What Eric Said

by Eric Boehlert

Within the fast-forward world of campaign journalism, it's not considered cool to examine the recent past in order to provide context for today's events. (We know it's not cool because nobody does it.) Nonetheless, here's a very brief history lesson that the political press prefers to ignore.

At the Democratic National Convention in 1992, Jerry Brown, who finished a very distant second to the party's nominee, had his name placed into nomination and addressed the assembled convention. After seconding his own nomination (true story), Brown delivered a fiery speech that thrilled his unruly supporters inside Madison Square Garden. Brown's ill will toward nominee Bill Clinton was so legendary that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution considered it newsworthy that Brown's convention address "avoided a direct attack" on the nominee, while the Los Angeles Times noted Brown "did not specifically endorse presidential nominee Bill Clinton."

Indeed, for weeks leading up to the convention, Brown refused to back his party's nominee, complaining to The New York Times in June that supporting Clinton was like buying a ticket for the Titanic.

Four years earlier, the Democratic convention in Atlanta witnessed even more tumult from the second-place finisher when Jesse Jackson, furious at being passed over for the vice-presidential slot by the party's nominee, Michael Dukakis (who failed to call Jackson and tell him the VP news), threatened to withhold his delegates' support from the party's nominee. In fact, just hours before the convention began, Jackson's supporters threatened to place the candidate's name into nomination for the vice presidency, which would have created a massive floor fight between Jackson and Dukakis' pick, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas.

Pre-convention tension grew so heated that the mild-mannered Dukakis was quoted as saying, "I don't care what Jesse Jackson does. I'm going to this convention and I'm going to win." During his convention keynote address, which lasted nearly an hour -- much longer than expected, Jackson did not specifically endorse Dukakis.

End of history lesson.

Now, take those historical nuggets from 1992 and 1988 and transport them to Denver this week, and try to imagine what the press reaction would be (not the political reaction, but the press reaction) if Hillary Clinton delivered her address Tuesday night and did not endorse the Democratic Party's nominee.

Honestly, I have trouble even picturing the response, mostly because there has already been such an unhinged media response (see Maureen Dowd, if you must) to Clinton's finishing second, speaking at the convention, and supporting the party's nominee. If she snubbed the nominee? We'd probably see a media-credentialed riot, with hordes of pundits and reporters roaming the late-night streets of Denver (Pitchforks? Probably) in search of Clinton and looking to inflict long-term pain.

Fact: Many in the press have portrayed Clinton's planned convention address, as well as the fact that her name is being placed into nomination, as an unprecedented, heavy-handed power grab.

Fact: It's not. In years past, Democratic candidates who won lots of primaries and accumulated hundreds of delegates (sorry, Howard Dean and Bill Bradley) have always been allowed to address the convention and very often place their name into nomination. It's the norm. It's expected. It's a formality.

This newly manufactured media attack on Clinton is just the latest in a long line of press grenades thrown her way this year. But this time, she's not the only victim, because the media's concocted story line is being used to unfairly skewer Barack Obama, too.

Consider New York magazine: "Obama Agrees to Roll-Call Vote for Clinton. Does That Make Him a Sissy?"

What's so startling in watching the coverage of the Clinton convention-speech story has been the complete ignorance displayed about how previous Democratic conventions have dealt with runners-up like Clinton. It's either complete ignorance or the media's strong desire to painstakingly avoid any historical context, which, in turn, allows the press to mislead news consumers into thinking Clinton's appearance (as well as the gracious invitation extended by Obama) represents something unique and unusual. Something newsworthy.

Based on previous conventions, if a candidate had accumulated as many delegates and votes as Clinton did during the primaries and then did not have her name placed into nomination, that would represent a radical departure from the convention norm.

But, boy, in 2008, an awful lot of media outlets have played dumb. When covering the August 14 announcement about Clinton's role in Denver, they miraculously forgot to make any historical reference to similar names-placed-in-nomination at previous conventions.

Instead, readers and viewers were left with the obvious impression that what was scheduled to happen in Denver was remarkable, an anomaly. And I suppose if you look at the events through a soda straw, it does look unusual. But if you include the slightest bit of context, the story changes into something normal and routine.

But that's not the story the press wants to tell (the Clintons are not normal!), so the press simply erased the context and stuck to its preferred story line that Clinton's appearance in Denver and the placing of her name in nomination are one for the record books.

Searching the recent news archives, it's hard to find many articles or television segments that reported on Clinton's symbolic nomination and also mentioned that runner-up Jerry Brown had been nominated in '92 or that Jesse Jackson had been nominated in '88 or that Gary Hart had been nominated in '84. (You get the idea.)

When The New York Times reported on Clinton's pending nomination, it made no reference to historical precedents. Neither did The Boston Globe, nor The Wall Street Journal, nor The Washington Post. And on and on and on.

On CNN, Jack Cafferty commented, "The Democratic National Convention is now shaping up to be quite a party for Hillary Clinton. Her name will be placed in nomination. She'll give a prime-time address." He made no mention that that's what previous runners-up had done at conventions.

Let's give credit to the Los Angeles Times, though. In the final two sentences in an article reporting the Clinton convention story, the Times miraculously found space to note that Brown, Jackson, and Hart all had their second-place names placed into nomination.

Actually, the real credit goes to CNN polling director Keating Holland (figures, he doesn't work in the newsroom), who posted a lengthy analysis at CNN.com. Holland's piece not only put Clinton's role in Denver into historical perspective ("Overall, between 1972 and 1992, 10 Democratic candidates who lost the nomination in the primaries went on to have their names formally placed in nomination at the convention."), it also pointed out that Clinton represents the only runner-up to speak at the convention who formally endorsed the party's nominee months before the convention; i.e., all the others grudgingly held out on endorsing their rivals.

But not Clinton. Yet she's the one slimed by media venom.

Even after all these months, I still don't completely understand why Clinton's essentially centrist campaign for the White House ginned up so much open contempt from the press corps, which has felt completely comfortable addressing her in an openly derogatory and condescending manner. The issue of her convention involvement simply allowed the press to whack her around like a piñata one more time, regardless of the facts.

Just take a look at a recent edition of ABC's CW-worshipping daily bulletin The Note as it mocked Clinton's convention role with barely containable contempt:

Maybe it was better for the Obama campaign to invite you inside, since you would have made an ugly scene outside. Surely Sen. Barack Obama can afford to be gracious, even to you, since he'll leave Denver with the only prize that counts.

"Even to you." That's a nice touch, coming from the same press corps that erupts with indignation whenever somebody suggests Clinton might have been tarred with sexist campaign coverage. (Y'think? National Review Online, August 15: "Sure, Hillary's fat and waddly and screechy and gives pantsuits a bad name.")

