Andromache and Helenus

Speaking my Greek again on the warmer days of spring.  We've had some warmth, we've had some cold.  Now we are busting through to the actual spring weather.  I'm hoping it remains warm for many more months to come.  Sleep is like death.  It is a little death of sorts.  We awaken renewed.  There is no true death, only rebirth.  They can plant me like a tree in hopes that I'll grow but I'm a mortal thing.  I am doomed to die.  There is no true death.  And yet, it exists.  Greenwood cemetery is just a thought away.  My parallel universe still holds these spaces for death.  Giant gas balls in space hold all of the elements of my blood and bone, a universal plasma.  Blood from star to cell.  Dark blood.  Deep blood.  Red blood.  And the blackest blood of the cosmic womb.  This must be why light bursting forth from the deep dark blood of the universe stunned us into love and worship.  Love and honor.  Light bursting forth in the form of nebulae and embryo.  Beating hearts.  Life driven against the struggle of the dark.  Light shining through strife.  These things I see in the face of the Green Man.  Images show him with tendrils crawling out of nostrils or mouth.  Leaves grow around his eyes and ears.  Leaves twine with his hair.  It could be the Green Man or the Green Woman.  I see the birth of cosmic corners in the busting open of leaves in spring.  It will come.  On one particular day, for no seeming reason, it all breaks loose and green is upon us.  This is the dance we see.  Life and death.  Rebirth.  Going back to Buddhist lessons.  Seeing my face on a Greek stage.  Through fire and light, the dance of spring begins.  How do they all come together to dance so readily?  It's as though the fairies were waiting inside spring the entire time.  Every thought, every mythology, every parallel universe, every story has been wrapped up in the season of spring.  It is time, as a woman, to escape my tomb of cement slabs and rolling metal.  It is time to crawl out of the basement.  Spring is up here. 

Make a Moon a Witch

Rattling Death Breath.  Make a moon a witch.  Full, round lunar phase.  There is some haze around the rim.  Burn sage.  In preparation for the workings of a witch, you must prepare yourself.  It is something anyone can be but few choose.  Perhaps the reasons are that people are born to a different path, perhaps it is that people are afraid of the work, perhaps it is misinformation.  Either way, you have a witch within screaming to bust out.  If you let her, she will fly.  Most of the work of protection, cleansing, blessing becomes a daily ritual of sorts.  When we aren't managing the everyday, we are protecting ourselves and our loved ones.  We are pulling at roots of energy.  We are pulling them up.  We are allowing the flow to follow and fill us up.  Each night, the moon grows.  Each night, I pray for a lighted moon, a bright moon of night.  Fill up the sky with your phase.  Again, a witch is made on this night.  A witch in a year and a day.  Or tradition can fly out the window.  We get the scorn enough until something happens.  Other spiritual traditions try to maintain the anti-spiritual practice of not getting their hands dirty.  Even in the smallest circles, in the shortest rituals, we are blessed and we are drained and we need to remember to sustain ourselves.  Witches.  'Witch' is a loaded term but it is best understood as healer, friend (willing to go the extra mile to help others), warrior and nurturer.  There are those who can work with darker energy as well and perhaps that is the misunderstanding.  People are afraid of the dark.  Rightly so, I guess.  For certain spirits.  Challenges in a checker board.  Attracting the correct energy in ones life.  Asking always what is correct for me.  Is it to be lonely?  I'll have ghost walks and cemeteries.  I'll have writing workshops.  All to myself.  Is it to be lonely?  Is it to cast a circle, create a spell and offer up myself to servitude of the responsibilities of 'witch' even though I have responsibilities of marriage and work (and that's it).  Life might be better.  Burn sweet grass.  Bring in the sweet energy after clearing out all of the bad.  Burn the light in your mind.  Bless yourself with whatever you need to do work.  Sprinkle salt.  Close off your space to negative energy.  Create havens.  It's spiritual sanctuary.  It needs to be.  Walking in the sun.  Dying in the sun.  Sitting on the stump.  Sitting in a healing temple.  Kneeling in the woods.  Burning leaves of grass.  Night will come.  Make this moon my witch.  A most delicate friend with fur.  Frenzied spring break.  After smoke releases the season of cold and death.