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Naturalizing

Posted in Animism, Texas, Witchcraft, tagged , , , , on 9 September 2018| 1 Comment »

I’ve written elsewhere about bringing our practice home, and with the help of my current working group (D, C, D, K, H, J), building on the work of the New Moon group (S, B, C, D) I’ve been doing just that.

Welcome to the beginnings of the Central Texas Wheel of the Year:

In central Texas our year is divided into two halves: the Long-Hot (May – September) and the not-as-Hot (November – March).  Moisture flows during the two liminal periods of May and October – the time between,  the dance of the twins.

The Long-Hot brings southeasterly winds and rare gift-of-life thunderstorms.  The not-as-Hot is normally dry.  But this story, like so many others, depends….

It depends on Little Sister and Little Brother. When Little Brother (el niño) comes to visit the not-as-Hot turns cold, as well as wet. Some say this is because the Hag of the North swoops down to steal him away from his sister, and as he is carried away his tears fall frozen.  But when Little Sister (la niña) raises her fiery head searching for her brother we are dry as a bone and our throats are parched by her anger.  Little Sister often brings with her The Wild Mother whose winds push all things down and whose wetness drowns cities.

Life here begins in the dark, with the stirring of the winds; The North Wind.

Blood; blackland prairie
Bone; llano uplift
Ash; edwards plateau

The Guardian of Bone arrives on the North Wind.  Vulture, wings spread soaring high.  The eye of god.  The Starry Gate of transformation and rebirth. Guardian and Gateway, we enter the womb of the Milky Way through the starry vulva. You know, until we buried our dead Vulture ate all our Ancestors.

The point of balance between the hottest and the coldest temperatures of the year  (October 31/November 1) is the Autumn Equitherm.  Our first harvest begins now…all things in pairs.  Pecans fall and we remember those who have fallen. We remember what has been sown and harvested. What is remembered lives …along the starry path.

The longest night, Winter Solstice (Dec 20-23), we dream; dream the Guardian of Ash who emerges from the Starry Mother, God Hirself.

At the Winter Thermistice ( January 6), the peak climatic temperature for the colder time of the year, we begin to smell change, the rising of life, the stirring of loins, and the arrival of the Guardian of Ash.

Some years that may be Gray Fox (January 6 through May 1), with their full body environmental awareness, their relaxed effervescence and curiosity, some years it may be someone else.

At the Spring Equinox (March 20) we cross the celestial equator, no longer stirring we now roar full force into our first Time of Planting. Bluebonnets, Mountain Laurel, Mexican Plum run riot.

The balance of the temperatures at the Spring Equitherm (May 1) whispers the approach of the Long-Hot.  Dread, even as rain soaks us, stirs in our heart.  Second harvest begins; peaches, blackberries and tomatoes are ripening.

With the dread of the Long-Hot on our minds, the Guardian of Blood – Snake – arrives. It’s time to digest, absorb and integrate. The egg with the Golden Yolk inside.

Summer Solstice (June 20-22) – the Sun is ready, eat it. Open wide. Become whole and complete unto yourself.

And as we burn, as we digest, as we integrate under the sweltering malefic sun, the peak of the climatic temperature, the pinnacle of the Long-Hot, approaches.

Summer Thermistice (August 6), the Dying Time.  All fields are withered and bare, the grass is brown, leaves crisp, the land is ripe for wildfire. We propitiate the fire, call the water and digest the sun into night along the cosmic path to the Starry Gate. But….what if it’s too much? Did we bite off more than we can swallow?

The time of The Knife’s Edge (mid-August to mid-September) is the “danger” time.  We have ingested the Sun but are still integrating, absorbing.  It could go either way.  Tricky, Dangerous.  Wildfires or Hurricane.  We balance and wait….

Then hope arrives, the sun slants, it crosses the celestial equator again and Autumn Equinox arrives (September 22) bringing the second Time of Planting.  We sow our seeds. It is the turning time, the liminal gateway, and rains come.

As we await the beginning of all things, which rides on the North Wind…..

Enchanted Rock

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Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting connection

Posted in Sense of Place [blog], tagged , , , on 2 February 2017| Leave a Comment »

the sensual

The back garden is a carpet of bejeweled grass; each blade aquiver with droplets of dew.  The windows shine with condensation.   I open the door from the sun-room, and dozens of small birds scatter from the feeders.  I speak my normal greeting, “Good morning! Sorry to disturb.  I will only be a moment.”  The sky is a watercolor wash of gray and white. The air, chill and fresh. I pause as I head up the stone stairs to the barn.  I close my eyes and listen.

the Beara Peninsula : Cork

far distant tractor
bird
faint low of cattle
silence

This autumn and early winter have embodied stillness. While I witnessed some good storms, I most remember the uncanny silence.  Last year the trees in our garden were constant movement, as stormy winds danced over the ridge and buffeted our little stone house.  This year,  my attention is continually drawn to the quiet spaces.

the theoretic

In my last post I mentioned a nifty 10¢ word.  You may not remember it; in fact, you may not have watched the YouTube video about the word (which was linked at the bottom of my post).   Or, you may have.  I’ll remind you what it was: solastalgia.  It’s a term invented by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the sense of homesickness you have when you are still at home.

