Looking Forward

Maeve Binchy is an author I greatly admire. I read her books when I feel like the book equivalent of a snuggly quilt. I was reading one of her stories this morning and there was a comment that Boxing Day is a sad day because it is never as good as Christmas Eve because we are looking back rather than looking forward. I am sat here on Boxing Day and I am not feeling sad or unhappy.

Yes Christmas Day was lovely. The food was fantastic. The presents F and I bought each other were great (partly because we go shopping together and assist the other in buying pressies up to a certain value. Works very well! They still get wrapped and we still enjoy getting them...) and I got some lovely presents from other people to. The television was also great but I have a Sky + box full of other great things to watch.

F is the most important thing though. He is very much still here. He just made a full slap up fried English breakfast. It was very, very unhealthy but also very, very tasty...

I guess the thing is, the people I have fun with are still here, still part of my life even though Christmas is passing quickly. I have more good TV to watch, I have more lovely food to eat ( a duck waiting in the freezer for New Year) and more presents to give (we will see S later today) and more to receive (my families parcel hasn't yet arrived, but then I haven't quite sent mine to them either).

The only clouds on the horizon of my day are the sluggish feeling left by my enjoyment of a little strawberry wine mixed with lemonade yesterday and the fact I have to go out later. I have the pleasure of another full Christmas turkey dinner later complete with over cooked veg. Really all I want is to gently snooze my headache away and begin reading the various books I received yesterday (not Maeve Binchy's this time). I also like the idea of a lovely long bath with one of my books and one of my lovely lush bath bombs.

I guess this just gives me something to look forward to for tomorrow... *smiles sleepily*

Heavy Ritual

For the first time since I was a young teenager I have gone to a church service that wasn't a wedding. And my word! What a service!

F and I went to Truro Cathedral for Midnight Mass. A completely new thing for both of us. Both of us grew up attending church as was common at that time. It was a community thing and nothing else happened on Sundays. He went to a very relaxed Methodist Church and I to a little villagey C of E. Neither of us had ever been to Mass before and had no idea what to expect. I suspect that Mass at either of our childhood churches would have been very different.

There was an organist who could have played in the most fearsome of gothic horrors. With fantastic solos that were somewhat awe inspiring in their dazzling complicatedness. The old organist at my childhood church was more humorous than skilled. One time she skipped a whole page and didn't notice.

The voices of the choir were astounding! The acoustics of the cathedral threw their voices around. The highest notes soared... The technical audacity of the arrangements they were singing...

The cathedral was pretty much full with only the occasional seat empty. All the reponses were uttered by the huge crowd as one. The tone of a crowd talking together is incredible. A deep resonant sound that you can almost feel vibrate through you...

The building itself is pretty astounding. It is a little different from other ccathedrals up country. There are no huge paintings or plaster mouldings. If there is one thing the Cornish know how to work then it is stone. The pattern of the stones is so precise. The carvings are so intricate. The use of different types of stone is so intricate in places... And the ceiling floats far above...

Even the sermon was good and amusing in places while bringing a new (to me) perspective to the Christmas story... How common is that?

I guess I have grown up a little. I will no longer turn my back on the church because I can not believe or agree with everything in Christianity. The church is my heritage and the tradition of my upbringing. There is much to take from it and enjoy. If I look at it as my tradition rather than my faith then why shouldn't I go and enjoy it? It doesn't threaten my beliefs. I don't threaten others belief or enjoyment by being there.

So much in the church is pagan anyway... I can worship aspects of the Horned God... Finally. Didn't take many years for that to happen... Did I ever mention I can be stubborn?

Soul Food

I love food.

And I don't mean just a little bit. I probably love it too much sometimes! I have an unhealthy fascination with sweet foods but although these foods make me feel better they are not true soul food.

When F and I first lived together he was a master of frying. He converted me to the deep fat fryer and I converted him to non-chip shop fish. But then it all changed. I gave up smoking. My body gave up being thin (or at least thinnish).

Adjustments were made and as we settled in together we started using the fryer less and cooking more from scratch. The fryer now lies abandoned in a dark corner of the loneliest corner cupboard of our kitchen. It has stood on the brink of disposal many times and is likely to tip over the edge next time...

The true reasons have been lost in time but I found Riverford via the web and started to order a regular veg box from them. This helped with food budgeting and made sure I always had a selection of veg available when I felt the urge to cook more healthily.

It had a profound affect on my cooking. I could cook but having to be creative in order to work out what to do with celeriac or how to make the cabbage delivered for the fifth week in a row taste better taught me more. With help from Riverford's database of recipes on their website, recipes on their newsletters and now their cook book, I have even learnt how to make brussels sprouts taste nice! (roast with honey and onion and add toasted pine nuts)

My knowledge of how and when to use herbs and spices also improved and we just throw things in now. I can cook a stew (not hard I know but it is a different style of cooking than I had previously used) with dumplings of course.

Riverfords influence on our lives spread and we started using their meat to. I find it hard to go back to supermarket meat now. It is a luxury but one we both relish. I have a lovely rolled turkey breast stuffed with bacon and chesnuts and a duck frozen for New Years Day and the knowledge of how good they will be makes me salivate while writing this...

