#brightgnosis

[verdantlyviolet]

What do you find most exhausting about your practice? Conversely, what is the most fulfilling to you?

Lunar-solar calendar. It’s a pain to keep track of which causes me to lag behind a lot, leading to feelings of inadequacy etc etc

[verdantlyviolet]

Favorite memory so far from this week. Go!

My lemon tree grew its first fruit since it was planted in 2017! And they ripened this week!

[vine-black]

Favorite memory so far from this week. Go!

I got to visit someone I love. :>

Oh also the new smiling friends was pretty good.

[woolandcoffee]

Favorite memory so far from this week. Go!

This has actually been a week of real highs and lows (and it is somehow only Thursday and Friday is going to be packed, oy with the poodles already!). So, I'm going to cheat and share two favorite memories from the week, one a bit more serious and one a bit silly. First favorite memory is of my fiance being the most kind, genuine, and supportive person helping me to process some shit I've been dealing with and lifting me out of an emotionally rough place. He is such a treasure, and the way we support one another is so central to our relationship. No matter how low I'm feeling, he's there to hold my hand and help me through it. That's something worth remembering if you ask me.

Second favorite memory of the week actually just happened half an hour ago! I'm staying at a hotel for a work trip that is famous for it's live in ducks. Twice a day, the Duckmaster escorts the ducks to and from their nesting place to the fountain in the hotel lobby. It's always so much fun to watch the duck parade, and this morning was actually my first time seeing the morning parade. It's a bit silly, but so much fun!

[eldritchboop]

Favorite memory so far from this week. Go!

It’s been a dull week but the best is yet to come! A dear childhood friend is getting married this weekend and I am so excited to celebrate him and his new spouse.

And dress up pretty. That may be helping. I have a new cocktail dress and everything.

[eldritchboop]

What do you find most exhausting about your practice? Conversely, what is the most fulfilling to you?

I struggle a lot to maintain consistency (It's actually something I admire about watching your practice!). Some days it feels like far, far too many steps that I technically don't need to do and I just do not have the energy to do it. I think this is a general burnout problem, and I'm working on it!

The fulfilling part? I think it's seeing the results. When my flowers bloom, when my garden is lush, when the sky is full of rain, and I sit down with a meal that I made mindfully and it looks lovely. When I actually get to DO. It's a double-edged sword.

Basically, I need more time haha!

[woolandcoffee]

What do you find most exhausting about your practice? Conversely, what is the most fulfilling to you?

I love when you go on askbox sprees, the answers are always so fun!

In general, I think the thing that is most exhausting about my practice is that its something I'm almost always in the process of building. Yes, I am pulling from already established traditions, but because of the solitary nature of my practice, its something that I'm pretty much continuously constructing which can definitely be exhausting at times.

On the other hand, the way my practice helps bring me closer to divinity, creation, the body of the earth, the other amazing creatures I get to share this planet with, and myself is so fulfilling that it makes the wearisome parts worth it. My practice helps me build deep, sustaining connection, and I wouldn't give it up for the world.

Thanks for the ask!

[thegodthief]

What do you find most exhausting about your practice? Conversely, what is the most fulfilling to you?

Earlier, I had quipped that the short answer to both questions was the same: "Solitude." If you will grant me the indulgence of explaining why I answered thus.

It is exhausting working alone for damn near everything. The pandemic made matters worse, but this has been a problem for me from the moment I began stubbing my toe on the rocks along this path. Trial and Error™ is the hallmark of the practitioner, but when you don't have the ability to have your work peer reviewed, then the errors stick around longer and the trials have a heavier cost. I'm always hiding a part of me from other magic users while I wait to see which one of their DNI categories I'm going to fall into, this time.

What I noticed pre-pandemic is that eclectic magic users were very welcome, as long as you were eclectic in the right (read: popular and/or mainstream) way. There is a reason one of my first posts here so long ago was a rejection of sisterhood with other witches who were trying to claim some sort of connection for no other reason that I was considering if I was even a witch in the first place.

Here and now, in the long tail of the pandemic, I haven't tried to attend any in-person events or ceremonies. They all seem to fall on a weekday and are prohibitively far from me such that I'll lose more than just the earnings of the day. Not to mention, that I don't know the people putting these things together, nor the people presenting at the shindig, nor the area that the event is happening in.

Online, it is not much better. The groups I see in the few servers I lurk in are well established and have mutual chains linking within and without the online spaces. It feels like watching a group of kids playing double-jump and they have been playing so long together that they have their own rhythm for jumping in and out of the rope because everything about the game has been shaped into a pattern that suits them best. And here I am, clunky, uncoordinated, not presenting as expected, and the group leader is telling me to jump in anytime but the moment I do, I snag the rope and the game (read: conversation) just stops.

I don't question if that online space was meant for me. If it was, I wouldn't be fucking up the game. I question if I'm meant for online spaces, and have quietly taken my leave from most servers. (waves hand) I am not the content creator you are looking for.

This leaves me with very few people that I can be weird with. That I can ask a "deep question" to. That I have been trying very hard not to abuse with my single-minded focus, because one of the hardest things I have had to realize lately is that I am considerably Not Normal™ when it comes to wooish shit, because I don't think that even the Big Name Practitioners™ think about or try wooish shit as much as I do. Very often, their social media feeds (public and/or quasi-public) are 90% Everyday Life™ that you see for anyone else in that general area or demographic and an occasional Now This Is What I Call Magic!™.

There isn't anyone else like me, which is probably very good for everyone else, but is really fucking shit for me.

But, that same solitude is also very fulfilling for me. Because I do try the Weird Shit, and I do poke at the thing that most folks on my dash are concerned about poking at, and I get to work the ritual that takes advantage of my single-minded focus, and on occasion, I get shit done. It means that I don't have someone annoyed that I'm staying up late to do the thing for the tenth night in a row, or that when I put a jar in the fridge labeled "Not For Human Consumption" that it will remain where I put it no matter how many months days I go back to finish the rite I started.

It means I don't have to ask permission (or forgiveness) for deviating from the plan, because the plan was always going to be uncovered as I went anyway. It means that when I plan the purchases for the rite, that I don't have to add a "pinch" tax for when someone else decided to help themselves to the ingredients before the rite and takes just a "pinch" for themselves.

It means that I progress according to the work I'm putting in, and if something takes me a few years months to understand, then that's okay, and if someone takes me a few hours days to master, then that's also okay, and I'm not trying to force myself to work through my shit on someone else's timing, and that's hella okay.

But then, like the ouroboros, I wind up back where I started. I have this neat trick, this personal understanding, this alternative way of working this jar I picked up, and I want to talk about it with someone because that's one of the better ways for me to truly understand what I'm doing and what I've learned, but because this little thing I have doesn't have an accepted lineage, source, book reference, BNP recommendation, then I'm no different from amulet-chasers.

You'd think that having a personal blog of my own would make this easier. After all, having a space independent of advertisers and/or corporate interference means I can say what I want. But who is reading? Who was reading? With all that has happened (and continues to happen), my posts have dwindled to nigh nothing, and Tumblr remains the only space where I am active.

I don't know how to break the cycle.

This was very likely not the answer you were expecting. But it is the only one I have to give. My apologies.