Rowan wood

Sorbus, Europen Mountain Ash, which is growing in my back yard. While in the true interest for understanding my Celtic Pagan, and Celtic Wiccan friends better, i am now in earnest studying their craft. Which includes Oghams, the alphabet given to people by ancient Goddess Brighid, who said she had a way to teach the people how to remeber what they forgot, by using symbols they could learn to keep track of what they wanted to recall. -How reasonable and great a gift, the art and craft of writing and reading!

Coincidentally, it was suggested that i join a specific yahoo group for grove/clan/coven members. When also very recently i had decided to harvest and manifest my own set of oghams using the specific sacred woods for each, and simutaneous coincidence, some one asked if anyone knew of anywhere they might acquire a piece of Rowan for some magical work, for the New Moon, this next Sunday, Jan 22nd.

I replied, yes, but idunno, and probably not.

Yes, i have some, and it is perfect for what they described wanting/needing, but having it actually get to them on time, i was afraid, not. Adding especially to the mix, Monday being a Federal holiday and so the USPO was closed. They emailed me their addy and against the odds, it was shipped in a tube Tuesday.

Well, i just got the email! They love the wand i selected and sent, and it was a nice shaped peice that seemed to have created its own handhold, and added an extra, smaller peice, included, which turns out, is perfect for the magical working they had planned. And received it today!
Kool.
Life is never dull, and now i have yet another good story to share.
Blessed Be

red, white and blue all over...

(a note to a friend,   i liked it so well, its good enough to share...-in response to recieving a lovely photo of her maple tree in all it's Autum glory in her yard)

Oh so pretty!!!!

I never liked the colorcombination of red white and blue, and thought, it's just not natural!

Then one year, during a visit to New England in Autumn,freezing cold nights and sizzling afternoons, i took my mother and sister to Hancock Shaker farm in the Berkshires...

It is a living history farm, and the shakers all there long since gone, now. My mother and i walked in curiousity mode, one step after another.. as in "Oh, i wonder what is up this dirt road?") It even felt like we'd left the farm and were just walking toward the woods, we actually came  upon a corn field, and i learned that the cemetery was hidden among the rows, in the center, so "the people could hide their dead count from the Indians", in the corner, by the small wrought iron  fence, stood a very old possibly dead, oak tree with a large black bird standing sentinel,watching us, silently.
 When we beagn our return, where the road changed diretion away from that scene,  i noticed one large lonely single magnificent sugar maple in majestic color change, in the bright Sun and i looked up and into it and around it and for the first time ever, i saw this radiance of red surrounded by the brightest pure blue sky with huge white billowy clouds and was awe struck.

I was purely struck through,  as i stood there in the crisp cold air and blazing hot Sun, by my mothers tidbit of history, the idea of burying dead in a corn field, and the magical color combination of red, white and blue in Nature.... an awesome day that will never leave me and i am reminded of, all through the glorious days of Autumn.

I bought a couple peices of ornamental corn this year, (instead of growing any), so to have one to use in Bridey's eve basket.
-And some potatoes i hope age quickly for yummy potatoe pudding!

Love and hugs,
Aleta

Bravo, Occupy!

Bravo Occupy! Bravo to all the people takin' it to the streets. Today i wondered, what if they all joined hands or at least extended one arm to the person  next to them, and made a chain... this chain is growing and growing... I love that they are interviewing people who are well spoken and have productive, progressive corrective ideas and suggestions for improvement. Today, i saw a couple of suits demand to know what certain people did when they were arrested. I love seeing young and old, multi colored, multi religions, multi customs and multi costumed people all standing side by side, not just here, but everywhere, across the country and Europe, too. Instead of peoples fighting peoples under their government, they have turned the tide and come together to ask the government to be responsible for their actions and to also take action to address and correct the out of control oppression that big business has roped us all into and we must take back control of the people for the people, and correct the sneaky as shit games corporations have been playing on us and with our democracy. I refer to revolving door politics and policies, making their own legislation and regulations for their own industry, and squeezing the life’s work out of ours and even nearby Canadian farmers who have lost everything and in some case are in the process of losing everything or soon to be losing everything. Indeed, we even eat corporate food raised on corporate chemicals and hybridized by corporate money in corporate laboratories. These chemical companies have brought tragedy down upon so many innocent people in other countries where they had no regulations against them and their governments never saw (American owned) chemical companies coming. That is just one facet in this iceberg and we are all heading straight for it, with Big Brother, Big Business behind the wheel.  yah, its tricklin’ down to a thousand points of light alright, and those lights are burning brighter by numbers and volumes down below.

Look out, Baron, the people are coming. It's time for a revolution.

Bridey, Oimelc and Rapunzel...

What a long strange trip it’s been. 

Indeed.

