Pisces 11 and 12

One of my most important spiritual teachers is an astrologer by trade, and I'm erstwhile her astrology student. I used to think astrology was a bunch of nonsense and hokum. But then I met my teacher, Linda, and I couldn't deny the genius expressed in her understanding of this complicated art. I still have only the smallest idea of what's going on or what she's talking about, but Linda's way of doing astrology makes each person the hero of her own life and each life replete with meaning.

I have come to understand myself as an initiate because of two symbols that appear in my natal astrological chart (the snapshot of the sky taken at the minute of my birth from the perspective of my location on earth). First, my sun is at Pisces 11 (in the 11th house). The Sabian symbol for Pisces 11 is: A group of serious eyed, earnest faced men are seeking illumination and are conducted into a massive sanctuary. Second, my north node is conjunct my sun, at Pisces 12, the symbol for which is: A convocation of the Lodge of Initiates has bought the earth's glorious souls in spirit to examine the candidates.

The sun represents the meaning of one's life. The north node represents where one is headed in this lifetime. That my sun and north node are conjunct means that the meaning of my life and where I'm headed in life (my north star, if you will) are in sync. To me, both of these symbols are deeply spiritual. They make sense to me as someone who has sought meaning and the Divine her whole life.

While an initiate has mastered a body of knowledge in order to be initiated, she is also very much at the beginning of something: she us up for examination, she is being ushered into a sanctuary. At first this idea of being a beginner, not a master, chafed my ego: "Well crap, in this lifetime I only ever get to be a newbie?"

But I assume the mantle of initiate with reverence anyway, and I remind myself of the archetypal importance of the beginner (for example, the Fool in the tarot). My life snaps into narrative focus--it makes sense--when I remember myself as an initiate, when I narrate my life as a story of initiations. The story of undergoing an initiation is a way to make sense of and revere difficult times, because initiation isn't easy. Inanna had to give up her very life, her flesh and bones. The old saying that in childbirth a woman descends to the underworld to retrieve the soul of her child isn't an unfair description of my experience in labor.

As for my nom de blog, I chose it before I understood anything about myself as an initiate. But now I think it makes lovely, prescient sense.

A sense of wonder so indestructible

Happy birthday to me! I'm 39 today and thrilled to be incarnated. Still, I called my mother this morning and apologized for that whole labor thing.

A quotation I want to remember for Lucian's Wiccaning/baby blessing ceremony:

"If I had influence over the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life." (Rachel Carson)

Passing through the gates

I'm loving being a parent. The sight, smell, and sounds of my lovely boy fill me with pure joy and happiness. That's true, though it's also true that the first weeks of parenting are singularly challenging. He'll be seven weeks old on Saturday.

Labor was a harrowing rite of passage. "Initiation" seems like such a lilting, romantic idea, till you go through one. Hurts like hell.

When I began this blog nearly four years ago, I chose "Inanna" as a nom de blog because she seemed like an ancient Mama Goddess who didn't get a lot of air time (what did I know?). Also, I loved Talia Took's depiction of Innana in her aspect as a goddess of sexual love and fertility. Later, I felt a bit sheepish about my choice: "queen of heaven and earth" was meant as an ironic descriptor for little ol' me.

However, what you might know about Inanna is that her descent into the underworld is a paradigmatic rite of passage. Her initation involved giving up every claim to identity she had and all her worldly goods, abasing herself in front of her sister/shadow, the queen of the underworld, and having her corpse hung on a meat hook in hell. We might call it the mother of all initations.

Shortly after beginning this blog, I began studying astrology, and I learned that the Sabian symbol for my sun at Pisces 11 is "a group of serious-eyed, earnest-faced men are seeking illumination and are conducted into a massive sanctuary." The symbol for my conjunct north node, at Pisces 12, is "a convocation of the Lodge of Initiates has brought the earth's glorious souls in spirit to examine candidates." In other words, initiation is my raison d'etre, in this lifetime at least.

And so after a series of initations over these last several years, one fast upon the heels of another--mystery school initation, ordination, traveling to Turkey, ending my academic career, the illnesses that pointed the way out of academe, adopting my beloved dog Lugh, Lugh's death--I decided to become a mother, Goddess willing.

