Blessed Mabon

Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, willful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world wielding shoulder
Majestic as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet

~Gerard Manley Hopkins

Picture found here.

Taking G/Son, Tomorrow, to the RenFaire

My only real objectives are to listen to bagpipes and to get him in the kilts of his mama's Scottish ancestors.

Last year, we walked in, he on his fadder's shoulders, and he looked at the pennants a-flying, and said, "Oh, Nonna. Isn't it so beautiful?"

Heh.

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.

The Witch of "This" Place

Suddenly, the nights are noticeably longer and there are, in fact, leaves falling on the lawn. The CSA is delivering acorn squash, and apples, and mushrooms and I'm thinking of soups. I've been able to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows. In a few days, the Wheel of the Year will have turned all the way around to Mabon, the second of the three Harvest Feasts. (For the first time in years, I'll be out of town, away from my amazing circle of women, celebrating on my own, due to a court schedule beyond my control. I'm working on a plan to commune with some new nature so that I don't wind up making a sad little altar in my hotel room and feeling (too!) sorry for myself.)

Having three harvests is a pretty neat thing. It goes back, I think, to a time when monoculture was unheard of. If you grow different fruits and vegetables and raise different animals (as any sane people would do unless they lived in an incredibly hostile environment), they mature at different times. And you have different harvests, which come in an almost rolling cascade: radishes and asparagus giving way to too many tomatoes, the tomatoes giving way to too many zucchini, the zucchini giving way to the first autumn squashes and winter greens. In my herb garden, the tarragon is finished and the basil is warning me that if I don't "get around" this weekend to making it into pesto to be frozen in ice cube trays for the winter, I'll be out of luck. One thing about harvests is, when the food is ready to be picked, it's ready to be picked. We have to stop, pay attention, do what the plant requires of us when the plant requires it. That's part of what it means to be "in relationship" with the land.

It's traditional among many Wiccans to view this time of year as a time when we "harvest" other things, as well. If you set goals for yourself last Samhein, and if you've worked on those goals and been blessed with good health and good luck, you may be close to reaping the rewards of your work, whether spiritual, magical, financial, emotional, physical, or educational. And, if you're not, now's a good time to figure out what you can salvage and what happened to get in your way, all in preparation for the final harvest feast of Samhein.

I find it a good time of year, as well, to take stock. What have you got to carry you into the cold and difficult part of the year? What might you need to focus on now, that may have gotten lost in the heat of summer, the long days laboring in the threshing field?

If you consider yourself to be a member of a Nature Religion, I'd like to suggest that one of the areas you consider is your relationship with Nature. Do you have a relationship with -- not just a vaguely benign feeling for -- your landbase, your local watershed, some particular plants, or animals, or places near to where you live? If so, what can you do to improve that relationship? We Witches say that power follows attention. If not, what can you do to begin to actually live your Nature Religion? We Witches say that power follows attention.

By now, you know that I don't believe that, "Well, but I live in the city," is a good excuse. Most Pagans in America today live in cities. And the landbase of every city in America is crying out for relationship with its humans. You don't have to have a yard. As I've noted before, cities are full of deserted spaces, almost custom made for a Witch's attention and connection. (And devotee of Hers that I am, I can't help but mention that it is in just such deserted, liminal spaces that Hecate often resides.) In Last Child in the Forest: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv writes about the work of Robert Michael Pyle, who described his relationship as a child with "a century-old irrigation channel near his home. The ditch . . . was his 'sanctuary, playground, and sulking walk,' his 'imaginary wilderness, escape hatch, and birthplace as a naturalist.'"

Louv:

"These are the places of initiation, where the borders between ourselves and other creatures break down, where the earth gets under our nails and a sense of play gets under our skin," Pyle writes. These are the "secondhand lands, the hand-me-down-habitats where you have to look hard to find something to love." Richard Mabey, a British writer and naturalist calls such environments, undeveloped and unprotected, the "unofficial countryside." Such habitats are often rich with life and opportunities to learn; in a single decade, Pyle recorded some seventy kinds of butterflies along his ditch.

What "unofficial countryside" is your countryside? The crisp Fall days are perfect for walking around, looking, and listening. Tell me what you find.

