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Pagan Blog Project

[PBP] E is for Eostre and other Holidays

Saturday, August 30, 2014 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

I don’t have a specific connection to Eostre above other holidays, but, well, playing with letters and such… My exposure to the pagan holidays started with the Wiccan versions of them, centered on the journey of the Goddess and the God throughout the year. As I ventured off that path and onto generalised Paganism with a center on nature, I also took the holidays for their more seasonal nature instead of the metaphorical journey. As such, I generally observe the solstices and equinoxes and refer to them as such. The other holidays in between, I know of them, and I appreciate them, but I do not generally observe them.

 

Midwinter

Also commonly known as Yule. It is the time of the shortest day of the year, a moment to acknowledge that the deep of winter is here, and from now on we move again towards the light. A festival of rest, really, as many things are in slumber and the weather is (generally) not conducive to much activity outside the house. As the world is clad in darkness, it is also a festival of light and warmth. Literal light and warmth from candles, hearth fire, but also metaphorical light and warmth from spending time with friends and family. A moment to show your appreciation of them by sharing your home, your food, and gifts.

 

Spring Equinox

Here’s the titular Eostre 🙂 A festival for the awakening of the earth. Spring is at hand and it shows in the emergence of new life. Weather is improving and as such people drift back outside. A time to appreciate the new and the young, to revel in what the earth has to offer. A time, also, to work and prepare the land, sow the seeds and help new life come into existence.

 

Midsummer

Also referred to as Litha. It is the time of the longest day of the year, the opposite of midwinter. Time to give thanks for the light as we realise it will wane as we journey towards the darkness of winter. Life is at its height, animals are full, plants are lush, there is no shortage of food, and as such it is the perfect moment for grand celebrations.

 

Autumn Equinox

Otherwise known as Mabon. Winter is getting closer and humans and animals alike prepare for it. Harvests are ready and brought in, food is stockpiled and animals that sleep through the winter eat themselves round. It is again a time to work, but this time we bring things inward, into the home, instead of outward, into the land.

Posted in: General, Pagan Blog Project Tagged: Holidays, Me, Pagan Blog Project, Paganism

[PBP] D is for Divination

Saturday, August 16, 2014 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

Divination is a practice wherein one, through ritualistic method, tries to find meaning and gain insight to answer a question or help make sense of or deal with a situation. The name implies that the found insight is given by a a deity. However, I believe that the answers and insights found are a combination of factors. We have many layers of consciousness and are often unaware of a lot of things inside our own brain. Working with a divination method can bring things to the surface. Also, the energy with which you surround yourself influences how you see things. And beyond that, I believe the universe, or even one or more entities can push things when you’re interpreting if they feel you need to know something, or take something into account.

There are so many forms of divination, but I am mostly interested in two of them: tarot/oracle decks and runes.

Tarot and Oracle Decks

Tarot is a deck of cards with a specific set of cards divided in two subsets. The full deck consists of 78 cards of which 22 numbered ones make up the major arcana and the remaining 56, split up into four suits, are the minor arcana. There are many variants in design for a tarot deck, but all generally use the same terms and numberings. Oracle decks are similar but generally have different terms, different number of cards, different themes. The general idea in using them, though, is mainly identical to how you would use a tarot deck.

For a standard tarot deck, like the Rider-Waite version and direct spin-offs, there are standard interpretations of the cards. However, interpretation can differ from deck to deck as the individual designs evoke different feelings and insights. Plus, I’m notoriously bad at remembering the standard meanings, and don’t like to continuously consult a book or booklet. So for me, a more organic reading feels better.

Oracle decks are generally already built for a more organic reading, and I think that’s why I like them. There is no implied ‘right’ way to read a card. Plus since they lack the constraint of the standardized tarot deck, they can be in literally any theme you can think of.

