Chrysalis 1 Witch's Journey

20/07/2024

I don't know who else needs to see this today...

Image Description: Image with a black background and to the viewers right the top of a single lite candle, the flame bright and steady. To the left of image in white lettering against a black background a quote "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Below the quote, also in white lettering is the attribution "Litany Against Fear by Frank Herbert"

18/07/2024

Sometimes, my 15 minute daily meditation session is 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation. Sometimes, it is 15 min. of sitting, eyes closed, relaxed, trying to get my brain to shut up and stop chasing shiny ideas long enough to meditate.

The thing I have learned to appreciate though is that whatever happens in those 15 minutes, the continued daily training of my attention and awareness is at least as important as any meditational bliss or moment.

03/07/2024

The bright light of the sun intensifies every color as the humidity clings to ones skin as soon as you open the door to the painful heat of the day. A languid bathwater warm breeze drifts past, the tips of the tree branches and palm fronds swaying slightly against the palest blue vault of the sky. Patches of brilliantly white cotton stuffing clouds like islands in sky. A heavy silence seems to be the rule of the day despite the background hum of distant traffic and every A/C in the city, interspersed with the occasional caw of a bird and the murmur from neighbors sheltering in the slightly less punishing heat of the shade underneath a tree or on a covered porch somewhere in the neighborhood...

7/3/2024 Wednesday The Day of 11:49pm Hour of MarsWaning Crescent Moon Friends, The bright light of the sun intensifies every color as the humidity clings to ones skin as soon as you open the door …

17/06/2024

Friends,

I am nearly to the end of my maximum of 30 days of daily mindfulness meditations and blogging about the experience, if not the end of my meditation practice.

It has been a very interesting journey and I have learned a lot about meditation and myself.

Today I had an epiphany and a realization about it.

Day 26 of ? of meditation & blogging! 14 minutes 39 seconds Friends, I did my usual preparations of coffee and ice water. I bopped into a couple of ongoing online conversations catching up here…

14/06/2024

Friends,

My meditation and blogging journey continues forward to its set limit of 30 days! Today I did a bit of a deep dive into the actual experience of todays meditation session.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

Day 23of ? of meditation & blogging! 14 minutes 39 seconds Friends, It is what it is, and what it is today is the rather amazing difference something vaguely resembling a proper nights sleep ca…

09/06/2024

HAPPY PRIDE everyone and remember 'reading' is fundamental!

Black and white image of a Threads App Post white text against a black background with the text reading:

"In a couple of different replies & threads I have suggested that nonsense takes floating about the discourse this Pride around LGBTQ+ Rights & Inclusion are the results of either right wing trolls or LGBTQ+ folks in desperate need of either history lessons, therapy, or both. I was wrong.
I forgot to include those whose own status or privilege within our current oppressive over-culture would be threatened by change.
Accuracy and comprehensiveness are important, even within 500 characters!"

09/06/2024

Friends,

Today’s session was much less frustrating than yesterday. I tried adding a new wrinkle and was not trying as hard for peace and timelessness and was more simply accepting the journey of today’s practice, so of course timelessness and peace showed up for a bit!

Day 18 of ? of meditation & blogging! 12 minutes 55 seconds Friends, Today’s session was much less frustrating than yesterday. I tried adding a new wrinkle and was not trying as hard for …

08/06/2024

Friends,

Mindfulness meditation can be like gently drifting on a warm sunlit raft though the warm waters of timelessness and tranquility. At times we are sitting on that raft silently breathing feeling time crawl over and around us waiting, waiting for something to happen, for anything to happen. Sometimes we are standing upon the raft in rough waters using the oar clutched in our desperate hands playing whack-a-shark with our thoughts. Today's session was a bit of options 2 & 3 from our menu.

Day 17 of ? of meditation & blogging! 10 minutes 4 seconds Friends, When we open our inner eyes and turn them inward, focus upon our breath and trace the river of those breaths through our body…

07/06/2024

Friends,
Thanks to a moment of inspiration I had a delightful new development in my daily mindfulness meditation and blogging project! Yet inspiration also comes with a back story...

Day 16 of ? of meditation & blogging! 14 minutes 17 seconds Friends, Today I decided to mix things up a little in my daily meditation and it has yielded some interesting results! This morning a…

06/06/2024

Notes Upon The Journey

6/6/2024 Thursday Day of Jupiter, 6:35pm Hour of Venus cusping towards The Hour of Mercury, New Moon

Friends,

Late afternoon flows into early evening the slowly setting June sun's golden hour obscured by gathering cotton drift clouds piling themselves high from heat and the cloying humidity. What had been an absolute and oppressive stillness to the air relieved only by the occasional ghost of a breeze transforms itself into warm blustering breezes at a moment's notice.

As the sweat gathers upon my brow, I am tempted to remain outside waiting for that quicksilver moment just before a driving rain where the air is suddenly cool and comfortable as the building clouds get ready to unleash themselves...

But the clouds are still gathering themselves, some staying put high in the sky, others closer to me leisurely sail by from the East.

