Month: August 2020

Spinstress Craft: Magick for Independent Womxyn

Elsa Lanchester

Wait, you want it…when?!

me.

Hmmm….where to begin. I think I was sitting in the waiting room at the cardiac center inside EMMC about a year and three quarters ago when the crazy idea to pitch a book to Llewellyn occured to me.

Call it hubris. Call it the need to feel busy. Call it hope for some sort of future. I don’t know. But, it actually turned into a book contract! Now, the cat’s out of the bag. Well, the cover is. And as for bags, I’m wondering if I need to breathe into one.

Seriously, it’s a good thing. It’s just…a lot. Keeping it real.

So, I have an announcement all prepared. But for you all who ever read my blog, you get the real scoop. I’m in that carnival ride zone half way between laughing, screaming, and puking. I didn’t even want to talk about this whole project until a certain point. But I guess that point is here. You’ll look the other way and pretend I didn’t say anything if it all turns to pooh, right? Kay. Here’s all the stuff that I already wrote down about what this thing’s about.

“Spinstress” refers to magickal womxyn who weave and spin their own lives. It vibes off the old-school term “spinster,” because working womxyn at the dawn of industrialism often worked in the textile factories. The term spinster became something very negative, and that is what we are trying to smash (along with the toxic elements of what we call “patriarchy” that no longer serve any damn body in the long run).

“Womxyn” invites anyone of any gender to join the path if womxyn’s magick calls to them. The spells are about love, money, sex, career, family, power, arcane occult lore, and just a little bit of chocolate. 

Marilyn, bitches.

Seriously, you won’t believe the layers of magickal and semi-random awesomeness I’ve curated for this. I’ve got pumpkin spice lattes. I’ve got yoni eggs. I’ve got consecrated sex toys. I’ve got wards and sigils for self-defense (as well as security cameras and safety plans).

I’ve got glamour magick that works on a pair of Docker boots just as well as some Louis Vuitton heels. I’ve got obscure outtakes from infuriating Medieval manuscripts and Victorian “medical” books.

I’ll teach you how to call dragons, make and charge magickal oils, and speak the secret language of flowers. I’ve got unicorns (as sexual psycho-pomps). I’ve got black cats, broomsticks, and badass pointy hats. I’ve got the effing holy grail. I don’t even know what else to say.

Sound good? I hope you will find this book both helpful and fun. Some of the topics are heavy and some are just a laugh. Most are a bit of each. I hope that you find it a jumping off point to take the spinstress path and weave a lot more magick of your own.

One thing I encourage in the book is the use of our own musical playlists. These will come in handy for rituals, sex, cleaning the bathroom, or maybe even trying to do all three at once. Let me know if you figure out how to make that work. I’ll want your playlist.

I hope you can access it, because I tried making an introductory spinstress playlist on youtube. I’ll list the songs and what topics in the book they go with. If you can’t get my list, you can download them on your own at the platform of your choice. Feel free to share your own music ideas that seem to have the same vibes! I’m breaking it roughly into the types of chapters I have in the book.

Witchy and Magickal (hey, it’s that kind of book):

  • Yes, I’m a Witch by Yoko Ono. The completely incomprehensible lyric (you’ll know when you get there) is “Don’t try to make cock-pecked people out of us.” Now you’re gonna download it just to hear that, right?! Yoko. Effing. Ono.
  • Witchy Woman by the Eagles. I know, it’s old school. I shouldn’t say old because it came out the year I was born. Good ole ’73. Not too ole though.
  • Witchcraft, by Frank Sinatra, cause Frank reminds me of NY. Shout out to my home state.
  • Magic by Coldplay. The video is quite good. Lush.
  • I put a spell on you. Nina Simone is untouchable but IZA did a very good recent cover.
  • Sinnerman, by Nina Simone. Because I went through ridiculous angst about which version of the prior song to give you. Bonus Nina Simone. You’re welcome.
  • Season of the Witch. Okay, this was a Donovan single but there have been so many good womxyn covering it. Erykah Badu, Joan Jett and recently Lana Del Ray. Pick your poison (apple).
  • I never wear white, by Suzanne Vega. I actually do wear white, but it’s a badass song.
  • Which Witch, Florence and the Machine. The video is super weird.
  • Lily, by Kate Bush. We had to have some classic Kate Bush. Cast your magick circle with this song and you’ll be rock solid.

Sex and Love: It was hard not to let Lizzo just take over this whole thing but I did leave room for a couple other folks.

