It's Weird When They Openly Admit That All They Really Want Is To Foster Needless Discrimination

Keith Olberman has a point. Bill O'Reilley, who runs around pretending to be horrified over a nonexistant "campaign" to "indoctrinate" children so that they'll won't hate gay people and treat them like shit (no, really!), begs women to engage in threesomes with him. And his idiot listeners are fine with that.

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Calaveras

Every year, I promise myself that NEXT year, I'll get my act together in, oh, late August, and make sugar skulls for Samhein. I didn't manage it this year, but for next year, I'm determined!!

It looks pretty easy, and maybe G/Son will be old enough to have fun "helping" me. I think they'd make an amazing Samhein altar, and, as Kathy Cano-Murillo from The Arizona Republic notes, a Día de los Muertos altar without sugar skulls is like a Charms Blow Pop without the bubble gum inside. Inkubus adds that: Sugar Skulls (Calaveras) are a traditional folk art from Southern Mexico used to celebrate El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). This is a happy occasion in Mexico. The spirits of the dead are welcomed back . . . home with these beautifully decorated skulls as well as with altars, flowers candles, incense[,] and special foods. Families take the flowers and sugar skulls to the cemetery to decorate the tombs. Sugar skulls are colorfully decorated with icing, pieces of bright foil, [and] colored sugars[,] and usually bear the name of the deceased loved one being honored. If kept dry, the skulls can last a year .

Sure, Samhein is, for me, a holiday of Celtic origin, and Día de los Muertos originates, according to Wiki with the indigenous peoples [of Mexico and surrounding areas] such as the Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Mexica, Maya, P'urhépecha, and Totonac. Rituals celebrating the deaths of ancestors have been observed by these civilizations perhaps for as long as 2500–3000 years. In the post-Hispanic era, it was common to keep skulls as trophies and display them during the rituals to symbolize death and rebirth. The festival that became the modern Day of the Dead fell in the ninth month of the Aztec calendar, about the beginning of August, and was celebrated for an entire month. The festivities were dedicated to the goddess Mictecacihuatl known as the "Lady of the Dead", corresponding to the modern Catrina. But that's what I love about modern Paganism: the chance to create a completely syncretistic religion (yeah, I know that, for some, that's a term of derision) that blends together amazing elements from all over the world. And I've always found the beliefs surrounding the Day of the Dead to be, well, pretty Pagan.

Wiki explains that: Some Mexicans feel that death is a special occasion, but with elements of celebration, because the soul is passing into another life. Plans for the festival are made throughout the year, including gathering the goods to be offered to the dead. During the period of November 1 and November 2, families usually clean and decorate the graves. Most visit the cemeteries where their loved ones are buried and decorate their graves with ofrendas, or offerings, which often include orange marigold called "cempasuchil", originally named cempaxochitl, Nahuatl for "twenty flowers", in modern Mexico this name is often replaced with the term "Flor de Muerto", Spanish for "Flower of the Dead". These flowers are thought to attract souls of the dead to the offerings.

Toys are brought for dead children (los angelitos, or little angels), and bottles of tequila, mezcal, pulque or atole for adults. Families will also offer trinkets or the deceased's favorite candies on the grave. Ofrendas are also put in homes, usually with foods such as candied pumpkin, pan de muerto ("bread of the dead") or sugar skulls and beverages such as atole. The ofrendas are left out in the homes as a welcoming gesture for the deceased. Some people believe the spirits of the dead eat the "spiritual essence" of the ofrenda food, so even though the celebrators eat the food after the festivity, they believe it lacks nutritional value. The pillows and blankets are left out so that the deceased can rest after their long journey. In some parts of Mexico, such as the towns of Mixquic, Pátzcuaro and Janitzio, people spend all night beside the graves of their relatives.

Some families build altars or small shrines in their homes.

How could I not love a holiday that has people building altars in their homes, leaving offerings of alcohol for their beloved dead, and growing marigolds all summer long in order to be able to celebrate the passage from life to death, the turning, to use a Wiccan term, of the Wheel? I've always loved the scene in the movie Frida where Diego Rivera comes, after a long and difficult absence, to see Frida in the cemetery on the Día de los Muertos and asks her to house Leon Trotsky who had fled from the Soviet Union to Mexico. It's night. It's a cemetery. It's completely festive. She grants him his wish (and then fucks Trotsky).

