Dreaming

I could feel a voice talking to me (feel rather than hear because I could not tell you what the voice sounded like, it just was). The voice told me that I should only try to learn one thing at a time and that I had a choice. There was a book, a witches book of knowledge. The pages started to turn so I could see the headings of each, like being shown a prospectus. I remember the first I saw was cooking - I guess the art of the Kitchen Witch? The next few pages didn't get my juices flowing because I could not remember what the topics were, although I have no doubt there were topics there. And then came the page with the title Dreaming and my heart leapt. And in that moment, some music blared and dragged me from my sleep. I lay there, listening to F's alarm and feeling the light of the moon on my face from the window.

I have been happy all day, because of that dream.

I believe that you can learn things, but in order to be really good at something, you have to have an aptitude. I guess the dream explained what has started happening with my dreams this last week or so. I have always been a strong dreamer but things seem to be getting stronger. It also made it very clear that everything is my choice and that struck a cord as well....

I never understood what happened last year. On my birthday I seemed to be sinking deeper in to it all. I found my stang, made of rowan. It all felt powerful and then all of a sudden I was so ill and I felt this urge to walk away again. Then I chose to come back and suddenly everything is kicking off again, more than before. I don't fully understand what was going on with this year away but I think there is a strong link to choice here. I guess I could have stayed at the level of faith I was at but I stepped forward and I claimed myself as a green witch.

Now two things have been sparking stuff I believe this last few weeks - firstly BIG has taught me how to use art to explore myself and ask questions and some of the things coming back have been real interesting. Secondly, I bought a crystal pendant in the shape of a quarter moon. I have started wearing it all the time, tied on a waxed cotton thong.

Back to BIG - my current picture is of ME or of some aspects of me or even possibilities of me. I was bemused to find her arms cradling her head and that to the knowledge that she was in repose, maybe asleep. Now I know she is asleep, but not blind, not unseeing. Sleep is such a big part of who I am.

So what does dreaming mean? I have no idea really. I know my dreams are rich in symbology. I know sometimes they give me warnings. I know sometimes they try to help. It may take me my entire life to learn, who knows.

The first book that came to mind is Carlos Castaneda's The Art of Dreaming. I believe I have it somewhere. I never read it, although I read his other books. I don't know why, maybe the time was wrong. But now I need to find it. I also ordered another online tonight - Dreaming Realities. I shall start exploring the meaning of dreaming there and trying to learn how I can be a better, fuller dreamer and what that means.

Maybe one day I will get to see some of the other pages of that book and delve within it again. Maybe the skills of a kitchen witch will call to me one day. Strange really, you hear of many witchy aspects, but not many talk of dreaming and here I am, called to and answering. Where will it take me?

And next time I dream the lottery numbers, will I be able to remember more than one? (and yes, that number did come up the following night)

Sometimes I find the internet very furstrating. Sometimes you find a fascinating subject and a snippet of information but there is no internet trail to help you learn more. Instead all you find is a barrage of marketing info.

I decided to read a little more about the Picts. The lovely Mel has a fascination with them so I thought I would learn more. I guess specifically because I have a thing about blue hair and I wondered if their liking for dying themselves blue included their hair to. It seems scientific opinion has changed and they no longer think they used woad but copper or iron based pigments.

Woad took me to Pict and Pict took me here (got to love Wikipedia). Painted pebbles.... ooooh! This caused an um in my soul. I have been thinking of painting pebbles recently and here I am discovering that some of my ancestors would have used them for,.... well something.

I have an ancestor who left the Cairngorms for work In East Anglia, dropped the Mc from his surname and married a local farmers daughter. We Brits may have been a tribal folk but those tribes have long since forgotten their boundaries and moved around. A hodge podge. But knowing I have Scottish blood in my veins pretty much ensures I had at least one Pictish ancestor.

I also have Welsh and a good deal of fenland blood (or thereabouts) on both sides of my tree. Maybe this is why I love swamps, mires, meres, bogs, marsh, willow carr.... any of those landscaapes which are gently half water, half land....?

Anyway, the pebbles. They suspect they were used as charms. They have lines, wiggly and otherwise and dots in the main but also pentacles, crescents, circles and triangles. I failed to find out much else except that some work has been done on these symbols and there is now a believe that these are the writing of the Picts, a tribe believed to be illiterate.

The charm thing seems particularly likely as they have been used as such in this area in living memory.... Soooo cold stones or charm stones, kinda interesting!

A slightly better search shows that a charm stone has been found and registered by the Cornwall Archeaological Unit. This kind of suggests that their use was widespread across the British Isles but was more persistent in Scotland - maybe because of the link to language there?

