The Song and the Flame

April 10? Seriously? It’s been that long since I’ve written? Eeeek.

I haven’t had much to report specifically, I suppose. Discussion at TC has really slowed… to a halt, really. I’ve tried to revive it, but it doesn’t take. Maybe it will eventually come back around, maybe not. I guess we’ll have to see. If it doesn’t, at least it’s given me a good kick in the right direction.

I haven’t taken up the major festivals yet, but I’ve been continuing with the minor ones. I’ve done pretty well so far, I think. I mean, what I’m doing is very simplistic, just doing some basic maintenance on my Apollo and Hestia shrines, lighting candles and pouring libations to both, and then doing the same thing for and saying a prayer to all the Gods collectively. (I don’t have a permanent shrine for this per se, though there is a small area at the front of the end table by the couch that at the moment isn’t being used for anything else but that, and where the candle I use for that lives.) And some weeks I don’t get it done on Sunday, and wind up postponing it to Monday. But I’ve been at it for two months now, I think? And only missed once entirely. Which is doing pretty well for me.

I’m divided on the problem of major festivals. One part of me says that I ought to hold off on them until I’m a little more firmly established with the weekly stuff, maybe have that fleshed out a little more. The other part of me says that if I don’t start it soon, I may never. Especially if the Reform Hellenic Recon SIG at TC never goes any further with what it’s doing.

I still feel like divination should be in there somewhere, although in what context and what form I’m not certain. Form, actually, I’ve got an idea on. Jenett over at TC (and I apologize profusely if I misspelled her name; TC is down at the moment and I can’t check, and I’m horrible with proper numbers of T’s and N’s in names sometimes for whatever reason) has described a “quote deck” that she’s made with 70 quotes mostly from books she knows and loves very deeply, which gives a reading on multiple layers. There’s the surface meaning, out of context, and the meaning in the context of the story, for starters… I’m thinking of trying something similar. Not exactly the same, but going the same route of putting together my own deck of stuff containing imagery and symbolism and stuff that I know I can connect with, rather than trying (unsuccessfully, to date) to learn other people’s systems.

Still don’t know in what context to use it, though, exactly. I suppose at least at first it would be good to just use it, even for a daily reading or something, just to get a good feel for it. But I don’t feel like, from a religious perspective, I need to continue using it that way once I’ve got the hang of it, and I just… don’t feel any particular desire or call to do that on any level, actually. But then when do I use it?