The directions and elements

The 4 elements pot, showing the side of fire. To the left is water as a waterfall, and to the right air (a butterfly)...and on the opposite back side, a cave demonstrates the element of earth.

Where do you learn how to cast a circle with calling the 4 basic elements and the five directions?

Celtic paganism has been rediscovered in the last century, and is built upon the best of imaginary rites that probably have a few roots in the rituals that existed prior to the Burning Times of the Inquisition. Neo-pagans everywhere use somewhat the same ideas, calling upon the 4 cardinal directions with attributes that are similar to each. The 5th direction is center. North American natives have their ways...and we borrow from them many times. A Medicine Wheel has the four basic directions, as well as many others.

When asked about why a circle has the directions called, and where that came from, I referred to several of my favorite sources...but there are many more. Starhawk was my first teacher, in "The Spiral Dance." Barbara Walker gave many easy to read rituals, and Patricia Monaghan offers delicious descriptions of seasonal celebrations. These yearly holy rituals are designed to create sacred space.

Sacred space is simply a space apart from the regular world of our duties, obligations and sense of self. We can get in touch with a deeper Self when we set aside a place and time to cast the circle. If you get a sense of spiritual renewal when meditating or in church, this is very similar...and doesn't depend upon a mandated method of procedures. Each circle becomes the place and time that the participants create...and each is totally different.

The basics are the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and what these elements suggest to us humans.

Photo by Annie...thanks for reminder of our fire pit for Imbolc this year.

Fire is a source of heat, our passions, and represents the direction of the south.

A goddess of old, whose wings suggest the air element. Air is the element of quick movements, communications, and our breath...and comes from the East.

The water element is delightful, whether to drink, play with, or just look at. Water also reminds us of how we float in our dreams, and is represented by the West.

Earth element reminds us of chemicals, rocks, concrete, mountains, and the wisdom of the Earth Mother. The north is where to look for the Earth element.

Center of every circle includes the third dimension of a circle...creating an orb or sphere by going up and down, not just around on a flat plane. The Center is grounded where our feet stand, as well as gifted from the heights that extend into outer space.

I've been part of many circles, and it wasn't until I stopped reading someone's scripted "calling of the directions" that I learned what they really mean...different things to each of us, different suggestions each time a circle is cast. The whole idea isn't to do things "right" but to express your inner self in creating a place for having something special. We each are responsible for that creation, and for how special it may be.

Of course, this is just one woman's opinion!

snow day

I think those are cat paw prints...but I began to think perhaps a coon had come visiting. I've never seen one here. I think their paws are slightly longer than the little rounds that cat toes have.

Anyway, it's been below freezing all day, and we just had a few fluries again this afternoon, though the sun was warming the walk enough that some of the snow next to the house melted. But now it's getting dark, and will be colder yet.

So I'm really tired of being on the computer, doing various work related things, which felt like I accomplished something. Moving little bits of data around is a soothing almost mindless task. Of course making mistakes proves I'm a bit more mindless than the task required!

So I'm going to have dinner, watch news, and maybe do some knitting. I need to move around...whow my stomach is complaining that I've sat in one position most of the day!

I'm sorry the class had to be cancelled because the roads aren't all safe...though I imagine the main ones are. But my driveway is probably the worst one I'd have to tackle. Glad to skip that. But the class has been rolling really well, so the momentum may fall back a bit now. With 20 women coming, that's not the end of the world. Only one person chose to do something else with her time since our first class. We even have several people who keep saying they want to join us. I don't know how they'll feel about coming into the group now...but I know it will be ok with me.

past Imbolc

As the wheel of the year turns from coldest darkest days to Bridgett's bringing forth light again, Imbolc just passed and I am glad to see that the sun doesn't set quite so early. And when the cats wake me up, often the sky has started to be light outside. The ice had almost melted yesterday when I walked around the lake (not when this picture was taken...!)

I am quiet now, and finding my way into being householder, keep my cozy home comfortable and clean. This is the hardest thing I'm currently doing...being aware that my environment that I make is also a creation, not just a "maintenance." I give this to myself as self-love. I need that a lot these days. Usually January/February are the times I get depressed each year. It was good to sit in sunshine for 2 hours yesterday during the ritual.

I was so happy to be part of a ritual at a new friend's home for Imbolc. The smoke from the fire bothered me a lot of the time, but hey, I was just being gifted as the goddess chose, so I took what came my way. And I'm going back to sing with some women at the dark of the moon.

