Seasons of Moon and Flame. Danielle Dulsky

       CHAPTER 1

       Season of Tender Roots

       Belonging

      Surely you have never welcomed a wilder season than this. That journey out of winter might have meant death for a less bold version of you, or perhaps it did. Perhaps there is a heap of frozen flesh, a face with frost-webbed skin that looks much like yours, left behind in the snow, left to nourish the wolves and feed the loamy ground. Who you are now, a seeker having traveled through countless dreamlands of wintry snowscapes and barren fallows, is not the wild one you used to be. Who you are now, a warmth-famished wanderer destined to better heal those deep but unknown wounds of the anguished dead, is not the same creature who dwelled in winter’s darkness, who sought sanctuary at the hearthside and dreamed the smaller dreams.

      Those final long moons of winter have been a birth, to be sure, and you have woken this brighter morning with a heart full of lusty Pagan poetry and eyes that long for the reds of rose petals and ten thousand shades of green only a sprouting early-spring garden can show you. This moon cycle is the first of spring, running through the vernal equinox. Here you are, at long last, and the Garden Hag’s been waiting with a bountiful table attended by an infinite number of spectral guests; you may not know them, but these ethereal ones most certainly remember you.

      May this first moon of spring, this Season of Tender Roots, greet you as the Garden Hag does, with childlike curiosity and much, much joy. Her face is lined, her hair is gray, but her heart beats in the rhythm of the innocent erotic. You have come to her ivy-hugged house in search of some great, unnamed thing, and she is just the one to help you uncover that buried treasure, those invaluable golden depths of wild wisdom tucked away long ago, planted beneath the Elders’ Altar for safekeeping.

       Hag Lesson #11

      Spring magick is lineage-mending witchery.

      Our spring magick does the business of binding our dreams to those who came before us; our healing is their healing, and our longing is their longing.

      Remind Me, Grandmother

       A Whispered Lament

      Remind me, Grandmother. I’ve forgotten my way again in this time-impoverished world where no one seems to know how to find that soul-well of patience you showed me when I was a babe. My blood remembers endless days spent tending resilient gardens, uninterrupted by those unsanctified screens and spirit-starved screams for immediate attention. And, in those rare still moments, my bones’ marrow recalls retreat to the edges of waters fed by melting snows and into the yellow curls of budding daffodils.

      Remind me, Grandmother. I fear I’ve misplaced the treasure map showing me where my ancestral inheritance was hidden. My spiraling double-helix sigils are stamped with the pain of famine, dead children, and betrayal. There is a persistent mourning in the ache of my joints, and day by day, they groan a little louder in a bone-on-bone keening for my forgotten dead.

      Remind me, Grandmother. Without your perpetual hope, I’m in a dire place, precariously teetering on the precipice of feckless nostalgia and overromanticization of my haunted past. It’s the mudlicking primal wild I’m after, you see, and I know you hear me.

      Remind me of my tenderest roots, Grandmother, if only now, while I drift to sleep on these early-spring evenings.

       Sunrise Reflection: The Beloved Dead

      The first moon of spring calls us to ask ourselves potent questions about lineage and legacy, about broken mother lines and misplaced myths. Witches lean toward intuitive understanding in these times of lost ancestries, rather than endless intellectual digging through records of birth and death, easily fabricated nonevidence and inaccurate reflections of the deep wells of passion and experience housed by the flesh of those who bore us. There is a rejuvenated purity to early spring, an air of wide-eyed, newborn innocence and electric possibility that pulls us closer to healing what seemed unhealable — that is, to integrating what once seemed so far outside us, too foreign and, perhaps, too revolting to possibly be part of us. Each spring we are blessed with what seems a newfound gift of grace, an invitation to encounter, if not hold in our shaking hands, the wealth of Earth-based traditions that our blood remembers and remembers well.

      Those coming home to their Witchcraft, acknowledging the art of magick for the first time, perhaps, after sufficiently dismantling the walls of indoctrinated belief that blocked their way, often are met with yet another obstacle, one entirely unforeseen and seemingly insurmountable. If we are to embrace the rhythms of the earth, the Craft, and the land, we must feel into the beauteous fabric of which our soul threads are part. We must resist ignoring the scars we have inherited, yes, but we must also look to the wisdom of those who lived long before the dead ones we know by name. We must step back and broaden our vision, scrying our way from the intricate patterns of family and roots.

      To do so, we must seek out the beloved dead. We must extend our reach beyond a century or two. We must cultivate the long vision that eludes these days, and we must take great care with our fragile psyches and questing spirits.

      Tell me, how does it feel to set the intention to frame yourself as but a character in a larger story, without sacrificing your sovereignty? How does it feel, on the cusp of this fertile season of sensuality and abundance, to acknowledge that you were born, in part, to be the salve for the wounds of your kindred in spirit?

      The wild-hearted are stronger in numbers, and your magick is that much more powerful when you acknowledge that it is sourced from legions of flame-tending altar keepers, masses of hearth holders and medicine people who, in their own way, still stand with you. Spring is the season of digging, but for now, we forsake the trowel for the pen, the dirt for dream visions. In your Book of Moon and Flame, free-write on the following prompts, if they feel true, changing the language as you see fit:

       I come from a long line of flame tenders, and they remind me now of...

       In those wild dream visions, all my kindreds stand there, encircling a tree, pressing foreheads to bark, and praying for...

       I am the living bloom sprouted from seeds planted by my great-great-grandmother in a lush land of greed and battle, and these resilient roots of mine will never...

       Spring Equinox Celebration: Twin Eggs of Birth and Renewal

      Materials: Air-drying clay

      To beckon warmer days, to breathe hot and melt those persistent morning frosts in the name of sheer and visceral desire, is a primal act. We find ourselves in the final stages of labor here, birthing something out of pure will and our human longing to create but not knowing, not yet, what our faithful efforts have yielded. The great paradox of spring is this: If we look to the creation myths across many cultures, we see that birth is nothing if not violent, a sudden and cataclysmic eruption of something epic out of a primordial dark womb. And yet, in spring, there is also a sense of lightness, possibility, and joy.

      Our vernal equinox celebrations must weave these two seemingly opposing spring energies together, blending that soft-baby-animal creaturely and generative innocence with that bursting, disruptive force that brings all things new into being. Equinoxes are balance points between light and shadow, and on that first day of spring, we must welcome the sweet and sugary light along with the bold, bone-shaking dark.

      At your altar, light your candle of sovereignty and welcome the spirits of your more ancient elders of good intent, those who have your