troublemakers

Mind Your Manners, Heathen: A Witch’s Table Etiquette in Five Rules.

 

Hold your cup in both hands and slurp all you like, fallen angel. Be vulgar! The heartiest spread covers our Blessing Moon table, and we shall make our own rules tonight.

Let’s forget all we learned in finishing school and sit with full hearts and legs open. Let’s whisper words of grace and gratitude for all we are about to receive before we devour this bounty like the ravenous, sinful she-wolves we are. Mind your manners, Prophetess, and we shall get along just fine.

1. Speak raw: Put your dirty elbows on the table, and confess your deepest desires to me, wild one. Fuck the small talk. I want to know the nature of the longing that seethes beneath the midnight anxiety and fretful dreams. My soft skin is as sensitive as yours, so let’s not waste our holy breath on hapless wishes for cooler weather.

I don’t care to gossip about over-polished celebrities or tired pop songs devoid of romance. Let’s save our mundane musings for an Autumn evening when the spirits are so loud we can barely hear our own voices; tonight, let’s only speak of the raw and the real, forsaking any topic that does not make our bellies quiver with the sheer truth ascending from our guts and climbing our serpentine spines.

2. Soften your creaturely body: Lick the sweet crumbs from your fingertips and pour yourself another drink. You can’t be too greedy here, and there’s no use pretending you are nothing more than a diamond light body surviving on photosynthesis. Release your controls on your muscles and lean back. Rest your head in your hands and bark-belch between giggles lest you get a stomach ache.

I can’t be offended, my love, so feel free to lie on the ground between bites. Soften up that full belly and let the moonlight shine on your primal humanity, for we were never meant to hold our bones so rigidly.

3. Feed what aches: There is no strength in depravation here, my sweet, and our table is hardly the place to renounce your earthly needs. Go ahead and dig into this Blessing Moon bounty we’ve worked so hard to harvest. Have seconds and thirds while you can. Reach over me with both arms and grab what you like.

Butter your bread with something slippery and build up some fat, for Crone-time looms before us like an all-seeing and all-knowing wolf’s eye. Feed the cob-webbed parts of your aching psyche, dearest. Now’s the time, and I’ve spent all day brewing up these secret recipes just for you.

4. Howl your thanks: Keep chewing, and howl forth your words of thanksgiving between breaths. I want to hear where you’ve buried your treasure trove, Witch. I want to weep while you speak about the love you hold for your babes and the lust you have for your lovers.

I want to see you ooze so much gratitude from between your teeth that food spills from your tongue, and I want to be there when you break down and your whole body shakes with appreciation for this life your soul designed for you.

5. Leave when you like: You don’t need my permission to leave this table, and I promise not to think you rude should you gorge yourself on my bounty and leave the mess to me. You are my guest only for as long as my harvest nourishes you, and I dare say you will grow tired of my dark poetry and bitter flavors. From the murky bottom of my Witch’s heart, thank you for dining with me under this waning moon.

Thank you for sharing with me what others may shun, and thank you for showing me the nature of your soulful hunger. Hug me close, crush your bones against mine, and whisper something sultry in my ear before you go. These are the bright days of bountiful blessings when the world around us swells with brilliant grace and drips with the milky dew of pure possibility.

Let’s not stay too long indoors, my love, for there are others who crave our company.

Toss your napkin on the floor and lick your plate clean. Undo your top button and let your bulging belly hang free while you wave goodbye, and I’ll watch you lumber down the long road while the moon casts a serenely silver glow on your skin.

I’ll go to bed then and leave the remnants of our party strewn across the table so the faeries and house sprites may gorge themselves at the Witching Hour, and I’ll dream of falling leaves and greyer skies.

***

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Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky is a heathen visionary, Aquarian mischief-maker, and word-witch. Author of 'Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming', 'The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman' and 'Woman Most Wild' (New World Library 2020, 2018, 2017), Danielle teaches internationally and has facilitated embodiment trainings, wild circles, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of The Hag School and the lead teacher for the school’s Flame-Tender Facilitator Training and online coven, The Hag Ways Collective, an E-RYT 500 and YACEP, a Fire-Keeper for Ord Brighideach, and a dedicant to Irish-Celtic spirituality. She believes in the power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists as well as the importance of ancestral healing, embodiment, and animism in fracturing the longstanding systems supporting environmental unconsciousness and social injustice. Parent to two beloved wildings and partner to a potter, Danielle fills her world with nature, family, art-making, poetry, and intentional awe.
Danielle Dulsky