Thirty Years Of Spiral Dances

Ahhh, Mother. Now, I don't like to think of myself as a weak woman, but the veils, just now, are so, so, so thin, that I feel all raw nerves, all open wounds. My dreams have me ready to tape a sign up on the headboard of my bed: Dear Hecate's Dead Family Members: Give It A Fucking Rest; I'll See You Next Year. Enough is Enough.

I can't watch Starhawk's lovely video w/o breaking into sobs. There were years and years when -- a lonely solitary witch in a conservative, rural community, a solitary who had no real hope of ever meeting another "real" witch -- the simple knowledge that the Goddess was alive and magic was afoot in, at least, San Francisco, seriously helped to keep me going, and, by "going," I mean: continuing to get up out of bed every morning. That's what those of you who dance the Spiral Dance do for the rest of us. Don't ever think that it doesn't matter.

And, reading Starhawk's lovely post about how the crumbling of San Francisco's infrastructure will make it harder for Pagans to continue to grow the Spiral Dance (you saw it, didn't you, Fifth Sacred Thing, you saw it, didn't you?) I can't help but think: this is how it begins. This is how the twilight of an age begins. Devotee of Hecate that I am, I am bound by my blood and my soul to recognize and honor those liminal spaces where we transit from one culture to another. And, wherever we go, there we are. We're here. All our lives we have known that we would walk this way. But, yesterday, we did not know that it would be today. Yet, here it is: Samhein 2009. The year when crumbling infrastructure made it impossible for some to get to the Spiral Dance, while our government had money for war but not to pay craftspeople to fix bridges.

Ritual, as Starhawk says, gives us courage and hope. As we hurtle into the post-industrial era, may it be so for you.