Lughnasadh

“Hoof and horn hoof and horn
Those who die shall be reborn
Corn and grain corn and grain
Those who fall shall rise again”

I’m not sure the origin of the chant above but I learned it when I was a new witch. I’ve been thinking about it this morning. I posted in one of my witchy groups about mourning and sacrfice. I believe that even when you work magick to assist you in meeting a goal you have to be prepared for sacrifice. Will that goal require time, money, and energy? Nothing comes for free. The sacrifice could be as small as throwing some of your favorite plant into the fire to assist with your spell. At the last full moon I threw some of my precious lavender flowers into the fire because I have found my magick works better when I use materials that are sacred to me. When thinking about the harvest I’m bringing in for this turn of the wheel I was reminded of the sacrifices I had to make to get here. I had to leave my home of 50 years and move. In doing that I lost many friendships and connections and even angered some of my family. I’m in a smaller community which means a loss of opportunity. That being said, I have gained a back yard to practice my spirituality in, a studio where I can work on my business, and a safer community to live in. Oh yes and a lovely dedicated temple space!

Another thing I have been focused on is mourning. Here in Wisconsin, if you haven’t planted most things by now you are out of luck till next spring. If your crops have failed you have to just mourn the loss and look ahead. I feel it goes that way for goals as well. What goals did you plant in the spring? Did they all sprout up and grow or did some of them never get off the ground. It might be time to allow yourself to mourn those goals and let them go until you can plant them next year. I know not all witches live on the wheel but I do for the most part. Right now I am focused on harvest not planting. When the wheel turns again to Imbolc I will be ready to start thinking about new goals or old goals I want to restart.

Lughnasadh is one of my favorite turns of the wheel. We celebrate by playing games and having a big feast. We remember the sacrifice of John Barleycorn and we honor Demeter as the mother of grain. Usually we have pretty good weather this time of year, although it can be humid. It is always a great day. Underneath it all the energy calls on us to recognize we are turning towards the dark time of the year. The god of the grain will be cut down and Demeter must prepare to be without Persephone soon. As with everything there is light and shadow, harvest and sacrifice.

I can feel the energy shift towards the darker season. This morning when I went out to my backyard I saw two yellow leaves resting on my deck. It was just a glimmer of what is coming.

What will you be harvesting? Do you have things you wish to mourn?

D

New Moon

Whew…this Mercury Retrograde has been brutal. That being said the new moon always brings a fresh opportunity to get things done, so here I go…

This month I’m thinking about things in a broader sense. Instead of working on goals I am working on fire and power. By power I mean the power that comes from within. I think I am just now starting to feel the real cost of the past year. Now that the physical pain is starting to pass away I am coming to terms with the emotional pain.

Both Thor and Freya have showed up over the last couple of days. I have worked with them before but I do not work with them all the time. I’m going work with them for this lunation and see where it goes.

How are you doing and will you be doing anything special for this lunation?

D

Wrapping Up My Solar Year

Here I am again near the end of another solar year. I am more than ready to wave this year goodbye. Everything about my 50th year has been hard and it turned out nothing like I expected. I am ready to let that all go as I try to envision a new solar year.

I was born on June 21st. I am a summer solstice baby. I like the summer season even though it always feels so busy. By the time I reach Samhain I am more than ready for the rest that comes with the darkness. Over the past year I feel like the soil of my spirit has been tilled over and over. With the shock of each trial I had to find the strength to get up and start over.

I don’t have a ton of fire in my chart and I’m always seeking ways to cultivate it. The gods have given me a powerful message about this. They have shown me that the fire I seek is within me and that all I have to do it release it and let it flow out of me. This seems like something I should’ve already known but somehow in my frustration I just could not see it. So over the next year you are going to see a lot of fire coming from me.

I also want to work on my relationships. Covid really did a number on my ability to connect with other like minded people. I want to get out to more witchy events and I want to meet some new people. Because of past pain I let go of much of the local pagan community. Stepping out can feel scary but I am ready. The hard part is discerning who is safe and where is a good place to start.

Between now and my birthday I am going to work on pleasure, my word of the year and then I will hit the ground running when Solstice rolls around. Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts today. How do you celebrate the longest day of the year?

