A friend gave me a significant quantity of hematite beads (yay, hematite!) a while ago. I finally made it to my local bead shop to acquire tools, and spent today making this!

Hematite Bracelet

It’s not perfect, but it’s done, and it’s wearable, so I declare victory!

I love hematite, and really can’t have enough of it on my person. This bracelet feels quite nice against my skin, and fits well with my energies, so I’m quite pleased!

I have much more hematite, and another of the magnetic closure, so I’ll be making a second (and somewhat better) bracelet to match this one. I’m going to wait until next weekend, though—even if I didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow, I need to give my hands some time to recover. Also, crimp bead covers are tiny silver pieces of evil.

This month’s Community Altar celebrates Jord, the Earth Goddess, as we celebrate the traditional first harvest. Living in California, there’s always something to harvest (avocados are in season all year, and that alone makes being a California resident A Good Thing!), so “first harvest” doesn’t have quite the same connotation as it does in the Nordic countries, with their limited growing season.

Community Altar August 2018 – Jord; Photo by Joey Ivansco.

In the center of the altar is an image I used for Jord, which is actually a topiary sculpture from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Even though it’s not specified as being Jord, the image spoke to me strongly of Jord’s energies of nurturing, growth, and groundedness.

I used this site from the California U-Pick Farms Group  to figure out what the August harvest in California is, and assembled the altar based on what was available at Dan’s Fresh Produce (my local purveyor of organic produce). The fruit offerings are a pear, a peach, and fresh almonds from Dan’s. I made the two rounds of Viking Bread, and harvested the lavender and yarrow from my own yard.

I wrote this prayer to make the offerings.

Hail, Jord!
Earthy Mother,
Luxurious with harvest,
Abundant and fecund!
Fields of soft grasses
Beckon us to your warm embrace
As Sunna sails the skies.
Season after season,
Year upon year,
You bless us with abundance,
You grace us with goodness
Of field and forest,
Providing amply, fully, and freely.
We offer abundant thanks, fully and freely.
We offer gifts of grateful hearts
And contented souls
In thanks for your unending gifts.

May your harvest be abundant and joyous!

Silence Concerning an Ancient Stone
– Rosario Castellanos
Translated from Spanish by George D. Schade

Here I am, seated, with all my words,
like a basket of green fruit, intact.
The fragments
of a thousand destroyed ancient gods
seek and draw near each other in my blood. They long
to rebuild their statue.
From their shattered mouths
a song strives to rise to my mouth,
a scent of burned resins,some gesture
of mysterious wrought stone.
But I am oblivion, treason,
the shell that did not keep from the sea
even the echo of the smallest wave.
I look not at the submerged temples,
but only at the trees that above th3e ruins
move their vast shadow, with acid teeth bite
the wind as it passes.
And the seals close under my eyes like
the flower under the searching fingers of a blind man.
But I know: behind
my body another body crouches,
and round about me many breaths
furtively cross
like nocturnal beasts in the jungle.
I know it: somewhere,
like the cactus in the desert,
a constellated heart of spines,
it is waiting for a name, as the cactus the rain.

But I know only a few words
in the lapidary language
under which they buried my ancestors alive.

Crossroads
~ Joyce Sutphen

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
I will land on my feet this time,
knowing at least two languages and who
my friends are. I will dress for the
occasion, and my hair shall be
whatever color I please.
Everyone will go on celebrating the old
birthday, counting the years as usual,
but I will count myself new from this
inception, this imprint of my own desire.
The second half of my life will be swift,
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.
The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,
fingers shifting through fine sands,
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.
There will be new dreams every night,
and the drapes will never be closed.
I will toss my string of keys into a deep
well and old letters into the grate.
The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.