JOURNAL: Litha, once again

Litha has come round once again, fairweather friend.

Memoria de la noche. Ingrediente esencial la noche, como tambien la luna, llena. Las estrellas que miran son transeuntes la noche de Litha, menos vibrantes que nuestros ojos, mas distantes que nuestros sueños, inmediatos y perduraderos en esta noche. Es Litha y la Diosa lleva en su vientre la semilla. El Dios esplendoroso la mira, con devocion, con todo lo que un dios puede y desea entregar.

Mis pies estan sobre el mismo suelo, cemento amarillo, de techo el viejo parron que esta decorado de racimos nuevos. Conozco esta uva, negra y blanca, dulce y pequeña. Su sabor en mi boca, la sensacion de tomarla entre mis dedos y desnudarla para ver el jugo correr antes de llevarla a mis labios. El tinte azul oscuro en mis dedos, como tatuajes. Me delata esta uva, desde entonces. Con el fresco de la noche me siento bajo el parron y mis pies conocen este suelo. Mis ojos ven... todo lo ven de nuevo, espejismos u otras dimensiones ¿que mas da cual sea? Solo se que es Litha y me llama el suelo, la pared cayendose a poquitos, lo verde de la parra y el aroma a mi propia sangre. El significado oculto de la sangre. Potente, antiguo, eterno.

JOURNAL: Thessaly

I can see them, walking among these mountains, the twin peaks watching and guarding the caves below them. Witches, one and all, mythical and real, then and -if we find the door- now.

Ancient Thessalian witches were believed to control the moon, according to an old tract: "If I command the moon, it will come down; and if I wish to withhold the day, the night will linger over my head; and again, if I wish to embark on the sea, I need no ship, and if I wish to fly through the air, I am free of my weight."

POEM: Inanna (Hieros Gamos I)

Inanna:

Bien amada, tu nombre significa creación,
atrae dulzura al corazon que escucha el sagrado sonido
de la Diosa quien ama mas alla de la muerte,
hasta la misma vida eterna.

Es Inanna a quien se le ofrenda toda libacion en un rio sin fin
- cual miel, cual perfume de dulce esencia –
Innana la de las caderas sagradas que danzan el placer del cosmos.

Inanna la de la voz que canta al amanecer a su bienamado dormido,
sacro por haberla conocido la noche toda,
inmortal mediante la felicidad embriagadora de a Ella conocer
de acariciar el sagrado vientre y los senos que hacen derramar suspiros
inmortal al labrar la sagrada Tierra, siempre fértil y calida,
sintiendo que su libacion blanca entra en las morenas y henchidas carnes
de la Diosa madre, la Diosa amante, la Diosa hermana y reina.

Toda plenitud y toda felicidad fluyen de Inanna, la Diosa de los ojos tiernos y la mirada orgullosa, la Diosa quien hizo vigilia sobre su bienamado durante la noche toda, sabiendo lo que el debia ofrendar a cambio de Su sagrado amor.

Entre hombres este humilde jardinero es un principe
quien se entregara al camino mas antiguo:
el del renacer a la vida eterna – su cuerpo la ofrenda -
el de entregar su masculina fuerza y derramar su sangre por su pueblo.

Orgullosa la Diosa de su certera eleccion.

JOURNAL: Litha 2007

Solsticio, festival de fuego, antiguo dia de cuarto celta. Coincide con luna llena.

Nuevos proyectos. La Diosa embarazada del Dios quien nacera en Yule; el Dios observa los frutos de la union de Beltane, ahora en su apogeo sabe que esta es la semilla de su propia muerte, desde hoy la rueda comienza a girar hacia Samhain, hacia su ida al inframundo.

Paradox: el Dios esta en el vientre de la Diosa, sin embargo tambien a su lado en toda su fuerza solar. ¿Como llego a existir esta paradoja de la naturaleza? ¿que expresan realmente estos conceptos? No lo se.... solo se q el Dios al mirar a su sagrada conyuge sabe que se avecina su muerte y vive con ese saber, aun asi es fuerte y esplendoroso y dispuesto a lo que vendra, porque todo sacrificio de voluntad propia es mas poderoso aun.

