I finally drifted off to sleep and dreamed of a tree. In my hand was a set of instructions from the tree. I can read in my dreams (though it has taken years of practice, as a child I could not) but it can be difficult to focus. Yes, the ADHD girl even has a hard time focusing in her dreams. *sigh*

Painstakingly I followed the tree’s directions. Water on the this root, clear debris from there, push in that piece of bark, remove that dead stick. I got all the way through the list … and nothing happened. Except I woke up.

And my back wasn’t hurting anymore. Yay!

Also; weird.

Related posts:

1. Little Random Things
2. This Old Dream
3. New Addition 2

Poor image quality is due to poor camera quality

The Question:

What path do I take and where to from here? I have a fear that I am only paying attention and seeing what I want to see, not the message that is truly there.

Off the Cloth:
* Acorn (male, men, god) took off running and skittered away and into me.
* Amethyst (spirituality, religion), Tiger eye (intellect, air), Blood Drop (It’s a red marble with wax on one side to replace the min mortar and pestle that was lost, it’s for health and healing) and Sea Shell (emotions, water) all formed a line off the cloth.
* Petrified Wood (foundations, solid, old) and Clear Quartz (clarity, understanding) hovered just off and above the cloth.

First Impressions:
* Rabbit Bone (clergy, teacher, leadership) in isolated from the group at the edge of the cloth, facing away.
* Red Stone (fire, passion) sits at the edge as well, being blocked by the pairing of Juniper Block (blockage, obstacles, protection) and Strawberry Quartz (love, romance, sex).
* The centre is taken up by Juniper Stick (what is at the heart/centre), Misshapen Silver Nugget (unexpected treasures, the diamond in the rough), Turtle (pace, speed) and Blackthorn (witchcraft, magick)
* Antique Ring (tradition, heritage) is wrapped around Ivy (that which surrounds)
* Many pieces are interacting with Sharp Tooth (a predator’s tooth, attack, hunting, harm, negative communication) and Grinding Tooth (a prey animal’s tooth, positive or constructive communication, learning, sharing)
* The Key (unlocking, opening doors) is interacting with Rowan (World Tree, hedgecrossing) and Foot Bone (journey, path)
* Bottle Cap (which has a raven holding a key in a doorway on it, acts of service, sacrifice, practice) is covering (the very green) Bloodstone (the Land, earth)
* Vintage Jack (an old school toy; childhood, kids, the inner child) is at the edge of the group, heading away.

The Reading:
There is no need to commit to one Path or Tradition right now. You don’t have to dedicate yourself to anything or anyone. That day will come, but it is not coming soon. Take your time. Explore, find treasures and shiny things.

If you must DO something then you should serve the Land. Work on your connection with the energies and spirits of Nature and the Earth and rocks and trees and wild things. Learn about the landscape around you and build a relationship with it.

If you must study something, then study hedgecrossing, shamanism, the many worlds, cosmology, and the World Tree (etc). This will be key to your future success. Become knowledgeable now, before you delve too deep into practice.

That which surrounds the matter is tradition, heritage and history. Areas for you to study and practice: Traditional Witchcraft, Paganism within your heritage, Reconstructionist stuff. Look to the old ways. Become passionate about history, folk traditions and anything old time-y.

Inspiration and Mystery comes when positive (and new) communication (and thinking) surpasses or bypasses negative talk (and anxiety, doubt) and winds up where the hearth fire is. Take a look at home-based Crafting and crafting. Homemade things, arts and crafts, fixing up the house. Create stuff!

Whatever your living conditions are, try to make them a little more magickal, a little more spiritual. It might be an idea to take a class or find someone who you can share (and talk) about these subjects with. A cooking buddy, paint the house with your Mom, plant a garden with a friend? While you are being advised to not Circle with anyone, you still can talk, share and do other more domestic and practical things with others. You might even get inspired!

The spirits are also tied into your need to communicate, create and share in more positive ways. Perhaps you need to hand make more goodies for local land spirits. If you ever feel you can’t talk to anyone, you can always try a tree, or a river or the unseen spirits in a field.