  • All is full of love, by Bjork. There’s a lyric nobody can understand and doesn’t show up on any transcriptions, which is “And even in my doubt (all is full of love).” It irritates me that nobody knows that one so there you go. Beautiful song.
  • Adore you, by Miley Cyrus. A little on the nose but I think it’s pretty and the sentiment is good.
  • Angel, by Sinead O’Connor. Gorgeous song.
  • Truth hurts, by Lizzo. Watch the official video. Fab.
  • Scuse Me, by Lizzo. Ditto on the video. In fact, this video and the song itself tell us so many counter-cultural things it may take you two or three viewings/listenings just to get over your case of amIreallyhearingthis? Enjoy.
  • Fuck love, by Iggy Azalea (playing devil’s advocate, I guess).
  • Boys, by (guess who?) Lizzo. Good video.
  • You are, by G Tom Mac. Alas, this one’s not on youtube. It’s obscure but it’s on his 2008 album, “Thou Shalt Not Fall.” This guy only gets credit for being a one-hit wonder for the Goth classic, “Cry Little Sister.” He’s actually got a lot of good songs, most of which he wrote himself. He collaborated a lot with Roger Daltrey at a certain point. They did a duet cover of “Child of mine” that’s a face-melter. But I digress. I do that.
  • You’ve got the love, by Florence and the Machine. I’m pretty sure this one is about god, but you call it.

Power (Note, a lot of these songs use words some find triggering like b***h and n****r. Where they are used, they are used by people who have a right to claim them based on identity and context. I think so, anyway. Just letting you know there are power words in here that we have to be mindful about):

  • Big God, by Florence and the Machine. Video is amazing.
  • Power, by Rapsody and featuring Kendrick Lamar. It was the other way around in the mainstream release, but this is her cut.
  • UNITY, by Queen Latifah. It’s old but it paved the way for womxyn in hip hop. It’s also really frikkin good.
  • Goddess, by Iggy Azalea. The girl can spit.
  • Like a Girl, by Lizzo. So awesome.
  • Mother’s Daughter, by Miley Cyrus. Watch the official video if you dare. She more than compensates for the gooiness of Adore you, here.
  • Greater Powers, by G Tom Mac. His voice is, well, powerful. Interesting use of the Indian frame drums here.

Self-esteem:

  • Crown, by Rapsody. Nice video.
  • This is me, by the cast for The Greatest Showman soundtrack (or solo by Keala Settle).
  • You Need to Calm Down, by Taylor Swift. You need to watch the official video. It’s at least half the impact of the song.
  • Run the world (Girls) by Beyonce. The video is weird. Just saying.
  • I’m Better, by Missy Elliott with Lamb. Her videos are incomprehensible gorgeousness.
  • Fitness, by Lizzo. Video. Now.
  • Impossible is nothing, by Iggy Azalea.
  • Good as Hell, by Lizzo. I told you she was trying to take over the whole list!

Holy Grail (Yes, there’s a whole section of music for Medieval research and such like. Just me? Also, I like soundtracks.):

  • Outlander, Season 1: People disappear all the time, The skye boat song, Dance of the druids, The woman of Balnain.
  • Kingdom of Heaven: Burning the past, Coronation, Sibylla, Path to heaven.
  • The DaVinci Code: Kyrie for the Magdalen, Poison Chalice, Malleus Maleficarum.

Listening to all that should keep you busy until the book comes out! I’m not sure exactly when that it. It’s going in the 2021 catalog. Beyond that, I’ll keep you posted! Wait, when’s the second draft due? Tomorrow? Where’s that paper bag?

Of white blouses, bread and ballots

Greetings, fellow humans! This message will also be posted on the website of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Castine (Maine) in due course, but without gaseous history-wonk effusions and additional snarky commentary. Lucky you! By the time you see this it may be August 18, which is the actual hundred year anniversary of the 19th amendment being ratified. Wondering why the heck that should still matter to you when you’ve got cats to feed and bills to pay (and bills to pay due to feeding the cats)? Keep reading.

When we think about the white dresses and festive banners of suffrage, we know how the story turns out. So far, at least. We may tend to skip ahead toward the end. “Those ladies” went out and held some parades, fundraisers and meetings. Some of them went to jail. We’ve no doubt heard a few of them refused to eat when they were incarcerated.

