Herbis Orbis

How many goddesses can you find in this post?

Last night in Experiential Anatomy class, a friend I hadn't seen in years said she enjoyed my blog.

Between two schools, two nights of classes per week and two jobs, I'd almost forgotten I had a blog! So here are some short(ish) updates:

Full Circle

The friend I mention above, Beatrice, was there from the moment I set foot on this path of studying herbalism. We spent many hours in class together, camping, driving, talking, eating in those days, and she showed me much generosity, both material and intellectual.

I can still remember one night when we sat in her van outside my apartment after school one day. I was trying to figure out where I was going with my future career, hopefully, in herbalism. I said, "I want to do something in herbalism that no one's ever done before! I don't know what it is, but it has to be different."

Beatrice sighed. "Oh, that's just your ego talking. When you get older you won't be so motivated by that."

I tell you, that moment has stuck with me all these years. Any time I feel the urge to be 'different' coming from some superficial ego place, I hear those words. It's made me a better student, a better herbalist, and hopefully, a better teacher in those rare instances when I might have some wisdom to impart to others.

She finished her course of study at our school before me, and went on to develop her career. When my school decided to offer an Asian bodywork program, she decided to go for it and expand her already formidable healing toolbox. How poetic it is now that she should return just as my long butt-in-seat academic journey nears its end. It seems a very auspicious omen indeed.

Hawaii and the 'goddess'

Lugh and I went on our (so far) annual trip to Hawaii last month. It was an odd sojourn, partly because it was so uncharacteristically cold (low 70s) on Oahu. Sweater weather, really, especially at night. I'd known this was going to be a working trip before going, and that I'd likely be stuck in the hotel most of the time, but I'd have appreciated at least the option of going out and snorkeling!

The one day we really had a chance to get any swimming in, it was still cool and windy. The waves at Waimanalo beach were wild. After eating pineapple and watermelon on the sand with my friends, I stripped down to my swimsuit and made my gradual entry into the water. My friend WaiWai appeared at my side.

We talked for awhile as we watched the waves trounce other swimmers. I'm no swimmer; she, on the other hand, was on the swim team in school. We are both Aquarians -- the air sign that carries the water of enlightenment. "That's the thing," I said. "We want to be able to carry the water and control how it flows. But we aren't comfortable being swept away by it." Of course in this sense I meant water in its broader aspect as the symbol for those often uncontrollable tides of emotion and dream. I think WaiWai agreed.

She taught me to dive under the large waves that day, flattening myself to the sand as the wave rolled over me. A useful tool indeed, in and out of the water.

We also talked about the old Hawaiian man who gave her her Hawaiian name. She told me he used to rub aloe on her shoulders, telling her how good it was for her skin. I asked if perhaps he didn't also just want to touch her. She said it wasn't unlikely.

"You know what the Sanskrit is for aloe, don't you?" I asked her. She didn't. "It's kumari," I said. "Kumari means 'goddess.'" It gave a new angle to her experience. "I have a big aloe in a pot on my doorstep," she said. "Maybe you are getting this piece of information about aloe so you can connect with it and the divine feminine more," I offered.

I may have been only half right.

That evening we were scheduled to go to a concert. It had been an overcast day at the beach and I was slathered with 70-SPF sunscreen. But after a few hours of resting in my hotel room, I started to get an itchy heat rash (along with a runny nose, headache and sore throat... Wind Damp invasion alternating between Hot and Cold). I asked WaiWai to bring me a few stalks of the 'goddess' when she picked me up for the concert. I put them in the mini-fridge and we departed for the show. Returning late from the concert feeling awful and exhausted, I went straight to bed.

The next morning I slit one cool aloe stalk down the middle, giving thanks. I told Lugh about my conversation with WaiWai as he drew the demulcent side of the plant over my shoulder, back, chest and face. It seemed a holy experience somehow.

"Wow, I wish you could see this," he said, as he smoothed the plant over my back. "The red bumps are going down instantly!" I'm convinced now that the best way to use the 'goddess' plant is to have it applied by a man who thinks you are a goddess, as well!

All Work and No Play Make Herbis Orbis a Very Dull (insert Homer Simpson drooling sound here)

I'm finished with the tedium and rigors of (acupressure) point location class, but that has been replaced by the aforementioned anatomy class. Which, so far, isn't anywhere near as maddening, though the tests are still challenging. This is joined by a shiatsu class and weekly 'client' intakes.

Meanwhile, I've got my big East West seminar experience coming up in a few short weeks, for which I am woefully unprepared. Basically we'll have three days of monitored clinic 'testing' where we interview, assess and formulate herbal preparations for various patients. Having fallen behind on other deadlines for work for the school, I will not be able to cram much studying in before I find myself amidst the California redwoods once more, feeling I don't know my own butt from a hole in the ground.

"But haven't you been working in clinic for the past several months?" you may ask. Well, yes, but not with Chinese herbs or patents, which I'll need to know. Suffice it to say, I'm going to rely on the books I'll bring and hope for a talented clinic partner.

And if I don't 'pass' -- well, there's always next year.

Or clown school.

