Got A Bonus?

This is the time of year when some folks will get either tax returns or bonuses based on last year's work. In my never-ending quest to help more Pagans live economically-sound lives, here are some ideas for what to do if you manage to come into a chunk of change sometime in the next month or so. The important thing to realize is that the universe has just deposited a package of usable energy at your doorstep. How will you use it?

The first thing you have to ask yourself is: "How secure is my job?" If you think that you could be out of a paycheck anytime in the next year, there's only one answer to what you should do with your lump sum: bank it. Bank it in an FDIC-insured bank account, even if they are only paying about 1% interest these days. (Most standard savings accounts are FDIC insured; just ask when you walk into the bank.) You may need that money to pay rent, print resumes, buy bus tokens to go to interviews in the next year. And, once you bank your bonus, sit down and make a list of your debts and the interest rate that you're paying on each one (look at your monthly statement; it will tell you the interest rate). Then, begin throwing all that you can at the debt with the highest interest rate. Thus, if you have credit card debt at 18%, a car loan at 12%, and student loans at 9%, you pay the minimum on the car loan and the student loans and you throw all that you can get, including all that you can get from taking a second job on weekends and evenings, at the credit card debt until it is paid off. Then, you start on the car loan. Finally, if you are worried about you job, NOW is the time to use your health insurance. Get your teeth checked, have your mammogram, fill your prescriptions each month as soon as possible (most plans will let you refill a months' worth of pills in 26 to 28 days. Those few extra pills can add up to almost a month's worth of free meds to be used once you lose your job and your health insurance.)

But if you reasonably expect to hold onto your job for the foreseeable future, there are a number of things that you can do with your bonus or tax return that will really help to make you more comfortable, secure, safe.

1. Put it in savings. If, in these economic times, you don't have between 9 and 12 months' worth of your net salary set aside, you're in real danger. In other words, if you get paid two times a month, multiply that amount by 18 and that's the minimum amount that you should have in FDIC-insured savings. Some of that amount could be in certificates of deposit, which pay a bit more interest but require you to not withdraw your money for a given period, but you really don't need to worry about that until you've got a chunk set aside. It is often taking experienced workers 6, 9, 12 months to find new jobs and those jobs often pay less than their former jobs. There is a law of the universe that requires your roof, your car, or your hot water heater to die just after you lose your job. You need to be able to pay your rent for months and months in case you do lose your job. And, hell, if the economy suddenly rebounds, times are great, and suddenly your prospects are unlimited, you can always use the money to redo your kitchen or take that cruise up the Nile that you've always dreamt of.

2. Go back to school in the evenings. Can you use your windfall to take the computer courses, paramedic certification, or massage therapy classes that would allow you to make even more money, do the job you want, be more secure in your present job? Then do it.

3. Replace the weakest link. What is it that's really not working in your life? An old, fuel-inefficient car that always breaks down? A computer you can't rely on? An ancient and rusty fridge that lets the food go bad? A basement that leaks? A wardrobe that doesn't work in your current job? Do the research, buy the best that you can, and do a ritual to kiss the old frustrations and inefficiencies good bye.

4. Get yourself organized. Go buy a good file cabinet (or two), boxes and boxes of colored folders, a real desk set, a paper shredder, trash bags, and some funky pens. Gather all your stray papers and put them in a pile. Several piles. A room full of piles. Blue files are for "home": make files for warranties, home insurance, repairs, etc. Orange files are for "car": make files for insurance, loan payments, repairs. Green files are for "finances": make files for paychecks, 401(k), savings. Yellow files are for "work": make files for work expenses, forms from work, professional orgs. Pink files are for "health": make a file for each doc, a file for health insurance reimbursement, a file for your advance health directive. Purple files are for "personal": make files for passports, birth certificates, awards. Spend 20 minutes a week filing the papers in your pile. In a year, you'll love yourself for it.

