Dancing Down the Moon

The In-Breath of the Year

A Blessed Ostara to one and all...

Fling yourself facefirst into the beauty of the new season!

Today I give you one of my favorite poems, a piece that has had particularly personal and intense meaning for me as the season has shifted from the stillness of Winter into the burgeoning green riot of Spring. 

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.


~Dawna Markova

Brief Thoughts on The Coming Season

Strange that Ostara and Easter fall on basically the same weekend this year, and also on a Full Moon in Libra, the sign of balance. 

Although I have been a bit preoccupied of late and not feeling especially connected to the season or the calendar, my heart always gladdens at least a little when I realize Ostara is almost here.  I think it may be my favorite Sabbat--the all-too-brief Texas Spring is usually in full swing by then, and the hillsides are blanketed with bluebonnets.  Bluebonnets, the state flower, are more a symbol of Ostara to me than the traditional bunnies-and-eggs.  I don't see a lot of bunnies around Austin except dead on the side of the road, and I'm not too keen on eggs, but bluebonnets are a living embodiment of the breathing-in optimism of Spring.  March brings the Bluebonnet Moon.

Easter is also the one popular Judeo-Christian/secular holiday that doesn't make me want to throw things.  I've always liked it far better than Christmas, which is interesting considering the myth behind Easter involves gruesome death and torture whereas all Jesus has to do at Christmas is be born.  Despite Mel Gibson's Jesus Chainsaw Massacre movie, and the creepiness inherent in wearing the symbol of your god's agonizing death around your neck (thank goodness nobody has deified JFK, or everyone would be wearing gold shotguns), I find Easter a comparatively uplifting holiday, perhaps because it hasn't become as overly commercialized as Christmas, or perhaps because if one can get past the snuff film fetishism that has come to surround Christ's death, the story ends with hope, the triumph of spirit over cynicism, of love over hatred. 

The point of the story isn't that Jesus died a lingering and tormented death, but that in the end the stone was rolled away, the tomb empty...or at least, that's what I like to think the point is.  My Sunday school teacher had other ideas, and was quite happy to guilt a roomful of nine-year-olds into the Sinner's Prayer by telling us in loving detail that the Son of God suffered and died for us, specifically, and it was all our fault for being horrible sinful people (those nine-year-old sins are the worst, aren't they?), and the only way to make up for all that pain was to be saved.

That's a hell of a way to start out a religious education, isn't it?  Shame and guilt may spur someone into conversion, but when it comes to truly winning souls and encouraging lifelong devotion, love and joy are far better motivators. 

Plus, Easter has better candy than Christmas.  I mean, Peeps!  Cadbury Eggs!  Marshmallow rabbits covered in chocolate!  Robin Eggs!  The mind boggles and the blood sugar rises!

Here the Season of Air and the Season of Earth have collided, so it's both cold and windy--seriously windy.  March has officially come in like a lion for the Central Texas area, and the lion has brought along a pride of allergens that have finally started affecting me after eleven years in Austin.  Spring, then, is a time of renewal, of bluebonnets, of sinus congestion.  We worship at the altar of Zyrtec and sow seeds that we hope won't eventually make us sneeze.

At any rate, this year I find myself craving Spring with a longing that surprises me.  I want Spring more than I want Peeps.  I ache for renewal, for revival, for God to move through my veins like a drug, for Goddess to green Her way through my skin.  I want to wrap the Earth around my bare flesh and feel the rain soaking into the parched landscape of my spirit.  Above all, I want to wake up, to yawn and stretch and feel myself quickening.  I want to shrug off the heaviness and dullness of the last few months and breathe.

My morning prayer lately has been,

Goddess, let today be the beginning of something wonderful.

It hasn't been answered yet, but as the cliché goes, hope Springs eternal.

Gah! Pink Hearts!

Whether you are single, married, coupled, cohabiting; monogamous, polyamorous, or simply amorous; heterosexual, homosexual, transgendered, bisexual, trisexual, an omniwhore, tertiary to a lesbian S&M quadrangle, into leather, vinyl, dessert toppings, celibacy, people dressed like Elves, Elves dressed like people, the Kama Sutra, the Sears Catalog, silicone or zucchini or any permutation thereof and beyond, in America it's hard to escape the crass, overcommercialized Hallmark "celebration" known as Valentine's Day.

