Midsummer: What the Wren Knows

When you walk a magickal path year in and year out, dancing that Wheel over and over, it gets in your blood. You become the Wheel, and the Wheel becomes you. In this state of Union, the Gods can speak to you clearly through tokens and omens that come through the spirits of Nature, and I don't just mean Otherworldly spirits. I'm talking about the plants, animals, and birds that you encounter as you go about your daily life.

Last summer it was crows and dead cats all over the place, and we all know about the shitty transformative energies of the Summer o'12. This year, it's a wren.

Our washer and dryer are in an outbuilding, and we often leave the door open so the cats can go inside when it rains. There's a shelf full of dryer lint and various stuff near the machines. I went in a few weeks ago and startled a little bird flying around. The door had been closed at that time, and I thought the bird had been caught inside accidentally. 

The next day, it happened again, and this time I saw it: a hollow hive-shaped nest deep within the dyer lint, and several speckled eggs inside. Ah! 

It took a few days to figure out what kind of bird it was, and it is a Carolina Wren:

Of course, it's always cool when the wildlife comes near, but it took a while for my mind to shut up and listen to Wren's message. 

Which, when it came through, floored me, and by that I mean, shook my very foundations.

This is what She said:

Druid.

You're a Druid. 

Or, as you prefer, a Druidess.

You've called yourself Witch, you've called yourself Wiccan, and you've earned the right to call yourself those things. But I know what you really are. And so do you.

What are your earliest memories? It's the time your mother got all the big pine trees cut down in the front yard. It's the way the light looked on the tree leaves before a thunderstorm. It's the smell and curious shapes of the sassafras leaves. It's the color of the willow oak leaves against the blue sky in autumn. It's the glory of the yaupon in winter and the filigree of bare branches against the sunset sky.

It's a hundred memories of trees, and plants, and birds, and all the things of Nature, wherever you go, Hawaii, California, Washington, Germany, Massachusetts, Indiana. What do you notice? The trees. The birds. The weeds. What do you remember, after all these years? The way the Light and Dark play on the Land. When do you mourn the most? When trees are killed and weeds are killed and the secret places are desecrate. When does your heart soar and sing? When you are talking to the wild flowers, and the weeds, and the trees.

And who is your Goddess? Who, after all these years, did you finally meet and know? Cerridwen. Do you remember your poetry? Do you remember how you used to be able to sit  down and compose a 20-page term paper in your head, and type it out completely intact, with endnotes, with no rough drafts and no revisions - on a typewriter, and get an 'A'? Why do you think you loved William Blake and John Keats so much? They knew the Awen, She gave them the Awen, a word you started to chant by instinct 10 years ago this Midsummer. Your officemate, not a Pagan, out of all the words in the world names her business "Awen;" can We send any message clearer than that?

The Witches, your friends, your family, your kinspeople, they're fine. Nothing wrong with them. Stay with them. But not for you the world of perpetual Halloween, of autumn-tinted shadows and the night-mysteries all the time; for you are also of the day, the green and the gold and the blue, the clear fine sky, and the Alban Heruin, the rays of Light on the Shore. And you have always known and felt this. Stop pretending.

For you not just the Sacred Union, but the fruits of the Union, which are the poetry and the song and the art. 

And you are a philosopher. Like your forebears, like William Blake himself, you can speak many languages of Spirit. Jesus is okay. Perhaps his feet in ancient times walked upon England's mountains green.

 Druidess you have been, and Druidess you are, and Druidess you will ever be. Dryw, my name in Welsh, which means "Druid" and "Wren." 

For I am the King of the birds. I have flown higher than the Eagle, and I give the power of prophecy, which you have already discovered. I was Taliesen, who is in you. I give the power of song, and I give the power of cunning. 

Having come home now to what I truly am, I feel no need to rush off and join a Druid organization. My current spiritual technology can serve my needs just fine, I think, for the time being.

I am in awe of how clear and direct these omens and tokens are. It stirs in me a desire to create, to worship, to serve Her and emulate Him. What a marvelous multiverse.

