Category: Uncategorized

Talking ’bout the Weather: Depression

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

I’ve been a bit MIA from the blog the last few weeks because, unsurprisingly, my depression is kicking up with all the *gestures wildly at the whole damn world* going on. I’m feeling…reasonable?…right now so I thought I’d actually come talk about how I view (and deal with) my depression.

I’m a lifer. I’ve had major depressive disorder most of my life (I think perhaps even as a child, but certainly since my teenage years) and have been medicated for about 70% of that. I first went on meds at 19. I was also diagnosed with type II bipolar disorder in my 30s, but I’ve come to doubt the accuracy of that diagnosis as I’m pretty sure what I thought of as hypomania was, in fact, just me feeling like myself for a while. (Everyone is different, though, so I recommend at least trying to get a proper diagnosis to give you a starting point.)

I’ve done a lot of shadow work and self-examination to identify where my depression came from, but to be honest, that did basically zero to alleviate the symptoms; it just gave me insight and allowed me to approach my treatment in a more useful way. I continue to have depressive cycles that don’t correspond to any particular events or traumatic triggers from the past. I realized that whatever caused my depression, I still have an illness, and I need to treat it as a medical problem while continuing to work on myself mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

In addition to my three prescription medications, I take Omega-3, and D & B vitamin supplements to help steady things in my head. I meditate as much as possible to promote calmer skies. I have tried exercise as a treatment, but I have physical issues (and body image issues) that make it difficult to maintain. I try not to look at my inability to stick to exercise as a failure, but as a “that didn’t work this time, let’s try something different.”

I also use my bullet journal/planner to help keep me oriented and connected to my life – it’s easy when you’re depressed to feel like you’ve become unmoored, and having trackers and a to-do list help remind me that I have goals and things to look forward to and they’re still there even if I’m in a bad way.

I think the most important thing I did for my mental health was the day I connected the concept of the Wheel of the Year with my depressive cycles. Not the Sabbats themselves, but the idea that change is continuous and the seasons roll into each other and back around again, but never sit still. All of nature moves in cycles, and I’m hardly exempt from that.

I decided to treat my depressive cycles as “flare-ups,” not as the end of the world. They tend to last anywhere from 2-6 weeks, but the thing that really matters is knowing they’re temporary. If I approach them as a symptom flare-up like I would with fibromyalgia, IBS, or other conditions, I am better able to keep them in perspective.

When I’m flaring up I try to listen to my body and brain. I pull back on social interaction and sleep a lot, but I’ve tried, and continue to try, not to stop contact with people, just to take a rest from things when I really feel like I need to. I work as diligently as I can to counter negative thoughts with what I know is reality and remind myself I won’t always feel this way. I try not to make major decisions. I watch comfort movies and TV, I don’t police my eating, and above all, I try to be patient with myself.

My mantra for flare-ups is, “I am the sky; the rest is the weather.” I visualize my flare-ups as leaden-grey clouds covering the sky, but even when they look still, they are moving slowly across the vista of my mind. They will eventually break up. The wind will usher them out of view, and I’ll be able to see constellations again.

All the things I do to help myself, from meditation to self-examination, help make the clouds move through faster and gentle the squalls as much as possible. But it’s all still the weather. It still changes over time. As daunting as that idea is sometimes, it also gives me hope.

Weather fronts come and go. But the sky remains, still clear and blue during day and star-flecked at night, even behind the fiercest storms.

Goal Setting in the Age of the Great Tire Fire

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

I find myself contemplating the second half of 2020, and aside from “What’s next, space monkeys? A plague of frogs? War with Finland? Another Minions movie? …oh goddamn it,” I am considering how my priorities have changed in the last six months.

I look back at my January 2020 goal-setting and I laugh and laugh and laugh. I mean who hasn’t thought, “This is going to be my year, I’m going to get my poop in a group and make big changes and accomplish A-Z and really do better at all my everything!” at the start of every year of their adult lives? But 2020…wow, y’all.

I had, on my list, things like finishing the novel I was working on and getting a second book underway. I planned to increase my income by a certain amount, finally get that yoga practice going, etc. And while in theory I could finish a book during quarantine, let’s be honest here: This has not been a productive time just because it’s been a non-busy time. Our brains and hearts are working extra hard dealing with all of this even if we haven’t had to take on extra responsibilities for our families or jobs.

I think it’s important to have goals even now – not big life things necessarily but just something to strive for, something to help keep you anchored in your life. But those goals don’t exist in a vacuum. What’s going on out there will absolutely affect what we can accomplish in here.

