Invocation to a Special Place

You are dear to me.
I give you

Hair from my head
Words from my mouth
Blood from within me

You have my essences, my life force; I am one with you.

These emanations of my body and of my soul are one with the leaf mould and the waters and the mosses of this place. The soul of this place. We mingle. I am one with you.

The Winter Lady

I joined in the Wintersnights observance by Brython over the weekend. Each doing in in their own place.

I spoke the appointed words and looked up at the stars in the clear sky. There were no clouds or anything but after I had spoken about  a shadow passing through the veil it was not long before it went a lot darker and I couldn't work out how this had happened. I sat in the dark for a while feeling spooked. The words definitely got a response.

I intended to do a meditation under the stars. But I didn't need to. The Winter Lady walked past me and I felt her presence. Or was it her absence?

Meditation Message

~~~~~Dream-Writing~~~~~

This came to me in a meditation, written down by me but only half in control of what I was writing:

What is nameless, let me not impose a name on thee. What is not human, let me not shape a human soul for thee. What belongs in one place, let me not take thee from where thy being is. What remains between us, this we share in common with every wight.
As the gods are our witness, and we theirs.

When I looked at it the next day I was awestruck that I wrote it. It sounds like someone else’s words. Where did ‘thee’ come from? I remember wavering a bit when I wrote ‘thy’ and had to think what to put. So their must have been a bit of editing going on. But I take this as something ‘given’ to me, mine by gift. I’m putting it here because I think I’m meant to share it.

Physicians of Myddfai

I went on an outing to the National Botanic Garden of Wales yesterday. I’ve often thought about visiting just to walk around the gardens, herb beds and the exhibitions. So as I had another reason to go there I arrived early and spent some time exploring the place. I had heard that they had an exhibition about the Physicians of Myddfai and was keen to see that too. The exhibition is really a mock-up of an old apothecaries shop with examples of old containers, scales and instruments for making ointments and powders from herbs. This is in a building next to the herb beds, not at their best at this time of year, though the autumn colours in the woodland and across the gardens more than made up for this.

The Physicians of Myddfai, according to legend, were descendants of a fairy from a nearby lake, who married a mortal and taught her children the secrets of herbs and their uses. The remedies used by the Physicians were written down in a medieval manuscript in Welsh. This was published with a translation in the 19th century and I was able to buy a paperback reproduction of it. I’m told some things in the book are later than the medieval remedies in the manuscript, but a lot of it is genuine and would have come from an older oral tradition, which could go back to the druids.

It’s wonderful that the Garden commemorates this tradition alongside its serious scientific work on botany. It’s part of the Garden that is set up as a tourist attraction but it’s also part of the Welsh heritage that this herbal tradition exists, carried on by the cunning men and wise women for centuries and now officially recognized by the National Botanic Garden. I’m studying these remedies to see what use I can make of them and what use my ancestors made of the herbs that grow in the woods and hedges of our land.

Samhain

So the festival of Samhain approaches and the shops are full of Hallowe’en masks, ghoulish get-up and all the accessories for kids to go around doing ‘trick or treat’ calls. I must admit I have mixed feelings about it all. Of course it’s good that this festival is celebrated. I live in a cottage down a dark lane where kids are unlikely to come calling. But if they did I would be pleased to see them. But I can’t help thinking that the whole occasion has become trivialized and that by going along with it we are in danger of missing the point.

It is the coming of winter, a dark time. Trees are losing their leaves and the spirits of the living world seem to become thinner and closer to the spirits of the dead.

So I don’t see it as a time for fun and games. My own marking of the festival will be more serious and solemn and will take place at midnight to acknowledge the coming darkness. But earlier in the evening I will have some pumpkin soup and put a candle in the window to mark the season and show any passing children, ghouls or other spirits of the night that they are in my thoughts.

A Charm for the Night

I love the night. The Darkness. Getting away from all light except the Moon and the Stars. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere where this is possible. But in cities the light is everywhere and even many villages are now brightly lit.

So here’s a charm for Darkness:

Mother of Darkness
Fecund womb of the Night
Embrace us under the glare
Of blinding light,
Keep us in the shadows of your care,
Cast a veil over us
Like Leafshade
When the Sun shines on a forest
But the summer glades are cool
And shadowed with your mantle
Where we can live as if invisible
And dwell in your dreams.

Recite this for your night-time reflections in quiet glades. Or behind drawn curtains when you retreat from the light with just a candle to flicker in the dark making shadows as gateways you can journey through.

Change of Life

It’s a long time since I last posted. Since then my life has taken a new direction. Looking back at my last posts I can see the clues that I didn’t see then. Now I can see that the things that were happening to me then were the beginning of a change in my life. I’m also now adrift from close relationships that have comforted me for the last few years, adding to a feeling of upheaval.

That’s just background to some of the deep experiences that have made me think about who and what I am. I’ve always vaguely identified myself as a pagan but I’ve never felt the need to involve myself in pagan activities and I’ve kept away from formal rituals or magical practices. But things have happened to me that mean I have to change. Listening to the spirits and the elementals in the wild wood has always been my life. Doing something with what they say to me is the challenge now. Somebody told me the things I do alone qualify me as a ‘hedge witch’ and I thought about calling myself one, though I think ‘wood witch’ says it better.

I’m now ready to identify myself more publicly. I hope this blog will help me share some of my private practices and make contact with others on the same path. I know I’ve got to me more outward looking and less introspective. I have some skills as a botanist and want to extend them I into herbalism and share my skills.

So this blog will change as I become stronger in my identity as a witch, or, perhaps when I’m a bit older, a wise woman. I wonder if I will be able to make contact with others on the same path? Link up with other lone practitioners for co-operative work .

For a while last summer some might have thought that I was going mad. My ordinary life went on and wasn’t affected. But my inner life was so intense that it frightened me. Now I’m through that and I have to build on it.