Yesterday, my women friends and I held a "Witch, Stitch n' Bitch" here at Kathleen's house, where I'm still living (not for too much longer, I hope). These little get-togethers are the stuff community, and life, is made of. I really do love them: A whole bunch of crazy women friends, plenty of food, getting drunk in short order, and then doing (or attempting to do) crafts. Actually, as Wanda and I both discovered, you can get a lot done when you get slightly loaded! The inhibitions come off, and suddenly, you are into what you're doing!
We decided to make sewing the focus of this Witch Stitch n' Bitch (or rather, we decided the order is more properly described as Witch, Bitch, Drink, then Stitch!): Kathleen had a sewing machine that wouldn't work and multiple projects, and the rest of us all had at least one project that required a needle. Anna got the sewing machine working, and we were all off to the races --- to the tune of enthusiastically loud, classic funk and disco beats.
My project is a continuation of my intense calling at Beltaine to work with the Goddesses of upperworld and underworld Earth, Gaia and Aliria/Naftha. One of my more precious takeaway treasures from Beltaine in the Grove is a sheet of woven ribbons peeled right off the maypole. The ribbons, not being good for the chainsaw, were sliced lengthwise, then cut into sections; I claimed one. This weave, I noticed yesterday, not only contains the entwined magic of those people who danced the maypole at BITG, it contains them all --- I noticed both sets of ribbons repeat in pattern, giving "full bandwidth" as it were: It includes the full cycle of the dance as it interwove in both directions, over, under, over, under, with people chanting aloud or praying their inner goals, blessings and intentions, Kathleen singing loudly behind me, and I myself panting "The Goddess is alive and magick is afoot... The God is alive and magick is afoot..." SO much beautiful fertility magick in one piece of chunky weave!
Trouble was, I quickly saw this piece would come apart unless I did something. A border, I decided, to hold the weave in place and both secure and disguise all the floppy loose ends. A maypole weave is rarely tight and never perfect, but my piece is quite nice, taken from near the tightly-wound bottom, when we all tussled for room to make one more weave, one more chant. For the border, I chose from my cloth stash a bright happy print of flowers and butterflies for Gaia, and a print of stones for Aliria-Nafta, who indeed hides her treasures down deep among the rocks. With hope, by the time I'm done, the piece will be very sturdy, whether I use it for an altar-cloth (I have a feeling both my Goddesses will want their statues to sit on it), a spell or prayer rug, or other sacred purpose.
Below are some photos from the previous Beltaine in the Grove (BITG), which evoke a similar mood to what I experienced. Although, the maypole hole was larger, and one of the most intense parts of my adventure there was when I took my turn sitting in that hole, surrounded and infused with the mighty power and confidence of two great Earth devas. I crawled out blurry-eyed with tears, shaking, and euphoric!
And the magick is woven for another year, and the sacred cycle goes on... Now I know what a maypole dance looks like from the air. So incredibly beautiful.
Sprites dance in the night, stories are told. It is up to us to find the sacred in every moment. I would love to remember, in my daily life, how that means every word and phrase, every meal, every stick and stone, and even (thanks to Aliria) every piece of plastic. We are all interwoven in this cosmos!
Today, Memorial Day, nothing was open except the big stores. Knowing I have to work tomorrow, I just stayed home and did... stuff! Stuff I'd been wanting to do! First, I cut, sanded and prepped the rest of my Ogham sticks (after recalling which each was), and decided who could substitute best for whom (i.e. Maple for Hazel, long Hawthorn for Blackthorn, a piece of spindle shaft for Spindle Tree). It's high time for these sticks to be ready and teaching me stuff! Then I penciled the Oghams on each one.
After that came a break and dinner; also, I'd rather woodburn at night, in private. So at the kitchen table, I took a crack at sketching Aliria, in one depiction of her that's been hanging in my head a few days. There are no images of this deity as I see her, only faintly related art or images. None capture the personality of this deva as I know her --- the Goddess of Oil in all her shameless, seductive, flaming might.
Here is the beginning: Such power in a few simple lines of pencil. . . . It's been years since I did any comic book style art. What fun! This darker member of the world's Goddess posse is clearly sitting on something. In comic book language, everything from her eyes to her torqued lower back, never mind those legs, says, "Be careful: I am powerful, dangerous, alluring and completely shameless about who I am!"
More is now, if not "fleshed out"(!) per se, then at least clarified, so it's obvious what she's sitting on. I rarely make any art of this adrenaline-raising, sex-death-and-badassery variety, of which we really do see too much in this culture, to the point of my eyes hurting from constant rolling; it's so ubiquitous, and ours is a ridiculously macho nation already. But Aliria insists I draw her this way at least a couple of times, in addition to her more benign Earthy forms. I mean, this is the goddess of Oil. Petroleum, the maker --- and one day, wrecker, if our current blindness and denial of her sacredness is any indication --- of human evolution and society!
She is shit-hot, this goddess (literally Keeper of the Underworld Flame) and knows it: Her gift is one of the most powerful, versatile, and yes, seductive on Earth; our relationship with it goes back thousands of years. But she began her craft long before we came along. And after we go extinct, she will make her next batch of coal and oil from our bones; from the animals we left behind; from the new organisms that flourish from the global warming we trigger. This mother, as it were, is too big to fuck, and her flickering finger seems to beckon wryly: "You're next."
This is the Aliria I want to honor here! And yep, I think this one deserves the wall.
Finally, late tonight when the kids were all in bed, I fired up the soldering iron and finished woodburning my Oghams. All done except for varnish-sealing. SO excited to work with them! The green candle means Brighid is being honored, since this project began under her guidance, but it dovetails nicely with the Gaia and Fae work I felt called to embrace at BITG. The still-smoking soldering iron invokes the fire, the forge craft sacred to Brighid. Fittingly, the same kneadable eraser I used while sketching Aliria I also used to clean my pencil guidelines off the sticks.
Now for some magick, and fun!
