Yeah! A whole buncha THIS!
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganrestoration/2013/10/how-pagans-can-save-the-world-the-pagan-restoration/
How Pagans can Save the World: the Pagan Restoration
I see what you did there…
Loki is really kicking me arse on life lessons recently and I need to process badly. No time for it this week. Still digging deeper and still finding strength. Figuring out that my emotions are not what I thought they were. The heart is deceitful above all things. I hate this but I see how it is useful. It is needed pain. Pain brings clarity and purification. I will be okay. It will be okay in the end as it always has been and always will be. I just need to breathe, focus, and regroup. I was born a fighter and I will remain so.
Lessons from Loki’s school of hard knocks
I’m building altars. This is His request. He hijacked my thesis as another learning opportunity. Not only am I reading so many books that my eyes are crossing but I am learning things Loki wants me to know about. Via this historical and metaphysical work, I am not only understanding the workings of cosmogony but learning who I am and what my place is in them. This is not an easy path to follow. This is work. Real, hands on, work that not only am I learning but living.
I didn’t understand Loki’s want to have me gone from my long term relationship and misunderstood His silence when I would ask Him for guidance. He told me flat out once that He was not a relationship counselor and that I needed to figure my own thing out there. He would even just sit and look at me with His hands folded in front of His face with that implacable look that makes me feel like prey instead of a spouse. He wanted me to leave and I thought it was because of my ex. He was trying to keep me from causing me damage. So that was lesson one.
Lesson two has been that I need to be more focused and controlled. I need to create to do this. I have a large project in front of me that I have committed myself to and I have to complete it. Make public promises so that you are forced to do what you need to because if you don’t then you will let people down. I hate letting anyone down. It makes me feel shitty. I know what they feel like too because I’ve been utterly let down by most people. So I have to focus on getting the work done. I have made enough promises that I cannot fail or I fail at life.
Lesson three not all gods are like Loki. Several entire pantheons are much more formal than He presents Himself. Loki just wants to drink coffee and Mead and teach me magic, history, and art. Sometimes in that order but mostly just all together because He says it’s all the same thing.
Lesson four is that I cannot walk through the fire and not take it upon myself. I am responsible for where I am because I have free will and that is a tricky little bitch. Free will is not just the freedom to make decisions and take action but the freedom to refrain from those things as well. I could have made better choices and maybe not. I could have chosen to not slit my loves throat with the blade that is my tongue. I didn’t. I could have shown more compassion and didn’t because I was worried about what I was doing and not what anyone needed.
I’m sure there are more lessons and I will be learning them. As for now though, I am becoming better everyday and confident of my ability to grow and learn my way through life.
So, Thanks Boss, for showing me all the ways in which I can succeed despite myself.
Breaking my world.
So I have had a traumatic year. Change is always hard. This year has been nothing but change and growth. They call them “growing pains” for a reason. It has been painful for sure.
I lost the love of my life to this change. It has been really hard to own up and deal with my own faults and mistakes in all of this. I was so convinced that I was in the right that I missed the damage I was inflicting. I pushed too hard. I said things with that sharp tongue that Lokeans are generally gifted with that cut past bone to the soul. I’m not saying he was perfect or that he didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just saying that I was blinded by my own self righteous veiws and that he didn’t deserve what I had to say. His flaws aren’t the point of my lessons here. They are just a small part of the puzzle.
He left. I was devastated. I was angry. I was afraid. I lashed out. I was wrong. Anger never gets you anywhere in love. My family is broken now. I had said to Loki that if He wanted me out that He should do something about it. The next day he was gone. He moved out while I was at school. Now I’m learning the lessons in the aftermath. Lessons I was too stubborn to learn before. Loki wanted me out to be able to get perspective and perspective is everything. I was a control freak monster and the fact that I was meant that it had to be my way or no way at all. I couldn’t see that. I thought I was being reasonable but I was only being so to my own needs. Not his.
Now I have to figure out what to do and how to repair the damage done. I have to heal my family. I have to make things okay for them. I have to heal myself. I have to learn my lessons. The year has been rough but I live in a better place and in a better situation and I have the time for these lessons now.
Hail Loki, who breaks it to make it.
Sickness
For the last two days I have been violently ill. I was in such terrible pain. A very good friend did a reiki therapy session on me and placed runes in my aura. At the end she told me that I was Odin’s daughter and He would take care of me.
This morning I woke, still ill, and got the oldest flying monkeys off to school. I came back in the house and laid back down while waiting for my youngest to wake up. As I did this, I tried to meditate to ease the pain. Odin picked me up as if I was a small child and held me and comforted me. I say as if I was a small child but what I truly mean is that I could see myself as both grown woman and child, curled up in the infinite All-Father’s lap, crying and being comforted. He spoke to me and I remember knowing that I was having the sickness taken from me. I knew then that He would protect me from harm and that He loves me as my mortal father wished he could. I have vague memories of fatherly love from when I was very small. I understand more of it now. I cried, not because I was in pain, but because I was loved and I had been missing this kind of love in my life for many years.
