The rock wall has been buried by dumploads of composted pony-poo and mulch and other filler, to eventually be a steep, safer, slope of garden/grass, but this process will take a few years due to compaction of the soil and the sheer volume of wheelbarrow loads we’ll need.  Still, the vision in my mind is pretty nice.

I’ve decided to clean up this spot over the course of the summer, and make a (hopefully) semi-daily meditation while sitting in the area, after doing a few chores to clean it up and such.  I’ll eventually be setting up a little outdoor altar, somewhat inspired by the Bored Gods “Shrine of the Mists” in spirit, but with a bit different ‘look’ physically.

I’ll post pictures soon, but think that starting with the Superfull moon this coming weekend, and Beltane just past us, this is the perfect time to start a Big Project, that can be done it tiny little steps over a long season.

Wish me luck. 

Before that though, I’m also happy to report another win FOR SCIENCE.

(warning: bugs and bits below.  You have been warned.)

This weekend, after a good day of playing around at a nearby farm, and being locked into the chicken coop by playful cousins, we discovered a spider mite or louse in the kid’s hair.  Now of course mom has a bit of an overactive “eww bug!” reaction, but after a recent purchase of a microscope at a yard sale, I figured “why not check it out”.

Of course, the kid was completely boggled by the fact that we “had a REAL microscope like the science labs?!”, but I assured him that it was a recent purchase and may be a bit blurry or entirely non-functional, but it was worth the attempt, for this particular Teachable Moment.

So, we grabbed a blank slide, wiped the copious dust from the lenses, and smacked a cover slip on top of the bug (it was a louse) and peeked through the eyepiece.  The little teeny hard-to-see spec was flailing it’s little legs around, and when the kid peeked through, his shriek of Joy was contagious.   OMG, MOM MOM, LOOK! IT’S MOVING! LOOOOOK! YOUCANSEETHEEYESANLEGS, and EVERYHING!

The afternoon then filled up with further micro-curiosity.  I plucked a hair by the roots.  The kid hesitantly yet stolidly plucked his own to compare (FOR SCIENCE!), and we brushed the dog to get a third hair sample.  A bit of lettuce leaf, an onion skin, the wing of a dead fly.  Sugar.  Salt.  Gourmet Salt flakes (not cubes). Water from the pond. Dust from under the sofa.  … all this flickered across the single “blank” slide that was included with the microscope kit. (a LEGO brick did not work, sadly, which I expected, and was a good lesson in optics and transparency necessary for Micro-viewing)

I’m sure we would have continued with flour, skin samples, and such but dinner time came and there were other chores to do.   Still, I’ve added microscope slide kits to my Amazon WishList, because my son already plans on trying more stuff to look at this week.  It’s pretty awesome.

As for the geeky Rites, I am also happy to report that we have just finished watching the Fellowship of the Ring, and  The Two Towers,with plans to complete Peter Jackson’s amazing trilogy at the end of this week.  We were a bit unsure if he was ready for it, but after being assured (by the kid of course) “I am eight, and Oh Yeah, I love epic battles.“,  we tried the first movie with a finger on the pause button just in case.

We shouldn’t have worried.

So far, Legolas is his favorite character, mostly for the action scenes with rapid-fire arrows.  He thinks Gimli is silly, especially during the battle for Helm’s Deep.  Aragorn is a good king, but dreams about his elf-love too much, but overall, the Ents attacking Isengard were the high point in both movies.

As he said loudly last night… “See, now THAT is why you don’t mess with Nature, right?!”    

Spot. (aka: Mr Moo)
Now resting in the clearing at the end of the path (aka, our freezer)

This time, our son was old enough to realize that ‘The Moo’ we had been feeding and tending to for the last year and a half was going away, not because he was sick or dangerous, but because he was loved and healthy, and will feed us this winter.   He cried.

Later in the day, especially after seeing the guy walk willingly into the truck and be driven away with “his family” (some other steers on their way to slaughter from the nearby farm), and a gentle reminder that beef=cow, he seems to ave realized what I consider the “rightness” of the situation.

I understand those who follow a vegetarian lifestyle, and respect that.  For us, an important thing for our son to know is where food comes from.  Be it the garden or the pasture, or the coop.   We raised Spot (and a brother who passed away last winter unexpectedly) with the intention to become “meat”.  He was loved, he had fresh grass and a building all to himself (seen in the background of this image), and a pond to drink from whenever he was thirsty.  Daily buckets of grain or cracked corn were an expected treat each evening after school.

