Author Archives: Hecate

Cathedral


Let the trees be consulted before you take any action
every time you breathe in thank a tree
let tree roots crack parking lots at the world bank headquarters
let loggers be druids specially trained and rewarded
to sacrifice trees at auspicious times
let carpenters be master artisans
let lumber be treasured like gold
let chainsaws be played like saxophones
let soldiers on maneuvers plant trees give police and criminals a shovel
and a thousand seedlings
let businessmen carry pocketfuls of acorns
let newlyweds honeymoon in the woods
walk don't drive
stop reading newspapers
stop writing poetry
squat under a tree and tell stories.


- John Wright.

Yesterday, I had an amazing experience; I was privileged to visit Muir Woods, just outside of San Francisco. What I imagine a devout Muslim experiences when visiting Mecca, or a Christian feels standing at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem must be somewhat similar to what I felt the moment that I began to come into contact with these ancient trees, many between 500 and 800 years old. Maybe I would feel the same feeling at Stonehenge or Crete or the Caves at Lascaux, but I don't think so because, although I am the Witch of a tiny place all the way across the continent, a place with a different watershed and soil and trees, this forest is much more my native place than anywhere in Europe and, for me, as a Witch, communication with "place" is a very important component of my spiritual practice. This place felt to me like one of the strongest living expressions of the meaning of North America.

I've found that there are certain places with deep and old magic that simply will not photograph or video well and Muir Woods, from the pictures that I've seen and from the video and pictures that I took, is one of those. (Have you ever had this experience? I find that it's also true of my beloved Potomac River.) You really can't communicate the scale and presence of, not just the trees, but of the overall entity that is "The Forest" with cameras.

I've been in larger forests before, but never one that began communicating via scent quite some time before you even arrive at the edge of the forest. The scent of the redwoods, which drifted up the valley and onto the sun-warmed air of Mount Tamalpais was like nothing else that I've ever experienced and, oddly, the entire time that I was there, I was aware of it, even though olfactory fatigue often leaves me unable to detect scents after only a few seconds. If sanctity and the holiness of Earth have a scent, this was it, although my strong feeling was that it is also a form of communication and a deep act of daily blessing.

While I was sitting on a bench, sobbing and in love, the branch of a redwood waved back and forth against my neck, almost as if the Tree and breeze wanted to say, "Oh, lighten up, Little Sister. You're here for such a short, short time; you should laugh more, like the ephemeral thing that we know you to be." I twisted and reached out my hand to a few inches away from the branch and began to do reiki. The forest smiled and took it in, and then I became aware that some one(s) have been coming to the forest regularly to do reiki. And I had to wonder how there are not several temples full of priestesses and priests devoted just to this practice, and to hope that, some day, there will be. What a deep and sacred calling. What a holy and magical life that would be.

Later in the day, I noted to my delight that Sia's back and blogging, and she reminded me, in that new magic that seems to have been waiting since the world's beginning for the internet to come along, of one of her earlier posts in which she explained that:

The central question in my tradition is this: "What are Witches for?


And, you know, on this day that is all about balance, that seems to me to be an excellent question to ponder and upon which to meditate, especially as we head towards Samhein when, for many of us, it is traditional to set new goals. It's a good question for circles and covens and it's a good question for individuals. What are Witches for? What are we Witches, in particular, in this circle or coven or group, for? What am I, as a Witch, for?

I'm going to be doing a lot of work with these questions over the coming weeks, myself. I'd love to hear your answers to them, as well!

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

Blessed Mabon


Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, willful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world wielding shoulder
Majestic as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet

~Gerard Manley Hopkins

Picture found here.

How It’s Done



Here's a good article about an interview with Washington, D.C. witch, Katrina Messenger, concerning Christine O'Donnell's claim that she "dabbled into witchcraft" during a picnic on a bloody, Satanic altar. This is one of the few times that my "don't think of an elephant" rule, about not launching into a discussion of what Witches "don't" do, deserves to be ignored. Here, there's a well-publicized charge that conflates Witchcraft and Satanism, along with some real misrepresentations about the nature of our religion.

