My New Name For A Blog

What Starhawk Said.

But Seattles—like those blinding moments in a love affair when the whole world stops, like those perfect poems that write themselves, like the song so catchy and beautiful it becomes a world wide hit, like the glowing day in the forest when you find the giant chantrelle, like any amazing, ecstatic, lucky peak experience, happen rarely. They’re the Black Swans, the unusual occurrence, the outlier. The daily grind of political activism is showing up, over and over again, with the same hundred people you’ve seen before. Getting yourself up off the couch where you’d much rather be, to march around feeling slightly foolish and chanting the same things you’ve been chanting since 1966. “Peace Now!” “Stop the Bombing!” “End the Occupation!” The effects, if any, of your actions are so far away and far removed that any sense of accomplishment or achievement is rare and abstract, and the chances of getting whacked, clubbed, trodden upon, hoarse from screaming, tear gassed, pepper sprayed, stun gunned, tasered, arrested, interrogated, deported, or facing other unpleasantness rise daily. The personal motto that carries me through these things is Garrison Keilor’s observation, that “things that are horrible for most people are good for writers.” And the sure knowledge that every freedom we cherish, every great change, every liberation of a slave or shift in conciousness or small increase in justice was won in just this way—in the streets by people who mostly felt at the time that they were losing.

We’ve got to do it. All those email petitions on the internet, all those phone calls are fine—but there’s no substitute for human beings putting our bodies in the way the operations of injustice and pounding on the gates of the exploiters and raising our living voices in outrage at stupidity and greed.

I'm an old woman and there are only a few things that I know for sure: Grounding is important. Kindness is seldom wasted. Photosynthesis is the highest good. Keep your house clean, your papers in order, some money set aside. Don't tell the Man much about yourself. Sisters make it all much better. As above, so below; as inside, so without. The moment when monkey mind most wants to take over, when fears are most intense, when you have the most reasons to turn back -- that's the moment when magic can happen. Hecate will be there for me, at the end. And, Starhawk is right. There is no substitute for human beings putting our bodies in the way of the operations of injustice. I have been glad every time that I did that, and I regret every time that I lost an opportunity to do so. I'm old, but I know this for sure.

Picture found here.

Slap Away My Holy Water And Call Me Shirley

but I swear that I was under the impression that this was the point of the whole damn thing.

The bishop also cites the carol Oh Come All Ye Faithful as an example of how songs of the season perpetuate inaccuracies of what really happened concerning the story of Christ's birth.
Bishop Baines says in the book it was not the "faithful" who went to see Jesus and his parents but rather shepherds, who were of the "great unwashed" and the wise men or Magi (astrologers) who were "not good Jews, but were pagans, men who were outside the covenant people of God."

Wasn't it? The notion that Jesus was born to bring "Good News" to the great unwashed and to those not recognized as "good Jews"? I suppose that a youth spent reading Quotations from Chairman Jesus may have done me in. (Holy shit. I may have paid $4.99 for that book in the early seventies.) Sigh.

Picture found here.

Obama Restaurant Watch

It's a bit surprising in how many of these places I've done magic, generally solo, but, recently, with my circle of wild, amazing women. Maybe we need to make a project of it; spell up at least one power spot a month.

I mean, you'd be surprised where a group of witches can sit quietly, sip martinis and merlot, call the Elements, cast a circle, invoke Columbia, sing a song of power, release a cone of energy, and go unnoticed until it's time for the waiter to bring the dessert cart.

And don't get me started on silently grounding and centering and sending out intent.

Picture found here

A Winter Ride

Who shall declare the joy of the running!
Who shall tell of the pleasures of flight!
Springing and spurning the tufts of wild heather,
Sweeping, wide-winged, through the blue dome of light.
Everything mortal has moments immortal,
Swift and God-gifted, immeasurably bright.
So with the stretch of the white road before me,
Shining snowcrystals rainbowed by the sun,
Fields that are white, stained with long, cool, blue shadows,
Strong with the strength of my horse as we run.
Joy in the touch of the wind and the sunlight!
Joy! With the vigorous earth I am one.

~Amy Lowell

Picture found here.

Who Says?

How much of the stuff that you do this time of year gives you pleasure?

Can you stick to that and ditch the rest?

Can you insure that you get some time outside, even if it means bundling up?

Can you do your daily practice daily every day between now and December 31st?

I have a dear friend who always counsels, when faced with a decision: think about how you'll feel if you do this. Think about how you'll feel if you don't.

It's pretty good advice. The Wheel of the Year is winding down. Why can't you?

It takes 3 minutes to ground.

Woman Murdered In London For Being A "Witch"

The increased murder of women because they are seen as witches isn't confined to Africa and Asia.

A divorced father of three from north London stabbed his mother 21 times after becoming convinced she was a witch and had put a curse on him, a court has heard.

Kayode Kuye tortured and killed Christina Kuye, 69, because he believed she had ruined his life with a black magic spell, the Old Bailey was told.

I'm planning to do some personal magic at Yule to protect women from this madness. Will you join me?

Keep Your Nativity Scenes On Church Property: How Difficult Is That?

The same scenario apparently needs to play out over and over again before people get the message.

The latest battle in the "war on Christmas" has come home to Franklin County's seat, and it comes down to the baby in the manger.

