On Samhain Eve

I got quiet for a while. Things got weird and wrong here, I couldn't figure out how to fix them or even pin down what exactly was wrong to work on a fix, and I learned some important lessons about stewardship and responsibilities that come with gifts. Naturally, I am compounding everything with feeling sorry for myself and seeking out The Perfect Answer when simply acting in some way on the problem would turn things around in no time. I'm not quick to see the opportunities that present themselves in crisis. The universe has all but rented planes pulling message banners behind them to get me to understand what's very, very obvious.

While I see photos of beautiful altars and offerings going up for Samhain (some of you are doubtless celebrating right now), this is not the year for it for me. It's been a long, full, challenging year in both the mundane and magical parts of my life, doubly so where the effects of one spill over into the other. It feels right to let it close in stillness and contemplation with small observances.

Ok, I did carve a pumpkin - the second one of my life - to guard us against spirits and trick-or-treaters. The timing just doesn't feel right for the holiday, even if we're in the glorious midst of a cool front that makes the days warm instead of hot and the nights snappy. The heat and drought went on for so long that the growth cycles are off for all the plants. Putting together a huge wheel of the year ritual here and now feels like trying to pull of Christmas in a post-apocalyptic desert outpost. So instead of feeling left out of celebrating like people who have seasons, I will take a hint from the universe and let it be what it is. I wonder if the spirits around here feel as drained from the summer as the living do...

I breathe in; I am alive

It rained last night. It wasn't enough to make a big dent in the drought damage, but it was exquisite. I was grateful driving home in it, thanking the gods each time I had to turn up the speed on my wipers. I ran out into the backyard with the dogs and stood in the last dregs of the day's light, letting cold drops sting my face, and I cried. The dogs weren't even upset about getting rained on, something they normally hate. Muddy pawprints are everywhere.

I have been practicing Mindfulness as often as I can remember for the last week. I'm listening to the CD teaching set, Living Without Stress or Fear, courtesy of the library. It's a Buddhist retreat, and it is outstanding. It's my first real encounter with the practices and philosophies and exercises, and it has been so positive. I've never been able to center or ground so easily. The impact on my anxiety could be life-changing. Kevin says I've been different, better the past few days.

Other than the exercises I've learned to do, I have learned that being fully present in the moment is very difficult for me. Too much energy, an overactive mind, and the overachiever gene are hard to beat back. They can be handy in magic, bringing lots of focus, oomph, and precise tailoring and visualization - but that's not being present in the here and the now. I thought it was, but it's not. In the rain, I think I achieved my first few moments of being truly present in a week of trying. Nothing mattered more right then, it felt such a rare and precious thing to smell and hear that familiar thing, to have it sting my skin, to feel my shoes stick to the ground as dust turned instantly to mud glue, to sense the dogs running happy circles around the yard. It was great to be truly there in a calm moment, rather than just those of intense pain or pleasure or anger.

The ability to achieve peace quickly is undervalued in Western cultures. We're fast and loud and big. This month has been littered with unexpected expenses, none of them impacting my mood. Abraham, the poodle man, had to get a big chunk of speargrass dug out of a joint in his foot, which had been infected by it. My car stereo ate a library CD and had to be replaced. All new tires. The endless heat equals high bills. My phone is dying. The wedding will be much more expensive than I had hoped. All of that, and I have a deep well of peace. I haven't panicked about money. I've gotten frustrated and deeply angry with Kevin, then had calm, productive conversations that led to equitable agreements better than I had hoped for. I feel good. I feel strong. I feel stable, which is something I haven't felt in a long time.

My hope is that the practices of stillness, peace, and mindfulness will let me hear the spirits more clearly, with better discernment, so that we can make progress together in my learning. I had wanted a teacher, but the woman I would have asked told me that what I'm called to has to be taught to me individually, by spirits, and learned the hard way. All too often, there are no books for me, no tidy guides. Perhaps, though, there are guides to equip us with the skills we need to undertake the learning, like the Buddhist monk I'm listening to. And that? That is a really big deal to have outposts in the wilderness so that we can be supplied on the voyage instead of foraging for every morsel, every sundry supply. Something to be grateful for, indeed.

Last week, my psychiatrist and I talked about how the hardest thing I am having to learn as an adult is moderation. It seems so wrong to take the longer path, to not superstar excel as quickly as possible, even though I know that the point of so many things is the journey. Pushing and striving has its place, and that place is not in everyday circumstances. In this, being a witch is so good for me. So very good. No book hands down what my spirits need me to know. I must be quiet and listen, and before that, prepare for them, invite them, prepare myself. I must be slow, deliberate, and discerning about who I speak to and how much to trust their words. There are an awful lot of tricksters out there, which is a painful lesson brought entirely by haste.

