My Babies

As promised, I give you a picture of what I planted.

My Babies!

That’s Rosemary, Lavender, Sage, Thyme (Orange and Lemon varieties), Yarrow, Marjoram and Parsley in the herb bed. I will be adding plain Thyme, along with Dill, Calendula, and Mugwort later (yes, there is enough room). I’m thinking about filling up the spaces in between the herbs with annuals this year, since I know the herbs are going to get MUCH BIGGER in time.

In the second bed (which I couldn’t get a good picture of because the light was terrible) I planted lettuce, chard, kale, mustard greens, nasturtiums, and chives.  And watching over the tender little greens is this:

Soft and Fuzzy

Yes, that’s a big fuzzy mullein. Yes, to some people it’s a weed. To me it’s an extra special added bonus gift from the garden. Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows of my abiding affection for weeds–and mullein is one I’ve never really worked with before, though I’ve admired her tall spires in ditches and at the edges of farmer’s fields. I don’t know very much about Mullein except that the blossoms are used in a (very effective) oil for ear troubles. But when I started clearing the beds and saw the Mullein there, it seemed like a sign that it might be time to work with the plant. So I carefully weeded around it. We’ll see if it plays nicely with my greens or not.

I admit there’s a disappointing lack of dandelion and chickweed in the garden. But now we’ve cleared some ground, I think there’s a good chance they’ll turn up. Just don’t tell the neighbors I’m hoping for more weeds.

I’m excited to see what will happen in my little postage stamp garden. I thought I might feel disappointed not to have more herbs, but I’m actually looking forward to discovering how a handful of plants will meet my culinary and witchy needs. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it in the coming months.

A Bit of Earth

“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”

In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled.

“Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“To plant seeds in–to make things grow–to see them come alive,” Mary faltered.

He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes.

“Do you–care about gardens so much,” he said slowly.

“I didn’t know about them in India,” said Mary. “I was always ill and tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and stuck flowers in them. But here it is different.”

Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.

“A bit of earth,” he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.

“You can have as much earth as you want,” he said. “You remind me of some one else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a bit of earth you want,” with something like a smile, “take it, child, and make it come alive.”

–The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

Since I came to the city in September I’ve mourned the loss of my garden. Of course with a full time job I wouldn’t have enough time to negotiate with the bindweed and blackberries for garden space, much less do all the other tasks required by a large garden. But as trees started budding and spring blossoms opened I couldn’t help aching a little bit, knowing that I wouldn’t be participating in the growth cycle in the same way this year.

Weedy!

Then my girlfriend’s mom asked if I’d like to garden with her. Of course I said yes.

Less Weedy

And that was when I was granted two raised of my own to plant in. It’s a much smaller space than I had before, so I have to choose what to plant carefully, but it’s a chance to get my hands in the ground–and it’s a project I can manage in the time allowed, especially since there will be someone there to water when I can’t make it across town to check on my plants.

Compost in Waiting

As you can see, the beds were full of weeds and in need of a good layer of compost (hence the line of plastic bags), but the little garden itself is a charming space. And more importantly I get to share it. I had forgotten how gardening is excellent therapy until I started clearing the weeds from the first bed.

When I get around to posting again I’ll tell you about the (other) unexpected gift, and show you what I planted. I know you can hardly wait.

Oceanside, and a Public Service Announcement.

So it appears that excitement in general doesn’t agree with me–or at least it doesn’t agree with the blog. While the events of the past two months have been equal parts wonderful and horrible, they have been 100% . . . intense. Which is bad for blogging, when you are me. I have a short attention span. But most of y’all knew that.

ANYWAY! I have lots to show-and-tell you all. IF I can get myself to settle down and blog a little more consistently–and I am making no promises. I have good intentions. But my life is full of all these . . . EVENTS. It’s absurd. I keep telling the universe I have a blog to update but the universe seems to think I have more important things to do. AS IF THAT WERE POSSIBLE.

My first show-and-tell actually happened two weeks ago. I accompanied one of my most significant distractions (She knows who she is.) (She will also hopefully not be offended by being referred to as a distraction.) to Oceanside for a weekend at the beach. It was the best weekend I’ve had in . . . I don’t want to think about it. Of course I took pictures on the beach. Because that’s what I do.

The View from our Cabin

The weather was blustery and damp–just what you’d expect–but we got just enough of a mild spell for a good walk on the beach.

