Seasons of Moon and Flame. Danielle Dulsky

you are calling in for yourself is not for you and you alone.

      Let the candles burn for a few minutes, holding your hands over the heat of each flame as you move between your visions. When it feels right, carefully pour some of the wax over the jar to seal it, then thank the elder ancestors for the flames they have tended for you. Open the circle and, ideally, allow the candles to burn out naturally, or snuff them if you must.

      And so it is.

       Waxing Moon Practice: The Wildness of Our Longing

      As this potent moon waxes, consider that what you yearn for is also yearning for you, that you are more sensitive to the spiral dance of nonlinear time than you think, and that desire is memory. As the moon swells toward fullness, task yourself with this practice as often as possible. For each of your cosmic egg jars, move your thoughts between these four points:

      1.Call to mind a seed memory — that is, a memory of you feeling the same feeling that is integral to your vision. While envisioning this moment, chant aloud: “Yes, thank you. More, please.”

      2.Now, come to the present moment. Chant: “Yes, thank you. More, please.”

      3.Call to mind the vision of you with dream fulfilled. “Yes, thank you. More, please.”

      4.Finally, picture the vision of future generations in a more sustainable world, feeling the same feeling that you yourself are calling in.

      Do this strategically until it comes more easily, though it might seem difficult at first. If your vision is you joyously dancing in nature, the seed memory might be you softly swaying in your kitchen on the first warm spring day, and then the dream-world vision might be children dancing while bees buzz about and butterflies grace the skies. Envision these scenes in succession: first, you swaying softly, then you in the present moment as you are now, then the vision of you dancing in nature, then the dream-world vision, you in nature, present moment, softly swaying, present moment, nature vision, dream world, and continue. This is a psychic dance that makes for potent spellwork, binding what you want to what you already have to what you hope will bless the great-great-grandbabes of the future, be they your own blood or not.

       Season of the Elders’ Altar: Full Moon

      Grandmother Speaks: Blessed by the Most Primal Rivers

      The Elders’ Altar is hardly as grand as you envisioned it to be. A lone and humble candle burns beside old, cracked antlers in the center of a flat slate stone veined with rose quartz and dappled with wax, set upon an immense tree stump, all nested well at the bottom of a steep hill. Morning-glory vines have overtaken it all, with blue and purple flowers spiderwebbing around even the candle, climbing the hill behind the holy place.

      You are not far from the Garden Hag’s house, and the journey seemed too easy, but you sense there is some battle in store for you.

      “Not very impressive, is it?” The Garden Hag pokes at your arm, and you raise a brow in her direction. “I know. I thought the same thing the first time I came here.” She pulls a lush bouquet from her long-flowing scarves and places it beside the candle. “Stand back.”

      The ground begins to tremble beneath your feet, just as a sudden white-blue streak of lightning cracks the sky and sends an immediate growl of thunder earthward. You want to ask what’s happening, but you aren’t given the time; the humble stump rattles, and loose dirt shakes at its roots, leaving an ever-widening hole beneath the quivering altar.

      The rains are falling now, and the candle flame is sizzling with the relentless drops but somehow keeps burning. Your footing feels suddenly unstable on this quaking ground, and with no warning at all, a burst of rushing water erupts from the hole beneath the altar, coughing a river your way and drenching you and the Garden Hag in a salty splash.

      “Hang on!” the crone shouts over the unrelenting sound of storm and flood. “This is what we have come here for.”

      You’re on your knees now, clutching the hag’s legs, and you can see that the waters are subtly pink in tone and smell faintly of iron. Even the rain tastes of seawater, and blush-colored droplets and darker red rivulets are running down your arms. More distant, the thunder growls, and the rain slows to intermittent drops as the stump’s roots return to where they were when you arrived, dirt moving to refill the void and sky returning to a soft blue shade.

      The chaos passed just as swiftly as it arrived.

      The hag pulls you to stand, and you wipe the wet from your eyes.

      “Well,” she starts, “how do you feel?” She blots your face with one of her scarves. “You’ve been initiated now into a line longer than you can possibly imagine. You’ve been blessed by the most primal rivers of wild belonging. Such is the magick of this place.”

       Full Moon Practice: The Truest Healing

      Materials: Cosmic eggs and offering to the ancestors

      This full moon of midspring calls for high-fire magick, demands you muster up will and agency, and urges you to forge connections between all the potent reflections and small ceremonies you have done so far this season. For this ritual, you’ll need your cosmic eggs, now sealed in wax from the new moon, and whatever offering you have been making to the foremothers since that first spring moon bade you examine more fully your ancestral lines.

      Begin by casting a circle using the circle-as-story method, or create sacred space in whatever way you see fit. Feel into your body. Hum. Let your belly swell with breath. At the center of your circle, place your cosmic eggs and an offering to the ancestors. Choose one cosmic egg to work with first, holding it and facing north. Now, take a quarter turn to the east and call up your dream vision, what you first nested in the jar, what you want for yourself. Feel the feeling. See it. Know it as already happening. Turn and face the south, and call up the vision of the dream world, the children being gifted with the same blessing you are seeking. Feel the feeling. Turn west, and call up the seed memory now — your past experience of the same feeling you are calling in, in greater, more potent form. Face north, and come to the present moment, holding on to the same feeling.

      Now, keep going, moving clockwise. Face east and call up the vision. Feel the feeling. Face south and call up the dream-world vision. Feel the feeling. Face west and call up the seed memory, again feeling into that moment in time, then returning to the present moment facing north.

      The feeling is the glue, you see. The embodied feeling, the under-the-skin sensation, is the binding matter between all these moments. We add one more layer to this now. Stand at circle center, the point of sovereignty, and touch the offering you are making to the forebears. Speak gratitude, saying “thank you” or other words that seem appropriate. Now, move around the circle nine more times, coming back to center after each direction and repeating your words of gratitude. Come to the north, feeling the feeling of the present, then return to center. “Thank you.” Turn east, feel the feeling and see the vision, then return to center. “Thank you.” To the south, the feeling of future generations blessed and whole. At center, “thank you.” Turning west, coming to the memory, feeling the feeling, returning to center. “Thank you.”

      Do this nine times before moving on to your second cosmic egg, going through the same process, adding gratitude to the ancestors after you have moved around the circle clockwise once, then continue for nine rounds returning to center four times each, before doing the same with the third and final egg.

      This work is powerful, indeed. When you have finished working with all three jars, remain at center, at sovereignty, and speak a spontaneous prayer to your more primal ancestors, to those whose drums beat in your blood, whose prayers are stamped on your bones. Open the circle when it feels finished, trust the spell as complete, place your hands on the ground, return the cosmic eggs to your altar, and spend as much time out of doors as you did engaged in the spellwork.

      And so it is.

       Season of the Elders’ Altar: Waning Moon

      Grandmother Speaks: This Is Hardly a Day to Be Timid

      The