Hello all,

Yes I do owe any readers out there and my own self some Notes on the Journey here… but I thought I would take the step of doing an actual topic driven blog post. This somewhat radical departure from my ongoing lack of actually writing was inspired in part by a Tweet by Youtuber and Thelemite Da’at Darling… (See Postscript 10/22/22)

“I will die on the recommending daily practice hill. I don’t care how much backlash I get for recommending daily meditation and doing a lbrp, it will help you progress, and I won’t say daily practice is “outdated”.”

@daatdarling aka Georgina Rose on Twitter (See postscript)

So I have been intermittent at best with my morning routines of physical and spiritual self care lately due to some dramatic scheduling upsets at work.  No shame or guilt,  it is what it is and I guess I am learning to be more compassionate towards myself when I am not able to go according to my plans? I am also learning to value the idea of being fluid in my daily or regular practices. My learning curve was helped by what seemed to me, in a moment of self doubt, a timely post on Instagram by Patheos blogger The Gardnerian Librarian who wrote…

“If you find yourself losing motivation to practice or engage with daily devotions, etc, then *change something*. Your practice should bring you joy and satisfaction. The moment you feel like it’s become something like a chore, *change it*. Devotions in the morning becoming stale? Do them at sundown. The change, no matter how small, will excite your brain.

Don’t become complacent with unhappiness or boredom.”

-The Gardnerian Librarian in an instagram post….

This is a very positive development for me as for all too many years I would try to develop a regular practice of spiritual and magickal work and journaling and such, and between my being blessed with ADHD and the somewhat chaotic nature of scheduling in my chosen field of the Hospitality industry and more than a few longstanding issues related to self doubt and questioning my own self worth, I would start heaping shame and self doubt upon myself if I could not engage in my practices in the way I envisioned them in or what I had in my mind as “the right way”.  After a time I would set them aside often telling myself I was being practical and that I could pick them back up later once things were less chaotic.

The problem of course is that the pace of life around us does not calm down for our convenience.  It is when life starts throwing us the curveballs of chaos that we most need to lean in to the practices that nourish and sustain us.  Then too, as my hospitalization last year so dramatically highlighted for me, tomorrow is never guaranteed to us, so we may as well do what we can when and how we can to make life joyous and pleasant now!

Now fluidity in ones practices can come in either scheduling or format depending on the practice in question. The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which Da’at Darling mentioned, is one where you might be looking at scheduling because of course it is a very specific ritual/practice with a very specific format and functions. Other practices, like the ones I engage in, can have a certain fluidity to their structure and scheduling as necessity dictate.

“So What are you up too on the regular Pax?” one may ask. 

Well for the sake of writing about them I can divide them into three categories Spiritual/Religious, Magickal, and Practical, but I don’t want you to think that any of these practices are solely within one category… at the end of the day once we have figured out what practices sustain and nourish us they do so in a complex and interwoven way that can tend to defy easy categorization even if we are categorizing them in a perhaps fumbling attempt at explaining ones attempts to unscrew the inscrutable.

Practical: includes basics like taking my medications and vitamins, remembering to eat something for breakfast before my daily commute to work, the assorted tasks of self-care and grooming related to going out into the world, and even prepping a lunch/dinner for work so I don’t need to spend money buying something on the way in.

Spiritual/Religious: includes some form of greeting or prayer or offering to the Ancestors and the many Spirits of the world around me and of course The Gods. Spiritual also includes attempts at Shadow Work including journaling and a daily Tarot Card draw where I contemplate the meanings of the card and what my subconscious might be trying to tell me in the meanings that most spark my interest or awareness. Then to there is meditation although for the time being I am happy to let it sit with micro-doses of mindfulness as I take a few moments throughout my morning to sip my coffee and savor it’s flavor and a few moments of silence and mental stillness before turning to whatever is next…

Magickal: includes some form of grounding and centering and shielding, and breathing into and connecting to/checking in with my chakra’s/energy centers/parts of self.

Now with any regular spiritual practice, as I know, the experience of it will ebb and flow.  When one practices meditation for example, sometimes one is just struggling NOT to count the seconds and get ones thoughts to shut up and sometimes you caress the faces of the gods…

I will be going into some more detail in a second part to this post I think, as at the moment I kind of need to be about my practices and my morning if I am to get to work this afternoon in the Hospitality mines of The City Beautiful.

Bliss and Blessed Be folks!

Post Script 10-22-22: Since the time I wrote this it has become increasingly apparent that Georgina Rose has Alt-Right associations and leanings. I do not recommend or endorse her or her works.