The Black River: Death Poems (press release)
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The Black River: Death Poems (press release)

Editor’s Note: This book was released November 2024, and was edited by Deirdre Pulgram-Arthen, the executive director of the EarthSpirit Community. To order the book directly from the publisher, please use the link at the bottom of this post.

NORTHFIELD, MA—NatureCulture announces the release of our 20th publication, The Black River: Death Poems. This is an anthology of poems about death and dying, available in two versions: portable paperback with owl cover for people who are grieving, and all-black large format hardcover for use by death ritual leaders. 69 authors from eight countries have contributed to this anthology of 149 poems grouped into four stages: Dying, Death, Remaining, and Journeying. The poems are heavily indexed: by relationship to deceased; by themes—memory loss, pregnancy loss, long/short illness, violence/war/suicide, hope, acceptance of death; by language—most are English and there are 3 in Spanish, 1 French, and 1 Arabic; and by suggested for use in ritual. This book is non-denominational and brings together contemporary poets writing on the many stages of grief and death. 250+ pages; featuring interior page decorations by artist Martin Bridge.

The editor, Deirdre Pulgram-Arthen, has worked in service to her local, spiritual, and interfaith communities for 40 years. She has a graduate degree in counseling psychology, is a certified Death Midwife, and a published author and composer of sacred chants. She is a mother and a grandmother, which is her favorite title. Deirdre lives in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts with a small community on a 130 acre nature preserve. Deirdre believes that “By using music and poetry to reach beyond rational thought and touch the depths of our felt experience, the arts serve as passageways for transformation and healing.” She has a passion for creating deeply spiritual, personal experiences of the sacred—in recognition of ourselves as a part of the natural world, and as a way of expanding our connections within the human community. As the director of EarthSpirit, a non-profit focused on current and traditional European earth-centered spiritualities, Deirdre creates rituals for celebration, seasonal cycles and rites of passage—including the sacred passage into death.

In keeping with NatureCulture’s mission to help people be in right relationship with the rest of Nature, this book addresses human existance within physical and spiritual relationships in the physical world and beyond. Publisher Lis McLoughlin believes “Poetry has an essential role to play in helping people come to terms with complexity, and the dying process, death itself, and the subsequent experiences of people who love the deceased, are among the most complex experiences humans encounter.”

The book is organized in such a way as to try to address feelings that arise at any stage of grief or grieving, without being prescriptive or simplifying, and includes a section directly related to Our Animal Kin. It adds powerful contemporary poetic voices to the conversation about, and rituals pertaining to death. The poets offer their experiences and insights so that no one will have to rely on an internet search for a one-size-fits-all classic poem, but rather, can choose something more personally meaningful.

A book launch with panel discussion and poetry reading was held November 3, 2024, online. The book can be ordered from your favorite bookstore. To order the book directly from the publisher: https://www.nature-culture.net/the-black-river-death-poems

Artwork by Martin Bridge

On Remembering Your “Why”
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On Remembering Your “Why”

by Tracy Wharton, PhD

I’ve been reading one of Father Greg Boyle’s books. G, as he is called, works with gang members, young people whose entire mindset is centered on violence and group identity. He shares stories about times that he got angry, frustrated, shaking his fist at the sky, and helplessness — not knowing what to do next. I was thinking about his stories and also about conversations I had with Dolores Huerta, a community organizer who has taught hundreds about meaningful equity and how to make meaningful change. These two people have what appears from the outside to be an unlimited energy, an insurmountable drive. But the truth is that they are just as human and subject to the emotional fallout of the actions of the world as the rest of us.

I remember one year during the 2016 election cycle, Dolores came to the university where I worked at the time. She was leading one of her famous get-out-the-vote tours and had come to rally our young adults. This civil rights icon could have filled the stadium for her rally, but she had been assigned a relatively small auditorium in the back area of the student union and the crowd spilled out into the hallways and central balcony area as people crammed shoulder to shoulder to hear this tiny force of nature. She and I found ourselves quietly waiting in a back hallway, listening to the crowd, for her entrance. “Can I ask you something, please, Dolores?” “Of course.” “My students talk about burnout,” I said, with tears unexplainedly starting to rise. “They ask how we keep going. I don’t know what to say. It’s so hard sometimes. Everything is just… so hard. And it just keeps going. How do you keep going? What do I say to them?” I asked as I tried not to let my own emotions rise to the surface. She paused, turned her body towards me fully and looked up at me with the deep compassion of a mother who has raised children and an activist who has rallied cities. She took my hand and patted it. “I see what has happened,” she said. “Your country has broken your heart.” I was stunned. We stared at each other for a heartbeat. “Don’t worry. It won’t be the last time. So get angry. Scream and stomp your feet. Have your pity party — that’s ok. …Then get your ass up, brush it off and get back to work.”

