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So.
I had a thought as I was coming home from the Ottawa Pagan Conference yesterday.
The whole "coming home" phenomenon of Neo-Paganism? ("I always knew I had a religion, I just didn't know what it was called", etc.) That feeling of 'this is so familiar, it just feels right'?
Yeah.
I don't personally think of that as coming home.
For me (and probably a lot of other people), I already knew what I believed. I went out looking for a religion (a lable, basically) that fit what I was doing.
As such I was already home. Finding "Paganism" just meant that I found out what the address is. :-)
Anywhoo.
On a related note, I got an e-mail ages ago from someone who reads this lj (I don't know if you want me to identify you or not, duckling), asking me about Kitchen Witchcraft and fairie-folk, and such-like. :-)
So... I'm addressing this stuff here. :-) (I hope you don't mind). :-)
When I cook or when I garden or when I harvest, this is religion for me.
Religion, of course, comes from "religio" -- to re-link.
See... okay. Back-story:
All my Gods are female. I had a devout but horribly one-sided disappointment of a "relationship" with Jesus back when I was about ten years old. (Can you tell I'm still bitter about how badly that one turned out?) He never once showed up when I invited him in. ("Like a little child"... my-aunt-agnes...)
Anyway. So by the tenth grade I had completely lost my faith in christianity. I didn't like Jehova, I was fed up with Jesus, and I couldn't deal with the church's track record (I have since chilled out at least a little bit and allowed that christianity, in general -- while it did encourage/promote/occasionally-demand the slaughter of millions -- also produced/encouraged/caused-in-some-way some pretty cool stuff including the works of Bach, Faure, Healy Willin, and Mother Theresa, as well as getting on the nerves of Rosemary Radford Ruther, Carol Christ, and Mary Daly enough to get them writing Feminist Thealogy -- which is pretty damn awesome if I do say so myself).
Right.
So. Lost one faith, went hunting for another.
What I found -- and who found me -- would kinda-sorta, more-or-less qualify as fitting under the heading of "Feminist Spirituality".
Except that my spirituality is (A) not political (though it informs my politics, without a doubt), and (B) is a religion.
Which gets us back to what I was saying before.
I practice... Informal, DIY, heavy on the domesticity, Goddess Religion.
Religion --> Religio --> Re-Link.
I am re-linking myself to: The Land, the Divine, that which is sacred within myself, my own body, and my ancestors.
What I am practicing is religion. Though some would see it and call it spirituality (which I can deal with, even if I don't personally apply that term to myself).
If I define "magic" as "actively working with energy", or "actively working with people who aren't human" (which is a bit of a stretch, but might qualify ;-) then... when I cook and when I garden, I am doing magic.
I did my squash-tastic midwinter feast, and a whole lot of it I made in a day. (And apparently called up a snow-storm while doing so... Second year in a row... hm...) I put Heather Dale's song "Stone Soup" in the CD player on repeat and just let it play for hours while I sang along and cooked like a mad-woman. Everything worked out beautifully. :-) (I may even have had time to vacuum. ;-)
I sing to my garden.
I encourage my plants and they... take to it quite well.
I don't call this magic (usually). My own definition of "magic" is "spell-craft". Everything else is Being Awake, or doing things... 'mindfully', or whatever you want to call it. It's being aware that I'm not the only intelligent thing in the yard, and that people died so that I could eat, that people will never be born so that I can eat, it's saying Thank You regularly. :-) (I have a shrine on top of my piano -- one that is fairly dusty, although it occasonally gets added to -- but my *altar*, the place where I make my offerings... that is the compost heap. I may well have drunken worms in there. ;-)
And all of that brings us to the other question... Faeries...
If by 'fairies' you mean the type of people who turn up in Charles de Lint books, no. I don't work with the faerie folk.
If they're feeling friendly towards me, I'm more than happy to have their help or have them take up residence in the yard.
But.
<*sigh*>
The trick with these folks, like any of them is that... If I 'believe' (court, encourage, etc) in the Faeries at the Bottom of the Garden... I can't *not* believe in the Blue Hag or the Bogarts and all the rest that aren't particularly friendly (or are downright hostile) towards humans. And, truth be told, I don't particularly want to encourage those ones.
If, however, you mean "the people who are plants", for example, when you say "fairies" then. Yes. Obviously. :-)
Anywhoo.
