Category Archives: They Say A Witch Lives Here

Rain, Falling Leaves, Woodsmoke, Stones


Now that I've been home for (almost!) a week in my snug little cottage with the bricks, and river stones, and lanterns interposed between me and the chilly, Autumn rain, and now that my old body is beginning to remember what time zone and what season this is, I am almost incandescent with joy. Ever since I was a teenager (maybe before!), I have adored Autumn. And I adore it still, and I am addled enough to imagine that the feeling is mutual.

What I love best about it, at least now -- at this stage of the amazingly fun game that I showed up here playing -- what I love best about it now, is the incredible sense of deshabille in the garden. There's no point going out and spending an evening or a weekend "straightening" and "fixing." The garden just now is a familiar lover, the kind willing to let her breasts spill out of her bathrobe while eating Chinese take-out w/ chopsticks on her side in bed, the kind who will go into the bathroom while her lover is shaving and pee, the kind who will go for a walk with her lover's friends with her hair pulled back in a pony tail and her face free of make-up. (The other morning, I sat at a stoplight and watched a young woman jog past me with full make-up (eye-liner! you know that's going to run!) and color-coordinated jogging clothes. All that I could think was: "Your life is going to get a whole lot easier for you as you age. So mote it be.")

I sit here and watch the hostas turn yellow and die, I watch the toad lilies bloom, I watch the Japanese Maple leaves turn copper as a mere precursor to the brilliant scarlet that they will eventually turn, I email back and forth w/ Landscape Guy about what to plant this Autumn, and I love being the Witch of This Place even more than I can ever begin to say. There's an old saying in "Chop Wood, Carry Water," that goes: "I have always known that I would come this way. But, yesterday, I did not know that it would be today." It's actually wrong. I have always known that it would be today.

May your Autumn be a mess of messy age and may all of your ancestors show up and bother you. So mote it be.

Picture found here.

More Muir Woods






For me, as for many modern Pagans (most of whom live in urban areas), a trip to a wilderness spot such as Muir Woods is a once-in-a-lifetime event, a pilgrimage to a sacred site, a "Journey to the West" in search of wisdom. Such pilgrimages can be life-changing events, and, certainly, I will never forget my trip to Muir Woods. (And, of course, Wilderness spots can only take so many of us traipsing through.) I brought back a tiny, carved, wooden tree to put in the NorthWest on my altar, to help me to connect to the larger spirit of North America, the North America beyond my Potomac River watershed and the red-clay-amended-with-acorn-shells-built-on-a-swamp-landbase upon which I live, garden, and priestess. A small sign in Muir Woods taught me that deer depend upon the Vitamin C from maple leaves to get through the Winter and I'm considering now how to get the falling leaves from my ancient maple to the nearby woods for the deer who live there. I used the word "privileged" in my post about Muir Woods and that word was chosen deliberately. For most of my life, a trip to a place such as Muir Woods was simply out of the question and I'm grateful for the opportunity that my job gave me to visit.

And yet -- despite all the dreams that I've had, ever since my trip, of a Chapter House in Sausalito, dreams of denim-and-cotton-garbed priestesses and priests spending their lives entering the woods and doing reiki for the ferns, and redwoods, and condors, and chipmunks, and moss -- despite those dreams, when I got to the lower level of National Airport and could feel that familiar swamp dirt beneath the floor, leaching LANDBASE up through the soles of my feet and into my solar plexus, I knew that I had come home to my own true work. I am the witch of THIS place and my pilgrimage has only made me more so. Those of us who live in urban areas are called to as sacred a task as are those someone(s) whose reiki I sensed in Muir Woods. Muir Woods is threatened and needs magical care, but so is the strip of land between the parking lot of your apartment complex and the interstate. So is the pocket park located a block away from you in the city, the one where people come to let their dogs run. So is the tree growing through the sidewalk outside your office building. So are the weeds growing in the alley behind your condo. It's all sacred. It's all Goddess pouring Goddess into Goddess. It's all in desperate need of priestessing, in need of reiki, in need of loving care, in need of relationship.

What are Witches for?

Photos by the author. If you copy, please link back.

