Struggling with depression sucks.

 Dear Reader,

I've not been sleeping well over the last while. My doctor adjusted my medication but it doesn't seem to be helping as much as I thought it would be. My mood is dropping and I find myself struggling with thoughts like I should give up on my blogs and all of my writing projects because depression lies to me and tells me that it is all going nowhere fast.

My anxiety has been rather high which leads to me over thinking the prospect of writing anything at all. It's at a point that even writing in my daily journal about the random stuff the kids do and what happens in the neighborhood provokes a mini-panic attack. Fortunately, I will be talking with my doctor next week and figuring out the next step to addressing this problem. 

I feel really guilty that I haven't been writing here or on my other blogs. I sit down to write and I get so full of anxiety and fear that the words just go out of my head. Right now, I'm half tempted to delete this whole thing because "no one wants to listen to you whine." My big Camp NaNoWriMo project only got four pages done through out the entire month. That was supposed to be the Lokean devotional project. I sit down to work on it and I get afraid that I'm going to write everything wrong and that some one is going to lob a brick through my window for daring to go so far as to write about this.

It's a combination of C-PTSD from how I was raised and my performance anxiety colliding with each other and leaving me virtually paralyzed on how to act. I am not going to give up on these things. I'm struggling and my brain is like jello right now. I've got about as much focus as a goldfish. All I want to do is sleep, in part because I'm not sleeping well and in part because I am depressed again.

It is hard to do things when your disability smacks you in the face with a halibut. That, however, is where I'm at right now. Hopefully, after a little bit, I'll be doing better and back to daily writing.

A Confession.

 Dear Reader,

I must make a confession of sorts. I have not been writing on any platform in quite some time because I have been terrified that what I write will cause harm. I have been terrified that what I write will bring suffering to my loved ones. I have been terrified that what I write will be the cause of great sorrow.

These terrors are in part the fruit of evil that was done to me as a young child. The people who raised me told me that if I wrote about things they disapproved of people would come to burn our house down or kill us. They told me that if I wrote about topics that they disapproved of my entire family would suffer because of it. They told me that if I gave voice to anything that wasn't 'normal' that I would be ostracized and other people would do things to harm me. These lies were repeated so often that they became the backdrop to my early efforts to write.

I have walked away from these people. I have cut pretty much all ties to them. Due to the nature of the psychological trauma that I experienced with them, however, I have these anxieties and terror that seize me when my mood is low. I have bipolar II and I regularly experience low moods because of it. This acts as a trigger for the emotional flashbacks that have been making writing and any form of creative expression awfully hard over the last few months.

I desperately want to write. I desperately want to finish the book I started a few weeks ago. I desperately feel the need to express myself. At the same time, terror stops me. The pressure within is miserable. I ask that you forgive my silence. I am trying to over come this. I will not be abandoning my blogs. But things are very difficult right now because of my disability and life being complicated.

Struggling with writer's block.

 Dear Reader,

Life got complicated recently. I've been doing my best to sort it out. In the process of it all, because of my anxiety issues, I have come down with a bit of writer's block. I'm working to resolve this. I hope to have real content for you soon.

This post is a place holder for future content.

 Dear Reader,

I am recovering from a migraine yesterday and dealing with intense pain due to arthritis right now. I'm hoping that the pain medicine will kick in soon and I'll have an easier time focusing. Until then, I must apologize for the lack of witchy content right now. I'm in a fair amount of pain and my brain isn't quite at peak performance right now. Please check back in a few hours or so. I may have something interesting up by then. In other news, arthritis can die in a fire.

Practical Witchery: Lunar Timing.

 Dear Reader,

There's a plethora of books about how to time every thing from planting your garden to cutting your hair with the phase of the moon. There's so much stuff about it, it even makes it in to the Old Farmer's Almanac (which is quite literally the last place I'd look for anything witchcraft related). Generally, the time frame from the new to full moon is good for things to increase. The time frame from the full to the new moon is good for things to decrease. This is a form of sympathetic magic that relies upon the apparent increase and decrease in the visible moon to affect the increase or decrease effects of your spell.

I don't use astrology except to idly note where the moon is located at a given time in the sky during the month. There are practitioners who time things by when the moon is located in specific signs oriented with different astrological houses. Again, as I am by no way an expert or experienced in astrology (too much math for me), I can't point you to good resources to help you with this form of timing. 

I use lunar timing based off of moon phase because it is where I have gotten the most effective results. During the dark of the moon, that approximately three day period around the new moon, I find is most effective for shadow work and revealing things that are hidden. During the approximate three day period around the full moon, I find is most effective for general magical practice of any sort.

Divination: Runes overview.

