Author: Rachel-Rebecka

Goddess Craft Witchy

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by Rachel-Rebecka

I recently attended The Morrigan’s Ravens Retreat online, which is put on by the lovely Joey Morris of Starry Eyed Supplies. It was quite a transformative and wonderful journey. Prior to this, I had never worked with The Morrigan before, and with how well the retreat went (some very profound experiences were had) and how much information I’ve gleaned from it, She will be part of my practice moving forward. Joey is an absolute fountain of knowledge, and I still have a lot of the material to work through and book recommendations to follow up with because there was just that much material provided.

This retreat was completely online, and it stretched over three months (three weeks of material and then a rest week). Joey mentioned that she hoped to one day move it from the online sphere to in-person, and I would definitely save up to attend if that ends up being the case. I don’t know when Joey will be putting it on again, but I highly recommend if you want to know more about The Morrigan, or feel called to work with Her, this is the route to go and the teacher to chose.

One thing I learned about The Morrigan was that She is a poetess, and it was a big surprise to me that when I began working with this aspect of Her, my own poetic cork unplugged. I can’t even begin to tell you about how much my Samsung Notes app on my phone just became full of fragments of poetry and bits of prose. My favourite one that I wrote was this one:

“Badb,
Weave my grief
Into a lullaby,
So that I may
Herald my anguish
And cry my anger to the night.
Phantomess,
Draped in silk and moths’ wings,
Be witness to the changing of the guard,
For I now stand alone and
Mother’s soul rests on the wings of corvids,
Spiriting her to the Otherside.”

– Unfinished poem by Rachel Venos, 2024

Williams Shakespeare I am not, but I really did like this one. It’s not finished yet, and I plan to keep working on it and post the finished result.

It feels good to be creative again. Another thing working with The Morrigan has done is force me to confront (that seems too strong a phrase – She has politely kicked me in the pants and put me in front of) my grief regarding my mom’s passing and everything that happened with my ex-pedophilic partner, David. Things I thought that I had worked through, but as always… there was a lot of residual feelings there that I had been allowing to fester.

Although I’ve been journeying with The Morrigan, I haven’t forgotten my patron goddess… Lilith has given me the nod to work on what I’m working on now, and She’s been a pillar of support.

And mentioning Lilith, I’ve actually been thinking about what parts of my practice I want to post about on here. One of the things that I plan to work on is getting more familiar and working more with Lilith’s epithets – is that something anyone would be interested in reading about? Some of them have more information on them than others, so I will probably end up combining those into one post. I’m going to tap into this creative buzz that I’ve got going on and start writing more about my practice regardless… but that’s where I might start.

Daily Music

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by Rachel-Rebecka

I have been listening to this song non-stop:

KiTTiE’s new album, “Fire,” has been announced for June 21st and I am so fucking excited. It feels like it’s been forever since they released new music and I couldn’t hit the “preorder” button fast enough.

I hope you all are well. This last month has just been sickness after sickness for me, and it’s all culminated into influenzae. I haven’t been sick like this in years, and it’s one of those illnesses that once I think I’m getting better, I wake up with some new kind of symptom and the roller coaster starts all over again. Right now, I’m extremely congested, I have a wet cough and it sounds like there is a geiger counter going off in my chest. I’m hoping that I’ll have whatever this is flushed out of my system by the end of next week… I finally get some time off and I am not spending it in bed with some NyQuil and a box of Kleenex. I refuse.

Something exciting that’s been happening this month… I finally splurged and bought myself a desktop, thanks to my fairly decent tax return. I bought the tower, and Charlie helped me out with the other components. I’ve decided to finally take the leap and finish my transcription course, and working with my laptop was just not going to cut it. Right now I’m in the process of clearing out my mom’s old craft room and turning it into my office, so that I can get everything set up. I’m really happy about this, because I will finally be able to get my butt into gear and start posting content here. My laptop is nearly impossible to work with (poor little shit can barely handle an open browser with more than one tab), and now that I have this really awesome desktop, it will be much easier for me to do what I want. I am hoping that by this time next year, I’ll be taking my RHDS exams, and then getting in some transcription side hustle.

It’s been raining here almost non-stop for the last month. It’s put a damper on my outside activities, but I’ve really been enjoying it. Rain = my favourite. My lawn is starting to look like a forest, though, so I’m hoping it dries out for a few days so I can mow it down. My lily of the valley that got massacred by the cattle that invaded my yard last year has come back, and I almost cried when I saw it. It’s one of the last things my mom planted before she got sick, and I was afraid that it wouldn’t regrow after they tore it all up. Hopefully those cows stay in their pasture this year.

Daily Music Photodumping

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by Rachel-Rebecka

Update to my previous post: I responded to Harriet. In hindsight, I should have just ignored it, but I think if I’d done that, she would have found another way to reach out. I simply told her what Emilie’s feelings on the matter were. I thought I was pretty polite considering, and I know it wouldn’t have gone well if I’d said what I really wanted to, so I did make an real effort to be polite. She responded immediately by trying to gaslight me, and she went on about how she’s trying to “be an adult” and they’ll “respect Emilie’s wishes” and blah blah blah word vomit bullshit. Because she immediately tried to gaslight and be patronizing, I’ve made the decision to just leave it alone. I said what I said, I meant what I said, and I have nothing more to say on the matter. It wouldn’t surprise me, really, if she reports back to Emilie’s birth father or if he put her up to this to begin with. I archived the conversation and I’m not giving her anymore of my emotional labour.

Things have been a bit up and down lately. Norovirus is currently tearing its way through my house, and thankfully I am now mostly over it. I don’t know where I picked it up from, because I’ve been by myself at work and haven’t really gone anywhere else, but I came into contact with it somewhere and it got me. It got me really, really good, starting last Friday morning. It came on so suddenly that I was confused as to why “that” was happening.

Thankfully I’m now mostly over it. I just feel terrible because both Emilie and Charlie have it now. Emilie vomited in the truck on the way home yesterday, so we had to pull into a gas station so I could clean her up. Poor little dear was so grey, she looked like a lump of clay. Wasn’t too hard to get her to stay home and rest, but I’m going to try and get some Pedialyte into her later on. That might be a bit of a fight.

Autumn has transitioned from sleeping in mine and Charlie’s room to sleeping in her crib in her own room. It’s been an adjustment for me, because I’m so used to her being within an arm’s reach at all times, and I’m right there when she needs anything. Charlie invested in a pretty sophisticated baby monitoring system to ease my mind, and it’s been quite fun to peak in on Autumn and talk to her through the camera. I will never get enough of this:

Sleepy one-eyed pirate.

This weekend, I need to put her curtains up and do some more decorating in her room, but the transition has gone really well so far. The bassinet that she was sleeping in was a pretty snug space, so I thought that not having that snug feeling would make it hard for her to sleep, but it doesn’t seem to phase her at all. I went in to check on her early this morning, and she was completely sideways with her limbs thrown every which way. Takes after Charlie in that way, I guess, LOL.

Going to be working more on the yard this weekend, as well. I might take some pictures of my progress if things go well. I have to get the lawn mower out of the garage and get it functional for a quick mow, too. As long as the deer cooperate and let me work, I should get a lot done this weekend. My next big project is to get my hands on a small chainsaw, so I can get the fallen trees cut up into more manageable pieces and get them all picked up. With fire season already here (thanks global warming), the faster it gets done, the better. And then once the fallen trees are done, I can start taking measurements and planning for the new fence and (maybe – possibly) my chicken coop.

Here is my latest earworm to share: