“Because I can say just from the perspective of being a witch that I don’t need anyone, least of all the gubmint, to convince me of global warming. It is in my yard, messing with my mandrakes.” –Harold Roth, from the article below.
At the thrift store by the college someone dropped off a whole bunch of native american stuff and women’s spirituality books. I’ll review one on WTH ..
In one the author is a Universalist and believes that the Logos that created all life and exists in each
Reason as the HGA is female.
The Unitarians disagree– believe in one Divinity that which is all that is and we are always united with that and transcendennce is simply remembering that fact.
In the Gnostic belief– the Logos is male and the Form of the Universe (crowley’s Hadit) and the female is the substance and space (Gnostic Sophia and Crowley Nuit.)
to be done on the waning moon after dark
open ritual with evoking pentagam with new wand
light a candle for the goddess
pour collected water into the new cup
(note: no god candle or god energy for obvious reasons
no circle because i i am honouring and do not need to constrain or protect)
Face east and say:
“i honour ye, bright Goddess. Lady of the Spring and morning.
Ba’ast and Ma’At who sustained me thru my youth.
Making sure I got into only enough trouble to learn that
which does not kill us makes us stronger,
taught me how to play, and when to hold silent
who i am and where my boundaries lie.
i released you long ago, but remember you with fondness
and thank you for your support and kindness.”
pour some of the water on the ground. offer some bread and a piece of an apple.
Face south and say:
“i honour ye, full Goddess. Lady of the summer.
The heat and heavyness. In fertility and trial you were there
Lilith and Dianna watching over and protecting the Lauren and
guiding my unsteady hand in raising her to be a sensitive, strong
self reliant woman
You helped my thru my own darkness and come to full radiance
Finding my place in a tapestry of faith and seeking
in the last place i would ever look yet needed it most”
pour some water on the ground. offer some bread and a piece of an apple.
Face west and say:
” i honour ye, setting goddess. Lady of the autumn breeze rustling thru the leaves.
Lady of the in between and Lady of the Night. I yearn for understanding of this new time.
Of understanding dreams, of crossing back into the Mauve Zone,
only this time with the knowledge and understanding that Binah provides.
I thank you Jaguar and Nepthys for taking me to this gate, this place.”
pour some water on the ground. offer some bread and a piece of an apple.
Face north and say:
“i honour ye, dark goddess. Lady of the winter and barren land.
I hope to someday be granted your wisdom and patience.
That someday i will be ready to have the respect and admiration as a wise councilor and confidant.
That i will live up to your legacy,
Gufo, spirit of the night forest,
Hekate goddess of the crossroads between this world and the next.”
pour some water on the ground. offer some bread and a piece of an apple.
Face the northwest holding the witches bottle
(note: the container has last of the blood and herbs associated with mother and fertility energy–
hibiscus, damianna and rose. the container itself was purchased in Melbourne, AUS when i was in my first trimester with the lauren on the night I completed my dedication to Lilith. It is white, has flowers, and says “Bloom”)
Hold up to the sky saying
“I release you, my past, back to the earth, from where we all are born and from whee we all will return.
I thank you for your lessons and i will remember the fondly the light and the love I have shared in the last 40 years.”
Bury the bottle.
Do a LBROTP
blow out candle.
I am currently creating a God and Goddess Art series of paintings.
This painting is of Freya and Bygul and Trygul, and it is a gift for a friend who is starting her Neophyte training at an Ásatrú coven. I included all of the phases of the moon in the picture, since she feels that this Goddess both embodies and transcends Maiden- Mother – Crone. She is a tree, because I see the Goddess as the Generatrix and Sustainer of the Tree of Life.
Guanyin is a Chinese Goddess who was believed to be able to hear the cries of the world. She is a manifestation of Avalokitasvara, the Buddhist God of compassion. Almost stories of female heroes in Chinese myth feature her as a prominent figure. In my painting, she sits upon a Lotus blossom, showing her sense of peace and that she was able to attain nirvana (one of the meanings of this symbol from Zen.) There is a circle behind her, signifying the Whole, and there is a real world scene– showing that she has a presence in the world, and we can all aspire to be like her. Finally the Metta meditation is printed on the right:
May all creatures be safe,
May all creatures be happy,
May all creatures be healthy
and be free from harm
This painting was the first of the series, and represents the Holy Guardian Angel– the Higher self or the part of each of us that makes us special and unique. The ancient Greeks called it the Daemon. I consider the HGA to be a God/dess because each of us are creators and destroyers in our own right, each of us can aspire to greatness, each of us can win Nobels, lead a nation, stand in front of tanks, paint the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel, as long as we can dream and believe. This painting contains photos and quotes of people who influenced me in my youth.
