Dancing Down the Moon

Seed Post #11: Grace

Festival of the Goddess, Central Texas
October 13, 2007

Friday night was wet and cold--the dew fell early, and everything in my tent was damp and freezing.  After spending the evening around the campfire, watching the stars and hanging out with some amazing women, having to crawl into a wet bed woefully unprepared for the cold made for a pretty miserable night. 

Saturday night I was ready for it.  I changed the configuration of my blankets, put on extra socks and leggings, and took two Benadryl to help knock me out.  We ended up going to bed a bit earlier that night; Saturday was a long and busy day, and I was sunburned and exhausted.  I knew that if I was going to strike camp on Sunday and stay after to help with the festival clean-up, I needed sleep.

It is a universal truth that the warmer and more comfortable you are in a tent, the higher the likelihood that you'll have to pee at three a.m.  It is also known that I have a bladder the size of a walnut, so most of my camping experiences involve laying awake trying to convince myself I don't need to get up. 

My eyes popped open, hauling me out of the swirled tumble of dreams that always accompanies falling asleep to the sound of drums.  My brain shifted violently into alert mode:  had I heard something?  Was a critter of some kind after the food?  Was it raining? 

A squeeze in my nethers pointed out the matter at hand.  Ah.  Dammit. 

It was eerily silent outside the tent, so I knew it had to be very late; I groped for my watch and saw it was about five in the morning.  I rolled out of my toasty warm fleece-lined sleeping bag with a sigh, but noticed immediately that I was not particularly cold, and that my bed was not damp.  I nearly jumped for joy.

The sound of a tent flap unzipped echoes horribly across a sleeping campground.  I poked my nose out, looking around; still dark, nobody about.  Good--that meant I wouldn't have to go hide behind a tree to avoid mooning passersby.  I also noticed, as I tried to find my sandals, that the rug outside my tent was totally dry, a small miracle.  Pleased, I stumble-lurched from tent door to makeshift privy.

Upon returning I sat down on the rug to remove my shoes, and now that the pressing business of the moment was dealt with, I finally took the opportunity to look up at the sky.

Friday night had been crystal clear, and the sheer number and brilliance of the stars had been enough to take my breath away.  I could see, stretching across the sky, the great Web, strands of light woven by the Goddess Herself, Her hands guiding the tapestry of the universe.  Constellations had winked down at us; I could finally see all seven sisters, and Andromeda, and eventually Orion as he rose.  Sirius, the Dog Star, who predicted the rise and fall of the Nile; Scorpio, my own sign, huge and sprawling.  The Big Dipper.  It was amazing to watch them all turn slowly overhead, and to see periodic falling stars zip from one end to the other.  Out  in the middle of nowhere, you finally find yourself Somewhere.  I stared up into the arm of the galaxy, a band of hazy light, and felt both insignificant and powerful, tiny and massive. 

Saturday night, clouds rolled in early, and there wasn't much of a skyward vista while everyone was awake.  No rain fell, but I was disappointed that the awesome view of the previous night was shrouded from us. 

Then, at five in the morning, it reappeared.  It felt as if the entire night had realigned just for the sake of one little Witch sitting on a blue rug. 

All weekend the sense of the numinous had evaded me.  I had enjoyed the company and community, but felt myself apart from the spiritual experiences others seemed to be having.  My pre-30 existential crisis was reaching a fever pitch; even as I tried not to worry, and tried to let go, I still felt the pull of fear and uncertainty. 

Sitting there, my eyes full of stars, everything just fell away. 

I felt naked and sublime before the Work of the Gods.  I watched the slow, steady track of a satellite passing through the constellations, and I thought very clearly, "Goddess...please...if everything's going to be okay, if I'm going to find a way to be happy and have a good life...please, send me some kind of sign."

The voice that filled my head was immense, loud as a thunderclap and silent as the grave, as powerful as love but as feather-light as a moth's wings.  It was a little bit wry and a whole lot compassionate, like a giant hug followed by a playful slap on the ass.

"Don't worry, child.  I've got it all under control."

Before the words could even register, a bright flash of blue-white light filled my vision, as a meteorite streaked from one end of the sky to the other, almost in slow motion.  I'd never seen one that bright or that long-lasting; it left a faint trail in the sky as it faded from view.

"Gratitude" is far too small a word for what I felt.  I became, in that moment, the chalice, overflowing with the presence of the Divine.  I felt like I'd swallowed the entire star-lit sky, like the night was my skin, my breath, my blood filled with light.  The universe rushed in, and suddenly everything was both infinitely complex and perfectly, perfectly simple. 

As long as I have known there was a Goddess, I knew She dwelt in the stars.  Perhaps it was the Strands of Starlight series by Gael Baudino that influenced me, or perhaps my childhood habit of staring at the sky and renaming the constellations was Her way of nudging me gently in Her direction.  Isis, Astarte, Inanna, Elthia; Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea.

