Way of the Rabbit

Our Lady of Candelaria

2012-02-01T16:31:00.000-08:00

Gentle Reader, below is a creative praise piece I have written celebrating La Morenita, the Black Madonna of Tenerife. February 2 is one of Her feast days.

All the watching hosts of Heaven know that hard times plague the race of men who, in their suffering, have forgotten to laugh with joy at the gift of Life.

Deep at the bottom of the ocean, in the womb of creation, the Mother's song rises and creates being from nothingness. A conscious choice is made, and the sea births Her holy treasure.

You sway in the waves, cascading toward shore, and when you touch the sand, your fluidity takes form. No longer water, you become wood, and root your love in the land of your arrival. At the sea's edge, you record the song of the Mother upon your feet, to remember your mission, the waves lapping and frothing about you.

EAFM IPNINI FMEAREI

The bottom of the ocean is the place of eternal patience, and so you wait. For men to come. For time to pass. For humanity to welcome love's readiness. You hold your child to you tenderly, for He is hope, and you rock Him in your wisdom, singing a lullaby.

EVPMIRNA ENVPMTI EPNMPIR VRVIVINRN APVI MERI PIVNIAN NTRHN

Darkness descends, and in the warm night you almost feel as if you were back at the bottom of the sea, singing with your sisters. But no. That time is over. You know what you must do. You take a single green candle from the folds of your robe, and ignite it with a whisper. Come.

ETIEPESEPMERI

Here they are just now, two goat herds. Rough men with random thoughts. Humans tend to resist the unfamiliar, and upon seeing you, rather than dropping to their knees in reverence at the soft light of your amazing grace, they react with violence. One raises a stone, the other a knife. They advance with fear and malice.

You move a hand, gently, as if waving. As if writing. As in a caress.

LPVRINENIPEPNEIFANT

The first man's eyes widen in terror. His arm, still clutching the rock, is frozen in an uncomfortable paralysis. The second man is mute with fear. He cannot stop it. He cannot help it. He slices into himself with his knife. Away, like two jackals, they run howling along the beach.

Sometimes it takes a small act of war to wage peace.

And you wait some more, rocking your babe, who coos at you and looks up at the stars. They encircle your head in a crown of light, as each crashing wave now begins to chant your names. Shh. Shh. Shh. They are secret. They are thousand.

The men come back, crying and bleeding, cowering behind another man who risks nothing but bold eyes. They hang back while he inspects you, the diamonds in your eyes twinkling dangerously as you meet him with steady regard. He orders the men to come and lift you, to carry you back to his village. Aghast, trembling, they approach. One reaches to cautiously grasp you about the waist with the only good arm he has left. Miraculously, his paralyzed arm loosens instantly.

NARMPRLMOTARE

The second man reaches to support you at your back, bleeding on your gown from his knife wound. The blood seeps into your wood, staining it rich. The gash on his arm glistens for a moment, then sears closed and scarless as he yelps with surprise.

NBIMEI ANNEIPERFMIVIFVE

Fully healed and whole once more, NOW THEY BOW WITH REVERENCE.

Knowing Mother, you teach from the place of profound Mystery. You know the secrets of human-rearing, and you apply them to the children these men have become. Your Yes will only mean something to the race of men if you give them your No first. Otherwise, they will treat your Yes carelessly, dishonoring themselves with casual entitlement. The sea has taught you well.

They enshrine you, call you Mother. Of course.

They venerate you and give you gifts. Silly. You want only their humility. But it makes them feel good to do it, so you turn away nothing.

They give themselves to you in utter trust, weeping, and you devour their surrender. Hungrily.

Another day will come, a day of guns and cannons and crosses. But that is not today. Today you are The Goddess. Today you are The Dark Mother. Today you sparkle black from your Shrine and call me to come. Today is a good day. I'll bring you fishes, gasping in the nets I wove till my own hands bled with roughness. That will be my gift.

Hail, Our Lady of Candelaria! Hail, La Morenita! Hail!

Choosing our challenges

2012-01-31T08:16:00.000-08:00

Choose your challenges, for challenge has certainly already chosen you.

By "choosing our challenges" I mean two things: 1) deliberately designing mental, physical, emotional and spiritual "ropes courses" for ourselves in order to develop strength in these areas and 2) deciding to accept the unplanned challenges that come our way with humble gratitude.

Choosing our challenges by design helps us build literal or metaphorical muscle, develop a sense of self-esteem in our achievements, and extend ourselves into previously-unknown realms of our own power. You have heard of Charles Darwin's concept of "survival of the fittest" as the mechanism of evolution, yes? Choosing self-generated personal challenges helps to ensure our personal evolution.

Making the decision to choose our unforseen challenges when they show up unannounced can give us a sense of personal agency within the life events that are out of our control, opening the way for conscious engagement instead of creating resistance.

Committing to choosing our challenges can mean the difference between a lifetime of gratefully turning adversity into wisdom, or a lifetime of feeling victimized, put-upon, dragged under, and singled out for suffering.

Let me walk you through three personal examples of choosing my challenges. These examples may or may not topically resonate with your own experience, but please take from it whatever is of benefit to you.

Challenge 1: self-designed
Recently, I took it upon myself to submit to the challenge of creating a regular yoga practice. I have been sort of "yoga lite" for the past decade, loving it when I went to class, but typically falling away from classes and allowing months and even years to go by without practicing. Several months ago, along with my good friend and neighbor Rowan, I decided to start going to yoga once per week. We researched and selected a gentle yoga class at a local studio on a day/time that worked for us both, and we committed to going every week. This meant that we needed to face three difficulties:

- our own interia. Let's be honest, it would just be far easier to stay home in our pj's, drink tea, and hang out.

- finances: taking a regular yoga class means coming up with an extra $60 per month. In this economy, hardly anyone has "extra money" they aren't using, so we had to carve out and prioritize our funds. We stopped going for coffee and saved up that money, allotted some of the pin money we might spend on other things for yoga, and decided to make do with sweatpants and using the studio mats instead of buying costly supplies. That made the decision more sustainable.

- pain: accepting a bit of pain is within the natural scope of yoga practice. This was the hardest for me, because sometimes when I am in a particular stretch or pose, the discomfort invokes a body memory that I have struggled with, and I feel powerless in light of the pain. By reminding myself that this is a self-chosen pain, rather than pain that was forced on me, I am able to continue to choose it, to hold or deepen the posture. And, not surprisingly, within a few weeks of practicing this way, the pain subsided considerably.

Choosing to engage all three of these obstacles, and finding solutions for them, has helped me to build a greater sense of physical, financial, and emotional discipline. Of the three, however, conditioning myself to accept and even sometimes to seek out physical pain as the natural course of my practice has been the most powerful. The decision to accept pain in a self-designed personal challenge is a great preparation for accepting the second type of challenge: the unchosen challenge.

Challenge 2: the unchosen challenge
This past year, as part of a highly-charged, emotional, and aggressive public debate about issues related to gender in paganism, I found myself and my community the target of hate mail, death threats, and slander because of our work with women's blood mysteries. I did not see this situation coming, and it really blindsided me. It was pretty awful to receive name-calling, taunting, and vicious threats as a result of something as beautiful and natural as honoring the womb, the yoni and the mysteries of menarche. It was painful to watch people I had considered friends or at least solid acquaintances sidle away and turn their backs lest they be tainted by association. I felt angry and sad, and I did not understand why my community and I were a focus of this debate when we have always supported gender diversity and everyone's right to define themselves as they wish.

I could have stayed in those feelings. It is so seductive to dwell in the "why me?" moment. I could have lashed out and ranted. I could have rushed to defend myself, hastily tripping all over everything as I attempted to appease my detractors. I could have allowed myself to become bitter, and on a few occasions, I was sorely tempted to just throw in the towel and allow the angry, crotchety, ranting brain to take over.

Instead, I chose to stay with the pain. I stopped, watched, waited, listened. I opened up and allowed myself to be covered in the filth of others' anger, hate, and hurt. I decided to engage the challenge rather than trying to disengage from it or turn away. And once I had decided that, I was able to hear the higher calling of the lesson at hand: that there are many people for whom gender is a painful issue, and that their pain needs to be recognized and addressed, and that this debate is important. From that place, I began to participate in the debate authentically, as my whole self. I did not resort to violent language, even when it was directed at me. I did not succumb to hatred, even though it was directed at me. I stayed polite, I held my boundaries when necessary in order to ensure my safety, and I allowed myself suppleness to respond slowly, carefully, and from my heart.

By choosing the challenge, I was able to begin to see something that is really important: to be a woman is often to choose pain, whether you were born with a yoni or not. For a woman born with a yoni who wants to become a mother, she must willingly decide to choose the pain of birth. For a woman not born with a yoni who wants to embrace life fully as a woman, she must willingly risk the pain of social stigma, do tons of inner searching, and even endure surgery if she wants to go that route. By finding it within myself to stay with my own pain, I was given a window onto the pain of others, and I felt less alone. I felt less defensive. Instead, I felt waves of compassion for everyone in all sectors of the debate, all of whom were in their own sort of pain. When a topic pushes as many buttons as gender does, it means there is a well of pain there. The people who were name-calling and threatening me were just other human beings with feelings. Their pain was so significant that it overflowed their lives and poured into mine. When someone is bleeding all over you, do you just watch or do you try to stop the bleeding? I did my best to stop the bleeding by seeking education, taking mindful action, and engaging in loving communication.

I still think that as long as the patriarchal mindset is the ground of most peoples' worldview, we are all doomed to bleed to death slowly. But by choosing to engage my personal part of that pain, I stopped feeling powerless/alone. I stopped being or having an enemy. I started seeing a bigger view of things that helped me relinquish ego and come from patience.

When we start down the road of "But it's not fair!" there is no coming back to reason. We just flail helplessly, like a turtle on its back. The only answer to "It's not fair" really is "Life isn't fair." Because life really isn't fair. It just isn't. And nobody's whining is going to fix that. In fact, nothing will fix it. The only thing any of us can fix is ourselves, our own views. By choosing to fix my own view and accept the challenge placed before me as the guiding wisdom of the Divine, I embraced it and transformed myself.

When I speak of acceptance, I'm not talking about "giving in to fate" or "let go, let God." Those approaches can heighten a sense of disempowerment and impending doom. I am talking about actively choosing to say, "If I just stop focusing on my own resistance right now and choose this challenge instead, I will be more ready to open to the growth opportunity provided by this moment, and I will allow my Divine Self to be my guide."

The keys to this approach, for me, are agility of mind, discipline of emotional response, and self-trust. If I can open my mind and bend my own thoughts away from "this shouldn't be happening," I give myself permission to find a previously-unconsidered brilliant solution. If I can cease my heart's anguish by applying the cooling balm of acceptance, I give myself the possibility of being less controlled by my emotions and instead I allow them to be companions on my journey. Then, though fear might walk with me, it will not have the power to sabotage my courage. If I trust myself to be able to do these two previous things, I am able to stand in greater confidence with my next steps. Trusting myself means that I ask myself difficult questions, think things through to the best of my ability, then act responsibly from a desire to manifest the best possible outcome for all, including myself.

The agility, emotional discipline, and self-trust I gain from choosing my unexpected challenges comes back into play in the third type of challenge I want to describe here.

Challenge 3: the unexpected choice in the moment
Back at the yoga class, after about 6 weeks the teacher suddenly announced one day that we would be learning headstands. 5 women of various ages, sizes, and experience levels all eyed her warily. With perfect form, she planted her forearms on the floor and lifted her legs up, up and away with utter grace. I was very impressed and very dubious, but I decided, in that moment, to give it a try. Either I would make it, or I would not. But without trying, how would I know?

I started by choosing the challenge. I once saw a special about David Blaine where someone asked him how he could bring himself to do his fabulous stunts. His response, "I don't give myself any other option." I planted my forearms and began to pedal my legs up the wall at first. It took a few minutes because I have a big booty and had a hard time finding my balance! Rather than giving in to my resistance and blaming my lack of physical agility, I engaged my mental agility. "I am safe. The teacher is right here. Nothing bad will happen. I can afford to try a bit harder," I reasoned with myself. Fear arose, "What if I hurt myself, fall, look like an idiot?" I engaged emotional discipline within, "Fear is irrelevant here. I am not in danger of anything more than a bruised ego or sore shoulders at this point. If it gets too much, I will sensibly stop. My fear will not dominate this situation." I wondered if my arms were strong enough, if I was too fat to do it, if I would have the balance it took. I engaged my self-trust and kicked my legs up, up, up and away! It worked! I STOOD ON MY HEAD! Are you kidding?! I couldn't even do this as a child! 37 years of inner story about my physical abilities melted away in one shining moment of having taken on the challenge. It was great. Rowan and I crowed about how proud we were of ourselves all weekend long :)

This third type of challenge is really a hybrid of the first two: I did not see headstands in my immediate future when I woke up that morning. The idea never dawned on me when I was getting dressed, when we were driving to class, not right up until the teacher announced it. In an instant, by choosing the challenge, I got over the need for a prolonged period of wavering, vacillation, and self-doubt. I used the tools I have been cultivating within in order to choose to accept the unforseen challenge at hand with a measure of curiosity, humbleness, and excitement rather than resistance, upset, or paralyzing fear. And then I did it.

Now, I'm no expert headstander. I am not great at it. I will definitely need a lot more practice. But I now know, for sure, that I CAN do it, and that is enough to keep me going back for more and deeper self-designed challenges. Achievements like these also help me build the confidence, inner poise, and determination to be more graceful in the face of unforseen challenges.

By training with our self-designed challenges, and by choosing even the challenges that feel foisted upon us, we condition ourselves to be prepared for anything that might come our way with agile mind, a ready emotional set-point of empowerment, and a sense of self-reliance and trust. With these three things, we can rise to any occasion and be the Great Ones we were born to be. With these three things, there is very little we cannot do. Nothing is actually beyond our capacity. We can change ourselves, our lives, and our world if we want to. We just have to choose to do so.

Sometimes it's tricky to find the sustainable mark of success in facing our challenges- we may not be able to resolve a health issue completely. We may not be able to find a job as quickly as we want to. But we can nevertheless create a trajectory of courage and determination in how we handle those things, and still count ourselves among the Great Ones. When we cannot change our circumstances, we can change our own minds, which requires a powerful application of personal Will.

How will you be Great today? How about just by being yourself, but stretching a little further into what that might mean?

Baba Yaga: Part 2

2012-01-26T11:43:00.000-08:00

Me, age 3. I am playing in my backyard, against the white fence where we later planted the raspberry bushes. It's Spring. There are thousands of little tiny frogs hopping around everywhere. I am a little bit afraid of them, but I also love them in the way that some children love frogs and all creepy, crawly, hoppy things. My curiosity gets the best of me and I step on one. It looks so springy, and maybe if I can step onto it, it will hop around with me on its back!

My mother finds me outside, weeping, trying to stuff the tiny frog's guts back down its throat. I now know Death. I know that it is swift and wet and that it cannot be undone. This is one of my earliest memories.

Thank you, little frog, for giving me this lesson. For as long as I draw breath, I will be grateful to you.

Thirty-five years later, I am a priestess of Baba Yaga. Death has been a longtime friend on my life journey. We came to an understanding early on. I know Her to be life's blood and viscera, the raw matter of form and the black expanse of formlessness. I channel Her in rituals, speaking of what it feels like to be misintrpreted, vilified, silenced. I know Her when I make medicines, and She guides my hand...Just a little more of this, not too much. Too much will make you sick. Too much will make you die. Just enough. There. I know Her in the dark corners of my mind, where mocking cackles taunt me and fortify me and remind me of my ego attachments.

I am living what I think to be a whole life, but I have a nagging sense that something is wrong. There is a burl on the root of my tree, and I can feel it, but I can't quite place it. A nameless guilt. A shame. It's small and it croaks.

I am invited to a ritual at friend's family coven. There, at the dark of the moon, we take a journey to meet Our Dark Mother. The purpose of the rite is to confront a piece of ourselves we need to heal or let go.

I enter the glade. I usually don't like visualization exercises very much. I'm less of a visual person, more of a singing/feeling person. I would do better if we were chanting. Then, poof...the vision arises...

I am surprised by the immediacy of Her presence. There She is, predictably squatting in a swampy, forested area. Around Her leap hundreds of tiny frogs. She is laughing, cackling. The air smells rank. She picks up a little frog, bites its head off, spits it out. Drops the body, picks up another one. I am horrified. She looks at me, "You! This is YOUR FROG. I ate it for you! It died for you! I will eat ALL OF YOUR FROGS."

I snap back from the trance. I am filled with awe, clarity and purpose. I now know, for sure, in a way I didn't know before: everything and everyone I will ever love or hate will die, and none of these lessons will matter unless I choose to hold them wisely. I can choose to shame myself with my lessons, whereby I create an aversion to learning. Or I can uplift myself with gratitude for my lessons, whereby learning is a joy.

All of these years, I have shamefully carried that little frog. I have wept over it, felt guilty for it, wondered if perhaps it was a sign that there was something wrong with me. I placed so much undue pressure on this little frog to bear the burden of my guilt and shame, rather than correctly and gratefully holding it with praise for the lesson it taught me.

Let me tell you about this pattern I have observed in myself, and in others: when we find something distasteful, we look away. We then suffer with shame at our own lack of courage and compassion in our aversion, and we project that shame upon what we turned from. By looking at the pain, looking at the shame, walking right up to it and confronting it directly and with gratitude for all of its strength in bearing the weight of our lesson, we transform pain into wisdom and learn more.

Baba Yaga represents the collected shame we carry over natural things: our all-too-human desire for conflict, the times we inadvertently or maliciously cause harm, the parts of ourselves we hate to acknowledge, the parts of ourselves we reject as imperfect, the parts of ourselves we don't want to admit to.

Back at the ritual, we move on to our activity. Given beeswax, a wick, and some paper, and told to fashion a candle and write a note about my trance, I move swiftly, shaping the black wax into a little frog, anchoring the wick down through the center. I cut and bunch up some red thread to represent the guts coming out of its mouth. I write a letter of passionate gratitude, also asking for forgiveness and offering to take upon myself in the next life the damage I did in this one. I take that candle home and burn it, grateful for the ritual, grateful for the learning, grateful for the frog. I light the candle. It burns the guts out of the wax frog. I integrate the knowing, and realization arises.

For many, many years, I have had this little pewter frog figurine. I never made the association between the frog of my young learning and this little figurine- I just liked the figure. It is one of the things that means "I'm home" when I have moved. It was originally mounted upon a piece of agate with glue. I got it at a souvenir shop when I was a child, in New Hampshire. Is it any coincidence that the day or so after this transformative ritual, it accidentally falls off the shelf, breaking the frog loose from the agate- basically freeing him from where he had been stuck?

I go to Baba Yaga's altar, place him tenderly there. This little Ancestor who taught me so much is given a place of honor upon my altar. Exalted now, where once he was banished to the recesses of my consciousness by shame and aversion.

Baba Yaga is not one for high-fallutin' ways. She teaches me the courage to face myself in all mirrors, to embrace that which causes me pain or shame, to hold it up as a mighty teacher, to launch myself into the unknown of vulnerability. She tells me that the one who goes vulnerably, humbly, and authentically to Death is met with tender care and a soft, warm lap, while those who go to Death fighting are dragged roughly. She teaches me to be whole in Life and filled with Life, for Death is always certain. She teaches me not to flinch away from my fears, from shame, but instead to embrace and transform them. She teaches me all of this, and much more.

Na zdorovie, Baba Yaga!

Hidden Track on this blog:
Recently, I made a D & D character for a game with some friends. I made a Druid Halfling with very low charisma who rides a battle boar and is wildly inappropriate in conversation. I called her "The Ropemaker's Daughter." Today, googling Baba Yaga, I find this woodcut of Her riding a boar as a political satire from the 1700's. I love it when stuff like this happens. Magical nerdery.

Baba Yaga: Part 1

2012-01-26T09:36:00.000-08:00

Crone Mother
Bone Mother
Healer, seer, witch!
Secret keeper,
Screech owl,
Mighty wolf bitch!
Baba Yaga, Bright Dawn!
Baba Yaga, Red Sun!
Baba Yaga, Dark Night!
Baba Yaga, Black Sky Woman,
Keep me safe within your sight.
Keep me on the path of right.

"Now is not the time for fear. Now is the time for courage. Have courage in the face of death. You are never actually far from it."

Thus speaks the Bone Mother of Slavic lore, Baba Yaga. I have been a dedicated public priestess of the Yaga and the energy current She represents since 2007, but She has been a part of my life since I first heard of Her as a child in stories.

In order to really "go deep" with Baba Yaga, it helps to understand the Slavic mindset and the dark humor that are part of our cultural charm :)

Here is a little game I learned as a Polish child. You take a child's hand and draw a circle in the center of the palm during the first part of the recitation, then innumerate the fingers from thumb to pinky, as if counting upon them. On the pinky you lift the whole hand up in a sweeping motion and let go of the pinky with a flourish to finish the game. Meanwhile, you are reciting a little nursery rhyme. The whole thing usually ended with me in fits of giggles. The translation of the game is such:

She puts some porridge in her hand and calls the children to the table. She gives some to this one, and this one and this one and this one, but she doesn't have enough for this one, so he dies and his soul flies up to heaven and eats bread!

The world over, we see folkloric evidence of customs designed to help families cope with their fears of infant and child mortality. We see examples in the naming ceremonies in several cultures where children are called things like "little dog" or "little shit" until they have proven they will survive infancy. We see examples in the the customs designed to keep the faeries from attacking children in their beds, and others of this ilk. From the American mindset, one might read the "game" above and be horrified. Yet I can see this game as a way to destabilize fear of mortality in a culture where poverty, hunger, and untimely death have been a way of life for the underclass and working class for centuries.

The Slavic mindset prizes honor and courage above all, (with Roman or Byzantine Catholic devotion taking an additional priority for many.) To stay honorable and courageous and faithful in times of difficulty demonstrates a mental and emotional discipline that is a part of the nobility of the Slavic people. We see this quiet determination and personal authority in the examples of the Winged Hussars, Marie Curie, and Lech Walesa.

(Note: Please do yourself a favor and click on the Winged Hussars link above. You will find gem-quality sentences like, "These daring, brave, unabashedly-feathered badasses crushed throats up and down Europe for two centuries, annihilating battle-tested armies three times their size with nothing more than a huge-ass lance, an awesome set of ultra-cool wings, and a gym bag full of iron-plated armor ballsacks.")

How does one gain a calm, unflinching strength and sense of personal North in life? By facing fear. It is truly the only way. Even if we are bolstered by all kinds of praise, support, and personal sense of our own power, we cannot avoid experiencing fear. Fear is much more than a conditioned response. It is a hormonal one, a brain-chemical one, unbidden. Everyone experiences it. Only by confronting it can we gain purchase in our personal development of courage. By standing toe-to-toe with our fears, and staying present through and beyond the hormonal response, we learn how strong we actually are.

Thus arrives Baba Yaga.

"Grandmother Bony Legs," is the archetypal witch who lives in the dusky glen and preys upon passersby. She frequently attracts sniveling, fraidy-cat, wanna-be heroes, sending them on wild and woolly journeys to prove their mettle, or challenging them to sample Her sensual pleasures. They often shy away from her gaping maw, milky eyes, and aging, scrawny body that smells of blood and pine. The great irony is that, as the Mother Goddess of Everything, Baba Yaga is AMAZING in the sack, and lusty, and joyful. But because these silly boys don't know any better, they say no. Then they usually die. (STOP. Metaphor check. Baba Yaga says to me: How many times in your life have you denied yourself joy by saying 'no' to something wonderful because of fear? How many times have you regretted not going boldly toward your bliss? Hmph. Well, aren't you a silly little knight! The minute you deny joy, you die within. Why, then, live only on the outside when the inside is dead? That carcass is just taking up space now. Here, [licks her iron chops] let me help you with that.)

Vladimir Propp, Russian folklorist, "links Baba Yaga with the priestly mentors of tribal societies who guided men into adulthood through a process of symbolic death and resurrection." (Russian Myths, Elizabeth Warner) I agree, but would argue that She also presides over the coming-of-age initiations associated with women's Blood Rites such as menstruation and birth. Menstruation involves symbolic confrontation with mortality in light of the visceral presence of life blood. Birth brings the risk of actual death.

These trials of initiation (preparation for war, preparation for birth) represent two shades of a single specific hue. Though divergent in purpose, they are nonetheless commonly known to be experiences that bring one face to face with fear. Similarly, it is held that if one has practiced and prepared to be courageous in the face of fear, one is more likely to survive these trials. Thus, we are rendered stronger each time we suppress a shiver at one of the Yaga's more gruesome tales. It shows mettle to be able to look at Death, humbly but unflinchingly, and with personal authority. That level calm in the face of fear earns you Death's respect. Once you have met this particular opponent, and you fully accept that the date of your duel has already been set, and that Death will win, the two of you can walk in companionable silence and mutual respect. Knowing allies, if you will. Occasionally, Death forgets that today is not the day, and gets hungry, comes at you with iron jaws gnashing. A look, a word, a quick movement, and you reassert yourself among the living. It could be as simple as choosing a different train. Other times, you are brash and devil-may-care, so maybe Death flicks a cigarette butt at you and burns you a little, just so you remember who will prevail. This is what it's like to walk with Baba Yaga. By deepening into a friendship with Her energy over time, you can prepare for a fearless Death. In fact, you can welcome Death, by then, as a friend rather than an adversary.

