Endurance of Spirit

It has been a very challenging time of late. I have been struggling with finding the mental cohesion to post pretty much anything. Even writing in my prayer journal has become difficult. I have times where I feel like I am something inferior because of my difficulties. I know that a larger part of those feelings stem from my unhealthy self image and a truckload of distorted views on my self worth. Throw in a heaping pile of just plain difficult work managing the household, parenting, and the business of my children's educational needs, and it gets really difficult to find the energy to do much of anything beyond exist. And even existing makes me exhausted.

If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen me post earlier tonight something about 'running out of spoons'. It is a bit of shorthand to describe the state of mental and emotional exhaustion that I have when I run out of my energy to keep plugging at the challenges before me. We all start the day with a limited amount of energy and some of us have a bit more limited energy than others. Those of us, like myself, who have a deficiency in proverbial spoons (a unit of energy, if you will) find that we have to plan our days according to what we think we have the energy for. As a result, there are things that will get missed. As blogging is not a primary part of keeping the household running and my meeting my responsibilities as a wife and parent, it tends to find its way towards the lower end of the list.

Sometimes, I feel rather like all of this is a futile effort and that my energy should be placed elsewhere. This feeling, however, is not the fruit of a desire to be frugal in how I expend my resources but rather the result of that morass of unhealthy thinking that I struggle with on a daily basis. For, that unhealthy mess of thoughts tells me that my dreams are unworthy of actualization and that I am not deserving of success in any areas, among a lot of other terribly unpleasant things. As I sit with this tangle of unpleasant mess, I find myself sorely tempted at times to just give up.

But, I don't. There is something down deep inside of me that just won't let me. I can be in abject agony and I still will struggle forward, usually with a great deal of anger at being in said agony. Some people would call it tenacity. I think, however, tenacity is just an adjective to describe something more basic than that. Within me, my spirit is drawn to contest against the world and push to realize a specific vision of the world. I will thole my injuries (and sometimes foolishly try to act as though they're not there) and continue to push towards making this vision real.

Sometimes, I have people ask me why I do everything the hard way. It is the same part of me that refuses to lay down and die at play here. I find myself confronted with a challenge and I see one single option that is fitting and honorable. Thus, I push myself to use it to manifest what I feel must come to be. After the fact, I will have people tell me that they couldn't see how I did it and exclaim my courage. It bewilders me, because I saw only one viable option. It wasn't a matter of courage against adversity as much as it was taking the sole option that makes sense.

Now, this rambling bit has a point. My spirit pushes me forward. It is what helps me to endure pretty much everything that has been thrown at me thus far in my life. Our spirits are far stronger than we realize. It is from our spirit that we derive the strength to do the seemingly impossible tasks. (And I will confess adrenaline helps in many cases as well.) As much as our higher brain tells us that what we face is insurmountable at times, that deeper primal part that is twined somewhere between spirit and biology tells us we can make it happen. In all honesty, that endurance and unwavering push to press forward is what keeps humanity moving forward.

It is my hope that somewhere within the depths of our collective hearts and minds, there is the force of our collective spirit that will push us to reverse the great tragedies unfolding in the world. It is my hope that we will stand against the evils of the world and create a more just world for our descendants and life at large. And I think it all begins in the refusal of individuals to give up when things get painfully difficult.

Thus, I continue to write. Even when I don't have the spoons for it.

Is it OK to disagree with Gods?

There is this idea that has been bubbling at the back of my mind for a while now. I have some people in my life who are very firmly of the opinion that one should never disagree with the Gods. I have other people who pointedly refuse to even consider situations where they are in a position where disagreement could come up. I sit here and I look at this with a question in mind. I can't help but wonder where does the dividing line between piety and free will land on these sorts of matters. I know that some people would argue that disagreement with one's Deity is tantamount to blasphemy (or worse).

