What Would It Take for You to Smile Before Your Ancesors?

As a part of my daily practice, I ground and make contact with the cold, red, Virginia clay upon which my little cottage is built. I twine my own roots around the deep roots of the ancient oaks, tall maple, triune river birch, crape myrtle trees, new magnolias, Japanese temple pines, gardenias, lilacs, lavender, rosemary, and sage. This part of my practice can actually take a reasonable amount of time. It's like checking in with a bunch of different family members; you wouldn't begrudge that time or try to rush it, would you? And I will go to my grave believing that it matters, that the Earth is healed when we spend time with her, touch her, send our love directly to her.

Lately, I am more and more aware of the way that a horizontal (about three-foot-tall (or deep))-layer of cold has spread not only over my bit of Earth, but of how it has, as well, spread for several feet underground.

I admit that, when I walk outside every morning to feed the birds (barefoot, if at all possible and reasonably safe, just to remind me that I am a priestess of the Earth and need to physically connect with Her), I examine the sunny protected Southern exposure near my deck for some sign that the crocus and daffodils (of which the tips are only now just barely visible) have grown a bit. I walk outside every morning to the car and scan the hellebores for a bud or two, scan the mulched, North-facing, cottage gardens for any sign that the Gallanthus, aka, snowdrops, are beginning to sprout, even though I know that they're a good 4 weeks away, at least.

And, yet, what my bit of Earth is telling me is that, until that layer of cold rises out of the red clay, there won't be any flowers. I'll know to really look for the flowers when I ground and find that the cold has stopped penetrating deep into my red Virginia clay. That's not what I expected to learn when, a novice, solitary Witch, I began, years ago, to daily practice grounding, but it's what grounding is teaching me, just now, all these years later. "Here, my dear, here's a deep revelation: Winter's cold seeps below ground and that influences when things bloom." Well, um, yeah, but I was thinking more, you know, dramatic revelations, lightning, dawn cracking thorough clouds, and, well, yeah, of course, cold/Earth/plants, yeah, ok, but, um deep insights? "Here, my dear, here's a deep revelation: "Winter's cold seeps below ground and that influences, when things bloom." OK, I learn, pace, Mr. Roethke, by going where I have to go.

And, then, I drive beside my beloved Spout Run and alongside my beautiful Potomac River and see the ice that has been there for weeks and weeks - unheard of here just South of the line that Mr. Mason and Mr. Dixon decided to draw. Last weekend, I was driving G/Son home, and we went over the bridge from Virginia into Maryland, across the Potomac River. Almost always, I tell him, "Now we're driving over the beautiful Potomac River," and then I call out, "Good morning, beautiful Potomac River!" This time, I said, "Now we're driving over the beautiful Potomac," and, before I could say anything else, G/Son said, "Good morning, Potomac!"

You know, I have been a good deal more lucky than I had any right to be. I raised an amazing, kind, gorgeous, good-humored, feminist Son, who married a beautiful, down-to-Earth, kick-ass-yogini of a hera, and who is an Earth-shatteringly-amazingly good Father. I've loved me some poets and priests of nothing. I've taught a lot of poor kids a lot of stuff and I've organized some educational programs to ensure that a lot more got taught. I've kicked a whole lot of law school ass, and I've written motions and briefs that have, if I do say so myself, been improbably successful. I've advised a number of wind and solar companies, thereby, in Lovelock's words, cushioning The Fall. I've taught one or two amazingly bright young lawyers how to think about legal issues and how to write good legal prose. I've been friends with a whole lot of amazing women. I've made a warm, welcoming home that frequently houses Witches and their rituals and provides an afternoon's succor for activists who need to sit on a porch. I've done magic for Code Pink, talked truth to power, and poured wine for wounded revolutionaries. I've worked with an inspired greenman to make a garden and ritual space. I've marched in every important march of the last half-century, handed out campaign literature, helped to get a woman on the ballot in VA and voted for her in the primary, done pro bono work to ensure voting rights, and fed people who were hungry. And if I were to die with nothing to proclaim to my ancestors beside the fact that my G/Son has a first-name, "say good morning when you pass" relationship with the Potomac River and that I know when my bit of Earth is still cold, well, I'll die happy and answer gladly, that's all I can say.

