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I Made This! – Jewelry Box Edition

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

I haven’t done much crafting in a long time, and I was so pleased with these guys I had to share. We’ve all got our quarantine crafts, right? What can I say, I didn’t want to make sourdough.


I’ve had the same huge wooden jewelry box for years. It’s a great piece, and has drawers and swing-out compartments and you name it, but over time I’ve realized it’s just too much car for me. I found putting things in the various compartments such a pain that I would just pile my jewelry on my armoire where it would get tangled up.

Most of the jewelry I wear every day I hang on my wall from a driftwood hanger I made forever ago. I have a lot of pendants, but they still don’t need the kind of organization the red box provided since none of them are on chains. Because of my nickel allergy I have a selection of chains that I wear and just swap out the pendants.

I trolled around Etsy for a neat but inexpensive box that would hold everything, but it occurred to me: a couple of weeks ago I found this nested set of two unfinished boxes in my craft supplies (I think from Michaels, I remember they were $3) and thought…hmm…why can’t I make my own? And why can’t I have two small ones instead of one big one?

I had also recently gotten my hands on a lovely decorative paper collection by a European company called Stamperia and I was itching to glue it to something cool.

The collection, “Cosmos,” was celestial and night-time themed, and it went perfectly with the general color and decor I’ve had going over by my altar lately. I had in fact purchased it to make things for my altar, but decided it would also be perfect to decorate my new jewelry boxes.

Tools and Materials I Used:

The only things I bought specifically for this project were chalk paints; everything else I already had. (Oh, and I borrowed the Mod Podge from my roomie.)

It wasn’t a terribly complicated process. I coated the boxes in Cascade paint, then dry brushed the other colors on the sides and corners until I got the look I wanted.

Then I Mod-Podged the paper bits onto the boxes, let that dry, and finished with two coats of Mod Podge over the whole box.

For the larger box, I took the name plate, which was silver, and coated it with the gold paint. I wasn’t sure if it would stay on, but apparently “multi surface” really means “multi surface.” I was so pleased that I used the paint again on the round beads that became feet for the small box.

I glued the name plate and a sentiment I found in the paper collection onto the top, then flooded inside the bracket with Glossy Accents; it dries clear like a resin. (I used to use Glossy Accents on my shrines to mimic water.)

Since I couldn’t find my metal brads, I used the two teal beads where brads should go. They add a bit of sparkle.

I wanted a ring organizer inside the bigger box, so I cut out half of the foam thingie that was in my old red box. This box will be for my rings and pendants. I also thought the inside lid needed something, so I went through the paper collection and found myself an owl.

The smaller box is just for earrings, so it didn’t need any foam. The inside of that one is plain Cascade, without any adornment; it’s so small I think adding anything more would have been overkill.

I did, however, give it feet! I found four squatty round beads and painted them gold, then glued them to the bottom of the box, just to fancy it up a little.

I’m so happy with these lil’ guys. They look great together and they hold everything I need them to hold. I have them on top of my armoire with a couple of bowls where I keep perfumes and whatever jewelry I’ve just taken off.

I have so many unfinished little boxes and other containers I could probably use up the whole paper collection decorating them – they’d make great gifts.

Have you made anything while you’ve been in quarantine? What’s your most recent craft or art project? Now’s a great time to try making something new, if you have the energy and mental space.

(If all you’ve managed to create lately is a Cap’n Crunch and Gummi Bear quesadilla, you’re doing fine! A pandemic is not a reason to “hustle” more or give your life a makeover unless that’s what you have the time, strength, and money to do. Whatever you’re doing, or not doing, you’re doing great. That’s not sarcasm.)

All You Can Do is Breathe

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

Lately I’ve watched so many people experience something I know all too well from life with Bipolar II, though on a more condensed timeline than I’m used to:

You have a few days where you feel pretty okay. You’re productive, calm, can take most things in stride. The pandemic can’t last forever; there are good things to look forward to. You feel you’re adapting as well as can be expected. Life is weird as heck but you’re working with it.

Then you have one day (maybe two) where you can’t get out of bed. You don’t get anything done. You might just sleep. Everything is too much, especially the outside world…and the idea of ever leaving quarantine is almost as terrifying as the idea of it lasting a week longer. I saw someone on Twitter call these days the Hell Zone.

If this is happening to you, I am so sorry. Nobody should have to visit the Hell Zone, ever. It absolutely sucks that the one thing we can all do to make a positive impact out there – stay the heck home – is also a big contributing factor to depression!

If you pay any attention to the outside world at all the onslaught of uncertainty, outrage, and fear is relentless. Our poor neurotransmitters were not prepared for this. Fight-or-flight is one thing; “Scream impotently at the TV or cry on the toilet, repeat for three months” is another.

Some days, all you can do is breathe, and it turns out, that can be a huge help.

Breath work is almost instantly calming. Why? Well, think of how an animal breathes when she’s freaking out or just escaped a predator. Short breaths, shallow, high in the chest. Now think about how you breathe most of the time – for Americans it tends to be short breaths high in the chest. The way we breathe can put us in a constant low-level OMG-WTF-RUN! state.

The remedy is to breathe deep from your belly, getting your diaphragm involved, and let your chest be the last thing that fills up with air. Deep, slow breaths tell your body and brain that the threat has passed and you can let go of that pesky cortisol.

