So this year I entered my black cord phase of my path and with my group. Before I go into the actual reason for my post let me muse for a few on the whole cord deal....

    I really love the idea of having cords to mark milestones in your path work, but I personally feel that they in no way shape or form should be given as an annual gift because you managed to stick to your religious path for another year. I have been walking my path for almost two decades an only now felt it appropriate to take a black cord. Not to say I have been lacking in my studies I have written and re-written a full set of Sabbats and Moon rituals all from my own mind well over five years ago. I have worked with several groups and have lead more rituals then I can count. I have studied many religions of the past and lead/participated in spirited discussions on these. I have made just about every one of my ritual tools by hand including hand carving my altar, self binding my Book of Shadows, taken on a vision quest and so on. I take my religion and dedication VERY seriously. Not a day goes by when I don't either meditate with Lord and Lady or I'm not working on something pagan, so my feet are almost running down my path. Now even by doing all of this it was not till last Samhain that I took up the mantel and responsibility of that black cord. To me if you have that cord you had better damn well be able to know your shit inside and out. If I ask you about what gods and goddesses you patron then, if you have that band of black about you, I had better hear those deities life stories because if all I get out of you is "well...I just really feel drawn to...so-and-so" I'll want to tie that cord around your neck. I mean come on people that cord come with a weight of responsibility. It means that you can hold your own and know your stuff.....just because you are offered a cord doesn't mean you have to take it. The path is a life long journey why rush to get to the finish line...anyway back on to my original thoughts for the day

    So this year I decided to start my learning by picking up two subjects that I kinda dread. Truth be told I have never had ANY real interest in either tarot or astrology. Both to me were just way too involved and complicated and as both looked to just be a form of fortune telling I wasn't really going give them much more then a glance. My personal feeling about a religion is that even though their might be things you don't like you gotta do them anyway. I do feel that those in the past along a similar path did use both these tools so even if I don't use them I have to at least learn about them so as part of my commitment for this year I gave myself the dreaded task of taking on both subjects. That was in October, then in December the lovely lady that used to run Light of the Moon in Evanston IL came to a Tarot Meet Up I had joined and let us know she was going to be starting both tarot and astrology classes in January. How fantastic is that!! I picked up the books for the class and started reading the astrology and hit my normal wall. These books are boring...real boring. I have never met an astrology book that I liked and the one for the class was no exception. Sleeping pills have nothing on these guys.

     The tarot I was having a slightly better time with. I had picked up a book called The Complete Illustrated Guide to Tarot by Rachel Pollack and had one of those "Ah-Ha!" moments when the numbers of the minors were grouped to show their meanings. I had learned the Trumps back in my early years of Wicca and had been reading with just them for along time, but the 56 minors had been just way more time then I want to put into what I thought was just fortune telling. I've never given fortune telling much stock, yea it can be fun, but was never my bag. Now I took to the tarot like a baby to mother's milk. I was understanding it as being much more then a prediction devise, but as a way of understanding the energies going in inside me that are coming to the surface. It is a way to better understand my inner conscious and what it's telling me. The classes on this were now helping me understand the relationship between the cards and what patterns to look for.

   I was dreading the astrology class. We were handed our natal charts and the lot of us looked at them as if we were handed a calculus problem. Janet then started to go over them with us and so much of our personalities came out in those lines and symbols it was kind of scary. Then we got into how when the planets line up or fall in patterns to go with your chart that it can be directing energies your way. Now I understand why I was to take this class, as a way to better understand the energies around me as how to use them better. Now this class became cool, and I have loved every week of it so far.

   I'm applying my knowledge to my spiritual practices now and as a result I know that this upcoming New Moon on Friday is happening during a Mars-Pluto opposition which makes it a fantastic time to begin new spiritual paths. So now I'm holding a Dark Moon at my house the night before for banishment of the old and a New Moon the next night to begin things new for my path coming up. It's also fantastic that it comes right in the month of Ostara the time of new growth so by all means everyone take advantage of this great energy pattern the universe if sending out.

May you always have shade over you head and sweet water to drink.