Tim Burton Tree

That tree looks like it’s going to crawl down the hill to the water, I swear.

Beautiful Barnacles

Purdy.

Oooh, Shiny!

Oooh, aaaaaah.

It’s alive!!!!

Guess what this stuff is living on? Can you figure it out from the closeup? Here:

Portable Reef?

These days, even ocean life is available to go. Okay that’s an awful joke–and seriously, I was as saddened by the pitcher hosting a colony of frizzly things as I was fascinated. (No, “frizzly things” is not the botanical name. I’m not even sure they’re plants. My knowledge of ocean life is pathetically limited.) And now that things were living on the thing, I didn’t want to pick it up and put it in the garbage. What’s a hippie pagan to do? I left it. The wee creature in the shell was still alive, and the waves were coming in to take him or her back out. I’m trying not to lose sleep over it but y’all know it isn’t easy.

DON’T LITTER PEOPLE. Didn’t you go to kindergarten? That concludes my Public Service Announcement for the day.

D is for Dandelion: Pagan Blog Project 2013

D is for Dandelion. How could it not be?

I meant to write a much better post. One with pictures and orderly ideas. But this week got away from me, what with car trouble and money trouble as a result of car trouble and . . . you get the idea. D is really for distractions, but I couldn’t find a way to make that fit the Pagan Blog Project theme. So, on to Dandelions! My favorite.

Though the flood of Dandelion posts stopped coming ages ago, I haven’t stopped my love affair with Dandelion.

Nothing more common than a dandelion, right? Except . . . not.

Dandelion was the first plant that ever came to me in a vision. Well . . . actually, I guess I came to Dandelion. In my vision I was very tiny, and being carried by some kind of bird. I was dropped into a dandelion blossom. There were other things in that vision too–giant stone goddesses in a cavernous temple, and feeling my smallness in a big universe. But the Dandelion was the destination: it was light and hope in a dark place.

The trouble with writing a Dandelion post is that there is SO MUCH I COULD TELL YOU ABOUT HER. So I’ll just tell you a few of the impressions that come to mind most immediately for her. Then you can work with her and see for yourself–anyone in a temperate zone should have easy access to Dandelions as long as they aren’t buried under a bunch of snow.

Metaphysically speaking, Dandelion flowers and those wonderful seed-filled puffballs lift the spirits, and can bring childlike cheer and playfulness to our magic. The seed heads are especially good for the kind of magic where you want to send good wishes into the air–especially if those wishes are for more than yourself.

With the way she grows abundantly everywhere, and every part of her is so good for you, Dandelion embodies generosity and community. What looks like a petal in a Dandelion blossom is actually an entire flower, perfect and complete–but together all those little flowers make up something greater than each on their own. A great ally for someone who wishes to invest themselves in community but struggles to maintain personal boundaries and identity.

And her roots–roots that go deep, roots you will never manage to dig up completely no matter how hard you try–bring life and openness to dead soil, drawing on nutrients deep down. She is like that energetically, too: work with her roots when you feel you need to draw on strength (or other qualities) that are buried too deep to access easily. But be careful here–Dandelion can also bring to the surface long-buried emotions, and working with her roots this way can be intense. Not bad, but intense.

There is more–so much more–I could say about Dandelion. And maybe I will. Later. Now I have to get ready for work.

D is for Douglas Fir: Pagan Blog Project 2013

Douglas firs were like guardians of the home I left behind, standing at the edges of the property and keeping silent watch. There were three firs, all growing near my bedroom window, that I felt particularly attached to. One I could see from bed, staring at its tall shape whenever I looked up from my journal or my knitting. I often sat beneath its branches and leaned against its rough bark when I was feeling deeply unhappy; I was usually comforted and steadied by contact with it. The other two loomed over the area where I most often did ceremony when I worked outdoors. They were not warm and fuzzy like the first; but I sometimes felt like if I could step between them at just the right moment, under just the right conditions, I might end up goddess knows where. Probably somewhere with giant carnivorous plants.

The trees are some of the things I mourn when I’m missing my former home.