That's my prattle. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
I had a thought as I was coming home from the Ottawa Pagan Conference yesterday.
The whole "coming home" phenomenon of Neo-Paganism? ("I always knew I had a religion, I just didn't know what it was called", etc.) That feeling of 'this is so familiar, it just feels right'?
Yeah.
I don't personally think of that as coming home.
For me (and probably a lot of other people), I already knew what I believed. I went out looking for a religion (a lable, basically) that fit what I was doing.
As such I was already home. Finding "Paganism" just meant that I found out what the address is. :-)
Anywhoo.
On a related note, I got an e-mail ages ago from someone who reads this lj (I don't know if you want me to identify you or not, duckling), asking me about Kitchen Witchcraft and fairie-folk, and such-like. :-)
So... I'm addressing this stuff here. :-) (I hope you don't mind). :-)
When I cook or when I garden or when I harvest, this is religion for me.
Religion, of course, comes from "religio" -- to re-link.
See... okay. Back-story:
All my Gods are female. I had a devout but horribly one-sided disappointment of a "relationship" with Jesus back when I was about ten years old. (Can you tell I'm still bitter about how badly that one turned out?) He never once showed up when I invited him in. ("Like a little child"... my-aunt-agnes...)
Anyway. So by the tenth grade I had completely lost my faith in christianity. I didn't like Jehova, I was fed up with Jesus, and I couldn't deal with the church's track record (I have since chilled out at least a little bit and allowed that christianity, in general -- while it did encourage/promote/occasionally-demand the slaughter of millions -- also produced/encouraged/caused-in-some-way some pretty cool stuff including the works of Bach, Faure, Healy Willin, and Mother Theresa, as well as getting on the nerves of Rosemary Radford Ruther, Carol Christ, and Mary Daly enough to get them writing Feminist Thealogy -- which is pretty damn awesome if I do say so myself).
Right.
So. Lost one faith, went hunting for another.
What I found -- and who found me -- would kinda-sorta, more-or-less qualify as fitting under the heading of "Feminist Spirituality".
Except that my spirituality is (A) not political (though it informs my politics, without a doubt), and (B) is a religion.
Which gets us back to what I was saying before.
I practice... Informal, DIY, heavy on the domesticity, Goddess Religion.
Religion --> Religio --> Re-Link.
I am re-linking myself to: The Land, the Divine, that which is sacred within myself, my own body, and my ancestors.
What I am practicing is religion. Though some would see it and call it spirituality (which I can deal with, even if I don't personally apply that term to myself).
If I define "magic" as "actively working with energy", or "actively working with people who aren't human" (which is a bit of a stretch, but might qualify ;-) then... when I cook and when I garden, I am doing magic.
I did my squash-tastic midwinter feast, and a whole lot of it I made in a day. (And apparently called up a snow-storm while doing so... Second year in a row... hm...) I put Heather Dale's song "Stone Soup" in the CD player on repeat and just let it play for hours while I sang along and cooked like a mad-woman. Everything worked out beautifully. :-) (I may even have had time to vacuum. ;-)
I sing to my garden.
I encourage my plants and they... take to it quite well.
I don't call this magic (usually). My own definition of "magic" is "spell-craft". Everything else is Being Awake, or doing things... 'mindfully', or whatever you want to call it. It's being aware that I'm not the only intelligent thing in the yard, and that people died so that I could eat, that people will never be born so that I can eat, it's saying Thank You regularly. :-) (I have a shrine on top of my piano -- one that is fairly dusty, although it occasonally gets added to -- but my *altar*, the place where I make my offerings... that is the compost heap. I may well have drunken worms in there. ;-)
And all of that brings us to the other question... Faeries...
If by 'fairies' you mean the type of people who turn up in Charles de Lint books, no. I don't work with the faerie folk.
If they're feeling friendly towards me, I'm more than happy to have their help or have them take up residence in the yard.
But.
<*sigh*>
The trick with these folks, like any of them is that... If I 'believe' (court, encourage, etc) in the Faeries at the Bottom of the Garden... I can't *not* believe in the Blue Hag or the Bogarts and all the rest that aren't particularly friendly (or are downright hostile) towards humans. And, truth be told, I don't particularly want to encourage those ones.
If, however, you mean "the people who are plants", for example, when you say "fairies" then. Yes. Obviously. :-)
Anywhoo.
That's my prattle. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
