spiralthicket
Newbie
Canadian Branches Gaelic Roots
Posts: 15
Pronouns: She / Her
Religion: Gaelic Polytheist
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Post by spiralthicket on Jul 23, 2015 17:07:24 GMT -6
Also bring house plants inside is a great idea, I'm sorry to hear about your struggels Alec. I know it can be hard feeling with phobias and mental illness. But you are being so brave going out and trying, and I think bringing plants in is such a wonderful idea. I know I did when times tough and I needed a little green in my life.
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Post by Allec on Jul 25, 2015 18:57:49 GMT -6
My poor little bonsai is struggling but living. My baby feet on the other hand...oiy...I couldn't keep up with it x.x So it's outside now, kinda just...barely making it.
I suck at gardening x.x
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Searlait
Junior Member
Posts: 63
Pronouns: She/Her
Religion: Gaelic Polytheist
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Post by Searlait on Jul 25, 2015 22:32:26 GMT -6
Having lived in the same place for so long growing up, connecting to the land just became second nature (ha!) via observation. We have really lovely colors in the spring and fall, and specifically watching the foliage change year in and year out is something I've always done. You tend to get a feel for when certain flowers or trees start to bud and bloom without being a horticulture nut, or what kinds of birds tend to stop by. For me, becoming familiar with your local cycles is an important part of my spiritual worldview. That's why I don't /insist/ it being summer on the 1st of May, or winter on the 1st of November. Because in my local climate and ecological system, it isn't. While I usually feel more spiritually awake in rural or wooded landscapes, those are more like special treats because I haven't built a relationship with them like I have with my own suburban neighborhood.
Now that I've moved out, of course, I have to start all over again.
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Post by antsnaidhm on Aug 6, 2015 8:09:53 GMT -6
This is going to sound super weird, but: I have lived in the same two places, a mile apart from each other, all my life. (My mother's house and my grandparent's, for those keeping track at home.) I haven't felt comfortable in either since I hit my teen years and stopped insisting I could talk to birds, animals, and trees like people. It's almost as if the environment views me as a completely different person now - one they're not exactly sure they like. And this is a problem that now extends through most of my home-state - it's not that I am unwanted, I just feel uncomfortable in most places.
I've started keeping a nature journal, making sketches and observations of parks around the state or my backyard outside my window. Birds, plants, mammals all get noted down; after my viewing, I try to identify each and give a few facts about the species.
Of course, I'm moving this September, to one of the few areas that seems to actively like me! So I have to start all over again. BUT if anyone has any other suggestions for generally talking and getting to know land spirits, I'd love to know. I'm going to be at this school for three years and I would like to make a connection to the land.
(And wild-harvesting sounds like a really good start!)
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leithincluan
Junior Member
Posts: 85
Pronouns: she/her
Religion: Gaelic Polytheism and modern British druidry
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Post by leithincluan on Aug 17, 2015 13:11:47 GMT -6
Working with a garden (a tiny one!) helped when I moved to an area where I wasn't happy and couldn't connect to the land. I planted outdoor shrines and a faery garden. I also made trips a bit further afield, to forests and fields that were in the general vicinity but where I felt a bit more connected. I was in Nottingham, so I had the ancient Sherwood Forest to explore, which was pretty cool! Staying connected with the land is important to me, as a GP and modern druid, but it's not always as easy as it seems, especially if you move a lot. I love the urban landscape in particular and have done a lot of work to connect to the land in London. Offerings of honey and seeds, and exploring hidden places around the city, are my key ways for connecting
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Post by Allec on Aug 23, 2015 18:43:12 GMT -6
We're moving (again) to an apartment that opens its back patio to a huge field. I'm think I may watch our to-be-dog run around the field while connecting to the land that way. Maybe I'll feel safer with a dog companion?
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cass
Junior Member
Posts: 77
Pronouns: they/their
Religion: Gaelic polytheist
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Post by cass on Aug 26, 2015 3:25:06 GMT -6
connecting to the land used to be the easiest thing for me because i've been living in pretty rural areas for the last decade and a bit, and even when i lived in the suburbs, i would go hiking and wandering in the mountains pretty frequently. and before i moved, i had an amazing yard and a really strong sense of place, so even though i was starting to have trouble with chronic pain, it was easy to sit outside and kind of connect a bit.
and now i have the saf francisco bay a half mile from my apartment and i can rarely get there. there's so many amazing places along the bay where nature has reclaimed dump sites and i want to explore them and get to know them as well as all the other places in my life, but it's getting so difficult that it's becoming a major cause of depression for me lately. i start seeing a physical therapist in a week and hopefully with time i'll figure out better way to cope with my body's new limitations and i'll find healthier ways to connect with my new city. right now is so blah though
it probably doesn't help that i came back to my dad's for the week and discovered that the landlord had cut down the tree i'd been leaving offerings under for the past 3 years. for no reason! it was a perfectly healthy tree! it's making all of this a lot less bearable. now i have to think of what to do for those spirits :\
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calluna
Newbie
Posts: 45
Pronouns: She/Her
Religion: Gaelic Polytheism
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Post by calluna on Sept 1, 2015 12:40:53 GMT -6
Possibly off topicness, but psuedo-on-topic? Possibly?
