archive-post | Hearth Moon Rising

Fluorite Intelligence

December 10, 2021

I really like this little guy. It’s a piece of fluorite, about one-and-a-half centimeters at its widest point. I have fluorite crystals that are larger, and complete, but I like the vibration this one has. I’ve noticed that when placed closer to my more perfect fluorite crystals, which objectively I would expect to be vibrating on a stronger, higher frequency, the energy from this one is subdued. Perhaps it’s overshadowed. So I like to commune with this one on its own. I’ve found that in a crystal healing, more and bigger and stronger is not always better.

This little one did not like the flash from the camera. I put it in salt to cleanse and hope it recovers. (Not salt water for fluorite; it weakens the structure.)

Fluorite is supposed to be an eighth chakra stone, due to its eight-sided structure. Perfect fluorite crystals look like back-to-back tetrahedrons (like the Egyptian pyramids). Fluorite has celestial associations and is believed to be good for connecting to higher spiritual realms. I use it in ritual or carry it in a pocket for protection, to avoid being drawn into the pollution of narcissistic and small-minded people. Katrina Raphaell says, “Fluorite is one of the most powerful New Age stones, for it brings into the physical plane higher forms of truth and integrates those conecepts into the mind…”

Though it promotes clear thinking, I believe fluorite can be ungrounding, as it focuses attention on the higher centers of thought. So, not for activity that requires focus on immediate external awareness. Naturally, it helps dissipate anger through encouraging detachment.

I also use fluorite in spells to repel tooth decay, since its chemical composition includes fluorine. Again, be careful not to soak the stone in water for any length of time, and don’t ingest fluorite in any form.

Brigid

December 3, 2021

Most of my goddess pictures and statues are on my altar, logically enough, or in the same room as my altar, where I also do ritual or yoga. My picture of Brigid, however, is in my office. I think of Brigid as the quintessential work goddess. Homage to her is through keeping a clean house, providing for the material maintenance of the household, improving relationships within the house, creative work, and the appreciation of creative work. You might characterize her worship as purpose-driven, but I think of her as the spirit imbued within the process of living well.

It’s typical to post about Brigid on her holiest day, Imbolc (February 1-2), but she’s on my mind today. I’ve been reading about her in an old copy of SageWoman from 1991, in a spirit of nostalgia. I felt a longing to return to a time before the Orwellian hellscape emerged that compels us to play along with the transing of kids (or equally absurd abuses) to keep our jobs. Times have changed, even at SageWoman, which now subscribes to the gender ideology. It pays.

The theme of this 1991 issue was “Work.” Many women wrote thoughtful essays about the morality and spirituality of work. An article about Brigid by Callista Lee had what she claims is a “traditional prayer” called The Genealogy of Brigid. I checked it out on the internet (okay, there are some good things, or things that are good sometimes, about the 21st century). It does seem to be a well known prayer. If you are being harried, to use an old-fashioned term, for not bowing before the trendy gender edict, perhaps this prayer will help.

Happy Thanksgiving

November 22, 2021

I am grateful to you, my readers, for almost ten years of blogging!

I once had a turkey challenge me to a race. I was cycling down a country road, and the turkey trotted along beside me. I started cycling faster, and then the turkey started racing me! The encounter ended at a draw when we reached a copse of trees and the turkey had to take wing.

Another post at Return to Mago

November 12, 2021

Oops! I plum forgot to schedule a post today. Busy week. But I do have something for you to read at Return to Mago. It’s about the Mesopotamian giant Huwawa as a myth about environmental destruction under patriarchy. Sounds heavy, but it’s a good read.

After Samhain

November 5, 2021

We’re waiting for the first snow now. Mornings are frosty, and I’m putting the car in the garage overnight again. I just finished a long article about the giant Huwawa. I’ll have a link next week.

I needed a cemetery; I never ordered death

October 29, 2021

I stopped by this cemetery in the middle of a busy day to take gothic photographs for my Samhain blogpost. Unexpectedly, I ran across the graves of two friends of mine, David and Paula McDonough. He died in 2013 and she died this past year. I didn’t know they were buried in this cemetery. They owned the hardware store in my village and I saw them often, usually at the store but sometimes other places. The store recently sold, which felt wrong, even though they could hardly run it while they were dead.

My relationship with death is usually rather detached, especially in cemeteries. I visit this cemetery several times a year, at night or in the early evening, to watch the sky with other amateur astronomers. I pass it on the road regularly. The place is pretty, but familiar and even banal. I’ve decided this is where I want to be buried, so already it feels a little like home.

The cemetery smells like the thyme used as groundcover

I can’t say what I was feeling today was grief, exactly, because we’re told grief is so many things. It is anger and guilt and sadness and apathy. It is trying to remember and trying to forget. What I felt today was a wishing that would not abate in intensity for being told it could not be satisfied. I disliked knowing that things never stay the same. Losing David was bearable while Paula was still around. She confided she didn’t care much for the store, but kept it going in his memory.

