When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

--Mary Oliver

The Afterlife

One thing I’ve learned from being immersed in a book about what happens after we die is that something that starts out as a theory can become a belief. A belief that can shape a life and a culture, but all started out somewhere as a theory or perhaps a spiritual or psychic download.

And, as anyone who’s been around others who regularly have spiritual/psychic downloads knows, they can be suspect. No psychic is always right. No throw of the tarot turns out to be pertinent.

I’ve had two of these downloads so far in this lifetime, two times I suddenly had a theory of what happens in the afterlife. I enjoy them, but they have not become my belief. I remain the only congregant of the Church of Deborah Oak as my main commandment is that we all are divine and our own spiritual authority. So I’m not encouraging that my wacky theories and downloads to become scripture for others. But, they are fun so I will share them in hopes of encouraging others to come up with or be open to downloading a theory of the afterlife.

The first download happened at Disneyland as a child. This was way back when there was different tickets for different rides. E tickets were the most exciting and they were the most expensive. The Matterhorn was an E ticket ride. The A tickets were for rides like the teacups or Dumbo. Standing in a long line in the hot sun for the Jungle Cruise I had my epiphany. The afterlife must be like Disneyland. If you want to get back in the game of life quickly, you get in a shorter line and get a more boring and tedious life. Like the Teacups. If you want a more exciting and entertaining life, you wait in an interminable line for an E ticket ride. Makes sense, right? It makes sense, but it has no reckoning which in the most stories and theories of the afterlife seems very important to us humans.

Reckoning is part and parcel of my second download, which occurred soon after Trump became president. This second theory is that when we die, if we have taken steps to make a better world, we go back in time. We don’t remain fully conscious of who we have been, but we do take back some sense of mistakes of the past and best practices for a better world. We would go back to a parallel reality and history of the world where more people tuned into how to make things better with an unconscious but strong understanding of what mistakes had been made in our current reality. We’d go back to a world that would get better as time went on for humans and all the species of the planet. Climate change would not be in the future. And, if we’d been agents of greed and evil, we’d simply die and go forward into the world we currently are in. Two realities, based on this reckoning.

My actual experience has been remarkedly different. I say experience as it is not a theory, it’s how it has felt at deathbeds. The most recent was my mother’s in April 2016. It was a rainy night, the first rain we’d had in that drought year. She’d been laboring all day and I was alone with her and knew it was close. I felt her gathering momentum to leavie her body. I imagined her going out into the rain and the daffodils she loved and that were blooming at that time. I told her I knew she was leaving and would be part of all she loved. This felt true. There didn’t feel like there would be a reckoning, just a becoming part of everything. I told her I was going to leave her alone for 10 minutes, knowing some people need to go alone. She died a minute or so after my sister came back to the room. I feel her now in the daffodils and in the rain.

Who knows if this feeling I had is what actually happens. Maybe not. I don’t know how it squares with also feeling I can still communicate with her and others of  my beloved dead . I continue to be in relationship with many of them. Some appear regularly, some have never showed up.

It’s all a mystery. I am kind of beholden to my second theory as it turns out, I like the idea of a reckoning.  I’m  looking forward to the book club meeting and hearing if others have had these kind of wacky downloads. The Church of Deborah Oak preaches that we all are capable of coming up with our own afterlife. Every single story of the afterlife somebody somewhere came up with. Or maybe it was group project, something we fools could certainly come up with together. We are on a journey together, why not imagine what that journey entails after death?

Hope to see you on Monday!

We Are All Hanging On

Kim Chilvers

At the Fools Journey Restorative Retreat this year, to honor and deepen our work with the Hanged One, I will be offering a morning in silence for us to notice our inner world more and to feel that struggle with not being able to do things the way we ordinarily do them, yet knowing we voluntarily sacrificed our voice for a few hours to find that knowledge, that new way.

The Hanged One is hanging upside down, unable to move but seeing the world in a new way, from a new perspective. This year, also the year of my second Saturn return, I found myself stuck, hanging, unable turning my own life upside down and the universe turning my life upside down.  I spent much of the year unrooted and living out of a suitcase, sometimes by choice sometimes out of necessity. How does the Hanged One get tied up, is it by their own initiative, is it because it is time to see the world in a new way, is it consequences of actions made?  

