Let Yourself Be Honey-Tongued

There is poetry in all things if you look for it. Language, and how we speak about a thing, carries incredible power. Language shapes our world view. It shapes our understanding and our relating.

Bees have been beloved to the poets since time immemorial. Sappho, Sylvia Plath, Kahlil Gibran, Pablo Neruda, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Oliver, and Antonio Machado to name a few. Indeed to speak well, beautifully, or convincingly is to be “honey-tongued”.

One of the things I hold most dear about the bee shamanism pathway is the craft of poetic speech. Very rarely is anything laid out for you in linear fashion. Every teaching drips in metaphor, poetry, and carefully selected words. Rather than “the infinity symbol”, it is the lemniscate. Rather than “working with energy” we sup of the flower. When we explore language with our honey-seeking tongues, we drape ourselves across the bed of our imagination. Worlds open. New pathways of seeing and understanding occur.

When I say beekeeping, what do you imagine? When I say bee guardian, what do you imagine?

When I say, “a practitioner of bee shamanism can learn to energetically work with their endocrine system”, that’s interesting right? What about when I say, a melissae can become a mistress of her own alchemical garden? Something else happen. I’m roughly talking about the same thing. The first makes a certain kind of sense. You can nod along, say “sure, sure”. The second evokes. It beckons. It hints at much more than energetic work. Something nearly mythic is at play, and you are invited to be part of the myths stalking you. A mythic life doesn’t have any interest in easy explanations.

Bringing the liquid amber of poetry into our language addresses the hole that black and white thinking leaves in us. It is rather anti-establishment. Patriarchy doesn’t love it. Your head of marketing is wringing their hands.

The dominant narrative likes things to be laid out: steps 1,2, and 3. No crooked path through the gloaming. No dalliance in the meadow on your way to market. It’s all “how to’s”, quick fixes, and “7 easy steps to siphon the creative soul right out”.

I’m fairly certain the bees don’t approach life from a users manual. They are infinitely more complex than branded, market-approved language will allow. So are you.

We owe the magnificent creativity of this Earth a little attention to the craft of language. After all, she spins in the black void of the universe, who’s very name hints at the honey-dark stuff that binds it all together: poetry, song, verse.

When I name a course Apis Sophia Exstasis, Entwine, or Betwixt and Between, I’m not trying to be mysterious. I’m calling to the particular poetry of your soul with words from my own. I believe that we are magnetically drawn to that which will call us home to ourselves. Have you ever stopped in a town while traveling just because you liked the name of it? Yeah, that.

Perhaps we could step away from the confines of words that sell, or words that make it obvious, and step into the sensation you feel on your tongue when you speak the name of a beloved softly to the night air.

Maybe then we can start to sniff out the pollen-scented language of the bees.

Communicating with nature

When we seek to communicate with another species, we have to open up our centers of knowing. We have to move beyond language and sight, while still softening into our senses and our sounds. Each of us carries so many ways of knowing within. While one person may “hear” the bees by seeing an image in their mind’s eye, another might “hear” them through a physical sensation, or a distinct emotion. Still, your way of speaking with the bees may come through dreams, a series of synchronicities, a phrase in your head, a sudden knowing. It takes believing that it’s possible. Believing that a plant, stone, beehive, or mountain, might actually have something to say, and might even be interested in saying it to you.
You can communicate more than you think you can.

It’s Okay, She Can Handle It

I was having a book discussion with women from my beekeeping apprenticeship last week and we got onto the topic of sovereignty and body autonomy.

I teach about asking the bees for permission each time you enter a hive or manipulate them in some way. This is NOT a common practice. In part, because we don’t know how to ask. We aren’t taught emotional and intuitive pathways toward knowing, or ways to work with our feminine side. In a Patriarchal system, we value our masculine side and masculine ways of knowing. Intuition and body knowing don’t have visual evidence to back them up, so they are undervalued.

I have a lot of students come to me after a rather upsetting lesson or in-the-field experience with a conventional, or even natural, beekeeper. It goes like this: beekeeper has an agenda. Beekeeper moves fast. Beekeeper quickly manipulates hive. Student expresses concern. Beekeeper says: “Don’t worry, they can handle it.”

There it is. The ubiquitous term that immediately devalues a being’s sovereignty. Not to stereotype, but only twice in the stories I’ve heard has this beekeeper been a woman.

What got me, is how often this phrase is used when manipulating or harassing humans. The female coworker experiencing sexual harassment: don’t worry she can handle it. The young boy being forced to toughen up: don’t worry he can handle it. The child being “lightly” bullied by their own parents: don’t worry, they can handle it. The 13 year old girl being teased by family for her changing body (me): don’t worry, she can handle it.

This attitude of toughness, or the ability to survive something, is so prevalent we don’t even notice how often we all say it. There’s a different between surviving and thriving. I think this is the crux of modern beekeeping: the commercial beekeeping industry has enforced a model of survival for human gain, dulling our senses to what it means to truly thrive.

The toughen up model of living may be great for survival in challenging environments, but it also comes with the Patriarchal disdain for those girly things like emotions, intuition, softness, gentleness, and god forbid, taking your time.

So next time you hear yourself of someone else say, “Don’t worry, she can handle it,” stop and check yourself. She may be able to handle it, but it does not mean she is okay with it.

Photo by Onyx Baird

Motherhood as a River

So far, parenthood hasn’t been the hard chore so much of the internet (and people I know) implied. Every day is a joy of discovery. Granted, I have amazing help, but not always. It’s often just little Cricket and I trying to find a way eat breakfast before 11, composing work emails while breastfeeding, and circling the neighborhood wearing an ergo.

What I’ve learned so far:
• My lifelong battle with anxiety has significantly diminished and now there is a low hum of contentment in my being.
• Said anxiety, when present, is no longer existential, but very much about the well-being of my daughter.
• it’s good to have neighbors.
• Bath-time is happy time. Naked butt is happy time. Morning wake up is happy time.
• Getting out of the bath is sad time. Putting on clothes is *#%! bs sad time.
• It is possible to make lunch one-handed.
• It’s also possible to pee while wearing a baby.
• Apparently watching a human figure out how to be in a body is the most darling thing.
• The wrinkles on my face are from years of practice making silly faces, which are now in high demand.
• Babies can literally grow bigger in the space of a nap.
• It’s okay for my body never to be the same again. Mom’s are warriors.
• I still love coffee.

Everyone’s motherhood journey is vastly different, and the kind of support you have plays a huge role.  That being said, my experience of it being more joyful, content, and fulfilling than expected comes from my own history of grief, longing, and years of preparation.  It has taken me a decade to get pregnant again after a heartbreaking miscarriage.  Between 17 and 30 I attended four births.  I watched and supported my goddaughter grow up.  I had a lifetime of adventures and travels. The whole time I wanted to be a mother.

Many people were very supportive of my choice to have a kid on my own, but I also heard a lot of warnings: it will be very hard. Am I sure? Do I know how I’m going to make a living. Am I ready? Why don’t I wait a little longer? Really now? Do I know I’ll lose my independence? 

I also heard to prepare myself for grief and identity loss.  I was very scared of postpartum depression.  I had experienced a version of it after my miscarriage: the hormone dump, the fatigue, panic attacks, anxiety and depression.  I didn’t know if it would happen again, but I did know that I am prone to anxiety and depression.  (Side note: interestingly, I haven’t dealt with panic attacks, serious anxiety, or depression since discovering I have the MTHFR gene mutation - common in 40% of population - and starting to take methyl folate as a result).  

I had spent so many years processing grief around miscarriage, longing for family, loneliness for partnership, rejection, fear of my biological “clock”, etc that I had gotten used to things being hard.  It became part of the narrative of my spiritual journey.  But if the spiritual journey is all shadow work, then in some ways, you run the risk of finding yourself addicted to shadow work.  You’re subconsciously looking for the next underworld journey. To the big excavations.  Somehow it makes to good stuff acceptable as something you’ve earned.  Oh hello, culturally prevalent Christocentric programming.  👋🏻.   It’s not all that different that spiritual bliss bypass, so common in the washed-out versions of western spiritual capitalism (⬅️yeah I called it that). 

I’ve done my share of “shadow work”, and I even let my ego start to tell me that it was somehow more valuable than all the “light work” so popular today.  Either way, if you are only working with one end of the spectrum, you’re stuck.  Life is a lemnicaste ♾ when we spend to long in the underworld winter, we forget that sometimes ice melts and rivers just flow.

My pregnancy was a flowing river.  It  scared me so much.  I had to consciously remind myself to accept that my body was healthy and things were flowing.  Around me the world literally burned.  I stayed inside with air filters on for four months.  But I was a textbook healthy pregnancy at 39.  I felt luscious.  I felt the most beautiful I’ve ever felt in my life.  Good thing the medical industry made sure I knew I was a geriatric pregnancy 🙄.

When Aurora arrived, the panic came back for a couple weeks.  If I napped while someone held her in another room, I would wake up with an animal-dread and burst into tears when I saw her safe and contented in a loved ones arms.  It was hormones, for sure, but also a deep unwinding of fear, and slow acceptance that indeed, just because the other shoe CAN drop any moment, does not mean it’s going to.

Therefore, when I say I am delighted by how content and happy I feel, it’s not because all mothers should feel this way, it’s because I didn’t know I could.  I was preparing for the inevitable identity loss and grief for my former self, and instead I have landed in myself in a way I really didn’t expect to experience in this lifetime.  I though I had figured out how to be in my body before. I spent a decade studying under a shamanic tradition that centers around embodiment and womb connection.  It prepared me for this, but I could never have imagined what motherhood embodiment actually felt like.  

