Spiritual Gleaning
Solstice, magic, internet DNA tests, Poppin' Fresh 4 lyfe, rockstar embroidery, automatons, self-driving cars and candles. Lots of candles.
Up here in this hemisphere we’ve just passed the Winter Solstice. I also use the term Yule for this time of year. Of course it’s the start of winter. I blur the lines between what is pagan or witchy and even what Christmas is to me, because I’ve always been “rootless” when it comes to things like belief systems and their holidays.
In my process of defining a spiritual life, I decided it was more honest of me to find and use what is “out there” in the world, that I resonate with.
In taking pieces here and there, I might inadvertently and sometimes intentionally break the rules of what words or symbolic things belong to whoever or whatever, along the way. Sorry if I offend anyone.
That said, I did the ancestry thing and found my roots to be mostly Spanish and Scottish, so the wheel of the year and connected witchy rituals can very well fit within the realm of my genealogy. That kind of witch may be in my blood, but who knows?
I recently listened to an artist and witch share that she’s interested in defining her own sabbats, as the traditional wheel of the year does not culturally or intuitively match the mix of who she is. I dig that.
I personally feel connected to the traditional “wheel,” which may have to do with my roots, but I’ve always felt that any ceremony, ritual, or spiritual practices I’ve engaged in comes mostly from the commodified and economic world I was born into, but maybe that’s the case for most of us.
I first learned about the wheel of the year from one of several books I gathered from an old college classmate who had decided to leave behind her pagan explorations. I still have these books.
Pasta in a Can
TV as a babysitter. Boil-in-the bag Salisbury steak on a discount version of Wonder Bread for dinner, Jiffy Pop maybe once a year when the Wizard of Oz was broadcast on NBC or CBS. Falling asleep to Disney movies at the drive-in while lying on blankets on the top of the family station wagon… Pop-culture fed into me like a spoonful of technicolored Fruity Pebbles for breakfast. None of it brought me to an innate feeling of being connected to everyone or nature or Gods or a higher power, or did it?
I can grow my hair long, dress in flowing dresses and wear crystals and a string of bells around my waist (all of which I have done and felt intuitively drawn to do) but I just can’t ignore all of the pre-packaged consumer-culture stuff that surrounded my development. When I make more “witchy” wardrobe choices, I always feel a comfort in making statements (to no one) meant to address my advanced level of self-awareness (joke), stating that I’m going through some kind of “Stevie Nicks phase” or something to that end.
I feel like admitting all the ridiculousness and distraction and moments of grasping for meaning after searching through so much information is some form of honesty, and this need I have to do so is also connected to my art.
The way I see myself as the best witch and artist I can be is to make something of all that garbage, noise and beautiful things that helped/helps form my neural connections. It’s where I mine from. The fact that I founded my spiritual belief system by watching reruns of the show Bewitched and feeling the dark power of Magica DeSpell (I have been misnaming her Magica McDuck for years!) in my comic books from the 1970’s, tells me that any sort of communication potentially handed down from witches in Spain, Scotland, Northern Europe, Ireland, France and Wales- not to mention those who made new lives in North and South America, had to come through, at least in part (and it feels like a large part), by way of televised broadcasts and thin-papered and mass-produced texts sold on magazine racks at the local five-and-dime.
*Magica DeSpell has had such an effect on me that to this day I consider the sight of a found dime to be a sign from another realm, helping to guide me in some way or another.
To a large extent I idealize how this is the way spirituality made its way into my life, (in a, “look, you can find spirit anywhere!” sort of way) but I don’t braid ideals of capitalism into my now silvering hair and any bells I own are not those found on Wall Street. I wish I could say I was shown ritual and ceremonies performed out in nature, and taught ways to engage with spirit through my dreams, passed on from generations of women or gender-fluid ancestors who trusted and sensed their connection to earth, time, and even space.
That said, my DNA results show I have the teensiest amount of indigenous Chilean blood in me (Chile is where my mom immigrated from), and I suppose that is where my rooted “witchiness” could possibly connect to different patterns and perceptions- from a different hemisphere and different connections to nature. I’d like to believe that’s the case, but according to the website I sent my spit to, it’s like a very, very, very small percentage of DNA.
As well, I grew up hearing stories of a grandmother I never met, that felt magical in their telling. As far as I know, she was a Spanish-Catholic in South America doing things like healing bird wings, making shoes out of tires, and preparing the dead for funerals in her community. Maybe that one-percent indigenous Chilean in me comes from her. However, my mother, who told those surely embellished stories, was determined in the early 1970’s to assimilate to her new world, the American world, where, as my air-force brat, just discharged from the Navy and now managing a Kragen Auto Parts store father would show her, unambitious working people should rely on and trust the advancement of production and technology above all else. The “simple life,” brought to you by our commercial sponsors- a home, a car, lots of cigarettes, TV dinners, spending weekends watching televised wrestling events or suntanning in the front yard as the kids amuse themselves, fighting over who gets to use the Sit n’ Spin while stuffing our mouths with machine-manufactured orange sherbet packed into something not unlike a toilet paper tube, praying that our next meal would be chicken, deep-fried and served “family style,” in a giant paper bucket.
