bloodteethandflame

A life in threes

Month: September, 2015

I Am.

It’s been quite an emotional rollercoaster for me today.

  • Relationship issues.
  • Devotional issues.
  • Devotional relationship issues.  (Though in the interest of trying to remain positive hasn’t been all bad…it simply involves some work about which I’ve been hesitant to finish, and the overwhelming sense of being emotionally drained in doing it.)

Upside, I got a good walk in lovely cool weather.  Downside, getting caught in a torrential downpour and now I feel generally achy.

Upside, I did enjoy a lovely text conversation with a dear friend today, and it meant so much to me…you don’t even know 🙂  Downside, none 🙂

 

I think that this is an apt song for today.  Though its set in a minor key, the message strikes me as positive overall — which was so like the day itself:

Going at it again: ‘Spread the word, they said,’ Part II

Earlier last week, I was surprised to report that I did not see any more of those ‘blurb of God’ signs that peppered my neighborhood last week.

As you may have read in the post, I went through and re-purposed and replaced many of them to reflect a balance of other spiritual beliefs:

IMG_2969

As a matter of fact, it would seem that the Housing Authority had removed all of them as of Wednesday of last week.

I felt gratified to think that my point had been made, as I had not seen them replaced.

Until today.

godblurb1

godblurb2

Heh.

I must say that I’m a fan of that second blurb, the one written in cursive/black ink.

It reads:

Jesus loves you like any one else.  don’t worry.

I am especially tempted to respond to this one with snark, thusly:

Dear Jesus:

I thought that You said that I was special!  I am worried that You love everyone else more than me 😦

or better yet…

 Dear Jesus:

 So I take it that You are capable of breaking my heart ‘like any one else’ that loves me, too.  No thanks 😦

 

 

😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone I know.

iamfire

I don’t know who this ‘r.m drake’ is…but zie sounds like Someone I know.

Can’t take my eyes off You…

LokebyStripedSmokerDA

The fire god says hello

(Loke-spam #2 by Striped Smoker on DeviantArt.)

Spread the word, they said.

Well, some folks are.

The other day, I was thinking about this duty to evangelize that a lot of Christians have got going….and this default assumption that their evangelical Christian behavior is welcome anywhere that they are.

And it got me to thinking about my own religious beliefs and how I am sometimes reluctant to ‘come out of the closet’ as it were, because I personally live in a community dominated by Christians – namely Baptists and Jehovah Witnesses.

I’ve always chalked it up to the fact that I am living in that state in the South which is not the South but still has a lot of Southern conservative Christian attitudes, namely Florida.

(But even so, I will admit that even before I was publicly identifying myself as Norse non-reconstructionist polytheist, or as  a Celtic-flavored Pagan, I still grew up surrounded by people who often made the assumption that I must believe in a God and of course, that God had to be the Abrahamic God that they and their parents believed in — despite the fact that my parents styled themselves as agnostics — because I grew up celebrating Christmas and Easter.)

