Mercury Goes Retrograde This Weekend

Pretend You're A River

It's Always Some Little Girl, Looking All Alone, Surrounded By Grownups, With Her Hair Done Up. But It's Different, This Time.

This morning, driving into work, coffee mug in hand, news radio on, I was informed that several of the streets that I normally take were blocked because the Secret Service was taking the lovely young daughters of President Elect Obama from the stately and patrician Hay Adams Hotel to Sidwell Friends private school, where they were beginning the new semester.

And, I'm old. In my own lifetime, I traveled the South with my family and walked past the Colored Bathroom into the Women's Bathroom, sat at lunch counters where "colored children" couldn't sit, watched my dad attend the March on Washington and the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King. In my own lifetime, the Misses Obama wouldn't have been allowed in either the Hay Adams (as guests) nor at a prestigious DC private school.

And so, on 20th St., N.W., DC, this morning, I just broke down in deep, gasping sobs. Sobs for Thurgood Marshall. Sobs for little Linda Brown of Brown v. Board of Education, who wanted to go to school with her white playmates, Mona, Guinevere, and Wanda. Sobs for all of those who gave so much to make America live up to her promise.

Today, two little African American girls traipsed off from one of DC's finest hotels to one of DC's finest schools. We routed traffic all around the city in order to make it happen (because George and Laura Bush are jerks.) And, for just a minute, I am proud of us. I am proud of how far we've come in just one lifetime. Go, America. You go, Girl. That was pretty cool.

Thanks to the folks at Eschaton who helped me find the pictures that I was remembering.

Wyrd

Breaking the silence
that turns around
the double edge of seeing.
I have called you
into the night moon
because we have come
to learn the end of waiting.

Looking for nothing
to take us out of here.
Ramshackle.
A word that divinely
chains us to earth.
Ramshackle wind
ramshackle fire
ramshackle house of our bodies
like a lizard
hiding under the blue tint
of English holly
as if the red berries
will sustain us
all the way home.

~Lynn Andrews in The Woman of Wyrrd

Art found here.

The Only Inauguration Party Worth Attending

Details Here

Party starts around 2:00 pm.

Art found here.

Sunday Trakl Blogging

Kaspar Hauser's Song

He truly loved the purple sun, descending from the hills,
The ways through the woods, the singing blackbird
And the joys of green.

Sombre was his dwelling in the shadows of the tree
And his face undefiled.
God, a tender flame, spoke to his heart:
Oh son of man!

Silently his step turned to the city in the evening;
A mysterious complaint fell from his lips:
“I shall become a horseman.”

But bush and beast did follow his ways
To the pale people’s house and garden at dusk,
And his murderer sought after him.

Spring and summer and – oh so beautiful – the fall
Of the righteous. His silent steps
Passed by the dark rooms of the dreamers.

At night he and his star dwelled alone.
He saw the snow fall on bare branches
And in the murky doorway the assassin’s shadow.
Silvern sank the unborne’s head.


~Art found here.

What It Costs To Be A Musician In America

The Wild Hunt reports that Pagan musician S.J. Tucker has been hospitalized. In a country without national health insurance, getting sick can be a truly terrifying experience for musicians, who often don't have private insurance. Check out The Wild Hunt to help S.J.


Update: A wonderful commenter at Eschaton adds that musicians can get insurance here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Thers Said.

Here's both [puerility and insanity], from Krauthammer:

"Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating."

Anyone who can look at dead children and preserve "moral clarity" is a psychopath. Clearly.

Picture found here.

What Does Grounding Look Like?

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



Picture found here.



Picture found here.



Picture found here.



Picture found here.



Picture found here.

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!

~Photo found here.

Keeping Your Feet On The Ground

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


~Picture found here.


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

Death Is The Mother of Beauty, Mystical

One of the things I love about Wicca is its celebration of death and decay. Wallace Stevens, in his poem Sunday Morning, wrote:

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

(The Collected Poems, 69)

~Reprinted in Gardens, An Essay on the Human Condition by Robert Pogue Harrison

Photo found here.

