Muggle Life Blues

 It is SUCH a struggle to slip back into #mugglelife after five days spent between the worlds doing the work that changes all the worlds, the work that starts with the self and ripples ever outward. I am a medical transcriptionist (MT) in my muggle life and it doesn't pay so well, which is why I'm studying to be an Arts Therapist and am in my third year of a bachelor degree but for now, the MT pays the rent and is flexible in that I can choose when I work and how many hours I work and I work from home. So today, the very day after camp finished, I find myself sitting here having to do MT and it was tedious and soul depleting but I feel oh-so-stuck.

So today has been a struggle. I have a WitchCamp hangover filled with the sads. I was prepared for that though. I'd love to live between the worlds and do nothing but work on putting myself back together kintsugi style but society is structured in such a way to make that impossible. Bills need to be paid, mouths need to be fed, education must be had and medical needs must be met. 

Kintsugi: the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum. Also known as Golden Joinery.

I ran the Iron Pentacle and that seemed to get me through the day and I have to just be ok with that being enough for now. Like I said through WitchCamp, I would like to spend more time with each point and so I have ordered Jane Meredith and Gede Parma's Book: Magic of the Iron Pentacle. May it get to me quickly though in the meantime I really need to get back to writing my Lit Review. It's due next week and it needs to be between 4,000 and 10,000 words. So it's probably better that the book doesn't reach me too quickly because a Literature Review requires a lot and a lot and a lot lot lot of reading! I gave myself the day of working on it as I slip back into Muggle Life but I definitely need to start working on it again tomorrow.

My Lit Review is looking at a truly fascinating topic. I'm looking at how human's experience their internal world. Do you hear your thoughts with your own or another person's voice? Do you see your voice in images like a movie or symbols? Do you simply sense with your mind rather than see or hear things? Do you just have feelings without an awareness of any thought process going on underneath it? How do you experience your inner world? Have you even ever stopped to think about how you think? Intriguing no? It is for me. So that is part of my literature review.

However, I'm an Arts Therapist. Did you notice the 's' on the end of that? Not an Art Therapist, an Art(s) Therapist. What that means is I create space and provide the materials and tools in a therapeutic way that allows my clients to express themselves, to discover themselves, to gain insight, to create change, to use kintsugi on themselves. It occurred to me during WitchCamp that what we do there is actually very much Arts Therapy. Art(s) can be anything from drawing and painting to sculpting, to dance, to storytelling, to writing, to movement, to singing and chanting to sand tray work to collage and just about anything else you can think of and at WitchCamp what are we doing? We are doing witchCRAFT and what is craft? It's part of art. WitchCamp takes us through experiential processes. Arts Therapy takes us through experiential processes! It gives me chills to see my worlds converging like that.

The experience of Arts Therapy

That may have seemed like a bit of a tangent but it's related to the Lit Review because the Lit Review is not just about the workings of the inner world in the individual. I am also looking at Expressive Writing and how that helps in a therapeutic way and further, I'm looking at Lucia Capacchione's idea's on writing or drawing with the non-dominant hand and how doing so can allow us to tap into our subconscious or unconscious. So what my Lit Review is looking at, is aiming at, is driving toward, is to question can we make the internal world external and in doing so capture our unconscious world on the paper?

In order to do that though I have to read study, after study, after study on the Inner World, inner speech, inner monologue, inner dialogue, inner vision, inner communication and see what the researchers have discovered in this area. Then I have to do the same thing on the Expressive Writing side of things, looking at as many studies as I can to see what those researchers are saying, then I will take What Lucia Capacchione writes about in her numerous books and I will try to weave (there's that Spider again!) it all together to see if I can make a cohesive tapestry out of it all that will lead to a research proposal - which is the next assessment after the Lit Review.

So now that beautiful CloudCatcher's online version of WitchCamp is done and dusted, this is where I have landed now the dust is beginning to settle. Back in the world of the Mundane Muggle and focusing once more on the magic that is Arts Therapy - well, the theoretical/research side of it anyway. I have also been working on an art piece dedicated to the Star Goddess from which Iron is birthed but I'll share that when it's done. For now, Dear Reader, go forth and be merry. I'll leave some links here to some books in case you are interested. In Joy!

BOOK LOVE

Magic of the Iron Pentacle

The Power of Your Other Hand

Expressive Writing: Words that Heal