The way in which Deb’s challenge is in sync with my own life is fascinating. Major housecleaning and a bit of Mercurial Work were already on the table. It’s the last days of the semester: the apartment must be clean and cleansed before I leave, so that I don’t come home to a disaster and loose all the sanity I intend to gain before break; it’s my last day to write & study before I take my final exam and turn in my final paper, which makes Hermes my best friend and Mercury my fuel; also, I need them both to help me out with the ten-hour drive through corn corn corn corn corn corn corn and more corn, punctuated only by major urban areas and rural speed traps.
Deb is right to point out the importance of a clean house for magical work. I was skeptical of this theory for years, but I got the clue phone eventually. These days I can tell the difference in my magic—be it my daily practice, my lunar rites, or anything else—when I haven’t taken the time to put everything away, do the dishes, and sweep the floor. Yes, my body is my temple. So is my house—I named it the Sunrise Temple for a reason. I need to get me a besom and an aspergillum. In the meantime: smudge, smudge, and more smudge.
The matter of my time management is a little different. Finals is the high-stress-point of a student’s year, and that involves a mad roller coaster of high production and gross procrastination. I’m doing better than many of my peers—I turned in my first final paper a whole hour early, my last should be done tonight, and I’m think I’m prepared for my final exam in Attic Greek (expect to see a bit of original Greek composition and my first attempts to translate Homer here over the next few weeks)—but I’m still here blogging right now instead of studying. We’ll soon see if that’s time well invested in legitimate “rest”, or just another round of “anything but homework”.
In magical terms—because while my scholarship is intimately related to my religious practice, it’s not quite “magic”—I need to work out a new schedule. After several months of off-and-on daily practice, I’ve come to the conclusion that what I’ve been doing isn’t quite working for me. I need more variety. I need to up my “chill meditation” to “magical ritual” ratio. I need to spend less time worrying about my daily practice and get back on top of my lunar rites.
I just missed the Full Moon. I haven’t even done my monthly tarot reading. So be it. The Dark Moon is coming, it has always featured more prominently in my personal practice than the full—that whole shamanic thing—and the Hellenic lunar calendar starts on the first day of the waxing moon anyway. I was already considering making that shift, and now’s as good a time as any.
These things are all easy. I was going to do them anywhere.
Putting down and moving rocks … that’s a little harder. I’m a little vague on what I want right now, outside of the academic sphere. I’m moving in a lot of directions but I don’t actually have goals.
This is often how I get myself into trouble.
I’m so overwhelmed right now that I don’t eve know which of the weights on my shoulders are my schoolwork, which are the demands of others, and which are my own. I won’t be able to sort out which are the good weights from the bad until I’ve had a little rest.
ETA: Fucking typos.