May you have a deep relationship with your own bit of Earth and may you find a river or mountain or moor to which your family may become tied.

Picture found here.

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.

Like This

Spent wonderful time Sunday evening with some of my magical women. Nothing else restores me like that.

Radio-Free Hekate
(written to be read aloud, as a prayer)

Not with your ears. They will lead you astray.
Listen with your feet.
Nestle them naked
down deep into the tangles of the roots and grass,
burrow your toes under the warm soil, investigate,
tune into the right station,
let the ground rise up into your arches, fill up your base
surround your heels with the movement.

Listen with your skin.

Pull the sound up through every muscle in your legs,
the earth is playing you like a harp, you are being strummed,
softly, strongly, an insistent tune,
a pinnacle point of pitch and vibration
as the space where all your strings come together

let this sound, this calling from the earth,
fill up the hollows of your sacrum,
course it's winding way up your backbone,
chime up each rib like a xylophone, catch
and keep the rhythm of your beating heart.


Tha-Bump. Tha-Bump.
Sound growing
and moving
and expanding
exploding into all its potential
as it blasts from your
fingers and mouth and eyes,
through your every cell

the incredible, undeniable,
untamable sound of living
that your ears, alone,
would never understand.

~Victoria Day 2002, reprinted in We'Moon 2010: Reinvent the Wheel We'Moon says that Victoria Day lives in Columbia, MO and is a "priestess, dancer, and activist who creates from her deep connection with the Divine and her belief that it is essentially important to work for peace."

We were planning to discuss a book we'd all read and our daily practice. We got caught up in the book and didn't get to daily practice . (And, come on, that's happened to you, too, right?) A large part of my daily practice is deep grounding. I love how this poem describes that process. How does it work for you?

Picture found here.

Go Ground

What I have to say is: go ground.

Yes, Democratic politicians, including those in whom we really, really, really wanted to hope, are timid, corporatist tools. Yes, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Go ground.

This was a skirmish, not the war. We're losing the war, too, but that means that you should go ground.

Daily Practice

On this day when we honor Dr. King, I am reminded of something that Starhawk wrote:

The power of our outer work in the world depends on the depths of our connection to the springs of life that feed us. To make our work effective, and to say sane while doing it, we need a strong, daily personal practice.

What's yours?

Mine, these days, is to feed the birds in my bare feet, even when it's v cold out on the deck, to carry a mug of hot coffee into my ritual room, move my old bones into a sitting position on the yoga blanket on the floor before my altar, ground and connect with this tiny bit of Potomac watershed, light the candles and incense, call the Elements, call the Goddesses with whom I'm in deepest relationship, cast a circle, and say the Ha Prayer. Then, I cleanse my chakras and run the Iron Pentacle. If I have time, or need, I go to my Place of Power and either do magic or get a message. Then, I thank the Goddesses and the Elements and open my circle.

It's all real; it's all metaphor. There's always more.

Picture found here.

Home For The Holidays

Breathe.

Center.

Remember who you truly are.

Can you find 10 minutes to go outside and feed the birds? Some seeds, some bread crumbs, a bit of apple spread with peanut butter.

Fill your lungs with the cold Air. Notice your feet upon the chilly Earth. Connect with the Fire deep inside the planet. Watch the Water of your breath turn into mist when you breathe.

It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more.

Picture found here.

Ground

Now, as the light begins to decline and we head towards Mabon and then Yule, is a good time to recommit to a daily practice, even a short and simple one. Sit (in nature, if at all possible) and ground. (See an earlier post on grounding here.) Light a candle or some incense or simply breathe in the smells of dirt, plants, water. You are part of Mother Earth. You are part of your landbase. You are part of your watershed. What are they telling you?

Picture found here.

Relationship With The Land

And so, i went out tonight, to walk widdershins in the waning moon around my new circle of stones. And, there she was. There was the first firefly of summer, dancing with such lovely laziness around my circle of stones.

