May fires & sex rites... or just gardening.

May/Valborg/Beltaine rites are often related to sex. But while I see no point in denying that sex is an interest of mine, it is not something I engage in in for ritual purposes. I am not that kind of witch (thought I know a few...). Sex can bring intense feelings but it is not magic, and I look upon it as cheating a bit. Like I think it is cheating to use drugs or alcohol in rites really. I cheat a little at Valborg evening, I drink beer. :-)

I have a relationship directly with nature that aquire nothing else to instill me with a sense of wonder and worship, that is as intense as an infatuation. The feeling I have is beyond intellectual edmiration of natures beauty and cruelty. The intellectual understanding of nature deepens the feeling but is not the source of it. I feel bliss in every cell of my body and I forget about myself when I am out in nature alone. (Other humans most often spoil it for me by talking.)

I am born a hex. At six years old I went into the woods behind the cottage and made my very first altar on a big rock that was flat on top. I gathered curious and beautiful finds there, like a cranium of a raindeer, feathers and stones that glittered or of strong colour and wierd shaped branches. I also made paint from berries and made signs at the altar. I do not know where I got the ideas from. My foster family where atheists, I knew nothing of my herritage then.

Now we are leaving for Valborg celabration. Lo from the collective has rented a car. First we are going to see that Coleridge is all right in the winter storage, before we continue to the cottage by the sea. We have lots of work to do there at this time of year. Both with the boat and the cottage garden. I am bringing novels and rubber boots with me. There will be no internet. But we will manage. We will pretend it is after the civilization has fallen, like in that song "You and the Candles".

Frozen feelings

If I'm smitten with someone and he picks up on that and he is interested and change his behavior towards me - I freeze up inside. I loose all interest. I figure out what words or actions that would alienate the person and then I do it. It is over before it ever really began.

You might think I have problems with attatchment or commitment or something. Maybe it is that too. But what I feel is not fear but weariness. "Now the game begins" I think. I notice myself responding to how I am supposed to react when he is doing his part. I am revolted by it. And in that same moment it dies for me.

That is why I keep my feelings inside me and shelter them. To let them last longer. I do not think it is possible to start a relationship without falling into the old tracks that are shown to us by media and the world around all of us. Yes there are different variations. But they all feel fake and unsatisfactory to me.

If you who are reading have a suggestion for a sollution to this problem of mine you are very welcome to comment on my post. Even if you just want to tell me I am completly wrong and pretentious or something. I am fully aware of the fact that I am dysfunctional and strange. :-D

Hex fires

Now the ancient fire festival of Valborg/Walpurgis, (or Beltaine) is beeing prepared. I have seen many bonfires beeing stacked. Sweden is very secularised but all the old heathen festivals are still celebrated by almost all, but concidered just fun tradition by the majority. This makes it easy to be a practising heathen.
We usually travel to the summer house, clean up the lawn and spend Valborg there. So also this year... I love it. It is the first time of the year we go there. And now there is all the spring flowers. Yesterday and today it has been real summer weather, too. We also go there because the biggest bonfire is usually on the beach next to the cottage and we don't want it to be burnt down. It's traditional to get drunk at Valborg and that is a dangerous combination with fire and fire crackers, that are used to scare evil spirits away.

The tradition tell that the Hexes would have a party this night and then return from Blåkulla "Bluehill", where they had resided since Easter or Ostara. From there they brought back the vegetation spirit to the land so the summer would be bountyful. The May Queen brought it with her in the shape of a seed like Persephone in greek tradition. The fires could symbolise the guiding light of the torches of Hecate who was known to the romans as Diana Lucifera or Diana Lucina. (Interesting that we in Sweden at midwinter have the Lucia tradition.) Since the Hexes flew in the dark the May fires made it easier to find their way back home. Of course they didn't really fly they were just high. It has old shamanistic roots. Now we just get drunk. :-)

Diana Lucina/Hecate is not forgotten...

