Divination: The Relationship between Manannan and Brigid

I just finished Robert M. Place's The Tarot: History, Symbolism and Divination (one of the books I got Jeff for Solstice this year), and so I thought it might be worthwhile to experiment with his three-card story technique. One of the spreads he recommends is a nine-card "relationship spread," so I used that spread to explore the potential relationship between Manannan and Brigid Star Fire. My clarity in the question ("What is the relationship between Manannan and Brigid?") may be somewhat lacking, since I didn't exactly ask what their relationship was in regards to me, and I'm not sure my interpretation of the cards will be all that accurate since I've only experimented in a kind of intuitive way with three-card story readings before (jumping to a full nine-card spread may have been ambitious, now that I'm looking at the cards all laid out in front of me). But here goes:

(g) (h) (i)
(a) (b) (c) . . . (d) (e) (f)

Manannan

© Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, The Shadowscape Tarot

(a) The Star (XII) - A card above all of hope, renewal and inspiration, the guidance of starlight emerging from darkness and difficulty. There is respite, rebirth and peace in this card, the optimism that resides in stillness and quiet, in which the first stirrings of joy begin. The image of the card is dominated by the soft blues and purples of water in ripples and swirls around the figure of the Star stepping delicately over the surface of the water. Around her swim golden carp, and above her shines a seven-pointed star in silvery-white reflected in the rippling curls of her hair. All is still and quiet, shimmering. The figure of the Star walks forward, but looks to her right (my left) with a hand upraised in blessing.

(b) Ace of Wands - A card of energetic beginnings and passion taking root, the wand of fire planted firmly in the ground alights with inspiration and creativity. This card seems to reflect the classic meaning of new beginnings and fresh starts in the realm of activity, yet the image depicts an autumn landscape at sunset, golden-colored fallen leaves swirling and rustling around the feet of the foxes, while small red mushrooms push their way up from the soil nearby. This spark or seed of creativity illuminates and draws out the creatures and spirits of the woods that otherwise may not be seen — just as in autumn, with the baring of the trees can reveal new aspects of the landscape usually hidden by the thick green of foliage. Of the three foxes, one faces right, one left, and the third forward — this last has a sun-spiral tattoo on his flank, spiraling outward. The seed of fiery energy and passion can take root even in a waning season, and germinate and grow throughout the spiraling year.

(c) Page of Pentacles - The Page perches upon a mounded rock around which an ancient dragon, green and verdant, curls asleep and dreaming of prosperity, fecundity and opportunity. She holds forward glowing in her left outstretched hand a small golden orb, the spark of opportunity and initiative, the key and invitation to plunge in and enjoy the sensuality and physicality of the world. She faces forward on her perch, as does her owl companion, though the sleeping dragon faces off to the left (my right), towards the center of the spread.

Story: The general flow of energy in these three cards seems to be from the central card (the Ace of Wands) outward in two directions, towards The Star and the Page of Pentacles on either side. One fox each faces left, right and straight on — my interpretation of this is what Place calls the "central teacher" pattern, in which a central figure is pointing out or commenting on two options or alternatives. The spark of creativity and passion symbolized in the Ace of Wands takes on two different forms. In The Star, that spark becomes a silvery seven-rayed point of light, far distant yet able to give guidance and hope in the midst of darkness. The figure of the Star reaches towards the utmost left of the spread, in fact almost directly pointing towards the placement of Manannan's candle and shell on my altar. In the other card, the Page of Pentacles, the spark of energy in the Ace of Wands becomes an invitation or offered gift to take the plunge into a sensual, pleasurable engagement with the physical world and encouragement to seize the opportunities presented. Though this card, too, is mostly a forward-facing one, there is some movement of energy to the right, towards the center of the spread. The Ace of Wands, as a central teacher, seems to be suggesting that these two approaches to an initial spark of inspiration need to be balanced and brought together — the intertwining bodies of the foxes, the spiral tattoo that draws both together, and the spiraling double-twist of the staff on the wand itself seem to suggest bringing these two approaches together to inform one another.

Brigid Star Fire

(d) The Hanged Man (XII) - A card of willing surrender and self-sacrifice, especially a time of reversals, transformed expectations and a new perspective on the world that can bring further insight and breakthroughs. The figure of the Hanged Man is one of release, but also of tenacity and strength, the inner courage and commitment to see through a period of difficulty and sacrifice, a suspension of the ego on the World Tree. Upside down, hanging from the branches of the huge oak, he faces off to the right, but his head tilts back so that he almost seems to be craning to gaze left from his inverted position. Above his hands, protected by the fold of his legs, he cradles a small, glowing golden orb similar to the one the Page of Pentacles offers.

