Author Archives: Hecate

Wildwood Tarot


My regular readers know that I'm given to rants about how acquiring things is not the same thing as practicing a serious Nature Religion.

You can buy every book that Lewellyn publishes (my bookshelves house more than a few). You can have Celtic-this and dragon-themed-that and unicorn-themed posters all over your house. You can cover your tables, walls, and yourself with cheap cotton Celtic-batik tablecloths (I've got a few!). You can wear high-Goth or expensive SteamPunk (OK, if I win the lottery, I am buying that hat). You can burn incense and sage from etsy 24/7. You can jingle when you walk from all the pentacles, LOTR-themed jewelry, and gypsy-hand amulets that you wear, but it doesn't make you a devotee of the Goddesses/Gods nor does it cause you to live in tune with Gaia.

And I work at practicing what I preach.

I own fewer than a dozen Tarot decks and I regularly talk myself out of buying yet another really neat one. I rely almost entirely on my Robin Wood, with some Tarot of the Crone, hand-made by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, thrown in for mystery and the occasional Cheryl Richardson Self-Care Card pulled for an overall theme. On my iPhone, I have the Goddess Tarot app, and I find it uncannily accurate for one-card answers to questions. I have Joanna Colbert's Gain Tarot on order for this Autumn, and Joanna knows that if she ever decides to sell the painting for her Six of Water, I'm first in line. And, ok, someday I'm going to break down and buy myself the Peter-Max-inspired Aquarian Tarot, which I always buy as a gift for friends.

And, beyond that, there's only one other Tarot deck that I've seriously craved. Ever since my brilliant friend Stoat showed me his Greenwood Tarot deck, I've been seriously in lust. Supposedly based upon pre-Celtic, European themes, as well as the Wheel of the Year, it's been unavailable for some time (although occasionally one will show up on eBay for several hundred dollars and I'm not spending that kind of money for a deck of cards; my heart is happier with an almost-paid mortgage and some money in the bank).

Now, Mark Ryan, who worked on the Greenwood Tarot, has come out with the Wildwood Tarot, described as a "complete reconception and redesign" of the Greenwood Tarot. I got my copy last night, on the Full Moon.

My practice for getting acquainted with a new Tarot deck is to ground, center, call the Elements, and cast a circle. I smudge the cards and the LWB (Little White Book, although it's a largish dark-colored book in this case) and then I just spend time with them. I look them all over, in order, shuffled, and then, finally, with the LWB to help me learn the ones that are less-Rider-Waite based.

I'm in love.

Pictured above is my first reading with this deck.

What divination method do you use? Is there a new one you're thinking of trying? How do you handle your lust for "stuff"?

Wildwood Tarot


My regular readers know that I'm given to rants about how acquiring things is not the same thing as practicing a serious Nature Religion.

You can buy every book that Lewellyn publishes (my bookshelves house more than a few). You can have Celtic-this and dragon-themed-that and unicorn-themed posters all over your house. You can cover your tables, walls, and yourself with cheap cotton Celtic-batik tablecloths (I've got a few!). You can wear high-Goth or expensive SteamPunk (OK, if I win the lottery, I am buying that hat). You can burn incense and sage from etsy 24/7. You can jingle when you walk from all the pentacles, LOTR-themed jewelry, and gypsy-hand amulets that you wear, but it doesn't make you a devotee of the Goddesses/Gods nor does it cause you to live in tune with Gaia.

And I work at practicing what I preach.

I own fewer than a dozen Tarot decks and I regularly talk myself out of buying yet another really neat one. I rely almost entirely on my Robin Wood, with some Tarot of the Crone, hand-made by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, thrown in for mystery and the occasional Cheryl Richardson Self-Care Card pulled for an overall theme. On my iPhone, I have the Goddess Tarot app, and I find it uncannily accurate for one-card answers to questions. I have Joanna Colbert's Gain Tarot on order for this Autumn, and Joanna knows that if she ever decides to sell the painting for her Six of Water, I'm first in line. And, ok, someday I'm going to break down and buy myself the Peter-Max-inspired Aquarian Tarot, which I always buy as a gift for friends.

And, beyond that, there's only one other Tarot deck that I've seriously craved. Ever since my brilliant friend Stoat showed me his Greenwood Tarot deck, I've been seriously in lust. Supposedly based upon pre-Celtic, European themes, as well as the Wheel of the Year, it's been unavailable for some time (although occasionally one will show up on eBay for several hundred dollars and I'm not spending that kind of money for a deck of cards; my heart is happier with an almost-paid mortgage and some money in the bank).

Now, Mark Ryan, who worked on the Greenwood Tarot, has come out with the Wildwood Tarot, described as a "complete reconception and redesign" of the Greenwood Tarot. I got my copy last night, on the Full Moon.

