Category Archives: Sabbats – seasons

Creating Your Meaning for Winter Solstice

Each sabbat can mean many things depending upon where we are in our life. Sometimes we need to focus on just one aspect of the season. Other times we are having a layered experience.

It is darkest night of the year!
Feel the warm embrace of the crone.
Face your fears.
Lie down and rest.
It is time to let go.

It is the return of light!
Make proclamations.
Dream new things.
It is time to celebrate the light.

There have been times when I have even made a distinction between the dark dreaming, the dreaming that happens when the Spirits of Kindness enter our dreams and the dreaming that happens when we start to co-create with the spirits.

I wait and I wait for inspiration. How will I engage with the energies? How will I express? What is authentic?

This year, mere weeks before Solstice, I reached a milestone and my life went through a sudden, total change for the better. I was able to leave behind trauma, entering a new, promising environment. This brings to me all the things you might expect: shock, relief that it’s over, survivor’s guilt, fear and disbelief, joy, waves of healing and…. an empty void.

So for me this year, my Winter Solstice will be about gratitude and acceptance of this blessing. It will be about trust in the good things to come and a surrender to the Spirits of Kindness, allowing them to fill this void inside me with the starlight of the Solstice. It will also be about letting go. Praise be.

What does Winter Solstice hold for you? What is just right for you this year? Answer these questions and your holiday will be potent.

Blessings and love to you all.

Tasara

Yule in the Pandemic

Darkness deep.
Ordered nights across a gaping void.

Some of us are safe.
Some think we are more than can be true.
Some have tumbled into the black, beyond.

Each night shifts the dark,
and the Great Mother, she speaks out loud.

I W A N T T O K N O W Y O U .

The you that breathes again
when the screen is finally closed
the movement of the air
as your heart glints in secret
over the smallest things.

The landscape that grows around you
when you move towards your joy.
Which longings are true?
Where is your delight?

Allow the light to return,
to you.

Remember your innocence
and sing for me, my love.

Sing for us all.
Sing for your bones.
Your glow will soothe the world
As you are in it.

Pandemic Mabon

We have entered the land of the She
and the sun, she has slipped past and is making her way into the darkness.
She is taking with her
our dreams
our dead
our ideas of who we think we are
and what we think would have happened.

Now in the second harvest, we see the truth
what we have gained
what we have lost
and what has never been all along.
Illusions.

Mourn for those and that we have lost.
Let it be easy, like the cool river.
She moves silently in the darkness.

Let fly free with the crows
your plans and visions which are not so.

There is much to allow in the darkness.
We must be prepared, so
empty yourself.
There is time.
Empty yourself.
There is a shining within you.
Empty yourself
for the new dream that is coming.

Blessed be.

Happy LItha

Happy Litha, my friends!

This sabbat, this season is about the much lost energy of benevolent male sovereignty. This is the day of the power of the Emperor, the King (not the lord or the prince).

artist unknown

I intentionally use an image of a white man, because this is where we need these energies revival the most.

Men, when one has undergone the trials and tribulations of society pushing one into a role which you do not believe is true to your heart, after you learn how to fight – and win, because you were told to, once you have earned your throne and have had the responsibility of tending to others thrown upon you, then the unexpected. sheer weight of this responsibility should be awe-inspiring.

The true role of the Emperor, the King, is to not hold power, but rather to channel it to where it is needed, to keep the power flowing so it does not become stagnant. When one has faced one’s own suffering with an open heart, one is able to understand other’s suffering, to build bridges between peoples and to celebrate the gifts and talents of all members of our diverse country.

See the vulnerability in this King’s expression. This is how it should be. When we are too sure, we are not growing. We are not able to be responsive to what is before us. The agility of the warrior, later in life becomes alacrity of mind and heart.

This great power is not the same as the Goddess power. It is different, and they are both needed. Yes, it is crucial to continue to feed the resurgence of the feminine, but this is in order to restore balance, in our relationships and within ourselves. None of us can fully heal until there is balance.

Today, we focus on the archetype of the Great Father, Husband and Benevolent King.

