Summer is a time to have fun outdoors and enjoy the beauty of the green world. With so many plants growing and blooming, there is magic aplenty in our own backyards. Even if you live in a city, you can enjoy the magic of herbs grown on a windowsill. Alternatively, buy cut herbs at a farmers’ market or dried ones at a health food stores.

With a strong spicy aroma, it is probably no surprise that basil (Ocimum basilicum) is one of the most popular herbs today. It was also favored in ancient times. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans used basil for medicinal and culinary purposes. During the Middle Ages, sprigs of basil were scattered on floors to freshen and clear the air as well as to protect against witches.

Shine

“No, hold,” said the sergeant-in-arms to the crossbowman. “First let them watch their god die.”

He sat on the great stone in the clearing.

Arriving, we went first to greet him: to kiss his hand, and receive his blessing.

When all had gathered, he rose and raised his arms: so naked, so tall. Between his antlers, constellations wheeled.

The bolt took him just below the breastbone.

He fell like a star out of heaven.

On Saturday July 16th at sundown, we completed a two year project to build a Shrine to Cernunnos.  There are earlier blog entries here that describe the process of building the structure.  This entry describes the final touches and the consecration.

Birds fascinate people. Many people set out feeders to attract birds to their gardens. Others travel long distances to spot a particular bird. People watch birds fly, perch in trees, and sing to each other. What is it about birds that draw humans to them? Many will tell you they love birds for the joy they bring.

Birds teach living in the moment. A flash of brightly colored feathers, then they are gone. The sight of a condor soaring in the sky makes people pause and watch. Crows amuse on-lookers with their antics. A lonely call of the loon fills those who hear with longing. Constantly in motion, birds teach humans to live in the moment.

Just as a field has a fence or hedge, and every forest an edge, so does every household have a boundary, a liminal space in which, for perhaps no more than a split second, one is neither in nor out. One is in between.

Power lies in these in-between, or liminal, spaces – power that can be benign or malign. Scholar Claude Lecouteux describes the house as a "protective cocoon, one that is sacred and magical" (48). As ancient homes tended to be passed down from generation to generation, it was common for a man (as women often joined the homes of their spouses when they married) to be born in the house in which they lived and to die there. This means that inherited homes were also the places in which one's parents, grandparents, and so on had been born, lived, and died.

It's an icon of the new paganism, really, known to millions all around the world: the Triple Goddess sigil on the cover of Robert Graves' White Goddess.

It's also a prediction.

It could almost be a Minoan seal, although it's not. In fact, it was designed by Graves' gifted friend and secretary Kenneth Gay (né Karl Goldschmidt, 1912-1995) to Graves' precise specifications; Graves stood at his elbow throughout the making of the image.

In it, we see the Triple Goddess herself: three bare-breasted women in flounced Minoan skirts, their arms intertwined around each others' shoulders. But this is the Three that is Nine, Graves' Ninefold Muse: above her, three cranes, below her, three linked spirals. In each of the Three Realms, She is sovereign: Heaven, Earth, the Sea.

Standing before her in adoration and supplication, we see a long-haired youth, naked (except his for belt) and ithyphallic. He is her worshiper, her consort, her poet. Above him, we see the signs of his twin natures: the fivefold star of life, and the spotted serpent of prophecy and death, the light and the dark together. For he is his own twin and contrary.

But this is no simple scene of adoration that we see before us: it is the making of an agreement between the Goddess and her Poet. The seal seals the deal. For she bestows upon him a gift, the reception of which marks his fealty to her: an eye.

For love, she gives insight: the age-old covenant.