Dancing Down the Moon

Turn, Turn, Turn

The beginning of October was so chaotic and weird that it has only just occurred to me that it's actually October.  As in, Fall.  Really, truly, and honestly Fall.  Good God. 

The weather's gone schizo and can't seem to make up its mind what season to be in, but today it's cool and gloomy and the high this week is scheduled to make it to 86 or so with quite a bit of rain and another front coming through on Thursday.  Autumn.  It's in the wind, the rain.  Go outside and taste it every time you breathe.

Such a paradox, Autumn.  It's life in death.  All the rain has made the lawns and flowers come alive, and there's something vivifying in the air, but it's an exhalation, not an inhalation. 

There are cooler weather, lots of birthday parties, new seasons of TV shows, my favorite clothes, and Halloween candy.  There are wonderful memories.  And there are also very unpleasant ones.  Autumn is emotionally heavy and edged with the ache of loss.  It's the Witching Season and the Weeping Season and the season of looking in and the season of looking back.

As they say, you can't step in the same river twice; each year that Autumn turns around again I find I'm a slightly different person in a slightly different place.  

Almost ten years ago at a job I hated, I got a small pothos ivy that eventually grew to five feet long on either side.  When I took it home I placed it on what would become my altar to the God, and for years it grew on top of my entertainment center as the focal point of that altar.  I've never been able to keep plants alive, but this one thrived for a long, long time.

This past year it started dying. Strand by strand of the ivy turned yellow, then brown, and shriveled.  I trimmed it back to the pot to help it retain energy, and finally changed the soil and fertilized it, but still, one leaf at a time, it died.

There is one leaf left. I can't say whether I want it to survive or not. That ivy is a deeply layered symbol of my past, and I think it's time for me to start over with a new plant, perhaps even in a different pot. The timing of its death is not lost on me.

There are a lot of things in my life that are coming to a head--nothing external, really, but changes that have been on a slow burn for, in some cases, years.  My Saturn return is about to officially end and I can feel the energy of my life shifting, as it has been an inch at a time for months now.  I feel like a cycle that started when I turned 30, that frightening night and the upheaval that followed, is completing this year, and whoever I've been has only been the barest shadowed edge of who I'm starting to become.  

Maybe in a couple of months I'll have some idea what all of that means.

Bring Me a Shrubbery!

I'm working on a great post about my newly-redecorated kitchen, which I hope to have up by Monday, but in the meantime I thought I'd share this article with you about growing herbs indoors.     

How to Grow Herbs Indoors:  Easy? Maybe not. Rewarding? Hell yeah.  From Chow.com.

Personally I'm rubbish at gardening--I have a brown thumb that really kind of offends my Pagan sensibilities.  I can kill any plant no matter how hardy it claims to be.  If god is a plant, when I die, I'm so fucked. 

I do, however, have an adorable new flowerpot that's crying out for something green and cheerful, and I was thinking of trying parsley, as the article says it'll grow indoors without tons and tons of light.  My kitchen gets indirect sunlight most of the day but definitely not enough to keep something like rosemary happy.

Do you grow herbs indoors?  What kind?  Are they for culinary, medicinal, and/or magical purposes, or just to look pretty and green up the house?

J is for Jacked Up on Meds, and also for Jingle Bells

Yeah, I realize it doesn't go with the rest of the alphabet entries, but cut me some slack, I've been sick.

That is in fact why I've been absent from the blogosphere--right about my birthday I began to develop what turned into a massive sinus infection and I've been sick as a dog since then.  I've missed a lot of work in the last two weeks and my Thanksgiving was kind of a bust; the infection has been extremely painful and debilitating so I haven't been in very good mental shape to write.  I'm on my second round of antibiotics now and slowly mending.  Very slowly.

Meanwhile the holiday season has officially brow-beaten its way into the world again, and again I find myself thankful I don't have cable so I don't have to deal with the constant bombardment of compulsory "holiday spirit" which basically equals profligate spending.  Of course, I still can't walk into a store without the red and green assault.  I find the whole thing utterly distasteful and stressful.  Santa Claus can bite my jolly white ass.