(e) The Moon (XVIII) - A card of dreams and things half-seen in the pale moonlight which sometimes seems to only create more shadows and uncertainties in amongst the dark trees of the woods. The figure of the Moon stands within a ring of mushrooms, an enchanted faery circle glistening with tiny fireflies and dew. She holds up her left hand pointing upwards, a tiny red heart in her palm, and in her other hand she holds a strange, white mask with elongated nose and red ribbons trailing from it, which she turns her head (to her right, my left) to contemplate. Above her, a gray-white bird, possibly a doe, flies off to the left above her head. She is a figure deeply involved with masks, questions of identity and honesty — she holds at once the bright heart of true emotion revealed to all, and the mask that one might use to conceal it. She stands within a sacred circle, danced around by faery beings, yet she appears solitary and singular in the center, not exactly participating in the gathering. The world around her seems very much like a dream world, both obscure and revealing.

(f) Nine of Cups - The mermaid-figure in this card marvels at the swirling beauty around him, so rich and luxurious — the school of golden fish turn and move, circling almost as one being, sparkling and shining in the dark waters, and the mermaid seems to bow in reverence and gratitude in amongst them. This card symbolizes wealth and luxury, especially in terms of emotional contentment and gratitude, and suggests a feeling of exquisite harmony and fluidity in how everything seems to be coming together. The mermaid faces left, towards the center of the spread, but although the fish swirl around him, many seem to face to the right, towards the placement of the candle of Brigid Star Fire on my altar.

Story: It seems as though these three cards might be illustrating what Place calls a "central problem" pattern, in which there is no clear energy flow and the central card is blocking or dispersing the energy. The center card, The Moon, faces forward, but her face is turned towards the left (her right), with both hands raised. This might also be a "central teacher" pattern or even a linear pattern from right to left, where the final card (the Hanged Man) is turned to meet the action. The figures in these cards seem much more ambiguous than in the Waite-Smith deck Place works with, so I'm not exactly sure how to interpret the energy flow in this story. Assuming a linear pattern to the energy flow, the story moves from the Nine of Cups towards the right — suggesting a beginning in harmony and emotional contentment that then leads through a period of confusion and uncertainty as the Moon contemplates an open, revealed heart on the one hand (literally) while contemplating the mask in her other and what role it might play. This uncertainty and exploration into the dreamworld leads to the final card, the Hanged Man, who is turned to face the on-coming action but holds behind him (to the left, nearest the center of the spread) the glowing ember of possibility and, perhaps, renewal. This interpretation might suggest that a period of confusion will lead to a revolutionary change in perspective, turning the world upside-down and revealing new insights. In some ways, a central teacher or central problem interpretation sees very similar meaning in these three cards, with the Moon acting as a turning point in the process that can either block or give aid during a transition from the emotional contentment of the Nine of Cups to the wisdom-gifting self-surrender of the Hanged Man.

The Bridge Between

(g) Two of Swords - A card of blockage and impasse, the hooded figure stands in the center of the path, blocking the way with drawn swords crossed. A dark and immovable figure in the midst of the forest, his eyes are hidden by his hood so that he cannot see the offerings of the two swans by his side — the small, red heart of love and receptivity and the red-orange flower, possibly a poppy, symbol of sleep and death which open up the way for dreams of respite and renewal. He is frozen like ice, his back towards the right, the center of the three-card spread.

(h) Justice (XI) - A card of balance and harmony, a clear and even mind capable of weighing all things carefully and perceiving clearly and with piercing insight their true character and quality. A card concerned with truth, even when such truth is as subtle and light as the lightness of a feather or a butterfly's wing — in many ways, Justice is also a figure that turns inward to consider the inner tensions within the soul itself, seeking a balance that will help to ease these tensions and allow a return to center and equilibrium from which to take just and appropriate action in the world. The figure of Justice holds the light father-like sword of insight and discriminating mind close to her breast, turning her insight inwards, while holding out the balanced scales to influence and respond to the world around her. She faces forward, balanced and symmetrical in her stance.

(i) Eight of Wands - A card of energy and activity, beginnings and initiatives that move forward with the momentum of what has come before but that leave behind established projects to seek new ground in which to plant new seeds. The figure in the Eight of Wands sets loose her seeds drifting in the wind, carried to new fertile ground where they may germinate and take root, growing into new saplings and eventually great trees. But this process seems to happen largely without personal effort or involvement, carried along simply by the force and energy of the activities themselves and the wish that set them spinning out into the world on their gossamer filaments. The figure faces away from the center, towards the right, watching as her wishes are carried off by the wind.