Katrina's kinder than I am; I believe the young woman was lying. There's a common xian trope that involves having gotten mixed up in Satanism and then being saved by faith in Jesus. It's apparently OK for xians to lie when it suits their purposes. Whichever, Katrina does a good job of quickly turning the interview to what Witches actually do and who we really are.

It's sad that O'Donnell's nonsense eclipsed what was, by all accounts, a quite successful DC Pagan Pride event, but it's a good thing that some members of the media are seeking out credible Pagan sources to counter O'Donnell's slanders.

/hat tip to Capital Witch for the video and to Katrina for the email notification about the interview.

Now, More Than Ever, This Is True


On every full moon, rituals ... take place on hilltops, beaches, in open fields and in ordinary houses. Writers, teachers, nurses, computer programmers, artists, lawyers, poets, plumbers, and auto mechanics -- women and men from many backgrounds come together to celebrate the mysteries of the Triple Goddess of the Dance of Life. The religion they practise is called Witchcraft.


STARHAWK, Spiral Dance

Update: And those people deserve more than to be the campaign prop of some Teabagging opportunist. Those people don't believe in Satan. Those people don't have picnics on bloody altars. Christine O'Donnell is a liar.

Picture found here.

May Your Hand Hold the Scythe With Strength


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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture found here.

This and That



Good on the Daytona Beach News Journal for an informative, correctly-capitalized article about Pagan Pride Day in New Smyrna Beach. None of the "they don't worship Satan" nonsense and a decent description of what "Pagan" means. More like this.


I've never seen conservatives as willing to accept witchcraft as some of Christine O'Donnell's fans are turning out to be.

It's been out for a bit and I'm still waiting to find it. Terry Pratchett's new and brilliantly-titled book, I Shall Wear Midnight, sounds great. I can't wait to get ahold of it.

I Shall Wear Midnight picks up Tiffany's story as she settles - or not - into life as "town witch" on The Chalk, taking care of the things people generally don't like to think about.

There, with the assistance of the spectacularly argumentative, kilt-wearing, wee but hardy Nac Mac Feegle, she tends to the needs of her village, always riding a knife-edge between being useful and being an object of suspicion who meddles in unmentionables.

But Tiffany's skills as a witch have caught the attention of the Cunning Man (surely one of Pratchett's spookiest villains), a no-eyed spectre who menaces our heroine as she goes about the business of seeing her village through a change in baron.


Archeologists have found a wall painting of Tyche, the Greek Goddess of fortune, during excavations on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee. The picture appears to date from the 3rd to 4th Centuries, C.E.

Her head is crowned, her youthful gaze is focused, and she has abundant brown hair beneath her crown.
. . .

Apart from goddess Tyche, researchers also found a wonderfully etched relief of a maenad, one of a group of female followers of Dionysus, the god of wine on a bone plate.


(I believe the author meant to say that researchers also found a wonderfully etched relief, on a bone plate, of a maenad, not that Dionysus was the God of wine on a bone plate. )

And, in Egypt, a recently re-discovered tomb includes paintings of astrological scenes and the Goddess Nut.

The room is in very good condition and contains beautiful painted scenes in vivid colors. Blue and yellow dominate the ceiling, as the goddess Nut welcomes with raised arms the body of the deceased.


(Not clear if the author meant "astrological" or "astronomical," at least from the article. )

So, Apparently, I Don’t Get Invited to the Really Cool Parties


watertiger has the goods.

Batshit insane Teabagger candidate for Senate Christine O'Donnell (best known for being violently anti-mastrubation) claims to have "dabbled into witchcraft."

O’DONNELL: I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. … I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. [...]

One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic alter, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic alter.
.

I wish she'd leave us out of her insane clown posse of things that go bump in the night. Don't even get me started on "alter" vs. "altar." I agree w/ watertiger: O'Donnell's lying, something that her religion pretends to consider evil.

(I know Andrew Sullivan reported the other day that O'Donnell's sister claims to have checked out Wicca along w/ every other religion in the universe. I'm not giving Sullivan a link. But it's an interesting family, apparently.)

Picture (of another wingnut) found here.

