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Tag: land spirits

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My Bealtaine Season

A lot of witches and pagans use the term “Samhain Season” for the months of October and November (approximately – everyone seems to define it a bit differently) but I hardly ever see its counterpart – “Bealtaine Season”. There’s an Otherworldly high tide at this time of the year as well, though it might be a little more difficult to sense, as there are upticks in activity in the physical world and many of our mundane lives as well – getting outside more and tidying gardens in preparation for planting, making summer vacation plans – as opposed to the slowing down of the autumn and winter.

But just as Samhain is the modern Irish month of November, kicked off with Oíche Shamhna, November Eve, so too is Bealtaine the modern Irish month of May, with Oíche Bealtaine the May Eve festival. Though this year where I live, the rising tide was already quite high by the dark moon on the night of April 19th-20th, and I expect it’ll be another week or so before I actually feel the ebb.

It’s a busy time of year, for me, because the beginning of the high tide often overlaps with another of my personal festival calendars, and there are a number of mundane anniversaries as well. My other personal festival calendar follows the movements of the star Spica, and this year, Spica’s heliacal seetting was approximately April 25th. So we went straight from the dark moon (20) into that (25), and then my wedding anniversary the following day (26), and then Oíche Bealtaine/Hexxenacht (30), Bealtaine/May Day (1), my child’s birthday (3), the astrological cross quarter & full moon (5), my mother’s birthday (7), mother’s day (14), and the dark moon again (19), which is when I expect things to settle down, given my past experiences.

I wouldn’t mind Otherworldly things settling down early, though – whether it’s just that or also the astrological weather, I haven’t been sleeping well, and when I’ve been asleep I’ve often been pulled off somewhere, doing magical work instead of getting uninterrupted rest. I’m exhausted.

Despite that exhaustion, though, I’ve been outside quite a bit, getting garden beds ready for the growing season, and getting my beautiful new crabapple tree settled in. While the cherry and plum blossoms usually follow the equinox around here, it seems like this crabapple will flower along with the azaleas and rhododendrons. Those tend to be at peak bloom just after our last hard frost, which is usually just about the first of May. And then a week later, it’s time to start moving all my seedlings outside for good, so it’s a busy time of year for a garden witch like myself as well! Weeding the herb bed and transplanting seedlings and planning out what else to plant where once the ground is warm enough to germinate seeds. This year I’d also like at least one more shrub to fill in a gap in front of the house.

I try to only put native plants directly into the ground, with my crocuses being the main exception. I didn’t plant any of the daffodils or grape hyacinths or dandelions, though the pollinators seem to love them, so I let them stay. I try to proliferate what native plants show up, like the milkweed, the boneset, the wild blackberry, and the asters. the crabapple is a hybrid, not a wild type, but it’s still close enough that the native pollinators and birds should get use of it. Pretty much all of my other herbs and veggies are in raised beds or pots, in an attempt to contain them. The containment hasn’t worked well for the mint or the yarrow, but it turns out yarrow is native here as well, and the mint is a reasonable addition to my front lawn, no worse than the grass. I planted an eastern white cedar in the back yard last year, and also a passionflower vine, but I’m not sure if that actually made it through the winter. It’s supposed to be a perennial but I’ve yet to see it this spring. If I had a bigger budget, I’d love a couple of serviceberry bushes and a redbud tree and a bunch of native irises and honeysuckles… but most of that will have to wait!

Being in good relationship with my land and local spirits is one of the foundations of my practice, and native landscaping is just one of the ways I lean into that. I’ve also been working on a ritual format similar to quarter calls, that petitions large nearby land spirits or waterway spirits that form natural borders in the landscape. I used it for a small ritual with a group of friends last weekend, and called upon the Susquehanna River, the Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac River, and the Appalachian Mountains. I know these landmarks, I know their spirits, and I have been developing relationships with them for years – it seems only fitting to give them offerings and to ask for their support as I do seasonal workings.

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The Less Mystical Side of Fairy Witching

The last couple of posts I’ve made about my work with the Fair Folk have been pretty woo, so I thought I’d share another anecdote that’s decidedly more… mundane.