The use of a deck is also varied. You can pull a single card from the deck as a card-of-the-day type thing or have an elaborate layout to answer questions or process complicated situations. I prefer simple spreads because I like to ponder over the result and extrapolate from there. So card-of-the-day things, or maybe a basic three card spread in a past-present-future setup. There, the first card details what came before the current situation, the second indicates what’s up at the moment, and the third card gives insight in what might happen.

It’s important to have clear, before you start a spread, what the function of each place in the layout is. If you use the aforementioned three-card one, you need to narrow down what exactly you need it to show. Because ‘the past’ and ‘the future’ are too broad. If, for example, you feel stressed out at work, you can define the past-card as ‘what is the root cause of the stress’, the present-card as ‘what is currently the main thing keeping me stressed’ and then define the future-card as ‘what do I need to focus on to get past the stress’ . While not strictly foretelling a future here, it can give you insight into what to do in the future to help your current situation. Extrapolating, you can build a spread to suit your question or situation.

As such, tarot isn’t so much ‘telling the future’ as it is a tool to help you understand yourself, your situation, your life.

I’m a very minor collector of decks. I don’t have as many as I would like, but good decks can be pricey. I started out with a regular Rider-Waite deck, bought in my teens during my first steps on the pagan road. For years that was the only deck I had. I used it occasionally. It’s only been the last year or two that I’ve gotten more interested, even though I still don’t read as much as I’d like. But step by step we also get where we go. I have in that last two years acquired more decks, and it’s fun to see that each has its own vibe and different decks fit different moments, questions or feelings.

I’m currently eyeing this oracle deck. I bought her tarot deck in the same style in her previous kickstarter and it is fabulous.

Runes

Runes fascinate me because they are also an alphabet. And languages in all their forms are like magic unto itself to me. Plus, they have this long history, which is another passion of mine. Runes were in use among Germanic tribes in the first couple centuries of the common era and evolved in form. In Scandinavia the Elder Futhark was simplified into the Younger Futhark with less characters, while Frisians and Anglo-Saxons did the opposite: they created the Futhorc which had more characters.

Every rune isn’t just a letter, it is also a word. And from and through that, it derived meaning. The runes were used as signs and charms, ascribed magic powers they got imbued with it. They were also used for divination by throwing them on a piece of white cloth and then taking a number of them and interpreting their meanings together.

As such, they are still used today. However, since very little is known about how the divination was done exactly, there are different interpretations on how to do this. Some people use runes in a way that is similar to tarot/oracle decks in that they use spreads and layouts where runes are placed as they are drawn and then interpreted according to the layout. I, however, prefer to use casting whereby I throw the lot of them on a cloth.

I then take the ones that fell blind (since the rune is only on one side) out, as they don’t count for that casting. I also take apart the ones that fell outside the cloth, or the shape that I’m using. Depending on the question, these runes either get interpreted as being outside influences, or also get discarded. The remaining, open, runes get interpreted together.

A quicker method, for a simple draw if you have little time or a simpler question is to cast your runes as above. Discard the blind ones and the ones outside the perimeter and then grab three at random from the remaining open ones to interpret. You can also use a daily rune draw as a motivator or power word for the day.

If you want a middle ground between casting and spreads, you can construct a pattern with different areas and then cast the runes on to that. This allows you to interpret groups of runes together, as they apply to the area they fall in.

 

In the end, for both systems, it’s important to do what feels right for you. Only you can tell what does and does not work for you.

Posted in: General, Pagan Blog Project Tagged: Communication, Future, History, Journey, Kickstarter, Language, Me, Mindfulness, Pagan Blog Project, Paganism, Self-Discovery, Spirituality, Thoughts

[PBP] C is for Colours

Saturday, August 2, 2014 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

A cursory Google search on colour meanings and how to incorporate them in your practice as Pagan will give you thousands of results. The meanings are often similar, but never quite 100% the same. This is because, like almost everything, the meaning behind a colour is an interpretation. Due to how we’re wired, and in which culture we’re raised, some interpretations will overlap or be the same. And so,  over time, these interpretations become fact. Become dogma.