In the spring of last year my partner and I decided to house sit for a friend in Santa Cruz for the summer, leaving our home, cats and turtles to be somewhere we love, in someone else's house for a couple of months.  Around the same time as we made this decision my father's health was declining and he was placed on hospice.  I was very torn, knowing I needed to be able to go North to help him but wanting to go South for adventure, the ocean and a new perspective.  I spent a fair amount of time on the road.  

During the summer, one of the hardest parts of hanging and having a foot in three places was when my sister and my father got COVID.  She was stuck, hanging, sick, alone in a hotel room not knowing if my Dad was going to get it or not.  My Dad was alone at home not knowing if he was going to get sick and if he did knowing he was unlikely in his condition to survive.  I had to sit with a feeling like I couldn't do anything as I couldn't risk exposing myself (and my chronic health issues) to take care of them and doing nothing does not come easy for me.  I could of course do magic, and learn to sit with the unknown with feeling out of control, feeling helpless but getting to know myself in a deeper way, hanging, stuck, tied up.  My father did get Covid, got very sick but survived.

During the fall, having made a decision to uproot ourselves and move to Santa Cruz but still back living in Berkeley and spending half of my time in Sebastopol taking care of my Dad.  Spending many days and nights surrounded by the quiet liminal space of near death.  Hanging, meditating, observing, not a lot to actually do. 

Winter, storms brought rapid decisions, packing, hurrying up only to sit and wait for things to come together, less introspection, less observation, more struggle to turn myself and my life back upright in a new way.  

We moved into our new place on Spring Equinox and this season is bringing time to reflect on who I now am, older, parent-less, working on regrounding myself with my new feet on new ground.  

I am looking forward to our Restorative Retreat continuing our journey with the Fool to the Hanged One, to deepening my ability to sit in the unknown, to be upside down, and come back to be ready for change for myself and the world.  

Are you feeling stuck, tied up, ungrounded, are you ready to turn over and see things from a different way, to let go, to change?  Do you have a feeling things could be different if you could just get a new perspective?  Do you need a weekend in a beautiful place, doing art, getting a facial by the pool?  Spots and scholarships are available for the Fools Journey Retreat, June 16-19.  Go to www.afoolsjourney.org for more information or to register.  

Kim Chilvers 

One Fools' Beltane

Hello, Foolish Friends!

As I thumb type this message I am in the tub luxuriating in a magical black salt and flower soak gifted to me by my son’s lovely partner. It’s been a long week, people. A long week.  But… it is Beltane Eve. What better way to get down to some witchy action on this most potent of evenings while, like the Hanged One, surrendering and letting it all go. For sure tomorrow I will also get up (hopefully late as possible) and wash my face in what dew remains of Beltane morning, straight off my newly blooming roses. No. It’s NOT a thing just for maidens! It’s for any and all Fools who want to partake.

Oh my, the Spring and newness and green of this Beltane is strong this year. Flying over the country on a clear day last Sunday as I headed to DC to do some advocacy on The Hill, the land below, emerald green or still covered in a snowy blanket, was sending up curly tendrils of energy that reached deep into my tender heart. The earth felt hopeful, resilient, as it does at this time of year, but it hit me stronger. Perhaps all this hanging has me seeing things differently, but despite all the crazy shit that is happening all around our home planet, that is what I felt. Hope. Rejuvenation. Possibilities. Change.

Down below me and reaching skyward, what I sensed was beauty and love.

Also, there have been dreams. For me this is extra important because I was an intense dreamer for much of my life, but for years now I have lived in a dream desert — not remembering many dreams at all, and really mourning for them. Over the last couple months, though, they have started to return to my consciousness, slowly, piecemeal, like a timid animal. But I feel them peering around corners and see their shining black eyes now, and this week actually remembered two. This is so good.

This is Beltane. Growth and renewal, pleasures of the body and connection through the veil. Hope. Love. Joy, and also recommitment. For me, I began a journey (a Fool’s Journey) to reconnect with my activist side but with the intention of doing so with joy and growth. With the intention of supporting those who are not being heard in this moment, elevating their voices and following their lead while listening to the voices from my dreams and ancestors. It was a beautiful start.

I would love to hear what you are doing for Beltane, and how the season feels to you. How is your Fool’s Journey going? Are you still feeling the pull of Justice or are you heeding the call of The Hanged One?

Are you coming to the restorative this June? I certainly hope so!

If you haven’t already registered, please do so as it is fast approaching and it will help us in our planning. And signing up for a magical restorative seems a perfect piece of Beltane magic right there! Also, if you are in need of a scholarship, tomorrow is the last day to apply for one.

