Come join us tonight on Sacred Earth Radio as we review all the eclipses and moon phases coming up in the next few weeks.

The Mary statue in the yard is a very local Goddess. I received her as a house-warming gift from Siri when we lived in Beaver, and I have trucked her concrete self with me around Oregon a few times. I put her in our yard, just outside our fence on 20th street, hoping that she can become a public altar where people feel free to leave offerings if they would like. Sharon helped me plant roses on either side of her. One of my neighbors calls her “The Praying Lady”, and another had the urge to put flowers at her altar, but didn’t.
Mary is one of my many attempts to establish a public personal ritual space. I used to have my concrete statue of Aphrodite down in front of Tom’s bookstore. I would lay flowers around her and leave offerings, but no one seemed to notice, and the corner where she sat was a catch-all for organic detritus. It just didn’t work. I considered buying a house near downtown, living upstairs and turning the bottom floor into public ritual space, but that road remains untraveled. Living at the Temple in Nevada was my first experience being in a public ritual space. And it made me realize how needed these spaces are — spaces dedicated to contemplation, divine connection, personal ritual — whatever is needed.
So my hope is as always that Mary may be able to fill a role for someone, be a little space for a private prayer that is held by others. And that seems to me to be the power of these spaces, that our individual prayers are held, held and heard.
As I was getting ready for bed, I realized that I had prepared an offering of my moon blood, but had forgotten to offer it! So, a quick jet outside for a late night ritual was in order. I slipped on my shoes and a robe, and went to the statue of Mary in our yard. In my mind and my heart I held the faces of our friends here in Hood River, the trials and joys personal and public, the circle we weave. I poured my libation, offering my gifts to the gifts of the earth, locating myself in the grand cycle of birth, fertility, and death, and holding us in the arms of this sacred land at the feet of Mary.

We began in the green lush of Portland, then headed east and south. Every mile, it got a little drier. Every hundred miles, it got a little warmer. We went through Doug Fir, past the Lodge Pole Pines of central Oregon, to the scrub south of Burns. I opened to the ever enlarging skies. Everytime we would pass a little grove of trees, Siri would get a bit wistful. But, pedal to the metal, I pushed us on all the way to the desert of the Temple of Goddess Spirituality Dedicated to Sekhmet. North of lovely Las Vegas, south of the Nevada Test Site — a curious bookend of sin and self-destruction. But we are betwixt and between, in the arms of Sekhmet.
Yesterday when we arrived we went up to the Temple straightaway. Walking along the path, I picked up dried twigs for a small fire. It didn’t take much to move me firmly back to this place. I began to sing to the twigs and dried roots, grateful that they would make a quick and lovely fire.
I brought Frankinsence candles as an offering. But I had forgotten the lavender I set out to bring. Well, that just got added to the list of the many things I forgot. But, I remembered the candles. I set the little fire, and it lit so easily while the wind picked up. The chants poured from my mouth, winding with the wind whirling around the temple. The flames lept and crouched, and I sang.
Sitting looking into Her eyes, I melted into the stone floor. Melding, becoming one with this sacred place. Feeling Her presence, Her fire, Her light, Her dark gleaming. The wind spiraled around me, the flames reached towards me, and suddenly drops of rain pelted in, carried by the wind. I was cleansed, blessed, and filled to the brim.