I ask myself, what do I want to nurture in my life for the rest of the year? What do I need more of right now? And then, what’s a small thing I could add to my day that would help nudge me toward that? For my longer-term big goals, picking some wee aspect to chip away at could mean progress without overwhelm.

Overwhelm is a thing I’ve come to understand on a new level in the last few months. The continuous onslaught on my mental health coming from the outside world has lowered the amount of energy I have available. I have to respect that and not pretend I’m going to feel “normal” again any time soon. 2020-life depression might just be a new way my depression manifests itself that I have to learn how to live with. (Thanks, America.)

All of that in mind, and considering my original goals, I’ve decided to take a massive dose of Phucumol (talk to your doctor today!) and, with a mighty YEET!, toss them all and start from scratch.

There are three smallish things I want to do/start doing:

  1. Eat a little more healthfully, specifically not ordering out all the time but eating actual home-cooked food with vegetables in it that aren’t potatoes, and maybe drinking some actual water? Cutting back on the deliveries will be good for my budget too.
  2. Move. Just a little. I really really want to figure out a way to get myself on the yoga mat, even for five minutes at a time. I have plenty of resources and a good chunk of time in the afternoon after work I could use, I just…haven’t.
  3. Write. Creative outlets are very important to me in general, but now especially. I do want to keep blogging, but I also want to pick a larger project and stick with it for a while. I haven’t decided which project that will be just yet.

Eat, move, write. That doesn’t sound so insurmountable. They’re all things I can still do while the world is a giant tire fire.

What are your tire-fire goals?

2020, Second Draft

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

I’m going to say this up front: America fucked up.

It was a losing battle from the beginning with the narcissistic ignorant grifter in charge and all his equally repugnant cronies guaranteeing there would not be enough testing, enough aid, or enough time before the country “opened back up.”

Let’s make one thing very clear. America never “closed.” It just let white people go home and bake bread while people of color, other minorities, and the poor involuntarily shouldered the burden of keeping vital services running for the rest of us.

If things keep going as they have–and there’s no reason to believe otherwise given how badly people are behaving just because they’ve been asked to put a piece of fabric on their faces for an hour here and there (I wonder if those Klan hoods impede their delicate respiration too?) that things won’t be worst-case scenario–it’s not just 2020 we’ve lost. It’ll be most of, if not all of, 2021 as well, depending on vaccine availability.

I’m not trying to doomsay here, I’m just trying to look at what’s laid out in front of us. This is not going away any time soon. The life that we had at the beginning of this year is over for a while. That means we need to manage our expectations.

Most of us have been treating the pandemic as a short-term problem; for other countries it has been. But America fucked up, as it is wont to do. It didn’t have to be this way, but this is what we have to work with while we keep trying to make it better.

We have to find ways to care for our mental health under the relentless onslaught. We have to find ways to keep adapting and to adjust the changes we’ve already made to shore them up long-term. What can you do to make your at-home life more sustainable for the long haul? Do you need particular equipment to help make working from home easier? Do you need to try a meal kit service or learn about batch cooking and prep to make feeding your household less draining? What can you to make your home more comfortable to stay in every day? Do you need make standing weekly Zoom dates to look forward to? A chore chart? Look at what has worked, and what hasn’t, the last few months. What are you lacking? How can you create more of it?

Your quarantine does not have to be a cocoon. It can just be where you keep your shit as together as possible. You don’t have to emerge ripped, speaking Cantonese, with a homemade sourdough loaf in each hand.

Make the best of things, absolutely, but acknowledge and accept that THIS FUCKING SUCKS. It SUCKS and it’s HARD and you’re ANGRY and SCARED and you want to cry and scream and you want to hug your Mom and you CAN’T, DAMN IT. All the weeks we spent doing the right thing have been undone by a bunch of selfish assholes, and IT SUCKS.

I think the most important thing we can do is admit that things are going to be a mess for a long time and then get off our (metaphorical) butts and get on with living our lives in whatever form they have to take.

We may not be able to avoid a perilous future but we can still help mitigate the longer term. America’s track record with learning from its mistakes is, well, not stellar, but we can still do better, both as individuals and as a nation. I cling to the hope that by November it won’t be too late to turn things around or at least wrench them from their blindfolded gallop toward a cliff. But to even have a chance, we have to VOTE! Meanwhile there are city council meetings to sit in on, letters to write to lawmakers, petitions to sign. You can do a lot from home!