Finally, this painting (unfinished) is t
he last in the series. It is of Kali– the Goddess of Time and Change. In this painting, she stands in front of the Kali Yantra– which is a circle of triangles and Lotus petals– showing that time is sacred and it is without beginning or end. She is sticking her tough out– reminding us that life is short and we really shouldn’t take it too seriously. There will be skulls in the painting– showing that time may be endless, but human lives are finite.
In the mainline Hindu faith, she is regarded as one of many Godforms which describes the universe (Brahmin), but in some Tantric schools, she represents all Goddesses (Mahadevi.)
To me, she represents the fact that you don’t always have to be a “Good Girl” to be feminine, and that nature is both creative and destructive. I always had an affinity for Kali and Sekhmet–I know Nature isn’t all flowers, and butterflies and light and happy, hopping bunnies. My major is college was Earthquake Geophysics, and my first devotion was to the San Andreas Fault. I have seen the folds and fractures and microfaults which made the Amagosa Chaos, I practically lived in Death Valley for 4 years for both my thesis project and escapism (leave me alone, i am camping and finding myself), I helped the in-law with cutting up a “few trees” (48 to him is a few) after Ivan, I cleaned up M.M.’s parents’ home after the Northridge Quake, and babysat someone from Kansas during Loma Prieta’s aftershocks.
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge – myth is more potent than history – dreams are more powerful than facts – hope always triumphs over experience – laughter is the cure for grief – love is stronger than death
–Robert Fulghum
Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.
–Stanley Kunitz
Today, I happened to be reading The Whirlpool of Life and came upon this entry: The Power of Myth. The author is a science education advocate who is saying that humans are obsessed with stories– the only way we learn is thru stories, and to be able to understand the most important story of all– where did we come from and what will we become, we need to step away from the books and other people’s stories, and find our own truth by connecting to nature.
Besides being a good tool for teaching evolution in specific and science in general to little kids, mythology is an important tool to explore and explain our own origin as individuals. Jung and others developed an entire cast of archetypal mythologicly based figures to describe the way the human psyche worked. Joseph Campbell believed that myths were the historical strands that wove the tapestry of years and space of the human family together.
So what is my myth? What characters make up my myth? What is my place in it? What happened? What was my heroes journey?
I see myself in the following light:
she is the girl who cries on Lenin’s birthday
and feeds a rose to the moon
she escaped to the deserts of stillness and rhyolite
and prayed to Nuit and Hadit, Ma’At and Suketh
she wished on stars that were really airplanes
and made friends of skunks
and danced on Saint Andrew’s hills.
she is the warrior who scaled the mountains
and received harzbrugite batle scars
she, on their Saviors Day defended her car’s honour
and Told many a person “you don’t f#@$ with my friends”
Testified and witnessed and protested against attrocities
she fought for rights and stood up for the opressed
no matter how many legs they possessed.
she is the mother helping kids “walk it off”
and offering band-aids at the skatepark
she reads stories about zen ghosts and fox shamans at bedtime
and weaves yarns about butterflies and Brigit and hope
she keeps the IT system admins in line
and keeps everyone to track, whether they feel they need to or not.
she is the woman who rules the coffee shop after closing
the advice giver who reads the tarot more as therapy than divination
and spends many an hour in parking lots keeping friends from driving
she is the lover of the night and the owl,
of the autumn wind and the gentle rustling of leaves.
she has been everywhere and is becoming and unbecoming.
and where she goes, she hasn’t a clue.
College:
Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
–Jung
In the mythology of my maidenhood, there was a montley cast characters:
There was White Rabbit,
not just as his DJ name, but what he did for all of us.
He showed us what it was like if we fell down the rabbit hole, took the red pill, etc etc. We all wrote countless lines of poetry to him and I will not recreate it here.
But though he was not the first person I had ever loved, he was the first person who ever understood me. (And, of course, I hated him for it.)
There was that princess who was always in need of saving–
like the girl in the Perils of Pauline
she didn’t know she needed it– nor did most–
as she stomped around with indignation in jackboots
and with enough piercings to set off a metal detector
and eyeliner to make some Mac counter-girl gainfully employed.
There were the drama queens and sychophantic serfs,
(not sure into which of these categories my ex fell)
the parade of lovers and would be suitors
the fools and the saints
and too many goth boys and girls to count.
