Category Archives: Musings, Ventings, & Other Personal Posts. AKA Articles
Elder Tricksters
11
lets them do vital work.
It is work that only they can do
to protect our communities.
Today I read the September 28 entry of Juno Covella—Perpetual Calendar Of The Fellowship of Isis, by dear departed Lawrence Durdin-Robertson. Here’s an excerpt:
“A comic old woman … with her jokes and lewd gestures moved Demeter to laughter. … This episode served to relieve the mourning.”
In Japanese lore, the sun Goddess Amaterasu retreats to a dark cave after being overcome by misery. An old woman, with humor and lewd gestures, draws Amaterasu from the darkness. Amaterasu’s exit brings Her light back to the world, which had darkened during her retreat.
To my mind, the old woman who made the Greek Goddess Demeter laugh ensured humankind’s survival. Demeter is a harvest Goddess. When She was not able to move on from Her immense grief, plants could not grow. Food is life, just as the sunlight that Amaterasu embodies is necessary for life.
Both these myths reveal tricksters to be Shamans. This is contrary to the usual portrayal of tricksters.
Elders Who Teach, Heal, & Empower Us Through Good-Natured Tricks and Joy
Seeing trickster as Shaman is only one way I reject the standard definition of a trickster. I also reject the portrayal of a trickster as someone who plays mean tricks to teach us important lessons. I view a trickster as a kind person who empowers us enormously through joy, fun, and good-natured tricks. (Read a pivotal 4000-word essay about Trickster in a two-volume Book of Shadows. It provides a more comprehensive look at my unusual theories about tricksters and their powers. Both human tricksters and trickster Deities can give you so much.)
Trust Your Intuition and Common Sense
The two old woman tales embody my understanding of a kind, joy-bringing trickster. How wonderful to finally find my theory embodied in traditional lore. It shows me, once again, that if I trust the conclusions I reach through intuition and common sense, I will eventually find them backed by traditional lore.
… Perhaps I noticed this embodiment in the Japanese lore decades ago. However, seeing the same archetype in a second tradition today brought it home.
Kind Eccentric Elders Are Important to Humanity’s Survival
Elderly tricksters healed Demeter and Amaterasu of pain so that They could bring Their gifts to the world again. This embodies elders of all gender identities who are kindly, joy-bringing tricksters helping younger individuals overcome pain. Thus, younger generations are more able to contribute to their community and the larger community that is All Our Relations.
This is a pivotal and overlooked power of crones.
One reason patriarchy devalues and otherwise oppresses elderly women: So that they cannot uplift their community, which is then more easily oppressed.
Elderly trickster men are devalued for the same reason. The disrespect heaped on them is seriously damaging. It may not be as bad as the disdain commonly shown to elderly trickster women. But pointing that discrepancy out might be splitting hairs. In any case: Wisdom is often attributed to the tricks of elderly men, and the positive results of their antics are more likely to be acknowledged. Regardless, they vitally need their communities’ support. Keep reading.
Elder Tricksters Help Us During Crisis
When crisis causes paralyzing grief, pain, and anger, so we cannot overcome the crisis, eccentric elders can step in. Each one is Trickster as a Shaman who heals us and empowers us.
It is important to know that they will bestow their joyful healing tricks on anyone. Tricksters embody love.
It is equally important to recognize old lady tricksters as Shamans who heal matriarchs—the latter being women who, like Demeter and Amaterasu, provide for their loved ones, communities, and All Our Relations.
It is important to recognize this because matriarchs usually lack even the dubious support their male counterparts receive. This affects everything from their mental health to their physical health to their productivity.
In a moment, more about the importance of supporting their male counterparts. My immediate point is:
It is important to see old lady tricksters as Shamans who heal matriarchs because patriarchy pits younger and older women against each other. Both lose vital support. This influences not only their productivity but also their chances of survival.
Wonderful trickster men uplift the individuals who lead by vitalizing—instead of by dominating—communities. These elderly fellows are like the tricksters who uplifted Demeter and Amaterasu. It is important to support these guys. They reject patriarchal male leadership models. By doing so, they give up privilege and fight systemic oppression. This makes them vulnerable to oppression.
I’ve been talking about men and women. It is equally vital to recognize and protect tricksters who do not identify with either gender. Or who identify with both. Or who otherwise gender-bend.