So I send my prayers to the winds today, that our men become deep listeners, intense, unmired contemplators. That they do not throw down their weapons or their masculinity but they instead look to the wisdom inside themselves and around them to stand up in a new power, one which is generous and kind, and defends the rights of all people.

Blessed Be, and may the Strength of the Sun Shine in your life today.

Tasara Jen Stone

artist Brian Froud

The Season of Goodness

(Imbolc, 2020) Blessed Imbolc, my companions. The Earth, she turns for us. For the North, ’tis Spring – for our relatives in the South, Fall. We notice the buds on the trees, the longer stands of sun, the song of returning birds, the budding of flowers…and the unprecedented outpouring of generosity. The deep mother hands the reins to the gentle father and we are on. Here comes the sun. ’Tis the Season of Goodness.
Now is the reign of the Sun, who pulls us gently towards his heat, who is soon to intoxicate us with offerings of new life. May our expressions be joined with these forces that reach ever upward at this time. May we be slow, to listen, be wooed into the magic and be lulled by the song of our own hearts. There is much to fear, yet the season of life continues. What passion rises in you? How may you share it with the rest of us?
Now is the time to express. Blessings on our journey through these times. Please, Spirits of Kindness, look over us. Stand by those under ventilators, isolated from their worried families.
Make visitation with our distraught families, soothing, circulating through the empty spaces, putting the old things to rest. Rest deeply with our medical providers and give our leaders strength as they navigate the governmental powers on our behalf. Remind us to listen for the Spring in each other’s hearts, to breathe deeply, to wait for the silence in our conversations, to bridge the long held distance we have had while jostling so close together. May we learn to integrate with our hearts this time, as is in our nature, as is in the nature of nature, to grow. To continue on in newness each time. The seeds are in the air, looking for fertile ground.
Open, my friends. Receive, take root and blossom for us. We need you.
Blessed Be. ~ Tasara

Perching Before Samhain

Grandmother pulls her shroud
and the rains, the warm rains,
it rains inside this endless cup of grey.

Grandfather blows his crisp leaves
and the smell, the earthly smell, 
the smell brings me to myself.

Tis the blessed season of endless twilight, 
of richly dressed sunrises,
of memories fine, memories drawn,
memories, ancient borne,
come from the crack of the horizon.

As I gaze through branches brown,
sienna tangled in my hair
I know my home, my home,
my earthly, earth home.

She waits for me in the shape of a rook,
on the other side,
in a cave,
in the dank
the darkness.

And I savor the moment, her beckoning,
for she is no longer my huntress, my dread.
She is my mistress, my mother, my crone.

For I have been through canyons dark, seen mirrors sharp.
I have walked the valley of the dead,
been tangled on the rocks with no matter,
I have been, again and again.

Under the wraiths’ long cry,
the songs I could not hear
the banshee did not lie,
and then I found my footing.

She has shown me the way, through myself and back again.
And this time.. I relish the time, the time.

Tasara

The Ancient Bones of Ceremony

This book has no recipes for ceremony. Instead, it takes you on a journey through the stages of creating your own. Through this experience, you will deeply understand the energetics of what makes ritual powerful.

Cover

Step into the mysteries of the ancient ways as you travel on an allegorical journey to explore the many dynamic aspects of what makes a ceremony transformative for yourself, your family and your community.

Weddings, rites of passage, baby blessings, funerals, yes, and also life changes that are not typically honored: loss of relationship, divorce, new home, new job, eldership and retirement.

For many of us, the formats provided by higher authorities are not enough, and imitating traditions of other cultures is controversial. We need to return to the bare bones of ceremony and create transformative events that are personalized to our own lives and the culture we live in. This is where our power lies.