I look at my experiences and I find myself not inclined to agree with the premise that one who is devoted to their faith must always agree with their Gods. I just can't shake the idea that we have free will and this extends to if we are going to agree with the Gods on everything. Some Gods will demand that their believers adhere to all points they set forth and make agreement part and parcel to worship and devotion. I can appreciate that relationship dynamic but it strikes me as an outlier rather than the norm.

I am not the most pious person. I freely admit this. But I don't think that piety consists of slavish adherence to a set of rules. It is my understanding that piety is a mind set. One can perform the ritual gestures of worship from a mindset that is not fully engaged and focused upon what the meaning of said rituals are. I tend to call this lip service to faith. It is, from what I have seen, a more shallow way of worship and focuses upon ritualism. Now, for some people this is what works for them and what they can engage in given their life circumstances and needs. I try not to look down on ritualists, but it is hard for me to see this as operating on the same level as people who make the conscious choice to engage in the ritual, understanding all the meanings of the ritual and the role one assumes in enacting it.

A pious person is someone who approaches Deity with respect. It is a person who approaches them with careful regard for the role Deity plays in their relationship with the person in question and the world at large. The person who pours out a glass of water in offering for their gods and is fully invested in said action, in my opinion, are more pious than the person who pours out a bottle of expensive malt whiskey with out that sense of engagement and conscious action. Piety is an intersection between right mind and right action. (And right action is fluid because life changes and the actions demanded of us will change as our relationships with Deity change and develop.)

Coming back to the question of disagreement with the Gods, I think it is possible for a pious person to disagree with the Gods. I think that we can not only disagree with the Gods, but express said disagreement in a manner that is respectful of the Gods. I am a strong proponent that every person is having an individual relationship with Deity and that they experience Deity in a manner that is best for them to comprehend at that time. As such, the Gods may place something in our path that we will disagree with. And I think that the Gods expect said disagreement and will observe us to see how we respond.

I think there are cases where the Gods test us via disagreement to see if we will stick with our oaths to them (such as an oath of obedience being tested with an action required that the worshiper opposes). I also think that there are cases where the Gods set up situations that we are going to disagree with as a way to get us to change our thinking and our mode of addressing situations. Finally, I think that the Gods present us with situations that will provoke our disagreement as a way to open up further dialogue between us and them.

I don't think that disagreeing with the Gods is an instant case of impiety. I think it is rather a situation where we're called to look at the situation, question it and our role in it it, and reassess where we stand. I think that such situations are vital for a person to have a faith that is 'living' because continual reflection and reassessment is the way we grow. The question of impiety arises when we approach how to handle this disagreement.

The pious person will approach the disagreement as though it is a communication breakdown between themselves and the Gods. They will try to find away to respectfully handle the challenges that arise from it and actively seek ways to maintain their respectful relationship with Deity as they do so. The pious person will maintain the right mind circumstances even as they work to reestablish what the right actions are for the situation. The impious will lose sight of the necessity of respect and abandon the search for what the proper response to the situation will be.

In all things, we are in a relationship with the Gods. Piety is the expression of respect towards them. Just as a person's relationship with another is going to be different from their relationship with yet another person, so too shall the individual relationships with the Gods be different. There will be vast swaths that are going to be similar between people. This is how organized religions developed, from people recognizing the shared elements of their individual experiences with Divinity. I think that if we would be wise, we would remember that our individual relationships with the Gods is going to be different for each of us. Thus, we must remember that piety will manifest a little differently with each person.

TL:DR version - It is OK to disagree with the Gods, provided you maintain respect for them.

Storm within.

I had been feeling upset with the difficulty I have been having in organizing my thought to post. As I was juggling the household chores, bills, and caring for a sick child today, I told myself that I really couldn't make myself try to write up blog entries on top of it all. It has been a long, tiring, and trying day today. (Any one with suggestions for how to prevent earwax build up issues for children, please let me know. Irrigation and drops work only so well. And wiggly kids don't do a good job of holding still for either.)