Circling Beltaine

Unbelievably, I'm staring right into the wild eyes of Mayday again, which this year I will spend with my group here in the Midwest. Sometimes I wonder if anything could top the gentle magic of my Beltaine spent last year in the redwood forest, but I have no doubt it will be wonderful in its own way. It always is.

Beltaine is that incredible time of wild blooming desire -- desire on all levels. As I approach May in a much more subdued, introspective way this year, I wonder if I am just so full of desires for all aspects of my life that I'm having trouble focusing; or if the flowers and fruits of last year's desires have depleted and exhausted me so much that I need to lie fallow for a year.

We shall see what blessings the season brings. I submit to the tide, but I acknowledge that this time around, I am not bending to the wild hunt; I am Persephone emerging from my mysterious, dark time with Hades, rushing reborn into the strong, garlanded arms of a goddess who loves me even so.

Finding an herbal ally, daemon and/or genius

A couple of weeks ago, this video of Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert was making its rounds on Twitter. In it, Gilbert discusses the idea of how the creativity of artists was perceived in the world of classical antiquity.

In short, artists didn't take all the credit for creating some incredible piece of work; transcendent artistic expressions were believed to be the fruit of a collaboration between the human artist and his or her assigned supernatural helper spirit, a daemon (as it was called by the ancient Greeks), or genius (as it was called by the Romans).

Gilbert says of the ancient Greeks and Romans,

People did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then. People believed that creativity was a divine attendant spirit who came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.

By the time the Renaissance rolled around -- regarded as the rebirth of the art and spirit of classical antiquity, ironically -- the human being was placed at the center of the universe and artists themselves became known as 'geniuses', signaling a shift toward the belief that creativity was indeed a singularly human phenomenon.

I shared this video with my friend @theogeer of Autumn Twilight. I mentioned that I had felt rushed in clinic the previous evening and complained that I wasn't quite sure I had adequately helped my new client. I joked that I sure could have used the aid of an 'herbal genius.'

Theo said:

I wonder about that idea of an herbal genius. Lots of practitioners, particularly of native or isolated traditions have a plant ally of some sort. Carlos Casteneda famously detailed the development of his alliance with peyote, and the Curanderos and Brujos of Mexico and Central America have a well known alliance with mint, which they use for everything. Maybe what you need is to find a plant ally to guide you in your work?

Now, when you live with one foot in the magickal world as Theo and I do, synchronicities are not only frequent but also consciousness-shifting. Those few lines of his above focused my mind on the events of the previous night at the clinic:

I was concluding a follow-up appointment when my teacher and herb clinic director, Althea Northage-Orr, popped her head in the room and politely asked me to hurry up; an unscheduled client decided to come at the last minute and she wanted me to take the case. I wrapped up my intake and ran to the pharmacy to tweak my follow-up client's herbal formula.

His formula originally contained white peony root, also known in Traditional Chinese Medicine as bai shao. I took the bottle of tincture down from the shelf. It had about a finger-width left at the bottom. I looked at the golden liquid and said to it (silently): "Nope. A woman is going to come in today who will need you." I put the bottle back on the shelf and subbed another Yin-building tonic into this man's formula.

Sure enough, my next case was a lovely woman dealing with exhaustion and family hardships at just the time she was beginning menopause, among other complaints. The white peony, which I had always considered a very feminine, softening, building herb, was among the medicinals indicated for her symptoms. I was happy to drain the last of the bai shao into her formula and mentioned it specifically when I tried to explain to her what my treatment principle was and why I had chosen some of the herbs that she would be taking.

That night I dreamed that I was drinking tea out of a wide bowl with a strainer pressed to the bottom of it to keep the tea leaves from floating to the surface. When I had finished the tea, I removed the strainer to discard the marc (used-up plant matter) and was delighted to find that the bottom of the bowl was covered with large white flowers, fresh and plump as if they had just been cut from the plant.

I hadn't thought of my little moment in the pharmacy with the white peony tincture or the dream at all, until Theo's question kicked my memory into gear.

White peony is now a definite herbal 'genius' of mine.

Althea (whose special plant ally is mugwort, not marshmallow, by the way), incorporates workings with plant devas into our education to help attune us to the spiritual energies of plants. In this way I've had wonderful experiences sitting in her garden with live plants which made them special 'friends' -- namely, skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora), elder (Sambucus nigra) and St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum). But I'd never had quite the same experience of communication between myself and a plant like I had with white peony.

Another teacher of mine, Michael Tierra, has mentioned several times on his blog that herbalists often happen to be artists as well. Being both myself, and knowing many herbal healers including Michael who fit the artist bill as well, I wholeheartedly agree. A paragraph in one of Michael's recent posts really resonated with me:

No matter how deeply one studies and enters into the complexity of healing, plant biochemistry and so on..., nevertheless there is always place for the irrational and the subjective. The poet's perspective of life, the musician's sense of harmony, the artist's eye of proportion and relationships - these are all shared by healers, especially the herbal healer who works with plants, which are the pure creative expression of nature and the healing process.

I challenge anyone to express it more brilliantly than that!

