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It's a chilly Beltane here in Paganistan, but during a precocious run of 80° weather a while back, a friend sent me a photo from the year's first sunning down at Sweetwood Sanctuary.
(And yes, that is the legendary Bull Stone that you see there in medias res.)
I couldn't help myself.
Is that a standing stone between your legs, or are you glad it's Spring? I wrote.
Back came the e-mail with the expected response.
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.
Standing at Sweetwood Temenos in the heart of SW Witchconsin's Driftless Area, the Bull Stone must surely be among the best-chronicled standing stones of the Megalithic Revival.
Below, you can follow the real-time, five-year saga of the finding, moving, and raising of this American menhir.
I wish you joy of the journey.
The Saga of the Bull Stone
It Takes a Shaman to Raise a Stone
The Problem of the Disappearing Pagan Male, and What to Do About It
Bull Stone Rising: Some Thoughts on Foundation Offerings
How Did the Standing Stone Get to the Top of the Hill?
Dance of Stone: The Ballad of the Bull Stone
Liturgy for the Consecration of a Standing Stone
What does a standing stone do?
Raised in 2021, the Bull Stone stands at Sweetwood Temenos, a pagan land sanctuary in southwestern Witchconsin's legendary Driftless Area. Born in the bed of an inland ocean, old before dinosaurs walked the Earth, the six-foot, one ton slab of karst limestone is the standing stone that I know best.
So what does the Bull Stone do?
Its long axis aligns with the Sun, pointing to the places on the horizon where the Sun rises and sets on the day of the Winter Solstice.
Its short axis aligns with Earth: with both a notch on the southern horizon, some two miles distant, where two ridges come together and, to the north, with the sanctuary's Grand Circle.
What does a standing stone do? Easily told.
Hallowing the Bull Stone
Sweetwood Temenos
The people gather at the head of the path.
Statement of Intent (Priest)
Stone remembers.
480 million years ago—before the dinosaurs—the Bull Stone formed, on the bed of an inland ocean.
Five years ago, the Warlocks of the Driftless brought it—with the Stone's permission—from its immemorial bed.
Two years ago, we raised it. (I tell you, that Stone wanted to stand.)
Today, we consecrate it.
The Story
Procession
Horns sound. Led by priest, oil-bearer, crown-bearer, and libation bearers, the people process down the hill and through the woods to the Bull Stone.
Circumambulation
The people circle the Stone nine times, moving always to the right.
Chant: Giver of Pleasure and Life
Mass Anointing
Oil-bearer raises basin of fine oil. People imbue oil with their blessings. People dip hands in oil, anoint Stone, then one another.
Hymn
The Shaft Song (Priest)
Crowning
The Wreath-Bearer, a young girl, is lifted to crown the Stone with a wreath of leaves and flowers.
Horns sound.
Threefold Libation
Two women pour libations of water over the Stone. (Horn.)
A woman and a man pour libations of red wine over the Stone. (Horn.)
Two men pour libations of milk over the Stone. (Horn)
Half a moon to Samhain, and here in Minneapolis the lilacs are blooming.
Anomaly. Anomaly. In the American Midwest, lilacs usually flower around Bealtaine.
What's going on?
I first noticed the phenomenon a few weeks ago at Sweetwood sanctuary down in the Driftless Area of southwestern Witchconsin. I made a few lame-ass jokes about the Glastonbury Thorn—“...but at Sweetwood, the lilacs bloom both at Bealtaine and at Samhain, haha”—but inside I harbored less cheerful suspicions.
Lilacs, like most blooming woody plants, set their blossoms in the fall. An old apple tree will often bloom out of season just before it dies, one final, poignant, display of beauty before the end. Apple trees are the poets of the orchard.
But no, the resident priest assured me that the Sweetwood lilacs had done the same the previous year.
A couple of hundred miles to the north, lilacs were blooming here in Minneapolis just last week. Others, not yet blooming, are leafing out, as in a normal year one would expect to see in late April.
I hear different things from the voices around me. It's normal, it's not normal. It's drought-stress (but Sweetwood hasn't been in drought this summer). It's climate change. It's this autumn's extended warm weather.
Well, omens are notoriously ambivalent in the interpreting. If this is an omen, I for one am uncertain how to read it.
A double rainbow with horizontal, cloud-to-cloud lightning between the bows.
How's that for an omen?
Sweetwood Temenos in southwestern Wisconsin. The Warlocks of the Driftless have foregathered to raise—finally—the one-ton megalith of pre-Cambrian limestone called the Bull Stone. On the eve of the Raising, we go down to do some site prep.
Thunder has been rumbling continuously in the distance for quite some time: longer non-stop thunder I've never heard before in my life. Clearly, something big is moving in. Well, the rain will be welcome. Here in the Midwest's Driftless Area, as elsewhere, it's been a dry Spring.
Just as we finish our work, the heavens open. Soaked to the skin, we stand there laughing. Some guys strip off. After the prolonged heat and drought, our skin drinks in the cool rain. So does the Land.
Singing a Thunder song, we trudge through the downpour up to the pavilion. The rain drums on the metal roof. We stand, watching and listening.
For a good half hour it pelts down, a good thorough soaking after a long thirst. The Storm rumbles off Eastwards as, nearing its setting, the Sun shines out in the West.
Then the culminating moment of grace when Rainbow spans the East, vast, accompanied by her twin sister.
We stand, marveling. Someone sings a hymn to the Rainbow Goddess, Daughter of Sun and Storm.
Suddenly that final bolt of lightning, brilliant, between the Bows. It's a moment of utter holiness, piercingly beautiful.
“Well, gentlemen, there's our omen,” someone says.
