IMAGINE: it's the Winter Solstice, it's cold and dark outside, sintering snow blankets and quiets the world. But the Coven is together, celebrating the shadow time. Suddenly, the power goes out. The lights go off. The music stops. The only sounds we hear are each others' voices and the soft crackling of the fire.
We gather to huddle around the hearth, wrapped in blankets, cider still warm in our mugs to read poems by candlelight and tell stories. We are Witches, we make our own light.
Merry Yule. Happy talking together.
We Are Wild Seeds in the Winter Night by C Melissa
May the longest night cradle me kindly.
May the ancestors gather close to align me.
May the returning light find my heart wild and awake,
and the seeds I shelter in winter stir, dreaming of the year they’ll make.
May the night of all nights weave its charms round my door,
and the first dawn of winter bring light to my core.
May the kin of my blood stand beside me unseen,
and the seeds sleeping under me rise witch-wise and green.
May the darkest night fold you in, quiet and deep.
May the turning of the wheel guard the dreams that you keep.
May the old ones walk with you through veil, fire, and bone,
and the seeds that you shelter wake wild, of their own.
May the Solstice night fold you in, velvet and frost.
May you release what hinders your power; let it be lost.
May the mothers stand guard as you tend to your heart,
and in the cold dark show you the paths where all journeys start.
Memory’s Daughter by Linda
Thought-bees sting me, continually.
Not honey bees, these barbs don’t stick,
They prick and flee, leaving me
In confused conundrums of
lost dates
missed mates
worried waits:
What have I forgotten now?
Too much to remember, and
Worry replaces mnemonic acuity.
I am the intersection;
Everyone’s path crossing mine,
Dropping clutter behind,
Thoughts to divine, until,
In their time, I become
Simply the asterisk
Footnoting their lives.
Oh, I’m there, always, somewhere,
Lost in the glare of their own
Self-importance.
What baleful
Portents will bring me out of
This Lethean blankness?
I want honesty, frankness,
forthright,
upright
Out loud and in your face,
I want my place, not erased or forgotten.
I’m remembering now,
Remembering how I went down to the depths,
And emerged as myself, dripping wet with the
Shining waters and blood of my own inspiration.
Leaving behind the others who whine,
Who cannot keep up, who will not walk by me,
Only wanting to tie me,
To orders that no longer rule me.
I’m remembering now
And memory. Is. Freedom.
My Unbreakable Yule Oath by Jasmin
*For some traditions, making oaths this time of year is practiced for Yule celebrations. Once made, the oathmaker is bound to fulfill the promise - it is attached to our fate/destiny.
I swear to survive
for as long as I can.
To speak with earned confidence
and work with practiced humility.
To set boundaries as acts of care,
and build community from devotion.
To honour the ancestors
and listen for what they still teach.
To keep my altar alive
even in seasons of rest.
To know when to lift others up,
and when to ask to be lifted.
To meet violence with unflinching strength,
and find holy joy in collective rage.
To know who I am,
and cherish the knowing of others.
To rest when my bodymind calls for stillness,
and work only when I am ready.
To live with deliberate purpose,
and love deeper than fear.
To meet my own gaze in the mirror
and remain content.
To honour the wild world,
and dance with my woodland kin.
To keep writing,
and read the words that carry others through.
To make love and make art
whenever the fire allows.
To be the witch I wish to meet in the world,
and to love every other witch living in it.
So it is.
So be it.
So see to it.
Blessed fucking be.
Jessica pulled the Ten Of Pentacles for the Collective
TRANSCRIPT
Amy: we're so glad to be gathered the longest night of the year to have each other and be able to be together in this way. we always start our meetings with the lighting of a candle. It's a birthday candle for Heather and for Holly. and then in the name of accessibility. I'm using an electric candle today.
Some of us can't burn candles for whatever reason. And anything that casts off a beautiful glow is gonna work for our magic. And for our yue. And for our solstice.
Risa: Bright Solstice. Happy birthdays. We survived. We're in the dark together. I love this moment together that we take. I was assembling our Yu Specials. I'm looking back over the past years and looking at how we started our first ever Yu special. A small circle of people in person singing that Carol Amy had written.
Amy: Telling
Risa: stories about the Caly, who I've been thinking about so much. The storm hag, the storm witch, the storm queen. We did a series of, a pair of two Yu specials about chosen family that are so dear to my heart with jinx, monsoon and the gods. Oh my God. and then Amy and I did a special where we were so tired and it had been so hard and we set each other this gift of a task where we imagined that we were writing like a letter of reference.
I was writing a letter of reference for Amy to my wisest council of beloved Elders to tell them about how much I loved my wise and brilliant friend, and she wrote one for me and I reread those today and I was just weepy with how gorgeous they are.
Amy: I haven't revisited them. I should.
Risa: They're so lovely.
They're linked in our new post that'll go out in the RX this week of, of you all rituals and solstice practices. This is, this is a gift you can give yourself or a loved one at any time. Pretend you are lighting, writing a letter of reference to the universe for someone you love and describe how magical they are.
Do it for each other. It's fucking awesome. Remember how important you are and powerful and magical you are. Help someone else remember.
Amy: Especially at this ultra consumerist time of year, it really is a very special gift that you can give someone that costs nothing but time and love.
Risa: Yeah. And energy.
And then after that one, we started having these holiday parties where we invited our coven to bring a story, a song, a poem like a little, company talent show full of magic. And so we invite you to, drop any fear or shame that you can manage to release.
Feel it slip off your shoulders. Feel it melts like snow gently off your face. Feel safe and welcome and held in this little tiny lighted space. We'll make together for a couple of hours to be held in magic and an amazing Santa Hats.
And if you have brought something, a thought, a spell, a blessing, a song, a poem, a story, use the raise hand emoji. If you brought something and you do not want it used in the recording that we will share of this holiday special, just let us know before you start. We'll edit it out. So it can be just for us, or it can be for the great grand broader us in the cauldron we create in the dark between our ears.