I know not every mother experiences things this way.  This is just my story.  But I do think it’s important that we acknowledge there can be ease.  The river can flow.  Even if there are rapids, whirlpools, and the occasional eddy.  I will not step into the Christocentric model that motherhood is martyrdom.  If other mothers feel that way, remember that we are responding to a colonial, religious, white suprematist, patriarchal system which has methodically suppressed and oppressed women’s spirituality, women’s voices, and women’s leadership for thousands of years.  The village was dismantled in exchange for the factory.  The woman doctor (midwife) was literally murdered.  The multi-generational household was exchanged for the nuclear family.  Of course women feel abandoned and alone as mothers.  It can help when we hear that other moms are having a rough go of it too.  To hear we’re not alone.  

However, it also helps to hear that motherhood can be joyful, easeful, rich, content.  Even if you’re single. Even if you don’t know how it’s all going to work out.  Even if you gave birth during the Anthropocene.

Mothers are the fiercest, strongest, most earth-shaking force in all of human history.  We move mountains.  We break hearts open and rip down dams and blockades alike.  We craft estuaries of safe haven.  We build temples to the imagination.  

She, the mother, is in you, regardless of whether or not you ever bear life from you womb. She is in everything you create with you precious life. She is in every way you mother the land, the community, and the furred and feathered ones in your charge.  

This is a hard time to be in the world, but the babies still come to us, the spring still blossoms.  Clearly, there must be some delicious goodness worth the grace of our presence.

There Is Still Magic

My daughter is one month old today.  I am still landing in the steady belief that she’s really here, she’s really my daughter, and I get to keep her.  Becoming a mother has been a lifelong dream of mine.  I walked into it with no illusions.  I knew it would be hard.  I knew I’d need a lot of support.  I knew I wouldn’t sleep much.  But there really are no words to prepare you for what happens to your heart when your make a whole human, and they look up at you and smile in the early dawn light. 

The in-between time of postpartum has been full of responses to her every need, and a few tiny pockets of reflection.  I am always amazed by the series of events that conspire to create major life changes.  If it wasn’t for the pandemic, this baby wouldn’t be here.  If I had been partnered, this particular divine baby wouldn’t have been the baby I conceived.  If I hadn’t spent years building up a business and a following here on Instagram, I would not have put the call out to raise funds for the donor/insemination process.  The right people might not have ever known I was trying to have a child.  The donor may have never come into my life.  All the various pieces might not have fallen into place to bring this little one earth side.  

We all buy into the story, consciously and unconsciously: the great career, the big love, union, a child, a family.  I wanted it all, it that particular order.  Life is much more creative than that.  I chose to try for a child by donor because I wanted this baby more than I wanted to wait and hope  for a partner.  

I remember feeling sad and a bit guilty that I couldn’t have a magical, intentional conception with a partner who was also wanting her.  Insemination felt so cold and clinical.  My fantasies had to be firmly moved out of the way to make room for consciously conceiving this baby.  And let me tell you, on the day she was conceived, it WAS magical.  I was able to do the insemination at home.  The way the donor came into my life was synchronistic, unexpected, and incredibly timely.  Due to the pandemic, the potential donors at the cryobank (who I had  painstakingly selected over months to make my final choice) were all running out of vials and the cryobank wasn’t taking any new donations.   

I also found that I could do the insemination at home with a midwife.  I tracked my ovulation, but the machine I was using broke and got the day wrong.  I inseminated 3 days too early.  

Since I knew it would take a number of tries, I wasn’t too upset when I discovered the error.  We had already set things in motion.  

On the day of my first try, the bees swarmed and gathered outside my window: a potent symbol of female fertility. Beneath the swarm I found the antler of a stag: a potent symbol of male fertility.  We did two inseminations twelve hours apart.  In between, I went into my hive named after the serpent of Delphi.  While spotting the queen, I looked down and saw a huge gopher snake slide past my feet: an ancient symbol of both male and female fertility and power. Then a close friend called to tell me she was pregnant.

Three days later I felt implantation.  I was having a smoothie in town and it happened.  I didn’t dare believe but early symptoms showed up right away: abdominal cramps, water tasted metallic,  abdomen rounded out a bit, breasts got fuller, dizziness, and a heightened sense of smell.

After a decade of grief and longing, it took one try.  One magical convergence. So I’m here to say, even if it doesn’t look like how you planned, magic is still afoot.  The most modern and seemingly clinical of procedures can be surrounded by ancient power and mystery.  Life can always surprise you with gifts.  By the Gods, this Instagram account made it possible for me to raise the money to do the insemination and was directly responsible for connecting me with the donor.  You all made this possible. Magic. It takes being willing to see the magic when it happens: the signs, the synchronicities, the flow, the unexpected.  I hope I can remember this as I endeavor to raise this little human to the very best of my ability.  In a world full of chaos and strife, in the midst of climate crisis, there will always still be magic. 

Embracing the Eco-Erotic

“And now you ask in your heart, 

‘How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?’ 

Go to your fields and your gardens,

And you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, 

But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. 

For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, 

And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, 

And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.”

• Kahlil Gibran The Prophet

I had a dream last night where I was partner dancing with a beautiful stranger and someone broke us apart.  I protested, “but I’ve been single for six years!” This late into my pregnancy it’s actually quite surprising to dream about love.  While my dreams in the early stages of pregnancy were all about processing loneliness and the longing for the beloved made manifest, in the last few months I did something I haven’t tried in about a decade.  I stopped my dreaming practices.  As a dream teacher, this was rather uncomfortable, since living by example and maintaining my practices is so important to me.  Yet with the loosening of the threads that have made up the whole of my identity (a byproduct of pregnancy), I needed to let go of the “work” part of dreamwork, and just see what my daughter and I wanted to dream together.  

There’s been your fair share of chaotic nonsense dreams, but throughout the last few months, my dreams have been peppered with the sensuous and the erotic.  Not in the way of lovely mysterious encounters with dreamy ( <—- yes pun) men, but with the inherent eros that ripples through nature.  I have dreamt of bathing in thermal pools with mermaids, of swimming in a river canyon lined with blooming jasmine, of surfing with dolphins through rainbow phosphorescent seas, and of sailing on rope swings through a verdant forest.  All of these types of dreams carry a note of the sensuous mixed with exhilaration, a feeling we often attribute to intimate encounters, or falling in love.  However, these are all propelled by encounters with the natural world.  

Sitting at the edge of spring, and the edge of motherhood, I am becoming aware that these years of “singleness” (whatever THAT means), have also afforded me the opportunity to cultivate something precious.  A deep, wildly sensuous affair with the living earth.  Do you ever pick a single rose petal from a flower just to caress your lips with it until the petal becomes translucent?   Or go to the river early, when the water is still cool, just so you can feel the sun warm your skin as you dry out on smooth rocks?  Or inhale the scent of a beehive in May, eyes closed, feet bare?

Do you know what this kind of behavior can do to your imagination?  You can learn to inhale more than air.  To breath up the deep green of a temperate rainforest, or the indigo blue of a desert night.  You can see more in a ripple of hills and clouds than a horizon.  You can float into the hanging gardens of Babylon.  Hell, your own skin can bloom in peonies and anemones.  

I think, this is perhaps what bees do every day.  Riding waves of scent and light we only glimpse in our dreams.  Enfolded in flowers.  Submerged in the hum.

It’s also the inherent terrain of the child who is allowed to freely be with and of the Earth.  In the era of climate change and biodiversity loss, we need more than ever to cultivate this relationship with nature.  With the sensate experience of pleasure as it relates to sun, sky, wind, rain, sea, sand, fur, flower, snow, and stone.  Our ancestors most surely did.  Maybe not in the near past, but somewhere in your blood there are the whale-song memories of cultures who courted the moon and laid flowers at the feet of the sea.  

This kind of relationship to the beloved that is more-than-human is not simply a pleasure, it is a necessity.  When we feel more than our basic survival is at stake, when we feel our soul is entwined with this fluttering, heaving Earth, we change not just how we fight for it, but how we love.  

Magnetic Maternal

I wanted to be held by a man.  Someone who loved me so much that he wanted to create life with me.  I wanted to share the moment of that positive pregnancy test with him, in joy and disbelief.  I wanted him to bring me hot cocoa and soup and marvel and my shapeshifting.  It was a fantasy, but not entirely unrealistic, after all, couples experience this all the time.  It took a decade of carefully picking apart the threads of love, partnership, and bearing a child.  I could not accept that they might be separate things.  Everything about my life had taught me to desire the coming together of two souls to create a third.  At the same time everything in my life has also taught me that family happens in a myriad of ways, and love does not equal someone who desires to create that new life with you.

When I love, I love big.  Not selflessly or with delusions of grandeur, but big like the way I feel when the ocean is lit up with phosphorescence, or when the songs sung by friends around the campfire make your heart want to burst.  Big like rivers and autumn.  It took a long time to learn the difference between desiring romance and desiring partnership.  It’s embarrassing to talk about wanting a man, wanting a partner, wanting love.  It feels like every statement of desire needs to be followed up by a disclaimer: “But I’m fine on my own.” “Oh, but I’m also a strong independent woman.” “Oh, but I’m not co-dependent.” “Oh, but I know I don’t NEED a man.”   Need and desire are two very different things.  What a perfect paradox of our times to be a woman who is at once longing to be met in love, and at the same time dismantling the patriarchy programming of a woman’s role in society.

It was some time around the 5th year after my miscarriage that I realized I may not meet someone in time to have a family.  This is when the unpicking of the threads began in earnest.  I was and remain unwilling to compromise on either of my two deepest desires around family: for a child and a partner.  I slowly came to the understanding that my time to grow life in my womb was limited, while love of a man was not.  I started to research the insemination process.  I began to make life decisions around the possibility of being a single mother.  I dated.  I cried over a broken heart.  I moved to a place with more access to friends, family, and community.  I doggedly refused to become jaded.  I took apart and rebuilt my life piece by piece. 