Most importantly do not give up. One way or another we’re going to get through this. I can’t make any promises about how, or what the world will look like on the other side, but we’ll get there. Take care of yourself, take care of others, and get used to editing the plans you make for how life is “supposed” to go.

The first draft is usually crap anyway.

Why the V-Word?

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan
Ahimsa, the Sanskrit word for “non-harming”

People often wonder why, given the social stigma associated with the word “vegan,” I wouldn’t just call myself “plant-based,” which is apparently way more palatable to the mainstream.

There are several answers to this, the first one being, I am not all that interested in being palatable. I am interested in living according to my values. If my being vegan upsets you, well, there’s the “back” button.

The second answer is that to me, “plant-based” is a diet.  It’s a fad, to be perfectly honest, like Keto or Paleo or whatever the hell the newest “eat all the bacon you want” thing is, just in a different direction. A large percentage of people who call themselves “plant based” are doing so merely to lose weight.

This irritates me mightily because we know diets don’t work, and I can tell you firsthand that eating only plant foods does not guarantee any particular health outcome (there’s no meat in a French fry). So when people decide that their plant-based diet is way too hard because it doesn’t offer enough pleasure or satisfaction (which I get in spades from non-diet vegan food, by the way), they quit, often becoming the dreaded “ex-vegan” who evangelizes against the entire lifestyle despite never having really lived it.  Basically, dieters don’t make good lifelong vegans because dieting is bullshit, and a diet of bullshit is only sustainable long-term for flies, mushrooms, and people who watch Fox News.

Important side note: Many people who have issues with eating a vegan diet forget that you still have to eat enough. If your overall caloric intake has dropped of course you’re going to feel like hell! EAT! If you eat a varied diet with sufficient calories, it will be very difficult for you to become medically deficient in anything, especially protein.  When was the last time you heard someone mention the actual medical term for the condition caused by protein deficiency?**

That brings me back to my overall point:  Veganism is not just a diet.  It encompasses far, far more than what you eat.  The definition of veganism, as offered by The Vegan Society (whose leadership actually coined the term “vegan”), is,

Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.  [italics are mine]

When I say I’m a vegan what I mean is that I try to follow this definition, not just that I don’t eat meat, dairy, or eggs. I also practice compassionate consumerism when it comes to household products, clothing, shoes, accessories, body care, and more.

There are of course areas I don’t have much control over. No sane vegan would tell people to stop taking their antidepressants because they might have animal products in them – or because they were almost certainly tested on animals.  (If anyone ever tells you to do this, run away.)  Note that the definition says, “as far as is possible and practicable.”  If I don’t take my meds, I may commit suicide one day, which means I can no longer advocate for animals (or the environment or minorities or anyone else), so I choose to stay mentally healthy and try to make the world a more compassionate place.

There is NO SUCH THING as 100% vegan. It’s just not possible. At some point you’re gonna step on a bug.  We live by consuming living things; that’s just how being alive works.  Vegans are not ignorant of this fact.  We make an informed choice to cause the least harm we can in every way we can…and we do the best we can. Sometimes we fall short. Humans do.

Thus, I personally eschew the term “plant-based eater” because it’s a one-dimensional phrase, typically bandied about by fatphobic dieters, that only covers one part of my vegan practice. 

Yes, I consider it a practice, and a vital spiritual one at that. I chose to call it that because it reminds me that, as with any other kind of practice, perfection is not attainable and that’s okay; I can only keep doing better than the day before.  It also reminds me that these choices are as much a part of my spirituality as any other. My meditation practice, devotional practice, divinatory practice, and vegan practice are all strands in my wee spiritual web. They all inform each other and in many ways depend upon each other.

** kwashiorkor

An Important Thing

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

For a long time – years – I’ve tried to avoid talking about the dreaded v-word (vegan, not vagina) on my blog because I didn’t want to deal with arguing or rolling my eyes at anti-vegan “jokes” about desert islands or antagonistic questions from people who don’t actually care about the answers but just want to bait me.

Very recently I had a revelation that I’d like to share with you:

Fuck that shit.

I’m not going to pussyfoot around an important component of my spiritual life just to pacify trolls. I’ve avoided subjects like my veganism or fat-positive posts because a long time ago I got death threats and extremely cruel emails and I shrank back into my cave to hiss at passersby and never actually express the totality of myself to the world.

Again: Fuck that shit.

