They're Only Words, And Words Are All I Have, To Take Your Heart Away

So, yeah, I'm the witch of this little bit of land inside the Potomac watershed, with a bunch of oaks, and maples, and birches, and some newly-planted magnolias. Me. Sorry, bit of Earth, that's what you got in the cosmic lottery. I'm not as strong as the 30-something Army officer across the street, to the North, but I'm a lot more Earth-sensitive than the Ugly Neighbors to the South. And, at any rate, you're stuck with me

And in the midst of a storm system that, by best estimates, is the sort of storm system that hits once every 700 or so years, I'm telling myself that I'm doing pretty well. I stocked up before the storm and, truth be told, for years I've been buying either a can of something on sale or a container of bottled water at least twice a month when I go to the grocery store, so I'm not going to starve for a long time, and I bought stuff like bread, eggs, etc. just ahead of this storm. So it's going to be March before I'm going hungry, although I may run out of alcohol (Goddess forfend) by the end of this month, or so. And I've long since installed new sump pumps, a new furnace, a new generator, and new insulation in this little cottage. I have two comforters on my bed, a drawer full of warm socks, and cashmere shawls out my toukas. I'm figuring that I've got internet, heat, electricity, and hutzpah to last forever, so, you know, Winter, do your best. I've even got firewood on the back porch.

The Big Storm of My Life hits and I'm out on the porch communing with the fox and the spirits of this place and the Devas of this storm and I'm sheltering in place, watching Netflix, making sweaters for G/Son, finally reading Little Big, and I'm cool. I was born, in large part, to commune with nature and that's what I do for a good 18 hours.

Finally, day dawns, it's sunny and cold, the storm is over, and I strap on my boots, wrap a Hermes shawl over my head, don my Chanel sunglasses, put on my warm coat with the black velvet collar, and I head out back to bang the snow off of my two new magnolia trees, stopping on the way to knock snow off of my euonymous bush which is hung w/ suet feeders and peanut feeders and all kinds of bird-seed dispensers. I wade through snow up to my sweet, round ass, climb the hill, use my iPhone (my iPhone! I'm so modern it hurts!) to snap pictures, use my broom (Babe! Just this once! Just this one time you can't fly me? Srsly? Cuz it would just be v cool. No? OK. But I'm just saying, "If not now, when?" Just this once? No? OK. No biggie.) to knock snow off the trees, and I head back to the warm inside of my neat little cottage and a hot mug of lapsang souchong.

On the way, I fall down.

Falling scares me; I'm an old woman with a bum ankle full of screws, plates, titanium. Falling on this much snow is fun; it's soft. Getting back up, that's not so easy. It just squishes everywhere that I try to push down. I can't, and this is often the story of my life, gain purchase.

I ground. I breathe. I check that I do, still, have the cell phone in my pocket.

I refuse to get scared. Frostbite? I laugh at frostbite, even as it IS lapping at my more sensitive parts. (No, I'm NOT going to the hospital w/o underpants, which, it just happens, I did not bother to put on this morning. I'm my grandmother's granddaughter and I'm just not. Why do you ask?)

I call for help to every great-great-dwelled-inside-a-cold-cave grandmother that I have, especially the ones who lived through the ice age just so that they could send their mitochondria all the way down to me, me, this silly old woman floundering around in three feet of snow in her back yard and hoping that she won't be a bad story on the evening news. Who am I kidding? I'm just hoping that I die in the snow before Son gets to yell at me; he's SO not going to be amused. I can just hear me telling him, "Well, I wanted to knock snow off the trees. . . ." I have to get up and get inside so that this does not happen. (Line from a LeGuin short story: The Ancestors: "Oh, it's that one. She's in trouble again." Yes, damn it, help me up!) I crawl a few yards through 3 feet of snow (easy for you to read) to my back deck, where I can grab a post and become, again, upright. I walk carefully back along the Eastern side of the house, up the icy steps, back into my bedroom, under my covers.

I get into a warm bath and I do chastise myself. "You could have BROKEN your ankle again. Or your leg! You oughtn't have done that. You need to learn your own limits. You're not as young as you used to be. Crazy old woman; you're lucky you didn't have to call for help, which couldn't have gotten here, in this weather, anyhow! Don't do that again. I mean it."

So last night I did the best magic that I know to raise some guys to come dig out my walk, car, back stoop, etc. At 2:00 this afternoon, after the sun had had time to work on the snow and ice, I went out and shoveled a path from my steps to the street. (Goddess to Hec: " Ho'kay, I sent you someone to clear your walk. You didn't say who. What else you want? You ask too much, you know that?") The sky was blue, the air was clear, I felt good. I shoveled, I paused to let my heart rate get down, I shoveled, paused, admired the clear sky, admired my progress from steps to street, shoveled, anticipated the sweet ache that I'd feel in my shoulders this evening in bed, shoveled, breathed in cold fresh air, looked at the blue sky, shoveled: you get the idea. A couple of neighbors walked by. I called "hullo" to them. One neighbor said, "Are you doing ok? You need anything?" and I said, "Yes, I'm fine; how 'bout you all?"

I came back inside and, for no reason that I can imagine other than that the Mother knows that I appreciate, above all, her sense of humor, not an hour later 4 guys in a truck showed up asking if I needed anything shoveled. I paid them to dig out my car and to dig out the back deck so that I could open that snowed-in door and feed the birds.