Earthwalker

I was born on the thirteenth of June in the year 1975. It was a Friday and there was a tornado warning out that day so the sunset that I was born under was not seen by many. I had always been drawn to nature as a child. We lived on a large parcel of land in northern Illinois that was bordered by both a farmer and forests. It was in those fields and groves in my youth that I would steal out at all hours of night and day to wonder the paths and find what could be found. Long were the summers and falls of those days, and I can recall so many of the sounds and sensations of that time.

    I remember the blowing of the grasses by midnight breezes and the pin pricks of starlight in my evening wonderings. By day the buzzing of the insects and songs of birds were enough to remind me that no matter where I was I was not alone. In the spring the apple and cherry blossoms were joined by the soft fuzzy buds on the pussy willow I had planted when we first bought the house. These small gray leave coverings were always my favorite sign of spring and I have sought them out every year as long as I can remember. As the cool breezes of spring lead way to the summer months my mother would have us plant the large garden, full of corn, beans, potatoes and a bounty of other vegetables that would be our dinner in the ever approaching fall.

    Summer came with it’s chorus of insects and long days. Chili mornings lead to hot afternoons spent wondering up and down the fields. I climbed trees and looked over the land feeling the breeze blow. Many an afternoon was spent pulling weeds ,resentfully, in the hot sun. Fireflies danced round in the twilight leading me out into the cooling air and towards the rising moon.  The days were never ending and the nights that followed filled with silver light that rained down like some magical shower of light.

    Fall’s cooler nights would arrive like a long lost friend. The air now filled with the sent of ripening apples and the rustling sound of the corn stalks blowing. Weekends now were spent picking berries of red and black before raking piles of apples, picking threw them for the good ones, to make pies and crisps. Leaves were raked over the bed of roses to help them through the long cold months. As the days grew shorter trays of onions were left in the precious rays of the sun to dry before being stored in hanging bags in our garage.

    The winter nights were long and dark. Snow piled up all around and bitter winds blew across the bare land. On sunny days the blazing white light shimmered off the snow drifts tuning them into piles of diamond dust. We were warm inside the small house As the days grew longer the melting snow formed forests of icicles. It was then that I knew that the pussy willows would bloom again.  

    Why I should have been drawn to these paths and trees I was not aware, but I was aware that it was not normal. All around me others were racing to the latest entertainments or loud gatherings while I was content to simply wonder from sun up to moon rise in this odd little word of branches and blooms. I had looked into books on witchcraft at the local library, who’s selection was very meager, but never found what I was looking for. These books were about rites held in secret locations underground and hidden away. I did not think this was what I wanted and so I put the idea aside till my teenage years and just went along my meanderings.

    It was in 1989 that I came upon a copy of Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham. I picked it up at a bookstore and knew that this was what I was to do for the rest of my life. As I read it, it explained more of what I felt inside then anything I had ever before. I do not claim to have done spells, or drew circles of salt as a child not knowing why I was doing them. I do not come from a family of witches, just from a family that enjoyed working the land they owned.  No this book did not explain any mystical behavior I did, no the book more fit my reverence for the land, the Earth and Moon the Sun and Sky. It was a path that I felt I knew on the inside and a way to bring it out. It was at this time I started my Book of Mirror and was able to record down my feelings and experiences. These were short and mostly dealt with my coming to terms with the new way I was seeing things.
   
     Once I felt the time was right I did a self dedication in a grove near my house. It was one that I had gone to many times before and now it would be the site of one of the most important things I was ever to do.  The incense was a green jasmine cone, as that was all I was able to fined at our local Woolworth’s and it was a Spring day of lazy clouds and bright sunshine. I had taken what I need to a grove and stumbled down the side of the hill that I had to climb to reach the area. The grove was a wonderful place. It was not more then a hundred yards across and had a small creek running threw the northern edge. It’s roof was a canopy of leaves supported by many tall thin trees. Sunlight dripped like golden rain on to the ground and when the wind caressed the branches the puddles of golden light flowed into one another in a brilliant dance of golden watery light. I came here often to sit and play growing up. I lit the incense and read the dedication aloud. As I read the was no wind, not even breeze, it was as if all was waiting. I finished and then there came a great gust of wind, stronger then that had been at all that day. It was then that I knew that I started something that I could not turn back from.

