Michael and Jaspenelle

Woodburned Altar

Last week (just before the plague hit) I finished woodburning the top of our family altar. A friend made the solid pine piece as a handfasting gift to us. I struggled for a long time with what I wanted on it and I decided in the end that simple was best. The wood still needs to be finished. I am going to do that this summer with tung oil.

Up until last week, I was certain I was going to do my full personal symbol on it. Now I think I am going to leave it as is and engrave the central moon triquetra on that glass disk That will have to wait till after the move though. Tonight we are taking the altar over to our new home and doing a small house blessing ritual, so I am glad I finished it.

Winter Solstice

Brightly burns our fire tonight.
Magic dances with candlelight.

Hold my hand and join in song.
Raise the Sun King bright and strong!

Dark is giving way to light.
Brightly burns the fire tonight.

Winter Solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year. It falls around December 21st of each year. It is a festival day in many cultures often calling for bright lights and fires, freshly cut evergreens, feasting with loved ones and singing and dancing. These festivities serve to rekindle the human spirit in the heart of winter.

In many modern Pagan traditions, Winter Solstice, is a celebration of the rebirth of the sun. Many still hold vigils awaiting the dawn, heralding the sun as the God reborn from the sacred womb of the Goddess. In other traditions a great battle is waged between the Oak King and Holly King where the Oak King triumphs returning to the world to longer warmer days.

It is a near certainty that Winter Solstice was of significant importance to ancient people, especially Proto-Celtic tribes. The evidence of this is obvious in the layouts of the stone monuments of New Grange in Ireland and Stonehenge in Britain. Each of these sites was carefully built to line up with the solstice sunrise. It can be suggested that the marking of midwinter was important for ancient communities because the people needed an approximate idea of how long their stored provisions had to last.

The most common alternate name for Winter Solstice is Yule a term originating from ancient Norse and Germanic tribes. It began as a celebration marking a 60 day time beginning at the lunar midwinter, but by the late Viking Age, it had become a great solstitial midwinter festival that amalgamated the traditions of various midwinter celebrations across Europe. On the the eve of Yule a huge log was lit in honor Thor, god of thunder, and feasting would continue until it burned out, which could be up to twelve days! A portion of the log was saved to be used in the lighting of the next year’s log. (more…)

Prayer

My handmade mala beads, stained yellow with turmeric and individually polished with beeswax. A labor of love which I use everyday.

Trick or Treat!

Me in my Green Man costume Mommy made me for trick or treating!

We had so much fun on Samhain. We went trick or treating with Shannon and her daughter Rachelle (who was Hannah Montana.) Mommy made me a Green Man costume. It was really fun to yank on the felt leaves she stuck all over my shirt.

On Saturday we had a bunch of people over for a feast (I tried some carrots for the first time and spit them EVERYWHERE! Ewww, I don’t want solid food yet.) We set a plate of food for the ancestors on the altar. I love crawling across the floor to the altar and trying to pull the cloth off of it.

Oh ya, I am CRAWLING now. I can get across the living room in about 6 minutes, sooo fun but exhausting. I want boob twice as much now that I am burning the baby calories.

On Sunday we made a dreamboard with Mommy and Daddy’s goals and dreams for the next year. I tried to grab the pictures to help place them but Mommy wouldn’t let me, something about me slobbering all over them. Oh well!

Today my Goddessmother is coming over to take care of me while Mommy is in the dentist. I’m excited about seeing her. Mommy doesn’t seem so thrilled about the dentist though.

Samhain

The Festival of Samhain was an ancient Celtic festival, falling on October 31st. A day which also marks Catholic All-Souls-Day and the secular Halloween, both strongly colored by the Celtic festival. Unlike most of the other sabbats, Samhain is not dictated by astrological events and therefor always falls on October 31st. Beltane is it’s counterpart laying directly opposite to Samhain in the Wheel of the year.

Samhain marks the end of the planted harvest and the beginning of the meat harvest. In days long past this time was vital, with the first snows nearing it was time to cull the herds and preserve their meat for Winter; without which the communities survival would be in question. Our ancestors knew this and so lived in harmony and with intuitive knowledge of the weather and changing seasons.