And this from Radar magazine:

Barack Obama has approved Hillary Clinton's dubious campaign to put herself up for nomination at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. We have to ask: Is it because she's a woman or just power-hungry?

Note that Clinton's convention campaign was "dubious," which was accurate if Radar, y'know, ignored facts and precedent and history and all that annoying stuff.

Meanwhile, what was The Note's proof that Clinton would have "made an ugly scene outside" the convention if not included? The Note had none. And that's what's been so amazing about watching the brazen, Clinton's-trying-to-steal-the-convention-with-a-speech coverage: The narrative is built on a swamp. The press has provided virtually no facts, not even anonymous quotes, to support its beloved narrative that Hillary Clinton's planned speech ignited some kind of civil war inside the Democratic Party.

What's curious is that journalists who have actually bothered to cite campaign sources about her speech and symbolic nomination came away with a very different picture of what was unfolding behind the scenes.

Writing at his Atlantic blog, Marc Ambinder, who seems to enjoy regular access to Obama sources, noted that "reports of strife between negotiators for Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama are exaggerated" and that "multiple sources in both campaigns have described the negotiations as relatively free of acrimony."

The next day, Ambinder returned to the topic perplexed, wondering why so many members of the press were pushing the clearly inaccurate story line that the Obama and Clinton camps were practically at war over the convention schedule.

Ambinder was either being naïve or playing nice with his Beltway colleagues. (My guess is the latter.) Because it was obvious the press didn't care whether the rift about Clinton's speech was real or imagined. The story helped journalists advance their beloved narrative that Clinton is a political-party wrecking ball and that Obama is too weak to control her. So even if the evidence ran counter to that, the press was sticking with its story line.

Like Ambinder, another journalist who actually reported the story was Joan Walsh at Salon.com, who wrote, "My sources say the Obama campaign was enthusiastic about the idea of putting Clinton's name in nomination, having independently reached the conclusion that it was the best way to honor her achievement and do more to win over her supporters."

She then included a quote from Obama spokesman Bill Burton:

"The conversations with her folks were very cordial and we've been able to work very closely with them as we unify this party. ... We couldn't be happier about how things are going with Senator Clinton and her team."

Burton made several public pronouncements like that regarding the Denver convention schedule, but New York Times columnist Gail Collins mocked the idea that the scheduling had been cordial and easy, instead comparing the convention task to negotiating a Middle East between "enemy forces."

And then there was Washington Post columnist Jeff Birnbaum who announced Obama never should have allowed Clinton to be nominated, suggesting it was a huge political mistake. How did Birnbaum know? He just knew. The fact that polling found Democrats by an almost 2-to-1 margin thought Clinton's nomination would be good for party unity was of no interest to Birnbaum or anyone else in the press spinning the event as a Democratic catastrophe.

FYI, Birnbaum told The Wall Street Journal he was "grateful" for "Hillary Clinton's attempt tacitly to take over the Obama victory" because it was a great story that the press could cover throughout the convention. (Oh, goody.) As one blogger wrote after reading Birnbaum's quote, "I thought journalists were supposed to uncover the facts and report the story, not decide on the story and then interpret the facts to accommodate their storyline."

Meanwhile, let's be clear: Clinton isn't the only injured party here. After the press constructed the phony premise abut Clinton's convention speech, critics then used it, unfairly, to tag Obama as a softie who can't even stand up to a woman. (Gasp.)

"Russia rolls over Georgia, Hillary Clinton does the same to Barack Obama. Now we know who's boss." (Michael Goodwin, New York Daily News)
"If Hillary Clinton can ride [roughshod] over this guy what do you think bin Laden will do?" (Dick Morris, on Fox News)
"Russia invades Georgia. Hillary invades Obama's convention. Obama does nothing constructive on either count." (Amanda Carpenter, at Townhall.com)
Why were critics able to get off those cheap shots? Because the press, strenuously ignoring facts and recent history, was determined to paint Clinton as the ultimate party crasher.

—E.B.

Pagans At The DNC.

Rita Moran from Blue Pagan has a great post about an interfaith ceremony at the DNC that was actually, surprisingly enough, interfaith. It's such a drink of cool water for Pagans when that happens.

Now, if they'd just start answering Rita's e-mails.



Picture found here.

My American Prayer

I live in a swing state. And, unless you live somewhere v safely blue, we're both going to vote for Mr. Called to Serve and Mr. Hate on Anita Hill. Because the Patriarchy doesn't give us nice, clean choices. It only gives us choices between crappy and less-than-crappy. And this old hedge witch will keep on choosing "less than crappy" over and over and over again.

Great Granddaughter, I wish for you: better choices.

I wanted to pray this American prayer too. I just didn't want to be excluded from it. Again. Again.

My American Prayer is to a deity with a womb. Who bleeds. With a vagina.

I think she understands.

Maybe The Nicest Thing Anyone's Ever Said About Me

Is this.


Although, really, I'm a blonde.

Cackle, Cackle, Cackle! We Are Everywhere! Bwhahahahah!

Here's an interesting blog being written by Pagans attending the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver. I'm delighted to see that there are out Pagans at the DNC and I'll be checking their blog frequently this week.

Rita (for more about her history, see the archives over at The Wild Hunt) discusses a situation that nearly all of us encounter from time to time -- doing magic in an unfamiliar location and environment:

This evening, after a great supper at the Mercury Cafe (witchy, hippy hangout, great food, well worth visiting when you're next in Denver), I had the privilege of attended a Circle for Peace in Downtown Denver.

As someone far more used to holding ritual surrounded by trees, I'll admit I had a few misgivings. How could we create the same feeling of closeness to Nature in a downtown parking lot? No problem. If the people involved truly believe in Peace, and in each other....if those in the circle connect with Nature as it exists in that parking lot, the circle just might work.

And so it did.

We were about twenty, young and old, men and women, and we joyfully joined minds and hearts in our hopes that peace and unity would come out of this convention.

We made and decorated prayer flags which will hang from a building for the duration of the convention . . . .

When a large part of your magical working comes from a relationship with the land, it can be difficult to do magic in an unfamiliar place. A witch friend recently remarked to me that she can feel the magical roots of my house, now that I've been doing magic here, alone and with my wonderful circle of women, for a number of years. And, it's true, any place where you repeatedly do magic develops a relationship with you and you come, almost unconsciously, to tap into and rely upon that relationship when you do magic.

But there are times when you're far from home and familiarity. In those situations, I find that paying additional attention to grounding (see Starhawk on Grounding for Activists) helps to make magic possible. Either as a separate step, or as part of the grounding, you can contact the new land, feel what it wants, seek its permission and assistance. For witches who ground with a tree visualization, this can happen when you spread the roots of your tree into the earth of the unfamiliar location.

