Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot...
Well, to tell the truth, I feel like the world's biggest heel posting this article during FTTW's First Birthday Bash. However, as one of my favorite quotes goes, "Life is what happens while you're making other plans".
Life has been... happening, and it has become very difficult for me to squeeze out enough focused personal time to write my weekly articles, sooooooooo, I'm writing this week to let you, my loyal readers, know that I'm backing down from a weekly column. I am really sorry.
The last article I posted was about the pagan Year Wheel, and that's the point from which I will continue to write and post articles. You'll see a new article post from me a week or so prior to each of the pagan Solar Festivals. Next one coming up is Litha, Summer Solstice, so you'll be seeing an article from me around June 14th.
Just in case you want to keep track of when to look for me (isn't that presumptuous?!), here's the Sabbat list:
1. Yule - Winter solstice Dec. 20th or 21st
2. Imbolg Feb. 1st or 2nd
3. Oestara - Vernal Equinox Mar. 20th or 21st
4. Beltaine May 1st or 5th
5. Litha - Summer Solstice June 20th or 21st
6. Lughnasadh Aug. 2nd or 7th
7. Mabon - Autumnal Equinox Sept. 22nd or 23rd
8. Samhain Nov. 1st or 7th
Of course, things will (not might, but will) change. As things happen that affect the pagan community, like the recent decision to allow the pentacle on V.A.-provided headstones, I will probably send in an article that Michele & Turtle will graciously find room for. Or when things are calm and I can do a decent article on some aspect of paganism or witchcraft, I will. I hope to eventually be able to get back to a weekly or bi-weekly column.
I do want to thank all of you that have read and, I hope, enjoyed, my articles. I will miss looking for your comments every week; they generally brightened my days.
In the meantime, I hope you all take care of yourselves, enjoy the summer to the fullest, and Blessed Be!
Goodbye, Pat. Or rather, so long for now....
Vermont Village Witch Archives
With the festival of Beltaine just past, it seems to be an appropriate time to talk about the Pagan Wheel of the Year, or religious calendar. Beltaine is my favorite festival, even though I have yet to celebrate it properly... um, "properly" for my beliefs means fucking my brains out in a field with my magickal partner. I'll explain why later.
2. Imbolg Feb. 1st or 2nd [August 1st]
5. Litha - Summer Solstice June 20th or 21st [Winter Soltice]
My car is a rolling billboard. It started out innocently enough with a couple of pagan bumper stickers that my daughter got me. Then I got dragooned into leading a Wiccan discussion group, and turned a wee bit militant about being "out" - the back of my car now has seven pagan/witch bumper stickers on it, along with a couple of political ones from the last election.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Okay, anybody remember Radar O'Reilly and his teddy bear? How fierce he was in defending his attachment to it? How Hawkeye and the others actually seemed to sort of respect the fact that this little quiet dude was willing to take all that abuse to keep his comfort creature with him? I think in some ways they wished they'd had his guts. Would have made for fewer hangovers.
When I was pregnant Horace made it back to my bed. I didn't find out I was knocked up until after Nayland and I had broken up, so there I was, seriously depressed and pregnant, with a very empty double bed. I slept with Horace. He was big enough to cuddle up to, and having him there made me feel I wasn't quite so alone.
started to closely resemble living with Sybil. Mom now has multiple personalities. We've started to give them names.
shows up. Don't get me wrong, when it's Mom or "Ruth" crying, because she's sad or feeling helpless because she's just remembered the Alzheimer's and her blindness, we hold her and comfort her and help her past it. "Sarah", on the other hand, gets told to knock it off and get a grip - and she always does. The tears stop, and the whining stops, because nobody's being a good audience.
Mom also shows up fairly consistantly for my daughter, Jo. Mom helped raise her (we've been together for 21 years), and Jo is "our girl" to Mom. When Jo takes her shift in the afternoon, she always assumes that it's Grandma she's dealing with, calls her that, and most of the time that's who she gets. They chat about what's been going on in Jo's life, they sit and bead together (my mother strings plastic pony beads for kids' necklaces that I sell at the Farmers Market), and they usually have a pretty good three hours together.
being woken up with ridiculous questions, so when she got the sense of what he was asking her, she kinda yelled at him to just get rid of it! So Dad grabbed a towel, fished it out of the toilet, dried it off and tossed it out the front door. My sisters giggled on and off all night.
