Blog | Deborah Lipp | Author, Priestess, Witch

Blessed Equinox!

September 23, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / Comments Off

It’s the Fall Equinox. May the turning of the seasons brighten your life.

It’s always been an odd holiday for me; it’s the middle of three harvests, and the other two: Lammas and Samhain, have a great deal more folklore and interesting accouterments. I mean, Lammas, you’ve got all that bread baking, all the traditional gathering stuff, the games, the murder of John Barleycorn: Very colorful. Then there’s Samhain, which, hello, is when the whole world wakes up and notices Witches. Costumes, death, apple-bobbing, dumb suppers, funerary rites, and that whole New Year thing.

So Fall Equinox sits there like a red-headed stepchild, and no modern renaming (“Mabon”) is going to change that. It’s also known as Harvest Home, and some people do a Thanksgiving thing, but I’ve got a close biological family and we do the November Thanksgiving to a fare-thee-well, so I can’t say I’m excited about another one.

Most importantly, the Wheel is turning, and it will continue to turn. We mark our lives by these 8 moments, and that’s incredibly important. Also important, the perfect balance of light and dark. We stand between Summer and Autumn, and can look in both directions at once.

So we must ask: What is ahead? What is behind?

Blessed be.

Mystic Fair Brasil, October 8 and 9

Yep, I’ll be there! I’m very excited about this event, and my upcoming trip to Brazil.

Mystic Fair Brasil website (Portuguese).

My presentation video is not yet up on the website, but I’m sure it will be soon:

Movie Review: X-Men: First Class

June 14, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / Comments Off

X-Men: First Class (2011) 7/10
A “reboot” prequel of the X-Men franchise: It is 1962, and mutants are gathering together, some to end their isolation, and some to avenge themselves on mankind.

(cross-post)

Holocaust survivor Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), who will become Magneto, seeks the man who tortured and experimented on him in 1944. That man, 18 years later, will be known as Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon). Shaw is controlling major government figures with his three mutant accomplices, including Emma Frost (January Jones).

Meanwhile, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), PhD in genetic mutations, is working with the CIA to gather mutants to help save the U.S. and the world from Shaw’s threat.

If all this sounds a little top-heavy, it is, and the movie threatens to topple over with the weight of front-loaded back-story. It just maintains its balance on the back-story issue, even though I haven’t even mentioned Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), or CIA agent Oliver Platt. This movie is so busy that Platt isn’t even given a name in the script.

It’s very hard to review a movie that earns a “B-” grade. “A” and “F” are what make writing reviews fun and easy! This movie does a lot right, and a lot wrong. Great movies can have flaws, but you don’t think of them until after you leave the theater. In that sense, X-Men: First Class is surely not a great movie.

» Read more..

An Open Letter to ADF

June 6, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / 21 comments

Note: This letter was sent to the Archdruid of ADF and shared with the Mother Grove (Board of Directors) before publication. I include their response at the end.

Isaac Bonewits’s death has been a great tragedy for me and mine. I have lost my beloved friend of almost 25 years, my ex-husband, my former High Priest, and the father of my only child, Arthur Lipp-Bonewits. I have struggled to balance immense personal grief with the heartbreaking loss to the entire Pagan community of a brilliant leader, teacher, scholar, thinker, and bard. More than either of these, I have had to prioritize being a mother, as Arthur, at far too young an age, has not only lost his father, but has gone through the difficult and often frightening ordeal of caring for him in his last months.

Throughout all of this, the kindness, compassion, respect, and support of the Pagan community, including ADF, has been one of the things that has kept me going. That I could look up from my personal sorrow and know that Isaac was being treated with dignity, honor, and love, was a sustaining force through the most acute period of grief.

Imagine, then, my shock and dismay when I learned that ADF was selling DVDs of Isaac’s memorial service. » Read more..

Wicca 101

May 14, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / Comments Off

I am looking to teach a serious Wicca 101 course; 13 classes plus occasional ritual. If you know someone who’s interested, have them email me at deborah at deborahlipp dot com.

No one will be accepted without an application and an interview. These are in-person classes. I cannot accommodate NYC students unless they can drive here (I’m on a commuter rail line that doesn’t run late enough for our meetings).

This is not for the curious, but for people seeking real Gardnerian training.

We need joy

May 2, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / 2 comments

You don’t need me to tell you how bleak the news has been lately. Massacres, political oppression at home and abroad, natural disasters, threat of nuclear meltdown, tornadoes, union busting, racism, and tragedy. Half the time I want to hide under the bed, or stop listening to the news.

I didn’t wake up at 4 a.m. to watch the royal wedding, but I looked at pictures on the Internet, and it gave me a thrill. The hats alone are enough to cheer anyone up. I watched my DVR Today Show coverage on Saturday, and a little more of it on Sunday (there was a lot), and I have to say, it felt good. I’m not one of those royal-obsessed people, but you absorb a certain amount of information, and y’know, I’m Oscar obsessed, and there were two Oscar-winning movies about this particular royal family in the past four years. It’s a strangely-constrained life the Windsors lead, but they allow people to gather around a sense of nationalism that transcends politics. The occasion was beautiful, and when Prince William leaned in and kissed his bride a second time, yes, I kvelled.

And then, last night, the news that Osama bin Laden has finally been killed. I know it’s strange and ambivalent to celebrate death, but I celebrate a victory, and a closure, and a sense of triumph, and again, a sense of nationalism that transcends politics (although there are definitely politics involved).

We can’t just be serious-minded day in, day out, caring about all that bad stuff and struggling to make a difference. We need the punctuations of joy. We need to feel, this is good, this is pretty, this is a win. We need to hug each other and say YES! We need to know that life has all the colors, not just the grays.

