A month of silence

And then there was silence.

Things with me in this spiritual realm are cyclical. Without someone else in my life to "keep me focused", my interests and priorities wander. The last month or so has been more about the basics of life. Struggling with some transgender-related medical processes.. basically being forced by the establishment to "start over" with a new round of therapists and a new set of approvals and letters.

That, some depression, some worries over finances, blah blah blah. I still haven't finished the first of the three books on Wicca that I bought, the dryness of the subject, and it's "ill fit" for me, becoming clearer with each page.

And I realize as I read along through it, the truth that I realized in my late teens. The word that describes me best is "Pagan".. because no more specific appellation seems to fit. Slightly new-age, slightly celtic, slightly greco-roman, slightly egyptian... a little of this and a little of that, all mixed up in a spiritual omelet, with a heaping helping of wild speculation. I seem to have more spiritual connection with Stargate SG-1 than with any religion.

(That's.. I say.. that's a joke, son).

Still, the quiet voice has been silent for the last month, or if not silent, at least too quiet to be heard over the din of mundania. Maybe she has been drowned out by the noise of everyday life, or perhaps she has stilled her call to let me deal with the critical things first. Either way, as summer turns to fall and we enter the season of feasts, I am sure that she will make herself heard once more.

The scars of my past point to another truth

That last post is certainly difficult to follow. I've taken the last couple of days to really consider some of the things I said. Do I really believe that it's all bullshit? I guess that's the question.

Why, if it's all just bullshit, did I feel the need to buy a special box for my unusable deck of tarot cards? Why do I even buy Tarot cards in the first place? Why is the quartz crystal pendant I bought still in the tarot deck box, and not being worn, or hung up with the other necklaces? Why is it important for me to build an altar, especially since no one enters my room other then me? There's something going on, and it's been going on for a long time.. and I have the scars to prove it.

When I was just exiting high-school and entering junior college.. I was "seeking" back then too. Back then, I had built a small altar piece in sculpture class, and a pendant in jewelry class. And one night, alone in my room, for whatever reasoning I had back then, I sat in some meditative/prayer/proto-ritual mindspace, and I held the pendant (made of copper) in the flame of a candle. (Kids, don't try this at home!)

My intention had been simply to warm the pendant slightly, pass it through the smoke... I was using very tiny candles, and I horribly misjudged the amount of heat that the pendant would store up. Copper seems to be extremely good at that. I ended up giving myself a couple of extremely bad, third degree burns, which I treated in secret for weeks (how the hell could I explain it to my parents?) I did manage to live though, and eventually they healed into the scars I have today.

I forget about the scars most of the time, as I wear clothes. But those scars are there, and will always be there to remind me both that I am fallible, and that I am merely human, in my seeking a connection with.. something.. that exists, or seems to exist, beyond that which is scientifically rational.

Back then, I was chasing the same shadows I'm chasing today. Back then, I was bolder. Now I know that fire is hot. (which means that dinner was cooked a long time ago?) I'm not making the same stupid mistakes again.. but I'm still faced with the same.. timid skepticism that kept me back then, from finding like-minded people, jumping in and "joining" anything I couldn't control.

Would I have felt differently if I had been introduced to Wicca by a friend when I was 19? Maybe. But that isn't what happened. Now 19 years later, I find myself unable to relate to certain things I'm reading about in Wiccan theology.

I'm also finding a strange bemusement in reading about how even among Pagans, some people are still bigoted exclusionary jerks. I'm not sure why I'm surprised by that. Man is a tribal/pack animal.Us vs Them is hardwired into the animal. But it's still amusing to me, to see people with an (arguably) made up religion try to justify their bigotry using their religion as an excuse. Perhaps it's just the coincidental timing of events in New York and Washington, among people with more traditional religious views, that makes it so amusing.

This is, of course, the problem with organized religion: the Organizers. When organizers have racist, sexist, or whateverist prejudices, they tend to use their influence as an organizer, and enshrine their human prejudices in the cloth of their organization, using their powers as an organizer to exclude those they consider undesirable.

Haters gonna hate, and Radical, militant, transgender-hating, female-superior, lesbians... well they're gonna do whatever it is that they're gonna do. There's gay men who can't stand the idea of a woman sitting on their furniture, and can't sleep until it's been steam cleaned. Crazy extremists come in all colours of the rainbow. It's just that the heterosexual, christian crazy radical extremists outnumber the queer ones by simple virtue of being in the majority.

