More Imbolc Preparations

There's so much to do. I'm reorganizing my Book of Shadows (a.k.a. Ye Olde 3-Ring Binder of the Arte) and I'm not quite sure how I want to do it. So far all I've done is just move everything into a larger binder. Things were getting a little cramped, and I've added some new sections this month. The new binder still isn't quite big enough, but my OCD won't let me split everything into two binders. In addition to the binder, I also have two composition books that I started when I bought my very first books on Wicca. One of them was my very first Book of Shadows, and the other was my journal. I discovered pretty quickly that the bound-book system didn't work for me, but by then there was too much in these journals to think about abandoning them or recopying them. So now I just keep them with the binder. I'm glad that I kept pretty good records early in my studies. I've come a really long way and it's been really helpful to be able to look back at all of that. Oh yeah, and embarrassing. Thankfully, YouTube didn't exist and no one had blogs, so all of my naivete was confined to private journals and never publicly witnessed.

I've got a ritual planned for Imbolc that's I'm excited about. It includes the kinds of things you'd expect: house cleansing, candle blessing, psyching myself up for spring, and putting out a lot of food for wild critters. I made a new source candle for my altar. I haven't used a source candle in any of my private rituals before, but the longer I'm Blue Star the more Blue Star ways of thinking become my ways of thinking. It's gotten to be downright silly for me to be working without one. Blue Star doesn't adapt well to solitary ritual, but I sure do try.

I'm also plotting a new altar to Oya. Oya is not what I would call a patron, but She and I do seem to have some sort of connection (even if it's just on my end) that I want to explore more deeply. I've had altars to Her before, but I've got the space to do something more sizable and functional now. On the surface, we definitely seem mismatched: a white Wiccan girl with an Irish and Anglo-Saxon background who feels an affinity for the sometimes very scary Yoruban goddess of wind, fire, change, cemeteries, and the marketplace. I used to have dreams about Her when I was in college and I started reading about Her soon afterwards. I took a class on modern goddess worship senior year and spent a lot of time talking to the professor, an Osun devotee fluent in native Yoruba. And also a tiny, soft-spoken white woman with a PhD in anthropology.

We can't all be devoted to European gods, after all. It just reinforces the idea that you don't choose your gods so much as They choose you.

Imbolc Preparations

Imbolc is my favorite sabbat. This time of year just feels like it's bursting with potential. It's easy for me to think about what could be and forget about what is. This year, Imbolc is especially poignant because I'm finally in my own home. Sure, I'll have to get a roommate eventually, but for right now, I have a house all to myself. For the last several years I've been confined to a college dorm room, a tiny house shared with four other girls, or one bedroom in my brother's house. It feels wonderful to be able to stretch out. Of course, all of my books are still jammed into my bedroom (I tried to spread them around but just couldn't bring myself to leave it like that), as are all of my guitars, but I think well-ordered clutter is my style. I'm just going to embrace it.

I've spent all of January cleaning, getting things in order, unpacking, getting rid of things that I don't need, reordering my finances, making plans for a new job, adopting a cat, plotting the spring herb garden, and making candles. Not to mention going to school full time.

Imbolc to me is about getting ready for the year. In this case, getting ready for a whole life. I feel really blessed.

I don't really know what's moving me to start a blog. I'm generally a very reserved person, especially where the Craft is concerned, but I'm just feeling the urge lately. Maybe it's because I don't feel like my views are represented in the sort of blogs and YouTube videos (etc.) that are so prevalent now. Everyone has the same books on their recommended reading lists, and it's not because those books are so great. It's just that they're the ones that are easiest to find and get passed around the most. Everyone seems to subscribe to the same paradigms in their practice. That's fine, if that's what works for people, but maybe I'm just here to say that I'm different. I'm not a solitary eclectic. I don't think the way most people who claim to be Wiccan think. I'm not saying I'm better, I just want there to be a more balanced picture of Wicca on the internet. We're not all fantasy lovers. We don't all believe in fairies. We don't all practice Reiki. We don't all subscribe to the idea that all gods are one god and we're all just following variations on the same One Truth. We don't all think that Scott Cunningham was the bee's knees (or whatever).

So in this blog, I'm going to write a little bit about my Wicca. Writing is how I sort things through and figure them out. I'll write about books I'm reading, things I've seen on YouTube, people I've met, issues I've run into... Hopefully I'll make some new contacts and learn a lot. Or at least get out some angst.