Sing of the Light

Blessed Yule!  If you're reading this then that means the world hasn't ended ;)

I wanted to share my Winter Solstice chant with you all.  I wrote this chant several years ago as part of a Sabbat series.  While I wrote this chant, I was strongly channeling the Goddess of Reflections, who I also sometimes call the Veiled Goddess.  I had worked with her for my then-coven's Yule ritual, and ended up drawing her down unintentionally during the ritual, so by the time I wrote this chant a week or so later we were on quite familiar terms.

My altar candle for the Veiled Goddess.  It smells like honeysuckle :)

I still don't know her name, and she hasn't been showing up much lately.  Perhaps it was just one of those things where a god or goddess shows up for a while to help fill a void or give you a prod in the right direction.




Sing of the Light

In the darkness hold out your hand
Receive the light, and fan the flame 
Pass it on to your brothers and sisters 
Open your heart and listen to it sing!

It sings of the light in all of it forms 
It sings of the sun, and the moon, and stars 
It sings of their light reflecting 
And it sings with joy of love - the most beautiful light of them all.

Please let me know what you think!

You are free to share my post and use my chants in ritual - and I would love to know that you do!  But please do not record or otherwise reproduce my chants in any other way without permission. 

Stars

Source: poster-street.com

I was really shocked and saddened to hear about what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary.  I watched the news unfold over the course of the day, and just couldn't believe that someone would open fire on innocent little kids and their teachers.  Just wow.  I send my prayers to the gods that they find peace in the afterlife and that their families find healing.

On a more musical note, I'll be posting the chant I wrote for Yule later this week.  Keep an eye out :)

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Sorry for the dearth of Monday Music Break posts lately, folks.  November and December have turned out to be pretty rough on me, both at home and at work.  Hopefully January will be less stressful and I'll have the energy to work more on this blog.

I did just learn that I will be taking on some new and exciting responsibilities at my job, which should hopefully make work less stressful and more interesting.  It will give me the chance to flex my writing and editing skills some more and work on social media stuff.  I'm pretty stoked about it.

In the meantime, please check out what some of these other awesome pagan bloggers are posting about:

* Jason Pitzl-Waters just posted the Best of 2012 Show for his podcast, A Darker Shade of Pagan.  If you don't subscribe to that podcast, by the way, you should - the music he plays is kick-ass.

* My dear friend Awenydd has been writing some lovely poetry over on Stories from the Cauldron

* Teo wrote a really powerful post about cleaning up ritual space as a way to find stillness and renewal.

* Lonely Coyote wrote a neat post about working with rosemary.

* This post is few months old, but I wanted to draw attention to it: Finally the hurdles were overcome, and Literata (one of the local pagan leaders in the DC metro region) was recognized by the Arlington County Court as a clergy member, and thus able to perform marriages.  Awesome victory for the local pagan community!


Also, I have had this song stuck in my head for the last couple of days.  HALP.

Birthday Music Break!

Today is my birthday!  Two of my good friends treated me to Thai food and chocolate decadence cake last night, which was so much fun and soooo yummy.  I didn't really do much today, as it's the middle of the week and no one is available.  So I'm enjoying a quiet night in, drinking a winter ale and catching up on my DVR.

I just wanted to pop in before I go to bed to share a little music that I've been digging lately.  I've been listening to a lot of Bonnie Raitt over the last week or so.  She's one of my favorite artists, and while she's not pagan, DAMN does her music have soul!

Here is one of her songs that has a real roadhouse blues feel, "Love Me Like a Man."  Enjoy!

Manah Manah!

You're welcome ;)

Sorry, I couldn't resist.  This is a music blog, after all, and "Manah Manah!" is one of my favorite songs.  

I hope everyone has a fabulous Friday, and that your workday goes quickly.  I'm looking forward to heading over to Piratz Tavern tonight for my friend's pre-birthday celebration (the real party is tomorrow night).  What are you doing to celebrate the start of the weekend?

30 before 31: A Year in Review

Last year I made a 30 before 31 list - a list of 30 reasonably-sized goals or projects I wanted to complete before I turned 31.  My 31st birthday is almost upon me, so I thought it would be good to look at how I did with completing the goals I set for myself.

