THE RUSTiC WiTCH : A Doll, The Pentacle & Star-Shaped Seeds Of Creative Potential...
Every seed contains within it the potential for new life.
Every person does, too... even if that new life is of the more artistic variety.
Every book, every movie, every blog post, song, invention, business, marriage, meal, idea is born of the seed of human potential and- once it has been brought into manifest reality- it takes on a life of it's own.
In this way, every person is a divine creator. Every person is a life-giving, star-shaped seed.
Have you ever noticed that humans look like walking, talking stars?
With our arms & legs outstretched, our bodies form a star.
Leonardo Da Vinci demonstrated this when he gave birth to the now infamous Vitruvian Man...
This is only one of many reasons I have come to love the unfairly maligned symbol of the pentacle.
The pentacle is a five-pointed star inside a circle (a pentagram is a five-pointed star), and it can be found all throughout nature, in the petals of certain flowers, the underside of a sand dollar, an apple sliced length-wise...
Witches love & work with nature, and THAT is why witches love & work with the pentacle.
It has absolutely nothing to do with devil worship.
I like to think of the pentacle as a kind of manifestation portal, the quintessential representation of pure potentiality, a symbol of life, a seed that contains each of the four elements, air, water, fire, earth, plus that magickal ingredient that brings it all to life... Spirit.
As I mention in this video, it is also one of the most sensual representations of humanity, as each of it's five points stands for each of our primary senses : taste, touch, sight, sound, smell...
ABOUT THAT DOLL :
In the summer of 2007, my future in laws flew out west to scout wedding locations in Big Sur with their soon-to-be-married kid & myself.
They wanted to pay for the ceremony and help pick out the location. The problem was my dream location was "too rustic" for their taste, as was- much to my disappointment- every other location I loved.
We were- after all in Big Sur.
Big Sur is rustic. I am rustic.
That's why we're a good match.
My in laws, on the other hand... Well- let's just say they are not rustic.
So- nothing was agreed upon as we made our way up the coast to Monterey for a Cannery Row shopping expedition.
I felt pretty checked out during that shopping trip. I felt unseen, unheard & totally undervalued.
Was this not, at least in part, my wedding we were planning? Did my personal taste not matter at all?
And that's when something kind of weird happened.
I found this funky little string doll in the bottom bin of a toy store & felt unreasonably compelled to have it...
It's hard to explain the WHY of that particular desire, but I will say it felt important- like I NEEDED that doll. Like that doll somehow made me feel seen. So- I bought it and put it in my pocket.
Cannery Row was bustling & packed with tourists that day, and I wasn't in the mood for bustling or tourists, so I found myself reaching into my pocket again & again to hold that doll.
There was something comforting about it. It felt like a secret touchstone that kept bringing me back to myself...
Until dinner time.
After a long afternoon of un-rustic shopping, we were all seated in an un-rustic restaurant, waiting to be served our un-rustic food, when I reached into my pocket to find that the doll was gone.
If my in laws did not think me strange before, they certainly must have in the moment that I blurted out, "My doll! My doll is gone!" and went bolting out the door to find it.
Did I mention how bustling & packed-with-tourists Cannery Row was that day?
Cuzz- it only got worse as the dinner crowd moved in, and I found myself pushing through herds of slow people, frantically scanning the sidewalks of Cannery Row in search of that doll.
I was imagining a dog gnawing off it's head or some boogery kid picking it up with sticky icky fingers or maybe a janitor chucking it into the trash...
When- there it was- in the middle of the street, face up &- I swear this is true- waiting for me.
I do get that this is a strange story- and that you might be thinking, "It's just an ugly little string doll."
But it seemed like something more to me at the time, and I've kept it on my nightstand in this bowl of Big Sur rocks ever since.
Years later- when I read the "Doll In Her Pocket" folktale presented in Women Who Run With The Wolves, my doll took on a whole new meaning, and I now refer to her as my "Vassalissa Doll", as she's come to represent the power of intuition & the way that Soul can be accessed through physical objects...
In what way do YOU access your intuition?
Do you use tarot cards? A pendulum? Runes?
I don't think these things are absolutely necessary, but they are handy & a whole lotta fun!
Every person does, too... even if that new life is of the more artistic variety.
Every book, every movie, every blog post, song, invention, business, marriage, meal, idea is born of the seed of human potential and- once it has been brought into manifest reality- it takes on a life of it's own.
In this way, every person is a divine creator. Every person is a life-giving, star-shaped seed.