Working with my breath is fundamental to my spiritual practice. I learned the basic technique that I use courtesy of certified Zen badass Thich Nhat Hanh; in his writing he calls it “mindfulness verses.”

All you have to do is, as you inhale down to your belly, mentally recite “Breathing in, I…” followed by what you’d like to have happen or what you’re doing; then as you exhale at the same speed, think, “Breathing out, I…”

The simplest version:

“Breathing in, I know I am breathing in;
Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.”

Then you can up the stakes and invoke the state you want:

“Breathing in, I feel calm;
Breathing out, I feel safe.”

And so on. The important thing is that you’re bringing your attention to the act of breathing as well as the feeling you want to create within yourself. Timing chants or prayers with the breath is an easy way to intensify their effects on your mind and body as well as draw up more energy to put toward your goal.

I recently happened across a prayer that was a more Christianized version of Zen mindfulness verses; it was spoken to God, and it connected the in-breath with a positive attribute of the Almighty and the out-breath with something the practitioner wanted to give up to Him. I liked the idea, so I created one of my own, and I thought I would share it with you.

Take this idea and use it, adapt the wording to your own beliefs; take out “Your” if you’d rather not deal with personified Deity at all. But do give this kind of easy but powerful practice a try next time you feel unmoored, are having a Hell Zone Day, or just want to pause a moment and allow yourself to pause and reflect.

Meditation, Prayer, and Magic (Oh My)

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

Let’s take a moment to talk about three concepts that are thrown around a lot in spiritual discourse but tend to mean different things to different people: Meditation, prayer, and magic.

I’m not here to give you the definitive word, but I would like to explain how I view them so you’ll have a sense of where I’m coming from, and perhaps it will spark off thoughts of how they fit together, or don’t, in your own practice. In mine, they don’t really have definitions so much as characteristics, and those characteristics are…pretty fuzzy around the edges.

Meditation

In my practice there are two basic kinds of meditation:

  1. Plain old sitting, which may be breathwork or what I refer to in my head as The Drift. I plug into the current of the Universe and just let that current move through me, like docking with the Mother Ship.
  2. Visualization or “guided” meditation, which I put in quotes because most of the time I’m guiding myself. In these meditations my mind is more active, following a path. I often use this kind of meditation to relax at the beginning of a session by visualizing energy flowing either up or down through my body one part at a time; I also use visualizations such as a path through the forest in order to commune with Deity.

The defining trait of both of these is that they are receptive in nature. I meditation am the radio, not the microphone.

Prayer

Prayer is the other end of the communication spectrum; in prayer I am reaching out to God/Goddess. I express something, whether gratitude, a plea for help, and so forth. As Anne Lamott says, the three most essential prayers are “Help!” “Thanks!” and “Wow!”

Prayer can happen at any time, and in a lot of forms. I might be sitting on my bed going over the things I’m glad of, or sitting in my car at a stop light panting after someone nearly t-bones me. I might have walked outside for the first time in days, felt the sun on my skin, smelled jasmine in the air, and just had to say “Oh heck yeah!” to the Universe. I might be drawing or painting or dancing. What matters is I am expressing an emotion or need, whether I hope for a reply or not.

(It is my learned opinion (as in learned the hard way) that all prayers are answered, just not necessarily with a “Yes,” and not necessarily right away, or in English. Sometimes the conversation of prayer is two-way. Sometimes it still feels like shouting into a void – but I do it anyway, because if nothing else, it makes me feel better.)

Magic

The definition most people give for magic(k) is that old Crowleyan one that goes something like “the art of causing change in accordance with the will.”

What does that mean? Well, in my own practice, magic is the creative art of tapping into the energy of probability in order to influence events.

Okay, well what the heck does that mean?

If you’re not familiar with the magical arts you might have this idea that we’re out here believing we’re Harry Potter or some shit, but it’s important to know that actual magic is NOT the same as fantasy sorcery. It’s not about waving a wand and POOF! your desire appears; magic in the real world works with probability and within the realm of actual physics (which admittedly is rather magical). Splendid alterations of natural law have been known to happen but in general we expect something a bit more…subtle.

Magic won’t make you instantly rich (usually), which is the judgment people often hurl at magic workers: “Oh yeah, if it’s real, why aren’t you rich?” Well, what I’m doing in a spell is increasing the odds in favor of my desired outcome, not producing an outcome out of nowhere. How well it works depends on how much probability is pushing back against me.

For example, let’s say I want a particular tangerine-tinted buffoon to be eaten by wolves and shat out over a cliff. No matter how much oomph I put into a spell for this, there is way more stacked up against that happening. He’d have to be somewhere wolves are found, left unattended by his sitters; the wolves would have to want to eat him, and then do so without being fatally poisoned. I’d also be working against the will of a lot of very silly people who for some reason don’t want him to be eaten by wolves and shat out over a cliff. There’s a lot in the way.

Also, magic works best when it doesn’t work alone. If you do a spell to get a job but then don’t apply for any jobs, the probability of you actually landing a job is pretty damn low. Sure, an offer could come out of the blue, but you’d be far more likely to get an offer if you polished your resume, researched the market, sent out applications, worked on improving any rusty skills involved, and did a job spell. Magic is a tool to achieve change, and as an added edge can make all the difference – it pushes on the boulder, but if the boulder isn’t already aimed downhill, it probably won’t roll as far as you’d like.