Labor was a dark door that I approached unwillingly but also with singular determination. I was wary and afraid, but I also believed in its necessity, its sacredness. There were times during my labor with Lucian when I thought, "this is the worst day of my life"--a thought I don't think I've had on any other day. The pain was unlike anything I've ever experienced, and the thought floated through my mind that childbirth is more physically challenging than war. ("Take that, you big, macho, patriarchal, death-fetishizing assholes," was the other part of that thought.)

I worked in a huge cauldron of warm water at home, surrounded by midwives, and I had the dream that I was reliving my own birth, my mother's labor. I screamed often, and worried the dog, though Adonis reports that my focus was inward and away. There was an abrupt break in the labor at transition; the baby's heartrate dropped and didn't recover, and my midwife made a quick decision to move us to the hospital, where Lucian was born four hours later, after I pushed him out myself under conditions that mostly felt hostile. But I was held by a large community saying prayers, meditating, visualizing, and making magic. The magic worked; more on that later.

At the end of labor, with a roar--his, mine, that of the people in the room--my sweet baby entered this life. Someone placed him on my chest. Adonis cried. And--forgive the cliche--I knew that that day was also the best day of my life.

29ish days

Today marks the end of Lucian's first lunar cycle. (Tomorrow is the one-month solar date.) Happy birthday, beloved one!

Embodying the abundant universe

(From the Gaian Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert)

I believe as a tenet of faith that the universe--the Goddess, the Mother--provides what we need in abundance. Always.

This belief doesn't reside in my intellect, if you will, but in my gut. My brain easily generates myriad reasons why this belief is false; begin with the reality of poverty. But my belief, which relies on faith, isn't so much a proposition against which to marshal arguments. It is, rather, a way of understanding the world. It functions like a background assumption. (I'm well aware of problems with confirmation bias, but I'm not doing science here. Grant me poetic license.)

I think that whether or not this belief (or way of understanding the world) comes easily to you depends on the circumstances of your early life. That's not to say that we can't come to believe that the universe provides for our needs in abundance even if the circumstances of early life were meager in the relevant sense. The first step in coming to believe is realizing that we believe otherwise; for example, to realize that we're acting from an assumption of penury, that we believe fundamentally that life is hard, that we're its victims, that we're undeserving, that things never get better, that people are out to get us. Thus we uncover our operating assumptions. We work to accept that we have them (and acceptance is no small feat, though I give it short shrift here). And we begin to pay attention to all the hints we're given that assumptions of scarcity are false. When people make gratitude a practice, that's what they're doing: they're paying attention; they're counting their blessings.

(I've had a hard time with the idea of practicing gratitude because I have an old belief that I don't deserve my many blessings. Gratitude is, in my mind, and for biographical reasons, linked with feelings of guilt and undeservingness.)

Very early in one's life sojourn, one learns on a basic, physical, preverbal level that the universe provides for one's needs, or one learns that it doesn't. I think I'm lucky; I got the message, somehow, that my needs would be met. Maybe I carried that belief into this life with me. (My "soul card," in tarot, is the Empress. Both my rising sign and my Pluto carry the message, too.) Maybe my faith formed as the result of responsive early mothering. (Thanks, Mom!) Things--mostly thoughts--have happened to occlude my faith, but I think that at its foundation it's solid. It is a glorious piece of luck.

I know that as I spend these early weeks with my child, my one task, as I see it, is literally to embody for him the abundant universe. He's still coming into this life; he's new here. How is the world as he finds it? There is a lot of big, scary, uncertain stuff that he doesn't need to know about yet. But he is almost always held. We hold him bare skin against bare skin. We hold him in the sunlight streaming through our bedroom windows. We carry him, we sleep next to him, we wear him in a sling. He is never away from us. He is never left alone. We sing and babble and kiss him and make jokes. He is always fed when, or even before, he asks. There is plenty to eat. He is kept dry and clean and warm. That big, loud beast, the dog, is his friend. He shows no fear.

And there is a huge, excited, welcoming, loving community holding him and his parents. We were held during the birth by an extended network of friends. Witches worked magic for him. Astrologers watched the sky. Gifts continue to arrive. People come to visit. Home-cooked dinners appear on our doorstep every other day; his body is literally being built by the community. I'm in awe of the generosity, love, and good will engendered by this small being.

He affirms my faith in all things good.

"You were born in a merry hour"

When Lucian was born, my astrology teacher sent me his natal chart. Several astrologers I know had been watching the stars for weeks, awaiting the birth. I know just enough astrology, and am just enough a new parent, that I could look at the chart, look up a few things, and freak myself out. A very little bit of knowledge is dangerous, at least to oneself.

