Handwork, traditional crafts, and cooking as a spiritual focus.

 Dear Reader,

As one looks around, they find that in the pagan religions there is a push to go back to the land, revive traditional crafts, and engage in artful expressions of beauty that are found in heritage crafts (in some cases requiring a bit of archeological study and experimentation to figure out how our ancestors did it). This push is also present in Filianism and Déanism, though it is more of an unspoken undercurrent.

Engaging in heritage crafts and practices (i.e. making a crochet bedspread or cooking old family recipes) does a number of things. Firstly, they keep these things 'alive' and the knowledge of how to survive in hard times is hidden in these seeds of hobbies that people engage in. Preserving food is not an easy craft to master, but it has become quite popular. You need not be a modern day homesteader or a 'prepper' to do these things. In the case of preserving food, not only can you adjust batch size with a little math, there are many books and resources about how to do it safely. As such, you can give truly unique, homemade gifts to friends and family, some that may not have been seen since your grandparents or great-grandparent's era. Such a gift is a direct link to your ancestors and they will be delighted to see you reviving the skills they used out of necessity and making beloved recipes.

I propose that in the Filianic and Déanic community, we share our successes and mishaps in our effort to revive heritage skills. Not only are we sharing knowledge and growing together in our ability to be successful in this, we can prove witness to the goodness that was present in the past and carry it forward into the future.

As a spiritual focus, heritage crafts tie us to a long line of ancestors and innovators that made life easier to bear during hard times and allows us to focus on the gratitude of the convenience of the modern day. As a spiritual focus, we learn patience, forbearance, and the value of our efforts in all areas. These heritage crafts are a gift from our ancestors and Déa to engage with them and keep their memory alive in this world. 

Ancestor Worship and Animism in Filianism?

 Dear Reader,

Some may consider the memento mori picture to be spooky, gruesome, or scary. Generally, a picture not entirely keeping with the theme of this blog. Honestly, I find it a healthy reminder that this life wanes and another waxes as we grow older (ideally). Many people see the Dark Mother as a mysterious, somewhat intimidating figure, like death, and have a low key fear of Her.

It is the Dark Mother who is present in all things, even the very bones left behind when we expire. We must not fear death for it brings us closer to our ancestors and the very spirits of the world. We transition from a life on one level of existence to another that brings us closer to Avala. We must not fear but rather celebrate the rebirth that comes with death. We should share joyfully our memories of the deceased even as we seek consolation in each other's arms for the fact that they are no longer corporeally with us.

Ancestor worship and animism are closely entwined in Filianism. There are spirits all around us. If you work with them, you can accomplish many things and grow to have many allies you can call on when Khear's shadow over falls you. The Helati (saints) and our beloved dead stand as close to you as the Janyati (angels) to guide and protect you from evil. Taking time out of your day to pour out a glass of water for these spiritual beings in offering of kinship, love, and respect is a small act that can reap great rewards. Plants, for example, have spirits variously known as dryads, fairies, and the hidden folk. In honoring them, you honor the Earth itself and encourage these spirits to look favorably on you. Earth spirits, such as those that are associated with plants, are very protective of their chosen location. Your houseplants will defend your home from the forces of evil that try to get in just as effectively, if not more so, than a spell for home defense. And they will help you along your path to Avala and Our Lady's blessed presence.

Blessed Samhain & Tamala

 Dear Reader,

I'd have posted these sentiments yesterday but it was a day of errands and a trip to Urgent Care for myself. I didn't even get a chance to sit down at the desk until it was the end of the day. I didn't have the spoons to write an entry into my daily journal. It was exhausting and painful yesterday. Apparently I have bursitis in my right shoulder, which happens to be my dominant arm. It's making things awkward.

Now, why do I bring up bursitis? Because my late Grandfather has been around today reminding me not to push myself too hard, to ice my shoulder, to apply heat, and, most of all, to move things farther than it is comfortable. He has bursitis a couple of times and bone spurs in his shoulders. He's warned me that once you have one bout of bursitis you're at risk for future ones. I didn't like hearing that, but Grandpa has always been honest and plain about the truth.

