North Stars, Flame

North Stars, Flame-Tending, and the Apocalypse: Rituals for the Hopeful Heart in Dire Times

By Danielle Dulsky, author of Seasons of Moon and Flame

As a young woman, beloved witch, author, and teacher Danielle Dulsky found refuge, nurturance, and wisdom when visiting her grandmother’s rustic home. Next to the fire of the winter hearth and sitting outside with the wildflowers of spring, her anorexic body was loved and fed, her racing thoughts were slowed, and she received a maternal support she did not have in any other part of her life. These visits with Grandmother Grace were the seeds that eventually grew into Danielle’s deepening exploration into the Sacred Hag archetype and the wisdom that these elder women have been sharing since the beginning of humanity. Her third book, Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer's Epic Journey of Becoming is a “Year of the Wild,” — consisting of thirteen chapters that correspond to the thirteen moon cycles, or lunations.

he earliest moons of the year, for me, are those best spent pondering my “witch’s north stars;” these are pertinent but unanswerable questions that my Craft moves toward, never quite reaching but always seeking. My north stars give me hope when I find myself struck by sorrow, bemoaning the state of the world, or just spiritually unfed. My north stars keep me from trying to win at my witchcraft, necessarily tempering the lessons of my individualistic, American upbringing and gifting me with the rare opportunity to savor the journey, to be met with joy during the practice of magick, to yet again see a spell from the untainted perspective of an innocent. This year, two of my guiding north stars are these: What is the role of the Witch in a wounded world? What does T

it mean to cultivate wonder and whimsy on this damaged miracle we call a planet? Timely questions, these. In spring, as my Witchcraft turns more toward ancestral healing and the myths beloved by my people, I look to the archetype of the “flame-tender” to give greater meaning to these, my 2020 north stars. She is Brighid in the Irish pantheon, the pagan Goddess turned Saint, and she requires us to have the long vision, to resist the short-sightedness the overculture has sold us over and over again, and to keep humble fires burning for the ancients and the yet-to-beborn. Brighid’s fire-temple in Kildare, Ireland, a truly hallowed place I visited three years ago on a misty August morning, is believed to be the site of at least six centuries of continuous flame-tending, much longer if the assertions made about the fire-temple having even deeper pagan roots are true. Nineteen priestesses tended the fire for nineteen consecutive days, and the Goddess Brighid was left to tend the flame on the twentieth day. The fire never died, as legend says, burning so cleanly there was never even any ash to be swept away, and my heart aches with reverence at the thought of so many generations of priestesses holding the same dedication, keeping the same hope alight in the dark of night when the ghosts were surely thick all around them.

Candles through Time: A Small Ritual-Remedy for the Aching Heart Should you need a simple

and home-brewed remedy for the disconnection that affects us all in our timeimpoverished world, gather three candles.

Tea-lights work well because they will burn out safely on their own, but any candles will do. Grant a single breath to each of the four directions, then name one of these candles for the present moment, tended by you now, in this body. The candle of “presence” will go in the center. Name another the “primal ancestors,” tended by your forebears in the living past, a time that once was and yet, somehow on some plane, still is. Place this candle to the left of “presence.”

Lastly, name the third candle the “loving yet-to-be-born,” tended by future generations connected to you not only by blood but also via relationships of spirit and soul. Place this candle to the right of “presence.” Light the central candle first and breathe, sense yourself surrounded by your beloved dead and compassionate descendants.

Tend to your senses in this moment. Notice what you hear, feel, smell, taste, and see. Tend to the spirit of the moment, then light the “primal ancestors” candle off the central candle. Imagine the care taken by those nameless fire-tenders stretching on back through your lineages, back through the realms of the deepest time. Sense their dedication. Hear their drums and their songs. Let your visions of them warm you now in this moment.

Return your attention to the central candle called presence. Light the candle called the “loving yet-to-be-born” off the central candle and imagine now the many flame-tenders who will be born to this world, who will move through their own rituals and stoke their own hearths, who will, in small ways and epic ways, be the realization of your own deep desires, just as you are the living answer to the many prayers of your forebears. Let them surround you, the spirits of your beloved dead as well as those full-ofpotential souls. Be swaddled in warm layers knit from time. Breathe and be well. Find solace in the knowing that you are but a single thread in a great and beauteous cosmic tapestry, comfort in the understanding that you are held by and belong to a fantastic and exquisite web of lineages, stories, music, poetry, and magick. Be lit by the glow of these majestic truths. And so it is.

From my book, Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming:

“To live as the Witch lives is to allow your world to be shaped and reshaped by those swelling, cresting, and ebbing wilds to which you already belong. To live as the Witch lives is to continually remember, as the magick-maker’s journey is not solely one of knowledge acquisition but so often one of simple recollection. Whatever particular ancestral medicine runs in your blood, whatever hallowed recipe of many lands, songs, and ceremonies has brewed you, you are a wisdom-keeper with much to gift this wounded world. You are a holy confluence of many fertile and fastrunning rivers of lineage and land knowledge. What I offer here in these pages is an invitation to awaken that wisdom, that wild and soulful meaning you already embody, to find sanctuary in time’s cyclical movements as you would in the warm, firelit home of an elder healer.”