Author Archives: Hecate

Home Soil


Every garden is based on affinity for and knowledge of the ground, on true intimacy and kinship with your home soil that comes not only from cultivating the garden but also from sitting completely still on the earth that you garden, and walking aimlessly and mindfully about on this same ground. These practices are rooted in listening to your soil and in following your garden down to its source. Begin by sitting still and doing absolutely nothing. Make yourself very comfortable on the ground and then, don't move at all. Give your full attention to what is happening around you. Watch the shadows of the black mulberry leaves move like cirrus clouds across the face of your garden. Be ordered by the beat of the ruby-throated hummingbird pulling red nectar out of full-blown salvias. Sink down to earth and sit deep in the saddle of your home garden. Settle yourself on yourself and let the flower of your life force bloom.

~Wendy Johnson in Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World.

Landscape Guy dropped this book off at my house a week or so ago, and I am absolutely LOVING it. Reading it along with David Abrams' Becoming Animal (I've always been one of those readers who has a number of books going at once; it used to drive my mother crazy. Do you do this or do you read one thing at a time?) is an amazing experience in connecting to the Earth as part and parcel of a spiritual practice.

What do you know about your home soil that you didn't know a year ago?

Picture found here.

A Task for Writers


For those of us who care for an earth not encompassed by machines, a world of textures, tastes, and sounds other than those that we have engineered, there can be no question of simply abandoning literacy, of turning away from all writing. Our task, rather, is that of taking up the written word, with all of its potency, and patiently, carefully, writing language back into the land. Our craft is that of releasing the budded, earthly intelligence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of the things themselves – to the green uttering forth of leaves from the spring branches. It is the practice of spinning stories that have the rhythm and lilt of the local soundscape, tales for the tongue, tales that want to be told, again and again sliding off the digital screen and slipping off the lettered page to inhabit these coastal forests, those desert canyons, those whispering grasslands and valleys and swamps. Finding phrases that lace us in contact with the trembling neck-muscles of a deer holding its antlers high as it swims toward the mainland, or with the ant dragging a scavenged rice-grain through the grasses. Planting words, like seeds, under rocks and fallen logs – letting language take root, once again, in the earthen silence of shadow and bone and leaf.

~David Abram

Picture found here.

The Garden in Winter




The ground's been covered with snow for the last few weeks, which is actually good for the garden, but difficult for this gardener. It keeps me mostly inside and leaves me longing for a chance to be outside, breathing fresh air and just being with plants. Today I went to the DC Seed Swap, sponsored by Washington Gardener Magazine, at Green Springs Gardens in Alexandria. It's drizzly, grey, and cold here, but it was still wonderful to step into the gardens with their very-well-shoveled walks, to feel the energy of seedlings and seeds (and gardeners!) inside the Horticultural Center, and to begin to feel my enthusiasm building over the opportunity to get things to grow.

There's this thing that happens to me (does this happen to you, too?) when I step outside in a garden, even in Winter, and can let my eyes move over a vista. There's a palpable loosening and expanding of my soul and a brightening in my body in the areas of my yellow and green chakras. It happened the moment I entered the gardens and I'm still feeling it, maybe more strongly than normal because it's been weeks since I've been anywhere except inside, in the city, in my car.

I took seeds of woad, Grandpa Otts' morning glories, dill, black-eyed Susans, and wildflower mix and came home with white narcissus bulbs and black bat plants. And a determination to spend more time with plants, even if we do still have a bit more Winter weather on the way.

/Goes and compulsively checks, yet again, seeds planted just 4 days ago.

Pictures by the author; if you copy, please link back.

My New Name for a Blog


What Gus Said.

Gus' post on abortion is short and incredibly well-reasoned. Please check it out. Here's a taste:
Spiritual literalism degenerates into irrationality.
. . .

By reading sacred texts in a purely logocentric way [fundamentalists] ultimately trap themselves and cut themselves off from all spiritual insight because as Sallustius and Augustine and Ambrose all recognized, they cannot be read that way wisely. When the 'literalists' interpretations are contradicted by historical evidence or scientific discoveries, because they have rejected myth they have no way to incorporate new knowledge into their spiritual understanding, and so new knowledge must be rejected.

I have a pretty much standard reply to people who tell me that we must outlaw abortion because it "kills babies." It goes like this:

First, please get back to me when we feed, house, clothe, give medical care to, and educate the actual babies who are actually born. Until then, abortion is better than exposure or sale into slavery, which is how humanity dealt with unwanted pregnancies for centuries and centuries.

