Author Archives: Hecate

Everybody, Take a Chill-Pill


Mercury in Retrograde

BY SHERYL LUNA

The day ended badly with a broken ankle,
a jinxed printer, and a dead car. The dry yellow grass
against the sunset saved me. Roosters

pranced across a lawn of shit, proudly plumed
in black feathers, bobbing before the gray goats.
It was the first day I saw god in the quiet,

and found a mustard seed was very small.
There I had been for years cursing “why?”
and all the gold in the sun fell upon me.

There was a white mare in the midst
of brown smog, majestic in the refinery
clouds. Even the radio wouldn’t work!

My mother limps and her hair falls out.
The faithful drive white Chevy trucks
or yellow Camrys, and I’m here golden

on the smoking shock-less bus.
I lost language in this want, each poem
dust, Spanish fluttered

as music across the desert, even weeds
tumbled unloved. The police sirens seared
the coming night, dogs howled helplessly
sad.

Lo I walk the valley of death, love
lingers in my hard eyes. Mañana never
comes just right. I mend myself in the folds

of paper songs, ring my paper bells
for empty success. Quiero Nada,
if I sing long enough, I’ll grow dreamlike
and find a flock of pigeons, white under
wings lifting awkward bodies like doves
across the silky blue-white sky.

Picture found here.

Dark Moon Commitment


It's the first really raw day of the season, even though we are, still, a few weeks out from the Winter Solstice.

Last night, I tucked G/Son in, and, just as he was falling asleep, he murmured, "Nonna, I hear the wind."

I said, repeating one of my most-used magical incantations, "Yes. It's windy and cold outside. And we're here, inside our snug cottage: safe, and warm, and dry. You're under warm covers and you have on soft pajamas. Safe and warm and dry." I rub his back while I say it, and all that I have goes into hoping that all his winters are thus. [I never claimed high magic; the hedge kind works for me.]

This morning, after I drop G/Son back at his house, I come home and begin to prepare for the Dark Moon. A December Dark Moon: windy, and cold, and raw. The wind is whipping the last several hundred leaves off of the oldest oak. The birds who know me best sit huddled in the now-leafless euonymous shrub by the deck, knowing that I will show up to put out seed. The grey and black squirrels, who are now feeding pregnant bellies, sit on the edge of the cedar fence, waiting for the peanuts that disappear mere minutes after I put them out. My garden is, by now, almost all bones.

And I, bent under how much reading and writing I have to do today for work, take off my coat, put on some ritual items, and begin to prepare a meal for the dark, three-headed Goddess of the Crossroads. And, all of a sudden, I am fully engaged, fully present, fully here, even if what I am here for is "mere" commitment. I take comfort in T. Thorn Coyle's discussion of the fact that:

“Even when you’re just going for maintenance, progress ends up getting made.” I remarked that this seemed true for any practice.

While riding my bike to my next appointment, I pondered this. Why was this true of so many things? Physical health, meditation, writing, dance, job skills…? What was it about maintenance that would end up facilitating growth? My answer was commitment. For all of these, we are making a commitment to ourselves and to our projects. We are stating that something is important enough for effort, and even if we aren’t going full out, we still end up building muscle, so to speak. We end up learning something. We are showing up to ourselves and for ourselves.

. . .

Someone once said, regarding the Pentacle of Autonomy that I write about in Kissing the Limitless, that he wasn’t sure everything began with commitment and then flowed into the rest of the points (honor, truth, strength, and compassion). Didn’t we sometimes start with desire, or something else? Here is one answer: It isn’t that commitment starts every single thing, it is that commitment starts the action of our will. Commitment starts the flow of deepening. It takes what might be a small impulse, or even a daydream, and makes the first step toward channeling this into manifestation. Commitment is the goad to our spirit, and the cheerleader, and the stalwart support. Commitment is the thing that keeps us showing up.


Mighty Mother of All Change! You who stand at the crossroads, You who look in all directions! When I am full of time to come to You and when I am overcome with work, when I am able to spend hours at Your feet and when the world is too much with me, Bright-Coiffed One of Liminal Space, You whom I meet whenever I work for change, Heroic Hecate, all my worship is Yours on this windy, Dark Moon Day.

Picture found here.

My Other Broomstick Is a Hybrid


Last night, looking to delay for a moment the inevitable pre-bedtime bath, G/Son wandered into my ritual room and picked up the fairy door on my altar. "Nonna, why fairies don't like people coming into their houses?"

I replied, "Well, I think they like their privacy; we wouldn't like it if people just wandered into our house right now, would we?"

