Safe Travels

Deities one might call upon before undertaking a journey:

- Odin, the god who wanders the earth
- Loki, the Sky Traveler
- Hermes/Mercury, messenger of the gods, depicted by winged feet
- Apollo, whose chariot drives the sun
- Hecate, the dark goddess who presides over crossroads
- Janus of the two faces, god of new beginnings
- Poseidon, god of the sea
- Rhiannon, goddess of horses and the sea
- St. Christopher, patron saint of those embarking on a long journey
- Khonsu, Egyptian god of the moon, patron of travelers
- Fortuna Redux, Roman goddess of fortune specific to travelers
- Luna, Roman protectress of charioteers

Wheel of Fortune

The design on the Wheel at the center of this card is probably the only symbol I've ever seriously considered getting as a tattoo. When I was sixteen it was because it's mysterious and beautiful. Now it's because this card sums up my general worldview: that life is a constant circle of ups and downs, and we are called to both enjoy the good times and to remain steady in the face of adversity. To remember that even if the wheel has turned down and things look bleak, it's going to turn again.

This is one of the hardest lessons life teaches us, and it seems one I'm always learning.

Tons of symbolism in this card. Those on the inner wheel are from alchemy and represent the four elements in the form of mercury, sulphur, water and salt. The outer ring contains the Hebrew letters IHVH, the sacred name of God; TARO is also TORA when read counter-clockwise, which refers to the sacred Jewish text of the torah. The eight spokes of the wheel correspond to the eight points of the year. The snake of ill fortune descends; Hermes, messenger of good news, ascends. Atop the wheel sits the sphinx, poser of riddles. The corners of the card are guarded by the four fixed signs of the zodiac, Aquarius, Scorpio, Leo, and Taurus, those keepers of tradition and stability even in the midst of change.

As a Major Arcana card this also represents the external forces of the universe, rather than actions driven by our own agency. It can be difficult for a control freak such as myself to accept that forces outside my control are constantly affecting my path and that of the people around me.

It's good to be reminded of this, and that the challenge of life is less what happens to you than how you respond to it.

Signs, Portents, and the Sacred Chickens

Specifically, augury. I've never thought too much about this before but this cartoon I saw today made me laugh.


Augury is an ancient practice, but is probably most often associated with ancient Rome, and certainly that's where I've gotten most of my information on the subject. Essentially, augury is the interpretation of the will of the gods by observing the behavior of birds and their flight patterns. One of the earliest forms of augury is watching the sky - lightning and thunder have always been seen as portents, for obvious reasons.

Auspices taken from birds came from two types: those noted by their singing (ravens, crows, owls, hens), and those noted by their flight patterns (vultures, eagles). The priest would designate to which side of him their flight would be considered an favorable or unfavorable sign.

My favorite story of auspices has to do with the first Punic war, when Rome fought Carthage. In the Battle of Drepana, 249 BC, the patrician Publius Claudius Pulcher was in charge of a naval expedition to fight the (vastly superior naval forces of) Carthage off the western point of Sicily. It was practice to consult the augurs in the form of the sacred chickens. Feed would be scattered before the chickens and if they ate, it was a good omen; if they refused or flapped their wings, a bad one.

On the morning of the battle, Pulcher consulted the sacred chickens as was his duty. The chickens, however, refused to eat. Impatient to get to the battle, Pulcher threw them overboard and declared, "If they're not hungry, perhaps they're thirsty." The battle went on as planned.

Turns out one should not ignore the council of the sacred chickens. Bad omens being bad omens, he lost the battle badly to the superior Carthaginian forces. Publius Claudius Pulcher went back to Rome in disgrace and was ultimately convicted of sacrilege due to the chicken incident. Ruined, he was sentenced to exile.

I have always been fascinated by ancient Rome but the story of the sacred chickens has to be one of my favorites. I highly recommend the podcast by Mike Duncan, "The History of Rome." He talks about this incident and it's hilarious. The entire podcast is brilliant and the episodes about the Punic Wars are among my favorites.

There's a very good article on augury here:
http://www.societasviaromana.net/Collegium_Religionis/augury.php

It may all seem like silly superstition, but it's interesting to think about signs in the world around us. It's not absurd to recognize the significance of a circling group of vultures as a real indication that something has happened. I don't know about the specifics of ancient interpretations, but it's intriguing to realize that the world is always telling us something. It's a matter of observing.

Spring Cleaning

This made me laugh. It's practically a picture of me.

For the longest time, autumn was my favorite season. The crispness in the air, the glory of the changing colors, the hint of frost after several months of sweltering heat - what's not to love? I'll always love autumn.

But in the last couple of years, I've developed a new appreciation for spring. Perhaps it's because the cold dark of winter wears on me more now than when I was younger. In any case, the warmth and promise of spring are my new favorite season. After months of 7 am sunset and 5 pm sunset, I'm beyond thrilled to see dawn breaking on my way to work (around 5:45; I'm an early bird). I love the blooming flowers and the pink and white flowered trees and the pale buds of new leaves. I love the sky darkening with a storm that gives rain instead of snow, and washing past to leave the air clean and fresh and electric.

