Love!

Week 23

I wrote this Hub two years ago. Enjoy. Oh and my friend's list is now nearing 1000 lol

I love you! No really!

I love you. Three words that get said without being meant but which also scare the crap out of people so much, they run from them. What is wrong with telling someone that you have love for them? What can BE so wrong about being loved? And what about the many forms of love? Can we tar those three words with the same brush for such a magnificent feeling? No, well I don’t think so.

I for one have been emotionally retarded, unable to tell someone I have love for them or that I’m IN love with them. I source this to the fact we were not told as kids growing up, that is not to say we were not shown love but it wasn’t verbal. I shall leave my childhood issues there and move swiftly on to the now. Is it more acceptable these days to tell someone you love them? Scott Miles on BBC Radio One tells all his callers ‘love you’ and they say it back. I hear teens on the phone saying ‘love you’ after a call.... to me this is a strange thing. It’s not wrong, just a bit alien to me. I suppose I’m always afraid they may think I mean romantic love and that I want to ‘be’ with them, rather than just saying ‘hey you’re a funny sod, I love you for your humour and how you make me smile’.

Or maybe that’s just me and my underlying fear of rejection? Afraid to say those three words cos they might mean that person flees before your eyes. Been there, done that! This brings me to another poignant point – why do we give our love to the wrong people? At what point does the rose tinted glasses go on and we fail to see what that person is really like? Love like that is painful and dependant on the other person to validate you as a person worth loving. That’s not healthy love. That love kills the soul and pushes people over the edge – sometimes literally. We have all been there though and most of us are better people for surviving that kind of love. I know I have. I am faced with embarrassment the things I have done whilst being in love that in hindsight you recoil at the sheer cringe-worthiness of it all. Is that love though? It sure as hell feels like it at the time but once again, upon reflection it’s almost like an obsession party going on in your head and the other person isn’t invited! You know it’s true, be honest.

So how do you define love? It is the true meaning of life (or should be) in most spiritual and religious paths. I believe that love makes the world go round. Well actually it’s the gravitational pull of the Universe but metaphorically speaking, we all strive for love, we all want love, we all want to be loved - anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. And I’m not talking about romantic love either, although that is what most people secretly yearn for. If you look at any book on Inner Child, or psychology it all points to the part in our lives when we stopped feeling loved. That’s when we developed our neurosis, our inner demons that we spend years and lots of money in counselling trying to overcome. Simply it boils down to the fact that love was removed, abused or denied. Bad things happen at the hands of messed up people because they are part of a chain of events that damaged them. So they damage others and the circle goes on. At some point though, we have to break the chain of our cycles and free wheel into unknown territory. It’s scary as hell. Knowing that at some point ‘love’ has damaged your hearts and minds will make you wary to love again, to give love, to be loved, to feel you deserve to be loved. That’s where I find myself. I have suffered and survived that destructive aspect of love. But what I realise is that is not what love really is. Love is pure and without cost, it’s an energy that we can all tap in to – it’s Universal. Without it we die or feel empty and dead inside. Oh you know that’s true too.

We love our new shoes, we love our cars, we love our new gadgets and we declare it to the world. But why can’t we declare that we love a stranger for making us laugh when we were at our lowest? Why can’t we say ‘you’re awesome, you make me smile – I love you for that’? Why are we afraid to express ourselves with those three words yet tell the world wide web what we had for breakfast? We share such insignificant things on these social networks but we don’t really express ourselves do we? We don’t tell these virtual strangers that are now part of our friends list that they mean something to you. I tried to have a cull of my friends list the other day, at nearly 700 it’s out of control. But I couldn’t do it. Even though I have never met the majority of them, in their own ways, they have reached out to me, they have shared their lives, they have listened to my problems and rants on my status updates and they have liked my life, my images, my opinions and become friends. People I will never meet are not without significance and cannot simply be culled. I have discovered a rich and diverse culture of people with so many interesting variances that I am richer from the experience. I can guarantee that when I am down, someone will say something to make me laugh. I have done the same for others too.

