The Juniper Way & Some Changes Afoot

A year or so ago, I wrote here about one of my very favorite books, Wise Child, by Monica Furlong. Those ramblings sum up rather well my adoration for the wisdom, the wildness, the strange beauty, of that slim book. Since around that time, a little phrase, "the Juniper Way"  has hung about my heart and mind, my feet and my hands like a guiding light. I can't articulate precisely what walking the Juniper Way means, but it is surely a way, as in the Taoist concept of the term. It is inspired by the wise Juniper, mentor to Wise Child, who is a doran. 

Juniper and Wise Child, from the cover of Wise Child

Juniper explains to Wise Child that a doran is the true word for what she is (not a witch, which can mean many things, and only sometimes what doran means). She tells Wise Child that a doran is one who has found a way into seeing or perceiving, and that the word comes from the old Gaelic root dorus, an entrance, gate or way. When Wise Child asks what is seen or perceived by these dorans, Juniper tells her "the pattern," and I imagine she means the great web of connection between all beings, that hitches the bobcat to the brush rabbit to the oatgrass to the dry soil to the earthworm to the magma heart of the earth, and the other way too, from the bobcat to the fir tree its carcass will one day feed to the oxygen the fir tree makes and the moon far above. And us, too, tangled somewhere in the middle of it all. 

When Wise Child asks what dorans do, Juniper then tells her: Some of us do healing things, like me and my herbs. Some of us sing, or write poetry, or make beautiful things. Some don't do anything at all. They often stay in one place, and they just know [...] how things are" (83). 

Each day, she schools Wise Child subtly in the ways of the doran. They gather herbs together, process them, milk the goat, learn the stars, the old stories of the world, the lives of animals. They engage deeply, joyfully, and with great hard work, with the simple everyday tasks of life, from sweeping to root-scrubbing to wildcrafting. 

Pearly Everlasting along the Muddy Hollow Trail-- a native summer medicine!

I try to bring the wisdom of Juniper into my every day, and so I've decided to share a bit of that Way in a slightly more orderly manner here. If you all enjoy, I shall carry on with it! My plan is to have three to four different themes, under which I will post new thoughts and images two to four times per week (!). They will obviously be little bit shorter than usual! And yes, things are going to be much busier around here than before...

The categories are as follows: 

Catskin, by Arthur Rackham

Patchwork Coat of Muses— in which inspirations, learnings, and small scraps of my own stories are shared. This will generally mean passages from wonderful books, ranging from fiction to ancient, medieval & indigenous history, ecology, natural history, folklore, etc. The personal writings will generally come from my morning exercises, in which I often choose a painting (from all over the place) or symbol (from my Book of Symbols) to spin a small yarn. (Wise Child learning astronomy, geography, poetry, calligraphy...)

Hands & Hearth— in which makings of the hand, held within the sphere of hearth and home, are explored, from felting to embroidering, herbalism, spinning, plant-dyeing, rabbit-tending. Tea too. (Wise Child milking the cow, sweeping the floor, learning to weave and dye, tending the herbs in the garden)

Notes from the Wild Folk—in which the Songlines of the wild land beyond my back yard are explored, from the tracks of coyotes, brush rabbits and ravens to the fruiting of the manzanita bushes, and the language of wrentit, towhee, robin, & more, and their places in the great web of being. (Wise Child and Juniper wandering the woods and heath, wildcrafting and learning the ways of the animals and plants of the self-willed land beyond the fence.)

Elk Lines— in which I share more occasional explorations of my latest Wild Tales by Mail project, this rewilding of the Handless Maiden fairy tale. Insights into the process, excerpts and some illustrations will be posted like small windows into this strange writerly realm. 

And finally, I would like to invite all of you dear and blessed readers to come join the strange blue gathering-place of my new Facebook page for Wild Talewort. This was a very big and difficult decision for me. I have resisted and avoided this for many, many years. Sometimes I want to throw in the towel and flee from the entire internet, for the way it dissociates and deadens, distracts and destroys, as much as it also connects and empowers individuals, artists, activists, in ways never seen before. And yet I must thank it, that I can make my living and my path as a tale-weaver in this world. This is an enormous blessing, a great gift, and sometimes a very difficult way to walk, let me tell you! 

And yes, surely Juniper had no blog, no Facebook, no none of it, but this is the world in which I live, and you live, and I am trying to navigate it the best I can, because it is where we all seem to increasingly gather. I know it is a very complicated and fraught issue, but at the end of the day I say to myself—yes indeed, old girl, you & your love could run off alá Juniper to the woods and meadows happily for the rest of your days, making do, milking goats, growing herbs, tending fires, off the human grid and deep in the wild grid (no easy feat, I should, and also one that I do dream of, and see somewhere down the line, if a bit far off), and maybe one day the world will shift and these Internet webs will be no more, nor many of the structures we so depend on. But for now, I am a writer, and a tale-maker, and it is no fun writing stories for yourself, nor is that quite the point, not in my heart. So there you have it, and here I am, on the Book of Faces, trying very hard not to run away again with my tail between my legs in terror. Do come and say hello!

If you would like to read some truly brilliant and more in-depth thoughts about said Book of Faces (a term I borrowed from Rima Staines), come along and read her excellent post on the subject here. You won't regret it. 

And you can expect the first of these Juniper Way sharings tomorrow! 