Story: The flow of energy in these three cards very clearly fall into the pattern Place calls the "central origin" — a central card facing forward, with cards on each side facing away from the center in opposite directions. In this case, the center card of Justice may indicate a current pattern in the relationship and the two results that may arise from such a pattern. Clear insight and discernment, with a focus on finding a careful balance and weighing truth against truth, gives rise, on the one hand, to the Eight of Wands, a card of momentum and energy (especially one that will lead to new beginnings) that are largely impersonal in nature and somewhat "left up to" the forces and whims of nature. This might mean that the stillness and inward-turning nature of Justice is likely to give rise to activity of a dispassionate and impersonal nature, instead of a more personal involvement and engagement. In the other direction, another result that may arise from the pattern embodied in Justice is the Two of Swords, an impasse in which the swords of analytical thought are held at cross-purposes, barring the way and preventing a deeper receptivity to the gifts being offered. Given that the Two of Swords appears to the left, closer to Manannan's side, and the Eight of Wands appears to the right, closer to Brigid Star Fire, this suggests to me that too great a focus on discernment and balance may lead to an impersonal but potentially fruitful relationship with Brigid, but will only serve to block or prevent a deeper relationship with Manannan, whose fluidity and receptivity might be stymied by over-analysis.


Overall Interpretation: I find this reading difficult and rather ambiguous in its meaning, and I suspect one of the biggest reasons why is because I did not clarify enough in my own mind exactly what I was asking before beginning. Am I treating Manannan and Brigid as two distinct entities and asking for insight into how they relate to each other, as though they were two mutual friends of mine and I was looking for insight into their relationship? Or am I asking for insight into how each of these deities fits into my spiritual life in an integrated way that brings them into relationship? In other words: where am I, as querent, in this spread? I think the second version of the question is probably the closest to the one I was intending (though having a clearer question in mind may help in the future). If that is the case, then it seems likely that the three cards for each deity suggest how that deity is in relationship to me and how that relationship shifts or changes with the involvement of the other deity; while the "bridge" between the deities seems to be about my own attitudes in how to consciously connect them or bring them into relationship in my practice and approach. What's interesting is that, for each deity, the card closest to that deity and farthest from the center seems to reflect or echo the "core" of the other deity: the card closest to the heart of Manannan is The Star, a symbol that I have been connecting deeply with Brigid (Star Fire); the card closest to the heart of Brigid is the Nine of Cups, an intensely watery card depicting an underwater ocean scene. In both of these cards, water and fire, darkness and light share an intimate relationship with one another, suggesting that it is unwise, if not impossible, to try to separate them out into distinct entities without running the risk of diminishing one or both. As the relationships in each of the three cards moves towards the center, ambiguity and uncertainty seems to enter the picture (especially in regards to Brigid), but the card closest to the center in each three-card grouping holds that seed of light that is offered as a potential new beginning, new opportunity or new insight into the world. In this case, the "bridge" with a fulcrum as Justice, concerned with separating out and discerning between opposites, might represent my intellectual attempts to reconcile these changing relationships and clearly delineate each deity, though it seems such an attempt may be wrong-headed and unhelpful right from the start. This seems especially ironic considering that at the beginning of my reading, I spent a minute in meditation reaching out to the energies of water/sea below and fire/sky above, joining them together in the earth/tree of my body (as per the DOTR three realms working from Lesson 2) and asking for clarity of insight in my reading.

With that, I'm going to do a final three-card reading asking for advice to see if this interpretation may be even remotely on the right track.

Final Advice

(c) Ace of Cups - A gift and beginning, the first drop of water that unites with the ocean, merging with the source of all water and life, sending ripples out in all directions. This card is one of utter unity and wholeness, the emotional and intuitive core from which all else springs and ripples outward — mystical in its connection the the sacred grail or chalice, source of life. The first stirrings of gladness and joy, an initial surge of connection and attraction, as the tides are pulled by the moon, it is also a card of imagination and receptivity.

(b) Queen of Wands - A fiery queen of passion, initiative and energy, she stands at her harp, her living wands, drawing the delicate strains of music from its strings as the creatures of the forest still to listen, entranced by her energy and enthusiasm. As queen, she has the maturity and composure to balance her fiery energies with receptivity and love, and these weave through each other to lend beauty and depth to her activities. She is self-confident, playful and at ease with herself, whether she is the center of attention or retired into the background.

