In My Bones, I Am a Witch

Maybe it won't be helpful at all, but on the off chance that someone who has to talk to the press ever needs to actually explain "what Witchcraft is," here's (a bit of) what it is, to me.

It's a religion that honors that part of women that is also divine, that helped me to finally heal the wound caused by Catholicism's solitary emphasis on male images and versions of divinity and priesthood. Finally, in one blinding moment, I too, was (really) created in the image and likeness of the divine. I, too, was a priest(ess). And, as the poet said, that has made all the difference. Catholicism denied me the word: Priestess. That was the word that I needed all of my life to explain to myself who I am. Witchcraft gave that word to me. It has touched me; I have grown. That one word was the most important key to unlocking for myself who I really am.

Witchcraft is a history that explained to me why female power was always shown as evil and problematic, why all that the nuns could offer me was sacrifice, why the men in the church/medical profession/government were so terrified of my raw power.

Witchcraft centers me within the Wheel of the Year, teaches me how to live in deep connection with the cycles of the Earth, Moon, constellations. It gifts me with a relationship with Hecate, Columbia, Baba Yaga, Quan Yin. It grants my own life a place at the harvest, the winter freeze, the Imbolc shift, the warming of the Spring. It centers me within a history of old women stretching all the way back to a frozen old crone in a cave in Sweden, holding off the wolves from the scent of warm afterbirth near the fire, inside the cave, between her body and her power.

It's a theology and a philosophy that honors all of life, that honors the connection between the light and the dark, between my bloody, messy, life-giving, milk-spurting, orgasming, food-tasting, flower-smelling, cancer-getting, strong, out-of-control, fantastic female body and my quick mind, my ability to produce prose, my ability to think in thea-ology, my urge to win, and my deep longing for the poetic.

It's a way of living that allows me to exist in the natural world, that provides me with lessons in how to exercise my power, that respects the deep intuition that has guided and undergirded (when I ignored the guidance) most of what I have done for most of my life.

Witchcraft has made me whole, taught me who I am, gotten me through some insurmountable odds.

Witchcraft is how I wake up in the morning, connect my dreams to the "real" world, travel to work, and connect to the plants, animals, waterways, and humans that I meet on that journey. Witchcraft is how I move myself into the Druidic dancer of the law, the Priestess who uses power with skill, the woman who can play the glass bead game to help her clients and friends.

Witchcraft is how I cast a web of protection across a street that Obama's motorcade is about to cross, how I light incense for a friend's beloved dead, how I pluck strands of the web to influence an election, to protect an activist, and to bless Elizabeth Warren or revolutionaries across the globe.

Witchcraft is how I garden on THIS bit of Earth, how I drive every morning along the Potomac River, how I knit warm sweaters for G/Son, or cowls for all the men in my family, or caps for DiL and her mom. Witchcraft is how I buy vegetables at the farmers' market, pick and dry herbs in my garden, pull the levers when I vote at my local community arts center, and deal with the guy behind the counter at the place that services my hybrid car or the guy behind the counter at the place where I buy my morning coffee.

Witchcraft is me, living and growing within a circle of women, bumping up against them, adoring them, living my own life within a circle that includes them. Witchcraft is a blue new Moon painted on my forehead, me calling a direction surrounded by my Sisters, the cone of power we raise to protect activists, the magic we do to turn retrograde Mercury against those who would harm us, the delightful ability to help a Sister achieve her own magical goals as we stand, skyclad, inside a circle of power.

Witchcraft is how I teach G/Son who the Goddess is, allow him to use my athame, do Reiki on his bones that grow so fast that he has growing pains. It was how I did the same for Son's growing pains, drew pentagrams on the door to my DiL's labor room, circled protection around their home, and how I cast Tarot to see the best solution to a legal knot.

What Witchcraft Is, is a pretty big topic. It's way too big to waste time explaining that it's not about [insert noxious practice here].

What is it about for you?

Potpourri

"My" homeless vet is having heart troubles. I spent a lot of time today trying to find a VA service that will go out to the TR bridge on-ramp and do outreach to him -- and came up empty. Tomorrow, I'm going to take him aspirin, which I know can help to stave off a heart attack. Are there any other supplements that are good? (Damn. I hate feeling powerless. Hello, Shadow.)

Dill, oh dill! Why will you never grow where I want you to grow, but always grow where I've planted rosemary or thyme? Why? (Hello, again, Shadow!)

Butterbur, if you keep encroaching on the day lilies, you will find out that I can be as Kali, Bringer of Death. I am just saying.

