During my childhood, my family lived the Craft more than celebrating it with organized and detailed rituals. Sometimes the rituals we celebrate feel so normal and routine that it is easy to assume there is no ritual at all being expressed, but this is not entirely true. Lighting incense and candles and setting out a bowl of milk or cup of wine for the Fairies on the night of the Full Moon is a ritual. Gazing at the Moon and noting Her many faces and phases is a ritual. Holding up a cup to the Moon in blessing and pouring some of the contents on the ground as a libation, then drinking the rest, is a ritual. Creating impromptu songs, poems, or music sung to the Moon, performed and released with blessing to the Goddess, is a ritual. These are all rituals done without ringing bells, setting up altars, or putting on ritual robes. These are the rituals of every day living, when the magic of each moment is savored and released so that the energy of living flows unhindered to be carried in harmony with the tides of Nature and the Universe.

– from the Esbats of the Goddess, by Ann Moura

One of the reasons I have difficulty referring to myself as a witch is that my rituals are exactly this:  Little things intertwined strongly with the mundane.  If I didn’t tell you, you’d never realise that I’m doing something magical right in front of you.

I used to have an elaborate altar, and I tried my best to keep up with the observances of all Sabbats and Esbats — until I realised that this just doesn’t work.  The altar made my room feel stuffy, so I dismantled it.  I now keep a statue of Bast on my vanity and a couple of Orthodox ikons (my spirituality is mix’n'match) on the top shelf of one of my shelving units.  The intricate Sabbat and Esbat celebrations felt forced and unnatural.  These days my acknowledgement can be as little as quietly saying, “Happy New Year”, to myself; or perhaps sharing my tea and dry fruits with a plant on the kitchen window; or simply greeting or bidding adieu to the Moon.

It’s the every day stuff to me.  Nature is magic, life is magic.  What’s important is not the rigid structure or the spell, but the meaning behind your simple — sincere — words and intentions.

Whenever I do a spread, I usually copy it into the journal directly, whether from the book or from the internets. But since I’ve filled four notebooks already, it’s hard to return to a particular spread.

Yesterday I finally sat down with my notebooks and a binder, and organised all spreads from various places into one. I’ve got a few left on my HDD that I’ll copy once my laptop is fixed, and also a couple in my current journal — these I’ll handle once I move onto a different notebook.

It felt so great to finally consolidate them all. And my Tarot binder is growing! Ah, satisfaction.

This is definitely a great companion for the upcoming deck!

If only I were $35 (or $50? Can I dream?) richer, I’d be buying this right now.

Revitalising Your Tarot Practice, Part I: Decks.

This is a good article on spicing up your usual reading routine if you feel a bit stuck, bored, or in a rut.

Bored with Tarot? Well, it happens. It’s happening to me right now, albeit in a different light — I’m not bored as I am stuck. Starting a blog was actually one of the ways I had hoped to battle this.

I’m currently reading with two decks RWS and Pagan, and feel like I don’t know either one of them well enough, even though they’ve been my companions for a while now. There are also two decks that I bought a year and a half and a year ago, and I have barely moved to explore them.

One could say that it’s happening because the decks aren’t “mine” — and indeed, I can’t seem to tune into them — nor am I trying hard, really. One has imagery that’s a bit unexpected, another one seems to have meanings that aren’t too deep for me.

Not that I’m too deep a person, I’m actually pretty shallow, but when I dive into Tarot, I usually look for symbolism.

Either there isn’t any, or I’m looking in a wrong place.

I tried one of the techniques described in the article before — the comparative approach. I used it to study one of the newer decks. And perhaps this is where I made the mistake — I was looking for similarities where there aren’t any. Different decks usually want to be used for different readings, and perhaps that particular deck wasn’t meant for the reading I was doing.

It’s all so vague, isn’t it? I wish I had a more solid example.