Saturn Return: Weekly Meditation (Crossing Ascendent)

Days of Note: Saturn crosses Ascendent

Sun: sagittarius (mutable fire), 7:26 AM - 4:54 PM
Moon: *waxing gibbous, aries (cardinal fire)
Earth: cold, in the mid-to-low 40s most of the day, starting out quite sunny but then fading to gray, cloudy weather; not that I would know, as I spent pretty much all day inside working on various things, but mostly writing


Last night I had a dream that my aunt Tricia, who works from home as a baker of wonderful homemade cakes, cookies and pies, etc., had decided that she wanted to quit baking and go into taxidermy. (Apparently, this dream was probably inspired by a scene from an episode of X-Files that Jeff and I watched together last night, which I was only half paying attention to at the time and must have gotten into my subconscious.) Anyway, in the dream, my aunt decided she really wanted to be a taxidermist, she was fascinated by it. But the only tools she knew how to use were things like blenders and egg beaters. I have some vague visual impression in my mind of some poor animal carcass being tamped down into the thin, tapering container of a blender, the lid fitted on nicely and the switch flipped, resulting in that lovely whirring and the spinning of blood and bone and fur and bits all into a uniform pinkish paste.

This might not have anything to do with anything, but I thought I would jot it down.

I started writing this journal entry at 11:11 PM, though I doubt I'll be finished with it until what is technically Sunday morning. I'm wide awake and not feeling the least bit tired - which is indicative of my sleep schedule these days, where sometimes I feel so lethargic I can't pull myself out of bed before 10 AM, and other days I'm awake before dawn (which, as dark as the days are, isn't really that hard anyway) with plenty of energy to spare. This morning, I woke up at around 5 AM and tossed and turned a bit before finally giving up and getting up entirely at about 6:30 AM. Jeff had to leave to get the kids, and I fell back asleep for another few hours, so I suppose it all evened out. We'll see how I am tomorrow morning. (Jeff, who slept downstairs on the futon because he'd been snoring a lot lately, hardly slept at all last night because of various worries about this weekend, so now he's excused and sound asleep despite me still being awake.)

I hadn't planned to do much work today - or rather, I'd planned to at least try to clean and organize the basement some in preparation for our up-coming move. But two of the four kids were sick with some kind of stomach bug (which had them on a bland diet of food, though neither of them really acted all that sick - it was a nice excuse for everyone to stay quiet and relaxed in bed reading or drawing for much of the day), so thoughts of trying to organize some kind of cleaning extravaganza were out. At one point I sat down to check out John's recent post on No Unsacred Place, which was excellent as usual, and that was the kick in the ass I needed to sit down and work on the piece I'd wanted to do for this coming week about the recent news coming out of the science journals about LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, being a single, planet-sized mega-organism very similar to a "living ocean" of genetic soup. A pretty cool concept. So I spent all day researching various creation myths from different cultures and drawing comparisons between these and the scientific evidence they have for LUCA, pointing out some of the common themes of primordial chaotic waters, a moment when separation and individuation begins to occur, and the idea of a god being dismembered and the parts of his (or her) corpse being used to actually make the world.

So even though I didn't have any time really to do some formal Saturn Return meditation as I'd planned, I ended up doing quite a bit of contemplation on some of those primordial ancient themes about dissolution, death, separation, limitation and the power of form. Some of the Greek myths actually involve Kronos/Saturn himself, so... there's that.

I find myself really connecting to this idea of a common genetic ancestor in the ancient primordial oceans as a living being that is both an ancestor and a god(dess). This just really jives for me. It works well with my more animistic sensibilities which can sometimes shy away from being overly metaphorical or psychological about the gods and would rather rejoice in and celebrate the Actual Sun Right There See There It Is than in some idea of a sun deity in the abstract. On the other hand, though, it also gives some context to Manannan as a "son of the sea" without having to bear the burden of being the literal sea itself. Manannan mac LUCA, perhaps. Manannan has continued to be an important god to me, and I think I've reconciled myself to just him and Brighid for the time being as a working pair who play nicely together. Manannan is a god of the threshold, the liminal space of the mists, the psychopomp who leads the dead into the other realm, the trickster who will turn things upside-down just for the sake of teasing and challenging. I think there are definitely some parallels here between Manannan (and Manawydan from Welsh mythology) and the figure of Saturn. And strangely enough, while I think of Saturn primarily as a planet and, after that, as some kind of psychological archetype and energetic influence, I find it a lot easier to think of Manannan as an actual god, personified, and able to help me with the Saturn Return. I have no sense that he is Kronos/Saturn, any more than Jeff is, say, Commander Samuel Vimes. But the "real" god Manannan has some understanding of the character/nature/influence of the psychological archetype of Saturn and can give me some insight - like we can have a discussion about it and share our perspectives, in the same way Jeff and I can talk about the characters in Pratchett's books and he can give me insight into what it's like to be a father, something I wouldn't know as much about.

One thing that I was reflecting on just now while I was reading and trying to fall asleep was the nature of Saturn's recent transit through my twelfth house in Libra, the sign and house of my natal moon. I think it was Arroyo who said that Saturn can have a lasting influence when passing through the sign and house of the moon, even when it's not in exact or close aspect to the moon itself. I don't remember precisely when transiting Saturn was exactly conjunct my natal moon, but I do know that the moon is associated with a lot of "mommy issues" - coming to terms with the mother's influence in the family and the inner archetype of the mother in the psyche, as well as grappling with ancestral influences of all kinds that have been "inherited" on the psychic or psychological level. With my moon in Libra, I wonder if I have a particular sensitivity to concepts of fairness, justice, balance and beauty being manifested in the role of the mother - whether by myself or by other "mothers" in my life.

Saturn has been transiting my twelfth house for about two years now, I think. It's soon to cross my ascendent and enter my first house. In fact, looking up my chart just now (at 11:48 PM on Saturday, December 3) I see that transiting Saturn is within 13 minutes of my ascendent and the cusp of my first house. So... maybe that's why I'm suddenly feeling a certain amount of energy and clarity around these issues.

Anyway, as I was lying in bed I suddenly saw all the various ways in which the energy and influence of the mother had been manifesting in my life in ways that provoked my anger or frustration over a sense of violated fairness or justice - in particular in my relationship with Jeff's ex-wife and biological mother to my stepchildren, who has consistently attempted to act in the role of controlling "Mama Bear" figure to both me and Jeff as well as the kids. It hit me that I had been grappling with two issues that were often put at odds with one another.

On the one hand, I wanted things to be Fair - both in the sense of being just and balanced, and also beautiful and harmonious. This led me to a lot of conflict on Jeff's behalf when I felt that his rights as a father were being trampled on or ignored, when he didn't get "his fair share" of time with the kids (even when him having more time with them, and the struggle to get and keep that time that was often involved, left both of us feeling worn out, exhausted and stressed). I also made a lot of judgements - emotionally and ethically - about Emily choosing to stay home and be a "mom," even going on to have another child with her new husband, instead of stepping up to be an "equal partner" in both the divorce (by pulling her weight with joint debt from the previous marriage) and in her own new marriage (which, I will be the first to admit, is none of my business, though I sure do have opinions about it). This judgement - and I won't say it was judgmental necessarily, but it was a judgement, certainly - often had me worrying about the kind of example she was setting for the kids, and my own response was to push back - to balance out her example by becoming even more ambitious (Saturn!) in my own role not as a stepmom but as a "career woman" and female adult role model to the kids. This was me pushing back against the figure of the mother - both in external form and my own potential role - and seeking instead another kind of authority. That has Saturn's influence written all over it.

On the other hand, I also had already learned the lesson - which Saturn had helped teach me before - that to find a harmonious balance it is often important to let go, to release certain emotional blockages or stubborn opinions and to give up being the kind of person who has to control every little thing to make sure it all comes out alright. This was a lesson that I actually learned from my own mother, by bad example. Seeking too much control in a world that is by its very nature so much bigger and more complex than you could ever possibly understand is the very recipe for out of control stress and paranoia. This is what happened to my mother to some extent (though I have to admit that in recent years, perhaps because of the change in her career and my brother and I no longer living at home, she does seem to be improving on this in small ways). The whole thing was, in fact, a lesson all about boundaries and limits (hello again, Saturn old friend!), learning to understand the extent of your own control and when not to push beyond them but instead accept them and trust in the greater harmonies of the universe (there's Saturn, straddling that liminal space between the concrete manifestations of the inner planets and the influences of fate and cosmic force of the outer planets). This was a lesson I knew very well, and something that I continued to affirm to myself consciously. But I was completely piss-poor at actually following through and listening to my own better judgement.

So here were two urges that were definitely working at odds to one another. The urge on the one hand to make sure things were fair and just and balanced - and the desire on the other hand not to become like my own mother and like Jeff's ex-wife, both of whom were excellent examples of the immaturity and stress that characterizes a "control freak" who uses their good intentions to justify their paranoid manipulations and micro-management of everyone around them (essentially being a "mother" to everyone and not being able to trust others to do what's fair or harmonious on their own). Confronted with the glaring evidence that Jeff's ex-wife had no interest in being fair - I think mainly simply because she was incapable of stepping outside of her own perspective in order to see how what she wanted was unfair - it was an incredible challenge for me not to respond by trying to control her.

