Fixing Etiolated Succulents

February 12, 2019March 8, 2019 J.Leave a comment

It’s almost spring, and the unseasonably warm weather has my plants all confused. I’ve got a new basal shoot on my nepenthes, my cacti are putting out new growth, my pothos and aloe are threatening to take over my apartment… So, even though it’s a bit early still, I figured now was a good time to take inventory and see who’s going to need some pruning and re-potting. Unfortunately, it looks like the lack of winter sunlight has left some of my younger plants in a bit of a state, and they’re going to need some “fixing.”

Why is fixing in scare quotes? Well, unfortunately, once a plant is etiolated, there’s really no going back. A stretched-out echeveria is not going to become a neat, compact rosette again, no matter what you do for it.

That doesn’t mean all hope is lost, though.

Let me start from the beginning.

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Neodruidry

Blessing Rite + S.J. Tucker Solo Show

February 7, 2019March 8, 2019 J.Leave a comment

This week was a busy one — fortunately, I didn’t actually have to leave my apartment for most of it!

Tuesday, I got to enjoy a solo show by S.J. Tucker. It was a pay-what-you-want online concert, and honestly a lot of fun. I don’t often get to go to concerts myself (IH is murder on my desire to hear things), so it was awesome to be able to support an artist I enjoy and experience their work in a place where I knew I’d be comfortable. There’s another concert coming up on the 19th, check out S.J. Tucker’s page on Concert Window for more details.

Wednesday, I took part in a streamed blessing ritual. As a solitary practitioner, I’ve had to build my rituals around the outline given by ADF without really having a live example to draw from. I’ve developed a ritual pattern and wording that’s comfortable to me (though I would like to re-write some to make it more poetic and give it some more “flow”), but I’m still curious about how other people do their thing. The blessing ritual was a great opportunity to interact with other Pagans in a warm, friendly atmosphere — again, without having to actually go anywhere.

The ritual structure itself was familiar, aside from a few things. The person who hosted the ritual silvers their well differently from me (I use the same, purpose-dedicated silver Mercury dime each time, as opposed to using a new silver bead each time), and draws three omens instead of one.

One thing I’ve noticed about performing rituals is that I always end up very emotionally affected by the omen drawing phase. There are only a few occasions where I’ve ever gotten “bad” omens, and I could almost immediately trace them back to their causes. I talked to my S.O. about it afterward, describing how I invariably get misty-eyed when it comes time to draw the omen and see what blessings are offered.

Really, I think it amounts to the feeling of being seen.

I use the Animalis os Fortuna tarot deck for my ritual divination. It functions like a standard tarot deck, but the artwork and symbolism on the cards themselves make them open to interpretations that, to me, seem to mesh better with ritual divination than most other decks. I’m not fluent enough in runes or Ogham staves to use those yet, so, tarot it is. Since I use tarot, there are a lot of cards, and, therefore, a lot of opportunities to draw something seemingly irrelevant to my situation. This never happens.

I don’t mean in an interpretive way, either. I don’t end up with ambiguous cards that I can sort of apply to my situation if I really think about them. Whatever cards I draw are always a giant, glowing beacon pointing to whatever is on my mind, or whatever I need most. It’s a very, very validating feeling.

In the streamed ritual, the first omen drawn was kenaz. Now, kenaz and I go back about a year — to the Imbolc before this past one, actually. I hadn’t joined ADF yet, but I did decide to do a small ritual to honor Brighid. A lot of my rituals involve a trance state (something that has informed a lot of my artwork) and, during this particular one, I was shown a symbol drawn in a slab of wet clay. I didn’t recognize it, but I was intensely curious and did a lot of searching. As it turns out, it was the rune Cēn from the Anglo-Saxon futhorc: ᚳ.

Cēn (or kaunan, or kaun, or kenaz) is a torch. It’s the healing fire, and the fire of the blacksmith’s forge. It is passion, desire, vitality, and creativity. It’s one I’ve meditated on a lot in the year since, and having it come up again now was a very good feeling.

I don’t know if I’ll find a local grove with the same ritual structure and overall guiding principles as ADF, but I’m glad to have found an avenue to at least take part in rituals with others.

(Speaking of creativity, there’s a new post on my art blog about some stuff I’ve been working on!)