Un poema al respecto, sobre Inanna y su elegido.

JOURNAL: A kiss for Samhain

Not any kiss. A kiss requested by an old woman met by chance on a dusty lonely road. There stands the warrior, the young hero in the making. The old woman, a hag, a woman whose wisdom and beauty are unacknowledged by man's concepts of beauty. See: her eyes are cloudy with age, her skin weathered by so many nights looking at the moon, being the moon, her hands wrinkled and veined in deep blue. She stands on the earth and looks at the young man, the bearer of the days to come, he who seeks and needs experience and wisdom to survive. But he may not find without what is not within. And so, when the woman requests a kiss, he denies it. "el beso que quieres no va a ocurrir nunca, no va a haber beso" a sentence seals his fate, which until that moment could have gone on several different paths. Not an occassion when a kiss is just a kiss, a rose by any other name and many such platitudes. Fate doesnt deal in platitudes, it is the one black on white, relentless bottom line. Now only one path ahead, the one where the opportunity, nay, the certainty of gaining wisdom and experience are left behind for some time, to be earned instead drop by drop along the weary years. The old woman smiles with bitterness. Her eyes smart with tears she will not shed. This one she thought would be wiser, she had believed him able to see past appearances. Instead, a replay of the old story between wisdom and youth. A lonely path for her, but then the acquiring of wisdom usually is a lonely path. She turns away without goodbyes.

JOURNAL: siddhe with wings and red flowers in their hair

Borne by the winds of change, they travel ahead of me to protect and to shield those too young to have the duty. To avenge the lack of scruple and to seal the door of evil. Hands raised to fend and to punish the trespasser. Siddhe who love the innocent children of the moon, the maidens who in youthful enthusiasm glow and seek.

JOURNAL: waiting for Siddhe II

Un hada, a dryad rather...and it reminds me of one who loves fairies and believes fervently in one day reaching them or their reaching her.... I expect she has no idea I think about her and about fairies and about how like green leaves is her scent and how like smooth, pale tree bark is her skin. Strange destinies which bring us close only to make us part. So rare and delicate she is, so dear to me and so far away in time. Wherever you are, sweet as a peach I remember you and one day the paths shall open again.

Poem: july moon

Once upon a full moon a gipsy heart was free
to seek binding sweet as new earth

feeling the magnetic pull of a sudden stormy moon
for a moon in clear skies can hold storms within

storms which no man may ken not tie
only live thru

once upon a full moon a gipsy heart gave itself
nary a qualm nary a tear

only the gentle flow of a few drops of blood
which loved as love ever does

in truth an offering of trust
in truth, an offering of trust

Poem: black roses

One, two, three
untidy dried bouquet
dust like mist on petals
thrust into my hands
with the eargeness of a child
wishing to please

brittle petals, dust like mist
within the heart of the rose
who knows what lives within the heart of a rose
even when faded and dry
mayhap it feels itself still vibrant
as the sun rises and touches it

and the sun, touching such a rose
does it feel a pang?
does it touch gently out of pity or out of love
for the beauty that was

does the sun feel the tremor upon petal and stalk
does it understand at all
the bravery of a faded rose opening to such light?

JOURNAL: a blue room

A priest makes an offering to the Gods of the Old Kingdom. How many memories in one picture which represents so many. How many dynasties and how many thousands of ceremonies performed. Mindfulness of the old ways is my intention in this little space, to say: I know you did, you do, exist. The incense rises still blue and faint at first then thickly rolling around the room. Three such in my life, to whom goes my respect and my affection. One my present partner in some magickal things, in some magical way.

JOURNAL: for the sake of clarity

One of my brothers (I have several, blood, foster, step etc) or, to be more exact the brother who follows me in birth order, has complained that he reads my blog but doesnt understand a word of what its about. So, in plain english, this blog is an experiment. Well, several.