G/Son said, "No," and picked up my sheathed athame, something that's been fascinating him his last few visits. He said, "Nonna, why at Halloween, you give witches three pieces of candy?" [All the other trick-or-treaters get two.]

I explained, "Well, I'm a Witch, and I really like witches."

G/Son: "Nonna, you're not a real witch." [We've had this talk before. Kids being kids, we'll keep coming back to it until G/Son works it out.]

Nonna: "Yes, I am, but I'm a different kind of Witch from the mean ones in stories. I'm a Witch because I honor the Earth. OK, if we hurry up our bath, we'll have time for some popcorn and one more Scooby Doo."

This morning, as we were driving back to G/Son's house, he noticed the gauge in my car that shows when the electric battery is charging up and when it's assisting the motor. At first, he thought it was the gauge for gasoline and that we were running out. I explained what it was and how the electric battery helped the car to use less gasoline and that this was good because gasoline pollutes, so I try to use as little of it as I can. I told him that my car is called a "hybrid" car.

G/Son: "Why you don't want to pollute?"

Nonna: "Because I am always trying to honor the Earth."

Silence for a bit. [I am certain G/Son is working on my explanation of how some plants are called hybrids and how a car can be a hybrid, too. I am pretty damn proud of what an intellectual influence I am on this kid.]

G/Son: "So you're a Witch because you drive a hybrid."

Nonna: "That's right."

Or, it's the other way around, but that's close enough for now. We'll save the whole "broomstick discussion" for another day.

As we were pulling into his driveway I said, "Your car is a hybrid, too." G/Son said, "No, Nonna. It's a Toyota. Daddy told me." No one in the world can remind me of how very much too seriously I take myself as fast as this golden-haired kid with freckles and Elvish blood.

Picture found here.

What, There Weren’t Any Hungry to Feed or Sick to Cure?


Good grief, Charley Brown.

SOLDOTNA - An Alaska store owner says a wooden cross wrapped to the store sign in Soldotna was an unwelcome act of vandalism that goes against her pagan and spiritual beliefs.
The Peninsula Clarion reported 45-year-old Rondell Gonzalez arrived Thursday at her store, the Pye' Wackets on the Kenai Spur Highway, and found a makeshift cross about 7 feet tall attached to her business sign with plastic food wrap.
Gonzalez says she believes in spiritualism rather than organized religion. She also said her father fought and died in Vietnam for religious and personal freedoms.
Her store specializes in wellness and self-help books, candles, oils and crystals.
Soldotna police say it may be the first vandalism of a religious nature in Soldotna.


So loving and full of light, these xians.

I'll just point out that I can't think of any story in even recent memory involving, for example, pentagrams painted on the outside of a Christian bookstore.

But it's the Christians who are persecuted.

Picture found here.

Marvelous Truth, Confront Us at Every Turn


Matins

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

i

The authentic! Shadows of it
sweep past in dreams, one could say imprecisely,
evoking the almost-silent
ripping apart of giant
sheets of cellophane. No.
It thrusts up close. Exactly in dreams
it has you off-guard, you
recognize it before you have time.
For a second before waking
the alarm bell is a red conical hat, it
takes form.


ii

The authentic! I said
rising from the toilet seat.
The radiator in rhythmic knockings
spoke of the rising steam.
The authentic, I said
breaking the handle of my hairbrush as I
brushed my hair in
rhythmic strokes: That’s it,
that’s joy, it’s always
a recognition, the known
appearing fully itself, and
more itself than one knew.


iii

The new day rises
as heat rises,
knocking in the pipes
with rhythms it seizes for its own
to speak of its invention—
the real, the new-laid
egg whose speckled shell
the poet fondles and must break
if he will be nourished.


iv

A shadow painted where
yes, a shadow must fall.
The cow’s breath
not forgotten in the mist, in the
words. Yes,
verisimilitude draws up
heat in us, zest
to follow through,
follow through,
follow
transformations of day
in its turning, in its becoming.


v

Stir the holy grains, set
the bowls on the table and
call the child to eat.

While we eat we think,
as we think an undercurrent
of dream runs through us
faster than thought
towards recognition.

Call the child to eat,
send him off, his mouth
tasting of toothpaste, to go down
into the ground, into a roaring train
and to school.

His cheeks are pink
his black eyes hold his dreams, he has left
forgetting his glasses.

Follow down the stairs at a clatter
to give them to him and save
his clear sight.

