satyapriya

Only a second to transform my own image
from odd girl
to witch.

Books unlocked her from the oven,
the cupboard, from the deep, dark woods.
She took my place in suburbia,
a cauldron for belly,
a hearthfire for heart,
a spitting black cat of a mind.

I Became,
spell by spell,
now that I had a name to call myself;
a regard for the Moon that went beyond
astronomy and science.

As the natural and unnatural world grew my backbone,
shaped me curved and sharp,
so those old Phoenician and Aramaic slopes and bowls
gave me what I’d hungered for:
a label, an understanding, something to believe in.

I've been listening to 'The Break' by Marian Keyes on audio in the car. There's no way I'm going to finish it before PizzaBoy and I head away for our own break to Gaia Eco-Retreat (review after experiencing). So I've googling to find spoilers for how it ends. No one's giving it away. Plenty of hints, and yeah, I've gotten all that, because I'm at chapter sixty-something. But I need to know how it ends. The audio book will shortly go back to the library.
While I was tootling around the net, yelling 'Give me spoilers!' I came across a blog called something like 'eats vegetables and reads books'. It amused me, and I spent some idle brain time thinking what I could rename this blog so it would be a witty and clever book review thing.
Then I shrugged, and thought 'medicated, munching, and reads books' was both derivative, and boring.

Anyway, last week, I finished reading 'The Rules of Magic' by Alice Hoffman. It's the recently-released prequel to her famous 'Practical Magic'. This time, we get the story of Aunts Jet and Frances, who, in 'Practical Magic' are far more interesting than the main characters.
In this book, we see the childhood of the aunts, plus their brother, and their adult years leading up to the beginning of PM.
Frannie is a hard character to grab onto, but Jet was compelling, in both the 'what will happen' and the 'I wanna shake some sense into you' way.
I have to be in a particular mood to enjoy Hoffman, and her writing style, because she tells the reader. We are never intimately inside a character's head. Never. We don't feel their feelings, but we see their actions, and their thoughts. This annoys the shit out of me normally, which is why, even though I loved this book, and the take on magic is hedgewitchy, kitchen witchy, fanciful, and homespun, I don't list Hoffman in my top ten authors.
Nevertheless, I did like this book, and it's a keeper, which is a rare thing for me.
Does everyone live happily? Would it be a Hoffman book if they did?

I signed up for a Tarot Art Journalling course with Kiala Givehand a couple of months ago. March was THE month. The Facebook group went crazy, and it was all I could to do a daily pull and a matchbox-sized sketch, despite great intentions. Halfway through April, and I've just done my first lesson - Sigil work.
Because I was impatient to finish, the face has ended up looking like every face I've drawn since I was 15. I wanted her more manga, I wanted her more detailed, older. Well, I got a little older, because I put some bags under her eyes, but she's definitely big-eyed, with the same scrappy long hair I always draw because I get fed up by the hair point. I haven't even given her a neck. Under her face is a black cauldron full of black, red, and purple. The sigil I drew is on her right cheek, not her forehead like I planned. Her hair isn't red, her eyes not brown (like me). Purple, black, and blue hair, purple eyes, pinky red full mouth. She looks sad on one side, slightly distressed on the other.
Anyway, there she is in my art journal, with a sigil on her face. Now, I can leave that there, and move on with the next lesson, or I can work magic with the sigil, empower it, and set it free into the world. And I think it's time to do exactly that. I haven't worked any magic in at least two full moons, if not more.
I shall refer to my T.Thorn Coyle book of 'Sigil Magic for Writers', and perhaps read the pertinent chapters from a few other books to see which way of sigil empowerment I fancy. There's more than one way.
The first part of sigil magic is complete anyway, because I can no longer clearly remember what the sigil is for. Forgetting the sigil is often mentioned as an important step. Create it, empower it, release it into the world.
A recent talk with SexMagicMan: he says he's never come across the idea of forgetting the sigil purpose. He's done loads of magic across more than 30 years.
Oh, what to do, what to do....
Reading is always a good idea....