Two Cents.

There is a debate going around about Pop Culture Paganism.  One side is saying, in a nutshell, that it is inappropriate to lay worship before pop culture icons such as superheroes and the like because they are not gods and it is insulting to ‘real’ deities.  There should be awe and fear and power there, and there is no room for the friendly camaraderie that PCP(an either unfortunate or hilarious acronym) can inspire in people.  The other side says that this is rubbish and that people can interact with the gods however they and They will. Now, obviously this synopsis is very abbreviated, and I haven’t read a lot of the posts because I get the idea and I know it will annoy me.  However, I did take a moment to consider how I felt about it.  My decision boiled down to that its none of my business what another does, nor is it any of their business what I do.

Something that bothers me a little with ‘hard’ polytheism is that there is a hard line, and I have trouble drawing that when it comes to the divine or the astral or anything that we humans don’t truly understand.  One of the things that struck me about side A’s arguments against PCP is their idea of how the gods must be approached.  While that may work and is appropriate and right to them, not everyone works that way.  Anubis has specifically told me NOT to bow to him, he’s asked me to call him Puppy instead of Boss like I used to, has said we were equals, and I’m beginning to suspect he and Loki are frustrated by my fears when they have never given me a reason to be afraid of them.  It’s not that I believe the gods are here for us as some kind of blessing dispensers.  They can be cruel, they can be terrible and awful, and I am certainly not a special snowflake.  They are simply nice to me, for whatever reason.  They are sometimes playful, usually friendly and fond and I’ve simply had too much validation to believe it’s sock puppets.

As far as Pop Culture Paganism goes, I met Anubis through fanfiction, and Loki used the Marvel movies (and Anubis) to budge in on my life.  I don’t worship them, but I have met and interacted with ‘characters’ from pop culture.  I don’t believe the Doctor is a god, but others may see him that way, or maybe he’s a mask for a deity.  Who knows?  I don’t consider myself ‘into’ PCP, but aspects of it work for me.  What it boils down to for me is: if the gods want you, they will walk into your life however it works for them to do so.  I do not judge their choices.  It is not my place to do so, nor my desire.

For Vali

Pain should howl across Winter snows
But there is only silence.
One step then another
Sinks into the cold with
The scent of pine
Clinging; cloying.
It’s full of life and
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
A whimper should drown it out
But silence is all there is.
There is no voice or laughter;
Not since then.
Not since Them.
Footsteps echo after mine,
Soft on stone and
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
I will never clean the taste of blood
From my teeth;
My tongue is thick with it.
I do not really want to.

Power

Power frightens me.  I’m not sure why that is or where the idea came from.  Perhaps it’s from the very real question that always lives in the back of my mind: “What if I’m wrong?”  It’s a question that has haunted my days forever.  What are the consequences of being wrong?  Can I afford to pay the price?  When you exert power, you exert a control over people, over events, and/or yourself, and if you’re wrong, the results can be anywhere on the scale of a minor hiccup to a cataclysm.  At least, that’s what it feels like to me.  The decisions you make affect others and I don’t know what I would do if I hurt someone.  I can understand wanting to hurt someone, wanting to curse them even, but I couldn’t imagine actually doing it.

I’m not much of a researcher.  I like to know things, but research can be exceptionally dry and dull and I’d often rather throw myself into a lake of fire than read one more word.  It seems like one should just suck it up and do it, but there is a point where you literally just cannot understand or take in what you’re reading, and forcing yourself is a waste of time.  I tend to prefer to read about experiences instead.  Now, I certainly do not take anything read in a blog as golden.  A blog is a singular point of view.  I like to read several, and create a patchwork quilt of the world through the eyes experiences, a colorful landscape where things shift and flow.  It’s not helpful, particularly when you’re trying to exercise discernment.  It’s like living in a story when you’ve only read every other paragraph out of order.

This is not to say that I don’t do research.  I am selective to a certain extent of what I read and I have to take it in stages, but I’m working on it.  I’m focusing on Anubis at the moment, and I want to branch out more into more general information on Egypt, but I also kind of don’t care about that.  I don’t consider myself a Kemetic, and I want the information only to understand Him better.  Call me everything you want for that.  Go ahead.  There is nothing you could say that I haven’t said to myself before.  I feel like I should care, but it’s all to know more about Him, and not about them.