In the beginning of my journey, I would compile pages and pages of correspondences. Lists of colours, animals, herbs, moon phases, trees, rocks, you name it I probably had a list. And that list would tell me the meaning, and how I could best use it within my practice. In actual practice, I hardly ever used those lists. And as I’ve grown I’ve come to realise that many of these correspondences are not so set in stone. Especially for things like colours the vibe it gives you is much more important. That vibe may very well match a listed meaning, but it can also be drastically different. And that is okay.

I am predominantly a visual person. Colours, therefore, are especially important to me. I fall for vibrancy and rich colours. And I enjoy seeing the millions of gradients and tones one can find in nature (especially autumn). This means, for my practice, that I associate colours with nature-related things first, and from that come the vibes I get. And some differ depending on context. Light blue, for exampe, is both a deadly cold and a pleasant summer breeze, depending on context-colours and the shade of light blue. All this to say that the below list is what I associate each colour with.

White Snow and ice, winter. Silence. Crispy coldness. Clean, cleansing, purifying. Solidifying (water turns to snow).
Black Darkness. Enclosure, holding securely. Hiding, keeping things hidden, safe. But also, keeping others/other things out.
Grey Overcast, stormy weather, hard rain. Desolation, emptiness, nothingness, the void.
Brown Earth, ground. Steadfast, unmovable. But when it does move, destructive potential. Loving parent, comfort, nurturing, healing.
Yellow Sun. Heat. A tendency to overdo warmth and turn it into oppression.
Yellow-Orange Sun. Summer. Fruit. Fresh summer-warmth.
Orange Loud. Attention seeking. Passionate about things.
Red Enduring warmth. Embrace, hug. Enduring love (for family, friends, partner, random people, aka all forms of love).
Dark Red Blood. Life. Strength. Power.
Rose Delicate. Old. Tenderness. Old love (people from the past). Romance.
Pink New love. Passion, lust.
Lilac Early summer. Flowery. Fleeting. Temporary things.
Purple Stature, elegance, grace. Sophistication, intelligence, wisdom. Learning, teaching, seeking.
Dark Blue Lakes, seas. Expansive, go with the flow, you can’t go against it anyway. Deep sea, hidden, secrets.
Blue Rushing rivers and waterfalls: temperamental, quick, deceptive.
Light Blue Light skies, summer rain. Refreshing, cool.
Blue-Grey Winter skies, icy cold, can turn dangerous quickly.
Blue-Green Tropical shallow oceans. Calm, clear, relaxing. opening up.
Light Green Early spring. Young, new, fresh. Not yet fully grown, child or child-like.
Green Spring. Youth, growing up. Growth, evolving. Discovery, journey, travel.
Dark Green Deep, old, forest. History, looking back.
Posted in: General, Pagan Blog Project Tagged: List, Me, Pagan Blog Project, Paganism

[PBP] B is for Bast

Saturday, July 19, 2014 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment
Gayer-Anderson Cat, British Museum. Made of Bronze, from the Late Period about 664-332 BC.

Gayer-Anderson Cat. Made out of bronze, from the Late Period about 664-332 BC. She wears jewellery with the divine eye of Ra and Heru and a Wadjet amulet, signs of  just retribution. The sculpture is located in the British Museum. Photo Source: Wikipedia (user Oxyman)

Bast is the Goddess known to many as the cat-headed patron Goddess of cats. While this is sort of true, she is much more than that.

Worshipped in Lower Egypt nearly 5000 years ago she is a daughter of Ra. As such, she is a Sun Goddess, and serves as a warrior and protector in his name, and as such carries the title of The Eye of Ra. Her name’s meaning is uncertain. But because the b3s-sound is written with the hieroglyph of an ointment jar, it most likely meant “She of the Ointment Jar”. She is also associated with protective ointments.