Picture found here.

Our Mabon

A trip w friends to the farmers' market. Sun-warmed figs and sweet, soft cheese. Icy cold white wine. Mixed greens, balsamic, olive oil. Rissotto w corn, tomatoes, and basil picked that minute from the deck. Rockfish planked w rosemary picked a minute before from the bush. Chicken thighs w garlic, lemon, and rosemary under the skin. Jazz trumpets. People I love. Discussions of gratitude. May it be so for you.

Blessed Mabon

J. Keats

CCLV. Ode to Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease; 10
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 15
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day 25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Picture found here.

Harvest

This weekend, my wonderful circle of amazing women and I were, once again, directly in the shadow (and Shadow!) of power, doing magic. This time, with a serious Mabon bent. In spite of what assholes (and I apologize, in advance, to all real assholes, which perform an important function) such as Dana Milbank may think, the "real people" of DC have always adored our farmers' markets. The renovation of Eastern Market is complete and, like my boobs, is both real and fabulous!

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

Mabon And Living In Relationship With The Land

There are eight Wiccan Sabbats each year: Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon, and Samhein. I admit that Mabon is one of the ones that has often felt less "witchy" and significant to me. It's sometimes called "The Witches' Thanksgiving," which sort of makes it sound like a September version of the American Thanksgiving holiday, but one that falls too early to have that lets-eat-a-lot-because-seriously-people-there's-frost-and-shit-out-there-and-you-know-a-hard-rain-is-gonna-fall feeling that gives American Thanksgiving its real energetic push. But the more that I work with, and listen to, and continue to be in relationship with this one particular bit of land, the more I "get" Mabon.

First of all, the veils that began, incrementally, to thin on Litha now get demonstrably thinner every day and you can feel the rapid progress. By Ostara, they'll be back to "normal," which, for veils, means: but you can still slip through them, you just have to know what you're doing and do a bit of work. Being in relationship with this spot of land for a number of years now has allowed me to learn how the veils "feel" at all times. It's almost automatic, sort of like being aware of the quality of light or the presence or absence of bird song or cicada chant. I wake up in the middle of the night or the morning and sense them, I pull weeds in the herb bed and am aware of them, I walk outside in the pouring rain, stretch out my hand, and feel their heft. Mabon feels, in very many ways, like the beginning of, or the prequel to, Samhein.

Second, there's the actual harvest. Two years ago, our oak grove masted and there were more acorns than any dozens of squirrels could ever eat. I raked up a few tons of wet acorns, cursed them, spent the whole next spring pulling infant oak trees out of the cottage garden, the lawn, the poison garden, the mint. Last year, there weren't a dozen acorns from the entire grove. A number of our squirrels died off, which meant that the fox went hungry, and there were, due to poor nutrition, v few squirrel babies this Spring. This year, the harvest looks normal, and the squirrels love the new, big, flat, irregular flagstones that make up the winding walk to my front door. Apparently, those stones were made for cracking acorns. And, there's the harvest from the herb bed that I put in Spring before last. This year, the lavender and tarragon and sage and thyme and dill came back with a vengeance, the rosemary overwintered and grew quite a bit, the parsley came on almost too strong, and the pineapple sage, well, it's just ridiculous. Even the mint that was moved into pots is doing almost too well, the morning glories now come completely from self-seeding, and I'm growing dozens of datura, all from my own seeds. My rain barrel and I have learned each other's rhythms, and the beech tree and I are now friends. This year was, in so many ways, the Year of the Landscaping. I can't wait until next year to really see the results of all the black day lilies, white cottage garden flowers, and glossy gardenias that we put in this year. I plan to reap the harvest of beauty from this year's investment from now until I die.