It’s spring now by most people’s reckoning (though I personally tend to see the equinoxes as the midpoints of their respective seasons), and as I write this it certainly feels like it, too – 65 and sunny and breezy. Which means I now need to fulfill a promise I made last year to my local Fairy Queen.

When we moved to our current house at the very beginning of the pandemic (no joke, our closing was three days before the governor shut the state down), there was a flowering cherry tree in the front yard that was clearly on the wane. Some of the branches were dead and there was a hole in the trunk that revealed rotten wood inside. Still, that spring, it flowered. And again, in 2021. And again, in 2022. We trimmed away some of the dead branches, and tried to prune it gently each year, but when it failed to put out a full crown of leaves last spring, we got a notice from the HOA – dead trees weren’t allowed, particularly not in front yards, and it would need to be cut down asap. I had hoped we’d be able to let the tree die gracefully over a winter, but despite the few leaves it did have, there was no convincing the HOA it was still “alive enough” so we conceded.

The poor little stump, all that is left of the tree we had to take down

As I usually do when I have to make major changes to my yard, I explained what had transpired to both the land spirits and our local fae — and was met with disapproval. I understood — I didn’t really like it, either — but caught between the two powers, I attempted to negotiate a fine price for the tree, instead. I was told I would need to replace the tree the following spring, before a year and a day had gone by, and that it would need to be a tree that bore both flowers and fruits, and should be in the Rose family, as wild roses are the symbol of my Local Queen.

So this week’s fairy witching task was calling several local tree nurseries and garden centers to find one that has something like a crabapple or wild cherry or upright serviceberry, that will plant it for us, and has some kind of guarantee to replace the tree if it dies… that fits my somewhat small budget. And once I do, I’ll need to schedule the tree to be planted before the beginning of June.

I think I’ve decided which nursery, I just want to go in to select the tree (likely a crabapple), and then I think they should be able to schedule the planting sometime before Bealtaine, which would be ideal! And then the lonesome stump in the front yard will have a friend, and hopefully the Fair Folk won’t blight my vegetable garden.

But yeah, word to the wise… these connections and agreements do have measurable effects on my personal mundane life as well. So keep that in mind, if you’re interested in doing this work.

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Spirit Relationships for a Defensible Home, Part One: Outside

I said in my last blog that spirit relationships make up another layer of my home defensibility, and they do — both inside and outside my house. I’m working from an animistic perspective here, because that’s what I do and who I am, but I think there might be some helpful kernels even for folks who aren’t starting from that perspective. In the last blog, I mentioned greeting the spirit of the parcel of land, and the spirit of the house itself, and those are the first two spirits I build a relationship with in any new place I live. Those relationships are usually somewhat less “showy” (at least for me) that some of the others I’ll mention in this blog, but they’re the foundation for everything else. If you’re not on good terms with them and well situated in your property, it will be difficult to make your home defensible, no matter what else you do. Also, if you’re not the property owner, you can still form your own relationships with the house and land, and that will help support any wards you place around areas (like a bedroom) that are specifically yours. You can also make relationships with spirits both outside and inside the property, to support your defenses. For the purposes of this blog, I’m just going to cover spirits that are found outside the property, because I originally had started writing out both “outside” and “inside”, but it became a bit too long for one post!

This is an image from unsplash of Great Falls on the Potomac, which is very similar to an image I took that I almost used – except this one is much higher quality!

Land spirits, (ie spirits of the land itself, not nature spirits more generally) in my experience, seem to be some sort of nesting dolls, in that you can ask to speak to the spirit of a particular property, and one will show up, and ask to speak to the spirit of a neighborhood, and one that feels slightly different and slightly bigger will show up, and the same (slightly different, slightly bigger) for a town, a region, etc. (However, when we start to approach places the size of the state of Virginia, they get a little too big for me to really pin down borders. I find it easier at that point to attempt to contact the spirit of a particular geographic feature, like “the Appalachian Mountains”, or “the land to the east of the Chesapeake Bay”, rather than relying on my memory of a map of human-drawn borders!) For the purposes of A Defensible Home, the neighborhood or perhaps the town should do you pretty well — this is the larger land spirit that encompasses the land you call home, and it is a good idea to get to know them, and to remain on friendly terms. For me, that usually means being a good “citizen” — picking up trash when I see it, making sure my yard has plants helpful to local insect life, not disturbing local animal life, and the occasional offering of water or something biodegradable that won’t disrupt the local ecosystem (no invasive plants, no foods that will harm wildlife, don’t pour alcohol on plants, etc). When we “talk”, it’s more a mind-brush than a conversation in words, and most often I just ask about the weather! The creatures who live on the land this spirit encompasses live in symbiosis with it — and we should strive to, as well. That also means that all your plant and animal and insect “neighbors” can provide omens, should you need to seek them. I have mapped my local birds to the ogham, and that often provides my land and nature spirits with a way to get my attention. I know which birds live nearby, and which are infrequent enough visitors that their presence might be meaningful.

