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Reblog: Priestessing Depression: Why are Pagans So Afraid of Negative Emotions?

~ Camilla Laurentine ~ 2 Comments

It’s much, much harder to priestess the bad stuff in life–the petty revenge fantasies, the tantrums born from exhaustion, the moments of cowardice and greed, all the emotional farts and belches that every single one of us experiences. It’s much harder to be present for these moments, to tend them, to hold them and honor them and truly try to understand them.

But that’s exactly what we need priestesses for.

via Priestessing Depression: Why are Pagans So Afraid of Negative Emotions?.

*applauds* Represent!  This was perfect!

How I Found My Path, Parts 1 & 2 – A Belated Week 1 YouTube Pagan Challenge Video

~ Camilla Laurentine ~ 3 Comments

 

So I’m the one who can’t sum up how they got onto their path in less than 20 minutes.  It’s complicated, and I expect no one to actually watch my rambling, convoluted story since it takes about 45 minutes.  This is what happens when no one is around to yell, “Get to the point!”

The story of my religious, mystic, and mental health path up to this week…

Freya Portrait

~ Camilla Laurentine

Cross-posting from my art blog.  I’ve decided to release the images I create of the Gods into Creative Commons (non-commercial, non-derivative, with attribution), so snag it for your blog if you would like it.

Camilla Laurentine's avatarWunderkammer by C. Laurentine

The Goddess Freya, face half-covered by her falcon feather cloak. Her eye is an intense blue. She stands in front of a dark blue sky with faintly white clouds.

I received a new graphics tablet for the holidays this year, and it’s been completely awesome.  After a couple of studies of eyes, I started to work on this piece of Freya.  This is my first 100% digital painting, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

You can buy prints of this image here.

Note: I have no control over what items my image shows up on from what I can tell, but let me just say I didn’t make the image for a duvet cover.  The tiny picture on it looks ridiculous in the preview photo.  Please don’t buy it. Ha.

Secondly, the works I do of the Gods I have made the decision to offer under Creative Commons for non-commercial use with no derivatives (works based off of it).  If you are interested in a commercial license, please email me at Notawiccan (at) gmail (dot) com…

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A New Blog for the New Year

~ Camilla Laurentine

For those of you who are reading my blog with an interest the topics of disability, jewelry, and/or art, I have decided to move a lot of this over to a new blog: Wunderkammer by C. Laurentine.

This blog is going to be focused mainly on religious, spiritual, and death-related topics along with mental health specifically in the Pagan and Polytheist communities.  I’ve decided to do this due to fear that my religious blog was going to be overtaken by my activist work and my art.  It felt kind of weird and not right for some reason.  There will be cross-over from time-to-time, but don’t worry!  I will be sure to post links and reblog when appropriate.

And for those who are here for religion specifically but are raising children, I’m going to spend the next year over at my PaganSquare blog talking on the subject of Syncretic Roman Polytheism and how I’m bumbling through religious education with a pre-schooler.

I look forward to hearing from and talking to everyone in the upcoming year!

Give Away and General Note

~ Camilla Laurentine

I’m alive.  I’m dealing with family and health of both the mental and physical variety currently.  The focus has been on creating physical items lately for me, because I’m forcing myself to stay grounded.

A copper bun pin with 4 pink pearls at the top laying on a dark gray bookWith that said, over on my Facebook page for my jewelry, Wunderkammer by C. Laurentine, I’m hosting a give-away for a bun pick.  I’ve pinned the post to the top of my page, so it should hopefully be easy to find.

The winner will receive their choice of plain or pink, gray, or white pearl copper pick.

Hope everyone is doing well during the holidays!

Spirit Work & Mental Illness

~ Camilla Laurentine

Glad to see someone else talking about this! Also making me feel that my inevitable return to school to become a counselor is needed by people other than me a decade ago.

DevoTTR's avatarThe Twisted Rope

Alternate title: Quit romanticizing my illness.
Alternate title #2: Quit demonizing my treatment.

Every so often I will see little flare-ups in the pagan community that center on two fairly unrelated topics: spirit work and mental illness. Don’t get me wrong, these topics can be related, but they aren’t necessarily related, though many people try to make them out to be. I’m sure many of you have seen articles like this and this that go on and on about how we’re killing our spirit workers because they have mental illness and are not handling it “properly”. And if we’d only just learn how to “properly” handle these “gifts” that we’ve been bestowed, we’d suddenly find that our problems would poof out of existence.

Being a spirit worker myself, I read these posts and feel my jaw clench shut as I find rage welling up in my stomach. These posts are…

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