Years ago, when I first moved into this magical cottage, I was, pax cancer meds, v depressed. But one night, all unexpected, I came out onto the porch in the deep night and looked out into the woodland surrounding me and, there, there She was, there was the Goddess, blinking and dancing and making love to me in a thousand points of light. It was not the beginning of joy, but it was the end of despair.

And so, each year, although I watch through snow for the fox, and through March for the crocus and hellebore, and through April for the daffodils, and through May for the sage and woad and jack-in-the-pulpit, and through June for the roses and lilies and gardenia, although I watch just up to Litha for all of them, I do begin in June to watch for the fireflies. And, tonight, there She was. She was gentle, blinking light, dancing in between daylilies and crepe myrtle, in between beech and mint.

Welcome, lovely light.

Daily Practice

There are several ways that I could drive to work, but I use one that, while a bit longer than the others, takes me through the woods along Spout Run, past the rocky cliffs, and over the beautiful Potomac River.

Tonight, the river and the misty rain were having sex. You couldn't tell where one began and the other ended and they were both only partially disrobed, surrounded by leaves of the brightest Spring green and the white bridal blossoms of the Bradford Pear trees. My spirit wants to swim in that pearl-grey rain, floating just above the river and penetrating it so gently that it's all at once imperceptible and maddenly delicious.

A daily practice can involve many components. For me, one big one is to pay daily attention to the Potomac River, the lifeblood of our nation's capital, the source of the water I drink, the baths I take, the water I pour on my flowers and herbs.

Ground and pay daily attention to something "outside" of yourself (Rumi would laugh at that use of the word). That's an excellent beginning of a daily practice.

Photo found here.

Crofut Farm, Grover’s Corners; United States of America; Continent of North America; the Earth; the Mind of God

Discussing the need to become re-involved with the natural world, David Abram of the Alliance for Wild Ethics says:

Our senses have coevolved with the whole of the sensuous world, with all these other sentient shapes and forms, all these other styles of life. Our nervous system emerged in reciprocity with all that rich otherness, in relationship and reciprocity with hawks and waves and stormclouds and waterfalls, with an animate, living land that spoke to us in a multiplicity of voices. . . .

[Yet, in the modern world, many have come to believe that a] dynamic or living relationship is simply not possible with an object. The only things you can enter into relationship with . . . are other humans. Yet the human nervous system still needs the nourishment that it once go from being in reciprocity with all these other beings and entities. And so we turn toward . . . our human lovers and friends, in hopes of meeting that need. We turn toward our human lovers demanding a depth and range of otherness that they cannot possibly provide. Another human cannot possibly provide all of the outrageously diverse and vital nourishment that we once got from being in relationship with dragonflies and swallowtails and stones and lichen and wolves. It's just not possible We used to carry on personal relationships with the sun and the moon and the stars! To try and get all that, now from another person -- from another nervous system shaped so much like our own -- continually blows apart marriages, it explodes so many of our human relationships, because they can't stand the pressure.

I'd add to Abram's point that we now, also, seek what we're missing in increasingly advanced technology: what we can't get from other humans we now often look for in tv, DVDs, computer games, Wii. And, they're all great; I'd be lost without the internet. But I agree with Abram that there are some things that only being in relationship with the Earth can give to us.

I believe that one way to begin to establish that relationship, or, perhaps to re-establish it, as most of us did have such relationships as children, is -- this will surprise no one -- to regularly ground. A regular practice of grounding helps to remind you that you are of and in the Earth, helps you to focus on how the Earth is feeling, how it makes you feel, what you have to say to each other. This is one of the reasons why I like to ground by paying direct attention to physical stuff: are you sinking your roots into mountain stone, wet clay, warm sand, forest duff, garden humus? Is the ground frozen or warm? Are there small pebbles that your roots push past or large stones around which they curl? Are there worms, bugs. moles, bats in caves? Do your roots twist and branch around the bones of your ancestors, someone else's ancestors, the bears' ancestors? How does the energy that you pull up into your roots taste, feel in your belly, smell when you exhale it out into the air around you? I don't know how you can do this exercise and not realize that you are made of the Earth, you are in relationship with the Earth, you and the mole, you are both seeking solace and rest deep in the Earth; are you not sisters?