I said on my Christmas Day radio show that we are all connected and we should all take the time to observe the world around us. People fall and need catching. I have fallen and been caught. By a virtual stranger I added on the back of a comment on someone’s status. I let that person into my life and out of the blue, she read my cry for help and rang me up. That was an amazing thing to do. I felt elated that a stranger cared to do that. I am that stranger too. I have love to give the world but strangely enough, I give little to myself.

Now that’s another can of worms! How many of us have self-love? How many of us deny ourselves love because we don’t think we are worth it? How many of us don’t love ourselves? Now come on, be brave. Chances are if you are overweight you don’t like yourself much. True enough for me. But I know that love myself, I will feel better about myself, I will lose weight. But I don’t. I look at myself in the mirror and think ‘yuck’ why would anyone want that? And that vicious cycle is what keeps the weight on. And you know what? Love put it on. It did, honest. When I was in love and happy with myself, I lost weight. When that person extracted and denied that love to me, I turned on myself and gained weight. That weight is emotional baggage. And it’s so hard to lose, maybe I should take it to Heathrow, they lose luggage all the time.

You know you don’t need someone to make you feel validated, to feel loved but it helps. There’s no feeling in the world more euphoric than being in love. We shine and glow with it. And then it’s gone....here we are back to co-dependence love. How do you break a habit of a lifetime? How do you banish those demons that haunt you? How do you go on to survive a broken heart – romantically, betrayal of a friendship, rejection? All of these are ugly things. Yet we are reminded in Universal love when we stand in awe at a glorious sunset, at a babies smile, at an impromptu hug from a friend ‘just because’, a phone call from a stranger when you are down..... this is love at work.

I love you because you are you. I smile at your words, laugh at your humour and inspired by your life and what you do. We are all unique. Love is Universal and fills us all. Pass it on. It’s just three words and world may just stop spinning if we forget that. The best thing my sister Rachael ever told me is that ‘you get the love that you think you deserve’ – truth hurts. If you don’t think you are worth it you will continue to attract negative relationships. Love yourself – go on give it a try. I will if you will.

Let yourself be loved. Until you do, the weight won't shift, you won't find your true love and even if you do, you won't feel you deserve it and wil repel it. The hardest thing to do is to break the habit of a life time. It's ok, you are only human after all. Was that an 'aha!' moment? I wrote this from the heart. I put it out to the Universe. Lets see what happens... thank you for reading this. I'm great at giving advice, I just need to heed my own - don't we all!?

Love really is all around. Look and you'll see it.

Keeper

Week 22

I was just looking for inspiration for this weeks subject, when the word 'keeper' popped in to my head. I'm not entirely sure I can put this into words, as it's a deep rooted feeling.  I'll give it a try though.

I'm staring blankly at the screen here.... how do I word this? Ahhhh!

Ok it's nearly an hour since I started this....

Connection with the land. Being it's keeper. Walking the land, looking at the woods, seeing the energies, feeling the land beneath your feet and feeling it light up around you. You open up. You SEE. You FEEL.

For me, the place I'm Keeper of is the woods in the village where I grew up.  My meditation place is those woods, even though it's 200 miles away now. I grew up playing in those woods. I know all those trees, all those dells, all those paths and the secret places to sit under the big holly trees.  It's part of me.

I was trying to find the Terry Pratchett quote about Tiffany Aching but can't find the exact words. It goes something like this: She is part of the land, she tells the hills who they are and they tell her who she is.

That. It's like that. Memories of walking the Songlines sneak in .. and back out again. I will rediscover that memory when I'm meant to.

We all have that place we feel we are Keeper of.  Where we are connected to. More than other places we love.

Here's some pictures of my place. Those are all the words I can think of right now.. but you get the gist.

So peaceful here

Lightning oak - has since been chopped down.
I have a section of it which one day I may turn into a bowl..

