witches’ britches :}

Initiation

It begins and It ends

With Love

Wide-eyed babe

Born into arms of darkness

Swimming

Heart’s beaming anchor

Finds no ground

Born into the seven tongues

Whispering, snickering

Sneering and wiping

The Love, the Love

It goes

She falls

She forgets, spiraling

Until one day The Hermit

Wolfen by side

Meets her in the Night

Deep in the darkness

His lantern revives

Floating, floating

Absorbing, absorbing

Drinking in the light

Suddenly

Death comes

And its great scythian teachings

Prancing in with the Tower

Demolishing the bud

Of re-memberance

Of re-membrance

Of Love

Hanging by threads

She passes Death’s teachings

Through the pillars and pylons

She rides

Riding with Emperor

Structuring and building

A life anew

The scent of Love flapping

In wake of pointed spear

Sure that she’d survived it

Sure that she’d found plateau

The hunger, the hunger

For Love, it returned

Scanning and seeking

Amongst her fertile kingdom

She could not find it

Here, amongst the green

It was gone

And as if responding

To growing emanations of despair

The Magician

The Shaman

Appeared

Schooling her again

Re-membering her

With Love

On the wings of a dream

She travelled to far off lands

Following the traces

Following the symbols

Following the drum

Becoming shining babe-like Fool

Wandering

And again

Invisible worlds

Of terror

Shook her hand

Filled her core

Infusing the crevices

With crazed imaginings

Shadow overloading

Feeling into pain

Of Paradise

Smiling eyes feared her

Drunken revelries urged her sleep

Mind murky

She stumbled

Death came to her again

Knocking, grinning, asking

This time? This time?

Do you have enough

For Love in the Darkness?

Sleep so easy

Disappearance a gift

This time?

Somehow

She survived

The raking

Burned, shrunken and weary

Somehow she survived

A wizard met her there

In ineffable deepening layers

A magical castle appeared

He of great machinations

He, he reminded her

Of Love

While psychotic waters lapped

Begging for entry

The rushing river full of fishes

Soothed her

His hook and teaching of ways

Saved her

One day wandering away from the castle

Full of both aimless gratitude

And a growing gnawing desire

She stumbled across the river

Into the gates of a Grand Temple

There she was welcomed

The Priestess, smiling

Great cats pacing her sides

Even though hidden

In a gnarled knot of forked tongue

The Priestess met her there

The Priestess chose her

And said again

“Love”

The Priestess beckoned

For a pilgrimage to hot waters

Nestled in canyons

Of dusty oak and soaring vulture

Although she trembled

The trek concluded

With deer and angelica calling

To the lair of The Lovers

How to be Mother

To the Wounded Son

She tempered, she tempered

Between the internal

External

Eternal

Weaving bodies and minds

Slicing cords and sealing

Keeping silent

The Lovers changed her

The Lovers broke her heart

But fueled the Dark Mother

To realize

How to Love

How to Live

How to Serve

How to Breathe

Light, Dark, and all Between

How to hold the line

And honor

Ripped open by teacher

Over and over again

She rose, she rose

Stronger

Father Fire

Loosed her

From Lover’s Nest

To cold concrete

Again, again

Death threatened

Whittling her matter

Trying, trying her skill

Yet this time

She stared in those cold eyes

And recognized

The initiation occurring

She took up the blade

One hand grasping

The other embracing the cold bone

Of this Mother

A darker kind of Love

It is only recently

She has made her way to The Chariot

The evanescent winds of belief

Letting them in

Stepping into the carriage

Holding the reins

Looking out, onto the vista

A field both fenced and wild

Her tigresses, waiting

Her center, alight

It is only recently

She has fully re-membered

What has been and always has been

Along the many meetings

Archetypal collisions walking

Testing, testing

Urging her

To Love

This time?

Death is never far away

This time?

Do you have enough

For Love in Darkness?

She holds the reins

She feels the soft leather, sliding

The bodies of force, pulling

Raring

They say yes

She says yes

To Love,

To the deep heart of remembrance

Waking and reminding

We are here!

