New Moon/New Sun/Birth Day Ritual

This goes back to March 1988 but I'd forgotten about it until I was going through some boxes of papers and found an old copy of "Weird", the newsletter we used to publish. No coincidences. So here it is, just as it appeared in "Weird, Volume 3, #1". I offer this ritual as the first blog entry I've made in a long time, to whoever reads it - feel free to adapt and use as you Will with my blessings.

(This rite was originally conceived as a new moon ritual, but could be easily adapted to Springtime usage as well as being applicable to one's birthday, or for any occasion of renewal/rebirth.)

The Circle is cast as usual, according to respective traditions. Prepare by the Middle Pillar exercise or one such as this:

Center yourself and breathe rhythmically. Picture above your head an orb of blazing white light. Recognize this as the light of your Higher Self and revel in its beauty. Next, while remembering to breathe steadily, see a ray of this white coming down into your heart on an indrawn breath and picture it turning gold there. As you breathe out, see the same ray of white light continue, flowing down to your feet and pooling there. On your next indrawn breath, pull up from this white pool a rosy-gold ray to your heart. As you exhale this breath, feel the rays combining in your heart, fiery bright and golden.  Repeat this five or six times until you feel fully charged Then say, "I am light!"

In the center of the Circle, one candle burns in the Cauldron. Next to it rests a full Cup of wine or herb tea. Slowly and thoughtfully, extinguish each of the quarter candles, then the altar candles. Sit before the Cauldron, facing northeast. Reflect.

"I am darkness. I am the movement of all things unseen. I am shadow. I am all shadows. I am free."

"No door is opened except in darkness. No light is loved without measure of night. No balance is struck without a price. No fullness is cherished without longing."

"Black, timeless, looming hours; I am the eyes of the lightless Moon. Empty, frozen, new with power, silent with understanding, the Dark Mother, the Great Sea, The Cauldron of Eternity."

Facing East: "I am the sound of the unborn winds, the music of the heartbeat yet unknown, the dance of the turning tide, the silence between breaths. I am all that is, the faraway bells of midnight skies."

Facing South: "I am the blue of flame, the invisible spark, the fire of the unseen star, the electricity of the universe, the untouchable glow of spirit. I am all that is, the twinkle of forgotten lights."

Facing West: "I am the waters of deep reflection, the womb of the ocean's birth, the eternal movement of waves and the stillness of sleeping seeds. I am all that is, the floating, timeless sea."

Facing North: "I am the caves, the stones, the hollow earth, that which waits in the eternal hills. I am all that is, forever patient, forever waiting."

Meditate for awhile on the New Moon, the Dark Mother, the dark side of the year, midnight, the barren time, etc. Then repeat the white light exercise and relight the candles one by one like so:

 To East: (relight candle) "I salute the East. I drink in the dark winds and celebrate their union with the bright, the coming year, and the songs of new voices!" (drink from Cup)

To South:  (relight candle) "I salute the South. I drink in the dark heat and celebrate its union with the light, the coming year and the glowing of new fires!" (Drink from Cup)

To West: (relight candle) "I salute the West. I drink in the dark potion and celebrate its union with the bright, the coming year and the cleansing of fresh tides!" (drink from Cup)

To North: (relight candle) "I salute the North. I drink in the dark powers and celebrate their union with the light, the coming year, and seasonal rebirth!" (drink from Cup)

Repeat the white light exercise one more time, facing the center of the Circle and the Cauldron. Then relight the altar candles.

Say: "We are the Moon and Sun at new, and wisdom follows in our wake. We are the echo heard in daylight, the point of everlasting return, the eternal, the unchanging, the pure, the naked and the free. Our mind is one, our powers are one - the unconquerable, the immortal sentry, the holy guardian angel, incorruptible and ageless as as gold, the heart of eternities. We share one flesh, we see one vision, we speak one voice, we glow with one fire and we dwell in one darkness. We dance the dance of onyx moons and empty stars.

"Welcome, all that is, within us and beyond. All that will be starts and ends in you. You are the point of everlasting return. So Mote It Be!"

(If you want to, make a wish and blow out the candles.)

Threefold thanks to Katharine Clark, my Tuatha de Danaan sister, for providing the original ritual on which this one was embroidered. 

After the Fall

The big fall down the steps, that is, which happened on the June New Moon night,  seriously wrecking my back and cracking a couple ribs. I'm lucky I didn't break my neck. Got up in the middle of the night to pee, somehow caught my big toe in the cuff of my pajama pants and went tumbling down the stairs. Funny how everything goes into slo-mo when these things occur. I counted the steps as I hit each one, somehow turning a somersault in the process, picking up speed as I went, finally landing flat on my back at the bottom with the wind knocked out of me. Not being able to breathe for a minute was more horrifying than the fall itself. I laid there and moaned for awhile, slowly and painfully getting to my feet. Johnny came running and sat down beside me, puzzled. The upshot is that the disks in my back are basically shattered to shit. If I'm on my feet for more than ten minutes at a time, the sciatica demons start dancing merrily down my spine, running mainly down through the left hip and leg to my feet, twirling their little razor sharp lightning bolts as they go.

The pajamas went out in the boxes of household items and clothing for the VietNam Vets pickup the following week, good riddance.  Otherwise, the June new moon was glorious, with Venus and Jupiter riding high in the evening sky and the backyard all a-glitter with fireflies.

What does this have to do with tarot, you may well ask? After the fall, I went into a rather despondently dreamy state for a few weeks because I had to make some changes, physically, which of course affected all levels.  I kept working with the Smith-Waite tarot, which I love dearly. In retrospect, the Pestle of the Moon wasn't such a fiasco after all. Even though I had to stop because it was giving me nightmares, and some of the connections between cards, the Yeats poem, and the images for meditation just didn't make any sense to me. Now that I look back, the nightmares were probably my own deep seated fears and bugaboos bubbling to the surface. I still don't understand a lot of what I experienced, but I believe I did the right thing by quitting. It was getting very uncomfortable. I realize that not everything in this journey will be sweetness and light. I did the best I could.

I continued using the Smith-Waite as a daily meditation guide, drawing three cards on the new moon, and one for daily meditation each day. The three cards, ostensibly past, present and future, soon revealed themselves to be: 1)new and waxing  moon; 2)full moon; and 3)waning.

Surprisingly, the July new moon reading gave me all Cups. I rarely get Cups in my personal readings. I'm not a very emotional person, tending to be rather more analytical and intellectual. Cups were overflowing all over July, though. First there was 4 cups on the new moon and waxing phases, as I came to terms with the results of my fall, feeling like a failure, disgusted with myself, refusing to see the good side of it, if indeed there was any. The whack to my back and ribs seemed to knock loose all kinds of pent-up emotions and made me question a lot of things about myself and my way of life, balancing all that with the rest of the world around me. I even questioned being vegan, which is often challenging, as those who are not vegan can probably imagine. The King of Cups was for the Full Moon, then the good old 6 of Cups.

It seemed like the 4 cups was supposed to be a "faery gift" but I missed it. There were  signposts I kept stumbing upon, drawing me to "faery", which is really where I started into my Craft. I even came across an article about Feraferia on Facebook, and felt sad somehow because it referred to Feraferia in rather condescending tones reserved for old psychedelic hippie delusion cults, the harmless (and meaningless?) kind, as if it were a relic, at best.  Among my earliest jaunts into what I consider "the Craft" was a long and happy correspondence with Feraferia which taught me a great deal about nature religion and what some might call the faery ray. These are my roots.  I can't go back there, though, all the people are now gone to the Summerlands or otherwise lost to me in space and time. 6 cups, too, should have been a gift but I just couldn't pick up on it. I was taking long naps in the daytime when I should have been pulling the weeds out of my little fairy garden. I was in a depression, washed out to sea with an unaccustomed tidal wave of emotions.

That was goodbye to Smith-Waite tarot. The daily cards were all tens or otherwise pointing to the end of a cycle. The Devil card came up twice!  It was time to cut my losses and move on.

