7 Days a Week, Pt. 1: Planets & Deity Names

Hello, Readers,

As I've been reading through some beginner-Witch material again lately, I've started thinking again about basics--building blocks of magic, timing, simple things we can do everyday--and one of the things that came to my mind was timing and intention based on the day of the week. Many people know where our English names for the weekdays came from, but many people also still do not. I remember years ago, when I was first studying Paganism and Witchcraft, mentioning the origin of the days of the week to my mother, who had no idea! So I figure in 2019, maybe some other people still haven't had this come up for them, either. And even if you do know this naming origin stuff, a Part 2 of this post will be going up next, talking about using the planetary and/or Deity associations with the days of the week for deciding what kinds of magic to do on what days. If that is a sort of magical timing you're interested in, look out for that post next.

Image by me, using symbol images from solarsystem.nasa.gov

Days of the Week: Planets & Deities

There are seven days in our calendar weeks, and this has been the case for centuries although it was not always that way. The Roman Empire was responsible for the shift sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries, according to the Wiki article which I will link below with other sources. There were also seven "classical planets", or moving celestial bodies that, at the time, could be seen with the naked eye and were known to the astronomers of classical antiquity. We would not use the term "planet" for all of them today, as the definition has changed over the years. One of them is our Sun, which we know as a star. The other is our Moon, which we consider a "satellite" today because a planet would have to be orbiting the Sun directly, whereas our Moon orbits Earth.

These seven classical planetary bodies were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Earth was not included because, well, we live here. It was all about what we could see up in space from where we were.

Naming the Full Moons (in 2019)

Moon sticker on my mini laptop, which is also the
header photo in my Moon Magic group.

Hey, Readers & Moon lovers!

This was originally going to be a post in my Moon Magic group on Facebook (edit from the future: which no longer exists as I do not use FB anymore), but it quickly turned into FAR too long of a post for that. It is, however, a fairly normal length (for me) long blog post. So here we are!

Earlier this year in the Moon Magic group, I shared two tables with the Full and New Moons for 2019. The original tables were generated from moontracks.com and the Full Moon one also includes some of the most commonly known "Full Moon names".

Readings Page Update LAUNCHED!

[Note: This was an update for an earlier page version that no longer exists. I've removed the link, but am leaving the post as a record. =) Thanks! ]

Dear Readers,

My Readings page reboot is finally done! And live! Here it is!

If you also follow my YouTube and Instagram (possibly also mentioned this on my Facebook page, not entirely sure), then you know I've been working on redoing my Readings offerings for the new year. I wanted to have it done by January 1st, but personal life issues in December threw me way off. I started redoing the page in mid-February and was making great progress to have it done by the end of February to start out with March as the beginning of my Spring Quarter (that's a new thing, you'll read about it on the page!). But then February 28th, in the home stretch, all the work I had done that week was suddenly lost when the page--for some unknown reason of technology--reverted all the way back to original draft... It was a blow, for sure. I spent two hours that night trying to redo everything from that week, realized it was already after midnight and therefore officially March 1st, and decided I needed a break lol.

So I finally got back to finishing the page today, and IT'S DONE! FINALLY! The link is above. Just wanted to update you. So many hours creating the images, taking the photos and doing the editing, typing out the descriptions of decks, deciding which decks will be available each quarter, typing the descriptions of the readings... and it's finally ready for the public. 💗

Blessings~
-C-

Gods, Grant Me Strength

Hey, Readers,

Before 2018 totally passes us by without another post from me, I figured I'd better write something up. I've been meaning to write again for a long time, but on one hand, it can be difficult to decide what should be a blog, as opposed to a Facebook post, Instagram post, YouTube video, private journal entry, or exclusive Patreon post. On the other hand... I haven't wanted to actually open up my mini laptop, sit in front of it, and type up a blog post.

As a matter of fact, I haven't wanted to do anything.