Cold air
comes in at the street door.


vi

The authentic! It rolls
just out of reach, beyond
running feet and
stretching fingers, down
the green slope and into
the black waves of the sea.
Speak to me, little horse, beloved,
tell me
how to follow the iron ball,
how to follow through to the country
beneath the waves
to the place where I must kill you and you step out
of your bones and flystrewn meat
tall, smiling, renewed,
formed in your own likeness.


vii

Marvelous Truth, confront us
at every turn,
in every guise, iron ball,
egg, dark horse, shadow,
cloud
of breath on the air,

dwell
in our crowded hearts
our steaming bathrooms, kitchens full of
things to be done, the
ordinary streets.

Thrust close your smile
that we know you, terrible joy.

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

The War Over Xmas


As I've said before, it's my own humble opinion that the world would go round a good deal faster if we'd all act like adults and acknowledge that, at this time of year, there are BOTH a number of different religious holidays and a secular holiday related to giving gifts, getting together w/ friends and family, making snowmen, exchanging cookies, etc. For historical reasons, there's some overlap, both between the holidays of some of the newer (cough*Christian*cough) religions and some of the older (Pagan) ones. And there's some overlap between the practices of some religious groups and some of the practices of the secular holiday. But most thinking adults can figure those things out and go on about their business.

For an odd group of xian Dominionists, however, no December can be allowed to pass without an attempt to blur the lines and create a sense of persecution among their faithful. The problem is, sadly, not limited to America.
Will you be wearing a crucifix to work this morning? Have you pinned your "Not Ashamed" badge to your lapel to show the world you're proud to be a Christian? Have you noticed the concerted campaign of anti-Christian bias all over the nation? No, I hadn't either – but that may be more evidence of the attack on religion that's secretly under way, like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Or so some leading churchmen would have you believe.

The "Not Ashamed" campaign is the work of Christian Concern, a pressure group whose most vocal spokesman is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey. He has been sketching out an alarming, totalitarian scenario in which Christmas cards are "censored" because some don't feature mangers and oxen, school Nativity plays are "watered down" because they dramatise festive mice and squabbling baubles as well as baby Jesus, and Christmas lights have become rubbishy "winter lights" with no angels anywhere.

"Christmas has become something of which some are ashamed," Carey thunders. "A new climate hostile to our country's tradition and history is developing." Gosh, how nostalgic the ex-Archbish makes me feel. I'm pitched back years to when, as a tiny child, I listened to our local priest, Fr Smith, smiting the pulpit and declaring to his Battersea flock that the "real meaning" of Christmas had been lost in a haze of Morecambe & Wise TV specials and the American way of calling Yuletide "the holidays".

. . .

Not even Lord Carey's own people believe in his awful warnings about anti-Christian discrimination, the censorship, the undermining. The heads of the Christian think-tank Ekklesia say they can find no evidence to back up the "Not Ashamed" campaign, although "we have found consistent evidence, however, of Christians misleading people and exaggerating what is really going on, as well as treating other Christians, those of other faith and those of no faith in discriminatory ways".


John Walsh proposes a possible reason that the xian Dominionists are so worried:
The sad truth, Lord Carey, is that people aren't hostile to religion or passionately devout about it; just increasingly indifferent. They may send religious cards, sing carols, attend Mass, inspect the crib, as they've always done – but more as a style choice than an expression of devotion. They haven't been nobbled by Christianophobes. They just don't feel any atavistic twitch of veneration any more.

When the philosopher AC Grayling was introduced on a recent radio show as "a devout atheist", he corrected his host: "That's like calling me a devout non-stamp collector." What bothers Christian Concern, and the like, is that many people just aren't disposed to collect the stamps any more.


And I can't say that I believe that acting like a petulant child who can't understand the concept of overlapping holidays is one likely to make many people likely to WANT to start collecting your stamps, but, you know, whatever works. Me, I like the quoted bit of Dickens, describing the way I like to think of the secular holiday:
"a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely..."

Picture found here.

In Love with the Land


In Medicine for the Earth, shaman Sandra Ingerman says:
To heal the [E]arth . . . you must connect with the elements, the plants, the animals, and all forces of nature. You must reestablish your connection with the web of life, seeing that you are not separate from the rest of life, and you must see the beauty in all things.

. . .

Intention You must set a strong intention to return to living in accordance with the laws of nature, remembering [that] you are part of the web of life and are ruled by, and a part of, the cycles of nature. You must set an intention to open the lines of communiation with the spirit that lives in all things.

Love As you open to the wisdom of the trees, the plants, the animals, the insects, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the elements, you learn that all life thrives on love, and love is a key to creating harmony.

Harmony If you return harmony to yourself by aligning yourself with the river of life, the river of life will bring harmony back to you and the planet.

Union When you remember your connection to the web of life, and the spirit that lives in all things, you are once again in union with yourself, the rest of life, and the divine.

