thoughts from a threshold » me (bio, site info)

A quick note

Jenett — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 23:56:47 +0000

It’s been quiet here – and it’s going to continue for a little bit. Earlier this month, I accepted an awesome new job that will be taking me from Minnesota to Maine, and I’ll be moving over the weekend of July 30th.

I have lots of things I want to say about preparing for a move, and about finding and connecting with new Pagan resources in a new area, but I keep not managing to write any of them down yet. Hence, this note to say why – and that I’ll be picking up with writing as I get a little bit more time/focus back.

If there’s stuff you’d particularly love me to talk about, feel free to comment, and as always, that’s often a good way to inspire me to write something in specific relatively quickly. (No promises, but your chances are good.)

Ten years perspective

Jenett — Mon, 30 May 2011 02:58:05 +0000

About ten years (and two weeks) ago, I went to the first Seeker class with the group I would later join. It met in the back room of a coffee shop that isn’t there anymore, and several of the teachers left the group a few months later for various reasons.

It was not my first introduction to Paganism, or Wiccan-based practice, or magic. After all, I’d been reading fantasy books with characters who were Pagan for quite a while. I’d had some powerful experiences in college that lead me to explore some basic magical concepts like centering and grounding.

And I’d always believed that the Gods were many and varied, notes and strands of melody singing out in the cosmos in infinite combination, as only someone who was raised on daily stories of Greek mythology can.

I’d also taken my time.

I’d been an active Catholic throughout high school and college (after becoming Catholic when my parents returned to Catholicism when I was 13). There was a lot I’d loved about my college Catholic community, in particular, but I also had frustrations. (The role of women in the church. A desire to create ritual, not just facilitate it. A growing certainty that my GLBT and polyamorous friends were not doing something wrong or sinful, but something that was often complicated, given society’s biases, but something that could be and often was joyous, loving, and wonderful.) There are still things I think many Catholics get right, and do wonderful things with – but it’s a place I visit, and chat with, not a place I could live.

I was approaching 25, engaged, working at my second job after college, going to grad school part time. I’d moved halfway across the country the year before, and I’d taken the time to figure out what I wanted out of my religious life.

After a lot of reflection, I knew I was a happier person when structured complex ritual was a part of my life (at least sometimes). I wanted a path that included music in some way. That worked with the polytheistic view of my world. Something that had a cohesive way to explain some of the magical and energetic experiences I’d had. And something that could help me … be better. Do better. Learn more.

I looked at other religions, too. But I kept circling back to some strand of Paganism.

And so, I found myself in the same place as hundreds, thousands of people before me. I’d read some books. I’d browsed Witchvox. I’d wandered and lurked through alt.religion.wicca and alt.religion.wicca.moderated on Usenet, and various mailing lists. I’d gone to a few public rituals in the community, and gotten a better sense of what I really wanted. I’d sent out some emails (embarassing ones, in hindsight, but hey.)

Three separate people ended up pointing me at a particular group, also on my short list from that Witchvox research. And so I said “Eh. Let’s try them first.” And then had to wait until they offered introductory classes at a time that fit with my grad school schedule.

And so, that May, I found myself in that room, with a dozen other people, and four or five people from the group, depending on the week. Over the five classes in the series, the number of students got smaller. (That’s pretty common in things of this kind.) I heard a lot of things I already knew. (Book knowledge has never been the problem for me.) But I was listening, more, to “Is this a place I could see myself? Are they doing things that will stretch me in the right ways?”

I thought they were. And now, ten years later, I’m even more sure of that.

(I should note here: I don’t think my path is everyone’s path. In fact, I think it’s the right fit for very few people. I’m a lot more interested in helping people figure out what their thing is, the thing that makes their spirit sing and dance and delight the way mine has.)

Those ten years have brought amazing changes to me. I got married – and divorced. I dedicated with the group in September, initiated in early 2003, and went on to gather in my second and third degrees. I hived off to form a new group – ok, that one is still in process, because the rest of my life needs to settle. But I look forward to that.

And in between, my life’s shifted and changed. I’ve gained a relationship with two deities very near and dear my heart, in ways that I would never give up, even though I still have a hard time talking about it. And a number of other deity relationships that, while less immensely personal, I treasure and delight in.

I’ve had ritual experiences that fundamentally changed how I viewed the world, in the best possible ways, that gave me more understanding of myself, of what I could offer, of what I could become given a nudge into the void in the right direction.

I’ve had the privilege of being part of other people’s spiritual learning. I taught Seeker classes myself for the better part of four years, was the primary teacher for Dedicant classes for a year, wrote a number of rituals, and have had endless conversations online (as well as writing a lot of supplementary and discursive commentary.) Some of which people say is very useful.

And I’ve been part of other people’s initiations, an experience I always treasure and am humbled by. I’ve also seen other friends move away from Paganism, into paths that call their hearts, and considered it a part of my job as their friend to help them think about that in all the ways that lead to a clear decision, not the one I might prefer.

And somewhere in there, I’ve learned to actually have visuals in my meditations, and explain how I sense and experience energy to people who don’t hear it. I’ve figured out (mostly) how to pace teaching for people who are not like me in how they learn. And I know where a lot more of my own personal sore points and foibles are, and what to do about them so they stay my problem, not someone else’s.

And if the mark of a healthy spiritual life is in the connections it brings me, my life is infinitely richer now than it was those ten years ago. The deity relationships, of course, are a delight, even when they’re also a challenge. My friendships aren’t always local, but they run deep and true and strong. And there are these people, my tradmates, who I don’t always agree with – but who I love, and cherish, and know will always be a part of something dear to me. And while stuff was not always smooth and peaceful around the time I hived, I’m particularly proud of the fact that I’ve kept good relationships with the group I trained with. (And I deeply enjoy visiting them when I get the chance.)