That all being said, there is a danger in putting too much of your resources into guilty pleasures. Music, dancing, socializing, entertainment. It’s easy to get distracted, to wind up watching TV or listening to music or hanging out instead of practising. All good things in moderation. Keep a balance between life and the Craft.

Beware of becoming blinded by love, lust or romance; a pretty face or a charming personality. This could wind up cutting you off from your spiritual journey and your practice of the Craft. You need to be solitary right now, at least for the most part. Keep some distance between your relationships and your practice. Now is the time for inner work and introspection, not for Circling with groups or an overwhelming personality.

There may be a fear of what other people think of you and say about you. Someone may be a gossip or verbally abusive to you. This may especially relate to your relationship with a woman or women close to you, such as your mother or your female friends. Allowing other women’s opinions and words to hurt you is detrimental not only for your self esteem but for any relationship you may wish to build with the feminine divine.

You need to make serious changes in how you communicate with others and with yourself. If you tend to beat yourself up, it HAS to stop. Learn new scripts. You don’t need anyone’s approval but your own. Seek to validation from within. Own any problems you may have with communicating, do you come on too strong or are you afraid to speak up, are you critical of others? Whatever it may be, you need to examine this.

You are NOT on a healing Path right now. The only person you need to work on is yourself. Learn Thyself, Heal Thyself, Know Thyself.

You are being discouraged from working with male deity and being told to “keep away from boys”  lol  sorry!

It is unlikely that you will be getting a teacher any time soon, if you are looking for one. Also, there is no need to enter into teaching, clergy and leaderships roles just yet.

Childhood and childish things have packed up and are leaving. Things will get sorted out, keep plugging away.

Practice your grounding. Ground and centre!

Find solace and strength in your connection with the land and the things that you build/make/create.

Serving the Land will be good for you emotionally and physically. MOAR exercise, go outside and play! This will also be an important factor in the building of that spiritual foundation and in leaving childhood behind in a healthy way.

At the Very Heart of the Matter:
Unexpected treasures can come through the practice of Witchcraft. The spirits caution you to keep a slow but steady pace. Neither rush into things, nor procrastinate. The treasures or prizes that you seek may not be the ones you find. Though you will find Witchcraft rewarding, it may not be in a way that you expect. Keep an eye open for small prizes and hidden treasures along the way. Smell the roses, pocket a few pebbles, and then move on.

Your Path is marked by a “bread crumb trail” but the pieces are very small, quiet, and subtle. Do not expect anything big, shocking, or life changing to occur in the next little while. The big mysteries may come, but not yet.

Your Focus and Goals:
* Serve the Land.
* Rid yourself of negative people, bullies and gossips. If they say horrible things to you or about you, they are not your friends.
* Learn to be kinder to yourself.
* Use more positive and encouraging thinking and communication styles.
* Embrace your own passions, not other people’s interests.
* You are in no position to heal or fix or save anyone but yourself.
* Don’t be distracted by other people or by hedonistic pursuits.
* Traditions and history surround everything, mind your ancestors.
* Incorporate your practice into everyday things, the hearth, the home, little projects, and hobbies.
* Study shamanic and spirit working practices. Learn your theory before you leap.
* Focus on your self; don’t practice with others for a little while.

Over all Message:
The start of any journey if fraught with doubt and distractions, concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. Watch the ground beneath your feet; don’t worry too much about what might be down the road and around the bend. You don’t need to name the Path you are on yet, get to know it and yourself better first.
Right now you are still laying the foundation of your spirituality and your practice. Take your time, build it strong. Build it well.

Client Feedback:
Not only was my question answered but also it has given me the direction I so desparately needed.  Accuracy is certainly an understatement.
It answered so many questions I didn’t even know I needed to ask.
When I first read the reading, I sat and cried for a bit. Just not only the overwhelming sense of, not relief, but that kind of almost elated feeling that it wasn’t all in my head. That I am starting to walk the right path.
It stirred a feeling something akin to a comforting hug given when it is needed most and a slap in the back of the head, wrenching me from a lovely daydream.
I had to laugh at the of the masculine element, it certainly almost mirrors what men are doing right now. It was very funny.