Not yet, but very soon a storm will come ushering in the night of the New Moon.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

05/06/2024

Friends,

I have reached the end of week two of my ongoing daily meditation and blogging run! I am becoming a pro, or at least a procrastinator... read more below

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax/Geoffrey

Day 14 of ? of meditation & blogging!*end of week 2* 10 minutes 6 seconds Friends, So I slept very very deeply, until around 5 something am when I woke up and then puttered around online for a …

05/06/2024

A Holy Season
(C) 2022 Geoffrey Stewart

Pride is a Holy season.

Pride is about honoring the memories and works of our Q***r Ancestors, those of both body and spirit!

Pride is about recalling that in the face of oppression, thru societal & institutional neglect we have been able to come together as families of love & choice & blood, to come together as communities & coalitions, to come together as people of decency & character & many faiths, to not merely survive but to gloriously thrive!

Through art, joy, family bonds of blood & choice, through mutual aid, through laughter & often heroic perseverance through many trials & tribulations we were able to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice.

Perhaps most importantly, Pride is not only about reminding ourselves of what we have done as a community in the past, to Never Forget, but to also remind ourselves that….

We. Can. Do. So. Again.

02/06/2024

Friends,So my morning meditation & blogging misadventure continues... I am building a stable & sustainable practice, both in meditation & once again in my writing. It is such a joy to be in my creative flow again!

Day 11 of ? of meditation & blogging! 12 minutes 32 seconds Friends, *cue birdsong and uplifting music* Another morning where I have woken up feeling like at some point where I was sleeping Mr.…

30/05/2024

Notes Upon the Journey: May 29th 2024

5/29/2024 Wednesday Day of Mercury
10:15pm Hour of Mercury cusping towards The Hour of The Moon
Waning Gibbous Moon

Friends,

The Sun has set for the day. The Moon has hidden itself somewhere low in the seemingly cloudless night. The humidity is low and the night air is cooling from the heat of the day so even though it’s still quite warm if feels relatively cool. There is the slightest of breezes causing some of the treetops to sway slightly. The distant noise of traffic blending together and sounding rather like a river running in the distance, until it is punctuated by a horn or someone speeding and gunning the engine, or a plane or train somewhere in the darkness. The ground frogs are quiet and for now you can hear the faint almost electrical sounding humming/chirping of the free frogs somewhere in the distance.

A peaceful dare I say almost meditative calm settling over the world as Night deepens towards the Witching Hours. For myself the time between Midnight and 3am, each of them the classical folkloric Witching Hour depending upon whom you ask, are a time of magick, of power, of potential.

My recent spiritual rekindling has not happened entirely in a vacuum. The daily meditation and accompanying blogging have been a catalyst in this alchemical change going on within me, or perhaps the turning of a skeleton key sitting in an old lock as one begins to open a door? Whatever metaphor you like this renewed burst of writing and creativity, this reconnection with my deeper and higher selves has not happened all at once there has been a lot going into it. I was originally going to clumsily swing topics into some updates about my life based on my last brief check in....

(read the rest here)

5/29/2024 Wednesday Day of Mercury10:15pm Hour of Mercury cusping towards The Hour of The MoonWaning Gibbous Moon Friends, The Sun has set for the day. The Moon has hidden itself somewhere low in t…

29/05/2024

Life, work, and other endeavors... and a few creative blockages had taken me away from writing for a while but I am back with a new ongoing series of meditative misadventures!

Day 7 of ? of meditation & blogging! Friends, 10 minutes 22 seconds. Today was my first real challenge to the morning routine of our current project. I had fasting blood work first thing in the…

23/03/2024

"Sipping some coffee and savoring some quiet before the tumult of a busy day at work I take a moment to splash some Florida Water into the offering cups. A brief moment before the window-sill altar breathing in the perfume scent and seeking some small comfort with a moments connection with the Holy Powers. A micro-dose of magick and ritual.

These tiny magicks, snippets of ritual, they are the building blocks of greater things. At the same time they are also worthy and worthwhile practices all on their own. Bit by bit, rung by rung, we ascend or descend into our higher or deeper selves and through the layers of Creation. I think it can be very easy, sometimes, to forget the value of the smaller puzzle pieces in the art of Magick. Especially when we are starting out or renewing our practices or working to reclaim our path. It is the same with reclaiming any practice we have let slip away in the mad rush of days that life can sometimes be.

In the afterglow of the golden moment I opened todays post with I felt the urge to write *something*, to post *something*"

Read the rest here...

Friends, Sipping some coffee and savoring some quiet before the tumult of a busy day at work I take a moment to splash some Florida Water into the offering cups. A brief moment before the window-si…

05/02/2024

As they are wont to do, the horrors persist.

So do I.

If you are reading this, so do you. I am glad for that; the world is a much more delightful and interesting place with you in it!

Let's try to keep that going shall we?

03/02/2024

The time for us to do the things we need to do, the time for us to do the things we want to do, will not simply emerge in our lives like Athena bursting forth from the neck of Zeus. Much like a sculptor’s masterwork laying dormant in a block of marble we have to go digging for it.