In this 10 year period of dismantling and becoming, I discovered an untruth I have been carrying with me: that I was not deserving of more than one good thing at a time.  I created either/or paradigms.  I can either be a strong woman or be taken care of by a man.  I can either have a career as a musician or have a child.  I can either have a child or a man.  I can either be a mother or a lover.  I can either be magnetic or maternal.  You only get one.

It was the bees who started to change this.  I was captivated by their ability to surrender so fully to the bliss of the flower, and return with soul purpose to feed the nest.  Behind them sat the Melissae, the bee women of ancient Greece, and all the teachings of their lineage.  The Melissae is a woman who is fully alive to her eros and with her desire to nurturing life.  Magnetic and maternal.  One does not beget the other, they are constantly in flow with each other.  No sequestered spiritual life for the bee women.  They are fully of this world, dripping with the milk of the stars and the blood of the Earth.  I owe my courage for conceiving a child on my own to the knowledge that these women existed.  They exist.  We exist.

What is it that crafts these mythic lives we live?  Everywhere we see the day to day struggle of career, loneliness, memories, health, finances.  Yet, underneath and swimming around this is the possibility that you are crafted from the same material myths are made of.  The stuff that reaches beyond the fantastical and straight into the soul of things: long journeys, transcendent moments, the dark night of the soul, the wise mentors, perseverance beyond the odds.  Whatever new story I am writing, I know now there will be at least one essential strand that I pass down to my daughter, and that strand is the red thread of Womanhood.   When we look back in time and lift the veil of history written by men, we find a rich sea of women’s spirituality, women’s traditions, and women’s stories. Cultures and traditions that revered the Mother as creator and bringer of life.  The creatrix. She who we both come from and return to; the void of creation, the magnetic Earth.  She who is both Mother and Lover.  She who is full bellied and entirely entwined with her own sexual potency.  She who gathers the winter to her breast for the long sleep.  She who dances wildly through the desert and gazes quietly into the moon-filled pool.  

Perhaps separating the strands of partner and child are less about coping with grief and longing, and more about inviting the night sea memory of reverence for the Sacred Feminine to take center stage for the new little woman that I am carrying from one side of the veil to the other.  Perhaps she chose me because I am just wild enough to choose to bring her fourth on my own.  I am not striking out alone, but rather sinking into an often unspoken of lineage of women.  Women who were not “single mothers”, but mothers within societies, priestesshoods, and tribes where a woman was not dependent on the nuclear family to survive.  

As I near the portal of birth, there is a candle burning for the pathenogenic priestesshoods we’ve nearly forgotten about.  A candle burning for the womb shamans.  A candle burning for the grandmothers midwifing their granddaughters.  A candle burning for the pythoness prophetess and her womb utterings. A candle burning for the red tent.  A candle burning for the way of the rose.  

I do not doubt that my desire is strong enough to weave a family for my daughter that includes a father.  I have no say over the timing, but I do know that she chose me now, and I chose her.  I chose her during a global pandemic.  She chose me when all the hands of community could not hold her as she enters the world.  I chose her despite the sometimes insurmountable heartbreak.  She chose me because I am alone, not despite it.  I chose her because I can, not because I’ve run out of time.  She chose me because I am strong and soft.  I chose her because I am brave, and because I wanted her more than anything in my life.

I have never felt more in touch with my womanhood.  

Together we are the maternal and magnetic, dripping into garden of life.

Photos by Koa Kalish

The Twelve Days of Yuletide Revisited

Last winter I wrote a series of twelve posts on Yuletide. Each post honored a theme or tradition associated with the pre-Christian winter holidays in old Europe. I have complied them here in one long post for you to browse through. Enjoy!

The First Day of Yuletide

MOTHER’S NIGHT

December 20

For the next twelve days I am going to be doing a series on some of the Old European traditions associated midwinter. We begin with the twelve days themselves.

We all know the popular song, but what are the twelve days of Christmas? If you go looking, you’ll likely be told the 12 days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day and end on January 6th. From the birth of Christ to the coming of the three wise men. Twelve days plucked from the people who celebrated the Earth and handed in a neat little package of Christian theology, avoiding old traditions like Mother’s Night.

So what are the original twelve days of Christmas? To understand this, we must first recall that prior to Christianity there were centuries of celebration at midwinter. In fact, in the Roman Empire, 250 years after the birth of Christ, the people celebrated the 25th of December as the rebirth of the Sol Invictus, the “Unconquerable Sun”. In early Christianity, there were even some who claimed the Nativity was on summer solstice. It’s important to remember that what’s in the Bible we know today was decided upon. There is actually no biblical evidence of Christ being born at midwinter, but since midwinter is a time when people celebrate the return of the the light (literally, the sun), it only made sense to meld the birth of the Christian saviour with pre-existing rituals. Christianity couldn’t quite do away with long-standing folk traditions, so it absorbed them, making slight alterations.

One of those alterations was to change the dates of the twelve days of Yuletide, and give each day to a Saint. Nice and tidy. The original twelve days actually begin on Mother’s night, the eve of winter solstice. Today. December 20th.

Mother’s Night comes from Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon traditions. In the Norse tradition, this night celebrated the Dísir or ancestral mothers. The Dísir were the Old Ones: ancestral grandmothers who blessed, protected and provided prophetic counsel to the clan. This is a night for holding vigil through the dark.



The Second Day of Yuletide

YULE/WINTER SOLSTICE/MIDWINTER

Today marks the shortest day of the year, followed by the longest night. Back when calendars followed the season and cycles of the stars, the solstices were times of lasting festivals and holy observances. In some places like the Celtic Isles, Winter’s Night was a time when the flame or light of the previous year was burned through the night, to usher in the dawning of the light on the following morning. In this way, the flame of the old year ignites the new year.

In continuation with my 12 days of Yuletide exploration, I give you the Yule Log. All across old Europe, it was customary to fell a tree, usually Oak, Spruce or Pine, and drag it through the village to eventually be placed upon the hearth and burned through Solstice Night and sometimes beyond. The ash from the log was often saved and used in various cultures to bless the crops, aid in fertility, protect against storms, and heal the sick.

I’m calling it the Yule log because that is how it was popularised by Victorian Era England, but it has many names and many customs tied to it. Yule is derived from Juul, a Scandinavian midwinter feast when a Juul Log was burned in honour of the Lightning God, Thor. In France, the Tréfoir de Nöel was burned for all 12 nights of Christmas, and the ashes were saved to protect against lightning strikes. In Italy, the log was laid upon Juniper boughs, which coins were placed upon it. In England, a branch from the old log of the year before was saved to light the new.

One of my favourite associations is the connection between the Yule log and the snake, described by 

archaeologist Marija Gimbutas She discusses how the log is a representation of the snake, or the “life force” of the earth and symbolises renewal. In the Scottish Highlands, the Yule log is the Cailléach, the Old Hag/Woman who was burned to make way for the renewal of life. As such, the ash, once again, had the healing powers of fertility.

You may not have a hearth, but you can follow the footsteps of folk traditions by lighting a candle at dusk or greeting the sun at dawn.

-Art by Harriet M. Bennett-

The Third Day of Yuletide

MISTLETOE

“The Druids held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it, always supposing that tree to be the oak….They call the mistletoe by a name meaning, in their language, the all-healing.” - Pliny

It has not been so very long that we have lived as if our lives did not depend on the crops, the seasons and the forces that move determine them. When dark winter reigned, people looked to that which brings life. They looked to the sun deities of rebirth. They looked to the fertile promise of life held within the female form, honouring traditions like mother’s night. They also looked to that which lasts even in the heart of winter. This is where the tradition of bringing the ever-green into the home to deck the halls and the mantle. The holly, ivy, pine, fir and of course, mistletoe. It only makes sense that this sacred all-healing herb of fertility found its way into our modern traditions, without losing its essence of the promise of life. For what does a kiss under the mistletoe represent at its heart? The promise of love, life, and renewal. As a side note, mistletoe wasn’t the only green associated with kissing. In parts of England, there was also a “kissing bush” made from evergreen and holly, and filled with red apples or red paper “roses”.

While popularised as a kissing sprig for the hopeful, it has other folk customs associated with it. In France it is given as a gift on New Year symbolising peace and luck. In Sweden, similar to the Yule log ash, the mistletoe was placed on doors and mantles to protect from lightning. In England it was given to athletes because it held all the distilled “soul” or power of the Oak tree it grew up.

Whether you are decking the halls with sprigs of mistletoe for fertility, for luck, for peace or for strength, remember it is an utterly pagan tradition that remained strong, despite the Church trying to ban it. I would like to think that’s because nobody wants to get rid of a tradition that involves kissing in the darkest time of the year. This was the time of year that the wild revelry of Roman Saturnalia took place after all.

The Fourth Day of Yuletide

DEER MOTHER

Once upon a time, a great forest blanketed the northern lands. It stretched from Scandinavia to the British Isles, and from Siberia over the land bridge into North America. Moving through that forest were those who knew the silver tracks of the old ways: the deer and their people.

Today, this great forest has diminished, and the way of life for its indigenous guardians is threatened. We call this forest of the north the Taiga or the Boreal forest and out of it’s depths comes one of our most beloved winter fairy tales.

It was always the reindeer that truly captured my childhood imagination: a sleigh of flying deer, spinning their way through the stars to land on my rooftop where I left carrots and cookies? How marvellous! But Santa’s reindeer have a much older origin and so does the elf himself.

The story of the reindeer came from the snow covered lands of Northern Europe where the people honoured Deer Mother. The reindeer is the only deer where the female is larger than the stag. Both male and female reindeer have antlers, but only the female retains her antlers in winter. Much like elephants, the oldest matriarch leads the herd. For the Sami people in northern Scandinavia, life depends on following the herds. There is an ancient marriage between the deer and the people. Deer bring life. On winter solstice, Deer Mother takes to the skies, carrying the light of the sun in her antlers, bringing rebirth to the land.

