Eostre seed thought - dance of life

With current events around Covid-19 I almost forgot this festival, even though I had booked the day off. Having moved house into a 'project to get it right and do a proper job', a witchy, snow white romantic house. There are a lot of jobs to do, projects within the project. The basement is one of those. I had dirty, dusty, wear a mask work to do so I brought music down and worked to the music. Dance music.
It was Eostre and my thoughts, amongst the drudgery, turned to it as a ritual space and then a favourite in the mix reverberated through the space. And I danced, at first hesitant remembering moves.
Hitting the beat, then after a couple of minutes the flow began.
The moves, throwing shapes.
The Techno-shaman in me, made it a sacred space.
I danced like no one watched me,
I didn't care, as the joy of dance flowed through the air waves.
The past of ecstatic nights when I was a mid-core raver.
Shamanic dance of healing hurts.
The dance took me, it revealed the Ingvi-Lord.

I was talking to a friend about music and dancing, she told how music brought out tears but that she felt the approbation of her peers. This meant she couldn't hear the music and dance because of the release of emotion. We discussed Techno-Shamanism about finding that safe, sacred space where you can be able to release that emotion in music and dance. How, for many too old (i.e. over 30) to find a dark and dirty night-club, a good old kitchen rave whilst cooking the dinner hits the spot where you can dance, cry, laugh and have joy without approbation.
Calming down from the ecstatic vision I returned to the scrubbing work.

Upon reflection about the experience it seemed about right, I have a horseshoe to rune-work with as a lucky totem, the horse is sacred to Ingvi-Freyr as told in the story of Coifi. I have a space above the stairs down to put it. The Awen feels good. This can be a sacred space.

Navajo Flatbread Recipe

Chef and baker Brandon Johnson has shared a flatbread recipe that looks super simple and easy to make.

Brandon, from South Dakota, posted the Navajo (Native American) flatbread recipe on Facebook...

Navajo Flatbread, for six:

2 cups flour

1 – 1 1/4cup of lukewarm water

1 table spoon baking powder

1 tsp kosher salt

1 table spoon oil/butter/shortening

Mix dry ingredients together and add most water, mix and add water until it has the consistency of tacky pizza dough

Knead for a few minutes

Let rest in greased bowl for 30- 60 minutes

Divide into 6 pieces and roll out on floured surface thin. (Tortilla thickness)

Heat pan to 180°C

Cook until golden brown spots and flip, cooking until done

They can be made ahead and kept under a flour towel or frozen for later use.

Imbolc seed thought: Balance of the middle way

A bit late as it took until me Eostre Affirmation ride for the seed thought to germinate in the solid grey days of rain

The balance days where the moon is setting/rising and the sun is rising/setting feels like a liminal time of balance between  opposing principles. These solar and lunar principles of energy and reflection, positive and negative feels very relevant in these modern times where fundamentalism and polarised views are on the rise, as an aspect of digital disruption where new technology such as social media disrupt or destroy the previously established norm.

It is tempting to view this in a polarised fashion and buy-in to the click-bait headline reporting, "social media is evil" or "why you need instagram/facebook etc.". The truth and the knowledge of the truth is that these are powerful tools capable of good and evil. Just as Brexiteers, Remainers, Trump voters aren't all bad but have allowed a single, simple narrative to over-focus them on a single principle. This also applies to a world view of Hope for the future or Despair at where we're going. They drive our behaviours and when we have single principle behaviours this leads to conflict between those for and against. The positive and negative views create friction and conflict just as positive and negative ions can cause an electric shock. Some would welcome the energy of a powerful shock but this is painful change. It is necessary to view both sides with a jaundiced eye, look at them from several angles and critically think of them from several viewpoints to understand what is really going on. This is the balance of the middle way.

I like the tension caused by the days where the sun is rising or setting just as the moon is setting or rising where I am caught between the two energies and can see the knife edge path of the middle way balancing between the two energies. Just as emotionally the bi-polar days of high optimism or the dark days in the depths of pessimism are hard, the best days are somewhere in between.

Neither Hope nor Despair is the way forward, critical thinking and balance is the middle path.

Frige House blessing

After cleaning the house.  I  circled each room sunwise.  

Holding an incense stick and a quartz crystal I chanted this continuously 

Berkana Frigga Gebo

Bless this house

Bring happiness

Bring positivity

Bring  joy.

Berkana Frigga Wunjo

To this hearth

To this house

For this and all moments.

