March Pagan circle... spring is coming! - Page 3

[Aubergine68]

Sign of spring -- melty snow everywhere -- above freezing every day for a while now. And it is getting light at 6:30 am when I get up now!

Originally Posted by Teenytoona

. I always love the day you can change the calendar, I always feel it should be some sort of mini-celebration!

Me too, Teenytoona! I have a kids calender on the wall, like in preschools and we always make a big deal out of changing the months. In March, we always keep track of "lion" days and "lamb" days -- in like a lamb, here!

Hugs Wolfcat and Valerie. How are you doing today? I hope you are both feeling at least a little better.

Originally Posted by earthmama369

I'm feeling it a bit different. Where the kids are running around like loons, I'm having a hard time keeping up with my ideas and desire to create. More ideas than time or energy. I'm trying to do some writing and some needle felting every day, to harness some of this energy and actually apply it toward something rather than just spinning it off into the wind, like so many of my half-finished, never-finished projects.

I agree with DoK -- your post was inspiring! Living a creative life is the essence of magic, I think! I have been feeling it too/trying hard to do something special every day. I think about this a lot. I think a lot of the creative energy moms have goes to mothering our children, nothing more important, but if you spend a day reading and crafting and talking and listening and learning with your children, it can feel at the end of the day that there is nothing left.

Last night, my 6 yr old got out of bed yawning after bedtime and asked "What makes balls bounce? Is it because they are full of air?" and "Can you sit criss-cross-applesauce (crosslegged) if you wear metal clothes like knights?"

But then he had to go back to bed....how do you hold on to these ideas and moments? I feel like I should just ride the wave of the kids' creative thinking, sometimes, because it is so much fresher and wilder than my own. But I also feel that honoring my own is important...so I putter along with crochet and playing with beads and stones and reading and writing a bit...

There is a new book in the Dies the Fire series by S. M. Stirling -- I've requested it at the library. THe series starts as SF catastrophe that kills off most of the human race, but turns more Wiccan/Arthurian/Tolkienian with every book. This one is called The Sword of the Lady -- I think our hero and his group of 9 ("the canonical number for a quest") is going to get his Excalibur in this book. I have had mixed feelings about other Stirling novels, but I really like these ones.

Clay, I hope you find your groove today. And Maia, I hope you find your ring(s)! And Cari -- hope you get your posh coffee and your littles feel better (and boo to bank account snafus and payments not processed on time!)

Welcome KTG and Shanniesue --I like the image of a fledgling. A good one for me this spring (though it is too early here for nests and eggs, much less birds learning to fly.

Liza, your daughter sounds like so much fun.

[femme_rouge]

Originally Posted by shanniesue2

Well I haven't read the pages, yet (it's morning and I have limited time).... but I wanted to introduce myself. I'm calling myself a fledgeling pagan at the moment. Have felt a leaning toward the divine feminine and earth based spirituality for a few years, but am just now giving myself permission to really explore paganism and the goddess. I'm really enjoying my study

Anyway, I though about joining in last month's thread, but by the time I got to it, you all were like 20 pages into it, so I just decided to wait till this month. So here I am

Welcome shanniesue2 & ktg! I still feel like a fledgling even though I've identified Pagan for about 2 1/2 years now (and felt like it was just finally putting a name to something I always was). As far as studies go, I feel there's so much to learn and explore. So many paths to learn about. Welcome and enjoy your journey.

Thanks for all the kind words about our displacement. I went to an energy work class yesterday, and we did a very calming meditation to work with fear. I was able to connect a feeling of confidence with my fear of the unknown (where are we going to live, will it be in the same town...). Now, I think I need to do it 3 X a day.

Aweyn- Thanks. I'll look for some orange candles today. Sacral Chakra? I'll look into it. I'm a fledgling with energy work too.

Wombat-My kiddos will be 4 & 6 this summer. Any kid friendly events you know of off the top of your head? Sorry about the overwhelmed feeling you're experiencing. You've had so much going on with 3 young kiddos, sickness, snow, house repairs, cars and who knows what else. I think overwhelmed is perfectly appropriate IMHO. Maybe cut back to only the absolute necessities for a bit, so you could take a couple of minutes to replenish yourself? And here I just asked you for a favor-tsk tsk. Never mind on that unless it's fun.