Magic demands patience for the most part. It doesn't take too many times spending a year living the fallout of raising a lot of energy and throwing it it a poorly thought out working. (Pro tip: Don't ask Brigid for more money at work, a new job, and to finally, truly learn patience all in the same Imbolc ritual. You will get what you asked for, and it will be excruciating.) Books are good for a lot of things, but there come points that there isn't one out there that is for you and your path. Like the Moon card in Tarot, you step into the boat and go where it takes you in the deep, dark night. That takes faith. The faith takes good experiences and bad, so that you know you can handle either and come out alive. The gods and the ancestors are faithful to speak. I am learning to be faithful to arrive and to listen.

My practice teaches such good lessons. Unfortunately, the rest of my life hasn't necessarily started learning them yet. And so when the rest of that outside chaos pushes things off in my practice, it feels like a great, sad failure to myself and to the gods. The problem of never feeling like you're doing enough is a personal one with a high cost. I messed up for the last moon. I made homemade cornbread in the spirit flame's cast iron vessel. I made the harvest altar and decorated it. And then there were a couple of blips in my personal life, and I forgot to actually do anything. The cornbread for Grandmother still got offered, but not in the right way, and not to her so much as to the land. Nothing got done for the God of the Forest. I fail in the small things and fear that I'll never be faithful enough, get the offerings and rituals and secret messages right. Just as much, I fear being enslaved to the whole thing to the exclusion of the rest of my waking life. I fear losing the thin line between present, past, future, and whatever forces operate in the Otherworlds. I've always had dreams and visions, heard and seen things. I can choose not to obey, but I can't not be aware of what they want.

I think of taking off till the new moon, to regroup. But the day is overcast, heavy, and grey as rain (rain!) looms all around. I pray and ask for a break to the drought, for a generous watering for the land and the animals and the fires. If the rain comes, the harvest will surely come with it. If the rain comes, we will be saved. Instead of taking a break, Grandmother tells me to scrub the porch, clean up, quit worrying myself and be domestic. The porch is cleaned of a summer's worth of dust and ashes and schmutz. I will start the bread dough when I finish this, then take a ritual bath in the summer's spicy sweet harvest of sunflower petals, roses, and juniper. I will be forgiven, make amends, and not keep apologizing after everything is smoothed over. I am glad Grandmother is here to guide me, to lead me.

The coming harvest?

School is back in session. My friends up north have irksome Facebook posts about the crisp weather while it's still over a hundred degrees here in Texas and my sky is full of pale ecru smoke from the fires nearby. Fall comes in name only here, but I have faith. I am reminded of a line from a poem written by someone I used to know. It's about God and begs, "Come with Your suddenly, and take me away." It is dust bowl dry here. The earth has cracks so deep and wide we have to warn children away from them. We have learned in the last week that pine trees, parched yet rich with sap, literally explode when the fire burns around them. May the gods have mercy on us.

The animals in the fields are dying. They are shipping the cows and horses up north, losing future generations of livestock and livelihoods. The remaining cows huddle together under scrubby short mesquite trees, trying to find shade. The hay stubble they eat has been burnt by the sun past being yellow and brittle to being a warm grey and powdery. This should be our late summer planting season. Fields should be full of fresh, green grass and knee-high cotton. I was going to plant ornamental gourds to grow and dry for next fall's wedding decorations, but it is too hot and the restricted water allotment must be used to water the foundation to keep the house from cracking worse than it has already. The earth has pulled back from the house by several inches and half of the doors can't shut right. Still, I have faith.

Because I believe that fall will come, that it will bring the rains and the healing both the land and I ache for, I built it an altar. The stag, for the God of the Forest, whom I love so dearly; He that I hunt with, that I run with in visions, whose mantle I wear while setting things right - he crowns the thing because there is none other worthy of it. For Him, a bounty of beautiful gourds and carved acorns. Incense wreathed in grape vines. Hand-blown glass hurricanes with candles. A hand-woven cloth with intricately knotted fringe made by Indians in Mexico. There is sacred cornbread for Grandmother, baked in the spirit flame vessel.

It's hard here and now. Trying. Things seem to move with glacial speed, and hopes with good omens keep ending in disappointment. My soul aches for the imagery of harvest and the refreshing transition out of summer. Only what is there to harvest? When your magic work is around the wheel of the year, leading toward a season of harvest and the land is dead and scorched, what does that forecast for one's spiritual harvest? It scares me, but still, I have faith. Perhaps I should scatter mustard seeds over the altar...

