EagleSong is a 46-year-old, Aquarian, crafty Dianic green witch, born on Imbolc or St. Brigit's Day. She runs what she calls a "dreamwalking" called RavenCroft Garden. It is the culmination of 20 years of practice with growing herbs and healing. She holds workshops and classes in many subjects.
Red Oak spoke with her about her life and the croft...
Red Oak: Do you have a specific tradition that you follow?
EagleSong: I would say that the Dianic tradition would be the closest tradition. I'm pretty eclectic, but it was the women in the Dianic tradition who caught me when I was falling, and I would have to thank them for that and say that I'm practicing that tradition.
RO: How old were you?
ES: I was 41. I had been practicing my whole life but didn't have names for what I was doing. At 41, it became clear to me that I was actually working in a certain tradition, as eclectic as it may seem, but based totally in the Earth.
RO What exactly is a green witch?
ES: A green witch is a woman who has been inspired by Nature, so in essence my practice is really the observation of the nature of Nature. That to me is the biggest puzzle and the greatest mystery - is what is the nature of Nature and how can I be in the flow without pushing or resisting the nature of Nature.
RO: What is RavenCroft and what do you do here?
ES: RavenCroft is basically an idea that's come to being on the planet. I've been gardening my entire life. I've been an herbalist for last 20 years, and so RavenCroft is the weaving of gardens and herbs and life's way - I like to call it a life way - that is sustainable, because we honor the Earth here.
We recognize the strength and beauty of the feminine. The gardens have been totally created without the use of any rototilling. I'm trying to be as nonviolent in my approach to the Earth as possible. The hardest thing for me this morning, when I was laying the path down in the shadow garden, is to not be too tidy, to really watch what happens if I'm not intervening and making it look like a perfect garden and acknowledging the perfection of it as it is.
RO: What is a shadow garden?
ES: The shadow garden got named that because the form came from the shadow of a maple tree. Other people call it shade gardens, but we loved the term the shadow garden, and, actually, it was laid out in a moment of inspiration, and it's a woman - the shape of a woman inverted. There's a woman outside and a woman inside reversed, so the pathways create one of the channels of energy in the woman and the outside form boundary of the garden create the other.
RO: So you don't need plants that require shade.
ES: Oh yes, the plants that live in this garden are the plants that prefer shade and a woodland type setting, like goldenseal, witchhazel, lady's mantle, violets - these are all plants - hellebores, lemon balm - things that all love the shade. We have a perfect place for them, so we use it.
RO: I understand you have a spiral garden here. Can you tell me what the significance of the spiral is?
ES: For me, the significance of the spiral is that it is a symbol that denotes change. It takes into consideration time, place and movement. The spiral garden was the first garden created at RavenCroft, and, again, it's never been tilled - it's done totally by sheet composting and mulch and then just easing plants through that into the Earth. I really believe that symbols like spirals carry with them inherent information - so that when a person walks the spiral garden, not only do they see the plants and enjoy the plants, they are actually having a bodily experience by walking the spiral. Whether they recognize it consciously or not, the form itself of the spiral is then nourishing them.
RO: Do you plant particular plants in this garden, or is it more a matter of the shape that is of significance?
ES: Yeah, the shape is the significance, and really the essence of RavenCroft is that it is a working croft. It isn't a garden for good looks; it's a garden that really sustains the people here, and, in so doing, the people sustain the Earth here. It's a great weaving.
RO: What is a croft?
ES: Croft is a word that comes from Scotland. The crofters were the close-to-the-earth people in Scotland, and they were forced off of the land in the highland clearances. I always see them as the Earth-based people of Scotland, but actually they came after the indigenous people in Scotland, and they've had a very trying existence.
They are tough people, they are Earth-based people, and I think that tenacity is once of the things that this croft is all about. Being an Earth-based person, I have raised sheep and have been a commercial fisherman, and many of the things I've done in my life were actually the same kinds of work that the crofters did, and they, too, practice an Earth-based, Goddess spirituality
RO: Why the name RavenCroft?