As you have no doubt guessed, I take a dim view of a holiday whose essential purpose is twofold:  one, to force heterosexual men into proving their love for their women by purchasing pre-packaged meaningless pink heart-shaped "gifts" that take less thought than choosing a condom for later that night; and two, to make unmarried or non-hetero people feel incomplete, so that they will buy into the myth of the "perfect day" and give thousands of dollars to the wedding industry before their shelf lives expire and they are doomed, forever, to be alone.

Yeah, I don't like it much.  Speaking as a perpetually single heteroflexible fat chick, the minute all that pink crap starts showing up on the aisles--the day after Christmas--I get hives and have to avoid the grocery store.  As if February weren't already a hard enough month for me since my brother died in 2004--the whole month leading up to that horrible anniversary I have to stare my wretched spinster's state in the face and endure endless commercials for blood diamonds and talking teddy bears. 

Yeah, I really don't like it much.

One Small Year

I am having a rather enjoyable dilemma.

As I have mentioned many times, Yule is the Sabbat during which I set down goals for the coming year.  At this moment my year-box stands empty on my altar, purified and waiting for my dreams and desires; it will hold them safe and stand as a reminder for me this next Turning. 

That's all well and good, but what do I put in the damn thing?

You see, up until this year it's been disturbingly easy to fill up my year-box with lofty and not-so-lofty goals.  "This year I'll start a new book," or, "This year I'll update my blog three times a week," (oops) or "This year I'll get my finances in order."  Time after time, year after year, I come up with a handful of what seem like perfectly sensible goals...yet time after time I find that I don't reach them. 

It starts off the way most people start off with New Year's resolutions--with a bang.  I get on the horse and ride hell-for-leather, but by February, the zeal has unzealed, and my excitement has run its course, bogged down in the unromantic hustle of day to day life.  If I'm lucky, I'll accomplish one or maybe even two of my goals, but the rest wither on the vine, giving me something else to feel guilty about when Samhain rolls round again and I have to face yet more things undone, obligations unfulfilled.

Last year I tried something different: instead of specific goals, I wrote down a prayer of sorts of how I wanted the year to go, things I wanted to manifest and things I wanted to release, and so forth.  That didn't go over so well either; it was too vague, and anyone who works in goal-setting type fields can tell you that your goals have to be measurable, realistic, and have some form of accountability built into them; they also have to have a timeline involved, which you would think would be easy since I give myself a full year.  Saying "I'll start a book this year," however, is still too vague unless you break it down into steps:  "I'll brainstorm ideas in Spring and have an outline by Ostara," et cetera, is more manageable.  I'm just not a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal, it turns out.  My pants need landing gear.

I think the real problem, however, hasn't been the goals themselves, the steps involved, or the timeframe; the problem has been my own attitude.  The flawed and damaged part of my psyche that was benefiting from depression (I think I am unworthy, therefore I must do everything I can to prove I am unworthy, because I think I am unworthy, and round and round) saw the year-box as a golden opportunity to set myself up for failure.  There is of course a part of me that fears failure, but even more sinister is the part of me that fears success--if suddenly I realize that I'm capable of doing amazing things, I'm no longer off the hook!  I no longer have any excuse for sitting around on my ass bemoaning my worthlessness if I have proven that I'm awesome!  The human mind has its arsenal of dirty tricks and spring-loaded emotional traps, and they are so, so easy to fall into.

Over the last couple of months some amazing things have been happening in my life--amazing things that are due almost entirely to my own effort, coupled with the favor of the Divine (God helps those who get off their butts and quit whining).  In the process, these small achievements have stripped me of some very comforting and poisonous illusions. 

I am not, as it turns out, incapable of changing myself or my life.  I am not, as it turns out, worthless.  I am, in fact, one seriously badass Witch who holds in her hands the power to change the world. 

Imagine how my mind has been reeling under these realizations. 

And imagine how this casts a new light on my goal-setting process for 2008.

