Just got to share my afternoon experience – can’t tell anyone else cos I get the rolly-eyes “here goes the mad tree woman” thing! Lol

A little background! I had a rotten night’s sleep. I was woken at 3:30am with a migraine, it was so painful, I cried myself back to sleep, trying not to wake Man, because he had to be up for work at 6am. Suffice to say, I woke up this morning feeling really groggy…still with migraine remnants (you know when you feel like you’ve been punched in the head and have a mahoosive inside bruise.) I sat and felt very sorry for myself.

Then the phone rang. Then it rang again, and again and again. It was so painful to my head to hear it ring, I turned it off.

Then I logged online to find loads of really taxing emails (about funding for workshops) that I need to deal with. Feeling quite sick, I turned off my email, and moaned a bit on Facebook (as I do! Lol)

Then the dog started staring at me – doing the mindbending “take me for a walk before I poo in your shoes” thing.

The last thing I wanted to do was go for a walk. Outside it is blowing a hoolie, there is horizontal rain…and my head…OH MY HEAD! BUT. I have dog, and I have a duty to dog…

I wrapped myself up warm, long waterproof coat, comfy walking shoes, and off we went to the beach. No one else around, just me, the waves crashing, the wind a-blowing and…Dog.

Until I saw a young woman of about 18 years old - she was wearing a long blue floral skirt, a white hoodie, and looked flipping-freezing! She had long dark hair that was whipping around her face in the wind and she was running bare foot over the sand, down to the sea. The wind was really lashing and it was POURING down, yet, she ran with total gay-abandon, her skirt pulled up and being blown by the wind to the sea, where she twirled herself round and round.

Her (what I can only suppose) boyfriend, was stood on the sea wall calling to her to come back – but, she was oblivious, completely lost in her own world, knee deep in the cold sea, spinning and spinning round and round entirely revelling in the elements…and I stood there watching her desperate to spin round and round too, shouting “isn’t it wonderful!” – but I couldn’t, and didn’t…this was her moment and I had no idea whether she knew I was there…it was such a special, private moment for her…I didn’t want to burst her joy-filled bubble!

But Oh my goodness, what a wonderful thing to see!…because I know that feeling…I’ve been that girl, spinning around and around, arms raised to the sky tasting the rain, and there is no other feeling that even comes close…and I miss it!

The young woman finally came back to this world, and ran bouncing like a child to her boyfriend, “you’re crazy” I heard him call to her as she ran towards him. She was grinning from ear to ear! He just stood giggling with his arms open, waiting for her.

I walked away in my own dream world, with a little of the girl I used to be re-lit in my heart. Life throws some bloody awful blows sometimes…and you have no choice but to pick yourself up and carry on, and sometimes you lose who you really are underneath all the layers of care and worry (and waterproof coats and sensible shoes!) That young woman taught me a big lesson!

There is of course always room for “sensible”, but it’s also essential to let yourself be who you are. Others will shout at you, call you back, and try and make you into something you’re not – and it’s true, you sometimes have to bend for others, because that’s life, and that’s how we all survive together – but, there are times when you just HAVE to be yourself and just “be”, because life will keep throwing the hard times at you – and unless you take a little time to run with gay abandon (either metaphorically or literally) you’ll always be the observer, the one looking on…wishing you had the balls to run bare foot into the stormy sea and feel it’s energy rush through you.

My lesson this afternoon has been heeded, and tomorrow, even if it is raining horizontal rain, I’m going to have me a little paddle in the sea!

Comments are welcomed on this blog post, and any of the others, at the Pagan Heart Forum which you can find by clicking here.

An age old Pagan debate

By Lazuli of Pagan Heart

I know that this will be, and has been, an ongoing debate forever, but, it’s something that caught my eye today, and I wanted to highlight the story.

A 4^th grade school girl in Minnesota has recently hit the pagan headlines. This young girl has been chastised for wearing her pentacle at school. The girl had worn the pendant for some time without anyone taking much notice, but when a supply teacher started at her school, he demanded that she hide her pentacle inside her shirt. Children wearing other religious symbols as pendants weren’t chastised. He told the child, “You should keep things like that to yourself."

The girl was upset and told her mother, who complained to the school. The mother received an immediate reaction from the head of the school and the supply teacher in question was black-listed within his profession.

Here’s where the debate starts.

Apart from a squabble amongst commenters about what the pentacle actually means…the debate ensues. Some points:

• It is not made clear whether the teacher is a Christian or not. Although the assumption that he is has prompted many of the comments left on the story. But, I’d like to point out that the purpose of me including this story is not that it becomes a Christian vs Pagan thing, but more a debate on how the situation was handled.
• Some commenters believe that this man has been made an example of. However, others point out how many pagans have been tortured by people with his kinds of opinions over the centuries, and feel it was the correct response.

