Witch School: Meditation, Grounding and centering

This week's lesson included a brief guided meditation. This helped focus the group and prepare su to talk about meditation in general.

There are two basic types of meditation.

Introspection: this is focused within. It helps you calm yourself and clear your thoughts. It lets you sort things out. This is a very helpful sort to practice daily.

Journeying: This takes you outside of yourself. It allows you to speak to spirits or deities, and take direction. It's best to do this guided, especially for the novice, and the very sensitive. Occasionally an outside entity will horse on a journeying meditation.  This is where they piggyback along and possess the journeying meditator. It's most often to deliver a message through the journeying meditator.

Grounding came next. Grounding is letting the energy within you flow out into the ground and then drawing up new energy from the ground. This is easy in Memphis where we sit on the conjunction of two Ley Lines. It is often easiest to do this while breathing. Breathe out and visualize the tired, used energy leaving your body and flowing into the ground. Breath in and visualize the new energy from the ground flowing up to fill you.

Once you are full of the energy, it's time to center. Take your will and wrap it around that energy, claim it for yourself, wrap it up and make it yours. My visualization is a wire-wrap around a glowing green core, but use what works for you. Centering establishes your place in the universe and your will as a driving force.

This is all in preparation to create or enter a sacred space. A Sacred space is a time and place set apart for the divine. Grounding and centering is the mental work before casting the circle which delineates the physical area of the ritual.  Casting the circle cuts a bit of space and time out to sanctify it.

When the circle is cast, that particular patch of grass or bit of living room is no longer ordinary, but a church, a place to contemplate the divine.


We talked about several solitary meditations that we do.

Holes: Visualize walking into the ocean or a lake. When you are in the water, holes open all over your body, and the water flows through you, washing away all stress and negativity, leaving you clean and empty.

The Couch: Create a couch, a large, comfortable one in your mind. Don't sit on it yet, just picture it in every detail. When you sit, three people will join you. You may know them, you may not. Sit with them, talk to them, listen to them.

A Labyrinth. Many of us have walked a candlelit labyrinth at Festival of Souls. It's a meditation on its own. And if you don't have a labyrinth, remembering the walk can be form of meditation.

The Fish and Flower: You are in the ocean and you are swallowed by a fish. It isn't painful or frightening. Inside the fish is warm and dark. Stay there as long as you like, warm and dark and safe. Then push your way upward. You are a flower. Bloom, spread wide in the sunshine, let the warmth soothe you and enjoy the light after the darkness.


Their assignment, and yours if you like, is to meditate three times for at least five minutes a time.

Next week and for the month of October, we will be talking divination.

Transitioning: Choosing my name

You wouldn't think choosing a new name would be work.

You're issued a name at birth by your folks. You get used to it and keep it and it comes to suit you. Or you change it.

But when you're changing everything, including the big Change, the name has to come along for the ride. While I've dated a guy named Beverley and known women named Johnny and Tommy, I wanted something unambiguously male.

Angelia Marie is a lovely name. It has served me well in many capacities. Yes, the I is deliberate, no it is not pronounced. Screening technique is one of the many services.

But when it came time to choose, I put some restrictions on the name: Nothing obviously ethnic. I would look ridiculous as a Haruto or Pablo or Kazim or Bai or Vladimir or Antonio.  No Hebrew based names either, because those are Biblical and I am Not El's People. Which killed Michael, my alias for years, and Andrew.

My people protested, wondering what was left. I reminded them we still had Norse, Germanic, some French, Greek or Russian and Celtic.

So we decided on the path of least resistance. Nicholas. It's Greek, meaning Victory of the People.
Nick has been a steady and useful muse, and with the personality takeover by that particular alternative personality, it worked.
These days it's become Papa Nick or Nikolai, as my daughter is dating a Nick.

The middle name was trickier. I needed a name with no S to break up the one ending Nicholas and the one starting Sparrow. Harder than it sounds, given that S is the 6th most common letter in the English language. We strongly considered Wyatt, which I like. It has connotations of manliness and means "powerful in war." But in the end, Rowan won.

Rowan is a tree, a mountain ash, and it is the witchiest of witch trees. It has been used for protection and spell work for centuries. "Rowan tree, red thread, hold the witches all in dread." It doesn't grow in the Sunny Southland where I live, but needs more cold. Shame, I was hoping to plant some, and make rowan jelly.

Rowena was my magickal name, given me by the Green Man himself, early in my walk on the pagan path. Part of witchery is knowing things and knowing names for things, and I couldn't do that until I had a name of my own, he told me. It was important to me to keep that.

Sparrow, I will keep as long as Mudd keeps me.

