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.

Patriarchy. You're Soaking In It

No one could have anticipated that patriarchy would have real world impacts on women's stomachs.

You Need To Listen To This

Black-Eyed Susans

They're the State flower of Maryland, but the grow really well in Virginia, too. Perennials, they can grow in some shade, which, in my yard, is a good thing. I like them because they'll bloom for several weeks here at the end of July, when most flowers are finished, providing color until the fall mums come in.

When Gardenias And The Afternoon Sun Love Each Other Very Much . . . .

The sun has been making such intense love to Earth that the deck burns my feet when I walk outside, barefoot, to make love to the Earth with my feet. My gardenias, that I harbor inside all winter long, living, as I do in Zone 7, are blooming. If you walk outside in the heat of the mid afternoon in July, in Virginia, the gardenias on the deck surround you with a scent that makes you very, very certain that the Goddess loves us, and wants us to be: ecstatic.

Witchcraft is a religion of ecstacy. I believe that if I believe nothing else. And, this hot afternoon, surrounded by gardenias making such love to the Air as only a lover devoted to nothing but love could possibly make, I am, well, I am in ecstacy. But it's polyamoury. The gardenias can only make this kind of rare, refined, mad love to the Air when the Sun helps them. And, it's all good.

Sweet Potato Vine And Coleus

The woman who lived here before I did was a potter and she left several of her lovely large pots for me. This year, I planted nicotina, sweet potato vine, and a dark coleus.

Sage

This is Sage Bergarten, German Mountain Sage. It is mad for the mix of sandy soil and wood chips in my herb bed. In late October or early November, I'll cut it and hang it up to dry. I'll burn it all winter in a tiny incense burner that my world-traveler brother gave to me, on a small block of charcoal. It will purify the air in my ritual room, ground me, remind me that summer is coming, when the sun is so hot that the sandy soil stays many degrees warmer than the air for hours after the sun has gone down.

Garden Pr0n

Not sure exactly why, but this year, the fig tree is going wild. Usually, the birds and squirrels take about three bites out of every fig and leave me, like, two figs. This year, I may have enough to bring some inside to ripen just for me. I'm happy to share, but I do wish they'd leave some for me.

My chipmunk was a wild woman this morning, dashing here and there and up over the herb bed and behind the grass and under the coleus and in between the helibore. I warned her, "Look out. You know that cat, Smudge, from across the street, is looking for you. If I can see you, you know that Smudge can see you."

Ten Years

Wait, The Reporter Forgot To Add "Self-Professed"!

What's cute about this story is the casual and completely matter-of-fact mention that the couple is Wiccan.

But, really, a WaWa?



Art found here.

Oh, This Could Be Fun Or It Could Be Terrible

Wicked: The Movie.

My New Name For A Blog

What Susie Said

IOKIYAR

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the kind of wall-to-wall screaming coverage that we would have had for WEEKS if Theresa Heinz Kerry had blithely announced on television that "The only way to get around is by private plane, so I just went out and bought a plane!"

On The Fringe

As my brilliant friend, E says, go check out Fringe Fest. This is wonderful city.

The Blood Of The Martyrs Will Water The Meadows Of France

Bastille Day

There was a time when people marched against their governments when their governments oppressed them.


Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

We too shall enlist
When our elders' time has come
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

Remember. And, if you cannot remember, imagine.

My New Name For A Blog

What Jason Said.

Actually, this story reminds me of one that Jason and I both covered a while back in Virginia. Fundies took the local board of ed to court and got the court to say that the board of ed had to let the fundies send home announcements for Vacation Bible School, etc. Some local Pagans took advantage of that ruling to make the board of ed send home an announcement about a Pagan event for children. Fundie moms went batshit on their blogs, the community was outraged, etc. Almost none of them "got it." Gee, this is how other groups feel when we xians do it. Guess there's a good reason for the separation of church and state, after all. Nope. They were too busy being "threatened" and "outraged."

Eventually, I think the board of ed decided that it would just stop sending home announcements from any non-school group (originally, they'd sent home announcements from things like the local Dept. of Recreation, which gave the fundies their hook).

In Which Our Heroine Has Too Much Fun

I love Washington, D.C.