Samhain and Tamala is the time of year that the dead draw closest to us. It is not only our recently deceased loved ones that call out to us. Our great ancestors do so as well. Those who are our ancestors by way of our blood line, by way of our educational history, and by way of our spiritual heritage all call out to us words of greeting and love. They call to us encouragement to live boldly and with joy. And, sometimes they drop some wisdom into our laps as well.

Blessed Samhain and Tamala.

 Dear Reader,

I am just about over this damned bronchitis. I didn't do anything big and fancy for Samhain (which also is the first day of the Filianic holy time of Tamala). I did wear jewelry that invoked deceased friends for their company as I took my sons out trick or treating for the first time in over a decade. It just has been nothing but bad weather and people being sick this time of year for a very long stretch. So, when the weather was merely cloudy and everyone was mostly healthy, we did it.

The kids didn't get a big haul of candy but they had a great time wishing everyone along the street a happy Halloween. (We took the approach that the houses with their front light on and no candy were the 'trick' portion of trick-or-treat and cheerfully wished them a good evening.) There was a brief scare as a very nervous little dog rushed out someone's door towards my youngest son, but that ended well. He was of the opinion that the little dog was naughty and still learning how to be good after he got past the ZOMG IS IT GOING TO NIP ME!?!

Today is the second day of Tamala, the Filianic festival of the united body of believers both living and deceased. Yesterday was the day of invitation for them to come to us and take part in the celebration. Today is the day of celebration and prayer for gratitude for the community of believers. I also mark today as the day to invoke my ancestors (both familial and otherwise) to honor them and ask their blessing over my family. If I can manage it, I'll be doing something like a Dumb Supper for them. The challenge there is that mice are beginning to get into the apartment. It makes leaving a food offering out over night a tricky proposition.

Tomorrow is the third day of Tamala. On this day, we bid farewell to our guests who have come to visit us through this celebration, provision them for their journeys off to their respective residences in the spiritual world at this time, and celebrate the union of all within Déa. It is not a 'good bye' but a 'see you again soon' and a joyful time where we take comfort that all are one within Déa and not even death may separate us from all whom we love and all who love Déa.

NaBloPoMo 2: Honoring the Ancestors

 Dear Reader,

This post is on a topic that is close to my heart. In most of the United States of America's pseudo-Christian over culture, the dead are forgotten as soon as they're in the ground. There used to be a ritualized period of mourning but this gave way to hurry up and get back to work. It is considered to be morbid or impolite to discuss the dead after their funeral except in passing. This is not because of concerns that it would draw their spirit to you (which is found in many other cultures) but because death is a taboo topic for the majority of my country. Unless you're talking about murdering others in the abstract, the it gets bantered around quite casually.

In the pagan community the time around Samhain (also known as Halloween) is a time for honoring the dead. Altars and shrines are set up to them and rituals are practiced to keep their memories alive. This is not the only time of year one can spend a moment honoring they who went before us. It can be a daily practice such as what I have. Every morning, I brew a pot of coffee and put out a cup as an offering to my ancestors. It is a small act of welcoming, but it can be a big thing.  Small ritual acts build up big energy over time.

It's like building a cairn. Each small pebble is not much in itself. The entirety, however, can be breathtaking in what is built. There are days where I'm not feeling well or I just don't have the time for that morning offering. I trust that the ancestors are forgiving and understand when I am unable to do my daily ritual. They say that each of us are the result of the love of thousands. That love is deep and can carry us through hardship. Even when that hardship is having a bad case of the flu and being sick in bed most of the day, our ancestors will care for us and lend us the energy we need to be healthy and well.

Some may say, but I'm an orphan, I have no ancestors that I know of. Or I have disowned my family, I can't venerate them. Remember that line about the love of thousands? That means you have ancestors that are not going to be recognized as related to you. That means that you have ideological ancestors who guide you as you try to navigate life in an ethical way. That means that you can venerate the dead and let them reach back to you with the same care you extend to them, regardless of how much blood quantum connection is there.

Life update & Blessed Mother's Night.

Dear Reader,

As Yule is literally right around the corner, I have been busy. We've been cleaning house, cooking, and decorating. This is on top of the usual daily rounds of parenting and keeping house. Honestly, I'm looking forward to the break that I'm going to take after Nativity starts. I am taking the 12 days of Nativity (which is when my family also celebrates Yule) off from things like making projects for other people and doing hard housework. Just light housework and the minimum necessities to keep the house running.

