If I was plain or ugly I would have walked a different path. My grandmother had been a medicine woman and she taught me many things. But beauty found me another path. In my village each of us have a place according to our gifts. Beauty and a barren womb were mine. And so my place was set before me, among the men. The other women in our village scorned me, they hated me. But I know they were thankful. For I spared them yet another childbirth.

I didn't know my mother. She died in childbirth with me. My grandmother raised me. The women in our village didn't like my grandmother but when there was illness or need they came to her for her gifts. Wherever Grandmother went conversation stopped and the villagers would back away giving her plenty of room as she walked by. We loved each other. We were all we had.

She told me stories that I loved, about the Owl Spirit who flies out of our belly at night in search of prey. My favorite story was about Black Widow Spider who wove a web from strands of moonlight with starlight into a magical cloak that turned her into a very beautiful human woman. She was a great charmer and seducer of men. Of all men. Those men who were weak and those men who beat women she killed by eating them in her spider form. But those men who were strong in body and spirit she loved and oh, what pleasures she gave them. My grandmother was very explicit and I believe my training began with that story.

After my grandmother died I lost the only person who ever loved me. Before she died she pulled my face to hers and as she kissed me open mouthed, she blew her life into me. I cried and sobbed and there was no one, no one to give me comfort. Afterwards, that day something changed in me. It was like a shield went over my heart and the loss of my grandmother and the loneliness that I felt was suddenly a little more bearable. And my work was different from then on. It was like with each man I was with I could see into the private part of his heart. I began to understand what drove a man from his wife into my arms. What I used to think of as only as men's lust I perceived as a loneliness and pain that was different from mine but the same too, in some ways. I started to see that my place in my village was an important one.

One day, a foreigner came to our village. And oh, what a charmer and what a beauty he was! At first it was like a game between us, like two well matched cats. But soon something changed. Something changed in the way he held me or in the way I let him hold me. I don't know, but it was different.

I went for a walk that evening. It was late winter, not quite spring and still very cold. The large pond was still frozen. But it was late winter. I knew the ice was thinning. He asked me to leave my village. To go with him. I knew that if I walked out far enough that the ice would crack. And I was afraid that if the ice cracked I would be swallowed up by waters too deep and too frigid.

copyright, Francis Salmeri

The Clay Pit
by Elfself

I dreamed I was in a clay pit, digging clay to use in my pottery. The pit was about 10 feet deep and 10 feet square. I was barefoot, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and covered with clay. It was especially on my arms and face and in my hair, and I was reaching, digging, and cutting into the walls of the pit, pulling out blocks of clay. I loved the feel of the clay squishing up between my toes, and the coolness of the pit. (There was bright, hot sunshine above, but I was in the shade.)

I remember wondering vaguely how I was going to get out of the pit.

The best clay came from about halfway down; it was smooth and elastic, even-tempered, easy to work. I felt a calm happiness being in the pit, digging my own clay by myself, knowing it was good clay and that with it I would produce beautiful pottery.

That was all of the dream. I told it to my therapist and he asked me what I thought it meant. Although I had not previously thought about it at all, I immediately knew its meaning:

The clay pit is my depression, and the clay is whatever I get from being depressed. It may look like dirt or muck, but with it I will produce a beautiful product. The best way to get the clay is to dig it myself. The place to get the best clay is in the clay pit, which is not a bad place; it's simply a place to go to get the clay.

But I still don't know how to get out of the pit.

The main page of The Wiccan & Faerie Grimoire of Francesca De Grandis

Learn about Be a Goddess!, a book about applying spirituality to your daily life so that you can be happy!

Visit with Francesca for counseling (or call it spiritual guidance or shamanic counseling) to further your inner and outer goals.

this page was created 3/01