My practice for getting acquainted with a new Tarot deck is to ground, center, call the Elements, and cast a circle. I smudge the cards and the LWB (Little White Book, although it's a largish dark-colored book in this case) and then I just spend time with them. I look them all over, in order, shuffled, and then, finally, with the LWB to help me learn the ones that are less-Rider-Waite based.

I'm in love.

Pictured above is my first reading with this deck.

What divination method do you use? Is there a new one you're thinking of trying? How do you handle your lust for "stuff"?

Wildwood Tarot


My regular readers know that I'm given to rants about how acquiring things is not the same thing as practicing a serious Nature Religion.

You can buy every book that Lewellyn publishes (my bookshelves house more than a few). You can have Celtic-this and dragon-themed-that and unicorn-themed posters all over your house. You can cover your tables, walls, and yourself with cheap cotton Celtic-batik tablecloths (I've got a few!). You can wear high-Goth or expensive SteamPunk (OK, if I win the lottery, I am buying that hat). You can burn incense and sage from etsy 24/7. You can jingle when you walk from all the pentacles, LOTR-themed jewelry, and gypsy-hand amulets that you wear, but it doesn't make you a devotee of the Goddesses/Gods nor does it cause you to live in tune with Gaia.

And I work at practicing what I preach.

I own fewer than a dozen Tarot decks and I regularly talk myself out of buying yet another really neat one. I rely almost entirely on my Robin Wood, with some Tarot of the Crone, hand-made by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, thrown in for mystery and the occasional Cheryl Richardson Self-Care Card pulled for an overall theme. On my iPhone, I have the Goddess Tarot app, and I find it uncannily accurate for one-card answers to questions. I have Joanna Colbert's Gain Tarot on order for this Autumn, and Joanna knows that if she ever decides to sell the painting for her Six of Water, I'm first in line. And, ok, someday I'm going to break down and buy myself the Peter-Max-inspired Aquarian Tarot, which I always buy as a gift for friends.

And, beyond that, there's only one other Tarot deck that I've seriously craved. Ever since my brilliant friend Stoat showed me his Greenwood Tarot deck, I've been seriously in lust. Supposedly based upon pre-Celtic, European themes, as well as the Wheel of the Year, it's been unavailable for some time (although occasionally one will show up on eBay for several hundred dollars and I'm not spending that kind of money for a deck of cards; my heart is happier with an almost-paid mortgage and some money in the bank).

Now, Mark Ryan, who worked on the Greenwood Tarot, has come out with the Wildwood Tarot, described as a "complete reconception and redesign" of the Greenwood Tarot. I got my copy last night, on the Full Moon.

My practice for getting acquainted with a new Tarot deck is to ground, center, call the Elements, and cast a circle. I smudge the cards and the LWB (Little White Book, although it's a largish dark-colored book in this case) and then I just spend time with them. I look them all over, in order, shuffled, and then, finally, with the LWB to help me learn the ones that are less-Rider-Waite based.

I'm in love.

Pictured above is my first reading with this deck.

What divination method do you use? Is there a new one you're thinking of trying? How do you handle your lust for "stuff"?

Tuesday Poetry Blogging


The Truly Great

~Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Picture found here

Tuesday Poetry Blogging


The Truly Great

~Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Picture found here

Tuesday Poetry Blogging


The Truly Great

~Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Picture found here

History from a Pagan Perspective


This new book looks fascinating and I'm going to add it to my (already too long) reading list.
The newly released novel "Buried: The Discernment of Pagans in Ancient Rome" (ISBN 1456471651) opens with a hostile confrontation between [P]agans and Christians. Though the Christian viewpoint may be familiar, says author Frank Troy, the reader is then swiftly transported into the unfamiliar, dangerous and strangely beautiful world of pre-Christian Rome as it is seen and understood by the [P]agan narrator. Troy, a retired literature professor, has spent a lifetime studying the literature and philosophy of European civilizations prior to the arrival of Christian ideas and concepts.

The novel's principal narrator is a 27-year-old Roman aristocrat named Aeneas. Educated in Aristotle's Lyceum in Athens, a lover of boxing and philosophy, his narrative aims to help readers understand the how and why of paganism's magnificent achievements in a range of areas including philosophy, politics, art and science.

While fulfilling his military obligation in Alexandria in 387 A.D., Aeneas falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful female scholar Hypatia. After he is discharged from service the lovers travel by way of Athens and Delphi to Rome to meet Aeneas' sister, Honoria. Unexpected family obligations require Aeneas and Hypatia to separate, but they vow to reunite. Hypatia returns to Alexandria and Aeneas and Honoria travel north to join their father, the governor of Upper Germania. As the summer passes, Honoria falls deeply in love, only to lose her lover in a war between opposing generals. Their father too becomes a victim of the war, and the siblings flee to the safety of a family farm near Carthage and plan their reunion with Hypatia. Their future, however, becomes more complicated than they ever imagined.