It would be nice if those excluded subcultures could all hold hands and be one big happy family, but sadly that's not what happens.

(and yes, I do realize that Dianic Wicca is a very minor subset of Wicca, much the same way that Mennonites are a very small subset of Christians).

Meanwhile.. in the real world, I'm not a Dianic Wiccan (phew). Hell I'm not even any kind of Wiccan, at this point I'm not really leaning towards becoming a Wiccan, and nor do I appear to be much of anything else at the moment. It is a litttle frustrating, as someone who doesn't see The Divine as something easily related to as Masculine, the Goddess-Centric focus of said group does have it's appeal. However, the group itself has not only zero appeal, but in fact it has negative appeal, and lots of it.. even if I were welcome to be a part of it, which I'm not.

But then, no aspect of The Divine would make such silly rules. And I'm quite sure that The Divine, called by any name or gender, would welcome the gratitude and positive intentions of any who felt called to give them, at any time or place. It is humans that make these rules. Flawed, limited, imperfect humans.

Ah well. Enough of this topic, it doesn't really affect me.

Looking forward to finishing up this first book, and moving on to the next, because it will give me an opportunity to post a review of the book.

Disjointed, dischordant, observations on the road

Special note: I will not be apologizing for my use of "Man" or "he, his or him" to refer to humanity, or mankind. I grew up watching the Original Series Star Trek.

I'm an irreverent, sarcastic bitch, and my balking threshold is really low. 

I am a fact and science based person. I always have been. I have never had much personal use for Religion of any kind, and have only seen it's value, in the social, community supporting construct that churches and other religious communities provide.

I believe in very little beyond science. And what little is beyond that, is mostly unformed, fragmented, and fleeting... like fine glowing embers, lofted away from a campfire.. beautiful, formless, always moving, and gone without a trace in the blink of an eye. Untouchable, almost unseeable if sought. Where do they come from, and where do they go?

What holds those otherworldly embers together, is poetry and flights of fancy. The flowers grow because of pollens and insects, and seeds and nutrients. Chemical reactions, acts of chance, and the laws of physics. The bees find the flowers by some other science, of chemistry, light waves and frequencies.. the actions of a million years of evolution makes these things fit perfectly together, as though from this perspective, they were designed to work perfectly. Did a God sit with a paintbrush and create the flower? Did a Fairy whisper to the bees to tell them what colors to look for? Science is pretty clear, it works the way it does, because all the bees and flowers that didn't work that way, died.

But in poetry, in fancy, that is where Gods and Faeries hold domain. The immense forces of time, chemistry, and evolution put those colors on the flowers, and also taught the bees what to look for. In poetry, chemistry is God's paintbrush, and chance is the gentle guiding push of the Fae.

What then remains of religion, for the person who can see that God is nothing and everything, but still really nothing? That God is all of this, chemistry, time, trial and error of countless, infinite organisms, objects, chemicals, forces; all colliding off each other, influenced constantly by one another, until along comes Man. And then Man, in his need to understand his difference from all the other creatures around him, and all the things he does not understand, creates poetry and fancy to fill the gaps, and beautify that which he cannot ever fully comprehend. In fancy, Man envisions God, and in science, Man knows God.

Ten thousand years of poetry and fancy, and so many people embrace that poetry as fact, and exclude, hate, subjugate, persecute, murder, mass-murder, and wage terrible wars over which fanciful explanation is "true and right".

I am not likely to fit into any group or "church".. or worship group by any name. In part because I know deep down,on some undeniable level, it's all bullshit. When I shuffle a deck of Tarot cards, I am not embuing the cards with some psychic energy, I am not allowing the spirits of air and water to send me a message, I am simply (and crudely, 'cause I suck at shuffling cards) introducing and approximation of randomness (or unpredictability) into the order in which the cards appear. The "Magic" in this case, is not the cards, but the thoughts and memories that the randomly selected cards (once drawn) invoke in me. And thus, the way my mind constructs meaning from the cards.

There are things I know, and there are things I don't know.. and there are many things I can't explain. But that doesn't mean that they cannot be explained.

And yet here I am.. buying Tarot cards, and books on witchcraft, fancy decorations with symbols traditionally associated with the super-natural, the meta-physical, magic. These are items of poetic and fanciful superstition.

What is life without Poetry or Fancy?

The shadows are not full of faeries or gods, no ghosts or great wisps of spirit, or strange creatures living on another plane. But the shadows are still places I cannot see.. and it gives me some small pleasure to imagine that those creatures of fancy are there guarding the lonely darkness. That my parents are not simply gone, their minds erased, their personalities deleted, reduced to dead meat and then to ash; but instead live on in a mystical realm of happiness.