I’m watching people all over the world stand up and be seen and killed for what’s right. Obviously the BLM movement is not meant as a self-help tool for White people, but having taken up the work of examining my behavior and educating myself, in the midst of learning a lot of hard truths I also realized I don’t want to play small anymore, whether about fatness, veganism, mental health, magic, social issues, or religion.

Now, please note, I am not going to be posting inflammatory things or vegan-themed rants full of horrifying images of tortured animals. In fact my intention isn’t to “convert” anyone, but just to share this part of my life as it fits into my spirituality and other aspects of who I am. There will be food and probably some meditations and prayers, but I intend neither to guilt nor rage, only to be me. I will put together a post of links for those who want to know more. There are so many people out there who have already created great resources both for the whys and hows of vegan living and I’d rather send traffic to their good work.

In that same vein I am not interested in debating the subject. I don’t want to hear “mmmm, bacon” “humor” on my feed. I don’t want to hear why you can’t be vegan because cheese or how you tried it once and ALMOST DIED OMG or whatever. I don’t care about the asshole vegans you’ve met. Honestly I don’t care about your why-nots and I do not respond to antagonism. I don’t approve/I delete comments that aggravate me because this is not a democracy. I am not obligated to teach you or engage with you.

You are more than welcome to skip any post you want. It’s your time and energy! You decide where it goes! Just like it’s my time and energy that goes into writing here, and my time and energy that will not be spent engaging with trolls.

This is not to say I expect any of my regular readers to behave badly. You’re all great, and I’m so glad you’ve stuck with me. But whenever I bring up the v-word or talk about fat positivity I get a ton of static, and it’s that potential static I’m talking about.

What I hope you gain from these sorts of posts isn’t why you should behave a certain way so much as it’s how your ethics and beliefs mesh with your practices and how you behave in the world, whether as a spiritual person or merely as a consumer. I want more people to consider how their spiritual practices and beliefs do – and SHOULD – affect every part of their lives, not just the hour in front of the altar, on the mat, or in the pew.

I won’t be dedicating a huge number of posts to this topic, and it won’t be all in a row, just now and then when I feel the need to talk about it, or in posts where I think it has some bearing on the post’s subject. I’ve already been trying to do some of this since I restarted my blog back in March.

Now that I’m over 40 I’m coming to understand what “authenticity” really means and how we simply don’t have time in our brief human lives to trot out incomplete versions of ourselves for the approval of strangers. Therefore I’m hoping to be a less hesitant in posting things that are important to me just because they might bother a few people. I don’t want to lock parts of me away like they’re a dirty secret. So I won’t.

Fuck that shit.

A Pig, a Paintbrush, and a Practice

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

From Wikipedia: Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as kinsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

I discovered the art and philosophy of kintsugi a while back and like many other Westerners found it intriguing. It’s certainly become more well known in the last few years, appearing everywhere from Pinterest to fan fiction. (It’s very popular with fan artists as well.)

While I feel that I’ve grown past my “broken” phase of life, I remember it very well, and at the time it didn’t feel like I was filling my cracks with gold as much as it felt like stapling myself together haphazardly, then slapping a coat of plaster over the whole mess.

Nowadays kintsugi has a different relevance for me. Even in a reasonably-together stage of life, I often have chips break off or a new crack appear, either in a spot I didn’t patch well enough before or in someplace entirely new. That’s often how life works, though. The first time an issue arises we say, “All I’ve got is mud and straw, it’ll have to do.” The second time we’re older and wiser (hopefully) and patch more skillfully, with cement. But eventually when the flaw comes out we’ve lost the desire to hide our cracks from the rest of the world and think, with a flick of our feather boa, “To hell with what anyone thinks, this time this bastard is GOLD.”

In October of 2018 my lovely friend Nan took her first trip to the UK and brought back a wee gift for me. She knew how much I adore pigs and found a wonderful locally-crafted pig ornament at the Spode visitor center.

At the time I was having another bout of depression that had knocked me off my vegan practice (and into a vat of queso). I have never claimed to be a “perfect” vegan because such a thing cannot exist; what most people don’t know is that I’ve been on and off the wagon for years, usually only off for a few days (sometimes only a single meal) then back on, depending on my mental health. I have been gradually shortening those episodes, but I still wobble. That’s why I call it a practice.

This is of course not what I want. I want to be steadfast and dedicated to living my values. When I’m on my game it’s actually pretty darn easy to be vegan, especially here in Austin; it’s me that’s the problem, not the lifestyle.

