Bravely Out of the Broom Closet

So we're coming up on what some people have decided is to be "Out Yourself as a Pagan" Day. And, of course, this effort is motivated by good ideas.

We all know the stories about, for example, homophobes who were transformed by the discovery that their child, next-door neighbor whom they really liked, coworker, etc. was gay. It's easy to hate an abstract "Other" and more difficult to maintain your prejudices against someone you know and like.

And the more of us that there -- demonstrably -- are, the more difficult it becomes to pretend that we don't exist, that only angsty teen-age girls practice Witchcraft (as if that were a reason to de-legitamize it), that Witches are all man-hating feminists with granola stuck in their teeth, that only oddball failures become Witches, etc.

Further, there's the simple relief and authenticity that can come from not having to hide a part of who you are. I love it that my Son, DiL, and G/Son, Landscape Guy, and political friends know that I'm a Witch; it's nice that I don't have to hide an important part of my life from them. I like being able to say to Landscape Guy, "I need the stonework around the firepit large enough to accommodate a circle of women." I like being able to say to political friends, "As a Witch, I can never go along with any policy that will lead to eliminating wild spaces."

So, yes, I get the possible value of a "Coming Out" Day for Pagans, even if it's not associated with Pagan Pride Day, which generally comes in October.

However, my formative years were heavily influenced by the union movement (yes, I am that old), and I've searched in vain for any indication that the organizers of "Out Yourself as a Pagan Day" have set up the equivalent of a Strike Fund to pay the expenses of those who get fired for outing themselves or the legal fees of parents who find themselves on the downside of a custody battle. Strike Funds are what serious movements do. I think it's lovely to invite others to take risks, but I am old and cynical enough to understand that people really do lose jobs, leases, custody, etc. when they out themselves. And outing yourself to even one person, especially in today's world of Social Media and internet files that never die, is, at the least, opening the possibility that you will be outed to the entire world.

I've said before that broom closet decisions are personal decisions and that I'm not in a position to make them for even one other Witch. At its core, for me, Witchcraft demands Honor and that means that I completely and unwaveringly respect each Witch's own decisions concerning where hir broom closet begins and ends. I have friends who make their living as public Pagan leaders. I have friends who are "out" in their federal government or nonprofit jobs, but who would fall on their athames before causing their fundie families the pain that would be caused if they "came out" as Witches. And I respect every shade of grey in between. And while my family, close friends, and select neighbors know that I'm a Witch, I could become less effective at and ultimately lose my job if people in that world knew about my religion.

I'll also say that, as someone who has been on the receiving end of TMI concerning other people's (fundie xian I was next to in first-class all the way from SF back to DC, recently, I'm looking at you) religious experiences, I often think that the world would "go round a good deal faster" if casual and business acquaintances were less, rather than more, "out" about their religions. There are (a few) times when religion naturally comes up in the conversation and there are times when you're forcing the issue and requiring others to participate in your own ego needs in ways they'd likely rather not. I don't like it when people force conversations with me about their religions and I don't feel any need to do that to others.

Which is all a rather long-winded wind-up to proposing a few suggestions for those who are going to be interacting with the media during "Out Yourself as a Pagan" Day.

1. The reporter is not your friend. S/he does not want to help you get your message out. Hir job is to sell Viagra. The more sensationalistic a story s/he can turn in, the more Viagra sales. Every word that you say to the reporter needs to be informed by this decision.

2. You need to become crystal clear about your objective. Why are you talking to the press at all? Can you put the message that you want to get out into one, short, pithy sentence? If not, don't talk to the media. Let someone else. Spend as much time as it takes to get your message into one, short, pithy sentence. Lawyers sometimes spend all day writing the opening sentence for a brief or oral argument. If you don't have the time to devote to this effort, then don't talk to the media.

3. My blog is a broken record on this topic, but I'm going to remind you that if you attempt to negate a frame, you reinforce that frame. If you've read even three books on Witchcraft, you've come across the notion that you don't craft a spell to focus on what you don't want. So, for example, you don't write affirmations that say that you're banishing sloth and loneliness from your life. You write affirmations that say that you bring Fire and the ability to focus as well as the ability to attract love into your life. Think of Richard Nixon announcing, "I am not a crook," or Christine O'Donnell saying, "I'm not a witch; I'm you." Today, when people think of Nixon, they think of a crook and when they think of O'Donnell, they remember that she "dabbled into Witchcraft." If you say, "Witches are not evil old women with green skin who do spells to harm people," the next time people think of Witches, they will think of . . . .

