In my greater Work I am tasked to go into many darknesses. Whether delving into the dark places in people’s hearts, traveling the astral and spirit worlds, or even walking in the forever-twilight between the worlds of the living and the dead, someone in my position is expected to travel with skill, confidence and honor.

But there is an obstacle to my pursuit of this Work: fear. Not the healthy and legitimate fear of what can befall careless travelers who blunder through the otherworlds, rather, a constant and steady fear of the world around me, especially physical darkness.

Bound up in my fear is a critical disconnect, the effect of which can likely be felt throughout my life: I have lost the distinction between being vulnerable and being in jeopardy. In Work and in life, there are times when allowing ones self to be vulnerable is healthy and vital, but I have armored myself against vulnerability in the quest to feel safe.

However, I am a shaman and an ordeal master. One who serves a Lady of productive destruction at that. It is my job to push at brittle places, drive people past comfort, and take them to places they never imagined going in their greatest dreams or most awful nightmares. I cannot escape the nature of my Work even when the one in need of pushing is myself.

Late this evening I arrived at Ramblewood in Northern MD where I am attending and presenting at Dark Odyssey: Fusion. Not long after getting my belongings unloaded, a heavy sense of depression and loneliness overtook me. This is not unusual, I feel this way at the beginning of just about every event I attend, particularly at Ramblewood. Being surrounded by so many people in the intimate setting of a sexuality event, sharing living space in group cabins, and being around so many partnered people while attending without a partner myself, can combine to leave me feeling like an island in a turbulent sea of people. The feeling typically fades within a day or so.

Having arrived the day before the majority of event attendees, I decided to go for a walk up to the camp labyrinth, set off in the woods a short walk from my cabin. It was not a random decision. I have only been erotically intimate here a small handful of times (three to be precise), although I have had many enjoyable scenes in the dungeon. Of those three times, two happened near the labyrinth, and I hoped to connect with the positive emotions and memories of that place to remind myself that the loneliness I was feeling rarely lasts.

Having driven nine hours in my boots, I decided I would walk barefoot. In itself this is unusual for me, as I have long been uncomfortable being seen without shoes on. Getting acclimated to being barefoot has been an ongoing emotional (and physical) challenge I set myself over the last two summers.

Here is a list of what accompanied me on my walk: My stout denim bluejeans, cotton underwear, one of my fabulously garish plaid shirts, my wallet, 3G smart phone, JF Rey glasses, and tactical flashlight. And of course, my DO:Fusion name-badge. On an 80 degree evening, I was prepared to be carded, make a phone call, look up Julia Robert’s acting career on IMDB, and illuminate an object up to 1000ft away. All while dressed to go panning for gold. At an event where people routinely wear nothing more than what the gods gifted them with at birth and what the Dark Odyssey registration staff gave them on arrival.

When I arrived at the labyrinth the night was still, illuminated by the luminescent flashes of dozens of lightning-bugs, a distant moon, and a canopy of stars. I could not really enjoy the sight however, because at every sound, I would reflexively click my flashlight on, the harsh light a safety blanket against the looming darkness of the surrounding woods.

I clicked my light down its energy-saving and less eye-searing low setting and proceeded to walk around the perimeter of the labyrinth. Skirting the boundary of small stones, I followed a path leading away towards the edge of the wood. A short distance down, the path forked and led back towards the labyrinth. Continuing along by flashlight I became conscious of the distinct feeling of the path beneath my feet. My route soon had me back at the labyrinth and I became aware of the need to explore my feelings of vulnerability.

Making my way to the bench placed near the labyrinth to accommodate drummers and people with mobility impairments, I anxiously stripped my clothes off and placed them careful down. I was aware of rising nervousness born out of leaving my phone, with its implied access to help in the event of an emergency. My nakedness was another source of anxiety. While Dark Odyssey events very clothing optional, aside from in the pool, where being clothing would be more conspicuous than nudity, I am rarely naked here. The fact is that I remain deeply uncomfortable with other people seeing my genitals, as when I lost weight, I also lost skin coverage, and no longer can pass for intact (not-circumcised), more restoration is required to get back to my previous, passing state. Having my obviously circumcised penis out where people can see it is a major trigger for my body dysphoria issues. The only time my genitals are seen at these events is when I am self-demoing a technique for one of my classes, in which case I am in a position of control as the presenter, and I make it a point to mention that I am restoring.