There is a path!

Great forces

Within

Without

Circling

They have made us!

Wild and mystical tendrils

Webbing specific faces

And places

These gates, hollows, temples

Soul breath, we look into each other’s eyes

And exclaim

It is time

To go

Love, love, love

Through darkness, madness and fear

Great veils of self-initiation

We’ve walked

We’ve carved sigils into heart

Bleeding, gathering

Recording

Love, love, love

We do it all for Love

It began

With Love

It ends

With Love

Your

Our

Initiation

Love

In the Darkness

Image from The Tarot of The Spirit by Pamela and Joyce Eakins found on: https://www.elitarotstrickingly.com/blog/the-tarot-of-eli-minor-arcana-thoth-tarot-3-of-cups-abundance-tarot-of-the

~Grimoire~

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

Like the smooth skin

Of the blind finger

Feeling it’s way to the message

So it is with The Grimoire

All she can do

Is imagine its thick leather surface

Rippled with gold foil

Balancing its heft

Upon palms of outstretched arm

In center of mind’s eye

All she can do is pull it in close

And take in the spectral aroma

Of woodsmoke and incense

Visioning what

Struggles and twists to become

Such a troubled birthing this has been

Starts and fits and ends

Over and over, trying to complete

Over and over, attempting to download

Conceive

The message

Too large, whipping with tendrils

Of eons and voices and symbol

She can’t even comprehend

Messages

From long ago

This pen and paper attempting

As lightning rod

For a thousand hungry-ghost cloud

Looming, circling, beating

Yearning

To enter,

Yearning

To tell

Wishes

Of hoping

Pleading

Final release

Many lifetimes

Many medicines

Many…evils?

They clamber

Vying for one electric stream

Attempting in such capacity

To fit into one tiny arm

It shakes, it aches

And mind trembles

Finally collapsing

Into blankness

Again

Squeezing her Will

Under quivering hand

She feels, faintly

A loose form

Starting to rise

Again

Perhaps, today

Again

Somehow it will embody

Those gilded edges

That smoke-blessed page

Perhaps, today

Again

It will make it through

But, she shudders

What be its cost, madness?

The price of birth, death?

Will body frame crumble

Leaving only book behind

Switching place of essence

Book to form, scribe to wind?