About dinner time, I hit the point where I was ready to have a melt down of my own. My youngest was screaming and crying about how he didn't want dinner (after nearly throwing a fit over the idea that he wasn't getting his peanut butter and jelly sandwich because he thought I was giving him his brother's ham sandwich). I discovered that the pork ribs I had planned to make for Beloved and I to have for dinner had spoiled. And I was somewhere between cranky because I was hungry and ready to scream from frustration. It always scares me when I hit this mental point because I feel like there is a jumble of pure chaos in my head and I can't think clearly. It is even worse when I'm hypomanic (which was a few days ago).

Fortunately, Beloved got home from work just in time to manage the kids as I attempted to broil some hamburgers and make myself some macaroni and cheese. As I was dealing with food stuff, it struck me that this feeling like there is a howling storm inside my head hits me on a bunch of different levels. There's the obvious sense of anxiety and frustration that comes from such a tense mental state. And there is the obvious short temper that comes with it. But, at the same time, I find myself feeling like I'm screaming into the howling wind on a spiritual level with no resolution to what has me screaming. I find myself feeling like the gods and spirits are all just beyond my reach, circling around me in the storm. It is a nerve wracking feeling because my anxiety tells me that I'm being judged.

After I got some food in me and I had some time to calm down, I looked at that storm analogy and tried to figure out if there was some way to make that into something more user friendly. To be honest, when you feel like you're on the verge of screaming insanity, it is hard to channel it into something useful. Usually, when I hit that point, I dissociate some to give myself some breathing room. Otherwise, I start stammering, trembling, and becoming more prone to shrieking over the stupidest things. It is a horrible feeling of helplessness to have that chaos in my head taking over everything. Thus, I escape it by turning off some of my responses to it. My therapist says this is not the healthiest option for how I can handle it. I've yet to find something that works better, to be honest.

But, sometimes I actually can manage to channel that storm into something. Sometimes, that sense of howling chaos in my head comes with an eerie clarity that allows me to see an action that needs to be taken to resolve the problem that lead to it arising. Usually, it happens in cases where I have been stoked to rage over some injustice and I channel all of that energy into solving the problem. It is not a comfortable place to be at. It scares me some after the fact. But when I have a place for that storm to go, it is amazing to watch it unfurl rather than try to tear me apart. Because when I 'ride' that storm, I will not rest until my mission is completed. It is a dizzying sensation and I find myself caught in a measure of ecstasy when it happens, only to have it go out like a blown out candle when it is complete.

Odin is the god of wisdom. He is also a god of madness. And of fury. I think all these things are tied together. And I think that when we manage to take the madness and turn it into something we can use, his hand is there aiding us. He's claimed me as a daughter. At first, I found myself uncomfortable with the idea. The Hanged God is not known for being a gentle deity, nor for being one to keep his people on easy paths and to coddle them. Then it struck me today, Odin is the god of the storm. This storm inside me is as much from him as it is a product of the constellation of suck that is my history. And I wasn't angry with this, which seems a bit odd. No, I'm actually thankful for it. Because it is a sign that Odin is always with me. It is a weapon he has put in my hands so that I may break down barriers before me and crush my opposition, even when it is my own illness.

Anger is like a firestorm in my head. I feel like everything speeds up and I am going to start screaming and throwing stuff. It scares me sometimes. Well, more often than sometimes, but it is also perhaps one of the most powerful weapons in my arsenal. Because sometimes scorched earth tactics is the only appropriate answer to the problem and sometimes you need to scream with the voice of a hurricane to get heard. Wisdom lies in recognizing when those are the correct response to the situation and I think that each time I hit this mental/emotional/spiritual storm inside me, I am learning more about how to deploy it to my advantage.

Recovery & Renewal.

I apologize for my recent absence. I was hospitalized a short while back due to complications with my bipolar. I honestly have spotty recollection of things due to how badly I was doing and the way my medications had been adjusted on a daily basis, it seemed. It was very difficult for me to reach out for help when I hit rock bottom. Thankfully, Beloved was right here and he helped me get the help I needed.

