Magic and manifestation

Mabon, the fall equinox is almost upon us. A time of balance between light and dark. The annual local signs are upon us.

School has started in several districs this last week.  The Minnesota Rennisance Festival is well underway and today the State Fair has started with everything imaginable on a stick. I could wax long about mini donoughts and fried cheese curds but I will save you the melodrama of a junk food junkie...

Around the Leaky Cauldron I would love to say I am a flurry of activity but that is not the case and I am okay with that. Healing a scratch on my eye and an ulcer on my right big toe is the order of the day. Relearning how to play the piano is my main activity outside of work as well as being more proactive about addressing my own depression and emotional healing process.

As a result, I have decided to start a 21 day reiki attunement process to deal specifically with depression issues.  I am also choosing to work with a face of the goddess that I haven't in too long and she is doing what I needed her to do: give me a swift kick in the butt to get over myself already.

I love working with Epona when I need to balance out my physical activity. In this instance the urge to be inclusive and a hermit and balancing the demands of my job as a customer service professional and that I am in a very social/active family.  When I work with her I usually use white candles and bergamont oil.

As much as I talk about sending energy to issues I want to talk a bit about what magic actually does.

Magic helps us manifest the reality that we want to have happen. Magic is the most sucessfull when it is focused on ourselves (There is that who pesky free will thing involved with other people.) Unless you are willing to change your interior and exterior reality magic is futil. To quote the Charge of the Goddess, "you will never find without until you find it within."

So how do you challenge yourself?

When I was actively counseling others, I was introduced to a process called Brief Therapy. I use it successfully to this day.

The process is: asking yourself if..
If your life was perfect, how would it look?
What would realistically need to happen in order for it to manifest?
What is one thing you can do right now to move in that direction?

When I am in my ritual time, this is largely what I am doing. I am connecting with the divine and honoring divinity in me. Then I am usually doing some sort of work to manifest the reality I want.

So, for instance I am working on my active depression. What does that mean?
Extreem self care. Making sure I am getting enough calories and enough of the right calories.
Sleeping when I need to.
Stepping back and reevaluating whatever it is I am angry or upset with.

I will soon be getting a light box to assist with the seasonal loss of light aspect of things. I will also be focusing on some home improvement things as time and money become available.

Is it a perfect process. Not always. I am human. I screw up. I allow my anger, pride, and shame to get in the middle of things. However, those are the times I work the AA solgans like "Progress not Perfection." Forgive myself and others and move along. Its all we can ever do.

So as we head deeper into fall: ask yourself what are you doing to help bring balance into your life?

Blessed Be!

Now For Something Completely Different.... Grandmother Spider and Fall Goddesses....

I love the fall in theory. My seasonal affective dissorder can make it interesting but I still love the colors and Goddesses associated with this season.

One of my favorite faces of the Goddes this time of year is Grandmother Spider.

She is a Southwestern Native American creatrix. For me, part of the romance for Grandmother Spider is that she is very straight forward and blunt about her information.Like most of the Native American Elders I know, she does not mince words.  Following traditional aspects of the Lakota tribes I have hung out with, I enjoy sharing a cup of coffee with her and offering her prayer ties and tobacco.

The stories never truely say why type of Spider energy she is.

When I am working with her she shows up as either a giant taranchula or wolf spider (an ancestral totem for me). When she shows up it usually means that I am either going to be a lot more social than I have been or will be meeting new folks that will have a heavy impact on my life.

Her altar is usually in oranges and browns. I like using fall flowers from amaranth to sunflowers depending upon what is available.  Again, offerings of seasonal fruits, nuts, and grains are always acceptable. Marigolds, tobacco, and cornmeal are also good.

For me, she reminds me of my connections. She reminds me of my creative power. She reminds me that my strength comes from my ancestors. Those I know by name and bloodline and the earliest of ancestors.

I like using the chant:

"We are the flow and we are the web.
We are the weavers we are the web." When working with her.

For incense I like using copal or cedar.

On a weather divination note: I like looking at the spider webs this time of year to predict what type of winter we will be getting.  I have several recluse spiders on my property and the more generic daddy long legs.  If the webs are incredibly thick we will have a cold winter with lots of snow. It they are thin, then a mild winter is in store. 

It will be a few weeks before I will start seeing the signs for the season ahead.

