Happy New Year to ALL

Fifty-two years have passed since this picture was taken. I wish to all of you who played any part, no matter how big or small in those 52 years a very HAPPY 2008!

HAPPY YULE TO EVERYONE!

I'm back!

At last, a very recent picture--November 2007. I am off on the road again and all of the strange things are happening that accompany my travels on a regular basis. This quote from WB Yeats reminded me of the strageness that is my life these days.

Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the sally gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
...She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

William Butler Yeats
Down by the Sally Gardens

Well, my heart is not full of tears, but I am certainly having a lot of flashbacks to the old days. Just about every ex-husband (I have three of these) and/or boyfriend I've had in the last 20 years (too many to count) as well as friends--some just released from jail--have contacted me in the last few months. It is getting crowded in my memories and in my out box for emails. I wish I could go back with each of you and "bid (you) take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree," once more again with me. I have such memories, so many awe-inspiring moments.

Whatever happened to the Branwenn who danced madly, skyclad at Starwood? Where is she now? How do I rediscover her? The Branwenn whose feral growls reached up nto the night with howls of passion and Goddess inspired visions. It is too soon for her to grow old and dim.

To ALL of you I say--I remember.


Brightest Blessings and Love--
Branwenn

A Great Writing Quote from Sylvia Plath

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." -- Sylvia Plath

Samhain is coming--

Time to clear up some misconceptions---

Hello Again! Merry Meet! I have been so busy with my two new blogs that I have neglected this general/personal one quite a bit lately. I have a few announcements about my two new blogs.

First, Travels With Branwenn http://travelswithbranwenn.blogspot.com/ I hope to post to this blog at least twice a week. I will include some pretty good stories and pictures about the globe-trotting I have been doing the last 10 years. A lot of my travels have been to "Pagan-related sites" like Stonehenge near Amesbury, UK or Brighid's Well in Kildare, Ireland. Some of the posts will be about using reward points and how to save money traveling. Anything related to travel is good for this site, so if you have any ideas of your own and want to point me in a particular direction of interest to you or feature something of yours as a guest blogspot--just let me know.

Second, Crystal Visions Celtic Wicca 101
http://crystalvisionsceltiwicca101.blogspot.com/
Crystal Visions Celtic Wicca will be the site where most of the posting is done, at least for a while. This Wicca 101 Course is a loose-woven group of posts about the Wiccan basics and things Celtic. None of it is ever intended to take the place of face to face study with an initiated priestess. I definitely have not changed my feelings that initiations need to be done face to face. There are many good Wicca 101 classes on the web and I will be using some of my original material and some from the other sites that I really like and I WILL be crediting these other folks with their material. For right now, my health is such that I cannot keep up the pace of classes needed to do the traditional face-to-face year and a day needed for First Degree Training. This blog is a way of getting the material together and preparing for the day when I am once again teaching. This day will come soon, hopefully, and I can resume the face-to-face training.

Third, this personal blog, Branwenn's Crystal Visions, will be mostly for the days when I am needing to work on personal items, vent a bit or have an issue that means a lot which I want to communicate to YOU out there in the rest of the world. I will try to make these the types of posts that can benefit everyone and not just poor little me whining.

PLEASE comment on all of these blogs. Send me email at Branwenn@aol.com
and let me know what you do and don't like. I am listening and I want the feedback.

Two new blogs launched today for Branwenn...

Two new blogs launched today!

• Crystal Visions Celtic Wicca 101


• Travels with Branwenn

Celtic Colours International Festival (October 5 through 13)

This is a festival that I would love to attend! It is one of the highest rated Celtic Festivals in the world. Anyone want to go with me--next year?--I think it may be too late for this year.

Nova Scotia October 4, 2007: Nova Scotians get out their kilts and fiddles each fall to celebrate their Highland heritage, as many of its early settlers came from Scotland. During festivals like the Celtic Colours International Festival (October 5 through 13) on Cape Breton, and Féis Mhábu (October 7 to 9) in the tiny town of Mabou, the island exalts all things Celtic and Gaelic with concerts, dancing, language workshops, and art exhibits.
Magical Nova Scotia> Cape Breton's Cabot Trail

On A Completely Different Subject--

• In my bio, I mention I have several areas of personal interest. I am going to need more than one blog-maybe several-one for each of the many facets of me. Sounds a bit uppity, but then I am one of those wild, uppity women that Vicki Leon talks about in her three books from the wonderful series that started with Uppity Women of Medieval Times. I have decided to stop apologizing for this and to revel in it as one of the things that makes me the incredible female that I am. One of the mistakes I have made repeatedly in my life is to try to PLEASE everybody. That stops now. I am going to continue to try to be nice when I can, there's no sense in being mean just to be mean, but as of today, I will not back down from something I truly feel deeply in my heart just to make someone else happy.

