Midsummer Musings

photo via Google search

After divorcing my mother, my father married a Creole woman named Roxie Anne, who was a mixture of African American, French and Choctaw heritage. I thought her exotic features made her beautiful, although she was shunned as much for the color of her skin as for being a second wife in a time ( the 1960s) when such things just weren't done in very white Roman Catholic families. She was a good woman, a quiet soul who introduced me to Creole cuisine, and the wonderful traditions of St. John's Eve in her native New Orleans.

A strict Roman Catholic, Roxie kept as many saints' feasts as she could, attended mass when she was able, and never forgot her cultural roots, even when she and my father frequently moved around the East Coast. No matter where she made her home, her Louisiana customs went with her. Though she never claimed or admitted to practicing Voodoo, I can sit back now and sort through some of the things I observed when I spent time with her, and those elements of her personal spiritual practice stand out. She always wore white on the Feast of St. John, lit a candle-she was always lighting candles and poured her own- and said prayers throughout the day. One year I spent a few weeks during early Summer with Roxie and my Daddy at their cottage rental in Rehoboth, Delaware, and she introduced me to her version of  a St. John's Eve head washing. After the sun set we went to a remote area of the beach beyond the boardwalk and walked out into the ocean, holding hands. Roxie sang a chant in French as the water lapped up against us. Both of us were wearing head scarves, and when we got out into the water a little more than waste high, she removed her scarf and let her long black hair tumble down into the waves. She stood there for several minutes combing her fingers through her hair in the water before gathering it up again in the scarf; then she pulled off my scarf, took my hair  down, and 'washed' my hair in the salty seawater. I remembered how she handled my hair; it was an act of reverence. She hummed throughout it all, which seemed like a long time but couldn't have been more than a few minutes. When finished we walked to shore, the ocean at our backs.

We stopped just short of the waterline and sat on the sand, where she told me the story of the Lost Acre, the place between the sea and the shore. It is a liminal place, she explained, a place in the Otherworld that belongs to the spirits of the sea. I found a holey stone on the beach that day. I still have it; it sits on my desk in the living room and when I pick it up, it reminds me of that day on the beach, my hair still wet with salt water, where my step-mother baptized me in the mysteries of the sea. It makes me hungry for steamed clams and all the good things about time at the shore, for the briny scent of the ocean, and the sound of gulls flying overhead.

I am a Pisces child, born on my father's birthday. I love bodies of water- lakes, ponds, rivers and oceans, and yet I have never learned to swim ( I have an inkling that a past life was spent as an Irish third class passenger on the Titanic, where I drowned). I am enchanted by the sound of rain, waterfalls and ocean waves, which lifts my vibration and increases my energies. A portal opens for me when I'm in running water (http://amethjera.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-wonder-of-water.html). My Pisces intuition also connects me solidly to the earth, mountains and stones of all kinds. I'm an empath still learning to manage my emotional insights and how I'm affected by what I pick up from others. I am still learning a lot of things about my spiritual choices and practice...that is the joy of this journey.

This morning I went wort cutting, which sounds very mysterious and witchy, but is actually just a stroll around town to see what's growing in the wild places that are available for collecting. I use common plants ( some which you might call weeds) and adapt their correspondences for simple spell craft. I rarely do any really involved high magick because simple seems to work best for me. I keep a jar of pennies by the door for offerings and take along a bottle of water for both me and thanking the spirits. Today I came home with some catnip, mugwort, wild sweet pea blossoms, red clover, white clover,  blue anemone,creeping bluet, and dandelions. I also found a chunk of broken vintage red brick,and three crow feathers. Not a bad haul, and all I had to do was keep my eyes open!

Mists of Memories

We leave the light of Summer months to enter the long,dark days of Winter. It is the time to gather what we cherish close, casting away what we no longer need and what no longer serves.

The Veil is now at it's thinnest, and we stand at the end of the bridge. We reach out to greet and touch our Beloved Dead. Those who have already made the journey to the great Unknown return in vast numbers , seeking out the warmth and love of their friends and families this night. If you are so inclined, put out a bit of food for them, so they may feast on the the things they enjoyed in this life. No, they will not be able to physically eat it, but they will absorb the essence of it and be satisfied all the same.