My response, and something I had to work on with Jeff a lot, was a process of affirming our personal boundaries. It took a lot of push-back and a great deal of stress and hard work every time we were confronted with Emily's tendency to act entitled to private information about our lives that were none of her business or to bombard Jeff with unsolicited emails full of advice about issues of which she had little to no actual knowledge. We worked hard, as a couple and equal partners in the matter, to help each cope with that stress and reaffirm our right to establish clear, healthy boundaries. But mostly, it sucked. I've been getting down on myself a lot over the past couple years about my feelings of having failed at this work, or at least of having responded in ways that were not helpful or healthy. And definitely there were times when our attempts to establish strong boundaries crossed the line into an attempt to control or compensate for Emily's disrespectful or manipulative behavior. But looking back now, I actually feel like we did an okay job. One recent change came about when I broke down and asked some folks on an internet forum if they had any resources that might help. One person responded and pointed me to the "Ten Commandments for Low-Contact Parallel Parenting with High-Drama Ex's." (The idea of having a short, authoritative list of simple rules to follow.... yeah, Saturn, you bet.) Jeff and I read this over, saw a lot of ways that we were already following the techniques suggested and a lot of other places where we could improve. So we started following the rules, and we sent a copy of them to Emily asking her to abide by them as well. (This was after we caught her in a bald-faced lie about one of the kids' health issues, which for us was the final straw and, in some ways, a relief that her manipulation could no longer be denied or explained away.... though of course, that didn't stop her from trying.)

That was about two months ago now, I think. Today, Jeremy confronted Jeff when he went to pick up the kids to let him know that two of them weren't feeling well - and for good measure threw in his own two cents about how "this silent treatment isn't having the effect we [Jeff and I] were hoping it would have." The comment had Jeff fuming when he got home, but he and I talked about it and were able to laugh off the continued arrogance and immaturity. I pointed out to him that our stress has definitely gone down and we don't waste nearly as much time in pointless conflict with Emily; meanwhile, we have more energy when we do have the kids and less anxiety over every little issue that might somehow make its way back to us, so our time with them is more enjoyable than it was before. Whatever Jeremy and Emily think, the technique is most definitely doing what we'd hoped it would do on our end. Jeremy simply declaring that it wasn't working - without asking Jeff's feelings on the matter - was just one more example of why the Low-Contact Parenting techniques were a good idea after all.

One of the things that I think was most helpful about the Low-Contact Parenting was that it helped us to recognize when we were crossing the line from "affirming healthy boundaries" to "pushing back and trying to control others." With rules that restrict our email use to only short messages pertaining specifically to the kids themselves and that avoid intentionally provocative language, for instance, we're forced to catch ourselves before we shoot off that obnoxious letter that we secretly hope will smack Emily back into her place and divest her of any delusions she has about our opinion. The rules work because they ask us to turn a critical eye back onto our own behavior and to recognize when we're demanding something that we should probably just not expect given what is and is not within our reasonable ability to control. These rules give us a structure whereby we can learn how to find a balance between our sense of fairness and our need to appreciate our limits. (And I'm using "we" a lot here because it's something Jeff and I have mostly worked on together, but in many ways this is a lot about my own issues.) But all of this only came after we had done the difficult work of establishing boundaries that could safely secure at least a minimum amount of real fairness and equality between Jeff and his ex when it came to the kids - including giving us the legal ground to stand on in order to negotiate for a fair and workable schedule for child custody after our move. If we hadn't done that necessary work of pushing back and establishing boundaries first - especially in Jeff's case, I think - we would have been in a position where an attitude of "it's out of our control" would have left us open to manipulation, exploitation and a certain amount of guilt.

So here I was being hard on myself about how we handled it when, looking back, maybe we did pretty much the best we could given the circumstances. We weren't perfect, but I think we've found some long-term sustainable ways to find that necessary balance and we were able to bring our more unseemly responses into check before they got out of hand and went too far. At least, right now I'm feeling hopeful and optimistic and so that's my present understanding of the situation. I'd love to hear what Jeff thinks of all of this. (He's asleep now - maybe I'll have a chance to talk to him tomorrow about it at some point.) I'm sure his perspective will be a bit different, considering the influences going on in his own chart right now. And maybe I'm completely wrong about this - I'm kind of making it up as I go, really, and he knows more about astrology than I do.

In any case, what began as a day spent contemplating the "primordial mother ocean" has ended up with some pretty startling thoughts about the energies of the moon-as-mother in relation to my Saturn Return. Perhaps leaving the twelfth house and crossing the ascendent means that these issues are be resolved, maybe "coming to light" in a more conscious way now that I'm moving out of the house of mystery and mysticism. I don't know. I hope so. I think it must be a good sign that I just happen to be awake and thinking about this during the time when transiting Saturn is coming into exact aspect with my ascendent. That has to mean something, right? Like my willingness to be awake to this and open to it, to face it instead of just wanting to "go back to sleep" and ignore the lessons. I hope Manannan can help me stay open to the lessons I need to learn, and in the meantime help me to maybe not be quite so hard on myself if things seem like a struggle or I have to work hard. I think it's a really important insight, that coming to terms with our boundaries and limitations (Saturn) is also about learning how to trust in the greater universe. I just read an old tale about Manannan that someone randomly posted online the other day, about a shepherd who is on his way home with his sheep one evening when he runs into Manannan, who teases him about his certainty of the way and pulls down a confusing mist that shrouds his eyes and makes him lose his sheep. After bumbling about in the dark mists all night, Manannan finally relents and lifts the mist, for the shepherd to find that he was only a few yards from home with all his sheep safe and accounted for by his side - and Manannan joking that sometimes he just likes to play a prank for the joy of it. Sometimes I wonder if I'm in a similar position - stumbling around in the mist all night only to finally realize once the veil lifts away that I've been close to home all along and in no real danger. But I also have to wonder if maybe, if I didn't bumbled around quite so much and fret quite so loudly (and maybe sometimes comically), if Manannan wouldn't consider me quite so worth his attention. ;)

So with that thought, I'll call it a night.

Gender Identity Issues in Dianic Ritual

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 6:57am - 6:09pm
Moon: waning crescent, capricorn (earth/cardinal)
Earth: warmer today and sunny for the most part, and now a thunderstorm has moved in (complete with lightning) and it's supposed to rain all night


I need to go to bed, and this will not be a proper diary post, but I wanted to record a post I made to Facebook today regarding an issue reported on The Wild Hunt about a Dianic ritual held at PantheaCon that excluded transgender women from participating, and the protest-ritual and open discussion forum held in response.

Today's Wild Hunt post was the first time I heard anything about the transgender-exclusionary Dianic ritual held at PantheaCon and the controversy and conversation it stirred up. I wonder if friends here on FB would care to weigh in with the ideas and opinions?

I've been reading an on-going conversation on one of the Pagan forums I belong to, and the main issue seems to be the lack of communication, that the ritual wasn't marked as "cisgender-women only" beforehand and, when it was specified (by turning people away at the door), the phrase "women born women" was used, which has derogatory connotations. There's been a lot of debate about the nature of religious freedom/discrimination at a public convention, the pros and cons of allowing Mystery traditions to hold rituals that may exclude or offend others, whether or not Dianic traditions are inherently bigoted or discriminatory, etc.

So here's where I'm coming from: I am (if I'm understanding the terms right) a cissexual female with no particular feelings one way or another about my gender. I believe in a kind of non-literalish reincarnation and, for that reason, I have worked during this particular lifetime to appreciate being embodied in a way that is biologically female, approaching it as a sacred thing with lessons to teach me (even when those lessons are sucky "you're going to be too ill and in pain to move for two or three days every month" kinds of lessons). But still, when I indulge in more typically "feminine" behavior and dress, it often feels somewhat like a playful engagement in identity-creation that I (and I alone) can step into and out of if/when I like, but that no one else has a right to impose on me. Since I kind of shrug my shoulders about gender, I've never been remotely drawn to "women's Mysteries" and find myself uncomfortable around groups that have that focus because they don't speak to me (kind of like being the only person who doesn't speak fluent French in a Parisian café) - but I don't begrudge them their right to explore such mysteries in a private ritual space or within a tradition with less fluid gender boundaries than what I'm comfortable with. All of that is my background....

These are the points where I'm finding myself a bit stuck about this PantheaCon situation, though:

(a) Even though I consider myself a feminist, and I feel relaxed about sexual- and gender-identity fluidity, and I try my best to be compassionate and supportive of people's right to self-identity definition and creation.... I haven't spent much time formally studying feminism and feminist philosophy. I did not know until even a few months ago that such a word as "cisgender" even existed, and I find that I'm still uncertain in some contexts what it's being used to mean. There seems to be an almost endless vocabulary for speaking about sexuality and gender-identity, and often it's difficult to know which words are currently acceptable, and which have become taboo, and which are in the process of being reclaimed. I did not know that "woman born woman" was derogatory, and in fact, I'd never even heard it - but I know I've probably used similar phrasings (such as the long-winded, clinical-sounding: "someone born biologically female who identifies as female") when I was unsure if there was an appropriate word for that concept or what that word might be. (Although I understand the desire to create gender-neutral pronouns, when I hear people using "ze" and "zir," I still flinch (on a visceral, auditory level) at how similar it sounds to racist, stereotyped imitations of non-native English speakers' "dialect" (eg. a racist stereotype of an Italian saying, "Ze Pope-a! Ze is so-a nice-a!").) People in the forums have complained about the "dogwhistle" use of the Dianic group's name ("Amazon").... but to someone outside of the world of formal feminist studies, many of these specialized terms feel very similar. Often, the language being cultivated and utilized among those who care most deeply about these issues seems to be evolving and changing so rapidly, that a person like myself who is unfamiliar with all the "lingo" feels excluded from the conversation simply because I am so uncertain what to say or how my words will be interpretted. I have had best friends stop speaking to me for making missteps in terminology that I was unaware of even having made. For me, this brings up the real heart of this issue: wanting to be an accepting, open-minded person (heck, even *actually being* an accepting, open-minded person), doesn't guarantee that someone will be familiar with specialized language. So how do we overcome that gap, especially in large public settings? How can we strive for inclusive language that doesn't, by the very nature of its specialization, grow increasingly exclusive in nature? I'd love to hear people (especially those more familiar with these language issues) weigh in on this.

