We gathered roses and bright zinnias to crown their heads with flowers, these shining daughters who we've cradled and fed and loved with everything we have and everything we are. We knelt before them and sang, our hands gently washing the feet that we once carried inside our own bodies and that now follow their own paths. For a moment, time folded and we could see them as babies in our arms, curly hair and round faces, at the same time seeing the girls in front of us, flowers in their hair, bright eyed and smiling, and so too we see women of the future, tall and strong boned kneeling at the feet of their own girls as the song goes on and on. We tried to tell them what we want them to know, what we want them to carry with them as they go on their ways: You are loved. We are here. You are loved. You are strong. You are magical. We treasure who you are. This love that carried them forth into the very world they walk on. We hope it is enough to embrace them for a lifetime, and so we kneel and sing and anoint and adorn and hold their hands in ours. We are here. You are not alone. You are wise in the ways. You belong. We are not sure if tears can say what we mean to say, but they fall anyway as we try our best to weave our words and wishes and songs and stories, with strength and confidence into a cloak of power that will encircle them with magic, no matter no matter how far away from us they journey.
We have come from beyond the garden, stories both old and new in our hands. Our breasts are bare our hips are heavy, and we are willing to show our incisors. Centuries of silencing and suppression have been unable to stick to our skins, our lapis beads rest easy across our throats, and red crescent moons shine upon our brows. No longer willing to settle for giving birth to demons or destroyers, we bleed all over the pages of history, eat all the apples we please, carve stone into shapes that tell our hearts to remember, and sing of the forgotten things, untamed, unbound. Our most reliable sacred text is the one we write each day, shard by shard, step by step, bone by bone, breath by breath, side by side.
Priestessing during a pandemic has not been easy! The past nearly two years have forced a serious assessment of where I currently am in my work and my willingness to offer what I can offer and to withdraw from what I cannot.
After careful consideration, I have been working in person with a very small group this summer every week, using the Lilith Circle Guide that accompanies the anthology Original Resistance. While I do not feel ready to branch back out into larger, more public group work again, it has been a really nourishing and rewarding experience to gather in a very small group. I encourage you to consider ways in which you might set your feet to the spiral once more and to reach back out to your own community in face-to-face connection with a circle that feels nurturing, safe, and enriching to you.
In my dream, the Summer Queen is wrapped in summer’s fire, garbed in gowns of gold and brown, and blazing with desire, the grass and grains are winding down, leaning in ebbing spires. She feels the heat beneath her feet, her stride is wide, her lips are sweet, her arms lift up to lightning streaks. She twirls around on thirsty ground raising the passions higher. With hips and hopes expanding wide her heart alight with joy and pride her song is strong, her howls are long, her many prayers are hot and bold and then her plans find ease at last remembering the wheel spins fast it’s nearly time to share the floor, as Autumn’s Queen peeks round the door.
In August, I feel held in a space between summer’s fire and summer’s fatigue. There has been a blooming and a ripening, and now a harvesting and a fading begin as the time comes to turn the page.
Listen. This is the time of waning and rebirth, retreat and re-emergence, the patience of rest, the renewal of will, the brightness of hope, the warmth of embers in a long night.
Happy Solstice! I have a Winter Ritual Kit and a bundle of companion materials including a guided audio ritual walkthrough available to you here.
Thank you for walking through this year with me!
May you find wisdom in the silent spaces, courage in the mystery, and the power to make the choices you know you need to make to activate your dreams.
All land has history – many millions of years of it – all natural places have living beings who reside there or pass through; all places have a landscape, an altitude, weather and seasons as well as a relationship to the four elements and all buildings have, as well as history, an intention or purpose informing them. Places can hold great resonances of emotion and just by being there we participate in it. Some locations gather layer upon layer of meaning, for example churches are often built on land, or on top of sites that were always considered sacred, as a method of colonising local religions. These places are often high points in the landscape with significant features of water, geography and relationship to the local spirits. Churches themselves are often majestic structures, containing art work of great beauty, reverence for the divine, interred bodies, memorials and the thousands of rituals that have occurred within them. Perhaps they also retain the whispers or cries of those who lived and worshipped here before this current building was constructed, from lineages that might stretch back untold generations.
If you are gathered with friends or family for New Year’s Eve, here is a light ritual you can do that isn’t interruptive of festivities but can add some meaningful heft to the launch of the new calendar year.
Place a dollar coin, for luck and prosperity, into the bottom of an iron cauldron or Dutch oven. Pour in 2″ of fresh water (rainwater if you have it). Add a handful of kosher salt or sea salt, for strength and patience, and stir until as much salt as possible has dissolved into the water.
I stand rooted here on the earth and offer my gratitude. I turn to the East and offer gratitude for the air I breathe. I turn to the South and offer gratitude for the fire of my spirit. I turn to the West and offer gratitude for river, lake, stream, and ocean. I turn to the North and offer gratitude for stone, tree, and bone. I touch the earth and offer gratitude for this land I call home. I reach towards the sky and offer gratitude for sun and stars. I place my hand on my heart and breathe deep, offering gratitude for all that I am and all that I have and for the many blessings of my life.
Thank you.
You are enough.
Our updated Gratitude Ritual Kit is available for youhere. And, our Winter Magic class has begun and is free too!
I spent some time with the new Three Cauldrons layout that is included in the ritual kit and my results were so perfect. I DO need freedom, hearth-tending, and making sacred/blessing as the core components of keeping my cauldrons tended. I actually laughed aloud when I saw the Wand show up in my “Contribution” cauldron.
The Three Cauldrons are those of Vitality, Connection, and Contribution.
Archer
Thanks as always Jamie! Very interesting about stoicism and Buddhism and Marcus Aurelius. (You know, whenever I look up Spock's philosophy, stoicism c...
Anthony Gresham
I know that one of Odin's titles was Lord of the Spear, and that he hung himself on Yggdrasil for 9 days. By any chance was Kveldulf dedicated to Odi...