So, when Nan gave me my pig, I decided to use it as a talisman. I charged it ritually to help boost my ability to make good decisions and to walk my talk. Every month on the Full Moon I’d give it a refresh. Eventually, though, I missed a month, then another. As with so many spiritual habits mundane life got the best of my intentions.

You can probably see where this is going.

One day, while dusting and rearranging my altar, I knocked the pig off the wall and it broke into pieces.

Sometimes the Universe gives you less a Cosmic 2×4 and more a Cosmic Anvil.

I cried. I looked at the broken little ornament and thought about how shitty I am and how I have no integrity and I cried some more.

Then I got out the Superglue and fit the pieces back together. There were enough tiny shards missing that it didn’t look very well mended, especially on the back; I also glued my fingers to it at one point (don’t tell my roommate) and re-broke it while trying to free myself.

It was quite some time later that I made the connection between my busted-up talisman and kintsugi.

Once I did, however, the course of action was obvious. My piggy ornament had to have its cracks made gold.

I had already glued it back together, so instead of missing lacquer and gold powder or any other more traditional Japanese method, I bought a bottle of metallic gold paint and a tiny paintbrush and began applying layers of gold in the cracks. I’ve done this several times in the last few months, just adding a little more shine each time, and as I paint I reinforce my intentions to keep going, to do better and then better again, to become the person I want to be inside and out.

It’s not perfect. What is? Perfection is a lousy goal. You’ll drive yourself to an early grave chasing a toxic illusion. What’s far better, and better for us, is looking at all our failures and faults as another place where we can add something shiny. Or, to let a much better poet than myself say it,

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

“Anthem,” by Leonard Cohen

Recipe: “Cherry Garcia” Pound Cake

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

Sometime during the week I left myself a note on my phone: Cherries vanilla almonds chocolate – yogurt Cherry Garcia cake???

I’m not sure where the idea came from aside from the fact that I LOVE cherry vanilla, I love chocolate with cherries, & I love Cherry Garcia ice cream (unfortunately I don’t really like the nondairy version, as almond milk ice cream is too watery-tasting to me).

After a search on Pinterest for vegan loaf cakes I decided to improvise, or rather to start with a prewritten recipe and alter it. I found a lemon blueberry pound cake from Vegan Richa and used it as a base (since I know her recipes are excellent), adding and tweaking various ingredients to get the flavors I wanted.

The result, dear reader, is glorious. Super moist, not cloyingly sweet, studded with big juicy cherries and chocolate chips. Next time I may swap out the vanilla for almond extract, as I also love cherry almond anything (my shampoo is cherry almond and I want to eat it every time I wash my hair). If I do that I’ll probably scatter some sliced almonds on top of the glaze.

I posted a pic on Instagram and Facebook and got hit with lots of requests for the recipe, so, here you go!

Recipe: "Cherry Garcia" Pound Cake
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Recipe: “Cherry Garcia” Pound Cake

Recipe by Dianne Sylvan
Servings

6-8

servings
Prep time

10

minutes
Baking time

1

hour 

Ingredients

  • Wet Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup nondairy yogurt (I used Silk vanilla soy)

  • 1 c nondairy milk (I used Oatly)

  • 3/4 c sugar

  • 2 tsp vanilla (or almond) extract

  • 3 tablespoons canola or other oil

  • Dry Ingredients

  • 2 c all-purpose flour

  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

  • 1/4 tsp baking soda

  • 1/4 tsp salt

  • 3/4 to 1 cup frozen or other pitted cherries tossed in 1 tablespoon flour (the vague measurements here are because you might want a higher ratio of cherry to chocolate, or vice versa, but FYI I used 1 cup of the former and 3/4 cup of the latter)

  • 1/2 to 3/4 c chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate)

  • Vanilla Glaze

  • 1 c powdered sugar

  • 2 tablespoons nondairy milk

  • 1 tsp vanilla (or almond) extract

  • 2-3 tablespoons cherry jam or preserves (optional, but adds an extra punch of cherry flavor)

Let’s get it on

  • Preheat your oven to 350F. Spray a loaf pan with nonstick or line it with parchment paper.
  • Whisk all the wet ingredients together in a large bowl.
  • Whisk the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl, then add the dry (except the cherries and chips) to the wet and whisk until well combined.
  • Fold in the cherries and the chocolate chips. Scrape the whole mess into the loaf pan and top with a few extra cherries and chips if you like. Bake for 55-60 minutes until it doesn’t jiggle and is golden brown.
  • Let the cake rest in the pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack. Allow to cool for at least an hour before glazing so you don’t make a big damn mess.
  • Once the cake is cool, put a pan or platter under the cooling rack. Spread the jam (if using) over the top of the cake more or less evenly. Whisk the glaze ingredients together then pour over the top of the cake. (The pan/platter is there to catch the dribbles.)
  • Slice and serve to a grateful world.