03/02/2024

You are a Witch. You are capable of taking that energy, of reclaiming it from the contexts of fear and panic, and re-purposing it. You’ve done it before for others. Give yourself some of that same love and grace.

03/02/2024

Low panic is a state of deep and genuine need dear heart. What is that if not the place from which one petitions the Holy Powers?

06/12/2023

THIS JUST IN!!!

Billie Eilish loses 1/10 of 1% of her Instagram followers after coming out and so-called journalists flip their s**t.

24/11/2023

Getting into the Yuletide and Solstice Season Spirit with different Eclectic bits of music and song...

Lyrics to Get Into The Spirit :When I look around meAnd see what's going onI think about the time we hadAnd where we all came fromHere comes the dream that's...

31/07/2023

Friends,

The clock radio has shut itself off, after pulling me towards wakefulness after I had stirred in the minutes before its destined moment and a dutiful hour of sharing the latest news from NPR with me. After some stumbling and grumbling I have procured strong hot coffee and ice water. I sit and sip, alternating as needed. I breathe. I sit in silence for a time. Checking in with myself, body and soul. Relaxing and stretching and uncoiling from the tightly wrapped fetal position of the last few years...

Bliss and Blessed
Pax/Geoffrey

19/07/2023

Hmmm sometimes, I give myself good advice...

Friends,                 In these fearful times I keep finding myself doom-scrolling, drowning, desperately trying to stay…

12/07/2023

"So a while back The Cryptonaturalist posted something to their social media…"

"I found this profoundly touching and meaningful to me and my life's journey, so I shared it across a few formats. A friend of mine on Facebook took strong exception to this piece, feeling it dismissed hopelessness, reducing it to some sort of personal preference. They also believed it was belittling of suicidality somehow, and was painting hope as somehow being easy. I was a little surprised by this. For myself, as someone who grew up in a dysfunctional family, the son and grandson of alcoholics, someone who in their mid to late 20's seriously contemplated su***de on at least one occasion, someone who has wrestled deeply with periods of depression and self neglect over many years I had very much the opposite reaction to this piece..."

Read the rest here...

Friends, So a while back The Cryptonaturalist posted something to their social media… We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness.It saves us from ambiguity.It has an answer for eve…

25/06/2023

"We humans are story telling creatures. We look for patterns. We pass on knowledge and history and culture through stories and folklore of all sorts. Across centuries and cultures and many mediums this has always been the case. Stories have power. The power to inspire, to enthrall, to obsess and to distract. The stories we listen to, the stories we tell ourselves and one another can touch our minds and hearts. They can lay bare what is yet unacknowledged or unknown within our thoughts and souls. They can teach us lessons about ourselves, the world around us, our culture. They can affect change within us and within the world around us."

We humans are story telling creatures.  We look for patterns.  We pass on knowledge and history and culture through stories and folklore of all sorts.  Across centuries and cultures …

22/06/2023

Breathe in, breathe out,
Slowly, savoringly, sensually,
Struggling to rekindle a self long left languishing,

Breathe in, breathe out,
Trying to reel back in years of misplaced energy and passion,
Years of mistaking a workplace & job for a career,
Years of punishing self neglect.

Breathe in, breathe out,
Sip coffee & drink water,
Lean for a moment,
Into silence, into calm,
Scrying within for that spark,
Those embers that once were flames,
Passion, creativity, hope, magic, Joy.

Breathe in, breathe out,
Letting flesh... be,
Letting thoughts...be,
Letting my self feel and think,
Without running away with or from them.

14/06/2023

Listening to the Making Gay History podcast as I do some chores. Pouring offerings of coffee and burning sticks of Mugwort and Dragonsblood. Listening to the voices of folks who were at Stonewall the nights of the riots.

14 minutes in...

I am listening to the Bonus Episodes put out June 28th 2019 for the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. Craig Rodwell, owner of the iconic and now gone Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York City. The second half of this episode is an interview done a year or so after Stonewall and they are talking about the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day march..March... and to hear them discussing the idea that... Gay people (in this era Gay was often used as an overarching term for LGBTQ) everywhere should March annually in June for Gay liberation...

Bringing the voices of LGBTQ history to life through intimate conversations with champions, heroes, and witnesses to history.

09/05/2023

"Sometimes you have to take a step sideways, or a couple of steps back and then sideways, before you can move forward. Sometimes, especially on a swiftly tilting planet in tower times, one must take a breath or two and relax into the strange comfort of the fact that it is ok, to not be ok; and then continue with The Work."

Pax / Geoffrey

04/05/2023

A new Notes Upon The Journey post is up at Chrysalis! This regular feature includes updates on goings on as well as some musing on a recently encountered cledon!

5/3/2023 Wednesday Day of Mercury9:01 PM Hour of VenusWaxing Gibbous Moon Friends, The sky has been largely clear today. A warm day with delightfully low humidity has given way to a pleasantly cool…