Herbalits are artists and therefore should create a special place in their practice for the help of their own little attendant plant spirit. Perhaps like animal totems these may change and cycle back and forth over time, but the idea of a divinely assigned plant ally, while by no means new, can really help an herbalist to co-create with the ultimate Divine source of healing.

Since my experience with white peony, I've been keeping my intuition a little more open and trying to allow it to confirm or be confirmed by my usual bookish nature when it comes to choosing herbs for a formula. I pay attention to herbs I come across during the day, in the form of pictures or live plants or dreams, and more often than not these herbs step forward when I review a client's case. Sometimes their presence is specifically indicated for a certain condition; other times they help me decide when I am on the fence about two herbs that do very similar things.

I have to say, after only a short time with this approach, the results and the experiences I have had with clients have been very gratifying. I have felt a greater confidence in my formula selections -- a shared confidence greater than the reassurance I have gotten from books and research only. I keep the awareness of gentle, beautiful bai shao close by; she takes the edge off performance pressure and ego, allowing me (so far!) to be a more present and compassionate practitioner. I am as grateful for this blessing and gift as I am for my human teachers.

If you have a special herbal daemon or genius, I'd love to hear about it and how you came to know it was your ally in the comments section!

Herbalist Michael Moore, 1941-2009

The herbal community has lost a real treasure. Please read Michael Tierra's wonderful tribute to herbalist Michael Moore, who passed away last Friday. Visit Michael Moore's website here and plant a perennial herb (preferably one native to the western United States, if it can grow in your area!) in his honor this Spring.

Tired, Schmired. No Whining at Imbolc!

Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees?
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.
--Romans 8:24-25

Tired, tired, tired. It's a word I hear a lot lately. If you live anywhere that has a true winter season, you know what I'm talking about. Those dark, cold months seem to pack the chronological punch of double time, so long and arduous are they.

It's not that we endure much hard physical labor during winter; that is an effort reserved for the warmer months. What makes winter seem to drag on and on forever is the opposite -- a lack of movement which makes us feel like we're not getting anywhere, not moving forward. While the temperate climes of other seasons call us out into nature for work and play, winter seems designed to keep us inside, stoking cabin fever as much as the fires we need to keep us warm.

Your relationship with winter might have a lot to do with your love of snow sports and how state-of-the-art your outerwear may be. Where I live, we've just been through one of the most bitterly cold, high precipitation winters we've had in about 15 years. How I feel about this season is often colored by how many days of sub-zero windchill I have to walk through, how quickly my city plows the side streets, what sort of technical malfunctions come with frozen switches and wires, and how long it takes before the deadbeat landlords in my neighborhood finally clear their ankle-turning sidewalks of impacted snow.

So, considering this winter's track record -- Yeah, I'm tired. Many a morning I have looked out my window and marveled at the breathtaking expanse of virgin snow and the otherworldly hush that comes with it, inches of crystalline water buffering the sound of traffic, footsteps, voices, planes; the sole sound the lonely scrape of a shovel in the distance. But then I'm out in it walking to the train, and like David Byrne I say to myself, "If this is paradise, I wish I had a snowblower!"

Winter is exhausting in some respects. But if we've done it right, we've used it to rest and to dream. And no matter what the thermometer says outside, hope isn't just right around the corner, it's here.

Lessons of Water at Imbolc

God hurls down hailstones like crumbs.
The waters are frozen at God's touch;
God sends out the word and it melts them;
at the breath of God's mouth, the waters flow.
--Psalm 147

On the Celtic Wheel of the Year, February 2 is actually the first day of Spring. Sure, it could be colder than a meat locker outside, and the ground could be so hard it might seem as though nothing green could ever burst forth from it. But take my word for it: February 2 marks the beginning of Spring.

Like Paul says in his letter to the Romans at the beginning of this post, you have to hope for what you cannot see, and wait with endurance. This hope, waiting and endurance is the work of Imbolc, also known as Candlemas. Perhaps if we cannot see that which we hope for, we can sense it, and in early February we usually get that blessing. For sure, the days are getting noticeably longer. If you're lucky, as we have been just this weekend, you get a thaw and watch the first movement of the year not driven by some merciless wind. There are no signs of life yet, and the ground is still covered with snow, but I've been watching with pleasure the receding crusts of dirty snow as it melts into puddles. I sent up an "Amen!" for every icicle (some with small child- or pet-skewering potential!) hanging from the eaves of the house that shrank in the sun, drop by drop, until finally breaking free and shattering into pieces on the ground below.

It is no coincidence that the element of water is most prominent at Candlemas rituals. At Imbolc, we purify ourselves for initiation into the Light of the Year, the new cycle of work and growth on our spiritual and mundane paths. It is a kind of baptism in this sense -- a washing away of the Dark and of the old year.

If you look at the role of water in the sacrament of baptism, you can see that it cleanses, which is largely the point, but deeper than that, it carries a special blessing. It is a vehicle for the Spirit, which follows it and falls onto the person receiving the sacrament, conferring the grace of purification and welcome. This is precisely the same role water plays at Imbolc, lit and made alive by the fire of the young Sun.