The message here is that you MUST NOT begin your interview by telling the reporter that, "Witches don't eat babies," or that "Pagans are not Satanists," or that "We don't really do evil spells." Negating a frame reinforces it. If you give the Viagra salesperson a sound-bite about not being a Satanist or not eating babies, I guarandamntee you, those are the six seconds of your entire, 90 minute conversation, that will show up on tv/on the radio/in print, etc. Really. Trust me. And you are not smarter than the reporter. The reporter does this everyday of hir life, while you may talk to the media a dozen or so (if you're v active) times in your life. If you say it, they will use it to (1) sell Viagra and (2) make you look like an idiot. You are playing on their field. Don't give them ANYTHING that you don't want them to use.

4. "Out Yourself as a Pagan" Day has even more pitfalls, IMHO, in terms of media communication, than does Pagan Pride Day. While even fairly mainstream religions may have Pride Days (DC has a great Greek Orthodox festival, for example), the entire notion of "coming out" brings up the issue of why anyone feels the need to stay in the broom closet in the first place. Discussing prejudices against Pagans (the reason some Pagans stay in the closet) without slipping into the whole "We're coming out because some folks think we eat babies, but we don't," (which winds up on the evening news clipped to "We eat babies"), requires a level of media-savvy that I don't think many of us possess.

So if you are going to participate publicly in this event, I urge you to have one, pithy, quotable sentence about why you are are coming out. "I want the whole world to know that a [doctor, lawyer, computer technician, architect, fireman, neighborhood volunteer, librarian] can also be a Pagan." "I am proud of the ancient traditions of Paganism that brought us democracy, philosophy, science, sustainable agriculture, etc., and I want to share that with my community." "I am proud of who I am and I wanted to participate in this nationwide event to share that with my friends and neighbors."

What will you say if the reporter asks you, "But what about the people who say that Witches eat babies?" You need to not only have your answer to this question written out, you need to practice with a friend (preferably on video, if possible) how you will answer this question and all of its variations. If you don't have time to do this, you don't have time to be a public spokesperson. The objective here is NOT to give a detailed, nuanced, thorough answer to the Viagra salesperson's question. The goal here is to get away from negating a negative frame and to IMMEDIATELY GET BACK to the message you've decided that you want to get out. "Sensationalism aside, Pagans have a long and proud history of providing civilization with important institutions such as democracy and philosophy that . . . ." "What I want to focus on is how modern Pagans can be important in a post-peak-oil world, especially given all we've learned over the ages about respecting the cycles of nature. For example, next month, my group will collect seeds at Ostara to donate to a local community garden, where, last year we . . . . " "As I mentioned, this Summer, MYGROUPX will be holding seminars to teach anyone who's interested the basics of Witchcraft and you can register for these classes at www.mygroupx.com or you can . . . ."

Go spend an afternoon watching, say, Rachael Maddow or Fox "News" and see how conservatives respond to every question that comes up by ignoring the question and repeating the message that they want to get out. It's a learned skill and you can learn it. Buy and read George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant. Role play with a friend. You may not like conservatives, but they have been wildly successful at getting their message out and at framing (death tax, partial birth abortion, America is a xian nation, etc.) the issues that matter to them. If you're smarter than they are, why haven't you been more successful at getting your message out?

I'll leave to each Pagan's own conscience and decison-making process, whether, when, and how to come out. I've already made my own decisions on those issues. But I will beg each Pagan who decides to come out to the media to do it in a way that doesn't harm the rest of us. Dealing with the media is a skill and it can be learned. Or it can be royally botched. You owe it to all of us not to botch it, esp. when it's so easy to just shut up until you know what you're doing.