Of course, when it comes to the house and yard, spring equals work. So much work. I've spent about twelve hours over the last two weekends getting the lawn mowed and trimmed, weeded and fertilized; pulling weeds and reestablishing the rock borders of garden beds; turning over the vegetable garden to prep the soil with compost for the coming season; laying fresh mulch; and of course, the fun projects of adding a couple new plants. There's the brunnera with tiny blue flowers for the shady spot by the window wells, and the pretty red barberry that I put next to the fence in what was previously a patch of weeds. (Shout out to the Man-Friend for hacking into the stony earth and getting that hole dug for me...or, as he put it, "digging up your sidewalk.")

The weird thing about spring is that even though it's exhausting - and this is just the outdoor work; I'll spend at least a few more weekends pulling down knickknacks for their yearly cleaning, clearing out the dust bunnies from underneath all the furniture, and reorganizing the garage from a winter's worth of accumulated junk.

And yet I love it. I embrace it. I become lost in the work and can't stop until I've completed a task, even when my arms are shaking from the vibration of the weed-whacker and my knees ache from kneeling in the dirt and I'm scratched up from trimming the rose bushes. I can be out there for hours at a time and never really get sick of it; sheer exhaustion and the realization that I'm getting sunburned is usually what drives me back inside. Housework certainly doesn't have this motivating effect on me.

No, it's nature. It's the earth under my hands, the wind whipping across my shoulders, the mist of approaching rain as I continue on, determined not to stop until the rain drives me inside.

I have a magic circle in the front  yard. Technically it's an oval, but I used four sidewalk lanterns to mark the cardinal directions, and the more I look at it, it's the perfect space for an outdoor ritual. I'm not sure exactly what I'll do with it, but it's my favorite kind of summer project.

The wheel turns! And I think to myself...what a wonderful world...

In Memory of Peanut

It's been a couple of weeks now since I had to put her down. I haven't wanted to talk about it.

Peanut went completely blind not long after I posted about her. It was a special kind of terrible to watch her cautiously making her way around, testing the boundaries of the bed, the drop-off of the first stair to the basement, the edges of the rooms. My active kitty who was nimble and lithe as a girl was reduced to a fragile old woman, carefully navigating the steps up to my end table and bed.

I'm still not sure she was really ready to go. She slept most of the time, but she was eating and drinking to the last, laid there purring in the circle of my arms for an hour before I took her to the vet for the last time. But she was clearly in pain from her mouth and her eye, and there comes the time, that heartbreaking time when you realize she's not really living anymore. She's existing.

It's a nice urn.

It's still difficult to go to bed at night and look at the empty spot by my head where she used to lay. But I'd rather focus on some of the things I loved about her, and share that instead of the pain of her loss. She is gone. I'll miss her forever, and hope that we will meet again someday.

She loved this ledge. Used it as a shortcut from the kitchen, on the right, to the hallway and my bedroom, on the left, all the time. She was uncanny at predicting my return home every day, and about the time I'd be getting into my car, she'd perch on the edge of the ledge back there and wait. Then run down the ledge to greet me when I came in the door.

I was going to put the urn in my garden, but my roommate suggested leaving it here, and it's so perfectly, heart-wrenchingly appropriate, that I think I will.

Peanut loved milk and Club crackers. Her favorite places to sleep were my bed, the chair in the office, and on a blanket in the office closet. She was not one to enjoy being petted for long periods, but loved to tuck her head under my arm while I hugged her close and played the banjo across her ribs. She liked to get up on the high chest and keep an eye on things from up above. She would head-butt her way into the bathroom every time I went, and after every shower she'd clamor to be let in so she could jump in the tub and lick up all the water clinging to the sides. She liked to eat spiky plants and throw them up later.

These are all such trivial things. She lived in my home and followed me from room to room and offered me her love and companionship. I'll forever be grateful, and I'll forever miss her.

Goodbye, my sweet Peanut. Rest well.

On Being a Witch

What does it mean to be a witch?

It's a question worth pondering. Coming from my strict Catholic background, there is still a part of me that feels 'rebellious' when I call myself a witch. Like I'm playing a role or defying my elders. Perhaps this was true when I was a teenager, and first became interested in the occult. (Occult means 'hidden,' incidentally, and refers to the entire, vast array of secret and forbidden knowledge - alchemy, magic, spirits, tarot, and the like.)

Today I had a moment that made me smile and think, this is what makes me a witch.

Dig if you will this picture of a startled and stunned yellow finch. I have a large picture window in the living room, and birds fly into it pretty regularly. Most often I hear them bounce off and never see any further evidence. On one occasion I got out there in time to see a sparrow with a broken neck take its last breaths. I buried it in the back yard.

Today, it was this gorgeous yellow finch. He lay there in the grass in front of the planter, taking rapid little breaths. I helped him upright and took him into my palm for a while to calm down and get his bearings. He flared his wings once, shifted around, didn't seem to have any severe breaks or injuries, but was clearly quite traumatized and made no effort to escape.

