Category Archives: Mountains

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Winter is Coming

September 22, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Harvest Home and the Michaelmas Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Jon. Healing, in some ways. Ruth, in Spirit week at her high school. Having fun. Anxious. Gabe, with his first pimple, Nosy. That squash soup I made last year for Kate. Still good, fed us all. Jodi and kitchen ideas. Cold nights. Kep and Rigel beside me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Autumnal Equinox

Tarot: Four of Bows, Wildwood

Monday night we had frost. Tricky. Moisture dripped from the garage eve onto the steps up to the loft. Had on my tennis shoes. Not yet winterized, my mind left out the part where that small amount of Water could freeze, become slippery. Especially on the sole of a tennis shoe. Grabbed the railing, steadied myself. Oh, shit. Went to the results of my recent DEXA scan, bone density. Hoping I have enough bone strength to fall and not break something important. Like any bone in my body.

That Worm. The one about handling this place in the Winter. Bit into the Apple of my paradise. This is something I have to face, deal with. Choose ways and means to keep myself safe and happy. Rigel, too.

Not a big deal. Yet. And there are options.

Our house in the early morning, light on Shadow Mountain

This is where I want to be. Kate’s last Home. Our Mountain Home. I’m willing to think this through, come up with solutions. One of which entails finding somebody to plow my driveway. Starting again on that one this morning.

Jodi came. She’s from Blue Mountain Kitchens. I want to inspire my cooking. Make the kitchen a place I want to be. Functional, yes. Beautiful, too. Rustic, fit the house, its location. We talked cabinetry, counter tops, backsplash, storage, prep. I liked her. She had some good ideas.

Next week Bear Creek Designs, who did our downstairs bathroom, putting in stone and tile, creating a zero entry threshold for the shower, comes out. I’ll see what they have to say. I like them, too.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Living in Paradise

Money can answer many of the questions about that Worm. Protect the Apple. And, I have enough. Not more than enough, but enough, to tackle most of the issues.

Also needing to get strong bodies up here to move furniture. Table from downstairs to the old sewing room. Kate’s recliner up to the living room. Figure out what to do with the big wooden display cabinet and its glassware. The smaller one and its rocks, including the nice gneiss Tom sent me a while back.

As I often whisper to myself, I’m getting there. Slow and steady. The tortoise. Not the rabbit.

Jon, Ruth, and Gabe came up last night. Jon has to get Jen to sign the title to the Subaru so he can donate it CPR. This is happening. Very slowly, but it’s happening.

Today though is a holiday. Let’s not forget. Mabon. The Autumnal Equinox. The time of the Harvest Moon. The combine contractors are working their way through the Wheat Fields of the Great Plains. Corn pickers are out in Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois. Soy bean harvest. Apples in the orchards.

Those gardens with Squash, last Tomatoes, Beans, Onions, Raspberries, wild Grapes. Wicker and wire gathering containers filled, carried into kitchens. The canning equipment taken down from its high shelves. Oh, what a time. Fresh vegetables and fruit, nuts.

Mabon is a late name for this harvest holiday: Feast of the Ingathering, Harvest Home, or simply Fall. Meteorologists say Fall when September 1st comes. Most of us still follow the old ways, though we may not think of them that way. Celebrating equinoxes and solstices, in their reversed forms in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, constituted a religious rite in many ancient cultures. Anywhere agriculture followed the seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, the Sun and its relation to Earth’s orbit evoked awe and wonder.

No accident that CBE has a sukkah up, open to the sky. A prominent Harvest holiday on the Jewish calendar. And, I learned a year or so ago, once the primary holiday at this time of year, not the High Holidays. Bounty in the form of first Fruits, unblemished Animals came to the Temple in Jerusalem. Sacrifices to the most high god. Think I’ll head over there this evening. Pizza in the hut.

A week from today we celebrate Michaelmas. The traditional beginning of the academic year in England, the Michaelmas term. The feast day of the Archangel Michael. Tom and Roxann’s anniversary. And, as you’ve often heard me say here, the start of the Springtime of the Soul.

Guess I’ve had a Jewish sensibility all these years. This does feel like the beginning of a new year to me. I celebrate one at Samain and on January 1st as well. Multiple new years. Multiple opportunities to examine life. In fact, I think I’ll do a Fall Tarot spread to see what this wondrous season has in store for me.

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Tradition a longer conversation summarized

September 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Tarot: Nine of Stones in the Wildwood Deck

Meaning (according to the Wildwood Tarot book-WTB):

Reverence for past wisdom and sacrifice. The ability to relate to ancient knowledge and pass on the lessons of ancestral memory and ritual.

Let me throw in here, too, Ovid. And, my interest in pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus. Dante. The Tao. The early world of Hinduism. Christianity and Judaism. Those very early shamanic faiths of the Mongols, of the Japanese (Shinto), the Koreans.

Even anthropology. My interest in anthropology was to find the way of other peoples, to know and understand them as much on their own terms as possible. Travel as well. The learning inherent in being the other.

I’m not a syncretist. I’m not an everybody has something to teach us sorta guy. Though there’s a sense in which that’s true. I’m not trying to find the one truth that snakes through all the traditions. There isn’t one. And, yes, I’m pretty sure of that.

There is though this truth. The human body, its limitations and potentials, does remain pretty much the same over time. The brain and its evolution has hardwired certain ways of responding to the world around us. Though there have been dramatic climatic changes like the ice age, the sorts of challenges the world provides in its various regions remain at least similar even today.

What I’ve done, often without knowing it, is to immerse myself in the thought ways, the life ways, the ritual ways of so many different cultures over long periods of time and in very different geographical and geological conditions that I feel like a citizen of multiple cultures, yet beholden to none of them. Including, perhaps most of all, my own.

The tricky part for those of us raised in the West and in the Judaeo-Christian tradition can be capsulized in one word: progress. Progress assumes linear time. Progress assumes one culture can evaluate others qualitatively. Nineteenth century France is better than, nineteenth century England. Or, China’s civilization is superior to everyone else’s outside the Middle Kingdom. Or, we, the USA, will make the world safe for democracy, the obvious best form of government.