Related posts:

1. New Years Reading
2. Review: Last Year’s Birthday Reading
3. To Fly By Night

I have a back log of writing due to computer issues, but I hope to get all caught up over the next week.

Any how, this one is supposed to be quick which is why I am boring you with it now.

Last night I tried something a little different. I sat on a High Seat and did a casting. Holy Shit!

This is a public service announcement!

My question: I asked my spirits what they wished for my blog readers (and friends and podcast listeners and etc) to know?

The answer:

Poor self esteem, self doubt and lack of self worth is like walking around on a broken leg.

The approval and acceptance of others does not heal a broken leg. It only acts as a crutch. Yes, it’s easier to get around on a broken leg with a crutch, but the leg is still broken.

Tearing down other people may stop the pain of the broken leg, but it will never heal the fracture.

Comparing yourself to others, and finding yourself lacking, only breaks the leg further, slowing or stopping the healing process. Comparing yourself to others, and finding them to be lacking, is like taking a baseball bat to their legs. Get your nose out of other people’s Crafting.

Only your own accomplishments and self satisfaction can heal the broken leg. Remove doubt, make a commitment and achieve something.

Stop waiting for other people to approve your desires and goals. Do it anyways.

This year find ways to say “I did that!”, “This is my choice for myself” and “I made this!” as often as possible. Care naught if others give you the kudos that you think you deserve; learn to walk on your own legs. Walk for yourself. Go places, new places, hard places, scary places. Be brave for yourself. Earn something the hard way.

Heal the leg.

Happy New Year gang!

Related posts:

1. To Fly By Night
2. Horned God Devotional
3. Look! A Press Release!

Related posts:

1. Today is the Day

I allow it to drift

I don’t understand why people expect it to be rigid

Focused, perfect, single minded

Why do they seek trance in text book rigidity?

It’s not about staying in the box

I let my mind go out of bounds

Beyond the boundaries of what is allowed

In the daytime in the sunshine in the work-a-day world

We have to be so polite

So nice and sweet

Structured and organized

I am not disciplined as I sit before Them

Chatting and rambling on about nothing

They listen indulgently

Like grandparents letting a small child prattle on

I let my mind wander

Out of bounds

Beyond reason

What focus?

There is no focus

I drift on a sea of thoughts

Unbidden and unfettered

Thoughts come and go as they please

I drift here and there

I open up

I become expansive

Too big to fill my little shell

I slip and slide away and down

Out of bounds

Beyond the boundary

I slide away from the body sitting before the altar

And we go wandering in a twisted landscape

Some might fear if they realised this is what is to be found

But really it’s just another place

So long as you can find your way there and back again

Related posts:

1. Questions for a Fox
2. The Dance
3. Horned God Devotional

When folks come over and inquire about the macaroni in the offering dishes upon my house shrine I act like it’s no big deal. I just made too much and so I gave it to my spirits. It gets a little more complicated to explain that I am expected by my spirits to make too much and give them their fair share. That I keep their offering bowls small because they expect them to be filled.

It’s all rather a lot of bother.

Spirit work and devotional practice that is. A bother. That’s why it’s called work and practice I suppose.

Years ago, I was researching medicine bags and crane bags and the like. I came across something talking about Native American shamans and their relationship with their medicine bags, and with the spirits within their medicine bags. For some, they had to sing a specific song for each item/spirit in the bag before opening it. Over the years the bag would acquire more and more items. When they died, they might pass their bag onto someone else, who would have to learn the songs for all the spirits in the bag. Then start collecting their own power objects and familiar spirits and sing songs for them as well. Sometimes it gets to the point that it takes well over and hour to sing all the songs required before the shaman can even open the fucking bag and get to work.

Then there’s the need to take care of a big-ass heavy bag full of precious objects and spirits who want you to sing yourself hoarse before they will work with you.

Imagine being a slave to your medicine bag.

Welcome to one of the less glamorous aspects of being a Hedgewitch.  The bother. The expectations. The schedule that must be kept. The building and maintaining of relationships with entities that some people don’t even think are real. Booyeah.

