Magical Girl As Totem

Posted on by
Sailor Moon (character)

Sailor Moon (character) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tsukini kawatte oshioki yo!

Traits: transformation, friendship, hidden strength

The Magical Girl isn’t just any old archetype. She’s one of the most popular, most-invoked archetypes in Japanese comics and animation. She’s been built up, deconstructed and reimagined. Hell, I’m not even the first one to use the Magical Girl as a magical archetype.

(Also, if you’re a fan of Sailor Moon in particular, I recommend checking out Serenitism, it’s an interesting take on a spiritual path based on the mythology of Sailor Moon.)

If you’re feeling stuck in a mundane life, you may need to invoke the Magical Girl. She knows the value of the everyday because that’s her downtime, but what she seems is definitely not all she is.

The easiest way to invoke her is to get home from work or school, change into a completely different outfit, and go do something exciting that would surprise the people around you. If going out with your witchy friends is an option, you can do that. If you don’t have a lot of witchy friends, or the time and money to go out, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, though. You can go out by yourself or with another adventurous friend and try all kinds of things – a blacksmithing class, a burlesque show, skydiving lessons, or anything else you’ve always thought sounded like fun but worried was the kind of thing other people did.

Failing that, hold aloft your sword and yell “for the honor of Greyskull!” Or maybe that one only works in Etheria.

Magical Girl is also useful when you’re in an environment where you feel you have to be closeted about some aspect of yourself – your orientation, your religion, your gender, or even just your hobbies. Being in the closet, feeling like you have to pretend all the time? It’s fucking hard. Nobody does it because it’s fun. But sometimes you have to, for safety’s sake, keep your secrets secret. Magical Girl has experience with that. She knows how much it sucks, but can be necessary. She’ll help you hold your secrets in your transformation locket, kept close so you never have to forget who you are.

House Work: No Place Like Home

Posted on by
Dorothy, as depicted by John R. Neill, is usua...

Dorothy, as depicted by John R. Neill. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The new place is definitely starting to feel more like a home than the old studio apartment ever did. The living room is pretty much done, aside from eventually wanting to replace the chair, and the kitchen has come together. We hung art in those two rooms, and most of it has even stayed on the walls.

My garden is still tiny and my cucumbers failed, but there are actual pea pods on my peas. It was kind of amazing when I realized that – like suddenly, magically, the gardening thing was working. There are green strawberries too, but somehow the peas are more real to me. Maybe because they look like themselves.

We also acquired a washing machine. We’re going without a drier for the time being, to see if we can get by without one. I think it’s do-able, at least for the summer. I’m on a DIY household kick, and I need to pick up vinegar and borax and all the other pieces to make my own cleaning supplies. Once I’ve got that under control, I think I’m going to try teaching myself to cook.

In less successful news, the bedroom wall still isn’t painted. We started this, oh, at least a month ago now. Picked a color, got a tester, hated it. Wanted to pick another color, but Mara’s new preferences had come into play, so I had to find a better source. Did that, picked TWO colors, liked one.

Still haven’t made it back for a regular quart of paint. I think we’re waiting until some nebulous perfect weekend when we will have Time To Paint, but realistically I know that’s not going to happen. I need to make it a priority – but I have to work a ridiculous amount of this weekend, so I still don’t know when we’ll do it.

It’s L. Frank Baum’s birthday today, one of the ancestor days I celebrate. It’s really wonderful to see how universal the Oz myths have become. Not every retelling is good, but it’s such a cultural touchstone that that almost doesn’t matter.

But hey, if you’re looking for a good one, check out Namesake. It’s not just Oz but there’s a lot of Oz in the first arc and the story is beautifully executed. I also recommend the new Oz Reimagined anthology.

The interesting thing about Oz, in my book, is that everybody remembers that Dorothy went home at the end, but people don’t realize that in subsequent books she not only went back, she happily moved there permanently once she was able to bring the people she cared about.

The lesson of Oz is that you can, in fact, have your dreams and your family too. It may take a little longer or require more work, but you don’t necessarily have to choose.

Fan Fiction and Journeywork

Posted on by

There are, roughly speaking, two kinds of spiritual journey. One is travelling through other places – Faerie, the Nine Worlds, that kind of thing. That is a useful skill to have, and can be a wonderful or terrible experience in its own right, but it’s not what I’ve had on my mind lately.

The other kind of journey is more internal. That’s not to say it isn’t real; the inside of your head can be a very dangerous place, and your self is absolutely real. It isn’t taking you elsewhere, though. The beings you interact with there are often archetypes – spirit animals, guides, parts of yourself, and sometimes deities. You go somewhere inside yourself, and you learn something if you’re lucky, and then you return.

I have experimented with using the writing process to guide this type of journey. When I am in the right mindset as an author, writing fiction is a bit like automatic writing. I feel as if I have very little control over the way the story is going, and I share in the emotions of my main characters. This makes it possible to “write” a journey that has at least as much emotional space and room for surprise as a guided meditation.