Progress both puts blinders on us, makes jingoists of us all, and imagines an unproven and unprovable idea: that next year, next day, next minute things will get better. By whose standards? Mine? Yours? Theirs? The citizens of ancient Ephesus? Of X’ian. Of Kyoto.

Of course, central heating beats a fire in the middle of the hut with a hole in the top to let smoke out. Of course, driving in a motorized vehicle is easier than walking or riding a horse. Of course, air conditioning is preferable to suffocating heat. You can extend this list.

But. Is central heating progress? Depends on the fuel, in one way of looking at it. Natural gas, propane, and heating oil are all common fuels. Think. Climate change.

Same question about driving and air conditioning.

Humans tend to favor the thing they have and know. So, today is better than yesterday.

Meaning (according to the Wildwood Tarot book-WTB):

Reverence for past wisdom and sacrifice. The ability to relate to ancient knowledge and pass on the lessons of ancestral memory and ritual.

As a 1960’s radical, anti-establishment, pushing for new political, military, economic, sexual, intellectual mores, to consider myself one who reveres past wisdom, ancient knowledge? No. No. No.

Yet. There I was studying Socrates. Zoroaster. Ovid. Greek history. Biblical literature. Dante. Taoism. The history of ancient civilizations like Assyria, the Qin dynasty, Middle Kingdom Egypt. Not only studying. Learning. And in that learning, unbeknownst to me, at least partially, being shaped by that learning.

When I went to seminary, I saw the utility of the prophetic tradition in Judaism and Christianity. It could be used to press for change on behalf of the widow and the orphan, the enslaved, the oppressed, the poor and the hungry. I considered this tradition, that of the prophets of Ancient Israel, the real gem in the long years since the death of Jesus.

It was. And, is. But. There is another jewel there, too. One only accessible to the meditator, the reader of scripture, the ascetic, the one willing to face the root of the faith. To get burned by its heat. This is the faith of the Russian Starets, the Welsh peregrinators, mystics like St John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart. And, not faith. Not really.

Why? Because it involved and affirmed an actual experience of the numinous.

My inner world got shaped, in the end, more by this strain of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Though. Again, I was only partially aware of that at the time.

When I fell too far away from the very idea of theology, of religious institutions, I went into a long period of quiet. I sold my commentaries, no longer engaged in lectio divina, or used the Jesus prayer.

Camus came back to me. Life is absurd. Without meaning. Death is final, extinction. To live is a choice. One that can be altered.

The Great Wheel came into my life sort of through a back door, a way of understanding Celtic thoughts and motivations. But when Kate and I moved to Andover and our long horticultural, beekeeping, canine loving life really began, the Great Wheel slowly seeped into my thinking about the garden, about the life of dogs and people, about the hives and their superorganism.

That was what I had been prepared for. Staring at the root of an ancient faith. I had the inner tools to accept the Great Wheel as the genius of a culture, one that had clear application to what I did every morning with hoe and spade.

Gradually I came to see that this ancient religious calendar spoke as forcefully to my spirit as the Gospel of Luke, as the prayers of Meister Eckhart. More forcefully at that point.

That was what led me to a bare knuckle spirituality, stripping away the accretions to the Great Wheel that had come from well-meaning, but in my view, silly, Wiccans and Druids.

I saw the Great Wheel, and when I did I saw it through Taoist influenced eyes, as not a belief system but as a metaphor with its feet planted in my garden. It was there, right before my eye. Beltane to Lughnasa. To Samain. To the Winter Solstice.

I had embraced an ancient way, a way I had learned from study and practice. I am, sort of, a traditionalist.

So, Nine of Stones. Hear ye, hear ye. Yes, sir!

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An Ordinary Pagan

September 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Monday gratefuls: My sisters: Mary, BJ, Sarah, Anne. My brother: Mark. My ancient brothers: Tom, Paul, William, Mario. Family. It is both what you make it and part of what made you. Three-hole punch. Internet recipes. Cooking. Inogen. Rain and a cool night. Living on the Mountain top.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain on the deck

Tarot: Nine of Stones, Wildwood Deck

The Wildwood deck bases its suits and major arcana in Celtic myth and lore. And, it correlates them to the Great Wheel. I’m learning from the deck, deepening my own thinking about the Great Wheel, about this World, this Earth onto which I was thrown along with each of you reading this.

My interest in the Great Wheel ignited during my search for a theme, a focus for writing. Kate suggested I look into my heritage. At the time I knew about Richard Ellis, my indentured servant ancestor who arrived in the U.S. in 1707. His father, a captain in William and Mary’s occupying army in Ireland, came from Wales. Denbigh. I also knew that the Correls, also on my father’s side, immigrated during the Great Potato famine in the late nineteenth century.

So, things Celtic. I expanded my reach later on into Northern European myth and legend. Genetics put this strain of my family history as more significant than the Celtic, but I was well into the Celtic material before I got genetic information through 23andme.

This learning coincided with my leaving the Presbyterian ministry and moving toward Unitarian-Universalism. I found(find) the UU movement liberating, but thin soup. It’s a nice refuge for folks fed up with traditional religious institutions, but in itself it offers only a bland diet of warmed over religious thought disconnected from its roots, decent poetry, and a laudable willingness to take action for social justice.

Though I transferred my credentials to the UU, I found my attempts to enter its ministry regression. After a couple of embarrassing and unnecessary attempts. (Kate told me I was making a mistake.) I needed to write, to be away from religious institutions. Not try again in a profession which did not fit me from the beginning.

After I left my ministry monkey back in its theological jungle, I became a flat-earth humanist. Atheist. No afterlife. Death=extinction. No world beyond the phenomenal one. And that one only as it can be understood through science. Logic. Yes. Data. Yes. Facts. Yes. Myth. No. Other World. No. Spirituality. No. Learning from poetry and the world’s religious traditions? No.