But Douglas Firs thrive in this area, and when I go for walks at work I find their spiky, distinct pine cones on the ground, and look up into constant green and feel comforted again. My experiences with the tree thus far make me think of them as the perfect ally or totem for those who are mourning a deep loss, or who feel trapped in despair. The comfort Doug Fir offers is not the kind that tells you not to cry, it isn’t smile and be happy comfort. It’s deeper and kinder than that: they allow you space for sadness, but they also remind you that life doesn’t end just because you are sad. They are too wise to tell you not to cry, but they are too strong to let you lay down and die. They tell you to keep trying to make it better.

I’ve read that the thick bark of the Douglas Fir enables some trees to survive forest fires, though they are scorched and blackened. They survive devastation, even if they will never be the same again. They remind us we can do this too.

There’s a wonderful post at the Therioshamanism blog about how Douglas Fir helps her with being a transplant: I like what she has to say on the subject and couldn’t say it better, and I suggest you read her take on the tree as totem.

I’d add that I find Douglas Fir to be a powerful ally for the uprooted, those who’ve been jettisoned from home or comfort zone unwillingly–or who, like me, left because it had become unbearable to stay.

Like Apple, Douglas Fir can help us to survive when we are out of our element. But I think of Apple as the companion of the adventurer, who traverses foreign territory and then returns home. Doug Fir, in contrast, is a friend to those who have lost their homes, to the permanently displaced, or to those who for whom home is not the place of safety we would like it to be.

I mentioned in a previous post that I like to infuse the needles in oil. This is my favorite way to work with the tree. You can add the oil to your bath water or make bath salts with it–the best way to take comfort from Douglas Fir, I think. But a sachet of the needles, or keeping the cones on your altar or using them in charms would also be appropriate. And, as usual the simplest way is to hang out with one, and you’ll get fresh air at the same time.

C is for Coming Out: Pagan Blog Project 2013

Ah, coming out–I’ve done so much of it over the past decade! These days I don’t have to do much coming out because I’m a fairly open book. Granted, my transparency is partially involuntary: I’ve never understood how people can create and maintain a deliberate persona. Clearly (haha, see what I did there?) I will never be an international woman of mystery. Or even a local woman of mystery.

As y’all know from the story of my moment of self realization, once I figure something out about myself, it’s not long before everyone around me knows it too. AlTHOUGH, coming out to my parents when I fell for a woman was not quite as amusing as the first blurted confession of bisexuality. Being gay is just about an unforgivable sin to my birth family. Telling my mother I was involved with a woman began a decade long conflict that ended, last May, in her refusing to speak to me. (This isn’t actually such a bad thing. But that’s another blog post.) And yes, coming out to her as pagan was part of that ending. The situation was far more complicated than that–isn’t it always?–but the risk of losing people when you come out is very real. It’s no wonder some pagans stay in the broom closet pretty much forever.

When I first joined Facebook and realized that family and friends who knew me back in my fundamentalist days were going to be able to find me there, I debated about whether or not I should be open about my spirituality. I decided to go with letting my freak flag fly, for a few reasons. (You didn’t think you’d get through the PBP without at least one of my lists, did you?)

1. I wanted to give paganism a more realistic public face. (Not that I’m a public figure, but . . . y’all know what I mean). It’s true that a good number of us pagans are wired a little differently than the average practitioner of mainstream religion. But most of us couldn’t be as ridiculous as that British guy in the red bathrobe if we tried. And most of us aren’t interested in trying. (Also most of us don’t even own red velour bathrobes, much less wear them in public.) I’m just a regular person who also happens to be pagan. I figure the more people who know that, the better for public perception of pagans.

2. Isolation is unhealthy. I am a fan of small ritual circles and even solitary practice, but I think that the craft suffers when it is tucked away in dark corners and curtained living rooms. You see the same kind of problems with the nuclear family–the self-contained unit is set up to rot from the inside out. Similarly, insular religion makes for poor mental health. Whether you practice with others or not, whether you open your coven to a larger number of people or not isn’t the point. The point is that the human mind needs an influx of fresh ideas on a regular basis to keep from stagnating and growing unhealthy things in its depths. It’s much easier to keep the currents moving when you are open about your path with a variety of people.

