by Wendy Hawkin | Dec 21, 2016 | journal, mythology
Winter is here. We, in the northern hemisphere, feel her enfold us. She is the Ice Queen. Cloaked in black frost, exhaling snowflakes in a great rush of crystal, she ushers us inside and bids us remember who we are. We, humans, are vulnerable to her whims; cannot control her, though, in our technological frenzy we arrogantly believe we can–right up until she pulls the plug.
Today we begin winter here on the Pacific coast. This is the shortest day and the longest night of the year. This morning, the sun did not rise until 8:05 am, and too soon will set at 4:16pm, leaving us with a mere 8 hours and 11 minutes of daylight.
But like the yin and yang, this darkling queen brings more to us than inclement weather. She brings the promise of lighter days. For solstice is a turning point. The climactic dark night ends with the birth of a new dawn, and from this time forward, days grow longer.
Winter Solstice is a Festival of Light, which many of us celebrate by decking our halls with lights and greenery, connecting with our spiritual selves through meditation, or gathering outside at sacred sites.
In the Valley of the Kings at Brú na Bóinne in Ancient Ireland, our Neolithic ancestors also celebrated the new dawn of Winter Solstice.
newgrange.com
Brú na Bóinne translates to something like abode or palace of the river Boyne. It is the mythical home of the god, Dagda, his wife, Boann, and their son Oengus, the love god. They are of the faerie tribes, the Tuatha de Danaan. The stone walls are engraved with symbols we now consider Celtic, though this tomb was built well before the arrival of the Celts to Ireland.
Five thousand years ago, these ancient indigenous tribes built passage tombs from rock. One has been excavated and restored. Built with keen intelligence and divine insight, this stone temple, consists of a roof-box above a portal and leads down a nineteen-metre passageway into a cruciform chamber. It is capped with a corbel roof that seems to defy gravity. As the sun rises on Winter Solstice, its beams enter the roof-box, creep down the passageway, and finally illuminate the chamber.
Her builders were Neolithic farmers who understood the cycle of birth and death. And so, the tomb is much like the womb of the mother earth. For seventeen minutes on Winter Solstice, an elemental union occurs as the beaming light of the sun enters and impregnates the Earth. Gestation follows over the darkling winter months, and if all is well, new life bursts forth again in spring.This is the sacred dance of death and rebirth.
The Boyne Valley really is spectacular. I stood inside the stone chamber, while the guide simulated the experience. It’s one for your bucket list. But, if you can’t travel there, you can still read about Newgrange in detail and tour the tomb via virtual reality via Voices From the Dawn.
standing between the entrance stone and roof box
by Wendy Hawkin | Dec 9, 2016 | journal, mythology, writing and publishing
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” GK Chesterton
by Wendy Hawkin | Dec 7, 2016 | Book Review, mythology, writing and publishing
I read Coraline last night. All of it. Every word. Wafting through my head in Neil Gaiman’s deep slow British voice. It took hours, but I couldn’t stop until the little girl had set her world back to rights.
If you haven’t met her, Coraline is a bored little girl who prefers microwaved pizza and chocolate cake; who turns up her nose at her father’s adventurous cooking, and is annoyed by her parents because they work too much and ignore her. She lives in an enormous old gothic house inhabited by eccentric people far more “interesting” than her parents.
She is bold, smart-alecky, and defiant. And like most children, Coraline is curious. She likes to explore.
That’s how she meets the “other mother”… the “beldame”… the monster who can suck a child’s soul out through her eyeballs and into a glass marble. For eyes are the heart of the soul. All the beldame leaves behind is a filmy shell with black button eyes…she sews them in with a long needle and black thread.
Emily Carr’s Guyasdoms D’Sonoqua c. 1930 museevirtuel.ca
She is D’Sonoqua, child-stealer of the Northwest Coast First People; the abusive step-mother in Cinderella who uses her new child for slave labour; the jealous poisoned apple-wielding queen in Snow White; the fire-building cannibal witch in Hansel and Gretel who cages and fattens little boys and girls with sweets before she cooks and eats them.
She is the Nightmare of a child neglected, bored, disbelieved, lonely, powerless, and vulnerable.
Coraline’s world is fraught with danger, but there is only one thing to do with a beldame that steals your parents and intends to suck your soul into a glass marble.
Fight. You must be brave and strong and smart and you must fight. You must solve the monster’s riddle; creep down the grave-dark corridor; descend into the moldy damp belly of a basement; ignore the skittering rats and spiders; and confront the monster. Even the bits that detach and creep after you, like the beldame’s clickety right hand. You must fight and win and you must do it alone. There is no other way.
All children must know this.
We cannot protect our children by locking them in glass rooms like butterflies. Glass cracks and breaks; evil seeps in like a virus; keys are lost and found; monsters lurk outside the door…and often inside. Butterflies grow sad and sick and die.
All children meet their monsters.
I did not meet the beldame as a child. My monsters were marauding pedophiles, child-stealers more Hearts in Atlantis than Coraline, but with similar intentions: to steal my soul. The crunch of tires on gravel meant HIDE. If no one is home, huddle behind father’s armchair and do not make a sound. Do not breathe. BECOME INVISIBLE. If walking to school: find a ditch, a creek bed, a copse of trees. VANISH. Take to the woods and fields. RUN. But it does not work. Monsters are strong; have powerful senses. They sniff you out…eventually, and you must fight.
