Lest you think that Fire has been all painful and unlovely to me this month, I’ve also been feeling more impetus to bring about positive change in my life. Fire is inspiration and drive, passion and determination. I’ve actually been raising the amount of changes in my life in an environmentally-friendly way in the past couple of weeks. I put a clean two liter grape juice bottle, full of water, into the toilet tank to lower the amount of water we use. I’ve been paying more attention to packaging in my purchases, and cutting down on packaging where possible. And today, I had a famous first–I made a loaf of bread! This last may seem mind-bogglingly mundane to you, but just a couple of years ago I *hated* cooking. I’ve been more interested in knowing what’s actually in my food, so learning to make more from scratch has really been appealing to me.
So Fire isn’t all bad, and I recognize a crucial role of that element in my life. I still need to get comfortable with it on other levels, but hey–here’s something I can connect with!
Also, on a totally side note, I know what a pain it can be to try to bounce from blog to blog, making daily rounds. I’m not a huge web-savvy person, though I know that this blog has built-in RSS feeds. However, I do like Livejournal, particularly because I can have feeds built right into my f-list. Makes things a lot more convenient. For you folks in LJ land who don’t know about it yet, here is the LJ RSS feed for therioshamanism.com. Wheeee, convenience!
Therioshamanism 
Hi Lupa,
Another thing you can do with your vege scraps before you compost them. Keep all the clean bits (onion skins, carrot tops, leek tops, whatever) and chuck them in a container in the freezer. When you’ve got a nice pile chuck them in a pot with a litre and a bit of water and boil the buggery out of them. Strain, and pour your homemade stock into an ice cube tray (or several, or you know, just eat your delicious soup!), scraps from this onto the compost! Three uses! Simple and yum.
We’ve been doing this for a few months now (mostly to use the scraps that our worm-farm friends can’t eat, like onion peelings and chillies) and because we buy seasonally as much as possible, our stocks reflect the season. It’s a great way to cook.
As much as it pains me to say it, Fire is one of my primary elemental inspirations or motivators; particularly creatively. It’s why you can see a very clear habit of ‘burning up’ and then ‘burning out’ in my creative life. A swathe of pictures followed by ‘so…I’ve been flashbacking a lot lately.’
But fire is also the force that lets me put one foot in front of the other to go to Francesca’s once or twice a week.
Fire is a beast of an element when it is being serious, but it is also one of the most gentle, and serious. The two fire goddesses that guide me, Sekhmet and Karijiana, when they are not prodding me with burning fingers, give me a depth of love that I’ve never quite experienced from any other element. Water comes close, I think, with my aching romantic connection to L’yuvotn’r. And Earth comes close too, with my knowing, solid, loyal love to Vavale.
But Fire’s depth of love is a different deal.
I would agree though, it is part of the ‘pain game,’ as it were. The person who coined ‘no wisdom without suffering,’ was obviously familiar with fire’s furious nature to burn away that which doesn’t work. The problem with fire is that it can hurt what remains in the process.
Be careful of discarding what you don’t need to discard during this time. Fire can burn something valuable beyond recognition.
Ravenari, you and I are in the same boat. I am VERY much a Fire person, heavy on passion and Will, but also very prone to burning out because that fire can be difficult to sustain.
Theokleia–That’s an awesome idea! I’m going to start doing that 🙂
Ravenari–It’s definitely one of the more direct elements. Fire has burned away a lot in this month, and taught me a lot about what I often wrap myself in in an attempt to protect myself from things. But it’s also kept me warm throughout (and I hate being cold!).