My regular teacher for Classic Egyptian has gone to Egypt for the next three weeks and we have a sub taking her place. The sub is a lovely woman! I had my first class with her last night and she spent time evaluating our posture and correcting it, which is something normally overlooked a little by our regular teacher so I was glad for the tips!. We worked on gaining technique with a faster pace than we were used to and covered several traveling steps, which was so much fun! I can’t wait to see what we cover with her in the next class.

I haven’t made it to a tribal class yet, but a couple of my friends keep telling me how amazing it is, so I am excited to check it out for myself next week.

In addition to getting out twice a week to have some fun with friends, I’m hoping that spending 2 1/4 hours a week doing belly dance will help me start losing a bit of weight. It’s certainly works me into a sweat and it’s a very fun way to get moving!

Me @ Underbelly Kasbah December 2010

Now it’s time to go off and be sick some more…

I managed to get my hand on a Flip Mino HD for cheap (an unwanted gift someone was getting rid of). I’m going to grab myself a tripod and start using it for my youtube videos as well as record myself dancing to self-critique. Don’t expect any dancing videos any time soon, though. I’m not even letting Wolfman see me dance until I feel like I’ve got a bit of skill worked up!

I got my fraction of the savings accumulated in the shared account my sister and I had going from our previous shared living arrangements. It’s a very, very nice figure. I plan on spending a little on a few things I’d like to have for my initiation at the end of the month, the flip mino mentioned above and some on the fees I owe uni. The rest goes into savings for a rainy day. It’s good to have some savings again!

I have a few things I’m working for this site and off site, but that will have to wait until next time…

I can’t embed videos on wordpress, apparently… but you can view my contribution this week, here.

The house is coming along slowly and steady, though we still have a couple of weeks to wait until our couch will be delivered. I got 90% of the junk and boxes in the soon-to-be temple room sorted out over the last week, but I need to figure out what I want to do with the space now and make arrangements. We’re heading over to the hardware shop before the end of the month and I’ll be getting enough wood to make four small crate-sized boxes and a large box. The large box will act as my main altar and altar to Freyja until I get a space just for her (I’d like to fix a shelf above the altar, but renting might present issues with that). The smaller boxes will be places to mark out the directional points in my circle for AODA ritual and will be stacked up to the side of the room like a bookshelf when not in use. Wolfman said he might get me the lantern candle holders for my “initiation present” (a way of showing his support), which would  not only look nice inside on the boxes, but would be handy if I got to hold outdoor ritual. I have almost everything I need for the initiation, I just hope I can get the temple sorted out and set up in time. I’ve got two weeks, so it should be feasible.

I’m taking a break from the ’30 Days of Paganism’ essays for a short while, probably until after my initiation because my spirituality has had a bit of a upheaval these past few weeks and some of my views and opinions are being effected. I do plan on finishing them, polishing them up and adding them to their own page so that new commers to the blog are able to read through them and gain a bit of insight into what I do and how I do it.

So now my First Degree looks like this:
DAILY WORK

- Meditation (minimum of 15 minutes)
- Sphere of Protection Ritual
- Daily rune pull or divination spread for at least 9 week (270 daily divinations minimum)

WEEKLY WORK

- Movement meditation (Yoga, most likely) at least twice a week
- Spending time in nature at least 15 minutes once a week
-  Memorize a ritual for opening and closing magical space, and practice it at least once each week*

ONGOING WORK

- Make at least 3 lifestyle changes for sustainability
- Write about holydays as they happen
- Read at least 3 books on divination and from them select at least 30 themes for meditation
- Read at least nine books on the natural history of the area in which you live & relate as much of this information as possible to your own experiences of nature.

PROJECTS
(I am keeping a few aspects of the Magic spiral because I really think they’re applicable to my practice at this stage)

- Plant at least 1 tree in the year I am studying. (Planning on doing this on my initiation and tending during the year following)
- Prepare a wand, cauldron, and crane bag*
- Magically prepare at least 3 stones with different intents*
- Perform at least nine other divinations, besides mydaily readings, during my initiatory year
- Create a personal handbook of divination, writing out the meanings of each of the symbols in my divination method. (Half a page per symbol minimum)
- Write at least 3 pages on the importance of divination in Druidry
- Write at least 9 pages on the importance/significance of the Wheel of the Year

The books I have selected for the Divination Spiral are:

Nigel Pennick, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Runes

Diana L Paxson, Taking Up The Runes

Freya Aswynn, Northern Tradition Mysteries & Magick or something else… (I own the Aswynn book, but I don’t know if I really like it…)

Note: The * marked criteria are essentially optional, they are the parts of the Magic spiral that I really would like to encorperate into my practice now rather than waiting until my second desgree.