(b) As a Pagan, I strive to move away from spirit/body dualities and to grapple with the Mystery of embodied spirit or soul, i.e. spirit that arises or emerges from physical existence, rather than merely being a "ghost in the machine" that happens to reside in it. On the other hand, as human beings I also think our experience of physical reality is shaped overwhelmingly by our self-awareness and by our creativity, meaning that physical reality is fluid and responsive and can be shaped by the very awareness/soul that arises from it. I'm wondering how this factors into this conversation on Dianic tradition and those who object to it. A lot of the conversation I've seen on the forums rejecting Dianic tradition as bigoted or discriminatory utilizes language about how a transgendered person can feel "born into the wrong body" - but this language seems to take for granted some kind of idea that the spirit/soul/mind is separate from the body and can get stuck in a "machine" that doesn't feel right. While I totally support people in choosing how to describe their own experiences and wouldn't want to say such a description is "wrong," it doesn't make much sense to me trying to work with a worldview that does not rely on spirit/body dualism. Since Pagans are a small minority of the overall population, I would guess that Pagans are also probably a minority of those who identify as transgender, which means descriptions of the transgender experience might be shaped by Abrahamic/monotheistic assumptions..... Are there Pagans out there who have found ways to talk about the transgender experience that do not rely on this kind of dualism? Or does it seem that the transgender experience itself actually appears to confirm this kind of dualism between spirit/mind and body? Or am I totally misunderstanding these explanations?

Diary

Days of Note: Last Quarter White Waking Moon

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 7:03am - 6:04pm
Moon: last quarter, scorpio (water/fixed)
Earth: quite a bit of sunshine all day, though still cold and very little melting going on - the bird seed I scattered after last week's thaw thinking, foolishly, that we were in the clear is now under three to four inches of snow, except for the seed I scattered on the low partition wall just outside the dining room window, where the birds have brushed aside what little snow snuck in under the awning and made a feast of it where the cat can watch them


There are a lot of things to be angry about these days. Let's start with the good news: today, the scale said I'd lost a pound, despite the gorging on holiday chocolates for the past week. Also, early this morning, the package from Amazon arrived with Jeff's Official Valentine's Day present for me: two new books, including the new David Abram that I've been salivating over for months (and another, about the role of fiction in the evolution of the human mind).

Now the bad: The check from my last invoice was only just mailed out today, delayed almost two weeks because the person who has to sign off on these things was traveling. This is the second time in in the past few months with this new job that a check has been delayed so long that I've had to go nearly a month without income. With bills and student loans to pay, not to mention wedding savings, the unreliability of a regular income even while I'm working the max number of hours I'm allowed to according to my contract... well, it's frustrating. I have to be one of the more fiscally responsible adults I know, and yet even with my "cushion" of savings, it's hard to go so long without money coming in, and especially frustrating as I know that I have been putting in the hours and that the money will arrive eventually. I am, technically, allowed to send an invoice whenever I want. I had been sending them regularly every two weeks, on the dot, assuming that even if there was a wait of a week or so, after a few weeks of working those checks would be arriving regularly, albeit delayed. But as it turns out, I receive payments seemingly at random, sometimes within a day, sometimes more than two weeks late, with no way to predict. It is certainly a change from the immediacy of earning cash as a waitress when I knew, even if over time I didn't earn as much, what I did earn was mine immediately. You never starve when you can earn cash enough to at least buy your next meal. But a person could get into real trouble with all of this imaginary money being promised to them, and the checks never seeming to come.

But that's just on the personal side of things, and even that's not a big deal, just a minor frustration. On the socio-political side of things: I may have to rethink my policy about not voting unless there's a candidate I actually support. As news comes out, week after week, of all of the truly disturbing, woman-hating, worker-hating, minority-hating legislation and policies coming from Republicans since they won back their coveted power-seats in the last election, they are really challenging me to redefine the "worse" of two evils. The idea of paranoid game-theory in the voting booth makes me sick to my stomach, when the "lesser of two evils" seems still so very evil and backwards and destructive and militant. But if you had wanted to argue with me that "things could be a whole lot worse" back around election time, you would probably have made some headway if you suggested that, once voted in, Republicans would take serious and far-reaching steps to roll back women's and workers' rights to pre-1950s standards. Of course, I wouldn't have believed you. I would have thought you were exaggerating.

I feel sometimes like the ones who walked away from Omelas. Except that I can't walk away, not with Jeff's kids. It's not even like our jobs prevent us — anywhere-with-internet work-from-home stuff would be so very liberating.... but in the end, they just prove frustratingly unreliable, an excuse for Emily and others to assume that our schedules are infinitely flexible. (And thank the gods we don't have the kids this weekend, since my check being so long delayed means we barely have enough money between the two of us to feed ourselves. Like we live extravagantly or something, with our oatmeal breakfasts and our puny salads twice a day.)

I am so very bitter and frustrated sometimes. I feel helpless and overwhelmed, when I get emails from MoveOn.org and other places about protests and petitions. There will be protests on Saturday in solidarity with the union workers in Wisconsin, and my first reaction was: I wish we could go, but we have the kids. When I mentioned it to Jeff and he reminded me that this is our first weekend off without the kids in more than three months, my next thought was: so we could go.... until he asked, "Is that really how you want to spend our only weekend off?" Just the thought of it made me tired. We still haven't been able to officially celebrate Valentine's Day because of these check delays and our schedule being jammed so full it hurts. But not to go... feels so selfish, like I am weak and small and, just like everyone else, so busy running the rat race that I have no energy left to resist. I didn't want to be that kind of person. When did I become that kind of person? The other day, a woman came door-to-door asking for donations to a Clean Water initiative to help raise funds to prevent hydrofracking in the area. We tried to explain that we barely had two pennies to rub together between us, but I think she must hear that all the time, or at least enough to be only very politely disappointed. I got her information and went to their website after she'd gone to send them an email offering my time as a volunteer if they needed anything, since I have (just barely) more time than money available to donate these days. I haven't heard back from them. Part of me feels relieved.

This is not fun, or freeing. There are days when I just want to slip back into my lonely life, where at least there was quiet, and stillness, and in that kind of solitude even loneliness and grief could be beautiful. Now, half the time I feel like I'm just running around trying to keep up with the millions of demands — and sometimes, Jeff feels like a leaky bucket, so willing to always give and give to even the most unreasonable expectations, that I'm in a kind of quicksand watching the energy I invest in him slip away into half-finished projects and a million ideas that never get off the ground. And I read something today by Thalia Took, in her blog about her OCD father and the junk he made their home in, and how she had learned the "demand resistance" response to always say NO! first whenever anyone asked because she learned it from him, and from the unreasonable, unhealthy, unfair expectations he always put on her and her sister. I learned that from my mother. I had to learn to scream NO! at the top of my lungs in the face of insanity and cruelty, or I wouldn't have made it whole into adulthood. And I've spent a lot of time learning the art of yes! and the deep roots of generosity... but sometimes, I wonder if Jeff, whose mother is so supportive and accepting and Zen that she's barely there sometimes, never learned that no can be necessary. Intellectually, maybe, but not really. Sometimes I still don't know if his agreements with me are real or if he's just so good at being agreeable. And I can spar with him in debate and talk about different topics, because he'll play devil's advocate even for the devils, even for people he doesn't agree with. Which is why he's interesting, and why he challenges me. It's like being in love with everyone who ever disagreed with me. But.. sometimes, I think I need him to agree with me on important stuff, and say no! when it really matters.

This is something I'm going to have to talk to him about. And also probably having to do with my Saturn Return work, now that I think about it. It's no surprise that I have authority issues, but I think I've been successfully grappling with those issues for years now. So maybe this is the curve ball of a Saturn Return: when I ask myself the journaling questions Jeff wrote up for me, when I ask myself what restrictions and limitations I resent and that keep me from feeling free: my answer is not others' authority, it's others' childishness and neediness (and that's true for the kids themselves, too). Since I've chosen not to have kids of my own, I hadn't anticipated facing that particular yoga. If I'd had a choice in the matter, I would have stopped at a healthy, sustainable number (but that feels like wishing Josh and Fiona out of existence...). And now I'm almost laughing at myself and remembering the mini-crisis I had the other day when reading about Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and realizing I couldn't just dismiss it as complete gibberish. There are some very harmful, sad little ideas in it (like how intelligent people are so very rare and special and they're never wrong about their wonderful little inventions and they never make mistakes) — but there are things like integrity, creativity, self-reliance, things that I really go for. And more than that, the feeling of fatigue and resentment that made Rand first muse, "What if all of us 'creative minds' went on strike?" I know that feeling! I get it, I really do. I think Rand was selfish and childish to write a fantasy world in which an elite class of "thinkers" could hold the world hostage... but I know the feeling, of being so tired and frustrated and wondering why anyone else isn't stepping up to the plate to take care of all this shit, why I feel like I always have to do everything. Except I'm not stupid. I know everyone feels that way much of the time these days. People talk about apathy and nihilism, but I really don't think that's what's wrong with this country. What's wrong is that everyone is so fucking tired. And we're tired because of the way we live in this country. And we can't seem to change the way we live because we're all too fucking tired.