Welcoming the Dead into our homes this night, we  remember and honor them. Their memory remains strong in us this way. Ancestors will only linger with us for awhile, and then depart across the bridge and through the Veil the way they came. Pray for their safe return and comfort through the next year, for surely they will be joined by others known to them. The clock winds down through the years until we, too, are dust and memories.

The coming months will be cold and dark as the days have lost their light. The last harvest is in, and the season of plenty wanes.We will draw ourselves up close to that we care about most against the lengthening darkness and cold as Winter approaches. We go to that place of Deep In-dwelling. Some things and people will surely fall away during this time, but we ourselves will survive until the first green bud of Spring returns. The holy spark of life will burn within to keep our spirits warm.

Let us keep the sacredness of Samhain, and raise the song of Harvest Home!

Shrines Of My Own Experience

AquaAura

"Today I embark on a pilgrimage to shrines of my own experience, going back to places I once lived, places that will be filled with memories. In each of our lives there are these landmarks, physical histories that we inhabit, where the moments that made us who we are unfolded, at that time in vivid reality, but now as if only in a dream. Can we ever really go back? Yes and no. I will walk the same ground, see shapes and faces that I remember, but time has wrapped her gray skirts around the light of my past and the years have kept their promise of change. Still, it will be good to go home."
                                          
                                                                                           -Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston


Steven Charleston is a heretical member of the Choctaw, retired Dean of the School of Divinity at Yale University, former bishop of many diocese, and author of some pretty nifty spiritual truths, like the statement at the beginning of this post.

Bishop Charleston posts daily inspiration on Facebook and I seldom find myself disagreeing with him, although our paths have become spiritually divergent over the years. I admire his vision and dedication, and the fact that he often questions his chosen path. Even while questioning, I get  an undercurrent of the unshakable from him. It appears that the questions are for clarity and not due to a confusion about his journey. I admire his steadfastness. It gives me stability.

Midsummer is always bittersweet for me because it heralds an anniversary of  major life changes. I sold my family home, lost my sweet feline companion, and a dear friend, moved to a new location in an area that is pretty much politically and religiously at the opposite end of the spectrum of my personal tolerance - all within the weeks surrounding Litha over the period of a decade. I've said it before-I am not a Summer person. I do need the sunshine and light to keep the wolves of clinical depression away from my door. I love the sheer greenness of the grass, the trees and the flowers. But I am not a Summer beach goer; I don't bask (or bake) in the sun. I burn too easily, even slathered with sunblock. I don't like the relentless heat that goes on for days, or the unpredictable severity of Summer's storms. I love the ocean in the Winter, when the beach is deserted and the sand beneath my feet is firm from the cold. I like the crisp wind and the grey-blue sky that blends seamlessly with the endless water. I love the ice floes, the foam, and the cry of the gulls. I like the nakedness of the shoreline.

Back to the pilgrimage that the Good Bishop mentions. The places that have become shrines of my experience are many in the last few years. Not all of them have particularly good memories attached to them, but I can look back now in retrospect and find something good and positive-though bittersweet-in those days. Without trying, I have become the person I am most comfortable being. I have been fortunate to have fallen into who I am. Thanks be to the Goddesses and Gods who have been my companions! Perhaps before I had been trying too hard, driven by personal demons and mistaken beliefs about being successful. Today, revisiting landmarks and their histories, that which resonates most with me is that I am enough just as I am. That particularly speaks to who I am spiritually now. Many times have unknowingly worked at my Craft. I know so much more now than I did as that  17 year old who had an inkling that magic was all around me, but was clueless about how to access it in any measurable way. I know more than that young woman engrossed in formal theological study who later took vows to bring knowledge of the Divine to others. I know more-thankfully-than that fateful day just beyond a year of coven study. I know that the titles and degrees are simply descriptive of my journey and that though they were part of my path, they were not the journey.