5. Go pay a lawyer to write your will, your power of attorney, and your advance medical directive. I don't care how young you are. You'll feel all kinds of better once it's done. Have fun with it. What causes should get all your money if you die after everyone you love? What songs should be played at your memorial service? It's your stuff. Do you really want your fundie cousin to get it all and give it to her fundie minister? If you have kids and you haven't spelled out exactly who will be responsible for them and how they should spend your money on them (College is ok, but funds to tour with the band aren't? A year to hike around Europe is ok but an MBA isn't? It's your call, but only if you make it), you're being negligent. Do it now. Go out for dinner and a nice glass of wine afterwards. Now, you really can die happy.

6. Go get one of those "executive" health exams. Have your damn mammogram. Buy a home treadmill, or a membership in a gym, or a new pair of glasses. Get your teeth fixed. Buy a mountain bike, a set of free weights, some sessions with a personal trainer who will help you develop a regular exercise routine. Buy a good pair of walking shoes. Finally learn to fence.

7. If you can do it and it works in your life for all the right reasons, now is a good time to make a down payment on a home. Do the research first. Make sure you know about every government incentive program that's out there. Make sure you get a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage. Make sure you get the home inspected. Make sure you've negotiated hard for the lowest price. And, then, throw your bonus into the pot of money you've already saved and do it. There's nothing like committing to a very specific piece of land.

8. Green up. Can you use your windfall to install energy-efficient windows, buy new appliances that use less energy, install a green roof, invest in solar panels that will allow you to sell power back to your local utility? Get on the web, spend an hour doing research, and then go for it. Buy a rain barrel, pay a green company to install insulation, buy some mesh bags that you can use every time that you go to the grocery store.

9. Spend the money on plants. Buy, and get a gardener to install, some trees that will give you shade in the summer so you can cut down on your air conditioning bills. Buy a few fruit trees that will give you fresh fruit for years to come. Put in a vegetable garden that will cut both your carbon footprint and your grocery bill. Buy into a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group and have a local farmer deliver food to your door all year long. Pick a color scheme (black/white, orange/yellow, purple/pink) and put a cottage garden outside your door.

10. Prepare for an emergency. You should have at least a few days' worth of food, water, and meds set aside. Take your windfall and buy canned foods, bottled water, basic meds (aspirin, antiseptic, bandaids, etc.), vitamins, etc. Find a good place to store them. I buy one can of something on sale each time that I go to the grocery store. A can of beans, tomatoes, tuna fish. A bottle of vitamins, a box of powdered milk, a few extra batteries. It can, as it has here in the MidAtlantic, snow quite a bit, but it will be a long, long time before I'm starving. Make a list of what you'd like to have on hand in case you are confined to home for a week or two and then go shopping.

11. Finally, here's my one hard and fast rule about bonuses and tax refunds. Set aside 5% for fun and 5% for a good cause. You've got to feel like you're enjoying the money, a little bit. So go buy a lovely scarf and give some money to a candidate you like. Take the family out to dinner and give some money to a homeless shelter in your area. Buy yourself a camping trip and make a micro loan. Buy a tree for your yard and a tree for the local hospice, library, school. Do what will make you feel good.

Money, especially money that shows up as a lump, is just a form of energy. Witches are good at directing energy. How will you direct yours?

Picture found here.

Saturday Poetry Blogging - Black Heritage Month Edition

Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)

by Nikki Giovanni

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

I mean...I...can fly
like a bird in the sky...

Picture found here.

Follow Me Down (The Rabbit Hole)

I am so there.

Balance

My Sun is in Pisces and my Ascendent is in Gemini, so I can always see many sides of each argument. And, as we move closer and closer to the Vernal Equinox, it's good for us to seek, like Mama Earth, balance. Consequently, I offer you both John Michael Greer's ArchDruid Report and Phila's Hope Blogging.

Actually, they're both positive, in their own ways.

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.

The Safe Island Of Mindfullness

A Warm Embrace - The Great Bell Chant from R Smittenaar on Vimeo.

A friend of mine posted this a while ago and, I have to say, I love it. I am jumping off the mainland of monkey mind and swimming for all my life is worth for the safe island of mindfullness. You come, too.

Sadly, I Missed This Conference

Discussion starts at about 3 minutes in.



Damn. If only I'd taken off from work.

