Chapter 1: Thinker.

I.

The young girl was an athlete and a scholar. Her father was a soldier, and tamed the large warbirds that dominated the sky during times of battle. The birds were used as transport in peacetime, and so although the guns were silent, she often went days without seeing her dad. Although she’d felt pressure to join her father in his occupation when she grew up, she had no issue telling him she didn’t think it was for her. She didn’t want to fly, and besides, she was allergic.

Her mother, by contrast, encouraged her daughter to find her own path. She was intelligent and hardworking, and strove to raise her daughter as an independent and well-educated woman. With her help, the girl grew up knowing school as a joy instead of a chore.

The fifteen-year-old was a bit too bookish – and taller than most of the boys by at least three inches, which put a serious damper on her social life. She always managed to have a date for the few formal functions held by her religious school, but she wasn’t exactly popular. She was, at the moment, reclining on a bench under a tree in the park, engrossed in a book about folk magic and superstitions. She wondered idly about the beginnings of such belief. “Could they be rooted in something true? Why would people still do these things if they didn’t, somehow, work?”

A small silver thread floated down on the breeze and landed on her right wrist. She held her arm up into the late afternoon sun slanting through the tree’s branches. It shone and sparkled a bit as she shook her hand, but the thread clung and loosely encircled her wrist. As she watched it, it seemed to appear, vanish, and then appear again. She carefully slipped the silver thread from her wrist and put gently into her pocket.

She gazed into the distance, lost in thought. The ancient oak trees seemed to commiserate with each other in rustles and whispers as the sun dipped behind the crown of leaves.

“Where’s Jehovah?” the grey-eyed woman asked, amused. She was peering into the clear pool of water set in the middle of the chamber. The water was completely still, but the images of the young girl flickered and moved in the soft light of late afternoon. “He’s taking his eye off the ball with this one.”

From one of the deep-cushioned chairs on the far side of the room, a veiled woman answered, “She’ll come to us eventually, Glaukopis. You know she will.” You could hear the smile in her voice, even though the veil obscured her face. “The die, as they say, has been cast.”

“You know as well as I do that nobody’s fate is written in stone, Sister, even if we do like to say it is so. Isn’t that right, Hound?” She walked over and reached down and affectionately scratched the ear of the big, black dog seated at the woman’s feet. It raised its massive head and licked her hand in appreciation.

“Just look at her - already interested in the things beyond the worlds. The path is often twisted, but it will get here.” Propolos noticed her sister’s furrowed brow and motioned to Hebe to bring another silver cup. “Don’t fret. Sometimes you think too much. Come, sit with me and have some wine.”

Where's my lighter?

I'm totally doing this for Samhain.

Queimada

Do you think it would be too dangerous to have a pot of flaming alcohol? Maybe I could do it in the garage. Or the driveway. Or someone else's house.

Still! Intriguing.

Superhero Mashup

VikingRocknRollSpiderman!

Please kindly ignore the mess and the state of the hardwood floor and instead admire the creativity of my Bono/Eric the Red/Peter Parker spawn.

Huh...That Went Well.

I finally did it. I quit the soul-sucking sales job in order to take a soul-sucking corporate job. The uncertainty of payment, the knocking on doors and the mandatory sales calls finally got to me. As a wise woman said to me (last night, in fact): Do I really want my livelihood and success to be based upon those characteristics and personality traits that are my weakest? It seems so simple when put that way. I reckon most good advice is.

I've been hired back at my old company and so far, it's been pretty okay. I was offered a promotion and a raise, so I went back. It's comfortable, familiar, I'm good at it, I get my 4 weeks of vacation back, and if they lay me off again, I'll get another 15 weeks of severance!

I know, I'm so ambitious it kills me.

This weekend, our coven, N., held Lunasa with our sister coven, S.R. It's been lovely having both groups together, and I'm exceedingly glad that we have finally come to the point where we're comfortable doing Sabbats together. We had too much food (as usual), plenty to drink, and a really lovely, if not original, ritual by one of the S.R. members held at his house. My son came with us and had a blast because this covener was also a huge Star Wars fan and let my boy wear the Stormtrooper helmet (it made noise!) and play with all of his nerf guns. Did you know they make a Nerf machine gun? Me neither.

Today's Parenting Question brought to you by Raised by Jackals: disturbing, or normal? My son, for some reason, really loves the villains. I mean, he wanted to be Venom (the black, deranged Spiderman) for Halloween last year, he pretends to be the Sandman and the Green Goblin, and the only game he plays on his DS is the Transformers one where he plays a Decepticon. And now - Stormtroopers? Why the bad guys, shorty?