Berkana Frigga Gebo.

Dedicated to Frige this day 20th Dec Yule 2019.  

Wuldor's season

A hoar's skirts smother the Weald

Her beauty, merciless frost,

Wuldor rises, glory shines.

Lifts her frock, glowing beauty.

Their light shifts my aching soul.

Samhain Seed Thought - regeneration

It is easy to focus on the past, those who have passed before us and the darkness of the season. 

Druidry teaches of the celebrating the cycle of growth, order and decay.  Samhain is celebrating the seasonal decay.  In the garden the leaves are turning those glorious yellow, umber and red colours.  They then can be gathered and munched into leaf mould an essential compost for the garden.

So the seed thought is the growth that comes from decay.

A hard winter

Weather Lore

My country wise friend has been saying since Lughnasadh that the plethora of Hawthorn berries presages a hard winter. Do the old ways and their lore work at a time of climate change?
We will have to wait until Beltaine to know. Although the photo is not clear even at the end of August the hedgerows are full of berries. The acorn crop is heavy too. I just need to find some Blackthorn now to make Sloe Vodka ready for Yule.

Guldize Seed Thought - The } Quality

It is a little known fact that our modern digital world is massively indebted to a little known theoretical (physical) architect.  My work is as an I.T. or Digital Architect.

This architect was Christopher Alexander https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106728.The_Timeless_Way_of_Building  who was in turn influenced by Taoist theory.

There are a few places where you can see his influence in the physical world – the Café at https://www.westdean.org.uk/ and Oregon University in addition to a few others.

Whenever you use or engage with the digital, world be it a website to fill out a form or complete a service like renewing your insurance, and at any time you use your smartphone.  Then you use two things that Christopher Alexander articulated:

1.       Design Patterns – taken from his book ‘A Pattern Language’.  This applies not only to the user experience/interface (UX/UI) but also to the way that computer systems are developed

2.       Object Orientation (OO) – which is based upon ‘A Pattern Language’ and ‘The Timeless Way of Building’.  Most modern computer languages have some basis in OO.

Whilst the passage below is rooted in Taoist terminology this applies, as a universal wisdom, to Gewessi (Druidic Heathen) thought.  It explains why it is hard to define what is wrong with a design – a missing ‘un-named quality’.  I’ve taken a part of his seminal work and replaced the architectural language with the more abstract word design in the text below to clarify why it was used in Computer Programming…

 

"THE WAY

 

What looks at first sight like an accidental quality which marks the designs (towns and villages) of the past, turns out to be the most fundamental physical property of the world we live in.

This is simply the character of design (buildings) which reflect the forces in them properly.

 

The prismatic design of our own time, the design built with the simple geometry of cubes, and circles, spheres, and spirals, and rectangles; this geometry is the naive order, created by the childish search for order. We happen to think of this order as the proper order for a design (building), because we have been taught to think so; but we are wrong.

 

The proper order for a design, which comes about when designs are correctly fitted to the forces in them, is a much richer order, with a far more complex geometry. But it is not merely rich and complex; it is also very specific.

And it will show itself, under any circumstances, where designs are actually correct.

Whenever anyone manages to make a design which is alive, it will have this specific character, because that is the only character which is compatible with life.

 

When I myself first started to make designs with this character 'the un-named quality', symbolised as }, the character amazed me.

At first, I was afraid that I must really be a conservative at heart and that I was unconsciously striving to re-make the past.

 

ITS AGELESS CHARACTER

 

But then I read a passage in an ancient Chinese painting manual — the Mustard Seed Garden manual of painting — which made the situation clear to me.

 

The writer of that manual describes how, in his search for a way of painting, he had discovered for himself the same central way that thousands of others like him had also discovered for themselves, throughout the course of history. He says that the more one understands of painting, the more one recognizes that the art of painting is essentially one way, which will always be discovered and rediscovered, over and over again, because it is connected with the very nature of painting, and must be discovered by anybody who takes painting seriously. The idea of style is meaningless: what we see as a style (of a person or of an age) is nothing but another individual effort to penetrate the central secret of painting, which is given by the Tao, but cannot itself be named."

Gold Days are here

The Guldize, Goel Dheys or the Feast of (hay)Rick's is approaching.  The rick being a type of haystack. The change in the season from Summer to Autumn is starting.
This pic reminds if the Long Man of Wilmington...if only I had 2 staffs.