I recently had the opportunity to visit the foundation that she started with her daughters in California. They live and work in the same place where Dolores led grape worker strikes all those years ago, now a deeply “red” political district, kept that way by redistricting every time power from the people rises too far. I met vecinos (community members) who had learned English to be able to testify about poisoned water, youth who had led a campaign to install sidewalks near schools, middle schoolers who led get-out-the-vote campaigns; and I walked with Dolores and her daughter Camila in the field where she had first taken up a megaphone. We talked about “just doing the next thing,” and how there was always something else — sometimes small, sometimes enormous, but always equally important to the people in the way. The work was not just about clean water, vaccines, and voting, but also about swimming pools and soccer fields — places to find joy and fun. Equity and community are not just about keeping hate at bay — they are also about building good lives for people.

At the end of the day, after a full agenda of business meetings, walking tours, and photo ops, we were leaving from dinner. Dolores turned to me and Liz, who was going to give us rides home, and asked “hey- do you want to go see some jazz?” Liz and I looked at each other. “Jazz?,” we asked, “really? I mean, it’s been a long day.” “There’s this group that gets together every Tuesday night to jam, and tonight there are some students that I know sitting in. It’s on a patio — great space. Want to go? I mean, if you’re too tired, I understand. The times zones and all…” Liz and I agreed and we headed to jazz night. We got drinks at the bar — Dolores asked for the good tequila — sat near the back, and we had a thoroughly lovely time for a few hours. I asked Dolores how often she came and she told me “as often as I can. You have to do fun things and this is soo good.” As we got up to leave, a group of women across the room noticed her as the crowd parted and came rushing over, asking for photos and autographs. Now nearly 10pm on a Tuesday night, Liz and I looked at each other, wondering if we needed to help her escape, but Dolores moved towards them without an ounce of hesitation. I watched as she shook each hand, made eye contact and asked “Hello! What’s your name and what do you do for your community?”

What a profound and simple question — what do you do for your community? And not just that — name yourself and take credit for what you do. Don’t seek out recognition, but don’t shy away from it either. As she spoke to every person who came up to her, a growing line as we watched, she greeted every person equally and without an ounce of hesitation. I watched from just behind her right shoulder. I saw genuine curiosity, and a knowingness that her question prompted something important that immediately told people what was important to her. And every response — every response, no matter how seemingly insignificant — was validated with a smile and encouragement.

There is something central and important here about how we do things and what we choose to do. The call to action is to do something. Anything. It actually doesn’t matter how small, because lots of small things add up to big things. Everyone doing something moves us in a direction, and we can see each other in how we relate to and support one another. Our differences are there, but so are our relationships, and those relationships give us common ground. Sometimes it’s just an inch of common ground, but it’s there.

The other important lesson from Father G and Dolores is to do things that make you happy and don’t forget the joy in the world — go see jazz. Be present and enjoy the good tequila. Remember why you fight and what you are fighting for. You have to remember your “why.” There is just so much happening in the world, and while we all take breaks from the news barrage, turning away is not an option. It is easy to feel helpless in the face of so much hatred, death, and destruction. I found myself bolstered by knowing that Father G sometimes feels helpless, sometimes doesn’t know what to say. I found myself reminded that Dolores knows exactly how I feel; she has felt it too. And both know that change is incremental — it’s a long game, sometimes very long, but that the time scale of the world doesn’t always match what we want it to be, and nothing happens if we do nothing. Sometimes we are just doing “the next thing,” the small thing in front of us in our little corner of the world. But we cannot lose sight of our “why.” We cannot lose sight of the impact that we have when we take action, and what is at stake. When you lose sight of that, it’s all just paperwork and responsibility, and it’s heavy and hard. Knowing your “why” doesn’t make it less hard, or less heavy, but it does remind you that you are not alone and that you are not carrying anything by yourself. Community becomes a magic word. So — What do you do for your community? What’s your ”why?”

All photos © Tracy Wharton

Weaving the Web — Creating Community, Changing the World
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Weaving the Web — Creating Community, Changing the World

by Deirdre Pulgram Arthen

photo by ClearH20 LeStat

At the Rites of Spring “Weaving the Web of Community” ritual, every year we attach cotton rope strands to the already erected maypole to create a circular warp, held for the community by specific members, into which we then each weave ourselves with our own individual balls of colorful yarn. This year the underlying theme for Rites of Spring was “Creating Community, Changing the World” – a concept at the heart of EarthSpirit’s mission – and at our web weaving ritual we wanted to emphasize this.

