3rd Week of Advent

3336 Astraea 15 - The third night of Advent is so bright! With this many candles lit, it looks so cosy and warm! Though this is the night that is associated with Dea Matrona on the Clan Jana website, I am tempted to think of the first night as that of the Light Beyond the Darkness, as it is so much starker, bleaker, though that tiny bit warmer, to have a single candle lit on the mantle. With three - this seems the warmest of times already, and we have not yet gotten to full strength!

We finally got our live Yule tree yesterday! My family spent much of Rayadi busily rearranging the front room to give it the pride of place - each of us already envisioning Nativity morning when we wake up and come into the room early to see it bright and glowing before us!

This morning we were able to decorate it: a little more restrained than the imitation one we have in the family room; mostly in gold ribbon!

I've begun reading an interesting book: Flowers in the Mirror. It is acclaimed for being an early piece of feminist literature: a book that pled the cause of women in late 1700s Imperial China. The author Li Ju-Chen writes of Countries of Women, and places where the social order is reversed - where women take the role of men, and men take the role of women in the house to illustrate the state of society at such a time when cruelties as foot-binding were still in wide practise and women were cloistered away from the opposite sex and the outside world. So far, in its depictions of the spirit realm and the Fairy of a Hundred Flowers and all the spirits of the different flowers of the world, has been a lovely read that hits all the right points in my love for magical beings and divine realms!

I cannot yet say anything on the rest of the book, just starting it as I have, but the introduction explaining Popular Taoism at the start of the book seemed to have intriguing parallels to Filianism in my own mind, in that once Taoism took off in popularity, writers began creating stories to illustrate their faith:

A host of minor writers came into being, who were preoccupied with presenting tales of the supernatural and the miraculous in support of their faith and incorporated a mass of folklore and mythology into the religion. (A Note on Popular Taoism)

This brought to mind immediately the beautiful story that I read almost as often as I can - The Dream Key, particularly suited to this time of year. It would be a beautiful goal to write more stories, of however short a nature, of this type to enjoy amongst ourselves and share with others!