The borough has a decades-long tradition of allowing the local garden club to place a Nativity scene, depicting nearly lifesize statues of a kneeling Mary, Joseph and a swaddled Jesus, shepherds and kings, on the ground surrounding the Memorial Fountain. . . . Earlier this month, PA Nonbelievers Capital Area director Carl Silverman wrote the borough a letter stating its intention to erect [a sign reading "Celebrating Solstice -- Honoring Atheist War Veterans."]

While the group believed it did not need the borough's permission because the creche required none, it was submitting a proposed design in "the spirit of cooperation," the letter said. . . . "We didn't want to take Jesus out of the public square," Silverman, of Camp Hill, said. "We want to put atheism in the public square."

Bill McLaughlin, president of the Chambersburg Borough Council, said that after discussion with the borough solicitor, two practical options emerged -- officials could allow everything or allow nothing to be displayed at the fountain.

The council chose to allow nothing, he said.

McLaughlin said he took PA Nonbelievers' letter as "a demand, with an implied threat of legal action."

The council came to the rather unstartling, but apparently difficult-for-xianists-to-comprehend conclusion that: "The downside of 'everything' is it means everything," McLaughlin said. And, [t]hat was something council could not live with, he said.

I've recounted before the story about a xian group that sued the local public school system and won the right to force the local public schools to send home announcements about church activities in kids' bookbags. Yet, when a group of local Pagans took advantage of the same ruling to send home notices about a Yule celebration at the local UU church, the xians went ballistic. Eventually, the school system decided, reasonably, to just not send home any kind of non-school notices.

In Chambersburg, as everywhere, there's a simple solution to the xians wanting to put up nativity scenes: Central Presbyterian Church, located on the square directly across from the fountain, is considering construction of a perch on its property where the creche could be displayed. That won't satisfy the xianists, though, because what they really want is to impose their religion, and only their religion, on everyone else via government property and action.

Xians upset over increasingly vocal atheist organizations might do well to consider that their own attempts to force their religion on everyone else is likely the cause for what is starting to look like an increasingly organized and vocal atheist movement.

Another Dispatch From Our Glorious War On Xmas

Ya Think?

[W]hy do Christian groups insist on this campaign year after year? I think the answer to that question may be, alas, crass commercialism. A 2006 story from the Religion News Service reported that the American Family Association sold more than 500,000 buttons and 125,000 bumper stickers bearing the slogan “Merry Christmas: It’s Worth Saving.” The Alliance Defense Fund sold about 20,000 “Christmas Packs” that same year. The packs, available for a suggested $29 donation, included a three-page legal memo and two lapel pins.

The bottom line here is, well, the bottom line: The Christmas wars are a financial windfall for the organizations that whip up this frenzy. The Christmas wars have become, ironically, the ultimate commercialization of Christmas.

I’m not saying that there are times when we Christians shouldn’t stand up for our rights, but when we fire all our weapons in such a meaningless skirmish, we alienate potential allies, and we have no ammunition for the battles that matter.

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

This video is long enough (almost ten whole minutes!) that, if you're like me, you'll get multiple opportunities to notice how monkey mind keeps trying to take over, to breathe, to bring your attention back to your present, and to relax again. Isn't it interesting information?

Home For The Holidays

Breathe.

Center.

Remember who you truly are.

Can you find 10 minutes to go outside and feed the birds? Some seeds, some bread crumbs, a bit of apple spread with peanut butter.

Fill your lungs with the cold Air. Notice your feet upon the chilly Earth. Connect with the Fire deep inside the planet. Watch the Water of your breath turn into mist when you breathe.

It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more.

Picture found here.

Thursday Poetry Blogging

On this wine bowl of pure silver—
destined for the home of Heracleides,
where discerning taste and elegance reside—
I've engraved flowers, streams and thyme,
and in their midst a handsome youth,
naked and erotic, dangling his leg
in the water still. I prayed, memory,
that I'd find in you an ally strong enough to render
the face of this youth, whom I loved, just as it once was.
It will not be easy, as it has been
some fifteen years from the day he fell,
a soldier, in the battle of Magnesia.

~C.P. Cavafy

Picture found here.

Yes, Let's All Get Worked Up Over The Pleasantries We Exchange With Shopkeepers

I agree: Epic Fail. And if Bill O'Reilly is a Pagan, I am the Queen of Romania.

Yesterday, I was in line at the local sandwich place and the guy at the counter handed the woman in front of me her order and said, "Have a happy holiday." The woman, clearly a tourist and completely delighted to have a chance to get pissy said, "It's Merry Chirstmas, if you please!" Counter Guy said, "Oh, I meant the Thanksgiving holiday. It's tomorrow." Good on him.

Picture found here.

Gratitude

And. so, when your family members begin, as they must, to push, push, push, push, push those buttons, you can ground. You can breathe. You can deliberately expand the space with your breath to give yourself more room to simply be, to give yourself an opportunity to be present and calm in the midst of a situation designed to take away your control.

May you find quiet time in the midst of frenzy, may you remember who you are in the midst of commercialism designed to make you forget, may you feel the deep peace of the ever-more-deeply-slumbering Earth in the midst of this culture's fear of that sleep.

So mote it be.


~Photo by the author. If you copy, please link back.

Throw Back Your Head

An Idealized Small Town

I have a Roycroft side table that I cherish. At least he was interesting. At least he was trying.

Maybe It's The Waxing Moon In Aquarius

Suddenly, it's Talk About Goddesses and Gods Week in the Pagan Blogosphere.