5 community members stepped into the center of the circle of several hundred gathered around the maypole and held up the rope stands in pairs – one named for a way that we create our community and the other named for a way that the same work can serve to change the world. People were invited to come forward and take a strand if it called to them, and to hold it for the community to weave itself into, indicating their commitment to that aspect of our ritual intention. As each strand was called, our hearts swelled as several people came forward to hold each one, sometimes 6 or 7 at a time so that, by the time that all were called, fully half of those gathered were in clumps holding the strands that speak so strongly to our values.

Here are the intentions we wove into that web:

We create community by teaching our children that their voices matter.
We change the world by raising young people who know their voices matter.

We create community by creating spaces where all are welcome.
We change the world by advocating for inclusivity where we go.

We create community by working together to care for the mountain we’re on.
We change the world by caring for the lands we come from

We create community by taking the risk to teach each other what we know.
We change the world by cultivating experienced teachers.

We create community by coming together for handfastings, funerals, and other rites of passage.
We change the world by offering meaningful models for others creating rituals for themselves

We create community by singing together.
We change the world by bringing out the music in others.

We create community by offering healing and support during difficult times.
We change the world by offering support to people struggling with disaster or oppression.

We create community by celebrating seasonal cycles together.
We change the world by taking action to protect the natural world.

We create community by cooking for each other.
We change the world by knowing the value of service.

We create community by believing in each other’s capacity to change and grow.
We change the world by striving to offer an alternative model to the punitive justice system.

We create community by offering time and money to sustain our community.
We change the world by enabling our community to engage in global outreach.

We create community by laughing and having fun together.
We change the world by nourishing our spirits, enabling us to do important work in the world.

We create community by holding each other accountable.
We change the world by holding our political leaders accountable.

We create community by supporting each other in caring for our dead and dying.
We change the world by destigmatizing death and honoring it as sacred.

We create community by experiencing the sacred together.
We change the world by engaging in interfaith work.

We create community by creating and sustaining deep connections with each other.
We change the world by showing that enduring relationships are possible.

We create community by honoring our ancestors.
We change the world by striving to become ancestors worthy of honor.

We create community by hiring our friends and by serving our friends.
We change the world by putting our money where our values are.

We create community by caring for each other’s children.
We change the world by debunking the myth of independence.

We create community by creating shared culture that honors all beings.
We change the world by rewriting the mainstream narrative – that any one being or person should be valued more than another.

photo by Hattie Adastra
Beyond the Veil
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Beyond the Veil

SaerUlf

 I remember rising in spinning embers to smoky stars….contracting, expanding, striking out, whirling, growling in the heat,
Slithering in the fire,
Burning away to the essential element,
In flame fed by the wind,
supported by earth and stone,
driven by the thunder of drums,
built with sweat, sinew of muscle and the call of ancestral bones…
 I remember sunlight shattered across the water,
Wild photons shimmering, dancing,
Falling together, racing apart…
 I remember the Green Ones
whispering through the leaves,
a shiver, an ethereal song running through, embracing it all…
 I remember a newly transformed adult dragonfly,
emerging from earth at water’s edge, struggling to pull itself out of the mud,
to dry her delicate wings in the sun…
 I remember stories of life and death,
joy and sorrow,
victory and struggle,
love and grief…
 I remember FEELING vividly
this infinite web from within from without, tying us all together —
 Enshrined forever in the heart,
  in all song,
   In every dance,
   In every beat of the drum…
 Today I remember, but feel it in less than a whisper,
from behind the wall that separates this singular life
from the realm of our collective consciousness…
  If I still draw breath as we reach the end of this present circle around Sol,
I will fall together with all of you,
Into the all of THE ALL.
 The wall of illusion will fall,
and the remembrance will once’s again flourish into vivid feeling/knowing/BEING…

HAIL TO THE RITES OF SRING

When the Wind Blows, They Dance
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When the Wind Blows, They Dance

by Arianna Knapp

Deirdre held up a tent stake wrapped in white cord and said, “Who will hold a strand for the Trees? The Green Ones among us?” It was May of 2017 and we were at the Community Web Ritual. I turned to Dag’r, looked in his eyes and said “I have to go.” Then I ran across the circle  and sensed a blur of floppy sun hats, sunburned shoulders, and giant parasols as I took the stake from Deirdre’s hands.

As I held the stake, tied to the strand, connected to the Maypole being woven with the songs and energy of my friends, family, and community, there was a simple “knowing.” I had taken the first step on a journey and I had no idea why, or where it would lead. 