We have planned a lovely weekend. Spa, art, ritual, magic, community…Come and hang with us!

For more info and to REGISTER or apply for a SCHOLARSHIP, hurry over to www.afoolsjourney.org. There are spaces available and we really want to see you there with us.

Brightest of Beltane Blessings,

Bread

The Upside Down

The Upside Down

Bread - A Foolish Facilitator

April 19, 2023
New Moon in Aries
Aries solar eclipse

This past weekend four of the foolish facilitators gathered to plan. We breathed in the sharp sea air of the San Mateo coast, gazed at the blazing stars, watched baby sea lions learn to climb the sea rocks with their mamas, and got down to the business of making, and planning the making of magic. And we were doing it while upside down. And if you happen to be lucky enough to come to this June's magically restorative camp, you'll be doing it upside down, too.

For this alternative view of the multiverse, we can thank the Hanged One. Card number 12 of the major arcana shows a person hanging by their leg, tied to a living tree in the shape of a Tau cross. Their free leg is also making another cross – or also may be seen as a yogi in tree pose. If they are hanging as a form of torture or punishment, our Fool, for this is the Fool we met at our very first camp, the Fool of card 0, now further along in their initiatory journey, they don't seem to be suffering. They are relaxed, glowing with an internal light, at peace with what they are doing. Is it a rite of passage? A sacrifice? It certainly seems so. The Hanged One looks out and sees the world from an entirely different perspective, and in so doing gains something, learns some lesson, some magic, that will ultimately carry them forward on their journey towards The World card. They are halfway there. Interestingly enough, the woman/goddess depicted on The World card (number 21... ya see that? 12 is the Hanged one... 12...21... yeah) is in the same position as our foolish Hanged One, only now right-side up.

Now, I'm no astrologer, but I am a witch, and I know enough to know that there are phases of the moon that are more conducive for planting and those that are best for harvesting and the work that has to take place in between. This dark moon is a good time for setting out your seeds, your intentions, of what you want to see grow. That might be literal seeds for your garden, or it might be the seeds of your desire for societal change. Either, or both (!!) are great options. The dark moon in Aries also reminds us that we can slow down for a bit to rekindle our creative juices. Slow down and we might see that the halo of the Hanged One comes from their fire within. It's not a sweaty glow! Just chill out and hang for a bit, and perhaps contemplate how you plan on watering and feeding those lovely, rebellious seeds of yours and how you want things to look when they all take root and bloom.

One of the things I've been thinking about as I have been hanging with the Hanged One is how upside down the world has felt for the last several years. I've been ending my (almost) daily workouts by practicing headstands and trying to stay in that position long enough to ground. It's a very interesting thing to do, grounding through your head. There are people walking by, doing Zumba in the room across from me, and here I am, rooted and strung up to the stars. Yesterday I was thinking about how, after living in the upside down for all this time, that maybe I was actually right side up in this position and wondering how my change of perspective might help me sow seeds as is only right, it seemed to me, in the air. So here I am, casting my word seeds to the winds. What will grow? What will be eaten? Only time will tell. Keep hanging in there, fools. We have only the world to gain.

✨SPACE IS STILL AVAILABLE - COME HANG WITH US!

✨SCHOLARSHIPS ARE STILL AVAILABLE

✨Applications for scholarships are due by May 1.  We are dedicated to keeping costs as low as possible and to providing needed financial assistance whenever possible. 

The Inadvertent Priestess

The Inadvertent Priestess - Deborah Oak

I never set out to be a priestess. First and foremost, I am a Witch. The priestess became  a byproduct of the witchery. Not all Witches become priestesses, but those of us who work with groups and participate in putting on public rituals inevitably learn some  priestessing skills; how to create and guide energy in circles and how to step into the center of a circle and open to inspiration.

I came to being a Witch through grief and feminism. As what would eventually become a tradition, Reclaiming Witchcraft, was coalescing, I jumped into the fray. Way before Witchcamps and big public rituals, we did rituals around demonstrations and actions. I think the first time I invoked something, it was in jail during a mass arrest at Livermore Labs.  I was terrified, but I stepped in and did it. Over the years the terror subsided and confidence replaced it. Faith and trust replaced it. As one of the last generation to have a childhood devoid of a culture where goddess worship existed, much less priestesses, the role of priestess has not only been healing, it’s been empowering.