Troy seeks to offer readers a tale that is rich with historical details and numerous surprising plot turns, along with the narrative that interprets events in light of [P]aganism's core beliefs about the underlying nature of reality and the purpose and meaning of life. Modern readers, Troy contends, will encounter an unfamiliar world view that is initially puzzling, yet as the novel unfolds, [P]agan core beliefs gradually become clearer. Troy aims to provide insight to readers so they can begin to see that even though ancient and modern core beliefs are fundamentally different, the practical problems faced by Rome were an amazingly accurate reflection of ours today.

What's up with this recent resurgence of interest in Hypatia?

Also, Dear Mr. Troy, Since it's pretty clear that you wrote your press release, if you want to sell to Pagans, perhaps you should capitalize our religion, just as you capitalize "Christian." OK?

It's available at Amazon; I can't find it at any of the independent bookseller sites I normally recommend.

Anybody read it yet?

Picture found here.

History from a Pagan Perspective


This new book looks fascinating and I'm going to add it to my (already too long) reading list.
The newly released novel "Buried: The Discernment of Pagans in Ancient Rome" (ISBN 1456471651) opens with a hostile confrontation between [P]agans and Christians. Though the Christian viewpoint may be familiar, says author Frank Troy, the reader is then swiftly transported into the unfamiliar, dangerous and strangely beautiful world of pre-Christian Rome as it is seen and understood by the [P]agan narrator. Troy, a retired literature professor, has spent a lifetime studying the literature and philosophy of European civilizations prior to the arrival of Christian ideas and concepts.

The novel's principal narrator is a 27-year-old Roman aristocrat named Aeneas. Educated in Aristotle's Lyceum in Athens, a lover of boxing and philosophy, his narrative aims to help readers understand the how and why of paganism's magnificent achievements in a range of areas including philosophy, politics, art and science.

While fulfilling his military obligation in Alexandria in 387 A.D., Aeneas falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful female scholar Hypatia. After he is discharged from service the lovers travel by way of Athens and Delphi to Rome to meet Aeneas' sister, Honoria. Unexpected family obligations require Aeneas and Hypatia to separate, but they vow to reunite. Hypatia returns to Alexandria and Aeneas and Honoria travel north to join their father, the governor of Upper Germania. As the summer passes, Honoria falls deeply in love, only to lose her lover in a war between opposing generals. Their father too becomes a victim of the war, and the siblings flee to the safety of a family farm near Carthage and plan their reunion with Hypatia. Their future, however, becomes more complicated than they ever imagined.

Troy seeks to offer readers a tale that is rich with historical details and numerous surprising plot turns, along with the narrative that interprets events in light of [P]aganism's core beliefs about the underlying nature of reality and the purpose and meaning of life. Modern readers, Troy contends, will encounter an unfamiliar world view that is initially puzzling, yet as the novel unfolds, [P]agan core beliefs gradually become clearer. Troy aims to provide insight to readers so they can begin to see that even though ancient and modern core beliefs are fundamentally different, the practical problems faced by Rome were an amazingly accurate reflection of ours today.

What's up with this recent resurgence of interest in Hypatia?

Also, Dear Mr. Troy, Since it's pretty clear that you wrote your press release, if you want to sell to Pagans, perhaps you should capitalize our religion, just as you capitalize "Christian." OK?

It's available at Amazon; I can't find it at any of the independent bookseller sites I normally recommend.

Anybody read it yet?

Picture found here.

History from a Pagan Perspective


This new book looks fascinating and I'm going to add it to my (already too long) reading list.
The newly released novel "Buried: The Discernment of Pagans in Ancient Rome" (ISBN 1456471651) opens with a hostile confrontation between [P]agans and Christians. Though the Christian viewpoint may be familiar, says author Frank Troy, the reader is then swiftly transported into the unfamiliar, dangerous and strangely beautiful world of pre-Christian Rome as it is seen and understood by the [P]agan narrator. Troy, a retired literature professor, has spent a lifetime studying the literature and philosophy of European civilizations prior to the arrival of Christian ideas and concepts.

The novel's principal narrator is a 27-year-old Roman aristocrat named Aeneas. Educated in Aristotle's Lyceum in Athens, a lover of boxing and philosophy, his narrative aims to help readers understand the how and why of paganism's magnificent achievements in a range of areas including philosophy, politics, art and science.

While fulfilling his military obligation in Alexandria in 387 A.D., Aeneas falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful female scholar Hypatia. After he is discharged from service the lovers travel by way of Athens and Delphi to Rome to meet Aeneas' sister, Honoria. Unexpected family obligations require Aeneas and Hypatia to separate, but they vow to reunite. Hypatia returns to Alexandria and Aeneas and Honoria travel north to join their father, the governor of Upper Germania. As the summer passes, Honoria falls deeply in love, only to lose her lover in a war between opposing generals. Their father too becomes a victim of the war, and the siblings flee to the safety of a family farm near Carthage and plan their reunion with Hypatia. Their future, however, becomes more complicated than they ever imagined.

