ravenrook

17th day after new moon in aries

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:52:52 GMT

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.

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21st day after the new moon in aquarius

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 22:30:12 GMT

what does the green shoot know when it comes forth from the earth?
does it remember the warmth and the roughness of the gardener's hands?
does it know it will one day bear fruit?

'will the circle be unbroken?' we cry
the circle itself calls back,
'by and by, by and by'

***

Aquarius is a time of planning. the seeds that can bear the cold can be planted now. we collect seeds for later. the longest nights of winter are past us, but the hungry days aren't over yet. I try to hold on to every minute of sun that I can get. spring is still far away.

as we look towards the month of Pisces, we might be feeling unsteady. like the seeds, we need rest. we wait in the darkness, and look inwards for strength. patience is a virtue.

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22nd day of the moon in aries

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 16:33:27 GMT

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!

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11th day of the new moon in aries

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 15:37:01 GMT

hello! it's been a minute. spring has sprung so I've been quite busy.

I got into librarian school so on top of keeping up with the garden, I've been trying to get my stuff together to move this summer. I really hate moving. this will be the biggest move I've done, by a long shot. so the theme of my life lately has been simplifying. both my physical items (I really don't want to have to drive a huge uhaul across the mountains) and the things I'm doing. it's so hard for me to have a daily routine but it does really help. wah.

I've simplified my spiritual practice down to basically just ancestral veneration and keeping up with the moon cycle. I like the ancient roman calends-nones-ides system a lot. I guess I'll just do a little breakdown here because I think that'll be easier than explaining

calends
-new moon
-traditionally honoring Juno
-personal associations: Hathor carrying Ra between her horns; Isis; Mary, Star of the Sea
-practice: in conjunction with noumenia, I'll honor the wandering dead and leave them some milk and honey (when I remember......); also honoring guiding spirits and house spirits; card read for the month

nones
-first quarter
-if I remember right, this was when ancient romans honored the Lares. I'm having trouble finding a source though so maybe double check me
-personal associations: Black Madonna; cycles of rebirth; Persephone & similar stories
-practice: prayers for the dead, maybe some food offerings if I remember

ides
-full moon
-traditionally honoring Jupiter
-personal associations: Sophia; justice; Mary, Lady of Roses
-practice: this is a good day to bake bread; remember the particularly inspirational dead; celebrating abundance

the last half of the month is a fallow period, a time to rest. as you can tell, I've been really into Mary lately. I honestly couldn't tell you why, other than she's just cool. I think I was inspired by a fillianist on tumblr. maybe I should do a writeup about Mary someday, my thoughts are kind of complicated.

this reminds me that I haven't checked on the website in a while. agh.

wishing you the best.

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new moon in aquarius

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 21:09:28 GMT

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!

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shit kickin

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 19:39:07 GMT

howdy. I'm trying to stay off social media but also I haven't been able to work for 2 weeks so I'm at my wit's end. this is better than tumblr at least lol.

I have a rare sleep disorder called idiopathic hypersomnia. from the outside, it looks like narcolepsy: I fall asleep a lot, I'm very tired all the time, I would sleep like 14 hours a day before I was diagnosed. but while we have some idea about the genetic basis and physiological mechanisms for narcolepsy, we know so much less about IH. there's no cure, so I'm in the phase of getting prescribed a random assortment of stimulants to see what will allow me to function. narcolepsy medicine (a non-amphetamine stimulant) has helped. on medication, I sleep around 8-12 hours per night, but I usually still get sleepy in the afternoon and need to take a nap. so they tried to increase the dose of that medication (note that they were increasing me to the regular adult dose, nothing crazy). that did not go well. imagine the worst caffeine rush you've ever had but then add a crushing amount of existential dread and feeling like someone just shot your puppy. I go back down to the half dose.

at the same time, I've been taking an NDRI (norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor, like an SSRI but for different neurotransmitters) for at least a year or two. so I go to my psychiatrist and she thinks that since the stimulant acts on dopamine, maybe the NDRI is why I'm overreacting. and my lack of energy is definitely part of why I'm depressed, so maybe I won't need the antidepressant if we can get the sleep stuff under control. we cut the NDRI and went back up on the stimulant. this was about a week ago and I've been in an absolute haze ever since. I very easily could've stayed in bed all day every day. at one point I got up and tried to fold my laundry and just sitting up caused so much pain that I couldn't do it. it was like my body didn't even have a crumb of energy to send to the muscles needed to keep me upright. needless to say, my depression and my sleep both got worse. and now I'm back where I started 3 months ago.

today's the first day I went back up on my NDRI so I'm kind of having the worst of both worlds at the moment. I'm physically jittery but mentally asleep. I have a ton of stuff I need to catch up on from my week of emptiness. I've just decided that maybe it's best if I take it easy today so I can do all the things I want to do tomorrow. cause there's a lot. man I feel like shit.

well. bis bald, hasta luego, ĝis revido, whatever you prefer

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jan 21 - 5 days before full moon in leo

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 19:31:46 GMT

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

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nov 26

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 19:58:32 GMT

howdy howdy. just got back from visiting family for that Thursday we all get off work.

this week I've mainly been diving into Heathenry. I'm not quite sure why I haven't gotten into heathenry before. I guess the Norse gods have always felt distant to me, but other than that, my beliefs are pretty much aligned with Heathenry. for instance, I already was using the idea of a hearth cult, I didn't know that idea originated in heathen spaces.

I started down this rabbithole because I've been trying to figure out Mercury and Rosmerta. I came across the idea that the god the Romans called Mercury evolved into Odin as society changed with the dissolution of the empire (I wish I could find this source but I've forgotten it, it's kind of driving me insane). so that would (potentially) cast Rosmerta as Frig.

at this point, it kind of clicked that maybe what I've been searching for is Odin and Frig. I have a tendency to avoid the obvious, and Odin is so obviously someone I'd be interested in. I guess he's finally caught up to me, for better or for worse. the good news is, instead of trying to piece together a mythology, the mythology around Odin is fairly rich. of course, I can't let it be simple, so I figure I'll be looking into continental german or anglo-saxon interpretations.

in other news, I've started learning the Cherokee syllabry. my trip to Ireland inspired me to learn the language native to the land I live on. it sounds kind of silly, but sometimes I wonder if the spirits miss being called by their own names. so far I've learned sa-sa is goose.

picked up a few books at the library. currently reading The Hellenistic Age: A Short History by Peter Green. it's a little dry so far but it's a time I'd like to know more about.

ĝis la revido kaj estu sekura

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update on life and such

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 14:45:22 GMT

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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testing email post writing

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 14:28:49 GMT

hi hello! let's see if this works!

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Sun, 26 Feb 2023 17:08:25 GMT

hi this is a test entry

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