But for me, that fanciful poetry is so hard to see, because so much of my mind rejects it. It was not luck, or fate, or God's will that caused me to miss a bus, it was the fact that I was not adequately minding the time.

Yet some part of me craves that fanciful poetry. Perhaps it is the actions of ten-thousand years of Man's need to congregate and worship, ten thousand years of killing off those who didn't believe, perhaps it's society's pressure on one who doesn't fit the mold, or the cumulative effects of 38 years of exposure to people who espouse beliefs in these things. Perhaps it's just that I can't fully accept that "all there is" is chemistry, random chance, and trial and error over time. Or perhaps I can, but that leaves me feeling sad and a little empty.

It seems impossible. within me, a universe of billions of cells, organisms, and chemical agents, each fighting for their lives, struggling against their environment, totally unaware of me.. just to keep my hair growing, my lungs flexible, or my eyes blue. Those billions broken further into groups forming organs, each struggling against it's environment, for nourishment, for health and strength, only barely aware of each other but contributing to an even greater system which becomes me. I am unaware of them.. my liver, my spleen.. the billions of cells.. and here I sit, barely aware of myself, much less the universe within me.

My mind instead is on issues of society and religion, on what is real, and what is poetry, and whether that poetry has meaning or value if it isn't true.

A Pagan and a Wiccan meet in a bar...

No, there's no awesome joke about Pentagrams vs Pentacles coming, sorry.

Sitting alone for many a night, with "Vaguely Pagan" whispers in my shadows, I began of course searching popular places, with popular keywords. Google, Amazon, and even eBay.. tossing in various combinations of keywords like wicca, wiccan, pagan, altar, tarot and so on.. into the various search fields and "just seeing what comes up."

What came up was a hell of a lot of random. Among the most interesting were baseball cards (some athelete with the last name "Pagan".. poor guy), allegedly "haunted" items including books and rings (how does one "haunt" a ring?), and an almost unbelievable number of people selling all manner of exceptionally esoteric things. Spices? check. Stencils? check.

Randomness aside, what I did start to see was one undeniable pattern. Once you dig past the mass-produced pendants that claim some talisman-like properties, and the "make more money, lose weight, quit smoking" spell sellers... What's left is merely decor, and more often than not, cheap decor.

In my web searches, I found the poorly maintained (1996ish Geocities-style) homepages of a few self-proclaimed pagans and/or wiccans... but in the modern "I can't put that on facebook" world, it seems that many people have decided to put their private beliefs back into the closet, at least as far as the web is concerned. Either that, or people are getting much better(?) at making robots.txt files.

I fully admit, the eBay and Amazon searches were more fun, and digging past pages of less-helpful-than-I-would-like wikipedia articles and various people "selling things".. well the signal to noise ratio exceeded my interest to boredom ratio.

What I was able to find, were several recommendations for books, and three books kept being mentioned by several people. So I decided to look those books up on Amazon, and there I was able to read a lot of interesting reviews relating to those books. Sadly, all three books were focused on "Wicca".

Now that statement needs explaining. In that nebulous genre I will call "Alternative Spirituality", most books  these days, particularly books that will come recommended with any regularity, are going to focus in Wicca. Partly due to the fact that it is the most organized, and thanks to a few TV shows I won't mention, well Wicca has become something of a brand name. I've got nothing personally against Wicca per se, but I find some aspects of the Wiccan ... idiom.. to be difficult to relate to, though I freely admit that this position is based on only a slight understanding of the Wiccan theistic system.

I went ahead and ordered the three books anyways. On one hand, I could definitely use more knowledge about Wicca, and on the other hand, these books came highly recommended (to varying degrees) because of their broad appeal and applicability of much of the material to other paths. But beyond that, the way Google weights it's search results based on what you tend to show interest in, most of my web searching leads back to Second Life.

So books are going to have a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and that's good. But I say "Sadly" because I want to find the path that belongs to me, not just follow A path. Wicca is definitely "a" path, and it's one that works for many people.

However, my personal relationship with the omnipresent creative source that spawned all of existence (I need to come up with a funny acronym) is simultaneously so monotheistic as to be almost atheistic, and simultaneously nebulously polytheistic verging on pantheism (or, Frying-Pantheism). What my relationship to that source is not, is duotheistic.