Despite there being no one else with me in the woods, I was a bit surprised by how uncomfortable I was being naked in a “public” place.

Picking up my flashlight, I proceeded to walk the same circuit again. This time I made the choice not to use the light. Gripping it in white-knuckled fingers, I strained my senses to feel the different densities and textures of the ground beneath my feet to find the path, just as Marten and Silver had taught me years ago. Freed from the brilliant LED light, my eyes began to adjust and I strove to integrate the visual and tactile information into one cohesive sense of the world. Through it all though, my inner monolog chattered on. I was vulnerable up to a point in the woods, but I still had my security blanket snug in my hand, with my thumb resting on the button that would wash the world in 200 lumens of blinding light the moment I asked it to. As long as I had a touchstone, my mind refused to focus and experience the woods and the night for what they were. I had an out in the form of my flashlight, and as long as I had that, I remained a traveler on but not in my surroundings. My armor against the intimacy that comes with vulnerability was very much whole, despite my nakedness.

My feet brought me back to the drummer’s bench, and almost against my will I set down the flashlight, being careful to frame it on my bright shirt so that its dark form would be difficult to miss on my return.

I set out again, my bare feet providing a wealth of information about the ground I was treading on. Even so, as I came to the place where the path forked, I strained my vision to make sense of the patterns of light and dark before me. A passing breeze or perhaps an animal rustled in a distant tree and the craving for the small metal tube with its trapped miniature sun and sharply scalloped end was very nearly a physical ache.

Making my return again to the bench, I remained discontent with the agitated state of my mind. There was no doubt that I had wadded into the dark waters of my own heart, but I knew that I had not achieved what I had at some point in the evening determined to do. I had not gone into a state of vulnerability and openness where I could fully feel at one with my surroundings.

To succeed in the ordeal path, one must be determined above all to see things through. Somewhere in the proceeding explorations this had become an ordeal, with myself as both seeker and guide. With that realization bubbling in my mind, I took off my glasses and set them carefully beside the small tactical flashlight.

My eyes rendered useless without my powerful prescription lenses, I set out again to circumambulate my short course.

This time any residual fear was gone from my mind, washed away by the growing familiarity with these woods and the intense focus needed to stay on the curving path by the sensations of my feet alone. Joined with the earth in the task of getting me around the path and back safely to the labyrinth I finally felt the unity with the land I was missing, and I was intimately conscious of my open and vulnerable state existing without the fear I had believed indistinguishable from it. As I walked, blind and naked, through the still woods I found myself feeling freer and safer than I could remember being in a long time.

After a period of rest and contemplation, I felt that it was time for me to return to my cabin. I toyed with the idea of returning in my naked state, but discarded the idea as potentially awkward. Pulling on my jeans, I was struck by how heavy they felt. Rather than armor, in that moment and place, they felt more like a weight dragging me down into the sea.

I do not yet know where this discovery and exploration will take me. But in the spiritual and emotional afterglow that accompanies ordeal work, I feel more assured of my ability to go into darkness and journey back again on the power of my own two feet than I have in a very long time.

Take a moment to look around yourself. Everything you see has a name, a symbol of existence. Our entire experience of our world(s) depends on drawing distinctions through identifying symbols and sounds. The faiths that many of us grew up in recognized this:

Genesis 1:4,5 God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

In the story of Genesis, the Hebraic god separates the light from darkness, but light is not Day until it is named such. Likewise with darkness and night.

The mythology and lore of a great many religions, as well as magical and spiritual traditions, abound with stories of the power of names and naming. From the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin, to Isis learning the true name of Re and in doing so becoming his equal, to the Judaic child naming and blood sacrifice ritual, to the taking of a partner’s name in a marriage, and the choosing of a new name as a step of gender transition, the importance of names is easy to see. Names bind us together into tribes, whether based around nationhood, faith, or a preference in computer technology or truck manufacturer. The first part of an introduction is someone’s name. It could be said that until a person has a name to go with their face, they aren’t really known to you.

I travel frequently in two worlds in which people frequently take new names and identities. In the pagan world we call them circle names. In kink/BDSM they are scene names.

On the surface the two seem the same, and for some people they likely serve an identical purpose. However, if we delve a bit deeper into the two cultures we see some critical differences. In the pagan community a circle name is often representative of one’s pagan identity. Perhaps a deity one relates to, or much like my own name, characteristic of an individual’s place in the spiritual world and pagan community.

