Seasons of Moon and Flame. Danielle Dulsky

yours to heal, my great-great-granddaughter. And this” — she pulled a large and spotted egg from her pocket — “this is my resilience, my refusal to stay down for too long; now it’s all yours, as it’s always been.”

      Recover the final two objects and rest your body now, humming softly with basket full and heart tender.

      Now, some of the lusty grandmothers who tell this tale say that as soon as she took that last egg, the chicken-witch woke warm in her bed, laughing at the bizarre dream of treespeak and egg-bearing grandmothers, but that the very next day Juniper left her farm sanctuary and went into the world, celebrating the spring at a debaucherous garden party where she met a lover who would become friend, who would become partner.

      The lusty grandmothers who harbor a love of the traditional fairy tale end the story like this:

      The chicken-witch remained in that grove, a lovely young juniper tree to anyone who ventured to that hallowed ground, for many years, though to her it seemed only a single evening, until a sacred hunter with a warm heart saw her for what she was: a healing woman who spoke the language of the trees, who held a treasure trove of wisdom in her skirts, who needed no saving but rather to wake with a heart made more whole by blood and belonging.

      The Garden Hag goes quiet then, recovering from a story well told, and you ponder the treasures gifted you, on this fateful evening as this Season of Tender Roots opens itself to you like a wildflower beginning to bloom.

       Opening Practice: Your Spring Initiation

      There is much joy to be had under the first new moon of spring, to be sure; so, too, is there much healing to be done, much bleeding on the ground to feed the roots. You find yourself on a precipice of some great, unnamed thing here, and your inner hag is bidding you soften those hard psychic edges a bit. Surrender. Lay your winter-frozen flesh bare on the ground and welcome that annual melt.

      Speak these words in a wild place, if you’re able. Find yourself in those predawn hours when the house is asleep but the ghosts of the beloved dead are awake. Gaze into that swelling dusty-pink glow on the horizon, and know you are not, and indeed have never been, alone.

      This is my spring initiation, and I know now that the joyful hag is me. My heart beats in time with the drums of my forebears. My laugh is the cackle of every crone who came before me, and those mighty ones have surely dreamed me into being. Somewhere right now, in a time that is long gone but still is, there is a hopeful wanderer of my bloodline gazing at the sunrise, as I do in this moment, praying for the very wholeness and healing that I embody. I am the living incarnation of their secret spells, and somewhere, in a time that is yet-to-come, there is a hopeful creature connected to me through this silver-threaded cosmic web. Their breath is my breath, and they have woven the most beauteous tapestry out of these scars of mine.

      Seal this ceremony by envisioning one of your most caring primal ancestors breathing in rhythm with you, in rhythm with the babes of the future who wonder about the wisdom of ancient altar keepers like you.

       Waxing Moon Practice: Writing It Real

      This first moon of spring is a soul-warming moon, and our magick is tasked with both manifestation and healing. As that moon of cleansing storms swells toward fruition, ask yourself what you are calling in that, if only in a small way, serves as a healing salve for the wounds of the wild, for the aches and pains endured by those who have come before us. We bridge the ancient with the new now, beneath these radically hopeful skies, and we bind the material to the embodied feeling.

      Gather the signs you have been receiving from both dreams and the material world that seem to show you the way forward. Choose three life areas to inform your manifestation Craft as the moon waxes toward fullness; these might be sacred work, art, family, gender expression, romance, spiritual connection, communication, or any other aspect of your being that seems potent and pressing now. Certainly, we do not have such pieces of ourselves tucked away neatly in stacked boxes. Our work is hardly separate from our art or our communication. We are selecting certain puzzle pieces of our lives now as an act of discernment, of brave-hearted manifestation. We choose now to make the first mark on the blank canvas with hands shaking and brush dripping. We choose now because we feel those quickening energies sparking in our cells, and we choose now to claim the choice as ours.

      Spend this waxing moon choosing the beginnings of what will be your spellwork in spring. Ask yourself what is in transition, what feels as if it is shifting underfoot, and what is teetering on some thin edge waiting for you to pull it close or push it away, once and for all. You might look to the creation myths of your ancestry, framing those tales of primordial darkness, violent deities, cosmic eggs, and ancient, long-rooted trees as telling metaphors for the magick of manifestation.

      If it feels overly limiting to choose only three life areas, then choose more. If it feels best to work with only one area, then this is the path. Part of the Garden Hag’s medicine is discernment born of vulnerable and honest reflection; we take stock, we choose the path, and we move forward, all the while listening to our inner crone for direction. Each morning as the moon waxes, set the intention to receive a sign from the wilds, and look to the ways in which nature itself is an oracle.

      In your Book of Moon and Flame begin to describe the life areas as you want them to be, as if they were a snapshot of you in a future remembered into being. Write it real. This is not one-size-suits-all manifestation magick; this is word-witchery at its best. As you write, stay in touch with the embodied feeling of this moment you are describing, and be sure this is a feeling you can name as your own. As you see yourself there in that moment, is the feeling joy? Ease? Satisfaction? Release? Try to maintain that embodied sense of the moment while you write and describe nothing other than the actual moment of fruition, of vision realized.

      All the While, They Were Writing It Real

       Storm Moon Spells

      In their most epic moments, they were so still that ivy might have wrapped around their frozen flesh, that moss might have gathered beneath the once-soft swell of their thighs. The twitching of their right hand was the lone sign they lived on, pouring black-ink word-witchery onto the page like their very lifeblood was running out through the end of the pen and curling in dark, sanguine poetry, weaving and swirling about in aching words and lost stories. Spring storms raged outside their window, vicious battles between the lightning children and their low-rumbling hunter god, but they were unmoved. Were others to see them in such a state, they might think them a slow-breathing monument to a hunted witch-scribe, but they would never know their wildest secret. In those moments, they were writing it real, you see. They were breathing it all into being, one precious letter at a time, like a dream vision had by their great-grandbabes longing for their handwritten myths; in those moments, they were dreaming those holy innocents to life with the potent medicine scribbled and tossed about on the page. Yes, the harder-hearted ones wondered about them — pitied them, even — but, all the while, they were writing it real.

       Season of Tender Roots: Full Moon

      Grandmother Speaks: The Sweetest Fruit Is Only Fresh for So Long

      The Garden Hag told you your scrapes would be worth it, and the bounty before you affirms her promise. A more beauteous tablescape you have never seen. Surely, you have come a long way since that first winter moon. Surely, some long-gone elder is blessing you from the ethers.

      The Garden Hag is tending to your wounds now, blotting the blood and smearing bitter-smelling plant medicine on your bare back. Your belly is snarling, but the choices are so immense that you cannot decide what taste you’d like first on that overdry tongue of yours. Pitchers of pink liquid with golden flecks stand next to platters of fresh and glistening fruits and homegrown greens. The sweet scents are so overwhelming that you all but forget your wounds and scarcely