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INTRODUCTION
As I have seen the world through Witch’s eyes, I have been fortunate enough to live each moment of my life with the knowledge and deep feeling that the globe I walk upon feels my step, hears my voice, and answers in return. As a child I felt able to converse with the world about Her joy and pleasure. Upon my initiation as a Witch at the age of sixteen, I experienced an immediate intimacy with the Earth, Moon, and stars. This awakening became reality. Every dance I danced, every childlike chase, every handful of flowers, was a bonding of my heart and spirit with my Mother, the Earth.
In the vastness of our universe, seemingly unknowable and often hostile, our human voices sometimes seem small and insignificant. Our spirits cry out for something more, some connection which will prove that we matter, that we exist. In my own experience as a Witch, I can assure you that the universe and particularly our own planet, Mother Earth, is knowable to a great extent and not hostile to those willing to listen honestly to Her song.
The most extraordinary relationship that exists in creation is the bond between a mother and her children. We each sense this instinctively when we are born, but I recently had an experience that impressed upon me just how poignant and profound this relationship can be. I had no forewarning that evening about what was soon to take place, when a woman, a complete stranger, walked into my daughter’s shop, where I receive my clients. She was an attractive, well-dressed woman, in her mid- to late forties, but she was visibly upset when I looked up into her eyes to greet her. She came to me seeking peace and answers to questions about her dead son. Her only child, her teenage son, had been killed in an auto accident about one month before. They had been very close, she said, at times more like friends than mother and son. She couldn’t accept his death, that he was gone from her life. She felt bereft and lost.
She told me she knew nothing about the ways of Witchcraft, but that her son had taken an interest in magic and used to read lots of books on the subject. Not knowing which way to turn, she at last decided to come to me. She desperately wanted to know if her son was all right.
My heart went out to her: I was deeply moved by her story. My emotions were immediately engaged, and I wanted to comfort her. At the same time doubts arose within me about my ability to bring her some measure of peace, for I realized at once how distraught she was. I took a moment to reach inside myself for strength. I decided to approach her psychic reading just as I approach all my other counselings. I tried to put her at ease. She seemed to relax and I began to read her cards. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. I was well into my reading when I lifted my eyes from the tarot and saw the figure of a young man standing just over her left shoulder. I sensed that this was the essence of her beloved son.
So as not to disturb the rapport I had with the mother, I suppressed my own sudden feelings of surprise and wonder. I had not expected this. I quickly decided to prepare her for the message her son was attempting to send to her through me by explaining my beliefs, as a Witch, about death or the afterlife. Gently I told her that the choices for departed spirits are three. They can cross over into the Otherworld, a magical but very real place we call Summerland, where they can choose to stay forever. This is the land of milk and honey, peopled with our Gods and Goddesses and Faery Kings and Queens. The second choice is to be reincarnated and return to Earth in another capacity of service to the Great Goddess, our own Mother Earth. The third choice is to remain on the earthly plane as a ghost, until deciding either to cross over into Summerland or be reincarnated.
I told her that her son, for the time being, had comfortably chosen to be a ghost. Then I continued to say, as gently as I could so as not to frighten her, that he was standing right next to her at that very moment.
The woman was startled, then skeptical. As she tried to accept what I was saying, she quite naturally asked for some proof that he was truly there. She needed to know. She needed reassurance. I tried to give it to her by describing in detail what I saw and heard. I said, “He wants you to know that he is fine and not to worry about him, and he also wants you to know that this is his most prized possession.”
With two hands, the boy proudly displayed before me a beautiful long sword that looked as if it were from the Civil War. The woman gasped. “We buried him with his great-great-grandfather’s sword!”
Her son smiled, then told me to tell her that being a ghost felt a little like being the Highlander (a character in a movie of the same name). He said, “I feel like the Highlander, because I know I’m going to live forever.”
Again the woman gasped. The Highlander was the last movie they saw together!
The young man asked me to reassure his mother that he was going to wait for her until the time came for her to cross over, and then together they would go to Summerland. “In the meantime,” he said, “know that I am happy.”
As a Witch or “walker between worlds,” a term that is often used to describe Witches, I felt it a particular privilege to share in so vivid and meaningful an experience. The vision, and my revelations offered to the distraught mother, brought some semblance of peace to the woman and also served to reinforce my heartfelt conviction that there is nothing stronger than the love relationship between a mother and her children. I offer this story as a metaphor for the bond we each share with our Mother, the Earth. That bond is all-encompassing, always renewable, life sustaining, emotionally and physically satisfying, meeting all our needs, and answering all our questions. And yet it must be a reciprocal relationship in order for both Mother Earth and the human race to survive. With Celebrate the Earth I hope to demonstrate and offer to you the methods by which every human being can honor the Earth and play a part in the healing that must continue to take place.
I believe that the devastation of our planet in many cases is due not so much to negligence as to impersonality. We think of Earth as something apart from us, a separate entity, which exists on its own and will exist forever. It is my hope to awaken in you the notion that when one organism suffers, we all do. Each of us can make a direct contribution to Earth’s well-being and come away with something deeply personal and of great importance, for the healing of Mother Earth is also a process of self-discovery.
When I became a Witch, I began to see people more as individuals and to realize how valuable it is to develop each individual’s talents and gifts, whether it be the simple ability to communicate with others or the more complete ability to communicate psychically with other worlds. The mental projections and actions of every man, woman, and child on the planet combine to create the world in which we live. And yet many of us do not see or understand the magical power each of us wields. We are not aware of how strongly connected we are to the whole. We do not see ourselves as Her children and do not realize just how close to our Mother we are.
Each of us shares in a vital and timeless partnership with our planet. When we are young, we hold an intimate fascination for the world around us. But as we grow older, we get caught up in the hectic pace of a busy world. Time, in our society, weighs heavily upon our heads, but instead of being reckoned by the rising and setting of suns and moons, it is ticked off by the invasive blare of a clock radio or the high-pitched electronic tone of a digital watch. It is sad for me to think that for some of us, our feet never really touch the ground. These are people who are compelled for whatever reason to walk from house to paved driveway to car to concrete sidewalk to work and back again, day in and day out. There are still others who do not know that the milk they buy in the store comes from a cow! While I am not advocating that we each buy a cow and a barn and become farmers, I am saying that we have lost much of value along the way. We make tiny compromises here, small sacrifices there, and before you know it, we are many times removed from the magical place we once lived and breathed as children—our own planet, the Earth.
We never do forget that youthful wisdom, however; for while we may feel disconnected, especially in the midst of our modern, industrial world, in reality we are not. The ancient rhythms of the seasons are not only universal, they are instinctive. The primeval drive that compels us to respond to the changing seasons still lives within each of us.
Our inseparable relationship to Mother Earth is nowhere more beautifully represented than in the Wheel of the Year. The Wheel of the Year is an ancient and sacred ritual calendar marking the Earth’s changing seasons and the Sun’s never-ending journey across the sky. This extraordinary calendar was begun by Witches in pre-Christian, proto-Celtic times and is observed by Witches today in its modern form. Each event marks a significant moment of change in the Earth and is rooted in one of the eight lunar and solar festivals of the ancient Celts.