The huge horse chestnut trees shadow

My old lady hornbeam. A really old one too. Diseased and since chopped down.
I collected drop wood from her for wands and staff

Under the holly trees canopy you can hide

Bridge over the 'river' it's actually a flood plain

Karma

Week 21

I'm well behind again! I've been chewing this over since my Justice blog. Then this month, something happened to my sister that really set my gears grinding and thinking about Karma. It's only thinking out loud really, I'm just going to put fingers to keyboard and see what happens.... much like my other blogs lol.

What is Karma?

From Sanskrit karman ‘action, effect, fate’.
noun
(in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.
informal
good or bad luck, viewed as resulting from one's actions.

I had a look on Google to see what I could find on what Karma is and there's endless popart dedicated to it. There are also Hindu and Buddhist websites that discuss it at length. Karma is very much part of the Buddhist way of life but it does say that Karma predates Buddhist teachings and originate in India. In the Hindu faith, there are three types of Karma. I'm not going into that here, but by all means, go and explore the definitions for yourself.

Keanu is a practicing Buddhist

So. Karma. If you're not Buddhist or Hindu, you pretty much think it's the answer to everything. Someone screws you over? Never mind, Karma will kick their arse. I think there's a bit of a cross over with the ol' three fold law too going on some of the stuff I found in Google images. Karma is seen as payback, as revenge for bad deeds done. It's a term banded about by every Tom, Dick and Harry and I doubt any of them really know what it is.  They just think it's something they can curse at you 'I hope Karma kicks your arse' and the like.  That's not what it's about. Not even remotely. That kind of attitude will only serve to have YOUR arse kicked by Karma for wishing ill right? That kind of attitude isn't a solution to the issues that have arisen.  YOU are responsible for your own actions. YOU are accountable for your own deeds. YOU get what you think you deserve. If you attract wankers in your life, think about why that is?  Sure, there's plenty of times in my life where I've been screwed over by people but I've had to look honestly at my part in that. What did I do to attract them? What lessons did I learn from it? Will I keep having to learn those lessons until it sinks in? Yeah! Cos that's Karma too.

In one script I read, it says about one person being very rich, whilst another suffers poverty. It says that Karma meters out a balance.  It's a nice idea. But lets face it, how many people die every minute from starvation, murder, poverty... ? How many of the rich seem untouchable? If Karma was kicking arse, it would start there right?  Alas that is not the way of this world.

Karma isn't Justice. Karma is Balance. Karma is Universal Law. Karma is Newton's law of Cause and Effect. What Karma isn't, is your bitch.

A warning from my own personal experience. I may have mentioned this in an earlier blog. When I started on this path a decade or so ago, I was told about Karma/three fold law. At this point in my life, I went through more in six months, than most do in two lifetimes. I wanted those people to pay for what they had done to me but I believed that by wishing them ill, it would bounce back to me. I really turned myself inside out with this! I was already in a bad place, but thinking that I'd get more unless I thought fluffy thoughts, made it a whole lot worse, caused a full nervous breakdown.  I firmly believe that if someone has wronged you, that you tell them. If someone harms you, tell them.  It's natural to want that person to suffer what they've done to you. When you do magical workings, you reflect back to the person, what they've done to you, the idea being that they will receive the pain they inflicted upon you.  This is why it's best not to hex people when you're angry and hurting.  You really have to think about it and that takes introspection.

Holding on to past hurts really does eat away at you too. Don't do it. I wish I could heed my own advice but I think I'm better at letting go of things these days, than I was 3 years ago.  A friend once told me 'that guy who just cut you up on the road, the one you're ranting and raving about, the one you're still pissed off about an hour later, he's already forgotten you. Don't hold on to it.'  I'm still not too hot on the forgiveness business. I will let it go, try and put aside the anger and move forward. I never forget though.. which means I've not really forgiven them doesn't it?  I'm still working on that lol.

