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!
Monday was the National Gallery. Here is one of the greatest collections of paintings in Europe (which means: the world). They were showing a collection of Renoir Landscapes, but at $24/pp we decided to skip it. And just as well, because the free exhibit, “Manet to Picasso: A Redisplay of Modern Masters”, was just great. In fact, it was incredible. Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ was so vibrant, although we both felt that his ‘Two Crabs’ was one of the best paintings ever created.
We took the train at Marylebone Station to Stratford-Upon-Avon and could not take our eyes off of the countryside. It was so gorgeous, what with it being late spring. We saw lambs and calves and fields of some golden flower that we could not figure out the purpose of at all. So many of the towns we passed through had townhouses, each with a garden and a washing line. And so many older building — we saw castles flashing in the distance, and manor houses surrounded by estates that (clearly) had been working since the middle ages. Over the two+ hours of our journey, people got on and off the train at nearly every stop — this was clearly a popular route.
Today we went to the Tate Museums — the British and the Modern. We arrived deliberately early (before the TB opened) so that we could have a leisurely breakfast in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, there were only two cafes that we found, both side by side, and one was completely empty. A very bad sign. The one that was doing business, however, was pretty good. I’ve never had a latte lacking in foam, but their grilled cheese and ham was a tasty way to start the day.
After such a late night, we slept in until after 10am. Today was the day when we were to meet the woman who was selling her King Lear tickets to us, so we decided to have brunch near where we were to meet her. We had yummy ham and cheese croissants at a French cafe in Embankment — an odd little area with modern art stuck up on very modern glass/steel buildings, all along cobblestones streets. Serious juxtapositioning.
This was our special treat day. My lovely sister, C. had recommended a visit to watch a session of Parliament as a particularly fun thing to do. So we went over to check it out. Its a bit of a odd moment when you realize that,yes, that nice young man at the gates is indeed holding an Uzi. Hordes of tourists were wandering around, but we managed to find our way into the Visitor’s entrance. A lovely young thing (the equivalent to an American Congressional aide) guided us into the building and told us to ‘queue up.’ She also warned us that since the PM would be taking questions, we were unlikely to be able to watch — everyone wants to see those sessions. We were very excited — to see Blair doing something that makes intelligent Americans WISH we had a similar setup in our government is a wonderful event. (We’d watched the PMs Questions on CSPAN on a couple of occasions at home.)
We got a good night’s sleep, barely managing to make it to the hotel breakfast before the 9am close. Breakfast was plain: three kinds of cereal, a variety of juice, toast (white bread), and coffee. We only ate there once, mostly because it was an incredibly noisy way to spend the day, and we preferred to sleep later. ==> note: I actually slept past 9am every day we were there, even with going to bed at 10pm or so. Clearly, I was exhausted each day. < === The day was overcast, but warm — 65 degrees or so.