That sounds rough, we may think. But they won in the end (or in 1920 in the US). Well, white women won. Native American women and many immigrant women remained disenfranchised. Native people got the vote in 1925, but states would use little loopholes and technicalities (and overt violence) to keep them from the polls. We’re familiar with hearing this type of experience for African Americans. Even after women allegedly got the franchise in 1920, black women and men risked their lives and those of their families if they tried to exercise their rights to vote. We’ll talk more about that momentarily.

The pageantry possible when the women organizing it are badasses at sewing!

Skipping ahead through the lessons of history is understandable in our world of blazing-speed and multi-tasking, where we are not only tempted but encouraged to drop any habits or curiosities that do not clearly serve our immediate ends. Yet, as Congressman John Lewis recently reminded us in his powerful memorial op-ed in the New York Times, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. When it comes to disenfranchisement and voter suppression, this may never have been truer than it is in the fall of 2020. As he said:

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time.

When Woodrow Wilson was elected to office in 1913, women and other minorities who were inclined to activism were ready to hit the street. This president was known to be a racist. He supported and helped to disseminate overtly racist propaganda, like the white nationalist film “Birth of a Nation,” which was based on a novel called, “The Clansman.” Among other things, this film passed on the old tropes that black men would sexually assault white women if they were not rigorously controlled by morally superior (civically franchised) white males. Wilson screened this film at the White House. It was, in fact, the first film ever screened at the White House. One example of a president taking advantage of a new and exciting technology to endorse certain opinions more personal than civic.

Some NOT very fine people having a KKK style celebration of the first film ever screened in the White House by President Woodrow Wilson

Women engaged in activism for their own franchise at that time. Then called suffragettes, hundreds held a protest parade against Wilson in March of 1913. It was held the day before his inauguration and widely compared to the 2016 women’s marches. In 1913, the women on the march were assaulted in the streets to the extent that over a hundred of them had to be hospitalized. The secretary of defense had to deploy federal troops to help quell the violence that rose up against them and allow ambulances to get through the violent crowds to even help them. Later and after a congressional hearing on the matter, the police commissioner of Washington DC was forced out over his decisions not to send sufficient police support for the women’s march.

crowds pressing in on the parade, 1913, stopping the lead float from progressing

When women were jailed for protests back at that time, it was not a low impact experience. Lady Constance Bulwer Lytton recorded in her memoirs what it was like to come up against hostile police. On her first march to Parliament, this was her experience:

The crowd pushed me up against a policeman and I said to him, “I know you are only doing your duty and I am doing mine.” His only answer was to seize me with both his hands round the ribs, squeeze the remaining breath out of my body and, lifting me completely into the air, throw me with all his strength. Thanks to the crowd I did not reach the ground; several of my companions in more isolated parts of the square were thrown repeatedly onto the pavement…. A German lady who was tall, well-built and of considerable strength managed to keep near me. Three times, after each of the “throws,” she came to my hep and warded off the crowd while I leant up against some railings, or against her shoulder to recover my breath. Several times I said to her, “I can’t go on; I simply can’t go on.” She answered, “Wait for a little, you will be all right presently.” At the time and ever since I have felt most inexpressibly grateful to this stranger-friend.

Lady Constance and pal (I’ve noted before that Constance was a dedicated vegetarian also)

This type of treatment was recorded by many women on both sides of the pond. Of course, once Constance and her peers made it to the parliament, many were arrested and incarcerated. The treatment didn’t get any better there. Two of the most notorious prisons where these women activists ended up were the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, U.S. and the Holloway Women’s Prison in London, U.K. (where Constance wound up many times). Once in jail they were deliberately (not surprisingly) treated with optimal lack of dignity. At the worst prisons some were stripped, chained naked to cell doors, and sometimes sexually assaulted. This happened in November of 1917 at Occoquan in VA with such brutality that historians still term it a “night of terror,” with women being stripped and chained to the cells, and one being beaten to the point of a heart attack.

They didn’t do their activism, as the media at the time tried to portray, because they were narcissistic attention-seekers or bored housewives who’d been “allowed” too much time on their hands. They did it because they knew they, their children and grandchildren would never have full rights to safety and freedom (or at least a chance at them) without the massive privileges that came with a ballot.

one of the ambulances at the 1913 parade, completely unable to move until Feds sent the literal cavalry to help

This is not to say that our activist ancestors always got things right. At the same 1913 march where the police let Wilson supporters in town for the inauguration wreak havoc on the women activists, internal strife was doing damage of its own. Black women activists from groups like the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) were being turned away from the march by white organizers. The NACW was formed in 1896 to advocate for the franchise as a way that black women and men could work against inequalities of all kinds (especially lynching, which was rampant at the time the group was founded and was more of a threat than ever with Wilson screening that horrible film and endorsing the clan). The women’s club motto was “lifting as we climb,” and they sought the women’s vote to improve the lives of women as well as men in their communities.

