Each Day is a Gift, Untie the Ribbons

Another Days Blessing

Every day there is magic around me. Today my deer, Brown Town Brownie came to visit. I love that she is not afraid of me and does not flinch when I stand just feet from her. She is one of Gloria’s from last year I believe and she was always one to stay close to home.

She looks at me with such trust in her eyes, and I know that as I talk to her, she is really listening to me. She is one of the deer that will come when called, usually bounding through the forest to get to where I am. In the fall when all the leaves are down and carpeting the forest the sound of the deer coming to eat still sounds to me like people moving towards me.

Gloria, the piebald and Missy came to eat later this afternoon. Gloria had the two little fawns with her; how magical they are with their miniature little bodies and tiny spots. They follow their mother to the corn and then decide it is much more fun to run and play some reindeer games. I laugh as I watch them scamper about the woods playing hide-and-seek; mother deer always on alert for them.

Brownie was slightly limping tonight perhaps she stepped on something or misjudged a step. Most days though, she stays close to home content to lie in the cool dirt of the valley. As summer moves on, the babies will grow quickly. I am always pleased when there is a late season birth so that I will have a little one or two to entertain me through till winter. I can’t imagine my life without the companionship of the deer….

Blessed be,

Priestess Absinthe Aradia

Litha Blessings

Some days I tend to take life for granted. We all get caught up in the same grind of routine, day after day. But some days, the Goddess just comes up and smacks us right in the head when we least expect it. Today was one of those days.

Going through the motions of morning chores, dogs out, dogs in, cats fed, it was time to walk up the hill and see if the deer were there to eat and also to shut the porch light off on the cabin. Usually I will find my one brown deer, Brownie, hunkered down in the cool dirt of the valley but this morning she was not there.

On the way back down the path, off to my right something light colored near the long ago fallen logs caught my eye….it was a tiny baby fawn, cream colored with a brown patch on the top of her head (a patch that also had a white mark inside of it). She did not startle when I stopped, completely in awe that this magnificent little being was so close to me and yet seemed so comfortable. I stopped and just gazed at her, cooing softly that it was okay, I was not going to hurt her.

Earlier in the season, I had asked my ‘girls’ as I call Gloria, Missy and the gang, to bring me a baby this year, one I could get very close to. I promised them that I would not hurt it, and that I would be honored to know that they trusted me enough to bring a young one so close. Today, that wish was granted.

I walked back to the house, grabbed the camera and headed back up to snap some pictures. A little off to the right of the deer, I saw movement in the leaves and a box turtle was making its way across the leaves less than a foot from the baby deer. The tiny deer let me snap her picture about six times, stardom did not seem to bother her. I put the camera down and edged a little closer to her with a handful of deer corn; she stood up and looked at me, still showing no fear. Okay, I said to myself, I have been given this really wonderful gift today and I watched as she stretched and leaped a few feet away from me to the other side of the forest.

As I loaded the pictures in my computer I realized how very lucky I am to be able to have such creatures of beauty so close to me every day. How many people can say when they walk in the woods they can call out a few names and have deer suddenly come from all areas of the forest to eat just feet from me? Or that one winter they actually got to pet the long lithe neck of a blind white doe in the middle of a blizzard, a doe that seemed to magically dance around my legs…a doe that had supposedly been shot and killed days earlier by police for fear of her carrying a disease. I can assure you, that deer is not dead, or if she was then I was visited by a White Spirit Deer in the true sense of the word.

Suddenly my mundane day did not seem so mundane any more, it had turned magical. The Goddess is all around me, every day She has gifts for me, some tiny like a butterfly flitting around me in the garden, some not so tiny like two majestic white bucks. But this I can tell you, magic is real and it is around me every single day, and this little doe is living proof!

 

Blessed be,

Priestess Absinthe Aradia

        

Claire Holley - "Under the Moon"

Jimmy Hutton ~ "Secret Garden"

Stevie Nicks - Forest of the Black Roses (Demo)

Fleetwood Mac ~ Gypsy (Extended version)

Roots of the Woods Wytch

You may be asking yourself, what exactly is ‘wood wytchery’?  First of all, it is not a typo that I have spelled wytchery with a ‘y’ Vs. an ‘i”, I have done this purposely .It is my trademark, what I am all about ~ an eclectic combination of green witchery/herbalism, a mix of druid and shaman and a follower of the Goddess in her various guises. The woods wytch is a strong believer in elementals and faeries and works closely with them.

More than just the garden variety wytch ~she is deeply rooted in nature and while she may have a typical garden, her world extends far beyond the scope of the backyard. The woods are as familiar to her as the smile lines around her very eyes. In all seasons the woods wytch is in tune with Mother Nature. I have a deep respect for the earth and all life upon her. These very beliefs have shaped me in to the wytch that I am today.

I have always known that I was different, from a very young age. Yes, I was one of those kids in school that got teased about their looks. I was gawky and had a big nose. And while most kids would have lived for the day when they would outgrow their looks, I learned to accept my differences. Early on I learned that I did not want to be a carbon copy of everyone around me. And I can honestly say, I am a far cry from being like any one else!

My love for nature began at a very early age. While most kids were out playing riding their bikes or playing dolls, I was playing florist, potting up flowers or gathering prickly chestnut burrs, picking fallen berries to eat from the huge tree in the side yard or marveling over the wooly feel of a pussy willow catkin.  On the way home from school in the spring, I would quickly dart across a front lawn to pick some daffodils or crocus for my mom, or find the hidden litter of wild kittens under the house (and get bit more than once). Like most kids growing up in the 1960’s I could not wait for the trip to Woolworths for a green turtle (before they were banned) or a few pet mice.

When we would make trips to the country to visit with my Aunt "Minnie", I could hardly wait to leave the city to spend the weekend in the country where I could sleep with the windows open inhaling deeply the scent of the forest pines. My ears were keen for the different sounds. The din of the city far behind me, I could now hear the whippoorwills and the tree frogs. Long walks with my beloved Aunt to the man-made cedar lake were a treat to the senses; the gray sugar sand was cool beneath my feet and felt like silk when I sifted it through my fingers, the scented brown cedar water a far cry from the only water I had known in the city, flooded city streets after a heavy rainfall. And while I tried to take part of the country home with me (peanut butter jars became the temporary homes for tiny baby toads) it never seemed to work for long. Although the lizard, Dino, lasted a bit longer than the frogs he left too. I remember my brother and I burying him in a Luden’s cough drop box (he may have been hibernating, but we never figured that out). The seeds of wytchery had already sprouted but I would have to wait until I was a teenager to finally leave the city behind and move to my beloved woods.

Blessed be,

Priestess Absinthe Aradia

moondance van morrison

~ Sisters of the Moon ~

Loreena Mckennitt - The Mists of Avalon