My New Name For A Blog

What el Gato Negro Said:

Wish You Were Here

Bereavement Notice


It is with deep regret that we announce the bereavement of the Gaian family, most especially the Chesapeake Bay Watershed branch of the family, which, in 1878, lost the beloved Labrador Duck. The Labrador Duck, Camptorhynchus labradorius, was a striking black and white eider-like sea duck that was never known to be common, and is believed to be the first bird to become extinct in North America after 1500. The last Labrador Duck is believed to have been seen at Elmira, New York on December 12, 1878; the last preserved specimen was shot in 1875 on Long Island. It was thought to breed in Labrador, although no nests were ever described, and it wintered from Nova Scotia to as far south as Chesapeake Bay. More here.

No services were held, but donations may be made to any organization that preserves watersheds.

At Samhein, we honor our beloved dead.

Picture found here

My So-Called (Witch's) Life

The witches are out buying bras and having dinner. I am on a conference call at work.

I come home from a long, insane day at work. The whole way home, the gorgeous crescent Moon is to my right, to my left, ahead of me, behind me; wherever I go, there She is.

There are lights on, witches inside my house, dinner set out on my table, a conversation already in progress. I eat. We dance. We divide a box of organic produce from my CSA. We discuss meetings w the mayor, squabbles w/in federal agencies, legal research gone awry, local witch wars. We hug.

I tell the witches on Saturday about my old furnace; it dies on Tuesday; the new one will be installed by next Friday; I'll get the witches to bless it next Saturday. Here's the blessing: may you live a year longer than Hecate. Hah! I hope it's a really good furnace.

The witches gather on Saturday to do political magic. We are in the shadow of the Capitol, we are on a train to NY, we are literally between homes, we are on the other side of the Atlantic, on business. We use cell phones, computers, iCameras, and the love for each other that pours out of our hearts, the anger in our souls. When we feel goose bumps, we know that the magic is working.

I make a reference at a family dinner to turning someone into a newt. G/Son says, "No, Nonna! You're not a fairy or a witch! You can't do magic!" I say, "Yes, I am a witch." Son says, "Oh, trust me, G/Son. She's a witch." I take it as a compliment.

Furnace Guy shows up and says, "I love the Halloween decorations in your yard." While he's figuring out that my 34-year-old furnace is (no surprise) dead, I go out and feed the cardinals, mourning doves, sparrows, and finches. I check the blossoms on the fall camellias. I flip a tarot card. Do I need to replace this furnace? Trumps 13: Death. Yeah, fine, ok, at least I get a tax break.

I cut lavender and sage and bundle them into smudge sticks. When the pineapple sage is done blooming, I'll bundle it into logs to burn all winter long.

I ground, I breathe cleansing breaths into each of my chakras, I call the Elements, my animal guides, some Goddesses. I cast a circle and find myself between the worlds. I say the Ha prayer, I run the Iron Pentacle, I call to the universe for my material needs, I sit within my ruined temple of a place of power next to some heated springs and south of some mountains. I walk back over a high bridge and through a meadow of yarrow, over a field of parsley and thyme. I re-enter my body. I hang my magic cloak back on the hook. I go backwards through the Goddesses, the animal guides, the Elements, back into my own body.

I unload the dishwasher.

Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

I chop and carry w/in a world alive with magic, w/in a community of magical women. And that has made, as Frost noted, all the difference.

Picture found here.

Wish You Were Here

Phantom Shiner

Wiki says:

The phantom shiner (Notropis orca) is a species of fish. It was once endemic to the Rio Grande basin and ranged from central New Mexico to southernmost Texas and adjacent Tamaulipas. Once found in the warm water reaches of the Rio Grande (though never particularly abundant), no specimens have been collected in this range since 1949, and it is believed to be extinct in this area.
The native range of the phantom shiner was the Rio Grande from Espanola downstream to Brownsville, Texas. In New Mexico, it was documented only in the reach from Espanola to Socorro.
Specimens of the phantom shiner have been collected only irregularly (three times in 1939) in a 60 km reach of the middle Rio Grande between Isleta and Bernardo. A single specimen was taken from the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park in 1953 representing the only known example of the species in the river between El Paso and the mouth of the Pecos River. In 1959 Trevino-Robinson reported the phantom shiner as abundant in the lower Rio Grande in Texas, downstream from the Pecos River confluence. The last known specimen was recorded in Mexico in 1975.

Little fish, you vanished just two years after Son was born. We miss you. The algae that you ate miss you. The big fish and the big birds that ate you miss you. At Samhein, we remember you. What is remembered, does not die.

Photo found here

Wish You Were Here

A Passenger Pigeon Poem

One and Then Another
by
David Staley

One and then another
and then another just the same
Then dark and living clouds descend
with the thunder of a billion wings

A mighty mass of movement
The thick and musty stench
The unheard of sound surrounding
the breaking of the branch

"Here they come!"; the cry is heard
Then movement on the ground
A deadly storm is coming quick
with greed and violent sounds

With pole or net or gun
the targets are the same
Though a million are left for dead
the loss is seen as gain

Then away the clouds arise
A billion to their fate
Dashed to the ground from different skies
to pillow, plate, or crate

The living clouds descend
Each one marked with a numbered wing
Billions are millions are thousands
and then; one is left to sing

A short movie about Martha, the last carrier pigeon. How terrifyingly sad it must be to live out the life of "the last."

