Coronavirus affecting daily life, and enter Pagan studies in Glowing world

Wow, ok. So, there are major cities on lockdown. People can’t leave their homes for anything other than “essential” things like groceries and the doctor. Bars, restaurants, nightclubs, retail stores, and other shops are all closed for the next three weeks. Kenny and I went to Costco today, and we stocked up on things like canned tuna, frozen berries, shelf-stable milk, and frozen orange juice. Thankfully, we have about five rolls of toilet paper at home, because every last roll is gone. Lysol, gone. Paper towels, gone. Gloves, gone. Kleenex, gone. I ordered some nice cloth handkerchiefs, in case one of us gets sick, because we were really low on Kleenex. We were able to find two boxes of Puffs at a different store, which surprised me. It’s shocking.

I’m glad people are taking this seriously. When we got home, Kenny and I took off our gloves, washed our hands, and wiped every food item down with 70% alcohol. I can’t tell if my throat hurts because it tenses up when it’s stressed, or because I’m getting sick.

On Saturday Brent invited me over for boardgames, but then told me that his daughter has a fever and that he would understand if that made me change my mind. It did, I stayed home.

I want to get high, but my new job starts on the 30th, and I’m not positive that they won’t do a drug test on the first day of training. With the job that it is, it wouldn’t surprise me.

I danced along with a sword dancing instructional video today, and that was nice. I wanted to get at least 30 minutes of physical activity in there. I’ve been listening to audiobooks too.

Oh. I’ve been studying Paganism. It seems to be less of a religion and more of a philosophy that we’re all interconnected, and that we all have the capacity to make good choices. It’s less about “saving” and more about taking responsibility for your own beliefs and behaviors. Christianity taught me that I was born “wretched,” and that there was a heaven and a hell and if I didn’t believe that Jesus could save me, I’d be punished forever. It sounds so weird when I lay it out like that.

Pagans might believe in an afterlife, or not. They don’t particularly have a stake in anyone following the exact beliefs that they do. It’s more about your own journey. What goals do you have? What limiting thoughts do you want to get rid of? What skills do you want to work on? The book I read has more questions than answers. I love it.

Paganism is WAY more like science than I anticipated. You’re encouraged to write a journal. Record how things are going. What you tried out. What didn’t work. What kinds of things are you working on? This way, you can look back later and see how you’ve grown. It’s about spiritual growth. I didn’t really understand that concept before. With Christianity, you generally pledge that you believe every word of a book that you haven’t read yet. Then maybe as you go along, you read it over many years. And if there are things that don’t make sense or contradict each other, all anyone will tell you is “god works in mysterious ways.” The idea is that god is so big and so spiritual and so incomprehensible that as a puny and inferior human, there’s no way that we should try to understand.

Paganism says, write your own book. Read any book you want. Get ideas from any culture you want. Do whatever you want. Maybe don’t harm anybody, because we’re all so connected that you’d just be hurting a part of yourself, but other than that, it’s all fair game. But also, it’s up to you to decide what “maybe don’t harm anybody” means. Is self-defense ok? What about eating animals? What about plants?? And it doesn’t answer any of that for you. I love that.

I went to a moon circle ritual at Bailey’s house last Monday. We “called the quarters” by acknowledging the four cardinal directions. We “raised up energy” by chanting and playing unique instruments. We did “transmutation” by writing down things that we wanted to let go of, and things we wanted to bring into our lives in the coming weeks. Then we burned the papers we wrote them on in a tiny cast iron cauldron. It was so cool that several days later I set up my own little altar with objects representing the four directions and had my own mini ritual/meditation session on my own. It was lovely. A few days after that I purchased a small altar cloth, so that when I create the space it’s more focused/sacred seeming. I also got a mini cauldron, and I’m very excited about it. Watching flames take over my written-down fears, a la voodoo, is just super neat. The cauldron and cloth arrive next Tuesday.

I don’t think I want to wait that long for my next little session. Last time I just tried to send some healing energy and connectedness feeling to the whole world. I especially focused on the East, because that’s the element associated with water. We need healing, cleansing of the water in us. The water droplets we breathe out spread the virus, so that needs to heal.

More important to me than whether or not my thoughts actually telepathically perform medicine on people, is the focusing of my mind on pulling in whatever resources will help. If I tell my mind “here’s the goal– people healing. Let’s do what we can to help,” then it takes me out of the helpless and isolated mindset, and into focusing on what I can control. Can I make someone smile online? Will it help their immune system even a tiny bit? Can I encourage folks to stay home, and set an example? Can I make sure I’m washing my hands, social distancing, doing whatever I can to help? Yes. So I’ll do that. It’s less about spells and magick to me and more about orienting my mind in the direction that I want it to go, and making room for the emotional energy to do the physical work that will help change things. It’s the nature of exponential growth that every single person matters. It’s huge. It’s a big responsibility, and it saves lives. And if that’s magical, well ok.