Black and Burgundy and Bleeding

I have entered the season with black and burgundy hair cascading over my shoulders... Menapause (YES! Finally!), and a sense of quiet self . Quietness has never been a part of me for long periods of time. When I was quiet I was into something or up to something or just something was up. It isn't depression. I've examined myself for that. No. I'm satisfied and happy within myself...my world.

It's the quiet you experience when you're in a cave alone and can hear water dripping ever so slowly...echoing off the walls, bouncing back at you from a thousand different directions. It's noticing every little nook and cranny in that cave, the smell, feel of the rock and grit under your nails and on your hands, straining to see and experience, wondering what is around the next corner or down the cravasse. It's no longer worring if your rope will hold or the batteries of your flashlight are fresh, or even if you will find your way out.

I realised I have embraced my crone. With her I embraced the dark part of myself that is well acquainted with the things that go bump in the night. In the dark, I have stretched out my hands and run my fingers over their craggy faces. Blindly, I read their boney edges and gapping sockets finding them beautiful and exquisite in form.

This afternoon I am drinking Earl Grey tea from a china cup over a black lace tablecloth. It's grey and cloudy outside. I can feel the subtle press of the oncoming storm thrumming on my skin and in my head. It suits the moment and the mood.

Tumbling through the pages of an altered book I've been working on for a few years, I began noticing a pattern to the unplanned art. It is my "Lydia" side...the black and white side I write from, my nom de plume. Photos were pasted, bits of found objects, faux jewels and very red ink scratched against the paper bleeding over and across the pages. My thoughts were as smoke.

There was a soundless, silent grieving that I was engaged in....trapped in the love of tradition and religious ritual of childhood. Confessions and belief... I had left that standing alone, discarded, in the pews and under stained glass. The plaster saints casting down sorrowful disapproving eyes. I laughed and skipped down the aisle, swearing under my breath a vow to never return. And yet, I mourn for things nameless. Things distant and brittle catching words in my throat as a spider's web. What I cannot write, cannot share. So difficult to express.

There is a story here among the scattered pieces.

Each grain of sand drops down. I look to the stars and see they are there ...constant...grasses green going golden in the heat of days. Like the grasses I, too, am parched and growing brittle with time.

Breezes turn to blasting winds, pulling up the grains of sand and wearing everything smooth and hazy in my soul. Cycles of wind and rain and brutal sun paint my days in canyon colors. Wearing down the harshness and wild insolance of my youth to a deep, mellow humour.

Something in the dark of the cave beckoned me, and yet I was frightened. I couldn't go yet; couldn't plunge into the cool depths escaping the blazing sun of late spring. Going below ground is a sacred thing for a Druid. You are travelling to the land of the Underworld and all the blessed dead. It is a trip not taken lightly, for if you emerge you are returned to the living world forever changed.

It wasn't what was in the cave that struck me with fear. It was myself and the doubts ... unworthiness. I have learned wisdom and abused power all in the name of love and passions that drove me nearly mad. Power is returning now and I am afraid of not it, but myself. Barren of it by choice for so many years, I come back to the world of true magick and find myself more a novice than the sorceress I was.

Be careful what you wish for...holding crystal to the moon...I realise my time has come. There is no death only cycles moving into the next phases of our eternal lives. Childlike, I will take my offerings and enter the cave.