And finally: Happy Lammas to everyone. This is the first of three harvest festivals (the other two being Mabon in September and Samhain in October). Right on time, I saw the first wheat fields cut this week. Lammas is an interesting holiday in that it is a time of burgeoning plenty - corn is high, wheat is ripe, the summer fruits are succulent - but it's the beginning of the end of summer and the slow descent into the dark. We think of the archetypal sacrificial god who dies so that others may continue to live (Dumuzi, Osiris, Jesus, among others) and appreciate the great gift he offers us. May you never hunger!

Self-Absorbed Prattle, aka, My Life as a Financial Advisor.

She walked up to the blue house, business card in hand. She rang the bell, and turned slightly away from the door as she had been taught to do. She saw a young and jaunty couple, pushing strollers, walking up the street. As they drew level with the blue house, they turned around, walked down the other side of the street away from her.

A few minutes later, working her way down the other side of the shady avenue (why was there nobody home this afternoon? she thought idly), she passed the blue house again. There, in the driveway, playing with a couple of tow-headed toddlers, was the jaunty couple. She felt deflated, and all of her faux-cheerfulness evaporated. They had seen her standing on the front porch of their house and had walked away rather than talk to her. Now, they pretended they didn't see her. She wondered if pretending not to see her was to save her from embarrassment or to save themselves from it. I'm not an evangelist, she wanted to yell, I'm just a goddamn financial advisor. You don't have to run away from me.

She drove home slowly, circling around the streets surrounding her house. She didn't want to get home too soon. Finally, she pulled up behind the local high school and began to cry - a little, at first, and then more when she remembered that school was out for the summer and there was little chance of being discovered by unsympathetic 16-year-olds.

She sat in the car, dabbed at her eyes with a leftover coffee-shop napkin, and waited until the red in her eyes was gone before she drove home.

I Must Be Crazy.

Remember waaay back in May of '07 when I was all stressed out about a Finance exam? Well, lest you think I've learned anything from that little episode, I've now been hired as a Financial Advisor for a global investment services company. I've been grinding away studying for my Series 7 exam, and I'm having flashbacks to grad school.

I hope this will be worth it. I just couldn't stay at the Airline...being laid off twice in - what, seven years? - is all I could take. It was definitely time to look for a new industry.

And since I have a...er...MBA in Finance, I thought I'd try it out. So far everyone's pretty supportive, family, friends, and even my new firm. But I'm stressed and tired from studying nonstop for four weeks.

More to come.

Happy Happy!

Beltane is almost upon us again! An excuse for us neglectful bloggers to start fresh. It's actually starting to feel moderately springy here in the Midwest, and if you can ignore fuel prices, long commutes, the crash of the housing market, and the tenuous grip on solvency that the Airline has got, it's a pretty good day!

I'm setting up a new Wicca 101 class with my friend E. We're the public faces of our respective covens, and we've been inundated with requests from seekers who find our listing on The Witches' Voice. Since there's really nothing in this area for newbies, we decided to put our witchy heads together and create a class. E. knows the owner of a local New Age/Metaphysical shop, and they've very generously offered to let us use their classroom space.

We're tremendously excited and also quite nervous, since this is the first real classes we'll have taught. We've got an absolute metric ton of information we want to cover but we don't want to overwhelm the students.

My personal view of Wicca is a little more traditional than E's (who is much, much more eclectic than I). He's also tremendously crafty and has mad skills when it comes to blending oils, incenses, sewing, weaving, and creating ritual robes from twigs and bits of fluff. I will depend on him to keep everyone's attention while I am droning on about Proto-Indo-European religion and Gerald Gardner.

I met a lovely Alexandrian High Priestess after we posted the class announcement, and she has graciously agreed to take a look at the class outlines and offer feedback. I met with her once for coffee and spent three hours discussing teaching approaches, British Traditional Wicca, the Chicago pagan community, and people we (mutually) knew. When I was living in CO, I hooked up with an Alexandrian HPs but had to drop out of the (fairly intense) training due to my work schedule. I've not lost interest in that particular path, so it was fun to meet another Alexandrian, especially since the BTW community here is so underground as to be practically invisible (yes, unless you know where to look, I can hear my former HP saying).

Anyway, I tried not to flatter her too much and bug her to take me as a student. Well, I did, a little. I couldn't help it. This is a path that I've always wanted to get back onto, and I promised myself that if I got another opportunity, I would not pass it up. I hope it works out.

Now go light a candle and get all Barry White on someone. It's mandatory for Beltane.