Oh, I used the Celtic and Northern European folk traditions in my writing, yes. But, did I believe it? No. How could I?

Yet. The Great Wheel. Fit so well with my Thomas Berry inflected view of climate change work: creating a sustainable future for humans on this planet. It helped me into the thought world, the faith world of the early Celts.

When Kate and I moved to Andover in 1994, I’d already written three novels using the faith worlds of early Irish, Welsh, Scots, Cornish, and Breton folk. And, one using the Ragnarok idea from Northern European faith worlds.

We wanted to grow perennial flowers. Have fresh cut flowers every day. So, I learned about spring ephemerals, corms, tubers, bulbs. Food for them. The culture they needed in terms of soil, light, protection.

Then vegetables. A degree in horticulture by correspondence from a university in Guelph, Ontario. An orchard. Bees. A fire pit.

Our life together, Kate and mine, had Irish Wolfhounds, Whippets, and plants. Lots and lots of plants. We worked together, sweated together. Got sticky harvesting honey. Steamed from canning. Drying and freezing became a usual part of our fall.

It was hard manual labor and I loved it. So did Kate. We also loved each other and who each other was when working outside. When putting food by.

As the life of our gardens became our lives, the Great Wheel began to make deeper and deeper inroads into my heart. The Winter Solstice became my High Holiday. Or, my Deep Holiday. I celebrated the Celtic holidays, wrote e-mails and blog posts about them in addition to using them in my novels.

At some point I realized I had become a pagan. Not in any particular sense like Wicca, or Druidry, or Witchcraft, just an ordinary pagan, a person who found his religious life adequately nourished by the turning of the seasons, by the natural world, by love.

I’ll get to the nine of Stones later, but it supports this journey in a very specific way.

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Underneath the bones, my wings are pushing out

September 19, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Susan. The Woolly Retreat. Pruning. Yet more of Kate’s jewelry. Satisfaction at getting things done. Subway. Stinker’s gas. Lodgepoles. Black Mountain. That one forerunner Aspen. Golden. The Stars. The blackness of Space. Four amateur astronauts. New hearing aid. Roger.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The house on Shadow Mountain

Tarot: Ten of Swords, Druid. King of Stones, Wildwood. (not sure about these two. for the first time. maybe it’ll hit me later.)

Met with Susan yesterday. She’ll house sit for Kep and Rigel when I drive to the Woolly retreat the first of November. We had a long chat. Dogs. Drivers in the mountains. Cars. She’s a Mountain type. Making a living anyway she can. She cleans houses and dog sits, lives in a rented room in King’s Valley. Almost 70.

Living in the Mountains has a strange and strong attraction for certain folks. Kate was one. She refused to consider moving. I’m one, too. Though. Once in a while, recently, I get twinges of, oh, this might be too much for me someday. Usually in the morning when I’m still sleepy, still not warmed up. But that worm is there.

Still remember the first days up here in the loft. I’d write, then look out the window at Black Mountain. Write. Look. A sense of being in the right Place. Yirah. Awe. When I’m down the hill, hot and bothered by all the traffic, I can turn the car West, head back up into the Front Range. I become peaceful again.

BJ, Kate, Anne at Kate’s birthday party apres eclipse

Kate’s here now. Forever. In the Iris bed. In Maxwell Creek. On the Yahrzeit wall at CBE. In my heart. In the bones and stones of this place. She died a Mountain Woman. Fits with the Earth Mother persona she nourished for over 20 years in Andover. A powerful attractant for me. Keep the memories, the torch for her going.

The running of the fence line is underway. Zeus. Boo. Kep. Thor. Rigel. Rigel. Boo. Thor. Kep. Yip, yip, yip, yip. Neighbors kept friendly by a fence. Yup, Robert Frost.

The day got away from me. I had to change the sheets on the bed, always a good workout. That damned Tempurpedic weighs 120 pounds and concentrates all of its weight right where you’re trying to lift it. Got it done so I laid down for a nap.

In my zoom meeting with my ancient buddies Paul, Tom, Mario, and Bill I checked in. Well. As near as I can tell, I have no tale of woe. For the first time in six months. They all laughed and clapped. Me, too. Yeah.

Of course. Cheer up, things could be worse. I cheered up and sure enough things got worse. Hope not though.

This is six months later. After a lotta upset. Kate’s death, grief, and the return of my prostate cancer. Jon’s various illnesses. Which continue. Sorting through the necessaries after Kate’s death occupied more time than I would have thought. Normal, though. Still not quite done.

As I’ve written, I can feel the tidal forces running with me now rather than pulling me out sea. Provided I can stay well, I think that will continue. Gonna get a flu shot and a vaccine booster in the next couple of weeks.

I also contacted Elisa Robyn’s, my astrologer friend from CBE. She’ll do a new reading for me on Monday, September 27th. I’m leaning in to the Tarot, astrology, Kabbalah world. Letting it speak to me. Call to me. Challenge me. Inspire me. That old skeptic me would pooh pooh all this. Showed him the door. What helps is what helps.

Tom had an interesting exercise for us this morning. He gave each of us a poem earlier in the week. We read them aloud and told the others what we thought.

Here’s mine:

The Phoenix Again

On the ashes of this nest
Love wove with deathly fire
The phoenix takes its rest
Forgetting all desire.

After the flame, a pause,
After the pain, rebirth.
Obeying nature’s laws
The phoenix goes to earth.

You cannot call it old
You cannot call it young.
No phoenix can be told,
This is the end of the song.

It struggles now alone
Against death and self-doubt,
But underneath the bone
The wings are pushing out.

And one cold starry night
Whatever your belief
The phoenix will take flight
Over the seas of grief

To sing her thrilling song
To stars and waves and sky
For neither old nor young
The phoenix does not die.

