Let's Make Sure that Grandkids Can Visit

So, lawyerly disqualifiers first, I don't know Liona Rowan, but this survey was passed to me by a local Wiccan I know well. Rowan is conducting a survey concerning the need for a low-cost retirement community for people s/he calls "Pagan Elders." It's my impression from reading the survey that, by "Pagan Elders," Rowan means "old Pagans," rather than "old Pagans who have, for example, published books or made a big mark," but I may be wrong. And I could wish that the grammar were, well, better.

However, many Christian and Jewish groups provide nursing homes and retirement communities, either for their members or for older people of any religion who need care. So the concept of Pagan elder care is not surprising, especially as we move into an era where many of the people who came to Paganism in the decades between the 1960s and today are getting older and in need of care.

I can't help but imagine life in a Pagan nursing home. Tarot readings at lunch. Vegan meals. Of course, the Beltane circles might have to conclude before 4:30, when we old folks begin to flag. Endless discussions about whether it's appropriate to call only Goddesses at the Full Moon. Skyclad rituals with walkers. Meds dispensed along with Reiki. Weekly smudging with sage in the dining hall and crafts center. (OK, that was totally not PC and completely inappropriate, not to mention ageist, and I'm sorry. Still giggling, but sorry.)

I will say that I can see the benefits of a Pagan retirement community. And we now have our own burial grounds, so why not a place to retire? One question that's missing is whether or not Pagans need to bring pets with them. I imagine that many would want to.

Here's Rowan's survey, in case you are interested in taking it. Responses should be emailed to : 10ksanctuary@gmail.com.

******

Dear Pagan, Goddess spirituality and Polytheist Community,

My name is Liona Rowan. I am a Witch and priestess assessing the need for a retirement community for our low income Pagan Elders. In my research I have found zero retirement communities for our Elders. It is my hope that I can help that become a reality by assessing the needs and desires of our Elders. Because many of our trailblazing Elders have been spending their time and energy building community, sharing their knowledge and generally care taking. Many of our Elders live in poverty or near poverty. I believe this is unacceptable.

By assessing the need for such a retirement community with a Temple on site I hope to be able to acquire grant monies and donations to build a retirement community in a country setting but near a major city. I am in the process of setting up a 501c3 for the Temple and retirement community to be called 10K Sanctuary.

In my vision there will be initially eight homes that will be around 700-800 square feet. Enough room for a single person or a couple to live comfortably. At the moment the rent will be set at $600. a month all utilities included. I hope to have an orchard and large herbal and vegetable garden in addition it is my dream to have bees. The vegetables and fruits would be available (at no cost) in season to the residents of the retirement community along with honey.

This is still in the exploratory phase. Please answer the questions and add any suggestions or improvements that you feel are important to create a harmonious place to grow old in the company of other Elder Pagans.

Thank you,

Liona Rowan
10ksanctuary@gmail.com

10K Sanctuary Pagan Retirement Community Survey

Please return all surveys to:
10kSanctuary@gmail.com

On a scale of 1-10 1 being the least important and 10 being the most important please answer the following questions

To choose your answer, simply highlight your choice and type an "x" in the place of the number you chose. Thank you in advance for your input!

1. It is important for me to live in a retirement community with other Pagans, Goddess or polytheistic spirituality people.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2. It is important to me to have personal outside space for a garden or leisure.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

3. It is important to me to have an indoors or protected community Temple/worship space when the weather does not permit outside ritual.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

4. It is important to me to have access to a priestess on site as needed.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

5. It is important for me to have an office/study/ritual space in my dwelling.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

6. It is important for me to have a washer/dryer in my dwelling.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

7. Wheelchair accessibility to temple, personal dwelling and outside spaces.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

8. It is important to me to have the opportunity to share my knowledge with the community.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

9. It is important to have access to activities in the larger community (YMCA, library, local restaurants, bars, supermarkets, farmers markets, etc. )

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

On a different note:

using the same scale 1 being the least important and 10 being the most important.

1. I would like to have access to fresh organic fruits and vegetables in season.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2. I would like to have access to a community resource person.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

3. I would like to have the option of group transportation to access the larger community.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Please take as much space as you need to answer the following question:

As an Elder in the Pagan community my ideal retirement community (not assisted living or nursing care facility: Just start typing your responses after the colon, save and send the completed survey to 10ksanktuary@gmail.com

would include:

would look like:

would provide:

please include anything else you feel is important in a retirement community for Pagan Elders:

*****

Picture found here.

Surprise Harvest

Today, I am harvesting seeds. Sweet peas, climbing beans of different kinds, broad beans, kale, cilantro, spinach . . .

I love the circularity of this. I love taking part in this wonderful, external cycle of seed-to-plant, plant-to-seed, seed-to-plant. It continues to amaze me that a kale seed the size of a pinhead can grow into a plant whose leaves I can feast upon all winter and which, one day in spring, will bloom with yellow flowers the bees will love. And, furthermore, that from those flowers will grow dozens of slender pods that by the end of the summer will have dried and cracked open, spilling thousands more seeds to start the cycle anew.

~Marian Van Eyk McCain in Crone: Women Coming of Age, Issue No. 3, 2010.

