Being with one's own

... and coming home to oneself. 

It's already several weeks since Wendy Rule came back to Murwillumbah to give a concert, after a long absence due to COVID and lockdowns and all that. She lives in the United States now, but has come back frequently, pre-pandemic, to delight her loyal followers throughout Australia – until, for many months, she couldn't.

Murwillumbah is a smallish country town (albeit the centre of a large surrounding rural district). One of Wendy's oldest friends lives just a little out of town and organises concerts for her here, finding venues, advertising the dates, arranging ticket sales, and so on. This woman is in the Goddess group I belong to, and is one of several witches in that group. For those who didn't know, Wendy herself is a witch, writes songs with a Pagan sensibility, and always begins her concerts by casting circle onstage.

I talked to a friend about attending the concert: one who, like me, is one of the elders of the Goddess circle. In our octogenarian years, we're not mad keen on going out at night any more. I'm not fond of driving at the best of times. This friend, who lives near me, often drives me to events we're both attending, but this time she was awaiting a cataract operation and wasn't keen on night driving – which I understood, remembering how distorted oncoming headlights looked before I had my cataracts done.

But this was just a gig in town, easy even at night. I realised I could drive her for a change, and pay her back a bit for all the times it's been the other way. We decided to go. 

It was a wintry night, unusually cold for these parts. We wore long socks and spencers, which we seldom need, and several layers of outer clothes. We arrived in time to get a good parking spot and only had to walk a short way in light rain. The hall filled up fast – mostly women, and some men who looked perfectly comfortable in such a gathering; also a few children.

The music was wonderful! As always. 

I was transported, fulfilled, immensely thankful. I felt deeply myself, in touch with my core.

My companion, who is very spiritual, very involved in earth healing, very aware of energy and the cycle of the seasons, is nevertheless not a witch. At interval she looked around and said,

'Interesting audience. There's a particular vibe here, connecting these people. I can't quite work out what it is.' I took a quick glance around and said immediately,

'Oh, it's all the local witches.' And understood at once why I had such a feeling of home-coming.

Not that I knew many faces. I found out later – because Wendy thanked them from the stage – that a number had travelled interstate from south Queensland, even as far away as Brisbane. And it's years since I've taken part in any local gatherings of witches; never any of the larger events. So if not the faces, what was it I recognised – that my companion also recognised without knowing what it was?

It wasn't their clothing. Everyone was rugged up against the cold. Some looked a bit hippyish, or a bit witchy, but not as if they'd dressed up specifically to create that look. I think we'd all just worn our normal gear for going out somewhere special on a cold night. I myself had on a wonderful purple velvet jacket over the other layers – a garment which I don't think of as specifically witchy, just something warm which also looks good for a night out. But yes, I guess our collective tastes were not exactly running to the conservative, even while they weren't flaunting the freaky. Some people, wrapped in overcoats, were even a bit drab.

As I was leaving, I had a quick word to Wendy. Her audiences respect and admire her enormously, and love her too, but we don't hold her on a pedestal like a star. She is a star, and a wonderful talent – and she's also a down-to-earth Aussie girl. She wouldn't have remembered my name, but she'd have known my face from other concerts over the years and some interactions there, so I didn't worry about introducing myself. I just leaned in and told her how wonderful it was 'that all this could happen again, and we could be here'. I instinctively put a hand over my heart as I told her it was like coming home.

There happened to be no-one else around her at that moment. She looked into my eyes and thanked me simply – clearly from her own heart. 

'That means a lot,' she said. 

A few days later I tried to explain that deep feeling of homecoming to a couple of friends who weren't there – how rare and special it was. They seemed a bit puzzled. One was a member of the Goddess group (not a Pagan but a Buddhist; we include many spiritualities).

 'Don't you get that feeling at the Goddess gatherings?' she asked.

The Goddess gatherings are wonderful. I love the rituals, the sisterhood, the coming together, the purpose of what we do. It is indeed a kind of homecoming, and beautiful. 

But no, not the same.

'Witches are very earthy,' I said. 'The Goddesses are all about light – taking it into ourselves, sending it out into the community. It's more, um ... ethereal ... on a different level.' 