Hope everyone's finding some balance today

[bluets]

Originally Posted by shanniesue2

Well I haven't read the pages, yet (it's morning and I have limited time).... but I wanted to introduce myself. I'm calling myself a fledgeling pagan at the moment. Have felt a leaning toward the divine feminine and earth based spirituality for a few years, but am just now giving myself permission to really explore paganism and the goddess. I'm really enjoying my study

Anyway, I though about joining in last month's thread, but by the time I got to it, you all were like 20 pages into it, so I just decided to wait till this month. So here I am

Welcome! Yes, this is a chatty bunch. Just jump right in

[Autumn Breeze]

Originally Posted by shanniesue2

Well I haven't read the pages, yet (it's morning and I have limited time).... but I wanted to introduce myself. I'm calling myself a fledgeling pagan at the moment. Have felt a leaning toward the divine feminine and earth based spirituality for a few years, but am just now giving myself permission to really explore paganism and the goddess. I'm really enjoying my study

Anyway, I though about joining in last month's thread, but by the time I got to it, you all were like 20 pages into it, so I just decided to wait till this month. So here I am

Welcome!!! You are about where I am I decided to explore it all back in November I think? It's been a fun journey so far! This thread moves FAST!!

[bluets]

without rubbing it in anymore...

WE HAVE SUN TODAY!

work just plain sucks.

i have NO IDEA how to learn this material for my homeopathy course, now that i'm not so great at memorizing... but i did learn that i kicked butt on the clinical biochem course. (but then, it was a time-unlimited, open book exam so really i should have not made the errors and omissions that i did)

i cleaned out almost all the last remaining remnants from Imbolc last night and hung up my Ostara wreath, set out some colored eggs from last year. my mom gave me our tools for making Ukrainian pysanky eggs (these ones http://www.learnpysanky.com/) so i might try that again - had tried it years ago and it is HARD.

i finally kicked the coffee habit. okie, well, this is day #3. so i'm back to slurping my root decoction to give my stressed adrenals a boost. surprisingly, i'm not missing coffee so much.

[bluets]

okie... apparently the Chilean earthquake has caused a 3" shift in the Earth's axis.

and now we get into the more esoteric consequences:
http://www.witchschool.com/forum/top...calling-on-the
http://www.witchschool.com/video/rev...o-blog-1-march

any comments?

[DaughterOfKali]

We have a nicer day today. Thank goodness. It's partly sunny and not freezing. It's still coat/jacket weather but it's not below freezing. That's a start!

Originally Posted by bluets

okie... apparently the Chilean earthquake has caused a 3" shift in the Earth's axis.

I haven't seen any news articles about that. Will have to google.

Edited to add: The computer model used by Gross and his colleagues to determine the effects of the Chile earthquake effect also found that it should have moved Earth's figure axis by about 3 inches (8 cm).

The Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis, which it spins around once every day at a speed of about 1,000 mph (1,604 kph).

The figure axis is the axis around which the Earth's mass is balanced. It is offset from the Earth's north-south axis by about 33 feet (10 meters).
(taken from yahoo news)

[DaughterOfKali]

Originally Posted by wombatclay

I woke up today feeling overwhelmed. Not suree why. I need to wrap up some pictures for the shop and post them... <snip>

But I sure am looking forward to seeing your new items!

[mamaofthree]

good morning! the sun is out again! woot! i don't care if it is still cold, i just live seeing the sun.

all of the boys are sick. wth? i think we might have picked it up at the museum of science and bacteria in boston a week ago. sheesh. so much coughing and snot! blaaah! last night i gave everyone benadryl to help with sleep and the snot. they all seemed to sleep better. now they are all running about beating each other with rolled up newspapers, playing star wars (they are light sabers).

i have been wanting and wanting for years to do some herbal study and make things. i even got a kit about a year ago (from learningherbs.com) but i have yet to even take the time to watch the video and do any of it. ugh! i want to find something to do other than nursing, but i just can't seem to figure out what i want to do... as good as my job is (i make real good money) i am completely unsatisfied. i spend most of the time i am at working doing things that i personally don't agree with. i want to feel fulfilled in my work life, but i can't seem to get the gusto to do anything different. i think i am afraid to try anything else in case i don't do it well.

ok enough of that.

h

[Wolfcat]

I do feel better today. I really hate this time of year... still too dark to get any good, consistent energy... the end is in sight, but still so far away...

But today I realized that I had no problem getting up at my normal snooze time and DS is less grumpy. Soon, the light will be getting us up earlier and earlier.

I'm still feeling the pressure from all the people who want me to do things... I don't want to do things right now... I'm hibernating still.

And then there's this guy... Me and him and a very good friend of mine are doing this informal book club. And the other night, he popped into our secret chat room and said that seeing me (my friend wasn't there) cheered him up so much that he was going to stay up an extra half hour just to chat. I don't know what to do with that...

