Refreshing

I attended a fabulous workshop with Orion Foxwood last night, where he talked late into the night about southern conjure and rootwork.  Lots of awesome, inspiring, useful stuff.  But the thing that I’ve been thinking about the most today was when he said that the more a magic worker does magic, the healthier he or she is.  Just be aware that the toucher is always touched, so when you do magic, make sure it’s worth your ass.  (That’s probably pretty close to a direct quote, there.  Orion is awesome to listen to.)

Today I stepped away from the computer for a while and went for a walk in the spiderwebby woods, then took a cleansing bath with sea salt and Florida water.  (And that wasn’t just to get the traces of web off my arms, although I admit it was a nice side benefit.)  As I keep mentioning in the podcast, it’s been a busy summer, and this was a particularly busy week.  Most of that was good-busy, but even good-busy can eventually drive me nuts and make me forget what exactly I’m doing all of this busy-ness for.  In particular, I’ve been working so hard lately to write about magic, that I realized I needed to take a day off to do some magic and recharge my batteries.

And, you know, I keep thinking about those spiderwebs.  Not so much the ones I walked through, but the ones I saw everywhere I looked, sometimes two or three in the same tree.  Most of those spiderwebs were new – not frayed by the rain we had earlier this week, or torn by captured insects trying to get free.  They were perfect, ready and waiting to serve their purpose and do the thing they were so exquisitely built to do.  Can we, too, make ourselves new each day, in order to serve our purpose?

Media Astra Ac Terra Episode 23

Episode 23 of Media Astra Ac Terra is now available!  In this episode, we look at Jupiter in the Astra segment, and the mineralogy and metaphysics of sodalite in the Terra segment.  Then in the main show I talk for a while about expectations.

There were many links mentioned in the introduction to the show!  First, I received some great feedback from Pombagira (aka Polly) in New Zealand, about Alan Garner’s essay on the wheel of the year in the southern hemisphere.  You can find that (and my reply) in the comments section of the show notes for Episode 21.

As I mentioned, the Pagan Podcast Index has moved over to the website of the Proud Pagan Podcasters.  You can now find the Index here – and thanks again all around, to everyone involved in providing this resource!

If you’re a writer, be sure to check out the submission guidlines for the Misanthrope Press anthology Etched Offerings: Voices from the Cauldron of Story.  Submissions are open from September 1st to October 31st.  Good luck!

In podcasting news, I mentioned (and played a promo for) the new show Borealis Meditation, aka Geology for Pagans.  If you like rocks, you’ll like this podcast!

I also announced that I will be doing a regular spot on the Kakophonos podcast, hosted by Rikki LaCoste, starting with the next episode!  Remember that they’ve recently changed hosts, and the existing iTunes feed doesn’t have all of the latest episodes.  But I’ll be sure to let you know when a new one is available. 

Rikki also provided the musical feature for this episode, “Of Star and Satyr” by Panthea, from the album From the Fountain of Lethe.  The CD was produced for the recent Kaleidoscope Gathering, but is available for download at that link.  I hope you’ll go check it out if you enjoyed this song!

As always, thank you very much for listening.

Bright and dark blessings,
Oraia Sphinx

Hunting Patience

One thing I’ve learned from observing birds of prey is how much of their lives is spent watching and waiting.  They’ll sit in the shadows, keen eyes trained outwards or down, until they find a potential meal or decide to move on to better hunting grounds.  Even when something catches their attention, they sharpen, but often don’t move right away.  After all, moving too soon is likely to warn their target, as well as alert any other likely prey in the area.

When they do fall upon something, though, the action is quick and committed.  A missed catch is clumsy and awkward-looking precisely because the attack was so committed in the first place – but it had to be, in order to have any hope of success.  A casual fly-by doesn’t bring home dinner, and it’s better to risk looking foolish than lose a chance to eat.  (Mind you, I don’t think any of this is going through a hawk’s mind, although I swear some of them do look kind of embarrassed after missing their prey.  But I like to try to learn personal lessons from things I see in the natural world, and that usually seems to entail a little bit of anthropomorphizing.)

So what am I learning from this hawk today?  Maybe that patience goes a long way toward finding an opportunity, as long as you stay alert and attentive — but patience aside, sooner or later, you’ve gotta move or go hungry.  And perhaps most importantly, once you move, you can’t be halfhearted about it; then even if you fail, you’ll know you really went for it.

And always – always – look at the camera when your picture’s being taken.  *grin*