At Samhein, Martha, I will call you. What is remembered, does not die.

Picture found here.

And Blue antelope. Wish you were here.

Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here

*Hat tip to Mickey Z for the "Wish you were here" meme.


Your turn.

Over And Over And Over And Over Again

It's odd, isn't it, how it's so seldom that men need to be paraded naked around a field?

Five women, including three widows, were forcibly brought to a field Sunday in Patharghatia village in Deoghar, about 350 km from state capital Ranchi. They were stripped and paraded naked and two of them were forced to eat excreta, police said.

"Sushila Kumahrin, Sagiran Beebi, Hafijan Beebi, Sujan Beebi and Gulnar Beebi were tortured to accept that they were witches and practise black magic. The incident took place at the instruction of a witch doctor. The witch doctor said that these women were practising black magic and were causing problems in the village," a police officer said.

. . .

In Jharkhand, women are subjected to different forms of torture after being branded witches. There are instances when women have been paraded naked, forced to eat human excreta and even killed.

According to official data, more than 700 people, majority of them women, were killed after being branded witches. The witch doctors manage to escape as people fear black magic if they are named. Yet they don't fear stripping and torturing women accused of practising black magic. That's odd, isn't it? It's almost as if there were some other explanation for what's going on.

Picture found here.

Come, Yet Again, Come, Come

T. Thorn Coyle is making good sense:

We are riddled with contradictions and opposing forces. We do things for myriad reasons, yet so often think we should be doing things out of some purity that very few attain. Why? Because we want to be noble and good. We want to do things for the very best reasons, rather than what seems petty or small.

But you know what? We just need to show up anyway. We need to make a commitment, however impure, however filled with coarse impulses mixing with the fine. Why? [Because, in the act of showing up, we can find] the path to integration, to wholeness, and to presence. This is how we connect our parts to each other and how we then connect out with the rest of the world. Besides, if we wait until some moment when we feel perfect, we shall never show up at all. All of our parts deserve to walk the pathways of commitment, each contributing however it may. Otherwise, no growth will come and we will miss opportunity after opportunity to see ourselves, to know ourselves, to test ourselves, and often, to just enjoy our lives.

I love the line about how if we wait until some moment when we feel perfect, we shall never show up at all. It's such an important reminder.

I'm a boringly big proponent of grounding as the first step in daily practice. And, yet, at this time of year, with tissue-thin veils, I find it more and more difficult to ground "enough." I've practiced long enough to recognize this; I know that, by Yule, I'll be back to grounding deeply and thoroughly. But right now, it's not easy and, if I let myself, I could just give up on the rest of my practice because I can't reach that moment that Coyle describes, that moment when I feel perfect enough to show up for the rest of my practice. Yet, as Coyle notes, "all of" my "parts deserve to walk the pathways of commitment," and, if I wait until I am perfectly, completely grounded, as grounded as I can feel from Yule through Imbolc, then I will miss opportunities to continue with the rest of my practice, with those other elements of my practice that come so easily at this time of year that it's amazing.

And I'm reminded of a bit of Rumi: Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn't matter, Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times, Come, yet again, come, come. I don't know about you, but the only way that I've found to grow as a witch is do do daily practice. Even when I don't "feel witchy," even when I'm tired or sick or stressed out at work. And when I fall off the wagon, the only thing to do is to rejoin the caravan. Even if I have broken, as I have, my vow hundreds of times, the only thing to do is to return to my altar, relight the incense, ground as best as I can, call myself a witch, call the Elements, cast the circle, do the work.

Blessings to you in your practice.

Piewacket

The fun playlist over at the Cottage Witch sent me searching for this:



I have, oddly, never done nor heard of a spell that involved a bell, a book, and a candle. But it was a great movie.

The Only Worship There Is

Wherever you are is home
And the [E]arth is paradise
Wherever you set your feet is holy land
You don't live off it like a parasite
You live in it, and it in you,
Or you don't survive
And that is the only worship of God there is.

~Wilfred Pelletier and Ted Poole in Earth Prayers from Around the World edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon

Picture found here.

Ahhhh!

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

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

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

Blessed dark October Moon to you.

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

Earth, Air, Water, Fire; In This Circle We Conspire

Step out onto the Planet.
Draw a circle a hundred feet round.

Inside the circle are
300 things nobody understands, and maybe
nobody's ever really seen.

How many can you find?

~Lew Welch

Picture found here.

The Burning Times, Yet Again

The Wild Hunt recently had a serious post concerning the number of people -- often children -- being murdered and abused as "witches", often in places that sound far away from us such as Africa or India. I linked to the blog and urged American Pagans to do magic this Yule to put a stop to this abuse. As the Wild Hunt's article made clear, this is not "just" a problem oversees.

A new article in the LATimes indicates that the spread of xianity throughout Africa, including churches linked with American churches, is a large part of the problem.

The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria's 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

. . .

The Nigerian church is a branch of a Californian church by the same name. But the California church says it lost touch with its Nigerian offshoots several years ago. "I had no idea," said church elder Carrie King by phone from Tracy, Calif. "I knew people believed in witchcraft over there but we believe in the power of prayer, not physically harming people."