I thought about going back to the Sacred Rose, which is a very faery deck. This idea stayed with me up until the moment I opened the drawer where I keep my decks - and I ended up taking out the Celtic Wisdom one instead. Going back through the book to refresh my memory, I found an outline for a year-long working which seemed like just what the doctor ordered. It was on Lughnasadh, which is the time of renewing vows and promises.  The working consists of meditation sequences based on the ogham trees, sabbats, and figures from Celtic myth. I started on Lughnasadh, which begins with 3 cards from the Knowledge suit (Earth/Pentacles).

One of Pentacles is the Lia Fal or Stone of Destiny. Two is Dialogue of Knowledge, which pictures the young "grass-beard" poet Nede and his mentor, the elder poet Ferchertne.  The Woman of Knowledge (Page of Pentacles)  is the third card - lo and behold, it is Airmid, the herbalist of the Tuatha de Danaan, a personage with whom I've always felt deep kinship in the sense of Anam Cara.  It is easy to listen for Airmid's voice. I touch base with her almost daily.

Synchronistically, the first day I started this meditation, I cut my forefinger by accident (or by design) which was exactly what I'd pictured doing earlier that day as I visioned myself picking the bramble branch of Muin (the ogham tree for this phase) to set on my altar.  Ok, this is the time of sacrifice, Tailtiu's funeral games and all. (Lugh's foster mother, in whose honor he started the first Lughnasadh, died of exhaustion after clearing a forest for farm lands) I decided to go out and pull up all the jagger weeds from the neglected garden along the side of my house, partially as a kind of penance, partially as an affirmative action to support my new Celtic Wisdom endeavor. That was rewarding. I was also inspired to dig out my box of colored pencils and a large sketch pad which I hadn't touched for a couple of years, and create my own drawing of The Perfecter card - which along with The Soul card, serves as guide and focus for each of the meditations in this year long cycle. The directions are to lay out the 3 meditation cards on the Perfecter card, but there isn't enough room for that. It felt good to draw with the colored pencils again, and I finished my Perfecter last night, a big achievement that helped me to feel a lot better about myself. And I have a nice large Perfecter on which to properly place the cards.

It seems like I'm on the upswing "after the fall" at this point. Still in a state of transition but no longer feeling overwhelmed by the necessity of it. I'm moving in new directions and recovering old creative outlets. Embarking on a year long committment is a big step, especially considering I abandoned the Pestle of the Moon project before finishing. At this point, the Celtic Wisdom path feels right and all the signs and omens are encouraging.

(Lady Bramble https//tadja/wordpress.com/faery-gallery)

Pestle of the Moon, Part 2 (finale)

I abandoned ship before it crashed on the rocks. Yet the working seemed to be a success because my intuitive faculties do seem sharper now. So maybe it wasn't all for nothing.

If you read the previous post in this blog, you know that on the last New Moon I started a tarot working called Pestle of the Moon, from the Katz-Goodwin book on the Smith-Waite tarot deck. It was based on the Yeats poem "Phases of the Moon".

The card I drew for the Waxing Crescent phase was 6 cups and it corresponded with "The Dream". What more pleasant card could there be for a dream, right? Wrong. It gave me nightmares on the first night. The tower-like building in the background, which I never really noticed much before, reminded me of my childhood church, so that when I went into the scene, I went back to the memories, disappointments, and all the pretty cups lined up for gifts that were never received.

The next night with 6 cups was a little better, because I was determined to avoid all thoughts of church  and focus more on the flowers, imagining their scent. My neighborhood smelled like honeysuckle, and the alehoof and wild phlox were blooming so I focused on visualizing (or whatever the olfactory equivalent is) that, which was much more pleasant. "Sigfried's Idyll" was playing on the radio just before I fell asleep, and that definitely helped but I couldn't remember any dreams.

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The next night I finally remembered in great detail the dream I had, which was set in a small town. Before the small town scenario, I was with my old friend, Lady Bridget, but I can't remember what we were doing. Then everything changed and I was seeing (but was not a part of) a row of passengers, as if on a plane or bus, who were delayed for some unknown reason. The stewardess was rudely eating a sandwich in front of everybody, offering people bites which they angrily refused.  They were all mad because of the delay. Finally someone sent a sort of courier across the street to get something that would allow the passengers to proceed on their way. As I watched, the courier looked like they were enacting a drug deal or something suspicious, in the middle of townspeople who were aimlessly milling around. They parted to allow the courier to pass though them and they all seemed to be in on the deal, whatever it was. When the courier returned, there was a sense of release - although I never did see an actual vehicle, there was just a row of seats and people in them - and I assume the trip continued as the dream ended and I woke up with a 1950's pop tune in my head and the lyrics "I just found out yesterday - the girl I love is going away..."  I couldn't make any sense out of this dream but at least I remembered it and it was accompanied by music, which was supposed to be part of the working.

Then to make matters worse, I got confused about the lunar phases, of all things, and went into a panic. It was Katz and Goodwin's fault though. The way they laid this out, each lunar phase supposedly lasted three days/nights. This obviously doesn't work out right and the number of cards pulled for the working will only fit with the lunar phases if the length of each quarter is three days/nights and then the dates of the actual New, Quarter, Full and Quarter Moon are one night apiece. It made me wonder if they actually did this meditation themselves. If they did, they would have explained it more clearly!

Next was Ten of Swords on First Quarter night, one night only, with the keyword from the Yeats poem being "adventures" or "whims".  Not a harmonious combination. While visualizing the card, I bravely tried to focus on the positive sides of it - that Tens are the end of a cycle, the death of what's no longer needed - but I kept being drawn to the wounds or holes made by the swords, the ugly strata of brown ground, blue horizon, sulferous yellow sky and the falling black cloud. My mind wandered to ask who these ten swords belonged to anyway? I almost started naming ten people to whom they might belong but stopped myself at that point.  I woke up the next morning in a terrible depression, unable to remember any dreams, but with a heavy, sad feeling that all my "adventures/whims" were dead and should be abandoned - especially this particular "adventure" of the Pestle of the Moon experiment.

Thank Goddess that card was only for one night!

Next was Knight of Swords with the keyword "Hero's Crescent". At least that combination made sense. The first night I tried to get into the card and ride with the Knight. All that happened was that I woke up with the opening bars of a violin concerto in my head. The rhythmic, striding melody was familiar but I couldn't remember the name or composer. After the second night, a chromatically down-sweeping waltz, something like Valse Triste, was with me when I woke up. By the third day, I sensed that the Knight of Swords was somehow traveling with me through my waking hours, a vague presence beside me. Someone posted the old Rainbow song, "Man of the Silver Mountain" on Facebook and as soon as I saw it and listened to it, it clicked as a theme song of the Knight of Swords, the Hero's Crescent. On the final night of this phase, just as I was falling asleep, a man's face flashed before me, sharp and foxy with a rough shadow of unshaven whiskers on his cheeks and chin and something suggesting an open helm around his head. He was looking right at me with slitted eyes that were sharp and bright and was about to say something - when suddenly I jerked awake! I had the distinct impression that the Knight of Swords was ready to tell me something and I missed it. I felt like he had gotten closer and closer through this phase until we were finally face to face. Then it was over.

That brought me to the Full Moon and the King of Pentacles, keyword "twice born, twice buried." That night I dreamt there was something horribly wrong with Ace, my cockatiel. In the dream, I uncovered him as I usually do in the morning and found that overnight his wing and tail feathers had grown extraordinarily long, and they were so heavy that they were drooping around him. It scared me so badly that I woke up. Later that day, someone posted a picture of 2 phoenixes on facebook and the feathers were exactly like what I saw on Ace in my dream. It gave me one of those classic chills of recognition.