I thought the past few years were bad, but this year... well, it's been even harder. It's been one of the worst years of my life, in its own ways. It's also been one of the best.

As I approach the crux of my first Saturn Return, the effects of which I've definitely been feeling for some years now but the exact moment of which (when Saturn will be in the exact place it was at my birth, not just in the zodiac sign, which it entered last December--Capricorn, for those keeping track) doesn't occur for about another year yet, the challenges I find myself facing are only increasing.

I Am a Change-Maker

Hey, Readers,

Last month I posted a video going over the results from a viewer survey I posted about a year ago. Some of the questions I asked in the survey were about how people felt about the more political topics I had started to make some videos about, and in the video I responded to a few things I learned from the survey results. For example, some people said they don't understand why the political/justice related topics are relevant, and/or they don't think they belong on my channel. I explained briefly in said video, that my channel is about my life, and the identities I hold are part of my life. So when I talk about the LGBTQ+ community, I talk about my own place within it and my own experiences as a non-hetero person. When I talk about Paganism and Witchcraft, it is with the similar knowledge that I am sharing views from minority identities. There are more of us than people think, but Pagans ARE still a religious minority. And we get treated as such. I used to not think my life was political, and I "didn't like politics" (which, as a child, I thought of mostly as voting for Senators and the like, and voting for or against school tax levies).

Ever since starting my YouTube channel, however, I have made videos about my religious path and identity with the knowledge that this is a minority point of view. This is fringe. This is still widely and vastly misunderstood by many people.

Moon Sign Datebook: My First Impressions

Hey, there!

This blog post is a companion to my video review of the 2018 Moon Sign Datebook, giving my first impressions of it as I prepare to work with it this year. I also plan to do a fuller review at the end of the year, to share any further insight after working with it for the whole year.

Watch the video here if you prefer to listen/watch along!

I'm writing this blog post in addition to the video for two reasons:
1) So that people can choose to read this text summary rather than listen to/watch the video.
2) I can add updates here, as I've continued looking things up and adding information to my planner since the video was recorded and edited.

Trust & Who We Are

Hey, Readers,

Have you ever noticed people whose energies and personalities seem totally out of line with what they say they do?

I have. In the past, and again today, a similar thing.

In college, for instance, one of my friends and I got into a course that was usually for Nursing students only, because it fulfilled a core requirement we needed and overlapped with our studies in theatre. It was a course on bioethics and how narratives (theatre, fictional stories, non-fictional accounts, etc.) can help have difficult conversations about ethics in medicine. So it was myself, and one of my theatre friends, in a class full of people who were studying to be Nurses.

Long story short, not only did half of the Nurses-to-be in the class have poor attitudes and not seem to care at all about other people's needs, but a few of them actually actively fought back against having to learn about other people's views and needs, arguing that the Western medical system always knows best and everyone needs to just deal with it.

Needless to say, I hope no one I know ever ends up with such uncompassionate nursing care. But it's out there. There are a ton of people in fields like that because the medical field makes money, and has a certain amount of prestige. Thankfully there are also those out there who are amazingly caring and compassionate, and passionate about their work helping people--PEOPLE, not just names on clipboards, not just means to a paycheck. One such nurse is a friend of mine who also happens to be a High Priestess. Another is my partner's mother, who recently retired from many, many years caring for people. A third, though not a Nurse but a Nurse's Aid, is my mother. My mother cares deeply about people, who they really are, what they really want and need.

But, this isn't about Nurses. That was just an example, one of the more startling experiences I had, in that classroom with these people who were meant to care about people and flat out refused to do so. This is about people whose personalities make them seem out of place with what they're doing. Nurses who don't care about people seems a little odd, if the way you think of nurses is as people who care for others. Care-givers. Nurturers. Nurturers who don't nurture? Seems like maybe something else would be more suited to their personality and views, right?