Have you ever met someone who you were originally repulsed by - maybe for no real reason, but then they grew on you over time? Baba Yaga is kind of like that. Have you ever seen a really gruesome sight? You know you shouldn't look. It will give you nightmares. But you can't help it. You look anyway. Baba Yaga is kind of like that. You know that if you have one more shot of vodka, you will have a terrible day tomorrow. But it's so cold and delicious. You take the shot anyway. Baba Yaga is kind of like that.

In addition to Her fondness for would-be heroes, the Yaga has a special taste for children, stuffing them into her great oven and picking the tender flesh from their broiled bones. (STOP. Metaphor check. Baba Yaga says to me: That whole, 'I eat children,' thing? Actually, I eat ALL OF YOU, young, old, etc. The stories about me eating children actually point to the fact that I am the Great Dark Earth that will one day consume your very bones. From the moment a child is born, his or her days are numbered till we meet in consumptive decay. It's not like I want to eat children more than anyone else, but the metaphor is designed to help people cope with infant mortality and their own mortality. Also, children are frequently featured in my stories because I do the difficult work of disillusioning your inner child. You can't forget me once you've seen me. The moment the child discovers that one day it, too, will die, it begins to die. That is the Wheel of the Mind.)

Dust to dust.

Kenneth Johnson writes, in Slavic Sorcery:

Bone Mother destroys us, then resurrects us, even as the earth from which we have our being is born and resurrected each year. She collects our whitened bones, pours Water of Life and Death upon them, and sings her magic songs. Thus, having died, we return.

(looking up at the sky, whistling, hands behind my back)

But Baba Yaga is not all just sturm unt drang. She also knows the secrets of the forest, which mushrooms to eat, which not to, which mushrooms will help you pray. She knows the plants that heal and the ones that kill. She makes healing waters. She grants wishes. It is said that each wish She grants takes a year off Her life. She then makes a potion from Blue Roses. Lore has it this Blue Roses potion restores life, and serves as an elixir of immortality. In addition to being an Initiator, she is also an Alchemist.

Further symbolism underlying Her alchemical nature includes the mortar and pestle. Baba Yaga rides across the sky in a mortar, steering with the pestle. In Slavic peasant tradition, according to Warner, wedding songs include references to the mortar and pestle insinuating heterosexual intercourse, the source of life. As She rides through the air, she sweeps away Her tracks with a broom behind Her. Thus we see how Death is mounted upon Pleasure, upon that which yields Life, and that any given life is but a single ride through the black night of time. With this perspective, we are invited to stand in awe of the majesty, the vastness of the procession of the Universe and the miracle of our being in it. That perspective renders our individual fears irrelevant. In the grand scope of All Time, how will you spend your small bit? Quaking in a corner or screaming with laughter through the sky? Either way, there will be darkness all around you. That much is a given. From this knowing, Baba Yaga has taught me to chase the comets and fling myself at the New Moon, to love the ride completely, regardless of what is happening to or around me. Finding ways to laugh and rejoice in life when death-like emotions and circumstances have threatened to overwhelm me is the most powerful source of my own courage.

Tantra teaches me this also, but in different ways. That is for other posts.

Baba Yaga also incorporates shamanistic symbols. Her chicken-legged hut is the subject of great curiosity and analysis. I have seen it explained as a typical Siberian reindeer-herder outpost, where a platform is built upon thick tree trunks where tree tops have been removed, with the trunks resembling legs. I have seen it referenced as an allegory for the "zoomorphic tribal initiation huts in which neophytes were symbolically swallowed by the 'monster' in order to be 'regurgitated' later as adults." (Propp) Propp also writes about the idea of chickens being sacrificed at the foundations of houses in Slavic custom as a possible source for the myth. The entrance into the Cave, the night in the haunted house, the portal to the Underworld: Baba Yaga's house is definitely a point of no return. Beyond here there be dragons.

Life is always beckoning you to step through the doorway into the unknown. Having built up your capacity for courage, go ahead and enter Baba Yaga's hut. There can be no wavering in indecision. Either you want to live fully or you want to die. You may not actually know which, sometimes. That is pretty normal. You may want both. Enter the hut of Baba Yaga and find out.

There is so much more to tell! I haven't even covered a fraction of Her myths, symbols, or really any of my personal stories of Her. But we have a long time. I'll come back to all of that. Here is one story, however, that was begging to be told today.

A memory that makes me smile

2012-01-25T04:34:00.001-08:00

Some of you may have seen me wearing a copper dagger pendant. It's one of my favorite magical necklaces, dedicated to Oshun. I used to wear it for protection, but now I wear it to signify discernment and commitment to my vows as a priestess. (More on these vows at another time.)

Anyway, one day I was wearing this necklace, working at The Sacred Well with Iris. We had ordered pizza and soda for dinner, and I was setting the table. She poured me a glass of Coke. As I reached across the table to set a plate down, my pendant fell forward and dunked into my glass. Iris and I paused, looked at it, looked at each other. She said, "Rabbit, did you just accidentally perform the Great Rite in your Coke?" and we fell out laughing. :)

Bodhicitta

2012-01-19T08:18:00.000-08:00

Consider this statement, gentle reader:

"Magic without Bodhicitta is death. Magic devoted to the benefit of all beings makes the world whole."

Thus opens one of my favorite magical-instruction books of all time: Tantric Thelema by Sam Webster, available at my store, and via Concrescent Press. Sam has produced a magnificent work, though you won't find a huge, sprawling 800-page tome filled with tables, correspondences, rhythmic incantations, or self-importance. Instead, you will find this book to address, in pithy and inspiring manner, the very heart of magical practice: generating beneficial energy of a divine nature for the sake of all beings, and a means to enfold yourself within the idea of "all beings."

Sam and I have enjoyed many conversations on this topic of motivation in magic. I appreciate his points of view, and his work has helped me to develop a more thorough means for assessing my magical actions that goes far beyond "an it harm none do what ye will." (Though I still think that is a good place to START in the creation of a personal system of magical ethics.)

Bodhicitta is a term from Buddhism that I have heard translated as, "compassion," "lovingkindness," and "boundless friendliness." It is the idea of conditioning the awareness toward benevolence for all beings, with an eye toward holding the greater good above one's own individual good.

When my magic is designed for me and my own ends alone, it is like running headlong into a brick wall. Why? Because it begins and ends with me. It is a closed energetic circuit. There is no mingling of my energies with a wider goal, and frankly, I'm a pretty small being to drum up all of that hooha for. I may be divine and sacred, and I do believe that to be true, but I'm not trying to puff myself up, either, and I think it fair to opine that many people actually feel a pretty strong sense of humility about themselves. This humility, when not expressed healthily and regularly in one's magical practice, gives birth to the self-doubting voice that rises when you are standing at your altar and asks, "Really? Are you all that important to ask for all that stuff?" This voice can completely slaughter the efficacy of our magic if we allow it. One antidote sometimes used is to prop oneself up with affirmations and practices designed to get one to feel good enough about oneself to believe one is worthy of the ensuing magic (cleansings, baths, self-blessings and such belong to this class of practices, IMHO.) These are good methods to help one recover from the near-constant public messages of worthlessness we receive because we are women, pagan, poor, "insert-your-own-reason-why-you-have-it-hard-right-here." These messages are very real, and very damaging. Practices to undo that damage are very helpful, and I see many people employing them successfully. I view them as part of a wider whole.

In addition to self-elevating practices, there is another crucial piece of the antidote to this little doubting voice that denies your desires. By dedicating your magic for the sake of all beings, and including yourself within that populace, all of a sudden your simple request seems piddling by comparison to all the needs of all those you know and love, as well as those you dislike, as well as those you don't know. Your tiny claim is entirely swallowed up in the vastness of possible healing that could come of this working, and you are immediately swathed in gratitude for all you DO have. This is key to manifestation: a grateful state of mind. Your choice to devote your energies to the greatest good joins you with the most powerful force possible: Bodhicitta. The turn from self to other. The turn from tightness in the chest to relief in the limbs. The flooding of affection for humanity, this life, this moment, all of it. The pure feeling that generates life-changing magic.

If you look at nature and the cosmos, where does energy tend to flow most powerfully? Through the widest possible channels. Yes, water trickling down a slender cleft in rock can wear away a chasm over time, but water gushes and frolics in the wider rivers so much more freely. When I do magic for myself alone, I am attempting to wear down stone, to bend nature. (Insert here your own inner awakening to the meaning of wicce, "to bend." Consider its implications in light of this analogy. I invite you to complicate your understanding of this idea further :) When I do magic for the greatest possible good, I relax into trusting that although I believe I know best, if I do not I will be corrected. Then I jump in, join my energies to that of the laughing, rushing river, and I ride the current happily toward my goal along with everyone else I have included in the working. This results in near-instant personal growth of a quality way better than I could possibly have imagined, a whole lot of positive results in the lives of those I can see who were also affected by the wave of goodness, and a sense that my personal goals are wholesome, rather than worrying if they are at odds with the Universe.

Consider here: the moment you tell someone, "I'd like to pray for you," your prayer is already working because they have felt the power of your love even in your asking for permission. Already, you are an intensely powerful force for good, even if they politely decline.

There are no times when going against the greatest good is the best solution. If one awakens Bodhicitta in one's magic, a peace settles into the heart and stays there. One naturally begins to ask for everything to be dedicated to the greater good, and that all beings have their needs met, including those who have different goals/beliefs/principles than one's own. This is where that pesky little self-doubting voice that used to block us starts to actually help us. We engage in healthy self-reflection in light of the greatest possible good. It starts us asking important ethical questions. "If I get that million dollars, and everyone else who wants that does, too, what will it do to our economy?" "If I manifest that rainbow, will anyone be harmed by the rain it takes to create it?" "Could it be that my beloved has not yet shown up because it is to his/her highest good to be learning whatever lessons they are learning right now?" These questions offer one an opportunity to pause and consider the farther-reaching implications of the magic, to reframe the request with greater skill, to deepen into the actual meaning of the request.

Once we have formed our desire, awakened Bodhicitta, and reflected on the deeper good, there is no cleansing bath in the world that can make us feel cleaner or more wholesome in our magic, which typically then proceeds apace at quite a clip and with stellar results.

I leave you with this quote from Quietly Comes the Buddha by Elizabeth Clare Prophet:

"Only in selflessness can a soul be trusted with omnipotence."

If there is any benefit in these words, may it be dedicated to greatest possible good of all beings. If there is any error, let it fall upon me alone.

Stop SOPA!

2012-01-17T22:31:00.001-08:00

http://blacklist.eff.org/

Amazon Ancestresses

2012-01-13T11:58:00.001-08:00

Annually, the members of the Amazon Priestess Tribe each select an historical woman leader, artist, activist, or personal family member to study in depth as her Ancestress of that year. Over the years, I have enjoyed the stories and wisdom of welcoming notable women such as Ai-Churek, Marie Laveau, Frida Kahlo, and others to my altar.

This year, I have been tapped by a few different members of the Women's Reform Movement of the turn-of-the-20th-century United States. So I sent the following to the Amazons for consideration, and thought I might share it with you, here, too.

You know the phrase, "History repeats itself?" Well, I'm sure many of us who have been watching the recent events in the US can see threads of commonality between the times we live in and other times in history. I see a great parallel between the problems facing us now and the problems that engaged women in the reform movement of the turn of the 20th century. These women reformers initially began meeting in small, social, self-improvement-based circles and then began to spread their messages of ecology, labor reform, social justice, and equal rights into the public sphere. They accomplished some amazing things during the most active forty years of the movement (from 1880's through about 1920), including the enfranchisement of women in the US. Later, FDR placed many seasoned leaders from this movement in key government positions under his administration. They significantly contributed to the programs, policies, and innovations of the New Deal, which gave us public schools, public water sanitation, standards of food processing, labor regulations, libraries, and more. Now that many of these areas of society have been eroded by corporate greed (as they were back then, also) I am planning to connect with an Ancestress from this time period to inspire me to be a powerful and positive part of shaping our changing society. I feel, as a High Priestess, that this is a part of our role: the creation of culture.

The National Women's History Museum has prepared an enjoyable, easy-to-follow, extremely readable timeline of significant women, organizations, and events of the Reform movement era. As we begin to consider Ancestresses for 2012, I thought some of you might find these women as inspiring and their work as relevant to our current times as I do. I highly recommend reading this brief page, and then clicking "Next" through the presentation. It is some of the best online women's history I have seen to date.

Bone Divination for 2012

2012-01-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

Sarangerel (1963-2006, in honor of her life: Hurai!) was a practitioner of Mongolian-Buryat shamanism who formed an impressive bridge between western students, such as Bay Area teacher and healer Daniel Foor, and the surviving Mongolian-Buryat shamans. These shamans had survived the Communist purge of religious practitioners, and were re-membering and reviving as many of the old ways as they could. They trained Sarangerel, and she became a spokesperson for their new organization, a role she held tirelessly until her sudden and surprising death.

In her book Riding Windhorses Sarangerel offers a beginning look at the practice of Fortune Telling with Shagai, or sheep knuckles. (p. 139) The shagai are the exact same four knuckle bones found in another popular game/divination system known as astragali, played all over the ancient world. Fascinating article about this, click here, really! And another one!

When rolled, the shagai fall into one of four different possible positions:
horse (most lucky): on the narrow side, not the more pronounced "S" shape
sheep: (also lucky): wide side, hump-like formation up
camel: (unlucky): on narrow side, pronounced "S" shape
goat: (unlucky): on the wide side, hump-like formation down

On Jan 1, I sat down with my shagai and performed a divination for various questions.

What is the general message for the world this year?
1 horse, 2 sheep, 1 goat: Hereg yawdal saadgui
"Business or other affairs will have no difficulty." We have one of the most auspicious positions, the horse, which represents strong life force; 2 sheep, which represent peace and sustenance; and 1 goat, which can represent obstacles and confusion. Many different cultures are facing turmoil and upheaval right now, as common human obstacles rear their ugly heads: greed, fear, violence. But this divination indicated that general desire for greater peace, positive change, and sustainability was likely in 2012. A shared commitment to patience and forward thinking will avert capricious or unintentional disaster. Danger can be averted with friendliness. Surprise those who criticize you with grateful thanks. Defer the discomfort and see if you can't just get past the sting of ego without having to wreak it upon anyone. Be peace and watch peace grow around you.

What is the message for Earth Herself this year?
1 horse, 1 camel, 2 goats: Esen mend udaam jargana
"Health will improve slowly." We have one lone horse carrying forth the vision of sustainability and ecological concern. It is a powerful horse, but it is slowed in its progress by stubborn obstacles in the form of the goats. The Earth is carrying a great burden for the sake of our selfish comfort, as might be inferred by the camel. We need to remember that if we overburden the camel and try to traverse the desert, we will all die of thirst. In order to survive the desert (which I read as our need to heal and conserve the waters of the planet), we must guard the waters carefully. I see water conservation as key movement of 2012.

What is the message for the US this year?
4 goats: Busadiin yag ujigtai
"Slowest omen." Have you ever watched a goat comb through a lawn or hillside? They munch their way along, meandering in a manner that only appears methodical to the keenest observer. They will decide, without warning, that you are an intruder and head-butt you. Sometimes they head-butt you even when they are happy. It's just how they are. Unlike the steady and speedy horse, the reliable camel, the docile sheep, the goat is kind of a wild card. It can indicate obstacles, as we saw previously in this reading, and also unpredictable results. We can all see the ways in which our country, government, public welfare systems, and economy are teetering, weak, and in some cases are on the verge of crashing irrevocably. Well, this reading indicates that this may happen, and may not be a bad thing. It is certainly the most circuitous route to creating change (4 horses instead might encourage direct, solutions-oriented thinking, respectful dialogue, things settled quickly and to the best outcome of all) and no doubt we will be dealing with the fallout from having to learn these things the hard way for a long time. On the other hand, lessons learned the hard way often stick better.

But that said, since we know difficult changes are coming, and we can see the writing on the wall, we can each choose to engage our own buyan, or positive energy generated by practicing good deeds and acts of reverence for the benefit of our nation's growth and global improvement. By dedicating ourselves to individually being the change, we each become filled with windhorse (strong spirit and life force, similar to Ashe`, Prana, or Qi). That individual and collective windhorse can still power positive progress, even in the face of obstacles and uncertainty. Wait, watch, pray, gather windhorse, and follow what feels like peace in your heart even when your mind would lead you toward violence or harshness as the solution.

If you are interested in more info on Bone Divination, or any divination, really, check out Cat Yronwode's excellent site Readers And Rootworkers for more info and links.

Aphrodite Pontia: She of the Sea

2012-01-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

Gentle Reader, I am happy to say that I am participating in a fun new project initiated by Rowan Pendragon of One Witch's Way. It's called the Pagan Blog Project, and you can join, too, if you like. This week, we begin with the letter A. So of course I though it a great time to work with Aphrodite. Hail, Great Daughter of the Sea! Guide my words with your wisdom! So mote it be.

I received this question on my Facebook yesterday:

Q. While many men and women are attracted to me to my energy and tell me so, it seems that my sense of confidence also keeps them from actually asking me out. How do I balance my attractiveness with my assertiveness to make me feel more approachable to potential suitors?

I woke up with my darling Albert this morning at 5:30, and set a pretty pink-gold Apple on Aphrodite's Altar. I lit some Blue Roses incense, made by Gypsy over at Nu Aeon in Salem, MA. It is "an incense specially formulated to honor the Goddess in all Her aspects and to attract true love." I meditated with Aphrodite on this question, and just before 6 AM, I ate the apple of wisdom, bowed to Aphrodite, and sat down to write.

Before reading any further, please take a moment to consider the beauty and majesty of Her sacred oceans, the waves of love She already bestows.

Relax, wonderful one. There is nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all. Just as each wave that crashes on the shore is fresh, unique, and can never be duplicated, you, too, are a divine and singular occurrence. Know this. Know that this is as true as the reality of the ocean waves: permanent, yet dynamic. Not fixed, but not flimsy, either. Your strength and confidence are glorious, your vulnerability is glorious, and you are glorious. You are eminently lovable, and the fact that many people tell you how attractive you are is a great gift.

Your question contains three energies that might be serving as obstacles to your enjoyment of the process of love: insecurity in how you are perceived, impatience, and outsourcing the power of love to one other than yourself.

Let me let you in on a little secret: we each teach the world how to love us by loving ourselves completely. You know already that your confidence is an attractive asset, having been told so, yet you question whether or not it stands in the way of being lovable. This suggests that you do not believe what others tell you: that your confidence and assertiveness are attractive.

The vendor in the marketplace, haggling and shoving and arguing and bargaining and asserting herself, is beautiful. The professor, delivering an authoritative, scientific, scholarly lecture at an international conference, is beautiful. The mother who refuses to leave the principal's office until she has had a SERIOUS word with someone in charge about what happened to her child in the cafeteria today, is beautiful. The pre-menstrual, weepy, argumentative, moody 14-year old who wants everyone to think she is grown up already, is beautiful. You are beautiful, in every way.

Know this: the one who is meant to love you already loves ALL of you, including your confidence, even though you have not yet met. This person will find all the things you dislike about yourself worthy of love. Would you disrespect the powerful and wise love of your most cherished companion by rejecting his/her opinion about something so important?

The only place where confidence fails in love is when it shoves vulnerability out of the way. Vulnerability is also essential in love. Vulnerability is the reason WHY we love the person who is standing in front us, hands on hips, ready for an argument or in a bad mood or having a rough day. We know who that person is, beneath all of their upset or difficulty of the moment, and we love that person at their vulnerable core. If your confidence is pushing your vulnerability out of the way, there is only one way back: through the great hall of patience.

Patience is essential for lasting love. Patience is the soil in which love plants its seed. A sense of eternity makes for a great lifetime with someone. Whether you meet your someone at age 13 or 85, your lifetime with them begins the moment you meet and if you stay patient and present with each moment, the love you enjoy will feel like it goes on forever. Forever is not a long-term promise we make to someone. It is a moment-by-moment promise. The only way to cultivate pure, loving, mutual presence in each moment is with patience and a sense of contentment in the vast ocean of time. Healthy love grows slowly so that trust can be established. It grows slowly so that good, healthy patterns can be established. Sure, two fiery souls may meet and fall madly in love in an instant....but in order for the relationship to last they will eventually have to choose to work on being SANELY in love rather than madly in love. Your sustainable approach to love has already begun. As a smart, self-possessed individual, you want to participate artfully in the process of love. Hold the journey of love lightly in your mind: you are already on it. It is already happening. This wait is part of it. This time of personal growth and cultivation is necessary. It is the training you need in order to be whole in a lasting and timeless love. Cultivate patience. Pray for your beloved, as my friend and fellow Aphrodite Priestess Lady Maia Mermaid taught me. Pray for his/her well-being every day, though you have not yet met. Pray for his/her happiness every night, as you cuddle up in blissful patience, holding the trust and safe feelings within that you currently think will only happen when that person actually arrives.

Do not delay the happy feeling of love and receptivity. When you wait to allow yourself to feel loved for the person to arrive, you actually hold the person at an arm's length with your internal resistance. So start the feelings of love now, and hold them within you for as long as you can. In the beginning, you will falter after only a short time of holding those feelings. That is normal. Stick with it. You will learn to extend the interval. Be filled with love and vulnerable when you are with yourself, rather than judging yourself for not having the lover yet in your immediate sphere. You DO have a beloved already (in fact, you have many possibilities already, and it will be up to you to choose how many you decide to explore). Your beloved's every heartbeat is already whispering your name. It is unfolding in perfection. It will be worth the wait. It already is, as the priceless lessons you are now learning will continue to show you.

For 6 days, rise in the morning at 6 AM and bow 6 times to the East, to Venus as She crests the horizon. Conjure a feeling of deep love and peace in your heart. Seek, gently, the little pockets of resistance that live behind your heart and down your left arm. Apply love to these places. Journey around your body, looking for anywhere else that love feels lacking. Fill them with love. Then, say 6 times aloud, "I offer myself a blessing today, of love, patience, and presence. I offer my beloved a blessing today, of good health, happiness, and well-being. I patiently, happily await the day when our paths cross and we meet in the flesh." Splash or spritz yourself with rosewater and blow a kiss to the heavens. After the 6th day, let go of the formal ritual, but hang on to the blessing and say it whenever you feel it is magically correct to do so. Spritz yourself with rosewater whenever you like to uplift your spirits and refresh your commitment to allowing love to unfold. And I highly recommend blowing kisses to the heavens as often as you like.

That concludes this meditation. Thank you, Aphrodite Pontia, She of the Sea that ever dances: vast, patient, and already full.

May the path to love that you are on be joyful, present, and patient! May the reward for your growing be a better life for you and everyone you touch! So mote it be!

American Sabbat: New Year's

2012-01-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

A few months back, I wrote about my American Sabbats project, which is a series of round table discussions and rituals I am facilitating this year to shed light on the history, cultural context, and intention behind some of the secular holidays in the US. These holidays generate tremendous energy in our culture, but how many of us actually know the roots of their celebration? And, how relevant or applicable are these meanings in our current culture? Further, how can we, as spiritual practitioners, celebrate these holidays in a way that is intentional and meaningful, rather than just another occasion for thoughtless spending/consuming?

Although the concept of turning over the year in the solar or lunar cycle is as ancient as human curiosity, there has been great disparity about exactly when the "official" turn of the year happens. The earliest recorded celebration of the new year was in Mesopotamia in about 2000 BCE. At that time, the new year was celebrated around the date of the Vernal Equinox. For many, if not most cultures on Earth that followed the cycles of nature as their temporal system, the new year was usually celebrated between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox. It was decidedly a "return of the light" holiday. The imposition of a man-made calendar assigned the new year to March 1 in Rome.

In fact, the months of January and February did not come into existence until 700 BCE, when Numa Pontilius named and instituted them. Before the revision of the calendar by Julius Caesar, Roman officials noted this date with the installment of two consuls into the highest offices in the land and homage to Janus, the two-faced god of transitions and thresholds. (Notice how his leaves make a heart? It's important. Even though the contemporary heart symbol was unintentional in the rendering, it's still important. Everyone who worships the guardians of crossroads knows that a good heart is essential to good choices.) After Julius Caesar revised the calendar in Rome in 46 BCE and was subsequently assassinated, Roman officials in 42 BCE chose to deify him on January first and paid him annual reverence thereafter.

