the third point on the pentagram, feel into the land you are on and acknowledge the indigenous people, the tribes by name if possible, that belong to this ground.
4.The fourth point on the pentagram is your own body; take a breath and on the exhale, without judgment, notice the multitude of sensations present in your creaturely body now, at this moment.
5.Last, inhale deeply, and feel into the current season or moon cycle on your fifth and final exhale.
Moving through the entire pentagram of being takes less than one minute, and it is a simple practice that can be done at the inception and ending of gatherings, solitary ceremonies, and any event that deserves a certain level of dedication and reverence.
To My Pagan Foremothers, I Am Still Here
Word-Witching the Circle-Round
I know not whether I dream of you, you circle of hooded heathens with drums ’tween your legs and smoking pipes dangling from your lips, or if I am, in fact, a living dream of yours. Did you conjure me on some dark-cloaked evening when the thunder rolled and the oldest gods walked heavy on the earth? If I be your vision only, even so, I am still here.
Grandmothers of the North, come to me. Bear witness to this initiation of mine while I face the snowcapped mountains and bid my bones become stone. Grandmothers of the East, come to me. Whisper hushed hymns in an alien tongue while I welcome the warmer winds to bless this naked and aging skin of mine. Grandmothers of the South, come to me. Tend this altar fire while that primal dance takes hold of my flesh and animates these overstiff joints dried out from joylessness. Grandmothers of the West, come to me. Drench me in seawater and weave kelp into my locks so I might remember the old salty mother who bore me.
To my Pagan foremothers, I am still here, held by the loamy ground below and blessed by the vast indigo night above. And so it is.
To Tend a Better Altar, to Write a Better Book of Moon and Flame
The time is nearing now, the time when you will leave this House of Initiation and begin to seek out the hags, as you have many times before within this lifetime and countless incarnations. Before you enter each hag’s house, you will be asked to take to your altar, to create a tangible space that will honor the essence, the potency, and the medicine of those particular lunar seasons you find yourself in. Your altar might be simple, a portable tray that can be moved from room to room or a hidden shelf in a cabinet that can be tucked away in the dark. So, too, can your altar be grand and stationary, your holiest of holies in your wild home.
Witchcraft always meets you where you are, and you need not exhaust your precious resources to prepare for this journey. Your altar is a place to work, to make magick, to honor deity if you feel called, to remind you that your witchery is the stuff of beauty, and to serve as hallowed ground, a place to return when life is tugging at your skin. Before you leave this House of Initiation, define an altar space that will support your work, and name it as your own.
Hag Lesson #10
The altar is a touchstone.
Find for yourself, also, a large blank book that will become your Book of Shadows or, if you like, your Book of Moon and Flame, a place to record dream visions, sacred symbols, bizarre images, spellworkings, word-witchery, and all the secrets learned from those cunning hags. This is a living text, a book penned by your hand. You are both author and reader, thus you cannot misstep in writing upon these pages. Clear your altar when ready, place your blank book alone on that surface that will see you through many, many initiations as you journey, take a breath, feel the tingle of intense potential and vast possibility, and begin.
An Initiation of Blood and Bone
This is my initiation of blood and bone. I am naming myself Witch, and I am seeking out those hidden treasures in my psyche left there by my heathen grandmothers so long ago. I am taking back what is mine, and the wildest gods with the greatest stories are dreaming me into being and naming me their Priestess. Awakened I am on these precious days, and my most beloved dead are walking with me as I undertake this great journey and live the wildest year I have ever known.
Invocation to the
Crone of the East
Welcome, Witch of Blooming Bud
Paint my face with loam and mud
The scent of birth, this cleansing storm
And you, the hag, in softer form.
The language of spring leaves out the witty banter and proper rhetoric, forsaking the serious grumbles and pensive frowns of winter for those joyous belly-wobbling laughs that can erupt only from their low places on warmer days. Spring is the annual sunrise, the season of possibility dawning and hope subtly realized, if only in those fleeting glimpses of an innocence we once knew when our skin was tighter and our worlds were smaller. We look to the east now, searching for the perpetual dawn in the eyes of newborns and in the tender roots of a garden well nursed through those harsher moons. We find her right there, that Garden Hag who rules this fertile season of hard-blowing storms and resilient hearts, and she tells us tales of ancestral healing and the silver-threaded web of generations. She tells us to check in with our beloveds, to ask for what we need, and to allow ourselves to feel tender. Her stories are those of lightning women; warm, wounded grannies; and wild children, and her wisdom is born of an undying faith in renewal and rebirth.
Overview of the Spring Journey
Season of Tender Roots
Nourishment: Belonging
Story Medicine: The Chicken-Witch of the Grove
Season of the Elders’ Altar
Challenge: Heart Healing
Story Medicine: Temple of the Flame Tender
Season of Mud-Caked Hands
Wisdom: Gathering
Story Medicine: Bawdy Betty and the Lady in Beige
The Spring Altar, Handmade with a Wild Innocence
Lay to rest the bones and pine of winter. Now come the moons of erotic innocence and nature lust. Build your spring altar to reflect new beginnings, sensuality, and righteous rejuvenation. Gather things that grow, and tend them well. Honor the air element with sustainably harvested feathers, eggshells, and wildflowers. At altar center place a candle colored or carved in such a way that you might name it “Sovereignty.” You might place a small dish of fertile dirt in the north, seeds in the east, an image of the sun in the south, and a seashell in the west, all to honor the beauteous dance of the elements as the Wheel of the Year turns toward fruition. May your altar evoke a felt sense of possibility and infinite potential. These are the days of swelling purpose, weaving ancestral memory with long vision, and digging out the deep secrets, and your altar is a physical reminder of these fertile intentions. May you find what you seek.