3. Secrets arouse suspicion. I’m not saying we all need to turn our paganism into a sideshow and perform for the cameras. But I think being hush hush about our spirituality makes it seem like we have something to hide, something to be ashamed of–whether we actually do or not. I’m sure it makes some people fear us, and I think fear is food for hatred and violence. Which leads me to my next reason–

4. I’d like to make the world safer for us, and for future pagans. Creating a safe world for pagans is obviously a complicated task, but I think we can look to several other civil rights struggles for inspiration. I can’t think of an instance where the government took it upon itself to uphold the rights of a minority–I’m no historian, but I’m pretty confidant that legal protections come after struggle, and under the weight of public demand. If we are an invisible minority, then our struggles are easy for the general public to ignore. One person standing up for themselves is easy to brand as a rebel or a freak. But if there are a lot of us–well. They can’t ignore us all, right?

Now, after saying all that, I have to make the disclaimer that you should take my list of reasons with a grain of salt. The decision to come out–or not–is personal and important and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you what to do. I know coming out of the broom closet wouldn’t be a wise choice for everyone. For some people it is quite literally unsafe, and I hope those people have the sense to ignore my little list. There’s courage, and then there’s foolhardiness. And I hope y’all wouldn’t let anyone talk you into being a fool–not even me.

C is for Carnelian (and Courage): Pagan Blog Project 2013

This post is a little bit all over the place–I’ve tried to rein it in but sometimes my brain is disorderly and chaotic and there’s only so much I can do with it.

Sometimes stones will practically crawl off of shore shelves and climb into my pockets. Not very often really–it seems like most of the stones I work with are given to me as gifts–but sometimes.

This happened with a piece of Carnelian a few weeks ago, and who was I to argue? So naturally when it came time to choose my first C word I reached for the Carnelian and sat down to do a little meditating with it.

My Pretty, Pretty Carnelian

I like to start my journeys with a visualization I got from Susun Weed’s Greenwitch course: walking down a set of 13 steps. I count down from 13 as I walk, and when my imaginary foot hits the imaginary ground at the count of 13 it’s often like something clicks into place, and I can feel myself in the midst of a different setting than wherever I’m journeying from.

This time I was at the edge of the wood, and the sun was an orange cinder already half sunk behind the horizon–exactly the color of the big chunk of carnelian in my hand. I stood on snow–and I had some amazing furry boots, but that’s probably not a vital detail of this journey. Once I was really immersed in the setting I started walking, and wondering if it was a good idea to be heading into the woods at dusk (does anyone else wonder things like this in journey work? Or am I just a little too type A?).

Of course immediately upon thinking this I heard wolves howling–that’s the kind of thing you can expect to happen in dreams and journeys, immediate materialization of random thoughts and fears, as well as of good things. I’m glad real life isn’t like that. I started walking faster, down a slight hill, and at the bottom a cottage with a smoking chimney and glowy windows.

I ran to the cottage and knocked on the wooden door, and it swung open. When I stepped in, I would have assumed there would be a wise old woman or something, but there was no one at all. And as I looked around the cottage, two things happened.

One, I realized the cottage was my home–or it had been at one time.

Two, I started having to stoop to fit inside the house.

And as I thought, this place is too small for me, I started growing at a ridiculous rate, like Alice after eating the little cake. I broke the little house to pieces–and the trees now came just higher than my ankles, and the wolves I’d been afraid of were the size of horseflies.

I stood there all huge and shocked and felt a sort of firey, tingly feeling all through my body, and I hear/felt a voice/thought telling me I have a bigger life to inhabit–and to fill with amazing things and people. (That’s a tall order. I already know some seriously amazing people. The thought of more of them is almost overwhelming.) (Also, please don’t think I’m on an ego trip talking about building a bigger life. I had made my life really, really small. To say my life will be bigger isn’t saying a whole lot.)

Gradually the feeling dissipated and I opened my eyes.

After my little trip I looked up Carnelian in a couple of my books to see what the “experts” have to say on the subject.

Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic mentioned a lot of things, including courage and protection–which seemed in line with what I saw in my journey.

The Book of Stones (by Robert Simmons and Naisha Ahsian) also mentioned courage. It described how Carnelian can give us more physical vitality and passion, and can help us take action and bring ideas and dreams into reality or physical form.

Which brings me back to the journey. What was interesting about my vision was that the moment I felt I’d need the most courage was AFTER the miraculous growth spurt. I realized that the woods and the wolves and the smashed shelter all happened before the journey–the imagery was just a quick summary of my past. Demolishing the house wasn’t an act of courage, it was almost involuntary. But inhabiting a bigger life? That’s intimidating. That’s something I still have to figure out how to do, and something I was resisting for a very long time because–honestly, I lacked the courage to break out of my self-imposed limitations.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Courage lately because I’ve been reading up on Druidry, and courage is one of the 9 virtues of a druid listed in the ADF’s Dedicant Manual. The manual describes Courage as “right action in the face of danger”, but I think that’s an incomplete definition. Courage can also be the decision to take action that scares us–danger or no danger.