Liberation


Liberation tried to commit suicide when he was seventeen. Things got even worse before they got better. He was married to Terror for nearly ten years. One day, when he was wandering famished and half-crazy in the mountains, he bumped into Ecstasy. Ecstasy wept to be reunited with his old friend and taught Liberation a simple prayer. After that Liberation was free to leave Terror.


~from The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler

Is it terror that stands between us and our liberation, or is it boredom? Are they two sides of the same mask?

Picture found here

How It’s Done


Here's a wonderful article on an upcoming Pagan Pride event.

Both the author of the article and the spokesperson for the event get a lot right. Note the use of capital letters for the words "Pagan" as well as for specific Pagan religions. Also note how the spokesperson conveys that Paganism is a minority religion w/o sounding at all defensive or perpetuating ugly stereotypes.

Kudos to both.


Other Pagan Pride organizers would do well to print this out and do likewise.

Picture found here.

Put Down that Computer, Young Lady, and Go Outside


In the end, you are either connected to your landbase or you are not. You either have a personal relationship with your watershed or you do not. Those things take time.

You can buy all the books and athames and tarot decks and Celtic-knot gimgraws and plasticene statues of Goddesses in the world. You can go to festivals, you can take on-line courses, you can wear t-shirts with air-brushed pictures of wolves under a full Moon, and you can dress like a RenFaire refugee 24/7. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) But those things won't make you a practicing member of a nature religion.

Just saying.

What did you do to "practice" your religion today?

Picture found here.

So I Guess the Real Point Was to Get to Say: "Kenyan!"


Other anti-colonialists:

George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
John Adams
Everyone who signed underneath the words: Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor
Ghandi
J. Ann Tickner
Cynthia Enloe
bell hooks
The People of Cyprus
The People of Greece
The Poles
The Russians who resisted Hitler
The People of Algeria
Albert Raymond Forbes Webber
Geronimo
Tecumseh


You get the idea.

Picture found here.

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


Count the mistakes, girls and boys. Extra points if you list them in comments.

Whooo, baby. This is like a compendium of how not to do it.

And, by the way, there are many religions that are not xian that also are not Pagan. I'm thinking Judaism, Islam, Latter Day Saints, Eckanar, etc., etc., etc. Spouting misinformation is no way to "clear up the misconceptions about [P]aganism."

Picture found here.

Update, kudos to Greta Cuyler: 610-371-5042 or gcuyler@readingeagle.com. for understanding the rules of capitalization. It's not her fault that people who should know better go around announcing, "We're not Satanists," thereby causing everyone in the room to think of an elephant.

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


Count the mistakes, girls and boys. Extra points if you list them in comments.

Whooo, baby. This is like a compendium of how not to do it.

And, by the way, there are many religions that are not xian that also are not Pagan. I'm thinking Judaism, Islam, Latter Day Saints, Eckanar, etc., etc., etc. Spouting misinformation is no way to "clear up the misconceptions about [P]aganism."

Picture found here.

Update, kudos to Greta Cuyler: 610-371-5042 or gcuyler@readingeagle.com. for understanding the rules of capitalization. It's not her fault that people who should know better go around announcing, "We're not Satanists," thereby causing everyone in the room to think of an elephant.

All Acts of Love and Pleasure Are Rituals of the Goddess


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

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

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

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

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

May it be so for you.

Picture found here

Sunday Dance Blogging



Beatrix Potter had a relationship with nature (based largely on prolonged observation) that many modern Pagans could envy.

Beatrix Potter’s artistic pursuits began in her youth. She was a keen witness of the world around her. As an artist, she was largely self-taught, relying on her powers of observation and honed by the dedicated copying of works. She sketched landscapes, flowers, fossils, as well as animals and other subjects from the natural world. Potter worked in a broad spectrum of media including watercolor, pen and ink, and pencil, and experimented in oils and with print-making. Like her father, she was an early practitioner of the art of photography. Beatrix Potter’s work is characterized by delicacy and great attention to detail.