America

Once upon a time a sami family from Finland emigrated to America. One of the daughters was my great grandmother, also a hex. She worked as an waitress and met my great grandfather. They had a farm and my grandmother was born. My great grandfather inherrited a farm in Finland so they moved back. My grandmother married a charming but bad man, against the will of her parents. My grandfather. During the war she escaped with her children into Sweden and married another man. And converted to Jehovas witnesses. I remember this much from what my aunt told me. I was most interested in the part that my great grandmother was an hex too. Do I remember it wrong if I think it was Michigan they made their American farm in? I wonder if I still have relatives back there. Did my great grandmother have sisters who stayed back there and who had daughters and granddaughters?

Now when I have researched finns in Michigan a little I just have to cite this slightly racist remark the folklorist, Richard Dorson made about the finn emigrant community in his classic Blood Stoppers and Bear Walkers:

The coming of the Finn has rocked the north woods country. He is today what the red man was two centuries ago, the exotic stranger from another world. In many ways the popular myths surrounding the Indian and the Finn run parallel. Both derive from a shadowy Mongolian stock - ‘just look at their raised cheek-bones and slanting eyes.’ Both possess supernatural stamina, strength, and tenacity. Both drink feverishly and fight barbarously. Both practice shamanistic magic and ritual, drawn from a deep well of folk belief. Both are secretive, clannish, inscrutable, and steadfast in their own peculiar social code.

It tells me something of how the finns were recieved if nothing else. It is not at all stange to me now that my great grandmother and her husband decided to go home to Finland again. My aunt said that my great grandmother missed the genius loci of her homeland. I guess it was like me missing the Torne river now.

Awen

The only strong experience of Awen I ever had was walking by an gigantic ancient Birch tree at home. It was a quite ordinary day and I was neither glad, sad or empthy feeling. I had not eating anything special or starved myself eigther, had not prayed or meditated or dreamt anything unusual that night. I didn't feel a longing for God to show up, and I do NOT think I was choosen or spoken to by God allmighty or anything like that. That's not how I think it works. Was it even the tree? It is a tree I must have walked past a thousend times and climbed a hundered times.

But in that moment I was made aware that everything is One and Love.

Thought this was an beautiful experience that I often try to recall in my memory, I don't try consciously to repeat it. I am happy that I don't have those all the time, it would become an nuiscence. But I would wish that everyone could have one such experience in their life. But I also belive that when we die, all of us no longer have the mental walls up that separate us from knowing that we are and have always been part of it: God or Hel or whatever you want to call it.

Now Baron, one of the founders of P.I.E. is experiencing something that he puts into words with references to tv series Twin Peaks. He says fire is walking with him and talking to him. And he is saying meny strange things, sounding like an oracle with a fondness for David Lynch productions. We are having some trouble interpreting him, but it will be interesting to see where all this ends up.

Blacksmiths & Black magic

I bought this viking age style glass today. This model was found at Birka. Come Beltaine I will drink Wytchwood brew from it! Since before I have a bowl and a money purse from Birka that my brother gave me. I have some jewelery too, quite much. When we sailed to Birka on Coleridge last summer, I bought a crystal pearl. My collection of replikas is growing, I hoard like a dragon. I like how much of the things are made in the same way now as they were back then. From my aunt I found out that we have some Vallon blood in our family, and she said my eyes are Vallon.

The Vallons were blacksmiths and magicians. Or people thought there was some magic to the blacksmithing that they were so secretive about. I have many different streaks of magicians in my family history, and on both sides too. Most of it is sami. I love to hear storys about my ancestors. Some of them are infamous. Well, one of them. He had a bit of a temper. I wouldn't strike someone with blindness, even if it was just for four days. To begin with, I don't care to find out how to do something like that. And then there is the Law of Return. Who knows, my wiccan sisters could be right, there might be something to it...

I'm pondering something the mysterious 'Gerrymander' left as a message to the PIE crew: "To see ahead you must learn what has come before."