Spirits of your local waterways are likewise important, and also seem to function like nesting dolls, with a spirit of a stream, the creek it feeds into, the river that feeds into, and then around here — the Chesapeake Bay. I really think every animist witch ought to know what watershed they live in, down to the small streams closest to you! At the larger end, your local river spirit can be a very powerful ally, and with the vast number of witchy uses for water, especially running water, I think it makes sense to nurture that relationship. As with the large land spirits, my offerings to my local waterway spirits are mostly “being a good citizen”, and my contact with them is more mind-brush than casual conversation. Interestingly, though — and this is just my personal experience, so your mileage may vary — I do find the river spirits to be more likely to take on humanoid forms and speak to me in words. That may come from my background in Irish Polytheism, where several river names are those of goddesses, because I do tend to address rivers (and the Great Lakes, and the Chesapeake Bay) as deities in their own right.

For both of these categories of spirit, the role they play in the defense of my home is mainly that I can ask them for forewarning if danger is nearby, and for assistance if I attempt to expel something from my property. If I banish something, I don’t want it to take two steps and come right back, and sometimes the land and waterway spirits are willing to help keep it away. They can also ground out or disperse unwanted energies, though I find it best to ask them how to transmute the energies so that they will be most useful. I have even used some of my excess energy as offerings recently: I was running a little hot due to a hormonal problem, and got up early in the morning to go on a cave tour. Inside, I ended up stumbling a bit because of drowsiness and balance issues, so I stopped and greeted the spirit of the cave and asked what I could give, in exchange for sure footing. The answer I received: your heat. So I took off the jacket (which was a little warm anyhow), and let my excess heat float off of me, into the cave. And after that, I didn’t have any more trouble walking over the uneven terrain!

The other main category of Outside spirits just consists of spirits who live nearby. You have human neighbors, and animal, plant, insect, fungi neighbors, spirits of land and water and (perhaps) of constructed things, but also there are other types of spirits who just go about their business mostly unseen in this world we share. For me, the spirits of this category with whom I interact the most often are the Fair Folk. (All the rest of this paragraph is my own UPG, based on my own experiences; I make no claims that others will experience it the same way, even within my local area, and outside my local area I have no idea how things are organized. Understood? Then let’s continue.) There is a fairy court near me that has territory roughly corresponding to the local stream’s watershed, and the Queen of that court has become a close ally of mine. When I banish something, her folk will (often) chase it beyond their own borders, and when there are dangers, she (often) warns me, and when she requests my assistance in her own difficulties, I aid her with my magic as best I am able. As her stream empties into the Potomac River, her court seems to belong to a larger assembly of courts aligned with the Potomac watershed, and then above that, there seems to be a higher authority encompassing the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed. I try to nurture relationships with each of the small courts I come into contact with, and with the larger authorities, but the court whose territory I live in is the most important for my home defense. We are very frequently in contact, and I give very frequent offerings, and when there is something I need help dealing with that lies beyond my wards but not beyond her borders, it is usually to her that I first turn, even before my gods. The Fair Folk are fickle though, and so diverse it’s impossible to paint them all with the same brush — the type of relationship you’re likely to have with your local Fair Folk depends on them perhaps even more than it depends on the steps you take to nurture a relationship. It is far easier and far safer to be on pleasantly cordial terms like “you stay out of my home and I’ll not meddle in yours” than it is to be involved in a pact that amounts to mutual defense, but for those who do have Good Neighbors inclined to alliances, for prices you’re willing to pay, they can be very valuable allies.