Oregano, please see my comment above re: dill.

Spent today reading, thinking, editing, talking to smart people, and writing. Once, in my wicked youth or childhood. . . . Sometimes, your job IS your daily practice. And that, pace R. Frost, has made all the difference.

Anne Hill has up a great post about talking to children about dreams. A few months ago, G/Son was awakened by a bad dream. He headed across the hall into his 'rents' room. Sleep-addled and hoping for a few more of Lethe's blessings, they pulled up the covers, snuggled him in between them, rubbed his back, and attempted to get some more sleep. He shook my beautiful DiL awake: "Mommy! You did not ask me about what was IN my dream!" Children want to talk to us about their dreams; it's up to us to teach them that what they dream matters. Thank the Goddess, my G/Son has a wonderful mother who woke herself up and asked the important questions. A while later, G/Son spent the night with me and, when he woke up, in that magical, information-rich moment between sleeping and waking, he said, "Nonna! Can you hear my friends? I think I hear my friends from my old school." I told Son and DiL about G/Son's dream, and they've been making opportunities ever since for G/Son to spend more time with some of his old friends. And he loves it!

African Alchemy has an interview w/ Adrienne Rich, who GOT ME THROUGH LAW SCHOOL w/ A SNIPPET OF POETRY Rich says: "Nothing 'obliges' us to behave as honorable human beings except each others’ possible examples of honesty and generosity and courage and lucidity, suggesting a greater social compact."

Thorn Coyle. Leonard Cohen. A good cause. For precisely what are you waiting?

Dear Glitter Person I do not know you, but I think I love you. Why thrice-married Newt Gingrich ("I was against Ryan's plan to deny health care to old people before I was for it") gets to complain that allowing gay people to marry will "destroy traditional marriage" is way beyond me. Also, as someone who is financially responsible, I have to say that if your estimated worth is only about a million dollars, you've got no business owing between 1/4 and 1/2 of that to Tiffany's. And I love Tiffany's, purveyor of all things Elsa Peretti. (As I've posted before, one of my rules for dealing w/ a bonus is to get yourself some little thing you want before investing most of the bonus. I've spent more than a few of my bonuses on Elsa. Unlike Newt, I could afford them w/o going into debt.)

If you don't check in every day with In the Mists of Avalon, you should.

What the Arch Druid Said. This week as every week. If you only have time to read one blog, this is it.

Everything here smells good. As do the gardenias in my garden and the earth after all this rain. Not to mention the (see above) dill, oregano, chocolate mint, sage, and deep black iris.

If you care about social media, you should read my brilliant friend, E. No, really. Every day.

This morning, I passed a new (at least newly-advertised) farmers' market at the OPM (that's Office of Personnel Management for those of you outside the Beltway). Thanks, Michelle Obama! Mr. Bittman has a great article about how Detroit, yes Detroit, is embracing locally-grown food.

If you're interested in checking out some Pagan events, you should be checking regularly with Medusa.

After days and days of heavy rain, I got to go sit outside in my bit of Earth and reconnect. It felt wonderful. What's going on in your bit of Earth?

What's rocking your world these days?

Picture found here.
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My New Name for a Blog

What Medusa Coils Said.

Medusa does a fantastic job of covering topics important to Dianic Witches. If you don't check her out regularly, you should.

The Witch of "This" Place

Suddenly, the nights are noticeably longer and there are, in fact, leaves falling on the lawn. The CSA is delivering acorn squash, and apples, and mushrooms and I'm thinking of soups. I've been able to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows. In a few days, the Wheel of the Year will have turned all the way around to Mabon, the second of the three Harvest Feasts. (For the first time in years, I'll be out of town, away from my amazing circle of women, celebrating on my own, due to a court schedule beyond my control. I'm working on a plan to commune with some new nature so that I don't wind up making a sad little altar in my hotel room and feeling (too!) sorry for myself.)

Having three harvests is a pretty neat thing. It goes back, I think, to a time when monoculture was unheard of. If you grow different fruits and vegetables and raise different animals (as any sane people would do unless they lived in an incredibly hostile environment), they mature at different times. And you have different harvests, which come in an almost rolling cascade: radishes and asparagus giving way to too many tomatoes, the tomatoes giving way to too many zucchini, the zucchini giving way to the first autumn squashes and winter greens. In my herb garden, the tarragon is finished and the basil is warning me that if I don't "get around" this weekend to making it into pesto to be frozen in ice cube trays for the winter, I'll be out of luck. One thing about harvests is, when the food is ready to be picked, it's ready to be picked. We have to stop, pay attention, do what the plant requires of us when the plant requires it. That's part of what it means to be "in relationship" with the land.