It's Easy; Anyone Can Do It

NTodd describes the completely unscary, not-intimidating, and v American act of having a meeting with his representative's staff. More of us should do this. I'm going to commit to do it twice this year, on issues that really matter to me: the environment and women's rights.

Will you commit as well? It's easy. They come to your area and you can schedule 15 minutes with them. You can precede yourself with an email discussing the points you want to make. You show up at the local office with some cookies or muffins or photos of your area for the rep's walls, you make some small talk, and then you tell them what you want your rep to do and what you'll do to back your rep if they do the right thing. You say, "Thanks," and you follow up the next day with a nice email. You can do this, and you should.

A lot of 18 year olds died so that you could. So you can do it for them, if for no other reason. Email me when you do it and I'll go put a flower on a grave at Arlington for you.

Picture found here.

Early Writing, Early Magic

Here's a fascinating article about French cave art. I don't know about you, but I've always felt a deep connection to those amazing paintings of horses, rhinos, cows, and human hands, likely viewed in flickering firelight by our many-times-great-grandmothers. Now, there's evidence that some of the smaller symbols that generally accompany the paintings may have been an early attempt at writing.

While some scholars like Clottes had recorded the presence of cave signs at individual sites, Genevieve von Petzinger, then a student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, was surprised to find that no one had brought all these records together to compare signs from different caves. And so, under the supervision of April Nowell, also at the University of Victoria, she devised an ambitious masters project. She compiled a comprehensive database of all recorded cave signs from 146 sites in France, covering 25,000 years of prehistory from 35,000 to 10,000 years ago.

What emerged was startling: 26 signs, all drawn in the same style, appeared again and again at numerous sites (see illustration). Admittedly, some of the symbols are pretty basic, like straight lines, circles and triangles, but the fact that many of the more complex designs also appeared in several places hinted to von Petzinger and Nowell that they were meaningful - perhaps even the seeds of written communication.

A closer look confirmed their suspicions. When von Petzinger went back to some of the records of the cave walls, she noticed other, less abstract signs that appeared to represent a single part of a larger figure - like the tusks of a mammoth without an accompanying body. This feature, known as synecdoche, is common in the known pictographic languages. To von Petzinger and Nowell, it demonstrated that our ancestors were indeed considering how to represent ideas symbolically rather than realistically, eventually leading to the abstract symbols that were the basis of the original study.

And, no surprise, this early writing may well have been associated with early magic.

One huge question remains, of course: what did the symbols actually mean? With no Rosetta Stone to act as a key for translation, the best we can do is guess at their purpose. Clottes has a hunch that they were much more than everyday jottings, and could have had spiritual significance. "They may have been a way of relating to supernatural forces. Perhaps they had special symbols for special ceremonies, or they may have been associated with the telling of special myths," he says.

The whole article is well worth a read. And I had to laugh, knowing how possessive the French are about their language (which I love), thinking of those early French women and men, writing the first French on cave walls. I'm betting the signs say: D'abord, vous faites un cercle.
Picture found here.

No, Really, We Are Laughing At You

Women's Laughter

talking the night away
kitchen sink humour
laughing like drains
cackling like crones

hooting like owls
howling like wolves
gut wrenching
belly laughs

filthy jokes
foulmouthed
spitting it out
old bags and bad girls

table thumping
trivial, tribal,
tremendous
the power

of women's laughter.

~Cora Greenhill, quoted in We'Moon 2010

Picture found here.

Tarot

Here's my 4001st blog post:

Tarot never lies to me.

Picture found here.

May The Goddess Guard Her. May She Find Her Way To The Summerlands. May Her Friends And Family Know Peace.

American poet, Lucille Clifton has taken the ferry ride.

She lived in St. Mary's County, Maryland, and she wrote:

blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that


Picture found here.

Can We Live Through February?

The Devil Is In The World -- Weird

I have to say, it can't be much fun, always having to be so paranoid and upset.

Surviving Breast Cancer

There's new information indicating that a daily dose of baby aspirin can have important benefits for women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Aspirin may help save breast cancer patients
Aspirin may offer a powerful way to help breast cancer patients survive the disease, according to a large new study.

