Buy the Book, Read It, Pass it Around!

I read this book in my early 30's, wish it would have been around when I was a wee nymph.

AND since I'm posting books that brought inspiration and positive perspective into my life I have to share with you any and all of the books by SARK.

I WALK WITH THE GODDESS

Spring Cleaning

So I have some time alone today and felt inspired to clear out the herb cupboards and unearth my altar. I found my handmade oracle stones burried under dust, bells and incense. I clean them, ask a question and let them loose. Now, to find those instructions I wrote down in one of my journals the day I made them. More digging. How far back ago did I conjure these stones ???? and a journal pops out from the shelf and opens to a page from Sept 2010 ..... and so I share the entry with you .....

Keep your edges Sister !
They're a beautiful part of who you are -
those "lightworkers" have woven a deceptive web
your darkness makes them uncomfortable,
they're grinding and smoothing your edges down.
You've replaced "Witch" with "mystic" so they
can place you on the side of "good" - given
you Angels & Spirit Guides to give you answers
& moved your power to someone outside yourself



 What have you taught them ?

Thank You, Merlin Stone !

MERLIN STONE

Her books and words made my world a different place.

FEAST OF THE FLAMES

Circle of wimmin, halfway to spring

Quickening hope, earthsoul rising

Candlemas song to waxing light

Bridget's fire burning bright

Cauldron, broom, candle, wine

Apple , Elder, Dogwood, Pine

New witch, old witch, spiral line

Cirle of womyn, circle of time

~ Illa Suzanne

" If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will have another flight;

If Candlemas Day be shower and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again."

 

WHEW, GLAD THAT'S OVER ...

Mercury retrograde has been a bitch this time around. Full moon, lunar eclipse and planets lining up all at an already stressful time where so blatantly a pagan holiday has been taken over by a bully. Blah, blah, blah, I'm so glad the pressure is off, near completely off.
I can sleep again, the sleep of darkness, warmth and dreams. The deep sleep of winter. Sinking deep down into the rich dark earth and healing, dreaming. So many past issues regurgitated into December, my head still spins during my wakeful hours.

Today I return to my volunteer work for a local women's shelter that provides free services to women and children of abuse. Haven't volunteered since I was a teen and I'm glad I decided to do community service again. I had ( and still have sometimes) a hard time acclimating to the multiple egos that rear their ugly heads from the many volunteers. It's amazing to me that there are STILL office politics even when no one is collecting a paycheck. I stupidly thought since we were all volunteering our time we'd all be equals, my ridiculous utopian naivete shines again. My lesson is to figure a way to get women to work together. Patriarchy has ruled us for too long.

All in All, things are getting back to manageable again. I shall have a better plan in place for December next year. I had a beautiful Solstice but the "muggle" xmas thing wears me out, on many levels.
Happy hibernation !

WE ARE PREDITOR, NOT PREY!

It's a catchy title and just one small line, from this interview, that holds profound meaning for some. This interview is full of amazing snipets of knowledge. Go make a cup of tea and listen, if you feel compelled. Blessings!

Radio interview with Dr. Ada-Belinda DancingLion, healer, medicine woman and spiritual counselor.

Deep lessons revealed in a 30 minute interview that some will never learn in 30 years.

I'm inspired, hope you are too!

ANI DIFRANCO "Reprieve"

"Seasons of the Witch" FALL

I quote to you from Patricia Monaghan's book "Seasons of the Witch" page 65; 
( I'd read this to you if we were together. This passage has touched my heart so deeply this year, maybe for you, the same ... Blessed Autumn to you all! )

