Sweet passage, Monica Sjöö

You already know that Monica Sjöö has died. I learned first from the Furious Spinner yesterday; the Wildhunt Blog also has a nice collection of commentary. Last night at my women's circle we lit a candle on the altar to help light her way; it burned down as we spent the hours telling our stories from this summer's Pagan festivals and Witchcamps. We also admitted that none of us - for shame - has read her work, even though we know of her work. I somewhat blithely promised to read The Great Cosmic Mother. Zoe cautioned me to be careful what I promise the dead. So now I really have to read it! (I've always intended to, you know.)

Some notes for future blogging

Here are some things I've been thinking about and may blog about when I can collect my thoughts:

(1) What does it mean to be Pagan clergy? How does one train and where does one serve? Is that my path?

(2) What does it mean for Paganism or Witchcraft to be a public religion versus a private, secretive one?

(3) Voluntary simplicity as spiritual practice.

(4) Taking care of oneself as spiritual practice.

(5) Should I get a tattoo?

Mercury retrograde and my iBook

Since the planet Mercury is in retrograde, I decided it would be a fine time to reformat the hard drive on my iBook. Foolish, foolish mortal! I risked the trickster nature of the god, and I lost.

Mercury, as you likely know, governs communication and travel. When Mercury goes retrograde, which happens three times each year for about three weeks, we are advised to slow down, think matters through before acting, regroup, rethink, put off important decisions, and take special care with travel plans and communication. It isn't the time to reformat a hard drive.

I needed to reformat because I installed Tiger (the newest Mac OS) on my 20-month-old iBook G4 about a month ago, and ever since, my computer has been running slowly and programs have been frequently closing without my prompting. I was seeing way too much of that little spinning rainbow circle. This was driving me crazy. The advice I got was (a) to do a "clean" reinstall of Tiger and (b) to upgrade my RAM to 512 MB. Since the RAM will cost me $150, I decided to do the reinstall first to see if that helped matters. The good news is that it has.

The bad news is that I lost data. In moving information from the iBook to my external hard drive and back onto the reformatted iBook, I managed to lose: the contents of my address book, all archived email messages, and all Firefox preferences (which allow me to navigate my blog-world - what you don't know is that I have two other blogs). Notice anything about the particular data I lost? Yep, it all has to do with communication. Ha!

I wanted to blame someone for this misfortune, but despite the fact that Adonis was helping me, I couldn't blame him, since it wasn't his fault. We did everything by the book, we believe. We have no idea what happened ... except that we tempted Mercury, and he laughed at us.

Be careful out there.

A Witch's playlist

A while back I started assembling an idiosyncratic witchy playlist in iTunes. Here is what I have so far; I'd love suggestions.

• A Witch - Monty Python's Holy Grail (Yes, you can get this on iTunes! "She turned me into a newt!" "A newt?" - pause - "It got better...")
• Building a Mystery - Sarah MacLachlan - Surfacing
• Witches' Song - Marianne Faithfull - A Perfect Stranger ("Shall I see you tonight, sister, bathed in magic, greet? Shall we meet on the hilltop where the two roads meet? We will form a circle, hold our hands and chant, let the great one know what it is we want.")
  
• Mysterious Ways - U2 - Achtung Baby (A bit of a stretch, I know. But still, at the end: "We live through miracle days. Spirit moves in mysterious ways.")
• Gypsy - Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits (It's cheesy, but I actually like this song. Anyone remember the video?)
• Crescent Moon - Cowboy Junkies - Pale Sun, Crescent Moon ("Won't you come with me?" she said. "There's plenty of room in my iron bed. You're looking cold and tired, and more than a little human. I know I'm not part of the life you had planned, but I think once your body feels my hand, your mind will change, and your heart will lose its pain.")
• Under Your Spell - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling ("The moon to the tide - I can feel you inside - I'm under your spell - Searching - Like the sea, pulled to you so helplessly - I break with every swell - Lost in ecstacy - Spread beneath my Willow tree - You make me complete - You make me come....")
  
• Losing My Religion - R.E.M. - Out of Time (This song has always resonated with me, even though "losing my religion" is really a southern expression for I can't remember what. Also, check it out.)
• I Put a Spell on You - Creedence Clearwater Revival - Chronicle, vol. I
• La Bruja - Salma Hayek - Frida soundtrack
• The Mummer's Dance - Loreena McKennitt - Book of Secrets
• No Man's Woman - Sinead O'Connor - Faith & Courage (Because the song sounds so frickin' cool.)
• I Am a Vamp! - Ute Lemper - Berlin Cabaret Songs (Fantastic song from the decadent days of Germany's Weimar Republic: "My bed belonged to Pompidou; like Loulou I have bright red hair; I dance as well as Solomé; and treat my Baptists just as fair. I wear Mata Hari's dress, the ring of Marie Antoinette; the fairest Helen wore this corset to a gala Trojan fête. I am the poison of the Morgians; I am a witch like Joan of Arc. I wear the stockings of Dubary, bathe in coffins for an art.")
  
• Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered - Rodgers & Hart (Ella Fitzgerald) - Best of the Songbooks ("Those ants that invaded my pants - finis!")
• Witches - Cowboy Junkies - Caution Horses ("Come dance in the moonbeams, ride the night wind, make love to the darkness, and laugh at man's sins.")
• Daddy I'm Fine - Sinead O'Connor - Faith & Courage ("strong independent Pagan woman singing")
• The Christians and the Pagans - Dar Williams - Mortal City (What Pagan doesn't love this song? "The food was great, the tree plugged in. The meal had gone without a hitch ... till Timmy turned to Amber and said, "Is it true that you're a witch?")
  

All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Here's a fun refutation of "Intelligent Design" theory. ("Intelligent Design Theory is neither intelligent nor a theory: discuss.") The graphics are particularly worth a look.

(Via PZ Meyers)

First harvest

Noddy at Numenous Thoughts writes about eating locally "as an act of Divine Connection." I like that idea. I've eaten local foods for years as a way of supporting the local economy and the local organic farms, as well as nurturing and protecting the environment and my health. Now I'll add the idea of eating locally as spiritual practice to my thoughts and intentions.

This week is Local Food Week where I live, too. People are pledging to spend $5 this week on local foods (no problem!) and several restaurants are offering meals made entirely with local foods. (Hmm, I think I know what Adonis and I are doing for dinner tomorrow night.) This evening I walked with a friend to pick up our farm share for the week: corn, onions, carrots, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, summer squash, and herbs. At the farmers' market today I got green peppers and chard. I have peaches and blueberries from the fruit stand. I'm stocked with local garlic, honey, and wine. I cleaned out the fridge this evening and arranged all the food so I could easily see what I have. It's a good time of year, and I feel very blessed.

Say it, sister!

Morgaine, of The-Goddess, has a new blog, with Psuedo-Adrienne, called Women's Autonomy and Sexual Sovereignty Movements. Morgaine is an unabashed Witch. (Is there such a thing as an abashed Witch?) Here is a sample of what she has to say about women's sexual sovereignty.

I want women to be treated as full and equal citizens under the law. I want the law to stop tolerating men’s infidelity, and stop penalizing women’s sexuality. I reject the monotheist idea that sex is only for procreation, and that engaging in sex is somehow “wrong”. It is a normal adult activity that people should be free to enjoy in an honest, responsible manner. The state has no business in the bedroom. It’s only input to sexual activity should be to prevent the spread of disease, and it isn’t even doing that. Only women should have the power to make decisions that affect only women. No Uterus, No Opinion.

Yes, that phrase is harsh, and men bristle at it. I don’t care.

My uterus is not a political issue, and no male is authorized to negotiate the disposition of it. Ever.

Having a child is an awesome responsibility. I admire the people who choose to do it. Stewardship of another human, whether through parenting, teaching, or healing, is a sacred act that should be taken on with an open and loving heart. We cause only harm by forcing people to have children they don’t want. The current declines we are seeing in the crime rate are in direct correlation to the availability of legal abortions. It is wrong to force a woman to risk her life if she is unwilling or unable to carry a pregnancy to term. It is pointless for society to create a burden on women, social services and the legal system when we have a perfectly viable alternative to unwanted pregnancy.

Bush, ID, and the politics of ignorance

I like a good fantasy as much as the next Witch, but my ultimate loyalties lie with the reality-based community, and I couldn't be a Witch if in affirming my spirituality I had to disavow science. It's a common misconception about Pagans - one I myself held for many years - that we believe in the supernatural and are unscientific. But Paganism is a naturalistic path. Many Pagans are science geeks and wonks. Many of us may also believe that science isn't the only paradigm for knowledge; personal experience, and poetic interpretation of that experience, is also valued. (And here we could have a discussion about what counts as knowledge ... but we won't.) But I've never known a Pagan who was so willfully ignorant as to deny evolution, and I've never known one as anti-intellectual as the fundamentalist Christians who endorse so-called "Intelligent Design" theory. Now George W. Bush has told reporters that he supports teaching ID in our public schools. You can find details and analysis here, at PZ Meyers' excellent blog.

Phyllis Curott, in her lecture at Starwood on the growing theocracy in the U.S., addressed the religious right's hostility toward science. She said that widespread ignorance among the citizenry is an important component of social control, and that the religious right's dismantling of public education is a deliberate part of their political agenda. Those of us who are Americans and who care about our country have to fight back.

Reflecting on Lughnasadh

Here is a lovely personal reflection on the meaning of Lughnasadh by a Texas pagan named Andy.

I did it!

Those of you who know me will be shocked to hear that I did manage to make it up before dawn to meditate. Then I went to the gym.