I found an interesting old book that had been scanned and placed on the internet here. It seems there was a history of curing stones that would be placed in water and on drinkign the water the patient would be healed. Apparently they were also used in Wales (did I mention I also have Welsh ancestry?) and called Adder Beads or Snake Stones.

I might have to paint some stones, rather than just think about it....

Green Witch

Last week as part of BIG, I painted this painting. (Some of this has been previously written, sorry for repitition)


It is based on a memory, or a half memory / half story. I talk when I am tired, mostly about nothing, sometimes I get repetitive. As a young child, my family was driving back from somewhere at night. I was resisting sleep. The moon was full and I started to talk.

'That's my friend Moon that is. Can you see my friend moon? I love my friend moon.' and on and on. I think I half drove my folks crazy and half amused them.

And so this I painted. My childlike me has moved from the car and is alone with a blanket in some vegetation. I am not surprised by the blue hair, after all, I am fully aware of my love affair with blue hair. I even remember how that started.

When I was putting myself back together after my breakdown, aged 21, I read a book called Stepping in to the Magic by Gill Edwards. A great book. She proposes that we have a higher self and a basic self (as best I remember) with guided meditations to meet them (amongst a lot more). I met Scrutius, the mole who is my Basic self - he searches for hidden treasure and I gave him a fantastic pair of winged pink glasses a la Dame Edna. My higher self was a blue parrot spirit called Anyol. In human form she has long wild blue hair....


I should re-read this book and redo it to. I am not sure if these are permanent features of me or if they are likely to change....

but the green skin?

The only thing I do know is that I drew a lady with green skin on my soul armour page of my soul journal and all of a sudden it is very clear that she is me. The same me as the green skinned girl.


So this week we have to explore an aspect of our previous painting. Ask a question and using painting to answer it. So I wanted to find out what this green meant to me. I filled my pallet with six different greens. I slopped it on to make a beautiful background and then painted on top in more green and this is what I got.


I knew spirals would be in as they were the first thing to pop into my head. Then a tree. But the tree wanted to be more symbolic and they also drew on celtic knotwork with entwined strands. Then, the idea of a green man but he turned out to not be a face, but a body with his green lady. They are mere suggestions in the green, crude. Then they got vegetation and more spirals and then the second lady tree and the spiral clouds.

I will take another picture once it is dry and I can move it somewhere with better light....

So what does this mean? Oh that is sooo clear to me now. Green is the colour of life, chaotic, messy, verdant life. It is the colour of my spirituality. My Goddess and her consort, amongst the trees and other plants. It is spirals and knotwork, spiraling and knotty life..... It is who I am.

I was claimed by my Goddess from the beginning. I was a witch before I was born. I am.

I should have no doubt.

I claimed the moon as friend when I was tiny. I wrote stories of Father Sun and Mother earth in my teens. The biggest signs of who I was before I even knew what a pagan was.

Soooo....

This brings a new question. I know traditionally there has been a two tier system in wicca - hereditary and non-hereditary. I always wondered about the lost hereditary witches - I wonder if I might be one of them? There is something in my family - acertain something that seems to have slid down the tree, probably from my Mum's Fathers side. And that says it all, a generation with no women born to the family. A hard time with deaths before they should have happened and a broken family.

My Mum is no witch but she has a healing touch and sometimes, with an uncomfortable look on her face, she admits to me that sometimes she knows things. With her Dad dying in her teams, a few years after he separated from her Mum, what contact would she have had with her paternal Grandma? If she had been a witch, what could she ever have said?

But it doesn't matter. I am sure I am a hereditary witch - or at least that I was in one of my witchy lives. Because that is what this painting tells. I am a past life witch. I have no idea how close to the heart of the spiral I will step in this life, but it is my choice, my Goddess walks with me but the degree to which I involve her in my life is my choice. And I choose her, just like she chose me so many lives ago.

I should believe.

Scream!

In Cornwall we have a lovely tourist attraction called the Eden Project. It is an educational charitable trust but the attraction for the masses is the two biomes, one mediterranean the other rainforest. It is a fascinating place and made even more so with the additional focus on the arts. So all the educational things there tend to be a real interesting mix....

They have found various ways of increasing the use of the site. In the Summer they have concerts and in the Winter, Ice Skating. And this Halloween they had a Skate and Scream.

We were kind of running a little late so we missed the beginning of our skating session. This was not a problem however. The skates are the solid moulded sort and not designed for those of chunky legs. I had to go up a size just to be able to do them up. I was so very, very uncomfortable, I managed one circuit, holding on to the side and gave up. My ankles still hurt today.

S managed a few more before giving up and F was the most enthusiastic.

The rink was a disappointment as well. It was not decorated for Halloween as advertised... It was beautiful but not what I was hoping for...