(a) King of Cups - A king of intuition, emotion and receptivity, he governs with endless patience and calm, deeply in touch with the emotional and spiritual needs of his subjects. He is a protector and provider, offering healing and cleansing from his sacred chalice. Balancing out the receptivity and fluidity of his natural element with his maturity and authority as king, bringing structure and order to his realm. Yet his authority arises not from imposition or control, but from being deeply attuned to the patterns and currents of intuition and emotion that flow through the world.

Story: The pattern in this final three-card reading is obviously, almost overwhelmingly linear, moving from right to left, from the Ace of Cups through the Queen of Wands to the King of Cups. All of the figures in these three cards face to the left (even in the Ace of Cups which might be expected to be forward-facing, the golden fish that arise from and swim around the chalice face to the left). In this story, then, it seems that the Ace of Cups represents a beginning, an initial gift of connection and intuition that then led to a relationship with the Queen of Wands, a queen of fire, energy, passion and creativity. This seems to clearly indicate a relationship with Brigid (Celtic fire goddess). Through this relationship with the Queen of Wands, there is then movement towards the King of Cups, a powerful king of the depths of intuition and emotion. Again, this seems to so obviously indicate Manannan, not only in imagery and symbolism, but in the suggestion of intense emotional engagement that I feel with him. The three cards, moving from right to left, actually move across my altar from my Brigid candle to my Manannan candle, again seeming to indicate a linear movement from one to the other. Yet, the fact that Brigid is represented by a Queen and Manannan by a King (each of which themselves have a balance of energies within them — fiery feminine, watery masculine) seems to be a strong suggestion that, even within this linear progress, Brigid and Manannan are paired as a couple and are intimately related to each other. Overall, the advice of this final reading seems to be to accept the unfolding progress of events at face value — a linear movement through/away from Brigid and towards Manannan — and to allow myself to explore this relationship with Manannan more deeply, but without worrying that to do so will somehow weaken my relationship to Brigid. As a fiery Queen of Wands used to being the center of attention and showing up in the center of the spread, it's unlikely she will be going anywhere any time soon.

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.

Saturn Return: A Ritual for Manannan

A mostly impromptu ritual based loosely on the design I've been using with the Lady of the Stars group, very loosely, with improvised invocation and blessing. I asked for the presence of the god of the sea who came to me in dreams, asking to know him better, to explore our relationship.

In some ways, I felt this ritual was frustrating and dissatisfying. I was not able to get a clear "read" on this god of the sea (I think I have permission to call him Manannan for now, even if this isn't his true or only name), and the images during my meditation seemed murky and and uncertain. Perhaps this was because I had no formal invocation, but spent time simply asking for his presence in stumbling phrases. I'm not sure.

I sank into trance to the sense of my own breath and pulsing blood as the movement and sound of waves, ebb and flow, back and forth. It was almost as though I could feel my body swaying with the tides, as the waves lapped the shore of my body with every breath. I held the shell in my hand that had been a gift from the ocean when we were there in September. Cool and seemingly soft at first, it grew warm and hard in my hands as I breathe, feeling the push and pull within me, lulling me. Still, for a long time, I could not "see" anything the way I have when entering trances with Brigid Star Fire recently. Just the pulse and rhythm of the waves seemed to envelop me. After a time, it seemed to me that I was in a tiny wooden boat, rocking upon a huge, mighty ocean that stretched for miles in all directions so that I couldn't see the shore anywhere, only horizons of shimmering water on all sides. I sat for a while, feeling the tiny boat rocking beneath me, creaking, so small and fragile on that vast realm. I realized at one point that there were oars in the bottom of the boat, and I picked them up and made a few clumsy attempts to paddle, though I didn't know how and, in any case, did not know which way I should be moving.

An oar slipped out of my hand and, after floating for a moment, began to sink beneath the waves. Without thinking, I dove in after it, soon realizing that I, too, was now sinking and sinking, deeper and deeper, into the depths of the ocean. I felt the sensation of unthinkable depths stretching down below me into darkness, and the pressure of the water above me growing greater and greater as I sank. I remembered the experience of a vision from before, an encounter with the Lady of the Stars when she sent me plunging into the dark depths of the ocean, and like then, I tried to relax and allow my body to sink without fighting. I soon found that I was standing on the ocean's bottom in a midnight of water, no sun or starlight penetrating this deep. (All of this, though, came in only glimpses of trance that seemed murky and difficult to "hold onto.") Around me were bone-white coral reefs and silt kicked up by my walking. The enormous pressure of the ocean above me suddenly had me feeling flushed and overheated with exertion (even in the cool room of the study in my thin ritual dress). I bent down and saw, half buried in the sand of the ocean's floor, a shining object — when I bent down to pick it up, I discovered it was a perfectly circular, hand-held mirror. It reflected a silvery light that flashed and glinted. When I held it up to my eyes to peer into it, I caught a glimpse of my own face — I seemed to be made of blue fire, my hair drifting and dancing above me in dark blue-black curls and waves, my skin a deep, shimmering blue with hints and ripples of green — and as I looked in, I could sense somehow that the rest of me, too, looked this way, that I was clothed in the same shimmering, sheer-sparkling blue and green robes from the dream, and they swirled and turned about me in the currents of the water. Startled, I turned the mirror away from myself. It glimmered and caught light coming from somewhere.