Due to pressures put to bear by white women from the segregated south, the women’s march organizers colluded with oppression. Now a’days we call that “horizontal hostility,” where minorities put in the position of scrapping for crumbs end up in conflict with each other rather than the ones pulling the strings. Anyway, noted African American suffragist Ida B Wells did manage to march with the white delegation from Illinois as a form of protest, but she was the exception that proved the rule. Similar things were happening in the UK as British women tried to sell ladies from Australia, India, and other “colonies” on sitting in the back seat and waiting for a turn.

NACW CLUB OF BUFFALO, NEW YORK, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

None of these women’s activism was not easy or safe. Mostly, as the activists pointed out, because women couldn’t vote. Without full citizenship, they lacked basic protections. They pointed out what we all too often forget in this day and age, where voting is so much of a privilege that it has become little more than a hassle. They pointed out that those with the franchise make all social decisions about rights and burdens around issues of healthcare, child care, education, abuse, indigency, reproductive choices (or lack thereof), and literal freedom (whether people may be enslaved or held in poor house prisons, or made to work off debts as indentured servants, for example). The first time any women were registered to vote in Massachusetts, for example, was in order to vote on school board committees. After several failed attempts they won this limited franchise in 1879. At this same time in the American South, openly violent white nationalist groups like the KKK and “red shirts” were terrorizing black citizens who dared to take advantage of the waning opportunities that came after the Civil War.

Particularly, white southerners used violence and intimidation to keep black citizens away from voter registration and the polls. It was official in 1896 when the Supreme Court decision Plessy vs. Ferguson gave Southern states room to modify their constitutions and create fully legal segregation. Hence came the era of Jim Crow, with stunts like “guess the number of jellybeans in this jar” in order to register to vote (but only if you’re African American). Activists like young John Lewis were beaten and humiliated for their peaceful sit-ins and marches, culminating in the infamous “Bloody Sunday” where police gassed and beat Lewis and other participants in a march across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama. Particularly infamous was the beating of female activist Amelia Boynton, due to the abject brutality the police unleashed on her. Reminiscent of the personal accounts of Lady Lytton, Amelia later recounted her experiences on Bloody Sunday:

Then they charged. They came from the right. They came from the left. One [of the troopers] shouted: ‘Run!’ I thought, ‘Why should I be running?’ Then an officer on horseback hit me across the back of the shoulders and, for a second time, on the back of the neck. I lost consciousness.

Amelia Boynton about Bloody Sunday in Selma, 1965
Lewis and Boynton holding President Obama’s hands at the 2013 Pettus Bridge commemoration (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson) This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

Lewis, Boynton, and their brave peers won a major victory in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. This outlawed discriminatory voting practices like those of the Jim Crow south. Unfortunately, in 2013, the teeth were pulled out of this law. A key formula in the language was removed by a slight Supreme Court majority (5 to 4) that meant states no longer need to seek federal permission to tinker with their voting anti-discrimination laws (a guardrail known as “preclearance”). As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg warned in her typically accurate and acerbic dissent,

“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”  

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg 2013

Okay, she’s awesome.

Ever since activists around universal franchise (making sure everyone can vote with equal ease of access) have warned us that states have been up to mischief. Purging the voter rolls of people who haven’t voted recently, moving polling places without notifying citizens, throwing out ballots due to many subtle technicalities, and so on have snowballed over the past seven years. One of the high-profile activists fighting for universal franchise in the news of recent months has been Stacy Abrams. Abrams ran to be Governor of Georgia in 2018. She lost to her opponent, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who happened to be the one setting a lot of rules about voter accessibility and the validity of ballots. Accusations of corruption by Kemp were rife, and not for the first time in his career. Yet whether we agree with those allegations or not, Stacy Abrams’ campaign had a wonderful speech in it that can be applied to the importance of the universal franchise. This speech wasn’t done by Kemp herself. It was done by Oprah!