May Sarton

My reaction: I can feel, underneath the bone, my new wings pushing out. And I await the cold starry night when my new Phoenix self will take flight.

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Country Roads. Pruning.

September 18, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Zeus, Boo, Thor. Rigel, Kep. Running the fence. Happy. Susan, who will care for Rigel and Kep during my time at the Woolly retreat in November. Social Security. Orgovyx. The rolled over IRA. My pension. This house. This life. More pruning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Alan in Fiddler. Taking Jon, Ruth, Gabe.

Tarot: Ten of Wands, Druid. Queen of Stones, Wildwood. Question-what can I do today to move my new life forward?

Happy Camper. On the way I pass King’s Valley where Marilyn and Irv live. The intersection of King’s Valley road and 285 is deadly. Each year people die. No light. No overpass. Left turns into heavy cross traffic.

When I finished up my first round of fire mitigation, I hired a teenager from down the block. A good worker. On the last day of our work together he got a phone call. His Uncle John, a Harley rider, died in a wreck at the King’s Valley crossing.

Further on 285 winds down into a Mountain Valley. A right turn takes you to Staunton State Park. I see the eastern Slope of Black Mountain out my loft window; its western Slope is the eastern boundary for the park. 45 mph down the Mountain to the Valley.

Later, after a steep climb, up yet another Mountain, 285 snakes past Pine. It has a short shopping mall with coffee and gift stores at the intersection with Pine Valley road. Down the Pine Valley road winds the North Fork of the South Platte River, opening out into wide swaths of Pasture, boiling over Rocks. Tom and I drove Pine Valley road to Manitou Springs and the Pikes Peak Railroad.

Up. Down. Colorado Mountain roads. At Pine the Continental Divide shows up in the distance, well beyond Bailey.

Happy Camper has a narrow, bumpy, dirt road that winds up a Hillside. At the top is a metal industrial building where Happy Camper grows Maryjane and creates their own branded products. The retail shop is on the right as you drive in.

When I went in yesterday, there were 8 men of my age, some with masks, some not. They’re all together, so I can help you, said one of the budtenders. Yes, that’s a thing.

Eight of the Indica Cheeba Chews, please. The black ones? Yes.

Back home for a full workout. A few tasks. Called Jackie and changed my October 2nd hair appointment. My Tarot and the Tree of Life spread class interfered. Lunch and a later nap.

It’s been what qualifies as a busy week for me. Glad the weekend is here. It always amuses me that I feel different on the weekends, looser, less driven. I mean, I’ve been retired from a regular work week since 1992. But the weekend, even though I often worked on Sundays, still feels freeing. Yay. Friday’s over! Reminds me I want to experiment with keeping the Sabbath.

Still working on cooking for one. Sometimes good. Sometimes not. Last night. Not. I had cheese and crackers.

Ten of Wands, Druid. Queen of Stones, Wildwood

Until today I have not asked a question of the cards I turn over in the morning. It is usual to ask a question, but the daily “oracle” card can also be read in light of the general trends in your life.

what can I do today to move my new life forward?

The ten of wands has shown up a lot for me. It’s about carrying a burden, keeping on keeping on. Staying the course. The Queen of Stones in the Wildwood deck evokes a different, but complementary sensibility.

The Queen is a Cave Bear, guarding the entrance to her home as dawn paints the near sky. The Wildwood book suggests she raises these questions: How can you best promote well-being at home? Where can you make space to care for yourself and others? What needs to be preserved?

The ancient Cave Bear is now long extinct. I saw a Cave Bear skeleton, it might have at the Science Museum in St. Paul. They stood fifteen feet with their upper limbs extended. Big. Strong. Master and Mistress of their domain. An apex Predator.

This Bear Queen has a home, one she uses to raise her cubs, for hibernation in the winter, for shelter in other seasons. So do I. And, as I went to bed last night I had thoughts about what I needed to do next. Pruning?

Yes, some of that. The bookcases in the bedroom, the still cluttered living room area. The recipe book I have to create out of recipes printed from the internet. I also got the file folders I needed to organize my financial papers.

Another thought last night focused on reading books about the Tarot, reentering the world of astrology. That research and scholar mode.

Today the Bear suggests I focus on space. Making it a caring space for myself, for Jon and the grandkids, for guests. So. I will.

The Ten of Wands reminds me though that I need to put down the pruner and the book, take a break. I no longer need to have my head down, pushing forward. That time died with Kate. I can relax, do something fun.

Deciding to go to the Woolly Retreat is an aspect of this. Road trip. I’m going to drive. First long trip on the road since 2016. Excited.

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Fourth Phase

September 16, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Happy Camper. Kol Nidre. Yom Kippur. CBE. Marilyn and Irv. Cool(er) nights. Alan. The Wildflower. Colorado DMV. Ruby. Her new tabs and title. Workout. Black Mountain. Maxwell Creek. That Deer I hit. Shadow Mountain. All the Critters. National Western Stock Show. Bees. Evergreen. Black Mountain and Brook Forest Drive.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Draft Horse Shows

Tarot: 8 of Swords, Druid

Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement. The sealing of the Book of Life for the next year. It is written. Choose life.

I didn’t attend any of the High Holidays though I tried last night on Zoom. I don’t have the same childhood memories of these holidays that bring so many back to the synagogue. Sorta like Christmas and Easter if they were in the same week. Also, I still don’t feel comfortable in large groups, masked or not. In addition I’m tired. Orgovyx still saps my energy, leaves me achy and flashy. (hot flashy, that is)

Sukkot, on the other hand. I’ll go next Wednesday unless I’m still worn out. Sukkot is a harvest holiday and fits with the Pagan Great Wheel Taoist guy that I am. Ruth and Gabe may come up, too. I hope so. We’ll sit outside, spend some time in the Sukkah, see friends. Eat pizza. It will have no meat. Meat and cheese, nope.

Marilyn called last night before Kol Nidre, the first Yom Kippur service. Checking up on me. I appreciate that. That’s Alan, Tara, Rich, Jamie, and Marilyn. All since Sunday. I have friends here.

