I wrote the other day about some of the challenges that come with being prescient, with being granted visions or knowledge of things that are yet to come to pass. It’s still heavy on my mind for several days now, and probably will be part of my thought process for a while to come.

Though I’ve met plenty of people that disagree with me, I believe strongly that we are given different gifts for a reason, and that those gifts develop over time, and that we sometimes develop new gifts or abilities. I’ve heard plenty of explanations as to why this would be, or how it could happen. In all seriousness the mechanism is not important to me. As with many things, whatever mechanism or system you ascribe it to makes little difference. What is important to me is recognizing the changes in myself and those around me. What is important is accepting the gifts and changes with humility and awe, and coming to terms with them.

One of the reasons that prescience challenges me so strongly is that in the grand scheme of things it’s very new to me. I have years of experience in other areas of the occult, and other gifts that have manifested in my life. In that time I’ve learned to take the good with the bad and use what I know, and what I can do, do the best of my ability. I haven’t figured that out when it comes to foreknowledge yet.

Foreknowledge is difficult to handle because it’s come to me in two different forms. Short-term precognition (knowing an event will happen moments before it happens) is a (relatively) common form of foreknowledge. I’ve been experiencing this off and on for a little over two years now. The second form that I’m experiencing has only happened rarely in the last two years, but is beginning to become more common and more detailed. It began as vague recognitions of large patterns. I’d know that a change was going to occur, but not what it was. I began to recognize shifts in the people around me that I could understand as having a long-term direction or outcome. About a year ago I experienced my first foretelling (knowing the exact occurrence or events that will occur in a specific time frame. A type of prophecy).

Since then I have begun to have more regular knowledge of the results of certain events set into motion by one thing or another. I’ve had less than a handful of true foretellings in that time, but each one has been more clear and exact than the one before it. When I cast the ogham now, the staves are almost always accompanied by very fast flashes of experiential imagery.

During this time my short-term precognition has continued to become more consistent, to the point where I have found myself having trouble in conversations with people, because I sometimes hear what is about to be said several seconds before it is said. (In the spirit of disclosure, I can rarely tell if this is telepathy or precognition. There are enough other experience of precognition that I believe I attribute this to it appropriately.) I often find myself picking up the phone before it has begun to ring, or responding to an event a split second before it occurs.

I’ll be honest, the precognition rarely phases me. A lot of it is easy to take in stride. Foretellings, and the vauge understanding of how interactions and events will come to pass are much more difficult for me to handle. It may seem like a year should be adequate time to figure this out, but it clearly isn’t. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this foreknowledge. I don’t know how to use it in a responsible manner, or if it is meant to be communicated to other people. Perhaps most importantly, I haven’t really found any way to control it yet. With the exception of the flashes I get when I cast the ogham, I haven’t yet figured out how to induce or harness either precognition or foretelling.

I’m going to write a bit about a tangential subject later, but an important aspect of something else I’ve been thinking about ties in here. There are plenty of people in the world who believe that anyone who writes about psychic or magical experiences in a direct manner are either making things up, or insane. There are also quite a few people who have no trouble accepting the experiences I describe as valid and in line with my perceptions, even if they can’t directly relate.

The thing that’s been bugging me lately, is that people seem to think that having a strong psychic talent, or perceiving the course of events to come, or being a skilled practitioner of the Art makes everything easy or good or right in someones world. It’s not just the pagan/occult/new-age community that has this trouble. People think that smart people have it easy, that talented athletes have it easy, that doctors, scientists, and gifted musicians get some sort of easy-life bonus for being born with the special talents that make them who they are. I fall into a few of those categories, and I get very frustrated with people (who write me off, or who believe me) that think my life must be so easy to handle since I’m so blessed with the gifts of god.

It’s not easy. It’s fucking hard. Every day I struggle to make the best choices I can, to use what I know and what I can do responsibly and with appropriate authority. Any one who has a strong communicative psychic talent knows how hard it is to face people every day, to react ethically and fairly without abusing the extra information we are privy to. Being psychic, or being able to communicate with spirits, or commune with a deity, or cast an effective spell does not make it any easier for me to find happiness. I still cry when I’m hurt or lonely. I still look for comfort from those close to me. I have no smooth path to love or fulfillment, or simple way to make a living working from home for only 4 hours a week.

In short, my life is just like everyone elses life, with the small exception that I sometimes spend hours suffering from hyper-sensitivity, or freak out because the noise from the printer at work is suddenly making my skin crawl, or cry myself to sleep because the foretelling I’ve experienced is too much for me to handle for the time being.

I guess I’m whining a bit, but I won’t tell if you don’t. I don’t mean to make it sound so dismal, it really isn’t. But it isn’t all sunshine and lolcats either.