The Mount Zion Lighthouse — also named by three other families as the accuser of their children — is part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. The Fellowship's president, Ayo Oritsejafor, said the Fellowship was the fastest-growing religious group in Nigeria, with more than 30 million members.

"We have grown so much in the past few years we cannot keep an eye on everybody," he explained.

. . .

Even churches who didn't use to 'find' child witches are being forced into it by the competition," said Itauma. "They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism."

That's what Margaret Eyekang did when her 8-year-old daughter Abigail was accused by a "prophet" from the Apostolic Church, because the girl liked to sleep outside on hot nights — interpreted as meaning she might be flying off to join a coven. A series of exorcisms cost Eyekang eight months' wages, or US$270. The payments bankrupted her.

Neighbors also attacked her daughter.

"They beat her with sticks and asked me why I was bringing them a witch child," she said. A relative offered Eyekang floor space but Abigail was not welcome and had to sleep in the streets.

Members of two other families said pastors from the Apostolic Church had accused their children of witchcraft, but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

The Nigeria Apostolic Church refused repeated requests made by phone, e-mail and in person for comment.

. . .

There's a scar above Jane's shy smile: her mother tried to saw off the top of her skull after a pastor denounced her and repeated exorcisms costing a total of $60 didn't cure her of witchcraft. Mary, 15, is just beginning to think about boys and how they will look at the scar tissue on her face caused when her mother doused her in caustic soda. Twelve-year-old Rachel dreamed of being a banker but instead was chained up by her pastor, starved and beaten with sticks repeatedly; her uncle paid him $60 for the exorcism.

Israel's cousin tried to bury him alive, Nwaekwa's father drove a nail through her head, and sweet-tempered Jerry — all knees, elbows and toothy grin — was beaten by his pastor, starved, made to eat cement and then set on fire by his father as his pastor's wife cheered it on.

Hey, xians! Nice religion you got there. Maybe the pope can give another speech on the evils of Paganism or some American tv pastor can blame Wiccans for terrorist attacks or hurricane damage.

Picture found here.

Dark Moon

Dark of the moon
Plant a seed tonight
Dark of the moon
What we envision
Dark of the moon
Will come to be
Dark of the moon
By the full moonlight

~Wiccan chant

Off to do some dark moon magic with the witches. I occasionally note that the amazing women with whom I work do political magic directly in the shadow of the Capitol and, oddly, that generally results in at least one email saying, "Nuh Unh. If you did that, someone would notice and stop you."

We are far from the only ones. You just don't see us because: (1) you don't expect to and (2) we don't want you to.

But we're all over.

Reya:

Snapshot: Me, at Mt. Vernon, standing next to George Washington's tomb (not the swanky crypt he's in now. I'm talking about the earth-covered small room where he was originally buried). I am dumping a liter of ice cold water on the tomb, while almost shouting, "WAKE UP!! We NEED YOUR GUIDANCE! HEY!!! GEORGE!! WAKE UP!!!!" That was early into the first Bush administration when it became clear just how bad things were going to get.

Snapshot: With cohorts I am conducting rituals of recognition at each of the original Masonic cornerstones of the District, each stone precisely aligned to a cardinal direction. We offered wine and cornmeal, cleaned up the sites, danced around, sang songs, etc. We spent a whole year doing Connect DC. It was very fun.

Snapshot: Along with some of my cohorts I am standing in the rotunda of the Capitol. It is August 17, 2001. Three of us are standing in a triangle around the center of the rotunda, holding pieces of rose quartz. One is holding a sphere, one an egg, and one a long, pyramidal point. We are casting a "Triangle of Stillness" in the midst of the crazy central vortex of the Capitol, beneath the Apotheosis of Washington. (After that day I "saw" the triangle of stillness crystalize into a protective shield. After 9/11, my cohorts and I were convinced that our ritual had somehow protected the Capitol.) Yeah. Magicians tend to be grandiose.

Snapshot: I am standing at a fountain below the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, flinging dozens of marigolds into the water, sobbing, chanting, "Drink! Drink! Drink!!" (I still don't know what that one was about!)

I could go on with the snapshots: a year and a half of rituals at Logan Circle, Dupont Circle, Lafayette Park in front of the White House, at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln, on the American Civil War battlefields, etc. Oh yeah I was a very busy ritualist for a few years.

Connect DC: West of the Capitol

In ur churches, drinking ur wine.

At the Lincoln Memorial:

My New Name For A Blog

What Ruth Said.

The horribly skewed politics of right wing oppression is all the more disgraceful because it is wielded under a banner proclaiming family values. Valuing the family has been the most neglected practice of the administration we just tossed onto history’s dung heap, where it belongs.

The country needs to forge ahead to rebuild our economy, even though the wingnuts continue to bray about tax cuts for the wealthy, their continuing answer to the stagnation caused by…tax cuts to the wealthy. What has been ‘trickled down’ on the kids is a nightmare, made out of what was given to our generation in the form of the acclaimed North American dream.
The nuts and bolts of the real economy are always under the threat of ideology that thinks hardships are fine for the working class as long as the wealthiest get all the benefits. The remnant of supply-side delusion is undead and still struggling to climb back out of the grave it dug for this country and its treasures. The ranting you hear from teabagging ideologues is the death rattle that will go on until we can end it with real solutions.


