Friday, March 26, 2010

Location, Location, Location

Blessings, Darlings!

Last time I posted on altars I talked about simplifying what is on them. This time it's about where you have them .... but I'll start with a bit about how many some folks have.

Oddly enough, given my 'simplifying' post, I have a lot of altars. Three in the living room and one or two upstairs in various rooms. And, of course, the blessed forsythia in the yard were I make offerings as well.

As I might have mentioned in a previous post, the living room altars are pretty much in an Ar nDraiocht Fein Druid set up: one for nature spirits/land, one for Ancestors/water, one for Gods/sky. Having them in a heavily used (by me) part of the house makes keeping them dusted easy and using them a natural part of my everyday life.

And I do work with the Gods altar on a daily basis. On that altar is my 'healing cauldron'. In it I keep slips of paper with people/animals/things I want to keep in front of the Gods, so to speak, and send energy to as often as possible. Requests for healing/energy go in the cauldron (usually with the date on them, and they get removed after a moon cycle or so), the name of the various pagan groups I'm in live in there, as does a general 'family' slip of paper. Candles get lit for them at least once a week.

The other two altars in the living room I make offerings on weekly or so. It could well be argued that I should work with the nature spirits and ancestors daily, tho.

Upstairs I have altars that I do more 'involved' workings on. If I was doing something like one of Raymond Buckland's multiday candle rituals for changing luck, and moving candles closer to the center each day, then I'm going to work in a place where the rest of the family won't move things 'for' me, or the cats won't knock things over. Which means upstairs in my office, keeping the door closed while the multi day working goes on.

Those are my 'formal' altars. Then there are the other places I do workings ....

Ironing board.
Vegetable Garden.
Compost heap.
Herb Garden.
The stand of poison ivy.
etc.

In fact, since I'm in the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel Wiccan tradition, and the goal of the Assembly is to re-enchant the world, so perhaps in time the entire world will be my altar.... or not, given humans and our property rights.


Frondly, Fern

Monday, March 22, 2010

Monday LW - The Musical Fruit

Blessings, Darlings!

Sorry for disappearing for a month - was out of town, then business-busy, then I think I had a problem with gall stones. I'll be discussing that with my doctor later.

But now back to Monday's Wellness posts!

You can tell if I'm working on either my finances or my wellness by what I cook. Transforming dried beans into wonderful dishes is one trick that works on both.

Beans are full of fiber, both soluble and insoluble. These not only keep your bowels regular but the soluble fiber helps lower your cholesterol. Apparently bile and dietary cholesterol bind to insoluble fiber in the digestive track and you poop 'em out rather than absorb them. And the fiber makes them very filling.

Beans are low on the glycemic scale, and thus great for diabetics, prediabetics, and anyone who wants their blood sugar as steady as possible.

Beans are high in protein, so help fill that dietary notch, and they have an assortment of the B-complex vitamins in them (unless you cook them with baking soda, which breaks some of the b-vitamins down. Baking soda keeps the color strong in red and black beans).

And beans are cheap. I can buy a pound of dried pinto beans for a dollar, and split peas cost even less. One pound dry cooks up to about 3 pounds, quite a lot of food for one dollar!

So last week I was lazy and just grabbed a can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans off the shelf, tossed the beans into my blender, added garlic, tahini, lemon juice, hot sauce, and some olive oil then blended 'till smooth. Instant hummus. My husband even loved it! We had it with fresh broccoli florets and carrot slices as the main part of lunches.

Today I've got 2 gallons of chili on the stove. My chili is three parts tomatoes to two parts beans to one part meat and one part red peppers/onions. I also make it soupy rather than stew-like, because it's good and we can easily over eat it. This will be lunches this week.

I have a bit less than a cup of leftover pinto beans. I'm considering tossing them into the meat I'll be cooking for tacos for dinner tonight, altho' I know my husband will NOT be happy with that. Or maybe I'll make refritos out of them, which he and the spawn will more happily eat.


Frondly, Fern