Back then, she was displayed with a lion’s head, just as Sekhmet, a similar Goddess in Upper Egypt. After the unification of both Egypts, one would expect these deities to merge, as that is what usually happened in such cases. Both taking on elements of the other. But in this case, both Goddesses were strongly rooted and had many worshippers, so they started to diverge. It also didn’t help that Lower Egypt had lost many a conflict between them and Upper Egypt and as such also lost in influence.

So around the first millemium, Bast became associated also with domestic cats, who were revered for their hunting abilities that kept food storages safe and vermin at bay, but were seen as less fierce than lions. Her images depicted her now more often with the head of a cat instead of a lioness. The nurture and care mother cats show their young also slowly turned Bast from a Warrior Goddess into more of a Mother Goddess type. Still very protective but in a different way. Now she not only protects the pharaoh, but also children, and mothers. Which in turn, and probably helped by the fertility of cats in general, lead to  her being seen as a fertility Goddess as well. Eventually, when the Greek influence in Egypt grew, her transformation became complete, as she was now mostly seen as a lunar Goddess instead of solar as they associated her with Artemis, the huntress.

While she was revered in many places (like Memphis, Heliopolis, Denderah, Sais and so on), her main center of worship was Per-Bast, or in its more commonly known Greek form, Bubastis (modern day Tell Basta). It is located in the Nile Delta, about 80 km north east of Cairo. This is where her temple stood, described by Herodotus as a majestic square building on an island in the middle of the city, lower than the rest so one could look inside to see the grove of trees encircling the shrine itself.

Her festival was celebrated at Per-Bast, but also at other cities like Memphis, Thebes and Esna. Herodotus describes it as many men and women (some 700.000) coming to the city in ships. The women sing, dance and shake their sistra (a rattler-like instrument) along the way, there are many sacrifices and a lot of drunken revelry. This was apparently customary for Deity festivals, as the same is known for others 🙂

In later times Bast is regarded as the mother of Maahes  (also known as Mihos or Miysis in Greek) with Ptah being the father.

Bast is also often referred to these days as Bastet. This, however, is merely another spelling, and not another pronunciation. During the New Kingdom, the -t at the end of words tended to vanish from speech. To emphasise when it was to be spoken, an extra -t was often added. And that generally comes with an extra vowel as well. So Bastet is just Bast.

For me personally, I have always been drawn to cats. Which only grew after I finally had my own after I moved out. At first I started worshipping Bast in honour of cats. But as I learned more about her, I became more invested. I turn to her for strength and protection and I honour her by giving her a revered place on my Altar and showing respect to her creatures.

Sources 

S.D. Cass. All About Bast. www.per-bast.org/bast/historical.html

C. Scott Littleton, ed. Mythologie, een geÍllustreerde geschiedenis van mythen en verhalen uit de hele wereld. 9789057643378

Herodotus. Found referenced in all other sources.

Wikipedia (even though they insist on Bastet). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastet

Encyclopedia Mythica. www.pantheon.org

Knowledge gained over the years of education and general reading.

Posted in: General, Pagan Blog Project Tagged: Me, Pagan Blog Project, Paganism

[PBP] A is for Altar

Saturday, July 5, 2014 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

2003-12-13mamaaardeMy Altar has always been my most visible ‘thing’ of my paganism. When I started out on this path in my teens with Cunningham’s Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner, all swept up by the storybook feel of what Wicca was, buoyed by TV shows like Charmed and the whole Wicca-for-Teens thing that started showing up in books, I was very focused on the magic and the ritual parts. That mainly showed in a lot of reading and gathering of info from various books and websites and not much actual practice. However, The Books dictated I should have an Altar, so I did. I set it up as it should, according to the books, with representation for the elements and the God and the Goddess and so on. But it was mainly just something that I should have, not something that directly connected with me.