Garden & Cosmos

If you live anywhere near DC, go see this exhibit now, before it goes away. No, really.

Picture found here.

Exactly

If it were of any use, every day the gardener would fall on [her] knees and pray somehow like this: "O [Lady], grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o'clock in the morning, but you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in, grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion, alyssum, helianthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought-loving plants -- I will write their names on a bit of paper if you like -- and grant that the sun may shine the whole day long, but not everywhere (not, for instance, on spirea, or on gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron), and not too much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no plant-lice and snails, no mildew, and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven. [So mote it be.]" For so it was in the garden of Eden, otherwise things would not have grown in it so well as they did, how could they?

~From The Gardener's Year by Karel Capek, reprinted in Gardens, An Essay on the Human Condition by Robert Pogue Harrison.

~Picture found here.

Lie Down In That Grass

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~Art found here.

How Many Of The World's Goods Are Measured In Birds' Nests? How Many Should Be?

Talking to Carolyn Raffensperger, Derrick Jensen asks: Wouldn't the precautionary principle then destroy competitive advantage?

Raffensperger answers: I want to turn that sentence around and suggest that competitive advantage destroys. The idea that we can outcompete, that we can compete by lowering dollar costs destroys. The idea that we measure goods in dollars destroys. How many of the world's goods are measured in U.S. dollars and not, for example, in the number of bird's nests? If we measured all of our economy in the number of hatchlings of migratory birds, we would figure competitive advantage in an entirely different way. But competitive advantage drives lower and lower dollar costs on things, and increases the probability that we're going to externalize costs.

As Janine Benyus has pointed out, nature favors cooperation over competition. And that sense of mutualism and reciprocity is undermined with competitive advantage.

The whole question of competitive advantage leads to some absurdities. There are some things that are just plain stupid to trade. Why are we moving water around the planet using fossil fuels? Why does France have a competitive advantage with Perrier over some other bottled water in the United States, or over drinking your tap water? That is not rational.

So to worry that the precautionary principle is going to destroy competitive advantage is to worry about precisely the wrong thing.

~Picture found here.

On Reading Garden Porn (aka All The Gardening Catalogs That Start Showing Up In Mailboxes Now)

Ode to a Woman Gardening

by Pablo Neruda

Yes, I knew that your hands were
a budding sprout, a lily
of silver:
you had something to do
with the soil,
with the flowering of the earth,
but
when
I saw you digging, digging,
pushing pebbles apart
and guiding roots
I knew at once,
my dear cultivator,
that
not only
your hands
but also your heart
were of earth,
and that there
you were
making
your things,
touching
moist
doorways
through which
the
seeds
circulate.

So in this way
from one plant
to the other
recently
planted one,
with your face
spotted
with a kiss
from the clay,
you went
and came back
flowering,
you went
and from your hand
the stem
of the astromeria
raised its solitary elegance,
the jasmine
adorned
the mist on your brow
with stars of dew and fragrance.

Everything
grew from you
penetrating
into the earth
and becoming
green light,
foliage and power
you communicated
your seeds to it,
my beloved,
red gardening woman:
your hand
on familiar terms
with the earth
and the bright growing
was instantaneous.
Love, thus also
your hand
of water,
your heart of earth,
gave
fertility
and strength to my songs
you touch
my chest
while I sleep
and trees blossom
from my dreaming.
I wake up, open my eyes,
and you have
inside me
stars in the shadows
which will rise and shine
in my song.

That’s how it is, gardening woman:
our love
is
earthly:
your mouth is a plant of light, a corolla,
my heart works among the roots.


~Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Holly Said.

For that matter, if you really do believe that God has a plan and that it’s possible to stray away from it, I’m not sure why that’s automatically a bad thing either. We’re talking about God in capacity as Creator of the universe. In an infinitely lesser way, I am also in the business of creating universes and designing the way things work, as are many other artists, designers, and authors. Perhaps unlike an omnipotent creator, it is very easy for human beings to create things that grow to be larger than ourselves, to create the unpredictable. I know that for me personally, one of the chief joys of creation is in watching the creation get away from me — watching things happen that I didn’t predict.