Or maybe I'm just cranky and dealing with post-moon headaches and my "day off" today I spent mostly drafting an essay on "Pagan pacifism" which is going to end up far too long and unwieldy to be much good anywhere, and is probably going to take a huge amount of research and, damn it, writing is hard and I've gotten lazy. I like being able to just spout off ideology, I like "talking points." They're quick, ready-made. Writing takes so much out of me. On my "day off" I spent all morning working and got only three or four decent paragraphs out, with the rest of the article looming in front of me like a monster ready to guilt trip me and gobble up every spare minute of my free time. So instead, I write rambling, whiney diary posts. And do tarot card readings. (And rethink all those stupid reasons that I stopped writing poetry.)


Break.

So just as I was about to move on to my tarot reading, Jeff finished what he was working on and we sat down to have what turned out to be quite a long talk, mostly about all of this. I tried to talk to him about the drained feeling and the "demand resistance" story and how it related to my mother, and comparing it to his experiences. This led into a conversation about Saturn Return, and me expanding a bit on what I wrote above, on grappling with childishness and immaturity as kind of nontraditional conceptions of authority and restriction.

As we talked, several things began to fall into place that I want to just note here quickly. First: the idea of confronting childishness seems, the more I talk about it, like a very obvious aspect of my Saturn Return work. Reflecting on my meditation the other night in my ritual for Manannan, I mentioned to him about the many images that seemed to stem directly from kids' movies like "The Little Mermaid" and "Finding Nemo." I'd assumed at the time that this was just a kind of "bad connection" that was dredging up all my mental stereotypes of underwater scenes, but this issue of childishness puts that in a new light. It also relates back to my last "conversation" with Brigid during my personal Imbolc meditation, when she appeared to me as a playful young girl running in bare feet through the grass and counseling me to "lighten up" a bit. I was more receptive to that message, at that time, as being so obviously good and sage advice — but I'm not sure I've been all that good in following it. Instead, I've continued to fight against childishness (or perceived childishness) in others by increasing the pressure on myself to be responsible and adult about things, to buckle down to the discipline of being mature and reliable. If Saturn Return is going to be about confronting and integrating figures of authority in my life, and the "figures of authority" that I am struggling with are (or seem to me to be) characterized by childishness, neediness and immaturity... then it makes sense that I may have to do some work on nurturing and encouraging my own "inner child."

These are just thoughts. But having talked things over with Jeff, I'm already feeling more relaxed and optimistic about it. (Also, he made me a little teacup of chocolate sweet almond milk! Mmm, nutty!)

Diary Tarot Card:
<- Nine of Wands, Strength (VIII) -> Three of Cups

The Nine of Wands poises ever-vigilant, straining against the uncertainties of the coming future, toughened and hardened by past conflict. Perhaps too suspicious, too ready to perceive a threat, too on edge to relax and find respite — yet in the past, such vigilance has served well, cautioning against indulgence and lassitude and allowing the instinct to self-preservation enough reign to do its necessary work. The figure sits astride his lion, a hand resting retraining and reassuring on its curled horns and armored head. Still, when does vigilance turn to paranoia and pugnaciousness? When does strength become blinded by the urge to armor and arm ourselves against uncertainty and adversity?

Strength rests her hand lightly on the brow and jaw of the lion where she stands, a lion unencumbered by armor and yet seemingly more powerful, mightier and freer than his subdued counterpart in the Nine of Wands. She is the gentle guardian of strength, draped in white, vulnerable in her half-nakedness, who can open and close the lion's great muzzle with the lightest touch — the lion of the subconscious and animal soul, whose power is sleek and fierce. He is not subdued and reigned in, yet neither is he destructive and dangerous in his wildness; she listens to the dark rumblings in the lion's heavy throat, a purr or a warning, as she listens to the promptings of her own animal soul, knowing when to heed the sound and when not quiet its noise. With courage and gentleness, Strength does not need to fear her animal, and so does not need to subdue it either.

The Three of Cups dances in joyful celebration of community and togetherness, a moment of happiness and playful camaraderie. Though full of energy and enthusiasm, there is in this card none of the tension or fire of the previous two, but instead the active flow of exchange and communion, sharing the pleasure of laughter and good company. While each of the other cards face outwards, looking either into the past with wariness and hard-earned memory, or into the future with quiet will and receptive strength, the Three of Cups circles merrily around itself, caught up in the moment.

The overall message of these cards seems to be that through excessive vigilance and worry about the uncertainties and potential threats of the future (perhaps arising from past hurts), we turn our backs on our truer, more powerful inner strength — the Great Secret at the heart of this spread. By accepting that inner strength and appreciating its proper role, as gentle but courageous guardian of our animal souls, we open ourselves to opportunities for true connection and community — a cause for celebration and joy — for we can trust ourselves to playfulness and exchange without worry that such engagement will spin out of control and cause damage or harm.

Diary

Days of Note: Moon Conjunct Saturn

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 7:06am - 6:02pm
Moon: waning gibbous, libra (air/cardinal)
Earth: cold again, the temperature falling all day, so that steady, pleasant rain in the afternoon gave way to thick, fluffy snow, and then eventually to crystalline glitter in the air that lays on thick over night



Spent most of today working and fighting cravings for soda and chocolate, a bit of a set back after this past week full of chocolate Valentine's Day candy, but by this evening I felt more energetic and light, not so bogged down by heavy foods my body has to work too hard to digest and integrate.

Last night, I posted a request on the TC forum for some advice and insight regarding the strange dream of the sea god that I had the night before. Even sharing as little as I did, I found myself nervous about what kind of response I might get. Luckily, many folks have responded with very helpful and insightful suggestions — and of course, most insightful of all is to ask Him (and ask Her, ask Brigid as well) to explore and deepen the relationship, if that's how I want to pursue this.

So that's what I plan to do, and to begin this process tonight, in fact. Jeff and I, the day before this dream, had worked out a plan for ways to work with my upcoming Saturn Return, and I think that, at least for now, I'm going to explore this relationship with this sea god in conjunction with that. My first meditation rite will be tonight. I wanted to make a quick note here, to note the usual diary-appropriate information, before moving on to that work.

Diary - Dream

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 7:07am - 6:01pm
Moon: waning gibbous, libra (air/cardinal)
Earth: early in the morning, still, but the weather forecast is calling for a chill, gray day with chances of a rain-snow mix later this evening


Last night, I had several intense dreams about the ocean, one after another as I woke and then fell back into sleep again. The first were more mundane — images of being at the beach, waves rolling, strolling along the sands, sun shining down — I suspect because high winds recently have sounded very much like waves during the night, and we're also reading a book at the moment that takes place by the ocean, though it's a rocky coast in Cornwall. A bit later, the dreams became more erotic in nature, with Jeff and I racing along the sands, chasing one another, catching one another up in passionate embraces and rolling, tumbling along in our lovemaking. (You can tell these were dreams, because the sand wasn't a bit irritating!) During this dream, there was at least one scene that took place in a kind of hotel room or small apartment furnished with lush décor and rich colors. Out one window, a scene stretched away far below (as though I was looking from the tenth story of a building) of rolling dunes and hills tumbling up over themselves into mountains — yet, facing the other direction, the room opened up onto the beach itself, right at sea level, the walls and floor slowly fading, giving way to sand and horizon, the ceiling stretching out and out like an awning that eventually became a drape of cloth that could be pulled away. The apartment had a sense of being cozy and enclosed within, and yet there was no discernible break between inside and outside where it met the waters running up the shore.

After waking up from this dream in very early morning, about two hours before sunrise, I fell back asleep to have another dream about the ocean, even more intense than the last. In this, the ocean's size seemed magnified, the waves huge and deep, harboring enormous sea creatures like whales incredibly close to shore, their slick, dark backs arching up out of the blue waters as they leapt and splashed. Above the ocean on the horizon, it seemed there was a god — the god of the sea himself — who would pull away and withdraw like an outgoing tide, and when he did, there seemed to be this great, overwhelming noise of... gathering, gathering in, not a sucking exactly, but a rumbling, gathering cacophony among the clouds, and in the sky there appeared a kind of expanding sphere of inward-collapsing cloud and light that pinched in, almost the way an hour glass might, or a funnel, as sand slowly drains from the top — the faster it falls away, the larger the sinking hole around it becomes. This sphere of pinched, withdrawing sky seemed to undergo a color shift, along with the terrible, tremendous noise, that shaded it the colors of sunset — reds and oranges and rose into deeper blushed-purples.

I witnessed this happening twice, standing within the lushly-furnished room from the dream before, and after the second time, once the sphere collapsed and the great noise was replaced by sudden silence, it seemed the sky turned into paper confetti, bits of cloud shredded up and falling, drifting down in bits of white curls of thin paper, and other pieces of sky in huge, flat papery circles that were on one side the colors of sunset and on the other side the bright blues of a sunny day, these circles that drifted and fluttered down past the windows, some of them five or six feet across. Of course, the sky itself was still there, it wasn't as though the paper confetti was the sky itself — only, bits of the sky that fluttered down after the noise and change in the sky had ended.

