It's been a long time since my last post. I'm not going to spend much time on that except to say that I've been in various funks and brown studies for a while now, although with periods of my usual sunny disposition. (disposition is a funny sort of word; it sounds like something is out of place, when in fact it means that one is disposed in ones normal way.)
So here it is - New Year's Day, the wind up of the "Holiday Season". I don't really celebrate the usual holidays in the usual way. Although I use the occasion of Christmas to connect with family and friends as well as acquaintances and even strangers, I don't celebrate in any religious sense. As far as the new year goes, I celebrate that at Solstice (the True New Year) with ritual and hope. Say what you will about the astronomical explanations of the event of Solstice, I know that it is brought about by the influence of Magic. The practitioners of that old time religion (shamanism with various embellishments) knew their stuff. The work of keeping the seasonal procession intact is not to be trusted to fools or pompous asses.
I grew up in a Christian environment, but no one in my family was especially devout. I would say that both my parents tried to live by the precepts as taught by Christ, but were not big on the forms. My mom did attend church fairly regularly. Anyway, I no longer practice. I just can't get behind a religion that has allowed itself to be hijacked by the morons of the right to promote everything from sexual hypocrisy to war on just about any thing that doesn't pander to the greed of America's Ruling Class. Not content with forcing reason and logic out of public policy debates, the Yayhooos have turned their own religion on its head and made it sick. The sad part is that nobody in the Church seems troubled by this.
Enough of that.
So how does one celebrate Solstice anyway? Without doing any research at websites devoted to the practice of Pagan, Animist, or Shamanist rites of seasonal passage, I suggest:
Celebrate with fire. A big bonfire is best, of course. (In Zetroc, one annual Solstice party featured three large fires in succession - Past, Present, and Future) Fire is good because it allows you to symbolically burn something unwanted from the past year, and thus be rid of it in the new one.
Celebrate with language. Spells, incantations, prayers, poetry, boasts, tall tales, and honest memory and reflection are all appropriate. Spend some time talking with people you like and commune with well. Verbally express your hopes, fears, regrets, successes, and happiness to yourself and others. Write out a wish for yourself for the New Year on paper. Then burn the paper, not to incinerate the wish, rather, to change its form from material to ethereal and thus disperse the wish universally.
Celebrate with sensuality. Eat, drink, and be merry. Also, in this vein surround yourself with foliage and decorations sacred to the Gods of Winter; holly and ivy come to mind as well as sage and mistletoe.
Celebrate with Magic. Create a serious ritual and preform it seriously. It's MAGIC!
Celebrate with a seed of hope for the New Year. Plant it in your heart. Nourish it with love, and it will come forth a living thing in the Spring and develop to fruition in the warmth of High Summer. This too is Magic. It is the Magic of Love. Use it unsparingly.
An Update on the post: Omens and Portents. It seems that sometimes crows have conclaves, a sort of gathering of the tribes, associated with the ripening of fruit. They abandon their usual haunts to gather at orchards, both derelict and functioning, to feast on natures bounty until sated and then they go home. The four needle bundle - After much searching I have finally found a second one of these. This time I also got the branch it came from. (Now and then the squirrels go all squirrelly and rip a bunch of ends off the branches of the pine trees around my deck. They're trying to get at the conelets that grow there.) Turns out that it is an anomaly of the four leaf clover type. All the other bundles on that branch had three needles. The day of reckoning has come and gone with no event.
I plan on posting more often, but I'm also pretty busy listening to and creating playlists. My Hope is to learn to type with ten fingers and thus be unable to smoke while posting. It is going to be something to do instead of smoking. I'm on my last pack. Knock on wood.
Today's Music: Sean Riley and the Slowriders - Only Time Will Tell
Today's Quote: " Well, the sights and sounds of sin, of the broken hearts that won't mend, in the whispered refrain at the edge of sleep, are more than a body can stand." Fred Eaglesmith
