healthy, wealthy, and wise

Death serves to make us appreciate life, and sickness serves to make us appreciate health. Today I've been giddy with gratitude for my health and the incredible energy of this living body. Wow! What a miracle!

Ever since the full moon I've been battling the flu. Actually, it pretty much won a few hours into the initial skirmish, and then I fell into bed. Taking time off from my practice is always hard. Besides the loss of income, it means a massive amount of work in rescheduling every appointment. I don't remember the last time I took three days off in row. I was really sick.

Today I woke up and was delighted to feel something other than ill. I felt like myself!!!! I've been savouring that all day, just how fabulous that is! I know I'm not totally up to speed, but just to feel the level of energy that I do now, to feel an appetite again, to have a clear head; that's making me feel like a million bucks! Rich as rich can be!

The weather co-operated with my elation today by being glorious, one of those pearly San Francisco days, which culminate in one of those twilights where the city appears bathed in iridescent fairy fire. I don't even know what the last three days have been like, or what the sky's looked like at night. Oh, to have my health, that is precious beyond belief!

nightcaps and spirits

Yesterday the day started with ten young co-eds from a Jesuit college descending on the house as part of a city wide volunteer fair. They came to create blankets for the project I had started with a few friends in response to hurricane Katrina. Our website, theblanketproject.com is up and running, and hopefully soon people will be able to upload pictures of the blankets they are doing onto the site. It’s just the kind of pragmatic magic I like. It serves a purpose, and it’s a spell to blanket the country in warmth, kindness and compassion. The blankets that have come in have been beautiful, with great designs and powerful sentiments attached. The young women jumped right in, and in a few hours there were several unique blankets that not only will keep those who survived that hurricane warm, but are works of art as well.

It was a warm day, and with that very specific golden thickening of the air that is particular to this season. The dead are pouring on in through the veil. As the young women sewed and chatted, Fern and I created our house altar for the dead. We set out a fine place setting and filled the plate with pomegranates and chocolate and filled a glass to the brim with dark rum. The offerings may change between now and Samhain, but it was clear that today was the day we needed to start feeding the dead.

Lucy dropped by, and then Nancy came by to look at my spirit bottles for the altar to New Orleans she is creating for the Spiral Dance. We had a great discussion about what spirits to fill the bottles and the mosaic oversized cocktail glass with. I will be on the hunt for some real absinthe in the next few weeks.

The volunteers left and then the unexpected happened. Lyra’s roommate came over to cut Fern’s hair and I ended up getting a cut as well. Jesse is completely untrained, and her cuts are wild art installations. Somehow they work well, managing to be unusual but also attractive. Maybe it was the dead, maybe it was the fact that my divorce had become finalized on Yom Kippur, but something told me the beginning of this New Year calls for a new do. A lot of dead weight came off, and my hair feels and is acting more alive. It’s spirited!

I then spent some hours in my studio working on my new bottle. This one is dedicated to the spirits of rebirth/renewal. As I made it, a new bottle demanded to be made, one devoted to Marie Laveau. Marie Laveau made sure I woke up and took notice.

Early into the evening Denise talked me going with her to see if we could slide into the talk that the astrologer Caroline Casey was giving at the Bioneers conference. Everything lined up to make this as smooth as possible, we even got a parking spot right out front. Caroline covered a lot of ground, but spent considerable time praising and invoking Marie Laveau, saying that given Marie’s chart, she’s really up to some work right now. Caroline’s talk addressed so much of what my day had focused on as well; New Orleans, the thin line between the dead and the living, and taking creative action. I’m happy with my new haircut, loving the idea of an astrological chart having meaning far after our death, and full of juice for making these bottles. I topped off the amazing day by crawling into bed and finishing the movie I’d started the day before “What the Bleep Do We Know?” Perfect, just perfect. Count on a little quantum physics to be the perfect nightcap!

back to the garden

The longer I’m a witch, the less need I have for the formal casting of circles or raising of cones. Every inch of this planet is sacred space, and each second we’re involved in casting some spell. The trick is remembering this, and that’s where Buddhism and Witchcraft meet. The more I’m mindful, the more I’m amazed at the magic involved in mundane life. Rose told me often; “the mundane before magic”. I’m beginning to feel there’s absolutely no difference between the two.

