I found the Path Back!

WOW. I cannot believe it is May 19th, 2011. I have missed a lot and I apologize for keeping all of you out of the loop and hoping that some of you would still continue to read. I have faith in the Goddess that she will motivate me again to write and inform myself and others on whatever comes into my path.
Too much has been happening in my life. I graduated from my university on Friday the 13th. I wish the goddess would have alerted me to the fact that I graduated on Friday the 13th because I had too much trouble getting to the ceremony. The trouble started weeks prior but you know what, it doesn't matter because I completed my degree. I am currently attending a community college to finish up my minor which is in biology. I am very proud of myself and since then I have been relaxing and preparing for school and applying for jobs in the real world.
The end of the semester was hard as Hades but I did it. Although there were flames biting at me every step of the way there were cold fronts that moved in to cool the flames. This cool breathe of the goddess came in the form of my partner, rituals, and friends.

My partner has been too wonderful to me during the end of my semester. He was always there to support me and I unfortunately was not the nicest to him during the dark times. hahha. For making it through the hell I think that he is going to get a really good graduation gift from me! ;) hahah.
The other day after stressing out about everything going on in my life Bobby and I went on a beautiful hike on the Urban Trail in town. It was beautiful but I also had a mission. I needed to ground again and do a meditative walk The urban trail is perfect because it goes all through town. I brought Rafiki with us and he enjoyed it thoroughly.
There are beautiful trees that symbolized the flow of life. The Ponderosa Pines are strong and resilient trees. They take all the wind in Flagstaff is stride! There was also a lovely uprooted tree that had a root sticking out that was perfect for a wand so I had to grab it. Of course had the tree root not been ready to come off I wouldn't have taken it but I feel as if the tree allowed me to take it!
Along the way there were various animals, Bobby and I were training our eyes and I am happy to say both of us found creatures that neither of us could see. I was proud of us.
I was the first one to see this chipmunk. He was so cute and let me get really close till Rafiki started barking.

The only problem with this hike is that the stream that runs along side of the trail is a reclaimed water area. It was originally a natural stream thru Flagstaff but because of daming there is no natural flow until the snow comes and melts. We walked all the way to the lake that the city has made that contains waste water effluent as they call it. If you do not know anything about reclaimed water I would suggest looking it up. The water is filtered and cleaned by the city and is deemed suitable for wildlife to drink from and to live around, yet the sign on the lake says WARNING: DO NOT USE!
How is this safe water? Shouldn't all life have access to clean water? And why don't the majority of people in this world value the environment and all more-than-human life? (The phrase more-than-human comes from a book I read called the Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram look it up if you get a chance) I took a class this semester entitled Gender, Nature, Culture and this was the most eye opening experience. I will making a post about all of the books I read and give reviews for anyone who is interested in educating themselves can do so.
The lake is a perfect example of the intersection between Culture and Nature. Seeing the sign at the lake helped open my eyes and remind me that I have a lot to accomplish in this world still!

This hike was beautiful and I am so happy B. and I went on it!
I owe him a lot for helping me ground and keep my insanity in check and for that I say THANK YOU AND BLESSED BE!

Friends have always been a help and will continue to be help. The wonderful thing is that I found a best friend in someone that I never thought would end up being that close to me. She has helped me so much this semester and I hope she continues to remain in my life. Rebekka you are divine in all senses of the word and am so happy that found someone I can lean on and learn from and I hope you know I am there for you! I share some of the most out there ideas and some of the most connecting ideas with you and because of you my spiritual knowledge has grown tremendously!
Friends are the rocks that I lean on and consider them as close as fmaily. DJ, Mari, and Sebbi love you boys! DJ- we did it!

The other factor that helped to get me through the end of the semester was ritual! From April to May 18th I did four big rituals. For some people that might not seem like a lot but for many of them I was leading different aspects. The first was a full moon ritual. It was really basic and a good way to set intention for the coming month which was the end of my career at NAU. This was very grounding and I am thankful it happened.
The next ritual that came was Beltane! Beltane was beautiful and I will be making a post about the ritual of Beltane in the coming days!
Then I had my class ritual. For one of my classes this semester we had to design a ritual that focused on bringing awareness to the land of Flagstaff and balancing the energies of fire and water in the area. That is also going to be part of the post on Beltane. Keep your eyes open for it!