Getting Your Act Together for Imbolc

But water is also a splash in the face -- a wake up call. The time of dreaming in the dark is done, and it's time to get to work. The water that moves now, that cleanses us, also removes the sleep that carried us through the deep winter months. Last Imbolc I wrote about the work ethic example of the goddess Brigid and the traditional meaning of Imbolc -- from the Gaelic for "in milk," associated with lambs born at this time of year and all the work and preparedness that requires. The movement of water from frozen to flowing is, for many of us, a subtle but more understandable cue that the time has come to prepare the way to put some of our more realistic mid-winter dreams into action.

So too does the receding snow pull away the cozy covers from a sleeping earth, revealing it to the approaching and life-giving Sun, telling the ground to "wake up," so to speak, and begin the work of letting seeds soften for their millions of inevitable underground Spring explosions.

We often feel groggy when we're just waking up, but the energy of the year is beginning to grow. It is time to make the most of the few weeks we have left to prepare well for what we wish to bring forth in the New Year! Whether you have a circle of friends with whom to observe Imbolc, or just a meditative bath to mark your official entry into the new cycle, I hope you reflect upon the lessons of newly moving water and the role the warming Sun plays in this. A blessed Imbolc to all!

Above: Lugh in a Chicago alley; The Baptism of Christ by Paris Bordone.

The Sweet Taste of Hope

Just had to post a photo of these cupcakes I made (with my husband's help) for our landlady's Inauguration Day party on Tuesday night:

I piped the frosting and put the sprinkles on these cake-mix cupcakes while Lugh printed and cut out the Barry heads.

"I think it's safe to say that Obama won't be spending an evening in the future cutting out pictures of my head a couple dozen times," he said.

Congratulations to our new First Family but more than that, congratulations to our nation for demonstrating its ideals.

Guest blog post on Kuumba/Creativity at www.planetherbs.com

As my last act of 2008 I've written a blog post on the sixth day of Kwanzaa, Kuumba/Creativity, along with corresponding poem and herb, here.

It's funny; as a blogger and a writer you can get pretty myopic about what's useful, what's appropriate, what fits, what doesn't, what's relevant, what works, and what is just plain good or not good. None of this becomes so clear as when you write for someone else's blog, let alone your mentor's!

So, suffice it to say, it was not the most unharrowing experience just to write this one little post. But hopefully it'll only sharpen my skills and make me a better composer for 2009.

Happy New Year everyone!

The Dark of December: Time to Count Your "Nevermores"

 

Most of us know Edgar Allen Poe's most famous poem -- the one that catapulted him to stardom, in fact, in 1845: "The Raven."

Is this poem the story of a grieving lover slowly descending into madness, hallucinating an interaction with a raven who may or may not be there?

Even if it is, Poe's "The Raven" illustrates a great way to waste the segment on the Wheel of the Year which is the darkest yet of the Dark half: December. Let's take a look:

THE RAVEN.

ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door --
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; -- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow -- sorrow for the lost Lenore --
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore --
Nameless here forevermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me -- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door --
This it is and nothing more."

So here's our narrator, sitting in his cozy little house, fire crackling by, reflecting upon the past. Certainly we see late October and November as a time for reflection upon the past year. In October we reflect more on the past year's gains -- it is the final month of harvest, after all. And, keeping in mind that to reap the October harvest means that something must die, November is traditionally considered as the month of remembrance for the dead.

But "The Raven" is set in December -- "bleak December" -- and the time for reflecting and remembering is over.

Note that in our poem it is December outside, separate from our narrator's action, and something from out there is trying to get in. Whatever it is makes our narrator (read: us) nervous and scared, and understandably so.

But look closely: the narrator is out of step with the season and time of day:

It is midnight; he is awake, reading, fighting off sleep.

Now is not the time for rational thinking or for rationalizing whatever might be "out there" away; it is the Dark of the Year, and we are quickly slipping into the time for dreaming, and as we all know, dreams are anything but rational.

December is the time of forgetting, and he is still remembering. Perhaps forgetting is too strong a word; anyone who has been initiated into the ways of death by the loss of a loved one is forever changed and will certainly never forget, but one does have to stop dwelling at some point.

That point is represented on the Celtic Wheel of the Year by the darkest time: December.

I'll write more about that in a moment. Let's move on through "The Raven":

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" --  here I opened wide the door; --
Darkness there, and nothing more.

A lie: first of all, sleeping would be appropriate at this hour, not napping, and secondly, he wasn't napping, he was awake, reading! Another incongruence.

 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"
Merely this, and nothing more.

Using his empirical sense of sight, he searches the dark abyss fruitlessly for the visitor who has come a-rapping. He whispers of course, hope against hope (or horror), what is on his mind: the name of his lost beloved. The darkness returns the name. Is it she who has disturbed his evening? Is she out there? But the echo is all he gets, and so, unsatisfied:

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon I heard again a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Our narrator turns away from the cold night beyond his door, probably never even stepping over the threshold, and returns to his room. He chooses not to search the blackness, preferring the comfort of his quarters and morbid thoughts.