My wonderful circle of amazing women is working this year with Columbia, especially in her incarnation as the Goddess of Washington, D.C. I'm really enjoying getting to know her, not least of all because she's a rather young Goddess, as Goddesses go. I recently did some dark Moon magic and she showed up, huge and solemn and strong, and said, "Here, I can make this work for you." And, then, she did. She doesn't talk a lot. But when she does, she means what she says.

Who's the youngest Goddess or God you've ever called?

Picture found here.

Really, Some People Are Just Assholes.

In the Glorious War on Xmas, I am on Athenae's side. And it takes an entire boatload of stupid not to understand that Scrooge at the end of the story was happy, while Scrooge at the beginning of the story was mean, unhappy, petty, miserable. Kind of like today's "conservatives" and "libertarians." There's a message hidden a sixteenth of an inch deep there, boys. See if you can find it.

Picture found here.

The Stupid. It Burns.

I Will Buy This Book

Holy Shit. I pretty much am Mrs. Johnson. Well, my stash doesn't have its own shed. Yet.

Vast, Gorgeous, And Strong

Thorn Coyle has up an important post today. You should go read the whole thing.

We live in the mitzrayim and we do not have to. Once we reach adulthood, no person or circumstance keeps us in the narrow place without our permission. The narrow place can be helpful during times of incubation: we may wish a bit of extra constriction in order to figure out where the new boundaries are, push against them, and learn how to stretch. But we cannot stay there forever. Sooner or later we have to move to bigger pastures, to well-watered fields and wider vistas - or heavier weights - in order to get a fresh perspective. Staying in the narrow place constricts not only our vision of self, but our vision of the world and our vision of possibility.

We can become vast, gorgeous, and strong. We can live fully and brightly. When we let ourselves out of the boxes of our thoughts, we can more clearly see what we can do and not only who we can become, but who we are.

What would life be like if our only boundary became the boundary of love?

Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Susie Said.

I'll just add, though: don't think for a minute that the catholics wouldn't love to execute and jail women who have abortions. They just understand that, for now, that's unacceptable to most Americans. They'll get their camel's nose under the tent by first criminalizing abortion and then, once it's illegal, they'll begin to advocate for "stronger measures to ensure complete compliance." These men have never had a problem burning women at the stake.

"Your Excellency" my round, sweet ass.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

Winter Sleep

When against earth a wooden heel
Clicks as loud as stone on steel,
When stone turns flour instead of flakes,
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,
When the hard-bitten fields at last
Crack like iron flawed in the cast,
When the world is wicked and cross and old,
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.

Little birds like bubbles of glass
Fly to other Americas,
Birds as bright as sparkles of wine
Fly in the nite to the Argentine,
Birds of azure and flame-birds go
To the tropical Gulf of Mexico:
They chase the sun, they follow the heat,
It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet!
It's not with them that I'd love to be,
But under the roots of the balsam tree.

Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr
Is lined within with the finest fur,
So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house
Of every squirrel and mole and mouse
Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather,
Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together
With balsam and juniper, dry and curled,
Sweeter than anything else in the world.

O what a warm and darksome nest
Where the wildest things are hidden to rest!
It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep,
Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!

~Elinor Wylie

Picture found here.

The Disappeared

The Last Wild Witch

He's Determined To Destroy Whatever Little Bit Of A Career He Has Left. He Is

Cage in Season of the Witch is even worse, apparently, than Cage in a remake of the Wicker Man.

When two knights (Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman) return from the Crusades, they find their homeland ravaged by the Black Plague. The church blames the plague on sorcery, and orders the knights to escort an accused witch (Claire Foy) to a remote abbey , where monks will perform a ritual that they hope will put an end to the pestilence

I think that I saw this movie. It was by Ingmar Bergman. It begins with the immortal line: Jag var Doden. I'm not sure that it needed to be remade.

Merry Fucking Holiday

I don't watch tv, and I work pretty hard at avoiding all the winter holiday commercialism, so, but for this Chicago SunTimes article, I'd never have known about the above commercial for the Gap. Since I don't have to see it a million times, I think it's kind of cute, as far as WesternCiv commercialism based upon exploiting third world laborers, promoting ageism and sexism, turning religion into commerce, and destroying the planet can be cute. (I am, I'm a regular bundle of optimism and joy.) The dancing's not bad, and my first reaction is to think it's cool that they even bothered to mention my religious holiday: are Pagans now a large enough demographic that we're worth including? Or, maybe we're thrown in for shock value; most folks in advertising think that a controversial commercial is great, as it generates even more interest than a "normal" one. So, cool.

But while Ms. Falsani, the religious columnist for the SunTimes, goes out of her way to not get involved in the "war on xmas," she does manage to harsh my ad-induced holiday buzz. While they all occur around the same time of the year, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa and Winter Solstice hardly carry the same spiritual weight. Oh, really?

I bet you're never going to guess, so I'll go ahead and tell you: the xian holiday carries the most spiritual weight, followed by the other patriarchial, monotheistic, Abrahamic religion, followed by the African Americans, followed by the Pagans. I know, who'd have thought?

Christmas celebrates the miraculous birth of a savior come to redeem the world. Hannukah, while also commemorating a miracle (a one-day supply of oil for a lamp in the temple lasted eight days) and the victory of the Jewish rebellion over the Hellenistic rulers of Jerusalem, it is a minor holiday, not to be compared to the High Holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur or the major festivals, Sukkot and Passover.