In 567, the Roman Catholic Council of Tours dismantled the celebration of new year's on Jan 1, citing it as a "pagan" holiday. During this time, the new year was celebrated regionally on different dates throughout Catholic Europe: Dec 25, March 1, March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation), and Easter represent some of the approved days for celebration of the new year.

But oh, how those rascally pagans persisted, nonetheless! In 7th century Flanders/Netherlands, Roman Catholic Saint Eligius wrote a warning about new year's celebrations, "Do not make vetulas (little female statues; "vetula" in Latin means "Old Woman"), little deer or iotticos or set tables at night (for the house spirits) or exchange new year's gifts or supply superfluous drinks."

In 1582, Gregorian calendar reform reinstalled New Year at Jan. 1, though many countries still continued to observe their own dates and celebrations. Notably, the British Empire (including the US Colonies) did not acknowledge Jan. 1 as the official start of the new year until 1752. Prior to that, British new year was celebrated on March 25, "Lady Day." New Year's Eve/Day in the US falls on the borderline between Dec. 31 and Jan 1, in the Gregorian calendar.

Thus, we can see that Jan 1 as the "official" new year in the US is a end-result and man-made acknowledgment of a natural event: the Earth's journey round the Sun. And after all of the back-and-forth of religious politics around this date in Rome and beyond, we can hardly call it a purely "secular" holiday. So, if New Year's is actually a spiritual holiday, and specifically a pagan one, there must be vestiges of ritual and meaning in its celebration, right?

Well, yes and no. On one hand, there are all sorts of regional and local traditions to ring in the new year that may or may not have pagan roots or spiritual motivation, but are certainly ritualistic in approach. For example, the song Auld Lang Syne, which is sung lustily and with heartfelt feeling among many revelers across the nation, is an old Scottish folk tune that was "discovered" by Scottish poet Robert Burns in the region of Ayrshire when he heard a farmer singing it. Burns then wrote it down, embellished it, and published it in a book called Scots Musical Museum in 1796. Guy Lombardo, who had heard the tune sung by Scottish immigrants in Canada, first played the song for American audiences on New Year's Eve at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC in 1929. Since then, the song has ritualistically been sung to welcome the new year in the US, to the degree that Life magazine once remarked, "that if Lombardo failed to play 'Auld Lang Syne,' the American public would not believe that the new year had really arrived."

In NYC, and across the nation, folks gather in Times Square or around their televisions to "watch the ball drop." In 1904, Newsman and entrepreneur Alfred Ochs purchased the area now known as Times Square, which had formerly been called Longacre Square. To commemorate the name change, he hosted the first of the now-legendary New Year's Eve celebrations on his new property. In 1907 he commissioned a 400-lb ball to be made of wood and iron, suspended from a flag pole, to drop and mark the exact hour and moment of the new year so folks could synchronize their watches (get it? TIMES Square? Note for clarity, in case your mind works like mine does: Ochs and his Times Square cronies did NOT found TIME magazine, which came along in 1923, published first as a newsworthy lark by two Yalies). Nowadays, this custom has grown voluminously: from the wooden ball to an aluminum one, to a lighted one, to an apple, and now to the current one dropped this past weekend. It is 12 feet in diameter, weighs nearly 12,000 pounds, and is covered with over 13,000 LED lights and 2600 crystals. This year, as every year since 1907 (with the exception of wartime "dimouts" in 1942 and 43), the ball has been lowered slowly over the course of the last minute of the year, reaching fulfillment at the exact second of midnight.

There are other local and regional traditions we covered in our discussion last night, such as eating Hoppin' John in what feels like Hoodoo to me, or the ringing of bells, launching of fireworks, etc. I won't get into all of these here, in favor of giving more room to the discussion we had during the roundtable. The attendees raised some great points in the discussion, and I intend to cover three of them here: the commercialization of the holiday, colonization and cultural appropriation versus exploring/creating our own traditions in the US, and the concept of resolutions.

It is likely that any investigation of most contemporary American secular holiday celebrations will eventually lead the researcher to the commercial roots of the celebration, and NYE is no exception. The first Times Square NYE celebration was in honor of a commercial media enterprise. As an icon, the ball symbolizes a lot more than a mere tool for the synchronization of watches. It symbolizes revenue at all stages of its journey: from the money generated by the sale of news media at its inception to the tourism dollars the US reaps from the millions of people who now travel to NYC to participate in the celebrations annually. The fact that the ball has grown so much in size, weight, and splendor over the years is a signifier of American prosperity and the American ethos of "bigger is better."

In our discussion at The Sacred Well last night, we explored the consequences of having commerce at the center of a secular celebration. When we look at spiritual or religious holidays in world history, we see what core concepts are at the center of each: family togetherness, community well being, the commemoration of an individual's rite of passage, the shared desire for revering a particular godhead or deity, or some natural event like a volcanic eruption or an eclipse. When we assessed American New Year's in our conversation last night, we could see one main theme emerging: the celebration of consuming alcohol. We opened our roundtable with the questions of "How do substances figure in to spiritual celebrations? Is there a "right" or "wrong" way to imbibe in a sacred ceremony? How holy can New Year's possibly be if it's brought to you by Budweiser?" One of the participants of Irish heritage, Sean, noted that although alcohol is a welcome and well-loved part of many Irish celebrations, it is the event and people one is celebrating rather than the alcohol itself. But to look around Times Square on NYE at all the billboards, flyers, and advertisements one wonders what is actually being celebrated: the alcohol or new year? It's not as if we are honoring Dionysus intentionally with this cultural celebration of drunkenness, nor Indra, nor any other specific deities of wine or drunkenness. It's not as if we are celebrating love and community; most of the people in Times Square are out-of-towners who do not know or care about one another. In fact, crime and cruelty are rife at New Year's Eve in Times Square, and the police presence is a bit overwhelming. So, if we are not gathering around the return of the Sun, nor the deities of wine, nor loving community, what are we gathering around?

We poked at this a bit more: here in the US, what does the turn of the year actually mean to us, collectively? In this melting pot of cultures where there are so many different interpretations of the new year, why do we gather around January 1 at all? Having been stripped of its spiritual significance, what is the relevance of New Year's in America, other than as an opportunity to party with friends? Further, when we gather with those friends, what is at the heart of the gathering? Is there a purpose beyond just the fleeting moment of intoxication?

Contemplating the melting pot dragged us further down the Rabbit hole. One attendee, Jalina, remarked that in Mexico City where she grew up Roman Catholic, her family would gather for a big meal at New Year's, and they would go to church together. Sean, Andrea, me, and others of Roman Catholic immigrant backgrounds all nodded in recognition: we all have memories of going to church with family and enjoying a meal of traditional ethnic foods at the holidays. Happy memories, all in all. But we then had to really look at another aspect of it: that the Roman Catholic Church picked and chose for us, and for our ancestors, what we would celebrate and how we would celebrate it. Catholicism is the legacy of colonialism in Mexico, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and many other countries. If Jalina was in pre-colonial Mexico, if Sean was in Ireland, if Andrea was in Italy, if I was in Poland, before colonization, before the Crusades, we would be marking our various new year celebrations in VERY different ways than we do now. Colonization and religious domination took away the pagan practices of our ancestors and replaced them with the activities and symbols deemed fit by church authorities. When our ancestors or we came to the US, the melting pot further stripped us of ethnic authenticity, rendering our names, foods, customs, and cultures more homogeneous.

Yet certain aspects of cultural traditions persist despite the efforts to squelch them. The tiny corn dolls and the wycinaki, or paper cut-out figures of Polish traditional art represent themes far older than Christianity, far older than what we now know as "western civilization." Like the vitulas given on new year's that St. Eligius warned against, these little icons are symbols of the Earth Goddess, or the primacy of nature. I believe that these symbols of devotion to the Earth represent the heart of hearts around which ancient and modern spiritual celebrations gather, in every culture. They are present in some secular New Year's Traditions, as well. The black-eyed peas are the bounty of the Earth. The First footing of Scotland, people going around visiting one another's homes at Hogmanay (new year) with gifts of coal and salt represent that the Earth provides all that we need, and that we are happily always able to share Her gifts, whether we can afford other fancy things or not.

Sadly, the ready availability of the gifts of the Earth in America is now questionable, with Big Ag controlling most of the food production, with Congress-created dust bowls where there were once verdant marshes, and with laws against harvesting rainwater as emblems of how far we have come from seeing ourselves in gentle partnership with this Earth, rather than as its lords and masters. When the Earth is no longer free, nor considered primary, but has been relegated to being dominated, corralled, and "owned," we lose sight of one common denominator around which we might have found meaning together despite cultural differences.

What happens when a culture is whitewashed and no common ethnic traditions can be established? Other traditions arise around commonly shared aspects of the culture instead. In the US, the common aspect around which most of our traditions gather is money. Not abundance, but money itself. Abundance would be the gift of the Earth freely given, but this land was decidedly NOT freely given. It was taken. Because just as our ancestors were colonized, we, too, are colonizers. When something has been taken, rather than earned or shared, it loses spiritual significance. So, while we Americans are participating in the customs of commerce during our holidays, we are nonetheless looking for meaning as well, and not finding any at the heart of our own culture. That is sad and unnecessary, because on the whole, our diversity makes us a very strong and wondrous people, and I feel we could learn a lot from turning inward and really looking at ourselves. Yet how often do we see people turning inward toward the spirit of America for a sense of relevance? Instead, many Americans take on the cultural attributes and religions of others rather than looking to our own cultural center for a sense of value, because a lot of us would really hate to admit that we actually worship money under the guise of freedom. It feels dirty and meaningless, doesn't it? Isn't it painfully ironic to consider that many of our indigenous and nomadic ancestors, and the ancestors of this land, held certain core values of revering the Earth and life that, due to time, greed, and evolution, we have cast away only to now go begging with fat wallets to gurus from "othered" cultures to teach us once more?

Around this point in the conversation, one of the attendees exclaimed, "Now I feel ashamed!" He was referencing something not specific to the idea of cultural appropriation, but it caught my attention. I believe this is the very core of the American Sabbats project: to ask the questions about why these secular holidays came to be, to acknowledge how they can be double-edged swords, to honestly ask ourselves what is at the heart of our culture and why it is there, to deepen into our feelings about it all, including righteous shame as well as righteous pride where earned, to sift through and gather the fragments that are good and dear and loving, to atone where possible (it's never too late to begin protecting the Earth and treating all beings with respect! Start today!), to leave behind the practices that feel unsustainable, overly-commercial, and ultimately joyless. As Americans, we have this sometimes-charming, sometimes-horrible need to always reinvent the Wheel. Our pioneering spirit means that we build up and tear down only to build up and tear down again. This is part of the human condition that transcends time and cultures, of course, but it is particularly prevalent in America, which my friend Doc E says, "Is going through its terrible twos (hundreds, that is.)"

But maybe we don't need to tear it all down and rebuild it. Maybe that would be wasteful. Maybe what is actually needed at this point is an evaluation and refinement process. I often hear people say, "The system is broken." I truly believe that while that is applicable in some cases, in many cases the system actually works remarkably well. After all, we DO have public libraries, education, roads, voting, firefighters, and even some pretty good-hearted police who are actually concerned with protecting us. But the values the drive the system are broken. A system without values is like a body without a heart. America lost its heart when colonizers stole land from the indigenous people and killed them. (I am reminded of the Chevy ad, "We're the heartbeat of America," placing money, again, squarely at the center instead of love.) In order to revive the still heart of America, I believe systemic analysis and contemplation are needed, followed by actions taken to reinstall healthier common values at the center of American discourse. A movement away from money as God to Earth as Goddess, and further toward Universe as All-encompassing and spacious enough for everyone, would help. Part of that work includes vesting our secular holidays with a deeper sense of thoughtfulness, love, community, reverence...all those things that have been lost, dismissed, slain, whitewashed, or converted out of us as being deemed "indigenous" or "pagan."

That brought us to the topic of resolutions. A young couple, Megan and (name not coming! Sorry! Jeff?), mentioned that although they have not made resolutions before, they are both struggling with certain difficulties in personal growth and financial survival that have given them pause, and that they were planning to make resolutions this year. Both of them have college degrees and yet are living the all-too-familiar story of working in piecemeal jobs or service jobs that don't challenge them intellectually or personally. They both feel ready to express their potential, yet also frustrated. Jalina mentioned that she doesn't do New Year's resolutions, but she has a sort of running "to do list." Sean said he doesn't make resolutions at New Year's, but that he does at his personal new year, his birthday.

We discussed how most New Year's resolutions are almost doomed to fail from the start. Physics teaches us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed- it merely changes form. In my personal magical practice, I can see how attempting to make drastic changes to entrenched forms overnight can be difficult and dangerous, aggravating and discouraging. Sustainable change, such as losing weight, quitting smoking, getting in shape, and repairing other forms of damage happen slowly over time. They are not usually instantaneously successful. Let's face it: a drunken moment of earnest feeling on New Year's Eve does not a firm and lasting commitment make. Then, when the resolution fails, folks feel ashamed (again, there is that shame!) because we have not fulfilled our promise to ourselves. When we cannot keep a promise to ourselves, we lose faith in ourselves. When we cannot resolve to do better and then follow that promise with sustainable change, we lose trust in ourselves. I have also heard a lot of folks bragging about how "they don't make resolutions, they just try to live right every day." Well, yes. OK. I get it- go ahead and live a good life every day. That is brilliant! I think it is a great idea. But how will things in our culture change at the larger level if we do not together resolve to fix them? And how can we create and sustain collective resolutions if we cannot trust ourselves to create and sustain personal ones?

I explained a bit about the word resolution. First of all, it contains the Latin word solve, which means "to loosen, dissipate, disperse." In modern parlance, the word means an expressed commitment to an action or ideal, or else it means bringing a conflict to an end via the establishment of a common ground. In its older, alchemical meaning, however, resolutionem (from the Latin), means "to reduce things to simpler forms." Isn't that what this whole essay has been about? About loosening the bonds of commercialism and opening the heart to deeper meaning in its place? About moving away from the mechanized, from the commercial, from the convoluted or contorted, from the myriad relativistic twists and turns, toward something simpler and more profound and more relevant that transcends all other cultural signifiers?

Isn't New Year's, simply, a celebration of the return of the light? What if we celebrated it as such in a non-denominational way, noting the passage of time as the central attraction? Wouldn't it be more effective if, rather than creating a 12,000 pound light-up ball that blinks only for one minute once per year and costs the Earth years in greenhouse gases from the travelling revelers, we lifted our hearts in gratitude for the Sun that shines every day, for the moon that marks yet other passages of time? What if we dedicated our resources toward resolving the Greenhouse effect instead of spending it on alcohol? Further, wouldn't it be better if, rather than coming up with a million defenses and excuses and justifications for why it was anyone's right to kill and harm Native Americans, the contemporary community of many different races who all benefitted from the Native Americans' first presence here restored them to the most honored and valuable lands we have, issued heartfelt words of compassion and care, generated fiscal resources for them and made governmental financial recompense, and began quietly embracing their respect for the Earth without appropriating their culture?

This is how the new world could be: centered on love, growth, care, and kindness rather than commerce, addiction, and secret shame. Everyone could still be themselves, but better.

We brought our probing and illuminating New Year's talk to an end with this thought, and then gathered together for a brief ritual in which we each resolved to take a small piece of our lives that we are already grateful for, and extend it further for the benefit of all. We all resolved that by being our personal best, we would lead by example. We resolved together to be the light of joy in the world, in whatever small and large ways were possible and available to us. Each attendee chose a personal means of sharing their light. I was inspired by all of the responses: I resolve to perform excellent self-care, I resolve to recognize the good in people rather than criticizing the bad all the time, I resolve to reconnect with my roots, I resolve to continue to explore and learn about my path and walk it well.

In the end, which is always the beginning, we cannot change the past. We can thank it, and let it go, like the old year. We can be present in our personal strengths and solutions for ourselves in the new year, and we can begin to collectively resolve to challenge the larger problems that loom over us, to gather around giving and sharing rather than taking and consuming. So mote it be!

I'd like to take a moment to offer my great thanks to those who attended the American Sabbats New Year's session last night. I look forward to the next one, which will be our Valentine's Day session on Feb. 15. See you there!

My other blog is a broom...

2011-12-29T11:04:00.000-08:00

I have a few blogs for different things. Way of the Rabbit is my all-purpose blog, about my life, opinions, priestesshood, magic, etc.

But just like a household that has "all-purpose" cleaner as well as other kinds of cleaners, I have other blogs.

My Adventuresome Graveyard Rabbit blog is the one I created and maintain to be accepted into the Society of Graveyard Rabbits. You might think I would have founded such an organization, being that it is comprised of so many things I love. Alas, I did not. But I love them and want to be a part of their Society once I have reached critical density of posts there.

The third blog I have is one that I started several years ago, but never filled in till now. It is called Dancing with Orishas, and it is where I intended to write about my experiences as an uninitiated devotee of Oshun. But life went on, and... I realized this morning that it was time to haul it out, clean it up, and get going on some of THAT backlog of writing. This is what I wrote there today. Thanks for reading!

Green Men and the Goddess

2011-12-18T21:31:00.001-08:00

Last night at Circle of Aradia's Winter Solstice, which was the 40th anniversary of the Dianic Tradition, I was called upon to light the green candle for the future of the Tradition. There were three candles there on the altar representing the future: green for the world, white for community, and red for sisterhood. Ironic, I thought, looking at them together. At my Dianic Ordination four years ago, there were white candles on the altar. I saved them, and this past year as I have been in personal discernment about the Tradition and its stance on men and transgender women, I have been burning them down to offer clarity to my path. Our Amazon Ordinations use red candles, and though I looked longingly at that emblem of the Blood Mysteries, I was not called upon to light it. Instead, it was clear, I was instructed by the Priestesses to light the green candle.

Ironic, because in addition to being a Dianic High Priestess, I am also the Mother of a Men's Mysteries Tradition: the Green Men. Although I respectfully acknowledge their sovereignty and autonomy, I take credit for my part: I made the space in our CAYA community for this work. I penned one of the main prayers used in this work, and I designed the foundational structure that supports this work, though the men do the actual work privately in their own, deep, wild, wonderful ways. I am proud of this. I am proud of them. I am one of very few contemporary Dianic High Priestesses who has chosen the honor of being a spiritual leader of men as well as women. It is humbling and empowering at the same time.

Ironic, because I source my confidence in my ability to lead men from the firm foundation my Dianic sisterhood gives me. With my sisters, I set myself free. So free that I have much, much more to give on a larger scale than I would otherwise have, and I therefore can afford to take chances on doing things that might once have scared me, like working with men in a very spiritually-intimate way. Or challenging the rules of my Tradition by exploring elasticity in what I teach.

As I prepared to light the green candle, I envisioned a beautiful future where there is mutuality, respect, love, & honor between ALL people of ALL genders in ALL Traditions. I thought of how the Green Men & CAYA are based on some of the principles found in the Amazon Priestess Tribe's iteration of the Dianic Tradition, including power-sharing techniques, reverence for Goddess as primary cauldron of life, and high regard for women in authority. I thought about how much the Green Men have challenged themselves, grown, and gained amazing wisdom due to enacting these principles, and how the women in their lives (including me as their High Priestess) have seriously benefitted from their study in gentle, self-arising, vulnerable wholeness.

Isn't that what so many women in the Dianic Tradition want? For men and women alike to be safe, vulnerable and non-violent? To be honored in their personal and community authority by men and women alike? I held that vision of the wonderful Green Men, whom I love, in my mind: men who approach me with dignity and poise, men who willingly acknowledge my leadership skills and intellect, men who support the power of the women in our community with complete loyalty, and who know that doing so only adds to their own power. I envisioned women all over the world being treated with kindness, respect, and integrity by men, and by one another. I envisioned women and men leading by example in their mindful ways, in their sparkling speech, in their fullness of self-arising power. And I thought, "How blessed a world it would be if this kind of honoring happened everywhere! How blessed I am to be in the presence of such balance and beauty in a 360-degree experience of religion that meets ALL of my needs: for uncompromising radical sisterhood, yes- that is crucial, but also for reverent brotherhood, for a family of one-ness."

Then I thought, but it's not JUST a blessing received- it's a privilege earned. My reality of empowered relationships with men didn't just happen. It was built because I did the work. Specifically, I took the risk as a Dianic High Priestess of honoring the Divine within these men, and held up my lunar mirror to show them a reflection of how glorious they are, how much they are capable of, how great it can feel to be respected and acknowledged in their power by a woman who also feels respected and acknowledged in her own power. In doing so, I received the reward of an at-first-shy, but now-thundering and ever-growing blast of solar, joyful light that invigorates our collective work and points back, always, with gratitude and radiance to me and the other women in our community who support these men in their journey as Priests.

I flashed to an unforgettable moment at PantheaCon three years ago, after the (now) Green Men had just completed their first (of many), glorious, well-received rituals. It had gone really well (naturally, because these men are AWESOME ritualists). They were telling me about it as we stood on the balcony of one of the hotel rooms. They described the setting, the attendees' reactions of how beautiful it was to look another man in the eye and take his arm in brotherhood, without competition, without challenge, just opening to peace and support and dignity together. Captain Jack of Bears spontaneously leapt into a passionate recitation of my Charge of the Sun God, and it brought tears to my eyes to see and hear him, nobly delivering my words and giving them LIFE. "I am the strength of the mountain, and the laughing, rushing river, and the path of the sacred arrow, and the hunger of the wild hunt..." I wrote these words, but he MEANT them in a way that was wholly his own. The men looked on approvingly, some mouthing the words along with him. At the end of the oration, there was silence. Then, Magus Abba Ben Zo ventured, "Dude, you looked really sexy while you were saying that, with the wind blowing through your hair," and all the men enthusiastically AGREED! YES! HE DID! We ALL agreed! It was the same sort of energy among them that I feel with my Amazon sisters when we compliment and adore one another in circle. That kind of open, affirming, heartfelt affection between heterosexual men in our culture is so rarely displayed. Instead, men are taught to cut themselves off from one another, or to eye one another warily. The Green Men know themselves to be benevolent lovers, fathers, and brothers to the world, and therefore feel free to express themselves with an openness that feels really correct and whole. I hold that moment as a shining jewel in my memory. It emblematizes so many other moments of pride, hope, and happiness that have followed since the Green Men took up the charge and began organizing themselves as a powerful force of love in CAYA and the world.

And so, holding these thoughts and feeling safe, proud, and holy in the reality I gave birth to, I said, "May the principles of the Dianic Tradition be of benefit to the entire world." And it will be so, because it is already happening.

Last week, one of CAYA's Dedicants asked me why everyone, male and female, who becomes Clergy in CAYA is required to dedicate to a Mother Goddess. The intellectual reasons are threefold:

1) In a world where monotheistic patriarchal religions seek to dominate, it is a radical act to honor the Mother Goddess, who represents the rights and needs of all (regardless of gender, race, ability, age, sexuality, economic status, or faith.)

2) Even when paternity is uncertain, maternity is always certain. Thus, we dedicate to a Mother Goddess, who represents the womb of creation, birth and life throughout time.

3) The founders of CAYA are all women who came to practice together because of a shared love for the Mother Goddess. In honor of their work together and the roots of CAYA, we dedicate to a Mother Goddess of our choosing whom we admire and revere for Her role in our lives.

But in the instant of lighting that green candle last night, and thinking of the VAST contrast between the Green Men of CAYA and, say, the police currently brutalizing elderly women and veterans, a simpler, less intellectual, more profound awareness dawned in me about why we do this:

Because it is good for the world that we do this, that we lead by example in our love for the Goddess, and the qualities of life-affirmation that She represents in us ALL: men, women, everyone.

If the principles of Dianic practice can shape a world where men arise in their own glory to love and respect themselves and women, and where women arise in their own glory to hold power and authority in equal measure with men unflinchingly and with confident, non-reactive wisdom, then it is good and right for the entire world to receive the blessings of the Goddess that we Dianics find in our practice.

It starts with one or two people deciding to just lead by example. Women fearlessly showing men how they REALLY want to be seen, spoken to, treated. Men accepting this teaching with open hearts and employing it to great benefit in their own lives, for their own empowerment as well as more balanced empowerment in the greater community. Power scales balancing where they have, for so long, been psychologically and ethically askew. All able to be as free and vulnerable with one another as small children, but retaining the wisdom of their years. Here we are in CAYA, doing it. And doing it well, if I do say so myself. Step by step, we grow closer as a Coven family because of this work. I think the general state of happiness within our community speaks volumes about its success. I love my community, and am so grateful for the lessons that are flowering in me with you all as time goes on.

I salute you, my Amazon sisters! Your love and beauty and ferocity give me courage to reach beyond my comfort zone!

I salute you, my Green Men brothers! Your joy and tenderness and respect give me hope for a better future for us all! I lit that candle as much for you as for my sisters!