I much prefer the beef we’ll receive from his life, to one of commercial farmed produce.  We put ourenergy and love into the spirit inhabiting this cow’s bo, and will receive it back again to nourish us.

R.I.P.  mister Moo.  You were part of our ‘family’, and will be part of us forever.

I’ve had two private messages asking about some crafty things I made recently, so I figure here’s a great place to post about them.   Sadly, I do not have any pictures of such in-progress, so you’ll have to be content with words.  First is a scrying mirror, second is poke-berry  which makes a wonderful kid-friendly project and can be used for all sorts of magical inscriptions, or simply  painting in a colouring book! 

First, a scrying mirror I made for a lovely friend of mine, which can be seen on her altar here:  http://bringingupsalamanders.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-moon-thoughts.html

First, I took a simple wooden picture frame and decorated it with blue wood-stain and black paint.  It’s hard to see, but the bottom is ‘celtic’ knots across the bottom, which was really time-consuming.  I had planned to do all the designs that way, being pressed into the wood with an ink-less ball-point pen, but it hurt my hand so I stuck to paint and ink for the other designs.

The left side is inked with vine-like designs, the top is speckled like a field of stars, or chaotic dots, your choice, and the right side contains a symmetrical series of geometric sacred shapes.

The corners of the frame are decorated with a star-like design based off a custom pendant I wear, a triskele triple-spiral, a pentacle, and (I think I recall) an acorn on the bottom left.

To colour the glass darkly, I had a small ritual fire from apple and elder branches that had fallen in our yard, and burned during a New Moon.  I  smudged the frame and glass with mugwort and cedar (also from our yard), and charged the whole thing with love, and somewhat open-ended intent to be a sacred tool (since it was not for my use, I did not want to get too specific with ‘charging it’).

After the little bonfire died out, I took the black coals, powdered them in my stone mortar & pestle, and mixed some more dried mugwort leaves in with a bit of salt-water to form a pasty goop.  This got smeared on the back of the glass  allowed to dry, before affixing the back of the picture frame “stand”.   (So instead of being painted glass, you look into the soot sandwiched between the glass and the backing).

I am quite willing to make a mirror for anyone else, with this, or other methods.  Simply comment with a request and I’ll coordinate things via email or facebook.     Enjoy! 

*   *   *

The second craft is a quick and easy ink, for those of you with access to Poke-berries. Any other dark berry will work, but I prefer poke, because it’s an abundant ‘weed’ in my area, and things like raspberries get eaten too fast to be saved for inks.    One interesting bit of trivia is that the Unites States Constitution was apparently written using fermented pokeberry ink, as it was the “common ink” of the time.  Fermenting it seems to help preserve it, but for myself and the kid, the quick and easy method works just fine as a family project.

Collect a bundle of ripe berries, maybe a cup or three, depending on how much juice you want. Remember, a little ink goes a long way! You will also need a tiny splash of vinegar and a pinch of salt.

I tend to collect berries after the first killing frost, because the plant is dying off, and most songbirds who eat these have migrated away, leaving the leftover berries to rot.    I’ve also used elderberry for this recipe, when I have an abundance of those.

Simmer the berries in a small pan with just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, with a splash of vinegar (any type will do).  Vinegar helps set the colour a bit more, and seems to draw out some more ‘oomph’ from the berries in terms of alkaloids and energies, I think.    Your mileage may vary.

Basically add enough liquid to prevent the bottom from burning, but not enough to overly dilute the juice from the berries.  While you could squeeze out the juice, I find that heat helps extract more, and is less messy on the hands.  Plus, while I have no scientific proof, I think that heating the berries helps set the colour better, and thickens the juice into a better ink-like consistency.  Feel free to improvise and experiment.

I tend to keep stirring the pot for a good 20 minutes every so often, until the water looks nice and richly coloured. Not too much that it turns pasty with berry-skins!

Turn off the heat and let the pot cool off a bit, then simply strain out the ink into a container.  I used a coffee filter and a funnel to strain the ink into an old sea-salt bottle I had lying around.   Small pickle or baby-food jars work just as well.

