Tag Archives: spirituality

What is a witch?

Recently a little girl told me that all witches are ugly and old and have green skin. Hm. I’ve been thinking a lot about what being pagan means to me lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to manifest in this life. I believe that magic is focusing your intention and your will on making something real. I don’t think it has to be about repeating prescribed words or chants that someone else made up. I honestly don’t see much point in following someone else’s path, even as I read books that other people write about their paths.

I think the painting is part of it for me. I often think of it in terms of creating the background setting as if I was creating a theatre set. All the world’s a stage and all the people are but players. (I don’t believe in a binary of genders so the original quote doesn’t seem so fitting.) I am shaping how people see me. I am shaping who people perceive me to be. It matters to me. I put as much effort into this as someone else would put into a spell. I want to draw the right people to me.

Sobonfu told me to make my own community as I will never belong in one that other people have made. I need a place to invite that community. I need a space where people will feel the force of my will and feel influenced without me even having to say anything. If I have to say something then I have missed a window. I have missed an opportunity.

I don’t know how many opportunities I have left in this life. Everytime you miss a window you change the course of your future. You change what opportunities will fall into your lap in the future. There are limits to what any person can accomplish. I know that I will hit limits. I just don’t want to miss opportunities that might be well within my limits.

It feels like it matters so much.

It’s the waning crescent moon. The end of the cycle. Time to let things go, but what? It’s almost time to think about new beginnings again. Oh golly. I don’t know what to let go of nor what to start. So much happening. So many balls in the air. How can I narrow my focus to be more effective? Right now I am spread in so many different directions that I hardly know what to change nor how I will manage.

I know that tomorrow will involve maths, breakfast and a visit with friends, then painting. Friday is a park date with homeschoolers then more painting. My arm is only a little sore. My hand isn’t even numb. Surely that means I am ready for more work. I really want this part of the hallway done.

I really want all of the high stuff done so I can go back to working at reasonable heights with a step ladder. There is no way to get to the other side but to go through. I can do it. I will do it. It will feel good to be done on so many levels. All it takes to get through is doing many more hours of work.

Now that’s magic I can embrace.

Bitches, boundaries, and dirty little secrets.

When I was a kid my mother was fond of telling me: “We keep our dirty laundry in the closet” meaning that we do not discuss the horrible things that happen behind closed doors. I internalized this message and didn’t tell anyone I was abused for years. When I was 15 and had a series of breakdowns I came to the conclusion that I could not live by her directive. Instead I decided that I would have no secrets. I would do absolutely nothing I was ashamed to talk about generally. And if I ever did find I had something I was ashamed of I would talk about it as publicly as possible because then there would be nothing that could be held over my head. I can never have someone emotionally blackmail me with something I have done. I have accepted a small change in this policy in the past couple of years as I have slightly gone into the closet for my job. This has been incredibly emotionally stressful for me and paved the road for me to start keeping other things private. I recently had to look at myself and my life and what I am doing and I realized that I have a dirty little secret. I have something I am deeply ashamed of and that I am hiding from people. When your behavior is at odds with how you claim your behavior is that means that either your opinion of yourself/your ethics is out of date or you need to change your behavior. Given that I am still proud of my basic code of ethics that means that I need to undertake the very difficult and painful task of living up to it.

So here I am. This is my confession. This journal entry is not really filtered for a variety of reasons. I need to say these things about myself in a basically public way because that is how I operate when it comes to things that are bad. I cannot hide them. I debated with Noah long and hard the merits of doing this in a public way and essentially this is something that I need for me. So a lot of people who read this journal are not really used to my harsh self-analyzing posts so this one may be really hard for you. I invite you to skip it if you feel that the messy inner workings of my mind are things that do not need to be part of your life. And given the nature of gossip, if anyone chooses to break the basic confidentiality implied by my journal please at least have the respect for me to tell me that you are sharing this entry with other people. I feel I deserve that.

So here we go–a rather unhappy and dark picture of me.

Interesting…

I just got a phone call from someone I have not been friends with for nearly a year. This person has very strong (alternative) religious beliefs and has offered up himself as a stand-in for me in a major ritual to help deal with some of my karmic/astral issues. I asked him more than once why he wants to do this for me and he said simply because opportunities to do this kind of healing do not come up very often and he feels compassion for my suffering. As difficult as it is for me to accept at face value help from him I told him that I would be honored to have him do work for me.

He is one of those people that I conflict with significantly and yet… there is some sort of odd connection anyway. I recognize the power in what he is trying to do and I have been astounded at the things he understands about me. I don’t know entirely how to feel about the ritual that will commense in about 45 minutes. Although, frankly, if anything can help me deal with the poison that works against me sometimes in life I am grateful.

Strange as it may sound to people who do not share similar spiritual beliefs, I think there is some sort of karmic involvment/debt between he and I and I still don’t know how things will work out in the long-run. Despite rather serious run-ins/anger/hostility… there is something there. I just don’t know what yet.

I wonder how radically my life is going to be affected, for I do believe in the power of these sorts of rituals.