So on to the Scream...

This was fantastic. A walk through the rainforest biome in the pitch dark (nearly). In small groups forming a conga line we wended our way through, guided by tiny little orange flame lights. This was after we had been scared by actors as we queued. Oh and then someone puched a panic button inside and we had to wait with the actors for a while. Unfortunately we started and then got turned back to wait a little longer.....

Once in, people grabbed our ankles. A witch sat in a hut. A satyr talked to us in a clearing before we got doused in water. We were shut in a hut and then there was bangs and flashes. Dry ice bubbled in the pools of water. A head sat in a cube full of moths. And a man with a chainsaw chased us....

It was very good. S was soooo terrified! He could not get any closer to F if he tried.... And then on to the other biome where we had a drink, wandered through the plants in the half light before sitting and hearing the story of Les Lavandieres, the washers at the ford....

It was a good evening. I love the way paganism is woven into such events. I guess the Religuous Right might have something to say about such events but they are mercifully a quiet minority in the UK. Most people wouldn't even notice the pagan slant or see anything unusual there. Such things feed my soul.

There was an altar set up for Dia de los Muertos with pieces of text describing the different elements as well.... All good....

Wait and See

I left the house to blue skies and a sprinkling of frost. A happy day.

I have come to the conclusion that my dream was a happy dream, underneath all the strangeness. I have been on a dull path and then I got lost on the rocks but soon I am going to find my path again. This path is just for me, each foothold will appear as I need it and I will reach the top and that will be a place worth being. Maybe it will be a hill, or a hill that is a foothill to bigger hills and mountains or a nice level cliff....

I think it was a warning that the fallow, dull and more lately, just plain difficult times I have had of late are about to change. This may be scary but those footholds will be there and I will find them, they are perfectly placed for me.

So, I just have to wait and see, how exactly this change in my path manifests.

The dream made it clear to me that although some people do not like some landscapes, there is merit in them all and beauty too. Even the most treacherous. In fact often the most treacherous of paths lead to the most beautiful of places. As long as we keep walking. This fallow time, walking the causeway through the tidal marsh and mire which appears bleak but isn't....

Tidal areas such as the one I saw support so many birds and have an important role in filtering and storing pollution. Mudflats may look lifeless but they are far from it. They also protect inland areas from the might of the sea.

So where will life take me next?

Magpie Dreams

I had a particularly interesting and vivid dream this morning so I am going to write it here before I forget - and if you have any ideas.....

It has three parts and I know the first part was first but not the order of the last two.

***

I was at work, studying and I was thinking how I had not expected to have to do a dissertation again. I started work on a new section which was all about the tail feathers of magpies. I don't think the work was just about magpies though.

Then my Boss comes in and starts showing me a section in the newspaper about a Chinese restaurant I used to work at and how they were holding a big charity event. They had included individual pictures of the people who would be working that night. B was there, a lovely older man, who was much older than he looked and a real live wire - he has been retired some time. There some guys I believe used to be washer-uppers and they turned out to have very posh surnames and to be the sons of a banker.

***

I was in a lowland tidal area, walking through a mudflat / salt flat / marsh sort of a place along a causeway. Lots of others were walking through as well and some were driving (not that they moved any quicker). One man started to explain how valuable this landscape was, and how the pollution added to the variety that now lived there. A lady got cross at that and said she didn't see why it had to be so ugly and why couldn't we clean it up.

I didn't say anything, but this is what I thought... Pollution can create, over time, unique habitats, things will live there that live nowhere else. Polluted sites also become a refuge for things that used to live elsewhere but have been driven out by changing uses. I wondered how she wanted to clean it up? Bring in tonnes and tonnes of topsoil, barricade the sea out and grow trees? I love those landscapes and never find them desolate, boggy, marshy, mires....

We reached a headland and I started to go round but realised that was not the path and came back. At first I could not see the path but then Little Dog ran up and I realised there was a series of toe steps dug into the grassed over rock. Not full on steps, just big enough for a foot, or hand. Somehow the vehicles were going up as well. Little Dog cavorted around on the path and the slope. I didn't get to see what was at the top, or where we were headed.

***

I was in my parents garden (which is quite large, full of trees including many old fruit trees and bushes). I was up by the blackcurrant bushes, creeping through the grass towards some magpies to get a better look. They saw me and flew up into the nearest tree. (which happened to be an oak whose story I shall tell after) They sat there, two adults and three scruffy young adults, with mismatched feathers.

The mother politely told her offspring to be polite an say hello. The first two chicks said hello as they flew over, third and fourth magpies said nothing and the fifth said hello. I concluded that not all of them could speak and set off in the direction they had gone.