D

Out of Pain Comes New Life

Whew! I have been going through it lately! I have experienced this before and I know that this is the tilling of my life that preceeds a huge season of growth. Whenever the soil of my inner life is worked, turned over, over and over again, it is a very painful process. Things are cut off and pulled out, displaced and disguarded. My nights are sleepless as my body vibrates with anxiety and vigilance. Typically I view this vigilance as a by product of my childhood trauma, now I’m trying to see it as the vigilance of my spirit awaiting the new growth about to arrive.

Beltane is coming soon and I can hear and feel its song in the distance. It will bring with it flowers and sunshine, dancing and a bursting forth of new possibilities. This soil that has been painfully turned over will create space for my new self to push through. So for now, I’m trying to embrace this season of pain and struggle. I trust the universe that the wheel is always turning and soon the rewards of hard work and endurance will come to me.

Spring is a messy season and I’m feeling kind of messy right now. It has been rainy this week but every so often the sun peeks out to remind me that it will not always be gray.

D

Ostara and the Inner Child

With Ostara arriving soon I have been thinking about my inner child. I celebrate the young maiden Goddess for this turn of the wheel. When I imagine myself at that age it often brings sadness because my childhood was very traumatic. Luckily I have fairly good memories of Easter and so I can use them to fuel my Ostara work. My mother would buy me an Easter basket every year and I was always so excited to dig through the fake grass hoping to find the perfect piece of candy. When I grew a little older my mother would buy me a lily to wear to church. I felt like a big girl and I would spend most of the service smelling my flower. Sometimes my basket would have bubbles or a jump rope, or maybe a new Barbie doll. No matter what was inside it was magical! Every Easter would bring a new dress no matter how little money we had. I don’t know how my mother did this, again like magic she made miracles happen.

During this week leading up to Ostara I intend to indulge my inner little girl. I’m going to try to capture her sparkle and way of looking at the world. I’m going to try to call some of her sweetness back to me. She is who I was before I became so guarded. She is wild and affectionate, she is the part of me who loves freely without worry. She is dandelion chains and frilly socks, she is about to bloom and unaware of what is coming.

How will you celebrate Ostara? I’m going to put up some of my decor today and this weekend I will cook some delicious food. I will probably play with my puppy outside just like I did when I was a girl. Some things never change and I can hear the echos of her, my child self calling me to come outside and play.

Rebirth

This week I experienced another rebirth in my life. I’m finding the process of death and rebirth to be very accelerated these days. As I have been breaking the chains of past trauma and unlocking long barricaded doors inside my brain I’m dying and bursting back into the world of the living over and over again.

Last week I experienced the death of a long-held idea about myself and my childhood. I was stunned by how much the death of this idea hurt and haunted me. Embracing the truth that I uncovered stuck a knife in my heart and caused me to need to let that old view of the self die and a new self to emerge. I grieved this old self and felt sad to see this romanticized idea die and be replaced by something closer to the truth. As always a new self sprung to life and she is more compassionate to the little girl who was and she can see the landscape of my life with fresh eyes and perspective. This is magick! Being able to face the old ideas regarding self and embrace new ways of viewing the now and the past. This process can be heart-rending but through working with The Morrigan I have learned to face it all bravely knowing that the death of the old self is only temporary. She used to nudge me towards the changes I needed to make now I feel she watches over me as I move through transformation after transformation, recreating myself over and over like the creatrix witch that I am.

This week I intend to meditate and work magick using the Queen of Pentacles as my inspiration. She keeps coming up over and over. Mars is back in Gemini and so I’m hoping that will give me a tad more energy. I will admit that working magick when you are chronically ill can be very difficult. It can be hard for me to muster the energy I need and at times the brain fog makes it hard to focus. Early spring has arrived in Wisconsin and so I am hoping to draw some energy from that as well. The new moon will once again be upon us next Saturday. It will be in watery Pisces. I intend to work some over the next few days to removed obstacles so that when the new moon comes I can hit the ground running.

Do you work with the moon cycles? If so what will your new moon work look like?

D

Rewilding

Did you have a happy Yule? Mine was mostly quiet, cozy, and simple. We are all moved into our new house and I am enjoying having a yard again. I’ve been spending time getting to know the land spirits and we were even able to have a fire outside on the solstice. The lovely tree pictured above was found on a walk with my puppy yesterday. It reminded me of the crone adorned in her finest winter dress. There is something so magickal about snow and ice on trees making the whole world look like a fairyland.

