Happy B/day, Margot!

It is the nastiest, coldest, least-welcoming Spring that I can remember.

The April Dark Moon is rain-dotted, cloud-skudded, colder than April is wont to be. Seeds aren't sprouting, the wind has been a merciless Ban-Shea, trying desperately to tell us -- Something. It is cold, and dark, and nasty and the wind-chime that my madly creative friend K gave to me is singing, singing, singing, saying -- Something. I want to be in bed, sleeping, preparing for tomorrow's work of meeting, conference call, writing, writing, writing. But, the moon is dark.

So I am, instead, outside, on the deck, surrounded by the roses and gardenias that I have planted in between snowstorms, guarded by the oak trees, the old, old oak trees, naked, whirling, whirling, whirling, dancing, whipping my rain-misted hair back and forth and up and down and all around me as I -- well, as I do a dance to the dark moon. And to the Goddess of the very dark moon. As I lift my goblet to Her, as I cry wild poetry to her, as I, well, as I shiver and cry to her.

My Lewellyn calendar tells me that today is the birthday of that deliberate and scholarly Aries Margot Adler. When Charlene Spretnak first informed me that there was a name -- witch -- for what I was, Margot Adler told me that I wasn't the only one. Her magical book, Drawing Down the Moon, taught me, well, taught me to dance naked outside in the nasty weather, taught me to hang on for almost ten years, taught me to believe that I'd find others of my kind.

The prayer that I recite every morning -- "I am a manifestation of the Goddess. Mother, help me to grow into my better self. It's all real, it's all metaphor. There's always more" -- comes, in large part, from Adler.

Adler wrote about people who believed that Wicca was a religion of ecstacy. She wrote about Wicca as a sensual gathering of women with different needs and different goals, but similar skill sets. She wrote about Discordians and Asatru and Dianics. She wrote poety that still chills me and she wrote about some stuff that was embarassingly silly. What she did was to write about the reality of Wicca.

I am more grateful to Margot Adler than I can say. Hail, Dama! Many blessings on your natal day. May the Goddess bring you many happy returns of the day. Ivo! Evohe!