The Fifth House - Creativity
The symbol on the wheel for this House is an Egyptian hieroglyph indicating
singing or speech.
Music
I'm lead singer and fiddler for three bands, a brand new
sorcerous Thelemic techno-Sufi band and
revolutionary movement called
Nuit, a Celtic rock band called
Annwn
and an acoustic duo called Ashby House. I've written some songs, some of which are on CDs
and tapes recorded by Annwn and Nuit.
Early in 1997, I wrote a few new songs
for the 5 year old Rock 'n Roll Ritual
(there'll be a recording of it eventually, I promise,
probably by Nuit) preparatory to performing it in February 99
at PantheaCon
in Oakland. I went through a LONG dry spell after that, but the knack is
beginning to come back to me, and I'm beginning, slowly, to produce more
songs.
Music is my vocation (as opposed to my profession, at least for now).
It's really only in the context of my vocation and my hobbies that I get
to exercise creativity. This section of the site houses such writings of
mine as I have time to publish on the web.
Prose - Nonfiction
- Lady of the Depths: Primal Goddess
of Celtic Shamanism
- An article originally published in Shaman's Drum, 1989. First
of a series I'd planned on European shamanism; the series never got published
because that issue (containing also some articles on Tibetan shamanism)
sold worse than any issue before that one, which, along with a few letters
to the editor explaining how "European shamanism" was an oxymoron
and only the Native Americans can do real shamanism (yeah, right, but don't
get me started on that one) convinced SD's editors that their readership
didn't want to hear about it. Buncha wannabe Indians (gripe, piss, moan).
Anyway, since John and Caitlin Matthews have successfully published a couple
of books on the subject of European (and specifically Celtic) shamanism,
I thought I'd put this item back into the light, along with its sequels...
- The Ordeal of Lleu as Shamanic Initiation
- An exegesis of the Fourth
Branch of the Mabinogi, explaining how Lleu's tribulations are a form
of shamanic initiation, overseen by his uncle Gwydion. This originally
appeared in Keltoi, the journal of the
Celtic League American Branch.
- European Shamanism - a Preliminary
Reconstruction
- There's some repeat material in this from the Lleu paper; it constitutes
my first (and unfulfilled) effort at reconstructing a shamanic system based
in European myth and symbol, for the benefit of people who might (for whatever
reason) feel strange about doing Native American religion.
- The Annotated Passion Play
- My "work in progress" -- continual progress -- attempting
to annotate and explain the lyrics to Jethro Tull's album A Passion
Play
- De Missa Gnostica
- A rant/essay on the subject of the OTO
Gnostic Mass, what I think it means and is supposed to accomplish as
a magical working.
- Why I'm a Centre of Pestilence
- Because I discuss the Book
of the Law, that's why. So shun me, already! ;)
Prose - Fiction
- Blood Libel
- I think this may be my best story ever. Originally published in Vampires,
edited by Jane Yolen and Martin Greenberg, 1991.
- My Bibliography
- See what you get when you surf the net looking for your own name? I
had no idea this existed... and I'd forgotten that I wrote so many stories...
Poetry
- An Enchantment
- From a version of the Rite
of Jupiter in which I performed.
- Scarlet Muse
- Lyrics to a song about Crowley's mistress, Leila Waddell.
Hobbies
This is also the section of my site that deals with my hobbies. Many
of my hobbies involve membership in an organization,
but in most cases the hobby has taken on a life independant of the organization
(or was instrumental in my joining the organization), such that for only
a few exceptions, the organization is not the hobby. (The map is not the
territory.) These are the three that take up the most time:
- Homebrewing
- I've been brewing for about 8 years, mostly extract (I'd rather let
someone else do the mashing work for me; it's not as important to me that
I have that degree of control over the process. I'm a cook, not a chemist...).
Most of my original recipes come
from sitting around wondering, "What would this taste like in a beer?"
or "What do I have in the pantry to brew beer out of?"
- Medieval recreation
- In this case, the organization sort of is the hobby, the organization
being the Society for Creative Anachronism.
In the West Kingdom of the SCA,
I'm called Siobhan ni hEodhusa or Siobhan fhidleir (the fiddler), and I'm
a Mistress of the Laurel (think of it as a sort of arts knighthood). You
can look at a picture of me at an SCA event,
if you like. I'm interested in Medievalia
of all sorts, and the SCA has engendered an interest in several sub-hobbies
for me -- medieval recipe redaction, medieval
and renaissance nautical things, medieval music (actually, I was interested
in this in college, too, but it was the SCA that drove me to study
it in school), and so on.
- Morris Dancing
- I am proud to be a member of the White
Rat's (Experimental) Morris. I have a small selection of Morris
links.
leighann_at_elfhill_dot_com
(obfuscated to foil spambot harvesters; make the obvious substitutions)
Last modified 6 Feb 2001