branches up, roots down

My iPod has turned out to be my daily divinatory tool. Slipping the white earbuds in, with my 700 some songs on shuffle, I take a reading of the first three songs that come up, trusting that they’ll either reflect my inner state, or predict the currents of the day. Right after my birthday, when spirits were running high, and the lusty current was really running through me, Super Freak, by Rick James, came up several times in a week, as well as Wild Wild Life , by the Talking Heads. Sympathy for the Devil got frequent airplay during the weeks when I found myself absurdly engaged in the discussion of “ Lucifer – friend or foe ?” Believe it or not, just as I was writing this, with my iPod clicked into the stereo – my beloved Leonard Cohen just started in on The Road to Hell . Today, with triangles still on my mind, my three song reading was an emotional bull’s-eye. Janis belted out “ Piece of My Heart ”, then Alanis Morisette hissed “ You Oughta Know” , followed up ...

Three is such a powerful number magically. The most powerful number, except for maybe nine. which is three times three. Any witch I respect believes in the return of three, the knowledge that what you send out will return to you three times. Everything we do affects us three ways` -physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In Reclaiming Feri, we work on aligning our three souls; our fetch/vital body (or younger self), our human soul (or talking self), and our god self/soul. The tripod, the pyramid, are supposed to be forms involving three points that are strongly stabilizing, that have power. Witches worship a triple goddess, seeing the goddess as having three faces; maiden, mother, and crone. The power of three resonates throughout the Craft. Why then, are they so problematic in relationships? Today this was on my mind, in my thoughts, percolating as I ruminated about several friends. One of my oldest friends has struggled with triangles all her life, growing up with...

For Desire Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best: and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries , or cherries, the rich spurt in the back of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing. Give me the lover who yanks open the door of his house and presses me to the wall in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload and begin their delicious diaspora through the cities and small towns of my body To hell with the saints, with martyrs of my childhood meant to instruct me in the powers of endurance and faith, to hell with the next world and its pallid angels, swooning and sighing like Victorian girls. I want this world. I want to walk into the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass, and I want to resist it. I want to go staggering and flail...

Last night I went to a Seder for the first time in my fifty years. It’s strange that it’s my first. I’ve certainly been invited to many, especially by Starhawk, but something else always happened to intercede. This was the first Seder that Naomi, who was hosting it, was not spending with her family, as her parents are in Israel . It was an all women’s Seder and as the night went on, it turned out that for almost all of us, the dinner involved some kind of first. For several, it was the first time they’d met a witch. Naomi loves my witchiness, and persists in always introducing me as a Wiccan priestess. Finally I've gotten her to add on that I'm also a priestess of Elvis. That always lightens things up. One of them, the fashion editor I think, said quite evenly; “Witchcraft seems to be really in style right now.” Well, she should know, it being her job and all to keep up on what’s hot and what’s not. So, it’s finally in style, and better than that, it comes in handy in feeli...

I was coming up the back stairs when the weather turned on a dime. The sunny spring day became overcast and a swirling wind began to whip. As I was climbing the stairs, Lyra, my 17 year old goddess daughter, called out the backdoor “Deborah, is that you? I think today is the Apocalypse!” At that moment, with the sudden shift in the air, and the darkening of the sky, it felt like she was right, that something had begun. I’d had a rollercoaster of a day after a night of bad dreams. I’d mediated a hostile interaction with officemates. I’d worked hard to stay breathing amidst the peculiar nasty intensity of therapists going at each other. I’d had a long conversation with a friend about painful shifts in our friendship circle and magical fallouts. I’d listened to several upsetting messages on my voicemail. I’d worked with two grieving clients. And then, walking to the bank, I broke down sobbing in front of Global Exchange’s window installation which happened to be an altar to Marla. I ...