Oh, and people keep talking about how BIG I'm getting... I'm getting a touch nervous cuz I haven't gained ANY weight, and I STILL get told I'm huge...

Oh, and I'm looking for a place where I can do a VBAC... they hide here.

But my day will be good... and filled with yummy foods... like starfruit and nachos

[DaughterOfKali]

Mamaofthree- Sorry the boys are sick.
Thinking of you, mama.

Originally Posted by Wolfcat

Oh, and people keep talking about how BIG I'm getting... I'm getting a touch nervous cuz I haven't gained ANY weight, and I STILL get told I'm huge

Maybe it's just your shape changing.

[Aubergine68]

Originally Posted by bluets

okie... apparently the Chilean earthquake has caused a 3" shift in the Earth's axis.

and now we get into the more esoteric consequences:
http://www.witchschool.com/forum/top...calling-on-the
http://www.witchschool.com/video/rev...o-blog-1-march

any comments?

Interesting question, bluets.

Not able to take time to watch the video, can't get it on this computer. What does it say? Does it mention Haiti?

I googled a bit -- when I first read your post I read it as a 3 degree shift, not 3 inches, which would be scarily huge and fast.

I dunno. I think that there are always earthquakes and they always have created minor changes, so this is nothing new? But now we have the ability to measure those changes?

Found an evocative quote in one article, a scientist saying that "what definitely the earthquake has done is make the earth ring like a bell."

So, for anyone who finds spiritual significance in an earth change like this, do you believe that the more powerful earthquake in Chile and small shift is more significant spiritually than the Haiti earthquake that took so many thousands of human lives? Because I'm a lot more concerned about Haiti, still...just glad the loss of life in Chile was not so overwhelming.

This is a serious, not a snarky question. I'm wondering now exactly where my own spirituality fits on the earth-centered vs human-centered continuum.

[Wolfcat]

Originally Posted by DaughterOfKali

I haven't seen any news articles about that. Will have to google.

Edited to add: The computer model used by Gross and his colleagues to determine the effects of the Chile earthquake effect also found that it should have moved Earth's figure axis by about 3 inches (8 cm).

The Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis, which it spins around once every day at a speed of about 1,000 mph (1,604 kph).

The figure axis is the axis around which the Earth's mass is balanced. It is offset from the Earth's north-south axis by about 33 feet (10 meters).
(taken from yahoo news)

Yay, YahooNews: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/201003...neddaysonearth

[wombatclay]

It's an interesting question... quakes and things have always caused these small shifts. The impact on day length due to the Chilean quake is less than a second. But human activity can impact the axis too... the CNN story mentions the Chinese dam project, which will have an impact on day length too (though again by less than a second). For myself, I don't really find a spiritual aspect to the shift in day length... I mean, it's so small it's not really detectible "in real life", you know? I do find spiritual significance to how people rally and reach out after tragedy though.

Interesting analogy with the bell. It reminds me of the 1811 Madrid quake... the famous quote/event was that "the bells rang in Boston". Quakes in earthquake prone areas cause problems (obviously) but when a quake hits a region where the underlying rock hasn't been fractured by centuries of smaller quakes you can get some real humdingers because the waves can travel for looooooong distances without losing much energy. I took a seismology class in college and I guess some of it stuck!

