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#Harvest #Moon (revised excerpt from Manifesting Destiny: Pages from Persephone’s Notebook)
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Harvest Moon, too overcast to see your resplendent glory. We’ve been dancing to, if not exactly under you. The weather should be clearer tomorrow night for the full Full Moon effect. Or will another hurricane come up the coast to drown you? Unsettled weather. Unsettling times.
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I mind-see a fantasy, and wonder about the Christ and AntiChrist quoting scriptures, using prophecy to further causes of today. If Christians wonder why I mock them, or more likely take offense (turn that other cheek, guys), how would they feel about castigations of being Satan Worshippers, evil heathens, unbelievers in the One True Church (splintered as it may be). They leave no room for me. I, on the other (left?) hand honor them by taking their creed seriously. There’s room enough in believing for all of us. Why don’t they want to see that? They’ve only been around for a couple thousand years. In the beginning was way before any of us can remember. At the end we all die, onward to whatever afterlife does or does not await us. The Bokononists, in Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” believed the world ended when they died. Their world did. Of course, their world was a fictional one created by a human author. So like a god, the artist, creator of worlds.
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Don’t worship me! I don’t want the responsibility. Why would a god? Why would a President? What kind of power does it really give them? Well, if we the people and our other representatives aren’t looking, paying attention, expressing our minding, who knows? Maybe it’s not some mythical AntiChrist and Beast as prophecy warned would bring about The End Times. Maybe the threat is much more mundane and RealPolitik. Myth or portent, humanity does need to PAY ATTENTION! We need to understand and believe in our true reality, the world where we live.
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So, dear Goddess, tonight belongs to you, under the Harvest Moon. My intention for supplication to your wisdom will be brought with holy honor. What is the nature of my harvest and my sacrifice? The Vestal Virgins were not physically intact, but free of the domination of any man. Perhaps I am in that sense a virgin as well. Though the bonds of love — but are bonds of love a domination if it is a love between free equals with no expectations, no demands? What am I willing to sacrifice? It’s not like I’ve got much. Maybe I can sacrifice my ignorance, my unfounded fears, my ill-advised temptations, self-imposed limitations. I sacrifice my weakness in the service of my strength. Sounds lovely. The thing with magick — be oh so careful when wishing that you are ready for the consequent reality after tweaking to magick’s demand. Be careful what you will for; it may become your destiny. I am opening myself to destiny, not out of bravery, but necessity. What else have I got? It’s far too late in the game to switch over to a “normal” lifestyle. I have the candles, the incense, the herbs, the wine, the spell. Blessed be, all wise and witchy, and willing to manifest the joy of peaceful plentitude upon our world.
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http://caelastory.blogspot.com/2009/08/manifesting-destiny-pages-from.html
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It is time to reap ecstatic harvest
of moonbeams dancing to dawn
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Come, discover arcane treasure,
magic of my forest’s harvest!
Breathe radiant air of revealed bliss.
Respond to call of tribal chants
no longer silent,
embraced in resonance.
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Layered legend long ripens, tangled,
mired below in brooding traipse through
dust and gloom.
Crafty synaptic flow,
dreamcatching from all hallowed and harrowed,
tasting subtle essence in the bitter grain
of sanctified harvest sacrifice.
Swept into light as destiny,
revealed by labor of cultivation, excavated,
bestowed honoured place
in ritual chorus.
Celebrate
‘round communal table, exultant vibration.
Energies blend, fuse.
Recombinant winds call timeless tunes.
Rhythmic movements re- and un- engage,
ever changing,
never wholly new.
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Loosening from light, long hazy days ebb golden,
move through Sun grown fields and buzzing industry of
bringing in harvest as written in ritual lore.
Cold is still a legend, a remembered song
soon enough we’ll be singing,
huddled into aural lamps for mutual warmth.
Tonight, as twilight melts into familiar
constellations, migrating like flying life,
sweet fruit of harvest still feeds celebration.
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Wizardry of synaptic awareness,
unlikelihood of consciousness,
Dreams, Visions, Reveries,
ineffable insights
too dear to deny.
See, smell, taste
chemical reactions;
hear reverberating air.
Feel through ceremony, festivals,
deities, seeped in ritual,
the glue
of worldview.
There is no limit
but that will assigns.
Strict chants, mannered dance,
keep reality in line.
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Real lives yearn, feel need
for some promised warmth of care,
shared extremities that nurture hope
of shared deliverance, hands and minds
together strong;
surge of survival over uncertain destiny,
return to industry, if we might find that energy.
Realign expectant gaze toward peace, plenty
— planetary necessity.
Eventually to remember as poignant history,
ritual song, reverie
as respite to somber tidal drum
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In these moments
stuck in migrating vibrations,
attached to this Earth,
mired (but not beyond mirth,
cosmic inspiration),
miasmic
throes and woes,
undefined transformation,
laborious birth;
I am dignified, made whole,
giving service to vision.