Nicholas Rowan Sparrow.
It's who I am becoming.

Witch School: Wheel of the year

This is a new feature. The kids of our grove (all 17 and up) needed basic home training before being sent out to the bigger pagan community. We hold witch school, every Sunday 3-5. This week's was 12-2 because of a couple of birthdays.

This week's topic was the Wheel of the Year.
Or you can't celebrate holidays if you don't know them.

The year has two solstices, the summer and winter. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year and the winter solstice is the longest night.

There are two equinoxes, when day and night are exactly equal. These happen in spring and fall.

And half-way between these four days are cross-quarter days that fall on the first of the months.

Our calendar is very pagan. The months are named for Roman Gods in some cases.
January is Janus, the god of doorways, of beginnings and endings.
February is from februa, purification. It was a time of cleaning and purifying the home and self
March comes from Mars, the god of war. This was the first month you could field an army.
April is from avrilla, to open. It was a time when buds and flowers opened
May is from Maia, the goddess of the spring time
June is for Juno, queen of the gods. This is why being a June bride is such a blessed estate even today. If you married in her month, Juno, patron of marriage, would bless you. 11% of all weddings happen in June.
July is named for Julius Caesar. He took the month Quintilus (fifth  month, the Roman Calendar started in March) and renamed it on the Julian Calendar.
August is for August Caesar. Not to be outdone by his uncle, he demanded Sextilus become his own month and stole two days of February to make it 31 days as well.
September means Seventh Month
October= Eighth Month
November =Ninth Month
December= Tenth Month

The kids said "So they got tired of naming things and just numbered the rest. DANG!"

Then came the holidays. The holidays move in a basic cycle, called the Wheel of the Year and we ride the Wheel and turn the Wheel as well. (The links are to my Pinterest Boards on the holidays)


We started with Mabon, because that is where we are in the calendar
Mabon, the Autumn Equinox, around Sept 22, is the second harvest, grains and fruit. Vegetables and wheat were caught at Lughnasadh. Every day, I pass a pear tree on my route that is heavy with fruit and growing riper by the day. This is basically the pagan Thanksgiving. We are grateful to the gods, to the land and sky and to the workers as well for the food that has grown this year. This is the time of winemaking and preserving, of winnowing and storing.

Samhain, November 1, is the final harvest, the end of summer (Samhain, "Sow-in" means summer's end). This is when animals were butchered and preserved for the long months ahead. At this time, the veil is thinnest and ancestors often come back for a visit. The Church made it All Hallows and All Saints to honor the Martyrs. Hence All Hallows Eve or Halloween. The legend of Jack of the Lantern was retold, and pumpkins are easier to carve than turnips. Sex magic is also done at this time, since Scorpio rules both sex and death.  Gabriel is running our Samhain rit

Yule, the winter solstice Dec 20, is the time of the Oak King being reborn, and the days begin to grow longer again. We celebrate because midwinter is bleak, and needs a part to get through it. Every cold country does this. We talked about Mothers' Night and gift giving and all the things that go with Yule. Ollie and Emily are running the Yule rit

Imbolc, February 1, is the beginning of the lambing and the time when all those Beltane babies start arriving. Imbolc means "in the belly" and is a fire festival to see winter out, a milk festival and a time for planning the spring crops.

We discussed planning a garden at Imbolc and planting it for a closer connection to nature. Ollie was just excited about fresh tomatoes. And Cat was excited someone else knew about tomato preserves.* Tres Leches cheesecake made in boob shaped cake pans were also discussed for Imbolc, because it is a milk festival. A milk bar was suggested for after rit, with soy, almond, cow, rice and goat milk, plus chocolate and strawberry and other flavors.

Ostara, March 21 is the vernal equinox.  It's when the days are long enough that chickens start laying again, hence the use of the egg symbol. This is time to bless the plants and start hardening them off for transplant. It is vaguely connected to Easter, by the name, although Easter is the first Sunday of the first full moon after the Equinox. Passover is the full moon festival, and Easter is tied to that.

Beltane, May 1, is the fertility festival. A round of "First of May"** was sung, and maypoles as phallic symbols were discussed. This was done to make the land and animals and people fertile, and ensure survival. Animals were driven between large bonfires and blessed. People made love outdoors as a kind of sympathetic magic to make the earth grow. It was decided there should be penis and vulva (triangular) shaped cakes for this festival. And possibly ice cubes as well.

Because of all this, May Eve, April 30, was Walpurgis night, when all manner of evil walked abroad to cause havoc among mortals.