Sheep atop a headstone that reads: Anna B, daughter of William and Margaret Taylor, 1903-1917

I stayed in the cemetery a long time, waiting for the feeling of emptiness and loss to pass, but it never did. Eventually a crow flew close to me and cawed loudly, and I left.

Here is an excerpt from the sixth tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, recorded in the second millenium, B.C.E.:

Do we build a house forever?
Do we seal a contract for all time?
Do brothers divide shares forever?
Does hostility last forever between enemies?
Does the river forever rise higher, bringing on floods?. . . . . . . .
From the beginning there is no permanence.

Review: The Dangerous Old Woman

October 22, 2021

When I was in my mid-twenties, I was introduced to The Secret Dakini Oracle, a deck of cards (unfortunately out-of-print) loosely based on the Dakinis, fierce Tantric goddesses somewhat analogous to the Crone archetype in Western culture. It was when I saw the card that incorporated this photo of an anonymous old spinster that I decided I had to have this deck. The young women in my cohort loved anything related to “The Crone,” mostly because we saw it as subversive. Too bad The Dangerous Old Woman wasn’t there for us back then. Clarissa Pinkola Estes correctly states that the stories about the heroine confronting the old woman are really recorded for the young woman.

This audiobook has actually been out for about ten years, but I only discovered it this year. I had mixed feelings about Dr. Estes’s first book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, and I can only relate my impression at that time, as I remember it, because I gave my copy away. On the one hand, I loved Dr. Estes’s retelling of Bluebeard and many of her insights about the tale. That alone was worth the price of the book. I was put off, however, by the Jungian flavor of much of her prose. I wasn’t alone in this assessment, even at that time. Recently, a young radical feminist book group chose to read Wolves and gave up in frustration, deeming it “too patriarchal.” I think they were probably reacting to Carl Jung and Dr. Estes’s training as Jungian analyst.

Because The Dangerous Old Woman is immediate, heart-centered, and personal, unencumbered by psychoanalytic definitions and terms. Dr. Estes draws on stories of women in her family, relating multi-generational and cross-cultural experience to fairytale and myth, making the wise woman tales refreshingly contemporary. Dr. Estes has a marvelous storytelling voice that feels conversational, even though the material is very focused. I found the stories from Eastern European immigrant culture fascinating and exotic, yet the stories from Latina culture gave me a warm nostalgic feeling from my years of living in the Southwest.

This is a recording to be savored. I would have loved The Dangerous Old Woman when I was a young woman and found it revelatory, yet as a woman now well into the second half of her life I could only nod and say “Uh-huh, uh-huh” to the lessons Dr. Estes draws from her material. This audiobook is a jewel. Even if you had trouble relating to the author’s earlier work, check this one out.

A Watery Fall

October 15, 2021

I’ve been seeing a lot of mushrooms in the woods the past month. Usually it’s late spring/early summer when mushrooms are abundant. To me, mushrooms have a fairy association, and of course an association with water.

This picture may look like it’s upside down, but it’s Chalis Pond on a clear day.

This Red-spotted Newt was very patient and co-operative.

The Mountain Ash is related to the European Rowan.

Mid October and still no snow on Giant Mountain.

Happy trails!

The Brindled Fairy Beast

October 8, 2021

A brindle is streaked pattern, too vague to be called a stripe, found on dogs, horses, cattle, wolves, cats, guinea pigs, and moths. Note that these are usually domestic animals. The most prized brindle pattern is orange and black, but brindled animals can also be black, white, and gray.

The brindled animal is ascribed as fairy animal, with the ability to move between worlds. The Book of Taliesin mentions a brindled ox.

I shall not deserve much from those with long shields.
They know not what day, who the causer,
What hour in the serene day Cwy was born.
Who caused that he should not go to the dales of Devwy.
They know not the brindled ox, thick his head-band.
Seven score knobs in his collar.
And when we went with Arthur of anxious memory,
Except seven, none returned from Caer Vandwy.

A brindled cat is more commonly called a tortoiseshell. The First Witch in Shakespeare’s Macbeth declares “Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed,” signifying it is time to begin her magic. (“Brinded” is an older form of brindled.)

The following anecdote, which I shared in Invoking Animal Magic (found in Patrick W. Gainer’s Witches Ghosts and Signs), features a brindled dog.

In the year 1880, in Peach Tree, West Virginia, a large brindled dog appeared that frightened even the meanest dogs. The mean dogs would hide under their houses with their tails between their legs. The brindled dog only appeared at night, never in the daytime. People did not like the dog and began throwing stones to discourage the dog from hanging around. The stones would pass completely through the body. The intervention of the preacher was sought, and he shot the dog five times from five feet away— but each bullet passed through the dog’s body as if it were air. Finally, after three weeks of harassment, the brindled dog went away, never to return.

This incident may or may not have occurred at this time and place. The mention of the year suggests that it really happened, while the “brindle” in the dog supports the idea that this is an old fairy story that came over to the Western Hemisphere from the British Isles. Perhaps both.