Not a very definitive explanation! (About either the Goddess group or witches.) But my friends seemed to get it.

It's not an either-or. I can be many things, and am. 

I think it has to do with witchcraft being such an integrated, even ordinary part of my life. I don't stop to think about what I'm doing, I just do. Not much in the way of elaborate rituals – well, they don't feel elaborate to me after many years. It feels natural to honour the nature spirits, put protection around my home, speak to any guides or deities who might help with specific issues, say thank you to the Universe when it puts a beautiful feather or interesting stone in my path, blow a kiss to the full moon, sometimes cast circle just to connect more consciously with the elements, wear a pentacle somewhere on my body even if no-one can see it.... 

I feel it would be much the same for other members of that audience. People speak of finding their tribe. I think I have several tribes – poets, the Tasmanian-born, Whovians.... But witches are my tribe in a much more basic way. I don't even need to connect with them in person; it's just that I feel it when I do: feeling it in the way we are each, simultaneously, connecting to our deepest self. It seems I can breathe more deeply; I feel more fully in my body; I become more surely aware of my place in the scheme of things.

Some things can't be satisfactorily, logically explained. They just are. You just know.

We Shall Not Meet

Spring Equinox 2021

In this Southern Hemisphere, Spring has arrived: the time of renewal. In my garden, two irises bloom, abundant with colour and light. 

With joy after many months apart, we Goddesses of Shining Light prepare to meet for Equinox. After months of staying COVID-safe, we plan for glorious reunion. We’ve missed gathering – to dance in circle to honour the Goddess; to sing and meditate; to send out our light, drawn from the heavens, to our community here and to the wider world. To feel our hearts revive. And to lunch together afterwards in friendship, reconnecting with each other’s individual selves and lives.

Then comes a sudden new lockdown for our area. The gathering cannot happen.

A facebook friend reminds me, inner reality is paramount and I can celebrate very well alone. I can … but he fails to understand the power of the communal. We women are aligned in our purpose, our understanding, and in the mystical joy and peace we share, uniting for this service. 

It is above all our own renewal, an energy source. There are many things we do for others. This coming together is also a time for us — for each in her inner core, and collectively. Here we renew our strength. Here we renew our hearts. Here we renew our deep inner truth ... our spirit.

We want to look into each other’s smiling eyes, and hear again each other’s voices.  

We are not all Pagan, though several of us are. We include Christians, Krishna devotees, Buddhists, Indigenous people on their own timeless spiritual paths, New Agey types, and one avowed unbeliever — who nevertheless has an excellent understanding of energy flow and subscribes to our ideals.

What ideals are they? 

We seek to embody the qualities of the Divine Feminine, both privately and collectively. ‘Light workers’ is surely the most accurate term for us.

But can this summary convey how much we’ve been longing to meet? How our gatherings nurture and restore us? How they carry us through the months to the next time?

‘I see you,’ we say to each other without needing words. ‘I see you,  I know you. You are precious and distinct … and we are one.’ 

We relinquish our plans. We shall meet etherically instead. 

At Poets and Storytellers United, in Weekly Scribblings #88: Equinox, Magaly invites us to write on one or all of three phrases. I chose, 'I see you.' What I wrote seems to belong best in this, my 'witchy' blog.

My Virtual Ritual

The Goddesses of Shining Light gathered on the etheric plane. We won't meet physically during the pandemic.

I dressed in the nearest I have to autumn colours: long, russet skirt and top and coppery jewellery (plus my usual silver pentacle). Although this wasn’t Equinox, April’s still autumn [in the Southern Hemisphere]. Adding my magenta cloak, I felt wrapped in the arms of the Goddess. 

I used the room where I usually perform magic or give psychic readings (aka spare bedroom). At 12 noon — one of the magical hours — I used my cleansing wand, first to clear the space, then my aura, then imagined doing the auras of all present, using physical actions, as I envisaged them arriving in their coloured cloaks: blue, red, purple, aqua, burgundy, orange, forest green. Laying aside my wand, I walked around the room in a circle – a very small circle, in that fairly small room – visualising the space expanded and the others with me, chanting a song we always use.