In the weeks and months that followed the pledge faded in and out of focus. What did it mean to “hold a strand”? In the Fall of 2017, I attended my first Twilight Covening and then I stepped into the Anamanta journey and I realized a growing drive to be deeper among the beings of the land. I opened to the trees, I gave space in my meditation for green ones, and it brought peace.

While enjoying a rambling mid-Winter drive, Dag’r and I discovered a homestead among the hemlocks, and so we moved. As we introduced ourselves to the land and beings of the land, it was the green ones who taught us, and they continue every day. Open to the wind rolling down the hill, echoing the sounds of waves crashing to the land; open to the creak and groan of Summer breezes, the crack and snap of the coldest clearest night as the trees keep watch. 

As planning for the next Rites of Spring and Village Builders gathering started, there was Deirdre looking at a sea of faces and said “Does anyone feel called to lead the Green Ones Grove?” My hand shot in the air and I found a new way to hold that strand for my community. 

This moment, like that sunny day on the ritual field, is remarkable because I was not making a choice to volunteer. I was not “going to the next level.” I was not acting on information from my methodical, logical, well-planned brain. I simply knew that I would do it, and it was right.

There was a pandemic. We stayed home among the Hemlocks. After weeks had passed and it was clear that normalcy was going to be a ways off, I began to hang out with the trees. The Azalia outside my bedroom door is my confidant. The crabapple with the birdfeeder is a friend. The Hemlocks are my elders, my ancestors, and my guides. The green ones of our land are the Tall Lords and Ladies, and when the wind blows they dance.

As the World opened back up and we gathered again, my shape had changed. I am stronger now, yet more willing to bend. I can see the many shades of the long horizon and I choose to watch the light shift instead of chasing the Sun. My roots are not holding me back, they feed me. 

Being in people-centric spaces has become a chore. When I must spend time in concrete covered lands, I seek the green ones who may be found in planters, on desk tops, or stoically anchoring sidewalks. Breathe with and touch the tree, hug the tree, open to the experience of the tree. 

Last Fall I was appointed the official Tree Warden of Chester, Vermont. This is one among other political roles I fill, but it brings me deep joy. In this capacity, I have now spearheaded a grant process that has garnered funds to replant trees on a riverbank prone to flooding, and to begin to return shade trees to our Main Street corridor. 

I took a strand and pledged to hold it without knowing what it could mean. It has changed me.

-Arianna Knapp
EarthSpirit Board of Directors

photographs © Arianna Knapp

Pisces III: A time for the Lesser Mysteries
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Pisces III: A time for the Lesser Mysteries

by Andrew B. Watt

Editor’s note: The zodiac divides the sky into 12 signs of 30º each. An ancient subdivision of these 30º signs is into three “decans” (from the word for “ten”), or 10º segments. Each year, ten days before the Spring Equinox, the Sun reaches the third decan of the sign of Pisces, before beginning the astrological year again as it enters Aries at the Equinox. This post was written specifically for this third decan of Pisces.

This time of year, I find my thoughts drifting back to something my friend Sara Mastros said about visiting Greece in February. She got into a cab one day at her hotel, and told the cab driver to take her to Eleusis, about fourteen miles away. The driver, once he understood her request, nodded and sighed. “There, it will already be spring.” In downtown Athens, she said, this was a hard statement to credit —it was cold and blustery, with an extra needle or two of frost in every breeze. But, once there, she found it impossible to ignore — there was new greenery everywhere, and flowers were starting to open in every sunny sheltered place around the site of the ancient Telasterion, the hall where the Mysteries of Eleusis were celebrated.

It was already spring there.

Of course, the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis were celebrated at the start of the ancient month of Boedromion. Called “The Showing” and open only to initiates, it was a multi-day ritual that we know only a little bit about, and some of that only from Christian apologists attacking it as pagan nonsense. The season of these Mysteries began on the 14th day of Boedromion, and probably at or just before the Autumn Equinox, and with particular pomp and circumstance every four years. We know that these rites involved the story of Hades kidnapping Persephone, of Demeter’s imposition of the first winter on the Earth, and Zeus and Hermes negotiation of a truce.

But by the 7th century BCE, the Mysteries were already so old and full of archaic language that people barely knew what they were witnessing. And sometime in the century or so that saw the elevation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to cultural prominence in Greece, the priestly families that oversaw the Eleusinian rites established the Lesser Mysteries. These lesser mysteries, called “the Teaching” or “The Telling”, were also only open to would-be initiates, who sent a donation of a piglet as an offering to the Telasterion and its attendant families as the price of initiation.