Grab a quill, or a fountain pen, or, as we do, a small craft paintbrush (size 1 or 0o, or whatever your preference!) and have fun scribbling, painting, and drawing.

This ink will wash off of things fairly easily, so it is not recommended for clothes and such.  However, it is great to use on paper, and staining wood a vibrant magenta!

With age, the bright purple-pink colour of this ink will fade to a rusty brown after a few years, so keep that in mind.  This fact, however, makes it even cooler to use in magical journal writing, as it seems to look “archaic” as it ages.

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/why-scouting/

One quote from the bottom summarizes what I was going to say already:

It is the same earth, but we have grown in this short time from 3.5 billion to 7 billion people.  The outdoor code, to be conservation minded is no longer quaint — it is part of the solution. To do your best, To be prepared…

Got a horse, have not done much more than feed her a bit of grain each evening.

Got a new computer,  it’s still in the box.

Got my next belt in Karate (well, will officially get it Friday, but passed the test to earn it last thursday), feel like I should be doing more practice in the evenings.

Got a patch update in my favorite computer game that Changes Lots and totally upends the mechanics of the character skills.   Have not logged on for more than 10 minutes in the last ten days.

Got a new book, from one of my favorite series, and am finding it difficult to sit down and read it.

Got a little faerie-hut (bird house) at the dollar store and painted it prettily, and yet can’t find a home for it, which bugs me a Lot  more than it should….

Gotta re-do the dresser decorations for autumn, and feeling terribly uninspired and procrastinatic[sic].

It all seems like tons of “fun stuff” is not getting done.  But then again, all that Fun stuff, and the lack thereof, is making me horribly irritable, wanting to crash in bed at 7:30 after work, and frazzled.

Must be the changing of the seasons… or the two days of frost that kit and cemented in my psyche that a Cold Winter’s Coming and it isn’t gonna wait.  And the least among us knows, Where you stand won’t change the way the wind blows…

..either that or the “sludge” in my brain rising to the surface after pouring in a bunch of water last week. 

This resonated with me all week, in light of our barn collapsing, which makes the property look decidedly less ‘Green-natural’ and more ‘trash-heap’ until it gets cleared up. In true microcosm/macrocosm fashion, this just keeps reminding me what a mess we’ve made of things, and how nice it used to, and will look again.

I helped create the BP oil spill after all, by continued use of petro-commercialism, as Anne said recently. I also helped set aside a patch of yard to be tended respectfully and minimally, and am looking into composting toilets and rainwater collection barrels. Each of us has potential for Change, both good and bad.

So, it seems this moon cycle is one where I find myself musing upon Pan more often than not. Pan in his many facets of untouched wilderness, his voice of Panic, and his [pro]creative drive.

Strangely, I have never been one to ascribe to any particular Pagan-themed diety in this manner. After a solid Lutheran upbringing, with appropriate Christians-tinted faiths, my own Pagan path has tended more towards generic elementalism, pantheism, and non-specified Druidic leanings. (Plenty of explanation of my spirituality on this blog’s archives.)

I had a brief stint of Faerie-slant which still sticks with me a bit. But the Gentle Folk are no gods. Otherwise, I’ve generally paid mere lip-service to other cultures’ Deities in acknowledging their existence on some level, but never joining their ranks. I liken this to knowing the Governor of Minnesota exists, but living in New York, if that makes sense. Yet everywhere I’m looking lately, I see horns. My own facebook page photo, for example, then wearing those self-same horns for fun while working outside last week “to be silly”. Looking back, are those silly head-decorations becoming something totemic? I don’t think so, but still, I’ve had them for years and never worn them much before now.

I even found my penny-whistle while cleaning up our closet on Thursday, and enjoyed waking some sleepy half-memories in my muscles by trilling a few songs out off my fingers. It’s no pan-pipe obviously, but the symbolism is surprisingly apparent when seen in retrospect, as they weren’t done with Pan in mind at the time. It’s interesting.

Did any of you readers with a more personalized relation with a particular Higher Power approach things in a similar manner, or were you off searching for a name specifically? Or, I suppose in other words, did you find your connections, or did They find you?

I also wonder if I’m just reaching for synchronisms that aren’t there. A bit of spiritual Apophinia, perhaps?

