SageWoman #48 (reprint)
Wintery Magic

SageWoman #48 - Wintery Magic

Anyone remember Y2K? If you do, (besides dating yourself) you can probably recall the sense of being at the edge of something new, exciting and possibly wonderful -- or catastrophic. Feels a lot like the current mood, doesn't it? In a time of uncertainty, this issue reached for (and I believe, achieved) a sense of finding the certainty, the rootedness in fundamentals that we all long for.

We begin with Ginny Anderson's "These are the Gifts", a luminous description of place-centered theology and ritual that her community finds in a dozen sacred places that circle their home ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay area. Contrasting sharply but providing an intellectually rousing counterpoint, Dilyn Dana Pierson reflects on her increasingly solitary, stripped down expressions of spirituality in "Forsaking Wicca?"

Next comes Tamalyn Kelly's rousing paen to the (still) burgeoning Goddess movement "State of Our Union" and Eldonna Bouton's heartfelt account of a women's initiation into her moontime in "Sisters of the Long Dance."

December 12 is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and in "Be Here Now" Suzan Stone Sierralupe and Sabrina Vourvoulias share both Our Lady's herstory and the herbal lore surrounding her. Wendy Hunter Roberts looks into the future with both anxiety and hope, reflecting upon both the challenges and potentials of a future more aligned with the goddess in her article "Magic in the New Millennium?" while Diana Paxson remembers her personal friend and author of the Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley in "Priestess of Avalon."

Dan Brown was by no means the first author to probe the mysteries of Mary Magdalene, who is the featured Goddess in this issue as loremistress Lesa Whyte explores in "Love is Stronger than Death: the Story of Mary Magdalene."

From our columnists comes Susun Weed's tales of the beginning of her famous herbal school, holiday gift giving with a difference from Lunaea Weatherstone, reflections on the challenges (and gifts) of solitude by Crone magazine editor Ann Kreilkamp, a cautionary tale on the abuse of magic by Carol Christ, Joanna Colbert's tips on finding magic in nature during winter, and a double-helping of Winter Solstice festivals, lore and rituals from Waverly Fitzgerald.

96 pages of mystery, discussion and community, published Winter Solstice 1999.