Always More

I mentioned last week that I was going to be attending a workshop on identifying wild edibles and mushrooms, and so I did!  It was about a three-hour workshop, most of which took place in the woods with our two instructors, one of whom was a mushroom expert while the other was well-versed in other edible plants.

The weather conditions turned out to be unfavorable for finding many mushrooms; it’s been a bit dry, so there wasn’t much to harvest.  To compensate for that, however, the mushroom expert (must…resist…fun-guy joke) brought everything we needed to learn how to inoculate oak logs with shiitake mushroom spores!  So we each went home with our own pet log that will sprout yummy mushrooms in, well, maybe as much as a year from now – but still, very cool!

On the “other edibles” front, we had more luck.  I’m actually not going to go into too much detail about what kinds of things we learned to identify, or what you can do with them – I don’t feel comfortable passing that kind of information on because I’m a completely raw beginner in this field and whatever I say should not be taken as a suggestion to go out and eat something in the woods.  Even the people teaching this class carried multiple field guides with them to be sure of their identification skills.  But if you can find a workshop of this type in your local area, I highly recommend taking it; there’s no substitute for personal instruction by knowledgeable people in a hands-on setting.

The thing that really struck me was how my perceptions changed after about an hour in the woods.  Instead of lumping most of the plants into a general category of “green things to avoid stepping on,” I was spotting individual species, and even noting differences between some of the look-alikes that tend to grow together.  (For example, we found some Solomon’s Seal and False Solomon’s Seal growing right alongside each other.)  On the one hand, this was very satisfying, as it meant that I was picking up some skill at identification, but given how many plants I was noticing that I couldn’t identify, it also reinforced the experience I so often have – realizing how little I actually know.

And isn’t it exhilarating to realize that the more you look, the more there is to find?

Media Astra Ac Terra Episode 20

Episode 20 of Media Astra Ac Terra is now available!  In this episode, I take a look at the planet Venus, as well as the mineralogy and metaphysics of rose quartz.  Then in the main show I talk about working with both the emotions and the intellect.

In the Astra segment, I mentioned a site with a good explanation of both ways of deriving a pentagram from the movements of Venus (which will also give you some helpful visual aids that my audio podcast couldn’t provide.)

Speaking of visual aids, here is a nice, simple picture of the Tree of Life with the Lightning Flash drawn upon it (by Morgan Leigh, available here) to help clarify my comments in the main segment about the path of manifestation.

In between segments, I played promos for Kakophonos with Rikki LaCoste and New World Witchery with Cory and Laine, plus my fun little show bumper made by Chris Orapello of The Infinite and the Beyond.

Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode!
– Oraia Sphinx –

All and Nothing

I was going to title this post “All or Nothing,” but then I decided to get all Buddhist on you.  That was after my schedule decided to go wall-to-wall crazy on me – but right in the middle of the upcoming fullness is a dharma talk by a Tibetan khenpo on discovering emptiness.  So I don’t know what to make of it.

Today I found a fantastic martial arts school that I think will suit me perfectly – it’s tiny, eclectic, with beautiful forms and friendly people who clearly work their butts off.  I’ve been itching to get back into training (and no, they don’t have a cream for that, so I had to find a school.)  Then I went off to sitting meditation, hoping to meet the aforementioned khenpo, who unfortunately had a headache.  But Friday’s talk should be awesome.

Then on Saturday I am attending a lecture/hike on identifying wild mushrooms and other edibles in my local area, plus a later workshop (elsewhere) on psychic shielding.  And on Sunday, if I am still able to sit upright, I have a tea party.  A corgi tea party.

(Have I mentioned I also have a podcast to put out on Friday and a book that still needs editing?)

As you can tell I’m feeling a little zany tonight, not to mention pressed for time, so this will have to do for my weekly blog post – but hopefully with all this awesomeness coming up, I will have plenty to talk about next week. 

But for now, I leave you this.  Pretty flower.  Calm flower.

Grins and Blessings,
Oraia

Kreativity

So yesterday I was surprised and honored to discover that Cory at New World Witchery has nominated me for a Kreativ Blogger award!  Thank you, Cory!

Now, this award has rules:

1. You must thank the person who has given you the award.  (Thanks again, Cory!)
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog (Check!)
3. Link the person who has nominated you for the award (Done.)
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting
5. Nominate 7 other Kreativ Bloggers
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate
7. Let the nominated victims bloggers know they have been tagged

So now for 7 things that people might find interesting about me.  Hmm.

1. I took flying lessons before I took driving lessons.  My dad was a private pilot instructor at the time, and I was crazy about planes, so when I was about 15 or so, I started  lessons.  And…I didn’t actually like it.  (These things happen sometimes.)  But I continued to love planes, and when I was in the Air Force I did get to ride in several interesting aircraft, including a B-52 Stratofortress where – because B-52′s had only just been opened up to women pilots – I was the first woman that the crew had ever flown with.  I was  just a cadet along for the ride, and I wasn’t going to be a pilot, but it was still an honor to be acknowledged that way.

2. I am an unrepentant musical dilettante.  After being forced to take clarinet as a kid (and quitting at my first opportunity), I’ve dabbled in guitar, harp, tin whistle, flute, octave mandolin, and – most recently – fiddle.  But the instrument I have maintained the most consistent relationship with has been my voice.  For the most part, that just means I sing in the car. 

