Mantell Fair- “am I not here who am your mother?”

I am in the Physic Garden in Cowbridge, and I am praying.

Lady’s Mantle, friend to women and midwives. Named for the mantle of the Blessed Virgin, who gathers us all under her cloak of protection. Birth work often blends with death work… when I light candles for babies who have passed and for their mothers who grieve for them, I imagine the little souls being held in the goddess’s radiant cloak of stars. I hadn’t expected to see this herb today, but it was also I who started the conversation with her with my prayers. Lady’s Mantle, like the Virgin of Guadalupe, says; “am I not here, who am your Mother?”

I will often put Lady’s Mantle in tea blends for women who have experienced loss, who have seen too much blood or who are longing to bleed. The secret of this plant is that she can do both - the compassionate mother who knows just what her daughter needs.

The leaves of Lady’s Mantle glisten with her tears bright as jewels, the tears of a mother who understands. Alchemists believed this dew was a sacred elixir. Like Mary Magdalene in the gospels who weeps and weeps, feminine tears are the water of life and renewal. I think of sacred sexuality author David Deida and how he describes the radiant beauty of a woman openly crying. The key is feeling safe enough to be open.

Often I will speak to an expectant or new mother and she will say; “I’ve been crying” and I will tell her good, this is good. Women come to my home to be wrapped in rebozo cocoons as tears slide down their faces. When we are feeling vulnerable in the childbearing year, other women are the mantles that we crave to have wrapped around us. I remember my mother telling me as I held my new baby to my breast;

“It’s the mothers that don’t cry that you need to be most worried about”

Motherwisdom. This is the dew that I drink from the leaves of my mothers and grandmothers, from the women around me. These are the mysteries of the womb. With the divine power to create also comes deep sorrow, in the next moment that sorrow becomes joy again, and around and around we go on the journey of the heart.

“Our dear Lady’s Mantle give her tears between the dawn and the dew. Kneel before her between your courses, sip them up with your tongue, and a child she’ll bring to you” goes the folklore.

And I kneel, and I drink, and I bless my forehead, womb and heart.

St Melangell, the goddess in the yew tree

St Melangell, the goddess in the yew tree

Nestled in a valley and down winding tracks in North Wales you can find the shrine of St Melangell. The legend says that the Irish woman was praying there when the local prince's hound was chasing a hare. The hare found refuge under Melangell's cloak and the hounds and the prince retreated, powerless in the presence of feminine love and devotion. The hounds were frightened and the prince's horn would not sound.

If you look beneath the christian retelling you find a local goddess and her hare companion, the hare representing the old faith of the people, possibly a fertility cult. The hunting horn, that phallic symbol of conquest, withers in her presence.

Melangell shelters the old worship of the feminine from the hound of religious patriarchy and the local prince who tries to enforce it. They are ultimately powerless. The goddess adapts, she reinvents herself. She survives from age to age. Inside the church, where paintings of hares and ladies were abundant, was a small statue of a crone. Like the other virgin goddesses with the yoni-like folds, hares concealed within. As ever, the goddess spreads her mantle around us in protection. The worship here is so blatant, so wonderful to behold.

But where I really met with Melangell is in the churchyard, where the yew trees are ancient and wise and their branches cover you like the hare of the tales. The most vast of them all with branches like a cloak concealing the trunk, so that you have to part the folds to enter her womb.

Standing amongst the bird feathers, nestling my offering in her branches, I realised the saint was the tree herself, sheltering so many generations. I felt her breath move through me as she spoke and her words moved up my spine... whispering, awen.

Dear St Anne, Find Me A Man

Dear St Anne, Find Me A Man

"He loves me, he loves me not" goes the childhood flower petal game, where a young girl has her first experience of divination to determine who her future love may be. If you open any book on foraging, herbal remedies or plant folklore you will find many similar practices, whereby herbs and flowers will be placed in buttonholes and under pillows to allow the young maiden to see the future.

And while this may seem romantic and wistful, beneath it all we see a ruthlessness that young girls have, an intuitive knowing that the type of man you end up with can make or break you. In times gone by the matter of a husband could be life or death, and a prudent choice was essential for a safe life and getting your basic needs met. As the phrase goes; "if your husband chews, be glad he doesn't smoke. If your husband chews and smokes, be glad he doesn't drink. And if he does all three, be glad he won't live long"

With stakes that high, how were young women to know who was the one for them?

Clarissa Pinkola Estes talks in her book Women Who Run With The Wolves about the importance of grandmothers and mothers teaching young girls survival instincts and discernment, in a world that so often tells women to be nice and polite instead of listen to their inner wolf that raises its hackles and growls danger. "Be friendly, but never tame" she says, lest you fall prey to the type of unscrupulous man who is happy to love bomb and overwhelm your sensibilities as a means of trapping.

So many women discover the monster beneath when it is too late. Just like Bluebeard's chorus of dead wives, our grandmothers through the generations who were trapped are singing us to safety from beyond the veil. I have heard them in my dark moments.

In Italian Folk Magic by Mary-Grace Fahrun, she talks of a well beloved grandmother in Naples called Signora Teresa who had a number of tricks for picking a husband. Who, after all, is wiser than a grandmother? When we lived communally she would have observed the young men from cradle to manhood and could observe who was courteous, kind and hard-working and who was bad news. In the old tales, character is always determined by how kind one treats the old woman who appears as if by magic.

When Signora Teresa passed away girls prayed to her and made her a local saint, and Fahrun's aunts prayed to her to find their niece a good husband. The legend says that you must pray to Signora Teresa and carry a basil leaf and a clove of garlic in your purse, and the basil will attract a good man and the garlic drive away a bad one.

I will never forget the way my grandmother's eyebrows raised when I left the house to kiss an ex-boyfriend goodbye, at his insistence. "That won't last long" she said wryly, mouth grim. And I will never forget the first time she met my husband and told me, quite seriously - "he's kind. You want to hold onto that one."

In the modern world we can leave unsuitable men, leave marriages that have run their course or become abusive, but the world of dating for women is still fraught with peril when there are no wise grandmothers overseeing the young people. Commitment-phobes, situationships, criminal records, misogynists.Who are you going to call to help you?

Two years ago I took part in the St. Anne novena. In the roman catholic tradition, Anne is the mother of the Virgin Mary who can be prayed to for all matters love related. "Dear St. Anne, find me a man" goes the rhyming petition. Peek beneath the surface and you find the grandmother spirit, the goddess Ana, the wise crone, sanitised for the conquering religion but still retaining all her power.

In a novena, you petition the saint every day in the hopes that you will obtain your miracle. So I asked St Anne to find me somebody decent, somebody who really wanted to be a husband in the truest sense of the word. After so long resisting and putting up barriers to what I truly wanted, I was willing to acknowledge the innocent desire of my heart that had been so often trampled.

It seems to me that admitting what you really and truly want is the hardest part. Because it makes you feel vulnerable.

Like village grandmothers, the goddess knows us all, as midwife and mother has birthed our souls and bodies onto earth, knows the desires of our heart and what would be for our highest good.

I look at my hand and the daisy engagement ring that adorns it - "I once was poison ivy but now I'm your daisy" sings Taylor Swift, acknowledging the softening power of love in our lives. Daisies in my ears, daisies on my wedding cake. For innocence and renewal, for divination.

After my wedding day I get out my St Anne chaplet that I used two years ago and realise that at one end is the saint medal and the other a daisy bead that I put all my hopes and dreams into. Rose quartz beads for unconditional love. And a wise granny to call every day.

It seems to me that the old charms are the best charms, that old spells still work true.

And for matters of the heart, ask your grandmother!