Oprah harkened back to the times experienced by young John Lewis (and generations of both their ancestors before), when she urged us all to the polls. At a televised “town hall” event in November 2018, she said:

I didn`t take voters voting seriously until around my mid-twenties. Around my mid-twenties, I had the privilege of hearing Reverend Otis Moss Jr. who`s a preacher. You all know him, preacher, preacher in Cleveland, Ohio. And I heard him tell the story of his father, of Otis Moss Sr. who right here in Georgia`s True County got up in the morning and put on his only suit and his best tie and he walked six miles to the voting poll location he was told to go to in LaGrange. And when he got there after walking six miles in his good suit and tie, they said boy, you`re at the wrong place. You need to go over to Mountville. So he walked another six miles to Mountville. And when he got there they said, boy you`re at the wrong place. You need to go to the Rosemont School. And I picture him walking from dawn to dusk in his suit, his feet tired getting to the Rosemont School and they say boy you`re too late. The polls are closed, and he never had a chance to vote. By the time the next election came around, he had died. So when I go to the polls and I cast my ballot, I cast it for a man I never knew. I cast it for Otis Moss Sr. who walked 18 miles one day just for the chance to vote. And when I go into the polls, I cast the vote for my grandmother Hattie Mae Lee who died in 1963 before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and never had a chance to vote. I vote for her. And when I stand in the polls, I do what Maya Angelou says I come as one, but I stand as 10,000, all those who paved the way that we might have the right to vote. And for anybody here who has an ancestor who didn`t have the right to vote and you are choosing not to vote wherever you are in this state in this country, you are dishonoring your family. We are disrespecting and disregarding their legacy, their suffering, and their dreams when you don`t vote. So honor your legacy. Honor your right to citizenship in this which is the greatest country in the world, the greatest country in the world. And the right to vote is like the crown we all get to wear.

I would lovingly urge all of us to honor an ancestor when we take the time and make the effort to make sure we cast a ballot. Base line, all of us who have female ancestors, and I think that’s pretty common, have such ones to honor. Many never saw their own chance, but they endured great suffering and hardship to win that chance for us. They knew what we have all too often forgotten.

A ballot is bread. A ballot is a roof over your head. A ballot is laws to protect you when the police are called, either by you or on you. A ballot is an education for your children and grandchildren (an education equal to those with greater opportunity). A ballot is dignified care for our elders and for yourself in times of illness, disability, and later years. A ballot is your freedom of speech, and freedom of reproductive choice. The rights that our forebears fought for so hard are not cast in iron and impervious to harm. As the Voter Rights Act shows, they can be eroded in a heartbeat and eventually perhaps destroyed completely.

A ballot cast by you is also all of those things cast by you on behalf of your friends and neighbors. Those who fought for the ballot knew all too well what it is worth. Would they ever have dreamed how quickly many of us forgot? What else can we do? Even if we don’t have the time or proclivity toward “activism,” there are things. Now is the time to urge friends and neighbors to apply for absentee ballots. Simple letting your own community know you plan to vote and talking about the positive reasons for this civic decision, makes an impact. If you go to the ballot in person, perhaps take one person in your circle who needs a ride.

Those who fought for the vote knew its value and wouldn’t want us to forget. I’ll let one of them say that in her own words. This is from Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900-1904 and 1915-1920.

“The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guarantee of your liberty. That vote of yours has cost millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. Money to carry on this work has been given usually as a sacrifice, and thousands of women have gone without things they wanted and could have had in order that they might help get the vote for you. Women have suffered agony of soul which you can never comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it! The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Understand what it means and what it can do for your country. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully.”

Carrie Chapman Catt

Non-partisan voting resources:

League of Women Voters: https://www.lwvme.org/

When we all vote: https://www.whenweallvote.org/

Back in black (for the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene/The Black Goddess)

I had an interesting experience last night. I was just finishing up bedtime things in the kitchen when there was a terrifying bang somewhere down the hall! It sounded like a cross between a gun going off and a wall collapsing. In this particular house a gunshot would be far less likely. Of course, I went running toward the sound.

Turns out it wasn’t so bad. A large, framed, vintage picture had fallen off the wall. It had been quietly resting there for years, but it looked like all that time enduring gradual pressure had finally bent its nail down. I can relate. Anyway, the picture and frame were thankfully unharmed.

I love this picture. I found it at an antique shop ages ago and I love to wonder where on earth it came from. It’s a very interesting depiction given that it looks like it was done in the early to mid-twentieth century, way before speculating about Jesus and Mary’s “special relationship” was cool.

I decided Mary and Jesus (and the two befuddled disciples trying to ease-drop behind them) must’ve taken a rather dramatic dive in order to demand pride-of-place in the recently remodeled living room. I complied.

