Saturday Goddess Blogging

Wow.

So today was the day when my wonderful, amazing, incredible circle of women got together for our annual retreat (aka, the day when we kick our own magical asses). It was wonderful, amazing, incredible. I can't imagine that I ever, in all the reincarnations that I may have had, have, ever, done anything to deserve to be in a circle with such amazing women. So, it's not deserved. It's a gift. It's, in the truest sense of the word, grace. It's a blessing from the Goddess, from the ancestors, from the Universe.

Each year, we choose a Goddess to work with. Today, we bid farewell to Hygeia (although I, along with some others, will continue to work with her individually) and welcomed in Lilith.

It's going to be a v. interesting year.

Kegel Blogging

Mid-month kegel blogging. Or, you could pee whenever you sneeze or laugh.

Trees

Things that make me smile.

My neighborhood has its own dead-tree sculpture: a mermaid that's about two stories high. She holds a bird aloft. Watching her come to life was quite an experience.

Summer Solstice

This week, I believe that I can state unequivocably, is my favorite week on the wheel of the year. This is the last week during which the days grown longer. Next week, we come to the Summer Solstice and, immediately thereafter, the days begin to grow shorter and shorter again, leading inexorably to the freezing dawn when I will stand with the wonderful women of my circle, bang pots, shake tamborines, yell, and generally make as much noise as possible to wake the Yule-time Sun. We drink schnappes or whiskey or some other throat-burning booze from glasses made of ice and then we throw the glasses on the frozen ground to shatter into a million diamond shards before heading off to a greasy-spoon on Capitol Hill or a pancake house in Arlington for a v. hearty breakfast.

But, for now, the sunlight pays the world the great compliment of lingering until almost nine o'clock in the evening, the flowers bloom, the grass grows, and the lightening bugs remind me, if I ever forget, that I live in an enchanted forest, full of mysteriously-blinking lights, leading me into shadowy and deep mysteries. The herb bed swells with herbs, the farmers' market bulges with riches from blueberries to tomatoes to cucumbers, the birds flit and float about, and, and, and, there's lots and lots of daylight!!!!

This weekend, my amazing circle of witchy women will hold our annual retreat (aka, the day when we kick our own magical asses) and, next Wednesday, my v. creative circle sister K. will lead us in our Summer Solstice ritual. By Thursday morning, I guaran-damn-tee that I will be magicked out. And, happy. And, a bit sad. I know that I should be equally happy to see the beginning of Fall and Winter, and, yet, I cannot help but to rage, rage (a bit) against the dying of the light.

Happy Summer. Happy sunlight. Happy long days of summer. Enjoy. It's everthing. It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more.

Air

Water

Nancy Drew: Girl Detective

I don't know about you, but I remember my first Nancy Drew mystery as if it were yesterday. I was seven. My best friend, Bonnie Ayers, and I were playing in her big sister's bedroom and I pulled The Mystery at Lilac Inn off the shelf and started reading. A half an hour later, I came up for air, went home, and made my mom drive me to the library.

This movie may be cute as all get out, but it's not about Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew was old enough to drive a "roadster". She had a tomboy friend named George. She gave instructions to the Drews' housekeeper. She was independent and smart and brave and someone I'd have died to become when I was seven.

I've read a lot of books since that afternoon in Bonnie's big sister's bedroom. I'm not sure that any of them have reached out and grabbed me and transported me as effectively. I'll probably skip this movie.

My New Name For A Blog

What Twisty Said. No, really, What Twisy Said

Retro

The Dark Moon is tomorrow and Mercury goes retrograde on Friday. You might want to conclude your important business/travel plans/financial contracts, oh, say, tomorrow morning.

Sweet Mother of the Gods. Please. Kill. Me. Now

New watch, huh?

Fire

Earth

Many Happy Returns, Mr. Yeats.