As I came out of my meditation Loki told me to get up and drink hot chocolate made with milk. I did not wish to do this as my stomach was still sour and hurting. I protested. “Just do it. Hell, put two packets of hot chocolate in there. Just drink it woman.” I do what the Boss says, so I did it, thinking this was the worst idea /ever/. I drank my hot chocolate in this eighty degree at 8 am southern weather and I waited. In fifteen minutes I was right as rain. “Chocolate has magical properties. I swear.” Umm… it does? Okay. I suppose it does. It worked. I’m not gonna complain. I felt fine and I was on my way about my day. I have actually had /more/ energy and been on a cleaning binge.
Hail Odin and Loki for loving me as They do and healing me when I was ill. Offerings are up and coming!
How to wear a cowl like you mean it.
This is a cowl. Stretched out it is basically a short scarf tuned sideways. It can be a really fun accessory for the winter and can be worn several different ways.
This is what it looks like buttoned up. I generally just slide mine over my head.
Twist it like this before you put it on and it will make it tighter. Some cowls are made this way. They’re called infinity cowls because they are permenantly joined and twisted like an infinity symbol. This is mostly done for visual interest or for warmth on really cold days.
If your cowl has some flair to it add some interest by wearing it to the side. If it doesn’t have flair *gasp* then add a sparkly broach or a flower hair clip and add some! Get creative!
You can be like me and keep the wind at bay by covering your face. Or I might be pretending to be Darkwing Duck. O_0 heh.
I also like to pretend I’m in Assassins Creed and wear it like this.
However, Hipsters also wear them like this. I have nothing against hipsters but I’m not one. I’m more nerdcore so I like my gamer ref.
And that is how you wear a chunky funky cowl! Easy peasy. You can get creative with them. There are a lot of different ways but these are the ways I like the most especially with the chunky yarn cowls.
Hope that helped!
Working, on what I am not sure but I’m working at it….
I have been pushed and drawn to all forms of divination. There are several forms that I am adept at naturally. Several I am not. As dear Heather says, I was asked to put on my big girl panties and set down the tarot in favor of the runes. However, I was told to get a pendulum in the meantime. Loki helped me pick it out. Hematite seems to be the theme for me. I’m working on learning to use these things correctly, with the runes being infinitely more difficult than the pendulum, obviously.
Another thing I am working on is this giant art project for class that is a huge piece of interactive work. I want people to come up and open it and discover for themselves what it is to behold the Feminine Divine in all of its glory and to question their archetypes thoroughly. The Tryptic of the Virgin Mary opens up into the visage of Kali the Black Mother posed in the Modest Venus with her hair done the same as Venus but in black and a huge skull necklace hung about her. All the while sporting a nimbus of gold around her head. It will be 3 panels tall and then have 2 panels that open out to the sides much like an altar piece I saw in my Renaissance Art History class. I was informed that it would most likely be taken as blasphemous and I would catch hell for it. To which WE replied: “Fuck ’em.” The chakra colors will surround the nude figure and I am going to glue jewels to the panels in the corresponding places. Lots of gold. Lots of bright colors. Lots of throwing that Byzantine blue and gold shite right back in their faces. We lost our goddesses to this. Mary who quietly took her place and did as she was told. This is our role model. Stay quiet in the face of adversity and soldier on. Ummm…. No. I’d rather have Kali who guarded over child birth and is the destroyer. She has spirit. She has fight left in her. I’d rather be Venus, never apologizing for my sexuality, never denying it, but rather embracing it with dignity and vigor. I’d rather be Ishtar, over seeing my city and making sure that families grew and prospered and that the seasons were renewed in time. Be quiet my ass. Never.
I don’t have anything against Mary personally other than it feels like this is the Lifetime Movie Network and every movie is about how some helpless woman quietly took the abuse and never fought back against her male oppressor until the tragic end. SCREW THAT. I shan’t be a victim of this. Loki would have a cow. (no horse jokes please >_<) He is pushing me to discover my own power. My very own strength as a woman and what that means. I am more than the sum of my parts. In doing this, He has introduced me to several other energies and let me touch the sacredness in each of Them. It is a powerful experience. As women, we have put off for far too long our individual discovery of what makes our power sacred. There is a reason that women are traditionally the spiritual guidance, the medicine women, the seers. There is some thing in our hearts, our souls, our very make up as human that allows us to touch things that most cannot and it is time that we took that power and emboldened ourselves with it.
The Ring
This is the ring that Loki and I picked out. We want a ceremony but due to me being a broke ass 99% of the time I doubt that will happen anytime in the near future. *Sigh*
Life On Fire 