Yes, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to dismantle and then rebuild your life.

But it takes even more courage to see when your life isn’t fulfilling its potential and do something about it BEFORE a disaster comes along to boot you out of your comfort zone. I tend to wait until something drastic pushes me to change, and then it’s all explosions and tears and “I should have seen that coming.” I suppose it gets things done but y’all, I don’t recommend the path of smash. I recommend embracing a kinder, gentler kind of courage–one where you say “okay it’s scary to change things but if I don’t it’s going to hurt more later.”

Magically speaking, you could work with Carnelian to help you with this very practical, useful sort of bravery. It’s what I’m going to try to do, because I don’t like to imagine the alternative.

Going Away, Coming Back

I took a little trip down to Eugene this weekend to visit some friends I hadn’t seen in a few years. My trip mostly consisted of eating and talking, with some movie watching thrown in. But my friends’ apartment complex had a nice little trail running around its edges and meeting up with a city trail, so I took a nice walk.

I’m pretty sure that there is the Willamette River, if I’m reading the map right.

I even got  a little sunshine–probably twenty minutes worth. It was nice to look at different trees and water than I usually get to look at. It’s always good to see friends, and to step out of my usual context for a few days.

When I shuffled through the door of my apartment with my bags this afternoon I felt a profound sense of comfort, and I realized I actually felt like I was coming home. It always takes a while, after moving to a new place, to achieve that feeling of home; it was a nice surprise to wrap up a lovely weekend.

You know you’re in a good place when one of the nicest parts of going away is getting to come back.

Usually the Last to Know

After yesterday’s heavy post I figured it was time for something a little lighthearted to remind y’all that I’m mostly a big goofy dork.

Also when I was checking out other Pagan Blog Project posts, Hare mentioned that moment when she realized she was attracted to the ladies, and it reminded me of the silliness of my own ah-HA! moment. It went something like this:

Back in 1999 I was working in an office in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There was a new-ish guy named Rick and we kind of hit it off right away, talked a lot on breaks, etc. He was reasonably attractive and I was tired of being single and I was considering trying to work up an interest in him. We went out for coffee after work.

We sat in a booth, and I was facing the counter, so I could see the barista. The new guy–I think his name might have been Rick–started telling me the story of his recently broken engagement. I think he might have been trying to get a sympathy shag, but I’m not sure because I was watching the barista. She had short hair, and was wearing a halter top. She had the most beautiful neck and shoulders I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t stop staring at her. And while Rick went on about . . . something to do with his ex, I couldn’t really focus on what he was saying–it suddenly occurred to me that the wistful feeling I was experiencing was not, in fact, about wishing I was as pretty as the girl behind the counter. It was about wishing I could kiss the girl behind the counter. I was ATTRACTED to her, in a big way. Outwardly nothing in the environment changed but internally it was like that moment in a movie where someone new walks into the bar and even the jukebox stops and stares.

I looked at Rick and blurted out, “I think I’m bisexual.”

Rick paused in his monologue, raised his eyebrows, and said: “Well. Yeah.”

What can I say? Sometimes I’m the last person to know things about myself.

B is for Brigid (Pagan Blog Project 2013)

I didn’t want to write about Brigid.

For one thing, there are an awful lot of posts about her already.

For another, due to my upbringing, my relationship with the concept of deity is fraught. As a general rule I don’t have much to do with deities, and they don’t seem to want to have much to do with me. When I do vision or journey work, I encounter all sorts of beings but none that I would describe as god(dess), most of the time.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t even know if I believe in gods/goddesses. But. There she is, this presence, this pull. A tugging that I’ve felt since I first encountered her in 2004. I’d been a pagan for just three years and my studies had been sporadic and scattered, but something about Brigid got a hold of me. A friend of mine felt the same, so we decided (as many naive baby pagans do) that we would do a ritual to dedicate ourselves to her.

We did the ceremony, and it was lovely, but nothing very exciting happened after. Life went on as usual. Brigid didn’t visit me in dreams or send messengers my way. I had a permanent falling out with the friend I’d done the ceremony with. After a few years it seemed like the pull I’d felt toward her was something I’d made up.