I also look back, from this perspective, and wonder.

I’ve spent five years on the board of a local Pagan project (Twin Cities Pagan Pride), where I was part of the board that took the event to a two day event, got 501(c)3 status in our own right, and most recently have shifted to an outdoor fall festival (the public education part), and a brand new event in the spring focused on creating a space for the Pagan community to come together and share and challenge and learn (that does not involve camping…) That’s pretty neat stuff, all by itself. Helping to create a brand new moment, an event that brought people joy and wonder and learning – that’s what I live for.

I’ve written rituals, and been part of debugging others. I’ve helped friends through major medical and personal difficulty with far more patience and flat out usefulness than I would have ever imagined I had. I’ve held people when they cried, and given them help that let them face challenges in new ways. I’ve written an absurd amount, but every time I write, I get better. I’ve pummelled my brain to figure out a new way to explain something to a student or groupmate who was struggling, and I’ve done my best to figure out how to resolve conflicts in a way that was effective but compassionate.

And I’ve gotten my share of nasty emails, insults, dismissals, and much more. And of course, some places I’ve failed. Some of it well deserved, mind you. (As I noted above, I am not perfect.) And I certainly have my frustrations: with myself, with community issues, with patterns and cycles that I don’t need to repeat. I’ve had friendships change and drift away that I miss and wist for – while knowing that part of that has to do with ways I failed, somehow.

There are two things I most treasure about my religous and spiritual life these days, and a couple of others that continue to delight me.

First, that I have (as you might guess given that the word ‘phoenix’ shows up in both group names in the tradition) a number of tools for self-transformation and growth that I can use to change things in my life. That doesn’t mean those changes are instant (the past year is painful evidence of that). And it doesn’t mean I’m in control of the process.

But I feel like my training, my group work, my tradition, has given me experience enough to walk to the edge of the cliff, and jump off, and trust I’ll find my wings before I hit the ground. Not that I do that carelessly, of course. But I did it for each of my three initiations (just as it was part of the process of finding a group in the first place). And it’s lead to my facing a complicated and challenging job search, and some miserable health circumstances with a lot more grace and dignity than I would have thought even five years ago.

Doesn’t mean everything goes my way. But it does mean I tend to be less miserable in the process.

Second, I delight in having a wide range of tools at my disposal. Sabbat ritual? Simple. Meditation to help with a particular issue? Probably have one I can edit up fast. Daily or regular personal practices? Got a good sense of what might and might not help for a given situation. Ability to create my own solid, meaningful, effective ritual space and do what I need to? Yep. And a fair bit more.

It’s not that I know everything – but I feel pretty competent in a general sort of way. (What an elder deep in my affection refers to as being a professional trained stunt priestess.) It’s a lot like my other vocation, my profession. I don’t know everything there is to know about being a librarian, either. But I have a pretty good idea of what kinds of stuff I don’t know, and where it might come back to bite me, and what to do about that if it starts becoming relevant.

And that’s a pretty amazing place to be living. Lots of people don’t get here.

Then there’s the delight. Those perfect shivers of time where everything clicks in a ritual, and the chant and the incense and the colors and shapes, and the people beside you all slide into place and echo down the years. Those moments of perfect clarity in the service of M’Lady and her Lord. The inspirations of creating a chant, a ritual moment. A burst of flame from flash powder one Mabon, of the sun rising over the east bank of the Mississippi with the Morris Dancers dancing the sun up (a part of my personal practice).

Not all the moments are glorious. There’s the eternal downpour of one Beltane, where I thought I’d never get dry and my shoes squelched for days. The ritual where I worked so hard anchoring that I slept for nearly a day solid afterwards. The difficulties of any group of people doing complicated things that expose sore spots and weaknesses and frustrations. And, very occasionally, people doing things that had no excuse, that left their scars on those I care for. But all those things taught me something I would not wish to lose, too.

There were, also, of course, many hours of homework, of practice, of doing things that didn’t quite work, didn’t quite click, trying to figure out what I was missing. Of cleaning the temple when I’d rather be doing any number of other things. And there were those moments of frustration when I didn’t live up to my own standards, or let someone down. Of not knowing what to do about something, or not doing what I knew I should.

But we pick up, and we go on. When religion works, it helps us change and grow and become better, more glorious, brighter in the world.

There are things I know now I didn’t know five years ago, or even three. That’s as it should be. And it makes me wonder what I’ll know in early 2013, ten years from my initiation. Or in five years, or ten.

What I hope is that the richness, the delight, the wonder, the awe that are part of my life now are more so then. That there’s a greater stability and deep roots to anchor the work and writing and teaching and sharing I want to do, both as a librarian and as a priestess. That I’ve had a chance to learn more things, and be surprised, and do more things I’d never dreamed of.

And I really wonder what the larger Pagan communities will look like then, and what I’ll be particularly passionate about doing in them. I’m looking forward to finding out.

Fresh eyes, no lightning

Jenett — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 03:59:06 +0000

I’ve just come home from my first visit at a Catholic Mass since Easter of 2000. A dear friend of mine was joining the Catholic church, and very much wanted me to be there, and so I was.

(My basic take is that I am happy when people I love find religious communities and lives and connections that enrich their lives, help them deal with the hard times, celebrate the good times, and make some sense out of the rest of it, and I do not care which traditions those happen to be. I am, of course, happier that my friend was doing this in a very social-justice focused parish, and deeply amused that her sponsor and other RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults – how adults become Catholic, basically) folks knew she was inviting a priestess and witch, and were all quite glad to meet me.))