What a relief no longer to be an oval peg trying to fit into a round hole - more frustrating than a square hole, because that's obvious, but with an oval peg (to extend the metaphor), one keeps feeling as if one could and should fit. It's the almost-ness that gets you.

Blessed Alban Heruin. May the Light shine brightly on your Shore.

Hawthorn: Queen of the May

As I mentioned yesterday, two Plant allies have come to me this year: lemon balm, and Hawthorn.

One must capitalize Hawthorn, for this is a regal tree, a tree that carries the gravitas and majesty of Queendom. She is compelling and complex, Dark and Light, healing and hurtful; more of a shrub than a proper tree, but as commanding as the mightiest Oak.

The Hawthorn that graces my life (I can't say "my" Hawthorn) was planted as a sprig from the Arbor Day foundation 8 years ago, sandwiched between two crabapples. For years it was just a little shrub; and then suddenly, three years ago, it expanded and blossomed right on cue for Mayfaire. The creamy white blossoms enjoy the sunny branches up high. They don't last long, and one poem compares the breeze-drifting petals to tears. (There is a curious amount of poetry about the Hawthorn.) No worries, though: the new leaves are vivid green and tinged red (a clue to Hawthorn's membership in the Rose family), and the astonishingly red berries, called haws, light up the dimmest winter months.

Lady Hawthorn ... how shall I say this? She has a reputation. She's not an aphrodisiac, but men who fall asleep under Her wake up with their heads in the lap of the Faery Queen, and yes, that is poetic euphemism. But Hawthorn isn't interested in your naughty bits. She's after your heart.

What does She want with your heart? Why, she wants to heal it. And that's exactly what She does, blossom, leaf, and berry. Hawthorn has extensive benefits for all manner of physical heart ills. She lowers blood pressure, reduces arterial plaque (arteriosclerosis), gentle  dilates the blood vessels and therefore opens up circulation and increases oxygenation, steadies irregular heartbeat, and helps lower cholesterol. 

Energetically, She is calming and centering, albeit in a slightly different way than Melissa (lemon balm): you can actually tell that Lady Hawthorn is working in the heart center, whereas Melissa (lemon balm) is more in the head.

You know that feeling in your chest when you are angry, tense, or afraid? Even in healthy people there's a constricted feeling in your breath, a very slight choking that may not even be physical? Hawthorn opens all that up. Hawthorn lets you take that deep breath that helps move the anger away. 

Oh, and like the Lady She is, she provides nutrition but also helps normalize your digestion and your appetite.

I am a crab; Cancer is my Sun sign, and there is a strong streak of harrumphy, coldhearted curmudgeon in my nature. Hawthorn helps me loosen my crab-claw grip on the grumps. A little hawthorn, and I can take a deep breath and go into the place of loving or empathy or compassion that I need to be in.

True to my -ishy approach to herbalism*, I started by pulling a couple of berries and eating them. Very powerful. Please understand that when I say "very powerful," I'm not talking about a head-rush or anything like taking a pharmaceutical (legal or illegal). I just could feel my heart chakra open up, my breathing deepen, and my core being get calmer. The blossoms make a wonderful tea, but mine were all gone before I realize they were all gone. However, you can eat the leaves, and they work. They have a bland taste. I think they dry well enough to preserve for teas or capsules.

The thorns .... oh, the thorns! The Lady protects Herself and Her own. She's got, like, 2 inch thorns and they are as sharp as a needle. But then, that's true to Her rose nature, like roses, blackberries, brambles, etc.

Lady Hawthorn helps me connect to my Celtic-ish based practice. I've never fully bonded with the 13 month tree calendar or many of the Ogham because I have no context for many of them in my life. Blackthorn may make many witches quiver with lust, but I've never seen it; I have no relationship with it. Ditto with the much-loved Rowan. They don't grow in eastern NC; they are foreign to me. And I've always felt foolish trying to work magick or divine with something I have no familiarity with. So getting to know Lady Hawthorn up close and personal has been very rewarding from a practitioner level. 

