Chant to Hecate

Crone woman, stone woman
Claw shell bone woman
Lone woman alone woman
Dark mother star mother
Well river storm mother
Death Mother, Birth Mother
Earth Mother, Earth Mother.

~Leni Hester

Picture of Hecate and Her Jackal at the Crossroads found here.

Saturday Poetry Bloging

Pale Hekate


Pale Hekate has come to the garden
called by our pomegranate offering
beneath the shadowed hedge.
Her hands rake a trail of death,
dying in a spiral
bedded into the earth.

In her wake, the mint sprigs emerge,
luscious and renewed.
Green children offering grace
at the feet of death.

~Jacinta Cross

Picture found here.

Invocation

Hecate Invocation (traditional)


Goddess of the cross-roads,
Goddess of Manic-Depression,
Dweller in the deep places of the earth and mind,
Traveller in the land between worlds!
Torch-bearer! Protectress of the very old and the very young;
Protectress of those used and abused;
Healer of those who are torn apart;
She will be there for us when we call on her and at the end.
Grandmother to lost children and to the downtrodden.
Nurse to the suckling infant,
Comfort to the lone man or woman in the darkest night.
She who seeks vengeance for her children who are wronged!
Wanderer and prowler!
Sorceress who lives at the edge of the mind.
Drawer-up of the secret compost from the unused internal well.
She who has no relatives on the earth save for her children.
Without Mother or Sister.
Lady on the brink, both bi-polar and uni-polar!
They call her mad, and it is she who terrifies the disbeliever and the
unworthy!
Bringer of nightmares!
But she it is who sooths the sleepless and disheveled spirit.
Mother of night!
Dark Power of the moon!
Keeper of the shadow!
Walker of the endless highways!
She unites those who follow her as her children; the Hekite.
Bearer of the sacred poppy.
Shape-shifter, Transformer.
Keeper of the hounds of Hel and the three-headed dog Cerebus!
She walks abroad in the hour of the wolf and under the Dark Moon!
Hear my call O Lady and cover us with your starry cloak.
Let the unborn moon seed in my heart this night.
And let her growing light shine upon our intention;
That she be at our full deliverance,
So Mote it be!

~Erhard Hans Josef Lang

Picture found here.

Hymn to Hecate

O nether and nocturnal and infernal
Goddess of the dark, grimly, silently
Munching the dead.
Night. Darkness, broad Chaos, Necessity
Hard to escape are you . . . you're Moira and
Erinys, torment, Justice and Destroyer,
And you keep Kerberos in chains, with scales
Of serpents are you dark, O you with hair
Of serpents, serpent girded, who drink blood
Who bring[s] death and destruction and who feast[s]
On hearts, flesh eater who devour[s] those dead
Untimely, and you who make grief resound . . . .

~Papyri Graecae Magicae, quoted by Tim Ward in Bearing Torches: A Devotional Anthology for Hekate, published by Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Picture found here.

Even If We're Just Dancing In The Dark

In Kissing the Hag: The Dark Goddess & the Unacceptable Nature of Woman, Druid priest Emma Restall Orr writes:

[D]arkness is not evil; it is simply the not knowing. Throughout the history of our people, as far back as stories allow we see evidence that some have explored the power of the dark. In the long barrows and passage graves of Britain and Ireland, five to eight thousand years old, we find clues as to how peoples reached out to understand the forces of darknesss and death that loomed over them. . . . [I]t isn't just courage that is needed. Courage often comes with limited sensitivity. It takes a mindset that is willing to perceive and accept the unknown, the unknowable, that which is almot unthinkable, and find a language to explain [that] to those who can't.

Looking into our own dark places (part of the work of a Witch) is, I think similar. Courage is needed, but also an ability to come back and translate and explain to our Talking Selves -- our active-in-the-world rational selves -- what it is that we've discovered in the dark. And then to figure out what to do about it. I find that, when trying to help my Talking Self to use what I've learned in the dark, sitting in meditation helps. Journaling helps. And then, letting the images, dreams, odd phrases and feelings just sit (maybe my grandma would have said "letting them gell") is what really helps.

Picture found here.

How do you help all of your "selves" to integrate wisdom about your dark spaces?

Nothing Comic About It

So instead of Peter Parker it's Pavitr Prabhakar. Aunt May becomes Auntie Maya and Mary Jane Watson is Meera Jain.

Even better,

It's another Virgin Comics cover, this time spotlighting the story of the female divinity Devi, the Sanskrit word for goddess. Clad in skintight black leather from neck to boots, the contemporary version of the mother goddess has been transformed into a modern-day superhero. Only unlike Wonder Woman, Devi can also be seen (albeit in more modest attire) immortalized in a ninth-century sandstone sculpture in the adjoining Gallery of South Asian Sculpture.