Interesting to consider the impact Judaism has had on me. Significant, for sure. I still feel no desire to convert, but the way of the Torah is now part of my way. Torah means learning, but learning in a particular way. With keen attention. With observance of details and mistakes and embellishments. With all we have. With others. Rabbi Jamie has taught me that Torah study is the way. And, I try to follow that way. See what you’re looking at.

My investment in applying Torah to biblical and Jewish liturgical traditions is slight, but I appreciate the opportunities. Applying it to Kabbalah, Tarot, poetry, my backyard, my inner world, the lives and times of my friends and family, the Critters that live up here, politics, on the other hand. My investment is high.

The wonderful aspect of Judaism, especially reconstructionist Judaism, is that I fit right in anyhow. I don’t have to try to shoehorn my actual beliefs into some ragged conformity. I can let them hang out, to be seen by all.

Rabbi Jamie, my first true mentor, has taught me a worldview that can accommodate my peculiar religious/spiritual/philosophical bent and add to it. It is Torah. It is grounded in the now. It is communal. It does not find tradition oppressive, nor does it find tradition authoritative.

In the simplest terms it is a hermeneutic. A method of interpretation that insists we be faithful to our experience, that we open ourselves as broadly as we can to the world around us and within us. That we learn with a bias toward merit in all that we study. This means not always going in with the sword of reason or the bludgeon of logic. It does not mean, however, excluding them.

In philosophy and anthropology, even in seminary, I found academics more a blood sport than anything else. What does that mean? How do you know? Who says so? Where’s the evidence? Correlation is not causation. Let’s wrassle!

Rabbi Jamie has taught me a gentler way of approaching learning. It does not neuter the intellect, but it does insist on giving sources a chance. On giving others a chance. On giving your self a chance. It does insist on openness.

In that process I have discovered tarot as a mirror for my soul, a guide for my journey. And, in discovering that, I have reached into my rib cage, spread it out, and exposed my heart. I can feel my way past the veil, again. I can let the totality of the universe, seen and unseen, in. I can feel my presence in Malkut, yes, but I can also feel my presence in the Crown, the Keter, and, yes, I can also feel the ayn sof.

My grief and my past six years at CBE and my own dogged searching has prepared me for this time. My fourth phase. My life has begun to withdraw from the hurly burly toward the spiritual, the soulful, the unseen. I’m thinking of myself right now as a hermit and of Shadow Mountain as my Mountain Hermitage. We’ll see if that lasts, but I think it will. I hope it will. This is the last journey of my soul here in Malkut. May it be a fruitful one.

Eight of Swords

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Let go (Note: correction below)

September 13, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Monday gratefuls: Tara. The Ancient Ones, holding space for my eventful life. Peregrenatio. Rigel, lying down with me last night. A long night asleep. Orgovyx. Exhaustion. Hot flashes. Cousin Riley, his wife. Diane and Mary in Indiana. Bailey Patchworkers. Kitchen remodelers. House stainer. Jon, Ruth, and Gabe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Death

Tarot: Death, #13 of the Major Arcana

So many help me. Jon, Ruth, Gabe came up Saturday. We had chicken pot pie and I sent them home with two. They also went to Upper Maxwell Falls to scatter some more of Kate’s ashes. I didn’t feel quite up to going and I wondered if it might be better anyhow. Allow them their own time, their own way of saying goodbye.

And, it was so. Here are Gabes’s (correction) words about it:

“Grandma’s metaphorical ashes. The ashes that stuck to the bottom were the parts of grandma that will stay with us forever. The cloudy ashes that eventually dispersed to go to the Atlantic Ocean were the parts of grandma that were temporary and that we don’t need to remember like pain and suffering. And, the glass was the vessel like our bodies, useful but not permanent.”

Leaving for Durango, Bill not pictured. Tom, Paul, me, Mario

The next morning I take a walk with my Ancient friends: Paul, Mario, Bill, and Tom. We spoke to each other in our minds, through the spirit air waves as Mario suggested. We gathered afterward. They’ve allowed me a lot of time to process my ongoing, eventful life. And, I love them for it.

Afterward I went over to an organic breakfast spot, Taspen’s. Been here almost seven years and it was the first time. Meeting Tara, my friend from CBE.

We talked. Tara is a great listener and an empath. When I told her I felt I’d expressed self pity when Jon and the grandkids left on Saturday, she said it sounded like love. Ruth had said, See you, grandpop. And, I said, my voice catching, I hope so. Sounded needy and self-pitying to me at the time.

After talking with Tara, I thought. No. I was vulnerable, sadly hopeful. And I don’t experience vulnerability with them too often. Maybe that’s changing now.

Today I’m going to the meeting of the Bailey Patchworkers. Kate’s stash and other sewing accessories will be given away to her friends there. I asked for a couple of minutes to speak. I’ll tell them that Kate loved them. That they gave her friendship and motivation for sewing. And, right after we got here. She went faithfully as long as she could.

They were a very different crowd from her ordinary social circles. She spoke her political truth often, to folks who didn’t agree. As Lauri, her engineer friend said, “I should have disliked her, but I adored her.” That was Kate.

These are those who helped me just in the last three days. A lucky guy, I am. And, of course, Rigel and Kepler.

Tarot: Death, # 13 in the Major Arcana

I’ve been drawing cards in what some call a daily oracle. Pick out one card, see how it speaks to the day. Oracle is a poor choice of words in that it has a predictive connotation. I don’t find the tarot useful as prophecy. I’ve found it astonishingly useful as a mirror to my inner world. It shows me things I ignore, or overlook, or diminish, or things I didn’t know were there.

Let’s see. I’d call it, I guess, The Daily Mirror. Ha.

Anyhow my point here is that I’m doing my own thing with these daily cards and I’m not only reading the day, but the trends. I’ve had so many cards that spoke to my anima. I’ve remarked on this before. I’ve also had cards like the Hanged Man that speak to a transformation in values, in beliefs, in life way.