Yesterday I was looking at the chart again and freaking out, so I emailed my teacher about scheduling a March appointment for the family. I told her how I was scaring myself and what some of my concerns are.

Today, visiting our favorite cafe for lunch following a pediatrician's appointment, we saw my teacher. Adonis and I walked in, Adonis carrying the baby in his car seat. We were immediately greeted by several people we knew. My teacher came over to us in the midst of the whirlwind and said, "I didn't even see you guys, but I saw the baby and knew immediately who he was." She gave me a big hug and said loudly into my ear, "don't be stupid; just look at him." Then she leaned over Lucian and, like a fairy godmother from a fairy tale, whispered words for only him to hear. He watched her intently, and when she was finished, he closed his eyes and slept.

Early days

Yesterday at the mystery school a friend said to me, "you still look totally shocked--or am I just projecting?" I replied, "nope, I'm still totally shocked." How does one get used to the idea of having a baby? "Getting used to" doesn't even make sense. He's just there, now, this whole new part of my life, who in the early days and weeks feels like all of life. I'm sure at some point I'll once again have a thought that isn't about the baby, but not yet. It's been only two weeks. Mostly, we breastfeed and sleep. We've had some visitors, including my family for a weekend. I'm aimlessly reading some books. We care for Gryphon, who seems to be adjusting well, but whom I worry about anyway; does he still feel important and loved? Does he feel like he has a role? (He's very protective of the baby and me, but I worry he's stressing himself out.) Adonis does household chores and keeps me fed, with the help of friends dropping off meals every other day. On warmer days, when it gets above 20 degrees, we all go for a long walk. But mostly, we're captivated. Held captive.

Yesterday we spent the day at the mystery school with Adonis's class. That was very good. So much love. I wouldn't have had Lucian without the hope my years in the school have given me. We can change. We can heal. We can risk love. We nourish ourselves in the darkness and reach out toward the light.

Welcome, little light

I gave birth to our beautiful son on Saturday the 10th at 1:42 p.m. We named him Lucian, meaning "light" (like Lugh and luz), to honor the dark time of the year and the difficult time in our lives that allowed him to come forth. We feel fully blessed and wrapped in the love of our communities. Thank you to all of you here who have been holding space for us.

Waiting

Yesterday we went to visit our midwife, who performed acupuncture on me and checked on the baby (still in utero). Baby is fine, taking its own sweet time. I'm fine, too, if a little impatient and judgmental of my impatience. (Pregnancy hormones are a fine thing, though--very soothing.) Adonis went back to work today so he can spend his alotted time off with the baby instead of sitting around watching me not have the baby, which was making him anxious. Gryphon the dog is keeping a close eye on me and prefers not to let me out of his sight. I wish I knew what he knows.

Thank you to everyone who keeps checking in and leaving comments. You help keep my spirits up; I feel so lovingly supported by my cybercommunity.

And still not yet

Thanks to everyone who keeps checking in. I will keep you posted.

We've descended into quite a bit of silliness in the household. I want the baby to know that eager as we were to meet her/him, we also had a lot of fun waiting. And waiting...

Not yet

Still no baby; looks like s/he's coming in 2009. Morale is flagging a bit here at chez Inanna, though I know this is all perfectly normal: the lateness, the emotions in reaction to lateness, trying to keep busy, trying to stay focused, wondering what we could be doing differently while knowing, somehow, that everything is unfolding as it should. I got into the birthing tub tonight to try it out and watched the bright crescent moon rise through the window. We've created such a beautiful, loving space. I'm quite happy in this, the very definition of liminal space.

Adonis and my sister have shoveled out the car and gone for Thai food and dvds. I'm curious to learn which movie they manage to agree on. Another member of my birth team is coming over to hang out and braid my hair. I'll likely fall asleep early.

May She hold you close as we all tumble into the new year.

Uber-Cap

One day past our due date, and baby and I are hanging out with Adonis, Gryphon, and my sister, who arrived yesterday and is blessedly doing housework. If the baby comes in the next day or two, s/he'll have six planets in Capricorn, including sun and moon. Sun, moon, Mars, and Pluto are basically conjunct in the first six degrees of the sign. That's a little hard to get my head around.