As my practice evolved, She gained more symbols:  She was the Bright Weaver, whose eight-legged emissary had a habit of showing up in my life to encourage me not-so-subtly to write and create.  Legend has it that the Spider invented written language; anyone who's read Charlotte's Web is aware of this connection.  The Goddess is Star of Light, Abyss of Darkness; the stars and the spaces between.  Her eyes contain the whole of the galaxy, and its warp and weft pass through Her fingers, each strand a life, each intersection a possibility, a choice.  The combined pattern of every interaction and every living thing forms the Web, which is Her being, woven by each of us acting as Her hands, guided by Her grace.

It had been a long, long time since She had spoken to me.

It was a long, long time before I could go back to sleep that night.

Seed Post #10: Liminal

On November 19, 2007, author and legend in her own mind Dianne Sylvan will celebrate her 30th birthday.  (Actually she'll celebrate it on the 17th, a Saturday, enabling her to get wasted and sleep in, necessary both to honor her birth and to prepare her for Thanksgiving.)

I was always proud of myself for my apparent immunity to the typical American's dread of turning 30.  Marriage and children aren't big priorities for me, so landing a man by that Momentous Birthday never hung over my head with the swinging terror that it does over many women's.  The specters of crow's feet and other signs of aging likewise don't stir me much.  Given my emotional history I always figured I would be lucky to be alive and sane at 30.

I also had the advantage of hearing over and over throughout my young adult life that 30-35 was when my mother finally felt "like life made more sense and things came together."  I met similar sentiments in women all over the place--after the chaos of the 20s, the 30s, while not a walk in the park, at least marked the beginning of true adulthood.  And so, I greatly enjoyed being able to say honestly, "I can't wait to turn 30!"

It's still true, but for slightly different reasons--less because I'm looking forward to the onset of my 30s and more because I want my 20s over with already.

Among Pagans, the Grendel of young adulthood is the much-feared Saturn Return.  Saturn, the icky planet of karmic yuckiness, is supposed to roar into your life like some demonic Santa Claus, leaving you gifts of disaster, meltdown, and existential angst.  Saturn Return is spoken of with the same hushed terror as cancer and tax audits.  But what is it really, and what does it really mean?

Seed Post #9: Dance

I was in high school when I first realized I loved to dance.

Our school district required a certain number of physical education credits, but if you were in the marching band or a sport, you could get out of taking actual P.E.  I found this incredibly unfair--my choice was either join band or run laps?  Neither was at all appealing.

Luckily I discovered another option:  something called "Dance P.E."  All the girls who wanted to be on the drill team took the class, as did pretty much every other non-band, non-sports girl.  Several of my friends were taking it too, and I thought surely it had to be better than being forced to play volleyball with the boys. 

I had a blast.  Everything we did--even square dancing--came naturally and happily to me.  I learned to waltz, I learned what jazz hands are, I learned how to choreograph and choose music for performances.  For a young woman whose success had always been mental, this was earth-shaking and strange. 

I came dangerously close to trying out for drill team, too, but I couldn't overcome the basic truth that I was too fat.  The drill team at our school won awards and was famous for its high kick routines, and while I could learn choreography with remarkable speed for an awkward chubby girl, there was no way they would let me into a group that wore thigh-high skirts and did splits on the football field.  Instead of working harder and trying to get in better shape, I did what would become my pattern throughout life:  I gave up. 

I spent the next three years watching the team perform with bitter jealous longing in my heart.  The girls who made the team had taken dance lessons from childhood, and had perfected their big vacant smiles and big hairdos.  I don't think many of them really had a passion for dance; it was just something they were expected to do, as the white, upper-middle-class popular girls whose parents had dragged them to recitals and classes all their lives.  I didn't want to dance to encourage school spirit, or to show off my long legs.  I didn't care about competitions.  I wanted to dance because, even at fifteen, I knew there was something there.

Seed Post #8: Harvest

Harvest, for me, used to be a far more literal thing.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my paternal grandparents had a massive garden, fig and pecan trees, and four beehives.  There was always something to harvest at their house.  I could watch Grandpa decked out in his space suit stealing honey from the bees, or I could spend the day digging potatoes from the wet earth and, head to toe in mud, get hosed down by my enthusiastic brothers before going back inside.  I could yank slender carrots from the ground or pluck tomatoes from the vine.  I loved the frisbee-sized white squash shaped like UFOs, and the crisp cucumbers.  I wouldn't touch the okra with a ten-foot-pole (I still won't.  I don't do slimy food.  Ugh.)

Afterward I spent hours in the kitchen watching, and sometimes helping, as my grandmother and mother pickled, canned, and preserved buckets and buckets of good things to eat.  The figs took the longest and perfumed the whole house with the heady smell of sugar and fruit boiling happily down to thickened syrupy goodness on the stove. 

The year after Grandma died, Mom tried to keep the garden going, but the magic was gone and the work simply too time-consuming.  The tomatoes, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice--it was so beyond the notion of "bumper crop" that nobody in the family ever wanted to see another tomato.  Finally, she got the idea to make ketchup.  Being a fussy eater (or, as George Carlin translates the term, "big pain in the ass"), I wouldn't eat any ketchup that wasn't  Heinz, so the experiment was lost on me.