The Death card is the apotheosis of that trend. Yes, indeed, it refers to death. But, to death as transition, as transformation, as a severance with the ways of the past (including life, eventually. for Kate, already), an entry way to the new. If you recall the High Priestess from yesterday, she blocked the way on the path. She encouraged waiting, going down into the depths. I’d call it wu wei.

The death card opens the way, suggests I embrace the changes that the anima cards have hinted at, the inner knowledge that the High Priestess wanted me to attain before going on. It also suggests letting go.

Let go, Charlie, of the flat-earth humanism of your post-ministry years. Let go, Charlie, of the old life you had with Kate. (note: this does not mean an end to grief or a diminished view of life with her.). Open yourself to the tarot, to astrology, to kabbalah, to the other world. Open yourself again to the creative life of writing and painting. Live into it. Live with it. Live. Let go of the caregiver, let go of the inner skeptic, the inner editor, the inner cynic. Embrace the mystical, the soulful, the beautiful. Let go.

Die to the old ways and be born again into a fourth phase of life. One focused on creativity and the other world. Let go.

“Meaning: Initiation and transformation. The core structure of initiation involves an experience of death followed by an experience of rebirth…We often have to die to our old ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving before we can open to our new life.” DTB

* “After a period of pause and reflection with the Hanged Man, the Death card symbolises the end of a major phase or aspect of your life that you realise is no longer serving you, opening up the possibility of something far more valuable and essential. You must close one door to open another. You need to put the past behind you and part ways, ready to embrace new opportunities and possibilities. It may be difficult to let go of the past, but you will soon see its importance and the promise of renewal and transformation.

Similarly, Death shows a time of significant transformation, change and transition. You need to transform yourself and clear away the old to bring in the new. Any change should be welcomed as a positive, cleansing, transformational force in your life. The death and clearing away of limiting factors can open the door to a broader, more satisfying experience of life.” biddy tarot

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Uh-oh. Changes.

September 8, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Orgovyx. Biologic Pharmacies. Money. CBE. The New Year. Rigel, sweet girl. Kep, happy boy. Dan Herman. Rich Levine. Alan Rubin. Marilyn Saltzman. Jamie Arnold. Judy Sherman. The Ancient Ones on peregrinatio. Safeway pickup. Cool breeze last night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dan’s honey

Tarot: Ace of Swords

Big news. $800 a month co-pay for Orgovyx. Not my first encounter with the predatory pricing of American pharma. Kate had a drug, I can’t recall the name right now, that was $500 a month. I’m applying for assistance. Yes, that’s enough, with the hit I took from going to one social security check and losing a third of my pension, to bite. In the decision making process between Orgovyx and Lupron. Lupron has a higher incidence of cardi0-vascular side effects. But, it’s only once every three months and covered by insurance.

Can’t imagine what folks do who don’t have resources at our age. And, that’s the bulk of us, I understand. What if you had to choose between rent and your cancer drug? Or, between food and your cancer drug? Self-triage.

On the other hand life is valuable. Sure. And, I want to do what I can to sustain mine. Let me see? Universal health care, anyone?

Boy, that Safeway really steps up. I put in a pick-up order for 8 am. They sent me a text at 6:00. Ready. Come whenever. I’m glad. It makes the morning simpler.

Barring more illness on Jon’s part or another wreck on Ruth and Gabe’s, we’ll finally distribute some of Kate’s ashes at Upper Maxwell Falls this Saturday. When Jon, Ruth, and Gabe can make it. Ruth told me she wanted some of my chicken pot pie so I’m making some on Friday. It’s been a while. Usually makes four to five full pie tins. Freeze well, too. I’ll give her two and keep two here. A good incentive to actually cook.

This will be the last of the family remembrances originally planned for August 18th. I’m planning a Kate offrenda for Dia de los muertos. I’ll burn a yahrzeit candle. (a twenty-four candle burned on the death date, but it seems appropriate.) Mix up the cultures a bit.

Which brings me to Yamantaka. The mandala at the MIA. Where I learned to accept death, my own. Long meditations on my corpse. Greeting the change, the transformation with excitement. Still sad. Yes. But also, what a moment!

Realizing I’ve been such a flat-earth humanist for so many years. Death=extinction. No god. Life is absurd. Don’t give me any of that metaphysical stuff. Changing.

Oddly, part of the stimulus for the change is a Korean tv show I’m watching, Hotel de Luna. It’s on Netflix. Instead of seeing a psychologist, Seoah saw a mudang, a shaman. Kate and I met him. The Korean worldview is a complicated mix of ancient folk traditions and high-tech, global capitalist culture.

Near Seoul, Kate. April, 2016 Visiting Seoah’s mudang

Hotel de Luna includes an Asian emphasis on ghosts, vengeful ghosts, shamans, an afterlife, and reincarnation. I’ve always dismissed reincarnation. Part of my existentialist, humanist, empiricist worldview. But. Kabbalah includes reincarnation. Buddy Mark Odegard once said he believes in reincarnation. The Buddhists, do, too. Hindus. None of this is evidence of more than a human desire to continue life in any way. Or, is it?

I’m beginning to open myself to the idea. What does it mean? What could it mean? I can feel the consolation it brings and consolation is pretty important. I know that right now. What about my embrace of the Great Wheel? Was I a Druid in a past life? Or, at least a believer in the auld religion?

When I mentioned how hard I find the idea of synchronicity, Jamie said, “Ah. The inner skeptic.” Yes, exactly. What if the inner skeptic needs an equal, perhaps stronger inner believer? What if I could find him again? I knew him once, right after college and on into seminary. He got a lot of learning from Christian mystics, ascetics, the Celtic Christian Church. He saw Jesus, Moses, and Abraham perched together on the sliver of a crescent moon while meditating.