Whatever did not come in through the door is now at the window. Though he still rationalizes it away to preserve his peace of mind, he is still compelled to see what the December night has brought him.

 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

The December night has brought him a raven, which unapologetically barges right in. In myth and legend, the raven is the bird of death -- from bill-tip to talon, black as the cold midnight from which it came, an eater of carrion, its artless broad beak not made for singing (that is the glad expression of spring and summer birds), but only capable of uttering rough sounds.

Or in this case, as we shall find out, one merciless, negative word: "Nevermore."

But who are the other 'characters' in these two verses?

Where does the harbinger of the month of cold, darkness and death, the black scavenger bird, alight?

Atop the head of Pallas Athena: daughter sprung full grown from her father Zeus' head, virgin goddess of wisdom, valor and war, companion to heroes, bringer of light, discipline and philosophy to humankind.

Pallas' totem animal is the owl; how dare any other bird, especially one so inelegant as the raven, perch right atop her horsehair helmet?

Athena represents order, rational thinking, discipline. This represents comfort for our narrator, most likely an academic of some sort. But he's already got one foot in another world -- the world of death, into which he has been initiated by the loss of his Lenore. He refuses to look at Death for what it is, and so does not understand its mystery, only its machinery. He is torn between wanting to forget Lenore completely and wishing to be reunited with her. In any case he remains static in his dwelling upon the memory of something that can never be restored to the original state with which he associates it.

When the raven perches atop the white bust of Pallas Athena, it signifies two things: 1) This is not the time for rational thinking. It's a wild, dark, December night out there and you would only be so lucky as to be able to rely on rules and your five senses to get you through. And 2) Death and decay are inevitable. Not even the most ardent worshippers of Athena's Olympian ideals of light, discipline and heroism can escape it.

But it is our narrator himself -- or some 'knowing' part of him -- who utters the name of the Death god himself: Pluto. Pluto is Hades, lord of the Underworld, where, if we were to look at this from a Greek mythological point of view, Lenore now resides. And a sight-seeing tour to the Underworld is exactly what the Dark of the Year provides, if one is aware enough to buy a ticket.

Like so many of us who study myth and archetypes, our narrator has the tools and inner knowing to apply the mysteries' usefulness to his mundane life, if only he can remember that they exist beyond his precious books!

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning -- little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door --
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered -- not a feather then he fluttered --
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before —
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Bleak December's salesbird of death seems to tell our narrator: "Look -- if you think you will ever be rid of the reality of Death, you've got another thing coming, buster."

 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore —
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never — nevermore."

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore —
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Hmm. "Some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster/ Followed fast and follwed faster till his songs one burden bore --/ Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy bore..."

Gee Mr. Narrator, project much?

Alternately dismissive and bemused, our narrator continues to be torn: first, he rationalizes away the raven's talent for speaking its single word, but then pulls up a chair and tries to divine some deeper meaning from it; second, he seems to begin moving forward in unraveling the mystery of his bird guest, but then immediately returns to his tormenting yet familiar thoughts of dead Lenore.

 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee -- by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite -- respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

The narrator either hallucinates or truly senses the presence of angels and incense. He thinks that in kindess God has sent them to help him forget Lenore. The raven once again unceremoniously disrupts the stillness with its familiar cry.

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! -- prophet still, if bird or devil! --
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted --
On this home by Horror haunted -- tell me truly, I implore --
Is there -- is there balm in Gilead? -- tell me -- tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil -- prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us -- by that God we both adore --
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

By now knowing EXACTLY what the raven's answer will be to any question put before it, the narrator bizarrely gives the bird the power of a prophet and asks it if he will ever find relief from this sorrow, either in this world or the next. Of course the raven gives its usual reply.

And because this poor guy is already at the end of his rope, you know the result isn't going to be pretty:

 

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting —
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!

Driven to anger and hysterics by the raven, who has only done exactly what at first 'beguiled all (the narrator's) sad soul into smiling' before, the narrator screams at the bird to get out of his house. The implacable raven utters his one word and remains there still.

So how do I say our narrator is "wasting" his December?

Let's give the raven a few more words:

"Dude, if you are just going to sit here in your house, as though it were still the time of reflection and remembering (October and November), then no, moron, you will never find relief from your sorrow. You'll never forget Lenore because you won't let her really be dead. And much better than forgetting, you won't ever understand what she really meant to you until you stop dwelling on her absence."

Poe, I'm not.

In other words, you can't keep riding the wave of anything from the past if you're going to move forward. You have to let go -- let die -- your triumphs and failures, or at least the emotions of them, so that you can build anew. Yes, you'll use foundations previously laid, but if you sit around saying:

"Gosh, what a nifty foundation I've built for myself, it's so cute and perfect and adorable and grand that I wish I could preserve it just the way it is,"

Or:

"Damn, look at this lopsided, poor excuse for a foundation I tried to build for this project. It is so ugly and upsetting I can't even look at it long enough to clear it away,"

...You'll never get anywhere.