Troy seeks to offer readers a tale that is rich with historical details and numerous surprising plot turns, along with the narrative that interprets events in light of [P]aganism's core beliefs about the underlying nature of reality and the purpose and meaning of life. Modern readers, Troy contends, will encounter an unfamiliar world view that is initially puzzling, yet as the novel unfolds, [P]agan core beliefs gradually become clearer. Troy aims to provide insight to readers so they can begin to see that even though ancient and modern core beliefs are fundamentally different, the practical problems faced by Rome were an amazingly accurate reflection of ours today.

What's up with this recent resurgence of interest in Hypatia?

Also, Dear Mr. Troy, Since it's pretty clear that you wrote your press release, if you want to sell to Pagans, perhaps you should capitalize our religion, just as you capitalize "Christian." OK?

It's available at Amazon; I can't find it at any of the independent bookseller sites I normally recommend.

Anybody read it yet?

Picture found here.

Saturday Poetry Blogging


Meditation at Lagunitas
~Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.


Picture found here.

Saturday Poetry Blogging


Meditation at Lagunitas
~Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.


Picture found here.

Saturday Poetry Blogging


Meditation at Lagunitas
~Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.


Picture found here.

Synchronicity — Wherever You Go, There It Is


Sobeit has up a great post today about the need to consult our landbase when we make important decisions.
In all [E]arth traditions there is an understanding that the land is a witness to truth, that its very molecules do not lie, that its constituent fabric and all life forms that naturally grow upon it are wise in ways that humans rarely match.

. . .

One thing is certain: whoever lives upon a land with respect is welcomed by that land in ways deeper than we can imagine - a fact we should bear in mind when issues of race and culture are raised. For those who are true to the land shall find that the land also keeps faith with them. With our ability to move about the earth and settle at will, we do well to first consult the region where we are thinking of living, going straight to the land and speaking with its spirit, so that we can live with discrimination, truth, and respect.

"Wherever you are living, go and stand on bare, unconcreted earth and commune with the spirit of the land. Return to your home and in soul-flight go back to the site you visited and ask for a better sense of discrimination."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Earlier this week, a friend and I were discussing a point that Thorn Coyle makes in Kissing the Limitless:
The [E]arth remembers us, and the places where we grew up or have lived a long time recognize our patterns, just as we recognize the patterns of those places. Upon entering a new place, I always strive to introduce myself to the energies there. If there is time, I spend long moments in meditation, sending out tendrils of my life force into the land and sky, getting a better feel for the space and the beings that reside there, and noticing what is different from my home. This introduction also gives me a sort of permission to be there, and my time there is more joyously spent.

Starhawk is talking seriously about making a movie from one of the three or four books that completely changed my life, The Fifth Sacred Thing. (It's one of those projects that makes me think, "If it could be done well, it would be wonderful. But I'm so afraid that, once the process starts, best intentions and good plans notwithstanding . . . ." And I'd rather see it not done than see it done with compromise.) One of the things I love best in that book (well, I love a lot, but, lawyer that I am, one of the things that I love "really, really best," as G/Son says,) is the description of how decision-making happens. There are people from the various affinity groups gathered together in a room, each speaking from hir heart about how best to proceed against a threatened invasion. Some argue for war, some argue for sabotage, some argue for nonviolent resistance. And, then:
The Speaker raised her hand, calling for silence, and bent her ear to the Salmon mask.
"Friend Salmon says, 'Learn from water. Water is malleable, water is gentle, but drops of water wear away stone, and everything it touches is shaped by its passing.'" She sat down again. [And then the argument goes on, some calling each other cowards, some explaining what's wrong with that notion, . . . .]

When I first read that passage, all that I could think of was the question that my Environmental Law professor asked the class: "What's wrong with Justice Douglas' proposition that someone should be appointed to 'speak for the trees?'" Older, and maybe sadder than a lot of the class, my hand went up. "Weyerhauser will create a "Committee to Speak for America's Trees" and explain why trees long for, need, in fact, must have, clear cutting." I got an A.

I've been mulling over, lately, the notion of how we can have a democratic (forget consensual, let's just talk about honestly democratic) society when the money of large corporations appears capable of contaminating everyone and everything. I'm not a member of the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." I'm so far to the left of that, that it's difficult to even see that over the horizon. But I'd be orgasmically ecstatic to see that wing of that party these days. Because I don't. Other than Elizabeth Warren, I see, from the White House on down, a whole lot of people who, while I have no doubt that they went into politics planning to do good, are the sort of persons of whom Winston Churchill is once supposed to have remarked, "We've already established that. All that we're arguing about now is the price." And I wonder, more and more, how can we ensure that there's anyone who has (1) a real seat at the table, (2) in the Salmon mask, who (3) isn't colonized by those who make money killing Salmon and destroying Salmon's habitat?