Here in these mountains I am hundreds of miles from the place I spent most of my life, where my people lived and died. I have not been back for nearly eight years, and so much has changed. I still keep up on things a bit through online news, but it's no longer the place I left. That life is firmly behind me. There are a few friends I'd love to see, but we keep up through phone calls and email, so I'm up to speed. If I could manage to make myself invisible, I'd like to walk around the old neighborhood for a couple hours to collect the part of me I left there. And  I need to visit the graves of my loved ones just once more to leave some flowers and take pictures for my memory book.

Occasionally, it is good to go back, even when it's painful. It puts where I am today a little more in perspective and gives me clarity. Last night I gathered my tools-the tiny iron cauldron, the glazed chalice and leaf-shaped plate, the cut glass bowl that holds ritual salt, the water shell, the incense dish, sacred blade and assortment of crystals, candles and oils with the intention of rededicating all of it to service and the common good in the next day or so, whenever I invite the elementals and faeries  of my Scot-Irish/German/Italian heritage to the dance around the small symbolic fire with me.

Something else I'd like to go back to is celebrating the fest days of particular saints-something I happily did as an Anglo-Catholic but was uncomfortable doing in the early throes of obsession with Paganism. I have never been anti-Christian, but let's just say that the theology and liturgy fell out of my favor for awhile. Further self study has given me a new perspective and renewed interest in the subject. On St. John's Eve I plan to do my own little home head-washing ritual: maybe I can work in some of that rainwater that's been coming our way lately courtesy of tropical depression Bill. Not even going to pretend this will be anything like the actual traditional ritual on my end, but it will be something to satisfy my needs.  In case this sounds like something you'd like to explore further here's an excellent article: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-holy-day-of-voodoo-st-john-s-eve I'm finishing this post on the morning of the Solstice. The sky has just begun to lighten over the mountain behind me, and everything I can see from where I'm sitting is in long shadows. I love the sound of mornings here, when birds of all varieties are singing and the air is still cool. My visitor this morning is a tiny house wren just outside the window. I've been watching it for five minutes now, trying to imagine what that little being is thinking as it searches the sidewalk for crumbs and bugs. I am trying to visualize what it's like to be so unaware of my self that I simply fit into the scheme of things so innocently. Since I will never be a house wren (probably,reincarnation not withstanding, but who really knows?), it's presence this morning is a gift five minutes that I am not wondering or worrying about all the things I have to do today. Oh to be as free as that tiny bird!

         

Irish

I am Irish and German on my father's side of the family and Scot-Irish and Italian on my mother's, so there is a lot of Hibernia in my DNA. It could be the power of suggestion, or simply personal preference, but I feel more Irish than anything else in my ancestral background. The late Christian mystic John O'Donohue often wrote that the clay-the dust from which we are formed- has memory. O'Donohue spoke in an authentically lyrical Irish voice, one which melded Celtic Christianity and the much older inner poetry of the Emerald Isle. The combination transcends labeling ( which I personally try not to do with spirituality, but I find I need to at times for the sake of context and describing content). The voice that speaks from the clay of which he makes us so keenly aware has memory which comes back mysteriously to me. I find myself knowing things of which I have no recollection of learning in this life. I've come to believe that these things are genetic memory. I have no other explanation for knowing these things intrinsically, but I am enough of a skeptic to eschew immediately believing that they come directly from the Divine. I don't take credit for that kind of connection for myself; I don't think I'm any kind of special. It smacks of smugness... and yet more modestly, I know we humans who work with the spiritual side and nurture it are capable of occasionally having the gods speak to us. Shaman of every culture, it seems, as well as the priestly class of many traditions regularly tap into that flow of energy and are set apart by it. I make no such claim for myself.

I think my Irish ancestry simply sits within me. In particular moments it works its way to the surface in my personality from the Place of Deep Indwelling and and the secret Elsewhere found in all of us. Brigid is my personal patron and because of this there are occasions when I  feel the fire in the head that she carries. My Pagan initiation took place at Imbolc (which is also her feast day). This time on the calendar her vibration seems to grow within me until peaking at Ostara, when the light of her forge gathers enough strength to carry me through the rest of the year.