The cult of the deer stretches back 14,000 years and reaches across Asia, North America and most of Europe. There were a number of goddesses associated with the deer. One of these is Saule the sun goddess from Latvia and Lithuania. Saule rides across the sky at midwinter in a sleigh lead by reindeer. She weeps her tears (sacred waters) and each tear is forged into amber which she throws down to the people along with apples (often associated with fertility and eternal life). Deer mother is so enduring that she found her way into our modern myths and stories, even if obscured behind the Patriarchal wash over her most holy act.

The Fifth Day of Christmas

Santa

We discussed how re-branded Rudolf can be restored to proper status as Deer Mother. Following in suit, we can’t talk about flying reindeer without discussing the gnome. And by gnome I mean The Elf. Or the Shaman. Or the Spirit. Father Christmas. Papa Nöel. Saint Nicholas. Kris Kringle. You know, Santa.

Some folks like to source Santa’s origins in a 3rd century saint known as Nicholas, the patron saint of children. There are many different representations of a benevolent holy man who watches over children, so I have plenty of room for Saint Nicholas in my heart, but let’s not forget the true origins of the holy one in the sleigh.

There is a rich shamanic heritage connecting many modern day Christmas traditions with the Northern peoples. In particular, we owe much of our folk customs to the Evenki, or Tungusic people of Siberia; the reindeer herders (also the Sami to their west of Siberia). Aside from their dependence on reindeer in the long winters, the Northern shamanic cultures also have sacred ties to a red capped mushroom that grows symbiotically beneath evergreen trees. The Amanita Muscaria, or the Fy Agaric is exactly the mushroom you imagine when you think of Christmas gnomes and Santa. It is a psychoactive mushroom the people would harvest and dry by laying them on the branches of the evergreen trees, like our modern Christmas tree. The shaman would later collect them in a large sac and deliver them as gifts to the people. One of the attributes of the Amanita is indeed to cause one to “experience” flying and witness flight in other grounded creatures like the reindeer.

Amani ya brought health and well being, but it was also how the shaman and the people could travel to the spirit world and bring wisdom, knowledge and “gifts” back to the people. Did you know this is the culture were we actually get the word Shaman or šamán, meaning “one who knows.” No wonder Santa, bringing his gifts from the Otherworld, is the spirit of winter who “knows”. Tonight, when you leave your cookies by the chimney, leave a little something for the spirits who bestow their gifts this time of year.

The Sixth Day of Yuletide

THE CHRISTMAS TREE

That’s me (left) and my oldest friend at the ripe old age of 1.

If you’re following along with these posts, you have probably gathered that most of the Christmas traditions I’m sharing have older roots in Northern and Eastern Europe. There are some Roman influences, but overall, much of our winter celebrations come from the cold, snowy lands where sunlight is in short supply this time of year. The beloved Christmas Tree is no different.

As with most of these traditions, there is no hard and fast origin date or place for the Christmas tree. Decking the halls with boughs of holly and evergreen has been a practice among pre-Christian Europeans for centuries. Often branches of evergreens, symbolising the continuation and ever-renewing force of life on earth, would be placed over windows and doors, or decorating major festivals such as Roman Saturnalia. This Roman festival of wild revelry, celebrated during what is now modern day Christmas, was a festival of joy and merrymaking in honour of the God Saturn.

Most decorated evergreens were set up in village squares or paraded from house to house. It wasn’t until the Victorian era that the indoor Christmas tree decorated with candles became popularised. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, was German and introduced many of our most popular Christmas traditions to the royal household and thus to England and the United States. In parts of Poland and other Eastern European countries, the top of a fir tree or a large branch was hung suspended from the ceiling, usually over the table. These were decorated with fruits and nuts. In Germany in the 16th century, there are records of trees also being decorated with dates, apples and other foods, as well as cut paper flowers.

The tradition of tinsel on the tree also comes from Eastern and Northern Europe, where strips of silver were hung from the tree. There is even a legend of a Christmas spider who weaves strands of silver and gold to decorate the tree as the family sleeps. In some places it is considered good luck to find a spider and her web in the Christmas tree.

The Seventh Day of Yuletide

THE CHRISTMAS WITCH

Ever heard of La Befana? She comes from an Italian legend connected to the birth of Jesus. La Befana's name is derived from the Greek word for Epiphany. The Epiphany is the day baby Jesus was revealed as the Son of God. The legend says the Three Magi stopped at La Befana’s home on their way to find the baby Jesus. She is described as an ugly, poor, old woman with a broom (recall the Cailleach of the Celts). The witch receives the three Magi. In some legends they asked her for directions and she points to the star of Bethlehem. In others, they are already following the star and invite her to come along. La Befana refuses because she has too much sweeping to do, but after they leave she changes her mind. She tries to follow them without luck, and to this day, she wanders the skies on her broom looking for baby Jesus. At each home she flies down chimneys and leaves gifts for good children or coal for bad children.

Prior to Santa Claus, the only gift-giver at this time of year in Southern Italy was La Befana. She too, has older roots than her encounter with the Three Magi. In pre-Christian Italy, there was a tradition burning an effigy of an old lady to bring in the new year. Pieces of that fire, as well as the sacred ceppo, or Yule log, were represented in her gifts of fertility now known as "lumps of" coal. Lift up any tradition and there is another one that is Earth honouring, and perhaps a little more female honouring hiding underneath it.

Midwinter was considered a time when witches and ancestral spirits could most easily be felt. It was at this time that stories were told and divinations were cast. It was time for magic and divination. Who better to represent this time than a benevolent witch who somehow found her way into Christian myth. The broom is one of the most powerful symbols of Old European women’s spirituality. It is the symbol of the spirit flight of the shaman, or witch, or seer. It is the world tree. It is the spine, the Axis Mundi, the sacred tool. It is a women's spiritual heritage hidden in plain sight.

The Eighth Day of Yuletide

SING TO THE TREES

I grew up in a town that was small enough to still have Christmas carolling. I used to love going from house to house singing tunes. We gathered before a house and sang until the owners opened the door. Sometimes they ignored us, but sometimes they would join in. If I had been doing this a few centuries back, perhaps the owners would have offered treats, money or gifts. Or, perhaps we wouldn’t have been singing to homeowners at all; we would have been singing to the trees.

Christmas carolling, in the old sense of going from door to door and singing, has roots in Wassailing. As in: “Here we go a-wassailing among the leaves so green…” Wassail is a drink and a folk tradition celebrated during the twelve nights of Christmas, or in early January. The word comes from Anglo Saxon “vesheil” meaning “be well” or “be whole”. As a drink, it is typically made from a spiced wine/ale or cider and sometimes an egg. In medieval England, where abundant apple orchards grew, and livelihoods depended on a bountiful harvest, folk would go down to the orchards with a large bowl of hot, spiced wassail. Often they dressed colourfully, wore feathers in their hats and even performed masked plays. Songs were sung to the trees while wassail was sprinkled over the branches. The bowl of wassail was also shared among revellers, and at the end, the villagers went to the largest tree in the orchard and poured the remaining wassail into its roots. Toast soaked in cider or beer was placed in the forks of the tree. Ever wonder where the term “toast” while drinking came from? Now you know. All this was done with the intention to wake the spirit of the trees and ward off an evil spirit that may harm the harvest.

Wassailing has recently made a comeback in parts of England and the US! You can go sing to the trees one of these winter nights. It doesn’t have to be an apple tree. Any fruit tree will do. Just remember to bring a piping thermos of spiced wassail and offer some to the spirit of the tree. Be well!

Photo cred: 1) public domain 2) @deans_court 3) @cornwalllive 4) @westerncider

The Ninth Day of Christmas

MUMMING

Do you go on costumed capers over the holidays? Because you should. Don’t leave your masks and revelry to Halloween, there is still time to join in with Celtic winter tradition of Mumming. Although, you may need to invite at least one friend to dress as a ghostly horse. Rules are rules.

Similar to wassailing, mumming has had a resurgence in Ireland and Britain. Mummers would typically dress unrecognisably, swap clothes, wear masks and go about the village singing, dancing and performing plays at each house. These revelries often happened within the twelve days of Christmas. Traditionally it was done in silence or “mum”, although singing and rhyme became a major part of the plays as the tradition continued. The word mum means silence. This is where we get the phrase “mum’s the word”. Mumming and wassailing often overlap, but there is a third tradition worth mentioning here as well: The Grey Mare. In Wales the Grey Mare is called Y Fari Lwyd or Mari Lwyd. As it goes, the skull of a horse is placed on a pole with a white hood hanging behind her. Often she is decorated with ribbons and adornments, but her skull is usually left bare. In this Welsh tradition, folk carry the hobby horse to pubs and homes where they perform a rhyme game with the owners in exchange for entry. The mummers offer a verse of playful insults and the folks inside the house have to reply with a rhyming insult. This goes on until one of the sides falters on the rhyme. If the mummers falter, they leave, but if it’s the home owners, the mummers are invited in for drinks, food and mischief.

Why a horse? There is a Christian story about a lost horse and Mother Mary, but the practice is markedly pre-Christian. In Celtic culture the horse was considered sacred as was white animals. White or silver (grey) animals were emissaries of the Celtic Otherworld: the white hind, raven, hounds of Annwn, and Rhiannon’s horse, to name a few. It was a way to carry the spirits with you. Yuletide is a time when the veil between this world and the other is thin, and brings both tricker energy and blessings.

Photo: wikimedia commons

The Tenth Day of Yuletide

ELVES

The mid-winter festivals aren’t just for honouring ancestors and celebrating the light. They are also a time for the fey folk. In pre-Christian Europe, the feast days occurred during key points in the seasonal calendar. The equinoxes and solstices were always considered powerful days of magic. It is on such days that reality is less distinct: ordinary and non-ordinary reality, or what the Celts call “the veil between the worlds” is mutable. The veil becomes thin and fairy folk are often seen.