As time went on, and I grew comfortable with my path and what I felt, what I needed and what I wanted, Wicca mostly fell by the wayside. I’ll always retain some things, purely because it was the first thing I learned, but I have grown into my own. Polytheistic versus just the God and the Goddess, and more emphasis on spiritual practice versus magic/witchcraft and ritual. I occasionally do spellwork or a small ritual thing here or there, but my main expression these days is internal and silent. And as that has evolved, so did my feelings toward, and connection with, an Altar. It started to pull me in.

In high school I had made this big clay statue of a (hugely!) pregnant woman: Mother Earth. She was the first thing that resonated with me, and so I built a devotional space around her. That started still in my teens, and that is what the picture shows. Mother Earth safely inside the cupboard, with a nature image in the frame before her. And to the left behind me you can see, vaguely, a jar. It has sand in it, and feathers stuck in that.

Over time, I added more items that meant something to me, versus items that I was ‘supposed to have’ . And with every item, Altar, as a concept, became a part of me. And the more that happened, the more the appearances changed, and so on. The rules-and-regulations approach got replaced by one based on intuition and feeling, especially as I started to incorporate more mind-stuff into it (meditation, general mindfulness), culminating in the present day with the entire top of the dresser in my bedroom dedicated to my faith (and my craft, even though I use it little).

1654243_10151936641028155_221143015_nI wish to build a connected universe in my Altar. So the base of it is formed by a goat skin (which I found at Ikea, of all places, but my wallet liked it 😀 ). On top are signifiers for the elements, which is something that originates in my Wicca beginnings, but fits very well in my nature-based approach. There’s three bowls, for the three realms of Earth, Sea and Sky, but also for the elements of Earth, Water and Air. The Earth bowl is light green and filled with rocks, a pinecone, a fossil, a (fake) spider and such. The Water bowl is light blue and filled with shells. The Air bowl is light grey and filled with a glass sphere with air bubbles inside, and feathers. For Fire there are candles. Beyond that I have variable things there, like egg-shaped rocks, postcards featuring Mucha art depicting Spring as young women, and spring candles (bright green and yellow) that I placed there this spring. And when I tweak the Altar for summer (probably next week), I will replace the eggs and postcards and candles with different things, depending on what feels right. Probably, though, the green candle will be replaced by an orange one. And there will be flowers on it more often and so on, all through the seasons.

Next to that I also have statuettes/figurines of those deities that are special to me, and whom I worship. These are Bast, Egyptian Goddess of, among other things, Cats; and Athena, Greek Goddess of  Wisdom and War. Both will get their own post in this project, although poor Athena will have to wait for next year. I will post a new picture of the Altar once I’ve changed it, but here’s a somewhat recent one I already posted back in February when I changed my bedroom. This was before my new dresser so everything is much smaller.

Posted in: General, Pagan Blog Project Tagged: Altar, Journey, Me, Pagan Blog Project, Paganism

[PBP] Intro + Index

Friday, July 4, 2014 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

The Pagan Blog Project is a way to reflect and share your beliefs and insights and so on. Officially you start in January and do each letter of the alphabet twice to precisely fill up each week. Since I’m lazy and not good with schedules, I’m only doing one letter every two weeks.

The list here is my current list of topics, but they might be subject to change if in any given week the mood strikes me to write about something else.

  • A is for Altar
  • B is for Bast
  • C is for Colours
  • D is for Divination
  • E is for Eostre and other Holidays
  • F is for Fall
  • G is for Gaia
  • H is for Holy Spaces
  • I is for Intuition
  • J is for Journey
  • K is for ‘Karma’
  • L is for Labyrinths
  • M is for Meditation, Mandala’s and Music
  • N is for North
  • O is for Offerings
  • P is for Polytheist
  • Q is for Quietness
  • R is for Ritual
  • S is for Spring and Summer
  • T is for Teachings and Tales
  • U is for Unlearning
  • V is for Voice
  • W is for Winter
  • X is for…
  • Y is for ‘Yin-Yang’
  • Z is for Zodiac

 

Posted in: General, Pagan Blog Project Tagged: Intro, List, Me, Pagan Blog Project, Paganism

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