1. to get back to writing creatively again (so it has prose and narrative and poetry).
2. to act as a blue-print to a little astral space i'm working on and to use YOUR energy in helping me build it as you visualize it when you read about it.
3. feed-back for 1 and 2 (but that hasnt gone so well it seems)
4. archive space for a book I am working on Goddesses and witches of the world, a medium term project.

and its all mixed together, which is why it may not make sense if you think blogs are all about what actually-factually-on-the-earth-plane HAPPENED on x or y day. Part of the fun is letting you work out what actually happens like that, what happened actually in the past in this life, what are memories of other lives and what is sheer narrative made up by me. Woe betide the mortal who believes the love stuff relates to him/her in particular, that would be to completely ignore that I am polyamorous and to give yourself faaaarrr too much importance in my world.

end of little explanation.... :)

JOURNAL: full moon & retracing steps

A whirlwind tour of magickal lands.... stonehenge, avesbury, glastonbury, tintagel and places in between..... all known already, all met anew and their energy renewed by the june rites. Today the full moon and here I am, so exhausted that I could not raise a slight breeze..... but happy to have given pleasure and to have fed minds and spirits.

Jasmine again....

The scent now ethereal and seldom remembered, far away from its cause and even the consequences drift down the river of time affording a little more breathing room with every passing month. Yet jasmin arouses the essential woman, the one who cares not for the shape if the feeling be present. My unfaithful friend is remembered as I light a candle in my windowsill even though it is long past dawn. What a distinction, to be remembered from among those whom I call friends for the brand of disloyalty which marked my heart as surely as an iron brand forged and heated with hatred in the heart. And yet you loved me well.... I saw it myself and lived it day by day.

This morning early to light the wood in the stove, curlicues of steam from brewing tea and a comfortable armchair. Beyond the window spring has settled in well and the birds have been awake for hours. The only jarring note is a crocheted woollen cushion which has appeared all by itself on the armchair, I swear I did not put it there. Blue and yellow, with a hint of brown on the outer edge, lined in cotton.

JOURNAL: Beltane take III

after long absence: reunion. The gift of a long spring night is a sweetly stolen moment with your fingers feeding me and then taking from me a little token of what I would feed you with.... danger and thrill both. So easy to unsettle you with one sentence and how I love to challenge you, to make you know that it is I before you and no other. Within your cottage I realise that it is so very like my own that they could have been crafted by the same dreaming mind. Omen or coincidence? do we believe in concidences at all, sweet friend? the herbs gathered at Litha at last safe within your hands, to nourish you and give you solace when despair comes near, to cleanse your spirit. Watered by my own hand, cut with my own hand and sacred knife and hung to dry under my roof, a roof you shall sleep under when the time is right. When you drink them sunshine and earth shall mingle on your tongue and mayhap you shall remember me, as I remembered you that day in a land far away. We have lived in so many lands you and I, yet none have managed to make us part for very long.

JOURNAL: Beltane by full moon

Yes, beltane by near full moon and by the light of stars. Sound of running water jumping over slate. Movement of trees near and owls far.

JOURNAL: watching time

Watching time go by, as the flames burn and shimmer on the water. Night long as absence, your absence.

JOURNAL: new moon in spring

10% full doesnt cover the delicate sliver against a deeply dark sky. No man in the moon tonight, the maiden barely beginning to glide across a cloudless sky like the barque of ages. Ready to be filled with events, emotions, surprises, everything that the full march towards a moon laden with fulness may bring.

JOURNAL: waiting for time to repeat itself

The cyclical nature of certain events –while not proven by science- is a given in certain circles (pun entirely intentional) and with good reason. What has happened before has a high probability of recurring. Not that the universe favours catching the same bug again and again as a survival characteristic, but a certain susceptibility to entropy is established once something which tends to disorder is allowed to happen.

In the realm of human emotions this becomes a pattern which is well known to star-crossed lovers. A fine example is where a relationship has a past unknown to the couple. I am of course referring to past lives. Certain seeds of time and experience are sown in the soul and carried into a particular incarnation, to be watered by the first glance exchanged. The phenomenon of love at first sight –or coup de foudre, as the |French so aptly describe it, (for it is indeed as if a bolt of lightning had descended from the heavens unto the hapless pair) is the most usual expression of this happening and can reliably be followed by all the symptoms of two souls with outstanding business to confront.

