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Don't look now, but the guy walking down the sidewalk is dragging a life-sized wooden cross, hooked over his shoulder.

(Well, big enough to crucify a large child on, anyway.)

I think of H. L. Mencken's famous definition of Puritanism: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having fun.”

We are. It's the first Sunday in May, which means that here in the pagan neighborhood it's the annual May Day Parade down Bloomington Avenue. Thousands of people, as we do every year, have gathered to dance down the street in collective joy that Winter is finally over.

As the guy gets closer, I notice that his cross has a caster on the bottom. Hmph. Jesus should have had it so easy.

A satirist by nature, I can't help myself. I start to sing:

The wheels on the cross go round and round,

round and round, round and round;

the wheels on the cross go round and round,

all through the town.

People around me laugh. The guy looks irritated. Not quite the reaction that he'd expected, maybe.

A while later he comes back, headed back to wherever he came from. This time people around me join in.

Nippy today.

Well, middle of February. Gotta expect it.

Could be worse.

Well, we don't have hurricanes, volcanoes, or earthquakes.

Seen warmer.

Seen colder.

Warmer next week, I hear.

All uphill from here.

Well, at least we're not in Duluth.

If you're in Duluth:

My friend opens the door.

“Hi,” I say, “I'm from Aradia's Witnesses. I'm here today to discuss the Book of Shadows.”

My friend laughs.

“Did you ever come to the right place,” she says. “Come on in.”

It's an old joke: What's the difference between a JW and a Wiccan?

So, here's the story of the cabbage.

A while back I came into a number of cabbages, so many that I didn't have room for them all in my refrigerator. So I asked Aura if I could store one in hers.

“Sure, go right ahead,” she says.

A week later, I get a call.

“There's a cabbage in my refrigerator,” she says. Clearly, our conversation of the previous week had slipped her mind.

What's truly funny was her tone: exactly the same tone of mingled horror and disgust that one would use to say, “There's a dead rat in my refrigerator.”

“Oh, that's mine,” I tell her. “I'll get it this afternoon when I'm over.”

So that's the cabbage that I made the cabbage rolls from.

Party at Frater B's

“Just about sunset,” I say. “Time to go out.”

The pagans have been sampling Frater Barrabbas' awesome home-brew all afternoon.

“Wait,” says N. “I have to pee first.”

“The Sun doesn't wait,” I say.

We go out. Across the lake, the Sun is poised at the horizon.

M, a notorious chatterer, belatedly joins the group. Hearing her draw in a preliminary breath, I turn and fix her with my eye.

“We're trying to do something sacred here,” I say, meaning: Don't get started. For a wonder, she actually listens.

The Sun reaches the horizon. We blow, a conch shell and three horns.

Territories of Time

Witches, like other predators, are territorial animals.

Territories of place, though, are not the only kind of territory.

“So, how was your Fourth?”

I'm talking with Aura who, at 84, has as good a claim to being Grandmother to the local community as anyone. (Of Carl "Llewellyn" Weschke's very first crop of initiates, she alone remains: still fully engaged, still sharp as an athame's edge.)

My question was casually intended, mere open-ended conversation-fodder.

Little did I realize down what paths it would lead.

Unlike pagan immigrants like me—there are many here—Aura's an autochthon, born right here in Minneapolis, the Water City. (That's what the name means literally: a Dakota-Greek hybrid, aptly enough.) What had she done with her Independence Day? She had spent it driving around with one of her daughters-in-the-Craft, tracking down all the places where she's lived in this pagan city during her long and rich life.

Witches do this kind of thing. The Wise remember, and place is the medium of our memory. My own coven, too, has done the driving tour of all our various covensteads through our now-going-on-50-year-history.

Territories of place are not the only kind of territory.

It took them a while to track down the first house where Aura lived after she was born: she hadn't seen it in years. Finally, they managed to locate it. Her eyes sparkle as she tells me.

“Was I ever surprised when I looked across the street and saw your car in the driveway,” she says.

Turns out it's right across the street from my house.

They say there are thirteen—thirteen, count 'em—Green Men down at Merlin's Rest.

Can you find them all?

How Merlin's Rest became the pagan pub in town, I'm not sure.

(Because it's British, and pagans tend toward the Celtophilic? Because you can kilt up there, and any self-respecting pagan guy will happily don his nine yards at the drop of an athame? Because it's adjacent to the pagan neighborhood?)

For whatever reason, it's been the local pagan pub for years, which here in Paganistan is saying something. Go there, and you'll pretty much always see other pagans.

Actually, pagans being pagans, you'll probably hear us first.

For a long time, the local Druids met-up there weekly. (In fact, modern Druidry got its start at a public house in London, in 1781. Draw your own conclusions.) Whether or not they still gather there post-covid, I don't know.

Heathens, witches, Druids: Merlin's serves them all.

(No, not that Merlin: this is merlin the falcon.)

If pubs have secret Craft names, Merlin's must be The Green Man.