the art of travel

Occasional travel is good for the soul. To me, it’s like experiencing good art. Both assist me in reflecting on life -mine and at large - from vantage points outside my normal terrain. Good art can be literally framed or held within the container of it’s structure, travel is framed by time. Travel and art are also of one piece for me in that seeing art is a part of my art of travel. This last trip to Europe was a masterpiece I will savor the memory of for years.

As I write that, I was immediately blessed with the memory rising up of seeing Picasso’s Guernica in New York with my father when I was nineteen. The Vietnam war was just coming to it’s end. As wars tend to do, it had plagued our nation and our family. My father and I had battled over it for years. We stood together at MOMA and looked up at the huge disturbing piece. I looked over at my father, and to my wonder, saw tears in his eyes. This moment is inextricably woven into my understanding and experience of that terrible war. That trip, that piece, that moment, they all are part of what has forged me as a human being.

My summer travel was a gallery show on fire and water. One of my organizing principles as a witch is my strong relationship to the sacredness of the elements. That, along with holding the wheel of the year sacred, has been the backbone of my practice, it’s what I hold as essential to the craft. On my trip this summer, I experienced the alchemy of fire and water in a new and different way.

Earth and air, they are constants. In every breath, and constantly underfoot, earth and air are something we as humans work with, but they are always available. We may till the soil, or fan ourselves or build windmills, but we don’t have to work hard seeking earth and air.

Water and fire are a different matter. So much of human culture has been centered on easy access to these more elusive elements. Energy and water continue to be something we humans have to strive to have available to us. In my travels it struck me how special it is to find places on this earth where fire and water are plentiful, and live in balance. In Glastonbury and Bath the sacredness of the two are palpable and abundant. Glastonbury has the fire energy rising out of it’s spiral of the Tor, mixing energetically with the red and white ancient wells nearby. In Bath, the hot springs are a literal mix of fire and water. It’s these kind of places that humans find sacred, and devote themselves to being near.

At Avalon witch camp, we worked the story of Hades, Demeter, and Persephone. Somehow in the working of that story I came away with the revelation of how, like our seeking of fire and water, we also seek sex and love. Like fire and water, having both in balance is something to hold in reverence. This does not come easily to all.

I’m back now from my tour of fire and water, full of images, rich moments and ruminations. I love good art!