A devastation has occurred. Does it matter

what it was? Who commanded it?

 

Or, if it split the ground

with its own energies?

 

The bare moon rises over the orchard.

Inside the house, the curtains move a little.

 

A lone bullfrog bellows from the woods-- a single, wet note.

Almost a bark, but deeper.

Sexual. Discordant.

Night after night, this astonishing sound.

 

~ Jenny George 

 

It is Spring! The frogs are back. I am writing this newsletter next to my wee babe who is sleeping next to me. There are so many newsletters that I have wanted to write in the past year, but was so ill during pregnancy that I wasn’t able to get words together. Now that I’m on the other side of the birth portal and about to emerge from the fourth-trimester, I am slowly trying to find my words again. My brain and body are forever changed and stringing together sentences is a skill I hope to re-acquire with patience and practice in the months to come. But here is one little watery thread that I am pulling on as I begin thawing out postpartum. (If you’re just looking for announcements, head to the bottom of the newsletter.) This isn’t at all my birth story, but there is talk of birth here. It is more so a murky offering of synchronicity, polyphonic essences and the power of frogs.

 

For those who are new(ish?) here to the ‘ol Sister Spinster newsletter, you may or may not know that before I moved back home to NY, I used to live in Mendocino, CA. I had a sweet little herbal schoolhouse in the redwoods where we had lots and lots of fun. Lately, I have been thinking about the final workshop that took place in that little building in 2019, a collaboration with friend and poet, Lindsey Boldt. We offered a weekend long experiment called “Shaping Water: Poesis and the Oracle” which brought together oracular trance work, plant magic and spellcraft. We worked with the-one-who-croaks-from-the-dark-waters, Frog Woman, as teacher and initiate into our scrying work. I feel like Frog Woman is an upstream archetype of the Sheela Na Gig’s — I'm thinking of the neolithic figures of fertile frog divinities that Marija Gimbutas references in The Living Goddesses. Frogs sing before the rain comes; in European folklore they have long been associated with the fertility magic that is linked to primeval waters of life (I write a bit about fertile spring waters in this old newsletter). So we practiced reading and listening to the energies that flow in these waters —- even did some squatting over the wild springs in the redwoods, visioning with the frogs. We worked with plant allies as divinatory tools to channel, write and speak with Frog Woman, shaping what we pulled from her watery realm into poetry and spellwork. Our final day consisted of a group ritual where we channeled a long collective poem in the voice of Frog Woman and chanted it together for a looooong period of time, moving and raising the energy through the room. We made an essence of our final working, the croaking spell of Frog Woman held in the crystal essence bowl in the middle of the room. This essence that was made in community is a polyphonic essence. It contains multiple voices, a multitude of sounds and vibrations, both harmonic and dissonant. It holds the waters, the plants, the redwoods, frog-woman, all there in the bowl.

 

I’ve had this essence tucked away in my cabinet in the apothecary. I let it sit. I don’t think I dosed with it at all since making it almost 7 years ago. It felt too powerful, too big, too strange. When is the right moment to dose an essence of a collective frog-poem ritual? It was definitely a weird one — and I’ve made essences of a lot of freaky, odd things over the years. The Frog-Woman essence would be considered an “environmental essence” — an essence that is made of a place, a time, an event. I often find that dosing with an environmental essence sets the scene, so to speak. It creates context. An environmental essence acts as a vessel — how is your transformation held? Is the change happening in a gentle, relaxed way (ex: an essence of a hot spring at sunset) or is the transformation more vigorous (ex: an essence of a thunderstorm rolling over the ocean)? You know how you can feel completely changed after a few days away from the routines of home? Or even a nice, long walk in the woods? Sometimes you just need a little bit of an environmental shift to see a situation in a new light or to feel refreshed. This is the magic of environmental essences. I just didn’t know when I would dose with a frog ritual collective essence in my day to day life. It certainly wasn’t going to be one that I gave to clients without working with it myself. After a while, I forgot about it altogether and the bottle gathered dust in my essence cabinet.

 

However, about a week before going into labor, I remembered the Frog Woman essence. I began dosing. The words that I had channeled as a part of our collective ritual poem came to me again: “I am all cavern / all throat / I push the prism out” and I started to recite this line over and over again in my head as the birthing portal drew near. I pictured my body opening, a cavern. I dosed with the essence. I dreamed of birthing a tadpole baby and trying to hold the slippery being in my hands. I dosed with the essence. A squatting-frog necklace purchased years ago was unearthed and worn around my neck. I dosed with the essence. A clay frog amulet arrived in the mail from Priscilla, who was totally unaware of this emergent, re-invigorated connection to the archetypal frog (thank you, Priscilla!). I dosed with the essence. When I type this out, I realize this could sound rather peculiar — tracking folkloric frog signs before birth. But at the same time, birth is an otherworldy trip and I always think that when the mythic symbols start talking to you, it’s best to follow their lead. And this is how the essences also work! They bring our attention to how the world speaks to us in the most subtle, silly and spellbinding ways.

 

In some European countries, dried frogs and frog-shaped votives were given to Mary statues in Christian churches, with a petition for a pregnancy or safe birth. Here’s an example of such an offering. I had no dried frogs; the essence became my offering. I dosed with the essence. I read and re-read the Russian fairytale, The Frog Princess & I contemplated the magical act depicted in the story of casting off frog skin and transforming into a human. When my contractions started, I wondered if this is what it felt like, to shape-shift into a new form. To cast off one skin and become another. Robert Bringhurst, in his essence on polyphony in Everywhere Being is Dancing, says, “Polyphony… is something else: a trajectory of voices, intuiting the grain of meditative space. One voice speaks at once, but in finding its trajectory, that voice actually becomes other voices as it goes. The self enacts its many selves, or is possessed by many selves, sliding or gliding more often than jumping from one to the next.” Exactly this. I dosed with the essence. A polyphonic medicine. Frog Woman, help me slip my skin, sing the songs of vernal pools and croak open. I dosed with the essence. Waters of life flowed from me. Images of wet frogs crouched in dark waters came to me. Over and over, the essence both informed and illuminated the threshold that I was stepping through (squatting over?). I became a cavern. I dosed with the essence. I opened. And at 1:37 am, on a snowy, cold, January morning, my son, Angelo, was born in my home apothecary, right next to my essence cabinet. I push the prism out.

 

I’m finishing this newsletter days after I began writing. Right now, Angelo is out on a walk in the carrier with his dad, which is currently the only place he will really nap. They meander out in the woods behind the house every day and as Angelo sleeps he gets to hear spring winds, the waters stirring in the vernal pools and the chorus of the peepers. We like to think that this spring polyphony is informing his dream life, in one way or another. On a nap-walk over the weekend, I saw my first ephemeral: hepatica. Welcome, Spring. Tomorrow, I return to teaching. Emergence! 

 

To continue to swim in these waters a bit, I have spots left in Flowering Round this year! We start next month! While I call this program a ‘practitioner training program’ it is more than that. It is a year of creative collaboration and ceremony with plants and essences. It is about coming into this polyphonic relationship to place — hearing the songs of the plants and thus becoming the song. Slip into flower-skin. We will cover seasonal plant energetics, how to prove a flower essence, the art of formulation, the poetics of crafting essence descriptions, creating flower ceremonies and so much more. If you have any questions about the program, don't hesitate to reach out. I'd love to hear from you and have you join us with poems, praise and continued floral devotion this year. 

 

Big hugs & hopefully more soon when the babe allows,

xx Liz 

 

p.s. please excuse typos and errors as I did not get to proofread this because of bebe!