Both parents were not lovers of using their time for cooking or even eating food- they hoped that someday we could just take a pill for each meal and get on with it. I heard them speak about this “dream,” repeatedly.
I suppose that’s why I love a home to be used for nurturing and sharing. To take care and put time into making the “fuel” that keeps us going is something I value.
Mess up the kitchen and clean it again and again and again. It’s worth it.
For all my badmouthing of convenience here, I am not immune to the lure of a Campbell’s Mushroom Soup casserole or fast food treats from time-to-time, but I love a space where we can be slow and intentional in activities and tasks that have speedy, unhealthy alternatives. I’m lucky to now have this. So much is missed by way of alluring billboards and internet ads sending us on illusory missions to try and speedily get to what can’t be bought, like a carrot on a stick tied to our backs.
It’s a dirty trick on those of us who have our minds so often consumed by our jobs that pay little money and take much of our thought and emotional energy.
So what do I call this?
I like the term, “hedge witch” so much. I feel it’s a way to name myself as someone who finds my spiritual connections by rooting into and tending to the the things I just mentioned as well as the home I make and whatever community I find myself a part of, in ways that follow my intuition. I may not be perfect at any of it and I haven't yet churned my own butter, but I do my best (in this world that asks us to go faster and faster) to remember to trust my “gut” and slow down. Energies exist here. Spirits. I believe this. I can find all parts of what I’ve determined as my witchy self in this idea I have of hedge-witchery.
Whenever I take walks in new places or even where I live and find a house with a charming yard with trinkets, chimes, shimmering crystal baubles hanging from trees and plants in colorful planters, etc... and all it feels lived in, tended to and cared for, I imagine it’s the home of a hedge witch- often with an actual hedge or fence lined with wild growing and flowering things. Someone who makes up their own witchy rules and thrives that way. I hope someone might think that about me and the home I make.
Yoda Lights
From December 21st, here in the northern hemisphere, we start to think of days lengthening. Ceremonially it’s about lights. Candles. Think about the Yule log- While the solstice is the mark of winter, from this point forward the days start to grow longer, the night shortens. We might think about the coming warmth as a way to get through the remaining cold and darkness.
Consider how we would think of this time if we had to rely on growing and harvesting and even hunting our own food. Think about how lucky we are if we have a home to keep a fire burning, a heater running, lights twinkling on a tree and gifts underneath it.
What are symbolic representations of this time? What does this time mean for you? Do you have bad connections to it? Have you had to develop your own ways of either getting through the holidays or have you managed to define your own rules and rituals or traditions? I think it’s all valuable and all worth honoring because, well, life is so brief and it makes sense to try and make it something we paid attention to and engaged with as best as we could.
Years ago I didn’t feel a strong, personal connection to the holidays, pagan or otherwise. Kenny, my partner, definitely did and was heartbroken when we first met because we couldn’t afford to make our way back to where he came from, where his family engaged in large gatherings and Christmas traditions. We lived all the way on another coast, and this was the first time in his life spending Christmas away from his family.
Personally, I was not excited to fall into his family’s idea of the holidays at that point, as the childless people we were, living in Hollywood with financial setbacks, doing what we had to do to be artists after changing our lives in our thirties.
I had been a holiday “floater” since I could remember- falling into the traditions of friends and friends’ families in order to experience that kind of warmth and connection, always feeling as though I was sitting at the proverbial “kids table” at the party, even though I was always treated with total love and warmth.
I shared with Kenny how much of a gift it was to not be able to afford travel at that time, as we were at the start of our lives together and able to create our own version of this time of year, so beloved by the both of us during our childhoods, albeit in different ways. This was our chance to build something we would treasure, from the ground up.
This was little consolation for him, but he embraced how things were and one night he called my pre-paid cell phone while I was on my commute home, asking to meet him on Hollywood Boulevard after I made the climb up the stairs from the underground Red Line. For him, it was a few steps from our apartment, where he had been working that day.
I found him on the Walk of Fame, wearing a Santa hat and he told me we were going to pick up whatever fresh tree we could find and afford (that would fit into our tiny living space) at the small grocery store nearby, where local street performers, dressed as superheroes in dirty costumes in order to hustle tourists out of change for a souvenir picture, purchased or shoplifted their dinners.
After deciding on a spot in our apartment for our first shared holiday tree, we walked in the dark (we couldn’t yet afford a car) to the Target on La Brea and Santa Monica, passing Kermit the Frog tipping his Charlie Chaplin bowler cap to us as we held hands in the night, chatting about how we would collect tree ornaments over time. Each one would tell a story. We decided we needed to get things started with a string of lights and some small, reflective glass bulbs- to set the stage for any treasured trinkets we’d eventually find and hang, which was the reason for this trip to the store.
