Hi guys! Just wanted to let you know that you can now find me over at AmieRavenson.com. That’s right, I moved all my stuff to my new host so I can tweak it, twist it, and make it mine!
I’M SO EXCITED!
I’ll also be hosting my new podcast there, though that will be a few weeks before I start releasing episodes. I want to build up a nice stash of finished eps to cover my ass.
See you on the flippity flip! 🙂
Heart Chakra
Sorry I’ve been quiet lately, I’ve been a little swept up in first edits on my novel, Altar of Change. I’m nearly finished, and then I’ll be asking some friends to read through and hack it apart so I can make it stronger, better.
While I’ve been editing, I’ve had another idea gestating in my brain. I watched this video on YouTube last week, and I felt very drawn to try and introduce a daily devotional element into my personal practice. Since I don’t do anything quietly, without lots of examination, writing, and sharing, I decided that this might just make a fantastic podcast.
I’ve been wanting to do more with this blog, and this is a great reason to move it to its own domain, which will be happening soon. I’ll make an announcement on that later.
It will not only be the home of my typical bloggy ramblings, but it will also be the home of Bewitching Your Day, a podcast dedicated to finding spirituality every single day. I will talk about various things that present themselves to me, or occur to me, and I will release a new (short) podcast EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 366 DAYS.
Yeah, it’s kind of a big project.
We all need a little sacred space in our lives. This office (my half) has been used for hardcore, marathon gaming sessions, working from home, job searches, storage for art supplies, and everything else. I feel like I’m embarking on a new journey in my life, and I want this space to change with me.
So it’s time for me to clear the clutter and make this space a welcoming, creative, sacred place for me to do my thing.
In the spirit of honesty, let me show you what I mean.
My dirty office 1/3
My dirty office 2/3
My dirty office 3/3
The omens have been good on this one. I keep seeing hawks everywhere I go, and they’re a symbol of finding your life path. I’ve been searching for some time, and this just feels right to me. Also, a tarot reading I did on Mother’s Day (Tarot and Tea 2014) was very positive.
So I have a feeling that things are about to start looking up! I wish you luck in all of your journeys as well. 🙂
We tied and crafted two new offerings for our spirit branch tonight.
My offering was green and gold and used yarn, embroidery thread, aventurine beads, and a piece of jade tied to a turmeric root for healing. I annointed it with some healing oil and lit a healing candle once it was attached to the branch.
Bear and I also created an offering together to bring some passion back into our marriage. (We tend to get derailed by our hobbies and my pain level, and sometimes we just forget that we’re total perverts for each other.) This one used 3 strands of yarn, a purple velvet pouch, a garnet (good for passion AND our birthstone), damiana, jasmine blossoms, and two rose petals taken from my bouquet, which also hangs in our bedroom. We annointed it, and each others’ hearts, with some fire of passion oil and lit a seduction candle.
Tomorrow I’m planning on making us some Damiana tea and finding some time for hot Bear and Goat nookie. 🙂
I suspect that Bear would make a GREAT Pagan. 🙂
More herbal goodies I’ve been working on.. Also getting ready to do a block of editing on my first novel to hopefully *gasp* put it ‘out there’ sometime in the near future. 🙂
Herbs for fibromyalgia (and other chronic inflammatory diseases).
My life changed about 2 years ago. I began to realize that the ‘normal’ aches and pains of being a woman in her late 30’s weren’t all that normal. A lot of other people my age weren’t feeling the same things I was. Furthermore, those ‘normal’ aches and pains were getting a lot worse. They were beginning to affect my mood, my energy level, and my ability to cope with ‘normal’ life things like stress and sleep.
I talked to a friend who has fibro, and found that a lot of my symptoms were very much like hers. So I went to a doctor, who ran blood tests to rule everything else out. She did. We were left with fibro. And here I am.