Not for nothing is the repeating of certain key meetings referred to loosely as karma, rather than allowing for the possibility of an encounter being a result of dharma. It is not a simple lack of technical exactitude on the part of the speaker, it is a term chosen because unconsciously it is felt that such meetings are usually to settle outstanding debts.

What would make us stride boldly into perilous waters other than the feelings associated with being in love? The urgent need to breathe the same air and eat from the same plate ensures ample opportunity for karma to unfold and ripen. A trick of destiny to ensure we repay our debts and so bring some balance back into the development and progress of our souls.

Now, how many lifetimes of refining and adjusting, of paying and creating new debt must come round on the wheel of life before a fortunate encounter happens between those two souls? They may be assumed to progress, in the main. Yet they have no mechanism to ensure that they meet each time they reincarnate as each acquires obligations with other souls which may take precedence over their personal link. Time is fleeting. And in a way immaterial, for no matter how many lifetimes go by, they will have their opportunity to meet on a plane of existence to continue or conclude their business. Yet to be within a particular lifetime and to have gained enough awareness of these processes of the soul and THEN meet a pair of eyes across a room while knowing that one has seen them before, maybe remembering when, how, even why, is an entirely different process.

The most fortunate of encounters is when both souls are in a state which allows them to know what is happening. Such an encounter is seldom indeed. How curious then that they should knowingly avoid each other, what matter may induce such a reaction? When one of the two avoids, it is usually to avoid the payment of karmic debt, a presentiment of pain, of loss perhaps. To avoid re-living past pain is not a reason, for if they know what happened they know if it is not so this time. At this level of development there is access to further knowledge, so surely it cannot be fear of the unknown. What else could cause such avoidance? What instinctual knowledge is there unfolding which causes avoidance of what would seem a great privilege?

JOURNAL: spring and cherry blossom

Today spring is all around my garden, the cherry tree is covered in pink blossom and hardly any petals are on the ground yet, many flowers are still tight little buds. I have looked carefully at the lilac bushes and their leaves are beginning to sprout, blossom in a few weeks. I can never decide whether I love more the intense scent of the white lilac or the gentle lavender colour of the lilac…lilac. In an ideal world, like so much else, one would choose a combination to make the perfect reality. Rather like love really, how does one choose between this sweetness or that scent or that intensity of shade when in fact one loves life in all its variety. There is so much opportunity to love when one has an open mind and a fine eye for subtleties of existence. In an ideal world, my little cottage would receive visitors galore, perhaps on a windy autumn night a dark stranger on horseback with a cloak buffeted by the wind and pale long fingered hands that would need defrosting by the fireside.

On a spring day such as today, perhaps two women walking up the path and sounding the copper bell by the gate to let me know they were to cross the perimeter into my garden. One holding a willow basket in her left hand and helping her partner over the cobbles of the stone path, which I leave purposefully to be taken over by moss, an old trick to make unaware strangers announce themselves by the sound of their falling. I walk on the grass, of course, not wishing a similar fate. The other wears a long skirt, woollen still at this season when one can never tell what weather the day will hold. Early risers come to surprise me with a mobile breakfast contained within the basket. A smile escapes me as I watch their demure clothing, clothing hiding legs and ankles, blouses long sleeved and shawls at the ready gathering on their bosoms. So proper a semblance of maidenhood, yet such different realities beneath. Part of the tapestry that life offers me, witches enough to accompany me when company is wanted. In that I grow more fortunate with every season.

This place attracts a discreet sort of guest, not every person who knows of it may enter it, and few know of it who are not witches. There is something to the energy of the place which defends itself from easy gaze or curious hand. Before ever I came into this part of the world it was already so, only after several visits did it unveil itself to my eyes and a path eluded me for some time. As it should be, for I had requested a place far from prying eyes and insensate hearts. Having gathered friends enough willing to help build in other realms, the path opened one day with the ease one experiences when permission has been granted in a higher place, no obstruction to mar the way nor to fool the unheeding. To watch stone gather and pile in shapes of its own will, cohesive and strong, is an experience which makes other realities pale. The art and toil of it is invisible, only the result is warm and tactile.