It's traditional among many Wiccans to view this time of year as a time when we "harvest" other things, as well. If you set goals for yourself last Samhein, and if you've worked on those goals and been blessed with good health and good luck, you may be close to reaping the rewards of your work, whether spiritual, magical, financial, emotional, physical, or educational. And, if you're not, now's a good time to figure out what you can salvage and what happened to get in your way, all in preparation for the final harvest feast of Samhein.

I find it a good time of year, as well, to take stock. What have you got to carry you into the cold and difficult part of the year? What might you need to focus on now, that may have gotten lost in the heat of summer, the long days laboring in the threshing field?

If you consider yourself to be a member of a Nature Religion, I'd like to suggest that one of the areas you consider is your relationship with Nature. Do you have a relationship with -- not just a vaguely benign feeling for -- your landbase, your local watershed, some particular plants, or animals, or places near to where you live? If so, what can you do to improve that relationship? We Witches say that power follows attention. If not, what can you do to begin to actually live your Nature Religion? We Witches say that power follows attention.

By now, you know that I don't believe that, "Well, but I live in the city," is a good excuse. Most Pagans in America today live in cities. And the landbase of every city in America is crying out for relationship with its humans. You don't have to have a yard. As I've noted before, cities are full of deserted spaces, almost custom made for a Witch's attention and connection. (And devotee of Hers that I am, I can't help but mention that it is in just such deserted, liminal spaces that Hecate often resides.) In Last Child in the Forest: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv writes about the work of Robert Michael Pyle, who described his relationship as a child with "a century-old irrigation channel near his home. The ditch . . . was his 'sanctuary, playground, and sulking walk,' his 'imaginary wilderness, escape hatch, and birthplace as a naturalist.'"

Louv:

"These are the places of initiation, where the borders between ourselves and other creatures break down, where the earth gets under our nails and a sense of play gets under our skin," Pyle writes. These are the "secondhand lands, the hand-me-down-habitats where you have to look hard to find something to love." Richard Mabey, a British writer and naturalist calls such environments, undeveloped and unprotected, the "unofficial countryside." Such habitats are often rich with life and opportunities to learn; in a single decade, Pyle recorded some seventy kinds of butterflies along his ditch.

What "unofficial countryside" is your countryside? The crisp Fall days are perfect for walking around, looking, and listening. Tell me what you find.

Picture found here.

G/Son's Going to Like This

Go Hermonie!

I've always longed for the sequel in which Hermonie discovers Wicca, applies all that she learned at Hogwarts, and does, indeed, become "quite the brightest Witch of her generation."

Picture found here.

What A Witch Does

Earlier this week, I wrote about the relationship between control over our emotions and the ability to, right to, advisability of doing magic. I've seen, and I imagine that you have, as well, people who had some native ability to direct energy but who had almost no ability to control their own emotions, their tongue, their actions. My advice: Shield. Move Quickly Towards the Door. (And of course, we're all on the journey; I've never met the completely evolved human. But it's part of my work, as a Witch, to keep working on myself and to keep searching for those who have danced a bit farther down the path so that I can learn from them. It's one reason why doing magic in a community of women is so important to me.) And epic poetry and national legends are full of stories about those who were corrupted by their native ability to do magic, those who didn't do the interior work needed to create a safe container for that power. So it's not that you can't do any magic until you've spent years doing the alchemical work of turning the impulses of a two-year-old into gold. But your ability to do effective magic and to step into your true power as a priestess, mage, magic-worker, Witch does depend on a growing ability to control yourself and your emotions.

While someone studying the art of magic might gently yet thoroughly become aware of each potential stumbling block that remains in [her] soul, the [W]itch within all of us may not learn how to do this with such discipline or studied attention. [Hopefully, the passage of time and] the roads of experience . . . with luck and a fair wind, allow us as women to know ourselves better, acknowledging and accepting who it is [that] we are. We grow more emotionally intelligent: the ability to identify an emotional energy when it is triggered, with a sense of where and why it was sourced, allows the [W]itch to understand its force, its reason, its craving and direction.

Emma Restall Orr in Kissing the Hag: The Dark Goddess and the Unacceptable Nature of Women.

