Monday Madness

I prayed, and I received understanding.

I called upon the divine, and Wisdom came to me.
I loved her more than scepters and thrones.
Wealth is nothing compared to Wisdom.
I cannot compare her to any jewel,
for gold is like sand compared to her,
and silver is like dull clay.
I love her more than health and beauty.
I love her more than light, 
because she is unfailingly radiant.
All good things come to me because of her, 
and from her hands come all treasures.
 - Wisdom, 7-14

One practice I've adopted from my husband and a few of our friends is finding a Word. A Word that symbolizes who you are, who you want to be - what you strive for. Your life's purpose.

My word is Wisdom. I like knowledge - I do like learning new things - but Wisdom is what I want. I don't need to know HOW, so much as WHY. I want to go back to school, but I haven't decided exactly what for. I intend to take a Psychology 101 class, a Sociology 101 class, and a Philosophy 101 class. I want to know WHY people do things the way they do, WHY the world is the way it is. I took a Introduction to Ethics course once, and had an amazing time in it. Philosophy is really interesting to me. I think those three classes, as well as possibly a Counseling class, will tell me what exactly it is that I want to do. Besides strive for Wisdom.

In the meantime I read as much as I possibly can, about a wide variety of topics. I'm currently having a lot of fun watching the videos on The Vlog Brothers' Crash Course channel. I've also enjoyed a lot of the videos at The Khan Academy, and worked through a lot of their math course. Reddit and Google+ provide me with a lot of news and current events. (Pick your subreddits and circles carefully, and those sites can be incredibly educational!)

Unfortunately, working retail this holiday season is infringing upon my time spent seeking Wisdom. It's also infringing on my time spent writing entries for this blog, as you've probably noticed, and I apologize sincerely! I have at least been able to keep my commitment of one entry a week; and after the New Year I should be able to get back to daily blogging.

I shall end this blog with two questions for you all.

Do you have a Word?
What are your favorite resources in the search for Wisdom?

Monday Madness

This is actually a little more like Friday Madness, or Thursday Madness, since Thanksgiving and Black Friday are what this entry is about.

I have to work on Thanksgiving. And not just Thanksgiving morning; I have to work from 4 pm to 11 pm. Which means the Thanksgiving Dinner plans I had are now "Thanksgiving Lunch" plans, and I'm very, VERY grateful to my hostess for changing her schedule for me.

So back to this working on Thanksgiving thing. I work in retail. I always have. I've worked in various stores, and I've never had to work on Thanksgiving before. The earliest I've had to go in was 4 am on Black Friday. Which sucked, but I understood. That company is opening at midnight this year. Another company I used to work for is opening at 9 pm Thanksgiving night. Other companies are opening at 8 pm, or earlier. The company I currently work for is open 4 pm to 11 pm on Thanksgiving Day, and opening again at 7 am Black Friday.

WHY?! Why do companies do this to their workers? Thanksgiving is listed as a Federal Holiday, but soon it will only be Federal Employees that get the day off. Retail almost never pays Holiday Pay. Only full time workers get that, and those are few and far between in the retail business. So while full-time people, federal workers, and union workers all get paid to NOT work on Thanksgiving, we get paid time-and-a-half TO work. Which means, in comparison, we really only get paid half-wages. If you go off the basis of people getting Holiday Pay. Half-wages to work on Thanksgiving.

Because consumers will come out to the sales. Everyone complains about what this does to workers - but they still go shop the sales. If you want this to stop, it begins with you. YOU must stop shopping Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. YOU have to vote with your wallet, and stop supporting these practices. Unless the consumer - YOU - stops giving in to the marketing, corporations will continue to open their stores earlier and earlier, and make their employees miss more and more of their "holiday", to rake in the sales.

We talk about the over-commercialization of Christmas. It's now branching into Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is no longer a time to enjoy good food with your family, but a time to pig out until it's time to go to the stores and shop. Or a day to sneak out of dinner and go visit the sales. I would really like to be able to spend Thanksgiving dinner with the people I love, but instead my husband will be home alone and I will be catering to shoppers. Shoppers who will probably wish me Happy Thanksgiving, and ask "why are you working on Thanksgiving?" not understanding that it's because THEY ARE SHOPPING.

