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It's October, which is a special month for Himself and me, and the artwork featured in this post is commission is a gift for Him for a personal festival. The artist is Tab Cole, and her deviantArt is here: http://www.ladysaishan.deviantart.com/gallery/ if you'd like to see more of her work.

In other news (?) there seems to be yet another godspouse controversy, which has generated posts here and there. I'm not sorry to say that I've been engaged in other activities and don't know what started people ranting. As someone who gets asked a lot about godspousery, I'll say this:

I'm writing today about Pagan monasticism, for a couple of reasons, one being that a colleague in my study group asked about how you can tell whether you’re called to clergy as a monastic, particularly as opposed to being a priest or priestess. The other reason I'm writing about it is because many Pagans are not aware that monasticism is a vocation in our faith, and certainly even fewer people outside Paganism.

“While in common usage the terms "nun" and "Sister" are often used interchangeably (the same title of "Sister" for the individual member of both forms), they are considered different ways of life, with a "nun" being a religious woman who lives a contemplative and cloistered life of meditation and prayer for the salvation of others, while a "Religious Sister", in religious institutes like Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, lives an active vocation of both prayer and service, often to the needy, sick, poor, and uneducated.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nun

I can’t find the same sort of reference for the difference between “priest” and “monk,” although I suspect it’s somewhat similar. It’s been a long time since I formally studied Catholic doctrine. However, I’d also say that in Paganism, the lines are a bit fuzzier in terms of monasticism. If we were using the strict Catholic definitions, I’m somewhere between a nun and a Sister – I have a large amount of most of my days dedicated to contemplative study, prayer, and meditation, but I also do a lot of community work online and in person. This is why I have “free-range nun” listed as my occupation. It’s sort of tongue-in-cheek, but it’s accurate.

"The point of Pride is our recognition of our own self-worth and the ability to live fully without reservation, allowing our true nature to shine outward while not giving in to the ego's temptation to compare ourselves to others. It is complete innocence, living fully and unabashedly in the moment." -Storm Faerywolf, on the Iron Pentacle

"Pride emerges when our will is engaged and we stand upright in our truth. We are often misinformed about what pride is. What is called “pride” in our culture is often merely arrogance, or what I call 'false pride.' Arrogance has its flip side in self-depreciation, which is just another face of the arrogant posture." - T. Thorn Coyle, Evolutionary Witchcraft

In today’s edition of Let’s Use the Iron Pentacle to Unpack What Binds You, I proudly (ha!) present: pride. It’s a loaded word, and often used unkindly against others. For my own unpacking purposes, I’ll talk about pride in my accomplishments, because ideally, we should be proud of them, no matter what they are, and saying, “Hey I’m proud that I accomplished this thing,” shouldn’t immediately cause someone else to infer, “I did this, you didn’t, neener neener.”

Or, why UPG is personal, and why no one else's gnosis should get in the way of your relationship with Himself.

Loki is many things - charismatic, cunning, ruthless, loyal, loving. When I was a newer Lokean (yanno, still had the new car smell!), I used to worry that the sweet Husband that I had was somehow a false Loki or a sockpuppet or whatever godphone error. Over time, I've come to realize that it's not that someone else is wrong about Loki being harsh to them, or that I'm wrong in understanding His relationship with me, it's just that I'm not living with their Loki, and they're not living with mine. I suppose some of my feelings on Him are colored by perspective - it's not as if I've never been asked to do something hard - I left my mortal spouse, uprooted my child, lost a fair amount of zie's childhood pictures and keepsakes, many of which I'll never be able to replace, but the reason why He asked it of me was of Nyd, and still done out of love, so I can't truly be angry with Him or feel it unjust.

Fun fact about me: I have a degree in speech-language pathology, and my concentration was in clinical phonology with a heavy emphasis on linguistics. I love studying the sound systems of a language and how sounds are tied to meaning. Today I happened across Forvo, a linguistic site that specializes in using native speakers to demonstrate how to pronounce words. It is single words and not sentences, but it's still helpful in developing an ear for nonnative speakers.

Of course, Forvo has a list of Norse mythology terms and many other languages as well. I hope that resources such as this will help preserve and protect against linguistic extinction. Every language has its own way of expressing a view of the world, and the language we speak undoubtedly shapes the way we think about everything in the inner and outer world. As Pagans we are explorers of other worlds, and so preservation of language is as precious as any other resource.

For those of you unfamiliar, July has become a festival month of sorts for Loki. Sirius, the dog star, is known as Lokabrenna - Loki's torch or brand. Late July/August is when Sirius rises, and so many of us celebrate Himself in the dog days of summer.

Today I'm making Him this: 

Greetings, gentle readers. July is known as a month for Loki, because in the dog days of summer, Lokabrenna (Loki's Torch) rises. For those of you unfamiliar, Lokabrenna is another name for Sirius. Himself is active this time of year, and many Lokeans honor Him this month by posting poems, recipes, or other devotional works. I'm starting my month with a recipe for Him - a meal of hearts.

Loki's lore includes the eating of hearts. Here in the modern US, we don't do a lot of cooking with organ meats, but for seidhr I experimented with cooking chicken hearts, because it was what I could get my hands on locally. I offered Loki some, and He was positively FERAL and overjoyed to get them, because it is such a rare treat. So I'm gonna encourage y'all to try offering Him hearts, and since people usually don't know how to cook organ meats (I had to play Hail Lady Google), I will offer my own experience. I started with this recipe, because it involved grilling the hearts, and if you're familiar with Gullveig in the sagas. you know that He found her heart smoldering in embers and ate it, and barbecue is the closest that I can offer to that experience right now. If I ever get my lungs to a state where I can go camping and not have to worry about campfire smoke messing with them, I'd like to attempt cooking a larger heart for Him the way you do a baked potato, cooked straight on the coals, rubbed with butter and herbs, wrapped in tinfoil.