Though I could not see the sun or moon coming through the waters, some light from above reflected in the mirror in one long beam of silvery light that shot up through the depths back towards the surface. As I turned the mirror, the beam of silvery light tilted and swerved, changed direction until I was holding the mirror before me, reflecting its beam as though it were a flashlight illuminating a path along the ocean floor. I began to follow where this beam of light led (as I walked, the pressure and heat seemed to ease, so that I again felt light and cool), and soon came across a deep underwater cave of tumbled, jumbled dark black rocks. I entered into the cave, and within it was a massive figure of a king, who reminded me more than a little of King Triton from the Disney movie, The Little Mermaid: friendly and old, white-haired and wise. I asked him if he was Manannan, the sea god who came to me in dreams. And the figure began to laugh, a great booming laugh that was more a thundering of the water than a sound itself, and it went on and on, a bass note pulsing through the ocean in all directions. After a moment, it started to seem almost mechanical, like the giant, frightening head in the Wizard of Oz. On an impulse, I lifted the silver moon-mirror again and, over my shoulder, caught sight of a smiling, mischievous younger face behind me. I swirled around in a quick turn, and there was the sea god I was more familiar with — a smaller, younger figure, not thin but healthy and muscular with not an ounce of fat on him, sleek but thick like a dolphin, hair waving with kelp and seaweed. The figure of the king behind me seemed now, quite obviously as though it'd always been, covered with lichen and coral and other bits of crumbling, eerie sea anemones, so that even the crown itself was some bits of coral and fronds. I felt as though I could scrape away the layers with my fingernail. I felt confused and unable to focus well. I held out the shell that I had been carrying, the gift I had received from the ocean, as though showing my ticket or invitation to a party, my explanation for being there. Manannan took the shell from me and blew into its narrow end as though it were an instrument, and sure enough, out of its bell-shaped, wider opened end there unfurled a bouquet of lavish underwater fronds and floral-looking plants blossoming in reds and purples. It was ridiculous and silly — yet, when he handed it back to me, it seemed utterly precious and the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I could not ask him questions, I felt incapable of either articulating any or being able to hear or listen for any answers. I was not able to hold any image for long. Yet when I tried to ask Manannan if he would help me with my Saturn Return work, I got the sense that this king in the underwater cave was, in some ways, connected to that work and to my perception of authority — some laughing, mechanical fake or fraud, in some way, unresponsive, perhaps antiquated and crusted over, and certainly not what it seems. I also seemed to get the sense that this type of meditation was not going to work as well with Manannan as it has seemed to with Brigid — that my way to connect with and communicate with him was going to be much more visceral and embodied, less cerebral (and it wasn't until this that I realized just how "in the head" much of my connection with Brigid has been in my rituals, very visual and auditory). My relationship with Manannan, if there was going to be one, if I decided I wanted one, was going to be much more about experiencing the Divine within myself, the feelings and sensations that weave together my body and my emotions as sometimes strange, impenetrable mysteries. I got the strong sense — though not in words — that this work would be about energy and sensuality, about spending time in ritual simply sitting with the feeling of the ocean and its presence in my very blood and body and breath. As these impressions arose in me, I found it impossible to stay "in" the trance, but at the same time felt again that pulsing of my breath and blood and the rhythm and sound of the waves washing up the shore, as I had at the beginning. I spent some time simply sitting with and experiencing this sensation in my body, and as I did, I found my heartbeat increasing, growing excited, and a kind of sensual longing rising within me similar to what I had felt in my dream.

I am not at all sure this will help me with my Saturn Return work, or if this will be an appropriate relationship to pursue while also trying to cultivate my relationship with Brigid Star Fire. I felt, despite the experiential connection with the sea as I breathed in trance, that afterwards I had very few answers or indications about what I should or could be doing, what direction to go in.