So I'm editing legal pleadings on line and I'm feeling rather Mistress of the Universe, myself, if I do so say so, and then some v nice neighbors stopped by to say they were on their way to the supermarket and did I need anything? I was happy to say that I didn't, and we chatted about the upcoming even-more-snow and I mentioned that I have the generator, so, if the power does go out, please feel free to come by and charge up cell phones or laptops or whatever, and then my v nice neighbor said, "I saw you out this afternoon, struggling to shovel out your walk."

Damn.

Just, damn.

I didn't think that I was "struggling." I was feeling pretty damn good about getting out there in this once-in-a-lifetime storm and clearing a way to the street, just after having had an epic struggle to save some magnolias, meanwhile knitting a sweater, editing a legal pleading, and cooking some soup.

I don't know. Maybe I'm nuts. Maybe I should be living in a nice condo for old people. I know the nice neighbors didn't mean anything, except to be nice, but I didn't think that I looked as if I were struggling. I didn't. I thought that I looked strong and vital and alive and like a tough old survivor. I did. That's how I felt and that's how I assumed that I looked.

I'm going to go on being the witch of this place. Struggling isn't the worst thing in the world. Giving up on the struggle: that's bad.

I wasn't struggling. I know struggle and that was not struggle. I have struggled, and, when I was struggling, no one knew it, but that wasn't struggling. Just saying.

Apologies: I forget where I found this picture.

Enjoy

Well, This Is Interesting

So it's looking as if we'll be socked in, here in the MidAtlantic, for the better part of a week. I admit that, INTJ that I am, I'm a bit of a homebody and don't much mind time to myself, especially as long as my internet connection is working.

The fairies woke me up at about 3:00 this morning and, even though I'd shoveled off the front step before going to bed, I could barely open the front door for the weight of the snow against it. I shoveled off a bit more and then propped the door open so that I could at least get out this morning and shovel the steps off properly. At least another half foot has fallen since then. I tried, I did, to go around back and fill the bird feeders and push snow off of my two new lovely magnolias, but the snow was up to my sweet round ass and I just didn't think I could make it uphill and back. Feeble old woman. Landscape Guy says to let them be and we'll fix things in the Spring and I'm sure that he knows best.

Times like these, though, it's a good thing to commune with Hestia and ask her for a long list of things that need to be done around the house. Might as well start the Spring off, whenever it does come, with everything organized and neat and fixed up.

Hope that you are safe and snug and full of warm soup. This picture isn't much; it's shot through the screen of my screen porch; that door is shut tight by almost 4 feet of snow.

UnfuckingBelievable

Professionally Outraged catholic Bill Donohue and others explain why it's actually discrimination against xians for the Air Force to take seriously xian desecration of Pagan worship spaces. No. Really.

"The cross was also compared to a swastika. Mikey Weinstein, a past graduate of the Academy who incredibly has clients of his watchdog group on campus, said that the cross at the pagan site was tantamount to having a swastika in the Jewish center!

"Weinstein has long insisted that Evangelicals are guilty of intolerance at the Academy, though a 2005 report on this issue found “no overt discrimination.” But the report did detail examples of religious intolerance against Catholics and Protestants.

"These remarks have added to the chilling atmosphere that Catholics and Protestants must endure. I wrote to the Congress in 2005 about this matter, and I am doing so again.

"We need to know why hypersensitivity to non-Christians has evolved into insensitivity to Christians."


The whole sorry thing is here.

And, yeah, a cross in a Pagan worship space is like a swastika in a Jewish space. Xians killed witches; Nazis killed Jews. Neither one of those symbols is introduced into such a space as a sign of anything other than hatred and an intent to frighten. Nice religion you got there, xians. Those poor, poor persecuted xians.

Picture found here.

Snow

So when I step outside, I am in a time out of time. I am transported NORTH, I am with my grandmother's grandmother's grandmother. There are forces flying about quite near the Earth that can only announce their presence by booming, "BE NOT AFRAID!" And, as if to make absolutely, doubly sure that I would PAY ATTENTION, the fox ran across the nighttime snow, the most lovely, terrifying, beautiful thing in the entire world of things more beautiful than they can possibly be.

I'm sure this storm is going to make my life difficult for days and days to come, but tonight it is simply, well, it is simply something that I've lived all my life to be ready to experience.

I Hate To Say It, But This Could Be Good

Again With The Capitalization Problems

So, it turns out that Tim Graham is an idiot, who surely failed 4th grade English. (In a few places below, he's quoting others who also, apparently, failed 4th grade English, but neither did he correct the errors, either with brackets or the use of "sic.")

I noted the U.S. Air Force Academy was making a public space for pagan worship, and wondered if the media would notice. Fox’s Special Report noted it on Monday, quoting a Catholic priest who disapproved. . . .

The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has now set aside a new outdoor worship area for followers of earth-centered religions. That includes pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans. [So apparently the umbrella term "Pagan" doesn't get capitalized, nor do the terms "Witches" or "Druids," but Wicca does get a capital letter. I can't find an underlying rule that explains this.]

Sanchez suggested paganism is somehow a brand new idea during his show Rick's List:

Is there a new religion out there that most of us haven't heard of? Time for today's most intriguing.

