let it shine

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 how to be a self-important Reclaiming priestess. At our Cirque de Samhain I've lead over a thousand people to the Isle of Apples to meet their beloved dead and do the spiral dance. It’s my trance journey to that isle that’s in The Pagan Book of Living and Dying. I teach magic and have been going to witchcamps for years, aspecting everyone from the Feri Queen to Hades. In the Craft, Reclaiming is the tradition that has big tent priestessing down, and I’m one of the most seasoned of those priestesses.

And yet, I’m pretty sure a good party is as transformative and sacred as any cast circle. The Charge of the Goddess states, “all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals”. A good party is one in which there is both pleasure and love, new bonds are made and old ones strengthened. Last night was a good party. For many years I went to the Black Cat House, which has been home to several of the biggest of the big tent priestesses thru the years, and did vigil on Solstice night and Very Important Magic. Twelve years ago I moved into my own home, a house which demanded to be occupied on Solstice night, and opulently decorated. Circles are still being cast over at the Black Cat, and Important Magic done thru the night. I’m glad about that, but I’m happier at my house, which fills with good food, my beloved friends and family, and enough new people to keep things interesting. I take pride that my house is where the children want to be, and last night was no exception. Gingerbread houses were made, too much sugar eaten, and the teenagers talked past dawn, bringing in the new light and the promise of a future.

There was also an 3.5 earthquake and Marion leaned too near the altar and her hair caught on fire. It was put out quickly by my girlfriend, the quintessential butch, and a general prayer went out that these were both portents that the return of the sun would bring small dramas causing no real harm or damage.

I don’t know if there’s any use to the whole thoughtform of “saving the world”, my years in Reclaiming have made me weary of that kind of grandiousity. I do know that I want to keep imagining a world where conflicts are solved without killing, and one way to do that is to keep on creating a culture of beauty, balance and delight, one party at a time. I think Reclaiming might be better served by less attention to Very Important Magic that has the intent of saving the world, and more attention given to the art of throwing good parties and the hostess skill of making others feel welcomed and comfortable. I take on your challenge, Rob Brezny! Let the solstice sun bring out the hostess/networker in me and let it shine! Is there any better kind of magic to be doing?

the horrible stuff

“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 those I’ve known who have battled either Aids and cancer, some who’ve lost the battle, some who continue to be in active struggle and some who are in a blessed interlude of peace. Some of my pagan and activist friends like to bandy about the word “warrior”, liking to define themselves as such, although they are for the most part devoted to non-violence. I’ve never liked the term, wanting to distance myself from anything with war embedded in it. But, in thinking of those with cancer or Aids, I’m thinking today that they should be called warriors, as opposed to “patients”. This, I can get behind.

There’s a death I’ve imagined for myself, one that’s come to me in dreams and visions. It’s a quick death, and the broken glass and bright red blood of my possible last moments has infused my art, coming to be quite beautiful to me, and not at all horrible. May it be so…and may it be a long way off.

I'm having a hard time imagining the horrible stuff today. For anybody.