How do you do magic away from home?

Art foung here.

Yet More Friday Fun

More Friday Fun

Friday Fun

Friday Cat Blogging

Miss Thing lives to be admired.

Thanks, Obama, For Giving The Christianists Another Win. And They Won't Vote For You, Anyway.

Now what is it about this that is so difficult to understand?

At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.

For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won.

Was it the nuanced, thoughtful Obama, who may have convinced a few more skeptics that he isn't a Muslim? Or was it the direct, confident McCain, who breezes through town-hall-style meetings the way Obama sinks three-pointers from the back court?

The candidates' usual supporters felt validated in their choices. McCain convinced and comforted with characteristic certitude those who are most at ease with certitude; Obama convinced and comforted with his characteristic intellectual ambivalence those who are most at ease with ambivalence.

The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state.

The loser was America.

In his enormously successful book "The Purpose-Driven Life," Warren begins: "It's not about you." Agreed. Nor is this criticism aimed at Christians, evangelicals, other believers or nonbelievers -- or at Warren, who is a good man with an exemplary record of selfless works. Few have walked the walk with as much determination or success.

This is about higher principles that are compromised every time we pretend we're not applying a religious test when we're really applying a religious test.

It is true that no one was forced to participate in the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency and that both McCain and Obama are free agents. Warren has a right to invite whomever he wishes to his church and to ask them whatever they're willing to answer.

His format and questions were interesting and the answers more revealing than what the usual debate menu provides. But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?

The past few decades of public confession and Oprah-style therapy have prepared us perfectly for a televangelist probing politicians about their moral failings. Warren's Q&A wasn't an inquisition exactly, but viewers would be justified in squirming.

Go read the whole thing here.

I'll just add that I blame Obama even more than I blame Warren or McCain. Obama's the Democrat. He's supposed to fucking know better.

Maryland Ren Faire

I'm going to take G/Son. I used to take another little boy.

How many tarot cards can you spot? I see the six of wands, the Fool, the Lovers, the Emperor, the Hermit, the three of cups, the six of cups, . . . .

Don't Tell Me Prachett Was Never In A Coven

How our planning meetings generally go.

Listen To The Wind

It's mid-August, just past the full moon between two dark moons in the same month. It's that point on this whirling ferris wheel of a planet when things seem to pause, just at the top of the wheel, although the wheel is really moving madly along.

Here in northern Virginia, it's been v, v dry, no rain for weeks. I'm back into the triage watering of last summer, when we were in a deep drought. The first v few green acorns have already started falling off the oak trees and hitting my roof. They scare Miss Thing now, but, by September, she'll ignore them.

There's something about the beginning of Autumn, even the Indian Summer of early Septembe,r that instills a sense of purpose, that gets me motivated. When I was in school, I loved the fat new notebooks, the sharpened pencils, the sense of possibility that came from cracking the spines of brand new textbooks. I make new year's resolutions at Samhein, and the time from Lughnasada, through Mabon, on to Samhein is time to get serious; time to dig down and try to accomplish whatever's left undone.

It's coming. If you listen, you can hear the cold wind blowing leaves in swirls around your feet.

Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Jason Said:

The post-Christian era is upon us, and the longer the two major political parties court 25% of America's religious adherents to the near-exclusion of nearly everyone else, the sooner they experience irrelevance as that demographic becomes just one voice in a cacophony of faiths and philosophies.

I hope Mr. Purpose-Driven (as if life were something to be "driven" ick!) Warren adopts a vow of silence tomorrow. Mr. Obama, every time that I'm about to open my checkbook, you find a way to make me close it. Just saying. You can balance my money v all those donations you think you're going to get from fundies and make your own determination.

Art found here.

Yes!

So this morning, in spite of not getting to sleep until 11:00 last night, G/Son rolled out of bed at 7:00 am and announced, with a satisfied smile, "Nonna! I waked up!" We should all approach the day like that!

We had some breakfast and played around in Nonna's yard and then, in Nonna's neverending effort to educate, we went to the lovely Whitman Walker garden and fed the koi fish and walked the labyrinth. "Nonna! I'm walking the path! Nonna! I got to the sitting rock!" Not meditative, but good.

Then, Nonna's plan was to find the nature center with the bee hive under glass, and the slice of a big tree showing all the rings, and some turtles. But Dinoysis, whom I believe guards this child, intervened. Nonna took the wrong entrance into the park and there, instead of a nature center, as G/Son immediately noted, was: A carousel!

Nonna: Do you think we can ride it?

G/Son: Yes, Nonna. We can!

When we went to buy a ticket for the carousel, there was a small locomotive that goes all around the park. G/Son adores trains above all else and he said: Look! Nonna! A train! A red one!

Nonna: Do you think we can ride it?

G/Son: Yes, Nonna! You and I can ride the train!

And, so, we did. We were the last pair to get on the train for this ride and we sat directly behind the conductor. Waiting in line, G/Son was literally jumping up and down and saying, "I'm happy! I'm happy!" He held my hand all the way through the park and periodically looked up at me to say, "Nonna, we're riding. We're riding the train." I don't know if it gets any better than this, and here's my admission against interest to Life, but, you know, for me, at least, it doesn't have to. If this is the apogee of how good it gets, well, it got better than I ever had any reason to expect that it would.

After we got off the train, we rode the carousel. Because, as Auntie Mame famously announced, life's a banquet and some poor suckers are starving to death. Not G/Son and me. Not us.

Sunny Summer Saturday.

I drove past the beautiful Potomac River Saturday morning and it was the exact shade of bottle-green jade that can only be described as Summer River Green. Of course, it made me remember this poem:

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.
No.

Give them me. Give them me.
No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,
Better than voices of winds that sing,
Better than any man's fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I want them.
No.

I will howl in the deep lagoon
For your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me. Give them.
No.

-- Harold Monro


I went to a knitting class at Stitch DC; all of the knitters there were far, far better than I. Interesting group of women, all ages, various ethnicities, sitting on Capitol Hill, comfortably silent for long stretches, with only the clack of knitting needles. Of course, we sat in a circle. It's what women do, and it's powerful. I learned a new way to cast on stitches and a new way to increase a stitch. We'll see if that's enough for me to make my first pair of mittens w/ a thumb.

I drove back home past the beautiful Potomac River. By late afternoon, it was giving back to the sky the same lovely blue color that the sky was giving to the river. Boats dotted the river just as fluffy clouds dotted the sky. I could only think: As above, so below. It's all real; it's all metphor. There's always more.