JOURNAL: full moon in Libra

The sign that rules over justice and equilibrium rises over the horizon and for a few astrological hours its influence is felt on the world, a place which has much need of it. Perhaps it is Ma’at’s influence which may be best tapped now, to find clarity within and without. For in clarity lies a path to justice, to better understanding. Although not all wrong doing is a sign of ignorance or confusion. Still, justice may be found in clarity even after great wrongdoing. For without seeing truly, there can be no regret.

JOURNAL: the fact of moving

Time, space, distance and other things being explained by quantum physicists are never as vivid as when one has to live them through the realms of emotion instead of through the world of the senses, the limited senses allotted to humankind. I have to leave a house for a while, not a play house, a real house for which I feel love and in which I have known love. A house which vibrates at times with the sound of music and sometimes with the feel of magick being lived and magick being performed. Even on a cold night such as tonight, the onset of autumn, the house is welcoming. Even at this late hour and all the folk within asleep, the house itself is awake and aware, as a witches´house should be and doubtless is.

In the cottage I have lit the first few logs in the iron stove and the smoke rises light and thin above the tree-line, attracting curious glances from the village below. I have set my copper kettle on it and soon thin steam should rise from my tea cup. I work on a quilt, a patchwork quilt which shall doubtless be finished before winter sets in. It shall lie on the bed in the guest bedroom, waiting for a worthy guest to lie beneath it. So few of my guests use the spare room, most are close enough to sleep beside me in my own bed, or not to sleep at all but at least to warm the night with their presence. Fitting host-price.

JOURNAL: waiting for siddhe

The coolness of night enters within the cottage, wide open french windows look onto the inner garden. A lemon tree shelters a large quartz and next to it a torch awaits being lit. I shall go sit next to it soon, well before midnight, and open the doorway through which I may glimpse the fairy kingdom. Perhaps there I may find the answer to my restlessness of this night, the need to be wild and to make something be which never was before. The Siddhe are not who many humans think, they are the fey children of nature, not at all human nor godlike. They are entirely themselves and the human who considers them his friend may well be wrong. Then again, as among any other folk, there are types and types and also rugged individuals. I have met one who migrated and somehow won the right to leave his world of origin and to inhabit a human body. I can´t say I know him much, but I may come to know him yet and perhaps we both shall be the richer for it. Interesting times we live in.

Onto another subject: the joining of bloodlines. Witch lines, of course. You dont really expect me to talk about any other kind in any depth, now. I am wondering what way it is gained other than through procreation and also how two of different lines meet anyhow.

JOURNAL: waiting for the wind

Late summer night and I wait for the wind, that beloved element which brings and disperses both. Say not that my vision fails me, the wind rises from the south and comes towards my door, sure of welcome or at least of pushing open my door, if not softening my heart. A late summer wind, I believe, still with warmth in it and softness of a kind once seen within these garden walls.

JOURNAL: Pandora´s box

A synonym and a legend both, Pandora whose curiosity revealed secrets, now a woman who holds within herself secrets, the unexpected. You named me well that day. I still hold secrets. One more than others might interest you and I think it is a secret that will continue to be so, in this life at least. I dont know your level of access in the worlds in between. Nor do I care to know. There was much more to be seen than time allowed, fair weather friend. Inch'Allah, much may be seen still, but not by you. No, not by you.

JOURNAL: Jasmine

The olfactory sense the most potent to bring the past through the doorway of time into the present. We forget time is linear for us in the mundane when one inhalation makes it the year before, the season before, a night before, a sound and feeling before. In this same way we can set up trigger reactions for ourselves, booby traps with dividends, key important states of mind to certain perfumes and incenses, one of the infinite variety of the arts arcane. The whole field of aromatics brings rich dividends when used to deepen various states. But for today, Jasmine hanging rich as a cloud of white stars over the bedroom window brings yesteryear.

JOURNAL: eclipse of the moon

I was reminded of a song from the 80´s: total eclipse of the heart. Yet the work done was totally different, a cleansing of the past and new vigour and union as the moon emerged from the earth´s shadow. The basement room has a certain feeling of very old things lingering and the new incense mingles with the scent of sulphur. Yet the energy summoned entered clear and crisp, there is something very stable in sitting beneath the horizon line and knowing that coolness that deep places have. An earth elemental made a good companion, compact yet very visible and firm in his presence.

oh, so much to be done and so little time......

