Flashes of Insight

SPIRIT’S STORY SPIRIT SPIR BEAR, BEAR and Tonka Too 
Date: 5/12/2008 1:01:23 AM Eastern DaylightTime

  I have been waiting for quite some time to tell the story of my beloved dog Spirit. Interesting too that at this time I am dogless for the first time since I found Luna in 1973.  Actually there was a span of 2 years after Luna passed that I was dogless but for most of my adult life, I have been graced with wonderful canine company. Tonight is also the eve of Spirit/Bear’s passing on Mother’s Day some 7 years ago.
I am now feeling ready for another dog in my life and am hoping that Spirit/Bear will feel that it is a good time to return to me on this side of the veil. (read on…)

Aphrodite and Oshun/Imbolc and Beyond
 

I like to celebrate the coming of the Sacred Love Goddesses starting on Feb 2 with Imbolc,Candlemas,Brigid’s Day and so on.
Mainstream culture likes to deify St. Valentine and give this bloodthirsty slayer of women the one day of the year that Love is supposed to Rule. How totally bizarre  and how the hell did he manage to grab that gig? I could research but let’s just chalk that up to the  badass patriarchy.
This just does not work for me at all so for years, I have celebrated  the time between Imbolc and Feb 14 or so as the Feast of Aphrodite. During this time one can delight in all manner of love rituals [as long as they are non-manipulative] and generally pump up your love groove. (read on…)

The Wise Woman’s Tarot by Flash Silvermoon

I will be offering a new feature for Pagan Ways. Grannymoon has asked me to do a 3 month reading for all the signs of the zodiac so that each of you can keep up with your shifts and changes during these ‘interesting times’.
I will be using my Wise Woman’s Tarot so I thought that it would be best to give you a little taste of the Divinatory Tool itself;
Meet The Wise Woman’s Tarot…….

The Wise Woman’s Tarot is a multicultural, matriarchal book with colorful companion deck. It celebrates the global female lineage in 78 powerful images. (read on…)

Modeling New Ways of Being-The Annual Wise Woman’s Festival Preparing for the 5thYear April 4-6!
by Flash Silvermoon

These are very exciting times and it has never been more important for us to start living into a higher consciousness.
The Annual Wise Woman’s Festival is one of those experiences of living into a such a consciousness and space that grows year after year in empowerment,safety,and deep sharing by all.
Its hard to find words to describe the intensity and subtlety of the uplifting feelings we enjoy at the WWFest.It is always a heartwarming empowering experience of soul connection for many with their sisters, lovers and friends. (read on…)

Luna the Amazing Amazon Shepherd by Flash Silvermoon

My mare,Chinamoon has her head through the window of the computer room hoping that she can score a few more pears since its almost her 10th birthday.
My new kitten Star is fast asleep and cuddled up against the small of my back on the chair behind me while brother Red is on the floor curled in a ball. All in all,a most happy moment here with the Moonhaven Menagerie.
When I was at the Coffeeshoppe today, I ran into an old friend Steve, the Chiropractor who had once adjusted my dog Astarte.
He actually asked about China’s earlier incarnation,Luna, who is the Star of this chapter. Steve didn’t know anything about China but remembered how my ex and I would drive Luna around on a bean bag chair in the back of the car during her declining years with degenerative myolopathy. I had forgotten that he had known Luna because very few of my friends now remember her so the serendipity and timing of this walk down memory lane was quite amazing (read on…)

Around the early seventies it became apparent to me that my lesbian feminsim also needed a spiritual path that was congruent. I had been reading and studying about Witchcraft and for everything that I read this seeemd to fit my more anarchistic ways. Not a lot of rules there and they honor a Goddess hmmm sounded good to me and yet I was yet to have a real circle of women who believed as i did and I longed for that.
I remember that I first heard of Z when she was arrested in LA for reading Tarot Cards, or so they said. At the time I was also making my living on the East Coast reading Tarot Cards and starting women’s Kozmic Consciousness groups beacuse I didn’t think they would buy Coven’s just yet.

