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Elder Mother - Hylde Moer
sambucus sp.
It's hard to talk around my big toe. Or maybe it's my heal? Either way, I have my foot firmly lodged in my mouth and the words are as clumsy and as sticky as primordial ooze because it's about that far I’m going back here. Back at least six million years when the salmon swam fresh and young and bright buttoned eyed up the river under the reflection of the dancing triad of elder trees, red, black and blue. And all those other Old Ones. Holding forth. When the salmon spawned and danced for death and the fauns and dryads frolicked about in celebration of growth and the fey wrung mysteries of mischief and the Elder swung open the gates to and fro and looked upon the nature of things and held her stag pipes upwards. I'm going back to when the old magic was the only law and all knew their nature irrelevant of the dance they played around it. It's a different thing to know the laws before you be breaking them, rather than just for the breaking in of itself, there’s a reverence in that thats far removed from the politics of church and that's what the old magic speaks of and what we’ve long forgotten. And here I find myself, with elder looming large pushing in the telling, so, while I’m birthing this little offering of something that's lost behind the big mist of my modern mind I have to tell you, it's not a graceful or dignified thing. Rather like the time I was six and doing forward rolls on the living room floor in my nightie and my mother gently told me to go and put me knickers on. It doesn’t matter how innocent you are, there is still the nature of the thing and us poor gibbering monkeys, not wanting to look in its wrinkled, brown-rimmed eyeball. And I would like to blame it on our hairless speech or dexterous thumbs or just the fact that we are here to up-end the whole applecart but either way we still have the blessings, we still have the endless love of the wise, these ancient keepers of the lore, these million-year-old sentiment beings, that somehow keep tolerating us, so on I goes with my story of Mother Elder despite feeling like an ant describing the statue of liberty, the perspective being very skewed by what I know and I so small in this tale. And Elder, well she just be insisting on what I am.
As a diaphoretic and febrifuge Elder is a master conductor of ending and beginnings. To marry the whole, Elder brings to the surface that which is hidden in the depths of my being, opening up the periphery for release, perspiration and dispersion. I can let go though it often creates a stink.
As I am particularly hard-headed (so good for doing stuff my way!) my first real interaction with Elder was incredibly unpleasant. I was in a room full of folks meditating with the plants and at the end of the morning we did a quick round with Elder and passed around the elderflower tincture. Oafff. As soon as I closed my eyes I saw her righteous annoyance, heard a hurummpff and a verbal yell “ Well Finally!” and I saw her, as if for the first time and then bang, she took me straight to my birth and the incensed rage I was experiencing, right then, as a little baby, a child just born, who somehow fully understood that my mother wouldn’t keep me and that that was what I was entering into. The whole experience took about 30 seconds and I sat, eyes closed, shell-shocked, until we broke thankfully for lunch where I could stumble off, and finding a blessed swing set I rocked back and forth, weeping for that rage and that baby, who, up until then, had a detached recognition of being born, which started with a happy adoption, that I had, my whole life been on peaceful terms with. It began to become a little more complex. A little richer. A little more me.
And I understood that baleful glare that I had encountered from Elder. That angry “well finally” as I finally saw her. For my whole hippy happy nature loving good recycling privileged person life I have been best pals and buddies with elder, knowing the daily gossip, boasting about her european qualities as a newbie herbalist in america and how back in the old country, where we grew up chugging down her cordial (the best!) and tossing fried flower pancakes around like frisbees, how she was, like, a really meaningful part of my life. Even though in my heart I had felt her sigh as she watched my efforts to harvest her flowers so the kids and I could make soda, felt the endurance as I talked about respecting the plants and saying thank you while breaking branches and not once knowing myself of her, from her. She had witnessed and tolerated me playing at being a part of this earth, my earnest, yet such bloodless shallow gestures - such good intentions - and now finally, finally I had shown up with just a scent of respect and authenticity and she got to have her say.
I was devastated and also wholly enlightened. Plant communication is unmistakable, shakes your cellular interceptions and changes you irrecoverably. Talking to the Other in this “only us” world hits you beyond mind. And my early rage revealed just explained so fucking much about the following of my life. In this world of glamour, the truth is such a gift. And believe me I now approach slowly and no she is not my friend. Take this lesson and learn it well says Elder. Staff and rod, severity and mercy, cycles and mystery and I can barely get the nerve to look her in the eye, knickers or not, often preferring to sit small and quiet, eyes closed and body alert and at her bidding. Yes Mam.
Elder opens up all channels of elimination - Matt Wood
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