It’s been a tough road trying to learn how to manage my symptoms and keep from crashing and burning. I’ve learned that meat is bad, sleep…
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I was going to have better pics, but I used too much Veganaise on the potato salad, and Bear got creative with purple food coloring on the eggless frittata. We’re still working on tweaking recipes for a book I’m working on called The Vegan Pagan. 🙂
Ostara Feast:
* Baby spinach salad with strawberries, mushrooms, sprouts, sunflower seeds, and a tahini/miso/strawberry dressing (I’m calling it Persephone dressing)
* Eggless tofu frittata with vegan sausage, onions, tomatoes, and vegan cheese
* New potato salad with green beans, green onions, Veganaise, and tons of dill
Dessert:
* Bubble green tea with coconut milk
Spinach strawberry with Persephone dressing
Happy Ostara everyone! 🙂
So we dug through my ribbons, yarns, and beads, created something that was meaningful to each of us, and said a few words as we tied our first offerings on. Then I lit a candle and some kyphi to enhance the atmosphere for some meditating I want to do later.
The spirit branch is sparse, but it’s only going to grow more and more beautiful with time.
Spirit Branch
My wish/focus for the next month is trying to relearn focus in meditation and having a regular spiritual practice.
Amie's spirit branch offering
Bear’s focus is to build momentum from his last paid voice over job to try to get more jobs, and start to make a living from his voice over work.
Bear's spirit branch offering
So, I was supposed to be super productive today. I was going to finish my Full Moon Offering incense, write about my 5th patron deity, maybe write a bit more about my complicated relationship with Inanna, clean my side of the room, bathe the doggies, maybe even collect some cherry blossoms.
It didn’t work out that way. I’ve been having quite the fibro flare for the past few days, and it culminated in a lot of pain when I woke up. So I already knew that things were going to work out a little differently. Sometimes I have to pick and choose where I spend my energy, especially when it’s limited with a flare up.
So first, Bear and I spent some romantic adult time together. We don’t get a chance to do that often these days, what with work, our other work we take on, our hobbies, and my health stuff. It was tough for me to talk myself into it today, hurting as I was, but SOOOO worth it. It always is. We need to reconnect, and that needs to be a bigger goal than what it is sometimes.
Josef and Amie Ravenson
Afterwards, I was struck with the inspiration to start a project that I’ve been noodling for a while. I wanted something that was rather simple and beautiful to reconnect with my spiritual practice, and with the full moon in particular. So I was thinking about something that would be creative and meaningful, and maybe even something that Bear would want to participate in.
Thus was born the idea of the spirit branch. It will not only be beautiful, but it will give us a focus for each lunar cycle.
So we spent the next hour or so searching for the perfect branch to use. (We have a lot of branches around, as our yard is heavily wooded in the back.) I found a really pretty maple branch covered with lichen, but I couldn’t bear to damage the pretty lichen with what I wanted to do. I found an ash branch, which I liked because it would tie to Yggdrasil, the World Tree. But it was old, and I didn’t know if it was already rotting. So after looking around, I was drawn to a section of a dogwood branch that was leaning near our woodpile. The energies of dogwood are good for love magick, protection, and also WISHES. Bingo! It’s also prevalent here in the South in the Spring, and I thought that was fitting. It will tie our wishes to our home, and also to the time of year when we started this practice.
Dogwood magick- Cornus florida inflorescence, showing four large white bracts and central flower cluster (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So the idea is that on every full moon, we raid my (considerably large) yarn and ribbon collection to find something that represents what we want to manifest for this lunar cycle. For example, this cycle I will choose a purple yarn, maybe some purple beads, and I will tie it around a quartz crystal, because I want to bring more ritual and a spiritual practice back into my life. Then, I will tie the yarn to our spirit branch, maybe light a candle, and meditate on the significance. Bear will do the same, probably without all the meditation, etc. But in the end, a wish is a wish, positive energy is positive energy.
I will also tie charm bags, dried herbs, stones, etc to the spirit branch on each full moon, and over the years it will become more and more beautiful with all of our wishes, focuses, etc. there for us to see. I’ll post an after pic once we’ve attached our first wishes.