Sept 1975 NYC in the loft of artist Carol Clemments, I actually met Z and we shared Tarot readings on the floor over boxes.By this time,Z had become my Hera for standing up against the establishment to try to actually have Church status like the other religions and not have to pay taxes, she was very savvy and that was of course why they came down so hard and what led to her First US Tour to market The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows..hence my meeting her in NYC.

(read on…)

How Far Out of the Broom Closet and into the Streets

Part of my “outness” is just me being me and if that helps another to be themselves more then part of my job is done whether as a witch,a lesbian,a feminist,,whatever closet you inhabit, I suggest that you feel around for ways to be more comfortable,more you whatever that is, , to test those boundaries and expand them and bust out as much as is comfortable and then in time push a little further.

My job is being a Priestess and that for me is my full time job which includes Divination, Astrology, Sacred Stones, Vibrational Healing,Animal Communication, teaching playing music and on and on so I am fortunate to love all that I do and not need to occupy a closet for any of these things.

Of course at times I have paid a price for my freedom and this was my choice to make.

(read on…)

A piece that was excerpted for a book published on Feminist activists of the early 70’s it is written and editted by Barbara Love who wrote Sappho Was a Right On Woman. Might Have been called Women Who Changed the World 1970-75

Their editted version of this article is infinitely more tame.

I entered the Women’s Movement in 1970 from the left, I was very involved with the Anti-war Movement for several years before as well as Civil Rights. I went to Woodstock in ‘69 and I was very much a child of the ’60’s. a child of Woodstock Nation.

However, my politics of peace and love got very radicalized after being teargassed in DC during some Moratorium marches and did major organizing for May Day ‘70. I also participated earlier in the Poor Peoples March when it came through my College.

In 1970, I ran for Miss Trenton State College in NJ as a feminist and blew the doors off the competition. All the papers interviewed me for weeks and the show actually brought together most of the radicals of the day from a tri state area. It was a riot and the Dean tried to arrest me for inciting one but I helped contain the experience to a political event and also made sure that interviewers and other protesters only put down the beauty pageant, not the women in them!

(read on…)

Speaking as an out and proud lesbian of some 36 years, I agree that sexuality is not necessarily lesbian or straight or even BI but a continuum and we all fall in at different places on that line.
Nothing is WRONG except being what you are not.

Only you in your deepest places know this and can make your choices. One thing though that we must take into consideration in this discussion is that we live in a society of Compulsory Heterosexuality and sometimes fear and even economics plays a huge part in a woman’s choices.

(read on…)

Flash Silvermoon Interview..for Pagan Pathways
Date: 10/2/2007 8:36:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Thank you so much for agreeing to share with us! Please do tell us about yourself and feel free to be as in depth as you like!We would love to print your picture too!

ok I will pick a couple for ya

Where were you born and raised and what are some of your earliest memories?

I was born in the presence of my mother on March 18, 1950, in Jersey City, NJ. I am quite sure that my room must have faced the Statue of Liberty because I have been a freedom fighter for as long as I can remember. They tell me that after singing Happy Birthday to me on my first birthday, I smiled and put my fist through the cake!

My first Feminist action took place in kindergarten at 4 yrs of age. I had been participating in the rhythm band for a couple of weeks just waiting for my turn to play the snare drum. I had clicked the claves and clanged the triangle but that magic moment when my sticks would strike the skin of the DRUM was awaiting me that morning or so I thought. I was not raised to think that girls were inferior to boys so imagine my surprise when I had the sticks taken from my hands and was told that girls could play anything but this and that I could go to the back of the line again.