In Scandinavian cultures, one of these fairy creatures is the tomten. The tomten is a short, gnomelike old man, often dressed in red with a white beard and a pointed cap. You’ve probably seen felted versions of tomten on Christmas trees. The tomten are general benevolent Swedish gnomes, who share relations with the Danish Nissemen and Finnish Tonttu. It is the gnomes who bring gifts at Yuletide. Tomte means “homestead man”. These fey folk are the spirit of the home and offer both protection and company during the long months of winter. They are usually friendly, guarding the home or farm against evil, but they are also known to respond to bad behavior with their own mischief. Does it sound like any red-dressed elf you know? These elven creatures had a great deal to lend to our modern day commercialised version of Santa Claus. This is also where the story of Santa’s elf helpers comes from.

The myths and legends behind these gnome helpers are often associated with the very practical job of running a farm and keeping things clean and orderly. One of the surest ways to upset a tomten and bring down his mischief is to be messy, untidy or rude. On Christmas Eve, the tomten is left butter for his porridge, just like the bees are left a candied cake.

The Germanic, Slavic, Norse and Celtic myths are full of otherworldly creatures who visit during “thin” times like winter solstice. It is a time for great blessing and honouring of the land and its otherworldly inhabitants, so that life may return to thrive in the green of summer once more

Art: Nasjonalbiblioteket Norway 1885

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

SATURNALIA

The Christmas season is full of many traditions that have their roots in the rivulets and estuaries of folklore. From flying reindeer to fruit cakes, there is a rich tapestry of customs woven between the old gods and the new. Christmas is simply the newest name for a time period that required merriment. Why? Because we all need to lift our spirits in the heart of winter. Do you think we’re the first generation to experience Seasonal Affective Disorder? Definitely not. When your life literally depends on the sun coming back to warm the land and make crops grow, seasons become awfully important. This time of year was about prophecy, divination, offerings, celebration, song, storytelling, nourishment and giving. And though we may not like to remember it, in our tidy, holy days, this time of year has also always been about getting it on. If you need any clues just look at the trailing star leading from mistletoe to the New Year’s Eve kiss. From whence does such amorous behaviour stem? Well, from every culture dealing with long nights, spicy brews and close quarters. But also, from the Greek and Roman winter celebrations such as Saturnalia and the winter feasts of Poseidon and Dionysus. These were feasts that carried on for days if not the whole damn month and required an “anything goes attitude”. Let’s all remember, that before the shitty Patriarchal oppression of women by the Church, folk had a much more realistic attitude toward sex. As in, it happened, often. Both men AND women enjoyed it. Women created life from it. It was pleasurable for women (and men). And sometimes, in the dark of winter, it could really just lift the spirits and bring about a little more of that sacred fertility every culture since forever has been celebrating.

Saturnalia, the most well known of these festivals, was a time for merriment, drunkenness, and the breaking of social rules. Servants were served by masters. Clothing was swapped, nakedness abounded, and much banter was to be had. There were even honey cakes shaped like male and female sexual organs paraded around and, erm *coughs*…consumed. 

It was your everyday bacchanalia. The gods of love and wine ruled. This was one of the first origins of Christmas. That’s right. Folks celebrated the return of the light (read: the return of fertility and life) by exchanging gifts, songs, kisses and oh so much more. Speaking of Bacchus, did you know that Dionysus was also a sun god reborn and that his festival was on the winter solstice? Brumalia, was the Greek winter holiday associated with Dionysus and wine. It wasn’t only his, in early days this winter festival of rebirth and the “Waxing of the light” was also associated with the parthenogenetic (virgin birth) Goddess Demeter and her underworld daughter Persephone. Life meets death meets life again. Shall we go back even further? There we find the ancient death and resurrection of the Sumerian goddess of the light, Inanna. What sits between the powerful force of death and the ever-renewing spring of life? Sex, of course. And so when all gets upended on its head and the gifts have been given…when the songs have been sung and the wine all drunk, people kiss beneath the mistletoe and at the strike of twelve because: life. Life. Life. Life. In the face of dark winter’s death, we insist on life.

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

Twelfth Night

What better way to end the 12 days than with a celebration of Twelfth Night. What exactly is Twelfth Night? It’s the final night, the last hurray, the “Go big or go home”. It’s origins lie somewhere in antiquity, between the Nordic Juul season and the Roman Saturnalia. Or perhaps even older than that. The winter festivals were never about one day. The season of winter merriment was just that, a season, which eventually had to come to a close so that the hard work of winter could carry on. What better way to end that season than with a party? The Twelfth Night comes from the Christian feast of the eve of the Epiphany, typically celebrated Jan 5th. The Epiphany is also known as the Feast of the three Magic Kings, marking the arrival of the 3 Wise Men to Jerusalem. However, prior to the Catholic Church deciding on the 6th for the Epiphany, there was an older tradition of celebrating the end of Yule which began at Winter Solstice. In fact, the church actually changed the day of the Epiphany to try to discourage the generally pagan revelry that occurred on the original 12th night: New Years Eve. Good try dudes. It failed. ⠀

So let's carry on with the merriment: 🍰 In Old England there was a custom of the King’s Cake. On this night, a cake was made. A bean was baked into one half, and a pea into the other. As guests arrived, men were given slices of cake from the bean side and women from the pea side. Whomever received the piece with the bean or pea was crowned the King and Queen of Revels. ⠀

 In Celtic countries like Wales, Scotland and Ireland, there is a tradition of first footing. It is considered good luck to have the first person who enters your home after the stroke of midnight be a dark haired man (a stranger is best!) bearing gifts of a coal, shortbread, or whisky! This likely stems from the fear of blonde Viking invaders in Northern Scotland. Besides who doesn’t want a tall, dark and handsome stranger bearing gifts at your door at midnight. Shall I send my address?⠀

Furthermore, in Scotland, where Christmas was banned by the church for a period of time (for being too pagan), the people celebrate Hogmanay. Folk used to actually work through Christmas and put all their festive attention on Hogmanay. This grand New Year’s Eve festival of fire balls, torches, fireworks, and lights includes traditions such as first-footing, kissing (of course), and ringing of bells to clear the old and ring in the new. It was also a time of gift giving and house cleaning. If you’re in Edinburgh you might even start New Year’s Day with an icy dip in the sea!

In Ireland, single people often placed a sprig of mistletoe, holly or ivy under their pillow in hope to dream of their future mate.

Whatever it is you do this night, give a toast to the people who came before you. Everything you do comes from somewhere and was touched by many cultures intermingling and borrowing from one another. Ring in the year with one hand reaching back, and one hand reaching forward, as we carry on with the grave responsibility and wild revelry of being human.

  Photo credit: @edhogmanay showing the Edinburgh torch procession at Hogmanay.

Harvest Season

I see harvest feast season as the time between the Celtic New Year and the Gregorian New Year.  This means, form Halloween through Christmas, food suddenly becomes much more interesting for me because I’m thinking about fall bounty: fruits, nuts, squash and all the other seasonal flavors that bring thoughts of warm nourishment and cozy times.  

Thanksgiving is a very problematic holiday for all the reasons that are popularly known and many that are less so.  However, despite its origins, the idea of a late autumn harvest feast is not new.  This whole season is a time to celebrate harvest, and there are harvest foods, ceremonies and festivals in every culture.  Sometimes, harvest celebration is also about making up your own new traditions.

Normally, tonight my sisters and I would be helping our mother bake pies for Pie Night.  That’s right, the day before Thanksgiving we have a meal just made of pies.  Pumpkin, Fruit, Tarts, Pot pies, hand pies…you name it.  All the pies.  

There’s something about rolling out pie dough for a French galette or an apple pie that makes me feel connected to the older ways of getting food.  The kind of food that was gathered seasonally because we didn’t have refrigerators.  We couldn’t just pop down to the store to buy imported mangos or greenhouse strawberries.  For many of our ancestors, the relationship to food was more direct and immediate.  A good harvest was something to celebrate, to pray for, to honor.  In our consumer culture, it’s easy to forget the preciousness of food.  Even while so many in our own country are going hungry.

Beekeeping gives me a sense of that preciousness.  Caring for the bees in a bee-centric model usually means I get less honey.  Some years I don’t get any at all.  Therefore, when I do harvest a small amount from the bees it is always an utter delight.  Something worth savoring.  Something precious.  Something to celebrate.  It makes me think of those special moments when you get to enjoy something that was grown with care over time.  Something that is only available certain times of the year.  It’s not so very different than gardening.  Each potato you dig up from your garden is a jewel.  You feel an elation and giddiness and the excavation.   You immediately want to make something delicious to share with someone you love.  It’s the same with honey.  Why savor it yourself, when you could share that first fresh bite of harvest with your sister?  This is the spirit of feasting I try to cultivate when gathering with family and friends each November.  There is a delight in sharing good food.  To offer someone a taste of something delicious is aways a way to celebrate life.  It reminds us that no matter how hard it is, in this moment, there is honey. 

That being said, we can’t savor the honey, nor share the bounty, without coming to terms with the legacy of devastation and displacement colonialism brought to this nation.  We can not feast with out also acknowledging the lie that this holiday represents.  Yes, it may be a step to see is more as an opportunity to celebrate harvest, but not at the cost of turning away from the reality of what this day means.  We can, I think, do both.  We can honor ancestral traditions and make new ones.  We can celebrate the bounty of the earth and honor the first people’s of this bit of earth that we inhabit.  We have to make something new out of something old and broken.  A different way of honoring life and the earth stewardship that is required of us going forward.  Part of stewardship of place is honoring the people of that place.  All of this is in my heart as I pass by Pie Night without any pies, and wonder just exactly when I’m going to roast that pumpkin on the altar.

P.S. just for good measure here’s a ridiculous video of my mother and I dorking out in the kitchen a decade ago:

The Courage to Steward Hives

Rendering comb down to golden disks of beeswax is one of the ways I process the loss of a hive. By giving my attention over to extracting the pure, golden, divinely scented wax from the skeleton of a hive, I feel connected to the life-death-life cycle of that hive.

