Caer’s Devotional How-Tos

Caer Jones has a bunch of great articles on her blog about developing devotional practices that can be useful for people of many traditions- or even folks who haven’t yet figured out what path they are on yet. Even if your practice ends up being totally different than what she does, it gives you some ideas to work with.

Growing Devotions

Part 1 Understanding Devotions

Part 2 Finding Your Center

Part 3 Connecting with the Land

Part 4 Embracing the Ancestors

Part 5 Knowing the Gods

Part 6 Returning to the Center

Striking the Spark: Oil Lamps- What, How to Make & Use Them

Part 1 History of Oil Lamps– symbolism, fuel options, types of oil lamps

Part 2 Constructing the Standing Wick Oil Lamp

Part 3 Constructing the Floating Wick Oil Lamp 

Part 4 Using Oil Lamps

Building Woo Spaces

Altars & Shrines– How are they different?

Personal Shrines 

Working Altars

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Favorite “D” PBP Posts

Dagaz- Huginn & Muginn’s musings

To Dare- Super-Duper Space Witch on activism

Dán– Seeking Imbas

Deity/ies/Divine

Druid Bird– My Relationship with Deities

Seeker Sight– Divinity: a guide for seekers to concepts of the divine

Scathcraft- Divinities (in French, Google translate link on site)

Mistress of the Hearth– Devi, the Great Goddess

Deity Communication- Witch of Valenwood   “I am not a Pagan because I have chosen a priestly path to non-Abrahamic deities, and I don’t believe that communication with deities is integral to a Pagan identity. Your pagan beliefs may allow for such communication to occur, and the praxis of your pagan beliefs include such a thing as a goal, but it is not obligatory.   I believe in the gods, I love a few of them, and I believe that occasionally I can feel their presences. But my praxis is to live in a way I believe will please them and make offerings in their names. Whether I pray to them or not, they exist, and I am wary about meddling in the affairs of gods, for they are subtle and quick to anger. My love and respect for them is too sincere.” -That’s piety, my friends.

Specific Deities: Miach Rhys writes about Dian Cecht, an Irish God of Healing

Seeking Imbas- The Dagda and his epithets (actually the name Dagda itself is an epithet meaning Good God)

Dependency– Leithin Cluan

Devotion/Devoted/Devotional– Strip Me Back to the Bone:  “Devotion is, I believe, ultimately a private affair that can not reliably be measured empirically by outsiders — and in this case, outsiders means anyone other than you personally”

Spirit Stitch– A Place Where All Forces Come Together

Isleen – Daily Devotion to the Divine

Echtrai “In addition, it has been the experience of many polytheists that you do not choose a god. If they desire a devotional relationship from you, they’ll come knocking. Imagine if someone walked up to you on the street and said “I’m going to marry you.” Wouldn’t that be weird?

Abgeneth– Unlikely Devotionals: Everyday Things in My Life I Find Brought Me Closer to the Gods

Delight in Doing the Work- Grave Moss & Stars “Doing the Work is a common phrase used to indicate doing the hands-on, occasionally tedious work that is related to or directly causes a sense of personal and/or spiritual fulfillment.”
Delightism– Donald Engstrom

Discernment- Red Menace “Discernment, I find, is a topic that is strangely absent from a lot of pagan books I’ve read. I’ve seen books go on at length about the clair abilities, the various methods of divination, but there never seems to be a discussion on training yourself to understand when the divination is coming from an external force, and when it’s you seeing only the patterns you want to see. ”

Disillusionment- from Thorn the Witch

Disney & Callanish Stones– Knot Magick on the standing stones depicted in Disney’s “Brave” and information about them in the real world. I hadn’t heard of these stones before reading this post, so thanks to the writer and Disney from bringing them to the fore (even if Disney just happened to find them convenient Scottish scenery)

Disting– and other Heathen Holidays in February Pagan Grove

Division– Conor hopes for an amicable division between pagans and polytheists

Domovoi– Witch’s Journey– domestic spirit in Slavic folklore

Domatites (Poseidon) Strip Me Back to the Bone “The biggest reason early on that I decided I was not and could not be a Hellenic pagan was because Hestia would not be my hearth; Poseidon was. Poseidon would remain so. Fast forward years later. Just last April I was reading through Pausanias’s Guides To Greece, as one does, and I stumbled upon a reference to Poseidon Domatites – Poseidon of the house, or, more specifically, of the rooms.” I vote that she can jolly well call herself a Hellenic pagan or polytheist if she wants. You don’t need to strictly follow “Old Stones, New Temples” to be one.

