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With the Summer festival season nearly upon us, I thought that I'd write a chant to honor our regional pagan land sanctuary, Sweetwood Temenos: so-called from its sumptuous sacred grove of sugar maples

Among other things.

I've Got Sweet Wood

I've got Sweet Wood

(clap clap   clap CLAP clap)

You've got Sweet Wood

(clap clap   clap CLAP clap)

We've all got Sweet Wood

(clap clap   clap CLAP clap)

la la la la la la

He's got Sweet Wood

(clap clap   clap CLAP clap)

She's got Sweet Wood

(clap clap   clap CLAP clap)

They've got Sweet Wood

(clap clap   clap CLAP clap)

la la la la la la

Then you go around the circle, naming names, to embarrass honor those present.

It's become a truism in Craft circles that organizing witches is like herding cats.

Writer John Michael Greer suggested some years back, though, that this question approaches the problem from the wrong direction.

“Cats aren't herd animals,” he said. “If what you want is cats, what you need to do is to open a can of tuna fish.”

Students of the pagan community have not infrequently commented on the problem of the “disappearing pagan male,” and the resulting gender imbalance in our population. The long-term implications of such a demographic hemorrhage are, of course, dire: a community without men will not long survive.

Fortunately, I think that there's a solution to hand.

In June, the Warlocks of the Driftless will finally—after a year's hiatus for the plague—be raising the Bull Stone at Sweetwood Sanctuary in southwestern Witchconsin's Driftless Area.

Suddenly, there are men converging from all directions who have heard about the project and can't wait to help.

Clearly, men just want to raise standing stones.

The rope broke just as we were moving the standing stone up the steepest part of the slope.

It had taken us the better part of two days to move the ton-and-a-half pillar of sandstone from its bed in the wall of the coulee—that's what they call a ravine around here—down into the coulee, across it, and then up the hill on the other side toward the shrine that we were building for it.

That's when the rope broke.

Hopefully, in years to come, we'll be moving more standing stones, probably larger ones than the Bull Stone, here at Sweetwood Sanctuary in southwestern Witchconsin's Driftless Country, and we haven't necessarily ruled out the use of modern machinery to do so. But we had decided that, for the first stone, we wanted to use the old ways to move and raise it.

So it was with ropes, poles, and the strength of our bodies (and minds) that we began moving it up the hill. At the top of the slope, we'd rigged up a pulley around the trunk of a tree. With its aid, we had already brought the Stone most of the way up.

As it happened, I was top man on the pull at the time. When the rope snapped, I had been tugging with my entire weight braced against it, so naturally when it went I flew, ass over teakettle, down the hill.

My first thought was for the guys behind me, now in the path of my momentum as I went rolling downslope. “Pull in your arms and legs!” I thought frantically; I was afraid of kicking someone in the head.

At solar noon, the people gather at the feasting-ground.

The Story

An elder tells the story of the moving and raising of the Bull Stone.

(Why is it called the Bull Stone? Because there's a golden bull buried beneath it.)

(Why is it only six feet tall, and why did you move it by hand? Because, though we hope and plan that it will be only the first of many standing stones to come, we wanted this first among them to come from the Land itself, and for it to be moved and raised in the old way.)

(What is the purpose of the Stone? The Stone marks the point on the horizon where the Sun sets at the Winter Solstice. Its purpose is to make the Great Rite with the Land, and so ensure fertility in crop, herd, and tribe.)

(The Stone was raised by men; is this, then, a Men's Shrine? No, it's a Shrine of the Great Rite, the most sacred offering an act of love.)

Procession

Horns sound. Led by libation bearers, the people process down the hill and through the woods to the Bull Stone.

Circumambulation

The people circle the Stone three times, moving always to the right.

Mass Anointing

Oil-bearers pour fine oil into the hands of the people. The people crowd in and anoint the Stone, then one another.

Crowning

The Wreath-Bearer, a young girl, is lifted to crown the Stone with a wreath of leaves and flowers.

Horns sound.

A loving springtime tribute to the Spirit of Skyclad.

Jack-in-the-Buff

(Tune: Jack-in-the-Green)

Now Winter is over, and Summer's come in,

so it's finally safe to start showing some skin.

Our ski-masks and parkas we joyously doff,

for to go about dancing with Jack-in-the-Buff.

Parkas we doff, parkas we doff,

for to go about dancing with Jack-in-the-Buff.

Now Jack-in-the-Buff is a singular man

with sandals, a beard, and an all-over tan.

A pentagram pendant is more than enough:

“Adorn, but don't cover,” says Jack-in-the-Buff.

More than enough, more than enough:

“Adorn, but don't cover,” says Jack-in-the-Buff.

Now Jack-in-the-Buff has a very strange power:

be they never so prim, within less than an hour,

wherever he goes (it amazes us all)

the clothes will start dropping like leaves in the fall.

Amazes us all, amazes us all:

the clothes will start dropping like leaves in the fall.

When you raise a standing stone, or build an important structure like a house or a temple, you'd do well to begin by making a foundation offering first. That's the pagan way.

What archaeologists call the “foundation deposit” is prayer made permanent. It embodies, in an ongoing way, the builder's intentions for the new structure, constituting the foundation beneath the foundation.

Among the Copper Age cultures of what archaeologist Marija Gimbutas called Old Europe—as in Minoan Crete, Old Europe's final flourishing—it was not uncommon, when building a house, to bury beneath it first a small, clay model of a house: action made articulate. The intention could hardly be clearer.

So when, at Beltane, we raise the Bull Stone at Sweetwood Sanctuary in southwestern Witchconsin's Driftless Area, you can be sure that, before the raising of the Stone itself, we'll first be laying our intentions in Earth.

The Bull Stone marks the marriage point of Earth with Sun, of People with Land. The Stone itself makes the Great Marriage with the Land both in microcosm—at the shrine itself—and in macrocosm, lining up with the notch on the horizon where two ridges meet that marks the place where the Sun sets on the shortest day of the year.

In the Earth beneath the Bull Stone we will lay three carefully-chosen offerings:

At Beltane, we raise the Bull Stone.

How, you ask, did we manage to get a ton of local limestone from the wall of the coulee (ravine), across the bed of the coulee itself, and all the way up the hill to where it now lies?

Not difficult.

The Witch sat at the top of the slope and Sang the Stone up.

Really. She Sang, and the Stone just—as it were—floated up the hill. Call it levitation.

I, Steven of Prodea, tell you this, and I know it to be true because I was there, and saw it happen myself.