"Vasilisa the Brave" by Dan Mathews (September post on the SageWoman Channel on Pagan Square)
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
As a witch in the Reclaiming Tradition I have spoken/sung/danced some version of Fire invocations, or witnessed Fire invocations in some form or other, countless times. It is part of our practice of creating the Sacred Space in which we do magical work for healing and justice as solitaries, covens, or communities. We Ground, Cast a Circle, then open our awareness to and welcome our Elemental Allies: Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Center/Spirit, before we do anything else.
My Grandma Peggy was always terrified of Fire. Her fears were not irrational, much of her life was spent in the dry mountains of Northern California and from the mid 1940s through the mid 1960s she and my Grandpa Ed ran the French Gulch Hotel, a bar and restaurant built in 1885 of wood with questionable retrofitted electrical wiring that could have easily gone up like a tinder box. My Grandpa Ed was the Chief of the volunteer French Gulch firehouse (itself a flammable shack housing one old firetruck). The only source of water in case of fire was the creek running through town. Amazingly in the entire time Grandma Peggy lived in French Gulch both her home and business were spared the periodic wildfires that happen in those mountains. But, after she had moved out of town in the 1980s, the house she shared with Grandpa Ed did burn down.
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
My Grandma Winnie never voiced a fear of fire, although she lived through the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire as a toddler. That fire completely destroyed her poor, densely-packed, immigrant neighborhood “South of the Slot.” In 2004, many years after her death, the shack she shared with my Grandpa Russell in French Gulch burned to the ground during the French Fire. All four of my grandparents’ graves were somehow spared in that fire as it raced up and down the hills.
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
The French Fire in 2004 that burned my grandparents’ shack, tore through French Gulch jumping from one side of the creek to the other, leaving a random pattern of burned lots and surviving houses. Sometimes unexpected good can come out of the devastation of fire. My father had been courting the local school teacher for two years before that fire. She, with just cause (given my father’s wild early years), had been holding him off. But when the fire threatened her home, he helped get her horses and other animals out over the backside of the hills since all the roads were blocked. He had worked with his father (my grandpa Russell) in the 1940s and 50s packing tourists and hunting parties into those hills by horse train, so he knew how to finesse the steep slopes and ravines and come out safe on the other side. After that she relented and they lived happily together until his death a decade later.
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
All the California Mountain Ranges are prone to wildfires: The Sierra Nevada on the eastern border, the Coast Ranges on the western edge, the Cascade Range in the northeast corner, and the Trinity Alps where I’m from in the northwest. California, thirsty and dried out from multiple years of drought, has again been on fire this summer. The Valley Fire in Lake County near where I now live in Sonoma County claimed over 1,200 homes and over 76,000 acres of habitat for other red blood and green blood beings. As the devastation raged I watched with tears as my friend Megan and her husband, Brandon, coordinate through Facebook and texts with their neighbors, helping alert folks to evacuate. Because Brandon works in law enforcement and could get back in before others, Megan fielded hundreds of messages, again coordinating with her husband to let folk know if their homes burned or survived, and to find animals if people hadn’t been able to get home before the roads were closed. The two of them coordinated efforts to find, feed, and get water to many of those non-human beloveds.
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
We understand that Fire is necessary for life. Yet destruction is also part of Fire’s life, and from a human perspective that can be devastating. May we as humans, as witches, learn to work with Fire as an ally, but never be lulled into forgetting its wild power.
*********
For a beautifully written and painful look at the Valley Fire and some of it’s implications for humans read Elizabeth Creeley’s September 18th DINNSHENCHAS blog post “What I Saw at the Fair: The Valley Fire part 2” at https://dinnshenchas.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/what-i-saw-at-the-fair-the-valley-fire-part-2/
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
As a witch in the Reclaiming Tradition I have spoken/sung/danced some version of Fire invocations, or witnessed Fire invocations in some form or other, countless times. It is part of our practice of creating the Sacred Space in which we do magical work for healing and justice as solitaries, covens, or communities. We Ground, Cast a Circle, then open our awareness to and welcome our Elemental Allies: Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Center/Spirit, before we do anything else.
My Grandma Peggy was always terrified of Fire. Her fears were not irrational, much of her life was spent in the dry mountains of Northern California and from the mid 1940s through the mid 1960s she and my Grandpa Ed ran the French Gulch Hotel, a bar and restaurant built in 1885 of wood with questionable retrofitted electrical wiring that could have easily gone up like a tinder box. My Grandpa Ed was the Chief of the volunteer French Gulch firehouse (itself a flammable shack housing one old firetruck). The only source of water in case of fire was the creek running through town. Amazingly in the entire time Grandma Peggy lived in French Gulch both her home and business were spared the periodic wildfires that happen in those mountains. But, after she had moved out of town in the 1980s, the house she shared with Grandpa Ed did burn down.
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
My Grandma Winnie never voiced a fear of fire, although she lived through the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire as a toddler. That fire completely destroyed her poor, densely-packed, immigrant neighborhood “South of the Slot.” In 2004, many years after her death, the shack she shared with my Grandpa Russell in French Gulch burned to the ground during the French Fire. All four of my grandparents’ graves were somehow spared in that fire as it raced up and down the hills.
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
The French Fire in 2004 that burned my grandparents’ shack, tore through French Gulch jumping from one side of the creek to the other, leaving a random pattern of burned lots and surviving houses. Sometimes unexpected good can come out of the devastation of fire. My father had been courting the local school teacher for two years before that fire. She, with just cause (given my father’s wild early years), had been holding him off. But when the fire threatened her home, he helped get her horses and other animals out over the backside of the hills since all the roads were blocked. He had worked with his father (my grandpa Russell) in the 1940s and 50s packing tourists and hunting parties into those hills by horse train, so he knew how to finesse the steep slopes and ravines and come out safe on the other side. After that she relented and they lived happily together until his death a decade later.
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
All the California Mountain Ranges are prone to wildfires: The Sierra Nevada on the eastern border, the Coast Ranges on the western edge, the Cascade Range in the northeast corner, and the Trinity Alps where I’m from in the northwest. California, thirsty and dried out from multiple years of drought, has again been on fire this summer. The Valley Fire in Lake County near where I now live in Sonoma County claimed over 1,200 homes and over 76,000 acres of habitat for other red blood and green blood beings. As the devastation raged I watched with tears as my friend Megan and her husband, Brandon, coordinate through Facebook and texts with their neighbors, helping alert folks to evacuate. Because Brandon works in law enforcement and could get back in before others, Megan fielded hundreds of messages, again coordinating with her husband to let folk know if their homes burned or survived, and to find animals if people hadn’t been able to get home before the roads were closed. The two of them coordinated efforts to find, feed, and get water to many of those non-human beloveds.
“Fire, you animate every atom with the spark of life. Fire, you regenerate the land and release seeds from their cones. Fire, you heat our homes and inhabit our hearths. Fire, you fill us with passion for ourselves, for our lovers, for activism and justice. Fire, be with us now in this sacred circle.”
We understand that Fire is necessary for life. Yet destruction is also part of Fire’s life, and from a human perspective that can be devastating. May we as humans, as witches, learn to work with Fire as an ally, but never be lulled into forgetting its wild power.
*********
For a beautifully written and painful look at the Valley Fire and some of it’s implications for humans read Elizabeth Creeley’s September 18th DINNSHENCHAS blog post “What I Saw at the Fair: The Valley Fire part 2” at https://dinnshenchas.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/what-i-saw-at-the-fair-the-valley-fire-part-2/
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