In the Ogham, it's called "Huath." The Authorities focus on the thorns and call it a tree of protection and defense; true enough, it's used to make hedge-fences in the old country, to keep in what needs to be kept in, and to keep out what needs to be kept out. It's often determined to be a masculine tree. Well, it's masculine to me in the same that the High Priestess can strap on a sword and be the Priest in a ritual. But she's still a Priestess, and so is this tree.

She is sacred to the Goddess Cardea, of Roman origin but deeply embedded in our subconscious as associated with cardiac, although The Authorities don't recognize Cardea/Cardia's name as a source of the word "cardiac." Cardea is a Goddess of hinges, or doorways, of thresholds. Hawthorn is Her sacred tree. And it's a tree associated with the realm of Faery, of people falling asleep beneath it and actually going into the Otherworld.

There are also levels here about boundaries, personal boundaries, when to open up to people and let them in your heart, and when to provide a beautiful exterior that hides enough thorns to deter those who would steal away the goodness you have to offer. What can Lady Hawthorn, and Cardea Goddess of Thresholds, teach us about loving but having proper boundaries?

There are Mysteries here, mysteries of a whole heart, a green heart, an open heart needed to go into the Otherworld, and to encounter the Queen of the May. And the paradox: it is the Goddess, the Queen of the May, who can heal our hearts. And safety is important for all of this.

* "Ishy" is my vague and idiosyncratic approach to herbalism that is absolutely imprecise. You can do this with mild herbs. I can do it with Hawthorn because my heart is pretty healthy and because I'm cautious by nature and never eat more than two or three leaves. However, I don't know you. Because Hawthorn works on the heart, even in a very, very safe manner, I do not recommend this -ishy approach for anyone else. In fact, if you want to try Hawthorn, read up on all the links on google; inform yourself, check with a doctor if you have any cardiac or blood pressure issues, etc. In other words, you're a grown-up and your relationship with this Plant is between you and Her.

**************

The Hawthorn in my yard is a "Washington" hawthorn; there are many species. Mine definitely has the medicinal and energetic properties. 

Here is a lovely poem from Willa Cather called "The Hawthorne Tree:"

ACROSS the shimmering meadows—
Ah, when he came to me!
In the spring-time,
In the night-time,
In the starlight,
Beneath the hawthorn tree.
Up from the misty marshland—
Ah, when he climbed to me!
To my white bower,
To my sweet rest,
To my warm breast,
Beneath the hawthorn tree.
Ask of me what the birds sang,
High in the hawthorn tree;
What the breeze tells,
What the rose smells,
What the stars shine—
Not what he said to me!

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

I Greet Thee With Earth

Today is Earth Day. It's kind of like Mother's or Father's Day, the one day when we make a token effort to show appreciation to our literal, human creators for, you know, creating us so we can enjoy food and music and careers and Facebook and sex, and make other little human critters. Only this day is for Big Mama, Gaia, Erce, Hertha, Pachamama, Prithvi Mata: the literal Mother Of Us All, the Earth.

I like the the concept of Earth Mother and She-Who-Creates-Us and She-Who-Sustains-Us. I like the internet memes that go around with pretty pictures exhorting us to take care of Her  by doing x or avoiding y. I appreciate the information that goes around about stopping Monsanto and Nestle and the frackers and the rain forest loggers.

But this Earth Day, I have to look at the language we use in reference to "Mother Earth," and I notice that while it does displays reverence and appreciation, it still implies a separation. It's a She-Us relationship that this language implies. Intensely bonded, yes, as close as a mother nursing her baby on her breast; but still separate, different.

And in the wake of Boston, disturbing. And wrong. We are not separate from the Earth. We are the Earth.

As much as pandas and redwood trees and condors and tigers and elephants. Along with mushrooms and wheat, viruses and quartz crystals, worms and howler monkeys. And the tuberculosis bacterium. And cholera. And the HIV virus. And cancer. 