By Mabon, most of the crops in the area where I grew up have already been harvested:  corn, maize, soybeans, cotton.  It's also big rice country.  My favorite fields are the maize fields (maize being the local term for sorghum, which is used in Texas as livestock feed, so I disagree with its purpose but love looking at it), with their heads made up of a thousand round seeds that ripen from yellow-green to a deep, sun-soaked rust.  More than once I've hopped over ditches, my pocketknife in my fist, to make off with a head or two to decorate the Dread Sylvanator's Lair.  We used to sneak into cornfields and eat ears right off the stalk, picking strands of silk out of our teeth for hours afterward.

Now I live in the city, and don't have any sort of garden; my three sad little plants don't produce anything but brown leaves.  Though I visit the region of my birth often, and I do everything I can to stay in touch with the Earth, the concept of the harvest for me has become more metaphysical than physical since moving to Austin. 

There are some Sabbats, like Samhain and Yule, that are intensely personal for me.  Others, including Mabon, have always felt like community holidays.  There's nothing like a Mabon feast to usher in the Season of Overeating.  My personal, spiritual exploration of the Harvest doesn't really happen until Samhain with the "official" death of the old year; the year then lies fallow until beginning again at Yule, and the period between is the time of death, of dwelling in the Underworld. 

Still, the Earth Herself reminds me that Autumn is afoot, and that seasons don't change automatically on a holiday.  The Wheel is a progression, an unfolding, a breath in and out.  Here in Texas the Fall weather doesn't really get going until October.  Right now it's not so much Autumn as it is "less Summer."  Next month this time my body and spirit will be filled with energy, excitement, and overflowing love for the Scorpio Season--I'll also be as busy as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest, to quote my other grandmother.  After the endless doldrums of Summer, Fall is a whirlwind of activity.

When I think about my personal harvest for 2007, I am confronted with a year that, I must say, pretty much screwed the pooch.  Very little of what I had planned to accomplish this year has come to any sort of fruition, if it sprouted at all.  Some plans started to grow straight and tall, only to flop over like an inadequate boyfriend before anything useful came of them.

It happens sometimes.  I learned this, too, living in a farming community.  Some years are lean, some are lush.  (That is, without the aid of scary chemical fertilizers and cancer-causing pesticides that create uniform, genetically-altered frankencrops.)  Growth and change are not just a matter of will; they are subject to the environment around them, the soil they emerge from, and how they are tended.  Many factors can take a year from triumph to pooch screw.  The lovely thing about a spiritual relationship with Nature is that you come to understand that each year is a life cycle--birth, growth, decline, death, rebirth, all come within a single Turning, and like life itself, are renewed every year.

And so, before you lament those things left undone, those ideas gone feral, and those best-laid plans that went spectacularly awry, remember that this, too, shall pass.  Both the beautiful and the harrowing pass.  Success and tragedy, life and death, all pass.  Trying to hold on to any point on the Wheel won't stop it turning.  Those things we harvest one year must be sown again as seed the next.  We are not owners, but conduits; we are both the weavers and the woven, but the tapestry is never finished.

All things are temporary, and there is a wonderful freedom in that thought--for all things change, and they can always change for the better, if we are willing to be more than passive observers of our own lives.

We own nothing, nothing is ours
Not even love so fierce it burns like baby stars
But this poverty is our greatest gift
The weightlessness of us as things around begin to shift...

~Indigo Girls

Have a blessed Mabon, everyone.

Seed Post #7: Herbs

Children never came to the Witch's home, but if they had, no doubt they would have realized straight away that it was not like most adult apartments.

First was the smell:  the air beyond the dirty green door held the smoky fragrance of faraway countries, strange spices, and exotic woods baked beneath a harsh sun.  It was the scent of incantations and of cookies baking.  Over time that smell had seeped into the Witch's clothes, her hair, and her linens, so that only when visiting regular people's houses did she even notice it. 

The atmosphere inside the apartment was subtle, yet distinctive.  Few people who spent time on the World's Most Uncomfortable Futon wanted to rush out.  People lingered, and felt safe.  There were things in the world that would not dare attempt to breach its borders, though the Runes drawn on its doors were invisible, and the sigils of protection had been carved in the air. 

Small bundles and bags of unusual substances were tucked into kitchen cabinets, hung by the doors.  Walking barefoot over the cheap apartment carpet at certain times of the month might stir up flakes of coarse salt (white or black, depending on the season).  The coffee table boasted a wide, shallow dish filled with dozens of colored stones:  agate, quartz of several varieties, carnelian, amethyst, jet...and there were stones all over the apartment, as well, hiding in nooks and gathering dust on tables, peeking out from beneath the leaves of plants.

The living room artwork featured waterfalls, forests, and women dancing beneath the Moon.  In the bedroom were family photos, as one might expect, but also a gigantic painting of a tree in a riot of colors; and a Prismacolor portrait of Green Tara hanging over the bed, flanked by candle sconces. 

