Читать книгу Seasons of Moon and Flame - Danielle Dulsky - Страница 13

Invocation to the

Crone of the East

Welcome, Witch of Blooming Bud

Paint my face with loam and mud

The scent of birth, this cleansing storm

And you, the hag, in softer form.

The language of spring leaves out the witty banter and proper rhetoric, forsaking the serious grumbles and pensive frowns of winter for those joyous belly-wobbling laughs that can erupt only from their low places on warmer days. Spring is the annual sunrise, the season of possibility dawning and hope subtly realized, if only in those fleeting glimpses of an innocence we once knew when our skin was tighter and our worlds were smaller. We look to the east now, searching for the perpetual dawn in the eyes of newborns and in the tender roots of a garden well nursed through those harsher moons. We find her right there, that Garden Hag who rules this fertile season of hard-blowing storms and resilient hearts, and she tells us tales of ancestral healing and the silver-threaded web of generations. She tells us to check in with our beloveds, to ask for what we need, and to allow ourselves to feel tender. Her stories are those of lightning women; warm, wounded grannies; and wild children, and her wisdom is born of an undying faith in renewal and rebirth.

Overview of the Spring Journey

Season of Tender Roots

Nourishment: Belonging

Story Medicine: The Chicken-Witch of the Grove

Season of the Elders’ Altar

Challenge: Heart Healing

Story Medicine: Temple of the Flame Tender

Season of Mud-Caked Hands

Wisdom: Gathering

Story Medicine: Bawdy Betty and the Lady in Beige

The Spring Altar, Handmade with a Wild Innocence

Lay to rest the bones and pine of winter. Now come the moons of erotic innocence and nature lust. Build your spring altar to reflect new beginnings, sensuality, and righteous rejuvenation. Gather things that grow, and tend them well. Honor the air element with sustainably harvested feathers, eggshells, and wildflowers. At altar center place a candle colored or carved in such a way that you might name it “Sovereignty.” You might place a small dish of fertile dirt in the north, seeds in the east, an image of the sun in the south, and a seashell in the west, all to honor the beauteous dance of the elements as the Wheel of the Year turns toward fruition. May your altar evoke a felt sense of possibility and infinite potential. These are the days of swelling purpose, weaving ancestral memory with long vision, and digging out the deep secrets, and your altar is a physical reminder of these fertile intentions. May you find what you seek.