JOURNAL: Invoking the Goddess

Within, without, above, below....... where is the Goddess to be found? In my entrails, carried within the stream of my blood, in the darkness of the pupil of my right eye, or my left? Or is the Goddess found in you? Can She be found within you? male you? You greet me with persistent silence and I begin to seek you in the night, faraway friend of my soul. Shall I be insistent as wind when angered, as insistent as pounding surf, as the aeons since we first grew into each other? from within the witch I think I shall awake the enchantress until you can deny me no more, until I am a fervour in the light that touches you in the dawn of your awakening. Until your breath suddenly grows shallow and you inhale my scent or drown, until the memory of me is etched on the inner surface of your eyelids. And this is not love......

JOURNAL: re-membering

re-membering: a use of words which I learnt from Dianic feminists, to squeeze out the juice of meanings. To re member is to put together the limbs of the past into a coherent whole once more. I have the right to define my own use of language and to use it as a tool for my personal creation.

re-member: a vine harbour in the garden, beneath a rug and cushions and the makings of an altar on a purple cloth. Bunches of white and black grapes hang above. Dionysus not the God of choice. An athame: sylvan within its scabbard (miniature sword) and flowers engraved on the hilt. An athame of plenty, of fullness, of birth. Perhaps strange for a cutting tool, but true.

Now I sit beneath the same vines and remember that night with its moon incandescent in the sky, low and pregnant with light. The warmth of late summer. The joy of the occassion. Searing pain for quite a few seconds, then the mouth sucking at my finger as if life depended on it. Night without, full sun within. The die cast, the course run, the commitment made.

Now to bed, with the scent of jasmine entering my window and scenting the blue room as it did then, as it will tomorrow and tomorrow.

JOURNAL: brick by brick

The cottage is fertile, within its womb grows a basement room, a little cave where energy is stored, where memories linger, where layers between realities are thin. The shelves on two walls are lined with books, the kind of books visiting relatives are not meant to see, oils with little labels and dates. A small table bears an egyptian shrine, as it used to before in another place. Isis and her crown have pride of place. On the floor, rugs which remember the shapes of two bodies united in a quest of the spirit across time, across space. A tiny window at ceiling height lets in some air, a few stray sun beams which just manage entry past its metal bars. On the ground, strewn rosemary for remembrance and lavender for blessed sleep.

I wonder where hobbits do go in the dark of winter, their slow, heavy bodies well covered against the cold. Perhaps they too dwell in dark warm places lit by candles.

Poem: riding night mares

In the dark, in the dark which is inviting and full-scented
my body lies prone, a freedom of sorts, to abandon it

you enter, by what path I know not
since I blocked the paths with quarried stone
and the river of feeling that led here
I let it bleed dry
so that you might never sail its waters in the warmth of the night

before thought, before awareness of myself
there is awareness of you, of scent and skin
of flesh different to mine
and of blood which makes my heart beat fast

your unique signature: that the blood in your veins
makes my heart beat as my blood makes your heart beat
the occult significance of blood in a neat resume

neater than jagged piercing

JOURNAL: The earth

Soil. Clay in places, overly dry in others, moist and dark. Even the earth seeks balance in my life. Balance it shall find. The garden prospers and soon another set of hands to prepare the place and to plant the new trees chosen for shade and for healing. Among them, quercus ilex, an evergreen oak with its male and female flowers and perennial leaves. It shall be the centrepiece of my little grove of sacred trees, together with drimys winterii (Canelo o Foye). The tree of peace among the Mapuche and the tree from which the kultrun is made, the sacred drum of the Machis. A meeting of European and Mapuche trees, to provide a space in which to retreat and listen to the voices of ancestors, by and by. When I am an old woman I will find shade there. There my ashes shall be spread.

JOURNAL: The garden

The herbs gathered at Litha hang now dry from the oak log which holds up my worksurface in the kitchen. Soon to be put away properly labelled for winter use. The herbs are flourishing in the garden since their trimming, the mint particularly fine and in full bloom. They shall be used for magical workings rather than health, not enough to go round.

