Santa as a Secular God

There are people who, when they find out Santa isn’t real, feel betrayed. That…doesn’t compute for me. I mean, I respect that in some cases there’s trauma there, of course. But for me, I never stopped believing in Santa. Even when I realized that my mom was the one putting the gifts in the stockings …

Dealing with Disapproving Ancestors

When I first moved into this apartment — the apartment that belonged to my Oma for 20 years — I tried to keep a spiritual/religious/witchcraft life going. It wasn’t easy. It never felt right, and it seemed that no matter what I did spiritually or religiously, I never got centred. Not to mention, a ton …

Heilig Avondmaal 2012: Bringing the Dead Home (again)

Ms. Dirty of Graveyard Dirt has issued her Holy Supper challenge again this year, and I’ll be participating. (There is a lot of swearing at her blog, fair warning.) Today I realized it’s Sinterklaas Day, or the Dutch Christmas. We celebrated it when I was a little kid, and continued to into my adolescence. It’s …

Going the Distance

Proper posture hurts. When I align my spine correctly, I have to brace myself against a wall with my hands. My breathing comes short and I get dizzy. Sweat breaks out on my brow. Tears spring to my eyes. I can’t hold it for long. I know I must hold proper posture. It is not …

Restlessness and Ramblings

If you’re visiting the blog itself and not reading from a feed or email, you probably notice something different. As in, the entire theme. I get bored easily. I’m a creature of change. I like flame because it’s never static. I need earth in my life just to centre me and ground me long enough …

Samhain, part 2: Embracing God the Father

Remember when I said Manannan wasn’t a thwap? I’m thinking perhaps I was wrong. He’s been very clear, the past month, what He wants from me this Samhain. He wants me to to do a ritual in which I accept His foster-fatherhood over me, and renounce my biological sire for good. Mind, I did do …

Quan Yin, compassion, and lovingkindness

A while ago I was having tea and knitting time with a school friend of mine and her parents. They’re lovely, amazing people, and I got to talk a lot with them about my work for the Gods — specifically Brighid. I got an email from my friend’s mother a while after our meeting, and …

It’s the little things.

Trigger warning: rape, eating disorders, fatphobia, abuse I have a lot of trauma triggers. Some of them are big. Some, not so big. The big ones are ones more likely to be shared with a lot of other people — rape, abuse, etc — and as such are ones that I actually talk about, as …

Becoming My Own Person — a ritual with Persephone and Hades

A week ago Friday I posted about Persephone, and becoming my own person. I said I was going to do a ritual to cut myself away from my abusive father, because I was tired of being hurt by him. I did the ritual on Monday the 13th, the eve of my 26th birthday, the last …

Persephone, and becoming your own person

When I was a child I was obsessed with the myth of Persephone’s descent. I read all the sanitized versions, of course, and so came to associate Her descent with my own — having to visit my abusive father for access weekends and, later, seasons. (Family law is mainly concerned with working around the needs and …