Cancer and Chaos

It has been a while since I've blogged and I wanted to let you all know what has been going on.

My husband's mother has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and the cancer has also gone to her lymph nodes. My husband found out he more than likely has a condition called Marfan syndrome, which is a disease of the connective tissues of the body and can cause heart problems. There's a 50/50 chance that if he has it our son does too. He needs to undergo more testing.

Throughout this ordeal, someone in my life who I thought was a friend has shown their true colours and proven that they were actually never my friend, and it was all about them. At the ripe old age of 30 I am learning valuable lessons about people and how to know who you can trust. I now understand why some people are standoffish and wary of people, instead of open-hearted and friendly like I have always tried to be.

My mother-in-law is busy seeing both oncologists and other specialists as well as naturopaths to look at what her treatment options are. If she is going to get through this she needs to be focused and positive and do everything she can. I need to be strong for her, and to do that I myself need to be focused and have the right people around me.

I don't anticipate that my current life problems will deter me from keeping up with the requirements of IDGAF, on the contrary: I am finding myself turning to my spirituality almost more than ever. I am feeling a pull towards the dark goddess, which is something I am exploring through study, meditation and divination. I am still reading the book Shadow Magick Compendium by Raven Digitalis, which is brilliant. It contains stories from the mythologies of various cultures and traditions, information about shamanistic practices such as animal spirits, spirit guides, herbalism and dream work, and shadow work (both in the Jungian sense and the nocturnal/dark witchcraft sense). When I got up to the part about totems/animal medicine I reached for my copy of Totem Magic by Yasmine Galenorn, which I am now reading as well. It's not a comprehensive guide to working with totems and animal spirit medicine (like Scott Alexander King's Animal Dreaming or Ted Andrews' Animal Speak, but it is an extremely practical starting-off point for beginning to work with animal spirit guides. I read in one of the two books (can't remember which) that Samhain is a great time to work with animal magic, which is interesting as that was my focus this Samhain.

I meditate daily and I practice something simple almost daily. Larger workings are reserved for when I need them, and I celebrate the wheel of the year and sometimes lunar cycles (I love the new moon but often feel icky around the full moon). One thing I have been focusing on a lot is divination using tarot and oracle cards. I am thinking of getting my runes out and starting to study and use runes again. I have been making a fair amount of YouTube videos, and I recently gave away a reading to one of my subscribers. The reading went great, it flowed well, felt comfortable, and I got great feedback from my quearant. It's something I'm thinking of doing more of soon.

The next holiday coming up is Imbolc, which I am looking forward to. Imbolc and Lammas/Lughnassadh are often overlooked in favour of certain other, flashier holidays, but this year I have been paying more attention to them and enjoying them a lot... perhaps that's a topic for another blog post?

That's about all for my update. I have more posts in store, so hopefully it won't be so long between posts next time. Thanks for reading, and blessed be. xx

Conceptions of Deity

For some reason I once had the perception that all real witches were hard polytheists to whom the gods communicated clearly and directly. I think I got this impression from a few witches I respected and saw as magically effective who identified as hard polytheist. For these witches it seemed that their gods, spirits and magical beings had a very direct and full-on way of communicating with them, and that to them the gods were as real as you or I.

So I tried really hard to be a hard polytheist. I was like "right! Come at me and speak, gods!" *Crickets chirping* Did this mean I wasn't a real witch? I have since come to the conclusion that it didn't, and it doesn't. Not all witches view their gods through the lens of hard polytheism in this form. For me, the way that I experience, communicate with and relate to the gods is less direct. The gods may not communicate with me directly in my mind just as though I was having a conversation with a friend, but they do send me signs and signals, they put "coincidences" and synchronicity on my path for me to recognize (or stumble over!) and they speak to me through divination.

For a long time I have struggled with the concept of belief for much the same reason as I struggle with the concept of worship: the conditioning of my Christian upbringing. I guess for many hard polytheists belief doesn't come into it because of how the gods communicate with them, but for the rest there is faith that their deities exist independently as self-aware entities. A soft polytheist would believe that all of the different deities are expressions of one supreme being that can appear to different people in the way that they can best recognise and work with. I like this idea, but I still don't actually believe it in the "blind faith" sense. I have had experiences of course, but I recognise my personal experiences as subjective.

I have realised that spiritual atheism is a bit of a taboo among some pagans and witches. For some people it's almost as stigmatised as Satanism, or the concept of Christo-paganism. Why this is, I'm not sure. I personally don't see the problem with having a spiritual practice without an actual belief in a deity or the adoption of a religious dogma or doctrine. Having come from a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion, I am glad to get away from the idea that one must have blind faith in a deity without evidence. I am a grown adult, and I give myself permission to experience and perceive deity in my own way... I am no longer being told when to sit, stand, kneel, pray and what to believe without proof.

So, what is my present conception of deity? As a pagan witch I feel I am mainly a pantheist, animist and soft polytheist, however I have often felt I am essentially a spiritual atheist. I understand you can't be both a theist and an atheist, but I guess I'm just trying to work out where I stand... I just feel that if you could somehow prove to me that there is unequivocally and without a doubt no independently existing and self aware deity, then for me there would still be spirituality. There would still be nature and the universe and cosmos and the gift of our senses and minds to perceive it with, and to me that's sacred and divine. Maybe that makes me a pantheist, but does that imply believing there is divine intelligence behind it all? Even if there isn't, to me it's still sacred and awe-inspiring.

As you can see, this isn't something I am set on hard and fast at this point in time. Much like where I fit into in my witchcraft practice. I am very eclectic, but I see myself as fitting somewhere into the hedge witch/hearth witch/green witch categories. I do work with deities. As I mentioned, I do not worship - rather I honour, revere and adore their spirits. The deity most dear to my heart is the earth herself, and that isn't a matter of belief - she just is.

Perhaps I am struggling too much with my conception of deity, perhaps I have too much time on my hands! My conception of deity may be different and unorthodox, but it is my own.

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!