In kink/BDSM space, a chosen name is often a shield. It serves as a layer of insulation designed to separate one’s kink identity and activities from the real and potentially disastrous consequences of having one’s kinky life known to an often hostile non-kinky world. Despite advances in pagan visibility, this reason remains a secondary, or even sometimes paramount reason that circle names are taken as well.

What both communities share is that they put great weight in knowing someone’s real name, by which I mean the name on one’s government issued ID. This is a fascinating concept, that one name is inherently real. By extension, it implies that the others are, if not false, then lesser. How would this concept be extended to the gods? I serve the Lady, does my service of Her in that aspect in some way diminish the worship of those who know Her by another? In my own tradition at least, that idea is patently ridiculous.

In our spiritual tradition we believe that while the gods are unique and separate entities, they can have different aspects to their being. Perhaps where I have seen this most dramatically, has been in my Work with the Northern Tradition deities. Odin the Allfather, Odin the Wanderer, and Odin the Shaman-King, are but a few of His immense number of names or titles. Likewise with his oath-brother: Loki the Husband of Angrboda, Loki the Trickster, and Loki the Mad/Destroyer of Worlds, arguably an aspect in itself of Loki the Husband of Sigyn, represent distinctly different aspects of the deity and phases in His existence.

A colleague of mine Works very closely with Odin the Wanderer, and when He appears to her, He comes with both of His eyes intact. That aspect of Odin exists in a state before His transformative journey that cost Him one of His mortal eyes. My own patron has multiple names and titles. Other deities have called Her The White Lady, or Tashrisketlin’s White Lady. To us, She is simply the Lady, or the Mistress of the Forest Fire. For over a decade we strove to learn the name that She is more widely known by, having been assured that there was one. Only when we stopped caring, did we finally come to learn it. But worshipping Her in that aspect is as foreign to me as any unfamiliar deity.

The gods are not unique in having names and titles with power. Over a half-lifetime as a magician and spirit worker I have accumulated my share of titles, which have their time and place. Likewise I have and have had a number of names.

Wintersong Tashlin or on occasion Wintersong G. Tashlin is the name that carries me through the world. In Vreschtik tradition, our names have to have some form of symbolic meaning. Wintersong is quite specific: the sound that a winter wind makes whistling and tearing through bare branches in the forest.

Wintersong is not the first chosen name I have had. Before I was Wintersong, I was Stardancer. Before that, Oceandreamer. Oceandreamer looked towards the future with expectations and hopes as vast as the great ocean, but like the ocean herself, was helpless to resist the push and pull of outside forces. Stardancer, is a story for another time. There is also a spirit name known to a few intimates, which is where the G in Wintersong G. Tashlin comes from. Like some other magicians, I took a spirit quest long ago to find my true name, and having done so, never shared it with another soul, living or otherwise. All that said, of course Wintersong was not the name given to me by my parents.

The name I associate with myself most often is Wintersong Tashlin. But while not a stranger to her, my mother does not relate to me as Wintersong. To her I will always be Eric, a name that in its own way represents an aspect of me as clearly as Wintersong does. I would never expect my mother to call me Winter or Wintersong, because to her I am not a mage, shaman, or kinkster. Not the cold wind in barren trees, but rather the child who’s diapers she changed, and who she watched grow into a man. There is no reason for me to expect her to relate to me as Witnersong, and doing so would reject a vital part of myself that is Eric. Becoming Wintersong did not make Eric cease to be in the way that Wintersong supplanted and replaced Stardance and Oceandreamer. For that matter, when I changed my legal last name, Eric L. Leshay was in fact supplanted by Eric L. Tashlin, an evolution of one aspect of self.

Where a name comes from can have a great deal of power. A frequent, and inappropriate question asked of transgender individuals (or others who have changed their names) is what their name was before transition. Even with the intense work involved in changing one’s gender legally and socially, the attitude persists for many that one’s name given at birth is somehow more real than a taken name. The name we grow up with can be seen as shaping us, whereas a name taken is shaped by who we are. To know someone’s birth-name is to understand a piece of their journey.