Some of the members of the court local to me do come in the house now and again, but mostly they stay outside, hence their inclusion here. However, they are the main reason, as I said in the first blog, that I don’t use iron at my property line. That does mean I have to use a little more finesse when it comes to creating wards that will allow emissaries in, for example, but not those inclined to make trouble. I do rely on my agreement with their queen for that, in large part, but I also have some finely tuned interior wards, as I mentioned before, and House Rules, which I will explain in more depth in the next blog. In the meantime, Daniela Siminia has an excellent overview of her own approach to allowing in some-but-not-all, on her own blog, here.

And as that’s already quite a long post, we’ll call that a wrap! I’ll be back with part two next week, hopefully. I’m trying to post a new blog every Wednesday, so check back then!

Edit: Here’s the link to Part 2!

Building Ethical Relationships with the Land

I read a blog by Hecate Demeter recently that I thought asked a very good question at the end: “Do you ever introduce yourself to the land? If you travel and will be somewhere for a few days, do you ever bring an offering to the new land?”

My immediate answer was “Yes, of course I do,” but my very next thought was – “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that at an event who wasn’t doing it with me.” That doesn’t mean people aren’t doing it, of course – doing it privately is much better than attempting to show off to your fellow attendees – but it did make me wonder. How many people actually do this? Do they always do it, or only at witchy/pagan events? Do they do it differently if they’re visiting in different contexts?

And then I reflected on my own practice. I tend to default to the ceremonies and prayers of the indigenous tradition from my mother’s side of the family. Tobacco, a self introduction that includes the place I was born, murmured words of thanks to all friendly spirits. When I’m at witchy or pagan events, or anywhere I’m likely to do magic, I also seek out the Local Fair Folk. As part of my work with the Fairy Queen I serve, I am supposed to check in at the local consulate, in a manner of speaking. However, If I’m somewhere only briefly, or if I’m not on Turtle Island*, my introductions are more likely to be silent and meditative, seeking brief connection and energetic exchange. In general, I consider friendly relations with the local land wights, body-of-water wights, nature spirits, and otherworldly beings to be an important exchange of hospitality.

If there are Dead around, you can try reaching out to them, too, if you can do it in a way that is respectful and not dangerous to you or to them. If they have very different life experiences or spoke very different languages or practiced very different spiritual systems to yours, they may not want to hear from you. That goes double if your bloodline ancestors wronged them or were their enemies. However, knowing who not to bother or ask a favor of is also an important part of getting to know your neighbors! Also it can sometimes be a good idea to leave the Dead – especially the Unquiet Dead – to a witch who specializes in deathwork.

Occasionally Deities/Divinities** may show up as well. One time I was in Puerto Rico talking to the waves on a beach, and a Divine Spirit associated with the sea — in the shape of a Black woman with blue hair — touched my mind, leaving me with a brief experience of divine awe. (I think she was probably Yemaya, but she didn’t give me a name — just the vision, and a sense of welcome.) When they show up, though, they are not usually invitations to a deeper relationship. These brief experiences are the energetic equivalent of getting a friendly wave from a Head of State who is currently in a motorcade that just happened to be going by wherever I am.

Most of Hecate Demeter’s blog series, however, is a call to ground your practice in the place you are, and to build relationships with the land, water, and nature spirits who live nearest to you. She says (and I very much agree) that we don’t need to “re-enchant” anything. The land is still enchanted, still inspirited. What we need to do is to rekindle our relationship where we are, wherever we are Right Now. Lots of modern USian*** people feel like they don’t have roots because as a culture we move around a lot, but population movements have always happened. Even if you’re only going to be around somewhere for six months, it’s still a good idea to get to know your neighbors – corporeal and otherwise.

In my own practice, I try to build conscientious and respectful relationships with the spirits I encounter as I go about my daily life. A lot of those are Otherworldly beings of various types that largely fall into the broad category of “fae”, or they are spirits of specific “objects”, like trees, cars, houses, creeks. But I find that when I reach out to the land itself, there are what feels like layers of spirit, like the layers of a nesting doll. The deeper and larger I go, the harder it is to communicate, though I have had pretty good results with rivers and cities as singular units. For example, I wrote this quarter call that calls upon rivers local to me for use in a group rite I helped lead:

Tonight we create sacred space by grounding ourselves deeply in our natural surroundings.  We live here, in a landscape dominated by the Appalachian mountains to the West, and the Atlantic ocean to our East, beneath the dome of the Sky.  But tonight we call on powers more local, better known to us.