5. Paganism, Wicca, Faerie, etc. are religions. They are not faiths. Xianity and Islam are based, to a large extent, upon "faith." This is the notion that "believers" have "faith" in, for example, Jesus or Mohamed, and that they accept "on faith" certain precepts of the religion. Even when one's rational mind might cause one to "doubt" certain tenants of such "faiths," one is encouraged to "have faith" in one or another promises of the featured "faith." Not all religions are "faiths." Paganism is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of religions, including, for example, Wicca, Druidism, Asatru, etc. None of these are exclusively "faiths," but they are all religions. So when you talk to the Viagra salespersons, don't describe Paganism as a "faith," or as a (tickles back of throat) "faith community." Describe it as what it is: a religion. My religion has nothing to do with faith and everything to do with direct experience of divinity/nature/nature/divinity/etc. If you're going to speak for all of us, speak for all of us, including the majority of us who have zero faith and 100% experience. Why legitimize the idea that the only valid religions are those based upon faith?

May the Goddess guard those who come out. May the Goddess guard those who practice privately. May all of us show Honor to all of the rest of us. So mote it be.

Picture found here.

My New Name for a Blog

What Medusa Coils Said.

Medusa does a fantastic job of covering topics important to Dianic Witches. If you don't check her out regularly, you should.

Mr. Mubarak, It's Time for You to Go

The god forsakes Antony

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

- Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)


Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Find the Summerlands, Brian Jacques

May the Goddess guard him. May he find his way to the Summerlands. May his friends and family know peace.

So sorry to hear that Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall Series, has died.

Set at the pastoral Redwall Abbey in the misty English past, the books are written for children 8 and up. They center on the triumph of good over evil — specifically the hard-won victories of the abbey’s resident mice, badgers and squirrels over the marauding rats, weasels and stoats that perennially threaten their peaceable kingdom.

There are quests and riddles; cunning treachery and chivalric derring-do; and, in a feature that became a hallmark of the entire series, groaning boards spread with sumptuous feasts, lovingly described.

Redwall is a big favorite of G/Son's. It might seem odd for a Witch to introduce her grandson to a series of books set in an abbey, but the Redwall books (and the related series of animated movies) are never overtly religious, just overtly good, while being honest with kids about things like evil and death and struggle. And the female characters are kick-ass. The descriptions of the feasts at Redwall are written by a man who loved the Earth and its bounty and who would, I think, have agreed that all acts of love and pleasure are rituals of the Goddess. Son says that, no matter how large the meal, if he asks G/Son, "So, is THIS a feast?" G/Son always says, "No," because the meal isn't a proper Redwall feast.

A Perfect Day

In a recent interview with Washington Gardener Magazine, herbalist Jim Duke describes a "typical" day at his 40 acre home near the Lower Patuxent Reservoir, the Green Pharmacy Garden.

[A]t noon, we join in the gazebo for a vegetarian soup or such, with some fresh veggies and culinaries from the garden, some canned or dried, fleshed out with the usual starters like cabbage, carrots, garlic, onions, and potatoes, from the kitchen cabinet; sometimes serenaded with herbal country music from the HerbalBum. And Thursdays, the weekly volunteers' open house, we close with flower-watching (vespertine opening of such flowers as Oenothera or Datura), herbal snacks, live country music, sometimes with great classical guitarist Bruce Casteel, and the herbal folks discussing tall herbal tales and aching herbal tails.

Sounds absolutely wonderful to me.

Picture found here.

What Sadness Sounds Like

I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee

BY HOWARD NEMEROV

I tell you that I see her still
At the dark entrance of the hall.
One gas lamp burning near her shoulder
Shone also from her other side
Where hung the long inaccurate glass
Whose pictures were as troubled water.
An immense shadow had its hand
Between us on the floor, and seemed
To hump the knuckles nervously,
A giant crab readying to walk,
Or a blanket moving in its sleep.

You will remember, with a smile
Instructed by movies to reminisce,
How strict her corsets must have been,
How the huge arrangements of her hair
Would certainly betray the least
Impassionate displacement there.
It was no rig for dallying,
And maybe only marriage could
Derange that queenly scaffolding—
As when a great ship, coming home,
Coasts in the harbor, dropping sail
And loosing all the tackle that had laced
Her in the long lanes ....
I know
We need not draw this figure out.
But all that whalebone came from whales.
And all the whales lived in the sea,
In calm beneath the troubled glass,
Until the needle drew their blood.

I see her standing in the hall,
Where the mirror’s lashed to blood and foam,
And the black flukes of agony
Beat at the air till the light blows out.

