Читать книгу Seasons of Moon and Flame - Danielle Dulsky - Страница 14
ОглавлениеBelonging
Surely you have never welcomed a wilder season than this. That journey out of winter might have meant death for a less bold version of you, or perhaps it did. Perhaps there is a heap of frozen flesh, a face with frost-webbed skin that looks much like yours, left behind in the snow, left to nourish the wolves and feed the loamy ground. Who you are now, a seeker having traveled through countless dreamlands of wintry snowscapes and barren fallows, is not the wild one you used to be. Who you are now, a warmth-famished wanderer destined to better heal those deep but unknown wounds of the anguished dead, is not the same creature who dwelled in winter’s darkness, who sought sanctuary at the hearthside and dreamed the smaller dreams.
Those final long moons of winter have been a birth, to be sure, and you have woken this brighter morning with a heart full of lusty Pagan poetry and eyes that long for the reds of rose petals and ten thousand shades of green only a sprouting early-spring garden can show you. This moon cycle is the first of spring, running through the vernal equinox. Here you are, at long last, and the Garden Hag’s been waiting with a bountiful table attended by an infinite number of spectral guests; you may not know them, but these ethereal ones most certainly remember you.
May this first moon of spring, this Season of Tender Roots, greet you as the Garden Hag does, with childlike curiosity and much, much joy. Her face is lined, her hair is gray, but her heart beats in the rhythm of the innocent erotic. You have come to her ivy-hugged house in search of some great, unnamed thing, and she is just the one to help you uncover that buried treasure, those invaluable golden depths of wild wisdom tucked away long ago, planted beneath the Elders’ Altar for safekeeping.
Hag Lesson #11
Spring magick is lineage-mending witchery.
Our spring magick does the business of binding our dreams to those who came before us; our healing is their healing, and our longing is their longing.
Remind Me, Grandmother
A Whispered Lament
Remind me, Grandmother. I’ve forgotten my way again in this time-impoverished world where no one seems to know how to find that soul-well of patience you showed me when I was a babe. My blood remembers endless days spent tending resilient gardens, uninterrupted by those unsanctified screens and spirit-starved screams for immediate attention. And, in those rare still moments, my bones’ marrow recalls retreat to the edges of waters fed by melting snows and into the yellow curls of budding daffodils.
Remind me, Grandmother. I fear I’ve misplaced the treasure map showing me where my ancestral inheritance was hidden. My spiraling double-helix sigils are stamped with the pain of famine, dead children, and betrayal. There is a persistent mourning in the ache of my joints, and day by day, they groan a little louder in a bone-on-bone keening for my forgotten dead.
Remind me, Grandmother. Without your perpetual hope, I’m in a dire place, precariously teetering on the precipice of feckless nostalgia and overromanticization of my haunted past. It’s the mudlicking primal wild I’m after, you see, and I know you hear me.
Remind me of my tenderest roots, Grandmother, if only now, while I drift to sleep on these early-spring evenings.
Sunrise Reflection: The Beloved Dead
The first moon of spring calls us to ask ourselves potent questions about lineage and legacy, about broken mother lines and misplaced myths. Witches lean toward intuitive understanding in these times of lost ancestries, rather than endless intellectual digging through records of birth and death, easily fabricated nonevidence and inaccurate reflections of the deep wells of passion and experience housed by the flesh of those who bore us. There is a rejuvenated purity to early spring, an air of wide-eyed, newborn innocence and electric possibility that pulls us closer to healing what seemed unhealable — that is, to integrating what once seemed so far outside us, too foreign and, perhaps, too revolting to possibly be part of us. Each spring we are blessed with what seems a newfound gift of grace, an invitation to encounter, if not hold in our shaking hands, the wealth of Earth-based traditions that our blood remembers and remembers well.
Those coming home to their Witchcraft, acknowledging the art of magick for the first time, perhaps, after sufficiently dismantling the walls of indoctrinated belief that blocked their way, often are met with yet another obstacle, one entirely unforeseen and seemingly insurmountable. If we are to embrace the rhythms of the earth, the Craft, and the land, we must feel into the beauteous fabric of which our soul threads are part. We must resist ignoring the scars we have inherited, yes, but we must also look to the wisdom of those who lived long before the dead ones we know by name. We must step back and broaden our vision, scrying our way from the intricate patterns of family and roots.