He runs the Air Force Academy's astronautics labs in Colorado Springs. He also helped turn this double circle of stones into an outdoor chapel for Druids, Wiccans, and followers of other earth- centered religions. He calls it a freedom ring.

Our most intriguing person of the day is Tech Sergeant Brandon Longcrier, who says about half-a-dozen academy cadets are now devout believers, and many more are catching on. Longcrier describes himself as a pagan. This is him use[ing] [I can't help myself.] white sage to consecrate the circle during the [W]inter [S]olstice. [If "Christmas" gets capitalized, and it does, why not "Winter Solstice" or, the more appropriate term, "Yule"?] Tech Sergeant Brandon Longcrier, intriguing? To say the very least.

Here’s the brief item from Special Report anchor Bret Baier:

The U.S. Air Force Academy is in the final stages of planning a worship area for followers of earth-centered religions, including Wicca and Druidism near its landmark chapel. [So here, the Druids at least get capitalized, although apparently all "Witches" are now "Wiccans." Again, no underlying logic that I can see. Nor can I see any point to the quotation marks in the next sentence. Would there be quotation marks around "St. Mary's Chapel," or "The Crystal Cathedral"?] The organizer of the "Stone Circle" says there has been no resistance at the academy.

But one Catholic [oh, yeah, they definitely get a capital letter] priest [Ha! That's a little-p-priest, but, then, it's not an in-quotation-marks-"self-described"-priest, either] calls the decision "politically correct cowardice by bumbling bureaucrats, adding quote "Behind the smoke and mirrors of the supposed high demand for earth worship prayer circles is a small group of activist atheists in America who seek first to water down and then to abolish the name and face of go[d] [Dude, you so missed an opportunity to win a capitalization war, here,] from the public square." [So it turns out that Pagans are atheists. Who knew?]

The academy chaplain says every service member is charged with defending freedom for all Americans, and that includes freedom to practice our religion of choice. The academy also has worship areas for Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. [OK, all of those guys get capital letters.]

But beyond my obsession with grammar, which has only been intensified by a life in the law where even capitalization matters, Mr. Graham's post is rather disturbing. Noting that some xians already felt compelled to show up and place a cross in the Pagan's Stone Circle (and we can all pause for a moment and consider the reaction should a bunch of Pagans show up and paint Pentagrams all over the "worship areas for Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists"),
this 4th grade failure finds himself constrained to ask: To consult the dictionary, NBC was saying someone "violated the sacred character" of an object or place. What if the viewer at home doesn’t consider a pagan circle to be "sacred"? Timmy, Timmy, Timmy. What if I don't consider the baptismal font of your xian church to be [note the use of quotation marks] "sacred"? Does that mean that leaving Pentacles all over said font is not "desecration"? Are we to assume the xians didn't mean to violate the Pagans' notion that their place was sacred? It's all ok? Because, you know, sauce/goose/gander, and I can find your worship places lots more easily than you can find mine.

Lately, I've seen more and more xians worrying over how unpopular they are. They might want to begin to consider why that is.

Picture, provided for comparison purposes between the stone circle that the Pagans at the Air Force Academy get and the chapel that the xians get (and, yet, the xians felt the need to desecrate the Pagan circle), found here. Weak-ass god, if you ask me.

What The Rude Pundit Said

Where's some catholic man in a skirt to wonder why xians are increasingly unpopular?

False Hope

What If Relationship Is The Point?

Parker, Or, How I Cut My Eye Teeth

Imbolc 2010

It snowed several inches last night, but today's sun, and temperatures in the low 40s, melted much of it. An almost perfect day for astrological Imbolc. I slept in and did conference calls and answered emails and read cases from home, my snug little cottage in the Potomac watershed. I'd gone out last night and hung suet and peanuts and sunflowers from my euonymus bush, so that the birds could calorie-up before being snowed in. I needn't have worried. I was able to go out on the deck this morning without slipping and pour sunflower seeds on a cleared-off surface for the birds.

And, after the conference calls, I decided to set my altar up outside, albeit that I have a lovely, cozy room set aside in my cottage for ritual. It was sunny and the snow was melting and I figured that, with a sweater and a shawl, I could be comfortable outside for the better part of an hour. My wonderful circle of amazing women did our Imbolc celebration over the weekend, with the full Moon, but this afternoon was just for me, the Witch of this Place, as I announce myself before calling the Quarters and beginning to do the work of a priestess who helps to turn the wheel. I did what witches do and I called to Brigid the Bright and, as I always do on Imbolc, I started my datura seedlings. Datura's poison; don't handle it w/o gloves or some other barrier and always wash your hands afterwards. But the flowers are pure white, and they smell of lemon drenched in vanilla, and, in the late summer, they open in the moonlight. The seeds take a long time to germinate; you plant them and water them and give them light and then you always think: this batch is a dud; they're not going to germinate, nothing wic here. And, then, long after you've given up, the first green sprouts appear.

I did what I do in circle and I charged the tiny peat pots and the lovely little seeds and I planted the seeds in the peat pots and charged the whole thing and then I looked up. On the deck, were about a dozen birds of all sorts, including both the cardinal and the blue jay, who never show up together. They didn't mind me and they didn't mind my iPhone playing music and they didn't mind the pinon incense and they didn't mind the 7 different candles burning. They were just there to help to turn the wheel because, well, because the wheel needs turning and they live here, too.