Three years ago, when we put in the raised herb bed, I tried again to grow dill. It's one of my favorite herbs. I'd tried and failed miserably to get it to grow in the old herb bed, but that was in a too-shady spot and my hope was that the newer, sunnier bed would be better for it. Failure. Three or four weak, yellow, two-inch long seedlings showed up and died. Fine. I'm a big girl and I can take "no" for an answer. Dill just didn't want to grow here. The next spring, I gave the space to pineapple sage, which went mad. This year, I moved the pineapple sage to a pot, unable to figure out any way at all to use that much pineapple sage, and stuck basil in that spot.

And, then, a funny thing happened. Dill started sprouting in every section of the herb bed other than the one where I'd originally tried to grow it. Giant dill. Huge, healthy dill plants, full of that amazing scent and flavor. Lots of huge, healthy dill plants. Lots. Dill plants that I certainly didn't plant, at least not in those spots and at least not for the past two years. Dill that I've used all Summer long with a sense of wonder at the ways nature works.

Now one of the things I love about a herb garden is the sense of orderliness, the geometry of each herb in its place, the narrow mulched paths in between them. I'm pretty ruthless about pulling up Italian parsley when it begins to crowd over into the curly parsley's spot or about weeding the Greek oregano back into its own spot when it begins to get too familiar with the marigolds. But I couldn't make myself pull the dill, so it's grown all summer, two plants in the parsley, a plant in the sage, one or two in the rosemary patch -- you get the idea. And, now, just before Lughnasadah, the feast of the first harvest, it's gone to seed in great, glorious headfulls of hundreds of dill seeds.

"So, good, finally you're dead," I say to the dill, "and now I can pull you and restore some order." But, of course, I can't throw those seeds away, even though there are enough of them to populate several herb beds the size of mine. "Maybe I'll give some away to friends, " I think, justifying myself as I fill a large bag with the brown heads full of seeds. "And I can use some dill seeds for flavoring over the winter," I continue. "Maybe I'll use some in seed bombs for guerilla gardening. These are obviously strong seeds, seeds of survivors, even if they do apparently need to sit in the ground for a long time before they wake up and grow."

[W]e, the elders are the seed-savers of our culture. And seed-saving, in many forms, is now an imperative. For in these rapidly-changing times, there is much we are losing and much more in danger of being lost. That includes not only the native plants and animals which are disappearing for ever but the domesticated plants too. With the spread of industrialized agriculture, many traditional varieties of fruit, vegetables and grains have been irretrievably lost.

Id.

What will you harvest? What will you leave behind? Will any of it have come as a surprise to you?

Will you really, finally die
after I use all the Sweetmeat squash seeds
you gave us years ago? Your fat, happy seed children.
I still plant lettuce seeds, Buttercrunch, that came from your serious saving.
Will you fade when the envelope is empty
of life rattling around in seed form?

. . .

Food to share, food to dry, to can
before the shrivel and pucker of pods
where the next generation of seed babies
snuggles down in the cold nursery of winter
to await the next incarnation
while decay enjoys its own feast
and compost works its slow resurrection.

~Bethroot Gwynn, quoted in We'Moon 2010: Gaia Rhythms for Women: Reinvent the Wheel.

Photo by the author. If you copy, please link back.

I Love That One

My gosh, I LOVE this blog! Lunaea has a bunch of other fun ones, too!

What inspiration!

Not Here, Not There

When I was trying to grow up both female and Catholic, the church kept telling me about "the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." And when we uppity women got too '"hysterical" to ignore, they threw us a bone and said, "Oh, yeah, well, the Holy Ghost? That sexless, inhuman dove or flame or whatever the fuck it was? That "thing" that gets so much less attention than the sexed, humanized Father and Son? That's you. That's the "divine feminine," or "wisdom," or "Sophia," at least to the Greek Orthodox, or something; can't you shut up now?"

Well, no.

And, so I was ready-made to be attracted to Wicca, with it's real trinity of Maiden, Mother, Crone. Now that's a trinity that I can understand and one that has nurtured my spiritul development for nigh on a quarter of a century, and it's the spiritual truth that I expect will be on my lips and in my heart when I dance across the river between my garden in Virginia and the orchards in the Summerlands (it's a thin border and a river full of crossing stones. I can see it, once it a while; I think that I'll be good at making that crossing, even as rooted as I am to this particular place.)

And, yet, like so many symbols, that trinity glosses over a lot of subtelties. And, especially as women live longer and fulfill more roles within the world, we're finding that there are a hundred different variations and subcategories between those three markers/archetypes. One of the most discussed, within the feminist Pagan community, is a fourth stage sometimes called: Queen. This is the woman whose family is raised (or who has mothered a creative project, social justice movement, business, work of art, or garden (hell, sometimes all of those) to fruition)and who is, in this day and age of modern medicine and preventive health measures, still sexual, active, vital, alive, able to create and grow quite a lot before she goes off (as I am beginning to long to do) to sit by the fire, dispense wisdom when asked, nap, and reflect. She's what I think that the Empress card was really meant to show and she's a combination of the Queens of Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles. (We all wind up knowing at least something of all of them, by the time we get to be 50/60 something.)