Some lore represents ultimate power as a hermaphrodite. There is good reason. By transcending gender, a hermaphrodite transcends all divisive dualities, thus embodying the ultimate connectivity—the union of all parts of the cosmos.
This is one of the greatest tricks that anyone can play! It is one of the greatest and most delicious tricks to have played on you! It invites you to open to a blessing that is the essence of life, love, and Shamanism. It is the trickster offering the following invitation to Demeter, Amaterasu, and any of us when we are trapped inside ourselves:
Come out from isolation and sorrow
so that you can be embraced by all of life
and be in union with the cosmos,
in all its goodness, beauty, joy, abundance, and power.
Tricksters who gender-bend are subjected to all the disdain and other harm that male and female tricksters encounter, and for the same reasons.
They are also targeted for additional reasons. Here is one specific to tricksters who heal honorable young leaders:
As mentioned, a person who does not adhere to so-called gender norms embodies unity and an invitation to union. All power resides in union within the self, union in a community, union with the cosmos. To alienate people from their inborn power and power as a community, oppressive cultures divide everything into opposing boxes.
Opposing boxes. Light supposedly opposes dark, as if day and night did not happen by the planet’s natural rotation.
Nature is not seen as harmonic union, but as separate parts always in feral conflict. This idea implies people must constantly vie for dominance or be crushed. Thus pitted against each other, they won’t work together to throw off oppressors.
Boxes. Our bodies and life itself are seen as machines, with mechanistic parts independent of each other. Death culture!
No! The universe is alive. It is a glorious, complex, synergistic, and jubilant weave, of which we are a part. And we each mirror this tapestry in all its wondrousness. The weave within and around us makes all magical and mundane power accessible. Ours!
Individuals who represent that by not gender conforming threaten the idea of mechanistic dualism. It is a core cultural underpinning of systemic oppression. So they are targeted in awful ways specific to them.
The horror can start at birth: The word intersex is a term for individuals born with traits that are not gender-conforming. This can include having both male and female genitals. Surgeries that cut away some genitals so the baby’s body represents only one gender still happen today. This is physical and emotional mutilation. An infant’s body and psyche are too vulnerable to withstand this trauma without suffering an awful impact that could last a lifetime. I imagine how terrible it would be for an adult to withstand the surgery, and then think of how much worse it would be for a newborn
I dedicate this post to a dearly departed friend. They were born with male and female genitals. That is still sometimes called a hermaphrodite. Some intersex individuals do not like the term hermaphrodite, and the term is definitely out of favor right now. It was a definition my friend liked.
A card in the Rider Waite Smith Tarot deck portrays a Hermaphrodite. A divinatory meaning of the card is ultimate power.
How to Learn from Old Tricksters and Let Them Empower You
Let us honor our elder tricksters, learn from their wise eccentricities, and be healed by their so-called peculiarities.
For example, have you ever thought an elder was rambling verbally, perhaps about glory days? Or repeating stories you’ve heard a million times?
Perhaps through repetition and so-called rambling, they are weaving a lifetime of experiences together for you and thereby weaving the different parts of the universe together. Open your heart and relax, so the weaving that is the universe can wrap around you like an enchanted blanket. It’s a trick!
Note: This essay emphasizes protecting elders because of their vital contributions. But everyone deserve protection and respect from their community, even when their value is not obvious.
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Please tell me your thoughts about this post in the comment field at the bottom of the page. A single sentence can make a big difference to me.
Comments connect us better than social media does. We can share our ideas in a community without haters trying to divide and distract.
It’s okay to be the only person commenting on a post. I don’t care about receiving appreciation and approval from a lot of people. In Traditional Shamanism, people connect as individuals. That is what my Fey-touched heart wants.
Does anything come to mind that you’d like to share?
Or claim trickster power simply by writing “trickster” in the comment field. It’s a trick!
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Dragon Abundance Magic
A Wealthy Generous Cornucopia Dragon
Once upon a time, there was a good dragon.
It was you—you are a very good dragon.
You are such a gorgeous dragon.
You are love.
You are the cat’s pajamas.
You are everything.
Everything is everything, and you have everything in you—all the world’s joy, all the world’s energy, all the world’s money, all the world’s happiness, … and all the oranges.