Abram says that we need to realize that, there is something interior about the mind, but it is not because it's inside us, but rather because we are inside it. Mind is not a human property, it's a quality of the [E]arth. As soon as we begin to loosen up, to allow the life of the things around us, and as soon as we begin to speak accordingly, we'll begin to notice that the awareness that we thought was ours does not in fact belong to us. We're breathing it in and out. Along with all the other animals, the plants, and the drifting clouds, we are immersed in the mind of the living world. . . . And I need to notice that each place has its own particular style of awareness. The intelligence of this place, the mind of this land, here in this valley, is quite different from the mind of the Puget sound, which is quite different from the mind of the eastern forests.

If we just start listening somewhat, something will snap us up, and suddenly we'll be just practicing; we'll be in it. Just discovering one again that we are inside the world will, I think, be vital, sufficient, strong enough to enable us to work with whatever we must face.

Ground. Ground regularly and something will snap you up, and suddenly, you'll just be practicing; you'll be in it.

Abram quoted in How Shall I Live My Life? On Liberating the Earth from Civilization by Derrick Jensen

Photo found here.

Grounding

Aquila ka Hecate explains how, with an illustration dear to my old, hippy heart.

Right now, while Mercury is retrograde, the world is at a crossroad, and things seem wild, right now is a v good time to Be Here Now!

What Does Grounding Look Like?

I don't know about you, but my left brain is a lot stronger than my right brain, and that can make visualization a challenge for me. You don't have to visualize in order to ground effectively, but, in my experience, it sure helps. One thing that helps me get past my crippled right brain is to build up a visual "library" of images upon which I can call. As I've noted before, when I garden, I spend some time examining the roots of the weeds that I pull, the seedlings that I plant, the trees that I love. Here are some lovely images of roots that may help some of you other "Talking Self Types" to ground more easily:



Picture found here.



Picture found here.



Picture found here.



Picture found here.



Picture found here.

Keeping Your Feet On The Ground

When I think about grounding, a part of that concept is what most witches would recognize as daily practice: sitting at my altar, sending my roots deep into Mother Earth, breathing through those roots, achieving a deep sense of groundedness to carry me through my day. And another part of what I think of as grounding looks more like living a well-grounded existence: taking care of my physical body, living in a clean, organized space, managing my finances, arranging my personal situation so that I can live with integrity, getting where I'm supposed to get when I'm supposed to get there, doing what I say I'll do, being able to remain grounded, rather than scattered. That kind of integrity is important for a witch because, if your word and intention aren't any good, as someone once said, in this world, how can you expect them to count for much between the worlds?

I'm often surprised how many people who would never think of disregarding the laws of magic are willing to disregard the other laws of reality. You're disregarding the laws of reality if you live beyond your means, ignore your health, fail to manage the details of your days with at least some measure of grace and courage. I'm not talking about obsessive control; in fact, I'm talking about the opposite. I'm talking about mastery over enough of your situation that you're able to achieve what you want to achieve, rather than spending most of your time reacting to forces beyond your control.

I think it was Thomas Merton who explained that the highly-disciplined day of many religious monastics is actually a springboard to the freedom needed to achieve serious spiritual progress. Few of us will ever engage in that much structure, but I think the point's still well-taken: it's difficult to do serious magic, to grow spiritually, to help to turn the Wheel if you arrive harried and late for the ritual (do not get me started on "Pagan Standard Time" -- ha ha -- rude is rude, and those of us who have been wasting our time sitting around waiting for you aren't amused; just saying), if you're worried about being evicted, if you didn't get enough sleep the night before because you stayed up way too late (again) watching Buffy or playing Wii.

In D.C. Pagan circles, I frequently bump into a lovely young woman who clearly really wants to live a magical life and grow as a witch. She signs up for classes that she then regularly misses because (pick one) she's sick with another bad cold, she's out of money for gas for her car and can't get to class, her dysfunctional SO needs her to bail him out, she just lost another entry-level job because she doesn't show up there very regularly, either, she just got evicted because she had 15 cats living in her apartment even though she signed a lease agreeing not to have more than one, . . . . She volunteers for responsibilities that she then regularly has to dump, at the last minute, onto someone else because she . . . you know. Anyone who's been active in the Pagan community knows people from the same mold. It's not really surprising, when you think about it; people are attracted to ecstatic, magical religions for a reason. But you want to just pull a witch like this aside and suggest that what she really needs to do -- in order to live as a witch, in order to do magic -- is to get her "mundane" life in order before she takes another class, buys another Tarot deck, heads to another festival.

