Blessings Darlings!
In a conversation with the Chubby Hubby, I was again decrying folks looking to 'consume' spirituality - buying lots of items, saving lots of shared 'information' on someone's ideas of what each days correspondences are, short meanings of symbols, short info on herbs, memes, etc. The CH, being wonderful and brilliant (why else would I marry and have children with him?) pointed out that 'consumption' is a very basic animal survival skill. He pointed to the cattle in the fields around the house - and that they spend darn near the entire day eating/chewing their cuds. They, literally consume ALL DAY LONG. He's certainly right about that!
OTOH - they eat grass. Grass is very low in nutritional value. They have to consume all day to get what they need, BECAUSE WHAT THEY EAT IS OF LOW VALUE.
We're mammals, yes - but we aren't cattle or sheep, right?
We humans are omnivores. Our systems are able to handle food with higher nutritional (and caloric) density. Eating a pound of meat will give us way more calories (the macroelement that powers our larger brains!) and still leave us more leisure time to focus on other things than eating enough raw spinach to provide us with the same amount of calories. Even cooking the spinach - putting some effort in early on - provides us with the vitamins and minerals that are more abundant in spinach, and makes it faster to eat it.
Now, apply that knowledge to our minds. You can try to fill up your mind using ... generic stuff shared on Facebook, from unknown and unvetted sources (even if you know the person sharing the printable cliff notes on herbs or crystals or whatever). Feeding your mind well on that stuff is going to take ingesting that all day every day. And not leave you time to do other things, whether than be your family, your job, cleaning house, overthrowing patriarchy - whatever.
Now, apply that knowledge to our spirits. Action (like at least cooking the spinach) helps you feed yourself better. There is a difference in the 'nutritional density' between active an passive spirituality. Passive spirituality would be things like consuming a public ritual done by others, where you are rather like an audience member at a performance, passively letting the actors move you 'between the worlds' and them doing all the work vs you being there and actively sending energy to everything from the casting of sacred space to the magical working (you've now cooked the spinach!) and doing ritual/magic yourself. There is a difference between lying out in the grass 'open for the Divine to fill you' vs making offerings to a specific God or Goddess, or writing poetry for/about that Divinity. There is a difference between gathering what you find from whatever unvetted source online and saving it on your hard drive vs getting stuff from vetted sources online vs taking classes from vetted sources vs putting what you learn into action.
You might just want to actively think about this.
Frondly, Fern
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Monday, August 27, 2018
Wandering in the Mists.
Blessings, Darlings!
We are coming off a week of cool - almost fall-like - weather (if Fall meant 70 degrees and no rain.) Today starts a week of more 'normal' hot weather. As a result, last night was a Fog Night. That's not unusual here - our subdivision tends to get very thick fog.
But last night I was outside relaxing as it developed, and it was back-lit by the Full Moon. It looked amazing.
The fog crept in from the East. First it filled in the low areas of the fields, leaving the ridges still visible. All of the stars were blotted out the stars in East. There were a few holdouts in the West, and Mars - at about midpoint in the night sky - fought a valiant battle against being obscured.
The fog thickened, covering the ridges, then the trees. By dawn visibility was almost zero.
But now most of it is gone, wisps only remaining by the Rivers, probably making walking the old Tow Path full of encounters with the shades of the Civil War dead.
For Autumn is a-coming in, and Summer's going away oh.
Frondly, Fern
We are coming off a week of cool - almost fall-like - weather (if Fall meant 70 degrees and no rain.) Today starts a week of more 'normal' hot weather. As a result, last night was a Fog Night. That's not unusual here - our subdivision tends to get very thick fog.
But last night I was outside relaxing as it developed, and it was back-lit by the Full Moon. It looked amazing.
The fog crept in from the East. First it filled in the low areas of the fields, leaving the ridges still visible. All of the stars were blotted out the stars in East. There were a few holdouts in the West, and Mars - at about midpoint in the night sky - fought a valiant battle against being obscured.
The fog thickened, covering the ridges, then the trees. By dawn visibility was almost zero.
But now most of it is gone, wisps only remaining by the Rivers, probably making walking the old Tow Path full of encounters with the shades of the Civil War dead.
For Autumn is a-coming in, and Summer's going away oh.
Frondly, Fern
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Breathing Room
Blessings Darlings!
Long time readers of this blog know that money - well, lack of it - has been a feature in my life for a bunch of years now. Things have FINALLY eased up for a bit! Since this ease is from FINALLY having some serious work for our home-based business ... we don't know how long this will last.
Still, rent being due is no longer panic inducing. And bills that we've had to ignore are being paid off. It feels really nice.
Of course, since the financial reality is still 'future uncertain', the basics of our lifestyle isn't changing. I'm able to re-stock the staple foods we got very low on (flour, canned veggies for specific dishes we make a lot, coffee, tea, etc) but still did it with the 'low-end' replacements (generic tagless tea bags rather than nice loose tea, for example.)