Because it is meant to be a practice heavy with archetypes, I found that using fan fiction can make the process a lot easier. If TV Tropes has taught us anything, it’s that media is just filled to the brim with archetypes (which is just a nice way of saying cliches, sometimes) and the themes of myth are being reenacted right now on network television. If Once Upon a Time or the Vampire Diaries or, hell, Hannibal or White Collar gives you the framework you need to hang your internal work on, I say go for it.

The trick is in being able to reach that mindset where you’re honestly experiencing the emotions of the main character you’re writing, making choices as a person in the experience instead of from authorial fiat. Once you can step that far in, writing can be done in a light trance (again, not unlike automatic writing) and the journey may begin to surprise you.

J is for Judging Your Limits

Posted on by

I seem to have hit my level of activity saturation. Work, school, gym, fiction and blog… is the point where something gives. Either I’m not getting my homework done because I’m working on a blog post, or I’m not getting my fiction written because I’m doing homework or… well, you get the idea.

I’ve always said I’m more productive when I have a full plate, and that’s still true. But there’s a point where a full plate becomes an overfull plate, and I think “attempting to blog every day” is the last straw for me. My plate runeth over.

So, hey! That was an interesting experiment, and I won’t be worrying about it again any time soon.

Atlantean Ascended Masters and Me

Posted on by

I’ve written, here and there, about fictional influences. About the incestuous relationship between my writing and my beliefs, and how they feed each other. I’ve teased out the way the elements work for me by experimenting with explanations in fiction. I’ve written about understanding the gods as higher beings who draw on and sometimes seem to emenate from those elemental Powers.

The point where those two ideas converge happened to me today. If fictional ideas are real enough to convey meaningful truth about the Powers, and if the gods I interact with are, in a way, agents of the Powers… it stands to reason that eventually I’d hear from one of the agents of the Powers from my fiction, doesn’t it?

I don’t pretend to understand exactly how this works. In the context of the story, he’s essentially an “Atlantean ascended master” or something along those lines – a 4th dimensional alien who helped build the pyramids from his headquarters on Mu. (Maybe I should call the History Channel?)

Look, I know how this sounds. But I’ve done enough pop culture work that it’s not inherently impossible for me to comprehend it. I could wave my hands and go on about the Powers taking forms we recognize and all of that. It’s still… it’s different, when it’s a form that’s only really known to me and the people who read my writing.

I guess it’s not that surprising. I mean, I’m learning the cartomancy system from this universe. I’m “studying” its history, metaphysics and magical styles. Why wouldn’t I also make this particular connection?

I guess the real question will be “how does this work out?” just as it is with any other aspect of my practice. I’ll try working with him and see if it has results. One of my most important tenets is to believe in what works, after all. If it works, great. If not, oh well.

Mental Gymnastics

Posted on by

Joining a gym. That was a thing we did.

It ended up being a pretty straightforward choice for us. The gym we joined has several classes we’ve been planning to pursue, a pool, and convenient locations and hours. When I did the math, the gym membership cost less than the classes and the community pool, as well as being more convenient than the latter, plus I can drop in before or after work and spend some time on the bikes or the weight machines.

I know there are lots of people who argue against joining a gym – it’s an unnecessary expense, it’s extra time, nobody ever goes, and so on. Believe me, I’ve thought through all of it. But the math for the classes Amber wants to take is pretty compelling, and paying some money to do a healthy thing versus paying no money to almost never to a healthy thing makes spending the money sound reasonable.

I’ve messed around with bodyweight exercise, with stuff you can do at home, with the paleo-style spontaneous exercise. But it comes back to the same thing everything else comes back to: I need habit. I need schedule. And I’m more effective when I acquiesce to that need rather than fighting it.

Since one of the gym locations is on my way home from work, I can easily go there two nights a week. Amber will meet me there after she gets back from work. Bam, instant schedule. Add in the Saturday morning tai chi class (yang style, I missed you!) and I have a workout plan that sounds sustainable, at least to me. Now I get to see how that works in practice, I suppose.

Project Protagonist: Walpurgis/Beltane/May Day

Posted on by

I totally forgot I was writing these up as I go! (Actually, I haven’t been very diligent about the Project Protagonist posts, have I? I need to get back to doing this regularly.)

This time of year is complicated for me. It’s not complicated in the same way that Yule is, with Family Thoughts and all the baggage that goes along with that. But it is a holiday that my ex had very strong opinions about properly celebrating, and that makes it harder to tease out the meaning for me than some of the others.

I still think of the day as Walpurgis because that’s what I first learned it as, before I knew about the wheel of the year. (Hello again, Catholic upbringing, nice to see you.) I tend to consider it a complement to Samhain, a time when the veils are thin, the otherworlds are close, or whatever your description of choice might be. Magic is a little bit easier. Change comes a little bit faster.

The May Day energy is comparatively recent but can be very useful to draw on for certain kinds of projects. It’s just another kind of change, really, and I could certainly see Puck  having a great deal of fun with Occupy. Paradigm shifts are powerful, whether it is magic or socialism.