We had a gift shop about 500 yards south of the house, with a large gravel parking lot. I used to ride my bike down and back every day, 'cause there was a great hill to coast down to get there. One day I was riding back through the gravel lot and almost hit this five foot long snake. It's size was freaky enough, but then it rattled at me!! I set off for the house, peddling for all I was worth, screaming for Dad 'cause a rattlesnake tried to get me! Dad grabbed the rifle and the garden rake and followed me back down. He managed to get the snake tangled in the rake and shot it. Up until then we hadn't known that there were rattlesnakes in Vermont. Shit!
On the inside of the window was this tiny little bat, hanging upside down, wings curled in, asleep. By the time I turned around, she was gone. I went back to the other room and found all the girls plastered against the wall. Silly me, I asked if anyone wanted to help me catch and release the bat. All I got for an answer was squeals. So I went back, took a small blanket and scooped it off the window. Bats squeak like mice, I found out. I carried it downstairs and outside and flapped the blanket. It took off into the dusk. Pretty thing, too.
Then last year, I wound up with the best 'what I did on my vacation' story. On the second day of my vacation, a Sunday, I was meeting a friend out at his farm in Whiting, except I got there before he got home from church. I decided to go out to the barn to see the baby chicks they'd just gotten that week. When I opened the barn door, I heard the adult chickens in their pen going nuts - for good reason, because there was a skunk in their pen chasing them!
It's when the mountains after a new snowfall are so piercingly bright you have to wear sunglasses when it's overcast. It's when you take bets on how long it'll take before your neighbor the snowboarder breaks his collarbone this year. It always starts with a ritual snowball stuffed down your daughter's collar (and then you run, laughing, 'cause she's gonna thump you if she can catch you). It's when you finally take the silly cat that wants to go outside OUT, and throw him in a snowbank so he understands why you won't take him out for walks. It's when you make "sugar on snow" after a fresh snowfall (get a lasagne pan full of fresh snow, bring a couple of cups of REAL maple syrup almost to a boil, then drizzle them over the snow - you get strings of maple taffy that you pull off with your fingers and eat - serve with sour pickles and plain doughnuts). It's when you have no problem waiting for the oil truck to finish it's delivery so you can get out of your driveway, 'cause it means you'll be warm for another month. It's the season when the earth sleeps, beneath this coverlet of white, and rests for the coming year.
Winter used to start around the end of October/early November here, but thanks to global warming, this year it really didn't arrive until after New Year's. One of the state's major ski areas didn't even open for business until the middle of January. The biggest ski area in Vermont, Killington, was sold this year - the old owners getting out while the getting's good.
Then spring arrives. The temps climb into the 60's and low 70's, the breeze is gentle and from the south, the migratory birds come home and every plant and tree busts out in vegetative ecstasy. Little pregnant buds on the ends of branches are suddenly leaves, gardens are filled with green knives of crocuses and daffodils and tulips thrusting their way to the sunlight, farmers are out in the fields turning the earth and planting corn. The cows, sheep, goats, horses, emus, llamas and whatever else has spent the winter cooped up in barns are suddenly out on the hillside meadows again. Walking through downtown you discover all the people you vaguely know who were pregnant when winter started and you didn't know it, because now they're all out there pushing strollers.
Sometime around late September to mid-October, fall arrives. The mountains turn wheat gold and luminous scarlet, with swaths of deep evergreen where the pine and balsam grow. The TV stations run foliage reports (where the best color is and is going to be over the following weeks), and the new driving challenge is leaf-peepers. These are tourists who come up to drive slow, stop unexpectedly and hop out of their cars to take pictures. Fortunately, they leave money - lots of money. They are a mainstay of the state's tourist economy, so those of us who realize that try to be tolerant and not run the idiots over on the highways.