Amy: I am gonna open the floor with something I have brought to our solstice parties before, but I think it bears repeating. this is the Woman's Spirit magazine from 1977, the year of my birth. I have another one that's also from the Winter Solstice Women's Spirit Magazine, published quarterly, so on the equinoxes and on the solstice, and I've course have read through them, but I have never found an entry in those magazines that resonates so much with how I feel about this coven at this time of year.
So. I'm going to read this entry. This was again, women's Spirit Magazine, was a feminist commune who made a magazine. And so a lot of the stuff that comes up in the magazines, it's just stuff that people have sent in, stuff that readers have sent in. So this is, a little musing sent in by a reader named Marra ACH called Mother Yule.
I was thinking of Christmas today. The Magical Tree of Lights, fragile glass birds, chalk lambs, family obligations, tired mothers cooking, all for the birth of a son. An impish granny muddled my mind and gave me over to delight in Christmas again, I realized that she was the one who rekindled the sunfire from her hearth Fire.
Just a little old root woman cooking, making puckered fruits into honeyed pies, leavening, soden dough, all the magic that women have always done at Christmas. She has called herself Mother Yuel. I've looked up Yue in the dictionary, and not only does it mean the Pagan Fire Festival of the Hearth log, but the word also means happy talking together.
Father Christmas brought rewards for good behavior, but Mother Yu brings friends together. Around a magical goddess tree. I drew her and she looks like a little badger or mole, an earth loving creature, slightly mischievous among humans and fugitive. I remember the old legend of the Lady of Miss Rule when the time of Christmas decreed outrageous body and foolish behavior among women.
A time to caricature serious concerns, not abandoning them, but giving them a full shadow. I've drawn her onto a lino cut also, and will print her picture again and again.
Risa: Happy talking together.
Coven: Hi.
Risa: Oh,
Coven: am I still here?
Risa: are here.
Coven: Yay. Bright solstice. I just wanted to share, something that, a thought that I had. this month, for perhaps almost obvious reasons is the month where I work more with Mother Mary. 'cause she's one of the energies that I work with. I got curious about Mother Mary's story in
The Koran. do you guys know it? It's really beautiful. I just kind of put like a little audio reading of it. she has Jesus by herself in a secluded place under a palm tree, and God provides dates and water for her as she's having birth paints.
And I thought that was so beautiful. And then I wrote this and I just wanted to share it. I don't know what it is, I don't think, I'm not sure if it's a poem. Maybe it's just a, maybe it's just a thought. but it says Virgin of Virgins as in untouched by expectation, Virgin of Virgins as in guided only by inner conviction, field by introspection artist of artists as in birthing divinity as her nature.
That's it. I just thought it was cute.
Amy: That was beautiful, Izzy. Thank you. It is always good to, interrogate the stories we've been told and poeticize them in our own ways. Ryan,
hi Angie. Hey,
Coven: I don't really have anything spectacular or big to share. Just, this time of year heading towards the longest night, I always feel really called to into my home, into, into myself, to get very grounded and centered and clear on everything that I've accomplished throughout the year, everything that I didn't accomplish.
And after the solstice, as the light starts to come back, I can feel this little heartbeat almost. Telling me that it's good, it is time to start overcoming my inertia. And I just have to do it a little bit at a time every day. Just like the sun comes back a little bit at a time every day. And I just feel like this is a time to really nurture and grow what you want to become in the next, the next time spring is here, right?
And just all of the dreaming that you get to do while it's dark and it's still cold outside, and you can make your plans and feather your nest and engage with people that are really close to you, that you love,
Amy: And
Coven: that's my, I guess, tradition this time of year.
Risa: That's so beautiful, Angie, and so beautifully said. Thank you so much. You reminded me of two things. I would love to ask for volunteers for this circle one, to be access, which if you're comfortable, keep an eye on the chat and then periodically raise your hand and share with us things that have been said in the chat so that folks who can't manage splitting focus between chat and listening can just relax and listen and be held by you and your attentiveness.
Coven: okay.
Risa: Okay. Will will somebody be Access Witch? Thank you, Melissa. Angie, are you raising your hand to Share again or to be Access Witch?
Coven: be access,
Risa: okay. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. So yeah, just, just put your hand back up when, you know, periodically when there's stuff that feels like it needs to be added. And then the second role is Oracular Witch of the Circle. Your job is to either typing or handwritten, although it's probably easier typing to just write down those phrases that chime for you.
From what we all say, you basically make a found poem by listening and noticing. There's no pressure for you to edit it in any way. just listen, notice the things that recur, that jump out, those moments where we're all like, oh, shit. Yes, I can do it. Risa. Thank you witch Reed. Thank you so much. Okay.
Melissa, I would love to hear what you've patiently been waiting to share.
Coven: Thank you so much. so I love to do this thing this time of year. I've been doing it for about 10 years and it's not like, resolutions. Essentially it's trying to plan out my year ahead using how I feel. How I want to feel in the year ahead.
So it's this seed planting exercise that I've been doing for a really long time, kind of not knowing that I was doing spell work before I was doing spell work. and then also I've been spending the year connecting or trying to connect with my ancestors a lot more. so I wrote a poem like for me, but sort of for you as well, sort of like a collective you.
So it's called, We Are Wild Seeds in the winter night. May the Longest Night Cradle Me Kindly. May the ancestors gather close to align me. May the returning light find my heart wild and awake and the seeds I shelter in winter stir dreaming of the year they'll make.
May the night of all nights weave its charms around my door and the first dawn of winter bring light to my core. May the kin of my blood stand beside me unseen and the seeds sleeping under me. Rise witch wise and green. May the darkest night fold you in quiet and deep. May the turning of the wheel guard the dreams that you keep.
May the old ones walk with you through veil, fire and bone, and the seeds that you shelter wake wild of their own. May the solstice night fold you in velvet and frost. Let it be lost. May the mothers stand guard as you tend to your heart and the cold dark, show you the past where all journeys start.
Amy: Yay. That was something easy. Thank you, Melissa. If you are willing and able, can you, send the text of that piece, so that we can share it and you can email it or message or post it in the Circle C space. So everyone who couldn't make it tonight can still enjoy it
Risa: tonight. Oh my God.
So many beautiful lines. Thank you so much for that Spell.