I set out to my place in the country with the intent on diminishing the rat population, getting the composting toilet working properly, and planting trees. Clearing out the vermin infesting the house, dealing with my shit, and planting trees that will bear fruit, these are all so called “mundane” tasks that are fraught with the power of changing consciousness at will, and are each the most potent of spells. You don’t really need to be anointing candles with oils to be make things move in your life. Cleaning the house, weeding, or planting seeds with magical intent are just as effective.

My coven, Wind Hags, along with our partners, bought these 40 acres in the wilds of Sonoma about 11 years ago. Part of a big land association formed as a result of hippies heading to the country in the early 70’s, it was perfect for a group endeavor. Having been an old commune of sorts, it came with several ramshackle cabins and the standard Northern Californian Yurt. About two years after we purchased it, Wind Hags had dissolved and the rest of us had bought Starhawk out. She bought a place of her own down the road and everything has remained almost as it was over the years. It’s as if not only the structures on the land, but the very structures of our relationships have not been altered or improved on much, just become more weather-beaten and eroded by time. A big shift in energies happened this year, with Patti and Karl moving to Portland. The installation of a packrat in the cookhouse and the encroachment of thistles and brambles call for yet another shift. This is magic I’m interested in.

I went up this weekend with the intent of approaching the land with a new sense of responsibility, a new commitment. Another couple went with me, new friends who are unique in that they are a bridge between the Reclaiming and RAN communities. Nancy is on the board at RAN and has taken magical classes with me, and is one of those people who when I met, I thought “Oh, there you are! I know you!”. The amazing thing is I felt the same way when I met her partner. They have a farm in Cortez and are much more familiar and experienced with the magic of gardening and country living than I. They made me think a lot about dead and living soil, and showed me clearly that I have a lot to learn about digging holes, and tending to that which feeds me.

My old coven sister and her partner, both of them my initiators into Feri, came up on Sunday. It was a delight to see them and hang out together, something we haven’t done in years. Nancy has set her intent on more magical training, and it was clear that meeting the two of them is part of the spell she is involved in. She's going into Reclaiming with eyes wide open, being privy to seeing it though the sight of those who both helped form it, and have left it. For me, reconnecting with them, enjoying each other’s company and planning out how to tend to the land together, this was part and parcel of the magic I’ve embarked on.

Three new trees are now planted and two rats are dead, with more to follow. I freed the drawer of composted shit and the composting toilet is now working well. Driving home, amazingly, Joni’s song came on the radio. We are stardust, billion year old carbon. I’m paying attention, and working on getting back to the garden.

We Are Golden

The new moon with its eclipse has time and space slipping and sliding, there is feeling that literally anything can happen! This week the wheel clearly turned and the air is different. For one thing, it’s full of noise. There’s something always surreal about the week in San Francisco when the Blue Angels are flying overhead. It’s such an aberration in this left of center city to have a sky full of jet bombers showing off, it’s truly disconcerting. The city is full of people like myself muttering in disgust or dismay. Gus the dog got so upset he climbed the fence and some poor guy came home to find him cowering on his couch! He could be Houdini reincarnated into a hound. Dealing with this was part of Ilyse and my last minute preparations for the big RAN party.

Dressed in our finery, we took a cab to the event, and walking in, I knew it was going to be fabulous. And it was! The city that had dive bombers overhead all day had also dedicated the day to the Nigerian activist who had been killed for exposing the atrocities done in his country as a result of oil profiteering. His brother spoke, and there were tears all around. We reveled in the many victories RAN has had in the last twenty years, and ended up dancing for hours to a great band who is known, but not to me. I can’t for the life of me remember their name, but the music was great to dance to. I especially enjoyed Bob Weir jamming with them and singing old 60’s standards, like “What it’s Worth”. Some of my Deadhead friends would have plotzed. All through the night I felt an immense sense of gratitude for knowing the people I do. What a cast of characters!!!!

