Remembering Destruction

One thing I have learned in life is that is is crucial that we take time to remember and honor the destruction in our lives. Remembering the traumas in our past allows us to grieve in a healthy manner and ensures that we never forget the things that have made us what we are. We can never get away from our shadow, and we shouldn’t want to. We need not dwell on the darkness. It is unhealthy to do so. However, it is equally unhealthy to pretend that we have no shadow. Integration is key. Integration is balance. There is dark to every aspect of life. 


In Judaism, there is a day for remembering destruction. Tish B’Av, the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av, is a day of destruction in Jewish history. Many terrible acts destruction have happened on this day, including the destruction of both temples. The 9th of Av is a day of mourning and fasting to mark and remember the terrible things in our past. If you want to read about the history of destruction on this day, you can do so here.


Because the Jewish calendar is lunar, the date varies on the Gregorian calendar each year. In 2019, the day fell on Saturday August 10. However, because the day fell on the Sabbath, it is observed on Sunday August 11. The Sabbath is a day of supreme joy and beauty, and we do not fast on the Sabbath. Traditionally, the day is observed through fasting, prayer, reading Lamentations, and general sadness. 


I, personally, do not fast on Tish B’Av. I do tend to spend the day in solemness and reading of Lamentations. I take time to remember the destruction that has happened on this day and I try to find parallels in my own life and not just dwell on the world as a whole. I find it quite interesting, but not coincidental, that the day always falls around the time of Lughnassadh. It is the beginning of the shadow season. It’s still summer, but we are reaching the time of harvest and drawing closer to the time of death. What better time to take a day to observe and remember our past traumas?  


Lammas Traditions

This past week on August 1, we celebrated Lammas or Lughnasadh (luna-sa), the first of several harvest festivals. Although I am Jewish, I come from Scottish heritage, so I do observe Gaelic/Celtic holidays such as this one. There are many ways to celebrate Lughnasadh, as well as many myths and legends that surround it. Like everything else, I pick and choose what I do in my celebrations surrounding the wheel of the year. 


As Lughnasadh is a harvest festival, my celebration mainly surrounds the foods that I eat. My Lammas meal is pretty simple. I make sure to eat from the Native American Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) as well as a loaf of bread- namely Challah. This Jewish braided bread traditionally was just bread and the word challah referred to the pinch of dough that was offered to the Queen of Heaven in the fire. You would literally pinch off a piece of dough and burn it in the fire as an offering to Asherah. However, the term challah has come to mean the loaf itself. I generally don’t make my own challah (although on occasion I do), so at Lughnasadh I make sure to take a pinch of the already baked bread and save it to burn on my altar for the Queen of Heaven. Then, I eat the remainder of the Challah with the Three Sisters.

My Lammas meal is the majority of my observance of this holiday. I also like to have a corn dolly on my altar from now until Mabon. That’s about it, though. I’m rather simple in my observances and that works for me. What are your favorite ways to observe Lughnasadh? 

~Chaya Levana


The Gift of Mercury Retrograde

Mercury is in retrograde from July 7 – July 31, 2019. What does this mean? In simple terms, it means that Mercury is travelling backwards from it’s normal path. In reality, this isn’t possible. So why do we say Mercury is in retrograde? Because Mercury is closer to the sun than Earth it has a shorter orbit time (88 days compared to Earth’s 365). In other words, Mercury wizzes by Earth several times in our year, But, like the story of the tortoise and the hare, at some point, Earth, in her steady circle, will catch up to and then pass Mercury. When Earth passes Mercury it appears that Mercury is moving backwards. This is Mercury retrograde and it happens three times each year. 

In astrology, Mercury rules communication, coordination, travel, commerce, and finances. So, when Mercury is in retrograde we tend to experience communication snafus and things just tend to not go well in these areas. Oftentimes, we tend to expect awful things to start happening as soon as Mercury goes retrograde or when we start experiencing these things we wonder if Mercury has gone retrograde. 