Picture found here.

Home Soil

Every garden is based on affinity for and knowledge of the ground, on true intimacy and kinship with your home soil that comes not only from cultivating the garden but also from sitting completely still on the earth that you garden, and walking aimlessly and mindfully about on this same ground. These practices are rooted in listening to your soil and in following your garden down to its source. Begin by sitting still and doing absolutely nothing. Make yourself very comfortable on the ground and then, don't move at all. Give your full attention to what is happening around you. Watch the shadows of the black mulberry leaves move like cirrus clouds across the face of your garden. Be ordered by the beat of the ruby-throated hummingbird pulling red nectar out of full-blown salvias. Sink down to earth and sit deep in the saddle of your home garden. Settle yourself on yourself and let the flower of your life force bloom.

~Wendy Johnson in Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World.

Landscape Guy dropped this book off at my house a week or so ago, and I am absolutely LOVING it. Reading it along with David Abrams' Becoming Animal (I've always been one of those readers who has a number of books going at once; it used to drive my mother crazy. Do you do this or do you read one thing at a time?) is an amazing experience in connecting to the Earth as part and parcel of a spiritual practice.

What do you know about your home soil that you didn't know a year ago?

Picture found here.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

A Task for Writers

For those of us who care for an earth not encompassed by machines, a world of textures, tastes, and sounds other than those that we have engineered, there can be no question of simply abandoning literacy, of turning away from all writing. Our task, rather, is that of taking up the written word, with all of its potency, and patiently, carefully, writing language back into the land. Our craft is that of releasing the budded, earthly intelligence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of the things themselves – to the green uttering forth of leaves from the spring branches. It is the practice of spinning stories that have the rhythm and lilt of the local soundscape, tales for the tongue, tales that want to be told, again and again sliding off the digital screen and slipping off the lettered page to inhabit these coastal forests, those desert canyons, those whispering grasslands and valleys and swamps. Finding phrases that lace us in contact with the trembling neck-muscles of a deer holding its antlers high as it swims toward the mainland, or with the ant dragging a scavenged rice-grain through the grasses. Planting words, like seeds, under rocks and fallen logs – letting language take root, once again, in the earthen silence of shadow and bone and leaf.

~David Abram

Picture found here.

The Garden in Winter

The ground's been covered with snow for the last few weeks, which is actually good for the garden, but difficult for this gardener. It keeps me mostly inside and leaves me longing for a chance to be outside, breathing fresh air and just being with plants. Today I went to the DC Seed Swap, sponsored by Washington Gardener Magazine, at Green Springs Gardens in Alexandria. It's drizzly, grey, and cold here, but it was still wonderful to step into the gardens with their very-well-shoveled walks, to feel the energy of seedlings and seeds (and gardeners!) inside the Horticultural Center, and to begin to feel my enthusiasm building over the opportunity to get things to grow.

There's this thing that happens to me (does this happen to you, too?) when I step outside in a garden, even in Winter, and can let my eyes move over a vista. There's a palpable loosening and expanding of my soul and a brightening in my body in the areas of my yellow and green chakras. It happened the moment I entered the gardens and I'm still feeling it, maybe more strongly than normal because it's been weeks since I've been anywhere except inside, in the city, in my car.

I took seeds of woad, Grandpa Otts' morning glories, dill, black-eyed Susans, and wildflower mix and came home with white narcissus bulbs and black bat plants. And a determination to spend more time with plants, even if we do still have a bit more Winter weather on the way.

/Goes and compulsively checks, yet again, seeds planted just 4 days ago.

Pictures by the author; if you copy, please link back.

My New Name for a Blog

What Gus Said.

Gus' post on abortion is short and incredibly well-reasoned. Please check it out. Here's a taste:

Spiritual literalism degenerates into irrationality.
. . .

By reading sacred texts in a purely logocentric way [fundamentalists] ultimately trap themselves and cut themselves off from all spiritual insight because as Sallustius and Augustine and Ambrose all recognized, they cannot be read that way wisely. When the 'literalists' interpretations are contradicted by historical evidence or scientific discoveries, because they have rejected myth they have no way to incorporate new knowledge into their spiritual understanding, and so new knowledge must be rejected.