The Greak Ak. Spirit of the Forest, sure.. King of the Fae, maybe.. but half of God?

 And frankly, even though the Master Woodsman, The Great Ak, was the coolest and most magnificent and impressive pagan icon ever to grace my eyes as a child, I frankly find nearly every representation of The Horned Male God of Wicca to be very difficult to regard as any sort of diety, much less any sort of symbol of masculine strength and virility... and as for Lord Ak, I have trouble embracing his visage as more than a "spirit of" deity... besides at his age, I doubt he gets in much hunting.

Combining this with a fundamental (transgendered, duh) core issue, regarding masculinity as something inherently negative, and of course an upbringing that had a very Cecil B. Demille, John Huston, George Stevens sort of Christianity.. Charlton Heston as Moses as God.

To a 5 year old, this is what the Christian God looks like.

Cernunnos, an image sometimes used to indicate the Horned God of Wicca.
(Any resemblance to Jonathan Harris is completely coincidental.)

All kidding aside, the real issue, of course is that on some deep level, I do not actually consider masculinity divine. Frankly through my own particular experience, most of what I associate with the term "Masculine" is stuff I consider "base" or "the animal" or just plain old "undesirable", with the Feminine standing in opposition with terms like "grace". Therefore that omnipresent creative source is difficult for me to relate to at all.

Because the vengeful, storm summoning, Charlton Heston (as Moses, as God).. well he's not a terribly nice fellow. He doesn't have kind eyes, and he's got a lot of rules if you want his approval.

This conundrum leaves me without a "Male God", but to be perfectly fair, it leaves me without any kind of Female God either. While I am convinced that the The Feminine is Divine, I'm not sure that The Divine is necessarily Feminine.

But to bring this all back to the subject of books, and Wicca, I am coming to this discussion with a very concretely nebulous idea of what "God" is. And while I can engage that God through several of it's Aspects, as illustrated by some Greco-Roman Gods (as an example), I can't engage, faithfully, the Aspects that the Wiccan faith seems to put up.

I'll continue reading the books I've purchased.. because doing so has already resulted in the realization of "how I can't accept some of the things I'm reading", resulting in the moments of clarity that fueled this post.

And if I am, truly, "on my own" with this path, then maybe these books (and others) can help me find ideas and elements that I can borrow, to help me add structure and ritual to the beliefs I find.

Troubled crossings

Through these many days of cleaning, I've been taking something of a personal inventory, both literal and emotional.

There's so much to say.. and so few words that really fit. Shame, sadness, loss, fear of embarrassment, fear of taking the wrong path, fear of judgement, fear of abandonment, fear of being alone, regret, impatience, anger, indecision, reluctance, shyness, inadequacy, loneliness... the list is near endless, but none of the words seem to explain enough.

In the end, it is obvious that I am not a perfect person. I am not at perfect peace with myself, I am not in perfect harmony with the universe or with nature (hell, between the asthma, allergies, insects, and so on.. more often than not, Nature seems to be out to kill me). I like eating meat, and bacon and cheese (usually all at once, with fries and a coke). I'm shy, and I worry far, far too much.

The me, the Real™ me, is not a mystical creature born of moonlight and arrow fletchings. She is scarred and scathed, the sum total of every mistake, every stupid word regretted later, every rejection, every loss, every embarrassed blush, every single tear and bruise.. and every fear.

What am I after, in this journey then?

While talking to my "least crazy ex" via email last night (not all of my former lovers/partners/etc earn the title "ex" btw), I tried to describe what I'm going through spiritually. And the phrase I used was: I'm trying to hear the quiet voice I ignored most of my life.

I'm still going to have baggage and unresolved feelings once this cleaning, this purge, is done. Regrets, embarrassments, and the kind of internalized damage that comes from so many foolish things said, so many embarrassments, so many public humiliations, betrayals, losses, etc etc. And a huge portion of that baggage, that damage, those painful memories so deeply ingrained in my modus operandi.. will probably be with me until the day I fall down and the story ends.

So what then, of the mythic me, the me of dark water, moonlight and arrow fletchings? Who is she, and where does she fit in to the picture? And how do I relate to her, while still carrying the scars, bruises and fears etched into my psyche?

Going through boxes

For all the material possessions, family heirlooms, and keepsakes that I lost when my father died, I sure do have a lot of crap.

I blame this in part on my Father, who said to me at an early age "don't throw that out, it might be useful someday". Dad's garage was full of bins containing old nails and bolts.. bins, boxes and coffee-cans FULL of rusty metal bits of all kinds, old car parts, and so on.

