I was walking home this afternoon as twilight began to fall and I looked up amazed to see the nearly-full Moon hanging heavy in the sky, gleaming perfect and bright just above the rooftops. I had nearly forgotten that tomorrow is a Full Moon and there it was huge and undeniable right in front of me.

This makes me ponder other things I've ignored of late and I wonder what else is looming right in front of me that I simply haven't looked up to see. I think of rituals I've missed and altars I've neglected to assemble and mediations I keep meaning to get around to. I thought the other day about working a spell but wondered why magick would provide for me when I have given it so little lately. What does it mean when our lives leave us without energy to attend to our spiritual practice? It's called practice for a reason. Does faith exist in the face of neglect?

Staring up at that amazing Moon I was struck by its nearness, its beauty, its magnificence. In the clear sky of today's early evening it felt as if the Moon had chosen to appear to me, calling for my attention. The Universe has its ways of getting our attention but sometimes it simply waits for us to notice. It occurs to me that whether I looked up to see it or not, the Moon has been there all along. Perhaps there are other things that have been there all along, just waiting for me too. I feel inspired to reconnect with them.

Without much of instructive value to say about tomorrow's Full Moon, I'll just let Cafe Astrology do the talking:

On Saturday morning, the Moon is full, as the Gemini Moon exactly opposes the Sagittarius Sun. The Gemini-Sagittarius polarity is a mental axis, where Gemini represents the "lower mind" and Sagittarius represents the "higher mind". A Gemini Moon encourages us to think logically, while Sagittarius persuades us to think in a far broader manner. Sagittarius symbolizes the quest for meaning and ideas that expand upon the here and now. Gemini is quite comfortable in his or her immediate environment or neighborhood, while Sagittarius stimulates us to venture beyond. Neglecting either end of the axis will surely backfire on us. Ideally, a balance should be found between the two energies, and this is what the Full Moon invites us to do. This Full Moon is about communication, attitude, and our sense of adventure. Something has been building inside of us, and now is the time when the energy of the cosmos fairly demands that we let it out. Over the next two weeks, we will discover what this means for us. For now, we can't sit on our feelings. We need to express them.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 5:47 PM | Comments (0)

If you are reading this you've no doubt noticed that my last post was on October 31 (and for those of you who enjoy reading my posts, I apologize). So, imagine my surprise when I start getting messages from my web host merely halfway through November to tell me that I am reaching my bandwidth capacity for the month. How, I wonder, can this be possible?

Some of the bandwidth usage on the site is from actual readers (and for this I am truly grateful, especially given my absence lately) but most of it comes from spam on my email accounts and people who are stealing it.

For those who don't know this, when you borrow an image from someone's website to use it on your own and embed it using the source URL from the originating website, you are stealing. You are stealing bandwidth for which someone else besides you is paying. You are stealing someone else's money.

I like to use images on my website - they make the site more interesting and add to the content of the posts. I always credit the source of the images I use and I ALWAYS save images to my own server before I post them on my site. If someone finds an image on my site that they like enough to use on their own website, I would hope that they would exercise the same courtesy. Unfortunately, lots of people don't. And therein lies the rub.

I can't afford to pay for other people to have pretty pictures on their websites. I've contemplated solutions ranging from taking my website down entirely to never using images in my posts to accepting Google ads to offset the expense of web hosting. I can track where bandwidth usage happens and Technorati has a handy program that lets me see just exactly who is using content from my site. So I'll just say this: if you want to use an image you've found on my site, please save it to your own server first or don't use it at all.

For now, I'm keeping the site up as is and I've employed a band-aid solution in an effort to thwart the bandwidth stealing. But if bandwidth usage doesn't slow down soon I won't have any choice but to change my site. After everything I've put into it and the pleasure that my readers tell me they get from it, I'd hate to see Blogickal be any different than it is (except of course for a bit more regular posting from me!). I think I'd call it a day and simply close up shop first.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 10:10 AM | Comments (1)