To do so, we must seek out the beloved dead. We must extend our reach beyond a century or two. We must cultivate the long vision that eludes these days, and we must take great care with our fragile psyches and questing spirits.
Tell me, how does it feel to set the intention to frame yourself as but a character in a larger story, without sacrificing your sovereignty? How does it feel, on the cusp of this fertile season of sensuality and abundance, to acknowledge that you were born, in part, to be the salve for the wounds of your kindred in spirit?
The wild-hearted are stronger in numbers, and your magick is that much more powerful when you acknowledge that it is sourced from legions of flame-tending altar keepers, masses of hearth holders and medicine people who, in their own way, still stand with you. Spring is the season of digging, but for now, we forsake the trowel for the pen, the dirt for dream visions. In your Book of Moon and Flame, free-write on the following prompts, if they feel true, changing the language as you see fit:
I come from a long line of flame tenders, and they remind me now of...
In those wild dream visions, all my kindreds stand there, encircling a tree, pressing foreheads to bark, and praying for...
I am the living bloom sprouted from seeds planted by my great-great-grandmother in a lush land of greed and battle, and these resilient roots of mine will never...
Spring Equinox Celebration: Twin Eggs of Birth and Renewal
Materials: Air-drying clay
To beckon warmer days, to breathe hot and melt those persistent morning frosts in the name of sheer and visceral desire, is a primal act. We find ourselves in the final stages of labor here, birthing something out of pure will and our human longing to create but not knowing, not yet, what our faithful efforts have yielded. The great paradox of spring is this: If we look to the creation myths across many cultures, we see that birth is nothing if not violent, a sudden and cataclysmic eruption of something epic out of a primordial dark womb. And yet, in spring, there is also a sense of lightness, possibility, and joy.
Our vernal equinox celebrations must weave these two seemingly opposing spring energies together, blending that soft-baby-animal creaturely and generative innocence with that bursting, disruptive force that brings all things new into being. Equinoxes are balance points between light and shadow, and on that first day of spring, we must welcome the sweet and sugary light along with the bold, bone-shaking dark.
At your altar, light your candle of sovereignty and welcome the spirits of your more ancient elders of good intent, those who have your best interest at heart, those who want you to remember the unique power that runs in your blood. Face the east, the direction of new beginnings and the spring season; then begin to mold two egg-shaped sculptures from clay by hand, honoring this season of renewed opportunities and endless chances, pondering the infinite potential found in nature, the sheer resilience of wild agency, and the peace that comes from knowing that all dies to begin again. What you failed to hatch last year, what stayed hidden behind your fragile eggshell walls, surely will emerge from the cosmic egg this go-around, vibrant, full of wonder, and poised for timely action.
Take care with these new creations, humble in appearance as they may be. Hold an egg in each hand, naming the one in your right the Egg of Morning, the one in your left the Egg of Evening. Begin to move now, as you feel called; these movements might be subtle and slow gestures or emphatic leaps and rhythmic pulses. Pray with your body. Become an embodied expression of possibility. Honor both the expanding light and the dwindling dark here, on the equinox. Imagine your beloved ancestors dancing with you, holding their own eggs and welcoming what comes. Invite your primal and long-gone dead, those who hold the deepest treasures, those who can initiate you better and more meaningfully into your Craft than any living human.
These delights are what our best times are made of, after all. These small revelries remind us why we have been born to flesh. Stay with this for as much time as you have, permitting your movements to perhaps find repetition; here is where we meet the body electric, when our dance becomes a sacred limb-and-spine offering. If you can stay in the dance until that blessed slightly altered state of consciousness comes, when the dance swallows the thoughts whole and there’s little left but heartbeat and movement, you will encounter there a small piece of the Holy Wild sensual.
Your dance has charged your eggs with memory and feeling. Seal this ceremony by decorating them in whatever way seems right, perhaps with rose thorns penetrating the Egg of Evening or intricate symbols of blossom and root carved on the Egg of Morning. Drink something cool and sweet, and welcome all that comes, returning your eggs to your altar and thanking the ancestors in spirit who joined you in your celebration.