I owe my friend S., one of the most intent-upon-knowing-herself people I've ever met, for my real introduction to Jungian concepts, including shadow and projection. There are dozens of books, courses, psychotherapists out there that can help each of us to identify -- and learn to dance with -- our own shadows, to show us when that inexplicably strong reaction we have to something that someone else does is really projection (our own shadows' way of saying: "Hello! I'm still here and I'd still prefer to remain hidden, even though I also long to be known. Look! Over there! Someone else doing [insert reflection of shadow]! Go get them!" It's often some of the most valuable information we ever get -- if we learn how to use it.) Learning to, in Restall Orr's words, "identify an emotional energy when it is triggered, with a sense of where and why it was sourced," is one of the most important ways that a Witch acquires control over herself. Shadow work with a good psychotherapist can help, as can dream work, daily practice, journaling, art, meditative dance or other exercise, working in community. How are you working on this? What has worked for you in the past? What shadow within you keeps distracting you from your true work as a Witch? How would sitting down and having dinner, doing ritual with, making love to that shadow enhance your work as a Witch? When do you lose control?

Restall Orr explains that emotion:

doesn't overwhelm [a Witch] or take the ground from beneath her, but instead she contains it without a struggle, pausing to consider the wisdom of any action she might take, pausing until her view is extended in every direction. Nor does holding the emotion for a moment, a day, a year, dissipate that energy; when she is ready, the [W]itch has the ability to direct that emotional energy, with all its force intact, in a perfect vibrant stream of creativity.

It takes practice.

Id.

LOL. Yeah, it takes practice.

May my practice be in the service of the Goddess. May your practice be blessed.

She Doesn't Have Warts On Her Nose? Fuck You.

Asheville Citizen Times: Fail.

Let's count the ways:

1. Not capitalizing "Witch."

2. Cute hahahah about how she doesn't have warts on her nose. Do their stories about rabbis also note that said rabbi doesn't have a big nose? Discuss African American ministers and note that their lipes aren't really "that" thick? Make fun of the pallor of Episcopalian ministers? Amazedly note that Father O'Sullivan didn't show up red-nosed and drunk? No? Well, then, . . . you know the rest.

3. But she has learned to cheerfully endure the suspicious glances, spoken and unspoken disapproval of those who learn of her Wiccan belief system. How accommodating of her. What was her other choice?

4. The comments. Nuff said.

Byron's amazing and does a great job writing about her religion. The Citizen Times, not so much.

Picture found here.

Mystery

Religion is Revelation:
all the Wonders of the Planets striking
all your Only Mind.

Guard the Mysteries:
Constantly reveal Them!

~Lew Welch in Earth Prayers from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon


Various forms of Paganism are sometimes described as "mystery religions" or are taught at "mystery schools." Wikipedia says that:

The mystery cults offered a niche for the preservation of archaic religious ritual, and there is reason to assume that they were very conservative. The Eleusian Mysteries persisted for more than a millennium, more likely close to two millennia, during which period the ritual of public religion changed significantly, from the archaic cult of the Bronze to Early Iron Age to the Hero cult of Hellenistic civilization and again to the imperial cult of the Roman era, while the ritual performances of the mysteries for all we know remained unchanged. . . . "They were singularly persistent. The mysteries at Eleusis near Athens lasted for a thousand years; and there is reason to believe that they changed little during that long period." For this reason, what glimpses we do have of the older Greek mysteries have been taken as reflecting certain archaic aspects of common Indo-European religion, with parallels in Indo-Iranian religion in particular.

The mystery cults of Greco-Roman antiquity include the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Dionysian Mysteries, the Orphic Mysteries and the Mithraic Mysteries.

I consider there to be two great Mysteries that are central to my practice, although they are not Mysteries in the sense of being kept secret from those who are not initiated. The first is described in the Charge of the Goddess:

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.

The second is the Mystery that so many mystics have tried to describe or discuss and that, at its mysterious heart, really cannot be discussed, but only experienced. It is the Mystery that, when we manage to wipe away from our eyes what one speaker described as the "enchantment of forgetfullness," we realize that everything is everything. It's all, to paraphrase J. D. Salinger, just Goddess pouring Goddess into Goddess. Or, as Alexander Pope explained:

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
An Essay on Man [sic], 1734

What mysteries are at the core of your practice?

Picture found here.

It's Still A Justification For Murder

She's a witch!

The Craft Of Craft

In The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice, feminist author Susan G. Lydon writes that:

Knitting grounds me in the realness of the physical world. The feel of the yarn in my fingers, the steady growth of the fabric, the soothing click of the needles, the attention required to stay on course all help to hold me close to terra firma. Though mind and spirit travel in the cosmos, beyond the moon and stars, my body stays rooted in comforting solidity. I've come to appreciate solidity in these last few years, to value strength, an unshakable core.