Have I ever mentioned that I’m a little afraid of my casting collection? No? Heh. Well, maybe wary is the better term for it. I am wary of becoming a slave to it … because, well, all 30-odd pieces want me to sing to them. Fortunately, the pieces of my casting collection are/is kind of a hive-mind (that’s the best that I can explain it, like a bee colony or ants or something) so I think one song for all might make them happy.

But if I start singing for them, who else will want a song? The casting collection’s main job is translation and communication with my spirits. If I singing to the collection, will the ancestors get jealous and want a song? What about everybody else? Oh, and HE already wants me to play the bloody tambourine for Him, no matter how poorly I play (and I do play poorly). Have I mentioned that I’m a terrible singer? Maybe I can negotiate for more poorly played tambourine instead of having to write/divine and sing chants?

Just the care and feeding of the casting collection alone is a lot of work. Pieces leave as they wish, choosing when to fall out of my hands or bag and disappear into the weeds and grass, or to roll away and drop off a pier or go under a bookcase. I do sometimes choose when to retire a piece and sometime they ask. But rather a lot of the time I simply open the bag one day to discover one of the pieces is gone and I never got to say goodbye.

Then I have to go through the process of finding a replacement, then prepping it, introducing it to “the group”, blessings, charging, blooding. Then I have to learn how it speaks and what it says and how it works with the other pieces, while they are all still figuring that out themselves. The hive mind has changed slightly. I’m kept always on my toes. It’s always changing, I am always learning, there is no chance to simply memorize meanings and then rest on my laurels.

The collection (it’s such a great example and a large part of my practice lately) likes to be warmed up a bit before casting. I usually do this by giving the bag a gentle shake (think like how you bounce a baby) and holding the pieces in my hands, gathering them up together. I’ve gotten good enough to chatter inanely to others while doing so. Somehow making it obvious that I must greet the pieces and cajole them to work earns me funny looks.

That’s a whole other bother … fellow witches and pagans who don’t get it. Who think that it all must be done elegantly, flowing and … and not weird. Do something odd or awkward like blowing on your divination set or baby talking to a crow skull and all your validity goes right out the window in their mind. Nevermind that fact that the elegant shit is just for show and the spitting, swearing, shaking, whispering, sweating, bloodletting, pissing and such is the real deal! It’s supposed to look like the white witch on TV with her perfectly rhyming poetry and not the crazy voodoo chick with her eyes rolling back into her head on that documentary we watched once … right? Bullshit.

Anyways …

The collection like all my spirits (great and small) likes scared smoke. A favourite offering. Incense is probably the most commonly given. As other than possibly annoying the girl up stairs with the constant smell of sandalwood or juniper berries burning on a hot coal it is pretty easy. But the other kinds of smoke makes them happier, is somehow more nourishing. Because it is shared I think. Put it in your pipe and inhale, fill you lungs, then breathe it out onto/into them. Sharing not just the smoke but your breath as well. From deep within yourself. A gift of self, smoke and energy. There are many different types of smoke that can be used, some more legal or safer than others. Some of my spirits have preferences. The casting collection likes all kinds of sage but especially salvia divinorum, what a surprise. But that’s for special occasions. Usually.

Others have a thing for tobacco, especially cigarettes. Because they know that I am addicted. The fuckers. I quit smoking about 6 years ago. But I do it for them now and then. I light a cig or buy some good tobacco for my pipe. I inhale (of course whether I inhale or not depends, you don’t inhale when smoking a cigar for example) and I share it. I fight the cravings the day after. I never do it in the home because the smell will drive me crazy. I never touch tobacco, of any sort, except in ritual situations. It’s becoming more and more like a geas (or geis, but I like the Scottish spelling myself).  As if I need another one. At least this one only makes me look odd once in a while, such as when the girls are digging through a box of herbs and hands me a bag of “incense” tobacco and I drop it, or quickly hand it off. Lame excuse: I quite smoking and I stay away from it now. But Juni, it’s not like smoking tobacco or cigarettes. Yes, but still … here take this.

*sigh*

At least the food related geas handed to me by the Big Guy can be passed of as a food allergy!