The raven, an unwelcome and frankly disturbing gift given by the bleak December night, reminds us that now is not the time for harvest (killing), nor is it for remembering, but for stillness and the 'beingness' of being dead. It's dark. It's cold. Nothing that isn't supposed to be alive now is.

What does this mean? This means that whatever you worked to manifest in the light of the year should have been harvested by now, and given thanks for by now. And what was discarded should be left to do the un-work of being dead: that is, putrefaction. It is from this decay and primal soup that we call forth new life that will grow under the light that slowly returns after the Winter Solstice. December is a month of irreconcilables, but that is the greatest mystery of all. It is the 'coagule' of the alchemists, taking the putrefied remains of organic substance and reassembling its elements into something completely new.

 

The narrator of "The Raven" has his inner knowing. He knows he can learn about the mystery of death and where Lenore is if he just goes outside, leaves his incongruent chamber of morbid dwelling (no pun intended) and accepts the death, dark and stillness of December. He even seems to know that he's as stuck as the 'unhappy master' he imagines taught the raven to speak.

But in the end he tries to expel the raven from his familiar little morose hamster-wheel of out-of-season thoughts. And like a messenger sent from his higher self, the raven plants itself until -- if -- the narrator ever "gets" it. With its maddening one-word vocabulary, the raven is a reflection of the narrator's own stasis and a reminder that while true death brings about change and new life, stasis sets the stage for nothing but desolation.

If, this December, you find yourself in the place of the narrator, remember: if you don't feel like sharing your room with the raven, just open the door and walk out into the dark and the cold, accepting the season. Like the plants who have returned their energy to the earth, seemingly incapable of ever returning to life, lie down and sleep deeply. Get rest now, because after the longest night, it will be your job to dream dreams of the new year.

"O Night you black wet-nurse of the golden stars! From this darkness all things that are in this world have come as from its spring or womb."

-- Philalethes, Magia Adamica, 1650

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Woodcuts above by Gustave Doré, 1884.

Dear God: Thank You

Today I came home to a brand new country with Barack Obama as our Commander in Chief.

I stayed up late to watch the returns last night from Cabra Castle in County Cavan, Ireland. It took a lot of self-control not to holler with joy when Obama was declared the victor -- this would have awoken the entire castle compound, nestled in a remote country area. It seems it has taken all of history to make this one wonderful moment and to produce this remarkable man. It's just the beginning, but I think it's been worth the wait. Everyone we talked to in Ireland supported Obama.

Above is a photo I snapped this afternoon at a newsagents in Dublin's airport, catching by wonderful coincidence this beautiful Irish little boy playing peek-a-boo with me.

Samhain 2008: Calling All Souls

 

I have spent this Samhain and the days leading up to it in Ireland, the place from whose pre-Christian traditions we take our Wheel of the Year. As I type I am riding on a coach out of Killarney to Galway (crossing the River Feale just out of County Kerry into County Limerick, to be exact).

I have a fairly good idea of what my magickal group were doing yesterday for Samhain -- a mystery play commemorating the goddess Inanna's journey to visit her dark sister Ereshkigal. stripped of her seven 'me' (hilariously called 'doodads' by Ima in her fantastic Tuesday night lecture) as she moved closer and closer to the heart of the Underworld.

Like Lammas and Autumn Equinox, the two preceding festivals on the Wheel of the Year, Samhain continues the theme of death and going downward. That is, the death of ego as well as death of body, and also the movement downward into the dark of the year, into the time of dreaming. It is generally acknowledged that this is a time of year when the 'veils between the worlds' are thinnest.

Which worlds are these? In the case of Samhain, they are the Middle World -- the world of action and mundane human existence; and the Underworld, of course -- the realm of the dead, darkness, and water and earth, elementally speaking. (Note, at Beltaine, which is opposite Samhain on the Wheel of the Year calendar, the veils are thinnest between the Middle World and the Upper World, the realm of light and air, along with its elementals and spirits, particularly what we call in Ireland the sidhe -- fair folk).

Certainly traveling through Ireland's unseasonably cold and bleak landscape -- but still green and dotted with yellow blooming gorse, fuschia, wild rose, yarrow, prehistoric stone ring forts and beehive homes, and of course, sheep -- sets an enchanting and somewhat somber atmosphere for Samhain. A fair number of trees have already lost their leaves, exposing cores wound round with ivy, and many of those deciduous trees still bearing leaves look aflame against the purple-grey clouds.

The serene but subdued scenery stands in contrast to Ireland's history; much more so than the last time I was here I have heard about the sorrows of this land, most tragic of which are of course the famine, civic unrest and oppression by the British, a sorrow that I imagine is passed on even in cellular memory from generation to generation. The sense of loss and longing is echoed through the stories of many of our tour, more than a few of whom have experienced personal tragedies and recent deaths of family members and friends.

One of the things we usually do on Samhain is to honor the dead and our ancestors. Specifically, we speak their names, in the belief that because the Wheel of the Year has brought us down into the darkness and closest to the Underworld, they can hear us, and through our spoken memory, live on.

