I’ve been spectacularly quiet this month because my old wrist injury’s flared up again and typing hurts it, so no typing for fun generally speaking.
That said, I wanted to share my 5 favourite, day-changing affirmations from May Cause Miracles by Gabrielle Bernstein, which I worked through earlier this year (and it rocked!).
I suck at making up affirmations, so I like to pick them up off other people. Literally, pick a short one, and say it lots to yourself in the day, whenever you remember.
Take ’em and use ’em, my monkey children. All the day all the time. Especially number 1.
1. I am grateful for this moment.
2. Today I am a miracle worker. I choose to see love in all.
3. I could see love instead of this.
4. I choose to believe in abundance and accept this belief as my reality.
5. I forgive myself for having that thought. I choose love instead.
I look forward to meeting you in more teeny tiny posts in the future.
On a wonderful adventure in Devon last weekend I picked this book up in a bookshop on discount. £4.99! Get in.
It’s Goddess Bless: Divine Affirmations, Prayers and Blessings by Sirona Knight.
I’ve seen it online before, but never bought it because my other adventure with this kinda book – Be Blessed by Denise Dumars – really left me cold. I didn’t like the tone (really conversational, which is usually win – didn’t work on me this time though), or the way it jumped pantheons exclusively and non-stop, or the stuff in it really. I just didn’t find it useful, or beautiful, or steeped in the divine, which is what I’d want from a devotional book. I gave it away in the end.
So I was really put off the idea of buying another devotional book.
This one rocks though. It’s just full of prayers, beautiful prayers, to goddess, and some pantheon goddesses too – Anu pops up a lot (She’s a fave), Aphroditie too, a bunch of Nordic goddesses, but mostly the prayers and affirmations are just addressed to the Great Goddess. It’s wonderful, especially since I suck at writing poetry and beautiful divine things. The prayers are wonderful, and the affirmations are really really great and uplifting, and there are some lovely ideas in here of how to use prayers in your life, and what to use them for. And there are prayers and devotionals in here for everything, dude.
It feels like how you’d imagine a prayerbook ought to feel.
So huge thumbs up for this purchase. Recommended!
Woah, hold on a minute, Time.
The other week I turned 25. I feel like I have graduated into grown-up-hood, because of this:
– A dance classmate asked me my age at the weekend, and when I said I was 25, she said she thought I was 16, and I WASN’T OFFENDED. In fact, I was a little bit pleased.
– I could get preggo and have a baby with Superman now, and people wouldn’t go “But you are so young to be having kids!” and secretly be thinking stuff like Haven’t you heard of condoms? or Slut! Keep it in your pants! They’d just think, yeah, all right then, that seems appropriate.
– 25’s the time when you are a teenager/early 20’ser you think you will have a good job, a steady income, maybe saving up for a house, be engaged or married, and know exactly where you are going in life. You think, ah, that’s a grown up thing to do. I’ll do that when I’m 25 or so. BUT I AM 25 AND NONE OF THAT STUFF HAPPENED!
– My friends my age own a £1000 sofa. The other ones own a house. A couple more are getting married. I know people younger than me who are divorced.
Also, 30 in five years guys. There is so much I want to have done by the time I am 30. Have watched the craft again for one thing. Own a dog. Go to tropical paradise. Swim in a coral reef. Y’know, have a successful career at my weird-ass jobs.
So it’s time to pull my finger out of wherever it’s supposed to be in that analogy and get a move on I think. If I just continue being worried and afraid and procrastinaty, I’ll end up an old lady who wishes she’d spent more time having fun and less time on Facebook.
Here’s an interesting thought. I lifted this from the Pagan Restoration column by Sam Webster on Pantheos:
“I focus on worship in this discussion because worship is the living act of religion. Belief is just thinking about religion, and in healthy persons it changes with their development. Only in Christianity is belief central. If you are focused on what you believe, not what you do, you are thinking like a Christian.”
I’m not a Christian, and I never have been one, so my experience there is pretty limited I’ll admit. And I’m in England, home of the Church of England, which is a very laid back and plain kinda sect, so I don’t know how it works in the more flamboyant ones. But from every pamphlet I have ever read (and I read them, all of them) and books I’ve picked up at the library, a big focus is admitting that Jesus is Awesome and God is the Bestest, having that belief and attitude in your head, and being nice to people, and that’s basically what the religion seems to want from you most. Praying is good too, but you don’t have to do much more if you don’t want to – I know plenty of nice people who identify as Christians, and just pop along to church twice a year at Christmas and Easter. And a couple who even don’t do that.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with that really. Not everyone wants to spend ages doing practical religious stuff. Some people just like having a safe place to operate from, and want to feel a part of something. And I think if you believe in something, it’s going to affect how you operate in the world, which means there’s a kinda greater meaning behind what you do, which is nice.