And the only glimmer of an answer that I've been able to discern is encapsulated in Sobeit's post. We have to, as a cultural value to which we all give real credence, return to, taste, and listen to the Land, our Watershed. And while I think (and I am a woman who has given her life to The Law and would do so again, tomorrow, with a happy heart) that The Law can help to make a difference, what really has to happen is for us to begin to tell ourselves better stories. As Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” The universe that we perceive is, indeed, made of the stories that we tell ourselves and our children.

And we have to start telling a different story. Not only in our legal opinions, but elsewhere, as well, in those stories that seep into our bones before we ever read a law or a news story about a Supreme Court opinion.

This weekend, I read G/Son the story of Merlin and King Arthur. And it gripped him and raised questions within him as it has (repository of so many Western archetypes that it is) in generations and generations of post-Roman Celts. In the version we read, Arthur goes to France to besiege Lancelot for daring to sleep with (the Queen of) Arthur's Land, Albion. And it is while Arthur has turned his back on his land in order to pursue the demands of Patriarchy that Mordred raises an army against Arthur, requiring Arthur to abandon his fight with Lancelot and return to Arthur's own land to slay Arthur's Son (destroying what Patriarchy pretends to be about -- male progeny -- for what it's really about -- death), lose Arthur's relationship with Arthur's land, and sail off to a land ruled by three women in order to be able to return again in the hour of England's greatest need. Although the book clearly said that "Some said that Mordred was the King's own son," that was too much for G/Son to process. So on each successive reading of the story, when we got to the part where Arthur and Mordred slay each other, G/Son said to me, "Nonna, why the King fought with his own brother?" And each time I would say, "Arthur fought with his closest male relative because he didn't know what else to do. He had boxed himself into a corner by imagining that he could own and control either a woman or The Land. Arthur was a good man who wanted to help people, but he made a big mistake. He couldn't see that women, like Guinevere, and that a landbase, like England, must be free to make their own choices. Mordred made the same mistake."

The stories that we tell, the stories that we hear as children from our Nonnas, the stories that we see on tv, the stories that they show at the movie theatres: those stories matter. They matter in as basic and as important a manner as whether or not we can find a way to do what Sobeit, Thorn Coyle, Starhawk, and Justice Douglas have all urged us to do: to listen to our Landbase, to pay attention to our Watershed.

Because, after all, we desperately need a Lorax, who speaks for the trees:
Yes, I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please. But I'm also in charge of the brown Bar-ba-loots, who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loot suits and happily lived eating truffula fruits. Now, thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, there's not enough truffula fruit to go 'round!

Picture found here.

Synchronicity — Wherever You Go, There It Is


Sobeit has up a great post today about the need to consult our landbase when we make important decisions.
In all [E]arth traditions there is an understanding that the land is a witness to truth, that its very molecules do not lie, that its constituent fabric and all life forms that naturally grow upon it are wise in ways that humans rarely match.

. . .

One thing is certain: whoever lives upon a land with respect is welcomed by that land in ways deeper than we can imagine - a fact we should bear in mind when issues of race and culture are raised. For those who are true to the land shall find that the land also keeps faith with them. With our ability to move about the earth and settle at will, we do well to first consult the region where we are thinking of living, going straight to the land and speaking with its spirit, so that we can live with discrimination, truth, and respect.

"Wherever you are living, go and stand on bare, unconcreted earth and commune with the spirit of the land. Return to your home and in soul-flight go back to the site you visited and ask for a better sense of discrimination."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Earlier this week, a friend and I were discussing a point that Thorn Coyle makes in Kissing the Limitless:
The [E]arth remembers us, and the places where we grew up or have lived a long time recognize our patterns, just as we recognize the patterns of those places. Upon entering a new place, I always strive to introduce myself to the energies there. If there is time, I spend long moments in meditation, sending out tendrils of my life force into the land and sky, getting a better feel for the space and the beings that reside there, and noticing what is different from my home. This introduction also gives me a sort of permission to be there, and my time there is more joyously spent.

Starhawk is talking seriously about making a movie from one of the three or four books that completely changed my life, The Fifth Sacred Thing. (It's one of those projects that makes me think, "If it could be done well, it would be wonderful. But I'm so afraid that, once the process starts, best intentions and good plans notwithstanding . . . ." And I'd rather see it not done than see it done with compromise.) One of the things I love best in that book (well, I love a lot, but, lawyer that I am, one of the things that I love "really, really best," as G/Son says,) is the description of how decision-making happens. There are people from the various affinity groups gathered together in a room, each speaking from hir heart about how best to proceed against a threatened invasion. Some argue for war, some argue for sabotage, some argue for nonviolent resistance. And, then:
The Speaker raised her hand, calling for silence, and bent her ear to the Salmon mask.
"Friend Salmon says, 'Learn from water. Water is malleable, water is gentle, but drops of water wear away stone, and everything it touches is shaped by its passing.'" She sat down again. [And then the argument goes on, some calling each other cowards, some explaining what's wrong with that notion, . . . .]