Amy: I have another poem. our good witch poet friend m Cheney could not be here tonight, but they sent us this poem. It's called, lemme Put These Bells Down, ringing in my Hand. The Veil is always Thin by M Cheney. The veil is always thin. The dark.
Just lets us see secret realms don't reveal themselves. They're always there waiting like stars. Our eyes simply adjust to the darkness. We wait all year for quiet, so we may hear spirits. We wait for the dark so we can see the ones we loved again. But my loves, there is no need to wait. They're always around us, always urging us to take a bite of this life while we can.
So for their sake and mine, and while there are teeth in my head, I will eat. I will eat. Melissa, what have you brought for the Yule tide gathering of the missing witches Coven?
Coven: Hi everybody. Love to see your glowing faces. this book has been one of my books of the year, which is Disabled Witchcraft 90 Rituals for Limited Food Practitioners by Candy Zar.
what I love about it is a lot of things, but I'm just gonna share an incantation of theirs, and it's the spell of Cies. So if you have time, you can chew with this a little bit.
Amy: Hmm.
Coven: I laugh in the face of attempts to crush me and my community. I laugh not because there's no injustice or because I'm callous, but because laughter says I'm worthy of joy.
That joy is enough on its own. I invoke this power against unjust and ableist systems. This laughter is a spell magic from my very self. I love you all.
Amy: Love you so much, Mel. We love that book. Jasmine, are you doing a book club of that book? We got a thumbs up from Jasmine
Coven: sometime in the new year.
Amy: if we survive, we will be doing a book club.
Coven: I make it,
Amy: You're gonna make it babe. I bet. My Christmas bells on it. We're gonna do that fucking book club. You're gonna be strong and well and. Powering through the book club
and elker too. Elker. It looks like you dressed for a fancier party than this one. Yay. And you look so good dress. I wore
Coven: my starry dressed because when, when is a better time to wear a dress with stars on it when we are celebrating yuel together? So I brought my star dress, and beyond that, to our gathering, I bring, my personal favorite goddess who I work with, FRA Holla and or Fra Perta, depending on where you are and what you'd like to call her.
Frail hala and frail perta are fierce winter goddesses from Germany and they are protectors of women children. The in between they've been said to leave the lead, the wild hunt. And they're also fierce enforcers of rest during this time, primarily through slitting your belly open and stuffing you with stones and straw if you're not resting.
So my hope for you all is that Raha and Raul Perta give you the space to rest and enjoy this Yue and this solstice.
Amy: You gotta love that. Eastern European, you know, this is where like the, the Krampus, the Krampus, as my dad used to say, would come and steal bad children.
Coven: Every time I'm like, I wonder why I am the way I am. I just look at old German fairytales and folk. I'm like, that explains so much to me
Amy: Yeah. The living's hard, but you know. We get through it together, we keep our Cold Eastern European wits about us.
And if you're not resting enough, we'll cut out your gizzard and if you're bad, a demon will steal you in the night. Beth, what do you think about all this?
Coven: as someone with Wine Garner is a last name. I think I sympathize a lot with all the scary German fairytales. I have a poem that I wrote last winter, that I thought I would share 'cause it's about the winter solstice. it's called Winter Solstice. These long nights wrap around me like a hug. The darkness mothers me. It tucks me under handmade blankets. Softly sings the old songs to me. I press my face into the soft fur of winter, feel its pur against my chest, and know that fangs and claws will keep the clamor of the bright world at bay.
Never do I hunger for longer days or more light. The summer sun is a blade that flas me. I find no shelter, no peace under its oppressive glare. Chill air, stroking my cheeks, my breath ghosting into a black sky full of diamonds. Here I can hear the silence and the melody underneath.
Risa: The silence and the melody underneath. So beautiful. Thank you so much, Beth, Jessica,
Amy: while you're working that out, Jessica, just so everybody knows, yes, I did get my hair tangled in my jingle bells, so that was inevitable.
Coven: I have jingle bells forbidden in this home for reasons you can see.
Okay, I think I got my microphone fixed. Alright. Okay. and also I'm at work, so if I get a customer I'll have to go. So this is going to be very quick. Okay. first of all, very beautiful readings. This is my very first party event, whatever. So bear with me. I'm nervous, it's whatever, but here I am. I'm putting myself out there.
I did a tarot pull, for the collective. that's been kind of my focus this year. is ion, getting into it. I used my Chris Ann, I used the light Sears tarot deck. it's probably been my favorite that I've picked up. And, five minutes before the meeting I pulled the tint of Pensacolas, which could not be more perfect.
And it's so beautiful and it is a, family value and traditions card. and just like a comfort card, you know, and I know personally for me, this yu season, I've gone slow. I've taken things very slow. You know, we had a big tragedy during Thanksgiving, the harvest season. And so we're all just kind of healing, doing some things, baking a lot of things, spending time together.
And I hope that's the same for most of us this season. We all just need to slow down and remember our traditions and that's what's beautiful about Yue for me. Is being able to teach, my children and, my fiance, the traditions that I have been following for a very long time. So, that is my excerpt for today.
thank you.
Amy: You did perfect, sweetie. Great job.
Risa: solstice with
Amy: remind me again what card you pulled.
Coven: The 10 of Pentacles.
Amy: The 10 of Pentacles.
Coven: Yes.
Amy: If anybody wants to chime in with thoughts about 10 of Pentacles as it relates to the collective, let us know.
Coven: I'm new and that was my very first collective pool I've ever done.
So thank you for allowing me to do that and giving me the opportunity. So thanks.
Amy: Happy talking together.
Coven: Perfect. Bye. Thanks for calling us from the shop.
Risa: Those of you who weren't here the first year. When Amy realized that Zoom wouldn't pick up her bells, because they hadn't adjusted to doing sound like that, and she rage shook them at us in silence over and over again for the entire circle. You could go back and listen to it. I'm pretty sure she edited them in to every place that she, I did shook them.
Amy: did better believe I went back and I recorded my jingle bells and I put them in that fucking recording because, well, this is our ule tide special and there will be bells.
but even if y'all couldn't hear the bells, I'd still be shaking them. I'd still be shaking them in a way that is to say, I'm with you.