Engaging in the daily practice of grounding, the first kind of grounding that I described above, provides a really good example of what I'm talking about. It, or some intentional practice quite like it, is really the foundation of any magical practice. But it's almost impossible to engage in that practice if you haven't set aside a space and time to do it, if you can't find your altar for all the clutter, if you oversleep, again, and have to charge out of the house in a frantic dash in order to catch the last bus, etc. What it takes varies for each of us, and one witch's well-lived life might look like chaos to another witch. A good test is integrity: are you able to do what you say you'll do, are you able to meet your "mundane" responsibilities, or do you go through your days caught up in a whirlwind that blows you here and there?

No, you don't have to be a black belt martial artist who eats only wheatgrass and tofu. But you have to take care of the physical body that is your vessel for magic on this planet. No, you don't have to have a high-powered job and make a million dollars a year. But you have to live within your means. No, you don't have to live in a palace, or a magical woodland cottage, or a temple by the sea. But you have to live in a safe-enough, clean-enough, organized-enough, comfortable place to which you can retreat and from which you can go forth and do what you want to do in the world. And, no, you don't have to devote yourself to only one activity, but you can't be so over-committed that you never really "do" anything deeply enough for it to change you.

If you don't regularly do this sort of work as Samhein approaches, now, at the end of the secular year, is as good a time as any to take a grounding inventory. What areas of your life are well-grounded? How'd you do that? What areas of your life could stand to be placed upon more solid ground? How will you make that happen?


~Picture found here.


Update: Just to add: I'm completely in favor of living less-than-conventional lives, but it's often even more important to be grounded in those situations. If you choose not to have a "regular nine-to-five" job, good! But it will be even more important for you to manage your finances, to live within your means, to find other ways to provide structure for your days. You might spend lots of time traveling and living away from "home." Great! It will be even more important for you to figure out where, in each new place, you'll ground, to keep your stuff organized enough that you can pick up and go, to pay attention to what you eat, when you sleep, where you can exercise. It's kind of similar to what I say about polyamory. It's great, but it's often even more work than a standard "couple" relationship. At the very least, the work is different enough from what we're "used to" that it can seem like more work. The test, again, is whether or not you're living a life of integrity.

Lie Down In That Grass

Via e-mail, a couple of readers have responded with dismay to my post on calendar magic. "That's not magic; that's basic How to Function 101 with some allusions to the elements thrown in!" And, "Liminal spaces are magical spaces, not dead time at the end of the mundane year!"

Which reminds me of one of Hecate's famous Wiccan distinctions: Some people practice witchcraft. And some people are witches. Neither is any better than the other, but there is a difference.

IMHO, Wicca always was, and hopefully always will be, a religion of the people. And as Medusa recently noted to Thorn Coyle, many, if not most, people have a limited need in their lives for connection with the divine. So for many people, Wicca will always be about a tumble in the Spring clover on Beltane, the enjoyment of mead at Mabon, a moment to remember ancestors at Samhein, a spell for a new job or a new love, and the odd connection with "something else" felt almost by random at a full moon or on a beach at sunrise. A good time at a festival. An 8-times-a-year experience. And that's good. That's practicing witchcraft.

Other people have a much stronger need to spend as much of their time as possible living in connection with the Divine, inhabiting their Goddess-selves, walking around aware that it's all just god pouring god into god. My own shorthand for this is "living as a witch." And what I want to do, what I try to write about on this blog, is not so much practicing witchcraft (there are lots of good blogs about that), but living as a witch. I want to explore how to live as a witch every possible moment in this modern world. I don't, no matter how much some part of me may long for it, live in a Ren Faire forest or a Goddess temple or in a cave on an island. I live in a modern urban center, with congested traffic and Starbucks and homeless people on the streets next to the v rich and the v powerful. I work at a large law firm. I get mammograms and colonoscopies in major modern medical centers. I buy my groceries at Whole Foods. My circle does magic to influence political events in the modern world and I spend most of my day -- almost every single day -- on a computer. And I need to know how to live THAT life as a witch, how to dance THAT dance as fully aware as possible of my connection to everything that is, of the fact that I am a manifestation of the Goddess, of the fact that it's all real, it's all metaphor, there's always more.