Witchcraft

“But why are so many witches poor?”

February 5, 2019February 7, 2019 J.3 Comments

You’d think that, if magic really had the ability to bring you the things you want, you’d never see a witch who was poor, or sick, or wanting for anything. They’d just be a moon phase and a candle away from getting their heart’s desire, right? Google the words “prosperity spell,” and you’ll get — no joke — over 11 million results. If these spells really worked, wouldn’t you only need one? If they were really worthwhile, wouldn’t we have a lot more lottery winners walking around?

Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that.

There are a lot of reasons why magic doesn’t really work as a “burn candle, ????, profit” kind of deal. Like:

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Books · Neodruidry

Let’s Read: A History of Pagan Europe

January 31, 2019March 15, 2019 J.Leave a comment

Note: This post contains affiliate links to the book(s) I mention. These allow me to earn a small finder’s fee from Wordery.com, at no cost to you. Thank you for helping to support writers, publishers, and this site!

Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick’s A History of Pagan Europe was originally recommended to me years ago, and I pretty much just read it for the fun of it. When it popped up on the approved reading list for the ADF dedicant path, I realized it’d probably be a good time to give it a closer look. It’s a rather dense read (though still an enjoyable one), and, considering the subject matter, it takes a couple of passes to really absorb all of the information presented.

Jones and Pennick do an excellent job of connecting dots between disparate cultures, explaining each area’s stages of religious development in easy-to-understand terms. (The convergent evolution of the concept of sacred wells/trees/etc. between Mediterranean and Celtic cultures was especially interesting.) I particularly enjoyed the analysis of Celtic culture pre-Roman contact. There’s really a dearth of information available on this period — it seems like a lot of what we know is via the Roman conquest itself. Because of Rome’s relatively relaxed attitude toward outsider religions, many aspects of Celtic religion were preserved (albeit in an altered form) through syncretism with the dominant religion of Rome. The Druids disappeared. Their symbols, deities, and sacred sites, however, survived.

(Ultimately, it was this attitude that led to the persecution of monotheists — Rome didn’t particularly care what religion anyone was, so long as every citizen honored the ruler’s personal deity. It was believed that this helped preserve the state itself, and thus failing to do so was tantamount to treason.)

A History of Pagan Europe is a bit dry, as many books of this nature are, but it’s a book I find myself returning to now and then. There’s a lot to take in, and, as a Pagan, I feel that sources like this are important — simple, factual, without a lot of the editorializing you find in books geared toward a new-age or Pagan audience.

life

Let’s eat paste!

January 29, 2019January 31, 2019 J.Leave a comment

Okay, not really.

I haven’t written much lately, mostly because of two reasons:

I was incredibly sick and felt like death, and
It’s almost time for me to turn in all of the essays I’ve written over the past year for evaluation by whoever at ADF is in charge of that kind of thing.

So, in essence, I haven’t written much because I’ve been busy writing in between bouts of coughing and other assorted misery. I have done some other creative-type things, though, which is awesome. I’m in the process of moving my altar (hopefully to a place where cats can’t happen to it), too.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering what the paste bit is about. Let me explain.

Continue reading “Let’s eat paste!” →

life

DIY Brain Chemistry

January 10, 2019January 31, 2019 J.2 Comments

I’ve been doing a lot of reading.

I don’t want to call it “research,” because looking up a bunch of studies isn’t really the same as designing an experiment or compiling a meta analysis, but it’s a lot of reading nonetheless.

See, for years, I’ve been trying to find ways to mitigate some Brain Things. It isn’t purely panic disorder, because there are some very evident physiological aspects to that aren’t really adequately explained by anxiety. It also isn’t purely physical, either.

The first doctor I ever discussed it with was my pediatrician. I was thirteen, had begun experiencing regular panic attacks, and my mother was tired of it.

“It’s anxiety,” he said. And that was it.

It went untreated for years — I was told it was all in my head, that the liver absorbs adrenaline in under a minute (lol what), and there was no reason for any panic attack to last longer than that. This left me with two things:

A raging, untreated panic disorder.
A diagnosis of anxiety.