Karma isn't going to beat the shit out of you for being a wanker. Karma isn't going to give you the winning lotto numbers because you're down on your luck. Karma isn't the answer to your problems. Look inside, you'll find them but you really have to look inside and be HONEST, the only person you'll be lying to, is your self.

Peace y'all

Justice

Week 19

JUSTICE

1. The quality of being just; fairness.
2. a. The principle of moral rightness; equity.         b. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness. 
3. a. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.                                b. Law The administration and procedure of law.
4. Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason

Is it me, or do pagans feel outraged more about injustices? The smallest slights against them and it's end of the world stuff, citing lack of honour etc etc.  Not just me? Good.. thought it was.  Is it because Playgans like to fantasise about the olde days of yore, of chivalry and the such? A lot of them do live in a fantasy world. So maybe it's only the natural progression of their life to be outraged about injustice to them. By outraged I mean talking a lot about (and by talk, I mean slag off to the nines) the wronger and not actually doing anything about it. 

When I started this particular blog 3 weeks ago, things were kicking off in the little world I occupy.  Maybe it was right to leave it until after it had all settled to finish what I was blogging, or it could have been a very angry soap box session.  Ok, it WILL be a soapbox but now with some more perspective and calm thrown in lol.

People come and go in our Warband. They blow in with big intentions, even bigger declarations of respect, get branded with tattoos, tabbards, the whole nine yards and then blow out again with even bigger noise on their way out.  Usually with their noses in the proverbial slings citing some bullshit reason why they now hate us.  Having been around in the Warband for the last decade, I've seen them come and go.  Those who stick around, work quietly in the background, not looking for any kind of glory and they are ALWAYS there when they are needed most.  Quality, not quantity as they say.

Now the last lot that just left were just unbelievable. 'We don't do gossip' and yet.. that's right, in spite (spite being the operative word!) of their claims of wanting to leave quietly, they are still kicking off about us being big meanies.  Now, I wouldn't mind but they won't even say what it is about! How can you make things right, when they ALL won't discuss it? How can you amend any wrongs if they won't tell you what you've done wrong? How can you move forward, without knowing what's holding you back?  Now as far as I'm concerned, I tried for ages to mediate with them and got the biggest loads of wankybollox you've ever read... big long posts that contained absolutely NO explanations to why they were pissed off.  Hail and farewell, says I....  and then when we didn't plaster it all over social media and slag them off, guess what? Yes, that's right, they started and they told enough people of their 'hurt' that others felt bad for them and then also started.  Shitstirring I believe it's called. So I posted up their own words and then some said 'aha' and realised they'd been lied to and some didn't.  Victim mentality at it's finest.  I have no patience with people who play the victim.

If it's not known by now, know it now... I keep all the messages, emails and screenshots of the shit I have sent to me.  I will quite happily post it up as proof that you are talking shit. I do not tell people who they can and cannot be friends with and I don't encourage others to unfriend others because of a fall out I've had. People can read both sides and make their own minds up.  I have quite a collection now of these screenshots and emails going back years.  I keep them because I need too.  I don't like having to argue with people I previously thought highly of.  But it seems I do indeed have a target on my back and you know what? This warrior will fight back, especially when I know I'm right. Sticking up for myself and my friends is Just. Anyway, as I've seen, they all come back eventually eating humble pie.  They are welcomed back every time but that doesn't mean I don't remember the poisons they poured in others ears. I watch. I wait. I hope they got it out of their systems and I don't have to add yet more screenshots to my folder.

So Justice.  The last word in our Oath we take under the Sword of Britain - Truth, Honour and Justice. They are words I live by.  I even had them included in my paint job on my bike. They are not words I will just discard like many others have done before.  You don't throw away an Oath like that because you don't like Arthur and the Warband anymore.   Those who can, never truly believed in the value of those words they swore to uphold.  You can throw away the friendships you made when you were declaring we were your family, your brother and sisters; you can turn your backs on those who loved you but the Universe is watching and you will be measured in Time for what you have done to others.  Is that karma? Nah, I think karma is something different but I can't exactly put my finger on why it's different... not yet anyway.