I salute you, Wildflowers! You lead the way with innovative thinking and daring energetic exploration! You are the big playground where our innocent selves can be free!

And may that better future we hold in our shared vision be realized in the now for the benefit of all beings.

Aphrodite Doritis: Giver of the Good Things

2011-12-16T08:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I invited folks on my Facebook page to privately submit questions regarding love and human relations, and told them I would select one at random to answer in meditation with Aphrodite. As it turned out, I received quite a few along a similar theme, which I have distilled to the following single question:

How can I move past negative patterns from previous relationships to more freely, healthily, and joyfully open to the love that is arising in my present life? What obstacles need to be cleared?

Last night, I placed heart chakra crystals anointed in love oil under my pillow, held this question in my heart, and opened up to Aphrodite's guidance before I went to sleep. This morning, I arose at 5:30 with my beloved, and asked within where I ought to begin. I lit a combination of incenses, dressed a pink candle with pearl powder, and entered my meditation till 6 AM. I bowed to the Morning Star, and then began writing. The following musings on the question at hand are the result of that meditation. May they provide loving relief, a spark of inspiration, or be helpful in some way to you, dear reader.

I find myself turning to the story of Ariadne, priestess of the labyrinth on Crete and associated with Aphrodite in Cyprian worship. Ariadne has many different myths associated with her, but I have chosen one above the others as a means for exploring this particular question. I am looking at a variation on the Pausanius story of Ariadne, Theseus, and Dionysus. Please, go read it before reading this further.

Ariadne is glorious in her own right as a wise woman, a priestess, a sovereign with the capacity to help others tremendously, yet she has a difficult time applying her healing wisdom to herself when it is most needed. Sound familiar? This is one of the most difficult ways a Priest/ess of Aphrodite is born.

Perhaps you have spent years helping others, devoting yourself to caring for those you love. You can't remember when this tendency started in your life, but you know it to be profoundly true: you are a helper/healer. That calling to be a helper/healer is the calling to be a Priest/ess. Perhaps, in the absence of that Temple where you might receive proper instruction on how to heal with your love in a safe and fulfilling way, you ended up expressing that calling in an unhealthy way: perhaps by sleeping with people you didn't want to sleep with but who seemed to "need" it so badly you didn't feel you had a choice. Perhaps you found yourself in a terrible relationship with a very broken person, someone who really needed you, or really needed to make you their outlet for their woundedness. Perhaps you, thinking on some level that you were helping them, stayed overlong in that relationship. Perhaps you, forgetting your own sovereignty, felt powerless to leave it. Perhaps you, being human, still feel a paradoxical love in your heart for someone who hurt you, or you feel fearful that harmful patterns of an old relationship might be replicated in a new one. You know your own story better than I do. Many paths are available within the labyrinth of this question. But the end problem is the same. In the place in your glorious heart where courage and self-determination and self-knowing would usually be, you have fear, hurt, and mistrust instead.

Please know this: holding an abuser or unstable ex responsible for their actions and getting away from the situation is only one step in your healing. The next step is to heal your own relationship with trusting yourself. You won't be able to trust anyone else till you trust yourself again. Forgive yourself for making a difficult choice, for choosing a relationship with a damaged person, for throwing yourself under the bus when you knew better- because, for sure, a time came in the relationship when you knew better and still didn't stop it. You were too afraid. Forgive yourself for that. Forgive yourself for making bad decisions. Give yourself the gift of self-trust once more. Watch self-love bloom into a healthy flower in your life.

Lauryn Hill sings a complicated song called "Ex-Factor" that springs to my mind. Many of the lyrics are relevant here, "It could all be so simple, but you'd rather make it hard. Loving you is like a battle, and we both end up with scars..Cuz no one loves you more than me, and no one ever will...How can I explain myself? No one's hurt me more than you, and no one ever will." I used to think these lyrics meant that no one could ever hurt her more than this person because their relationship was so singular and unique in her life, and because she still loved them so much despite all. But I have a different take on it now. I now take it to mean, "No one has ever hurt me more than you and no one ever will because I HAVE DECIDED THAT I DESERVE BETTER."

Have you really decided that you deserve better? Maybe you have. Maybe you think you have but it's still feeling kind of fresh and tentative, and you're not quite sure it will hold up once you're in an intimate situation again. Maybe you are still waiting for the other shoe to drop in a new, healthy situation. Stop waiting. Stop fearing. Stop mistrusting. How? Decide from within and then hold firm. Take as many baths, burn as many candles, say as many affirmations as you need to until you feel confident that you have programmed your mind to trust itself again. Decide where your lines are: what lines can you fully vow will you never, ever cross in love again? What boundaries are you prepared to hold forever for the sake of self-respect and self-trust, even if it means losing a single lover, or many lovers? Choose them with confidence. Decide. Then, go ahead and open up to loving in new ways fully. Know that, while no one can guarantee that there are no other bad apples out there, you can personally guarantee yourself that you will make better choices in the future. Making that decision is the foundation for self-trust, which then will allow you to trust another.

Ariadne, once she completely lets go of pining for the man who betrayed her, then attracts the transcendent love of a god. And, you can see how this would apply to letting go of the love of a woman in favor of opening to the love of a goddess, as well. When you choose to bring your trust back home, when you decide what your basic rules and boundaries are, when you recommit to yourself after healing from the pain of a love gone afoul, when you decide that rather than ASKING for love you will instead BECOME love, you then become a Priest/ess of Aphrodite. All who serve Aphrodite learn this at some point in their journey: that you do not have to give love away in order to heal anyone else. Instead, you choose to emit love freely, treat yourself and others with respect, and lead by example. Others may choose to follow your lead or not, but each needs to learn this from within. You cannot learn it for anyone else. This is the only way for a sustainable love to enter anyone's heart or life.

She's been waiting, waiting.
She's been waiting so long.
She's been waiting for Her children
to remember, to return.

Consider asking Aphrodite to fill the place in your life where pain was with love. Consider asking Aphrodite to fill you with the golden radiance of self-trust. Consider opening to Aphrodite and saying, "I have not made good choices. I have not been full in my power. Please walk with me, strengthen me, and help me craft a finely-wrought sense of self-worth. Please fill my life with positive reflections of the love that I am, and that You are. Please help me find within myself the perfect love and perfect trust that I deserve. Please guide me in discernment to find that love and trust reflected in all of my relationships."

Picture yourself as a fountain filled with an ethereal, shimmering water.

When love goes badly, that fountain gets clogged, green with muck, and stagnant. In opening to self-love and self-trust, you cleanse the fountain and it begins to flow again. When you have given yourself the gift of healing and trust, you then begin to overflow the fountain, attracting the attention of others naturally. The attention you receive can feel scary and predatory after a hurt.

But guess what? Because you have chosen- because you have decided that it will be different this time, it will be. Your thoughts, words and actions must, and will, reflect that. You will hold your boundaries. You will spurn negative attention rather than feeling powerless against it. You will distill the pool of possibilities down to the few candidates who actually qualify to be with a Goddess...that is to say, other conscious and intention-oriented people like yourself. Then, together, you can begin to weave a future of mutual love and trust, sourcing the threads of love and trust from within each of you.

Ariadne is also associated with thread in the story of the labyrinth. Her thread is a guide through the shadowy twists and turns of life, love, and self-development. Your journey down into the shadow of love's worst pain took you past some rough spots. You looked at them as you sailed by, eyes widening in fear, terror growing as you powerlessly journeyed deeper into the darkness of doubt. You will, indeed, have to pass these scary places again on your way out. This time, stop. Clean up. Tend the broken altars. Sweep up the shattered mirror. Take the time to fish the wick from the lamp and relight it. Leave the place better than you found it. Follow the thread of your heart's truth- that it is a glorious gift and deserves to be treated as such by you and all others- back to the entrance of the cave. Make no mistake: you will again in life journey to dark places within. That is the nature of spiritual growth, of the endlessly returning tides. But because you have cleaned up the cavern and left it better than before, you will fear less to enter it next time. Then, the darkness becomes a comforting friend. And that silken thread of your heart's truth comes in handy on each journey.

And now I am complete with this meditation. May there be some benefit in it.

Hail, Shekinah Mountainwater, Great Ancestress and author of Ariadne's Thread. Thank you for the gifts you gave to our community, beloved Priestess of Aphrodite!

Hail, Aphrodite Doritis: Giver of Good Things! Thank you for the blessings of love, dark and bright! Thank you for the journey of the heart! Thank you for the golden future yet to come! Thank you for bliss and pleasure! Thank you for beauty! Thank you for love and trust! Hail! Hail! Hail!

Ten Reasons to Love Humanity Anyway

2011-12-14T17:12:00.000-08:00

The holidays can bring out the Krampus in anyone. Traffic, year-end financial woes (particularly the ones that are still difficult since LAST year-end, or the one before), rough weather, stories of unchecked and gross consumerism, the office party you had hoped to avoid...there are lots of reasons to kvetch, grump, whine, and crank about the general state of humanity. So, I thought I might post a few reasons to just go ahead and love humanity anyway. These things fill my heart with a genuine affection for people, and I hope they help you, too.

Ten Reasons to Love Humanity Anyway

10. Because when we are alone, we often sing passionately, loudly, and badly.

9. Because farts are universally funny, and we all know it, and we all do it, and we all laugh about it.

8. Because everyone looks better naked. It's not the size, shape or texture of their body that makes this so. It's the fact that they are naked that makes this so.

7. Because every annoying co-worker, unreasonable parent, screaming child, unstable passer-by, or otherwise difficult person has the capacity for a radiant, shy smile of surprised delight when treated with unexpected kindness.

6. Because we tend to reinvent the Wheel a lot, and it speaks volumes about our heartfelt desire to be smart and creative when we do so.

5. Because everyone's outer know-it-all is actually an inner genius.

4. Because everyone has at least one amazing talent they will only share when they feel safe that love is present.

3. Because everyone is worried about something in their lives that love could heal easily.

2. Because when you choose to go ahead and love humanity anyway, you have less time and energy to poison yourself with negative feelings.

1. Because when you choose to go ahead and love humanity anyway, that includes you.

Part II: The Making of a Goddess

2011-12-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

On a recent trip with the Amazons to the Goddess Temple of Orange County, I witnessed the making of a Goddess. Not a humunculus, not a meditational deity, nor a visualization. I witnessed the making of a real, flesh-blood-spirit Goddess. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life.

Perhaps some back story is in order here, eh?

We enjoyed a glorious visit with our sisters there: Temple founder and Presiding Priestess Rev. Ava Park, First Priestess Morrighan, the Naiads and Votresses. We love our sisters and have so much respect for what they do at the Temple. And after this visit, we grew even more in loving regard for them.

During Sunday Services, the lights were gentle in the lush Sanctuary and all of the women were performing delicate ritual enactments at the various altars. Rev. Ava carried the Temple's statue of Bast into the sanctuary. This statue of Bast is beautiful, gilt with gold, adorned with jewelry, in standing position. It is the statue that watches over the Temple at the front door as women enter. Halting the customary ritual proceedings, Rev. Ava invited Kismet up to the main altar.

Rev. Ava asked Kismet to place her hands on the shoulders of the statue, and spoke to the congregation about life, about sisterhood, about how precious and blessed we are to be able to witness one another's passages and journeys. Then, using the powers of her will, voice, and love, she magnificently conferred Kismet's life imprint into the statue of Bast, joyfully and triumphantly declaring that as long as the Temple stands (and may She stand forever!), this statue would henceforth be known and revered at the Temple as "Bast-Kismet, Kismet-Bast!"

The world over, there are stories of royalty and other humans taking the name of a deity or aligning with a deity to assert a cult of divine right. (I'm thinking right now of Cleopatra's alignment with Isis, but perhaps some of my more scholarly friends can offer some better examples.) There are stores of deities merging with one another in name and energy, such as Pallas-Athene. Sometimes these mergings suggest a historical colonization process, sometimes a spiritual evolution of understanding in a given geographic area.

But on this Sunday morning, in one of the holiest places I have ever been with some of the holiest women I have ever known, I came once again into a particular awareness of how a Goddess comes to be in myth and legend.

Because we decide so, and then tell the stories to each other.

My first aware encounter with this knowing was at the age of 19, when my next door neighbor, a Methodist Minister, said to me, "He was a wise man who invented God." (This quote is attributed to Plato, but I did not go very far down that Rabbit hole of research to see about all that.)

I have honored this knowing in my own Coven, where each of us dedicates ourselves to being the representatives of our various deities on Earth, being sure to have altars well-tended and propitiated, being sure to host rituals and do good deeds in their names, keeping them alive with our honoring energies.

There, in the Sanctuary, this knowing came upon me again, afresh. Each Naiad Priestess stepped up and whispered in Kismet's ear as she stood, holding the statue, swaying with tears, "Sister, you are so brave...You have always been one of my favorite people...I love you...You are so beautiful...You will always be in my heart." Rev. Ava embraced Kismet, whispering, "Ever since the first time I saw you, I knew I would love you forever." Then, each of the Amazons present, with not a dry eye anywhere, stepped up and offered her blessings, kissing Kismet's cheeks, petting her pink hair, weeping and hugging her. Branwen took one knee, in soldierly fashion, and gave Kismet a ring and a level oath: "I.will.always.remember.you." Iris, who has chosen to tend to the spirit of Kismet's deceased son, Parker, whispered quietly words of comfort and honor. Yansumi and Kismet hugged and wept. I cannot remember what I said when it was my turn, as I was very busy trying to remember what everyone else was saying and doing so I could tell Kismet about it later.

Rev. Ava's voice arose, gently, and the hips in the room started to sway, "She changes everything She touches and everything She touches changes..." We slowly circled Kismet, each woman in attendance offering her a blessing, a bow, an act of homage as we chanted, "Bast-Kismet, Kismet-Bast!"

Kismet offered a few heartfelt words, quietly through her sobs from a place deep within, "I have had such a hard life. I used to hate the Goddess for taking my son and for all of my pain, but coming to CAYA and my sisters changed all that. I love Bast. She has healed me."

Kismet's tears WERE so healing on that day, for all of us. I feel it safe to say that for many who love Kismet, we still do not always know what to say to her, or how. Truly, what words can possibly be comfort for the losses and pain Kismet has suffered in her life? What polite response could possibly convey the raw realness of this journey she is on? But in Ava's ever-present wisdom, she gave us a great gift of "permission to speak freely." And acknowledging that a life can be well-lived, full of lessons and joy amidst the pain, was Bast's great gift to Kismet and to us all. Isn't this consistent with Bast's message in Her rites at Bubastis? "Cast off your pain, toil, and woe, even just for today. Cast off your roles, responsibilities and accomplishments, and revel in the music of being alive!"

And so, after the tears, we reveled. We sang songs of joy. We laughed. Kismet's soul blossomed with a new peace, a new presence. Bast-Kismet, Kismet-Bast.

Getting in the car for our 7-hour ride home. We were all stunned and throbbing from this powerful weekend, this revolutionary ceremony. Rev. Ava kissed me good-bye. "No words," she said. We bowed our retreat, ensouled with the vibrancy of the Temple once more.

In the car, riding home, Brenda said, "I'm thinking about how there will be women who will only ever know of that Goddess as Kismet-Bast, and how when Kismet is gone we will bring offerings to her at the Temple." I said, "There will be women who cannot for the life of them understand why we bring offerings of cigarettes and pink hair dye to the Temple!" And we laughed and cried again. And said, "But not today."

A few days later, we had a Ritual Service planning meeting for CAYA. Kismet was feeling up to it, so she came to the meeting. I walked out of my office in time to hear her saying, "I don't understand why y'all aren't bowing and getting me stuff. I AM a Goddess, now, after all." Kismet- to me you have been a Goddess all along.

In my personal view of the Divine, this is how it works: if we do not remember the gods, they die for lack of attention. Perhaps they wither off and become skinny spectres. When we revere them, they become full and juicy on our adoration, and the energetic current of co-creation is palpable in the connection. If they become too engorged with power, they can get demanding and unreasonable. If they get hungry, they can be sullen. Just like humans. In my cosmology, the whole Universe is a grand experiment in the co-creative power of a shared illusion between various states of being, and our decisive choices and view inform our reality. Thus, believing in gods makes them real. And the more real they are to us, the more real we are to them. If it is mutually chosen, the connection between spirit of a person and an actual person can be retained in relationship, as an ancestor, as a deity, as a tutelary spirit, as an imaginary friend. Call it what you will, but all of them rely on a particular type of belief feeling that doesn't have a precise name and transcends all cultures. When we Amazons watched our sister Kismet become a Goddess at the Temple, I had that nameless feeling. A Goddess was created in our midst, in realtime. It happened. I know this to be true, 100%. Why? Because we decided it was so. And so it is. And here I am, now, telling the story. That is how myths begin.

Hail, Bast-Kismet, Kismet-Bast!

Part I: All Hail, Duat Ka Neit Kismet!

2011-12-07T08:19:00.000-08:00

There is no pretty or delicate way to explain this first part, so I am just going to say it: my beloved friend Kismet is dying. Not today, not tomorrow, and hopefully not for a long time. And no one actually knows how long they have to live, even given best possible health. But Kismet has a complex array of health issues, and these issues will lead to her eventual passing from bodily form into spirit form.

I have known that Kismet was dying from the day I met her. Her then-husband (bless him for what he did that was good and bless him for getting the hell out of the way when he needed to) half-carried her into my store four years ago where we had an interview to see if she qualified to train with me for ordination in the Amazon Priestess Tribe. She was thin, thin, thin, and weak of body, and exhausted of spirit. She had been through serious trauma in her life, had suffered profound loss, had experienced tremendous physical, psychic, and spiritual anguish. She hated the Goddess, was mad as hell about it all, and told me so. She was outwardly composed (in true Virgo fashion), but I could see there was a lot of power, rage, and an iron will inside her.

If I had been a more experienced Initiator at that time, I might have looked at all this data, seen the writing on the wall, and said, "I think you are very magical, but I am not certain you are up to the rigors of this training and I do not feel comfortable assuming the liability of your care in case this gets to be too much for you." I am so glad I did not have that "Cover My Ass" sensibility at that time, because I do not regret one second of this journey.

The Goddess spoke to me during that meeting in Her firm, ineffable way. A deep knowing arose. "This woman is going to teach you some very important lessons. And yes, she is your responsibility. And yes, you will be with her till the end. And yes, she will be trained as a high priestess." Sitting there, looking across the table at this tiny, broken bird, some little truth lodged itself in my heart like a package yet to be opened. And then it was all decided and Kismet became an Initiate with the Tribe.

During the year of training that followed, I learned many things about Kismet. She is a brilliant ritualist with a skillful sense of the group's energy. She is hysterically funny. She has a certain kind of luck that affords her fantastic adventures and experiences. She is wise and mysterious. She can trance out and aspect a Goddess like nobody's business. She is an excellent researcher. She is an artful, poetic writer. She is outrageously beautiful. She relishes an assignment. When she loves you, she loves you completely.

Oh yeah, and she's also HELL. ON. WHEELS.

If I had been a more experienced Initiator, I might have had some kind of protocol prepared for someone who carries so much pain and anger at the Goddess. I did not. Instead, I was pretty much bowled over on a number of occasions by the stuff that came out of Kismet's mouth. But together, Kismet and I found our way. She was willful, brash, and irreverent as a student. She would dive headlong into a fight. She told me she thought the Buddhism I cherish as a blessing was "too depressing." Her e-mail signature is, "My mouth is my chalice. My tongue is my sword." And she is not kidding! Such a shit-talker, this one! Ooh, we've had some real doozies! Reining that sword in and keeping it sheathed was my full-time job as her teacher. During her initiation year and the service year afterwards, Kismet and I spent a lot of time going back and forth about graciousness, peaceful self-expression, and how to (pleasefortheloveofallthatisholy) not piss me or her other sisters off. She has an e-mail folder called, "Rabbit: The good, the bad and the ugly," where she has saved some of our more flavorful correspondences. I have a mental folder called, "Kismet," with yellow tape all around it and a sign that says, "Do not put your hands into the cage. The management does not assume responsibility for what happens if you do."

During her initiation year, Kismet came back around to loving the Goddess. Of course she did, because the Goddess IS love, and opening to love after pain is one of the hardest lessons She teaches us. A long time ago I heard the phrase, "Hate is only misplaced love." I know it to be true, seeing Kismet's path. Once she woke back up to the love and joy and pleasure and sisterhood of the Goddess, Kismet really started to blossom. She dyed her hair pink. She started cracking badass jokes. She told me funny stories about being a casino card dealer. The things that had angered her and made her sad took on a new meaning as life lessons and sources of strength. She became more quietly authoritative. She opened up more about her true feelings. She laughed and smiled more. She dedicated her High Priestesshood to Bast at the time of her ordination. She gained confidence, she pushed through, her demeanor and overall mood dramatically improved. Her health, unfortunately, did not.

Over this past year, Kismet has dealt with some of the worst physical pain and some of the most ridiculous healthcare situations one can imagine, including gross negligence from several Kaiser Permanente doctors. Her medications have been all over the place, her pain levels sky-high. She was actually told by the chronic pain management clinic at Kaiser that they wouldn't see her anymore because she's just in too much pain and there is nothing they can do about it. It took them three months to figure out that her alarmingly high blood sugars were the result of some ridiculously inattentive medical staff ordering her the non-diabetic formula of her intravenous medical food. Ingredient number one: high fructose corn syrup. Grr. She lost a lot of weight- weight she could not really stand to lose. She lost a lot of hope- hope she could not really stand to lose.

Watching all of this unfold has been difficult...and I can only imagine how much more difficult it has been for the people even closer to Kismet on a daily basis: Yansumi, her primary caregiver and another Tribe member, her son Dakota. And even the indomitable Kismet, always ready with a wisecrack, has been pretty depressed these past few months. Yet in this time, despite all the pain and the anger and the hopelessness, Kismet has also be growing in a certain nobility. She can summon this tremendous poise at times that is so ethereal. The spectre of Death sobers us all, and invites us to greet Her with dignity. It's such a paradox, because in many ways, Death is excruciatingly undignified. It can have us literally shitting our drawers and screaming like babies because we are afraid. Yet, the moments of peace that are equally possible in Death bear a gravitas that is unparalleled.

I count on my friends to be my teachers, and they fulfill that role admirably. From Ladybug, as our first Tribe member to be pregnant, I learned about birth and motherhood. From Iris, I learn about self-worth. From Grey, I learn how to activate my goals. From Rowan, I learn patience. From Raven, I learn commitment.

Kismet is teaching me about living and dying. Perhaps I ought to say, in watching Kismet's inexorable march toward death, I am learning to value all life more fully. Staying present with Kismet in life all the way, and helping Kismet to stay present in life all the way, is a gift. Enjoying Kismet's life (and may it be long!) is a gift. She is an amazing friend. She is a wonderful High Priestess. She is a crazy wisdom teacher. I give thanks for her life.

It disturbs me how many people carry regret about not having said the things that needed said. We get shy. We feel insecure. We don't know how to talk about hard things. We get scared. We mumble about what ought to be sung and shouted. In my brief life thus far, I have known many, many dear people who died. Death has been a longtime associate of mine. I learned early on to just go ahead and say the real thing, right now, because there are no guarantees that I will have another chance. In this spirit, I write this now, even though I know that it might be more traditional to wait until Kismet passes to do so. Bollocks on that. If I wait, she won't get to read it. My words will not be there to comfort her in her fleshly incarnation. She will not get to revel in knowing that she is famous to me. Now, reading this, let there be no shadow of a doubt that I adore her and respect the full, bloody, beautiful truth that is her life. That I will celebrate her and honor her for all my days. That she is a Goddess to me.

Kismet-Bast, all hail!
Duat Ka Neit Kismet, all hail!
I love you.

Deity through the Looking Glass

2011-12-05T15:04:00.001-08:00

Below, this catchy little (koan? Poem? Ditty?) that has been swirling around in my mind all afternoon basically represents the most distilled points of every religion I have ever studied or practiced, through my own humble lens, of course. I'm a curious student rather than an authoritative scholar, so your mileage may vary.

All Some One None

The All is always the All
And sometimes some are the sum.
The One is usually you,
And None is everything, too.

Confidential to Thelemites: go ahead and substitute AL for All and Nun for None at your pleasure.

11-11-11: Order & Chaos

2011-11-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

Gentle reader: please note that this post is purely in reference to the 11:11, 11/11/11 phenomenon, and is only coincidentally also posted on Veterans Day. Check out my 10/27/11 post and watch this space on 11/11/12 when I post more specific and thoroughly-researched info and perspectives on the sacred nature of Veterans Day. While I honor and regard highly the sacrifices and contributions of our Veterans this day and every day, I have reserved today to specifically address the singular phenomenon of numerical coincidence the date/timestamp offers us.

Happy 11/11/11! I know it's silly. I know it's a late and superficial calendar that assigns this day its supposed specialness. I know that the only reason it's exciting is because of the advent of the digital age, where time stamp appearance matters. I know that in the great progression of actual time, today has no more significance than any other...