After this second time, the sea god returned to the room, which seemed to be his room or temple in some way, and he was in human form, or at least, that was the impression I had, or that he left. I had been with someone else, an older woman, in the room, but she was gone now and there was only me. I remember the vague sense of intrigue and accident, as though I were not supposed to be there and it seemed the sea god mistook me for someone else in how he greeted me with familiarity and intimacy (though at another level, it seemed to me that he must know who I really was and that there was no mistake, for he was a god, after all, and had to know these things). I was wearing garments of shimmering, sheer, sparkling blue and green in the flowing robes of a priestess, and he came to me as his priestess and drew me down beneath him and we began with an embrace, touching and caressing each other, our mouths searching each others' out. His body felt as heavy and wide as the ocean.

Through this intimacy, I could feel a sense of mystery flooding me, overwhelming me, the mysteries of the ocean that were only known and kept by his true priestesses. And because I was not a true priestess of his, I felt that rush of power and revelation and eager excitement, but also a kind of growing, intense fear as though I might drown. He could sense it, too, and seemed suddenly to realize that I was not his priestess (though, again, it seemed he had known this in some way all along) — and he pulled away, and we parted. He disappeared, went off again somewhere I did not know, and I was alone for a while in the room, thinking on the experience and the mysteries I had barely glimpsed. Watching out over the sea from the room where I sat, I could see the deep waters roiling, the winds above them pacing back and forth and churning up whitecaps — the sea seemed restless and an expression of his restlessness and reckless energy stirred up by our embrace. There was about the whole scene a kind of uncertainty about how to proceed, and a sense that I had "gone too deep" already to turn back now, and that once having glimpsed the mysteries I had to commit myself to pushing forward, moving on to become a priestess myself. As though a seed of mystery had been planted in me that I would have to honor and nurture, or it would one day rise up suddenly to drown me nonetheless.

I forget exactly how the dream ended, but I think he came to me one last time. I had walked out of the room and onto the open beach beneath the sun, bare feet teasing along the edges of the waves lapping up the shore. There he returned, found me again, and walked with me for a while. I don't remember what we spoke of, or if we spoke. The dream just faded away, with no real ending or conclusion, only a strong sense of his presence there by the ocean, and an intense longing almost more powerful than I could bare to touch him again, to be with him — a longing I felt echoed and returned from him.



Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this dream. I have always had intense dreams about the sea, and maybe that's all this is: a combination of memories of the ocean stirred up by the book we're reading, and some sexual desire, and some other emotional tides. On the other hand, I have also felt drawn to the Celtic sea god Manannan (or, in Welsh, Manawyddan) for quite a time, now, and that draw has always held a sense of the erotic in it in some way, as he has seemed to me in meditations not as an old man, but as younger, wilder, both more playful and more dangerous. I wonder if this dream is a call from him to take seriously the invitation to become his priestess.

Yet at the same time, I find myself resisting that call, if that's what it is. I am so far away from the ocean here, it seems impossible to be a priestess of a sea god landlocked surrounded by hills and mountains! Not to mention, I'm not sure how I would handle that relationship and my relationship with Brigid Star Fire — after years of practice being monotheistic, I feel at most comfortable with the idea of henotheism: belief in many gods, but devotion to just one. I'm not sure how I could possible be a priestess of two gods, when both could make such a claim on me. I feel as though, to go deeply into the mysteries, I would have to be devoted primarily, if not exclusively, to one alone. How would I handle my daily devotional work to balance a relationship with more than one god? How would I work with each in ritual — would they work together in a single ritual, is there any basis in the lore for such a thing, would they be compatible, would they expect rituals devoted solely to them for each of the holy days, or more?

In my astrology, Neptune is opposite my sun, and forms a great triangle along with Saturn and Pluto conjunct. The watery connection of the moon, too, plays a part, and I had already been talking to Jeff about setting up a schedule of regular meditation and journaling in preparation for my upcoming Saturn Return. I was even planning on doing another journal entry today or tomorrow to explain the details of this work, since my first meditation is scheduled for tomorrow (and then approximately once a month when the moon is conjunct Saturn both in the sky and in my natal chart). Perhaps I am meant to work with Manannan as a guide to my Saturn Return in some way. He is considered by some to be a kind of psychopomp figure, a guider of souls back and forth between the mists of the world, across the sea into the west and the Otherworld.

As my first Saturn meditation is scheduled for tomorrow, I'll look into it then, I think. For now, I wanted to record this dream, since it was so very strange and intense.

Diary

Days of Note: Full White Waking Moon

Sun: entering into pieces (water/mutable), 7:10am - 5:59pm
Moon: full moon, virgo (earth/mutable)
Earth: a second unusually warm day in the middle of February, bright, warm sunlight, white fluffy clouds in a crystal blue sky, winds shifting the bare tree branches and playing with the wind chimes all up and down the block, the woods was restless with spring's first robins and last winter's dried, dead leaves stirring in miniature cyclones in the breeze; everything is mud and melting ice


The last few days were rough, with some discomfort and pain and general fatigue, but today has been lovely. We've opened up the windows all over the house to allow the rooms to air out with the breeze, and the place feels full of shifting life and wafting curtains again. A warm day like today does not feel very much like spring, exactly, as it's too early and it seems even the land knows tomorrow will be cold and near freezing again. The air is too dry and restless to be full spring air, though everywhere there is mud and muck and melting. Jeff and I had lunch outside in the backyard, watching the clouds pass in front of the sun one by one. He kept insisting it was a day from May, but May is more lush and green than this. Everything is still very dry and stiff, not awake like true spring but restless in its sleep. It will be waking soon.

The last few days of work have been interesting, as a new project had me hopping and worrying a bit about my "boss's boss" approving of what I was doing. Things seemed to have gone well, but to go from so little supervision to that kind of extra oversight makes me worry. I want to be thought of as a competent and hard worker — a tough task to accomplish when you work from home sometimes, I guess.

So my creativity of earlier in the week was on the wane, for a few reasons. Today was a "day off" (with only a few hours of work in the morning), as was yesterday which I spent mostly arguing with trolls online. I should know better, but it's hard to resist sometimes. This time at least I did not let it bother me so much... or, I shouldn't put it that way. "Letting" seems to have very little to do with it — but at least, the trolls remained laughable, and their insults ridiculous, enough for me to easily shrug them off. I spent some time yesterday afternoon working on some creative awen work with the Kowit poetry workbook.... but found none of the prompts for the exercise I was working on to be very helpful. Prompts like "remember a time when you were sad" or "remember a time when you felt humiliated" came up empty-handed — I could remember occasions that seemed a mix of frustrated and restlessness, but nothing much else came to mind. Jeff said I must have just been in a particular mood, and I know that sometimes I do get "blocked" or stuck in a particular emotional state when it becomes difficult for me to remember feeling any other way. That got us on to astrology again, and conversations about my moon being in my twelfth house, so that the source of my emotions were often a mystery to me but also, if I follow them willingly and trustingly, serve as my connection to Mystery and grace.

This, of course, led back to a conversation about how to work with my Saturn return, which is fast approaching. Yesterday, in my restlessness, I asked Jeff just to come up with a simple practice I could do regularly, since trying to be "creative" to come up with some practical exercises seemed too much to deal with at the time and I was coming up dry. He said he'd give it some thought, and in the meantime I will be contemplating it, too. I want to ask Brigid for her aid in this endeavor, but I'm feeling like a neglectful devotee — this past week, I completely got the day wrong for my Flamekeeping shift. Remembering that I would be Keeping during Valentine's Day, I had it in my brain that my shift began at sundown on Valentine's Day itself, but this turned out to be one sundown too late. When I realized the mistake (no thanks to my Google calendar, which has been acting wonky with my holy days sub-calendar for some reason recently), I kept my shift one day off.... but still feel as though I should have done more to make up for the lapse. If my first year of Flamekeeping was characterized by plenty of strange and happy coincidences, with my Keeping shifts falling on important dates almost every month it seemed, this year's Flamekeeping seems more like to be characterized by distraction, forgetfulness and a need on my part to be more careful and disciplined in my devotions.

After dinner yesterday, though, I did return to my computer to work on a poem inspired by the trollish bickering that I'd experienced online that day. Reimagining these accusations of being "idealistic" and naive and living in "white flower power land" (like I said — so absurd as to be laughable, almost endearing in their mischaracterizations of my view), the poem arose as a kind of affirmation that to be open to wonder is also a kind of power, and sometimes one more difficult and more risky than the power of brute force and violence. I shared the poem below, as well as on P+P (where a reader promptly tried to rebut with song lyrics — gods, I love a good old fashion bardic match!). So yesterday, after priming the pump for hours and coming up dry, it turned out I had a poem in me after all.

Today, after working several hours in the morning and lunching with Jeff outside in the sunlight, I decided to go into the woods for some meditation. During my walk, I scouted the next stone I would need to bless and consecrate for my DOTR work. I sang songs to the earth as I walked, which always helps to anchor me and center me in the work, reminding me that this is not just some casual stroll but a journey for a sacred purpose. I made my way to the stone outcropping where I usually sit, looking down over the ravine, and spent some time in meditation there, breathing and chanting the awen and grounding in the stirring bones of the earth. It's obvious that I need to return to regular meditative practice, as my mind wandered quite a bit during this time. But then, I am not a machine, not clockwork, and I do sometimes wonder if a wandering mind just isn't more natural during some times of the month. Chanting the awen, I felt centered and grounded, and when I fell back into silence, it seemed to me that my voice continued to be carried and echoed in the wind and among the trees in the woods surrounding me — just as it had that time in Ohiopyle, near the waterfall last May. I consecrated a small jar of water and, after a sip to honor the Spirit within, poured it out upon the rock as an offering to the local land. I then did the same with a jar of birdseed, as an offering to the spirits and beings of the land. Though my meditative work was perhaps not as fruitful as I might have liked, the rite itself seemed rooted and powerful enough. Anyway, we do not do these rites for ourselves alone or the way they make us feel — we do the work as real work, true action in the world, that shapes and changes the world. A gift is a gift because of intention, even if that intention is worn and frazzled at the edges because of moontides and stress. I hope the land can meet me half-way, as it has so often done before.