(This is Fawkes, Dumbledore's Phoenix)

Finally I got to the Waning Gibbous phase, the Ace of Pentacles, and the keyphrase "The soul at war/frenzy". I was able to remember all the details of a very convoluted dream that involved a waiting room in a doctor's office, working on embroidery to pass the time until my friend came out of the examination room casually talking about his bleeding ulcers that were "bleeding right now" then he went on to talked about a massive sum of money that he was trying to avoid paying. Meanwhile I decided to go into the kitchen of this place (a hospital?) and see if they had a bag I could put my embroidery into so it wouldn't get dirty. The cook said sure, but first he had to crack some eggs, which he did very violently on a metal griddle, and there were bloody chicks and water and all kinds of sickening stuff which he washed down the drain. He gave me the empty egg box for my embroidery and I wasn't sure it would fit, but I just wanted to get out of there. I went back into the waiting room and out the door, and there was a crowd of children there who seemed curious about what was going on but their mother kept shooing them away, telling them they couldn't go in yet. Suddenly I was in my old house and Jay was in his recliner which he'd placed on top of a stove or a heater for some reason, and I nervously cautioned him not to let it catch fire. A woman from one of my old covens was there in the background, like she lived there. I realized I hadn't thought about her for ages. Then I woke up with the Strauss waltz "Gold and Silver" in my head.

The next day I decided to just stop. I refused to go to sleep with "the soul at war" and "frenzy" while trying to meld into the Ace of Pentacles, such a totally benign image. It was crazy. I felt much better after that, as if some great pressure had been removed. Since I stopped (on June 5) I've still been remembering my dreams more clearly than before, so I guess it did work in a way. I didn't get much out of the lines from Yeats at all, though, which mostly didn't seem to fit in with anything. It was like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle in the dark.

New Moon is coming up and I do plan to continue my tarot adventures, although I have no idea what's next. I don't think I'll attempt anything else from Katz-Goodwin, though, as much as I love the Smith-Waite deck.

The Pestle of the Moon (Tarot)

On the Taurus New Moon, I put my Sacred Rose deck back into its butterfly book-box and switched over officially to the new Smith-Waite deck, which has been under my pillow every night for a couple of weeks now. I've been pulling a "card of the day" from it ever since I got it, to help with the bonding. I feel very comfortable with this deck now, especially since it gave me all three of my so-called Life Cards - Empress, Hanged Man and The World - on three consecutive days as card of the day, in their chronological order.  That was rather astonishing.

Starting on the New Moon, I began something called "The Pestle of the Moon" which is not really a divination but more of a meditation or exercise. This was described in the Katz-Goodwin book on the Smith-Waite tarot.  The purpose is to "regenerate your intuitive abilities". It derives from W.B.Yeats' poem called Phases of the Moon where he gives attributes for the Moon's phases. Katz and Goodwin describe it as "an entirely off-book method that may or may not even register consciously as to its effect." They suggest that it be done as a meditation, for relaxation and enjoyment.  They also suggest that dreams be recorded during the Pestle of the Moon cycle, naturally.

On the New Moon, according to directions, I laid out the High Priestess and Moon cards with the High Priestess above Moon. Then 8 random cards were drawn and placed around these two, starting at the right which is New Moon, then going widdershins to Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full, Waning Gibbous, Last Quarter and Waning Crescent. Each phase lasts about three days and nights.

I found a free lunar phase app to download to my phone, yippee! Ready to go.

The meditation or exercise is simple. Take the card of the current phase and put it by the bed. Before going to sleep, glance at it and let intuition pick out one thing from it as a focus. Eyes closed, visualize the card, then open eyes and glance at it again. Repeat until the card is clearly visualized. Then while falling asleep, repeat the keyphrase of the moon phase, derived from Yeats' poem, while seeing the image growing larger. As it grows and takes you in, merge with the scene. Let the keyphrase turn into sound, a chant, or music and take you deeper into sleep and into the card's image.

The first two nights after the New Moon, I did this with the World card. The keyphrase for the New Moon is "Cradle". Two things stood out to me in the Smith-Waite World card. The four figures at the corners of the card (which to me represent the fixed signs of the Zodiac) seemed cartoonish. One is a man (Aquarius) but the other three seemed to have human features, which struck me as a little silly and whimsical, but it was ok. The second thing was that the wreath around the dancing figure looked scaly to me, and I kept picturing it as an ourubourus snake even though I know its supposed to be leaves, ideally with roses. Why did Pixie leave off the roses, I wondered. The first night was very relaxing and I enjoyed the meditation, especially connecting the "cradle" idea with The World, being rocked gently to sleep. I did dream but couldn't remember it.

The second night (last night) was completely different. Instead of relaxing, it was vaguely scary and the meditation kept me awake instead of soothing me. I couldn't stop thinking about the snake-like wreath, which didn't really bother me. I like snakes. But it just kept coming back into my mind and preventing anything else from occurring to me. Even the 'cradle" rocking didn't help me to get into the right state, which got more tense as I continued. Finally I gave up and just let myself go to sleep without even trying to visualize anything.

Tonight is a new card for the Waxing Crescent phase, whose keyphrase is "The Dream". The card is the Six of Cups, a pleasant card for a dream. Meanwhile I transcribed the Yeats poem into my Moon journal for handy reference. So we'll see what happens next.

I'm looking forward to regenerating some intuitive abilities, as Katz and Goodwin describe in their intro. I feel that I'm intellectualizing too much - which is my nature, with natal Moon in Aquarius and Gemini Rising. However, this is supposed to be an "off-book" exercise for renewed intuition, and here I am doing research, looking up the Yeats poem, studying moon phases, even re-reading my old notes on Florence Farr and Golden Dawn, to prepare for this lunar cycle working. Wrong? I guess I should just let it flow, without any expectations or pre-fabricated ideas, and give my rusty, hide-bound intuition a chance to emerge from the shadows.

Tarot Blog: Introduction (for lack of a better title)

I've decided to make this personal blog into a Tarot Blog. I wish I could think of a more magickal sounding name for it. Maybe eventually I will. "Tarot Blog" is just so plain and ugly, and I hate the word "blog" with rhymes with "flog"....

Anyway - the reason behind it? I've been in a renaissance with Tarot lately.  Long story, which started with receiving  Book of Shadows Tarot from a dear friend as a Yule gift in 2013. While it was good to have cards that were Wiccan-themed,  many of these cards seemed to have no connection to traditional Tarot images and symbols, which was a challenge. Still, I loved working with it over the past year and half or so.  It expanded my horizons with regard to how the basic form of tarot can be used and forced me to consider a broader possible interpretation of the cards in general.  Before that, I'd been in a quiet phase of tarot, having lost my entire collection of at least 20 tarot decks in a fire a few years ago. Shortly after that,  I received a new Sacred Rose deck from a thoughtful soul-friend, and those cards are still my all-time favorite. I purchased a few of the newer decks, but wasn't quite ready to pursue a regular tarot practice for awhile.  I was in a quiet phase with everything, as I rebuilt my life and slowly found my way back home.

What I'd been doing over this past year and a half with the Book of Shadows tarot was simply drawing 3 cards on each New Moon.  Then I would check in on the following Full Moon and make notes on how this was working, or not. As the moons passed, I noticed that the 3 cards seemed to coincide with the ongoing lunar phases. The first card, which I was originally reading as "The Past", was a good indicator for the first part of the waxing phase. When I checked in mid-cycle, on New Moon, the middle card, which I'd been reading as "Present" was beginning to manifest effects. The third card, "Future", was an accurate picture of what was going on by the time I did my final look at these three cards on the next New Moon, prior to pulling out the next set of 3.  And so on and so forth.

I should explain my methods of tarot reading here before going on to what came next. I am a minimalist as far as card readings are concerned. The fewer cards, the better, and I don't do reversed interpretations at all. If a card turns up reversed, I simply turn it right-side-up, with the philosophy that the tarot is a completely positive divination tool and doesn't intend any of its messages to be reversed. If a card or cards betokens some warning, it should be obvious from the picture presented by the reading as a whole. Besides, reading with no need to reverse a card's meaning makes it easier for me. At one point in my 50 years of off and on tarot studies, I went through the inevitable stage of believing that the more cards you use in a reading, the more accurate it can be. I did readings with entire decks, using every card, major and minor arcana, and all sorts of complicated Life Readings and Soul Readings and other mumbo jumbo. What a mess. Not only was it exhausting and took hours to do, but it was usually a very ambiguous reading in the end with so many possibilities (all the cards!) thrown out for perusal.  Finally I gave up on the huge tarot readings and used less and less cards until now I am down to just 3 at a time, which gives me a very clear picture at this point in my tarot journey.