We found them immediately. Plastic Yoda-wearing-a-santa-hat heads, capped onto golden twinkle lights. It was a short strand but with our tree measuring just over two feet tall, we only needed the one. Perfect.
“Ugly”
In October the Art Ranger and I went on an excursion to San Francisco. She heard that PJ Harvey was playing at the Masonic and we got tickets in the spring and I made plans to take off work the following school year, in order to attend. I had never seen her in concert but had wanted to since the 1990’s.
I had seen PJ Harvey’s image and name on a banner or billboard outside of The Whisky A-Go-Go in Los Angeles. Maybe it was 1994? It was either the album art from Rid of Me or a promotional photo from around that time. I can’t remember.
It got my attention, for sure. It didn’t appear to me that she was trying to be pretty in a way that rock stars usually did. It seemed kind of ugly, but strong. And when I finally heard her music, I felt there was something in it that I felt uncomfortable with, but it was powerful, melodic, unusual and also familiar in a rock sense and I loved it. That’s when I came to the conclusion that something can be good and uncomfortable and even “ugly.” It can be meaningful. In years to come I would realize that ugly wasn’t the correct term.
As the date to the concert in San Francisco came closer, I suggested we also see some art and stay the night in the city. My pal agreed and we began to make a plan. I found out that Kara Walker had an installation at SFMOMA, which is where I first discovered her work in the 90’s and I was thrilled to get a chance to see her new work in that space.
That first Walker show took me on a journey I never expected. Like PJ Harvey, I was lured into a complexity of beauty, power, darkness and in this case, humor. Her cutout silhouettes reminded me of having that done every year in elementary school, our heads creating shadows on black paper, then traced in white chalk and cut out by teachers as a gift for our parents and caregivers- but the story told by Walker’s cutouts were not the same as those meant to be charming childhood keepsakes.
In addition, she had drawings and sketches framed and presented in ways I had never considered. Each section told stories I had never tried to hear, and I was lured into something difficult to pay attention to, by the demonstration of her craft, as well as the arrangement of it all. I went to the museum that day to see a Keith Haring retrospective but it was Walker’s work I needed to see. It changed everything. What a powerful force.
Fast forward to 2024 and Kara Walker has created Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine), an installation (on view from July 1, 2024–Spring 2026on floor 1) with animatronic figures, as well as a display case with sculptural items. It’s an area for the public to sit at and be with her characters and their movements for as long as the museum is open. I do believe you can experience it for free, which I love. You can also take home your own paper message that Fortuna, herself, spits out before you.
I so was moved by it and glad to see this video where she speaks about the process as well as the work. I recommend you watch it and also see and spend time with the installation, telling a story of people, a time, a city and also magic and spirit- to put it in ridiculously simple terms and my own words. It’s something that needs to be felt through experience.
And speaking of magic- the concert, which we attended after the visit to SFMOMA, was everything I could have wanted from Ms Harvey, after all these years.
(I should note that after being around Walkers automatons, something she says has to do with the connection the city has to the world of technology, both past and present, we found ourselves taking a driverless taxi to the concert.)
PJ’s album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was the soundtrack to a time in my life when music felt like secret messages that gave me courage to enter a new life. Fully engaging in Rid of Me and Dry, years after their release, was a way to remind myself of my own power right before I made that shift and entered into something I perceive as a spiritual awakening that led me to being the witch I am now; caring about mysticism, home and nature- who makes art that tells stories about demons and angels existing in different but connected fields of energy.
I must not forget how important her album White Chalk was for me when it was released in 2007. I was working in a midwestern art studio with a big window and a view of snow. So much snow. I walked to the record shop to buy the CD, transferred it to my MP3 player and listened to it on repeat, while walking from home to studio and back, in a landscape I never thought I’d live in. It still feels like music of winter and that time. Singing of bones and blood, darkness and the devil.
On the cover art she wore a white dress and I’m not sure if there were words stitched onto it at that time, or if it’s something the designer added for the tour that came after.
Not long before moving to the midwest I thought that the only kind of wedding dress I might ever wear would be one with words embroidered in red thread, so I resonated with this idea and garment.
In the concert my friend and I saw in San Francisco last October, as part of the tour costumes, PJ wore a dress where she and the band made drawings on it, documenting their experience as well as the places they visited and performed.
In addition to idea of garment and experience combining as art, her choreography and simplicity displayed that night felt like a witch’s blessing (although I’ve never heard the artist mention anything about being a witch), without needing to be said as such, and I’m glad I saw her perform live at the age I am at now, and her, having defined her art and music-life as diverse and so neatly formed as it has become.
As for my own creative projects, I’ve been working mostly to reign things in- doing what it takes to keep my attention focused, and it’s working??? I’m wrapping things up, taking notes, mining from here and there. Journaling a lot with a pen and paper. Walking, listening to dreams and looking at the ocean in between life’s distractions. Moments move so fast. Reminding myself to be in it all, right now. Light a candle. Look at it.
I’ll have work to show at some point.
Blessed Solstice and thanks for reading.