And, sure, sometimes, I find liminal spaces by fasting, taking a ritual bath in a tub filled with rose petals picked on the dark moon from my own rose bushes, lighting incense in my ritual room, casting a circle deosil with a silver athame whose handle is sealed with a celtic knot made of gold, and traveling along the astral plane to a spot prepared for me both by my own ritual workings and by my Patroness, a serious-eyed Lady with three heads and a large black dog. I go there for a purpose, to change consciousness/reality/myself/the world at will, to work pre-planned magic in a place where all things are in flux and where change is not only possible, but likely. It's hard work, it's exhilarating, it's serious business.

But I don't do that kind of magic every day. Even if I didn't have to get up, put on a suit, and show up on time at work, I couldn't do that kind of working every day. But I still need to live every day as a witch. Sure, I know I'm a witch when I'm wearing ritual robes and burning incense on charged coals inside a circle of spring-green light. But I need to know how to live as a witch when I'm stuck in traffic on the Roosevelt Bridge, when I'm taking a client to lunch at the Palm, when I'd dropping off drycleaning, when I'm firing up my Apple computer to read blogs, when I'm mowing my lawn, when I'm on my iPhone with Son, when I'm calculating whether or not to refinance my home, when I'm trying to talk myself into just five more minutes on the treadmill.

And, thus, for me, the world, the world that we dare to call "mundane," is full of liminal spaces, many of them as yet undiscovered. It's full of serendipity. It's full of elementals and dryads and pixies and Goddesses and genii locii. It's full of metaphor. It's full of magic. Liminal spaces don't only exist upon the astral; adolescence is a liminal space, menopause is a liminal space, pregnancy is a liminal space, being out of a job is a liminal space, living in a country longing for an evil leader to go away and a new inspiring leader to assume his job is a liminal space, every corner that I turn all day, every intersection through which I drive my car is -- you guessed it -- a liminal space. Being aware of the liminality of each of those situations is a big part of what it means, for me, to live as a witch. And looking for ways to use such "mundane" liminality -- figuring out a magical way to use downtime at the end of the secular year -- is probably, IMHO, a more important part of living as a witch than the limited number of times each year when I dress up in ritual robes and do high magic. If I had, Goddess forfend, to give up one or the other, I'd trade my most ecstatic high ritual experiences for a lifetime of everyday magic. So I balance my checkbook with magical intent, I cook and freeze cabbage lentil soup with magical intent, and I organize my calendar with magical intent, and I call upon the elements for aid, and I ground before I pick up my pen.

Rumi said: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense. That's a liminal space and it doesn't matter where you find it: inside a circle inscribed with the names of seraphim and demons or beneath a full moon on a frosty field or at your desk with your new calendar before you. The important thing is to lie down in that grass.

~Art found here.

Getting To Know The Ground

If you're going to practice grounding, it helps to be familiar with the ground. Garden, even if you've only got a tiny spot or a few window pots. Pull weeds for a friend or volunteer to do it anyplace with a garden: a hospice, a library, a park, a nursing home. I do a lot of weeding, it's one of THE most oddly calming meditative devices that I know. And when I weed, I spend some time examining the roots of the plants that I'm pulling out of the ground. Different plants have different kinds of roots and I find it helpful to have a visual library of lots of different roots inside my head when it's time for me to sink my roots down into the ground. Over time, I've learned that I usually have two sets of roots. A very energetic set of roots, clear and glassy and filled with blue and gold swirls. (Didn't say it made sense. That's just how they appear to me when I begin sinking them into the ground.) And, a second set that's like some young trees that I've pulled out of the ground. Woody and tough as hell, even if a bit thin, with lots of small "hairy" rootlets shooting off the larger "branches".