I get it. I support you in the same, you know, sometimes I hold up a candle, but this time of year I'm gonna ring them bells and I know. Risa the ringing of the bells echoes particularly with you this year for sure.
Mm-hmm.
Risa: Bell this year. Jasmine, we're gonna survive.
Coven: I think so. Hi everybody. so happy New Year witches. It's the new year for us and in some traditions, some of you may be a part of those traditions like me. making an unbreakable u oath is part of the celebration. So once this oath is made, then the oath maker is bound to fulfill these promises, for it is attached to our fate and destiny.
so I wrote my u oath for this year and I am happy to share it with all of you. They're not resolutions. It's a U oath.
Amy: You're perfect. You need no resolution.
Coven: All right. My U oath, I swear to survive for as long as I can to speak with earned confidence and work with practiced humility, to set boundaries as acts of care and build community from devotion to honor the ancestors and listen to what they still teach.
To keep my altar alive, even in seasons of rest, to know when to lift others up and when to ask to be lifted to meet violence. With unflinching strength and find holy joy in collective rage to know who I am and cherish the knowing of others to rest when the body mind calls for stillness and to work.
Only when I am ready to live with deliberate purpose and love, deeper than fear to meet my own gaze in the mirror and remain content to honor the wild world and dance with my woodland kin to keep writing and read the words that have carried others through. To make love and make art whenever the fire allows to be the witch that I wish to meet in the world and to love every other witch living in it.
So here I swear, in front of coven, ancestors, alter and the gods. So it is so be it. So see to it, blessed fucking be. Thanks everyone.
Amy: Blessed fucking be. Thank you Jasmine. We cherish you. We cherish you, we cherish you, and I know everything that you vowed you are already doing, and those are the best kind of promises to make.
Right? Here's how I will continue to live my life. In the honor of those that came before and those who will come after. Thank you. Jalyn. I cherish you. I honor you. Oh, and excuse me, Angie, do you have something from the chat for us?
Coven: Yeah, I just wanted to share, there's been so much, so many compliments and so much love for everyone who's, who's done their shares.
Love for Joy. Shared a link that says, for those that like Christmas songs, but need a different style than the standards, here's a Sting concert that's really good, and they share a link to that. And, also a good story to listen to BBC's, the Darkest Rising kind of Solstice meets A Wrinkle In Time.
Flavor is another share from Love for Joy with a link. And Amy Miranda shared a link of their favorite Christmas song and holiday wardrobe inspiration on YouTube, it looks like. I think and, Jess said Beautiful Beth, I feel the same about winter. everyone loves Amy's jingle bells
and lots of encouragement for when Jess was nervous.
Amy: Hello? Can you hear me?
I can hear you. I can see you. I can love you.
Coven: I just wanna say happy you all to everyone in this coven that is the most. Magical, accepting and respectful group of people I have ever met. So happy you all to everyone I bring to the coven. first my little candle centerpiece. It has a star in the moon because we are all a bit cosmic
I went out to my holly, I have a huge holly tree in our yard, so I brought lots of fresh Holly. And what I would like to bring is a funny tale slash true almost trivia of the Holly Plant. So we all know that it's protection and, all of the good magical spiritual things that it goes into the different seasons.
But did you guys know that birds, when they eat the little red berries, they actually get drunk? So the pokey leaves keep them protected while they're sitting in the holly bush, like their own little tavern. They're just a bunch of little birds getting drunk in a tree. And to me that is Yue
happy.
Amy: That's what the holidays are all about. For sure. If we can just imagine ourselves as little birds in a tree getting tipsy on berries. I'm going to keep that. I'm going to keep that as a place that I go to in my imagination with all of you, my little birds. Thank you Bri.
And I loved your centerpiece. I know you made it and it's gorgeous. Thank you for sharing it with us. Yes.
Coven: Hello.
Amy: We're gonna survive.
Coven: Can you hear me okay?
Amy: We hear you just fine,
Coven: Okay. I brought a poem. it's a little dark, so I thought I would just share it.
Wrote it a while back. It's called Memory's Daughter.
Amy: You wrote it?
Coven: Yes, I wrote it.
Amy: Wonderful.
Coven: Thought. Bees sting me continually, not honeybees. These barbs don't stick. They prick and flee. Leaving me in confused Conundrums of lost dates, miss mates worried weights. What have I forgotten now?
Too much to remember and worry replaces mnemonic acuity. I am the intersection, everyone's path crossing mine, dropping clutter behind thoughts to divine. Until in their time I become simply the asterisk footnoting their lives. Oh, I'm there somewhere always lost in the glare of their own self-importance.
What baleful importance will bring me out of this lithian blankness. I want honesty, frankness, forthright, upright, out loud and in your face. I want my place not erased or forgotten. I'm remembering now remembering how I went down to the depths and emerged as myself dripping wet with the shining waters and blood of my own inspiration, leaving behind the others who whine, who cannot keep up, who will not walk by me, only wanting to time me to orders that no longer rule me.
I'm remembering now. Memory is freedom. Thank you.
Risa: Fuck. Yes.
Coven: Thank you.
Risa: Thank you so much.
Amy: Your poem was so good.
Risa: I'm gonna leave them behind if they can't fucking walk with me, I'm gonna choose my family and I'm not gonna walk in the cold and the dark with people who don't offer their gifts to me.
And I'm gonna remember who I am. It was beautiful. Linda. You're such a power. Thank you.
Amy: Yeah. That poem was straight fire.
Risa: Mm.
Amy: Linda,
Risa: where in the world are you, Linda?
Coven: where am I? Yeah. As my daughter said once when I was taking her home from daycare and we were stopped at a stoplight and she said, is this Cleveland, meaning the street?
We used to cross place called Cleveland Avenue. And I said, yeah, do you know where you are? And she goes, yeah, mommy. And I said, where are you? She goes, I'm right here, mommy.
So I'm back in Colorado. I've been back since back in, I've been back since October. Yeah.
Risa: Dropping from Colorado.
Coven: Yeah.
Risa: High, love for joy.
Coven: Hello everyone. what I wanted to share with you all is that even in my life where I've hit these really dark points, there's always some kind of. Message or light that's around. If you can pause and settle yourself for just like 30 seconds and look in the periphery of your vision and see what shows up.