With my crystal-laser-tipped athame (witch’s dagger) I brought in the elements / directions. I spoke our traditional Light Ritual, with the requisite actions. I have great love for it, and I like the continuity of having worked with it for years, building that energy. 

Thereafter, I followed a procedure we’d been emailed, including bringing light to each of us around the circle, in all our various physical locations, and to those loved ones we’d called into the centre. 

This time we omitted the singing and dancing we normally do. Circle dancing does need a physical group!

On my iPad, I tuned into Goddess Elizabeth singing her inspirational song, ‘Lifting the Veil’, knowing others did too. 

I spoke aloud Section 1 of our Shining Vision*, with focus and intention.

I recited our closing prayer.

I thanked the beings who had come to be with us — clear that it was us, not just me — and opened the circle.

Finally I sang aloud, ‘May the circle be open but unbroken ...’ three times.

Later I took a selfie, still in my cloak, to mark the occasion. Then I changed back into everyday wear and went about my day, feeling at once grounded and uplifted, calmed and elated.


*To hear Our Shining Vision (with preamble). 


Note: 'The Goddesses of Shining Light' is not a group of witches, although there are witches among us. We are women of all beliefs (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, New Age, agnostic ... and yes, Pagan) and all ages (from 3 to 93) living in and around a particular locality, who seek to embody the qualities of the Divine Feminine and to spread our light to the community in ways both practical (e.g. feeding the homeless) and energetic. Our monthly gatherings are also occasions for taking time out of our busy lives to nourish ourselves.

A WINTER SOLSTICE TALK: Ceremonies of the Ancient Celts and Druids

A talk I gave towards the end of the day at the 2015 Winter Solstice program arranged by The Goddesses of Shining Light. Note, it's a quick sketch, not a scholarly treatise! (In a couple of places I refer to things said earlier in the day.)

The Ceremonies of the Ancient Celts and Druids

As mentioned earlier, by doing ceremony here and now we are connecting with generations and centuries past. And as far as we know, those ancient ceremonies were not so very different from those which we have conducted here today. It happens that by now we know quite a lot. In areas that were occupied by the Celts in both France and Britain, archaeologists have found enough evidence of ancient seasonal festivals to give us an idea of the way they were conducted.

Actually one can't really separate the Celts and the Druids. The Celts were the people, Druidry their religion — though not everybody officiated in the religion, just as not everyone in our society is a minister or priest. ‘Druids’ was the name for the priests and priestesses of that culture. (They also had roles as bards, healers and seers.) It is clear from traces of old stone circles that remain that, contrary to some assumptions, Druidry was a cult of the moon as well as the sun, with a matriarchal, fertility side. Nevertheless the sun was of great and obvious importance, being vital to life on earth. The ancient circular structures were sometimes oriented to stars such as Sirius, but most often to the midsummer sun or to the sun's birth in midwinter — that point in the cycle that we ourselves have reached at this time.

Modern research suggests that both the Celts and their Druidic practices evolved from Neolithic times, with input from the early Britons when the Celts arrived there. This proto-Druidry then evolved into what we now think of as classical Druidry — that is, the Druids whom Caesar described, and the image that comes to mind when we ourselves think of the ancient Druids. 

It appears that Druidry and what we now call Wicca were two branches from the same trunk, two versions of that original religion.  After the Romans spread their Empire throughout Europe and imposed their own religion, the original religion went underground for centuries. Both strands became secret for a long time, and still have elements of secrecy today, revealed only to initiates. During this long underground period, the old religions were kept alive by a secret oral tradition. That last is disputed by some people; but, having studied both Druidic and Wiccan traditions and taken part in their ceremonies, I'm persuaded that there is reason to believe it.

As you know, there has been a great revival of these ancient traditions. New versions of both religions have arisen. The ever-emerging archaeological evidence increasingly supports the opinion that the ways of Neo-Pagan worship do indeed echo the old ways. 

Just as we have done here today, people gathered in a circle. These were, and are, nature religions. When possible, people gathered, as they still do, outdoors — sometimes inside a stone circle they had already created, or within a grove of trees. In cold weather they gathered around fires — often, of necessity, indoors. Parts of Europe can get very cold indeed.