Adaptation for Families, Coven Groups, and Other Wild Circles: A Dance of Light and Shadow
Communal celebration of our kinship with those quickening seeds and searching sprouts warms us when the chill in the air is persistent past its time. Consider adapting the aforementioned ritual to a wild circle of revelers by inviting everyone to dance and move. You might place a basket of premade eggs in the center, with all moving to bless these timeless symbols of gestation and new beginnings. You might have half the group represent the Egg of Evening, the waning darkness, and half represent the Egg of Morning, the expanding light of day, with each group moving through their own body prayer of becoming. Beat the drums. Howl. One of the greatest mottoes for spring witchery is this: We must have joy in our Craft. Resist taking yourself too seriously now — there’s plenty of time for that later, after all — and honor what tribulations have come and gone during the winter season, what a welcome victory it is to have made it through to spring.
If you feel called, you might also make and decorate egg-shaped cookies or place small wishes and blessings inside eggs and hide them in that time-honored tradition with quite Pagan roots; the egg is hidden as a symbol of gestating the new, and uncovering it is a symbol of birth. With your wild circle, wear vine-wrapped flower crowns and call the days to swell toward fruition. Share stories of lineage healing and sweet remembrance, knowing that every belly laugh is as holy as any incantation could ever be.
Season of Tender Roots: New Moon
Grandmother Speaks: Let’s Get Some of This Blood in the Dirt
At long last, you have arrived. Something about this place sparks childhood memories of dewy forest floors and visitations by those mythic fair-folk, those thin-limbed creatures made of lightning that you were so sure were real — that is, until you were told you were dreaming. The Garden Hag’s house is surrounded by blooms so bright they seem to hum, unable to live as such beauty and stay silent. You believe the house is made of stone, but those creeping ivy vines have wrapped every wall in deep emerald curls, and the door eludes you.
For a fleeting moment, you wonder if you are still alive, if perhaps you did indeed die on that winter mountain, and this is your afterlife, a lush place that has never known chill or famine. Even so, your heart beats loudly, and you smell the sweetness of wet dirt. Surely, in the ethers, the gods would never allow flowers to hold such potency, to be more glorious than the deities themselves.
“What are you waiting for, child?” Her voice startles you, and you can see nothing now but tall-growing sunflowers and rosy thickets. “Come, you must be hungry, and I daresay you look a fright.” The garden becomes less forgiving now as you move thorny stems out of your path and make your way toward her voice, struggling to choose the right path. “That’s it. Keep going; it will be worth it, I promise.”
You’re in the briars and brambles now. You question whether you took the hardest path, or perhaps all ways were fraught with such sharp-toothed obstacles. Your flesh is carved up by these wilds.
“You’re nearly there. Just a little farther. Stay on the path you chose; don’t second-guess yourself,” she urges, and you think her voice sounds far too optimistic to belong to a hag. Blood runs in rivulets down your arms, and you taste iron on your tongue. She’s really there now, though. You can see her thick gray curls through the brush, and you make one final push beyond these angry grasses and bladed branches. Erupting from the thicket, an aged blackthorn with low branches pierces the flesh of your legs and soft of your belly. You fall, bloodied but free, at the feet of the Garden Hag.
“You didn’t think such beauty came without a price, did you?” She reaches to help you stand, and you blink the red from your eyelashes to see her better. She’s a raw one, for sure, and the sun has loved her well for many years, but her rose-and-pentagram tattoo is still clear on her cracked-skin chest. She’s dressed in sheer pastels, and you can see every sharp curve, every thick and raised scar, of her wise-woman body through her clothes. “Come, before you eat, let’s get some of this blood in the dirt; the roots love it, and I have just the story to welcome you to my humble haunt.”
The Garden Hag helps you to her bountiful table, lushly blanketed with all manner of homegrown fruit and root vegetable. Hiking her skirt between her legs, she sits at the garden’s edge and leans close, smirking. When a hag such as this twists her mouth in that sly way before she tells a story, you can trust the tale will be a doozy. When the roses themselves seem to bend a bit closer to hear her words, you know you are about to learn much from this old one with a child’s heart.
The Chicken-Witch of the Grove: A Ceremonial Equinox Tale
To participate in this story ceremony, collect a single basket and eleven objects that can represent the passions, wounds, joys, art, memories, and great loves of your foremothers. These might be eggs, as they are in the story; crystals; flowers; or any other symbol of forgotten stories and hidden secrets. Scatter them around the room or in a natural setting, tucking them away as if you are hiding treasures for a curious babe, then begin to read aloud, setting the intention to symbolically recover lost pieces of your lineage.
Oh, child, you might want to cover your ears, for I’m about to tell you something that’s sure to shock even the likes of you. Take a breath. Are you ready?
