January 2010

For the past two years, as I already mentioned, I at least acknowledged Yule. Three friends (only one of whom is witchy) were always willing to hold a small ritual that culminated with lighting the Yule Log and inviting anyone at the event to write out and cast their hopes for the coming year into the fire. Well this year it rained. So we lit the candles on the Yule log and I pulled out my cauldron and anyone who wanted to could toss their burning wish in to the cauldron. As I had already come to my “I need to do the stuff” decision, I decided to hold a solitary ritual on the actual solstice.

As it was still raining outside, I opted for an indoor ritual. And for the first time, in a very long time, I really felt connected to the ritual. I felt connected to the divine, in a profound way. I sat on the floor of my office, set out my candles and set up my altar (I hadn’t had a permanent altar in years, but more on that later). I remembered to ground myself, and sat in silence in the dark for a few minutes. I went through some basic quarter calls and I’d found a really amazing invocation to the Goddess online (paganlibrary.com). As I started the invocation, and got to the section about water (and ice), my water candle cracked.

I’m skeptical enough to say, “hey, these aren’t quality candles.” The year before, I had decoupaged some of the glass pillar candles (the kind that often have saints on them). These were just glass, and I’d used tissue paper in the elemental colors. Anyway, they are cheap candles. I’d never even burned them properly, see about not practicing. But as I said the words, the glass cracked. Loud enough to break my concentration. Interestingly, it only cracked. The piece remained in place and the candle remained burning. It’s possible that the air in the room was cold or that the candle glass was cold. It’s possible it was already cracked, and lighting it exacerbated the damage. Lots of reasonable explanations exist. And I am more than willing to accept them.

But, I am also willing to believe that it was a reminder, a message. This was the Goddess telling me to come back to my practice. To re-discover my path and actually walk it again. I had already begun to realize that I needed my faith back in my life, and this loud crack of glass was my call. In another moment of synchronicity, one of the issues I was thinking about at the time of Yule was my need to improve my communication skills. I’d fallen into a lot of unhealthy habits with my relationships, and had largely stopped communicating about things that bothered me, hurt me, angered me.

So I am re-dedicated to my path, whatever that turns out to be. I will hold my own rituals for every full moon, new moon, and sabbat for the next year. I will return to mediation, to study, to contemplation of my path. I will keep a journal of this experience (and now a blog). I will actually update my Book of Shadows and start writing my own rituals and invocations. So this is the start of my journey.

New Moon January 4, 2011

I believe this was the first time I had ever done anything for the New Moon. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what I thought the NM meant. I dusted off my books, my old journals, and spent some time on the internet (hey, I’m a modern witch after all). Most of what I read pointed toward the NM being a time for banishing (I’m not sure I still subscribe to that, but again, more on that later). I found a banishing spell connected to the NM, and rewrote it.

One aspect of witchcraft I’ve never been comfortable with is insistence on archaic language. Don’t get me wrong, I love poetry, I specialized in poetry. I love a well-crafted sentence, and I love words in general. However, much of the Gardnerian language sounds artificial and well silly to me. So, with this project, one of the first steps was to start re-writing or writing totally new invocations, spells, etc. I can get behind a rhyming spell for memory and even rhythm, but seriously, I can’t connect to the use of “ye,” “thee,” and “thou” – Unless it’s at the Renaissance Faire, and even they recognize it’s silly.

Getting back to the point, I thought about what I wanted to get rid of in my life and in myself. I was trying to deal with a lot of emotional interpersonal crap at the time, and it seemed like the right time to get rid of it all. To let it go and start anew. I wrote out as specifically as I could what I want to let go of and what I wanted to let heal. As I read each item (out loud) and watched the paper burn, I felt a great sense of peace. A relief to get rid of all the yucky stuff. And no, I’m not saying my life was all rainbows and kittens afterwards, it’s a work in progress. But when I find myself getting caught up in bullshit, I often call to mind the image of those words burning. It usually reminds me that the drama just isn’t worth it.

I finished the ritual with a visualization of clean, white light filling all the spaces left by the banished negativity.

Oh, and I had my own “cakes” and “ale” at the end – and by that, I mean coffee and thin mint cookies.

Full Moon January 19, 2011

By this point, I was rushing into rituals like a newbie pagan again. While fun, it is a little tiring. For the FM, I spent some time meditating on what “new beginnings” meant to me. I considered all of the things I wanted to accomplish for the year, spiritually and mundanely (it can’t be witchy all the time). And honestly, even though it was only two weeks from the last ritual, I felt like I hadn’t accomplished nearly “enough”- whatever that meant. I think it was simply that newbie feeling. I wanted my practice perfected and set in stone and to have everything done. So, I forced myself to take a step back. It’s one ritual at a time, and one project at a time. No matter how fun starting a new tarot journal might sound, I also had a lot of other responsibilities and goals. And besides, I rock the tarot – even if I would like to re-explore my cards.

