The Heart of Tao | Weeknotes 12/22

Magic lists, herbal hot chocolate, bean runes, Meri Lywd, sacred music, biblical angel trivia, and ritual sweatpants.

Comrades—

First, apologies for the missed week! We traveled into NYC for some in-person Yule rituals. Please accept this consolation prize of us in ritual garb (not pictured: Jess’s ritual sweatpants)—

It has been a busy couple of weeks: B got a new tattoo, J got a new job as a project manager (thank you, those of you who intended). In light of the busyness (and the project managing) we found ourselves incredibly grateful for the magical technique of the list.¹

This was not our first time heading to do ritual in NYC, but we’ve gotten good enough at it by now to have a standard packing list. Travel can be disorienting, the city can be disorienting, and ritual can certainly be disorienting. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in the experience and forget that you, as a human, need snacks, snow boots, and your MTA card—let alone incense, offerings, tarot cards, and the emergency dragon’s blood.

This is the gift of the list. Nothing gets forgotten or left out. Gift lists are particularly powerful. Not just ensuring that your niece gets her Uncle Iroh toy (do not read my niece this article before Christmas, I will find you), but that everyone feels included. They build relationships and connections. Hilariously, Jess and her husband Andie did not make gift lists for each other, and ended up getting each other the exact same gift (an axe). At least now splitting firewood will be a family activity :-)

More than just establishing a signal in the noise, lists offload the cognitive burden. It’s easy to forget that all our thoughts don’t have to live in our heads, and sometimes trying to cram them all in there really isn’t worth the effort. 

Wishing you the most unhurried and unharried of holidays,

Jessie & Brian.

(J&B in ritual … or a french manuscript on making gunpowder, you decide)

Earth

J’s new DIY rune set: dried fava beans & sharpie.

J’s favorite herbal hot chocolate recipe: 

2 parts raw cacao powder

1.5 parts chamomile

1 part peppermint

0.75 part cinnamon

0.35 part star anise

Bring equal amounts milk & water to a simmer in a saucepan. Pour the hot liquid over your cocoa mix. Steep 5-10 minutes, then add 1 tsp honey and a dash of cayenne powder to each individual serving. -J

A surprisingly positive take on Ragnarok from Rune Rasmussen. -B

Source. The Mari Lwyd.

Sea

For the solstice, I found myself revisiting this Nick Drake classic. -B

Ossipee, New Hampshire.

This talk on Paganism in Roman Britain from Ronald Hutton has some amazingly touching moments of connection to the past, as well as an absolute schoolboy delight in the many gods of things, including the god of dung.² This one brought to our attention by the bewitching Brenna :) -B

Sky

The Yuletide Carol of the Season from our dear friend Tim.

Two very different albums of sacred music that have been moving me: Ukrainian Village Voices and Lost Voices of the Hagia Sophia. -J

B’s new tattoo.

Biblically accurate angels trivia quiz. (I got 5/9) -J (B got 6/9 but only because he really likes Ophanim).

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The Heart of Tao

by Kenneth Morris

There where the brook comes down in a white cascade

From the gloom of the pines to the green of the mountain glade

Suddenly I was aware of the heart of Tao.

I was making a poem–simple thoughts enow—

And choosing the simplest words—and then, somehow

There where the brook comes down in a white cascade,

At the sound of a lute blown down through the pine-tree shade,

The spirit within me thrilled and stirred and swayed,

And suddenly I was aware of the heart of Tao.

First there was one came bent, with the sweat on his brow,

Bearing a load ‘twixt low-hung bough and bough

There where the brook comes down in a white cascade;

And then, that one, unseen, in the wood who played;

And then—this one who heard, in the woodland strayed

Was suddenly wholly aware of the heart of Tao…

But suppose I had only striven and searched and prayed,

And not gone forth where my fancy led me—how

Should I so have suddenly come on the heart of Tao

There where the brook comes down in a white cascade?

1. If you, dear reader, don’t find list making magical enough, you can always make it in runes, the Theban alphabet, or Enochian, we’re just not responsible for the consequences.

2. Sterculinus. You’re welcome.