I feel you can be pagan and not do a lot of practical stuff based on what I have said above – I feel it’s a given you will be into recycling whatever you can, picking up crisp packets and supporting environmental causes. And that’s enough. It’s about how you see the world, which influences how you are gonna interact with it. You are gonna take at least a little action, spesh if you are a pagan, because it’s obvious what actions you take. Nature good. Treat nature good.
I think the idea of belonging to a religion but not personally doing much action about it does come from the Christian idea of the important thing being about believing, not action, because in Christianity, you’ve got more people taking action for you – ministers and priests and of course, the big J himself – and you just have to go around having your beliefs influence your actions. But being a Witch is more like being a minister or a priest than a believer – it’s about taking that action, whether you are a spiritual witch or a practical witch. That’s the whole point.
So I’m banging my Witches Have To Do Stuff drum again. There is nothing wrong with not doing stuff, and making a difference in the world through your eco attitude, but if you are a witch, you have to do at least a little witchcraft regularly. Thems the rules.
I think I understand the concept of having a special witchy name a bit more now.
It’s a way of bypassing all the funk that your normal, worrisome ego brain pulls on you when you wanna get down with some wicca and pull out the assurance and confidence of your witchy self.
Lemme explain.
I always thought that regular ol’ me was enough for witchery. I righteously believed that I should believe that I was totally awesome and worthy and capable, and if I didn’t, well obviously I was being stupid. I saw the idea of taking on a different personality as a kind of betrayal – a way of saying, I’m not good enough, so I will pretend to be someone else.
However, that just means if you are getting down with wicca, it’s easy for your regular self to recite all these excuses as to how you don’t deserve to be a witch, and therefore anything you do just won’t work and you feel super crap. And it’s all your own fault, because if you simply believed in yourself, then everything would be wonderful, you massive jerk you.
(Hopefully I’m not the only one with these kinda issues – I’m the sort of person who has a tendency to believe that you only deserve something if you spend literally all your time working obsessively, obsessively hard at it, and even then, I discredit all the hard work I do do. This extends to Wicca as I don’t feel like I work hard enough at it. This is an issue I am working on at the moment.)
It’s really hard to bust out of this kind of thinking. So the point of a witch name is to just cut the crap back down to your essential witchy self. The main thing is the knowledge that this is a core part of you, not just a ridiculous fantasy of being a Charmed one or an Ancient Oak High Priestess of Majyik, which is what I always worried about. I reckon your witchy self is just who you would be without all those worries and fears bringing you down, because when I am my witchy self, I am clear, confident, focused and decisive, things I am definitely not a lot of the regular time. I care and respect what I think, not what others think. And I think that’s what we are all like underneath all the stuff we’ve picked up and piled on top of it.That doesn’t mean you should get everyone to call you ArtemisCalling, or UnicornPrincess, or whatever your witch name is. (Maybe it’s Zoe, or maybe
So there we are. I think I get it. What do you think the point of a magical/witchy name is?
I watched about half of this vid the other day – it has one of my hero’s Kris Carr in it, who does some awesome green smoothie recipies I have for lunch sometimes. It’s about what’s in food, how food companies are interested in selling food, not creating healthy people (big surprise there) and why we find it so hard to give certain foods up.
It’s usually a sold DVD, but until the end of March 2013 they are doing a free instant-access webscreening of it for all curious peeps. I watch it while I am having my lunch break.
Click here to watch the whole thing! Or a bit of it! For free! We love free.
You all know I can’t stop reading.
Years ago, when I lived and cooked for myself, I was a total veggie living mainly dairy free. I’m not that keen on meat, or mass killing animals for food, and milk makes me feel sick.
When I went back home to live with my mum, I slowly went back to non veggie-ism. Salmon, lamb, nom nom nom. And now I live with Superman, I eat meat without thinking really.
Diet is a really funny issue- mention anything about it and everyone thinks you are personally attacking their lifestyle choices. Me included.
I used to believe that veggie-isim was an integral part of my Wiccan identity – how can you love the planet if you are murdering and eating half of it? I’m sure I was quite righteous about it. Sorry. Us humans do freakin’ love being right.
Sodding spirituality, meat and its friends do make me feel sluggish, and veggies make me feel like I am made of woodland goodness – it’s no secret I have a fairy tummy, and I aspire to be the kind of person that drinks green smoothies and raw food salads, I just haven’t got round to it yet. Because even when there is something you know will be great for you, and even your inner guidedness (usually so secretive and quiet) is screaming “YOU WANT RAW BROCCOLI WOMAN! TURN ON THAT F’IN BLENDER!” It’s so so much easier not to do all that difficult change stuff and to continue plodding along with”The Normal” instead.
I picked up Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin this afternoon and I’ve been reading it. I am vegan- friendly, so the secret agenda of persuading you to Eat Vegan was not a horrid surprise, and was actually mega convincing. I’ve been reading about how gross milk is (preaching to the choir sisters!) and how nasty animal farming is (shudder) and I’ve decided I am choosing to go veg again. Not necessarily in one move, cold turkey. I’m just gonna start being more thoughtful about what I eat.