It's a city of monuments, sculpture, public gardens, and, of course, government, which, even as sucky as it's been for, well, for ever, I adore. In my most important and memorable dreams, I wander through these monuments and past these marble statues of Prosperity, Truth, Commerce, and Justice.

I came to D.C. as a far-too-full-of-myself (some things never change!) five-year-old, stepping off the train from Chicago at Union Station with my mom, my brother and sister, and one tiny turtle (the kind they used to sell in drug stores). I was born in the college town of Boulder, Colorado, where I learned my mad love for mountains, but I'd never seen anything -- anything -- that spoke to my deep soul the way that this city of marble and high ideals spoke to me. We moved because my dad took a job writing speeches here, but he had a meeting in Cincinnati the week that we got off the train. My mother, may the Goddess guard her, took three little kids (and a turtle) to the Hotel Continental just around the corner from the office where my dad was going to be working. For a week, we lived in that hotel and, every day, Mom would take all three kids (but not the turtle) out for a long walk in the city and through one of Washington's many, many museums. We'd walk until we were tired, at which point, my brother, Joe, who was, I swear to the Goddess all of four years old, would (after the first day) just hail a cab.

When Son was young, I was a young, single mother on a school-teacher's salary. We spent, I warrant, more time wandering the (free!) museums of Washington, D.C. than most other mothers and sons. Son adored the Air & Space Museum, but, Goddess knows, we covered every inch in every museum up and down the Mall, more than once. Do you ever wish that you could remember "the last" time that something happened? I don't remember "the last" time that I took Son to the museums in D.C.; I'm sure at the time it didn't at all seem like "the last" time. But eventually, he got into high school sports, found girlfriends, got busy studying for SATs, and there was, sadly, a last time. It may have been a trip to see the Boating Party by Renoir at the Phillips, but I can't be sure. I do have a vague memory of lunch afterwards at Teaism.

This morning, G/Son and I got up early, had strawberries and orange juice, and headed down to the Mall. Nonna miscalculated how early you need to get down there to get a parking space. We were a little early.

At two-and-a-quarter, G/Son's started asking one of the first questions for which I ever got in trouble: What's going to happen? It's an attempt, as my mother knew and resented, to figure out how to be in control, to prepare, to master the situation. I have a different approach than did my mother. I provide the kind of detailed information that I'd have appreciated at two: We're going to get in Nonna's car; you can have your water bottle while we're driving. We're going to drive downtown, past the beautiful Potomac River that Nonna loves, we'll go to the dinosaur museum, see dinosaur bones, and then we'll get back in Nonna's car, drive to your house, and tell Mommy and Daddy about it.

We got down a bit early, so we walked around the Mall for a while, waiting for the dinosaur museum to open. We fed a muffin to the v brave pigeons of D.C. We chased a v bold D.C. squirrel who lives out of the trash cans around the Mall refreshment stand. We looked at the Enid Haupt garden and tried to decide if the fountain inside the Sackler Gallery was a reflection of the outside fountain or another one, inside. We decided that we preferred a fruit bar to popcorn from the little red cart. We watched bees and butterflies in the outside butterfly garden near the dinosaur museum.

And, there, although I'd forgotten it for decades, it was. The Carousel on the Mall. People who hate Washington, D.C. just don't realize how many lovely hidden treasures it has. And one of them is the carousel just outside the Smithsonian Castle on the Mall. I used to spring, and it was "springing" back then, for a ride for Son on that carousel, with its old-fashioned animals and carousel music and bright lights. It was still closed when G/Son spotted it from across the Mall and said, "Nonna, is that a merry-go-round?" We went over to investigate and, there it was, the blue horse with a blue saddle of G/Son's dreams. He told me, "Nonna, I've got to ride that blue horse." I've lived too long to disregard a message from the deep psyche/the Gods like that one.

We waited, and waited, and waited for the nice man to show up and start selling tickets. We had a fruit bar and a bottle of water and we decided that the beautiful blue horse was named Herman. We waited some more. When Nonna suggested that we walk around and come back in a bit, we decided that was a bad idea. When other little kids began to get in line behind us at the ticket stand, we agreed: She doesn't want to ride Herman; she must want to ride the zebra. He doesn't want to ride Herman, he must want to ride the black horse with the lightning strikes on his saddle. She doesn't want to ride Herman; she wants to ride the blue dragon.

