Redfield & Rolfes Protection On the Way!!!

My altar is actually only a part-time altar.  When it isn’t being used for magical purposes, it’s being used as a candle making station.  But you go with what you got you know?  The desk faces South-East so the quarter candles are accurate in their direction to the center of the altar.  I made the candle holders out of scrap wood.  It isn’t very pretty but very functional.  When we get the spare room in order a more formal meditation / ritual room will be made.

Anyway, I did a protection ritual today for the two soldiers.  It was a nice quick ritual and my spell candle is burning now.  I got excited to do the ritual and forgot to engrave the candle first, but it shouldn’t affect the outcome.  I was going to engrave a protection rune and a symbol for each soldier.  I’m going to do the ritual periodically so I can get really fancy with the candle next time.  I want to do a white candle with an over dip in another color, then carve the runes in that layer so they really shine through.  It should be pretty. 

Anyway, getting off the topic.  I haven’t grounded yet from the ritual so I’m full of energy and my mind is going everywhere.  I didn’t include my wife in this one.  She was acting funny about joining me so I did this one solo.  She was wanting to watch though, so when I re-do it she can be there.  She said that she was afraid of being struck with lightning.  That’s a hoot.  You just gotta love her.

Here are a couple pics just after closing circle.

Same old same old – Daily daily

I’ve been making sure to spread the love around with my daily activities.  I have so many things I’m doing now that it’s hard to make sure I hit each one so nothing and no one gets neglected.  Some of it is pleasure, some work.  Add my spiritual studies and work studies and I’m one busy camper.

My daily tarot draws have mostly become weekly draws and I’m fine with that.  I still do my cleansing and morning prayer, then attempt meditation after dinner.  Some days it works, some days I can’t stop the chatter.  But that is all normal.

I figured I better post here and in my private journal anyway just to keep in the habit of reviewing my day and digging around in my mental flotsam for anything worth noting.  Sometimes that is when the eureka moments happen.  Answers come when you stop trying to come up with them.

Ah.  Here’s one. The dark moon is tomorrow.  My protection ritual is going to be  Thursday night for David and uh… i’m not sure I know his name, but the young gentleman who is in the navy and is going to be deployed soon. You can read about both on the SpiritsCast forums.  Pictures of both are there.

Anywho, I’m off to read a little bit and go to bed.

Bring on the Tree!

It’s been a busy weekend.  I’m so glad to go back to work. 

I did a daily draw the other day, I guess it was Thursday.  I was studying the cards and having trouble with the King of Wands.  My mother called in the middle of things and just infuriated me.  I have no patience with people who call to ask for help and then refuse to listen to anything you have to say.  I mean geez, if you didn’t want to hear what I was going to say, don’t freakin’ call me!  So I gave up and never really got back to it.  So, King of Wands.  What does it mean?  I’ll have to get back to that one at some point.

Today’s draw was the Two of Pentacles.  I was asking to be told about my day tomorrow.  It looks like I am going to have to keep an eye on things to ensure I maintain my balance.  The card shows a young man juggling 2 pentacles.  They leave a golden orange rainbow in their wake.  He is standing on the shore and a dolphin jumps behind him.  Behind the dolphin is a full moon illuminating a ship.

 I did just buy a new technical book for work and have just started digging through that.  I also just bought a new game and am playing that.  Both of these things usually occupy most of my time until I burn out on whatever activity it is.  I’ll have to make sure I don’t over do any one aspect of my life.

I started my meditation on the Air element the other day and writing in my BOS the things I come up with.  It didn’t go as planned though.  Instead of Air, I found myself in my sacred space doing a protection ritual for our son who just got to Afghanistan.  I used the protection spell that I’m going to do with my wife in a few days.  The dark moon is the 16th, so I think we’ll do this on the 17th when the moon starts to wax.  That gives me a couple days to think about how to split up the ritual so Janet can take part if she wants.  I’ll continue to send protection his way in the coming months while he’s deployed.

