|
|
|
May 18th, 2012
12:27 pm - My religion teaches science!
 I am experiencing a slightly frustrating research issue, where it turns out that very few people care about "that thing I want to know." Not such a big deal, generally, except that a lot of people care about "that thing that's almost like what I want to know, but their thing is pseudoscience that doesn't provide me with real answers."
In other words, I'm trying to determine some particular heliacal rising and setting points of particular constellations, but all I find are "calculate your the sign that was rising on the day you were born!" websites that are only concerned with 12-13 distinct constellations. Add to this that I never took an actual astronomy course and didn't do so hot with trigonometry, and things aren't really looking up.
I have lucked out and found a couple of useful star heliacal rising dates, but the one that is mostly eluding me is a clear and simple set of dates for the Pleiades. And, of course, with the Pleiades, items quickly become more pseudo than science (because that's where the Dolphin Masters who founded Atlantis, Ascended Druidry, and the Ancient Mayan Crystal Civilzation came from, you know).
I have, however, found some interesting tools online, and as I find more and more tools (and more and more academic papers that explain the concepts I never learned in school) I understand the concepts a bit better each time.
Why does it matter what the heliacal rising and setting of the Pleiades are? Well, there's lore for one thing: Hesiod tells us that one should sharpen his sickle when the Pleiades appear (i.e., prepare for harvest), and plow when it ceases to be visible in the night sky (i.e., prepare to plant). And that gives us. . . Bingo! A yearly cycle that is not tied to the moon (more accurate) and has observable phenomena associated with it (easier to read than the change in length of a solar day). The Dog Star, Sirius, is another celestial object we can use to measure out time in a similar way, which I've found far easier to calculate (since it's just a dot, not a bunch of dots that take up 110' arcminutes, nearly 2°, in the night sky), and modern astronomers have made actual charts for that star.
Of course, I could just wait and watch the night sky for a few months and see what happens. . . except that I'd like to apply this to a paper, which I'd like to finish before. . . next May (it appears that the Pleiades may already be past its heliacal setting, which means I'm no less than a year from complete observations). Besides, as frustrating as it is, I like that my religion challenges me on occasion.
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood:  frustrated
Current Music: "Tampico Trauma", -JB
|
April 12th, 2012
01:18 pm - Celtic dowsing? Sure, we can do that!
I don't do a lot with pendulums, but as we've been building stock at The Magical Druid, I realized that something useful might be a Druidic Pendulum Board, for those who are interested in adding dowsing to their druidry.
I started with an Awen at the center, and put the "common" answers folks will find on dowsing and divination boards ("Yes," "No," "Unknown") at various points. Thinking about it "Druidic-like," I started wondering what other things might be useful.
I thought a tripartite division was obvious, but I felt that "Priest/Warrior/Producer" was not the best way to go for this one. Instead, I went with "Spiritual/Physical/Emotional" as the division, giving an indication of what realm the answer to your question might lie in.
Then, I wondered if there was additional value in adding in virtues that corresponded, and it seemed like there was value there. So I added the Nine ADF Virtues in to see how they might fit together. It turns out, they fit together rather well on this thing.
I added a broad knotwork border and put some decoration with four Celtic animals outside: Salmon, Boar, Hart, and (of course) Crane. I am not yet sure if those spaces on the board need some "use" or not. They may be too far outside the central circle to provide dowsing help.
Now, I'm excited to try and burn it and see how it works!
Concept Piece
I was also thinking about adding an ogham alphabet and planchette and making it a ouiji board, which might make those animals less decorative and more useful. . . Could be fun!
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood:  cheerful
Current Music: "My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don't Love Jesus", -JB
|
April 11th, 2012
04:32 pm - An Anniversary Pilgrimage for Cranes
A comment by one of the members of Three Cranes Grove, ADF, got me thinking about what it means to be approaching the 10-year mark as a Grove. It certainly means something special. . . but how do we embrace, celebrate, and perpetuate our past in a meaningful way, while still looking to the future?
When I ported our Grove calendar over to Google from our previous calendar, I imported a few important dates that I thought would really matter: I projected out our 100th, 200th, 500th, and 1,000th High Days (mostly because it's much easier to do that early in the game rather than later in the game, as anyone who has tried to make their 1,000th journal entry, tweet, or facebook posting special knows), but I also kept the original founding date information on the calendar.
As I was looking it up today, I realized that we have an interesting and entertaining opportunity to do something a bit special for our anniversary, with enough planning: a little 10th anniversary pilgrimage.
So, here are some dates, the reasons why they're important, and the "pilgrimage stop" I'm suggesting for that particular date, along with an action to do. My tongue is only partially in my cheek at certain points. . .
- May 31 - Commemorates the date
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) anivair and I met to form 3CG - Meet at the Cup 'O Joe's at the Lennox Town Center (1791 Olentangy River Road) at 5:30, and order either tea or water (the drinks of choice for the initial co-conspirators). Talk with someone about something new you'd like to do with the Grove. optional: Have a discussion with someone you've just met about Welsh mythology, and get in over your head very quickly.