My Book of Shadows, v. 25 (or so)

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

Part 3 in my series about the spiritual toys and tools that have remained a part of my practice (or are part of it again, or have become important to me since I’ve started getting my groove back).

One of the things that I always loved about Wicca and its relatives was the idea of a Book of Shadows.

For those unaware, a BoS can be a lot of things to a lot of people. In some traditions the material in it is handed down upon initiation, and is either passed down verbatim or added to by the practitioner. In some traditions the whole thing is your own to create or curate. Some people use it as a journal of rituals, magical work, and divination; others use it strictly as a “cookbook” where they write down spells and rituals, both of their own composition and those copied from books or online. Some people keep two books, one a cookbook and one a journal.

A lot of people use some sort of handmade or beautiful bound book; some use a computer file. I’ve seen some that are sort of both nowadays that you can keep on your tablet but make look like a book using Goodnotes or another notes app. You young’uns and your technomancy!

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to a BoS (which some call a grimoire, others using one term for a journal and one for a spellbook) I’ve had several over the course of my magical career and the only kind I never could really warm up to was the digital variety. Keeping a BoS appeals to my love of pretty notebooks and journaling supplies. My last one was a gorgeous thin book of handmade paper I got at a local bookshop; I wrote in it all by hand, did all the borders and doodles, and nearly filled it up before it became obsolete for my practice.

Okay, there’s ONE “wrong” in a BoS, and that is not crediting your sources. Add where you got a ritual or poem somewhere on the page, both because it’s the ethical thing to do, and so that you can find it again if something happens to your book!

Last year I started a new one. I dubbed it my Book of Moonlight and Shadows, as the duality of shadow and light are very important to my practice, and have combined illustrations, poetry, prayers, and records of Tarot readings so far. I’m absolutely in love with the overall style I have going, so I wanted to show off a few pages here. Notice that you can see the new knob I got for my altar drawer to replace the boring wood one it came with.

Supplies used will be linked at the bottom if you wish to check them out.

An A5 dot grid journal from Archer and Olive; note all the fuzzies on the cover. Their notebooks are gorgeous and super high quality (the pages are 160gsm) but the fabric on the covers attracts dust and hair like you wouldn’t believe. I have cleaned it with a wad of tape and gotten most of the hair off, but living with four cats, it’s kind of a doomed enterprise. Oh, and the edges of the pages are silver-gilded! It’s soooo lovely.
The cover page. The color in these pics is weird, even after white balancing, but note that the paper in A&O notebooks is bright white. The drawing is in ink and colored pencil.
I am primarily posting the Index page to show that I screwed it up and had to patch over it. Any time I get a nice notebook I remove one of the pages to use for patching, as it’s way less distracting than correction tape (especially if your pages aren’t bright white). Also I love the berry bramble border.
A sort of dedication page, featuring a Rumi poem I love that I first heard at church last year. We sing it as a round. I get it stuck in my head all the time!
Even though I don’t celebrate most of the NeoPagan Sabbats (see my post on Beltaine), I love having a Wheel of the Year image in my BoS, and I’m extra proud of how this one came out. I intend to add to the page, filling in the blank spaces with notes on the seasons and adding holidays I *do* celebrate.
Another spread I’m really proud of. These are prayers that I use often, either as a whole or one section at a time, often with my beads. The left side are prayers to Theia, my Goddess of Starlight and Moonlight; and the right is to Persephone, Goddess of Shadow .
The left-hand page is a draft, really, of the verses that would end up in the blog post about breathing prayers; the right is the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism, with the logo of my church in the bottom corner. (I just realized I didn’t write the origin of the Principles on the page – look at me violating my own rule! I will fix that immediately.)
Lastly, one of the more utilitarian page spreads – Moon phase lore on one side and number lore (for Tarot cards mostly) on the other.

Not pictured are images of Tarot readings, as those are extra personal. Those pages utilize a lot more washi tape and glued-in images. I’m considering moving my divinatory records to my bullet journal and making my planner much Witchier, in the same vein as Jessica Starr does in this video:

If you’re interested in any of the supplies I used, here are some links. They are not affiliate links and I receive no compensation, I just wanted to share things I enjoy using.

