Only a Week to Go

As the Spring Equinox has come and gone, not only does the beat of the earth seem to be steadily speeding up as we approach the warmer months of Summer, but so too does the year.  Next week it will be October ... shortly after that, Bealtaine will be celebrated and then the Wheel will be moving around to Mid Summer.

I am finding myself wonderful just where has the year gone ... am I ready for long hot days of Summer yet, especially with our soaring southern heat?

Charm to Be Rid an Affliction

Gather a litre of water from some spring or stream, and pour it into a large bowl, set within a darkened chamber; by candlelight, then, take a silver knife and write with its point upon the water's surface the name of that which afflicts you.

The Independent Goddesses

This year has been a rather productive year for me with respect to my writing.  Not only am I in the final stages of completing the manuscript of my first book for printing, but I have also had a number of essays appear in various anthologies.

 

The first of these anthologies is Unto Herself: A Devotional Anthology for Independent Goddesses, edited by from Ashley Horn and Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which is now available.

 

This volume consists a collection of prayers, poems, rituals, essays, and short stories written about various independent Goddesses including Artemis, Athena, Columbia, Coventina, Freyja, Hekate, Hestia, Isis, Kuan Yin, Lilith, Mary, Minerva, the Morrigan, Nehalennia, Neith, Skadhi, Tabiti, and Vesta.   Amongst the contributions is my own essay on Neith, who was an extremely early Egyptian Goddess.

Spring has arrived at The Goddess House

Growing over the verandah to the The Goddess House is a beautiful old wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) that, with the help of my partner a number of years ago, we restrung the wire in order to "encourage" it to provide shading from the intensive northerly Summer sun we get here in Adelaide.  Alas, like anything we try to tame from nature, it showed that it had its own will and continued to grow according to that ... and not mine.

 

With Spring well and truly upon us, the wisteria is bursting into gorgeous lilac coloured flower, and on the breeze, its delicate scent is found.  Little wonder then that wisteria is associated with the element of Air and attracts to it powers of gentleness, inspiration, as well a sacred knowledge and wisdom.

Prayer to Persephone

Mother of All Things

"The Mother of Songs, the Mother of our whole seed

Bore us in the beginning.

She is the Mother of all races

And the Mother of our tribes.

She is the Mother of Thunder, the Mother of Rivers

The Mother of Trees and all kinds of things.

She is the Mother of Songs and Dances

She is the Mother of the Stones

She is the Mother of the dance paraphernalia and of all temples and the only

Mother we have

She is the Mother of the Animals, the only one

She is the Mother of the Milky Way

She is the Mother is the rain, the only one we have

She alone is the Mother of things, she alone."