Now I'm Here

Pagan Blog Project - Week Seventeen - H #2 – Hestia

My house is falling down.

We're renting, thank goodness. But since we moved into this place over five years ago there have been serious foundation problems: backed up plumbing, cracks in the wall and ceiling, damp spots on the floor, dirt in the bathroom...

I've had a strange relationship with this house. At first I was indifferent and uncomfortable. Haven moved from a really great place in Texas, North Carolina was weird and foreign. A friend visited with us a few months later and he said "oh, you have such a cute little witchy house!"

Hmm… maybe.

The indifference continued until a few years ago when I decided I hated this place. I was tired of it and all of its quirks. I wanted to leave, to rent or possibly by a new place. So, we shopped around for houses, looking at prices and financing. It was just not possible. Moving to another rental was also not really a good idea, either.

I'm not sure what happened first. Was it cocktails with my girlfriend, or my at-the-time Coven's ritual devoted to Hestia? But something changed in both my perception and relationship with my house. Slowly, but surely, it became my home.

As a group we devoted a ritual to Hestia/Vesta. I did a lot of studying on her before the ritual, and included a little lesson for the ritual itself. Though the ritual was focused around creating foci (in this case, a tool of devotional focus), looking back now I realize something else happened, at least for me. I finally bonded with my home. Most of all, I realized my physical space was not the source of my dissatisfaction, but I was depressed about more meaningful areas of my life. Changing my house wouldn't make me happy. I would have the same old problems but in a different box.

I needed to change the focus of my life.

In the center of my crappy little home is a huge fireplace, and while the Coven did rituals together in my living room, the fireplace was a natural center staging area, with the mantle and hearth serving as the perfect altar tables. I had always decorated the mantle with flowers and kitschy holiday decorations. But I found that over the years the mantle was less of a mundane seasonal piece of home decorating, but had become a seasonal shrine. And at some point I had begun using it as an altar, charging items or creating little charms. Over the years, my Pagan tools and paraphernalia weren't just hidden and tucked away, but were slowly migrating into the house and into my mundane life.

It wasn't just this refocus on my hearth that shifted my perception of my home, but the ritual itself and learning about Hestia. One of the ladies in the group was going through transitions in her own life and had suggested we do a ritual and lesson regarding reconnecting to our habitats, and Hestia was a natural choice for this.

Hestia’s domain is within the home. But she’s not just about cooking and cleaning, but about protection and nurturing energy. She’s about keeping our focus, and she’s about making sure our domestic energy translates easily into our public lives, and vice versa. The Vestal Virgins in Rome were priestesses who guarded the hearth and flame (may it burn forever!). Their energy in both a literal and a magical sense were devoted to the protection of Rome as both a micro and macrocosm, and this devotion and attention is a useful reminder to anyone who might be feeling a little scattered, a little discontented, a little out of sorts. In my experience, Hestia’s energy is useful for anyone who is looking for something with which to devote themselves.

After spending some time to Hestia, a shift happened in my life. I began to reconnect with and love my home. There was magic there now, in ways I hadn't realized. (Though to be fair, it's not like magic came out of nowhere. The magic had always been there. I just hadn’t really noticed it yet.) And an added and serendipitous bonus of working with Hestia was starting communication with Hermes, who is Hestia's total bff forever.

Most of all, this moment was a catalyst for meaningful change in my life. I got a promotion at work. I was given a car. I applied for graduate schools and was eventually accepted. I have a room now devoted to my Pagan tools and altar. Now I might even love my little house, even though the molding is coming down and my bathroom wall is rotting out.

Working with Hestia totally and literally change my focus, and that's powerful magic

Dear Friends

Pagan Blog Project - Week Five - C #1 – Covens

 I like to brag that I was very lucky as far as my introduction to Paganism goes. When I was ready to really study and potentially practice the Craft, I was delighted to find resources all around me. Many of my friends knew Pagans or were Pagan themselves. A lot of the feminist theory I was reading applied to Earth Worship as well. Even my family was taking similar interests in Paganism. I remember with delight that my mom and I would often be reading the exact same books at the exact same time, unintentionally.

Not only did I have books and people to help me, but many of these people were in an organized group, a coven. The coven held public sabbats which were perfect for Baby Pagans. So, my first ritual ever was with the Serpents of the Vine, Midsummer 2005.

These people really had their stuff together. They had lots of experience and they all had lots of books and they’d pass them to me on a regular basis. Having an active message board online meant I could learn about the group, connect with the members, see upcoming events, and most of all, when I had stupid questions, they’d answer and help out. Through the coven I was able to participate in open sabbat rituals, open workshops, and even something simple and fun like Pagan coffee at a local shop. There was a community and a world opened up to me with the coven, even with only being an outer-circle person and not a member.

Through a system of me getting to know them, and them getting to know me, we found that we all liked one another. I was invited to a full moon esbat, and a few months later, invited to dedicate. With the dedication came a year of intentional study, mentoring, and real coven work.

Or course, having a coven has its ups and downs. There was drama, of course. Remember, Pagans are people, too! (and how!) There were breakups (with one another and the coven), gossip, cruel words, drama queens, people who took center stage, people who weren’t committed and didn’t do their work – all sorts of negative and toxic energy being spewed around by all of us, myself included. These things make it impossible to do magic with another person, but inevitably come up when you do magic with another person!

So what having a coven taught me was that it brings out the best and worst in people. It’s all part of being human, and Pagans are so very very very very human. (we almost make a religion out of it, don’t you think?)

I was lucky with my first coven, but I have dear friends who had horrible, scary first experiences. There are covens that abuse their members emotionally, sexually, and magically. For me, I was lucky. For others, they need to be smart.

I almost didn’t make it. We (the coven) almost didn’t make it. But I did, and we did. (Mostly/kind of.)

As people grow, change, and evolve, covens (should) grow, change, and evolve with them. And while I’ve moved away, and others have moved away, and others aren’t even Pagan any more, I still feel a connection with these people, a connection that I’ve never felt with anyone else (though I’ve come close, but different. Which is important to recognize as well. Different groups form different connections, and that energy takes on a different flavor. It’s different, but no less meaningful.) As a Baby Pagan, I needed a coven, but I also needed to move away from a coven in order to grow, too, in both my mundane and my magical lives.

And on my own in the big wide lonely Pagan world, I’ve learned that I had it very easy. When I went into my coven, they had already done all of the hard work. There was a system in place, with rules and tradition and protocol, and for the most part, it worked. It wasn’t until I was trying to start my own coven that I really, really appreciated this structure. It’s important to recognize, though, that some people and groups thrive under structure and some don’t. I guess I do. I’m lazy and I like it when people do all the hard work, and I just didn’t realize how hard it was help facilitate a coven until myself and others were trying to do it from scratch.

Not that my little coven was a failure. Far from it. I learned a lot, and it was a year of beauty and sisterhood and magic. While I don’t have a coven now, I have a group of women with whom I’m connected in a delicious, special way. What my experiment with covens has taught me is that being in a coven is hard. But they can be beautiful. At both their best and worst, covens can be a good way to learn and grow, and they can offer a way to facilitate those traits blooming in others, too.

Most of all, covens come in all different shapes and sizes. No coven I have now or in the future will be like my first coven, and I need to realize that. And what does or does not happen in my future will be unique and magical, and that’s special, too. That’s why we’re Pagan - so we can manifest our own destinies, magical and mundane, in whatever flavor we desire.