Today was exhausting. I had this goal of getting all of the hard cleaning and housework done by sunset. Sundown was at 4:30 in the afternoon. Thus, I was hustling and going at it in serious effort all day from when I got up at 5:30 this morning. I am unofficially celebrating Yule over the weekend too, because why not get a few more ounces of joy out of the days. Big family doings are happening on the 25th with the extended family celebrating Christmas. It's going to be a busy day.

In the last few days leading up to Nativity, I am going to be working on getting my planner set up for next month and writing more devotional poetry. Tonight, I am tired and my feet hurt from being on them all day. Hefting furniture around to clean around it is not as easy as it used to be when I was 20. I blame the fact that I turned 40 this year.

Tonight is Mother's Night. I honor the disir and my foremothers tonight. If I weren't so worn out, I'd keep vigil until sunrise. In my stead, I will have a little electric candle going on the altar and in my ancestor's shrine. I also put out an offering of rose water for Dea, the great Mother, during her time of labor. I remember labor, it was thirsty work and tiring. I can only imagine how great the work of labor is for Dea in this world, such as it is.

I wish you all a peaceful and blessed Mother's Night. My posting will be sporadic because the kids are on vacation right now. I am also making a point of resting over the time of Nativity, which means I may be doing other leisure activities instead of posting in the coming time. I view Nativity as a time of celebration and joy. I view Yule the same way. I also believe they are a time where the hard work of life should be suspended enough so that we can enjoy ourselves during this period.

Spirits, spirits everywhere. And not enough to drink.

My home has been referred to by my psychic friends as the spectral airport or the psychic UN. To say that there is a lot of paranormal activity is a little bit of an understatement. I know part of this is due to the fact that the building we live in is haunted. The ghost that haunts the building seems to favor our apartment. He (because I think it is a masculine spirit) generally just hangs around. He doesn't talk much or make himself visible to me. But he makes his presence known by moving stuff around or casting a shadow where there is no one standing there.

I know that he has a sense of humor, though. He pranked my husband. The ghost stood in the doorway to our bedroom. Beloved woke up from his nap and saw a shadowy male figure standing in the doorway. He jumped out of bed as the figure moved away. I was out with the kids grocery shopping when this happened. When I got home and was unlocking the door, Beloved whipped the door open, hoping to surprise the interloper. I was startled and then confused why he was skulking around the apartment with a knife in hand.

And he's pranked me as well. I was in the middle of cooking dinner and heard the front door close. I didn't look up from what I was doing, but I asked Beloved to hand me something that was sitting on the counter behind me. When nothing happened, I looked over and saw that no one was standing there. I asked my kids (who were watching a video at the time) if they had opened and shut the door. They looked at me as though I had lost my mind. It was about a half hour later that Beloved got home from work.

This sort of sets the tone for the dead around me. They're generally easy going and have a sense of humor. When I forget my offerings, they sometimes prank me to remind me that I forgot them. It is usually something along the lines of a small item vanishing from where it was supposed to be to somewhere else rather strange but obvious. Like when my car keys disappeared from their hook and ended up on the top shelf of the bookcase, which the kids can't reach.

Sometimes they're helpful too. Like the time when I found money on at their shrine when no one had put any there. Or when a previously empty container of coffee creamer is magically half full when I go to make coffee for everyone. Because my dead, Loki, Beloved, and myself are all powered by coffee. It is little things, but those little things are what helps make life interesting around my house.

And the dead here is not just my dead. I have had many just passing through on their way somewhere else but stopping to ask me to pass on a message. Or stopping because they heard good things about my house. Some days, to me, the house is full of noise and activity. Someone else looks about and the place is pretty quiet. But on that psychic level, I have a full house with friends greeting friends and ancestors popping in to check on their descendants.

I do my best to enforce frith in my home between all that would be here. It makes me happy that my dead, the housewights (because there is more than one here), and the landwights help me keep it. There have been times where my guests start getting snippy towards each other or get close to a fight. They are always asked to be more civil in their disagreement and escorted out when they can't do it. I think it is part of the reason why I get so many visitors. Because it is a place of neutral ground that pretty much anyone is welcome as long as they abide by my rules.