Anyway, what brought all this to mind was the warning label on a package of Maximum Strength Midol I just bought (yes, I read labels - they pass the time when you're on the can and are occasionally funny). This one said, under the heading of "Ask your doctor before using if:" .... "you have painful urination from an enlarged prostate gland". Umm, this is Midol - heap big women's medicine. We don't have prostate glands. What the hell dumb male is taking Midol?!
I have to confess, I play the lottery. No, not scratch cards. The Powerball lottery and the Tri-state Megabucks. I consider it my contribution to funding education in my state, 'cause I sure as hell have never won anything like what I've spent. I think my biggest win was $40.
Okay, so you might be wondering who my clan is (or maybe you're not - you could just be reading this to kill time while you inhale your bagel and coffee). My clan consists of like-minded blood relations (I'm not spending the rest of my life around people I don't like, even if we DO share DNA!), and my "adopted" kids, kids-in-law and grandkids.
The other advantage of owning the entire mountainside is that you can clear land near the top, shielded by the woods, for the active solar panel and wind power installations. I know folks who do those for private landowners. The idea would be for the clan to be self-sufficient for power. Add wood pellet furnaces for sub-floor heating, and everything's renewable energy.
And then there's my brother, if I could talk him and his wife into moving back here from Iowa, of all places! First thing I'd want to do is hire him for my architect. He did some awesome design work when he went to the Colorado Institute of Design - designed a passive-solar mall! Then I'd back his dream: designing and crafting bentwood furniture. I know someone who does chair caning who could teach him how. He and his wife have three kids they're raising to be happy little pagans, home-schooling them and so forth. I could easily see Brita running the clan daycare.
Of course, being a practical witch, I already know that I'd have the land put in trust, and have every adult in the clan who's working the land or providing services to the clan or starting up their own business be an employee of a holding corporation I'd set up. That way we could get damned good health care for everyone, from the babes to the elders.
SELF DEFENSE: When I was six I was the unfortunate victim of beatings on the way to school everyday. My main bullies were my younger cousin (by a whole whopping 6 months) and his best friend. One day I came running back home crying because my cousin and his friend had a pop-gun that shot blanks and made really loud noises. They held me down on the sidewalk and shot it right by my ear until I began to cry from fear. So my mom was fed up with sending me to school and then me coming back home halfway through my walk crying because of my stupid little cousin and his stupid little friends. So at the age of six my mother and uncle taught me "Self Defense". My first lesson was how to drop-kick a boy so that he lands on his knees on the ground. I didn't go to school that day, instead I got lessons. BUT the next day, my cousin's little friend was my first victim. They came up on me and tried to beat me up and instead of taking it, I grabbed my cousin's friend by the shoulders and kneed him right in the nut sack! He hit the ground and began to cry. My cousin stood amazed for about two seconds before he saw me looking at him and then he ran for it. I never got picked on by him again. {My first day back in High School I ran into my cousin's old friend and when he saw that I was bigger than him, he decided he desperately wanted to be my friend.}
As I said above, I was taught to defend myself and someone else if they were in danger. Angela was the first person I ever had to defend. At the age of 12 I had to stand up to an adult for the first time, an adult that was NOT my mother. I was at Angela's house for a family get together. Her whole family was there and me. Her uncle had come to visit from out of town and he was swapping stories with the good ol' boys in her family. Angela and her mother were in the kitchen making dinner as I sat at the table with the men. Suddenly Angela was screaming. I looked and her mother was hitting her repeatedly with a metal pitcher and screaming at her that she was useless. Angela tried to back up, but the pitcher just kept being swung over and over again. Angela backed up from the kitchen, through the dining room we were all in (no one reacted), and all the way down a 10' hallway to Angela's room where she cowered in fear on her bed as her mother beat her. I realized that no one was going to do anything to save her, so I did. I stood up from the table, looked at all the men and in my creaking voice said "You are all cowards!" I walked down the hallway and just as Angela's mother raised her hand with the pitcher one last time, I grabbed the pitcher out of her hands. Thankfully she was a very short Irish women and at age 12 I already towered over her. I held the pitcher over my head and said "Do YOU want to know how it feels?" She was in shock. I was completely calm, but she could see the anger in my face. I told her that if she ever touched Angela again, I'd make her wish she hadn't. To my knowledge, she's never touched her since. Today Angela is a mother of two wonderful children and her eldest is my godson, Gregory. I like to think that if it wasn't for me, she probably wouldn't have gotten this far.