Second, this society "kills babies" every damn day. We kill them with our bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. We kill them because we've made the decision that it's more important for CEOs to get obscene bonuses than it is to make all kinds of companies stop polluting and poisoning the commons. We kill them because we've made the decision that it's too politically costly to stand up to the NRA and impose the regulations that the Second Amendment calls for when it talks about "well-regulated" militias. We kill them because we've made the decision that it's more important for America's wealthiest 2% (and corporations) to bear almost no tax burden than it is to provide the visiting nurse services and mental health care that it would take to stop some poor woman's boyfriend from shaking a six-month-old to death because it was crying. And the people who wail the loudest about how abortion "kills babies" are generally in favor of those other "baby-killing" decisions. So forgive me if I can't believe that they really give a flying frap about "killing babies" and that they actually have other motives deeply related to preserving patriarchy.

Third, anyone who truly wanted to cut down on the number of abortions (which would seem to include anyone who actually thought that abortion "kills babies") wouldn't be in favor of criminalizing abortion. Because criminalizing abortion no more prevents abortions than criminalizing pot possession prevents people from possessing pot. Criminalizing abortion simply pushes it into back alleys, where it not only "kills babies," but also kills women. Anyone who actually wanted to cut down on the number of "babies killed" by abortion would, instead, be doing the things that decades of research show actually do minimize unwanted pregnancies and, therefore, abortions. You know, things like regular and well-funded actual sex education (which would teach that abstinence is a rather-prone-to-failure method of birth control), free, easily-available, safe, and effective birth control. Education for girls. A social safety net, including pre- and post-natal medical care for mothers and children, free and fantastic day care, preschool, and early education, financial support for mothers and kids who need it, parenting education available throughout a child's life, etc. Yet, the people who wail the loudest about "killing babies" generally are actively opposed to each of these things.

So, you know, don't hand me shit and tell me that it's Shinola. I'm not stupid and I can see through that "oh, abortion kills babies" bullshit. Sell crazy someplace else; we're all stocked up here. And the planet's way past its carrying capacity, which kills and is going to continue killing people of all ages.

Picture found here. (And yes, sometimes, a picture DOES speak a thousand words.)

First (Week) of the Month Bazooms Blogging



Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and declare it a good day.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading.

My New Name for a Blog


What Sara A. Said.
"Most witches don't believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don't believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman." ~ Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was a cute little witchlet armed with a copy of The Spiral Dance in one hand and The White Goddess in the other. I dove in, like you do, with exuberance. Reading Tarot! Casting spells! Trance journeys! Rituals! Meditations! Communing with trees! I did a self-dedication rite that I wrote myself! My awesomely shiny ear-wet witchiness was a sight to behold.

Possibly because I was kicking up such a fuss, a being started talking to me. She said I should call her Rowan.

"Are you THE GODDESS?" I asked.

"No, I'm something you can talk to," was the reply.

"Well, how come I don't get to talk to the real thing?" I wanted to know.

Suddenly, I was aware of the vast, cosmically profound black and starry depths of the Universe, and the intelligence that permeates it all, an intelligence so immense and complex that it is impossible to apprehend even how immense, complex, and profound it really is, only that the least touch from it overwhelms.

My brain did that thing that computers do when you try to run too much information through them. I blue-screened. *BOGGLE BOGGLE BOGGLE BOGGLE*

. . . then it went away. Rowan said, "That's why."

You should definitely read the whole thing.

Hat tip: Angela Raincatcher

Picture found here.

Sixth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival


There are the poems that you love, and then there are the poems that you write into your will. Here's one that I made the nice young lawyer from the white-shoe law firm write into mine:

When Death Comes

~Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.


Picture found here.

Poetry for Imbolc


Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
-- Sheenagh Pugh

On this Imbolc, may it be so for you.

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.

‘Scuze Me While I — Blam!


This week's page of my Ecological Calendar at work tells me that, at this time of year, some bees from every hive begin to make forays out in search of food, but that many are killed by freezing to death or by flying into snowbanks, which they mistake for the sky. I had this evil image of a heroic bee flying along in search of food, communing with the great Winter sky after weeks stuck inside the hive, and then, suddenly, blam! A snowbank. And the poor bee's last thoughts, inscribed idly by its poor frozen little legs doing their final bee dance, are "WTF?"