More Muir Woods






For me, as for many modern Pagans (most of whom live in urban areas), a trip to a wilderness spot such as Muir Woods is a once-in-a-lifetime event, a pilgrimage to a sacred site, a "Journey to the West" in search of wisdom. Such pilgrimages can be life-changing events, and, certainly, I will never forget my trip to Muir Woods. (And, of course, Wilderness spots can only take so many of us traipsing through.) I brought back a tiny, carved, wooden tree to put in the NorthWest on my altar, to help me to connect to the larger spirit of North America, the North America beyond my Potomac River watershed and the red-clay-amended-with-acorn-shells-built-on-a-swamp-landbase upon which I live, garden, and priestess. A small sign in Muir Woods taught me that deer depend upon the Vitamin C from maple leaves to get through the Winter and I'm considering now how to get the falling leaves from my ancient maple to the nearby woods for the deer who live there. I used the word "privileged" in my post about Muir Woods and that word was chosen deliberately. For most of my life, a trip to a place such as Muir Woods was simply out of the question and I'm grateful for the opportunity that my job gave me to visit.

And yet -- despite all the dreams that I've had, ever since my trip, of a Chapter House in Sausalito, dreams of denim-and-cotton-garbed priestesses and priests spending their lives entering the woods and doing reiki for the ferns, and redwoods, and condors, and chipmunks, and moss -- despite those dreams, when I got to the lower level of National Airport and could feel that familiar swamp dirt beneath the floor, leaching LANDBASE up through the soles of my feet and into my solar plexus, I knew that I had come home to my own true work. I am the witch of THIS place and my pilgrimage has only made me more so. Those of us who live in urban areas are called to as sacred a task as are those someone(s) whose reiki I sensed in Muir Woods. Muir Woods is threatened and needs magical care, but so is the strip of land between the parking lot of your apartment complex and the interstate. So is the pocket park located a block away from you in the city, the one where people come to let their dogs run. So is the tree growing through the sidewalk outside your office building. So are the weeds growing in the alley behind your condo. It's all sacred. It's all Goddess pouring Goddess into Goddess. It's all in desperate need of priestessing, in need of reiki, in need of loving care, in need of relationship.

What are Witches for?

Photos by the author. If you copy, please link back.

May Your Hand Hold the Scythe With Strength


This October, it will be seven years (a magical number if there ever was one, or, well, if there ever was an infinity) since I moved into this little cottage and I'm beginning to hatch plans for an all-night ritual of thanks, celebration, and renewal with this house and this land, including all the various spirits of both. (And, oh, Mama, do they both have spirits and astral presences! Do they ever.) When I first moved into this bungalow surrounded by very old oaks, the sound of acorns ricocheting off the roof would make both me and Miss Thing jump, make us start awake in the night, make us stop and wonder if something was wrong. Now, acorns are one of the sounds that I look forward to hearing in the Fall, almost as comforting as rain on the roof or crickets at dark.

Coming into Mabon, I've been madly harvesting the bounty of this less-than-a-quarter-acre-of-land: basil, thyme, sage, lavender, marigold blossoms (both for salads and for the Day of the Dead), parsley, more basil, dill, rosemary, peppermint, lemongrass, chocolate mint, sunflower seeds, lemon mint, apple mint, more basil, spearmint, oregano, more basil (I've taken to just showing up at work and at the homes of friends and family with bags full of basil and going "Pesto in a bag!" I've still got a ton of basil out there and enough pesto in the freezer to last for a year. I can hear them saying, "Oh no, here she comes again with her basil bombs," but what's a girl to do? Next year, I'll plant less.) , and, above all, beauty, stored in my eyes, and heart, and mind -- lush beauty to feed my soul through the elegant but stark coming months of November, January, and February.

And, I've been thinking a bit, here in my sixth decade, about harvesting. Harvesting, and, hence, Mabon, isn't for the weak. You have to go and take away from either a living animal or a living plant its life, its source of nourishment and/or its sexual organs, children, roots. You have to make decisions, often while tired, overworked, in a rush: Will this bit rot and rot everything around it, or will it preserve nicely and get me through the lean times? Will these seeds go bad or will they sprout, come Spring, and bring me an even more bountiful harvest? Should I leave this job and take this other one? What if I move? What will I do with this degree? How can I use my new-found knowledge? Who will buy this if I make it? Will this relationship bear fruit or poison? When I edit this paragraph, will the new ideas be better than the old?

