Gone Fishing

I will be back when I have caught me some nice fat fish!

Aftermath

Today was supposed to be a busy action packed day. Instead F is ill and tucked up in bed and the next few days are going to be even busier than they should have been. As I write, he snores. And I feel as if I have lost my get up and go for the day... Sat here feeling a little sorry for myself! For no very good reason.

I have lots of things I could do to prepare for all the niceness to shortly come... I could iron. I could pack some of my smaller things. Then I need to go buy Vitamin C for F. Instead I am here whining....

It is a beautiful sunny day out and if F had been well we would have finished his shopping and probably have gotten tea out. Now I face a day of being by myself. I just hope he shakes this cold quickly and that I don't get it.

Of course I know what is really getting me down.

Last night I hit a cat with my car.

It was on the opposite side of the road, watching with great enthusiasm some small scurrying thing in the grass. i saw it there and started to slow, to watch more than anything else, but I think my car startled it and it ran, just before I came alongside. And of course it ran the wrong way, it ran away from the nice verge it was stood by, towards my car. I braked as soon as I saw it run of course, but even so I felt a clunk.

Then the cat was off and running in the opposite direction into a field and then right and away. I was pretty much stopped by this time so I moved off and parked a few yards on and we got out. No sign of the cat at all. No moggy hanging out in the field, no blood on the road, no blood on my car. I choose to think that I had slowed enough, that I could not possibly have run over him for he was still able to run at high speed and there was no blood. Even so, running into a moving car has got to hurt!

My car is quite low to the ground and a cat would need to crawl to get under so the cat needn't have run into the wheel, it could have run into the body of my car but the impact felt around about my wheel, which is why I thought at first I had run it over.

I think that cat has to be one of the stupidest and luckiest around right now. I think it ran into my car wheel and if it had been a fraction of a fraction of second either way, I think the cat would have ended up partially under my car and been hurt badly. What I hate most is that I couldn't help the cat and I will never know for sure what happened to it.

So I am just busy dwelling on the cat. I need to get my behind in to gear and go get medicine for the man and then come home and iron things and think happy thoughts.

Just today doesn't feel like a happy day.

G is for Ghost

I have always been fascinated by ghosts. We would go on holiday to the Lakes as a kid every year and I remember I had a couple of books on the ghosts of the Lakes. I remember reading these stories and revelling in the unknown and that feeling of fear and mystery. I am not sure this connection of fear has been a good thing for me!

My fascination has continued, sometimes mixed up with scepticism in varying amounts. I love films and stories about them. Medium was one of favourite series and I really enjoyed the earlier series of Ghost Whisperer. Rent-a-ghost was one of my favourite TV programmes as kid. I loved Ghost and The Others.

I attended a spiritualist church for a while a few years back and I found it fascinating, although I struggled a little with the Christian aspects of it. No spirits ever came to talk to me, except a very confused old Roman who I don't remember having an awful lot to say... One day I stopped going.

My growing experiences with journeying and the stories of my teachers show that ghosts are real and they are out there. And as much as I am fascinated by them, they terrify me. I don't want to see them, or hear them or speak to them because ghosts do bad things. The thing is though that ghost is such a broad term.

Lisa teaches that a ghost is a spirit with unresolved issues. They may or may not be an ancestor. She has a lot to say about ghosts and many experiences with them and her blog is full of stories. There are a lot of distinctions, guides may be spirits but they are not bogged down with their unresolve.

I have been learning recently about my fear of ghosts and how I block them. I have been stubbornly digging my heals in about going to a graveyard and opening myself up to the stories in the bones of the dead around me. I am with out a doubt scared.

Then I bumped into the lady I used to go to the church with and we had one of our first chats in years. She informed me in no uncertain terms that I had without a doubt been very much blocking all my spirits from reaching me when I used to go to the church.

In recent times I think I am slowly reaching out a little. Last year my Gran, helped me find a beautiful new strap for the watch she received from her Mother for her 21st birthday so I could wear it to my own wedding. This healed much between us.