Her world, like ours, is flawed. It’s inhabitants are flawed. The very truth of these flaws, their honesty, is refreshing and powerful, but the real beauty comes from an understanding of one of the few truths I hold dear. The power to love is the gift that redeems us as citizens of this universe. All our greatness comes from our emotion, and it is in love that we stand silently victorious over the chaos of the world.

“How She must love us, To share with us all, to give us so very much — I can’t understand it. Just for my own part, even. What incredible thing have I done, or will I do, to earn — to deserve such, such blessing, so much love….”

“You’re reason enough, And besides, She cherishes what’s returned. What could we possibly give the Mother that She couldn’t make better Herself, except love? She could make us love Her — but it wouldn’t be the same.”

This is the Goddess who I want to know. This is the power of a Creatrix, a force of life and love. And where is she to be found in our mythology?” Many names seem close, but who embodies the spirit of love and creation in such a way without also driving headlong into our human flaws?

As Duane writes, our greatest flaw may be that we turn our backs upon the blessings we are given. We consistently beg for love, and then scorn the package it comes in. Some of my own truest moments of suffering have been when I have offered love (with no strings or physical demands) and found the person I was loving unable to see or accept my love. If there is a God or Goddess who transcends our petty failings and selfishness, how must our rejection make hir suffer?

In the last pages of the book Herewiss, the main character, finds himself communing with his Goddess.

(Hearn was right all the time,) he was saying to the night. (Always he used to tell me, ‘When you’re praying, don’t beg the Goddess. What mother can stand hearing her children whine at her? Talk to Her, tell Her what’s on your mind. You’ll always get answers back. Lie to Her and you’ll get lies back — but tell Her the truth and you’ll find solutions.’ And he was right. There is a part of each of us that is part of You — I just never really saw it until last night — and though it speaks in one’s own voice, there is no mistaking the source of the answer.)

Your father is a wise man, the reply drifted back after a while.

Herewiss nodded.

(Herelaf wouldn’t tell me what he was for,) he said. (There can, of course, be no deception on that last Shore — and he did tell me that he might not have been finished. Which leaves me with a conclusion that I find a little frightening. Was he trying to tell me that what he was for — was specifically to be my brother, to die on the end of my sword — and so to begin the events that ended in last night? To make me into what I am now? Was that it?)

The silence drifted around him for a long time.

(It’s not an answer that I like,) he said.

It is the answers we dislike the most, came the reply, that usually have the most truth to them.

(But, Mother, it isn’t fair! Not to him, not to me –)

He knew what the answer was going to be. It was spoken with a little smile, a sad one. Who ever said anything was fair, son of Mine? That’s My fault, and every time I hear that cry, it goes straight through Me. But next time. Next time –

He nodded, sighed. (I’m sorry, Mother, I really feel guilty about complaining. I have so very much: the Fire, my Name… and Yours too. That’s what I’m for — to find Your Name, as much as to find mine.)

That’s a start.

(You’re looking too,) he said in sudden realization. (But it is through we who live that You look. And when all who live find their Names, and all the other pieces of Yours–)

Silence. A star fell.

Herewiss smiled. (My life had been so pointed toward one thing, that I guess I panicked — I was afraid there would be nothing left for me to do. Beorgan’s mistake…. But if this is true, if I am for seeking out Your Name wherever it is to be found, and freeing it, I’m going to be awfully busy. This is a big world….)

… (Mother, mightn’t You have chosen better for the first man to have Flame in all these years? The Fire won’t lessen my flaws — they’ll get bigger, if anything. And even with all this Power — and I know I have much more than the average Rodmistress — can I really change the world that much, will I really be worth it? There’s so little time, so little of me –)

That, and the voice came firmly as that of a mother taking a sharp knife away from a child, that evaluation I reserve for Myself. By the common conception of it, humankind doesn’t consider something “worth it” unless they get their investment back, preferably with a profit. By this criterion, most of the Universe is “not worth it.” But I know — as do all the others who care — and the voice smiled at Herewiss — that it is often necessary to give and give and not get back in any way save the knowledge that the worlds are better for it. Freelorn is right, in that respect. Beaneth was right. Beorgan the doomed was right, so were Earn and Healhra and all the others. They knew they were doomed, but they did the right thing anyway, trying to make the world a little better.

The voice sighed. Valiant absurdity, lost causes, such things may be doomed to incompletion and failure of one kind or another, but they are none of them “wasted.” Judge these things by whether they will prolong the Universe’s life, or bring joy to what I made, and that is their worth. All things must die, but I will not scatter My poor botched creation like a child kicking over a misbuilt sandcastle. I will make it work the best I can.

Herewiss nodded.

(What shall I do now?) he asked.

You’re asking Me? Herewiss could feel a grin stirring somewhere. What should I do?

He grinned back. (Share the gift. Defy the Death.)

The answer was silence.

Share the Gift. Defy the Death.