"This would probably be on the outside wall of a temple in a niche. It's an icon that's worshipped, but it also depicts this climactic scene in the Devi Mahatnya, the origin story of the goddess, where she conquers the evil demon Mahisha, who takes the form of a buffalo. In a way, this is like the first comic-book story," Ms. Romain says, laughing.

More, here.

If you're anywhere near LA and care about Goddesses and/or comic books, this sounds like a great exhibit. I may try and swing by if I get out there on business.

Online collection here.

And, girls, getting into the act.

Picture found here.

Ahhhh!

We've had almost a full week of rain, which has now stopped, although it's still grey and cold and there's a wild wind that is making impulsive and not-very-gentle love to the branches and leaves. They respond in kind: the sort of sex old lovers have when they don't know for sure when, if ever, they'll see each other again, don't terribly care, but figure, "Hey, this one deserves to be good because of all that went before." (I guess you have to be a certain age to get this.)

One of the things that I love a lot about Autumn is this glorious WRECKEDNESS. The garden that was so orderly this summer is covered by a thin scrim of soggy, blown-about leaves, the trees are going to ruin, although they're going there with a final burst of color. Seed pods are popping before I can collect the seeds in nice, neatly-labeled envelopes (Datura from Front Garden -- Dark Moon -- Oct. 2009) and seeding the damp ground beneath them will-they-nill-they. The acorns that I was going to collect and send to a group that grows young oaks to repopulate MD are too soggy, scattered everywhere. Ghosts of those I've known flit around in broad day, talk to me and demand food and baths in my dreams, call to me across fields of parsley and thyme when they know that my feet are bare. Everything is going to ruin and doing it with a bonny will.

That Mother Earth does this, and does it once a year, every year, is such a gift. It reminds me that even when, like Dorothy Parker, My land is bare of chattering folk; The clouds are low along the ridges, And sweet's the air with curly smoke From all my burning bridges, that's ok. In fact, it's necessary, this blessed dishabille, chaos, going to ruin. Everything we do in Autumn, raking the leaves into neat piles, making warm soup, laying ruby-red fires, knitting vests, and laying out next Spring's garden on grid paper with colored pencils, it's all in a way an attempt to deny what the Mother is teaching us: ruin is lovely, in and of itself. It's this love of ruin that sends me gladly dancing through graveyards, watching the decomposition in my compost bin, heading into dark places inside me that ought to terrify a nice lady. Someone once said that people fear witches because we aren't afraid of the dark places. That's not quite right. At our best, we witches love the dark places, seek them out, co-destroy with nature just as, in Spring, we co-create. Because they're the same, because the one requires the other.

Blessed dark October Moon to you.

Photos by the author, if you copy, please link back. (I tried like hell to kill this rosebush all summer. I ignored it, didn't water it, let the morning glories overtake it. It gently ignored me and then, all unexpected, presented me with these lovely-full-of-vitamins-rose-hips. If she survives the winter, I'm going to be forced to pull her up and throw her in the compost heap w/ full awareness of what I'm doing.)

Lilith

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

The rose and poppy are her flower; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.


Picture found here.

Baba Yaga

Susun Weed has a great story about Baba Yaga and knitting and winter and cooperation and creativity and compost and what happens when we give back to the Earth.

When the snow begins to fall under tonight's Dark Moon, here on the banks of the frozen Potomac River, I will remember Baba Yaga, I will think of the hats and mittens and scarves and sweaters that I've knitted for Son, and G/Son, and G/Nephew, and I will dream each of them warm and safe and secure.

Baba Yaga is special to me and she's one of the Goddesses that I often invoke when I sit at my altar. To me, she's always seemed oddly modern, a tanned old woman with strong muscles, some gold jewelry, and the ability to look chic with her headscarf tied behind her neck, a la Jackie O. (Look. You relate to Baba Yaga your way and I'll relate to Baba Yaga my way. H'ok, bubbla?)

At least once a month, a make I recipe from Susun Weed's book on breast cancer prevention.

Soak some seaweed in water.

Saute some cabbage and onions and grated carrots in olive oil.

Chop up and add the seaweed. Add the water in which you soaked the seaweed.

Add a bit of tamari sauce.

If you liked, here's where you could add some tofu, or chicken, or shrimp, or fish.

Sprinkle w sunflower seeds.


Even if you think that you hate cabbage or seaweed, you'll like this.

Picture of Baba Yaga found here.

Shit! Fuck! Damn!

Dear Dark Mother, Kali Ma, Eater of Souls,

I know that all life is a manifestation of the Goddess and that the Eaters must, in turn be Eaten, and that it is this very process of consumption and decay that is Sacred. And, yet, I wanted to tell you today that I fucking hate my fucking little Sisters, the fucking mosquitos, and if I find the fucking one who lives in my car and chews up my ankles and calves while I'm driving and can't do shit about it -- when I find her, I am going to kill her and you can just add it to my karma tab and we'll work it out later.

Love, your daughter,

Hecate, Runnymead Conspirator