...but it's magic. It's magic BECAUSE so many people say it is so. It is magic because all over the world children of all ages are sitting by clocks every hour in wonder, waiting for the moment when the clock flips to 11:11 so that they can indulge in the urban myth that says they get to make a wish. For those of us raised in the digital age, this urban myth is a fat quarter in the patchwork quilt of our modern magic. I texted my niece and sister in NY this morning: "We've waited our whole lives for today! Make a wish!" I orchestrated my day, and begged Albert to stay home with me so we can be together and kiss at the appointed hour. I am completely aware of my folly here. And I love it. Today is BUILT FOR wonder, and I shall have a second helping, please.

Why, exactly, do so many people feel drawn to the 11:11, 11/11/11 phenomenon? Numerology? Mystical messages from our angels? The aqe of Aquarius, with all its fancy gadgets?

For me, it's stupid simple. I like the idea of 11:11, 11/11/11 because it looks orderly. That's it. It is extremely soothing to my mind to think of all those ones lined up neatly in a row. My life is filled with circles and spirals and fireworks and fractals. I love, that for this one moment in time, all will appear to be in utter order for a change.

Orderliness is one of the ephemeral dragons that I witness people battling, or one of the mystical unicorns that I see people seeking, every day. Some folks fight order. "I'm just not the cat who colors inside the lines, man." Yes, I hear that. I'm a button-pusher-bell-ringer-string-puller from way back. At the other end of the spectrum, some people are tired of being dutiful to order, and they struggle to give themselves permission for spontaneity. "I just feel like I've been so damned GOOD for so long, I'm ready to break out and do my own thing! But I don't know how anymore." I don't have that problem, though I know it exists. I have helped many clients over the years joyfully "bust out" of daily routines and make their lives juicier with some well-positioned creative chaos. "Hot mess" is one of my specialties in my tarot practice: both cleaning up after it and helping launch it, as needed.

But truth be told, I crave order in my own life. After spending my formative years eschewing order, I now have to fight for it- a clean living room, all the laundry and dishes done, cat litter scooped, bills paid on time, bed made, affairs tidy, relationships in full accord, healthy, my beloved and I having the same night off to cuddle up together- all at the same time? Order: oh, what a unicorn you are! Will all those ones please line up neatly on my digital clock for just a minute and let me get a whiff of order?

I can easily see how the current political climate is a process involving "order" and "chaos", with the tensions between "Officials" and "Occupiers" (my inner English teacher clutches her pearls and screams, "No! OCCUPANTS! For the love of all that is holy! Let us have a grammatically correct revolution, please!") The police/mayor/pundit/political candidate/newscaster says, "Now, now we can't just have you all here in a big disorderly encampment, eating donated food together and peeing in public and making art and love, fighting among yourselves, figuring it out, praying, chanting, re-purposing stuff, and making demands. No, no, this just won't do. Everyone, please get hold of yourselves and go back to your little boxes of houses and boxes of apartments and boxes of social classification so we can get on with business as usual. What? You won't do it? We'll MAKE YOU."

Meanwhile, the Occupants are saying, "Hey, we are in the midst of evolving an entire socio-political economic structure over here, using consensus methods. It's not pretty or easy, but it's working! We've got a bunch of shit to do in order to unfuck the system. And it's pretty important, in our experience, that there be witnesses to our process as it unfolds. Can you please just back off and try not to be evil for five minutes or something? Better yet, join us!"

So what happens? Things escalate, get violent, bubble up and over, calm down again. Lather, rinse, repeat. For thousands of years of human history, actually. None of this is new. And for you Battlestar Galactica fans out there, you know the quote I'm thinking of right now. (If you're not a fan yet, I highly recommend it. If you can make it through the second season, there is a payoff, I promise.)

And then, in the midst of the back-and-forth, a miraculous synchronicity emerges. Extremists on both sides begin to reduce what is going on here to an age-old, epic battle story, deeming themselves as "good" and the other side as "evil."

But I daresay this is not a battle of good versus evil. In fact, this is not a binary situation at all. It is nothing more or less than the birth of a new world, born of the conflict between the existing binary systems in place. In the existing world, the order of things has broken down and must be replaced with a new system, which in time will break down only to be replaced, and so on. It is the march of evolution. Life, death, rebirth. We pagans mark this in an annual wheel of the year. We mark it in our individual lives as the wheel of life. But it is within a much, much larger wheel- the wheel of evolution. It is the transformation of caterpillar into butterfly. It is sperm meeting egg inside of a viable host, and a new life beginning. All parts are necessary. Hard as it may be to swallow, we actually really do need all hands on deck to be asking the exact questions they are asking and holding the exact perspectives they are holding and generally doing EXACTLY what they are doing right now (though we COULD feasibly do this without excessive violence) in order to birth this new world. The sperm MUST fight amongst themselves on their way to the egg, the egg MUST be a diva who may or may not aquiece to any offer, and the womb of creation MUST (in at least a metaphorical sense, if not literally) be a bloody mess in order for life to go on. Revolution, at all levels and on all sides, is very life-affirming. Life is created in the physical revolution that happens between two bodies.

When our universe came into existence, the big bang theory posits, all the matter we now know of and do not know of was condensed into some framework that manifested (for whatever reason) an explosion. From UMich website: "This occurance was not a conventional explosion but rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other. The Big Bang actually consisted of an explosion of space within itself unlike an explosion of a bomb were fragments are thrown outward. The galaxies were not all clumped together, but rather the Big Bang lay the foundations for the universe."

What I get from that, and what I believe to be true from studying astronomy, is that the planets did not simply fly outward and then neatly arrange themselves into their order and orbits. Over time, particles evolved into planets and orbits emerged in an agreed-upon natural order under what later came to be known as Newtonian law. In fact, space has never been and is NOT orderly as a whole, though various systems align themselves into quasi-order for the sake of functionality around a sun, or a black hole, or another mega-event that awakens notice in the fabric of spacetime.

What is the event around which we can then arrange ourselves and formulate a new world order? Yes, I said it. Whether we like that loaded terminology or not, that is what is happening. Right now we desperately need the creative chaos of the Occupy movement. We need the people gathering in the streets and loving and hating and fucking and raging and collaborating and forming strategic, messy alliances. The awakening of the 99% is the Big Bang of our times. But what is the new order that will emerge to satisfy the rest of the population that rises up in terror at all chaos of this synergy? What new order will provide the equal and opposite reaction to balance out the explosion of possibility? Will it be that all beings in this country, on this Earth, agree to learn consensus process and adhere to it? Will it be an outward global domination launched by the 1%? Will it be a state of anarchy (which, despite claims to the contrary, almost always still arranges itself into some form of order)? The mind boggles with the vastness of these questions.

When I hit this point in my own thinking, I might lie awake all night long, quaking. In my better moments, I remember that I do not actually need to have all the answers to all these questions, myself. The Universe already has the answers, in its chaotic order, its orderly chaos. All I need to do is to stay awake in my own creativity, and to attempt to bring a wholesome order to my own affairs. All I need to do is observe and protect the wheels of life, of the seasons, of the Earth, of time, to the best of my ability. Part of my own plan is to make a wish at 11:11, 11/11/11- in a scant few moments! I intend to wish that my own affairs align themselves brilliantly in creative potential and sustainable order of operation. Then I intend to make that wish a reality on as many levels as I can.

My Coven, CAYA, recently recorded ourselves singing our annual Samhain song so potential attendees of our ritual could watch it ahead of time and be able to participate more fully. Each year, I write a new song for us that reflects what I have downloaded in my own oracular visions of the future. Here is a link to us singing this year's song, a song about finding common ground with all, opening to love in its fullest possible way, and being the change we wish to see in the world. Enjoy! And hey, at 11:11, 11/11/11...go ahead. Make a wish. Then make it come true.

In Memory: Congetta

2011-10-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

My mother sent this note to my sister and me a year ago:

"In 1984 when Poppa died, Memere and I planted flowers at his grave on Memorial Day weekend. I don't know if you both were there that year when we planted the flowers but you came to visit the grave with me. While you were wandering about looking at the tombstones you found two that bothered you. One was in the row in front of Poppa's grave to the left. There was a little tan brick laid on top of a grave with the name Amanda Maddren written on it in marker. You wondered if perhaps it was the grave of a little child or baby and the parents had no money for a stone. In the front row of that section of the cemetery, there was a stone with the name Congetta Thompson. She was born in 1932 and died in 1943. You were both so sad that a little 11 year old girl died. And you were both bothered that those two graves had no flowers. To sooth your feelings we got flowers and put them at both graves. Every year after, we placed flowers at the graves when I went to put them at Dad's grave. After a few years, the little brick was gone and I was no longer sure where it had been. However I continued to place flowers at Congetta's grave each year. I have done this for 26 years. I did so again this year.
I have always wondered about those two people and I have done many computer searches to no avail. Today I went to the office at the cemetery and asked about the two graves. It turns out that Amanda Maddren was not a child but an 84 year old lady from Portville. She was buried in 1959 and apparently someone wanted her remembered in 1984 and put that little brick there. The situation surrounding Congetta was a bit more mysterious. There was no person named Congetta Thompson in the cemetery. However, in that grave was buried an 11 year old girl named Congetta Bartolotto. The office manager was able to tell me that Congetta died of pneumonia and that she lived on Tompkins Street in Olean.

I went to the Olean Library and looked up obituaries. I did not find one for Amanda but did find Congetta's. Here it is:

Olean Girl Died Wednesday

Congetta Elizabeth Bartolotto died Wednesday evening (October 13, 1943) at the home of Mrs. Lenora Harris, 326 1/2 Tompkins St., with whom she made her home. She was born at Swains, New York, April 7, 1932, and had lived in Olean for nine years. Besides her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Bartolotto, she is survived by one brother, Lewis. She attended St. Mary's Academic School. The body was removed to the Halwig Funeral Home where prayer services will be held Saturday Morning (October 16, 1943) at eight-thirty o'clock and at St. Mary of the Angels Church at nine o'clock. Burial will be in St. Bonaventure Cemetery.

So part of the mystery is solved but we still don't know the story why Congetta did not live with her parents and why her tombstone has a different last name and the date of death is one day off. I'm guessing that the stone was placed later on and the date was not remembered well.
I guess retirement gives me the opportunity to clear up things I've wondered about for 26 years.

Thank you both for the many years that you accompanied me to the cemetery to plant flowers and for the concern that you both had for two little abandoned graves.

Love,

Mom"

I was nearly 11 when I stumbled across this grave. I remember sitting there for a long time chipping the lichen off the flat little headstone so it would be clean. I remember planting flowers each year. I remember playing in the graveyard with you, Congetta. You might say that I practiced Ancestor reverence long before I knew what it was. Isn't that true of so many of us in paganism? We can look back and say, "Oh hey, look. This was with me all along."

Two years ago, I visited Congetta's grave on one of my East Coast pilgrimages, and there was a little statue of a human girl and an angel girl praying together. My mom said, "Strangest thing. I found this statue on the ground in front of the grave, broken into three pieces, after the snow melted last year. I don't know who put it there, but I took the pieces home, your father glued it back together, and we put it back on the grave." Congetta's gift to us.

Congetta: you have been an Ancestress in the care of my family for as long as I can remember. We met when I was 11, and you will always be 11- it was the year before my breasts and bleeding, a year of powerful Maiden energy for me, and you were there. We both attended St. Mary's Academy. You died on the 13th, and I perform magic honoring the Queen of the Dead on the 13th of each month. These are the coincidences I know, and there are likely others I don't. Although you have not chosen to reveal all of the answers to the many mysteries surrounding your death, I have always found your presence in my life a comfort and a joy. I keep a vial of your graveyard dirt on my ancestral altar, and I remember you in all sacred ceremonies for the dead, as I will again tonight at our Samhain ritual. Thank you for being friend to a weird little girl who liked to play with the dead in cemeteries at the age of 11. Thank you for being the friend to that same little girl who is timeless within me, still playing in cemeteries. I remember you this season and every season with love.

Ritual for Justice

2011-10-27T06:36:00.001-07:00

I am so moved by the Occupy events happening in Oakland and beyond. I stand with those who are literally occupying public areas in the first of what looks to be many pushes over the next year toward liberation of our nation's resources from the hands of very few who have created systems that deny many of us access to attaining a financial level equal to their own for the sake of limiting our power.

Last night, I mustered a small group of friends and Coven-mates (Iris, Firefly, Kian, and Viking Queen) and we offered a ritual in the labyrinth at Lakeside park in Oakland. We walked the labyrinth to its center singing one of my heart songs: "Mother of darkness, won't you guide us through the labyrinth to the truth? Mother of darkness, won't you carry us through the chaos to the truth?" At the center of the labyrinth, we offered individual prayers and blessings upon the city and the occupiers.

Then we began to raise a chant: "This land is holy land. It is holy because of what is happening upon it. These people are holy people. They are holy because of what is happening to them. Our voices are holy voices. They are holy because of what we are saying." (Note: I believe, as a practitioner of Tantra, that all is holy at all times. However, I came up with this chant as a way of really rooting the power of the sacred in what is a largely secular movement.) This chant morphed into a chant for, "Peace, justice, freedom for all! Peace, justice, freedom for all!"

We walked, chanting, the short distance from the labyrinth down to Lake Merritt, which houses the spirit of Oakland's Oshun (in my practice). We chanted, spoke prayers, sang into Her sacred, weedy waters, asking Her to rise from the Lake, shaking Her bracelets. We asked Her to rise and protect Her city and its just residents. We invoked Her power of healing as well as Her warrior power to be present to whatever degree was most needed. We sang some more, and the water birds and geese pulled in tightly around us, clustering in their flocks and listening.

I had written on red, white, and blue candles, "May peace prevail, may liberty prevail, may justice prevail." We ignited these and they are now burning in the Community Altar at The Sacred Well.

I intend to continue to support social justice in Oakland, the US and the world magically for as long as needed. I will definitely arrange more of these workings as necessary. I'd be interested to hear what your justice workings or magic on behalf of social change look like, as well.

American Sabbats

2011-10-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

The 8 Sabbats in the traditional Wheel of the Year come down to neo-pagans from British Traditional Wicca as a mix-n-match set of not-very-accurately-reconstructed festivals from pre-Christian Celtic and Germanic celebrations of the seasonal equinoxes and solstices. I'm a huge fan of creativity in spiritual expression, so it doesn't bother me that these Sabbats as we now know them arrived late to the game and are mostly based on contemporary understandings and enactments of their ancient precursors. I observe these Sabbats with my own creative understanding and activities based on life, climate, and seasons here in Northern California, and I'm grateful at each turn (as an eclectic pagan) that I have the freedom to interpret them as I choose. Having this freedom of expression means that I get to enjoy celebrations that are timely, responsive to the needs of the moment, and diverse in articulation.

In our largely secular American culture, we do not tend to see a primary focus on the spiritual or religious elements of our holidays. Beyond getting a day off or having a good reason to dress up for a party, our holidays are mostly commercial events, with the notable exception of the Christians' Christmas. However, even when observed in the Christian Traditions, Christmas may also retain its secular celebration. Christmas-morning-presents-followed-by-Church go hand in hand in many (though not all) Christian households.

Now, I appreciate my secular holidays. I enjoy days off. I like getting dressed up for a party. But to me, being a High Priestess means that I am also regularly looking for opportunities to thoughtfully sanctify secular experience and use it as yet another opportunity to deepen my spiritual practice. To that end, a few years ago I began observing the following holidays as "American Sabbats":

New Year's
Martin Luther King, Jr Day
Valentine's Day
Memorial Day
Fourth of July
Labor Day
9/11
Indigenous Peoples' Day (known to some as Columbus Day)
Veteran's Day
Thanksgiving
Halloween

Sanctifying these holidays, for me, means that I really think about, research, and meditate on the meaning of each one. Why is each holiday a part of our culture? What are the main themes of each holiday? What are the traditional folkloric activities we perform around these days and where do they come from? What additional magical activities might we perform that would mesh with the holiday beneficially? What are the underlying questions these holidays bring up about American society, past and present? How can I celebrate these holidays with my community in an honoring and responsible way? How can I align myself with the great current of energy being directed at the spirit of each holiday by a large sector of American society in order to seed that current with magic for the greater good of all?

Over this next year, I plan to offer a series of workshops on the American Sabbats at my store, The Sacred Well, in Oakland. These events will be opportunities for interested individuals to gather, discuss the roots, customs and energetic nature of each holiday, and perform ceremony together to sanctify our observance of the holiday. I look forward to addressing the fun activities and traditions (carving pumpkins or watching fireworks), creating new understandings (investigating ways to render our holidays healthier, less costly, less indulgent, more meaningful) and engaging the challenging questions (How we can work with Indigenous Peoples' Day and the Thanksgiving holiday as a means to atone for the vicious colonization of this land and the treatment of Native Americans? How can we focus Labor Day toward creating justice in labor and wage conditions for all? How can we observe the lessons of 9/11 with respect for those who lost their lives and as a critical view of how the rhetoric of violence damages all cultures?)

I'll post more about these discussions and ceremonies here as each one comes up. I plan to start with New Year's and follow the secular American calendar. I'm really looking forward to this project as a way to locate my American-ness and my paganism in a shared pocket of consciousness.

PCon 2011 and the Rite of Lilith: The rest of the story

2011-10-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

The time has finally come for me to write down the entire story of what happened at PantheaCon 2011 and thereafter. I have spent the past several months wondering how to address this, musing over it, thinking about it, and practicing discernment about what I would share and with whom, in an effort to create greatest possible clarity while creating the most possible peace. In the end, at the encouragement of several Elders whom I respect, I am going to just offer complete transparency about this process of growth for me and CAYA Coven. This is long. If you stick with it, you will end up with a lot of really important information about the actual events of this past year from a firsthand source (me) who has been witness to many different pieces of the puzzle.

First, the backstory:

In 2007, I was ordained by Z Budapest in the Dianic Tradition. I have been, within my eclectic practice, engaged in Dianic circles since 2005, and I have been a feminist witch for my entire adult life. When I found my Dianic practice, it offered me a great deal of personal healing from past experiences, from body shame, from shame in my menstrual blood, and from fear of my power as a woman in a society that subtly and overtly conditions women to be fearful of power. The Dianic Tradition offered me a version of the Divine that looked like me, smelled like me, bled like me, and understood my worldview. I am deeply grateful for this work, as it helped me to grow in my confidence and personal sense of authority over my own life.

My journey from a personal practice in women-centered magic to High Priestesshood in the Dianic Tradition is another piece of data that bears explanation. Z Budapest has historically viewed ordination as the reward for work already completed, as opposed to an end destination for a series of classes. This is a crucial difference from other Mystery Traditions, which confer authority as a result of a period of study with a teacher. At the time I met Z, I had already founded CAYA Coven, and we had a membership of about 50 people. I was ordained on that basis, rather than as the result of taking a series of classes. I think it is important for me to share this, because many people have assumed that because I was ordained by Z, I was her student and am trained in her way of thinking. But to the contrary, Z has often made public and private statements to the effect that I arrived at her doorstep already trained, which is true. I trained myself, with hard work, study and first-hand experience in pagan leadership. I owe a lot to Z's books, to our friendship, and also to the books of many others, and to two significant teachers from my past whose names I do not release here because they maintain lives as private individuals. I do feel that I arrived at Z's doorstep ready to begin the lifetime journey of High Priestesshood, not as a student but as a colleague, friend, and one who enjoyed her writings in my formative years of the Craft.

Part of my commitment to lifelong learning about how to be an effective High Priestess has involved a strong amount of discernment about which policies, opinions, and practices of the Dianic Tradition best serve my worship of the Goddess, and which do not. When I look at the other Dianic High Priesteses in this lineage, I see a strong trend toward diversity. We are not all the same, we do not all share the same views, and we each bring our own flavor of practice to the Tradition. Not all of my Dianic colleagues practice the exact same way, above and beyond holding a central view of the Goddess as primary. Ask ten Dianics the same basic question about how we worship (or even if we would call it "worship"), and you'll get ten different answers. There is strength in that personalization. Though the difference of opinion can occasionally lead to conflict and disagreements, that seems natural in any living Tradition.

Fast forward to 2011: CAYA Coven has grown and now has some 500 members attending 6 different circles in two separate Covens in the Bay Area. I founded, and along with all other members, continue to develop the Wildflower Clergy Collective, which is our path of training in magical community service open via application to all women, men and those who wish not to identify based on gender who have completed our Dedicant classes and who are able to demonstrate the high level of preparedness and the supportive life environment we feel best befit the rigors of active service. We offer somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 circles per year, participate in several local community initiatives, and each have an extensive personal practice in addition to our public work. For 6 years now, we have welcomed all individuals to "Come As You Are" to our rites, and we mean it. We have enjoyed the company and presence of many individuals from diverse walks of life, paths, belief systems, and political backgrounds. Our Sabbats have always been open to all, regardless of gender, and our gender-focused full moon circles have always been open to all self-identified individuals, regardless of sex at birth. We have hosted transgender women and men in our Coven from the very beginning.

Within CAYA, there are also small, closed, invite-only affinity groups for the sake of specific personal work. These groups perform rituals and activities that they may or may not share with the public, as the groups see fit. These groups vary in theme. Some are gender-related, some are focused on other areas of personal development. One of these "inner court" groups is my Dianic lineage, the Amazon Priestess Tribe. This lineage is focused on the mysteries of the yoni, the woman's menstrual cycle as a lens for the life cycle, birth, croning, and personal healing. This Dianic group is a closed, safe, intimate place for the women in my Clergy to find, as I did, empowerment in our bodies just as they are. And it is/has been good work.

The Amazons, having attended numerous PantheaCon events and having witnessed and participated in many Dianic rites there, began proposing and offering Dianic rituals at PCon in 2009 with a rite to Artemis. In 2010 we offered a Dance of the 7 Veils. In 2011, we offered the Rite of Lilith. One key component of all the rituals the Amazons offer at PCon, and indeed all the rituals we do anytime, is that they are completely skyclad. We do not require all attendees to be entirely nude for our rites, but our priestesses are and it is strongly encouraged, as we feel there is a primal power in the naked female body that can be seen, heard, smelled, and felt in a visceral way when we gather to practice. We do not purport to be fully inclusive; we are not. However, we have chosen to share our rituals at places like PantheaCon in a spirit of generosity, without presumption. We do not think of our way as the only way nor even the best way. We are just sharing what we do with what we hope to be an enthusiastic population of fellow Dianic travelers at a large event where many different groups offer their practices to one another.

When I was writing the proposal for PCon 2011 about the Rite of Lilith, I made a crucial error in not specifying that this was a nude ritual designed for women. Although I used the terms "Amazon" and "skyclad" in my description of the rite, I take full personal responsibility that these terms are not universally clear. At the beginning of the rite, as we were figuring out some technical difficulties that caused a late start, I was approached by a member of PCon staff. He asked me if this was a rite for women, and I said yes. He replied that some men had gathered and wanted to attend, and would I please come and make an announcement about it. I agreed, and entered the hall where people were gathering. I saw that there were, indeed, men who were clearly dressed in men's clothing and who clearly live full-time as men waiting. I apologized for the delay, and also for the confusion. There was also one individual there whom I know personally, who does shift gender identity from time to time, and who was dressed that evening as a man. I said, "This is going to be a naked ritual for women. I am so sorry this was not clear in the program, but that is what it is. So, if you are not a woman, willing and able to be naked among other naked women, this is not the ritual for you. I appreciate that there is such wide interest here, and next year we will offer a more inclusive proposal. Thank you so much for understanding, and I am very sorry for any inconvenience." After I had made the announcement, we opened the doors and let anyone still in line enter the room. We did not check to make certain that all were cis-women (this, for those who might not know, is the more widely-accepted term for the phrase "woman-born-woman" which you may have heard in other contexts and which is considered offensive by many transgender people.) We did not ask any woman to remove more clothing than she was comfortable with. We believe there to have been at least one trans woman at the ritual, but we cannot be certain as she has never stepped forward amidst this conflict. Either way, we were prepared to host any woman who respectfully remained after I made the announcement.