So, that's it. Next year, I AM going to make sugar skulls, and decorate them, and make an altar. Hail Mictecacihuatl! Hail Catrina!

**********

Oddly, I find that more and more of my high holy days require the acquisition of plastic molds. My circle celebrates the rising of the Yule sun by banging on pots and pans and blowing whistles and beating drums (gotta wake up that sleepy sun!) and drinking strong drink in glasses made of ice that we then break upon the frozen ground (see, above, re: waking up the sun).

Friday Cat And Decoration Blogging

Friday Decoration Blogging

May It Be So For You

In a life of unearned joys, being able to live in a circle of amazing women is one of my greatest joys.

I've slept, in Stevie Nick's words, with poets, legends, priests of nothing.

I've been mother to a kind, good, sly-humored young man who has turned out to be, all unmentored, the most amazing father, a great writer, a v. good cook, a wonderful person, and a better son that I ever deserved. I've been lucky beyond luck to have a good and brilliant and kind daughter-in-law with whom I love to spend time. I have a G/Son whose picture I show to my dentist and to strangers on the train and who I knew immediately that I would love beyond imagining. I've lived past breast cancer to hear him say "Nonna," and if that's all that chemo bought for me, well, then, it was cheap at the price.

I've spent a lifetime reading poetry and seeing art and attending the ballet and walking in the gardens and the parks of some of the most amazing cities in North America.

I got to study law and to work for one of DC's best law firms and to handle fascinating, precedent-setting cases in great courts for a fantastic client.

And, yet, I count myself in nothing else so fortunate, in the words of the The Bard, than as a witch, in a circle of women. Tonight, a full moon under a rainy sky, was a confirmation of that for me. Wonderful, unearned things have been happening all my life, but having a circle of women sitting in my living room, eating dinner, drinking wine, relaxing from magic, sharing lives -- that's a gift from the Goddess that I never really expected to receive. Women applying for new jobs, sharing information about obtaining security clearances, renovating homes, going through pregnancy, watching their family members die, dealing with middle school girls who get called "easy," and coping with law firms where the chairman tells sexist jokes -- I count myself so lucky to be inside this swirl of energy.

May it be so for you.

Take Those Nooses Down

Code Pink Completely Rocks

What watertiger said. More here. Code Pink rocks.

And Then, It Rained

It's been such a long dry summer. I've watered, and watered, and watered my garden and my trees, getting a water bill that's double last year's. But that's only been to do triage, to try to keep alive my oak trees that were here when the American Revolution happened, to keep the expensive new toad lillies and the ancient rhododendron alive, to keep the moonflowers that Ruth sent to me, and the roses that I bought, and the gardenias that scented this entire Spring, alive.

But this morning, at about five o'clock, I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof. What an amazingly lovely sound. It's been so absent, lately. And, wonder of wonders, this evening, it was still raining. On Wednesday evenings, I get together with some amazing witches and we do ecstatic dance and eat a healthy potluck meal to which we each contribute. Tonight, after dancing and catching up with each other, we had collards and mustard greens, Susan Weed's cancer prevention cabbage and sea weed, garden squash and kashi, and cheese. We ate out on my screen porch and I kept interrupting the conversation to say, "Wow. I love the sound of the rain." My sisters indulged me. The rain is as if the Goddess just kept saying over and over and over again, "I love you. I love you. I love you."

Tomorrow, I'll gather with the women in my circle to do magic for two of us who need magic. Next week, I'll dance on Tuesday, instead of Wednesday, because Wednesday is the high holy day for my circle: Samhein. On Wednesday, we'll eat a dumb supper to honor the ancestors and do divination for the coming year. Magic matters, in my life, and my life is full of magic.

I wish that you could hear this rain, hear the thirsty earth drinking it in, hear the oaks and the datura and the thyme and the sage and the basil and the bee balm and the budelia drinking their fill for the first time in months. I wish that you could smell it through my open windows, dance in it with me under the full October moon, as we move from Libra to Scorpio, I wish that you could see, moment to moment, what it's doing for the thirsty plants.

What If They Invaded America?

My New Name For A Blog

What Diane Said.

Pretty Much

My New Name For A Blog

What Sir Oolius Said. What Natasha Said. What the NY Times Said:

Scientists have warned of impending disaster.

And life, for the most part, has gone on just as before.