Have you ever noticed that humans look like walking, talking stars?
With our arms & legs outstretched, our bodies form a star.
"Every man and every woman is a star." -Alesiter Crowley
Leonardo Da Vinci demonstrated this when he gave birth to the now infamous Vitruvian Man...
"Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had
produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia
del minor mondo cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the
human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe."
-Encyclopaedia Britannica
produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia
del minor mondo cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the
human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe."
-Encyclopaedia Britannica
This is only one of many reasons I have come to love the unfairly maligned symbol of the pentacle.
The pentacle is a five-pointed star inside a circle (a pentagram is a five-pointed star), and it can be found all throughout nature, in the petals of certain flowers, the underside of a sand dollar, an apple sliced length-wise...
Witches love & work with nature, and THAT is why witches love & work with the pentacle.
It has absolutely nothing to do with devil worship.
I like to think of the pentacle as a kind of manifestation portal, the quintessential representation of pure potentiality, a symbol of life, a seed that contains each of the four elements, air, water, fire, earth, plus that magickal ingredient that brings it all to life... Spirit.
As I mention in this video, it is also one of the most sensual representations of humanity, as each of it's five points stands for each of our primary senses : taste, touch, sight, sound, smell...
ABOUT THAT DOLL :
In the summer of 2007, my future in laws flew out west to scout wedding locations in Big Sur with their soon-to-be-married kid & myself.
They wanted to pay for the ceremony and help pick out the location. The problem was my dream location was "too rustic" for their taste, as was- much to my disappointment- every other location I loved.
We were- after all in Big Sur.
Big Sur is rustic. I am rustic.
That's why we're a good match.
My in laws, on the other hand... Well- let's just say they are not rustic.
So- nothing was agreed upon as we made our way up the coast to Monterey for a Cannery Row shopping expedition.
I felt pretty checked out during that shopping trip. I felt unseen, unheard & totally undervalued.
Was this not, at least in part, my wedding we were planning? Did my personal taste not matter at all?
And that's when something kind of weird happened.
I found this funky little string doll in the bottom bin of a toy store & felt unreasonably compelled to have it...
It's hard to explain the WHY of that particular desire, but I will say it felt important- like I NEEDED that doll. Like that doll somehow made me feel seen. So- I bought it and put it in my pocket.
Cannery Row was bustling & packed with tourists that day, and I wasn't in the mood for bustling or tourists, so I found myself reaching into my pocket again & again to hold that doll.
There was something comforting about it. It felt like a secret touchstone that kept bringing me back to myself...
Until dinner time.
After a long afternoon of un-rustic shopping, we were all seated in an un-rustic restaurant, waiting to be served our un-rustic food, when I reached into my pocket to find that the doll was gone.
If my in laws did not think me strange before, they certainly must have in the moment that I blurted out, "My doll! My doll is gone!" and went bolting out the door to find it.
Did I mention how bustling & packed-with-tourists Cannery Row was that day?
Cuzz- it only got worse as the dinner crowd moved in, and I found myself pushing through herds of slow people, frantically scanning the sidewalks of Cannery Row in search of that doll.
I was imagining a dog gnawing off it's head or some boogery kid picking it up with sticky icky fingers or maybe a janitor chucking it into the trash...
When- there it was- in the middle of the street, face up &- I swear this is true- waiting for me.
I do get that this is a strange story- and that you might be thinking, "It's just an ugly little string doll."
But it seemed like something more to me at the time, and I've kept it on my nightstand in this bowl of Big Sur rocks ever since.
Years later- when I read the "Doll In Her Pocket" folktale presented in Women Who Run With The Wolves, my doll took on a whole new meaning, and I now refer to her as my "Vassalissa Doll", as she's come to represent the power of intuition & the way that Soul can be accessed through physical objects...
"In the doll is the symbolic homunculi, little life. It is the symbol of what lies
buried in humans that is numinous. It is a small and glowing facsimile of the
original Self. Superficially, it is just a doll. But inversely, it represents a little
piece of soul that carries all the knowledge of the larger soul-Self.
In the doll is the voice..." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes. PhD
In what way do YOU access your intuition?
Do you use tarot cards? A pendulum? Runes?
I don't think these things are absolutely necessary, but they are handy & a whole lotta fun!
(FYi : There was no wedding. Billy & I were married alone in the forest in a circle of ancient redwood trees by a hippie witchy lady with a skunk stripe in her hair. It was very rustic.)