I have found that I have become more and more of a food snob. So has F even though he doesb't perhaps realise it yet because he is less of one than me. The other day he brought home a clipping from the West Briton with an offer for a lovely meal at Rick Stein's and a comment about his birthday... (Bare in mind he only ever used to eat chip shop fish)

So my fridge is now full of lovely cheese and meat and veg, with more veg outside and a box of fruit and nuts, all organic. I have wine for mulling, m & s deserts, organic apple juice and a jar of goose fat... And I can't wait to eat it all...

In all this it just left us with one little choice. Do we have roast chicken with S today? We thought long and hard but realised the answer had to be no. Christmas type meals three days in a row might be too much for him, and for us. So we thought long and hard about what would be a nice meal for us all. For S the perfect meal would be unhealthy and contain lots of meat and no veg (so like his father...). So here we are, the men watch TV and I type, eating snacky party foo to be followed by choclate cheese cake.

I think this meal is to satisfy the non-foodie food loving food part of me. May everyone enjoy their food as much as we are and shall over this Yule time.

Christmas Traditions

All families have traditions for this time of year. Some are common to most families, like a Christmas Tree and others are more personal. Many old traditions are becoming less set in stone and are changing, like turkey. When I was little I thought everyone did Christmas the same, but they don't.

I like many people across the country have just finished a stint of present wrapping with the television to keep me company. Hours of work that will be demolished in minutes! But there is something about receiving a gift wrapped present. I remember as a child sneaking into the spare room where each of us had a sack which our presents were placed in, in order to have a feel and guess what we might have.

On Christmas morning my grandmother would have slept in the spare room and to save us waking our parents we would go and see her. She always had a treat for us and a drink ready and waiting. These sorts of traditions are so personal and most of them centre around children. It must be hard for parents as children outgrow these little traditions and they are no longer suitable.

This time of year always makes me more broody than any other. Children make Christmas. They see past the commercialism of it all and their reaction is so innocent. They also thrive having all their family around them. It is so hard for those in divided families as well. Not everyone can have the children on Christmas Day. It must be hard for children if they do not have the same Christmas traditions each year, if they aren't in the same place each year.

F and I generally spend Christmas Day alone. The family day is Boxing Day with his family and S. Some years we visit my family, but then we miss S at Christmas. It won't be too many years before S is not spending Christmas with his family but with his own partner instead. Time seems especially precious at Christmas.

All new families start their own traditions though and F and I have. Every year we buy two new tree decorations. By the time we are grandparents we should have a lovely varied collection of decorations, many of them with sentimental meaning. So far the most important ones are two plush reindeers, one with silver hooves and the other with pink. The first Christmas we had little dog, she got hold of the pink one and chewed it. This chewed reindeer sits with its friend on the tree each year in pride of place and always brings a smile to my face when I see it.

Today we bought this year's decorations, a set of three spiky glittery things and a penguin. I don't overly like the penguin but that isn't the important thing about it. F liked it immediately and we had a discussion and it went back. We continued to discuss it. F is particularly good at cheeky banter and so our discussions tend to be fun. The penguin is now siting, pride of place between the two reindeer. I know that this decoration will also make me smile in years to come.

Ceremony Musings

It would be lovely to be able to come on here and talk about my fantastic Yule ritual but unfortunately that isn't going to happen. Maybe starting out as a Wiccan is easier in a coven, you have other people to help raise the energy and you don't have to remember or write all the lines yourself.

I haven't written poetry since I was at school and so I am still using others writings for my rites or making something up on the spot (or slightly after the spot). Unfortunately I have an atrocious memory so I find myself having to pick up the book to remind myself. I also have to look and see what I have to do next. This means that instead of relaxing into the ceremony I just end up feeling more and more tense and miserable as it goes on.

Then there is my equipment.... I have a few little tealight holders, some tealights, a stone, incense and a large candle. I don't have an altar, altar cloth, wand, athame, cauldron, bell or chalice. I want beautiful things full of meaning on my altar which means one of two things: a lot of money or a lot of time and skill making things. It could be a long time before I have an altar full of tools.

I suppose I did have a cauldron of sorts on my floor last night. I had a bowl with three pine cones, three clove covered oranges and three apples with clove patterns. I can see the bowl now as I write, in the fireplace surrounded by bay and jasmine. I would like to have had holly and ivy as well but I have neither in my garden. I know where to find both but I am unsure about taking living plants from nature. I even intend to return the pine cones.

I enjoyed my herb filled purifying bath (I always enjoy a nice bath) and I enjoyed making and sleeping with a solstice herb pillow after my ceremony (filled with mugwort, catnip, chamomile, hops, frankincense, myrrh, nutmeg, cloves and lavender). But the actual ceremony? It felt dead and awkward and the only person who can change that is me. I need to write my own ceremonies with fewer words so that I can relax into the ceremony. Maybe if I use the same words to call the elements and the deities each time, I will eventually become at ease with them!