ES: The name
RavenCroft comes from an honoring of the tradition of being
close to the earth - and Raven, because Raven is a symbol of change
and one that endures through all circumstance. Ravens inhabit
the entire Earth. They're the cleverest of birds. The Corvidae
family of birds are the only birds that use tools.
So I find them to be very inspiring, and about five years ago I saw a white crow, and, in a matter of months after that, my life turned upside down. So I'm very much endeared to the Corvidae family, and that includes the ravens, the crows, the jays, the yappy, clever birds.
RO: How and why did you start RavenCroft?
ES: I started RavenCroft like I do everything else in my life. I just move with the flow of energy that moves through my life, and then when I find myself standing somewhere what I always do is start gardening.
At first, I was confused because this isn't the place I would have chosen - circumstance brought me here. I have lived in the past on anywhere from 500 acres to 40 acres. I've owned several different farms, and here I am at the smallest place I've ever been in my life shared with many people. So I just really decided that here I would make a stand: To say anyone can live close to the Earth anywhere they choose, by honoring and recognizing where they're standing. So that's essentially what RavenCroft is.
I asked the Goddess for a ten-year garden when I walked out of my last garden, and we're five years into ten years here. So we're halfway, or at the midpoint, of RavenCroft becoming a place that essentially what happens is that things are planted and things are harvested. The work part of gardening has moved into a gentle way, we don't really do weeding and things like that.
RO: What is the "Wise Woman Way" and how do you incorporate that into what you do?
ES: The Wise Woman Tradition of healing is the oldest tradition of healing on the planet. It's a tradition that's based in nourishment. So I've been taught in a sense to look for what's right in my life, what's right around me and in any experience or situation I'm faced with. I can then move from a place of positive action and see how I can nourish a situation or a place or a person, or see even beyond that, how they can become self-sustaining and nourish themselves. I think it's the least-spoken tradition of healing and yet the most-used tradition of healing.
I have created RavenCroft as a center for the exploration of the Wise Woman Tradition. We acknowledge that it's a gentle way of healing. It allows the person seeking help to become in essence the efficient of the healing ritual. They are the one who declares what they should have or not have. It's a reversal in a sense of the way in which people traditionally move into healing.
RavenCroft for me is my healing, The reason I do it is because it helps me see more of my wholeness, that great mystery about who am I as a human being. I can see more and more of that. That is what the healing is to me. It's the vision of our wholeness.
RO: Have you always been interested in herbs and natural healing?
ES: Yes, I have. As a young woman in the sixties, I radically opposed everything, and the best way I could see to deal with it was either I would join... or I could blow things up or I could leave. So I chose to leave because the possibilities would be a lot more fun than spending the rest of my life in jail.
RO: Where did you go?
ES: I went to Alaska where I was co-owner of a commercial fishing boat. I learned a lot about the moon and the tides and the way water and the moon work on this planet. I was definitely in training at that time but didn't understand that.
One of the most powerful healing elements we can engage is the water - and the moon.
RO: So you're saying that what was going on in the main part of the States wasn't really reflected in Alaska?
ES: No. I like living in harsh environments, not harsh in a negative sense, but environments that challenge you to stay alive in them, because it keeps my attention and focus to what's important in life - that's staying afloat, staying warm, staying fed. So I got very much in tune with the basics and what really is important in life.
RO: Where did you learn about herbs? Did you apprentice yourself to someone?
ES: I apprenticed myself to the plants. I apprenticed myself to flocks of sheep and all the animals I've raised from chipmunks to draft horses, and so I became their student. They helped me to learn. I can't say I haven't tested what I do on animals because that's the way I found out most everything I do know about herbs - my own children included. Not that they're animals, but yes, they are, and so am I.
My learning about herbs was to use them, not just to go to a class and learn how other people use them, but to really engage them. I've used them for 20 years as my primary means of health care and medicine.
RO: What role do plants, herbs and trees play in what you do?