But on a more serious note, the bees' need for food is yet another good reason to begin starting some seedlings now (at least if you live, as I do, in Zone 7) so that they'll be ready to plant outside once the danger of frost has passed. Those seedlings will flower early and provide the bees with some needed food.

I save the pots that I get when I buy seedlings, wash them out in late Summer/early Autumn, and then re-use them every year to start seedlings. I've also made pots out of newspaper, which are great, as long as the ink is vegetable-based. You can pop them, paper pot and all, into the ground and the paper just decomposes. It's a perfect way to spend Imbolc, and if you have children, you can always get them to help, mark "their" pot for them, and then do all kinds of lessons about Science, Math (measurement, esp.), Poetry, Music, Art, etc.

Tomorrow, I'll be potting marigold, woad, cucumbers, and some orange cosmos (that I got as a freebie) for guerrilla gardening. I'll also sit down with my stack of garden porn catalogues and order datura, French tarragon, sweet basil, dill, Italian oregano, white foxgloves, black hollyhocks, and more black day lilies.

What are you planting? How many bees did you dance with last year?

I've got packets of one-year-old woad seeds for the first three people to email me their address at hecate demetersdatter at hot mail dot come.

Blessed Imbolc!

Nekhbet’s Children


My brilliant friend NTodd has a good post that shows the historical developments in the growing field of performing effective revolutions. One hopes that, as people gain more experience with the business of overthrowing repressive regimes, they'll pay attention to lessons learned from previous attempts. I've no idea what's really going on in Egypt (no one has, just now, not even the Egyptians), but NTodd's post provides reason to hope that the young people in Egypt have been paying attention.

Ever since this revolution began, several days ago, I've had this huge sense of Hecate floating gigantically over that part of the world. For me, Hecate is that magical power that creates the situation in which change (personal, political (of course, that's redundant), world-shaping, time-sensitive) can occur. She doesn't cause the change, She shifts the atmosphere, gets a butterfly to flap its wings in Brazil, moves the molecules of air just a bit farther apart so that something new can begin to infill, opens up a doorway, signals liminality. And that's what makes Her both a dangerous and a deeply-beloved Goddess. And I can see Her floating -- three-headed, key-bearing, sycle-weilding, filth-eating, and holding Her torches high -- over every map of Egypt that I've looked at.

I am not a devotee of the Egyptian pantheon, although I've called to Isis, Nekhbet, and Nuit in extremis and I see much to honor in all of those alien and strange deities. But I have a candle burning on my altar for Egypt, for the young people there who hope to affect positive change, and for the protection of the many ancient temples and artifacts. May mighty Hecate, who strode out of the Anatolian planes into Greece and thence to Egypt and the world shift the winds for positive change. Whoooosh.

Update:

Janet Kane says:
I hate to say I told you so, but for the last few months I have stated that the Uranus/Pluto Square is the next evolution of the Uranus Conjunct Pluto that we experienced in 1964 to 1969. Uranus/Pluto brings in revolutionary energy and the promise to totally transform society. Of course, all of the astrologers I know predicted the same thing. I didn’t realize that the revolutionary activates would take place in the Middle East.

At the same time that Uranus/Pluto is square, Saturn is opposing and squaring Pluto. Saturn turned retrograde on the day the protests started in Egypt. Saturn was opposite Uranus from 1917 to 1923 when we had the Russian Revolution. Also, Jupiter entered Aries on Jan 22. Jupiter is expansive and Aries is the energy needed to go out and express the need for freedom. This complex configuration of planets started in 2010 and will be with us for the next 4 years.

More Janet here. She's v good.
Picture found here.

Indeed, My Sheep Are Lactating


I mentioned recently to some friends that, as a Pagan, I'm preparing to celebrate Imbolc. One of my friends replied, "Really? Your sheep are lactating?" My response is that "lactating sheep" is an old way of describing a complicated process that also means "return of the light," "beginning of the end of Winter," "an inspiring time when we begin to throw off the lethargy and hibernation of Winter and concern ourselves with Spring, and new growth, and our own commitments to new life."