Another, it occured to me today, is the Mature Mother. I was sitting in my garden and thinking about Ruby Sarah's recent post about Beltane being the holiday when the Kore laughs birds and flowers. And realizing that, for many, if not most, women in our society, Beltane sex, the kind that impregnates you (and any child or project born in late February/early March is counted lucky, as "Beltane got"), is often not quite the experience of a Kore, the young maiden just experimenting with sex. She's not Persephone, gathering flowers with her girlfriends and caught, all unawares, by Hades. She's more likely to have already gotten her education, learned to enjoy and use sex, started her career, traveled a bit (if my own acquaintances are any indication), sown some wild oats, had some fun, and then decided -- deliberately -- to have a child (birth a business, found a movement, etc.). Which is the great blessing that birth control allows to those of us living in the late 20th/early 21st Centuries. And, for that woman, that Mature Mother who is no longer a Kore, but not yet a Queen, sex -- and pregnancy and motherhood -- is likely to be quite different from those same experiences when had by a Kore, who can sometimes find herself (Goddess knows, I did) torn a bit unexpectedly and unprepared from her girlhood and into womanhood/motherhood, from nurturing herownself into nurturing a child, project, cause.

And, for me, gardening this year -- just after a once-every-several-centuries Winter and in the midst of both warming spells that have oak pollen falling two weeks before its normal Beltane fall and cooling trends that threaten with frost seedlings put out after our "normal" last frost date -- calls to this Mature Mother, this woman who has learned how to manage the changing weather of lovers (human, weather-got, Herne, or Greenman), my get (children, projects, briefs, art, businesses, etc.), myself. I'm not the Kore, rocked and challenged by pregnancy and parenting. I'm not yet the Queen, ready to rule based on all that I've learned. I'm still in the final stages of the Mature Mother, working now on giving birth to Myself, that person who may have gotten lost a bit, (primordial soup, the stuff of Hecate) but also created, in between Maiden and Mother.

May it be so for you. Blessed Beltane.

Picture found here.

Going, Going, Going . . . .

Fit For A Queen

crone living with cancer making friends with death
funeral plans and pre-death rituals become a community affair
double saturn return brings a beautifully pagan croning ceremony
gaia at her radiant best green rolling hills rocky knoll sacred tree
blazing fires calling ancestors venus attending in the night sky
lesbian clan singing as i enter the third trimester of my life
a celtic warrior queen walking with ancestors
time now to prepare my beloved daughters my precious sisters
my devoted family my special friends
for my journey towards a complete and peaceful death
warrior queen reigning over life
wounds healed in heart mind and spirit
wisdom and life stories shared and stored
wrapped in a magnificent croning cloak
decorated with thoughtfulness by my female clan
patches stitched beaded and drawn
celebrating each woman's connection to me
inspiring creative colourful moving delightful
patches continue to arrive as cloak is destined for shroud
when living is done safe nurtured and cloaked in love
when journeying to the land of the dead
no queen will travel as gloriously robed as i
in the colors and handcraft of my precious
friends family and beloved lesbian clan
scottish lass to celtic warrior queen
i delight in the depths and joys of this time of my life.

~Anah Holland-Moore, quoted in We'Moon 2009

Picture found here.

Dancing In The Ice

Late last night, I stepped out, as I often do, onto the back porch for a moment before going to bed. It's my final moment with the trees and animals in my backyard, and I wanted to see if I could find the first sliver of the new Moon. It was cold and the sky was covered in clouds and then -- it rippled. (I don't know how to describe it any better, that moment when the veil moves aside a bit, thins so that you can see more through it than you could see before, you take the pill that makes you larger. So, it rippled.*)

The wind changed and tiny ice crystals began to fall, with a lovely bright noise, from the cloudy night sky. The branches of trees and lilacs, heavy with swelling buds, rustled like sistrums. The bark on the birch trees made love to the sudden cold. The atmosphere was instantly charged and I fell, standing upright, through caves of ice, across frozen fjords, into what C.S. Lewis called Northerness, high across the Arctic sky with Serafina Pekkala. My Scandinavian many-times-great grandmothers smiled at me, waved from their skis, reminded me that I come from a people who revel in the cold, pointed to my bare feet, and flew off into the dark. And I was back, on my own terra cotta tiles, in my own screen porch, watched seriously by my own squirrels and cat. And the wind chimes made a very serious "ting" as if to say, "Now, Listen. Now it begins."

And, there they were: the Maiden and the Crone, Spring and Winter, dancing around my frozen backyard, already carpeted with icy snow, dancing with the kind of stately gaiety reserved for special occasions. I watched them, so happy together, a beloved Nonna and her beloved granddaughter, and was reminded of the line: Life and death upon one tether/And running beautiful together. And, that's how it happens. We get one last big snow and that snow mulches and waters the already-emerged green shoots of daffodils and crocus. The warm winds of March will blow in within hours and melt the snow and it's all as it should be/has been/will(please the Goddess)be.