Put your elemental toys away

I’m wondering if I forgot to dismiss the water element when I was done with my cleansing one day a couple weeks ago because it is messing with me.  Actually, my disposal was 11 years old and finally started leaking.  We just didn’t notice for a week or so.

Janet noticed yesterday that our garbage disposal had been leaking for the past couple weeks.  We didn’t notice because we don’t get under the sink very often.  The whole area was covered in water and mold.  The disposal itself looks like it corroded through and was leaking water through the hole.  I replaced the disposal today, but I had to go to 2 different stores to find a decent one.  On top of that, it was raining this morning and turned to snow this afternoon so the side roads were a bit slick.  It took me 2 hours to get home.

After replacing the disposal and eating dinner we finished boxing up 9 gift boxes.  I logged on to the US Postal Service’s site and printed up shipping labels for all of them and arranged for a doorstep pickup of all 9 boxes tomorrow morning.  Great tip for those of us in the states.  If you go to usps.com and print shipping labels, you get a discount and can arrange for pickup.  No messing with long lines at the post office.    It’s pretty sweet.

it’s now 11:45 and I’m finally finished with everything.  I did accomplish a morning prayer today, but that is all.  I’ll do one more meditation tomorrow on Earth then move on to Air.

What a day.

Yule er uh Christmas Gifts

We finished up our Christmas gifts for the family yesterday.  The creativity and effort was offered up to the Gods, and we had a great couple days.  We decided on white wax.  The white palm crystalizes into a lovely pattern that looks a bit like snow.  The top… well here.  Pictures speak louder than words. 

They will be wrapped in a holly bag with drawstring boxed and mailed in a couple days.  It was a fun project and the aroma is nice.  The scent oil contains both pine and hints of berry and was very nice to come home to today.  The excess wax was put into tea lights for Janet to burn around the house.  I have a lot of the fragrance oil left over, so I’ll wind up making a few more for around the house for Christmas break.  Possibly even some for Etsy if I can convince Janet to paint some more jars.  It’s getting a bit late for Etsy but they might still sell before Christmas.

I did my standard morning cleansing and prayer this morning and a meditation on Earth a few minutes ago.  I’m not coming up with any correspondences for Diety or Herbs but then I don’t work with either one.  I’m open to anything sent my way however, so we’ll see what comes to me.

One last thing, my step-son David ships out tomorrow.  He is with the Marine Corp and this is his first deployment, so if you can send some protective energy his way that would be awesome.  I’m going to try to come up with a protection ritual that Janet and I can do together if she is willing.  I’ll do it myself if she isn’t, and will be sending protective energy his way while he’s deployed, but I think it might be cool for her to see a circle and a spell being cast first hand.  I haven’t approached her about it yet, I just had the idea in my meditation tonight so honey… tweety pie… love of my life… if you’re reading this, what’cha think?

That’s it for tonight.  Torchlight awaits!  It’s a rockin Diablo clone.  Any RPG gamers out there drooling for the next Diablo game release, this one should satisfy your craving for a couple weeks or so.

Blessings, Love and all that brings you Joy
HedonsDog

Correspondences – My initial list

What a good Saturday.  I spent the whole day with my wife gathering up the things we’ll need to make Christmas gifts for our family.  We like to make our gifts each year instead of buying them.  It’s a lot more fun and means so much more when they’re made by hand I think.  This year, we are both applying our individual artistic skills on each piece.  We are sending out Holly Berry scented candles and I  frosted the top inch of each jar and Janet is painting holly branches with berries around the frosted section.  The candle itself is made from Palm wax with natural wicks and is all natural (with the exception of the scent oil and dyes of course).  We are going to play around with the colors.  I think we’re going to make the candle white.  This will look like glistening snow because of the crystal patterns that form when the wax dries.  It should be lovely.  We might also play around with doing green candles on the bottom 3/4 of the candle with white on top.  That might look nice as well.  We’ll see how that turns out.  I am also going to make polymer clay holly leaves with berries on the lid of each jar so these should be wonderful.