One definition of a priest is someone who is authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion especially as a mediatory agent between humans and God. A priestess is profoundly different as Witches need no mediatory agent given we see the Divine in everyone and everything. When you priestess a ritual you have particular duties and responsibilities, but you are not a spiritual authority. One duty I feel strongly as a priestess is to help facilitate others in being their own spiritual authority.

During the same time Reclaiming was developing as a tradition, my partner was working for Greenpeace and then Rainforest Action. The environmental activist community also became my community. I helped create rituals of protection and officiate at weddings, birth blessings, and memorials. My strong preference is to work magically with other priestesses, but I’ve learned the beauty of service in officiating alone for those who defend the sacred elements but don’t identify as a Witch. Standing in such a circle last Sunday to priestess a memorial for such an activist prompted these reflections. And prompted my gratitude for this role I never sought out, that was inadvertent.  My heart is still singing from the experience, being able to do service in this way and create a potent container for my beloved friend to be remembered in.

One of the cards of the tarot is the High Priestess and there are some Witches who inhabit this role. To my mind, being higher than others goes against my Witch soul. Back when we began Reclaiming Witchcamps. I argued against pay grades and hierarchies of priestessing.  If I’m in a circle of priestessing, despite different skill levels, I want to be in a circle of equals, all equally invested in the work and valued. I believe magic works best that way. In my opinion, Witchcamps began veering towards creating a culture of adoration of the priestesses instead of empowerment for all. So some of us who’d been complaining about this for years decided to stop complaining and create something different.

So we jumped off a cliff and landed in Four Springs. It’s been an integral part of the journey to encourage others to step into the circle and be a fool, to open to inspiration and invoke directions or deities, and most of all, to make MISTAKES! Mistakes are lauded at Fool’s Journey. Call in the south instead of the west and it will result in hoots and hollers and clapping! YAY! In this way we celebrate the fool and also create safe space for learning magical skills.

We are in our 13th year of Fool’s Journey, in the year of the Hanged One. It’s been the perfect year for me to step out of my priestess and organizer role and take time to reflect on the journey. I’ve realized there are many who started with us who stepped into the circle to invoke a direction with the same terror I did decades back. Most of these long time fools have become comfortable embodying their priestesshood in ritual. This continues to move me deeply, including that annual moment when a new fool steps in with all the anxiety of a beginner. And the beauty. At Fool’s Journey, this is a sacred moment.

The point of A Fool’s Journey has not been to train priestesses. But, like my being a Witch, it’s been a byproduct. Which, in my view, is the best way to find yourself becoming one.

2023 Year of the Hanged Man

Year of the Hanged Man - Deborah Oak

This piece was written in late January of the 2023. Since that time there were the time of blossoms, but also there was snow and hail and now heavy rains. We are in interesting times.

It’s the new moon with the sun just entering Aquarius. The storms have passed for now and the plum buds on the trees that grace my city are busy getting ready to burst before the next new moon. If things go as usual.

But usual is becoming unusual.

For thirteen years I’ve been part of putting on a tarot retreat called The Fool’s Journey, a journey thru the major arcana of the tarot, which are numbered and go in order. And every year the card somehow matches up perfectly with the time. Strength and the Hermit were the cards for the first 2 years of the pandemic. Last year we focused on Justice, just days before the Supreme Court struck a blow to abortion rights. The year Trump was elected was our Emperor year. Some years, some cards are difficult.

This year is the Hanged Man, like the others, a card with varied and complex meaning. One meaning is seeing things from another perspective. I thought this was a good year to step back and not facilitate but merely participate. Somehow I believed the card wouldn’t work me as hard as in past years. I was wrong.

It is not an easy card. But as my friend Nancy said recently; “I’m thinking that the Hanged Man is the ultimate witches card in the deck. The Magician is all very well for male dominated modes of magic but it is in looking at the world from an utterly different perspective without denying other perspectives that makes a witch.”

I think there is truth in this. This is a time where new perspectives are becoming imperative. At the moment, we are hanging out with growing awareness that we are stuck with COVID, climate change and the ongoing threat to democracy. Witches in history and mythology are those who you go to when you are stuck and need help that can’t come from other sources. So there is challenge in coming together to work with the Hanged Man. What help, what wisdom do we have to give? How can we exercise and increase our ability to work between the worlds to find strength and tools for a changing world? If magic is changing consciousness at will, this is a perfect time to put our shoulder to the wheel of changing consciousness, adapting consciousness, and honing it.