“How can you be  homesick when you’re still home?”

Good question.  In our technology-driven world, change happens quickly.  From one month to the next, buildings go up and what was once empty green space is paved over.  We innovate, building faster and more efficient toys that we chomp at the bit to play with.  Often we don’t entirely understand the consequences of our new toys, but they sure are fun and entertaining!  At the very least, they make our lives so much more convenient. Right?

the way home

When our Place changes in ways we don’t entirely like, in ways we feel an unidentifiable sense of wrongness about, it impacts us deeply, both emotionally and psychologically.  We feel sad, sometimes despondent and even angry.  This  is solastalgia in action.

When I returned to Texas, after my years of North American roaming, I decided to live in Austin.   I did not want to return to my rural home-town. It was, and is, an economically depressed area.  Once  abundant with small and medium-sized family farms (a way of life that  succumbed to market forces when I was still a girl), the area struggled to survive with limited industry, and offered few employment or social prospects.  Austin, on the other hand, with its liberal hippy vibe and robust arts scene, was just what a young rebel needed!

But while I was away, significant changes had occurred back home.  My parents had divorced, my grandmother  grown increasingly ill, and my father had – unbeknownst to me – sold the land his own forebears had worked so hard to tend.  Bit by bit, he had let the land go for housing development.  When I heard this, I  felt as if someone had stabbed me.  When I drove home to see it with my own eyes, I broke down in gut wrenching sobs.  Powerless.  Feeble.  I had no recourse, no way of changing what had been done to the enchanted land of my childhood.  No way of upending the houses that  now sprawled over fields and barns I once played in.  No  way of returning the other-than-human friends and loved ones of my youth.

The feeling we experience when we see yet another box store go up on land we love, or a dear tree friend felled because power lines get right-of-way, is solastalgia.  It is the profound sickness in the pit of our stomach that tells us something is terribly wrong in our world.  It was with this grief and anger that I began my relationship with Austin, Texas: a place of asphalt, constant noise, and the suffocating experience, common to all cities, of being watched (so speaks the introvert). Yet this place, this city with its hustle and bustle, was now home.

austin_hero

I have been fortunate; I have lived in some gorgeous remote (quiet) locations: from the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, to the great Smokies of Tennessee, to the deep wagon ruts of the westward trails through Nevada.  These places were very different from home, but they were all wild, and spoke a similar language to the creeks and fields of the Gulf coast plains.  I didn’t hear this language in Austin: at least, not at first.

In fact, during my first year in the city I suffered from numerous stress-related illnesses and gave up, escaping to a country hideaway 40 minutes outside of town.  But the Place wasn’t finished with me, and as these things often happen, I really wanted (or needed) to learn the language of Austin–the language of the human city.  So, within a few years I was back: in the heart of the city and learning how to find Place wherever I am–a journey that began with stillness.

Next week I will say more about this journey; which is convenient, because I will be in Austin for the holidays!

Do you struggle to find connection within the city? Have you experienced uncontrollable changes to your Place?

[originally published 12/13/2016]

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How did Texas get her name?

Posted in Mythology, Texas, tagged , , on 13 July 2013| 3 Comments »

Image

Tradition says that more than two hundred years before Columbus ‘discovered’ America, a feud arose among the Aztecs and that, as a result, the Nasonites were driven forth and forbidden ever to return to the halls of the Montezumas.  The exiles wandered far to the northward and finally reached the beautiful summits of the hills near San Marcos.  They gazed with rapture upon the clear streams, the emerald valleys, the herds of buffalo and deer, and the droves of wild turkeys.  Believing that they had reached the “Beautiful Hunting Grounds,” they cried out in delight, “Texas!” or, as the Anglo-American says, “Paradise.” 

Mattie Austin Hatcher
Myths of the Tejas Indians
Texas and Southwestern Lore

 

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no Place is home

Posted in culture, folklore, Ireland, tagged , , , , on 14 February 2013| 3 Comments »

I have been writing at the new Patheos Pagan Chanel blog: A Sense of Place. It has taken me into a deeper exploration and understanding of my own connection to the geography around me, what constitutes “home”, and what various places mean to my spirituality and to my practice as a witch.

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the ring fort : Lissnabroc : Cork

Because it was such a sunny morning here in Cork, I went out for a run. As I passed the gate, leading into the pasture where the Ring Fort lives, I noticed a sigh. “blah, blah, Cork County Council…blah, blah…..planning permission for..blah, blah, ….a residential structure.”

What!?

The man who bought the pasture– from the family whose relations originally farmed it and lived in our stone house (that pasture had once been part of the farm belonging to the house we live in), a family whose relations had preserved the ring fort in tact (a fate not shared by two others on this ridge)–was now giving it to his daughter to build a new house. Right. Next. To. The. Ring.