I can not say I share the authors obsession with entropy. I can’t imagine a universe without the cycles of life and death on grand scales and smaller ones. But the sentiment does not rely on an agreement. Defiance is one of our other noble qualities as humans. Our courage and strength to defy the things that are anathema to us is part of what defines us as a race.

Share the gift. Defy the death.

It’s a reminder to love unconditionally. To love truly and deeply, not with the knowledge that it will cause you suffering, but in defiance of the suffering you know it will cost you.

Our traditional concept of worth is petty and small, and the Goddess reminds Herewiss that creation is a much beigger place, and that our notion of worth is best left to matters equally petty and provincial. When dealing with the cosmic scale, it has no relevance.

Something that I haven’t mentioned, because in the grand beauty of love it seems so small, is one of the most gorgeous outgrowths of this philosophy of love. The culture of the people in the book has no concept of sex as we do. In truth, I don’t think the words “sex” or “marriage” occur in the text once, although the characters share themselves quite liberally, and do occasionally form lasting binary relationships.

The world seen here knows that love is not a matter of gender. It knows also that the act of sharing is not a dirty or shameful one. It is an act of love, and an expression of our joy in each other. While the time-tested themes of jealousy and possessiveness come up a time or two, they seem less than the norm.

Many of the characters in the book pair off eventually, but even in their pairs, there seems to be a general acceptance of sharing being beautiful and welcome outside their diads. Our language does not have an accurate term for the attitude this culture has about sex, but I wish it did, because it is the utopian understanding that I dream of when I dare to dream big.

At about 4:15 I started clearing out all the work that was still undone. Responded to all my emails and made my task list for tomorrow. at 4:30 I was beginning to pack up so I could leave. At 4:31 work exploded. I got a major issue in my inbox that had to be dealt with today. I looked at it for a few minutes and realized there wouldn’t be a simple work-around. I had to fix it, and I had to fix it today.

I looked at the time. I can handle this I said. If I focus I can get this fixed and ready for production by 5:00 and still make it to Target, and then home, and then to my teacher’s in time. I got to work. No sooner than I had begun did I begin getting interrupted. Four or five emails from my CTO blazed into my inbox needing immediate review and response. Our Support/Quality manager was calling my name from the next row of desks. All told, another 2 hours of work or so was now on my desk. I really wish stuff like this would happen in the morning so it doesn’t mess up carefully scheduled tasks.

Anyway I made a very important decision. My job is more important than conjuring demons, and I released the very real conflict that was inside of me. I opened up gmail and fired a quick email to my teacher with a promise to call him up later to verify he knew that I was cancelling on him, and reschedule as soon as possible. I got back to work and addressed the original email. I resolved it and left the office at 5:00 to head to Target, with the intent of addressing the rest of the issues from home. I’m now on the train home, having achieved my mission and completed my holiday shopping (less one gift, which won’t be bought until next week, but it won’t be delivered until after the new year either way).

It’s 5:52, and I think I am going to be able to uncancel on my teacher. The issues are all handled well enough for the night, and unless my blackberry starts freaking out once I get out of the tunnel, I will have plenty of time to get home, get things ready, and get to my teacher’s in time. Possibly without even being late.

The point of all this, is that for all intents and purposes, there should be no way for me to make this session tonight. All the factors are against me. It’s the holiday season, which is bad for schedules to begin with. I have more work than I can easily handle during a full week, and both this week and next will be 4 short-ish days. And yet, after deciding that my study is a priority equivalent with my job, and putting my mind to work on being able to not cancel, a lot of things fell into place.

In short, my experience this evening is a demonstration of one of the most fundamental points of my philosophy.

The universe conspires to help us.

When we align ourselves with our goals and needs, and lean into the wind, the way is often cleared for us. Sure I’m going to be up late working tonight so that I can resolve these issues before going in tomorrow. But I’ll manage to make both my work and my study priorities and balance them around my needs, to care for myself and my loved ones, and to further my own knowledge and experience towards self-improvement and the welfare of my larger community.

All that, and I’ve even managed to write a blog post. Now if only I’d made it to the gym… Maybe I can practice a couple of karate katas before heading out…

I’m in kind of an odd mood. I’m working through some shadows tonight. The moon is barely waning and already I am getting depressed. I’m not sleeping so well either. The next two weeks promise to be challenging. Which is good, but also hateful.

I wonder if it’s always this hard to reconcile self-perception with the perceptions that people have of you. The person I am can only be self-defined. If I am to have personal strength I can not let myself be defined by the people around me. I can not let ascribed motivations supersede actual motivations. Self-definition, self-awareness is the core of individuation.

I think I see a hole that a lot of magicians before me have stumble into. It has me caught because I haven’t found a way around it yet. Must everything be a tight-rope walk? It would be really easy for me to isolate my perception of self and deny the veracity of perceptions given to me by others. In the core of things, this must be the goal. Nobody else has the right or power to define or constrain the person I am.