More recently I have had issues with an ancestral ghost. He wants his story known and I have done a lot of research into him, he seems to be giving me some space at the moment, because he can see I have commited to his story.

At a recent drum circle we connected with our ancestors and journeyed to find an Ancestral Spirit Guide. I found one called Crow, I don't feel able to share his first name. Several generations back, one of his descendants married into my family. We even chatted about my ghost a little. Crow is definately not a ghost!

Maybe I feel a little safer now I am collecting helpers, my family of totems, an ancestral spirit guide, a guide who resides in the upper world with Big Dog whose name I don't know, a plant allie (periwinkle), the spirits of my childhood home. I would like to think if I got myself into a tricky situation, maybe I have enough helpers to keep me safe now? To give me good advice if I got stuck?

One time we journeyed for a lady who wanted to know about a past life, a past life that is closed to her for good reasons and should remain so, not that we knew this when we journeyed. My Magpie guided me there and because I was flying with Magpie as a bird myself, I was unable to go into the water and follow the spirit, which was just as well. F had a few shadowy, scary glimpses. A tunnel with a locked door that he managed to open and then down there he found a very scary skeletal figure, a big set of carnivorous teeth appeared and threatened the figure so he could leave, and he did ( a first early sign of one of his totems working hard to protect him).

If we can travel to such places and our spirits will help us there in that realm, surely they will also help us in this realm? I do think I need to open up to these things more. Fear is not constructive....

Introduction to the Moon of Value or Protection

This moon began last Friday and laready it has shown a few things concerning what certain people around me value within their lives. A friend showed pretty dramatically that she did not value me, but that was fine because I valued myself and my happiness. It is all about noticing what we are grateful for and what we complain about.

The same events failed to rouse even a smile from her but yet I tried new things (which I always love, learning and experiencing is great), met some nice new people, had a beautiful meal and spent time with friends exploring new to me places. I value all those things much more than I value being miserable.

In amongst the day were some beautiful moments. I have a good friend who is staunchly Christian and has a great deal of faith, she struggles with my beliefs because she can not reconcle them with her own, but yet she is the only one of that group of friends I talk about spiritual things with because we both value talking to someone we care about who shares a connection to spirit than we value being offended and uppity about such things. Conversion is not part of it, we are very willing to disagree.

So there we stood in the street waiting for people to recongregate (the group had become a bit like a herd of frogs at this point), wrapped in my shawl together, happily disagreeing, looking for the common ground. And then she pointed out to me that Gulls were flying over our heads, down the streets like canyons, lit up by the lights below like beautiful white ghosts. It was a beautiful moment for me. She knew that the Gull was one of my totems when she pointed them out to me.

I am considering buying her a bible version translated directly from the Aramaic sometime. I read a few passages online and these versions seem to have so much more poetry to them. Maybe reading a different interpretation might help her to see that what I believe doesn't have to be seen as bad within hers. Even if it doesn't, I think she would enjoy the simple beauty of the words....

So this moon, not sure it is an easy one to get a handle on in some ways. i sometimes feel with these moons that there is another word in another language that would explain the moon perfectly but we don't have these words, the concept that has been a little lost in our society. I think this moon is one of those. But it is all about protecting our positivity by being grateful and valuing the things that bring us joy.

Wheelkeeper has written some posts on this moon here and here.... And I particularly like Lisa's post on Marriage. Value within relationships feels pretty important right now and I consider myself very lucky. Weddings, Marriages and Honeymoons all feature heavily for me right now and I am sat here feeling pretty contented.

So what has this moon meant to me in the past? I don't remember too much about being 4, perhaps I remember valuing my Mum quite a lot *grin*. She worked at my Playschool and I liked having her there. Books were very imprortant too, we would go with her to the library to pick out the books for playgroup and I always liked this. At 17 I was in my second year at college and I met my first love. We got together on my birthday and split up shortly before my following birthday. I will always remember him fondly, he was a good man and if I had been older and ready to settle down and not moving away from home, I suspect things may have ended differently.

