Almost exactly one year ago, I looked out on the side porch and saw that the little bucket of water we had put out for the stray cats had been tipped over. I went outside to clean it up and found a tiny little black and white hairball that began hissing and spitting at me as I approached it. It ran into a box, and I picked the box up and carried it inside. There were three kittens in there total; I named them Eenie, Meanie, and Miney, with the first one I met being Meanie.

Meanie had problems as a little kitten; she was lacking skeletal support in her rear end, and only had a tiny bony nub for a tail. She didn't like to be touched or handled there. One time she got her leg caught in some of the decorative metal work on a side table, and it obviously hurt her really bad since I had a hard time getting her leg out without her reducing my hand to a bloody stump, but I was able to get her free.

After a while my mom decided that we needed to give them all new names, and she gave Meanie the new name Bear because of how she resembled a bear. She also said that she runs like the Gatekeeper from Ghostbusters. Bear grew up to be a very sweet and loving cat, fluffy all over with a nubby tail, whose favorite time of day was dinner, and who enjoyed laying around the house and being petted and loved on constantly. She dearly wanted to be a housecat.

Yesterday I had instructions to keep the cats out of the house, since it was the shedding season and my parents were getting tired of finding clumps of black cat hair on the carpet. I put all the cats out; even though Bear wasn't one of the problem shedders, and wasn't doing anything besides being her lazy old self, I put her out too.

Dad came home a couple of hours later and told my mother and me that he found Bear lying by the side of the road. She was in the neighbor's yard across the road when she heard me open the door for feeding time; she was hit by a car as she was running back home.

I shouldn't have put her out.

Thoughtforms are those critters people create just by imagining them and putting a ton of energy in them so that they can actually affect things in the real world. They can range from small critters that are kept around just for personal employment or as familiars (called servitors) to huge icons that most everyone recognizes and are affected by although they are considered imaginary because they don't have a solid state in the mundane world, such as the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Boogeyman (called godforms). In between are critters such as mascots that are created by and maintained by a group and don't have a very large "following" (called egregores).

I have some thoughtforms that I have created myself; some have been for protection purposes, while a few were created to help with spells and other magickal workings. I enjoy the process of servitor/egregore creation because it allows me to work with character design.

And then there are some thoughtforms that other people have created, that I sometimes interact with; most of the time they are either egregores or godforms, but I have found some egregores to enjoy working on a personal level much more than godforms. Some approach me while I am doing astral work, usually to hand me a message, but sometimes they just want to have some fun.

It may not be something that we think about all too often, but just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were thoughtforms created for purposes relevant to their time, so have we of these modern times created thoughtforms, more widely known as pop culture icons. They have their individual followings, who are affected and inspired by them, and in turn feed them energy through their appreciation, helping them to grow stronger. Allow me to introduce one such egregore to you, who has been establishing a rather firm presence in my life over the Ostara season on into Beltaine:

Sonic the Hedgehog represents freedom, movement, productivity and creativity, mental acuity, and the power of music and dance. Elementally speaking, he represents the wind and air; if he were to have any astrological correspondences, he would be akin to the Sun and possibly Sagittarius or Gemini (although his "birthday" is in June of 1991, the real date of his creation as a thoughtform was way back in the brainstorming stages of his first game). His original purpose under the management of Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima was to help their employer, SEGA of Japan, to reach a greater level of influence in the gaming world than their rival, Nintendo. As an egregore today, he encourages people to keep moving and to keep fighting for what is right, and to not waste time wallowing in tears or despair.

I'd like to learn about other people's "imaginary friends" and the many ways in which they have been affected by these creatures of thought, whether of their own creation or someone else's.

Yes, they *are* real; just like how the sunlight makes us feel warm, although light has no real physical form, so do thoughtforms have their place in reality, despite having no "real" bodies.

No, I did not post this just to have some excuse to blather about Sonic. Yes you did. Hush.

Somebody has been stealing all the glowsticks at Wal-Mart. When I saw the pile of empty wrappers scattered around the cardboard glowstick bin, I just about let my blood moon energy out in full force. I managed to find one lonely stick, a purple one; how in either world am I going to work with just one stick?? Meh. As I went back into the grocery area of the store to get some noms, I was considering bringing one of the wrappers home to try and scry for the person who removed its contents, and send them a little bug for the weekend. I ended up just buying the one stick with my groceries and taking it all home. If I open the thing and it's already been snapped inside its packaging, though, someone *will* pay.

On the other hand, it is a LOST night. I wonder what's going down on the Island tonight. :D

If I were to combine what's mundanely visible about me with what isn't, this is probably what it would all come out to look like.

I like to draw in pen as affirmation of my skill and ability in getting it right the first couple of times.