I think it’s the right choice for my fairy tummy, but not necessarily for yours. No more delicious torture chicken for me.
I’m reading lotsa books right now, as ever – half out of one and half in the other. I’m also reading a lot of stuff about the Higher Self.
The Higher Self is meant to be the Ultimate You really – the part of you hiding out under all the personality and ego and whatnot that is totally, always connected to God, because that’s what it’s made of. My hero Franchesca de Grandis calls it the GodSelf in some of her writings, which totally makes sense.
I really don’t like the name Higher Self. It makes me think of hierarchy, it makes me think of trying to escape life and your body (because it’s higher, right, it sounds like it’s floating above you), it makes me think of snootiness and shoulds.
I prefer the name Deep Self. I think it makes more sense.
It’s the foundation of our selves – it’s always there. All our thoughts, fears and happenings are clouds chasing around on top of it, distorting it, keeping it from view, but it’s always there, just beneath, at the core of us. It’s our base of being. To get into our deep selves, all we have to do is surrender and sink back into it – a lot easier than stretching and reaching for a higher self, no?
Deep is timeless, still, ancient, wise, without judgement, mysterious, within. (And it makes me think of the ocean – no wonder I like it.) Higher is better-than, judgey, clouds and regular-Old-Man-god nonsense, striving and outside of ourselves.
I see the world as having an undercurrent of the divine, of wonder, of magic, just below the surface of what we can see and are used to. I think it makes sense that we’d work that way too.
I’m sticking in an updated review of my Crimbly presents – Magical Housekeeping and The Way Of The Sea Priestess.
Magical Housekeeping by Tess Whitehurst rocks. I’m really diggin’ this chappy. I was anoyed that it was quite simple at first and not entirely what I expected, but after thinking about it, there’s lots to be doing and thank crap it’s not chokka or I’d feel overwhelmed and never get round to doing anything. It’s changing the way I look at my home and the space I live in, and I am even more exited to be on this domestic witch kick I am currently rockin’.
Some of it is a bit new age, some of it is cute, and although I think the author forgets that most of the world doesn’t live in a gluten-free vegan larder packed with spelt, I really like this one – it’s inspiring. The line that sealed it for me was when the author was talking about animal imagery and energies, and her closing line on snakes was:
“Sorry, but no pet snakes. Snakes want to be free!”
I told you I’ve had difficulty with The Way Of The Sea Priestess by Louise Tarrier. I still haven’t finished it. All the things I said before still hold true on this one, but I am finding that although the writing is real hard going, underneath it are really great and valuable priestessing concepts and practices that I am actually applying to my own practice. Louise obviously practices what she writes about, and it’s wonderful reading about that. I think kinder of it the more time has passed since reading it – when I jump back in to read it, I get frustrated again.
So I’d recommend The Way Of The Sea Priestess to people who are trying to get their hands on everything they can about self-taught priestessing and devotional Goddess paths. If you are not really craving and jonesing for that, I’d give this one a miss as it’s tough going.
Since this Witches’ year is all about getting my witch on, I wanted to talk about a reason I used to not get my witch on.
The awesome thing about witchcraft and wicca is that you are never powerless – since it’s the spirituality of personal responsibility, we know there is always something we can do.
You can kinda strangle yourself with it a bit though.
I think like a lot of people, there are a few tangles in my character I’d like to brush out. One thing that always attracted me to witchcraft was the idea of facing and untangling these elements of your personality – banishing spells, spells to promote behaviour you like, and so on. Power to change! Right on!
I used to use Wicca to focus on changing myself, but not from a place of looking-towards-the-wonderful-result, rather a place of brooding-on-how-crappy-am-I-ness. I know when praying I was meant to ask the help of Goddess with stuff, so I did – Goddess, help me be less lazy, Goddess, help me like waking up in the mornings, Goddess, help me finish this paper that has to be in tomorrow. I’d plan spells to change stuff that I wasn’t keen on – mainly my shortcomings. I would just focus purely on stuff about myself I didn’t like and wished was not there, and as a consequence whenever I sat down to get witchy I’d just feel crappy about myself, and I knew that it was all my fault, because there are no excuses and I am a huge believer in personal responsibility, and then feel even crapper. I’d realise that I didn’t enjoy my spirituality and feel pants about that too, and that would go on the list of things that were wrong with me.
I was using spirituality as a way to kick myself, over and over, and remind myself I was not good enough.
No wonder I avoided doing any actual practice – it was such a downer.
I climbed out of it though – I explored a more devotional route with more emphasis on Goddess and less on Me, and through there to witchy practices that focused on beautiful results rather than broody shittiness. and found a way to a practice that makes me feel better about life, the universe, and everything rather than stuck in self-pity mud.
Faeriedaughter 