We have moved. Please go to our new site http://2witchesblog.wordpress.com
You can also check out what we are magically brewing up in our crafty cauldon at Enchanted Crafts.
Bright blessings from Mama Kelly and Lady Rose
Effective immidiately we here at A Blog of Two Witches aka Purple Moon Garden ask that you shift your bookmarks, favorites, blogrolls, and any feed aggregators to link to our new site at:
I had hoped/expected this to be a gradual shift but I am now concerned about being flagged/deleted as a spam blog becuase of the duplicate content
My expectation is for this site to remain up and running for about a month to allow our friends and fans to catch up.
Blessings to you all
Mama Kelly
I woke up about 30 minutes ago in the throes of an anxiety riddled dream. I’ve been dreaming about car crashes, missing children, and the like the past few nights. So, I woke up (yet again) gasping for breath, heart racing, the whole nine yards. There’s many reasons, but let’s leave it as I have too much on my plate, and too many worries pressing on my mind.
I tried to just “let it go” and go back to sleep but it was a no go. Which is a shame as I have to work today and probably won’t be home till 8pm. A little extra sleep would’ve been nice.
We got the kids’ report cards. PrincessNibbles’s was nearly perfect. The only areas she needs to work on are: handwriting, neatness, and sentence structure (remembering capitalization and punctuation, etc). MissAngst’s was …. not as terrible as we had feared. While 1 grade went down … she brought 3 grades back up. In short it shows effort. So we took them out for ice cream after dinner to “celebrate”.
I got my presentation done for school. It’s not overly exciting, but it should be sufficient for the grade I need. Next week is my final and then I’m done till the summer semester. I am already panicking about staying on top of three classes. At least for most of it, my homework will be the only homework I have to worry about.
I’m still not feeling all that hot. The fevers are gone as is much of the throat pain, but the ear pain is still hanging around. Which makes for a grumpy mama.
Well I’m off to start my day. PrincessNibbles and I are watching the tail end of “Jack Frost” and then I’m going to hop in my shower.
Mama Kelly
Reprinted from: to slam a revoling door (a collection of writing on a variety of spiritual topics by several very interesting guest writers)
Well, at least that is what some folks would say. I don’t think I’m going to Hell, but then again I don’t have all the answers either. The reasons I chose my spiritual path (wicca) are many but for the purpose of this post I am focusing on just a few aspects of how my choice came about. I chose to be a wiccan\pagan because it was the path that resonated with my soul from a very young age (I read my first book by Gardner, Witchcraft Today at age 13).
My father was Seventh Day Adventist (a bit of a zealot) and my mom a protestant (but rarely went to church). My father would tell me often that I was going to hell for wearing makeup, smoking, and various other minor teenage acts of rebellion. At about age 12, I began searching for a spiritual path that made sense to me because the Christian paths I had seen so far were too cruel and peculiar for me. For one thing, if my father was going to heaven, I definitely did NOT want to be there. He was a child molester. In my young brain it made no sense to me that a man who would sexual assault young girls (from the age of 2 through about 8 or so) could make it into any kind of heaven (just because he went to church and donated all his money) - and if so, then heaven was definitely not a place I was going to try to get into.
I attended a state run Catholic boarding school from 8th grade through 12th, so I had first hand (often seen with my own eyes) exposure to how many nuns one priest can keep happy - in the woods, in their rooms, and well you get the picture. So if the priests and nuns were going to heaven, (not that sex is a bad thing) - it just didn’t make sense to me that if the Church could lie to the world about sex being evil, do it in secret, and still get into heaven - then why would I be going to hell just because I chose a different path? The fact that the church did not allow women to have any positions of authority also played a role in my scratching off any Christian religion as a possible choice.
As I explored various religious paths, wicca was the one I found to be the most soothing to my soul. The individual was responsible for their own actions and would reap the karma from those actions. Women were priestesses and leaders within the Circles, representing the Goddess (an entity of compassion, forgiveness, love, sensuality, death, rebirth - and NOT some male authority who punished on a whim). Wicca respected the laws of nature and honored all living things, believed in being a part of the web of life. These were all concepts I felt to the core of my being and felt were true, and didn’t need a religion to teach them to me, but just felt “right,” so following a path that also honored those ideas was very appealing to me. The wiccan\pagan path is also one that is open to many ideas and encourages the individual to find their connection directly to the Universe\Goddess\God (or what ever name you chose) so there was no one human person trying to cram down any one’s throat their interpretation of the written words that were also written by humans (thousands of years ago in another language that could be interpreted in many ways).
As I grew older and wiser and more exposed to a variety of things in life, I also felt that the teachings of the Native American and Buddhists were wonderful and I could have been very happy following similar paths.