 Dear Reader,

I am not the most proficient or strictly by the book reader of runes. At the same time, I have an intuitive method that seems to work pretty well (as long as I am not struck by performance anxiety). Runes are the basis of a number of alphabetical systems. They are the precursor of the Icelandic, Norwegian, Scandinavian, Finnish, and other Nordic written languages. They are also the precursor of the English language. There were runes that were still in use in the English language up until early Modern English, such as the rune Thorn as a short hand for the dipthong 'th'. If we look at early English and Anglo-Saxon we will find a combination of the Latin alphabet and the Younger Futhark used in manuscripts. This period has inconclusive evidence that they were used as a divination system.

Indeed, the only historical mention of runes as a divination system is mudded by the fact that Tacitus doesn't say what exactly is inscribed upon the slips of wood that the Germanic peoples he was interacting with were using to perform their divination. He doesn't give a very good description of the divination practice. This is part of the reason why there are historical questions if runes were used as divination tools. There are some indications with the Rune Poems that were preserved in the historical documents of the post-Christianization era of the Nordic and Germanic regions that this is a distinct possibility. But the evidence is very difficult to discern.

Ralph Blum wrote The Book of Runes in the late 1980s and published in the mid-1990s. With this book's popularity, the use of runes as a divination tool exploded. Suddenly, there was a great many people who were claiming that Blum was accurate and others claiming that Blum was inaccurate in his portrayal of the Runes. More books about the runes and runic magic came out during the late 1990s and early 2000s. They muddied the waters further because they were not academic texts but tried to pass themselves off as having the authority of such. It was not a good period for the research into runic magic and runic studies. Some authors, like Ann Moura in her Green Witchcraft series presented the runes as a magical short hand script for accomplishing things. Other authors, like Diana Paxton in her various works, did their best to provide a more nuanced method of using runes. 

While there were authors in the pagan community throwing out just about anything that would stick to the proverbial wall, there was some serious academic research going on into runic magic and the practices of the Sami peoples (the last indigenous practitioners of native religion in that part of the world). That research was largely ignored outside of the academic circles because it didn't immediately clarify the use of runes. As a result, multiple systems of runic magic and divination have arisen completely divorced from all but the barest historical basis. (Now, this does not mean that these systems don't work. It just means that they're not the same as what the ancestors used. And that's ok because we live in a world that is very different from the ancestors and have different needs. I think that the gods answer our needs and do their best to meet us where we are rather than expect us to recreate lost practices whole cloth.)

I will be providing, in this series of posts, my interpretation of the Elder Futhark runes. These are, as far as I can tell, the ones used by the Germanic and Teutonic tribes that Tacitus interacted with. I suspect that they were used in divination cut into fruit bearing tree slips. I do not know if they were stained with blood as some 'traditionalists' insist or some dye like ocher. I don't have access to a rune set that is cut into slips of wood from a fruit bearing tree. I have the tile set from Ralph Blum's book set that I had bought ages ago when it first came out. It's rather worn and one of them is cracked. I also have a set that I made using pebbles and a set that is a bit larger that I made using glow in the dark 'pebbles'. In the case of all three sets, I've gotten the same results. This leads me to believe that the materials that your rune set are made from does not impact their effectiveness. At some point in time, because I'm half magpie and I collect things, I will probably acquire or make a set of runes from slips of a fruit bearing tree. If I do this, I will report back any finding as to how this impacts their effectiveness.

Update: I'm not avoiding writing, I'm just exhausted.

 Dear Reader,

Life has thrown a bunch of curve balls over the last few weeks. One of my boys injured his eye (thankfully it was a minor injury and he's fully recovered), the school had a major meeting regarding my other son, and there's been a ton of issues popping up over the last few weeks like my shower attempting to come apart as we were using it. I've been trying to stay on top of the cleaning I had planned but it's a mess all over again because I have boys and I am in a depressive episode. Beloved's doing his best to help but the whole situation is like shoveling snow in a blizzard.

I get to where I have time to write and the words just go 'poof' and I'm left feeling exhausted and kinda dead inside because of the depression. I want to write, but it's really hard. I am trying to keep pushing forward but it's exhausting. I apologize for the fact that I wasn't able to provide you with regular content over the course of the last month or so. Time kinda blurs together and it's a bit hard for me to remember what day it is. 

Being disabled is awful and I don't wish it on anyone. Having an invisible disability like mental illness or a chronic medical condition that make is hard for you to keep up with daily tasks is awful. On your good days, you might forget for a moment that you've got to conserve your proverbial spoons so you have the energy to stay on top of things later. The problem with being disabled in the fashion that I am is your energy levels fluctuate on a daily basis and what you were able to accomplish the day before may leave you exhausted the next day on top of the spoon deficit you may wake up with because you didn't sleep well/stress/anxiety/ect.

I'm trying to keep moving forward but I am very tired and downhearted. I haven't forgotten you all. I keep my readership in my prayers for your well being and my expressions of gratitude for your companionship. I just ask that you bear with me a little bit longer. I'm sure this depressive episode will lift eventually and I'll be able to get back to posting daily again. Right now, this is the best I can manage. Please forgive me if it is dissatisfactory or not enough. I'm trying my hardest to do my best.