There certainly are those who take names and titles frivolously or without due consideration. In the BDSM scene this can be seen in people who assume the name or title of master, in some cases without understanding the power and meaning of the word, or the work the community requires of one before that title can be used. Likewise, I have seen the terms shaman and spirit worker used to self-identify by people who see in those words either aspects of their own experience or echoes of their future selves, but whose spiritual journey as yet does not fulfill the weight and nature of the Work associated with them. Names and titles have power, and sometimes the assumption of a title can set one inextricably on a path that can be longer, and more complex than one would ever wish.

The powerful, and often nuanced nature of names and titles is something that bares deeper consideration in many traditions and communities.

Certainly much strife could be eased in the pagan and spirit work worlds if the varied aspects of deity were more greatly respected. Infighting has consumed segments of the community in recent years, much of it over whose perspective on individual gods and traditions is right. Understanding that one who calls on the One-Eyed King will have a very different experience and relationship with Odin than one who calls on the Wanderer would go a long way to defusing tensions that leave many of us walking on metaphorical eggshells, and has rent more than one community asunder.

In the kink/BDSM community we need to learn how titles should be earned and claimed, and develop constructive language for addressing people who take on titles that they perhaps do not yet have the right to. Also, recognizing that while the names people use when in BDSM space may or may not be the name on their government ID, for some a scene name is far more real than the name used in their non-kinky lives. This goes equally for circle names in pagan space.

Personally, I travel through the pagan, LGBT and kink/BDSM worlds as Wintersong Tashlin, although most people simply call me Winter. In a sense, it is my real name, if indeed there can be such a thing. In keeping with the traditions of my Lady and the nature of my shamanism, I strive to exist at the intersection of many worlds while remaining inherently myself. The continuity of my identity is vital to maintaining that role. What my name means to people in different spaces may vary quite a bit, that is the power and weakness in a name.

Finding words to define the people, objects, and concepts in our world represents one of the greatest powers every thinking person wields. Like any other power, names and naming require care and attention to understand and to wield to great effect.

A few technical changes are in the air.

I have moving my “Previous Appearances” page to be a child of “Appearances” instead of “Presenter.” I have also added a dedicated page on being a Demo Bottom for my classes, which is where you will now be able to find a list of my current and upcoming demo needs. Special thanks are due to Tristan Taormino and Sarah Sloan for allowing me to post their fabulous and much needed Demo Bottom’s Bill of Rights as its own page here on BarkingShaman.com.

I believe in the United States of America. More specifically, I believe in the idea of the United States of America.

This is of course, ironic in some ways, since as a pagan/poly/queer/pervert, it is safe to say that there are many “defenders American values” who would just as soon have me somewhere else. Probably Copenhagen if I had to wager a guess.

In truth, we in Tashrisketlin have frequently debated leaving the country for greener, and perhaps saner pastures. Thus far we have elected to stay, not because we are thrilled with the direction this nation is headed, but because to brutally paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill’s famed dictum on democracy: America is the worst country we’ve found, except all the others.

The problem with democracy is that people are hard. We’re complicated and inconsistent, gentle and brutal, we want low taxes and bountiful social programs, free speech and freedom from speech we don’t like. We need the cake not to be a lie, and live as if wishing hard enough will make it truth.

I came across two news articles this evening that drove home just how complicated a government of the people, by the people, for the people can be.

The first addressed the deeply troubling fact that the vast majority of Republican congress members steadfastly hold the belief that anthropogenic climate change is a myth, or in some extreme cases, a liberal conspiracy. In the spirit of representative government, the meager number of Republican congressmen and woman who accept the scientific data on climate change closely matches the scant number of GOP identified voters who do.

Acceptance of climate change science is rapidly becoming a purity test for legislators wishing to run as Republicans. In the 2010 mid-term elections, every GOP candidate save one denied the existence of anthropogenic climate change. A few days ago, a Republican presidential candidate (the one with a Google problem) declared steps to address climate change part of a coordinated attack on personal freedom by the liberal left.

The economic consequences of a concerted push to reduce carbon emissions are real. However, so too are the economic, environmental, and humanitarian consequence of doing nothing. The problem is that taking steps to address global climate change hurts us now, and in ways that economists can reasonably predict. If these steps aren’t taken, the burden of that decision will overwhelmingly be felt after the lifespan of most GOP congressmen and voters. Moreover, while the economy is a complicated thing, modeling its behavior is simplistic next to modeling the behavior of a planet-wide and rapidly changing ecosystem. To maintain their integrity, climate scientists must speak in theories and potential consequences, which opens their data and predictions to dismissal by legislators for whose agendas carbon reduction measures pose a concrete threat.

