Personal Practice vs. Conair an Cheo

I've been rereading the last post, involving my to-do list- for one thing, it's changed a bit, and for another, I realized that I don't want to include stuff about my personal practice here. This blog isn't concerned with my shrines or the personal prayers I need to write. So, I've set up another blog with Blogger (because I'm not really interested in flooding my website with religious posts). You can find stuff that is specifically mine at The Spiritual Babblings of Juni.

I've figured out the calendar! Well, part of it. This is a big step. Each of Na nDeithe Mór, The Great Gods, has their own 3 day 'festival', pretty equally spaced through the year. The rest of the gods, Na nDeithe Lasmuigh (The Outer Gods), that we don't work with that much, will have a single day holiday somewhere in the year. I'm not as worried about getting those dates worked out just yet. I still need names for most of the holidays, but it's a start.

I haven't started writing the Altú yet, but I've been thinking about it a lot, and trying to figure out what I want to incorporate and what's not as important. A lot of "why?"'s are popping up. My main struggle is not to make it so elaborate that it isn't practiced (after all, it's supposed to be done every week) but not so laid back that it can't be distinguished from one's daily practices.

I still haven't started writing the deity essays. I almost did- actually, I keep almost starting, and then not. I wonder if I'm approaching this the wrong way. I think I'm still being too....what's the word...strict? about it. I think I need to stop envisioning what they should be and just get going on them being anything.

Back to the calendar- I've started charting the weather every day, mentioning what season it feels like. I'm not particularly in tune with my environment, so this has been a little difficult. I need to figure out what spring or summer looks like for CT, before I can work on holidays/rituals to celebrate it.

I've been thinking more on life milestones/rites of passage. One thing I had decided previously was not to do anything really related to marriage; I can't remember who had said it, now, but someone on TC had mentioned their irritation with pagan paths that included marriage/handfastings just because the mainstream religions they were used to included marriage. But- Conair an Cheo is meant to be a 'family' path, and marriage is not only creating a new, tiny family but bringing two others together. I'd like to recognize that. I think, though, that anyone marrying a non-member would be encouraged not to have a religious wedding, because god oaths and other such symbolism and practices wouldn't make sense for a non-member to do.

There's too much to think about! I don't know how HeartShadow does it.

// Juni