Autumnal Equinox

While I'm still in the throes of a nine day modern interpretation (not my own) of the Eleusinian Mysteries, I was so uber excited for the opposition between the setting autumnal sun and the harvest moon last night to kick off the equinox celebrations. As I've mentioned before, I think it is incredibly important to keep my children in touch with the natural cycles of the planet they live on, so we try to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes outside. Alas! It rained here all day long!

A few cotton candy clouds are better than nothing, I suppose. We dashed all around town through a light sprinkling of rain for the last 10 minutes or so before the sun was supposed to set trying to find the ideal place for viewing, but the sun was never visible behind all the cloud cover. This picture was taken right at sunset, approximately 7:30pm for us.

There was no sign of the big, full harvest moon at all.

I have a get together with my (very young) apprentice on Saturday, and as he is currently very interested in crystal healing, I whipped up some small gem essences for him to try and charged them under the setting equinox sun.



Ghetto Pagan Mother of Four: Transports gem essences— crafted at sunset on the autumnal equinox and bottled in reused baby food jars— in her daughter’s Tinkerbell lunch box. And she can’t take a non-blurry picture to save her life these days. There’s a special ring of hell for this camera, I tell ya.

Today's Accidental Witchery

Today’s accidental witchery:

One of our family traditions is to make apple head dolls with the littles around the time of the autumnal equinox (it’s not an exact science, more like when the apples are ready and Mama has the energy). I use mine in ritual throughout the dark of the year, and the kids put on Samhain puppet shows with theirs. (‘Cause this mom doesn’t force her religion onto her children, but she does insist that they be aware of and take part in the seasonal changes of the planet they live on.) While making this year’s dolls today, the skewer from my oldest daughter’s went through the apple and into my hand. You cannot imagine the stupid amounts of clumsy that have been naturally bestowed upon me. Honest. A thick, glistening drop of ruby red welled up on my hand as I cursed, and when I yanked my hand away, said drop flew right into the mouth of my daughter’s doll. OH YES IT DID! See the picture? PROOF!

At which point she ran around the house screaming that she didn’t want a zombie apple head doll because it might try to eat her BRAAAAAAAAINS!

I think this mom may have to pull a switcheroo come Samhain.



The wound, clearly located on the Mound of Jupiter. That little bugger drank of the blood of my self-worth!

Birthday Tarot

Somehow I keep forgetting that I have this little blog, and now I'm very late in posting my birthday tarot spread. I'm lazy at best when it comes to tarot for myself. I prefer to keeps things as simple as possible, especially with something I am meant to track over a year. So, each year on the event of my solar return, I draw one card from the deck to represent my overall state of mind throughout the year and then draw one card for each month, laying them in a wheel around the first card. These were my results this year:

Center (self; mindset through the year)-- Ace of Swords reversed
September- VI of Pentacles reversed
October- IV of Cups
November- III of Cups
December- Knight of Cups reversed
January- Page of Wands
February- Empress
March- Emperor reversed
April- II of Wands reversed
May- VIII of Wands
June- Ace of Wands
July- Page of Pentacles reversed
August- Judgement

While I will reserve most of my personal interpretation for myself because it is, well, personal, I will say that it looks to be an interesting year. For one, this is the first time in many years that I have drawn any Major Arcana during my birthday spread. That in itself says a lot. It also seems that the spread is a bit Wand heavy, but that is not really unusual for me. Should be an interesting year...

I Stayed

There are days when it is so difficult to stay in this body. I don’t know what this “disorder” is that I have, or even if it is a disorder at all. (Ancestors say: What you lookin’ for a cure for? It’s a damn gift, girl. It’s a damn gift. Doctors shrug.) I know too that some would literally kill to be able to leave their physical being with the ease (ha!) with which I do so. Still, I have four children to care for and can’t just go AWOL whenever. I NEED to be present for them. You’d think, after all these years, that I’d be a little more adept at keeping myself from slip sliding into the Otherworlds at random moments, but if there’s been progress in that area, it’s slight. That frustrates the hell out of me.

It was only a matter of weeks for me to be able to trigger the OOBE’s on my own, but getting back? Staying here when the pull comes at an inopportune time? That’s been one hell of a different, far more complex story.

I stayed today though. I fought the pull tooth and fucking nail, and I stayed.

The Crystal Controversy

I'm a four planet Virgo, so one of the first things I was drawn to as a new pagan all those many years ago (is it really nearing 20 years!? Holy hell.) was crystals and gemstones. Herbs was first-- again, Virgo-- but crystals were not far behind. As taboo as this subject is in the more hardcore witch circles, I've never been ashamed to admit that I am drawn to pretty, shiny, chthonic things. I spent years carrying each stone with me, one at a time, and meticulously recording the results. I wore them, put them on my body, placed them under my pillow at night, meditated in circles of them, placed them in complicated grids, met them in dreams and trances... everything. Eventually, I did some not for profit crystal healing for others. I was still a teen and seriously considered doing this work for the rest of my life, but frustrations and concerns set in and I left crystal healing behind for good. I thought.