- June 26 - Commemorates the submission of a Grove Organizer Survey without a Grove name - Gather at the UUCE, in the Grove Nemeton (pending permission). Discuss other original possibilities for Grove names that we thought would be good at the time, and how terrible they are in hindsight. Spend time in quiet meditation on what the Grove would be like if there hadn't been any "Cranes" in the name. Spend a bit more time meditating on what the Grove would have been named if kargach had named the Grove, as he threatened to do if we didn't provide a name by the time we were approved!
- July 3 - Commemorates the date a name was chosen for the Grove - Choose a river or body of water that means something to you, and go to the water's edge. Do a meditation on Garanus the Crane (ADF members might look at Meeting the Crane on the ADF website for ideas on the sort of meditation to do. That night, celebrate with fireworks at shawneen_bear's house (or perhaps at the city-wide Red, White and Boom celebration, which will clearly be in our honor!).
 July 17 - Comemmorates the date ADF accepted our application as a Protogrove - Gather at the UUCE again (pending permission) for a rite to Teutates, Nemetona, and Garanus in celebration of our ritual successes and misfires. Attempt to shatter a still-wet clay sculpture of a horse, sing "Earth Mother, Blossom Lifter," light a bonfire, have Statler and Waldorf play our Outdwellers, set of a smoke alarm, convince someone to "run" for ADF Preceptor, and sing at least one Jimmy Buffett song.
- Sept 16 - Our 10th Anniversary Rite! - Come be with the Cranes to honor Teutates, the God of the Tribe, and celebrate the old and the new with a ritual that remembers all of the things we've done in the first ten years! We might even retire the Grove Poem officially (it's getting a bit long in the tooth) and kick off a new tradition! Consider this our "ritual commemmoration." Maybe we should send out some invitations to people to come to the rite?
- Sept 22 - Commemorates the first rite we ever did, 10 years after the day we did it - Meet up at the little, non-reservable shelter at Highbanks Metropark, kindle a fire as the sun goes down, and try to read our Inception Statement without adequate lighting. Following that, consume slightly undercooked pork!
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: "Nautical Wheelers", -MJD
|
March 27th, 2012
10:49 am - Crafting the Fege Find
 A couple of days ago, we received a request from shawneen_bear to create a fege find (Irish for "Finn's Window" or "Finn's Ridgepole"). seamus_mcnasty and I were pretty pleased with the outcome, and I spent some time doing research trying to figure out how best to make it.
The design appears in In Lebor Ogaim, or "The Book of Ogam," and is listed as one of the "cryptic varieties" of ogam. Both the translations of "window" and "ridgepole" bring to mind the notion that you can "look through" the fege (ridgepoles in Iron Age houses tend to lead to the smoke hole at the top of the roof), so we put a hole in the middle of it, since it's just empty space, anyway, and it is kinda cool to think about "looking through" the ogham, especially in this configuration. Religion, after all, is all about orienting yourself, and having the ogam as markers of your vision is pretty darn cool.
![[info]](http://l-files.livejournal.net/userhead/50?v=1282818844) erynn999's book, Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom, has a section on this (p. 144 in my edition, which I think is the current edition). She has some very interesting thoughts on the subject (including some notions regarding the shamanic process of "climing and squeezing out through the roof-hole" that are terribly worth considering). She describes the "ridgepole" in question and the hole at the top like this:
"The Féige Find can be immagined as the tree the poet climbs upward into the center to reach imbas and the Otherworlds. The glyph itself, with its five concentric rings, can be seen as the roof of the hut when you lie on your back looking up to the rings and thatching and the central smoke-hole. The ogam feda themselves are like the bindings that hold the thatch, and the stars spinning in the night sky around the central post of the world tree, or the north star that is the nail about which the heavens revolve." -p. 145 It's damn good imagery.
Anyway, I spent some time last night doing some practical work with the fege, as last night was our usual bit of Clergy Order Work. I meditated with the Window up to my closed eye, centered on the flame of a candle before me, and when I opened my eye and looked through the Window to the candle flame, I saw things beyond the flame before me that were reflected in the vision I had been meditating on. The real interesting thing was that I had left a pad of paper on the working space before me (so I could write things down afterward, not during, though I'd already drawn the fege on the paper), and I almost immediately had the urge to begin writing. Words poured out of me for a little bit. I had drawn the fege find on the pad before the journey, and found myself writing four sets of words in the four corners around the outside of the fege, and a fifth set of words spiraling through the fege itself.
When I went to journal the experience, I had to re-translate the words, which was not terribly easy, since I had been writing from one position, so some of the words were written backwards. I did manage to understand everything I wrote, though (sometimes by re-tracing the words in reverse to figure out what letter I'd intended to write). All the sets of words (couplets, almost) were about fire and poetry. It was a strange but deep experience.