ES: Oh, gosh, they're my inspiration. They help me understand the world I live in by watching how they grow and change and even how they die. In a sense, I see them as teaching me the truth, because the natural world to me is really what is true and the human-made world is the one that's contrived. I look to them for that anchorage in the truth.
RO: Do you consider yourself a healer?
ES: I consider everyone a healer, so yes, I'm included in that.
RO: How does that manifest?
ES: It manifests in my classes. What I'm most interested in is self-reliance, that people understand how they can take care of themselves. How they can love and honor the place they live and the people they work with. My life itself is the way I try to do the healing work. I guess to me healing means becoming as whole as I can, and others see that, and they're inspired. Then they do it for themselves.
RO: What type of people are drawn to your classes and workshops?
ES: I'd say 99 percent of the people drawn are women.
Last year, I gave myself the gift of having my classes for women only. This year that's not the case, I've opened up my workshops for men and women again. Mostly they're people who really want to know about where they live and how to care for themselves, and they love life, and they just want more of it.
I work with anyone who shows up and who is willing. I see myself more as an educator, a teacher of self-care. I don't find that I have to carry other people's burdens; I enjoy watching all of us carry our own: That's what life is all about.
RO: You mentioned that last year you gave yourself the gift of working only with women. Why did you phrase it that way?
ES: Because I considered it to be that. Just that. It was a gift to myself to just be in the company of women for one year, because I wanted to see what that would be like.
RO: What was it like?
ES: It was very wonderful, and it was rewarding. So many things grow out of my study groups and circles. Generally, the women that come to them become a core group themselves, and they continue on in their own healing work together as a group of women to support each other.
At this time, my longer workshops are still only open for women because I find that that a lot of the information I'm sharing is really only pertinent to women. And they share differently when they are in a women-only group. We share ourselves much differently when we are in the company of women than we do when we are in mixed company. I think that at this point in time, that's an important part of a lot women's healing.
RO: Can you specify what you mean by sharing differently? Are they more open?
ES: Yes, they're more open. Not only that, they're more generous with themselves. They allow themselves to do things they've never done before, to have experiences they've never had before.
They're more creative, they find sources in themselves in the company of women that seem to nurture and nourish them deeply.
Because of the world we live in, that's a space that's very difficult for some women to find. I find a great joy in creating a space where women have that opportunity. It's helped me tremendously in my life, and I'd just like to be able to share it more with other women.
RO: I would imagine that the men drawn to come to your classes are open to that type of teaching and are probably somewhat gentler or have more of a feminine side than your typical male - whatever that might be.
ES: (Laughs.) Yeah, that's hard to say because each person that comes is so unique. I think what I would see the most about the people who come, men or women, is inquisitiveness, that they are curious about life.
That's one of the main differences in the way I approach healing, that I do not really focus my attention on diseases. I focus on 20 years I've been trying to keep kids and animals and plants alive. So my work stems from life, not from disease and death. And in that of course is included disease and death. So we learn a lot.
RO: What is your fondest dream?
ES: My fondest dream is that RavenCroft find a larger piece of land and a place where women can come and find meaningful work and a meaningful place and a meaningful world.
RO: What do you consider your biggest accomplishment to this date?
ES: Standing here today.... No, no, last year I realized when I was planting my garlic in the fall in a hailstorm, that my greatest accomplishment in this lifetime to date is learning how to create earth. Learning how to basically turn refuse, what people would see as worthless, into rich, bountiful earth. That's my most important accomplish to date, and in doing that I've learned so much.
RO: I see that that you could look at that as coming from a lot of different levels. You could take eggshells and onion peels and make compost and earth out of them literally or you could take a piece of scrap land out on Highway 2 and make it into a forest or garden. You could do a lot of different things with that.
ES: Or you could take rage and turn it into topped up blackberry vines that then turn into a beautiful garden bed. There are many, many levels to that. To me, the most blessed thing we have is the sweet earth, and anything I can do to understand that is healing. RavenCroft is registered as a sanctuary, and that is the ambiance that I intend to maintain here.
RO: A wildlife sanctuary?