Picture found here.

Saturday Poetry Blogging

In The Storm Of Roses

by Ingeborg Bachmann

Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns, and the thunder
of leaves, once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels.

Picture found here.

They're Getting Worried

This is just so squicky. I hate everything about it, starting with the "It's us against the world" chestbeating, the "some say" strawperson, and the completely ridiculous assertion that "those some who say" don't get a (completely unexplained) "distinction" between AmeriCA and AmeriCANS. The quick throw-away: Washington may help in times of trouble, is the moment when the carnie's hand distracts you over here so you don't see him remove the coin from under the cup over there. Yeah, "Washington" -- aka all of us AmeriCANS -- have to bail you "free enterprisers" out every time you steal too much and the till gets empty. And that's why we AmeriCANS are going to regulate you.

What a bunch of overwrought hooey. But at least it shows they're scared.

Comfortable?

Not To Believe In Witchcraft Is The Greatest Of Heresies

Bishops ask for action against belief in witchcraft


CINDY WOODEN
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

VATICAN CITY - Two bishops from Nigeria asked the Synod of Bishops for Africa to make a clear commitment to educating Catholics about the fact that, while the devil exists, witchcraft does not.

"Suspected witches are abandoned, isolated, discriminated (against) and ostracized from the community," Bishop Augustine Akubeze of Uromi told the synod Oct. 12.

"Sometimes they are taken to the forest and slaughtered or disgraced publicly and murdered."

Witches do not exist and so the accusations are always false, Akubeze said. Even worse, people have been known to accuse someone of being a witch just to settle personal squabbles.

Akubeze said that while witchcraft "lacks any justification in reason, science and common sense," people continue to believe in it.

He called on the synod to make clear the Church's teaching that God is all-powerful and that he sent his Son to save all people from evil.

Bishop Joseph Ekuwem of Uyo, Nigeria, said that across the continent people believe that "witchcraft is an evil force capable of inflicting both spiritual and physical harm on a person."

The superstitions about witchcraft are so pronounced that people see witches as having more power than God, he said.

He urged development of simple versions of the Church's teaching about evil and Jesus' victory over it to be developed for the faithful.

The Church should also develop a new rite of exorcism and appoint an exorcist in each diocese, Ekuwem said.

In 1999 the Vatican published a new Rite of Exorcisms. The 1999 rules reflect the Church's recognition that many symptoms previously associated with possession can now be explained by medical science.

Picture found here.

Obama Restaurant Watch -- New Orleans Edition

Like my brilliant friend, E, I really love New Orleans. One of the things I love best about it is the food. ( It's possible that the garlic soup at Bayona is, in fact, the single very best thing I've ever eaten.) And you'd really have to wonder about anyone who would visit New Orleans without stopping to eat. So I'm relieved to learn that President Obama made time for gumbo during his trip to the city. Lunch from Dooky Chase was worked into the presidential schedule:

I know he likes gumbo, so there will be gumbo; I know he likes shrimp Creole, so there will be shrimp Creole; I know he likes fried chicken, so there will be chicken.

Chef Leah Chase is reported to believe that the athletic, young president is "too thin," something that New Orleans cuisine has a way of fixing in a hurry. Her food is classic New Orleans, a mixture of Sicilian, French, and Italian. Shrimp Clemenceau, an unlikely but successful casserole of sautéed shellfish, mushrooms, peas, and potatoes, is a no-brainer, but her fried chicken, veal, grits, grillades, and court bouillon are also out of this world. She reportedly cooked enough for him to share. Chase said the Secret Service came by Dooky Chase around 10 a.m. to pick up the food. While the order only called for enough to feed a few people, Chase said, "You know I don't do that." She essentially prepared a full buffet: 35 pieces of fried chicken, two gallons of gumbo, jambalaya, shrimp Creole.

Photo of the president during an earlier visit to Dooky Chase found here.

Oh Body Swayed To Music, Oh Brightening Glance, How Can We Know The Dancer From The Dance?

Many thanks to Teacats.

Blog Action Day

Caledonia

And, guitar players. I've always been a sucker for guys who play guitars, with those . . . interesting . . . calluses on their fingers. I have. (The music starts at about 3:00)

An Oldie But A Goodie

Mostly, I just like to watch Derrick Jensen take off his sweatshirt. And I'm a sucker for guys in poet shirts and curly long hair.




More here.

Great Goddess! You've Been Missed! Would You Like A List?

One can only hope that this news concerning the discovery of a temple to the Goddess Nemesis, who provided retribution against those who succumb to hubris, [and who embodied] vengeful fate, personified as a remorseless goddess will give pause to a few people.

Picture found here.