I went down to my backyard today and it seems like overnight it’s filled with Beltane energy. The foxgloves and roses are in bloom, and this strange spring now bears the first hint of summer. I cut flowers for my altar, remembering suddenly a Beltane 14 years ago when my heart was in similar state. It was the Beltane after the first war in Iraq , and I was bereft. Years of trying and failing at bearing a child had brought me to grips with grieving that this was not to be. Five years of trying and two miscarriages had taken a toll on my marriage. I was sure he was having an affair, something he denied repeatedly. I still can see her as she walked her bike ahead of us when we took to the streets that January when the bombing started, me knowing in my bones that what should be between he and I was flowing like a river between them. There was no evidence, nothing concrete to base an accusation on, yet I knew. At the end of April, he was away, doing something for Greenpeace in Austral...

My cell phone rang as I was watching my son’s little league baseball game. His team is called “The Angels”. Their uniforms are red, white, and blue. The day was sunny, the Presidio abundantly green. Ilyse was calling to get another friend’s number, to let her know that one of ours had just been killed in Iraq . When Ilyse said her name, I couldn’t place it, but later, when I saw her picture, I reeled with recognition. A woman I have been at many gatherings, many parties with. Marla Ruzicka, who had worked at Rainforest Action and Global Exchange, who had gone on to start her own organization, CIVIL, which documents civilian casualties in war zones and advocates for their care. Twenty-nine years old, she died outside Baghdad , blown up in a car. Watching my son play ball, in this beatific setting, I felt my stomach clench, and a sense of unreality descended quickly. A war is going on across the world, people are dying. The Angels were playing ball in their patriotic colors, and s...

When the Spanish sailed into the bay they saw a mighty mountain in the east and decided to go climb it, to see what they could seeof this new land from up on high. So they trekked across the Carquinez Straits to the hills and up and down towards the mountain. It took five days. Then their reactions to the poison oak erupted. They were bedeviled by the itching, turned back, and never climbed the mountain, thus missing the sight of the mighty Central Valley . Jen told several of us this story as we hiked around Mt. Diablo . I’d heard another story that it was near the mountain that the Spanish had rounded up a bunch of native peoples who escaped so mysteriously in the night that the Spanish thought it was the work of the devil, and cursed the place with the name. Both are good stories, and feeling the energies of the place, I can believe that the elements conspired to confound, confuse, and downright irritate the Spanish invaders. Mt. Diablo is hopping with spirit. After wh...

What a week! Today is April 15th. All my clients were on edge today, several talking about how they had procrastinated up until the last minute in paying their taxes. Taxes in the best of circumstances are not a joyful expense, but this year, paying them is especially painful. I, too, have put this off. I woke up today intending to print them out and send them during a break at work. And then the printer would not work. I muttered my incantations to the mechanical devas and went to work. When I got home, the printer was working again, but after spitting out a few pages, it ran out of ink. Even my machines don't want to cooperate with this bloody regime.

Don't worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive. - H. Thurman This arrived attached to someone’s e-mail on a Feri list I am on. After the last presidential election, as I tried to keep my head afloat in the sea of despair that engulfed so many of us, I sought guidance as to what I should be doing. Looking between the worlds, talking to my allies in all their forms, and listening to my dreams, the phrase “Do what you love” rose from the depths and became a strong refrain. There was chatter at first, argument and debate. Doing what I love, isn’t that a cop-out, the position of the privileged, a stance of the culture of narcissism that is so indicative of this empire? I grew up wanting to be part of a great revolution. I threw myself into the feminist movement of the 1970’s, the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980’s, and have been committed to magical activism – training activists in the art o...

Grief Arrives In Its Own Time It doesn't announce itself or knock on the door of your heart. Suddenly it's right behind you, looking with great pity at the back of your neck and your shoulders on which it spends days placing a burden and lifting it. Grief arrives in its own sweet time, sweet because it lets you know that you are alive, time because what you are holding becomes the only day there is: the sun stops moving, the sky grows utterly quiet an impossibly blue. Behind the blue are the stars we can't see and beyond the stars either dark or light, both of which are endless. - Stuart Kestenbaum One of my most notable magical gifts that I have been blessed with as far back as I can remember, is the gift of the right book, the perfect passage, the sentence I most need to read, finding its way into my hands at the moment I most need to receive it. I opened the Spiral Dance for the first time on plane ride to a funeral twenty-five years ago. In the months before my Feri i...