   It was now that I became more involved in finding more out with out bringing to much alarm to my parents. My mother was very kind to my “hobby” and was willing to buy me books within reason. There was a small bargain book store up the road from where we lived and it was from here that I got the bulk of my early knowledge. Copies of the Merlin Tarot, Handbook of Crystal Use and others were picked up for a few dollars and given to me as a means of pacifying my interest. These were mostly on the ways to use things, Cunninghams book was the most dear book I owned, for at that time I felt it the only one that really did understand what I wanted to do. It was about honoring all those things that people used in those other books.  It was an address in the back of this book that would lead me to the place that was to give me the most significant growth of my spiritual life. 

   Circle Sanctuary was listed in the appendix of contacts and it said that they will send you a free issue of Circle Magazine. Being only a freshman in High-school and not having any real job, or money to call my own, I sent off for it. When it arrived I was not sure what to make of it. It was like a large newspaper with articles on earth conservation, gods and goddess of other nations, and different tools. I was amazed that here was a whole publication dedicated to a Wiccan life. It meant that there were others out there. The sanctuary was located only a few hours away, but it would be almost ten years before my dreams of visiting it would come to be. For now I would pour over my complementary issue and lean it almost all by heart.

   Then I came upon a shop Called Light of the Moon in a town not too near by and befriended the shop owned who’s name was Janet Barns. It was here that I came into contact, for the first time, with things I had only read about; athames, powered incense, scented oils and books like Cunninghams. Books that expanded my mind and consciousness. It was Janet that first taught me how to read the tarot cards I would hang around the shop for hours at a time and talk to her, a pesky teenager I’m sure, but I was in awe that I had finally met someone that could talk to me about what I had only read. I had filled the high-school years of my path with reading tarot for friends, wearing my crystal in a little bag around my neck (my friends used to lovingly refer to it as my ‘angel shit’) and talking about Scott Cunningman’s book to whom ever I could. I had a few friends in school that took the book with a grain of salt, but none serious as me. I cast my first circle in the basement of my friend’s house with table salt and a stake knife. I remember feeling pretty silly about the whole thing. We both remember it to this day. The next big step forward for me was the day I left home.

    I was living with my boyfriend in Milwaukee Wisconsin in the spring of 1998 when I went to Circle Sanctuary for the first time.  It was Earth Day and it was to be the beginning of a much deeper relationship with the God and Goddess. That day is one of the most vivid memories I have and I play parts of it over still now almost ten years later.  Over the course of three years of attendance I learned much more then simple books could teach and because a trusted steward of The Land.

     It was with that group that I made my first Turn with a group of other Pagans and learned more about how and why we did things. It was over these years that I was able to lean the difference of those dedicated to walking The Path and those that were just there to say they were into it as there were many that came and went. My first summer there I did my first vision quest while watching the Land over one week alone. Morning would dawn over Sprit Rock, the sandstone out cropping that over looks the 300 acres, and I would sit and meditate to the rhythm of Earth. Here is where name came to me, but it would be years before I shared it with anyone but myself. Sitting in the mugwort circle watching the moon rise was to bring great inner awakening that I never to before have known. I would tend the shrines, sit in silence by Brigid Spring, all this bringing me further down my Path.

    Then my life took me further from Circle then was able for me to travel, so I began to look for other covens and groups to practice with. It was now I became part of a group called Crossroads. The group was a different type of growth. At first it was a group of getting to know people, my time with Circle had showed me how to tell those that were true Walkers from those that were there for show. Then only after half a Turn the group fell apart and a fracture spread causing half the older and truer walkers to depart. Then the void came. While it was good to practice with others again this group felt more empty then anything. It felt like a group that was going through the motions and not knowing or really caring why. It was at this time in the group that made me aware that I had grown enough to be able to walk by myself. So it was with some turmoil that I left the group and went out on my own, but not quite.

    Out of the turmoil of that time I became close with several members of the group and we started our own coven. Within this group I was able to write rituals as well as much of the other writings contained herein. This group was four at first, we did our rites in secret as it was forbidden to practice outside of the Crossroads circle, but after the break we were bore bold about our gatherings and opened them up to others, anyone willing to study and bring their views and opinions My researching of other religions and understanding of The Path I was to walk came into play these days. I had been researching things for a long time and now I was able to share what I knew and learn from others. So now I sit in my spritual haven and dip my candles, mix my essential oils and keep the stewardship of my land with thoes around me.