I imagine them as a pair – for me, Samhain is about internal shifts, and Walpurgis about external shifts. Samhain is the first new year, and is about clearing out old things about yourself, getting straight in your head. Walpurgis is the beginning of summer, making changes in relationships, friendships, how you interact with the world. Amber and I joined a gym and signed up for classes. We’ve made a major fertility-related decision. We’ve changed ourselves and now we’re changing our world, and six months from now it’ll loop around again, because that’s what it does.

Little Things

Posted on by
vintage shelf

I know, it’s hipster as fuck. I can’t help it.

We don’t have all of the art up on the walls, but we hung a lot of it today. It started with a wooden shelf in the kitchen. It came home from Goodwill because we’ve been needing something for the action figure collection. I think it was originally designed to hold teacups and saucers – there’s a slot in the back of each shelf which I think was to hold the saucer in place. As you can see, I threw some action figures up to see how they looked. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s a start.

And next to it, you can see the first piece of artwork that went up. Yes, it’s a bunny with a dress and a pearl necklace. No, I’m not even going to pretend I didn’t buy that at a artsy little boutique in Portland, because I totally did. I bought it for Amber, to go with her picture of a bunny in a fez. I like to imagine they’re a couple.

Twee as fuck, I know. So we got a bunch of the art up on the walls (though nowhere near all; maybe half?) and we’re getting ready to paint the bedroom now that we’ve decided on a color. Before we come in with the final paints, I’m experimenting with painting wards directly on the wall that the new paint will cover. I can’t remember if I’ve read of people doing this; it seems like an obvious idea, but I have no idea where the inspiration came from.

It’s hard to decide how much is “enough,” furniture-wise. I don’t want to fill up space just because we have more space to fill, but it’s easy to fall into that trap. One way we’re hoping to limit that is by having very specific aesthetics for furniture in each room. Pickiness cuts down on the desire to bring home everything.

And since the overwhelming response to my post yesterday was that you guys like my nervous breakdowns, I’ll share with you that emotionally, I had a very bad weekend. First Loki was trying to get my attention, then Odin was in one of my dreams this morning. I also dreamed about my ex last night, which was painful. I think I hurt a friend’s feelings via a misclick on AIM. I broke down crying trying to write a letter to my mom for her birthday.

That’s not to say there weren’t some nice things. Amber and I attended a tai chi class on Saturday, and that was fun. It was my first one in probably five years. Afterwards we went down to the Lan Su garden and enjoyed the weather. So there’s that.

If I’m going to let the little things hurt, I have to let the little things help, too.

Perception

Posted on by

Sometimes I struggle a great deal with the details I share here. I wonder how I come off to y’all, both my regular readers and random passersby. Do I overemphasize the negative? Do I sound too perfect?

I second guess myself a lot. Social anxiety and OCD meet at Social Scrupulousity Park, where I worry that I’m a terrible person and everyone was right to hate me in high school. I still worry I’ll say the wrong thing and hurt people. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again.

I get caught up in these thoughts and I shy away from blogging. I know that’s not an answer, but sometimes an answer seems too far away and besides, I could be doing homework or something. I’ve got plenty of excuses.

I’m better, though, when I’m not ignoring things. Keeping busy keeps me from getting too hung up. I’m thinking about trying to post every day this month, to see if it keeps me thinking. What do you think?

I is for Inconsistency

Posted on by

I have struggled to get the bare minimum consistency into my practice. For a long time, I only did magic when I needed it and dealt with gods or spirits only when they poked me. That’s pretty much the metaphysical equivalent of only running when you’re late and considering that your exercise – it means you’re not prepared for the work when you have to do it, and it means that in times of peace and plenty you’re putting the important things off.

I’ve experimented with seasonal celebrations, monthly cycles, weekly devotions, and using seven-day candles to mark my activities. The problem with all of these, for me, was that missing one set me back a lot. You miss Beltane and you’re off til Midsummer – or, if you’re trying to do your ADF writeups, you’re starting over. Obviously this works for a lot of pagans, and weekly practice works for millions of mainstream religious.

It doesn’t work for me. For me it’s pretty much daily practice or nothing. Screwing up daily practice leaves me only 24 hours to feel like a failure. It means I don’t feel I have to “go big or go home.” The more inconsistent my practice is, the more I feel I have to go all out when I do get around to it. Then I get worked up about it, my perfectionism kicks in, and it all falls apart again. Or religious scrupulosity eats my brain, and I’m irrationally afraid Odin’s going to smite me or something.

Right now, my daily practice is pretty much limited to tending Mara’s altar, lighting a candle or two, and meditating for fifteen minutes or so. I don’t even manage the meditation every day, but it’s something I always benefit from having in my practice when I can make myself stop and do it. I’m slowly adding my housekeeping to that, since I’m trying to do it with intent. It’s not fancy, it’s not Work-with-a-capital-letter. But it works for me. Better baby steps that work than inconsistent leaps and falls.