I've been home from the hospital for almost a week now. I am not yet at full health, though I am vastly improved from where I was at when I went in to the hospital two weeks ago. Feeling mildly depressed and somewhat anxious is an enormously positive difference when compared to being suicidal and having hallucinations. Looking back over the last several months, I can see how things came to that point and I honestly don't know what I can do to prevent it from happening in the future. That scares me. The idea that I am going to get sick like that again at some point in the future (and given how things have been over the last several years there is a good chance it will happen within the next year or two after I acclimate to my medications) is something that frightens me.

I've seen a good number of memes flying around Facebook that present mental illness as something romantic or like some kind of superpower. It is a mindset that I find fundamentally disturbing. It tells me that I should be thankful for what is, honestly, pure torment and a daily fight to hold on to my sanity. It tells me that if I'm struggling, it is because I haven't fully accepted the 'blessing' of my illness. This attitude that disability is something that can be transformed into an advantage with the right attitude is just as damning as the one that says that disability makes a person fundamentally worthless. Seeing these memes around on the internet makes me very wary about doing much with social media. Because that sort of thing is toxic and does not bode well for my recovery.

It is hard enough when you question your sanity everyday because you have been gaslighted into thinking you are fundamentally untrustworthy, regardless of how you bear yourself and hold true to your convictions. Striving to do that and then reality test everything because you're not sure what your experiencing is correct for what you have on the basis of the proliferation of these memes just serves to dig the hole you're stuck in deeper. (I need to clarify, the gaslighting happened during my formative years and I haven't yet managed to deprogram myself from it. It colors everything.)

So, I am working to restrict the stuff I deal with on the internet to things that will promote my health and wellness. I am not entirely sure how this is going to manifest in my future posting here. I do know, however, that I am going to keep this blog running. I honestly don't know if I am going to get back to the daily posting schedule. While I would like to do so, I don't know if that is going to be too much for me right now. My anxiety is making even this post difficult.

Moving forward, I am going to attempt to provide some solid, in depth information for other folks who practice witchcraft or pagan faiths and are struggling with mental illness as well. It is hard when your faith practice gets a few raised eyebrows when it is mentioned in passing. It is even harder when you have people openly questioning your sanity on the basis of your mental health history and faith practices. I wish I could say that my knowledge about being in that position came from academic study, but it really isn't the case. I've personally experienced slighting from professionals in the medical industry even as I have received such scorn from some people who were once very close to me. My personal experiences are obviously going to be very different from those of someone else. But it is my hope that in sharing them and my observations, I can make sense of what I have experienced and I can help at least one other person out there feel like they're not alone and they're not crazy for their beliefs.

I will still be doing my academic style posts regarding various topics. I have a whole list of divination oriented ones to write up. (If I can manage it, I will have the first of them up on Monday.) I am also working on getting a few books finished up that deal with Filianic topics. The Southern Hemisphere edition of A Year With Dea (a daybook of meditations) will be ready early Summer (provided I can get everything back on track). I have a book of mystic visions and such that I am nearly ready to send off to press. I want to say it will be available for purchase next month, but it depends on how things go with the publishing house I'm working with.

To you, my readers, I want to say thank you. Thank you really is rather paltry next to what I feel. I am immensely grateful for your support and readership. When the depression and anxiety tell me that my writing is a useless exercise, I find someone has read one of my posts or I have encouraged someone to look into new and interesting ways to grow in their spirituality. The fact that my writing makes a difference to you is what motivates me to keep going when all of the garbage in my head from my illness tells me to stop. Thank you.

Easter rant.

If you are on Facebook or generally run with a pagan crowd via social media, the above image may have flown across your screen. It's become something of an annual thing. I first saw this a few years ago. I twitched a little bit and then continued on with my day. Now, it seems I can't get away from it this year. So, rather than merely twitching, I'm going to give my response to it. (Spoiler: I'm not happy.)