The Celtic year was split into two parts, and Samhain marks the start of the dark half, or Winter, which will transition into summer at Beltane. Now is the time for Old Wild Mother Earth to slip into a deep slumber, there she will gather strength till the Spring planting. This rest period is important, if not vital, not only for Her but also as a lesson to us. We must all take a break from time to time, as to regain our energy. With our renewed energy, the fruits of our labor will be even better.

Historically Samhain was an important festival celebrated for three days in the royal court in Tara (in modern day Ireland.) All hearth fires were extinguished and a ritual fire was started on the Hill of Tara, signaling people to gathered on hilltops all across Ireland and light community bonfires. Sometimes two bonfires were lit and people and livestock passed between then in a purification and protection rite. At the end of the Samhain celebrations a burning ember was taken home by each family to relight their own hearth fires. This was a common flame binding together the entire community. (more…)

Teething

I am chewing and slobbering on everything lately. Dr Kincaid says I am very close to having my first teeth breaking through. I love my teething ring but much prefer the wooden spoons mommy uses in the kitchen. I know I have been a little cranky lately. I think chewing on mommy while I eat makes her a little cranky too, but she is very understanding. I am working on not doing that so much.

Mommy is making me a Green Man costume for Halloween. Hopefully we will be able to get Andrea to take photos of me in it, I love seeing her and her boyfriend Peter. An opportunity to make more people fall in love with me!

Scrap.b.o.s.ing

(My craft workspace, in the corner of the nursery.)

I seem to have developed a fixation for scrapbooking lately, or more particularly scrapbooking my Book of Shadows (for my non-Pagan readers that is a book that I keep all my spiritual research, essays and notes in, it is not a book for me, but a D-ring binder.)

I have always loved scrapbooking but it was a hobby I swore I would never get into because of the apparent staggering cost scrapbooking can reach. I was in Joanns today and some papers sell for $5 a piece! (Considering I only had $7 to spend, that paper was out of the question, no matter how glorious it was.) Not to mention the cost of all the cool types of stamps, scissors, punches, stickers, embellishments galore which, well, are enough to make this crafter drool and frugally cringe at the same time.

Luckily I have superhuman powers of restraint (or I am just an anally frugal b…witch) and only spent $6.59. I bought a #2 x-acto knife (using a 40% off coupon), a 3/4″ stencil brush, and a 4-pack of stencil blanks (these are plastic sheets you use to make your own stencils.) Now I can make some border stencils for my Book of Shadows pages! Yay, scrapbooking!

But, wait! What about my aforementioned promise to myself about not scrapbooking?!

That promise apparently broke itself without my conscious knowledge a few weeks ago, all because I I decided that I needed to organize my craft supply closet. (This might seem like an odd way to find a new hobby, but trust me, it is not was weird as it sounds, at least, not in my world.) While organizing, I found some leftover fabric from my apron as well as a bag of glass stones. Somehow that discovery ended up distracting me for a couple hours as I made a gloriously orange and blue cover for my Book of Shadows binder. (In my defense, the plain plastic cover was abhorrent to my crafty-sense, when I saw the fabric I “knew” in my mind what it must be used for, I had not choice but to obey said crafty-sense.) The next day upon admiring my bright new orange and blue Book of Shadows, I settled down and flipped it open and nearly screamed in crafter terror.

All the pages in it were so… plain…

Random typed up bits, some handwritten stuff, some torn out pages from magazines and newspapers, all stuffed in sheet protectors in no particular order. Unlike the cover, the guts of my binder did not reflect who I was (yes I am trying to justify the scrapbooking urge here.) I riffled through the pages in despair looking for something that could redeem me when I found a page with an Ojibway poem that I had decorated. I put that in the front of the binder. Beyond that though, there was nothing, just blah pages, so uninspiring I could hardly read them. (Can you tell that I am one of those people who like picture books?)

Instead of wallowing in self-despair (at least after pulling myself out of a couple good hours of it) I decided I rewrite the page about Bealtaine. I got some of the pretty paper from my craft closet (yes, I did end up finishing organizing it) and embellish it with a balsamroot arrowleaf flower I created out of some other pretty paper. That page went in second. I was on a mission now, no doubt sent to me straight from the Goddess.