And lastly there was the valley where alchemy was really true
where silicon turned to gold
and who cares if we killed the last almond tree
after dumping insecticide from fire copters on them a few years ago to save them from the horrible terrors of the fruit fly
as long as there are cyber-worlds and video games
As a mother, I also have my other mythos which was not often shared (this part of my heroes journey was the “going off into the woods” phase, as Uncle Al calls it):
Before there was even an idea of the Lauren (I had been told that I was barren), I had done a ritual asking for certain personal needs to be met because my life was in shambles– I was kind of homeless (more rootless– i had just moved to Georgia and had been traveling internationally a ton for work), having issues with other people, having terrible cramps, and feeling overworked and overwhelmed. I had asked Lilith for some help and received it in the form of finding a long term engineering contract for the State of GA and the situations with others resolving themselves in unexpected positive ways.
During pregnancy, I had many dreams with Lilith in them, and felt that she would play an important role as her guardian. Now Lauren is very attracted to owls, cats, night creatures, and loves night hikes. She fights against bullies, and will never let a boy tell her what to do. I see a lot of Lilith in her, especially since she is a Capricorn.
I saw a lot of Larunda in my early transition from maiden to mother– taken from my well, my Fault my Valley and shut up like Rapunzel in a tower, here, in a prominent N. GA suburb (yes, there was a reality show filmed here) where the only way to rebel is to don an Obama ’12 sticker and plant Ipomoea Alba on your mailbox. So I guess Lauren is one of the Lares. 
(Larunda, according to Ovid was a nymph who met up with a bad fate for talking too much. She apparently had gossiped about Jupiter’s sexual dalliances to the wrong person, and was told to literally “Go to Hell”. Mercury was to escort her there, but he fell in love with her and locked her up in a cabin where none of the other Gods would ever see her. Their children were the Lares– Italian household Gods revered by the Strega.)
Currently, I am out of that phase, and am in the “Return” phase of the quest. I have finally found my Sangha here– in both the local pagan groups and in Emerson UUC. I have a lot of friends who will listen, are willing to help, and I am helping them, serving in the community in many ways and giving back (socially, spiritually, and at work thru Toastmasters events and March of Dimes fundraising.)
I am also in a phase where I am revisiting all my spiritual practices, seeing what makes sense and what doesn’t fit anymore, and have dedicated myself to a new deity– Nepthys. (She is Isis’s sister and rules the night when Isis is asleep. She also was the nursemaid to Horus and a protector for women and children. To me, she was always the Goddess represented by the High Priestess tarot card. As a child I always knew she would be my penultimate deity for dedication, but was always a bit awed by her.
I find a few symbols which are of import to me, the Othala rune and Unicursal Hexagram.
In college, each of my friends and I got a different rune tattoo. I chose Othala because to me it represented legacy and home, while reversed it represented being an outsider, an outlaw, and one without a place. I saw myself for a long time as very different than everyone else, and not just because of the purple hair and skateboard. I always was asking “why?”, i could never leave well enough alone, I wanted to make to world a better place and I didn’t see everything quite like everyone else did. Yet I always longed for a true home, a sangha if you will. Somewhere where like-minded people gathered, and where you would not be judged for your political leanings, sexual orientation, or what God/dess you worshiped and how you did so.
In searching for a picture of the rune online, I learned that it was yet another Teutonic symbol used by the Nazis (pretty obvious why– they believed that they were the heirs of ancient uber cool Aryan Germans, and thus all of Europe was their home– hence use the rune representing ancestral home.) Not being a Nazi, I find it pretty rotten for them to have done this. I also find it equally distasteful that they used a symbol that represented the Sun (in Native American and the Bon religion) and Chinese Buddhist Vegetarian cuisine as their national symbol (makes me wonder if the Brown Shirts had an affinity for Hot Pot and Rice Bowls, but somehow I doubt it.)
The Unicursal Hexagram is one of the other important symbols for me, obviously, since I am a Crowley kind of girl. I also have this represented in my body art (right arm, scarification– I was the model for a professional piercer as part of a demonstration.) This symbol is pretty neat from a math geek perspective. It took until the 1800′s for someone to be able to draw a 6 pointed star with one line (unicursal means one contiguous line)– before all hexagrams were drawn with 2 lines. Hexagrams are the union of opposites– male/ female, yin/yang, active/passive, day/night… The unicursal nature of this hexagram is showing that when opposites merge, a new whole is created (see the Hegalian Dialectic.)