The takeaway is that in my practice meditation, prayer, and magic often work interdependently:

I may meditate on the question of what it is I need in my life, trying to nail down what’s underneath my desire for a million-dollar book contract; I might pray for guidance (which includes reading Tarot on the subject, more on that later as well) or find that the meditation/prayer combo gives me the insight I need to not even feel magic is necessary this time. If I then do a spell for my desire, I might meditate afterward to allow any wisdom on the matter to come into my mind or out of my subconscious.

Like I said, the boundaries are fuzzy. I think they’re pretty fuzzy for a lot of people. In practice, I don’t usually think of them as separate actions, but just part of my spiritual work as a whole.

There are a lot of nuances to unpack in the concept of magic and spellwork, which I’ll do in a post coming up very soon.

The Heretic’s Beltane

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

A NOTE BEFORE WE BEGIN: I am about to put forth some no-doubt unpopular opinions about the religion of my 20s, and I want to make it clear that this is based on MY experience. I should not be considered an authority on Wicca, especially since it’s been a decade since I called myself one and I am not involved in the Pagan Community at all. I am absolutely sure Wicca has evolved since my time; I am basing this on my life mostly in the 00s, starting in the period of 1990s Pop-Wicca when Silver RavenWolf’s “Teen Witch Kit” caused so much pearl-clutching. I am not trying to be an iconoclast. I’m just trying to be true to what I’ve lived, in the hope that if you’re in a similar place you won’t feel alone. That said:

This past weekend brought the Pagan festival of Beltane, and I kept thinking, “I should write something about this.” But then I kept thinking, “I don’t want to write about a holiday I don’t like!”

That’s right, folks, allow me to introduce myself, a Pagan who hates Beltane.

If you don’t already know, Beltane is considered one of the high holidays, or Sabbats, of many NeoPagan traditions, including Wicca, which I practiced for well over a decade. It is a “cross-quarter” day that falls midway between equinox and solstice; Samhain, aka Halloween, is another. In fact Samhain and Beltane are the two biggest festival dates, possibly because they fall during times of the year when big festivals outdoors are be doable without heat stroke or frostbite.

That was problem one, I found – in a lot of places, including Western Europe where Wiccan festivals were codified as such, May is still part of Spring. Most of the natural symbolism and iconography didn’t really apply here in Texas where it is already 90 on May 1 and Spring is basically in the rearview mirror. Before I even got to the mythology involved I had to change out the correspondences.

Really though, Beltane was a fertility festival. Pagan or not you’ve surely seen a Maypole in you time, but you might not have realized it is, essentially, a giant beribboned dick that everyone dances around – symbolic phallus worship.

Oddly enough I did not find this practice appealing.

Nor have I ever been into the hyperfocus on sex – specifically heterosexual coitus – as this grand sacred end-all-be-all in my religion. My experience was that Wicca in general was way too sexualized, and the guiding myth by which the Goddess gave birth to the God and then…I’m not sure how it worked but She basically waited until He was grown, shagged Him, then bore Him again the next year…I found intensely distasteful, particularly through the lens of my own personal history. I was told “it’s just a story,” but aren’t the stories we tell about Deity kind of important? Don’t those concepts and symbols work their way into the bedrock of our belief system? If it’s “just a story,” why not stay “Christian” but say it’s not important whether Jesus was crucified or not, let’s just say he wasn’t, and died at 80 surrounded by fat grandchildren.

The ideal put forth by Wiccans was that the religion is feminist, or at least non-masculinist, but if you looked at the specific traditions established by Gerald Gardner, and many traditional lines formed from his ideas, it’s a little difficult to find that in practice. The emphasis was on heteronormative coupling – lots of it – and since Gardner was a naturist there was a lot of ritual nudity as “a sign that you are truly free.” The figure of the High Priestess was almost always depicted as a traditionally beautiful thin white woman who really, really loved the Great Rite.

Now, I learned very quickly that a lot of what considered itself Wiccan (including myself most of those years) only partly adhered to its original rituals. A lot of what I encountered was really more of a blend of Wiccan concepts with more feminist ideals, sometimes to the extreme of cutting out the God altogether. People still clung to the Wiccan label because that was what was popularized, and it gave groups and solitaires an identity to hang on to when the rest of the world was hostile toward any NonChristian belief structure.

But even with the most Goddess-heavy groups, the emphasis on female biology as her defining characteristic (Maiden, Mother, Crone – these are all based on stereotypically “feminine” stages of biological development) still placed limits, still established a cishet focus that at heart excluded anyone who wasn’t born with female organs or whose life stages did not progress according to the timeline, so, in yet another religion, the idea that humans are made in God’s image (or She in ours) did not apply to all women.

As you can tell I am not a fan of trans-exclusionary radical feminists. I don’t want to hear from them, like ever, thanks.

In my mind, religion is what you do with other people, and spirituality is what you do with God; in a lot of ways hanging onto a Wiccan identity was for me a way to connect with others even though my own practice and connection with Deity and nature bore very little resemblance and used maybe 40% of the rituals “everyone else” did.