May Spring begin in your heart and move outwards from there into the world. May the beautiful poison thing in you bloom and perfume the world. May all the winged dragons of your special place attend you. May you become the priestess of your own bit of Earth.

This is my will. So mote it be.

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

Poetry On Imbolc

If you grace my blog even occasionally, you know that I love poetry. I love the way that words -- "mere" words -- can transport us. I guess that some of it is my Ascendant in Gemini, which loves wordplay, and some of it is my Sun in Pisces, which craves ecstasy, which I find, more often than almost anywhere else, in poetry. Some of it seems to be my memory of past lives when poetry, especially spoken poetry, was one of the few available art forms and ways to honor the Goddesses and Gods. And some of it is just capital-P-Poetry, itself, which is, well, for me poetry is both oxygen and lagniappe. When our ancestors developed grunts and squacks to mean, "Give me that stick," and "The baby needs attention," and "You can have some of mine," who knew they were laying the foundation for the author of the Song of Amerin, for Blake, Shakespeare, Crowley, Cavafy, Levertov, Akhmatova, Mary Oliver, Rumi, Dylan Thomas, Charles Williams, Peake, Burns, Gibran, Robin Morgan, Dorothy Parker, and so many others? I'd love to think that, someday, eons from now, any of my quotidian efforts would evolve into anything even remotely resembling poetry. May the Goddess guard that first great, great, many-times-great grandmother of mine who grunted the same way every time to mean, "Seeds," or "Meat," or "Danger" or "Comfort Here." That was a v good idea that you had, Lady.

And, so it is that Imbolc, when we give special homage to the Goddess Brigid, Goddess of poets, is a special Sabbat for me, one that I spend almost, well, not almost -- one that I spend all the way drunk on poems. I have a lot of books and, when I moved into this little cottage and catalogued all of the books, carefully by the Library of Congress system, onto Stickley bookshelves, the poetry books went into the kitchen, on the breakfast nook table, where they are most accessible. There are people who find it weird to walk into the kitchen and find poetry and people who love the poetry in my kitchen. It's a v good sorting device. So, it's v, v, v difficult for me, as you may imagine, to choose just one poem to post for Anne Hill's Poetry Slam.

I have a few poems listed in my will to be read when they push a button and send my body into the fire. But there's one of them that always makes me cry, raises goosebumps, sends me into the realm of the divine. And I am more grateful to Doreen Valiente, for channeling it, than I can ever say. So here's my contribution for this year's Imbolc Poetry Reading. It's old, and well-worn, and it never fails to send me. Others will post newer poems, edgier poems, poems that delight with their uniqueness. But, for me, capital-P-Poetry is this one, the one I want someone to be reading to me when I transit from Autumnals, etc.


Traditional by Doreen Valiente, as adapted by Starhawk:

Listen to the words of the Great Mother, Who of old was called Artemis, Astarte, Dione, Melusine, Aphrodite, Cerridwen, Diana, Arionrhod, Brigid, and by many other names:

Whenever you have need of anything, once a month, and better it be when the moon is full, you shall assemble in some secret place and adore the spirit of Me Who is Queen of all the Wise.

You shall be free from slavery, and as a sign that you be free you shall be naked in your rites.

Sing, feast, dance, make music and love, all in My Presence, for Mine is the ecstasy of the spirit and Mine also is joy on earth.

For My law is love is unto all beings. Mine is the secret that opens the door of youth, and Mine is the cup of wine of life that is the cauldron of Cerridwen, that is the holy grail of immortality.

I give the knowledge of the spirit eternal, and beyond death I give peace and freedom and reunion with those that have gone before.

Nor do I demand aught of sacrifice, for behold, I am the Mother of all things and My love is poured out upon the earth.

Hear the words of the Star Goddess, the dust of Whose feet are the hosts of Heaven, whose body encircles the universe:

I Who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters,

I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me.

For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe.

From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return.

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.

Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.

For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire.

At the end of all desire, there's the Goddess. That does it for me. Like all really good capital-P-Poetry, this one lends itself to adaptation. This weekend, at my Circle's Imbolc celebration, my gorgeous sister K. adapted the list of Goddesses at the beginning to the list of those Goddesses with whom our Circle has worked each year. It made goosebumps run all up and down my body and reminded me that I was, all unoworthy and unprepared, bathing in the presence of the divine.

I love my life.

Picture found here.

Nobody At Atrios Does "Frist" Anymore. But This Is Still A Good Idea

Tell me in comments why your blog is ripe for a link on February 3rd!

It's Odd, But

that's now how I've ever heard any branch of Wicca described. But what do I know?

(You have to scroll down a bit.)

More here.

Picture found here.

This Is Not The "Age Of Aquarius" I Was Promised

May you live in interesting times.

This is all leading up to the grand square which starts in May 2010 when Uranus enters Aries and will start moving to a square with Pluto which is moving into a square with Saturn. We are talking major social unrest and revolution. Plus Jupiter entering Aries on June 6 will expand all of these energies. Then in July, Mars goes into Libra and is the trigger to kick it all off at the time of a major eclipse on July 11. You will be hearing more about this grand square from me and from astrologers around the world who are closely watching this one. These types of configurations don’t come along very often.

My New Name For A Blog

What Echidne of the Snakes Said.

Picture found here.

