branches up, roots down

My horoscope for this week according to Rob Brezny says I should throw parties in 2007, that I am to be the zodiac's premier networker, getting people to play harder and take themselves less seriously. He also says this may very well save the world. Perfect. Last night I was hostess to a night long vigil for the solstice sun’s rebirth. I’d been preparing for this for days, cleaning the house, shopping for food, making menu plans, arranging altars, and gathering materials for the various spellwork that’s done thru the night. If I’m to be the zodiac’s premier networker this next year, it’s no big surprise or stretch. I’ve been in training for this for years. And I didn’t learn this in any Reclaiming class or witchcamp. My house has been my guide and mentor. I’ve stood in the center of more cast circles than I can count, raising my arms and invoking this that or the other thing, or leading those gathered round in a trance journey between the worlds. I know very well...

“I’ve had a great life. I’m not afraid to die. It’s just the horrible stuff that comes before it that’s got me down.” That’s what my mother said to me last night on the phone. She’s scheduled for a radical mastectomy next week, and then radiation, maybe chemo. Today, that statement keeps reverberating in mind. The horrible stuff that comes before it, yep, that is the real drag. Maybe she will die of cancer, maybe she won’t, but she’s somewhere past seventy living in a senior residential community and all too aware of the various horrible stuff that can precede death. She’s considered not doing anything, until she realized that choosing that course could be even more hideous. Even if you don’t go into battle with cancer, it for the most part refuses to claim a quick victory, and you certainly turn on the rack of pain plenty before you expire. Opening Jason’s blog, The Wild Hunt, I discover that yesterday was International Aids Day. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about th...

I can feel the dark descending, each day getting shorter, and the cold streaming in thru all the many cracks and crannies in this old Victorian house. Coming back to my beloved San Francisco , one of the first things I heard about is how some of my friends have been struggling to get an accurate telling of our experience in Seattle challenging the WTO. There’s a movie being made, The Battle In Seattle , which comes complete with real Hollywood stars like Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson. For years, hanging out at the Black Cat, reminiscing about various actions and uprisings we’d fermented, we’d imagine movies being made about us, and who would play us. Finally, this day has come. Characters will be amalgams, mixtures of many of us, but at least one comrade will play herself, facilitating a spokescouncil meeting, I think. It helps that she’s stunningly attractive, but heck, it is a Hollywood production. As fate would have it, last night I saw Bobby , the movie just out ...

Our first night in New York, my girlfriend made a beeline with me in tow to Katz’s Deli , where she introduced me to half sour pickles, and I did my best to finish a pastrami sandwich of gargantuan proportions. Then we hit the streets again. New York is a city for walking, and walk we did. We found ourselves soon at Toys in Babeland , a much better feeling place than Good Vibrations . There’s something to be said for a sex-toy store that is completely woman owned and run. It was a perfect place to spread the word about GlobalOrgasm.org . The store clerks there got quite exited and swore that they would be spreading the word. I’m glad, as this is a magical endeavor of proportions bigger than the sandwich I was busy digesting. It could be argued that all magic IS sex magic, as all magic involves the life force, which is inherently sexual. Given that, magic that literally uses sex packs a powerful punch, and tends to be effective. A call to action to have people around the gl...

This week brought the first rains of winter. I thought of my friend Reya, and the way she writes about the weather defining her . Witches have the saying “As above, so below”, a sentiment which is echoed in our belief that what happens between the worlds, affects all the worlds. The relentless grey skies of this week and my interior landscape have been perfect mirrors to each other this week. This week has been a case study of “as within, so without”. The grey hasn’t lifted yet, in all the realms. Early this week, the rain came down in a torrent soon after the phone call where I learned that my mother has breast cancer. My mother has been dying ever since I can remember. The diseases and maladies have been more phantom than real, and the last time I was worried that she was being operated on for cancer it turned out that she was actually having a face lift. This time, however, it appears she has The Real Thing. It looks like she will have a double mastectomy. As a witch, I’ve m...

Several days before the tide-turning election, The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about the newest slur sound bite from the Republicans. Even the most arrogant of them could feel a shift in the wind, the distinct possibility that this election couldn’t be stolen, and that not only could the speaker of the house be from the west, but that speaker could be a woman. The slur that started being slung was “ San Francisco values”. As soon as I read that term I broke into a grin. I knew that change was coming and that magic was once again at work. “ San Francisco Values”. I know that this term is meant to invoke fear of gays, wierdos, hippies, beatniks, and radical stances of infinite variety. And I’m sure it does. But what else does it invoke? Beauty, more than anything. New York is full of intensity, New Orleans full of debauchery , and San Francisco , well, San Francisco is full of beauty. It invites poetry, and anything that takes away your breath also makes you ...

