Tuesday 9 June 2015

I Bless this Blog of Shadows...

Well met and blessings.

Has there ever been a practice or aspect of your spiritual path that you enthusiastically threw yourself into at the beginning of your path, but has recently dropped off or been neglected? For me it is the art of magical record keeping, or keeping a Book of Shadows.

As a young teenager I would borrow whatever books on paganism and witchcraft I could possibly get my hands on from my local library. I would pore over these books for hours, and whatever information I considered useful to go back to later I would copy into a spiral-bound notebook bound in animal-print faux fur. I would also journal about the personal rituals and magical workings I regularly practiced. I still own these notebooks from my early studies, which I treasure. Sadly, as adulthood encroached and my personal life struggles ensued, my magical record keeping fell to the wayside. In recent years I have recommenced my journaling in the form of blogging. This has the added advantage of getting to share my thoughts about what I am learning with other human beings.

Allow me to introduce myself a little bit more. I am Gemma, a human female Earthican who has lived in Queensland, Australia all my life. I am currently 30 years old, a married mother of one, and a crazy cat lady. I have been studying and practicing some form of pagan witchcraft for 17 years now, since I was 13 years old (and I was already interested in magic, the occult and connecting to Mother Earth before that).

My spiritual path and my life as a witch will be the focus of this blog. My path is forever changing and evolving and will always be a work in progress. I want to document my path here as well as share it with like-minded others, and even folks following a different path if they choose to come into my online space respectfully. Everyone else... I reserve the right to banish, bind, block and delete.

I will go into more detail about my specific path and personal philosophy throughout the course of my journey writing in this blog, but I will try (hopefully not poorly) to sum it up here: as a pagan witch I am a soft polytheist, animist, pantheist and at the end of the day essentially a spiritual atheist. I do not identify as Wiccan, but I am influenced by the books I have read on Wicca. My path is very Shamanistic, fluid and perfectly suited to me as an individual. I am a child of Mother Earth, and I work with a few other pagan deities as personifications of the divine, while simultaneously recognising the divine within myself, other people, and everything in the cosmos. I am very much a hearth witch, finding that my magic works best when I weave it into every facet of my life as much as possible. This is an ongoing challenge; as you know, it can be hard to feel magical when there are beds to make, floors to mop, dishes to scrub etc. This is where having a mindfulness practice and other spiritual concepts I have adopted that aren't necessarily specific to paganism or the craft come in. I am also a Reiki healer, which I see as an extension of the healing work I was already doing before. Last year I joined the controversially-named fledgling online tradition of witchcraft, the IDGAF tradition. Since doing so I have found a structure and discipline in my practice that had been lacking for a long time previously. I have made a commitment to my own spiritual development that I am really proud of, and I have also found a community of genuine, interesting and good-hearted people.

I'm really exited about starting this new blog. I have a lot of ideas spinning around in my head that I want to share with my readers. This will be the place that I blog about the books I read, the workshops and courses I take and my ever-evolving spirituality. Who knows, perhaps I'll even get back into creating a physical Book of Shadows?

I protect this Blog of Shadows in perfect trust and perfect love
I call upon the ancient powers of all things below and above
This Blog of Shadows is blessed by the stars, moon, earth, and sea
This Blog of Shadows is sanctified, as I will, so mote it be!

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