Diary Tarot Card:

(b) Song of the World
(d) Song of the Land ............ (c) Song of my Gods
(a) Song Within

(a) Song Within - The Ten of Pentacles is a card of fulfillment and enjoyment in life, rooted and steeped in the beauty of the material world but married to the spiritual meanings and movements, often found most poignantly in art and aesthetics. As Annie Dillard writes, an artist "jammed in the pool of materials," lives also in the mind, home of forms, and in the spirit. This is a card of auspiciousness, prosperity and generosity alike as they are connected and mutually supportive in the physical world of nature and its laws of exchange and engagement. Hard work and diligence comes to fruition in poise, comfort and simple pleasures enjoyed freely, without covetousness or hedonism. A willingness to work within the forms and limits of tradition and deep, ancient wisdom also expresses itself in this card — while this may sometimes bog us down in overly stiff structure, in this card the limits and boundaries of form, tradition and discipline serve a vital purpose in shaping and cultivating liveliness and joy.

(b) Song of the World - Temperance (XIV) brings together in balance, harmony and exchange the swirling, dancing, jousting energies of masculine and feminine, earth and sky, light and dark, phoenix and dragon, yin and yang. Life comes not from the strict purity of extremes, but from this dance of tension and difference, each tempering the other — the fire in the water. This card signifies a time of respite, rest and relief — albeit only a temporary one, perhaps — after a struggle, when we have a chance to refresh ourselves, catch our breath, and ready for the next step in the journey. There is poise and a sense of stillness and quiet in this card, despite the roaring, twining energies that surround the angel of temperance where she perches. Her mind is clear and open, the connections between thought and soul and manifestation in the material world laid bare and beautiful before her soft-gazing eyes.

(c) Song of my Gods - The Seven of Cups is a card of paradox, offering many choices — almost too many to count or consider — but only some of them may lead to deeper connection with both soul and spirit, and the Song of the World. Egotism and fantasy threaten to lead us off our path and we may make wrong choices if we stay too long with our "heads in the clouds," day dreaming of wealth or fame or other such rewards. But with our gaze firmly held to those ways of true value, following wise advice of those who have come before us, we can find the path to deeper, more authentic engagement and wholeness. The siren song of this card is not all deception, but we must be careful in our choices, and allow humility — grounding in the earth — to help us choose which path we take.

(d) Song of the Land - The Chariot (VII) wrestles with the chaotic, restless forces of conflicting desires and intentions, the conscious and the unconscious aspects of ourselves. To master these tensions and ride victorious requires strength of will and receptivity to changing circumstances alike. Psychologically, this card represents the healthy development of our ego selves, that sense of self that governs our actions and navigates a smooth, sure course through sometimes murky waters or conflicting interests. This is a card of composure and confidence amidst confusion and disorder, the first assertion of the ego as a reliable center for the individual self.


Further Interpretation - The cards drawn for the Song of the World (Temperance) and the Song of the Land (The Chariot), both major arcana, also both involve the balance of energies and the dancing, push-pull of conflict and tension between opposites. Appropriate for the time of year, and for the weather and energies of this day in particular, these cards seem to reflect the moods, energies and currents of the greater world — the coming of spring, the restlessness of the wind over the bare, muddy land, the play of water over soil and warm sunlight slicing through sometimes chilly air. Both cards incorporate a kind of paradox of both stillness and chaotic movement, poise and grace as well as mess and conflict.

The Ten of Pentacles in the position of Song Within seems to indicate my recent focus on a more disciplined approach to creative writing, and my willingness to "prime the pump" even on days when I am not feeling particularly creative or inspired. It may also indicate the process of revision and craft involved in pulling together a book manuscript, a project that I have also started recently and hope to finish over the next several months. Since this card came up earlier in a reading in a position that seemed to suggest this was my best approach to the writing life and the work of my soul, I am pleased to see it showing up again here — perhaps this means that I am orienting myself in a helpful and receptive way and utilizing my self-discipline as the necessary tool that it is to help me accomplish my goals.

The card that appears in the position of Song of my Gods (Seven of Cups) is the most confusing of this reading, which is not exactly surprising given the paradoxical nature of the number seven. In previous readings, this card has seemed to warn about making wrong choices, being distracted by temptations to popularity or influence instead of remaining anchored in the work of my writing. The two figures in the card face in different directions, though both to the left (in fact, all the figures in all four cards face to the left, with the exception of a few of the animals in Temperance and The Chariot) — the woman looks up, gesturing, towards the position of the Song of the World (Temperance) card, while the man gazes down at the map he holds, in the direction of the Song Within (Ten of Pentacles) card. In the artist's interpretation, it is the male who is "grounded" and sensible enough to accomplish the couple's goals, while the female is too much distracted by temptation and fantasy. That the woman gestures towards the external "world" position while the man gazes down with steady discipline towards the "internal" position is interesting. Yet at the same time, the card that the woman points to is Temperance, a card with encouraging meaning of its own. The angle of temperance herself seems to be turned inward, deep in contemplation of the forces around her. Meanwhile, the Ten of Pentacles holds not only the prosperous queen, but the old dragon steady, perhaps even stuck, in his ways. So an orientation towards both the external and internal worlds may be necessary — the greater world may hold not only temptations and distractions, but inspiring examples and helpful guides to the navigation of these tensions and vital energies, while the inner world may run the risk of becoming too entrenched in navel-gazing and self-reference and in this way become stuck. A map may be a helpful guide, as in self-discipline, but it must be supplemented. A floating castle may be mere fantasy, but if we see such dreams realized in the world through the lives of others, perhaps we do well to ask ourselves how this is possible, and learn from the questions we ask. It seems to message of this card, then, is both discernment and balance, seeking out what is helpful to guide my choices without discounting either one or the other out of hand. Seems like the kind of advice I often get from my gods, Brigid in particular.

Diary

Days of Note: First Quarter White Waking Moon

Sun: aquarius (air/fixed), 7:19am - 5:50pm
Moon: *first quarter, gemini (air/mutable)
Earth: just below freezing, with gentle winds and gentle sun, but still very much winter despite the first hinting stirrings of spring


Today, my second "day off" of the week, I woke up at 6:30 AM wide awake. Of course, it being still dark and Jeff being pretty much sound asleep, I didn't bother to actually get up. Still, I was full of energy and excitement about the day. Most likely because it was my "day off" and I was eager to get back to what I'd been working on my last "day off," Wedding Wednesday — which I spent, not on wedding stuff as I should have, but on taking the first steps towards designing and setting up my new website. I can become obsessive about these things. It's always been the case that a huge motivating factor for me is the appearance and packaging of a thing. That may sound shallow or superficial, but for me, part of the thrill of a beautiful piece of writing is the aesthetic pleasure of the physical book itself: the heft and weight of it, the scent of book binding glue, the neat, elegant formatting of the fonts, the cover art. And when it comes to online writing, this spills over into websites. A website can be — contrary to so much embarrassing evidence out there — elegant and beautiful and inviting, a worthy showcase of excellent work. I want my website to be like that. And so I thrill at the hours upon hours that I get to spend tweaking code and experimenting with color combinations and layout features.

When all's said and done, though, I want to be able to fill a website with awesome material. So as much as I was excited about having a day off today, I knew that I really couldn't go much further on the website design without facing the music and buckling down to some actual writing. And weirdly enough, I was dreading that. I had a restless frustration, like cabin-and/or-spring fever, that made me worry I wouldn't be able to settle down to do the creative work I wanted to do. I feel like it's been so long since I've done creative writing that really sang my soul-song. And of course, I've been feeling pressure (or, more kindly, leadings) from Brigid that I should be turning back to this work and cultivating it. Even my aspirant work with DOTR this lesson is focused on creative work and our relationship with awen, the Druid concept of inspiration, the fire-in-the-head breath of the gods. So every day I failed to write creatively, it became that much harder to have any confidence that I still had it in me.

This morning, I got in a few hours of work before lunch, and generally wasted time poking around online reading articles and blog feeds and Facebook updates that left me feeling befuddled and muddy headed. I knew I needed to give myself time and space in which to be creative, but that restlessness was keeping me from calming down. That, plus the monthly cravings for pastries and chocolate were at constant war with my commitment to the mostly-raw vegan diet Jeff and I are trying out, and the result was the weird sensation that I was... bored. Which is hard to explain. But boredom as an emotional state, and the tension of cravings for un-filling, bad-for-me food, were hardly distinguishable. So finally, in early afternoon, I decided to compromise: I had one piece of chocolate from the stash my mother sent me in a care package for Valentine's Day, and then I went downstairs and got one of my numerous How To Write Poetry workbooks (I know where they all are now, because Jeff and I have organized our bookshelves, hurrah!). I read through the introduction and the beginning of the first chapter before getting to the first exercise. Then I sat down, and I did it. I've already shared the results.

