Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Raising the Mother Cairn
In a Place of Wild Ginseng
In the language of the ancestors, a gore was a wedge-shaped area of land—the word originally meant a spearhead—bounded on two sides by other features. (You may recall that the Gore of Lothlórien was bounded by two converging rivers.) The Gore of Sweetwood is defined by two coulees (ravines), and wild ginseng grows there.
There, on the delta-shaped Ginseng Gore, with stones from the surrounding coulees, we will raise the Mother Cairn. In the earth beneath it will stand, facing the point, a terracotta image of the Mother herself, her holy delta lovingly modeled.
There will we lay the ashes of the dead.
A cairn is the ultimate in democratic architecture: anyone can add to it. So, through the years, the Mother Cairn will grow, like a pregnant belly, as more stones and ashes are added; it will be for us a place of memory, and rebirth.
Such will be the Mother Cairn of Sweetwood.
So, by the power of the Mother, may we all, in our people's ancient prayer, be reborn to the People.
Sweetwood Temenos is a pagan land sanctuary located among the hollow hills of SW Wisconsin's legendary Driftless Area.
For the People of Sweetwood
Where gods walk, and witches dance
Photo: Ursadea
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