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Listen now, friends, to a tale of best-laid plans going awry.

As many of you know, my first book on Minoan spirituality, Ariadne's Thread, went out of print early this year. I got my rights back to the book and began revising it for a second edition. I wrote it before Modern Minoan Paganism came into being, so it definitely needed some changes. I was planning to release the new second edition on November 1 of this year.

May we breathe deep
and allow a blush of gratitude
to suffuse us,
soft and persimmon orange
as it permeates our bodies.
May we breathe deep
and allow compassion to illuminate us,
lighting our hearts with a golden glow,
softening our shoulders
and gentling our minds.
May we breathe deep
and allow a fire of creativity
to kindle in our bellies,
flaring bright and powerful
filling our bones with purpose
and lighting our way
May we pause,
allowing the warmth
of the moment to nourish
and inspire us,
and then set forth
hands open
and hearts ablaze.

New class upcoming for October: October Magic.

Please join me in celebrating the Yule season. 

You are invited to two Fairy (Faerie) Yule events. 

We gathered roses
and bright zinnias
to crown their heads with flowers,
these shining daughters
who we've cradled and fed
and loved with everything
we have
and everything we are.
We knelt before them and sang,
our hands gently washing the feet
that we once carried inside our own bodies
and that now follow
their own paths.
For a moment,
time folded
and we could see them
as babies in our arms,
curly hair and round faces,
at the same time seeing
the girls in front of us,
flowers in their hair,
bright eyed and smiling,
and so too
we see women of the future,
tall and strong boned
kneeling at the feet
of their own girls
as the song goes on and on.
We tried to tell them
what we want them to know,
what we want them to carry
with them as they go on their ways:
You are loved.
We are here.
You are loved.
You are strong.
You are magical.
We treasure who you are.
This love that carried them
forth into the very world
they walk on.
We hope it is enough
to embrace them for a lifetime,
and so we kneel and sing
and anoint and adorn
and hold their hands in ours.
We are here.
You are not alone.
You are wise in the ways.
You belong.
We are not sure if tears can say
what we mean to say,
but they fall anyway
as we try our best to weave
our words and wishes
and songs and stories,
with strength and confidence
into a cloak of power
that will encircle them with magic,
no matter no matter
how far away
from us they journey.

We have come from beyond the garden,
stories both old and new in our hands.
Our breasts are bare our hips are heavy,
and we are willing to show  our incisors.
Centuries of silencing and suppression
have been unable to stick to our skins,
our lapis beads rest easy across our throats,
and red crescent moons shine upon our brows.
No longer willing to settle for giving birth
to demons or destroyers,
we bleed all over the pages  of history,
eat all the apples we please,
carve stone into shapes that tell our hearts
to remember,
and sing of the forgotten things,
untamed, unbound.
Our most reliable sacred text
is the one we write each day,
shard by shard,
step by step,
bone by bone,
breath by breath,
side by side. 

Priestessing during a pandemic has not been easy! The past nearly two years have forced a serious assessment of where I currently am in my work and my willingness to offer what I can offer and to withdraw from what I cannot.

After careful consideration, I have been working in person with a very small group this summer every week, using the Lilith Circle Guide that accompanies the anthology Original Resistance. While I do not feel ready to branch back out into larger, more public group work again, it has been a really nourishing and rewarding experience to gather in a very small group. I encourage you to consider ways in which you might set your feet to the spiral once more and to reach back out to your own community in face-to-face connection with a circle that feels nurturing, safe, and enriching to you.

In my dream,
the Summer Queen
is wrapped in summer’s fire,
garbed in gowns of gold and brown,
and blazing with desire,
the grass and grains
are winding down,
leaning in ebbing spires.
She feels the heat beneath her feet,
her stride is wide,
her lips are sweet,
her arms lift up to lightning streaks.
She twirls around on thirsty ground
raising the passions higher.
With hips and hopes expanding wide
her heart alight with joy and pride
her song is strong,
her howls are long,
her many prayers are hot and bold
and then her plans
find ease at last
remembering the wheel spins fast
it’s nearly time to share the floor,
as Autumn’s Queen
peeks round
the door.

In August, I feel held in a space between summer’s fire and summer’s fatigue. There has been a blooming and a ripening, and now a harvesting and a fading begin as the time comes to turn the page.