This Telling was held at this time of year, in our mid-March before the Spring Equinox, in the Athenian “month of flowers” — and they were a catechism of sorts, a multi-day series of rituals, sacred meals, purifications, lectures and discussions about what would be received by the initiates at the Greater Mysteries. Once inducted, attendees then were eligible to participate in the Greater Mysteries eighteen months later, where they would have the background and intellectual framework to understand the experiences that the initiates went through in the autumn.

It sounds a lot like a modern pagan gathering, with rituals interspersed with workshops, doesn’t it? And how many of us had the depth of knowledge to understand our first pagan gathering? How many of us needed to come a second time, or a third, to really understand what was going on?

Of course, our rituals today are not the same. At Eleusis in the fall, we know there was “an ear of grain in silence reaped” — there was a mass washing of people at a beach, and a night in complete darkness, and a sacred drink in the dark, and a chest or box with sacred secret things in it, and a basket whose contents are similarly obscure to us today. And our rites and rituals are not so obscure or ancient to us that we have to hold special training sessions eighteen months ahead of time to have clarity about them.

But. All the same?

It’s not a bad idea to use this time of year to reflect on our own mysteries — not the Mysteries of what this object or that ancient text might mean to us as pagans today; or how to interpret the strange symbolism of rituals that haven’t been performed in almost eighteen hundred years.

No — instead, let’s take the time to talk about the Mysteries of how all life on Earth is dependent on the interrelationships of Sun and seed and soil, of rock and planetary orbit and seasonal shifts in daily sunlight, and the way that the dead provide both the fuel and foundation for new life. We can couch it in myth — like Persephone and Hades and Demeter and Helios — or in the most up-to-date scientific lingo we can.

But at its heart, this is still a mystery we humans understand only a little. And we deserve to be reminded of it, again and again — and perhaps most especially at this time of year, when the equinox is not yet come and the trees are still bare of leaf or blossom. This is the time of year when we most benefit from the reminders and the explanation, of course — because in summer and in autumn, the bounty of this transformation is obvious. Now we need to Tell ourselves the story, because the Show will be so obvious, later in the year.

And perhaps this is the reason to mark the Lesser Mysteries now, at this time of year when it’s still gray. It’s how we make spring come early in our hearts and minds, and bring a little of the mystery of Eleusis into our life.

There, it is already spring.

Photo of a stone church in Eleusis, Greece, on top of a rocky mound, with blue skies above.
Eleusis. Photo by Vassilis St on Pexels.com
In The Dark Time
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In The Dark Time

by Katie LaFond

Culture is the context; if it is holding you firmly and comfortably, it is mostly invisible. In my writing, I like to bring these unseen things forward, and try to make them a little easier to feel and to weave into your own context. Today, I’m going to talk about what I (and my family) do in the Dark. 

Pagans often talk about the Light half of the year, and the Dark half. Most understand this to mean the time between Beltane (May) and Samhain (November), and Samhain to Beltane. Most understand the Light Time to be a time to come together, to celebrate, to share, and to socialize, and the Dark Time to draw within, to rest, to dream, and to tend the inner fire. 

The Light half of the year brings us together at Gatherings, Sacred Land observances, Harvest Festivals, and frequent opportunities to come together. Pagans can mostly be as busy as they want to be during this time of the year, which my extroverted friends delight in, and even my introverted friends appreciate the overt model for “what to do.”

Descent

The first part of the Dark Time follows a fairly predictable pattern, and one we have plenty of models for. At Samhain, many families will clean graves, have a Dumb Supper, and Honor the Ancestors. At Yule, we sing up the Sun, burn a Yule Log, and gather with loved ones. 

Then, for a lot of people, it feels like a very long, cold time before Beltane. 

We have fewer models for “what to do” as New England pagans. We have Imbolc, which isn’t really the start of spring here, and even Spring Equinox often still feels like winter. We make Brigid crosses and often have our children hunt for eggs amid snowdrifts, but it is too cold to eat all that chocolate outside.

An image of an outdoor fire with a foreground closeup of a hand holding two metal knitting needles.

I return to the idea that we draw within, rest, dream, and tend the inner fire. When we lived in close knit communities that relied on each other for survival, we would spend the winter together, gathered around the hearth. We would tell stories, make music, make tools, weapons, art, and clothing. We would tap the trees during sugaring season and take turns tending the boiling sap, watching the billowing water vapor create dragons in the frosty air. We slept more, and dreamt more deeply, telling each other about our dreams, and letting the Unseen be a little closer to us. 