I am an old woman with a broken-and-held-together-with-titanium-screws-and-plates ankle, and there are five inches of snow and ice on the ground. But I am going out tomorrow afternoon, yaktrax on my boots, cane in hand, deep grounding accomplished, and I am going to bring pots and potting soil in from the shed. I am going to do that because Wednesday is Imbolc and I will be damned if I will allow it to come and go without starting some seeds. I know, I know deep in my muscles, and joints, and broken bones, I know that, however bitter the weather may be just now, I know that, in a few weeks, the Sun will begin to warm the ground and to coax green shoots from inside their thick bulbs and hard-as-glass seed-shells. And, more than almost anything, I want to be a part of that process, to partake of that metamorphosis, to find myself enmeshed in what is going on in my tiny garden, in my landbase, in the Potomac watershed, inside Columbia's district. I want to be as wick as the land, to keep on dancing the dance of the seasons.

One of the delights, for me, of being a Witch is the opportunity that the 8 major Sabbats (not to mention the Dark Moons and the Full Moons) give me to orient myself within the Wheel of the Year. The events of my own life can be fortuitous or calamitous; I can be engaged and fulfilled by my work or terrified that the economy is about to come crashing down on my head. I can be proud of my accomplishments on the treadmill or concerned that I am aging too fast. (Like Whitman, I say, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes".)) I can be coasting or struggling, but, still, the Sabbats ARE. And each one calls to me, in the midst of my pleasure or my struggle, and reminds me to pay attention to the forces of the planet, to the Wheel of the Year, to what is always available to me as a With.

You come with me; we'll turn the Wheel together.

Picture found here.

Sixth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival


Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press

Reading Becoming Animal by David Abram has been reminding me of this great poem by David Whyte. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at a meeting between the two of them.

May your Imbolc be inspiring and bright.

Picture found here.

What Chas Clifton Said

The trouble is, the model of “religion” available from the monotheists is just wrong. Every seven days, everyone lines up and listens to holy books or to a long sermon or bangs their heads on the floor. That just is not us. We are supposed to be about embodiment, ecstasy, performance, and ritual.

More here.

Now


Now seems like a good time to go light a candle and send some Reiki/good vibes/positive energy to Egypt, Kemet, Ht-ka-Ptah, Misr, the Land of the Nile, home of Isis, the land guarded by Ma'at.

May there be peace. May there be food for the people. May the ancient temples be safe.

Picture found here.

Framing: How It’s Done

I've complained before that Pagans tend to underuse and misuse YouTube. Go to YouTube and search, for example, "Wicca," and you get a lot of slide shows with pictures taken from the web and some music (often peppered with a number of misspellings), or a self-made video by a teenager discussing what Wicca means to hir. There's nothing wrong with either of those (well, except for the misspellings), but the medium itself provides the opportunity for some much more valuable sharing of information, both within the Pagan community and with the world at large.

A group of local, DC Pagans have made a YouTube that does, IMHO, a really good job of showing how YouTube can be used: in this case to explain Paganism to the world at large. Kudos to the people involved for getting the framing mostly right. You'll notice, for example, that the Pagans in the video discuss in positive tones what Paganism means, how they practice it, and how it relates to other religions. They talk about the seasons, service to others, mysticism, relationship to other religions, etc. They never (thank the Goddess!) get defensive and state that Pagans don't worship the Christian Satan or sacrifice babies, etc.



If I can offer two small suggestions, and these are things that I think come with practice: when you're talking to a camera, look into the camera. Practice really can make perfect; this is a learned skill. And please use "religious communities" or "religion," instead of "faith communities." "Faith" is a central tenant of the three large Abrahamic religions. Most Pagans view ours as a religion based upon experience (ie, I worship Hecate and include her in my religious practice because I have direct experience of her, not because I take her existence on faith) and none of our Goddesses/Gods requires faith from followers. Discussing all religions as "faith communities" frames religions as being more or less valid to the extent they involve faith, which only helps the three large Abrahamic religions, not ours.

However, those are, as noted, small suggestions. In general, I think these DC Pagans are showing how YouTube can be a great medium for teaching others about our religion.

Hat tip to Capital Witch.

Watching the Land Transform


It began to snow heavily here within the last couple of hours and I've been out on the porch every couple of minutes, simply watching and being with the rapid transformation of the land. A really major part of my spiritual practice, and one that's pretty difficult to discuss, not because I'm unwilling, but because we simply seem -- at least I simply seem -- to lack the words, is simply "being" with my own bit of Earth, listening to it, trying to grock it, experiencing it in all of its moods and moments, and relating outwards from my tiny space to the larger landbase/watershed of the Goddess Columbia. For me, it's this incredible privilege, an unearned honor, grace.

Two things struck me, and maybe neither of them makes a lot of sense to anyone except this batty old woman.