Kwanzaa is a nonreligious festival, begun in 1966 and celebrated nearly exclusively in the United States, which celebrates African-American culture and values. Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year and is for many pagans and neo-pagans the symbolic and spiritual rebirth of the year.

Could her biases be more obvious? Interesting how "pagans" and "neo-pagans" don't get capitalized, isn't it? And does the "religious columnist" for the SunTimes truly not understand that "the miraculous birth of a savior come to redeem the world" is based upon Pagan themes, celebrated at the Winter Solstice? Does she not know that many African Americans churches do celebrate Kwanza, making it, indeed, a religious holiday? Give me a break.

In case you missed the fact that Paganism is not the "spiritual equivalent" of monotheistic religions, Ms. Falsania repeats: While each of these holidays, for lack of a more universally applicable term, is significant to different groups of believers (and nonbelievers, for that matter) they are not spiritual equivalents. OK, I think we get it.

But, she's open-minded, really, she is. Still, I have no problem with all four being mentioned in the same context when we're talking about the things people celebrate this time of year. That's valid and correct. Mighty big of her, isn't it? Well, no, it isn't, as her next few paragraphs prove.

Unless we're meant to be concelebrating Bacchanalia or -- and this is even a stretch -- Mardi Gras, nothing in the Christian, Jewish and pagan traditions or the African-American cultural ideals that Kwanzaa celebrates would encourage the faithful to throw all rules out the window and do whatever feels good, man. Again, with the capitalization problems. Christians get capitalized. Pagans don't. Not spiritually or grammatically equivalent, apparently.

Given the lack of "spiritual equivalence" between the holidays, you'll probably not be surprised to see whose holiday gets an entire paragraph and whose holidays get jumbled together all into one.

Christmas is about selflessness and transformative love, the improbable gift of a divine baby born into straw poverty in order to reconcile the world back to God. We do celebrate Christ's birth by giving something to each other to commemorate that epic, divine gift. But it's not supposed to pivot around the exchange of material goods, and it's definitely not about sweaters and turtlenecks.

Hannukah is about power of perseverance, faith and righteousness to overcome tyranny. It's about a small miracle that changes everything. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Those principles are pretty much the direct opposite of the idea of "do whatever you want." And Solstice is, first and foremost, a natural, communal, Earth-centered event. Nothing about ushering in the death of the old year and the birth of the new says "fleece hoodies" to me.

So some people's holidays are "about" selflessness and transformative love, improbable gifts (but not gifts of improbable hoodies!) of divine babies who are born to "reconcile the world back to God" and some people's holidays are about nothing more than "communal events" (which would surprised my closed circle) that mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. You know, kind of a communal, Earthy, early New Year's party. Not much spiritual significance, certainly not the "spiritual equivalence" of transformative love, divinity, selflessness, and divinity. And, in case you missed it, babies! And, divinity. All religions are equal, but some are more equal than others.

What's really interesting is that the thrust of the article, to the extent that it has one, is that commercialism and religious holidays don't mix. So the entire discussion of the "spiritual equivalence" of the various holidays is unrelated to, and a distraction from, the main point of the article. Yet, one gets the sense that showing how "unequivalent" some religions are was the point closest to the author's heart. Does this woman not have an editor? (I mean, it's obvious that she lacks a stylebook, but I thought the SunTimes still had editors.)

I have a suggestion for Ms. Falsani. Turn off the tv and go get a Comparative Religion 101 text. Then, read it. And either capitalize the names of all religions or don't capitalize the names of any. Oh, and Merry fucking xmas.

More peace on Earth and good will here.

Real insanity (Did you notice it? Gap compares Christmas to the pagan holiday called ‘Solstice.’ Solstice is celebrated by Wiccans who practice witchcraft!” (as opposed to, you know, those Wiccans who DON'T practice witchcraft) cried the AFA in a press release.) here. (Yes, Virginia, Paganism IS Nazism).

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

Getting Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down" Can Be Difficult

We all have a monkey, er, squirrel mind.

Obama Restaurant Watch

Dear Mr. President,

Don't eat the lutefisk! I know, I know, I'm a traitor to my pipple, but, still, just don't go there.

But if you have any say about the menu, I'd go, as is often the case, for several of Aquavit's appetizers instead of the main course. GRAVLAX smoked salmon roe, melon, cucumber, LANGOUSTINE BISQUE crab and lobster salad, sea urchin, crème fraîche , and FOIE GRAS GANACHE pork and foie gras terrine, pickled apples, port wine .

As always, Obamafoodorama (my nominee for one of the best new blogs of the past year) has all the details.

Picture found here.

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

What Incredibly Sexy Hands She Has

Harvard Law Professor. Oklahoma Girl. I love her.

Picture found here.

Cherche de l'argent

So, oddly, or, if you follow the money, perhaps NOT so oddly, just as insurance companies are about to be forced to cover female breast health, a new study is out suggesting that women really shouldn't be getting such frequent mammograms nor should doctors be teaching women to examine their own breasts for lumps. No study suggests -- because it would be a lie -- that early detection isn't the key to surviving breast cancer. Because, it is. Finding a cancerous lump early, getting it cut out of you, and getting early poisoning for any cells that may have split off from that lump and headed elsewhere in your body -- those steps are, as everyone admits, the complete key to living to see your grandchildren become teenagers as opposed to dying while your own children are too young to remember you.