Some days, I luxuriate in solitude like a cat basking in the sun. I've fallen in love with the whole of creation, the redwood trees, the fingers of fog, raptors tracing circles in the sky. I'm living a life I always imagined but never knew how to find.

I've been thinking a bit lately (often while knitting -- a beloved friend is having a baby, I'm finishing up an Autumn-colored sweater for G/Son, I'm starting to think about holiday knitting (last year, I made hats for the men in my family and scarves for the women; this year, I'm thinking of cowls for the men and hats for the women)) about the relationship between craft (which, in my case is knitting, but in yours might be beading or basket weaving or crafting amazing cocktails or macrame -- does anyone still do macrame?) and my spirituality. And, of course, Wicca is sometimes known as the Craft of the Wise.

I like the way that knitting weaves me into a many-thousand-year-old circle of women, women who, even when they could sit down and "relax," kept their hands busy making things to keep their family warm. Knitting is generally passed literally and physically from woman to woman: mother to daughter, aunt to niece, teacher to student.* I suppose it's theoretically possible to learn to knit by reading a book or watching a video, but I don't know anyone who learned it that way.

I learned to knit, when I was in my early teens, from an old woman in our church named Mrs. Williams. She was an amazing knitter! When Son was born, she made him a cardigan and beret that I passed on to G/Son. I don't know who taught her to knit, but I like to send my gratitude back through that line, from me to Mrs. Williams, to whoever taught her, to whoever taught her . . . whenever I pick up my projects. If women had been taught to value their own skills, maybe knitters would be required to recite their lineage when they learned their craft, honoring the names of productive craftswomen long gone. My grandma crocheted, and I treasure an afghan she made for me. Her craft links me back to her and reminds me of her love every time I snuggle under her handiwork.

In Sacred Circles: A Guide to Creating Your Own Women's Spirituality Group, Robin Deen Carnes and Sally Craig note that women's spirituality:

is rooted in the daily experience of being a woman, whether we are cultivating herbs or cooking with them, diapering a baby, giving a presentation, or dressing for a formal dance.

I think that's right, or, at least, that women's spirituality should be rooted in our daily experiences. Knitting is part of my (almost) daily experience and so it makes sense for it to play a role in my spirituality.

I also practice a simple form of protection spell whenever I knit something. I weave my intention for safety and warmth (for whoever will wear my knitting) directly into the ribbing, the knitting and purling, the twisting cables, the oh-so-time-consuming seed stitches. I cast on repeating the spell I've made and focus on a visual picture of my intention each time I turn a row (or hit the marker on circular needles).

What's your craft? Who taught it to you? What role does it play in your spiritual life?

*I do know that some men knit and that's great. But it is, still, a craft practiced overwhelmingly by women.

My New Name For A Blog

What Thorn Coyle Said:

We have a lot of work to do, people. We still tear each other down too much, rather than lifting each other up. [Which may say more about our own shadows than anything else.] We still fight for petty positions rather than coming into our deep power and recognizing the power we see in each other. This is changing, blessed be, and I hope to continue working with those of you who are active in this change. I saw a lot of this sort of change at Pagan Spirit Gathering last week. I encounter it in other places where I travel and teach. I encounter the desire for this from people in my spiritual direction practice. It is my deep work to foster integration within myself and amongst those who are drawn into my circles. It is our deep work to shine like the stars that we are.
Would I ever want to host a television show? Perhaps. Teaching a million people how to align their souls intrigues me. Fostering spiritual dialog from a larger platform might be a good thing. Am I willing to compromise my core mission in order to get a television show? No. That sort of compromise is a compromise of my Being, of the Work of this God, and of my True Will. So, I did not make a video for Oprah. But I plan to make a video for you.

Look on YouTube in the coming months. All of this has inspired me to finally start videocasts to alternate with my audio podcasts. Just some short meditations, and answering questions you or I are grappling with. Something simple. Something to help us connect and reintegrate.

Meanwhile, let us continue to find ways to step up to beauty together. Let us continue to find ways to walk in strength. Let us open to amazement at this world, this cosmos. Let us amaze one another.

As I noted in comments to Thorn's post, I've long believed that YouTube is an under-utilized resource for Pagans. Many of us can't or won't (/raises INTJ hand) get to Pagan festivals, but we can be inspired in our own daily practices by Pagan teachers. I don't spend all of my day thinking about Pagan topics, spirituality, magick. I spend a big chunk of it thinking about law, legal prose, statutory interpretation. So I'm thirsty to hear from people, like Thorn, who have spent most of their time absorbing, thinking about, digesting Pagan topics, spirituality, magick. YouTube is easy, fast, cheap, and can be watched over and over in order to really grock the main points. I'd love it if, when I searched "Wicca" on YouTube I found more people of Thorn's calibre.