For about twenty minutes, I just held him in my palm. Eventually he got his legs under him and perched on my finger. So thrilling! This beautiful bird watched me from his tiny black eye as I got him to move from one finger to another (avoiding poop successfully two out of three times it emerged), just hanging out there, getting his wind back. I petted him with one finger and talked to him while we sat on the stump in the middle of my yard, next to the finch sock full of thistle seeds that hangs off the cottonwood tree. Two of his friends kept coming by. (Friends or rivals? Who knows.)

This went on long enough that I got tired of petting a wild bird and needed to find a place to put him down. I set him down in a pot of violas by the front door, got him a tiny cup of sugar water, and let him be. He was pretty badly shaken up even then, and needed more time to get back to himself.

About twenty minutes later I checked on him. It startled him, and he flew over to the trellis, then took off across the street, out of sight. I hope he's truly okay and recovered.

This is not the first time I have recovered a stunned yellow finch.

About a dozen years ago, I was walking to work at 5:30 am when a little bird flying across the road ran smack into a car windshield. Fell to the pavement and lay there twitching. Beautiful yellow finch, exactly this one. Exactly as today, I picked him up and saw he was still alive and unbroken; I took him to work (my restaurant, a block away), set him outside in one of the whiskey barrels full of flowers out on the patio, and about an hour later he flew off, apparently none the worse for wear.

Being a pagan, being a witch, is all about the connection to nature. To the land, to the animals, to the waters. I believe that the love a person bears for the living things around her is sensed by flora and fauna alike. The bird was stunned, yes, but it trusted me, long after it had gotten its legs back under it and could have flown away. It knew I meant it no harm.

I'm the Snow White of the neighborhood. Squirrels, birds and rabbits frequent here. Neighborhood cats come and go. A few weeks ago, that little gray one took a dump in my vegetable garden not twenty minutes after I dug up the soil for spring. Looked right at me through the window while she did it, too. It was so funny I couldn't even be mad.

Over the last few years, working in the garden, I have lost all fear of spiders and bees - though wasps still make me a little uneasy. Last week, when I mowed for the first time, I startled a little garden snake. Tried to take a picture but by the time I got my phone from my pocket and found the camera app, it had disappeared. Quick little buggers.

To be a witch is not just to have this connection, but to recognize it, celebrate it, be empowered and overjoyed by it. I can scarcely describe the thrill I felt gazing into the tiny eye of a wild bird that looked at me in perfect trust as I stroked its feathers. The connection.

I was raised to believe in other gods, other ways of thinking about the world, but I was born with this sensibility.

It's a gift.

Beltane

It's Beltane! Also known as May Day, the first of May. A day where we celebrate the rebirth of the land, spring is in full swing; in myth and lore, the thought is that this turning point in the year represents the merging of Goddess and God in the passion that drives all of creation.

Last week I saw a bit of spring folklore that states, "When the forsythia blooms, there will be three more snows." I have a special love of forsythia; I recall seeing it in huge sprays all along the streets in New Jersey decades ago when I went to visit my aunt and uncle, and thinking it was the prettiest shrub I'd ever seen. I wanted to plant one the moment I bought my house, and did so, two years ago.

It's a fast grower, forsythia. In two years it's come to about five feet around and this spring, it gave me the most beautiful yellow blooms, branches of sunshine that lift my heart every time I look out the kitchen window.

But this is Colorado, and the lore is certainly proving to be true. It's snowing today, and has in fact been snowing for the last three days. It's that lovely kind of spring snow that is only accumulating on the grass and merely wetting the streets. It hasn't been too cold and I am confident my tulips and irises, so beautiful in the last few weeks, will continue to bloom after this round passes.

Things that mark Beltane:

Colors - pink, red, white, green, yellow
Plants - daisy, bluebell, ivy, lilac, strawberry, rose
Stones - emerald, amethyst, rose quartz, amber, malachite, sapphire

Things to do to celebrate Beltane:

This is a fire festival. If you're blessed to have a group to celebrate with, it's a day to light a bonfire and dance around the Maypole, skipping along with the brightly colored ribbons of spring. When I was a little girl, we did this at the park in a lovely spring festival that took place in the morning... because the afternoons in the mountains tend toward clouds and thunderstorms. Traditional wood for the bonfire includes hazel, ash, rowan, willow, birch, hawthorn, alder, holly.

(Or whatever is around you. Practically none of these are native to my home.)

If you're a solitary like me, there are other ways to celebrate.

Write your intentions for the new season on ribbons, and tie them to a tree; Air releases them into the universe, while the tree grounds them into the Earth.

Light a candle on your altar, say a prayer to the gods and goddesses of spring - Persephone, Nerthus, Flora, Freyja, Idun, Pomona, Rhea, Dionysus, Ceres, whoever speaks to you.

Bake bread, or any other creative cooking craft.

Greet the Sun at its rising or setting. (If you can see it... I won't be doing that today.)

Above all, experience the joy that is the turning of the wheel. Winter is over, though in these northern climates it will continue to tease us, reminding us it is never far off. But with May comes the shift toward warmth and light and the flourishing of the Earth.

I can't think of a better reason to celebrate.