Knowing this, knowing how it seems like I should be better, know my shit better, and the vague feeling that I’m just not good enough, and you can imagine how badly it wigs me out when my world view is validated.  When I learn a new technique and can feel the power thrum through my hand, it frightens me.  It terrifies me when I am reading up on my research and find something there that I’ve known all along.  You can’t tell me that the Gods aren’t real because I know that they are.  That I have been blessed to know even something, particularly when I feel like I just don’t deserve it.. it’s powerful, and it’s awful, and very alarming to me.  Perhaps it’s a bit much to imagine, but I can’t imagine how else I should feel.

Crafting for Sigyn

I hope this works out the way it’s going in my head.  It’s completely by gut, so I’m hoping She guides me through it and it pleases Them.

I’ve had the inspiration recently to make a charm of a sort for Sigyn.  I have not directly worked with Sigyn, but I have done some reading on Her and Their children, Narvi and Vali.  In case you aren’t aware, Sigyn is one of Loki’s wives, the other being Angrboda.  A good place to start to look at Sigyn, Narvi, and Vali is Sigyn’s Shrine.

Anyway, in regards to the charm, I’ve rather reluctantly taken up simple jewelry making.  One evening, after stringing something for Anubis, I studied my beads (the majority of which are stone) and had a sudden inspiration.  I started stringing garnet, tiger’s eye, and pyrite together, but I needed something to break it up.  Now, these three beads struck me as strong Loki energy, so I tried lava, but I didn’t like it, and nothing of a similar nature seemed right.  Then, I tried a piece of opalite.  I, unfortunately, do not own real opal beads as they are expensive, but opal is known as the stone of tears and is something I associate with Sigyn, with fire opals for Sigyn and Loki.  So I space each set of three with an opalite bead and I couldn’t believe how beautiful they looked.  I knew, looking at the forming strand, that I needed to put a key on one end and some kind of charm on the other, but the only antique key I own was manufactured and Sigyn wanted a genuine, antique key, so I let the strand sit for a while to let things percolate.

Today, I revisited the idea of the strand and tossed around ideas for what the second charm could be.  Immediately, the answer came to me: Narvi and Vali.  If I was going to make something for Sigyn, I needed to include Them.  I read once a very moving post on Narvi at Galina Krasskova’s blog entitled Honoring Narvi, and immediately knew that I needed to use an abalone shell pendant for Him (I strongly associate abalone with the element of Water).  I spent some time wandering around E-Bay and eventually stumbled across a charm that featured a relief of a mother and her son, and though it wasn’t the prettiest one I saw, I knew I needed it.  Perhaps it wouldn’t work, but I had to purchase it to at least check it out.

Next, I looked up Victorian keys, since I knew it was something I needed.  The one that Sigyn wanted, much to my dismay, is a large but rusted key that went to either a castle or a jail, both of which are appropriate.  She insisted on a rusted key so that I could clean it and make it lovely again, regardless of my lack of experience in working with such things.  There is magic in the act of cleaning it, but I’m not sure what yet.

Last, I needed a charm for Vali.  Vali is a silent God, and One that I didn’t know very much about.  I had no idea what He liked.  All I knew is that He was turned into a mad wolf and killed His brother.  I hesitated to use any kind of wolf symbolism because I certainly didn’t want to offend Him or make something painful.  I dug around a bit, but He seems to be a God that just wants to be left alone.  I thought about it a bit, then remembered something I have at home: a piece of rawhide from the leg of a white wolf.  The rawhide is tough and damaged, and though I’ve offered it to someone who works with pieces of the dead in her art, she said there was nothing she could do with it.  The rawhide still has fur attached to it, so I’ve held onto it so that I could make use of the fur if and when the time came.  It occurred to me that I could find a small vial, like one used for rice art, and encapsulate the wolf fur into it, then wrap it with a green ribbon.  I found a vial in the shape of a beautiful crystal teardrop, and the idea of wrapping it with a green ribbon felt right.  I need to check with the wolf spirit, but so far, this feels appropriate.

I just ordered the items today, but I’m curious to see what I might learn once I have the charms in my hands.  It makes me a bit nervously to pour money into something like this, but it’s one of those things that wouldn’t feel right to ignore.  This beading thing is turning into an expensive pursuit, and frankly one that I don’t actually want, but I love my Gods, and it seems like such a small thing to do for Them.  A beautiful quote I read today on Galina’s blog (again; she has inspiring stuff), from the modern dancer Martha Graham, said:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

This feels to me like one of those things that just must be done.