So please. From one person to another. (Because though I work retail, I AM STILL A PERSON.) If you know someone who works retail, or if you have ever worked retail yourself - skip shopping on Thanksgiving. Skip Black Friday. Send a message to retailers that this has gone far enough. You can wait eight hours to get that half price TV or that blouse for 70% off. You don't need craft supplies while your family is eating Thanksgiving dinner. Tell retailers you'd like to wait and get a little bit of sleep. We employees will thank you for it.

Sunday Photos

Today I'm going to post a series of photos. These are shot off my back patio; I live on the fourth story of an apartment building, and there are thick woods behind our building. (On the other side of the woods are a grassy park where I've seen a herd of deer, and then more woods.) The view makes the apartment a really enjoyable space.

The view from my patio in June:

It was pretty, and green, and lush.








Then Fall started to settle in:

The trees began to change color and give us some wonderful fall hues.









After Hurricane Sandy brushed past us on her way to New Jersey and New York, a lot of the leaves were missing!

It started to look more like winter at this point.








And just a few days ago, it looked like this.

I plan to continue taking pictures as the seasons change, I really like the progression!

PBP - I'm a Word Witch

So - some witches classify themselves - Kitchen Witches, or Weather Witches, or Druids, or Shamans...I've tried to figure out, for a long time, what I am. Other than eclectic.

I'm a Word Witch. My favorite form of spellwork is to write out a prayer, or a poem, or a wish, and decorate the page and hang it on the wall. There are prayers sticky-tacked in odd places throughout my house. At one point, while Sascha was deployed, I had nine or ten prayers of protection and comfort posted around the walls of my bedroom!

Perhaps that's why I like this blog so much. I like words. I enjoy writing. In high school I dreamed about becoming a writer. That's not something I'm interested in now; it's hard enough finding inspiration for a blog entry every day! (And as you can tell, I do fail at that sometimes...)

Speaking doesn't do it for me either; it's the written word where I find magic. I get nervous and mispronounce my speech, but it's extremely rare that I misspell a word. The best way for me to remember something is to write it down once or twice.

I think the affinity for the written word has affected my choice in goddesses, too. Brigid has been my shield and open-armed, welcoming goddess since I began this journey; she's a goddess of poetry and inspiration, of hearth and home. Lately Cerridwen has been calling to me; she's another goddess of inspiration, but also of transformation. She can be vengeful and ferocious in getting what she wants - she chased her servant boy through several different forms when he accidentally took the potion meant for her son. (And eventually ate him, only to birth Taliesin nine months later!)

On one hand, I am eager to see where Cerridwen leads, but I am also a little afraid of the change she promises.

Cerridwen, Dark Lady, you stir your cauldron with such care. Please remember I can be burned too!

Tarot Tuesday

I've decided to start over again, slowly, with my old Friend, the Tarot of the Cat People. So I'm working through my "Tarot for Your Self" book, from the beginning, with this deck.

(You can see my first entry about this book here, and about this deck here.)

After recording my Tarot profile as seen in my first entry about this book, I moved on to a simple three-card spread. I know how to do the cross spread, but for now, we'll stay simple with the three-card. I've always read it as past-present-future, but this book suggests not only that, but also body-mind-spirit. An interesting twist.

Today my three cards are Nine of Pentacles-Ace of Pentacles-Two of Wands (inverted).

If I look at them as Body-Mind-Spirit, I see that I am incredibly wealthy in body (well, yes, I'd like to be a little less so!). My mind is at a peak of power right now, and my spirit is...torn. Torn between two things, distracted, dealing with a loss of faith. At a time when it really should be cementing its dominance.

Perhaps this is telling me I really need to work on letting go of the last bits of indoctrination left over from my conservative Christian upbringing. I still have a little trouble with rituals and overt spellwork; I feel silly calling out aloud to my gods or tracing figures in the air/on the ground. And this is something I need to get over.