But I have no desire to be alone in my life. I have no desire to estrange those few people close to my heart, and their feelings and thoughts are valuable to me. It’s hard to tell someone you love that you aren’t the person they think you are. Or that you aren’t acting from the motivations they place upon you.

It’s harder to try and take criticism or observation at face value and try to reconcile it with self-perception and memory. All perception is valid, even the perceptions of others. But what about perceptions that don’t reconcile, or don’t appear to reconcile in magnitude?

There’s no easy fix. I have to take what I’m given at face value and evaluate it’s place in my self-perception. How to change those perceptions that are inaccurate though? If someone brings something to my attention that is accurate it’s important to learn to observe it. That’s tricky but it is a matter of self-awareness.

But how do you change the perceptions of others that are inaccurate, and stem from their conceptual model of the person you are? I suppose people have been struggling with this since before the dawn of time. It’s hard to get a sexist to see an actual person behind the gender-identity they’ve assigned them. It’s equally hard to get a racist to see through the race-identity they expect.

Is it more difficult on a personal level? People create behavioral and identity models in their heads of all the people they meet. They use those models to interpret how you will react and how they should treat you. The accuracy of those models depends on the persons skill at creating them, the prejudices or blind spots that are in effect, and the rate at which the person they are modeling changes hir behavior. How can you break out of the models that people are placing on you gently? How can you be respectful and sincere, yet still let people know that they have some flaws in their model, or at least some dated components?

I also respect the will of a body of people, deeply and profoundly. That respect is not always made vocal, because too often I find that masses of people are stupid. But they have a right to their stupidity, as much as I might like to take it away from them, and they do not deserve to have their stupidity over-ruled by a well meaning overlord. It is an offense against their chosen path and the nature of their right to choose.

I’ve been thinking the last several days, about democracy and tyranny. What makes either of them functional? I’ve been thinking about how that applies to smaller units, like families and groups of friends. Take Ceann Uide. We practice a form of consensus in our household meetings, and in general development of our family. We use consensus to invite new housemates to live with us, and consensus to determine when a housemate or guest needs to leave.

There are times when I feel that’s a terrible idea. Usually when the consensus takes a turn that I’m not entirely comfortable with. This puts me in a very tough position. I’m sort of the unofficial patriarch of our family. My words carry a lot of weight, and I can be extremely persuasive if I put a little effort into it. When our discussion goes towards a river that is not to my preference I have to make a careful judgment. How forcefully do I speak out against this? Do I force a halt to consensus by refusing to explore the territory at all? Do I share my opinions strongly, or more fairly, as one member of our community.

I don’t believe I’ve ever chosen to halt consensus, but I know I’ve made forceful pushes in one direction or another. Normally though, I choose to allow consensus to do it’s work. I accept that though I have the power and influence to push our thoughts in a single direction, it is not my right to do that. It would be a breach of trust for me to override the consensual will of the group. And I have too much respect for the members of my family to do that. There comes a time when you have to cut the apron strings.

I began building this family on accident. And then with intent, strong and clear. And it has taken on a life of its own. As a result, I need to let that life take its own course. As with any parent, I will worry about the courses it takes from time to time. I will even be tempted to put my foot down and demand that something occur, or not occur. I hope that I can restrain myself though, because the family we’ve created deserves the chance to live it’s own life and make its own mistakes.I would like it to survive on its own, without me or George or Lizzie.

I would like it to be strong, having learned lessons from its mistakes, and it will not do that if It does not stand upon its own now, while it has a strong foundation and the ability to recover from injuries with a child’s speed of healing.

So, as we were walking down Dearborn on our way to Cosi, a random woman of some non-identifiable eastern European accent nabs my coworkers and I as we cross the street. This is not all that uncommon. What was uncommon was her question.

“I’m not from here. Do you know if Sears will sell a calculator?”

Now THAT is a truly random question, even for the city. “They might, but there is an Office Depot around the corner that most certainly will.” I pointed her in the right direction. Very exciting.

Why on earth was she looking to buy a calculator so desperately? Was she a spy with poor math skills who had lost her super-computer credit-card and needed a calculator to foil some dastardly plot by scientologists to take over the world?

That must be it.

I was just thinking about the dark. Right now I’m sitting in my bedroom in the relative dark. There is a little bit of ambient light coming through the windows. I should call it light pollution. It’s mostly light from street-lamps and stores. There is a tiny bit of light filtering in from the living room through the open door. The clock is digital, so there is that as well. I have the brightness on the laptop turned almost all the way down. The background is a dark picture (link), one of my current favorites.

My room is spacious for a Chicago apartment. Probably 9′ x 10′ or so. Add the bay windows and there’s more space. I have a lot of floor space, and the hard-wood floors are kept as clean as I can. (Sometimes that’s not very clean at all.) All along the windows are shelves that I built a couple weeks ago. Pine, unfinished. Altar space and storage space. Places for me to focus myself.

