My hedgehog is dead.

His front foot swelled up and his left eye went a cloudy blue colour. We took him to the vet and a few hours later we found out that he had a bone disease and was about two weeks away from death. He was put down to save him from suffering. I was only with him for a few days but I still feel so sad. It doesn’t seem fair that he had to die when everything was looking up for him. We were going to feed him and make him nice and plump so when he was released he’d have a good chance of surviving until next year. He was going to be released in Windsor Great Park, away from humans and away from dangerous roads. Windsor Great Park is where the legendary Herne resides too, I hoped that my little hedgehog would be protected under his influence.

I have nothing left of him to make a spirit home with, only his hedgehog food and meal worms mark his presence in the house. I want to claw him back to me, reel his spirit back to me like it’s a kite on the end of a string until he’s safe with me again. I will do it, but I’m not sure how. Baron Samedi and the Horned One will need honour and offerings, Samedi to open the door and the Horned One to guide him through. I will need a spirit home too, one made of hay and wool will do.

This is a bit of a depressing post, which I apologize for.

HOOFPRINTS

Who just bought Hoofprints in the Wildwood? Me!

I’m so excited about reading it. I’m so used to Amazon insta-shipping that I’m getting slight cabin fever waiting for Lulu to ship (THE STATUS SAYS ‘FULFILLING’. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? GIVE ME MY BOOK). Usually I try not to buy too many books on witchcraft since I want to keep my practice relatively idiosyncratic but since I love to read the blogs of the people who wrote it and because I want to support pagan writing that isn’t the usual 101, I decided to get it.
I’ll add a review once it arrives.

hog vs. witch

There’s a hedgehog and a hedgewitch in the house and I fear one of us has to go.

But maybe he can stay. The ‘hrtch hrtch hrtch’ noises he makes when he gobbles up his mealworms are too cute for words. My parents were on a walk when they found him crossing the road at an extremely slow pace. Hedgehogs usually run like the devil is asking for their phone number so they knew something was wrong. All the quills on one side of his rump are gone (I’m thinking it’s road rash, but who knows) so they scooped him up. He currently resides in my father’s office and seems to either eat or sleep with nothing between (so far he’s fallen asleep with his head still in his worm bowl).

I have a new box ready for my next shrine (PERSEPHONE! SPRING/SKULL MAIDEN!) and I bought some cream lace to work into it somehow. I still need a focal point so I think I’m going to browse Wiki Commons and Etsy until I find some artwork I like (YESYES, I WILL PAY FOR THE ART).

still not dead

It’s been a while (AGAIN) since I last posted so this is going to be a long rambling post that would have been cut into segments if I didn’t procrastinate so much (I’m not even sure why I’m procrasnating, I love writing this blog).

First off, I do psychology as a chosen subject and anomalistic psychology was one of the main sections. I’m a big believer in ‘don’t open your mind so much that your brain falls out’ and it was easier than I expected to mesh my beliefs with scientific fact. I’ve never been a big believer in clairvoyants talking to the dead with five minutes prep. Personally I think the dead have better things to do rather than linger around fame obsessed wannabes but your mileage may vary. Nor did I believe in psychokinetic power (moving things with only the power of your super-dooper mind), mostly because no one has ever proved it in a reliable study (if you could do it, wouldn’t you just DO IT? Complaining about a glass pane between you and the object shouldn’t even come up).

What do I believe in? Witchcraft hasn’t really been tested but healing by pray and through energy has. I really, really do believe that praying helps to heal. In a few studies the result is inconclusive and in others it shows that even in a double blind scenario, pray and energy healing does benefits. The subject hasn’t really be researched properly, it tends to get researched when governments and universities have surplus money -which is fair enough, I think mental illness should take a precedence- and when it is, it’s plagued by dishonest participants (one guy adjusted the lists so it looked like the psychic got every guess right).

This leads to why I wish pagans were more collective and had a reliable and interactive body to join. If most of the pagans joined, it would be easy to collect money for our own studies but I doubt that will ever happen in my lifetime (OPTIMISTIC, ME?).

I have exams coming up and my entry into university rides on them (OHH, GIVING MY AGE AWAY HERE). I have the opportunity to go to a very, very good university and the pressure of that has resulted in me procrastinating instead of actually doing anything. While I’m not yet full immersed in religion like I used to be (I haven’t hedge crossed in weeks now), I can still feel the Bride at my back so not revising isn’t an option. I can’t pray for success and throw myself to failure without incurring punishment.

Speaking of the Bride, her shrine is done! I used the virgin Mary instead of hunting for a Bride statue and I worked in some Christian bits to honour the Bride as a saint as well as a goddess. Hekate’s is done too, although hers has a lid rather than being open. I’m quite proud of them, and I’m looking forward to adding more to them as time passes. Next on the list is Horned One and Persephone and I’m hunting for boxes for them.

Now on to the least fun subject of all. I’m pretty sure that being off my depression meds caused my lack of interest in religion and quite a lot of things I used to enjoy. I loathe, loathe, loathe going to see the doctor for a refill of my prescription. I don’t really know why, it’s not like the doctor isn’t friendly. I think it breaks my illusion of being a normal, sane person so I tend to put it off for as long as possible. Putting it off this time meant going in for my pills late, which sent me into crying fits and generally being a bit of a nut. Suffice to say, you probably benefited from me not posting otherwise you’d be getting dramatic posts like ‘WHY I LONG FOR DEATH AND THE COLD OF THE GRAVE. THE CURSES THAT I PUT ON MY ENEMIES WILL MEAN THAT THEY ROT WITH ME, THEIR BLOOD POISONED BY MY SWEET REVENGE’ alternating with ‘LIFE IS WORTHLESS. I AM WORTHLESS. ALL EFFORT IS WORTHLESS’. Now I’m better though, I long for porridge with maple syrup instead of ~*A COLD, WORMY GRAVE*~ and putting the effort into making my bed is no longer ~*WORTHLESS*~. When I look back on these thoughts, it’s pretty easy to laugh at myself, which is better than being ashamed of them.

currently living

I’m not dead! (or sucked into the ether or struck down by an angry god!)