About 2 months ago I started reading posts online about Pamela Colman Smith, the artist of the Rider-Waite tarot deck. Right away, I felt a strong kinship with this woman known as "Pixie", as I learned more and more about her life and her art. I ordered a copy of  the book  "Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot" by Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin as soon as it was published. Then another close friend gifted me with the Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set for my birthday, to top it all off! It's a beautifully boxed set that includes the Smith-Waite Centennial Edition deck,  a copy of Waite's "Pictorial Tarot" which was originally written to accompany the first publication of the deck, another book "The Artwork and Times of Pamela Colman Smith" by Stuart Kaplan,  some postcards and prints of Smith's non-tarot artwork, a photo of herself, and a little folder of layouts for the cards.  I've read some reviews of this boxed set that complain about the way the Centennial Edition deck has been printed, presumably with a rather faded effect to make it look old and a bit fuzzy.  I have no problem with this, in fact I love it. It gives a feeling of time-travel through the cards, which I thoroughly enjoy.

So I'm off on a new track of my lifetime travels with the tarot.  As custom recommends, I've been sleeping with my new Smith-Waite tarot deck under my pillow.  It's a new look at an old deck, one that is a classic and has accompanied me off and on throughout my tarot adventures.  With the next new moon, I will start using it as my regular deck. Until then, I will draw one card a day. This will help me bond with the deck.

This blog entry sets the stage for future entries to come. If  you liked reading this, stay tuned for more. I welcome comments and discussion too.
 

It's been a long, busy Summer. Haven't written in this blog since before Beltane. Now it's Autumn Equinox and it feels like Samhain is coming early this year, judging from the recent signs and messages from the Other Side.

In honor of Autumn and swiftly approaching Samhain, I share this poem I wrote last year "For my Dearly Departed". Lately it struck me that "dearly" is an adverb and therefore must apply to "departed" as a very, not a noun. Not everyone departed so dearly, in fact very few do.

Anyway, here it is, slightly edited from the original poem. It is a Calvera, a Skull Poem traditionally written on the Day of the Dead, usually as a satire. Offerings are made to the departed loved ones on the Day of the Dead, as we also make offerings on Samhain of things the people enjoyed when they were still here with us.

Can kisses come back like ghosts?
I hope yours never do
Because your lips tasted like Kools
And I still hear you wheezing in the kitchen when you laughed
Then you'd light up another smoke.
But here's three packs for you,
I spent the last of my money on them.
Now you can have all you want
And you won't choke.
Maybe one more kiss tonight?
It will taste like heaven. 

The poem reflects the mixed emotions I experienced on the occasion of my late husband's demise. There has been some healing with time's passing. Last night he popped up in the middle of a rather mundane, ordinary dream. In the dream I was at Wal-Mart with my sister and my cousin, wandering around the outdoor garden center. My cousin pointed out a strand of unlit star decorations  hanging above our heads, Christmas stuff. When I looked up, there was a bright flash and suddenly it was New Years midnight and Jay was standing there, smiling and clear as day. Music started playing (Auld Lang Syne) and we exchanged a New Year's kiss. I wished him a happy 2015. There was no animosity, only fond affection. It was so vivid, I could feel his soft beard against my cheek as we hugged and kissed. Then suddenly he was gone and everything went back to normal. I was looking for my sister's truck in the Wal-Mart parking lot. It doesn't get more mundane than that, does it? Somewhere in the world, they do observe New Year's today, on Autumn Equinox, but I'm not sure where.

On other topics, I'm going to drum class later this evening, which continues through mid-November. Learning to play the djembe. I am not ready to go out and buy one, but I'm having fun and expanding my musical horizons.

Then I'll come home and do a simple Autumn welcoming, a little meditation on the changing seasons, and maybe some more writing.

My front yard has been transformed into the garden I've always wanted. No more lawn! I killed my back, which was not in the greatest of shape for starters, between digging up a tiny herb garden in the backyard (tiny because I ran into some rocky ground and had to limit my original plans), shoveling a whole dump truck of mulch into the wheelbarrow and distributing it through the garden, then to top it off, filling in the center of the garden with one cubic yard of pea gravel, one bag at a time. It was worth the effort, some of it in near 90 degree weather, even if my digging days are over now and I've been advised to use a cane if I'm going to be on my feet for more than 10 minutes at a time.

The Dwelling-Within Time looks like it's shaping up into a quiet time of rest and recovery for me.

Sweet Leilani

She's finally here! Isn't she gorgeous? says great-grandma.

Amber was in labor for about 16 hours. And when Leilani was on her way down the birth canal, she unfortunately (and this is gross, I warn you!) pooped and ingested some of it. She had to stay in Special Care for a week because she was on IVs and oxygen. She has a heart murmur, and is going to see a cardiologist on the 22nd. 

She was also born with two thumbs on her right hand! And she's tiny. She weighed just a little over 6 lbs. at birth and is 19 inches tall. 

Both mother and daughter are doing fine now. Leilani is eating regularly and gaining weight and strength. 

Just look at those dreamy eyes. 

 

 

Cabin Fever

There was a glimmer of hope on Imbolc. The temperature went above freezing for what seemed like the first time in ages. Small blurts of grass were visible. Watching the sky that morning, I spied a vaguely crescent-shaped cloud making its way across the freshly washed heavens and it inspired me to write this "Death Song for Winter".

The rains came down
The mists went up
And Winter went away.
A peaceful passing,
Carried off on carols
Of wren and robin
No more suffering.
Scars of dirty snow erased,
To rise in rainbows
From her face.
No lament,
No regrets,
Just the luminous promise
Of Spring
And that last arched eyebrow
Fading in eggshell sky.

It didn't last long. The few inches of snow that came afterwards are now preserved under a thick layer of ice that is both treacherous and stubborn. After yesterday's fall while trying to avoid a stray dog by cutting across the soccer fields that are now more like a skating rink, I don't even dare to walk Johnny in the park. The backyard will have to do. Both of us are going stir-crazy here. 

Johnny is a high energy dog. It's the Border Collie in him. He always has to have something to do, the more lively and interesting the better. His Lab side shines in his appearance only, in his glossy black coat and bright eyes, not in any laid-back temperament. When I finally got the backyard fenced in late last summer, I thought it would give me a break from marching up to the park with him three times a day. Well, now we only have to go to the park once a day - normally. Being iced-in, his yard excursions have dwindled to skittery two-minute trips to the far end where he does his business, then my high energy dog flops down in the snow and lays there, blissfully licking the ice. He could do that forever. He can't run on the ice. So we have to walk up to the park.

Yesterday the ice was horrible but we went out anyway. He was driving me nuts, dropping his Kong Ball on my foot every two minutes, (ouch) throwing his toys at me, even trying to engage the poor ancient cat in doggy games. So out we went. I had no intentions of going into the park, just briskly walking around it, still a good half-mile stroll with lots of scenery and scents for canine entertainment. We'd gone as far as we could go, all the way to the dead end, past the spot where there was a roadkill deer the day before, now removed but apparently leaving its blood-smell behind, past the K-9 training center, past the turn-off onto the path that is a secret back way into the park. Turning around, I spotted a large black dog coming down the road by itself, no leash or human in sight. Naturally it stopped where the deer had been. I prefer to avoid strange, loose dogs especially when they're bigger and bulkier than Johnny. There was nowhere to go to avoid this one except to cut through the park and across the soccer fields.

I quickly discovered that the soccer fields were now an ice rink.I held onto Johnny's leash and let him pull me across the ice. I didn't even have to lift my feet. I was swiftly gliding along with no effort at all. This was good!  Until he suddenly sensed the other dog, turned around and started pulling me backwards towards the road. The other dog noticed us and lifted its head, but stayed put. I struggled to control Johnny. Inevitably my feet went out from under me, I sailed up in the air and came down flat on my back, breath knocked out of me. Then I couldn't get up because I kept slipping. My canine companion was no help at all, he was still intent on maintaining his territorial rights on the roadkill traces. Somehow I got up and dragged Johnny across the field, stomping my way through the ice. The only safe way to go was to high-step it, smashing a ragged footprint into the ice with every stride. The stray dog went over the hill. We were home free. Now I have a monster bruise on my back and the sciatica demons are having a party all the way down to my toes.

So finally I get around to writing something in my blog!