Anyway, it was definitely fascinating, for several reasons.

First, because the Easter Vigil is one of my favorite rituals ever. It’s hard to not find a ritual which begins in darkness, kindles a sacred fire, lights candles throughout the darkened room, has bunches of music, and then puts a very large lit candle into a very large basin of water three times – quite compelling. It is, therefore, right up with there with my trad’s Samhain and initiation rituals as things I appreciate for the pure ritual aesthetic experience, entirely separate from those rituals are doing ritually, as it were.

(And this year, the gospel was Luke, which was nice, because it’s the only one of the gospels I haven’t actually translated most of or sung most of in other forms, so there was less nitpicking in the back of my head about translation issues.)

It was also fascinating because, while I’ve been in other Christian services since I became a (as a friend and elder refers to me ) professionally trained stunt priestess, this was the first time I’d actually been in a Mass.

And not only a Mass, but one where – because of my involvement in Newman Catholic fellowship through boarding school and college – I’ve actually done pretty much every part of helping with that particular service that you can do without being a deacon, eucharistic minister, or, y’know, actual priest. (Two of the three of which I’m barred from by my gender, and the other of which conflicts with making sure there’s music during communion).

I’ve been the lector and the cantor. I’ve accompanied musicians and been the ritual cantor. (including singing Fr. Roc O’Connor’s “This is the night”, which is a compelling piece with lovely sung poetry, pretty much as a solo call and response when the other person doing the duet backed out at the last minute.) I’ve kindled the fire (and taught people the relevant bits of fire safety) and lit candles, and brought gifts to the altar. And I’ve done just about every bit of set up and clean up for it there could be.

And, once, when I was 13, it was the ritual in which I joined the Catholic Church (I was born and raised Episcopalian, but my parents returned to Catholicism when I was 13, and I went through the same RCIA program my friend did, adjusted for about 20 years difference in development.)

In other words, I arrived at my Pagan ritual experience already well aware of many of the ways ritual can work. But be that as it may, the last time I was in a Mass, I was not yet Pagan, and I certainly had not had the substantial subsequent nuanced training in how all of those bits and pieces make the ritual work. Nor to see, hear, and sense the wonders of transubstantiation – one of the most common acts of ritual magic in the world, surely – with far more trained senses.

So, it was interesting to sit back and watch and hear the shifts of the energy through the ritual, and note the places where it worked, and the places where it worked even though something was a little hurried or extended. That’s one of the things that a weight of tradition gives you – it makes it easier to carry through those slight awkward moments that every ritual with humans has somewhere. (Because humans are imperfect creatures. Wonderful, but imperfect.)

It does, however, require a certain mental agility, because of my approach to being in services outside my tradition – which is to say the bits I agree with, and not say the bits I don’t agree with. (Which occasionally means saying half a phrase and not the other half, but hey.) Jesus as a son of a particular God, who did great things, and said some very wise stuff, and inspired a lot of good things in the world, I’m fine with, for example. But saying that there is only one God, well, not so much. That goes against my own commitments and my beloved Gods and Goddesses.

[This practice of mine is not confined to Christian services, of course. I do the same thing in open Pagan rituals where I'm not sure what the commitments/statements of what we're doing/magical workings etc. are likely to be.]

Likewise, there are some ritual acts I won’t do (like invoking the power of deity to descend into a particular person), because I have trained my brain to believe that these actions actually do specific things that is not appropriate in this framework, and would probably not be good for people to have it happen to them unprepared. In which cases, I cheerfully listen and watch politely, and keep my hands (and my energy) to myself. Do not cross the theological praxis streams, in other words.

But at the same time, it was lovely to be there. Not only to support my dear friend, but also because, no matter how much no longer being Catholic is the right choice for me (for various reasons that are probably pretty obvious), there is a part of me that is nostalgic for that, the same way I’m nostalgic for what Christmas was like when I was a child. It’s not that there aren’t other wonderful things now, that I didn’t have then. (There are). It’s just that remembering what was has its own potency and wonder. It was good and powerful to be in a large room full of people joyous at a religious moment, a transformational moment of renewal and rebirth.

More people having more awareness of those moments, and their power, resonance, and the responsibility to make the most of them can never be a bad thing in my eyes.

A pause for some background

Jenett — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:22:39 +0000

A friend on Dreamwidth posted an interesting Pagan meme that I thought was particularly timely: I’m coming up on the 10 year anniversary of seeking out the group I trained with and worked with until early 2008, when I hived off. Seems like a good time for a “What I’m doing now” moment, plus a nice introduction to link to in various blog places.

(Below, I’m speaking for myself, rather than the trad as a whole, which seems worth making clear right about now.)

Please describe briefly your Path:

Priestess in a small initiatory mystery-focused religious witchcraft tradition with a strong focus on personal transformation. (We have BTW influences from our forebears, but are not BTW).

I am a third degree and elder in the tradition with all the rights, privileges, etc. etc. that come with it. That and a couple of dollars buy a cup of coffee, and you’ll notice I don’t stand on rank (Jenett is my public Pagan name, as used for over 10 years. These days, I use it for everything except work and legal documents).

I am the 3rd person to reach the 3rd degree, and the first person whose training was fully within the tradition. I took and continue to take my particular role as “Hey, is this how we want to set precedent going forward?” very seriously.