I’m just superstitious enough of a person that, when something like that happens, I think it over a bit. It just so happens that the Catholic Feast of the Assumption of the Madonna, celebrating Mary the Mother ascending to Heaven, is August 15. Dialing time back a bit, the Gnostics used the same date to celebrate and study their doctrine of the assumption of the black goddess of wisdom, Sophia. On this same range of dates (around August 13 to 15) was the Roman Pagan festival of Nemoralia. This holiday was in honor of the virginal goddess of their pantheon, Diana. August 13 was (and is) a feast day for the Greek goddess of death and transitions, Hecate. Sekhmet, Egyptian lioness goddess, gorged herself unto inebriation on the blood of unjust humans on August 7. A celebration of Venus as protector of crops and groves occurred on August 19, and so on. Yes, Venus. Protector. Moderns like to see her as a featherweight who floats around on a seashell but Venus was the protector of Rome in those days and was known to kick some ass. She was a love and lust goddess, sure, but she’d also rip a new one in anyone accused of being a rapist.

I clipped this out ages ago during divinity school. I think it came from a Margaret Starbird book about the feminine divine.

Anyhow, I’m sure you see the connections. As is typical of world religions, the goddess holidays kept piling on top of each other over the ages.

This is all well and good, but you may be wondering where the “black” part comes in. Certainly, goddesses like Hecate and Sophia have lots of black in their symbolic and artistic color schemes. This color goes into the most ancient times of human religion for many reasons. Obviously, the cradle of civilization was in African regions, and early people had dark skin. Black was also associated with good soil and hence fertility and life to the ancients. The black soil of the Nile River, for instance, was revered in the Kemetic practices of ancient Egypt.

It’s kind backwards and an obvious racial appropriation that black became a stereo-typically negative color, especially spiritually. If anything, it’s the other way around. The ancients saw white as a color of death. Think about it…bleached bone, icy snow, and so on versus the black soil from which all life could be seen to spring.

Psychologically we probably all understand the meaning of nighttime and darkness. It’s a time of mysteries, power, and often fear. A dark god or goddess includes these aspects of life. Often their worship is at least partly done through closely guarded secrets, passed on only to initiates. S/he is often associated with death and reincarnation. Yet that isn’t all. Most of these deities, on their own or in combination with consorts, contain a full polarity of sun and moon, light and dark, openness and mystery. They tend to be triple deities…the stereotypical maiden, mother and crone (son, father, and death/spirit).

In terms of magick, black is receptive and white repels other energies (hence the associations with purity or death). This is why witches/magickal folk use a lot of black. At least, that’s how I was taught in one of my major traditions. When you want to do magick (a prayer with punch), you are building a wish battery. Black draws energy in, so why wouldn’t you use it? Still, you may want to rethink wearing black to a funeral. It’s stressful enough with out sucking in the vibes of every grieving person there.

Anyhow, back to Mary. The reasons that a Black Madonna popped up across the globe probably had to do with her syncretization into regional sacred stories. There may have been other theological reasons to represent Mary Magdalene as the Black Madonna if she is compared to the “shulamite” bride in the Song of Solomon (“dark I am, but lovely,” dark as in very tan from working all day in the fields…a poor girl who makes good by marrying the King).

Certainly there are Black Madonnas here, there and everywhere. There are Black Madonnas in Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, France, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, and Spain. Certainly the largest collection of Black Madonna shrines seems to be located in Sicily.

© Symbolreader, 2020 Madonna and Child Einsiedeln, Switzerland

The church/es (primarily Catholic, Orthodox and Gnostic) can demure and claim that these statues are only blackened by centuries of candle soot. Yet it’s impossible to hide the ways that local people (particularly women) worship these Madonnas while incorporating many of the “old ways” and old goddesses. Besides the ladies I mentioned, other goddesses with a black/underworld/arcane rep include Cybele, Artemis, Isis, Pele, Nut, Cailleach, Morrighan, Baba Yaga, and more.

Mary has always carried the spirits and (sometimes quietly) the powers of other goddesses. She has long been associated with healing, protection, prophecy, fertility, and interceding in/answering prayers (aka manifesting magicks). When she wears the royal blue robes of the mainstream, she channels high spiritual vibrations and astral communication of all that we need to live good lives. When she wears the dark skin and perhaps robes of a cthonic (underworld) mama, she takes on the role of spirit midwife, guardian, guide and perhaps even judge in the incomprehensible mazes of death. In both roles she brings prophecy and secret teachings. In both roles she is revered and respected.