Go outside and sit on the ground. At a park, near a river, in the mountains, beside a tree. How does it feel to your ass, to your legs, to your back, to your hands? Stretch out on the ground. How does it feel to your belly? Is it sun-warmed, or still damp and chilly from the last rain? What is it saying to you? What do you want to say to it? If you're going to have a relationship with it, you might want to introduce yourself and become familiar with it. Before you go, you know, invading it with your roots.

When you ground and drop your roots into the Earth, I find that it helps to be aware of how the ground is really feeling these days. It's hard and cold in winter, here where I live. Lately, the top layer is squishy from the wealth of recent rain that we've had. Some mornings, the first few inches are frosty. Come Spring, it will likely be wet, as well, but it will warm gradually. In Summer, the ground here can get parched and, especially in the afternoon, the first half an inch or so can be warm from the sun.

When I ground sitting at my altar, as I sink my roots into the ground, I note the top layer of rich soil, the lower layers of red Virginia clay. I note worms and bugs and moles and the roots of the deep old oaks that surround my home, whose roots form a network of protection around this cottage and its grounds. I sink my roots deeper, noting the bones of my ancestors, becoming one again with the Earth, welcoming my roots, grounding me. I sink my roots lower, past the aquifer, through layers of solid rock that nourish me, down deep enough that the ground begins to warm, lower and deeper -- and spreading out wider and wider all the time -- to the very molten core of Mother Earth, the part of my Mother most full of energy. And then, I begin to draw that warmth and energy up.

With practice, you'll likely find that the ground "feels" different when you ground in different places. My circle of wonderful women often does magic on Capitol Hill and, there, the ground feels more marshy to me, a bit less solid, easier to penetrate and more apt to move around a bit. The ground beneath my office feels even marshyer, and more oppressed, burdened by too many buildings and too much concrete. I have to work harder to get grounded there. When I was in the mountains of Vermont recently, the ground was cold, full of tiny rocks, and it "tasted" mineral-ly, like mineral water with a strong taste.

You can approach grounding as an abstract task, a magical practice that doesn't require you to get your hands, well, dirty. And that may work for some people. But, for me, grounding is about developing a real relationship with the ground, with Mother Earth, the kind of familiarity that allows sudden access when necessary: Let me in old friend, I need this and I need it now.


Picture found here.

Even If We're Just Dancing In The Dark

Matrifocus just keeps getting better and better. They've got up a great poem by Starhawk, perfect for these times.

Maenad Prophecy
by Starhawk

When kings wage unjust war,
When poison fills the skies,
When the rich prey on the poor,
When hope for justice dies

When a spell lies o’er the land,
Of malice and of lies,
Then a wild and fearless band
Of women shall arise

Crazy saints, yoginis,
Peering through the gloom,
Maenads and dakinis
Witches grab your brooms!

Sweep away the stench
Sweep away the sneers!
Sweep away the clench
Of hunger and of fears

Dance to feel the passion
Dance to wake the wild,
To honor deep compassion,
For the forest and the child,

Dance to keep the Arctic cool,
To keep the jungle green,
Dance for every holy fool,
For every wound unseen.

Dance for justice, dance for peace
Dance for life to thrive,
May beauty, health and joy increase
For every being alive

Dance in love, dance in wrath,
For chains to fall apart,
Dance to choose a better path,
Dance for strength of heart,

All across the nation,
Bankers quail and glower,
Cracked is the foundation
Of the bastions of power

Strong walls crumble,
Kings face their final hour,
An angry earth shall rumble,
Down shall fall the Tower.

And through its stones shall weave the roots
Of a living tree
That offers us its shining fruits
Of truth and liberty

Fruit to fill each empty hand
With sweet gifts of the earth
Dance to heal this bleeding land —
A new world comes to birth.


© 2008 Starhawk. All rights reserved. Starhawk wrote this piece for the Dance for Life and Regime Change, a Ritual Magic Action scheduled for Halloween night in San Francisco, 2008.

