PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com Walking the path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland with stories, art, and ritual
It is my ritual of Autumn Equinox to bury a small clay doll. She represents part of me that sinks into the deep dark of the winter months. Deep in the underworld, she is nestled under the soil, among sleeping tree roots.
This ritual only started a few years ago as normally I would symbolically bury her in a large black clay cauldron. In 2019 I took her with me while visiting home and on the Island of Eigg I followed a dream and buried her in the soil.
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Today is my celebration of being born into this world and in this life, there is only one thing we can be truly certain of, and that is death.
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For me, it begins by trying to shut off my head, although silencing those chattering voices aren't always easy and so I try to let my feet or hands take over.
Feet take me a walk around the neighborhood and never too far afield these days but there is still lots of magic to be found in the hedgerows.
Hands perform rituals which have always been a focus to keep me sane, to make meaning when sometimes it feels that there is none. They keep me tethered to the land and the voices of the old ones. Small little gestures about how I'm feeling - needing an unravelling here and a weaving there.
Dzooqua (Doll), Tsagaglala Petroglyph and the Cauldron of the Cailleach
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The Sisterhood of the Antlers
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Beltane morning. I am in the foothills of the Appalachians yet there is a cool breeze blowing which transports me to the Isle of Oronsay, sitting on top of a Mesolithic shell midden - made by people who perhaps moved around their landscape in a great ritualistic gesture.