As we journey closer into fall, remember Grandmother Spider and your connections to your human community and all your relations.

Blessed Be.!

Soul Cages and Collectors Part 2

I have to apologize.  I haven't read the story in a while.  Jack does attempt to save the souls of the drowned sailors.

However I still stand by the remaining comments. In addition to what I already wrote, there are two other main instances where the concept of a collector is mentioned.  In Women Who Run with the Wolves, a collector is mentioned in the context that she collects items that are used in healing shattered souls.

The second instance is a trickster earthbound spirit that captures souls through contracts. I.e. I will give you the perfect boyfriend etc but you must give me X in return.

While my advisor was talking about a past relationship,  I look at my own choices first too see what contracts or deals I was making with the universe to achieve my goals. Yes, I will freely admit and accept responsibility for my own wyrd. 

Another area that this heavily ties into for me is the concept of self hexing or self cursing. We want a circumstance changed so badly we make up our own contracts with the universe to become earth bound in order achieve our goal.

At the moment,  in addition to continually dealing with the grief of a failed group marriage and intense work stress it is always tempting to come up with those types of contracts to fix the situation. And yes, I am equally guilty of that too.

So what's a witchy girl to do after she is done crying in the cauldron?  Energy cut aways, self blessing rituals,  and uncrossing rituals in any combination. Remind yourself of the good you are and taking accountability for your action.

Contemplative thought about the Collector

Warning this post is largely about my inner ramblings and an attempt to keep my thoughts clear. I am still working through some of the cohesiveness of it.  

One of the things I do on a regular basis is undergo Underworld Journey's. Ritual acts that help me confront my own daemons and hopefully find some healing. I went on a journey recently. Not all the shadows are chased out but there is a process being developed.

One of the things that was said to me before going to ritual was that one of my recent failed relationship partners was a collector i.e that I was more a part of their collection of people and things than a real relationship.

Being frustrated with the gods in general over my relationship history, I postulated with them what this ment about myself and my role in relationships in general.

After the ritual I was reminded of an Irish fairy tale called the Soul Cages. In it, our hero is a collector of lost cargo in a disserted area. On one of his expedition he meets a monster who collects the souls of drowned sailors in wooden cages. The hero, after a conversation, escaped. What has always bothered me is that none of the other souls are released.

The next night, while drumming, I was reminded of the story of Shango and Oba. The condensed version is that Shango was the warrior king of Oyo. He was a dancer and diviner and loved a lot of women. Oba was his legal wife. Oshun, the goddess of love and luxury was also a wife as was Oya  the Queen of the market place and the only one who can use Shango's lightening.

As the story goes, Oba was growing increasingly concerned that her husband would never look at her again. Feeling self conscious and afraid she went to Oya and asked what she could do to attract his attention again. Oya, being devious and seeing an opportunity, told Oba that if she made Shango a special soup out of one of her ears that would help get his attention. It did, Shango was terrified of the ear. Oba, feeling the rejection and fearing the damage could never be forgiven, fled into the cemetery.

So what's my point in bring this up?

At a certain point, those of us who are service subs desperately crave needing a defined purpose/role to feel fulfilled. In the Soul Cages, the imagery is there to suggest that the drowned souls were kept because they provided energy to the monster.  With Oba she was Shango's partner until she convinced herself that her role didn't exist anymore because the others held Shango's attention more often then not.

For myself, as a service sub, I am having a hard time seeing what my point is right now both at work, home and the community at large. I struggle constantly with this question of am I relevant? It is very tempting to be Oba at the moment, feeling like I have nothing unique to compete with and to run away from everything. My fight is reminding myself that support staff is still a valid role even if its not the star one.

As I get more clarity on the issues I will share more. That's enough for now.

Dancing at Lammas

I spent the last week with Harmony Tribe and the Sacred Harvest Festival.  We are in the process of packing up and heading back to the mundane world.

My biggest thing I come back with is that even if you are a solitary witch you still need community to challenge you and help you grow.

Change is inevitable.  We don't have the luxury of controlling the outcome and ramifications of those changes. However as Frank Herbert once said, "Without change something sleeps deep within us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken." Community helps us navigate those changes.  I am grateful for the friendship and leadership of this group and look forward to many more seasons to come.

Blessed Be.