Feh! I Grow Sick Of This Nonsense

Jason's got up another very good post, and, you know, I've just got to say:

I likely missed some important point, but I never thought -- nor was it ever a key tenant of my religion -- that every person burned for being a witch -- and I neither know nor care about the exact number, but let's just stipulate that the number was, well, far above "too many" ok? -- was "really" a "witch," but I do think that being a woman could get you burned as a witch, especially if you were too smart, too difficult, too unwilling to remarry and make your property some man's property, too willing to ask difficult questions, too able to move between the veils, too lucky, too good at healing the sick in an era when male "doctors" were claiming the role of healer for their own, too sexual, not sexual enough, too big for your britches. And I believe that there was a liminal point when being a believer in the pre-xian religion and being burned as a witch were both awfully well-correlated phenomena. And I've always thought that my identification as a witch was a small way to stand against that evil, that part of what I do by "being" a witch is to take a stand beside those women burned for being too difficult. It's not a lot; it's just what I can do every day. It's just a daily reminder to me of how close I am to, well, to being fired, run out of my neighborhood, beaten, disliked, disbarred, burned. And it's just what has made organic sense to me ever since the day that I learned that those burned were more likely to have vaginas and those lighting the fire were more likely to have penises.

And, in reality, the mythic truth, itself, was far more important to me (sorry, Mr. Hutton) than any specific number of female bodies burned, than the actual truth of some once-upon-a-time-Bachofen-specific-economic-model society based upon the matriarchal clans around which primates evolved into hominids, than some historical village that met specific political measuring points, than some man's nice story about being initiated by a naked woman or what was always his obvious need to be scourged. In reality, I agreed with Monique Wittig when she wrote:

There was a time
when you were not a slave,
remember that you walked alone,
full of laughter,
you bathed bare-bellied.
You may have lost all recollection of it,
remember...

You say there are not words to describe it,
you say it does not exist.
but remember,
make an effort to remember,
or, failing that,
invent.


Call me crazy.

I read all those early works and took from them life-changing metaphorical truths and never really cared if the actual numbers were or were not off by a factor of ten. One burned woman was too many in my nutty cosmology. One old man "initiated" by a naked woman scourging him was far less important to me than the chance to honor nature, to recognize the divine feminine, to celebrate on the holidays when my foremothers celebrated, to connect with my landbase as those old women connected with theirs, to see the same cycle in the changing year as they saw, long ago.

I never thought that worship of the ancient gods and Goddesses was transmitted unchanged down from my ancient Scandinavian many-times-great-grandmother to the 1970s, nor from the ancient Picts in my linage directly to Uncle Gerald and then to me, but I do think that I worship the same forces in nature and some of the same gods and Goddesses as did those ancient women and as did many of my genetic and spiritual forebears in old Europe. I doubt that any of them were Dianic witch lawyers who blogged on the world wide web. That doesn't stop me from drawing strength every single day from honoring them whenever I call the powers of Earth.

Kali on a croissant, I don't worship or do magic today the same way that I did twenty years ago, six years ago, a year ago, a few months ago. One of the things that drew me to Paganism and witchcraft was the chance to create my own rituals, to do my own magic based upon the needs of the moment, to engage with a religion and, in fact, with Goddesses, that could grow with me as I grew. And, hey, guess what? The Catholicism that I practiced in 1969, at a Folk Mass, was unlike anything that my Confirmation Saint, Saint Germain, ever knew in 1580. And what that lovely shepherdess knew was a whole lot different from what the first apostles knew in first century Turkey. Yet, oddly, no one, including modern xians, suggests that modern xianity is somehow flawed because xianity has evolved from its first century roots. Well, they were men doing the evolving, so that's ok, no need to call them silly.

I was always willing to see Uncle Gerald, and Aunt Doreen, and everything published by Lewellyn, and all the nonsense that Hecate puts out on her blog as human, and therefore flawed; fleshy, and therefore sacred, portals for myth and truth and magic to enter the modern world and was always willing to regard what they said as I regard creation myths: a way for deeper truths to be discussed and transmitted without getting tangled up in "mundane" facts.

Am I all broke up because some of the people burned in Europe as witches were good xians? Is Paganism useless to me because no one has proven that some societies were "matriarchial enough"? Am I about to abandon witchcraft because it turns out that ceremonial magic has made inroads into my daily practice? Hell, no. I'm the many-times-great-granddaughter of an incredibly mean old broad who crossed much of the frozen ground of Scandanavia with bare feet and bad toenails, shaking a rattling gourd the whole way, calling upon whatever name the Mother Goddess had in that snowy land, and keeping her family warm with incantations and instructions to chew on dried herbs. I spit on your historical correctness. Hand me that gourd full of fermented whatever. Do it now. I'm asking you nicely. The first time.

My New Name For A Blog

What Mickey Z Said.

I live with, now, two giant White Oaks (Quercus alba). They've been here since before America was America. They watched my little bungalow get erected a mere few decades ago. They feed the squirrels, harbor the birds, shade me and my neighbor, have roots that intertwine with mine every day when I do my spiritual practice. They're getting old. I do reiki on them. My neighbor and I pay an organic tree service to feed them. I water them even when I can't really afford to do so. White Oaks are amazing trees; every moment of every day they exude peace and stability and rectitude. How sad it is to lose one.

Picture found here.

Goddesses In The News

Pomona makes an appearance outside of California. You have a short time left to bid on the Goddess Hebe. Lakshmi is being worshipped in America. And Hecate hangs around at Yale.

Photo of Hebe found here.

What Susie Said

Susie explains yet another reason why Elizabeth Warren rocks.

Photo found here.

Little Boys

Gus is posting about an important topic, one that's been especially on my mind today.