But, you know, false positives -- the process and cost of checking out lumps that turn out to be benign -- are scary for women and, here's the important part, not cost effective for insurance companies. So, oddly, just now there's a study out saying that women should not be taught to examine their own breasts to see if the poisons in our air, water, earth, food, and life are giving the women cancer.

It's as Rep. Grayson said: Die quickly.

Me, I want to live to say "Namaste" to my Great Granddaughter. I'm going to keep doing BSEs and getting mammograms. Sorry, insurance companies.

Responsibility

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

Lady GaGa Does Witch for Vogue

Turns out, we're in fashion.

Yes, this is JUST how I look.

No, it's not.

Picture found here.

May The Goddess Guard Him. May He Find His Way To The Summerlands. May His Friends And Family Know Peace.

LA Weekly notes the sad death of Edward Woodward, star of cult TV shows The Equalizer (US) and Callan (UK), and, more crucially, the 1973 film version of The Wicker Man.

The film was remade in 2006 by Neil LaBute (starring Nicolas Cage) as a hysterically misogynistic flop, [Well, the movie was a hysterically (to coin a phrase) misogynistic flop, Cage was just a bad actor with a piss-poor script] but the original was a brilliant, moody little movie featuring Woodward as a repressed Scottish cop who gets called to investigate the death of a young girl in a remote island and ends up discovering a bizarre local pagan cult led by Christopher Lee in drag. Its soundtrack, written by Paul Giovanni and performed by Magnet, has had a huge influence on folk revival, freak-folk, and darkwave bands (and what other movie can you name that impressed both Pulp and Iron Maiden?).

As The Wild Hunt notes, a Wicker Man sequel is in the works.

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

Going, Going, Going . . . .

Fit For A Queen

crone living with cancer making friends with death
funeral plans and pre-death rituals become a community affair
double saturn return brings a beautifully pagan croning ceremony
gaia at her radiant best green rolling hills rocky knoll sacred tree
blazing fires calling ancestors venus attending in the night sky
lesbian clan singing as i enter the third trimester of my life
a celtic warrior queen walking with ancestors
time now to prepare my beloved daughters my precious sisters
my devoted family my special friends
for my journey towards a complete and peaceful death
warrior queen reigning over life
wounds healed in heart mind and spirit
wisdom and life stories shared and stored
wrapped in a magnificent croning cloak
decorated with thoughtfulness by my female clan
patches stitched beaded and drawn
celebrating each woman's connection to me
inspiring creative colourful moving delightful
patches continue to arrive as cloak is destined for shroud
when living is done safe nurtured and cloaked in love
when journeying to the land of the dead
no queen will travel as gloriously robed as i
in the colors and handcraft of my precious
friends family and beloved lesbian clan
scottish lass to celtic warrior queen
i delight in the depths and joys of this time of my life.

~Anah Holland-Moore, quoted in We'Moon 2009

Picture found here.

Remember, And If You Cannot Remember, Invent

To own the word Priestess, I am becoming more brave, beside my thousand thousand priestess-sisters.

I see the Goddess is returning through our troubled skies
through wars and violated children, through land raped
into angry dust and I will priestess Her,
call Her healing love through ritual and my daily living;
I know in all her many names she spells the flame of hope.

~Rose Flint, quoted in We'Moon 09.

Picture found here.

Pears In Sage Butter

One result of joining a CSA is that you get pushed to come up with recipes for foods that you might not often cook. I like pears, but I generally don't buy them at the store on the theory that they're too hard when you buy them and they'll go soft all of a sudden and be wasted. But they're high in fiber and have Vitamins C and K, to boot. However, my CSA has been providing them and, even after splitting my small, organic box with two other witches, there are enough pears left to make me go look for recipes.

My CSA is split about 50/50 between fruit and vegetables and, sure, you can take the fruit and eat it raw for lunch, but, especially this time of year, I often prefer it warm. These pears in sage butter are delicious, easy, warming.

Pick and chop up sage leaves.
Melt butter (I use half butter and half olive oil)
Saute sage leaves until butter browns.
Slice and saute pears.

I've done the same thing with apples, bananas, and squash. All good.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

Wild Peaches

1

When the world turns completely upside down
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.

2

The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass
Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.
The misted early mornings will be cold;
The little puddles will be roofed with glass.
The sun, which burns from copper into brass,
Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold
Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold
Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
The spring begins before the winter's over.
By February you may find the skins
Of garter snakes and water moccasins
Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.

3

When April pours the colours of a shell
Upon the hills, when every little creek
Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake
In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell,
When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak,
We shall live well -- we shall live very well.

The months between the cherries and the peaches
Are brimming cornucopias which spill
Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black;
Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches
We'll trample bright persimmons, while you kill
Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.

4

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There's something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There's something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

~Elinor Wylie

PIcture found here.

Correct

Energy is not simply one commodity among others; it is the ur-commodity, the foundation for all economic activity. It follows laws of its own – the laws of thermodynamics, notably – which are not the same as the laws of economics, and when the two sets of laws come into conflict, the laws of thermodynamics win every time.

. . .

