~ THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL ~
SUMMER SOLSTICE 2009
: STILL A FEW AVAILABLE :
Limited Edition Leatherbound Hex Collection
This complete collection of all four issues of Hex magazine, is beautifully bound in leather by Jason H. Craban. Each magazine is stitched with linen into the spine of this sturdy and handsome handmade case. The binding lays flat for ease of reading, and is held closed by a leather strap. The edition is limited to 13, all numbered, and signed by the artisan and editors of Hex. It features the first two issues which are now out-of-print and unavailable as well as the third and fourth issues which are nearly sold out as well.
IF YOU WANT TO PURCHASE A COPY
REPLY TO arrowyn@hexmagazine.com WITH YOUR ORDER.
First come, first serve!
If you are one of the lucky ones, when your email is received, you will be notified, and sent an invoice through PayPal to complete the purchase of your copy.
Each leatherbound copy is $100 + shipping
All proceeds go to Hex Press to support its continued effort to provide folks with an excellent volunteer-based, community-supported, not-for-profit publication.
: ALSO AVAILABLE :
Limited Run of Issues 1 and 2
I decided to cave in to public pressure and sell half the extra copies of Issues 1 and 2 individually! There are only 10 each and… THESE ARE THE LAST COLOR COPIES OF THESE ISSUES THAT WILL BE PRINTED! THAT’S IT. IT’S FINAL.
IF YOU WANT TO PURCHASE A COPY
REPLY TO arrowyn@hexmagazine.com WITH YOUR ORDER.
First come, first serve!
If you are one of the lucky ones, when your email is received, you will be notified, and sent an invoice through PayPal to complete the purchase of your copy.
Each copy is $15 + shipping
* * * * * *
Thor’s Oak at Upsalla
Midsummer!
Hail to the day! Hail to the sons of day!
Hail to night and her kin!
With gracious eyes may you look upon us,
And give victory to those sitting here!
Hail to the Æsir! Hail to the goddesses!
Hail to the mighty, fecund earth!
Eloquence and native wit may you give to the two famous ones
And healing hands while we live!
Lay of Sigrdrifa #3 – 4 Larrington version
In the northlands of Europe where Heathens made their home the sun’s nourishing light is reaching its peak, and so is the earth reaching a peak in her fecundity. During the midsummer season Kitchen Medicine and Magic reaches beyond the hearth to cast an eye, and a harvest basket, to the “mighty, fecund earth” around us. Some Heathens are lucky enough to have a space to plant and harvest something, be it flowers, herbs or food stuff. Such hobbies today are rapidly becoming valuable additions to the household budget – which seems to take more and more “magic” these days to keep in the black. Some of these fecund gifts are simply free for the harvesting.
A first glance at the earth might only show the Midsummer harvest we have labored to produce, but a closer inspection leads us to the fecund part. Take a closer look at what’s growing…See that tree, that bush, that weed, maybe some moss or even some fruit. All of these things are potential candidates for the harvest basket – and the medicine box.
Many easily recognized plants have completely nontoxic, medicinal parts that can be harvested at this time of year – at their Midsummer peak of energy. Just as they have been for countless generations. Look up first and discover the trees and the properties of those you have. Most climates support some kind of oak trees, so oaks are a good place to start. The oak is sacred to the god Thor, while duir was the Celtic term for oak and means both protection and Druid. Even Zeus and Jupiter were associated with this strong and majestic wood.
Wherever oaks grow, their human neighbors have used it as a medicine. Besides having edible acorns, Oaks (Quercus species), have bark with high tannin content resulting in strong astringent, antiseptic, and antiviral properties, along with a few others. An astringent constricts the capillaries and the skin and this action helps stop the flow of blood. While an antiseptic attacks germs and bacteria that can cause rotting flesh. Most often oak tea is used externally, though a tea can be drunk or used as a gargle. However, regular long term internal use of the tea can be detrimental and even hazardous so use accordingly only for short intervals.
Use oak tea as a wash and as a compress for bruises, small wounds or sores, and for hemorrhoids; use it as a gargle for sore throats, or as a douche for yeast infection; and to treat ringworm and other fungal infections like athlete’s foot. Collect the living inner bark, but do not ring the tree as this could kill it. Dry the bark in a dark and airy space and be sure to make the pieces small enough to store and brew easily. Oak leaves can also be used and would make a very nice addition to a foot bath for athlete’s foot or just sore and tired feet.
Of course, with oak one might often be able to harvest it fresh for each use, but having dried material available could be handy. Brew the inner bark or leaves into a medium colored “tea” as in “iced tea” – something you can see through but has some good color by pouring 4 cups of boiling water over a full handful of inner bark and let steep until it reaches a warm temperature. Use this fresh for external treatments and brew as needed. If choosing to use tea internally seeks out more inclusive information sources.
Keep looking around on your piece of earth, take pictures, and learn what can be useful to your Kitchen Medicine and Magic.
~Teresa “Hedgewife” Luedke
* * * * * *
~ IMPORTANT HEX ANNOUNCEMENTS ~
Hex got interviewed for Heathen Harvest!