An analysis of data collected from 4,164 breast cancer patients participating in the well-known, highly respected Nurses' Health Study found that those who took aspirin regularly were about half as likely as those who did not to die from the malignancy. They were also about half as likely to have their cancer spread elsewhere in their bodies, according to a paper published online Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Previous studies examining whether aspirin use may reduce the risk of getting diagnosed with breast cancer in the first place have produced mixed results. One earlier study found that people with colon cancer who took aspirin lived longer than those who did not. The new study is the largest to examine whether aspirin could help women who had already been diagnosed with breast cancer.

It remains unclear how aspirin may have this benefit. But researchers suspect it may be due to the drug's ability to reduce inflammation in the body.

MIchelle Holmes of the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the study, cautioned that more research is needed to confirm the findings before recommending that breast cancer patients take aspirin to increase their chances of surviving.

While the study was big and well conducted, it is an "observational" study, which means it can only suggest relationships, not prove them. The only way to do that would be to give some women aspirin and others a placebo and follow them over time to see if it works.

Several other experts concurred, noting that although aspirin is available over the counter and used casually, it can have serious side effects, most notably increasing the risk for dangerous bleeding.

Obviously, talk to your doc. But, if yours, like mine, recommends a daily aspirin, anyway, to protect v. heart disease, now there's an even better reason to remember to do it. I sprung years ago for one of those little weekly-pill-boxes at the drug store, the kind w/ a tiny little compartment for each day of the week. On Saturday, I refill it w my vitamins, aspirin, and any other needed meds and do a serious bit of reiki on the whole thing. I keep it by the coffee pot and it's easy to remember to take the meds first thing in the morning (and to check and see if I forgot).

Picture (and instructions) found here.

Because Empire Is The Methamphetamine Of Nations

Greer's generally quite good, but this week, you should definitely go read his entire post.

It may never have occurred to you to wonder why it is that the 5% of the world’s population who live in the US get to use around a third of the world’s production of natural resources and industrial products – certainly it never seems to occur to most Americans to wonder about that – but the economics of empire are the reason.

A century ago, in 1910, it was Britain that had the global empire, the worldwide garrisons, and the torrents of wealth flowing from around the world to boost the British standard of living at the expense of everyone else’s. A century from now, in 2110, if the technology to maintain any kind of worldwide empire still exists – and it can be done with wooden sailing ships and crude cannon, remember; Spain managed that feat very effectively in its day – somebody else will be in that position. It won’t be America, because empire is the methamphetamine of nations; in the short term, the effects feel great, but in the long term they’re very often lethal. Britain managed to walk away from its empire without total catastrophe because the United States was ready, willing, and able to take over, and give Britain a place in the inner circle of US allies into the bargain; most other nations have paid for their imperial overshoot with a century or two of economic collapse, political chaos, and social disintegration.

That’s the corner into which the United States is backing itself right now. The flood of lightly disguised tribute from overseas, while it made Americans fantastically wealthy by the standards of the rest of the world, also gutted America’s domestic economy – the same economic imbalances that funnel wealth here also make it nearly impossible to produce goods or provide services at home at a cost that can compete with overseas producers – and created a culture of entitlement that includes all classes from the bottom of the social pyramid right up to the top. As always happens, in turn, the benefits of empire are failing to keep pace with its rapidly rising costs, and in addition, rising demands for imperial largesse from all parts of society are drawing down an increasingly straitened supply of wealth. Meanwhile other nations with imperial ambitions are circling like sharks; the wisest among them know that time is on their side, and that any additional burden that can be loaded onto a drowning empire will hasten the day when it goes under for the third time and they can close for the kill.

Meanwhile, our media distract us with missing white women, whether Angelina and Brad are splitting up, and "reality" tv. Maybe we should bomb Iran.

I will say that I differ with Greer only concerning his optimism that various states, such as China, will win out over large multi-national corporations. I suspect that things may work out in quite the opposite direction, but the overall difference may be rather less important than we suppose.

Picture found here.

Winter Doldrums?