Energy is different. Once you turn the energy content of a few million bushels of grain into a pyramid, say, by using the grain to feed workers who cut and haul the stones, that energy is gone, and you cannot turn the pyramid back into grain; all you can do is wait until the next harvest. If that harvest fails, and the stored energy in the granaries has already been turned into pyramids, neither the market economy of goods and services or the abstract system of distributing goods and services can make up for it. Nor, of course, can you send an extra ten thousand workers into the fields if you don't have the grain to keep them alive.

More here

Picture found here.

Saturday Extra Dose Of Slow Down

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

A Gov't Of Occupation Facilitates Resource Extraction

More here.

More On The Catholic Church's Attempts To Dictate Policy To The DC Government

What Barry Lynn Said.

Catholic Charities DC, the social service arm of the archdiocese, received $16 million of its $23 million budget last year through governmental contracts.

Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, “The church’s demand is outrageous. If ‘faith-based’ charities cannot or will not obey civil rights laws, they ought not benefit from public funds.

“I am amazed that church officials would threaten to stop helping the disadvantaged because they are being asked to treat all citizens of the District fairly,” he continued. “They seem to have lost all perspective. How strong is their commitment to helping the poor if they’re willing to take this hardline stance?

“If Catholic Charities drops its participation in publicly funded social services,” Lynn concluded, “I am confident that other charities would be happy to pick up the slack.”

One wonders how many abject demonstrations of the fact that faith-based funding is a horrible idea are going to be necessary. Sadly, the answer is probably: quite a few.

Everywhere

What a nicely-done and even-toned article on Wicca, from a small-town paper. And it just does my heart good to think of a coven in Leonardtown. Why they didn't name themselves the Mollies, though, is beyond me.

Picture found here.

War On Xmas

USA Today asks: What about a stamp for Yule? Countdown to fundies screaming persecution in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, . . . .

Picture found here.

Bible Based Marriage

hat tip/Spells for Democracy

What She Said

Living While Being Female

Enough to get you killed. Can you do some magic at Yule to stop this shit?

They're Your Dollars

This xianist running in South Carolina is odious. Want to vacation elsewhere?

A Bit More "Slow Down" Just Because It's Friday

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

Martha Wainwright rocks like a rocking rocky rock. And the trumpet player also does not suck.

hat tip to Ali in comments at Eschaton.

That Thing That

Did you read Phila's Hope Blogging? Why the fuck not?

Don't make me come over there.

Picture found here.

Great Use Of State Funds

More here.

What Would A Real "Poetry Of The Earth" Sound Like?

I promised ("threatened" is a better word, for many of today's readers) recently to blog more about reading poetry. Again, if you're not someone who enjoys poetry, skip these posts; they'll only convince you that poetry is "difficult" and "dry," when, in fact, good poetry grabs your guts and leaves you whirling, like a good, but mysterious, dance partner. Good poetry does what good ritual can do, picks you up, takes you "elsewhere," and then gives you the shock of realizing that "elsewhere" is "here," that the familiar world is en-chanted and in-spired. So first you should experience poetry that you like and, then, only later, much later, should you read about reading about poetry. It's like reading about reading about dancing.

Here, however, for those still reading (maybe she'll say something; one never knows, she occasionally does) are some thoughts from Adam Kirsch concerning why the poetry of our age is not "religious" poetry but, rather, "poetry of the [E]arth." I'd like to think that this is so, despite Mr. Kirsch apparently believing that only people with penises can write poetry.

Ours does not promise to go down in literary history as a great age of religious poetry. Yet if contemporary poetry is not often religious, it is still intensely, covertly metaphysical. . . . the rise of the poetry of earth. This poetry—our poetry—prefers to imagine the artist not as a creator, but as a witness. It has a strong sense of ethical obligation, holding that the poet must serve as a bearer of memories and perceptions that history would otherwise sweep away. Whenever a poet is concerned with giving things their proper names, or with remembering what everyone else forgets, or with seeing nature so intently that it seems to yield up secrets, he or she is practicing this sort of Heideggerian poetry.

What makes the poetry of earth so challenging to write is that poets are instinctive world-builders. The artistic imagination is instinctively imperial, seizing on things seen and turning them into occasions for symbol and metaphor. (Think of all the poems that have been written to wrest the bird's song away from the bird and turn it into a symbol of transcendence, freedom, or passion.) Clearly, resisting this tendency requires an austere ethical discipline. But for the poetry of earth to be more than a bare catalogue of things seen, for it to achieve the linguistic and emotional richness of great poetry, requires a specifically artistic discipline as well. The poet of earth must use language to make us notice what we usually ignore, the way Van Gogh draws our attention to a humble pair of shoes; but he must avoid constructing the kind of coercive, tendentious myth that Heidegger builds around those shoes.

In Seamus Heaney's great sequence "Squarings," the poet is constantly brought up against the difficulty of this poised restraint. From the beginning of his career, Heaney has been an earthy poet in an obvious sense. His poems are often set on farms or in the countryside, and his rich, saturnine, consonant-heavy style is designed to give spoken language a corporeal weight. But in "Squarings," as he tries to enunciate the metaphysical propositions that have always guided his work, he becomes a poet of earth in a specifically Heideggerian sense. The first part of the poet's task, he makes clear, is to remain attentive to what most people ignore. "Make your study the unregarded floor," he adjures, and the whole sequence is full of concrete, sensual images: "Scissor-and-slap abruptness of a latch./Its coldness to the thumb. Its see-saw lift/And drop and innocent harshness."