I stopped on the way home for more of the free mulch that Arlington County gives away. All of the lovely, dark leaf mold was gone, but I got two big bags of wood mulch.

Spent the evening w my G/Son. We read Mother Goose. Life is good. May it be so for you.


Green glass bead found here.

Yet More Friday Fun

More Friday Fun

Friday Fun

The Time Of Picking Apples, Of Rendering Goose Fat

She said nothing. Her eyes were black as coal, black as her hair; her lips were redder than blood. She looked up at me and smiled. Her teeth seemed sharp, even then, in the lamplight.

"What are you doing away from your room?"

"I'm hungry," she said, like any child.

It was winter, when fresh food is a dream of warmth and sunlight; but I had strings of whole apples, cored and dried, hanging from the beams of my chamber, and I pulled an apple down for her.

"Here."

Autumn is the time of drying, of preserving, a time of picking apples, of rendering the goose fat. Winter is the time of hunger, of snow, and of death; and it is the time of the midwinter feast, when we rub the goose-fat into the skin of a whole pig, stuffed with that autumn's apples, then we roast it or spit it, and we prepare to feast upon the crackling.

She took the dried apple from me and began to chew it with her sharp yellow teeth.

"Is it good?"

She nodded. I had always been scared of the little princess, but at that moment I warmed to her and, with my fingers, gently, I stroked her cheek. She looked at me and smiled -- she smiled but rarely -- then she sank her teeth into the base of my thumb, the Mound of Venus, and she drew blood.

I began to shriek, from pain and from surprise; but she looked at me and I fell silent.


~Snow, Glass, Apples, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Julie Dillon.

Picture found here.

And The Debate Goes On (W/ Apologies To Sonny & Cher)

Faced with several possible interpretations based on the evidence we correlated, it became clear that although it remained possible that Gerald Gardner may have created the tradition, it was certainly not that plausible in comparison to some of the other conclusions that we reached. In fact, at this stage of our research we feel that it is most likely that Gardner was not that much of a charlatan after all, but that his accounts of initiation into an existing tradition, upon which he later expanded, were truthful. When stripped right back, without the many additions and evolutions it has undergone since the 1950’s, Gerald Gardner’s ‘Witch Cult’ appears to predate him by at least some years.

~Sorita d’Este and David Rankine discuss their book, Wicca, Magickal Beginnings.


Perhaps more interesting to me than the ever-debated question of whether (YES!) or not (YES!) Gardner created a "new" religion (is there such a thing? YES! NO!), is d'Este's and Rankine's discussion of Wicca as a mystery religion:

Whilst debating the possible starting point of this magickal tradition, we realised that all the evidence being presented was focused on the people who were the early public face of the tradition and their contemporaries. Yet this is a tradition which is also called a ‘Craft’ and which is an experiential tradition where personal experience is paramount for the understanding of the practices and beliefs. So why were we debating the origins of the tradition in terms of who said or did what?

. . .

Having asked ourselves all these questions again and again over the years, . . . we found that ultimately Wicca remained a mystery tradition at its heart. The practices and beliefs could only be fully understood through direct experience thereof and it was through this that the tradition could be best defined, not through the endless debates about lineages, initiations and personalities!

The definition of a mystery religion (or "tradition" as the authors would have it) as one that can only be understood through direct experience rings true for me; Wicca is what you do. I've been reading The Wiccan Mystic: Exploring a Magical Spiritual Path (religion, tradition, path, we're a confused people; I love us that way) by Ben Gruagach, who spends considerable time trying to define what a mystery religion is, and then determining that, even though Wicca fails to meet several prongs of his definition, it still meets the important prong, so it must be a mystery religion!

Gruagach says that mystery religions:

*require formal initiation

*have secrets shared only with members of the group

*focus their worship (bad word, IMHO, practice would be better) on communion with divine.

As examples of true mystery religions, he lists Eleusinian "cults" (v. bad word, IMHO), worship of Mithras, and the "cults" of ancient Egypt.

Gruagach says that Gardnerian Wicca was definitely a mystery religion: initiation by a "high degree" witch was required, secrets were shared (BoS!) only with members, and communion w/ the divine was sought through ecstatic practices, including flagellation, chanting, dance (if he were more thorough, he'd have added sex) (and drugs, including alcohol).

Yet, when he looks at modern Wicca, Gruagach finds initiation is often lacking; even in Gardner's day, there were certainly Solitaries who were never initiated by anyone (except, perhaps, by themselves. And, Deity. Which, would, you'd think, do the trick.) Similarly, there are, today, few Wiccan secrets not for sale in the aisles of any Barnes and Noble. (Except, of course, for the one that can't be printed in any book, posted on any website, or told by even a Ninth Degree witch to an Initiate: And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire. And that's where Gruagach concludes that Wicca does measure up to the most important prong of the mystery religion test:

Wiccans often perceive even mundane [now there's a word I hate] life as flooded w/ the Divine presence. Wicca is an experiential religion where one is expected to [I'd have said, "where one does" . . . "expectations" (of others) play so little a role in the religious life of most witches. You either do experience the divine or want to or you don't.] to actively seek out contact with the Divine [maybe "awareness of unity with" is better than "contact."] Concluding that it is likely that this characteristic [direct experience of Deity] is the essential core, the mystery of mystery religions Gruagach determines that Wicca is a mystery religion.

Does it matter? Probably not. One could live (and, certainly, through the centuries, many have lived) with intimate awareness of unity with the Divine, do magic, perform ritual, dance the Spiral Dance, and be in every way a witch without ever having heard of mystery religions or considering whether Wicca is or is not one. As d'Este and Rankine note, Wicca is called The Craft for a reason and a craft is something one does, not only a body of intellectual knowledge.

But I like Gruagach's discussion for this reason: it highlights what I believe to be an important distinction between Wicca and many of the "accepted" world religions. In what I find to be a rather icky attempt at "inclusiveness," xians, in particular, often talk about "people of faith" as if that somehow included all (real) religions. But it most emphatically does not include a mystery religion such as Wicca, where faith plays no role at all and experience is everything. (And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning [and having faith] will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire. ). Other religions, xianity, Judaism, Islam, Hindus, and even Buddhists may have their occasional mystics, the Levi Yitzchaks of Berditchov, the St. Theresas, the Rumis, etc., who directly experience union with Divinity, but one can be a full-fledged leader of, say, Catholicism, without ever having had such an experience. As long as one has faith, (OK, and for Catholics, who, perhaps more than Protestants, retain a few mystery traits, as long as one is baptised (initiated)) one is "saved," a complete member of the faith. Me, I find everytime that someone wants me to take something on faith, they're trying to sell me something, put one over on me. You gotta Deity? Show me. Otherwise, meh.

