Changes

The blog's needed a name change for some time. I realized recently that part of my problem with it was that "Red Raven" no longer fit me. If nothing else, I stopped being a redhead. And as Manannán mac Lir has been formally asserted as my patron, I felt this blog should reflect Him a bit more. Thus the name change to Ocean's Ways.

The topics I cover won't change. My willingness to speak, however, is returning as I rise out of the mental hermitage and work on asserting a few things a bit more.

Sense of humor, anyone?

Some British neopagans are up in arms because Fox Studios paid someone to paint a biodegradable image of Homer Simpson in his underwear next to the Cerne Abbas giant. They seem to think it's an act of sacrilege and plan to work "rain magic" to make Homer wash away sooner. Since the giant only dates to the 1600's, their assumption that it was carved with blatantly pagan intent seems a bit strange to me. It's as if nobody ever committed graffiti until the invention of spray paint. For all they know, they're defending the sacred nature of the work of a pack of drunken teenagers. The fertility association it's gained would easily be explained by someone coming along after the carving, having a quickie in the chalk, and deciding the resultant pregnancy was because they did it in the penis instead of, say, the club. But why ask me? I'm just someone who's read Ronald Hutton and realizes the fact that some "ancient" traditions only started after the Christians showed up.

Doing the right thing

Posted to the Imbas mailing lists.

Imbas needs strong leadership. I'm incapable of providing that under current conditions. I should've realized this years ago, but inertia is a harsh mistress. If you'll pardon the Latin, mea maxima culpa. I could cite work, my husband's lack of same for several years, and various happenings in my spiritual life as explanations, but I don't judge them to be excuses.

That said, I resign as president of Imbas, effective immediately.

I appreciate the good will of those who are capable of sympathizing.

Those of you who are not are welcome to your opinions. I'm not claiming to be a victim or otherwise blameless, and I expect my reputation's not doing so well in some circles over the truth within what's been going on.

And if any choose to speak ill of me for this beyond the truth, may the gods bless you with what you deserve for it.

Energy, blog news and a bit of CR content

I have had an extremely busy life the last few months. I've also been entering into a phase where my inner development is drawing energy away from more public explorations of same. I'm physically healthy, finances aren't any tighter than they used to be, and the rest remains stable enough. I am simply in a headspace where if I don't spend the energy on what I'm doing in real time, I won't get done what I need to do. I know this is horridly cryptic, but it's as good an explanation as I can make right now. Those who need to know the details are aware of what I'm talking about.

On the administrivia front, I just switched this blog over to the Google-modified side of the Force. My thoughts of migrating to a different space are being set aside for now. Whatever energy I have for blogging will be better spent writing than making Wordpress sit up and beg. I think the swap has killed the comments I had at one point, which is a bit annoying. They were uniformly interesting and very nice to see.

In CR news, I want to notify anyone who's still paying attention and may not have heard from other sources that Erynn Rowan Laurie's written a book on ogam divination (Weaving Word Wisdom) that frankly looks to blow the concept wide open. I'm not sure how so many writers on the subject have failed so completely to look at the Auraicept na nEces and seen that not only do they keep getting some of the trees wrong, there is much more to ogam than trees and vines. Erynn has gone back and done that and more. It's an expansion of her booklet on the subject that she released in late 2005, and it will be available through Immanion Press in September. What I've seen of it has me very excited.

Not moving, not gone

I realized I could either spend the energy I have for this blog migrating it or updating it. I'm going to update it instead. The next one will be much less than a month from now and a lot more interesting, if not at least a fair bit longer.

I hope some of you are still with me. :)

Update

PantheaCon and other personal stuff of a good nature has been consuming my February. More on the move will be posted in March.

I aten't dead!

I started the migration process to a new server and had my January suck my free time dry. I may just declare it done during a free half-hour, switch the LJ RSS feed to the new URL, and run from there over the weekend. I've had more than one topic I wanted to discuss get back-burnered because I didn't want to have to re-copy the posts. It'll be rough on the new one for a bit, but it'll be there at any rate.