Ritual for the Juno or "Higher Self," based from the Correllian Tradition

Materials

1. lavender or fresh linen incense
2. dull green, bright blue, crimson, black, white, sunny yellow, mild orange, and violet blunt candles (total: 8)
3. a chalice (glass) of pure water or whatever beverage I prefer at the time
4. image of the Higher Self, or a representation (imaginative = artwork or realistic = photograph)

This will require an individual altar which may be temporary (may not take place on the all-purpose altar).

1. Light the candles in the following order, from left to right: white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black.
2.  With each candle, feel a part of the Self manifesting and attaching. It does not matter which parts signify which colors and vice versa. An example, for concrete assignments, might be:
• White = the Lighter Self
• Red = emotion
• Orange = masculine energy
• Yellow = spirit
• Green = feminine energy
• Blue = mentality
• Violet = magic
• Black = the Darker Self
3. Invoke the Higher Self. ("I call upon the Higher Self, the Juno.")
4. Visualize the Juno. She is me, grown and aged slightly, wise but emotional, pure and white, a girl.
5. Speak to the Juno. This should be akin to conversation. This breaks the Veil between the Self and the Higher Self.
6. Offer and chasten the chalice of water (etc.) to the Juno, dedicating it and purifying it. Then drink it. Imagine the light of the Juno filling the water, the glass. Visualize it moving through your body, passing the Juno's strrength and wisdom into you, reassuring you.
7. Meditate on the Juno, the Higher Self.
8. Complete the offering with words of thanks and devotion.
9. Extinguish the candles in the opposite order in which they were lit.
10. Cleanse the chalice.

Omg I am now a TRUE NEOPAGAN.

I just realized this.

I'm sitting in my room, a candle for my evening ritual glowing and incensing the air of the room with the smell of vanilla-scented wax. I'm listening to the Pagan Radio Network, a song called Secret Garden by Windancer, which hums and throbs pleasantly and mildly in the background through these speakers. I am saving up for a new grimoire. I have a pet rabbit who walks in and out of my circles as she pleases, named after a flower. I have ritual honey sitting on my desk, goddess research lying on my dresser, and an altar by my bed with an offering basket, vase, and pedestal (with aforementioned candle) on it. That aside, I'm doing an eve3ning ritual, in my regimen.

How odd.

The next entry will be a mock-revision for my Juno ritual. LIIIIKKKEEEE a hipster.

I was called by Hecate last night.

I was just reading my correspondences book (It's called The Wicca Handbook by Eileen Holland and I recommend it) and I just... I think, happened to glance across her name. Earlier that day I had been at Barnes and Noble. The one we have locally has this whole wall dedicated to journals. Half of them are these beautiful (though expensive) leather-bound notebooks, with intricate design...

I was flipping through these today, just casually, and it occurred to me: These would make beautiful grimoires (for a lazy person such as myself who can't and won't bind her own). So I came home later, before I was going to do my nightly meditation/protection (which I have actually been doing... I've decided to go ahead and give Witch School: First Degree by Lewis-Highcorrell a chance, even though I have no intention of following Correllian tradition. It just seems like a good regimen... something I need, religiously). And I'm reading this correspondence book, I think because I'd thought, Hecate. It just popped in my head, I don't remember why, and I was looking her up, and I found she was the goddess of witches and I just heard her, in my ear, saying, It's time for you to make an honest grimoire.

Weird. But true, as far as I believe. So now I'm saving up for a BoS at B&N, instead of a gorgeous custom wand from Etsy. It's alright. This one will be purely for spells and chants that I write myself or need to remember. No correspondences or anything, just useful spells and spell-chants.

So I'm familiarizing myself with the community.

No one here, no one home, no one helping: more religious babble

1) I went to a church today for the first time in years, a decade maybe. It was Universalist Unitarian. They sung hymns and shared their life activities and talked. A speaker came to the front and talked about jobs and unions and how we should care for all workers' conditions and lives. A chalice was lit, and then put out.

Everyone was old. Fifties on up, with a few exceptions. I was very misplaced there, only fifteen years old; the next person on up was twenty-three, and another visitor, here with the rest of her (mostly aged) family. But later, when we were discussing things - the labor unions, ethical eating - at a potluck lunch afterwards, I felt like part of a community. For real. My mother didn't know the things I was talking about. I had a genuine, intellectual place in the group. That was nice.

2) I've talked to my mother about paganism again. I told her about a little pagan shop I knew of. I looked on Witchvox again. It's not there anymore.

3) I can't learn any more from books. All there is is Wicca. I now own a Witch School book in the Correllian tradition. I am not sure if I like it.

More complaints about the asshat

As promised, a brief rant. Because it'll make me feel like I'm right. And apparently, that's the thrill everyone's after nowadays.

Have you ever met one of those people who just absolutely had to be right? They couldn't just defer - they just constantly pick arguments about things that don't matter, like how I shouldn't say that I'm just using intuition to do this grammar worksheet because pretty much everyone in the class does the same thing and it sounded like I was implying that I was special, or perhaps Even though it goes against my personal moral code, I'm totally listening to a conversation I promised not to listen to, so would I please step ten feet back so that you can talk about things that don't matter with my best friend, with whom I'd just like to spend a little time with? Or... well, you get it.

Geez. I just want to hit him sometimes. It's the arguments - the constant arguments about things that don't matter. God, we used to be best friends, and now he's so fucking right all of the time. I'm going to call it rightallthetimeitis. Or maybe just use my Latin roots. It's just headitis - he's gotten all inflated over himself and now he's got a big head. Which I'd desperately love to knock off.