Please describe briefly how you practice it:

Ritual for Sabbats, Esbats, initiations, other rites of passage, and other times when a ritual is at least part of the sensible thing. We have a common structured ritual model.
Daily practices that vary by person, though there’s some common threads.
Mine involve music playlists, a household shrine (with varying levels of daily action), some meditation, and a lot of traditional crafts (spinning yarn, baking bread) as a vehicle for goals and energy movement in my life.
Thorough attention to not just how to do something, but why we do it that way, some of the (many alternatives), and appropriate variations.

When did you first commit to your Path?

Depends how you count. I’d been aware of Paganism as an option since about 1990 (when I was 15). I started seeking out specific (mostly energy-management focused) material to help troubleshoot particular issues starting around 1995.

In 2000, I started actively exploring Paganism (and my local community) as an option. I took Seeker classes beginning in May 2001 with Circle of the Phoenix, dedicated with them in September, and had my first degree initiation in early 2003. (Followed later by my 2nd and 3rd degrees.)

I generally call the Dedication “I’m pretty sure this is the right step” and the first initiation the actual commitment.

How is your practice different now than it was then?

Right immediately now – less group work, since it’s on hiatus until I figure out what’s going on with the job hunt.

In more general terms – a somewhat different focus on the ritual work: we are still clearly doing very similar things, but a lot of my work has a particular focus on music, movement, and story/narrative that is not necessarily always present in my parent group’s work.

I’m also a lot more comfortable adapting on the fly to a specific need.

Is your practice different today than how you thought it would be back then?

The differences are all additions: I was looking for something that would lead to ongoing group work, that would use a structured ritual format, that would have consistency and foundational materials that lead to persistent answers to questions about what we were doing, why we were doing it that way, and why it mattered in the first place.

But there are pieces in my tradition – mostly stuff I don’t talk about a lot in public spaces, because it’s complicated to explain without a lot of background – that I’ve found immensely powerful and meaningful and life-changing. I didn’t know to go looking for them, originally, but I’m so glad I found them.

Does your Path and core belief system differ now than how it was when you first started? See above. Not really.

What is your heritage and how does this inform your Path?

Mom’s side of the family are Austro-Hungarian on her mother’s side and Eastern European Jewish on her father’s. She and her family fled Vienna during the Anschlüss, and she grew up in the UK, where she eventually met my father, who was English. (They then emigrated to the US, where my siblings and I were born and grew up.)

That said, most of our family customs are much more from the English side of the equation, and that’s where a lot of my religious life influence also ends up.

What are your main influences for your Path?

The tradition as a whole (and experiences with the community of that tradition).
The interaction with the Gods (and other beings) I honor, serve, work with, etc.
Lots of fascinating conversations with other people who have great ideas.
Personal experience.

Which do you do more: practice or research?

This is a dualism I really dislike, not only for religious reasons, but for professional ones. I believe in learning: sometimes learning is about taking in information from other sources (research, conversation, directed experiences), sometimes it’s about trying things out, working with a new skill or idea, or whatever.

I read (and talk, and listen) a lot. I do (and make and create) a lot of stuff. Trying to separate them is a bit like saying “Which do you need more, air or water?” (And I pick that analogy because, of course, there is water in tiny little moisture bits in air, and there are tiny air bubbles in water.)

Do you feel that one is more important than the other?

See above rant. I do believe that practice without information is likely to get you in trouble sooner rather than later, and that research without practice does not make an actual religion or spirituality but is less likely to lead to trauma, therefore starting with research is usually the more sensible route. That said, there’s lots of simple stuff that can be done with pretty basic knowledge, so you don’t need to hold off very long on doing anything. (And I have a website devoted to that sort of getting-started thing.)

I think that if you’re *just* learning/researching and not doing, you’re not following a path yet. You might be figuring out if it’s a good idea, or what you need to get started sensibly, or whatever. But you’re not actually *doing*.

What values and ethics are important on your Path and in your practice?

A familial one: “The only thing they can’t take away from you is what is inside your head.” Know your stuff. Own it. Make it live in your life.
Things are connected. Mess with this end here, those other five ends may go in places you hadn’t anticipated. Still sure you want to tug?
The stuff we do changes us, and changes our connection to the world around us. Again, you sure you want to do that thing?
Stagnation is not helpful, as a general rule. Regular cycles of introspection, new plans, ongoing work, harvest, and reflection are a good thing.
We have control over our choices and what we do about them. That power means that if something isn’t working for us, it’s up to us to figure out what to do about it, not just sit there and wish that things were different.

There are lots more, but that’s a reasonable sampling of ethics. I particularly value

thoughtful communication and reflection before action
keeping one’s commitments (or renegotiating them if needed)
the transformative power of information, knowledge, and wisdom
and trying to leave the people, places, and situations we touch better than we found them. (And definitely not worse.)

What sort of cycles do you feel your practice goes through?

Like a lot of people, I have periods where everything feels like a struggle, and periods where everything is humming along beautifully. I think they’re both important. Mostly, I keep moving towards the next thing: the next season, the next goal, the next desire, the next hope, the next great conversation, the next moment of connection, while doing my best to savour the moments I’m having right now.

What is one of the greatest obstacles or struggles you have had to over come?

The past eighteen months (and counting) of health and job foo have been the single hardest period in my life – harder than the year of my father’s death, harder than the time around my 2nd degree that brought separation and divorce from my ex-husband, three moves in 18 months, finishing grad school, and doing my best to help people in a variety of other ways.

I’m learning a lot, but I’m ready to be done learning this bit, now, and am working on going on to learning a new job, a new focus, a new possibility, and what it’s like to build that in stability for a bit.

How do you see yourself practicing in ten years?

My dream would be to have a small coven of seasoned initiates who are interested in digging deeply into various topics of mutual interest. (I’m particularly interested in the intersection of music and ritual and magic, but finding people with similar enough interests is not that simple.)