I’ve been up to my neck in sugar skulls for the past week. The Great Studio Cleaning began as a hunt for my molds, which were never found. After several attempts with rigging my own out of cheap plastic skulls from Walgreens, I finally gave in and bought the expensive clear molds I’ve had such contempt for. Finally, in my travels to the cake decorating store for icing fixings, I found the molds that I had originally had, molds straight from Mexico , made from heavy duty plastic and much more traditional looking than the clear versions. It seems the dead this year want a variety of different kinds of sugar skulls, and it’s my job to create them. As I left the house this morning, I left behind a sticky stove and gritty floor. As usual, the magic is much more in the process than the product. By Samhain, my altar will hold beautifully decorated skulls of sugar, with names of the dead written carefully on them with brightly colored icing. However, up until that point the magic is in ...

It’s been well over a month since I broke my elbow. Since then, equinox has come and gone. Samhain approaches, with each day the air thickening with incoming dead. I continue to mull on the meaning of the break, it being the third in my household in the past year (my son and housemate both were on crutches in the early spring) and the third time I’ve had an elbow break in the last fourteen years. Was it a lucky break or a break-through? The crack in the elbow facilitated a break from writing, the longest one since I began writing this blog. A break was taken, due to the break. Being a witch, I can’t help but try and divine the significance in every little thing. My broken elbow was a rather middling to big thing, so you can imagine the sifting of significance this has engendered! Six years ago (November 11 th to be exact) I found myself out on the street with my young son in the middle of the night, clothed in only the top of my flannel pajamas. My house was on fire, and the flam...

My ex-husband is director of a San Francisco non-profit which plants trees all around town. One of the banes of his existence is the fact that many won’t plant a tree in front of their home or business due to the small chance that someone will trip and fall, and sue. This is so much on his mind that his first words to me when I called him on Tuesday night to tell him I’d broken my elbow were, “Can you sue anybody?” Given that I’d tripped on one of his trees in a freak accident, I’m choosing to hold fate responsible, and you can’t sue fate. We both ended up laughing heartily and he’s now forced to believe that people actually sometimes fall due to the dip between concrete and dirt, while I’m still shaking my head that one of those people turned out to be me. Those Fates sure have a wicked sense of humor! Every seven years for the past 14 years, I’ve broken an elbow. This is the third time, hopefully a charm, something I won't have to do again. I’m thinking on the significanc...

I subscribe to the Weekly World News . It provides no end of amusement, and I tend to agree with Tommy Lee Jones’s character in Men In Black that it’s the most reliable newspaper in the world. With it’s in depth articles on such things as the stairway to heaven collapsing, and its steady coverage on Elvis sightings, it keeps me well updated on the common bizarreness of planet earth. I consider it a kind of “Shamanic Times”. This week, with the demotion of Pluto as a planet, the news can’t be much weirder. I’m waiting to see what the Weekly World News will make of it. Pluto is the God of the Underworld, of all that lies below the surface. All the qualities of the god have also been ascribed to the now demoted planet. In Astrology, the energies of Pluto are transforming, as Pluto is the energy of the subconscious, which is the dirt and ground our actions take root in. Pluto is also associated with renewal and rebirth. It represents endings and new beginnings, as well as spiri...

Years back, one of my dearest friends remarked that what made me an excellent therapist was a challenge for me relationship wise. I believe in redemption, that things can change. I hone my eye on what’s healthy, breathing into that as opposed to focusing on what’s not. I don’t give up easily. As a therapist, these traits have been a great blessing, and they have infused my work. In relationship to anything else, they are a mixed bag. I have tended to stay in things longer than is good for me, and have had a high tolerance for dynamics that others quickly walk away from, focusing instead on the bits and pieces of possibilities for change. If I love something or someone, I hang on tight. Recently, as discussions about Reclaiming have swirled, and I move from dating into a more committed relationship, I’ve been thinking on what my friend told me years ago, and about those most difficult (for me) questions; At what moment is it most appropriate to not tenaciously hold on but to ea...

Soon after Lammas, the largest pagan gathering in the United States occurs in Memphis , Tennessee . The gathering is called “Dead Week” and every year it swells in attendance. At this point, well over 50, 000 devotees make the pilgrimage to honor the death of America ’s own Sun King, Elvis Aron Presley. Elvis is the newest indigenous pagan god to be worshipped on these shores since the European ancestors landed here and began their assault on the local deities and their worshippers. Elvis the historical figure died over twenty years ago, but the mythical Elvis is gaining an ever increasing number of followers. Reclaiming witches have the saying, “What is remembered lives.” If there’s a germ of truth to that, then Elvis is alive and thriving. Look around and you will see that as Mojo Nixon says, Elvis is everywhere. More than any other of our cultural icons, he remains alive in our popular consciousness. It is becoming increasingly acknowledged that the Elvis phenomenon can...

Supposedly the phrase “may you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse. As a witch, experienced with the power of paradox, I’m pretty clear that a curse can be a blessing as well, and vice a versa. These are interesting times. Sometimes I feel blessed by that, and this week, well, it’s felt more like a curse. Everything feels in spin, everything in flux, and as usual, the inner mirrors the outer, the outer mirrors the inner. What’s going to happen? Just wondering about that is exhausting. Best to just keep breathing and attempt to think about other things. As I breathe, one of the things my mind continues to chew on is the bone of Reclaiming, the spiritual tradition I’ve been part of creating. At the witchcamp I just taught at, my friend Rook and I taught a path on Reclaiming and Feri. I am a Reclaiming and Feri initiate, Rook is neither, and has been turned off to the glamour of Feri as he’s seen in shimmer thru his community. We didn’t so much as “teach” as we did faci...