I was on a walk this morning with one of my friends Michael Thiele of Apis Arborea. He establishes nest sites for apian beings (bees) in various watersheds, both rural and populated areas. Mainly log hives, which as a more natural home for honeybees. We were discussing the challenges of caring for bees as “treatment free” stewards amidst a culture and beekeeping climate of mass importation of commercial bees to our area and what that does to the population of locally adapted bees. We came up against the dichotomy of experiencing a sense of seasonal dread of loss with a surrender to the greater not knowing of what’s possible if we continue to try our best to listen to the innate impulse of the bees and how they live. It brought us to questions, as our talks often do, of language around beekeeping. What does it mean to be a keeper? What does it mean to be a steward? Or a witness?

I think to steward habitats for bees in a bee-centric model requires a tremendous amount of courage, because to do so means you will be forced to witness climate change first hand. You will not be able to turn away from biodiversity loss. From habitat destruction. However, in presencing ourselves with the bees, and being willing to listen and watch, we start to create and internal path that goes beyond grief, denial and apathy, and towards a constant and subtle shifting of one’s world view. We can’t change the world until we remember that we are nature, and from nature, life finds a way.

She Survived

Once, I drove through the narrow country roads of west Cornwall to find a sacred well. It was autumn and the sea looked Caribbean turquoise. The map wasn’t very good, but my friend and I found the well, partially overgrown with ivy, but not forgotten. One of the old places, where women’s water wisdom once offered healing and insight. A nearly obscured heritage. ⠀

The land owner, Trevor, met us at the gate, literal pitchfork in hand. He was happy to see us. He had learned a thing or two since he took over care of the property. He spoke to us of moon pools and the goddess Diana. He said Druids and shamans and all manner of pagan folk had visited the well over the years. It’s important, he said, because a well like that must be tended. He sent us on our way, we made our prayers, left our offerings and wondered at the lost ancient ways weeping through our veins.⠀

Then Trevor asked us in for a sherry. You never refuse a sherry from a white bearded farmer guarding a sacred well. There are rules. ⠀

Inside there was a spinning wheel and herbs. There were stacks and stacks of books. There was the love of a wife long past. Trevor handed us sherry in tiny glasses as said, “You know, this home used to be the home of a famous herbalist. Jessica was her name. She lived here in the 1600s. She knew how to make the secret preparations to call down the bees.”⠀

There it is. Not a mention of bees from my lips and here, this agnostic, curious farmer is telling me about the bees. How she could get them to swarm into the house. How she would heal the people with their remedies. She may have survived despite her arts, when so many women of her time perished. She who lived with these walls, and drank from the well, and walked in the ways of women’s mysteries. She who lived in a time when herbalist was synonymous with witch. Her wisdom meant death.⠀

Dear you, who tends the garden and sings to the bees in 2019, know that the thread survived in you. Remember that no matter how hard the men of the church tried to take women’s spirituality away from them, it survived, because it’s in you now.

They took the power of your weaving chants and called you an enchantress. For this you burned. They said no one could chant words of power but men. They took your healing arts and called you a witch. For this you drowned. No one could heal, save the grace of God and his doctors. They took your words and turned them against you. For this you were silenced.

But you survived, because the songs you wove were strong and made of the earth herself. You survived because you felt the warp and weft of life and death move through your own lunar tides, and you came to know cycles. You survived because you knew that someday you would be borne into the rich blood of your distant granddaughter and she would learn the secret ways to make preparations to call down the bees.

When the Death Goddess Comes

We’ve given her many names: Callieach, Persephone, Nepthys, Kali.  But her original name was Earth.  Mother.  Crone. Womb and Tomb.  There is no death goddess who is not also tied to, or herself a goddess of rebirth.  They are not separate, because life is not, and never can be separate from death.  This is why the Kelts built passage tombs or long barrows.  We are born of the Mother and return to the Mother, her dark and earthly embrace.  

In the modern era we often associate bees with symbols of abundance, industriousness, and springtime. However, bees have also long been associated with death in equal measure.  Bees and beehive are common symbols on tombstones, even within the Christian Era, but their association with death stretches deep into antiquity, where bees were seen by many cultures, including the Greeks and the Kelts, as messengers who could travel between the worlds, including between this life and the afterlife. This is part of the origins of Telling the Bees, when bee hives were visited after a death in the family to tell the bees of the loss.

The Widow by Charles Napier Hemy

Bees seem to be born of the Earth Mother herself, issuing forth from dark caves, tree hollows, and earthy hollows to bring life, honey, and springtime to the land.  Similarly they return, as the serpent does, to their interior slumber within the Earth each autumn.  Is it any wonder that in many parts of the ancient world bees were thought to be born from the carcass of a bull?  They are midwives to death and bringers of life.  

To be a beekeeper in the modern era, it is our sacred duty to befriend death.  The bees require it of us.  The midwives of death are asking us to midwife them.  How? Through presence, through grief, through ceremony, through surrender.  Bees die in the autumn.  If you become a beekeeper you are wedding yourself to an intimate relationship with life and death.  With abundance and the wasteland.  

To be present to, and witness death is to radically honor the feminine principle.  It’s feminist as fuck.  

There’s a reason the original goddess was the Earth herself, and the Earth was seen as the all-creating Mother.  Life and death were less of a duality, and more of an eternal cycle.  A cycle witnessed monthly in rhythm of women’s bodies: to blossom and to shed.  

To be a beekeeper you have to be able to sit with death.  Your bees will die.  Not always, and hopefully less and less.  But they will die.  From starvation. From varroa. From beekeeping practices you’ve been taught.  From chemicals.  From pesticides.  From treating.  From not treating.  From smoke.  From Cold.  We steward them, and do everything in our power to keep them alive, but without addressing massive systemic issues related to climate change, biodiversity loss, and repression of the feminine, the bees are going to continue to die prematurely and often.  Getting a hive to survive past a year or two is very challenging for new beekeepers.  

When the death goddess visits your hive, what can you do?  Honor her. Be fully present and alive to the death you witness.  Clean your hive.  Honor what’s left behind. Process the wax and the honey. Leave offerings of gratitude to the land. Bring your tears and your prayers. Feel that death move through your body, as a body made of the earth, who knows how to take and transform that loss. Celebrate the beauty they brought to your life and your land.

  Meet her at the crossroads. 

The Longing for Roots

I have often struggled with what it means to be a third generation Californian living on stolen land.  I love California dearly, but I am also someone who has always longed for a deeper sense of roots.  

I found the siren song of ancestral roots early on in Celtic myths and European herbcraft.  This drew me to England and Scotland by the age of 17, and I have spent the rest of my life feeling as though I were of two places.  

This is not unique.  Indeed, it is an age old story, whom many experience with far more acute trauma and severance than I ever have.  

With the spiritual starvation of the West leading to cherry-picking, one-off workshops and manifest-everything mentality, we are left sifting through the latest best seller on how to find peace, forgetting that we have pathways to the sacred singing in our bones and murmuring from the weeds and wind. 

The sacred has always been connected to place.  It has always been in the water, in the hills, in that particular tree, in the song of that one bird, in your potted basil.  It is everywhere and nowhere.  It is place-specific and universal.  It travels with us, but it is also living and unto itself.  Otherwise, how would the desert sing so clearly to some, and not to others?  How would the unforgiving north speak volumes to you, even though you’ve lived in a fast, coastal city most of your life?  Sometimes our roots are in our ancestral homes, and sometimes the wise earth is much less linear. We find that we are of places far from the roads our ancestors walked. Spirit of place calls the body and soul. It is not always about a specific identity. We are all one species on the same earth, after all. Nonetheless, there is a cadence to the song of a particular river or cave, and these places claim us, whether we seek to be claimed or not.

I believe, as climate change continues to unfold its unpredictability on our modern lives, we will see more and more migration of peoples.  It is happening here in California, as the fires continue to dominate our autumns.  Migration is of course happening due to war, religious prosecution, economic decline, but all are becoming more and more related to climate crisis.  As we become displaced, or seek to make room for the displaced, how does one make reparations with sense of place?  We have never been separate from the Earth that whispers from every corner of our existence.   

I am fortunate, in the dry lands of California, to suffer from no more than longing for an ancestral home.  I sit with this longing and know at the same time, that humans have always been migrating, and that we will again.  We have always been, to some degree, on the move.  A few centuries in one place, then a war, a dark age, a famine and the people move, bringing with them myths, beliefs, and practices from one landscape into another.  Adapting, surviving.  Where is the difference between a melding of place and culture, and the capitalistic act of skimming the cream off the top of some ancient tradition and repackaging it for profit?  Is it that we are always striving towards something with roots and something that frees us of our roots at the same time?  I don’t know.

I find comfort in the way the sacred is handed down through the business of living.  In the simple tasks of cooking, brewing, medicine making, gardening.  Take these candles for instance.  In the meandering thread of my bloodlines, how many times has a beeswax candle been lit, been prayed over?  How many times have hands lovingly and dexterously crafted such a candle from the labors of the bees?  Here, too, without place, without a Wicca 101 book, or a manifestation mantra, here I can find the sacred.  Here I can find both the ancestors and the place I hold, bodily, between the love of two lands.  Between the longing for roots and the creation of roots.  Some subtle dance between being claimed by place and claiming the love of place within.  

Find the thing that is ancient in you, and continue to tend it.  It may be as simple as baking bread.  

Content Theft: The residue of Patriarchy running the show.

John William Waterhouse -I am half-sick of shadows, said the lady of shalott

:Feminist Beekeeping Friday:

I am at a real crossroads this week.  I’ve got some unpleasant thoughts moving through my brain.  I’ve tried sorting through them with friends and colleagues. I’d like to have a strong argument or stance before writing about it, but I don’t.  I have a Scorpio full moon cocktail of compassion and raised hackles.  What I’m going to talk about may put you off. The subject is women stealing from women.