This version is done in cedar, because we like working in cedar, and it burns very cleanly (as opposed to some other woods that don't always burn well). We might try some other woods, but we'll have to see (oak, for instance, burns very poorly when it comes to detail like this. The most interesting thing is that apparently, no one has ever thought to make these things into jewelry, it appears, and we do love doing things that are new and unique! You can pick one up at The Magical Druid, of course!
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: good
Current Music: "Lovely Cruise", -JB
|
March 11th, 2012
10:55 pm - Crane Divination is a go!
 Last night, seamus_mcnasty and I spent the evening finally succeeding to create things with our new toy. A partial result is the divination set you see at right, which we used tonight as part of our Grove Members-only ritual. I posted about it a couple of weeks ago: it's the Crane Divination set I mentioned, now fully formed in wood.
The medium chosen for this first run was birch plywood, so not ideal for a divination set, but great for a first run (where things can, and did, go wrong). We're going to need to do some additional work, but I think we'll have them up on the site for sale next week or the week after, so folks can try and test them out. I think we may do them in cedar to start with, since we seem to have figured out a good burn rate for that wood. . . unless we can't get the birch plywood to do what we need it to do.
We also started doing a few more things (you can catch some of those things over at The Magical Druid's Facebook page), including a world tree and some pendants that ADF folks will recognize. We're starting to think about doing some "on demand" work and other custom work for people who want something special.
Ah, back to the workshop tomorrow!
Come find us at Trillium to see all the really cool new things we have: it's the first stop on the festival wheel!
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: "Jolly Mon", -JB
|
March 3rd, 2012
08:02 am - "I'm going after that truck." "How?" "I don't know: I'm making this up as I go."
I am a fan of Blu-ray, I think it's no secret. I like the quality of the sound and the video. Today, though, I saw something that made me very happy:
Indiana Jones is coming to Blu-ray!
And not just that last one, but all three. (Let's be honest here, Raiders was the best of the series.) I'll be ordering all that :)
I think we'll have to have a party. Maybe we'll watch them in reverse so that we can keep the audience interested :)
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: "Grapefruit-Juicyfruit", -JB
|
February 28th, 2012
01:28 pm - PFS Book: complete and in final edits, finally!
 Last night, I sent the book for the Pagan Fire Seminar we held back on Feb. 11th off for final proofing: I think it's ready, and that we'll be able to put the books up for order within about a week.
The book is clocking in at over 130 pages, and all I can say is "WOW" at the topics covered in that little bit of space. From tips on writing prayers to ways to deal with a variety of different ritual styles that others might present, I'm more and more happy with parts of it as I read back through it.
seamus_mcnasty is in progress on the video version of the shindig, and we're not sure how that will turn out yet: it may be a bit more than we can chew on.
Most of our books go through a pretty standard refresh process: the first edition is mostly just a test edition, and the second edition is a reorganized and expanded version in a couple of years (usually two to three) once we've gotten some feedback and grown a bit ourselves with the information. I don't expect this one will be much different: it's organized based on the workshop and workbook, so I could see us fully reorganizing this one and turning it into a much larger book. But for now, this one will be what it is.
I'm very excited to see what happens when we put it out, and to hear feedback from those who read it.
Cover photo by Sarah-Jayne Chapman
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "Mexico", -JB
|
February 16th, 2012
01:31 pm - A new Rune Poem, Draft 1
Recently, in a discussion with sleepingwolf, I ended up writing a rune poem. I hadn't done this before, but have thought about doing it for some time. This particular one isn't designed to have meter or anything fancy like that (at least, not yet), but just to get the ideas out of my head.
So, ( without further ado )
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: working
Current Music: "Oysters and Pearls", -JB
|
February 15th, 2012
04:58 pm - More Divination Tools
Continuing the divination theme, something else I have often wanted to do is to put together a "Nine Virtues Divination Set." So, first run at the idea is this:
Again, a really rough first draft, really: there's more work to be done, clearly, on this one. Besides, it's mostly clip-art :)
I'm in progress on Ogham and Greek Oracles, as well as a few other options, too. We have a long way to go, but The Magical Druid really is aiming to provide some quality stuff :)
Edited to Add: I occurs to me that this post about Esus, Cranes, and a Bull will help people understand the choice of imagery here.
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood:  restless
Current Music: "Desperation Samba (Halloween in Tijuana)", - JB
|
February 14th, 2012
12:51 pm - Version 1 of a Crane Divination Set
Here's version one of the Crane Divination I mentioned a couple of weeks ago:
I've had a couple of people "feeling it out" and we've found some ways to improve it so far. I think that there will be more to come on that front in the near future, but this will give you an idea of what it might look like.
seamus_mcnasty and I have received our laser, but won't be able to fully make use of it, we don't think, until sometime early next month or so. We've also decided to step up the process of finding a location, though it's unlikely to quite look like what we had originally thought. More on that later, I'm sure.
But, we're looking forward to having some unique, amazing things at Trillium!
(If you haven't registered for Trillium yet, you should!)
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: "Come Monday", -JB
|
|
|