At 30 I worked for the Police , I think this year was more about the Protection side of things - it was a year of service to protect others in my own little way. Not something I could have done long term without becoming hard. It made me very much more self-aware. I also worked part time for much of it.

This time round, I can already tell that relationships are a focus, but not just my own, that web of relationships all around us.

I also had a dream, part way through the night so I didn't get to write it down. I came to briefly after it and I remember thinking, 'well I guess my totem for this moon is the Heron then, I didn't expect it to be that easy and clear.' When I woke finally in the morning all memory of the dream was gone except for that thought. I am going to run with that thought because it was so clear and definate. It was on the night of the full moon. I think the Heron very much wanted to make sure I could call on it's support right from the beginning of the month...

Heron is all about Self-reflection and finding our own path. Herons are aggressive in defence of their territories and very much in touch with their own harmonious flow. When an opportunity comes they sieze it instantly. They are well balanced and have the ability to evolve and develop. They must be able to stand on their own and have a tendancy to dabble and become jack's of all trades. They seem to me to be a very good totem to help with Value and Protection.

Moon of Drama Review

OK so this Moon has not been overly dramatic, not for me at least. There has been drama going on around me, in other peoples lives but they have been able to cope with their own things mostly and have not involved me in it. The biggest drama in my life has been the organisation of a hen party that finally took place, thankfully.

I am going to have to be a little fuzzy here but basically, I and some friends had to organise it and it has been difficult from the beginning. whereas we let people take control of ours and trusted them to do something good, she couldn't do that. Every detail was passed by her, sometimes contradictory requirements were given, things changed with very little warning. The thing was though, instead of getting caught up in her Drama, I found myself disengaging from the process. I did what I needed too, but my emotional investment was pretty low.

Come the big day and she behaved very badly. Nothing we did was right. She was rude and ungrateful. The friend who had stayed emotionally invested in it all was devastated and ended up in tears at the end. I had a nice time and enjoyed it all, because I refused to be tied up in her unhappiness and drama. It was unnecessary. And not mine.

The rest of the month has been very much about value, community and fear. This month has been all about the Rabbit for sure, which is without a shadow of a doubt my totem for this month. They have been everywhere. I have come to love my Rabbit very much.

i don't think I have too much to add to the Moon of Drama from my first introductory post really, so on to the dreamboard. I think the words 'Enjoy everything regreat nothing' are very important when it comes to Drama, you can't let things pull you down too much, not when they are things that don't really matter in the long run. I also had 'escape to the real world', and maybe that is the meaning of all this too - the dramas themselves are artifical. I also had 'never alone' and certainly in learning to value my family of totems, i really am never alone.... One of them is never far away. Jackdaw (moon of Affirmation) likes to fly over and Kar at me when I am having doubts. and I certainly learnt to value Wasp...

As for the pictures.... Happy multicoloured lizard is just happy and cool and funky - at ease in his skin. Lounging around in hammocks reading books - well baths and books always feature in my life! The reindeer is very important to me right now. The sunlight coming through to the woodland floor looks like a path and to be honest although there has been drama all around, my path has been full of light and peace. Not sure I need to say much about the rest of it...

This is my picture of the month, a lovely picture of a piece of work created using shibori and indigo dye, it shows a silhouette of a Rabbit against the Moon. Nothing really could be more simple, graceful and appropriate for this past few weeks.... Not posted here because it is all rights reserved...

So on to my story for this moon. It takes a bit of a diversion to other ones I have written. This last drum circle we took a journey to become really, really big and to fill the universe. Into this journey popped an image of an old lady carrying a bag on her back with stars in it. I was only able to find hints about her and my facebook group was able to give me even more hints. She exists but she is old and lost under a veil of religion and myth. So here is my story for her...

The stars in the sky are little pieces of beauty, shining bright and singing their hearts out. They never sleep but they do eventually become tired. They do die. They have to die in order to sleep and dream, so they can be reborn as stars to shine bright and sing new songs that they brought with them back from the dreaming. They can only shine as long as they still have songs left to sing, but they dream so well, they have many, many songs....