The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains sprayed and football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. On an 81-degree day this month, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million-gallon mountain of snow.

By September, with the lake forecast to dip into the dregs of its storage capacity in less than four months, the state imposed a ban on outdoor water use.



To which, I'll only add: Too. Many. People.

How Your Cat Wakes You Up

This, right up until the baseball bat, is EXACTLY how Miss Thing wakes me up every morning, including the nails in the archival fabric of the bedspread. And, although Son says that I'm mistaken, this is EXACTLY how G/Son says "meow," which is his word for cat. I'm not sure, however, that the artist accurately rendered the "dance of the kitty paws upon the full bladder" which Miss Thing has completely perfected.

/Hat Tip to plum p in coments at Eschaton

Oh! Shiny Things!

Like Lunea Weatherstone, I'm a huge fan of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. The amazing thing is that their scents do smell exactly as described. And I can read the descriptions all night long. Here are some lovely new ones:

THE GHASTLY GARDEN
Overgrown oleander, marshy water hemlock, the sugared nectar of carnivorous blooms, putrefying wet greenery, oozing sap, crushed rosary peas, withered climbing roses, and nightshade berries.

THE TWISTED OAK TREE
Blackened, rotted oak wood blanketed in moss and choked by a cloak of grasping ivy.

ARCHANGEL WINTER
Crystalline, glassy ice whipped by a snowstorm. Piercing ozone, winter darkness. (I really want this one!)

JÓLASVEINAR 2007
The Jólasveinar are the seventy-some offspring of Grýla and Leppalúði, an ogre couple with a taste for chomping naughty children. This impish brood delights in causing discomfort, sowing confusion, and all-out raising hell during the Yule season. Their names are indicative of their malicious intentions -- Strap Loosener, Door Slammer, Window Peeper, Sausage Snatcher, Doorway Sniffer, Icebreaker -- and their creepy natures -- Lamp Shadow, Smoke Gulper, Crevice Imp. The devillish Jólasveinar finally cease their mischief and head for home at Þrettándinn.

Their scent is a mishmash of snow, dirt, Icelandic moss, marsh felwort, and the smushed petals of buttercups and moorland spotted orchids, with the barest hint of the scent of pilfered Christmas pastries.

THE SHIVERING BOY
Cold, cold forever more. A winter storm roaring through empty stone halls, bearing echoes of despair, desolation, and death on its winds. The scent of frozen, dormant vineyards, bitter sleet, and piercing ozone, hurled through labdanum, benzoin, and olibanum.

I'm also a big fan of Elsa Peretti and am lately longing for her heavily-promoted round pendant. Something about her shapes is so modern and so organic at the same time.

And, this Spring, I want to plant about 25 of these bat plants in the woodland garden. Surely next year we'll get enough rain, right? I will, of course, always long for far more books that I have time to read.

In just a few weeks, I'll run to Whole Foods to buy this year's Beaujolais nouveau, which I'll drink all the way up to Yule. Speaking of Whole Foods, they've gotten me hooked on Brown Paper Chocolates. I especially like the dark chocolate, zapped by ancho chiles, almonds and aged tequila and the white chocolate fragrant with Lavender, Pimm's® No.1 and Chervil with a cracked pepper and lavender fleur de sel afterthought. A tiny shaving of one of these is all you need, much better than the cheap stuff.

What are you longing for?

Twisted Fate

It has a certain symmetry to it, and while I have always liked the word rather more than the definition, I may be coming to appreciate the concept.
I'm about to buy a house in the one place I never wanted to live. And I somehow couldn't be happier after being handed life's lemons.
In the scheme of things, it is not that long past that I left the district, the capitol, the beltway boys behind. I spurned the traffic and the emotional gridlock and the fraternity of men who run think they run this country. I intended never to return.
For work and for marriage, I broke the promise. I broke down crying. I broke with personal traditional and I begged my husband in the middle of the night to pledge I wouldn't have to die in this place, where everything seems corrupt, where everyone becomes pasty and gray-eyed with work. I broke.
And in the candlelight, I sat and I faced the shadow in the inhumanity of the tower of white-walled, beige-carpeted luxury apartments. The months lengthened and when my spirit bent and bowed, it was not the goddess that saved me.
I did it. Day by day I learned to live in the body I am in, to inhabit my own self truly at last. I learned to find the women who would stand with me in the face of that fraternity, women who would not settle, who would not give, who would not only hope but act and laugh as they did.
And when my husband asked me what I thought my heart would long to hear, `Do you want to go?' I was almost disappointed. Why should I be chased away by men with a penchant for hostility and their fingers on the button? How could I leave now, when I have so much work to do? Plus, I'll take it as a sign that our realtor runs a Chinese medicine business on the side.
We stayed. We sang. We thanked the wolf and the spider and the symmetry.
The lemonade tastes good here.

