Samhain 2011

Samhain 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

Light, darkness, birth, death, each year begins with hope and ends in resignation.

The sun seeps through the clouds like a reopened wound, its watery light staining the landscape as if a thrice-washed bandage. At the edge of a shadowed wood, yellow daisies glow in the gloaming of the evening sun like a string of jack-o'-lanterns marking out the territorial margin between the land of the living and the land of the dead.

The wind whispers the names of the missing through the evergreens. Wind chimes toll a death knell for the departed. We cover their eyes for the ferryman so they can't see their destination. Into light or darkness we are unconcerned as long as they're at peace. Their cairns form the portals to the Otherworld. The moon holds a mirror to their souls.

Tonight, the glass is broken. Tonight, the dead and darkness become as one. We didn't used to fear the dead, we feared their disappointment. Like faded family portraits, ghosts were pale memories of once vibrant friends and familiars. Kobolds, goblins and Swedish tomte were once our kith and kin. In our desperate longing to reclaim them, we seek out witches, priests and necromancers to throw us winter's bone.

They cannot.

Life is a sacred gift, death a sacred mystery beyond the veil of which our mortal eyes were never meant to see.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Beltane 2011

Beltane 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

The White Witch has been deposed. The Green Witch has been resurrected.

At Samhain, the Frost Queen passed annual judgment against her twin and rival after usurping power at the autumnal court. The Green Witch was garroted and minced, her body cast like feed-corn across the dry and dusty fields. In the overwatching wood, oaks and maples bled in mourning. Beneath the oppressive blanket of her icy enemy, her seeds lay fallow all winter. Like a mother spider to her emerging brood, she prepares herself for the ultimate maternal sacrifice come spring, when in revenge of Medea's children, her hatchlings will devour her alive.

Each crystalline defection from the Ice Queen's occupation waters the seeds of the Green Lady's discontent, first by drips and drops then in a steady stream. The Snow Queen's alpine army melts away before the steadily advancing wall of green. At Imbolc, there was an uprising. At the equinox, a revolution. By Beltane, the ritual plunder of the White Witch's final strongholds had begun. As the last green jacked messenger arrives, the Sun Queen's court erupts into an orgy of colorful celebration.

Reborn in coldspring snowmelt, emerging from her donjon tower, the verdant maiden blushes pink and rose before the encircling soldiers of spring. Bees and wasps in black and yellow tabards, their lances sharp and shining, stand watch while common workers deflower her in turns. By Lughnasa, she will once again be heavy with child. In the wickerman at Samhain, she will be sentenced to her fate. Her ash and sackcloth remnants will be sown throughout the land. To once again lay dormant, awaiting Imbolc and the Equinox.

When the White Witch will be deposed, and the Green Witch resurrected.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Samhain 2010

Samhain 2010 - a reading (on YouTube)

Samhain is upon us, the season of leaf mold and decay.

Spun white threads of fungus creep across the forest floor like spider silk in hiding. The grove that glowed at midsummer has sickened, its heartwood is corrupt. In its final act of dying, the sacred tree laid a scent trail upon the wind. Now, rival colonies move in to fight over its remains. Under foot, its acorns crack and crumble, their soft interiors rot and blacken to reflect the misty night.

Beyond the hidden border, beyond the wall of thorns, the churchyard stands empty. A headless witch lurks near the crossroads, a black shadow snuffling beside her. She cradles a basket of steaming sweetbread to entice the unwary she plans to bake into her pies.

Deep in her woodland lair, tailors unravel the bewitching threads of her bloodstained kirtle. They whipstitch her victims' lips and eyelids shut. As her spellbound minions ply their delicate, golden needles, she stuffs unspun wool deep within their ears. Too late for them; they've already believed her lies.

Her shadow slides steel against naked steel in preparation to carve up thought and memory, like the dark familiars of an elder god already crackling within the fire. The smoke inside smells sickly sweet, like a horde of apples left to overwinter one year too many.

By moonlight, she ransacks the burial chambers of misty, musty cairns. She grinds their nitered bones beneath a pestle, then soaks them in rancid blood. She kneads the mixture smooth with ancient, arthritic hands. At midnight, she wagers with the shadow for butchered souls to leaven her sweet, dark, gobshite loaves. She stores their broken knucklebones in a bag beside her bed.

Behind her decrepit cottage, a midden rises where a single acorn soon takes root. A seedling feeds on discarded blood and bone until it grows strong enough to weave a spell around the somnolent, sated witch. Its golden branches then entwine through her rafters, its roots collapse her cellar walls, casting down her evil reign, crushing her quietly beneath.