In January I Dream. I foster a deep dreaming culture with my family. We have an extravagant sleep hygiene routine including stories, songs, vaporizers, fuzzy blankets, dream journals, and hot water bottles. We set alarms well before “get out of bed” time and talk about our dreams each morning while we snuggle before our busy day starts. I add events to my calendar so I don’t accidentally accept too many invitations, and instead I sit still, reflect, and journal about the year behind me, and what my hopes are for the year ahead. I add other events to my calendar to remind me to do things just for enjoyment. Joy is a pagan value, and January is a wonderful time to indulge in long hot baths, stargazing with heated socks on, and a massage or two. It can be hard to motivate yourself to go outside during the long cold dark, but your body will thank you for it.

February brings creation forward, as things Gestate. It is not about the product; the act of creating is joyful in itself. I try to make something each day; cooking, carving, writing, knitting, colored pencil drawings… anything that gets my creative juices flowing. I spend hours choosing seeds for my garden and planning this year’s layout. February is also Sugaring season, and I like to think about how the Sap is running in the Maples, and I like to think of something each day that brings sweetness to my life. Something small and beautiful; the sap isn’t boiled into syrup yet… 

Ascent

March sees things Emerge. I begin to sprout the seeds I’ve been collecting in the Dark, both literal and figurative. My onion seeds are first, quickly joined by kale and parsley. I look over my journals from Twilight Covening and Yule, and finally put my annual Tarot Card up by my desk. I make new jewelry to remind myself of the ways I want to grow and I stretch into these new pieces and test drive nascent shapes that limber as I grow into them. 

The word April literally means Open. I work to Open Wide. I walk outside every day, noticing how each day there is something new blooming, chirping, or emerging. I appreciate these last days with my wings still wrapped around myself and my family before I open wide my arms to embrace my community again at Rites of Spring. 

What do you do in the Dark? 

In the Spirit of the Earth,
Katie LaFond February 2024

February Festivals
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February Festivals

by Andrew B. Watt

From time to time, flashes of the ancient world of the Mediterranean help me illuminate the life I lead today. The three days of festivals at the end of February are among those flashes — not exactly the Eight Greats of solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter days, but something in-between. Rome’s second king after Romulus, the semi-mythical Numa Pompilius, set up the sacred calendar of ancient Rome and decided which days should be the important festivals of the gods. In a no-nonsense, legalistic approach, he chose dates based on day-counts rather than complex formulae relying on the relative positions of the Sun and Moon, or elaborate astronomical calculations.

By these simplistic day-counts, the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third days of February were marked as the time for “end of year” celebrations, for a year that began on March 21. Why not hold those festivals on March 18-20? The weather might change, and an early spring would give farmers a chance to start their planting. Better to hold the formal observations of the end of the year when it was still cold and frosty nights might still delay the seeding of the ground!

Today, the twenty-first of February, was the Feralia. A day for honoring the dead, not with elaborate rites but with a washing of the family’s graves and a small offering, and perhaps a re-arrangement of images of the dead in the family shrine. The Roman poet Ovid, in Book II of his poetic exploration of the Roman sacred calendar Fasti, writes of the Feralia, “a tile wreathed ‘round with garlands is enough, a scattering of meal and a few grains of salt, bread soaked in wine, and loose violets, is enough.”

Tomorrow, the twenty-second of February, was the Charistia. This was a day for renewing ties with neighbors, walking the boundaries of your personal property lines as a home-owner; sharing food and drink with the humans whose territory touched yours. It was also a day for calling on more-distant friends through letters or even personal visits, and renewing bonds of friendship. Here, Ovid says, “It’s surely joyful to turn our faces to those alive, after so many are mourned, to see those of our clan who remain alive, and count the degrees of kinship.” Incense was often burned for the health of one’s living kin and friends, although Ovid warns the impious brother and the cruel mother-in-law to stay away — how ancient is that cliche that one’s mother-in-law is awful, anyway??

At the end of the day, at the meal, there was a toast to one’s own elected officials, beginning with the duoviri, the co-mayors of your city, and ending with the Emperor. We might begin with a similar toast for our own elected officials… including, perhaps, an equal recognition of a safe and successful re-election for our preferred officials — or their replacements!

The twenty-third of February – Friday this year –,was the Terminalia — a day for personally reinforcing the boundaries of your city or town on both the physical and spiritual level. Many Roman citizens belonged to the auxiliary militias, and would walk the town wall and confirm that stores of arrows and spears were still secure, while the city’s priests ceremonially re-cut the pomeranium, the sacred trench that separated the civitas, the human community, from the wilderness beyond the wall.

