School Time and the Turning of the Wheel

So school is back in session. And, while that is exciting, there is a certain amount of tension in the air. It's a good tension, though: that breathless excitement that you get when you realize that you are hurtling toward some unknown destination that is only visible in the periphery. And you are afraid to even try to look at it too closely unless it changes because you looked at it, changes for the worse. But, it is there, and it is big, and there is the sense that if it crumbles it will crush you, even from this distance. Yeah, that kind of feeling.

So, there has been a semi-scheduled break in my tradition classes. I call it semi-scheduled because the scheduling was out of the control of both my teacher and myself. Schedules conflict, and maybe that's a sign that it's time to slow down a little. I am thankful for the break, though, since it allows me to focus on my school work and ensure that I make the grades I need.

But, minds being what they are, the learning process never stops, and I have been kicking around some thoughts with Nymphaea in our free time. She convinced me to post some of what I've been talking to her about on here, so here goes.

Don't kill me, as these are just my own thoughts, though I welcome comments:

The Wheel of the Year is a big concept within the larger pagan community. It symbolizes everything: life, death, love, hate, light, dark; and the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. I posted earlier about how, in my view, the Sabbats were divided into two alternating stories: the story of agriculture, and the story of light. I have been thinking about this, and since everything is a mirror of something else, I feel that these can also be related to people on a personal level as the stories of action and body/spirit. This is where it gets tricky, though. I do not agree that the solstices are the turning point of the solar year from light to darkness or darkness to light. Rather, the equinoxes are the turning points.

I drew this out as a sine wave (because nerd) where the solstices are the highest and lowest points (because they are). I mean, I feel that the longest day is pretty obviously the height of the light half of the year (still talking solar here). This puts the equinoxes halfway between, at the line, 0, the perfect balance between positive and negative. However, there is a downward slope after Midsummer before you get to 0, just as there is an upward slope on the other side of Yule. So, the issue, when looking for turning points, becomes whether you are looking for the light/dark dichotomy or the rising/falling dichotomy (incidentally, this works with the moon phases too, since the full and dark moons are the points of power and the quarters are the turning points) . Because, in the standard interpretations that I have heard, people are looking at the rising/falling dichotomy instead of looking at the tone of the season. This is not the way my inner world works. My magic is as light as it is dark, and I wish to celebrate these halfway points as more important explicitly because they are equal as well.

So, as we approach the equinox, the end of the Light draws near and the time of the Dark is just beginning. Let us move away from the physical growth that occupied our spirits and instead feed those spirits. Let them feast at the table of the Lord of the Underworld and his Dark Lady, for this is where wisdom is gained.

Presences

As an effect of my student-hood for my tradition, I have become more aware of the presence of spiritual forces around me in my everyday life. Nothing that I have experienced thus far has been anywhere close to the intensity with which I feel this presence at times. It's like a surge of caffeine/adrenaline that pumps through my limbs, making me feel like with just a little effort I could step into the sky. Unlike caffeine and adrenaline, however, I don't crash afterward. I find myself completely aware of every contraction of every muscle as I am walking around campus doing my job, and instead of feeling tired after lugging my load of books around, I feel exhilarated and energized, excited and maybe a little crazed about the thought of doing it again. I have also been having weirdly aggressive/protective thoughts lately. Like, I want to protect my family from physical harm, and when it comes down to it, my first instinctual reaction is more often fight instead of flight.

These are another reason that I find myself exercising more than before. The feeling of exertion and the sheer physicality of it is amazing, and I find myself having to force myself to quit to avoid injury toward the end of the workout.

I can only think that this is the influence of some divine masculine force. The call of the male archetype has never been very strong for me, though it was less foreign than the female archetype. As I progress into my young adulthood, I find myself more and more often identifying with warriors in the stories that I read, because deep down I know that I share that same drive, that same sense of protective duty.

I have tentatively identified this source as the God of the sun, a force that I have worked with before but not one that I have actively identified with. I was much more of a Nature/Storm God person myself, though that may have something to do with a father-archetype protector-of-my-person thing than actual identity. The reason that I have made the connection with the sun is that the feelings are at their strongest when I am out under the sun. I can feel it over the course of the first moments whenever I walk out into the sun; the power and sense of excitement pervade my every fiber, and there are times that I even feel my perceptions shifting subtly. My eyesight gets sharper, feelings intensify, my sense of smell even gets better. These sensations, I feel, are the senses of the divine warrior, tuning my sense to a more advantageous level.

Because of these feelings and my new found energy, I have decided that exercising is going to be a devotional time to this new feeling, exploring it and my relationship to the god that brings it. Maybe I will look more into Lugh. He fits the pantheon I feel drawn to, is the sun, a great warrior, and is commonly identified with the Gaulic Lugus, whose iconography included ravens, among other things. Yes, this is a stretch, but maybe this is a sign that I need to expand my pantheon. Lots of questions to answer. Lots of soul searching to do. Lots of miles to run. Until next time, guys.

Back! (again)

So my friend, Nymphaea, over at the Inner Sanctum has forced inspired me to get back into this whole blogging thing, and now I think that my life is in order enough that i can reliably do this. I'm going to start off slow, posting stuff at least every Friday, but hopefully later I can move it up to every few days. Anyway, enough of the excuses. Time for news!

Since I last left you, I have been super busy. I'm now living in a real, grown-up apartment with my real, grown-up friends. This is bringing along with it such adult activities as working full time and paying bills, making sure we don't starve, and making sure my plants don't die of neglect, as well as some rather unfortunate side-effects such as complaining about the weather and dirty dishes. Oh well, I guess this means that my life is good. I know I'm not complaining, especially since I now live with my amazing boyfriend full time (and not in a college dorm). I've never experienced this much change and growth before now (at least not consciously), so this adulthood thing is kind of like missing a step going down stairs. It's a little scary while it is happening, but immediately afterward there is that exhilarating sense of euphoria as the adrenaline pumps through the body. Like that, but in the soul.

Anyway, new responsibilities also include exercising, which used to be a curse word in my vocabulary. See, I started losing weight and really liked the way that I looked, so I decided to keep it up. not wanting to get too skinny, I've now decided to start doing some muscle sculpting exercises. Starting on Sunday, I want to be in the gym for twenty to thirty minutes a day, six days a week. I'll alternate days between aerobic and anaerobic exercise, so hopefully I build muscle at around the same rate as I lose fat. We'll see how that goes in a couple weeks, though.

As far as paganism, boy things have changed a lot. I have found, through research that I have recently been doing, that the hazy, pseudo-Wiccan stuff that I had been doing was not fulfilling for me. I have found this out because, as of just before Beltane, I am now a student of a tradition! I may post more about the tradition later, if I feel called, but for right now just know that I now have a group of people with which to practice my Craft. My teacher, who is an amazing kitchen/green/everything witch has me doing an amazing amount of coursework which is really helping me cement my practices in my daily life. I'll be posting revelations as they happen, as well as rambling on about stuff that happened in the Interim, which is what I will now call this extended silence.

Thanks for sticking with me, and to all of my new friends, welcome to my blog! For your safety, keep your seat belts on and your extremities inside the vehicle for the duration of the ride.