I wrote an entire book about, let’s be honest, practicing Wicca without necessarily practicing all of Wicca. I really got into the idea that the religion was evolving and could be what we made of it. (I still believe this and I hope it has continued to evolve in my absence.) I also tried creating my own tradition, you might remember, and the coven I belonged to definitely had its own way of doing things that was…sort of Wiccan? But even before my crisis of faith and the decade of nothing that followed, I was already realizing that there’s only so far you can stretch a label before it tears apart.

One of the few really fun things about jettisoning the label was that I could drop the pretense that I was at all interested in many of the Sabbats. To be honest the only ones I celebrated on my own were the Equinoxes, Mabon and Ostara; I’m not really sure why those two in particular appealed to me more than the others, but they remain my favorites. If I were to hazard a guess I’d say that the liminality of them attracted me – they are each a precipice, a transition moment between the light and dark halves of the year, and my relationship with Deity was always and still remains centered around the concept of a Light and Dark face to Her/Him, corresponding with those halves.

The interplay of light and darkness is kind of my jam. I’m a double Scorpio with lifelong cyclical depression. I guess I was predisposed.

I could, if I wanted, try to reclaim Beltane for myself. That’s certainly something I would recommend exploring to anyone who has fallen out of love with their religious practices – dig down into the meaning of the holiday, all the myths involved, all the usual symbols, and consider ways in which the holiday might apply to your own life and beliefs. Beltane is a day of rising action, of burgeoning energy as the Light part of the year really gets going. It’s about tending those seeds planted earlier in the year and helping them grow and grow. It’s a waxing quarter Moon, a time of getting your ass moving.

It’s also a good time to look at the things you wanted to do with your year and re-evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. If that habit you tried to start back around Ostara didn’t get anywhere (six weeks being a typical fatigue time for humans when it comes to change, and the Sabbats each being six weeks apart), see if there’s a different way to look at it, a different method. It’s a time to course-correct after a few moments of fiery honesty with yourself.

Now, Beltane in the time of COVID-19 is a bit different. If you’re like me all the plans you made for 2020 have kind of fallen to shit in the last couple of months, and you’re at loose ends, or coming unraveled entirely. This whole societal experience has shown a lot of people what’s important and what isn’t; it might be a good time to make that list for yourself, and make some decisions about what you really, truly want to invest yourself in going forward and what really wasn’t that important to begin with.

For me, remaking Beltane to suit myself is one of those unimportant things. There may come a year when I’m ready to take on that challenge, but for now, I’m content to celebrate the Sabbats I really love, and say “Happy Beltane” to those who observe it, “Happy May Day” to those who don’t, and “I hope you and those you love are safe and well” to everyone reading this, may all manner of things be well.

Stringing My Prayer Beads

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

Part 2 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).

I love prayer beads. I love the ritual, of course, and I love coming up with repetitive prayers and chants to use with them. I love how tactile they are, how smooth and cool stone beads feel in my fingers. I feel like using beads links me up to hundreds of years of seekers and the devoted from all over the world.

At last count I had two sets. One was specifically dedicated to Persephone, so I wasn’t using them much once Winter came to an end. I found them on Etsy and they feel amazing! There’s something solid and comforting about them that I find instantly anchoring. They’re made with carnelian and rose quartz beads.

The other set I actually had customized by another Etsy shop, and it didn’t have a particular dedication but was more all-purpose. It’s primarily moss agate with a silver oak leaf on one end and a Tree of Life on the other.

I love using both, but as I said, the first set has a particular energy to it that I don’t feel called to use the whole year. In addition, the version of the Goddess I am currently drawn to has two faces, and right now I’m working with the lighter half, who is a Lunar and stellar goddess not based on any specific tradition’s deity but to whom, for now, I refer to simply as Theia.

I’ll have more to say about Them later on. For now, suffice it to say I decided I wanted a set of prayer beads for Theia, but weeks of shopping online came up with nothing that really felt right.

While it may be lacking in the pre-made strand I wanted, one thing Etsy does have is a metric buttload of beads.

Careful shopping came up with the ingredients you see in the wee bowls: Blue kyanite and dumortierite as the main beads; tiny fluted silver spacers; silver leafy ovals as section beads (I believe in a Rosary each section of beads is called a decade), and for the end pieces, a flowered, stylized pentacle for one end and the Moon phases for the other. Add to that some monofilament procured from my roommate (who makes awesome jewelry), and I was ready to go.

I’d kind of forgotten what a pain making prayer beads can be – the first 99% of the strand took about 20 minutes, but getting that last knot on the Moon phase pendant took an hour! It’s still not perfect, but perfection is an illusion anyway, right? Better to have a thing made and use it than to stare at an imperfectly made thing and never get it finished!

Yeah, we’ll go with that.

The result is, if I do say myself, gorgeous. The blue kyanite beads are translucent, and the dumortierite have swirls of blue and blue-black. All the silver gleams.

I’m keeping them in a wooden bowl my mom gave me years ago, which won’t break when the cats inevitably knock it off my bedside shelf. My other two strands each have a container on my altar – the tree beads are in a fluorite bowl and the Persephone beads are in a pomegranate-shaped box. I wanted my new ones to be safe and within easy reach.

What do I do with my beads, you ask? Well, they function basically like any other of their ilk whether a Rosary, Mala, or Misbaha. I have a rotating selection of four-line (or so) chants and prayers that I mentally recite while holding each bead with my right fingers while the other end of the strand rests in my left hand. I start with an invocation at one end – with these beads, the beginning is the Moon phase pendant.