My oh my.

The question then becomes not, "what can I do," but, "what do I really want to do?"  One thing I have realized about myself in the midst of all of this is that I can do pretty much anything I set my mind to, but I also have to set my heart and my soul to it, too.  It's not enough to think something is a good idea--I have to be able to throw my passion into it, for passion is a force of nature, and what we love with all our being is what we create. 

Am I going to get my finances in order this year?  Possibly, but it won't be one of my goals, because the truth is I don't give a rat's ass about finances.  I make enough to live on, and that can be improved, but I don't care enough about it to devote myself to savings plans and investing and all that other stuff that matters so much to a lot of people. I've come to think of money as an irritating child always pulling on my skirts demanding things of me.  Yes, yes, here--you can have a cookie.  Now go play.  I have finally grown weary of stressing about my income.  One way or another things always work out.  Could I do better?  Certainly.  Do I need to worry about it?  Nah.  Not right now. 

The things that matter to me are less tangible, and I am finding they are hard to put in terms of action steps, but there's the rub:  in order to change something, in order to make a beautiful life and a beautiful world, we have to move, we have to plan, we have to take action.  This is as true on the individual level as it is on the global.

As I consider the coming year, then, I have to ask myself what matters most to me at this stage of my life.  What groundwork do I want to lay for the future, and what seeds do I want to plant that will see fruition by the end of the year?  What contribution do I want to make in the coming months? 

Such huge questions to be given over to such a small thing as a year! 

I think I may try categorizing them this year:  one personal goal to do with my own individual growth or health, one creative goal, one goal involving the larger world (volunteering, et cetera).  I'm not sure, though.  Luckily I have until Yule to figure it out.  I'm trying to limit their number as well, and not go overboard just because I have this weird new understanding that I can do anything (or at least give anything a shot and see what happens).

So much can happen in a year; so much can change.  Given the gift of twelve brand-new months, and the unique talents and traits that are yours alone, what will go into your year-box this Yule, figuratively speaking?  Who do you want to be next year this time?  If anyone has the power, you do.  Right there in your two little hands and the endless expanses of your mind.  Beauty and truth are within your grasp.

Get up, reach out, and dance with them.

Memories of Samhain

I am obligated under Pagan Bloggers' Law 8.1, subsection 4, paragraph 2, to write some form of post about Samhain.

I could go on in grand poetic style about the changing seasons, the nip in the air, the swirl of falling leaves.  I could discuss altars to the Ancestors, or the Beloved Dead.  I could write a splendid invocation or ode to the Dark Goddess.  Hell, I could even talk about Halloween costumes.

Turns out I've already done those things.  So, rather than offer up a repetitive essay on the spirit of the Sabbat, once again I turn to my own personal experiences.  I find that, appropriately enough, this week I am wandering amid my memories, the ghosts of Samhains past, thinking of all the ways I and my life have changed--and haven't changed--since my first Samhain ritual, when I was a wee Witchling of 18, before I even had my first tattoo.

Heated Whispers

There's nothing in the world quite as restless as a Witch about to turn 30.

All things considered, this Summer hasn't been too bad for Texas.  We haven't broken 100 (yet) except in the heat indices, and until August it rained and rained, keeping temps lower than usual. 
And yet, each day that passes makes me ache more and more acutely for Autumn.  I am staring at the sky and tasting the wind for the slightest tinge of Scorpio Season, willing the Wheel to turn, praying for relief from the unrelenting Sun.

Everything seems to be held in stasis right now.  Life, the weather, everything.  Even with the looming threat of hurricanes--I grew up on the Gulf Coast so I'm no stranger to the roar--the Earth feels like She's holding Her breath, waiting to exhale, waiting, just like me, for Summer to bow and exit stage left, its baked-brown costume shabby with age compared to Fall's brilliant robes. 

Perhaps it's the Dark Goddess whispering in my ear; Her breath carries the scent of fallen leaves and the slight chill of October rain.  She is a study in contrasts, a deeply Fiery and sensual Goddess whose season is one of cold and death, and to a person who has done her time in the Underworld, it all makes perfect sense.