I am the mother of an only son, an amazingly kind and gentle man who is so strong that he takes away my breath, often, regularly, spectacularly. I am the older sister of two little brothers, and the aunt of three nephews. I am the great-aunt of the world's cutest almost-one-year-old little boy, and I am -- as you may have heard -- a grandmother to my grandson. I held him a few minutes after his birth, looked into his eyes, said and meant "Namaste," and have been madly in love, ever since.

It's a sign of the Goddess' grand sense of humor that she's sent so many little boys into the life of this militant feminist, this Dianic witch, this old woman who would still love, at some point, to nurture a girl-child of my line. Maybe the joke's on the young men.

Today, I was considering the fact that there can be something so incredibly, burningly pure about a little boy's need for certain things. (It may be so for little girls, as well, I just wouldn't know.) Even when they're not the objects that I'd prefer to provide, I've coughed up the cash for them, simply because it was obvious to me that the little boy in question truly needed the object, and by "needed" I mean, "had to have in order to actualize," had to have in order for the universe not to veer off just that much wrong.

When Son was all gangly bones and adolescent longings and full of the need to move on, we did the campus tours, and he set foot on the Earth at Princeton, and he looked at me (a background of wisteria by the gate, as I remember it), and he told me that he needed to go there. I didn't like it. They had all-male eating clubs at the time. From the time that he'd been in my womb, I'd imagined sending him to St. John's in Annapolis for the education that I'd wanted, but couldn't have. But what I liked and wanted and what that nascent young man needed were two different things. Son went to Princeton.

At one point in his childhood, Son wanted a kit that took fingerprints -- a way to catch other people's secrets -- more than he wanted anything. I don't mean that he "wanted" it, I mean that, in order to be and become who he had to be, Son needed it. I was all the way broke at the time. I don't remember what bill I paid late, but I did get him the fingerprint kit with the magnifying glass, and the dusting powder, and the secret chart that explained everything.

G/Son and I have lately been enjoying the whole Redwall series, and G/Son has taken wholeheartedly, in the way that only little boys can take wholeheartedly, to the story of Matthias, the warrior who defends Redwall Abbey against all comers. I introduced him to the series, feeling that a steady diet of Pixar and Batman were somehow not meeting his deeper need for myth and for a hero with whom to identify. For a few weeks now, G/Son has been telling me, in that way that little boys have of telling you, and telling you that this REALLY matters, that he needed a sword and a shield, just like Martin and Matthias, the warriors. I don't like war, I don't like the notion of chopping up other beings with swords, I don't like the societal story that men get their value based upon whom they can kill. I don't know if this deep need for a weapon in all the little boys that I've known is genetic, or cultural, or some interesting brew of both.

But I know true need when I see it.

And I think that it just kills your own soul to see need that raw and to ignore it. I do.

Today, Son and I took G/Son to the Maryland Renaissance Festival and we ate spiced pecans and we drank meade and we listened to fiddles and bagpipes and we bought a wooden sword with a blue handle and a wooden shield with a blue dragon and we got a blue battle axe dripping blood painted on G/Son's forearm and we had, all in all, a perfect Autumn day.

Was I right? Was I wrong? Am I fostering exactly the wrong thing in the next generation? Am I simply giving way to a cultural/biological imperative? I don't know.

I only know that need that certain and that pure should be met.

That the world is better when such needs are filled and filled by one who loves the person who burns inside the flame of that need. When I was leaving this afternoon, Son told G/Son to "say 'thank you' to Nonna for everything," even though G/Son already had. G/Son looked with the eyes of his old soul deep into my old eyes and said:

"Thank you for getting me my sword and my shield."

I said, "You're welcome. I could tell that you needed them."

Then I went to my car and broke down in tears. Sometimes, my life is too wonderful for me to even bear.

I hope that Gus and our other elders can give us advice about little boys. How do we raise them in the 21st Century? What should their Nonnas be telling them? I want a better way to sister, to aunt, to mother, to grandmother our little boys. I just don't know what it is. And I'm not sure it's the sun dance that Gus proposes, but I'm willing to listen to all sorts of advice on this. I'm the one person who needs to know: the person placed in the position of sister, aunt, etc. But I don't know.

I only love and hope and try to provide what's needed. Goddess willing, that's enough.

Reading To Children

The NYT has a review of three children's books about Halloween (not Samhein). They all sound wonderful, but I especially love the evocative poetry from Only a Witch Can Fly:

The dark night around you fills with Fly, fly,
and bright yellow moonlight shines down.
Cat, by your side, purrs a gentle Bye, bye,
and Owl stares up at a star, so far.
Your heart tells you now and you walk to the door.
Cat arches his back and croons, Soon.

Isn't that JUST how it is on those windy, Fall nights when you stand at the door, watch the clouds skud past the Moon, and simply LONG to hop on a broom and go?

G/Son and I are still really enjoying The Last Wild Witch (which is not really about Halloween or Samhein but about the role of witches in the modern world and about how to use non-violent resistance), but we may have to check out these new books, as well. Maybe with a cup of warm cider and some oatmeal cookies.

Picture found here.

Saturday Poetry Blogging

OUT OF THE CHAOS OF MY DOUBT

Out of the chaos of my doubt
And the chaos of my art
I turn to you inevitably
As the needle to the pole
Turns . . . as the cold brain to the soul
Turns in its uncertainty;

So I turn and long for you;
So I long for you, and turn
To the love that through my chaos
Burns a truth,
And lights my path.