And, third, I'm focused quite a bit on using this Sabbat to, as I imagine my ancient grandmothers did, take stock. To count up what I have, what I lack, what I'll need to use sparingly this winter, what I need to initiate this coming Spring. What must I hurry and procure and what should I be dumping or using up right away? I don't just mean that in terms of seeds, or dried beans set aside for soup, or dried herbs made into smudge sticks or hung from the rafters for cooking. I'm looking at my wonderful and blessed relationship w G/Son, the time we spent in nature, reading books, playing trains, and watching President Obama make his very serious promise to the country, to Nonna, and to G/Son. I'm looking at my amazing circle of amazing women, doing trans-Atlantic magic, magic in the shadow (and the Shadow) of power, magic for ourselves and the world. I'm counting up legal wins at work, political/activist wins and losses, plusses and minuses in terms of my health. Even in these areas, my relationship w the land helps. My continuing communication with this land informs my thinking, grounds me, allows me to be honest with myself about where I'm doing well and where I need to apply more effort, come Imbolc.

What does Mabon mean to you? Do you use it to take stock? How do you celebrate it? What are the veils all around you doing right now?

Photo by the author. Please link back if you copy.

Mabon's Almost Here And The Veil Begins Thinning In Earnest

Not a big Updike fan, but I've always liked this one:

September

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze."



Picture found here.

Mabon Approaches

As we rush onward into Mabon, the late afternoon sun is doing such amazing things with the Japanese Maples that Landscape Guy planted last Fall.

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

Listening To The Turning Of The Wheel

Mabon's coming, so quickly that you can almost hear it approaching if you stop, listen, pay attention.


Eternal Spirit of Justice and Love,
At this time of Thanksgiving we would be aware of our
dependence on the earth and on the sustaining presence of other
human beings both living and gone before us.

As we partake of bread and wine, may we remember that
there are many for whom sufficient bread is a luxury, or for whom
wine, when attainable, is only an escape. Let our thanksgiving for
Life's bounty include a commitment to changing the world, that
those who are now hungry may be filled and those without hope
may be given courage.

Amen.

~Congregation of Abraxas.

Photo found here.

What I Love About This Religion

Just Past the Peak

Well, I was going to do a long post on Mabon, but you can just go here and read every word.

Hat tip to Innana.

Art found here.

From A Wind In The Door By Madeline L'Engle

I fill you wIth Naming.
Be!
Be butterfly and behemoth,
be galaxy and grasshopper,
star and sparrow,
you matter,
you are,
be!
Be caterpillar and comet,
be porcupine and planet,
sea sand and solar system,
sing with us, dance with us,
rejoice with us,
for the glory of creation,
angle worms and angel host,
chrysanthemum and cherubim
(O cherubim)
Be!
Sing for the glory
of the living and the loving
the flaming of creation
sing with us
dance with us
be with us
Be!

They were not her words only.
They were the words of Senex,
of the Deepening Sporos,
of all the singing farae,
the laughter of the greening farandolae,
Yadah itself,
all the mitochondria,
all the human hosts,
the earth,
the sun,
the dance of the star whose birthing she had seen,
the galaxies,
the cherubim and seraphim,
wind and fire,
the words of the Glory.

Echtroi! You are Named! My arms surround you. You
are no longer nothing. You are. You are filled You are me.
You are
Me.

Lately, I've been re-reading some of my childhood favorites and, duh, realizing how almost everything that I read throughout my entire childhood was about witchcraft, and magic, and mysticism. And I never knew; like the person who spoke prose all his life, I never knew. Anne has a great post; you have to read the comments about how people came to Paganism. And, although, for me, the aha moment came in a dry, dusty, political tome (ha!), all my life, every book that I took off a library shelf was preparing me for that moment, it seems to me.

I drove today, as I do every work day, past Spout Run, just by where it empties into the beautiful Potomac River. And I saw what I saw and have known there before. I live in a world more full of wonder and Naming (which, we all know, is the secret to magic and is, of course, what witches do) than I could ever have imagined.

(And, how could I have know, when I read A Wind In The Door the first dozen times that L'Engle was such a fan of de Chardin? And why would I have expected anything else? you matter you are be!) It's all a glass bead game. (Have I told you the poem about goblins and glass beads?)


Art found here

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?

Autumn's Coming

WHERE THERE'S FEAR THERE'S POWER

Where there's fear there's power, passion is the healer
Desire cracks open the gate -
If you're ready it'll take you through


But nothing lasts forever, time is the destroyer,
The wheel turns again and again -
Watch out, it'll take you through.


But nothing dies forever, Nature is the renewer,
The wheel turns again and again -
If you're ready it'll take you through.


by Starhawk