And now, for a shift from the global to the personal:

A few nights ago, comedian Tracy Morgan, said some stupid and deeply offensive things during a stand-up performance in Nashville TN. Included in his diatribe was his belief that being gay (or presumably lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer) was a media influenced choice, that we need to stop “whining” about bullying, and that if he had an effeminate gay son he would stab him to death. It’s that last part that elevated the incident from “he’s not getting an invite to the GLADD Media Awards” to “full-out media blitz.”

Which, to my way of thinking at least, is exactly right. The inevitable weak statement of apology from Mr. Morgan’s publicist was met with derision from all corners of the LGBT media world, from the “Gay Inc.” blue chips like GLADD and HRC, to the queer blogosphere. Where I become concerned, as someone who believes in America, is when the focus of the community’s ire turns from what he said to the fact that he said it.

Tracy Morgan has, through his words, shown himself to be worthy of our deepest contempt.

However, because I believe in the American experiment, I have no choice but to defend his right to speak those words. The LGBT civil rights movement has legitimate and heartrending arguments in favor of restricting hate speech towards our community. It is all too easy to imagine the deleterious effects that Mr. Morgan’s public affirmations of hatred could have on vulnerable members of our community, particularly queer youth of color. In comparing his routine to speech that the Supreme Court has found legal to ban, fellow comedian and out lesbian Wanda Sykes had this to say as reported in the second article of the evening: “…but for a youth in TN or any other numerous place, Tracy just yelled, ‘Fire,’ in a crowded theater,”

The LGBT civil rights movement, and indeed other civil rights movements in U.S. History including the struggle for African American rights and the Suffrage Movement, could not have achieved any real measure of success without free speech providing a stable platform from which to challenge an entrenched society. It would be selfish and counterproductive to undermine that foundational American principal in order to punish those who attack us.

Go after Mr. Morgan’s livelihood and I will be there right beside you. Boycott 30 Rock, picket or send letters of protest to venues that choose to book Mr. Morgan’s stand-up performances, call him out on his bigoted and violent hatred towards us at every imaginable opportunity. In this country we have the right to speak our minds, but we also have the right to make choices based on our fellow citizen’s speech.

Free speech is dangerous, anyone who says otherwise is either lying or ignorant. However, it is the dangerous aspect of free speech that also makes it so valuable. We owe it to the generations and civil rights movements that follow ours to safeguard free speech from internal and external threats so that others can follow in our footsteps.

What these two articles have in common is that both address subjects that are far from as straightforward as invested populations would choose to believe.

In the midst of a national and global economic crisis of historic proportions, introducing any additional financial burden on the American public or our straining economy could be reasonably be argued to be foolhardy. Moreover, it could, and indeed has been argued, that the climate change skepticism found in the GOP is a reflection of their constituents’ beliefs, as required in a representative republic.

Likewise, it takes a harder heart than mine to dismiss even one vulnerable member of our community pushed into suicide or other self destructive behavior by Tracy Morgan’s destructive words as the “price we must pay” for free speech. Ms. Sykes makes a fair argument, and it is dangerously tempting to put our community’s needs first and support her perspective, leaving other minority communities to struggle without the robust right to free speech that made our successes possible.

I fear that this country is not weathering well the era of the 24hr news cycle, Twitter, and an age where one can access the sum total of human knowledge through a device that fits in a shirt pocket. Governing a deeply fragmented nation of 300 million people, who have sub-divided into socially and culturally isolated echo chambers is a Herculean, if not Sisyphean task.

As the fictional American President Andrew Sheppard once said: “…America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight…” It is hard sometimes to know if the American people remember how to fight that fight. And more importantly, if we remember why we need to.

A year ago today I had a milestone birthday, which I let pass unremarked upon. The reason I passed on the opportunity afforded by my 30^th birthday to publicly reflect upon the preceding decade (or three) was simple: turning thirty depressed the shit out of me.

Despite the lack of my public acknowledgment of my birthday, I nonetheless had a great many personal reflections on what entering my third decade meant to me. For instance, when one lives with chronic health complications, it is easy to mark time in relation to them. I have been barking more than half the time I have been alive. In December of 2011 it will be more than a third of my life since I was free from constant pain. Moreover, as someone who’s health has been problematic for so long, I have at times questioned whether thirty represents the same point in my life’s course as it does for others. While there is nothing in my medical situation at the moment that actively shortens my life, there are many reasons to realistically question if I will see the same age my cohorts.