In all parts of the world, even that humble piece of green beauty you inhabit so well and with such grace, there exists a creature so wild, so beastly, no one dare speak her name. In truth, though, there are many reasons to go searching for her, this long-tongued mistress of all monsters, but only the bravest hearts ever do. They never have to look far, either; she’s in the house around the corner, pushing the cart in the corner shop, and rocking the grandbaby on the park bench. Yes, she’s fearsome, but she’s hardly rare.
Do you know what she is yet? Can you tell by the lilt in my tone? My smirk? The spark in my eyes?
She’s the lusty grandmother, low-breasted and sharp-tongued, compassionate in deed but obscene in humor. You might seek her out for advice; she’s got years of wisdom tucked under her tunic. You might seek her out for a listening ear; she’ll hear you like no one else can.
There is, however, one reason above all reasons why you might search for that mystery-keeping, hip-swaying hag — she’s got the greatest stories.
She tells the stories no one else tells, those tales of unchaste-women-gone-warrioress and loose-lipped Witches who shared too much. She tells the stories others won’t, and this is one she tells only the truest of hearts, only those who have expressed a longing for sacral wound healing that goes beyond talk and digs into the muck of it, into the fecund depths of shadow and rot, trusting that often there is, in the end, much growth to be born of disgrace.
Now, the lusty grandmothers all begin this tale like this, and I’m not one to part with their traditions:
Once, in a land where the mists remembered what people forgot, where the air was heavy with story and legend but those who lived there spoke in short bursts of arrogant rhetoric and one-size-suits-all maxims, there lived an ordinary woman who hungered for more. She yearned for poetry and passion, for those long-gone days of forbidden love and youthful rebellion. Where could she ever find her sisters-in-lawlessness who yearned to live as she lived, with an insatiable thirst for hedonistic ceremony, first-and-only kisses, blooming gardens, and sensual majesty?
This woman, this plain and simple chicken-witch who collected eggs at sunrise and tended to her garden until the evening skies glowed pink, woke each morning a little more ravenous for that particular secret that left unknown to her would continue to keep her from a more pleasure-filled life. She never kept a lover long, and her few friends maintained a careful distance. She boasted sacred solitude and a love of the land to hide her loneliness, but, indeed, there was an egg-shaped hole in her heart that she could never seem to fill.
Now, the lusty grandmothers who tell this tale disagree on many things, stubborn crones that they are. Some say that this woman, this woman whom we’ll call Juniper, hailed from a long line of women who shared her distaste for illusion, who yearned for something greater and more mystical than this ordinary world was showing them. Others say that Juniper was unique in her particular quest for joyful community and magick making. In the end, who’s to know? Isn’t that precisely where we all find ourselves, in that place of deep and debilitating uncertainty where our grandmothers are but black-and-white photographs and our more primal ancestors are mythic legends, at best? Juniper was much like we all are these days: trusting in her belonging to something greater than she had known but unsure of where to find the medicine she needed.
The lusty hags agree on this next bit, though:
Against all odds and weighted by the heavy shroud of mystery, Juniper had faith that she was the living incarnation of her ancestors’ best-kept secret. One evening, just as that first new moon of spring was rising, she set her mind to seek out that particular sustenance she was craving. She left the warmth of her farmhouse bed, called into the night by the silvery and spectral beams of that milk-white sliver in the sky, passing through her well-tended garden and by her many quiet chicken coops and, before long, finding herself with mud-soaked feet at the edge of a fog-filled grove. In this place, the grandmothers say, the trees had eyes. Juniper could sense the wild all around her, mist-made fingers caressing her face and hissing spirits singing softly into her ears.
Some of the trees watching her now were the kind she was named for, the holy tree of cleansing and renewal to those ancestors she had never known. Others were knotty oaks and naughty pines, holy ash trees with spidery branches, and mourning willows, but all bent to see the seemingly sure-footed maiden moving to stand at the grove’s center. Anyone who had been watching — if anyone would have dared to watch such a clearly sacred and solitary ritual — would have seen Juniper raise her arms moonward, stand stone still at the center of that place, and sprout shaggy greens from her head. They would have seen her skin gray over into bark, her head roll slightly to the side, and her eyes glaze over to become blueberry clusters. They would have seen her white dress pierced through and through by branches, and they would have seen a magick-starved woman turn into a lush and full-grown juniper tree.