Tonight before sunset I cut some and also some malvarosa and rosemary for a posy for a love altar, crowned by two very fine pink hortensia heads. Placed in my bedroom, by a window, and accompanied by some hand-rolled pure wax candles made by a former love, they should be very effective in bringing the joy of summer into my little abode. Now the exact shape is a matter for the powers that be.

Today a day of high, warm winds that swept the garden and entered into my bedroom all day long until sunset. Then calm set in.

JOURNAL: pain

Blue to counter the fiery red of pain.....nothing as exhilarating as the feeling of being pain-less after great physical pain.

JOURNAL: of the beloved

A dream came to me which was more a visitation, the beloved came and wore a known face, one that would not be denied in its urgency to enter my life again, to be accepted once again in spite of much grief and loss. I think it was the poem to Inanna which brought me the happiness of seeing the much loved being again before me, of hearing all the words so tenderly spoken before and new ones asking to return. The hair swung as it once did, to be caught in my hand. The arms held me and conveyed the longing of ages past, until the painful memories were erased and I realised that opening ones heart is not only possible but inevitable. Blessed Inanna, timely and wise. You know the unspoken hunger of the heart and the exact shape and scent of the beloved of each heart. The season will come once again and we shall be trees in full bloom. A testimony to Your might and to Your healing.

Poem: Inanna

Innana, beloved
your very name brings creation
sweetness to the heart that hears the sacred sound
of the Goddess who loves beyond death unto immortal life
Inanna to whom all libation is poured in an endless river
as honey, as sweetly scented perfume
Inanna of the sacred hips that dance the cosmos into pleasure
Inanna of the voice that sings at dawn over the sleeping form of her Beloved,
He who was made sacred through knowing Her
he who was made immortal through the joy of knowing Her
all bounty and all joy flow from Inanna, the Goddess of the tender eyes and proud gaze
the Goddess who through the night watched over her beloved
knowing what he had to give in exchange for Her love
proud the Goddess of her choice

Poem: the ancestors

Forests with dew and deep green trees
scent of earth newly washed by rain
sitting, we two, on ground new to us
our eyes locked into the past
your beloved shape shimmers and changes
eyes become deeper, brow thicker
shape of bone, shade of skin
even the very smell of you
change until another man is before me
the ancestor within you, the soul
whose body was stolen by the enemy
greets me with a look that would chill the bone
if he did not know me or deemed me enemy or unworthy

My eye stands the gaze that sears
my soul opens with nothing to hide
and nowhere to hide it
the silent exchange begins, your ancestor greets me
and my ancestor awakens to the greeting
the me now and the you then and the me then
only the you now is strangely absent or perhaps dormant
the weak link that we must stregthen least the enemy triumph again

(weeks later, triumph he did)

JOURNAL: gregorian new year 2007

Lords, ladies and gentlefolk, a new year by any other name is more of the same, time being elliptical and each event being somewhere connected to every other event in time-space. I sit at my kitchen table, looking out of a lead panelled window with new vitraux courtesy of a kind aunt and of a former love, who together set off a chain of events leading to my trying a new leisure interest. Winter is a good time of year to expand skills as long as it doesnt require stepping out of doors too often.

I think that in the distance to the right of my door there must be a city, for at midnight the far glimmer of fireworks interfered with the light of the near-full moon. The beech tree in my front garden awoke and its leaves shimmered and shook. I suspect it is home to a dryad who is as shy as any other of the tree spirits. I must think of a gift to introduce myself to her or him.

I smell the lavender oil in the wax that the kitchen table has been polished with. A lit white candle brings gentle light which highlights the shades of the newly painted glass panes. I wonder where my beloved has strayed, no message in so long, only dreams which speak of presence and also of absence that continues for too long. What holds her away for so long, I dont know but soon may,when the winds turn and a gentler time arrives. Sometimes though it is the storm which brings news when someone has gone too far or too long. Whichever, I wish her home soon even if for a few nights, to warm this winter which brings in early nights and cold awakenings. So many additions to welcome her home and the light over the door nightly lit may guide her here.