Happy Solstice!

Some acquaintances came down from the Phoenix area.  We knew they were heathens who had moved to Arizona, but hadn't met them yet.  They were being cautious and asked around first about if we were "normal" and "sane" kinds who could hold down jobs and not blame any and all trouble on mystical woo.  That's fine with us, since we're looking for the same kind of people as our friends.

We actually never got around to raising horns, but darn it, the day felt like a holiday.  We barbecued and made cherry pie with fresh cherries our new friends brought over.  Ivan and Lalat were complete lovebugs and everyone had a great time.

The summer is hitting the "are you having second thoughts?" part of the year.  Daytime temperatures are now around 109 degrees.  So...our air conditioning gave out.  We have a contract with the only AC company that will come out to where we are, and the AC needs replacing.  It's 20 years old or so, plus as I've said before, the previous homeowners were chain smokers.  Well, there goes the savings account, but that is what it was for.  We'll refill it again in due time.

(The Old Man is flowering.)

Four days until the Summer Solstice.  Sven is taking legal classes and I'm waiting for a background check through E-Qip before starting a federal job.  Nonetheless, we're getting by, although I did decide not to go to yoga for a couple of months to save a little of our cash.

As when I was in Coronado, I'm watching outside daily for the markers of seasonal change that belong to the desert.  For the past couple of months it's been cactus flower season, an example of which is above.  

Since May, we've been seeing a plethora of the local fauna coming out: rabbits, ground squirrels, lizards and roadrunners.  Oh, and the omnipresent quail have increased.  The monsoon season is a few weeks away since summer in Arizona is divided into "dry" and "wet" summers.  Observation continues.

We also finished our kitchen remodel.  Since hospitality is valued highly in heathenry, having a kitchen suitable for making lots of food and entertaining guests was mission-critical.  Our miserable little manufactured-home kitchen, which was furnished with RV cabinets of all things, is now full of floor-to-ceiling Ikea cabinets, granite countertops, and a central cooking island.  I found a copy of the Joy of Cooking for $7.95 on clearance and have already started to work with it.  It has recipes for just about every foodstuff out there, and if transforming every foodstuff out there isn't kitchen witchin', I don't know what is.

(More of the local flora on my property.)

Further to a reading done for me at Trothmoot in 2013, I've upped my ancestor devotion.  Currently I have an altar to my departed family in a corner of the bedroom.  After some thought while at Pantheacon, I've put one of those Indian-made Celtic tapestries up to make it private.  I am offering a small glass of water every morning and meditating there in front of items related to or owned by my forebears.  This seems to be producing results for me in the form of serendipitous knowledge and dreams.

I hope you all have a great Solstice, and plan to write about it soon!

Seasons come and go, and so do we.

I was at a used bookstore today, looking for any interesting occult or pagan books to add to my collection.  I came across one called “A Pagan Christmas” or something like that.  It was the usual sort of thing, with descriptions of what pagan traditions and symbols are still present in the modern-day North American Christmas.  I didn’t buy it, but it reminded me of something that has been bothering me: Sven and I aren’t celebrating holidays enough.

We did Jul right, but we were in the middle of moving and we didn’t put up a tree or any decorations.   December 25 doesn’t have any real meaning to us, but we kind of neglected the 12 days of Jul.  I celebrated the Spring Equinox alone, libating the Old Man and the grove of trees with a bottle of local Arizona wine.  This isn’t enough.  Granted it’s only been two holidays, but I feel like I’m being one of these joyless Christians who decides that most holidays are “too pagan” for them and don’t celebrate, failing to replace them with anything else.

Resolved: To do Summer Solstice in a big way. 

In sad news, Cal Cotton the Hornsmythe, aka The Moor, died of brain cancer today.  He was only in his early 60s.  We knew Cal from the Viking Fest at Vista, where he was always there in his Moorish costume, selling horns, skins, utensils, antlers, and anything made of same.  He was friendly and funny and talented.  We have a number of fox tails we bought from him because the cats love them, and our drinking horns were from his shop too.  He will be missed.  What is remembered, lives.