My mother also taught me about Love. Not the type where your parents go "When you grow up, you'll fall in love with a nice man/woman and you'll get married and live happily ever after." My mother taught me about the other types of Love, like Platonic Love. The type of love you feel with someone you can't have as a lover. There is nothing wrong with loving someone, but our society says there is. My mother taught me that "friends can be lovers" and vice versa, but it doesn't mean they have to marry you. She also taught me about Love for my planet. As a child I wanted to grow up to swim with the sea animals. My mother fed my imagination and hopes with National Geographic issues and news about SeaWorld down in Florida. My first trip to SeaWorld I learned a little truth about the big bad world. I got to take a backstage tour of the pools they kept Shamu and the dolphins in. At the time I was starting to pick up Animal speech in my head. As I was listening to the dolphins it occurred to me that I was understanding some of what they were saying. One of them said something about a "fish sandwich" and I found ti rather odd until I looked around me. Twenty feet from me was a Food Stand that was advertising "Fish Sandwiches". It suddenly occurred to me what the dolphins thought. It made sense that they would think that if they didn't perform well, they would be fed to the humans on a bun. I suddenly wanted nothing more to do with the world of captured animals and moral less Marine Biologists. My love for animals increased, but my respect for people diminished a bit.
I was born in Rutland, Vermont to young hippy parents. My mom, you all know her as Pat, had to raise me as a single mother (Dad split after 6 months). Thankfully she had the support of our family and her friends who also helped in raising me.
They are called Zener Cards. If you don't have the cards (which we didn't) then you can do what we did, which was use a normal pack of playing cards. My mother started by holding the card up with the back facing me from across a table. I was to try to "see" if the card had a red suit or black suit. After that I tried to see what suit it was. After that I tried for numbers. We kept going until I could tell her exactly what card it was. And can you guess what this little test proved? In ESP circles it would prove that I have Telepathy, whichs means I read the mind of the person holding the card and saw what they saw - a clear image of the card they held.
Until I'd become an adult myself, I never realised just how much my mother went through to raise me to be a good person. Yeah, I'm not a church-goer, I've broken some commandments in my time, my morals are my own- not something mandated to me, and I don't spend my life on my knees asking for forgiveness for being born, --BUT I've been told by many people that because of my actions and the person I am that my wings are already waiting for me in Heaven. I blame my mother for that. She taught me how to care and be responsable for someone other than myself. She taught me to be good. She raised me to be a White witch, just like herself. "Do no harm." I live by it. I also live by the Golden Rule (do you remember it?).
So, what happens in Vermont when we get socked by 30" of snow in 24 hours? You find out who the truly outstanding humans are! We got hit with a baby blizzard on Valentine's Day (what a GREAT excuse to spend the day in bed with your nearest and dearest!). I say "baby" blizzard, because I grew up in this state and remember snow storms that dumped that much as being a regular part of winter - pre-global warming, that is.
Of course, sometimes it was downright scary. 80 years ago, the ice jams on the White River caused such high flooding in another valley that it wiped out most of the village of Gaysville - check out the before and after pics. When you've got a river at full flood loaded with huge chunks of ice, wood frame houses tend to shatter like matchsticks. Always amazed me that the townfolks had rebuilt it. I've never understood people who build on flood plains, either.
We didn't go anywhere that day, even after I'd shoveled out midday. We only have the one car, and I don't trust other drivers in bad weather. I know I can drive in snow - I learned how to drive in this state. One of the things we did, when we were learning to drive, was find a good, big empty parking lot after a snowstorm. Then we'd go and purposefully put the car into skids in the snow, so we could practice getting them out again. It's all fine and wonderful to read the directions in the driver's manual about how to do it, it's another thing to practice it so it's automatic. You don't have time in a skid to think - your reactions had better be the right ones. I remember my first winter with a front-wheel drive car (yes, kiddies, I learned to drive when most everything was rear-wheel drive). I took it to a snow-filled lot after the first storm of the season, and ran through the whole skid-recover routine to learn the difference.