Well, that is true for my life too. I want to learn as much as I can about my ancestors and history around them. Like, what was special about the skolt samis that set them apart from other samis? This summer I'd like to travel to Inari to find out. I am also intrigued bu the Komsa culture. When I worked at Voullerim 6000 we made a research trip to Alta to look at the place it was discovered with professor Westfahl. It's interesting the way genetic research changes our outloook on sami history in Scandinavia and western Europe right now. And all peoples all around the world. Like when they found out the viking queen buried in Norway was persian! Peoples have wandered around and blended with eachother.

Ohh, I want to participate in the Genographic project. Too bad I have no brother on my biofathers side though. Maybe this research will counteract racism. I know I am a total mix and I am happy about it, just more of history to feel connected to. My microbiologist friend who is han chinese, told me that the split toenail I have is a sign I also have han chinese ancestry. I was intrigued, I love daoistic philosophy and long before I ever heard about Dao De Jing I heard sentences from it in my dreams. I was also awed when I found out the linkage between samis and berbers of noth africa 9000 years ago! But there is another aspect to it also. Now research in immunology is done on samis, and I have donated my blood tests to research on Lupus. The long dark winters in the arctic may have changed the samis immune system, researchers theorize. Maybe knowledge of the past will lead to a cure...

The Phoenix bird of Hope.

My lupus is in remission. I now have reached a subclinical level of inflammation, no longer burning up with rheumathic fever. I'm picking myself up from the ashes and regenerate once again, just like the Phoenix bird. The creature of Hope.

The Phoenix bird is also the logo for Paranormal Investigation Experts or PIE, a group I have been following and joined forces with some weeks ago. Hector, the brains of the pair that founded the group, has a theory called the JUMP theory. Or in my language: 'HOPP teorin'. HOPP is a nordic word that in it's anglicised version is written HOPE. So for me the JUMP theory is also a message about HOPE for a better future. (You did know that english originates from Nordic language? There is a saying: 'You cannot be born, live or die without speaking Nordic' ...Isn't that true, geekgrl2019?)

But the story of the Phoenix bird also tells about the pain of recreation, renewal. Before it can be reborn, it has to burn up in fire. (Think also of the beloved hindu God Shiva, the Destroyer.) There is always going to be people who don't want things to change, because they have more to gain by preserving their own power. And so it is in this case too. Somebody is sendig blueclad zombiefied goons to harass Hector and Baron, and the same people is trying to prevent the JUMP from happening again. Probably 'Greyish' types. They will fail. Resistance is futile.

Call it Ostara, Eostre, Easter or what you will. Doesn't matter what religion, this time of year is significant. This is the season of hope, beginning NOW. The egg - a really strong symbol in myths of all cultures. On the outside it looks like a dead stone (and often is camoflaged that way too, in pattern and colour) but from it comes life or a new way of life. Ptah the creator shaped the world egg in Egyptian myth. And many more cultures muse about the world beeing shaped from an egg. My own ancestors, the finnish, too. The druids say the egg is not from a bird but from a snake or dragon.

Wales, Cymry, is the land of the red dragon. I went to Aberystwyth at Lughnasadh the same day as my initiation in the Dan yr Ogof caves, to look at the Black Book of Carmarthen. Later I found what the welch call an dragon egg at the beach. It is egg shaped, smooth, white and a little translucent, looks like stone. I hold it when I need to calm down and think. The dragon who is born from it some day, I hope, is me.

The egg we are hunting now is the next JUMP. Weather the mysterious egg comes out of the butt of a bird, snake, fish or dragon, we will find it and open it. No strange organisation will be able to stop PIE. It is the oldest story in the mythology book, (or clay tablet) and our thoughts and expectations have power. What we can believe in, we can make happen, we can create. Just think of all the inventions that science fiction writers have dreamed up, that inspired researchers and were realised.
I have a dream!