The subject has recently come back onto my radar, and I find my reasons for ignoring crystal healing falling on deaf ears. But I have this space, so I thought I'd type out my feelings on the subject as a sort of cathartic exercise for myself, even if no one is reading it. ;)

The first thing that made me reconsider my position as a crystal healer was the ethics of where and how the various crystals are collected, and we're not even talking about the obvious ivory, pearl, and coral here, which are probably harvested illegally. The subject of blood diamonds has gotten some attention recently, but these are by no means the only crystals which are harvested at the expense of other humans, animals, or ecosystems. Anytime there is a phenomenon that grows as rapidly as crystal healing has, there will be people who want so deperately to profit from it that they push the ethics envelope, and I want NO part of that. Sure, I can do my best to ensure that I only buy crystals from ethihcal, fair trade suppliers, but the overall problem left a bad taste in my mouth.

Then there is the misconception that crystal healing can do no harm. Go ahead and google it. See if you can't come up with at least a dozen sites proclaiming how "safe" crystal healing is. Oh look, I found one in about 2 seconds: "There aren't any bad side effects...". This illustrates perfectly a complete lack of understanding about healing in general. Let me give you an example.

At the point at which I was considering leaving crystal healing behind, I was approached by a woman in her 50's who had been treating herself with crystals. She'd been using hematite to relieve back pain from an old injury because she'd read or heard somewhere that hematite was useful for realigning the verterbrae, but the back pain was still getting progressively worse. What was she doing wrong? Well, she'd misunderstood the problem first and foremost. Back pain from an old wound is probably not caused by vertebral misalignment. It's more likely inflammation at the site and/or nerve pain. So this woman was treating the wrong thing. Second, she was using the wrong stone. In my experience, hematite aggravates inflammation, so the stone she was using was actually making her worse rather than making her better.

With herbalism, people are usually distinctly aware that some plants are poisonous, so they have a healthy dose of trepidation about treating themselves without doing at least a little bit of research. But with crystal healing, people will pick up any old stone and expect it to be all happy goodness and rainbows, no side effects at all (except for the good ones, of course). There are some safe crystals, just as there are safe, nourishing herbs, but you gotta do the damn research. Healing is healing. This means that you have to a.) understand a fair amount of human (or animal, if they're who you're treating) anatomy and physiology, b.) understand the characteristics of the healing medium you are working with and c.) be aware of the constitution and particular peculiarities of the specific patient you are working with.

Are you going to die from making a mistake with crystal healing? No, probably not, but that doesn't mean it's harmless. I don't mean for this to discourage anyone from seeking crystal therapy with an experienced, qualified healer, nor do I mean to disparage those who practice crystal therapy. I just wish that more people were willing to recognize that there are risks that come with ANY form of healing.

Weekending

Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis)


Native sunflowers


Goldenrod is just beginning to bloom


Still a few blackberries hanging around




Spiral cornmeal offering

Book Review: The Transformation of Hera: A Study of Ritual, Hero, and the Goddess in the Iliad by Joan V. O'Brien

Let me apologize in advance for reveiwing a book that is no longer in print and is not available on the mighty Amazon. You may commence with the throwing of rotten tomatoes now. Thank you.

The Transformation of Hera is a scholarly consideration of the queen of the Olympians. While the title's subtext will tell you that the scope of the book is limited to her appearances in Homer's Iliad--and there is much use of the literary clues left behind in this work-- the author's research goes far more in depth than this. It reaches back to the pre-Hellenic worship of Hera to flesh out the usual shallow, shrewish description of the goddess through an etymological breakdown of her name and various epithets, archaeological clues left behind in her temples, statues, and artwork and the historical facts that can be gleaned about her worship. The research is substantial and well cited.

Overall, I found this book to be enjoyable and full of information. This is not light reading, so be prepared if you aren't used to scholarly works. There is definitely a feminist bias to the book, which may turn some readers off, but didn't seem overdone to me. I would recommend this book to Hellenic reconstructionists, devotees of Hera, and anyone interested in Greek mythology or goddess spirituality.

Personally, this book is indispensable to me as Hera has been my patron goddess since childhood. I have reams of notes on this book and always discover something new each time I pick it up again. It's one of those books that seems to confirm things about the goddess that I have felt intuitively for a long time. I often study as a form of devotion to my gods, and this is the book I choose when I need to devote some time to Hera.