Dissociation & Sub-Typing

Hey again, Readers,

I was writing a blog post about generalization and seeing other groups as one big group that believes all the same (outgroup homogeneity) while simultaneously seeing our own groups as diverse and made up of unique individuals. I wrote too much for one cohesive blog post, but I wanted to talk more about another aspect of this kind of thing, which is dissociation.

Generalization: "ALL Witches" etc.

Hey, Readers,

After posting a miniature version of this post (really just introducing the ideas/thought process) on my Facebook Page, I'm happy and unsurprised to see that those who responded basically already get what I'm going to say here. Happy, because that's great! Unsurprised, because they're people who watch my videos and hear me talk about this stuff a lot, so it's really a "preaching to the choir" situation. Nevertheless, I hope some of this provides food for thought and gives a little more background.

For a quick recap, I mentioned that I get comments on my YouTube videos saying things like "Wiccans all think ____" or "Witches are all ____" or even "All Pagans ____". These are coming from someone outside whatever group they're commenting about. But then what gets me is that in the same comment, they'll talk about their own groups in a much less generalized way, talking about the diversity and variety that can exist in their group. This is something that happens a lot. We have a tendency to see our own groups as diverse and able to be different from one another while still part of the same group, and to see groups we aren't in as being made up of people who are all the same as each other (and very different from us).

There's a term for this in prejudice psychology: outgroup homogeneity. Our outgroups (groups that we do not identify with/that we are not a part of) seem like one big, homogenous group of people with no variety. We generalize them into people who all act, think, believe, or look the same. But since we know the groups that we are part of, we know how different they can be... because they're made up of real people... whose personalities and quirks we know well. And accept.

Long Live Uncle Ray

Dear Readers,

Me with Ray at the Buckland Gallery opening, April 2017

As you may know by now, especially if you follow me on other social media, Raymond Buckland, known by many as Uncle Bucky or Uncle Ray, and more formally/historically as "The Father of American Witchcraft," has passed on. He has left his mortal body in favor of his Spirit body. In other words, he has died. We say all kinds of things instead of "died" often, don't we? In this case, since Ray is a Spiritualist, we know that he believes Consciousness survives Death. So while it is true that he died, I feel totally comfortable with the flowery language of "Raymond Buckland left his mortal body on this Earthly plane."

~

I had the pleasure of meeting Uncle Ray (my preferred name for him in casual speech and writing, though to his face and in our emails, I ALWAYS called him Mr. Buckland) five months ago today, at the grand opening of the Buckland Gallery of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland, OH. Before that, we had exchanged a few emails a couple of years ago, about Wicca, different definitions, and things that my online viewing audience had asked me about repeatedly over the years. Who better to ask than someone who was THERE? Who was actually first-hand part of the history of Witchcraft in the United States, as such? I believe whenever possible, we should go to the source. For me and my purposes, that source was Raymond Buckland.

There are many articles about Ray's life, work, and influence online today because of his death this week. I can't claim to do a better job than any of them, but I can talk about my own experiences and share in my own way. The Ray Buckland I corresponded with, the man I met five months ago, is a wonderful, warm, and encouraging energy. In some posts I wrote in my private Facebook groups with people who are working with me currently (and maybe on my public page, I really can't remember, I wrote so many posts while processing the event yesterday), I said that in meeting Uncle Ray it was clear to me that he embodied the Goddess' wishes for us, and by that I mean those named in The Charge of the Star Goddess. Ray exuded both, and all,

Beauty and Strength

Power and Compassion

Honor and Humility

Mirth and Reverence

Chatting with Ray at the Buckland Gallery opening.
Thank you, Steven, for taking the photos!

In many ways, I am grateful to have met Ray in his twilight years. He retired years ago, has been over the "hustle and bustle" of public appearances and huge online courses for quite some time, and he has been living for years right here in my own state of Ohio. He is a grandfather, a well respected Pagan elder to many, and that calming, charming, goofball energy that is the prerogative of folks who've done more than their share and they're ready to just kick back and relax, is wonderful to have known, even for a short time.