Happy Dust

Yesterday, I moved my ancestor altar from the bedroom into the kitchen.  I felt my ancients would get more love and attention out here with the rest of the family.  While I was setting up the altar, I tossed the old potting soil in the bottom of my incense dish and decided to replace it with sand from the sandbox.  

I thought I was being thrifty, but it ended up being a much better idea than I thought.

While I was coming back inside with my little jar of sand, I suddenly felt giddy.  I wanted to skip and laugh.  The energy coming off that sand was/is just delicious!  My first thought was, "Papa is going to love this."  Then I realized it would also make a great magickal ingredient.  

All summer long, hordes of neighborhood children have laughed, collaborated, and created in that sandbox.  Even now as the days are getting shorter, they run from the bus to the sandbox and play late into the afternoon, coats and backpacks scattered on the lawn around them.  I collected my sand durring this time of day.  With out knowing it, these children have continually charged the sandbox.  

Now, instead of "fairy dust" I have "happy dust."  You had better believe that I am going to find a dozen ways to use it, too.  

Sourdough Hot Cakes: Making New Memories and Honoring the Old

Lately, I've been noticing that cooking blogs make sourdough complicated.  They want to measure humidity, add unnecessary ingredients, make huge batches of leaven to use only a small sample, and do tests to rate the activity of their starter.

Just reading what the modern cook has to say about sourdough intimidates me and I've known sourdough all my life.  Sourdough was a staple for prospectors, cowpokes, and busy pioneer women.  It is intended to be simple.

As far as anybody can figure, my Papa kept a sourdough starter for 70 years.  He was of the cowpoke variety.  Every morning he made sourdough hot cakes or "doughs."  His kids were raised on them and so were us grandkids.  I made it a point to make them an important part of life for my older children and now I have started with the younger ones as well.

 This afternoon, I made hot cakes with Little Moon.  It's a simple process, but far easier with out the help of a hungry two year old.

Instead of a proper recipe, doughs are more of a ratio.  Use one cup of starter for every two people and go from there.  For each cup of starter use 1 tsp white sugar and 1/2 tsp baking soda.  Yep.  That's it.

Pour starter in a large bowl and gently mix in sugar.

Place baking soda in a mug or small bowl and dissolve in a tablespoon of warm water.  Fold into starter.

This is the fun part! As the baking soda mixes with the starter, the batter foams and grows.

Spritz a preheated skillet with non-stick spray and spread batter thinly.  The pan should be over medium heat. When the surface starts to dry, flip the dough and cook for a minute or so longer.

Done and done.



Serve with maple syrup and butter no photos of this as the girls were more than over me photographing their food.  My Papa always ate his with two over-easy eggs sandwiched in the middle and an entire flood of syrup, washed down with black coffee of course.

The girls loved this new addition to their diet and before we sat down to eat we set the prettiest hot cake in front of my grandparents photo as an offering.  All rolled up, the way Papa liked to eat them for an afternoon snack.

My Evolving Path

So, I've been pretty quiet for the better part of six months now.  It's been pretty hectic in more ways than one, but I am hoping to get it together and begin sharing my witchy adventures again.

As most of my readers know do I still have readers after this long absence?  I have identified as an animistic witch and focused mostly on nature in my craft.  Things change.  Over the past several months I have been reevaluating my spirituality and practice, not because it wasn't working, but because I felt something else might work better.

To be honest, I never felt wholly comfortable with the Celtic style rituals found in much of American witchcraft.  I also found a lot of standard practices to be a bit unweildly.  As I looked to simplify, I fell into a lot of sigil magick, which I found to be highly effective.  Then it just seemed natural that I learn about the Runes.

With the Runes came a deeper interest in my Norse heritage especially when I found additional Norse ancestors in my lineage, this interest was also spurred by the fact that Superman had developed the same interest.  Soon, the interest became a longing and we begin perusing a Norse/Heathen/Asatru whatever you decide to call it path.  Finally, we found what fits!

As I seek to embrase and learn my tribal faith, I continue to practice nature magick in a mostly intuitive way.  Someday, I hope to be learned enough to consider myself a Vitki.