Poking through My “bits and ends” drawer I then found stickers! These led me to redoing a couple more pages. Scrounging in the drawer some more I found some flower borders I had designed and transfered them to some more pretty paper and redid some gardening pages. Then I found myself up late at night in bed designing a Celtic knot border and redoing the Apple page. Then I…

You can see where this is going right? I found myself unwittingly scrapbooking. It didn’t occur to me till yesterday that is was in fact what I was doing, which made me pause and consider my vow before discarding it. The reason for my vow to not scrapbook was now moot as I have discovered, quite by accident, that it was not a high cost hobby when you do it all yourself (and having an expansive bits and ends drawer helps.) In fact, the way I was approaching it required no money down (until I took my $7 to Joanns today at least. And I can deal with the occasional purchase.)

Ultimately doing it almost all myself is infinitely more rewarding anyhow. I like scrapbooking, it is something completely for me and not dictated by customer deadlines.

Birthing Necklace

(Click the image for a bigger picture - 1024×768.)

This is how my birthing necklace looks so far (if I receive more beads, it will grow in length of course.) I really like how it has turned out too. I know not all the donated beads are red, but some people have difficulty following directions (I love you grandma and mom.) I find I really don’t mind though, the beads they sent were justified with special meanings which, in this case, were more important than color.

As always, Windigo had to get his adorable little face in my craft picture too. I usually crop him out but I thought he looked exceptional cute here.

Birthing Necklace - update

This is a picture of my living room altar at the moment. A friend made it for us as a handfasting gift, it is gorgeous solid pine with lots of storage space and very sturdy. I am slowly working on wood burning my sun into the top of it (hence the cloth covering up that particular work in progress.) I do most of my spiritual arts and crafts at this altar because I have a tall chair that is the perfect height for me to sit comfortable in front of it.

That is my birthing necklace on it (and some tools to work on it too) if you are curious. You can click the photo for a larger one if you wish. Some people have emailed me about wishing to donate a bead. I didn’t realize so many people read my blog! Thank you! The criteria for bead is as follows:

• It must be red.
• It cannot be plastic.
• Any shape is allowed but I would rather they not to be much larger then a dime.
• I will need it before May 15th.

You can send the bead to:

Michael and Jaspenelle Stewart
3129 E 29th Ave B
Spokane, WA 99223

I started working on the necklace today (realizing I had enough beads to do that was a wonderful feeling.) So far so good! Many thanks to Neserit, who shared the rosary tutorial with me. I am using that technique to connect the beads. It was a little tricky at first but I seem to have gotten the hang of it (thank goodness for spare eye pins though…)

I’ve paused working on it for now, I have lots of spare beads but I know there are still some beads coming in the mail and I don’t want to rush this, though it obviously has to be done before I go into labor! I also want to do a ritual with it on the next full moon (on May 19th) as that will probably be my last before the baby comes! Hows that for a life transitions…

Birthing Necklace

These are a few of the beads I have gathered or that people have given me for my birthing necklace. The only criteria I have for it is that donated beads must be red (representing the umbilical cord) and that I would rather they not be plastic. Since all the red beads are from others you can probably tell which ones I added to the lot! Most of our baby’s things are celestial themed, which is why I chose the blue lampwork moon as the focal point and the golden star spacer beads. I am hoping to have it done by May 19th so I can bless it under the full moon ritual.

I was originally going to make the birthing necklace on my own but when one of my friend’s found out I was making it and offered me a red bead to add to it, that idea seemed to hold more power. Now I am receiving more and more beads from people for it. I cannot put into words how blessed that makes me feel! My mother and grandmother are even going to send me a few heirloom ones and I admit, that offer made me cry…

If you are wondering what exactly a birthing necklace is simply a necklace that I will wear or have near me while I am in labor. I didn’t even know there was a term for the idea until I talked to my friend! When our baby is old enough to understand it’s meaning I plan on reworking the necklace into a mala for him.