~Mervyn Peake

Picture found here.

I'm In Love

My New Name For A Blog

What Susie Said.

The average American might even be angry if he/she understood the fact that he spends five times as much for procedures as other people do. But Gwen Ifill isn’t going to tell Americans that. . . .

Why? Why do we spend twice as much for drugs? Why do we spend five times more for procedures? In a rational world, this remarkable state of affairs would lead to strings of front-page reports.

But you don’t live in a rational world. You live in the United States, a society which is owned by corporate interests—unlike the other societies in those OECD data.

That ownership is enabled by the dulled sensibilities found in the mainstream and career liberal worlds.

Go read the whole thing.

In Small Words

As the Supreme Court weighed a dispute over a religious symbol on public land Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia was having difficulty understanding how some people might feel excluded by a cross that was put up as a memorial to soldiers killed in World War I.

"It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead," Scalia said of the cross that the Veterans of Foreign Wars built 75 years ago atop an outcropping in the Mojave National Preserve. "What would you have them erect?...Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?"

Peter Eliasberg, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer arguing the case, explained that the cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity and commonly used at Christian grave sites, not that the devoutly Catholic Scalia needed to be told that.

"I have been in Jewish cemeteries," Eliasberg continued. "There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew."

There was mild laughter in the packed courtroom, but not from Scalia.

"I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion," Scalia said, clearly irritated by the exchange.

More, here.

No, here, Justice, allow me to explain it to you very simply: Some people feel so strongly that it does NOT honor their dead that they were willing to sue all the way to the Supreme Court. If it truly represented everybody, then some people wouldn't be suing because they find it so offensive. So rather than continuing, in the face of clearly contrary evidence, to insist that everyone is honored by the symbol of a religion that, for example, considers me evil and damned and, thus, could hardly honor my dead, perhaps you could simply look at the evidence standing right in front of you. The fact that it's not offensive to you is irrelevant.

Oh, and, by the way, that conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star? Still excludes me. Still offensive. All monotheistic, warmongering, religions. All male deities.

Of course the point of separation of church and state isn't to try and find a religious symbol to put on government land that somehow represents everyone (including atheists). It's to separate government from religion. How about a memorial that is secular, not religious, in nature? Or a secular memorial to peacemakers?

Picture found here.

Fire!

October In the Garden

I finally have a Moonflower in bloom, the anemones are going mad, and the pineapple sage is just beginning to bloom.

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

And, Now, Just In Time For Halloween . . . .

Is the USS Salem haunted? She is, after all, on her third life. You can take a haunted tour and see for yourself.

"We were really excited to have the Ghost Hunters team onboard this summer," said Michael Condon, executive director of the museum, in a press release.

Condon wouldn't say if the team found any spooky evidence aboard the ship.

I suppose that, in some ways, we Pagans have a relationship to secular Halloween that parallels xianity's relationship to secular xmas, although we, at least, call our religious holiday by a separate name (Samhein in my tradition) to make the distinction. Still, secular Halloween is "based on" Samhein even a bit more than secular xmas is based on the xian holy day of Christmas, although I'm not about to launch some "poor persecuted me" campaign and bitch about the "war on Samhein" with "The Beloved Dead Are The Reason For the Season" bumperstickers, although, now that I think about it . . . .

I find that many of us, yours truly included, both enjoy some of the witchy and spooky aspects of secular Halloween, while, at the same time, objecting to the sexist and xianist characterizations of witches as evil, ugly, old women and to the commercialization of what is one of our high, high holy days. I have a collection of Halloween witches, added to just this year, that I collect the same way that some African American friends of mine collect Aunt Jemima figurines: I want to reclaim the word witch and to honor even those "ugly" old women who were being marginalized and persecuted as witches, even as the good xians skulked out to the edge of the village on moonless nights to ask for an herbal cure, a charm, a potion. I decorate for the secular holiday, I hand out candy to all the neighborhood kiddies ( dressed in my witchy finery, including the pointed hat), I enjoy the secular emphasis on the places where the veils thin, and I hold within myself as odd and, yet, because it's real, also sacred, the conflict over the strange overlap between my sacred day and the secular and commercial attempts to render that which chills us as somehow safe and silly. At the same time, I've started long -running blog wars with jerks who announce "The Witch Is Dead" when a conservative bites the dust or who call any evil woman a "witch".

How do you manage the overlap?

Picture found here.

A Culture That Is Killing The World

Sweet Little DFH

Photo of the author's grandson. If you copy, please link back.

I'm Just A Soul Whose Intentions Are Good

Landscape Guy so "gets" me.

He came by this afternoon to plot out the Western crocus bed and said, "Oh, by the way, I found a plant you're going to love for the woodland garden and I ordered you five of them. We can put them in when we put in the crocus. They smell icky, but you're not going to care when you see them."

It's nice to be understood.

Turns out, heh, the roots are poison.

Pictures found here, here, and here.

Electrifying

Times are tough, even for a Goddess.

Picture found here.

