ravenrook

hello!
happy (?) holy week. I'm in a weird space with integrating christianity into the rest of my deal. I think a lot about how religion is what has been passed down to us and this is what's been passed down to me. but at the same time, I want to resist the hegemony as much as possible. alas.
theoretically, there's a lot of cool stuff to work with. and obviously, there's power to it.

I haven't had much time for anything lately. I have no time to think after school and work. 
I managed to do my first hedge crossing since living here. I've been feeling like I never introduced myself properly. it was short but so far seems to have been effective. I possibly saw a ghost for the first time in a long time.
moving to a new place has me feeling lost. I don't think I ever truly appreciated how close I was to the local spirits at home. the spirits here feel distant. I'm still learning what they like. 

otherwise, things have been alright. I've gotten some clarity on health things and I'm starting to actually feel better. at the same time, I never got around to finding a new therapist and those sorts of things... I need to get on that. the semester is ending so quickly. I have a lot left to do. but not very much motivation to do it.

hello! happy may day eve I guess. I don't think I'm doing anything to celebrate. I thought about having a bonfire but it's been pretty rainy.

I guess I celebrated by putting my houseplants outside for the summer. it was really cozy to have them inside during the winter but it was starting to feel crowded. now they're all outside and it feels a lot better to me. and I can clean in all the nooks and crannies they were covering up...

I don't have a lot to say witchcraft-wise but I have been working pretty hard on my language learning. I finished the Cherokee syllabry course! I don't think I'll go on to actually learning how to speak Cherokee, at least for a while. but I'm really proud that I can read the characters and recognize a couple basic words! learning a new writing script was fun, so I'm already looking at what I'll do next. arabic, bengali, mandarin... lots of options.

I've also been working on spanish. the lessons on language transfer have been the best tool for me so far. things like duolingo make me lose interest pretty fast but I like having the people talking. I'm really excited to be able to read some Latin American literature.

I've been watching a lot of spanish youtube because it's good practice but also because I've felt like crap the past week. I've been so sleepy, it's been really hard to get out of bed in the morning. it's extra frustrating because I was getting into a good routine. I can't even put my finger on why my routine got messed up. the only difference I can think of is that I've had really bad dreams since this started and it's not like I can control that.

well I'm going to try to enjoy the rest of this rainy day. tschussi!

hello hello. tbh I completely forgot it was the new moon until just now... I haven't really been with it lately, my routine has kinda been worn away. well, that's why we have times to reflect and plan I guess.

I just put a couple essays up on my neocities about ancestor veneration. I'm actually pretty proud of those, they were really fun to write. actually writing stuff down has been a big goal of mine lately.

a while ago I came up with the idea of the time between St. Brigid's Day and the spring equinox being like a pagan Lent. I'm not fasting or anything, but my goal was to set aside some dedicated time every morning and evening to pray. I... did not get that far.

but the spirit of contemplation has kinda led me to think a bit more deeply about what I'm doing and what I want to be doing. I've been feeling off-track lately. and I think it boils down to me forgetting what my goals are. reconstruction has been super wearing me down and my initial response was to try a few different traditions to try to find one that fit. but stepping back lets me see the fuller picture. I started down the road of reconstruction because I wanted to know more about the historical context of paganism. but here's the thing: I'm not a reconstructionist, I'm a folk magician.

basically what I'm saying is I've deconstructed my definition of religion so much that I've wrapped back around to being a christian (do I believe in Jesus? not really. would 99% of christians call me a christian? probably not. but just cook with me for a minute). my context is completely christian, and whether I like it or not, my entire theology and cosmology and vocabulary is ultimately rooted in chrisitanity. I can try to call it neoplatonism or whatever, but really that's just me covering up that it's christianity with more steps.

this allowed me to realize that the deities I honor are not Greek or Roman or Anglo-Saxon. they're completely modern (in the big, post-middle ages sense of modern). they're syncretisations and new inventions and folk figures. and all of this was created in a context that is solidly christian.

one day I hope to write an actual essay on what I mean by deconstructing religion, but that's enough for now. in the meantime, I highly recommend learning about chinese folk religion, which really is what challenged me to think about all this.

so what does all this rambling really mean? it means I'm freeing myself from the expectations of recreating an ancient religion (absolutely no shade to reconstructionists, it's really cool work, just not for me). it means I'm going to embrace the living traditions that I'm a part of and define them on my own terms. it means I get to try again at doing lent cause ash wednesday isn't until next week...

be well my friends!

happy new year lol. we had family staying with us for most of december so honestly I didn't have many chances to actually do things. I guess I've kind of been in a slump. out of all the things, I've narrowed down that I'm really just hungry for tradition. I've been snowed in for the last week and I spent most of that time digging through christian theology trying to find something to hold onto. but at the end of the day, there's a reason I left the church. even as much as I miss having those traditions, I don't think I'll ever be truly a part of the church for those reasons.

so I guess I'm on my own! I can feel myself being pulled in two directions (that are not necessarily mutually exclusive). the first is digging into hellenic polytheism. I think my experiment with norse paganism was valuable and I learned a lot, including that it's not for me. my understanding of the gods is so rooted in a greco-roman pantheon, I just found it difficult to connect. I've been thinking for a while that my practice is basically just hellenism with more steps (and like tbh that's kind of a lot of modern paganism... like you can't deny the cultural impact of percy jackson and d'aulaires). like instead of trying to syncretise my way from Aphrodite to Frig I could just start with Aphrodite to begin with. I kinda have stayed away from helpol because it seemed too basic but hey we're trying to simplify, basic is a good place to be. not to mention there is a philosophical tradition that, while not necessarily living, is still pretty robust compared to what we've got for other times and places.

the other direction is to throw everything away and start at nothing. as an animist, I think that we all are divine, and therefore, I can meet the divine through myself. the moon, the sun, love, wisdom, all these things are divine because they're just as real as I am. they don't require names or mythologies to be worthy of praise. so basically I've been trying to get better at meditation and just enjoying the simple things.

religion is hard. I try not to spend too much time on it but I'm learning that it is something important to me. when I try to ignore it, it feels like something is missing. but it's also good to know that pretty much everyone in religious spaces struggles with this stuff.

miscellaneous updates: I'm still learning Cherokee, I really recommend language as a way to get in touch with the land and the people who live on it. I've learned so much beyond just the syllabary. I've been trying to celebrate the new moon but I've been out of town for at least the last 3. just today I remembered travel altars exist, so maybe I'll try to put one together. oh and Imbolc is soon! Brigid is so big for me so it's an important holiday but I don't even know if I'll have the spoons to do anything. I have a few days to contemplate though.

stay warm, stay safe

yay! we're up and running again!

after my first post I got a glitch where I couldn't type anything into the text editor so I pretty much forgot about this site. but yeah the impending death knell of tumblr made me want to check it out again. luckily, there's a way to make posts through email and that seems to be a good workaround at the moment. excited to actually figure out how to use this site :3

the new moon in scorpio is coming up this weekend. I'll try to do a recap of my craft over the past month. and I have a semi-new irl friend who's into magic and stuff and we're going to start meeting up. that's another reason I've been trying to clean up my neocities, she wants to work on a book of shadows and the one I've started on the website would be good to show her.

til next time

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