You like oranges a lot. You have all the oranges. But you don’t have them instead of everyone having oranges.
Everyone can have all the oranges.
Your having them all helps everyone else have them all. There is such plenty, and you as a dragon with many treasures are the keeper of plenty for everyone.
You don’t do it selfishly. Dragons are known as greedy, but they’re not, generally speaking. They are generous. However, even the most generous souls can be selfish sometimes. So sometimes even dragons get greedy. Back to what I was saying: You don’t do it selfishly. And when we get selfish, we limit not only other people’s abundance but our own.
But you can have plenty.
You are The Keeper of Plenty.
You are The Keeper of the Cornucopia.
Where a cornucopia swirls around—that’s your tail!
The fat part of the Cornucopia—that’s your lovely belly.
You are a cornucopia with wings.
The opening of the cornucopia is a great big,
great big,
great big,
great big maw that takes in everything.
And after you do, you laugh—great big giggles,
great big happiness.
You are The Keeper of Plenty for all of creation.
So let yourself have great big things.
Let yourself be the cat’s pajamas.
Let yourself be everything
because everything is everything.
Let yourself have all joy, happiness, energy, plenty,
abundance,
and oranges.
Because you are the cornucopia. So mote it be.
Keep scrolling to learn why I wrote this modern fairytale.
Shamanic Stories, Magic, Simplicity, and Theories
Storytelling is an irreplaceable Shamanic tool for transformation.
I am thrilled to have written the above fairytale because it is a single brief story that nevertheless embodies some of my theories about dragons that I spent years developing.
The tale does not necessarily spell the theories out, and that is the point! Theory sometimes gets in the way of inner and outer change. Listening to or reading theory can shift one’s attention totally to the cognitive mind, thereby not giving the rest of one’s being a chance to participate in the magic at hand. Magic is not just in the mind, let alone only in the conscious mind; it happens in the cells, too. Reading the above wee fairytale is a way for your atoms to drink in draconian realities I’ve spent years discovering during trance and the theories I developed about those realities, so that you can embody those realities and theories, rather than just read about them.
Boiling my complex work down to something simple is joyful. After years of developing ideas and imagery on a given topic and nailing down detail after detail, I love that all the work and the complexities the work provided will often lead to a simple little thing like this shamanic story I channeled—an easily understood wee tale that holds great big theories and images.
Plus, when I create that simpler expression, more doors open for me: more wonderful experiences, theories, and dragon images come to me.
If you read the story again, remember it’s not about the cognitive mind. Don’t worry the tale like a dog gnawing on a bone; don’t try, e.g., to figure out what each image means or how you are “supposed to react.” Just read the way you might read a fairytale—for the pleasure of it, going along with its mood.
You might experience all sorts of changes immediately or in the weeks that follow. Anything from self-love to more money.
Note: I wrote this in 2020 if not earlier. I often am too busy to post a piece until long after I’ve written it. But then, when someone might need the post, I suddenly find the time. Synchronicity is the Goddess helping out.
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Magic and Systemic Oppression
Magic is the opposite of systemic oppression.
The Goddess is the opposite of oppression.
Magic is Her loving presence.
Magic is a Pagan Goddess Who helps me have freedom, abundance, and joy.
Magic is real.
So mote it be!
I had fun that was also guerrilla Shamanism, radical action, guerrilla magic.
After I made the above graphic, I digitally put it six times on one page. Then I printed the page, cut it into six mini-flyers, and put them around town.
If you would like to do the same, request the mini-flyer page in the comment field below. That will show me your email address—which the public will not see unless you so desire—and I will send you the digital file to print.
Miscellaneous printing details that you can probably skip: If you don’t have a color printer, the page looks fine printed in black-and-white. The file is meant for 8 1/2 x 11 paper; if that size is less available where you live, let me know if it’s a problem. The file might not be my usual high-quality graphic. I struggled with reducing the graphic to fit six on a page and still maintain the quality. I don’t know what the problem was. I redid it a bunch of times so maybe it’s OK now. I can’t tell anymore; redoing the file over and over made me a bit visually numb. It is definitely a much better quality than the example on this page. And if it’s a less-than-fabulous print job, LOL, it’ll look grassroots … which it is!