Or, You Know, He Can Bite Me

Pope condemns gay equality laws ahead of first UK visit. Benedict XVI says legislation safeguarding rights of same-sex couples violates 'natural law' . . . [British bishops] told him [that] sexual orientation legislation that came into effect on 1 January 2009 had forced the closure of half the Roman Catholic adoption agencies because the law making it illegal to discriminate against gay applicants went against their beliefs.

In his letter the pope said: "The effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

It is also thought the pope was referring to the equality bill, which narrows the special exemption enjoyed by churches allowing them to exclude people whose lifestyles do not fit in with the religious ethos of an organisation when hiring staff. The bishops cited it as another restriction of their freedom of religious belief.

Why anyone listens to the words of this pedophile-protecting piece of patriarchial poo is beyond me. And why ANY country would let the pedophiles of the catholic church anywhere near activities such as adoption services is, you guessed it, also beyond me.

Meanwhile, I get that the catholics are hoping to scarf up some of the homophobes leaving the Church of England, and, really, nothing makes me happier than watching these xians cannibalize each other. But try and imagine that the "right" that the church is claiming were the right to discriminate against people with black skin rather than against people who want to love someone of their own sex. Let's try this:

They told him that race discrimination legislation that came into effect on 1 January 2009 had forced the closure of half the Roman Catholic adoption agencies because the law making it illegal to discriminate against people with black or brown skin went against their beliefs.

In his letter the pope said: "The effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

It is also thought the pope was referring to the equality bill, which narrows the special exemption enjoyed by churches allowing them to exclude people whose skin colors do not fit in with the religious ethos of an organisation when hiring staff. The bishops cited it as another restriction of their freedom of religious belief.

Go away, catholics. Just go away.

Picture found here.

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and call it a good day.

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. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading.

Hope

I'm just about ready to declare that you can't REALLY have a regular spiritual practice that doesn't include reading Phila's Hope Blogging.

At any rate, I am finding it more and more necessary.

Picture found here.

Oh, This Should Be Interesting

A British film competition will include an examination of the life of "Arthur Uther Pendragon."

Kyoko Miyake, 33, concentrated on Arthur Uther Pendragon, a motorcycling druid whose real name is John Rothwell. Mr Rothwell claims to be ‘the living embodiment of King Arthur’ and is preparing to stand in the general election in Salisbury. He lives in a caravan near Stonehenge paid for by supporters.

Picture found here.

Bonus Brigid Poetry Blogging

Stardust, Hope and Longnecks
for LD

I just read, to a friend today,
a poem about dust on the moon.
Funny thing is, and he'd even say,
a particle of that is in my room!

No, really. Believe me, i'm not lying.
The fodder of astronauts' is here, and beer!
Right here, by the wine bottle and the dead pipe,
in the basement where he showed no fear.

~Chicago Dyke

Picture found here.

I Thought We Learned This Stuff In Fourth Grade

So I was all set to rag on the Air Force Times over capitalization issues,

The Air Force Academy will add a worship area for followers of “earth-centered religion” — pagans — with a dedication ceremony scheduled for March 10.

A stone circle located on a hill overlooking the Cadet Chapel and visitor center will join Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist sacred spaces at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, a pagan who worked with the chapel to create the circle, said he did not encounter resistance to the idea.

“There really haven’t been any obstacles for the new circle,” he said in an Air Force news release. “The chaplain’s office has been 100 -percent supportive.”

But then,

Longcrier said earth-centered spirituality includes traditions such as Wicca and Druidism. Wicca is the largest religious group in the Air Force after Christianity.

So apparently their theory is to capitalize specific forms of Pagan spirituality, such as "Wicca" and "Druidism."

But there's still a problem. "Christianity" gets capitalized and that's an umbrella term for a variety of spiritualities, such as Methodists, Episcopalians, and Baptists, just as Paganism is an umbrella term for a variety of spiritualities such as Wicca, Druidism, Asatru, etc. Similarly, Judiasim gets capitalized, although that's an umbrella term for Hassidism, Reformed, Orthodox, etc. forms of Jewish spirituality.

It's not that complicated, people. Either capitalize all the umbrella terms or none of them.

Meanwhile, this new worship space is an important step forward for Pagans, especially at the Air Force Academy, which has recently been in the news as a bastion of the fundification of our military. And, wow, Pagans are the second largest group in the Air Force? Who knew?

Amazingly enough, The WaPo, which has a horrible record reporting on Pagan events, shows how it's done.

CSA Cookery.

This week, the CSA delivered an abundance of broccoli, along with some carrots. I added ginger, garlic, onions, and tofu. Stir-fried up in tasty peanut oil (there's now an organic brand that can handle high heat) and flavored w a bit of Balducci's ginger plum sauce. Enough for lunch today and some to pack for lunches this week.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

~Robert Frost

Picture found here.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right.
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall? --
If design govern in a thing so small.

~ Robert Frost

PIcture found here.

With Nature

Vows At Imbolc

Brigid is such a complex Goddess -- patroness of both poetry and smithcraft, of both fire and wells, of both healing of the body and the creative spark -- that it's not surprising that she is so beloved by such a wide variety of Pagans. One tradition in some covens is to make a vow to Brigid at Imbolc.