I’m thinking of making a second ‘access only’ journal or a password protected word press specifically for keeping all my degree-specific records together. I’ll share the url if I go ahead with it, but it would probably be a boring read to most.

I’ve had a handful of social appointments I’ve been enjoying - the Melbourne Fringe Festival, brunch with a fellow witch, herb shopping, book shopping.. it’s been very fun.

I received my initiation with the AODA, which I will have to do solo, since there are no Groves in Australia. The ritual is lovely, but it one of the secrets for members only so I can’t give too many details away.  I’m taking this month to prepare and plan on my making initiation on October 31st (Beltaine Eve, coincidently). I’ve also decided to change my first degree spiral to Divination and plan on doing Magic alongside the Healing spiral in my second degree. I’ll be posting my updated curriculum later today.

The reason I decided to focus on Divination is because All Things Futhark has now gone live! I didn’t want to spread myself too thin, so swapping to Divination as my First Degree focus will make things easier to manage. If you want to check out the All Things Futhark youtube channel head over to here, or go via the sidebar link.

This weekend is busy yet again with my Uncle’s 60th taking up most of Saturday and then Wolfman’s step-brother is getting married Sunday. Then the week following belly dance classes start up and my Wednesday nights will be dedicated to shaking my booty.

Busy, busy! But I actually like it. It’s a nice change from being stuck in limbo.

I’m still doing the “30 Days” of Paganism, but I’m taking it a little slow while my plate is so full of other commitments.

My First Degree looks like…

DAILY WORK

- Meditation (minimum of 15 minutes)

- Sphere of Protection Ritual

WEEKLY WORK

- Movement meditation (Yoga, most likely) at least twice a week

- Spending time in nature at least 15 minutes once a week – Memorize a ritual for opening and closing magical space, and practice it at least once each week

- Working with Nwyfre, Gwyar and Calas, the three Druidic elements

ONGOING WORK

- Make at least 3 lifestyle changes for sustainability

- Write about holydays as they happen

- Summon, direct, and banish the three Druidic elements

- Read at least 3 books on magic and from them select at least 30 themes for meditation

- Read at least nine books on the natural history of the area in which you live & relate as much of this information as possible to your own experiences of nature.

PROJECTS

- Plant at least 1 tree in the year I am studying.

- Prepare a wand, cauldron, and crane bag

- Magically prepare at least 3 stones with different intents

- Write at least 3 pages on the importance of magic in Druidry

- Write at least 9 pages on the importance/significance of the Wheel of the Year

I’m not sure what books I’ll be using for me magic spiral requirements just yet, I’ll have to go library hunting and hit to used bookstores! Oh money, how I miss having you to spare… I have Penczak’s “Temple of Outer Witchcraft” or his “Witch’s Shield” on my bookshelf I have never read through which may be suitable, otherwise I’ll have to find some suitable reads at the library or for cheap…

I am pro-choice, all the way – I think I woman should have the right to terminate her pregnancy if she chooses to. I really love the way that flameinbloom put it in her post, “why should a woman’s uterus be allowed to kill a fetus but not a woman?. It’s not that I don’t think life is a sacred gift (it most certainly is), it’s more that I see so many people bring children into the world without being equipped to teach them adequately. Now be have generation after generation of… well, morons. There, I said it. Part of this is that we are influenced by our family’s orlog, which is directly noticeable – we are a product of our upbringing, as are our parents and our parents parents and so on. But we have the ability to change our orlog by our choices, albeit is is more difficult that floating along the trail left by your parents. I used to get so angry at the amount of people I would see verbally/physically abusing their children, being completely irresponsible or putting their own selfish needs (or in some cases, addictions…) before the basic needs of their own children. What is the world coming to when children need protecting from their own parents? I half-joking suggested to my mother once in my late teens that the government should implant us at birth with a chip that effectively made men and women sterile until they had the physical and mental needs required to give a child a fare life. My mother laughed at me and said it was a interesting theory, but she feared if it was reality that the human race may be facing near extinction. In my late teen angsty aversion to the human race kind of way half-jokingly suggested that maybe that was the solution to saving the world. I’m a little less hardcore about it, but the core issues I have with the imbalance of birth and death in this day and age still remain with me.

Right alongside birth comes one of my favorite things in life… sex! You can’t give birth without the good stuff. I think that Christianity’s huge taboo with sex being sinful and something to be ashamed of is something that has really screwed with the human psyche… on one hand we have clergy who are so prudish that they are unable to even enjoy sex after marriage, or sex is such a taboo subject that no one is teaching people how to do it responsibly and there are sexual transmitted diseases running as rampantly around as the common cold. Then we have the other side of the spectrum… the western media is a perfect example of sex-obsessed imagery and talk that in any other situation would be considered completely crossing a line. I see 10 years old wearing heels, painted in more make up than even I wear at the best of times strutting about singing songs about getting hot and heavy and giving blowjobs. I’m sorry, but doesn’t anyone else find that inappropriate?