I turned out the lamp on the floor next to my bed. (My bed is on the floor.) I wanted it to be darker in here, because it is easier on my eyes. Also, it suits my mood much better. Even when I’m in a good mood I dislike strong light. I’m not in a particularly bad mood right now, but I’m definitely in a dark mood.

I’ve been thinking about where I’m going in life. What I’m trying to do. I’m weeks away from completing my three year journey through the Mystery School. Weeks away from becoming a mentor of the Inner Order. And I look at my life and wonder how I got here. There is so much in my life that I didn’t plan, so much that just happened. Most of it is great. Some of it is not so great.

I never would have thought that at 27 I’d have had less bed partners than my 20 year old room mate. Okay, so I’m a little down about not having someone to share a bed with. What can I say, I’m horny. There’s more though. I never intended to make a family. It just happened. I don’t regret it, and I wouldn’t give it up for the world, but I didn’t really choose to make it. Reazling that most of the good things in my life are the result of Kismet, circumstance, or coincidence, makes me question the value of planning.

No matter the plans I make, things seem to take a course very different. And I rarely mind the course change. Would I have gotten to the same place without the frustration of struggling with my plans? Maybe that’s why it bothers me so much that Shivian has to have everything planned out to the last minute, and gets so frustrated when it doesn’t happen. All the good things in my life are the product of waiting for opportunities to arise, and taking them. And I realize that I’ve been trying to nurture and explain that pattern, but don’t have any better words yet. There is a part of me that fears Shivian is missing out on the best of life, because he isn’t willing to look outside his calendar.

Not really my place, but I do worry a little. But it’s dark where I am, and I don’t rely on the light to tell me what’s going on. I often wonder if that is all that distinguishes people like me from cowans. I look around, and I let myself be informed by so much more than just what I see, or fail to see. I don’t know how to explain it.

I’ve read how other people have said it, and I don’t think it’s right. I’ve seen detailed descriptions of how a sensitive correlates sensory information and reaches the conclusions they do. People write things that go a little like this.

“The sensitive is open to information from a wider variety of sources than the mundane. She perceives with her eyes the subtle inflections of body posture and skin response, and interprets these on an intuitive level. When combined with sensitivity to vocal modulation, physical scents, and the impressions received from her sixth, psychic, sense, she is able to make an intuitive leap of understanding that a mundane would not be able to reach.”

Mundanes. It’s kind of an ugly word, a little offensive I think. I suppose some people might consider cowan offensive too. (It is the traditional term to refer to someone not a part of the craft.) I tend to use it to refer to someone who doesn’t practice magic, or has little psychic or intuitive awareness. Everyone is psychic, but so many of us have shut it off and kept it shut for so long that we wouldn’t know where to begin waking it back up. But back to point, I was thinking about the differences between me and so many of the people I interact with. Is it just that I like the dark? Is that really what it comes down to?

Who really knows. Perhaps there is no difference, and my discernment has broken down. Perhaps I’ve lost it. My experiences are what they are though, and it would be follow to try to live outside of them. That is perhaps the true definition of insanity. To deny that ones experiences are valid, and thus attempt to exclude a piece of our being. Whatever, it’s late and I’m tired.

I can’t speak to the experiences of my family while I wasn’t around, but I can speak to my experience. Saturday the 2nd was technically Imbolg. But I had Mystery School, and everyone else had things to do. John and Elizabeth went to a ritual sponsored by Earth Spirituality Chicago held at the Occult bookstore. They said the guided meditation portion of it was amazing.

I had Mystery School all day. Eleven and a Half hours of Mystery School. Granted there was a communal dinner break in there, but that’s a lot of Mystery School. Have I mentioned that I’m a masochist? I love my mentors and fellow students, and I love experiencing and exploring the mysteries of our vocations together. There is little on this plane (perhaps kink) that I enjoy more. Then again, we have oft discussed the mysteries of our vocations in relation to, and inside the world of, kink. So maybe there isn’t anything I enjoy more.

I got home just before midnight on Saturday. The apartment was lit with candles that made the walls and floor glow. The hearth altar had new candles, beautiful pillars almost three feet high. Mark, in his generosity, bought them at Ikea earlier in the day, along with who knows how many other candles.

Mark, George, John, Shivian, and Elizabeth were all piled into pillows on the floor, waiting for their food to arrive and chatting. I was exhausted but felt renewed by the love that filled our home at that late hour. I, admittedly feeling a bit detached and unfocused, joined them and we communed for an unknown period of time. Then there was food, and I stole a piece of pizza, which was yummy.

John and I stayed up together in the living room talking philosophy as Lizzie slumbered and the rest of the boys watched “Into the Woods.” When we finally fell into bed around 4:30 I was pleasantly warmed and looking forward to the day ahead.

I got out of bed around 11 the next morning, feeling refreshed and aware. There was frost on the windows, and cool winter-light coming through the windows. We puttered around for a little. I cleaned and swept, and George made scones for breakfast.

