The Goddess' Athames

A few years back, a Pagan man wrote an essay and published it on Witchvox in which he called him "the Goddess' athame." The point of this striking metaphor was that he considered himself to be an instrument of the Goddess' Will in all the ways that an athame works the Will of a Witch.

Last week, I got to experience the marvelous effects of several dozen "athames of the Goddess" all pointed at me in Love and Grace, and today, I sing that Love and Grace.

Since my initiation into an American Craft tradition in 2002, Lord Death has visited me and mine all too often. Now, I understand Lord Death's role in the greater scheme of things; life without death is cancerous, toxic, and miserable. For several Samhains I have enacted the Mystery of the Descent of the Goddess  into the realm of Death, the sacrifice of the Sacred King, and sung "Hoof and Horn / All That Dies Shall Be Reborn" with gusto.

Nevertheless, the deaths and the endings and the mournings and the letting-go-of-things have piled up and especially in the past two years, it's been relentless. Not only with the passing of people and beings I love, but the death of relationships I cherished; the death of my priestess role within my community, and my place in the community; and of the hopes and ambitions I had for my tradition. All gone. All failed. All faded away. 

It's been a lot of Winter. 

And so when Freya, my beloved and most special cat, my L'il, the Tiny Baby Kitty I helped feed unto life as a kitten, when she sickened, it was too much. Too much. All the grief of the past two years recapitulated into this one big grief. I reached out to the Goddess in confusion, asking, what should I do about Freya, what decisions should I make? And I felt nothing whatsoever except a blank and terrifying silence. My Goddess, why has thou forsaken me?

I was wrong. I was not forsaken at all.

Going public with my despair, I was astonished at how many people, dozens of people, took time out of their busy lives to read my posts and offer their words of  sympathy, consolation, and heartfelt advice. It was easy to see that every one of their messages was sincere. Some of these people I have never met face-to-face. Others I have not seen in over 20 years. 

It was an astonishing outpouring of Love and Grace, and through it I found great healing, and through it I found and felt once again the Goddess. 

I realized several things:

1. There comes a point where sadness morphs into depression, and the biological markers of depression often include a deficit of that marvelous spirit of connection that is the neurotransmitter "serotonin." Without adequate levels of serotonin, it is very hard to perceive, to feel viscerally, any kind of connection. That is one the reasons I had a hard time feeling the Goddess directly.
2. The Goddess, however, does not have to manifest directly into neural networks that may be misfiring at the time, but She can and does work through other people, who are not really Others at all, because we are all cells linked in the body of Her greatness, and love given is love shared.
3. That in this case, the Goddess very much implemented Her Will through these dozens of people who took the time to say a kind word, or many kinds words, to me. Every one was an athame of the Goddess, pointing a stream of glowing Love at me, and at Freya.

I have not felt the Goddess' love this tangibly in many years. It reminded me so powerfully that nurturing and cherishing the web of connection we have with one another is the highest form of service one can give the Goddess. Every single thing else pales in comparison, falls utterly away into insignificance. Status, "witchiness," tradition, form, praxis, all of them are meaningless unless they are subsumed into the service of Her Love. Without this Love, all these forms and items we Pagans cherish are like those decorative athames you hang on a wall: pretty and interesting, but ultimately useless. I know that is going to be a lesson I'll be unpacking for some time to come, and in that realization will come Spring, and the healing of my heart.

It may seem irreverent to quote a pop band at this point, but once again I marvel at the Awen of the Beatles - perhaps not surprising since they were, after all, Celts: "And in the end / the love you take / is equal to the love you make."

The Waxing Tide of Life: Long Days and Balmy Eves

Returning to a theme I started last winter: there are certain things in our cluster of spiritual practices that They Can't Teach You In Books.

One of these things is the knowledge you get from living the Wheel of the Year over and over again. The repetition allows you to notice how you respond personally to the different tides of Power. For me, the Beltane-to-Summer-Solstice period is when I fall in love with the Earth all over again. I channel my inner Romantic poet:

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild–

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;

And mid-May’s eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunts of flies on summer eves.*

This Tide brings me mystical experiences with the Elves, the Fae, the Spirits of Nature, sometimes life-changing. I wander outside, entranced, greeting plant after plant with astonished delight like the old friends they are. Hello, elder blossom! Hi there, yarrow - you're early and quite luscious this year. Oh look, there's my vervain who visited me last summer - I forgot about you - you came back! It's a reunion. I greet them. And they talk back. It matters not if they are "weeds" or plants I put into the ground. Some of my best friends are "weeds," which is why I am a shitty gardener - I can't stand to get rid of the beautiful, vibrant "weeds" full of nutrition and unexpected medicinal and magickal power.

Note that this period does not begin precisely on April 30 and end at the stroke of midnight on June 22.I am a fuzzy Crafter, driven by instinct, full of -ishness. My practice depends less on the calendar (and none whatsoever on precise astrological degree) and much more on the look and feel of the Land; what's blooming or dying; the rush of the increase of Life and growth -- or the slowing down, the decrease and the stillness; and the quantity and quality of Light. I celebrate the Full Moon as long as the Moon looks full; I work with its waning when I can see it beginning to wane. 

