It’s been a while since I posted. I kept meaning to write another post for October, but then it kept not happening. So here are some brief updates on various things.
Church. I am going to church now. Specifically the Anglican church about 5 minutes from my home. Why? Well, I’d heard nice things about the Anglicans, namely that they were pretty liberal, and very welcoming, and that the liturgy had all the stuff I really like. So I decided to check it out.
They are very nice, very liberal, and the reverend (deacon? Ok I haven’t figure out how the clergy works, exactly, working on that) was really nice to talk to. I even asked her if it was okay that I was pagan, not Christian, and she shrugged and said “Look, there was no bolt of lightning striking you down, so I think we’re good.”
I’ve been to two Sunday Eucharists so far; I had to miss this past Sunday, unfortunately, as I was caught up with work deadlines. I am going again this coming Sunday.
I am still very religiously involved in my pagan faiths, so this is not a conversion thing for me. I just have discovered that doing things with people and being involved in community is very important to me, spiritually, so I have found a way to do that. I am able to hold space in myself to go to church and worship fully and openly, and then to go home and worship fully and openly in different religious traditions.
~
I’ve been working on a project for a little while now, and it’s almost ready to be released. I’ve created something I’m calling A Polytheist’s Devotional Journal. It’s filled with prompts that are aimed at getting the journaller to dive deeper into devotion and to really examine themselves. The prompts are based off prompts from the Examen, which is a form of prayer in Ignatian spirituality, but have been tailored to a polytheist perspective.
I started this project because I’ve used the Examen myself in order to deepen my thoughts of the gods and more fully explore myself and come to better self-knowledge. I’ve found it very helpful. So I wanted to put together a little book that other polytheists who wanted to try this could get and work through.
I’ve received the proof already and it looks pretty good, so after a few minor adjustments to layout I’ll be publishing it via Createspace. The journal is small and slim; if you did a prompt every day it would last you 2 months. However, you can choose to do prompts weekly, or monthly, or whatever works for you. The pages are dot-grid and they’re pretty good at preventing ghosting/bleed through with many different inks. There are a few “blank” (ie, prompt-less) pages at the beginning and end of the book to doodle on, test out pens, create a neat opening page — whatever you want. The pages are numbered, as well, so that doing an index is easy.
The cover is a photo of a landscape, and in very small print it says “A Polytheist’s Devotional Journal” down at the bottom. I did it this way because Createspace requires I put the title on the front cover, but I wanted it to be unobtrusive so that no one could tell what the book is at just a glance.
Overall I’m pretty satisfied with this project, and am excited to release it to the public. I’m making the price as low as I can make it without losing money so that it’s accessible to people. (Stay tuned to the blog for a post about the official release, as well as a price.)
~
Another project I’ve started is quite a bit bigger, and I’m hoping that it’s a success. I’ve committed to a year and a day, starting on October 31st, to something I’m calling “Honoring the Mothers.”
This project came about from discussions with my mother and my mother in law that lead me to realize that women’s work is magic. The things that are usually classified as “women’s work” (and thus deemed unworthy of men’s hands) are things like cleaning, childrearing, cooking — all mundane activities that hold within them the power of transformation, of changing the world in accordance with will. Women’s work is witchcraft.
Originally, I was just going to write a blog post about this realization, but I realized I wanted to go deeper. I realized I had to go deeper. I wanted to spend a year really learning the secrets of “women’s work” and applying them in my life. I wanted to do this to honor my mother, and my grandmothers, and all the mothers before me who tirelessly did these jobs to keep house and home together; who wove their magic around their families and homes.
I am the result of the magic of thousands.
So how this project is going to work, basically, is I’m going to tackle this idea via cleaning and re-organizing my house. I’ve divided up the year into 4 sections, and the house into 4 sections. Between each fire festival (Samhain to Imbolc, Imbolc to Beltane, Beltane to Loafmass, Loafmass to Samhain) I will work on making that section of the house clean, and organized, as a devotional act for my ancestors and the gods of the home that I worship.
I’ll also be reading as much as I can about topics that are related to this — right now I have The Women in God’s Kitchen out from the library — and, to add cooking to the mix, I’ll be doing a recipe every season that I’ve never done before, that strikes me as particularly magical.
I’m not just doing this as a private project, either. I’m planning on turning my experiences with this into a book. I’ll be writing it throughout the year as I do the project. My hope for it is that it will be part memoir, part practical witchcraft application, and part exploration of what “women’s spirituality” means to someone who is genderqueer, but still feels a pull to that path.
Which brings me to my next announcement.
Patreon!
Yes, I’m starting up a Patreon account for my work here on the blog and any other religious or witchcraft work I do. (I do have a different Patreon account for my Fifty Shades of Drinking video series, but that is on indefinite hiatus as I’ve been having serious computer issues that have prevented me from working on it.)
So, what does this have to do with the book? Well if you pledge $3 a month, you’ll get access to excerpts from the book throughout the year. I won’t be sharing them anywhere else. (For $1 a month you have access to my patron-only feed, which means seeing blog posts on Patreon before I post them here, with the exception of this post.)
If you pledge $5 a month, you’ll get a free copy of the ebook when it’s released, plus access to the first 2 tiers. (You also get one free ebook from my backlist per month at this pledge level, but as this will be my first pagan book I don’t have a backlist at this point.)
So far I’ve only got three rewards listed, but I’ve got plans for more. If you enjoy this blog and my writing, or if you want to see bits of my Honoring the Mothers book before it’s finished, then consider becoming a patron! Your monthly support will help me continue to do this type of work.
That’s all the news for now. I’ll see you again soon with more posts, and an announcement about the journal.
Hope you all had a lovely Samhain, Beltane, and/or Halloween, where ever you are!
-Morag