Instead, we should look at this period as a gift. In modern society we tend to go full steam ahead with plans and projects. That’s not a bad thing, per se, but sometimes we forget to sit back and take stock of what we have going on and what we need to accomplish. Mercury retrograde is the perfect time for this. We can’t really stop everything for several weeks three times per year, but we can take these weeks to slow down and think about what we are doing. When we do so we are being mindful in all that we do. Instead of expecting bad things to happen and accepting that you will have a bad attitude about it, plan to use this time to look inward and take stock of what’s going on with you and how you interact with the universe. Make plans, but don’t make final decisions until Mercury is direct again. If you plan to travel, double, and even triple check, your travel plans prior to heading out. Be sure to have a back up plan. When things go wrong (because let’s face it, it happens during Mercury retrograde) take a deep breath and ask what you need to learn from the experience. 

Like everything else in life, Mercury retrograde is what you make of it. If you expect all bad things and a bad attitude, that’s exactly what you will get. Instead, expect to learn some lessons about yourself and you most certainly will.  

~Chaya Levana

Passover and the Omer

Passover, one of the major festivals of Judaism, is a Spring holiday that commemorates the Hebrew slaves’ exodus from Egypt. The festival is a seven or eight day holiday that begins with a ritualized meal known as the Seder (order) and is marked by not eating any foods containing leavening agents.

The Seder is the star of the Passover celebration. This ritual includes the retelling of the exodus story along with ritual foods and items used to help in the retelling. A meal is shared, wine is drank, and everyone comes together to remember. But, while the remembering is of the exodus from Egyptian slavery, we also take the time to remember other forms of slavery and oppression that our people, and others, have experienced throughout history, or are experiencing today. Modern Seders often include newer ritual items, including Miriam’s cup to honor the contributions of women, oranges (for LGBTQ issues), potatoes (immigration), and many others You can read about several modern additions to the Seder plate here

Once the Seder is over, Passover has just begun. We continue to substitute matzah for bread to remember that our ancestors had to flee Egypt in such a hurry that they didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise. Metaphysically speaking, leavening represents aras in our life that we need to work on. Some people refer to this as our sinful nature, but I think it is best to see it as our Shadow side- not something that must be eradicated, but darker aspects of our personality that need to be incorporated. We don’t abstain from bread and leavened food indefinitely (complete eradication), but for a time in order to better see what our life can and should be. We then incorporate these foods (our shadow) back into our full selves for a better, and more complete picture of who we truly are.

So, the Seder is the time of remembering and celebrating our liberation from slavery. But, after being enslaved we are living with a slave mentality. That way of thinking colors every aspect of ourselves and doesn’t go away overnight simply by being liberated. Like the Hebrews in the exodus story, we need a period of retraining our brains and embracing a new way of thinking. Enter the Counting of the Omer. Traditionally this was a time to count the forty nine days between the barley and wheat offerings in the Tabernacle/Temple. The omer measure of barley was offered on the second day of Passover and the omer measure of wheat was offered fifty days later on Shavuot (thus the counting of 49 days or seven weeks).

This seven week period offered a time for the Hebrews to prepare themselves for becoming a nation. G-d gave the law to the Hebrews at Mt. Sinai on Shavuot. This is when they became a unified nation. The seven week period in between their liberation (Passover) and becoming nation (Shavuot) was the time that they changed spiritually. They had to see themselves not as slaves, but as a free people in order to become a nation. If they had remained in a slave mentality they would have remained an enslaved people- albeit no longer physically enslaved

Like the Hebrews, we need a time of inner transformation after our liberation. The seven weeks of the Omer offers us a time to examine seven different aspects of our lives. According to Kabbalah there are ten emanations in which the Divine reveals itself. The counting of the Omer takes seven of these emanations and assigns one to each of the seven weeks of the count. During that week we thoroughly examine every meaning of that aspect of Divinity and how to incorporate it into our lives.

By celebrating Passover and Counting the Omer we are able to commemorate our liberation from a literal slavery as well as a spiritual slavery. We then are able to take the time needed for inner transformation and shadow work to prepare in order to be truly free. Passover and the Omer are my favorite time of the year because I am able to remember that I am free from the enslavement of the expectations of others. I am free and able to live my life according to my own spiritual understanding. I am free to to embrace my Jewitchy self. And, I have a time each year in order to incorporate the memories from my past into my current and future self. As a result, I am a more complete and awake spiritual being. May the day come when I am truly a being of light.