Check it out…on our blog on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/hexmagazine
or on the Heathen Harvest website: http://www.heathenharvest.com/article.php?story=20090531180504134
Also on our blog…
Review of the Hexology Show at Germ bookstore by Hunter Yoder:
http://blogs.myspace.com/hexmagazine
Review of NW Folk Life Show by Lugh:
http://blogs.myspace.com/hexmagazine
The narrative subject for the Fall issue of Hex is…What I learned from my grandparents. Send your experiences to submissions@hexmagazine.com. These are due on the Summer Solstice.
I am opening an invitation to participate in a collection that will go up on the new website called Altared Spaces. I am trying to collect a series of photographs of people’s altars and also spaces or environments that have been altered to make a sacred space. There is currently no due date, you can just send photos with a brief description, and your name to: altars@hexmagazine.com
Thank you all for your continued support and involvement with Hex!
~ cheers, Arrowyn
* * * * * *
• OTHALA •
Old English Rune Poem
Éþel (Homestead) is over-dear to each man,
if he may there justice and courtesies
enjoy in a mansion in frequent prosperity.
~ Rune poem translations by Sweyn Plowright
http://www.mackaos.com.au/Rune-Net/Primer/
And I thank you for bringing me here…
For showing me home…
For singing these tears.
Finally I’ve found that I belong.
Feels like home.
I should have known from my first breath.
– Depeche Mode, “Home” (from the album Ultra)
You can wander alone and lost for a lifetime – who knows, perhaps even for many lifetimes? You can wander rootless, worldless, confused and dismayed, unconscious even to your own starved state. How can you long for something better when you aren’t aware that you are pining away in the first place?
Home – Othala – to the old Heathens might have represented a particular place, a familiar dwelling or community, but it goes deeper than that. To be at home in the world – to dwell within Othala’s circle – means carrying a certain experience of self and world inside your own being.
Most Heathens have some inkling of what I am talking about – having been born into a more or less disintegrating mass culture, post-Christian, post-industrial, post-modern.
Everything has passed and a curious malaise graces the post-myth narratives that we have been offered to live out. Here at the end of time, plagued by spiritual homelessness, Heathenism calls and sometimes someone heeds it.
Coming back into the fold of a truly mythic experience of the world – rediscovering that all of Being is woven from magic and mystery and breath – can be profoundly healing.
Yet it can also be traumatising. Changing one’s life so radically is necessarily a gradual process. To sink down into the heart-depths of Heathen experience requires transformation of our relationships to time, food, nature, work, ethics, technology – the whole meat and grit of lived existence.
This gradual process is painful because it necessitates us hovering between the experience of rootlessness and the feeling of coming home.
With the realisation of all that is missing comes a raw ache; consciousness of our abandonment to the nothing of consensus modernity adds salt to the wound itself. It takes courage to come home. It takes courage to dive into the vulnerability of that deed.
It takes courage to shed our old, dead skin, even when we know that beneath it a new, rich, supple suit of snake scales awaits, bursting with life and hope.
Midsummer is a time to celebrate our healing, our making whole, our transformations, our rediscoveries. Bogged down in the endless negotiation of the badlands between nihilistic modernity and whatever necessarily hybrid Heathen life it is that we crave – well, it is easy to forget how good the positive changes we make feel. It is easy to dissolve into frustration and despair at the struggle.
So dance! Dance and dream. These are both arts for which Midsummer is deeply suited. Dancing and dreaming call us back home, call us back into the halls of our own spiritual well-being.
Midsummer is one of the most liminal times of the year, where the worlds of reason and myth, sleeping and waking, modern and ancient, become superimposed in their cycles and orbits, become synchronised.
This is an opportunity for us to imagine new, more hale ways of being, an opportunity to make the lateral leaps between worlds and halls that we need to open and nourish the roots and branches of our true natures.
And of course coming home doesn’t just mean finding a new equilibrium within yourself, or between yourself and the worlds around you. An old Germanic homestead was a home for community and hospitality and family and friendship.
You might find home lies in the arms of your loved ones, your cherished friends, those with whom you share this unfolding journey. Celebrate these connections, these enriching mutual recognitions. With the shared effort of many hands the spirit of being at home on the heath can ever be created and renewed.
A homestead is a fine thing: strive to carry it in your breast, on your brow, in your dreaming hopes, and the rest will follow.
* * * * * *
Stella Natura: Reaping the Flesh of Light
This Autumn, for two days just beyond the wane of Mabon, the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California will be graced by a Gathering of Souls, a channeling of primordial fire into performance and art in honor of the All. This festival will draw together some of the most important voices in the international dark arts world, from over the seas and beyond the mountains. Our gathering will transcend musicality in a reaching for the Beyond, and will prioritize those of us working with Spirit in any of its manifestations. Expect nothing less than a gathering of seekers, those others who you’ve sensed are out there, shadowed, working towards the transmutation of life itself.
Our stages shall be graced by:
Àrnica (Spain)
Changes
C.O.T.A.
Fauna & CoRE
Halo Manash (Finland)
Lux Interna
Novemthree
Procer Veneficus
Ruhr Hunter
Sere
Velnias
Voice of Eye
Wolfskin (Portugal)
September 25th and 26th, MMIX
www.thefleshoflight.org
* * * * * *
Hex needs your help! This is a community-supported not-for-profit publication. You can support us by clicking the link above and ordering magazines and prints, and spreading the word to all like-minded folk!
* * * * * *
Until the Feast of Bread, may you and your
household be blessed and kept. Hail!
~ HEX Magazine
* * * * * *
Leave a Reply