Hurry, hurry, I hear my heart murmuring.  Come, come.  I am impatient for my lover, waiting at the window for the sound of antlers crashing through the cedars, straining to hear the distant drums, my fingers toying with the neck of my robe, the candles already lit.

Nature, like good sex or fine wine, will not be hurried.  She has Her own schedule to keep.  Yet still, I call, and I wait.   I can feel the course of my life pivoting on the events of this Fall--I couldn't say why, but I feel it as surely as I feel sweat trickling down my back--and I am impatient.  Tired of standing still.  Ready to push.

I find myself singing:

summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall
wrap life in the brilliance of death to humble us all
how sweet is the day
I'm craving a darkness
as I sit tucked away with my back to the wall...

and the taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth
and the landscape of merry and desperate drought
how much longer dear angels
come break me with ice
let the water of calm trickle over my doubts

come let me drown
angels no fire no salt on the plow
carry me down
bury me down

and the taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth
and the landscape of merry and desperate drought
once I knew myself
and with knowing came love
I would know love again if I had faith enough
too far is next spring and her jubilant shout
so angels, inside
is the only way out

~from "Drought" by Vienna Teng

My mind is full of words like "surrender" and "unfold."  I'll have more to say about them soon.  For now, it's margaritas and air conditioning, sunscreen and sweat, and the cultivation of patience...whether I like it or not.

Leapin' Litha, part 2

When I was a child, Summer was a magical time, and I ran barefoot over the blazing hot roads of my neighborhood, my hands sticky from picking wild dewberries in the vacant lot one street over.  I remember spending long afternoons covered head to toe in mud from my grandmother's garden as we helped her bring in wave after wave of zucchini, tomatoes, okra, peppers, carrots, then potatoes...meanwhile my grandfather tended his bees, leaving a row of jars filled with dripping honeycomb that glowed amber in the unrelenting sunlight.   In that part of Texas, there were fields of tall corn so sweet you could eat it raw standing among the plants.

Here in the Austin area Summer still makes me think of growing things to eat.  The farmers' markets do a booming business during tomato season, and just about every juicy and ripe form of fruit and vegetable you can think of finds its way to the stands.  Even at Whole Foods and Central Market, local produce gets the spotlight, and every bell pepper contains within it the sun, soil, and labor of its birth. 

And so, despite the heat, Midsummer for me is a kitchen Goddess's festival.  It's a Sabbat of fruit salads and stir-fries, of spicy curry and warm vanilla. 

As a person with food issues, and as a person whose chosen diet is a bit unconventional, I find that cooking for myself is a daunting, and often depressing, prospect.  I frequently have to remind myself that I am worth the effort, and that my health is worth a bit of chopping and measuring.  I don't always succeed in convincing myself--this year so far I've done a pretty dreadful job of managing my health and my eating habits--but like any worthwhile pursuit, it's a process, not an all-or-nothing. 

Having fallen so completely off the wagon of my own food pyramid (that would be one funky-looking wagon), I decided that I would take this holiday season to rededicate the part of my home that is most vital to ensuring my health and well-being when it comes to my body:  the kitchen. 

Leapin' Litha, part 1

Mama Nature is being really bitchy this year.

I can’t say I blame Her—just look at how careless, ungrateful, and generally stupid we humans have been with Her gifts.  "Hey, thanks Mom, for all the glorious bounty You’ve handed us without question.  Now I'm gonna waste half of it, hoard the rest, and then rape You repeatedly with this great big oil drill.  Have a nice day.  Oh, I'm sorry—were you gonna eat that?"

And thus Summer came in on wings of flash flood, accompanied by immense oppressive heat.  It doesn't bode well for the rest of the year in terms of temperature and hurricane activity.  At least the drought hasn’t started yet.  As I type, there's a storm raging outside so loudly I can hear it deep within the bowels of an environmental laboratory filled with large machines that hum and whir.

In Which Sylvan is a Bit of a Stick in the Mud

To be perfectly honest, I don't much care for Beltane.

This has far less to do with the holiday itself and far more to do with the Community I've been on the fringes of for the last thirteen years.  On the whole, I find Pagans to be oversexed (which should really give people pause as it is coming from a double Scorpio), and Beltane seems to bring out the worst of that, turning everyone into horny 12 year olds. 

