Divination

Three of us sat
in the early summer, our instruments
cared for, our bodies dark

and one stirred the stones on
the earthen platter, till the salt
veins aligned, and she read the cast:

Whatever is past
and has come to an end
cannot be brought back by sorrow.

(From "Triple Muse" by Olga Broumas, Beginning with O)

Mugwort, sixes, and mothers

This morning one of my coworkers walked into my office bearing a bunch of mugwort perhaps a foot in diameter and taller than either of us - six feet, at least. I've got it propped up in the office now; the scent is wonderful. I may tincture some; I'll make smudge sticks and dry the rest for tea and, perhaps, dream pillows.

Mugwort, Artemesia vulgaris, promotes lucid and prophetic dreaming. You can take the tincture before bedtime, drink a tea made from the dried herb, or smoke or smudge the dried herb. Although it's called "common wormwood," it's not to be confused with Artemesia absinthium, which is the plant used in making absinthe.

Joanna Powell Colbert is working on the sixes of the Gaian Tarot. Yesterday she posted the six of water (cups). Last week was the six of fire (wands). (While you're there, you can read my fan-girl gushing.) Traditionally, the sixes are about finding new balance or equilibrium. Joanna is reinterpreting the sixes, however; in her deck, "the sixes are all about peak experiences in community, and each shows some kind of reciprocity." Given that the sixes correlate to the Lovers in the major arcana, Joanna's interpretation, while fresh, still seems to me to keep spirit with more traditional readings.

Finally, Lunaea Weatherstone has written a beautiful tribute to her teacher Shekhinah Mountainwater, who died on Saturday of cancer. I remember finding a copy of Shekhinah's book Ariadne's Thread in a used bookstore in Arcata, CA several years ago. That's when I was still a very cautious, not-sure-I-want-to-be-a-Pagan Pagan, but I was in love with the California coast and the beautiful trees of the Headwaters Forest, in love with Moonrise Herbs, and finding that book was just one of many signs that I was on my path.

Jason Pitzl-Waters has also posted a fine tribute. I particularly like this statement from Shekhinah's son, Frey Faust: "She was a creative mother, and she was very disciplined as an artist herself. Nature was important to her. Values were important to her. She was never interested in monetary wealth."

Safe passage, Shekhinah.

More on Venus in retrograde

The following is from the wonderful site, Mooncircles, from the most recent article by Dana Gerhardt.

Think twice before you buy the polka dotted rain boots. And I know the way your partner mispronounces certain words drives you crazy, but pause before ending the relationship just now. Recognize it's Venus talking - planet of love and all good things. Venus is in retrograde from July 27 to September 8. She's slowed way down and appears to be moving backward. This means she's been and will be traveling through the same sixteen degrees of the zodiac for approximately four months. Usually her transits are brief - bringing a gift of flowers, a smile from a stranger, a delicious meal, or a feeling of bliss for no reason. But now she's lingering in your life. Especially where the degrees between 2 Virgo and 16 Leo fall in your chart, you'll feel her influence for a while.

You may be inspired with unexpected joy or new creativity. But it may not be all sweetness and light. Venus retrograde periods can make you cranky, especially if you've been ignoring Venus in this area of your life. Her dissatisfactions must be listened to, although be cautious about acting on any sudden urges. A pent-up Venus can be a little crazy - spending money she doesn't have or saying yes when she should say no, issuing relationship ultimatums, or suddenly dying her hair bright green. Don't abandon all judgment, but pay attention to your desires. Problems with happiness, money, or relationships can emerge, but so can new solutions. This is a wonderful time to gain new perspective in the highlighted area of your life.

(The image of Venus is from the Hubble space telescope.)

Everything about love is a mystery

(This photo was taken at my local farmers' market, but not by me.)

The earth spends herself with wild extravagance here at the height of Lammastide, and I thrill with gratitude.

I give thanks for the three friends with whom I've had intimate conversations over the last few days: for their love, insight, openness; for reflecting back to me my own beauty and worth; for shared meals and goddess art and a sunny afternoon dog-walk.

I give thanks for my sweet puppy, keeping me company all weekend while Adonis is away; the puppy who woke me this morning by snuggling right up to my body and who stayed to cuddle; the puppy who with little struggle submitted to the indignity of a bath this afternoon and now sleeps, a clean dog on a clean quilt on the bed.

I give thanks for my lover; for the photos he's sent from California via iPhone, because he wants me to see what he sees; for wonderful phone conversations; for his willingness to face his demons and mine; for our adventurous partnership and abiding love.

I give thanks for the abundance of the earth and for the local farmers who feed me, for their commitment to our community, for the sweet, generous land. Yesterday I came home from market with tomatoes and peaches and eggplant, sheep cheese and freshly baked bread, spinach and kale, raw milk, yogurt, and butter, freshly-prepared macrobiotic food, and an armful of flowers.

