fireinthesea-blog

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Stand in solidarity with the Miccosukee:

Big Cypress Preserve is part of the Everglades, one of the largest remaining tracts of wetlands on Turtle Island (North America).

The Miccosukee Tribe have lived there since time immemorial and their care for their home has shaped it into the beautiful swamp we know today.

The National Parks Service is trying to rush a change in Big Cypress' designation from a Preserve to a Wilderness area. [plain text: The National Parks Service is trying to rush a change in Big Cypress' designation from a Preserve to a Wilderness area.]

This would give the area stronger protections for water quality, but would significantly limit the Tribe's access to their homelands and completely ignores how their stewardship of the lands and waters was and is crucial in maintaining the health of ecosystems.

There hasn't been a good faith effort to include the Miccosukee in a meaningful way (ie free informed prior consent & input!!!) on this change to their sovereign territory.

If you want to practice allyship, here's a chance. Sign the petition to show your support / solidarity with the Miccosukee. [plain text: Sign the petition to show your support / solidarity with the Miccosukee.]

Personalize it even just a little, even if it's just adding your own name or hometown. If you're able, print it out sign it and mail it. The Tribe and organizers working on this have a goal of getting 500 letters to the NPS/Secretary of the Interior. The online petition is almost at its goal! Just over 2,000 signatures left (as of Mar.16th 2024 21:30EST).

Please please share! I have it on good word that the NPS is trying to push this through before folks really have a chance to hear about what they're doing or make a fuss. So make a fuss we must.

The mailing addresses are below the cut for anyone who can send a physical letter!

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Do you ever find yourself in the presence of your deity and feel like "I was literally born to love you. All these years of life and evolution have allowed me to find you and i don't know how to deal with that." it's too big for my body

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are there any good/active gaelpol discords around? or even general polytheist discords that have a gaelpol presence?

relatedly, is clann bhríde worth getting involved with even if you don't necessarily believe in everything they believe in? and if it is, can you even really be involved without being on fb/is the discord active enough?

i want to get back to being involved with things again. i've been worried about doing too much too fast but currently i definitely need to be doing something more socially.

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me, constantly: pagans will just say shit

also me: hydrating is an act of devotion for followers of brigid

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prefacing this by saying that i've been hardcore ruminating and having intrusive thoughts about this for the past day, so i'm just writing this down to hopefully get it out of my head and i can't promise how coherent it'll be

i've been listening to quite a bit of podcasts since my surgery last week (yeahhh yeeterus at last!). and honestly i've just kinda been blown away by the amount of celtic myth/folklore and scottish/irish history podcasts have popped up since i've been gone, and it's really getting me feeling comfortable with the mythology and the language in a way i never have before. it's a piece that was missing for years for me. which is why it's really driving me nuts that like...

i'm not expecting to agree with everything these people are saying. especially going into the myth podcasts, i very much do not, and with the couple i've listened to most at this point, i'm interested in what these people have to say and have a lot of respect for them as storytellers and for people who surrounding immersing themselves so much in these stories, even when i disagree with what they're saying. for the most part.

but fucking what's with this 'the tuatha dé weren't actually gods' thing? especially coming an episode or two after they went on a whole big thing about how the glorious goddess danu was erased by that nasty christian patriarchy. how can you hold those two views at the same time? the latter seems to imply some damn heavy things about the former to me?

their points were that they weren't all powerful/all knowing/omnipresent/etc/that they die (which i'd recently seen other professionals say and been annoyed by), which is bullshit because there are other gods like that who don't get called into question. they literally said that the irish gods weren't gods like the norse gods, and i'm pretty sure they also fall into a lot of those 'failings'?

their other was that the ancient irish didn't worship their gods??? have i..... missed some things? my brain has stopped working

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Chinese-bluegrass fusion would fix me

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This is also why I don't know how to recommend spells to people because to me most spells are just:

Find a Guy who's really good at the thing (probably other people talk about how good he is)

Ask him to do the thing for you

Provide auxiliary support to make his job easier (and say please and thank you!)

And one Guy can often do a lot of things. Like, Rosemary can help with memory problems, sleep, cleansing, protection, healing, and nightmares.

So you can show up and say, "Rosemary, when I drink this tea of you, please infuse me with good memory so I can remember important details of this upcoming conversation."

Or, "Rosemary, when I hang up this sachet of you, please stand as a sentinel of my sleep and guard against bad dreams."

Or, "Rosemary, when I place your pot by the front door, please cleanse the air of all sickness that may enter, and keep the home healthy."

(And yeah, there are Techniques to this, but that's not what this post is about)

But the problem is that sometimes, the Guy might not be that helpful until you get to know him a little more and things get chill between you two. Or he might show you hidden aspects to himself that are not common and not talked about by other people.

So you can get into a situation where you've been hanging with Rosemary for a while and have a really weird dream and all of the sudden, Rosemary can make other people tell you the truth.

That's not a Rosemary correspondence and it's probably not something that other people can do with Rosemary.

But it's something you can do with Rosemary because you've gotten to know each other on a friend level.

A missing factor for me, and maybe for other people, was treating spellwork like a potion-making game where you just gather X amount of Y-aligned correspondence and if you mix enough of them you get a Potion of Y.

Like if you need protection, you just go to a correspondence list and find enough Protection-aligned plants (regardless of how they work or their personalities or attributes) and put them together in a bag and saying an unrelated charm or prayer that you say no matter which plants you put in the bag.

Which is how people end up with 50 little jars of dead plants that stay dead because they have no connection to them, still looking up what ingredients to use in which spells.