I drew three cards in divination as part of the ritual: one for the shore (right), one for the horizon (left), and one for the deep (center). The cards I drew were:

Ace of Cups (h) <- Ten of Wands (d) Eight of Wands (s) ->

I am not sure what to make of this reading (and want to borrow Jeff's newest book on the tarot to explore some more intuitive ways of reading the cards, as well as perhaps begin to branch out into alternative forms of divination, like the ogham). It seems to me that the Eight of Wands on the shore represents the beginning of adventure, the activity and energy of a new endeavor (perhaps as a previous one comes to an end), casting chance to the winds to see where things might lead. Ace of Cups on the horizon seems to represent a kind of ideal, where water meets sky, and the gift and promise of the sea as that place of reflection and connection, source and renewal. The Ten of Wands is a card of pressure and responsibility, even one that could indicate taking on too much, more than you can handle, and facing the possibility of choosing to lay down some of those burdens (or realize that the world does not depend on you). Yet in the position of the deep, it seems to also indicate the sense of just how great a pressure there is upon the oceans, which truly are responsible for all life on the planet, and the burden that is held lightly, but seriously and loyally. That the majority of the cards in this drawing should be wands, a suit of fire, seems somehow out of sync and not what I would expect from a connection with Manannan. (But Manannan is also a magician and a trickster figure... perhaps the wand as magician's tool has a place here?)

All in all, the ritual leaves me feeling just as uncertain and confused as I was before, and feeling no closer to being able to handle the coming Saturn Return with any special help or insight. Still, maybe a commitment to regular "sensual" practice is exactly what I need to help balance out the over-analytical side of me and ground me in my emotions and intuitions. I'm just not sure....

Saturn Return: A Schedule

Saturn will come full circle and cross the place it occupied in the sky at the time of my birth three times within the next two years:

• December 25, 2011
• March 24, 2012 (Saturn in retrograde)
• September 16, 2012

A Schedule of Saturn Return Work

• Meditation Rites when the Moon conjuncts Saturn.
  Roughly once or twice a month for the next two years, I will hold meditation rites when the moon comes into conjunction with Saturn as it circles the zodiac. For most of this time, it will come into conjunction with Saturn itself, and the placement of Saturn in my natal chart, on different days or at different times within the same day. As Saturn approaches the point when it has come full circle within my own chart, these times will grow closer together. Because my moon is in my twelfth house, the house of mysticism, union, creativity and vision, my emotions may often be mysterious and unfathomable to me yet also provide me with insight and intuition that I do well to listen to and follow. For this reason, the moon may be an appropriate guide to connecting with the energies of my Saturn Return in an intuitive, creative way that will lead to healthy, helpful growth and integration.
• Weekly Journaling on Saturn Return Topics.
  Starting in mid-October, for a year I will spend time each week (on Saturday) to journal about topics specifically relating to my Saturn Return and its energies and influences. I will continue this weekly journaling for a year, taking me just a month beyond my third and final Saturn Return.
• Miscellaneous and Spontaneous Work.
  As time passes over the next two years, I will be attending carefully to the themes and messages I receive through my meditative and journaling work. I may decide to include other ritual work or other forms of creative work inspired by these practices, as well as incorporating Saturn Return work into seasonal holy days and other significant occasions.

Questions and Themes for Journaling

• Do you feel like your life is on track?
• Where do you feel pressured, disciplined, restrained?
• Are there authority figures that you distrust, or who restrain you more than is healthy?
• Where do you desire more freedom? Who or what is holding you back?
• Are you making a bad bargain, paying too high a price for something you don't really need?
• What does it mean to have Saturn in Libra?
• What does it mean to have Saturn in the First House?
• What does it mean to have Saturn conjunct Pluto?

Moon Conjunct Saturn: Calendar

• Febuary 21, 2011
• March 20, 2011
• April 16, 2011
• May 14 and 15, 2011
• June 10 and 11, 2011
• July 7 and 8, 2011
• August 4 (morning and evening), 2011
• September 28 (early morning and afternoon), 2011
• October 24 (evening and night), 2011
• November 23, 2011
• December 19, 2011

SATURN RETURN December 25, 2011

• January 16, 2012
• February 12, 2012
• March 11, 2012

SATURN RETURN, retrograde March 24, 2012

• April 7, 2012
• May 5, 2012
• June 1, 2012
• June 28, 2012
• July 26, 2012
• August 22, 2012

SATURN RETURN, September 16, 2012

• September 18, 2012
• October 15, 2012
• November 12, 2012
• December 9, 2012

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.