I trust magic’s power because I trust the Goddess. My trust in Her is inseparable from trusting magic.
P.S. My newsletter subscribers regularly receive freebies. For example, I have sent out divination decks, magical jewelry, and digital talismans. If you’re not already subscribing, click the banner below.
Hard as a Diamond
Hard as a Diamond
Note: Diamonds are remarkably hard. They are used in industry for grinding, drilling, and sawing. Diamonds can cut through concrete.
Diamond hard times hone me
into the sharpest, most sturdy weapon.
Diamond hard times shine,
revealing evil—all that blocks freedom.
Diamond hard times shine brilliant,
revealing all evil,
including my own,
that I may overcome this inner enemy.
Diamond hard times shine,
revealing my resistance to my freedom.
Diamond hard times
force me to choose hope.
Thus I sacrifice my excuses for inaction.
Diamond hard times force me to
either recognize even more of my duties to community and self
or sink into self-pity and despair.
Diamond hard times force me to fulfill my duties
or live in self-pitying despair.
Diamond hard times are strong enough
to grind down my resistance to beauty.
Above diamond hard times,
the sky arcs:
Searingly compassionate blues
—that only an Artist could create—
enfold the moment. A loving embrace.
Diamond hard times
force me to raise my gaze,
study the sky,
and ponder the ring of mountains
that circle me with their
sun-bleached grass and cloud-like crests.
Beauty fills my cells with joy,
revealing meaning and purpose.
Francesca De Grandis, bestselling author of Be a Goddess!, is a fairy witch. She offers long-distance classes and shamanic counseling. She will also cast spells for you. Her Goddess spirituality embraces practical magic spells.
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Fairy Brigid Festival Ritual 2025
The annual February 2 Christian Feast of the Purification, also known as Candlemas, is rooted in the older Pagan festival for Brid.
Brid is a Celtic Goddess known by many names. Among them are Brigit, Brigid, and Bride.
She is a Goddess of metal smithing, poetry, and healing. She also governs the hearth and husbandry.
There is a tradition of purification at Her festival. However, the prevalent Christian interpretation of the February 2 purification is not the Pagan vision of the purification at Brigit’s festival.
The usual Christian rite seems to foster a sense of innate dirtiness, an unworthiness of God’s love. Ugh!
Here is a Pagan purification performed at Brid’s festival: Brigit loves us exactly as we are. Her festival celebrates that spring will come soon. She helps us shake off our winter drowsiness and find renewal.
The renewal brings us hope, power, and tribal connection.
With Her loving support, we can also use Her festival to cleanse away all that has held us back—all that kept us from fulfilling our full potential and being of maximum service to our communities.
I will lead this cleansing, renewal, and personal burgeoning in a free Fairy rite on Sunday, February 2, 2025 at noon, pacific time.
During the ritual, Brid will also help attendees make plans for 2025. She will bless those plans, too.
The event will be via teleseminar—aka group phone call. If you subscribe to my newsletter, you have the information about how to attend.
If you have not subscribed yet and are interested in attending future free rituals, click the banner below. Publishing the call-in number here would allow robot promotional calls to interrupt our ritual.
I Joined the Fairy Circus
I Joined the Fairy Circus
Look at my face as a child. Do I look like I was ever suited to a “normal” life?
Obviously, I had to join the circus of life, become a fairground barker, jump on a magic carousel, perform in the Fairy Big Top, and travel with a carnival between the worlds.
Hard Traveling
William, the man who raised me, started traveling poor and hard when he was about twelve. My research indicates that his mom couldn’t afford to feed him, so he left home at age seven to work on a farm. A census puts him on a farm at that time, but not in his mom’s household. This is corroborated by a family member mentioning an “uncle” whose farm she visited as a child. The “uncle’s” name is the same as little William’s employer. There is also a relevant photo.
A census also shows that William (Bill) returned home, where his mother now lived with a new husband and his son. That unfortunate young boy stole milk from his front porch after the milkman delivered it because there was not enough food in the home. He would drink from the bottle and then add water to hide his theft. He told this to his daughter, my cousin, who passed the story on to me when I told her I suspected Dad had lived in poverty as a child.
It appears that young Bill left home again soon, to hit the road at age twelve. This was a common solution if a household had too many mouths to feed.