Gift Horse Inspection Time

I learned to do natal charts over the weekend. The free ones online always have such strange explanations. We did mine, which was a little odd, but then so am I. My guy's was enviable in how clear and true it rang out his life's work, successes, and dangers. It's a good life, full of good things, and I am grateful to be tied to it.

What was I expecting to see in mine or hear in a practiced interpretation? I'm not really sure. Deep down, I thought it might spit out my destiny or life's work and tell me what I should be when I grown up. Like it would say, hey! your Saturn is in Taurus, so you should be a firefighter. Unfortunately, I'm already grown up, and the star-predicted path of eclectic jobs and erratic income levels is one I know well. It makes it hard to get ahead or make big goals to work toward, since being on the corporate ladder feels more wrong every rung I ascend.

It explains the abject failure of all my giant, magic-fueled attempts to swan dive into an Important Career. It's incredible to know that I'm not failing my destiny doing what I've been doing. It means time to grow things, to harvest them from nature, to make things, to learn, to make home a haven of beauty, rest, and comfort. Yet it feels like I'm failing to not put my smarts and skills into a Profession of Vast Earning Potential.

The thing basically said that my role is to support Mr. Career over there, to be domestic, to be artistic, to have a quieter more flexible life. That's really cool. It's what I wanted to do my whole life. But to have it spelled out makes me a little sad and jealous, as though what I am called to is lesser, not very special, or even invisible compared to what he's doing. He would never think that, would be upset that I feel this way. We all want to be special and respected. I fear that I won't be because he will always overshadow me.

Perhaps this is less about astrology and more about hidden marriage fears. If I take myself out of competition with him, I won't be a superstar overachiever anymore. Doing what's right and good for me isn't a failure, but it seems that way at the moment. It feels like giving up the potential of being self-sufficient. Lies, lies, lies...

Mother Mary Full of Grace Have Mercy

I put together a Queen of Heaven altar this afternoon to try and balance some of the Mercury mess happening in this house. Several years ago, I found this awesome antique piece in the back of a junk shop and am madly in love with it. I love Mary. Growing up fundamentalist Evangelical Christian, this is a monster taboo. I secretly prayed the rosary and bought icons when I was in Romania. When my mom was little, Mary would come to her in dreams, hold out her hand, and huge roses would unfurl from tiny buds as a gift to my mom. I love that.

In Greek, Mary is the Blessed Theotokos, meaning "light bearer", since she bore Christ. What that actually means in application is that she is the immortal one who literally births light and truth, bringing mercy to the world in a way that transcends all time. I think that's so beautiful, to have this woman who straddles life and death, working for us and mothering us and shepherding us with forgiveness on our bumbling paths. I adore Mary. Gestation and birthing of the complicated, large-picture truths of situations is a theme in my spiritual life. It's clear that it's something I am called to. I identify with her.

It feels fantastic in my little room here now, so peaceful. So lovely. I'm never afraid of her, only filled with gratitude and joy to approach her.

Mercury retrograde for the living and the dead

Mercury cannot get out of retrograde in Leo soon enough. It ruins relationship communication, throws off finances, and it makes my man distant and angst-ridden. This one had a big birthday (his) and a hellacious depressive episode (mine). Kind of a perfect storm of astrological clusterfuckery. We need a break from Mercury. I'm cleaning physically and spiritually today, then heading to west Texas for a weekend of creativity and witchery and jello shots.

Mercury rules communication, but when you communicate with the living and the dead, that gets complicated. It gets weird. I don't seek out the dead, never have, and don't think of myself as someone who really works with that. Never mind the riding of hedges, dreams and visions, and lifetime of observing spirit manifestations. Oh yeah, and the fact that they just show up and talk to me.

It's something I need to learn better control over, and until that happens, I'm being as careful as I know how to be. There are things you don't trifle with. Right before the retrograde period, my maternal grandparents showed up in the living room one morning when I was wondering about who would speak to me through a medium if I ever went to Lily Dale. It was a sweet time, healing some things that were left unfinished when she died, telling me how proud and happy they were about my engagement. Really nice, right? Mercury goes retrograde, and when I think about that, what is basically a shade of her shows up, animated but empty of a soul or anything, looking like she probably looks in her coffin now that she's been in there for a few years. It's horrible and rotten and wormy. It's hard to get it to leave.

I am so tired of bumbling through dealing with the dead. I don't know who to ask or learn from. I don't know what to make of signs sometimes, whether they're signs or gifts. Just this morning, Bo the familiar and I went to get coffee. In the closed up car, sitting in the driveway, a good-sized black feather dropped into my lap. As in materialized. It's the kind I used a year ago in my raven Halloween costume. Ravens don't live here, so is this an animal omen or a gift for the altar? Things are just weird right now. I hope this weekend with the ladies will offer up some answers or at least a respite.