Showing posts with label wicca: a guide for the solitary practitioner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wicca: a guide for the solitary practitioner. Show all posts

A New Year

So much has happened. Perhaps that story is for another day. Suffice it to say, this evening, I find myself quite... solitary.

I am thusly by my own choices... mostly. But regardless, this evening seems to be the perfect time to have a clean slate.

There is a practice amongst some pagans whereby they study for a year and a day before they are rightly initiated into certain traditions. As I have not found a group, I am a solitary practitioner. I have been a solitary practitioner of sorts since August 2010. I still have the note I made to myself the year I committed to giving myself a year and a day to sort through my former practices. I found them mostly easy to discard as they had become burdensome and toxic. The year was more a time of unravelling and deconstructing.

In the following years, I found small ways to begin following my pagan leanings. Mostly, my practices involved watching the moon and being aware of her phases. I would cast my wishes into a fire, set intentions, pray and sing and dance beneath her light. I became free to stand in my own intuitive beliefs.

This evening of new moon and thinning veil, I wish to dig deeper. I am reading through two books to assist me in my study. A year and a day to study more deeply, more earnestly. To find my weekly and monthly practices.

One of the lessons is to consider a list of words:
wicca
witchcraft
power
ritual
occult
pagan
spell
earth religion

I confess, I find myself comfortable reading about them and writing about them behind the privacy of my laptop. But I don't engage in daily conversations where these words are part of my normal vernacular. Why? Fear of negative reactions of others? Oh yeah!!

As I have studied, I come more and more to believe in a kind of magic. Not in some hocus pocus way. I find magic to be more of the change in me. It is as if I am more energetically connected to the Universe. Unfortunately, I don't always trust my intuition. Or maybe I just don't listen to it. The magic is when I do pay attention. Things happen. Are they coincidences?? I don't think so. I think it is more like Jung says... synchronicity. It is like being tuned in. When the Universe sends the message, it is important to be aware of it. Then when things come into our paths that we were already aware of, we are ready. It seems coincidental, but really, we were just tuned in.

I mention synchronicity because all the things that are coming together right now in my life seem heavy. But perhaps it is the right time for a clean slate. How appropriate is it that I find myself at this eve of a new year (according to pagan calendars) relationally free? And even more so that I took the initiative in each situation. Some, I may have dwelled in too long. Emotionally, I may have a harder time disconnecting from others. But I did not leave the ideas hanging... waiting... open ended. I closed the doors. And how interesting is it, as I think upon it, that there were three endings within a week? A trifecta. That is my sign. It is the smallest of nudges in my spirit that helps me to know this is the right path. A breadcrumb. A reminder. A cairn in my spiral path reminding me that this is the way.

As I sign off, this hallowed evening, I offer this prayer:

Summer Reading

I've been challenged to do a blog post on my summer reading list. Do you have your summer reading list yet?

I have a few books that have been on my shelf waiting for my attention and a few new (to me) books that I want to tackle this summer. Here is my list:


  • "The Tao of Turning Fifty" by Jennifer Boire
  • "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner" by Scott Cunningham
  • "Drawing Down the Moon" by Margot Adler
  • "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" by Anne Rice
  • "The Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd

"Tao" was a gift I received several years ago. I have notes, tabs and glued in images all throughout dating back to 2011. I have not read it all the way through yet, so this is the first book I want to finish. I have loved interacting with it. I am on the eve of my 50th birthday, so I can think of no better time to get this one read!

The others are from a few different used book stores. I LOVE used books stores! Especially the dusty, books-stacked-to-the-ceiling, get-lost-in-the-maze type of book stores! I usually browse and sneeze my way through... but you never know what kind of treasures you will find in that type of place.

So... what's on YOUR summer reading list??