In their circles they honoured the four directions, as we did in the Temple of Diana today, and the elements associated with those directions. They danced, they sang, they feasted. They told stories and recited poems. Their poems were their stories, put into verse to make them easier to remember. It was always an oral tradition in those days, and depended on being memorised. It was surely natural enough to preserve and disseminate it in the same way when it went underground. 

Their festivals were seasonal, and each one was a farewelling of the old season just past, and a welcome to the new one just beginning. They used this time to symbolically banish the ills of the previous season, putting those things behind them with the season itself — just as we today burned in the fire the lists of things we no longer want in our lives, creating an opening for new and better things to come.

Winter was very important in those old agrarian societies. Preceding Winter Solstice were the harvest festivals, in late Summer and at the Autumn Equinox. If you hadn't reaped and stored a sufficient harvest, Winter became dangerous, even fatal. The whole community could starve. People lived and behaved as communities then, not just as separate families. When they got through the winter, it was a time for great public rejoicing and thanksgiving. It was very literally a time of rebirth into light and life as the days now gradually started to get longer, moving toward Spring, when the crops would grow again and young animals be born. Winter Solstice was the beginning of the ancient New Year.

It is also known as Yule, and of course in the Northern Hemisphere it happens in December. Its significance as a time of new birth gave rise to the assignment of that time of year to Christmas and the birth of the Christ child.

The Druids call it Alban Arthan (the Light of Arthur) linking it to King Arthur. Today we are most familiar with one version of the Arthurian legend, the medieval or Romance version. In fact the story can be traced to nine different versions of Arthur, some historical, some magickal, some mystical, and some to do with the fertility of the land. There are parallels with other stories, such as that of Osiris. I'm sure we could find many parallel stories around the world. These ideas are deeply embedded in the human psyche — certainly in areas where the Celts lived and thrived. There is even an astronomical version, to do with the Northern Hemisphere constellations of the Bears, representing Guardianship. The name Arthur means Bear. The seven brightest stars of the Great Bear are known as the Plough, and Arthur then becomes the ploughman, preparing the ground for seed.

Whatever the story, whatever the origin, whatever the details, whatever the interpretation, one thing is constant. Arthur is always a saviour, appearing at just the right time to save the land from the forces of darkness. In that sense he is also the newborn Sun God, and therefore synonymous with Winter Solstice in the Druidic ceremonies.

Ross Nichols, one of the founders of modern Druidry, says, in The Book of Druidry, that Alban Arthan is,

Essentially a death-birth — the death of the old sun and temporary victory of the dark, the birth of the child-sun from darkness on the horns of the moon, the seed-period of life-spirit. [The] tiny light-seed or the first ray of [the] Light is represented as coming from the horns of Night as mother. All Christmas and New Year celebrations are from these ideas.

Here, of course, Christmas and New Year are six months away, but this is our Winter Solstice, or Yule, and the deeper significance is similar. A modern Australian Wiccan, Fiona Horne, in her book, Witch: a personal journey, has this to say about Yule:

The Goddess gives birth to the Child of Promise in the longest night.

From the greatest darkness emerges the strongest spark.

Reaching down deep into the psyche, in the face of greatest adversity, results in tapping into true unconditional joy.

Yule is the time of the Great Feast when the last of the winter stores would be used up in joyful abandon and defiance of fear, resting secure in the knowledge that the Mother will always provide.

Gifts are exchanged and people share cheer and courage in the longest night. The Goddess rewards our optimism and trust with the birth of the sun.

And that is one difference between the ancient ceremonies and this one. Fiona Horne suggests staying up all night with candles lit, to see in the dawn. We're not doing that here, as a group, but you might choose to do it for yourself, if you wish. The ancient peoples, I like to believe, would in some places have kept vigil together by firelight. And, as we heard earlier, there were places where they waited in total darkness for the return of the light.

Finally, Horne says:

Make plans for the coming year. As the Sun/son gains in strength, so dreams gain strength to manifest in reality.

You might not choose to stay up all night and see in the dawn; but you can reflect, before you sleep, on the things you wish to bring in as the light returns, holding them as promises to yourself. And of course, you don't have to stay up all night in order to greet the new sun tomorrow. It will rise at 6.38.