I've had an incubating idea for a post about how the old Maiden/Mother/Crone-Spring/Summer & Autumn/Autumn & Winter paradigm no longer works now that women live longer (thanks, Louis Pasteur!) and that Ostara ought, more than the festival of the Maiden, be thought of as the festival of play, something that even we old crones really enjoy. I wanted to talk about how one becomes freer, in some ways, to play and have fun as one ages, but you know, I'll let that gestate for a year. Just now, I'm all drunk on that loving dance of grandmother and beloved granddaughter.

Turn, Wheel of the Year, turn, and turn, and turn me around with you. I love my life more than I can say.


*It's so difficult as to be impossible to write in any comprehensible way about ecstatic experience, about what happens to a mystic in the moments when all the barriers dissolve, when what appear to be the false boundaries fall away and what appears to be the true web appears. St. Teresa tried, St. Catherine of Sienna tried, Rumi tried, Mary Oliver tries. My own pathetic efforts fall far short. (And, no, it doesn't pass my notice that it's during liminal times that this devotee of Hecate, Goddess of the Crossroads, is most likely to feel the infinite touch the buckle of her spine, to use Oliver's phrase.) In the end, words don't work for mystical experience, which happens to Younger Self, not Talking Self. Go catch that one moment in 53 years when the ice starts falling with exactly that sistrum sound. Go have an orgasm that dissolves all the borders. Go twirl around on a grassy hill with a friend and fall rolling down the hill on the green grass that's grown there for years longing for a child's body to roll down it. Stand in the sun and see that photosynthesis is the ultimate act of love and pleasure and fall down struck by the love and pleasure of seeing it. Go drink the mad witch's brew, love the reeling midnight through, grok the stars, come back, and we'll "talk." But talking won't really do any good, will it? And, by then, you won't mind, will you?

Picture found here.

I Want To Be An Old Woman

Lunea's right: this completely rocks. Get a mammogram and welcome your ancestresses on Samhein. In my circle, one of the things we do on Samhein is to call our female line back as far as we know it. How many old women are there in your line?

What I Love About This Religion

The Season Of The Witch

I've been thinking this week about what it means for a crone to celebrate Ostara.

Ostara, one of the eight major Wiccan holidays, is generally associated with the maiden aspect of the Goddess (when the Goddess is seen as maiden/mother/crone). It's Spring! New life! Bunnies! Lambs! Flowers! Persephone! Flora! What does that mean for a crone? (Yeah, I like the flowers and I love the returning warmth. And I can look fondly back upon the (v. confused, but v. brave) maiden that I was. That's not a Sabbat.)

But Ostara is also a holiday of balance. On the Spring Equinox, there is an equal amount of day and night. For me, the tarot cards associated with balance are Temperance, the High Priestess, the Moon, Justice, the Two of Pentacles, and, oddly, the Hanged Man. So many major arcana (hence, v. important) cards. Balance is clearly an important archetype and an element of many archetypes or it wouldn't show up so often in the tarot. And, yet, when the Hanged Man showed up recently in a v. important reading that I did for myself, it meant: the only way to succeed at this is to turn your own life upside down. To quote Rumi: "Now my loving is running toward my life shouting, What a bargain, let's buy it." Let's turn you upside down!

Balance is an important issue in the lives of so many witches. My own Moon in Taurus is always begging for balance, while my Ascendent Gemini longs to throw all caution to the winds and GO ALL OUT and my Sun in Pisces queries, "Balance? What's balance? Look at this v. exciting extremism that someone else is practicing!" When I was younger, my Sun and Ascendent signs won the battle. Now that I'm older, my Moon, often associated with the Inner Child, wins as often as not.

I keep preaching that magic is supposed to help one to live a more, not less, effective (well-balanced) life. What does that mean for members of an essentially ecstatic religion? Ecstasy, itself, is an oddly unbalanced state. And yet, those who practice balance -- eating a healthy diet, doing yoga, meditating, caring for their material needs so that they don't impinge -- those people are often the ones most able to throw themselves into ecstasy. From the greatest discipline, someone once said, comes the greatest freedom.

Tonight, my madcap friend R. gifted me with a lovely triptych of Tara. I'm drawn (that way, no wait, I'm not Jessica Rabbit!) to extreme Goddesses: Hecate, Baba Yaga, Cerridwen. Yet, those are not the Goddesses who have come to me in dreams. The Goddesses who've visited me in important dreams have been Mary, the Blessed Mother, Quan Yin, Brigid, and Green Tara, sweet, comforting, supportive goddesses (at least in my dreams) all. Balance. Balance between the dark, windswept crossroads and the warm and comfortable Irish kitchen in a downpour. Balance between the wild woman of the forest and the smiling, kind, Mother Mary, who, on my mother's kitchen plaque, offered a warm loaf of bread to the baby Jesus. Balance between the serious magician, stirring a witch's brew within which all things melt, recombine, become something unexpected and new, and the kind, black covered in green, Goddess who wants to hand out practical goodness. Balance between the champion way that I worry and the way that the kind Goddess and her consort who showed up at an important time in my life tell me: It will be ok.

For this crone, Ostara is a time to celebrate balance, to welcome balance, to dream of balance, to do divination looking for balance, to live, as a witch must live, as the Earth, right now, lives, in balance.