Some believe that the Earth, including us, of course, the wholeness of this planet and everything in/on it, comprises a single living Entity. I like that theory. I like it because it mirrors the reality of a single body; as above, so below. We think we're a single entity, but in reality, we're a huge collection not only of cells of a particular DNA line, but also hundreds of millions of bacteria, most of which are either living benignly in or on us, or who are actually benefiting us in some way. Our ability to digest many ordinary foods; to maintain a healthy immune system; to be normal weight; and perhaps even our resistance against mental illness and autism, may ultimately all depend on having good numbers of friendly bacteria in us. Where do "I" begin and the bacteria end? Wouldn't it be accurate to say that we comprise one composite Being?

And when disease strikes a person, it's because something is out of balance in the wholeness of that composite Being, some of its cells gone weak or rogue or rebellious and attacking each other and sickening that whole Being.

How is that not like the Earth? How is that not like us and our relationship with the Earth?

We are the Earth. We are part of the great composite Being that we call Mother Earth. There is no separation. 

When I meditate on this, I am forced to conclude that if I am a literal, integral part of Mother Earth, whom I call Hertha, then so is everyone and everything else. And when some of the "everyone else's" go rogue and believe  that they have to kill other people in order to incur Divine favor or get their needs met, then that is like cells in my body rebelling against me and causing me illness.

Whether it's Dylan Klebold or Adam Lanza or the Tsarnaeva brothers, they are me and I am them because we are all literally part of the greater Being that is the Earth. The chairmen of Nestle and Monsanto corporations and I are cells of the same Being. I don't have to enjoy the destruction and rogue actions of these my brother- and sister-cells anymore than I would enjoy or approve of a skin cell turned cancerous or H. pylori giving me an ulcer. Because it's healthy and appropriate to stop disease, and sometimes, you have to be tough or perhaps even brutal to stop a serious disease. 

But at the same time, to address a disease effectively, you don't have to hate the disease. In fact, the stress hormones that hate causes creates conditions that could very well make the disease worse. You do have to acknowledge some weakness in the whole system, something out of whack that allowed the disease process to occur and spread. 

When I see these beautiful young men in the prime of their lives fall victim to some inconceivable anguish or anger or fear or pain such that they believe they must go kill others, that's as horrifying as my own tooth twisting around in my mouth and biting me. But if that were to happen, I wouldn't hate the tooth. I would not say "that tooth is not me!" I'd try to figure out why my tooth was attacking me.

I am not a paragon of forgiving loving-kindness. I get ill-natured and close my heart and hold grudges as well as anyone. But in my faith tradition's liturgy, I was taught to step into sacred space and say

"Oh Earth,

I am your sister of earth

and I greet you with earth..."

And I take those words as True. I have to, otherwise I lie everyone time I cast circle. I am your Sister of Earth. You are my Brother of Earth. The Earth is our sibling, our Self.

I think that the best way to celebrate Earth Day is to cultivate a sense of One Shared Being with everyone else on the planet. If humans could do that, then the strong bond of shared purpose and affection that would grow would open our heart centers to include all the rest of our brothers and sisters, the non-human cells in our vast Being of Oneness. I am refraining from hating the Tsarnaeva brothers. I am refraining from hating the chairman of Nestle Corporation. I am refraining from hating Fred Phelps. I am praying that their diseased and afflicted conditions are healed and do not spread to the rest of this, the Earth-my-body and your body. 

Blessed Be.