Anyway, I just sat down and jotted down a list of correspondences in my B.O.S. for each element.  I’m going to do a brief meditation to see if I can come up with more.  This actually times well with my other course.  The December lesson is all about finding the correspondences with Earth so the two are in sync at this point. 

I’m about to do a brief meditation, then dedicate some creativity to Diety.  I’m going to see about making holly leaves and berries for the candle lids. 

Blessings to all, and here is my initial list.

Earth

Soil, trees, rocks and plants, salt, wood
North
Pentacle
Strength, physical self, wealth
Goddess, female
Planet Earth
Midnight, fall

Air

Air, Clouds, Smoke, Incense
East
Wand / Tarot Sword
Beginning, awaking, logic
Dawn, spring

Fire

Fire, Incense, Steel
South
Athame, Sword / Tarot Wand
Passion, will, creativity
God, Male
Mars, summer
Noon 

Water

Oceans, rivers, streams, ponds
West
Chalice, Bowl
Birth, emotion
Goddess, Female
Dusk, winter

Homework

The new episode is available, so I guess I should do my homework before listening to it and doing the indexing, so here goes.  I guess I should specify that my beliefs are currently in flux and a bit fuzzy.  I’m still zooming in on what exactly I believe.

• Diety has 2 aspects that are present in all things.  The Lord and Lady.
• Masculine and Feminine aspects of Diety are traits or influences present, not necessarily actual entities.
• The Lady is the prevalent energy in the Earth, plants, the Moon and the Stars.
• The Lord is the prevalent energy in the Sun, Sky and the animals.
• Both Feminine and Masculine energies are necessary for all things to be in balance.
• There are 5 elements.  Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and also Akasha.
• All things primarily align to one of the elements.
• Everyone and Everything is part of a greater unknowable whole.
• Effecting any 1 small thing effects the whole.

Now I’m off to listen to the newest episode, do a quiet meditation and write in my paper journal.  I’ve been neglecting it since I’ve been writing out here so it’s time to get it updated.  If time permits, I might also do a tarot draw.

The moon is almost full!!!

I did my daily cleansing and prayer this morning.  It took me a while to build up enough energy to start singing this morning, but I eventually got there.  It was a good day at work.  I figured out why I couldn’t figure out the sample program I was looking at and wound up not looking at it at all.  I’m off to a good start making my calendar control and will see if I can make it look just like outlook tomorrow.  Janet made Chicken & Noodle Soup from scratch today and it was yummy.  I did my podcast indexing work for the night and I just did my nightly meditation.  Oh yeah, I did go out to podcast alley and voted for 20+ pagan podcasts so you guys and gals go out there and show some love to the podcasters.

Sorry, nothing exciting today to talk about.  The moon will be full tonight at 2:30 am.  That’s kind of exciting.  I’m going to go out for a few minutes and bask in the moonlight.  It’s such a clear night.  I’m not going to be out there for long though, it’s 41 degrees currently and I’m in my jammies.  I wish I lived out in the country, gazing at the moon just isn’t the same in suburbia.

Thats all for tonight.

Back to work

This morning started nicely.  I did my shower cleansing but it’s still not feeling quite right.  I’m having trouble with the visualization.  Instead of persuing that, I did a morning prayer, welcomed the Lord and Lady to the new day and invited them to join me.  I took advantage of my morning drive today and spent it in song. 

1) Come By the Hills – to set perspective for the day.  “The cares of tomorrow must wait till this day is done”.
2) Freya, Skakti – to connect to, and to honor Diety.
3) Hills of America – for pride in my country.

I was full of energy by the time I made it to work and started in to this new project.  Ah frustration.  The sample program I downloaded was confusing as all get-out and wasn’t even working properly.  I wasn’t able to glean from that the knowledge I was looking for, so tomorrow I start from scratch and learn how I learn best.  By playing.  I’m tasked with building a calendar control in silverlight to be used in several places in our system for the geeks among us.  It’s going to be much fun, but I don’t know silverlight just yet.  I’m about to do a meditation (with music this time) but I’m going to skip the daily tarot draw I think.  I’ll do one tomorrow.