One of our family rituals -- and the thing that most marks "Autumn" for me -- is our annual trip to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. I've been taking Son even since before the festival found its current (magical) location. Last year, drunk on Redwall movies, G/Son was enchanted w/ the notion that there really is somewhere on Earth where one can buy candied nuts. We bought a paper cone full of cinnamon-sugared almonds and ate them all through the Faire. We meant to buy some more on our way out, but we were tired and forgot. All Winter, G/Son would say to me, "Nonna, the candied nuts you made are good, but we should have bought more on our way out of the Renaissance Festival." This year, just before we were ready to leave, we left his 'rents having crabs and meade, and ran back to the place selling candied nuts. We bought what G/Son called our "Winter Supply," -- six extra cones full. G/Son explained to me in the car, "In Winter, we can't find too much food, so it's good to have a Winter supply of candied nuts." I could not agree more. I could not agree more. I could not agree more. G/Son speaks for me.

We all need something -- candied nuts, dusty bottles of meade, dried thyme, a knitted blanket, a song, a poem, a circle, a recipe for soup verte, a cellar full of cider and wine -- that helps us to believe that we will make it through the Winter nights of brilliant stars, freezing fingers, and empty stomachs, into the coming (surely it's coming, of course it's coming, it always comes, please Goddess, let it come) Spring. To me, that's the difference between Mabon and Samhein. Mabon's about the hope. Samhein's about facing the other possibility.

That hope is what those hard-nosed harvesters buy for all of us when they steal the life from the hart, the hare, the seed pod, the turkey, the pumpkin, the potato, the turnip, the chestnut, the kale. May the Goddess guard them. May their spirit be strong in us. This is my will. So mote it be.

Picture found here.

All Acts of Love and Pleasure Are Rituals of the Goddess


You know those things that you're convinced that, if you ever said them out loud, people would really consider you crazy? (Come on, yes you do.)

I adore hands. I do. They're the first thing that I notice about a person and I'm a huge sucker for hands with character. Do.not.get.me.started.on.guitar.calluses. (If you had sex in the sixties, you know what I mean. Sweet Mother.) The sight of a wrist just below the rolled cuffs of a chambray shirt. Bracelets. Rings. Hands are what I look at first in a portrait or photograph and I can get weepy with joy at the sight of old hands with swollen joints knitting, petting a cat, holding a grandchild, wielding a wand. Babies' hands with dimples at each finger. The hands of a friend pouring wine, handing me pickles and cheese, massaging my shoulders. My own hands at work, typing legal prose, hour after hour, knitting a warm sweater for someone I love, pouring libations onto my altar rock, pulling weeds out of my garden, raised in a dance of benediction for my landbase. A moot court judge once told me that I used my hands too much. He was wrong. I love hands.

Yes, I agree, anyone who would say such things, out-loud, must be a batshit crazy old woman. Guilty, as charged.

Right now, my hands reek of pesto. I can smell them even all the way from the keyboard to my nose, can smell the garlic, basil, olive oil, Parmesan, slight vanilla of pine nuts. And, as much as I love hands, I really, really love scented hands, even my own. I love the way that hands smell after rinsing sage oil through hair, after massaging sore muscles with eucalyptus oil, after rubbing a baby's freshly-bathed body with lavender oil to induce sleep. I love the way that my own hands smell earthy after weeding for hours. I love the way that my own hands smell like apples and curry when I make acorn squash soup. I love the way that my sun-spotted hands, the hands of a priestess, smell when I've waved incense over the body of a sister Witch about to go into surgery. I love the way that my hands smell of lemons and lavender when I make the lavender-lemon-aide-martinis that have marked this Summer for me. And, just now, I love the way that my hands smell of pesto, the harvest of my herb bed, in-gathered on this almost-cool, rainy, early Autumn day, captured and frozen in ice-cube-tray-sized portions to be enjoyed all Winter.

In the frozen days of January, when the ground is hard and the air smells only of minerals and cold, and in the dark, grey days of February, when I am longing for the taste of green, the scent of anything growing, the sight of a sprout, I will thaw the pesto, serve it on steaming pasta, and remember how sacred my hands smelled, redolent of this harvest.

May it be so for you.

Picture found here