Beauty That Must die

"She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips..." In my 51 years of living, I have witnessed an incredible amount of Beauty that died. The Beauty I refer to is Beauty in the natural world. And most of it did not have to die. It died because the species Homo sapiens are, by and large, blind and unfeeling idiots. I have always been an animist by instinct. Weeds, scrub trees, lichens, wild plants, bushes, shrubs of all kinds have always delighted me beyond any reason. The phrase, "my heart leaps in gladness" applies whenever I am wandering down roads or in fields and come across a little bog with some jack-in-the-pulpits or elderberries, or when the first goldenrod blooms every Lughnasadh or when I see something I've never seen before. But this joy and gladness has inevitably been accompanied by aching pain and unassuageable sorrow, because there are very few places in my life that I have loved -- and when I say loved, I do mean love in the same sense I would use for my husband, friends, and family - because someone has inevitably come along and wounded or outright murdered these places in the name of --what: money? Safety? Industry. Development. Progress. I mourn people I have known who left this world too young. I also mourn the slope of swamp behind the house I grew up in that every spring was covered with hundreds of tiny wild irises. It was drained for cheap housing. I mourn the mixed old forest near my house that was logged. I mourn the hundreds-year-old oak tree that was cut down in Bridgeton so the road could be widened - Doug and I went and hugged it and sang to it and asked its spirit to leave the night before it was killed. We have a piece of its wood on our ancestor altar. There is a special place near my house, an old one-lane road, a brick road with a thin veneer of asphalt. It gets very little traffic and only a handful of houses; it's mostly wild forest and farmland. Little Swift Creek runs beside and through it, and there is an old beech forest (rare in eastern NC) and a lot of interesting and secret places. The road has 8 feet of shoulder on either side, then a ditch, and then on one side a strip of trees, and then a railroad. The Gods have visited me on this road. I have had ecstatic experiences while doing walking meditations. Hawks and cranes have visited me with messages. Gentian, Joe-Pye-Weed, boneset, lobelias, irises, skullcap and dozens of other wildflowers grow along the slopes of the ditch, and I have come to know them as old friends by greeting them year after year. My dogs can run wild along this road. Today the State Department of Transportation decided that a few shrubs and branches growing 12 feet from the road, and across a ditch, were too much and so they sent a big ol' tank of Murder out to poison the foliage with 2,4-d and Garlon. These are herbicides, which are surely among the most heinous spawns of human design. That special verge where flowers and shrubs and small trees grow so freely will have their cells mutated to grow uncontrollably (that's what 2,4-d does: induce plant cancer, essentially) while the Garlon comes along and kills it a different way. So this entire, wonderful little ecosystem is going to be shut down in poison that will last for up to a year. I have seen what happens when this kind of murder is imposed. Nature is wonderful in that She always recovers, but there is "scar tissue" -- She will regrow the more vigorous plants, such as poison ivy and invasive non-natives, and those will dominate while the few stands of wildflowers or native plants such as buttonbushes will disappear. It's like flesh: it'll grow back, but it'll be scar tissue, which does not have all the desirable properties of normal muscle, fascia, and skin. I called the Department of Transportation's 'Landscape' Department and asked what kind of science they had upon which they were basing their decision to do this. The nice gentleman had none, of course, although he referred me to his boss. Basically they have a mandate to kill brush back on one-third of the county's highways and secondary roads. Apparently how the roads are chosen are by request of the mowers and/or by random. I don't get the sense that the state is evaluating each road to determine how wide the shoulders are, how much brush is encroaching upon traffic safety or electrical or phone lines. What is really going on here is a mechanical and automatic pattern of department funding and spending and self-perpetuation. Having worked for state government, I know that each department or agency gets a certain amount of money each year. If you don't spend all that money, the following year you get less money. (Nope, no reward for frugality!) So there is an incentive to do work that does not need to be done and spend money that does not need to be spent. I have NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that the mowing patterns, which cut and scrape away excessive amounts of plant material far from the highways, and these herbicide-spraying programs exist entirely to spend and therefore justify this agency's budget. I have no doubt that this department or agency, like much else in the US and the Western World - hell, the developed world -- is committing this atrocity of needless death and destruction for no good reason whatsoever. We are locked in patterns of harmful absurdity and insanity, and yet those of us who protest are considered insane. Talking to the nice man on the phone, I could tell he thought I was a kook. And according to the anthropocentric, capitalist, dominionist culture I find myself in, he's right. But I think he and most everyone else in this madhouse are insane. I won't visit my road again for months. I will not be able to bear the life-force of Spring arising and seeing the dead and dying plants unable to participate in that dance. I will not feel comfortable for my dogs to wade in Little Swift Creek and drink from the ditchwater. I'll stay home and mourn, or hook them on a lease and go parade around the asphalt of New Bern and call that "good." But I will mourn, and I will grieve, and I will cry because once again, Beauty must die, and Joy has bid adieu.

