Our Lady Amaranthine

I have communed with Diana Domina far more often than Regina Nemorensis. I call Diana Domina our Lady Amaranthine, for the robes or gown she wears - rich red-purple robes, the color of pomegranates. I cannot tell the color of her hair, as she has a halo of silver light around her head - the hint of hair is there, but it is all darkened in contrast to that luminance.

I originally imagined her wearing the beautiful garb of a Roman noblewoman, probably clad in white or other lunar hues, but my experiences have been very different. She is also surrounded by the smell of fresh pomegranates in our interactions, strong and pungent, almost overwhelming. I've always associated the pomegranate with other deities before, so wondered if I was conflating things, or misinterpreting them.

As it turns out, Diana of Ephesus' iconography shows her with what many have thought were breasts, eggs or bull testicles for a long time. In my meditations, though, they are not - they are in fact strings of pomegranates, which is sacred to her. She says that the pomegranate's rich redness is like blood, and its many seeds the symbols of fertility, and that smearing a handful of the seeds and juice from a freshly carved pomegranate smeared on a woman's belly and pubis will bring pregnancy.

My interactions with her have been strange and not at all what I expected. We have discussed the health of the household, and she has urged me to not rush the consecration of the altar to her - "It will come in its time," is what she says every time I bring up the topic.

Next week, I'll post the consecration ritual I wrote for the foyer, which is the center of our house, in terms of layout, and the gateway by which most things come into it. She laid claim to this room early on in my meditations, saying that we should make this a place holy to her, as her cella.

Dea Biformis

The next few weeks I spent in ample meditation, prayer and sleep-communion, paired with my own researches.

The first and most important thing she gave me during this time was an understanding of her essential nature. She is dea biformis, or the two-formed goddess. That is, she is dual aspected in her role as the patroness of our covenstead. As befitting important aspects of witchcraft praxis and the ancient ties of Diana to Janus, she is "two faced," a goddess of liminal, in-between places, looking upon both extremes from a place of power and wisdom.

Each of these aspects has a name, of course, which are not to be spoken outside of the proper places and times for doing so. But for our purposes, these aspects are Our Lady of the Oaks and Our Lady Amaranthine.

The essential division between the two aspects lies in understanding something of the nature of our home. Our Lady Amaranthine, named for the color of her robes, is the Diana Within - the household goddess, who is the Lady of the home. She watches over and protects us and all those things that the interior of the home is associated with: nurturing, health, prosperity, and the like. She is also the Diana I go to directly for better understanding of household Mysteries - she is the witch-queen of all the sorceries of hearth and kitchen for our home, as well as my mentor (if you will) on the idea of household gods and the rites to interact with them. I mostly interact with her through meditation and communion.

Our Lady of the Oaks, on the other hand, is a bit more distant. She is wild, our Diana Without (as in "outside," rather than "lacking something"). This aspect is far more akin to the classical depictions of Diana, although she is very clearly tied to this land - not merely the property the house rests on, but to the Stone Mountain area and its environs. She is a witch-queen, too, though her Mysteries are deeply rooted in this land, and its old magics. The thing that sets her most apart from the depictions of Diana I know is her skin - it darkens and lightens, ranging from the very pale of the lightest Caucasians when the moon is dark, and deepening to a deep, African mahogany when the moon is full. I mostly interact with her in dreams.

Next week, I'll talk a little more about Our Lady Amaranthine.

Thanks for reading, folks.

The Walk in the Forest

My dreams after the session with L. Sophia and L. Fattah were powerful.

I was standing in a wooded area, and it was night. The full moon shone down from above, and I could make out the vague silhouette of Stone Mountain in the distance, black against the sky's dark, dark blue. She was standing behind me. Part of the way through I was sure she was back and to my left, while at others I was sure she was back and to the right. I knew that I shouldn't turn around, though; asking her why, she said that it simply wasn't that time yet. I didn't know her well enough yet.

She was laying claim to our covenstead, as we'd asked, and she reiterated what she'd said through L. Fattah earlier - she needed no other to do the work she intended. I realized suddenly that our covenstead needed to be Moonhaven, and asked if she would accept that name. She said that not only would she do so, but she was honored by it.

She said that oaks are sacred to her, and that she "would live well in Moonhaven's oaks." She also said that she came to me partly because of that - not only my own connection with oaks (present probably from my earliest pagan days, and the source of my Craft name), but also the oaks within our house as well. The mirror, in particular. She then pointed to one of the oaks here near us, and I recognized it as one of the oaks from our yard.

This oak in particular stands in our backyard. About a third of the backyard is what I'd call "domesticated," with lawn grass and carefully planted hedges and the like. The rest of it, though, is pretty much woodland, with tall standing trees, no lawn but a carpet of fallen branches and leaves, and generally left to run fairly riot. There is a short fence, with a hedge behind it that separates these parts of the yard, and in a break in that separation stands a tall, ivy-wrapped oak tree.

This was the oak she was pointing to. "This is mine," she said. "I stand on both sides of this oak." She said I'd understand later, but that when the time came to make a shrine to her at the foot of a tree, this would be the tree. She said that we would need a place for her indoors as well.

She then pointed to a star in the sky, reaching over my head to do so. She said: "In the huntsman's belt, I have left a guardian for your home. But stars not meant for the Earth."

