Welcome To the Cedar Grove

As I sit here, trying to think how I should begin, to find the start of my path for the coming solar year, the rain outside is soaking the ground, the sky overhead is grumbling with thunder. The saying over here is that if there is thunder in the winter time, there will be snow a Tenday later, yet we are currently 'enjoying' record temperatures. There is something wrong with that – it's called Climate Change, and yes, it does exist.

Day before yesterday was the Winter Solstice. Mir and I were travelling on that day, back from New York City where we'd been visiting with good friends, and stopped in on the National Museum of the Marine Corp on the way back to visit the statue of Sergeant Reckless. We were surprised also to see a piece of the WTC that we'd seen transported to the museum along the New Jersey Turnpike a long while past now… and remembered the Firefighters on the bridges paying their respects as it passed. To lay my hand upon the concrete and steel was a profound moment… one right for the introspection the Solstice and winter season invokes into a life.

Perhaps that's where my coming journey begins… like a seed, buried in the dark earth, sheltered from the cold and the wet and the external pressures latent in the unfolding year, held together by the protective pressures of my own internal thoughts, like the arms of Mother, holding Her child, who has wandered.

Summer! Summer! The cow's mild milk
and the goddess with summer within her,
and the yellow summer, and the white daisies,
and the goddess with summer within her.

--Irish May Day song

No longer the maiden, she is now the blooming young mother, giving birth to her innumerable children.

No longer the maiden...

Maiden, Mother, crone... White, Red, Black.. Green, Gold, White...

I remember, a time ago now, when there was great debate among the pagan communities and circles in which I moved, about which were the appropriate colours to represent the goddess in her various aspects. Those that argued against white for the maiden claimed that it supported the Christian view of a maiden as a pure (as in virginal) state of being, rather than an independent young woman, who is nubile and fertile, as seen in the green of the GGW crowd. It was a debate that raged at many meetings, sometimes literally... and looking back was really quite funny and worrying, both at the same time.

Funny, because, well... what a thing to worry about - you as a practitioner, use whatever colours work for you no matter what the reason. You use whatever speaks to your heart. And worrying because, well, if we get bogged down arguing about such things and trying to impose our will (of colours) on others, does that not paint us with the same brush as other religions whose 'one way' is the 'only/right way'?

For me, I have used (and sometimes still do use) both. I was taugt to use White, Red, Black, because... well that's what I was taught and I was young enough in the Craefte not to know anything to use as an alternative. Then I was introduced to the idea or Green, Gold, White... and I liked it... it worked for me. It spoke to my heart, because of my association with the goddess' fouth face. I figured if I was going to have a colour for the three main aspects of the goddess, then I wanted one for the Fourth Face of the Lady also... for which I chose Midnight Blue.

I can almost hear people asking, why not black... black would seem appropriate - the dark of the moon, when we cannot see her face but feel her influence in our blood, and bodies... Mistress of Magic. For me, black is absence... absence of light... it is empty (in spite of being what you get if you mix all pigments together), and the Lady is never that. But there is a certain darkness - a mystery - like the sky at Midnight that draws us to the Lady in her Fourth Aspect... and that is why I chose the Midnight Blue.

As I always have, I took what spoke, and speaks to the wisom inside my heart, and used what feels right as my signs and symbols. It is, I believe, called eclecticism... and I'm nothing if not eclectic.

O spring, beautiful season!
O goddess, beautiful goddess!

Come with joy to us now,
with goodness and plenty.

Come with tall flax that
roots deeply in the field.

Come with corn, lots
of corn, lots and lots of corn!

Look, we have sent girls to you
bearing gifts to make you happy:

Look, we have sent them to you
bearing cakes made with fried eggs.

--Russian folksong

The earth will bear for a long time with no return. She will keep on giving and giving, providing us with food and water and air. But even the goddess cannot go on giving without getting. If we only take from the earth and never give back, we will eventually deplete even her vast energy.

This is especially relevent on so many levels, and as I sit here, meditating on this in relative darkness after a day in the sun, with charity events at the school carnival, I find myself thinking about this on each of those levels in several different ways.

