by fire and fleet and candle light...

I haven't posted much of anything this month, so consider this an update.

I'm wending my way through Malory, and loving it. I haven't read most of those stories since I was a kid. At the same time, I'm reading Gareth Knight on the Arthurian tradition, which is certainly thought-provoking and helping me to make some connections. I have a hard time with the whole Atlantis thing. Somehow I have to come to some understanding of that, because I can't believe in it literally but it's all over the Druid tradition, so I need to find some peace with it rather than have my brain come to a full stop every time I see the word. I'll have some better-developed thoughts about that once I've finished the book. I'm also reading Philip Carr-Gomm's "Druid Way" which is very sweet and poetic and makes me wish all the more that I could afford OBOD.

I've been working with my tinwhistle and having fun with it. I look forward to whistle practice every day. The two songs I'm learning for this month are "Lyke Wake Dirge" and "Lewis Bridal Song."

I wanted to do gardening as my elective spiral, but that's not going to work. The idea was to get a community garden patch and work at learning how to get some really good yields from an urban space. I found out that there's a three-year waiting list for a slot in any of the community gardens nearby. I'm already doing as much as I can with my tiny, shaded backyard. Learning more will have to wait until I have the space. Instead, I want to learn more about fiber techniques. I want to learn to handspin. I want to know how to take a pile of animal hair and transform it into a useful item using low-tech items: a comb, a drop spindle, a crochet hook.

Of course, I'm meditating and doing the SoP every day, and practicing the full ritual form once a week or so. I'm also studying the Ogham every day, trying to get them all by heart. Once I have that basic level of knowledge I will start doing daily divinations, but that will be at least another month or two. I might make that a New Year's thing - an ogham reading every day in 2007.

I'm so glad I found this path. I know that many people find labels confining, but I'm delighted to have found one - I have the opposite feeling: I find the label freeing. It gives me focus and an orientation, so rather than trying to run in every direction at once I have a particular point on the horizon picked as a heading.