If that's part of your practice, allow me, please, to suggest that you consider a vow to become more connected to, to enter into a deeper relationship with, your own specific bit of Earth. Not "Nature," in the abstract, but your own landbase, watershed, yard, bit of Earth. Especially today, when most Pagans live in cities, this can present a serious challenge. Concrete does not lend itself to relationship nearly as easily (which is not to say "not at all") as do trees, rivers, meadows, mountains, beaches. But you can start, and it's a good place to start, with a pot or two of flowers or herbs on your balcony. You can start with the quality of light and how it differs in the morning when you are walking North from home to work from the evening when you are walking South from work to home. You can find some weeds that grow along the side of the interstate ramp where you slow to a crawl every morning in traffic. Those weeds have a lot to say and would love for someone to notice them every day. You can start with the same aggressive pigeon who shows up every day when you eat lunch in the park and wants a bit of your lunch. You can start with the homeless man at the stoplight or the young woman who still doesn't have much English who sells you a latte every morning.

As E. M. Forster said, "Only connect." Forster also said, Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership. How can you work with that this year?

Picture found here.

Fifth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival

It's almost Imbolc and that means that it's time for Anne Hill's Annual Brigid Poetry Festival, honoring the Goddess of poetry.

This is the now annual Silent Poetry Reading in honor of Brigid (Saint or Goddess, as you prefer). And while the first invitation was for a single day’s blogging event, watching the misty full moon tonight got me thinking of a favorite line from a poem that I want to offer, so I will simply declare that this year’s event has begun!

Life is hard enough; why shouldn’t we take all the full moon weekend leading up to February 2nd to celebrate this patroness of the arts and healing, and read her a poem or two?

So post a poem, a couple of poems, as many as you like, and then post a link to your poetry post(s) in the comments section at Anne's blog.

Many people enjoy Kipling's poems who would be confused by Keats; others delight in Burns who would be utterly without sympathy for Blake. The people who like Tennyson do not, as a rule, care much about Walt Whitman, and the admirers of Poe and Coleridge may find Wordsworth unattractive, and again his disciples might feel antagonized by Rossetti and Swinburne. It does not matter, so long as one finds one's own sustenance. Only, the happy men who can enjoy them all are the richest. The true test of poetry is sincerity and vitality. It is not rhyme, or metre, or subject. It is nothing in the world but the soul of man as it really is. Carlyle's 'French Revolution' is a great epic poem; so are Trevelyan's three volumes on 'Garibaldi and the Italian War of Independence.' That they are written in prose has nothing to do with the matter. That most poems are written rhythmically, and that rhythm has come to be the great technical fact of poetry, was, primarily, because men under stress of emotion tend to talk in a rhythmed speech. Read Lincoln's 'Address at Gettysburg' and 'Second Inaugural,' and you will see.

Nothing is more foolish than to say that only such and such forms are proper to poetry. Every form is proper to poetry, so long as it is the sincere expression of a man's thought. That insincere men try bizarre forms of verse to gain a personal notoriety is true, but it seems not very difficult to distinguish them from the real artists. And so long as men feel, and think, and have the need of expressing themselves, so long will their modes of expression change. For expression tends to become hackneyed and devitalized, and new methods must be found for keeping the sense of palpitant vigour.

~Amy Lowell

Picture found here.

PS: If you are one of those people who think that you "hate poetry," think: "song lyrics." I bet you have a set of song lyrics that speak to you. I won't upset you by suggesting that they are poetry. No, no. Just post your favorite song lyrics. ;)

Any Movie With The Line: "The Gods Are Real," Is On My List

Looks like a must-see.

More about how Hera is portrayed here.

My New Name For A Blog

What She Said.

For me, Imbolc is the Pagan Season of Hope – as we anticipate the Spring Woman who rises in the green veins of trees and tulips, come to lift us out of our dark night. (Hey…there’s a whole soteriology waiting to happen…Kore as Pagan Messiah…hmmm…of course, Feraferians have been saying as much for years.) Some may find, in this story, a metaphor. But for me it’s deadly literal. Without the knowing in my body that the ground will melt, that flowers will bloom, and that the wind can be again my friend…well, I simply don’t think I’d make it (I grew up in Texas and Colorado. And while I thought that my experiences in Denver and Boulder had prepared me for what it meant to live in a winter country, Mother Lake and Brother North Wind learned me right out of that notion). I imagine my ancestors may have had similar thoughts. And this movement is, deliciously so, outside of my realm of control. The earth spins and the seasons turn, and these things are greater than I, and I am a firm believer in the Mystery of Maybe Not Tomorrow – so I do not Make Spring, but I hope, and this Hope is born of my body – both Faith and Fact.

Picture found here.

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

J.D. Salinger, who, in the quote below, explained existence better than anyone else, ever, has gone to the Summerlands.


"I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all," Teddy said. "It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean. ~J.D. Salinger, "Teddy," 1954

It's been a long, hard January.

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

Howard Zinn has gone to the Summerlands.

Reading his book was an education and a revelation for me.

Picture found here.

Wassail!

I offer this fun article about the revival of an ancient Pagan tradition mostly for the sheer enjoyment of seeing expressions such as:

Andrew Fear, who owns Budgens in Mountsorrel

and

Thirsty Farmer Cider in Sutton Bonington.

I spend all day working -- as hard as I know how -- to write legal pleadings in good, strong, understandable, Anglo Saxon, English. So I can be forgiven, I think, for coming home and enjoying "Budgens in Mountsorrel" and "Thirsty Farmer Cider." (Also, Geminii ascendent. Just saying.)