And from the foundation of that tangled knotwork, the sacred grove will rise again.

© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

Samhain 2009

Samhain 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

Half the year we spend in darkness struggling to find the light. The night is not evil, only mysterious and unknown, unilluminated.

Unblinking eyes embrace the darkness tonight, glowing in the shadows, some friendly, some not, some merely mischievous. They look out from behind the masks of archetypes, the stories we tell each other gathered around the harvest fire to remind ourselves that danger is ever present and all around.

We tell tales of the horned god who is the hart bounding through the forest, darting into shadows to keep the wolves at bay. Like him, we fear the onset of twilight, the hunting hour for wolves and panthers. We sense them stalking us from a time when a flash of eyes provided our only warning before a scream heralded that one of us had gone missing, disappearing behind a trail of blood. The stag serves as the guardian of the forest deer, a reminder that if we are quick and willing to confront the circling pack in our fastness, our children will survive and prosper. But to him, we are just another set of eyes in the night, another predator darkly desirous of his flesh.

We speak of the great mother, the black soil beneath our feet from which life springs, as dark and mysterious as a cave. Sometimes cruel, sometimes gentle, she nurtures her better children and grinds the rest to nourish the next generation already stirring in her womb. She is the dark earth goddess we appease with blood, bone and flesh to keep the land fertile and the harvest towers full. After the sickle falls, she embraces our dead, still her children, whose eyes make our spines tingle in the night when she sends them out to play.

We whisper of the old crone, our ancestral grandmother, toothless and bent yet bold and unintimidated, reminding us with her cane when she thinks we've gone astray. She is the good witch whose identical twin lives deep among the trees luring children into her lair with sweet promises before devouring their innocence, baking them into men and women in her oven before offering them as sweetmeats to her pets, some of which have learned to walk on their hind legs among us. Their hungry eyes follow us while she hums through her preparations, devising a cunning plan to separate us from the shepherds and woodcutters so they can dine on lamb come spring.

Finally, we utter stories of the goblins, the thieves that live among us, miscreants of mischance that pilfer our good fortune. Hardship and misadventure waiting to steal our cache of luck, they are the mischievous spirits lurking near our shame. Once, they were simple village numina, kobolds and tomte easily appeased. Outcast from our homes like demons, now they gather in clans and tribes, packing up like wild dogs to hunt, setting camps deep inside the forest to brigand the unwary and unsuspecting. Their eyes shine beyond the windows tonight, casting back red or green reflections as they call for treats in small, high voices.

Half the year we spend in darkness struggling to find the light. Tonight beyond the harvest fire, eyes embrace the darkness, tracking us through the night. We must be careful not to hold their gaze or we will be spellbound by our own reflection.

© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Imbolc 2008

We arrive at the feast of St. Brigid, midway through the darkest portion of the year. A final celebration of winter before our minds turn toward the first campaigns of spring. We have healed from setbacks of the fall and now repair our equipment as the skalds and bards inspire us toward fresh glory with their ballads.

By the lake, the water sparkles with a dreamlike clarity as though filled with sparks thrown from a blacksmith's anvil. A storm cloud of crows rises to shadow our eyes as their contentious laughter startles us from slumber. We wake to a proxy war between the Norns and Fates. The Wyrd Sisters spin their magic from the well of the world tree while the Crones weave spells into the scenes of their tapestry and prepare to unleash the Furies for grievances against this life or the last. We thought their battle was just a brushfire war until the flames set the trees alight.

I hope the crows do not look down before reporting back to their mistresses as I think they would discover a salient, a small peninsula extending from our lines. Though we have fortified our position, I fear it may soon become untenable, a Maginot Line easily circumvented despite the fortune we have spent reinforcing it. Dark forces stalk between the brooding trees of the impassable and ancient forest that anchors our left flank, threatening to leave us an island amid a hostile sea should they find their way to the fields beyond.

We dream of conquests and counter-marches as we retreat toward our mountain strongholds to ride out this winter storm. Once the passes clear, we vow to unfurl our banners and raise the horns of war, reclaiming our destiny from such godlings and lesser men. I fear our gains will resemble the first footfalls on the last snows of winter, strikingly beautiful yet leaving no enduring impression.

Such are the dreams of Imbolc that lay restless within our minds as we sleep fitfully by the fire until winter melts into spring and the wind gives voice to the trees which whisper of brighter days to come.

© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III