This focus on experience may be why the concept of S/he's a witch but doesn't know it is common among many witches. We can recognize people who aren't Wiccan, would recoil at the suggestion that they're witches, but who clearly live in touch with Divinity, do magic, have found the Mystery within themselves, with them from the beginning, and attained at the end of all desire.

May it be so for you.


Art found here.

This Has Been . . . Drinking With Twisty

There are v few people with whom I would rather.

Whoooosssssssshhhhhhhh!

The Magical Tools Of The Twenty-First Century

Here's Angela, using her cell phone as a magical tool:

And then I woke up — with the song still in my head. I sang it to myself several times, hoping to remember it the next morning. I tried to go back to sleep.

But my bladder thought differently, and I realized if I didn’t record the song now I would not remember the tune in the morning.

So, I grabbed my cell phone and went to the restroom. Afterward, I called my voice mail at work and sang the song.

Art found here

Burning Person

Burning Man 2008.

Still ignoring half of the planet.

Some Days It's Melange, Some Days, Bitter Spice

I'm a big believer in daily practice. There are witches, wonderful witches, who celebrate only the Sabbats, or only the Sabbats and the Esbats, and that's v good. But, for me, being a witch means sitting down daily at my altar. Daily lighting the incense, daily lighting the candles in the candle spells, daily grounding, daily calling the directions, daily casting the circle, daily saying the Ha prayer, daily working several magics, daily listening to the Goddess.

Today, for no more reason than the law of averages, deep magic picked me up and carried me, the way that some occasional wave at the beach will lift you up and carry you. I've called Water a thousand times; today, West picked me up and carried me. And that feeling is the feeling of deep magic.

May it be so for you. May it be so for you

Earth's Foreknowledge Gathered In The Earth

Thers, for whom I'm supposed to be guestblogging, but who's not yet sent me the invite that will let me do that (ahem!) reminds me how much I love Seamus Heaney:

A Brigid's Girdle

Last time I wrote I wrote from a rustic table
Under magnolias in South Carolina
As blossoms fell on me, and a white gable
As clean-lined as the prow of a white liner

Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard.
I was glad of the early heat and the first quiet
I'd had for weeks. I heard the mocking bird
And a delicious, articulate

Flight of small plinkings from a dulcimer
Like feminine rhymes migrating to the north
Where you faced the music and the ache of summer
And earth's foreknowledge gathered in the earth.

Now it's St Brigid's Day and the first snowdrop
In County Wicklow, and this a Brigid's Girdle
I'm plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop
(Like one of those old crinolines they'd trindle),

Twisted straw that's lifted in a circle
To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring
As strange and lightsome and traditional
As the motions you go through going through the thing.

And I'm printing this one, now, for those members of my "tribe" across the pond and on the other side of the Equator. Blessings of Imbolc to you. It's all just Goddess pouring Goddesss into Goddess.

Art found here.

Rumors Of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

I'm still here!

We've had simply the most lovely weather, here in the nation's capital, for the past few days and, well, that's my excuse. I've been outside, in the garden, too much to blog. Life is short; there are a finite numbers of perfect days poured into each life. You can't waste them inside.

Go look at these amazingly gorgeous images of women over at Moments of Grace. I love lots of them, but the bored, little, punk angel may be my complete favorite. It says so much about how the aesthetic of Victoriana translated into the Goth movement.

Lunea's musing about tribe. What's interesting to me is how, these days, tribes span the globe. I feel lots closer to folks all over the world than I do to, say, my wingnut neighbor across the street or to my sister the idiot.

On the other side of the planet, Aquila qua Hecate is celebrating the feast of Brighid, a time for burning out the dross. In a way, for me, that process begins at Lughnasadah. I begin yanking out the stalks from the dead day lillies, watch the tiny yellow birds clean the seeds off the lovely, twisted branches of woad, continue yanking out bindweed, start watching for falling leaves and acorns. More and more stuff is "done" and the dross can be yanked and thrown into the sacred compost pile And the process goes on through Mabon -- eat it up now, it will spoil later -- through Samhein -- let's celebrate the dying that's happening everywhere around us right now -- through Yule -- clear, clean, crystal, not much organic mess left -- and on to Imbolc -- burn out the remaining mess, we need to get ready for the life that's coming!

Picture (and lots of other v interesting stuff) found here.

What She Said

Doing Magic Now, Here, Here, Now

Deborah Oak finds a swimming pool and well-apportioned kitchen to be magical tools. This Lughnasadah, I used my iPhone, the great magical tool of the 21st Century, to ground a circle of madly scattered women, two of whom had had the ultimate 21st Century meltdown: a bloggered computer.

Forget athames, chalices, drums. Upon which modern magical tool do you depend?

On the Eighth Day of the Eight Month in the Eighth Year of a Benighted Century . . . .

Tomorrow is 8/8/08, the eight day of the eight month of the eight year of this benighted century. I'm not a big student of numerology; I'd say that numbers and I have a difficult relationship, but there must first be some relationship for it to be difficult. My left-brained self, she has a v difficult time w numbers.

But somehow, w/in Tarot, numbers make more sense to me. The Eights are interesting. Eight is twice four. In Tarots, the fours are where things get so stable as to become, perhaps, stuck. In the Gaian Tarot, "Eights illustrate the test of taking action out in the world to make your dreams a reality, in their respective elemental suits."

For a long time in my life, almost every reading that I did for myself resulted in the 8 of Wands showing up somewhere. That's good. Movement. Going places. Heading towards goals. The Eight of Cups is v similar. Something's missing! Let's go find it!

The 8 of Swords is a bit farther back in the process. Realize that you need to move! Have a new idea! Quit sitting still! And the 8 of Pentacles is, as are all the Pentacle cards, about the practical way to get from here to there. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice! Do the work! Even if you feel crappy, even if some practices are more about how NOT to do it, just do the work, chop wood, carry water.

May tomorrow, 8/8/08 be full of movement, practice, insight, and heading off on important journeys for you.


Art found here. Most Pagans in 2008 America live in cities. I love the idea of an urban tarot.

Ringtones

The other evening, as we sat down to eat following our Lughnasadah ritual, my iPhone went off. One of the other witches in my circle said, "It's your son calling; his picture came up. And, whoa, that's a good song for him." Here's the ringtone for Son on my iPhone:



Here's the ringtone for DiL:



For the women in my circle:



For people at the borg:




What ringtones do you have for special people?

All Acts Of Love And Pleasure

NYT.