Although the weather wizards are calling for a bit more snow to fall on us, here in the MidAtlantic, where we're still not able to travel completely normally or to look outside and see anything but feet and feet of snow, if you "listen" with your body, you can feel the Wheel turning, sense the coming of Spring. The Sun's up earlier every morning and its light is stronger, especially, it seems to me, in the early evening when it hovers, more and more reluctant to go, on the Western horizon. The buds on the trees are bigger and bigger and, every few days, some new kind of bird returns from the South. It reminds me a bit of those moments when you're not quite awake, and, indeed, you could almost fall all the way back into a dream, but when you also know that soon you're going to wake up and start the day.

I think, and YMMV, that there's an advantage for Witches to being in deep relationship with a particular place, in order to appreciate fully the Turning of the Wheel of the seasons. And that takes time. It takes, as most relationships do, time spent with the beloved, both when it's pleasant and when it's not. It takes daily and hourly attention, not simply an attempt to reconnect 8, or 13, or even 21 times a year. It takes being open to the pain and degradation that the land has experienced and is experiencing, as much as it takes being open to delight in the blossoming of flowers or the warming of the soil. It takes turning off the tv, or the computer, or the cell phone, or your monkey mind, and, ok, it must be said: Going Outside.

Now, we all know, the problem with Nature Religions is, well, Nature. Snow and freezing cold in the Winter, rain and mud in the Spring, heat and mosquitoes in the Summer, wet leaves in the Autumn. And, so, one of the more practical parts of this religion can be learning how to be outside in each of those situations. Boots and shawls and Yax Trax in Winter, a mosquito repellant, discovered after trial and error, that works in the Summer. But if you're serious about being in relationship, then you have to do what's necessary to allow you to spend time with the beloved. And the rewards are substantial.

I was over at G/Son's yesterday, for the first time since the crushing snow that we got here, and he and his 'rents were showing me some v. large trees of theirs that came down in the snow. G/Son said, "Look, Nonna! Our trees came down, just like this!" and then he lay, face down on the floor, arms and legs spread out. The fall of those magnificent trees was too intense to discuss with mere words, it was, for him, a full-body experience. That's relationship.

May it be so for you.

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.

The Best DiL In The World

Patriarchy longs to set up a rivalry between Mothers of Sons and our Daughters-in-Law; it's one of patriarchy's most toxic myths. My mom and her mother-in-law (my paternal grandmother) managed to dislike each other and to snipe at each other for decades and decades, to neither of their benefits, making my dad pretty miserable in the meantime. (Sometime, I'll tell you the story of the year's-long Battle of the Thermostat. It's not pretty.)

Luckily, I don't believe the lies that patriarchy tells, and, besides, Son married a woman so cool, so grounded, so kind in every situation, so witty, so kick-ass, so generous of spirit, so Alia-of-the-Knife in the courtroom, so beautiful, so creative in the kitchen, and so flat-out-fabulous as a mother, that I simply adore her.

Today is important to our family not so much because it's Valentine's Day, although we love Valentine's Day, but because today is DiL's birthday. I'm lucky that she came into the world and lucky that she married Son. She's a true Aquarian and I love her very much. Her birthday this year has been marred by the snow; none of us could get out and shop as we wished. But I hope that she knows that we love her and I thank the Goddess for her every single day.

Fuck the lies of patriarchy. Two women who love the same guy ought to be good friends.

Happy birthday, DiL!

Picture found here.

There Are Statues, And Then There Are Idols

Note the subtle difference in these two stories, both about the recent discovery of a statue of the Goddess Durga. First, from The Daily Rising Kashmir:

Statue of Hindu goddess discovered from Jhelum

Asem Mohiuddin
Baramulla, Feb 13: A statue of Hindu goddess, Maa Durga Sherawali was discovered by some fishermen from river Jhelum here on Saturday. The white-coloured statue, 2.3 inches in height and 1.10 inches in width, was found intact except for one of the hands out of the seven broken.

Speaking to Rising Kashmir, Sub District Magistrate, Baramulla, Syed Muhammad Yousuf said the statue was recovered from fishermen of Dewanbagh, Ushkara.