Focus You must focus on your intention to open the lines of communication with the spirits of nature.

Concentration You must concentrate on intentionally changing your way of life to once again return to harmony with yourself and the natural world.

Imagination You must be able to imagine the spirits and forces of nature that live around you, the forces of nature that live in you, and a world in harmony and balance again. You must be able to use your imagination to see the beauty in all things.


In comments to my post this week on living in relationship with nature, Literata says, inter alia:
I think this concept of relationship with the land is the idea some people are oversimplifying when they talk about grounding with a local tree or observing the seasons.

. . .

I just about jumped up and down when I saw the photo [used to illustrate the post] - I recognize that area, because my personal connection is with Teddy Roosevelt Island. Building my relationship with the land there is based on observing the seasons, but not just as an abstraction: it's about noticing what's going on, what the changes reflect, what the spirit of the place feels like and how that changes. It's a deep kind of knowing, and I think the idea of relationship captures it better than anything else I've seen. Being in love takes effort - but it has the most rewarding results.

I think that Literata is right. Some people imagine that, if they sit next to a tree and ground, they've done it all. Of course, sitting and grounding with a tree is a great way to begin a relationship with that tree. And, if it's all that you ever do, that's still about a thousand times better than not doing it. But it's only a start. Similarly, if you want to get to know someone, meeting them for coffee and a chat can be a great way to start, but it's not the same as having a deep and abiding relationship with them. As Literata notes, being in love takes work. And, as Ingerman says:
You must focus on your intention to open the lines of communication with the spirits of nature. . . . You must concentrate on intentionally changing your way of life to once again return to harmony with yourself and the natural world.


I think that the daily practice of being in relationship with The Land is as important as the daily practice we do when we sit at our altars and meditate, vision, do spiritual practices, make magic. Both are necessary, but alone, it's difficult for me to see how either is sufficient. And I find that, in order to be a Witch, I need to be in relationship with a specific and particular landbase, specific trees and plants, specific running waters, a specific fox, a specific bossy cardinal. Otherwise, it's like someone who "loves humanity," but doesn't really know or care for any specific people. And while it's certainly a good thing to "love humanity," it's difficult for that sort of relationship to translate into the sort of medicine that Ingerman references. And, IMHO, that sort of medicine is partly what Witches are for.

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

Thank You, Miss Parks. I Kiss Your Feet



Wiki says: On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Her action was not the first of its kind. Irene Morgan in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, had won rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Interstate Commerce Commission, respectively, in the area of interstate bus travel. Nine months before Parks refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move from her seat on the same bus system. In New York City, in 1854, Lizzie Jennings engaged in similar activity, leading to the desegregation of the horsecars and horse-drawn omnibuses of that city. But unlike these previous individual actions of civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store.

I massage your seamstress hands with thyme-infused beeswax. I send reiki to the tired muscles of your calves. I ground and send courage to your frightened center. I whisper the thanks of many daughters into your ringing ears. I bring you hot soup (full of astragolus, garlic, mushrooms, and chicken broth), in jail. I bring you clean hair in the court-room, fresh underwear when you face the police, and the warmth of magic when you try to go to sleep, afraid of what they will do to you. I bring you the scent of lavender and rosemary from my garden and the warmth of all the wool that passes through my knitting hands.

I was not born when you refused to give up your seat on the bus. But I will bless you always. Thank you for making my world a bit more just. Thank you for the example that you set. May we, who come behind you, imbibe a bit of your courage.

First 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.

Picture found here (NSfW).

Fox



All of my life, I've loved these animals. There's something both awful and lovely about them. Or lovely about how they inspire awe, or awe-ful about how much I love them, or lovely about how they fill me with awe, or awe-inspiring about how lovely they are or . . . .

Well, foxes and ravens, I guess I'm just and old Wiccan stereotype.

There's a fox who lives on the hill just behind my yard, in an old woody thicket up there. I'm deeply in love and in awe of her. She came out into the yard early this morning, during a short break in our heavy rains, sniffed the space around my altar and my fire pit, turned, looked for the longest time at me standing, coffee mug in hand, on the screen porch, and then decided, I surmise: "Neither food nor foe." I keep thinking about putting out dogfood in the Winter, but I bet a naturalist would tell me it's a bad idea. But, if birdseed is good . . . .

In Relationship


In the world of child development, attachment theory posits that the creation of a deep bond between child and parent is a complex psychological, biological, and spiritual process, and that that without this attachment a child is lost, vulnerable to all manner of later pathologies. I believe that a similar process can bind adults to a place and give them a sense of belonging and meaning. Without a deep attachment to a place, an adult can also feel lost.