I have been thinking about rewilding. It was a focus of mine last year before my health went down the tubes. I know that I have some unfinished work there. A year later I am seeing rewilding differently. I have never been far from the earth, trees, and wild things in my environment. The forest isn’t where I will find the wild I seek. The wild I’m in search of comes from within me. It is stoked in the furnace of my soul and in who I was before the world told me I wasn’t enough. My word for this year is pleasure and I think to find pleasure I need to get reacquainted with my inner wild.

When I was a little girl I had a wild imagination. I ran wild through the wooded area near my apartment making that space my home away from home. As a young adult, I would go to see live music almost every weekend. I would dance and sing along with my favorite bands and allow myself to float on the wild current of the crowd. All these versions of myself still exist within me. I just need to allow myself to connect with them again. At some point, I learned that I was too old to spend my days climbing trees, dancing became harder once the responsibilities of adulthood came crashing in. My imagination dimmed when there were no more worlds to create other than the mundane world of work and the “shoulds” so many of us face.

When I first started practicing witchcraft I felt that wild energy. In being a witch I was not bending to what others thought I should do or be. I was being fully myself, it felt good and it felt wild. I remember when I would have dreams of flying and meeting the gods/goddesses face to face. I remember the wonder of seeing things I hoped for manifested in the world for the first time. It would be good to reconnect with that energy again. Pleasure waits at the place where I can let myself feel wild without constantly judging whether or not my feelings are mature, best for others, or if they serve a purpose other than giving me happiness.

As I follow this path I will post more. When do you feel wild? Did you choose a word for the year?

D

Earthing

We moved last week. For the last few days I have been trying to get in touch with the earth on the property we moved to. We haven’t had much snow this year so I took advantage of it. I found a spot under a tree and I laid down on the ground. I ran my fingers over the grass and then pressed my palms into the soft earth. For the first time since we moved I was able to pour all of my anxiety into the earth

As I gazed up at the tree I whispered my secrets and asked the tree to share her secrets with me. She spoke to me and told me her name is the mother tree. She shared her calm life-giving energy with me. I felt like I could just fall asleep under her. My little puppy Sansa came and laid with me. Together we enjoyed the moment dozing in the peace of the warm earth. After a while, we went inside and took a long nap together. I have really bad insomnia so any time I can sleep deeply and well it is a good thing. I woke up feeling so rested and relaxed. I’m planning to take an offering out to her later on today. I’m so grateful for the calming energy. My new backyard already feels like a sanctuary and I already feel a part of the community. A couple of days ago my husband and I took out offerings of gratitude for our new property and I went around and introduced myself to the land. I can’t wait to spend more time out there working magick and communing with nature.

November 2020

I love this spooky tree!

How was your Samhain? I had a lovely Samhain although some of what I had to let go of was hard. We lost our dog recently and so my husband and I have both been grieving that loss. My space feels so empty and I have been surprised by how big his energy was in my life. I hope he stays with me or at least comes to visit from time to time.

We are moving at the end of the month. We will only be 30 minutes away from where we are now. I am very excited because I will have a room to dedicate as a temple room. In the past I have had spaces for my altars but never an entire room. I think it will be really fun to set up.

Right now I am sitting in front of a sunny window enjoying the bare trees. I love trees in all seasons even when they are bare. They remind me to rest as the earth is preparing to do. They remind me that crones are beautiful! It is unseasonably warm today so I’m going to try to take a walk. Soon the snow will be flying and I’m actually ok with that. With everything tough going on in the world this year my connection to the Goddess has kept me sane and I’ve felt held by the universe. I hope you are all doing ok. How was your Samhain?

Once we move and I get started on my temple space I will post some photos here and over on Instagram!

D

November Gratitude

During the month of November I like to focus on gratitude. Today I am greatful for a lovely Samhain celebration last night. It is so delicious when you can feel your ancestors on the wind. I threw what no longer serves me into the fire and brought in some fresh inspiration for the new year. Who knows what this month holds, I only know that gratitude makes most things easier for me to get through. Are you focusing on gratitude this month? What are you grateful for?

D