If my earlier writing about Bill contradicts anything here, it is likely because my research netted new information.
Request: It seems that the expression hard traveling predates its use in a Woody Guthrie song. If you know otherwise, please tell me. The expression is magical to me.
It might seem odd that a phrase describing hardship is magical to me. It might even appear callous toward individuals who suffer—or have suffered—on the road. I am in no way romanticizing hard traveling or otherwise minimizing it. My family history, including my own, is why the phrase is magic for me. I won’t didactically spell out further explanation here. The situation is nuanced, so perhaps explanations require an oral give-and-take dialogue. But this essay explains in part, not didactically but experientially and embodied.
A Witch Raised on Optimism and Descended from Society’s Hedge Rows
I wonder if Dad’s love of music came from traveling. His adoration of music seemed incongruent with everything else about him. He even loved musicals. But perhaps his love of show tunes came from his mother, who was a showgirl.
I descended from people who were on the edges of society, but they were not always what most people would imagine.
I assumed showgirl was the family euphemism for stripper. But later, I saw a family painting that I was told is a portrait of Bill’s mom. Curious, I went online, armed with the painter’s name: W Haskell Coffin. I discovered he was known for painting Ziegfeld showgirls. If the portrait is Bill’s mother, she was probably in the Ziegfeld Follies or a similar group.
That is not incompatible with being poor. Here are two reasons. Many performers experience economic hardship. As in any business, some people accumulate wealth, some people barely scrape by. If she did make decent money, she would’ve been past the age of a youthful Ziegfeld girl by the time she suffered poverty with young William. He was born six years after the Follies began. Her money could’ve run out by then.
I’ve spent decades researching my family history, trying to understand it. I’m not a trained researcher. My conclusions could easily be amiss. I tell the story best I can. That’s the job of a circus barker. Perhaps putting a family history together best you can is a necessity when you come from the margins. There were so many roadblocks. For example, I contacted an organization that archives material on Ziegfeld girls. The person with whom I spoke explained that a lot of material was lost because, after Ziegfeld died, there was no money to be made from the archives, so no one took care of them. Marginalized because of lack of money.
The following snapshot of the portrait isn’t great. I took it without great equipment decades ago at a family member’s home:
(Update: Further investigation suggests this might not be my grandmother, despite the family’s claim and all the time I’d already spent researching the painting. At least it opened my mind to her being a showgirl instead of a stripper. I hope I discover the group(s) in which she performed, and I am still looking into Ziegfeld. Research is a living process; new findings lead to—or suggest—new conclusions. Unfortunately, most people in the know have passed on. Of the few that remain, I only know one who is a reliable source. Speaking of new findings: After I wrote the above part of this paragraph, I spoke with that trustworthy source—e.g., when her source might be unreliable, she acknowledges it. She provided new history: She too was told Grandma was a showgirl. She was also told that Grandma was an actress. She added that it was implied—though not said outright—that Grandma was not well regarded by the family because of her work.)
Another example of outliers in the family: Bill was as close-minded as they come. But as a teenager, I brought home a stranger. He had no place to sleep, was due to enter the Marines the next day, and carried a guitar. I assumed Dad would angrily turn him away. That would’ve been typical of my close-minded, bitter father. But he gave the guy a bed. I imagine it was in part because the fellow was soon to be a Marine, but that the guitar had a lot to do with it too.
Dad, unexpectedly, adored folk music, not just show tunes. After his World War II military stint, he didn’t return from Europe to his wife and kids right away (I wasn’t born yet, but I know the story). He went south and hung out with hillbillies. Had they met as hard-traveling children? Thus far, I don’t know where else this extremely conservative man could’ve acquired a love of folk music. And unless he had experienced it rooted in his life experiences and worldview, he would’ve loathed it in the ‘60s when it was associated with radical politics.
I am 74 years old. Previous generations of my family are long gone. Their deaths impelled me to investigate old newspapers, public records, etc., long ago. That has been and continues to be fruitful and fascinating. I will keep at it to answer my new questions about Bill and the rest of the family. Plus, the family member who I know to be reliable remains, ever-ready to talk. And the beloved dead appear in visions to point out directions I might pursue or even tell me stories.)