There is a lady who cares for the stars and it is her sacrifice that enables them to have somewhere to sleep and dream in safety. She is older than the oldest star as it was her that took them out of her bag and palced them in the sky. Well at least most of them... Coyote had a little bit of fun when he stole her bag and spilt stars across the sky to make the Milky Way, but that's another story.

She is stooped and walks slowly. Her hair is white and pulled up tight around her hair and tied in knots at the back to make a bun. Her eyes hold more twinkles than any star and there is a joy and humour that makes her look so young, but yet so old. On her back she has a bag, but it is a very special bag. It has two opening because it is a tube with the strap going from one end to the other. One opening sits just behind her right shoulder but the other sits at her waist by her left hip.

When she put the stars in the sky she pottered along and took handfuls out the bottom with her right hand and scattered them across the sky. Each handful had a name, the bear, the swan, the hunter and she spoke their names as she walked the sky. Sometimes she would take one star and place it by itself, or take two and put them really close together. She always knew where to put them and as soon as she took them from her bag they would wake up and remember their songs and begin to sing and she would smile.

The stars got to sing their songs in any order they liked so they could choose how they went. Some would sing their songs to a crescendo and burn themselves out in one glorious burst. Others would gently sing themselves out in a slow dimming. Every star was different and they always had the right song. And no matter how they went, she was always there, as their light went out, she would pluck them from the sky and throw them over a shoulder with her left hand into the waiting mouth of the bag. Once in the bag they would sleep, gently rocked by the sway of her slow and rolling gait. Sleeping and dreaming.

She will always be there, gently doing her duty, surrounded by the singing stars, until the last star goes to sleep and then she will sleep too, for a time at least, until the nect time a star wakes up. No one knows how she began or remembers her at the beginning, or at least no, one old enough to remember has shared the tale, but the stars remember their previous lives and sometimes they sing of them, and they sing of her and how the first thing they ever saw was her eyes twinkling back at them.

Dreaming Ahead

I just sat and read through my dreams of the past moon. Two weeks before I bumped into my old friend, she popped up in one of my dreams! Basically all to do with an old telephone number and getting a new one. Which is odd because this is exactly what we did.... I like this...

Killing the Rabbit

So having decided I needed the shawl.... and the clary sage.... and the rabbit... I returned to the shop on Sinday - closed. I left work and hurried there monday, closed and Tuesday, closed. Literally only just, but closed is closed.

So yesterday I left work early and I got in, just in time. I whirled around and grabbed the three things I had to get. As I was paying a song came on, Midnight City by M83. This is a song I heard once on MTV Rocks and fell in love with. It is definately a song that I have connected with. And here it was on in the shop as I brought three things I felt I had been drawn too buy.

I felt reaffirmed.

I left and went to the supermarket. Phoned F to see if he knew of anything we needed. He called me back after a few minutes and then I went in and did my shopping. I returned to my car and started to pull out. A lady was walking to the car next to me. I saw her, pulled back into my space and called her name.

She is someone I have known for years but lost contact with for some time. I used to go to a spiritual church with her. I stopped going because I struggled with the religious aspect of it, and because the spirits never ever wanted to visit me. It was lovely to reconnect. Things have moved on for her, now a spiritual healer and a Medium she told me of a meditation circle she goes to and another church she visits which is smaller than the one we used to go to.

I knew I was supposed to be there right then to talk and to make connections to other things. maybe it is time to explore some of those things again.

I said about my previous troubles with it and she told me in no uncertain terms that I had always blocked the spirits from visiting me. And I knwo she is right. My fear of opening myself up while sat in a graveyard for instance. Dealing with the ghost of JD was a challenge and his ability to visit my dreams speaks of a possible something within me, not just about his singular strength of character.... It terrifies me and I think it always has. There are hints around this and I know the things that scare us the most are often the things we have to look at most closely. I don't know where this will take me, what I will find, or if I will like it very much.