One commenter on the story says:

“The child should have been given a public apology. The teacher should have been reprimanded publicly. And then he should have been allowed to teach provided that he knew it would not be tolerated.” She continues: “How did this help her [the child] in her religious experience? I think not much. But maybe someone will have taken the time to point out that pagans are strong enough to feel sorry for people whose religion is so fear filled.”

The comments then develop and describe suicides of young people who have been so badly bullied at school for their Pagan beliefs.

Another says (we don’t know if they are pagan or not) that the teacher had singled this child out, and that “Stupidity should be painful.”

So, was this man, the teacher, a victim of overreaction? Has this just fuelled the fire of people who have such closed minds (religiously)? Could this have made them more adamant that they are right, and we are to be ousted? Has it pushed the universal understanding of pagan beliefs a few steps backward and gone against the essence of pagan belief by causing harm to another? Or should he have been reprimanded as such and made an example of, as a stand for all pagans to be allowed their basic human rights and to be able to, without fear, openly disclose what they believe in should they wish to do so? Is this karma or are we (I say ‘we’ as a collective, but do not wish to put all pagans into one bowl!) condoning the very behaviour that has caused such misinformed nonsense of our beliefs over generations?

This story is included on the Pagan Heart Forum – where comments and discussion about this story, all things pagan (and not pagan!) are welcome. We are a really friendly bunch of people from all over the world, with all kinds of experiences and backgrounds. Feel free to come and say hi!

You can find the Pagan Heart Website here.

Another New Year

From Lazuli of Pagan Heart

I recently came across the article below. I wrote it about 5 years ago when I was all a bit confused, I’d been through some pretty traumatic times, and although I didn’t know it at the time, I was on the verge of a whole new life. I was fighting with myself…do I remain the flighty slightly coo-coo person I had always been?,  or do I do what everyone else I could see was doing? One of the things that scared me most was being a sheeple…you know, someone who followed everyone else…did all the “right” things (marry, have children, buy house, have car…etc.) all that frightened the heck out of me. But I was on the cusp of change; I was on the verge of a whole new life, a new way of doing things…I think, now I re-read the text below, that instinctively I knew something was about to happen – but not quite what.

 I didn’t end up doing all those things that scared me…some of it by choice, some because choice had been taken away from me a long time ago…but finally I became secure…secure in the knowledge that it was absolutely fine to be a bit flighty and coo-coo AND have some of the things in life that seemed the norm (even the scary norm!)

Moving forward, the past year has been an incredible for me – I finally discovered fundamentally who I am spiritually – I’m still learning where that fits in life…and still discovering new and wonderful things. Pagan Heart has been my mainstay throughout 2011. A place to rant and rave, a place to share good and bad times. I have received such great companionship and learning from the people within – and oodles of love. I am blessed!

Five years on, I still don’t own my own house. I don’t have children. But I do have security – the knowledge that it really is all going to be OK – I don’t have to keep running any more…I can run when the fancy takes me, not because of fear!

I have a cramped head – always have had. My head is full of stuff and ideas and things I want to do, write about, make, create.

I’m not a nerd – I can be a bit geeky, but I’m not a plain Jane type. I’ve had my fair share of shaved heads and mohicans and getting drunk on the beach with a bunch of ‘older boys’ when I was young – I’ve run-away, gone travelling, danced with rock stars (well one!). I’ve taken drugs and run naked through fields and all without having to read a book about it first, but still, I have a thirst for knowledge, even though I don’t really know that much.

When I was a lot younger I was sent for a Mensa test, to be told that I was of high intelligence and if I didn’t slow down, by the time I reached adulthood I would burn-out…Guess what happened?!

My yearning for learning wouldn’t go away. When I was 10 I studied the history of London…for a laugh…not because I had to – but because I could, so I did. I never used to sleep a lot as a child, three hours (I am told) was enough for me – it didn’t occur to me that three hours was not the norm, because I’d have my head in a book, or I’d be drawing or painting until mum woke up to give me breakfast. Thankfully the sleeping patterns have changed now, and I’m just as good at sleeping now as I was at reading when I was a kid!