But no one was watching, and Juniper’s experience of that night was far different from what it might have looked like to an outsider without the ethereal sight.
Yes, she did reach her arms toward the moon, but all the while her roots were sinking deep, stretching low and wide, meeting and intertwining beneath the soil with the other trees’ ancient memories. The other trees did not look at all to her like bark-and-leaf, knot-and-needle forest dwellers, not any longer; she could see them for what they were in that moment: mothers and grandmothers come to meet her here, disguised as those earthly deities who were, like our foremothers, too often taken for granted.
There were dozens of them, moving toward her now, slowly and with much love in their eyes. She recognized so few of them, though she saw her face in their faces. No names had she for these matrilineal wisdom keepers, but they indeed knew her. Juniper sensed, in that moment, that each of these wild hearts held a piece of that secret that eluded her, a particular line in the story that, until this very moment, she thought was hers and hers alone to know and to share, if she had anyone she cared to share it with.
A hooded and kind-faced crone stepped forward and pulled two small and spotted eggs from the thick woolen fabric she was draped in; one of the eggs smelled rotten and was dull in color, while the other was so vibrantly blue that it glowed with an otherworldly spirit.
“Take them both, child,” the hag prompted. “This one is my grief over a babe lost too young, and this one is my love of the sea.”
Move about the space now, and recover two objects that symbolize these ancestral pieces, placing them in your basket.
The chicken-witch took the gifts with great care, nodding in gratitude.
“And here,” another grandmother stepped forward, dressed as a chaste and holy woman and holding two pink-marble eggs, one cracked and one whole. “This is my devout discipline that might have killed me sooner” — she handed Juniper the cracked egg — “had I not harbored such a wild lust beneath my overstarched skirts.” Grinning, the old one handed her other egg, and it gave Juniper’s hand the slightest shock when she touched it.
Recover two more objects that reflect these ancestral pieces, placing them in your basket.
“Don’t dare forget these,” offered another ancestor, a gender-fluid beloved wearing jewels of bone and shell. “This is my heartbreak when I left my land.” They held a bleeding egg up to their cheek and christened it with their tears. “And this...” They paused, opened their mouth wide, and a blue-quartz egg rolled from their tongue. “This is the Witchcraft that healed me.”
Again, recover two more objects, and name them what you like.
A seemingly faceless granny tapped her on the shoulder, and the chicken-witch gasped at the sight of her.
“Fear not, child,” the shadow beneath the hood ordered. “I bring you the deep mysteries of your people.” She handed her an egg made of bone with a skeletal hand. “The oldest medicine I have.” She pulled another egg from up her sleeve. “And the long-vision.” The spectral crone gave her still one more egg, a bark-skinned thing that seemed to be a seed, and then the whole of her vanished into thin air.
Recover three more objects, and name them what you like.
To Juniper, it seemed only a fateful, teary-eyed evening spent beneath a new moon, receiving long-kept wisdom and family knowledge, whispered slowly in her ear by one woman after another, handed to her as endless gifts of egg after egg. But to anyone living in the fast-paced world she had left, many moons would rise and set over this grove of mismatched trees set ’round the young, rebel juniper in the center.
“Such is the work of the spring,” the last grandmother mused, handing the chicken-witch the last two of her gifts. Juniper’s skirts were heavy now, weighted with a bounty of family secrets, cronely art, deep wounds and certain regrets, and hidden love affairs and, most of all, the wild inheritance that had been hers to claim all along. “This is a deep betrayal by those who claimed to love me.” She held a humble and misshapen shell, the insides long leaked out, and soft whimpers and mewling sounds came from the pitiful thing as she handed it to Juniper. “That heart wound was mine, but it’s yours to heal, my great-great-granddaughter. And this” — she pulled a large and spotted egg from her pocket — “this is my resilience, my refusal to stay down for too long; now it’s all yours, as it’s always been.”
Recover the final two objects and rest your body now, humming softly with basket full and heart tender.
Now, some of the lusty grandmothers who tell this tale say that as soon as she took that last egg, the chicken-witch woke warm in her bed, laughing at the bizarre dream of treespeak and egg-bearing grandmothers, but that the very next day Juniper left her farm sanctuary and went into the world, celebrating the spring at a debaucherous garden party where she met a lover who would become friend, who would become partner.