That said ... it's the Chubby Hubby's birthday. The Spawn is treating us to the Maryland Renaissance Fair. The Fair is a 2 hour drive from here, so we're planning on getting a hotel room for the night before, and are planning meals at three of my husbands favorite restaurants in the Annapolis to Baltimore corridor. We'll use my employee discount at the hotel, and his senior discount at the Fair.
It's going to be a 30 hour or so family vacation. With most of our money (vs the Spawn's) spent on food, since the motel won't be much. Our first vacation in ... 20 years.
I'm chuffed.
Frondly, Fern
Long time readers of this blog know that money - well, lack of it - has been a feature in my life for a bunch of years now. Things have FINALLY eased up for a bit! Since this ease is from FINALLY having some serious work for our home-based business ... we don't know how long this will last.
Still, rent being due is no longer panic inducing. And bills that we've had to ignore are being paid off. It feels really nice.
Of course, since the financial reality is still 'future uncertain', the basics of our lifestyle isn't changing. I'm able to re-stock the staple foods we got very low on (flour, canned veggies for specific dishes we make a lot, coffee, tea, etc) but still did it with the 'low-end' replacements (generic tagless tea bags rather than nice loose tea, for example.)
That said ... it's the Chubby Hubby's birthday. The Spawn is treating us to the Maryland Renaissance Fair. The Fair is a 2 hour drive from here, so we're planning on getting a hotel room for the night before, and are planning meals at three of my husbands favorite restaurants in the Annapolis to Baltimore corridor. We'll use my employee discount at the hotel, and his senior discount at the Fair.
It's going to be a 30 hour or so family vacation. With most of our money (vs the Spawn's) spent on food, since the motel won't be much. Our first vacation in ... 20 years.
I'm chuffed.
Frondly, Fern
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
What's Up In YOUR Land Base?
Blessings Darlings!
Here in my land base, the fireflies are long gone. Night are LOUD now, with cicadas and crickets having meet and greets. I can count on seeing some shooting stars every night that is clear enough ... but I can also count on late day thunderstorms often enough that at least half the nights aren't clear enough.
And it is so very much butterfly and moth season! Monarch and swallowtail, lovely moths I don't know the name of, and the ubiquitous cabbage moths are everywhere. Night features other moths, plus visiting bats (I'm guessing that they share barn space with the barn swallows).
The local peaches are ripe - and a local church is having their Peach Festival tomorrow. My tomatoes are nowhere near ripe since I planted them late, but the cucs and peppers and occasional zucchini (I only started one plant) are producing.
The rivers are high due to all the rain over the past month. Water practically pours out of cracks in the cliffs of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The humidity is high. Every day the forecast is "Today will be much cooler than yesterday was," but that's just wishful thinking. The temperature has been pretty constant.
This is when county fairs should be. Before school starts, in the gap between when farmers harvest stuff. Everyone should be eating funnel cakes with diced fresh peaches and powdered sugar.
Frondly, Fern
Frondly, Fern
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Petty Magic.
Blessings Darlings!
I'm in a lot of Pagan groups on FaceBook. In some of them, I even use my real name! The groups are where I get much of the inspiration for the Pagan posts on this blog. (Stop the pearl clutching - I don't air individual's issues/private stuff - I note general trends.)
Having joined a few new-to-me groups, I'm seeing a lot of folks spending a LOT of their time on petty curses/hexes/etc. That is - cursing/hexing folks for doing little 'wrongs' to the person doing the hex. And doing hexes/curses rather than, ya know, putting up shields and wards and protecting themselves from all sorts of shit, large and small.
I admit that no one has 'stole my boyfriend' since I was 16. Wait - okay, when I was 20 a guy dropped me for another girl, but I didn't blame HER then, either. He did it. I didn't do any magic to get him back because even at that tender age I figured that I didn't want to keep a cheater. At any rate - that was 40 years ago. So I've not had to deal with those emotions and such in ages. But ... just maybe there are reasons that your relationship didn't work for both of you. Maybe you need to solve those things in your life before you CAN have a long-lasting relationship. BTW, even without any magical intervention on my part - I'm pretty sure that my ex-BF married her and they divorced some years later. So maybe he never worked on HIS part of the reasons, Fern notes smugly, looking at her 38+ years of marriage.
Yes - that line was petty. Petty CAN BE entertaining. Don't get me wrong, I'm ALL in favor of doing magic for 'petty' things - petty things that make your life better/easier. Finding parking spaces is a good example, where a shot of focused energy will save at 5 - 10 minutes of your time. Petty? Yup - it's very far from a life-or-death situation. Improves your life? Yup!