Or, at least, the product of the process. But there were other results, too. It took me hours to write that poem, hours of weighing and pushing and feeling my way through each line. Even now, I'm not sure if it's any good or not. But the process was so satisfying and restful, and something I had missed so much without even realizing it. It was work, in the best sense of the word. Not busywork to keep me churning and spinning my wheels, not time clocked or overly specific exercises leading step-by-step. It was just the work of digging and sensing and sitting quietly listening to the rhythm of each line, each word, and working my way slowly, gently, towards the poem's end. It was so satisfying, yet calming, that after dinner I felt as though I had plenty of energy and motivation, and I was eager to plunge back in. Jeff had a few hours of work left to do, since he took time out of the middle of the day to run errands before the kids come this weekend. So I buckled down to tackle some revision work I'd been meaning to do for a while.

The plan with the new website is to make it mostly a static site to showcase my writing and publications (and possibly photographs), with a blog feature incorporated to share news and smaller essays. I won't be exporting the old Meadowsweet blog into this new site, but instead I'm going ahead with my original plan to compile the best pieces from the old blog into a book to make available on Lulu (or, possibly, through a publisher, if Graeme's small publishing company will still have me). Once I began the process of selecting and compiling these pieces (which was months ago now), I realized that many of them I wanted to expand and revise, incorporating ideas that developed in the comment threads and just in general touching them up and making them more suitable for the print medium. Because I'm a perfectionist. But the task seemed so daunting, I never really got started on it.

Tonight, I sat down after dinner and began working on an expansion/revision of the first essay. It wasn't just enjoyable, it was downright fun! I felt like I was back to my old self again, revisiting the old me who was a diehard Poet-capital-P. For so long now it seems — though it can't be more than half a year at most — I've felt not so much like a writer as like.... a blogger. And I do mean that in the derogatory sense, no matter how unfair that might be. But "blogging" (as The Doctor uses it) is like chattering gossip and bickering banter about trivia and current events. I think it could be more than that, and I used to be pretty good at staying grounded in that vision of it being more than that, but my involvement with P+P has dragged me down in some ways, I think, and left me disoriented and feeling utterly drained of creative inspiration. It is so hard to take the risk of true creativity when you feel constantly under attack my insulting snipers and overly-critical know-it-alls. It's hard not to get sucked into that world, to become small. But reading back over old posts, and working on them again with this new burst of creative juices, I felt as though I were coming home to myself. I no longer had to berate myself for not doing the work I was supposed to be doing. Even if it takes a while, even if I'm not rushing off to score the instant gratification of immediate publication in a blog medium, I am doing the work, and allowing it to take however long it takes. I may end up with some material worthy of publication in magazines (though my luck there has been less than wonderful lately). Either way, I am doing the creative work I want to be doing and allowing myself to look beyond the borders of our sometimes self-involved little community of Pagans. This, I like.

So it's been a good day, and this diary entry probably reflects that. There is much to catch up on that has been going on in my life, but I'm not going to beat myself up over not doing a better job of chronicling it. That is busywork. This is creative work. I'm also not going to do the first part of the DOTR Aspirant Lesson 3 as it is written. I will not be doing daily note-taking on my plans and goals, nor doing the weird exercise of writing with one hand, then the other for a week. I suspect this last exercise is supposed to put you in touch with your more "artistic" brain, but I have far better ways of doing that on my own. Perhaps I will turn the journaling prompts into poetry-writing exercises instead and experiment with them in that way, but in general I'll be adapting the lesson to suit my needs. I'm hoping this is alright with Bob. Since he and I have known each other in one form or another for several years now, he did invite me to just join outright as a full Druid member, but I agreed to go through the lessons. In part because it's a good refresher, and in part because I wanted to understand the community sense that was developed through the lessons themselves, and in part because I hoped to be able to give Bob some feedback on the lessons themselves and ways they might be improved. We'll see how receptive he is to me blowing off the lesson plans for this month and exploring awen in my own way.



Daily Tarot Card: The King of Wands stands noble and proud, energetic and ready for action and activity. His blood flows bright and quick with passion, enthusiasm for his work, yet as the mature "yang" of the suit, he also understands the necessity of structure and order to reign his power in, harness it and shape it to his purposes. He is a figure defined by his energy and enthusiastic engagement with the world around him and the work he pursues in it. He may sometimes try to do everything at once, and for that reason to shy away from a sense of control or imposed order that might restrict him or rob him of the space his creativity needs to flourish. Yet this tension between passion and calm, creativity and order, are held delicately and deftly under his rule.

Diary

Days of Note: first robin of spring

Sun: aquarius (air/fixed), 7:22am - 5:47pm
Moon: waxing crescent, aries (fire/cardinal)
Earth: snow overnight, layering a few inches this morning and still coming down in large, lazy flakes

This morning as I was getting dressed, I glanced out the bedroom window to spot the first robin of the still-so-new season of spring — in fact, a whole flock of them! Flitting and gliding between the neighbor's low bushes across the street, and the bare branches of the sycamore tree just downhill of our driveway. I counted at least fifteen of them, feathers ruffled and puffed out fat and fluffy against the cold, the unmistakably familiar red breast and dark wings. In among them was a single, brilliant red cardinal. I watched them for a good five minutes, dancing and weaving through the falling snow, dark creatures swinging through a dim white-and-gray landscape.

I could hardly contain my excitement about them. Playing through my mind again was the admonition of Brigid, from the Sassafras Grove Imbolc ritual three nights ago when the priestess drew the omen after our offerings had been made: "Spring comes through nature. Go out into nature to observe the real signs of spring coming." I took this to heart, as it echoed the advice I've been sensing from her for a while. The need to get back out there, ground in the woods and fields unrolling beneath the sky. I've allowed the winter's cold to intimidate me and keep me huddled in my home, feeling frustrated with the restless energy of cabin fever. The priestess interpreted the omen to be a gentle warning: do not sit in your warm, cozy homes and simply visualize spring coming — go out into the woods, go out to walk upon the earth, and see what is truly around us.

I can't help but think that this is also a plea for our attention and attending. That there are whole flocks of robins here and yet it seems so early.... It's been a long, unusually cold winter, yet already the robins are here. Part of me worries about the health of our planet, the extremes in season that seem to be increasing with every year. I think Brigid is not only asking us to attend to nature for our own good, but because the earth desperately needs us to be paying attention, to be listening for the signs of the dancing, turning seasons so that we can better recognize when that dance is out of balance or disrupted too drastically. In past years, sometimes I've felt spring hardly lasted — only a few weeks of mild, muddy weather before the heat of summer began to creep back in around the edges. Will that pattern repeat itself this year? I cannot know if I am not attending to the signs in the natural world around me, if I am too busy inside in front of a computer screen to notice the real world outside.

Still, a flock of robins is a blessing, and they were so beautiful! Spring cannot be so far away, when I can remember the fields bespeckled with dozens and dozens of robins hopping over muddy ground seeking out worms and bugs in the newly green grass. Just a little longer....

(I do intend to write about the Sassafras Grove Imbolc ritual. As soon as I have the chance!)

Diary

Days of Note: Brigantia Ritual with Sassafras Grove

Sun: aquarius (air/fixed), 7:26am - 5:43pm
Moon: waxing crescent, pisces (water/mutable)
Earth: chilly and rainy, gray, much of the snow melting away leaving behind slick ice and patches of old, dead grass

I have decided to cease updating this diary on a daily basis. Although it was a practice recommended by DOTR as part of their aspirant work, I have found pretty consistently that it was leading me to a place of frustration and blockage. I'm sure the daily diary wasn't the only source of these feelings, but beyond a doubt it contributed. The process of sitting down to list out the thoughts and activities of each day, for weeks on end, often left me feeling as though I were being scrutinized under a microscope, each day analyzed for its valuable or important content (and, more often than not, coming up lacking). The practice was, at least for me, one that was overly analytical — in the original sense of the word, as the opposite of synthesis, meaning to "break apart" or to separate out and make judgements. The etymological roots of "analysis" also have to do with "setting free, loosening," and for some people I'm sure that this kind of practice, with its simple daily structure, could do just that. (It seems like the kind of thing that Jeff would appreciate and enjoy doing.) But for me, I long for the composition of "synthesis," and the silence of the space-between the moments of that process. Trying to keep a brief diary structure every day kept me stuck in a hamster wheel of analysis while still failing to give me the space to compose my thoughts and feelings and express them as fully as I wanted. I don't think I would have been comfortable rambling on in this way about a subject seemingly tangential to the purpose of this diary, for instance, in the old format.

So the daily diary format recommend by DOTR just does not work for me. I have been keeping a journal of one kind of another for most of my life now, starting back in middle school at the recommendation of one of my mother's friends (who was a school counselor). The practice comes and goes, and when I look back I have only a patchwork record of my life, most of it boring or silly, or both. I admit, the idea of creating a daily record of events and thoughts appealed to my intellectual side — being able to look back over the course of a year and look for coincidences and patterns seemed fascinating. But in the end, the effort of creating such a record would defeat its purpose. Since taking up the practice, most of my entries have focused on feelings of frustration and restriction. The days when I've been most alive and eager have been those days when I most wanted not to bother with the diary. (This is how it often goes, I've heard.) But that's how it should be. We shouldn't necessarily want a nice and accurate daily record of life — we don't experience it that way, and we don't remember it that way. Trying to keep such a record is almost entirely future-focused: it's an activity you do now so that you can benefit from it in the future. There's not anything wrong with that per se, but I was finding that it interfered with my ability to ground myself in the present. Since making the decision about a week ago to officially "give it up," I find myself feeling much freer and more relaxed about the structure of my days. There is not so much a push to Accomplish Great Things, and so my days are quieter and gentler and a little bit more playful. Sometimes, that's exactly what I need. I am not a machine. Not every day will be interesting or full of relevance. I'm okay with that.

