Day 7: My natal chart

I'm not super into astrology-- basically because I think that unless you go really deep it's too general to be of real use-- but I was interested in seeing my natal chart after watching this video on Youtube.

I used this website to get my chart. I found it through Google. The first time I generated my chart I couldn't remember the exact time I was born, so I just did the generic "12pm" time stamp. My results were:

Sun: Pisces (6 degrees)
Moon: Gemini (20 degrees)
Rising: Gemini (11 degrees)

I wasn't entirely happy with this-- Gemini in rising didn't seem to fit me at all, except for maybe one or two things. I know astrology is normally very vague/general anyway, but when you don't fit what the thing says your sign means except in maybe one instance, then...what do you do? (On a side note, I've always wondered if there were people out there who didn't think they fit their sun sign in any way. I feel like I'm a very typical Pisces, but what if I wasn't any of the things that Pisces people are supposed to be? Anyway.) I went away slightly pissed off...but still wondered what would happen if I put in the correct time.

Luckily my mother remembers exactly what time I was born. So I put that in, and my results are almost radically different. Yay!

Sun: Pisces (6 degrees)
Moon: Gemini (23 degrees)
Rising: Virgo (4 degrees)

I like this result much better. My rising sign being Virgo makes SO much more sense to me than when it was Gemini.

Day 5: Some free pagan resources

Keeping up with a daily post is going easier than I thought it would, although to be fair I'm currently writing them two days in advance, so. Maybe it's cheating a bit? Hm.

Anyway, I've been looking for free online pagan resources for a few weeks now-- mainly books, since it's harder to find those than it is blogs or videos. There's actually a decent amount of free pagan/magic/witchcraft-related books available for free online (legally, I mean), and since most of them are related to the history of witchcraft (one of my interests) I'm really happy to have found them.

If you're interested in the history of witchcraft or just want some free pagan-related books to read, here's what I've found so far:

• Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches by Charles G. Leland (1899)
• The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz (1911)
• The Golden Bough: a study of magic and religion by Sir James George Frazer (1890)
• various books by S. L. MacGregor Mathers
• The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang (1893)
• De Occulta Philosophia by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1509-ish)
• Cornell University Library's Digital Witchcraft Collection
• The Witch-cult in Western Europe by Margaret Alice Murray (1921) !!! Kind of stupidly excited to finally read this and see what the big deal is.

I've been looking for more modern (1920s-present) stuff, but there are very little ebooks available and what I have found seems to be pretty expensive. Hm. Seems a bit of a missed opportunity, there.

Day 4: My electronic BoS

Since my research is, for the moment, completely electronic, I wanted some way to keep track of all the bits and pieces without having a ton of text files to sort through. Eventually, when I start reading actual paper books and whatnot, I think I'll transfer stuff to a paper notebook-- although I'm planning on that being more of a "here are my reactions to things that I read/do" than a "proper" grimoire/Book of Shadows. At least for now. Anyway.

I use Zotero to keep track of stuff. It works really well for the most part; you can add notes and tags, connect one item to another, and sort things into collections and sub-collections. The Chrome port is sometimes finicky, but it mostly works okay. I've got one collection that's just theories, info, opinions and interesting things I've found online (that's the YAAD folder) and another for my BoS, which is for how-to things, spells, etc.

(Click to enlarge.)

The nice thing about having an electronic notebook thing is that you can add videos as well as essays, blog posts, and so on. Since there are so many pagans on Youtube nowadays, I think that's a good thing!

How do you keep track of the stuff you learn? Do you write it down somewhere special?