I miss him. That guy that could embrace the irrational, the possibility of an Other World. And not cringe. Not shrink away. He was a bad boy of the Enlightenment. Oddly, the place I’ve retained most of him is in my Taoist thought. Wu wei? Yes. Sometimes. Follow the chi? Yes. Always. Experience the contradictions of consciousness and dreaming? Oh, yes. Follow the I-Ching? Yes.

Then there’s this Tarot. How can it be so damned meaningful, so consistently? Sure, it evokes archetypal thoughts, realizations. Yes. But, where do those archetypes come from? Is it the collective unconscious?

Changes on the horizon, I can feel them. Not there yet. The inner skeptic is still ascendant, but maybe not for long.

Ace of Swords:

“Keywords: Clarity. Clean break.” DTB

For example. I drew this card before I wrote this post. I didn’t look at its meanings until I finished. I mean… How?

The two commentaries below are from the Rider-Waite card, but the Druid Craft card I drew differs from it in a way especially important to me. This is Excalibur, lifted up by the Lady of the Lake. The intellect (the sword) rising from the unconscious.

The Dawn breaks at an inlet between the Loch and the Mountains to either side. I can see those Trees as Birch or Aspen. The Flowers look like Blue Bells. Both Minnesota and Colorado have the unaltered Natural World as substantial aspects of their identities. Birch or Aspen. The Mountains. A Lake.

This card speaks directly to my inner world. The Celts, Jung, my two favorite places on Earth. Appropriate that it should signify a break through. There are dark clouds there, too, and a Bird, maybe a Heron? The Heron is the on the card for the King of Vessels in the Wildwood Tarot.

I drew that card two nights ago. I’ve begun drawing a card at night, something to meditate on before I go to sleep.

Here’s a description: “As a bird that welcomes the dawn and often lives alone, the heron is known for its awareness and spiritual thoughts that its creator offers. This bird, defending ancient secrets, is said to stand at the gate between life and death, acting as a mediator between the Celtic’s journey of the soul to another world and reincarnation.”

Don’t understand how these things can be so closely linked, but perhaps that’s the point. I don’t need to understand, but accept.

“New ideas, new plans, intellectual ability, victory, success, mental clarity, clear thinking, breakthroughs, ability to concentrate, communication, realising the truth, vision, force, focus, intensity, stimulating people and environments, new beginnings, new projects, justice, assertiveness, authority, making the correct decision.” Tarotguide.

“As with all the aces, the Ace of Swords indicates that one is about to experience a moment of breakthrough. With its sharp blade and representing the power of the intellect, this sword has the ability to cut through deception and find truth. In layman’s terms, this card represents that moment in which one can see the world from a new point of view, as a place that is filled with nothing but new possibilities.” Labryinthos

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Yesterday and Today

September 3, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Chesed Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Prostate cancer. Orgovyx. Kristie. Kep and Rigel, my companions, my friends. Passing out of the dark valley. Exercise. Safeway grocery pickup. Express delivery. 47 degrees this morning. Rain on its way.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A Year Spread

Tarot: Three of Cups

Friday gratefuls: Rigel and Kep. Snuggling, staying with me, greeting me. CBE. The Bread Lounge. Donating. The spread sheets of the Rider-Waite deck from fellow student, David. Mark Horn and his Kabbalistic Tarot. Jung. His thought. Archetypes. Following our own hearts. The ancient ones. My friends. Diane. Mary. Mark. Cardio. Doing it.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain

Tarot: Two of Wands

Thursday

Did myself a service yesterday. Writing about my feelings, then choosing to exercise after my Tarot and Kabbalah class. Lifted my mood. Finished my cardio day today. 30 minutes. 5 minutes longer at 3.0 My IT band complained so that may not have been a great idea.

Got a few errands to take care of today, then I’m going to mussar at CBE. So, short post.

Yesterday I picked up groceries from Safeway, finished my Tarot and Kabbalah class, exercised, and felt good. Getting exercise in always makes me feel better. Also, errand completion.

That’s why I’m going to take off in a few minutes. Gotta get my title revised, register Ruby for the upcoming year, buy some sourdough bread and get breakfast. Donate diapers and feeding tube liquid to Mt. Evan’s Hospice. I keep forgetting to do that.

Friday

Went to the DMV to change Ruby’s title into my name, get new tabs for my plates. Like the Social Security administration a guard, this time a deputy sheriff, was at the door. Have to have an appointment. Oh. Woulda saved me an hour the guy in the leather vest and cowboy hat said. Me, too, I joined in.

Over to the Bread Lounge to pick up a loaf of sourdough, my go to bread these days. Had an egg sandwich before I went to Mt. Evan’s hospice to donate feeding liquid. They didn’t want it. Not sure what I can do with it now. Highly specialized. May have to throw it away. Mt. Evan’s is close to CBE so I went there and waited in the sanctuary for mussar to start.

Looked over the clever sheets David from Tarot and Kabbalah had created using a color printer. He printed out all of the Rider-Waite deck using a color printer. The copies he used for himself, hung by his computer were quite large, but he gave us all color copies, too, on eight and a half by eleven thick paper, six sheets in all. The Major Arcana take up two sheets and each suit has its own sheet.

This is in service of becoming familiar with each card in the deck and the deck over all. Very helpful. Gonna figure out how to do that for the Druid Craft and Wildwood decks at least. Learning the individual cards can seem overwhelming, this gives the task a gestalt it’s hard to get without putting the cards on a table face up.

Also signed up for a four session class with Mark Horn, who’s written a book The Kabbalistic Tarot. This class will feature a Tree of Life spread. Starts in October. Learning turns my crank, keeps me moving, the engine purring.

Van-Leyden St. Jerome in his Study by Candlelight (1520)

Just remembered that it’s fall, or at least fall-like. Certainly meteorological fall. A season of transition for temperatures, plant life, animal life. Hyperphagia. The Rut. And, for me, often a time of melancholy. So much so that Kate and I had phrase for her to say, “I sense you’re falling into melancholy,” when she saw the signs. Have to channel that part of Kate from now on.