At each oval-shaped “decade” bead, I pause and say a different prayer, usually something that I make up on the spot. Then I go back to the original prayer until the next oval bead. At the end, I finish with an expression of gratitude of some sort.

Sometimes I stop there, and sometimes I go back along the strand until I’m where I started. Sometimes I just think the words, sometimes I murmur them, sometimes I sing quietly. I frequently change things up as I go depending on what feels right, and sometimes I will use the same set of words for a set period of time (say a Lunar cycle) or for a specific purpose (soothing anxiety).

Here’s an example, just to show you how I do it. A lot of this is borrowed from other sources and varied traditions, some of which I don’t even remember, but I use phrases like these in most of my prayers. You’re welcome to use it if you like but please don’t repost it as I didn’t create every line. The sources I can recall are listed at the end of the post. Enjoy!

MOON PHASE PENDANT:
I call upon the Mystery of the Starlit night,
The beauty of the green Earth,
Mother of all things;
I call upon the radiant Queen of the heavens,
Heart’s light and soul’s longing,
Whose hands weave the tapestry of constellations.

INDIVIDUAL BEADS:
Hail, Star of the Sea;
Enfoldment of all enfoldments
whose love is poured out upon the Earth,
Be with me.

OVAL BEADS:
Goddess, tonight I am (however I’m feeling),
(reason for how I’m feeling if I know it);
I pray You will help me find (something I need) to sustain/guide/strengthen/etc me
And keep watch on your wandering child.

PENTACLE PENDANT:
Mother of all things, I give thanks
For the beauty of the Earth,
For the glory of the skies
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies; [yes I absolutely stole that]
I thank You for Your blessings
And for Your presence here tonight.
Blessed be.

Sources/Influences:
Doreen Valiente, “The Charge of the Goddess”
Gael Baudino, Strands of Starlight
Folliott S. Pierpoint, “For the Beauty of the Earth”

Altar-ation

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

Part 1 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).

For most of the last decade my principal altar has been a sawed-off and refinished organ bench that was once my grandmother’s. I love the piece, and have had it in my all the incarnations of my bedroom since my last apartment, situated within view of the bed so I would see it upon waking in the morning.

It’s been a touchstone for me all that time, even when my spiritual life had dried up and fallen off the vine. I still kept an altar even if all it did was gather dust. Having that space dedicated to what I felt was important in my life was essential to me even if I only ever touched it to clean off all the cat hair.

Over the last few years however I’ve realized something that, while distressing, wasn’t really something I could keep denying: Getting up and down off the floor in front of my altar was very difficult. I have bad knees, a bad back, and my general state of decrepitude has increased as I’ve aged. I had to finally admit that no meditation cushion or mat was going to change the fact that I needed to do something different.

I had already started doing my meditations on my bed anyway; my knees were far better supported there, and I was a lot more likely to meditate if I didn’t have to worry about injuring my rickety self. What I needed was a working space for readings, magic, and whatnot, as well as a shrine for all my Goddess figures, tiny deities, crystals, and natural objects I’ve gathered over the years.

Then I was watching a YouTube video by one of my favorite Witches, Molly Roberts, in which she was repainting her altar table…which basically was a kitchen table. A lightbulb went on! I could sit at an altar in a chair!

Well, online shopping, Target.com, and my COVID hush money pooled their resources to point me toward a lovely little Campaign-style folding desk about the same width as my bench but deeper. I eventually found it in a dark walnut finish that would look nice in my little sacred corner, and behold:

Pardon the white bits, I had just unpacked it and there was styrofoam everywhere.

I was hoping the drawer would be big enough for a dragon (those long-necked lighters for barbecue and camping) but alas, it was pretty tiny, but sized beautifully to hold my Light Seer’s Tarot deck and probably some other things.

One of my favorite spiritual activities is removing everything from my altar, cleaning and cleansing the surface, then placing things back one by one and seeing if anything needs moved, replaced, or stored away for a while.

This took that practice to a whole new level, as I first had to decide which items were most important. I don’t have a whole lot of tools, in the magico-ritual sense; I stopped using most of the traditional Wiccan tools long ago. What I do have are objects imbued with meaning and a few important things that get regular use.

In fact, this will be the start of a new blog series discussing my most valued tools and toys, both because I like talking about them and because they are an excellent measure of just how much my beliefs and practice have changed since I last wrote much about either.

Here is what my new altar looks like at the moment, all decked out with her sacred tchotchkes. It’s still evolving as I decide how to use the different spaces. I also ordered a pretty vintage knob to replace the boring wood one.

Pardon the cat hair. Cats live here. Oh so many cats.

Just a quick look at some of the items, starting on the left lower shelf. If there’s something you see you want to know about that I don’t cover on the list below, drop me a comment and I’ll try to explain myself. I’d like to eventually do a video tour where I can talk about each item.

