VIDEOS: Lily Dale Assembly

Hey, Readers,

For those of you who also like to be viewers, here are the two videos posted on my channel from my trip to Lily Dale, New York! We went on 18 August, 2012 and I posted the videos later, but didn't link them here until now.

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Me, outside the Healing Temple in Lily Dale.

Part One: Healing, Inspiration, & Spirituality

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Me, at the beach in Lily Dale.

Part Two: Bargains, Buckland, & the Beach

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Oh, and here's a bonus picture of me with Raymond Buckland's Corvette. =)

Buckland's Corvette and me in Lily Dale. <3

I've said I would possibly blog more about the trip later on, but I haven't yet. Perhaps in the future! Until then, please enjoy the videos.

Blessings~

-C-

I AM SO PUMPED RIGHT NOW (Lily Dale)

Hey, Readers!

You like that extremely colloquial title to this post? WELL, I AM PSYCHED. LET ME TELL YOU WHY.

My mom and I are going on a day trip tomorrow to Lily Dale, New York, which is a trip we've had planned for about a month for my birthday (my birthday was yesterday, the 16th). We're going with a large group of people, organized by a friend of ours who is a spiritualist and medium and did a lot of work at Lily Dale. We only paid the basic entrance fee, which includes a lot of daily, free things you can do within the area. There are also extra things that you can pay more for, but we're not going to do any of that.

So before you get too excited with me, know that I cannot ATTEND this exact thing that is making me so excited because 1) I don't have an extra $45 to spare and 2) apparently you had to register online way before this and I didn't know it was happening until just now when I looked up Lily Dale to try and see what would be available for us to do for free. So I'm not going to this event, BUT I'M PSYCHED ABOUT IT NONETHELESS, BECAUSE...

Cornucopia of Thoughts

Hey, Readers!

It's strange to write that greeting now, knowing that there actually are people following this blog. Hello! I am honored by your presence. But don't worry! I won't allow your being here to make me worried about how much I'm (not) posting. This blog is still, largely, for me. Just the things I am willing to share with the world.

I've done a lot of journaling lately, and some of the things I wrote about ARE things I will write or make videos about at a later date. But for now, I kind of feel like they're in flux, and should therefore wait until some time has passed for me to write on them.

Interjection: It's 2am here and my friend just texted me a quote from Frost. I love my life. =)

Anyway, instead of writing fully on individual topics right now, I will jot down a bunch of spirituality-related thoughts and connections I've been mulling over in one of my favorite forms: the bulleted list.

• I made a video on magick and coincidence (oh, that reminds me, I'm behind on linking videos here, too) in response to a question that an atheist asked me, which lead to conversations with two other atheists, one of whom I've commented back and forth with before.
• The new one lead me to thoughts about questioning, proof, and mostly, Nature. The crux of my little discovery through this discussion, which I have told no one but my journal yet but will elaborate upon at a late time, is "Nature is Diverse." Sounds obvious, doesn't it? It should.
• The one I talked to before lead me through this new discussion to one main lesson learned: When we way that our paths are about taking responsibility for yourself, your actions, and your beliefs, we mean it. It is not my duty to convince someone of anything. If someone wants to believe, of course they can get help from others, but ultimately it's up to them. No one can expect us to make them believe. Even if I could, I wouldn't do it. It's a personal journey. It's your responsibility.
• I love when the backwards tab actually takes me back to the main bullet. I really like bulleted lists, though I know that normally none of the bullets should be this long. They'll get shorter.
• My friend is still reciting poetry at me via technology and it's wonderful.
• I definitely want to do a video about sharing our rituals/altars. I have this weird back and forth going on in my head where I like seeing other people's altars, but I feel strange stopping in the middle of getting ready to do ritual to take pictures. It feels showy to me, even though I don't think that about other people when I look at theirs. Anyway, video on that sometime later.
• Speaking of, Midsummer was nice. I didn't get up at dawn like I wanted, and I couldn't have a fire and no one would come over if I invited them anyway, so I did a small thing on my own at the lake which I think was rather lovely. And I DID take some pictures, just in case.
• Many of us "modern pagans" view sacrifice as giving of ourselves. A layer of my skin has just been sacrificed to the sun, literally, so why not make it concrete and actually offer that? Out with the old, in with the new. I just wish it all came off in bigger pieces, like when my gecko, Kitty Lizard, sheds.
• I met a couple pagans at the craft sale we did last weekend!
• I was selling my jewelry and a girl wanted a pair of earrings I had made with pentacle charms. She was with her aunt, who said, "I would love to get them for you but I know your mom will have a fit." The aunt then told me that she and her husband had a pagan wedding and it was hard to get the family there, let alone buying the girl pentacles. The girl asked me what they were--she didn't know they were a symbol of anything. Just stars to her at that point. I told the aunt to send me a message on Etsy & I'll make the girl the same pair of earrings with another charm. I hope she does.
• But also, that means there are other pagans somewhere nearby!
• The pagans I know IRL can't celebrate with me, and that makes me sad. My cousin lives across the country and I'm not sure she practices regularly. My friend G lives a ways away and is hard to get hold of. And my ex-boyfriend and his fiancee say they're pagan and make a big deal of talking about it but I'm not even sure they actually practice. Last I knew, my ex wanted to be pagan but knew nothing about it and I was supposed to teach him but at the time the breakup was recent so I didn't want to, and now his fiancee doesn't let him near me, so of course they can't come over to celebrate.
• After reading The Spiral Dance I really desire more personal community, face-to-face. I'm not going to run and jump into the first coven I meet, of course. But it would at least be nice to have a small group of people I could celebrate sabbats with. Those feel like community times to me. Family times.
• Anni is leaving YouTube/PaganPerspective and I'm going to miss her because she is one of the best things ever.
• I want to travel and meet all my YouTube people. Everyone from PaganPerspective (Anni, Charlie, Bren, Cole, Rich, DR & Feather, Eric, Erriender, Waide, Liz, Yucca, Pat... so many current and past!), Tya, Sayge, James, Jody, Amanda!, and the list just goes on. I need time and money, please.
• I need to spend at least one year of my life living in the southern hemisphere. I am continually embarrassed at how much I don't know is opposite down there. I knew the seasons/sabbats were, but someone recently mentioned that the moon phases are, too, and I just never knew that. I think living a turn of the wheel essentially on my head would be a good experience. Again with the time and money, please.
• I would love to teach. I feel too young, but at the same time I know that the little bit I have learned in the past eight years can help others. Besides, we can learn together.
• I need to make my witchy t-shirts! I didn't get approved to sell them on the site, so I want to make my own, by hand, and sell them directly through my Etsy along with my other stuff.
• I want to make stencils first, so I can just trace & decorate each shirt and they'll all be unique but more uniform than if I free-handed each one over and over. It will save time and sanity.
• Ideas for shirts have been to make ones with my face (which I will not attempt by hand, thank you), ones with phrases about "cute witch" (I thought "PROUD TO BE A CUTE WITCH" or "I'm a CUTE WITCH"), my quote about balance, "YOU DON'T GET IT," quotes from my Shit People Say video, etc.
• I bought magnet sheets so I could make magnets with my artwork, but I haven't done that yet because I don't know what to put on them. I also haven't told anyone or asked for suggestions.
• If I cleansed a space with my besom the way I swept the barn today, it would take a lot longer.