Wise Child

When I was a girl of 8 or 9, my dear friend Elsinore and I spent long afternoons in the hedges and flowers of her mother's wild garden, in the yellow roses, the raspberries, the shade of pear trees, pretending to be dorans, inspired by the magnificent Juniper of Wise Child. We set up a camping tent in the overgrown place called, by her mother, the Secret Garden, flanked with roses, left the door open, went about the garden gathering various plants to make herbal potions. We whittled ourselves wands from some tree, I can't remember which, and rubbed them with rosemary to make them "magic." Those wands of ours felt full of some immense but inexplicable magic. They didn't do anything, but they felt alive to me.We took paper bags of her mother's wool, and a spindle each, and tried to spin, to no avail— we had little patience for it. We carved little wooden necklaces, polished them using her father's toolshed, set in turquoise, tiger's eye, amber, very proud of our careful creations. One day, when we could spin and weave, we were determined to make our own doran capes, woven with the colors of our spirits, the animals and plants of our hearts.

I am still getting there, the whole cape part— all the skills are in place except for the cape itself, which is quite a large undertaking once you've learned to weave, but have only yet made a slender scarf! Elsinore, on the other hand, studied textile design at the neighbor-sister school to the one where I studied creative writing and mythology (the latter not formally, but in all my class-choices), and has by now woven many a river or fox or meadow-inspired textile, if not a doran cape, precisely....

Hawthorn berries and below, tree

That longing to be like Juniper has never really left me; that wise and elegant vision of the doran, as described in Monica Furlong's beautiful book (a Gaelic word that describes a person most closely resembling a witch, in the whole earth-magic Druidic sort of way), was, in a sense, what I wanted to be when I grew up. For Juniper, on top of everything, is a weaver of tales full of magic and the inextricable web-wonder of all beings.

The vision of Juniper's home, up on a hill overlooking a little Scottish town, has never left me— neatly swept stone floors, a capacious and generous hearth, an attic with a loom woven with beautiful, naturally dyed colors, a little stable for goat and mule, a cool stone shed for drying and processing herbs, a wheel-shaped garden with the most everyday and useful medicinal plants the closest in, the dangerous and strong ones the furthest out, and beyond that the woods and meadows full of creatures, wild plants, ocean winds, the wholeness of life.

And the education of Wise Child, which is the central arc of the book, has always struck me as the most profoundly right mentoring I've ever encountered in the Western tradition. The mornings of hard simple chores that force the mind and the body into presentness, discipline and quiet, the study of stars and languages and myths, the gentle teaching via example of the uses of herbs, their handling, of the plants that live out in the woods and how to gather them, the animals and how to interact with them. So much time outside. This is Coyote Mentoring, people—the basis, I imagine, of nature-based learning throughout historical and geographical time and space. Wise Child absorbs through being by Juniper's side, by coming to metabolize and be nourished by Juniper's own relationship to the world.

Of course the whole thing is immensely cosy as well, which I can never resist, in case you hadn't noticed: the simple wholesome comfort of Juniper's home, fire, daily routines, milk goat, herbal preparations, walks. Ah...

I think I have all along held Juniper somewhere in my mind. She has in some way reached out her gentle hands and touched my interest in wool, in sheep, in spinning, weaving, felting, natural dyeing, in the Old Magic of the world, of wild animals, their tracks, their signs. Most recently, I have started to delve into the learning of medicinal plants, their ways, their names, their magic— oh my, what wonders, and Juniper has been there all along, gently guiding.

Juniper tells Wise Child that being a doran is about seeing the patterns of energy that connect and move through all beings, the great web of things. She says that doran is related to the word dorus, meaning an entrance or a way—into seeing the life moving through all creation. About halfway through the book she begins to teach Wise Child a strange and frustrating language the girl can't understand but must memorize, for nights on end. In a scene of great wonder, in a gathering of other dorans, Wise Child realizes what it all means:

"The singing continued, and to my surprise I began to know what The Language was about, not just the part we were singing now but the whole poem. It began with the praise and joy in all creation, copying the voice of the wind and the sea. It described he sun and moon, stars and clouds, birth and death, winter and spring, the essence of fish, bird, animal, and man. It spoke in what seemed to be the language of each creature. [...] It spoke of well, spring, and stream, of the seed that comes from the loins of a male creature and the embryo that grows in the womb of the female. It pictured the dry seed deep in the dark earth, feeling the rain and the warmth seeping down to it. It sang of the green shoot and of the tawny heads of harvest grain standing out in the field under the great moon. It described the chrysalis that turns into a golden butterfly, the eggs that break to let out the fluffy bird life within, the birth pangs of woman and of beast. It went on to speak of the dark ferocity of the creatures that pounce upon their prey and plunge their teeth into it—it spoke in the muffled voice of bear and wolf— it sang the song of the great hawks and eagles and owls until their wild faces seemed to be staring into mine, and I knew myself as wild as they." (p. 162-3)

If that doesn't sum it up, well...

Wise and beautiful creature. Since I was young, a little horse-rider, I've always longed that we could travel about thus, on these noble animals, hoofs clopping, to get from town to town.

Juniper tree, High Desert

If such things move you, do read Wise Child. It is full of much wisdom; it helps to re-root the feet in not only the wonders of ecology, but also of the magic that holds all things together, otherwise known as life and creation, the seed growing, dying back, growing anew.

Elder mother

Once you've got your hands on a copy, settle in with a strong cup of tea, go out under the trees, and enjoy. It is a touchstone to me, a yearly read.