DOTR Lesson 3: Awen and Creative Work

The Killing Blow

Call me the name of peace
as though it were a curse,
and I will bless you, saying,
Yes, and I will lift up
the white flower of cowardice
and trembling, I will lift up that blossom
the color of snow and ocean foam
and moonlight, cloud and empty wind
and bone. I will lift it up with these hands
worn and worried with bickering,
limp with the luxury of blood,
the hands I inherited from my ancestors
whose bones, too, are white beneath the mud.
The goddess of war climbs the mountain's peak,
the hard, pale sunlight like the whites of her eyes.
Wonder, too, is a kind of power.
What curse she lays on the wearied earth, saying,
Yes, and Peace, and other fearful things.
The hills grow soft, will not be rushed
as last year's dead lift up
the small, white blossoms of the spring.

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.

DOTR Lesson 3: Awen and Creative Work

Feeding Seagulls

I don't know how they came all that way, following the Susquehanna
into the foothills of the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania,
to the empty field at the end of my street where I took my father
out beneath the high, gray winds of autumn
to show him how I called the birds to me.
It wasn't hard, I told him when he asked
about the teacher's phone call, the wasted lunches, and why
I spent each recess in the field feeding gulls instead of playing with the other
kids. But I knew he couldn't understand unless I showed him.

Again, I plucked a grape and held its slick, dark shape
between two pudgy fingers — arced my arm in one smooth and mighty toss,
shoulder loose and elbow locked, the last flick of wrist sending the fruit soaring
until it disappeared against the blurry sky.
Again and again, I swung with all the longing I could send
out of my awkward, grade school body — the silent call to come, to feast,
to circle in. For a week this had gone on, me alone in the field
throwing grapes and torn bits of white bread smeared with jelly
into the air, as one, then several, then whole flocks of seagulls
gathered wheeling and quarreling around me, each silhouette two sharp
parentheses hinged around a tight, tiny body that moved like a boat
cutting through invisible waters, lazy with its breathless speed.

My father waited. Wedged between empty field and empty sky,
the mute sting of loss was creeping in. It was too late,
or too cold, or too dim in the autumn evening. I begged for him to wait
a little longer, as I tossed higher and higher, wished to god I had brought bread
instead, and dreamed with every second how the wings had sounded
against the air, the tense emptiness of those wild pilgrims
dancing and screaming around the promised offerings as they came.
I don't know how they made it all that way, so far from the shores
where my people, too, had spilled in ragged, starving flocks
against the land and staggered towards the mountains in the west.
My father turned to walk back home. Behind us, one or two gulls,
secreted away behind the clouds, dropped down on the abandoned food.

The ocean was only a story they blamed on one another,
crying over and over how they had lost it.

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.

Brigid Star Fire, An Imbolc Meditation

I began in a field, a green expanse full of flowers and bright sunlight unrolling on all sides. A figure danced in green and gold rippling, barely distinguishable at first from the wind shifting and dancing through the long grasses — yet as she moved closer, I was able to make her out. Eyes that flashed black and full of stars, a glimpse here and there in her turning and spiraling of a darkness, glinting cold and dark, then slipping, spinning back into green and gold. The mantle she wore spun out around her as she turned and danced, the colors of its threads flung out like sparks from a fire, leaping, or like flower petals of purple crocuses and myriad colored wildflowers — some falling to the ground to spring up as blossoms from scattered seeds, while others fluttered, took flight as a thousand butterflies flirting with the warm breeze.

So unlikely a scene, in the midst of this cold and bitterly long winter, that it took me a moment to adjust, to sink more deeply into the sense of place and allow myself to enter, to engage, the awakened land. The candle on my altar — the golden fire-in-the-water afloat among golden flecks of glitter in the blue bowl, the flame of transformation and forge fire that marked the opened center way — hissed and sparked as it consumed the offering of butter. On either side, the red candle of fire, poetry and inspiration and the blue candle of water, healing and integration burned steadily in their holders. But my eyes were closed, as I sunk deeper into trance. The green, gold meadow grew more intense in my mind's eye as I slipped down into my true center.