Wanting to learn and be a million different things has a knock-on effect though. Because now, as an adult I never really stick at one thing for long enough to become a master of it – I get distracted by shiny things and colours and books and paper, I like to experience new stuff, be in new places, touch the walls of old buildings, change the routine, eat my dinner for breakfast…and never, ever comply. I’m like a puppy who’s just been let out the house and into the garden for the first time and wants to pee up each and every blade of grass…all of a sudden I’m off on some tangent…and those who are with me at the time are left standing dazed and confused. “What’s she up to now?” That’s all OK for a child to do, you’re expected to have whims when you’re a kid, but when you’re an adult, you get lumbered with responsibility – and responsibility dumps all over flightiness until you’re knee deep in poop without a shovel big enough to dig you out.

If I was more focussed and grounded I might own my own house by now, have my own kids, be sitting on a savings account dreaming of retirement, but I’m not! I’m flighty and curious with no interest in normality or the boring mundane day-to-day life of most of my peers. I want to pee up every blade of grass, and then go back around and pee up them all again! I don’t want to be grounded, I don’t want to focus, I want the harshness of reality to be blurred and distorted so I don’t have to be the thing I fear so much. Normal. I don’t own my own house, I don’t really own anything…but a bunch of books about nothing in particular and a need to be different.

Is it worth it? What happens when there’s no-one left to help dig you out of the poo? I’m not lazy, I work hard. But I get bored so often. Mundane rears its ugly head and I’m off again, shiny colours and blades of grass tempt me away from doing the responsible thing, and I end up knee deep in the brown stuff again until needs turns to musts and I have to do the ‘grown-up’ thing so I can pay the bills.

I’ve had my fair share of hardship. My flightiness has caused me all sorts of pain and heartache, and although I try to blame everyone but me for that, I can’t…I create the chaos, I should learn to deal with it…I’ve been bruised and battered, I’ve also been loved and cherished, I’ve been homeless and broke, but I’ve also been blessed with warmth and comfort…I’ve seen it all, through my flightiness, my life has been far from mundane…but never secure.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is to never fear who you are – you are unique and wonderful, and have the ability to do amazing things. Be secure in who you are, take care of you, and the rest will fall into place. You will have energy to help others, you will be useful to those less fortunate, but you need to nourish yourself before you can do any of that other stuff.

So, although many of us will have viewed Samhain as our new year…I want to mark this evening and tomorrow, because it’s always been the most special time of the season to me.

I hope 2012 is wonderful to you and yours. I wish you an abundance of love and happiness – the security to be exactly who you want to be, and the strength to climb those inevitable mountains that we all have to climb. I wish you food in your belly, warmth in your soul, loving arms wrapped around you and a hand to hold!

!!!Happy New Year!!!

Yule

From Redhead of Pagan-Heart

What do we really know about this magnificent period of the year?

Image from Celtic Magpie - Photobucket

We know that some call it just winter time, others from other religions have their own name, but we know this period as Yule.

Yule is the time of the year when we celebrate Winter Solstice and everything related, we celebrate mostly on 21st , 22nd or 23rd December (depends on the year)

Winter Solstice has been celebrated in cultures the world over for thousands of years. This start of the solar year is a celebration of Light and the rebirth of the Sun. In old Europe, it was known as Yule, from the Norse, Jul, meaning wheel.

Pagans celebrate this time of the year in different ways, having different rites or traditions.  Paganism is seen in lots of forms from Shamanism, Wiccanism, Traditional Witchcraft, Druidry to the Germanic Neopagans and Northern traditions and more. Because of the different ways of pagans there are different ways to see Yule and to celebrate Yule, but there is a common essence and that is: death and rebirth, mostly REBIRTH.

Image from Celtic Magpie - Photobucket

I don’t know about the others, but I know that I, as a Wiccan, celebrate the rebirth of the Great Horned Hunter God, who is viewed as the new-born solstice sun. For Wiccans Yule festivities involve the burning of the Yule log on an open fire to honour the lord Cernunnos or the Horned God; the log is decorated with holly and other symbolic paraphernalia.

Also during the many Wiccan Yule rituals, the Holly King dies and the Oak King is born. This signifies the changes from the dark half of the year to the light half of the year.

I’ve found some interesting ways of celebrating Yule, here are some of them  – (From Celebrating Winter Solstice by Selena Fox):

“Adorn the home with sacred herbs and colours. Decorate your home in Druidic holiday colours red, green, and white. Place holly, ivy, evergreen boughs, and pine cones around your home, especially in areas where socializing takes place. Hang a sprig of mistletoe above a major threshold and leave it there until next Yule as a charm for good luck throughout the year. Have family/household members join together to make or purchase an evergreen wreath. Include holiday herbs in it and then place it on your front door to symbolize the continuity of life and the wheel of the year. If you choose to have a living or a harvested evergreen tree as part of your holiday decorations, call it a Solstice tree and decorate it with Pagan symbols.”