ES: Not just a wildlife sanctuary, but a nature sanctuary. Because, truthfully, how can we observe nature or learn about the nature of Nature if we don't give it a place to live.
RO: The theme of this issue is earth magick. What do you feel we can do for Mother Earth?
ES: Come to honor ourselves as fully human. To me, human is the most beautiful thing, not the worst. When we look at the nature, we look at the Earth and see our reflection there, then we just join in with the creation of it. In doing so, we also honor ourselves and the beauty that we carry.
RO: Has your connection to the land impacted your life in other ways?
ES: I'm tied to the Earth. It impacts every breath I take, every step I take. It's a joyful bondage. (Laughs). And a dangerous one, because Earth-based peoples don't get a good shake this day and age. And yet I wouldn't do it any other way.
RO: Could you specify what you mean by a good shake?
ES: Well, you see, folks aren't too kind on the concept of getting dirty. Even in what I think of as enlightened communities, they have decided that the things that really allow people to stay close to the Earth and create their own food are now disdained. Like you aren't supposed to eat eggs, and milk products are horrible, and yet my whole work here is around raising food, milk and eggs, they're things that allow me to stay close to Earth.
I can create my own food on a very small piece of land, which is a tradition that women all over the world have done, and still do. It's through the use of the incorporation of animals in our life in ways that serve us all. They help enrich the Earth here, they feed my family, they bring us an immense amount of joy in the just the caring for them.
RO: Are you a vegetarian?
ES: No, no, I'm not. I have been, but not anymore. I find that meat is a healing food for me and engaging in the growing and the honoring of the animals that I choose to eat is very healing for me, and it helps me understand the cycles of life of death.
RO: Does it bother you to kill and butcher and eat an animal you raised?
ES: I never butcher anything, and I only give death. Does it bother me? Every single time I do it, I open a window, a gateway so to speak, and I stand in it. And since time is truly only an illusion, I know that whether it's the rabbit or me, it's just a matter of time.
RO: How do you feel about the mainstreaming of the Craft?
ES: The same way I feel about mainstreaming anything (laughs). You lose the uniqueness and the joy that's found in that, and yet, some ideas are great mainstreamed. I wish everyone would grow her own garden. I wish community-supported agriculture would get mainstreamed.
The Craft? As far as the Craft being mainstreamed, I don't know. I suppose it goes up and down in popularity over the years. For me, it's just a personal life-way. I would never stop doing it, and I don't intend to get burned for doing it.
RO: Me either. How do you deal with issues that come up having to do with you being a witch?
ES: Well, let's see. Generally I meet them head-on and hold to the place that everybody should have personal choices in the way that they live their life.
If my basic tenet is to do no harm, then I don't have too much trouble with confrontation about it. I actually probably would enjoy a little more interaction around it. What I'm finding is actually that people are very interested coming from that place. I am actually working at nonconfrontive communication.
RO: Do you share with the people that come to your classes that you're a green witch?
ES: Oh no, I think that people's spirituality. like their sexual preference is personal information. It's in my flyer - I'm a green witch - so I'm not hiding that from anybody.
What I do here isn't about conversion or anything. All it is about is recognition of the energy patterns on the planet we live on and how we can maintain our health by recognizing those energy patterns and honoring them. That's all.
So I don't care what they are, if they're Buddhists or Hindus or - I don't mind if they're fundamentalist Christians if they're comfortable with the things that we do here. And it's not about religion, it's just about life and health, fullness.
RO: Have any of your students ever tried to talk you out of being a witch?
ES: Oh, heavens no. My students know right from the get go that they don't try to me talk me out of anything - or into anything for that matter (laughs). And I shouldn't do that to them, because will is really important to me and each and everyone being able to do what they will is very much a part of what I do.
The Craft, for me, is really coming to the place to honor that and do what I do in my life so that I'm nourished and I'm enriched and what other people choose to do is their business.
RO: What is the oddest thing that's ever happened to you dealing with what you do?
ES: Oh my goodness, the oddest thing? I think the oddest thing that every happened to me is falling through some kind of a hole like Alice in Wonderland going down the tunnel when she fell down in the rabbit hole.
