editorial
by Melanie Fire Salamander
The headline for Paul Stephens' story on page 5, "Getting Handfasted? Start Early on Your Rite!," sums up the theme of this Widdershins. If you're getting handfasted with the gods at Beltaine, or with other mortals around Litha, I hope you're already hard at work on your plans. If not -- get with the program!
Not all nuptials fall in spring and summer. This New Year's Day, I was very happy to call fire at the handfasting of two young men whose future looks brilliant to me. I don't know whether my friends want to make their connection legal, but it seems obvious to me and the Widdershins staff that they should be allowed to if they so desire. Widdershins supports the right of any and all consenting adults to be married in the eyes of the state.
This Beltaine, I'll be conducting a male-female handfasting, for a woman in my coven and her mate. I'm pretty excited, because it's the first handfasting I've planned since my own. The Tarot predicts joy and feasting. I know at least that we won't have some of the problems Lisa mentions in her cover story -- no fundamentalist parents to dodge, no elderly relatives to shock. The worst I fear is some of the groom's rowdy friends breaking into the May wine too early.
Neither will we, I hope, have the practical problems that plagued another covenmate of mine, who got married around Oestara a few years past. There's a reason Northwesterners tend toward summer weddings. At my friend's March nuptials, she had weather symbolizing all the potential ups and downs of married life -- not only sun and rain, but hail as well! Later, as the reception hit full swing, the water in the reception facility (my house) shut off. Our community well's holding tank had temporarily run dry. But our mellow pagan guests took this crisis in stride, even when it meant scraping sweat off after the sauna with an improvised stirgil rather than showering.
My own handfasting proved the truly pagan party I always wanted -- including, I fear, too much champagne. (Note to the unwary: There really is such a thing. My jazz guitarist friend who played at the event woke up the next morning with the worst hangover of his life.) We had everything, including thoroughly pierced caterers, food to die for, a running hair-dye salon in the master bathroom (both 15-year-olds and 50-year-olds went home with fuchsia locks) and, nearly, a fist-fight over the music. This tipsy bride had to talk down a punk rocker who was not about to dance to trance electronica. Through the intervention of my steady-nerved nephew-in-law, we settled on ska.
If there's a moral to these stories, it's to plan ahead for your handfasting and be willing to improvise. Rain and bad tempers, not to mention clashing spiritual beliefs and the fossilized views of the U.S. government, can threaten anyone's special day. So forecast with these in mind.
For those not just now contemplating community-sanctioned human connection, in this issue Kevin writes about a sacred connection between spirit and human, the marriage of the Haitian lwa to their followers. Freya flips the coin and discusses pagan divorce. Janice talks about other types of magickal moment in her life, and Stressmiss reviews the recent Seattle Erotic Art Festival, which she found full of juicy, pagan erotic art. And Catherine brings us a springtime story about community supported agriculture and its special connection to pagan life -- with, in one case, a significant disconnection.
I keep getting these nasty reminders that all is not as it should be. Gay people can't legally marry. Community-supported farmers hang up on pagan reporters. This frat boy keeps pontificating from the White House. This Equinox, I'll be working to make the balance swing toward what I think is right and good. I know you'll be doing the same.
Copyright © 2006 by the article's author