I've spoken elsewhere about the whole issue of recycling in this country - and the lack of it... and have honestly been trying to reduce... reduce my waste that cannot be recycled. And to reuse where I can. I can fill the water bottle I bought in the canteen from the fountain in the school corridors as many times as I like and still have fresh, safe water... and to recycle - for example. I have no vase, so when one of the children in my class brought me flowers for Mother's Day, an old plastic tub that used to contain snacky-crackers, has become my vase. I try to do my part to 'give back' to Mother.

Then there's the whole energies thing... as practitioners of a nature based faith we draw on the energies of Earth all the time, tapping into the Mother when we do any kind of working. We are taught to 'ground' ourselves, but how many of us truly do that in a way that creates a two way flow? Or even how many of us engage in a little exchange of energy simply as part of a regular meditaion. There used to be a meditation that we would do as a regular thing in one of the groups I used to go to, called 'the tree' by some. It's a meditation in which grounding and centering becomes a visualisation of a willow like tree - with branches flowering out of the top of the head and sweeping back down to touch the earth once more... and the energy we draw upon from our base flows in a circle back to earth. Many use this as a kind of cleaning meditation, as well as one meant to energise - and that's all well and good, but how about we do this meditation when we too are already energised? Would it not then help, even in some small way, to return some of the energy we take, daily, from the earth; from our Mother?

I try to do so as much as is humanly possible - as much as is possible for me that is. If there is one thing that I have observed of here, this place - this essentially spiritual land, is that Her energies here are buried deeply. One has to reach for them - open heart and mind with honest and reach deeply to connect with them. Haven't yet worked out why that should be the case - perhaps to distinguish the casual seeker from the serious, perhaps because other faiths here are so faithfully wrapped around the collective psyche of her people. Islam and Coptic Christianity certainly have their own influence over what could be considered the 'native' (and ancient) faith of this place... and all of these like a blanket, strangely protective, over the earth energies of this place.

Interesting...

She is mad, her lover ismad, and I am mad for loving her!
This world is bewitched by the lovely goddess.
No one can describe how lovely she is, how glorious,
how perfect her gestures, how sudden her moods.
Her lover, poisoned with love for her, calls out her name
endlessly, singing Kali's name over and over and over.
Life has currents, cycles, tides which ebb and flow.
She looks upon them all with equanimity.
Nothing is opposite in her mind: not life, not death;
not love, not hate; not the self, not the void.
Your raft, the poet said, floars upon the sea of life.
It drifts up with the tide, and down with the ebb.
But the goddess is there. The goddess is always there.

--Indian poet Ramakrishna

What she offers us is not a gray mixture of black and white, but a paradoxical world in which both exist in all moments, at all points, in all ways. Life is both pain and pleasure, love and hate. Kali is beyond both, but includes both.

The little acknowledge 4th face of the goddess, to me, is what this particular meditation is all about. I've always had an affinity with this occult aspect of the goddess - hidden even to many women, though I'm not arrogant enough to think that I have in any way mastered any kind of deep connection or knowing of her in this aspect.

Different than simply the 'dark' of the moon, the relationship with the Hindu's Kali is perhaps one of the better representations that I've seen. But even that is somewhat flaws by perceptions of Kali as a sword wielding destructress.

The Fourth Face of the Lady is everything and nothing. It is the cry that comes in the dark when there is no more hope left, and the sweet laughter of the deepest joy. It is a woman who is in tune with her destructive side as much as her creative one - the impulse to devour as well as nurture. It is simply balance in the extreme - and not always gentle about it... and I would say it is the ultimate honour a woman can give to herself to come to know the goddess' fourth face, and to love and embrace it for what it is... a woman's strength.

The goddess of love has lost her love.
She was sailing the heavens in a bright chariot
powered by swans, far from her lover, joyous and fee,
when she heard his voice. He was groaning.
Groaning in pain. Instantly she turned her steeds
and few back to his side. But too late!
Even from the sky she could see he was gone.
Even from the high air she could see
his lifeless body, the red stain of blood.
She saw what could not be seen: his absence.