Blessed be! 🙂
English: Lunar libration. see below for more descriptions Français : Librations de la lune. Voir une description détaillée en dessous. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Inanna came to me at a very pivotal time in my life. My partner of 7 years had just dumped me to go live with her new girlfriend the next state over, and my world was turned upside down. We had experienced lesbian bed death about 3 years in, and my self esteem suffered due to it. When I finally asked her for an open marriage, not to end our marriage, but save it, she agreed. Then she met someone and dumped me. I was devastated. But I was also a little exhilarated. Here, I finally got the chance to be happy.
So I dated. A LOT. I learned that I was again interested in men, even after being a lesbian for about 10 years. I also spent some time exploring kink and BDSM, and found out that I was quite good at it. I transitioned from thinking I was a submissive bottom to learning that I was a Dominant switch. It was a lovely time of exploration, and there were quite a few boys and girls I took along for the ride.
I began a podcast called Fleshvine’s FemDom Experiments, and that led to a partnership with a friend I had previously been seeing. We called our joint podcast Kinky and the Geek. It was through that podcast that I met most of the friends I have now, and also my Bear. That first tentative podcast I recorded, alone in my room, lonely and bored, completely changed my life for the better. It’s weird how that one pivotal moment can change our lives forever.
During this time, I was fixing so many things that my ex had broken in me. When I was with her, I felt unfuckable, and therefore unlovable, and that nobody would ever want to fuck or love me. My subsequent dating and playing activities proved that that wasn’t true. And it was then that I began to really feel alive again. As my body woke up, as I began to experience a healthy sex life again, I felt the stirrings of something deeper. I began to experience Inanna.
The Queen of the night, relief, 1800-1750 BC. (Photo credit: Bochum1805)
Perhaps the best known story of Inanna is her descent to the underworld. Inanna was known as the Queen of Heavens and was also associated with Venus, or the evening star. When she married a mortal king (and proto vegetation God), Dumuzi, she also established herself as an earth Goddess here on earth. Not one to be easily satisfied, she decided to also visit her sister Ereshkigal, who is queen of the underworld. Ereshkigal is immediately threatened and becomes very angry that Inanna would dare to visit her there in the underworld, so she devises a plan. She sets a guard at each of the seven gates of the underworld.
As Inanna descends through the 7 gates, she is instructed to remove a piece of clothing or jewelry each time. So to go to the underworld (which can be seen also as a woman’s journey within herself), she must remove some piece of her facade. Eventually, she faces her sister alone and naked, kneeling on the ground. Her sister is not appeased, and kills her, hanging her from a hook, where she hangs for 3 days and 3 nights.
Inanna had secretly spoken with her high priestess, Ninshubur, saying that if she didn’t return in 3 days to find help. Ninshubur goes to the Gods for help when Inanna doesn’t return, and Enki finally helps by creating two beings from the dirt under the Gods’ fingernails. They intercede on Inanna’s behalf, and Ereshkigal agrees to release her, as her presence is causing Ereshkigal some pain.
Inanna is revived and allowed to leave, but Ereshkigal’s demons follow her up through the gates back to the surface world. There, they demand that someone else must take her place. They try to take several of Inanna’s servants, but are refused because her servants mourned her while she was in the underworld. However, Inanna’s husband Dumuzi didn’t seem to mourn her at all, so he is taken in her stead.
He is kept for 6 months out of the year, and that is the time that Inanna mourns, which is the cause of Winter.
Foundation tablet from the Temple of Inanna at Uruk, dating to the reign of Ur-Nammu. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Inanna was one of the original love Goddesses, and a lot of the mythos of Aphrodite, Venus, Ishtar, Astarte, and Isis stemmed from her tales. She was worshipped primarily in her city of Uruk as early as 4000 BC. Her temples were places where sacred prostitution occurred, and a lot of her clergy consisted of asexuals, hermaphrodites, and ‘feminine men’. (I especially love ‘feminine men’.) Her high priestess would also enact the Great Rite (ritualized sex meant to ensure fertility) as a part of her worship practices.
Her holy day was the Spring Equinox (a good day for fertility rites), and her symbols were lions, owls, and an eight-pointed star.