This is a popular print which I know as, “the big one over the TV.”

I have a long history of interactions with Mary. Mostly, they were with Yeshua’s mom. I’ve seen statuary to her in Jerusalem while I was on an archaeology dig for school. Yes, I’ve literally dug up bodies in Armageddon. That’s a story for another time. I’ve seen Guadalupe’s shrines around Mexico when I was on my dad’s missionary trips. I’ve slowly collected or made a ton of art and statuary dedicated to the Marys. Often, it was without even noticing that I was doing it. More recently, I have incorporated the image of the Black Madonna on my altar and in my own spiritual practices.

My “marian” altar, including numerous examples with an Avalonian flair

In modern times, Mary is “back in black” as an icon of inclusiveness and diversity. Mary has always had a role in social justice theology. The Bible records her “magnificat” (song of praise) as (in part):

God’s mercy is for those who fear God
from generation to generation.
God has shown strength with God’s arm;
God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

Statue of Mary at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, taken by me, 1998

(Luke 1:46-55)

In the introduction to the book, “Healing Journeys with the Black Madonna (Alessandra Belloni, Bear & Co)”, Matthew Fox notes that the Black Madonnas are meaningful inspiration within movements like Black Lives Matter. Certainly, Our Lady of Guadalupe of South America has been connected to “liberation theology” for many decades and has long been honored by Native American and South American believers.

mixed media collage of Guadalupe that I made in college, back when I was going to Mexico a lot for missions with my dad

Many of the dark mothers have been associated with social justice and similar. One example would be the widely practiced “Hecate’s supper.” On the new moon (when the moon is virtually dark in the sky), her devotees would place food and other ritual offerings out for her. Though some might be on a household altar, it was the tradition to leave these items at a triple crossroads, sacred to Hecate as the torch-bearing guide through the labyrinths of death. The thing is, anyone who came for the offerings was considered a representative of the dark mother. Therefore, the Hecate’s supper was a way for transient people to get some supplies.

Partly because of her dark, shadowy vibe and partly due to the placement and iconography of certain Black Madonnas, she has sometimes been associated with Mary Magdalene as well as or instead of Mary the mother of Yeshua. This brings me full circle (kind of) to my picture of Yeshua/Jesus and Mary M taking that stroll (and that header off my wall).

I sort of think that they risked denting their frame in order to call my attention to the Mary feast day in a couple of days, and get me to put up some information on this blog. It so happens that I’m aware of an online event that those interested in Mary, particularly the Black Madonna (with emphasis on Mary Magdalene) may find very cool.

On August fifteenth Rose Lineage Priestess Annabel Du Boulay will be putting on an online festival for the Black Goddess. By the way, men, women and all genders are fully included and welcomed. She will give excellent information about the connections between several of these deities. I believe she will have a very special guided meditation included. As a priestess, author and also a musician, she is very good at those (yes, I know her and she’s very awesome). She does a great job of tracing the black goddesses from Ethiopia and through the mists of time, all the way to the mists of Avalon, so to speak. She’s based in England so there’s a time zone hitch for those of us in the US of A. As best I can tell, though, this is at the manageable time of 2pm Eastern, US time on Saturday the 15th. A minimum donation of 13 British pounds (about 17 dollars) is required to get the link. Donations will go to a charity called Project Harar, which does emergency COVID water support and (and some other supplies) in Ethiopia (as Annabel says, the original birthplace of the Black Goddess).

Happy Feast of Mary’s Assumption! If you’re a little witchy, maybe I’ll see you online in British Summer Time.

Here is a link to the online festival:

The Black Goddess Rites
Join Annabel for The Avalon Rose Chapel’s Black Goddess Rites as she guides you through THE most powerful gateway in the Rose Lineage Calendar 2020, with all proceeds being donated to Project Harar supporting vulnerable families in Ethiopia.
BY DONATION

References:

Healing Journeys with the Black Madonna: Chants, Music, and Sacred Practices of the Dark Goddess, by Alessandra Belloni (Bear & Co)

Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God, by Caitlin Matthews (Quest Books)

Celtic Lore & Spellcraft of the Dark Goddess: Invoking the Morrigan, by Stephanie Woodfield (Llewellyn)

Hekate Liminal Rites, by Sorita D’Este and David Rankine (Avalonia)

Feast of the Morrighan: A Grimoire for the Dark Lady of the Emerald Isle, by Christopher Penczak (Copper Cauldron)

Harvest

Here we are at Lughnasadh, which Wiccan-influenced Neo-pagans (what a harvest of words!) celebrate as the first-fruits of harvest. While it’s nowhere near Samhain (the meat/blood harvest that was syncretized into Soul’s Eve and Halloween), it already carries undertones of death. The Pagan god, like Christ, dies to protect and nourish his people each year. Sometimes called the barley or corn king, he dies back like a plant only to regenerate through the unseen magic of roots and seeds.