Then finally my club (unbeknown st to me) designed a whole ritual for me and graduating. I had no idea that they were doing this and I was blown away. To be honest it made me tear up a bit to hear all the things people wanted to say to me and about me. I feel blessed that the club thought it fitting to send me off with some guidance! That will be a separate post as well.

Thank you all for holding out and waiting for me to return. I knew it would happen I was just not sure when.

Blessed be and look forward to those posts!!!

Ritual of Celebration

On Monday the 10th the Neo-Pagan Alliance met for our last celebration for the school year. We have had a successful first semester as a club. I feel so blessed that I have met new peers that I can practic with and grow with. Just the other day Caitlin and I made mojo bags. An idea I first heard about on Mrs. B's blog. That is another post to come.
Anyway, when we decided to do the ritual we talked about it being a celebratory ritual, but it ended up being that plus a little of a end of the school year closure.
I was in charge of the invocation of the goddesss and Mark came up with the idea of drumming and setting intentions for the next school year. Also, he thought it would be a good idea to write down some negative things from the year we would like to be release from out life and then burn those. And to balance that out, we also had to write down as many (if not more) good things about the year. I agreed with Mark and thought that this definitely was a good idea. We decided that if you wanted to wirte down and burn the good things you could as well and if you also wanted to set an intention on the paper you could.
The best part for me was writing the invocation. I honestly had never written an invocation before and was really nervous about it. One of my major struggles on my path is believing that I know what to do. Being a Catholic was easy. I just had to recite the prayers, kneel when others did, and go take the wafer. With Wicca, there isn't any rules. Well, I mean restrictions on what and why I do something. Harm none and it seems like the goddess will guide you.
When starting the process of writing I needed a goddess that fit the ritual. So I went to my favorite website of The Order of Our Lady of Salt to find a goddess. And as I was looking through the goddesses I saw one that instantly caught my eye. Nortia jumped out at me as I was researching goddesses and had to read into her further, She is a an Etruscan triple goddess and is thought to be one of the main goddesses of the ancients. She had a temple at one of the huge cities at the time and people came from all around to visit her temple. At her temple followers hammered nails into the wooden door frame for her to fix their lives and bring good fortune in the coming year.
For our ritual, the year we were asking Nortia to bless and fix was the academic year ( didn't want to end the real year earlier than necessary as Madrone put it). The writing of the invocation was actually a really nice process. I learned a lot about me and about working with a goddess. I am very glad that when I called Madrone to tell her that I wanted her to look over it, she told me to not worry and that it would be fine. I knew she would say something like that, but I still had to call her.
The day of the ritual came and I was so excited to meet and get merry. We made it a potluck so we could ground, have some good conversation and then head into ritual. The day was nice and it was a little windy but we were waiting for the sun to go down and for the wind to calm so we could have a fire.
The food was delicious.
I made asparagus, broccoli , and potatos cooked in the oven with lovely spices. It ended up tasting great and Bobby made sweet potato curry and it was the biggest hit . The food led to great conversation just as I had hoped it would and then we went out to set up the ritual.
We started the ritual off by walking down towards the fire. Amber met us at the end of the stairs and she saged us before we walked into the circle.
After everyone was saged and down we called the directions, cast the cirlce and then led into my invocation. When I let Madrone read the invocation she looked at me and said wouldn't it be nice to hammer some nails into wood. I had wanted to do that but didn't have a hammer or any nails, so it was nice to have confirmation that my idea was good. We took three nails to be hammered into a piece of wood. Before I read the invocation I told the group a little about Nortia and then explained that as we hammered in the nails that we should think about what we would like patched up from the academic year. As I read the invocation I felt a sense of power. I felt like I had made a huge leap on my personal spiritual path.
After we did the invocation and everyone hammered the nails, we through the piece of wood into the fire.
Then we wrote on paper the bad things from the past school year on the paper and when participants were ready they through the paper into the fire. After the bad we put the good down and some of us set intention for the next year to come. After that we started drumming.
The drumming was great. Madrone brought out her drum Radiance and Amber and I had a session on her and it was greatttttt. Dancing, drumming, and getting lost in the music was AMAZING. We let the fire start to die down and we all gathered around Radiance. We started to sing songs around her and the sound of our voices blending together was magical. Madrone offered a song, I did, Mark sang an Icelandic song, and Bobby sang a Thai song. It was beautiful to hear the different languages and I learned that Caitlin has a wonderful voice.
Overall the night was truely a wonderful end to the academic year and a great start to the summer!!
More entries to come about the garden and mojo bags.
Below I will post the invocation and Goodbye for Nortia!
Blessed Be!