The apple trees were wassailed by the group led by Leicester Border Morris Dance troupe Bakanalia and a traditional incantation was then made to the trees before the wassail queen, 16-year-old Eve Mason, of Mountsorrel, led a procession through the orchard to music.

May the Goddess grant much happiness and long years to Eve Mason of Mountsorrel, who may as well have been named Rosie Cotton. And here's wishing Farmer Fear (I love this language!) an abundant apple harvest.

Picture found here, along with some fun recipes.

For Imbolc

My New Name For A Blog

What Cornell West Said.

But That Sure Was A Cool YouTube, With Will.I.Am & Scarlett Johansen, Biting Her Lip And All

How to Squander a Presidency:

He does not lead. Americans, especially in times of crisis, want their daddy-president to pick a point on the horizon and lead them to it. Often - especially in the short term - they don't even care that much which point it is. They will happily follow a president whose policies they oppose if he will but lead.

* And if he will demonstrate some conviction. I have never seen a president so utterly lacking in passion. This man literally doesn't even seem to care about himself, let alone this or that policy issue. He doesn't seem to have any strong opinions on anything, a sure prescription for presidential failure.

* He has therefore let Congress ‘lead' on nearly every issue, another surefire mistake. Instead of demanding that they pass real stimulus legislation - which would have really stimulated the economy, big-time, and right now - he let those dickheads on the Hill just load up a big pork party blivet of a bill with all the pet projects they could find, designed purely to benefit their personal standing with the voters at home, rather than to actually produce jobs for Americans. And on health care, his signature issue, he did the same thing. "You guys write it, and I'll sign the check." Could there possibly be a greater prescription for failure than allowing a bunch of the most venal people on the planet to cobble together a 2,000 page monstrosity that entirely serves their interests and those of the people whose campaign bribes put them in office?

* Well, yes, now that you mention it. If you really want to bring your government crashing to the ground, why not spend endless months negotiating with vicious thugs, who will never vote for your legislation anyhow, because they are so entirely devoted to your destruction that they're willing to call you a granny murderer? What a great and winning strategy!

* Another possible strategic move even stupider than deferring to Congress to write major legislation is to cozy up with the least popular people on the planet - including, in fact, the real-life granny killers. Got an economy that is so raw it's leaving thousands in literal peril of losing their lives? Why not draft some legislation to bail-out the people who created that mess and guarantee that they retain their multimillion dollar bonuses?!?! You know, the same folks who are always talking about how great capitalism is and how important it is to take risks! The same ones who are always telling us how awful the government is - the same government that saved them from extinction. Those folks. That's right, bail out with outrageous bonuses the very people who need it least and who caused billions of people around the planet to suffer, while leaving everyone else to fend for themselves! That'll raise your presidential job approval ratings every time! And while you're at it, bring in the much beloved health insurance and pharmaceutical corporate lobbyists, and negotiate a deal with them to craft your high profile health care legislation! What voter can't get behind that?

* Another brilliant presidential tactic is to be such a Mr. Happy Nice Face that you acknowledge no enemies for the country, or even yourself. Not the health care corporate vampires who suck the blood out of Americans from San Diego to Bangor, providing absolutely no value-added health service whatsoever, while denying treatment to deathly ill human beings at every opportunity, all to rake in billions more in profits. Not the reckless pirates on Wall Street who bet all our money on insane gambles that wrecked the global economy, took government bail-out money to survive, and yet are still drowning in bonuses as rewards. Not the Republican Party who spent three decades downsizing the middle class, plunging the country into wars based on lies, deregulating every protection in sight, fattening up corporate cronies, wrecking the environment, trashing the Constitution and polarizing the country politically. And not even a catastrophic climate disaster speeding toward the planet with relentless determination. No! We must all be happy and talk nice! No bad guys. Not even the bad guys can be bad guys.

* While you're at it, if you're trying to run the most failed presidency ever, a really good idea is to campaign in the grandest terms possible, and then deliver squat. You know, talk about bending the arc of history. Invoke Martin Luther King's dream and his struggles and even those of the slaves. Ring the big bells of generational calling. Remind voters every thirty seconds that the country badly needs "Change!". Then get elected and turn around and continue the policies of your hated predecessor in every meaningful policy area. Only with less conviction. People will love that.

* A related brilliant move is to mobilize a giant army of passionate volunteers dedicated to putting you in the White House, and then do nothing with them once you get there, other than taking them completely for granted and never calling upon them to do anything in support of your agenda. Be sure to deflate their enthusiasm in every way possible.

* Even more importantly, if you're trying to run your presidency into the ground you'll definitely want to avoid mobilizing the general public behind your agenda. To make sure that you don't repeat the great legislative victories of FDR or LBJ or (unfortunately) Reagan or (really unfortunately) Little Bush, never use their method of appealing directly to the people. Never express your legislative program as a moral imperative, a great calling to the nation. Never attempt to rally the public behind your cause. Never express any urgency. And never call upon them to demand that Congress pass your bills. Then, you can rest assured they won't!

* And let's take it up a whole ‘nuther level, while we're on the subject. A successful president is one who articulates a strong and compelling narrative for the nation. So, in your quest to avoid rising even to mediocrity, be sure to leave a great big gaping canyon where that whole narrative thing is supposed to go. No New Deal, no Great Society, no New Frontier or War on Terror for you. Nope! Just a thousand little projects with little non-solutions to big problems. Hey, why not inject yourself into Cambridge, Massachusetts community police politics while you're at it! Or the New York State Democratic Party gubernatorial primary! Or you could deliberate for weeks about which breed of dog to get for your kids! That's a great use of the president's political capital!

