Longest night. Darkest day. A bleak time to be sure. But once it is the longest night, then nights are shorter. Once it is the darkest day, days become bright.
Since the wheel last turned this way, my life has been touched by death, cancer, lay-offs, failure, and loss. It’s been, in short, a fuck-all year.
But I am happy, and I have hope, because the Sun is reborn, and so are we all.
Celebrate rebirth.
Blessed be.
A few days ago, I dreamed that someone I knew was an expectant father, and his wife was in labor. I was to be the labor coach and, while my friend waited nervously outside, I went in to attend to her.
When I entered, I discovered the “wife” was an elderly Native American; a shaman (I knew) in jeans, a red flannel shirt, and a headband. The shaman got up on the delivery table and spread his legs, and from between his legs a slit opened in his blue jeans and a head began to emerge.
Well.
Last night I dreamed that I was at a festival with friends Larry & Sabina. We were playing some sort of game or doing some sort of ritual, and they needed a drop of my blood to prove my good intentions. I knew they would prick a finger but then Sabina said that didn’t work and could I please turn around. It was, I think she said, for initiation, but I don’t know what she meant. I think it was still a sex game in my mind. She lifted my hair and took a slice from the top of my spine/base of my skull (exactly where my Kali eyes tattoo is, but I wasn’t aware of the tattoo in the dream). It was a plus-sign shaped cut and it hurt horribly. I felt like she was damaging my brain. I was terrified and angry. I cried out in pain but I was afraid to move. She cut my like that, with me holding still and crying out, for a long time. I was wondering, in the dream, if this was domestic violence.
Upon awaking, that dream plus the earlier one seem to add up to some kind of message about ritual or transformation, but I can’t put it all together.
Tags: dreams
Honor your dead, and celebrate the living.
Find a place within where you recognize these two are the same.
Blessed be.
Click through for all the relevant links and information. Understanding and knowledge protect us, I think, and I encourage you to participate.
Tags: Pagan Census
I have just learned that Marion Weinstein, author of Positive Magic, has passed into the Summerland. May she be born again, at the same time, and in the same place, as those who love her.
Positive Magic was a sweetness-and-light book that I have often criticized, but there’s one kick-ass spell in it that I have recommended many times.
On a personal note, it was through Marion’s help that Isaac was able to get diagnosed with the chronic illness he has. This was in 1990, when we were still married and the parents of a really cute new baby. Isaac had been getting a run-around from doctors who were uninterested in his very weird symptoms, when we read an article about a rare disease in Marion’s newsletter. The symptoms matched Isaac perfectly. He called Marion and she connected him to the author. The author had this sort of tone that I could hear from across the room; doctors can’t love getting calls from hypochondriacs who think they have whatever disease they’ve read about most recently. Clearly she thought this was just such a call, but because it was Isaac Bonewits, and because it had come through Marion, she listened. And listened to the point where she realized Isaac was really sick and gave him the information he needed to take to an MD and get diagnosed.
Maybe that isn’t such a big deal, but it meant a lot to us and I’ve always felt fondly towards Marion since then. I am sad to hear of her passing, and hope sincerely that her sojourn in the Summerland is delightful, and that her loved ones find comfort.