Midsummer Blessings

To all my dear friends, blessings, for the Midsummer times are here.

We light the fires of the Summer sun upon the Earth; we sing of the green and the darkness under the trees.

We give thanks, for the cool waters, for the waters from the sky and the waters under the Earth. Thanks for the fires of the Sun and the fires we kindle on the ground. Thanks for the cool air, that lofts the birds and the scents of Summer. Thanks for the warm and fertile Earth, that bears our weight and the life we depend upon.

Goddess, I hail you; triumphant queen of the Midsummer night. You are the subtle moon past full, the silver grasses before the wind, the whispering oak. Lead me out to know the dark and the life you hold so gently by. Cradle me in the stillness at your centre; help me know.

God, I hail you; glorious king. Stand upon the Earth, crowned by the Sun. Now one with your Goddess, spring forward and lead me, Lord of inspiration, fire and feeling. Show me new paths. 

As the year burns and the wheel turns, guide us all in love and care; help us fight and be valorous for what is good. Give us the power and the heart to choose the right path, no matter how hard it is to follow.

So Mote It Be!

Bright blessings to all this Midsummer’s Eve. 

Faces of the Goddess

Over the last few months I’ve had a lot to think about; I’ve been on this path now a pretty reasonable amount of time, perhaps 10 years, if you count all the years in which I was a substance in search of a form! In that time, I’ve spent most of my spiritual energy embracing the feminine in the divine, in the most amorphous sense, and attempting to reconcile and balance Her with the masculine Deity I have been familiar with my entire life. She hasn’t really had a name or a face; My Lady, Nature, Gaia, the World.

I’m starting to think that I need to go further. For me, I need attributes, I need a personality. I need to at least explore the possibilities more deeply. Actually, I have to thank Aleq Grai for this; had he not made a comment about possible weakness in generic ‘Goddess / God’ worship a few months back, I might not have reached this conclusion quite yet. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but there can be no harm in exploring the concept.

If we look at why Christianity accepts ‘God’ as a ‘generic’ deity (Aleq’s other point), then we see that it can stem from the belief that they have the ‘One True’ god, that others are superficial or have been superseded. It’s not a nod to a generic, all-purpose deity, far from it; it’s a clarion call to proclaim the primacy of the God of Gods, who needs no other name in this time and place. For the same reason, us humans call the Earth, the Sun, the Moon by no other names than the ones that give them their form. We don’t need to; they are the only ones we have.

In fact, the Christian god is anything but generic. He is, for a start, a triple god, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and is worshipped in His different manifestations in different ways, as well as together.

Generic is not necessarily unchallenging, in any case. As I said to Aleq, the challenge in worshipping the Goddess, for example, is to define for yourself, or to allow to be imparted to you, the attributes that concern you at that particular time and place. Goddess / God is everywhere, is everything. If you manage to grasp the hem of the robe for a fleeting second you’re doing well.

Once you label, you are seeking to negate, no matter how you try to dress it up. By calling Goddess by a name, we are trying, even subconsciously, to limit what we need to understand so we can concentrate more effectively. It’s a filter, if you like. Trying to corner the might and the mutability of the divine in a way we poor humans can comprehend. It’s like capturing a butterfly and nailing it to a board. In our case, of course, once we’ve done this, the butterfly remains alive and we try to communicate with it.

Perhaps this analogy has been taken a little far! But I think it makes a good point. Perhaps my need for a definition, for attributes, is a retrograde step; perhaps I’m ‘wimping out’ in a spiritual sense. However, I believe the challenge is to try to see as much of the bigger picture as we can - and to fully understand the whole, we must study the parts that make it up. Hence my delve into the Faces of the Goddess.

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…and my dear Seshat’s Voice has made her point on this topic as eloquently as ever!

 

Tarot

Ages ago, I bought a very beautiful deck by Cilla Conway, called The Intuitive Tarot. I’ve been trying to get time together to work through the cards - I haven’t even studied them all yet!

It’s been a somewhat unpleasant weekend - constant driving rain, gale force winds and no prospect of setting foot outside at all. My father went to the village shop in the car to get the paper on Saturday - it’s 100m away. My son is teething badly and we’ve had a constant battle all weekend to get him to take medicine, water or anything at all to eat - added to which, Mr GW has been working 18 hour days, and we haven’t seen anything of him at all. Argh!

So last night, around 10, I got the chance to open the deck and draw a card. I got The Hermit. Bearing in mind I’m a rank learner in the tarot field, I’m quoting directly from the book here;

“Promptings from the unconscious that should not be ignored. Deep guidance - the voice of the soul urging you on to fulfill your destiny. The path of the unknown. Fear that must be faced in order to grow. Necessary withdrawal - from the rat race, from a given situation, from the familiar. Waiting for the right time.”

This was a really useful card to draw, for me, for this time. It’s helping with the feeling that I don’t have time for all of ‘this stuff’! I forget constantly that ‘this stuff’ isn’t extra to my life; it is my life. Perhaps I should say that everything I do is my life, and stop trying to enforce artificial distinctions. If the spiritual is ever to be afforded the same status in life as the mundane, then it can’t just be ‘for Sunday’. 

So that was me until this morning. I’d put the card aside in the book to write this post; reaching for the deck in its cloth I knocked it to the floor and one card came free of the wrapping. The Ten of Swords.

A naked figure, on a black background, the world above. Back pierced by the ten swords, but no blood. Head bowed.

