Make Every Day a Ritual – Evening

Human’s need rituals. This is the conclusion I’ve come to after years of studying religions, faith, people, psychology, cultures, and just watching people in all settings, in all walks of life.

Now, let me clarify that by ritual I don’t necessarily mean a religious rite or sermon. By ritual I mostly mean a habit. Daily rituals are good, healthy, fulfilling habits done every day that help your emotional, physical and spiritual growth. This could be as simple as a cup of chamomile tea after a long day at work or as elaborate as every weekend you create an at-home spa for yourself, shut down all technological outlets, and just relax and detox from negativity.

Here are some daily rituals that I have and I want to make clear that I’m not posting these to tell you that you should do them – NOT AT ALL! You should make your own rituals, ones that are unique to you! I post these only to inspire you and better explain how important these small acts are to me.
Also, be sure to check out my Morning Blessings and Mid-day Offerings

Evening Revelations

Evenings are family time for me. It is the time when I go to my girlfriend’s derby bouts, visit with close friends, eat dinner together (even if we’re all having something different), snuggle up together, or just lounge and be together.

Evenings are also the time in which my brain goes into social mode. I am on Twitter, Facebook, my blog, Pinterest, Witch School and Temple Illuminatus chat, and so on. I’m catching up with what was going on in the world that day, posting on my blog to share my own insanity, answering e-mails and forum posts. If there are any new videos posts on YouTube from my subscriptions, I watch them. I read the blog posts that I follow. I connect with the world around me. This all usually happens while the three of us play a movie in the background, which may be noise pollution or mental anxiety but it is something that can draw us out of our online world even if it is just a moment to laugh together or discuss something that just happened in our peripheral vision.

This is also the time I do readings, if any are ordered. I retreat to the bedroom and lay out my cards, take pictures, spend time writing up the reading so that I get exactly what I need to get across and send them out to you, my readers.

I usually end my day with a bath or shower. This is my time to visualize any irritations, negativity, non-beneficial energies being washed off of me like so much dirt and spiraling down the drain to reconnect with Mother Earth who will transform them to something more beneficial in the long run. Sometimes I do another Reiki self-treatment in the shower, this one a shorter one that usually focuses on the upper body and major chakras.

I come out of the shower, fresh and warm; drink a mug of tea; finish up my day if I have any loose strings; prepare for bed with my lovies.

Concluding my Rituals

These are all my rituals that get me through my day. They are by no means anything I recommend for others. Please find rituals as unique as you are. They are by no means set in stone. They can change from week to week, month to month, year to year. I may no longer drink a pot of tea a day just as I no longer drink 3 pots of coffee a day. I might start using flower essences and ethereal flowers instead of crystals and reiki in my water. I might start showering of a morning for rejuvenation instead of in the evening for relaxation. I may magically become a morning person…not likely…but I might.

I seriously don’t expect to have these same rituals AT ALL if/when we move, have kids, have financial or employment changes, etc. That all is in the future and, while I plan on it like the Sagittarius I am, I am not bothering to change my rituals for it just yet.

The point of these posts is to show you what I do. Now I want to see what you do. If you write a Make Every Day a Ritual post, please share it with me here in the comments or post it on Twitter with #EveryDayRituals

I can’t wait to read all of your sacred rituals.

Love and Light
HedgeWife

Wiccan Ethics: Is it a sin to Kill?

I was very hesitant to write about this subject because, well, it’s a hot button for almost anyone who follows any religion, whether its Wicca, Christianity or Buddhism.

Is it wrong or sinful to Kill?
This is a topic that came up in the Temple Illuminatus chat room the other night and I added my two cents there, so, if my readers are from that chat, I’m sorry if this seems redundant but my points here might be a bit more clear now that I’ve had time to think them through.
Many people when reading this question will say YES, killing is wrong. A Wiccan will call upon the rede of Do as you will an HARM NONE.

I want to point out the fallacies in this statement and why it is too simplistic.
First is that many people will say this until they are in a situation of Kill or be Killed. Maybe you would not kill another person to save your own life, perhaps your religious beliefs are so far ingrained that you feel as though that killing a person, even if they are going to kill you, is simply two wrongs not making a right. What if that person was going to kill someone else? What if that other person is your husband or girlfriend, son or daughter, mother or sister or brother or nephew? Could you hold onto the idea that killing is wrong even in that situation? Would you still kill the would-be killer?

What about in situations of death row? Is it wrong to kill a serial killer, a mass murderer, a serial rapist, a pedophile? Does your compassion go so far as saying it is wrong to kill these people?
Now, I want to point out that in Wicca and many Earth-based religious beliefs, all things have life. If it is wrong to kill, is it wrong to kill all living things? Do animals count? Are you a vegetarian or vegan who believes it is wrong to kill any living thing? What about plants? Scientists have proven that plants actually fear being harmed or killed even though we cannot hear their screams. Is it wrong to kill them? Should we simply stop eating or building homes from trees or even walking on the grass for fear of killing any living thing?
By the way, these are just things to think about…

Now take it in another direction.
Go back to those people on death row. I bring forth the idea of a man who is a pedophile who killed three children after abusing them. Does he deserve to die?
Now, for the many of you reading this who believe in reincarnation and that we all choose the life we live in or at least the lessons we are supposed to learn in this life before we are born, that our actions in our past lives effect the events of this one.

Those three children knew, before they were born, that they were making a choice in this life that would have an equal outcome. They had past-life relationships with the man who did this to them.
This concept comes from a book I read by Dick Sutphen. In this book he did a past life reading of a woman who wanted to know why she was in an abusive relationship with a man who, turns out, raped her daughter as well. Turns out the three of them had a past life in a similar situation in the middle east during a time when it was common for men to take on the daughters of his harem as wives even at a very young age. The man brought this idea over into this life, whether he meant to or not along with the idea that women are beneath him. The daughter, in this past life was abandoned by her mother so in this life she decided she would make the choices necessary to force her mother to stay with her and care for her – the rape and abuse she suffered ensured her mother’s nurturing care.

You may have an issue with this idea but, what if the three children made the choice to settle some sort of karma with the man who killed them? How can we know whether or not the children were not murderers in a past life? For all horrible people were children once – Hitler, Stalin, the Virginia Tech murderer, were all once children.

Another change in direction
What about soldiers? Are they committing a wrongful sin by killing people who could pose threats to their country, their freedom, and their families?
Are they evil for killing?

I once heard that soldiers carry with them the karma of their killing. Many soldiers were soldiers in their past lives and continuously live out this lifestyle in each lifetime. A soldier in the Roman legion dies at the hand of a Gaul. He is reborn in WWII as a Nazi soldier killed by an American bullet. He is then reborn as an Afghani fighter who is kills himself for his religion, country and family.
This is a cycle that can only be broken by the conscious choice to turn away from that path and find a new purpose.

I propose that killing is not wrong or evil in a sense. Killing is simply a decision. It is an action that has a reaction. Those that live by the sword or gun or noose die by the sword… Those that harm others will, in turn, be harmed by others. This is karma. It does not depend on whether or not others deem or judge it wrong or a sin, it simply is.

If you do not want to be involved in the karma of killing, do your best not to kill. It is up to you as to how far you go in this decision whether it simply means not joining the military, voting against a politician who is pro-death penalty, becoming vegetarian, or even wearing softer shoes so that when you walk on the grass it does as little damage as possible.
Life is full of these karmic choices and it is part of experiencing life to think about them, decide on them, live them.

I know this post is going to anger and upset a lot of people. I want to make it clear here that this is merely an argument that saying it is wrong to kill is far too simplistic a statement.