  1. Inside the cubby is a bowl that is holding the pieces of a project I’m working on – making my own set of prayer beads. I’ll be talking about those in depth once I have all the parts.
  2. Also you can see the pin a friend gave me showing Carrie Fisher (in glitter) with a quote about mental health.
  3. The set of beads in the front left is my current go-to, and I bought them from an Etsy shop.
  4. Up on the shelf on the left is of course my newest candle, one for the second facet of my sort-of-homemade Patroness. You can also see a tiny tiny Ganesh that is actually a French Fève, or, one of the tiny trinkets found inside a King Cake in France.
  5. The fluorite bowl is where my beads are supposed to live, but when this was taken the bowl was still setting up after I glued it back together. It fell the heck apart when I picked it up a while back.
  6. My practice involves pop culture to an extent, and any Pagan who saw Moana and didn’t go all gooey-souled when they saw TeFiti, well, there’s just something wrong with you.
  7. There are also redwood cones I found on my last trip to the Pacific Northwest, and some needles of the same tree that I keep in a jar (over on the lower right).
  8. In the center top is a newer Goddess that used to belong to my roommate; she’ll be getting a bit of a makeover as her paint is all chipped. In front of her is my Flaming Chalice from Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church, a new member gift that I light at the start of religious endeavors (including at the beginning of our virtual services these days).
  9. The pomegranate-shaped trinket box, meant to be a wedding favor, came from Turkey, and I keep my set of prayer beads for the darker half of the year inside it.
  10. On the lower right you can see the one shrine I made that I never sold, Artemis. I’m not devoted to Artemis but I loved how that piece turned out so much that, when nobody bought her, I decided she should live on my altar.
  11. There are little frogs doing yoga because…frogs doing yoga.
  12. And of course in the front center is my Book of Moonlight and Shadows, where I keep important info, magical records, and diagrams of important readings for future reference.
  13. Oh! And on the wall is a ceramic pig, a gift from a dear friend who got it for me on a trip to the UK. I use it as a sort of charm to help me recenter my vegan practice, and a while back, it broke. HAHAHA thanks Universe. I repaired it, then painted in the cracks with gold paint, in an echo of the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi.

A More Literal Sort of Lunacy

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

This week of shelter-in-place has been harder for me than those previous, I suppose because we’ve officially passed one month here in Austin since the order was given and at bare minimum there are two more coming, though who knows? At this rate the tiny army of depressingly privileged idiot white people protesting against saving the lives of people who do labor for them might get their way, and they’ll have regained the freedom to force poorer people to cut their hair and paint their nails and bring them the Red Blooded ‘Murcan Platter at TGIFriday’s or whatever so stock prices can go up-up-up and human beings can be cut down-down-down.

Anyway.

As you can probably tell, the whole situation is taking a toll on me, as I’m sure it is on you too. The world has already worn out my Last Good Nerve and I’m down to basically the Bottom of the Dollar Store Bin Nerve. Thank god for meditation, medication, and masturbation, am I right?

(I may cut that line, or I may just bask in its ridiculous glory for all the internet to see.)

At any rate, I didn’t come here to rant and rave like a lunatic, I actually came to talk like a Lunatic about the Dark Moon, the New Moon, and the early Waxing phase in the lunar cycle.

In my experience a lot of people of a mystical/magical bent lump the Dark and New Moons together in terms of their spiritual and magical significance. You certainly could do that; after a time of waning energy, of divesting Herself of her glowing raiment one shoulder at a time, the Moon vanishes from the sky for a moment and we’re left in a period of vast, star-flecked potential.

Over time however I’ve come to recognize a subtle but important difference in the energy of the Dark Moon (where there is no Moon visible at all) and the New Moon (when a sliver of light appears, the leading edge of Diana’s bow), as well as how those two periods relate to the rest of the waxing phase.

When the Moon is completely dark I feel more of an urge to go inward than to cast magic or energy outward. I want to curl up in the roots of a tree and stare up through her leaves at the stars. It’s a moment of pause, like the actual event of death, the breath ceasing, the brain stilling. The month to be hasn’t drawn in its breath quite yet. Everything is balanced, waiting, empty. It’s the kind of darkness that can hold your dreams as well as your nightmares; it’s all in which shadows you peer into.

The Dark Moon is the time to dream. To plan. To make your lists, or just to take your desires and hopes to the Source and figure out where you’ll go next. Deep contemplation is needed here; the time for banishing work and decrease is done but it’s not quite time to get a move on.

As soon as that fingernail of light appears, the energy shifts. Time begins to move forward again with a relieved inhalation. That is the time to begin. Gather your jars, your candles; gather up your desires and toss them in big glittery handfuls to the wind, cast them into water, set them alight. As the Moon’s light waxes, the energy builds, starting with a few baby steps and, by the time the Moon is full, running full tilt, bare naked over the hills.

I think a lot of people gloss over the need to observe the Dark Moon. Going within, as many people are being forced to do right now, is hard for most of us. We’re afraid of the quiet, the dark – but nighttime holds up half the sky, and to jump from dusk to dawn is to miss a huge opportunity to explore our own interior landscape and just…sit still and shut up for a minute.

Sitting there in the dark (which is never fully dark, even on a cloudy night some light remains, just as in the brightest day something is casting a shadow) we can pick out our seeds and make sure we have the soil to plant them in. When the New Moon rises we can stick our fingers in the dirt and get those babies growing. Water will come; it always comes to the Moon.

If we try to think of our quarantime as its own sort of Dark Moon, the potential for change becomes clearer. I’m talking on a micro scale, on an individual basis, for those of us who have the time and privilege to tap into that potential rather than, say, spending 16 hour days on our feet in a hospital or working ourselves into tatters to keep house, teach children, police children, feed our families, work an 8 hour day in a chaotic house, and hopefully sleep in there somewhere. Not everyone has the luxury of choosing how to spend these weeks, but if you do, I highly recommend meditating on the spaces inside that mirror the spaces overhead.