I have a pretty much standard reply to people who tell me that we must outlaw abortion because it "kills babies." It goes like this:

First, please get back to me when we feed, house, clothe, give medical care to, and educate the actual babies who are actually born. Until then, abortion is better than exposure or sale into slavery, which is how humanity dealt with unwanted pregnancies for centuries and centuries.

Second, this society "kills babies" every damn day. We kill them with our bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. We kill them because we've made the decision that it's more important for CEOs to get obscene bonuses than it is to make all kinds of companies stop polluting and poisoning the commons. We kill them because we've made the decision that it's too politically costly to stand up to the NRA and impose the regulations that the Second Amendment calls for when it talks about "well-regulated" militias. We kill them because we've made the decision that it's more important for America's wealthiest 2% (and corporations) to bear almost no tax burden than it is to provide the visiting nurse services and mental health care that it would take to stop some poor woman's boyfriend from shaking a six-month-old to death because it was crying. And the people who wail the loudest about how abortion "kills babies" are generally in favor of those other "baby-killing" decisions. So forgive me if I can't believe that they really give a flying frap about "killing babies" and that they actually have other motives deeply related to preserving patriarchy.

Third, anyone who truly wanted to cut down on the number of abortions (which would seem to include anyone who actually thought that abortion "kills babies") wouldn't be in favor of criminalizing abortion. Because criminalizing abortion no more prevents abortions than criminalizing pot possession prevents people from possessing pot. Criminalizing abortion simply pushes it into back alleys, where it not only "kills babies," but also kills women. Anyone who actually wanted to cut down on the number of "babies killed" by abortion would, instead, be doing the things that decades of research show actually do minimize unwanted pregnancies and, therefore, abortions. You know, things like regular and well-funded actual sex education (which would teach that abstinence is a rather-prone-to-failure method of birth control), free, easily-available, safe, and effective birth control. Education for girls. A social safety net, including pre- and post-natal medical care for mothers and children, free and fantastic day care, preschool, and early education, financial support for mothers and kids who need it, parenting education available throughout a child's life, etc. Yet, the people who wail the loudest about "killing babies" generally are actively opposed to each of these things.

So, you know, don't hand me shit and tell me that it's Shinola. I'm not stupid and I can see through that "oh, abortion kills babies" bullshit. Sell crazy someplace else; we're all stocked up here. And the planet's way past its carrying capacity, which kills and is going to continue killing people of all ages.

Picture found here. (And yes, sometimes, a picture DOES speak a thousand words.)

First (Week) of the Month Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and declare it a good day.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading.

My New Name for a Blog

What Sara A. Said.

"Most witches don't believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don't believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman." ~ Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was a cute little witchlet armed with a copy of The Spiral Dance in one hand and The White Goddess in the other. I dove in, like you do, with exuberance. Reading Tarot! Casting spells! Trance journeys! Rituals! Meditations! Communing with trees! I did a self-dedication rite that I wrote myself! My awesomely shiny ear-wet witchiness was a sight to behold.

Possibly because I was kicking up such a fuss, a being started talking to me. She said I should call her Rowan.

"Are you THE GODDESS?" I asked.

"No, I'm something you can talk to," was the reply.

"Well, how come I don't get to talk to the real thing?" I wanted to know.

Suddenly, I was aware of the vast, cosmically profound black and starry depths of the Universe, and the intelligence that permeates it all, an intelligence so immense and complex that it is impossible to apprehend even how immense, complex, and profound it really is, only that the least touch from it overwhelms.

My brain did that thing that computers do when you try to run too much information through them. I blue-screened. *BOGGLE BOGGLE BOGGLE BOGGLE*

. . . then it went away. Rowan said, "That's why."

You should definitely read the whole thing.

Hat tip: Angela Raincatcher

Picture found here.

Sixth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival

There are the poems that you love, and then there are the poems that you write into your will. Here's one that I made the nice young lawyer from the white-shoe law firm write into mine:

When Death Comes

~Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.


Picture found here.

Sixth Annual Poetry Festival

I've posted this before, but I love this poem, especially the call that it makes for us to find what we need in our landbase.



Blessed Imbolc.

We Need It All

Do what you love. Do what you can. Do what best serves your landbase.