The lusty grandmothers who harbor a love of the traditional fairy tale end the story like this:
The chicken-witch remained in that grove, a lovely young juniper tree to anyone who ventured to that hallowed ground, for many years, though to her it seemed only a single evening, until a sacred hunter with a warm heart saw her for what she was: a healing woman who spoke the language of the trees, who held a treasure trove of wisdom in her skirts, who needed no saving but rather to wake with a heart made more whole by blood and belonging.
The Garden Hag goes quiet then, recovering from a story well told, and you ponder the treasures gifted you, on this fateful evening as this Season of Tender Roots opens itself to you like a wildflower beginning to bloom.
Opening Practice: Your Spring Initiation
There is much joy to be had under the first new moon of spring, to be sure; so, too, is there much healing to be done, much bleeding on the ground to feed the roots. You find yourself on a precipice of some great, unnamed thing here, and your inner hag is bidding you soften those hard psychic edges a bit. Surrender. Lay your winter-frozen flesh bare on the ground and welcome that annual melt.
Speak these words in a wild place, if you’re able. Find yourself in those predawn hours when the house is asleep but the ghosts of the beloved dead are awake. Gaze into that swelling dusty-pink glow on the horizon, and know you are not, and indeed have never been, alone.
This is my spring initiation, and I know now that the joyful hag is me. My heart beats in time with the drums of my forebears. My laugh is the cackle of every crone who came before me, and those mighty ones have surely dreamed me into being. Somewhere right now, in a time that is long gone but still is, there is a hopeful wanderer of my bloodline gazing at the sunrise, as I do in this moment, praying for the very wholeness and healing that I embody. I am the living incarnation of their secret spells, and somewhere, in a time that is yet-to-come, there is a hopeful creature connected to me through this silver-threaded cosmic web. Their breath is my breath, and they have woven the most beauteous tapestry out of these scars of mine.
Seal this ceremony by envisioning one of your most caring primal ancestors breathing in rhythm with you, in rhythm with the babes of the future who wonder about the wisdom of ancient altar keepers like you.
Waxing Moon Practice: Writing It Real
This first moon of spring is a soul-warming moon, and our magick is tasked with both manifestation and healing. As that moon of cleansing storms swells toward fruition, ask yourself what you are calling in that, if only in a small way, serves as a healing salve for the wounds of the wild, for the aches and pains endured by those who have come before us. We bridge the ancient with the new now, beneath these radically hopeful skies, and we bind the material to the embodied feeling.
Gather the signs you have been receiving from both dreams and the material world that seem to show you the way forward. Choose three life areas to inform your manifestation Craft as the moon waxes toward fullness; these might be sacred work, art, family, gender expression, romance, spiritual connection, communication, or any other aspect of your being that seems potent and pressing now. Certainly, we do not have such pieces of ourselves tucked away neatly in stacked boxes. Our work is hardly separate from our art or our communication. We are selecting certain puzzle pieces of our lives now as an act of discernment, of brave-hearted manifestation. We choose now to make the first mark on the blank canvas with hands shaking and brush dripping. We choose now because we feel those quickening energies sparking in our cells, and we choose now to claim the choice as ours.
Spend this waxing moon choosing the beginnings of what will be your spellwork in spring. Ask yourself what is in transition, what feels as if it is shifting underfoot, and what is teetering on some thin edge waiting for you to pull it close or push it away, once and for all. You might look to the creation myths of your ancestry, framing those tales of primordial darkness, violent deities, cosmic eggs, and ancient, long-rooted trees as telling metaphors for the magick of manifestation.
If it feels overly limiting to choose only three life areas, then choose more. If it feels best to work with only one area, then this is the path. Part of the Garden Hag’s medicine is discernment born of vulnerable and honest reflection; we take stock, we choose the path, and we move forward, all the while listening to our inner crone for direction. Each morning as the moon waxes, set the intention to receive a sign from the wilds, and look to the ways in which nature itself is an oracle.
In your Book of Moon and Flame begin to describe the life areas as you want them to be, as if they were a snapshot of you in a future remembered into being. Write it real. This is not one-size-suits-all manifestation magick; this is word-witchery at its best. As you write, stay in touch with the embodied feeling of this moment you are describing, and be sure this is a feeling you can name as your own. As you see yourself there in that moment, is the feeling joy? Ease? Satisfaction? Release? Try to maintain that embodied sense of the moment while you write and describe nothing other than the actual moment of fruition, of vision realized.