In rural areas, Ovid says, the men brought the firewood, and the women carried coals in a pot from the hearth fire; the neighbors brought a suckling pig. The boy throws grain five times in the air from a basket, and the girls bring out honeycomb and wine. The boundary stones are found and honored, and Terminus, the two-faced boundary lord, is commanded to move not an inch in the coming year. Then there’s a feast out there on the edge where our fence meets yours, and where both of our boundary markers touch the wild places.

I don’t know how other people might do this, but I’ve identified a route that will take me from my home on a long circuit through the centers of all of the towns that border mine, and then back past my community’s town hall. On foot, it would take me 18 hours (Google claims); I think I’ll probably drive this year since it’s uphill (both ways!), but it will take me past the doors of a number of friends’ homes.

There’s no obligation on anyone to honor these three festivals as February’s days grow longer and there’s a shift in the weather, of course. But there’s something simple, here, too, about counting heads among the living and the dead, re-thinking boundaries, and having a minor celebration or two. And I think these three days have something of that simplicity of expectation that can shape familial traditions and practices.

I’ve not quoted directly from this translation of Ovid, but Book II of Fasti. has been ably translated here by A.S. Klein. https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/OvidFastiBkTwo.php

Discernment, Danger, & Discomfort
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Discernment, Danger, & Discomfort

by Irene Glasse

Silhouette image of a person climbing a mountain with ropes, against a muted sunset.

I have a confession for you today. Are you ready? Here goes.

I am afraid of the dark.

Ridiculous for a witch, no? Especially for one who regularly participates in events and ceremonies that put her outside in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere?

There are reasons for the fear. Since childhood, I’ve experienced something called “REM Sleep Behavior Disorder” or “REM Intrusion.” The short description of this condition is that my brain sometimes fails the gear shift between sleeping and waking. When I have a bad dream, if the gear shift fails, my body wakes up while my mind is still dreaming. I open my eyes, and the dream is overlaid on the reality before me.

That would be fine if I were dreaming about… say… mermaids or unicorns. But in those moments, I’m not. The gear shift failure mostly occurs during nightmares.

As an adult, I understand why this happens, and I’m able to talk myself down once my brain fully wakes up and the dream fades. But as a child?

Bad things happened in the dark. And no one was able to help me, or to explain. The fear is rooted deeply into my early years.

And, given that, I still place myself outside in the darkness.

You see, discomfort and danger are not the same thing. And there’s a good deal to be said for sitting with discomfort in a safe place. I can be utterly terrified, startling at small sounds, with my heart pounding, and also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am, in fact, quite safe. These spaces of discomfort allow me to continue working on the trigger and all the emotions and behaviors attached to it within a safe container.

So, I head out into the forest, into the darkness, pretty regularly. I go deliberately in order to learn to dance more gracefully with my fear.

If you’re doing anything worthwhile in your spiritual practice, you’re going to come up against your edges. You’ll attend a ritual that brings up emotions you’re not expecting, you’ll read a book that pushes your buttons, you’ll go on a journey that feels unpleasant to you, or you’ll experience any number of other possibilities that suddenly bring you face to face with your own discomfort.

When that happens, it can be tempting to shut the whole thing down. We’ve gotten so used to being comfortable that we’ve forgotten the very real wisdom and power that comes from navigating our edges. The Path of Ordeal is a real one — one of the most profound spiritual experiences I ever had was at the very end of the Crucible, the “final” of Marine Corps Boot Camp back in the 90s. I would not have had that experience without the sleep and food deprivation or forced marches. Navigating discomfort — going through my own resistance — revealed something wholly new to me. Something that continues to inform and support my spiritual practice to this very day.

So, are you in danger? Or are you in discomfort?

If you know that you can step out, can return to your campsite, can raise a hand and someone will help you, can choose to revoke consent, can leave a gathering and go home? You’re not in danger. You’re uncomfortable. And sometimes, that’s more than enough reason to do any of the aforementioned actions. We’re not always up for sitting with our edges. When that’s the case, use your self-awareness to decide what’s right for you. Particularly in the space of shared ritual and ceremonial experiences, you really can just bail. The policy of consent applies to rituals, and it can be revoked by any participant at any time.*

But, make sure that’s what will actually serve you. Encountering our edges usually makes us want to quit. The thing is, if you lean into your discomfort rather than seek to escape it, there are some sparks in that darkness worth seeing. The next time you find yourself navigating your edges, here are some questions to consider:

  • What experiences or memories is this connecting with?
  • What emotions are present right now? (Literally name them — “discomfort” is usually covering a few others.)
  • What is this experience teaching me about myself? What am I learning right now?
  • Why do I want to quit? How do I feel about that reason?
  • What do I think the goal of this experience is? What theories do I have about the design choices?