Sex should not be a hush-hush topic, I believe that children should knows it exist, that babies can comes from having sex and it should be done responsibly and at the very least, perhaps you will have taught them to partake in sex safely.

Death is another taboo topic that is often not spoken about and often not viewed in a healthy way, causing far too much damage to the living left behind. It is a a out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of topic and I can understand that – death is a little scary. No one really knows what happens when you die, we have our theories, but we’re not going to be able to prove them, even after we die and find out the big secret to it all! The unknown is scary, but just as ignoring other instabilities is not health, ignoring death is unhealthy. It happens. It’s a part of life that we should respect, try to accept and not sweep under the rug or try to run from it – it is a vital part of life and without it we could not appreciate life.

The afterlife is a little redundant for me to worry about, since I believe the focus of life is to live it, not worry about if you’re going to be sent to hell or live your next life as a cancer victim or a dung beetle. Sure, I have a few ideas that seem to appeal to my senses, but in the scheme of things it’s not really all that important to way of living. I think that generally when you die you body returns to the earth and your spirit has a few options. If you are a devotee of a certain deity, I believe your soul may be absorbed by them, adding to their own spirit. Perhaps you will stay behind as an Ancestral guide, or if you are too emotionally tied to something in the ‘living’ world, perhaps you stick around as a ghost. Perhaps you return to the Source to be injected back into the swirling pool of other souls where your spirit will be transformed into something new such as a tree, or an animal of some kind. I don’t believe that the spirit stays intact every time it is ‘reborn’. When you go back into the Source to get recycled, you are combine together with the entire energy of the source – billions upon billions of other spirits. So part of your soul might help make up a tree, or a bird or a spider or a rock, but it won’t be ALL of you, and as such I don’t think we retain memory of it. I do think that some people are reincarnated into human life again, especially those who have unfinished goals to accomplish, oaths to fulfill or something to learn before bringing it back to the Source. But like I said, I live my life fully because it could be the only life I get. I am here now, and this is what I know, so what reason do I have not to make the very best of it?

Animists believe that everything – humans, animals, rocks, plants, the weather – everything has a spirit or a soul. I view this as a spark of the energy from the Source that I spoke about in my Cosmology post before this. It is an energy and certain kinds of ‘intelligence’ that we can sense and communicate with because we too are a spark of the Source and everything is connected.

Polytheists are people who believe in multiple Gods and Goddesses and view as individual entities with their own personalities and their own agendas and not just archetypes for a male and a female energy/deity such as The God and The Goddess in Wicca. There are varying degrees of Polytheism spanning from Hard Polytheists believing that gods are distinct, separate real divine beings not psychological archetypes or personifications of natural forces to Soft Polytheism, which holds that Gods may be aspects of only one God, or a God and a Goddess, psychological archetypes or personifications of natural forces.

Up until recently I considered myself a hard polytheist, I certainly do believe the Gods are separate beings and not archetypes, but I also leave some wiggle room in that theory to leave space for migration and cultural intermarrying. I don’t believe that Odin, Wotan and Wodan are all different Gods, I believe they are all the same, but with a different name and slight variances in perception that change from culture to culture. That being said, though they have some similarities to them, I would not go so far as to say Freyja is also Aphrodite or that Njord and Poseidon are one. Of course, I may be wrong… I have never met Poseidon or Venus. It is purely on a prominent instinctual prompt that I draw those lines. When I think about the possibility of Freyja being Aphrodite I feel a strong tug in my gut and a firm “No” impression that is outside my own thoughts.

The way I view it the Jotun are spiritual beings which are linked to primal elements of the Universe, the most obvious being the Fire and the Frost Giants spoken about in Norse Mythology. I believe these to be the first spirits in existence, which is backed up by lore speaking of Ymir, the first Frost Giant. As the worlds evolved I believe the next tribe of spirits to emerge were the Vanir. The Jotun and the Vanir are what I believe the pre-Indo-Europeans worshiped before the Aesir moved into town. The Jotun and Vanir are both heavily rooted in nature, whereas the Aesir seem to be more about human society, which is where I base my assumption. The way I kind of think of it in my head is as follows:

The Source

The Jotun/Etins/Primal Forces

The Vanir and The Aseir

Elves, Dwarves, Wights, Ancestors

Humankind

The way I see it is that the Source is just way to vast and complex for us to understand in a practical manner. The Gods are a bit closer to us and easier (though, still plenty complex!) for us to communicate with.

I dont believe the Gods are omnipresent, omnipotent or omniscient. They have more power that humankind, but the only one running the Universe is the Source itself, which even the Gods are bound by.