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In July I picked almonds, early in the morning, up a ladder with a basket in my front yard. The almond tree is a nonpareil which is supposed to be an ornamental or pollinator, not a nut bearing tree. We, my mom and I, had planted the nonpareil tree along with another variety of almond tree that was supposed to be the nut bearing tree, but the other tree had died, and one day mom had come home with a "white pomegranate" for me to plant where the other almond tree had been so we only had the nonpareil. It made beautiful flowers every spring, but mom wanted nuts. One year mom told the tree she wanted nuts and it bore nuts. It has borne nuts every year since.

I rarely do any spells anymore, but there is one I do almost every day in the summer. When I get in the pool I splash the water and say "No f*ing wasps! No thing that stings belongs in my pool!" So far so good, knock on wood.

I'm facing a moral decision, and since I'm using signs, godphone, and divination in my decision making process along with the more usual method of asking my friends and fans for advice, I'm blogging about my decision making process here on Gnosis Diary: Life as a Heathen. The processes I'm using are relevant to the topic of this blog. Whatever decision I reach will also be relevant because it's about an opportunity to talk about Asatru and heathenry.

I received 3 money related things (one actual money, two possible opportunities to make money) all in a clump: 1. my first royalty check for my new book arrived! yay! 2. I got a couple of nibbles on getting a housemate, even though the suite isn't actually ready right now (the attic workers are arriving again in about an hour or so actually, as I write this), 3. there's an opportunity to be a paid speaker at an online pagan event. At first I thought I was being formally invited by the convention organizers, but it turned out to be just informal feelers via a presenter. An actual invitation would come later if I decide to fill out an application form to be hired as a presenter.

I need to decide whether to pursue (and eventually, to accept) opportunity #3. I want to promote my book, of course, and I'm always out for heathen visibility. This opportunity arriving in association with the other things seems to indicate a sign that it's a good opportunity for me. Three is a special and sacred number in heathenry. Not incidentally, this is the first time I've ever been offered an opportunity to pursue a PAID speaking engagement in a major pagan or heathen related event. Although I've done paid speaking at science fiction events, at pagan events I usually just get free tickets and maybe free content like books. The reason I'm hesitating is that the event is associated with Christian Day. Not as a speaker, just behind the scenes, and I would not have to deal with him personally at all.

I started my decision making process on this by making a friends-only post on my Facebook page asking for advice. I got conflicting advice. The advice generally fell into these categories: A. My voice is needed in the community, not in spite voices like Day's but because of them, to give people someone else to listen to; B. Working with Day would mean I would be someone the commenter could no longer support; C. Who? Who cares? Take the money and do my thing. D. The 3s mean this is something Odin wants me to do. E. What would Loki do? What would Odin do? What do they say? F. Seek divination from a diviner I trust. G. Aside from money, what would I gain by being a presenter at this convention?

Response D. is where I started, of course. The 3s are the reason I asked my friends for advice instead of just dismissing the idea out of hand. I take signs seriously.

Well, but I have a godphone, and response type E gave me a logical next step to take. What would Loki do? I easily heard that answer in my head: Loki would say "f them, haha, I'll do my own thing."

On the other hand, Odin would do almost anything for knowledge. So what does Odin say? I asked him, in my mind. His reply: "Do what you want, but if you don't pursue this opportunity, I will know that what you want isn't really money."

My immediate  mental response to that was of course, "No, I want it. I do want money." We're talking about $150 for a one hour to one and a half hour class. Not a life-changing amount of money, except for two things: A. I've never made $150 an hour before and that would catapult me into a position to demand more money for my labor later, and B. this is an opportunity provided by Odin and I have to go on to a next step to show him that I appreciate the opportunities he is showing me and that I do in fact want to make an actual living and have money and would like to continue to be provided opportunities to earn money.