From my own personal experiences, I know that wanting Justice for wrongs levied against you and yours, can soon turn into holding on to those traumas and letting them consume you.  Some times you just have to ask the Universe to serve up it's own Justice and move on with your life.  Hindsight is a bitch!  I do hold on to these things, I do feel them deeply and I do take them personally.  Is that a character flaw on my part? No, I don't think so. I think it's a character flaw for those who take advantage of those with good natures who welcome them to their heaths and heart.  I know what personal trauma is, real nasty horrible stuff, and what these people are doing now, doesn't really register on my scale of giving a shit.  It's as simple as that.

I am nice right up to the point when they cross the line... and then they wish they hadn't.  No, not hexing or any of that. It's quite possible to go through life without threatening people with magic.  If you can't use your own Truths to fight your battles, then you shouldn't be commanding a damned thing, let alone magical intent. As Granny Weatherwax says, you might know how to do magic, but that doesn't mean you should.

Oh and before I go, I just remember this pearl of wisdom someone shared once.

When you point the finger of blame, three fingers point back to yourself. Think about it... even me lol

I

Week 18

From a very young age, you develop the sense of 'I', who you are, what makes you an individual. Your character develops and you become your own person. This is before you're walking.  You don't stop developing who you are, as a kid, as a teenager, as a young adult, as a parent - til the day you die. The friends you have, the people you love, the music you enjoy, the places you go... everything is every day changing in who you are.  More so when you're made aware of your spiritual path, be it a religion or spiritual path, it applies to it all.  I can only discuss my own experience of this though.  A bit about where I am now and who I am.

I recall cycling down a hill in town and thinking 'what religion should I follow'. I'd left school (I was about 17), I knew about the main religions and what they get up to, so I went through each one in my head, weighing up the pros and cons and if any of them felt right.  They didn't.  So I wasn't anything. I'd been raised in a Church of England village, went to a CoF school, had been Christened and brainwashed by the school and Brownies to go to church every Sunday, to sing the hymns in class and have a Christian view of the world.  I still think I'm more Christian than those who claim they are lol.. but that's another story.

Anyway..... nothing fit. It wasn't until 1998 that I found spiritualism but it still wasn't quite right. Then a couple of years later, the thing I felt, the thing I believed in was given a name - pagan.  Of course you later find out that it was a derogatory name and was an umbrella term but it was an identity, a place to start on the path. And boy was that path a twisty one!  This was around the time of Charmed, so finding books on the subject of paganism was a tad fluffy and targeted the teenage market.  That was another thing, this became fashionable.  Everyone was suddenly a witch, wearing the jewellery and outfits and claiming ancient heritage - which upset those on those paths. It made a mockery of their journey, or so they cried.

At the time, online forums were the place to go to learn, to meet like-minded people and meet at events. I certainly learned a lot about people! I met some good ones, whom I still keep in touch with and some absolute (insert expletive of your choice here) who still rear their poisonous Hydra heads when you least expect it.  I learnt a lot about myself but most importantly, I learned what I am NOT.  I discussed in my Blue Crow blog about how I found my name and what it meant. I have covered part of this before.  I learnt it was ok not to know where you are going on your path, what you're doing or how to do it. I learned that you don't have to know these things, just let your heart guide you.  I haven't gotten anything out of a book to help me in this way, it's all come from within my self and the world around me.  I learned that in spite of these people out there who will shoot you down, who make themselves out to be some kind of forum-messiah, that they only taught me what I didn't want to be - a know-it-all fuckwit.  In hindsight, and it is in hindsight because I beat myself up about 'why' for years, I do not need their approval to be who I am.  They are keyboard warriors, they don't do anything constructive and they poison people. That said, they did teach me those lessons and for that, at least I should be thankful.  What am I saying?! Did I just hear myself saying I was grateful for being treated like shit? No way... well yeah, I did lol.  Remember my words from the last blog (what do you mean you didn't read it! lol) ...