This is only my second time to Ireland, and I don't know most of the people on this tour, brought together by my husband's music. I had planned to arrange for at least a private ritual recognition of Samhain, such an important cross-quarter point on the calendar. But one has to be sensitive about how far strangers (or friends) are willing to move outside their comfort zone.

For example, last night I was talking to a friend about Samhain and how I wished we could come together as a group to somehow acknowledge it and speak the names of our dead in this beautiful land. Not a full-blown 'ritual' by any standards, but something more formal than over a plate of fish and chips. To my surprise, this person said she didn't feel the need to do much ritual with others anymore because it had already been integrated as a part of her everyday private life. She follows an eastern path and meditates everyday. I realized that if I had been asked the same question a few years back I probably would have answered the same way.

This discussion made me consider the need for such things -- for ritual in general but for community ritual in particular. I like to think that like my friend, most of my mundane life is actually a protracted ritual, or perhaps strung together with moments of ritual and recognition of the divine throughout the day. Some might call this prayer, and that would be pretty accurate I think.

But I think that it is not always enough. Certainly for those who do not make time to create sacred space throughout the day or week or month, a gathering less formal than, say, church, could alter their view in a healing and organic way, and bring them more in tune with the natural rhythms of the year and our human life. Setting and time have everything to do with this. Recently I heard a Catholic bishop say that love and spirituality work best if they are organized, and at some level this resonates with my line of thinking.

Community ritual, even if it is as small as just two people -- gives those participants a chance to bear witness, which goes a long way toward validation of self and other. It is an opportunity for reflection as well as integration. It is a chance to bond in a uniquely human way, at the soul level.

In the case of Samhain, to share the names and stories of our deceased loved ones in community momentarily (or perhaps more than momentarily, who knows?) expands the memory of the past, strengthens our connections to it.

"Yes, I share your memory," we say.

"Yes, I share your sense of loss," we say.

"Together we help each other to see the faces of those who have left us."

And maybe above all, we say and hear, "Yes, a part of us went down with them for a time into the Underworld, an experience that has left us forever changed."

A blessed Samhain to all souls out there, above and below.

WE are James

Me, txt: hey, guess where i am

Yahms, txt: where

Me: at the vic waiting for james to go on stage. just thought id let you know since the last time i saw them was with you, 15 years ago

Yahms: i wonder if you and booth will make eye contact this time

Me: im in the balcony. doubt it

Last year, I found out that one of my favorite bands from high school, Manchester-native septet James, had reunited.

I quite literally did a little jig of glee.

It was springtime when I got their newest record, "Hey Ma," and I first listened to it as I rode the train home after work. Oh my. As soon as I heard Tim Booth's familiar voice -- a rare comfort -- I smiled and smiled, first to myself, then at my fellow wondering-eyed passengers. And when I heard that trademark old-school James fanfare trumpet, I laughed right out loud. It was magic, it was home... and the music and my listening to it conspired to draw the season's new magnolia buds right out of their tight little fuzzy shells as my train wended its way through the greening treetops.

So when I found out that James were finally taking their new tour to North America, I marked my calendar and bought my tickets as soon as I could. I hadn't been this excited about a concert in a long time.

The last time I saw James, I was a senior in high school. Their 1993 hit record "Laid" and its ubiquitous title track were in heavy rotation on my Walkman and in my high school sweetheart's -- that's Yahms -- little yellow Prelude. While many people know James for their cross-dressing, dysfunctional-relationship song "Laid," what they may not realize is that that track is only one on an album of beautiful, mysterious, anxiously questioning and occasionally ecstatic songs. Even to a tender 16-year-old, its grown-up themes of mystery and religion were too seductive to resist, even if I could not understand them at the time. (Of course, at the time I thought I could.) And most people do not realize that this group had been together since the '80s and put out at least four great albums before their breakout record.

Imagine what it was like for my teenaged self when, in the pitch blackness of the theater all those years ago, I first heard Tim's ethereal wail, and the quiet crowd got even quieter. Then, from my place very near center stage, I saw the back-lit silhouette of a slight, curly-haired man wearing a long, loose, filmy dress, first swaying like a reed and later bursting into a shimmering, shaking dance.

Wow.

Of course I was immediately in love, but mostly in awe of this strange creature before me, probably the first person I'd ever seen who seemed so totally at home in his unique way of being. In high school, like many others my age, I was trying on every different hat I could find in search of the right fit, burning through the sleepy layers of childhood to get to my true identity -- so different from the man on stage, it seemed.

And at some point during the concert, as this singer looked directly into my eyes and sang a few lines of some familiar song (so electrified was I, I do not remember which song), I felt connected, momentarily completing a circuit of some nameless but exhilarating energy. Connected and seen.

Fast forward to September of 2008, at the Vic Theatre, having forgotten my ID so water was the beverage of (no) choice, sitting next to my own musician husband in the balcony, suddenly feeling too old to be jostled around on the main floor. I looked at the fans around me. This was my generation -- incomplete strangers reunited under the same circumstances as all those years ago: much older, some having had several children, spouses, responsible jobs, dressed in such a way that it was clear we no longer needed to define ourselves by our fashion.