This all seems rather dull, but if you’ve ever had the experience of sitting on the counter of the kitchen, laughing and and smiling, you understand why I mention it. Around two in the afternoon the cooking began. George wanted a feast. To the sound of Josh Groban, S.J. Tucker, Wicked, and Mika we danced and sang. John and I began to cut the beards of wheat off the stalks so we could make Brig’s crosses later that night. Lizzie had some adventures zesting fresh oranges with a cheese grater. George laughed maniacally as he poured half a bottle of cabernet sauvignon over the Seitan. We were awed when the corn/wheat/white-bread braided loaf came out of the oven, smelling rich and hearty.

We have a huge kitchen. It’s a dream. George complained that there wasn’t enough room. Again. We did a lot dishes throughout the day. All in all we managed to keep the kitchen relatively clean, even by the end of the night.

Josiah came home from Kelly’s, where he hadn’t slept well and napped for a couple hours. I was *this* close to waking him up with a snowball, but I didn’t want to get hexed. Mark and Shivian arrived around 6:00, and we began to prepare everything for the evening. We lit the living room/ritual room with candles, the Hearth altar glowed with a fire all its own.

We feasted, serving each other, pouring water for each other. We laughed and smiled more. Then we cleaned, moving seamlessly, and we sat and conversed until Frank arrived. Fresh from work, excited to be with us, to celebrate. We were eight now, and we cleared the room, moving into a circle as is habit.

We laughed at each other as we made our crosses of wheat, the moist stalks trying not to fold properly. We made offerings to the flames, and ground herbs together, sharing our intent for joy and happiness in the coming seasons. We made up chants, writing melodies and harmonies under the sounds of each others voices. The room grew warm, and the Goddess walked among us.

Brig came up through George, her words warm and sharp, like the fires of the spring and summer. But they wrapped around us, sharing her warmth and love, her blessings. She touched us with humor, with anticipation for the future, with the strength of our love and our community. When she left there was a moment of genuine sorrow that came through all of us. Then we let our love move around the room again.

We kissed and hugged. We shared our love and placed our gifts in their places. We separated and let ourselves move to our beds, sleeping. The sun was returning, and we slept in peace.

So I have some of my pagan friends, who throughly detest the holiday and everything associated with it. And I have my family, who celebrate secular Christmas, being staunch agnostics. My brother, for instance, says “It’s the time to celebrate family and love, and give gifts to the people that are meaningful to you.” The quote may not be perfect, but that was the gist.

And I’m a little caught in the middle. I don’t like a lot of the trappings of the holiday. I hate that our culture places so much emphasis on it, and I hate what it does to people. No, not cheeriness. I hate how much stress and work and pain goes into Christmas. I know people who don’t want to go home for Christmas for no other reason then the amount of stress involved in it.

On the other hand, I love my families traditions. I love sitting around breakfast and going through stockings, and playing with puzzles and gadgets and watching the joy and surprise on my families faces. I love the opportunity to spend time with them for no other reason than being a family. I love arguing with my brother and teasing my father and laughing at my mothers technological mistakes.

I wonder why the dogma of the season is such a big deal. Why do people, pagan and non-pagan alike, have to get so caught up in the details. The Christians want to celebrate the day as a holy one, great, go to it. If pagans don’t want to celebrate it at all, or want to stick to what they believe to be more traditional Yule celebrations, that’s fine too. But why on earth does everyone get so stuffy and forceful about it? Why do they get offended that other peoples traditions differ? What’s wrong with the fact that my family always has a baked ham for Christmas dinner? What’s the deal?

Mmmmm Hot zombies on my desktop. Wait, that’s a distraction. Not what I meant, not what I wanted to say.

I’m sitting in the living room, watching Jesus Christ Superstar. This is the 2000 version, and oh my wow is it fascinating. I will admit that I don’t love all the music, but the cinematography and the way it was put together are the fascinating parts. Jesus is s a curly-blonde with a rather body-builder face, and Judas is played by a greasy shyster type. The Pharisees are officious looking members of some corporate Board of Directors.

Neither George nor I have ever seen it before. I think the original must have been better, cause wow. With the exception of this one scene “See my eyes…” the whole thing is just a bit awkward. I’m wondering how it was made in 2000. It looks as though it was filmed sometime in 1986. But no. Oh and Jesus, sweetie, you don’t have that note. Really. You don’t have it. At all. Stop trying. Please stop trying. It’s not pretty. No joke, he’s tried to sing the same note at least a dozen times so far, and every time it’s come out uglier than Judas’ purported sin. I just heard the line “your omniscient brain” sung. Yeah, it’s that bad. Hmmmmm. Now there are Jewish ninjas on the screen. Fascinating. (I’m not sure they’re supposed to be ninjas, but that’s what they look like)

Anyway, I was thinking about how awesome it is to have Netflix. If you haven’t already guessed it, I’m working up to a discussion of communal living. We have a Netflix account, and we share it. I admit that I spend more time on it than anyone else, but we pick what movies we want next. Right now we have Kinky Boots (Because it’s awesome), Jesus Christ Superstar (Because we’re weak and curious), and Bang Bang You’re Dead (Because I love it and insist everyone else sees it.)