. . .

Attachment to Land is not only good for the child, but good for the land as well. As naturalist Robert Finch asserts: "There is a point . . . in our relationship with a place, when, in spite of ourselves, we realize we do not care so much anymore, when we begin to be convinced, against our very wills, that our neighborhood, our town, or the land as a whole is already lost." At this point, he argues, the local landscape is no longer perceived as "a living, breathing, beautiful counterpart to human existence, but something that has suffered irreversible brain death. . . . "[I]t no longer moves, or if it does, it is not with a will of its own."

...

Passion does not arrive on videotape or on a CD; passion is personal. Passion is lifted from the [E]arth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.


~Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods.

I'm in relationship with two running waters. One is Spout Run and one is the Potomac River, into which Spout Run, well, runs. I follow Spout Run on my way to work every morning and join the Potomac just where it does, right near the Three Sisters and a broad, open curve in the river. And then I drive along beside the river until I cross over it, just beside the Teddy Roosevelt Island, where I've seen eagles, ravens, foxes, squirrels. This time of year, the leaves are nearly gone, and both Spout Run and the Potomac are easier to see. This morning, there was a gentle rain falling, making the dead leaves look slippery and the rocks look like they'd been polished all night.

I want G/Son to have this sort of relationship with Land. He's already developed a few favorite places to go hiking, one the things that Son and DiL do to help him grow into living on this Earth. What did your parents do for you? What do you do for the child(ren) in your life? What do you do for yourself?

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.

Still Enough to Get You Burned to Death

And it's still usually women getting burned.
The fear of witchcraft in Ghana has been traced back to the 15th century when the nation was introduced to Christianity. It was through the churches teaching that raised the anxiety of locals about the destructive influences of witches. Women named as witches were accused of drinking human blood and eating the flesh.
.
More here, here, here, and here.

Saturday Poetry Blogging




Day Lilies
by Rosanna Warren

For six days, full-throated, they praised
the light with speckled tongues and blare
of silence by the porch stair:
honor guard with blazons and trumpets raised
still heralding the steps of those
who have not for years walked here
but who once, pausing, chose

this slope for a throng of lilies:
and hacked with mattock, pitching stones
and clods aside to tamp dense
clumps of bog-soil for new roots to seize.
So lilies tongued the brassy air
and cast it back in the sun's
wide hearing. So, the pair

who planted the bulbs stood and heard
that clarion silence. We've heard it,
standing here toward sunset
as those gaping, burnished corollas poured
their flourish. But the petals have
shrivelled, from each crumpled knot
droops a tangle of rough

notes shrunk to a caul of music.
Extend your palms: you could as well
cup sunbeams as pour brim-full
again those absent flowers, or touch the quick
arms of those who bent here, trowel in
hand, and scraped and sifted soil
held in a bed of stone.

Photos by the blogger; if you copy, please link back.

Black Friday


One of the surest ways for me to upset folks is to blog about personal finance.

That's not surprising; the entire issue of personal finance/prosperity/money is pretty fraught within the overall Pagan community. There are likely a number of reasons for the "issues around this issue," including the squick of New Age Prosperity gurus, a still-lingering notion from the late 60s/early 70s that it's "wrong" for tarot readers, reiki workers, Pagan clergy, etc. to charge for their work (although that's become less of an issue lately and was always kind-of tempered with a grudging, "well, at least bartering would be ok"), and a general preference for a more egalitarian, less hierarchical community (and little separates and creates hierarchy within the overall culture than disparate economic circumstances). Lots of Pagans simply have priorities other than "material success" and many of us have very grave concerns about the planetary impact of overconsumption of Earth's resources. You can probably think of other reasons. And, Goddess knows, the current completely dysfunctional economy has vastly exacerbated all of these issues; it's pretty difficult to read advice about personal finances when your job's been send offshore, you've lost your home due to mortgage fraud, or a health problem bankrupts you after years of work, thrift, and prudence.

All of which often leads, in my humble experience, to people reacting to what they hear in their head rather than to what's actually being said.

Which is, as seems lately to be too regular a practice with me, a long wind-up for saying: For the love of the Goddess, do NOT put yourself into debt this holiday season. Debt, like fear, is the mind-killer. Debt can poison your life, threaten your home, ruin your chance for a comfortable old age. Kate Moss, the anorexic model who has done as much as any single human to poison the body image of millions of women, is infamously supposed to have remarked that "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." (Ms. Moss has, obviously, never had good caviar, the soup at Bayona, my friend E's apple pie, Son's bar-b-que, DiL's clam chowder, my friend B's chopped liver, or a well-buttered lobster roll on a hot day at the National Cathedral's annual flower sale. And she is poorer for the lack.) I've looked at debt from both sides now, and I will say that almost nothing that you buy on credit is as good as debt-free feels.