Completed //  In Progress  //  Not Completed

1. Make my blog more awesome and increase readership - I moved to a better blogging platform, started a weekly feature to share pagan music, and I've now found a focus for my blog that most inspires me.  I participated in Bloggiesta in March & September, which was super helpful.  I also tried my hand at reviewing an album, which had mixed results.  I am still really proud of myself for doing that, because it was rather out of my comfort zone!
2. Get my 1^st degree initiation - As it turns out, I was denied initiation and I was released from my coven as of March 24.  I'm still regrouping from that and mostly avoiding public rituals for awhile.  I'm still proud of myself for completing the work, though.
3. Clean out my old room at my parents’ house - I made a big dent when I visited them earlier this year, and found some interesting treasures in the process, like an envelope full of letters from my pen-pals.  I still need to tackle the rest of the boxes.
4. Get a tattoo to commemorate finishing my 1^st degree of the mark given to me by Gwynn Ap Nudd - I contacted a tattoo shop recommended by many friends, but failed to follow up on that after the degree kerfluffle.  I really need to contact them again to set up an appointment - I've been getting lots of pokes from Gwynn about that.
5. Take a real vacation with Jack (even if it’s only a weekend getaway)
6. Get a new primary care physician - I've had 2 appointments since July.  She's really nice, as are her staff, though they are not all as competent as I would like.
7. Get a rheumatologist - I'm hemming and hawing about this one.  There wasn't much my last rheumatologist could do, other than prescribe drugs that didn't work and repeat the same old nonsense about exercise.  However, my fibromyalgia is getting progressively worse, so I need to do something.
8. Get back on migraine meds
9. Talk to a doctor about getting on anxiety meds
10. Take at least one creative writing class - I looked into creative writing classes at the local community college, but I don't have the energy to take classes on top of a full-time job right now.
11. Break into freelance writing and/or editing
12. Create a kick-ass writing portfolio
13. Get a better, more fulfilling job
14. Meet Jack’s parents
15. Sell/donate more of my unwanted books, clothes, etc. - Man there was a great deal of purging during the move, including donations.
16. Finish my British Columbia scrapbook
17. Look into acupuncture - I found out my health insurance covers it now.  Score!  Now to find an acupuncturist who is in my network.
18. Get my college diploma framed
19. Visit Gettysburg again
20. Visit a museum that I’ve never visited before
21. Organize a reunion for high school classmates in the DC area
22. Sit down to cross-stitch once a week - Expecting myself to cross-stitch once a week was far too lofty a goal.  The last time I picked up a cross-stitch project was in the summer, when I sorted the thread from a new kit.  I miss the zen of putting needle and thread to fabric, though.
23. Learn a new craft
24. Cook Thai-style chicken curry from scratch - I've decided to just let the professionals make it for me, since Thai restaurants are generally not all that expensive.  That doesn't change the fact that I want all the curries.
25. Get back into yoga
26. Learn how to use my new camera to take better photos - My skills are still VERY amateur, but I've been playing around with my camera a lot and I think I'm starting to get a handle on better photo taking.
27. Grow my hair long again - I did grow it out to about halfway down my back.  But it started looking scraggly and feeling too heavy with negative emotions, so I ended up cutting it a month ago to right below my shoulders.  (The Barbed Pentacle has an interesting article about hair and energy/magick - careful, it is NSFW!)
28. Learn new hairstyles for said long hair (other than braided or in a ponytail)
29. Start an indoor herb garden - I had a kit and planted it earlier this year, but all the plants died a slow, sad death after they sprouted.  Maybe I should stick to succulents.
30. Go on a photoshoot in the park with Sha-na-na

Man, that's a lot of incomplete goals.  Some of them I've decided to abandon on for various reasons (like being released from my coven, or cutting my hair).  There's a few that I still want to maintain as goals in the coming year.

It was a fun exercise, but I don't think I will do a 31 before 32.  30 goals was a lot, and some were not really feasible or were too "big" for the purposes of the exercise.  Maybe next year I will set just 5-10 goals/projects for myself.  That seems more reasonable, and it will be more likely that I attain everything I set out to do with my year.

The Most Important Harvest

Happy Thanksgiving!  I have a chant to share with you all.  It is both a Samhain chant and a Thanksgiving chant that I wrote it several years ago as part of a Sabbat series.

Nom nom pumpkin bread!  It's a traditional part of Thanksgiving dinner in our family.

The words for this chant came straight out of a dream, in which I was saying the mealtime prayer at Thanksgiving dinner with my family - because, you know, my traditional Catholic family would ask a female neopagan to say the mealtime prayer :)  The idea of family and its love being the "most important harvest" was key to the dream.  Samhain is the last harvest - my dream (and, I am sure, Hecate, who gave me a serious chant-writing kick in the butt at that year's Hecate ritual) was telling me that all the crops and other things we harvest in the autumn are not nearly as important as the love and fellowship we "harvest" in our family (however we choose to define that family).  Since Samhain, for me and seemingly for many others, seems to be about ancestors/family, this kind of chant seemed very appropriate for the holiday as well as for Thanksgiving.




Most Important Harvest

Look around,
Holding hands - feel the connection between you.
We are all bound by blood and by choice.
This family is the most important "season,"

And its love is the most important "harvest."

Please let me know what you think!

You are free to share my post and use my chants in ritual - and I would love to know that you do!  But please do not reproduce my chants in any way without permission. 

Monday Music Break: Arkona

It's Monday, which means it's time for another Monday Music Break!

I've been listening to a lot of hard rock and metal lately, so when I tried to think of what song to post this week, I immediately thought of all the European pagan metal bands I recently discovered via the wonders of the internet.  (Okay, actually I thought first of Cassandra Syndrome, but I've already posted their music twice :)  One of those European bands is Arkona, a Russian group fronted by lead singer Masha Scream that combines elements of metal and folk in their music.

Photo by Acid Pix via Wikimedia Commons

This song by Arkona is called "Liki Bessmertnykh Bogov."  I don't have a translation of the lyrics (if you have one please post them in the comments!), but from the video description, the basic idea is that she is singing about Russian legends and traditions.

Kick-ass, right?  I might just post some more pagan metal next week :)

For all my American readers, I hope you have a happy, thanks-filled Thanksgiving!

I bust into gigglefits every time I look at this

Just dropping in to post a quick Doctor Who-themed giggle for Friday for ya'll:

You may have seen this posted up on my Pinterest board a little while ago.  Seriously, I can't stop laughing at it!  Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, indeed!  Hope you enjoyed the giggle too.

Monday Music Break: Dead Can Dance

Hey folks, happy Monday!  Apologies for the radio silence last week - real life got in the way!  I was at my work's annual conference, so I was massively busy with that.  And then I spent the weekend in recovery mode, as I was physically and mentally wiped.  Fortunately I'm (mostly) all rejuvenated now and ready to bring you some more fabulous pagan music :)

Photo by GothEric via Wikipedia

I was in need of some chill, darkish music tonight.  I recalled the group Dead Can Dance from a number of episodes of A Darker Shade of Pagan, and their music - and "Opium" especially - suits my temperament perfectly this eve.