I’ve been reading more and more about living communally. I figure since this great experiment of ours is flowing forward whether we like it or not, I should know what I can about it.

Now is a good time to talk, since I’m beginning to encounter some of the rough spots. In organizational life cycles, I would say that we’re going through a phase of storming.

Right now there are a lot of stress factors building in the apartment. I’m the only one of the four of us who is currently employed. I won’t be able to manage all the bills on my own for more than another few weeks, so we’re all feeling the pressure of that. Above and beyond that, Josiah is a new element, that we’re working hard to incorporate. We love him dearly, but he’s caused an energetic shift in the apartment. We’re all struggling to incorporate this, but we haven’t gotten there yet.

So when you live with other people, what do you do when the energy doesn’t feel right? How do you handle it when things get a bit weird, or when you don’t feel welcomed by your home? Lots of communal situations have long and detailed lists of rules for how to handle all personal conflicts, and house rules. I haven’t seen any of these things taken from a mystical point of view, or from the point of view that we share here at Ceann Widhe.

There are a few primary tenets we operate on.

First, organicism and balance. We strive to create natural communal living spaces. By natural I mean uncontrived. Our living room is primarily a pillow room. When we watch dvd’s we pile into the living room and make ourselves as comfortable as possible. I often work on the laptop (as I am now, I’ve been conditioned since a child to do something else while I watch the television, don’t ask.) The altars that are in public spaces are earth tones, nothing that is garish or intrusive. We try to create a space that feels warm and embracing. The altars in the public room are also altars for things that are generally honored in Ceann Widhe. An Ancestor Altar, A Faerie Altar, a Hearth Altar, and a communal working altar. We strive to carry this principle throughout the apartment.

Second, the concept of harmony. We work to support each other, to be more than just house-mates, but family. We try to keep each other healthy and happy. We try not to get in each others way and to oblige each other however we can. When we have conflicts of personality we resolve them harmoniously where possible. We try not to leave hurt feelings or bruised hearts lying around in the open. We each commit to being responsible for our own feelings and ensuring that they’re addressed.

Third, the concept of mysticism. We are a household of mystics. We are spiritualists, witches, pagans, mages, psychics, healers, and shamans. We honor and respect the spirits and gods with which we reside, and strive to maintain a healthy, spiritually active environment for ourselves and our extended family.

Fourth, we are not a family of hippies. We love hippies, they have their place in the world, but we aren’t hippies. We’re young, urban mystics and professionals. Two of us serve on the Board of Directors for the Brotherhood of the Phoenix. All of us partake in activist opportunities that interest us. All of us are urbanites, fascinated by, and in love with the city and the community we are building here. All of us enjoy having money to spend. We’re all curious about how communal living will function INSIDE a capitalist environment. (Most often, communal collectives strive to remove themselves from capitalist society as much as possible. This may be an eventual goal for us, more likely it will be a side effect of trying to live healthier, better lives. But none of us are actively trying to get out of capitalism)

There may be more, we’ll have to discuss them, but these seem to be pretty essential to the way we live. So with those things said, how is it that we resolve conflicts that arise? How do I explain that things feel a bit wonky? As mystics, we need to embrace our intuitive knowledge of these things. If I am feeling that there is an energetic pressure, there is a reason for it. That reason may be my own, or it may be the manifestation of something larger. Either way it needs to be addressed. This is a rule in all walks of life. When something begins to fester, or rot, or stagnate, you need to address it appropriately or it will continue to fester.

Alright, that’s it for now. Namaste.

But I’m not really intending to write about our work in the community. This is not the place for that. The service yesterday had a single powerful message, one that was more potent than most people would realize. The message, or what message I received, is a simple one, that many of us forget.

Family has nothing to do with our differences, nor our similarities. Family has everything to do with Love. This is the season of balance, although we are fast approaching the dark tide of Samhain, the winter months are not here yet. This is the time to remember the convergence of opposites, the places where we find our own unique balance points, find the stability in that knowledge to let us walk bravely in the world without fear.

I am blessed to have family that is strong and noble, family that gives me the strength to spend every day of my life out of the closet, to acknowledge myself as the key to living a happy and fulfilling life. There are no separations but those that we create out of fear or hatred. We are the gifts that are given unto the world each day and night, and how we spend those gifts is the true measure of man. We can spend those gifts wastefully, squandering them on the effort that it takes to build walls, or we can spend them creating families.