My "almost nothing" qualifier consists of this: (1) I think that education is priceless and that, since, sadly the United States doesn't support quality life-time education, it can make sense, over a lifetime, to borrow money for an education. Often, though not always, the investment is financially sensible, as a good education can result in earnings high enough to justify taking out the loan. I can also think of situations in which the way that education enhances everyday life can make it worthwhile to incur an educational debt even when it won't be financially rewarding and will require lifetime sacrifices in other areas. (Yesterday, I mentioned to family that G/Son is getting quite good at arithmetic and can count to 100. G/Son disappeared, and I thought at first that I'd embarrassed him by making him the center of attention. But in a moment he re-appeared from the table where he keeps his recent papers from Montessori school and said to his other grandparents, "I can count to 100 and this will help me." Then, he used the number chart that he'd handmade at school to count off the numbers from 1 to 100, including the teens which, for some odd reason, still give him a bit of trouble. Later in the evening, he brought me a map of the world that he'd colored in and showed me the names of the continents. I can't put a price on that.) (2) I think that, in some circumstances, borrowing money for a mortgage can make sense. Certainly, in the midst of today's mortgage fraud crisis (and it may take a number of years to work this out), and joblessness epidemic, I'd be very hesitant. You can always rent for one more year and put the difference in the bank. But buying a small home that you can pay off in 10 or 15 years can be a good investment because, even if the Catfood Commission reduces us to penury in our old age, one can at least be generally certain of a roof over one's head. (3) I think that, for people first starting out, and especially now while interest rates are quite low, if you live in an area where a car is necessary (and, ask, first: is it really necessary, right now?), it might make sense to borrow a small amount of money to buy your first car, especially if this will allow you to get to a job, get out of your house with your small child, get to college, etc. Eventually, your goal should be to be able to pay cash out of savings for a new car. (4) In some rare circumstances, when you are just starting out in life, it can make sense to use a credit card in emergencies. Here's the kind of emergency I mean: You're out of college, in your first home, with an infant. The used car that you bought a year ago, that you use to drop your child at day care and get to your job, needs a new radiator. Your trusted mechanic says that a new radiator will get you at least another 18 months out of this car. Your savings won't cover the repair. W/o the car, you'd have to take 3 busses to get your child to day care and yourself to work and then 3 busses the other way at the end of the day. Put the repair on your credit card and then cut expenses to the bone to pay it off as fast as humanly possible. Once it's paid off, start putting the amount of your monthly payment into the bank for at least a few months. Next time, you won't have to borrow to cover the repair. (5) You're in the middle of Full Catastrophe. You've lost your job, you've got huge medical bills, and you need to rent a U-Haul to move out of your house and in with a relative. You need another chemo treatment to stay alive. You need to buy a plane ticket home to see your dying mother.

Beyond those sorts of instances, my advice (and, feel free to ignore it or dispute it) is to not borrow money, esp. via credit cards. Whatever you think you need, you really don't. If you buy things with a credit card that you cannot pay off at the end of the month (ie, you're using the credit card for convenience or to earn airline miles) then you are, simply, living beyond your means. And you cannot live beyond your means for any length of time.

This time of year is especially difficult. No matter which, if any, holiday(s) we celebrate about now, there's a pressure to spend money whether we have it, or not. What kind of creepy parent wouldn't get their child everything they want for xmas? What kind of jerk can't donate to the office fund for the xmas party? What kind of friend are you if you don't buy cards to send to everyone you know? What sort of person doesn't get a gift for the doorman, the mailman, your secretary, the guy who does your hair? What kind of niece doesn't go buy her aunt another unwanted bottle of eau de toilette? Do you want to be the only one on your block without flashing lights that up your electric bill and pollute the planet? Everyone else you know can afford to go camping on the Winter Solstice. What kind of money-grubbing jerk won't contribute to the gift fund for the Circle? Are you really going to wear those thread-worn robes to the Solstice celebration?

Come on. Stop. We're Witches. We deliberately live outside the village, at the edge of the woods where things are wild. And one of the first elements of effective magic is the ability to perceive reality. Send an email: Dear Friends and Family, This year, with Bob out of work and my medical bills, we can't afford to send gifts. Please feel free to reciprocate by not sending gifts to us. We hope that you have a wonderful holiday and that you don't spend even one minute standing in line to buy "stuff" for us.