We got (hell, yes there are benefits to always needing to be in control) the first two tickets, were the first two on the carousel, got to Herman before anyone else. G/Son was pretty accurate about which horses the other kids wanted to ride; well, he's the witch's grandson. (What's going to happen? What does your intuition tell you?)

And then, we were doing it. Life caught us up in the moment and all the waiting was over. The music was playing, the lights were on, Herman went up and down, G/Son sat in the saddle, absolutely equally divided between the mad joy of Pan and the odd terror of going too fast and having too much fun. Nonna (a late-coming advocate of Pan's side of things) stood near Herman's head and said, "You're doing great. You're having a good time. This is fun! Whee! Go, Herman!" G/Son alternated between calling out, "Go Herman," and yelling "Hold on tight, everybody!"

Too soon, but not a minute too soon, the carousel slowed, and it was over. We gave Herman a hug and a pat on the neck, and said, "Good job, Herman. Thanks!" We got off the carousel and got into our stroller. G/Son told the man operating the carousel, "Thanks for letting me ride the blue horse on your merry-go-round!" and the man just cracked up.

It could be my last time on the carousel. I could die on the way to work tomorrow, driving past the lovely Potomac River, But it might not be. When we left, we called out, "Bye, Herman! See you the next time we come downtown!" I just want to remember every time so that, if that time is the last time, I'll still be able to recollect it, re-live it in memory, enjoy it over and over.

Who knew that I'd get this amazing blessing of being a Nonna? Once, in my wicked youth . . . .

Nah, I can't pretend that it's anything but lagniappe. And it is lagniappe, lagniappe, lagniappe. May it be so for you.

Freya's Day Martini Blogging

Goddess, the market sucked today.

Why? Why? Why Didn't I Riot In The Streets In 2000? Why?

OK, now he's just fucking with my liver and going na-na-na-na-boo-boo I can give you cirrhosis and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sweet Mother of the Gods, where's that gallon jar of olives, that tablespoon of vermouth, and that truckload of Stoli?


Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Dirk Gently Said.

The Carrot Or The Athame?

Travel

I had dinner with two of my very dearest friends in the whole world last night and I remembered just how liberating it is to sit and talk with the people who really understand you, who provide you with endless reasons to admire them, who will call your name at Samhein when you are gone. Once, in my wicked youth and childhood, I must have done something good.

At one point, we got to talking about: Where would you travel to if money and time were no object? Both E and S are better travelers than I, and they both had lists of more exotic places than I have. With my moon in Taurus, which S kept insisting was no excuse for me, I like to stay home, living my well-ordered life, among my lovely things. But if money were no object, which, I admit, can make travel much more palatable, there are two places that I'd like to go to before I die.

I'd like to be in Sweden, home of my maternal ancestors, on Litha, when the sun shines all day and all night long and people hop in boats to go across the water to Denmark to buy beer, when they go to small cottages in the mosquito-infested woods and entertain their neighbors.

And, I'd like, in deep midst of deepest winter, to see the Aurora Borealis when the dancing sky is at its peak, which apparently happens every 17 years.

Where would you go, if you could go first class, if money and time were no object, if the urge to travel overtook your love of staying home, tending your garden, drinking a cup of tea?

Since He Kissed Them And Put Them There

FISA - Surveillance State Enhancements Act

Clinton - NO
Obama - YES.

I believe this calls for a poem.

e.e. cummings - Buffalo Bill's
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death?

I admit that I am surprised. I expected Hillary to vote as he voted, in order to show that she's supporting him, in an effort to get him to continue to pay off her campaign debt. Instead, as she so often, although not always, does, she did the right thing.

But she was shrill. She cackled. She was a "ball-buster." Marc Penn! The announcer in her commercials sounded too much like an announcer! She said, "Not as far as I know" the fourth time she was asked if Obama was a Moslem! She's likeable enough! People were "just more comfortable" with him.

In reality, she had a vagina.

/with apologies to Eugene Fields

Read A Nice Poem

The Lightest Touch

Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then like a hand in the dark
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.

In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.

-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press


Image found here.

Cleaning Up

What I love is what an unconsciously feminine take this is on alchemy. But then, my Moon is in Taurus.