How lovely that all this happened around Beltane. May the springtime be our color in a life with too much gray. Blessed be to all!

Spring just might come

March 17, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / Comments Off

We spend the whole damn winter longing for spring. Counting the hours. Watching the damn groundhog.

But our longing doesn’t mitigate the fact that at some level we don’t believe it will come. That the first day it’s warm in a timely manner, we’re surprised. (In a timely manner because, sure, if it’s February 10, we are surprised by sixty degree weather, but on March 17, we shouldn’t be.) At some point, we—at least I—settle into a deep fatalism about winter; it’s here, it will always be here, it has always been here, where’s my scarf and coat?

Yet spring comes.

And February was so long that it lasted into March
And found us walking a path alone together
You stopped and pointed, and you said, “That’s a crocus”
And I said, “What’s a crocus?,” and you said, “It’s a flower”
I tried to remember, but I said, “What’s a flower?”
You said, “I still love you.”

–Dar Williams, “February”

Storytelling

February 9, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / 4 comments

A long time ago, I blogged about forgetting to put the coffee filter in the coffee maker. Today was one of several days since that time that I almost did the same thing again, but remembered blogging about it.

Maybe, if I hadn’t blogged it, I would remember, instead, doing it, and stop myself from doing it again. But maybe not. Telling stories has a powerful and magical function within us. It alters what we remember. Maybe it’s grandiose to say it changes who we are, but it gets inside us and changes…something.

I read earlier this week that blogging is declining among teens and twentysomethngs, replaced, I suspect, by tweeting and updating your Facebook status. And there’s nothing wrong with just needing to say something, which is what 140 characters does. It doesn’t tell a story, it just says something, and we need that too.

But storytelling serves a real and age-old human need. Blogging is, in that sense, old-fashioned: Have a story to tell, tell it. It’s just a new way to tell stories, but so was the Guttenberg press.

6th Annual Brigid Poetry Festival

February 2, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / One comment

The annual Brigid Poetry Festival is an online celebration of Imbolg/Brigid’s Day in the form of sharing poetry around the web.

This year, I am deeply inspired by Isaac’s song “There Were Three Sisters:”

There were three Sisters in our ancient land,
In our ancient land there were three.
And they did dispute which of them
Should be, should be, should be,
Greatest of all in the hearts of the free.

Oh, first spoke Danu, the Mother of All,
Her voice was as rich as the earth:
“I give them my cattle, my grain,
And mirth, and mirth, and mirth.
Freedom without joy is of little worth.”

And then spoke Macha, the Goddess of War,
Her voice was the roar of the wave:
“I give but courage, for fear will
Enslave, enslave, enslave.
Freedom’s a gift given but to the brave.”

Now third spoke Rion, the Light of the Moon,
Her voice was as vast as the sky:
“I give to their thoughts great wings
To fly, to fly, to fly.
Freedom means naught if you never ask why.”

[Repeat first verse. Instrumental break.]

But then came Bridget, the Queen of All Arts,
Her voice was a flickering flame:
“My sisters I fear your gifts miss
Their aim, their aim, their aim.
None but through me can their true freedom claim.”

“For pleasure and riches are fleeting at best,
And a warrior’s strength is quite brief.
And knowledge alone brings them naught
Save grief, save grief, save grief.
Without beauty’s fire within their belief.”

“My healers restore hope to those who despair.
My smiths forge them weapons so grand.
My bards cause all those who kneel
To stand, to stand, to stand.
The fires of Freedom are lit by my hand!”

There were four Sisters in our ancient land…

The nature of love

January 31, 2011 / Deborah Lipp / One comment

Having pets is a gateway to contemplating the nature of love, self, and connectedness.

I love Callisto. I adore her. And I believe she loves me. She sleeps wrapped around my neck or tucked between my arms, often with her face up next to mine. She seeks my lap all the time (and seeks Arthur’s lap less often).

But does she love me? Some people cannot be convinced that an animal can love. All of her behavior can be explained by instinct, by marking her territory, by leaving her scent on me and seeking warmth and so on. I could argue that making sure she can kiss my face through the night (moving around with me as I toss and turn) has no real feral or instinctual value, but some people would be convinced and some wouldn’t.

So, does she love me?

Why would we say that animals can’t love? Is love a part of intellect? Clearly a cat is sentient; it experiences sensation, it is curious, it focuses. Clearly, too, a cat is not highly cognitive; cats lack language, tool-making, mathematics, and comedy. If we say that a cat doesn’t love, does that mean that love is a part of cognition? That doesn’t make sense, does it?

So we can say that humans have “higher consciousness,” and love is a part of that. But that’s another poorly defined term. What’s “higher”? I can say my love is “higher” than Callisto’s because mine has selflessness in it; I do for her. Her love for me, arguably, is expressed selfishly; she loves by cuddling in exactly the way that she likes to cuddle. Yet a cat will tolerate a significant amount of manhandling from its favorite people. Tolerance isn’t selflessness, but it’s not selfish either.

If we say that only humans (or humans, whales, and dolphins) have “higher consciousness,” are we saying that only we have souls? I’m not comfortable with that. I am not 100% sure I know what a soul is, or where it can be found. I think, in fact, that it’s pure hubris to say I know such a thing. I mean, who the fuck am I? What then, is this higher consciousness that corresponds loosely to, but is not, intelligence?

Truth: We don’t know. We act like we know, we feel like we know, but we don’t. Because we sense it isn’t intellect, we associate it with the deepest and most spiritual of feelings, including love. And then we say that creatures who aren’t “high” on such a scale therefore don’t love. But we don’t know that.

All of this (more or less) ran through my head this morning while being rather aggressively cuddled by Callisto.

« Older Entries Recent Entries »

Deborah Lipp