I need to take a moment to say how much I abhor the commercial trappings of secular St. Patrick's Day. There is not a wit of truth in the portrait of the endlessly drunken, loud Irish lout (although the Irish, like the rest of world, enjoy a good time now and again). It's derogatory cultural profiling,  insulting in more ways than I care to cite. If you recall, early in the Industrial Age, signs were posted in the windows of big city businesses that read, " No Niggers and No Irish need apply"... yet it was precisely those groups ( and many Eastern Europeans) who provided the unskilled labor that built the roadways and railroad lines, who were the general contractors and who dug the coal out of the ground to fuel this country in it's infancy. Many Irish  came here to keep from starving to death in their own country during the Great Potato Famine only to become the poorest of the poor on America soil.  The comical image of the Irish invented by American marketing  belongs on the dung heap with the commercialization of Christmas, and lately, Halloween. The happily jigging leprechaun may have a scintilla of reality as tales of folklore portray the Fey dancing in the forest in some accounts, but if that folklore holds true, it would be rather risky to try to talk them out of any of their treasures. The choice of Patrick from among the three patron saints of Ireland- Brigid and Columba are the others-points to the fact that since his back story is the most sketchy, his story would be the one most available and malleable to morph into a completely new cultural and spiritual myth. Please, let's do something about replacing the pointedly stupid stereotypes of St. Patrick's Day that ridicules an entire culture with something that honors the contributions of people of Celtic heritage in a dignified way...What's wrong with Irish Heritage Day, or Celtic Heritage Day?

The single Irish stereotype I do hold with is cooking corned beef on St. Patrick's Day. Yes, I do know that the original meal consisted of rashers of boiled bacon to go with the traditional cabbage and potatoes. Bacon was a luxury item to the poor in New York, and corned beef- a tough cut of meat tenderized by the process of marinading or 'corning'- was a suitable substitute. Jews who shared the urban ghettos with their equally poor neighbors introduced corned beef into the Irish culinary arena, an act for which I am eternally thankful. I cook my corned beef in a crock pot with the cabbage and potatoes nowadays; afterward, it's painted with a bit of mustard glaze and placed in the oven for a few minutes while I fry the cabbage and make colcannon out of the potatoes (adding a bit of boiled kale). It makes for a grand yearly feast at my table.

If the snow melts enough for me to make it out to the cemetery, I'm going to take a handful of shiny pennies out to press into the ground and pour a little milk and honey out for the Land Spirits. The local cemetery ( on the historic register) is the final resting place of many of the European immigrants who were enticed to this area with the promise of jobs in the many coal mines in operation in the 1800s. A fair amount of Irish, Scottish, Hungarian, Polish and Negroes gave their lives digging "black gold' out of the mountains here, and quite a number of them are interred nearby. In between their headstones, grow an abundance of mushroom rings-fairy rings-so if the stories hold true, the Fey are dancing among the bones of those who have gone before across the Veil.

And speaking of those who have crossed the Veil, for the very first time during this holiday, I'll be remembering my friend Arthur among the Beloved Dead I honor at my altar. Studying the Druid priesthood, he took the name of the sea god Manannán Mac Lir and for the first year of our friendship I called him 'Mac'. He crossed the Veil suddenly and much too soon; during my yearly trance journey, I'm going to look for him. There are questions and unfinished business for both of us, and hopefully we'll cross paths along the way...if not, there is a later day which awaits for that meeting.

And as for you, Gentle Reader, my hope for you is a bright moon on a dark night to guide you along your way...and a bit of reading from Irish Central: http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/the-magic-of-irish-witches-and-druids-top-ten-ancient-irish-charms-and-spells-128912303-237762261.html#


Slainte!

Auld Lang Syne

It's January, and even though we've been in the New Year for nearly 72 hours, I'm still drawn dreamily back into December and earlier days of Christmastide. Most every year I feel this way, and I can't exactly put my finger on why...I just do. Maybe it's because December is co closely linked with a kinder, gentler time in my life, when things were a little less unsure. Maybe because December holds the Magick we imagine the rest of the year. Most of my childhood memories-good and bad-are set in the homey warmth of this time of year.

It's good to simply be still and remember.