All the While, They Were Writing It Real
Storm Moon Spells
In their most epic moments, they were so still that ivy might have wrapped around their frozen flesh, that moss might have gathered beneath the once-soft swell of their thighs. The twitching of their right hand was the lone sign they lived on, pouring black-ink word-witchery onto the page like their very lifeblood was running out through the end of the pen and curling in dark, sanguine poetry, weaving and swirling about in aching words and lost stories. Spring storms raged outside their window, vicious battles between the lightning children and their low-rumbling hunter god, but they were unmoved. Were others to see them in such a state, they might think them a slow-breathing monument to a hunted witch-scribe, but they would never know their wildest secret. In those moments, they were writing it real, you see. They were breathing it all into being, one precious letter at a time, like a dream vision had by their great-grandbabes longing for their handwritten myths; in those moments, they were dreaming those holy innocents to life with the potent medicine scribbled and tossed about on the page. Yes, the harder-hearted ones wondered about them — pitied them, even — but, all the while, they were writing it real.
Season of Tender Roots: Full Moon
Grandmother Speaks: The Sweetest Fruit Is Only Fresh for So Long
The Garden Hag told you your scrapes would be worth it, and the bounty before you affirms her promise. A more beauteous tablescape you have never seen. Surely, you have come a long way since that first winter moon. Surely, some long-gone elder is blessing you from the ethers.
The Garden Hag is tending to your wounds now, blotting the blood and smearing bitter-smelling plant medicine on your bare back. Your belly is snarling, but the choices are so immense that you cannot decide what taste you’d like first on that overdry tongue of yours. Pitchers of pink liquid with golden flecks stand next to platters of fresh and glistening fruits and homegrown greens. The sweet scents are so overwhelming that you all but forget your wounds and scarcely feel the spittle running down your chin.
“Go on,” she mutters. “If you dither in uncertainty too long, this bounty will fade. Already this arrogant sun threatens to brown the berries and wilt my roses. All of this is yours now; what stops you? Some distant memory of a mocking bully? Something said to a long-lost loved one, words you didn’t even know were stuck to one of your bones like these thorns in your flesh? What stops you from claiming these gifts as yours? Eat now. Don’t wait. The sweetest fruit is only fresh for so long.”
Full Moon Practice: Cosmic Eggs of Creation and Will
Having described your dream visions, having written them real, gather three jars now, one for each of the life areas with which you are working; if you chose to have more or fewer life areas, then you’ll need as many jars as dream visions. Each jar is a cosmic egg, a place to nest and gestate. Choose objects to place in the cosmic eggs that represent each vision, and be sure to include something you value in each jar. In manifestation spell-work beware of using objects that you care nothing about; this expresses your lack of commitment. This is not to say, however, that you must use objectively pricey items; these are small things that mean something to you. Inside each jar, place the objects along with a small piece of paper describing your dream vision that corresponds to that particular cosmic egg.
When ready, beneath the first full moon of spring, cast a circle or create sacred space in another way suited to your practice; then hold one jar at a time in your hands. See yourself in that vision you are calling in. Feel the feeling. Begin to move in small ways, and however you are moving, begin to see yourself moving that same way in the vision, breathing as you are now in the vision. Step into the flesh of the body that is you in that vision. This is your becoming, your holiest hour. You have already written it real; now embody it real.
Feel yourself surrounded by your beloved ancestors, and imagine them moving as you are moving, breathing as you are breathing. When each vision feels full, as if you cannot more powerfully be in that yet-tocome, already-here moment, place the jar on the ground and move on to the next vision. Move and breathe with each of your cosmic eggs, trusting that you are being held in this moment, that the moment itself is holding you, willing it real with you and for you.
After you have held each jar, stand in your circle now, feeling the energy you have raised through your vision, body, and breath. Stand in infinite trust, full of faith that you have rippled the cosmic fabric in that moment, and offer gratitude for what comes, for what is already here.
And so it is.
Season of Tender Roots: Waning Moon
Grandmother Speaks: The Strongest Medicine
You might have called yourself a glutton in your younger years, but you know better now. You know to eat when you’re hungry and deprive yourself of nothing. You know not to apologize for having a feeling, creaturely body, and you know to sleep when the world has made you weary.
“I see you’ve eaten your fill, sweet child.” The Garden Hag smiles. She sits across from you at the immense table, still covered in flowers and fruit despite your having had your ravenous way with nearly every food offered. The waning moon looms above, promising some great vibrant change. “I’ve prepared a room for you, but before you head for such comforts, I’d like to invite you to take the strongest medicine of all. Your stomach can handle it now.”