At the age of 21 Potter began a scientific study of fungus. Charles McIntosh, the ‘Perthshire Naturalist,’ guided her in her work. After more than 13 years, she developed a theory on the germination of spores which, though rejected by the scientific establishment of the day, is today recognized as being ahead of its time.

In 1902, at the age of 36, Beatrix Potter published her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She produced 28 books in her lifetime, including the 23 little Tales, which are all still in print today. These books have sold 150 million copies and have been translated into more than 35 languages.

By the time she had reached her 40th birthday, Beatrix Potter had acquired Hill Top, her first farm in England’s Lake District. This became a quiet refuge for her work. Over the remaining years of her life she became a respected local farmer, landowner, and sheep breeder. She keenly promoted the traditional farming methods and ways of life, which she knew to be essential to the preservation of the beautiful, wild environment of the Lakes.


More here.

Her works for children go in and out of fashion, sometimes considered too quaint, twee, anthropomorphic. But she does a good job of introducing children to the idea of a natural world beyond their windows and to the concept that animals, too, have wants, desires, motivations.

Did you read her? As a child? As a grown-up to your own children?

Days Before Mabon, Waxing Moon


No doubt about it today; Summer's coming to a graceful end and Autumn is peaking through the veils, ready to usher in glorious death.

What do we know?

I wonder. To wonder takes time. I walk in the hills behind our home. The leaves have fallen, leaf litter, perfect for the shuffling of towhees. The supple grasses of summer have become knee-high rattles. Ridge winds shake the tiny seedheads like gourds. I hear my grandfather's voice.

All sound requires patience; not just the ability to hear, but the capacity to listen, the awareness of mind to discern a story. A magpie flies toward me and disappears in the oak thicket. He is relentless in his cries. What does he know that I do not? What story is he telling? I love these birds, their long iridescent tail feathers, their undulations in flight. Two more magpies join him. I sit on a flat boulder to rest, pick up two stones and begin striking edges.

What I know in my bones is that I forget to take time to remember what I know. The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves. We are animals, living, breathing organisms engaged not only in our own evolution but the evolution of a species that has been gifted with nascence. Nascence--to come into existence; to be born; to bring forth; the process of emerging.

Even in death we are being born. And it takes time.

I think about my grandfather, his desire for voices, to be held as he dies in the comfort of conversation. Even if he rarely contributes to what is being said, his mind finds its own calm. To him this is a form of music that allows him to remember he is not alone in the world. Our evolution is the story of listening.

In the evening by firelight in their caves and rock shelters, the Neanderthals sometimes relaxed to the sound of music after a hard day at the hunt. They took material at hand, a cave bear's thigh bone, and created a flute. With such a simple instrument, these stocky, heavy browed Neanderthals, extinct close relatives of humans, may have given expression to the fears, longings, and joys of their prehistoric lives. (John Noble Wilford, "Playing of Flute May Have Graced Neanderthal Fire," The New York Times)

A bone flutelike object was found at Divje Babe in northwestern Slovenia recently, dated somewhere between forty-three thousand to eighty-two thousand years old. Dr. Ivan Turk, a paleontologist at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences in Ljubjana, believes this is the first musical instrument ever to be associated with Neanderthals. It is a piece of bear femur with four holes in a straight alignment. Researchers say the bone flute may be the oldest known musical instrument.

I wonder about that cave, the fire that flickered and faded on damp walls as someone in the clan played a flute. Were they a family? Neighbors? What were their dreams and inventions? Did they know the long line of human beings that would follow their impulses to survive, even flourish in moments of reverie?

Returning to my grandparents' home, I notice the fifty-foot antenna that rises over the roof. I recall Jack telling us as children how important it was for the antenna to be grounded in the earth, that as long as it was securely placed it could radiate signals into the air all over the world. Transmit and receive. I walk into his dim room and place my hand on my grandfather's leg. Bone. Nothing lost. Overcome by something else. Ways of knowing. My fingers wrap around bone and I feel his life blowing through him.

John H. Tempest, Jr., passed away on December 15, 1996, peacefully at home in the company of family.


~from Listening Days by Terry Tempest Williams

What music is Autumn going to play upon your bones? Are you grounded enough for signals to radiate all over the world?

Picture found here.