I also wonder if the webmistress of “The Gods are Bored”, or a Druid’s Apprentice, could get me a proper interview with Pan? *chuckle*

So, while I’m musing on all things goat-boyish, here’s two songs to entertain you. I just re-listened to them at work, which brought me merrily through that afternoon doldrum that hits around 1:30.

Enjoy. (and thanks to Nettle for sharing the songs initially with me recently!)

http://www.youtube.com/v/uxCPkg_Ee3Q

http://www.youtube.com/v/hztAzxNdL8c

Photos and pictures to come later, but we returned from a really fun time in Boston for a whale watch.  I’ll summarize here, and post links and photos in a second blog entry this week.  Work’s busy and the evenings are still filled with barn de-construction. 

The bus left at 4:30am on Saturday, and we returned home just after midnight.   Loooong day.

Once we arrived at the harbor, we boarded the large catamaran boat and headed out to sea.   I liked all the little islands we passed in the harbor, and the view of Fort Warren.  The trip out to sea took about an hour or so, and the waves were somewhat choppy (2ft chop, they said) so there was a bit of a mini-game we played inside the seating area.   I’ll simply describe it as anti-Twister, where you tried to Avoid putting hands and feet in the coloured spots on the floor.  (I was surprised just how many people get seasick, since it is exciting to me, not illness-inducing at all)

When we got out approximately 25 miles from shore, we saw whales!!!!   The humpbacks were feeding, which was really neat.  They would blow little ‘bubble nets’ underwater, to encircle the schools of krill and little fish, then swim up into the circle of bubbles and fill their mouths before diving back down and doing it again elsewhere.   All told, we saw what the captain estimated at 15-20 whales in the surrounding area,  and at least 7 individual whales in our immediate location.   They identified one as “Anvil” but did not have too many clear fluke-shots from the bridge to positively ID others.

On the way back, around 1pm, the kid slept after finally crashing from being up since 3:30am.  The return trip to shore was much calmer as we were traveling with the waves, and a steady tailwind. Returned to port around 2:30.

After this, we went to the Boston Aquarium.  That is a really neat place, with a huge, HUGE tank in the middle, full of fish and sharks, and a few eels, and the usual “big tank” sort of occupants.  (video of shark to come!)

All around the bottom were four species of penguin, which was really neat.  The African penguin sounds almost exactly like a burro/donkey, which was very funny.

After the aquarium, we played in a big fountain in the area, which was probably my son’s favorite part of the whole trip.  Shows once again that the best things are [relatively] free!   The fountain was a big flat tiled area, with little holes all around it.  From time to time, jets of water would come shooting out of the holes, in somewhat random patterns, to heights around 15 feet or so.   The kids in the area loved running through the jets, or dashing under the spouts as they rained down again.   Luckily, we had spare clothes in the bus, but for a short time, the kid got to wear my wife’s very over-sized sweatshirt in order to cover his soaking bottom.

After the fountain, we realized we had about an hour or so before the bus arrived to take us home, so we visited Kitty O’Shea’s Irish Pub.  I had the most delicious Fish&Chips I think I’ve ever eaten in my entire life, topped by a frosty Guinness from the tap.  YUMMM!!

The bus arrived a bit late (around 7pm instead of 6:30), and most of the scouts drifted off pretty quickly.   I fell asleep for a little bit, but very restlessly due to the uncomfortable seats.   Still, when we arrived back home around midnight, I consider the trip a successful adventure.

And that real bed felt extra-welcoming when we finally sprawled into it at, fast asleep almost before our heads hit the pillow.

I have a deep-rooted Dread (yes, with a capital D) regarding society today that I have tried to keep under wraps and dismissed as over-dramatic conspiracy-theory-ish folly.  Then again, I also think that dismissing such things is what got us to this point to begin with.   Thus, the unbalanced mood lately, and inability to focus on the details of things.

Recently, however, I found myself feeling altogether different about the whole topic of the Deepwater Oil disaster.

I was sitting outside last night, trying to visualize my opening ‘circle’ and was struck by a profoundly angry sky.  Physically, it was overcast and warm; a wonderful summery evening to sit outside.