I learned the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram from a friend over the weekend. There are parts of it I really like (And around me flames the pentagram, and within me the six-rayed star - I love that. It feels like a shield that doesn't feed solely off my own energy.) and parts that I feel really funny about. (Tracing the pentagram in the air, intoning certain words that have no real meaning to me.) I've already changed some of it; the gods I call upon being the most significant. (Rhiannon before me, behind me Mannanan, to my right Brigid, to my left Cernunnos.) I will probably continue changing it until it feels right to me.

Did any of you have issues with your magic? Did you ever feel silly performing a ritual? Any ideas for how to get over it?

Monday Madness

Normally I write these entries the day before, and schedule them to be posted. But it's 10 till 2 in the morning, and I've been searching for inspiration for this entry.

In the meantime, Sascha and I have been marathoning Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Yes, you heard me right. Sabrina. It's a show I never got to watch growing up because *gasp* witches! He mentioned the other day that he used to like that show, and when I said I never got to watch, his immediate reaction was to decide we were going to watch all of it.

We're about 10 or so episodes in to the first season, and I have to say, I'm impressed. Given that this aired in the mid-90s, I'm surprised it was as well accepted as it was. I was especially amused by the Halloween episode; Aunt Zelda informed Sabrina that she shouldn't buy into the commercialization of the holiday, and to remember the true meaning of Hallow's Eve - family. Given that that's what is usually said about the high Christian Holiday, I just thought it really neat.

It's just not often that you see witchcraft portrayed in such a positive, family-friendly light. I mean, what other movies/TV shows have featured witchcraft/wicca/paganism?

Charmed - not quite family friendly.
Bewitched - actually another good example of witchcraft being portrayed favorably.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks was good.
But The Coven, The Craft, The Blair Witch Project, The Witches of Eastwick, so many bad examples.

And of course, now, the Harry Potter series. I was just surprised to see a series about a family of witches aimed at a younger audience, fifteen years ago! It might just be my sheltered upbringing, I suppose.

Does anyone else know of positive portrayals of witchcraft in the media?

Sunday Photo

I love this picture. This is an EXTREMELY calm day on the Oregon coast - people who are only used to the east coast don't understand how rocky and unpredictable and dangerous the Pacific coast is. The floor of the ocean drops off VERY quickly, and there's undertow currents pretty much all the time. 

Combined with this memory of the Pacific are the people in this photo. In the foreground are my little brother and his fiancée. On the right are Sascha and our other best friend. These are three people I miss very much from back home in Oregon. And this memory of our beautiful day at the coast is something I will always treasure.

Love you guys.

Bonus Post: Two Men - the Difference

President Obama won re-election Tuesday night. A lot of other fantastic things happened and fantastic people got elected Tuesday night, but this entry is about the difference between my President - a man who's tried to better the lives of everyone in this country - and Governor Mitt Romney, a man who admittedly only cares about 53% of the country.

This is President Barack Obama thanking some of his campaign workers, after he won the election:


And this is Mitt Romney's thanks to his campaign workers: Mitt Romney's Campaign Cancels Staffers' Credit Cards in the Middle of the Night

This is the difference between these two men. One of them fucking CARES.

PBP - Woman, Phenomenally

When I was in high school, I was big into poetry. Still am, but in high school I had a few poems that I wrote on papers and pasted onto my walls. (Come to think of it, I still do that, too!) One of my very favorite poems at the time was Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman. I ADORE this poem. Why?

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.

I am a woman. I am not my society's ideal of beauty. I'm rather far from it, actually. As I write this, I'm snacking on leftover Halloween candy which is only going to take me farther from said ideal. But you know what? I am a woman, and I am phenomenal, and I am loved. It only took me, oh, YEARS to realize this!

I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.

When I met Sascha, I was at the end of a long-distance, mostly-online relationship that was spiraling downwards fast. The ex in question wasn't making any effort to make the relationship NOT long-distance, and my self-esteem, never the greatest, was taking hit after hit. And then I met Sascha, who put such effort into wooing me that I began to realize I was actually quite a catch after all.