When I first read that passage, all that I could think of was the question that my Environmental Law professor asked the class: "What's wrong with Justice Douglas' proposition that someone should be appointed to 'speak for the trees?'" Older, and maybe sadder than a lot of the class, my hand went up. "Weyerhauser will create a "Committee to Speak for America's Trees" and explain why trees long for, need, in fact, must have, clear cutting." I got an A.

I've been mulling over, lately, the notion of how we can have a democratic (forget consensual, let's just talk about honestly democratic) society when the money of large corporations appears capable of contaminating everyone and everything. I'm not a member of the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." I'm so far to the left of that, that it's difficult to even see that over the horizon. But I'd be orgasmically ecstatic to see that wing of that party these days. Because I don't. Other than Elizabeth Warren, I see, from the White House on down, a whole lot of people who, while I have no doubt that they went into politics planning to do good, are the sort of persons of whom Winston Churchill is once supposed to have remarked, "We've already established that. All that we're arguing about now is the price." And I wonder, more and more, how can we ensure that there's anyone who has (1) a real seat at the table, (2) in the Salmon mask, who (3) isn't colonized by those who make money killing Salmon and destroying Salmon's habitat?

And the only glimmer of an answer that I've been able to discern is encapsulated in Sobeit's post. We have to, as a cultural value to which we all give real credence, return to, taste, and listen to the Land, our Watershed. And while I think (and I am a woman who has given her life to The Law and would do so again, tomorrow, with a happy heart) that The Law can help to make a difference, what really has to happen is for us to begin to tell ourselves better stories. As Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” The universe that we perceive is, indeed, made of the stories that we tell ourselves and our children.

And we have to start telling a different story. Not only in our legal opinions, but elsewhere, as well, in those stories that seep into our bones before we ever read a law or a news story about a Supreme Court opinion.

This weekend, I read G/Son the story of Merlin and King Arthur. And it gripped him and raised questions within him as it has (repository of so many Western archetypes that it is) in generations and generations of post-Roman Celts. In the version we read, Arthur goes to France to besiege Lancelot for daring to sleep with (the Queen of) Arthur's Land, Albion. And it is while Arthur has turned his back on his land in order to pursue the demands of Patriarchy that Mordred raises an army against Arthur, requiring Arthur to abandon his fight with Lancelot and return to Arthur's own land to slay Arthur's Son (destroying what Patriarchy pretends to be about -- male progeny -- for what it's really about -- death), lose Arthur's relationship with Arthur's land, and sail off to a land ruled by three women in order to be able to return again in the hour of England's greatest need. Although the book clearly said that "Some said that Mordred was the King's own son," that was too much for G/Son to process. So on each successive reading of the story, when we got to the part where Arthur and Mordred slay each other, G/Son said to me, "Nonna, why the King fought with his own brother?" And each time I would say, "Arthur fought with his closest male relative because he didn't know what else to do. He had boxed himself into a corner by imagining that he could own and control either a woman or The Land. Arthur was a good man who wanted to help people, but he made a big mistake. He couldn't see that women, like Guinevere, and that a landbase, like England, must be free to make their own choices. Mordred made the same mistake."

The stories that we tell, the stories that we hear as children from our Nonnas, the stories that we see on tv, the stories that they show at the movie theatres: those stories matter. They matter in as basic and as important a manner as whether or not we can find a way to do what Sobeit, Thorn Coyle, Starhawk, and Justice Douglas have all urged us to do: to listen to our Landbase, to pay attention to our Watershed.

Because, after all, we desperately need a Lorax, who speaks for the trees:
Yes, I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please. But I'm also in charge of the brown Bar-ba-loots, who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loot suits and happily lived eating truffula fruits. Now, thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, there's not enough truffula fruit to go 'round!

Picture found here.

Synchronicity — Wherever You Go, There It Is


Sobeit has up a great post today about the need to consult our landbase when we make important decisions.
In all [E]arth traditions there is an understanding that the land is a witness to truth, that its very molecules do not lie, that its constituent fabric and all life forms that naturally grow upon it are wise in ways that humans rarely match.

. . .

One thing is certain: whoever lives upon a land with respect is welcomed by that land in ways deeper than we can imagine - a fact we should bear in mind when issues of race and culture are raised. For those who are true to the land shall find that the land also keeps faith with them. With our ability to move about the earth and settle at will, we do well to first consult the region where we are thinking of living, going straight to the land and speaking with its spirit, so that we can live with discrimination, truth, and respect.