Let’s back track. This wee little Friday post is called Feminist Beekeeping Friday because it’s about time we have a place for women’s voices in the world of bees.  After all, bees have been associated with the feminine and the life-giving goddess for a few millennia now.  In ancient Europe, where apis mellifera comes from, the bee was held sacred and depicted in statutes of bee goddesses. In Greece there were temples kept by bee women tending the sacred arts of seership, healing, dreaming, and ritual.  These women were simply called Bees.

So I loosely base these Friday musings on bees, women, the feminine, and dismantling the Patriarchy. Cheers, darling!

Where were we?  Oh yes, the Great Silencer.  As Patriarchy entered Goddess culture, women’s voices were systematically silenced. Women’s ways demonized. Women’s power vilified and shamed.  Women’s bodies violated.  Right on down to the present era. We are raised in a society that is the adolescent offspring of a belief system which still encourages oppression, witch hunts, inequality, and ownership.  Capitalism is a byproduct of this belief.  So is egocentric individualism.  So is spiritual bypass. What a mire we’re in.

Some of it survived though.  Hidden in plain site, or just at the edge of your vision.  It has been waiting.

Enter the rise of feminism.  The rise of women’s voices.  The return of the sacred feminine. Here we are, carving a place for ourselves because it’s finally - maybe - safe enough again.  Here we are, the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn, seeking our own spiritual truth without very much guidance. 

Have you ever wept in longing for the mythic grandmother to come apprentice you to her arts? Have you ever sought pilgrimage, initiation, rite of passage, ceremonial transformation without a compass? Did you read that “how to” book and despair?  Go to that workshop?  I get it.  I did.  I spent over twenty years in study. Sometimes I found rare gold, and it stripped me to my bones. I wept for the lost wisdom.  I began to find where it was hidden inside.  I am still weeping.  I am still finding. 

I began to put all this study, work, and practice into form. I began to craft my own teachings.  People came.  I was overly generous.  I hear that a lot.  What does that even mean?  I wanted to give it away.  I wanted to keep it veiled.  I have ancestors’ voices in me that need it to stay veiled.  I have ancestors’ voices that need me to be loud and public. I want to be generous.  I want to make a living.  I don’t want to loose vitality in the process.

Women came to my courses and they changed my life.  I get to be the thing I longed to be but could not find at 15, at 25, at 30.  Somewhere around 35 I found my voice.  I found my stride.

Here in the present, it has been brought to my attention quite recently, there are women who are now repurposing my content, my class names, and my words with very little discretion and not a mention of their source.  These are women who have taken my classes. Pause.  What I do and what I teach is NOT proprietary.  Where I learned much of what I teach is open to all.  I am not special.  I don’t get the one diamond pass. Unpause. I have spent years cultivating my own form of teaching, my own practices, based on the spirit-informed integration of teachings I’ve received from others.  I’ve also learned from the land.  From my body. From my creative soul. 

What a sticky business.

How do we strike out on our own because we are inspired? Because someone’s teaching spoke deeply to us?  Because a school or a program awoke something in us?  Inspiration is the name of the game.  That’s the point.  That’s why a person teaches. 

I have no problem with inspiration.  I have no problem with people sharing things that came from me, that came from the woman before me, that came from the spirit within me, that came from the ancestors behind me.  What I do have a problem with is plagiarism.  With content theft.  With idea theft.   

What it comes down to is a deep internal sadness around loss of integrity.  Around the loss of the human hive in the oldest sense of women gathering.  We’ve learned to distrust each other.  So many women don’t trust other women.  We’ve learned to doubt ourselves.  To gaslight each other.  Where is the sisterhood? I don’t know the ethical call here.  There is a reason things stayed behind the veil.  Stayed hidden.  This experience is the modern version of that reason.  We are still functioning from within a male-centric, colonizer framework.  We appropriate. Take what you want.  Don’t give credit.  Commodify it. Brand it. Go for the quick fix.  Is your longing so great that you take with out notice?  Is this the spiritual starvation of the West?

There is a beauty in the exchange of skills, practices, and hard-won perspectives.  It’s perfectly human to share and share again.  However, don’t let acquisition stop the journey.  I don’t now much, but I do believe that mimicry is selling yourself short.  You don’t have to invent the wheel or be totally unique.  I most certainly am not!  I am a patchwork quilt.  However, you also don’t have to be that thing you see outside yourself.  There’s a chance that your desire to mimic someone’s work is actually an invitation to dive deeper within.  To excavate the hidden seas and rare silver rivers of your own body’s knowing.  The secrets waiting in your ancestral library.  The particular language spoken by the bit of earth you’re standing upon today.  Can you bear to turn your gaze to the hallowed keening of your longing? 

Meanwhile, there is a woman somewhere at her loom, weaving thread she died herself, with hands that have held the hands of many sisters.  She is singing an old song as she works.  It is rhythmic and hypnotic.  It took her years to learn the pattern.  It took many unravellings.  The warp and weave stretch your heart as you gaze on them.  She will spend her whole life making this cloth.  She is making it for you. 

Meanwhile, that same woman is you.  She is weaving with threads she spent lifetimes spinning.  She may be working a loom built by sisters, mothers, grandmothers, but she is the one who has earned her seat. She is singing an old song as she works.  The rhythm is like the hum of bees.  She has learned how to make honey. She has learned how to sting. She has mended many frayed threads.  Some she cut away. She has learned about boundaries. It broke her heart. It made her whole.  She is re-sanctifying the ground of herself, her sovereignty, and her safety. 

 She will spend her whole life making this cloth.  She is making it for herself.  

Dante Gabriel Rossetti -Penelope.

She May Not Behave Like You Expect

You may think you know her. You may have read about her behaviour. You may have studied her. You may have experienced her habits. She may be nearly predictable. But, she may not behave like you expect. She is a Queen, after all.⠀

This season I have had more encounters with queens than any before, and the great She is schooling me. We are taught to recognise a series of behaviours in animals, plants, earth and people. we learn to expect them. We greater knowers, like to know things. We like to predict. It makes us feel safe. It helps us steward. But the wild doesn’t read our textbooks or attend our webinars. We forget that each face we encounter, each bobcat, rowan tree, hummingbird, isn’t just an animal, they are a being with a personality, and personalities aren’t always predictable. ⠀

Life is wildly unpredictable. Our sunlight cultivation of order and neat little vegetable rows gets ruffled by errant vines and night visits by the deer people. But oh how we long to be among those unsettling antlered wanders. We know the swarm follows the queen and she hides deep within it, but oh how we long for that moment when she wades bravely along the outside edge. When she does not hide. She confounds us, but we long for a glimpse of her strange mystery.⠀

They say when you hive a swarm, the queen is in the heart of the cluster and stays protected deep inside the new colony. But yesterday she flew in the golden rays and landed on my finger. ⠀

They say a queen mates shortly after hatching, but I have witnessed her waiting weeks, remaining virginal and adored by her sisters. ⠀⠀

She is complex. She is a daughter of the sun and the moon. She yields and she takes no prisoners. She is a mother and a lover. She is discipline and chaos. ⠀

She gives me hope as I step down an unusual road to motherhood, weeping this week in joyous gratitude for the village of people supporting me (you!), while being absolutely brought to my knees in the heavy grief of longing for a partner. 

The Queens. Our ladies of Sun and Shadow, they hold my spirit in their delicate ferocity. In their promise for life. They remind me: be wild, step bravely, let yourself be fed, wait for your time. Walk into motherhood with Her, and like her, be something you could never predict.

The Hobbyist Beekeeper

We humans love labels. We like neat little categories and stacks. One of the definitions beekeepers like to make is between professional beekeepers and hobbyist or backyard beekeepers. This is often used in ways to dismiss backyard beekeepers as uneducated, annoying, or quite possible the problem (re: why bees are dying). The thing is, people have been living with bees for far longer than commercial operations have been keeping bees. It’s not a hobby. There were ancient laws in Ireland established just for beekeeping.

Living with bees is a way of life. We need people in cities and countryside to find ways back to living with the natural world. Community gardens. Rooftop apiaries. Urban farms. Neighbourhood chicken coops. Calling beekeeping a hobby relegates it to something cute, but inconsequential. Ask any beekeeper if their relationship to their hive feels inconsequential. We are in need of more relationship with the non-human world, not less. The non-human world, I dare say, is also interested in relationship with us. Even if that relationship is simply saying hi to the songbirds in the morning. There is an exchange. It is felt. Only our modern, proof-driven minds question this. All indigenous cultures know the Earth and her creatures hear you. Your ancestors knew it. You know it too. It is the way of things.

Photo by @simon_weller

The Long Dark Night is Upon Us

Every good story has a rite of passage. A dark night of the soul. Uncharted waters. The descent into the Underworld. The fall. The path that disappears into the woods. Persephone knows all about it. So does Eve. Isis. Princess Leia. Atreyu. Durga. Frodo. Rapunzel. And Aphrodite, but she’ll never tell.

If you’ve stumbled into a good one, there’s often a guide. A trickster. An old woman. A star. A raven. A ragged dog. A swarm of bees.

Everybody knows you have to follow that staircase down. Everybody feels the tension rise, but no one says, “Go back! The story will just have to end without apples this time.” We all know the only way to Grandmother’s house is through the woods.

But we got fancy. We learned to bypass the woods. We flew over the oceans. We got the app. We poured concrete over the passage to the Otherworld. We ordered delivery. We learned how to explain the reason behind the raven, the star, the dog. Slowly, the treasure map of deep purpose and wild transformation faded in the fluorescent lights of modernity, and nobody could figure out how to make a new one with a 3-D printer.

Some of us looked back, waaaay back, and decided they knew better then. We felt we were born into the wrong time. Some of us looked way forward and decided we’ll have the technology by then. We felt we were born into the wrong time. Sisters I love look at me and say, when will our wombs swell and children come? Men I love look at me and say, we can’t bring children into this world. Not now. Look at it.