Outside of my own health, there were many other life markers that appeared to me a reflection of the overall tone to this turn of the Wheel. My relationship of eight years had painfully disintegrated, earning me the dubious distinction of following my parents footsteps into divorce. After a mixed run, our company had collapsed under the combined weight of a disastrous economy, our own inexperience, and the departure of one of the partners. For the first time in years the specter of insolvency haunted our family, and we were surviving only on the generous financial support of my parents.

Lastly, in moving east to the Raymond NH area, we had abandoned a vrescht that the Clan had put quite a bit of work into, adding to looming questions about where our magical and spiritual work was going.

In short (I know: too late), I faced the eve of my 30^th birthday from one of the bleakest places I have been. There were good and happy times behind me, and I doubted circumstances could develop such that I would see those times in years to come. My feeling crossed dangerously close to suicidality on more than one occasion. Only love for my partner and family, my oaths to The Lady and Tashrisketlin, and the able assistance of a gifted therapist, got me safely passed those feelings.

But then something changed. Some part of me said fuck that and decided to try to make the best of what I could. What followed was a year of change, if not always easy or pleasant.

A new medication gave me some relief from the worst of my odd migraine condition, though sadly not my pain. While in the long term, that medication’s side effects outweighed its benefits, it opened up parts of life that I had thought lost to me and put me on a path to finding a viable medication to replace it. For starters, as I am typing, the Cruxshadows are playing on my mp3 player. In the last year I have rediscovered music, which had been completely lost to me because of said migraine condition. Over the four or so years in which I could not listen to music for more than a few minutes I had forgotten how meaningful it could be in my life.

Also, I decided that at a crossroads in life with so much change, I would allow myself an early mid-life crisis. With a complete lack of experience, but a lot of determination, I bought a 1979 Suzuki motorcycle and declared that within two months I would pass my road test to get my motorcycle endorsement. I had never even sat on a motorcycle before, and in fact until I was thirteen there was doubt as to whether I would even learn to ride a pedal bike. But that is why I did it. I needed to set a challenging goal and fight to achieve it so I could remember how.

Tashrisketlin did establish a vrescht here in Raymond. And while we have not been able to do what we initially intended with it, the experience built our confidence. This vrescht has been a useful teaching tool for our journeyman and our students. Before we leave it in a few months it will be turned towards one of the most challenging masterworks our clan has ever attempted.

While we have not found another partner to become part of our primary relationship, Fire and I have had time to heal the emotional wounds of the break-up with Evan. We still do not work ideally in a binary relationship, but Fire and I have rediscovered what made us fall in love in the first place and have worked hard building solid foundations on which to build our larger family when new primary partner(s) do come along.

Having accepted Brigantian Designs’ failure, I devoted much needed attention to improving my skills as a presenter and went on to a number of joyous personal successes through the year. I also tried my hand at selling cars at a local Nissan dealership, which taught me much needed lessons about the limitations imposed by my health and my spiritual spiritual path. Plus I now know more than anyone could ever want to know about the 2011 Nissan product line.

With fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence I set about actively trying to make friends for the first time in a long time. Along the way, Evan and I stumbled and plowed through the challenging territory of building a meaningful friendship. I also began to date outside of my relationship with Fire, and have embraced a richer poly life than ever before.

Now I sit here typing in the fading twilight of my 30^th year (it is my birthday, but I haven’t yet reached the hour of my birth) and unlike a year ago I can see a path through the forest of shadows. It is a dark, twisting and dangerous path, but I can see it.

Our financial situation is just as dire as this time last year, although I have fledgling ideas of how I might contribute more meaningfully than I do now. And there are dark clouds on the horizon for all of us, they tug at the awareness of nearly every diviner and spirit worker I know. I also know that my health is not going to become perfect anytime soon either.

But I have dragged myself up off the mat. I am a Master Vreschtik magician, the White Lady’s shaman, a damn good public speaker, and I have people who love and support me, and whom I support in return. This last year has brought home what Raven meant by wear your scars with pride. Sure this turn on the Wheel has seriously kicked the shit out of me for nearly all of my thirty years, but I’m still standing. As I look towards thirty-one, I find myself feeling ready to get back in the fight.