While researching information about the beloved Saint and triple Goddess, Bride, Breed, Brighid, Brigit … Her name changes as much as Her legend spans space, as well as time. Beloved by so very many people, peoples, tribes, villages, counties, countries and cultures!  -Not to mention, diametrically opposed religions. (I daren’t mistake to assign Her to only one or another or any of the above!) Bridey: beloved far and wide, across time and space.

Not only a saint, but an Abbess, and one with a unique permission, for a female, to assign or select the local bishops. Whom, She insisted were goldsmiths before they would even be considered! (I feel so impressed by the many attributes, that I can hardly contain myself not to use exclamation points throughout!)

During my reading, I keep wondering, where do people get their information?  Reading things that just don’t riddle out, that is, just don’t seem to sound right or ring clear or true.

For example, “corn dollies”. I have  found  instruction for making Brighid’s Cross  by weaving or plaiting wheat or make a dolly with corn husks to lay in a basket on  the eve of Her feast day, February 2^nd, which is also known as Ground Hog Day, Candlemas and Imbolg or Oimelc. (Which is often translated to mean “ewe’s milk” and “in the belly”, likely both  referring to lactation, but neither in the O.E.D.) I know a corn dolly when I see one, they were still being made and sold when I grew up in New England. They are dolls, made with corn husk.  I also know wheat weaving when I see one; they are made from plaited grain, usually wheat, sometimes Black Bearded wheat. Wheat weavings were never called corn dollies. They were called wheat weavings, grain weavings, or plaiting’s and all of them considered good luck charms. Originally Scandinavian, they were intended, made, and used for blessing and protection, and normally hung in an obvious place, up high, in high regard within the home and even on both exterior ends of homes and barns. They were not toys, nor simple decorations as it seems nowadays. And were certainly not the corn husk dolly’s we see today.

So, just to set the record straight… when the fruit/berry/germ/seed ripened, it hardened, that  is, a verb, not a noun, it kerned, korned, or corned, its kernel ripened, just as the salt from the sea will harden or kern along rocky shorelines.  In some english speaking areas they were called kirn-baby's (recorded as early CE 1770’s). They were generally fashioned from the last sheave of grain harvested and dressed with ribbon and a piece of white cloth and fastened to the reapers sickle or cutting tool.

Which somehow I managed to stumble upon Rapunzel.

Oh for cryin’ out loud… now where did I read that the so called famous idiom, (which not only was regularly rewritten, apparently regularly misquoted.

Let down your hair.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, (rapunzel a portion of land, as in agriculture, soil for growing or raising food, and a plant, possibly  a grain or campanula roots, not our radish, not our maize, but like a kernel, as in it comes to bear its fruit, ripe and hardened, and golden colored). “Let down your golden hair”. Which is more likely the bardic or poetic way of ‘telling the story’, of Nature’s nature-al way of doing all things seasonally,  describing the harvest and the effect of the changing of seasons.

“Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.” Literally says, when wheat/wheatgrass/oat/rye, etc. grain) are healthy and ripe, their tops literally droop down under the weight of the kernels/germ/berries. Kernel/kern/korn/corn, but not our corn on the cob, not our maize.

-I think I read that in 1209 CE, the church began banning traveling minstrels and musicians from perfroming in public, which, thus began the beginning of the end of the re-telling and reenactments of the old stories and so, the beginning of the end of sharing information, or passing on the lessons and wisdoms from one generation to the next, from one era, and one area, to another.  But if those olde poets and bards are to be heard, the grain is heavy when ripe and ready! And golden!

So, I see Rapunzel as a metaphor for a story about Mother Nature. (Disney’s Tangled aside, having become modernized and managed to substitute the “W” word, for the “B” word, that is Bitch, instead of Witch. Yah, well, whatever, and still we do not protest, but pay it forward. Okay, I digress.)

In one version, the neighbor guy stole “rapunzel” (radish? rape? grain?)  from the garden  of Mother Gothel,  aka Frau or Dame Gothel,  later vilified to become notoriously mean, old and ugly “the sorceress”. Obviously an older womin, left to tend /fend her way in this world alone, for whatever reason, and righteously caught the thief who had been stealing her food from her garden every day to satisfy his young wife’s craving who apparently threatened him to get it -or else… she would leave him, she would just die… yadda, yadda, the story details totally depend on the location and year of publication. It has been retold  since the tenth century, from Persia to Italy to France, and eventually Germany with the Grimm Brothers, who rewrote it regularly to republish it to sell more. Well, you know that story.

So, Mother Gothel, having caught him plain and simple, they make a deal. I think instead of turning him over to the authorities for theft, she said, sure, take all of my food, (all the rapunzel), all you want of it, if you give me your next child to raise as my own, as a mother would.  Who knows what penalty theft could get you in their village. Right? She said, I will love her, protect her and take care of her like she is my own.