Look at it.

Look at it.

The bees are dying. Look at it. Yes, my loves. And they are also birthing. The seas are dying. Look at it. Yes, my loves. And the whales still sing. The ice is melting. Yes, my loves, and it breaks me. Humanity is breaking. Yes, my loves. And the people still sing.

Down we go. The long dark night upon us. The trail lost. Too far in to turn back now. The footprints you were following whisked away by a fierce wind.

 The only way to the house of the elder is through the woods, and by God, when you get there, it may be empty. It may be forgotten. You might have to become it. You humanity, might have to follow Persephone right down into the place where you meet the Minotaur.

Look at it.

Grief. Rage. Joy.

Look at it.

The terror.

This old myth is retelling itself on the grandest stage. It is certainly FULL of guides: that last pod of Orcas in the Salish sea. The record loss of hives each winter. The coyotes in Central Park. We’ve had so many clues.

How long does a rite of passage last anyway? Now the work becomes that ancient art of seeing in the dark. Ask Luke Skywalker how he did it. Find the pieces of ourselves forsaken. Ask Isis how she did it. Reclaim the knowledge imprinted in our twisting helixes. Ask Eve how she did it. Defeat the Nothing. Ask Bastian how he imagined it. Be here, born for this moment, birthing into another. Ask the Earth how she does it.

The Underworld Shadow of the Distorted King

Last night I dreamt I was in the arms of an Ash tree. Above me in the high, bare branches was a king snake. Below me, was another king snake. I remember thinking, as long as there are king snakes around, I won’t be in danger of rattlesnakes.

To understand this thinking, you must know I have a lifelong phobia of rattlesnakes after a traumatic childhood experience which invariably connected rattlesnakes with childhood abuse. I have spent my adult life repairing my relationship with the serpent.Back to the ash tree. In Norse mythology, the Yggdrasil, or World Tree, is an Ash tree. It's branches reach into the heaves and roots spread over the whole of the earth and into the Underworld. In ancient Ireland, the Ash tree is one of the guardians of the land. In Greek Mythology, the nymphs of the Ash tree were called the Meliae, which means ash tree and is a derivative of the word for honey (melt). The king snakes came directly from reading these words from Martin Shaw about the distorted King archetype and our longing for the honorable inner King:

“A King or Queen is a centralized point inside the psyche which has the power to radiate outwards, make decisions, hold boundaries, enjoy three-day feasts, and draw up the gates when necessary. There exists an interdependence between them and their servants and kingdom. This is a built-in posture of the self, not an argument for external monarchies or dictatorships.….The savage and distorted King is a force that anyone living today has experienced in abundance. We are far more familiar with this than a King image that is strong, decisive, cultured, and fair. When that image is denigrated or entirely lost, then the psyche is adrift from ancestral anchor-points that could root it in a fertile sea bed with the bones of captains and great ships.”

We are in a very real confrontation with the underworld shadow of the distorted King. The Queen or Sovereign Earth is speaking volumes through every possible language she has. Every shadow and every illumination is interwoven, and we are being asked to do the seemingly impossible: to both confront our collective fear, pain, and illness, and to heal ourselves and the planet.

 Note: Gopher snake baby died in my hands after I found it on the road

It must be stated that it is a privilege to be contemplating the “big picture” mythic undertones of this moment in the world. As I read beautiful poetry and inspiring words from people I follow online, I am also marking my privilege to do so. We can practice awareness around our projections of perspectives you or anyone else “should” have.

I, for instance, am privileged to work from home, even if I have trouble making rent. I don’t have kids who are out of school now. I am not dependent on the school lunch system to feed my children. I don’t have to juggle already sick family members and kid’s homeschooling. I am not forced to work in hazardous conditions. I am not currently in danger of eviction. There are so so so many people who are living through very real, terrible conditions that are now being hit with the virus and the nearly impossible need for social distancing. There are small businesses that may not make it. There are refugee camps with no preventative supplies. So while the big picture stuff is something anyone can ruminate on from any background, let’s also be collectively aware that any kind of talk as to the big “why”, or spiritual growth, or consciousness raising is often (at least on social media) coming from a place of privilege. As such, how then can I give back? What is my social responsibility?

I am going to make every effort to not impose any sense of what you or your family “should” think or do. I know social media can seem like a place of authority because we speak from an often unconsciously learned sense of marketing to the public. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I am doing my best. I am scared. I am hopeful. I am learning. I am privileged. I am also a small business owner. I have big picture ideas and many small anxiety-driven fears. The earth is speaking. We are capable of great harm. We are capable of magic.

Love you.

Paradoxes in Living

Staring out the window, my mind is ricocheting off various topics. The Coronavirus and systemic racism. Varroa mites and treating the symptoms. Climate change and the denial of human abuse to the planet. How you can be a feminist, and still really enjoy when a date foots the bill. How great it can be to foot the bill. The silencing of a women’s voice and the inevitability of two white men vying for power.

How do we measure abuse with the bees? How can we tell? If a woman grows up strong and “fine”, how can you tell what actually happened to her when she was too young to protect herself? The violation of a child. The violation of a woman. The violation of the bees. The violation of the earth. The violation of a peoples. We have to stop, but how? This is what the death of Patriarchy looks like. Seeing the abuses of power at every turn. Eyes wide open. Witnessing the patterns. Breaking them.

If the hive were your child, would you treat her that way?

You wouldn’t look at me and immediately be able to read the trauma of childhood abuse. I certainly never talk about it. But it’s there. It plays into my fears and my ferocity. It fuels empowered reclaiming of my body’s wisdom, and also still wakes me in terror from vague dreams. Shame prevents me from speaking about it. But the story of one person’s twisted use of their own physical power over another is playing out on every channel right now. So loud.

Does it mean I stop falling in love with plum blossoms, moving like honey is rippling through my body, or singing La Vie En Rose at the top of my lungs? Not at all. I’m fucking awesome right now. Life is doing that golden thing we always seek, but rarely get to swim in.

Regardless, I have found that the greater my capacity to swim in the dewy glow of life’s magic, the greater capacity I have to face the shadow of pain and trauma.

How do we teach our children better boundaries and more trust at the same time? How do we care for the bees without projecting our desires for “production” or connection” onto them? How do we stay connected? There is so much paradox in living.

Saint Valentine of the Bees

It’s Valentine’s Day.  Oh, excuse me, the nymphs of the woods and springs want me to amend that: it’s another Spring Fertility Festival! Yay!  What, you say? Spring Fertility? Yes. The bees, myself, and the historical record all agree that that long before the Christianization of this day, the festivities of love and fertility were celebrated on the streets of Rome as the 3 day festival of Lupercalia.  

Deemed far too pagan to last under such a wolfish name, the festival has tiptoed through the ages as a celebration of love, albeit the Saint Valentine version IS a bit more chaste.  Those early Greek and Roman polytheists really knew how to get down.  Just look at how they celebrated the winter holidays of Saturnalia (shout out to pre-Roman, pre-Hellenistic Dionysus).   The festival began with a goat sacrifice in the cave where twins Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf before founding Rome.  Goat sacrifices aside, Lupercalia culminated in all the eligible young women putting their names in an Urn.  The eligible bachelors drew from the Urn and the new couple would be paired for a year.  Like online dating, but more risky, and more fun. There was also a whole thing with slapping women with the sacrificed goat hide to ensure fertility, but we modern witches tend to only do that every 113th “Valentine’s” day, so nobody freak out.

Photo by Koa Kalish, 2013

Despite the Christian habit for appropriation followed by denunciation, Saint Valentine wasn’t all so bad himself.  In fact, he was martyred as a Christian Saint during a time when Christians were heavily persecuted by the Romans.  People have had a hard time sharing opposing beliefs forever.

There are a few (mostly fabricated) legends about Saint Valentine, but one of my favorites is that he married young lovers in secret during a time when Emperor Claudius II had banned all young men from marriage because he needed them for war.  Some accounts will tell you he was never associated with romance, and his appointment to the auspices of chivalric love came as an attempt to suppress some of the more erotic, fertility customs of the ancient world.  Now, instead of wild sexual expression, we have boxes of chocolate and roses.  The roses I understand.  Same with the chocolate.  It all goes back to fertility, and when we look at fertility we find the bees.  February is when the quickening begins, flowers open their petals and bees begin to buzz, making the sweet ambrosia that has united lovers across time and culture.  

Cupid’s arrow after all was tipped with either honey or venom.  You choose.

Photo by Betty Lou Chaika from “St.Gobnait, Lady of the Bees”

Did you know that Saint Valentine was also the patron saint of beekeepers?  He takes his seat among the pantheon of gods, goddesses, saints and spirits who protect bees and beekeepers.  Saint Modmonoc of Wales, Aphrodite, Saint Ambrose of Milan, Saint Gobnait or Ireland, and Bride to name a few.  I have particular affinity for the Irish Saint Gobnait, who’s feast day is February 11. Patroness of bees, she was known as a skilled healer who used honey in her remedies and has an awful lot of overlap with her Celtic predecessor, the mother goddess of healing and honeyed-words: Bride or Brigit. 

In the British Isle and Ireland, folk practice the tradition of wassailing well into February.  Wassailing is the ceremonial practice of toasting the apple trees, livestock and bees for good health.  In old Europe this was the time folk sought the miracle that is the return of spring to the land.  The bees lead the parade of flowers, milk and fruit, emerging with the promise of honey on the lips.

So, to those of you longing for someone to bring you flowers, or wishing you had a date tonight, try this on for size: it’s always about the bees.  They bring life.  Want to celebrate?  Buy yourself some roses.  Eat some chocolate.  Pour yourself a cup full of mead, dress in your finery, and march out to the trees and the bees, toasting to sweetness of it all.