http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070628/wl_africa_afp/egyptwomencircumcision
Just starting with: its obscene that we need to ‘ban’ female circumcision. Sometimes I hate this world, or at least some of the people in it.
w00t!!!! My article “Coming Together: A Look at Pagan Group Structures” is now up at Witchvox.
Humans are fundamentally social creatures: we love to get together. We are educated in groups, we work in groups and many of us worship in groups. But what, exactly, is a group? A group of people working in the same room, or on a common project, does not necessarily make a group.
On Thursday — the Solstice — we were rear-ended by an uninsured motorist while at a dead stop in traffic. Bad news: it was rush hour, we got a huge load of negativity dumped on us for blocking the road, my neck and shoulders hurt and he was uninsured. Good news: I have excellent insurance, the car was barely damaged, I have an appt on Mon to see my Doctor.
Today, as I was updating my theme (in honor of Summer’s appearance), I noticed that the last few posts all had an odd symbol inserted — a capital A with a pointy hat on top. I had to edit those posts to make it go away, and there was no reason (like a formatting change of a ” sign, for example) that I could see.
Hail Mercury!
Mercury, the planet governing communication ad travel, is moving ‘backwards’ from June 15th until the evening of July 9th.
I suspect that in these modern times, Mercury’s energy has a far greater effect on us than it did the ancients. Do we even notice when Venus moves retrograde, for example, or Jupiter? Generally, no. But when our computers seize up, our cellphones spit static, or our summer travel turns into a nightmare of missed connections and lost luggage, we definitely know that the great Mr. M. is sending out oppositional energy.
As a Virgo with Mercury as my ruler, I often feel particularly out of sorts during this time. In fact, it used to drive me nuts. Stark raving bonkers. But in the last few years, I’ve managed to find a pathway through these times that is usually productive, and rarely as frustrating.
Share the secret? 🙂
I use the RE-words as my guide: Lord M’s reversal is a perfect time to REflect, REvise, and REstore. Seriously, it is that simple. Of course, I am always prepared to also have to REdo, and REturn. But that can happen any time (it just feels more stressful during a retrograde).
In the past I’ve revised the book I was working on.Sure, new ideas and concepts formed, but since they came about as a result of taking another look at what had already been done, it was part of the REvision.
I’ve found myself covering ‘old’ ground with friends and loved ones — things that might have ended up in an argument, but instead we tried to REveal deeper layers to reach a more completely understanding. (Sometimes we did, in fact, have those arguments. But it seems that we ended up getting to a better REsolution.)
This time I am going to REstart a major project: cleaning up the nearly 10gb of data — TEXT data — on my hard drive. It’s been collecting for years and is a jumbled mess. I’m going to use the next three weeks to REview the data, REorganize it into more useful categories, and REstore my usual tidiness to my computer.
And, just in case, I’ll be backing up all of my changes as I go along: Just in case the Darling Mr. M. decides that what I really need is to REformat and start fresh.
I didn’t mean for there to be *quite* so much time passing between blog entries, but Life (as it frequently does) got in the way.
That said, I don’t have much to post at the moment. My interview (based on The Virtual Pagan) with The Magical Buffet was posted in their May issue. It was a fun moment of ‘way back’ for me. The Wiccan/Pagan Times ran a long and well-done interview with me as well. (The well done is not a reference to my replies, but to the quality of the questions asked!)
Australia’s magazine “the spirit guide to Spellcraft” ran an article about me in its Winter 2007 issue (remember — the are ‘opposite’ us Northern Hemisphere folks!) that was lovely. The only problem is they start of by listing me as a member of CAW and having circled with Oberon Ravenheart-Zell. I like the man immensely, but am not a member of CAW, nor have I had the pleasure of doing ritual with him. Corrections are in the works.
Coming up: I’ll be speaking at Portland Pagan Pride (September 7-8) and COAST’s Pagan Pride (September 15th). I am also going to be in Columbus, OH for the International Real Witches Ball October 26-28.
Fun stuff!