Pagan Blog Prompt: Bare Feet

Pagan Blog Prompts: Bare Feet

How do you feel about going barefoot?

Do you? When, how? Where? And of course, why?

Sunfire’s bare feet at Silver Falls, WA in July ’09

Ooh, fun things. And a photo from Washington state, which I love.

But, on topic now, of course.

I hate shoes. I always have. I go barefoot whenever I possibly can. I usually run all summer and most of fall without shoes, until it gets too cold. Or if there’s construction I wear shoes, but that’s a safety concern. I love not having shoes constricting my feet in the slightest. It’s great to just walk around and not have to worry about putting on shoes or what will fit, or go with clothes, etc. I enjoy the freedom of just walking around, no concern whatsoever for shoes or anything like that.

So pretty much whenever and wherever I want to, I don’t wear shoes. It’s easier, and more comfortable for me. Of course, I have freakishly narrow feet, which makes buying shoes difficult, which probably partially inspired my love of going without. Because it’s always more comfortable to be barefoot than to wear shoes that hurt. But it’s also just that I enjoy the freedom of walking about without shoes on. I do follow a safety aspect though. I never go barefoot near construction. If there’s any danger of my getting hurt, I wear sturdy shoes. Outside of that though, I go without as often as I possibly can.

There’s really no spiritual reason for it. I’m not huge on woods, or outdoorsy stuff when it comes to my paganism. I can appreciate nature. And after living in the Black Forest practically (or rather, right on its doorstep), I really do love forests, trees, and the wonderful scenery that they provide. However, I’m still a city girl and I don’t like to be out in nature for too long. I’m more comfortable near conveniences. So it’s never been a matter of “getting closer to nature” as to why I go barefoot. I’ve just always done it, and I’m most comfortable that way, so I suppose that’s why I’ve always been barefoot for as long as I possibly can be.

Pagan Blog Prompt: Blue Moon

Pagan Blog Prompts: Blue Moon:

This weekend marks the full moon, the second in the month of August. When this happens, people refer to it as a Blue Moon. They say there is a lot of powerful energy in a Blue Moon, moreso than the usual full moon.

What does the Blue Moon mean to you?

Will it affect your magic or alter your perception in any way?

How will you use it, if at all?

I’m going to combine my original thoughts with the answer to this prompt. Because I like both, and I’m going to do it this way for fun.

So original thoughts:

So am I the only one not excited about it? I’m sure I can’t be, but it sure feels like it. I’m definitely not even sure that it’s anything more than a modern invention. I know I read somewhere in a history text for class that it used to be 13 lunar months in a year, at least in some cultures, and the Church in Rome decided to make it 12 solar for some reason or another. I can’t remember the text or what class it was for (the scholar in me is cringing at the lack of remembrance I must admit), but I do remember reading it.

And what’s so special about a 2nd full moon in a modern calendar month, when the months are all wonky in length anyway? We have 30-day, 31-day and one 28-day (occasionally 29-day) months. So then, why all the hoopla about a 2nd one in a month? It’s bound to happen. And our calendar system is inaccurate, as evinced by the need for a leap year with an extra day to make up for the discrepancies between how time actually moves, etc and how we measure it. So the “blue moon” just seems like more modern contrivance to me.

I don’t really think there’s much special about full-moon or new-moon or any of it. I don’t think that you have to practice certain forms of magic at certain times of month for them to be most successful. I just think that it’s a bunch of culturally ingrained superstition as to the lot of it. I mean…the whole “crazies come out on the full moon” has been around for so long that I don’t think most people even know where the trope comes from. And if I remember my Classics prof’s lecture correctly, lunacy comes from lunar, which has to do with the moon of course. So there’s that. But I think that it’s a bunch of superstition, this whole magical properties to the moon.

Basically, the “blue moon” doesn’t mean anything to me. Just like a regular full moon doesn’t mean a whole lot to me either. It doesn’t alter my perceptions, doesn’t change how I work magic or how I think. It’s just another night. I enjoy looking at the moon at night, but full moon, blue moon, whatever moon, it doesn’t matter to me. I just enjoy sitting outside and star-gazing. The type of moon is irrelevant in the long scheme of things. I’m far more likely to want to know about star movements across the sky as having more significance, because those seem far more connected in human psyche than lunar phenomena. After all, the calendar as it is isn’t all that old, they’ve been changing years, months, how to measure time for hundreds of years, so I doubt that there’s very much of a deeply ingrained connection to a “blue moon” as being special, given the modern definition of the term.

