Nettle

Grandmother nettle, abundant and invisible, like the old wise crones that pass unseen in a society that prioritises youthful beauty. Wise, witchy grandmothers that they tried to eradicate in years gone by, for their superior wisdom and biting tongue. You never notice nettle til it bites you - then you curse it and your carelessness.

The magical herb for pregnant and nursing mothers, full of nutrients and goodness to keep your eyes bright and your energy up. What we crave most when pregnant and with a new baby is a strong dose of mother wisdom from a woman who has seen and done it all… instead we are handed ferrous sulphate that makes us vomit and Gina Ford books. The body rejects what is not good for it, and with any luck the mother will also expel the modern baby advice that asks her to kill her inner wise crone.

Nettle is like Baba Yaga who fixes you with her beady eye and raps you on the knuckles for not paying attention. She’s the crone initiation that knows you need to be cruel to be kind, that some things can only be learned the hard way. She can judge somebody’s character instantly, is fiercely protective and isn’t afraid to speak her mind.“Open your eyes!” she barks to our inner maiden “There is a price for ignorance!”

She will help us pick up the pieces when we invariably do pay that price.

She is also the grandmother that peers into the pale face of a new mother who is doing too much and mutters under her breath “in my day we stayed in bed, the midwife wouldn’t have us up and about for weeks”. She’s the grandmother who insists you look unwell and that you’re not eating enough for the milk to flow. The breastfeeding experts will say this isn’t true, but we let grandmother nourish us anyway.

Nettle oil, massaged into arthritic fingers and dry infant skin to bring relief. Nature knows that grandmothers and babies belong together. A lullaby so old it has no words, it’s simply hummed and passed from mother to daughter through gentle pats on the back.

Once we knew the power of nettle. She asks us to remember.

Ostara

Ostara

When he checks my car's spark plugs in the dark and the pouring rain

And gets up early to go to the car parts shop.

The day where I took the children to school and came back the long way over the fields

Saw the nettle and the cleavers are here

More than enough to make nourishing brews for the rest of the year

As I tramped up the muddy hills and fine mist

Asking the spirits to carry me over the slippery bits.

Sam joked with me about the other night,

Said "you wouldn't even let me cut one strawberry to help"

And it seems to me Ostara is saying

"Daughter, remember

You are part of the whole.

Let yourself receive it all,

Like the earth receives the sun and rain

And see what beautiful things may grow."

St Joseph, Sacred Stepfather

On the 19th it is the feast day of St. Joseph. I’m a folk witch, which means I draw my spiritual practice from my domestic life, from the religion of my ancestors and the wheel of the year, woven together. My helpers are the saints, ancestors and the Madonna. My tools are oil, salt, candles and holy cards. The weaving brings great joy and meaning to me, and I, for as much as possible, reside in the part of my brain that holds poetic memory. In the words of Milan Kundera;

“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful …”

Our concept of fatherhood is a modern one. For the smallest part of human history have we had nuclear families, for an even smaller part of human history we have had testing to determine which child is biologically connected to which father. It was not so long ago that in Scotland the royal line was determined through the mother, as biological fatherhood could never be certain. In Judaism still, the line comes through the mother.

For our ancestors, who worshipped the Great Mother and women as her earthly representation, father was a social role that was bestowed upon a kinsman of the mother - her uncle, or brother, or other relative. It was understood that the father would earn the child’s love and guide and protect them as they were growing. It was an honour.

I think of the word husband, so like the word husbandry… the respectful cultivation of the land. I think of the kingmaking ceremonies of the past, where the Great Mother would choose the steward of her body, the earth. This is where we get the legends of the holy grail and the Fisher King, who is dying from the wound in his thigh, as the land is laid waste around him. What happens when the steward does not fulfil his role, and the feminine principle is abused?

What happens when the husband thinks the land belongs to him?

In my own story, these concepts of fatherhood are something I must marry within. I see fathers protecting the mothers of their children so beautifully as bodyguards of the birth space, catching babies in birth pools, kissing brows, singing songs, holding vomit buckets. There is something so breathtaking about seeing a man staring into the eyes of his newborn baby, skin to skin, faces mirrors of each other. And yet, the law has allowed a man to terrorise me for years based on our modern understanding of biology and who owns who. My children have a wonderful, gentle and dedicated stepfather. I want to hold all these truths in my heart and remember love. So I pray.

In folk magic, St Joseph is the one you want when you’re moving house. There is a tradition of saint punishing, whereby if you bury his statue upside down in your front garden he’ll get your house sold so you’ll turn him upright again. Traditionally, the father builds the structure of the house, the mother makes it a home. In folk magic, you give offerings to St. Joseph depending on how well you have been “provided” for in the year that has passed.

Legend has it when they were choosing a husband for Mary, Joseph threw his staff down and it sprouted lilies, recognising him as the chosen one. There is something so undeniably erotic about a staff ejaculating flowers and we see the symbolism of renewal in March, where the sun awakens the life within the earth, like the father awakens the life within the mother. In the ancient love poem of the goddess Inanna and Dumuzi, Inanna says “he has sprouted, he has burgeoned, he is lettuce planted by the water… he is the one my womb loves best” which signifies to me that Joseph is also the Goddess’s chosen lover.

In the story of the Fisher King, of the wasteland that occurs when the King does not honour this sacred contract between man and earth, the question the knight must ask is “what ails thee?”

On St. Joseph’s day, I would like to propose that what ails us is a lack of sacred fatherhood and good husbandry. The story of the birth of Jesus, of a man acting as doula to the Goddess awakens us to the remembrance of social fatherhood as an honoured role. It reminds us that love and protection of the feminine principle and devotion to the divine child, which is another name for life on earth, the fruit of the womb of the Great Mother, is essential if we are to reclaim all that we have lost in this wasteland. The flowering staff reminds us of the beauty and wonder that can be found in making love, of a phallus that is not a weapon but that sprouts lilies and renews the land. Lilies symbolise purity, the innocence, pleasure and joy of our sexuality before we linked sex to property.

We may reflect on all this and ask ourselves - so is Joseph the father or the stepfather? The answer is both. We marry social and biological fatherhood. We honour them both. We remember conscious conception, and that a child begins as a desire in the mother’s heart, to which she invites the worthy man of her choice to participate in the miracle of creation and nurture.

“You are the one my womb loves best” she whispers to him.