fireworks.

Today was a difficult-ish day, for some reason. So I suppose it is all the more important to do a gratitude list. I don’t have trouble feeling grateful for things per se, but it’s helpful for me to unpack what was useful and unique about each individual day.

• attending the Gnostic Mass and seeing my friends at the local O.T.O., including one who is left-handed like me and may be able to teach me how to knit.

• opening the blinds in my bedroom and watching the Fourth of July fireworks while lying in bed.

• eating a delicious salad with walnuts, green apples, and blue cheese.

• listening to my sister, who just got back from her honeymoon to three of the world’s most beautiful cities, tell me about priceless works of art and the green hills of Scotland.

• having a best friend in whom I can confide anything.

That’s all I can think of right now.

walking the path.

Another great post from the efficiently-named Rob’s Magick Blog. I am going to go out on a limb and say that it is my favorite magick blog. And I read a lot of them.

It’s important to note that the tree of life is really just a model of an abstract, and not a true spatial map of the universe. Each of the ten spheres are infinite in both space and size. Each one is near to each other. And the spatial relationships are simply the order which we decided to lay them out. If you’re in Binah and moving towards Kether, Chokmah is not to your right.

Qabalah jokes crack me up. This one made me feel like I did reading Lon Milo Duquette’s Chicken Qabalah. I had the great urge to share all the funniness with someone, but in order to explain the humor, you’d have to explain the entire Qabalah.

light and darkness.

Wrote 1200 words on Witch Light this afternoon. Had a three-way writing chat with Rinn and another writer. Strength in numbers. I hope the online writing group will become a regular thing.

My motivation to eat well is at a low ebb. I’m working at being good to myself nonetheless.

Image from Manly P. Hall’s Secret Teachings.

frangipani.

Today’s gratitude:

• Watching a movie on my couch, wrapped in a quilt, leaning against pillows I’d chosen myself. Because of the weather, I felt like it was the start of autumn, not summer.

• Listening to a live Tori Amos concert at Bonnaroo, archived and streamed by NPR. Rediscovering my love for her music, after a break of several years.

• The smell of my husband’s hair. Our carefree trip to the corner store. Seeing the dioramas he’d made for his D&D game.

• Taking care of my tomato plant. Repotting it, cutting away the yellowed leaves.

• Feeling like I am reconnecting with the goddess energy that is my spiritual home.

Tomorrow: I want to make myself vegetables.

gratitude.

Late night. I’m going to do a practice I see recommended everywhere: write down, at the end of the day, five things you are grateful for. Be as specific as possible.

• After a painful walk, remembering I only need to do the best I can.

• Researching alchemy for most of the afternoon. Learning the juicy details about the lives of Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel, and so on.

• The vase full of sunflowers on my kitchen table.

• Seeing Eclipse with Rinn and her sister. Letting myself get lost in the fun of it.

• Being missed by my husband while I was out.