Poetry for Imbolc

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
-- Sheenagh Pugh

On this Imbolc, may it be so for you.

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.

'Scuze Me While I -- Blam!

This week's page of my Ecological Calendar at work tells me that, at this time of year, some bees from every hive begin to make forays out in search of food, but that many are killed by freezing to death or by flying into snowbanks, which they mistake for the sky. I had this evil image of a heroic bee flying along in search of food, communing with the great Winter sky after weeks stuck inside the hive, and then, suddenly, blam! A snowbank. And the poor bee's last thoughts, inscribed idly by its poor frozen little legs doing their final bee dance, are "WTF?"

But on a more serious note, the bees' need for food is yet another good reason to begin starting some seedlings now (at least if you live, as I do, in Zone 7) so that they'll be ready to plant outside once the danger of frost has passed. Those seedlings will flower early and provide the bees with some needed food.

I save the pots that I get when I buy seedlings, wash them out in late Summer/early Autumn, and then re-use them every year to start seedlings. I've also made pots out of newspaper, which are great, as long as the ink is vegetable-based. You can pop them, paper pot and all, into the ground and the paper just decomposes. It's a perfect way to spend Imbolc, and if you have children, you can always get them to help, mark "their" pot for them, and then do all kinds of lessons about Science, Math (measurement, esp.), Poetry, Music, Art, etc.

Tomorrow, I'll be potting marigold, woad, cucumbers, and some orange cosmos (that I got as a freebie) for guerrilla gardening. I'll also sit down with my stack of garden porn catalogues and order datura, French tarragon, sweet basil, dill, Italian oregano, white foxgloves, black hollyhocks, and more black day lilies.

What are you planting? How many bees did you dance with last year?

I've got packets of one-year-old woad seeds for the first three people to email me their address at hecate demetersdatter at hot mail dot come.

Blessed Imbolc!

Nekhbet's Children

My brilliant friend NTodd has a good post that shows the historical developments in the growing field of performing effective revolutions. One hopes that, as people gain more experience with the business of overthrowing repressive regimes, they'll pay attention to lessons learned from previous attempts. I've no idea what's really going on in Egypt (no one has, just now, not even the Egyptians), but NTodd's post provides reason to hope that the young people in Egypt have been paying attention.

Ever since this revolution began, several days ago, I've had this huge sense of Hecate floating gigantically over that part of the world. For me, Hecate is that magical power that creates the situation in which change (personal, political (of course, that's redundant), world-shaping, time-sensitive) can occur. She doesn't cause the change, She shifts the atmosphere, gets a butterfly to flap its wings in Brazil, moves the molecules of air just a bit farther apart so that something new can begin to infill, opens up a doorway, signals liminality. And that's what makes Her both a dangerous and a deeply-beloved Goddess. And I can see Her floating -- three-headed, key-bearing, sycle-weilding, filth-eating, and holding Her torches high -- over every map of Egypt that I've looked at.

I am not a devotee of the Egyptian pantheon, although I've called to Isis, Nekhbet, and Nuit in extremis and I see much to honor in all of those alien and strange deities. But I have a candle burning on my altar for Egypt, for the young people there who hope to affect positive change, and for the protection of the many ancient temples and artifacts. May mighty Hecate, who strode out of the Anatolian planes into Greece and thence to Egypt and the world shift the winds for positive change. Whoooosh.

Update:

Janet Kane says:

I hate to say I told you so, but for the last few months I have stated that the Uranus/Pluto Square is the next evolution of the Uranus Conjunct Pluto that we experienced in 1964 to 1969. Uranus/Pluto brings in revolutionary energy and the promise to totally transform society. Of course, all of the astrologers I know predicted the same thing. I didn’t realize that the revolutionary activates would take place in the Middle East.

At the same time that Uranus/Pluto is square, Saturn is opposing and squaring Pluto. Saturn turned retrograde on the day the protests started in Egypt. Saturn was opposite Uranus from 1917 to 1923 when we had the Russian Revolution. Also, Jupiter entered Aries on Jan 22. Jupiter is expansive and Aries is the energy needed to go out and express the need for freedom. This complex configuration of planets started in 2010 and will be with us for the next 4 years.

More Janet here. She's v good.
Picture found here.

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