Fair Yule

Belated solstice blessings, ye Pagani, and a merry christmas to those who celebrate today, too. (Earlier I was saying to Adonis, christmas is really the same holiday as solstice, you think Jesus was really born in midwinter?) I celebrate christmas when I'm with my parents and sister; growing up, it was always a special day in our house, and I don't mind continuing that. I like the candlelight service and carols, the special breakfast, the gifts. But I haven't missed them this year, as we've stayed home.

The solstice tree is sparkling, we've had special food, and we had a very sweet ritual in the birthing room on solstice night. For me, the solstice is about honoring the simplicity, darkness, and quiet of the season, so gifts are wintry and warming; this year I gave Adonis long underwear, flannel pajamas, and a new turtleneck the color of his eyes. There is a wreath on the door, soup on the stove, and cookies in the oven. Friends are stopping by to visit. Family are calling on the phone.

Last night Adonis tossed and turned and had unusually vivid dreams about moving through tunnels and greeting unexpected angels at the door. "Prepare, make way, the time is nigh." I thought immediately of all those dreaming men in the bible, men like Jacob, the Pharoah, and Joseph. The women, it seems, never dreamt, but instead were visited while awake by angels (Sarah, Elizabeth, Mary). Why is this?

I always appreciated Sarah's skepticism ("a child at my age? tell me another one") over Mary's obedience ("I am the lord's handmaiden"), but now I see, too, that to experience pregnancy and birth is to give oneself over to forces not of one's own ego and will. I made a conscious decision in the last couple of years to open myself more and more to the magic of what happens, to ride my life rather than try to steer it. I don't know why that works better for me, but it does.

That is my Pagan prayer for the winter solstice: to open to magic and mystery, to earth and the fullness of being human; as much as possible to bear witness to my own life without judgment; to love, to hope, to have faith; and to try to feel all of it.

Slow times

Yesterday the sun was shining, which is a rare thing this time of year. I took Gryphon for a walk--more of a slow waddle on my part--so we could sunbathe. There is a nice stretch of land along the lake's inlet where it's safe to let dogs off-leash, yet few people take advantage of it. We rarely encounter anyone else there, except for disgruntled Canada geese, though we do see human, dog, and deer footprints in the snow.

Today we're getting a foot of snow. It's coming down fast and beautiful. I'm contemplating walking three blocks to the coffee shop for a mocha. But who knows? Gryph and I managed to stay under the covers till noon.

Today is Adonis's last day of work for six weeks! Hooray for parental leave!

The birthing room is almost ready. If I manage to do any work today, it will be finished. Last night two friends came over to help with the big tub. Amidst the art and quilts and houseplants, it looks less like a big agricultural trough and more like, as Adonis pointed out, a cauldron. I'll post photos of the room when it's ready.

This is lovely

I would guess that the Winter Solstice is important because it combines a moment of poise and stillness--that only the dark can provide--with a real change of direction. Everything goes on but nothing is quite the same again. This echoes our experience of those Solstice moments of life: birth, menarche, leaving home and cleaving to another, death.... Womb moments.

To listen or be truly touched we have to be brought to the point of stillness. Only then can we be truly open to the other. Then we must enter the creative dark where all seems confused and uncertain and anything can happen. Then the light rises. Then all seems the same but there is that deep awareness that things will never be the same again.

--Paul, She changes everything She touches, "Evoking the Goddess"

Birthdays and presents

Happy birthday wishes to two men who have long delighted me: John Crowley and Woody Allen. (Who knew they shared a birthday, and with my little friend Iðunn, too?)

Last night was our last childbirth class, and the man who delights me the most gave me an excellent footbath and foot massage and a very cool present. (Let's hear it for retro-aesthetic sexuality, postmodern femininity, and pit bulls.)

Where we're at

That's Gryphon with my baby belly. Four weeks till our due date.

Our birth team came over for the home visit yesterday: our midwife, her apprentice, and their nurse. They'd been up the night before at a birth. We showed them around our house and sat down with them to envision the birth. They described their different roles and asked what we needed from them. While they'll be there throughout the labor to offer support and monitor how the labor goes, they also described themselves as working quietly in tandem, largely in the background, meditating and holding space for us and the baby. I'll give birth in a space created by Adonis, my sister, and me, held by these three women with tons of experience (I have none, after all) who respect the instinctual, animal wisdom of my body, who will support Adonis and me but not interfere with us, who will offer us care and love throughout the birthing. In my wider community, word will go out via the mystery school's listservs that I'm in labor, and we'll be held by all of that love and energy, too.