Let’s see where this next cycle takes us.

10 Things I Love – Quarantine Edition

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

I haven’t done a 10 Things I Love list in forever, but there are a lot of things I’ve discovered, or gotten to enjoy, because of shelter-at-home that I might never have gotten to otherwise so I thought I’d highlight a few of them.

Not everything on this list is COVID-19 adjacent; in some cases the timing is a total coincidence, but these are 10 things that have made plague life a bit more bearable.

1- Melissa Etheridge’s Daily At-Home Concerts

Usually about 20-30 minutes long, the shows feature a mix of her older songs (“Ruins,” OMG) and newer work as well as a lot of covers. Today’s was Piano Day, and she and her daughter Bailey did a cover of Coldplay’s “Fix You.” In my early 20s I was a huge ME fan, and it’s been a long time since I really listened to her, so her little concerts are really taking me back, in a lovely way, to my late 90s feminist rocker and singer-songwriter days.

Day 35!

Posted by Melissa Etheridge on Sunday, April 19, 2020

2 – Patrick Stewart’s Sonnet a Day

Patrick Stewart reading one of Shakespeare’s sonnets every day. That’s it. What more do you need?

3 – Niall Horan’s new album Heartbreak Weather

Not COVID related. I just love the album. My favorite songs on it are “Bend the Rules” and “Put a Little Love on Me,” but this is another one I adore, and the video features an adorable old couple who are…well, deeply weird.

4 – Having a Buzzcut

I already wrote an entire post about this, but just to keep you updated, I still LOVE IT. In fact I might ask my roommate to buzz it off even shorter.

5 – Blogging Again

Who’da thunk it – after a couple of years (maybe longer) of having no desire to blog suddenly I’m a 3x a week updater. What’s next, finishing that werewolf novel?

6 – An Amazon FireStick

For a long time I’ve wanted an Apple TV, the better to bring all my streaming together in one place; our Blu-Ray player runs several apps including Netflix and Prime, but I also wanted to be able to watch Disney+ on the big TV instead of just on my Macbook. It turned out that while Apple TVs start at like $129, I could get a FireStick for $50, and the day I was looking at them there was a coupon for half off that! It’s a much better interface than the one on the Blu-Ray as well, and much faster.

7 – Disney+

Speaking of which, I’m SO enjoying Disney+. Having almost their entire animated feature catalog at my fingertips is amazing (I am a longtime Disney lover, so much so that I very strongly considered trying to become an animator; my hand tremors and general insecurity about my artwork as well as the enormous price tag of CalArts changed my mind). Not only that but all the Star Wars movies, all the Marvel, and a load of Nat Geo documentaries to watch? We just watched a 3 parter on new discoveries made about the tomb of King Tut, and it was so fascinating! Not to mention Frozen 2 is currently my Self-Care Movie, so, being able to watch it over and over whenever I like is delightful.

8 – The mass effort by society to do something good

We’re in the middle of an unprecedented-in-our-time movement by millions of people to help protect not just their own families, but others they don’t even know. Certain authorities and perhaps 0.5% of the population (who will die for their god given right to TGIFridays, I guess) are trying to curtail that effort, but I sincerely doubt the Tangerine Twatwaffle is going to succeed while so many local governments are using actual facts and science instead of egomania and share prices to base decisions upon. Millions of us are staying home, at the risk of our livelihoods and social lives, to reduce the danger to others. We’re seeing a social movement I would not have given us credit for here in America to take care of each other, to reach out virtually and make sure people are getting supplies, and to continue having community even at a distance. We want, en masse, to do the right thing. How often does that happen anymore?

9 – Alton Brown’s Pantry Raid and Quarantine Quitchen videos

My favorite food nerd has taken to YouTube with a series of videos about pantry items and ways to get the most out of your stores; he and his wife (and their dog Scabigail) are also doing a cooking series together. A lot of them involve foods I wouldn’t eat, but they’re still fun.

10 – ChilledCow and ChilloutDeer on YouTube

Turns out I really love chillout, chillstep, and various lofi hiphop grooves. I find them weirdly both motivating for work and relaxing for evenings. ChilloutDeer‘s hourlong mixes in particular please me, but I can put on one of ChilledCow’s streams and just have it on all day while I work. Who doesn’t love finding new kinds of music to enjoy?

A COVID Confession

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

I feel I need to admit something:

I’m scared.

Now, you are probably thinking to yourself, “No shit, Sherlock,” given the state of *waves frantically at the world* and the possibility of a) horrible illness and possible death, b) horrible illness and possible death for people I know and love, c) economic collapse that ensures people I care about will be in dire straits or already are, d) do I really need a fourth?

The odd thing is, the fear I’m experiencing is not focused on those things. It’s something much harder to define. I figured I would talk about it here because chances are I’m not the only one having this particular variety of fear and if you are too, I don’t want you to think you’re alone.

I’m afraid of life after COVID-19. I’m afraid of the world opening back up again. I’m afraid of going back to the office. Of eating at restaurants. Of things being “normal,” or whatever “normal” is at that point.