I picked the packrat habit up in spades, and I've struggled against it all my life. And like those people you see on Discovery channel shows where the therapists, camera crews, and teams try to have an intervention and help get rid of the mountains of junk, whenever I begin working through the stuff, I too find myself drawn into the memories and personal history I associate with that object. Throwing out a bent up pair of sunglasses or a broken pair of headphones, or an old unfinished project is HARD for me. Not impossible, but it's hard.

During the big cleansing of the last few weeks, I've used the following 3 questions to get me through most of it:

1. "Do I have a use for this now?"
2. "Am I likely to have a use for this in the near future?"
3. "Will it be difficult to get another one when I need it?"

For example, my bowling ball stays, because while the answer to the first two questions is "no", getting a bowling ball of an appropriate weight and getting it drilled to fit, can be both time consuming and expensive, and house-balls with holes my size, tend to be too heavy. But a lot of other things HAVEN'T passed this test, and most have gone in the "donate" bin. From clothes I haven't worn in several years, padlocks, a DVD player that needs repairing, a cheap white-board, books I have no interest in reading or re-reading, etc etc. I've boiled 13 totes down to 6, most of them 1/2 full.

There's still plenty of things.. still far more than I "need" at the moment. Some remain for their sentimental value, some because I want a "plan b" or "plan c" if something breaks, but most of those are "reasonable" things to keep. But the pile that's leaving is positively amazing to me, and I've even managed to part with some of the rosaries I collected.

During all of this, a lot of memories have come up, and I've spent more than a few hours trapped in memories of the past. Some negative memories, for sure.. things I did and regretted, life paths that I didn't follow, or wasn't able to follow. I've thought a lot about people who were important in my life, but who are now "lost to the past".

In my mind, I can romanticize some of those memories, make them larger than they were in life. Explore the feelings I held close and never revealed... the people I wanted to form romantic connections with, but was too hung up on my own issues and sense of inadequacy, to ever admit it.

The girl with the fox's tail, that I didn't follow when I should have, the girl I wasn't totally honest with when I had a chance, the times I could have expressed interest in learning about people's spiritual lives, but didn't because I was too shy, etc etc. That regret and sadness for paths not taken, it's sticky, and is hard to let go of once I pick it up. I've casually looked up more than a couple of the people from my past. Their lives have moved in their own directions, hundreds of miles, and 20 years away. New York, Stockton, Los Angeles, Wisconsin.

Names aren't really important, this isn't about trying to reconnect with the actual people. We parted ways for our own reasons, and grew apart, in our own ways. That's part of why I don't have a facebook page, actually. That connection we once had, is gone.. and collecting "facebook friendship links" from all those people, pretending that connection is still there.. is just as bad as living in a room surrounded by stacks of boxes of meaningless accumulated crap. For a few, some of those friendships have maintained, but they've also evolved into different connections than they used to be.

I haven't been dwelling TOO much in those memories though. This cleansing is FOR that. That's why I started this digging into my things.. to uncover the parts of myself I had shut away inside those boxes along with the junk. And in taking time to be with those emotions, yet still part with the items.. I hope to come out the other side of this lighter, both in terms of accumulated stuff, and in buried baggage.

But through it all, I can see a remarkable consistency in the person that I was then, and the woman I am now. A little less crazy now, less on edge, less unsure, but less secretive too. A little more proud and at peace with myself, and a bit quieter for several years spent mostly alone or online. Yet still clearly not whole, and in need of more than a little care.

Vesta's Cleansing

So in my tentative, stumbling way, I figured I should begin learning more about Paganism. I mean, duh, that's the point right? So while trying to get a foothold to take my first tentative steps, I decided to subscribe to a "Neo-Pagan Holidays" calendar via google calendar, which I already used to track popular holidays (for store promotions), IRS deductions, rent and so on... and I also added the "Phases of the moon" gadget as well.

It seemed like an innocuous and low-intensity way to start. The day I subscribed to this calendar was the day of the new moon, which itself felt rather appropriate. The new moon, of course, being the end of the last lunar cycle, and the beginning of a new one. Over the next few days, I began to clean my room, going through some of my storage totes, and purging some of the things I never use, clothes I won't wear, etc. As is so often my way, unfortunately, the task ground to a halt right around the "this mess is actually worse than it was when I started" stage.