Doubt– Baring the Aegis

Draugadrottin– Wytch of the North (she is doing a series on Odin’s epithets/titles) This one basically means “King of the Zombies”

Drawing Down/Drawing In– In general I wasn’t interested in posts on Drawing Down the Moon, but Raven Scribe has her own meditation loosely based on it, to help her deal with seasonal depression- asking help from Brighid (so of course I couldn’t resist)

Druids/Druidism– Philosophical Pagan– Allec, on why she doesn’t call herself a Druid

Ci Cyfarth untangles a mess of historical Druid definitions

Duir, the Mighty Oak at Raven & Oak

Devotions, Mumming and other Links of Spiritual Interest

I keep finding more and more nifty resources and ideas on other blogs to further my spiritual interests. A series of posts by Mystik Nomad on developing a devotional practice (link is for the last post, but it has links to all the previous ones)

More from the same blog on designing/making/using prayer beads  Additionally, here’s a website that’s been around a long time: Karen’s Prayer Beads– she has prayer bead examples from many different religions.

I love collecting beads, beading and have been meaning to make my own prayer beads forever, but the procrastinator and perfectionist in me have gotten in the way. Newsflash Caelesti- you can always take them apart if you change your mind!

Ariel, the Practical Polytheist lays out instructions for making your own Prayer Book: Intro,  Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5, Steps 6,7,8,9

All of these are relevant and helpful to anyone who honors multiple gods/spirits (regardless of exact theology) Makes things a lot less intimidating when they are broken down into pieces.

Dver, Hellenic polytheist and spiritworker, also has an interest in masks and mummery– the old European (and New World versions) folk traditions of dance, processions and other customs that take place at transitional seasons. Like me, she is interested in them regardless of how truly “pagan” they are in origin.  I think if more of us were to take this perspective, these are the sort of customs that could bring Wiccans, Druids, Heathens, assorted pagans and polytheists, and yes Christians and spiritually-minded atheists and agnostics together.

The first issue of Air n-Aisthesc is out– a peer-reviewed scholarly magazine on Celtic polytheism. Available both in print & digital! Will add this to Celtic polytheism resource page.

A good follow-up to my rather thrown together post on Diplomacy, here’s a good review on those handy qualifying words: Some, Many and Most.  I know for posts I’ve written that have gotten me in trouble, going back and editing with those words  (sometimes) helps calm people down.

Just for fun: Tattuinardola Saga– Star Wars- if it was written as an Icelandic saga. (In English just in the style of a saga) Maybe a way to bring the Tolkien & Star Wars geeks together?

Goals for 2014

Goals I’ve already started on:

*Communicating/getting together with Gaeltacht MN classmates to study Irish. After several weeks of cancellations due to weather, holidays etc. my classmate Sue & I picked a day, time and place for our first meeting, as well as topics to focus on.

*Kickstarting devotional practice- I began participating in Sassafras Grove, ADF’s annual “Brighid along” in which they share prayers and devotional practice for 9 different aspects of Brighid in the nine days/nights leading up to their Brigantia ritual. I heard about this on one of the ADF lists and signed up for their Facebook page to participate. So far I’ve just been reading prayers from my tablet, but that’s a start. My long-neglected altar is decorated for the harvest season, and I need to take down my Yule tree downstairs before I can really celebrate Imbolc properly.  I also am sporadically reading prayers from Book of Hours: Prayers to the Goddess by Galen Gillotte. A new group devoted to Brighid has emerged called Clann Bhride– some folks from the Cauldron forum are involved with it. I’m really interested in taking part in it, and I downloaded their Book of Hours- beautiful prayers and lots of really neat ideas!

*Doing creative stuff- I’m regularly writing on this blog, but would like to get back into crafty-ness. Would be great to combine this with devotion to Brighid. Went to the Crafty Geek meetup a couple weeks ago for the first time, and did a little work on making greeting cards.  That one also connects with the goal of connecting with friends/family. But Crafty Geek meets on Thursdays, which is when we’ve scheduled the Irish study. However, there is a knitting group meeting on Wednesdays, and it is also much closer to where I live & work. I was planning on going to both of them this week, but ended up needing to be at home to show the house to potential tenants (we have the room filled now though!)

Other goals:

*Connect more with family & friends locally and long-distance.  CuteHobbitBoy & I both have relatives that live either close by close enough for a day’s visit, we also have friends that we’ve lost touch with.  Come up with a plan on how to do this (birthday get-togethers, Skype, phone, texting, greeting cards.

*Keep moving in direction of health/finance-wise being able to have kids

*Figure out how I want to be involved in ADF & Unity, and  create plans on how to make it happen.

*Social justice activism- what do I want to do/how do I want to be involved?

I have so many hobbies & interests it’s tricky to figure out how to balance them!