The Unicursal has 6 points. 6 is a special number in the Kaballah– it represents a return to the middle pillar, and is the highest attainment one can obtain spiritually under the Abyss (Da’Ath, 11. This is the next rung of the middle pillar between Tipereth and Kethar, and is the axis upon which the tree will flip from dayside to nightside. It is often omitted from drawings of the tree for simplicity sake.) This means that it is in balance– not too much active or passive energy. It also contain all 6 things under the abyss– earth/manifestation, love, power, glory, dreams/illusions, and union.
Ingredients:
1 tsp fresh ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp brags liquid aminos
optional– 2 tsp rice vinegar
1/4 tsp lemongrass
1/3 cup shelled edamame– organic
1/3 cup mushrooms
1 carrot, grated or thinly sliced
1 head broccoli
1 tsp seasame oil
1/4 cup nuts or seeds (peanut or cashew, i used pepitas)
1 cup brown or jasmine rice
Directions:
brown garlic, lemongrass and ginger for 5 minutes in seasame oil
add brags and rice vinegar
cook 2 min on med
add mushrooms, edamame, and broccoli
cook for about 10 min on medium
add nuts
cook rice as directed on the package (typically boil 1 1/2 cup water for 1 cup rice, when boiling, add rice, cover and cook for 20 min on low heat until water is absorbed.)
serve with carrots as garnish, serves 2- 3 people
(the original title was going to be “i think i am a crone now” but didnt want to be THAT much of a weird al fan… uncle al is bad enough.)
I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing. –Anais Nin
so i can’t sleep… doctor’s office called a few hours ago to let me know my surgery is on May 31. and am still waiting on pituitary function test. yay.
Really thought i had more time to prepare. normally, such transitions in life take months or years– like menopause, puberty, adolescence, pregnancy. Even the surgery was supposed to be in the end of July (since N’side is supposed to have a long wait to schedule procedures.)
driving down I-75, I started bawling. this is going to be my last period. my last chance to charge and consecrate an item with menstral blood. i am seeing myself running around in a flurry of activity, reconsecrating every tool i own except my boline and my kitchen witch athame (can you saw EWWWE!) . and then the other thoughts crept up on me… what will happen with my energy balance when I am suddenly missing a bunch of organs?
called 2 female Emerson friends and they told me that my 2nd chacre will be ok, if i get some healing work done, and that all should be ok, and to do some sort of personal transition ritual. both said i would still be in the mother phase– both because of my age and because of the lauren, teaching all the 5 year olds, etc…
but i am not sure…
what am i … when i am no longer fertile… i have a bunch of friends my age with kids out of the house… either married, in the army, or n college… i have had way more life experience than anyone typically has by my age– due to the “if a little is good, more must be better” principle i have lived my life by.
but i am the “den mother of GNO” …
i don’t know what i am …
or where i am going… and this is something i cannot control. and i HATE anything i cannot control.
and i am truly scared. now i am driving my broomstick without a map, without my spin-a-spell, i-ching and runes. i have the night air. the shadows and the signs from my dreams to guide me. i am at the precipice of that cliff that F.E. long ago told me about.
“Yes Uncle Al said that every Man and Every Woman is a Star. But your Holy Guardian Angel is that in the universe who will light your way when the sky is dark and cloudy and you cannot see by your own starlight. Trust in the universe, make a leap of faith, and know that She will catch you.”
Well, here goes…
so i have not been able to “get in” and settle to meditate since Ostara. I asked around, and no one really has. Only achieved Kensho once. The Lauren and I muddle thru 10- 15 min of Zazen and chanting painfully. Am often frenteic and have a hard time with sleep.
It is almost hypomanic, but not in the usual way– which vascilates between excessive rumination and short lived obsessions (too bad i ran off to Vegas with my bipolar 1 ex one of these times before I learned the power of discernment. Now these are basically about artistic pursuits, work projects but mostly shoes. Currently drooling over a pair of black Olsen Haus flats with blue trim… Come summer, and if I still want them, will buy them, but not before.)
This energy feels like being a kid Christmas Eve or at a sleepover– must stay up lest i miss something.
As I stated earlier, I am not the only resident of this crazy town, and there are many theories. One is the whole Gematria theory– 2+0+1+2= 5 which translates to Geburah, motion/ power. Or the energy made manifest from the whole Mayan Callendar silliness. Or all the importance and concentration spent on the election from all sides. Or Rio after billions of dollars in weather related disasters and the IPCC basically giving up on 2c.
I am ok in ritual or an active trance dance, or anything active. I can listen to music, if i am driving and am on the phone. I am happy if i am multitasking only.
Made these today during a meeting. Beads are vintage onyx and green jasper and Greenman came from 3 Starving Artists and is clay.
