Back from Pantheacon

I was able to catch an earlier flight home last night, and so was able to be on the ground in my home airport before my originally scheduled flight boarded -- yea!

I'm still a bit dizzy from all that happened, but will post the highlights soon.

Will also try to catch up on the friends list, but not sure I'll make it all the way back.

WTF?

There's an entry in my LJ Inbox that says "You are not authorized to view this comment."

How can I not be authorized to view a comment on my own journal???

I've seen notifications of deleted comments before, but this is new.
And weird.

*crunch*

My teacher gave me a strand of prayer beads as an ordination gift: a cycle of rose quartz, bone skulls, and wood, with a special charm on the end.

I just stepped on it and severed the strand.

I was holding it in my hand with the intention of putting it in my jacket pocket and taking it with me to pick up my daughter, but then had to stop and sift through my suitcase to find something else. I never noticed the strand slip from my hand and onto the floor -- just the "crunch" as my heel came down on it.

Strangely enough, none of the beads seem to be broken -- and it broke within the wood beads, which I imagine are more resilient than the quartz or bone. Evidently the edge of a hole severed the cord.

I'm taking this as a sign that I've done more than enough resting and not enough integrating of my weekend -- and that restringing the strand this evening will provide an opportunity to do exactly that. I also think that restringing it will be a way of owning and claiming the energy I received.


Even though none of the individual beads are broken and I feel very strongly that there's a real purpose in it happening, I'm feeling rather awful that I *stepped on* and *broke* my teacher's gift.

Re-Making the Strand

I've re-made the prayer bead strand that broke.

It's not quite the same as it was before (aside from the fact that my finishing is never quite as elegant as my teacher's work).

The original strand had rose quartz to represent Inanna -- and while it worked within the artistic and energetic integrity of the piece, it didn't feel entirely right to me as a representation of Inanna. Her stone is lapis -- and she's far more fierce than rose quartz feels to me.

As it happens, I have a strand of lapis beads which my ex-husband gave me for Christmas years ago. It's been sitting on my Inanna altar since I put it up a few months ago, but not actually used. As I looked at the rose quartz beads this evening I realized that the lapis beads were about the same size. I brought them down, and yes -- they fit.

So I re-did the strand with lapis instead of rose quartz.

Except that I cut the tiger tail off too short to be able to double it back through the crimp beads to finish it, requiring me to cut another length and re-string the strand.

That's when I realized that the row of lapis seemed too intense, and the dark shade combined with the skulls and the wood beads to make the overall tone of the strand too dark. So I swapped out half the lapis for half the original rose quartz, alternating them. The contrasting colors seemed more Inanna-like than either solid color, and seemed to represent both the intense and the light energies better than either stone alone.

When I re-strung it this time, everything went together well. It still has all the elements my teacher included, as well as a bit more to make it fully mine.

I'll try to post a photo in the next day or so.