Invocation of Nortia
Nortia, Goddess of Fortune and Fate,
be with us on this special date.
As we close the chapter of our school year,
bring your message loud and clear.
Help to mend the breaks and tears,
And bring us good fortune this coming school year.
As in old we slam the nail,
Bring the Fortune without fail.
Nortia, Nortia, NORTIA.
Be with us now!
Hail and Welcome!

Farewell for Nortia
The nail is sealed,
Our year is healed.
Nortia, you brought your fortune,
We feel the wheels in motion.
Thank you for your guidance.
Go if you must, stay if you will.
Hail and Farewell!

The Begining of the Spiral Dance

About 2 years ago I started my new spiritual journey as a witch.
I didn't know where this journey would take me or if it was the right path for me, but with every step I take on the spiral I realize it was the right one for me. Growing up in the Catholic faith was good until I realized that their exclusion of many different people (especially the exclusion of women) was not something I agreed with. My mother is such a strong figure in my life and to see her repressed in a sense by her faith really upset me. I thought that she should have been allowed to lead the church. To me she knew more than the priests did and certainly cared more for people and definitely was in my opinion far more advanced in her spiritual journey than the priests. But because males can only be priests in the Catholic faith she could only get involved in what they had for her.
Other factors surfaced in my life and my time with the Catholic faith came to an end. I drifted for a bit trying to find what I believed and always in the back of my mind was earth based spirituality. I had dabbled when I young. My mother found my book, which was Silver Ravenwolf's Solitary Practitioner, and as you can imagine it didn't go very well. But back to the present. So I was doing my own research into Wicca and felt I was lacking something. I realized I missed the community of my Catholic faith. Even if I didn't like the people in the church they still worshipped with me in the same way. Not knowing how to find other witches I was at a lost. However, the Fates were on my side and I was led to the Goddesses of The Cinder Moon. GCM was a local group of women who started a monthly goddess circle. This circle was a public ritual and I was lucky enough to go to the first one. I attended the first one and was amazed. That was where I first met my mentor and my spiritual mother, Madrone. She is amazing. I have learned soo much from her. After that first meeting I asked to meet with her because I was going away that summer to work and wouldn't be able to attend the goddess circles. I wanted to know of some books that she thought would be good to read for a beginner. She directed me to Starhawk's The Spiral Dance.
That book started it all. On the plane to Massachusetts I read, underlined, and wrote down questions about the book. I enjoyed the book so much and was so pumped when I came back after the summer. I of course attended the next goddess circle and afterwards I said I wanted to volunteer. I became involved and was hitting my peak in the group when the circles ended. It was sad but Madrone reassured me that it was not an end. Just a time to regroup and come back in a different way.
She was right. Because there were no more goddess circles I have developed on a solitary level and now I have started a club at my university, the Neo-Pagan Alliance, to meet other people my age who were also practicing. There are many stories in between GCM and the NPA and those will surface sometime in the blogs future I am sure.
NPA has brought into my life new friends who I can practice with and enjoy my spirituality. We are having our first full moon ritual that we designed and I am super PUMPED about it. Also at that ritual we will be blessing candles that we are going be making into herbal candles to sell as a fundraiser!
This blog is exciting for me because I have a place to record events other than my journal. Hopefully along the way I can encounter other traveler's of the spiral dance and hear their insights and perhaps offer some of mine.
Blessed Be!
Merry Meet Merry Part Merry Meet Again!