I'm a woman
Phenomenally.

And that was simply the kickstart I needed. In the years since, I've come to appreciate my own personality, my own mind, my own REASON. It seems a little sad, looking back on it, that I needed a man, a relationship, to prove this point to me, but that goes back to the way I was raised.

I was raised in a very conservative Christian household. Dad was the head of the household, and he was the one that made the decisions. Mom voted the way Dad did; not because he told her to, but because she believed he knew best. My older brother was more...extroverted, outspoken, braver, etc...than I ever was. So to go from that environment, to a man that wanted to know what I thought, what I believed, what MY reasons were for things...it was unexpected. And to go from the environment of "Pray to God, he has the answers, he knows best, don't trust your own judgement, read the Bible" to "Harm none, do what ye will" and "Look inside yourself for the answers" was even more mind-blowing and eye-opening.

Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

And then! And then I discovered the GODDESS. Some of you have been raised monotheistic and understand; some of you probably can't. The GODDESS. The female half. Suddenly, instead of having my life dictated by a masculine god who just. didn't. get it., there was a divinity who was part of ME. Or perhaps a divinity I could be part of. This was a world-changing idea. A few of my more experienced pagan friends were afraid I would devote myself too much to the goddess and forget the balance, but I think I simply needed a few years of immersing myself in the divine feminine. Now I can look at the masculine half with new eyes, and re-accept that energy. I just needed time. Time to learn that I, too, can be divine. I am not lesser than a man by the chance of being born female. I am a WOMAN, and I am phenomenal.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.


^This was going to be the end of this entry. But I wrote this before the election on Tuesday, and I suddenly have a lot more to say. WOMEN. Women are the winners of this election. I have several things to share with you that have been floating around Facebook and elsewhere.




"You know your party is in trouble when people ask did the rape guy win, and you have to ask which one." - Alec Baldwin

And also this story: Women and Minorities to dominate the Democratic Party

This is the difference between the Republican party and the Democrat party. Republicans - 90% white males. Democrats - 47% white males. New Hampshire elected a completely female delegation for the first time in US History. We elected an openly lesbian senator. We elected a Hindu woman. A Buddhist woman. A disabled woman. An openly gay congressman. We re-elected an African-American President, with two daughters, who has pledged to protect and fight for a woman's right to choose, for women's access to contraception and preventive healthcare, for equal pay for women, for marriage equality. Marriage equality passed in three states, and a marriage equality ban failed in a fourth.

It wasn't until LAST YEAR that a woman's bathroom got added to the House floor. LAST YEAR. Tuesday marked INCREDIBLE strides for women and minorities. For the first time in a long, long time I feel proud of my country. I am cautiously optimistic about the turn we're taking. Actually, no. I'm not cautiously optimistic. I keep saying I am because I don't want to get my hopes up. But really, I am FREAKING EXCITED for the step we've taken. I am ECSTATIC. I cannot WAIT to see what the next four years bring.

Book Review: How to Spot a Bastard by His Sun Sign

How to Spot a Bastard by His Star Sign: The Ultimate Horrorscope

So - I'm not going to pull any punches here. This is a terrible book. It's mean-spirited. If it's satire, it's not very funny. If you took the fictional, awful, hateful, stereotypical, man-hating, bitter feminist and asked for a book on astrology and why men suck, this is what you'd expect to get.

There are no positive sides of men in this book. None. It is completely one-sided. I think it's a terrible book to even have out there; things like this are what people point to and say "See? Feminists hate men!"

The chapters are organized as follows:
"The [sign] bastard" (3-4 page description that's painful to read)
"How to spot one" (2 sentence stereotype)
"Where to find one" (2 sentences)
"How to intrigue one" (short paragraph)
"The first date" (shorter paragraph)
"When to do the deed" (two sentences)
"When to pop the question" (never. It's always some version of never)
"If he dumps you" (two sentences saying you're better off)
"If you dump him" (two sentences also saying you're better off)

Don't waste your money on this book.