Spring Fertility Celebrations

Last week I wrote about how witches and Jews (and other groups) are similar in that they are persecuted. In that blog I explained the Jewish holiday of Purim. You can read that post here. That was not the blog I intended to write last week, but it is what my heart needed to write. Well, honestly, the part about Purim was what I planned to write about, but the second half wasn’t. Today, I am sharing what I intended to write last week. I want to discuss the similarities between Purim and Ostara as well as a myriad of other holidays from various traditions. Below I have listed several holidays along with what they originally meant and how they are celebrated today. They are listed in order of when they occur in 2019. All but the last two occurred over this past week.

St. Patrick’s Day
Always celebrated on March 17, this day is the Feast Day of the Catholic Saint Patrick. While he was not Irish, St. Patrick was sent as a missionary to Ireland where he became famous for driving all of the snakes out of the country.. While many people see this as a myth, others see it as reality. In actuality, Ireland never had snakes, so in a literal sense, St. Patrick did not drive them from the land as they were never there. Others, however, say that the snakes St. Patrick drove out were not literal snakes, but were pagans and witches and that he was removing the Old Ways from Ireland in order to bring Catholicism in. Today the day is celebrated not as a religious holiday (except among Catholics), but as a form of Irish nationalism. The day is celebrated with wearing green, drinking, festivity, and general merriment. Many pagans and witches mark the day with green in order to celebrate nature and as a way to show St. Patrick that he didn’t succeed in removing them from Ireland.

Ostara is the pagan celebration of the Spring Equinox, and as a result, always falls around March 21. It is a celebration of the fertility goddess Ostara. The day is celebrated with planting, nature walks, time outside, and various other rituals to welcome Spring. Symbols of the day include fertility imagery such as the rabbit and the egg. A festive meal is generally celebrated with eggs and early spring greens. 

Nooroz is the Persian New Year celebrated on the Spring Equinox. This holiday is preceded by a major Spring cleaning to ready the home for the celebration. Nooroz is celebrated with bonfires and a festive meal shared with friends and family. The meal includes various fertility symbols including eggs and spring greens. Many celebrants buy new clothes specifically for Nooroz so that they will look their best for the celebration. 

Purim is a Jewish holiday that occurs in late winter or early Spring. It always falls on the same day on the Jewish calendar (Adar 14), however, because the Jewish calendar is lunar, the date varies on our solar Gregorian calendar. Purim commemorates the story of Queen Esther and the victory over Haman and the salvation of the Jewish people. When Esther learns that the Persian King- her husband- had consented to the murder of the Jews (her people) she decides to confront him. She fasts (dies to her flesh and descends within her spirit) for three days and then goes before him without being called for, risking her life to plead her case. The holiday is celebrated with raucous parties, drunkenness, costumes to hide ourselves, charity, and eating triangle shaped cookies known as hamantaschen (Haman’s ears) that have sometimes been seen as a representation of the vagina.

Holi is the Hindu festival celebrating the beginning of Spring. Because the Hindu calendar is lunar (like the Jewish calendar) the day does not always fall on the equinox which is a solar astrological marker. Because the Hindu and Jewish calendars are both lunar, Holi and Purim fall around the same time, often on the same day or within one day of each other. Holi is known as the festival of colors and is celebrated with vivid color pigments being thrown around. There are also bonfires and festive meals to mark the occasion. Holi is sometimes also referred to as the festival of love and is a time when people gather together and forget grievances they have with one another.

Like all Jewish holidays, Passover falls on the same lunar/Jewish date (Nissan 15), but moves dates on our Gregorian/solar calendar. Passover is a seven day festival commemorating the Hebrew slaves Exodus from Egypt. The holiday begins with a festive meal- known as a seder- which includes the retelling of the Exodus story. For seven days the festival is celebrated by not eating leavened bread. This is done in commemoration of the fleeing Hebrews who had to flee at a moment’s notice and did not have time for their bread to rise. At the seder, and for the following seven days, the only baked goods eaten are unleavened bread. The festive seder meal marking the beginning of Passover includes fertility symbology- eggs and early spring greens.