What is this dancing? I asked her, running to keep up as she laughed and twirled. What do you have to teach me, Brigid? Is spring here already? It seems so cold still. She seemed to ignore my half-frantic questions, challenging me with her movements to stay on my toes. Suddenly, she flopped down in the grass like a small girl, giggling, laying on her stomach propped up on her elbows, running her fingers through the grasses and flower blossoms. Her gold-flamed auburn hair fell around her face in braids, and the soles of her bare feet were slightly darkened with the dirt of the earth. I looked more closely at where her fingers were playing and dancing through the rich flora of the meadow. She plucked a white-fuzzed sphere of a dandelion and sat up, cross-legged, and held it up between us for me to examine. "Funny," she mused, "How the same flower that can be so golden and bright as the sun — turns to white, soft fluff carried on the wind when it goes to seed...." She took a deep breath and blew, closing her eyes for a moment as if making a wish. The we both watched as the seeds one by one let loose and drifted like snow across the wide field — some snagging in the nearby grasses and trembling there, others carried far and high until they were lost to our sight against the bright sky. "How much they look like tiny stars!" Brigid exclaimed, and she was on her feet again, running and dancing among the flowers. The field seemed suddenly full of dandelions, most of them golden yellow and bristling with sunshine. When Brigid found one ready to seed, a crystal fuzz-ball of intricate webbing in white, she'd flick it with her toe as she danced past, sending the seeds scattering to the wind.

But, I called out, what about my work? What work should I be doing? I have been so tired, it's so hard for me to work up the energy to stick to a discipline. You are the Goddess of the Forge, of the steady and unglamorous work of transformation! Don't you have any advice for me? She laughed with that laugh that always seems to mean, "You just don't get it, darling!" She continued dancing through the green, sun-bathed fields, calling out behind her, "The dandelion is not always sunny. Sometimes it must go to seed to survive, sometimes it must put down deep roots! Not every season is the season of discipline and work! Things change! I am not just a goddess of transformation — I am also the goddess of inspiration!" As if in response to these words, on my altar the red candle sparked and hissed, and its flame danced in its holder. "Now it's time for you to indulge in some joy, my darling!" Brigid announced, catching me up with her hands and swinging me around trying to urge me to dance. "Now is a time for the joy of inspiration — do what brings you joy, find again the playfulness in yourself. Now is not a time for work — I am sick of work — now is the time to play! As the spring comes and the days warm, play and be joyful! These are your duties now, to dance the spring in, to welcome it as it deserves!"

Her words kept coming, urging me to seek again the source of my joy, to sing my soul-song in playful notes, and set aside my worries about obligation and progress. Moved by her words, I joined her dancing, and together we spiraled and swirled and skipped through the grasses, singing and laughing beneath a high, bright sky. After a time, I asked her, Should I — I mean, you are my goddess. Should I take an oath to you, a formal vow? She scoffed kindly at my question. But others in our group have done so — and I have no doubt in my heart that I am devoted to you... Her dance slowed beside me so that she could gaze more deeply into my eyes. "For others," she said, "An oath is like the spiderweb that connects and weaves them together in my service — and it is on those strands that the jewels of transformation, devotion and inspiration collect like dew. But you — you are already too full of duties and responsibilities, shouldering too much of the world as an obligation. No, you do not need to make any more promises to me that you have not already made. What you need to learn.... is a little bit of joy and freedom!" And with that, we were spinning again, dancing. The red candle on the altar sparked and danced along.

And as the trance deepened, as I slipped in and out of the rhythm of the spiraling dance across the meadow, it seemed that suddenly she caught me up in an embrace full of passion and joy, kissing me deep on the mouth — her breath becoming my breath, sweet and warm with the scent of flowers and greenery in springtime. I opened my arms to embrace her, and found I was embracing nothing but breeze and sunlight, as my body shivered, transfused with a sudden warmth tingling in every cell. She had entered into my body, or merged, or blended — I found myself to now be wearing the lush green robe and mantle hemmed with golden knotwork ribbon weaving its patterns along each edge, and as I spun, it rippled out around me in long undulating waves that seemed the very expression of joy and creativity rooted deep within the earth. The dandelion seeds drifted white around me, and soon the field was full of them, wafting as thick as snow but warm and soft. I found the meadow had grown dark and the seeds drifted upwards to mingle with the stars against the darkness of the night sky. I seemed to hear her voice from within — yet from a great distance — "What you need to learn, child, is how to plant the seeds of joy in your heart and nurture them as they crave. What grows of these — leave that to me...."

Then slipping quickly back, the trance came to an end and I was sitting before my altar again, watching the three flames burning steady and silent in the still air. Dipping my finger in the butter again, I consecrated a fourth candle, a large white pillar in a red-and-orange stained glass hurricane jar. This was to be my flamekeeping candle for the coming year, lit and tended every twenty days during my shift. What promises you have from me are already enough, Brigid? I pray this is so, and that I may keep them dear....