The Tao of Imbolc: Dance and Flow

Lately I've been minding the Tao, that beautiful, ancient Eastern observance of ebb and flow, Yin and Yang, resistance and yielding, sinking and rising. I've been minding it by reading about it via Alan Watt's The Watercourse Way; by  incorporating the vinyasa of movement-with-breath in my Yoga practice, and by adding some simple Qi Gong to my weekly practices.

When you look at the world through a different window, you still see the same world, but you certainly see a different view, and that's the value of looking out different windows. Alan Watts posits that Western language (unlike many others) predisposes our brains toward pinning things down concretely, labeling them, and establishing their IS-ness. So, we get concepts such as "Imbolc is here." "Spring is here." "This is a sacred day." These standing waves of fixedness. We can then build a chart and describe what Imbolc is: the meaning of name - probably "ewe's milk." Historical references: the ewes begin to give birth to baby lambs. The days are longer. In some places, there's a little bit of ice melt. Associated Deities: Brigit. Candles, fire, flame, etc.

We can go on is'ing until we think we know the thing, until, like the naturalists of the 19th century who killed in order to explore life, we've pinned down the wings of this particular butterfly and have analyzed its patterns of color and migration and eating and cocooning and mating and breeding habits. And when we've figured out how it fits in with all our other is-nesses, the other butterflies and moths and winged creatures of the Air. 

And we end up with a lot of facts and a dead butterfly.

This morning I contemplated Imbolc by thinking the days are longer. And then I wondered: what  does that mean, really? And I saw our Earth-Lady from space, all green and blue and white and brown,dancing gracefully around the Sun, Her partner. Our seasons results from the flow of this long dance. The holiday-tide and the lengthening light arre simply moments when we notice one step flowing into the next. 

The astrological glyph associated with Imbolc is the double-wave of Aquarius, the Water-Bearer whose jar flows forth water, electricity, milk, semen, inspiration, any flow, any wave. 

Today I recast my practice to honor the flow and the dance, by moving my whole body into invoking pentagrams, by honoring and invoking the Elements with the tides of my breath, the buzz of my nerve endings, the pulse of my blood and lymph, the mass of my flesh and bones. The pentagrams transformed from stars into flowers and then back to stars, and the space around me transformed from a gentle chaos of the Elements unorganized into a gentle cosmos of the Elements organized .... and then, upon release, back into the background of un-Being, like a butterfly briefly alighting onto my hand, and then floating away. In a dance.

Shit They Don't Tell You In Books, Part 2: Traditions, Egregore, and Magickal Current

My colleague, Spanish Moss, posted an excellent blog recently about "Traditions" - magicko-religious affiliation groups in the "Pagan" vein. Everyone should go read it now. Seriously, you should, because it will help you understand this blog better.

Everything Spanish Moss said is factual and true, but more can be said. In reality, not all "Traditions" are equal, and I don't mean characteristics of practice such as circle-casting techniques or pantheon relationships. No, I mean the internal, unseen, energetic underpinning of a Tradition along with its deeper relationships to Deity and Mythos, all of which go into making that powerful and mysterious concept we call egregore.

The Gardnerian Tradition has been around for at least sixty years and perhaps more, depending on if you believe Gardner made it all up or found/added to/adapted some pre-existing practices. The Alexandrian Tradition has been around for nearly fifty. They've had thousands of initiates and hundreds, perhaps 1000+ of solid practitioners who are working the same core material for decades.  They also have a simple Deity structure that is stable. That's a lot of man-hours of practice. That's a lot of people tied to their respective egregores -- which, it might be said, is conceivably part of a larger egregore called "British Traditional Wicca." That's a lot of Third Degrees and Second Degrees. All that solid practice and all those Third and Second Degrees act like pillars and archways and flying buttresses that hold up the structure of those Traditions.