"Wherever you are living, go and stand on bare, unconcreted earth and commune with the spirit of the land. Return to your home and in soul-flight go back to the site you visited and ask for a better sense of discrimination."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Earlier this week, a friend and I were discussing a point that Thorn Coyle makes in Kissing the Limitless:
The [E]arth remembers us, and the places where we grew up or have lived a long time recognize our patterns, just as we recognize the patterns of those places. Upon entering a new place, I always strive to introduce myself to the energies there. If there is time, I spend long moments in meditation, sending out tendrils of my life force into the land and sky, getting a better feel for the space and the beings that reside there, and noticing what is different from my home. This introduction also gives me a sort of permission to be there, and my time there is more joyously spent.

Starhawk is talking seriously about making a movie from one of the three or four books that completely changed my life, The Fifth Sacred Thing. (It's one of those projects that makes me think, "If it could be done well, it would be wonderful. But I'm so afraid that, once the process starts, best intentions and good plans notwithstanding . . . ." And I'd rather see it not done than see it done with compromise.) One of the things I love best in that book (well, I love a lot, but, lawyer that I am, one of the things that I love "really, really best," as G/Son says,) is the description of how decision-making happens. There are people from the various affinity groups gathered together in a room, each speaking from hir heart about how best to proceed against a threatened invasion. Some argue for war, some argue for sabotage, some argue for nonviolent resistance. And, then:
The Speaker raised her hand, calling for silence, and bent her ear to the Salmon mask.
"Friend Salmon says, 'Learn from water. Water is malleable, water is gentle, but drops of water wear away stone, and everything it touches is shaped by its passing.'" She sat down again. [And then the argument goes on, some calling each other cowards, some explaining what's wrong with that notion, . . . .]

When I first read that passage, all that I could think of was the question that my Environmental Law professor asked the class: "What's wrong with Justice Douglas' proposition that someone should be appointed to 'speak for the trees?'" Older, and maybe sadder than a lot of the class, my hand went up. "Weyerhauser will create a "Committee to Speak for America's Trees" and explain why trees long for, need, in fact, must have, clear cutting." I got an A.

I've been mulling over, lately, the notion of how we can have a democratic (forget consensual, let's just talk about honestly democratic) society when the money of large corporations appears capable of contaminating everyone and everything. I'm not a member of the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." I'm so far to the left of that, that it's difficult to even see that over the horizon. But I'd be orgasmically ecstatic to see that wing of that party these days. Because I don't. Other than Elizabeth Warren, I see, from the White House on down, a whole lot of people who, while I have no doubt that they went into politics planning to do good, are the sort of persons of whom Winston Churchill is once supposed to have remarked, "We've already established that. All that we're arguing about now is the price." And I wonder, more and more, how can we ensure that there's anyone who has (1) a real seat at the table, (2) in the Salmon mask, who (3) isn't colonized by those who make money killing Salmon and destroying Salmon's habitat?

And the only glimmer of an answer that I've been able to discern is encapsulated in Sobeit's post. We have to, as a cultural value to which we all give real credence, return to, taste, and listen to the Land, our Watershed. And while I think (and I am a woman who has given her life to The Law and would do so again, tomorrow, with a happy heart) that The Law can help to make a difference, what really has to happen is for us to begin to tell ourselves better stories. As Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” The universe that we perceive is, indeed, made of the stories that we tell ourselves and our children.

And we have to start telling a different story. Not only in our legal opinions, but elsewhere, as well, in those stories that seep into our bones before we ever read a law or a news story about a Supreme Court opinion.

This weekend, I read G/Son the story of Merlin and King Arthur. And it gripped him and raised questions within him as it has (repository of so many Western archetypes that it is) in generations and generations of post-Roman Celts. In the version we read, Arthur goes to France to besiege Lancelot for daring to sleep with (the Queen of) Arthur's Land, Albion. And it is while Arthur has turned his back on his land in order to pursue the demands of Patriarchy that Mordred raises an army against Arthur, requiring Arthur to abandon his fight with Lancelot and return to Arthur's own land to slay Arthur's Son (destroying what Patriarchy pretends to be about -- male progeny -- for what it's really about -- death), lose Arthur's relationship with Arthur's land, and sail off to a land ruled by three women in order to be able to return again in the hour of England's greatest need. Although the book clearly said that "Some said that Mordred was the King's own son," that was too much for G/Son to process. So on each successive reading of the story, when we got to the part where Arthur and Mordred slay each other, G/Son said to me, "Nonna, why the King fought with his own brother?" And each time I would say, "Arthur fought with his closest male relative because he didn't know what else to do. He had boxed himself into a corner by imagining that he could own and control either a woman or The Land. Arthur was a good man who wanted to help people, but he made a big mistake. He couldn't see that women, like Guinevere, and that a landbase, like England, must be free to make their own choices. Mordred made the same mistake."