Today I pack up the car and take the fig, pomegranate, and avocado tree to my land. I’m also taking pity on Gus and getting him out of the city. The Blue Angels are on his nerves. Ever since yesterday I’ve been humming Joni’s song….given how things are going, this dream might actually happen. Heck, I actually think it is happening!

And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

History Lesson

Tomorrow night I go to the 20th year anniversary celebration of Rainforest Action Network, the organization that my ex-husband was director of thru the late 1990’s. Kelly was one of those instrumental in the environmental community in linking forest issues to globalization and RAN played a big role in the magic in Seattle at the mass mobilization against the WTO. Up until he was unceremoniously let go of as director, we had both considered RAN a locus of cherished community. Victories, such as Home Depot stopping using old growth, were beginning, and a strong network of friendships was being built.

In our years together, I became close to many of his colleagues and cohorts who worked at RAN, Greenpeace, and other environmental groups. I taught workshops to longtime activists on using magic, coining the term “magical activism” and incorporated using magic in the teaching of civil disobedience tactics. After Seattle, Starhawk took this on as well, and I eventually turned my attention to other work. I had introduced my ex to Reclaiming when we were in our twenties, and he returned that favor in our thirties by introducing me to this particular sector of the environmental activist community, a community that as it turns out, is one which I feel more valued in than in local Reclaiming. Ilyse, a campaign director at RAN, just bought into my building and has become chosen family. Over the years, my priestessing skills have been well utilized in helping people of this community marry, do rituals for their children, and deal with grieving the dead.

Kelly was ousted from RAN at the same time as our twenty year marriage was coming to an end. Like with so many things that come to a close, there is no one clear cut reason for the ending of his directorship, or our marriage. In both, a variety of factors mounted up, an assortment of straws accumulated, and eventually a break occurred. In the lead up to this anniversary celebration, I’ve puzzled over the curiosity of my ex having more resentment, hard feelings, and heart break over his fracture with RAN than with our break-up. I’ve been a mirror of this in my estrangement from local Reclaiming. Strangely, we both have struggled with disillusionment with communities we once were in the thick of, that we once believed we would be part of forever, while more easily making peace with letting go of our commitment to a future together. Perhaps all those years of couples counseling were effective! If not in keeping us together, than in allowing us with some grace to let go. It’s so much harder to let go of something which matters to you deeply when you are treated as if you don’t matter!

Although I still can’t see myself attending the Spiral Dance, I’ve found myself badgering him to take his place at the anniversary dinner, feeling he‘s played an essential part in RAN‘s history. Inspired by the Reya Letters, I wrote him the letters he would wish to receive from those he still feels injured by. They were incredibly healing for me to write, in ways I still don’t quite understand, and I hope they’ve been healing for him to receive. Reya gifted me in a similar way with a letter from the Spiral Dance cell, something I’ve reworked until achieving utter perfection, until each word is now a gem giving off light and eliciting laughter.

As I prepare to go to this celebration, I’m thinking once again on the topic of community. True community is made up of the people you actually spend time with, who you commune with, and who you both create and then share history with. It’s not necessary that you like everyone, in fact, creating real human community means working together even when you actively dislike each other. There’s something powerful about accepting that even those we can’t stand do matter, do serve some purpose. I’m thinking of all the stories, not all of them pleasant, which will be in the room tomorrow night. Good and bad, I’m thankful for them all. They are my history.

new moon

In popular culture, it’s only the full moons that grab attention. Associated with werewolves, love songs, and full emergency rooms, everyone expects something dramatic to occur on a full moon. But, living the shamanic lifestyle, the trick is to pay attention to the energies surrounding the new moon, where the seeds of the future seem to be planted. This is the best time to make wishes, to set intent, to pay attention and get down to some life interpretation of the dream we are leading. This new moon really packs a punch, being also the beginning of the Jewish high holy days and one in which there happens to be an eclipse.