Art found here.

Ivan Kupala

Jumping the bonfire, bathing, communal dancing. So many elements that appear and re-appear.

Picture found here.

Watertiger Nails It

Go. Now.

A picture really is worth a thousand words.

Sweet Mother, Dems, Could You Just Please Ovary Up?

And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day.

We are but warriors for the working day.

Of course, Digby.

My New Name For A Blog

What the Mad Melancholic Feminista Said.

Also, Skippy.

The Middle Finger Of The Invisible Hand

Juicy

Lunaea, as per generally, is right. There is something madly subversive about public dancing.

Friday Cat Blogging

The More That Things Change! The More That They Stay The Same

You know what, Barack Obama, you can fucking bite me, OK?


It is my fucking body. If I take a whim to tattoo it, I will. If I take a whim to shave my head, I will. If I take a whim to cut my toenails, I will. If I take a whim to get an abortion, I will. On a whim. Because it is my fucking body and there's just no compromise between you, who apparently believes that my body can become state property for the use of the state's interests, and me, since I believe that, well, that it is my goddess-damned body and not the state's. One could have hoped that someone whose ancestors were considered property might have had an understanding of this point, but, turns out, possessing a penis make that point irrelevant.

You stupid, naive fucktard. The fundies won't vote for you no matter how fast you sell me down the river. And I, I am going to have to get v drunk to make myself vote for you. And you'd better hope that John McCain starts gaining on you, or my checkbook, well, I won't be in a hurry to open it. You stupid, arrogant, male asshole.

Picture found here.

The Meaning For The Dancers Of The Dance

He Has Obstructed The Administration Of Justice

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Happy Independence Day

The Ophelia Cantos By Theodora Goss

Lilies tangle in her hair: green stems

Like water-snakes.


A disembodied hand

Floats on the surface. So much has been lost

Already: toes, the lobe of her left ear.

But this remains, a damp, immaculate

Sign, like a message saved from the dark current.


She wandered through the courtyard in her tattered

Dress distributing wild violets.

She called us whores—your son ma'am, not your husband's

I think—and knaves—the taxes sir, your cellar

Is stocked with sweet Moselle. We called this madness.


Indicia of her innocence: to be

A maiden floating dead among the flowers.


She will become an elegant and mute

Image: the sodden velvet coat, the sinking

Coronet of poppies, virgin's bower,

And eglantine. The replicable girl.

(A blob of Chinese white becomes a hand.

The artist puts his brush in turpentine,

The model pulls her stockings on.)


And yet,

Surround by the water-lily stems,

Her face appears an enigmatic mask:

A drowned Medusa in her snaking hair.

The lilies gape around her like pink mouths,

Telling us nothing we can understand.


Her eyes stare upwards: dead and not quite dead.

***************

We're heading for the harvest, the time of dead things, the time when alive things are cut down dead and used to feed alive things. It's all (the Dark) Goddess pouring (the Dark) Goddess into (the Dark) Goddess.

Image and lovely patterns here.

The Hokey Pokey

Deborah Oak explains what it's all about:

I have pleasant encounters with people I love, I've gone forward and gotten stuck, something dramatic happens, it costs me, and somehow, eventually, I go forward again, with plenty of slowing down and breaking/braking to eat good food and enjoy the company of those I love. And, through it all, the sun or moon is high above, and there’s beauty all around.

Chas Clifton offers the on-shrooms version:

(You sit on the curb in front of the liquor store until a guy wearing a wizard's hat and driving a van with California plates comes along and says, "Hey, want to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant?")

The "Street of the Idol-Makers" was shorter than last year's version, due partly to Sacred Source now being owned by the same people as Maxine Miller Studios, or so I'm told.

The emphatically Pagan switch plate on the right was at Dryad Design's booth. Paul Borda has also designed a Green Man version, where the switch forms his tongue.

Hecate adds: I had dinner at Iron Gate Inn. The grape vines were bearing. I watered herbs. I read G/Son some poems. It's all good. It's all Goddess pouring Goddess into Goddess.