So there's this kind of trend called homesteading which is all about being in touch with nature and raising your own food and sometimes keeping animals, mostly populated in my experience with hipsters and really right-wing Christians. Thing is, it's pretty much what my grandma's done since she moved to our town off of the farm. She had been a farm-person all her life and couldn't imagine not having it.
Me being badly balanced and tired out quickly from being disabled as well as someone who burns without her trusty bottle of SPF 110 (Broad Spectrum Max Skin Protection) I never really was interested in it or the land since there was a lot of OW involved. Now though, I've slowly gotten more and more into it (coincidentally as the ancestors are being pushy) and I've been considering maybe making a blog about trying to reconnect to the land and getting more in tune with things like the harvest, the land spirits, and venting about ALL THE FRACKING WEEDS, and getting over my giant fear of chickens, and doing it from a polytheist perspective instead of an atheist get-back-to-nature perspective, or a conservative Christian proper-stewards-of-the-land perspective.
At the same time, though, I'm kind of worried about pagan blogosphere drama, that doing something like that might somehow infer that pagans who are city dwellers or not in rural Pennsyltucky can't connect to the land, or somehow "less pagan" which is something I don't believe and definitely DON'T want to happen.
I dunno, what do you guys think? Would I offend people? Would something like that even be interesting? Or is this a situation where someone needs to smack me upside the head and call me a narcissist for thinking my attempts to get back to the land as a polytheist would be interesting to anyone else?
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Post by Allec on Sept 1, 2015 12:58:45 GMT -6
Oooo! I really like that idea. I think as long as you never phrase things as "Do this or else you're a BAD PAGAN/POLYTHEIST/WITCH" you won't offend people. And you can make it about specifically connecting to Pensyltucky (heehee) instead of land in general, and write that in your about so people know what's what. Hell, I may use this idea myself if you don't mind. Maybe upkeeping a blog will help me connect The Heartland
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calluna
Newbie
Posts: 45
Pronouns: She/Her
Religion: Gaelic Polytheism
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Post by calluna on Sept 1, 2015 13:17:34 GMT -6
Oooo! I really like that idea. I think as long as you never phrase things as "Do this or else you're a BAD PAGAN/POLYTHEIST/WITCH" you won't offend people. And you can make it about specifically connecting to Pensyltucky (heehee) instead of land in general, and write that in your about so people know what's what. Hell, I may use this idea myself if you don't mind. Maybe upkeeping a blog will help me connect The Heartland Yeah, I never do that, mostly because I personally get SO SICK of people saying I'm not a real witch because I didn't find it on my own, and crap like that. And dude, Pennsyltucky is a thing. I live in The T, and it's bad out here for anybody different. It can be scary. But yeah, it's definitely going to particular to our land, so. DO IT! We can totally help each other out and egg each other on with moral support <3
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Post by Allec on Sept 1, 2015 22:33:12 GMT -6
OKAY this is a thing I'm gonna do now~ *flies off*
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cass
Junior Member
Posts: 77
Pronouns: they/their
Religion: Gaelic polytheist
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Post by cass on Sept 2, 2015 1:45:12 GMT -6
Possibly off topicness, but psuedo-on-topic? Possibly? So there's this kind of trend called homesteading which is all about being in touch with nature and raising your own food and sometimes keeping animals, mostly populated in my experience with hipsters and really right-wing Christians. Thing is, it's pretty much what my grandma's done since she moved to our town off of the farm. She had been a farm-person all her life and couldn't imagine not having it. Me being badly balanced and tired out quickly from being disabled as well as someone who burns without her trusty bottle of SPF 110 (Broad Spectrum Max Skin Protection) I never really was interested in it or the land since there was a lot of OW involved. Now though, I've slowly gotten more and more into it (coincidentally as the ancestors are being pushy) and I've been considering maybe making a blog about trying to reconnect to the land and getting more in tune with things like the harvest, the land spirits, and venting about ALL THE FRACKING WEEDS, and getting over my giant fear of chickens, and doing it from a polytheist perspective instead of an atheist get-back-to-nature perspective, or a conservative Christian proper-stewards-of-the-land perspective. At the same time, though, I'm kind of worried about pagan blogosphere drama, that doing something like that might somehow infer that pagans who are city dwellers or not in rural Pennsyltucky can't connect to the land, or somehow "less pagan" which is something I don't believe and definitely DON'T want to happen. I dunno, what do you guys think? Would I offend people? Would something like that even be interesting? Or is this a situation where someone needs to smack me upside the head and call me a narcissist for thinking my attempts to get back to the land as a polytheist would be interesting to anyone else? this is something i've been wanting to do for years, and for a while it seemed like a real possibility for me, but now not so much. it's nice seeing someone else wanting to go for it though! i would really love to hear how you manage with all the OW, as that's one of the things that makes it seem so impossible now. i have actually heard of other polytheists doing/wanting to do this. it seemed like an especially big trend for gaelpols for several years. sadly a lot of them turned out to have really gross libertarian, verging on fascist ideas that pretty much put me off the idea that this is something to be strived for as part of my religious life. non-gross people should def reclaim the idea though cuz it's such a nifty thing!