I've never gotten into a skid I couldn't get out of. I'm rather proud of that. I get a kick out of it when someone's riding with me for the first time and I fishtail into our driveway - I do it on purpose, 'cause it's the best way on snow to line the car up with the driveway. Usually freaks my passengers out, though. Unless I'm kind and warn them.
Good thing, too. This happened just about the same time that my best friend kinda sorta pushed me into accepting the fact that I'm a witch. I used all sorts of other terminology to describe myself (earth mage, telepath, empath, etc.), but not witch. He made me see that I am a witch, by any other name, and that led me to start studying again, and really getting a handle on what I can do... some of which isn't really very nice.
So how do I do it? I keep a selection of stones in a bowl on my household altar. When I have a situation arise that I want to use a stone for, I scatter them on a flat surface and go over them with my receptive hand, feeling for the right energy. When I find the stone that calls to me, being a paranoid person, I check it against my reference books to see if it's even close to being appropriate. Almost always it's dead on.
Dev had an emergency C-section with her first child, 'cause Mattie decided to try to come into the world backwards. For her second, she wanted to try to do it the right way, and had been working with a midwife at the birthing center over in Randolph. But she was terrified she wouldn't be able to do it - a lot more terrified than I'd realized.
It was the most incredible experience of my life, helping that little boy be born. I'd been present at the birth of my adopted granddaughter just six days earlier, but her mom was all focused and righteous and zipped Morrigan out in four hours. Yeah, I helped her walk and kept her monitor leads straight and provided moral support, but nothing like helping Gabe into the world.
Home I went, to ice cream and Jello for the next couple of weeks. My very first solid meal was Christmas dinner. I was so happy I didn't have to skip that - my Mom was a great cook. After we stuffed ourselves, we all went into the living room for presents around the tree - where I promptly threw up Christmas dinner all over the tree. But I missed the presents!! My sisters were not amused.
Then a couple of years ago I was facilitating a Wiccan circle for a friend of mine who had a New Age/Metaphysical/Alternative Healing shop. The first year of the Circle we had our Yule celebration in the Education Center he rented upstairs in his building. Great pot luck dinner and a Yule ritual, lots of mingling, some new faces. Then last year, due to shrinking finances, he had given up that space and when he tried to rent it for the evening for us, we found out that his landlords considered us a cult and refused to rent it to us. Whew.
So this year, we are again hosting a Wiccan Yule party on the 23rd. That has become our second family tradition. It should be an amazing party, because this year I have two adopted grandchildren in the mix - two of my Wiccan daughters gave birth last spring.
We had absolutely crappy weather for the two days. The day before we had partly sunny in the 60's (which is pretty neat for Vermont at the end of November!). Then we got hammered by 40-60 mph winds, flooding rain, the temp dropped to freezing and we had snow on Day 2. Today, the day after, was still cold, but sunny. Okay, so maybe the heavens did open up, but I'm not self-centered enough to believe it was just because I set foot on their campus. I graduated with one of my degrees from that school and worked there for almost two years - you'd think if the Trinity was going to object, they would have sent my computer room up in flames long ago.
They have, literally, a shitload of names, and each carries a slightly different flavor/personality/attributes... but basically they come down to the female nurturer and the male protector. Sometimes she's a warrior, and kicks ass, and sometimes he's a lover and dances in the deep woods. So I became a practicing pagan oh, thirty years ago or so.
One of the first bumper stickers on my car read "My Goddess Gave Birth To Your God". If you actually read about the history and evolution of religions in the Mediterranean region, that is a true statement in an anthropological sense, never mind the metaphysics of the issue. It's also pretty guaranteed to piss off the Religious Right - hey, that's my favorite button: "Doing My Part to Piss Off the Religious Right!" Followed by "Lord, please save me from your followers!"
So why don't I extract witchy revenge on people who screw with my life? Because I'm a white witch; I don't use my abilities to hurt people. Sure, I know how. I even know how to make a voodoo doll that works - but I don't. There's this thing called karma, which is basically "you reap what you sow". I told my doc, and a whole lot of other people who've asked, that I don't want to spend my next lifetime as a dung beetle in an elephant herd. Think about it. Too much shit, too little time - major frustration!