A lot of visuals come into me that way. So just a honoring of our friends and loved ones that have passed on, some becoming our elders, others becoming our kin from beyond. And to know that this coven holds you in your dark times as well. So if you reach those stages where it's really dark and scary and you can't see any light, know that we're out here holding the light for you and it's gonna be okay.
We're all cats and have nine lives, and we're gonna land on our fucking feet because that's just how it's gonna be. Thank you for letting me share.
Amy: We will survive and we will see the tricky ways that light comes in through spaces we're witches. You know, we're gonna notice the tricky ways that light comes in through spaces, and it's gonna make us think of all the magic that we're all doing together separately, descendants, ancestors. Oh, thank you.
Thank you so much. And thank you again for the Freddie Mercury candle. I love him so much. He sits on my shelf and I look at him often, although I do not light him, except for at our weavers meetings. And speaking of weavers meetings,
we have
invited some very magical people to send us some recordings for our weavers Full Moon.
And for those of you who were there, you have heard these before, but for those of you who weren't there, I asked their permission to share them more widely because they resonated with us so much. And so since they were just for the Weavers Coven meeting on that full moon, we thought it would be really special to share them with all of you the missing witches, Kevin at large,
Coven: hello Witches and magic makers and continually evolving Angels. My name is Maria Mena and I'm the author of the Anti-Racism Tarot Workbook Tarot for the Hard Work. And host of the Kinky Tarot Podcast. I'm also a ritual facilitator, tarot reader, and sex coach in training today, I join you in a passionate commitment to healing the world.
Part of that work includes our reconnection to the land, the restoration of the land, and the return of land to their native peoples who have been stewards of the land for long before capitalism. There was a time before capitalism, and there will be a time after it. I think it. I feel it. I know it. My invitation to you is to do one thing this week that connects you to our beautiful planet.
Connection to the land can sound like this distant concept like it's inaccessibly, mystical, or something that's solely in the realm of shamans and elder witches who are very deep into their ancestral knowledge.
It's the kind of connection that we can have that links our human consciousness with earth consciousness. However you choose to see or define those terms, consider how previous generations, even before the written word, had primarily just what was right in front of them as a primary thing to relate to the topic and concept of place.
We can all have this kind of connection if we choose to be aware of it and lean into it. The land lives in our bodies and senses. Unfortunately, we live in a time when so many people find the land to be disposable, a bottomless resource to be exploited and drained. They considered the land to be inferior to humanity, inanimate and unintelligent, but they missed the fact that we wouldn't be here without the land.
The land bred and cultivated us as humans. Human rights are infinitely intertwined with the ways of nature in solidarity. I leave you with that question as well as this quote from Black Elk. The holy land is everywhere.
Amy: Thank you, Maria Venni.
Coven: I call The power of mutation into this water are bringing in the freaks, the weirdos, those that refuse to conform to the rigid, toxic hierarchies of this system. We invoke your presence here, dear Mutant, to help us transform into the sacred, interconnected organism that we are meant to become.
We are interdependent, we are interwoven, we are intermediaries. Bless the ancestors, the queer, trans, gender, non-conforming, freakish ancestors, those beings that guide us in this moment. We are living ancestors and we are calling upon this power, this magic, to support those that come through us, those that come after us.
Asking the waters to use their gifts as a way to permeate everything. Calling in radical hope, healing, invoking asking for blessings upon our beloved communities.
Risa: Julie?
Coven: Hi everyone.
Risa: Hi Darwin.
Coven: I don't have something new to share, but I thought I would reread the Solstice blessing I wrote for the Coven two years ago, and that I read last year. I think it's still a good blessing for us now in this moment. So this is a solstice blessing for our coven. May we spend time together in loving ways.
May we embrace both joy and sadness as we gather throughout the year? May we celebrate when we have things to celebrate. May we hold each other when we break apart? May we encourage each other as we birth new ideas into the world. May we learn and grow together? May we ask questions and share wisdom. May we wonder about the unknown?
May we sit in the discomfort of being wrong. May we tickle each other with glee. But only if we first ask for consent. May we respect each other's boundaries around tickling and other boundaries. May we acknowledge our privilege in having access to this community and that many cannot access it even though they may be the ones who need it the most.
May we do the difficult work of challenging the inaccessibility and ableism that shows up in this space, and the white supremacy in this space, and the colonialism in this space, and all the isms in this space. May we listen to those most impacted by these isms? May we have hard conversations, may we be accountable to each other?
May we be activists together as we resist oppression in the world. May we include slowing down in our activism. May we soothe and fuel each other so that we are equipped to do social justice work. May we offer care to each other in tangible ways? May we normalize asking each other what our needs are?
May we organize to collectively meet our needs? Blessed fucking be.
Amy: Thank you. and I hope that you'll bring it back every year and read it every year. It's such a wonderful piece and I will shout you out personally because you're always the person who listens and listens and then drops the most brilliant, profound drop the fiery
Coven: mike.
Amy: so I just wanna like, honor and thank you for being that person at so many meetings and I feel like this blessing, this poem is part of that. Thank you again for your brilliance.
Risa: Julia, keep bringing it. Thank you Jessica.
Coven: How's it going at the shop? It's going great.
I've had two customers. I found out an interesting fact about St. Nicholas today that I don't know if, I'm sure somebody hasn't heard this, but he is the saint of prostitutes.
He actually, when he was younger or when, these three little girls, their dad was going to sell them off to be prostitutes and he threw coins in their window at night. So he is the patron of prostitutes and human trafficking. And I found that out today and I just think that that is very beautiful. So I just wanted to share that.
Amy: That's so beautiful. Like the most vulnerable people, that's who we should be protecting, right? The baby who was born in Palestine, in a manger because there was no room at the end. Sex workers,
Risa: all power to sex workers.
Amy: And Palestinian Babies
Risa: and Palestinians.
Coven: Hi.
Amy: I
Coven: I refuse to talk until somebody says my name.