Picture found here.

Most Pagans Live In Urban Areas

How much nature can you relate to in your urban landbase?

Most Witches Live In Urban Areas

Enjoy.

Religion Of The Moon

There are some things that you just know about yourself, know in the bone.

One of the things that I know about myself is that I will always, no matter what else, come what may, chance what might, I will always be a complete sucker for good poetry. Is it my Sun in Pisces, my Ascendent Gemini, the placement of Neptune in my chart? I don't know, but I do know that when I am coughing my death rattle, I will still be in ecstatic love with good poetry.

Here's some:

Remember the moon? Remember the night when you were fifteen and you crept out of your house at night when you were supposed to be asleep, to see the moon? And it was so bright you could barely believe it was real, and the glare from its shining made an enormous cross in the night sky, and the grass was a dangerous carpet of silver blades, and the trees all had sweet dark secrets they told you, carried to you on the wind that touched your bare arms, cold as butter? You saw it then for a minute – the great map of the planet and all the stars and whirlpools in the black honey of space spread out before you, and you stood as though you had been driven feet first and planted in the earth, knowing this would be your religion, forever. Well, somewhere inside you there is a story and a dance for that moon and that night and they are waiting for you to give them breath and body. Because the more you dance the moon, the less you will forget Her in the face of terror, clocks[,] and currency. Birds covered in oil. O Religion! Bind me to the moon. Bind me to unforgetting, and in that binding[,] the unfettered freedom of Knowing how to continue, and going about the Work with holy resolve.

OK, it purports to be prose, and, wracked, I'd admit that it's prose, but it's very poetic prose, isn't it?

If we can just read enough poetry to "go about the Work with holy resolve," we can all die happy, I think. I can, at least. Can you? What does it take for you?

Picture found here.

Can You Face The Goddesses/Gods And Claim That You Are "The Witch Of This Place"? If Not, Why Not?

Joanna is asking some good questions. How many can you answer? How many will you commit to being able to answer by Samhein? Ostara? Beltaine? If not, why not? What else are you doing that is more important than being the Witch of your place?

- What are the trees in my neighborhood? When do they bloom? What do their fruits and seeds look like? What insects use the trees? When do they shed their leaves? How do their seeds get to new sites to grow?

- What is the flowering sequence of local flowers? When does the first bloom of each species appear? When are half of the flowers of a species in bloom? When does the last flower of each species bloom? Are some species found growing together more often than others? What does the dead plant look like in winter?

- How do the patterns of clouds and light change over a period of weeks? What things are happening around me that seem to be affected by changes in the sky? 8

Like many other spiritual practices, spending time in nature each day encourages us to slow down, to pay attention, to breathe deeply, to practice gratefulness, and to connect with Mystery. I have found that a sure-fire cure for depression — even in the depths of a gray and gloomy winter — is to go for a walk to my secret place and soak up the energy there.

Joanna's discussion of finding your own, secret place in nature reminds me of one of my all-time favorite poems by David McCord:

THIS IS MY ROCK

"This is my rock,
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun;

"This is my rock,
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky;

"This is my rock,
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face."

Now that Landscape Guy's put a real rock in my garden, it is where I go to "meet the evening, face to face."

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

Modern Witch

Lots of great comments in response to this post about living as a Witch in this modern world.

I thought that I'd mention a few of the things on my iPhone that aid me in my practice. Obviously, there are songs on my iPod that reflect my religion. From this to this to this to this. And, I keep this YouTube on my iPhone and have whipped it out and played it at Sabbats more than a few times. I also have an iPhone "app" (see how hip I am?) that tells me what phase of the Moon we're in and the astrological sign in which that Moon appears. I have the (oddly accurate) Goddess Tarot on my iPhone and, wonder of wonders, I have a compass on my new iPhone. I can be out in the middle of nowhere on a foggy day and determine the directions, and, thus, the elements, and, thus, cast a more accurate circle. I've used the camera/video app to take pictures of altars pre- and post-ritual, pictures of my sisters, shots of tarot spreads to preserve for later review.

I don't keep my BoS online, but, eventually, I probably will. Still too attached to being able to draw pictures, tape in recipes and pics from magazines, seed packets, and dried herbs to go there yet. I keep a lot of photos online and use them to illustrate rituals, illustrate blogs, keep me inspired.