So, I have to go on to a next step, and I have to do it now. The next step does not have to be applying for the job, though, and in fact, I actually can't do that right now, because the application forms won't even be available until July. So that is NOT the next step that I have to take now. It has to be something else.

Another step I could take is to ask about the convention's safety policy. I asked the person who messaged me about this opportunity and was told they don't have one. But, their site isn't set up for this yet, and won't be until this summer. So, I'm thinking, if I could influence this online convention to have a safety policy, that's a positive outcome I could achieve. That would be worth doing. But, I would really need to wait and see if they come up with one on their own first, which I would not see until they have their site set up for this. Or would I? Maybe I could relay my desire for a safety policy through the person who put out the informal feelers. OK yes, I literally thought of doing that while I was typing this out, so just preparing this blog has helped me work through my decision process.

But I also can't wait on further decision making to see if they do it or not. I'd have to wait til their have their website up next summer to see if they really do it, regardless of what they might tell me next. So, I still need to take another next step right now. My next step is to seek more advice. Divination advice, as per Response F.

I messaged the person who initially contacted me about this, "My next steps are: 1. I am relaying through you to the organizers that I would desire a safety policy on the website, and 2. I'm pursuing divination and will get back to you when I have the results."

Response G. isn't really advice exactly, but it did get me to clarify to myself what I am trying to achieve. This is not ONLY about money but the money is important because I wanted it and Odin is trying to provide it. Aside from the money, though: A big, popular online platform from which to speak would allow me to reach more people with my message. My message consists of: buy my book, Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path; participate in / promote the Heathen Visibility Project, which is simultaneously a pride project like Pagan Pride, a project meant to be useful to journalists and bloggers, and an anti-Nazi project, which is really important to the whole culture not just specifically to Asatru; for more info besides in my book you can read my blog (this one! ) and apply to join the Asatru Facebook Forum. More generally, my message is about how Asatru is done and how it got that way. I also have messages from the gods to humanity to communicate, including: respect and protect the Earth. These messages, especially the anti-Nazi and pro-environmental messages, may be more important than anything about Day. If I did a presentation, it would be specifically an anti-Nazi presentation. I'd talk about the Heathen Visibility Project and about how to counter Nazi magic.

Back to: what is my next step?

Response F. suggested divination, and that's my next step. I asked Odin if that was an acceptable next step and he said yes. He said he is only asking me to take a next step right now. Because 3 is such an important number in this decision making process, I'm going to ask 3 different diviners. Probably people who each use a different method or system. The first person I asked was not doing divination at this time. I'm about to ask some other people. I'll blog about my divination results in future posts in this series.

This Saturday, April 4, there is an online pagan and heathen festival to replace the in-person festivals and conventions that were canceled. Bindrune Festival has speakers via podcast and live chat. My recorded podcast Asatru Ritual Basics will go live Saturday afternoon, and I will be available to answer questions during a live chat during my time slot.

I'm really excited to be the Guest of Honor at this Festival. Other speakers will be talking about Celtic, Slavic, and Buddhist topics in addition to more Heathen topics.

The nature and symbolism behind Pagan handfastings is explained to cowans. Fire ravages a Vodou temple in New Orleans. And a Pagan festival in the Midwest is held this weekend. It's Watery Wednesday, our weekly segment on news about the Pagan community around the world! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

I recently attended the joint Between the Worlds and Sacred Space conference that occurred in Maryland from the 5th through the 8th of March. Between the Worlds is a conference which occurs every few years, dependent on the right astrological circumstances, while Sacred Space is an annual conference. I'd never attended either, but I had been invited to be a presenter for Between the Worlds by Ivo Dominguez Jr (And a hearty thank you to him for doing so). Thursday was the start of the event, and I attended the opening ritual, which was a powerful awakening of the Sacred Space egregore. I liked how everyone got involved in the ritual...It was quite moving in its intensity. Later on I attended a talk by Literata on Modernity and Occultism and how different people had specific visions of what they wanted to manifest and how what they manifested didn't quite turn out the way they expected, but nonetheless built a current of sorts that we can look back on in history.