Which is fine, but it's also like... not necessarily what everyone is looking for.

So my point is that if correspondences are reduced to 4-5 purposes on a chart, then you get the correspondence brainrot which is like "which kitchen herb is a gentle cleanser, and which kitchen herb is a strong cleanser," when the reality is that if a guy can Cleanse he can show up gently or strongly in his own unique way,

And it all makes more sense by just treating him like a Guy and asking him to do what you need to do.

I genuinely think that if a practitioner is looking for something deeper and more relational in their practice, a really good way is to scale everything back and start using like one activated (evoked, prayed over, petitioned, etc.) Ally in each spell and just asking if he, as a Guy, can or wants to do something for you.

Like if you go absolutely bonkers over a good cup of Chamomile tea, what's the harm in asking Chamomile to cleanse for you? What's the harm in asking Chamomile to protect your home, or bless your sleep?

At the very least you're going to begin learning a lot about Chamomile in an interpersonal way, where you can begin understanding the "correspondence" for yourself. And you can also learn some fucking cool stuff, like, isn't it weird that when I ask Chamomile to protect my home, we all started finding little bits of cash we had lost?

Idk. Magic is just easier when more things are Guys.

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Buying an object from a pagan/witchy store on Etsy because I like the aesthetic:

The handwritten note that reeks of sage inside of the package: May this magik ritual bowl bless your altar and bring a higher vibration of frequency to your work 🙏🔮

Me, immediately throwing my desk clutter into it:

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remaking this poll bc i saw one like it that had limited options and was also ended… hopefully i’ve covered all the bases

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“Remember why you became a polytheist. Perhaps you prayed and Someone unexpected answered. Perhaps a Goddess tapped you on the shoulder and said “you’re mine.” Perhaps you realized that the world is better explained by many Gods of limited power and scope than by one all-powerful God and you decided that following Them was the best way to order your life. It’s hard to be spiritual when your roof is leaking. If your current situation has dampened your enthusiasm for the Gods, Their virtues, and Their work, it’s understandable. And usually, They understand too – They tend to have a longer and wider perspective than we do. But whatever your reason for becoming a polytheist, it was valid then and it’s still valid now.”

— John Beckett “Polytheism in Difficult Times“

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Cailleach- Illustration by John Duncan in Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend (1917).

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"You said: The Shining Ones. You said: The Fair Folk. And you spat, and touched iron. But generations later, you forgot about the spitting and the iron, and you forgot why you used those names for them, and you remembered only that they were beautiful"

— Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

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Polytheist & Pagan Asks

🙏 - Which pantheon(s) do you actively worship?

🌞 - Which deity(ies) are you closest to/do you worship the most often?

✨ - Do you believe in patron deities? If so, do you have any that you know of?

🌍 - Which pantheons do you believe exist?

📜 - Have you ever made an oath, vow, or contract with a deity? If yes, how did it go (you don't have to share)?

📿 - What are three things you're grateful to your deity(ies) for?

🖋️ - If you could say anything to your deity(ies) right now, what would you most want to say?

💌 - What is your favorite form of deity communication?

🎭 - What is an emotionally impactful or a silly worship-related experience you've had?

❤️ - What's one memory of your practice that you reflect the most fondly on?

🥂 - What is your favorite devotional act or offering to give?

🎉 - Do you celebrate any festivals? If so, which ones?

🫂 - Do you syncretize any pantheons with one another? If so, which ones?

🔮 - Do you delve into topics like the occult or the mysteries? Do you do anything esoteric?

⭐ - What is something you wish people outside your practice knew more about?

📖 - Do you like the way your pantheon is most often portrayed in media? Why or why not?

🏛️ - Do you have a favorite statue or temple to your deity(ies)? If yes, what is it?

🔥 - Do you have a favorite myth or tale from your pantheon or others?

🧭 - What led you to your practice?

🧿 - Did you have any other spiritual beliefs before discovering your current practice?

🪽 - Do you believe in angels and/or demons? If yes, do you worship or work with any?

🪄 - Do you practice witchcraft? If yes, do you keep it separate from your deity worship?

🪦 - Do ancestors or human spirits play a big role in your practice?

🐾 - Do animal spirits play a big role in your practice?

🌱 - Does nature - plants, nature spirits, etc. - play a big role in your practice?

💀 - Do you believe in ghosts? If yes, have you ever had an experience with one?

☄️ - Do you believe in astral travel/the astral realm? If so, have you been there before?

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Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill was born into one of the few remaining Irish (as opposed to Anglo-Irish) gentry families in the early eighteenth century. Her mother was a poet, and Eibhlín, one of twelve surviving children, was taught to read and write in both Irish and English. Her parents arranged a marriage for her, but she was widowed while still in her teens. A few years after, the young widow fell for a man of whom her parents thoroughly disapproved: the rakish soldier Art Ò Laoghaire. Eibhlín and Art eloped, settling in his ancestral home in County Cork, but things were far from peaceful. The Sheriff of Cork, an Anglo-Irish Protestant, detested Art, and after one too many disputes, had him unjustly declared an outlaw; Eibhlín’s husband was now on the run. When his mare returned home, bloodstained, Eibhlín knew the worst had happened. She rode back to recover her husband’s body.

Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, Eibhlín’s lament for her husband, is recognized both as one of the most beautiful poems in the Irish language and one of the best poems of its century in any language. As for Art’s murderers, the Sheriff was found innocent by a jury of his peers - but not by Art’s brother, who gravely wounded him before fleeing across the Atlantic. Eibhlín herself would live until 1800.