Well now it’s been quite some time since I last logged in here, let alone actually post something. Part of it is due to the world going absolutely nuts and I’ve been sucked into it, and the other part is being unable to do any sort of pagan anything due to housing issues. I was basically living on the basement floor on a mat for 2+ years and as anyone who’s dealt with transient living knows how soul-sucking it can be. I couldn’t feel a damn bit of connection to anyone or anything, just a zombie working all my waking hours, eating constant fast food from always driving everywhere, and dealing with the weight of the world on my shoulders. I couldn’t even focus my attention to read anything more than my facebook feed.
Then 2 years ago I met my now girlfriend in the January just before the pandemic hit the US in full force. She was a dairy goat farmer who wanted to get into a homesteading lifestyle and had no problem with me being pagan. See, I had wanted to do some sort of small farm or even an urban farm lifestyle for many years and past relationships didn’t support that. Called it stupid, waste of time, and with my job situation being what it was I knew I wasn’t ever going to actually earn enough to buy land and a house to do so anyway. But still, I dreamed, and honestly I still think I’m dreaming, that this isn’t real.
You know what she ended up doing that first year we were together? We moved into a new small farm in a lovely area, and she gave me sheep for my birthday and quail for Valentine’s Day. Yes, sheep. I got to skip over the chicken math entirely and went right into the animals that sustained my spinning hobby for the decade prior. Now I raise 2 breeds of sheep on this farm alongside her goats and honestly, I can’t imagine my life without them.
But you know what else happened? I saw the stars. I felt the seasons. I became part of the yearly dance that encompasses the entire planet in the seemingly endless variety of ways. I felt all of these things I never could feel when I was living and working in the cities and suburbs, working inside constantly. I felt my paganism come back, and be ever present in my life rather than being something academic to study and preserve.
I still haven’t done formal rituals despite being able to now, haven’t yet felt the need to. My magic is in processing the wool to turn into a source of warmth wrapped around a loved one. In speaking to the moon and stars every night for easy births and protection from coyotes. In giving thanks to the old trees on the land for carrying us through drought. In preserving food to carry us and our animals through the next year.
Things aren’t perfect of course, I still have to deal with job issues and the stress of dealing with human stuff like taxes and health concerns. But for the first time in my life I feel like I’m where I’m meant to be. And for the first time, my paganism feels the most real too. I can’t describe how freeing it is to experience this.
I don’t know what direction I’ll be going in the future on this blog. I still follow the same basic framework with the seasons and worldview, those haven’t really changed, even if I don’t do as much physically for them. I’m also not sure how much detail I can give regarding the farm experience either, due to the heavily Christian nature of agriculture in the US and the financial consequences thereof. I’ll have to see what can work out, but in the meantime I’ll still keep the blog available for the past information to be useful to others.
Along the River 