--Ovid, Metamorphoses

We do not celebrate the seaons the way our foremothers did.

It's interesting to me the difference in focus between here, in coming from the Romans, where the spring festival is celebrated by mourning with the goddess the loss (and subsequent rebirth) of her lover - which for the celts/celtic traditions is an autumnal/winter occurrence. For we celts, spring festival revolve around the return of the goddess from her underworld habitat, symbolising the return of life to the barren winter world.

The symbol of the egg (adopted by 'ahem' later, incoming religions), and the seed are prominent, as is the ritual of planting, associated with affirmations or desires for the coming year. Balance of light and dark too... as the Vernal Equinox is of course a balance of the same, and is generally when most people these days celebrate the beginning of spring. Ah, the Wheel of the Year definitely turns differently than it used to... even in the relatively short (If you can call 26 years short) amount of time that I have been practising.

What will [i]I[/i] be doing this year, in celebration of the Turn of the Wheel. Well, I haven't really thought about that, even though it's technically only 4 days or so away. I have a real hangup about this, never on a rising tide admonition that I was given when training. I appreciate if you're going to do something, you have to make preparations, get supplies and things, and that's normal, but the actual wording and things - the form of the rite, perhaps I will not work on until the actual day. But then of course there is the question of 'when' and choices abound. 20th? (the astronomical date of the equinox this year, at 5.15am UST), The nearest following weekend? The nearest following full moon? The nearest following appropriate moon? There could be arguments for all of these, and all would require research and meditational discovery as to where my heart feels it is best celebrated. But right now, I have the image of a decorated egg in my mind.

Now to make it happen.

She is a woman whose yellow hair falls down
in thick twisted braids and whose green-irised eyes
are of uncommon beauty and whose cheeks
when flushed resemble the rosy foxglove.
Snow is never as white as her teeth, nor
the leather of Parthia as red as her full lips.
When high queens see her, they ache with envy
at those red lips opening over those white teeth.
They ache to see such beauty, such perfection.

--Maeve, described in the Tain bo Cuailnge

Honoring our own efforts, and demanding that others acknowledge them as well, should be part of our daily discipline.

Here is a conundrum. In the quotation as it's given above, we're told that - as the Goddess Maeve - we too should be prepared to stand up for what we're done and also demand that those around us do also. Folks say that you'll never get ahead if you don't 'blow your own trumpet (horn)' as it were, but at the same time, people seem to value humility - I guess because it's less threatening maybe? So how do we marry the two?

It's something I've never been very good at. Selling myself, blowing my own trumpet, however you want to put it, (though I seem to do pretty well on interview, which is confusing really). I find it uncomfortable and always have, preferring by far to be humble and quiet about things. I wonder if that's a British thing or a me thing - because many of the people I know that are not British don't seem to have that problem. They are able to speak of their achievements, it seems, easiy in order to allow others to comment on their ability or prowess.

Yet as I think more on the words of the quote, and of how I feel in trying to self-promote my achievements (yes, sometimes even to myself), I'm put in mind of the line from The Charge of the Goddess in which we are reminded:

Let my worship be within the heart that rejoyces
for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.
Therefore, let there be beauty and strength,
power and compassion, honor and humility,
mirth and reverence within you.*

Which urges us for balance in all things. Honour and humility. Can we be humbled by our own knowledge of all that we have achieved, all that we can do, and does such recognition bring us closer to an aspect of the goddess, perhaps different from the persona - forceful and strong as she is - of Maeve, as is the quoted in the text? If so, what goddess - what aspect might she be?

None of this touches on the aspect of others' respect for an individual though... others respect of me, and my achievements. Do I even want that respect, that recognition? Well, I mean yes, sure it's good to be appreciated for what you've done. It's a good boost to your self esteem when someone tells you that you've done a good job with something. To feel validated in what you do is also a good feeling.

To accept that recognition with good grace is not always easy, and perhaps that is where the humility comes in, but accepting the recognition of another in some way honours them in return. You become a mirror of each other, a reflection of the divine like moonlight on water - and in such a way, perhaps, is Maeve's angry heart made calm.

(*Written by Doreen Valiente)