Unbeknownst to me, several gender equality activists had pre-planned a protest at PantheaCon regarding the issue of gender-and-sex-exclusive spaces. Unbeknownst to me, this group had already contacted the Pagan Newswire Collective letting them know that they planned this action. Unbeknownst to me, they were outside protesting our ritual while we were figuring out our technical difficulties, and saying that we excluded trans women. THE AMAZONS HAVE NEVER TURNED A TRANS WOMAN AWAY AT THE DOOR OF ANY OUR RITUALS. We believe in personal integrity. We believe that in women's culture, if a woman sets a boundary about her preferences, other women will honor that boundary. We believe that if any woman is in need of healing and is prepared to participate respectfully, lovingly and kindly in a ritual for such, she should have it. We do not do penis-checks or pat-downs. WE DO ASK THAT ALL PARTICIPANTS AT AMAZON RITUALS BE ABLE TO BE NAKED AND ALLOW THEIR YONIS TO BE PRESENT IN THE RITUAL SPACE for the purpose of a particular type of visceral experience, much the same way others hearken to the witches rune and gather naked at their own rites for their own purposes. There are many women, both cis- and trans-, who struggle with public nudity. There are many women, cis- and trans-, for whom this type of ritual might be triggering. There are also many women, cis- and trans-, who do not feel called to this particular type of worship. We support thoughtfulness and personal responsibility in the matter of selecting the rituals that will be most personally helpful, creating the necessary boundaries for any specific type of work one feels called to do, and respecting the boundaries of others, whether we share those boundaries and agree with them or not.

Unbeknownst to me, at the same PantheaCon where we hosted our controversial ritual in a small, back-corner meeting room, there was a ritual happening upstairs in a main ballroom where any woman who was currently menstruating was not allowed to attend. Has that been mentioned, protested against, pointed out as cruel, violent, hateful, or unfair as often as our ritual has? No. In fact, it has barely come up. Apparently, it is not considered violent to make a woman stand aside due to her menstruation. Apparently, it is allowable to delineate space on the basis of biology if one practices some Traditions, but not others. Apparently, it is less offensive to exclude a bleeding woman than to celebrate her. Mind you, I respect this group's right to host a ritual that is authentic to their Tradition, even if it appears to be in direct conflict with one of my core spiritual beliefs in celebrating a woman's blood. I trust that there are many paths through this forest, and some of them are meant to remain Mysteries to me. However, I object to the disparity in public outrage that feels symptomatic of misogyny. [Editorial note: see comments section for an expanded view on this topic, thanks to Geoffrey.]

I think it is important to say here that I do not think the PantheaCon organizers or staff were at fault in any way for this incident. I imagine that the amount of angry correspondences they have received trumps mine by the hundreds, about this issue and any number of other issues that create strong emotions around this powerful event. I think the staff of PCon put together an amazing weekend with a truly awesome staff so that we can all enjoy ourselves and express ourselves. That is incredible, and I think it is a bargain at the admission price they charge for a Festival of this scope. I admire the fact that Glenn and her staff have managed to keep this event sustainable and strikingly diverse from year to year. I expressed an apology in an email to the PantheaCon staff after this all began to transpire, and I received a warm response that indicated they understand this to be a delicate situation, and they have handled many delicate situations over time. I really appreciate this Con, and its organizers, and its staff, having had countless positive experiences with many different members of the team. I am grateful that they chose this coming year's theme, "Unity in Diversity," with such responsiveness and care, and I look forward to seeing what programs get selected to iterate that theme.

After our ritual was over, the Amazons went about the rest of our Con as usual, attending workshops and rituals, socializing with friends from near and far, and enjoying ourselves. Unbeknownst to us, a storm was brewing and a meeting was held at which we were a primary focal point of the discussion due to our ritual and our request that the space be reserved for women's naked worship. At no point did a single organizer of that meeting seek us out, alert us that there were questions and issues that needed to be addressed, nor were we told that we were the cause of this stir. When Wendy Griffin appeared at that meeting, she asked the organizers why CAYA was not in attendance, and was told that "they could not find us to invite us."

I find that very difficult to believe. CAYA Coven usually occupies an entire wing of the hotel at PCon because we bring so many people. Literally, there are typically 50 of us there, wearing CAYA t-shirts, badges with our Coven's name on it, presenting rituals and workshops as CAYA members listed in the program. The main organizing staff at PCon knows many of us by name and face, and could easily have helped the meeting organizers find us had they been asked to do so. My business had a booth in the vendor room with my name attached to it that could have easily been found to give me a message to attend this meeting. There is absolutely no reason why anyone in the reasonably small DoubleTree building could not find one single one of us with the day's notice they had before this meeting. Instead, we were not invited to this meeting, where we would gladly have shared that we had turned no woman away from our ritual, that we were completely willing to engage in discussion about this topic, and that we would be happy to explain our approach to eclectic paganism as all-inclusive, meaning that even when conflicting views arise, we make space for them all and work through them together. Instead, by the time we were alerted that we were a major focal point of this meeting, it was almost over. And by the time the misreports of our "exclusionary ritual" hit the blogosphere and erupted in a huge game of Telephone, it was too late to counter fiction with fact in a way that even mattered to most. CAYA Coven was judged and sentenced without a fair trial in the minds of many people, all over the country, whether they knew us, spoke with us, had been in attendance at our ritual, or not.

And into this, Z arrived, and she came swinging. While I honor Z's many, many contributions to women's culture and feminine spirituality, I cannot condone speech that is filled with hate, neither against me nor on my behalf. I would not and have not communicated my opinions in those terms. I respect Z's right to hold whatever opinions, thoughts, and practices she chooses, and my expectation is that we are all given that freedom to do, think, speak, or feel as we choose. My reasons for creating specific sacred spaces are not merely rote from my Tradition; they are my own, and I believe each of us has the right to create our own sacred spaces as we wish.

When the Internet erupted, CAYA carefully worked on a statement that addressed our position and reflected our all-inclusive approach to this topic. Be warned- it is not bite-sized. We in CAYA Clergy all agreed that this was not a bite-sized issue, and that it deserved full explanation. For those who do not know, have not read that long statement, or who would prefer a quick view of its core: we hold the space, as a Coven, to respect each individual's right to worship exactly as he or she pleases and finds most rewarding. Full stop. We do not promise, nor attempt, to provide for all possible needs and every single possible practice with our limited capacity of volunteer Clergy. That would be impossible, though with sufficient growth in our population of mindful and magically-gifted individuals over time, we can easily see providing for a great many more needs. At this time, we do all we can to create safe spaces for a number of different types of practice in our 6 circles: public, private, gendered, non-gendered, multicultural and multi-focal, singular-in-focus and clearly-defined...each person in CAYA brings his or her own mix of ideas and practices to the table, and we work through the very real and sometimes difficult and always rewarding process of letting everyone come as they are, enjoy what we can offer if they want to, and find/make their own way in our community if it feels right to them. We do our best to create safe containers, and we don't do a lot of hand-holding beyond that point, because we're personal-responsibility-and-free-will-type people.

Of course, no one can please everyone, and both before and after CAYA issued our statement we received backlash. In the past year I have fielded dozens of e-mails calling me names, making wide assumptions of our practices or intent (often from people who know nothing about us and had not read our statement.) In one case, we were told we were "a bunch of self-righteous breeders who worship our wombs." In two incidences, I was sent death threats and in others, threats of violence, a la "one of these days we'll cross paths and then you'll get what's coming to you." It was really painful and disconcerting to be threatened with death and violence as someone's idea of justice for a situation that did not actually occur the way it was reported. It bespoke, to me, a massive appropriation of the violent rhetoric of patriarchal domination. "If you don't give me what I want, I'll hurt or kill you." Isn't that the battle cry of the rapist, the colonizer? This has no place in the kind of civil discourse I strive for, teach, and pray for on a regular basis.

Further, even after we issued our statement, in a still-kind-of-unbelievable situation, I was called in to the Berkeley City Council chambers in May by my councilman, Kris Worthington. Ironically, I have voted for this man in the past several City Council elections because I admire his bold and radical approach to local politics. Why was I called in to chambers? Because The Pagan Alliance had chosen to honor me as their 2011 Keeper of the Light in acknowledgement of my local efforts to be of support to the pagan community. He was trying to decide if he would pull the permits for their entire Festival the day before the event due to an unsubstantiated and unresearched complaint that I was a transphobic individual who was hosting exclusionary rituals on city property. He lectured me for the better part of a half hour about how important it is for us to accept the self-definition of all people(a position I wholeheartedly support), all the while using terms like "women-born-women" in his lecture (demonstrating that he was not actually as well-read in this area as he proclaimed to be). I explained to Mr. Worthington that all of CAYA's rituals were open to all, and that the Amazon rituals were actually performed in the nude as privately-organized, invitation-based religious events for women. I explained that CAYA had hosted trans women in our public rituals from the beginning, but reserved the right for any internal group to have private events around whatever criteria we felt most appropriate. I explained that our Amazon Mysteries surrounded the yoni and menstrual cycle, and that having both of these things was the pre-qualifier for entry into our private events. He said, "Oh." I asked him if he had visited our web site and read our statement on this subject after receiving this misinformation about me and my Coven. He said, "No." I said, "I am fairly certain that I am within my rights to A) practice my religion as I see fit in the United States of America, and B) offer invitation-based events on private property delineating any boundaries I choose that are within the scope of legal activities. What I am not certain of, Mr. Worthington, is if you are actually within your legal rights to have me here without doing the research to substantiate or dispel this complaint against me, or to pull the permits on this Festival without any proof that I have engaged in trans-phobic or hateful activities, which I have not." He said, "Weeelllll, sometimes people get angry without knowing all the facts." I said, "Tell me about it." and left. I really appreciate that Kris Worthington is outspoken and supportive of each and every person's right to self-define. I agree. I do wish, as I often wish with politicians, that he had checked his facts first.

The next day, the Festival was beautiful. I worked magic for this: that everyone in attendance would really be able to fully enjoy a lovely day of being pagan together. Even in the relatively liberal Bay Area, there are many folks whose jobs or other obligations keep them in the broom closet. Events like these are crucial for community building, and represent a rich Interfaith experience for all. I was informed that the Pagan Alliance had to provide extra funds for extra police presence, since I had received death threats. There were also threats that protesters would show up at the event which was now being billed in certain circles as a transphobic event (despite the fact that The Pagan Alliance is an organization committed to all forms of civil equity for all pagans, and Transgender SF, The Fellowship of the Spiral Path, and Circle of Dionysus were main supporters of the event, each of which holds a commitment to gender diversity and specifically commitment to trans issues at the core of their organization.) I, and CAYA are members of Fellowship of the Spiral Path, and we are supporters of the Circle of Dionysus. My partner and I performed music with the Circle of Dionysus at the Festival that day with 2 other CAYA members and several other CoD members. It ended up, after all that pre-fear, being a wonderful day. I received the Keeper of the Light sacra from previous KoL joi wolfwomyn, an outspoken, genuis, down-to-Earth trans-identified activist, a devoutly irreverent Discordian, and local/national witch-about-the-world who offers wisdom with humor and a heaping dose of reality. joi and I rode in the parade together with previous Keepers of the Light M. Macha NightMare, Don Frew, and Max Dashu. joi was dressed in a glittering tuxedo, I was in a white dress. We looked like a crazy wedding cake topper. Members of my Coven marched in the parade as well, wearing rabbit ears. Laughter really is the CAYA way, and the best medicine.

By this time, The Pagan Alliance was already planning their Conference on Gender and Paganism, which CAYA sponsored, provided volunteers for, and at which we offered a Ritual of Radical Forgiveness that I had written. I spent the summer pondering many different challenging questions: how could I ethically deal with a pagan community where death threats and unsubstantiated rumor were unfolding? How could I find ways to create a spiral of good in this situation that benefited all parties? How could I generate what I felt to be the correct energy of compassion, vulnerability, and openness for truly heartfelt discussion to be shared? How could I uphold my own commitment to providing sacred space for all, on their own terms, in the face of pressure from both gender equality activists and fellow Dianics to shut out the other side's needs? From these questions, I created this ritual and offered it. I also posted the outline and an explanation of it here on my blog. My good friend Ava Park of the Goddess Temple of Orange County has a phrase she uses in her teachings that I appreciate as a High Priestess. "Lead like water," she says, "always seeking the lowest point, the most natural channel."

In an effort to lead like water, I offered public apology for my error in describing the intended audience for the Rite of Lilith, and for any trouble or harm it has caused, in any direction or at any time, whether intended or otherwise. I also offered heartfelt forgiveness to all who had threatened me, called me names, or caused harm to me as a way to centralize healing for all. I did my magical best to create a wave of good. I stand by this ritual, its intention, and its enactment as the right thing to do. It was, in fact, the only thing I felt appropriate. Many different individuals from that event expressed their appreciation for it. Many who have denounced it were not present, so how would they know?

I am only now, on the other side of that magical and energetic shift, feeling ready to write this story down in its entirety. I have spent the past six months working through: working through the morass of public misinformation, working through challenging questions around my personal practices, working through anger toward those who wished me harm, working through resentment at those who sent private letters of support but never stepped up to support me publicly, working through the sadness of being denounced within certain segments of my Tradition for even entertaining the question of transgender women and men in consensual Dianic spaces, working through the bitterness of watching others expand their personal public relations and media presence by denouncing my Coven (again, most of whom have never attended a single one of our events or rituals). There was a lot of suffering in that working through. I believe that suffering tends to spill over onto others if not carried mindfully, and I have done my best to just minimize harm rather than lash out or get too fully into the mix in anger. Because I truly believe that solves nothing. I have been successful in my personal restraint more often than I have not, and I count that as growth.

So, where am I now, and where is CAYA now? CAYA proposed three rituals for PantheaCon 2012: one all-inclusive and two for self-identified men and women, respectively. The Amazons proposed one ritual: a naked ritual for women. I proposed one on my own: a devotional to Yeshe Tsogyal, one of the ancestresses in my personal pantheaon. I also proposed, along with Devin Hunter,a pan-Dianic, all-inclusive ritual for anyone who wants to experience the Dianic perspective of Goddess-as-Whole-and-Complete-Unto-Herself. I feel like we flung a bunch of possibilities toward the staff of PCon for the sake of greatest diversity, and I trust that they will figure out what fits best into mix, if any of them at all. If you plan to be there, and we have been accepted, consider giving CAYA rites a try even if you've been mad at us this whole time. You really stand to lose nothing by coming to see for yourself who we are and what we do.

As for me, I have deepened in my personal practices as a result of this experience. I am solidly continuing to acknowledge my long-held belief that every single person has the right to worship as they choose, whether I am interested, included, or not. And I am continuing to provide as many different types of ritual spaces as I am able, to meet the widest variety of needs.

May these words prove to be a source of goodness and benefit, and if they are lacking in any way, let that fall upon me. If there be any merit, it is because of the guidance of my divine indwelling spirit, and I am grateful. Blessed be.

Wild Geese

2011-10-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to the familiar voices of my sisters as they passed overhead, winging their way in V-formation across the sky, signaling the change of seasons. As I, too, am migrating (admittedly only a short distance from Berkeley to Alameda), I feel closer than ever to my totems as they answer their inner call to get a move on. Answering that restlessness is natural to them. For me, it requires much more agonizing.

I first read the beautiful poem below, written by Mary Oliver, two years ago. I have a recording of Meryl Streep reciting it as a guest on Prairie Home Companion in my phone, and recently I have found it encouraging to share with a few of my clients and friends. It's a highly unorthodox moment for me, in the middle of a reading, to say to a client, "Would you mind if I go get my phone and play you this poem? I feel it encapsulates what I am trying to say to you." Everyone has loved it, and everyone I have shared it with has taken away their own meanings from it. This morning, it came to mind as I lay in bed in my new home, listening to their cries, having finally turned in the keys to the Hobbit House last night.

Albert and I burned a last fire at my former hearth and released a great deal of past magic. Then he left and I burned the broom brush and broke the handle, sprayed gardenia water to cleanse the place and leave it fresh and ready to be filled with a new spirit, called to my dead cats to come with me. Gathered myself up from each and every corner, thanked each and every room for its fulfillment of function, and, sobbing, closed the door and walked down the brick-and-stone path one last time. Being in the thrall of nostalgia is excruciating, and my ongoing mindfulness practice around observing my emotions is weak in ways that I see bear further work.

On the other hand, I got home last night and my handsome, loving, nurturing partner was waiting with open arms, comfort, and readiness for our next steps together. I am so happy about this move. I love our new space. I am delighted that my life is unfolding down this new path. And I also grieve in the interstices of change for what I leave behind. Do the geese yearn for this pond or that greenway of their past? Or do the places they have grazed, slept and mated all just blend together in their memories like the landscape flashing by in a blur?

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver

Outline: Ritual of Radical Forgiveness

2011-09-28T09:48:00.000-07:00

At the Pagan Alliance's recent conference on Gender and Paganism, CAYA Coven offered a Ritual of Radical Forgiveness as one way of creating atonement and accord around our complex approach to handling gender-selective spaces. This is but one of many steps we have taken in the past year toward harm reduction around this issue. Additional measures to create peace and clarity included many personal conversations with concerned individuals and activists across the country, sponsorship of the Pagan Alliance Conference on Gender (and we were gratified to find out that our sponsorship allowed the Conference to give scholarships to low-income individuals who would not otherwise have been able to attend), and our own process of negotiating this rocky terrain via internal discussion, review of existing protocols and future planning in our Coven.

CAYA's commitment to gender diversity includes a commitment to creating public circles for all to practice ritual together, circles for all who self-identify as a particular gender, and private, closed circles for those who continue to identify with their gender at birth for the sake of healing and deep personal work. It is not an easy place to be. On the one hand, intellectually-sound and impassioned arguments exist for the full inclusion of all self-identified men and women in all gendered spaces they choose. These arguments are well-reasoned, clear, loving and radical- all very much in keeping with CAYA's core philosophies. On the other hand, there are mysteries and wisdom paths that are associated with embodying a certain gender from birth and the lifetime of acculturation to that gender, as well as physical experiences associated with coming of age in that particular body. These are primal, powerful, visceral and also radical- very much in keeping with CAYA's core philosophies.

I do not think anyone in CAYA or outside of CAYA has the final answers on how this integration of diverse and sometimes opposing viewpoints can happen effectively to the highest benefit of the greater pagan community. Certainly it won't happen overnight. Certainly it requires delicacy, patience, and good faith.

Our hope in offering a Ritual of Radical Forgiveness at the conference was to magically and sympathetically put to rest the discord around the topic of the past year and to acknowledge that there is pain and challenge on all sides of this issue. It is our prayer that, moving forward, everyone who has a strong and powerful opinion on this topic or experience of their gender reality will be able to at least co-exist in mutual harmony, respect for one another's right to hold their views and practices as best befits them, and non-violence in our language and actions toward one another. The religious right would love to see us tear one another apart. It would mean they don't have to lift a finger in order to cripplingly disempower us. I, for one, will not allow that to happen if I have any say in the matter whatsoever. My intent is to create respectful unity around our spiritual diversity and thus protect it with my own intentions, prayers, words and actions. To that end, here is the ritual outline, for those who were not able to attend. The ritual was received very well by the 25-30 participants who attended, and while it is not a final step to end all conflict, it felt like a powerful step in the right direction toward peace and wholeness within our extended community.

Ritual of Radical Forgiveness
Pagan Alliance Gender Conference 2011

Intro: Yeshe Rabbit
-What is Radical Forgiveness? It is a path to personal liberation. Just as acid held in a bucket eats away at the bucket, so too do anger, grief, resentment, and blame eat away at us and steal our joy. Liberating ourselves from this pain is crucial to moving forward with our lives, even when we cannot find resolution to past hurts or current disagreement.
-Why is it important that we forgive? Because we are not always able to see justice at work. We all have open endings in our pasts, things that hurt us or harmed us, injustices that never gained redress. Radical Forgiveness allows us to put a period where previously there were ellipses and question marks. It allows us to let go of the past so that we have more energy to create positive change in the present.
-Does forgiveness imply condoning/excusing negative behavior? NO. Forgiveness is a process of acknowledging your own correctness for/in yourself, acknowledging the hurt someone else has caused you, and willingly choosing to let it go rather than hold the conflict in an ongoing state of dissatisfaction. At no point is anyone asked to condone or excuse anyone else’s behavior or action. Instead, radical forgiveness re-centralizes your own truth by de-polarizing your reality and disentangling your destiny from someone who hurt you.

Grounding: Yeshe Rabbit leads with Sam Webster’s Dedication of Merit
“May the benefits of this act and all acts be dedicated unto the complete liberation and surpeme enlightenment of all beings, everywhere, pervading space and time. So mote it be. May the benefits of practice, ours and others, come to fruition ultimately and immediately, and we remain inn a state of presence.” Tone three “Ah’s- at the first, awaken the divine helpers of the universe, at the second, they awaken the divine in us, and at the third, we and the divine hosts of the universe awake the divine in all beings.

Circle cast: Each person turns to the person to their left around the circle and says, “I am holy and you are holy and this circle is holy.”

Directions: Gatekeeper Jey
Air: the spirit of gentle communication and respectful discussion
Fire: the courage to face our conflicts with peaceful hearts rather than rage
West: compassionate wisdom for all who cause harm or have been harmed by others
North: stability of self to face those who have harmed us with equanimity

Ancestors: Salamangkero Yansumi
Bessie Smith-lesbian blues singer, Gloria Anzaldua-political author and activist, Sylvia Rivera- transgender activist and Stonewall participant, Gwen Araujo- local teen victim of transgender hate crime, Harvey Milk- first openly-gay person elected to political office, Audre Lorde- lesbian author, James Baldwin - gay author, Arthur Evans- recently-deceased author of Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, Doric Wilson- playwright and gay activist, Bayard Rustin- gay political organizer, draft resister, key in creating the 1963 March on Washington with Rev Dr MLK who was later kicked out the the Fellowship of Humanity for his sexual orientation, and all those whom we cannot name here: we ask that you bless our work from your place of wisdom beyond this mortal coil, and open the way for our hearts to lift in self-determination and personal clarity.

Invoking the Highest Powers and protector deities of everyone in the Room: Yeshe Rabbit facilitates a collective personal invocation for each person to feel whole, safe, holy and acknowledged for their truth in this working

Guided Meditation on Radical Forgiveness: Stella Iris
(CAYA Clergy walk around during this meditation gently fanning the participants with feather fans.)

Ritual Cleansing: Yeshe Rabbit invites each participant to whisper his/her grievances into his/her hands, and to cup them there, like a caterpillar in a cocoon. After ritually opening our hearts, releasing anger and resentment and hurt to the best of our ability, we allow our pain to fly away transformed into butterflies. All are invited to repeat this practice as often as necessary in an effort to help us move forward from blind rage and pain toward productive, respectful, solution-driven effort. Stella Iris guides all Clergy in facilitating a ritual hand-washing (Molly Blue Dawn and Stella Iris with a pitcher and bowl, a ceremonial splash of water) and Gatekeeper Jey follows, anointing everyone’s heart, hands or third eye with Unchain My Heart oil (anyone may refuse oil if they wish, due to scent-sensitivity). Yeshe Rabbit speaks further on the nature of suffering and how it overflows the boundaries of one person to cause pain in another. The cycle of pain yields only more pain. Forgiveness breaks the cycle. Yeshe Rabbit invites everyone to lift their fragile and delicate hearts and powerful voices as one in order to release the past and create a better future for all.

Raising Power: Stella Iris leads the group in a slow, deliberate spiral dance, Gatekeeper Jey takes the end. Molly Blue Dawn, Salamangkero Yansumi and Yeshe Rabbit will hold the drum and song at the center. Anyone who cannot or does not want to spiral dance, may join them at the center to receive energy raised. All look into one anothers’ eyes to recognize and acknowledge one anothers’ holiness.
Song:
“And we’ll dance as the walls are falling
and we’ll be the change we wish to see
and the Universe will answer
for a joyful change is what we need
and we’ll know the our gods are with us
and the spirits of our honored dead
for we hear their voices singing
in our hearts and in our heads.”
-song by Yeshe Rabbit, 2009

Once the spiral has turned its way in and out at least three times and Stella Iris has crossed paths with Gatekeeper Jey, they grab hands and gently pull the spiral back into a circle. Yeshe Rabbit dedicates the power raised for the healing of all who have been harmed in their sexuality and gender, and the enlightenment of all who have done the harm, that the cycle of harm draws to a conclusion and mutual respect reigns. Seamlessly, she moves into thanking the higher selves of everyone in the room.

Ancestors thank and devoke: Salamangkero Yansumi

Directions thank and devoke: Gatekeeper Jey

Circle is opened by passing a kiss while singing, “We are a circle within a circle with no beginning and never ending.”

Transition and Transformation

2011-09-22T15:59:00.000-07:00

After 8 years of magic, I am leaving my wonderful witches' cottage in Berkeley and moving in with my beloved. Albert, to a new magical domicile.

This is a huge transition for me. I have been good friends with the spirit of place at Fox Court, a small community of stone cottages listed on the National Register of Historical Places. It was built in 1935 as a community for the laborers who were building homes in the Berkeley and Oakland Hills. The entire complex is charming- all brick and stone. Each apartment features a fireplace with a unique round chimney, English flagstone floor, hand-turned brick, and lots of little built-in drawers, cabinets, and nooks for magic. Each unit is considered a "studio-and-a-half" with the exception of three bonafide one-bedroom units. Perfect for one person. But not an easy place for love to grow in the modern era, though at one time I'm sure each unit housed a whole family. Thus, I move on, because I am ready for love to grow.

