SharedBliss: Magelet & Artist Ketzirah

Ketzirah

Listening to: I love the vocal arrangement in this.

Bliss: After today, two more days next week at the library. Then it's time to really get busy! Right now, part of my bliss is figuring out what a new rhythm to my days might be like.

It often comes back to rabbits, doesn't it?

For those of us blessed with the love of a rabbit (or rabbits) in our lives, that question is answered with a resounding and giggling "yes!"

Marcy painted Cinnamon, a rather famous bunny in bunny world, and eventually that led to Ketzirah contacting Marcy to ask for a portrait of her beloved bunnies, which turned out like this:

Petunia & Derby at the Carrot Tree

During the conversations that happened to help that painting along, Marcy realized that Ketzirah was a blisschick, a chick following and living her bliss. And that was that!

Ketzirah's spiritual path is complicated and unique to her -- as all our spiritual paths should be. She has chosen the term Magelet over Jewitch. The term means "circle drawer," and she is a practitioner of earth-based Jewish Magick. For more about her background, go here.

One of her many amazing projects is an online Guide to the Jewish Wheel of the Year. You can subscribe to a monthly guide which includes key dates, Torah readings, themes, rituals, activities, and more. You can go here for more information about subscribing.

She is also a fiber and embroidery artist, and you can find her etsy store here.

Her blog is Peeling a Pomegranate. The pomegranate, of course, more likely being the fruit in the Garden of Eden story and also having significance in the Demeter and Persephone myth. Watch her website in March for her 5th anniversary edition of her Passover Hagadah.

(Being creative runs in this family; check out Ketzirah's husband's etsy store. He's a furniture maker and woodworker.)


Describe the PrimaryBliss of your life. How did you come to know that this was your PrimaryBliss?

The primary bliss of my life is discovering and crafting connections. This is really the core to everything I do. Whether it's finding some neat new thread between scripture and the wheel-of-the-year or helping someone else make a critical new connection in their life -- that's what really fires me up.

What types of choices and sacrifices did you make to be able to craft this bliss-filled life?

Funny, but I really had to think about this one. I can say how it's radiated in my life much better than what types of choices or sacrifices I've had to make. Most of the sacrifices are for training as a priestess. I, and my husband, have had to give up several years of vacations so I can use my vacation time for training intensives. I've also chosen to change careers once already, and am dreaming of a second, to align my vocation and avocations.

How does your PrimaryBliss radiate out into the rest of your life?

This one I can answer. My desire and love of connections is responsible for my helping to found Becoming, an earth-based pantheistic spiritual group in the DC area. It's also responsible for my spending the past three years working towards being ordained by that group, a term of service and study I've just completed. My understanding of the power of connections also radiates into my day job, where I work as a strategist. I see the threads between things and help connect them into a cohesive picture. Beyond this, it also radiates into how I eat and live.

If everything is connected, then everything I do matters. It's very important to me that I am connected to the food I eat. I don't eat factory farmed meat, but I prefer to phrase that in the positive. I eat meat when that I am able to connect to the people who raise the animals. I also prefer to purchase artisanal and small batch products whenever possible because it provides direct connections to the people who create these things that I eat, where, and own.

What are some other activities that also give you this sense of bliss? Things that make you lose track of time?

I lose track of time when I'm studying something new that lets me see another node on the web. I lose track of time when I'm crafting rituals or working on my monthly Rosh Chodesh Guides, reading a really good book, or walking in a beautiful place. I also lose track of time when I'm petting my rabbit or off on a grand adventure with my husband, so who knows!

My artwork is also worth mentioning here. I work with fiber art, embroidery primarily. I've been designing my own work for years and experimenting with stitches and techniques to create unique expressions.

What is your daily or weekly spiritual practice?

My daily practice begins with a brief yoga stretch and morning prayers. I use the Kohenet prayerbook and pick out one pieces and chant it using my singing bowl, and finish saying the Shema with my singing bowl. Once I arrive at work, I ground and center with a prayer I call "the leader's prayer." It helps to set my foundation for the day. I usually recenter myself once or twice during the day with a centering exercise.

I take a moment before eating anything to bless my food and dedicate it as an offering of Divine service before eating it.

And I end the day with a simple prayer before falling asleep.

Each week I honor the Sabbath with a simple home ritual. My husband, who is not Jewish, always takes a moment to be with me during this ritual.

What music is your bliss?

Right now I would say Kronos Quartet. My friend Angela Raincatcher turned me on to them recently and I love them. I also have been on a "melancholy singer-songwriter" kick, so think artists like Colin Meloy and the Swell Season. I really like a wide range of music, and also listen to everything from Linkin Park and Alicia Keys, quite regularly.

Name books or authors/poets or people who are your bliss, who influenced your bliss.

My amazing, amazing husband is my bliss. He is just an incredible man who feeds my heart, mind and body. Not kidding about the body, he's a great cook! My best friend and mentor, Angela Raincatcher is another bliss-influencer! She's incredible as a teacher and great fun.

Some of the most influential writers for me has been:
Octavia Butler
Charles de Lint
Jasper Fforde
Rabbi Jill Hammer
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Anita Diamant
Poppy Palin

For poets, I love Shel Silverstein and also Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

What advice would you give to someone who feels they have not yet discovered their PrimaryBliss?

I would remind them that it may not be one thing or something easily identifiable. I think people should explore many different things and then they may find a common thread of "bliss." The idea of "connections" isn't exactly an obvious one, but I've realized that it is the unifying factor in all that I do.

I think it's also important to find your own way! Many people get caught in the "right" way to do something and one's "PrimaryBliss" may be very, very different from anyone else's. The same is true with magick. People try to follow recipe books and the official way of doing things instead of using these as road maps to finding their own special way of working magick.

Do you have a favorite quote you would like to share?

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes You.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
is Change.

by Octavia Butler from Parable of the Talents

I find Ketzirah's level of commitment to be most inspiring. Her commitment to follow through on ordination and study, for example, but even more so, her commitment to a full, all day prayer life. How many of us relegate prayer to once a day -- if that?

I also admire her synthesis in terms of her spirituality -- her ability to see and interweave all those connections. It is obvious that she is a woman of deep integrity, who takes those realizations into her daily life, considering even the implications of the food on her plate for the rest of creation.