I’d love a life of coven work, ideally work with a romantic partner/spouse, personal work. I imagine I’ll be continuing to do some variety of reading, writing, and talking about my path, though I don’t dare to imagine what form of technology that’ll take.

How do you incorporate your practice into your life?

How don’t I, is a slightly easier question. I consider my chosen profession – librarianship – to be partly a religious vocation (in the sense of connecting people with information that gives them choices and possibilities). Most of my daily life choices are pretty consciously rooted in specific values of my path. You can see a sample day in the life over on my Seeking site.

Has walking your Path changed you as a person?

Yes and no. I think I’m more me, more the me I want to be and become like, rather than being vastly differnet. (That said, a bunch of external labels have shifted for me since my teen years: I used to be a good little Catholic girl with strong Republican and conservative leanings. These days, I’m a witch, priestess, and grown woman with lots of opinions, but also lots of ways to integrate those into my life.)

The biggest change though was between high school and early college – by the time I started seriously exploring my path, I was already pretty much set in the direction I continued in.

Do you consider yourself to be a priest/ess? How so?

Yep. Goes with the whole ‘initiatory mystery-focused initiatory’ bit. I am capable of setting up and guiding someone through the experience with (we hope) successful results. I talk with and to the Gods, and help others do so when they need it. I create and hold and anchor a temple space, and create and assist with making the rituals that happen in that space.

A witch? How so?

See “witchcraft tradition” That said, I view priestess as *why* I do things (in service of the Gods and community) and witchcraft as the technology I primarily use to do that, in the older sense of technology (a systematic treatment or body of tools).

A shaman? How so?

Not quite so much, both for cultural appropriation/confusion reasons, and also because that’s just not what I do. I do think there’s something in the argument that western European folk magic and witchcraft is that area’s answer to solving that Siberian shamanism looks at, or that various First Peoples tribes have other solutions for – in other words, helping those who need to be reconnected or made whole somehow.

Which matters more: getting the vocabulary right or the actual practice of what we are trying to define?

I’m a librarian: how do you find the practices if you can’t talk about them or point to them? Words matter. That said, while I love a good etymological or semantic wrangle as much as the next person who likes those things, I’m also often just fine with it when people say “Here’s the definitions I’m using, let’s get on with the discussion”.

One of the most profound things anyone ever said to you was:

“Reach out to those who thirst” (conversation with M’Lady, and a good guiding principle for my life, partly because it has so many interpretations.)

A defining moment on your Path was:

One of my very early rituals with the group I trained with (perhaps four months in) involved a Drawing Down of Hecate, in which I was told, in phrase-for-phrase perfection, the last paragraph of a letter my father wrote me the summer before he died. I do reread the letter regularly, but hadn’t recently at the time, and it was not something that I and my HPS had discussed in any detail. (I think she knew my father had died when I was in my teens, but that’s about it.)

That’s the point at which I said “There is something very Real here. Ignoring it would be stupid and foolish and close-minded.”

Have you ever taken a “leap of faith”?

Many. Every initiation. Every new circle role. Every time of trying something new for the good of the person I was teaching, or the ritual I was helping, or the community event I was helping plan. Very few of them have failed.

I do also think that the leap of faith that got me to move from Boston to Minnesota in 2000 was a religious leap of faith, though I didn’t recognise it as that at the time. (It being the only way for me to end up working with the specific tradition I’ve come to love.)

Please tell us something stupid, reckless or embarrassing you did once in your practice:

There is a story about an Artemis ritual, an outdoor fireplace, and rather too much flash powder, but it is a fairly lengthy story so I won’t go into it here. (We did take a number of safety precautions, and no one was harmed, but it makes an impressive and cautionary retelling. Moral: more is not better when it comes to flash powder.)

What is the most frustrating thing about your Path?

Good question. The fact that I do not have unlimited time, energy, and hours, to devote to all the things I want to do and would love to learn from? But it seems unfair to blame a fundamental human thing on the path.

Have you ever been frightened?

Yep. But mostly in the ‘awestruck’ way, not in the ‘argh, we’re going to crash’ sort of way.

Can you perform ritual without a script?

Yep. And in fact, it’s generally my preference these days.

CotP was a training circle, so we often had people doing roles they were relatively new to: scripts really help with that if you don’t want to spend hours in rehearsal. But I did learn from that how to work off of notecards in a way that feels natural for participants.

Have you ever preformed spontaneous magick/spellcraft?

Yep. I have done a fair bit of stuff while driving (moving forward in a car is a very handy visualisation.) More of it works than doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, it’s usually that the framing wasn’t very clear.

What are you still exploring or experimenting with?

Lots of stuff. Figuring out how the past year’s health changes have effected my ritual work in particular (How I raise, focus, and sustain energy is different. So are meditation, visualisation, breathing, and a whole bunch more.) The whole music/magic/ritual tripod I mentioned. Integrating more of the art forms into ritual work (in ways that are accesible to a small group or personal setting).

I’m looking forward to the exploration of how a small working-focused circle is different from a larger teaching circle (where I did my training), but it’s going to take a while to get there.

What (or whom) are you the most committed to in your practice and on your Path?

I’m going to talk about the deities below. To what, in general, the “reach out to those who thirst” I mentioned above.

Ritual tools are …

Handy. Tools make it easier to do things efficiently and/or better. However, the tool is not the work, and the tool is not the creator, and it’s good to be clear about that.

Magickal tools are … see above.

The one thing you can’t do without is: my brain.