No, Really. This Time I'm Serious. Come On. Really. Don't Play Games. It's Me, Your Many-Times-Great Grandaughter. Talk To Me. Seriously. Guys?

Driving home this evening from pizza w/ Son and G/Son, while my beautiful DiL was at a meeting at G/Son's school, I finally felt it. The thinning of the veil. It won't be complete for another few weeks, but it's beginning. Perhaps it was waiting for our first blast of true Fall weather to usher it in. Whatever triggered it, it's here. You can feel it, smell it, almost see it, as the darkness comes earlier and earlier and as the acorns hitting the roof tap out a message from the Isle of Apples.

This is the time of year when I have conversations with my ancestors -- the farther back, the better. (No, really. If you knew my family, you'd agree. The farther back, the better. Some other poor witch, born centures from now, can try to hold a conversation w/ my parents. Blessings and good luck upon you, Dear Descendent. It will help if you can speak Crazy.) I talk about whatever's on my mind, what's worrying me, what I plan to do for the next year, what I think about the year now ending, about anything that I need to talk about. I talk, well, my rising sign is Gemini, so, I talk a lot. I have a lot to say.

Son once, as a v. little boy, maybe three years old, was fascinated with a National Geographic story about the Vikings. My mother told him, "The Vikings were your ancestors." Son asked what an "ancestor" was, and my mom explained that they were his relatives, but that he'd never meet them because they were already dead. It made Son inordinately sad. I've always found that, first, very endearing, and, second, very true, in the "larger truths" sense of the word.

Most of us do long to know that we are part of a line, part of a clan that transcends time, someone with, not only a past, but also, the possibility of a future. And, of course, we are, each of us, someone with a long, long line of ancestors stretching back to African Eve, each of us the result of a long line of people who, no matter what else they did, or failed to do, managed to survive and to pass their mitochondrial DNA, the cleft of their chins, some archetypes, and the will to live down, down, down, through the centuries, through the Ice Ages, and wars, and droughts, and cracking of ice walls leading to floods, and long migrations, all of it passed down to -- us.

To today's survivors. To the ones who will, one day, feasting in the Summerlands, drowsing on the Isle of Apples, notice the Veil getting thin and peer across to see someone who looks, and smells, and sounds . . . familiar, in the original sense of the word. Someone who seems insistent on reaching across the veil to touch our hand, hear our voice, get some kind of important message from us. When that time comes, may we be kind.

I'm reminded of one of my favorite passages, ever, from Ursula LeGuin. A woman importunes her ancestors for help. "Oh, it's That One. In trouble, again," the Ancestors chuckle to each other. It's what I imagine some Viking thrall saying to some settler from ancient Rus and to the barefoot old crone, the one who died lighting fires at the edge of the cave to keep the winter wolves away from the smell of placenta and mother's milk. "Oh, it's That One. In trouble, again."

*******************

Update: A point made in comments reminds me that I should have noted that I often talk to many-times-great aunts and uncles. I don't think that a lack of direct progeny prevents one from hearing calls through the veil once in the Summerlands. We're all related somehow.

Mabon

I swear by all that's holy (and, let's face it, I'm a witch. I think that it's all holy. The pretty stuff: the flowers and the mountains and the flowing river and the sunlight on the water and the softness of a baby's cheek and the maiden's blush and an eagle and waves and firelight and brave deeds, and the widdershins stuff: the worms and the decay and the mold and the spiders and the cold and the dark and the crone's greed for the warm spot by the fire and the fear and the death. So, it's a lot to swear by.) that yesterday, when I drove home from work, the trees along the Potomac River were green. And, tonight, literally overnight, they've begun to turn yellow and brown. As if Mother Earth were saying: here. Here's the boundary. Summer's off on one side and, here, on this side, we're beginning the slide into darkness, and coldness, and death.

Sunday, for one day, everything will be in perfect balance: day and night; darkness and light. And, then, Monday, we begin, will we or nill we, ready or not, the decent into the underworld. And, no less of us than it did of Innana, the underworld will demand that we gift it with all that we hold dear. It will take more from us than we are really prepared to give. It will end with us hanging, naked, from meathooks in our evil sister's kingdom. It will end with me tired of winter and bulky clothes, sick of worrying about slipping on the ice, desperate for a taste of spring greens. And, as a witch, I celebrate this process every bit as much as I celebrate Springtime when everything is new, and fresh, and, as my G/Son says, "hap-py!" I celebrate it as much as I celebrate Summer, when the sun makes the most passionate love on this planet to the tree leaves and photosynthesis happens, when tomatoes and blackberries and peaches and corn and crabs and basil explode in the garden and on the table of my screen porch. As a witch, I am eager to stand once again at the gate to the darkness and offer up my earrings, calling, "Sister of Darkness! I've left Dmuzi on the throne; here I come!"

Balance, the Wheel of the Year teaches us, is seldom found. Two days out of 365. The other days, it's all about movement, trends, the turning of the wheel. Here's a spot worn smooth. Come put your shoulder up there against it, with mine. A witch's job is to turn the wheel, and round and round the wheel must turn. It's turning now towards darkness. How can you help it to turn? Next Eostara, it will shift, and turn again towards light. What secret wlll you bring out of the darkness, clutched, bloody and weak, but glowing, to your breast? What is it that you need to learn during the next six months of germination? What do you need to leave behind to decay and be slowly transformed in the permafrost of the dark northern nights?

