Aradia and I celebrated the full moon two nights ago, and had our early Samhain feast last night.\u00a0 Neither of these would be as significant, except that we\u2019ve rather \u201cfallen off the wagon\u201d with both our magical practices and our social lives.\u00a0 So we decided it was time to have a party.<\/p>\n
The story actually starts last weekend, getting the house ready for an old friend of Aradia\u2019s to visit from St. Louis.\u00a0 Reflecting our mental and emotional states as I creep up on six months of unemployement and we both struggle with classes, our house was something of a disaster.\u00a0 Our house altar had been almost untouched since our practice group stopped meeting shortly after the Summer Solstice.\u00a0 It took us most of the week, but the house was clean (if not cleansed) and the altar prepared for Samhain less than half an hour before Firebird & Crew arrived.<\/p>\n
Firebird brought three friends with her : two fellow spinners\/manipulators, A and C, and A\u2019s ladyfriend N, who invited herself along despite not having any actual interest in the entire affair.\u00a0 MagicCat didn\u2019t like them at all, which turned out to be a red flag.\u00a0 Firebird was good fun, but her friends should have just stayed in St.L.\u00a0 By the time they left, Aradia, myself, and our house were all toxic.\u00a0 So we cast a circle and cleansed the house like we should have done before they got there.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, everything was beautiful again.\u00a0 The Circle snapped into place as soon as we lit the Air candle, like we\u2019d never left off.\u00a0 We went room-to-room with a burning wand of white sage and a lavender oil mister.\u00a0 We even did the porch.<\/p>\n
Living with another witch for the last year has really changed my mind on a lot of things.\u00a0 Aradia and I went to the KC Renaissance Festival a month or so ago, and one of the vendors we passed by specialized in ornate \u201cdecorative\u201d brooms.\u00a0 For the first time, I found myself seriously thinking about owning and using a besom.\u00a0 Given my absurdly macho, psuedo-ceremonial roots, this is not a tool that most of the things I\u2019ve done or studied put any emphasis on.\u00a0 I\u2019ve only used a besom once, in fact, when I helped make one for a workshop out at Heartland this last May.\u00a0 When we went back to the Faire last weekend with Firebird & Crew, we passed the same vendor and I found myself thinking \u2013 not \u201cis this a tool I need?\u201d but \u201cwhich of these would be best for me?\u201d.\u00a0 Apparently I had made my decision sometime in between \u2026 probably while pushing the broom.<\/p>\n
Fast forward a week.\u00a0 The house is actually still clean, though in need of some work.\u00a0 We\u2019re both still in a fantastic mood, despite the stress.<\/p>\n
I originally had plans for Friday night, but they were canceled when the gremlins in Aradia\u2019s car threw a party to remind everyone they were still there.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember exactly what she said about her own plans for the evening, but my response \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the full moon?\u201d<\/p>\n
When I say fell off the wagon, I\u2019m not fucking joking.<\/p>\n
We went over to Aradia\u2019s family\u2019s house to help them with the annual brush-burn and to incinerate a few things that that should have been disposed of long ago.\u00a0 We took our drums and tranced out for a while before doing our full moon tarot readings.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t formal, structured, or intense, but it was what we needed.\u00a0 We need to work our way back up to intense, and we\u2019ve got about seven days.\u00a0 (Samhain\u2019s\u00a0totally<\/u><\/strong> going to kick my ass.)<\/p>\n Saturday came, and with it our pre-Samhain pumpkin party.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t know what anyone\u2019s plans for the actual weekend would be, or if there would be a ritual at all, so we decided to host a feast and carve jak-o-lanterns.\u00a0 The invitations went out almost a month ago.<\/p>\n I helped Aradia make pumpkin soup out of the five kuri pumpkins (the green-and-orange ones) you saw on the altar, and Aradia made a loaf of amazing tasty bread.\u00a0 We drank tasty pumpkin beer.\u00a0 My parents brought an amazing autumn stew.\u00a0 Our neighbor, K, brought pumpkin-filled doughnuts.\u00a0 Our friends Pasiphae and Aiden brought a feast all by themselves: pumpkin-banana bread, pumpkin-cheesecake pie, and Halloween-themed jell-o-snacks.\u00a0 (They also brought their munchkins \u2013 the MagicCat was not amused.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n We all had so much fun that we never got to the pumpkin carving part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aradia and I celebrated the full moon two nights ago, and had our early Samhain feast last night.\u00a0 Neither of these would be as significant, except that we\u2019ve rather \u201cfallen off the wagon\u201d with both our magical practices and our social lives.\u00a0 So we decided it was time to have a party. The story actually … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[81,87,166,232,238,258,279],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedonism","category-witchcraft","tag-feasting","tag-full-moon","tag-moon","tag-samhain","tag-seasons","tag-stories","tag-tools"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-2m","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}