There are so many things wrong with this on so many levels. Revisionist history irritates me to no end. Intentional mangling of information and presenting it as fact makes me furious. This is a meme that I keep seeing reposted with the intent to 'set the record straight' about Easter. I confess, I get angrier each time I see this. I can appreciate the desire to demonstrate the pre-Christian roots of this celebration. I can even appreciate the desire to normalize pagan faiths. You don't do that by way of bullshit. A few minutes of fact checking and this is revealed to be utter garbage.

Ishtar is not connected with Easter in even the remotest fashion outside of this meme. The name Ishtar is pronounced entirely differently than the word Easter and comes from a completely different culture. She is indeed an Assyrian, Babylonian, and Akkadian goddess of love, war, fertility, and sex. Ishtar is believed to be a cognate to Innanna and Astarte. (They are Sumerian and Aramean goddesses, respectively.) Her name is understood to be pronounced 'ish-tar' given what we have been able to do with reconstructing the ancient language that her name comes from. The egg and the 'bunny' are not her symbols. She is associated with lions and a seven pointed star. 

The closest we can come to an association with the spring season is the myth of her descent into the underworld. This myth is considered to be a part of seasonal worship patterns with Ishtar's descent associated with the fallow time of year and her return to the upperworld with the return of fertility. This association, however, is not as strong as others would like to paint it. The figure that is tied most closely to the fertility of the land is not Ishtar but her lover Tammuz. Ishtar and Tammuz are a pair that bring fertility to man and livestock (in Ishtar's case) and the land (in Tammuz's case). This, however, is only one interpretation. In another interpretation, Ishtar's return to the upperworld comes when she sends Tammuz in her place to stay with Ereshkigal (Ishtar's sister and the goddess of the underworld) because he did not mourn her absence. The lore is unclear here and the historical record is inconclusive as to which interpretation is correct. There is, however, a growing consensus among scholars that the second variant of the tale of Ishtar's descent is accurate, which would make her the primary deity of fertility.

Now, what does this have to do with Easter? Not bloody much, to be honest. A vague seasonal overlap and some passing similarity in the visual appearance of her name to the term Easter (which only occurs in the English language, from what I can tell) is the best connection you're going to get here. Easter is a word that comes from an entirely different part of the world and an entirely different period in history. Easter has been shown to be derived from the old English term Ostara (which has multiple spellings and can be found in the Germanic people of continental Europe from this era as well). Ostara seems to be connected with a goddess of the same name, though there are functionally no records of her worship.

Ostara is believed to have the hare as an animal associated with her, but there is no solid evidence either way. She is also believed to be associated with eggs, but that connection is equally questionable. The folk practices of Easter are considered by many to be cultural vestiges of the worship of Ostara. Within the modern pagan community, Ostara is observed as the celebration of the Spring Equinox and many give homage to this mysterious deity. These observances, however, have a great deal of overlap with the culturally dominant Easter folk practices. While there is an effort to 'take back' the folk practices, the lore is functionally non-existent and the corpus of devotional activities of mainstream pagans are of modern manufacture.

Now, someone may ask where I personally fall on this matter. It is a fine question and I believe it merits answer. Ostara is a Germanic goddess whose historical cult of worship was in many ways lost by the time Bede wrote of her. I honor her as a fertility goddess. I am of the opinion that she is most likely of the Vanir. It is my belief that she is a mighty goddess that is not directly approached because people are not sure how to approach her. At the Spring Equinox, I pour out offerings for her as I do for the other gods. I ask her blessing upon my efforts over the growing season and upon my growing children. It is my suspicion that children and young of any life form are under her special care. I think that the connection between Ostara and eggs comes because this is when birds begin nesting. 

I also think that my area celebrates Ostara early when we go by the calendar because the birds are not nesting yet, but it is easier for my children to celebrate it in proximity to the Christian celebration of Easter because there is less friction with our Christian community. At the Spring Equinox, I am not only celebrating and honoring Ostara, by the way. I also give offerings and celebrate Freyr and Gerda. It is my sincere belief that this is the time of year that Freyr returns from Helheim to his bride. Thus, I make a point to pay homage to them as well at this time of year.