The stories that we tell, the stories that we hear as children from our Nonnas, the stories that we see on tv, the stories that they show at the movie theatres: those stories matter. They matter in as basic and as important a manner as whether or not we can find a way to do what Sobeit, Thorn Coyle, Starhawk, and Justice Douglas have all urged us to do: to listen to our Landbase, to pay attention to our Watershed.

Because, after all, we desperately need a Lorax, who speaks for the trees:
Yes, I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please. But I'm also in charge of the brown Bar-ba-loots, who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loot suits and happily lived eating truffula fruits. Now, thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, there's not enough truffula fruit to go 'round!

Picture found here.

Missing the Memo





Last night, I had dinner (on the porch in spite of the record-breaking heat here in the mystical MidAtlantic! Of course, we did have shade, the ceiling fan, and a bottle of icy grand cru from Arnould & Fils, recommended by my brilliant friend Stoat) with a beloved magical Sister. I asked her, "You'd tell me, right? Mercury didn't unexpectedly go retrograde and I just (in retrograde Mercury fashion) missed the memo?" Because it would explain a lot. (Blogger, you fickle, evil BitchGoddess, I am looking, inter alia, at you.)

And speaking of missing the memo, I'm not sure why I am just now finding out about the amazing sculpture of Fidelma Massey. If I'd known about her sooner, I'd have planned my garden around one of her sculptures. As it is, I'm going to have to sit down w/ Landscape Guy and see where we can work one in. There's a spot he's been pointing to along the Southern boundary for a few months and saying, "Something needs to go there. You need to figure out what."

And, in true if-Mercury-isn't-retrograde-who-is? fashion, I'm not sure where I first found Ms. Massey's work. I thought it was at Sally J. Smith's site, but now I can't find it there. (And I'd love, someday, to get Sally to build one of her fairy houses in my garden for G/Son, too. He's so fascinated w/ the fairy door on the big maple in my woodland). Whoever brought Ms. Massey to my attention, many thanks!

Which of her works do you like best?

Pictures: Google "Fidelma Massey" and click on "Images".

Missing the Memo





Last night, I had dinner (on the porch in spite of the record-breaking heat here in the mystical MidAtlantic! Of course, we did have shade, the ceiling fan, and a bottle of icy grand cru from Arnould & Fils, recommended by my brilliant friend Stoat) with a beloved magical Sister. I asked her, "You'd tell me, right? Mercury didn't unexpectedly go retrograde and I just (in retrograde Mercury fashion) missed the memo?" Because it would explain a lot. (Blogger, you fickle, evil BitchGoddess, I am looking, inter alia, at you.)

And speaking of missing the memo, I'm not sure why I am just now finding out about the amazing sculpture of Fidelma Massey. If I'd known about her sooner, I'd have planned my garden around one of her sculptures. As it is, I'm going to have to sit down w/ Landscape Guy and see where we can work one in. There's a spot he's been pointing to along the Southern boundary for a few months and saying, "Something needs to go there. You need to figure out what."

And, in true if-Mercury-isn't-retrograde-who-is? fashion, I'm not sure where I first found Ms. Massey's work. I thought it was at Sally J. Smith's site, but now I can't find it there. (And I'd love, someday, to get Sally to build one of her fairy houses in my garden for G/Son, too. He's so fascinated w/ the fairy door on the big maple in my woodland). Whoever brought Ms. Massey to my attention, many thanks!

Which of her works do you like best?

Pictures: Google "Fidelma Massey" and click on "Images".

Missing the Memo





Last night, I had dinner (on the porch in spite of the record-breaking heat here in the mystical MidAtlantic! Of course, we did have shade, the ceiling fan, and a bottle of icy grand cru from Arnould & Fils, recommended by my brilliant friend Stoat) with a beloved magical Sister. I asked her, "You'd tell me, right? Mercury didn't unexpectedly go retrograde and I just (in retrograde Mercury fashion) missed the memo?" Because it would explain a lot. (Blogger, you fickle, evil BitchGoddess, I am looking, inter alia, at you.)

And speaking of missing the memo, I'm not sure why I am just now finding out about the amazing sculpture of Fidelma Massey. If I'd known about her sooner, I'd have planned my garden around one of her sculptures. As it is, I'm going to have to sit down w/ Landscape Guy and see where we can work one in. There's a spot he's been pointing to along the Southern boundary for a few months and saying, "Something needs to go there. You need to figure out what."

And, in true if-Mercury-isn't-retrograde-who-is? fashion, I'm not sure where I first found Ms. Massey's work. I thought it was at Sally J. Smith's site, but now I can't find it there. (And I'd love, someday, to get Sally to build one of her fairy houses in my garden for G/Son, too. He's so fascinated w/ the fairy door on the big maple in my woodland). Whoever brought Ms. Massey to my attention, many thanks!

Which of her works do you like best?

Pictures: Google "Fidelma Massey" and click on "Images".