That Cottage Of Darkness

Aquila ka Hecate alerts us to this amazing Matrifocus article by Victoria Slind Flor concerning the relationship between life and death -- a concept that I believe is at the very, very heart of Paganism.

I'm still thinking about a point that T. Thorn Coyle raised several months ago: that Pagans need to do better thealogy. I think that Paganism needs a thorough and well-written exploration of this incredible mystery at the heart of Paganism and certainly at the heart of Wicca. It goes to the movement of our religion beyond duality, to the reason why witches celebrate "creepy" things such as spiders, snakes, bats, worms, darkness, etc. It goes to why we celebrate the Wheel of the Year and to why Samhein, for example, is as wonderful and important to us as is Beltane.

Slind Flor writes about her compost heap, a form of magic that I, too, practice almost daily and which I find always amazing.

My altar to Kali Ma is the yard-square, black-plastic compost bin that takes up one corner of my garden. Every morning I walk out into my garden, lift the bin's lid, and look into the heart of my Dark Mother. Then I pick up a spading fork and turn the compost, chanting "Jai Ma" all the while. I could easily say that turning the compost is the single most important part of my personal spiritual practice.

The compost seethes with heat from the microbial breakdown of the organic material, and fuchsia-colored worms writhe in the mixture. New life is coming from old. Kali Ma eats death and grants us the possibility of rebirth and renewal.

I feed my compost bin the usual kitchen scraps, garden trimmings, shredded junk mail, and coffee grounds. . . .

Whenever I lift the lid, I get a reminder of my own personal mortality. No matter how carefully I tend it, someday my body will be food for worms. The same thing happens in my garden.

I became a serious gardener [when] surrounded by death and loss, I felt Hokusai's great wave was about to swamp my boat.

The only possible antidote was trying to bring something to life. And what I chose was my garden. . . .

The irony of my seeking life in my garden is that every day I also was forced to encounter death. The tulips dropped their white petals, the poppies dried to hay, and the delphinium went dormant and died down to the soil level. Try as I could, there was no way I could defeat the natural cycle of the plants' lives. I had no choice but to trim away what was dead and desiccated and toss it into my compost bin.

I empty out the bin every year around the vernal equinox. I have a full cubic yard of compost and it takes me several days to spread the wealth around. I carry compost by the bucket, and take a trowel to lift and deposit a good-sized mound around each plant. Then I water carefully, and step back to watch the compost work its magic.

At Beltane everything explodes into bloom and life. The pansies are the size of teacups. The sunflowers — this year I am growing 11 different kinds — are growing so fast that I can almost hear their joints creak. Lacy blue lobelia spills from all the pots, and the air is scented heavily with jasmine and lemon blossoms. All the plants' flowering parts sing out their siren Beltane song: "I'm here, come and fertilize me." If I were a prudish Victorian, I'd be tempted to veil some of the flowers because they are so luscious, sensual, in fact, downright erotic-looking.

But they bring me back to Kali Ma. All the plants, fed with Ma's good compost, are rushing onward to their destiny: fertilization, seed-bearing, then death and destruction. This morning I watched as a scarlet and white Danebrog poppy unfolded its wrinkled petals. Tomorrow those petals will fall to the ground, and I'll gather them up to place in Kali Ma's gaping mouth.

Kali Ma and my compost bin teach me the futility of dualism. I can't divide the world into light and dark, death and life. Everything cycles around again. No matter how brilliant the color, how enticing the fragrance, how silky the petals' texture, the plants all have the compost bin in their future.

And so, in a somewhat different way, do I. I place a wreath of flowers on my old gray head and dance with my sisters in a verdant meadow on Beltane morn. But I must remember that my dark mother waits for me. Jai ma!

How would our culture look if we acknowledged the role of death, if we celebrated it, if we looked forward to it, if we didn't try to pretend that it doesn't exist? What would it be like to have a well-written Pagan thealogy based upon death and darkness? Would our shadows maybe cease causing us to create so much death all the time in order to hide from ourselves our own fear of death?

How would your own life be different? What would you do differently this very weekend if you acknowledged the role of death in your life and in our world? Do you have a compost bin? Have you ever used it for magic? My own circle is getting ready to do magic for the dying honeybees. Death magic is all around us. I think that there is no magic w/o death. Do you agree?

Tiny Penis Disease

It always brightens my day when a man completely gets it. Paul Waldman, a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America and author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success shows in this Alternet article that he completely gets it.

Last month saw Al Gore's triumphant return to Capitol Hill -- the once-ridiculed candidate now acknowledged as a visionary and treated with long-overdue respect. But the most remarkable moment of Gore's hours of testimony in both houses may have been one in which he wasn't even involved. It shined a light on both the changed atmosphere in Washington today, and the fear and loathing that that change is bringing on.

