The Unburnable: A Witch’s Reflection on the Year of the Hag
from ‘Ways of the Witch Storyteller’ by Danielle Dulsky
The season of reflection in the afternoon-dark is upon us, and this Witch is slow-dancing into 2020 with hood raised and lantern lit. On the full Blood Moon in October, I locked eyes with a white wolf in the woods. Today, on the cusp of Yule, I pulled the elder ogham. This is unburnable integrity, the bitter medicine and graceless shadow that is ours whether we choose to see it or not, that which remains, the space between death and birth.
Timely symbols, these.
Find me now discerning between what is truly unburnable in my work, in my world. Find me diligently tending The Hag School altars this coming year, as I enter this Year of the Flame-Tenderholding my community close and the paradox closer, as I discern what stays, what goes, and what must simply grow, as I redefine ‘sovereignty’ yet again, as I travel and share tales from Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming, as I sink my roots deeper into this home of mine and call up the buried-in-my-marrow treasures that have been lying in wait these last long years, and as I find magick in the aching places that are falling to bones.
The Hag School was born on New Year’s Eve 2018, formedfrom soft and unanswerable questions, from paradox, and from the understanding that we are, stubbornly and with puffy eyes, tending flames lit long ago in the name of yet-to-be-born generations. We are a lone bud in a vast garden called human, and human is a fragile and flaking seed in a windswept land that shall survive with or without us.
Our magick wants our intentional humility as much as our wise sovereignty.
Unburnable for me now, in this moment, are the Hag School’s“north star questions:”
What is the emerging role of magick, embodiment, and witchcraft in a wounded world?
How can we cultivate wonder and whimsy on this damaged miracle we call a planet?
How can we create circles of becoming that grow and shrink as needed?
How can we be generatively disruptive to binary thinking?
Where do we go from here?
These are pulsing heartbeat queries gestated behind the ribs of Witches. These are the questions our work moves toward, the wonder our circles hold, and the heart of our ceremony. Find us on the mountaintop sharing stories of broken lineages and enduring hope at the fireside. Find us moving together in a many-bodied prayer to who we might have been and who we will become. Find us standing in a stream whispering prophecies to no one but ourselves then howling on the cliff’s edge in dire hope that we will be heard. Find us together doing all these things, then find us alone doing the same.
Our witchcraft wants our dedication, our care. Who are we if not the heathen visionaries who hope against hope?
I spent yesterday in rocking-chair-and-candlelight reflection on the north-stars (while the ice and snow fell outside my window, no less), gauging how every single offering The Hag Schoolholds is moving toward these questions, assessing how artful our web between what is and what could be has been woven.
Our offerings, quite accidently, are reflected by “CRAFT;” Collective, Retreats, Apprenticeship, Facilitator Training, and our Teachers.
Coven: The Hag Ways Collective, our online coven for “dreamers, Witches, storytellers, and wildlings,” moves toward these questions through story, communion, and group ceremony once per month and via the coven’s portal between sessions. Ours is a sudden circle of participatory ritual, of potent rebellion against the over-culture’s rules that would have us tamed, and of seasonal magick discussion, planning, and integration. All are welcome. Join anytime here. 23/month.
Retreats: Our retreats, The Story of Our Rising from Bones in spring and The Story of Our Becoming at Samhain, are mountaintop containers for wonder and awe, kinship with nature and the elements, and a place to witness our workaday lives so, upon returning, we can make the necessary shifts to facilitate our healing, our becoming. All are welcome. There is one spot left in The Story of Our Rising from Bones spring retreat. See the info and register here.
Apprenticeship: The Hag Witchery Apprenticeship is a multidimensional offering that is co-created by me, as teacher, in partnership with the participants (13 at a time). This is an online offering with two (optional but strongly recommended) in-person immersions at my house, with all content supportive of the participant’s existing practice of (and desire to enhance) pathworking, spellwork, word-witchery, ancestral healing, seasonal ceremony, and embodied witchcraft. This is me sharing all I know about what it means to be a Witch in a wounded world, and it is my only one-on-one offering. There are 6 spots left in the 2020-2021 group. See the info and apply here.
Facilitator Training: The Flame-Tender’s Training is an in-person training for those seeking to integrate witchcraft, storytelling, and embodied (moving and breathing and humming and rocking) ritual into their work. This is about community, honing direction in an aching world, breaking systems that do not work, and living and breathing together as sovereign creatures within a changing collective. This is about creating and offering rituals of becoming, of holding circles that are touchstones, of getting uncomfortable, of art-making, and of framing the sensory body as the place where we meet the world.3 spots left in the spring immersion. See the info and apply here.
Teachers: Our teachers are The Hag School’s living council of witches, ritualists, social justice educators, therapists, and dreamers. They are the school’s beating heart. Find a few of them in our new library, The House of the Hag. Find more of them in-person at our retreats and trainings.
May 2020 be your wildest year yet. May this Solstice gift you with dream-visions of the Yuletide pyromancer, hooded and singing into the glowing forge where your new year yet is being cast, where you are already slow-dancing in spring’s holy shadow, where you are already grinning in memory of a quiet winter spent warm and well. May you seek and find the unburnable, this longest night.
And so it is.