branches up, roots down

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...

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...

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 lif...

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 ...

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 attentio...

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 catastrophi...

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 purifyi...