If you want to point at the pagan origins of Easter, that's great. Let's look at the real origins rather than this bad fiction meme.

Waning of Moura.

Moura 27

My intentions to post through out Moura have been frustrated by my illness and this has me feeling somewhat despondent. My home is not half as neat and tidy as I had thought I would have it by now. Part of this was due to the chaos that came when my previous stove attempted to set itself afire a third time. (Last two times were due to grease build up beneath the stove top. Apparently the previous tenants in the apartment never cleaned it, as there was a thick layer of grime. It was only clean on the surface, it seems. That was resolved with some effort and steel wool. This third incident was a case of one of the oven burners shorting out. There were sparks everywhere. It was quite alarming. We now have a new stove.) Part of this is due to the fact that I have two small children who are positively brilliant at creating messes. And, finally, my lack of energy and depression has made some of the simplest tasks of caring for my home quite challenging.

I am presently on new medication for my depression and in the midst of an adjustment period. This medication has me feeling fairly awful and I find myself struggling with my simple daily prayers. In the middle of all this, I received a gift of an Anglican styled rosary. As I was looking it over and admiring it, I managed to catch the cross on some fabric and split the jump ring that was holding it on. Fortunately, I didn't lose that charm. I did, however, take the opportunity to amend it to something closer to my leanings and added a silver pentacle charm where the gold tone cross was. I have been handling this set of beads a fair amount over the last week.

I found myself struggling over what sort of prayers I would use with it. In my depression inspired thick wittedness, I just would pick up the beads and ask for comfort in my angst. I did a little reading today about Anglican rosaries. I found that they are less structured in their prayer format than Catholic rosaries. Ordinarily I would have been comforted by this idea, but right now it only served to make me more anxious. Then I saw something that felt like it was written just for me. As I may have mentioned in the past, Dame Julian of Norwich is one of the religious women of the past whom I feel a measure of kinship towards. There is a set of prayers based off of her writings (towards the bottom of the page here). I am going to adapt the language slightly because the pronouns for Dea are female and I am not interacting with Yahweh. Still, I have a place to begin with this new set of beads and this comforts me.

I beaded myself a 108 wooden bead mala on Monday. I just felt the necessity to do so, thus I did. I know several other people who are Buddhists and have found the practice of this philosophy life changing. I find myself debating if I should add some chanting based upon Buddhism because so many people I know are finding such solid and helpful results. I am having a hard time thinking clearly because of the depression and the medication change, but this is an idea that has been at the back of my mind for about a half year now as I have watched my friends enacting major changes in their lives. The other possibility that has come to mind is taking up a more focused practice of the Nordic path, including galdr.

I feel somewhat cut off from Dea again. I believe it is my illness getting in the way. I feel as though there is a pall cast over me. The effort that it takes for me to write my little daily prayer in my journal has been harder than it has been over the last year. My prayers of late have been for our Lady to ease my illness and help me manage my symptoms. I still have faith, though the depression and such tell me to give up. It is, I hope, this faith that will carry me forward into health.

Unwell.

Hello everyone,

I am attempting to attend to my Moura devotions and manage my well being at the same time. The efforts to manage my illnesses are winning out over much of the devotional activity I had planned to do and getting posting done. I struggle with posting because depression tells me that it is a futile effort and that my work is useless in the grand scheme of things. I also struggle because the mental focus to do so has been difficult to attain.

My medications have been adjusted and I honestly don't know how this is going to effect the situation. It is my hope that it improves things. My home is not as clean as I wanted it to be. My life is something of a disorganized mess right now. On the whole, I really am not doing very well at all. Still, I am not going to give over to despair.

Thank you all for being so patient with me. I sincerely hope that we are reaching a turning point in this mess with depression and rampant anxiety. Thank you again.