An Explanation of Sayings.

Dear Reader,

It gladdens my heart that many of you are finding A Year with Dea to be of use and comfort to you. There is a question that has arisen about the sayings that I have quoted that are not canonical. While I have included a reference to the text those sayings are contained in, I think it better that I tell you the story of them in addition to what you can find in Drowning in Light.

I have had visions of Dea since I was young. My experiences with her have been confusing at times but always a comfort. My first vision happened September of 1991. I went to the woods to meditate, for I was still learning this practice and the woods was where I could escape the distractions of my parents' house. A vision came over me. I was in a place of white light. The light emanated from something so bright it blinded me. I vaguely saw a female shape but the light was so brilliant that I couldn't look on it to see her features. A voice filled the air. It spoke my name and I felt like I was in a ringing bell. The air vibrated and I could feel the vibration from that voice fill me. When my vision returned, I was no longer sitting against the tree but rather laying flat on the ground as though I prostrated myself before something.

I didn't speak of my vision to anyone. I knew that my parents would be hostile towards me for it and accuse me of making things up. I was twelve and afraid of the reaction anyone would have had towards me for it. The household I grew up in did not consider the supernatural as more than anything for a laugh and cheap movie tricks, at best. A few weeks later, in late October, I was again in the woods behind my parents' house. A voice filled the air. It was a sweet sounding female voice. It called my name and I looked around to see who could possibly be there. Then, before I could call out to see if anyone was present, the voice said to me, "All who believe are kin." In that moment, I knew that I was having some kind of spiritual experience. For the voice that spoke had the same feeling of being within a bell as happened with my first vision of her. I ran home, frightened that I was in some manner of trouble for even having an experience that my upbringing had so firmly denied.

The statement echoed. It echoed in ways that did not make sense to me at that age, not knowing much of anything about anything religious at all. Still, I looked at the different faiths in the world and saw how they were all related. I saw how everyone who had faith were somehow kin to each other, including they who had nihilistic beliefs, for they had faith in their own beliefs. Somehow, I didn't understand it, but somehow the capacity for faith had made us all kin.

Recurring dreams of a woman of queenly bearing in white and blue happened for months. In these dreams, she held flowers and walked in a garden more lovely then I had ever seen on Earth. She was always dressed as a great queen of the high middle ages. I struggled to understand the fact I kept having this dream. At the same time, I was in the midst of my early spiritual training as a witch. Thus, meditation was a thing I practiced daily and I kept a detailed journal of what came of it, as I did of my dreams as well. I came to the conclusion that the Lady in my dreams was a goddess of some kind. (At this time, I was unfamiliar with Catholicism and only had a vague concept that Mary was revered by them. For all my fascination with the middle ages, I was more interested in the stories of knights wooing their loves than I was with the era. After all, I was twelve.)

It was in the midst of all of these dreams and my confusion that I had my second vision of Dea. It was late November. I had gone off to the woods with out my parent's permission and in secret (and rather recklessly, I confess now for it was at the beginning of hunting season) to meditate where I had my first vision. It was chilly and the poplar leaves were on the ground now instead of a few up in the trees still. I was in a garden filled with flowers. At the center of the garden there was a noble Lady. She held lilies in her right hand and roses in her left. A silver circlet was on her brow. She wore a white wimple and veil. Her gown was a dark blue, almost cobalt in color. She held out the flowers to me and said, “Come, my chosen daughter.”

When it had passed and I hastened home, my mother complained that I stank of roses, as though I had bathed in perfume. I hadn't any perfume and the distance from where I had been to my parents' kitchen should have been enough to have muted the scent just because of the wind blowing. I didn't say anything of the vision because my mother was already irate that I smelled as I did and I was fairly sure I was going to be punished if I said anything that sounded strange to her.

Over the years, through out my education and studies, I sought to find and know the Lady who had claimed me as I sat in a grove of winter-ready poplar trees on a hillside. It lead me through many different paths and many different ways. In the progress of it all, I discovered that the Lady was not the only deity out there who took interest in me. But, she was always there. Always. At one point, I thought perhaps I was to become Christian and that was the meaning of this all. Then I had the confusing "It's not you, it's me," conversation with Jesus, where he said I was very clearly not one of his people, though I was a very nice and good person.

Filianism made itself known to me in 2005. I was at a dark place in my life and said that it clearly couldn't be the right path. After all, I had all of these OTHER gods around me and I deal with spirits and the dead. I was a witch, how could I be of that faith and be one at the same time, right? Filianism continued to come up as a theme time and again. When I started this blog, I finally stopped avoiding what was right in front of me.

I am a seer. Dea or perhaps one of the other gods, I honestly don't know, has given me this gift. Sometimes it seems a curse because what I see is so tragic. Sometimes I feel as though I'm going crazy. For a time, I honestly thought that my spiritual experiences simply had to be my imagination running away with me or perhaps hallucinations. Until I started having hallucinations, which was horrific. My spiritual experiences didn't go away with the hallucinations. They became the lifeline that helped me endure them until I hit a point of absolute crisis.

I'm on medication now for my psychological illnesses. One would logically expect for these spiritual experiences to cease when they are on high doses of antipsychotic medication for an extended period of time. They have not. They continue with a good degree of regularity, waxing and waning with the seasons in some cases. In others, they're just random and daily. But the sayings in the book I published and that I referenced in my other book, they have been said to me by Dea and the angels.

I am humbled by them. I am guided by them. And, I live in some degree of holy awe of them. My relationships with Dea and the angels is different from my relationships with Loki and Freyr. Dea is my mother, my Lady, and the source of all wisdom. From her all of my other loves stem. But, Dea claimed me as her priestess an a cool autumn day when I was hiding from my parents and siblings, giving me a place of refuge for my spirit that I was desperately seeking.