The wheel turns and we have reached Ostara. In the festivals name is the goddess Eostra an Anglo – Saxon Goddess of fertility and spring. You might hear in her name the echoe of the word Easter and you’d be right. All those bunnies and eggs have more to do with her than with Christ rising from the tomb.But it’s not Easter you might be thinking well our calander is always seasonal and so it’s flipped in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Coven of the Wildwood (Brisbane branch) met up on Mt Cootha to see in the season. We held a sweet little ritual to mark the rising of the lady, patron goddess of the Wildwood, the crescent crowned goddess. We travelled to the underworld and watched her stir and listened to her wisdom. For me she revealed the key to my heart. On coming back from our trance we recorded our insights and then raised a cone of power.
After that we feasted and chatted. As is often the case there were musings on climate change and how they had shifted around the wheel as we know it. We speculated about the bushfire season to come.
The day following I went to a workshop with Fio, Gede Parma on the Goddess Hecate. I discovered why I’d been given that key to my heart. Fio’s classes are always a mixture of historical context and practical skill and experience.
We worked with three magical tools significant to Hecate, the torch, the knife and the key. One of the more moving exercises was travelling to the underworld to visit our beloved dead. By the end of the workshop we were ready to hold a circle, casting, invoking, calling the quarters and raising power for Hecate.
One of Fio’s more beautiful skills are drumming and song. I sometimes think their rhythms are now part of my DNA although I struggle to remember all of the songs. Sometimes I wish there was a database of witch songs.
A very long time ago I was in a tiny coven with Fio dedicated to Hecate and I remember what surprised me at the time was her titanic aspect she was a vast goddess, the Queen of heaven.
There are so many layers to this triple goddess that it is almost like watching a history of ideas unfold across her form. She is maiden, mother and crone, human and non human, Queen of Heaven and eater of filth. In many ways there are few deities who are witchier.
I always see her at the crossroads in my mind, there at that moment of decision. When you are uncertain or choosing a path call on her.
The ghost road
I met Hecate at the crossroads
She raised her lantern and said
These are the roads you can take
There is the road of service
But you will have to overcome the poisons of your ego
There is the road of love
But you have to take a blind leap of faith
There is the road of reason
The dust there is dry so carry some water
Then there is the road that few take
It is the ghost roadIt leads you away from all you know
I tossed a coin and took the ghost road
I walked along its shadowy way
Under giant trees with mossy bows
I heard a distant fiddle play
Then the track petered away
There was only me, the fireflies and the stars
All these years I’ve been trying so hard
To fit into the town but it feels like I’m drowning
It was as if this one path became all paths
The stars held my philosophy, the forest my love and to speak of it was my service
Then there is the mystery I can’t tell
You can only have it from walking so
Out along your own ghost road
4lovealone 