With Tasara Stone’s careful guidance, you will learn to:

  • Identify your heart’s yearning and turn its message into a pure, ceremonial intention
  • Create beautiful metaphors and symbolic language to express your heart’s need
  • Invoke and maintain sacred space
  • Perform ceremony with effective, safe practices

For public ceremony you will learn to:

  • Identify community needs and desires
  • Empower others to participate in the ceremony-creation process
  • Manage large groups of people when the energy is unpredictable
  • Hold ethical and safe space for others

Tasara Stone’s lyrical writing, which includes prayers, blessings, and paeans of gratitude, transports us to a sacred landscape where our heart’s needs are treated with utmost care. We tune into the light that glows at our core, connecting us to all of life. We spend time with Mother Earth and her elemental spirits, who teach us to walk the sacred spiral path. We learn about the importance of aligning ourselves with the cycles of growing and dying, accepting and letting go. Only with this wisdom and love can we craft and experience ceremonies that are truly transformative.

Tasara Stone offers us not only a practical guide, she gives us a powerful and moving experience of the energies that will nourish our practice. Her words root us in the very soil out of which ceremony grows. Fully engaged, heart, mind, body and soul, we come to understand how the wisdom of ancient times can help us cultivate an authentic spiritual practice in the midst of modern life. This is another essential gift of The Ancient Bones. As we contemplate the lies and distortions that bombard us daily, we come to understand ceremony as a way of creating alternative stories for ourselves, ones that give our lives true meaning.

Access The Sweetness Within You.

Sing Your Song.

Shine Your Light.
———————————————————————————

Where to Buy

Paperback/Ebook
Bookshop is my favorite, because they donate to local bookstores.
Also, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many others.
Audiobook
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Skeleton

Once you have fallen down and rotted upon the earth
and dreamt your dreams
and picked yourself back up,
you cannot remain a skeleton.

The wind that blew through your ribs
to teach you its song
will only keep singing the same song,
and you have learned it already.

The ravens will not come back
because the have sated their hunger
for the dead.

Child of this earth,
the guardians give you a home now.

Grow flesh,
choose garments of color,
hum your song
and listen for the wind
when she wraps herself around you
on a late summer day.
She has secrets about being whole
as well as being dead.

We pass through a door
into nothingness
and as we return through another,
all the rest close.

It is the way of being mortal.

It is a good way,
for without song we cannot express.
Without song we cannot swell and beam,
shape and teach
what has come through us.

This time you will be different.
This time the terrain will be taken more carefully.
This time your ear will be attuned more keenly
to the authentic.

That which comes without warning

And then there is the time when after the long awaking, after the split, the sleep and the recovery, after the faith has been held for so long, that sustenance seeps up from the ground. Things look the same but the doors are open. Medicine pours into the dry wounds and pleasure for living returns. The fallow period has passed. All the dreams, the prayers, the offerings to the mother have been heard and the answer is now in your blood.

Live. Live the life you wanted. Defend the new life as if survival depends upon it, because it does. And you know that now so there is no more deliberating. It is a fresh page and you are not a young thing, so take the pen and stroke from your life, the tapestry which cannot be undone yet can always continue.

Not knowing has become fun again, only because of the rock inside. This rock which has been formed through so much hardness, this hardness which has become your strength. To trust in that strength is to find the will to be gentle again. To know that you have become your own protector grants freedom to be able to choose to be open again. This child, inside is safe and brings a joy to carry you forth.

Blessed be the seasons that pass. Blessed is the ground beneath our feet. Blessed is the food and the wake and blessed has been the silence.

We do not run, nor push nor fend. We stroll into a new world with the patience of time. We savor and we test. We choose again and we go for what we always wanted. With skill this time.

Blessed be.

Blood Orange Sun

The world I hold in my heart is crumbling
into ash as the fires burn in Canada.
The world I hold in my heart slowly dissolves
as continents’ edges drown in hurricanes.
One end cracks under the heat while the
other snaps in the cold.
There is no place to hide from our sins against
the mother.

The consumer looks up, wishes for reprieve
on her way to her morning Starbucks.
The consumer drives deeper into the core
for gold, for oil, for coal.
The four-leggeds run for shelter
beasts of sea tangle in our webs.
We are breathing the bones of our ancestors
as the one-leggeds crash to the floor.

The spirits will always be spirits.
The mother will balance herself
as she steadies herself and her people
means death to those of us left.

Turn back the narcissist from the wheel.
Turn back to the mother.
Turn back the narcissist wound in ourselves.
Turn back to the mother.