* As long as you're walking away from the grand narrative, why not let the opposition define you as well? Let them say anything imaginable about you, and never respond. You're a socialist! No, you're a fascist! No, you're both! At the same time, no less! You're a granny killer! You're not really even an American! You're taking over the US for the Muslims! You're a massive taxer and spender! You're running around the world, apologizing for America everywhere you go! No worries. Just remember the golden rule, and your presidency is sure to sink: Never engage, never respond, never preempt, never attack, never fight back.

* In general, you'll also want to take the most important power the president has - the bully pulpit - and totally piss it away. Appear everywhere at once, all the time, saying lots of nice words, about a thousand different issues. But never with passion, never with compelling simplicity, never with repetition, and never with urgency. Pretty soon you'll turn being everywhere into being nowhere. Everyone one will tune out your ubiquitous self. Give up the high moral ground which is the most important asset of the office you hold, and you'll make sure that no one ever listens to you anymore. You will persuade the public of nothing. Except that you are irrelevant.

* But you can do better still. Help your enemies, so that they can crush you more effectively! Start by not even realizing they are your enemies. Then, treat them with greater respect than your friends, even though they've run the country over a cliff. Defer to them at every opportunity. Consult with them even as they insult you to your face. Allow them to run Congress, even though they have small minorities in both houses. Never force them to vote against simple, popular legislation. Never call their bluffs. Never associate them with the destruction they've caused. Never label them the treasonous hypocritical liars that they are. Help them to resuscitate the comatose near-corpse of their political party, just before it's about to die, so it can rise up and savage you.

* Another great trick for crashing a presidency is to pick all the wrong priorities to ‘fight' for. Imagine, for example, if FDR had substituted for his ‘Day of Infamy' speech right after Pearl Harbor a ringing call for an American revolution in cobbler technology! Yes, that's right, in response to the devastating surprise attack by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan, what if the president urgently called upon us all to start making really amazing shoes?! Before it's too late, and we all get blisters on our feet! Similarly, Mr. Obama, your spending the last year on (jive) health care and jetting around the world dipping your toes into foreign policy problems while Americans are losing their jobs and their houses is a fine way to kill your presidency. Guaranteed to work every time.

* And, finally, perhaps the most important thing one can do - and the thing that helps explain many of the other items above - is to adopt really, really pathetic policies. If you're doing a stimulus bill, for example, make sure that it's too little money, not targeted at real stimulative levers in the economy, costs a lot, doesn't kick in for a year or two, gives away about a third of the money to ineffective pet projects for Republican while none of them vote for it anyhow, and leaves the unemployment rate stuck at a miserable ten percent. Or, if you're doing a bail-out of the banks for the purpose of producing the liquidity essential to restarting the economy, let them take bonuses as big as they want, and don't actually require that they loan out to anyone the money you've given them. Or, how about spending nearly all your political capital on ‘health care' legislation, which is really an insurance company boondoggle bill instead? That's really what the people want, eh? No wonder Obama's not out there writing the narrative, fighting the good fight or crushing his enemies. Even he can't get excited about his own priorities, so extraordinarily abysmal are they.

All of this represents the best prescription I can imagine for wrecking a presidency, and Obama has followed it with exacting precision. Indeed, doing so would appear to be his only real passion. It's almost as if he were a Republican sleeper politician in some party politics version of the Manchurian Candidate, planted to arise on cue and destroy the Democratic Party from within.


And the response from the WH is to try and make the Republicans like him by promising to cut spending on social programs (which is what "freeze" really means), while giving the military-industrial complex a blank check. Cuz THEN they'll stop calling him Hitler, a socialist, a Nazi, a Kenyan. Sure. Heckuva job, Barack.

More, here.

/hat tip, the divine watertiger.

Picture found here.

Fire Festival

For Imbolc

"Springtime's comin'," he said. "Cannot tha' smell it?"

Mary sniffed and thought she could.

"I smell something nice and fresh and damp," she said.

"That's th' good rich earth," he answered, digging away. "It's in a good humor makin' ready to grow things. It's glad when plantin' time comes. It's dull in th' winter when its got nowt to do. In th' flower gardens out there things will be sirrin' down below in th' dark. Th' sun's warmin' 'em. You'll see bits o' green spikes stickin' out o' th' black earth after a bit."

"What will they be?" asked Mary.

"Crocuses an' snowdrops an' daffydowndillys. Has tha' never seen them?"

"No. Everything is hot, and wet, and green after the rains in India," said Mary. "And I think things grow up in night."

"These won't grow up in a night," said Wetaherstaff. "Tha'll have to wait for 'em. They'll poke up a bit higher here, an' push out a spike more there, an' uncurl a leaf this day an' another that. You watch 'em."

"I am going to," answered Mary.


~from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Picture found here.

Poetry For Imbolc

Here's hoping that, for the fifth straight year, Anne Hill will be sponsoring the on-line Imbolc poetry slam in honor of the Goddess Brigid, patroness of smithcraft and poetry.

Here's an early start:

February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.


You've got a week to search for your favorite.

Picture found here.