The groundhog's prediction this year was of special interest. Not because it was a weather omen. It's always six more weeks of this or that, because there are six weeks until Spring Equinox. This year it was a declaration that in six more weeks I will get to meet my great-granddaughter, Leilani Mae, as she is predicted to make her entrance into our world just in time for Spring.

Will she be an Aries like her daddy or a Pisces, in harmony with her mother's moon-sign? Will she be pale or dark, red-haired or brunette? I hope she'll have her father's eyes, sky-blue, but genetics weigh in heavier for dark brown. Of course we'll all love her, no matter what she looks like.

Crow Lesson

Crows are my favorite bird. I admire their intelligence and cunning. Recently they taught me a lesson in respect.

As a bio-regional animist, I profess to live as part of a family that embraces all creatures of nature including stones and plants as well as animals, and humans of all races and creeds. I honor the ties that bind us all. I am pledged to respect each one's role in the play of Life, and honor their right to live and create in their own ways. This is not as easy as it sounds, nor is it always beautiful and bright. Part of this is also acknowledging that there is darkness as well as light, sadness as well as joy, and danger as well as comfort.

A pair of house finches chose to build their nest on the eaves of my porch in the springtime this year. I felt blessed by their presence, especially since this was the first Spring in my new home. First they came scouting out the site. Both of them surveyed one corner of the porch and seemed to discuss it daily, deciding exactly where the nest should go. I was glad they didn't pick the space right in the corner because I knew the drainpipe and gutter dripped there. Wisely, they finally settled on a spot a little off from the corner, hidden behind the top of one of the metal support posts. Every morning I enjoyed watching the nest take shape as the pair busily gathered stuff and put it neatly into place. Home sweet home!

Then the mother bird sat. I knew eggs would be coming soon. Both birds were spending more time in the nest. Then one morning I heard the tiny peeps of hatchlings. There were at least two, maybe three. I didn't want to disturb them by peeking too closely.

The hatchlings were well-fed by their parents over the next several weeks. One morning I was thrilled to see one of the babies flapping their wings, practicing to fly. It wouldn't be long before they would leave the nest. This was a little sad, of course, because I would miss watching them each day, but I was happy to see this wonderful avian rite of passage taking place right before my eyes. It was a joyous, hopeful experience.

I mentioned crows at the beginning of this bit of writing. I think you know what comes next. The same day I saw the baby bird flapping its wings, I went out to walk my dog later and noticed a crow on the porch roof. There are lots of crows around here, but they prefer to stay in the woods across the street or roost in the line of old pine trees behind my house. This crow was watching, listening, and putting together a plan. I could almost hear the wheels turning inside that sleek black head. I clapped my hands and yelled to chase it away. It cawed back at me and flew only as far as a nearby tree, where it remained on surveillance.

It was a gift to be able to watch the finches make a home on my porch and raise a family. This daily story I'd been witnessing ended abruptly when I saw the crow squeeze itself into that small, presumably safe place in the rafters and tear into the nest, taking away one baby bird, then quickly returning for the other. The mother and father did their best to ward off the crow but they were too small to be intimidating.

After the babies were gone, the pair flew away and didn't return for about an hour. Then suddenly they were back - with an entire clan of their fellow house finches! This group of birds swarmed all around the vicinity of the nest, fluttering and twittering loudly, for a good ten minutes. It was like a wake. Then, as suddenly as they appeared, they all flew off at once.

It was heartbreaking, yet I couldn't hate the crows for being crows. I still love them. Now I have a slightly different kind of respect for them.

There's still a happy ending. I thought the house finches had abandoned the nest after the crow-raid. There was no activity for a few weeks. Then one morning I saw what I assumed was the same pair return and take up housekeeping again. Or it could have been a different pair. It doesn't matter. Soon there were eggs, hatchlings, and this time they survived without any threat from crows. Two healthy young house finches left the nest with their parents a few weeks ago.

The song of life goes on, finding its own harmony on the wing.

I am submitting this blog entry to the Eco-Animism Blog Carnival whose theme for August is "BIRDS".

Connexions and Relations

I learned recently that the braids of Native Americans symbolize connections to the Earth Mother and All Our Relations. Wearing one's hair loosely is supposed to connect one's Spiritual Essence with the Wind Spirits. I never knew the significance of the braids and I don't even know how true it is.  Not everything we read on the internet is true! When my hair was longer, I would sometimes braid it, mostly just to get it out of my way, but being a child of the Woodstock generation, naturally I preferred to wear it loosely flowing. Now its too short to be braided but still long enough to flow blissfully.

Do we need to have braids to connect us with our Earth Mother and All Our Relations? No, but to some it may serve as a symbol of that link.

As an animist who professes to live as a part of a family that embraces stones and plants, all creatures of nature, humans of all races and creeds, and honors the ties that bind it all, I am pledged to respect each one's role in the play of Life, and honor their right to live and create in their own ways. This is not as easy as it sounds, nor is it always bright and beautiful. I find it very liberating, though, in many ways.

I grew up with racial prejudice and ethnic jokes as the norm. My mother was born and raised in South Carolina. She had a black "mammy". Need I say more? My dad is probably the most prejudiced person I know. He hates anyone who is not exactly like him. He is constantly drawing lines between Us and Them. I think most of it comes from fear, although neither of them would never admit that. Every door in their house has not one, not two, not three, but four locks which are locked at all times, as if at any moment one of Them will burst in and beat them up and rob my parents, just because they are Them. By the way, they live in one of the lowest crime neighborhoods in the tri-state area. How different things would be if my parents suddenly realized we are all the same, or even opened slightly to that concept.

Less fear in my life is one huge benefit of being an animist. My sister instantly locks her car doors if she is caught at a red light and there happens to be a black man walking nearby.  Recently while I was walking my dog in the park, I encountered what appeared to be a homeless man, walking the other way, mumbling to himself. When I mentioned it to her, she insisted that I call the police if I saw him again. Why? He wasn't doing any harm. I just avoided him, stepping a little to the side and giving him his own space. He had as much right to be in the park as I did. Why should I make more trouble for him than he already had, which was obviously quite a bit? More than once in my life I've been homeless too.

Not that I deny there is danger in life. Respecting and honoring the truth and reality of each part of creation includes recognizing the reality of potential dangers. Sure, any man could be a rapist, no matter what color their skin. And any storm could strike you dead with its lightening. I recognize these truths but I don't let them get in my way. I try to be careful but I don't let fear keep me from enjoying the day. Life flows much more easily when energy isn't wasted on fear and pointless hate.

The wind in my hair that I enjoy as an animist makes me feel so free sometimes that I start to feeling superior, especially when I think about people like my parents and sister. Feeling superior isn't right. I should feel humble instead. I suppose their fears and loathings have a place in the world too but am I supposed to respect that? It's hard to respect and honor everything and everyone sometimes.

Take crows, for instance, a bird I admire for their intelligence and cunning. Recently I witnessed a crow take a baby house finch from the nest I'd watched its parents build on the eaves of my porch. Every day I watched the nest take shape, then the eggs came, and just the day before the crow came, I saw one of the nestlings flap its wings for the first time and it was such a hopeful, happy sight. The crow, after several days of surveillance, studied the situation as crows do and figured out a way to get to them. It was heartbreaking to see the tiny baby bird carried off while its parents did their best to fight off the crow, to no avail. Afterwards a very strange thing occurred. From out of nowhere, an entire clan of house finches suddenly appeared and gathered around my porch, singing and flapping around and generally acting as if they were at a wake. No crows attended. I can't hate the crows for being crows. I still love them, but with a slightly different kind of respect.

Being an animist often makes me feel quite ecstatic, almost high or stoned on feeling "the connexion". It's a big rush to open your heart this way. Yet there are always challenges, like the crow incident, that make me pause and sigh. The ecstasy I feel doesn't make me feel superior, just very much alive. I wonder if that's one of the purposes of religion/life-views, though, to make us feel superior (rightly or wrongly). It doesn't feel right, especially when animism is supposed to be based on respect for everyone's and everything's place in life, no one person or thing more precious, important, beloved, or better than another. I shouldn't put myself above any other person, let alone a pebble or a strand of grass.