Happy birthday, William Butler Yeats
Wiki says that: Recalling his childhood, he described his "one unshakable belief" as "whatever of philosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent... I thought... that if a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world."

Wiki also reminds us that: Yeats was admitted into the "Golden Dawn" in March 1890, taking the magical motto Daemon est Deus inversus translated as Devil is God inverted or A demon is a god reflected. He was an active recruiter for the Golden Dawn's Isis-Urania temple, and brought in his uncle George Pollexfen, Maud Gonne, and Florence Farr. He became involved in the Order's power-struggles both with Farr on one hand, and with Macgregor Mathers on the other, most notably when Mathers sent Aleister Crowley to repossess Golden Dawn paraphernalia in "the Battle of Blythe Road". After the Golden Dawn ceased to be and splintered into various offshoots, he remained with the Stella Matutina until 1921.

I love his poem, "Unworthy Praise":

O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What’s not for their applause,
Being for a woman’s sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.
What, still you would have their praise!
But here’s a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.

And, one has to love a man who loved a woman named Maud, one of my all-time favorite names, and her a revolutionary, besides. With a daughter named Iseulet.

Going Forth By Day

Reading Necropolis Now, which is fast becoming the most talked-about blog in Pagandom, I came across this snippet:

The Book of Going Forth By Day (a.k.a. The Egyptian Book of the Dead). I

I did not know that. I did not know that the Egyptian Book of the Dead was also knows as the Book of Going Forth by Day. But I love that. I love the idea that that's what death is or can be. (Were the Tibetans and the Egyptians the only ones to write Books of the Dead? If so, why is that? I was raised xian and I can't remember any instruction at all on how to conduct myself once dead nor upon what to expect.)

Wicca honors both death and life, both the dark and the light, both the winter and the summer. That's why my compost heap is as important a center of my religious practice as is my altar.

You should check out Necropolis Now's posts on decorative skulls, as well.

Air

Water

My Kind Of Witches

My New Name For A Blog

What Dan Mcenroe Said.

The excerpted poem of WH Auden’s that he quotes:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

reminds me of one of my favorite folk songs by Shwana Carrol called "I Can Be Peace." She's no Auden, but the message of her song -- that in the face of all the horror of war and insanity, the one thing that each of us can do is to work to embody peace, to manifest and create peace in our own lives and for those around us -- makes the same point Auden makes when he prays to "show an affirming flame." I sometimes sing the song to myself when I let the asshole in the Jaguar cut in front of me during rush hour. Really. I do.

~Art found here.

At The Very Least, This Trend Opens Up Lots Of Great New Names For Cars

From today's EEI newsletter:

Plug-in Hybrids, Electric Vehicles Gaining in Popularity

Soaring gasoline prices have spurred enthusiasm for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and a new all-electric import from China is selling well, Chicago Tribune Automotive columnist Jon Hilkevitch reported. The Xebra-PK (pronounced "Zebra"), is offered by U.S. firm ZAP, or Zero Air Pollution. At a cost of about $10,000, an estimated 250 have been sold since last October. Wrote Hilkevitch: "The ZAP line is considered a neighborhood electric vehicle, marketed as a second car to travel short distances pollution-free and gas-free."

The columnist noted that GM has developed a plug-in hybrid concept car, the five-passenger Chevrolet Volt, and the market also features the ZENN (Zero Emission No Noise) and Dynasty, both made in Canada, along with the U.S.-made Tiger Truck, and the Kurrent, produced by American Electric Vehicle.

Al Hallaj, a research associate professor of chemical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was quoted as saying: "Electric cars are no longer just a novelty for hobbyists or tree-huggers. Oil consumption is a national security issue and we should move to electric-based transportation, as well as improving wind, solar and hydrogen fuel cell energy."
Chicago Tribune , June 11.

Imagine. A Goddess Church.

Medusa Coils has a great post up about Goddess temples. I'm not sure that I'd like to attend one regularly, but I like the idea of there being Goddess temples.