Seeking personal power is …

Important. I believe that someone who is actually secure in their personal power is able to get on and do other wonderful things. It’s the people who are insecure, threatened, uncertain, etc. who tend to cause the problems.

I also believe in a quote from a Lois McMaster Bujold book (Borders of Infinity) where Miles says: “Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.”

Power is what lets us create change the future. We have to understand our own, and its relationship with the powers around us (other people, the Gods, other beings, the world as a whole) in order to live in power, not in revenge.

Politics and your Path are …

My ethics and my values inform my politics (as they should), but my tradition doesn’t have any particular political statements beyond an ethic of tolerance for other people’s choices. I treat politics like I do any other choice: something to be thoughtful about, to grow from deliberate choices and actions, not reactions.

One thing you wish people would understand about your Path and/or practice is: There’s a tremendous amount of variation out there among Pagans. Asking me is more helpful than assuming you know what I’m doing. (Plus, I really like questions: they get me thinking in new ways.)

Do you teach?

The question is more “Do you stop teaching?” Because really, I can drop into “Do you want to know more about that?” mode at the flick of an eyelash. (I try to use my powers for good, not boredom, but I do have what I describe in gaming terms as a +2 Obsession flaw with finding information. Handy for a librarian, but occasionally disruptive in conversation.)

More seriously, I had the pleasure and delight of teaching one of the Dedicant year series while with CotP, have two prospective students locally if I stay in the area, and if I don’t, really want to offer something class-like wherever I am. (Coven-related stuff, but possibly also Seeker/intro/develop your personal practice type stuff: locally, I don’t feel the call for that, because there are about 5 groups doing it at any given time.)

What do you feel is the role of clergy in modern Paganism and Heathenism?

I don’t think I can speak for all those other people, but my own take on being clergy is that it’s about creating ways for people to connect with the Gods, the community, and the stuff that they, personally, need to deal with for whatever reason, and then not abandoning them in the deep dark woods without a lantern. In other words: create spaces for learning, exploration, and connection, and make sure that some tools and safety precautions are in place so that the experience ends well, not badly.

(I think these things are true in any religion – have you ever seen a parish council meeting that got nasty, or a sermon that split a congregation in half? Words can be plenty divisive. But I think they’re extra specially important to take seriously when we’re doing stuff that takes people out of their daily reality into other places.)

Sometimes being clergy is about public ritual, or teaching, or running a group (I’m more about the latter two than the first, but I can do them all with reasonable competence.) But I also think it can be about things like hospital chaplaincy, or writing, or creating sacred spaces for family beyond yourself, depending on how you approach it. Or helping a friend through a crisis, or solving a problem, for that matter.

I also think there should be more room and more discussion to roles in the broader Pagan community that *aren’t* necessarily clergy – musicans, artists, writers, readers, volunteers, creators, planners, etc. who share their time and energy with others, but without roles directly helping people connect with the Gods in specific and directed ways.

When the Veil (or Hedge!) is thin, how does that feel to you?

I hear energy rather than feel it (or see it): the best way I can describe it is a very faint string tremulo. (There’s a decent quick YouTube video about this – a good example is about 1:45 minutes in. It’s a very shimmery other-wordly sound.)

What entities do you work with most? (ancestors, gods, fae etc)

When I have group work going, I end up working with/honoring three primary pairs of deities: the two I work with personally, the two the coven works with, and the two the tradition works with for specific rituals.

My primary personal work is with a pair of deities who I am pretty sure are an English (not Celtic, thank you) deity-of-body-of-water whose name I do not adequately know in any way that translates to other people well. (I normally refer to her as “M’Lady”) and her consort (who I usually refer to as “Himself”) who is all about riding the bounds of stewarded land, and hoofbeats on sun-dappled trails.

M’Lady is also particularly interested in sharing information and understanding with others, with a particular kind of quiet patient compassion without being either maternal or smothering. If you start going in the direction of the medieval approach to the Ladies of the Lake, and take a sharp right into a quiet garden with a lovely pool (and some other stuff) before you get to ‘random hands holding up swords in lakes’, you’re in sort of the right geography.

I also will do what’s effectively short-term consulting work with other deities from time to time – Artemis most notably – for specific situations/reasons, and I keep circling around something with either Hestia or Vesta for household ritual stuff.

The tradition also does a fair bit of work with ancestors (both of kin and of kind). I do honor my blood ancestors, but I also honor Hypatia (of the library at Alexandria) as a ancestor-of-profession.

What is your relationship with the Land?

Geography informs our lives, even when we don’t recognise it. I prefer to be reasonably conscious of it – hard not to, when for much of my ten years in the Twin Cities, I was driving over the Mississippi every day. (You can read what I wrote about that, and the geography of the river, in a post I made just after the 35E highway bridge collapse in 2007.)

I believe that my path – my Craft – need to be rooted in the location I live in, in some fundamental ways. One of the things that’s simultaneously exciting and terrifying about the current job hunt is the fact I may need to figure out all of that again.

The main purpose of ritual is:

To help people connect with the important things for them – with their Gods, with others, with a goal or purpose, with community in a way that encourages movement forward, not stagnation or retreat.

The most important aspect of ritual is:

That it be at least somewhat effective, the requirements for which depend a whole lot on who you’re talking about, the path or structure you’re using, your goals or desires, and a bunch of other things.

What is the purpose of divination/dowsing (or whichever for of augury you use)?

I primarily use it as a way to look at all aspects of what’s going on – in the sense that a well-designed system will take a wide range of common (and not so common) needs, desires, things to think about, etc. into consideration.

I don’t think it tells us what will happen. I think it tells us what might happen (or even what’s probable) if we don’t make any changes. And yet, knowing – asking the question – is already a change.

