I’m not where I’m supposed to be this weekend.
It’s Easter, which normally means Spring Mysteries Fest. However, I didn’t have the funds to attend this year. So I am at home, with the Ogre, working, watching movies, and doing very little of anything. Because it’s Easter, and going out to do anything this weekend would be madness.
It’s sort of got me thinking about calendars, which was the March topic for The Cauldron Blog Project. So, yeah, I’m writing about that topic now. In April. Because I am obviously *ace* at keeping to a schedule (irony considering the topic).
Anyway. I’m trying to build something. A religious life that I can keep faithful to, and that includes days of significance. But it’s not enough to just have the *days*, I need to have something by which to mark them.
These are the days I know are important and I know I must do something to mark their passing (or I do already*):
*Imbolc (Feb 2nd)
*Easter (varies)
Walpurgisnacht (Apr. 30)
*Beltaine (May 1)
Summer Solstice (June 21)
Loafmass (Aug. 1)
*Samhain (Oct 31)
Yule (Dec 21)
*Christmas (Dec 24/25 — I consider both days Christmas; many people consider only the 25th as Christmas)
For Imbolc I keep the flame and do a Brighidine activity. I participate in the Cill exchange of brats and crosses. I put a brat out for blessing. I feel like I should do more, but for now this is what I do, and it’s enough.
Easter I spend at Spring Mysteries Fest, thus it is a Hellenic holiday for me. I honor the Hellenic gods and participate in the Mysteries.
Beltaine, I don’t have many traditions. It’s a celebration of reclaiming sovereignty for me, so often that means cleaning the house. It’s also the Morrigan’s holiday in my path, so I will cook a feast for Her and myself, and might participate in godsex. I don’t know how that will pan out now I am living with the Ogre.
Samhain is Manannan’s day. I don’t have any set traditions but I’ve done *something* for the holiday mostly every year. This is an area where I’d like to nail down something a little more concrete.
Christmas I spend with the Ogre’s family and we celebrate in the secular fashion.
Walpurgisnacht, Summer Solstice, Loafmass, and Yule all feel important to me, and I used to have a celebration for Yule quite often. But now I’m not sure what to do, and it’s leaving me feeling a bit lost.
Those are just the “big” holidays of my path. There are others that I feel I should honor…but I don’t know what they are.
I’ve been thinking of having specifically set aside days for the Mighty Dead. I can’t handle daily offerings for them, I’ve realized; it’s too much spoons. But a day for each ancestor, I can do. (This is an idea I got from Juni; credit where it’s due.) So I need to work out an ancestor honoring calendar, which means doing quite a bit of research. Research, huzzah! Something I can do. After figuring out the dates (I know one already) I’ll need to figure out *what the heck to do on those days*. A bit more difficult.
And then I feel there should be days I set aside for more deities than just the Big Three. I am a polytheist after all; I do honor more than just the Sacred Triad. Most are Hellenic at this point, but I’d like to start honoring other deities as well.
Setting up my calendar is important to me. It’s putting guide posts in my year; if I’m where I’m supposed to be on those days, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, then chaos and disorder the rest of the time will be easier to handle. Or so I think. I crave routine but I also despise it, so I need to find a balance of routine that doesn’t feel repetitive and tedious for me, and figuring out a certain amount of holy days in the year will do that. The only daily offering I’m doing right now is to Hestia, and that’s probably the only daily offering I can do.
I’ve discovered, in my attempt to unfuck my habitat, that working a little bit every day to keep my house clean (in a livable sense, not a spotless sense) is driving me insane. By the time the weekend hits I don’t want to do shit anymore. It feels like a pointless, neverending slog against a giant mess that will consume me no matter what I do so I should just bow to the inevitable.
I’m not sure if that feeling will go away once we finish unpacking and the house is no longer boxes and boxes and boxes. I hope it will, because right now I’m finding it really hard to just do the bare minimum to keep the house clean.
Possibly I just haven’t found my rhythm yet and that’s where this feeling of hopelessness comes from.
And now I’m rambling without a point.
The point is — I need a calendar set down, with traditions I can follow. And I need to figure out what it is sometime soon, so I can have something to look forward to when I’m feeling pressed down by the daily grind of just keeping house and home together.
I feel this could probably be filed under “Mental Illness and Religion”, to be honest. Because that’s what I’ve been saying, this post, without saying it. Mess makes me depressed but I don’t have the mental spoons to clean every day, and I barely have the mental spoons to do daily offerings, so perhaps having holidays every several weeks will give me the boost of religious energy I need while being something my spoon levels can handle.
So, step one: figure out what to do at the end of this month for Walpurgisnacht and Beltaine. Step two: do it, for fuck’s sake.