I've said it. Okay. Hi. I wanna share two things. Okay. one of them is a fun fact. Not so fun. but I'm reading this book, which you guys have probably heard about and I've also mentioned it before. So you've heard me talk about it. if we've been in any meetings this week together, it's called Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism. Have you guys heard of it? I've just started it, but I've just, I'm learning so much. They're like, I think it's like a collection of essays. Okay. The fun fact I wanna share with you guys is so in 19. Wait, I wanna say the year right. Was it 77?
Oh gosh, I have it right here. whenever Sputnik was released. the US was like, maybe we should start, letting women, work because the Russians did a lot of things and women were allowed to work, it wasn't a problem. So after Nik, they were like, huh. And they started the International Law of Education Protection.
I don't know, my book is in Spanish, so I'm translating from Spanish back to English, but some like international law to protect education. So it would encourage like. Women and also like, kind of break a little bit of the social stigma that women couldn't enter math and science degrees all because of Sputnik, which I thought was really cool.
And then there, there are other facts that are similar to that one where the US was like, huh. And I thought that was interesting thing to share. And the other thing I wanna share is I, I'm sort of learning to write poetry, especially what's the one where you don't have any rules? Free verse. So, and I shared this poem like in the coven, in the missing witches feed, but I wanna try reading it out loud for you guys.
Now I'm scared because I've never done that before, I think.
so I wrote this poem about, I think most of you know, I'm autistic. And this was written thinking about like autistic overwhelm and shutdowns. And so here it is. At times I see it coming. Clouds fill my body. I see it before it shakes every inch of my body. It burns, it owns, it strikes down the branches that form my synapsis.
It stops not, it shows me my body can't contain my bounty. It tells me my times. They're not coming. That's
Mary, you all. that was, that was great. hopefully my voice is okay. I have COVID so I'm gonna share a short quote.
Amy: masking is mutual aid.
Coven: Yes. It's my first time, so I count myself. Kinda lucky. I try to set a goal for reading every year, and, one of the first books of the year I read, made me just wanna sit with this book for a long time.
So, it made it hard to get to the next ones. it's the 10,000 Doors of January by Alex e Harlow. it's about a young woman who discovers magical doors that lead to other worlds. I wanted to share one quote from that. 'cause I hope you'll find the cracks in the world and wedge them wider so the light of other suns shine through.
I hope you will keep the world unruly, messy, full of strange magics. I hope you'll run through every open door and tell stories when you return. So I love that quote and it just, makes me feel of this time of year and searching for the sun.
Amy: What a beautiful quote. Can you say the name of the book again?
Coven: It's The 10,000 Doors of January.
Amy: Ooh, by Alex
Coven: e Harlow.
Amy: If anybody's looking for a band name, 10,000 doors of January. I won't forget that. Thank you so much. I'm so glad that we have this. Place that is accessible for someone who's feeling poorly and still wants to hang out with and be among friends and be together.
You know, many of us have joined from bed before because we just want to be together.
Coven: oh. I did that for a year.
Amy: So again, I'm sorry that you're not feeling well. I'm glad you're resting and I'm so happy that we can be in this space together.
Risa: May we run through every open door together,
Amy: All the magical doors opening for you
Risa: all the magical doors.
Amy: Once a snowflake fell. On my brow and I loved it so much and I kissed it and it was happy and called its cousins and brothers and a web of snow and golfed me and I reached to love them all and I squeezed them and they became a spring rain and I stood perfectly still and was a flower.
Coven: story I have for you, is called Amma Tara in the cave. It's a retelling of an old myth As the goddess of the sun, Amma Tarascio looked over the prosperity of the world, all things bright and good came from her.
But the great goddess had long been in conflict with her younger brother, Susanna, the God of storms. He was tumultuous and selfish, carrying little for any destruction or chaos left in his wake. And so they fought often. The conflict escalated when Susanna O destroyed oes, rice fields, fields. She had personally sown and tended fields she had intended to feed the human she cared for, as well as the gods all decimated in a hail of rain and mud.
Then, much Rossi's brother through malice or carelessness killed a sacred beast. Filled with a rage and grief so large, she didn't know how to express it. She fled to a cave called Amato, forsaking all life and community. And that's the thing, isn't it? Some grief is so large, it takes the whole of us.
Some rage is bigger than a storm, bigger than we can express in polite society. So we leave, we withdraw and tend to our wounds as best we can. We say, you do not deserve my light. Amma Tara left for It was all too much and the world was without sunlight. Some tellings of this story paint SIO as weak or selfish denying the cosmos, her light and hiding away on her own.
But I see her retreat as courageous, honoring her pain and her experiences. It is her hermit moment when she retreats from a too much world to process and gain wisdom from difficulty retreats and stops giving regardless of the consequences. But the world spun on without her, and it did suffer for the lack of her light.
That's not her fault. More the fault of the circumstances that drove her to flee in the first place. For being the son is both a gift and a role, a responsibility. The great goddess could, at that moment, not bear the world, missed her. No one knows whose idea it was to gather outside of Mont Sue's cave.
But the gathering soon grew into an impromptu festival with food and games and music. Oh, the music. It was raucous and loud, joyous, and free. People spun in and out of a dance that had no steps, but a thousand different forms until the moment one particular dancer stepped into the center of the crowd, bells jingling on her ankle, the goddess of dance and mischief, strode into the clearing the people made for her and began to dance.
She passed from hand to hand creating shapes with her body as the music swelled. It was beautiful and sublime, and for a moment the crowd was breathless, but rasu did not emerge. I don't know if Anu Usme was disappointed that her gorgeous dance did not summon the great goddess, but I do know what she did next.
She stomped into a sumo wrestler squat. Her face had a contorted mask. A drunken man caught her eye and began to laugh. She continued to whirl and stomp whooping wildly and tossing her skirts. Her dance became a comedy poking fun at the very form she had so perfectly executed. She flirted with the crowd who cheered.
They egged each other on and people laughing at the height of her dance. She lifted her skirts and exposed herself to the crowd who were falling down with hilarity. Rasu could hear the Mary making from deep within her cave. And with the laughter outside reaching its apex, she could no longer resist her curiosity.
She quietly made her way to the mouth of the cave to see what the fuss was about, but she didn't immediately see the festival gathering. No. Some clever Kami had hung a large mirror, a sacred one called Ami at the front of the cave. So Amsu came face to face with herself, startled by a reflection she had not seen in many months.