What was the most difficult book you ever read? (Either difficult to understand or hard to face what it said or both)

Music in Renaissance Magic by Gary Tomlinson, which is mostly about Marsilio Ficino, a completely fascinating Renaissance philosopher, magician, and esoteric theoricist who spent a lot of his life trying to figure out how to make the music of the spheres apply to music. It’s a fascinating book, too, but it suffers from the problem that you need a fairly high level of music theory background *and* a fairly high level of general esoteric history and knowledge to really make sense of some of it. (I had more of the music theory at the time I read it in college, and really need to go back.)

(Mostly, I am likely to find books annoying or badly written, rather than difficult, if I have problems with it.)

What book do you recommend the most to others?

Currently high on my regular recommendation list is Diana Paxson’s Trance-Portation (you can see my comments, which include links to the introduction and first chapter and other handy info over on my books and resources site.) I love it because it’s well-tested material with lots of trouble-shooting advice and widely applicable skills/approaches.

What is you favourite podcast (if any) and favourite blog (other than your own)?

I have not been listening to Pagan podcasts a whole lot recently, but one of my standby general ones is Midmorning, from Minnesota Public Radio. The host, Kerri Miller, does an amazing range of topics (each one generally getting a full hour’s time with one or more expert guests.) She includes authors, musicians, and politics, but also a wide range of topics about food, technology, health, finances, and much more in a way that’s both entertaining and highly informative.

For blogs, I read The Wild Hunt to stay up to date on news and other stories of interest, and I’m also really fond of Gordon’s Rune Soup, which is all about magical theory in a very pragmatic way. I always get a new perspective when he posts. (I read many many others, too, but we’ll try and keep this limited.)

If you could impart only one last piece of wisdom or knowledge, or share one experience with the world at large, what would it be?

I try not to give one answer for anything after 11pm. It seems foolish.

Which, really, is not a bad thing: know when you’re not likely to be making good decisions, and try to avoid making the important/lasting/high consequence ones then.

Please finish this meme with a picture, image or photograph of some sort:

One of the problems with honoring Hypatia is that images of her are not satisfying (either they’re very Victorian, or they’re reflecting other things that weren’t where I wanted to focus.)

So, a couple of years back, I made my own, as my first exploration with polymer clay figures. Last weekend, I did a redesign (because the original, made to sit on the edge of a shelf), has a distressing tendency to do a nose dive at odd moments.)

Here’s the new one. You can see some making-in-progress shots on the web, too – the last one has comments with more notes about materials.

And hey, you can have two photographs:this is the current stuff on my daily practice space/shrine. It includes the prosperity statue I made in similar ways. I’ll talk more about this in post in the near future.

The shiny new project

Jenett — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 14:30:29 +0000

Hi! This would be the announcement of the shiny new project that’s been occupying a lot of my spare time on and off since August. It’s actually not all that secret – I’ve had a link in the header here for a while, and I’ve mentioned it (usually in relation to specific pages) on several forums over the last few months.

Welcome to Seeking: First Steps and Tools at http://gleewood.org/seeking . It contains 107 (and counting) separate articles about general Pagan topics, with a focus on getting started in religious witchcraft paths. They work from basic definitions, to a series of articles on connecting with other Pagans, to a selection of core and common practices (and some ideas on how to start with them), to broader questions that come up a lot, and where I wanted to collect my answers and thoughts.

And welcome to its new sister site, Liminal Words at http://gleewood.org/books. There’s only a few titles up there right now, but more are on the way. It’ll include both Pagan titles, and other books of interest – on my current list are notes on books about the natural world, productivity and time management, food, and much more.

Both these sites are a way for me to use tags and other organizational tools in a way that’s clear, useful, and easy to understand, rather than trying to throw everything together on this blog.

What is it?

Seeking, as I said, is a way for me to share stuff in my head in a way that might be useful to me and to other people. There’s more below about why I started working on this. Where there are books (or other online websites) I like, I reference the books (Books do some things really well, and extended discussions on a particular topic are one of them.)

These articles are mostly

things that I think most books don’t cover well
things that aren’t as widely available on the web as I’d like (Centering and grounding, weirdly enough, don’t get a lot of screen time.)
topics where I wanted to share experiences, personal practices, and other such things in more detail. I don’t think what I do is the only way, but I do learn a lot from how other people approach things, and I suspect other people do too.
and while there’s certainly some theory in there, a lot of it is very pragmatic – how to do stuff, how to get started doing stuff, how to vary what you’re doing in thoughtful ways.

They’re not meant to be a complete instruction method, but they’re meant to help someone get a solid start, with a good awareness of things to look out for and be attentive to. (They’re also not formal writing, though I’ve tried to write clearly.)

I want to repeat here something I say on the intro page over there. What’s here (and there) comes from the distillation of my own training, plus a whole lot of reading, conversation, practice, and experience. I’m not The Expert on everything, but you can think of me as An Experienced Voice. (The only thing I’m The Expert on is how stuff works in my own coven.)

There’s more coming:

I have a few more pages in the Broader Questions area to write.
And I want to write the commentary sections for the CARE pages.
I have a bunch of books to add to Liminal Words.
And I’m contemplating how to organise a series of pages on finding and evaluating Pagan books, websites, and other resources, including notes on copyright and other issues.

And, as I said on the 1st, I’m planning to start posting here much more regularly, on topics related to better teaching methods, sustainable priestessing, using information resources better, and general process geeking. Asking me a question is a good way to get me writing, so feel free to go “Hey, write more about that thing?” No guarantees, but your chances are good.