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calluna
Newbie
Posts: 45
Pronouns: She/Her
Religion: Gaelic Polytheism
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Post by calluna on Sept 2, 2015 10:33:11 GMT -6
Possibly off topicness, but psuedo-on-topic? Possibly? So there's this kind of trend called homesteading which is all about being in touch with nature and raising your own food and sometimes keeping animals, mostly populated in my experience with hipsters and really right-wing Christians. Thing is, it's pretty much what my grandma's done since she moved to our town off of the farm. She had been a farm-person all her life and couldn't imagine not having it. Me being badly balanced and tired out quickly from being disabled as well as someone who burns without her trusty bottle of SPF 110 (Broad Spectrum Max Skin Protection) I never really was interested in it or the land since there was a lot of OW involved. Now though, I've slowly gotten more and more into it (coincidentally as the ancestors are being pushy) and I've been considering maybe making a blog about trying to reconnect to the land and getting more in tune with things like the harvest, the land spirits, and venting about ALL THE FRACKING WEEDS, and getting over my giant fear of chickens, and doing it from a polytheist perspective instead of an atheist get-back-to-nature perspective, or a conservative Christian proper-stewards-of-the-land perspective. At the same time, though, I'm kind of worried about pagan blogosphere drama, that doing something like that might somehow infer that pagans who are city dwellers or not in rural Pennsyltucky can't connect to the land, or somehow "less pagan" which is something I don't believe and definitely DON'T want to happen. I dunno, what do you guys think? Would I offend people? Would something like that even be interesting? Or is this a situation where someone needs to smack me upside the head and call me a narcissist for thinking my attempts to get back to the land as a polytheist would be interesting to anyone else? this is something i've been wanting to do for years, and for a while it seemed like a real possibility for me, but now not so much. it's nice seeing someone else wanting to go for it though! i would really love to hear how you manage with all the OW, as that's one of the things that makes it seem so impossible now. i have actually heard of other polytheists doing/wanting to do this. it seemed like an especially big trend for gaelpols for several years. sadly a lot of them turned out to have really gross libertarian, verging on fascist ideas that pretty much put me off the idea that this is something to be strived for as part of my religious life. non-gross people should def reclaim the idea though cuz it's such a nifty thing! I think the gross people are part of the reason I want to do it, because, at least in the spheres I've seen, it's really conservative, scary-type Christians, and crunchy culturally appropriative psuedo-hippies. (I may have thrown a paperweight against a wall when one of them created a "tiny house" inside a traditional-style vardo. Like F---- NOT YOURS GET OUT OF THE SANDBOX. That's kind of why I'm cautious. I want to do it from a...moderate view I guess? Talk about things that come up in the life and relate it to how I connect with the lore, and stuff like why I have more issues eating veg I've grown then meat my Da's shot, and And how you don't have to give up going to the city and playing DnD or your XBOX, as well as the ability to do it as a disabled person. Does that make sense?
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cass
Junior Member
Posts: 77
Pronouns: they/their
Religion: Gaelic polytheist
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Post by cass on Sept 2, 2015 16:26:29 GMT -6
oh yeah, it makes a lot of sense and i really look forward to what you have to share! uuugh some of that tiny house stuff can be soooooo gross in their appropriation/romanticization of vardo and rroma culture, it gets me so pissed. i've noticed a lot of that in permaculture and similar when it comes to indigenous communities. so much gross noble savage bullshit
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callisto
Junior Member
Posts: 54
Religion: Dodekatheism
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Post by callisto on Sept 2, 2015 18:38:17 GMT -6
I think I'm going to venture tonight for a plant to take care of and keep inside. And then also try to go to this park that doesn't trigger my agoraphobia (though it's a bit of a drive to get to it.) wickedlittlecritta : Walking and venturing would all be fine if I didn't get this intense dread while doing it! Being with other people doesn't seem to help :/ But I think starting small with a park and then also with a house plant will do me a lot of good... Speaking of starting small, a step in-between potted plant and a park would be creating a terrarium, basically the outdoors in miniature and under glass. They can be as simple or complex as you choose.
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