Another Essay Checked Off the List

 Yay I got an email this morning about passing Essay #5 - 2 Powers Meditation.  So happy.  Technically, I'm working on all of the other essays, but actively I'm working on the Pagan Virtues and the Book Reviews.  If you're following recently, I'm 5 weeks into my Pagan Virtues Deep Dive project.  I've finished reading Being a Pagan and have written a rough draft, so far.

I've made an attempt of the both High Day essays, which I thought would've been finished first, but they're all in various stages.  Which is odd, because I love the high days and I love writing and performing rites for them.  Figured that I'd be good and done by now, but I've tweaked the 8 days so much over the years to better suit my beliefs, that I can't really remember what they originally mean.  What's original and what's mine?  Then there's some original days that I can't click with, like Imbolc and Lughnasadh, namely because they celebrate deities that I have no connection to, or they're part of cultures and pantheons that I don't know much about.  Or I struggle to read the language.  Celtic, Gaelic, and Welsh are just so difficult for me to read, I'd rather not.  I have dyslexia--my mother tongue is hard enough.

That and in my early years I associated the Wheel of the Year strictly with Wicca--and I'm not Wiccan.  Like many, I was for a couple of years, but I haven't been Wiccan since middle or high school.  I worked to not use the typical Wiccan names for holy days and even tools.  

Course over the years, the Wheel of the Year has become more than just a Wiccan thing, but became more of a general Pagan thing.  I didn't start using that term again until I joined ADF and their 8 days are the Wiccan sabbats, although they don't use "sabbat"--actually in Our Own Druidry they explain that the s-word was a slur against Jewish people, thus why they use High Days instead:

"It was quickly decided to abandon the term 'sabbat', invented by the Church as a slur against the Jews, and the term 'High Days' was adopted in its place" (page 112).

Personally I prefer Holy Days, but I'm getting used to High, too.  Some folks may have a repulsion to 'Holy' due to religious trauma or whatever, and tend to reject all words that they may associated with any of the Abrahamic religions (unaware that many of those terms are older than those religions, and that yes even ancient pagans prayed, worshipped, and had holy things).

But over the years, I've also learned that most pagans don't like to read history, academic or not.  They prefer their paganism history to be lightwashed, whitewashed, putting pagans on peaceful victimizing pedestals, and make Christianity always the villains.

Yeah.  Some pagans prefer fake "history".  Well research of what we have of history, which is written by the victors, true.  Still, history ain't black and white, good and bad, pagan and christian.  All right, off the soap box.

Yes, I've been relearning the Wheel of the Year.  

Speaking of which, the Fall Equinox is coming up this month, and I've a ritual to write.  Fall Equinoxes I usually focus on Persephone's return to the Underworld.  Last year was a focus on accepting change and letting go of things, using a children's book called The Fox and the Leaves by Julia Rawlinson.  Holy crap what a year of release I've had since last year! Kicked out of a group that meant a lot to me, lost friends, my mom died, realizing and releasing the disillusionments of she and I's relationship, Mother Wound stuff, accepting that I need to be tested for autism, and lots of other major overarching releases.  It's been a fuckin year, yall.

Maybe this Equinox ritual will be one of rest...just sitting outside and feeling the fall breeze and listening to the winds move through the dry and dying leaves?  A focus on sunshine as we move through the darkening days.

I dunno.  Maybe?  I am feeling that more than letting go or traveling to the Underworld this year.  Maybe staying above ground in the sunlight, instead of hibernation in the darkness?  We'll see where the Spirit takes me this year.  Hopefully Sunna can provide some inspiration to get through these essays, as well?

- Dedicant and Hearth Keeper, Foxlyn Wren