Our temple Goddess wears a crown of Three Moons, and the disc in the center is a mirror.
Many are its meanings, but this foremost: that the Moon is Herself a mirror.
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A warm golden light streams from the temple doorway. I enter.
Shining, the Goddess stands on the altar. She's actually grinning.
This is not always the case. Usually Her smiles are of the small, secret variety that art historians call “archaic.”
Not today. Today She wears a big, wide grin. Anyone who thinks that statues are static has never lived with this one.
Gifts always make Her happy. The coven was over for Full Moon last night. Each of us kindled a candle before Her. For five days they will burn there, bearing the intentions of our heart.
I hear the procession before I see it.
They enter in at the front gate, with rattle and drum. I join them, and together we wind around the house and back to the garden.
All summer the little goddess has presided over the growth of tomatoes, eggplant, beans, beets, kale, and collards, sunk to her knees in the ground.
Now we stand her instead in a bowl of wheat grains, wheat that we will eat (cooked in almond milk, sweetened with honey, perfumed with rosewater) on the year's longest night. We garland her with harvest marigolds.
Lastly, we cover her over with the same veil of night-blue silk that will enwrap her through her winter slumber in the pantry. We're about to process her down a public street, on which she will duly bestow her blessing, but this is, after all, a goddess: not everyone is privileged to see her.
The procession reforms. I walk this street every day of my life; tonight it becomes a sacred route, a processional way. People arriving for choir rehearsal at the corner church stop to watch.
“Steve?”
It was the high priest of one of the local Wiccan covens on the line.
“We had an inquiry from a woman who's into...uh, feminism. I thought she might be...uh, a better fit for you guys.”
It was the early 80s. We were the new coven in town back then, still in the days of our coven household. (Barring time spent in utero, those were probably the most intense nine months of my life.) The local Wiccan scene still being pretty hetero at the time, with three bi women and one gay man, people naturally thought of us as the “gay group.”
(In fact, sexual preference just wasn't an issue with us. It still isn't. When our first straight member joined some years later, no one even noticed until months after that we had, so to speak, expanded our demographic.)
“Sure: give her the number, we'd be happy to talk with her,” I said. Riding the crest of the Second Wave at the time, we were proud of our unabashed feminism. We still are.
There was an awkward pause.
“Uh....”
He was fumbling for words. Clearly, this was going to be interesting.