Category Archives: Air

Invoking Air.









Video clips at Ustream
How does this change us? How does it change the eagles? How does it change the very element of Air, itself?

I know that I will never invoke it in exactly the same way, ever again.

I sent the link to G/Son via email.

Mercury may be retrograde, but this is v cool.

Newness


For the last few days, we've had very strong winds, making our below-normal, cold temps feel even colder. Wind, for me, is all about the Powers of the East, Air, Dawn, New Beginnings, Swords. At our Solstice celebration, I was talking with one of my Sisters about a painting that hangs in my home, showing a woman walking into a strong wind. I have always loved the idea of walking into the wind, of letting fresh new air blow over me and all my ideas. I live a lot -- no, really, a lot -- in my head. THE big challenge for me, in this incarnation, is to integrate my oversized Talking Self with my physical body, my Younger Self, my Sacred Dove. And I've still got a long way to go. But, give me words and ideas and sentences, heck, give me footnotes and case holdings and conflicting interpretations, and I'm off to the races, riding air drafts, soaring on wind gusts, riding, like an eagle, on Boreas, Chinook, Etsian, the Mistral, Typhoons, and, well, and the Wind.

Conversely, I take such a hugely sensual pleasure in being inside, wearing a soft cotton nightgown, on my sturdy bed and firm mattress, weighted down by cotton blankets, and comforters, and woven bedspreads, balanced upon ice-cold soft pillows, newly-turned from the wall-side, and listening to the wind whistle and howl around my snug little cottage. And there's hardly been a night for the last few weeks when I haven't been awakened at some point and given the chance to snuggle down even deeper under the covers and listen to the wind sough through the branches of my ancient oaks.

May it be so for you.

Picture found here.

Calling the Elements


I've been thinking a lot lately (well, it's sad; you get old, your mind wanders down strange pathways, but at least I've been thinking about this in between v practical issues for a rather demanding appellate brief; my job does do wonderful things for me) about the role that Calling the Elements really plays in Wiccan ritual. Coming, generally, at the beginning of the ritual, I think that Calling the Elements serves a role greater than the sum of its parts.

By that, I mean that Calling the Elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water! Come be with me; I'm your daughter. Air, Fire, Water, Earth! To my better self now give birth. Fire, Water, Earth, and Air! Bring me now the power to dare. Water, Earth, Air, and Fire! I call you now with all my desire.) is one of the parts of ritual that speaks most clearly to Younger Child and, as a result, can, when well-done, lead us quickly into that space between the worlds where magic is, indeed, possible. And when done perfunctorily, or as an afterthought, or as an Oh-Shit-I-Volunteered-to-Call-Water-and-then-Forgot-about-It-Well-Let-Me-Start-Babbling-About-Flow-and-Drops-Coming-Together-and-Hope-this-Works (I've been totally guilty of this), it can put a damper on the entire ritual, can make it that much more difficult for the magic to happen.

Younger Child, at least as I conceive of Her, is that part of us that responds to poetic language, to symbol, to things just below the level of language and conscious thought. It's funny (well, funny-strange, not funny-ha-ha, except in the sense that the Universe and I have, for almost 55 years, been having grand jokes on each other and then, of course, it's also funny-ha-ha) that, for many years after reading and understanding (intellectually) the concept of Younger Child, what I said to myself was: "But I'm deficient in this area. I'm too left-brained to have much of a Younger Child. If I see a sigil, I translate it into words and turn that task over to Talking Self, so, really, I don't have much of a Younger Child."

And, then, somehow, I remembered the first time that, as a child, I somehow wound up in a v nice section of a v nice restaurant. My memory is foggy about how this happened: I was the oldest of five kids in a working-class family and we didn't spend much time in any restaurant, much less one that wasn't (a special treat) a McDonald's. But I have this vague sensory impression of being in such a place, of reveling in the way that sounds were muffled there and that empty space provided room for one's being to expand. Once I made the association between that impression and the way that it made me feel as if maybe I could be who I'd always meant to be (this is shallow, I know; so is Younger Child), dozens of similar impressions came flooding back to me.

The way that great architecture has always made me feel. The way that fountains instantly make joy bubble up within me. The way that wearing elegant, well-fitting clothes has always changed the way that I move, the things that I say, the way that I feel towards others. The feelings of both groundedness and airiness that the scent of lilacs can induce in me. Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man. The way that a man's cologne can make me weak in the knees. Poetry.

So, I'm a slow learner; it took me a long time to get in touch with my own Younger Self; the one who didn't get much validation from my writer-father or my left-brained, Vatican II Catholic education. And, yet, once I did, I quit worrying about whether or not a sigil or rune induced anything within me and began to focus on the many ways that my Younger Self could be induced to feel comfortable, expand, do magic, invoke what I needed.

And, so. Here's Margaret Roach, in A Way to Garden, discussing the element of Air:
Where I live, I’d have to count wind—not cold, despite my Zone 5-ish climate—as the most destructive force in the garden, bringing down or splitting apart woody plants when it roars, and desiccating evergreens in winter. Particularly when it combines with or follows drought, as it is this year, it’s a force to be reckoned with.

For now, all that means is a few stray sycamore leaves (Platanus occidentalis). We’ll see what . . . other tricks it has in mind this winter. Batten down the hatches, won’t you?

Can you invoke Air more powerfully for your next ritual? I'd love to see it in comments.

Picture found here.

Air


Art, especially sculpture, has always spoken so deeply to my Younger Self. And I've long been a huge fan of Andrew Goldsworthy's work. Lately, I've been getting a lot of inspiration for things in my own life from two artists whose works contain echoes of Goldsworthy. One is Patrick Dougherty. Here's a short video about how he creates interesting spaces from tree branches.



Dougherty has an exhibit at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden that I'm itching to go see; like most sculpture, his work doesn't translate all the way into two dimensions.

The sculpture at BBG is woven from nonnative woody material that was collected from Ocean Breeze Park on Staten Island. The harvesting site was chosen by BBG's director of Science because of its proximity to the Garden and its large population of nonnative willow (Salix atrocinerea), which is designated an invasive species in New York State. Removal of saplings of this species helped protect the site's excellent assemblage of herbaceous plants. The park is owned by the City of New York and is targeted for restoration under the City's PlaNYC sustainability initiative.

. . .

When asked about some of the words that came to mind as he contemplated what he wanted to build in Brooklyn, Dougherty smiled and said "lairs; a place for feral children and wayward adults."


Maybe I can borrow G/Son and we can go one weekend this Spring.

The second is Sally J. Smith who blogs here. I especially like how Smith's work honors the changing seasons. Here's a short video showing some of her works for this time of year:



And here's another, with ice sculptures for the coming Winter. I love the way that Smith intentionally incorporates the Sun and Moon (yes, the real ones! and she's not alone) into her work.



What inspires you right now?

Picture found here.