(Incidentally, one of the posts on tap is about disentangling unwanted energies. Someone asked me last week.)

How to keep up?

New pages on the Seeking site will be noted on the Site Update page, now that most of the site is done. I’ll also make a periodic note here every time I’ve added a couple of pages or every few weeks, whichever seems to make more sense at the time.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of both this blog and the Liminal Words blog through the RSS links at the top of those sites. I’ll also be posting notes here periodically of new book commentary. (For those reading me via Dreamwidth or LiveJournal: I’ll be continuing to mirror the posts from this blog, but not the other two sub-sites. That’s part of why I’m doing the “New posts over here” notes.)

Why’d I do it?

As with most things in my life, it’s serving multiple purposes.

Getting my brain working: As I’ve said here, the last eighteen months have been a really lousy health time for me, and one of the hardest things for me was that the stuff that was easy for me, mentally, got really hard.

(The physical stuff wasn’t easy, mind you. But since a lot of my sense of identity is rooted in my head, not having the brain work like I thought it should, and losing a lot of what I’d otherwise use as coping mechanism was… well, I’d rather not do that again, please.)

That included writing, and in particular, writing that required extended focus and concentration. Which is why there were so few blog posts here in the last 18 months or so.

This project was, in part, a way to retrain my brain, to work on a project that was both very large (107 articles is a lot!) but that had smaller pieces I would focus on for an hour or two. And once that got going, I started playing with what happened when I got interrupted mid-writing, or took a break. How long did it take to get back into the swing of the work?

When I started working on these pages, writing 1500 words (my aim for length for an article – there are some that are a lot longer, mind you) was taking me 3-5 hours. The last essays I’ve done here are closer to 1000 words in an hour or so, sometimes less. (Which is much closer to my ‘normal’ writing speed for stuff I’m enthusiastic about and have a good idea how I want to write it before I start.) Hi brain! Nice to have you back like that.

I do in fact have a book I want to work on – on research and Pagan topics – and got another idea for something someone really needs to write last week (and that someone might be me. We’ll see.) So being able to work on big projects was a big goal not just to help me feel I’m really able to go do the kind of professional work I did once and want to do again, but also to maybe make progress on those projects.

It was also a good reward for me after working on cover letters and demonstration projects for long periods. (Ok, I like working on demos. But I’m sort of sick of cover letters. I’ve written close to 50 of them since June.) “Finish this cover letter, and you can go write that bit on daily practices you had a good idea for!” was a good mental bribe.

Preparing ground for long-term plans: I hope very much to be teaching in person again when I know where I’m working. However, I also know that I’m likely to have less time and energy for prep work while I’m getting used to a new job.

Many of these articles are things that I knew I might want to reference with a new student, but which I didn’t have a satisfactory reading assignment for without making them buy lots of books. (I approve of books. I think people should own books. But I don’t want a new student to need 10 books just to piece together the bits I think are most important about a topic.) Writing them now means I can draw on them later, that students can review what we talk about in a written form, and much more.

They don’t include tradition-specific materials, but those are things I intend to teach orally, without much in the way of written notes, for various reasons.

I like sharing this stuff. I was talking about this with a dear friend at Solstice, when she called me a theologian. I argue I’m not quite a theologian: what I do best, in my oh-so-humble opinion is that I take existing material, create connections between it, and figure out why it works and how to make it work better, without losing the bits that hold the magic, the awe, the potential, the possibility.

I’m a process geek, with a solid sense of religious mystery and mysticism, in other words. Which is not entirely what people think of when you say ‘theologian’, in part because a lot of definitions of theology focus on belief. I’m more about the practice, hence ‘geek’.

Some of the material comes from posts I particularly liked on various Pagan forums over the years, but 80% or so of it is completely new writing. (I’ve edited as I went, but I’ll be coming back and revising for clarity and tightening up some things in the coming months. If stuff’s confusing, let me know so I can fix it.)

Got questions?

Feel free to ask here, via the contact link, or any other reasonably reliable method. (Mindreading is not reliable for me, sorry!)

Feel free to share links to pages on the Seeking site, the Liminal Words site, or here with anyone you think would benefit from them.

But, please don’t recopy individual articles to other places without checking with me, since many of them rely on some existing links. That said, if you ask, chances are pretty good I might say yes. I like people using my stuff. I just want to know where it goes, so that if I come up with some brilliant new metaphor or explanation, I can share it with you, and to make sure my work is attributed usefully (with a link back to its original site) so people who like it can find more.

(I hope it goes without saying that I am a librarian who used to do DMCA copyright-removal responses for a major online site: I know how to file those reports for removal of copyrighted material when I need to. I don’t want to have to.)

And for the curious, some stats:

In August, I put up 29 pages. (Most of those were pieces I’d written in other forms elsewhere.)
In September, I put up 13 pages (about half of which were either very short or from earlier writing. September was busy with planning and running our local Pagan Pride.)
In October, it was 32 pages, much of which was new writing.
November had 14 pages (again, almost all new writing)
December had 8, all but one in written the last week of the month (You can tell I had two interviews in December, one of which involved preparing a large sample project, can’t you?)
And I finished the last 12 in the first two days of January. (I had notes or portions of several of these already, and they were mostly shorter and very easy to structure.)
Then I went through everything, made several specific edits (adding the tags, ‘read more’ links so the tag pages would look nice, and adding a ‘last edited’ note to each page.)

As I said, 107 articles (which includes 4 index pages, and about 5 other general info pages about the site.) And that comes out to 145,000 words. Which is, erm, a lot. Most of them average about 1,500 words, which is the length I was generally aiming for, but there are some longer pieces in there. (And some shorter ones).