When I was first in Berkeley, looking for a place to live, I stumbled upon an ad on craisglist for this place. It was listed for one single day. The ad was from the previous tenant, who was seeking a sublet tenant. She was a journalist who had fallen in love and run off to live in Ireland with her husband. Although she knew the likelihood that she would return to Fox Court was slim, she was not quite ready to part with the special place that had been her cherished home. I fit the bill of what she wanted in a tenant, and moved right in. Part of our deal was that I would tend her things until she came to fetch them a year later. Most of her things fit into the single closet, and I had free run of the rest of the apartment.

I remember walking up the walkway to Fox Court for the first time, escorted by the original tenant's friend who was showing the place for her. I was in awe of the beauty and peace of the place, tucked away behind the video store and shipping store. From the street, you could barely see it. In fact, some other witch before me had placed a powerful glamour on the whole building. Many times throughout the years, people I invited over could not see the gate even as they stood right in front of it. I had to literally come and get them so they could find their way in.

There was a small, rusty cauldron filled with cigarette butts on the front stoop of my unit. No one knew how it had gotten there- likely the stinky legacy of a previous tenant. I took it inside, cleaned it up thoroughly, and began using it. I had left most of my magical supplies in New York when I embarked on my cross-country journey, and was grateful to be able to replenish. That small cauldron is still with me- it was consecrated at my ordination as the sacred tool of my Priestesshood. As High Priestess of Alchemy in my coven, a cauldron acquired by mysterious means seemed fitting. It sits at the center of my altar, where I regularly fill it with sympathetic stones and symbols representing me and the changes I wish to make in my life. I brew myself in there.

Right away, the spirit of place at Fox Court began chattering at me. I felt welcome, as if embraced by an old friend. It was so safe, so secure and quiet. I did a lot of healing in that home, healing that was desperately needed.

I also had a great many joyful moments, times of laughter, arguments and lovers' quarrels, and magical experiences there. First off, as I was moving things into the storage closet, I found a bag of moldy coconuts. One of them had an old man spirit associated it. I vibed with him a bit, and e-mailed the leaseholder- what was up with these moldy coconuts? Were they consecrated spiritual items? Should I throw them away? And who was the dude? "My grandfather gave them to me. Leave them there. I'll get them when I come." So for the first year, Grandfather and I hung out. When she came and claimed her things, he went with her. He was cool- he'd sort of seep out of the closet from time to time, and hover in the rafters. Once he sat on the couch with me, much to my surprise. He thought it was funny when I had lovers over. I thought he was a pretty likable dirty old man.

One Ostara, I offered a ritual to the Fae in the garden. There are beautifully landscaped gardens at Fox Court. I poured libations, chanted, prayed. That night, I was kept awake by the sound of hundreds of tiny feet running up and down the walls and over the roof. I had asked to learn a deeper understanding of the balance between shine and shadow. I feel that lesson is still unfolding in my life, as I witness and participate in the beauty and melancholy of every passing season, each yielding its own rich flavor.

My Coven, CAYA, was born at the Hobbit House, as it affectionately came to be known. Our first ritual was a Mabon, led by Molly Blue Dawn, and we celebrated it at Live Oak Park. Afterwards, we all adjourned to the Hobbit House and made stone soup from scratch. I put a stone in the pot and a bunch of water, everyone added their own vegetables. I'll admit, the final product did require that I doctor it a bit for flavor, but it was a lot of fun. I'll never forget- that was the night I met Iris and Jack (then Merrie and James), who have since become some of my best friends.

CAYA's first Samhain happened in the Hobbit House. Attendees were led out to the back alley, where I witnessed their stories of "things that must be let go." Then each attendee went back inside, was blessed with psychic vision by Lady Kahina, and waited in meditation. By the end, a lot of the attendees had to go and the energy of the circle had dissipated and devolved into social conversation. But there had been some powerful purging, and for many weeks I received e-mails asking about when the next ritual would be. Two months later, we began hosting Full Moon Circles at the yoga studio where we still hold them today. That was 6 Samhains ago. I am still agog at how my community has grown since then. It started out with such simple magic from my heart and has evolved into an entity of its own. All children have to grow up, and it has been both a joy and a pain to watch my Coven come of age, with all of the stories, lessons, suffering, and bliss we have experienced together.

My first familiar, Sophocles, died at the Hobbit House when it was his time. He had been with me since I was 18, and he died three years ago. The vet came to the house, she kissed him on top of his head and called him "Handsome Boy" even though she didn't know that was his nickname. I had built an altar for Sophocles with roses, crystals, a white cloth, a candle, a little black cat figurine. I thought he would sit on my lap while it happened. Instead, he willingly crawled into the center of the altar and lay down. He was the picture of peace when he died, and the vet remarked that she wished every pet had that kind of end, full of love and compassion and the greatest respect. For my own part, I was honored to be his friend and to be there, holding his head when he died. My former partner was stroking his chest and face, and my other cat Medea (who passed on 6 months later) sat right there, looking on and purring her support and love for her best friend.

I could go on with more stories, and maybe I will at another time, but I actually can't bear to do it right now. Writing about the Hobbit House is very hard for me, as I stand on the verge of saying goodbye. My love affair with my home has never faded or waned. During times of financial challenge, it was my top priority to stay there. During times of joy, it was my safe haven where I could celebrate and be giddy without worry. A lot of fantastic, creative, fun meetings and parties happened at my hearth. There were also times, during painful relationship circumstances, when it felt like a prison and I grieved for the loss of my safety. But all's well that ends well, and now, in the end, I really only walk away choosing to bring the joyful memories with me.

So, why am I leaving? Because, as I mentioned before, love needs room to grow. Practically, there is only room for one at the Hobbit House. And now Albert and I are two. I pray that someday soon there will be three, if my body and the Goddess see fit. And that dream needs space.

At Winter Solstice 2010, I stood in the darkness beneath the blood red lunar eclipse, the sky streaked above with iridescent indigo clouds against the black night. With arms upraised, feet firmly planted upon the Mother, heart fully open, mind dissolved into the Void, I spoke to the Galactic Center above which our Earth was spinning. I asked for guidance and wisdom in moving myself forward: personal well-being, livelihood, relationships, and service. A simple song arose in my throat, "We give up the past to create the future." Singing it over and over, trancing and repeating and harmonizing with myself, I have been allowing change to wash over me this year. I am not surprised that this Samhain brings me many endings and new beginnings: moving from my home to a new home, stepping into a new role in my Coven as visionary and spiritual leader while releasing the role of temporal leader, my car dying, my sexual identity shifting away from being a lesbian to being...my fullest self, free from labels and saturated in pleasure and love. Albert, by the way, is amazing. He is intuitive, insightful, loving, caring, patient, and so very smart. It's all beautiful, and poignant, and painful, and it feels like it's happening at lightning speed. After months of prayer and years of discernment, the Great Road Opener is moving me to my next level in life. I do not know who I am becoming. I have liked all the selves I have ever been, so I look forward to getting to know this new one.

And in the meantime, I am cleaning and packing and moving stuff and crying, and crying some more, and laughing, and getting exciting about the future, and enjoying the present and crying some more, and visiting with my new neighbors: my dear friends the Wildes, and crying some more, and having crazy dreams, and doubting and fretting and laughing and crying some more. On Sept 30 I plan to have one last fire in the empty Hobbit House and burn a whole bunch of magical papers, talismans, and herbs. I plan to leave some little magical thing tucked away in a nook for the next witch to find when she arrives, seeking haven. May she find it. May I find it. May we all find it, right where we are.

Full Text of my interview with the PNC

2011-09-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

Crystal Blanton of the Pagan Newswire Collective recently interviewed me via e-mail for an article she is writing on the upcoming Pagan Alliance conference on Gender. I thought I'd post the full text of my answers here, since I worked hard on them and am sure they cannot be included entirely.

Name and position you would want to be used?
Yeshe Rabbit, Presiding HPS of CAYA Coven

What role are you playing in the upcoming Pagan Alliance event?

My Coven, CAYA, is a sponsor for the event, and as the 2011 Pagan Alliance Keeper of the Light, I will be in attendance. I am also one of the presenters. I will be offering, with other members of CAYA, a Ritual of Radical Forgiveness, designed to help everyone come together in heartfelt compassion, regardless of whether they agree, share similar experiences, or feel dubious about one another's views.

Why do you feel this event is important?

This is an important event because it is the first time that a pagan organization as large and active as The Pagan Alliance is giving thorough time and space for us to work communally on a challenging topic in safety and mutual concern. This is a polarizing topic, a controversial topic, and a topic that arouses a lot of emotions. When we engage the topic of gender in the private sphere with people who share our opinions, it leaves us little room to experience the challenges that might expand our opinions. We just soak in the warm, comfy pool of self-affirmation of our own views. When we engage the topic of gender in the wider, non-pagan public sphere, an unhelpful defensiveness can creep into the discourse because we do not trust that everyone involved in the discussion actually cares about our personal feelings and experiences--after all, "they" don't know us or owe us anything. We might feel misunderstood or anxious to make ourselves vulnerable. We might fail to open up. This event provides the structure of classes and workshops to offer many different perspectives, as well as social forum in which to meet others, discuss what we have shared and learned, and hopefully come to an appropriate place of respectful common ground.

How has the previous year of controversy and discussions effected the Pagan community at large and your personal Pagan community?

(Laughs) How has it NOT affected EVERYONE? Seriously, I could go on and on...this has been a year of tremendous growth for the entire pagan community. Interestingly, I feel that although the core issue of this debate has been gender, the larger issue that has emerged is actually about the need to establish effective social contracts. It's no longer possible for pagans to really remain insular, isolated, and uninvolved with one another. In the past, we were forced or had the choice to remain anonymous and separate. But now, due to this galvanizing issue and also due to the emergence of many pagans savvy with new media, we are being asked by the Powers that be to connect on a deeper level. We can't just get away with the polite, sterile niceties of "Merry meet" and "Blessed be" in our real-time or online relationships with other pagans any more. We actually need to learn how to effectively talk with one another and listen to one another, and to establish a common protocol of courtesy and kindness.

The issue of gender has provided a unique lens through which we can analyze our social interactions. For example, before PantheaCon 2011, I did not know there was a term more appropriate than "women-born-women." I did not know this term was offensive to anyone, having heard it used widely and without incident for many years. I did not know that the term "cisgender" existed. This is not because I had a closed mind or closed eyes; it just, literally, had never crossed my screen before. I went to a liberal college in my younger days, I studied women's studies...still, I did not know about these terms or their importance. I believe many people shared this ignorance. As I watched the debate unfolding online, I saw how many otherwise well-meaning people were unknowingly angering gender equality activists with their choices of terms. It was frustrating to watch people try honestly to be kind or fair and then get slapped because they didn't know how to communicate their thoughts in an unoffensive way. It was equally frustrating to watch otherwise-respected pagans issue forth hate speech and hysterical commentary from a place of fear, especially leaders we have counted on to model good example and maintain cool heads in times of turmoil. We saw (at least, I know I saw) many instances of individuals on all sides of the debate lashing out in anger and rage without actually knowing all the data or without the consciousness that there was a real human being on the other end of their big, angry rant. I, personally, received death threats, threats of violence, long letters shaming me and CAYA Coven (often for things that had not actually happened), and a HUGE onslaught of really inappropriate commentary that was vicious, cruel, and unhelpful to the already-escalated situation. All from people who claim to abide by the Rede or Law of Three, but clearly do not when their heads are hot. It was bloody and painful, as war always is. And war is actually never the best solution. It bespeaks a fear of weakness where the greatest strength would be vulnerability and softness. I think many of us know that, but forgot it. We need to remember.

The issue of gender inequality in the pagan community addresses a problem, to be sure: a problem of education, understanding, privilege, and biological determinism. But the issue that really showed itself to be the disease of which the gender issue is but one symptom was that of a lack of shared set of guidelines with which we can approach challenging topics together safely, compassionately, and mindfully. Obviously, without a single common Tradition, we are all able to enjoy greater diversity. No one wants us to lose that precious diversity. But without a commonly agreed-upon code of conduct for our process of exploring our similarities and differences, we are doomed to either fight with one another until we return to isolationism, or else skim over deeper matters because of fear of retribution. My hope is that all parties learned from this experience that compassion and gentleness are key in approaching topics or issues that we don't understand or agree with, if we are to have any hope of mutual support for our individual paths. In short, kindness matters.

On the Coven level, The Amazon Priestesses have been a private, invite-only Tradition for a few years now, so that has not changed. However, we decided to close membership entirely for the coming year so that we can regroup, focus on our ongoing growth and personal work in the Blood Mysteries, and heal from the vitriol that was directed at us from many far corners of the globe. On the larger front of CAYA Coven, we had an opportunity to publicly re-affirm our already-existing commitment to gender diversity and inclusiveness in our rituals and our Wildflower Clergy training program. On the personal level, I am working on a project called The Daughters of Lilith, which will be a free, monthly phone-in conference for transgender and cisgender women all over the country to call in and get to know one another, establish common bonds of sisterhood, and find our way toward wholeness together. I also have other projects in the works of a personal nature addressing the concept of ethics in paganism, with an eye toward creating more safe spaces for these kinds of challenging conversations to unfold to everyone's mutual benefit and growth.

What do you hope to get out of the upcoming event?

I hope, personally, that I and everyone who attends the event has a wonderful time, grows and learns a lot, and feels that they have both been heard and have heard others, profoundly. I pray that the existence of this event and others like it that may yet emerge signifies a new dawn of potential understanding and healing for every pagan who has struggled with gender-related violence, mockery, or prejudice. My heart lifts with that hope.

A Gift, by Denise Levertov

2011-08-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

My priestess sister Molly Blue Dawn sent me this poem. It seems like just the sort of thing one might need to read from time to time if one works as a spiritual guide, priest/ess, reader, or healer. Thanks, Molly!

A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

Thoughts on Lammas, Mabon, Samhain

2011-08-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

Every Tradition has its own customs and mysteries. Every Coven has its own flavors. In CAYA, we make room for many, many mysteries and flavors, as you all know. It is a great strength for us, offering us diversity and wide berth for interpretation of the various mysteries and flavors in ways that are personally meaningful and relevant.

However, there are some unifying themes that seems to crop up from year to year in CAYA as we turn our ever-evolving and revolving Wheel. Occasionally, when I have time, I write about them. Today is one of those days.

One of the common, repeated themes between Lammas and Samhain in CAYA has been what can be effectively termed "spiritual breakdown leading to spiritual breakthrough." It doesn't surprise me that this theme emerges again and again as a natural part of our work together, but the specific ways in which it emerges in our individual lives and in our collective practice is always fresh and new and somewhat unpredictable from year to year. Cultivating a sense of wonder rather than fear about this has helped me ride the tide with greater patience, compassion for myself and others, openness, and endurance. Today, I feel moved to share my understanding of this process with you, in case you find it helpful.

Harvest is a concept with many meanings and symbols. It is most commonly associated in neopaganism with abundance, prosperity, wellness, nourishment, sustenance. But the reaper of the harvest wields the scythe that also cuts, severs, lays the field bare, and creates permanent change. Loss is just as relevant a theme during the harvest season as abundance. This is the balance of light and shadow during this time of the year: that for every sheaf we gather to table, a barren stalk withers in the field. We fatten ourselves upon the sacrifice of the Earth. Life seeks to sustain itself however it can, and even in its triumph, death is still a natural outcome. Acknowledging this is part of aligning ourselves with the inevitable cycles of nature. Acknowledging this helps us to prepare for our own ultimate death with peace and acceptance, because we have prepared for it by enduring a lifetime of annual little deaths with (hopefully) a greater and greater sense of equanimity. It is not easy to be calm in the face of the little deaths. They feel so huge, so impactful, so disruptive. Even when a little death is for the best, and your divine self knows this, it might still come with an attached weight of resistance from the human self. That is one understanding of the double-edged sword that is used as a sacred tool in traditional Wicca. It signifies that even happy changes can be painful. Even painful lessons can yield happy results.

When we honor the Wheel of the Year, we move with its cycles in our own lives. Practicing on your own is a powerful exercise in personal development, as many of you know from experience. Practicing with a group tends to amplify the effects, as many of us have learned from working with CAYA and other groups. I have noticed that many of us are in the process of dying unto one reality in order to create another right now: moving house, childbirth, seeking to overcome depression, caring for the infirm, changes in relationships, changes in the structure of our organization. Some of these changes are joyful, some are painful. Most of these changes, if you really think about them, feel like a mixed bag. That is natural.

If we face each of these personal and collective changes with an attitude of fear and human resistance, we limit our ability to embrace the potentially positive result. When we choose to just "let go and let gods" altogether in the face of change, we lose a crucial human element of personal will. Harvest is a time of work, as every season is a time of work. The work of every season is a double-edged sword with both light and shadow aspects, with both human and divine aspects. The work of this season, as I see it through my own lens and the lens of CAYA, is to be both the stalk and the scythe. We receive, as the stalk, the ripening offered by nature and time, and thus become nourishment for one another. This is the reason that the concept of sacrifice is so crucial in our observance of Lammas. We also employ our will, as the scythe, to shape the changes that are happening to us. This is the reason that we focus on Samhain as a working to create change on the larger level, frequently including themes of social justice. The theme of "how we will we balance in our society" is the centerpiece of the song that I write for each CAYA Samhain celebration. Lines from past Samhain songs include "Change from without and change from within," "We'll be the change we wish to see," and "We must change, and we know it, with holy rage and open hearts."

And the hinge between these is Mabon: the time of balance when inner and outer worlds must come into accord and order. Take a moment to ask yourselves, "Am I in harmony with myself right now?" Am I in harmony with my community right now?" What emotions arise as a result of your answers? If there is resistance to natural change dominating you, try to give it room to breathe. Let it dissipate in the expanse of divine consciousness that dwells within you, so that you are not clutched around it. Alternately, if you feel lost and needing of divine guidance, or if you feel that your prayers are unheard or unanswered, take a moment to consider taking more significant practical actions and exerting your personal will. It's important that we recognize the need, and seek to attain a balance of both surrender and will in order to process change in a way that is productive and powerful. It is part of the lesson of the Equinox, and part of the larger lesson of the season.

Whatever your current breakdown, be it a the joyful breakdown of previously-held limitations that yield to greater joy (like choosing to put on your dancing shoes no matter how nervous you are), or be it a painful breakdown that feels out of your control (like discovering the your new apartment that seemed so perfect actually has a mold problem), try to approach it with a mixture of humble surrender and powerful will. Try saying out loud, "I accept what is as divine presence and I shape what is yet to come with my divine will." Then, see what happens and how you feel about it. I can pretty much guarantee a breakthrough will follow.

Priestess of Aphrodite

2009-11-06T21:06:00.000-08:00

Today is the 6th of the month- Aphrodite day. Each 6th of each month, I do something to honor her. I have it set to remind me in my phone calendar in case I forget or get distracted with my busy life.

Today, I forgot it was Aphrodite day. Usually the alarm goes off in the morning, but nothing today. I jumped in to my day and it was all blast-off.

This evening, I was on the phone with my mother. She told me this story about my grandmother. We are all in love with the Virgin Mary in my family. I love her as Black Madonna/Stella Maris/Kuan Yin/Aphrodite- they all run along the same or similar channels for me.

My grandmother had a terrible series of surgeries that were very painful. She was just beginning to recover when she had a stroke, then another. She went to the doctor and he told her she would need yet another surgery- a dangerous one. She was afraid, but said, "Thy will be done" and went along with it. Before she went in to the surgery, she asked the doctor how long her recovery would be and when she could go home. He looked at her, sized up her voluminous glittering jewelry and stylish hat and said, "You can go home when you're able to put your lipstick on again."

The day of the surgery came and she went in, went under, had the surgery. She was in recovery and the nurse sent my anxious mother to her own room to sleep and wait for my grandmother to wake up. About a half hour later the phone rang- the nurse called my mom. "We're losing her, her blood pressure is dropping rapidly and she isn't responding. You'd better come now."

My mom rushed back over there and the nurse said, "We've sent for the doctor. I'm going to consult with him. Go in there, hold her hand, talk to her, try to get her to wake up. She is slipping away. Try to connect with her and see if you can get her to wake up." My mom sat there, rubbing Memere's hand, saying, "Mom, you've got to stay with me. Come on, Mom, wake up. Come on." The machine was beeping, it was horribly scary. Then, all of a sudden, my mom saw Memere's eyes flutter a bit. My mom said, "Hey Mom, wake up! Come on!" All of a sudden, she heard my grandmother's voice, her lips barely moved, "GET ME MY LIPSTICK." By the time the doctor arrived, she was getting better, more stable, and the doctor had to renegotiate his deal.

This is where I come from, "Thy will be done," and "Get me my lipstick."

Memere, I miss you today, unbelievably. As my mom was telling me the story, I started to think that I ought to do a candle to Aphrodite in honor of my grandmother. She was so beautiful, and very glamorous.

Just as my mom concluded the story, my phone beeped and flashed at me: "Aphrodite day."

Dressing my candle with tears tonight.

Oh, poor blog...

2009-10-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

My poor blog- you have fallen prey to Twitter.

Twitter is so seductive, with its brief, encapsulated, easy-on-the-go update capabilities. Who takes the time to sit down and write anymore, now that Twitter and Facebook allow us all to be in the know in 116 characters or fewer?

But it IS important to write things down. I know this. I am an avid reader of print books. Someone took the time to write all of that down.

And I want to write a book desperately. I've built it up so much in my mind that I am terrified of the process.

But I'm thinking of doing nanowrimo this year and getting it off my chest. But what do I need to get off my chest? Hmmmm...

Waking the Dead

2009-05-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

We are going to see the living Dead tomorrow night. I can hardly believe it. It has been 14 years since Jerry died. I was in the car on the way to Toronto with my boyfriend Eli and my Dad. We were on the Skyway, high above the city. We were on our way to see Miss Saigon. The news came on the radio and I was really so sad. I had planned to either go to grad school or else go to beauty school, become a hairdresser, save up money, and follow the Dead. Those were my two favorite choices. I figured following the Dead would be the way I got to California - a longtime dream at that point already. When Jerry died, my choice was made and I ended up going to grad school in 97.

I haven't seen a Dead show since then. There were some "Other Ones" shows and Phil shows and Bobby shows and everything else, but I just missed Jerry. I went to one Phish show once, but it wasn't the same. Everyone told me it wouldn't be the same, but I just wanted to find something like the vibe of a Dead show so much that I went anyway. Not the same.

There is something about going to a Dead show. I used to go back East all the time. They are really special. At its height, it was a traveling utopia in many ways. My first show was such a memorable event. A woman came up to me, tripping her head off, and handed me a piece of paper that said, 'I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old." I bartered a pair of earrings I had made for a purple witch hat. I got separated from my friends and had an amazing adventure. I was wandering in through the gate and a guy came up to me and said, "Hey, want to get up?" and gestured to the port-o-potties. I climbed up and had the best view of the show for miles. At the end of the show, I was wondering how I'd get down and he re-appeared. "Want to get down?" he asked. He helped me jump down, grabbed my hand and we somehow, as if by magic, zoomed through this loooong line of people waiting to get out. Once outside, he let go my hand and disappeared. I was nervous for a minute that I wouldn't find my friends, but then saw that he had mysteriously deposited me right in front of their car in the parking lot. They came along and we all went home.

Another time, I went to a show and we ended up meeting these funny people who had a HUGE, FULL 5 pound bag of animal crackers. That's a lot of crackers. We ate some, then eventually we gave them away to these other people and forgot about them. At the end of the show we were leaving and we passed this car of people who were sitting on the tailgate, eating the last of the almost-empty bag of animal crackers.

Dead shows are full of trickster energy and good old bearded man vibes and general rabbity-ness in a lot of ways. The lifestyle on the road, the clothes, the nature, the freedom, the music of course. The people. I have a hundred other stories about Dead shows. Magical happenings, miracle tickets, interdependent co-arising of perfect moments in complete synchronicity. I mean, hey- they worked for something like 40 years to build that kind of vibe.

It's just my favorite vibe I have ever met on the planet yet. I think I will have it again tomorrow night. I think it has been long enough. And I feel Jerry will be there- this is his home turf.

Here, have some more. It's good for you:

Cute bread

2009-04-20T02:23:00.000-07:00

My friend Pixie gave me this Rabbit-shaped bread. I thought it was cute, so I took a picture of it. That is all :)

Oh, Mexico

2009-04-08T00:22:00.000-07:00

Today I REALLY was thinking about Mexico a lot. I wanted to report about it here. I guess this is the best way to do it:

Flight at 6 AM had to be a Hummingbird's at 4:30 got there at 5 made the flight anyway got picked up visited Carly (THANK YOU CARLY) stopped off at Jodi's house in Phoenix to pick all the herbs in her garden before we headed down the long, dusty road to Mexico.

Made it across the border without incident. Paseo. Cracked beers.