Only these types of questions

Soothe her while she stares at blank page

That such a channeling

Is really of grand importance

That only gods and demons and

Threats of death and annihilation

That only the battles of all lifetimes

And the resistance to Sacrifice

Again

Can explain

Dinner With My Shadow

I imagine Her

Not so hard, really

The one I’m constantly trying to forget

She incessantly sticks at my side

I imagine Her

Upon walking into a dinner party

Oh, the 13th Sister

Oh, the one who wasn’t invited

They’re embarrassed by Her

Nervous, prim and proper

Unable, really, to relax

Attuned to all the feels of the room

All the unattended forgotten ones

She fidgets, She fidgets

Short of breath and internally gasping for

Escape

But she stays

She stays

And she pulls out her measuring cups

Right there at the table

And she pulls out her calculator

Disturbing the frilly napkin

And she begins to tally the foods for possible consumption

This, this eases Her

This, this somehow distracts Her from the

Intensities of the unspoken she rides

She’s cleared off a part of the setting

She’s got her cups weighing

She’s got her numbers, calculating

She’s taking up space

Writing it all down

Before it goes inside

Somehow

This keeps it all in order

Somehow this keeps it all in order

I imagine me, looking at Her

And wishing She wasn’t here, at the party

Knowing, everyone knowing She’s here with me

They stare at Her, and I, unsettled

Some even trying to tutor

Encouraging discretion

But still She counts,

Still She levels

The mashed potatoes

So the surface aligns precisely

And only then plops it onto

Her plate

She’s still deciding whether she’ll actually

Eat

She knows

How to push it all around

Pretending

I hate Her

I wish she never existed

I wish she’d stop following me

And learn to chill out

I wish she’d know

How to laugh and eat and play

Choosing, tasting, adventuring

Like everyone else in the room

That she’d have other interests

Than the next meal, the next amount

The next possible poisoning

The next protective

Ritual

That she’d be led by her hunger

And quelled by her fullness

That she’d speak with wisecrack

At the lurking phantoms swirling

Around the table

Changing the field

Trusting Herself

And not just trying to hold It all together

Until It no longer breathes

She haunts me

And I’d rather not go anywhere

Meals solitary, inside

Appeasing Her

Than to continually risk

The shame I feel

When she’s seen

When I’m seen,

With Her

But She, cups clanging

And numbers whirring

Doesn’t seem to really care

She just knows she’s got to survive

This madness

She does what needs doing

To keep us from drowning

In a culture, externally, showing no other way

In a culture, introjected, systematically brainwashed

And I stare at Her

Eyes focused and uninterested in small talk

And I begin to see Her

And what she’s doing

And start to understand

How she helps

How she is helping

Until the scene shifts

Until the evolved tools present

She’s holding out

For nothing less than The Truth

And I start to see Her

And I start to see

I say to myself, watching me

This crazed laced-up alchemist madwoman

Desperately trying to keep us in order

So we don’t just lose it in a world

Of no holding

I say to Her, myself

That’s pretty epic

In its own strange way

And I begin to accept Her, me

Seeing how She helps

Seeing how She’s needed

Now

And I see Her

And I start

To maybe

To maybe someday

To maybe possibly

To maybe someday possibly

Begin

To love Her

Thanks for reading! This poem came from the following prompt–perhaps it will wet your whistle too?

What parts of yourself would you not take to dinner? What parts of yourself would you want to leave at home?

