it demands a lot of self-examination and a willingness to shed behaviours and beliefs that no longer benefit one, as well as a willingness to grow and change and challenge oneself. But it’s a very rewarding long-term path (and I specify this only because it’s hard to recognise personal change in the short-term), and one that I believe is the right one for me to be following.

(There is a longer and more detailed version of this information on the Believe page of my web site.)

Back To Work On The Book That Will Probably Not Be Known As ESTC

I just got the MS back for the spiritual pregnancy book, with the assurance that it feels good and hits the general mark at which I was throwing the ideas.

I am one huge sigh of relief. The problem with being the first to write a book on a particular topic is that you have zero context in which to place it.

I now have two weeks to tweak it and add the things that resolved in my brain the week after I submitted it. And I’ll try to lose another three thousand words or so, to get it closer to the target MS length. Some time away from it has already helped my perception of the work, for which I am truly thankful.

While I do that, we’re trying to come up with alternate titles because marketing’s concerned about the obscurity of the main title. I’m hoping that working on the MS will get my mind going on that too, because over the weekend I drew a complete blank on the problem.

The Samhain Time of Year

Being away from the computer has been refreshing. I’d forgotten what it’s like to not have to sit down first thing in the morning, or log off late at night.

I began a new story on Friday night, struck by a lovely new idea for a YA historical set in early 18th century Venice, and got nine hundred words down plus three hours of research (you see, Sorceror, I am weak still) to give myself at least some kind of context. It feels marvellous to be able to respond to inspiration again, and indeed, to have inspiration at all, because it means that my brain is no longer swamped by the Large All-Consuming Project written to deadline. And, as I suspected, as of half an hour after I sent the MS in to the editor, I began to remember things I wanted to do that didn’t make it to my final list, and ways in which I could have made what’s already there more focused and to the point. I’ve been noting them down as they occur, and when I get it back for edits and rewrites I’ll add them in. I’m expecting some of them to come up in the copyeditor’s queries anyhow. It’s too easy to ascribe the new story idea to the rebound factor: I think it may have more to do with the whole decks-cleared feeling of the end of the year. Part of me wants to pick up Swan Sister again, and I will, except my creative spirit seems to want me to work through something new to get the gears meshing properly again before I do.

Speaking of the creative spirit, Jan and I met Friday afternoon to work on music, and band was terrific on Saturday. For those of you who are fans and have been asking when the next gig date is to be, I can now tell you to circle January 20 on your calendars, assuming you already have a 2007 calendar. Otherwise, write it on a sticky-note and put it on your fridge or something.

We had a lovely Samhain ritual today, and as always, it reminded my soul that it’s the end of the year, and that goes so very far to expaining how I’ve been feeling these past few weeks. No matter how clearly my intellectual brain remembers Ah, yes, the Samhain time of year, my spirit doesn’t get it until we’re actually in circle, and then everything slots into place: emotional shifts, sleep patterns, sensations of loss and regret and slow greyness that creep into my being, which I usually ascribe to SAD and am only partially correct in so doing.

I did another Brid-centered ritual tonight as well with some of the Daughters of the Flame, and that too settled some of the murky misdirected emotion within me. Why can’t I remember that doing rit is good for me? Ritual feeds something in my soul that craves a semi-formal structure in which to meet my perception of the Divine. It’s easy, it’s direct, and it works. Maybe it’s that it all seems too simple, and my intellectual mind waves it away as such. Whatever the reason, I know better, and I’ve fallen out of the habit because of the boy and the family schedule. With some time off now that the book is finished, I can turn my attention to reconstructing a healthier spiritual pattern again as I rediscover who I am and what my life is, for perhaps the first time since the boy was born.

I can play the cello again, too, for example, something that I haven’t been able to do since I started the book because I’ve either been working or watching the boy. We had our first rehearsal for the Messiah this past Wednesday, and it was good. I’ve been waiting a full two months to feel that way about an orchestra rehearsal, rather than coming home and trying to forget the experience every week because they made me feel awful, my lack of rehearsal time showing how poorly I’m keeping up with the demands the music makes of me. I played through all the new music directly after I sent off the MS, and it went a long way toward helping me not feel behind before we’d even started playing that night. The work I’ve done for band recently too has helped me remember how much I love music, and how beautiful it can be when I’m not trying too hard or too tense to let it flow.

The decks do feel cleared. I’ve been struggling through that feeling of endings and going nowhere this past month, as I do every year. With Samhain past and the new year before me, I can sense that still point I need in order to rebalance and begin again.

And so the Wheel turns….