I for one, choose to create families. I am blessed in that I grew up in a strong family, and not a day goes by that I don’t honor the strength I have been given through that. And now, I am working to create my own family. True, I am not related to them by any blood bond, nor even a bond of true similarity (although it would be foolish to pretend that there are not many things we share). No, the family that I am building is based on the simple concept of love. I have found people that I deem worthy of love, who are willing to offer me their love, who are willing to make new communities with me. There is nothing but beauty in love, however it manifests, and I will challenge anyone who says otherwise.

Because in the end, love transcends sexuality and gender, religion and creed. Love transcends these things and many more, because it is honest. Love is the center of the Divine spirit, the Queer Spirit, and the Spirit of Humanity. And it is because of this that I base my family on love, and try every day to share that love without hesitation or question.

I’ve been writing plenty, I just haven’t been writing here. It’s hard to always have something to say. I love the organicism of blogging, but there is also a demand placed. Not that I think I have any loyal readers, I don’t know whether or not I desire that. Of course, the ego-fulfillment that is blogging suggests I probably do. I shan’t be troubled by it either way. For whatever the motives, I want these words here, that is in fact why I’m writing them.

You see, the internet is more than a communication tool, it is more than a media platform. It is more than semi-random connections of computers around the world. The proprietors of large media companies would have us believe that the internet is simply the new television. But you see, this simply isn’t true. The internet holds new promises.

More than anything else, the internet is becoming, and holds the promise of art. Let me be clear, when I say art I refer to the expression of the human spirit in any media. Art, at it’s core, holds the premise that we are more than just complex sets of proteins and enzymes animated by some neurological spark. The internet, this vast web of interrelations and connections, is the only medium thus brought into being by man that even begins to approach the complexity and variety which establishes the reality of the human animal. Because of this, the internet provides a forum for the creation and distribution of art that is unlike any other. It allows humanity to view itself from above, and gives us the opportunity to share ourselves in reality.

Art is no longer relegated to galleries, or libraries, or private collections. The internet makes the creation and expression of art into a fundamental human activity, and through this fundamental change in the way we make art, we have the opportunity to revolutionize our culture. When I write here, or when my friends make a movie or write a song, the internet immediately allows our culture to encompass these new thoughts. If they are original, they are brought into our culture clearly and although they may never be core, these new beauties become part of us. If the art is derivative but expressive, it becomes part of our cultural lingua franca, and if it is derivative and dull, it is immediately assigned to the corridors of expression, the artistic knowledge that supports our culture by reminding us of it’s commonalities.

Now don’t mistake me, I’m not getting all high and mighty about programming styles, but I find that I have a pretty easily negotiable style, and I like it.

That’s not really the point though, nor is my preference being ignored by others the point. But I have a seriously difficult time trying to grasp the ‘just make it work’ philosophy of so many people. Not even the people I work with particularly. Just people in general. I don’t understand why people don’t ever want to take the time to do it right in the first place. Instead they put band-aid after band-aid on the problem until they have a heaping pile of gauze and sticky and plastic. Then they wonder why they can’t feel their finger anymore.

I see this in my job daily, but it occurs to me that it’s a much much larger problem then lazy developers. It’s cultural. To look at the band-aid analogy, only from a different light. Look at the way our allopathic practitioners handle our medical care. They ask you what’s wrong, and then give you a perscription medication to ‘fix’ it. Except the medication doesn’t fix it. It alleviates the symptoms. To fix it, you need to know what caused it, and that would require a much better understanding of the human body than western doctors have. (Yes, I know there are a lot of great doctors out there, many of whom take good care of their patients. But there is a philosophical epidemic in the western world, particularly in North America, that indicates medication is the solution to our ‘problems.’)

But even looking at the poorly conceived concept of medicine isn’t a big enough picture. Why do we get sick in the first place? Laziness. We do exactly what some of my co-workers do. Instead of taking care of ourselves and building a healthy life to begin with, we do what’s easy, and work to get by. Then we are constantly supporting and reevaluating, and changing our lifestyles, or adjusting our bodies chemical balance to try and restore ourselves to a comfortable state of living. Just like my coworkers who just keep adding an extra line of code here and there to ‘get by.’ Eventually the projects source is so fixed that it’s unmaintainable and requires an expert who has studied the monstrosity just to make a minor adjustment, or it works in some frankensteinian manner that is unweildly and ultimately ineffective.

This is exactly what happens to our lives. Instead of making the changes that will bring us back to Actual health, we settle for the easy choice that returns us to an operable state. And every time we compromise and attain an operable state, we go a little further into that morass of chemically altered confusion that becomes more and more difficult to maintain and uphold.

I’m no better. Just like every one of us I’ve been conditioned to pursue a livable life with as little work as possible. It takes me enormous effort to make small changes to my lifestyle and patterns, to try to live a healthier, cleaner life. I struggle every day to detoxify my body and mind, to cleanse the misconceptions and damaged awarenesses. And I often fail.

That said, I am trying. And I encourage those around me to do the same.