God is a flower.

[changeling]

I'm going to get my ear pierced today. It's something I've wanted to do for some time – six months in a conscious way, and longer in a vague maybe-some-day way. It's something I want to do for religious reasons. It seems funny, typing that. I'm more used to things like "Jews don't eat pork, for religious reasons" or whatever. I associate it with the mainstream monotheist religions, which I am most emphatically not part of. Lots of people use the word "spiritual" as a replacement, but I see – rightly or wrongly – spiritual as being a very personal thing, a connection between you and Everything Else, the Universe, the Collective Divine. That's not right either. It's religious. I'm a polytheist. It's not something I necessarily talk about much, or feel comfortable discussing with people other than my close circle. I feel judged, as though it's so very last century to believe in more than one god. I feel backward. I feel pagan (haha). I especially felt funny talking about it when Tania (and, in theory, Nikki) from morris have just friended my journal. They're the first in my not-quite-bosom friends to read my journal for some time, as old friends fall away, or stop using LJ. I really just didn't want to be the "weird one" (well, "ones"; once again Steph and I are apparently inseparable in others' eyes) at morris, something that Marilla reassured me on Sunday (when I walked into an immovable object quite hard) is quite hard to be.

So. I'm a polytheist. I believe in a lot of things that I don't really expect other pagans to believe, let alone others who believe in less immanent religions. I am going to get my ear pierced as a devotional act to Bast. Today I have shucked my usual trousers, and am wearing a skirt as a devotional act to the Lady Frigga (who is both a seer and a woman of handicrafts), who I am asking to bless the embroidery I've been doing. And the embroidery I'm doing is a spiritual work – it's part of a divination system that I'm hoping to learn. It felt right to make the Map first, rather than relying on a computer print-out copy.

There you are. It shouldn't have felt so brave to write about this, which is only one of the many ways I'm deviating from the usual, but it did. And I'm glad I wrote it.

Comments

[lycaonia.livejournal.com]

You mentioned a divination system that you are doing embroidery for. Which system is it? I'd be interested in having a look as I'm getting back into divination after a break.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Well, calling it a divination system is a bit of a misnomer. It's more of a diagnostic system. It uses the runes, so I suppose you could just call it a riff on a theme.

[jolly-oddness.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I have no particular spiritual beliefs whatsoever, but I still believe in spiritual acts - embroidering and piercing included. Though you call yourself a polytheist and I call myself agnostic, we believe pretty similar stuff. Erm, that just excited me for a second there and I had to say :)

Good luck with your embroidery!

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I think there are a lot of people who wouldn't ascribe to a religion or particular set of beliefs who still have personal beliefs like the belief in spiritual acts. It's nice to have that in common with someone who may not follow the same path as you. It makes me happy.

Thanks!