Father Wind

Over the course of decades

Over the span of many trials

Comes to pass that I now wield

The reins to guide him

This wild bull of Will

This wild bull of Mind

Great Sprit within

I have known

The beggar and the king

The priestess and the sorcerer

The madman, addict and the sage

Wrestling, ever

With the parts that want to kill

And the parts that want to love

The parts that want to stay

The parts that want to run, hide, flee

In terror

Integration of the Two, the Many

Into center reins of the One

Mind now not so snaggled

By layered fallings of the Abyss

I hold center

I am He

Who discerns

Who brings the great power of Mind and Word

To serve the whole

To serve

The whole

But I remember

Sometimes nightly, so

Those days, and months and years

Of muddled and crazed conscience

Leading to darkness

Magic to manipulate and destroy

Even if in illusion of self

The unexalted one within

I remember

I will never forget that line

I walk it

Daily

I walk it daily

Now holding these reins

Now riding this spit-slobbering yet

Ever-gifting bull

Now speaking the words that calm him

I hold center

I trust

Over the course of decades

Over the span of many trials

Comes to pass that I now wield

The reins to guide and honor him

This wild bull of Will

This wild bull of Mind

These Two, these Many

This One

The Great Sprit

Wind-whipping and wise

Within

I am Father

Father Wind

Image credit: “Father Wind” from Tarot of The Spirit by Pamela and Joyce Eakins

The Monkey

Inanimate surrogate mother

Made from wire and wood

Each infant becomes attached

To its particular mother, choosing

Bare wire

Or cloth-covered

In time

With tests of deprivation

Despite the milk available at the wire mother’s teat

The infant clings to the cloth mother

Only leaving when survival deems

To retrieve the milk from cold and steel

These experiments

Although primate-focused

Describe a haunting similarity

Between the mothers I was asked to choose from

Not a straight correlation

But the tendency

To favor machine-made meals

Instead

Of her cigarette smoke rage infused ones

This choice, reminds me

Of these grasping creatures

My odd preference

For the mechanically measured

Hermetically sealed

Thick and milky liquid

For the vending machine’s

Savory chemical noodle brew

For the gravy-laden chunks

Of distant crafting hands

Poured cold from freshly popped tin

These

These give me comfort

I am wary of anything made by someone who sees me

Suspicious of the homemade meal

I fear a strange possibility of poisoning

From the farm-fresh hands of the local chef

He, smiling to feed

I hunger for the package

To see the numbers, ensuring

To see the seal, broken open only by me

To have no idea who it was that made the food

To know they had no idea I’d eat it

To know that their spells

Could never be intended specifically for my destruction

Like her’s did

Like mine did

Although consciously huffing

At such silly paranoias

This

This gives me comfort

Inanimate surrogate mother

Made from wire and wood

Each infant becomes attached

To its particular mother, choosing

Somehow

As usual, I am the odd monkey out

Whereas my brethren cling to the cloth

I seek the chilled, impersonal wire

It’s safer that way

~Image and topic inspired (and haunted) by Henry Harlow’s primate experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow

Food Memory Prompt: Travel

I thought I’d do something a little different today and post a little Food Memory Prompt for your perusal and writing practice :}

–>What food memory from a trip you’ve taken comes directly to mind? How do you remember this, through your senses?

For me, I’ll share about “Cornish Cream Tea”– a scone basted with clotted cream and jam, accompanied by a cup of the strongest of milky black tea.

Way back yonder, a friend and I ventured on a trip to Wales and England to research ancestry and geek out on Beatles and King Arthur hotspots. After traipsing around the green and rocky crevices of Tintagel Castle looking for gnomes, we found ourselves in a small cafe in the village eating this delectable meal. I think there were doilies everywhere. I still can remember the feeling of my teeth biting through the cloud of clotted cream, into the layers of jam and finally sinking into the doughy denseness of the scone…heavenly.

I’d love to hear about a strong food memory related to your travels if you’d like to share :}

PS. Just a short ways away from Cornwall is Devonshire, where they have “Devon Cream Tea.” Basically the same dish, but they insist on the jam topping the cream vs. the other way around. Both factions are pretty serious about the “right” way to do this topping!

CPU

The swirlings have begun again

The ancestors, knocking

The babies, crying

The choices, beckoning

The holographic realizations, expanding

The foundations, crumbling

The blazing electrical rerouting, destroying

I keep freezing

This CPU, once able to conduct

What flows through me

Is breaking, again

The terror of its outmoded form

Dissolving

Although timely

Haunts my days

Beckoned, once again

To step into new clothes, new understanding

New wakings, new dyings

These circuit boards are blitzing out

Frequent blankness

Random shut downs

Booting issues

All of these apply

To this slowly failing

Outmoded processing unit

If you calculate the ancestors

That may be waiting to download

Waiting for the seventh son of a seventh son

To finally heal the lines

It doesn’t take that long

To get into the thousands

Thousands waiting

Thousands hovering

Thousands begging

For the one to receive

Thousands of wounds

Thousands of traumas

Thousands of wisdoms

Thousands

This CPU once had blocking features

To not feel it all, throbbing

But the last upgrade

Advertised the removal of this feature

As a bonus

“Now including ancestral awareness”

I feel them

All

Waiting

Thousands

Waiting

Thousands

Wanting

Thousands

Hoping

That I will finally see

That I will carry the essence, magick

The whole of the bloodline sparkle

Clear the misunderstandings

Heal the torn fibers

Alchemize the great and pulsing mass

Into the once true beauty of the well ones

No pressure, eh?