Image from Celtic Magpie - Photobucket

I wait for Yule prepared with a warm heart and may you and your dear ones be blessed by the Light of a new SUN.

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From Fingal of Pagan Heart

A picture to peruse for this posting. Symbolic and thought provoking and open to personal interpretation.
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Finding my Pathway

- by Jehra of Pagan Heart


I never consciously set out to 'change my religion', or become other than what I was raised to be. I was Christened into the High Church of Protestantism at a few months of age and brought up to attend Sunday School, Church services and indeed brought my young family up the same way...but I had a problem and it was getting worse by the day and eventually turned to my Vicar for guidance. But I need to step back in time for a little while and start, at the very beginning.


I grew up seeing spirit. As a tiny child I was taught my prayers and Mother stood by my bed every night as I knelt to say the traditional prayers of children, 'Now I lay me down to sleep' and ‘Our Father'. Mother would kiss me goodnight and leave me and I would immediately climb out of bed and climb the ladder like steps that led to God’s room in heaven to tell him of my day. I never saw this as odd, nor did I question it, and I never told anyone of my nightly trips to hug God’s knees and clamber into his lap to chatter away as little girls can.


As I read the previous statement I can see raised eyebrows and, almost hear the derisory comments; but to a child, who is told that if you are good you will go to God...I asked Mother every night '…have I been good Mummy?' She would say “yes” and of course that meant to me a quick visit to God was available, so I did! Because I believed as a child; literally.


At 8 years of age, a loved and loving Aunt passed to the next realm, she appeared to me as I watched my Mothers distress and said simply she was fine, she didn't need her wheelchair anymore and was upset that Mother was so distressed. I tried to tell my Mother but was hushed and I simply kept it to myself. I was 12 years old before I realised that not everyone could see what I saw and that the reason I felt like the odd one out was precisely because I was genuinely different and that drew me into other thoughts. Yet I did not know then that what I did was outside of the realms of acceptance within my church. Diligently I prayed for help, and for protection because I saw much that was frightening and my teen years where filled with experiences I would not understand for many years.


I married young, just a few months after my 18th birthday, and spent the next 5 years creating my family, settling into a home and all the many calls on my time prevented my involvement in anything other than the most immediate of needs for a young and vibrant family. Then my eldest son at the age of 7 asked me a question. He commented that Jesus's Mum must have been pretty upset when he was killed by Pontius and followed with a query, which was, what Jesus must have felt like when his friends and everyone where so horrible to him and to see his Mum crying.


I wrote my Son a poem that night, it is posted on the Pagan Heart website, it flew from my pen, and I sat reading it drained of everything except awe at the speed of delivery. I didn't feel as if I had written it, more as if I had simply recorded what was told me.


I remained confused and a little awed as I re-read my poem, and in the end, shaken and not a little wary, I rang a Christian helpline. A lovely Nun from the Catholic church listened to my explanation and heard my poem and told me gently that she thought I had been given a special gift. I put the phone down with relief and read my son his poem the next day.


As I began, the first lines his little face reflected the feelings I too had experienced; Hold me, Love me - the words began, and he had an answer that he could accept.


I was still having the same old problem which had haunted me for several years, I had dreams.


They were not normal dreams. They felt 'real' and invariably were violent or destructive and invariably again...they all where predictive; they came true within 3 weeks of my 'dream' and they were getting worse, a lot worse. The ones I dreaded most where the airplane crashes, they terrified me. I had one such dream which was haunting my daytimes and in absolute trust I turned to the Vicar and explained I had awful dreams which were coming true and he directed me to Mrs B**** and her women’s weekly meetings group in her home. I felt nothing but relief. One of the ladies visited me first and gently probed what it was I needed support for and I told her of the poem experience, and the latest airplane disaster which by then had occurred in dreadful details which matched my dream almost exactly. She was sympathetic and I came to the Women’s Bible Meeting with real hope of some answers.


Mrs B**** asked me to tell the group my poem, and before anyone could say anything she asked me about my dream, so I told her it all. The women sat quietly watching my face, it felt uncomfortable to be the centre of such strong focus but I continued.


As I finished Mrs B**** asked me what did I do about these dreams? I said I prayed. I prayed because I didn't know what else to do, I prayed for the souls of those who would die and I prayed for a miracle that the disaster would be averted and as I finished I looked at her and I say truly now, I had hope and I had a need for healing. I was confused by these dreams and had no way of dealing with the aftermath of knowing hundreds of people would die and I couldn't stop it. I felt helpless and I so hoped for answers from these wise women, all of whom where several years if not decades older than myself. Surely they would have answers, they must have experienced this before, else the Vicar wouldn't have sent me here.