More Lineage from Society’s Hedge-Row Edges
Bill was not my biological dad. DNA indicates my biological father likely descended from nomads. A family story: An Indian prince proposed to Mom but she chose Bill instead. I don’t know what the family meant by Indian. Mom aside, the family’s lack of education and abundance of prejudice means family members might have considered various peoples as Indian. Was my father Arabic? Iranian? Or?
Grandma a showgirl, Bill a hard traveler, biological father possibly a royal nomad, and Mom a fortuneteller from a long line of Italian witches. I was grown in the edges—society’s hedge rows. Add that I was raised on old musicals with their fantastically optimistic themes, and I had to become a performer in the Fairy circus of life—a nomad traveling for sheer joy, both the experience of it and the giving of it.
Hard Times Taught Me Unapologetic Joy
I am grateful to know a beautiful joy that you can learn from hard times. It is a joy you learn to nurture regardless of circumstances. It is a pure, untainted joy.
That’s one reason I love the circus. Circus artists focus on creating joy and wonder, whether as a clown or trapeze artist. Their shows embody unapologetic joy.
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Loss, Fairy Magic, Unapologetic Joy, and the Circus
After going to the circus today, I had to buy myself a slide whistle.
Letting go of possessions is interesting. I feel okay about losing all my beloved small musical instruments recently. (They were stolen from U-Haul storage where they were temporarily stored during my move.) It was difficult at first. A good many instruments are gone: claves, kazoo, playing spoons, tin whistle, a collection of harmonicas, a harmonica holder so that I can play one while also playing guitar, …
I used them for years, some of them for decades. I had sentimental attachments to them. Wonderful memories remain. I am lucky.
And now I have a slide whistle. It is too ridiculous an instrument for me to have resisted. I can play kazoo like nobody’s business. I mean, for one thing, I make it sound like a sax. That is ridiculous so people start laughing. Now I will be able to incite laughter with a slide whistle.
I love making people laugh.
Humor helps us when we are in pain. Laughter heals.
Life should be like the circus.
I try to turn my day into a circus—filled with magic, daring, unapologetic joy, and a sufficient amount of ridiculousness.
I know in my heart that Fairies go to the circus. Many a Fairy worships human artistry and prioritizes joy. Surely, Fey Folk are drawn to circuses’ glittery costumes and uninhibitedly wild pomp.
Surely some Fairies spin enchantments for circuses to succeed financially. That way, circus artists can be paid to devote their time to keeping their skills sharp and entertaining everyone. Fairies not only seek entertainment but also want everyone else to have it.
Fairies bless my day so that I can live in magic, be daring, pursue joy wholeheartedly, and indulge in ridiculousness. That way, I am entertaining them.
When a small item is suddenly and inexplicably missing, Fairies might have stolen it, so lore tells us. Lore does not say that Fairies break into storage spaces and abscond with carfuls of boxes. That box of small instruments was not the only one stolen. Whoever is to blame, I’m happy to be more lightweight.
In recent years, the burglary and other unpleasant events forced me to let go of half my possessions. It was hard. But I became grateful that the universe forced my hand. It led to my choosing to get rid of more, and I hope to winnow down to only 7/8 of what I had.
running away to join the circus of life.
Older but still tiny, I escaped from the neighborhood
on my bicycle.
A circus performer in the big top that is life,
I travel across physical miles
and the small spaces within atoms.
It is easier with fewer possessions.
Burglars stole beloved tools that created joy.
Less burdened, I more easily traverse Gaia and atoms,
as I make new joy
with my slide whistle,
stubbornly happy attitude,
and magical spells.
I make joy with the musical instruments that were not stolen.
I make joy with new tools that appear in new lands.
I will make joy with the glitter and other goodies
that remain after I finish purging my possessions.
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Be a Goddess Who Has All Powers
Rage, Despair, and Grief Are Chances to
Be a Goddess (or Other-Gendered Deity) Who Has All Powers
A nomad mystic, traveling Faerie realms, I am stardust.
All Human Fates Entwine
Part of my human and Fey heritages is connection with humankind as a whole.
All our fates are entwined.
As a shaman and servant to the Fairy Queen, I have a joyful duty to serve not only my shamanic students but also the larger whole.
My students and other friends are wonderful spiritual companions. Traveling spiritually alongside them upholds and nourishes me. The following is not about these friends. It is about the human race, which is part of my larger community along with Gaia’s other children.