Also, thoughts and positive energies for Morning Glory Zell.  The Church of All Worlds will be holding a celebration of her life while she is still with us.  The event, called The Party Of Her Life will take place at their home in northern California this Friday. 

The sun rises, the sun sets, the seasons turn.  All else is transitory.  Blessed be.

Happy spring!

Things are going really well for us.  Our raised-bed gardening is behind schedule, but we hope to get more work done this weekend.  The best-laid plans and all that, but I'm hoping/envisioning us laying down more weed-paper (a fabric that suppresses weed growth; we're not rolling blunts here) and raising up the potato box some.

I continue to be amazed by the Old Man.

This is the 30 foot saguaro on our property.  See those holes?  They've been hollowed out over the years by generations of birds, and lined with mud and twigs.  When a saguaro falls, the resulting cup is referred to as a "saguaro shoe".  I saw a woodpecker flying out of one of the holes, and found myself exclaiming a mantra from the Ekklesia Antinoi, "This is where life comes from!"  The desert is teeming with life, and I can't for a second understand why anyone would consider it a dead or unmoving ecosystem.

This is our potato box.  Our potatoes are growing in well, and we need to add more boards for height.  The theory is that as the potato plant grows (you start them from potato eyes), you keep raising the level of soil.  By the time the plants are tall, you'll have 50-100 lbs of potatoes.  So far so good.

I've also started an herb garden in our Arizona room (an enclosed porch).  I planted my cilantro and basil from seeds, which I now regret as they are coming in so slowly while my rosemary, which started as a plant, is going gangbusters.  I'll pot my chocolate mint and kitchen sage today.

Yesterday was the spring equinox, so as usual I changed the altar cloth, gave little glasses of wine to both the ancestors and the Norse gods, then went outside with my bottle of wine to pour out libations to the Old Man and the spirits in our grove of trees.  

The weather here is beautiful in southern Arizona.  I'm enjoying it before it turns into the great outdoor barbecue by May.  But that is of course part of the cycle, and overall the heat isn't that bad, not compared to the steambath that is the east coast every summer.  

May your spring be full of promise!

Lazy as heck

Holy moley.  Another 2 months.  However at this point I have a lot to post about.

1. My grandmother, my last remaining grandparent, died at the age of 95.  This is story enough on its own, but it also pulled me away a day early from....

2. Pantheacon, which was memorable enough on its own.  I've now been away for 10 days so far from....

3. The homestead, where herbs and potatoes are now planted, the raised gardening beds are marked out, and the M. family is ready to give me a few of my first chickens.

Inhale, exhale, and I'll get back to this soon.  No, really.

So much water under the bridge

It's been TWO MONTHS since I last posted.  I'll admit, part of it was my being busy and part was a case of the yucks.  I had quite the argument with a member of the San Diego kindred, then one with someone here in the village, and it kind of killed my motivation. 

Nonetheless, I'm here in Arizona now, with cats, so my residence is almost official. 

We had our first Jul here already.  Sven, D and I had our blot on top of one of the outbuildings, watching the sun set over Picacho Peak.  After that we had a Jul dinner that couldn't be beat, with a magnificent goose, red cabbage, cucumber salad, a pressed salmon that IMHO was the best thing on the table, followed by cookies and rice pudding.  We forgot we had raspberries for the "red berries with custard" used as a shibboleth in WW2 to tell if someone was a German or a Dane.  Because only Danes can pronounce it.

Also, I'm sitting back and watching people fighting about polytheism on Tumblr.  Seriously?  I go there to look at giant robot models and pictures of Warhammer 40k fluff.  If you pursue your causes on Tumblr, you have more problems than I do, sunshine.

Ancestress

 

Someone pointed out (on Tumblr of all places) that the anatomy of the various Mother Goddess statuettes make perfect sense if you are a woman looking down at her own body and using it as a model.

 

When I lived in Mexico, I saw unknown amounts of anonymous ecclesial art that was known to have been created by nuns.

 

Now it also may be that the cave paintings of Lascaux were done by women, because the shape of the handprints are indicative of female hands.

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/prehistoric-cave-prints-show-most-early-artists-were-women-8C11391268

 

Our ancestresses silently, deliberately, emerge, and they were artists.