I believe my path is beautifully summed up in the Thelemic "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under Will." It is not permission to do whatever you want. It bestows the obligation to find your true role in life and pursue it with all you've got, while respecting (loving) all others' places and roles, trusting that there is a plan to the universe and a holy order where everyone and everything is a star in its own orbit - even, to an animist, the rocks and trees, the wind and the rain. The challenge is to not only recognize these connexions and relations, but to find ways to live in harmony with them without putting yourself above anything. Maybe this is not meant to be over-analyzed or worked at too hard. It might be just enough to enjoy the rush of those freedom winds in your hair and keep your heart open while letting the path take you where it will.

Writing off the page

One of my favorite writing exercises is "Writing Off the Page".  I can't remember where I learned this. Probably in one of those "How to Write Good!" books. You take a poetry book or use whatever book is within reach, or a favorite one, or pick a random one off the shelf. I've found this works best with a poetry book because it's easy to find a line of appropriate intensity and length. Open the book to any page, take a line from the page, copy it into your notebook or type it into your notepad, and take it from there. If you get stuck writing off the page, just rewrite the first line and start again, continuing your writing, or going off in an entirely new direction. I do  this exercise often, sometimes with good results, sometimes not.

This morning I picked a random poem from "A Year with Rilke". It was this one, from his "Book of Hours" set.

"The Beauty of You"

In deep nights I dig for you like treasure.
For all I have seen
that clutters the surface of my world
is a poor, paltry substitute
for the beauty of you
that has not happened yet...

I felt cheated by what felt like an unfinished poem. It felt like just a sketch, a doodle on a napkin. I loved the first line but it fizzled from there, to the last line dropping off into ...

So, being the slightly arrogant poet that I am (all poets should have a healthy degree of arrogance!) I decided to write off the page from the beautiful first line and this is what I wrote.


"The Beauty of You"

In the depths of the dark I dig for you
Like a miner hunting diamonds
Grasping for the glimmer of your heart
Listening for that dancing footfall
With ears attuned to that chance.
By candlelight I scry into shadows
And sigh for a twinkle of eye-shine
Hoarding those emerald memories
Like winter trees hold the gems of Spring.

Then, to take arrogance on step more, I invented a new writing exercise. I took my own poem and reflected it backwards.

Like gems of Spring held by winter's trees,
Memories like emeralds are still green,
Preserved by sighs and twinkles of hope
On a shrine of candlelight and crystals.
Tuned to the music of a chance of a dance,
Dreaming of steps that rhyme in time,
An empty grasp seeks to span the distance,
Digging up diamonds in the dark.

Maybe it isn't the greatest of poetry but it was certainly a lot of fun writing off the page today.

I should have listened to my intuition

I never liked dining at place which I will, for the purposes of this blog, call That Little Italian Goldmine.  It was, and probably still is, my parents' favorite restaurant.  It has an excellent reputation and has been in business for ages.  They serve traditional "Tuscan" food.  As a vegan, I could only order two different dishes there and even then drastically altered to leave off the meat, cheese or other possible dairy products. I still had to drain the oil from sauce with a fork before eating. It was never that great, in my humble opinion. The whole place felt claustrophobic to me, the waitresses all seemed like they shared an inside joke, and it was freezing cold in all seasons of the year. And it always just seemed like way too much to eat. But that's Italian, right?

Currently I am recovering from a horrible week-long bout with what the MedExpress doctor called a "type of botulism that results from food not being stored at the proper temperature". He wanted me to go into a hospital overnight for IV hydration but I argued that no one could take care of my pets, (and besides, I have no health insurance!)  so he released me with the solemn promise that I would do nothing but rest, constantly have a glass of water or other clear liquid beside me to drink, and nibble on bland foods like toast or crackers until I felt better, which should be in just a few more days if I followed the plan.

Without going into the extremely disgusting details, I will simply say that never in my life have I been so sick. All because of the marinara sauce I substituted for cream sauce on the pasta primavera, thinking it was a healthier choice. My dad, who also had marinara, was violently ill for a day or so but quickly recovered. Plainly, it was the sauce that did us both in. My mother ordered chicken salad croissant without eating the croissant, as usual (I think she just likes to say "Croissant"), and my sister got some sort of cheese drenched monstrosity. They escaped unscathed.

Was my intuition trying to warn me, all the times that I felt those creepy sensations when I walked into the, um, Little Italian Goldmine? Or was it just my turn to be poisoned? And why did my dad, a rather feeble old man in his mid 80's, bounce back like a champ while his daughter, healthy as a horse, almost landed in the hospital? At any rate, I'm never going back there again.

Today I feel almost human again for the first time since Saturday night. Being a philosophical person, I keep asking "What is there to learn from this?" There must be something, since it was such an intense experience. Or was it merely the fickle finger of fate giving me the bird? No matter how wisely you think you are eating, you can still get sick as a dog (sorry, Johnny! I wouldn't wish this on any canine or other living creature) from someone's carelessness at a restaurant.

I promise that my next blog entry will be better, as my digestive tract returns to normal. Right now, though, I am in the mood to grumble, which proves my health must be improving.

Aquarius Blue (re-posting)

The last of three re-postings from a previous blog.

AQUARIUS BLUE Feb 4 2013

If I am lucky enough to glimpse the bare, unclouded sky at this time of the year, I always think it is "Aquarius Blue".  It goes with the first secret signs of Spring that show around Imbolc or Candlemas (or Groundhog Day, depending on your orientation). A few days ago I was delighted to see teeny tiny buds on some trees during my park-walk with Johnny. When the Sun returns to these degrees of Aquarius, there are many hopeful omens for those who have the eyes to see!

Today is my grandmother's birthday. Her eyes were crystal blue, like sparkling star-sapphires, Aquarius blue. She's long gone from this world, yet I still celebrate her birthday. I try to do something I think she would enjoy, which is usually baking something fruity and sweet. Today I made a blueberry pie-cake, baked in the big brown ceramic pie pan that was once hers. I didn't get much passed on to me when she died, since my sister immediately took over her house and everything in it, and we were not on good terms at the time. Now we've both gotten over it, whatever it was, and we're as close as sisters should be. Last Fall she gave me this pie pan. I've been using it constantly ever since. It's like having Nana at the table with us again.

She was a strong and gentle woman who was like a mother to me until I was about 12. We lived with her and my grandfather until my mother suddenly decided that she wanted her own house, and we moved. Just as suddenly, my mother also decided to play the part of a mother for a change. It didn't work out very well, which was no surprise. I'll always think of Nana in the role of a mother because she was there first, last and always. She tolerated and stood beside me during  my teenage rebellion stage when my actual mother simply retreated in fear and disgust. She forgave my young-adult transgressions against the family and stayed close to me when my parents refused to have anything to do with me. She always had something kind to say to me, something pleasant to share, and if all else failed there was something good to eat waiting for me whenever I got home to her house.

Her tolerance, strength and gentleness, I think, must have come from raising her younger brother and running their household, a duty that fell on her when she was barely into her mid-teens and her mother passed away. Her father was a hard drinking immigrant coal miner who apparently spoke better Czech and German than English. All I can remember about him is playing with his pocket watch and chain while I sat on his lap. The early photos of my grandmother show a stocky, tall woman with wire rimmed glasses, wavy blonde hair and a rather wistful, wishful little smile dimpling her pale face.

No wonder she charmed my Irish grandfather and they married as soon as he got back from WWI and secured a good job with the railroad.  He was ten years her senior and worldly-wise, having come over from Belfast as a child with his parents, four younger brothers and three sisters. Soon his parents were gone and he had to support the family however he could, odd labor jobs and farm work around the rural edges of Pittsburgh. By the time they were all grown up, he went off to serve in WWI. He toured Europe as a soldier, eventually put in charge of black smithing and tending the horses, which were an essential part of the armed forces in those days. When the war ended he came back alive, unlike two of his brothers, and he celebrated by marrying his beloved Gertrude. He went to live with her, her father, and her brother in the house where my sister lives now, just around the corner from my current home.