I did not meet the beldame as a child. But I know she exists. I’ve met her since.
Every child has a monster. So every child must have courage and a plan and a voice. Give them magic, a mojo. An amulet for protection. An animal to confide in. Secret power words and numbers. An escape route through the woods. A hiding place. A song. Stories.
Stories in which the child confronts and beats the monster. Because as much as we try to deny it, we all know: monsters exist everywhere.
by Wendy Hawkin | Nov 13, 2016 | Ireland, journal, mythology, writing and publishing
As I paint the finishing gloss on To Charm a Killer, my mind drifts back to its creation. I can’t remember how the whole story came together–there were many edits, revisions, and transformations along the way. But, I do know some things.
In the beginning, a girl was abducted by a priest.
Hollystone Coven emerged as the hook for the series: a coven of witches who solve murders using magic. Not the blink and it’s done stuff, but by manipulating energy through ritual concentration and manifestation. For example, through focussed chanting, they raise power and bend and shape the forces of nature; something, we all have the capability of doing, if only we believed.
One day while hiking at Buntzen Lake, we came upon a large circle of people hidden in the woods. They were chanting “El Diablo” — whether conjuring or banishing the devil, I do not know. But that was the moment, the witches of Hollystone Coven began meeting there for Sabbat rituals.
I fell in love with Estrada, the High Priest of Hollystone Coven–everyone does–and he fell in love with the woods and with faeries.
“I’m serious, Sara. This forest reeks of life, especially after the September rains. Can’t you smell it?” He loved the primordial odour of wet earth; imagined his beginnings in the first fecund ooze…a microscopic amoebic creature, not yet conscious of the magical transformation that would one day occur.
Then I began scouting locations–walking in the footsteps of my characters.
Old Alexandra Bridge in Yale, BC is a real place, though the intuitive path Estrada follows to meet the killer is purely his own.
Drawn toward the killer by some unfathomable force, Estrada took his first steps across the Old Alexandra Bridge with trepidation. He couldn’t help but look down through the open u-shaped steel decking that stretched like rusty metal waves beneath his boots. Resting a leather-gloved hand on the orange railing, he stared, mesmerized by the roiling green-brown river. Beneath him, the Fraser, rife with sediment and autumn rain, funnelled through a canyon of colossal grey rocks into spiralling white-capped eddies. It was deep, cold, and forbidding.
And, when it was decided that the girl must travel to Ireland to escape the priest, I went with her to co-create her experiences. On Shop Street in Galway, I watched a woman performing street art, and she became an inspiration for Primrose, the Irish fey witch.
Draped and hooded in a forest green cloak that dragged upon the stones in folds, Primrose stood serenely, her hands hidden beneath gaping sleeves. Clustered branches of appliquéd emerald and silver oak leaves meandered over the cloak like a shimmering forest. The tiny elfish face beneath the hood was painted bright green, except for the area around her eyes, which was etched in dark spirals to resemble the knots of a tree. Her ever-changing irises glowed with golden iridescence as she smiled.
“You look like a nature goddess.”
“She’s Danu, Matriarch of the Irish gods,” said Estrada.
Primrose leads the girl on a mystical adventure in Ireland.
And when Estrada arrives, he experiences Primrose in a wholly different way.
That is as much as I can say; to say more would divulge too many secrets. This is, after all, a mystery.
Ireland is a magical land, and I hope to see you there one day. If this book is your inspiration, I will be smiling.
The Sligo Road
Dolmens at Carrowmore
Communing with the Faeries at Tara, seat of the High Kings of Celtic Ireland
by Wendy Hawkin | Oct 31, 2016 | healing, journal, mythology
Witchcraft has long been sensationalized and misunderstood.
This negative campaign reaches its pinnacle each Halloween with the image of the black-robed, black-pointy hat wearing crone. Old, ugly, evil. But…
Samhain is the witches’ new year. It is our time. A night the veils are thin between the worlds and the mind ripe for reflection.
fanpop.com
Witches are not EVIL. They LIVE…deep.
Witches are:
Sometimes silent; sometimes not.
Often apolitical, until pushed. Fierce proponents of social justice.
Reverent of Nature. Celebrate her, cry for her and fight for her; understanding that without her, we are nothing. Witches sing and dance for joy, appreciate her bounty and her beauty, and raise power in her divine goodness.
Observant. Revelling in the revolving wheel of the seasons.
Realistic. Accepting the certainty of death and rebirth; acknowledging the elements and appreciating their power.
Mindful. Witches meditate, craft, and heal. And seek to do no harm.
Energy-workers. They know that energy is mutable, can be bent and shaped by vibration, by words. They understand the power of manifestation, and know that thoughts cast out, come back three strong.
Healers of body, mind, and spirit.
Enamoured by numbers, symbols, myth and story.
Truth-Seekers. Casting ancestral memories back through time, they search their mother’s remedies for simpler, less invasive ways to heal and to live well.
Nurturers. Witches grow clean simple food, work with animals, herbs, and stones.
Creators of art, music…children. And so, envision a better future.
Intuitive. Listen to their internal voices and trust their feelings.
Strong and loving. Witches are not just women and not just men, but creatures whose sexual identities shift and shimmer in the changing winds.
Hopeful. Finding strength in each other, witches send hope into the world.