Actually, that reminds me... the question of earth action and human cost... one thing we learned in that class is how to locate a nuclear test blast. A nuclear blast creates a unique "seismic signature" and if you have a handful of measuring stations you can pinpoint the location of the blast. Once you're good at doing the calculations you can pinpoint an epicenter in moments. So really any nuclear test can be located to within a few feet within minutes of the blast. The earth itself "telling" observers where and what has happened. Same thing with specific types of earth events, but I remember the nuclear testing example most because it was so specific. It made me wonder why governments thought they needed treaties and guidelines to keep tabs on each other... the planet will literally tell the world all on it's own.

~~~~~~~
funk- I think it's spring. With the snow and the cold bugs we're still very firmly being pulled in/down but I think the first wave of up/out spring energy just washed over my head. I want the house clean and sparkling, I want a garden and flowers, I want something new. But since we're still sick, and cold, and under 2.5 feet of snow.... it's expressing itself as a funk.

I grabbed a few discounted "spring decore" items at the store while picking up groceries and I'll have Mike help me hang them tonight (wire/crystal/fabric "flower garland" that was half off).

Femme- what is your general location on the left coast? The Maker Fair in San Francisco is really kiddo friendly.... especially this year since the theme is "young makers". But I don't know if that is within your travel distance. You can PM me if you want, or just post what state/big cities you can get to. And no... no worries about overload! I think getting some things accomplished in that up/out direction will help!

[Maiasaura]

Originally Posted by bluets

i finally kicked the coffee habit. okie, well, this is day #3. so i'm back to slurping my root decoction to give my stressed adrenals a boost. surprisingly, i'm not missing coffee so much.

Why are you kicking coffee? Did I ask this before? Or is that a personal question?

Originally Posted by mamaofthree

i think we might have picked it up at the museum of science and bacteria in boston

i have been wanting and wanting for years to do some herbal study and make things.

Museum of Science and Bacteria?? Srsly, they call it that?

Tinctures and salves are surprisingly easy to make. I was intimidated, too. But you can make "folkloric" tinctures without having to be exact or measure anything.
FI, if you can do echinacea, just go to the bulk section of your HFS and get some echinacea, enough to maybe fill a quart mason jar about 1/2 way (fudge it...I think the one I have going right now is nearly full, actually), fill with vodka, and leave on the shelf for a month-six weeks. Or more. Label the day you made it. Shake every day, or whenever you think about it. Add more vodka when the level lowers. At the end of 6+ weeks, strain and voila! Echinacea tincture.
If you want to make a glycerine tincture b/c of alcohol issues (or kids ) you can measure out the tincture you made, put that plus the same amount of glycerine in a pan, and simmer it down by half (so, if you have a cup of tincture, you add a cup of glycerine, then simmer it down to a total volume of one cup). Takes most of a day. But then you have a yummy glycerine tincture
You can do it, mama! And you feel so accomplished, afterwards

Originally Posted by Wolfcat

And then there's this guy... Me and him and a very good friend of mine are doing this informal book club. And the other night, he popped into our secret chat room and said that seeing me (my friend wasn't there) cheered him up so much that he was going to stay up an extra half hour just to chat. I don't know what to do with that...

Um...enjoy it?

FR, I don't doubt that we'll find our rings...rings of some sort, anyway

[witchygrrl]

I'm so hapy it's nice out, but DD is sleeping so we're not going outside until later.

My current conundrum is whether ornot I take a job that's sort of being offered to me (it depends on whether a person who is moving also leaves the position, and whether they have enrollment to run the class--confusing!). It means an early commute to Cambridge, MA via train in the morning for 8:30, and then having my Dh meet me there, and then driving to his suburban job south of Boston, me driving home, and then picking him up in the afternoon. I don't know that it's enough money to justify the cost of the commute and the potential aggravation. But it would be money that we could use. Weird. I wish the local state college would just hire me:P I've subbed there twice now and I love it.

[DaughterOfKali]

Witchygrrl- That would be an awful lot of commuting. You'd have to be paid a pretty penny to make that worthwhile.

[mary3mama]

Oooh, March! I love March. Even if it is still cold and snowing (like here right now!) there is the anticipation of spring.

February became insanely busy and disorganized for me...everyone sick at one time or another plus new projects got started.

Maybe I can keep up with this thread now. And the treasure map one.

[bluets]

Originally Posted by Maiasaura

Why are you kicking coffee? Did I ask this before? Or is that a personal question?

it was a whim. but after almost nodding off during a seminar this afternoon, i have modified my "no coffee" deal: i will not make coffee at home but i will allow it at work, as needed

lately, the mere thought of coffee has given me a bad taste in my mouth. maybe it's just too much of the awful "burned" starbucks coffee that they have in the student union. maybe i should just walk a lot farther to get the better stuff from the local coffee shop

[bluets]

Originally Posted by witchygrrl

I'm so hapy it's nice out, but DD is sleeping so we're not going outside until later.

My current conundrum is whether ornot I take a job that's sort of being offered to me (it depends on whether a person who is moving also leaves the position, and whether they have enrollment to run the class--confusing!). It means an early commute to Cambridge, MA via train in the morning for 8:30, and then having my Dh meet me there, and then driving to his suburban job south of Boston, me driving home, and then picking him up in the afternoon. I don't know that it's enough money to justify the cost of the commute and the potential aggravation. But it would be money that we could use. Weird. I wish the local state college would just hire me:P I've subbed there twice now and I love it.

maybe it's time for a ritual... and follow-up with your contacts there to see if they are hiring more permanent positions. that kind of commuting (with spouse, in traffic, especially at the end of the day) nearly drove dh and i to divorce a few years ago. i agree with DoK - it better be good money to justify the time in the car.