I'm very excited. I feel so lucky that we've been able to create sacred space and intention around the birth; no matter what happens in terms of events, we've created a vessel to hold us.

I'm slowing waaaay down. My brain is enjoying more spaciousness, less pointed analysis. This morning as we walked home from brunch, Adonis delighted me with a high-flying exposition on capitalism, saving the earth, and Shiva. My response? "I need to pee, and then I need to lie down."

That's where we're at these days.

Parenthood, flexibility, fear, and politics

I took a personal day from work today, wanting to rest, work around the house, and write. I've started the dishes, cuddled with the dog, read some blogs, and had some oatmeal and tea. A bit of writing, and then I'm upstairs to finish unpacking the bathroom. I want to spend as much time as I can preparing the house--I work slowly and deliberately--but it's felt difficult to do while working full time, caring for the dog, running necessary errands, getting enough rest.... I'm a Pisces. We're easily overwhelmed. Lately I've been thinking about this quality a lot and trying to find some value in it, rather than just hating it and wishing it weren't true. If I know that I get overwhelmed easily, and I'm practicing acceptance, what is the healthiest way to proceed, and what gifts can I discover?

Last night Adonis and I attended our first Birthing from Within childbirth class. I've felt so much serendipity around our pregnancy so far, and very little anxiety or fear. (I just want the house to be ready!) All indicators are that I'm healthy, the fetus is healthy, and things are proceeding normally; we've opted for very little testing or intervention of any kind, preferring to embrace the inevitable mystery of the process, and that feels like the right choice. We feel utterly blessed to be working with our calm, hugely competent, compassionate midwife and her apprentice, a Witch with something of an attitude. The childbirth class is just us and one other couple; the other pregnant woman shares a first name with me, is due a week before I am, and lives with her partner two blocks from us. Like us, they're first-time "older" parents. The teacher is certainly Pagan-ish if not Pagan. Both Adonis and I were relieved after the first class to have an intentional space for focusing on the birth. Sometimes little bits of doubt creep into my brain--maybe we should be doing things some other way, having sonograms, planning a hospital birth--but then I'll have an experience, like attending last night's class, that confirms for me the way we've chosen to do things.

My family has been relatively chill, for them, but it's clear that they're taking on the worry-work that is eluding me. That bugs me. I'm sure it's a good lesson for parenthood to be dealing now with disagreement, conflict, and their fear about my choices; there's going to be plenty about the way Adonis and I parent that my own parents won't like. But the shock for me has been how my parents apparently don't care what my reasons are. They don't want to be reassured. They don't want explanations. They don't want to--or can't--hear why I value what I value. They just want to express their own fears and opinions and then hope I change my mind. There's no dialogue, no conversation. I think of the premium I place on gathering information, thinking things through, listening to my intuition, consulting my values, consulting my partner...and I marvel that these people, my people, don't use the same methods or value the same things. Didn't they encourage me to think critically? Didn't they teach me to consult my own heart and conscience? I thought they did. Maybe I was wrong. It's unsettling and weird to realize--at my quite advanced age, I know--that in an important sense, they don't care what I think. They don't want to understand what I'm doing or why.

All of this led Adonis to make an observation with which I quickly and easily agreed, once it had been articulated: when we're parents, we want to engage our kid(s) in conversations about what they believe and value, and to listen and sincerely try to understand, even if we disagree. I feel as if my parents maybe tried to do this when I was growing up, but I haven't felt that openness from them in a long time.

Something that's very true for me, though clearly not for everyone, and probably doesn't have to be true for everyone: to love me means that you care enough to hear what I believe and why I believe it.

Is that quite right? Of course my parents love me; of course they care for me. Yet still I feel this lack--a fundamental way of being cared for that I get from my partner and many of my friends and teachers, but not from my family of origin. That care expresses itself in wanting to hear what I have to say, wanting to know what I believe, and valuing the fact that I value something. It's a way of taking me seriously. It is, I believe, what Iris Murdoch means when she talks about "loving attention." It requires curiosity and flexibility on the part of the parent, the lover, the one who cares, and it requires a temporary suspension of fear and ego.