Then she pointed into the distance, on the horizon, towards the solemn silhouette of Stone Mountain. She said: "Go there and find the stone who will serve. Bring it here and place the star in the stone - marry sky to earth."

Diana

A few months after moving in, I took a trip back to Oregon, to officiate at the handfasting of one of my dearest friends, and my Craft working partner of many years, L. Morgaine d'Ursa. While there, I had the opportunity to return to Rookhaven, and sat in council with my High Priestess, L. Sophia and her High Priest, L. Fattah. We did a lot of talking, some additional training, and then settled in for an interesting evening.

L. Fattah had been working with a new system of channeling (new for us, anyway), and he wanted to show it to me. I was definitely interested, as the method seemed a very solid one, providing communication with deities close to us, and with the egregores closely associated with our coven and line. The formation of a new coven was on all of our minds, and so desiring some questions answered of the Great Ones, we sat down with L. Fattah's stone.

Very shortly thereafter, he indicated that the goddess Diana had a message for me. She was willing to be approached to act as the goddess of our covenstead, serving to ward it and act as our spiritual contact in the way other entities have been so contacted for other of our covensteads. Gleefully, I told him that I accepted. He chuckled.

"No, no, she's not offering," he clarified. "She's willing to be approached by you, if you want to ask her."

Ah. Quite the difference. So, I did so, with L. Fattah as our intermediary, asking her three times to come and watch over our covenstead. The following conversation was powerful and thought-provoking. She indicated that she would not "need" a masculine counterpart in her duties, despite our normal tradition of having a god and goddess fulfilling that role. I was also left with the impression that this was merely the beginning, an introduction, and things would move along upon my return to Stone Mountain.

Our Arrival at Our New Covenstead

In 2009, I moved into a lovely new house. Joined by my partner, another couple and a fifth friend of ours, we settled into this house to make it a home. We had been very discriminating in choosing this house. Not just any place would do for our purposes. We needed more than a dwelling capable of housing five men. I had been teaching a small group of Seekers for a few months at that point, and intended on building a coven, bringing the lineage of Oregon's Thalia Kyraphia to Georgia.

So, this home needed to be more than just where we lived - it needed to be a covenstead.

I knew I'd found the proper place when I walked into the den. This so-called "den" (which was quickly dubbed "the cathedral") was a massive room, with huge vaulted ceilings. At one end, with hardwood flooring, sat a fieldstone hearth, with a massive mirror above it. This mirror, which was framed in oak and carved with hand-sized oak leaves and acorns, literally stopped me in my tracks. I stared at it, dumbfounded - the oak has always been of significance to me in my own spiritual growth, and here I was, looking at my own face reflected back at me, surrounded by oak leaves.

The other side of the den was floored in beautiful, deep red tiles, and featured a set of massive picture windows that gazed out onto the back yard, with about an acre of tall trees and beautiful green foliage. Only a small portion of the back part of the property was what I would call a "lawn" - the rest of it was wooded, with a scattering of oak and other trees, a trellis-arched swing off to one side, and at the far end of the property, a small stream that burbled merrily over the rocks of its bed anytime it rained.

Paradise. I had to have it. Fortunately, my soon-to-be housemates agreed, and we all sat down to see if we could make it happen financially. In the meantime, my partner and I took a flower from the tea rose bushes up front, and a stone from its yard, with which to work some magic to bring us home to it.

Now, it is tradition in our line to name a covenstead. Many of us have used "[Something]haven," in honor of the first of our covensteads, Rookhaven, in Southeast Portland, Oregon. Well, we struggled and struggled forever, with no luck coming up with a name for our new home. We were happy to be there, though, and content to let the subject percolate.

Welcome

Most pagans these days look to "big names" in terms of Divinity. It's natural - most of us come from more conventional faith systems, which focus on The End All, Be All when it comes to that sort of thing.

Pre-Christian faith systems, however, were often far, far more nuanced. The "big names" were big because knowledge of them often spanned multiple communities. The vast majority of cultures, however, also held to "smaller" gods. Individual tribal gods, for instance, the gods of natural geographical features, household gods and a family line or clan's ancestors.

One of the things that training in British Traditional Witchcraft has given me is an appreciation of and fascination with these "small gods." Gerald Gardner touched on the fact that the deities of BTW are tribal gods. We don't pretend they are all-powerful or all-encompassing. Indeed, they are very much the kinds of gods well-known in old paganism: "belonging" to a single tribe (in this case, the Wica), their names and rites kept secret from outsiders.

They aren't seen as omnipotent entities. They are treated as our friends and close confidants in many ways. We don't ask them to do things for us - we do them ourselves (though we may ask them for their help in doing so). We don't talk about the "destiny" or "purpose" our gods have for us, any more than we talk about those that our friends have for us. Our gods want us to be happy - not by their definition of happy, but by ours. They'll help make that happen (just as those close to us will). Moreover, they need us, just as we need them.

This dynamic, then, has sharpened my perspective in a lot of ways. When we moved into our current home, we knew it would be a covenstead. As time has passed, we've sought to interact with our household and local gods - particularly the Diana Biformis who acts as the goddess of our covenstead (but not our coven).

This blog, then, is about the evolution of our interactions with these small gods. Creation of liturgy, recording experiences and understandings, and generally keeping a place where we can record this information for posterity's sake.

I'm not going to pretend that it's likely to be of any interest save to myself, my housemates, and maybe a handful of others. But for those who're interested - welcome.