On the second day of the event I attended a panel on alliances with the spirit world, with Diana Paxson, Dorothy Morrison, Kirk Thomas, Aeptha, and Michael Smith sharing their perspectives on working with the spirits. I enjoyed the various perspectives they shared, all of which showed a depth of experience that was meaningful to anyone listening to the panel. Then I presented my class on the Alchemy of Breath, which seemed well received. As a presenter, it is always nice to have a room full of people who are genuinely engaged in what you are sharing. After that we attended the ritual prep class for the main ritual. What I liked about it is that they provided people the necessary background information to get the most out of the ritual scheduled for that evening. Later I went to Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki's class on Astral Doorways. This was a fascinating class, where she presented information on the second road/world. A lot of what she presented fit in with what I've been learning from R. J. Stewart (no surprise given their respective lineages), but it also gave me food for through about my own practices in relationship to imagination. Finally I attended the main ritual, which was a syncretic mix of five different traditions, woven together quite nicely to create a ritual which spoke to the importance of being present and participative in the changing times, to represent your cause during those times and know that others were also there. Following all that I had some conversation with people I've met and people I already know.

The Pagan community is going through a period of upheaval around the issue of sexual predators in the community. It's not an easy topic and as the shock of recent events falls away, we're left with a question of, "What do we now?" In a recent discussion on Pagan Musings Podcast, I suggested that one action the community could take involves documenting situations where non-consensual sexual activities have been reported. In such cases, it can devolve into a he said, she said scenario, with neither side able to conclusively prove what happened. When this occurs, its important to have a process in place that protects everyone, while still allowing for the possibility that the offending person made a mistake, as opposed to consciously doing something offensive. By documenting such situations, it makes it easier to track what is happen and do something about it before it blows up into an even more harmful situation than it may already be. Actually, this process of documentation can apply to any type of infraction that occurs at a pagan convention or festival, but it does require that people organizing the event be willing to take on the task of documenting whatever has occurred, keeping it in a database, and also sharing it with other organizers and leaders in the community. This may seem like a lot to take on, but I think it would also help to cut down on behavior that is harming members of the community.

Recently I was reading Romancing the Brand, which is a book about marketing. However, there's an interesting rule in marketing and customer service: The rule of 3. The way the rule of 3 works is if you hear about an issue, person, problem, etc. from 3 different sources, then you take it seriously because it means there's a problem. If we were to apply this rule of 3 to our community, through documentation and through the understanding that an issue shouldn't be buried or ignored if it continues to happen, what this would allow us to do is effectively monitor situations before they got out of hand. The rule of 3 provides enough verifiable information that we can't continue to put our heads in the sand and ignore what's happening. The rule of 3 also establishes that a pattern of behavior is happening and not being changed, even though concerns have been expressed.

I recently attended Convocation for the first time. I was having dinner one night at the restaurant and I talked with my waiter for a bit about the convention. She asked me if I thought that she and her co-worker would be accepted if they visited the vendor room to look around and I told her that I thought it would be fine (The vendor room was open to the public as far as I knew). I thought about that conversation later on and how in that moment I was a public face for Paganism. And how at any convention that is hosted in a space such as a hotel, all of us are public faces of Paganism, even if we don't realize we are. The public space we are in is not solely a Pagan space. It is shared space and the impressions we make on the hotel staff and other guests matter.

When I'm at an event or anywhere really, I behave the way I'd want other people to behave toward me. I'm courteous to the staff, acknowledge the work they are doing and do my best to be mindful of my behavior and how others might perceive it. Now it's true that I'm at a convention to have fun, but  I also want to make a good impression because the staff and guests will come away from those experiences with their own perceptions about Pagans. And likely they'll already have some assumptions and beliefs about us based on their own spiritual beliefs, etc. However I think that how we act in public is important.