I stepped back and focused on only the ritual at hand – “Introspection on my new beginnings and getting closer to the divine”

I also stopped myself from beginning a massive gods research project to find the perfect deities – sometimes the grad school student in me likes to pop up.

I did spend some time considering what deity means to me. I don’t follow a specific pantheon. Sometimes I feel like a pantheist, all goddesses are The Goddess and all gods are The God. And sometimes, I don’t feel that at all. Sometimes I feel like the names are important, the stories are important. Sometimes, not so much. So I wrote my own invocations. Four lines each, trying to focus what I mean by god and goddess.

Summing up

Looking back nine months later, I realize that I really was in newbie mode – and tried to do far too much. I’ve stepped back from a lot of “plans,” and really tried to spend my limited time on the aspects that are the most important to me. Yes, I am still trying to define deity for myself, and unlike some pagans, I don’t feel like I’ve really been called by any gods specifically. I still feel that general call from Yule, but whoever She was, She hasn’t asked me to call her by any specific name. All in all, I find that January was a productive month, and I found my footing on a path. I’m still meandering about in the woods, but I at least keep moving forward.

Does the internet really need another pagan blog? Probably not, but this is not a blog about pagan news (we already have some awesome ones Wild Hunt, Patheos, Inciting a Riot). Nor will I be writing about the specifics of my rituals, spells, and rites (plenty of blogs have that information and well my rituals, spells, etc ate just that mine).

So what will I be writing about? Well about my path back to paganism and what I discovered along the way.

I have been a pagan and practicing (I’ll use practicing loosely) witch for about 16 years. Like so many of us when I first discovered the path, I was excited and jumped in whole-heartedly. I specifically found Wicca first (and really who didn’t?). I had run across the name and basics through urban fantasy novels. I didn’t know much beyond, "hey I really like the character in these books and the magic stuff is pretty cool." About that time, I was also in college. I was taking a cultural anthropology class and had to research/write an essay about a minority group. I decided it was a good opportunity to learn about Wicca. As this was back in the olden days, pre-internet as we know it now, I logged on to prodigy and spent some time chatting on the various Wicca message boards. The one book all of those helpful and very kind people recommended was Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon.

I read it and was hooked. Essay aside, I kept reading and I kept learning. It wasn’t long before I started practicing. Within about six months, I was signed up for a Wicca 101 class at the local metaphysical store. I enjoyed what I learned, but never really felt comfortable with the dogma of Wicca. I was also concerned about the group teaching the class. While the teachers were awesome, the off-handed comment from one of them about not being allowed to read Marion Zimmer Bradley’sMists of Avalon until her High Priestess gave her permission just didn’t sit well with me.

Before you start thinking this is some rant about Wicca being for fluffy bunnies or any of that, it isn’t. Wicca and it’s binary concept of deity, instance (at least at the time) on clinging to factual (historical) errors, and Eurocentrism just didn’t fit for me.

Anyway, I digress. I continued my practice alone. Some years it was just remembering to sit outside and watch the sunset/rise on the solstices or equinoxes. Sometimes it was my own rituals (mostly taken straight from a book, but more on that later). Eventually, I really became a Pagan in Name Only (PINO). Sure, I identified as pagan or a witch, and had a weak definition of what those terms meant to me. But I didn’t really do anything. An occasional parking spot spell, or reading the occasional book, checking out message boards sporadically, and reading tarot cards.

Then, about three years ago, my husband and I moved into a house. I had a yard and lots of space. It’s funny how lots of space has turned into barely enough space in the span of three years. I started hosting equinox and solstice parties for my friends (only one of whom is any sort of pagan). Mostly they were barbeques and an excuse to get together. On Yule, a friend whose former in-laws are Wiccan, made a Yule Log and four us performed a brief rite and invited everyone to cast their wishes for the coming year into the fire.

Yup that was my whole practice.

Last year (2010), I decided that wasn’t what I wanted. I was looking for more than that. Also during that year, I’d discovered Pagan Podcasts. Listening to Fire Lyte (Inciting a Riot), Velma Nightshade (Witches Brewhaha), The Pagan Hooligans, Corey and Laine (New World Witchery), and others really made me start thinking about what my faith actually meant. I didn’t want to be a PINO anymore. I wanted to find out what I really believed and what I wanted out of religion.

So I took Velma Nightshade’s declaration of “Do the stuff” to heart, and made a plan. I was going to make the time to celebrate/observe _every_ sabbat and every full and dark moon for one year. I would decide what rituals I wanted to be part of, and what I wanted to accomplish in my rituals. I would update my sadly small and long neglected Book of Shadows (or as I think of it, my ritual book). I would start to study again.

I think I’ve learned a lot and discovered a lot over the past eight months, and I’m sure I will learn more as I work toward finishing the year. My husband prompted me to consider writing about my experiences and what I’ve learned in a more public forum, after all, no one is reading my witchy-journal on the book shelf… or are you?

So this is my journey back to my pagan path. It wasn’t an easy road and ultimately I discovered far more than I expected.