The most confrontational part of the day came when Gore was being questioned by Oklahoma senator, famed global warming skeptic and former chairman of the environment committee James Inhofe, in a battle of wits that was not exactly an equal match. Inhofe had trouble getting Gore to answer questions the way he wanted to, and kept interrupting him and complaining about the limited time he was given.

After some back and forth between Inhofe and Gore, the new chair of the committee, Barbara Boxer of California, put a hand on Inhofe's arm and said, "I want to talk to you a minute, please." After Boxer suggested that Inhofe give Gore the time to answer his questions, Inhofe replied, "Why don't we do this: at the end, you [Gore] can have as much time as you want to answer all the questions..." Boxer then interrupted: "No, that isn't the rule. You're not making the rules. You used to when you did this," she said, holding up the chair's gavel. "Elections have consequences. So I make the rules."

Boxer spoke with appropriate authority: not angry, not loud but unmistakably firm. There was no doubt who was in charge in that room. You could almost see the steam coming out of Inhofe's ears, not only because he had been deprived of his power, but because he was deprived of it by a woman. She even held up the gavel, the symbol of that power, and practically taunted him with it. Freud couldn't have scripted it much better.

The response in some quarters was unsurprising. Michael Savage, whose hateful rants are reportedly heard by 8 million radio listeners every day, hit the roof. Referring repeatedly to "foul-mouthed, foul-tempered women in high places bossing men around," he opined that the image of a woman giving a man orders would lead to more terrorist attacks (or something like that -- it was a little hard to follow).

And it isn't only extremists like Savage who are having trouble stomaching the idea of women in positions of increasing power. We now have a female speaker of the House, and the strong possibility of the first female president; the prospect is sending some men over the edge. MSNBC host Tucker Carlson recently described Hillary Clinton as "castrating, overbearing and scary." Why Carlson looks at the junior senator from New York and immediately fears for the safety of his testicles might be something he and his therapist should explore, but he's hardly alone -- after the election Chris Matthews wondered on the air if Nancy Pelosi was "going to castrate Steny Hoyer." And Matthews has gone through a series of man-crushes on politicians whom he sees as super-hunky in their masculine ways. First it was George W. Bush, then John McCain and the current object of Matthews' affections is Rudy Giuliani. "I think he did a great job," Matthews said about Giuliani's tenure in New York. "And I think the country wants a boss like that. You know, a little bit of fascism there."

If Rudy ends up getting the Republican nomination, it will be because the GOP primary voters ignore his stands on hot-button culture war issues in favor of that little bit of fascism they crave. And if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, we can expect a virtual explosion of sexist rhetoric, every last drop of it based in fear and anxiety. She already gets described with a whole series of derogatory adjectives that don't seem to ever be applied to male politicians -- she is "ambitious" (unlike the men running for president) and "calculating" (unlike every other politician), to take just two. U.S. News recently noted that a speech she gave "was devoid of hard edges, contrary to her longtime image among critics as a harridan and a polarizer." She must have appreciated the compliment. Conservative radio and TV host Glenn Beck admitted that Hillary Clinton's voice drives him crazy. "She's the stereotypical bitch, you know what I mean?" he said. "After four years, don't you think every man in America will go insane?" (ABC News recently announced that Beck will be offering his insightful commentary on Good Morning America.)

For years, our campaigns have been marked by the "gender gap," the fact that Democrats do marginally better among women and Republicans do better among men. The gender gap in the 2004 election was actually relatively small -- John Kerry won women's votes by 3 points (51 to 48), while George Bush won men's votes by 11 points (55 to 44). But it is the fact that the latter margin is so much larger than the former that is worth noting. It is men, and white men in particular, who are so easily persuaded by campaigns like the one Bush ran, which can be boiled down to, "I'm a manly man, and my opponent is a sissy." Bush beat Kerry among white men by an astounding 25 points.

Should Hillary Clinton be the nominee, the gender gap will no doubt be bigger than it ever has been before. Part of this will come from some women who might have voted Republican (or not voted) casting their votes for her. But more of the gap will come from men fleeing from her, spurred on by the likes of Savage, Carlson, Beck and Matthews insisting that if you vote for a woman, then you must not be a real man.

One can't avoid noticing that as a group, conservative media figures are not exactly secure in their masculinity. Forever promoting war when they avoided military service themselves and doubling over to protect their tender parts every time a strong woman appears on their television screens, it's no wonder they are so impressed by politicians who may not be real men but know how to present a convincing facsimile of manliness.

Much of the audience that tunes in to the corps of overcompensating pretend macho men is just as insecure about their manhood, ready to cast a manly, masculine vote lest anyone raise an eyebrow at their choice for president. That doesn't mean that Hillary Clinton -- or any female presidential candidate, for that matter -- can't win. But if she goes around holding up any long, firm objects, a lot of guys' heads might just explode.

This story about Boxer fascinates me, not the least because even after she said to Inhoffe, "I want to talk to you," Inhoffe continued to try to just keep talking to Gore as if Boxer weren't there. I doubt there's a woman in the work world who hasn't experienced something similar. The result was that Boxer had to chide him: "Elections have consequences. You don't make the rules anymore."