Fern had warned me earlier this week that given the eclipse on Friday and the new moon in Aries, that I would a real hothead this weekend, feeling lots of anger and rage. She’s was planning to stay clear of me. She’s seen me angry before, and it is formidable. I’m normally pretty easy going, with excellent antennae for picking up the humor in tense and complicated situations. But when I’m angry, I’m fierce. One good friend says she can see my hair growing when I’m seething. I don’t tend to seethe long before I blow. And then after I blow, usually pretty quickly I can start laughing again. Right now, thinking of when I’ve been hopping mad, makes me laugh. Well, except for some notable and regrettable exceptions. So, I keep scanning, looking for where some ember of hurt or resentment is smoking towards ignition. There’s plenty of sticks I could be rubbing together, living with the cast of characters that I do provides plenty of fuel, but there’s no smoke as of yet. It’s making me think a...

I opened up my e-mail this morning to find a post from my guardian angel, who sent along some photos he recently was given of himself as a child and of his parents and their friends dressed up like pirates and gypsies. He remembered the feel of the day and the moments that the photos had been taken, moments that happened decades ago, not thought about in years. He ended the post saying; "Things just come back into your life unexpectedly!" I call him my guardian angel, because he so many times, in times of confusion and turmoil, has come unexpectedly back into my life, and has the blessed trick of doing so usually right when he’s most needed. He’s never come on a white horse to save or rescue me, but something about his kind voice, weird humor and arms that can enfold one like wings, has always given me comfort. He can always make me smile. We were lovers back when I was in my early twenties and he was in his mid thirties. I was a handful, going through the angry stage of radi...

From my early twenties until the year leading up to my fiftieth, I was acutely aware of the precariousness of the dark of the year. It was on the turn of the wheel at winter solstice that my father chose death over life. Over the years, I have known of others who lost their will to live in the dark of the year, and as a therapist, I operate somewhat like a car alarm on high in regards to those in my practice that battle depression during this time. I’ve been talking to friends and to my therapist about the first anniversary of the suicide of my ex’s brother last Easter, experiencing another round of grief and feeling in regards to suicide and the loss of my relationship with my ex. Coming home this week, I got hit with the news that two different men who I care for have both lost someone to suicide. And one of the men is my ex’s younger brother, who I felt so close to during the week following his brother’s death, who stayed closer to me than my ex did during the funeral. My heart goes...

On Saturday, Reya drove me to Baltimore to visit the American Visionary Art Museum . A friend of hers, after seeing one of my spirit bottles, had told her she needed to take me there. She was right. The name itself was a draw…the word visionary linked so comfortably to the word art. We drove through the storm, the winds howling and the rain pounding, and we arrived at the near empty museum. The moment I saw it, I knew it was a sacred site, a temple I could worship at, being banded in an exquisite mosaic, with a big eye affixed to the outside wall. We walked in and it was like walking into the museum of our inner lives, like the artists knew our stories and had been commissioned to do works that addressed our dreams and visions. A museum that housed not only the Titanic and Elvis but addressed the power of charging up water, the magic of toasting, that had shrines and altars galore, and had printed up in large letters; “Many creative people observe that their best idea...

My 13 year old son and I flew to Washington , D.C. on Thursday night to visit my dear friend Reya. I had planned to come alone, but she and her housemates made me realize that Casey would be warmly welcomed, and given it was spring break for Casey, what better than to give him a chance to see the nation's capitol! Casey is in seventh grade, the year that his progressive school apparently feels that kids need to wake up and smell the fascism. He started the year out studying the Roman Empire , with every paper and assignment carrying the lesson of learning from history, and noticing how what happened then is happening in the here and now. That lesson being learned, they now have started studying the holocaust. Visiting Washington brought both of these subjects together, as it clearly headquarters our empire's government, and also is home to the Holocaust Museum . As a child, I was sexually abused in our family’s bomb shelter. I learned early on that the world ...