It’s not that I’m not religious any more, it’s more that it’s changed from a bit of an obsession to a regular part of my life. Plus, it’s been really hard for me to write on here, I start things but I end up storing them away because they don’t seem up to par with the wonderful content on everybody else’s blogs.

Anyway, I do have some posts planned for you guys. While I’ve been gone from the blog, I’ve made two little shrines and I’m starting a little painting. I think my posts will be done less often, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to stick to it better, rather than keeping to myself.

I’m off to reaccquaint myself with some lovely  umber paint, so goodbye for now.

ouchie

(Cypress + Lavender) + Orange peel = Smoky as hell incense that smells like forest heaven.

PS- trying to hold the charcoal disk in your hand above a candle flame while simultaneously petting your cat = singeing a nail. I ain’t got no smarts.

EQUINOX, WHAT EQUINOX?

Spring has come! The maiden is sowing the earth with the green growth of spring! I am entirely unprepared! How did I forget?!

I did Imbolc early and now I’m going to be doing the vernal equinox late. Someone come beat me with the shame stick.

EDIT: Aha! I can pull it together at the last minute. Hoorah!

• Melon and strawberry candle, laced with lime and ‘sea breeze’ oils. Placed on my scallop shell offering dish then surrounded by dried lavender, orange peel and unburned incense (it actually looked nicer than it sounds, believe me). I left it to burn out through the night.
• An offering of sparkling water, with fir needles to remind Her of the forest and sprinkled with graveyard dust to remind Her of where she left.
• Two plain rose incense sticks and a ‘sorry I’m so disorganised’ prayer.

Throughout my hasty little ritual, I just felt so light-hearted. I hardly felt anger on her side, more like ‘I wondered when you were going to notice’. It’s been so sunny and the weather has been lovely, I’m a complete dumbass for not noticing that spring is actually here.

little update

I recently met up with my mother (she lives in a different country so we rarely get to meet face to face). She is very, very much against witchcraft (she actually threw out all my beginner Wicca books, back in the day) so I had to curbmy tongue when I spoke to her, so I wouldn’t go babbling on about forbidden subjects. She also gave me some money, which presents me with a little bit of a problem (not that I’m ungrateful, I understand that I’m so incredibly lucky to have a parent who spends money on me). I can’t spend it. It’s still Lent-ish purification time for me, which means no fickle spending. I don’t have anything that genuinely needs money to be spent on it so I have no excuse. I actually foresee a huge spending spree when the equinox comes around, just because I’ll have all this saved up money and so many things that I want.

This purification isn’t just purification. Persephone really, really makes me thinks of beautifying yourself and your surroundings. She goes from just ruler and wife to spring maiden, and I think appearance is important in both of those archetypes. I suppose she’s my only ‘feminine’ god. The Bride (despite the name) and Hekate have never really seemed womanly to me, although the Bride does link to being a housewife and taking care of the home, but not in a woman exclusive way. So I’ve been trying to combine purification and beauty, while not in a damaging way. I’ve had EDNOS in the past, because of that it would be a really bad idea for me to make fasting a religious way to be beautiful through weight loss, so I have to find other methods. I’m keeping myself well groomed, making sure I’m completely put together when I leave the house, even though that’s a pretty small way to celebrate the time. I’ve reopened my closed up ear piercings (it made the weirdest ‘tfft’ sound when it punctured the skin), so I can wear little studs again and I’m hoping to increase my piercings by one. I’ll tell you about that when I actually get it done though.

ABOUT MOI

I just added a new page, full of odd little facts about yours  truely. Go read!

oh prince

After downing vodka and sour shots, I’ve found that it is frighteningly easy to hedgecross. I was sitting in the back of my friends car, with Blink 182′s I Miss You blasting into my right ear (GREAT TASTE, I KNOW) and I could feel myself get that fuzzy feeling I get when I’m about to hedgecross. It’s strange, usually I have to really want to go but then it was a smooth and almost unnoticeable transition. I had to remind myself to concentrate on the conversation. It sounds incredibly silly that I need 90s pop and vodka to hedgecross, I know (well, everyone can’t go with incense and drumming, right?).

In the drunken reverie I was in, I found out something else too. I’m not a full moon or dark moon sort of person. I like it when it’s exactly half way, when you can forget which way it’s going to turn. If magic is about changing things, then we should do it when things most seem like they can radically change, right? I don’t think I’m a ‘dark/chthonic’ or a ‘light’ person, I’ve noticed that most of the spiritual things I have an affinity for are liminal, on the border and neither one nor the other.

God, my period of abstinence hasn’t been going that well. I’ve been good money wise (I’m not very social so I don’t mind spending when I go out, it’s just shopping on the internet that sucks my money away) but I haven’t been good eating wise. I’ve been trying to reign back my eating, trying to stop myself when I’m full instead of wasting it by stuffing my face. When you’re out with friends it’s so easy to indulge yourself. Now that I’ve transgressed, I’m not sure what to do about it. I feel like doing nothing would be insulting but other than that, I have no ideas. Maybe an offering will do.

PS- I feel like having a whine about the pagan blogosphere in general but I’m afraid of coming off either bitter or judgemental. Suffice to say I’m giving some people side-eye at the moment. Suffice to say, this gif illustrates my feelings quite well.