It was anything but domestic bliss. The old man hated "the Irishman" and fistfights were not uncommon. My grandmother patiently cleaned up after them. Her brother, Ernest, escaped by getting married and moving as far away as he could, which turned out to be Pasadena, where he lived to a ripe old age. Things calmed down a little after my dad was born. Eventually the old man drank himself to death in the early 1950s. One more thing I remember about him. I went toddling around the funeral home, whispering and shushing people, telling them Papa was sleeping. I really thought he was, and that's probably what they told me, since I was too little to understand.

Everybody loved my grandmother. She was universally cherished. She was a kind person without being overly religious. Yes, she went to church and was active in the Presbyterian congregation but I always had the feeling that it was just another way for her to find good things to do for others. Her kindness seemed to overflow into everything around her. She especially loved going to candlelight services on Christmas Eve and I can still see her carrying her candle home, beaming with childlike joy as she walked briskly up the hill shielding the little flame with her gloved hand. Then when she got home,  there would be candles lit from it. It was the only time she allowed candles burning in the house. By magical candlelight, plates of cookies and kolaches would appear, and soon the aunts (my grandfather's sisters) would come over to make a big fuss over my sister and I to fill in the time until we went to bed and they could decorate the tree and lay out the presents.

I still miss her at Christmastime. I used to think, with her white hair and twinkling blue eyes, that she might be Mrs. Santa Claus in secret, even though I knew my grandfather certainly was too grumpy to be Santa himself.

The day before she died, as she laid in her hospital bed, I brushed out that white hair and pinned it neatly away from her face just the way she liked it, using little combs to fix it in place, old-country style. Her eyes were sparkling blue as ever and I marveled at how beautiful she looked for a woman of 83.

Happy Birthday, Nana! What would you think of the world today? I like to think that your Aquarian nature would somehow adapt and find a niche here, no matter what.

You live on in my heart.

Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da (re-posting)

The second of three re-postings from blog entries earlier this year.

Jan 22 2013  ob la di, ob la da!

No, that's not some kind of magical incantation. Or is it?


Life goes on, that's all.


Here's a haiku to say where I've been and what I've been doing since last time I wrote.


The old wooden flute
Buried under papers
Hollow reed - my life.

The holidays were good times, for a change. Usually I dread them. Before the Christmas onslaught, I celebrated the first Winter Solstice in my new home, just a quiet evening by myself, candles burning, and listening, listening, listening, as I always do on the darkest night. I used to listen for Santa's reindeer bells, so I've had years of practice! Now I still listen,with all my heart, for tiny bells or distant carols or voices on the wind, audible omens for those with ears to hear. Secrets are told and mysteries unfold if you listen closely on the longest night. I am so thankful for my snug, warm, safe place. I will never forget what it felt like not to even have a roof over my head. Ample gratitudes were issued to the Powers That Blessed Be on Solstice Night.

Then Christmas. It was actually fun with my parents, as my sister and I donned silly reindeer antlers for the dinner and gift exchange, and there was a lot of laughter, smiles and even warm affection, rare for my family. I am finally, belatedly, understanding the dynamics of all this and seeing how it can work. A little sad, though, because there's probably not much time left, but this might have been our best Christmas yet.

Right after Christmas, as my parents' doctor said, "the bottom fell out." I saw it coming, didn't know it would happen so quickly though. It started when my dad fell. Then he fell again. My mother's dementia took a leap into oblivion. It's time for them to give up their house and move into an "independent living" village. This is by the order of their doctor. I think it's way past time.

Hence the haiku.

Been trying to be a hollow reed and let the breath of love be my voice. Sometimes it works, and other times no one hears or wants to hear. I keep trying because it's all I feel I can really do.

One bond that always stayed strong between me and my dad was music. When we couldn't find anything else to share or talk about, there was always music. Now he's almost deaf and his voice is only a whisper, due to an episode with cancer of the larynx years ago. Still, for Christmas I got him a collection of Tchaikovsky's symphonies on CD. He can hear them if he turns it up really loud, and if it's really loud he can't hear my mother screaming at him anymore. Just the music.

I used to have an old wooden flute, three tin whistles, pan pipes, a native American flute and a number of funny little ocarinas that I would play at odd moments, odd little tunes. I never played very well but I loved to play. Sometimes I miss it. I have a piano now, which was my first instrument, and although I love to plink and plunk and pound, according to mood, there's nothing like a hollow reed that takes your breath away.

My dad's voice sounds like an old wooden flute sometimes. He's had a stroke and sometimes hits a sour note or can't remember the tune, yet I can still hear the love breathing through his raspy pipes.

Midwinter ramblings.......

Time Travel (re-posting)

This is the first of a series of transposed posts from a previous blog, which I lost and found again, re-posted here for continuity's sake - apologies to those who may have already read these. Will continue with new posts after these three old ones!

 "Time Travel" written December 1, 2012

 It's been a time of many transformations for me over the past year or so. Some of these have been progressive changes and others have been a kind of backtracking.

Pop psychology likes to make big issues out of what I think they call co-dependent relationships. Relationships that usually involve one or both partners having addictions. When my husband passed away on the last day of July 2011, I was set free from this kind of relationship. His addiction was drugs, the hardest of all drugs. I didn't share that particular addiction with him but living with it every day for more years than I'd like to admit made me take up some addictions of my own in order to cope (if you can call it that...maybe a more appropriate word would be "survive") with these circumstances.

My addictions seemed harmless compared to his, although they were probably just as damaging in different ways. They did not involve the physical debilitation that comes from drug abuse. On the contrary, I became addicted to exactly the opposite path. I became a fanatic about health and diet, as well as adopting other habits to escape my everyday world. Not really healthy, although it appeared so on the surface. For me it was dietary practices (I went from a loosely practicing vegetarian to a hard core vegan), plus what might be called an addiction to fantasy in the form of online roleplay writing and to a lesser extent online games. Perhaps strangely enough, the roleplaying was not of a sexual nature, as so many people get caught up in, but it was historical. It was time travel, mostly back to the first few centuries of Ireland, intricately researched and imagined in all possible depth and detail. These habits and practices took me out of the space and time that I hated so badly and put me into a world where I was in control. He used to call it, with a touch of sarcasm, my "happy space." I lived on one floor of the house, he lived on another. I refused to let him drive me out of the home I loved, the house I dreamed of before we bought it, the place I felt I was meant to be, regardless of - to use more cliches of addiction - the big purple elephant in the room that no one mentions.

So, it could be said that I "enabled" (in the psychospeak language of these situations) his drug addiction by my silence and non-presence. However, I wasn't entirely silent and invisible. I tried so many times to get him to seek help in so many different ways. I tried everything I knew to heal him. You can't heal someone who doesn't want to be healed. Finally, I guess I just gave up. There didn't seem to be anything I could do to stop this.

When he passed on, I fell into a manic whirlpool of mixed emotions. I was sad and I mourned. I was happy to be free. I was angry that he left my granddaughter and me practically nothing, having cleaned out the bank accounts during the last few months of his life. I was thankful that I could now cleanse my house of all the sick, hoarded clutter and make it into the home I always thought it could be. I spent months cleaning and throwing things away. Months of constant, compulsive cleansing. There was an unbelievable amount of garbage. One of the big things I wanted to do was have a new furnace and central a.c. installed. It would be expensive but I was terrified of our old, ancient furnace and refused to spend another winter worrying if the house was going to blow up.

Well, to make a long story short, it basically did. There was one last night in that house, the coziest, warmest night I ever had there, October 27, 2011, with the new furnace working beautifully and heating the whole place like the old furnace never could. The next day as the contractor was finishing up, using a welding torch in the basement, a spark went up the wall and set the house on fire. It was a total loss.

My granddaughter and I lived at the Red Roof Inn, courtesy of the Red Cross, for 3 days. We were lucky enough to find an apartment right next door to our old house and moved right in. It was there that we started putting our lives back together. Eventually I bought this house where we are now, after months of visualizing and dreaming and hoping.