Litha, June 22, is Midsummer, the Summer Solstice. Days have reached their longest point and from here, the dark begins to grow again. The Oak King loses to the Holly King and night returns. This is when people have an idea what will produce well, because it's always a good year for something, and a bad year for other stuff. (this year has been amazing for watermelons) The garden starts coming on and there are vegetables everywhere.

Lughnasadh, August 1, is the First Harvest. It's about vegetables and wheat. When times changed to Christianity, it became Lammas, the Loaf mass, and people brought their first bread to church to be blessed. It also honors Lugh the All Gifted, because the time is coming when skills other than farming will be needed.

Holidays are important because they break up the dull round of our days. In a world with only one or two religious holidays, people grow far away from their gods.

This next year, we pray like the harvest depends on it!


Next week, grounding, centering and meditation

Their homework, and yours if you want, meditate at least once this week. Research and find different methods. Try some of them. Report next week.
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*OLD FASHIONED SPICED TOMATO PRESERVES
3 c. prepared tomatoes (2 1/4 lb.)
1/4 c. lemon juice
4 1/2 c. sugar
1 box sure-jell fruit pectin
1 1/2 tsp. grated lemon rind
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
Scald, peel and chop tomatoes. Cover and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Measure 3 cups into a 6 or 8 quart saucepot. Add lemon juice, grated lemon rind, allspice, cinnamon and ground cloves to tomatoes. Measure sugar and set aside.
Stir sure-jell fruit pectin into prepared tomatoes. (Saucepot must be no more than 1/3 full to allow for a full rolling boil.)

Bring to a full boil over high heat, stirring constantly. At once stir in sugar. Stir and bring to a full rolling boil (a boil that cannot be stirred down). Then boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

Skim off foam with large metal spoon. Immediately ladle into hot sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch space at top. With a damp cloth, wipe jar rims and threads clean.

Immediately cover jars with hot lids. Screw bands on firmly. Let stand to cool. Check seals. Store jam in a cool dry place. Yield: approximately 5 cups.


**
Strong language

Moving to a Post-Work Economy, part 2: Where are we going to get money?

You cannot have a consumer economy without people having enough money to consume.

This is why we're having problems and regular recessions. The mid-twentieth century consumer economy was based on the middle and lower class splitting about 70% of the wealth of the country, letting the rich have about 30%. Now, after decades of cutting taxes on the rich to encourage "job creation" we're seeing that the rich have about 95% of the wealth and we're fighting over the last 0.5%.

If you remove 65% of the money from circulation, you can't afford a consumer economy.

I was reminded that there are more jobs than manual labor and service sector. However, service sector work comprises 80% of American jobs and manufacturing is about 12%. 

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the changes:

But, I'm not certain their projected employment levels account for the increase in service sector automation.

So, 95% of the money is being invested in ways that it only makes more money, not new jobs, products or innovations.
And a lot of the jobs in that 80% are in the cross-hairs to be done by robots or cheap foreign labor. Direct service work--truck driving to fast food--is for the robots. Information based service work (call centers, tech support) has been outsourced for decades.

So what happens to the rest of us when our jobs go away?
What happens when all the burger flippers and truck drivers and help desk folks and air conditioner builders are out of work? We can't all be doctors and nurse and teachers.  (the projected growth sectors, although some districts are experimenting with distance learning, where several districts share the expense of one teacher who teaches via TV for all the classes)

We can't make a living selling each other artisanal soap, romance novels and personal shopping services. Not when the majority of the money has already been siphoned to the top. You can't sell stuff to broke people.

I am reminded of a convention (naming no names) where I looked at the dealer room, looked at my booth partner and said "There are two hundred dollars in this room. They will change hands a dozen times this weekend. Our goal is to go home with as many of them as we can."

That's how it's starting to feel here at the bottom end of the middle class. We swap around goods and money. We mutually mooch. We sponsor each other's patreons for the same amount and end up with a zero sum. If I have $25 extra this month, I'll spend it at someone's etsy or go fund me. If someone has an extra $25 next month, they'll throw it my way.

The gig economy is not stable and neither is the sharing economy, not without more money in general circulation.

We have become the Unecessariat. The Gimmies in Star Trek parlance, the last to give up hope of making an honest living, the ones who will ask for any job, who hate the idea of handouts.

And the owners and 1% are just waiting for us to die out.

How do we survive?
By continuing to swap around what money we do have. By packbonding.
By normalizing the conversation around Universal Basic Income as an alternative to guillotines.

Because we are at a tipping point. There comes a time in every society when economic inequality gets so bad that the fall of that society cannot be stopped.
It happened in Rome, despite the Bread and Circuses (and we're trying to starve out our lower class)
It happened in France.

It happened in Russia.

It happened in Germany.