Saturday Goddess Blogging

The Banshee

As we came down the old boreen,
Rose and I – Rose and I,
At vesper time on Sunday e’en,
We heard a banshee cry!
Beyond the churchyard dim and dark,
‘Neath whispering elms, and yew-trees stark,
Where our star shone-a corpse-like spark-
Against the wintry sky.

We heard and shuddered sick with dread,
Rose and I- Rose and I,
As the shrill keening rang o’erhead
Where cloud-wrack floated high.
Our two young hearts long, sorely tried,
By poverty and love denied
Still waiting for some favouring tide,
And now! Death come so nigh.

‘Which of us two is called away
You or I-You or I?”
I heard my patient poor love say,
With bitter plaintive sigh.
‘Neither, dear girl,” I bravely said,
‘To Mary Mother bow your head,
And cry for help to Her instead,
Nor heed the Banshee’s cry’.

We raised our hearts in fervent prayer,
Rose and I-Rose and I,
Nor knew our troubles ended there,
Our happiness came nigh.
For ‘twas the grim old farmer, he-
My only kin, rich, miserly,
Who, dying left his wealth to me-
For whom the banshee cried.

by Alice Guerin Christ

St. Gertrude

If fate had taken a very few different turns, its v. likely that I'd have ended up in a convent, and I'll admit that, to this day, virulent anti-Catholic that I am, I still sometimes long for the structured life of prayer and community that only Catholic convents appear to provide. Katherine Kunz doesn't help with her current photo essay concerning the Monastery of St. Gertrude. Here's the kind of thing that always pulls me in:

Stability with the Land

Sr. Teresa reflects that, “stability in community is also stability in the whole ecosystem of a place,…of which we are a very small part.” Stability cultivates a sense of groundedness. Almost everyone I talked with expressed the importance of the forest and walks on the land to their spiritual life. Sr. Placida spent an entire year living in a rustic cabin in the forest behind the monastery. Living one quarter mile from the monastery, Sr. Placida would join the community on Sundays for Mass. This time of solitude was extremely important and served to deepen her “inner life.” Many of the sisters come from farming families surrounding the monastery, and the bodies of sisters who have died are laid to rest in the monastery’s cemetery. The sisters have recently started to construct their own wooden caskets to be more connected with the land and to decrease the ecological impact of burial practices.


Kunz quotes the brilliant Joan Chittister, a Benedictine sister and author, [who] urges sisters to live their Monastic Profession through its three dimensions of stability, obedience, and conversatio morum in their present day commitments. “Do what these values demand, in this culture, on this planet, at this time, in this civilization, in the here and now.”

I imagine that's what Wiccans are supposed to be figuring out how to do, as well: Do what our values demand, in this culture, on this planet, at this time, in this civilization, in the here and now. Sweet Kali on a kettle drum, it's easier to say than it is to do. What does that mean to you, to do what the values of Wicca demand, in this culture, on this planet, at this time, in this civilization, in the here and now?

Hint: it has nothing to do with buying a cool athame. And just because you cast a circle, doesn't necessarily make it magic.

Great News!

Mary Oliver begins blogging.

A Woman In The White House

I think that Eugene Robinson makes some good points in today's WaPo article. I've been pretty upfront that one of the reasons that I support Hillary Clinton is that she's a woman. She's not nearly as liberal as I am, but then, I've never voted for anyone as liberal as I am. For my entire adult life, I've voted for white men who had a shot at winning but who were not nearly as liberal as I am. Given that, I think that there's inherent value in having a woman in the White House, at least once every 231 years or so.

And I don't intend to feel "bad" about calculating based, in part, on sex. Goddess knows, there's a boatload of white men who won't be voting for either Hillary or Obama based upon her sex and his skin color. We should stop taking sex into account? You first, Bubbas, you first.