“The fisherman of the area approached Deputy Commissioner and informed him that they have recovered the statue from river Jhelum. The authorities immediately dispatched a team to the spot and secured the statue which was later been kept in a strong room of District Treasury till the legal process for its preservation is decided,” Yousuf said.

The SDM said the significance of the discovery can only be revealed after proper investigation by experts.

Meanwhile, a fisherwoman, Hajira of Dewanbagh area claimed that the statue had been in the river for the last many years.

“I along with my son once spotted the statue two years back. But after attempting to bring it up the boat shook horribly and we decided to leave it. Today when the water level raised, the statue again emerged and was trapped in some other fisherman’s net,” Hajira said.

And, from the Press Trust of India:

Goddess Durga idol recovered

STAFF WRITER 18:37 HRS IST
Srinagar, Feb 13 (PTI) A marble idol of goddess Durga astride a lion was recovered from river Jhelum in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir today.

The idol, measuring 2x2-ft, was found by the villagers while they were fishing in the river, official sources said.

The idol was handed over to police and later to the Revenue department.

I'd still like to see the word "goddess" capitalized in the first story, but it's far better than the second story.

Picture (of a similar statue of Durga) found here.

WTF?

Here's an interesting story about a "real" (well, I guess that I'll take that over "self-professed") Witch being rejected as a candidate by the local British Green Party. The rejection appears not to have anything to do with her religion, which makes one wonder why the article mentions it, at all. To see just how silly this is, I've reproduced the article below, substituting the word "Episcopalian" for "Witch" and "Shaman and Shamanka."

Episcopalian's poll hopes dashed after rejection by Greens
Saturday, February 13, 2010, 07:00

A REAL Episcopalian hoping for success in the forthcoming general election claims she has been rejected by the Green Party.

Sarah Goldsmith, (pictured left) 50, who lives in Torre, Torquay, made her parliamentary bid for the Green Party last month.

She said her name was in the hat with others to become the Bay's prospective parliamentary candidate.

But since then she's been told her new membership has been refused.

The dejected mum-of-two said she believed the decision has been made because she is seen as an 'agitator' within the party.

And she claims she has been ousted because she has criticised the administration of the South Devon group — the biggest in the country.

Ms Goldsmith said she quit the party in 2008 after previously being selected as prospective parliamentary candidate for Torbay and on the Euro list for the South West.

She said: "I pulled out and quit the party because I had lost faith in the party.

"I wish I had not, but that has happened."

But she applied again in January and received her membership welcome pack, dated January 20, from Green Party HQ.

But just two weeks later, an email from Green Party chief executive David Murray states her membership had been refused under the urgent procedures process.

It read: "The Green Party Regional Council, in its capacity to review party membership applications, has resolved not to accept your recent application for membership to the Green Party.

"As part of this review process, GPRC spoke to both elected regional councillors in your area, then the matter then went through the GPRC urgent procedures process last week.

"All five representatives voted for the application to be refused. It is not possible to appeal against this decision, although any applicant may reapply to the party in the future if they wish."

Disappointed Ms Goldsmith said: "They were determined to have me out.

"It is a shame because I still stand by the party manifesto.

"I said I would go quietly. I will walk away. If they don't want me, then they don't want me," she said.

Ms Goldsmith said she had hoped to represent Torbay on green issues.

She said her lifestyle as a 10th generation hereditary Episcopalian is in tune with the party's politics.

Ms Goldsmith describes herself as a female Episcopalian who practises the ancient arts to help students on their spiritual journey.

A Green Party spokesman did not make any comment on Ms Goldsmith's recent membership application.

He said: "Sarah Goldsmith resigned from the Green Party in May 2008. The South Devon Green Party will shortly run a selection process to find our general election candidate for the Torbay constituency.

"That candidate will champion our party's goals to preserve public services, restore the NHS, and create jobs to address the recession."

See? It makes no sense.

Picture found here.

Saturday Poetry Blogging

All the True Vows

by David Whyte


All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.

By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,

it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again.



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

Friday Poetry Blogging

O Sweet Irrational Worship

by Thomas Merton

Wind and a bobwhite
And the afternoon sun.