Amsu looked and then stared at her own reflection. She searched the hollows of her face trying to chart the ways she had changed. Since coming out to this cave, she had gotten bigger, somehow making room for the rage and grief that had felt so immensely had driven her to solitude.
Alma Rossi was entranced by her reflection and sealed the cave behind her. So she has to come back, but I choose to see the story differently. A goddess who fled from the world and herself from a man who would not make amends with her was indeed drawn back outside by the body laughter and dancing of another goddess.
He reminds us that life doesn't always need to be so serious, once am rossio cut side of herself and took stock of how she had changed. I believe she felt ready to face the world again. Bolstered by the laughter outside that reminded her the world could be good. So, retreat as you need to take the time to hone your rage and feel your grief, but also laugh hard when you can.
And don't forget the world always has room for you
Amy: and oh, the music I asked, Reid, do you remember the music at that party?
Coven: I do remember the music at that party.
Amy: much. Ash.
Risa: Do you remember when the light returned? Because we all danced outside the cave and called it home
Amy: with bells on our ankles,
Risa: on our ankles, lifting
Coven: our skirts,
Risa: lifting our skirts.
Coven: I,
Risa: Start by noticing the cold out there in the dark, whispering under the door, the way we draw together, the way we need each other in this season. So much so we ritualize our gifts and Leanne Bemo Simpsons, a theory of water. She begins with the way snowflakes make snow landscapes. She holds the word centering up to the light, whisper it into the snowy landscape in your mind, centering the process by which individuals snow crystals each formed around a single molecule of water fall and slowly bind together.
Under pressure without fully melting, they hold their shape and become snowpack. Snowbank. A shared body in physics and geology centering describes particles fusing without losing structure. In winter ecologies, it's how many remain distinct while becoming one. Feel the water moving in. You open your hands.
Notice the heat there. Feel it in all of us, all of us listening, and the dark between our ears.
Nicola Tesla wrote, though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement, unavoidably implies a body which is being moved. And a force which is moving it wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force.
All mass possesses inertia, all force tends to persist, A body, be it at rest or in motion, tends to remain in the same state. And a force manifesting itself anywhere and through whatever cause produces an equivalent opposing force. And as an absolute necessity of this, it follows that every movement in nature must be rhythmical.
It is born out in everything we perceive. And the movement of a planet and the surging and ebbing of the tide and the reverberations of the air, the swinging of a pendulum, the oscillations of an electric current and in the infinitely varied phenomena of organic life, does not the whole of human life attest to it.
Birth growth, old age and death of an individual family, race or nation. What is it All but a rhythm, all life manifestation. Then even in its most intricate form, however, involved and inscrutable is only a movement to which the same general laws of movement, which govern throughout the physical universe must be applicable.
Can anyone doubt today that all the millions of individuals and all the innumerable types and characters constitute an entity, A unit, though free to think and act. We are held together like the stars and the firmament with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them.
This finger is part of me. I see a friend hurt and it hurts me too. My friend and I are one, and now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter, which of all the lumps of matter in the universe I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole? For ages, this idea has been proclaimed and the consummate wise teachings of religion, probably not alone, is a means of ensuring peace and harmony, but as a deeply founded truth, the Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same.
Tesla's meticulous, obsessive neurodivergent brilliance made it possible to transmit not just electricity, but also power over long distances to warm and light the darkest nights. His experiments shaped radio transmission, remote control, hydroelectric. He saw the waves moving through air, water, and electromagnetic fields.
At the height of his fame, Tesla imagined a world system that would bind the planet into one resonant hole, allowing energy and information to be received anywhere. While others assumed wireless signals traveled through the air, Tesla believed the earth itself was the medium, a resonant body that could carry standing waves.
It struck the right frequency like guitar strings, but he couldn't get it to work. Tesla's plans for limitless energy ran out of financial backers as JP Morgan Chase cut funding and science developed in other directions. Later in life, Tesla lived alone in hotel rooms. He wrote about a white pigeon whom he loved.
This isn't a metaphor. Before radio messages moved through living networks, homing pigeons crossed hundreds of miles carrying thousands of words on their bodies when wireless transmission replaced them, fueled by Tesla's innovations, the abandoned birds flocked in city squares. Tesla wrote, sometimes I feel that by not marrying, I made too great a sacrifice to my work.
So I have decided to lavish all the affection of a man no longer young on the feathery tribe. One white pigeon in particular mattered if she needed me. He wrote, nothing else mattered as long as I had her. There was purpose in my life. One night when she came to him, he said he understood she was dying, and quote, there came a light from her eyes.
Powerful beams of light more intense than I had ever produced by the most powerful lamps in my laboratory. When she died, he said, something went out of my life. I knew my life's work was finished,
Here are the feathers in the gentle snow. See the light in their eyes? All the winged ones hover around the edges of our circles now, their history in our webs and ness. Donna Haraway writes, why tell stories like pigeon tails when there are only more and more openings and no bottom lines? Because there are quite definite response abilities that are strengthened in such stories.
The details matter. The details link actual beings to actual responsibilities as spies, racers, messengers, urban neighbors, native species, pets, and more around the earth. Pigeons and their partners of many kinds, including people, make history each time. A story helps me remember what I thought I knew, or introduces me to new knowledge.
A muscle critical for caring about flourishing gets some aerobic exercise. Such exercise enhances collective thinking and movement and complexity. Each time I trace a tangle and add a few threads that at first seemed whimsical, but turned out to be essential to the fabric. I get a bit straighter that saying, staying with the trouble of complex widing is the name of the game for living and dying well together.
On Tara in Taris, we are all responsible to and for shaping conditions for multi-species flourishing. End quote. We are all responsible to and for Tara, we hold the story edges. We join Haraway in making the relay enhancing collective thinking and movement. We build the rhythms of life, tending to exist, tending to each other.
We fly with the feathery tribe on the crystalline icy wind at solstice edges. Meeting difference held centering. Leanne Betas, Moaki Simpson asks, is there a lesson here for our activism? Is there a lesson here for our magic? At Solstice, the earth reaches the far point of its tilt, then begins to return.