And, here, via a wonderful friend of mine, are a bunch of gardening "apps."

As I say every morning upon awakening: "It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more."

(Slightly disturbing) picture found here.

A Woman Clad With The Sky

Here's a fascinating article about religious and political uses of nakedness throughout the ages. The interview, with Druid Philip Carr Gomm includes an interesting discussion about the Pagan practice of worshipping skyclad.

Speaking of angels, nakedness has been put to many uses in religion. You’re an expert in English magic, including Druidism and Wicca. How do these interests overlap?

In Wicca, and to a lesser extent in Druidism, worshiping "skyclad" (i.e. clothed only with the sky) is used as a way of getting closer to Nature and to Deity. One might think that conventional religion, in contrast to these modern pagan approaches, would shun nakedness. But in reality there are numerous examples of religious leaders using nakedness to engender mystical states or get closer to God. The first third of my book focusses on this largely unknown history: looking in particular at the way nakedness has been used not only in classical Paganism and its modern revivals, but also in Hinduism, Jainism, and most remarkable of all, Christianity. I finish this part of the book with a quotation from Dolly Parton which nicely unites Pantheistic and Christian themes: “Sometimes I like to run naked in the moonlight and the wind, on a little trail behind our house, when the honeysuckle blooms. It's a feeling of freedom, so close to God and nature.”

The skyclad rituals that I've done have been some of the lovliest and most intense ones that I've experienced. IANAFP (I am not a festival Pagan) so maybe my experience is not the norm. Do you worship skyclad? In a group or alone? Only for certain workings or certain times of year?

Picture found here.

What I Do

One of my chief interests is: How do we live as Witches in an urban, 21st Century, professional world?

How do the tenents of ancient, Earth-based, religion -- e.g., respect for nature and matter, connection with the cycle of the seasons, manifestation of the Goddess(es), worship of the fleshy, female-body part of life, Moon-based community, and, well, and everything in the Charge of the Goddess -- translate to life in the "capital of the free world," modern office buildings, iPhones, calendars kept on computers, Facebook, commuting in rush hour, conference calls, briefing billion dollar cases? How do we live as a Witch at work, keeping up modern homes, gardening in this ecosystem, having the modern families that we have, being in the circles that we're in, communicating mostly "on the grid," being unable to schedule a dinner with two other Witches on less than a month's notice because one of us travels extensively for business, one of us has a big deadline at work, one of us is juggling theatre subscriptions, belly dance class, several blogs, and work?

I could figure out, I like to imagine, how to live each moment as a Witch in a small cottage in a wood, waking with the birds, gardening, praying with the cycles of the Moon, gathering herbs, spinning wool, dancing the Spiral Dance at established community festivals, and doing divination for village girls. I could determine, I think, how to live each moment as Priestess of Mother Earth, on that mist-shrouded Isle of Avalon, surrounded by sister-Witches, outdoor temples, sacred studies. I could have been, I tell myself, a kick-ass Priestess of Athena or the Eleusian Mysteries, had I lived in a time when society, itself, was organized around those religious lynchpins. I even think that I could live well as a Witch in some dystopian future Bene Gesserit convent (a word so like "coven") or some Honored Matres group. But those are not the challenges that Hecate's set for me. Oddly, she wants me to live as a Witch in this distinctly un-Witchy world.

Yet, I am a Witch, and I need to be a Witch. I need to fully engage that spiritual practice in a big city, commuting twice a day in congested traffic, confronting homeless people, needy young lawyers, frustrated paralegals, a super-hero-obsessed G/Son who already knows how to access YouTubes on my iPhone and needs me to help him connect to nature, and a circle of women who are all more busy than is good for the functioning of any circle (I, myself, being chiefly to blame). I need to invest in the stock market as a Witch. I need to decide which mosquito-repellants (if any) to employ as a Witch who (1) needs to be outside and (2) needs to respect Nature. I need to function as a Witch in the death-match that is modern, high-stakes law and as a woman whose spiritual practice demands integrity from her. I need to be a Witch when I take clients out to dinner at the Palm, to be a Witch when I send e-mails, to be a Witch when I write letters to my Senators, to be a Witch when I do dark Moon magic to impact legislation, elections, the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

It's never been easy: living as a Witch. It's never been, even for those foremothers we envy, clear how, in any given time, one could live the life and be a Witch. And, at least today, it's more often a choice between: living as a Witch and staying employed, as opposed to: living as a Witch and staying, well, alive. I get that. And there's not, on first glance, a lot in the ancient texts to give me guidance. And, yet. And, yet.