The Eternal Harvest Tradition, on the other hand, is 22 years old. It was created as a single coven by two First Degrees (Doug and his then-wife Morgana) and two other people who came from a non-BTW teaching group who taught a very different brand of "wicca," the Frosts. It was augmented by Doug's studies with various outer-court-American Wicca, Druidic, and ceremonial groups, often involving people such as the late Lord Ravenwind, who came in and brought their teachings and initiations. 

Eternal Harvest was quite volatile in the 1990s, quickly attracting dozens of students and a good number of initiates, who quickly hived off, and then just as quickly left. When I joined 12 years ago, I made it my ambition to rebuild. We attracted some very solid people, most of whom the readers of this blog will know from local gatherings. We did some good work in the local area. I know we have made a real, measurable, and profound change for the better in several peoples' lives.

But the Eternal Harvest egregore is nowhere near as mature, robust, or stable as an Alexandrian or Gardnerian group, and the same is true for many other trads here in the United States.  Part of that is because we're still relatively young. Part of it is because we have not had the hundreds/1000+ people practicing with us. There are a lot of other factors, too, but these are two of the big ones.

As some of us matured in our practice, both EH and with other groups, the Power inherent in this Cauldron we call "egregore" has increased rapidly, even exponentially. The unseen ties that bind our initiates together have grown stronger. This is great in some ways, not so great in others. What's great is that when person A has a magickal breakthrough as an individual, the rest of us kind of automatically get a backwash of benefit. On the other hand, when one of us undergoes a tectonic shift, such as I have, it creates an earthquake and subsequent tidal wave of destruction and instability. If we had 500 people in EH, it probably would not matter as much. Or, maybe it would: certainly the Feri's and Reclaiming have been rockin' and rollin' on shifting ground for years.

An interested party, seeing these shifts, asked me what was going on. My reply: I don't know. I really don't know. I know that last summer, I invoked Air, and via Air everything changed. I know that at the last lunation, I invoked Fire -- in a much gentler way, but enough to open a fissure within me until I erupted like Mount Kilauea and spewed a fountain of hot lava out. 

Those of you lucky enough to have been to the Big Island in the past 20 years will remember the explosions that take place when hot lava meets the sea. It's terribly destructive. It's also exhilarating and visceral. Ultimately it builds new land, but woe unto the trees and huts that get in its way.

I don't understand the relationship between my actions and thoughts and the egregore of my group. People like Annwyn being pissed off at me, sure, I get that. I said some shitty things. I'd be pissed at, and offended by me, too. But -- and I am in no way trying to deflect responsibility -- clearly there is more going on, because if our egregore is being this rocked by people getting pissed off at me, then how stable was it to begin with? And if it wasn't, why wasn't it? And what can be done about it?

I have never seen a detailed discussion of egregore. It's mysterious territory. If the BTWs know stuff about it, they ain't telling. I personally never dreamed it would be this powerful. As someone who loves analyzing energy, I'm hell of curious and fascinated. As someone who, at the end of the day, is a bit of a loner with strong selfish tendencies, I'm kind of horrified by how tied together we all are.

I would love to be able to give advice to people on how to assess an egregore in your choice of magickal groups, but I can't. This is one of the things the magickal community embedded within Contemporary "Paganism" ought to be talking about but unfortunately we're all too busy sticking our heads up our asses pursuing other lines of conversation. *Le sigh.*

I DID tell my enquirer the following: Magick is Hot. It's a Hot current. It's like electricity. It amps everything up. It accelerates. It frequently de-stabilizes. If you look at the history of Contemporary "Paganism," you will see that most magickal groups blossom and fade like daylilies. Stable, long-term groups are the exception and not the rule. And except for the BTWs, the very stable and long-term groups are often dependent upon one or two leaders who are the keystone of that group. When those people die or retire, the group breaks apart. You also see this with non-"Pagan" groups that run energy, such as some Pentecostal Christian groups. 

Outside of "Paganism," long-term religious groups rely on tribalism and and shared secular culture, or financial stability, or political agendas, to hold the flock together. We don't have that in "Paganism," and the Hot Magick Current makes it hard to develop. 

Again, I don't have an answer, but these are things that need to be said.

!!!TRADITION!!!