If I stopped every time I was afraid or uncomfortable, I simply wouldn’t go anywhere. Every single worthwhile spiritual experience in my life has included challenge. Indeed, my mechanism for determining where I’m supposed to go next on my personal spiritual path is to choose the option that scares me a little. The very best candy, as it turns out, is just outside your comfort zone.

The next time you find yourself ready to throw in the towel, look more deeply. Are you in danger? Or are you in discomfort? And, what response to this challenge will serve you best?

*If you are in a situation where consent cannot be revoked, or is not respected/fully complied with when it is revoked, get out using any means necessary.

Irene can be found at https://glassewitchcottage.com/.

Bayberry as a Prosperity Charm
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Bayberry as a Prosperity Charm

Andrew Watt

The last several years, and beginning even before we were married, my wife and I have given bayberry candles as presents at Winter Solstice. Usually, we attach a red ribbon and a tag with one of the many surviving rhymes from US colonial-era folklore:

  A bayberry candle burnt to the socket brings food to the larder and gold to the pocket.

Or possibly you’ve heard a slight variation on this.

  A bayberry candle burnt to the socket puts health in your body and gold in your pocket.

Or again, the longest one my wife and know of (but not always the one we use).

  These bayberry candles come from a friend:
  On [Christmas] Eve or New Year’s Eve, burn it down to the end.
  For a bayberry candle burned to the socket
  will bring joy to the heart & gold to the pocket.

It wasn’t until this year that I found myself wondering why it was that bayberry, so specifically, should be the key ingredient in this charm for the New Year. So I began to do some research, and made a couple of intriguing discoveries.

First, I was startled to learn that bayberry (Myrica cerifera) is native to North America rather than a European import. Originally found on the Mid-Atlantic coast from Delaware to southern Connecticut, English settlers successfully transplanted it to the Caribbean, too.

That meant these charms were neither Welsh nor English in origin. Instead, they were the result of Europeans learning important lessons from the new landscapes of New Jersey, Long Island, Rhode Island, and Cape Cod — possibly through interactions with Native peoples who already lived here, definitely through study of the plant itself. Both Natives and colonists used bayberries as a potent but somewhat risky medication taken as a tea or syrup for exciting and supporting the immune system. More often, though, the berries were boiled in order to extract the wax and essential oils to make candles that scented the air and allegedly drove off disease. Somewhere along the line, Europeans learned that the berries were risky to ingest but easy on the lungs and throat.

One of the plant’s other interesting features is that it creates nodules in its root system — tiny organic caves, almost — which serve as sheltered homes for symbiotic fungi that fix nitrogen in the soil at rates even higher than most legumes. Gardens with bayberry bushes thus tend to thrive, because they make this key nutrient available to other species in their environment. Plant bayberries, and your garden would thrive.

So the rhyme, which for many years my wife and I thought to be of English origin, is really of American origin — the result of communication between original inhabitants, European settlers, and the plants themselves.

And so, after many years of following this custom of giving out bayberry candles to burn at Winter Solstice for prosperity and health in the new year, I can regard it as a special tradition that doesn’t come from Scottish crofters or English peasants or even Welsh carolers parading beneath a Mari Llwyd horse-skull. No. It comes from us. It’s native to here. And maybe that’s a path forward for us all — to recognize that we don’t have to spend all our time regarding our European ancestors as the sole source of spiritual truth. To some extent, it’s necessary for us to recognize that we’re here on this ground, and our spirituality and customs have to be rooted in the places where we live and where our children and grandchildren will grow old. And maybe that means that we have to walk with greater grace and acceptance of the First Peoples who lived here, and honor what they taught our predecessors.

With that in mind, I decided to write my own rhyme, and add to the folklore around this little bit of winter magic, the bayberry candle.

  Our foreign forebears learned to know this land,
  and humbled themselves to learn its treasures.
  Bayberry made golden soil from sand,
  wafting aromas of year’s-end pleasures.
  “Friends, please come, burn these bayberry tapers;
  warm up at the hearth, sing songs of good cheer;
  drink of this wine, eat salmon with capers —
  tell tales to last ’til the turn of the year!”
  So it had happened in long-ago days,
  as the bayberry burned to the socket —
  and shall again, when we revive old ways,
  and treat friends better than gold in pocket.
  Then, a New Year rich with health, wealth and peace,
  is ours for giving — and getting — with ease.