Now I'm getting away from the thoughts I already had and reminding myself of other things, so I'll stop there. I'm glad I remembered to add the broom one, because I did have a long conversation with myself about that earlier. Even mundane tasks become magical explorations for me.

Enough. I'm going to watch some My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic now. Oh, that reminds me, after making one of those connections with the atheist conversation, I watched an episode wherein Twilight Sparkle, the resident magician unicorn of the group, tries to find scientific evidence for Pinkie Pie's intuition. The practitioner of unicorn magic is a scientific skeptic. Take that, expectations and stereotypes!

Good night, thanks for reading, and Blessings~

-C-

Candle Gazing

I started reading Starhawk's The Spiral Dance after I got it a short while ago. I haven't read every day, but I try to read whole chapters at a time, plus her notes from the ten- and twenty-year anniversaries, so I get the updates right after reading the chapter, to better remember.

Today, I read chapter seven, and I might begin chapter eight before I go to bed. But I decided that instead of diving right into chapter eight immediately, I would stop and do one of her easy little suggested activities. The simplest one I can think of, besides grounding and centering which I've done for years (and her definition of centering differs from mine), is candle gazing.

The goal of candle gazing is to increase your focus and concentration by gazing at a candle flame for five to ten minutes without letting your gaze un-focus, or go blurry, crossed, fuzzy, or double-visioned. So I lit a candle, sat comfortably on my futon, and settled the candle in front of me.

At first, I thought it might be difficult. Thirty seconds seemed to take forever and I thought "I'm going to do this for five minutes?!" But it's really not difficult. You just have to LOOK. After a while, it was tempting to shift my focus and scry in the flame--it kept moving in such interesting ways I had never consciously noted a flame moving in before, and I watch flames quite a bit. But after a while, I was sure it had been five minutes, and my gaze hadn't lost focus. I determined that this was probably not a necessary skill-builder for me, and I know I have pretty good concentration, but I still think it's good to test those basic skills every now and again.

I tried doing some other focus exercises with it, then, focusing on a specific size of flame or quickness, playing with wax and heat, and dropping an energy ball onto it. There were varying degrees of success. I doubt myself, suddenly ask myself "What on Earth am I doing?" Even after eight years and several obvious successes, I still occasionally doubt my ability to repeat a feat. Still, the next thing I knew, half an hour had passed.

Get a candle and a comfy spot and try candle gazing for yourself. You don't have to do it a lot if your concentration is already good, but it's worth flexing those muscles and maybe developing some more.

Blessings~
-C-

Spiral Dance

Hey, Readers!

I finally bought a copy of this book, which was recommended to me a couple years ago. It was always at Half Price Books--they always had at least two copies, every time I went--and each time I would look at it, planning to get it, but something always made me put it back. It didn't seem important enough to have it.

I don't know why, but yesterday when I went, I finally took it home. It sort of helped that there was an extra 20% off sale this weekend, but really, I think it was just time.

Has that ever happened to you? Nothing really changes that you can tell, but somehow, something that wasn't right before suddenly is?

Maybe it's just that I have more time to spend on this now. Who knows.

Blessings~

-C-

On Crystals (video)

On January 25, I posted this video about crystals in response to something that happened with my mother's business. Basically, this is me talking about how crystals work and why you should spend time with them, and not be discouraged when you don't get results immediately.

VIDEO: cutewitch772 - On Crystals

Thanks for reading!
-C-