They were mucking around in the big old lime trees on the other side of the house. I went inside but from the windows I could see them. The sun was catching their feathers and sparking the irridescence so that the black looked purple (you do get purple although blue and green irridescence is the sort I see more often) They sat there puffing themselves up so they lost the sleekness and looked chubby like wood pigeons and somehow, they started to look like wood pigeons, all grey and purple and white....

I then realised that my family were trying to get in the house and I had locked them out and that I had a lot of work to do on my dissertation on my laptop. Then I woke up.

***

So that was the dream. Every so often I have a dream that strikes me somehow, that is important. The last one I had like that, in hindsight was a very clear warning I was going to lose one of my beloved dogs. I have no idea what this one is but there are some strong themes and things I should add....


Last night F and I had Chinese.

Magpies are important to me and have been a long time. I watch them from my car at lunch and many times this week I have seen five or seven magpies during a lunch break or car journey. I spend so much time observing them that I can recognise their silhouettes, their flight style and their sqawks.

I was in my car the other day when there was a real loud magpie sqawk so close it made me jump. I looked out the window but could not see one. After a few minutes one appeared walking along the curb in front of my car and I realised the magpie had been curb crawling and that this had to have been the closest I have ever been to a magpie - probably about a foot away as it passed my door!

A guy at work has been doing an NVQ with lots of writing and evidence gathering and stuff.

The oak tree - well when my folks moved to the family home on my first birthday, they dreamed of a vegetable patch. They are not real gardeners though, although my Dad spends a lot of time gardening it is mowing, tree surgery (the old fruit trees are often in danger of splitting through the weight of their branches) and chopping wood. The vegetable garden fell in to disuse and because it was not being mowed, nature had it's way.

There is a whole cluster of thorn trees now and one of the cherry plum trees the garden is full of. When I was at around the age I was nearing my moontimes or recently started them, we found a sapling growing in the tall grass. (I have never ever realised before that that tree did start around then and never linked it to that before). It was an oak tree.

We helped it to thrive, although my Dad did not cut down enough thorn trees behind it so most of the branches are on one side. Soon though it will be tall enough though to grow over them. It produces acorns now too. We have no oaks in our garden and I don't know of any particularly close to our garden either.

When I was due to move to Cornwall I wrote a spell - one to help me be happy and to encourage the sending of my soulmate my way. I curled it up and bound it with a handmade braid. I buried it in the roots of that tree and it came true. I always go give it a hug when I go home.

So - suggestions on a postcard?

***

I just reread my old magpie lore post on my old blog. Aparently if a magpie looks you in the eye it is a sign of respect and you do not have to worry about bad luck. I have long since stopped worrying about bad luck from magpies - it just does not seem to apply to me. But I guess one sqawking my me from so close and five giving a hello flight over me with three of them actually managing to speak kinda says it all....

Song of the Bad Witch

I am not sure how I feel right now. Tired, frustrated, sad, angry? Pissed off because work shouldn't come home in my emotions with me. Relieved my Boss is on leave tomorrow... Debating whether I should go see her Boss tomorrow....

Today she decided to move our radio - to piss off a colleague in another department and to please another one in that same department. I was not happy and I told her so and why. She didn't like that much. The person she was trying to piss off, predictably, got pissed off. Words were had and the radio went in the bin with comments aimed at me for having complained....

She moved the radio so that it was more noise than music, more distraction than distracting. She moved it from the side with my undamaged ear to the side with my bad ear. Every noise drowned out the music, I could hear everyone talking outside. It was worse than having no music.

I wasn't rude, I wasn't unpleasant. She was.

So now I get to do my job with no music. Painful silence. The sound of people not talking to each other. If she wanted to carry on annoying the other person she would have put it back on, in it's original position. Instead she put it in the bin, to annoy me.

Sooooo glad that she is not in tomorrow. I am getting tired of this. This cycle of hate and disguise. I have been debating whether I would leave if I won the lottery and right now the answer is yes and I would not give her a penny either....

I did do one little thing. I am not sure whether I am proud of myself for doing something or whether I think it is an abuse.... My spells are simple little things, rhymes spoken inside my head mostly. Few and far between. A little rhyme, a simple little thing, a witchly sort of a thing. Sending skin problems.... on the face.... To someone who can not bear to be seen without an inch of make up....

Right now I can not feel guilty. And sitting here, I realise I am completely calm about work again right now at least. And do I feel guilt about that little spell? No. It will either work or it won't and I take responsibility for it. The threefold paying back of the karma from it is a small thing in the grand scheme of it all. And maybe the bad she has done me will completely cancel it all out? I donate my next boil or abscess to the karma cause....

So am I a bad witch?