Why I Am A Witch And Neither King Nor Pope

Carol Christ has a post up that explains, better than anything else ever can, what it was about feminist Wicca that called my name, kicked my ass, slapped me sideways, fed me spaghetti, and called me "Shirley":

The world renowned historian of religion Mircea Eliade said that religion originates in the desire to escape what he called “the dangerous and chaotic flux of things.” This view makes it nearly impossible to appreciate a Goddess whose female body symbolizes the creative and transformative cycles of birth, death, and renewal. Eliade’s thinking is dualistic because it arises from the attempt to escape the changing world, the world in which minds are part of bodies and bodies are part of nature. Dualistic thinking posits a realm of immortal and unchanging truth which is said to be the true of home of the rational mind which, it is said, can separate itself from the body and nature. Change is feared because things that change eventually decay and die. Dualistic thinking became foundational in western thinking through the influence of Plato. Here is Plato’s description of the Good: “This beauty is first of all eternal, it neither comes into being nor passes away, it neither waxes, nor wanes. . .” For Plato, the Good must be eternal. If it were not, like all other things it could decay or die. There is a clue here to why this kind of dualistic thinking is inherently anti-female. Plato also says that the good does not come into being which is to say: it is not born. Thus for Plato to deny death is also to deny birth. To deny birth is to deny the honor earlier cultures offered to the mother who gives birth. The denial of death is rooted in the belief that birth through a female body into a life that ends in death is neither acceptable nor determinative of the human condition.

Image found here.

First Of The Month Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Catching 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.

Called To Serve

You know, I think I warned people about this:

Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans that would expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support their ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday at Eastside Community Ministry in Zanesville, Ohio. The arm of Central Presbyterian Church operates a food bank, provides clothes, has a youth ministry and provides other services in its impoverished community.

"The challenges we face today, from putting people back to work to improving our schools, from saving our planet to combating HIV/AIDS to ending genocide, are simply too big for government to solve alone," Obama was to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. "We need all hands on deck."

But Obama's support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions was likely to invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination.

David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003 and later became a critic of Bush's commitment to the cause, said Obama's position has the potential to be a major "Sister Souljah moment" for his campaign.

This is a reference to Bill Clinton's accusation in his 1992 presidential campaign that the hip hop artist incited violence against whites. Because Clinton said this before a black audience, it fed into an image of him as a bold politician who was willing to take risks and refused to pander.

Why anyone is surprised that someone who handed out flyers showing himself in a pulpit and announcing that he was "Called to Serve" and is a "Committed Christian" would throw over the separation of church and state in order to cater to fundie whackjobs who wouldn't vote for a Democrat if jebuz came down from heaven and campaigned for him is beyond me.

Still better than McCain.

More here.

Hat tip: cahuenga in comments at Eschaton.

Two-Year-Old Wisdom

I was estranged from my mother ever since, well, to be honest, ever since the day that I was born. But I was in my thirties when I quit speaking to her, and so, perhaps, her death, when I was in my late, late forties, was less traumatic for me that the death of a parent often is for many adults.

This weekend, as he got sleepy for his nap, G/Son said to me, "I miss my mommy." I said, "Well, Mommy is coming soon to pick you up, and I'm sure that she misses you, too." G/Son asked, "Do you miss your mommy?" Not thinking, and I was driving at the time and calculating if we could get home before G/Son fell asleep in his car seat and whether or not I could put away the groceries before his nap or if I should try to put him down for his nap and THEN put away the groceries, and that's the best excuse that I have, I said, "Well, Nonna's mommy is dead."

That engendered a solid full five minutes -- forever in a two-year-old's world -- of the following dialogue, repeated over and over again:

G/Son: You don' have a mommy?

Nonna: When I was little, like you, I had a mommy. But when I got very old, my mommy got very, very old and she got sick and died. But I have you, and your mommy, and your daddy to love, so I'm not sad.

G/Son: You don' have a mommy?

. . . .

Finally, I said, "Nonna's mommy liked to help poor people and when she got too sick to stay here, she went to the Summerlands. I like to think that she likes the apples and the apple cider."

G/Son: Your mommy died?

Nonna: That's right.

G/Son: Well, Nonna, sometimes, that happens.

Death happens.