But I had a binder full of articles about Brigid I’d printed off the internet, and I couldn’t bring myself to recycle them during any of my frequent paperwork purges.

I stopped wearing the necklace I’d made with the Brigid medallion, but I couldn’t bring myself to give it away or sell it.

Every time someone would mention the goddess, I’d feel a funny little wistful ache. Then I’d forget about it.

Last year, as the demands of the people in my life started to conflict with my spiritual practice, I spent a lot of time reevaluating my path. I wondered if maybe I hadn’t imagined the connection I felt to Brigid. I wondered if she might be more than a nice idea. I wondered if I might try to just decide to believe in something, try creating a devotional practice even if I was full of doubt.

I wondered: If she is out there, would she welcome my attention after I had failed to follow through on working with her? I asked for some kind of sign, but I didn’t expect one.

And then I got an email from someone who had created a gorgeous Brigid art doll . . . and a few days later I received the doll in the mail. I was surprised and excited–and disappointed that the doll wouldn’t fit on the altar I had planned to put her on (she was taller than I’d expected).

So I put her on my desk with plans to move the altar somewhere else.

That was early September. A few weeks later Brigid was in a box in my trunk and I was sleeping on a mattress on my friend’s living room floor. Once I got semi-settled in my one-woman living room refugee camp, I put the Brigid figure on a little shelf in my crowded corner. My friend and I admired her, but I was in shock and the question of belief or spiritual practice was kind of on hold. I couldn’t connect to anything anyway–I wondered if all of my meditation and learning and magical work was a big lie I’d been telling myself, a crazy delusion to help me deal with the things I felt like I couldn’t walk away from. My doubt was deeper than it has ever been.

But when my friend and I moved into a bigger apartment and I unpacked my bedroom, the altar where Brigid would live was the first thing I set up. My spirituality was floundering, but creating Brigid’s altar was a compulsion I couldn’t ignore.

Brigid on Her Altar

Those three hawthorn berries picked at the roadside a few days before Samhain were for her altar, and I placed them in front of her with a hasty, embarrassed prayer. Help me survive this. Help me know what to do. Help me have some kind of hope. I didn’t believe it would do any good. I didn’t think anyone was listening. But, again, it was a compulsion. I wanted to believe there was some force, somewhere, that would intervene on my behalf, that would give me some relief or some nudge of guidance or some comfort. But I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t feel any connection to . . . well, anything. Not even to caring friends. The isolation of grief was absolute.

I’d like to say that after the prayer to Brigid everything was miraculously transformed, but we all know it doesn’t work that way. Change takes time, and as I’ve said before, magic isn’t about immediate gratification–and neither is prayer. Things did get better, but slowly, and I have no evidence that the prayer made a difference. For all I know, prayer only makes a difference in the mental state of the one saying it.

But the pull I feel to engage with Brigid more consciously and intentionally has been getting stronger–and I’m not sure what to do.

I still don’t know what I think about the gods. I’ve been struggling with the question for years. All week, thinking about writing this post, I’ve been mulling over the concept of deity and trying to figure out how to relate to it.

There’s this line in the movie Practical Magic: “You can’t practice witchcraft while you look down your nose at it.” As I consider the question of Brigid, consider the pull that I can’t ignore, I wonder if trying to work with a goddess I’m not sure I believe in is kind of the same thing. Can you worship the gods while looking down your nose at them? Or in my case, while not wanting to look at them at all?

I don’t have any answers to that question. I live in the middle of a constant tug of war between my skeptical side and my mystic side. I don’t know if this means I have a healthy balance or a split personality. And I don’t really know how to begin reconciling my internal contradictions. Do I just start saying prayers and making offerings and see what happens? Do I decide to believe in something? Do I see a therapist and ask for medication? Hell if I know.

All I know is that altar in the corner of my room has a strong gravitational pull, and I started wearing my Brigid medallion occasionally again.

Joseph Campbell talked a lot about living with myths that no longer fit us. As I understand it, he felt a lot of our problems as a society rose from a lack of a properly working mythos. I think if I’m going to be devoted to something, someone, I have to understand how it is relevant to me here and now. Figuring that out could take a while–especially when I’m not even sure where to start. I’m open to suggestions, y’all.