The Hidden One

1. Preparation: make sure altar is set up and correct materials are handy
2. Purification: get a shower first, or at least wash hands and say a quick prayer
3. Invocation:  Light candle(s). Pray to Hecate using her epithets and mythological allusions
4. 1st offering: light incense
5. Building energy:  play hymn to Hecate,  casual meditation, more prayers and invocations
6. 2nd offering: pour libation to Hecate
7. 1st working: energy working
8. 2nd working: spellcraft
9. 3rd working: divination
10. closing prayer, extinguish candles

Energy work and spellcraft to be tailored to different phases of the moon.   

• Dark Moon is about chthonic energy, connections to the dead and underworld, banishing
• Full Moon is about celestial energy, connections to the wider world, manifesting

 Well, a lot has happened in the last few months.  Most I don't even care to write down. I have had good, I have had bad, mostly I have just had a lot. 

I even deleted this journal at one point, but thought better of it.  While there is seemingly no one on here but myself that isn't some hack fanfic writer, I need a  private space to organize my thoughts. 

But this is my spiritual journal.  Let me discuss spirituality.  

~~~

After years of trying to fit into a particular cultural or historical paradigm, I have decided I am simply going to be an eclectic pagan.  An eclectic pagan witch spanning three European cultures.

• Brigid is a goddess of poetry, smithcraft, and healing.  In folklore she is the goddess of hearth and home, and this is the main domain in which I revere her. Brigid of the Judgements is an aspect of her relevant to my day job.   
• Odin is the god of magic (especially runes), poetry, and of the ruling elite.   Odin allows me to connect to my mostly Germanic heritage, but his main benefit is as the god of runes.  A lot of my magic work is through runes. 
• Hecate is probably going to be my main deity going forward, at least of general magic work.  Hecate has so many layers I can't possibly list them in a short snippet, but she is most famous for being the goddess of witchcraft. Hecate is often syncretised with Artemis and Selene as a kind of uber goddess, and in later Greco-Roman times she was also syncretised with Persephone.  Hecate is also highly connected to deities and spirits of the underworld; this includes Hermes and the aforementioned Persephone. 

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My values are pretty much conditioned by modern occult philosophies and modern humanism. I have an interest in ancient gods but I am not inherently interested in resurrecting the ancient ethical codes of those societies. 

I reject Christianity in its totality.  I had a Satanic phase once which still influences me in thought, but online Satanism is so ridiculous I don't care to claim the label. 

Let me just say I am one of those Chaotic Neutral occultists who values individual freedom, expression, and development above all else. I will work with other people where I must, or where it is useful to me, but I am not interested in living my life for others.   

~~~

Finally, I have a few trusted individuals, pagans and ex-pagans, occultists and assorted witches, with whom I associate for both mundane and magickal ends. Beyond these few, however, I honestly have little use for the pagan community, whom I increasingly have come to see as a largely dysfunctional morass of lost, desperate, at times unsavory individuals.