My herbalism is much the same. And one of this year's revelations is that I am, indeed, an herbalist. I'm just a very -ish herbalist. My idea of herbalism is to listen to an inner voice tell me you need this, and then go out and pick it and eat it. I check to make sure it isn't Deadly Poison, and then I just ask it for some leaves, kinda-sorta-informally, and I put them in my mouth and chew them up and swallow them. And then I see how I feel.

I have had astonishing results from this. Back in 2006, some instinct told me to pick feverfew leaves and eat them. I did and experienced relief from chronic pain and tiredness: enough to go back to full employment, and to continue to work on the chronic pain and tiredness, which I resolved. I probably owe my current life and work to Feverfew. The effects did not last long. After a month or so, the relief waned; but by then, I no longer needed it as much. Apparently it had given me whatever I needed, worked toward my own homeostasis, and boosted me into another level of being. This relationship was entirely with the fresh plant. Teas, tinctures, dried matter did nothing whatsoever.

Two summers ago, a clary sage plant suddenly grew and blossomed and for a couple of weeks, the back yard smelled like the Goddess. In the Goddess' perfume, I guarantee you, is a liberal helping of fresh clary sage. I would walk by and brush my fingers lightly against the flowers and melt inside. I saved some seed, but the plant, a biennial, died away eventually (as it was supposed to do). You can purchase clary sage essential oil, but I assure you that it has none of the sexy, sensuous depth and musk of a clary sage plant in the fullness of the Sun. This plant brought me closer to the Goddess of Love and also helped me experience some mild but interesting altered states of consciousness.

This summer, I have two friends: lemon balm and hawthorn. After the Great Clusterfuck that was 2012, apparently the Plant Spirit world decided to send me a team. DH and I both have a certain amount of unresolved stress, anger, and trauma. Our nerves are frayed and it's affected us physically somewhat. This has exacerbated my old friend ADD. Happily, the Plant Spirits responded by giving me a bumper crop of lemon balm. In fact, it was the quantity and exuberance of the lemon balm that clued me in: maybe I need this.

 I've had lemon balm for years, but never bonded with it. I tried the tea, didn't much like it, and always let the plant bolt to blossom. It smelled good and made the bees happy and that was fine. This year, however, I walked by and picked a fresh top and ate it, and quickly felt calmer and more focused. Ahhhhh..... so that's what 'centered' feels like. My, it's been a while; I'd forgotten.  A little research and I discovered that lemon balm is a marvelous nervine ( which I knew) and helps the mind be more focused (which I did not know). It's recommended for kids with ADHD, and I can tell you it helps with adult ADD as well. It helps reduce allergic response, irritation, and anxiety.

This and hawthorn are turning things around for me. [I'm going to blog separately on hawthorn, because it's such a magickal tree as well as medicinal, and there's a lot of lore associated with it.] The lemon balm has helped so much that I'm motivated to go beyond my -ishy picking-and-eating thereof. I'm infusing lemon balm into wine, and this morning I pulverized a quart and blended it with brandy and 151 grain alcohol for a tincture. I might make some "Carmelite water." There's a bit of a race against time, since all The Authorities say you need to pick it before it blossoms to get the most benefit, and mine is loaded with buds. They also say you can dry lemon balm, but it seems to lose a lot of its virtue in dried form; the volatile oils that give it so much punch evaporate. Nevertheless, I'm going to try drying it, and also making an infused vinegar. 

I sang to it as I picked the tops. I love you lemon balm. You help me think. You help me focus. You help me feel good. You smell so good. You're so pretty. Thank you for helping me. I always feel bad, picking a lot of a plant, although Goddess knows I have a lot of lemon balm left. I'll give her a drink of water tonight in repayment.

Although The Authorities assign lemon balm to the Moon and Water, I think of yellow-blossomed lemon balm as an herb of Air, of Mercury; it's at its best in the month of Gemini, and it's a premier plant of the nervous system and thinking, all Mercurial functions. However, it's a bee plant; its Latin name is Melissa, which is Greek for "bee," and it reportedly has associations with Diana. And the bee is definitely a Goddess-creature from before recorded history. I have not yet worked magickally enough with my new friend to be able to say much in this regard, but I'll let you know what I discover.

I always thought you had to have shelves full of tinctures and jars of dried herbs, and scales and droppers, and know about drams and how many drops make a milliliter, to be a Proper Herbalist. I don't know if my efforts to be a Proper Herbalist will work. I don't know if lemon balm tincture will do for me what walking by and picking some and eating it on the spot will do. Perhaps lemon balm is just for me here, now. That seems to be true of herbs and me in general. Our relationships are profound but pass quickly, like the Tides of Power around and between the Sabbats; like the waxing Light and the "murmurous haunts of flies on summer evenings." This may be one of the more hidden lessons of Lemon Balm, my friend Melissa, with its strong but ephemeral volatile oils that smell so heavenly, and give it so many benefits, and yet are so hard to fix and preserve. Enjoy the beauty and fineness of this moment. Take a deep breath, and just be in relationship with your Self and what's around you.

*John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale," one of the best poems ever.

These links on lemon balm were of benefit to me:

http://www.herballegacy.com/Lemon_Balm.html

Good Mrs. Grieves: http://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/b/balm--02.html