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It must be done carefully, delicately.  Too much and you'll tip your hand that you're an imposer.  Too little and you are clearly just a poseur.  There are always places that are forbidden to you - the velvet rope, the back room, the after party, the inner circle.

And I say f**k that.

Preconceived ideas, we all have them and rely on them.  Certain words or names evoke a response in everyone.  Generally these are negative emotions. 

Witch is a word that does this for Pagans.  Since I consider myself an eclectic witch who is seeking, it was a title I hesitated taking on as I traveled my path through paganism. 

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I'm not sure where this post is going to go, but I do know that I need to write something about how I am feeling today, how grateful I am for the 12 Steps in dealing with my codependency, how grateful I am that recovery is possible, and how aware I am of the fragility of my codependent sobriety. 12 Step work has helped me notice when I'm staring into the abyss, and it has given me the tools to choose a different path.

I returned from the West Kentucky Hoodoo Rootworker Heritage Festival last evening. The festival site was set in farm country in western Kentucky and vast fields of soybeans formed a crescent around the encampment.  A rooster crowed up the Sun each morning and coyotes yipped through the long, cool nights. We had one wet night and one cold night and days filled with one of the most diverse groups I've seen in my (admittedly limited) Pagan festival experience.

There were workshops, rituals, classes and plenty of networking with colleagues from as far away as Toronto. The food was good, the company cheerful and remarkably even-tempered. Lots of nice vendors tempted us all with their pretty wares and I can't even complain about the late-night karaoke simply because the folks doing it were having so much fun.

Who is this flower above me,
And what is the work of this god?
I would know myself in all my parts.
~ Feri Flower Prayer

My work of late has been focused around surrender, specifically, surrendering to the moment and surrendering to the Gods. And first and foremost, I have to surrender to my Self, specifically, to my Godself.*

So, let's start with the very basics, beginning with how to sense spirits. After all, if I'm going to be helping my readership work with spirits and totems and the like, I should make sure that you have a way of doing so. You might already have figured out a good option for yourself, but keep reading anyway if you like--maybe there's something in here you haven't considered yet.

I'm going to sidestep the issue of the exact nature of spirits, whether they're independent beings in a nonphysical reality that parallels our own, or unseen denizens of our world, or elements of our psyche that we project outward. Not that it isn't important, but I'll leave it up to you to decide exactly what they are; the how-tos I'm going to put in this blog should work regardless of your answer.