Waldman's spot on when he notes that conservative men sure do seem terrified of that great big Vagina Dentata in their minds. I still think that Newt Gingrich's assertion that the U.S. should just bomb Iran in order to show Iran that "you're tiny and we're not" says as much about conservative men's real concerns as anything that I've ever heard. EVER.

Interestingly, I had lunch w/ someone on the Hill who was repeating the Boxer/Inhoffe story. I think it's going to become iconic. It's sort of like Pelosi telling Bush to calm down and quit issuing threats, as if she were gently admonishing the least-bright of her grandchildren. The women are taking control. They're going to start out, at least, gentle and firm. But for those like Inhoffe who persist in pretending that the women don't even exist, much less exercise any power, well, gavels have lots of purposes.

Really, conservative men, it's going to happen. We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. You'll like the easy way a whole lot better in the end. Trust me.

~Someone at Eschaton Comments linked to this article today and I apologize for not remembering who it was.

Bare Feet

Maybe it's because my Sun is in Pisces, the sign that rules feet and ankles, but one of my life's greatest pleasures, and I mean this seriously, has always been going barefoot.

To me, there is something just incredibly sensual and luxurious about feeling the floor, or the dirt, or the grass, or the sand, or the ceramic tiles, or the wood of my deck, or the bricks of my walkway under my feet. It's like making love to the world, over and over and over -- moment, by moment, by moment. It's as if the nerves on the soles of my feet are connected directly to my hips, to my red chakara, to my deepest core. A large part of my practice is being "grounded" and bare feet are the best way that I know to practice that, well, practice as a moment-by-moment meditation.

Walking barefoot through the surf is a huge religious metaphor in my life, a symbol to me of being so blessed by the Earth that you're almost completely unaware of how blessed you really are, the waters of life rushing and flushing and gushing around your ankles, over and over, step by step, never stopping.

Sadly, as I've gotten older, I've also become very sensitive to having cold feet, although I'm still good for a few runs out in the snow or out onto the freezing ceramic tiles of my screen porch every winter, just to remind myself, through the pain, that my feet are alive and can touch the ground. But, most of the winter, I wear warm socks and slippers, cuddling my feet, but denying them what they want most -- contact. Having broken my ankle badly a few years ago (not an uncommon injury for a Pisces), I wear boots with a heavy tread and Yaks Tracks every time there's even a hint of snow or ice. For me, it's like walking around with blinders on or ear plugs that muffle everything.

Which is all a long way of saying that I went out back this afternoon and spent an hour picking up twigs and sticks that have blown down over the winter (my yard was spic and span last Fall, but living in an oak grove has its good points and its disadvantages) barefoot. Every twig and stone and dried up holly leaf "hurt" in some sense, but the sensation of contact with the wet, muddy Earth, the ability to stand with my back pressed tight to the maple tree and feel its roots thrumming and sucking through my feet was almost more pleasure than I could bear (or bare; pun intended). And, then, I came inside and walked barefoot on my old wood floors, through which I can feel so much of what's gone on in this cottage during the 51 years before I came to live here and in the 3+ years since I've been here, as well.

Miss Thing looks at me quizzically; she gets to go barefoot all the time. For me, though, it's an April through October pleasure. And I adore it.

What is it that you love most about the warming of the Earth?

Happy Birthday, Z

Happy Birthday, Zsuzsanna Budapest!

I regard Z as one of the elders of the modern Wiccan movement. Wiki notes that:

She founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number l, the first [specifically] feminist witches' coven, which became the role model for thousands of other spiritual groups across the nation. Her first book, The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, was published in 1975 and then re-published in 1989 as The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries. This book served as the first hands-on book to lead women into their own spiritual/Goddess heritage.

Z was arrested in 1975 in Los Angeles for reading Tarot cards to an undercover policewoman. She lost the trial, which resulted in a $300 fine and probation, whereby she was forbidden to read Tarot cards for others. However, she instead began teaching Tarot classes, in addition to courses in divination and witchcraft. The municipal code against fortune-telling (by someone other than a religious leader) was struck down nine years later. Z has led rituals, lectured, taught classes, given workshops, written articles tirelessly, and published in many women's newspapers across the country. She has powerfully influenced many of the future teachers and writers in the Goddess Movement.

Her circles are exclusive to women only, and she prefers an equal mix of heterosexual and lesbian women, which she believes provides balance in her rituals. According to Z, "We have women's circles. You don't put men in women's circles - they wouldn't be women's circles any more. Our [G]oddess is life, and women should be free to worship from their ovaries."

Located in San Francisco, Z sometime gets lost in the light of Starhawk's (well-earned) fame. But her books had a huge influence on my early spiritual development, and I don't know if I would have come to Wicca had it not been for her abillity to clearly tie this religion to feminism.

There's a line drawing in my copy of The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries that shows a crone, in winter, curled up at the foot of a tree, bare feet and long, gnarled toes, which must be so cold, not quite curled up underneath herself. Yet, the crone seems to be dreaming deep dreams and not unhappy with her life. She is, at any rate, a survivor, one who has made it through many cold winters before and who will, you hope when you look at the picture, make it through a few more, if for no better reason than to warm her feet in the Summer sun. That picture got me through some pretty difficult times.

Thank you, Z. Many happy returns of the day.