Sabbatting

What She Said:

Have you ever made bread? Ever knocked on the bottom of a hot loaf, searching for the perfect hollow note that will tell you it’s done? Ever bitten into sweet corn in July, a ripe peach in August, acorn squash in September? Ever made a summer fire? Thrown your most beloved God into its burning mouth? Ever danced the ecstatic volta at Sabbat with loved ones and heartfriends? Darlings, I know you have. And I wonder, as I wander, friends friends, I think it’s possible that the vast majority of the time…yes yes yes….these are enough. The meaning is there – grokked in the deep myth, sitting sated and strong in the marrow of our bones. There is no need to ask “what the grain represents” at Harvest. It is itself, the Grain, and that staggering mystery is enough. It is plucked, threshed, ground, mixed with yeast and water and salt and kneaded until it looks like satin, and then, swollen and ripe with pure life, it is thrust into a livid hole of fire, to emerge an alchemical miracle, and effing delicious with butter and blackberry jam. Isn’t that phenomenal? To consider this each year, or every day, is the spiritual devotion of a storied being wed forever to the heart of the Mama. Break the bread and give it to a neighbor. If words are needed, make them a prayer. If singing is required, sing your guts out. If you are so gobsmacked by its profundity that you lie on the fertile ground for an hour, enchanted by the stars and the smell of the fistfuls of frankincense and peasant loaves and apples you gave to the hungry fire until your arms were slack and your skirt empty, and during that hour you feel the weight of the fragile and amazing thing that is your body settle down into the planet’s lap, and you grok Harvest, beloveds, well….you can stick a fork in the season and call it done. And no one had to even ask you what abstract qualities you were metaphorically harvesting, or what the bread meant. The bread sits in your belly, infusing your whole body with its ineffable perfection. The mystery is in the bread. Literally.*

As we move, at an alarming and alluring rate towards Samhein, as I sit by my trees and literally watch the veils grow thin, thinner, thinnest, thin, I wish for each of us the pure Sabbat that Ruby Sara describes. In my humble experience, and, truly, it is humble, I've found that the best preparation that I can do for such a Sabbat is (here's a surprise! not!) to engage in a regular daily practice. For me, that means: sit, ground and center, call the Elements the Goddesses with whom I'm working (right now, Hygeia, and Columbia, and, as always, the Great Three Headed Goddess of Liminal Space Whose Very Being Creates the Possibility of Change -- Breathe, Breathe, Breathe), cast a circle, say the Ha Prayer, do my Iron Pentacle exercise, envision and breathe into change, thank the Goddesses, thank the Elements, open the circle. And, then, do the work. Feed the birds, weed the herb bed, knit the warm sweaters, write the shining brief, encourage the friend, be kind enough to the store clerk (THIS store clerk, the very one that the Goddess has especially chosen to throw this day into your path, THIS one) to elicit a smile and a small warming of the aura, repair the web, exalt in the sunlight or the rainstorm or the icy cold wine. In short, do the privileged work of a witch: put your shoulder to the wheel and help it to turn.

I'm not sure why such regular, and seemingly "mundane", practice leads to those Sabbatical moments in the field that Ruby Sara describes. But I do know that they do.

May it be so for you.

(Many, many thanks to Medusa Coils for noting Ruby Sara's return to the blogosphere.)

Picture found here.

*Or, as the Goddess said: 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.

Eating -- All Acts Of Love And Pleasure Are Rituals Of The Goddess

Eating the living germs of grasses
Eating the ova of large birds

the fleshy sweetness packed
around the sperm of swaying trees

The muscles of the flanks and thighs of soft-voiced cows
the bounce in the lamb's leap
the swish in the ox's tail

Eating roots grown swoll
inside the soil

Drawing on life of living
clustered points of light spun
out of space
hidden in the grape

Eating each other's seed
eating
ah, each other

Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread
lip to lip.

~Gary Snyder

Picture found here.

Obama Restaurant Watch -- Anniversary Dinner Edition

The Obamas continue to eat out in Washington, D.C., something that delights residents of the city and foodies everywhere. For their 17th wedding anniversary (congrats to both!) they ate at Blue Duck Tavern, an upscale, contemporary American restaurant at Washington’s Park Hyatt hotel, [that] fits comfortably with Mrs. Obama’s effort to promote fresh food. When the restaurant opened in 2006, it was among the first in the capital to hop on the local sourcing trend, and its menu still cites the origin of the ingredients, most of which come from nearby Pennsylvania. (I'll note that Nora was working on local, organic sourcing long before Blue Duck opened.)

No word on what the couple ordered. There's a lot to choose from at Blue Duck. Everytime I go, I wind up ordering a couple of the vegetable sides and skipping an entree. A meal of Leek and Mushroom Tart with Potato Leek Sauce, made from ingredients from Path Valley, PA and Constant Bliss Agnolloti, with Artichoke, Date, & Hazelnuts from Jasper Hill Farm in VT would make a pretty good meal. If the Obamas were feeling especially celebratory, they could pair the Perrier Jouët, Fleur de Champagne, Brut, Epernay 1999 with almost anything on the menu. Blue Duck is known for its ice cream, but I always seem to wind up ordering the tin of old fashioned sugar cookies.

Thanks again, to the Obamas for actually living in DC, instead of hiding out behind the fortress walls of the WH, the way that the former residents did. DC loves you.

Photo (and another review of Blue Duck) found here.