Getting diagnosed with anxiety is a curse in its own right, particularly if you’re medically female. Women’s pain is often ignored as it is, particularly for black women. If you have a history of anxiety and depression, it is downright impressive how many medical conditions it’ll get blamed for. (Like the time I was given SSRIs to treat a symptomatic hemangioma. Fun!)

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Blog · life

Living my best life is sucking the life out of me.

December 28, 2018February 5, 2019 J.1 Comment

Its 2:00 in the morning, and I am writing because I have, once again, destroyed my sleep schedule.

Well, not just my sleep schedule.

I have idiopathic intracranial hypertension. It makes me forget things, feel crushing headaches every moment of the day, occasionally lose my ability to see, and want to sleep basically forever. Left to my own devices, I will sleep for twelve hours and still be able to take a substantial midday nap.

Such is life.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t allow me much time for anything else. This doubly sucks, because what time I am left is also devoted to coping with the headaches, dizziness, anxiety, depression, and other trappings of having a head full of surplus brainjuice. Showering is tiring. Clothes hurt. On a high-pressure day, even holding my head up is more than my neck can manage.

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Witchcraft

When hexing is a feminist act.

December 18, 2018February 5, 2019 J.Leave a comment

“Harm none.”

If you’re in a witchcraft-using community, you hear it a lot. It’s a truncated version of the Wiccan Rede, “An harm ye none, do what thou wilt,” informally interpreted as a binding rule of witchcraft. It isn’t, though — there are plenty of witches of different religions, or none at all, and most of them aren’t bound by it any more than they’re required to follow the Ten Commandments.

Don’t get me wrong, the Rede isn’t a bad thing. Really, it’s pretty liberating… Particularly for people coming to it from more dogmatic religions.

“If it doesn’t hurt anyone, do what you want.” Does your partner consent? Sex isn’t a sin. Does your desire to get tattoos or piercings hurt anyone else? Do as you please. Do you want to carve an image of something? Knock yourself out.

I’m not going to lie, though. Misapplied, it blows.

Continue reading “When hexing is a feminist act.” →

life

Why “Unseelie?”

December 13, 2018December 12, 2018 J.Leave a comment

So, I’ve gotten asked, “Why do you go by Unseelie J online?”

There are a couple of reasons. Yes, it’s a pun on unseelie fae, but it goes a bit deeper than that.

While the word unseelie, particularly when attached to the unseelie court, is taken to mean “malevolent,” it has a number of uses. Seelie, its opposite, meant blessed, lucky, or happy. Unseelie, therefore, meant unhappy, unfortunate, or not blessed. It’s a term that resonates with me.

I have mostly created my own luck in life — I was born to a poor family, in a not-terribly-great family situation, raised by an abusive, staunchly religious homophobe, nearly killed in a car accident as a teenager, and, to top it all off, was diagnosed with a very rare, poorly understood, incurable, potentially lethal neurological disorder about six years ago.
It’s been quite a time.

I’ve also long realized that my primary purpose in life may very well be to serve as a cautionary tale to others, and I’ve become okay with that. I’m also okay with the fact that I am chiefly alive out of pure contrariness.

After all, like Maria Bamford says,

So, while I’ve got a neurological disorder, anxiety, physical pain, and the weight of my past to carry around, I’m okay with being unseelie. At this point, I also aim to be the biggest thorn in the side of the status quo that I can be, so I’m even okay with being considered malevolent.

It all depends on who’s doing the considering. 💜

life

I did the thing!

December 11, 2018December 10, 2018 J.Leave a comment

Years back, I had an Etsy shop. It worked out pretty well — I made a little money, a few friends, and had customers who genuinely enjoyed my art. Unfortunately, I fell out of it after I moved, was diagnosed with a neurological disorder, and began losing my sight.

I’ve always wanted to start it up again, though my artistic output isn’t as prolific as it used to be. Finally, I figured, why not? I have some finished paintings, jewelry making supplies, and other things I could use to start my store up again, so why not?

So, I did:

It isn’t yet fully stocked, because I had the sneaking suspicion that, if I chose to wait until it was stocked to my complete satisfaction,I’d never get around to actually opening it. So, if you’re interested in tarot readings or prints of my artwork, I’ve got you covered. In the meantime, I’m working on more things to add, so please favorite and keep an eye out!