My lovely new friends who live near me on Allen Mountain invited me to a Super Bowl party. It was fun, though several of us were definitely not football fans. I brought my knitting and was the only single person there, as well as the oldest, as well as a pagan with this little goddess symbol on my brow that I'd forgotten (purposefully perhaps) to wash off after the Imbolc ritual. At any rate, I didn't know anyone but the hosts, but then realized I'd met most of the others there, or they were friends of people I knew. It felt like 6 degrees of separation time...mostly through UU, but some through the BMCA (Center for the Arts).

So by the time I closed my eyes last night, I'd met several dozen new beautiful people at the two events I attended. And I had conversations with a lot of them. I also liked that I was following my own beliefs, even around the football crowd. The women seemed interested in hearing about Imbolc and Bridgett.

So to support these beliefs, I'll continue to work on the Cakes class, and hope that we (Byron and I) can provide the 20 of us women with an avenue to serve our own budding feminism and curiosity about the goddess in her many forms.

Snow is forecast for tomorrow, but the weather feels like it's immanent.

Keptain has had a good appetite for the last several days. Perhaps my own rice/chicken mixture added to the cats' food has helped. They both greet me with eyes that say they are starving, and can each put away a small meal 3-4 times a day. As often as I put it out, they chomp it up. Muffin has shown lots of weight gain, but Keptain hasn't. But he's also not having as many hair balls, so that's good I guess.

The Queen of Heaven

I've worked for over a month, off and on, doing a sculptural female figure. Lots of time-off during the holidays, then mid-January I came back to the BM studio to work. I only put in an hour the first few days I got to work (there were about 4 days that the studio was closed).

Then I finished the work, and am waiting for her to dry. As this happens, some small fractures have appeared, so this is not only a slow process, I'm doing some repairs with vinegar while waiting. Thanks to AJ for showing me how to use his little "rubber eraser" type tool. I'm calling her the Queen of Heaven, since she's different than all goddesses I've heard of, has wings, wears a crown of flowers and stars, and that's the name of the class I'm co-teaching right now.

In the meantime, I'm throwing with this same clay, the low-fire earthenware. I liked it for doing lots of sculptural things, and am just finding out how it throws. Pretty well, and since it's low fire, I'll be using store-bought glazes. But it does have a nice pure white body when it's fired to cone 06-04...much like porcelain, but of course not quite as vitrified (though it has had some ping when I've used it before).

The other good news is that there's a date and time set for the Raku class, which I've been waiting to take. Whoopee. I remember doing Raku in class at UF, and did several pots which are still around somewhere (I think). I enjoyed seeing DeSoule's workshop, as well as all his rather wonderful work...so I'm just hopping up and down like crazy.

Though there are more potters per square inch (mile?) in North Carolina, I feel pretty good about myself. I'm gladly tossing away the pieces that aren't good enough. Tai would be proud of me, because last year I would keep just about everything. Perhaps his influence has rubbed off. Or perhaps I'm tired of having all those mediocre pots lying around...some of which went to the hammer, and are now on the bottom of the fish tanks...and some are nice enough to be boxed up because of emotional attachments.

I hope someday to have a special part of my home to display just a few pots nicely. Not today however, cause my home is the most neglected part of my life right now. If it were my kid, they'd take it away for not caring for it enough. Something about householder identity crisis...or just laziness. Hopefully with Imbolc, I'll be more interested in my environment. Freezing cold must also contribute to it, because I do wish I could open a window to have fresh air sometimes.

OK, enough just talking to myself. There's only so much self-serving I can stand!

Goddess of technology

So who is this lovely diva? We were trying to call upon her the other night to find answers...which is when I usually think of "who is the goddess of this problem? Well, we sure have lots who are there for childbirth. And hearth and home.


Guess we need to kind of merge some aspects of several together.
I'm thinking Quan Yin for her mental acuity. Spider woman needs to lend us her web for the www that carries so many of our messages to each other. And other air goddesses, birds, those who come from the East...mental wisdom, perhaps even Sophia or her granddaughter (whoever we might name her).




Just some musings today. It's been so warm and sunny, what a blessed day! Just to let us know that the lake full of ice still won't be there forever.

This is a full time position, and all goddesses may apply. She needs to be awake and attentive 24/7, grounded enough to deal with all the electrical energies that flow through her, perhaps more along the lines of crystalline power from our earth mother, as those silicon chips were originally, not too dreamy or watery, because that would short out some circuits, and fast at intellectual endeavors!