This is especially probable when you are creating complex and unpredictable systems like games, and then letting players with their own agency run amok in them. It’s certainly true of many technological creations (hacking, modding, hybridizing) and it’s how many new creations emerge. But I’ve certainly heard authors talk about this phenomenon as well — the moment when characters come to life. If we are really made in God’s image, and this is such a moment of joy and wonder that’s part of the creative act, why should we think that God feels so differently? Do theists really believe that God is the kind of unimaginative, joyless Creator who frowns on anyone who doesn’t follow the Original Equipment Manufacturer instructions and guidelines?

That’s a pretty silly form of religion, if you ask me.

Go read the whole thing and then write Ratzi the Nazi a letter.

~Photo found here.

At The Crossroads Of The Year

This time of the year -- the space on the calendar from December 24th or so until January 2nd (and, this year, really, until January 5th) -- is special to me because it's always seemed to me to be almost the very definition of liminal time. And liminal times are when it's easiest for change to happen. That's what makes them scary to some people, but it's also what makes them special and, even, fun. They're the times when a small shove, be it magical and/or mundane, can make a big difference in ultimate outcomes.

Even when I was a good catholic girl who'd never heard of Wicca, or magic, or a Goddess of the Crossroads, I liked to inhabit and really use this time between semesters, between seasons, between years. It's the perfect time, especially when everyone else is in a food coma and slumped in front of the tv, to make changes, to, in fact, change consciousness at will. (Yes, it's natural to want to hibernate about now, and a reasonable amount of hibernation is a good thing. But it's interesting to me how often magical workers are those who are out and DOING (even if the out is in and the DOING is internal) during those times when everyone else is asleep. Night is the most obvious example; everyone knows that night is when the witches gather, the sorcerers work, the fairies dance. The dark Moon is another example. Too dark for most people to be out, but it's when serious magic can happen. And, wow, just your luck; there's a dark moon TONIGHT! Twilight, when most people put down their tools and head for home is a lovely liminal time.) For many of us this time of year is, at the least, a slow time at work, if not actual time off. The overcommitment of the holiday season, which hits women hardest of all as they bake, give parties, go to parties, shop, clean, etc., comes to a sudden stop and there's often some open time on our calendars. Open, liminal, waiting for us to work magic and move things in a new direction.

And calendars are part of what can make this liminal time so productive. IMHO, there are few magical tools as powerful as a calendar, be it the lovely new WeMoon calendar (I was gifted mine by my wonderful DiL), the calendar on your iPhone or Blackberry, or a plain old FiloFax. If it's got the phases of the Moon and plenty of room to write stuff, you can work magic with it (and starting today, you can usually find a lovely one on sale for half off). If magic is a way of being in control of your life, a calendar is possibly the most basic magical tool there is. (And don't just take my word for it. The Druids, the Mayan priests, the ancient Egyptians: they all understood that keeping track of time, knowing what's coming and when it's coming, being aware of precisely "when" you are, was magical.)

First, as with any magical working, you need to Ground. You need to get the basics of your life down onto the calendar. Birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays that matter to you. Dates when important financial things occur: car insurance due, taxes due, CDs need to be renewed. Important medical information; you can calendar monthly breast self-exams, write a note reminding you to call X number of months in advance to schedule your annual physical, your Pap smear, your dental check-ups. (Better yet, use some of this down time to actually schedule as many of those appointments as you can. Some doctors will let you schedule stuff like this up to six months in advance.) Stuff that needs to get done every year around your home: check batteries in smoke detectors, get the rain gutters cleaned, have the furnace and the air conditioning checked, etc. It's amazing how much grief you can avoid, not to mention how much control and power it gives you, just by taking a half an hour or so and getting all that stuff organized into your calendar.

