feminism

The Three Rs of the 13th Moon: Witching Void Rx for the Primal Feminine.

 

Oh, you sweet Queen! I knew you’d be looking for me at the glittery picnics and posh masquerade balls.

I told the hosts I had nothing to wear, that my black-lace wardrobe was better suited for summer moons, but I was lying straight through my long-pointed teeth. Sit down for a spell, and I’ll pour you some of my home brew, a bitter and thick mead seasoned with lavender and holy basil, that will make you rethink all your holiday aspirations.

I’ve some sustenance for you too; fresh from the wood-fire oven is a heavy-crusted, still-warm loaf baked by the ghosts who still linger here since I dismantled my ancestral altar. Let me fetch you the valerian-infused honey to sweeten it with, and I’ll have just enough time to tell you the truth before you drift off to sleep curled by my hearth.

Lean in, love. I can’t have the neighbors hearing my secrets. The black tourmaline I’ve planted at the edges of my fence won’t keep them from staring, and I’ve grown so weary of answering their boring questions about my living craft and moving sorcery.

Come close enough to feel the sinful musk of my breath on your cheek, Sister. Tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll share with you what I’ve really been doing these last few weeks, what I plan to be doing until year’s end. It’s a practice I hope you’ll take up, my love, but I must warn you, no one will understand.

Your family will click their tongues and raise their brows, your most fickle lovers might threaten to search for warmer arms — good riddance, but your truest companions, those dear ones who don’t blink when you wax poetic about Kali’s tongue, Hekate’s crossroads, and Lilith’s serpentine skin, they will acquiesce to the shadows and give you room.

Hold your breath. Here it goes. It happened like this: As the November moon peaked, my coven circled and wept for their dead, then my house emptied and fell into an eerie quiet; this is how I knew it was time. The air went still, and I left all the ritual mess, wrapping my grandmother’s cat blanket around my shoulders and walking into my haunted garden.

It came early this year for me, and the milk-white siren song of the 13th Moon serenaded me into a lucid dream of evergreens and hot drinks, yule log pyromancy and wicked knitting, solitary spell-work and wild divination, solstice solitude and soup-scrying.

You see, Sister, I’ve been diving deep and diving well into the three Rs, the only magickal remedy this Witch knows to the social dis-ease of consumption that befalls our world during this dark-n-holy time of year. Conjure some space for reflection, ritual, and rest. Build some temporary walls around your most precious resource, time, for this flesh is ephemeral and the wheel is ever-turning.

We are entering into the dark moon of the year when we fall back into the primordial black of nothingness, when we retract our claws from all we have created and birthed, when we sink back into the fertile dark where our magick is the purest and our hope is the strongest.

Rest, beloved Priestess, and rest radically. Be epic, say No, and let the show go on without your demure grace and careful planning just this once. I see your lids drooping and spine rounding. You’ve finished your meal. Let’s take a lesson from the furry, fat creatures and build a nest. Curl up with me, and we’ll drift off to sleep whispering to one another about the beauty of all-things-vast-and-void.

You hold me close when I long to fill the holes in my day with so much sugar and wine, and I’ll cast a circle to keep out our lonely and whining lovers.

When did we learn to fear the dark so? This still and sacred majesty holds it all for us. I’m raising my psychic hood as the wisest Crone does, and I’m letting my eyes go soft. I call in nothing. I banish nothing. Here, we Witches are at one with the very vibrations we will wield on longer days. Here, our bellies grow tamer and our spiral bones bend just a bit. Our blood runs heavy, and our fingers uncurl.

Can you feel it, my heathen Priestess? We are falling right back into the cosmic source of everything, trusting our worlds will wait for us until we return hungry and ready, raging and clear-headed, poised for timely eruption and wanting our wands.

For now, we are full of faith in the fertile dark, and we are fed to the brim with all the Primal Feminine food we need to carry us through these longest nights.

Blessed be the empty shadows, the ethereal infinite, the cool and quiet wild, for therein lies it all.

***

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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