This is a moment in time we all are stuck. Every person on the planet. Figuring out how to adapt and be resilient is everyone’s work.

During the past storm my brother-in-law’s decision to put a zip line across their washed out bridge ended up with videos and photos of my 65 year old sister hanging from a wire to cross their creek going viral. The BBC covered it! They thought outside the box and took risks. That zip line is still getting supplies to neighbors and my sister is getting out her deliveries for her Etsy store, aptly named Wolf at the Door Creations. They beautifully put the Hanged Man into motion in service of their community.

This is a time that demands we learn to live with wolves and fascists at the door, with creeks rising, with forests burning, with the thermostat going higher and lower than we’ve experienced and all of that with a steady onslaught of new variants of a tricky nasty virus.

Sometimes it can feel paralyzing. Like we are hanging upside down, powerless to get our feet back on the ground. But we have our consciousness, our perception, our awareness. The Magician’s tools are very nice, but yep, there’s times we must rely solely on our wits. And I do believe Nancy is right that this is what makes a Witch.

It’s cold and clear outside. My favorite time of the year approaches when the blossoms explode and the sidewalks get covered with petal snow. It’s the year of the Hanged Man. I’m hoping things go as usual but I’m learning that for all I know those sidewalks could have actual snow on them in a few weeks. I’ll adapt. I’m learning to hang. And I am not alone.

A Divine Day in March

A Divine Day in March - Deborah Oak

Somewhere in the early years of A Fool’s Journey, we began to do what we called “A Divination Bordello” to raise money for scholarships to our retreat. Why a bordello? Certainly my rambling and sensually decorated Victorian can evoke that aesthetic. Join that to meeting up in the living room to pick which of us would take you to one of the many rooms,  read your cards, chart the stars, or decipher your dreams, and abracadabra you have a divination bordello. The funk trunk, with its eclectic finery for sale just added spice to the fun.

Given COVID, now Divination Day occurs in the open garage, the roofed  patio, the backyard, and the carriage house. Even outside, the house manages to have magical nooks and crannies.  It’s lost the bordello vibe, but it still continues to be full of delight and surprise. Who knows what you will find in the funk trunk and what will be divined from the cards or other divinatory tools?

To divine means to discover by intuition or insight. The tarot is  particularly good at activating intuition and is a central path to insight on The Fool’s Journey. Some people look to tarot readings to foretell the future. Some tarot readers oblige and give predictions. And some of us don’t. When I read for myself or others, I’m looking for a reflection of life as it is at the moment. What challenges are occurring, what energies are available for support? No future is set in stone, but a good reading can reveal what we need to do to avert or bring about an outcome the cards are saying is in motion.

No future is set in stone, and no two readers will give exactly the same reading. To me, this is the beauty and the fun of Divination Day. I suggest getting  two readings by two different readers, asking the same question. There are sure to be two different answers, but usually complementary. Tarot readings don’t necessarily give a direct answer, but they do expand on possibilities.   

My son at an early age learned to  charge friends and family for readings. He did not learn this from me. It was some higher or lower power.  As he said when running for treasurer in 7th grade, “I’ve always been interested in money”. I’m pretty sure readings from the tarot and his animal oracle deck were the first time he made money. He was and is a good reader.  Way back then he’d say to me privately, “I’m just making it up”. Exactly. He’d grown up with the cards and although never read a book or looked up a meaning, he knew how to look at the cards and come up with a story. He understood intuitively how to make meaning from where the cards fell and how they interconnected. Learning the history behind the cards can certainly deepen our understanding, but essentially a good reader doesn’t compute the symbols in front of them, they divine them.

Part of the magic of the day inevitably is having someone who has never given a reading do so for the first time. There are always a variety of tarot decks and divinatory tools available.  Taking that leap and doing something for the first time is particularly sacred to the Fool’s Journey. I believe fools to have direct access to the divine and as such can be able to divine sometimes better than those of us who’ve been doing this for decades.  

Divination Day is Saturday, March 18th this year. It’s a day A Fool’s Journey embraces my son’s interest in money. And the tarot. The hope is that enough money can be made to make scholarships available for the retreat in June.  The spirits of my home particularly sing on Divination Day, loving the energy, feeling the divine in the divining. I love it too.

I hope I see you there!