You'll feel better as soon as you hit "Send."

Here are some additional very worthwhile thoughts about spending money just now:
Every dollar we put into the strange river which is the economy is a vote for the kind of world we want to live in. Do you want a world of blood and exploitation (which is the one we live in now), or a world of art and effort and justice? The choice, as ever, is yours.


Picture found here.

People Keep Doing It; I’m Going to Keep Complaining About It


Here's an interesting article about a Pagan who claims that he was denied a permit to work as a limo driver because of his religion and his sexual preference for BDSM. The Pagan, Peter Hayes, makes some claims about his interview that, if true, would be pretty disturbing:
He applied for a chauffeur's permit with the Vancouver Police Department's taxi unit in May 2005, and was interviewed by Barker, who was tasked with vetting his application.

Hayes arrived at the interview dressed all in black: black trench coat, black shirt, black dress pants, black tie and shiny black military boots.

When Barker asked what the occasion was for all the black, Hayes testified that he said he always wore black, like many Pagans. [I'll admit that I know lots of non-Pagans who wear a lot of black and that I know many Pagans who dress in all the colors of the rainbow. The limos and town cars I've been in have all been driven by drivers wearing black suits and a white shirt. I'm unaware of any branch of Paganism that requires its members to wear all black, and one can question the intelligence both of dressing that way for such an interview and of immediately referring to one's religion, rather than just saying, "Oh, it's just how I usually dress," or something. However, neither the fact that Mr. Hayes wears black nor the fact that he's a Pagan appear to be legitimate reasons for denying him a permit to drive a limo.]

During the interview, Barker told Hayes that he would not be granted a permit.

Hayes testified before the tribunal that the officer called him a "sex cult leader" during the interview, and was refusing the permit because of that. [It's unclear how Mr. Hayes' sexual preferences came up during the interview.]

He also said that Barker was "completely unprofessional, snarky and demeaning," "intentionally aggressive" and "rude and insulting."

In a letter to the VPD, Hayes wrote that Barker told him he posed "an extreme risk of recruiting passengers/customers into my cult during work hours."

The authorities, obviously, tell a different story:
But Barker told the tribunal that he denied the permit after a background check revealed a series of troubling allegations against Hayes spanning 10 years.

In the mid-1990s, Hayes was charged with the sexual assault of a child, although he was eventually acquitted. A decade later, in 2003, neighbours called the police to say that Hayes had danced naked in his bedroom in view of small children, but no charges were laid.

That same year, Hayes's live-in girlfriend reported to police that he had pushed and scratched her, but she did not want to pursue charges.

Barker testified that even though Hayes had not been convicted of a crime, he was worried that he could "be alone in the limo with the doors locked, gosh knows where, with kids or a female relying on him to get her home."

The tribunal ruled that Barker's testimony was credible, and that he was unaware of Hayes's religion or BDSM practices before the interview. [The fact that he was unaware of Mr. Hayes' religion and sexual proclivities before the interview seems irrelevant. If he became aware of them during the interview and used them as the basis for denying a permit, that would seem to be inappropriate.]
This decision also appears to eliminate the opportunity for the relevant board to consider whether BDSM is a protected sexual orientation.

So, was this a case of discrimination? Reasonable caution? What's your take?

The article includes the all-too-frequent confusion as to whether or not to capitalize the word "Pagan." First, we get:
A Vancouver man's enthusiasm for bondage and his pagan beliefs were not the reason he was denied a permit to drive a limousine

but later in the article, we get:
According to tribunal documents, Hayes says that he is a practicing Pagan
.

This isn't complicated, people. "Pagan," as used here, is an umbrella term that describes a category of religions that include Wicca, Druidism, Asatru, etc., just as the term "Christian" describes a category of religions that includes Catholicism, Baptists, Methodists, etc. If you would capitalize "Christian," (an you know that you would) then you should capitalize "Pagan."

I guess that we should be grateful that the anonymous, meant-to-titillate photo chosen to illustrate the story focuses upon Mr. Hayes' sexual practices rather than upon his religion.

Picture found here.

Thank You


Sun in Pisces and Gemini Ascendent, I have all of the signs in the Zodiac that look in two directions. As a result, I can often see both sides of any argument. It makes me a good lawyer, but, on occasion, an annoying friend and, to tell the truth, at times I can even frustrate myself: "Yes!" cannot be the answer to EVERY either/or question. Which is a long (two-sided) wind-up for saying that I can see both sides of the whole "gratitude" thing.