When the middle class feels they have lost everything, when the lower class knows they have, things change, radically and awfully.
Right now, we've got a populist demagogue who is giving the American people scapegoats for their economic pain. However... This only works for so long when you're not offering actual economic relief. Nazi Germany worked because it restructured the economy and provided jobs in the war machine as well as offering scapegoats.

I'm hoping it can still be stopped. We missed the last exit away from fascism over twenty years ago. I'm not sure we can avoid the economic collapse.

Do we get the Bell Riots that tip us to a more economically equitable society?
Do we go down the road so many third world countries have and fade away from the world scene, an enormous slum with a few rich folks in their isolated enclaves?

What do we do?

I don't have answers at this point. I have ideas, mostly unfeasible.

Change the pronoun, change the plot

The question came up: "Can you just swap the pronouns and turn a m/f romance into an m/m?"

My answer was "Sure, why not?"
Apparently, I think gender is a lot more fungible than most people do. Then again, my personal lesbian romance went heterosexual and then right into gay. So yeah.

 So I got to thinking. Of my novels, could I do swaps? The answer is yes and no. 11/15 could swap at least one character's sex, with no major changes, except to bedroom mechanics.

Can’t change sexes (4 books):

Barbarossa’s Bitch (m/m): Here changing anyone’s sex would change the story. The point is that these men are outcasts. Women are carefully guarded as the future in most settlements. If I made everyone female, I’d be writing the story of the Amazon settlement instead.

Shell Shocked (m/m): because this is contemporary, a bit more is made of Sean coming out. And Gabe is gay gay gay like a big gay thing with no hint of bisexuality, so making Sean a girl wouldn’t work. It’s also a plot point that women make Sean skittish.

Alive on the Inside (m/m): Again the contemporary thing that makes Nick so self-loathing. Although he does have a brief sex change during The Feast of Fools, he reverts back to male. As a girl, there would be no conflict.

Heart of a Forest: (m/m): not changeable. The major plot point is doing Robin Hood where Marian is boy, but only she, Robin and Bess know this. (And Bess doesn’t know Marian knows)

Can change one character but not the other (5 books):

Curse of the Pharaoh’s Manicurists/Terror of the Frozen North (m/m): Changing Charlie to Charlotte would not actually change the story in any way, except in dealing with Sarah Brown, Edward’s ex-fiancee. Sarah would see Charlotte as competition, and do all she could to keep Edward from marrying his secretary instead of her. Edward must be male because of his history.

Heart’s Bounty (m/m): Changing Miho to a girl would radically alter him. His whole plot arc involves being an outsider for wanting women’s things (flight and space) rather than men’s. Changing Hevik...would alter very little, except there would be a husband and child left behind when the exile happened, rather than a wife and child. Miho is bisexual, leaning very strongly to men, but a woman would be doable.

Nikolai Revenant (m/m, m/f): Nick has to remain male to have the backstory and novel arc he does. Making James Ligatos a woman, however, would change very little.

Anthony (m/m): Anthony must be male for his arc. But again, James being female changes very little.

Could change everyone with no effect (6 books):

Hard Reboot (m/f): Caitlin could easily be a boy and it would change the plot not one whit.

Spellbound Desire/Wild Hunt (m/f): There is no reason DJ has to be a woman. She doesn’t look, act or think like a woman. She could have stepped right off the pages of Raymond Chandler. She just happens to be stuck with boobs and monthlies. Until Bran shows her the fun stuff. Even then, Bran is functionally bisexual, and we’d lose one scene.

Glad Hands (m/m): Chuck could be a woman without much in the way of personality changes. Seven could be a woman. She’d have an R for reprobate or N for nymphomaniac instead of an H tattoo, and they’d have to trump up another reason to execute Chuck beyond “savage sodomite.”

Privateer’s Treasure (m/m): Making the ship an all-female pirate crew could work. Making Adlai a girl that Collins must disguise as a boy to keep safe would also work, but be unsavory. Making Collins a woman, whether openly captaining her ship or doing it as a man, would not change the plot.

The Sweet Science (m/f): As with DJ, there is no good reason for Lillian to be a woman. And she often disguises herself as a man to make her life easier.

Perhaps, the problem is that I write women very like myself and from there, it's a small step to man.

Planning for the week ahead

Tuesday: work and gym,
find candlesticks
finish scarf

Wednesday: Gabriel's birthday
work and gym
Mail stuff

Thursday:
Work and Gym

Friday:
Work
PT 10 AM at St. Francis


Sat:
9-5 Michaels


Goals for the week:
Write 1000 words
Edit 3 chapters
Finish scarf
weave in socks