Part of this incredibleness is complexity. I have myriad parts to that complexity:

• I am Wiccan. I am a Wiccan Priestess who teaches at times and plans to use some of these blog entries to put together a Wicca 101 course which I hope to teach at the local Community College next year. I am a mercurial and free flowing spirit who circles beneath the full and the new moon and at the eight Sabbats.
  (Some of you are saying, “HUH?!?!” Others of you are smiling and nodding saying, “Right on sister!” to themselves. This is one area that my blogs will explore in detail.)
  
• I live to travel. I live to be on the road. How I can do this is explored in more detail in another of my blogs. It is this that I have already started to address in my last post.
  (In typical Branwenn style, I have charged right in and then realized that I need structure to put this all together in a logical readable format—my Earth and Fire sides tend to pull me in two different directions.)
  
• If I could live in the British Isles and Ireland, then I would be there right now. The point of all my traveling and teaching and all of my other endeavors is to get to the place where I can travel and write from a green glen in Scotland or Ireland in the summer time and from a beach in Florida or in the tropics in the winter time. I will be developing these ideas as we roll along through this year ahead.
  
• I own, along with my wonderful husband Jamey, a huge, old house in the center of the Bible belt—making life sometimes interesting for me as such an out of the broom closet witch. We call our homestead “Brugh na Bhride” We have upstairs and downstairs renters, herbs, vegetables, animals, crafts, heavy remodeling and all sorts of Wiccan goodies and old-fashioned leanings to teach and talk about.
  (I could write for years and not run out of interesting things to talk to you about.)
  
• And that’s only the tip of the iceburg---

Hotel Rooms for Free

There are many ways to travel for free or for deeply discounted fares and charges. The first thing any frequent traveler should do is register for as many hotel and airline reward programs as he or she can find. I prefer the hotel rewards programs and have stayed for many free nights the last few years. It takes a lot longer to reap a free flight, especially when you travel in your own vehicle like I do on most of my journeys here in the United States.

The best Hotel rewards programs are:

1. Priority Club Rewards Hotel Reservations The Official Web Site

http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/pc/1/en/home

IHG InterContinental Crowne Plaza Hotel Indigo Holiday Inn Holiday Inn Express Staybridge Suites Candlewood Suites

This is the Reward Program for Holiday Inn and its many affiliates. This is my favorite rewards program. (And no--they didn't pay me to say that--at least not yet. I hope they are reading this and will find it in their hearts to reward me for my loyalty.)

2. TripRewards

http://www.triprewards.com/

This is the middle-tier hotel rewards program. True, they also have Wyndham and other more higher priced hotels, but mostly this is :










These are the hotels that most of us stay at when we have to stay in a hotel. Most of these are not fancy, but they should be clean and cheerful.

More tomorrow—I recommend getting registered with these two Hotel Rewards Programs as a good first step. See you tomorrow!

My Igo Ugo Page

One of the most interesting parts of my life is that I travel as often as I am able. I have been to: Iceland, Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, and all over the United States. I use different ways to score free travel perks like discounted or free lodging, dining and activities. First, I belong to every frequent flyer and rewards program that is out there. I will devote an entire post to strategies for acquiring the most reward points and using them wisely for the best benefits. Another way I am able to find free hotel rooms and fabulous free meals is by mystery shopping. Since I must keep my identity as a mystery shopper confidential or I can blow my cover and not be allowed to work for certain companies, I have to keep most of the details quiet. I specialize in hotel and fine dining shops and pick up other mystery shops in retail, banking, gas, fast food and others to supplement my income along the way of my travels. It doesn't pay for everything, but it sure does help out the bottom line. I spent two months in Orlando, Florida shopping this Mecca of vacation hotspots a few years ago. It was a wonderful way to spend what would have been a cold and icy winter. I came very close to breaking even with the combination of freebies and rewards points. In this picture, I combine two of my favorite activities--by cuddling with WB Yeats on a park bench in sunny Florida. Ireland and the British Isles are my favorite place to travel, so WB and I had a lot to catch up on.

PLEASE visit my IGoUGo Account at http://www.igougo.com/profile/myProfile.asp?member=77794 . Make sure to read the posts and tell me if you think they are good or bad or helpful. Thank You!

Welcome to Branwenn's World

The entire world is blogging. Do we all have something worth reading to say? I actually think I may surprise you. I will cover a large area of loosely related subjects: Wicca, Paganism, natural living, herb craft, Celtic mythology, gardening, travel writing, photography and much, much more. I will try to maintain my goal of a new post every day about something actually worth talking about. Look out world! You may never be the same again!

In these posts, you will meet a range of characters: four and two legged. Start by saying "Meow" to my familiar and soul mate, Rosie. Oh, and that is me in the picture with the black-haired beauty. I am the big red cat. Rosie is 11 years old and has outlasted many of my romances and one marriage. Steadfast devotion is harder and harder to find these days.