Ecstatic Fire Baby in Search of Water: Devotions and Affirmations: Restructuring the Spiritual Landscape while coming out as gender-queer

**everything in this post is from my own UPG (unverified personal gnosis) and is not intended to be a statement on any religious path other than my own. **

If you've perused my blog at all for older posts, or happen to have met me and discussed my practices in person, you will probably see that during my kindergarten years with paganism I have jumped from witch (starting out with Wiccan, goddess movement oriented viewpoints) to polytheistic worship with slight recon bents, mixed with a general pantheistic leaning that I now realize was more animistic than anything really. In short my theology is a hot mess.

In my practice, I have cast circles, called the quarters, worked with the Fae and the Vaettir (land spirits), strove to pour libations in keeping with the Hellenismos tradition of honoring the Theoi, and journeyed into the Otherworld to figure out where the Vaettir of my homeland are leading me.

I have followed Odin to the well of Mimir to see if what I have forgotten that would fill my soul with the abundance of remembering who I am. The Raven flies and caws above, and so I wandered with the All Father as his one eye scanned the void's leylines my mortal eyes could not see.

On simmering summer nights with their bloated moons, I invoked Hecate and heard her dogs hallow the night, announcing her path on the roads between worlds as she moved through the dark.

Perhaps brashly, but without regret, I devoted myself to Artemis after a year of studying paganism and witchcraft, and without hesitation, She who is Queen of the Wild, in her voice which is like an avalanche and the breaking of a twig on the forest floor all at once, said, "Bow."

The Fae have driven me mad for the span of a few days when I made the romantic's mistake of wanting to live in their realm for but a moment. Dark Rabbit (a house spirit) was waiting for me when I came back to my body days later, holding it out like a coat for me to slip back into. You may have seen me at work during this time, walking down the street, but inside, I was shrouded in a fog of Fae hex. When I wore my own skin again, I realized how everyone else dressed it, painted it, and denoted it with lace. I realized, after wandering in Faerie and meeting my child self I lost years ago, that my own body was my home no more.

I, the most sexually lack luster person you have ever met, encountered Inanna, the goddess of sex and Queen of Heaven, in a dream, and after she returned me to my second born body once I completed the arc of her descent, I have been her servant ever since.

Freyja blessed a little dagger pendant for me, one that I need because now, for the first time, after fully inhabiting my queer body instead of suppressing it's wants (to be the flat chested, skirt twirling, two different earring toting devil child), I feel like I'm behind enemy lines when I walk out my own front door, and I will probably have to ask for her shapeshifting cloak to flee more than once.
As she cries riding in searching for her love, I cry searching for myself.

While at a writer's conference, Apollo came to me in the night, pouring his holy light into my head, refueling the Blarney' Stone kiss as he played the blues long into the night, with the neon green veined marble floor beneath him flickering as the ink flowed from my pen sweeter than wine.

One of Odin's sacrifices turned shield maiden led me to a nest where she bid me to roost on a spotted egg, which she later broke over my head. I am still reeling in the after birth.

Sorry if I drip yolk on you, my friend.

Innana let me sit beneath the Huppulu tree to write verse in her honor. Anzu molted on me, and I'm still not sure if his ruffled feathers smudged the ink to the point that the words came out right. (you can read that collection of devotional poetry here)

Artemis pulled me through Selene, the Fae Mirror Goddess through which their world manifests in ours (my UPG, not intended to overwrite any one else's beliefs). I still feel like I have a foot in both worlds, and her bow is taught, ready to strike me down should the fever of any one world burn my brain out.

Dionysus led me straight to the Maenad circle where they rebuild him out of his old parts each year. He said they can rebuild me too.

In short, this is a devotional post in honor of all the ways the gods, the vaettir, and the good neighbors have influenced my life in the time since I formally began my path a few years ago. If you had asked me ten years ago where I pictured myself now, I never would have imagined that I would be a journey work oriented, ecstatic witch, whose rituals and magic leads them into the Realms of Spirit & Faerie, and onto the Page as poet and story weaver.

But up until now, much of my time has been spent experimenting, researching, and investigating the traditions of the past and present to better understand the way before me. I felt a yearning, a spiritual bleeding of sorts when I left my craft for more devotional work (although I believe very strongly now that was a necessary part of my growth) and a similar loss when I realized I needed to focus more on witchcraft to help shape my own mind-body poetics and metaphysical landscapes in a way that resonated with me more truly than the traditions I tried to mimic verbatim.

Now, I realize I am more secure in my foundational understanding of where I stand in relation to the gods, the vaettir, the fair folk, and myself as a a witch. I think this has been shaped largely in part by my conscious recognition that I fall under the umbrella of gender queer. The body is the seat of power and for years, when I pushed down the need to analyze and reconfigure it's meaning in relation to the world, I was squelching the reclaiming of my own identity, which is the will's power.

From Aleister Crowley to the mainstream neo-pagan Wiccan teachings of today, the will has been acknowledged as the seat of the witch's power. And I refused for years to look at myself in Mimir's reflective pool, and so my will was denied a house in which it could do it's own work.

It's in this head space that I realize it was unnecessary to abandon my more devotional practices, those rooted in recon teachings of honoring the gods in the manner their own cultures recognized as the best way to worship them. In fact, now more than ever, it is vital to my spiritual work. I must be in harmony with myself at all levels as I transition into Ecco - in sync with the gods, the spirits, and the craft - if I am to walk in truth.

And so I have re-lit the altars of the Theoi, the Aesir, and Vanir, spruced up my craft altar with it's shelf for Inanna, and reconfigured my devotional layout to the first god-love of my soul, Artemis. I am keeping the cycle of reciprocity on going between the Good Neighbors and this house.

I have looked to the recon calendars of Hellenismos and the Asatru traditions to honor the gods , and promise to keep their hearth fires burning through out the year. A new liturgical calendar now rests on my wall so that I might always take note of their holy days, and continue to set new days aside throughout the year to recognize their work in this world.

Writing this blog post reaffirms to me the love, wisdom, and change they have brought to me, and so, it is with great pride and affection, that I now strive to give back proactively to them.

This post is my commitment to keep the fires burning in these sacred spaces so that the gods might inhabit and be recognized in my household.

Hail the Theoi.