Yesterday (it's after midnight now) was listed on the Google Pagan Calendar as "Vesta's Cleansing". Apparently the ancient Roman Goddess, Vesta, had her temple closed and cleaned around this time. Here's what the description says:

This is the first day of a three-day festival honoring Vesta, the Roman goddess of hearth and home. She was a goddess of cooking and of warmth. Virtually no stories of her exist, except that she gave up a throne as one of the 12 Olympian gods in order to tend the divine fire; and that she winked at Prometheus when he took coals to give the secret of fire to mortals on earth.

In ancient Rome, a college of priestesses tended her fire, which was the home hearth of the Roman state — their high priestess was similar in stature to the American First Lady. They also tended the business of the state, by acting as impartial witnesses to wills and contracts. Once a year, they formally cleaned her temple and precinct, dumped the ashes of the previous year's fire into the river Tiber, and rekindled the flame. They also emptied their vaults of voided contracts and executed any outstanding wills.

This is a great time for a formal spring cleaning of pagan households, and for updating any necessary documentation: wills and testaments, legal agreements, contracts and personal oaths. It is also a time for emptying fireplaces and cleaning chimneys, and balancing accounts.

Some communities have a "spiritual swap" at this time: take objects from your altar that no longer serve you, and host a gathering; ask everyone who comes to bring objects from their altars. The objects can then be de-consecrated, or passed off on someone who will repurpose them on another altar.

Well.. with my room in a state of half-disaster, it seemed as good a reason as any to "get back to work". Much of the goal has been to find things that could get donated to charity. I won't pretend that the description above hasn't influenced me, it certainly has done.. but at the same time, I'm not so much dedicating my work specifically in the name of the Goddess Vesta either.

But heck, why not? This blog, this journey, is just beginning. And how best to make a break with the past, than to make a break with some of the clutter and junk of the past? Starting with a clean slate, so to speak.

This Thursday is listed as "The Feast of Vesta", which is described thusly:

This is the second day of a three-day festival honoring Vesta, the Roman goddess of hearth and home.

Where the feast of Vesta's Cleansing is about tidying up loose ends, today is about setting things in order. It is a day for renewing intentions, and rekindling home life. Rituals today should emphasize health, home, and safety. Houses may be blessed, a ceremonial fire can be kindled, and a feast is always appropriate at a festival of a goddess of great cooking.

There's been some nebulous tension between my housemate and I.. nothing I can precisely put my finger on, but it's there.  Of course, my spending hours of time alone in my room can't be helping things... and it's become sort of a chicken-and-the-egg issue, since the ambient tension doesn't make me want to stay downstairs.

But Thursday, inspired by the description of the Feast of Vesta above, I have decided to make a dinner to share. Nothing outlandish. Polish sausage, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and some mustard greens. Simple peasant fare, but easy to make with strong savory flavours. A meal from my family past. Simultaneously comfort food, and a peace offering to try and sooth the strain between my housemate and I.

I can't say I know a damned thing about Vesta, and I'm not sure I'd ever heard of her before reading about these holidays via the calendar. But heck, the timing of these holidays sure seem to be fortuitous.

The third of the three days dedicated to Vesta, Vesta's Opening, falls on June 15th, and is more focused on returning to difficult work.

This is the final day dedicated to Vesta, the goddess of hearth and home.

Between the cleaning of her temple and today, Vesta and her priests were assumed to be in ritual space, and unavailable for performing their other functions: witnessing contracts and collecting deposited wills and other records. This festival marked the end of that 'vacation' and the time to head back to work. Ritual on this day, either alone or in groups, can emphasize a renewal of vows and a willingness to re-engage with difficult labor.

I've ordered a couple of books from Amazon.com that come highly recommended for beginners exploring paganism. I wonder if one of those books will arrive by the 15th.. that would seem like quite the interesting synchronicity.

I can't say with any confidence whether this Calendar of "Neo-Pagan" holidays is particularly relevant to me at this point. I'm sure after I do some active reading, once those books arrive, I'll begin to start getting my bearings. I've got a lot of reading ahead of me, that much is certain.

Doing this exploration alone is going to be difficult. The reading not so much, but the "trying" of things, and the starting of starting/making/embracing of new things as holy or sacred. Balancing the "experimentation" versus the need to be both respectful and genuine/sincere. It's going to be hard to give myself permission to feel awkward, and still keep going. It would be nice to have someone to hold my hand through this, but this is the part of my journey when I have to walk alone and choose my paths. Once I know more about where I want to go, THEN it will be much easier to find company "going my way".