My little egalitarian heart was breaking but I screwed up my courage to tell the teacher that this was unfair and was there something else that I could do during this time as I didn’t want to be a part of something so unfair. She told me that I could fingerprint and so I stood in the corner for the rest of the year and finger-painted during the rhythm band time.
This theme and connection with the drums has followed me all the way through adulthood and today am appreciated as an accomplished percussionist. (read on…)

5. SAVOR YOU LIKE CHOCOLATE

I want to savor you like chocolate , baby
     So let those flavors flow…
I want to savor you like chocolate mama, so let your body go.
Well, we don’t need to rush…there’s so very much,
     so very much we can share, ooh, yeah…
I want to savor you like chocolate, baby, melting me into you.

Slowly like honey, our flavors blend,
     mocha dark & bittersweet
A taste so sublime I want it all of the time
     Ooh, baby, you’re so sweet.

Well, we can heat it up or play so very cool
Loving you all night is what I want to do
I want to savor you like chocolate so do me a favor…
     be my favorite flavor
Melting all over me, my favorite fantasy.
You into me.  Me into you,  Oh, my Goddess, what we gonna do.

I want to savor you like chocolate, so give me a taste
     there’s no time to waste.
So slowly go down …(I really mean it); Slowly go down…
I ain’t  fooling around, baby baby and slowly go down…with me.
Oh c’mon baby let’s savor it
* The Wise Woman’s Tarot - http://www.flashsilvermoon.com *

I definitely see patterns and planetary indicators of Queerness. I have lavendar written all over my chart with a Uranus/Cancer Asc.as a focal for my Tsquare to Sun/Moon/Mars.

I think a lot of Uranian,Aquarian,Plutonic/Scorpio energies can provoke some very sapphic behavior amongst women unless they have a strong Saturn pull that keeps them tied up because they want to follow the rules of society.

I did a wkshp 20 years ago on the Moon and Your Need for Nurturance. I had over 20 lesbians in my living room and so many of them had either strong Aquarius planets,especially Moon/Venus or planets in the 11th House or aspected by Uranus.

(read on…)

I have definitely been in my share of “Infamous Circles” so I will turn on the time machine to share space with you so to speak regarding a ritual referred to in Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon.I forget now exactly what the chapter was called, but it was the first pages of a chapter about a circle in Staten Island NY,might have been called New Witches or Pagans.

Anyway it was a most steamy summer night and it was a Full Moon if memory serves so I decided that we should do a bathing ritual as the women’s home had a beautiful big old bathroom with clawfoot tub. One by one ,crones first we each in turn got into the warm tub filled with flowers and aromatic oils to be adored and cleansed by our sisters. I was probably only 27 then or even younger. It was soooo beautiful and I remember my then lover Pandora playing her flute standing on the toileet seat, Kate Millett who was part of this first NYC Coven, The Amelia Earhardt Coven,initiated the first dip into the lovely waters and marvelled on how exotic it all felt.

(read on…)

        SACRED BLOOD
FLASH SILVERMOON C goddess tunes
under a Pisces full moon/lunar eclipse
[This is a chant and can be done as a round too]

SACRED………BLOOD   SACRED  BLOOD  2X
MOONTIME COMES   MOONTIME FLOWS
MOONTIME STOPS    MOONTIME GOES

WOMAN IS WHOLE….WOMAN IS WHOLE  2X
GODDESS IS NEAR     GODDESS IS HERE
SHINES LIKE THE MOON  SHINES LIKE THE SUN

SACRED BLOOD…………..SACRED BLOOD 2X

FROM THE WOMB TO THE TOMB 2X
SACRED LIFE   SACRED BREATH
SACRED BIRTH     SACRED DEATH

SACRED BLOOD       SACRED    BLOOD 2X

APHRODITE BREAKOUT Flash Silvermoon
C Goddesstunes Full Moon in Pisces/Lunar Eclipse 8/28/07
[sound like a Latin/Blues Funk raveup]

APHRODITE BREAKOUT
CHORUS-
Tonight is the night we’re gonna let it all come down Tonight is the night we’re gonna turn this world
around
See Aphrodite Breakout Aphrodite bring your lovin
home (read on…)