Indeed there were candles everywhere, even more candles than stones, and not the standard-issue scented pillars most young women bought at Bed, Bath, and Beyond; these were mostly votives, white and unscented, most of them burned at least halfway down.  It would be clear to the discerning visitor that their purpose was not to simply lend a fragrant ambiance, but to give off enough light to see by in the middle of the night.

Even if one were to look past the spines of the hundreds of books, not taking mental note of titles like Book of Shadows and Creating Your Own Tarot Spreads, it would be hard to ignore the altars.  There was an altar on top of the television, devoted to a god with no name; an altar in the kitchen complete with magical tasting spoon; and a third in the bedroom, this one extensive and cluttered with all manner of esoterica, watched over by the Queen of Heaven.

The most interesting piece of furniture, from a child's standpoint, would probably not be the altar, even with its long black-bladed dagger and its carved stone snake.  What small fingers would want most to pry into in the bedroom would be the two-door armoire on the adjacent wall.

Purchased at Target and banged together with a hammer and a string of curse words, the armoire was known to the Witch as the "herb cabinet" or, when she was feeling especially pretentious and mystical, the "apothecary cabinet."  Its three shelves and single drawer held treasures of all sorts, and even the most mundane-seeming had its arcane uses. 

The entire first shelf was crowded with candles and their accouterments:  holders in crystal and metal, glass cups, plates for pillars.  There were sandalwood votives and black tapers, seven-day Catholic style jars bought cheap at Fiesta, ball-shaped candles, tealights in four different scents bought from a fellow Witch who dealt in such delights.  The combined odor of them all was enough to knock down an elephant. 

The second shelf held a large basket stuffed with spell-crafting paraphernalia:  everything from squares of felt to a box of cowrie shells to yet more candles, these miniature tapers in various colors, standard issue from Pagan Central Supply.  The Witch seemed to have not one, but at least two of everything, and a deep and abiding love for small spoons (used to scoop powdered incense) and tiny bowls (used for a thousand other things).  There were two mortar-and-pestles, plus a third she kept beneath her altar.  There were incense burners and empty jars in various sizes (not to mention an entire Rubbermaid crate beneath the bed full of more bottles, jars, and boxes). 

The drawer on the cabinet's bottom was home to lengths of fabric, bedsheets, dinner napkins--altar cloths.  Most were spattered with melted wax and stained with wine or at least smudged with incense dust.  Incense dust, in fact, covered every surface in the apartment, as did short grey hair (cat) and medium dark hair (Witch).

The third shelf was perhaps the least likely to pass for a "catchall" or random storage.  A series of graduated stacking mini-shelves kept everything organized, but the rows and rows of small jars were also alphabetized (so were the kitchen spices), because the Witch was wicked smart, but also a little bit anal-retentive. 

The largest jars contained herbs she used most often:  lavender, mint, catnip, rosemary.  There was a large jar of sea salt, another of sand, and a third of melted snow.  The rest of the jars kept safe an array of strange-sounding plant life--leaves, flowers, roots, bark, and stems from all over the world. 

Deer's tongue, also known as wild vanilla, which called the  unnamed god; angelica, which banished evil; hyssop, blessed thistle, calendula petals, hops; vervain and chamomile; valerian, which smelled like moldy ass but enchanted her cat; resins like copal, frankincense, and myrrh; damiana, an aphrodisiac; elecampane, a Faery attractant; and more of her favorites, like dragon's blood and red sandalwood.  The jars went on and on, three rows of them, lined up neatly, waiting to be called into service.  Spice bottles from the kitchen often made their way into the cabinet, and vice versa.  Each jar was labeled carefully, and there were at least a half-dozen different shapes and sizes, ranging from salvaged baby food containers to one whose lid claimed it belonged to artichoke hearts when, in fact, it was full of mistletoe the Witch had harvested herself.

And not only did the Witch know what to do with every single jar, she knew a few things--and owned a few herbs--that were locked carefully away...just in case.  The Witch's arts were strictly ethical...but if she had learned one thing during her days as a Campfire Girl (besides how to pee in the woods), it was that it never hurt to be prepared.

This was also why if any children ever did come to visit, the Witch would cheerfully invest in a lock for the cabinet doors.

Seed Post #6: Samhain

Five Altars 

One

Turpentine and custard pie.  Copal oil.  Rose-scented soap.  That's how I remember you. 

I remember sitting next to you as you painted the tree-lined mountain landscape I would one day inherit.  You were no master, but there was love in every brushstroke, your hands so old they shook. 

I remember my mother and aunts and father trying to convince you to write down your pie recipe, but you shook your head--it was a pinch of this, a dash of that. 

You almost never smiled, but you didn't seem sad; you seemed tired.  We dug potatoes and picked figs together, and ate carrots right out of the ground that you had grown every year for decades.   Nothing else has ever tasted that good.