Hit the beach house at dusk, watched the sun go down across the Sonoran desert. Rested that night. Woke up early the next day.

Fill in three days of drinking beer, tequila, eating homemade everything, resting. I made a road trip into town with Rex to do errands, but mostly just sat around reading the mythology encyclopedia on the rooftop deck overlooking the sea. Got pounded by waves. Had a blast with Jodi, who always has such insight to share.

Every day, standing at the water's edge:
Aphrodite of the sea
friend of dove and sacred bee
queen of sensuality
lay your blessing upon me
that I may walk in love and beauty.

sang to Yemaya also.

Friday we went into town. The Malacon. Mary's shrimp shack, except now it's remodeled and deluxe. Gentrification is happening, but Mary is making more money, so that's a good thing. And she has margaritas again. Last year she didn't. They are great margaritas, naturally.

We walked through the street and these two Yaqui Shamans wearing masks and bamboo belts, carrying drums, were dancing in the street. They do this in the weeks leading up to Semana Santa, Holy Week. It is some kind of syncretization of their beliefs and Xianity. They do not speak, only dance and drum. You give them donations and they drum and rattle on your behalf. So we all gave them some money and they danced and drummed. Then they went on their way. Hummingbird encountered them again, and then we all did. The second time we encountered them, they came right up to us, took off their belts and wrapped them 'round our waists. Then they drummed and we danced. At the end, they hugged us. The one who hugged me whispered very, very quietly, "Belina, belina." Hummingbird said that means "pretty." There is video and once Otter uploads it I'll include it in this post.

Saturday we went down and bade farewell to the sea. Then Rex drove us back across the border and up to Phoenix, where we flew out. Drove home and dropped into bed.

I am so grateful for this annual pilgrimage.

Time flies

2009-04-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

I am in the process of learning to do magic with Time. Specifically, I wish to increase my ability to move fluidly in Time and to master my moments.

For this purpose, I asked the Universe for a time-turner.

Sort of like the one in Harry Potter, but not exactly. I don't want to try to cram more stuff IN to my day. I want to be able to slow things down and speed them up just slightly, so that I can, for instance, enjoy a visit with a friend a little longer, or arrive exactly on time to where I need to be even if I left the house late. These seem like relatively benign uses of time modification. I mean, I'm not asking for extra lifetimes or anything- though I do believe that this skill, if mastered fully, could yield that result. They say there are gurus in India who live to be 2000 years old just by doing breathing exercises. Anything, truly, is possible once one submits to the imagination instead of cold, hard "facts."

So, a few months ago, I discovered that our Ordination ceremony was taking place on the same day as the headwashing ceremony of some friends of mine. "Noooo!" I moaned on the e-mail list. "I need a time turner! Seriously, does anyone have a time turner?"

Well, Ask and It Is Given! (I'm doing the flip calendar this year. Dude- good stuff. Totally mind-bending in all the right ways.)

I'm at PCon and I find this extremely curious pair of earrings. There's no use trying to really describe them. HorseshoeclockfeatherRabbit??? Huh?

Anyway, you can see in the photo what I'm talking about. Great news was- I could tell these things had mojo. Specifically, they had mojo that could teach a Rabbit to control Time. Or at least bargain with it really well.

One of the earrings has a Rabbit that stands tall and stationary, upright. His backside bolt is fixed. The other has a Rabbit with a loose backside bolt. It SPINS. Yep, you guessed it - he's all outfitted for time travel. I can actually turn the Rabbit backwards and forwards to make time move differently.

Turn the Rabbit forwards while standing in line or sitting in traffic? It just speeds by! Want the last day in Mexico to be 2 days long? Turn it all the way around twice, backwards. Woke up at 5 AM, went to bed at midnight - we definitely felt the long, slow, stre-e-e-tch of the day.

I wear the turnable Rabbit around my neck for practical purposes, and then the other Rabbit sits on my altar at home.

Can they really control time? Is she crazy? No, really...is she delusional?

No- I just believe that my consciousness is a powerful tool. If I EMPOWER myself to believe that I can control time, a whole host of things happens- I no longer feel powerless to my lateness, so maybe I'm not AS late as I used to be. I notice which moments I want to make last, and in being fully present for them, I DO enjoy them more and they DO feel like they last longer.

And today, I swear I was in a reading for an hour, but then came out to find we had only been there for a half hour. I ended up with some extra time to sit and chat with Iris and prepare for my next reading, which made my day a wee bit easier.

Having a positive, self-empowered outlook helps everything. And I do believe there is magic, too. Inexplicable rifts in time happen frequently. We often ask ourselves, "What happened to the time?" It moves strangely, eerily. So, yeah, there's magic, on top of the psychological pep-talking that having these new toys affords me.

Now my new theme song is, "Ti-i-i-ime is on my side...yes, it is!"

Ordinations 2009

2009-03-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

Wow. I cannot believe that the year and a day of training is now over, that our Initiates are now Ordained and we have new and amazing Initiates to keep the cycle going! And the retreat! and the ceremony! and the cupcakes!

Seriously, where do I begin to explain this?

Well, actually there is very little I can explain here, because a lot of what we do there is secret. Not secret like, "Oooh, we have a secret and you're a butthead and we're not gonna tell ya." More like, "We have this very precious painting that can only be viewed through a small portal under filtered light because it is so rare." But those who go through the process will know how wonderful it is. And even those who do not go through the process often can tell it is wonderful by watching the evolution of the clergy we have on board here over the year and beyond.

One thing I am excited about is the the newly-budded confidence of so many members of my Tribe all at once. It is quite heady to feel the whole group just elevate as one like that. And I am also really excited about the new additions to our Pantheon! So many cool mythologies, deities, and new possibilities!

The Ordination ritual itself, Ostara, was a truly glorious affair. I always enjoy Ostara (go figure), and this year was no exception. Our new Initiates did an amazing job. An absolutely amazing job. They were brilliant. They memorized stuff. Memorization always impresses me. They choreographed ahead of time. Choreography is also quite impressive to me. It was a beautiful ritual. A great beginning to their illustrious careers as clergy.

The Elderflowers and I were so tired. We did a LOT of work to make the Ordination retreat a success and we were TIRED by the time we got to Ostara. And we still had to memorize the wording of the blessing of the tools and the orders of Ordination. It was funny. Szmeralda and Heaven were practicing their tool blessings and having a hard time remembering them. I joined the little clatch and tried, too. We were just looking at one another like, "Oh, no. All is lost. We are never going to remember the exact wording. And whose bright idea was exact wording anyway?" (ULP! Please disperse, there is nothing to see here...)

Then Iris walks up and we all start practicing again. It's getting better. We realize that if Molly just joins us, we will all be able to remember. So we call her over. Then the entire room erupts in Remy-ness. REMY! WTF? What a surprise!

So, back to the memorizing. Once all 5 of us are standing there together, all of a sudden we effortlessly know everything we're supposed to say. All the words are flowing in the right order. It's the magic. It's coursing through us. We are sisters in this eternal way and all information we need to make magic right now is readily available, flowing down through us and up through us, into the center of us as it has in many different lifetimes. It was perfect. We were able to remember everything flawlessly. Whew!

The Initiates did this amazing blessing upon the new Priestesses and Priests- in perfect synchronization. It was like listening to raindrops falling on a tin roof. Birds chirping all around us in the circle. Bees taking flight all at once.

And the face of each radiant priest and priestess as they stepped up to claim their titles and declare themselves before the community - perfect and beautiful, each one. I was so happy to see them actualize all their hard work. I am so proud them and all they have accomplished. So much personal growth. So much overcoming. So much having to learn that the true meaning of faith is to know that you are always flying blind with an exact course charted for you by the Great Gorgeous. They have come so far as clergy and individuals. They have brought so much to our community. It is such a blessing to have them on board.

I was on such a happy high that carried forth to Mexico...another post.

The accidental Great Rite

2009-03-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was wearing my copper sword pendant on a string around my neck. This is Oshun's dagger, and I wear it when I'm going to need a little extra protection, or if I am feeling overwhelmed and can't afford to be overwhelmed that day.

So, I was sitting with Iris at the table in the Sacred Well, and we were drinking cokes out of mugs. We naughtily drink coke sometimes, though we both agree it's terrible for us. I got up to go get a pen, and when I sat back down my dagger pendant accidentally dunked in my coke.

"Did I just do a whole Chalice and Blade thing?" I asked Iris.

She said, "Did you just accidentally perform the Great Rite in your coke?"

Giggles for hours. In fact, I still giggle when I think about it. And then Ninette says, "Rabbit, you and Iris are witch geeks."

Post PCon happiness

2009-02-27T21:16:00.000-08:00

PantheaCon was just so wonderful. I enjoyed this year so very much, largely due to the support and love of my Tribe.

First of all, Ninette held down the fort at home this time around, which was really so good of her. She was able to take care of the store and Violet, and she also cared for Molly's cat Bhageera. He got sick in the middle of Con, and it would have been really bad if he had been alone. But Ninette was able to get word to Molly so she could get home and get him to the vet. And now he's fine! So, horray for the brave soul who stayed home and looked after the encampment.

Then, our SW team was awesome. Barry and Ricky stayed in the booth mostly all weekend, and Iris, Artemisia and I flitted in and out, covering here and there, presenting here and there. It was great. We sold a star ruby ring to Chris Penczak- that was probably one of the highlights. I was so happy he picked that one out- it was a beautiful but understated style of ring, and the star on that ruby was just phenomenal. The ring really featured the stone. I feel like he is kind of like that- his presentation is simple and direct, not too flashy, but the substance of what he does is quality.

We also helped introduce the pagan world to some of our favorite "new age" stones, like lithium quartz, tangerine quartz, and cacoxenite. Often, pagans and new-agers do not have as much overlap as you'd think. Pagans tend to go for the traditional choices in stones: garnet, amethyst, citrine, moonstone, labradorite (pagans cannot get ENOUGH of this one!) Naturally the Wiccans are all about the amber and jet.

The new-agers tend to reach for the highest, buzziest, newest-discovered and most scientifically-strange stones: moldavite, or white modavite- a varietal of calcite that contains materials of "unknown origin" (yep, you space cases, this means UFO time). Barry and I consider ourselves the personal ambassadors of Moldavite to the witchy world. And that goes for other stones like "Super 7" or "Melody's Stone" (author of Love is in the Earth), which is a heady combo of amethyst, quartz, smoky quartz, goethite, lepidochrosite, cacoxenite, and rutile. Whoo-hoo! I have a ring of ths stuff and it heats me up! The amethyst helps you reach your highest spiritual levels, the quartz amplifies your gifts, smoky quartz grounds and protects, goethite (recent evidence suggest it may have been used to make the paint for the caves in Lascaux) functions similarly to hematite in that it simultaneously grounds and opens, lepidochrosite, well- Iris says it "makes people behave as they should, and you, too," cacoxenite is great for inventing that which has never been done before and completely original thought, rutile filters influences of others...what a powerhouse! VERY new-agey. Well, then I'm guilty. Ive certainly been called worse.

I am also so proud of CAYA. So proud of all we accomplished. The soup room was amazing- I actually ate something every day during Con and it was healthy! The rituals- well, we're still hearing about them from all sides. Our Amazon Priestess Ritual on Friday rocked the house- it was beautifully priestessed by the ladies. The Brotherhood ritual seriously changed lives. We have gotten SO MUCH positive feedback about that rituals. The Wake UP ritual was FUUUUNNNNN! So much fun in the wee early morn! OLT was so skillful and delightful, and "Yes, They Are" was a RIOT of delight. I know the ladies in "A Black Woman Speaks" also rocked their crowd, in a different way. VERY deep and so temporally relevant.

Also, I had some great social time with folks at PCon that I don't normally have. Usually I have a lot more business to attend to than socializing to do. But I got a good balance of both business and social time with folks at PCon. Had some good conversations, some great laughs.

Sitting on the couch with Artemisia, Iris, Thora. Heaven sitting on the floor. Manea in the room next door. Artemisia and I are giggling about inappropriate thoughts. Heaven turns and says, "Are you being bad? is there badness happening here?" Artemisia and I start laughing with Heaven. Iris leans across Thora to say, "Is there badness happening here? Are you being bad?" Now we're all rolling. Manea appears in the doorway, "Is there badness happening out here?" Full on roaring, can't breathe, doubled-over laughing. Yes, we were being bad.

Great job, us! I just love this family!

Polish Flint

2009-02-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

While I am in Tucson, I am looking for cool things for people I love. I wish I could find that perfect thing for each and everybody, but what has happened is that when something sings to me that it is meant to go be with someone, then I know to buy it. So of course there are some presents for Ninette and some friends, and also for my family.

I got my Dad a piece of Polish striped flint. According to the website of the guy who sells it:

"Striped flint can be found only in one location in the Earth - in Europe, Poland, on the Vistula River, near the town of Sandomierz. There are old Neolithic mines of the flint that was used to make axes which featured a worship, rite, and magic significa11ce. A man of the Neolithic age never parted with his flint axe even after his death for the striped flint was a talisman for him.
It is a unique stone that resembles rolling waters, and when you knock one against the other, it strikes sparks - the fire. It keeps great energy inside which can be felt even by smelling. This is a stone that joints fire, water, and air in such a unique manner. Components of the striped flint are opal and chalcedony. Its dark trails are of the organic nature.
The stone was carried by ancient Greeks and was placed by them in their beds to protect them against nightmares and any influence of bad energies in such a way. The stone favours the feeling of bonds with the nature, the reinforcement of living forces, and keeps one's countenance. Elixirs of the flint added to bath improve the tension and appearance of the skin and build up the whole system. It demonstrates positive effects when exposed to the face and neck skin, and the skin of the whole body. It regenerates scalded skins. Additionally, it demonstrates rejuvenating features."

I hope never to test the scalded skins part.

It really is cool-looking stuff, and I like the idea of my ancient ancestors carrying it around. Funny, because in the past 6 months or so, I have been frequently thinking about and wishing that I had a flint fire-starting kit for camping and outdoor ritual. It would be amazing to be able to build a fire without matches.

I tried banging the two pieces of flint I bought for my dad and myself together to see if they would cause sparks, but alas, no. I don't think the polished, display-quality ones work quite the same way once their roughness has been smoothed.

But now I am on a mission to learn how to start fires with flint for sure!

Fidelity

2009-02-06T07:15:00.001-08:00

Have you heard that Ken Starr -- and the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund -- filed legal briefs defending the constitutionality of Prop 8 and attempting to forcibly divorce 18,000 same-sex couples that were married in California last year? The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this case on March 5, 2009, with a decision expected within the next 90 days.

The Courage Campaign has created a video called "Fidelity," with the permission of musician Regina Spektor, that puts a face to those 18,000 couples and all loving, committed couples seeking full equality under the law.

Please watch this heartbreaking video:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/Divorce

After you watch the video, please consider joining me in signing the letter to the state Supreme Court and passing this video on to your friends. The more people who see this video, the more people will understand the pain caused by Prop 8 and Ken Starr's shameful legal proceeding.

Thanks.

Safe travel, deep peace, inner and outer goodness

2009-01-16T03:39:00.000-08:00

So, in preparation for coming home to visit, I followed my spirit's advice and got a St. Teresa candle. St. Teresa of Avila was a mystic who fell into trances, flogged herself to overcome her sins, loved the pain, and experienced ecstasy and visions as a result of trying to transcend the sin of human-ness. I was standing in Walgreens, buying the most mundane of things- Dramamine. And I went looking at the saint candles, cuz I always do. Sometimes I get the Virgin in the bathtub. But this time, St. Teresa jumped out at me and I started singing the song about her by Joan Osborne in my head. So on a whim, I grabbed the candle and off I went.

[You might be surprised to learn that I light saint candles from time to time. I do this because all my life my grandmother, Memere (May she dance among the stars!), did novenas on candles like these. A novena is like a Catholic spell. So, in honor of her, I do her kind of magic occasionally. She put a lot of love and protection around me with those novenas, and I am grateful. Plus, I am working to be "not-against" any spiritual practice, even the ones that challenge me. I might not choose to practice something, but "against" anything is a bad place for me to be.]

The morning I left, I dressed the candle and set it on my altar and lit it. I knew about Teresa and her crazy mystical visionary-ness. I knew about how she is the patron saint of the suffering. And frankly, I have been suffering. The loss of our cat Medea, the stress of my busy and demanding life path, the constant overwhelm of so much suffering in the world around me, and my own internal suffering that I do not really talk about much- which is that I often truly, deeply doubt my own goodness.

It used to be that I doubted my own "good-enoughness" for the world. I corrected that by being of service, and I think I fixed that pretty well. Being of service gives me permission to take up space, to be heard, to feel that I am able to accept the blessings that come my way. Service makes me "good enough" to belong in the world. BUT- what is still left to deal with is the doubt in my actual soul-level "goodness." I don't think there is "evilness," but I still doubt my "goodness." I think I invented that thought pattern because one of my deepest fears is that I will become spiritually cocky and stop working toward greater levels of goodness. But along the way that somehow translated into a doubt of the goodness that is likely already right there, factory-installed, on the other side of that grey screen in my mind. So I am trying to break that thought pattern while I am here.

Back to St. Teresa- she seriously doubted her "goodness" and she tried to fix that by flogging herself, which I tend to do the mental equivalent of. I want to overcome that trend. I lit the candle and began chanting what I wanted: "Safe travel, deep peace, inner and outer goodness." The first two parts are relatively self-explanatory, and the third part was that I would see examples, for my own sake, of goodness in my heart and goodness in the way I behave. It seemed like coming home to NY was a good place to look for my goodness, because I remember the innocence of my childhood here.

Now, since lighting the candle, I have had some wonderfully odd coincidences around this spell that make me excited about it. First- I was at TSW the day I lit the candle- right before I left to come home. I could not get the St. Teresa song out of my head, naturally, because it is part of the spell. I turned to Artemesia and asked her if she knew who Joan Osborne was. I mean, hey- she is 10 years younger than me. In some ways, we speak entirely different musical languages, with crossover dialects of Ani DiFranco (naturally) and a few others. Well Artemisia surprised me by BURSTING into a LOUD and LUSTY rendition of...you guessed it..."St. Teresa, higher than the moon." Confirmation numero uno.

Then, I came to NY that night- continuing to do my chanting of my spell and thinking about my St. Teresa candle. My first day here, I spent the entire day on the couch in pajamas, watching crime shows on TV. (Psst! It's secretly something I love to do. Crime shows are a guilty passion for me.) On that particular day, there were THREE different shows that featured witches or wicca as a prominent theme. In each, misinformation was flung about, subtle accusations of evil were leveled, and it was horrible. I was so frustrated watching those shows, and I realized how backward peoples' opinions about witches still are (despite REAMS of READILY AVAILABLE information to the contrary. Sigh.) The last show of the evening featured a very interesting development- it was about a man who finds a miraculous, weeping, prayer-granting statue of...wait for it...St. Teresa. I was floored. Confirmation numero dos.

I think my biggest hitch has been that I think of my Mom as the ideal role model, even though I don't actually follow her example on the cosmetic level. I think on the heart level, we're in synch. But it looks so different, it makes for confusion. If she is the role model, she must be the epitome of goodness, right? And if my life doesn't look like hers, then I must not be good, right? So this is what I am now chewing on: that if I will never be my Mom, and she is the epitome of goodness, will I ever be good? These are rhetorical questions - of course my mind knows all the rational, adult, psychologically-appropriate and sensible answers: that I need to broaden my definition of good to include myself, that her life is her own and mine is my own and they are both good, that goodness is a soul characteristic that doesn't look the same in everyone. But I am still teaching my six-year-old heart to understand this, and it needs patience, repetition of message, and...that St. Teresa spell.

St. Teresa, wild shamaness of the Catholic faith, meet me between our different worlds so we can be goddesses together. Step out from your convent into the moonlight and be with me in a place that is not a place, a time that is not a time. Let us be women mystics together, and share with me the truth of your goodness. Hear me, St. Teresa. Grant me the ecstasy of knowing my own goodness. Help me on behalf of my grandmother and all my ancestors who loved you. Show me that goodness is attached to my soul, and show me that my life reflects that goodness. Let us be pure with one another, pure in our soul-level goodness. Promise me you'll stop flogging yourself, Teresa, even for a minute, and I will follow suit. Grant me safe travel, deep peace, and a true sense of my own inner and outer goodness.

Snow magic

2009-01-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

I'm a weather witch. For the past several years I have been steadily working my way into the consciousness of the weather so that I can try to create more positive atmospheric conditions.

This year in CAYA, we have been working on rain. Rain, rain, rain- so precious. We are in a drought in California due to low rainfall for 2 years running. They are saying this year they will begin rationing our water. Now, if the lesson that is necessary to create better consciousness around water is that we MUST have rationing, I don't want to interfere with that. But if the lesson could still be learned via a good scare followed by lots of unexpected snow in the high Sierras and rain in the lowlands, well...I'm all for that.

Of course climate shift and global warming are a part of the cause of this weather pattern. But also, I believe, the water of the planet is inviting us to a consciousness-raising party. Someone said to me a few weeks ago, "Water is the oil of of the 21st century." And I believe she is right. Privatization of water has been insidiously forcing water further from the realm of natural law into the realm of commerce. And as water becomes more dear due to drought, it will become more expensive. And the more "they" try to control it for sale and profit, the less water anyone will have. But not merely because we can't afford it financially.

I believe the spirit of Water will protest, and will not allow itself to be regulated. I can envision floods that burst dams and refuse to be contained as one possible demonstration of Water's protest against commercial regulation and our poor stewardship. I can see drought as another possible demonstration. I can see that as long as there is this commercial consciousness around "not enough water" then there truly will be "not enough water." The collective unconscious may create a mass experience/hologram of "not enough water" so that we can learn our lesson of conservation and respect, and evolve our relationship with this element. All of those ways of accessing this lesson are painful, because they are all reactionary and rooted in "not enoughness." I can see the value of that pain as long as the lesson gets learned.

But, damn, the lesson gets learned slowly. And, damn, we are stubbornly addicted to our mass hallucination of "not enoughness." (Hmm, that addiction applies to many realms - not only water.)

So, I do my best to bring rain, and invite the community's help. This year, we've done a good many rain rituals. There was a rain-specific circle that I could not attend. But they rocked the hell out of it- it was raining even before they were finished. We also asked for rain during another drum circle at mid-summer, and the lights started flashing on and off in the room we were in like CRAZY. The next day- Jakc found the blog of a woman in Santa Cruz, with pictures, about the freakish rain storm that had just rolled off the sea onto land and brought a sudden, huge downpour.

At Yule, I was assigned to invoke the spirit of the West/Water, and I asked for rain on behalf of us all. It offered a tiny little sprinkle that evening, and a big downpour that night. On New Year's eve, I asked the CAYA community to create rain intentions and send them along the power channels created by the celebration of the birth of 2009...and we had amazing rain on the 2nd. So, we're all working on it together and doing a great job as far as I'm concerned! I'd love to see people working on it all the time. Some folks are already doing this- Szmeralda and Hummingbird and others have mentioned a great technique: singing songs for rain while in the shower. That is some good, smart sympathetic magic right there!

Here is a rain song I wrote- it does have a tune, but you could make up your own if you like:

We need rain in California,
unexpected rain in California,
to end this drought that hovers over us
and to bring water to the Earth.

You can substitute place names of your choice.

In NorCal, we benefit from the snow in the high Sierras as a primary source for our water, so I will be doing some snow magic this week while I am in NY. It's snowing here- and HOW! Two feet are out there right now as I sit typing this. I am so excited about it. I love the snow.
So, here is what I'll be doing- each time I go outside, I will pick up some snow in my bare hands and let it melt down into water. I will use that substance shift as the channel along which I send my intention for the snow to go to the high Sierras. I will also bring some snow back to Cali with me in a ziploc bag, and I will re-freeze it as ice cubes in my freezer. Then, when we need rain or snow in the mountains, I can take one of the snow cubes and let it melt in my spell cauldron in the garden to represent bringing that water to the Earth. And sing, of course. And drum, of course. And other ecstatic things.

In ancient Greece, there were entire colleges of priestesses of Hera whose job it was to regulate the weather and bring rain. They would use brass rattles for this purpose. I just happen to have a brass rattle- it's for Oshun, actually, but those two ladies get along just fine. And Oshun is usually willing to help a sister out, anyway. So I'll shake that when I do my snow and rain work. Another traditional Greek method of enticing the rain is that priestesses would draw a cart through the streets, and act like they were cows who were mad with thirst- bellowing, shaking their heads, surging their bodies forward with eyes bulging, snorting. And people would come out and throw water on them to simulate rain coming to cool off the cows, daughters of the "Great Cow-Eyed Goddess," Hera. I am all for us doing a ritual in the summer where all the priestesses get water thrown on them by everyone. Hmm- maybe we'll incorporate that into Litha.

But till then- anyone who reads this- go make rain in your own way!