First, just as the snow was beginning to get heavy, I snuck out onto the inner edge of the deck and put out a bit more birdseed. The community of birds that hang out in my euonymus bush took immediate notice. As is often the case, the first bird or two brave enough to come that close to the porch were tiny birds. Once the larger mama cardinals watching from the euonymus saw that the tiny birds were safely scarfing up seeds, they braved it themselves. What's up with that? Are the tiny ones just braver, more driven by a desperate metabolism, stupider, what? And what is it that is so elementally satisfying about seeing birds in the snow? Is it simply reassuring to our mammal natures to know that they're still out there?

Second, there was, for just the shortest moment, a deep revelation to me about the relationship between this kind of Winter snowstorm and what goes on in the land all Summer. That's it. Just a moment, and not anything that I'm at all able to put into words, beyond that. But one thing that I have learned over the years is to pay attention to these momentary knowings. I've also learned that this kind of revelation will come back, happen several times, and grow a little bit each time. And, over time, they'll enrich me and my practice, become a part of what I just "know."

Does that ever happen to you?

Photo (from last year) by the author; if you copy, please link back.

Get Going!


There are several cool things coming up; a few local and one global.

First, if you live in, or near, DC, or if you can get here, mark your calendar now so you'll remember to attend the Red Dragon Feast on February 12th. The Feast is scheduled from 2:00 to 5:00 in the Renaissance Hall of Westminster Presbyterian Church, 400 I St., S.W., Washington, D.C. The donation is $13.00.
The Red Dragon Feast is an annual magical feast and fundraiser for healing blood-borne disease. Donations benefit community building and a local charity committed to healing blood borne disease.

The event takes place in three phases:
1. drumming, dancing and ritual
2. toasting and feasting
3. a silent and live auction

We focus our intent by
- wearing red clothes
- eating red food
- toasting with red drink

~~~~~~~~~

We honor the survivors of these diseases, the health care professionals and researchers who are fighting to help them, and the memory of those who have died from blood-borne diseases. This three hour ceremony is a festive, collective prayer for cures ... an event that is serious fun!

~~~~~~~~~~

All Hail the Red Dragon!
All Hail the Life Giving Blood!

All content is public.

The event is sponsored and organized by the DC Radical Faeries.
The Radical Faeries is a community-based group, mostly of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender people, devoted to the panspiritual exploration of Queer spirituality. The DC Radical Faeries affirms the sacredness of Queer lives and promotes interfaith collaboration.

For over a decade, the DC Radical Faeries have hosted weekly potlucks, celebrated solar and lunar holidays, and coordinated events in the metropolitan area.

Second, if your practice involves gardening, you have two chances to participate in local seed exchanges, including one at which the DC Guerilla Gardeners will be present:

> Saturday, January 29, 2011 (Brookside Gardens, Wheaton, MD)
> Saturday, February 5, 2011 (Green Spring Gardens, Alexandria, VA)

[DC Guerilla Gardeners will] be at the February 5th event, swappin' seeds and telling everyone who will listen about the D.C. Guerilla Gardeners and our fabulousness!

Or, from anywhere, participate in this effort to study heirloom seeds.

Third, anyone with access to the web can participate in the Sixth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival.
It is that time of year again, when bloggers around the world post a favorite poem in honor of Brigid, the Irish goddess and patron saint of smithcraft, poetry, and healing. Brigid’s feast day is February 1st, so between now and then is the perfect time to publish a poem to celebrate.

Picture found here.

Finally a Feminist Historian’s Take on Whitmore’s Critique of Hutton



I'm still working my way through Trials of the Moon: Reopening the Case for Historical Witchcraft. A Critique of Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, a recent book by New Zealand Pagan Ben Whitmore. And I may have more to say about it when I've finished it and gone back and re-read Hutton.

