Full Moon Celebration

Tuesday night was a Full Moon, and I met up with a friend to celebrate it. First we met at Panera Bread for dinner and to discuss our beliefs. After that we tried going to a few metaphysical shops, but they were all closed. So finally, we ended up at our local Unitarian Universalist church for a Full Moon Labyrinth Walk.

The church has an outdoor labyrinth design in their courtyard, but since it was rainy out, they moved the walk indoors. They had a large mat that looked like this:

The idea of a labyrinth is that there is a set path, so its not like a maze. As you walk you can pray, or reflect, or meditate. For me, its a very calming experience, and it helps me to feel centered.

My friend and I walked it a few times, then brought our Tarot cards in to the hall by the labyrinth and did a few short readings.

I found my old Tarot deck from when I was around 12 or 13, so I am trying to connect with them. Here is a photo of my cards from this deck: The Mythic Tarot.

The top row got cut off a little, but they are The Empress, The High Priestess, and The Hermit. I am very glad that I found this deck, and look forward to using it as well as my Original Rider-Waite.

My friend has a set of Edward Gorey cards, that I wish I had gotten a picture of, because the artwork on those is very interesting and dark.

It was a great night, and I encourage others to search for local events in their area. I think the UU churches are a great place to start.

Talk to you next week!

How I Create Tarot Spreads

Hello, and welcome back! I know its been a while since my last post, but I recently graduated from college, and so I wanted to spend as much time with my friends as possible before I left them.

However, I did not forget about Little Miss Pagan and will begin writing at my weekly schedule again,

Today, I wanted to share with you all how I create my Tarot spreads. I am an avid television fan, so most of the spreads I do are based on my favorite tv shows, so for today I am showing how I create those.

I will use my Murder House spread as an example, based on season one of American Horror Story.

The first thing I do is think of a symbol I associate with the show. I use this to determine how many cards will be in the spread, and to give it a shape. For the Murder House spread, I wanted it to look like a house, so I wanted to have four cards as the house, with a card at the top to be the roof,

Next, I chose the five characters I wanted to use, these are usually the main characters and my favorites, and sometimes I'll add cards if I feel I need to include people. For this spread, I chose to use Vivian, Ben, Violet, Tate, and Moira.

Once the characters are chosen, I decide which card they will be in the spread. For the one, four of the characters pair off in the show, so I decided to keep the four of them as the base, and set the last one as the roof. So Moira was the fifth card at the top, and I put Vivian and Ben as the two bottom-most cards, and Violet and Tate as the second row of cards. I decided to have the women on the left and men on the right, again just to give them some organization.

Once the order of the spread is created, I assign meaning or questions to the cards. For this, I think of major character themes or motivations. A lot of the time I'll look up quotes from or about that character to influence the question for that card.

I try to jot down two or three options for each card, and then choose the one that fits the best. For example, for Moira's card I came up with two options: one was about what messes you are cleaning up since she is a maid, and she also has a great quote about women always cleaning up messes, and the second thought I had was to be how people see you, again because as a character some people see her as a beautiful young woman, while others see her as a elderly woman.

So once I narrow down my favorite questions, I assign them to the cards, and the spread is done! For the Murder House spread, this is what I created for the cards:

1: (bottom left) Vivian: What scares you?
2: (bottom right) Ben: What are you hiding?
3: (second row left) Violet: What makes you brave?
4: (second row right) Tate: What is the darkness inside you?
5: (top) Moira: How do people see you?

I hope this helps other tv fans create Tarot spreads. What spreads have you created? I'd love to see them!

New Moon Gathering

Saturday night was the New Moon, so my friends and I came together and celebrated! It was my first official spiritual get together, and it was a lot of fun, so I will definitely do it again.

I was little out of it, because I wanted to try fasting on the New Moon, and it drained me a lot more than expected. I may not do it again, I haven't decided yet.

Before people came over, I wanted to make sure my place would be protected, so I created a super brief protection spell. I hung a twig star on my door and focused on it protecting my home, and I also grabbed some stones that I felt were appropriate (sodalite, amethyst, shungite, jasper, and Botswana agate) and I placed them in five candles. As I lit each candle, I again focused on my home being protected.

We spent the evening doing Tarot and pendulum readings, and just generally discussing our spirituality, beliefs, spirits, etc. All in all, I think I had about ten people come out, and I would have had a few more people, but they were busy. I am going to invite them all out to my Beltane gathering as well.

It was really great to celebrate with everyone, and I am so grateful to everyone who came out. It's fun being a solitary practitioner, but there's something about practicing with others that feels better to me. I'll be sad to graduate and leave my group behind.

I will be having another Beltane/ Full Moon gathering next Saturday, so I will make a post about that once that happens.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

DIY Tarot Deck Bag

So this is the bag I made for my Tarot deck! Since I have kind of started a Tarot group with my friend, my other friend asked me to make one for her deck. I decided to make a tutorial for you guys!

When I was looking for easy diy Tarot bags, I felt like there weren't a lot of resources, and most of them were drawstring, which wasn't what I wanted. So while I was driving one day, I realized I could make them like this. I hand-stitched my own, and used a machine on the one for my friend. I hope this is helpful for people who want to make a cozy home for their decks.