The planet spins at about 1,670 kilometers per hour At the equator, its tilt shapes the seasons. The moon and sun. Pull the oceans into tides that move miles of water at a time. These aren't symbols, they're forces acting on us Now. Feel the spin that is a spiral as we whirl through our galaxies rotation, while tipsy on our own axis, feel the wild precision of it.
Imagine how it feels in feathers, in hollow bones. Take a small amount of water into your mouth. Hold it. See its molecules spin. Gathering swirling through Earth time. Think to the water. Let me remember. Remember me. Let me remember. Remember me? Our coven mate, Amy Miranda, taught me to whisper, remember me in the bath to the water, running through my fingers.
In her book, what we've forgotten, she writes, your work, your work, your practice is having an impact, not just in your life, but in the web itself. We are the seeds. We're the new growth. We're the miraculous architects of a new age. We are the children of the light. With the power of nature coursing through our veins, we can no longer mistreat ourselves, our cohabitants or our planet.
We've got to stop punching ourselves in the face. Just because we can't see anything with our physical eyes beyond the dark matter in the night sky, doesn't mean that nothing's there. Maybe we can't see through dark matter because other intelligent life hasn't decided to turn on the light yet to reveal the two-way window.
Life in the universe doesn't need to physically enter our reality in order to deliver messages. Why would it need to? When we are surrounded with it, it is the all. It is everything, and it is for us to remember. We are the ones who slam the door. When we open it. We are able to make our amends reuniting, not just with a force like no other, but with each other.
We are the ones who can make the reparations. Not just in spirit, but in this world we have a lot of work to do. Some of our work will be done with energy, and some of it must be done with physical labor, emotional labor, our bodies, our money, our time.
We are the change, and we correct the imbalances. We bring the reharmonization. We own the horrors of what has happened on this planet. We must make reparations with wisdom keepers. Indigenous people all over the planet are owed not just for the violence, but for the injustice of what the uninvited of stolen and to the ideologies that could have saved the world 20 times over.
By now, we must recognize that the ancient knowledge provided has always been the way forward. We can and will again. Live in harmony and in communion with the land and the beings who serve it. This is remembering. End quote.
Hear the drums. Bring attention to your heart. Hear its rhythm. Feel the warmth in your hands. Feel the space just above your skin. Notice the field around you. Movement more than light. Potential more than flame. Feel the rhythm of us all. Breathe with the beat.
Yours, ours, covens, move like centering. We meet in the rhythm of our breath, the heartbeat between our ears. We dance in dream day, we work under notice along hedge lines, outside the main road. Put a hand on your screen on a cable, or on something that reaches down to the ground. Energy moves through grids.
We still don't know exactly how pigeons find their way, what energies they trace across the face of Tara. Dark matter doesn't shine still. It makes up most of the mass of the universe. Without it, galaxies wouldn't hold. Care works the same way. We are a wave of care. We are the gentle, dark, and the light returning.
We move in spiral. Let it pass through the coven. Let it move into the grid. Let us hear the wild chorus. Let us sing together. Sound waves, centering. We call in the great wave of care. We're already here. Bright solstice and Happy New Year.
Coven: I love all of you. Plan out the year ahead using how I feel.
We are wild seeds in the longest night, which wise and green, our eyes simply adjust to the darkness. While there are teeth in my head, I will eat. I will eat because laughter says I am worthy of joy. This laughter is a spell. I wore my starry dress. Fierce protectors of women, children, and the in-between.
We keep our Cold Eastern European guts about us. The darkness mothered me. The darkness mothers me. I am at home among the shadows. 10 of Pinnacles. What card could be more beautiful? She rage. Shook, rage, shook the silence. I swear to survive as long as I can to set boundaries as acts of care. Find holy joy and collective rage.
To be the witch I meet in the world. Bells, bells, bells. 'cause we are all cosmic.
We're gonna survive. Memory's daughter, what have I forgotten? Now I am the intersection. Everyone's path crosses mine.
I remember now. And memory is freedom. Dripping fire from Colorado. I ain't worried about a bucket list no more. Continually evolving. Angels.
There was a time before capitalism and there will be a time after
the land lives in our bodies and the holy land is everywhere.
Bringing, bring in the freaks and the weirdos.
Bless the ancestors, the freakish ancestors calling in hope, change, transformation, healing. May we hold each other when we break apart,
learn, grow, ask questions, wonder, tickle, ask consent. Acknowledge our privilege in having access to this community. Challenge, ableism, white supremacy, colonialism, all the isms in this space as we are accountable to one another. Care, organize, play, cry, love, bless. Blessed fucking bee. All power to sex workers and Palestinian babies by women have better sex under socialism.
1977. Back to the social norms, all because of Sputnik
Masking is mutual aid. Indeed,
a web of snow engulfed me.
Some rage is bigger than a storm, and the world missed her. Her dance became a comedy. She flirted with the crowd. She raised her skirts. She came face to face with herself. Making room for the rage and grief.
I choose to see the story differently.
Centering movement force. Rhythmical. Firmament, part of a whole neurodivergent brilliance. One resonant whole one resonant body, feathery tribe. Hear the feathers. See the light in their eyes. Definite responsibilities. The details matter. Staying with the trouble on Tara Haraway, tending, centering, feel the spin.
Remember me and the web itself surrounded? It is the all. So many of us, we correct the imbalances. Centering. We meet in the rhythm of breath. We are a wave of care. We move in a spiral.
Amy: Blessed fucking bee Happy mul.
Coven: You'll shine bright
Amy: we'll absolutely survive and we love you.
Coven: I'm gonna gate Gloria Gainor.
Risa: To the Soul
on the,
please bring us to share Cheer
We
the longest.
Please bring us together to share.
Coven: Peace on earth. Happy solstice. In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice marks the date at which the sunlit hours are shortest and the darkened hours are longest. This due to the tilt of the Earth's axis is an astronomical fact.
Risa: Happy solstice,
we're
Mary. You all. That's it. We love you. Love you. I love you guys.
Coven: dance in the darkest, dark of the night, and we return, we call the return of the light.