Goddess and God - Earth and Sky

Once again, I am turning to Mom's a Witch for a blog prompt.  The truth is, I am a bit exhausted and out of touch these days.  In our new location I am spending more time out doors, but with two very small people both are mobile now it is not a time for spiritual tuning.  Yes, I passingly notice the sun on my face...the wind in my hair...the cool earth beneath me, but it all flutters by before I can fully soak it in.  I suppose it's no different for any mama of little ones, I just don't remember being so worn out when the big kids were young.

Ok, back to this blog topic.  Since I missed April lets forget for a moment that May is almost gone as well I am mashing up a pair of topics from April and May: Who is your patron Goddess and God?

When I first started exploring Paganism, I thought that I had to choose patron deities.  Everything I read talked about finding your patrons, learning to work with them, growing your spiritual strength through them.  There really wasn't much room for negotiation.  I needed to find a Goddess and a God. Yet, no matter how deeply I delved I could not come to grips with the concept of embracing a deity.  So I focused on Earth Magick and just kept learning and studying while skirting the whole higher being issue.

Somewhere along the way, my attention turned toward Shamanism maybe because I play a Shammy on WOW and I started finding answers that suited my natural bents.  Going back, way back to the first family groups living in mud huts, people did not seek answers from sacred personalities, but from nature.  Shamans spent a life time learning to communicate with the Elementals and the spirits of nature and the ancestors: they spoke to trees and read the clouds and received messages on the wind.  This made sense to me.  This is what I had been tinkering with my entire life, but had never been able to put a name on.  My deeper primitive self connects to the energy of The Universe through raw nature. 

I am a Animistic Witch. As recently as last fall, I would have labeled myself an pantheistic witch, but that was simply because it was the only label I knew that somewhat fit.  My magick comes from fostering a close relationship with the Universal Power and the Elementals.  I am "A child of the Earth and the Sky: kindred of the Elementals."  My allegiance is to the natural world around me.

Free Form Dreading and Embracing Myself

 

It's been six weeks since the last time I brushed my hair, eight since I have conditioned.  I'm looking pretty wild right now and I love it.  Already this journey has taken paths I never anticipated and I am learning more about myself everyday.  I am becoming more empowered to be completely, totally, and honestly me.  Because I have now taken the drastic step of completely rejecting societies standards of beauty, for the first time in my life I know that I am pretty.  Really, I'm not trying to sound egotistical, this is a big break through for me. From my husbands loving influence, I use to believe I was pretty.  Now I simply know it. 

 

Growing up in rural Montana, I saw dreadlocks in person for the first time when I was 11 or 12 years old.  They were being worn by a blond girl of 17 or 18 and I wanted to be her.  To me, she was the epitome of beauty.  Not only was her hair magnificently wild, but everything about her spoke of natural ease.  Of course, I only saw her from a distance, but it was one of those slow motion cheesy movie scene moments.  It is completely correct to say that I was drawn to dreads, although at the time I could not put my finger on any other reason than aesthetics.  Since my super conservative parents weren't about to let me dread my hair, the idea went to the back burner and continued to percolate for over twenty years. 

 

As I grew older and begin learning more about the culture of my ancestors, I found that my longing for dreads was calling to me from a time long ago.   I am a proud descent of the ancient Celts (Lowland Scott) and Vikings (Finn and Swede) on my dads side of the family, with more Viking (Swede) mixed with Sioux (Mandan) and German on my mom's side.  It is fair to say that the majority of my ancient ancestry likely wore their hair in some kind of natural matted style.  If we want to be completely frank, most prehistoric people probably did since there was no means to brush and maintain their hair in an "orderly" fashion.   Having always felt like an old soul and needing to connect with those who came before me, the desire to grow dreads makes perfect sense. 

Spiritually, my decision to dread goes beyond ancestor reverence and is an extension of my relationship to nature and my kindred the Elementals.  It is an acceptance of my true self similar to the way many witches take on a spiritual name, the girlish woman who still loves to dance barefooted and who wraps herself in the wind.  It is showing the Universe that I am happy with who I am and love the person I was created to be. 


**Since some of you are bound to notice, I do have five twist and rip dreads tied off with wool.