WItches Weekly June 13, 2004: Rituals – Meditations

1. When performing rituals/meditations, do you associate yourself with the element most closely related to your astrological sign?

Odd; I never noticed until I just thought about it, but I usually begin my meditations next to the sea, a stream, or by a pool of water. I’m a Cancer, which is the cardinal water sign. Coincidence? Maybe. I just love water, and I associate it with purification. I like to symbolically cross water or immerse myself in my meditation landscape before I begin my meditation proper.

As for rituals, I prefer to use fire and earth-based energies.

2. If not, do you associate/align yourself with your moon sign, or something that just “feels right”?

Again, I’m a Pisces moon, so there’s no escaping the water influence. Six of one, half a dozen of another. (Yeah, delving into astrology helped explain my hypersensitivity. I added fire to balance my practices and things are better.)

3. Do you follow the typical elements of earth, water, fire, air, spirit? Or do you follow an even more non-traditional association akin to earth, water, fire, metal?

I employ the traditional elements, but I consider metal a very powerful substance. I see it as being a meld of earth, air, fire, and water.

Things of which I was unaware:

Mention Venus transit, and I’m there. The skeptic in me never adopted the pentacle as a personal religious symbol until I learned its origin: it’s a two-dimensional plot of the eight-year Venus cycle. OK, I said those many years ago, now I can begin to understand why this symbol is sacred, and to source it to antiquity and not some made-up-recently, cool-and-groovy, let’s-call-it-ours creative moment.

Wow. I knew it had been used by several religions (including early Christianity, where it represented the five wounds of Christ), but I never knew the Venus connection.

(Found via Goddessing. Her original source can be found here.)

Witches Weekly June 07, 2004: Path, Workplace, and Raising Children

1. What path of Paganism do you follow? (If you take pieces from several traditions, list all of them and why you follow those as well)

Officially Wiccan. My formal trad is the Black Forest Clan, which is based on a blend of Celtic and Germanic practice. I like a lot of the Heathen practices and employ them on my own time.

2. Are you/would you be open about your spirituality in the workplace/school?

Ha, ha, ha. I worked in an occult store for four years. What do you think? It’s the one workplace where you’re odd if you don’t talk about spirituality. (Incidentally, one of my co-workers wears a crucifix along with her witchy stuff, and she often gets odd looks. Talk about when worlds collide.) I also teach a broad curriculum of Neo-Pagan subjects; and now that I’m a professional editor for a series of intermediate New Age books as well as the consultant for a New Age publishing imprint, yes, my spirituality is still central to my work. I know exactly how fortunate I am.

3. If you were in a marriage of separate faiths, how would you raise your children?

I’m not fanatical about my kids following my precise path. I’m lucky that my husband is Pagan as well, but if he wasn’t, then I’d bring my kids up with thorough education regarding religions of the world, with lots of emphasis on tolerance, respect, and the understanding that all those religions are just different ways of talking to God. (All of which I happen to believe, and is precisely what my kids will be taught anyway.) If they decide to become Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, whatever, I’ll be happy that they’ve chosen a spirituality that they personally connect with. But they’ll have done it after lots of education about the various religions of the world, and with the knowledge that everyone has the right to choose their own path. (It’s the teacher in me talking. You teach comparative relgion for three years and see what happens to you.)

Witches Weekly
May 27, 2004: Altar/Shrines

1. Do you have an altar/shrine?

Short answer: yes. Long answer: several. One main altar, which is surrounded by four small wall shelf shrines (two for me, two for HRH). We have a shelf shrine over the mantel with our main deity statues. I have a mirror/flame shrine which I use for writing. I created a small St Brigid shrine which hangs on a wall which is devoted to writing and spirituality.

2. If you do, what objects do you have placed on it and are any of them homemade or natural objects (ex: feathers, rocks, crystals)?

The main altar has a variety of stones for various purposes (i.e., the altar stone which is the heart of our altar, various river stones for healing work), plus hand-made candles, boxes, pouches, and so forth, including a lovely handmade statue of Hecate in her maiden form of the torch-bearer created for me by a student; the wall altars have piles of stones, feathers, acorns, etc, as well as statues; the divinity statues have stones in the offering hollows as well as being surrounded by hand-made Brid’s Crosses and a pile of wheat stalks. My St Brigid shrine has small stones piled in the cup designed for holy water.

3. If you don’t, (you can answer this if you do have one as well) do you have an area where you focus on your spirituality?

Anywhere I go, there I am… It’s good to carry sacred space within you. Being limited to a physical place is dangerous, in my opinion. All the same, it’s nice to have a material focal point, too. If I’m travelling, I use any kind of candle; I consider consecrated flame to be a physical manifestation of my internal sacred space.

4. How do you feel when you are settled at your altar/shrine (or area)?

Depends how I come to it, and the answer I require. Sometimes I’m angry, sometimes, I’m frustrated, sometimes I’m serene. What I get out of it is what I need to get out of it: either relaxed, energised, or even more angry (this last usually depends on how much I need to get accomplished in a given period of time).