In the North we call to Lady of the mighty Potomac, River of Swans, Lifeblood of this area.  We offer you sweet smelling incense, and soothing herbal waters, if you will stand as Guardian to our ritual tonight.

In the East we call to the Great Lady of the Chesapeake Bay, Grave of a Meteor and Mother of Rivers.  All waters in this area come home to you.  We offer you sweet smelling incense, and soothing herbal waters, if you will stand as Guardian to our ritual tonight.

In the South we call to the Lady of the majestic Rappahannock, River of Tides, Quick-Rising Waters.  We offer you sweet smelling incense, and soothing herbal waters, if you will stand as Guardian to our ritual tonight.

In the West we call to the Lady of the beautiful Shenandoah, River of Spruces, Daughter of the Potomac. We offer you sweet smelling incense, and soothing herbal waters, if you will stand as Guardian to our ritual tonight.

(c) 2019 by the author, Alexandra Nic Bhé Chuille. Please ask for permission before using.

Hecate Demeter says in the second blog that being in relationship with your landbase will make both your spiritual practice and your magic stronger, and I couldn’t agree more. I also find that cultivating relationships with your hyper-local land and neighborly spirits helps a lot with ward maintenance, and some of them may even be willing to enter a sort of agreement that if someone else intrudes into your shared space, they’ll let you know.

The third blog in the series has a few good ideas about how to begin this work, but it’s a bit like any spirit work, really – just go introduce yourself and see what happens. It’s hard to go wrong with a shared drink of water, as long as your water bottle isn’t made of steel. (Most land wights and nature spirits won’t mind that, but the Daoine Sidhe and some of the Huldufolk certainly will!) Use divination or ask for an omen, however it is that you normally talk to spirits. And get to know your land and its inhabitants!

*The continent of North America.

**I have seen Yemaya and others referred to with a distinction made between Deities and Divinities, and as I am both not sure what the distinction is, and also unsure who I was interacting with, I just put both. I occasionally use the term “god-level” for interactions like this, to describe an unknown entity who seems to have the level of power and vastness usually attributed to deities, but who is either someone I cannot identify, or is someone not known in any surviving lore.

*** I use “USian” here as shorthand for “US American”, to differentiate between citizens of the USA versus people who live in the Americas more generally.

Links to the blogs:

Prayer for the 4th

Originally, Glasreo and I had hoped to be part of a small group doing a working in DC today, but that did not pan out for us.  While we hope those colleagues of ours manage to pull off their grand endeavor with the help of the Theoi and other gods, we are home, and adding our power to the tide in our own small way.

A Prayer for the 4th of July

Today, I pray to the gods of War – that peace may be sought and maintained.

Today, I pray to the gods of Truth – that lies may have no power and be silenced.

Today, I pray to the gods of Justice – that the disenfranchised may be heard and provisioned.

Today, I pray to the Mighty Dead of this nation.  I call out to them, and I pour them libation, that they may maintain their legacy, and that the founding principles of this country – the ideals of the Enlightenment – may prevail.

Our Mighty Dead dreamed of a country where all could be free to be who they truly were, without fear.  While we now think many more aspects of individual identity should be protected, and we acknowledge that society does not give us all equal power, we continue to strive in the same ways that they did: increasing liberty and justice for all.  May those ideals unite us, where others would divide us.

I honor also this land – from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, to our northern border with Canada and past that to the Alaskan arctic, to our southern border with Mexico and the Gulf as well as the south Pacific islands.  The land contains many different biomes, innumerable ecosystems, and a great diversity of life beyond humanity.  Land, Sea, and Sky: these, too, are citizens, and they, too, must be protected and cherished.

So Hail to the Gods, Hail to the Mighty Dead, and Hail to the Natural World!

Tonight, my prayers will be lit in sparklers, not incense.