My most vivid vision of Inanna, however, occurred during meditation one night. I saw her not as the wanton Goddess of love and sex, or the serious Goddess, stripped bare and descending to the underworld. I saw her hovering over a field of grain, dancing, while blessings of fertility and rain fell from her skirts onto the field below. People on the ground danced with her as they were showered with her grace. To me, she is that golden grain Goddess of fertility, as that is the face that she showed me.
English: Wheat field (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here is my Inanna Pinterest board, and my Inanna Spotify playlist. Enjoy! 🙂
Creativity can be a double-edged sword. On one side, dreaming up and making beautiful things is wonderful, right? Whether you dream in poetry, write your truth, sing the song of your people, or bring a vision to life, you’re tapping into a process as old as humanity, and perhaps older.
However, what happens when you’re a manic creative? What happens when your ideas keep you from sleeping at night? What happens when the ideas come faster than your productivity?
That’s what happens to me when I get into a serious creative phase. Which I’m in now, incidentally.
(Speaking of, while I will continue to do what I’ve been working on- aka incenses and other goodies, some knitting/crocheting projects will be showing up as well. I also have 2 short story ideas I’m noodling. :-))
Dried green paint (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
That’s the call of Sarasvati in my life. While she’s typically known as the Goddess of knowledge, writing, and music, to me she will always embody creativity in ALL endeavors including arts and crafts. Traditionally, Brigid’s affiliations with craft might have been a better fit for the things I do, but as I said in my last post, I felt called by the Lakshmi/Sarasvati rivalry. It’s a struggle I feel continually in my own life.
Do I want to be true to myself and be broke and creative? Or do I want to take time away from my creative endeavors to pursue enough money to live off of? I know there’s a solution where I can have both, but in 39 years, I haven’t found it.
Lakshmi and Sarasvati came to me when I was in my mid 20’s. I had just left a very lucrative, but soul-crushing, job, and I was embarking on my first business. It shouldn’t be surprising that it was an aromatherapy company. It was called SmellyGirl, and it had a bit more Riot Grrl flavor than the things I tend to do now. I was experiencing the joy of giving my ideas form with the aim towards making a living for the first time. And I found it imperative to balance my creativity with enough practicality and gumption to actually make money at it.
What happened instead is that my very obsessive personality took over. I surrounded myself with essential oils and bottles and bathsalts, and I made my own labels, and my own order forms, and did all my own graphics, and my own website, and promotion, and, and, and… I worked 12-16 hour days with no rest. I would go to bed at 4 am reeking of peppermint oil, and that is the LAST thing that will help you go to sleep. So when I did try to sleep, I would just dream about what I would do tomorrow for the business.
Basically, SmellyGirl crashed and burned, and I did too. I began to hate it and hate my life. There needed to be a balance between my creative and my practical sides, and while I was burning myself out, I wasn’t able to bring it down to a practical enough level to make any money. I made a few sales, but quit before anything could take off.
I’m still obsessive with Ravenson Reagents, but the fibromyalgia is forcing me to take it easier on myself. It’s like my body has given me an internal alarm for when I start getting too type A about things. That’s when the pain starts. So, while the ideas continue, I don’t tend to try to do everything all at once anymore. There’s a balance to be found there too.
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But back to Sarasvati. She is associated with water in Hindu legend, and there has been recent satellite imagery that has uncovered the path of the enormous and ancient Sarasvati river, which was thought to be a myth. The idea is that knowledge flows like water, and while I do like that analogy, as a Western Pagan, she represents air to me. She is the very embodiment of communication, inspiration, knowledge, and all things air in the traditional Wiccan element alignments.
She is usually clothed in white, and has 4 arms, representing mind, ego, intellect, and alertness. She usually holds a veena (a musical instrument similar to a sitar), and manuscripts. She usually has a swan at her feet, and is near or floating on a river. Her festival is the Sarasvati Puja, and is celebrated at different times depending on which part of India you’re in.
Painting of the Goddess Saraswati by Raja Ravi Varma (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As always, here is my Sarasvati Pinterest board, and my Sarasvati Spotify playlist.
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