Guarded:

I encountered a slight snag last night while sniffing out a new target for my dream workings. A pretty little thing with an extremely sharp mind.....thoughts that prick like thorns.

It's strange how many of those who claim to be students of the Occult can be so vulnerable, open and unguarded. They might as well have WELCOME branded into their foreheads....

And then, every now and again, I run across one with absolutely zero belief, or training, and yet their defenses are nigh impenetrable.

Maia:

To the Darkness, my beloved Despina.

Many fools give you praise, in ignorance and blindness do they call upon your essence.

Sheep for the slaughter, ripe with delusions of grandeur.

Pre-Moon Sickness:

My hallowdays are held twice every month, on both the Full and Dark Moons. The rituals I preform during these times are referred to as Bacchanals.

At first it was only the Full Moon which called me when I began my path with my Lady’s main aspect, the Darkness. After I had advanced enough within her second aspect, which embodies the Flesh, the Dark Moon was added.

Now I am on her final aspect, which is known as the Twilight. (No relation to the book series.) This is the path which represents everything that lays in-between. A great deal of my work on it so far has been through the Dream Verse, but it also includes the veil, and the crossroads.

When it is deemed that I am ready, my Bacchanals will extend to both of the Half Moons as well.

Absurdity trumps Certainty:

Once again my lack of sleep has paid off. Because apparently I need to be driven half mad with deprivation before my idiot brain will start to receive the right signals.

I have uncovered the final name. It didn't make any sense when it first came to me, but I wrote it down and have just now dissected it and looked up the possible meanings behind it.

I finally translated the origins of the different parts of the name, after figure out just how they broke down, and thought that I must have lost my damn mind because it didn't make any sense, it meant nothing.

But this is the aspect which includes the Dreaming, so on a hunch, I fiddled around with a few dream dictionaries to see what the corresponding symbols were for the translations and by the Gods.....half of the name symbolizes future prosperity while the other is a forewarning of impending chaos.

The aspect of all things in-between, the crossroads, the veil, the scales and sands....I expected any of these things, and that is what made me blind.

I didn't think to look for the name to represent the balance, despite how important that is to my entire Godsdamn belief system.

Now ironic is it that only through the lack of sleep was I am to discover the true name for the Twilight Aspect of my Lady, which includes the Dream Verse.

Moon Called:

It's always best if I don't eat before the Moon, it makes everything easier on me the next day, plus my hunger won't be satisfied no matter what I consume, so I'll only be causing myself unnecessary pain.

Tonight's all about pain, but that's different, just a part of the overall ritual. I'd rather not have sickness dragging me down as well as the Gods only know, I'll face enough of that while I recuperate over the next few days.

Most women suffer from PMS, but theirs is nothing compared to mine. Even before I was sterilized I never really had issues of the physical kind, at least not based around my menstrual cycle....no, my PMS is simply the primal awakening up inside of me tied to a cycle which no menopause will ever free me from. My Pre-Moon Syndrome.

I wouldn't trade it for the world though. The Hunt has become a part of me, it's undeniable siren's call branded into my very soul. Before it was just some weird-ass thing I had zero control over that felt like being trapped in a surreal dream. A nightmare where I become one of the creepy-crawling things that stalk the shadows of the night. It was something I just went along with because I was helpless to deny the pull of it.

As I have grown in my Lady's grace, so too has the Hunt grown for me, reaching out and entwining with me, heightening my awareness of it to the extreme. What was once just a singular monthly event turned into twice a month, and now that I am walking the path of her final aspect, it has grown once more, adding another two nights to my tab.

Full, Dark and the in-between. This is what I am, a hound of my Lady's Hunt. There are countless Hunts, many which occur only as a dire foreboding of some ghastly event. The bringers of warnings and omens, wars and storms, but these, the ones which have claimed me....they are far more frequent and eternal.

But before I am able to let go, and completely give over to my wolf, I need to see to my other obligations. For this too is the night in which I make sacrifice.

Ride the Storm:

A storm is calling me. Too close to the Dark Moon and the call of the hunt, I can do no other than follow.

My Lady’s daughter has come to me these few days past, and she tastes of dreams and storms. I think she brought this tempest with her.

Fortune has seen to it that I have the time to seek her out now, otherwise it would drive me beyond madness.

She is my white rabbit, and now I follow her, this primordial child of the Darkness, with her twilight eyes, to bear witness to the wonders she has awaiting for me within the dreaming.

Remember what the Dormouse said....

This sounds like something you'd read in an Anne Rice novel:

I’ve always been in love with the word Gypsy. I know that it’s considered a slur, but I’ve never seen it as symbolic with thievery or any of the other stereotypes that some people associate with them. I know my opinion doesn’t matter because it’s not my people being insulted, but the term has always been so romantic for me. The old-school stereotypes of brightly painted covered wagons, a flair of skirts dancing around camp fires and fortune telling.

I think a lot of my ignorance about other cultures stems from romanticizing what I’ve read in cheap paperbacks. It’s no excuse, I know, but I have this weird love-affair with words and the imagery they invoke, regardless of how wrong or politically incorrect it might all seem in this day and age.

Even the modern portrayal of Travelers, I envy the closeness that they have to their people and culture, even if they’re a little xenophobic, as most tightly-knit groups tend to be. I used to know a woman who had married into a family of Travelers and she used to say how much she wished her husband’s grandmother would share some of her knowledge with her, but that they refused to expose their rituals to outsiders.

I’m so in love with the idea of that, and yet I have to wonder if maybe the isolation is the cause for so many of their woes and the way society tends to judge and reject them. I enjoy the idea of cultures having these secret rites and ceremonies that no one else has access too. There’s just this extreme romanticism in the concept of secrecy that I’m enamored with.