Sitting in the car

I have mild ADD.  I’m also unmedicated for it.  I feel weird for announcing it since I’ve only been diagnosed for about a year and I’m in my thirties.  It is evident in some areas of my life, such as my poor housekeeping skills, but overall it’s not particularly detrimental.  I suppose it’s most obvious in the way my mind works.  I constantly seek mental stimulation.  I want to be entertained.  Television can work but not often, as the idea of staring at varying stories laid out for me is unappealing.  I love to read, but books cost money and I devour them quickly, not to mention I’m irritable and bitchy if I’m interrupted.  The internet though… oh, the internet.  There is always something to peruse there: social networking, blogs, even fanfiction if you’re into that (which I am).  The most terrible temptation about the internet is that it’s always changing.  There may be nothing new right now, but refresh the page, and you never know what you might find.

Understandably, this is terribly distracting, particularly to my spiritual life.  If I’m not online, I’m daydreaming, and it doesn’t leave much room for anything else.  A recent post (which I cannot find again) mentioned how unbelievable it was that people often cannot spend a weekend in meditation and journaling.

I have trouble meditating.  Imagine that?  But I thought I could at least spend one day being mindful, and that meant no music, no television, and no internet.  How hard could that be?

Two hours.  It took only two hours before I was arguing with myself.  My favorite stories had updated and I wanted to read them.  Really?  Those were more important than at least trying to get somewhere in my practices?  I had just come back from the store, needing supplies to clean, and turned off my car to sit, so frustrated with  myself.  My parking spot faces a large field of weeds and overgrown grass and it’s on a hill, away from the bustle of the main town.  It’s quiet and still, in a way that sitting alone in my apartment is not.  It’s a quiet that I didn’t know how to create and a strange feeling came over me.  There was stuff I needed to do, but it didn’t seem important.  My mind went quiet.  I couldn’t figure out what was so special about the car.  I knew that, if I went to sit outside, it wouldn’t last. I would want to fairly quickly, but in the car there was no temptation, not for anything.  Just peace.

A car is liminal space.  It seems strange to say, but it’s true.  A car is possibility.  You cannot be distracted by a breeze or bugs or the almost silent buzz of electronics.  You are sheltered.  You can go anywhere.  You can go inside your home or turn on the car and go somewhere else.  There is nothing to stop you.  It’s like the moment before you leave on a journey where the possibilities are endless, and it lasts.  As long  as I sat in that car, I sat in that space, and the occasional sound or movement around me was distant and unimportant because it was outside and away and could not touch me.

I don’t feel that way inside my home.  Inside, even when I try to meditate, I always feel like there is something that I’ supposed to be doing.  In the car, it was different.  I could just be.

I suppose I still did something.  I wrote this post as I sat in my car.  I’m not exactly advocating spending my time in there, but it helped me to understand what it meant to be still, be silent, and simply be.  Eventually the need to get things done, to ‘stop being lazy’ took over and I left but I’ve experienced it now.  I know the feeling and can seek it elsewhere.  And if all else fails and I can’t be still, then I can take a timeout and go sit in the car.

And lo,

Through the darkness finally

Freed from light

Came the heartache of wounds,

Needs left bare to rot.

The pain curdles swift in

Festered flesh that leaves

Both bones and soul

Weary and starved.

 

I know the hand of my salvation,

Gentle fingers slicked with salve;

A balm against the endless misery.

But first the fetid, putrid flesh

Must be stripped and burned away

And thus the waiting heartache

As I wilt with nowhere left to go.

 

Standing in the liminal space

Where both death and breath survive,

I stand in the fiery gleam of twilight

And wait and whimper in my pain

And seek the next step forward in my journey

Away, although I know not where.

To search is useless, for never will

The newest path appear until

My hands can trace the dying flesh

Without shying from what I find.

Festival of Anubis

Hail, Anubis! Lord of the Necropoli, Great with Compassion.  He who Guides the Souls, Guards them on their journey into the dark Underworld, and Weighs the Hearts with fairness and truth.  Lord of the Mummy-Wrappings, Hail and welcome.  Rest your weary feet, should you choose, and grant me the blessings of your company.

 

~~~

He stands betwixt and between;

Lord of the Golden Western Sands,

Master of the Passage of Shadow and Shade.

He sees the worlds through the lens of observations

Stepping fully neither here nor there,

A specter of limbo, caught in between.

Life does not warm His face.

Death does not still His heart.

Long before, He walked the land,

Bringer of ending times with the kiss of the hooded serpent.

Freedom and compassion have warmed Him since

But neither brings but a glimpse of the sun

Wandering darkened halls on a river of black ink

Past shadowed pillars.

Where is the balance?

Is this what becomes of they who walk with Him

Between?