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Soar o’er awakened sky, past to now.
Taste surprised by puissant essence of
perennial harvest sacrifice.
Private seas pull grand tiding,
sweet, bitter sweet, salty sweet as candied seaweed.
Sunny, Moony, Star-eyed oracle snidely whispers
dense cues, cuneiform runes.
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Angels and
Demons wage sacrosanct war.
Dice from a grail foresage trial or comfort.
Hungry Ghosts wail.
Vampires and Creatures
of the night seek shelter before
travails of daytime break them.
Skies descend, dark mirroring.
Smell the woodsmoke, intoxicating, soft and sweet,
masks the taste of bitter bile, secret vomiting,
starving despite harvest’s gay array of treats.
Faded, nearly blind, falling in and out of
shamanic fever, primeval native callings beyond sight,
ripple of tribal beat at the periphery,
ecstatic vision dark/light/agony and brilliant breaks,
star-bright constellations.
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Private harvest.
Cultivation rituals hung taut.
Shamanic divination
spun into fine golden fabric.
Gifts of remembrance.
Harvest nights given to ceremony, empathic
frenzied dance, spontaneous gaiety
— a tribal stew of sustenance,
warm spirit embodied.
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Call in the harvest
My Lady awaits (impatient
is She, as all Immortals)
She sends cauldrons for filling
on chariots drawn by rays of the Moon
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Faery Queen or fabled harlot
stirs potent night blooms, expelling myths of
what we cannot bear, cannot overcome.
Feel in the electric falling starlight,
spells of renewal, of power to look back
upon our falterings, to find the seed now grown
yet changing still and ever, able,
willing, co-creating in the illuminated shadow,
invoking the peace of dissolving twilight,
of midnight’s hopeful resurrection,
of the hinting sky that lightens before the dawn.
Take peace into each breath, each incantation,
from the strength to align impeccably
with your deepest truth.
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Staring at Lady Moon,
breathing in sweet night blooming herbs from the garden.
She fancied hearing faint music in the rustling wind.
Slowly, not knowing that her body moved,
she danced, the wind carrying her like a lover’s arms
caught up in dancing slow and closer than a kiss.
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She had so long felt helpless, unloved, unsupported. She felt a slow,
undulating power move through muscles and mind.
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“Goddess?” Her voice quavered at the audacity; but she felt surer of her course.
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“Goddess, I am your child.”
Nothing had ever felt more true.
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Willing to be merry, to partake of
ritual, merging through
overarching trance elation.
Constellations, moving, shifting,
making waves in our collective
consciousness, appear to reveal
sparkling impulses of true vision.
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Pleasure can win
salient treasure beyond
imagining’s failure.
Caught up in
rising song, brave steps, the play,
foresight gifts of gravid day,
celestial night.
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Able to skip through vicissitudes as charmed emanation:
all is working inexorably toward fruition, true harvest’s peace.
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Who chants behind that flowing curtain, charming?
What acts denote sacred allegiance, guide to mystics’ source?
Tribal myths, quests as lessons, collected anecdotes
signify ambient science for that era’s delegation.
Zen koans, Aesop’s fables, lullabies,
invitations to meditate, to quiet, ineffable experience.
This yearn toward meaning harbors no enmity
to progressive projects magnifying kindness.
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Golden night.
High fields of food and seed
aglow for harvest.
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Harvesting Moonlight
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Today the dark approaches, loosens veils of entropy.
Pixel colors whisper, hum of trails diminishing.
Lumbering, tales sweaty from slumber sweep
crumbling crusts, twigs and dust,
unencumber twinkling.
Luscious Moon, brilliant, rises
like a sacred flower unbinds, radiant,
smiling indulgence.
Celestial song, deep-breath effulgence,
wise spirit. All we who hear it open our wings.
This night we fly over poignant fields of work requited,
imbibe euphoric mystery of peace. Sweet day’s release,
rewards of harvest, ritual feast of play.
Uproarious dance with moonlight; voice, arms, lift
in embrace so strong, complete.
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harvest
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Mornings come later now,
permeated with scent of harvest,
green and red and the bright orange
of the Harvest Moon.
Morning air, heavy with moisture
seeps through my pores
into my bones.
I see roiling ships caught in rough sea,
their fortune a deity’s toss of dice,
or whim.
Ships laden with treasure,
sailors desperately loved.
Synchronistic vision,
on a placid pond three ships sail
a fine sunny regatta.
No longer await on the sickle,
deep fade of harvest
beckons to prescient chores.
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Ritual
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Ritual gives form to meaning
(every merry crone doth know).
Every act from which we’re gleaning,
Every sack that we must sow
Gives rise to tides that make us wise;
Gives humor chance for binding wounds.
Does good these ancient weary eyes
To dance abandoned round the moon.