But I do want to continue to use this diary as a place to chronicle my progress through the DOTR Aspirant lessons which, feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, I stopped pursuing for the last several weeks. Now, feeling grounded in the present and freed from constant self-consciousness about my days, I feel up to the task of returning to that work.

I also want to include in this the developing aspects of my relationship with Brigid Star Fire, and the online "Lady of the Stars" group that has grown up in response to her inspiration. That was an unpredicted event, but one that I am so grateful for — being involved in this group has continued to strengthen my relationship with her and give me many opportunities to explore her Mysteries. I will probably be writing a longer entry on this some time in the near future, I hope.

I also want to note in this diary whatever other Druidry-related activities or events are going on in my life. For instance, tonight I am planning to attend the Brigantia Ritual being hosted by the Sassafras Grove, the local ADF grove in Pittsburgh. This will, for all intents and purposes, be my first non-festival, non-family group ritual as a Pagan. Most of my work until now has been solitary, or working with Jeff and the kids in small family rites on the solar and fire festivals throughout the year. When Jeff and I attended the Festival of Lights (I think that was its name?) with Cat and Peter up in Massachusetts last year, we participated in the large group ceremony that opened the festival weekend — but in my mind, that hardly counts as an actual ritual, since it was mostly all of us standing in a crowded conference room while a few people spoke prayers or songs of welcome. To me, it's not a real ritual without a few candles and some incense, at least. (Years ago, I also attended a summer solstice ritual with a group of eclectic Pagans in the woods — but I attended as an academic researcher and "token Christian" then, so... not quite the same.)

Which means tonight, I'll be attending my "first" group ritual with fellow Druids. I am actually quite nervous about it (had a dream last night about almost everything going wrong: getting lost, forgetting my offerings, not being able to dress appropriately, etc.), mostly because I'm shy in person and tend to clam up around strangers. I'm not sure what to expect. I've been wanting to start making contacts in the local community for a long time now, and looking at Sassafras Grove in particular as one of the most active Druid groups around, and well connected within ADF. But their public rituals throughout the year have largely focused on Norse or Saxon pantheons, and their workshops and discussion groups have been scheduled during times when I couldn't go (or didn't know about them until too late). Even this ritual is dedicated to Brigantia — Brigid in her Romano-Celtic context — which is not often how I work with her. But then, I work with her in a way that is probably fairly unique and not necessarily supported by current academic research. (She's not exactly known as a Star Goddess.) But I decided that I could spend a lot of time coming up with reasons why the Sassafras Grove wasn't a good fit, lots of reasons why they don't do things quite the way I would.... in the end, these were just excuses to stay in my solitary practice instead of reaching out to make contact and forge connections. In honor of Brigid, and her holy day of Imbolc, a day of new beginnings and coming spring, I thought it would be a good time to suck it up and face my nerves.

So I will also be updating this diary about my ritual and meditative experiences, as a way to process my experiences and sift through the thoughts, feelings and spiritual shifts that arise because of them. I hope that I'll be attending more group events in the future. If and when I do, I'll be writing about them here.

Daily Diary

Sun: aquarius (air/fixed), 7:33am - 5:33pm
Moon: waning crescent, sagittarius (fire/mutable)
Earth: snow. for the past three days, steady snow layering in slush and ice (hovering in the low 30s), punctuated by moments of sunshine through the clouds

Thoughts: thinking some more about a plan for the next several years in terms of building a career; had a conversation with Jeff over lunch about increasing my skill set for the contractor work I'm doing, including taking an online course in transcription and possibly some tutorials in one or more computer scripts; also, thinking about the revamped website and what I would include, how I would organize it and what its purpose would be (to showcase my writing and my author "persona" while distancing myself from the "passive-ist" stigma that's cropped up due to my writing on P+P, also to expand my audience beyond "Pagans" to include broader interest in earth- and nature-spiritualities)

Actions: slow morning getting going again (after two days off to focus on wedding stuff and website/writing stuff), spent some time singing and crying over Egypt and political angst; brainstorming ideas for new website; late lunch with Jeff, then several hours of contractor work; took a half-hour break to take a walk through the woods in late afternoon; after dinner, sat down to revise the LotS Imbolc ritual to post to the forum

Connections: feeling really good about the work I did for LotS once again; it seems silly to worry so much about internet/FB stuff when the work I do with this group always feels so focused and satisfying (and free of the stigma that I am inherently unreasonable/extreme because I'm a pacifist); I do very much enjoy writing ritual and working through meditations with this group; also, it brings me closer to my goddess, for which I am incredibly grateful; also dealing with some of the old sorrow over politics after reading a depressing article this morning about the news of protests in Egypt and VP Biden's reaction to it (basically that freedom and democracy serve economic interests, not the other way around, and should only be granted if they don't threaten the regime stability of our allies); Ani's "Next Bold Move" got me through that one with only a few tears, but afterward, it felt good to allow sorrow to be sorrow, and not try to justify it or reason it away through bickering

Daily Tarot Card: The Ace of Cups signifies the gifts offered by the mysterious depths of emotion and intuition, and the reflective perceptions and perspective to be gained from engaging deeply and authentically in our nonrational selves, exploring our dreams and creative longings. It is a card of gladness and blessings, signifying emotional fulfillment and enjoyment not from any concrete gain but from feeling ourselves more in tune with the rhythms and currents of life.

What two gifts does the Ace of Cups offer to me now? To the left: The Tower (XVI) signifies a sudden and shaking confrontation with truth and reality in all its complexity and unpredictability. A sharp change in perspective that may bring dreams or plans crashing down, the gift of the Tower offered by the Ace of Cups might be a deeper exploration of the shadow self, the nonrational and irrational aspects that have been hushed up and shuffled aside for the sake of "more important" plans, and now reassert themselves with a vengeance, demanding attention and reconciliation. This is a card of consequences and deeper integration in the face of difficulty and sometimes tragedy. Perhaps as a gift of the Ace of Cups, the sorrow or grief of the Tower is itself a gift, a flowing-over of emotion into expression, helping to cleanse and find renewal.

To the right: the Six of Pentacles, a card of mutual support and generosity, spiraling through a cycle of self-sustaining life and giving. Success has led to prosperity that is now poured out for others in need, watering the thirsty ground so that others may drink and grow, and in turn offer their support and generosity to others. This card is one that indicates the wise and compassionate sharing of resources and gifts with others, not merely as a superior benefactor to the lowly and needy, but as one who is in the midst of cultivating those gifts with the support and encouragement of others around us. As a gift of the Ace of Cups, we experience the emotional and spiritual fulfillment in witnessing in a very visceral, manifest way the ways in which we are all connected in a cycle of generosity, prosperity and charity to others. Unlike the Tower, which may have consolidated resources to build higher and higher towards a particular purpose, the Six of Pentacles seems to celebrate the sharing and gift-giving as a distribution and diffusion of resources among all so that all may benefit. The cycle of giving and support may even be more important than the specifics of the gifts themselves in some ways. This, again, reflects the themes of gladness and connection in the Ace of Cups, as well as reflecting that aspect of dreams and ideals that can guide us even when they seem impractical. The Six of Pentacles shows us that such generosity is the height of practicality, when gifts are giving gladly and joyfully to others as an expression of our relationship and connection.

Daily Diary

Days of Note: Flamekeeping

Sun: aquarius (air/fixed), 7:36am - 5:29pm
Moon: last quarter, scorpio (water/fixed)
Earth: warm enough to rain, with temperatures above freezing, delicious fog in the morning and then wet and rainy all day

Thoughts: mostly my mind was occupied with work today, which doesn't leave much room for day-dreaming; thought a bit about propaganda, and how (as Jeff points out) if it were easy to spot, it wouldn't be as effective as it is, yet it still disturbs me how apparently blind some folks are; also thought about community and its purpose, and whether or not it's a waste of my time to try to engage in a community just out of a sense of obligation, even if it does not nurture my soul; also, thought about Brigid and the prayer to smoor the fire (to "smother" it at the end of a day to protect the coals overnight to be relit in the morning)

Actions: after breakfast, headed out to Phipps, spent some time walking the indoor gardens before buckling down to contractor work; lunch there at Phipps, then several more hours of work; dinner at home, watching some TV with Jeff; wrote a brief rant-post for the blog (by accident), then a few more hours of work; followed by some flamekeeping time composing prayers for Brigid

Connections: worn out, but feeling productive and got quite a good number of hours in for work, happily; frustrated about some online stuff, but I think I'm making progress in terms of integrating what I know intellectually to be true so that I can have the strength of heart and character to follow through with my intention to remove myself from unhealthy communities... we'll see

Daily Tarot Card: The Six of Wands is a card of victory and triumph, success that has come from decisive action and hard work, overcoming challenges and challengers who have thrown obstacles in our way. Now, we achieve a victory and receive due recognition for our success. Yet something still nags at us - as the number six is only an initial completion of a cycle and not the end of our journey, this card also represents an urge not to "rest on our laurels," but to continue to work, to remain ready and willing to take on new challenges, as they will almost surely arise. A caution against arrogance, we can enjoy our moment of glory without allowing it to turn to complacency and laziness.