Happy Birthday to Virgo!

Virgo © Susan Seddon BouletThe Sun enters the sign of Virgo today! According to some traditions, we now enter into the Month of Isis, and the richest time of the creative and healing power of the Divine Feminine. We now enter in earnest the harvest season. Earthy Virgo is symbolized by the ear of wheat … Read more

Sunday Poetry: Bacchus

Bacchusby Ralph Waldo Emerson Bring me wine, but wine which never grewIn the belly of the grape,Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching throughUnder the Andes to the Cape,Suffer no savor of the earth to scape. Let its grapes the morn saluteFrom a nocturnal root,Which feels the acrid juiceOf Styx and Erebus;And turns the woe … Read more

Lughnassadh Poetry

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faithby Mary Oliver Every summerI listen and lookunder the sun’s brass and eveninto the moonlight, but I can’t hear anything, I can’t see anything —not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,nor the leavesdeepening their damp pleats, nor the tassels making,nor the shucks, nor … Read more

Lughnassadh Blessings!

Our hands will work for peace and justiceOur hands will work to heal the landGather ’round the harvest tableLet us feast and bless the land. Lughnassadh (often pronounced “LOO-nahs-ah”) or the Anglo-Saxon “Lammas,” is one of the Greater Sabbats and honors the First Harvest. In agricultural traditions throughout the Northern Hemisphere, this marks the start … Read more

Astronomical Samhain Today

Shiva-Shakti © Goddess GiftThis is the night to join the Dance,Partake in all-renewing trance;Where worlds within and out are One,Our sacred journey now begun. from Samhain Round © Mark Hirschhorn Today is astronomical Samhain. That’s because at 8:04 last night (Eastern Standard Time), we reached the exact mid-point between Equinox and Solstice, which is why … Read more

Día de los Angelitos

The Mexican, in contrast, is familiar with death. (He) jokes about it, caresses it,sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love. — Octavio Paz (1914 – 1998) Nobel Laureate for Literature, 1990 In many parts of Mexico, the Day of the Dead is observed on more … Read more

Witches’ Thanksgiving

These three ways lead to the heavens:asserting the truth,not yielding to anger,and giving…— Dhammapada, verse 224 Right now, if I get one more email that’s fairly vibrating with fear and anger regarding the economy, Sarah Palin, John McCain, and on and on, I think I might have a case of the vapors. Yes, I am … Read more

Sunday Poetry

The Harvest MoonTed Hughes(1930 – 1998)The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,A vast balloon,Till it takes off, and sinks upwardTo lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.The harvest moon has come,Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum. So … Read more