“External events, war, destruction of a people or an environment. Acceptance, Endurance. Voluntary sacrifice in order to change and grow. Personal defeat, self-destructive attitude. The lowest part of a cycle, possibly an envious colleague or friend.”

This means a lot. Particularly in regard to the start of my post. I think this means I need to not be quite so quick to get frustrated and cast down when things happen. Lots of things happen - against war, destruction of environments they can only be transitory. 

I do feel at the lowest part of a cycle, but it’s a comfort to remember that it is a cycle; like the moon, the full will come again.

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Do I read the blogs I feel speak to me the most or do they simply present themselves? I don’t know. All I know is, this jumped out at me from Women and Spirituality and it couldn’t have come along at a better time.

Synchronicity: perfectly powerful, simply effective.

 

Garden Calm

My parcel from the online garden store turned up this afternoon, while I was having a coffee with an old colleague who turned up to fit a new Sky dish (this town is so small… the last time I saw him we were working at the same car dealership!).

The parcel was a great excuse to get out into the garden and dig. My son covered himself in mud and water, happy as a sandboy, and I planted a Viburnum opulis, which comes out in large white pompom flowers, and has red berries in winter; 6 Kniphofia, or Red Hot Pokers, 3 Dahlia sensation, a Blueberry bush and 6 assorted lucky dip tall perennials. The garden can only benefit - and that goes double for me.

The lawn goes down in the next month. I can’t wait until I have a lawn, so I can lie under my Rowan tree and look up at the sky through the leaves. Looking up at the sun, the clouds, the moon and stars…

 I’m looking forward, also, to being able to use the garden far more as a room. None of the rooms in the house has ever felt quite right as a ritual space - I feel that the garden might do very well in this regard. Plenty of lanterns, plenty of night-scented plants, plenty of shelter, plenty of privacy. Perfect. And I can chalk a pentagram on the terrace.

Full Moon

The moon will become full later on today; I want to catch the wave as it turns and spend the next month rolling into myself and doing some serious introspection. This may be my equivalent of being shriven; I wish to approach Ostara cleaned of some of my more obvious warts and carbuncles!

The tone of late has been quite prickly and harassed, yes, I noticed; so perhaps a still calm place and some time to think will work wonders. I have a great deal of reading to do.

One of the points raised by Gardner in The Meaning of Witchcraft is the similarity, intended or no, between ancient churches and sacred groves. The nave pillars, spreading into ceiling vanes parallel trees, and the east window in many churches is round, symbolising the sun. Then there’s the frankly interesting carving; floriate and foliate bosses, green men, imps, animals dressed as priests and congregations, sometimes devils. I know of at least one instance locally where the left pillar leading to the altar has a grinning devil’s head out there at waist height, looking merry and naughty, and looking the seated congregation right in the eye. He’s not even mentioned in the notes that accompany the church walk.

PP and I intend to spend some contemplation time in local churches of note over the next few weeks; it might seem odd, a couple of witches choosing to go sit in churches; it might even sound vaguely blasphemous, but I assure you it isn’t. All witches should take the time to visit these places of other worship; they are open to all. It’s friendly and respectful to sit and reflect in these spaces, and the grave cheer of the atmosphere will warm and calm you. And, particularly in Britain, churches are built on top of or in the midst of more ancient pre-Christian places of worship. The Early Christians built their churches there for practical reasons - the locals were going there anyway, so it made sense for the Christians to be there too - and for solidly spiritual reasons - these were the places of power.

Many churches are also taking part in the ‘Caring for God’s Acre’ project, which involves husbanding of the wild resources in the churchyards; quite a number of rare and protected plants and animals can be found.

All in all, churches are a great resource and we’re lucky to have them. The ancient builders, masons and workers may very well have been building to their master’s plan, but they clearly incorporated their own pantheons and particular preferences for decoration; perhaps this is evidence incarnate of the old religion at work; we’ll never know for sure. But seeking out these whispers from the past is rewarding and enlightening; and at bottom good for the soul.

Full Moon Comedown

Who else gets this? I have been making an effort to know where I am with my moon phases, and so have noticed a definite pattern. Hyper at the Full Moon, totally wrung out for a week afterward. This couldn’t have come at a worse time - I’m unmotivated and am also having to work lates two days this week to prepare for a large meeting at the end of next week.

Is there some way to mitigate the effects? Am I psyching myself out? Is this a great case of suggestion? Who knows, but it is something I’ve come to dread in the month, so I wonder if there’s a way to turn it to account and make something positive out of it. This is what I am trying to get into the habit of doing with anything negative that comes my way - it seems a much more practical and useful means of dealing with small reversals of fortune and inopportune happenings, than whingeing about them, and doing nothing.

My Goddess Looks Down

I went outside this evening, tired, preoccupied, not happy; and there She was, looking down serenely, not angry, not shaking her fist, just looking. I paused and admired her, greeted her; and went on with my evening’s work feeling immeasurably better.

Ave Luna, symbol of my Goddess! Thanks for watching out for me.

Full Moon

Tomorrow is the Full Moon for us Northern Hemisphere types, and we (my partner and I ) were due to celebrate with an extended goddess worship for our chosen deities under The Tree.

Two problems - my partner is unwell, and The Tree is three foot deep in flood water!!

Luckily, Full Moons happen fairly often (!) and therefore we can push this one forward… in fact, what with the sites, the blog and the reading, I am busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, and feeling fully occupied in a Wiccan sense for the first time in a very long time. Truly a time of energy, growth and positivity!