This is where the "time travel" comes in. My new home is in the neighborhood where I was born and raised. My sister lives almost within shouting distance, two streets away. We moved from this neighborhood with our parents in 1962. Before then, we'd been living with my dad's parents. My mother wanted her own house.  It was traumatic for me. My grandmother was always there. She was more like my mother than my real mother. Suddenly I had to change mother-figures and switch from my grandmother to my mom who had very little in the way of maternal skills. I had to make all new friends and go to a different school. I hated the new house. My reaction was to rebel in as many ways as I could find, from seventh grade onward. Within a few years, I was going by a different name, shedding the name my parents gave me for a nickname which stuck. I was developing a whole new personality to go with it. Not unusual for adolescents, but in my case it was likely a little more extreme.

Skip the next fifty years or so.

Now I'm back where I left off in 1962. My sister and I are friends again. We started hating each other after we moved and as adults we went separate ways and didn't speak to each other for years. I've gone back to using my old name, sort of by default at first, because that's what I was called when I lived here as a child. I'm comfortable with it now. I'm in touch with my cousin again, who was one of my best friends for my entire childhood, and its like only a few days have gone by since we were in fifth grade. We marvel at how much the same we still are.

 It's very mind-boggling the way all this has worked out. It feels so good. I'm more relaxed than I've been for decades, after all that has transpired since the end of July 2011. I'm home again.

 Through all the transmutations of all those years, I've returned to the original "me" again. Don't get me wrong. I know its 2012, not 1962, but I am picking up whatever I let go, lost, half-forgot or otherwise buried, and making it work again while somehow weaving into it all the fine things I learned or took up along the way. Too much blogging. Yet I have so much more to say, on so many levels. Stay tuned.

The wonder of the circle of life

No, this is not about the Lion King movie. Well, on second thought....




My deceased husband was a hoarder. He was a garbage picker. He would bring home all sorts of weird finds and put them around the house. One day I found a broken picture frame, empty of whatever picture it once held, by the chair on the porch where I liked to sit in the mornings and write in my journal. It had Simba from the Lion King in one corner of it and across the bottom it said "Remember Who You Are". I never commented about it. Maybe he was leaving me a message. Maybe it was just one of his odd, random gifts. I left it there. After the house burned down, it was still on the porch.

Anyway, it was actually good advice. At the time I was doing my best to forget who I was. It was enough to just sleepwalk through the day and live in dreams at night.

Now I am really remembering who I am and it's all good. The circle of life is closing around me in a lot of ways. I like to think of it as a spiral, not really a circle. Sometimes, though, the loops close in a loving embrace around us before the spiral flows out into another round of the dance.

There is role reversal going on with my sister and I, with our parents. We must now become the caretakers, the teachers, the watchers, the advisors, and they have become the wide-eyed innocents, sometimes as careless as little children, sometimes as defiant as rebellious teens. We have to make sure their zippers are up and their shoes are tied. Yesterday my sister had the heartbreaking duty of taking the car keys from Dad. He responded like an angry sixteen year old deprived of his driving privileges. Worst of all, we often have to remind them of who they are.

In reminding them of who they are, we are at the same time forced to remember in much more detail then ever who WE are. We pretend to listen intently as my dad tells the same stories we've heard a thousand times, not cutting him off because we are happy he still has breath in his body to speak with us about anything. Stories about our great-grandfather, lately embellished, as if they've ripened with age. Stories about when he was a kid or when he was in the Air Force. He is living in those times more than in the present day. He's reminding us of who we are, in his own way, consciously or not.

And more clearly than ever I am seeing my roots, as I've returned to the neighborhood where I spent the first dozen years of my life. I realize, as I look back, how upsetting it was to be uprooted when I was 12, away from my grandparents' home into a completely new environment where I never really felt like I belonged. My parents' bought their own place, a house I always hated. It felt cold and sterile (yes, plastic covers on the couch and those plastic mats on the floor!) and alien to me. I still went "home" every weekend to stay with my grandparents. Finally I left my parents' house five years later for good, coming back to live with my grandmother from time to time until she passed away. My sister lives in her house now, around the corner and one street down from here.

I paid off my mortgage at the end of March. This place is all mine. I'm really home again. Another circle closes.

Which leads to the point of this blog entry. Lately through the World Wide Web I've discovered the sphere of "bio-regional animism" which seems to have taken hold on the West Coast and is moving eastward. I guess it's a response to how the internet has effectively gutted what we once called "the Craft" as folks are looking for new titles for the old religion, and don't want to be known as Wiccans anymore. I like the bio-regional animist's outlook. It's where I've been all along, and I'm happy to remember who I was, am, and shall be!

What does the bio-regional animist do? Make a map of your area marking out a five or six mile radius. Learn local flora and fauna. Geology too, because animists honor the life in stones and rocks as well. Do research and find the oldest trees. Be outside every day and bond with the birds and other wild things. Observe the cycles of nature and seasons. Take on the role of steward of the land within that radius. Keep it clean and healthy. Celebrate nature.

This is more or less what I did when I was a kid. I had tea parties with the fairies on the big stump in the wild backyard. I sang to the sky and especially the moon and stars, and they sang back. I watched the trees bloom leaves, lose them, go to sleep and wake up again. If I didn't know the names of trees, birds, animals or rocks, I made some up or they told me who they were. Bio-regional animism is as good a label as any. Or "witch".

I am so happy to be home again, back to the beginning of a circle. In many ways, I carried a lot of things with me in my heart and soul while I was elsewhere, and now I can bring them out again, like little gems unearthed from the spot where I left them years ago, and let them shine in the April sun.

Elegy for a Hare

As winter began
I saw a hare,
Caught as she ran,
In a fence's snare.
Her eye was bright,
Though glazed with frost
And without sight.

Her life was lost.

As I passed by,
Day after day,
My sad heart cried
For her decay.
One crisp bright morn
A blanket I spread,
Dry leaves to adorn
Her, tail to head.

A little prayer
I muttered, "Peace,"
And blessed the hare
For sweet release.
Was she fleeing,
Panic, prey?
Or simply being
Hare at play?

Four moons away,
Her sisters dance
Under the sway
Of lunar trance.

Home

After months of living in a temporary state of flux, I am finally home.

It's a very plain, yellow brick house. The yard is even plainer. Total tabula rasa. A blank slate.

There's a park right across the street, surrounded by woods. I'm learning the trees and the lay of the land, as I walk there several times a day with my good canine companion. I've seen rabbits, squirrel, and smelled a skunk. I've heard a lot of different birds whose voices I don't yet know, along with the more familiar robins, chickadees, sparrows, crows, woodpeckers and bluejays.

Johnny was frenetic at first, eager to absorb and know all the new smells, sights and sounds. There are four dogs and a pig (a sweet, gentle dwarf pig) next door. The first night we were here, the dogs and Johnny barked back and forth as if they were having a conversation. Now he doesn't bark at them anymore. They are our neighbors. He has calmed down and now he walks nicely beside me instead of trying to lunge ahead through the park.

I transplanted some of the roses that survived the demolition of my old house. While my sister and I were digging up the yellow climber, we found some gladiola bulbs (are they bulbs or gorms or something different?) and I put them near the roses. I have potted herbs waiting to go into the ground as soon as I decide where to put the herb garden. Several garbage bags of ice-plants are also waiting on my plans. In the next few days there will be a consultation with an expert landscaper/gardener to advise on what to put where.

Never had a lawn before. Don't like the idea of so much upkeep and maintenance just for grass. Seems pointless. I'm visualizing a knot garden that will take up most of the front yard. Ideally it will change with each of the four seasons. The backyard will be a large vegetable garden next year and of course the herb garden, but I have to wait until the deck is added on to the back of the house before I start planning that. Trying to get rid of as much "lawn" as I can and fill the space with gardens instead. The knot garden may end up being as labor-intensive as a lawn but I'd rather spend my time and energy on grooming something meaningful to me instead of being a slave to a blank, green expanse.

I have the two upstairs rooms to myself. One is the bedroom and on the other side is a room I am slowly making into a scriptorium. The loss of my books, journals and accompanying trinkets was the most painful part of the fire that destroyed the old house.

Here, this afternoon, in this quiet neighborhood on top of the tallest hill for miles around, I am starting to feel truly at home again. I slept until 9 this morning for the first time since I don't remember when. I'm relaxing and spreading my wings. I'm a different person now -  a Phoenix - yet I am more than ever who I always was.

Rising from the ashes....