Perhaps it is only I that imagines

But regardless

I can feel the throbbing

I can feel the freezing

I can feel the increasing rate of blips

Occurring in my way of going about it all

I can feel

This circuit board failing

Heavy and pathways jagged

If only by my imagined load

But still it’s real

From the four to the five

And hopefully, eventually

To the six

The old ways of holding

Are breaking down

I’ve been here before

Oh, sacred Tower

Oh sacred Nigredo

I know the downward spiral

The unraveling to a new beginning

It used to cause great upheaval

It used to cause me to run

Sanity imploding

Holding onto to mere threadlines

Doing extreme things

To get something bigger to contain me

Not knowing what was happening

The institution was the only safe place

I can understand now

Why I, and many

Keep returning

But lately, although shaken

I no longer scurry

It’s almost routine

I feel it coming, know what’s happening

And a switch called surrender

A switch called opening

A switch called receiving and curiousity

And an especially helpful feature called

Peaceful

Floating

In the Great

Abyss

Automatically it starts running

Holding me through

As this CPU falters

I realize the coming

Of the hand of a larger technician, replacing

I do my best

To settle back

To switch on the trust mode

Floating in that hollow unknown

As the new

And the old

Circuitry

Lifts and settles

One more time

To ready me

To carry

The thousand watt currents

Of the waiting

Ancient future

Memory

Memory

Oh mysterious memory

Why do I re-member you?

Why do I only re-member

Some of you

Hidden, fogotten boxes

Once unwrapped

Revealing a universe before?

That one taste…

That one specific sound…

That touch…

Forevermore, inscribed

Why?

Why do you stay?

Why do you linger?

Do you wait, embedded

For us to return?

To re-live

To heal

To release?

Memory

Oh mysterious memory

Do you wait for us

To collectively review

To see the old story

Perhaps ones laden in bone

To reflect

And to re-write?

Or are you simply

A leftover echo

Of primal survival mechanics

What to avoid

What to draw near

How to keep safe

How to

Attack

Memory

Oh mysterious memory

Why do we re-member you?

Why do we only re-member some of

You

Hidden, fogotten boxes

Once unwrapped

Revealing a universe before?

Teach me

Oh mysterious memory

Of why

You stay

Earth Sister, Sister Earth

Eyes towards Earth

A swirling macrosphere hovers

You know, you know

Balancing the spheres

Fire, Water, Wind and Earth

There’s a peace within

How do you hold it?

How do you wield it?

How do you tend

To this exponential, often terrifying

Sometimes dismembering

Vast and swimming field?

I’m here

Listening to the assignments

Great meditations

Horrid initiations

Carving hollow the space that now holds birth

You know, you know

On winter ice, use caution

There is no use fighting winter

Has it taken eons

To cultivate the space you hold within

All that intersect, feel it

Your pulsing orb of potential

Some call you Sister

Some know you as Queen

This unstoppable force

That springs eternal

Kore Persephone Demeter

Birth, bud, flower, aliveness

Seduction, withering, trauma

Falling

Dissolving, sleeping, waking

Sprouting

The cycle goes on and on

Now, in my gaze

A new birth becomes you

Revelation is near

Filled with the knowing

Ancient mycorrhizal tendrils

Growing into, and out of your form

Connecting, connecting

Pulsing, pulsing

Earth Sister

Will I ever really know your field?

I meditate on this, over and over

And still, struck with the vastness

Of this potential

Filled with birth, life, death and sooty particles

Stuck beneath nail

Smeared upon skin

Cosmological origins solidified

Holding, Holding

Birthing, birthing

Will I ever know you

In me?

This mastery of all potential

A walking Tree

A Radiant Sister-Queen

Serving the wholeness of your creation

Serving the wholeness of Creation

Through only a breath

A glance

A touch

Of your shimmer?

Meditating

On this, Earth Sister

You approach and call into attention

Eyes now open and glaring directly

You say…Follow Your Name

A psychic transmission as I gaze upon you

Calm and pulsing chest

Head now turned to sky

Mouth open, a haunting circumference

Follow Your Name

And Pay

Attention

She reminds me

And then re-absorbs into the field

She is the field

I stand, holding splintering post

This mysterious fence

I’ve circled

The entirety of my life

Looking out

Looking in

Circling

Living

Dying

Birthing

Earth Sister

You are the field

I am in

You are the earth

We are in

You are we

Becoming

Oh holy Shekinah

Precious

Radiant Tree,Walking

Out, onto the Land

My, Our

Your

Earth Sister

~image credit: “Earth Sister” from Tarot of The Spirit by Pamela and Joyce Eakins sourced from https://www.elitarotstrickingly.com/blog/the-tarot-of-eli-llc-court-cards-thoth-tarot-princess-of-disks-tarot-of