3. My degree is in physics, but I minored in Russian, which I started learning in high school. My high school class took a trip to what was then the Soviet Union, in fact, where I was introduced to the dessert possibilities of whipped cream.  Not on anything, mind you.  Just whipped cream.

4. I have been writing stories for as long as I can remember, mostly fantasy and science fiction, and for the past five years or so I’ve been writing novels.  There’s something addicting about feeling a story come together, especially when it takes months to write it.

5. All my life, I have had a memory of (what I believe to be) my death in a past life, in the form of a very specific physical sensation and a visceral reaction to certain imagery.  Only recently have I recovered enough detail to put it in context.  And I’m afraid that’s all I’m going to say about that for now. 

6. I spent a lot of time in trees as a kid.  There was this one sugar maple at the edge of our yard that I considered my friend, and I would sit in her branches for hours, reading a book or just hanging out.  We had some woods behind our house, and when I wasn’t climbing trees I was out sitting among them.  One year I trained a squirrel to eat out of my hand.

7. I am a huge Joss Whedon fan, and have watched the entire arc of Buffy the Vampire Slayer more times than I could say.  My favorite show of all time, though, has to be Firefly, short-lived as it was.  Is it wrong that I want to be River Tam?

And now for my 7 nominations:

1.Poetry’s Reclamation. This is a fantastic poetry blog maintained by Laura Gail Grohe, a close friend of mine whose work is often intensely mystical. Awesome stuff, and I hope she posts more. 

2. New World Witchery.  I hope it’s kosher to nominate the blog that nominated me, but Cory and Laine have done such an awesome job with both their blog and their podcast (both focused on American traditional witchcraft) that I couldn’t leave them off the list.

3. Earth & Magick. Meical ab Awen blends earth science and earth spirituality in his blog (and the podcast of the same name.)  Plus he’s got a wickedly funny sense of humor. 

4. The Abysmal Witch’s Blog. Saturn Darkhope, from the podcast Pennies in the Well, has a new blog!  There aren’t many entries yet, but what’s up there so far is inspired.

5. The Pagan Podcast Index.  Hedon’s Dog has done a phenomenal job in creating this resource for all of us who enjoy Pagan podcasts.  There is so much to keep up with!

6. Walking the Hedge. Juniper Jeni (from the Standing Stone & Garden Gate podcast) has created a fantastic blog full of humor, insight, and forthright honesty.  Definitely worth reading.

7. The Infinite and the Beyond. Mainly a support blog for Chris Orapello’s podcast of the same name (and I’ve been trying not to mix podcasts with blogs), Chris puts some great graphics and links into his posts for each episode. It’s always worth stopping by to see what’s going on with the show, which is one of my favorites.

So that’s that!  This post has taken all evening to put together, but I hope you’ve enjoyed my random thoughts about what you might find interesting.    Thanks again to Cory, and I’m thrilled to keep spreading the Kreativ blogger love.

Bright and Dark Blessings,
Oraia Sphinx

The Old Familiar Track

I went for a walk in the woods today, and found myself following the old familiar track without really thinking about it.  I haven’t been down this way in a while, but it’s comfortable, it’s familiar, it’s known.  I could go off the trail and explore – and I usually do, eventually – but I like the familiar track.

For one thing, it’s easy going.  I can lift my eyes and look around more, instead of having to watch my feet.  I also like following the same path on different days, and at different times of year, to see how this ground, and these trees, change over time.  Having a path to come back to after exploring also keeps me oriented, and gives me reference points in the landscape that can tell me where I am.

Spiritual paths can be a lot like that, too, with all of the benefits and drawbacks that come with familiarity.  On the one hand, having a long-term relationship with a single path lends depth to our understanding of it, and gives us something to steer by even when we step off it.  On the other hand, we can grow complacent walking that old familiar track, to the point where we no longer notice the details or pay attention to the very things that drew us to it in the first place.

An even larger pitfall, however, is that we can forget that we can step off the trail, and that there may be other paths through the woods. At its worst, this leads to fundamentalism, but even in small doses can lead to  parochialism and small-minded dismissal of alternative approaches.  The flip side of this is “path envy” – we see people on other trails and start to wonder if they know something we don’t.  We might start to wonder if the path we’re on is somehow inadequate, and either abandon it or get a bit defensive about where we’re walking.

That defensiveness can circle back around to a type of close-minded fundamentalism itself, when we look at where other people are walking and try to convince them that they’re on the wrong trail. “Oh, dear,” we say, “you’ll hurt yourself if you keep going that way.  The path is over here!”

Or we might approach them a little more casually, suggesting that they should be open-minded and try coming over to our path for a while, to see the woods from another perspective.  But how often do we make that suggestion when we aren’t willing to follow it ourselves?

Maybe I’m abusing the “path” metaphor, which has become something of a cliche.  And I often don’t like the way the language of “paths” is used in spiritual practice.  But sometimes it just fits the way I’m thinking, and today was one of those days.

On a final note, while no one accompanied me on the trail today, I did find evidence of those who had walked it before me.  And that felt nice.