I'm no historian, but Hutton's approach to the history of Witchcraft always seemed to me to be (1) too based in a privileged, literary, male approach to what is largely women's (and therefore subjugated and more likely to be found hiding in oral traditions, crafts, family customs, etc.) history and (2) too willing to accept monotheism's either/or way of looking at the world, i.e, either Dorothy Clutterbuck or many of the people burned as Witches were Christian or they were Witches, but, obviously not both and, if we can find, for example, evidence that they attended the Christian church (even when not to do so was to invite burning or social ostracism) then they must not have been Witches. (I don't know about Hutton, but most women I know in mainstream religions are pretty used to accepting that a certain amount of it is bollocks (yeah, right, Eve tempted Adam; yeah, right priests have to be men because the Disciples were all men, well, at least once you define the Disciples to exclude Mary Magdalen because she wasn't, you know, a man) and simply adopting the parts they like and ignoring the bollocks.) It seems far more likely to me that lots of people, especially women, simply accepted a mixture of Christianity and their old beliefs, just as many modern, self-professed Christians say that they check their daily horoscope in the newspaper, do yoga, and believe in accept evolution. [Literata makes a good point in comments: "Believe in" is bad framing, as it implies that evolution is a matter of faith.]

Now, thanks to Medusa Coils' monthly round-up, here's a review of Whitmore's book from a real historian, Max Dashu. Dashu takes a chapter-by-chapter approach to Whitmore's book and notes that the footnotes in this book are as important as the text. Dashu's review is well worth reading in its entirety, whether you plan to read Whitmore, or not.

Obligatory statements for those who should know better: Yes, of course, some of the people burned as Witches were not Witches and did not engage in any form of Witchcraft, shamanism, or other Pagan practice. Once membership in a disfavored religion becomes cause for persecution (not to mention property approbation), lots of people get wrongly accused of belonging to that religion. Look at the current attempts to insist that President Obama is a Muslim. Yes, of course, some suggested numbers of those burned at the stake appear now to have been overstated. That doesn't change the fact that thousands of (mostly) women were (and in some parts of the world today, still are) executed as Witches. Yes, of course, some early practitioners of early Wicca made up stories about covens that extended back to mythological times. Yes, of course, modern Paganism has evolved and is in many ways different from the practices, of, say, the ancient Celts or Egyptians or Greeks. You know, so has Christianity evolved. Look at what goes on in modern mega-churches, compare that to the socialist practices of 1st Century Christians gathering in each other's homes, and get back to me about how closely my Dianic magics track those of my many-times-great Swedish grandmothers.

None of those facts mean that modern Witchcraft doesn't have ties to ancient practices, that women who would today be called (and likely self-identify as) Witches weren't burned at the stake, or that Pagans need to consider ourselves a completely modern invention.

Picture found here.

Cold as Ice


It's been brutally cold here in the magic-crammed MidAtlantic.

The beautiful Potomac River is almost entirely iced over and the Canada Geese and mallard ducks are hard-pressed to find even a few spots where they can swim and dive for food. The ground is as hard and cold as iron and I'm completely disabused of the notion that I entertain for many months each year that Mother Gaia loves to make love to the soles of my bare feet, tickling them with soft grass, heating them with hot sand, bathing them in cool rain puddles. No, just now, the ground is lethally cold and feels as if it has never been in love with me. My memories of sitting outside in the middle of a pouring Summer rainshower, refreshed and in love, feel as if I must have imagined them. Will it ever be that warm again?

I step out on the deck in the slant, low, early-morning Winter sunshine, weak as old tea, careful not to slip on the ice as I feed the birds and the squirrels who are so hungry that even their inbred caution can't keep them from crowding around as I spread out peanuts and sunflower seeds.

We huddle, if we can, inside warm homes, moving quickly from home, to car, to friend's home, and back, bundled inside sweaters, scarves, mittens, and hats. I climb into bed at night wearing socks, and shawls, and flannel and snuggle under half-a-dozen blankets, covers, and comforters (what a wonderful word). By 2:30 or 3:00 am, temperatures dip as low inside as they're going to go, and my old cottage creaks, and moans, and whinges like, well, like an old woman, settling into the icy ground.

I spend some time during each day's practice re-charging all the things that I've knitted for family and friends with the energies of warmth and protection. I prepare vegetables and garlic (lots of garlic) for soup and sprinkle immunity, succor, and heat into the broth. I warm some of it in the morning before I leave for work and hand a tupperware container of it over to the homeless Vet who stands each morning, even this 18 degree morning, at the on-ramp to the Roosevelt Bridge. When I say to him, "Can you stay warm today?" he says, "I'm going to try. Thank you." It's not enough, but it is what I can do.

Every conference call of the day begins with people comparing the cold in their part of the world; Europe's gotten hit pretty hard, too; clients in New England show how macha they are by bragging that this is nothing; people in San Diego feel happy in their choice of landbase. We may live in a technological wonderland, but our animal bodies are still almost overwhelmed by this deep Winter and we connect by talking about it.