Fern had told me that given my astrological chart, to expect this new moon and eclipse to bring changes and transformation to my relationships - both to individuals and in communities. Now, change and transformation seem to be a constant in this e-ticket ride of my life, but I’m sensing the change right now is not in the form of the Tower card, there’s no catastrophic falling apart of any relationship. Those seem to be all around me, couples breaking up and mighty struggles happening. Given the battles I’m witnessing or hearing about, I’m rather happy to be going it alone at the moment. I think the changes this time round are more subtle, more fluid; this is a sea change. In this change, I’m setting the intent of continuing to discard old patterns that aren’t in my overall best interests, and to find myself easily be drawn to situations/relationships/adventures that give as much as they take, and that are essentially pleasing. I’m so ready to be fully pleased and delighted!

This new moon felt auspicious as it was a rare day I had hours of time to myself. Inspired by the Reya Letters, I spent some of the day writing my own set of letters. These letters are not only profoundly healing, but also hysterically funny. I wrote out my new moon wishes, and was surprised at the simplicity of them. I finished one big spirit bottle dedicated to New Orleans, and began another, and who and what that is dedicated to is in process of becoming. Perhaps the new moon! Naomi called during the day and invited me to a Rosh Hashanah dinner, and I noticed both how lovely the invitation was, and how important it seemed to decline. What seemed to be the magic at hand was to make a very nice dinner for myself and my son. It’s not often that there’s just the two of us home for dinner, and the meal was delicious in every way. In the past week, I’ve been acutely aware of his voice beginning to change. Like every change, it leads to more change. One of those changes will, of course, be in our relationship.

The day is over and it was a good one. Seeds have been planted into fertile soil. Here’s a new moon wish; May I travel thru this winter and on up into spring, rewarded and nourished by all that was planted today. So mote it be!

Invoking lost luggage

Tomorrow is the new moon, and Rosh Hashanah begins. In the giving up of monotheism, I’ve found myself open to working and being worked by a variety of other different tradition’s holy days. As newbie witch, way back in the late 1970’s, I pushed away from what I was raised with, and looked down my nose at any religion that centered around one male deity. I was pretty darn monotheistic in my polytheism! Now I invoke the wisdom of twelve step programs in regard to other religions; I take what I need, and leave the rest.

I was raised as a Episcopalian, but it’s the Jewish holidays that have been drawing me over the past year. Passover lent me it’s spirit of liberation in the spring, and these High Holy Days look like they will be generous to me as well. They are working on me, making me review old resentments, and what I’m ready to let go of. I’m looking at too, what I have to atone to and for. At Beltane, we have the moment of jumping over the cauldron, where we are symbolically purifying ourselves of what we don’t want to take into the next turn of the wheel. How much more powerful this moment would be if there was an actual lead up to it, if we all spent a week or so really looking at what baggage we needed to let go of, and taking some action around this - even if totally internally, that lead to the moment of cauldron jumping really having some breadth and power.

Beltane is at the height of the earth’s mating dance, it’s a frenzied and intoxicating swirl of life force energy. Maybe it’s just not the time for the kind of work that letting go of old baggage entails. Letting go of old resentments at Beltane is kind of like having a few drinks at party and spontaneously hugging someone you usually have conflict with. Who can really be in touch with resentments when such a great and wild party is going on all around? Those moments of ecstatic dancing with the Fey usually are just that, moments. There’s usually a hangover, and sometimes even the kind of remorse that comes from a drunken binge.

This time period right after Equinox, when the veil begins it’s thinning, this seems to be a great time to think about what we don’t want to take into the dark. This is a perfect time to review what I want to descend into the dark with, knowing that basement space can already be cluttered. How much better to go down those stairs free of old baggage, with the ancestors are all around, whispering their stories and tales, ready to assist in lightening the load.

Reya’s been busy writing the letters she wishes she’d received (goldpoppy.blogspot.com), and in doing this, she is healing old hurt and dropping baggage by the pound. She’s shared some of the letters with me, and as I have practically a matching set to some of her baggage, those letters have been healing for me as well. Tomorrow I will be writing down my new moon wishes, and one of those wishes will be sure to be a lightening of my load as I descend into the dark.