FALL  The Measure of Her Powers

Now comes a time of reckoning, a season of limits.
 There will never be more than there is now. The harvest is done, the cellars are full. Two seasons of growth have lead to this richness, this security, this abundance. This is a season for celebrating the plenty that work and time have wrought. This is a season for feasting with friends, sharing the bounty, toasting to work well done.
 This is a season, as well, for endings. For nothing more is growing. Nothing more will grow this year. There will never be more than there is now. And the winds of autumn descend to tear seed from stalk, to scatter what has not been captured.
 This is the time to decide what will die. Not all of last spring's calves and lambs and ducklings can be fed through the winter. Some will die, and in dying provide food. It is a season of decisions. And of prophecies: for as other life dies, it foreshadows our own deaths. The taste of death is in the air in fall. On our tongues, too, the taste of death: of plants that give us their seeds, of animals that give us their flesh.
 Such communion! As we pick the pumpkin from it's shriveled stalk, as we press the juice from apple's flesh, as we tear out carrot life by it's roots, we taste the deepest knowledge we can have: we need others to survive. That we breathe only because something has died. That we make our own flesh of the flesh of our world.
 Never in the seasons of our life do we feel more responsible.
 As she moves through autumn, a woman feels a passionate connection with all life. Yet, wise in the seasons of living, she can be unsentimental, even pitiless. She does not try to nurture everything and everyone, for she knows not all can-should-survive. She becomes selective. There is enough of everything- strength, love, passion, lust-everything but time.
 Time, she knows, grows short. Nothing seems endless anymore. her life grows full of endings: parents and friends die, animals she has loved disappear in a gasp, dreams fade beyond reclaiming. She does not recognize, when the deaths start, that fall has begun. But later, she will remember: after that one, it was never the same. Never again can she hold a living body without knowing the fragility of it's life, the closeness of it's death.
 She finds that she has limits. Her energy falters, her mind drifts, her patience snaps. She begins to husband herself, to save herself for what really matters. She has seen enough to guess the trajectory of most events, to hold back from repeating old mistakes. She knows now that some energy is wasted. So sometimes she seems parsimonious. But just as often, she is generous. That old coat? Give it away. That pretty pin? Oh, do take it. The half-finished book? No, it's yours. She does not need to cling to what she has outlasted. Things leave her: she does not need it all.
 Fall consumes a woman many times before and after middle life, whenever the time demands that she becomes decisive. She empties her womb of a conception; she leaves a convent, a marriage, a carreer; she puts a loved old pet to sleep. She cleans a closet, she gives away old books, she cuts her hair. Autumn finds her free and vibrant, impatient of delusions, ready to do whatever she needs to do.
 For she knows what she needs, and she wants it fiercely. For every false dream that dies, a true one is remembered. She climbs mountains to stand in alpenglow, she gallops out on a magnificent horse, she paints her secrets and her nightmares. She has a last and cherished child; she remembers passion with an old friend; she writes her own, her individual, story. She knows what memories she needs to store, to provide her winter years
 The autumn woman moves toward dreamtime. Though she knows her limits, she has also felt limitless. She has known the ineffable. She wakes at night from dreams of high windy places where small blue flowers bloom, and she knows in her bones that such places exist. Luminous beings appear in her dreams and pull her towards them. She recognizes the dust of infinity in a windstorm, the odor of timelessness in a fire.
 There is a transcendent energy about her, but she remains rooted in life's imminent realities. In her eyes you see the fire of primal knowledge: the knowledge of life and death. She knows that she will not escape this life alive. And she embraces it, moment by moment by moment.

A Witch Bows To No Man

Love this Dianic Witch !

Z. Budapest

"I stand on the shoulders of the sisters before me."

You are Unique and yet we're all the same ....

We've all seen the ads : would like to meet like-minded people ..... : I see them in every "pagan-y" form of networking available. Wish I had a penny for every time I've heard those words. Oh com'on, we've all said it ! ...  in our newbie phases, our lonely and misunderstood phases, when that love spell went wrong & I could really use a friend who's done this before phases, you know what I'm talkin' bout.
Well, let me save ya a little time and trouble, .......  there is absolutely No One out there who is "like minded". It's just you ! Just you in all your complicated and unique glory. Just you who has experienced Those things, at Those times, in Your life. Just you, who can see the Sacred the way you do, who Believes the way you do, and that's okay.  Once you get past that roadblock ( the one where you spend years searching for the "like-minded" group of friends) you are Free. Free to be friends with anyone. People who have entirely different beliefs expand your world and you, Theirs.

MAX DASHU - Restoring Women to Cultural Memory

    

" We stand on the shoulders of the sisters before us."

I've been stumbling around on this entry for over a week.
No words I can write will even come close to honoring the amazing work that Max Dashu does.
In 1970 she founded The Suppressed Histories Archives . Go there. Live there. Tell me you aren't touched, moved, inspired, relieved, reclaimed, in awe of our ancient cultural history.
The Art of Max Dashu
Very affordable Online Courses  to keep her important work (our true history) alive and passed on to future generations.
Max Dashu's Channel; Real Women, Global Vision
An Interview with Max Dashu, go to the second interview
 

GODDESS FESTIVAL 2010

Did you know ? 

We have our very own Goddess Gathering on the West Coast put on by our very own sisters, Z. Budapest and Bobbie Grennier.

Patricia Monaghan - Seasons of the Witch

" I stand on the shoulders of the sisters before me. "

Warning

She won't make wigs

of it. She has more brutal plans.

Some she feeds to pigs.

Some she burns in distant lands

you never want to visit.

Is it

strange that nude

before a flat stone altar

she fashions crude

and obsene figures from your hair ?

Beware

women who don't falter

when they pick up scissors or a knife,

who know the names of poison plants,

the purpose of each star,

the absolute anatomy of life.

Such women are, however,

individual and rare.

A single warning:

never let one cut your hair.

page 1, Seasons of the Witch 1992, by Patricia Monaghan, Delphi Press

Wikipedia Patricia Monaghan

Patricia Monaghan's Bio

I have a copy of Seasons of the Witch. Can't tell you how long I've had it and it most likely joined my collection via some thriftstore purchase. Books have a way of falling off shelves and into my path just when I need them. The poetry and artwork inspire me still to this day (and I'm not a real fan of poetry).