Perhaps it was past life experience on a wiccan\pagan path that also contributed to my choice, or some other reasons, who knows. Now at age 51, I follow a very eclectic spiritual path, which is still mostly wiccan\pagan in nature, and I am very comfortable with who I am, how I live my life, and very certain down to the essence of my soul that I will NOT be going to Hell (but should I be wrong, if I do, as I used to tell my father, “It’s ok cause all my friends will be there too!).
Blessed Be. Lady Rose, co-author of Blog of 2Witches, Incredible Shrinking Ladies, blog manager of The Diet Pulpit and The One Diet.
So last night was the concert .
First and foremost let me restate my heartfelt thanks to Lady Rose and TeacherMan for my early birthday present!!!!
There was much silliness before and after the show - put Lady Rose and I together for any length of time and it is bound to happen. I laughed a lot, which given my mood upon arriving at Lady Rose’s door is nothing short of a miracle. I met “the other Kelly”, who needs a better blogonym, and who is a co-worker and friend of Lady Rose’s and enjoyed making her aquaintance. I look forward to seeing her again at Lady Rose’s Harry Potter Party Pallooza in late May. She seems very sweet and has the same quirky sense of humor as the rest of us and by the night’s end it felt like I’d known her longer than just the couple of hours in reality.
But the reason you’re here reading this is to hear about Ms. McKennitt’s performance. I was enthralled, I was enraptured … It was quite simply put one of the most memorable and beautiful evenings of my life. It is hard to compare to last year’s concert gift, where we saw Bruce Springsteen. Totally different venues, totally different music. Let me just say it was AWESOME.
First of all The Academy of Music is a gorgeous theatre. It is an older building with wonderful acoustics (as in I could feel the music through my feet and skin) and opulent decor. It was a perfect pairing with the tone of the evening.
– photo borrowed from philorch.org
Ms. Mckennitt’s musicians are nothing short of masters. The percussionists, the strings, the various other instruments (and yes there were MANY) were all played not only with great skill, but with obvious pleasure. There appeared to be a great camraderie among the group and it was impossible to avoid catching a bit of their good spirits.
As for Ms. McKennitt herself? She is even more impressive in concert as she is on CD. Her voice is totally unique and it flowed through the room like perfumed honey. Her transitions from one instrument to another were flawless. Her little tidbits and stories shared between songs were enlightening and showed a great sense of humor. Forgive me if I gush, I am a little star-struck.
Favorite Moments (in no particular order)
Dante’s Prayer (from The Book of Secrets
“Cast your eyes on the ocean, cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless, please remember me”
I did not get teary eyed during this song, I quite simply sobbed, but in a good way (I think).
Beneath A Phrygian Sky (from An Ancient Muse
One of her new songs and I loved it. With such a large gap inbetween recordings and the reasons for that gap one had to expect a change in her music … and it did change … it grew, it evolved and it GOT EVEN BETTER.
“We wondered where our God was in the face of so much pain
And I looked up to the stars above to find you once again”“And a voice from down the ages, so haunting in its song
These ancient stones will tell us our love will make us strong”The Lady of Shallott (from The Visit
This is a favorite song of mine and I hoped to hear it played live and I was not disappointed!
Compare her lyrics to the original poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Never-ending Road (from An Ancient Muse
I dedicate this to my hubby GamerDude. We have had our fair share of challenges, and it seems that they will be continuing into the forseeable future. We are for some reason destined to walk a rocky road I guess. I am hopeful that we will find ourselves in a better place eventually and while things aren’t perfect I still choose him walk by my side on the road we call life.
“The road now leads onward I know not where
I feel in my heart that you will be there
Whenever a storm comes, whatever our fears
The journey goes on as your love ever nears
Here is my heart and I give it to you
Take me with you across this land
These are my dreams, so simple and few
Dreams we hold in the palm of our hands”
On a final note, while I am still not well, I am happy to report that the fever(s) and related night sweats may finally be behind me even if the throat and ear pain are still hanging around. I am glad of this because waking up in a puddle was getting redundant.
As of yesterday morning hubby was still advising me to stay home from the concert as I was running a fever and felt awful. I feel better today, though it would’ve been worth it even if I got worse which is what he and I had feared.
I get sick alot, and I will admit to ignoring and poorly self-treating signs of a sinus infection for several weeks now. But I really thought that I’d be feeling much better by now, I feel better than I did but still lousy. These antibiotics better kick in soon or I’m writing a complaint letter to Bayer.
The plan for today and tomorrow is to do homework (mine, not the children’s), bringing MissAngst to get a haircut/trim, to catch up on some household duty stuff, and to cook. Sunday I will be working till 7:30 or 8pm and then it is back to my usual grind. But on the bright side I only have 2 more classes to get through and then I have a 3 week break before the new semester! One step closer to my own small dreams.
May each of you find your way to your own dreams
Mama Kelly
