Getting back on Epona

First off Epona is a Celtic horse goddess. Just so that mystery is solved.

Whoa Nelly!

Well thats a bit disappointing....

Better....

But I digress....

I've been going to spiritual classes again. I need them like AA meetings. They keep me focused on what is important and provide a weekly dose of perspective and time for me to tune in to my higher self.  I've really fallen off the horse with any magical practice or aspirations. I spent so much of 2013/2014 distracting myself from loss, and focusing my magical intentions on growing my business that now I have too much work to focus on any magical practice. :-/ 


So I've come to a sad realization lately (one of many, caused by major emotional upheaval. but this one is one I can actively DO something about so I'm doing it) that I am a collector of stuff. Not a packrat. I just get "all the stuff". For example:

• I have nearly every art and craft supply even if I won't have time to do the art or craft until I retire.
• I have all the witchy stuff I could ever need (really NONE of it is necessary) but never do anything with it
• I keep taking these AMAZING MIND ALTERING TRUTH BOMB classes with Rev. Mark Lyons at the Silver Broom.(completely shameless plug for my teacher). I have notebooks full of notes and spells and all kinds of awesome stuff.....that I use a little bit.

So, I get all of this stuff: books, crystals, knowledge, etc....and then do nothing with it as though it will magically (pun intended) transform my life via osmosis. Like - If I could become my highest self just by proximity I'd have become a transcendent master years ago. If I lay a book about diet and exercise under my pillow perhaps....?

The first step is the knowing.


Great. Check!


Feeling accomplished.


Today FB (who must have noticed that TimeHop is a "thing") placed an image from 2 years ago today on my feed and gave me the option of making it public for other people to see. Here is the picture.

So I turned and looked behind me to the other end of the room toward that altar. 

<face palm>

The cork board is overcrowded with papers, pictures, and quotes stuck to it. Things are dangling, things are drooping. There are unused spell packets from holidays with my coven, and unused and unfinished spells I was working on, there is candle wax on EVERYTHING and dust on top of that. 

But it was good. Because I immediately got up and started cleaning it. 

I started with the physical cleaning. Dusting, wiping down, putting away. I moved on to decluttering the cork board keeping only what was working for me and grouping like things together. Then I got to the white ceramic canister on the right. This was an impulse buy after a late night pinterest binge. The idea is that you write down the positive things that happened in the past year and put the papers inside and on New Years Eve the family goes through it to reflect on the best parts of the year. 

The entries started in the winter of 2013. Shortly after the miscarriage that nearly unraveled me.

Inside there were, sadly, only a few things. Not because so few positive things happened but because remembering IN THE MOMENT that a wonderful thing has happened and I should add it to the jar didn't happen that often. Also, I think I need to lower my standards to things like "Got out of bed today!" or "Kept food out of my cleavage at dinner". But there were some good things in there.... 

little did I know that that would be the last time it worked and
this WOULD get really bad before it was over but
I once again felt the relief I felt when I wrote that down

I posted a picture of this oven mitt on FB which for some reason made me laugh out loud. An old friend was doing one of those "click like and I will send you something special within the year" "pay-it-forward" sort of things. She saw my post and gifted me with the oven mitt. I was completely surprised and overjoyed to receive it and it still hangs on my kitchen cabinet and to this day makes me smile every time. So I wrote that down and put it in the jar.

I had this ridiculously overpriced quilt set from the Land of Nod catalog picked out for my son's bedding. I"d searched everywhere; eBay, outlets, craigslist and couldn't find its like for any cheaper. I put off moving my son to a "big boy" bed because I was trying to figure out how to get this for him (me). My mother and sister chipped in and got it for his 6th birthday and I actually cried I was so happy and grateful. So I tossed the picture I'd had on my cork board for YEARS into the jar. It felt wonderful.

I also found the folded up piece of paper that my husband wrote the total of his bonus one year which we have historically been dependent on to keep us afloat but I don't understand corporatocracy or office politic stuff so I'm going to err on the side of caution and keep that amount private. 


I would have sworn that I put a paper in when my sister conceived my nephew easily and naturally but it wasn't there. But these two were.

• A love note from my hubby. Yes, this was that much of a momentous occasion that it needed to go in the jar. Melancholic introverts aren't much for passionate flowery extolations of emotion.  This moment needed to be remembered!
• This was a BIG DEAL. We were beginning to think he was colorblind or something

I also found the zip lock bag I've kept the last keepsakes, for lack of a better word, of my last miscarriage in. I just never knew what to do with it. Or rather, I knew I needed to let go of it in a ritualistic way. I couldn't just drop it in the trash. I needed to mindfully release it. I checked my wonderful iLuna app and saw it was a dark moon. The time just before the new moon. There are as many interpretations of this time as there are witches but to me it means a lull, a silence, a blank slate, the calm before the storm of the new moons power of creation and new beginnings. A time in the circle of transformation from something which is ending right before it becomes a new beginning. Perfect.

Finally I had the time, the inclination, and the very heavens working for me. I built a fire in the yard and tossed a bunch of white sage in. I took all the old spells, things I'd prepared and then never made use of and reciting each one as though I were releasing it I tossed them into the flames. Then I tossed in contents of that bag.

• Sympathy cards from my sister, mother-in-law, and a dear friend. I reread their compassionate words and was reminded of the love I was (and am) surrounded by even though I was too deeply in my grief to feel it. 
• A wooden bracelet with a saint and a cross on it. Not my usual thing but it was given to me by someone who also struggled with infertility as a good luck talisman. I could have sworn the saint was a woman but I think it may have been St. Gerard. I'd kept it on a altar and it had gotten singed and the string broke. It could have been a sign, if you believe in signs.
• A now broken wishbone we had wished on that had something to do with the baby
• The CD from the deceptive sonogram complete with little powerful heartbeat that stopped beating just 2 weeks later. I'd been so scared until I heard that sweet sound. And then I did, and I relaxed, and I really believed it was true. :-(

It felt so good to be rid of that bag. Its been a long process and I still have my weepy moments but I'm glad I'm not carrying that small but ridiculously heavy bag around with me anymore.

Then I tossed on a bunch more sage and followed it up with some sweetgrass. For a sweeter life ahead. 

I went back to my altar, finished cleaning, did a nice little altar devotion and for a while  all felt right with the world. And I'm back on the horse.