While I’m thinking about it, thanks for your input on my last draw Feith, I love hearing different viewpoints and things I may have missed.  I’m mulling over your comments and will be looking back over mine tomorrow.

Daily Draw Fool

The long weekend is over and I go back to work tomorrow.  My daily routine was fit in where I could, but it was light.  It was more important to spend time with Janet over the past 4 days.  I did meditate a couple times but my normal water cleansing hasn’t been feeling right to me lately.  I haven’t really left the house much so maybe there hasn’t been a need.  I do want to try the cleansing that Feith suggested. 

Hey sweety, I still want to call you Fey.  I usually type your name  with a backspace in the middle.   No matter how you spell it, it is still pronounced awesomesauce. 

Anyway, back to my last 4 days.  My meditation today was pretty rocky.  The old trick didn’t work but I didn’t have any music going.  I also tried to meditate before doing my daily draw and various journals.  I think the combination of placement and no music was preventing me from staying quiet.  That’s ok.  I’ll get back to a normal routine tomorrow most likely.

I’m starting a new project tomorrow at work, so I asked to be informed on how that project will go.  Here is a copy of my Tarot journal entry.

Spread – Cross of Truth
Question: Advise me on my project at work which starts tomorrow

1 – Basis: Knight of Pentacles
2 – Desires: Lovers
3 – Helpful: Four of Swords
4 – Opposing: Five of Cups
5 – Outcome: The Fool

Basis – Knight of Pentacles: The knight sits on his horse in a forest.  The horse is dressed in green with blue reigns.  The knight carries a pentacle shield and wears golden armor.  He carries a golden lance with a green ribbon and is looking to the left.  A rabbit is in the foreground and appears unafraid.  The knight is on guard, keeping a watchful eye but doesn’t appear to be in battle.  He and his horse are dressed to finely for battle.  According to the book, the knight can be relied upon and trustworthy.  As an event, it represents something you have been waiting for.  I have been waiting for a project to begin and I begin one tomorrow, using new technology so I will be learning something new.

Desires - Lovers: A warrior is holding a scantily clad woman in the air by her thighs.  It is night and stars are out.  The moon shines down upon them as they stand in the sea.  Dolphins are playing in the background.  This card represents a blissful relationship and the colors represent passion.  Since I was asking about my project, I’m thinking this card represents my desire to regain my passion for my work.

Helpful – Four of Swords: A knight lies upon a bed colored in red, yellow and orange.  The brick wall beside him is orange signifying passion.  Above the knight are 3 swords point at his chest in threat.  Below the knight at the ready is another sword.  The helpful message here is that the knight is ready to defend himself when threatened.  The book indicates a period of rest.  I missed the message of the knight lying down initially.  I have been between cycles at work and the downtime has made me eager to get back into my job.  This is helpful to me as I will be eager to get back to being productive.

Opposing - Five of Cups: A knight is kneeling in a meadow with a weary look upon his face.    His hands are clasped in front of his face and he looks like he is ready to give up.  Beside him are 3 cups toppled over.  Behind him are 2 cups still standing.  The message here is one of exhaustion.  I will feel the strain of my responsibilities and may want to give up.  However, reserves of strength are waiting if I just look for them.

Outcome - The Fool:  The fool is juggling the symbols of the zodiac with one foot twirling a ring and a baton.  The fool is able to be playful and also juggle the signs of the zodiac without dropping one.  The outcome of this reading is showing that I can do the same.  Juggle the serious aspects of my life without losing my playful nature.  The book indicates that unexpected opportunities will suddenly appear that can bring welcome change, and to remain open to making a major choice.  Based on that, I may be seeing the successful completion of this project bring an unexpected opportunity my way.