This was the wisdom they gifted me:-


“Who are YOU to pray for the dead?”


“Who gave YOU the right to write of Our Lords thoughts?!”


“It’s the DEVIL’S WORK!”


“DEVIL’S DAUGHTER!”


I sat in confusion. Deeply shocked, I was the devil’s daughter? It was the devil’s works? I had done wrong in praying? I stumbled to my feet and said simply "Thank you" and I left.


I wandered aimlessly around the local park. I felt dreadful, I was evil and horrible and was haunted by these dreams because I was somehow the devil’s own spawn. Terribly upset, as a committed Christian I felt I should be exorcised or something. I wandered out of the rain into the little local library in the old part of the park and there was my saviour. A woman who was friends with my sister (also a Librarians Assistant) saw me and recognised a person in shock.


She approached me and asked me what was wrong and I told her what had just happened. She looked at me strangely, she put her arm around me and walked me to a corner of the library I had never been to in my entire life, because it was under the heading ‘OCCULT.’


She swept a hand across rows of books, Yin and Yang, Buddha, Eastern and Western philosophies I had never heard of and books on dreams...lots of books on dreams. She said very simply “I think you should read some of these” and patted my arm and walked away.


The Gods Bless her, because I read alright! I read and continued to read, I found Spiritualist Churches, meetings, groups and in those places I was not an oddity, I was not the Devils Daughter, I read philosophy and I studied , I still do.


I never found one religion I could claim as my own, my truth, my perfect place. I did not wish to walk away from the Christ’s Light, nor did I wish to avert my heart and soul from the Goddess for in my studies I had read of so many faces of one light and believed, and still do, that when all of the world’s religions get together and piece together the jigsaw of our beliefs, and allow them to meld to one truth...then and only then, will we have the real truth of our deity, our Universal Truth.


So I became Shamanic, and being Shaman Ka is wonderful. I study herb lore, earth lore, the weather and animal behaviour and people, I study people a lot. More importantly as Shaman-Ka I am free of old restraints, I do not judge, nor do I condemn a religion, any religion because each has within it a kernel of truth. The trappings of manmade ‘do and don't’, the manmade restrictions of dress codes and demands, I ignore. What I seek is that religions core truth and invariably it begins with loving your fellow mankind.


I am comfortable as Shaman. I can, and do, attend any church, any synagogue, any temple, any shrine or circle, mountain top, place of beauty...anywhere at all in total and absolute belief that my Deity, my one true light is there, in me, around me but especially strong in these sacred places.


What does my Universal Light care that we use a thousand names, a thousand images to perceive and to personify the Universal Lights presence? It matters not! What matters is that I come with love, with faith and with total and complete acceptance.


It has been a long time since I walked the early hills of my childhood challenges. Many years now since I clambered the terrain of my youthful hopes and the many Eigers and Kilimanjaro’s of my young womanhood. No one has all of the answers, no one has all of the truth. But here, now, in this my later years, where challenges are more of the ant hill and steep stairs variety ...I know my pathway...


It is yours, and yours, and yours sir!..and yours madam, and yours little one...for I can and have, will always, be able to approach my truth with my own truth. I believe there is one Light, one Love and it is so powerful, so strong, so overwhelmingly perfect that when I approach with my thanks for a day accomplished, when I approach with a prayer for healing for a friend, or myself, when simply I clamber up a ladder of dreamscape to hug a pair of knees so far above my head to say "Hello God, I’ve been a good girl", even now...I am heard.


Walk in your own truth, it is a path of many steps, many obstacles will fall before you, many will be overcome by you. Make Faith your aid and Faith your trust.


I am me, and my Gods love me for who I am.


May light ever find you in your darkest hours.


Jehra

"She"

By Lazuli of Pagan Heart

I lived that pain, of losing again, when it stole my breath and it started to rain

and the wind kissed my face, in that beautiful place - where did you go?

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Then She touched my soul, made me whole...and nothing else mattered, except the story She told

by that glistening stream, She took me to see - taking me places I had never been.

She said "Open your eyes, and see the skies, blue azure, no need to hide..."

...and later we sat, watching the moon; healing the wounds; feeling all of nature's moods.

 Then She gave me her hand, as I tried to stand, "...Don't know if I can." - "You can!" she sang

She whispered "You are never alone...when you need a hand to hold, I'll be here, you'll never be cold."

Then with the soft dawn mist, She blew me a kiss, and faded gently, into the distance

And so that pain, that stole my breath, while it started to rain...

...taught me how to live again.

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