(Now, I gotta say, Mother Gothel, really reminds me of my Auntie Bernice, a widow, who never had children. She had a tiny house at the end of a dirt road. She had a turtle that lived under a rock by the corner of the shed, which was the original house her father built. She had a dog, a Welch Corgi named Dutchess. She hung bird cages in the trees in Summer and even grew peanuts in her garden! She canned everything and ground her own meat and shoveled the coal into a furnace to keep the house warm in Winter. And she liked to drink alcohol at the end of the day and put her feet up. (in the end, that's just how they found her body.) She never went to church. She wasn’t afraid of anything, she owned a gun, but never needed or used it, and liked the snakes and deer that wandered through her yard. I think I was a little bit scared of her when I was little, but now wish I had known better and wish I had known her better.)

Anyway, so, the thief, agreed.  

When his wife delivered a child, Mother Gothel, came to take her home, and named her ”Rapunzel”. 

 Along comes a young handsome virile dude on a fine lovely  day, and hears her soft sweet song upon the  breeze. “Oh Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.” Several versions of the same tale across old Europe say that the young prince, climbs, and visits her, regularly, and it is finally when she no longer fits into her own dress, i.e., is preganant, with twins!, (without clergy, hmm, begging for a rewrite!), so, her angry (step) mom, cuts off her long golden locks…

Sound familiar to anyone familiar? Demeter, Persephone? Cailleach and Bridey? Winter/Spring…

Take a bird’s eye look at the mature feminine aspect of initially great assuming power over the young maiden, who gradually, steadily, continues growing, unseen, ripening and finally too big to hide, contain, or handle. This truth is discovered by Frau/Dame/Mother Gothel, (aka Winter),  who loves, cares for, nurtures and protects, and has “kept” the maiden until she can no longer “keep” her.  (To keep, originally used to be a good thing, protect, guard, give attention, care for, etc.,. Also, as a noun, it  was the safest place and the last stronghold to defend.)  So, yes, indeed, like a good mother, until her prime, until her time. So we see, the season’s progress, from the older female, alone, and perhaps lonely, which is why she asked for the child? Or finding a replacement to keep the natural order of things? Her ugliness is simply reflecting natural aging, withering, decaying of the nature-al world, the plants having finished their time in the Sun, seeded, sprouted, rooted, grown, harvested and now composting and returning to the soil. It is Winter’s time now.  Old Mother,  a common and respectful term, that became vilified as mean, ugly, evil. Oh, and the  wicked “w” word, witch.

The young prince, courts, woos, seduces and impregnates the young maiden, who with him, becomes the Summer, the young, but pregnant Mother, robust and full and ripe until her harvest.

Okay, and yah, he pays, an ultimate sacrifice before being restored.

When she ages and withers to become the cold sleeping Goddess, blanketed by stillness and a mantle of white and ice.  Winter, gradually losing her grip, Imolc, Vernal Equinox, Beltaine, and everyone comes outdoors to celebrate.

Okay! So, does any of this sound familiar? <];)

Autumnal Quinox

as i awoke, earlier to prepare to attend a celebration of the Autumnal Equinox with friends and likeminded spirits, i appear to be in a semi upright position, so attempt to make preparations to get ready to get ready! But unfortunately cross eyed and woozy and wobbly, not looking good for being out and about and especially not driving!

(le sigh) c'est la vie, day 6 for alternate sleep therapy, or as i like to call it "cleaning up" my poor sleep hygiene... apparently not the overnight success as i'd hoped.

Truth be told, bed time may occur well before predetermined departure time at this rate and state of the situation. .

o let How can i convey to my own body, that i only merely wish i could at least make friends with my it so we weren’t all ways at odds with each other, it makes for maintaining real relationships, in the real world really awkward. Really, very awkward. Indeed.

That is all. Perhaps a nice nap before anything else comes up....

Ms. Body, you may win. But it is i who lose. You are not my temple nor e my altar nor my friend. Were you ever? I don't remeber ...any more....

speaking of burning trash...

Speaking of burning trash... I remeber a day at the airport, a reeeallly lonnng time ago.... i was behind a womyn, not tall, dark hair, light complexion, simple garb, light top, dark pants, sandals, small handbag. I was behind her at a ticket counter. She was being 'waited on' by an airline ticket agent. A paper fell, (flew?), (blew?) off the counter and landed on top of her left foot. She looked down at it, i watched it flutter down and fall onto her foot. She lifted her foot and shook her foot, and the paper fell off her foot onto the floor. The person behind the counter said something to her. Then she turned to her companion and said something, the companion bent over and picked up the piece of paper and gave it to the ticket agent. The image of the womin shaking her foot to remove a slip of paper to leave it on the floor is forever burned into my brain. Along with a great sense of awe and total confusion.... She is the quniticential (sp?) opposite of a tv-ad of a dark complected (sp?) man ornately dressed in medium tone animal hides, feathers and beads, long dark hair in braids, looking at and apparently being affected by the sight of litter along the roadside, with a drop of water leaking from one of his eyes, slipping down and glistening upon one cheek....