I know the moon and lunar cycles were important, but this particular phenomena is rather new, as measuring of time goes, or that’s how I see it. Basically, the “blue moon” is absolutely nothing to me. It’s another chance to see a full moon, which is great, just for star-gazing interests of mine. Magically it means nothing to me.

Meditating with crotchet

Reblogged from Druid Life:

In my book Druidry and Meditation, I talked a bit about the idea that any activity can be used meditatively. It being a small book, I didn’t explore in detail the many options here. When anything can be a meditation, the potential for discussion is large to the point of being unwieldy. But, this is a more personal one.

I know a lot of Druidy women who work with wool, from spinning it and dyeing to weaving, knitting, crotchet and felt.

Read more… 459 more words

I wanted to share this article from Druid Life. It's something new I've been working with personally. It's soothing and also quite relaxing. And crocheting kind of makes me feel closer to my grandma who has passed, as well as others from older generations, as a lot of them crocheted as well.

Relationships

So I stink at imaginative titles. That’s just something I’m no good at. This is really just a confusing situation for me.

I dated a guy during high school, we’re still very good friends. Or rather, more accurately, we dated 3 different times, but that’s just a detail. Still, we’re excellent friends nowadays, which I’m grateful for. We’ve got enough similar interests to have excellent conversations and we know each other well enough to know what few topics just aren’t worth the trouble that they might cause, unless we really want a good debate. There isn’t really anything that is totally off-limits with us. We’ve also got totally different ideas of our personal interests when it comes to academics, which is excellent. Both of us are entirely too competitive when it happens to be our particular area of interest. So the different interests there are also great. We can have fun talking and yet also not get too angry with competition. He’s been one of my best friends since our sophomore year of high school, and he’s always helped me out when I needed it.

Not that things were perfect, clearly not. And we’ve had our problems, but at the very least, we’ve been good friends. I know I can always ask him for help, and he’d help me if he could. I would do almost anything to help him out if he asked me. He’s one of my best friends after all. And that’s all it should be. We broke up the last time 4 years ago. I still liked him when we broke up, but I thought I was over it finally. I thought I had finally (in Germany of course) gotten completely over him. We should be friends at this point and not even think of anything more.

Because last year before I left for Germany he flat told me that he would never date me again. I understood. After all, I seriously screwed up our relationship. There isn’t anyone else to blame but me. It was my fault that we ended up breaking up. It’s not like I could fault him for telling me that we would only ever be friends. That’s the smart thing to say and do. And I would never have pushed against that. I’d have been more than happy just staying friends.

But I saw him this last weekend. And it just reminded me of every reason I ever dated him. He’s intelligent, brilliantly so in fact, funny and sweet, not to mention handsome.  He’s a gentleman really. And I know he’s still attracted to me, found out he was last year when I left too. Which of course just leads to far more confusion on my part. Because while this is great on one level – it’s just more trouble. Of course, I realized even before I saw him again (not that I wanted to admit it) that I still was using him as the measure of any guy who ever showed any interest in me. Which of course is a measure to failure, because beyond me expecting them to have every quality that my ex has, I’ve gotten to learn from my mother that I’m “intimidating” and so most guys fail my internal test on sheer fact that they don’t speak to me well, or they get upset about my being smart. I still don’t get it.

My mom explained it this way though – I’m intelligent, extremely intelligent in fact. I’m opinionated and independent. I know what I want and I go for it, at least most of the time. I’m well-read and I can discuss pretty much anything at least partially. I like politics and debate on religion, politics, economics, and pretty much anything else.

She says that guys find it intimidating when women are smart and know what they want. Which means I’m automatically in trouble with guys like that.