A substantial percentage of humankind practices greed, heartlessness, and cruelty regularly. At times, my rage, despair, and grief overcome me. I’ve realized that, at such times, these painful feelings might be the only way I connect with humankind as a whole.
Though a misery to me, these feelings are strong fibers that bind me to every human on the planet.
One way or another, connection to humankind must happen. I cannot escape it, no matter how terribly a large part of humankind treats Gaia and all Her children. I want to choose how I connect.
Escape from Cruel Situations Can Feel Impossible
When rejected, mauled, and deprived from birth,
when carried in the womb of a Faerie woman
who was scorned, battered, and exiled,
when our skin and hair
was perceived as reason for incrimination,
when humans have haunted me and hunted me
for almost three-quarters of a century,
until in old age and a sleepless night,*
my past seems to be proof
that escape from cruel situations is impossible,
my despair, grief, and rage are inevitable and sane.
I must embrace them.
Then I can recognize
that my exhausted mind deceived me.
I can achieve freedom.
Doors to freedom surround me.
Rage, Despair, and Grief Are Gates to Power:
I Am Stardust
Yes, I embrace them.
They become my gates to power: To survive and thrive, I must become so flexible that I am formless. Formlessness immediately leads to my transforming further, into star dust. It is my natural state. I remember my path. I can plant my feet firmly into it.
Once in my natural state, I quickly, without even trying, become the entire cosmos—Diana, Magna Mater. It’s one of my favorite states.
Now I have no choice but to be in it if I want to survive and thrive. In it, I have all power.
My job is to be my true self—I am stardust, Diana, Magna Mater—because that innately serves the cosmos.
I Am Stardust and Faery Power. I Release Everything Else
Preparing to move to Italy, I am ruthlessly getting rid of every material possession possible. I want nothing but stardust.
I will keep what I need for functionality and beauty. Stardust.
I don’t regret moving back to California, even though, now, I don’t intend to stay.
California is my home—my mother land. But you can’t go home again.
I had to return here to take care of some things before moving to Italy. I didn’t know that is why I came back.
A Nomadic Mystic Traveling Across Faerie Realms
Before moving across the pond, I need to spend time with dear friends in California. I need to revel in and strengthen our connections with each other. Almost all my friends here had kept in touch with me long-distance before I moved back to California. But I need time with them here. Not only am I enjoying wonderful companionship, we’re strengthening a foundation to continue our authentic connection long-distance. This time together will make that long-distance friendship even better.
I need to revisit the land beneath San Francisco’s concrete to say the proper goodbye I could not manage when I moved away before. I need to do other things here, too.
I hope Italy will be my permanent home. But who knows.
I’m no longer counting on a permanent home.
My father was likely Middle Eastern. He might’ve been a nomad. Has my bloodline kept me from settling down happily? Is my DNA the reason that trying to make a permanent home on the material plane made me unhappy?
My home is within myself and within care from my sweet Fairy Gods.
My home is between the stars. I have always known that. I have always traversed Fay realms, but they are my home even more than ever.
Is a Spiritual Home an Illusion?
… Perhaps the idea of a home in the mystic and spiritual realms is a deception.
… No, it’s not a deception. A spiritual home is an important concept. A spiritual home has many vital meanings. … I will never let go of the idea of a sacred “home.” … There are good reasons that I work hard to help my students find their spiritual homes. There are good reasons that I strive to help each student find various metaphysical homes. They could range from being at home in a career to being at home in oneself to trusting one’s magical truths.
And a paradox exists. I need to relinquish the idea of a home, in some ways. The free movement of Nomads with their ever-moving homes is battled by the patriarchy, a death culture that wants everything fixed in place. Borders and boundaries maintain greed-based institutions like patriarchy, colonization, and racism**.
To be free of society’s oppressive spaces and culture, I need, to some extent, to let go of even a metaphysical home other than the ever-shifting Tao. It is the glorious now that is always magic aka miracle.
This is not to say I can escape misery. Or despair. Or rage or grief. They are part of life. Part of the Tao.
Clinging to any rigidity that my fear insists protects me increases misery. Surrendering to the Tao opens every moment to the possibility of joy.