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the back pasture : my family farm : Wadsworth, Texas

Several things flooded my mind as I read the sign. First, that the new owners show an incredible lack of regard for folk tradition. In years past, no one in their right mind would have lived so near one of “their” dwellings (ring forts were seen as dwelling places of the Good Neighbors, and there were/are many prohibitions concerning them). This seeming lack of regard immediately had me concerned for the preservation and welfare of the ring. Secondly, I felt the trauma of losing my family farm all over again.

I am sure I have written here before about growing up on a farm in Texas. My experience of and deep connection with that Place forever shaped my present incarnation. Many times I have admitted that instead of human parents rearing me, it was actually the land. Nature herself, in all her forms, took a wild heathen thing, who used to run barefoot from sunup to sundown, and shaped her into the woman I am today. When my father got control of the farm, he sold it: bit by bit. While I know his actions were influenced by his Bi-Polar disorder, the loss devastated me.

So today, reading a simple white sign staked into the ground by the stone wall, I was struck once more with my own Solastalgia (Albrecht, 2010a): my own grief, pain, and trauma caused by the loss of Place. My post on Patheos this week was about snakes and sovereignty–specifically musing on the very local and immediate connection the ancient Irish kings had with Place. The right to rule, here in Ireland, was bestowed by a female agency and was intimately bound to the immediate environs of that tuath (The tuath was the basic unit of society and was based on kin grouping. At one time, there were up to 300 tuath in the country.). The king, then, was sovereign over his very specific Place–and nowhere else, as each tuath was independent (apart from occasional alliances, etc).

I no longer have a place. Uprooted and tossed on the wind, like many in western culture, I am a migrant. I am forced to carry my Place within me. This is both lonely and liberating. I learned, out of necessity and natural inclination, the tools to connect with my surroundings. These have served me well, as I have traveled–moving from place to place–the entirety of my adult life. And it occurred to me, reading the sign today and feeling the instant desire to flee so I don’t have to witness the infringement on the ring, that I’ve been running from deep connection my entire life.

Maybe we all do. In America, society has become disposable. Forces outside our immediate control have power and sway over our lives. So, whether due to economic or political forces, many are compelled into a migrant lifestyle, seeking work or fleeing destruction (another shopping mall or parking lot, anyone?). In ages past, we were subject to the power of a chieftain or tribal ruler. But at least that king was kin, and his domain–our domain–the same Place our ancestors had lived, perhaps for millennia.

a village by the sea : Ireland

a village by the sea : Ireland

Now market forces rule, and kingship is given to the profit margin.

I hurt…and because I can’t bear the loss of another Place, I will migrate once again. My face is turned toward the city. It seems my Fate is intimately bound with it. My academic interests include the psychological stress of urbanisation. It seems fitting, doesn’t it?

References:

Albrecht, Glenn. (2010, May 22). ‪TEDxSydney 2010 was organised by General Thinking. Environment Change, Distress & Human Emotion Solastalgia. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/-GUGW8rOpLY

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Let me introduce myself….

Posted in culture, folklore, herbs, Ireland, Samhain, Witchcraft, tagged , , on 31 October 2012| Leave a Comment »

Awake, awake, you ancient watchers
Awake awake and let me in
Come down come down, from your waiting houses
Come down come down and let me in
~Sharon Knight

Here, at the end of all things,

let me start at the beginning and introduce myself.  I am a native Texan, living in Ireland.  My sense of Place is intricately and intimately tied with the land  which is now known as south and central Texas.  I was born on the coastal plain, a land that stretches wide, with clear vistas from horizon to horizon: fertile and verdant.  Where big winds blow and the sky is a yawning expanse. Adopted at birth into a farming family, my youth was spent in isolation with nature.  My nearest human neighbors were over a mile away, and I was the only child of an only child.  I spent my days alone and barefoot, roaming creek bed, plowed field,   empty barn, and lonely byway. My grandparents passed to me their wisdom: planting and harvesting by the moon and signs, cures, folk knowledge, and  ancestral  stories.  Descendants of Welsh and ScotsIrish emigrants, they adhered to a system older than the society that swallowed them.  I was fortunate to have been cocooned in their land of enchantment – 250 acres, and then some, to roam and explore – unfettered – nurtured by the accumulated lore of generation upon generation….of  human and other-than-human persons. Love to you – always ❤

My blood seeks movement,

and I traversed the greet North American lands as a young adult, living and breathing in many regions.  My heart pulled me toward mountain, desert, forest.  I tasted and loved them all.  As these things go, eventually the blood pulled wide – to Far lands across an ocean …..and some of them I have kissed.  My bed is now in Eire, but how long She has me….only Fate knows. Deep in The Avondhu of east Cork, which escaped glaciation, my eyes seek and my ears are open.  Surrounded by new voices, new ways….. I follow my mesolithic ancestresses blood.


I  have always been pagan…… my grandmother infused my praxis as a witch….and my blood drives me back  – into a misty past, where we were all once truly Human.

To Mabon and Gene;
Katie and Thomas;
Chilton and Love-Ann

…Victor, Cora, Gwydion:

None are forgotten
nothing fades forever
all that has past comes around again

For here, what is Remembered Lives
What Is Remembered Lives

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