Connecting with my Ancestral Spirit Guide at a drumming circle a couple of months back helped. We spoke about JD and I think this guide has helped me deal with him somewhat. Either that or JD is a little less impatient now he has seen me read books and start the laborious task of putting together his story. Maybe both.

Anyway, there is things here to look at, to deal with. TOmorrow's Pagan Blog Project post will be on ghosts I htink so enough of them here for now.

This morning I arrived at work and there was two Crows eating something in the grass. I walked over to see what and there was the small corpse of a baby Rabbit.

Throughout the day the corpse became less Rabbit and more skin and bone.

As I left work, I saw three healthy adult Rabbits run off into the long grass. One passed and looked back at me.

The Rabbit is dead, long live the Rabbit!

Fear, Again

I had a job to do yesterday - I needed to go into town and get the finishing bits for a friends costume for her Hen Party. So I went into town. I don't often go. I don't overly enjoy shopping although I love buying. I find it hard to find things I want in town, they don't have the books I really want or clothes that fit me.

I like shopping with F. Mind you, I like doing pretty much anything with F. Everything is more fun with him....

F however needed his hair cut so we went our separate ways and I started trawling charity shops. The first thing that caught my eye was a pink cotton top in my size. Did I buy it. No. I couldn't really find anything to make into the costume but I went to look at the Cd's and books. As my eye flew across the rack certain things began to jump out at me. The Crow, Wings, Elegance... It was like being in a random omen generator and I started to feel a bit dizzy. Too much. I got scared.

So I went and got some cash and some food, which I ate, then I worked my way down, charity shop to charity shop with a couple of detours to bookshops. I bought Twitchiking - the story of a man who used to Twitter to raise money for charity and get to the otherside of the world. I saw it full price first and it jumped out at me when I saw it cut price...

But I couldn't find anything in the charity shops and I started to lose heart. Then I would hear a Jackdaw fly over calling to me. Believe. Believe. I did lose heart. By the end... Then I saw the little alternative shop and I had to go in.

I chatted to the lady a little and three things drew me. First that little bing went off in my head at a small pink object, when I picked it up, it was a small pink rabbit. Next Clary Sage essential oil jumped out at me so I asked what it was for.... She said depression and uplifting and bringing on childbirth. I looked it up this morning and if she had included it's properties for the skin and menstruation regulation I would have brought it.

Lastly a lovely woolen shawl drew me in. Now ideas for my costume (cowgirl) at work included wearing a poncho. The shawl had the look of a poncho and I tried it on and it was lovely. A lovely long rectangle that had been torn halfway, so that a long bit went down your back and two thin long bits down your arms and front.

I didn't buy it. I didn't buy anything. I went home. The lady told me she hopped I found what I was looking for. I think she could see my defeat and loss of energy and enthusiasm. I was not feeling good at all.

OK so I used to suffer from agoraphobia and depression so I was kinda thinking about such things when I got home. But mostly I was so tired! I joked with F that maybe I should make myself go shopping alone every weekend..

Later that evening I picked a couple of medicine cards. One was Armadillo. As I read about it, the very last line jumped out at me - about being sure depression you may feel is yours. It was all about defenses and boundaries. So maybe when I go shopping like that and I am all open because I am looking for possibilities and omens, maybe I am too open.

I think F acts as a buffer. I find other people easier when he is there. I can interact comfortably with large groups of strangers. Maybe I get included in his boundaries somehow. Maybe his love recharges and protects me.

My joke about going into town until I can do it comfortably and with ease is not such a bad one. Maybe I need to learn the hard way just like I did with my Boss. Maybe I just need to practice.

Anyway. I have decided to go back and buy the rabbit, the sage and the shawl. I may even go back and get the pink top. It took sometime to regenerate my reserves yesterday, maybe I shouldn't make myself go from one end of town to the other every time...

But you know, this makes me wonder what was really going on when I felt agoraphobic in my younger days.