A Spell to Overcome (Your Own) Prejudices and Stand Up for Justice

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

If you are a white person in America, you are privileged. You are also racist, or have been at some point in your life – maybe not actively, but it’s in there somewhere. It’s in all of us. We have to stop pretending we’re oh so woke and understand our role in all of this if we’re going to change that role and change the narrative going forward.

Even if you have worked on your own heart the fact is we are steeped in a culture that was built on the backs of Black slaves and through the genocide of Native American peoples. From the moment white people began to colonize this land we have treated people of color as less-than, to the degree that racism is ingrained in every aspect of our society. It’s inescapable.

I am not saying you are currently an overt racist or a bad person. I’m saying if you are a white American, you grew up in a racist country with a racist (and misogynistic, and homophobic, and on and on) culture. You did not start this culture! You were not alive when slavery was still acceptable! But you benefit from that history, and you benefit from the institutions that have been set up around the marginalization and demonization of those with darker skin. You are responsible for educating yourself and doing better.

We as white people have to get more comfortable with admitting we are not above our culture. It’s okay to own up to your own mistakes and shortcomings; in fact it’s necessary. This may not be a world we started, but we have to decide how it continues, and that means getting real with our privilege and our own past actions.

We have to get over our defensiveness. We must start by shutting up and listening to the people who are actually being hurt. We don’t get to decide what is and isn’t racist because we are not the targets of racism. If I’m punching you in the face I don’t get to decide if it hurts you.

Also, it is not the job of Black people to teach us not to be racist, so we have to stop expecting them to stop in the middle of trying to survive and hold our hands while we address our own prejudices. Lists and lists of books and articles, websites and videos, have come out in the last week that can help us. It’s up to us to figure out what we can do.

That’s why I wanted to share this spell for those of you who are into magical work. Its purpose is not to hex racists or change the whole world at once; its purpose is to help us figure out where we can help, and to give us the courage to follow through. Working to change the system is vital, but I feel we also have to look in the mirror and change ourselves.

A Spell for Justice and Overcoming Our Own Prejudices

This spell does two things: It seeks the wisdom to ferret out our own prejudices and overcome them; and it seeks to strengthen our resolve and help us speak up when we need to in the face of oppression. I am not someone who can march and protest outdoors in 95 degree heat, but I can donate, amplify Black voices in art and elsewhere, sign petitions, and retweet my ass off to make sure as many people as possible get important information. I can write things like this post. But moreover, I can learn how to speak up against racist remarks and behavior even when they’re from those I love. That’s very difficult for a lot of people (including me) to do, but it’s another kind of discomfort we have got to face in order to make a difference.

You will need only two things: A candle and some kind of stone. You might also want something to use to carve your candle, and of course you probably want some sort of candle holder, but that’s up to you.

I thought long and hard about what to recommend in terms of candle color and stone type, but I’m going to leave it to you; normally I use white candles for everything because they’re easier to find and versatile, but imposing more white on the situation doesn’t feel right, and using black for either the candle or the stone is a bit on the nose and kind of trite. You could use red to harness your anger, or green to invoke the strength of the Earth; a stone I would recommend is hematite, as it is grounding and strengthening and most people have a chunk in their magical drawers somewhere.

I just don’t feel that using a bunch of black colors or themes is the best way to go. There’s no need to get cute. That said, I would carve BLM or an anti-racist slogan into the candle, or a phrase like “stand up for justice” or “speak out,” depending on how skilled you are with carving wax.

1. Carved or not, set the candle on your altar with the stone in front of it. You may want to cleanse the stone before starting by passing it through incense smoke or rubbing it with an oil, but again, I’m not the boss of your altar, so you do you.

2. Create sacred space however you usually do. If you’re new to this sort of thing, just mentally acknowledge the four Elements and directions, possibly using simple words like these:

I call upon the strength of the Earth
upon the wit and wisdom of Air
upon the passion of Fire
and upon the compassion of Water
Be with me and bless this work.

Usually when I do this I visualize a sphere of light forming around me, emanating from the four directions, each in a color that corresponds to the Element. They all merge in the center, and meet the energy of above and below, which for me are secondary Elements (of a sort) of Darkness and Light. Once all these energies have met, they become a single color that is attuned to your purpose (or whatever color you think magical energy is just on its own).

If you revere particular deities or just archetypes, or if you have guides or guardians like angels or animal spirits, you can also call them in at this point to help you and witness your work.