111 - year - old reptile finally becoming a father
E

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Officials say an indigenous New Zealand reptile regarded as one of the last living remnants of the dinosaurs will become a father for the first time in decades at the age of 111.

Henry the tuatara and his younger mate Mildred produced a dozen eggs last month after mating at the Southland Museum on New Zealand's South Island in March.

Tuatara curator Lindsay Hazley said Wednesday Henry has lived at the museum's special enclosure for Tuatara since 1970 and had shown no interest in sex until he recently had a cancerous growth removed from his genitals. He was now enjoying the company of three females and might breed again next March

Picture found here.

Mystics

Been thinking a bit about the connection/overlap between mystics of all religions and Wiccans.

Poem by St Theresa

The Flower

All the earth with snow is covered,
Everywhere the white frosts reign;
Winter and his gloomy courtiers
Hold their court on earth again.
But for you has bloomed the Flower
Of the fields, Who comes to earth
From the fatherland of heaven,
Where eternal spring has birth.
Near the Rose of Christmas, Sister!
In the lowly grasses hide,
And be like the humble flowerets, --
Of heaven’s King the lowly bride!


Art found here.

Internal Glass Ceiling My Ass

What She Said.

Stop, Children, What's That Sound? Everybody Look What's Going Down.

What I don't understand about physics would fill libraries, but one thing that I have been able to grock is that the simple act of paying attention changes the object/situation/person/phenemonon to which attention is paid. I get that because that's the basic teaching of Wicca.

And so, perhaps it's because I'm paying attention (aka, perhaps it's "all in my head," as if that meant it's "not real"), but suddenly yesterday, the day after Lughnasadah, it all began to change. I went out yesterday afternoon to dance in the pounding August rain and there, just as I was about to go ahead and dance all the way into the stream, was a chilling breeze that made my bones cold and sent me inside for hot tea and a warm shower.

And there, this morning, as I finished the one task that I'd planned to do by Lughnasadah but hadn't gotten done -- cleaning out the garden shed -- was the change in light, the breeze in the leaves, the different "feel" that signals the lovely, slow arc of the year, from Autumn to Winter. I wanted to be at the Ren Faire w/ G/Son, I was thinking of a pumpkin-carving party, I was remembering my favorite recipes for soup.

It's only a glimmer. Here in the swamp over which they built our nation's capital, we're still likely in for six or eight weeks of heat. Son, DiL, and G/Son are at the beach. Congress is adjourned. The farmers' markets are still full of corn, tomatoes, zucchini, basil, and peaches. And yet, and yet, and yet, if you're engaged in that most magical act of all -- the act of paying attention -- you can hear the distant flutes of a changing season, the shifting of the leaves from green to gold, the birds feeding up and getting ready for the long flight South, the chill in the rainy air, a different quality of light in the morning mist.

A witch's job is to turn the wheel. And round and round the wheel must turn.




Art found here.

Oh, Heathcliffe!

One of America's most brilliant bloggers, Molly Ivors says that: all women's romance novels are based on either Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, or Pride and Prejudice. Molly reminds me of the sexist mistake behind the famous notion that there are only two stories in all of literature: A Young Man Goes on a Journey and A Stranger Comes to Town.


Me, I was always falling madly in love with the Heathcliffs.

Which women's romance novel are you?

What I Love About This Religion

Friday Cat Blogging

Miss Thing

First 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.

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.

Merci!

And, here's a video demonstration of a BSE.

Touch The Buckle Of My Spine

In comments below, the incomparable Anne asks for a harvest poem. The best one in the whole world, and a perfect one for Lughnasadah, is, of course, by Mary Oliver:

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything -
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker -
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing -
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet -
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

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.


Goddess, I love that. Let the immeasurable come. Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine . . . 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. With apologies to Rumi, the buckle of my spine is running after the unknowable, calling, "Hey! Over here! Come touch!"

Tomorrow is Lughnasadah and a Dark Moon. How can you look at anything in this world and tremble and grip your hands over your heart? What should you fear? Once again, once again, once again, as it has for thousands and thousands of years, as it has ever since Native Americans bred teosinte into maize, once again, tomorrow morning, in the leafy green ocean, the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body is sure to be there.

The blessings of Lugh and the blessings of Lugh's mother upon you and yours.



Art found here.

Aw, Come On

Eight days. Eight days out of the entire year. For Wiccans, those are the Sabbats. Eight days. And even then, we can't set them apart, take the days before them off to prepare and the days after them off to recover. Eight. Eight times every year. Eight sabbats. Eight days, just a bit more than one week, out of every year.

I swear in the days still left, we'll walk in fields of gold.

Art here.

In The Days Still Left, We Will Walk In Fields Of Gold

Must Die

Blessed Lughnasadah

There was three men came out of the west,
Their fortunes for to try,
And these three men made a solemn vow,
John Barleycorn should die.
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in,
Throwed clods upon his head,
And these three man made a solemn vow,
John Barleycorn was dead.

Then they let him lie for a very long time
Till the rain from heaven did fall,
Then little Sir John sprung up his head,
And soon amazed them all.
They let him stand till midsummer
Till he looked both pale and wan,
And little Sir John he growed a long beard
And so became a man.

They hired men with the scythes so sharp
To cut him off at the knee,
They rolled him and tied him by the waist,
And served him most barbarously.
They hired men with the sharp pitchforks
Who pricked him to the heart,
And the loader he served him worse than that,
For he bound him to the cart.

They wheeled him round and round the field
Till they came unto a barn,
And there they made a solemn mow
of poor John Barleycorn.
They hired men with the crab-tree sticks
To cut him skin from bone,
And the miller he served him worse than that,
For he ground him between two stones.

Here's little Sir John in a nut-brown bowl,
And brandy in a glass;
And little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl
Proved the stronger man at last.
And the huntsman he can't hunt the fox,
Nor so loudly blow his horn,
And the tinker he can't mend kettles or pots
Without a little of Barleycorn.

My New Name For A Blog/No Mercy

What Doug Watts said in comments at Eschaton:

AP: Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a homeless man with his black Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.

I'm not sure about why the adjective "homeless" is required in this story. What if it said this ...

Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck an unemployed man with his black Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.

What if it said this ...

Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a United States Senator with his black Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.

What if it said ...

Last week, Novak was given a $50 citation after he struck a returning Iraq War veteran with his black Corvette in downtown Washington. Novak kept going until he was stopped by a bicyclist, who said the man was splayed on Novak's windshield.

The appellation "homeless" is added to assure us that even if the guy died, nothing would be lost.

Doug's blog here.

Gentle Angry People

Anymore, I'm less gentle.

I was there; were you?

If not, why not?