I’ve been reading at a post-college level by U.S. standards since I was 7 years old, and I’ve always been reading literature. I read Anna Karenina when I was 11, Moby Dick at 10, 1984 when I was 8…and my favorite novel has been Dracula since I read it at 7. My more recent pick for secondary favorite novel is War and Peace, which I read in 2 weeks when I was 15. I’ve always been well-read, I love reading. Plus, I never had many friends as a child, I’m very awkward around people. So I always retreated to books. Which means that I’ve been very good at reading for a very long time. I read an average of 8.000 words per minute.

I’m a history student, and I have chosen to concentrate on Eastern European, which is unusual I know. But I’m good with dates and times, and I love historical facts. I can hold my own in literature, religion and philosophy. I can fully admit that I have a selective political knowledge base, though I try to learn more. I’m absolutely awful in math and sciences, which means I avoid those, as I don’t like to focus on things I’m not so good at. I’m very opinionated, that is true. And I don’t sugar-coat my opinions to make people happy. I’m not rude or abrasive, not most of the time. But I won’t play at kindness just because someone is uncomfortable with the fact that I’m well aware of what I think. I can nearly always back up my opinions with facts or reasoning. Oh, and then I know what I want to do with my life. I pretty much always have known, so that’s another thing.

Pretty much, mom says it means that I “scare” most guys. They’re afraid to approach me, or that’s what she has to say about it. Which just annoys me to no end. Because I don’t think I’m anything unusual or special. I’m just me, which isn’t much. But going with my mother’s observations, I’m “intimidating” to nearly every man I’ve ever met.

My ex isn’t afraid of me at all. He isn’t intimidated. Which is something rare enough that it definitely is great. He’ll hold down a debate with me, a conversation, he’ll argue if he thinks I’m wrong. I’m sure the sheer fact that he’s one of the few guys I’ve met that isn’t intimidated by me is a lot of it, but he’s not the only one. And yet, beyond all that I’m attracted to him just as much as I was 4 years ago. Talking to him is fun, refreshing really, and also something I’ve missed quite a bit. We didn’t talk a whole lot for nearly the whole time I was in Germany. It’s only been in the last 3 months that we started talking again.

I shouldn’t even think about it. Being friends should be fine. But then, I know that I still like him on some level. And I know he feels something for me. But I also know that he’s probably going to end up dating someone else, and that will just end up hurting down the line for me. I should just do what I can usually do, which is just detach and not look back. Impossible in this case though. Because I really do care about him, and even being friends is better than nothing.

Pretty much, my relationship luck is atrocious. I should have been over him years ago. I’ve been on dates ever since, it’s just a matter of nothing ever seemed to work, even if I tried to make the relationships work. And yet, I can’t even deny the fact that I look at what I want from a guy that I’d date, and pretty much every guy who has ever expressed interest in me fails at it. So pretty much I’m at a loss here. I know that I would date him again, if he were interested. I doubt that he is, or ever would be. Which is just confusing and leads to more trouble for me. And no matter how much mutual attraction there might be, we’ll probably be nothing more than friends. That’s both great and also just a tiniest bit frustrating.

So pretty much, this weekend made me realize that I’m clearly the one who unintentionally makes my life difficult for myself in terms of relationships.

JSTOR Raids

I have a few articles to read. Found them through JSTOR of course. I’m starting with 2, but I’ve got quite a few to go through. If nothing else, the fact is that these articles are going to be interesting reads. They have been at least to find them and read the first page or so on each. I’m not really sure how well they’ll come out in the long run, but I’ll enjoy reading them nonetheless. I’ve got some enjoyment of the whole situation, what with being able to access JSTOR and get new articles to read for research. I’ll have to check out EBSCOHost later as well.

The articles are interesting enough sounding.

“The Pagan Priests of Early Russia: Some New Insights” by Russell Zguta, from the Slavic Review. JSTOR article: here, if you can access it.

“Perun’s Revenge: Understanding the ‘Duxovnaja Kul’Tura’” by Irving H. Anellis, from Studies in Soviet Thought. JSTOR article: here, if you can access it.

All in all, it should be fun. They sound most interesting. At the worst, I’ve got some very interesting reading. And those are just 2 articles. I think I found about 15 more to go through also. I’ll have to see what I think about these articles. I enjoy research though. So this is the new endeavor for the week.