I was nine when you died--here one day, hospital the next, then gone.  I had never seen Grandpa cry before, but he cried, sitting on your empty bed, his gnarled hands clutching the hospital blanket you had lain beneath an hour before.  I curled up in my bedroom with the green and yellow afghan, confused, trying to make sense of it all.  My aunt came in and sat beside me, and showed me how to fold flowers out of Kleenex. 

For you, I lean a framed canvas back against the wall--a vase of roses you gave me for my birthday.  I still have the little glass turtle I took from your house after you died.  He'll sit on the altar and I'll dream of custard pie.

Two

I remember you fishing, sitting on the pier, a floppy white hat pulled down over your dyed red hair, a glass of vodka in grapefruit juice between your knees. 

I spent so many Christmases at your house, asleep on the floor, staring up at the popcorn ceiling spangled with bits of seventies gold.  Your bathroom was peach and had a padded toilet seat. I used to take the puff out of your powder and dust myself all over with it so I would smell like you.  You kept 1015 onions tied up in pantyhose in the garage, a knot between each one.

You taught me about cheesecake and fried green tomatoes.  You laughed and smoked and laughed some more, told ribald jokes over my head that I understood just fine, and when you died, I felt a great hole open up in me that everything seemed to fall into. 

They made me come up and see you in the casket, and it gave me nightmares.  I was almost happy you were gone, because of how much pain you were in.  But I looked over at my mother, now an orphan, and I cried for her.  I was sixteen.

You called me your Little Heifer, and Suzy Q, and I loved you fiercely.  I think if my first nephew hadn't been born three weeks later the whole family would have fallen apart.

For you I leave a slice of cherry cheesecake, a fishhook, and a pair of shiny gold bedroom slippers.

Three

I was at work when the gun went off.  We weren't allowed cell phones.  When I left the office at five I had seven messages, all the same, from different people:  "You need to call us.  Now."

I had to wear an ugly dress to your funeral.  I didn't have time to shop.  I wore my black leather trench coat buttoned all the way up, and midway through the service I slipped around to the back of the building and sobbed into the bricks.

You taught me how to climb out of my crib and wander the house late at night.  I loved sleeping on your waterbed.  You had a Jack Daniels flag hanging over the bed.  For better or for worse, you thought I hung the Moon.

The last time I saw you, you were hiding out in your garage smoking a joint while the kids were screaming and tearing through the house.  The moment had this sense of weight to it that I didn't really understand until later.  I should've gotten high with you, so we'd go out on a good memory, before I spent months so angry at you for doing this to us. 

For you I leave a sprig of rosemary like the one I placed in your hand before they closed the coffin lid.

Four

You and I weren't very close, and in fact it was a relief when you passed.  You were so old and so sick--the men in our family last a long time, but they don't do it gracefully.  I could see my father in you, and it frightened me.  I stayed away.

But I remember long ago, when Grandma was still alive, back when you still had the auto shop--I played under the workbench with one of the many half-tamed cats, or watched from a distance as you tended the bees, and I thought you were some kind of superhero.

You had an even bigger sweet tooth than I do.  For you:  a huge piece of my gooey butter cake.   Cake, and a pair of bright red suspenders.

Five

It's amazing how much you can miss someone you hardly ever saw.  We hadn't spoken since my brother died, but I still remember your hug that morning at the cemetery.  I smiled and told you you reminded me of George Bush, and you looked horrified.  It's the Bartosh nose. 

When we were little, one Christmas you acted out the entire Star Wars trilogy for me using your action figures.  I told you stories with my My Little Ponies.  We were almost exactly the same age, so we stuck together like glue.

I found out after you were gone that you'd written a book, too--something involving the Mac OSX server.  You were hugely respected in your field.  For a small-town country boy you left quite a wake behind you; I'd never seen a church that full.  Everyone talked about your enthusiasm for your work, but all I could think about was hiding under the kitchen table with you, sneaking pie crust, learning all about the Jedi.

I dream about you sometimes, and in every dream, we're standing together on a balcony.  You always look thoughtful, and a little embarrassed.  I asked you once if you felt anything, and you shrugged.  "Wind," you said, with what our grandmother always called your shit-eating grin. 

For you I leave an original Luke Skywalker action figure and a picture of us swimming in our underwear. 

For all of you I leave marigold petals, candles burning, a handful of acorns, a garland of Autumn leaves.  Perhaps I have no ancestors, perhaps the memory of my bloodline is too convoluted to unravel...but I remember you. 

I remember.

Seed Post #5: Wizard

I'm probably going to go up to 10 on this Seed Post series.

I didn't think I would be able to use this word, but last night I had a dream that was too strange and beautiful not to share.  It is quite obviously based on Neil Gaiman's Stardust, which I saw for the second time on Saturday.  If you haven't seen the movie (you should!) or read the book this probably won't make a whole lot of sense.

-

In the dream I had crept past the old guard at the Wall to go and visit the fair in Stormhold (obviously I was dreaming the movie version of the story, not the book).