But some days, it is noisy and very active. Those days, I make my cup of coffee and I have no less than four beings asking for some of it. And when I start cooking, I will get a laundry list of tips and commentary on how I'm doing it. On those days, I sometimes wish I could just turn off my psychic gifts. Because it is hard to concentrate with a whole chorus of people talking.

Witchy Life - The dead of the Great Lakes, remember them.

I thought about it last week, and I realized that I really should start telling you about what it is like in my life. More specifically, I should let you know about some of the weird, wonderful, and witchy things that happen around here on a daily basis. I don't know how my experiences will compare with someone else's but that will be shown eventually, I suppose.

As I may have mentioned earlier, I am a necromancer. Some people get alarmed when I say that. They assume that I am playing around in graveyards, desecrating the resting places of the dead, and generally doing gruesome things. That isn't exactly what happens. Have I done magic involving death? Yes. I have even performed a ritual wherein something was killed for the purpose of the spell. (It was a mosquito, by the way. When I need to do some sort of spell where death is involved, I opt for lifeforms that are generally pests. Most often, it is some insect, like the mosquito. And, no, I don't do those rituals often.)

Have I done magic in a graveyard? Yes. It was an evocation of a dead man's spirit for the sake of getting information. Offerings were given and he was paid for his time. (Payment being the cleaning up of his grave site and encouraging others to tend the graveyard.) Most of my time, I am involved with evocation on a case by case basis. Usually, the dead come to me with out much coaxing. I think it is because they get lonely and yearn for contact with the living. If you can hear them, then they'll show up and talk your ear off, unless you set some boundaries.

I think the most memorable example of an evocation was one that happened on the shores of lake Ontario a little over ten years back. I had gone to the lake with some friends around the time of Samhain. While they were busy marveling at the waves coming up from the brisk breeze, I decided that I was going to call out to the dead who were beneath the waters. I silently asked for one of them to come and tell me what might be done to honor them where they lay.

Honoring the dead is a big thing for me. I have an ancestor shrine where I interact with my ancestors every day. I give them offerings, talk to them about what is going on in life, and generally treat them as members of my family, because they are. This will play into my story, trust me. I had wandered off away from the group a little bit after my call to the dead.

I found myself standing at a spot where there was dead fish, seaweed, and a dead gull. It smelled appropriately awful. I was about to go back to the group when I heard him. He was an older man. His manner of dress put him somewhere in the 19th century as a laborer of some sort. I think he worked on one of the ships that crossed the lake back then. He was dressed for the weather with a heavy sweater and a knitted cap, both dark blue. His pants were a tan color and he was wearing boots. He had grey eyes and a full, bushy black beard.

As he stepped out from behind the outcropping of rock I was near, I was a little surprised. I honestly didn't expect anything to come from my call. But, as I was making ready to go back to the group I was with, I heard him say, "Wait a minute." Then he stepped out from behind the rocks and stood in the one clear spot in the middle of all the dead things. "You wanted to see me?" he said, sounding mildly surprised.

I asked him if his rest was peaceful. He shrugged and responded, "Peaceful as it can be. The waters are never still. Old bones lie deep but they get disturbed." I then asked him what I could do to make his repose and that of his fellows in the lake better, more comforting. I asked him what the living could do to make sure that the dead got their due. He looked genuinely surprised and touched by my question.

He said something about how he had been there for a hundred years (this was in the late 90s) and no one ever spoke to them. He insisted that there was nothing that they needed, that they were as well as they would be. I pressed the issue and after a sigh, he said, very simply, "Remember us. No one remembers us anymore. Lake Erie, they remember the Edmund Fitzgerald, but no one else." I was going to ask him how he wanted to be remembered but I got distracted by my friends calling to me. When I looked back, he was gone.

Every year in October, I remember him and all the dead of the Great Lakes. I want to do something more for them, but life always gets complicated and I can't find the time to get up to the lake. Or I run out of candles. Or something else goes sideways and I just don't have the means to do more than remember them. I think he is the reason why that happens.

He was a very quiet, humble man who died just doing his job. All he really wanted to do was to do his job and live a quiet life. I think the idea of my giving offerings or doing more than simply remembering them strikes him as too frivolous. But, when the autumn storms start to roll across the lakes, I remember them. One of these days, I will get up there again. And I will pour out a bottle of beer for them. Because I'm stubborn and I think he may be willing to share a drink for another conversation.