branches up, roots down

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...