In my religion, it's as important as new life emerging in the Spring. I won't, don't want to, refuse to impose my religion on G/Son. Yet, I'd like him to take a more reasonable view of death than do most Americans. And as we head from the longest day of the year, high summer, to Lughnasadh, the first of the harvests, I want to celebrate Death, that great harvest, in my own life and to be honest w/ G/Son about it.

Help A Witch Out

I need to come up with a list of about twenty of the Bush junta's worst lies.

I've got:

*Abstinence Education Works

*Outlawing Abortion Will Decrease the Rates of Abortion

*America Does Not Torture

*Faith-Based Initiatives Do Not Violate the First Amendment

Help me out in comments. I know we can come up with more than twenty.

Bush Terrifies Me

Every afternoon, I go halfway around Washington Circle and I sit at a light and look at this bit of masking tape that substitutes, here in DC, for freeway blogging. Periodically, the "authorities" come along and clean it off. And, then, immediately, it reappears.

It completely rocks.

Where Are Your Women?

Someone, and I'm old so I forget who, once called Sunday morning the most-segregated time of the week. They were referring to the fact that those "see-those-xians-how -they-love-one -another xians" didn't love each other enough to, you know, worship what Obama is pleased to call "a mighty god" in integrated company. Maybe that's changed or maybe xians still prefer their churches racially segregated.

But as Atrios demonstrates Sunday after Sunday, Sunday morning is still the most sexist time of the week.

It's 2008. We are in the frapping twenty-first frapping century of the Common Era. And people wonder why I drink.

The Witch By Adelaide Crapsey

When I was a girl by Nilus stream
I watched the desert stars arise;
My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx,
learned all his dreaming from my eyes.
I bore in Greece a burning name,
And I have been in Italy
Madonna to a painter-lad,
And mistress to a Medici.

And have you heard (and I have heard)
Of puzzled men with decorous mein.
Who judged--the wench knows far too much-
And hanged her on the Salem green.

Picture found here.

This Is What Classy Looks Like: Obama Picks NH For His First Appearance With Hillary Clinton

HRC: It was spirited because we both care so much.



You completely owe it to yourself to listen past the introductory remarks.


/hat tip to pie for the suggestion

Saturday Goddess Blogging

You could do worse on a lazy Summer weekend than to visit the Temple of the Forgotten Goddesses.

My wonderful circle of amazing witches selects a different Goddess every year upon which to focus. Or, perhaps I should say, every year a different Goddess selects us. Because we wouldn't otherwise, as we did the year before last, have chosen an obscure and almost-entirely-forgotten Goddess such as Hygeia. Spending a year with Her, I was struck, over and over, by the fact that this Goddess, who once had many temples built to Her and thousands of devotees, is now almost completely forgotten. It's as if the text of the catholic mass had become completely lost, as if the xian bible had completely ceased to exist anywhere on Earth.

It certainly took a determined group of fanatics, with a huge motivation to capture power, and centuries to devote to the task, to (almost, but not quite) erase the memory of so many female representations of the divine.

And, yet, in the words of Chrissy Hinde:

She will always carry on.
Something is lost
But something is found.
They will keep on speaking Her name.
Some things change,
Some stay the same.


Picture, and more by this amazing artist, found here.

Friday Cat Blogging

My frapping cleaning people let my neighbor's cat in and then locked up and left. Miss Thing, she no likee the other cats. She's still one unhappy deity.

What Russ Feingold Said

This is what a patriot looks like.

Why Every Pagan Should Be A Card-Carrying Member

WaPo says:

The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue the U.S. Naval Academy unless it abolishes its daily lunchtime prayer, saying that some midshipmen have felt pressured to participate.

In a letter to the Naval Academy, Deborah Jeon, legal director for the ACLU of Maryland, said it was "long past time" for the academy to discontinue the tradition. She said the practice violates midshipmen's freedom to practice religion as their conscience leads them.

The Naval Academy rejected the ACLU's request that the prayer be eliminated.

"The academy does not intend to change its practice of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer or devotional thought during noon meal announcements," the university said in a statement. It said that some form of prayer has been offered for midshipmen at meals since the school's founding, in 1845, and that it is "consistent with other practices throughout the Navy."

Nine midshipmen have complained to the ACLU about the practice, Jeon said yesterday. Some have since graduated. One recent graduate, an agnostic who objected to the chaplain-led prayer, said she felt pressured to take part in it.