After decades of practicing this surrender, my hopefully-correct understanding is that it’s become time to take it further. So I am. If I understand correctly, my survival and thriving require formlessness greater than I’ve ever experienced, despite my decades of shifting, shifting, and shifting. And I must be formless more consistently than ever.
My formlessness turns into stardust. And then I am a Goddess, Who has all powers. So mote it be!
In my events,
we have our heads in the clouds
and our feet on the ground.
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Footnotes
* A friend of mine says that whatever comes into your head after 9 pm is garbage. That’s obviously not true. But I understand her point. When you’re tired, it’s easy to sink into beliefs like, “My life is meaningless.” I am grateful when I remember my friend’s words at such times.
** Patriarchy, colonization, racism, and the other isms are synonyms to some degree. They’re also synonymous with greed. For example, if a white woman fights only to overcome her own oppression, good chance she is trying to climb into the upper caste so that she too can profit from the exploitation of oppressed groups. That is not feminism. It is greed. However, if she also fights misogynoir, she helps dismantle society’s oppressive structures. In other words, she understands that stopping isms requires stopping them as a whole. Mind you, there are many necessary exceptions to seeing them as a piece. For one thing, every ism has a distinct nature and needs to be fought against as such. But always fighting each one individually will dismantle none of them.
Italian Ancestors, Prejudice, Life’s Cycles, & Useful Magic
Italian Ancestors, Prejudice, Life’s Cycles, & Useful Magic
I’ve been looking into immigration to Italy.
As I research to see if immigrating to Italy is possible for me, I think about my ancestors and the cycles of life.
If I move to Italy, a cycle completes.
You see, Nonna arrived in New York in 1902 or 1903, when prejudice against Italians was rampant. Things have changed.
Things have not changed. They have become the same again because life is cyclical.
In rural Pennsylvania, from which I moved a few years ago, people used the N-word for me because my looks are typical Southern Italian (as opposed to the northern Italian blonde, blue-eyed, and very pale stereotype). I lived in fear for my life because my “nice white” neighbors did not want me in their “nice white” neighborhood. The growing fascism in the U.S. had emboldened them.
I’m not going into all the details because any intelligent person can imagine what they were.
But I’ll say these few things: Someone stood in my living room threatening me. They stood in my home, the place that should’ve been my safety. Toward the end of my time in Pennsylvania, as the hostility escalated, a friend visited a few times a week, so my neighbors would see that I was not an old woman living alone and vulnerable. I was driven from my home by racists. My home, which I worked decades to be able to buy, is gone.
I have no Pollyanna statement to make about what happened.
That does not mean I am without hope or optimism. Nor am I without useful, practical magic that makes all the difference.
A Good Life in All Seasons, with Help from Fairy Gods and Other Ancestors
Things come, things go. That is the nature of life. Always, the cycles.
And I have Fairy Gods. They have always backed up struggling individuals, lending powerful magic to fight oppression and other problems. In every cycle of my life, the good and the bad, the Fairy Queen and King and Their court stand by me.
I am part of the cycles of life, part of the cycle of the comings and goings. And my ancestors, which include the Fairy Gods, line up behind me in every season.
Nonna, whose picture is at the top of this post, arrived in the U.S. at the age of 15. The strength it took for her to settle in at that young age and build a life here is part of my heritage. It fuels my magical spells.
Mine is a good life. During my last three years in Pennsylvania, before I could get everything organized to leave, I feared for my life every day. Despite the terror and possibility of violence and death at any moment, it was still a good life.
The Fairy Gods Created Useful, Practical Magic for Us
I know my spells helped keep me safe and sane and helped me move from Pennsylvania as soon as possible. It is normal to be afraid in dire circumstances—even if you trust the protection magic you do. But Fairy magic mitigated the fear tremendously and kept me spiritually whole—instead of utterly traumatized—in other ways as well.
My sweet Fairy Queen and King offer us—Their children—practical spells for real life. They put Their divine power and down-to-earth wisdom into those spells.
My Gods, thank you for Fairy magic and everything else you give me.
If you want practical, useful spells relevant to all situations, take my classes. Click the newsletter banner below to receive notice of new classes.
Francesca De Grandis, bestselling author of Be a Goddess!, trained from birth in a centuries-old Shamanic family tradition that includes both Italian magic (La Vecchia Religione) and Celtic Witchcraft.