3. Next, take some time to review, mentally, what’s going on in the world that you want to help change. Don’t get too into the violent and horrific details; that could derail your purpose and lead you to depression or despair, which is the opposite of what we want to invoke here. We want to use our anger, not collapse under it.

4. Now light the candle and visualize its flame cutting through all of these mental images and casting the light of truth on the darkness we’ve come to. Imagine that you are holding this light, and helping it to grow brighter; that hundreds of thousands of other people are feeding the flame so it burns brighter than even the most vile hatred.

5. Pick up your stone in both your hands, letting it catch the candle’s light. Visualize the flame awakening the stone’s inherent energies. As you hold the stone, imagine you can gather up all your determination and righteous anger and fill the stone with it. Imagine that energy joining with the stone’s energy and the power of the flame kindled by so many protesters and seekers of justice.

6. Think, or say words like these; the volume isn’t important and neither is the specific wording, but what is important is your conviction. You might write out your wording before hand and have it on your altar, then keep it there as a reminder of what you have spoken before your gods (or the universe, or yourself).

I am [your name]
and I take a stand for justice.
The moral arc of the universe does not bend alone;
I pledge to help it bend using my talents and strengths.
I add my flame to the greater fire of truth.
Goddess [or whomever] help me to speak out,
to lift my shaking voice for what is right,
to find the courage to fight
and to know when my voice is not helpful.
May I be cleansed of my own prejudice
and may I grow in compassion and awareness.
I will listen, and I will educate myself,
and I will show the world through word and deed:
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
and so it is (or amen, or so mote it be, etc).

7. When you feel you have infused your stone with as much power as you can, touch it to your forehead, throat, and heart (the energetic centers of the mind/intuition, self-expression, and unconditional love) and then leave it before the candle while you ground yourself and meditate (I recommend Metta practice for everyone during these events). I would suggest you douse the flame without letting the candle burn down; you can then light it again the next night and charge your stone again, or save it to do again when you’ve been at a protest, or are about to go to one, or otherwise act up for what is right.

8. Carry the stone with you to influence your daily actions and words, and if you need its strength for a particular moment or hard conversation, hold it in your hand for a few minutes and mentally repeat something like “I take a stand for justice” or “Black Lives Matter.”

I hope this is helpful for some of you. Magic is a tool of change, and we need change now more than ever. It’s an excellent time for magic, as we may feel otherwise helpless or unsure how to help; hopefully this spell will give you more clarity or at least bolster your determination to lift up your flame and cast out evil.

All I Can Really Say

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

I don’t consider this a political blog – I might mention fairly frequently how much I loathe our bag-of-assholes-in-chief and his talking block of moldy cream cheese VP, but I’m not here to provide insightful commentary.  I feel like there are so many people who do it better than I could, and honestly, if I think about the world too much right now my already-wavering mental health will go kablooey. 

There’s also the fact that right now, the world doesn’t need to listen to me, it needs to listen to Black people.  As a white person (who has been ashamed of her people her whole adult life) I don’t want to talk over the people who are actually suffering.  My voice is not one that needs to be heard on this subject.

However.

I do want to express my solidarity with, and my profound apology to, to the Black community of America.  I am sorry we created this system that was founded on the idea you aren’t fully human. I’m sorry your sons and daughters are being murdered by people who in theory are there to protect them.  I’m sorry this country can outfit its police with military assault weapons but won’t bother to get PPE to its doctors.  I saw a Tweet yesterday where a Black man’s little boy asked “Are we going back to being slaves?” and I honestly wept.

I support your outrage and your protests.  For whatever it’s worth this white woman is 100% with you in your anger and grief. 

I am with you, even if I don’t hold up a sign and march.  Big crowds terrify me and I don’t have the physical stamina to be of much use out there.  I have donated to bail funds and signed petitions and am continuing to educate myself while trying to lift up Black voices whenever I can; that’s what I can offer you right now, and it feels woefully inadequate given the magnitude of horror pressing down on you from all sides.

Black men have been some of the kindest men I’ve ever met.  Black women are goddamn magnificent.  Black children are beautiful.  And all of you are worthy of respect and care and deserve so much better than this utter mess of a country we’ve built on your backs.  We have failed you in every way possible through our inaction as much as our action.  I hope this is the beginning of white people holding themselves to a much higher standard, though to be honest I don’t have a lot of faith in us right now. 

I’m so sorry this is where we are.  I hope where we’re going is better, and I want to help get us there if I can. 

Black lives matter. 

Black lives matter.

Black lives matter.

Amen.