I realize, of course, that this is a reaction to how sexually oppressive our  supposedly-decadent society is.  We live under a yoke of thou-shalt-nots most of our lives, we contend with rich old white men who want to legislate our pleasures, and we face rampant misogyny in politics, the media, and the world at large.  It's perfectly understandable, and perfectly healthy when practiced with care and condoms, that given the freedom to explore sexuality without a looming God-figure ready to cast us into perdition for loving who we love, there would be nekkid shenanigans aplenty. 

I freely admit that I am jaded when it comes to large gatherings of my co-religionists.  Not to play the survivor card, but I was after all assaulted at a festival in 2001, and while it was at Samhain and not Beltane, the hypersexualized atmosphere of most Beltane gatherings still makes me deeply uneasy when surrounded by 500 total strangers whose only credential towards ethical behavior is that they call themselves Pagan. 

Then too, given that my tradition doesn't go with the whole borderline-incestuous Goddess-and-God life cycle myth, it's probably understandable that the usual traditions of dancing around a giant phallic symbol and shagging in the poison oak never have done much for me. 

Even aside from that, however, I find something lacking in how we as a Community celebrate Beltane.  The emphasis on heterosexual physical lovemaking has grown more and more wearying to me over the years, and aside from how annoying it is to have some sweaty guy in a loincloth humping your leg at the revel fire or telling you that clearly you're sexually repressed because you don't want to have sex with him, I feel like a great many people are missing the real point--ecstasy does not have to come from body parts bumping together. 

To me, the essence of Beltane is ecstasy, but I only tangentially associate the word ecstasy with sex.  My view of ecstasy is one of spiritual union with the Source, and while that union can be achieved through another human, I'm far more likely to find it when it's just me, God, and my stereo.  I don't want to depend on other people for my ecstatic experiences; that's one reason I'm a Wiccan in the first place. 

My work with the Wheel has yielded a sort of seasonal timeline for the creative process: 

Imbolc is the conception of an idea (I love rutabagas.  I'd like to share my love of rutabagas with others.), Ostara is the breathing-in of inspiration for how to turn that idea into form (Oooh!  I should write a book about rutabagas!), Beltaine is the creative fire itself which is kindled when we allow our passions to fill us and spill over (OMG RUTABAGAS!!!), Midsummer is when that spilling-over begins to manifest in a practical way (Hey...would you read this chapter I wrote on the history of the rutabaga?), and Mabon is the result, the completed creation, which is then released into the world for better or worse (I Dream of Rutabagas is #1 on the NYT Bestseller List).

It is unfortunate, then, that this Beltane season I find myself completely and utterly lacking in inspiration or creative fire.  I had a good head of steam built up around Ostara for new projects and all sorts of life-wide changes, but all of that energy has completely and unceremoniously gone kablooey.  This seems to have left me feeling a spirit-deep lassitude that has lingered for nearly a month.

Taking a week off from blogging doesn't seem to have helped, so forgive me if my entries are a bit less frequent for the next few weeks as I try to harness the burgeoning power of the season to re-ignite my own sacred pilot light.  If I find a technique or insight that works especially well I'll be sure to give a full accounting of it here.

Meanwhile, if you need me I'll be curled up beneath a tree at Richard Moya Park, fumbling towards ecstasy.

The Wheel of the Year, part 3

It irritates me unreasonably when people capitalize the word "work." When I see Pagans online going on and on about The Work and how there's nothing more important than The Work, I start mentally capitalizing the phrase Pretentious Fuckery. (I realize this says way more about my own pretension than about theirs.)

Then in my last entry on the Wheel I caught myself doing it, and I laughed uproariously at myself.

The third point I'd like to make about the Wheel of the Year is that while it's true that I have discarded the God and Goddess metaphor that traditional Wiccans go by, that doesn't mean I don't have a metaphor that I work with at all. Early in my Wiccan career I slipped into a rhythm of personal ritual and spellwork timed with the Sabbats, and this evolved into a tradition of my own.