Everything has felt delicious this weekend: cleaning out the entryway to my home and scrubbing the stairs, laundering bedding, arranging flowers, rewatching Frida, wandering my favorite local art gallery, sitting on the grass outside the laundromat drinking an iced mocha from my neighborhood coffee shop, talking with friends, walking in the sunshine.

Aphrodite calls to me, she who guards the mysteries of love, passion, creativity, beauty, and pleasure. She calls to me, and I open.

Venus retrograde

In the comments to the last post, Oak reminded me that Venus is in retrograde. Here is Lynda Hill's take on what that could mean. Or, as another site sums it up, "Vibes can get really weird during this time, and a lot of people will be freaking out about relationships." Really.

I've got Venus on my mind a lot these days. She was the patroness of my journey to Turkey, and in my chart she plays a major role for the next nineteen years or so. I expect you'll be hearing more from me about that!

Late Lughnasadh

Late Lughnasadh greetings, dear readers. (As if it’s possible to be late among the Pagani.) It’s been an intense couple of weeks – not even two weeks – since touching down in New York. In addition to jewelry, tapestries, goddess statues, and coffee, I brought home a sea urchin spine from Turkey. Embedded in my right foot. I didn’t know it until I fell ill the Friday after my return and discovered that my foot was red, hot, and swollen, the infection trailing its way up my ankle. A doctor excised the spine and prescribed antibiotics. I hobbled around for a week, keeping my foot elevated as much as possible, soaking it every few hours in hot water and Epsom salts. Now I’m much better, nearly mended.

I’ve also witnessed much heartache in the past couple of weeks, from a friend who spent several days in cardiac intensive care, to several friends whose marriages are in crisis, to a guarded, hurting lover at home. I wonder if everyone’s heart is hurting. I wonder, too, at the ways I’ve guarded my own heart, and how much that guarding hurts and isolates me. It’s a normal response to contract in fear, yet that response so rarely serves us. I’m learning how guarding my heart blocks my generosity, both toward myself and toward others. I came home from Turkey with a heart more open and full, and the energy in my body has been tremendous. I can be more generous with myself and others, but it’s not about making anything happen; it’s about allowing the life force to flow and take its course. It’s an Oprahesque cliché to say that we can’t give to others without filling ourselves first. But I think I’m beginning to understand what it means to attend to my own needs and how, when I do so, I don’t have to make anything else happen. The rest just flows.

Lughnasadh is one of my favorite holidays, second perhaps only to Samhain. My sweet puppy was born around the sabbat (we adopted him in November two years ago), and so we named him for the solar god, Lugh. (He likes to hear me sing, and a favorite is "You Are My Sunshine," the appropriateness of which just struck me.) The abundance this time of year is staggering: the lush green, the still-long days, the gorgeous colors of the farmers' market. Indeed, going to market is one of my favorite ways to celebrate, along with eating as many tomatoes, peaches, and blueberries as I possibly can. I feel the blessings of the earth and the hint of fall in the air.

Perhaps the best things I've ever read about Lughnasadh can be found here.

Abundant blessings at the turning of the year.

Aphrodisias

That's me, in the foreground, in front of the Tetrapylon gateway at Aphrodisias, Turkey.

This site has been sacred to the Mother Goddess since 5800 B.C.E. The city was named Aphrodisias, for Aphrodite, in the second century B.C.E., and it remained a pagan stronghold long after Christianity came to the region. The temple to Aphrodite was built in the first century C.E. and much later, during the Byzantine era, converted to a basilica. The ruins at Aphrodisias have been beautifully preserved and reconstructed; the museum there houses the goddess figure who likely stood in the temple. An imposing figure, only suggestively human or female - and thus a far cry from the Venus de Milo or Botticelli's goddess - the statue's gown bears images of the three Graces, winged human figures, Gaia and Uranos, Selene and Helios - the moon goddess and sun god - and Aphrodite herself depicted as a sea goddess, accompanied by a dolphin and triton.

[Come] here to me from Krete to this holy temple
where is your graceful grove
of apple trees and altars smoking
with frankincense.

And in it cold water makes a clear sound through
apple branches and with roses the whole place
is shadowed and down from radiant-shaking leaves
sleep comes dropping.

And in it a horse meadow has come into bloom
with spring flowers and breezes
like honey are blowing

In this place you Kypris taking up
in gold cups delicately
nectar mingled with festivities:
pour.

(Sappho, Fragment 2, translated by Anne Carson)

Getting hot, cooling off

Blogging has been light because I've had an unusually busy social calendar for the last week and a half, and I'm getting ready for my trip to Turkey. I leave one week from tomorrow!

Last night was one of those sultry summer evenings where it's still in the 80s at dusk. I remember those nights when I was a kid and it was too hot to sleep; my parents would let my sister and me get out of bed to swim. For several years, we lived in a modest house in a semi-urban neighborhood, and we had a pool in our backyard. Swimming at night meant getting to swim naked, the only lights shining from under the water. After 15 minutes in the pool, our bodies cooled, we would go back to bed and sleep all night.