"Every now and then, you have to go back through the door of your past and see exactly what brought you to the present -where you are now. By looking at your past in this way, you can recognise how much you have truly grown as a person, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. The doors of the past should never be shut, as they will inevitable seal the progression of your future self."

So as hard as those lessons were, they are part of who you are now. Slam the door on those (insert expletive here), learn from it, move on. Keep screenshots!

My best advice to give those starting on their paths or even those halfway up them is this:

Be yourself. 

Go where your heart takes you. 

Listen to your gut feelings, 
they are rarely wrong.

Like attracts like

It's ok to be you - be an individual

You are not a sheep or a shepherd

Think for yourself - not others.

Never let anyone make you feel,

that you don't deserve what you want.

Be you.

Avebury sheep... no really it is! 

You never stop learning. You never stop finding out who 'you' are. You are you. It's ok to be you...

If ..........

Week 17

I don't have an 'i' but I shall share this poem that starts with an IF.. I wrote it about a decade ago. My brother and I had gotten into a debate about the past and it not existing anymore. I found myself writing this.

                              ----------------

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear as it is infinite. - William Blake

There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors of perception. - Jim Morrison

It has always seemed to me possible that by taking the appropriate drug, I might so change my ordinary mode of consciousness as to be able to know, from the inside, what the visionary, the medium, even the mystic were talking about.

But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.  He will be less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries forever, vainly, to comprehend. - Aldous Huxley

Every now and then, you have to go back through the door of your past and see exactly what brought you to the present -where you are now. By looking at your past in this way, you can recognise how much you have truly grown as a person, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. The doors of the past should never be shut, as they will inevitable seal the progression of your future self. - Blue Crow


Need I say more....? No really, do I need to? lol... that's your lot, for now.

Horned God

Week 16 .... I know, I know! It's really really late... soz!

I have a real thing for the Horned God.  My first encounter with this figure was in 2000ad and Slaine, I think I was about 11 years old.  I used to read the comic at the paper shop before going off on my rounds and the customer always got a well thumbed copy. Sacrilege, I know! hehehehe.  As an adult, I continued my love of Slaine and his Celtic warrior world and the goddess stories, well before I knew the term 'pagan'. So it's fair to say that the horned one is well established in this life time.

In the stories of Slaine, he does the work of the goddess and in later tales, travels through time, becoming part of history, fighting the bad guys who are defiling the goddess ie the land.  I've since read many Celtic mythology books and can see that Pat Mills (the writer of Slaine) has really done his homework. So those comics I read as a kid, were the real tales of ancient myths.  Love it!  Add in a healthy dose of sex and extreme violence (not at same time!) and I'm a happy puppy indeed.

He didn't think it too many

There are many interpretations of our Horny one and I happily admit that I'm no scholar, so can't debate it really. I'm just a girl who loves what he embodies.  Why? It's raw nature, it's base, it's it's it's life! That's the best you'll get out of me. I did have a Google on the subject and found some interesting sites you may wish to look at. Who is Cernunnos? - some history and debate about origins etc in there. Also check out Celtic Myth podshow - loads of links on the horned god and tonnes of other stuff.

I was sitting up my woods a few years back and was meditating. I was given a vision of a black stag human head in the big beech tree opposite. I'm no artist but I tried to transfer this vision from my mind to paint and this is the result.  The shapes of the branches/roots were symbolic to the vision I had, all to to do with the tree of life.

said it wasn't brill ...

A few years later, I asked my friend to tattoo his interpretation of this on to me. This was the result:

Crow outline was already there... first sitting

Gonna get some more added to this

And then there's my motorbike......

Slaine travels through time, in this saga he's Robin Goodfellow - spirit of the wood

Petrol tank

Side of the tank

Mudguard

Seat unit/tail piece

Damn right!

So there you go... not very informative but if you want that, click the links in the text.