Breezes float over squash patches now bursting: once bright blossoms, now baseball bats. I trepidatiously turn off the air con, leave the fan on just in case, to oscillate any surprise wash of wet heat fit to sideswipe us patient fall fanatics desperate for a cool morning and hot cider.
A September day, I finally pack away my winter sweaters. New England weather taunts to never Let the Sunshine In. Conditioned to keep alert for summer snows, I thought the cold would stay.
Nothing cold can stay, Ponyboy.
Oh. That’s Gold. Right.
Also Gold, as Autumn alchemizes the sun into shimmering, delicious apple, leaf, hillside. Gold will next pass Cold the baton of the Northeast. Sweaters barely hit their hibernation before they’re called back into service. Now, though, still besandaled walks and shirts sans sleeves.
Fall brings magic and romance and comfort in my witchcraft. I join the girlies on the 5th of July for Code Orange, when stores clear out the fireworks for spooky signs and Witch Way to the Wine glasses. I decorate jars with “Cats’ Whiskers,” and “Boneyard Dust,” and “Powdered Moth Wing” stickers holding Cat Treats, and Sugar, and Butterfly Pea Flower Tea, Respectively. My nosy cats probably leave actual whiskers in there too. I giggle that it works like that sometimes.
The Star, The Moon, The Sun of Tarot are seasonal drapings as much as Death, The Devil, The Tower. Celestial Promise after Peril. The Autumn sky calls me to marvel. The Summer Triangle still spins, Cassopeia’s Crown sparkles, the delicate teapot with lemon squeeze of Capricorn steeping, Cygnus the Swan starts to swim on, and soon Orion will hunt Taurus, stomping in with Betelguese hanging off his ghostly belt, To pursue and never slay.
I sink into the season, reminded as the Druids of this gift of harvest months: There is death and it is bountiful, and somehow it is delicious.
I hate to wax poetic to soothe the tragic. I loathe my lean to catch the melancholy in my glove before it rots, and spin it into glittering yarns, to weave you a warm tale that blankets the fallow of the year, to wrap around your shoulders, with your coffee on the porch, as breezes tumble leaves and leave them felled upon your feet.
The leaves know, as did the squash that failed to make the farmers’ market. They are nibbled, blackened, holey, and flutter to the ground next to their fiery fellow foliage. It makes no difference, be they lovely, be they gross. They all fall. They all become feast.
The king will behead or marry, whether the golden skein is spun, but either way, That’s a terrible king.
Where was I? Oh! the season. The terrible season of gorgeous sunsets and inevitable endings, that puts us in the sweetest trance. The magic of spices sprinkled in pumpkins, the mist of midnights under moonlight, the darkness soothing our skin as we quilt a cozy armor of fleece and hooded sweatshirts, to awaken the Celtic warrior who knows: This spell is required- -to let it all go. (For nothing gold can stay, remember.)
I spin with the stars, awash in reds and russets and sunlit rays, and tap my bonnie blackish cats upon their whiskered eyebrows with a grateful forehead bonk. I sip my sweetened squash elixir, even if it tastes like candles, and sing the bardic ballads of witches, mostly Stevie Nicks, as fading days drape me in Neesa’s silver shawl.* Grandmother Moon of Seneca holding me as breezes become gales, the Maiden-Mother-Crone reminding gold and cold will ever switch, and all keeps coming ‘round.
*Neesa is Grandmother Moon in Seneca. “Neesa, Neesa, Neesa” is a sacred chant, possibly gifted from Seneca Elder Grandmother Twylah Hurd Nitsch: Neesa, Neesa, Neesa Neesa, Neesa, Neesa Neesa, Neesa, Neesa Gai wey ho, Gai wey ho