The recent shift in my feelings, less upbeat, less resilient are markers I recognize. As is a leaden feeling in my body, a sense that I might be telescoping downwards, toward my feet. Mom died in October. The school year starts. The turn toward darkness is well underway. Two hours more of darkness for this date than on the Summer Solstice.

Michaelmas, the Springtime of the Soul, comes on the 29th of September. It may be that melancholy is a tool the psyche uses to prepare us for Michaelmas. Turning us inward, focusing us on the more narrow ambit of our own life.

Gonna stick with it for a while, remaining conscious of melancholy’s potential to turn toward depression. Use it.

See you on the darkside.

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The Year of Grieving ends in Wisdom and an Irish Wolfhound

August 29, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Chesed Moon

Sunday gratefuls: 49 degree morning. Ruth, only a strained shoulder and sprained back in a car accident with Jen. Gabe o.k. A quiet three days. Subway. Tarot. Kabbalah. The Hermit. The Magician.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth’s ok

Tarot: finishing the Life spread

As you may recall from yesterday, I created a new Tarot spread. Forgot to say it’s my final project in the class. We all have to show something we’ve learned. Not gonna go through the whole thing with them, too long. And, I imagine you didn’t read it through. But, I have. And, I will again.

Why? Because the tarot cards have the capacity to breach the veil of consciousness into the collective unconscious, to call out and up to awareness archetypal energies at work in my life. The only way to do it? Hardly. Poetry. Art. Friends. Kabbalah. Torah. Sacred literature. Movies. Literature. Nature. The tarot works for me much to my surprise.

#8. Samain/Binah, Three of Wands

“Keywords: Confidence, Realizing goals

Hard work begins to payoff…Realizing long term dreams and goals.” DTB

Perhaps Steiner’s springtime of the soul. A man, a farmer? an arborist?, stands with his hand on a Tree, looking out to the horizon. Beside him three wands have begun to leaf out, signaling that his work is vital, growing. A scene of future possibility. The full grown tree recalls earlier work, perhaps of another such man, now mature.

“Binah refers to the analytic, distinguishing aspects of God’s thought.

It is the uppermost feminine element in the Godhead, and is symbolized as the mother of the Shekhinah. Many of the symbols associated with Binah are therefore identical to those of the Shekhinah.” Jewish Virtual Encyclopedia

8 is infinity stood up straight.

Samain is the time when the veil grows thin and the boundary between this world and the other world is at its most permeable. Thus, Halloween, Dia de los muertos, All Saints. Coco.

The Celts chose to start their year now, at Summer’s End. The seasons between now and Ostara are Samain, Yule/Winter Solstice, and Imbolc. With Ostara these make up the first half of the Celtic year.

All this suggests that my life after Kate’s death may take a turn at Samain rather than Michaelmas. If her spirit/soul lives on (I make no assumptions.), then she will be able to communicate easily with me. I will make her an offrenda, my altar surrounding her ashes is a good start.

We’ll have a meal together, as Latin and Central Americans do in their graveyards on dia de los muertos. We’ll discuss her life and mine. She’ll have a glass of chardonnay, scallops and rare steak with fresh boiled asparagus. Finished off with some espresso, doppio, and a flan. I’ll have the rare steak, fried potatoes, and asparagus. Espresso and flan. A Paulaner Thomasbrau.

Perhaps I will achieve binah about her death and my life, discerning understanding.

#9 Yule/Tipharet Ten of Wands

“Keywords: Demands. Burdens. Overwork.

Carrying the weight of responsibility or obligations on your shoulder…Uncomplaining acceptance of your perceived burden. Reassessing priorities and values.” DTB

“Tipharet represents the ideal balance of Justice and Mercy needed for proper running of the universe.

This Sefirah unites all the upper nine powers.” JVL

The season of Yule, midwinter. The season beginning at the Winter Solstice. I feel strong, centered, in midwinter. 40 years a Minnesotan. The winter will not be ten wands on my back, though I would say that those wands don’t look all that heavy.

The man here, who does look overburdened, has walked a long way and has now begun an uphill segment. Might be me, coming back from down the Hill and through the Valley of grief. Navigating now a new life, back up on the Mountain. It will be, could be, that the new understanding of life will have created a tension between the old ways of life with Kate and the new ways of a realized life without her physical presence. That may be the ten wands.

But tipharet is the beautiful, the balanced place between Justice, Gevurah, and Mercy/Chesed. So it may also be that the wands will have begun to balance themselves, their weight distributed well for the climb.

#10 Imbolc/Hokmah Ten of Pentacles

“Key words: Blessings. Prosperity. Legacy

You may be in receipt of a legacy, or are creating one-either for your family or the wider community. Even difficult circumstances can carry hidden benefits. The chance to count our blessings and discover that they’re too numerous to count.” DTB

This is the last card in the spread, having now come round the full Great Wheel from Ostara to Imbolc. That it should have an Irish Wolfhound on it tells me all I need to know. The circle of Kate and mine’s life is in this card.

The woman stands in the black, out of the frame, perhaps out of this world. Perhaps in the other world. The gray headed man has a blond haired granddaughter by his side, Ruth, and a young man, perhaps Joseph over his shoulder. This represents the family left after the woman has gone into the blackness of death.

Though dead, the woman still holds a pentacle, a symbol of earth and abundance. Her presence is yet a source of comfort and grace for the family still on this side of the veil.

She is not absent from the lives of her family, just absent from Malkut, the physical realm.

This card strongly suggests to me that a full year after Kate’s death will find me, and our family, living and celebrating together, informed and supported by Kate’s legacy, her person and the wealth that she created. The spirit of the Irish Wolfhound, kind, compassionate, loving, loyal made present to all of us.

Since this is also the card for hokmah, or wisdom, I’m also inclined to believe that the year of grieving for Kate will bring to all of us a better sense of how to live our lives, both with each other and for each other.