Materials:
1/8 yard of outer material (regular ol' fabric, or heavy duty stuff in case you're worried about it ripping. I used standard cotton, and its held up so far.)
1/4 yard of liner material (I recommend something silky so that the cards slide easier.)
Scissors
Thread
Needle or sewing machine
Ribbon (Something thin)
Pins

Step One: Find some cute fabric! My friend got hers at Walmart, with the blue material being a dollar, and the liner was two.

Step Two: Place your deck on the outer material, wrong side up. You want to make sure the deck will fit. For this one, I folded the fabric so it covered half of the deck, and then marked it. You might want to fold it over more for a wider bag if you plan on keeping a spread cloth or crystals in the bag.

Like so

Step Three: After marking the spot on the fabric, take a ruler or other straight thing and make a straight line up the fabric so you have a line to follow while cutting. Cut out the fabric.

Step  Four: Once you have a long piece of fabric, you wanna take your deck and lay it on the fabric, kind of near the middle. Fold the bottom of the fabric up, so it covers the deck. Take the top part of the fabric and fold it down over your deck. This part will be the top 'lip' of the bag. Mark the fabric where you want the lip to come down too. I usually have the lip cover the top half of the deck, but you could make it longer if you want.

You can kind of see where I marked it in silver sharpie

Step Five: Cut off the excess fabric, so you just have the fabric for the bag. Then pin the bag fabric to your liner fabric, with the right sides together.

Step Six: Cut the liner to match the bag fabric. Then if you want, cut yourself a cute lil' spread cloth out of the remaining liner material.

Step Seven: Stitch the bag fabric together on the long sides and one short side

Step Eight: Flip the bag inside out, so now the right sides are facing out. Then flatten it with an iron if using a machine, or just manhandle it a little.

Step Nine: Tuck in the raw edges of the open side, and stitch that shut.

Step Ten: Grab your deck again, and place it on the liner side of the bag fabric, and then fold fabric up to cover the deck. Mark it with a pin, remove the deck, and flip it so the liner side is out. Pin the sides together.You should see the bag begin to take shape now.

Step Eleven: Stitch up the sides, liner side out. Flip it inside out so the liner is now inside the bag.

Step Twelve: Cut off a long length of ribbon, and pin it to the lip of the bag. I put mine about 3/4 of an inch up from the bottom of the lip.

Step Thirteen: Stitch a line down the ribbon, and backstitch over it again to make sure it stays attached.

Step Fourteen:Wrap your deck in your spread cloth, and put it in your bag. After that, wrap your ribbons around the back, and tie them in front. Trim off the excess ribbon, after making sure they are even on both sides. The bottom three pictures are to help see how to ribbon will look after its tied and cut.

And that's it! I know it seems like a lot of steps, but it really is simple, and doesn't take long to make them. I've had mine jumbled around in my purse since November, and its held up really good thus far.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Let me know if you have any questions.

Practice, Practice

Last semester, one of my friends came out to me as a witch. It was one of the most heartening experiences so far on my path, because it made me see that there are others out there. It can be easy to find people online, but because there is that disconnect between us, it can still seem like no one out there practices with us. So meeting someone in real life who is also a witch can be great, especially because days like today can happen.

My friend asked me to meet up with her and do some Tarot readings. I have fallen way behind on the Spread a Day 2 challenge on Tumblr, so I jumped at the opportunity to catch up.

We met at the student center on campus, which was another first for me. I try to keep kind of quiet about the witchcraft aspect of my faith, because I know that's the part with the most stigma. Setting up our table with all of our cards and spread cloths made me nervous at first,especially with so many people I knew around, but it very quickly felt natural.

We were joined by my other dear friend, as well as a couple others that we knew. This was very helpful because we could read for them instead of just swapping back and forth.

It was probably the most fun I have had in a while! It felt good to hang out with people and do what I love without feeling like I had to hide it.

And what was probably the best part of the whole thing was the respect we were given. I was expecting a few people to come up and be nosy and pry and look down on us. I was pleasantly surprised. We sat there for almost an hour and a half, and no one harassed us.

I feel blessed to be in a community where that is possible. I have read stories about people reading Tarot in public and having that one snotty person come up and tell them about how they're working with the Devil or something. So being able to practice, and not have to feel ashamed, was extremely liberating.

For the first time in my months of practice with Tarot, I actually felt like a Diviner. And it was amazing!

We are meeting again to do the same on Wednesday, and even better, two of my friends will be joining us after seeing the work we did today. I may even start a Tarot group for us to gather weekly and practice.

I encourage others to do the same, you may be surprised at how great it is!

Me taking notes for my Tarot journal

Happy Imbolc and Spread A Day 2!

Hello, and Happy Imbolc! I hope you are enjoying your day.

My Imbolc involved finishing up a Valentine's Day gift to my girl friends, making a Brigid's Cross, cleaning my apartment, tarot, and making a cup of my favorite tea.

My Brigid's Cross

I made my Brigid's Cross out of pipe cleaners because they were cheaper, and I have no idea where to get rushes from.

I found a tutorial on making Brigid's Crosses out of pipe cleaners here:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-St-Brigid%27s-Cross-with-Pipe-Cleaners

Today I also completed Day 2 of the Spread A Day challenge on Tumblr!

Arcane Mysteries and Ragabash Witch have created a Tarot challenge, which involves doing a Tarot spread each day. My Tarot skills are pretty rusty, so I am using this challenge as an opportunity to improve my reading abilities.

I hope you all have a great Imbolc! What are some things that you did to celebrate?