Metaphorically (Etherically? Astrally?  Mentally?  I’m not really shamanic in my practices), it was an oppressive weight crushing me to the grass.   I cried.  Real little-kid-upset tears, at being berated so sternly by the Sky.  I was an ant, helpless and afraid, and scraping my meager scraps of glucose from the blades of grass and gathering dew while dreaming of building a fortress in the sandbox.   It hurt my heart, and cut my spirit.   The oil, it flows, and there’s nothing I could do about it, except be blamed for everything I did to cause it.  I was at fault.  Knowing even a single human being, made it my fault.

Honestly, it was scary as all heck, and something I’d prefer not to repeat again.  If that’s shamanic work, I’m not wont to continue it.  Yet, I think I should.

I should, because after being left feeling raped and shattered, I picked up the shards of Me and went back inside to get a drink of orange juice.  I needed something cold and soothing.   I began to feel Lighter then, and a strange sort of hopeful and bittersweet about the whole situation.

Like lancing a boil to drain the fluid before it infects the surrounding tissue, I felt relief, but not closure.

I’m left today at work with a sense that while there is nothing I can immediately do to affect the oil spill, I should continue to apply energies to the healing of the land.  It’s nature responding to humanity’s greed, and rather than fight upstream against the flow, I need to merely turn into the current and help steer away from the rocks below.

It sounds totally depressing to try typing into words, but I can’t help but feel better that it happened somehow.  Fish will die, coastlines will need cleaning, and a terrible tragedy has been unleashed.  I do not deny this.   I feel bad not feeling worse that it happened, though.

The cynic in me thinks maybe this waste of oil will speed along the endgame, so that it’s not quite as deep a trough we are sliding into? The optimist in me feels conflicted with the caring/feeling person in me that maybe lots of stuff dying will help more stuff stay alive?   (Hiroshima stopped the war, after all)

I’m not sure what I think.   It is almost a sort of Ennui, but more cynical, and resigned at Fate.

But I think a bit differently today than I have been.

Bear with things… it’s a weird river I’m rolling on…

Oh sure, I’ve lit my candles, taken a few moments to admire and appreciate the budding life around me this spring, but there seems to be something missing.   I’ve fallen out of practice with Faerie-Play (for lack of a better word, since Worship seems the wrong connotation, so I’ll say Play, with the same inflection as capital-L-Love is used sometimes) and an attempt to re-strike that relationship gave me a pretty stern chastisement from the Otherkin camp for falling out of practice to begin with.  So, there’s one item on my to-do list this month.

Still, there’s another aspect of the Divine that I would like to re-connect to, and am not sure the best way to do so.   I want to say hello again to the Gods/Goddesses out there, Bored or otherwise.  Essentially, I would like to reaffirm a Path that includes something more discrete than “The Earth/Nature” (intentionally glossing over the depths of defining “Nature”).

I used to be very active in my Lutheran Church, and had a fairly solid understanding of God.  I redefined my concept of that being, and added other names to “Who is God” as I grew older and more pagan-minded. Still, I’ve never gotten really comfortable with other pantheons in popular use among the Pagani.  Celtic culture is really neat, but I don’t connect to Brigit or Lugh.  Norse Asatru is intellectually intriguing, but I have even less of a bond with Thor or Loki other than lip-service.  Likewise, the recent interest in Greek mythology (ala: Percy Jackson books) is fun reading, and scholarly, but I can not consider myself a student of Hellenismos.

I’ve done a bit of research with my family tree, which contains a fair chunk of ancestors deeply involved with PA Dutch Heathenism, and Hex-craft.  Yet again, my dabblings into that practice seem a bit forced and rote, rather than passionate and rewarding.

So,  here I am at a sort of crossroads.    I’ve got my current Practice and Path, which includes drum-circles, and gardening, and a rather down-to-earth subtle appreciation of The World We Live In, but I am feeling called more and more in my meditaitons to look towards Someone/Something.   The problem is I’m not sure who/what that is.

My question to the readership here is:   Other than continued practice with a particular set of Deities, is there a generalized way of opening myself up to inspiration?   As a (really bad) example, would I gather up an anhk and dagger, calling upon Ma’at or Nuit until something answers… or would I simply ask the spirits and Divine to enter in frith, and wait to see what particular name[s] pops into my head?

Of course, I already understand it’s a somewhat selfish question as well, wanting The Gods to start paying attention to Me…  Still, I’m more curious if I could narrow down my list of options for Me to start paying more attention to Them.

How did you find your current Path?