Starhawk's poem seems to me to be a partial answer to a question that Anne's asking:

So here’s the dilemma: any serious reading of the day’s financial news—just pick a day, it doesn’t really matter which—can make the average person feel [haunted with worry about the economy, wary of any conversation for fear of more bad news, eager to do something about the problem]. But when I do that, when I lift my gaze and really study the situation, I become practically incapacitated with fear and am no good for anything, least of all working to improve my financial situation.

Staying lucid in this dream—or nightmare, really—for any length of time is beyond my skill level. I can manage it for a little while, calming myself down from the shock of what is happening long enough to write more, and work more. But this is big and getting worse, and it’s only a matter of time before I slip back into shock about what is going on in the world.

Magically speaking, this is a tremendous opportunity to increase our ability to stay present in both worlds simultaneously. When I get seriously off-center, I have a few tried-and-true ways to re-center myself and carry on. What I would love to hear are all the ways the rest of you have for doing this. Because surely there are some great techniques I don’t know about, and this is the sort of time when we can all use as many good suggestions as possible.

Starhawk's suggestion:

Witches grab your brooms!

Sweep away the stench
Sweep away the sneers!
Sweep away the clench
Of hunger and of fears

Dance to feel the passion
Dance to wake the wild,
To honor deep compassion,
For the forest and the child,

Dance to keep the Arctic cool,
To keep the jungle green,
Dance for every holy fool,
For every wound unseen.

Dance for justice, dance for peace
Dance for life to thrive,
May beauty, health and joy increase
For every being alive

Dance in love, dance in wrath,
For chains to fall apart,
Dance to choose a better path,
Dance for strength of heart,

is a good one. We're witches. The times call out for magical action. Take some. Do magic for yourself and do magic for your world. I feel better every time that I do.

At times when we seem, as, Goddess knows, we do now, at an uncertain crossroads, I tend to invoke -- no surprise! -- my patron Goddess, the three-headed Goddess of the crossroads, Hecate. (Here's a really fun site that's, at least nominally, devoted to her.) She reminds me that liminal times carry as much opportunity as danger, and occasionally, she lifts a finger and points down one road or another.

I also follow Wendell Berry's good advice for times such as these:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Part of what's terrifying about the present economic situation is the awareness that we can do all the "right" things (pay off debt, build up savings, set aside emergency supplies, work hard at our jobs, network, take care of health issues now while we have insurance, etc., etc., etc. -- and we definitely should be doing those things) and STILL get caught in the tsunami of layoffs, inflation, etc. That's actually true all the time; our illusions of control are just that: illusions. But the current situation makes us face that fact. As Anne notes, that makes it an excellent time to grow magically, to increase our ability to stay present in both worlds simultaneously.

And so -- you knew that I was going to say this -- I ground.

Grounding is, for me, the first step in the process of remaining present in all worlds. When fear is getting in the way of being present (you know what the Bene Gesserit witches say: I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.),I add a step to my grounding. When I've sunk my roots down very deep into Mother Earth, I begin to breathe regularly and with awareness. When I exhale, I send my fear down through my roots into the Mother, where it can be transformed. When I inhale, I pull up peace, stability, clarity. I do that until I can truly say the words of Mary Oliver's wonderful poem:

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

From West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems, by Mary Oliver. Published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. Copyright 1997 by Mary Oliver.

And when you feel like that, it's a great time to dance the dance that Starhawk calls for. Last night's full moon, was one of the brightest ever. It's power is only beginning to wane this evening. Ground. Do one practical thing to make yourself safer (put some money in savings, pay a debt, exercise, clean up and clear out junk). Ground. Do one practical thing to make our world better (recycle, take old clothes to a homeless shelter, call your Senator about an important cause, read to a child). Ground. Do some magic to insure prosperity for you and those you love. Ground. And, dance.

Dance to feel the passion
Dance to wake the wild,
To honor deep compassion,
For the forest and the child,

Dance to keep the Arctic cool,
To keep the jungle green,
Dance for every holy fool,
For every wound unseen.

Dance for justice, dance for peace
Dance for life to thrive,
May beauty, health and joy increase
For every being alive

Dance in love, dance in wrath,
For chains to fall apart,
Dance to choose a better path,
Dance for strength of heart!

Picture of Hecate found here.