Heavy, right? I guess I get a little mopey every year around this time. I can feel the summer getting older by the second. “How did it go so fast?!” is my annual reprieve. That and, for the past couple of years, it’s the anniversary of my dad passing away. August 3, 2017. This year we celebrated by rushing my mom to EMMC with a possible heart attack. Fortunately, it seems to have been something a bit milder than this, though proper precautions are being taken. Anyone who is an energy sender or prayer, please send. Even if you read this message-in-a-virtual-bottle ten years from now. I’m sure I’ll still be needing help with something!

Before all the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad festivities at the cardiac ward, I was zoom-attending this year’s Glastonbury Goddess Conference. While it is a summer celebration, it also has autumnal themes. Sure, we play with Henna and dance and sing and all that (yes, even on zoom). But, we also talk in smaller circles about ageing, childlessness, assault, death, political injustices, and all manner of other things. I guess that’s life. You can’t prance around on the beach all the time without stepping on a little glass. Probably. Just me?

I have also blogged on my Witches & Pagans spot more about Avalon. I solved the riddle of the Grail quest. Just sayin’. You’ll have to read it to see if you agree.

Meanwhile, to remember my dad. One of my step-sibs and I were just doing so. To summarize:

A childrearing strategy that involved talking way over our heads about Kirkegaard, Wiesel, or Aquinas when we were still on comics.

Wild interactive story telling in the car during short commutes just as much as long drives, which surely made me at least three-quarters of the weirdo I am today.

At his first parish in Nebraska when I was about eight, he started paying me a penny a page to read my kid Bible (like a comic book). I guess he wanted me to seem devout. I don’t think he knew I spent the cash on candy cigarettes, which I regularly let hang off my lips like the grown-ups did while sitting on the steps of the parish house. Sorry, Dad.

Duke basketball, stomping and shrieking and using sporty terms I’m pretty sure he didn’t understand much better than I did.

Various forms of reckless (assertive?) driving that terrified many both in and outside the cars, which he always blamed on the time-frame and rigors of rural parish ministry. Do all parish ministers keep their collars in the glove box in case of speeding stops?

The Cadillacs. Sooo many Cadillacs.

His love of old time blues and gospel. I particularly remember his love for old video clips of Mahalia Jackson, at festivals and singing her guts out with sweat pouring down her face and her hair everywhere. Frikkin. Awesome.

His gusto for food and life. When dining out is was not unusual for us to find ourselves alone in our section while he roared with laughter and told rather off-color jokes. Oh, and sampled everyone else’s food to the point where my step-brother sometimes cried. Of course, my dad’s life-long love for rich food is part of why he’s not here. He occasionally buttered his meat. Just. Don’t.

His sense of fair play. He would always be willing to go to the mat for anyone on any cause that he felt sounded just, and he was a formidable mat-goer. Big, loud, brave, kind.

The parish visit was where the really shone. He loved to work his circuit doing sick-bed visits. He had chaplaincy privileges at every hospital and nursing home and home for the disabled within a hundred mile radius of any place he ever served.

Clown college. He went there. How many of us are willing to wear the nose just to cheer some sick people up?! That’s hard core.

Thrift stores. Ohmygod. The thrift stores. And book stores. Same thing. Many times as a child I literally thought I’d been left behind, he’d lose himself in those shelves for so long. Thank god most of them had cats. Late in life, his fave was the Salvation Army in Oneonta, NY, which he lovingly referred to as “the Sally.”

Being proud to call himself a feminist and raise a tough broad like me. The last vacation we took before he died I chewed his ass for some off-color joke (which was a hundred percent why he told them). He laughed and I, not ready to stop being mad, was like, “What?!” He said, “I’m just admiring the nuclear stealth missile I’ve launched into the world.”

I guess that’s it for this year. I have to save some stories for the rest of my life. I know he was proud of his Viking heritage and he might be hanging out in some Heaven/Valhalla hybrid, but I kind of hope we get to see each other in Avalon.

Wishing all a peaceful and healthy harvest. And much love to my daddy from his little missile.