feminism

This Is Me, with Over-Limp Fairy Wings: Beltane Verses for the Holy Heathen.

 

This is me, with torn-to-shreds fishnet stockings and over-limp fairy wings. This is me, spitting twice on both recklessness and the good-girl life.

This is me, and this is my ceremony of truth-telling and birth-by-fire. This is me claiming my right to speak and be heard, and this is no legendary tale beginning in a land far, far away.

This story starts after the party has gone too long, when the drunken creatures are calling me toward an uneasy slumber, when I long not for a mysterious prince to glamour me awake but for a raging Beltane bonfire to burn me in just the right places. This is the Maiden’s ritual of never-agains and no-mores.

I’ve left the safety of revelry behind, and I am biting my tongue bloody with a homesickness for a life I’ve yet to know.

This is me, with thick, crusted lashes and tear-soaked glitter flecks in my eyes. I am crouching by these flames I’ve sparked to life with my bare hands and raw will. I am wiping the weariness off and curling my painted toes in the melting mud. This is the wild woman’s last stand. This Witch refuses to work her magick for anything other than the majestic and the real.

My hair is knotted, and I’m through being a sparkling, pristine version of the dirty-teethed beacon to the Primal Feminine that is me. I am painting pentagrams on my heart with worm-riddled loam, and I am crawling around my ritual fire like a long-winged raptor testing her more earth-bound predatory powers.

This is me, and my wings are folded in tight. I am stalking a better life, squinting in the dark at a life so holy it can only be mine, beckoning the descended masters to climb through the ground beneath me and show me a way lit not by bright promises of transcendence but by low-burning lanterns illuminating the downward spiraling staircase into my most fertile depths.

Be my wilderness guides, ancient ones. Grant me a little night vision, just until this fire festival is over. My head is heavy with honey mead, and my soft body aches for rest.

This is me, and my wet lips are quivering under the Budding Trees moon. This woman is a fallen angel, and I’ve set my mind to the red-glow of the Underworld. I am shedding my scaly Winter skin and giving up my well-fashioned masks in the name of authenticity. I am a storyteller, a her-storian, and my darkness does not lie.

This Beltane night, may I enter the shadows willingly and without expectation. May I ask for no rescue, and may I permit the primitive, diamond-spark of feminine god-light to shine through my one mouth and three eyes. May my own divinity be my salvation, and may I be invisible to those vampires who would breach my boundaries and desecrate the sanctified ground that is my skin.

This is me, in all my bare-breasted and stretch-marked glory. My wine-soaked clothes have been shed, and this is the rawest version of my body I’ve ever known. May my soul’s new shape be forged in the milk-white beams at moonset, and may this birth-by-lunar-fire be a short journey from shame to grace.

This is me, and I am indeed a sinner. Purify my desire to please, and infuse me with an undying innocence that will glow bright green beneath my ribs from this Beltane birthday until my Crone’s final breath. Bless my longing. Sanctify this agonizing crucible as my sultry baptism in the soulful lake of fire, and melt to mush my most rigid joints and tightly gripped beliefs.

This is me, and I am more awake now than I’ve ever been. My wings are spread, and I am looking moonward for permission to rise. May I no longer dim the high-fire glow that is me. May I reject those who piss upon my wildest freedom, for tonight I am choosing joy over comfort, solitude over union, and transformation over stasis.

This is me, and I choose miracles and magick. This is me, and I choose hedonistic delight alongside compassionate connection. This is me, and I choose Summer’s moonlit romance alongside sisterhood, art, and spellcraft.

This is me, and these are my Beltane affirmations, the verses of the holy heathen, the hymns of the warm-hearted temptress, and the heavy-breathing of the limp-winged fairy who stayed at the party too long. My head is clear, and I am drawing a new flight path. I am invoking slick feathers and a wider wingspan, and I am rising out of these flames like the sure-voiced songbird Phoenix I have always been.

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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