IMO, most of us got into magic for petty reasons. My first ''big" spell was a love spell, done at age 12 or 13. I was charging rings to deliver a dose of 'fuck you' a year or two before that. Petty can provide motivation to learn magic.
But petty reactionary magic - 'someone did something I didn't like and I'm butthurt and need a curse so I get get them back' - isn't either learning how magic works (it's just following a recipe, which isn't bad, but it's not 'learning magic') or putting yourself in a position where others can't magically harm you. And if you keep ending up with the same issue that you want to curse folks over - you really need to solve the issue in your life that makes you keep putting yourself IN that position.
It's way harder to solve issues in your life, and way harder to learn to do magic other than canned spells from others, than it is to do reactionary magic when you're butthurt. The pay off, of course, includes that you don't end up getting butthurt all the damn time. That might not be an appealing pay off if you want to play victim all the time, or are looking to be rescued. If you want to play those roles, that's fine - but you might consider saving it for sex play instead of as a life style choice.
Thus Spake Fern.
I'm in a lot of Pagan groups on FaceBook. In some of them, I even use my real name! The groups are where I get much of the inspiration for the Pagan posts on this blog. (Stop the pearl clutching - I don't air individual's issues/private stuff - I note general trends.)
Having joined a few new-to-me groups, I'm seeing a lot of folks spending a LOT of their time on petty curses/hexes/etc. That is - cursing/hexing folks for doing little 'wrongs' to the person doing the hex. And doing hexes/curses rather than, ya know, putting up shields and wards and protecting themselves from all sorts of shit, large and small.
I admit that no one has 'stole my boyfriend' since I was 16. Wait - okay, when I was 20 a guy dropped me for another girl, but I didn't blame HER then, either. He did it. I didn't do any magic to get him back because even at that tender age I figured that I didn't want to keep a cheater. At any rate - that was 40 years ago. So I've not had to deal with those emotions and such in ages. But ... just maybe there are reasons that your relationship didn't work for both of you. Maybe you need to solve those things in your life before you CAN have a long-lasting relationship. BTW, even without any magical intervention on my part - I'm pretty sure that my ex-BF married her and they divorced some years later. So maybe he never worked on HIS part of the reasons, Fern notes smugly, looking at her 38+ years of marriage.
Yes - that line was petty. Petty CAN BE entertaining. Don't get me wrong, I'm ALL in favor of doing magic for 'petty' things - petty things that make your life better/easier. Finding parking spaces is a good example, where a shot of focused energy will save at 5 - 10 minutes of your time. Petty? Yup - it's very far from a life-or-death situation. Improves your life? Yup!
IMO, most of us got into magic for petty reasons. My first ''big" spell was a love spell, done at age 12 or 13. I was charging rings to deliver a dose of 'fuck you' a year or two before that. Petty can provide motivation to learn magic.
But petty reactionary magic - 'someone did something I didn't like and I'm butthurt and need a curse so I get get them back' - isn't either learning how magic works (it's just following a recipe, which isn't bad, but it's not 'learning magic') or putting yourself in a position where others can't magically harm you. And if you keep ending up with the same issue that you want to curse folks over - you really need to solve the issue in your life that makes you keep putting yourself IN that position.
It's way harder to solve issues in your life, and way harder to learn to do magic other than canned spells from others, than it is to do reactionary magic when you're butthurt. The pay off, of course, includes that you don't end up getting butthurt all the damn time. That might not be an appealing pay off if you want to play victim all the time, or are looking to be rescued. If you want to play those roles, that's fine - but you might consider saving it for sex play instead of as a life style choice.
Thus Spake Fern.
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Where Order Goes to Die
Blessings, Darlings!
I am ... disorganized ... to put it mildly. Okay, I'm Chaos personified. My house is where Order goes to die. Adding that to my chronic level of depression, this means that a lot of stuff falls thru' the cracks. And even more stuff FEELS as if it has fallen thru' the cracks.
So, again, I'm trying to change that. So, again, I have bought a weekly planner (the least expensive one that the store had.) I had the two OTHER notebooks I've been trying to use with me at the store, so I sipped coffee and moved stuff to the One Book To Rule Them.
To my total surprise, I found that while I've not been reaching all my goals, and CERTAINLY not getting as much done each day as I'd like to - I WAS doing at least something on almost all of my goals each day. Didn't write down the good sales from each grocer? No, but I looked at the ads and made mental notes. Didn't write down a week of meals? No, but I did plan 4 days of meals. Didn't have a full shopping list made? No, but it was mostly done. Didn't go all the exercising I planned to each day? No, but I got SOME in ... and found the weights I want to work with as well, and put a temporary fix in on the exercise bike. Didn't get done all the non-JOB stuff I wanted, but I got to the JOB every day and even on the day I was sick I made sure that the co-worker I usually drive in got to work (I had to ask the Spawn to drive the co-worker in that day.)