So, in that sense, I hardly think that I am the first person to point out that when you tell many people that you’re spiritual, they assume by default that you must be some form of Christian.

~~~~

But aside of all that, I’m getting pretty cranky about some of the people in my neighborhood.

Mostly because there is a woman in my neighborhood who keeps tacking these little cardboard signs everywhere:

annoyinglittlesigns

…and I mean everywhere.

Walking my dog the day before yesterday, I found at least a half dozen of them during the first 1/2 mile of my walk.  Two of them were taped above the walk signal button.  Three were tacked and/or stapled into tree trunks that were at least 100 yards from the road-edge.  And one – the above one – had been affixed to an electrical pole that held a public cable line repeater.

Walking today, there were at least eight more tacked, taped or stapled unto various things, often at eye-level.

One little sign had been twist-tied into the branches of a decorative hedge.

And it got me to thinking that someone was going quite out of their way to spread these blurbs of God.

I suspect that this is why small towns often put up those ‘Post No Bills‘ signs in downtown areas.

But no one seems to care — except for maybe me – because I watched several workers for the home association (whose job seems to be come out every other Thursday or so to clean up the litter along the sidewalks, and remove other things that don’t belong like the handmade cardboard signs of past garage sales and whatnot) – and I watched each of them stop as if to read these little signs, and then each walked away without removing it.

So, since the homeowner’s association seems to approve of these little signs – I mean, their job is to remove things like that all under the auspices of removing ‘litter’  and I distinctly witnessed each of them leaving these signs alone- I decided that I would turn each of these signs over and write my only little spiritual blurbs on them.

So far, I’ve re-purposed two with stanzas from the Hávamálone with a short passage from the Vedas, two with verses from Thelema doctrine that came through the Ape of Thoth randomizer, and one with a portion of the Homeric hymn 26 to Dionysus.

Now let’s see if those signs stay up.

 

 

 

 

Perhaps.

chaosofstars

Hm.

Is that a promise?

Grateful.

I know that I haven’t been posting much, or rather, I haven’t been posting as often as I’d intended.   Though it’s not as if I have a shortage of topics to write about – as a matter of fact, I’ve been writing a lot lately.

My devotional practice has been going through some changes, and as much as I wanted to share my thoughts about some of the work that I’ve been doing, it just hasn’t happened.  I’ve been wanting to write about the connections that I have been making – but somehow coordinating my thoughts into succinct blog posts hasn’t been going so well.

Somehow I haven’t been able to Post All the Things.

But I did want to post about how delighted I was to receive my copy of Silence Maestas handmade Loki devotional:

altarbook

So I moved some things around on my altar – because He seemed to want it up there as soon as I opened it.

But it’s a strange sort of thing because when I was reading it, the vibe that I was getting from Him seemed to be both excited and irritated that I was reading it.  Perhaps He was cranky over the fact that I had to remove the book from its place on the altar there in order to read it?  I don’t know.

I bought a copy because I was excited to support Silence’s book project overall, but I was also curious and excited to read more information concerning the feminine Loki as well.

So my purchasing this book was intended as a gift for both of Us, in this sort of roundabout way: it was certainly intended as a gift for Him, and a combination gift/informational research project for me.  (I’ll admit that those two aspects often become somewhat entwined whenever I purchase books pertaining to Him, but, then again, not every Loki-book ends up on the altar… so there you have it.)

I also got the nudge from Him to get my hands on this antler-piece

Lokiantler

–thought I’m not exactly sure why.    Another gift, perhaps.

I’m kinda using this as a bookmark – as the leather thong that came attached to the antler works rather well for holding my place in the large poetry book that I’m reading right now – but when I’m not reading, He seems to like it if I keep it on His altar for now.

And most recently, there’s these Loki and Sleipnir mini-rosary beads from Beth Wodandis Designs:

LokiSleipnirprayerbeads

They are lovely is all I can say.

I was struck by the coloring and quality of the labradorite.  I find them especially beautiful*

You see, I almost fell asleep while praying with them on the night that I received them.

The other darker beads are ‘dumortierite.’

I have read that dumortierite works well to increase one’s state of inner peace.

Indeed.

I am not kidding when I say that holding these has been immensely calming somehow, even though I had read in several other places that ‘dumortierite can be psychically energizing.’ Labradorite has a similar intensity of effect for me…but either way, I am not complaining.  

Perhaps I have been more hyperactive than usual, therefore the intensity of these two stones has had a calming influence in response to my hyperactive energetic state.

Who knows?

~~~

*It would seem that Loki considered this mini-rosary as an appropriate gift for Him, as well, since every piece of labradorite I’ve ever had has eventually ended up on His altar somewhere.

Perhaps I should make Him a themed altar just for all that labradorite that He’s been wanting ❤

Lessons.

Anythinglessons

(taken from The Open Mind  (with Dana Bowles) on Facebook)

What Is Godphoning and Do I Want The Responsibility?

A great read on the topic of Godphones and the related responsibilities of having a ‘ Godphone.’

(Though, to be honest, my ‘god-phone’ isn’t akin in the slightest bit to a telephone. It’s less audio-visual and more…tactile/sensation-based. It’s rather difficult to explain.)

Friends On The Other Side

“Dude pick up the phone, Dionysus has been trying to call for three weeks and now He’s bugging ME about you!”


Honestly though, only Dionysus and Hekate have given me the experience of Godphoning. Cthulhu and Morrighan can’t be assed. As Godphoning is such an intensely personal experience that falls into UPG, my mileage may vary from another practitioners’. Generally though, most of us have a lot of common experiences that crop up in all our posts on the subject, and so I’m going to add to that wealth of knowledge.

The funny thing about godphoning is that it’s a joke term. A certain clique of spirit workers, shamans, and other spiritually minded folk were trying to explain the different ways divine communication can occur with humans.  It was a VERY accurate joke though, and it stuck and is now used amongst the general populace. But what is a godphone?

View original post 1,026 more words

Surt(r)

I was talking to a friend of mine this afternoon, and we were discussing Surt, and the dearth of information that can be found concerning Him.

A cursory Google search turns up a lot of UPG from Raven Kaldera concerning Surt* – Kaldera is directly referenced in the first four links – but I was delighted to stumble upon this article on WordPress, which does string together several points about Surt as He appears in the Lore(tm).

Neat.

~~~

*Not that I’m against UPG (or doxa) by any means.

Most of what I have come to know concerning a lot of  Jötnar is essentially my own UPG….but yeah.  New knowledge is always good!