Easter is the Christian celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ. It is a moveable holiday- occurring on various dates each year, but the specific date is based on when the first full moon occurs after the Spring equinox. This holiday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus, his burial, three day descent into hell, and his resurrection and defeat over death. All of these taken together provide salvation for followers of Christ. In many instances, people buy and wear new clothes in order to look their best for Easter services. In addition to religious services that occur at sunrise in cemeteries, the day is often marked with non-Christian aspects taken from Ostara (rabbits, eggs) when the Catholic church forced conversions and took the pagan day and whitewashed it with their own celebration.

Here I have described seven spring holidays that revolve around or related to the Spring Equinox. These are merely seven- there are many more as most every culture has a celebration around this same time. I hope you are able to see that these celebrations are quite similar to one another, several of them having different figures representing the same theme (salvation) or even the same imagery (fertility symbols).

I find it interesting, but not surprising, that most of these festivals involve raucous celebration and merry-making, and that they each celebrate the fertility of Gaia- whether overtly or through their general meaning. It is no accident, really. We are coming out of the dark cold days of winter that mark a type of spiritual inner death. The Spring equinox is a time when not only the earth, but we, are reborn and face the warmer days of Spring and Summer. No matter what your culture or faith, I hope you celebrate a festival at this time of year, and that your celebrations be enlivening.

Purim, Witches, and Jews- Oh My!






Groundhogs, Saints, and Trees

The past few weeks have seen a turn of the wheel of the year. Many of us are still experiencing the depths of winter, but the earth is beginning to stir beneath the snow and frozen ground. 

This weekend saw the celebrations of Imbolc, St. Bridgid’s Day, and Groundhog Day. Each of these are different (yet related!) celebrations of the coming of spring. A few weeks ago in January, the Jewish celebration of Tu B’Shevat celebrated the same  thing. 

Tu B’Shveat, or the New Year of the Trees, falls on a different day of the Gregorian calendar each year. The name literally translates to the fifteenth of Shevat, which is the Hebrew day it falls on each year. This year (2019), the holiday was on January 20/21 and in 2020, it will be on February 9/10. 
In biblical times, Tu B’Shevat was a date on the calendar which marked the time when farmers were to take their fruit offerings to the temple in the fourth year after planting. In the 16th century, Kabbalists created a seder (festive meal followed in a certain order) to instruct followers about the meaning of the Tree of Life and the relationship between humans and the Ein Sof. During the rise of Zionism and the birth of the state of Israel, Tu B’Shevat became a time to plant trees in order to build the nation. Today, it is celebrated with seders and tree planting. Those of us who live in areas experiencing harsh winters can still celebrate by planting a tree inside and transplanting it later. 

No matter what spiritual tradition you follow, this time of year marks a turning. It is still winter, but late January and early February marks the midway point between Winter and Spring. Sap starts to rise in trees, the earliest flowers start to bloom. There is a general hope and promise of re-birth in the air. May the remaining days of winter pass quickly!

The Magic of the Winter Solstice

Magical practitioners often align their practice with the lunar cycles and phases of the moon. It is quite common to use the new/dark moon for setting intentions for things that you want to manifest, grow, and add to your life, and to work full moon magic for things that you want to lessen in your life. The reason for this is simple. You want to use the growing moon to increase and the waning moon to decrease so it is quite logical for manifesting magic from the time of the dark moon to the full moon and to practice banishing work during the time from the full moon to the new moon.

But the solar cycles are also a prime opportunity to work magic- especially for magic that will take longer to manifest. Sometimes you can work magic in a month, but other times it takes seasons or years. When you know what you are trying to work in your life you can choose the correct astronomical cycle to work with.

The Winter Solstice is a time to work magic and set intentions for growth. We don’t think of Winter as being a season of growth. Instead, Winter is a time of death and dormancy. But seeds that are planted in Winter will grow in Spring. When we plant magical seeds at the Winter Solstice they use the quiet time and stillness to grow. The sun reaches it’s shortest height in the sky at the moment of the Winter Solstice. From that point on the sun is reborn and begins to grow higher in the sky each day until it reaches its zenith on the Summer Solstice.

Winter Solstice is the time to plant magical seeds. With good care and proper follow through on the intentions, the magic that you plant now will grow and bloom in Spring.

Happy Solstice!

The Miracle of Being Yourself










Being Thankful for Self