Swimming naked, and swimming at night - floating on my back looking up at the moon and stars - are still just about my favorite things to do. I prefer lakes, ponds, and hot springs to artificial pools. (I’ve been skinny dipping after dark in the Baltic Sea; this is both cold and dangerous. Much more peaceful was floating on my back in the large hot spring at Orr, in California.)

(Indeed, hot springs are one of the few things my town lacks. That, and Ethiopian food. Okay, and a thriving independent bookstore. We’re not perfect.)

Last night it was hot, so Adonis, Lugh, and I set out for the gorge down the street, where the temperature is about 10 degrees cooler. We hiked in, not very far, and found a flat stretch where we could all walk around in the water. (It’s been dry this year, so the water is low; normally we wouldn’t be able to walk where we did.)

There was a lot of litter, which makes me so angry, but since dog walkers always have plastic grocery bags in their pockets, I was able to clean up the space we were in. In addition to the beer and juice bottles and cigarette wrappers, there was a pair of socks, some Styrofoam peanuts, a bag of empty take-out containers, and a dirty diaper. This isn’t the first time I’ve found a wrapped, dirty diaper in a gorge! People make such a misanthrope of me. I don’t understand how anyone can go to such a beautiful place and leave trash there. It breaks my Pagan heart.

I once knew of some Quakers who would carry a bag and pick up litter wherever they went. When someone would ask them why, they would say, “we’re Quakers; we pick up litter.” I think that’s a mantra that can express our most basic Pagan values. I say it to myself to counter my angry reaction: “we’re Pagans; we pick up litter.”

Midsummer Blessings

Liberation is not an achievement. Liberation is the degree to which you are able to savor the ecstasy you already are.

Find the world enchanted. Magic is everywhere. Blessings on this longest day.


(Art by Mara Friedman; poster by Syracuse Cultural Workers)

Ritual, health, and changing self-stories

(Image: "Self-no Self" by Sandra Sunnyo Lee)

Fiacharrey at the Cypress Nemeton noted my recent post on the uses of life-narrative in changing the self, and my comment that ritual could be a powerful tool for retelling our life stories and reworking our sense of self. Fiacharrey discusses the idea of using ritual in these ways; s/he focuses on the role that externalizing a difficult problem can play in psychological health. According to the original NYT article, those who score highly on assessments of well-being describe their problems as something outside themselves, "villains to be defeated," rather than as persistent character traits. So, for example, someone who describes a period of depression as coming out of nowhere and external to the herself (e.g., referring to it as "the black dog"), scores higher on a well-being assessment that someone who describes herself as a "depressive." The study discussed in the article seems to suggest that it's healthier to externalize one's problems in this way. The way to externalize the problem is to tell a story about it, and presumably an individual has some measure of control over the kind of story she tells. So perhaps we can retell our way to a measure of psychological health.

Fiacharrey gives some practical tips on designing rituals that can help us retell our stories:

1. “Externalize” the problem you are dealing with. Make it real and separate. Represent it with some tangible object that you can work with.
2. Word spells in terms of overcoming obstacles. Word them with the problem first, then the resolution. Negative, then positive ending.
3. Use third person instead of first person as much as possible.

And while Fiacharrey says s/he is "leery of reducing magic to simply a mind-trick we play on ourselves," I don't think that's what rituals of this sort actually do. If we accept Dion Fortune's oft-quoted definition of magic as "the art of bringing about change in consciousness in conformity with will," then taking intentional action to change the contents of our awareness and our underlying beliefs is magic.

But as Witches and other practitioners of magic (ought to) know, we can't think of the will in a common way. The idea of "willpower" - that I can make something happen by trying hard enough - is misleading. The will isn't about wishing something were so, or trying really, really hard; and it's not about forcing something to change. Indeed, it's an open question whether the will is terribly responsive to conscious, rational argument at all.

I'm not convinced that change happens best when we try to make it happen. While there can be a conscious decision to start telling one's life stories differently, after that decision is made, one may need to employ other means in the retelling. And that's where ritual can come in. Ritual is a form of communication with the unconscious, with the child-self, with Younger Self. The Feri tradition teaches that the only way to reach the Higher Self is by going through the Younger Self; that's why Wiccan rituals are often designed with Younger Self in mind - the pretty colors, the yummy smells, candles, nighttime, poetry, drumming, chant! We alter our everyday consciousness in order to reach something deeper. Ritual isn't about convincing the rational, everyday mind - the Talking Self - that something is so. Rather, ritual courts the child in us, and thereby connects us to the Divine.

To take it back to storytelling and psychological health: it's not enough to tell yourself a different story. You have to convince yourself of the new story. You have to learn to embody the new story. You take it into your cells, your bones. The new myth becomes alive for you. It's not a dramatic epiphany - at least, not usually. It's piecemeal. It's process. And it has to happen throughout your being, at every level, not just in the conscious mind. As is said: the mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.