Second, you need to do some Air work. Dream. Plan. Strategize. Have a conversation with your Higher Self, your ancestors, your Younger Self. Read tarot, cast runes, journal. What do you need to accomplish this year? What do you want to include in this year? Project yourself into the future, a year from now, looking back at 2009; what challenges would you feel really happy to see that you'd met? One year, I calendared one day a month to visit art museums. I calendar time every other month to get off into nature and spend at least half a day alone. You can calendar days to go to the gym, days to clean out closets, days to work on writing your dissertation, days to spend with people you love. You can write down the amount of debt that you will have paid off by the end of each month, the number of miles you will have jogged by the end of each week, the magical work that you will do each Moon.

Third, add some Fire to the mix. Get yourself excited about what you want to do. (Here's a hint: if you can't get excited about any of it, you need to go back to Air. What do you really WANT to get done this year?) Dance your year. Drum your goals. Chant your accomplishments as if they'd already (as indeed, somewhere on the Web, they already have) been achieved. Go for a walk and find a talisman to carry with you throughout the year: a rock, a feather, a scene captured on your cell phone camera. Charge it with your intent and wear it, put it on your altar, tuck it into your calendar. Draw yourself a year from now. Make a magical collage. Can you calendar some periodic Fire workings to help you to stay fired up about your goals as the year goes on? I lack Fire in my chart and this part of the process is often the most difficult for me. But I find that I can use some of my strong Earth tendencies to help. If I use this liminal week or so on the calendar to start actually doing the things that I've picked as goals, I develop a lot of enthusiasm for finishing, I convince myself that it's not really so difficult/scary/painful as I thought it might be. If I'm going to need supplies, I go get them. If I'm going to need to read information, I get it printed out, lined up, organized into folders or notebooks or bookshelves. If I'll need to be out late in order to accomplish a goal, I might make and freeze soups so that I'll have something good to defrost when I do get home. By the time the new year starts, I've already got a running start and a bit of momentum.

Fourth, add some Water. One of Water's most amazing qualities is its ability to cleanse. And you've got to wash away old stuff if you're going to start on an amazing new adventure. Use some of this liminal time to clean house, literally. Get rid of old stuff; give it to charity, give it to a friend, recycle it, throw it away. Clean out and organize your files, your ritual supplies, your checkbook, your purse. Actually take all those coins to the bank and deposit them. Clean all the old stuff out of your refrigerator and wipe the shelves down with white apple cider vinegar (charge it first, if you like!). Take a ritual bath or shower and chant the things you want to wash out of your life, your heart, your days. Start the year with every bit of laundry done, ironed, folded, mended, back from the dry cleaner, put away in an organized closet. Visualize water washing away the old year, falling like warm gentle rain on your calendar to grow your lovely new year, full of accomplishments and fun.

Finally, you want to add the Fifth Sacred Thing: Spirit. I can't tell anyone else how to do that. I can only remind you of the Charge of the Goddess: 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.


(A final note. Nowadays, I go through this process in the days leading up to Samehein, as that's the beginning and end of my spiritual and magical year. Luckily, you can now buy a calendar for the next year anytime from about August on, especially if you go on line. That means that I've already got the Grounding and Air portions of this process pretty well completed by October 31st. That allows me to focus even more on the Fire, Water, and Spirit portions of this process during the liminal days at the end of the secular calendar. Either way works; it's just a question of what works best for you.)

Picture found here.

Father Christmas' Home

G/Son and I have been reading The Father Christmas Letters by Tolkein and G/Son esp. likes the story about how the North Polar Bear tried to carry all the presents downstairs to load them into Father Christmas' sled. Father Christmas told him not to carry the presents on his head, but the silly north polar bear did it anyway. And then he fell and dropped all the presents on the stairs inside Father Christmas' wonderful home. He even smushed some. (Each time, G/Son assures me (himself) that Father Christmas won't bring US any smushed presents.)

I made him this replica of Father Christmas' home at the North Pole. He was just entranced.

For the first time ever, tonight, G/Son "read" me a story from one of his picture books. He's memorized enough of it to turn the pages and tell me the story. I love this kid.