Starry Like Me: Meditation on the Final Harvest

Hoooooray!!!

Pagan New Year is here, or, at least that is according to me. And if you'll mind me just a while I'll explain (otherwise scroll all the way down!):

I was born a good Catholic girl from blue collar, solid working-class roots. We went to St. Rose of Lima in Baltimore with Grammy and the Mc's when I was a little little girl, and later, to St. Athanasius, literally the church at the end of Church Street where Grammy lived in Brooklyn Park. I still remember the hard concrete feel of the church steps out the side door when I would sit awaiting the adults and look out over the bay to the Key Bridge. And I remember the sound of Grammy, depressed from the loss of her husband, Pop, the Colonel, as she literally started crying with joy on the phone when I called to sheepishly tell her I got awarded one of the scholarships to Arthur Slade Catholic School in the fourth grade. I grew up in uniforms that showed my knees and thighs when I got too tall during pre-puberty growth spurts, and later in uniforms that I rolled at the hip to show the edge of my boxers or thigh-high socks.

It was around that time, high school Archbishop Spalding knee-high trouser socks and maryjane doc martens that the witchy sense kicked in. Mom had it all along, would beg me not to go out certain nights because of a feeling in her gut, only to have me come home escorted by the cops, you know, arrested or car-wrecked or in trouble for smoking weed or some such thing. When it started, that sense, to arise in me I took it for granted, blamed it on the weed or LSD. In general at a young age I thought it separate from me, outside of me--as I'd been taught God to be. Which, ultimately, is how you learn to fear something. If it is separate, other than, or outside of your self.

I was "over" the Catholic thing by puberty (I had no room at the time for a system with such harsh dictates. I was a riot grrrl, and doing lots of experimentation that was "sinful" then, tho it's clear now that what was actually happening was my aversion to anything dogma or stringent institution beginning to show form.) I was a firm and dedicated "aetheist". Which is a lie I was telling myself.... I mean my earliest memories are swept gold at the fringes: mystical marvelling in the basement at Grammy and Pop's, or at our townhouse before my brother was even born, in the backyard at New Cut Farms where we moved when he was an infant. Memories of being stilled from the inside, then revelling in wonder over a deep and boundless inside sense that I remember choosing to just call Jesus back then. At 16 I read Tom Robbins for the first time, this correlated with my teacher, Mr. Keisling, introducing to me Joe Campbell's work on mythological thinking and the Hero's Journey. Acid was making me want to believe in a world magical and within. And specifically Robbins rambled on in such delightful boundless and resonating ways about white people in the Western World, who settled over everything indigenous and natural with a conquering mentality because we were severed from our true roots: of agricultural, pagan ancestry. I really, really liked this!

So it makes at least a little sense that, at age 17, in late October, with little other information than a head full of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Keisling's ditto run-offs on Joe Campbell and the purpose and necessity of myth, that I would get out of my car late one night, feel a sense of breathing or life coming out of the woods, and proceed to mark a four-cornered square off in the drive way by walking to and nodding to each corner, than placing myself within the square. I remember clearly daring myself--to trust what I was doing and to further trust that the woods, or presence of them, wouldn't make themselves known to me unless it were meant to be. And that is it, the one thing that as long as I can remember has been part of my make-up--what I used to call Jesus when I was little. An ever present line of peace and sweet that, tho not always available to me, is still somehow always there. A simple and real ground within that can only be described as I know.

I dont know when or how I fully surrendered to this path, but the thing is: it is mine. I take little bits of info from wherever I go, I take what fits, or what challenges me, because that too is a piece meant to fit--and leave the rest. I subscribe to no specific belief system other than the oneness of things at the base level--energy is neither created nor destroyed, only changes forms--and this is enough for me. I pray to Jesus because I believe archetypes are real, which is also why I find peace in the inner-realization exercises taught by the Buddha, and the reason I pray to the Mama and sit in the wisdom and light of her moon. Mostly I joy and revel and trust fully and wonder in the Great Unknown. I talk to trees and the earth and the wind and fire because of dakinis, or orishas, or elementals, but mostly because I believe archetypes are real. I worship the patterning of things, and at the end of the day beleive my only true Calling is the Hero's myth of my own and my own Divine Becoming as Joe Campbell teaches. The entelechy of potential. Being of service to others entelechal value through this. I believe in patterning, in entelechy, because as I said if I believe in the oneness than I believe archetypes are real. I believe in the power within and getting quiet to captivate and access this power. And I believe poor is the man who cant sit a while, or sees no value in doing so, amid the presence of his own self. The only thing he can know for sure...

Which brings me to pagan new years, or the last moon cycle of the harvest year. I doubt you'll find what I am about to share anywhere else, and that is because I have taken some generalized teachings from astrology, esoteria and paganism and applied them to my own personal experiences in life. I spit them back out know as much for you as for me because teaching/writing is how I better process and learn, how my path continues to open up before me. The New Moon is tomorrow and to me this is the most powerfull moon of the year. Traditional pagans celebrate Samhain, or New Years, at Halloween. It is the time when the "veil" is the thinnest.

In my own life this "veil" correlates to the waning amount of sunlight and the circadian effect it has on sleep and subconscious levels. Which for me, as an artist/writer/poet/shaman/witch is important, because the subconscious level is the place where my dreams happen. Where the details of life, especially that 90% that my brain is busy registering while I'm unaware and just doing my ol thing, get processed and integrated. This is also where Jung believes the reign of archetypes exists in full, our collective unconscious or memory. And so now we have greater access to this place. Likewise, new moon is when literally, the nighttime dark is darkest. So to me, and in my own life again and again, when the dark place comes it is the time of pure subconscious, a time to watch dreams AND especially what issues or joys, what fears or little nags surface in the day to day. Esoteric astrology teaches that a seed thought is dropped during the new moon--at the darkest part of the night the subconscious place aligns too with a archtype, or pattern, meant in an etelecholigical way to grow out of and become you. By the light of the following full moon your subconscious will have brought this seed or pattern more in to fruition in your day to day actions and expereince, and more to the light of your mental awareness.

Agricultural peasants of Europe took advantage of the extra light at October/November's final full moon to crop the last harvests and to put up the seeds that yielded from that year's produce. Rituals were actually harvest times in the field! This is why it is pagan new year: the end of the agricultural bounty for the year, thus time to look forward, to larder up the pantry and batten down the cellar with the bounty for the cold time to come, and as well anticipate next years harvest rounds. Also time to give thanks to the pantheon of Gods, or archetypes, that ruled the fertility cycles of the earth. I believe in our collective unconscious, as well as in the DNA memory of our cells, we still rise and fall according to the the tide of these old agricultural patternings. Later, we came to call this imprinted tradition Halloween.

Personally I have, again and again, experienced it to be true that the new moon preceding the Final Harvest Full Moon is that time during which I can glimpse the fruits of my entire upcoming year to come, because hints of them are so close to the surface of awareness within me. It is such a fabulous time to celebrate our yeild!!!!

So friends, take heart, take stock, be joyful and with gratitude and may you, this weekend, seek the quiet guidance of your Own.

As for me--my little bro's coming down the beach tonight with his beautiful fiance. We are having a fire for his bday--which, AUSPICIOUS auspicious hooray hooray--is also on the holy high day of last harvest new moon!!! What a year my bro must have to come, Woo hooooooo!!

And may you be blessed
and your blessings endings
that circle back to begin again
by this moon may your blessings enlarge
and circle for you this
holy cycle of samhain

harm to none &
blessed be!


O life. I love you.