And, still, Imbolc is coming. Inspiration is coming, that inner fire that results in an outward blossoming. Poetry is coming and the intense heat of a forging fire is coming. The ground will thaw and warm. The strengthening sun will coax tiny green seedlings out of their hard shells. We need to shake off our Winter weariness and wariness and prepare to dance on newly green grass, to look for snowdrops, hellebores, crocus, and daffodils.

What will you strip off first? What part will you first expose to the light? What will you keep covered as long as possible?

To Die a Free Woman


This.

So when Comstock and his fellow inspectors showed up at her cramped residence on West 23rd Street with a warrant for her arrest, Craddock steeled herself anew. "I wish to fight right through to a finish," she wrote her lawyer shortly afterward. "All I ask is that you use me in the most effective way possible." As an unabashed sex reformer and a mystic founder of her own Church of Yoga, Craddock was to Comstock a twice-damned purveyor of obscenity and blasphemy. He wanted to shut down her whole operation—the distribution of her pamphlets, the delivery of her lectures, even her face-to-face counseling sessions. "I am taking my stand on the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," Craddock countered, "guaranteeing me religious freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of the press."

Craddock could do little more than watch as Comstock conducted his raid. Scanning the shelves of her private library, he found sixty-one books and 536 circulars worthy of removal, all of which he could use as evidence against her before once again pulping such filth. A heavy-set man with mutton-chop sideburns and creased blue eyes, Comstock had been at this for a while, having led the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice since its incorporation in 1873. For three decades now he had been frustrating the designs of shady booksellers, sketchy impresarios, dime novelists, condom distributors, abortion providers, birth-control advocates, and taboo-breaking artists. Imbued with a strong sense of Christian discipline from his Connecticut youth, he had further honed his self-control through prayerfully resisting the temptations of army life during the Civil War—the whiskey drinking, coarse language, and tobacco chewing that marked the camaraderie of his fellow soldiers. "Boys got very drunk," Comstock noted of his army mates at one point in his diary. "I did not drink a drop. . . . Touch not. Taste not. Handle not."
"She thought her only option at that point was suicide," Schmidt says. "That that was the only way she was going to die a free woman."

That oddly keeps on being the only choice they leave us.

I'll just add that having my carefully-collected and painstakingly-archived books rifled by a fundie would pretty much do me in, as well.

Picture found here.

Exchanging Seeds



I can almost feel Imbolc stirring itself from deep inside my Mother and beginning to rise through the root-chilling red clay and rock-hard frozen surface of my tiny bit of Earth. I am longing like a thirsty woman for a taste of that icy water of inspiration, for all that I know that Imbolc is often considered a fire festival. Imbolc is a time to honor inspiration and the plain old hard work of forging new tools, as well as a time to commit to a warming that we can, often, only believe, rather than sense. I am willing, even if it makes me a foolish old woman, to commit to the warming. (My broken ankle, which simply FEELS itself more this time of year, and my too-cold-even-in-socks-toes, and my full-of-pain-even-in-gloves-fingertips are all ready to commit, as well.)

I am sifting, and hunting, and dreaming about which poems I will contribute to the Sixth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival. So many poems; so little time.

By Imbolc, I will have made my selections -- limited this year, as I'm really serious about upping my already-quite-healthy level of savings -- from the many issues of garden porn seed catalogues that arrive this time of year, and will start some seedlings -- always one of my favorite acts as a priestess. (My nomination for the best seed catalogue cover in years: this year's Seed Savers cover. Who knew that deep purple, deep red, and bright yellow were so gorgeous together?) Also, can I just say that the picture in this year's catalogue of their seed-drying barn, (go here and click through 24 times) is number two on my list of places in which I'd almost kill to, but likely never will, do ritual? (Number 1 is (after dark on the night of a full Moon, when the park is closed) the old Capitol pillars at the National Arboretum.) I want to dance through that barnfull of heirloom DNA in the worst kind of way; I've been there in my dreams almost every night since I've seen it. Seed Savers, I don't suppose you'd like some Witches to come bless your crops?

A few days after Imbolc, I'm going to an v exciting seed swap. I have woad, and pineapple sage, and sunflower seeds to bring. I'd love to find someone with Pam's Choice foxglove or Hollyhock Nigra to give away. I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at coconut echinacea or Bowles Black viola.

What can you bring to life's seed exchange? What would you like to get?

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.