I wandered among stalls selling incredible things--two-headed elephants, frogs that turned into princes (they ate their weight in flies), balls that juggled themselves, and tiny golden Snitches borrowed from another universe. I bought some sort of cakey thing on a stick. I was carrying this little gadget in my pocket that could detect enchantments, and it told me the cake was okay to eat; sometimes the people at the Fair would sell you cursed food that could enslave you or turn you into a donkey or whatever--let the buyer beware. I'd come prepared.

I heard a familiar voice, and turned around--and who should I see chained to the yellow caravan, but a certain young man of my former acquaintance, a young man I loved once, who had apparently run afoul of Ditchwater Sal and was her new slave-boy, complete with magical chain.

I approached, and he said, "Aren't you going to rescue me?"

"You're a Witch," he reminded me.  "You could take out Ditchwater Sal with your eyes closed.  I'd make it worth your while."

I looked down at myself; sure enough, I was gorgeous, dressed in this fabulous black gown with a velvet bag of Runes hanging from my belt and several enormous magical rings on my fingers. I had hair down to my butt. In fact I hadn't noticed, but there were a lot of people at the Fair staring at me as I passed. A few crossed themselves. It amused me.

I looked back up at him. "I'm afraid it's years too late for that," I said. "Besides, I'm not a Witch. Look for me in the sky as the Nile rises over the dog days of Summer and perhaps, one day, you'll be unchained."

I walked away, smiling to myself, and I heard him call behind me, "Be careful! Lamia will hunt you down and cut out your heart!"

"Let her try," I muttered. 

As I left the village, I walked into the forest, taking a narrow path that wound down into the darkness. Trees and brush parted for me as I passed, and even though it was the middle of the night, I could see just fine. Deer and other animals followed me, keeping a safe distance but watching.

Finally I came to a huge dark tree in the middle of a clearing--it was basically the tree from Pan's Labyrinth without the nasty giant frog inside. I put my palms against the bark, and the tree opened, revealing a small locked door into a secret cabinet. I leaned forward and kissed the lock, and it clicked open.

Inside the cabinet was a glass jar containing a glowing blue light that glittered and pulsed. I touched the jar and the light flared, giving me a surge of both joy and agony, and I sank down into the grass weeping, my hand still on the jar. When I took my hand away, I was perfectly calm again, unaffected.

There was a stag at the edge of the clearing watching me, and I beckoned to it. 

"Will you help me?" I asked the deer. "I have a long way to travel, but someone must stay here and safeguard my heart. If they find it they will kill me, and I'll never get home again. If I'm not in the sky at the appointed hour the river will not rise."

The stag nodded. 

I petted his soft head, then touched one of my rings to his nose, and he transformed into a handsome young man with antlers and glowing green eyes. "I will not fail you," he said, and kissed my hand. "Every creature in this forest will help to keep it safe."

"Thank you." 

As I started to leave, he asked, "How do you live without it?"

I looked back and shrugged.  "It makes life easier.  They're nothing but trouble anyway." 

But as I walked out of the clearing, trying to set my mind to the task I must perform before I could return, the stag and I both knew I was lying. I lifted my hand to my chest, and underneath my bodice I could feel the long ridge of a scar, and stillness where there should be a pulse. I had won my heart back from the cruel grey wizard who stole it, but at a terrible price--in my mind I could see the body of a dead man at my feet, hear my screams, and I thanked God that I could no longer feel. Soon, when I was home, all the stars would weep with me, and the Nile would flood with my tears.

Shaking my head, forcing the memories aside, I took the road back out of the forest, in search of a Babylon candle.

Seed Post #4: Jewelry

The first pentacle I ever wore was 2" across, fake silver, strung on standard issue black rattail cord.  I bought it at a mall store called Spencer's that specialized in tacky sex-themed gifts and pseudo-goth kitsch back before Hot Topic took over the pseudo-goth kitsch market.

When you're sixteen and live in a Texas cowtown of 10,000 people, a pentacle of any size can get you into trouble, and one the size of a Geo Metro hubcap is a cry of "shoot me, shoot me!"  No matter how proud you are of your new religion, I wouldn't recommend wearing such redneck-bait out in public unless you are exceptionally brave, stupid, or own an asbestos suit...particularly not if you're wearing said pentacle for the wrong reasons.

I find it amusing that people in the Pagan community think that teenagers are either serious about their religion or just trying to draw attention to themselves--as if, at any age, you couldn't be both at the same time. 

I also find the sort of thing authors write for teenagers just plain laughable, most of the time; not so much because of the "I'm your mommy and I know all about what it's like to be a teen Witch" tone, but because such books almost always include spells about prom dates, popularity, and other things that your average teen Wiccan is not all that interested in, forgetting that the average teen Wiccan isn't an average teen. 

We weren't popular.  We were socially awkward, outsiders, people who spent our Friday nights reading, not partying.  We had to hide our candles and worry about our lockers being set on fire.  We weren't cute and perky, we weren't cheerleaders--we were young rebels, anarchists, gothlings, artists.  Most of us were way more like the girls in The Craft than Sabrina. 