Son, DiL, and I walked it together, w/ some women from my wonderful circle. And I will do it again. And again. And again. I will do it until women are free. Equal. Empowered.

Will you?

If not, why not?

Seriously

Go listen to Sinfonian. Do it now. I mean it. Really. I mean it. Go listen to Sinfonian. Do it.


(I have that Hermes scarf in black. It's much more amazing in black.)

Mead Moon

One thing I love about BPAL is how spot-on accurate their descriptions are, esp. of something as ephemeral as scent:

MEAD MOON
Golden mead, fermented with fruit, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, ginger root, sweet-briar, rosemary, and lemon.

You know that's how summer smells.


Art found here.

For To Be Hopeless Would Seem So Strange

NTodd talks. You listen.

Betty Davis Eyes

This weekend, I've been thinking about eyes.

One of the primary ways that I define myself is as a reader. And while I know that one can read with fingertips as well as with eyes, for me, my eyes are, I think, more crucial than any other sense. I spend most of the day, every day, seeing, reading, looking. My sense of sight is crucial to my comfort with my moon in Taurus; my Younger Self needs to see my surroundings: the wallpaper on my walls, the flowers and trees, and the dance between sunlight and shade in my garden. And so many acts of love and pleasure, which, for me, are rituals of the Goddess, involve sight: Son's strong back, DiL's swingy new haircut, reading a book to G/Son, both of us commenting upon what's happening in the pictures as well as in the written story.

Earlier this month, G/Son spent a weekend w/ me -- and it was the kind of weekend that sends me home going, "OK, Goddess. Yes. Thank you for chemo. Thank you for whatever it took to get me to this point, to let me have this weekend, for the ability to dig my fingernails into the cliff and just HANG ON so that I could get to here, you crazy Bitch, You." G/Son was, his doctor assured Son and DiL, over his bout of pink eye and fine to be around other people. I didn't even have to give him the eye drops that made him cry.

We had the best time ever.

Three days later I got a bad summer cold and I figured that I'd caught it from G/Son and I figured: cheap at the cost. Rumi:

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.

Gradually, my sore throat got better and my runny nose got better and my cough got better and almost everything got better but my eyes kept getting worse. Sometimes, I am a dense, silly, old woman. Finally, about midnight last night (of course, it's ALWAYS midnight on a Saturday, isn't it?) I realized: I not only caught a cold, I caught pink eye.

I did reiki on my eyes and it was some of the best reiki I've ever done. I felt the same heat pouring out of my hands, into my eyes, that I felt the first time I ever had reiki, when my madcap friend R. did reiki on my broken ankle and I felt heat pouring out of her hands, through a thick plaster cast, into my broken bones.

And I couldn't begin to sleep.

I got up, got dressed, drove to the 24-hour pharmacy and begged the pharmacist to give me something. I admit, I considered going to the emergency room, but that's v. expensive and my experience from a few years ago, with an infected ear, is that nice old ladies in an emergency room on Saturday night tend to get to wait until, well, it's triage, and I understand it, and when I show up with a stroke or a heart attack I want to move to the front of the room, too, but, IMH experience, an old lady with pink eye isn't going to get taken care of at the emergency room until the inexperienced intern is v, v, v exhausted, the old lady is kicking herself for not staying in bed, and the sun is making mad love to the Eastern sky.

And, even then, in the middle of the night, exhausted, in misery with my eyes itching and watering and sore, there She was. A huge, just-short-of-half Moon, orange and low on the horizon, magic and, as always, My Mother, There for Me, hanging in the sky, invoking everything deep and delightful and making me glad that conjunctivitis kept me up all night and drove me from my bed to my car. And maybe that's, looking forward and looking back, eyes blue with spice, St. Alia of the Knife aware within her Mother's womb, maybe that's what it really means to be a witch. To see the Mystery and the Magic and the Meaning even in the very midst of pain and misery and physical deterioration. And to revel in it.

The pharmacist didn't do what I wish he'd done, which was to tell me, "Sorry, lady, you are SOL." He sold me some dumb drops that did fuckall nothing and that I am going to bury this week as a way of eliminating ineffective bullshit from my life. Creep.

Finally, the sun came up and I did something I almost never, never do; I called my doctor on a weekend. Here's how long it's been since I did this. I expected to get a number for an answering service. There's a job that's gone the way of the buggy whip manufacturer and the lady who laces the stays in your whalebone corset. Of course, now, you just leave a message and your doctor gets an email and she calls you back within, like, 20 seconds and calls a prescription into the pharmacy and, in less time than it takes to adjust to the 21st century, you go pick up eye drops.

Sweet Mother, thank you.

I imagine that dozens of my ancestresses must have had pink eye or its equivalent. They may have spent weeks in absolute misery. For me, one dose -- one dose -- of eye drops brought relief from one of the most maddening infections EVER. By the second dose, I felt well enough to begin knitting, reading, sitting at my altar. I'm still contagious, but won't be tomorrow. Am I grateful to the scientists and doctors who developed this drug? Does a witch dance in the woods?

Do you ever do magic that moves across time? I do. I started doing it when I was in law school, applying for jobs, and kept getting the sense that an older and "living in the future" Me had thrown magic back to me to use as a lifeline, was doing magic in the future that reached back to Me in the "present." And since then, I've done it "both ways." My "present" Self often throws magic back to my younger Self, to help her through, and to my "future" Self to help her, as well.

And, today, I can't shake the notion that, back in some cave, or hovel, or shack, or on some ancient, nomadic trail, or that off in some terraformed, cradle-to-cradle foundation, from some future time/place, from a distant star that still shines/will shine upon Earth's Moon, some ancestress of mine, finally healed of conjunctivitis or some other infection of the eye, threw some magic forward/back to me, here, now, in the 21st Century, in desperate need of healing. Or that, some future Self, looking back/forward, as I always try to do when I feel this kind of a-chronological healing, to me, here, Now, threw some serious science/magic/advanced-enough-there's-no-difference back to me, to me, depending upon my eyes.

May it be so for you.

Crowdsourcing

Cool way to start a new DC restaurant.

What intrigues me is how non-hierarchical this is. Yeah, as the article notes, there's still a "decider." And we haven't, yet, reached the point where someone speaks for the trees, or the squirrels, or the bees in this process. But I can imagine crowdsourcing being used in The Fifth Sacred Thing to figure out what to do about the invaders.

And that makes me happy.

Ecstatic Dance

If Wicca is an ecstatic religion, how do we achieve, maintain, and use ecstasy? How do we allow ecstasy to achieve, maintain, and use us? How often and, if not, why not?

Listen

Wisdom

What She Said.