"Everybody else is participating with their heads bowed and their arms crossed," the midshipman said in an interview. "It became very obvious that you aren't participating."

The midshipman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared her military career might be affected, said she went along with the practice at first because she didn't want to stand out. But she stopped in her third year and stood at parade rest instead of bowing her head and crossing her arms.

Those who want to pray during lunch "have the option to pray on their own," she said. "There's no reason they should subject everybody, including people like myself, to this prayer."

Academy spokeswoman Jennifer M. Erickson said that the prayer does not refer to a specific religion and that participation is voluntary. Prayers are led by Catholic, Jewish or Protestant chaplains.

The debate over whether to pray at U.S. service academies and colleges is several years old.

When the Air Force responded in 2005 to accusations of proselytizing at its academy in Colorado Springs, it issued guidelines that discouraged public prayer at most official events.

And in 2003, a Virginia appeals court struck down the Virginia Military Institute's mealtime prayer as unconstitutional. The ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League have asked the Navy to stop the lunch prayer at the Naval Academy based on the VMI ruling.

The Navy is "ignoring the law," said T. Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. "The government shouldn't be deciding what kind of prayer is the right kind of prayer and then coercing people into accepting their preferred kind of prayer."

What We Need Right Now

Radical feminism is a "current" within feminism that focuses on patriarchy as a system of power that organizes society into a complex of relationships producing a "male supremacy" that oppresses women. Radical feminism aims to challenge and to overthrow patriarchy by opposing standard gender roles and male oppression of women, and calls for a radical reordering of society. Early radical feminism, arising within second-wave feminism in the 1960s, typically viewed partriarchy as a "transhistorical phenomenon" prior to or deeper than other sources of oppression, "not only the oldest and most universal form of domination but the primary form" and the model for all others. Later politics derived from radical feminism ranged from cultural feminism to more syncretic politics that placed issues of class, economics, etc. on a par with patriarchy as sources of oppression.

The term radical in radical feminism (from Latin rādīx, rādīc-, root) is used as an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the root or going to the root. Radical feminists locate the root cause of women's oppression in patriarchal gender relations, as opposed to legal systems (liberal feminism) or class conflict (socialist feminism and Marxist feminism).

More here.

Picture, and more from this amazing artist, found here.

Shiny Things

I really love Lunaea's evocative tarot deck and often direct others to it.

I want her new her hew rosary madly.


Art found here.

If I Can't Dance In Your Religion, I Don't Want To Be A Part Of It

Carol Christ makes an important point:

The great scholar of the history of religion Mircea Eliade defined religion as the attempt to escape or transcend what he called “the chaotic and dangerous flux of things.” This definition--while allegedly not indebted to any particular religious tradition and claimed to be the universal essence of religion--is in fact rooted in a particular if widespread view that finite embodied life in a finite world cannot be accepted or understood as valuable or holy. From this perspective the recurring cycles of birth, death, and renewal in plant, animal, and human life cannot in themselves be seen to be sacred, and any religion based upon celebrating and preserving them does not fit the definition of what religion is.

Christ's point relates to my general and increasing distaste for the term "people of faith." First, there's just something squicky about it, but, second, and more importantly, even though the term purports to be inclusive, it defines my religion out of the picture, In fact, it's primarily only Abrahamic religions that require "faith" of their adherents and, if you mean Abrahamic religions, it's dishonest to pretend that you're being inclusive. The Craft, however, does not ask faith of its adherents. I'd say, as would many witches, that Wicca is a religion not of faith but of experience. Either you've experienced the unity of existence, the immanence of divinity, the presence of the Goddesses/Gods, magic -- or you haven't. If you haven't, you can still be a witch, but no one will ask you to take those concepts on faith. If anything, they'll show you methods and practices that can lead to those experiences.

For a long time, male-dominated religions and male-dominated schools of thought have been defining religion in ways that make what I do seem "less than." Christ does a good job of pointing out how they do this. If I can't dance in your religion, I don't want to be a part of it.


Picture found here.

Disagreement: I Can Not Haz It

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.


Henry James (1843 - 1916)

Where Are Your Women?

They Skipped Her When They Wrote History

Female Back Breaking Labor