What I do is to wake up each morning and re-dedicate myself, wake up each morning and pray. What I do is to take the route to work that takes me past a river, past weeds, past a homeless man with whom I have to interact. What I do is to try, consciously, to interact with young lawyers, paralegals, secretaries, and, yes, even co-counsel as a Witch would interact and not, merely, as another lawyer would interact. I try to pay attention to dreams (oh, look, we'd already cut off that branch w/o realizing it!), tarot, intuition. I try to buy food for me and for my family from local sources and to knit intention into the sweaters that I make for G/Son when I sit on conference calls, to invest with intention, to support with the money I make causes close to my heart. What I do is to garden consciously, after spending hours and hours in meditation with that land. And, what else I do is to sit every day at my altar, currently heaped with sage stems and leaves that I cut away from the living sage that returned from this winter's bad storms and will make into smudge sticks, and to ground, cast a circle, say the Ha Prayer, run the Iron Pentacle, go to my place of power, do magic, and, with gratitude, return.

What do you do?

Are there Witchy uses of email, iPhones, Blackberries, microwaves, lawn care services, investment advisors, YouTube, cars, computers, antidepressants, Facebook, and smart meters in today's world?
Picture found (warning) here.

A Self-Described Newpaper

Here's a pretty short article about the broo-ha-ha in Livingston Parish, Louisiana over some Pagans daring to want to get together. The author does manage to capitalize "Wiccan," but then adds "self-described."

So let's go over this one more time. Unless you refer to a self-described Catholic priest, a self-described rabbi, and a self-described Methodist minister, then you don't call Maeven Eller a "[s]elf-described Wiccan priestess."

It's not complicated.

The comments to the article are worth a look, as well.

A Religion Based On An Oscar Wilde Quote.

I spent all day arguing against people who have a real penchant for undercutting their own best interests. So I needed a smile when I came home to sit out on my porch, eat dinner, and read the inter-tubes. And I got it here, in this charming description of a young woman converting from Islam to Wicca and explaining it to her parents.

I wanted three things from my religion:

1. A moral code based on the Oscar Wilde quote "some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go" – strive to be the first kind of person and not the second

2. A profoundly hedonist approach to life

3. Transcendence – be that through ritual or prayer or eating marshmallows in woodland

Reminds me of the saying on my morning coffee mug: You pray; I dance naked in the forest.

And:

The only thing that troubled me about my new tribe was its propensity to want to organise into groups that then try to get mainstream recognition. I quite liked the lack of organisation and/or dogma that paganism represents.

The lack of any structure, hierarchy (as a solitary person I never joined a coven with a priest or priestess), or rules meant that I was free to do as I pleased. I followed the guidance I received in dreams. I accepted and adopted that which felt true to me and rejected that which didn't. I celebrated the solstices and lived by the moon. It was a time of expansion and magic.

Like the author, I too, like the fluid and "disorganized" nature of Paganism, the lack of structure, the constantly shifting emphasis. My Sun is in Pisces -- two fish swimming in opposite directions -- and my Ascendent is Geminii -- the twins, looking over each other's shoulders with opposite points of view. And, my Matron is Hecate, that Goddess of the fluid, liminal, ever-changing place where change is possible. So it's no surprise I love our lack of structure. Whenever there are questions such as: Is there really only one Divinity with many forms or are there really separate Gods and Goddesses?" I love being able to answer: "Yes!" The prayer that I say every morning includes the line: It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more.

And I love the end of the story:

I ordered a raw salad, my mother's jaw tightened.

"Are you a Hindu now?"

"Nope."

"I see. You know you can't have a Muslim burial now?"

"Yep."

"Have you thought what family will say at your death?"

"I was hoping all you elders would die before me." My mother's face visibly relaxed. She even cracked a smile. "Ah, that's true. God willing."

• The author has used a pseudonym at the request of her parents.

I love the idea of using humor to deflect the concerns and that, in the end, the author is still working with her parents on "this issue."

It reminds me, too, of my catholic mother's reaction to my conversion to the Goddess religion. She kept telling me, "Catholicism has Mother Mary and the female saints. That's all that Goddess religion is; you already had all that." And I was always saying, "OK, mom. Whatever gets you through the Mass."


PS. And you know what Dorothy Parker said about Wilde's quotes:

If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
Dorothy Parker in A Pig's-Eye View of Literature, 1937.

So a religion founded on his philosophy makes sense to me. Plus, it's bound to be a snarky religion and, well, after Hecate, I do adore the Goddess Snark.

Picture found here.