Cakes for the Queen

Our first class last night was very well attended, and proceeded without any major glitches. Byron Ballard did an excellent job of guiding us here and yon...as we explored ancient goddess worship which existed around 35,000 years ago (or maybe that was 70,000?) No matter to me, I'm not very exact with numbers. The thought that stayed in my mind was that this culture with a goddess deity existed for tens of thousands of years longer than the one we've been in for only a few thousand years.

We forgot to describe the shells as being the progression of goddesses through time, each one representing a 5000 year step...the shells were arranged around the altar. But when we did explain it, we also gave everyone the more linear time line that wasn't quite as "goddessy" (can that be a word?) which also picked up some of the major archaeological finds...like Venus of Willendorf, and Goddess of Laussel, etc.

We also explored our own body image by a guided fantasy and then discussing our feelings about ourselves. Since we had such a big group, not everyone got to share, so we'll probably break into smaller discussion groups next class.

I particularly like this goddess who depicts a powerful woman, probably delineating the 13 months of the year by the marks on her carved moon. As all women know, we have periods every 4 weeks or so for the part of our adult lives when we can bear children, and there are 13 full moons every solar year. Too bad someone came along and made a 12 month calendar...especially since they named these months after Roman rulers no less. Why? Gee, I bet it had to do with civilization becoming patriarchal.

Incidentally these photos are not from the Cakes curriculum, which has a lovely full color slide show for each of the first 5 classes. Good job, Women in Religion of the Unitarian Universalist Association! This revised curriculum is wonderful.

Having 2 felines (what species is in doubt) on either side as she gives birth, must have made this goddess purr-ty happy. Carved in stone, this is just a line drawing of this figure from Catel Huytek in what is now Turkey. I got a kick out of how the archaeologists report this goddess was found in a grain bin. So? Does that supposedly mean something? Perhaps that was a safe place to keep it once the goddess started to be threatened by, you guessed it, a patriarchal religion. Or maybe she was charging the grain for seeds for the next year's crop. The powers of magic were probably more part of everyday life, or perhaps not.

Anyway, I'm glad to be working with Byron to conduct this series for women of the 21st Century.

Goddess vs science

There are so many wonderful ideas, intuitions, creations, that all hark back to the goddess in her many aspects.

I happened to be looking at National Geographic photos, and somehow got some NASA photos of the moon...
which we all have to admit has something to do with not only tides, but Womyn's cycles.
Our last full moon was at perigie...the largest full moon because it was so close to earth.

Then I started reading about how the various names the Native Americans gave to different full moons were no longer relevant. They belonged to myth, not to our scientific era.

I felt like the "button-down" mentality (including pocket protectors) was still saying that being close to nature meant you just didn't count, you weren't of value, like NASA is.
Was.

I quickly removed my bookmark from that site. I don't get a thing out of looking at pictures that have that kind of background.

There must be scientists who also believe in the ideas I do...that nature, the earth and Gaia, that the moon and Luna, that womyn who are in tune with their menstrual cycles, that intuition, feeling, creativity, mythology, and the honor of Native traditions...are the most valuable insights to have about our world and universe.

If there aren't, then they are really sad.

I've always loved hearing what Scientific American had to say...because they print things that are just hypotheses, and they change them as science sees that their ideas have to change. I remember (yep, this dates me) that the world didn't have plate techtonics (the theory that our continents actually drift across the face of the globe) when I was studying Geography in college...but shortly after that it became the accepted idea. It had been proposed many years before, but it wasn't until the 60's that it became proveable, or at least "in favor" again.

Since then Gaia has become fashionable with all the Green environmental needs. Thanks to our political acceptance (perhaps too late) of the "Inconvenient Truth," our scientists as well as those who love nature, may end up holding hands eventually.

I'm personally excited about dark matter. I'm excited about CERN.

This doesn't stop me from loving the traditions and myths that honor the goddess. For me, they are just different glasses to wear, like bifocals kind of. I have to remember some scientists worship at the altar of evolution. They sometimes are kind of like Oroborus's, eating their own tails, because they tend to use their own theories to explain the next theories...a shakey proposition.

It strikes me when I am being very Zen, and paying attention to the world around me with "awareness" that this philosophical view lets me see the natural world, but it's an entirely different examination of the things I see from the scientist next to me, looking at the same things with the glasses of details, cause & effect, genetics, engineering, biology etc.

I guess I'm feeling the saddness that philosophy doesn't meet science easily. It sure does give me some stomach aches. But I remember in "What the Bleep Do We Know?" that the observer is influencing what is being observed, or created. I'm probably just observing the observer myself. My hall of mirrors reflecting infinity. My inner mystic is very comfortable with my inner questor...I'm a mystical experimenter.