1/4/2022 Tuesday during the Day of Mars

9pm Hour of Mars cusping (1) towards Hour of The Sun

Waxing Crescent Moon

Friends,

               *Takes a slow Centering breath and begins*

So as I mentioned on Instagram, I am picking up some of the set aside pieces of my spiritual practices and Craft lately.  In the face of my beloved’s stroke in August, combined with several job scheduling insanities brought forth by being short staffed and the stiff competition for labor in the Hospitality segment, I set aside all but the barest of essentials of my regular spiritual practices.

 As part of this I have actually picked up my journal and started writing in it again!  Thus the headers to tonight’s missive, which is the format I will use in my journal, and I may adopt for my Notes Upon The Journey posts going forward.

I spent the last couple of weeks weaning myself away from what I am thinking of as ‘disassociation scrolling’ and trying to be MUCH more mindful of how I am interacting with Social media and what I am putting into my brain.  There is a current in Esotericism and the Occult that suggests that our mental diet of books and media is just as important to our healthy growth and development as our physical diet, and I would tend to agree.  Especially given the last few years revelations regarding conspirituality and misinformation!

 In service to this I have been trying to take stock of how I am spending my sometimes-scant moments of free time.  It is not enough just to unwind mentally and take a few moments to retreat from what sometimes feels like an onslaught of daily life; we must be taking time for ourselves and engaging in habits and practices that actively nourish body, mind, and spirit! The exact format this takes is going to be different for different people naturally enough, but I think we can agree that there are a LOT of forces at work in the over-culture that work to distract us from or influence us in regard to this goal?

 For me this has meant both changes in, and contemplations of how I might positively change, how I am currently approaching things.

 In Body, I am trying to be more mindful of what I am eating, not only to support my Bear in his efforts towards eating Keto and Gluten-free for is health, but to support my own.  I am taking my morning meds and daily fistful of vitamins (2) in the world’s morning rather than my own.  Because of my hospitality schedule sometimes I am working to overnight shift and sometimes the afternoon, until recently I was juggling when I took my meds and vitamins in line with whatever my sleep schedule was.  I took stock of things and decided that the best thing for me and my overall health was to line it up with the worlds morning and evening rather than my relative mornings and evenings.  So whether I am getting up for the day or getting ready for bed to sleep with the Sun and awaken with the dusk, I am taking my various vitamins and meds on a more stable schedule.  This has helped me a LOT in my overall health and mood!  I am also taking the advice of AA and Alanon’s Just For Today and doing a few things each day I don’t particularly want to do just for the exercise.

So then, what does nurturing or nourishing your body look like or mean for you?

Regarding my Mind, as I mentioned I am trying to look at how I spend my down time.  I fall, all to easily, into the habit of just endlessly scrolling through social media lured in by the shiny and purposefully isolating and addictive natures of the sites.  Some of the changes I am making involves varying up my screen time between different apps so as to be in better communication and contact with people I care about.  Some of the equation is to cull some content from my feeds and also to start asking myself what I am on a particular app or site for, what topics or areas of interest do I want to draw content from, and to be mindful of how I interact with that content because the algorithms will take those interactions and run with them – force feeding me one thing and neglecting other aspects of my mental diet.

Improving my mental diet also means setting aside the screen for a book or podcast or NPR, looking at a movie or show occasionally.  The reading will be a bit of a challenge because I am so very out of practice doing it but I am realizing I need, and deeply miss, the mental exercise and nourishment of it.  MOST importantly reaching out to friends for actual interaction and conversation.  That last is difficult both because of the ongoing pandemic, but also due to the out-of-sight-out-of-mind tendency of my ADHD blessed brain.

So then, what does nurturing or nourishing your mind look like or mean for you?

I am realizing as I write tonight’s entry that the care and keeping or one’s spirit is something like an equation.  The things we do for body + the things we do for mind + (insert spiritual and religious practices and relationships here) = growth, stability, and happiness as we seek our ‘winged’ or perfect state.

I’ve been doing very good with the basics of this the last few months, I think.  Grounding and Centering and Shielding each day, breathing up through my Chakras (3), touching base with the different parts or layers of myself.

Journaling and introspection have been iffy and episodic.  But part of the whole point of my recent efforts in body and mind has been towards healing and stabilizing spirit, and my fumblings in social media the last few months have been accompanied by a lot of trying to get to better understand how I am relating to the world and what I need to be doing to heal myself from many unhealthy and neglectful habits and practices.  REGULAR journaling has not happened but attempts here and there, and creative work here in Chrysalis and elsewhere in my social media has occurred.  It’s just been a bit haphazard as I am getting my feet under me once more as it were.

I’ve had some ups and downs in terms of my regular practices in relationship with the Dead, the Spirits, and my Gods.  There have been times where the offering cups have moldered or lain empty and fallow.  There have been times where at best I spoke prayers during my commute to work.  As I mentioned at the opening of this letter, a lot of my efforts have been focused upon just getting through my day.   Much of my Witchcraft has been focused on space cleansings and banishing and protection work.  I am changing that up and going to be picking up my Tarot cards again, well yet again, because I am realizing as I find my stability once more that I need to be in better touch with my intuitive self.

I am also doing better recently in terms of my relationships with the Dead (as I call the Ancestors of body and spirit), the Spirits, and the Gods.  I am not engaging with them on the daily more formal basis I would like, but offerings are being made more regularly and with care and attention, prayers and praises are being made and offered, and space for listening being made.

So then, what does nurturing or nourishing your spirit look like or mean for you?

So that is what is going on with me lately.  You may notice that this is in some ways more detailed than a lot of my posts last year.  I am intending to use my blog more in the coming year, as an adjunct to my Journal and BoS/Grimoire, and as a place to work on the Craft of Writing as much as the Craft of Witching, so look for articles and think pieces and of course random stuff here, and elsewhere in my social media streams in the coming year.

Bliss, and Blessed Be!

Pax / Geoffrey

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• (1) “cusping” here is, as far as I know, my own coinage for noting the planetary hour when it is withing a short time of transitioning to the next.
• (2) Fistful of Vitamins is going to be either one of the volumes of my Autobiography or a band name if I ever develop musical talent!