So, on a day that seems suitable, I fast for a while, and stop in at the local graveyard with a little plastic baggie in my pocket. I visit with some of the graves, and I leave an offering of coins. When it feels like the right time, I go to the wild edge of the graveyard, where there's no houses or habitations for at least a half-mile, and I take out my baggie, which contains two pork sausages — and I lay them on top of the wall. "For Demeter," I say to one, and "For Persephone" to the other. I go home without looking back.

Back at home, I consecrate a portion of milk and a portion of corn meal to Hestia, and pour them out in the center of a circle. The full bag of corn meal goes out on the lawn in a large circle, subdivided into the "flower of life" by lines of corn meal. I give thanks to Hestia, Demeter, Persephone, Hades — for the ancestors who brought me into the world, for the wealth and health of the previous year, and for the gift of my home and its shelter; I also ask for the health and safety of my family and my community, and request opportunity and prosperity for me and for my neighbors.

Afterwards I wash in the shower, and air-dry before our fireplace. It's a bit warm for a fire, but it's a small one. Incense burners are going, with chthonic scents, and I walk between them, bathing in the smoke.

As darkness approaches, I sit outside in a chair facing the woods with the hood of my hoodie drawn about my face for a while, somewhere between a half-hour and an hour. When darkness truly falls later, and I can no longer feel or see the sunlight through the hood drawn around my eyes, I lower the hood. I find that I'm in a magical headspace, and the magic of the woods is truly open. The trees look back at me through kindly eyes. I hear bird song, and I understand some of what they sing.

I make a circuit of my home and its yard, and find that already the creatures of the woodlands have found my gift of cornmeal; my corn circle is already vanishing as the world eats its fill.

I recite Orphic Hymns, and go inside to the basement where the lights are off. There's a beer waiting for me, one it took me a while to find with more barley than hops. I take certain objects from their private box, and sit in contemplation of them in the dark. When I'm done, they go into the box. Eventually, when I'm done weaving this basket, they'll go into the basket.

Eventually, it feels like whatever needed to be done, is done. I light candles. I go upstairs, make a meal with pork and grain in it by that candlelight. And I can say, in perfect truth, I have visited the graves of the dead. I have made the sacrifice of meat, grain, and milk to Demeter and her daughter. I have washed. I have purified myself. I have walked in silence, and seen secret things in darkness. I have drunk the drink. I have taken from the chest and worked what I have found, and returned it to its private place. I have feasted.

There's no doubt in my mind — this isn't the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis. But there's something comforting and strangely wild about doing some variation of this, year after year at this time. Somehow, being aware of and responsive to that ancient formula, even though it's not 'mine' to lead, and it doesn't have anywhere near the same effect today that it's purported to have on its ancient practitioners, I've done what I needed to do.

Have I joined the Mystae? It's hard to say. But there's something to the working that has appealed to me greatly, and I'm glad I keep going there.

I have told Green Lady’s story before. Over, and over, and over. There’s not much new to say. Our paths are probably too entangled to untangle. When I felt a call to do a specific Work I knew it would be with her. There is no other candidate for this intimate exploration except her. This is like trying a new sex act, or traveling to an unknown country: You do it with someone you trust implicitly, explicitly, and completely.

I’m not going to spell out what The Work is - it’s not quite ready to describe, if it ever is - but it begins with an infusion of plenty of Southernwood into pure grain alcohol. 

I trimmed a ton of her bitter, feathery, bits in the appropriate day and hour (she’s damned near doubled in size since then), and I lovingly air-dried them on the top of my altar, turning daily until they were crispy enough to crumble with my fingertips. And infuse I did. 

What I expected was a slow batch that took days or weeks to darken. What I got was an instantaneous flush of green so intense that it looked like ink. I didn’t realize it was possible for chlorophyll to just… do that. I’ve paid for watercolor paints less intense.

(She won’t let me take a photo, but I want you to imagine a small sample of Moldavite-green liquid in a large vintage glass canning jar.)

In a previous “infusing” Hagging Out, the one where I re-batched my altar oil, I explained how she holds an untarnished moment for me. She’s got a little piece of the parts of me from Before. She kept it for me, the way I kept a bit of her.

It was then that I started this Work without even realizing it. I hadn’t quite kicked the hornet’s nest yet, but I was certainly lining up the punt. I began to kick up the Weird just to see if-… see what-… 

Okay, let’s be brutally honest: To see if I was still me. If the woo was still there. If the connections I’d worked so hard to establish were still alive. I’d been in a fallow period with my practice since my mother died.  I kicked things up to see what was left in the smoking crater. And if the crater was as bad as I thought and, well…

It wasn’t bad at all, really. The crater was me, not around me. The destruction was upstairs, not out there. They had all been patiently waiting for me to perk up. 

But then (because I am me) I went “You know what’d be a great idea? If I didn’t ease back into things at all, and instead walked directly up to the most monumental Work possible, and started a hockey brawl with it.” And then I intentionally, willfully, wantonly, attempted to throw hands with the Numinous. Within a day the synchronicities started to happen. The weird ones. The ones where you can’t be shocked or skeptical you just sort of go “Well, that’s… a thing that happened.” And it kept happening. People I hadn’t thought of or spoken to in literally 20+ years started sliding across my Tumblr dashboard or showing up as moderators on facebook groups being suggested to me. But did I stop? God no, why would I do that?

Buy the ticket and take the ride. And the ride has been intense. Better I avoid toeing up to that topic, honestly.

Since this has been two years in a row of revisiting this particular relationship in this particular way, I’ve decided to enshrine it. Whatever moon is full earliest in June is Green Lady’s Moon. The new moon begins the process of reconnection with the plant world, strengthening of ties, etc. The full moon will be for re-establishing connection with myself and my personal ties in Ritual. And the waning moon… Purgation. Heaving whatever isn't working, and is just "taking" out the door, kicking it in the ass for good measure.