Heaney is unrivalled at this sort of "study," which carries out the Heideggerian task of bringing "beings to word and to appearance." But in "Squarings," he insists that capturing the sensual world is more than an aesthetic activity; it also has a spiritual significance. At certain moments, "seeing things"—the title of the 1991 book in which "Squarings" appears—means seeing through them and beyond them. Heaney's poem is a record of such epiphanies, moments when the sheer fullness of the earth seems about to overflow into spirit: "A phenomenal instant when the spirit flares/With pure exhilaration before death."

For Heaney, however, the poet can only be true to such exhilarating moments by respecting their strangeness. That is why the word "epiphany," which Joyce famously used, does not quite fit Heaney's conception. The word comes from the Greek for appearance or shining-forth; in the Christian calendar, the Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the appearance of Christ's divinity to the Magi. But for Heaney, a post-Catholic poet, it is by no means clear that it is God who is shining through the earth, filling it with His glory. All he can honestly say is that the earth itself appears to shine; recording that radiance is the farthest he can go in the direction of prayer. That is why the language of Heaney's epiphanies is consistently negative, a matter of warding off conclusions and explanations. His sacred moments are those when "Nothing prevailed, whatever was in store/Witnessed itself already taking place/In a time marked by assent and by hiatus."

"Nothing prevailed" might be the Heideggerian poet's description of paradise: an instant of perfect restraint, where every being is allowed to be simply and wholly itself. This sense that "nothing" is more than an absence—that it can be a positive force, whose advent is to be welcomed—appears again in the work of Charles Simic, another poet deeply indebted to Heidegger. In his early poem "White," Simic succeeds in capturing this paradox as well as any poet has. "Out of poverty/To begin again//With the taste of silence/On my tongue," Simic begins, immediately plunging into the paradox at the heart of the poetry of earth. For if the poet's calling is to let beings be, then anything he says about them is a kind of violation of their integrity; the best poetry would have "the taste of silence." Later in "White" Simic returns to this problem in a startling, homely, yet philosophically dense image:
In the inky forest,
In its maziest,

Murkiest scribble
Of words

And wordless cries,
I went for a glimpse

Of the blossomlike
White erasure

Over a huge,
Furiously crossed-out something.

The whiteness the poet seeks is an absence, but also the trace of a presence. It is the white not of void but of erasure, the silence not of muteness but of reticence. In these lines, Simic succeeds in capturing some of the genuine strangeness of Heideggerian poetry, with its self-cancelling assertiveness. It is a contemporary version of the medieval via negativa: only what cannot be said is worth saying.

If Heaney and Simic demonstrate the exigent power of the Heideggerian mode, Billy Collins demonstrates that mode's comfortable decay. The poetry of earth succeeds only when it manages to make the earth itself strange to us, so that we can perceive it in its aloof beauty. When the poet allows the earth to remain familiar, however, his praise of it becomes mere praise for the familiar—for everything that is undemanding and reassuring. That is the note Collins strikes in "Earthling," where, after imagining what it would feel like to be heavier or lighter on other planets, he concludes:
How much better to step onto
the simple bathroom scale,
a happy earthling feeling
the familiar ropes of gravity,

157 pounds standing soaking wet
a respectful distance from the sun.

Collins turns the very name of earth, which was an enigma to Heidegger, into a synonym for all that is "simple" and "happy." But he too is drawn, by the common impulse of our poetic moment, to the question of how poetry can do justice to the earth. In their different ways, many of the best poets of our time are trying to make us not just understand but experience the truth Heidegger stated in "The Origin of the Work of Art": "At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extraordinary."

Read the whole thing here.

I'm not at all sure that either Heidegger or Kirsch understands anything at all about Greek temples. What do you think? And yet, of course, at its base, my entire life is composed of the simple, moment by moment experience of the truth that "[a]t bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extraordinary." You should, really, you really should have seen the dried weed/grass that I passed this morning on my way to work. I stopped, and it made the SUV behind me angry, it did, and cried, "You're amazing and lovely!" to that dried weed, sparkling in the cold Autumn rain. One of these days they're going to commit me; I know that they are.


Picture found here.

One wonders if Mr. Kirsch has never read Mary Oliver, , Adrienne Rich, Barbara Spring. They, too write Poetry of the Earth, and their poems are more involved with the Earth than with the weight of penised-Earthlings standing on scales, giving truth to theories of gravity.

Satyros

Music for raising energy:

I Wouldn't Call It An Addiction; It's More Of A Preference

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

Could Be Terrible, Could Be Fun

The Machete Times

Another disturbing reminder that women are still being murdered -- with machetes, this time -- for being accused of witchcraft. As many of us begin to plan our rituals and magic for Yule, I'd like to urge Pagans around the world to do magic to put an end to this persecution. There's no doubt that xian ministers encourage this violence, rile people up about "witchcraft," and grow powerful and wealthy by doing so. It needs to stop.

Wednesday Poetry Blogging

Nights
Joseph Spece

I
As with Franz Marc's Deer in the Forest:
one fawn is always closer to the Cubist
fragment of back and foreground than others, closer
to evolution through rupture.

II
Lowly as gum, and with the same ruminant
consistency, I stood hitched to your bruises.
The hue of the thether so violet-black
I thought myself second to a king.

III
Being a starfish radially cut down
to a single chunk. Then:
to grow back incidentally a person
without the viscera prone to othering.