I still can't find my desk under all the papers and such on it, but MAYBE I'm getting a bit more organized that I had been, and didn't notice it.
Oh - beware of crunches just after a cup of coffee. On that path lies danger and acid reflux.
This post brought to you by the upcoming start of the school year (therefore planners are EVERYwhere), and Lora O'Brien's site Do The Work!
Frondly, Fern
I am ... disorganized ... to put it mildly. Okay, I'm Chaos personified. My house is where Order goes to die. Adding that to my chronic level of depression, this means that a lot of stuff falls thru' the cracks. And even more stuff FEELS as if it has fallen thru' the cracks.
So, again, I'm trying to change that. So, again, I have bought a weekly planner (the least expensive one that the store had.) I had the two OTHER notebooks I've been trying to use with me at the store, so I sipped coffee and moved stuff to the One Book To Rule Them.
To my total surprise, I found that while I've not been reaching all my goals, and CERTAINLY not getting as much done each day as I'd like to - I WAS doing at least something on almost all of my goals each day. Didn't write down the good sales from each grocer? No, but I looked at the ads and made mental notes. Didn't write down a week of meals? No, but I did plan 4 days of meals. Didn't have a full shopping list made? No, but it was mostly done. Didn't go all the exercising I planned to each day? No, but I got SOME in ... and found the weights I want to work with as well, and put a temporary fix in on the exercise bike. Didn't get done all the non-JOB stuff I wanted, but I got to the JOB every day and even on the day I was sick I made sure that the co-worker I usually drive in got to work (I had to ask the Spawn to drive the co-worker in that day.)
I still can't find my desk under all the papers and such on it, but MAYBE I'm getting a bit more organized that I had been, and didn't notice it.
Oh - beware of crunches just after a cup of coffee. On that path lies danger and acid reflux.
This post brought to you by the upcoming start of the school year (therefore planners are EVERYwhere), and Lora O'Brien's site Do The Work!
Frondly, Fern
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Lammas? No.
Blessings Darlings!
Oh, goody - it's "Lammas". Lammas it the neopagan holiday that demonstrates exactly how EXTREMELY cut off from earth/agricultural reality so very many American neopagans are. (I can't speak for neopagans in other countries - my expertise (I was an agriculture major) is in US agriculture.)
The winter wheat harvest ended at least a month ago. It's WAY too late to be celebrating that. Spare me the "Loafmas" references thinking that they mean loaves of wheat bread. They don't mean loaves of ANY bread - the root of Lammas isn't 'loaf' of bread, it relates more to "Lord" as in "Lord of the manor' that the serfs worked on. It's about the 1%, darlings.
Barley harvest? Nope. That's just underway. It won't end for a couple more weeks. And no farmer is stupid enough to leave the fields during the harvest to have a harvest celebration. So spare me the singing of "John Barleycorn".
Spring wheat? The harvest for that doesn't start for a few more weeks.
If you want to say that you are following a 'nature based religion', wouldn't it be nice to ... actually pay attention to nature? Especially nature in, like, your local area? Find out when your closest few county fairs are, or 4-H fairs. THEY will be timed for between the local harvests. They MAY feature newly harvested local foods = or not. But at least you'll get the timing better.
Me - I'm going to the racetrack and participating in politics for Lughnasadh. Some of you know why this is way the heck more traditional than baking a loaf of bread. Especially from store bought flour that is undoubtedly over a year old.
Frondly, Fern
Oh, goody - it's "Lammas". Lammas it the neopagan holiday that demonstrates exactly how EXTREMELY cut off from earth/agricultural reality so very many American neopagans are. (I can't speak for neopagans in other countries - my expertise (I was an agriculture major) is in US agriculture.)
The winter wheat harvest ended at least a month ago. It's WAY too late to be celebrating that. Spare me the "Loafmas" references thinking that they mean loaves of wheat bread. They don't mean loaves of ANY bread - the root of Lammas isn't 'loaf' of bread, it relates more to "Lord" as in "Lord of the manor' that the serfs worked on. It's about the 1%, darlings.
Barley harvest? Nope. That's just underway. It won't end for a couple more weeks. And no farmer is stupid enough to leave the fields during the harvest to have a harvest celebration. So spare me the singing of "John Barleycorn".
Spring wheat? The harvest for that doesn't start for a few more weeks.
If you want to say that you are following a 'nature based religion', wouldn't it be nice to ... actually pay attention to nature? Especially nature in, like, your local area? Find out when your closest few county fairs are, or 4-H fairs. THEY will be timed for between the local harvests. They MAY feature newly harvested local foods = or not. But at least you'll get the timing better.
Me - I'm going to the racetrack and participating in politics for Lughnasadh. Some of you know why this is way the heck more traditional than baking a loaf of bread. Especially from store bought flour that is undoubtedly over a year old.
Frondly, Fern
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