That is what occurred to me when I was 41 and I finally realized who I am and what my life's about, and that was a frightful tumble to begin with and a joyous flight once I learned how to do it.
Now I feel like I'm standing wholly in my life, where before I was only partly in my life.
RO: What happened to instigate this experience of falling into the hole?
ES: The drama is less remarkable to me than the whole experience itself. The feeling of falling, the feeling of learning to fly, the recognition of what is and what looks like it is. Seeing the difference between the two. Any of our lives can have that happen through a number of things. Divorce, life-threatening disease. Usually, it takes some big thing like that though to really get us to wake up.
For me it was the same way. I got divorced. All of a sudden I had to reassess my entire life and look at everything. Recapitulate where I had been and where I am now. That was very good work even though it seemed really painful and I didn't know if I would make it through at the time. That's when those beautiful women caught me and said, "No, no, no, just flap like this, then glide awhile."
RO: How did you get the name EagleSong?
ES: I was given the name EagleSong. I lived high in the mountains in Eastern Washington, and I was walking home one day. I was in an aspen grove, and I was asking for a way of being that was passive, but active. I realized that singing is a passive action. I can do a lot with my voice; I've been learning over the years it's truly a life work to use the voice as the instrument of the Goddess. I had always been called Eagle something since I was fishing because I have really good eyesight - although that's changing as I get older. So I had the nickname of Eagle Eye. EagleSong seemed like the perfect name, so I just said that night - I am EagleSong. When I've changed my name, really the name changed me. Things like what happened to you, having eagles soaring around when you came today, happened to me frequently.
RO: What is it like, do you suppose, for trees? Do you think that they continue to gain in wisdom?
ES: No doubt about it. The longer that you walk the Earth, the wiser you're gonna get hopefully. Otherwise you wouldn't get to walk very long. There's wisdom inherent in life. I'm not saying that old people are naturally wise, and young people aren't, but I think the longer that we spend time on the planet, the wisdom changes. It grows, and it deepens.
One of the things I think that you get from that extended perspective is that you get that things come and they go, and that's one of the things that I really think is important for our well-being right now. A lot of the things in the world that have come in the last few decades or hundreds of years are leaving. We are learning how to let those things go.
RO: What do you mean by that, what's leaving exactly?
ES: I think one of the things that leaving is our way of being on the planet. We've had several thousand years of being intrusive to this planet instead of interacting with it, and I think that's leaving. I think people are becoming more mindful of how their lives effect things around them, the generosity of Earth and really getting to a place where they can receive that generosity.
RO: Do you talk to trees? To stones?
ES: I talk to anyone who will listen if you know me for a while (laughs) you'll know that's true. But really the cultivation of listening to them is what I'm working on the second half of my life. Really hearing what they have to say.
RO: What is your most rewarding experience from being a witch?
ES: The reclamation of my life. Reclaiming my life as my own.
RO: Do you have any advice for people who are interested in taking care of themselves, while at the same time taking care of the Earth?
ES: You can't do one without the other. We can't live here without a safe Earth. As I find people learning to care for themselves, they live lighter on the Earth. They become more creative with the Earth, and the healing goes both ways. The Earth, really I don't think She's concerned one iota about what we as humans do, because she knows we're like fleas on a dog. She could have them or not, and it wouldn't be any different to her.
RO: Do you think one of these days she'll shake us off?
ES: She could, she could. Some people say there's going to be a meteor hit us in a few years. I don't care. I don't think it's relevant. What's relevant is what I do in each breath and each step. That has made my life beautiful. I've been able to truly walk in beauty and become more comfortable in myself and the world I live in. I trust that whatever happens is okay, and because I'm really into eating weeds and living down close to the Earth, I sense that that's the safest thing.
Twenty years ago, I went off into the hills to wait for the end of everything and it never came, so now I've got it that, oh, right, we just have to act like it's going to end, and in that way we can appreciate every moment as we live it. Who cares how long it's going to be as long as each moment is noticed and chorused?