IV
The immolated dusk of a rich October.
And a dryad's long shadow recalls twice
the split xylem heart of her
owned sycamore.

V
Aplomb & Interior. And I've kept the dark soft and full for you
as flowers or red melon on the verge of spoil.


Volume CXVIII, No.1

Poem found here.

Picture found here.

Couldn't Be Insecurity, Could It?

Yes, because Pagans don't love their neighbors, and monotheists always do. And because Pagans don't see themselves as manifestations of the divine. And because the monotheistic gods are never capricious and wicked. And because all monotheistic wars are just.

Let’s imagine a world without the Judeo-Christian command to love one’s neighbor. Let’s imagine a world in which every individual is not made in the image and likeness of God. Let’s imagine a world in which the gods can be even more capricious and wicked than their own worshipers. Let’s imagine a world in which wars were neither just nor unjust, but instead just a fact of life. And let’s also remember—because we don’t have to imagine—the Peloponnesian War, a war that needed no competing Gods to produce a casualty rate unimaginable today. (It would be as if 44 million Americans had been killed in the European and Japanese theaters of Word War II.)

What's oddest about the post isn't its lack of logic, although that's rather pronounced, nor its ignorance about modern Paganism, although that, too, is rather pronounced. What's oddest is the need to demand -- even when one must create specious examples to back up that demand -- that monotheism is so much better than polytheism. If xianity works for the author, fine, good, that's nice. But why the need to compare and create lies that allow the author's religion to "win"? It's the true oddness at the root of monotheism. You want to worship just one god; fine. What's at the root of your need to put down my gods?

Picture found here.

Not Much Buffy About It

What it looks like to live as a witch.

Picture found here.

Into The Woods

It's that time of year, again. What we need to be doing, what our bodies and souls feel programed to do, is to go inward. Think about our lives. What changes do we need to make in order to be who we are meant to be? What are we doing that is working and we should emphasize? What no longer helps us to manifest "this god" in the world and can be let go?

Yet, all around us, there's a ramping up. Lights! Stuff on Sale! Holiday parties to plan! Stuff to buy (buy, buy, buy!). Thanksgiving is a mere way-station on the way to secular xmas, which must be merry (merry! merry! merry!). It's as if the culture deliberately sets out to discourage our need to go inward (not a lot of money to be made off of people walking in the woods and thinking).

The only answer for it is to: go inward. Go for the walk in the woods instead of the mall. Sit and stare at the fire instead of the television. Breathe. Sleep. Ignore the frentic hype. Plug in your earbuds and ignore the 700th version of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" or the (especially odious) "December to Remember" commercials. Where will you go today for a walk in silence?

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

Le Beaujolias Nouveau Est (Almost) Arrive!

The third Thursday in November is only a few days away! Rumors are that this year's vintage is quite good.

Fun facts here.

If you're in D.C., you can find parties here. The Obamas love to go out in D.C., so one never knows.

Picture found here.

One More Time

Some things make me so angry that I become inarticulate. So:

What Amanda Said

and

What Ericka Said.


Since before the Civil War, the nice progressive men have been explaining to women why we had to wait for our rights. First it was to free the slaves. Then it was to win WWI. Then it was so we could get Civil Rights for African Americans. Then it was so we could end the war in Viet Nam. Now, it's so we can get a health care bill passed. It's odd how we can't multitask. But I'm old enough to detect a pattern here. And I don't fucking like it.

To Be A Witch

Most of us, most witches, don't, however much we might imagine that we long for it, live in a snug little cottage deep in the woods where we spend all day long doing witchy stuff and posing like the heroines in Waterhouse paintings. We live in apartments in big cities and we have jobs and families and bills and Blackberries and computers and a million distractions and a million demands on our time.

And it's easy, too easy, to come to a place where it almost seems "natural" to have "everyday life," and, then, on the 8 Sabbats and an occasional time or three when we decide to do some "real magic" to address a problem, to remember that we're witches. And, that's ok, if that's ok, you know what I mean?

But there's more to living the life of a witch than the occasional festival, spellcasting, purchase of another tarot deck (repeat after me: buying stuff is not a spiritual practice). And one of the simplest ways to deepen as a witch is to engage in a daily practice: Center. Ground. Breathe. Pull back into the center spot in your belly all of the millions of strands of yourself that you've spun out into the universe. Connect, or more accurately, remind yourself of the connection that you have to Earth, Sky, Fire, Water, Center. Remember that you are a spiritual being having a physical experience and that both of those aspects matter. Remind yourself that the way to respond to this work assignment, this demanding child, this reckless, inconsiderate driver, this insane politics of war, this demand on your time is as a witch. Check: Are you, as a manifestation of the Goddess, doing the work for which the Goddess manifested?

If you can stop and do that throughout your day, you're a witch whether or not you've studied a year-and-a-day with Lady MeadowStarFox, ever danced the Spiral Dance beneath a full Moon, ever grown a single herb or worn a pentacle or consumed Cakes and Ale.

Set the alarm on your iPhone. Program pop-up reminders on your laptop. Wear a bracelet or a ring and do your practice whenever you notice them.

Picture found here.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

Conceit

I heard a winter tree in song
Its leaves were birds, a hundred strong;
When all at once it ceased to sing,
For every leaf had taken wing.

-- Mervyn Peake


Picture found here.