You lean back in your chair and look her in her kind eyes, seeing no malice there.
“It’s not a potent root or mushroom, this medicine.” She pulls her silk scarf around her shoulders and leans closer, dipping a finger into some jam and licking it clean. “It’s simply an understanding, a deep knowing of sorts.”
You swallow, waiting.
The hag lets out a long breath and stands, holding her palms toward you, lifting her chin, and presenting her medicine like a grand entertainer.
“The strongest medicine is realizing you are but a single thread in the great galactic fabric. One little tug from you changes the design — reaches the ancients, even — and touches the yet-to-come. The strongest medicine is knowing that you are becoming the wild one you needed when you were younger; that you are healing inherited wounds just by breathing; and that you are a member of a near-infinite and ever-evolving community of sages, Priestesses, and holy ones, of imperfect seekers and flawed lovers.”
She nods at the rosebushes that marked you well. “Those roses live now, but their petals will fall so others might bloom. This is the way of it. We are no different, and each spring we’re reminded of our fleeting beauty, our interconnection with all that is.”
She turns and walks toward the house. “Come, I’ll show you to your room.”
Waning Moon Practice: The Great Galactic Fabric
As a waning moon practice, consider making an offering to your ancestors. This might be a small gift, a flower laid beneath a tree or a poem written to those who came before you. There is no need to name these people unless you feel called to. You might make this offering just once as the moon wanes, or it might be a daily act of framing yourself as part of an unseen collective. As you make this offering, imagine some small child of the future making this same offering to you. See a world less wounded and a land left better by your hand, by the hands of those who act now to save what must be saved.
She Knows My Secrets Now
A Gift of Milk and Tongue to Mother Blackthorn
On an evening much like this one, I knelt and spilled milk on the roots of a stone-barked blackthorn tree in the name of the warrioresses who came before me, who called that tree their mother god, who humbled themselves before those lightning children of Danu better than I ever could. She pricked my neck as I stood, and I wanted to spit at this tree called strife by the green-dwellers, but I gifted her my storyteller’s tongue instead, leaving it as an ornament for her more beastly branches. She knows my secrets now, as I know hers, and I’ll forever call this ferocious wolf-mother tree my kin, long after I lay my aching elder body down before her so my blood might feed her berries, long after her roots wrap around the curves of my bones, and long after the innocent babes come to her, spilling their own milk for the Fae and speaking prayers in a heathen tongue.
Season of Tender Roots: Dark Moon
Grandmother Speaks: Tomorrow, We Get Dirty
“All right, child. Tuck yourself in tight.” The Garden Hag leaves a low-burning lantern at the bedside and opens the curtains. “Always sleep in moonlight when you can; it’s good for your skin.”
The bed is small, decorated with mismatched floral patterns, and the room smells of hyacinths and lavender.
“Dream deep, sweet one.” She has an earnest look on her face now, taking the lily that was tucked in her hair and handing it to you. “Tonight, we sleep. Tomorrow, we get dirty.”
Dark Moon Practice: Memories of Joy and Grace
Though we cast no spells beneath the dark moon, we can still do the work of preparing for what comes. As the first moon of spring wanes to dark, consider your cosmic eggs, those dream visions you are nesting now. Consider the feelings you have bound to each vision, and then call up a seed memory for each vision that resonates with the same feeling for you. If one of your dream visions is you in a new home, feeling both joyous and rooted, call to mind a memory when you felt that same, though perhaps less pronounced, feeling. Under the dark moon, find a memory of potent feeling that you can associate with each of your cosmic egg visions, then sleep well in this bright and blooming world you live in.
To the Season of Tender Roots, Farewell for Now
Birth is violent, is it not? No wide-eyed babe enters the world with ease, covered in sweet-smelling perfumes, laughing and gleeful at the amusement of its mother’s labor. This world is met for the first time with guttural screams, hot breath, and much, much blood. This world is met with primal eruption, with helplessness, and with an enduring trust that all is as it must be. We meet the spring with tender hearts thawing, with fragile roots seeking that particular nourishment they need from those who have come before.
To the Season of Tender Roots, farewell for now. We shall meet again next year, I a wiser Witch and you a growing garden tended well by the oldest gods.