RO: You mentioned living in Alaska and Eastern Washington; why do you live so close to a large city?
ES: Oh, I ask that myself a lot of times. There is no such thing as easier. Different challenges that's all, different changes. I carried water for 20 years it seemed like - it was really 12.
RO: What do you mean, carried water?
ES: Well, I lived in places that didn't have running water so we truly, literally carried our water. We didn't have electricity, so we truly, literally made candles on Candlemas. The holiday wasn't just a thing we talked about and celebrated. It was an experience of doing something about the fact that we needed light. So my life has been practicing the Craft, but not in any kind of a esoteric way, it's been a very grounded, down to Earth, real way.
RO: Very literal.
ES: Very literal. So when I come to a city, I bring all that with me. I bring 12 years of carrying water and chopping wood. I still chop wood, and I still carry water because I found that there was so much beauty in doing things by hand and being close to the Earth. That's why nothing here at RavenCroft is done with machinery. We do all of our herb harvesting, growing, manufacturing only with the use of human hands. That to me is the essence of really using what we were given as our tools.
So living in the city? I live here because I can tell people it doesn't make any difference. What makes a difference is, do it now. Wherever you live. Don't wait 25 years because you're going to go live somewhere in the country.
I raise my own food; I raise my own medicine. I keep all my animals well with what I've learned over the years. I've got milk goats and bunnies and geese and ducks and turkeys and cats and kids, and that is what counts - is do it wherever you are and whatever way you can, just make each moment precious, recognize the precariousness of it.
RO: You're advertising in your flyer about a year-long class. Could you describe what that's all about?
ES: It's called "Dreamwalking."
One of the easiest ways to lose one's dream is to not have anyone else believe in it. You have to be really strong to bring a dream to Earth when it's only your vision, which is part of the magic and part of the healing work we each get to do here. So this gives you a one-year head start on bringing your dream to manifestation. Dreamwalking is a year-long apprenticeship to your own dream. You're not apprenticing yourself to me or anything other than your own dream.
We'll do certain skills, practices, that give tonification to the process of bringing that dream. What can you do? Carrying wood for 12 years and water was part of my training. I know what it's like to live on the lowest level of civilization, and I appreciate the gifts I got there, and I also appreciate how nice it is to have a washing machine.
So the class is includes four, four-day sojourns into Nature - and this is a women-only class - where women have a chance to immerse themselves in a natural environment. They can do a solitary, or they can stay in a group camp in those times. We'll be going to a large cave in Oregon, real high in the mountains, we'll be going out to the ocean, we'll be walking the Wheel of the Year together so it becomes this work-group for women. It is an Earth-witch intensive, and I believe I've met a lot of women with beautiful dreams, and if they can just ground them, give them a root in the ground, that they really would change the world, and we need it. This world really wants those dreams to walk.
RO: What if you're not sure what you're dream is?
ES: Part of the year is that, is to work at how do we start to recognize a dream when we are having one? What's the difference between a false vision and one that really is your work? Part of that is learned in essence by doing, like I say RavenCroft is the culmination of 20 years of practice. It's my dreamwalking because I want to see what I've imagined: a peaceful sanctuary where many different type of life forms exist in cooperation with each other.
RO: I've been a single mother for almost 18 years, and my son is almost grown. I've concentrated on making a living, but now that he's grown, I feel I have come to a crossroads. I have all these options, and I know from experience that I can do pretty much whatever I want, but I don't know how to choose. I know very well how to move forward, but I don't know what direction to go. It's like I'm kind of waiting for direction. So I'm thinking about doing that class.
ES: An important part of dreamwalking, is when do you wait, and when do you move?
RO: It's a little frightening to me, because I've always had something to do, many things to do, and I've always wanted to take care of this, take care of that, but now I've kind of come to a point where I can relax, and relaxing is frightening to me.
ES: Yes, I hear that.
RO: Because I make sure I have many things to do, just stacked up. I can pick and choose.
ES: That's right, yes, and the very first step in healing is to do nothing. For people in our civilization, our culture, that's the hardest thing.
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