Neither staying nor going ever prevent the heart from breaking. All we can hope to influence is in what place and under what conditions the heart breaks open, because it will: unavoidably, regularly, and without concern for whatever else we might wish to be doing.





Art found here.

Blaming The Victim

I've been pondering this article all morning, amazed at the truths it tells and the things that it gets, well, if not wrong, only, at best half right. The point of the NYT story is that average Americans have been sinking deeper and deeper into debt, while the companies that loan them money have been doing very well indeed. And that's an important point that needs to be made.

What intrigues me, though, are the points that the article can't help making, although it does try and elide them. Note that the financial troubles of the woman in the story are, more than anything else, the result of the fact that she needed a hysterectomy and had a burst appendix. In many countries all across the globe, those events wouldn't threaten financial ruin.

But as happens with many debt-laden Americans, an unexpected illness helped push Ms. McLeod over the edge. In January 2006, her doctor told her she needed a hysterectomy. She had health care coverage, but she could no longer work at a second job.

She made matters worse during her recovery, while watching home shopping channels. “Eight weeks in bed by yourself is very dangerous when you have a TV and credit card,” Ms. McLeod said. “QVC was my friend.”

Later that year, Ms. McLeod realized she was in trouble, squeezed by her mortgage and credit card payments, her $350 monthly car bill, rising energy prices and a stagnant salary. She started to sell knickknacks, handbags, clothing and other items on eBay to help cover her heating and food bills. She stopped paying her credit cards so that she could afford her mortgage.

A year ago she was back in the hospital, this time with a burst appendix. Her condition worsened, and she lost the use of one kidney. She spent 19 days in the hospital and six weeks recuperating. Her prescription-drug costs added to her expenses, and by September she could no longer pay her mortgage.

Throughout the article, there's an emphasis upon the woman's responsibility for her own problems. (Ms. McLeod, who is 47, readily admits her money problems are largely of her own making.) She left her husband! She wanted some nice handbags and some jewelry! (NO discussion, at all, of the role that advertising may play in this issue.) There's no discussion about how government-paid-for health care and government programs to force employers to give employees time off from work for health problems could have helped Ms. McLeod. Nor is there any suggestion that perhaps some visiting nurse services (remember visiting nurses? from the 50s and 60s?) could have helped her to focus on other activities during her recuperation. I'm not sure exactly why, but something about this reminds me of how absolutely horrible the waiting area was in the local 24 hour drug store when I had to sit there at 2:00 am a few years ago to fill a prescription for an ear infection on a Saturday morning after a Friday night in the emergency room. And I just kept thinking, though my pain and exhaustion: lots of lost opportunities here. Lots of lost opportunities to foster health and healing and better lives.

Similarly, "rising energy prices and a stagnant salary" are mentioned in passing, as if they were simply facts of life, and not deliberate policy decisions by a Republican-controlled Congress, WH, and court-system (and, since 2006 by completely ineffective Democrats. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, I'm looking at you).

Should Ms. McLeod have done a better job of understanding the terms of her credit (babe, I want a Kelly bag worse than almost anything in the world, but NO handbag is worth 28% interest!)? Sure. One wonders how she graduated from high school without a basic understanding of this concept. (Oh, yeah, that's right. To the extent that high schools even teach consumer math, they generally do so with materials provided by BANKS AND CREDIT CARD COMPANIES!) But Ms. McLeod isn't the problem here. Where's the NYT story where the chairman of Wachovia gives up his stock options and golden parachute while readily admitting that the bank's money problems are largely of his own making?

And, explain to me again, why aren't we in the streets with pitchforks? Well, being told that the problems are our own fault plays a role in keeping people at home and depressed rather than in the streets and angry. And the NYT, where do its interests lie?


Extra bonus points: Count in comments the ways in which the photo is judgemental.

No One Could Have Anticipated . . . .

No one could have anticipated that this crappy Republican economy would be bad for women.

Shit! Fuck! Damn!

Dear Dark Mother, Kali Ma, Eater of Souls,

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

Love, your daughter,

Hecate, Runnymead Conspirator

The Moon Is As High As The Fourth Of July

My Circle of Amazing Women counts each dark moon, each full moon, and each of the 8 major holidays as lasting three days. And, so, if the "real" moon is on a Wednesday, but it's easier for us to meet on Friday night, we do, and we consider the energy every bit as real, the feeling as strong, the magic as effective. (It's a convention born of the kind of schedules that women in Washington, D.C. keep, but it has never failed to "work" for us. Maybe it's "derivative" and modern; maybe it's "East Coast," maybe it's, here in the center of world politics, political. Whatever it is, it works for us.)

By my Circle's reckoning, today "is" the Full Moon. The "real" Full Moon this month, at around 7:00 am on Friday morning, was so strong that it kept me out of bed, full of dance, and crackling with electricity and life until about 4:00 am on Saturday morning. Staring at the cool orb behind the branches and leaves of the oak trees, jotting down insights into my Book of Shadows, silently communing with the night, I sang my "Hymn to Her" over and over and over again.

And I spent part of "today's" Full Moon time sitting in the hot July sun, surrounded and grounded by the low, droning sound made by crickets in the afternoon heat, breathing the hot, gardenia perfumed, afternoon air, and listening to the small plot of land upon which I live. And I spent part of it at my altar, going through my daily practice.

I believe in daily practice like I believe in breathing, and bathing, and laughing every day, and in the beauty of the Darkest Goddesses. Over time, my daily practice evolves, but what stays the same is the need for my daily practice to be, well, daily. I ground, and if there's not time to do anything else, I think that a witch who has grounded has performed her daily practice.

But almost always, I also invoke the powers of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and a constantly changing group of Goddesses. Today, appropriate, I think, for the time when we harvest corn, tomatoes, okra, cucumbers (beloved by the Egyptians), blackberries, and cherries, I invoked Ponoma, after reading Sia's lovely post, along with several Others, and always culminating with my beloved patroness, the Goddess of crossroads, liminal spaces, change and flow and transformation, and birth, death, the Moon, witches: Hecate.

I lit candles dedicated to two different specific spells. I pulled a tarot card to give me something to consider. I tranced, and, in trance, danced, naked, adorned with flowers, and sweating in the July afternoon heat, to my place of power. I prayed my two important prayers and I listened, again, to the land. I invoked what I need, using my wand -- an old crooked branch that G/Son always picks up and says, "Your wand don' work?" -- and I swam back home from that "place," back down my street, and up my steps, and inside to the middle room on the left, to my altar.

And, as so often happens, the gate opens, photosynthesis carries me away, I remember that I am part of everything and that everything, oddly enough, is happily part of me, and then, before I dissolve all the way, all the way, all the way into everything, slowly, I come "back."

May it be so for you.