And I am different in so many ways as well -- in fact having just three days before the concert undergone a private Autumn Equinox ceremony with Ima and a precious few others to formally recognize my progress on my spiritual seeker's path. This was the new self whom I brought to the performance, to the new music.

Our excitement built as we saw the (mostly) familiar faces of the band when they strolled out onto the stage. And then, of course, there was Tim: even thinner now, completely bald with a devilish goatee, wearing not a dress this time but loose clothes nevertheless, clothes that would allow and accentuate his sinuous movements.

The whole band were spot on, even better than I remembered. Perhaps it is my more-grown-up-than-high-school, slightly more sophisticated ears, or maybe it was my seat in the balcony which allowed me to see them as a whole from above, that led to an appreciation of the single functioning organism these men became when they played together, and how each contributed their own unique excellence that made the proverbial whole so much more than the proverbial sum of its parts. It reminded me of two of their songs, "Dream Thrum" and "Bubbles," both of which provide, in part, the recipe for the creation of a homunculus.

Also, seven musicians are a lot of personalities and styles to get to gel well, by rock and roll standards.

But of course I really only had eyes for Tim, like so many of the fans there. After all, we were welcoming him back, prodigal son or no -- it was his exit in 2001 that ended James as we'd known and loved them for years.

Like his bandmates, Tim did not disappoint, triumphantly returning to our stage with his mercurial presence. Throughout the duration of the concert, I found myself experiencing the band in shades of the four classical elements. Tim could be quite firy, but more often than not he was the picture and sound and energy of Air, while the sound created by the instruments was almost always undeniably Water.

Sometimes Tim was the barely perceptible breeze stirring the surface of a glass-calm lake, and we were lilies slowly opening in the peace. Sometimes he was the precious line of air sustaining us copper-helmeted deep sea divers as we bobbed in slow motion amidst ghostly vegetation on the ocean floor. And sometimes he was the gale force wind agitating the ferocious briny waters, and being agitated in turn, while we clung to our tiny ship.

Some people reading this may have seen Tim's ecstatic style of dancing. This, too, to my mind, illustrates the supremely changeable element of Air. Slight as he is, his body gives a lighter vehicle through which the music/Qi can travel, from the feet, gaining purchase on the stage, through the legs to the pelvis, swinging from side to side, rocking the belly chalice, gaining more movement through the torso, firing through the heart and animating the arms, elbows, wrists and hands, tendons and ligaments straining, every joint forced to its full articulation, muscle fibers grasping one another, pulling forward and back... And above all his brain sloshing around in that bright white cranium, bathed again and again in its own fluids as his body submits to the sound, becomes it.

Ah. Take a breath.

And Airiest of all, no matter what personality of the element he embodied, you could understand every word he sang. Really. Just listen to any James record and see if you can't understand clearly almost every single word. This is an uncommon phenomena in modern rock music, folks.

In magic, the tool representing Air on the altar is the blade -- the blade which cuts only air, dividing space into mundane and sacred parts. Like the blade, Tim's voice did just that, cutting air from air, sharply slicing a channel for some even more rarefied communication to come through.

At one point in the concert last month, Tim came forward into the crowd, standing on the dividers in front of the stage -- horselike wooden structures meant to do just that, divide the band from the audience -- and clasped tightly the hands of lucky nearby fans for support. He sang an entire song this way, and while doing so, he looked purposefully all around him at the faces in the audience, including up at us in the balcony. The spotlight illuminated his giant smile; and indeed, I felt like he was seeing me, seeing us, all of us.

Later on, as the audience, tribe-like, joyfully sang every word of one of several James anthems, drowning out Tim's microphone, he once more looked at all of us and I could feel the circuit again, completing, going round and round, an exchange of energy and, well, love. The line from one such song goes, "Sometimes when I look in your eyes I can see your soul." Tim let us sing it over and over again by ourselves and we never got tired, so the band had to stop us to keep the concert moving forward.

During one of two encores, Tim disappeared from the stage only to reappear in the balcony directly across from me, to sing the haunting and heartrending song "The Top of the World."

Eye contact, this time for sure.

And this fleeting connection was even better than I remember it being when I was 16. I don't know if it's partly because he had more to give in that tiny moment, but certainly I feel that I had more space to receive it.

What is "it"? Just because I'm older, do I claim to know? Not really. But I do know that I walked away from this performance with a lesson in how to connect to others, a lesson in the marriage of the elements, and exposure to a rare, spark-throwing charisma that may only come off those individuals who express themselves with every kind of truth accessible to them. As St. Teresa of Avila said, "When we are whom we are called to be, we will set the world ablaze."

At 31, I'm less inclined to hyperbole but I have a better vocabulary and sense for energy than I did when I was 16. So you'll have to take my word for it -- my own nostalgia and inner fangirl notwithstanding, this was no ordinary concert. And it reminded me that none of us ever have to be ordinary people.

James: Thanks for coming back. Thanks for reawakening those sacred connections.

Oh! And thanks for taking pictures of us! I'm proud to be a flesh-toned blob in the balcony in the panoramic audience photo on the band's blog for the Sept. 26, 2008 show.

Check out James here.