I’m starting to ramble a bit I think so I’ll get to the point. It’s fucking WORK people. Really real work. It amazes me how often a god or spirit taps on someone’s shoulder, gives them some tiny sign and they … do nothing. They sit around and wait for another tap, another sign. Then wonder why nothing is happening.

A large portion of the castings that I do with my collection are for people who want to know what they should do on their Path, which spirit(s) they should work with. The answer is almost always the same: Do the work, you haven’t done enough. Why yes, there is a god/spirit/ancestor who has an interest in you, but you haven’t earned anything more than that yet. Do the work, make the offerings, do you research. For a  long while.

Most people I talk to give up a month or three after that first tap on the shoulder. But Juniper! I gave him/her/it offerings once a week for three whole months! That’s it? That’s all? My spirits demand at on offering every single fucking day kiddo. Or they won’t talk to me. That’s just for maintenance. If I want real help or real knowledge they want blood, sweat and tears on a regular basis.

I’m going to be an annoying egotistical bastard and quote myself:

 “…There is no such thing as “good enough” in a spiritual practice, especially when that “good enough” means you did next to nothing at all. A spiritual Path is not supposed to be easy and the gods don’t like lazy people.

The gods, spirits and ancestors do not reward people who do not do the work to earn their respect. If you want to develop a relationship with the Otherworld and the Spirits of the Land you have to earn it. You cannot simply show up with your hand out expecting a prize, for no work, like a spoiled child.

… You cannot expect your ancestors, people who fought battles with swords, who pushed horse drawn plows, who would walk many miles to the yearly feast grounds, to give you long lost lore for nothing. What we must look like to them, we who are so spoiled and pampered that we whine and complain when the processional to the ritual is longer than 3 city blocks. How can you ask for their aid, protection or knowledge when you are willing to do little more than pour half a bottle of cheap whisky out to them once in a while?

The processional for the Eleusian Mysteries in ancient times took a whole day.”

I’ve spent the whole month of August and the first 10 days of September plying my spirits with food and drink and prayer and poetry and smoke. I gave them a whole room in the apartment to themselves. I lead a ritual for Lughnasadh for my ritual group and assisted a friend in a devotional and prosperity ritual before my own altar. I spent a good part of last night on my knees, my face pressed against the hardwood flooring.

In return, last night I was given a dream. I dreamed that I was in a lodge in the woods. There was a gathering of witches there. They formed a circle, sitting, standing, kneeling around it. My casting collection was scattered around the edge of the circle. They were trying to divine something. One witch made a valiant effort but in vain, the information did not come. They turned to me. They wanted me to try. I dug in my heels. I could do it but I didn’t want to do it in front of them. They’d all look at me like I’m crazy. It wouldn’t work if I did it in flowing elegance and perfect poetry. This isn’t Wicca, this isn’t Druidry. This isn’t even religion. It’s witchcraft.

I step towards the circle. I stomp and shuffle. I rock back and forth. I wave my arms around. I make guttural sounds. My eyes roll in my head. The witches look on as if I am crazy. I hear them whisper, is she faking? Is she putting on a show? Why is she being so weird? I rock even more, I stomp around. I am wild and unpredictable. I fall on the floor within the circle, on my back. One arm raised behind my head.

Suddenly my spirits are there. They show me a new technique for slipping out of my skin. I am not permitted to share it with you here. But it works. They show me twice to make sure I know it. Then they wake me up so that I will remember. My hard earned reward for the last 6 weeks of work, a gift. Precious. I look forward to many months, maybe years, of practice to get it right.

There are bruises on my knees. Blisters on my feet. Burns on my fingers. My house reeks of a dozen different kinds of incense, the lady upstairs makes a point of coughing in an annoyed manner every time she is in the stairwell.  There is beer in the fridge that I will not drink, except a sip for sharing. I’m tired and my head feels like it is stuffed with cotton. I have to go to work today.

Welcome to walking the hedge, bitches.

Also: this.

Related posts:

1. Horned God Devotional
2. Defence Against the Dark Arts (When You are Locked Out of the Circle)
3. Are You Scared Yet?