It's stuff like this that I get angry about and stress over and has me going back to a therapist I haven't seen in a year. Geez.

But back to the point - there's one argument we have over and over again. Over and over. He thinks I'm being ridiculous, and I think he's being utterly stupid. He thinks I'm not using any semblance of logic at all and I think... well, he's being utterly stupid.

Here's the lowdown: after a long, multiple-year slog through multiple religions, he has apparently now settled on hardcore atheism.

No, no, I have nothing against atheists or atheism. I was once a heavy agnostic, then an atheist for a solid year, before finding a religion that made some sense to me. But...

It just seems to me that he is using Atheism as a label for his Headitis. You can lather a pig in lavender soap and rub it down with the softest and most wonderful lotions before giving it a delicate bath in the most perfect and serene of hot springs... But it's still a pig, and you're still going to send it to the slaughter.

My reasoning behind this - 1: "The whole point of atheism is that religion is stupid." Quote and end quote. While he may believe this - and I'd have no problem with that, if he weren't so forceful about everyone else believing it too - that is not the whole point of atheism. I was an atheist once. I never thought religion was stupid. I know its psychological significance and what it can do for a person. I know how it can give someone hope or comfort or even - and forgive the cliche - solace. I have had and have atheist friends other than him. One, in particular, was my best friend for several years - the years in which I found my current religion. She heard me out, gave her opinions. I know, from experience, that atheism does not, necessarily, recognize that all religion is stupid.

2: His arguments for atheism. Whenever he gets the chance, he makes fun of organized Christianity, in particular. Sure, it'll sound joking, just for fun, the works. But I know him. I've known him for... what? upwards of five years? And he's so bad at his "jokes" and trying to make them seem both antagonizing and humorous. It's only funny to him. Consider the audience in this scene: me, a friend (who at first he assumed would take his side in the ensuing argument) whom he has known for upwards of two years is an eclectic pagan; a Methodist girl who dislikes him; a Catholic, conservative boy who on-and-off likes him; a Muslim boy who is incredibly devout, as far as I'm aware. He purposefully seeks us out and brings these jokes to us, trying to make off like it's funny. It's not.

He always, always "beats" me (and note the quotes) in these arguments. Simply because it gets to the point where I start to think it's all pointless and give up and, presumably, he thinks he's won some sort of mental trophy. Well, I call bullshit.

Usually, the "debate" (and that's in quotes because the word debate implies that both sides are willing to listen to the other's opinion) ends with something along the following lines -

Me: Look, you can't use your oh-so-logical arguments to convince a devout Christian that their faith is stupid and that they should drop it like a hot rock and convert to atheism and instantly believe you because you prevent a few arguments.
Him: Yes, I can, because logically, religion doesn't exist.
Me: Logically, no, but the whole concept of religion is that you believe in something without proof. That's why it's called faith. Say you're right, and there is no god or life force or whatever out there. We have no way of knowing. But no matter how many logical arguments you present, they will never work, because logic operates on a different level than faith. It's apples and oranges.
Him: But there is no proof that any god exists! God is a delusion... do you really want to live under a delusion?
Me: If it makes me happy and gives me a sense of acceptance and contentment? Fuck yes.
Him: (I'll admit, actually, that at this point it usually goes down into stupid stuff that I can't even remember - presumably because it usually makes me mad, no matter what argument he uses, and I get the Red Tint of Anger and things go a tad hazy.)

It pissed him off that, originally, when this first started happening, I didn't take his side in that little group I described before. He turned to a boy, said, "But logically, that doesn't make sense. I mean, Inky just said -"

I stopped him cold. I said, "Don't drag me onto your side. I may not be Christian but you seem to have forgotten that I do, in fact, believe in a god."

I don't know. Something about him and his damnable "logic" just anger me in a way that African poverty never could or will. If he's so logical then why can't he deduce that no one besides him is ever going to believe exactly as he does, and he needs to get over his own head, then pull it out of his ass, then put his fucking pants back on and get on with his life?

I feel old for my age, sometimes. And then there are times like these, where I don't.

To Write an Essay

Here I am, sitting at the dining room table, compiling note cards which were due earlier today, and which I will use to write a lengthy essay on my chosen topic - Santeria, a syncretistic religion combining tenets of the African religion of Ifa and Roman Catholicism. I find it both fascinating and tiresome, as this has taken more than six hours thus far. Now, I allow myself a break.

Essays are terribly difficult things to write. Humanity speaks in its own mind in abstract concepts that often refuse to be verbalized, and so, when we come to a conclusion, especially a religious one as I have come to multiple times during this religious essay, it is so very hard to explain it away in a single sentence... even a paragraph... even a whole essay of its own. Religion is so complex, so diverse, that the only way to explain it, at times, is to make similes with other religions. And then, what of your varied audience? Say you preserve your audience with multiple examples from different faiths. How do you prevent the audience from jumping to conclusions? For instance, by likening the orishas (gods) Olofi, Nzame, and Baba Nkwa to the Christian Holy Trinity, I suspect I am making Christian readers - a large portion of the audience I know I will have - jump to conclusions about the positions and personalities of these gods.

It perplexes me: the many different nuances of communicating a single concept. We often make things seem more complicated than they are, which is, I suspect, the reason for missionaries. What good could a holy book or pamphlet or guide do where a living person could explain it in feeling, with liveliness and seriousness and yet a sense of humor? No text can compare to that. And therefore, this essay is futile. In reality, I am writing it only for myself.