As I write, a spell-candle I made at Imbolc flares: purple beeswax, folded into the wax herbs for meditation and psychic work, mugwort and others that came to hand. This candle has a fascinating flame, its yellow inset with two chevrons of purple, the yellow tending toward chartreuse. The whole flickers rhythmically like a strobe, and the effect creates a meditative state, just as I asked for when making the candle. I put this taper on my altar to Hecate, and she smiled on me and gave me the inspiration for this piece, which as you'll see deals with her realm.
I made another spell-candle at Imbolc, for peace within my family. I put in it herbs and oils for harmony, jasmine and rose, and also fragments of dried leaves from a maple tree that my mother planted with her own hands. At the request of a neighbor whose gutters it was littering, my husband cut down that tree as I watched, because my father and mother were selling the house by which it was planted. It made me cry to cut down a healthy tree in the prime of life. Yet my mother, leaving, would no longer get the joy of it, and the neighbor had done my parents several favors.
I saved a branch, which my mother kept in water for a while, and for myself some leaves. At the time I wasn't sure why I wanted them; at Imbolc I found out. A living twig is also left of that tree, upspringing by the stump. I hope the tree is reborn from that twig.
Spring means rebirth, the rebirth of vegetable life from the fallow earth, the birth of young animals and birds. I've also read that early spring is the most likely time for humans to die. Being born again with the season takes courage. In winter, if your strength is failing, at least you are in tune with the times. But what happens if the season turns, the days get longer, and you don't find your strength returns with the sun? Perhaps then you drop off the wheel of the year.
As my spell-candle burned for peace within my family, I found out that my father was in the hospital again. My father had had a rough few months. In October, a room in my parents' house burned. Though neither of my parents was hurt, the house was smoke-damaged enough they had to move out for three months while it was cleaned. In November, in the parking lot of the apartment building where the insurance company put up my parents, my father fell and hit his head. He was taken to the hospital. At that point, with him physically removed, my mother decided to break up with him. The genesis of that decision is a long story — 49 years long — but suffice to say her reasons seemed sufficient to me.
At the same time, my father loved her, and I think her leaving broke him. I see him as we left him in January, sitting in his new assisted-living apartment, smoking, scattering ashes on his slacks and the floor, a small, white-haired, 80-year-old man, shrunken into himself. He still insisted on doing for himself with as little help as possible. He regarded the maid, laundry service and assisted bathing that came with his new apartment as ridiculous luxuries — he was surprised his children said they'd be happy to pay for them when his money ran out. He proposed to live in this resort style two years, then commit suicide. Of course, none of us agreed.
About a week after we left my father, he stopped eating. It's hard to say how voluntary maintaining that decision was, because I suspect he got very weak very quickly. I found out his state after two weeks — no fault of the apartment complex, he'd sent the maid and the bath assistant away. He agreed to go to the emergency ward, but by that time he'd suffered a blockage to his intestine.
I think it was his way of seeking peace.
My spell-candle burned down. A doctor operated, but the blockage could not be fully cleared. My father died on February 19.
I tell you this not for sympathy — I don't know quite what to do with the sympathy I've received — but to say: Spells work. What you receive isn't necessarily just what you asked for. Yet I feel the universe was looking out for my father.
For some, spring proves a time to die. That's sad, to us the living. In some cases, though, the dead have found a peace they needed. I believe that was true for my father. At this time of spring, with everything pumping with new life, growing toward bursting forth in blossom, he could not follow. He could not face another year. He stepped off the wheel.
Spring is also the time of new flowers. At Oestara, I think particularly of daffodils, a flower I've always associated with my mother. Her favorite color is yellow, and at her houses she usually plants daffodils: returning with the spring, yellow like the sun, yellow like the early forsythia she also loves. You can read my mother's determination to continue her life now as jaunty, but it's also as stony as the life force itself — stony as living stone, the magma that's the blood of the Earth. I hope my mother continues in her determination for life as her flowers come up, as spring is reborn. I hope that for her peace is continued rebirth.
Both my parents were born Tauruses. As I celebrate both their birthdays this spring, I'll know that the season means different things to different people. May my parents, and all of us, get the kind of peace and the kind of joy we need this spring.
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