Public schools are not kind places.  Young people are ruled by at least two contradictory desires--the desire to be themselves and individuate, and the desire to survive.  It's one thing if you have Pagan parents who can support you, but if you're on your own, the deck is stacked in favor of the conformists. 

I had no teacher, no tools, only two books:  Cunningham's Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and later, Silver RavenWolf's To Ride a Silver Broomstick.  I didn't even get my hands on a copy of The Spiral Dance until I was 18.  My friend and I, who discovered Wicca together and dared the wrath of parents and the entire town (where people say things like, "She's Black, but she's so smart!" and "You know those Jews, so good with money" and consider themselves enlightened) drove out of town to the middle of nowhere and hopped someone's pasture fence to do our dedication ritual in a patch of woods.

I snuck away from my parents at the mall in Houston to buy that pentacle.  It was the first one I'd ever seen--this was 1994, before the Internet came to my town, and I had never met a "real Wiccan" as far as I knew.  When I plunked my money down on the counter (six dollars, if I remember correctly) my hands were shaking as if Jesus himself--or at least the Reverend from First Baptist Church--was peering over my shoulder saying "tsk, tsk, tsk." 

I was terrified of breaking with the norm.  I wanted so badly to blend in, to be like everyone else, but at heart I knew I wasn't.  Even though at sixteen I didn't really understand Wicca all that well--I didn't really know how to meditate; I believed correspondences were everything; I was afraid to pray to the Goddess because prayer was "too Christian;" and I could only do rituals in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, whispering in my bedroom with a single candle that I kept hidden under my mattress--I knew this was what I had to do.  I wasn't nearly ballsy enough to be myself, but I had no other choice than to try.

Everything was peachy until I made the mistake of wearing the pentacle to the movies one Friday night.  I thought it was secured beneath my shirt, but I forgot to keep an eye on it. 

Then the rumors started.

The funny thing about my hometown is that very rarely do people ever actually confront you about anything--they prefer to gossip, to whisper behind their hands and giggle as you pass.  "Did you hear about so-and-so's daughter?  She's a devil worshiper!"

Yes sir, I, child of well-known parents, tenth in my class, National Merit Scholar, president of the French Club, was now branded a Satanist. 

Oh, and a lesbian, but that's another story. 

Suffice it to say life was hell for a while.  It wasn't until my parents basically threatened to boot me from the house during one of our few big fights that my will was, temporarily, broken.  I felt betrayed that they had taken the word of complete strangers over their own daughter, and I was angry that I didn't have a chance--or the vocabulary, at the time--to explain myself in a way they could hear.  All I knew was that I had tried to be myself the way I'd always been told I was supposed to be, and I got nothing but grief for it. 

These lessons, the painful ones we learn in adolescence, are the ones that stick with us.  I had already learned I was fat and unattractive from my fellow students; now, I had learned that the real me was unacceptable, delusional, even evil.  Later I would come to understand why my parents reacted the way they did, and I wouldn't blame them for it anymore.  Lord knows I wasn't easy to live with back then.  At the time, though, it hurt.

Satan, I was told, was tricky--you didn't actually have to believe in him to worship him.  Even at sixteen that made no sense to me.  If my new God was actually the devil, and He was helping me to be a better person and take care of the environment and like myself more, then He was the lamest devil ever.  My inner smartass, already blooming, wondered if that meant that my parents were secretly Pagans--if you don't have to believe in something to worship it, how did they know Jesus wasn't really Isis?

I did not, however, ask this question.  I didn't ask any questions.  I went back to my room and buried my books and pentacle and candle at the bottom of a drawer.

I spent the last year of high school desperately trying not to draw attention to myself except in the normal ways.  I just wanted out.  I wanted out of that horrible town, and I wanted space between me and all the people who still looked down their noses at me--hundreds of miles, if possible.  I didn't know much about Austin, and I had no idea what I wanted to do at college (never did figure that one out), but I knew Austin was where I needed to be.  As much as I still loved my family, I held onto graduation day like a life preserver in shark-infested waters.

The night of graduation a Full Moon rose over the football stadium.  My eyes were fixed on it as I sat through the valedictorian's speech. 

And underneath my cute Asian-style wraparound dress, underneath my bright red gown, as I walked across the stage to take my diploma from the Superintendent, I was wearing a two-inch fake silver pentacle on satin rattail cord.

Seed Post #3: Self

All of that being said, of course, there is one kind of love that I think is not only important, but absolutely necessary:  self-love. 

I will be the first to admit that it isn't easy--I suppose love never is, regardless of source or destination.  While I worked out years ago that I needed to learn to love myself in order to thrive, I'm still working on that whole loved-by-others idea.  What can I say?  I'm a woman of contradiction.  Some people work backwards; they grasp the idea of being loved long before they can love themselves.  Or do they?  Can you ever really experience love at its fullest if you don't know how to turn it inward?  To me, being open to the idea of romance is a bit pointless if you hate yourself.  It seems that a lot of people focus all their attention on the outer, trying to dress an empty space in romantic drag.  Therefore, I have devoted my efforts these past few years to unlearning self-hatred and relearning self love.

