Mabh Savage's Blog: A Celtic Witch, page 38

Hornsea in Winter

   

    

    

    

    

 

Snow Dreams

Plain white sky

Like hotel sheets

Dull and unexpecting

Business like and taut.

So featureless

Yep promising

Cold, white fluff

Softness incarnate

Deadly and sharp.

Drifting down

And against doors

No pause

No laws

Against this invasion.

I dream of snow;

December’s promise

Solstice frost

The cost

Never too high.

Celtic Witchcraft- Pre Order Available!

I received the best parcel ever yesterday: a bundle of books with my name on them! If you’ve been enjoying my installments of Celtic Witchcraft on the Moon Books Blog, you can now pre order the book here. It’s out April 29th 2016, and costs a whole English fiver.

Enjoy!

Midwinter Madness

I’m sat in the doctor’s waiting room about to unveil a tale of woe for my long suffering GP. I’m coughing my guts up, but that’s not even on my list; a list I have to bring or my mushy brain will inevitably cause me to forget something vital.

Today’s list: a continuing muscle problem in my back that has been exacerbated by current affairs; hip and knee pain; a numbness in my toes and a discussion about Access to Work. Yet my decision to stop my anti-depressants isn’t on this list.

This isn’t because I’m proud of having made this decision on my own. Nor is it because I’m doing fine and don’t need GP advice, thank you very much.

It’s simply because, despite having been in the mental health system for more than two years, I still find it incredibly hard to broach the subject with my doctor.

I’m still afraid of the derision and head shaking I have experienced. The ‘buck up’ mentality. Or alternatively, the ‘aw poor you’ that will inevitably leave me in tears and feeling worthless for the rest of the day.

I’ve had a doctor tell me that my counsellor was ‘obviously testing me, and I failed the test’, and then laugh in my face.

On the other side of the coin, I’ve had doctors recommend fantastic literature, and even practical help like breathing exercises, and the pendulum method (which I was already aware of through meditation.)

Mental health care is still so hit and miss, that even though I’m seeing my ‘preferred’ GP, I’m still scared to bring my condition up. Still willing to struggle on alone, rather than wade through the sticky mire of false sympathy and muddled advice.

Parliamentary debate on current mental health services seems equally muddled, with bright spark Priti Patel once suggesting mental health suffered should wear wristbands to make them more easily identifiable; at least that fits in with her leader’s current Goebbels-like propaganda machine.

I never want to be part of a system that treats me as less of a person for having a complicated and fragile mind. We all have complicated and fragile minds; they all need treating differently; they all need care from time to time.

I know it is foolish that I don’t speak to my doctor today. I know it, and I hope you don’t make my mistake. Speak and seek help; talk, listen and strive when you have the strength, or be comforted when you don’t.

The more we speak, the easier it is for the next person to speak. And the next. Until there is no fear of speaking at all.

The Cover is Here!

  

Save the date: 29th April 2016, publication of Pagan Portals: Celtic Witchcraft. Artwork by the wonderful Kirsten Savage. 

Labour members- your views wanted on Syria.

Jeremy Corbyn has asked for views from all Labour Party members. If you are a member, check your inbox. MPs may soon have to vote on whether to extend UK bombing into Syria.

Please have your say. Here was my response:

UK intervention in Syria should be to lend aid to those suffering and forward the diplomatic process. Sending bombs instead does nothing but kill more people; destroying lives does not make a better future for anyone. Daesh want us to be angry; they want to show that the western world is out of touch with Islamic nations and an enemy to all Islamic people. If the UK bombs targets in Syria, then the UK is playing straight into the hands of the Daesh. Terrorism cannot be fought with violence. History has shown us this. We are no strangers to the threat of terrorism in the UK. But in 1997, it was talking, not violence that stopped the IRA bombs. Perhaps David Cameron has forgotten this, or perhaps there is some profit unknown to us in dividing the west from the east even further. Whatever his motives, I truly hope that there are enough politicians with a better memory, a bigger heart and a modicum of common sense.

Double Rainbow

  

If you look to the very left of the picture, you can faintly see the ‘second’ rainbow. Jim informs me that every rainbow has a double, and the colours are reversed. So although it follows the same curve as the primary rainbow, the outer colour is purple/violet and the inner colour is red.

Autumn may be blustery and the weather may be unpredictable, but at least it gives us rainbows.

New Zealand: Tree Church.

  

Brian Cox of New Zealand seems to have taken the phrase ‘Nature is my church’ somewhat literally…with beautiful results.

From BoredPanda.

Meditation vs Anxiety

I’m getting back into meditation this month. I’m fortunate enough to be involved with groups of spiritually minded people who are far more organised than I and can arrange structured workings. Without this kick in the bum I struggle to grant myself the time needed to clear and de-clutter my messy mind space.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how we can work so much harder for others, than we can work solely for ourselves… Or is that just me?

Anyhoo, I’ve done my first, proper meditation in months and it was wild, intense, and full of vivid imagery that almost immediately led to poetry. This makes me happy. But now I have the fear. What if, tomorrow, I can’t do it? What if I can’t ‘zone out’, centre myself; whatever you want to call it?

Because this happens. Sometimes, I just can’t let go. I sit and breathe and focus or un-focus, and I can’t let go of the outer world and slip into my own inner consciousness.

The anxiety that I won’t be able to let go, of course, makes this all the more likely to happen. Anxiety is a crippling, horrible force in my life, and when coupled with the fear of failure, can leave me vibrating like a spinning top; dizzy and ultimately useless.

How do I step past this anxiety, into a calm space to let magic happen? How can I calm my mind, in order to calm my mind? I have no solid answers. I simply launch myself into what I am doing and hope for the best. Only one session in, and already I am spinning and looking for what might go wrong; when everything went so right today; utterly nonsensical.

I should be proud that despite my (currently non medicated) anxiety, I have managed my first session with success. The twenty minutes or so before work left me bright and alert for the day, and excited for the following sessions. I should be high-fiving myself.

One day, perhaps, I’ll stop looking for cracks in the glass that just aren’t there.

I Rose

My rose was blue

I stepped beneath the arch

My rose was gold

Or peach

Softness incarnate

Never crimson

Never bold

Tentative like my

Steps.

I rose beneath the arch

To meet four faces

Framed with snake

With sea

With sinister teeth

With chains

With all the keys I need

To break free.

I rose and took

The proffered seaweed

Tiny bladders ready

To pop with salty sweetness

A shoreline promise

Of things to come.

I rose, hands out

Filled with light;

Stepping into darkness

My rose was black

Ashen; withered

Suddenly alive again!

Gold and glowing

Snakebite antidote

Starlight flowing

I rose; I gasped; I smiled.