Someone recently pointed out to me that the whole Christmas industry has basically turned the season into the opposite of what it should be, going by the Wheel of the Year.  We're encouraged to get out and shop, shop, shop, and attend lots of parties and crowded events full of bright lights and loud noise (sorry, but Mariah Carey singing "All I Want for Christmas is You" is noise).  The commercials try to emphasize the family aspect of the season but what they really want is for us to leave the house and go to the mall with hundreds of other people.  TV, radio, print, and Internet all lambast us with the same messages. 

Winter isn't an extroverted time of year.  Back in the much-vaunted Days of Yore, people didn't go abroad during Yuletide, they gathered close and stayed inside so they wouldn't die.  The traditions we're used to were started to celebrate that survival and people's interdependence, and the waxing of the light after the Solstice that ensured Winter would eventually end.  It was a hard time of year when people were stuck indoors.  The Earth itself turns inward this time of year, plants dying back to the roots, trees exposing their skeletons while their energy is conserved.  It's an introspective season when we feel called to hibernate and contemplate, but the urging of our culture compels us to be sociable now that we have the freedom to drive around in the cold instead of being trapped in the house (except in case of blizzard).  Because we're not allowed to do what's natural, and the commercial juggernaut of Christmas is so pervasive with its depiction of the perfect family gathering and the perfect gifts, it's really no wonder people are depressed and angry this time of year.  In fact very few people I know in the real world actually like Christmas, and even the ones who do get stressed out about money and family drama.

Personally this year I feel absolutely no connection to any of the celebrated holidays or traditions.  Even the Pagan Sabbat of Yule is tainted for me by the tasteless flash and ca-ching of Christmas. 

The timing of my illness amuses me.  I've been couch-bound for half the holiday season already, physically unable to shop or spend frigid evenings out.  My body has one hell of a sick sense of humor.

Perhaps next year I'll feel called to create some new traditions for myself or explore some of the old ones (none of which have ever appealed to me even as a Pagan), but this year I feel rather like one of the ancient tribespeople--that this season is something to endure. 

I'm reminded of a bit of silliness I wrote a couple of years ago:

Deck the halls with all our issues,
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Don't forget Xanax and tissues,
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Hide the bong and light the Yule log,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Aren't you glad you spiked the eggnog?
Fa la la la la, la la la la!

Hope is the Thing With Branches

I am the Earth these days, baked brown and tired.  The grass is wilting and turning crispy in the Sun's baleful gaze, except for today when the clouds have rolled over and there is just enough rain to crank the humidity up to "Sauna on Mercury."  We've already had record breaking temperatures in June, and there's still a good three months to get through before Autumn meanders into the spotlight, assuming it hits its cue.  You never can tell anymore. 

Heat saps my strength.  I am a child of Fall, and this time of year is always hard for me--I crave early sunsets and dragon-breath frost, long sleeves, trench coats.  The photosensitivity I mentioned in an earlier post, from my antidepressant, only makes this worse; Summer makes me tired. 

I remember, as a child, loving it--it was cooler then, and the prospect of weeks of vacation made me willing to brave the heat.  I ran barefoot over the blacktop and cherished the late evenings.  Barbecues, picnics, swimming lessons, Vacation Bible School, the ice cream man, snow cones...Summer has so much to offer children. 

Twenty years later I am parched and cracked and dizzy from the brightness.  You know that feeling when you walk out of a movie theater and the sun's so bright it hurts?  I feel like that every time I go outside, whether it's dawn or noon.  My head swims, my joints ache.  I want to hide in the cool darkness of my bedroom and hibernate through the Summer like a seasonally-dyslexic bear.

Spiders and Snakes and Deer, Oh My!

I recently joined a LiveJournal community offering Pagan writing prompts.  I'm looking forward to the suggestions offered--since I solicited suggestions here, I've been compiling a rather long list of possible writing topics to keep me inspired.  (I still welcome suggestions, incidentally;  comment on this entry if you have any.)

At any rate, the first prompt on the community had to do with animal totems in Pagan practice.  It got me thinking back to the early days of my training, when "what's your spirit animal?" was a burning question and I noticed that an oddly large proportion of Pagans were magically paired with wolves, birds of prey, dolphins, and dragons. 

Oh, and cats--let's not forget cats.  At the first student Pagan group meeting I ever went to at UT there was a girl in the corner who claimed to be a "cat spirit" and spent the entire meeting licking her forearms.

I shit you not.

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.