Part of me wants nothing in this world more than the chance to go to the Alamo Drafthouse again – to eat giant soft pretzels and drink booze in a darkened theater packed with people, where everyone is laughing and gasping at the same thing. Shared experiences! Parties! Dinners out with friends! Church services! My Thursday coffee date! Sitting in Starbucks pretending to write!

Another part of me never wants to leave the house again. Wants to stay in a circumscribed little life in here and let the world keep falling to shit out there.

Out there everything is awful. It’s been awful for a long time now. In here isn’t really that much better to be honest – I can still see news, still hear about the awfulness, still read Twitter for five minutes and want to commit five felonies.

But in here my life is tiny and manageable. It’s days and days of sameness. Work, sleep, eat, watch a thing, read a thing, shower, sleep more. Do all of that again. I go shopping at most once a week. I know a lot of people are finding that utterly maddening, but I’ve been…fine.

I mentioned in a previous post that before all this began I was expanding my world. I’d started making friends at church, was joining groups and attending events. After years of smallness I was reaching out…and now I’m not, and part of me is SO RELIEVED.

It’s almost like time has stopped for a while and as soon as the world starts turning again so will time. The utter catastrofuckery of the coming election will loom even larger. I’ll feel like I have to address the goals I set for 2020 that I haven’t made a whit of progress on so far. I’ll have to deal with…everything. Right now I’m hidden away in my tower watching the world through a screen. I don’t have to touch it. I feel worry and sadness for people risking their lives on the front lines, and I feel the weight of so much death, but it’s not about me personally. It’s a tragedy I try to help with when and how I can, but I feel insulated in a way, cloistered.

Now the thing about it is, there’s not much I can do about that. Staying home and being isolated is kind of how you help right now. It’s literally the thing to do. Or not do. It’s not like I can just up and decide to be a nurse! And remembering the last few days at the office before I was sent home, the stress and worry all around me was giving me panic attacks and making me physically ill. Getting back out into that does not seem like a good use of my strengths.

I’m not judging myself for any emotion that I do or don’t feel – there’s no road map for any of this and everyone has their own way of dealing. Instead I’m trying to just observe them, let them do their thing without trying to squelch or magnify any particular feeling. I’m just trying to hold my own space and learn from all of this.

It is however distressing to feel this way. I don’t want to live small, but I also don’t want to go insane.

The societal fallout of the pandemic is going to be studied for decades. Psychologists, sociologists, every kind of -ogist out there will have things to say about the strange tangle of contradictory feelings that seems to be afflicting all of us right now. I imagine that prescriptions for antidepressants and anxiety meds will skyrocket (they probably have already) and the mental health needs of people working in health care and other essential industries will be paramount. (Well, okay, this being the US there will probably be fuck-all resources made available given how little this country cares about mental health, but in OTHER countries where the governments give a damn about the well being of their citizens that care will be paramount.)

It’s hard to say what long-term effects all this will have on me as an individual or society as a whole. Chances are a lot of effort will be spent to try and sweep it all under the rug and just get back to the deeply problematic world we knew.

I don’t want that.

Do you?

Recipe: “Joy of” Banana Nut Bread

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

This is an odd quick bread recipe because it uses the creaming method instead of the muffin method, but I doubt you care about that; what you care about is that it’s delicious, easy, and doesn’t take a lot of weird ingredients. Pretty much every megamart has vegan yogurt and butter, even during this weird COVID era; I use Earth Balance, and the store had Silk soy yogurt this time round but almond, oat, or coconut would work. (I tend to stay away from coconut milk based things in baking because to me the coconut flavor is far too bossy.)

The recipe originally came from the 1997 edition of Joy of Cooking, which as you can see in the picture is a battered, splattered old friend of mine. I veganized the recipe and altered a few things to suit my own particular style of baking which requires vanilla and spice in everything. It’s especially tasty served warm and slathered with butter.

"Joy of" Banana Nut Bread
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“Joy of” Banana Nut Bread

Recipe by Dianne Sylvan
Servings

8

servings
Prep time

20

minutes
Cooking time

45

minutes

A cakey and soft loaf studded with nuts, this recipe made me realize I love banana bread after years of firmly believing I hated it.

Ingredients

  • The Dry:

  • 1 1/3 c flour

  • 1/2 tsp salt

  • 1/2 tsp baking soda

  • 1/4 tsp baking powder

  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon or 1/4 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 tsp cardamom

  • The Creamy:

  • 5 1/2 tablespoons vegan butter

  • 2/3 c sugar

  • 1 container nondairy vanilla yogurt (whatever sort you like)

  • 2 mashed very ripe bananas

  • 1 tsp vanilla

  • 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts

Directions

  • Preheat your oven to 350F and spray a 9″ loaf pan with no-stick.
  • Whisk together all of The Dry in a bowl.
  • With an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar for 2 minutes or until fluffy and lightened in color. Beat in the dry ingredients until the mixture looks kind of sandy.
  • Add in the yogurt and beat again until combined; then add the bananas and vanilla and beat briefly to distribute the banana. If you like chunky banana bread, and why on EARTH would you do that, fold the banana in instead of beating it.
  • Add the nuts and fold in gently. You can up the nuts if you like, I just eyeball the amount.
  • Scrape into a loaf pan and bake 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean. Cool sitting on a rack in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out onto the rack and cool the rest of the way.