On the one hand (we Pisces haven't hands, but we Geminis have four!), I can agree with Barbara Ehrenreich that this whole "Bright Siding Thing" has gone way too far. Too many of us get talked into doing crazy shit in the name of being "positive," and the whole "be grateful" thing can cover an awful lot of privilege when it's directed at victims of abuse, people whose jobs got shipped off to someplace where there's available slave labor, or women with cancers growing in their breasts because it is profitable for multi-national companies to pollute our air, water, and food chain (Carolyn Myss has a standing invitation to bite me). My Ascendant Gemini comes with a rather well-developed capacity for cynicism and snark and there's a reason that my first poetry love was (and is) Dorothy Parker. As Derrick Jensen has said, there's actually something quite liberating about realizing that we're completely screwed; I've drawn energy from that wave for almost my life's entire dance. (Parker: "Drink and dance and laugh and lie. Love the reeling midnight through. For tomorrow we shall die. But, alas, we never do.")

On the other hand, I've found the spiritual practice of intelligent gratitude to be very rewarding. I work pretty hard at never having a drink of water and never eating a bite of food for which I don't stop and thank Earth, the people who worked to bring those gifts to me, and myself for the work I've done to ensure that I have what I need. I sit zazen almost every single day in my garden or my ritual room and send gratitude out to the Universe for my healthy, happy family, for a job that I love, for my circle of women, for the roof over my head, and for the absolute lagniappe (years after the breast cancer and the broken ankle that, even mere decades ago, would have killed me) of the moment when G/Son points to my computer and says, "Nonna, that word is 'fox,'" or says, "Nonna, I think your cold is better; I don't hear you coughing as much." When I was in my 20s and going through a very rough patch (personally, professionally, physically, and spiritually), I somehow, long before I'd read anything about practicing gratitude, began the practice of forcing myself to write down three good things that had happened every day. When I go back now and read that datebook, some of the things I had to count to get to three seem pretty strained (it was a tough time), but the practice was transformational for me. It forced me to focus on what I wanted more of and to stop only thinking about the things (almost everything, at that point) in my life that hurt. Whenever Son, growing up a Scorpio through and through, was mad at the world, I would say to him, "OK, that's all true. But tell me three good things that happened today." (Sometimes, I think he thought the best thing that could possibly happen in the whole world would be to have a mom who didn't ask idiotic questions. But he never got to be grateful for that.)

And, so. We have a secular holiday devoted to being grateful. We Americans should be not only grateful but also ashamed and afraid for the fact that we consume far more of the planet's resources than we ought. And we owe a debt of gratitude to so many.
Plants and Animals in the Garden,
We welcome you -- we invite you in -- we ask your forgiveness and
your understanding. Listen as we invokve your names, as we
also listen for you.
Little sparrows, quail, robins, and house finches who have died in our strawberry nets;
Young Cooper's Hawk who flew into our sweet pea trellis and broke your neck;
Numerous orange-bellied newts who died by our shears, in our irrigation pipes, by our cars, by our feet,
Slugs and snails whom we have pursued for years, feeding you to the ducks, crushing you, trapping you, picking you off and tossing you over our fences;
Gophers and moles, trapped and scorned by us, and also watched with love, admirations, and awe for your one-mindedness;
Sowbugs, spitbugs, earwigs, flea beetles, wooly aphids, rose-suckers, cutworms, millipedes and other insects whom we have lured and stopped;
Snakes and moths who have been caught in our water system and killed by our mowers;
Families of mice who have died in irrigation pipes, by electricity in our pump box, and by predators while nesting in our greenhouses;
Manure worms and earthworms, severed by spades, and numerous microscopic lifeforms in our compost system who have been burned by sunlight;
Feral cats and raccoons whom we've steadily chased from the garden;
Rats whom we've poisoned and trapped and drowned.
Deer chased at dawn and at midnight, routed by dogs, by farmers, by fences and numerous barriers;
Plants: colored lettuces, young broccoli, ripe strawberry and sweet apples, all of you who have lured the animals to your sides, and all plants we have shunned: poison hemlock, pigweed, bindweed, stinging nettle, bull thistle;
We call all plants we have removed by dividing you
and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here;
We invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We will continue to practice with you and for you.

~by Wendy Johnson, Green Gulch Farm, in Earth Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations for Honoring the Earth, ed. by Eliz. Robers & Elias Amidon.

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

For Fun



It is, after all, the secular season for gratitude.

hat tip: Margaret Roach at A Way to Garden.

Margaret's video about "Gardening How-To & Woo Woo" is also worth a watch. Love her discussion of how the garden and the gardener are one. And, of course, it reminds me of Yeats:
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

How can we know the gardener from the garden? I'd hope that, someday, in my case, you couldn't.