Can a solo ceremony ever compete with the feeling left by something on the scale of Montol? I don't know but I shall keep going. Even if I continue to spill hot wax on my hand, lose the matches and forget my words!

Montol

Yesterday morning I was sat on the sofa with my laptop feeling nervous about celebrating Yule. Was there any public Yule type festivities I could join in with I wondered? Was there some way I could do something with my non-pagan fiance and step son which they might enjoy and might have deeper meaning for me on Yuletide Eve?

Like a cyber detective I baited google which such words as yule, 2008, cornwall, december, festival, celebration. And what i found was this and you can see some photos here.

I shan't repeat everything from the Montol website here but in short Montol is a festival celebrated on the eve of the winter solstice in the Cornish town of Penzance. Historical sources have been used to revive traditions that almost died through the zeal of the temperance movement, traditions which the town's authorities actively prohibited until World War One. The festival has recently been revived as a traditional but non-religous event with both Christian and Pagan roots acknowledged.

In order to get f (for fiance) to agree to go to this event I played the, 'this is the last chance to do something Christmasy with s (for stepson) before Christmas' card. And off we went (with the promise of me paying for some nice food afterwards as a little healthy bribery). We found a relatively small crowd of people stood outside the hall watching a band wearing masks with people arrayed behind with candle lanterns made of withies and greaseproof paper, many of whom were also wearing masks.

And then the road was closed and procession was off as people and lanterns streamed out of the hall. A second band appeared and the onlookers fell in behind them and we were off! Accompanied by modern classics such as the entertainer, soul man and superstitious reproduced in brass and surrouned by a crows of masked folk wielding flamable paper objects containing flames we promenaded through town and up to the hillfort.

I had never even known that there was a hillfort in Penzance but there we were on a warm, overcast, still night on top of a hill overlooking the whole of Mount's Bay. Our snake had grown as it climbed the hill and other snakes had appeared accompanied by a samba band. Others awaited us at the hill top and our small crowd had grown until it was hundreds strong.

Until this point S, who being a near teen had been vocal in an attempt to mask the fact he was a little uncomfortable, became very very quiet. Why is it the promise of a fire being lit is so fascinating to us all? This fire was no small tame fire on a hearth. A metal cage sat atop a pole and waited filled with food for the little fire wielded by a lady who danced around the circle. It caught quickly and the beacon fire must have been visible for miles. This fire was a wild beast in a cage clawing at the dark of the sky, throwing sparks into the wind...

Following the walk back to our car, it became evident that S had enjoyed it a lot and F had too and might even wear a mask next time! I was left with a deep peaceful feeling and fledgling mask designs floating through my dreams....

A Good Time to Start...

Today is Yule and it feels like a good day to start something new. I have never posted a blog before but have been inspired by several blogs I have started reading. I like the idea of writing a journal but need to have someone to write for. Even if no one else ever reads this, it doesn't matter. What matters is the possibility that they could...

So why now? Recent changes in my life and the odd splash of synchronicity have bought me back to my basic beliefs. I went to a religious school and was only ever exposed to Christianity as a child but somehow developed a fairly pagan faith with Christian ethics. Once away from home, I met many new people and while discussing faith with a friend I discovered that my personal faith fitted pretty well with her faith. I had never heard of Wicca before.

I always felt drawn to the hedge witch side of Wicca rather than the coven side but seemed unable to move beyond faith to celebrating. Rather than commiting to it, I tentatively dabbled around on the edges. My faith never changed but I never did anything with it...

So what do I believe? I believe in balance. I believe I can be naughty and selfish (although I find this difficult to do knowingly without guilt) without being a bad person. I believe that every thing has an energy and these energies together make a very powerful force which could be called Gaea. I believe this force has many aspects and can be seen in nature everywhere you look. I believe nothing is ever lost, in learning, in magic, in wonder... I am a scientist but science is all about knowing and less about faith. We can not ever know everything. I believe we should not hurt others but sometimes the path of least hurt can involve knowingly hurting others. I believe I will never get it right all the time and I don't necessarily have the right to decide for others. I believe sometimes a white lie can be best and I believe pushing people beyond their comfort zone can be best for them (I know I need that!).

I have over the period of this current moon begun to feel that it is time to move on, time to search deeper, maybe time to actually not be nervous, maybe time to work towards committing to what I believe. Yule seems like a good time to begin, it is when the world begins to move towards growth again. It is a time of small beginnings... A time of planning and thinking...

I celebrated my first full moon last week and am contemplating celebrating my first Yule tonight. I can not say my full moon rite was entirely successful. I made plenty of mistakes but my sense of the God and Goddess was that they were enjoying themselves and trying not to laugh so as not to harm my quiet beginning. I am not sure how I will spend the rest of today, will I write poems? Will I make a herb pillow to sleep with tonight? Will I go and find some holly and ivy to add to my Christmas decorations?

So all in all this blog is about me and my path. My path will not always be dominated by Wicca and some days other things will be important. I dream of owning more land than a postage stamp garden and keeping pigs and chickens. I like to learn and explore different subjects. I like crafts and currently make jewelery. It is about my attempts to begin living on the wiccy side of life....