We just passed Lammas, the cross –quarter holiday between Summer Solstice and Equinox. I’ve marked this sabbat for well over twenty years, and have planned and attended countless public rituals celebrating it. Lammas is also known as Lughnasadh, in honor of the Celtic sun god, Lugh, who began his descent after the solstice. It’s said to be both his wake and his wedding day, depending on which resource you go to. Lammas was a time in which the beginning of the harvest season was celebrated, and grain and bread were especially honored. In Reclaiming, we’ve usually focused on the sacrifice and death of the god of the grain, relating this also to Lugh, the Sun God, and how both die, only to be reborn, again and again. This year Lammas found me trying to get my feet back on the ground after the intoxicating high of both falling in love and being at witchcamp. I came back from witchcamp and not only had a full week of work to focus on, but the return of my son from his adventures...

I'm back from witchcamp. There was no internet there, but I was planning to write each day. Those plans were dropped by the third day. After a rest, I'll write about the upshot, but in short...it was fabulous! The last ritual ended up being priestessed by the Crone affinity camp, unplanned and spontaneously, but it worked...but more of that later. here's the beginning report: Day One Yesterday we arrived at Claymont, a 360 acre retreat center in West Virgina , near Harper’s Ferry. The energy of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers can be felt here, and I’m wishing I knew more about this land’s history, as I’m starting to feel it. There are two big buildings to house us, The Barn and The Mansion. The Barn is actually a renovated school, with two big wings of bedrooms. I feel blessed that I have a room to myself, with four beds. Three have all my witchy ritual wear laid out on them, so the room has become quite festive. My Elvis tapestry is also up. I haven’t ma...

Georgia and I woke up at 5:15 this morning. Why couldn’t we sleep? I’m jet-lagged, but time at home would be 2:15, so that doesn’t quite explain it. Maybe we’re excited about camp. We’re leaving shortly, and we’re now all packed and ready to go. Georgia ’s worried about bugs, and I have to say, hearing about the abundance of chiggers and ticks has me feeling like I should wrap myself in saran wrap. What would a camp be without bugs or poison ivy or oak? I’m teaching with my good friend Rook and we’ve bitten off a lot, doing a path on which utilizes the iron and pearl pentacle in examining the intersection of the Reclaiming and Feri tradition. Georgia ’s been planning her path for months, and has a big binder with the path all typed up and laid out. Rook and I are winging it. There’s not a goddamn thing on paper yet, and I’m trusting that our many conversations on the topic will yield something. Co-creation in action. Which I think really means not planning much. It’s on...

I’m in Maryland , where I’ve been meeting all day with the Spiralheart witch camp teaching team. It’s been an amazing day, with our planning going smoothly. Besides easily coming up with a great arc of rituals for the week, we’ve also shocked ourselves by our quick agreement to shift a major paradigm in witch camp culture. We not only decided that we all should get paid the same, we decided that really meant ALL of us, including the student teachers. The battle to let go of the pay scales has been a mighty one and a ridiculous one as well. I was the first voice raised to question why a bunch of anarchist witches who supposedly value non-hierarchical structures would want to create different levels of pay for teaching teams. That questioning has made teaching at my local witch camp untenable, but not surprisingly has taken up supporters throughout the wider Reclaiming community. It’s less money for those of us with long years teaching, but for me, it feels so much better. I’m a b...

THE SECOND COMING Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, ...

Spending the weekend at my new lover’s house, I thought about how I fled to a hotel last year , craving respite from the chaos of my own home. This weekend was also respite, but respite infused with pleasure. J. has no kids, no pets, no housemates, no neighbors coming in the back door, and no plants. I was heartened to be pleased with her aesthetic, and discovered that when someone says their décor is “mid-century” they mean that it’s from the 1950’s. With both of us born smack dab in the middle of that decade, I found myself quickly feeling at home, every lamp and piece of furniture reminding me of something from early childhood. With phones turned off, our attention remained solely on the slow discovery and unfolding of what it means to be together. Therapists have a name for that very particular and specific psychic space that gets created between two people. They call it the “intersubjective field”, something that is as individual as a snowflake. For those of us with a ...

Two years ago I spent summer solstice sobbing my eyes out, cursing the long days and short sleepless nights. At the height of the sun’s power, all that was illuminated was the pain of an unexpected break-up. The pie chart of my brain and being was primarily devoted to obsessive thought about my loss, my heart chakra was blown wide open, and I was tender and raw. I was completely miserable. This summer solstice I once again found myself distracted, preoccupied, and unable to sleep, deep in obsessive thoughts, raw, tender and heart wide open. This solstice, however, I’m happy. Ecstatic, really. Such is the power of love. And such is the risk of love. My current state can lead directly to the former state. In the last two weeks I’ve devised countless strategies to “slow it down”, trying to keep some cool remove and clinical detachment. I’m a therapist and know too much about both the chemistry of love and the way we can fall for someone to learn yet another hideous lesson ...