Now all of a sudden I feel like I'm talking about reasons to support Obama over McCain this election. And I am. McCain is the inflexible, calcified, ego- and fear-driven, dismissive patriarch writ large. So is Sarah Palin, for that matter: age and sex don't define these things. While McCain and Palin are both so readily dismissive of women's health and other items on the "liberal feminist agenda" (not that he has a damn clue what that means; I was still shocked to hear him state the matter so baldly), Obama and Biden appear utterly believably as good dads--literally, not in an archetypal sense, though that, too, must matter. Obama is able to convey his flexibility, curiosity, and devotion to the best in people while running the most impressively tight and creative campaign for president I have ever seen. One of McCain's slogans may be "country first," but it's pretty clear he's really about himself first, foremost, perhaps only. Obama, on the other hand, really appears fearless, and he appears largely to set his ego aside in pursuit of a larger, shared good.

Baptism

(The Guardian [Queen] of Water from the Gaian Tarot, by Joanna Powell Colbert)

Still no internet connection at the new homestead, so blogging hasn't been possible. That should change today. Also, things have been a bit hectic while trying to get settled in the new house.

My dad called Sunday morning and said, "is it true that you're not going to baptize your kid?" Oh boy. Talking to my mom later that morning, she said, oh yeah, he's really upset about that, he keeps saying "that's the final straw, I'm disowning her." (What you need to know about my blustery but very loving parents: they would never disown me. Dad threatened to disown me for having a child outside of legal wedlock, but then he helped us with the down payment for our new house, so you can see how that goes. They adore Adonis, and my mom says that we have the best marriage of anyone she knows--except for the part where we're not married.) Both my parents would prefer that we have the baby baptized. My sister, who is a formidable advocate for us, told them that I wasn't going to do things the way they would have me do them, so they just have to suck it up and let it go. My mom is actually kind of adjusting to this idea. Oh but it's difficult for me, the oldest and always a good girl, to "let them down" by doing things my own way.

Why not baptize the baby? Well, there is the obvious reason that Christianity is not my religion anymore. But that's not my main reason. I would even consider baptizing my baby for my parents' sake if I could get past the symbolism of baptism. Yet I believe strongly in the symbolic value of ritual, and how ritual enactment in part constitutes reality. The ritual message of baptism is this: human beings are born innately sinful, in pain and blood from a woman's body, products of a sinful act; being born human, from sexual intercourse, and of a woman necessitates purification, the cleansing with holy water. And to this I say, bullshit. Human beings are not innately sinful. To be born in the midst of blood, sweat, shit, and ecstasy is a holy thing.

I like the idea of an elemental blessing. I imagine that at a Wiccaning or Pagan baby naming ceremony, though I've never attended one, the child is blessed with earth and fire, water and air. In becoming human we become one with the elements, and to enact that symbolically seems a good thing. So we'll have a ceremony, and there will be a sacred cup filled with water, but the ritual will be something altogether other than a Christian baptism.

The temple of Artemis

A year ago I was meditating here.

These are ruins of the temple of Artemis near Ephesus, in present-day Turkey. The temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was the home of the famous many-breasted (or bull-testicled) statue of Artemis.

On the day I visited, there were several men selling reproductions of the statue, set up on tables near the ruins. Though I'd tried to haggle over prices (it's expected) throughout my time in Turkey, I'd also kept to the practice of not bargaining over the price of magical tools. (I'd purchased a knife to use as an athame and several goddess statues.) I picked up the statue that called to me and asked the man, "how much?" "Dollars, euros, or lira?" "Dollars," I replied, thinking of the $10 bill I had in my pocket. "$10," he said. Done.

The temple grounds were ringed with blessed thistle, which made me think of the epithet Thalia Took assigns to Artemis, "defend your boundaries!" I sat at the foot of the column you see here and meditated, surrounded by a few friends. Someone snapped a photo of us. A friend commented later on how it was the fertile women in our class--those of us still bleeding and hoping to have children--who had meditated in the temple, gathered around the column, while the rest of our class explored the grounds. Artemis is a guardian of children and animals, and She is traditionally invoked by women in labor as a Midwife.

Much has changed in my life since I sat meditating at the temple a year ago. The Mother took our beloved Lugh, something we can't pretend to understand but which we know happened as it should. I invoked Artemis on Lugh's behalf, several times, and I will invoke Her again as we adopt other dogs. I've invoked Her in her Amazon aspect on my sister's behalf, as she faced breast cancer. And in six months it will be my turn to invoke Her in childbirth.

She has accompanied me since before I knew I was a Witch, at least since I was an voracious young feminist, if not since I was a child who loved the wild places. And there is something of Her in me: guardian and fierce protector.