By ceasing to question the sun
I have become light,

Bird and wind.

My leaves sing.

I am earth, earth

All these lighted things
Grow from my heart.

A tall, spare pine
Stands like the initial of my first
Name when I had one.

When I had a spirit,
When I was on fire
When this valley was
Made out of fresh air
You spoke my name
In naming Your silence:
O sweet, irrational worship!

I am earth, earth

My heart's love
Bursts with hay and flowers.
I am a lake of blue air
In which my own appointed place
Field and valley
Stand reflected.

I am earth, earth

Out of my grass heart
Rises the bobwhite.

Out of my nameless weeds
His foolish worship.

No, I Won't.

Because masculinity is about which piece of shit American-made car you drive.



No, it isn't.

We Can Love The Land And It Can Love Us Back

In our language, the word for our bodies contains the word for land. Everytime I say that word . . . I'm saying that I'm from the land and my body is the land.

What our grandparents have said is that the land feeds us but we feed the land as well. We live on the land and we use the land and, in so doing, we impact the land: we can destroy it, or we can love the land it can love us back.

~Jeannette Armstrong, quoted in We'Moon 2012.

Picture found here.

Xians Putting Death Spells On Politicians

Nice religion you got there, xians. No, really.

Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake of Buena Park sent out an email Monday night, saying that perhaps his prayers had been answered with the death of [Democratic] Rep. John Murtha yesterday.

“Maybe God took him out,” Drake wrote. “Maybe God Answered our IMPRECATORY prayer that we prayed every 30 days.”

The Pennsylvania congressman, a decorated former Marine who fiercely opposed the Iraq war, died at the age of 77 after complications from gallbladder surgery.

I asked Drake if his statements weren’t distasteful, particularly coming immediately after Murtha’s death. He said that as a Christian, he didn’t buy into the sentiment of not speaking ill of the dead.

“It’s not distasteful to pray the word of God and include somebody’s name,” he said. “I didn’t celebrate his death. I said maybe it was God’s answer to our imprecatory prayer.”

Drake regularly asks his “prayer warriors” to participate in prayer targeting “unrighteous” politicians. He typically uses Psalms 109, including these passages including in his Monday email: “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” And, “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

At one point, Drake prayed for the death of President Barack Obama. However, he dropped that because he wants to see Obama faces charges that he is not a natural-born citizen and so cannot be president. Drake has such a lawsuit on appeal. Drake said he and his prayer warriors had been praying for Murtha’s death for four or five months. Among other things, Drake said Murtha’s use of profanity and his use of God’s name in vain [caused Drake to offer the imprecatory spells]. Beside praying for the death of specific politicians, he said they pray for “politicians in general who are taking unrighteous stands."

Of course, one can imagine the cries of outrage if Pagans announced that their spells had caused the death of some right-wing politician. (If Psalm 109 is anything other than a spell, I'd like to know what it is. ) Sensible Pagans would line up to disassociate themselves from the practice and we'd hear all about the Rule of Three.

I'm sure that "mainstream" xians will fall all over themselves denouncing this practice.

No, I'm not.

I Will Get Through This Winter

Birds hatching in nests.

Asparagus

That yellow/pink color of green haze that hovers over the trees just before the leaves pop out.

Cherry blossoms by the Jefferson Memorial in the moonlight.

Fresh watercress.

The scent of daffodils and tulips.

Purple and black jelly beans.

Cocktails on the screen porch, even if a sweater is needed.

Green grass.

Sudden showers warm enough to dance in.

Pink sunrises, earlier and earlier, every day.

Going outside in a light cotton dress.

Bare feet, even when it is a bit too early.

The return of the mourning doves.

The first day that the baby squirrels come down from their nest in the crape myrtle.

The way the dirt feels in your hands when you plant seeds.


Go on, you add yours.

Picture found here.

Blizzard Poetry Blogging

The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

~Wallace Stevens

Picture found here.

Snow On Snow On Snow, In The Bleak MidWinter

Snowing again, here in the deep MidAtlantic.

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.