Hecate’s Moon

Hecate’s Moon

is the piercing thorn

of a wilted white rose.

 

Frost covered, she rises over

bare trees shorn of leaves –

crackling obscenities.

 

Fog obscures her face,

obliterating any attempt

to categorize or capture essence.

 

Blood stains the river

that flows unimpeded

in this crack between her

worlds.

 

Listen, and you will hear

wild cats screech,

coyotes howl,

owls shriek.

 

I lay low.

 

She is what She Is,

A force to be reckoned with,

this Dark Side of

the Moon.

 

 

Working notes:

 

So many feminist spiritual traditions attempt to lighten the dark powers of this (Greek) mythological underworld figure who is multi -valenced and can be found in some form in every mythology. She lives underground seething in  silence and acts as a bridge between above and below as she moves between worlds. She slices our nights in two – living through the dreamtime – a specter unseen but experienced when the Earth turns dark. I think she comes now not because of the changing seasons but because gun violence*, rape, and the deaths of thousands of innocent people, trees, plants, seeds, and animals have become the new “normal.” Unspeakable acts of horror have come to define who we are as a people.

 

Hecate is, above all, the transformer holding living and dying in precarious balance until the scales tip too far. When she steps in with a scythe in her hand, beware because her force is deadly, and none are spared. Hecate’s wrath is boundless, her time draws near…

 

This month Hecate’s appearance also informs us that the end of the year is almost upon us. Her Full Moon, and the Feast of the Dead which is held over the last days of this month and stretches into November, ushers us into her world – a three way crossroad – Cairns mark the place between that which has gone before, the present moment, and whatever is destined to come.

 

Hooded, she walks alone and we spin through her once starry spirals turned to dust in dense matter. Spirals, patterns in Nature, remind us that as we spin out of control we are destined to implode.

 

*Note: in the middle of writing about gun violence at twilight, massive machine gun explosions cause us ( my dogs and me) to jump out of our animal skins. We live in a war zone,  one as yet, legally undefined.

The next morning hounds howl in a frenzy as they tree a hapless bear who will then be shot.