What I have to say, then, should not be interpreted as guru-on-high platitudes, but the result of years of sweat and tears that still flow from time to time. 

Especially this year.  Oy.

I've never been able to get behind the Eastern idea of the annihilation of the self as a spiritual goal.  There's something so wrong to me in the thought that human beings were gifted with the sense of self, of individual consciousness, and the ability to actualize that self--but somehow we're supposed to just forget all of that and OM our way to dissolution?  Perhaps I'm simply not enlightened enough, but I'm willing to accept my lesser state of being if that means I can be me, and be responsible for transforming myself instead of transcending myself.  That's one of the main places on the path where my brand of Wicca--if not most Paganism--diverges from East to West.  At its deepest heart All is One, but I don't live at the deepest heart; I live here in a curvy pink animal named Sylvan, and I think there's plenty for me to learn where I am.

However, I think that a little transcendence can be a great thing.  Where we Americans in particular get into trouble is in thinking that the self is everything--that the world begins and ends with me, myself, and I.  The self is the basic unit of human evolution, but there are larger measurements out there.  I suppose that, if you get right down to it, I believe in a balance of manifestation and transcendence, the two major currents (Divine complements, if you will, which I’ve talked about at length before).  Leaning too far to either side will eventually topple you over.

To get back to the point, allow me to hammer home the idea that I've lectured, blogged, and in fact written an entire book about. 

Self-love is not just some New Age ideal from the land of unicorns and pyramid power.  It is a divine mandate.  It is intrinsic to Wicca.  There's no way around it. 

Why?

Remember that other thing I'm always yammering about, that whole panentheism concept, wherein everything both within and beyond the universe is Divine?  Wiccans have this crazy idea that everything is sacred.  Nature is the shimmering, ever-changing garment of Deity.  Every pawed, leafed, clawed, and hoofed creature; every dust mite and termite; everything that dwells beneath the eye of the Goddess is a part of Her.

YOU ARE NOT THE EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE.

To love one part of Deity and not the whole is to be incomplete.  You are a part of the Earth, therefore your every cell is imbued with the indwelling Divine. 

As such you are every bit as worthy of love as the trees and stones.  You are as holy as the Circles you cast.  You are a living vessel of the sacred--yes, you, with the dimpled ass and the big nose, you with the bad Art Garfunkel home perm and the unfortunate Spongebob tattoo, you with the sagging breasts, the unibrow, the penis that lists hard to port.  You, imperfect and unique, are perfect and unique.

If you believe the Earth is sacred, and you aren't a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri, then you are also sacred, and loved, and deserving of joy and fulfillment. 

You are worth kingdoms. 

Now start acting like it.

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Now playing on iTunes: Sarah McLachlan - Ordinary Miracle
via FoxyTunes   

Seed Post #2: Love

Try though I might, I can't make up my mind about love.

On the one hand, I believe very strongly in love--Divine love, universal love, the universe as an expression of love…all sorts of chewy granola Birkenstock ideas that make me too fluffy for Old Guard Wiccans but not nearly fluffy enough for the Bunny Farts.  I love the idea of love, that love is all you need, that what the world needs now is love, sweet love (even though, clearly, love is a battlefield).

When you bring love down to a human-to-human level, though, my hardened Scorpio heart is skeptical.  I believe in its existence, but I don't trust its constancy.  I suppose that's my stumbling block:  trust.  There are times when I have to work very hard to trust even in the Goddess Herself. 

I'll tell you a secret:  I’m a closet romantic.  I love a clever, well-written romantic comedy, and I have a soft squishy spot for Jane Austen movies.  Though I wanted desperately to reach through the screen and feed poor Keira Knightley a sandwich, I loved every moment of Pride and Prejudice.  Sense and Sensibility is how I got my fangirl lust for Kate Winslet.  Bridget Jones's Diary remains one of my all-time favorite movies (and books), and I found a perfect description of myself in the movie Hitch:

"You're a realist masquerading as a cynic who is secretly an optimist."

And oh, how I want to believe in romance, in falling in love, in lasting matrimonial-type "I married my best friend" kind of love, in the kind of love that fat girls are trained not to hope for, because our job in the universe of coupling is to be the sidekick, the acerbic best friend, who makes witty remarks as the walking Tinkertoy starlet goes through the inevitable third-act complications to trap herself a man.

As you can see, I haven't quite reached that lofty spire of belief just yet.  Time, disappointment, soul-wilting/chakra-stunting trauma, and exes with hygiene/commitment/performance problems are stacked against my optimism.  In fact if you want to see me turn green and gag, put me in the same room with a new couple, or worse yet, people planning a wedding.  The only thing worse than being around people planning a wedding is...well, I can't really think of anything.  I am Sarcasma, Queen of the Snark People.

And yet…

For all its heartache and toe fungus, I know deep down that the universe is still a loving place.  I clothe my spirit in that truth and try like hell to remember it. 

Then I put on my Birkenstocks and watch Music & Lyrics.

(Love me some Drew Barrymore.)