Bobby's First Post

This is an indifferent picture of me, Bobby. I don't photograph well, being black and all. You can see that I am quite a large and intimidating dog. I started out fairly small, but grew up to be nearly six pounds, more than that if I weigh in wet or just after dinner. You don't need to be scared, though--I don't bite, at least not what you would really call bite. A couple of times I have nipped at dim-witted human puppies who kept chasing me after I'd clearly told them to back off. A great fuss was made over this, but if you ask me I did them a big favor if the experience prevents them from trying the same thing on some pit bull with a short fuse.

I live with Mrs. D., and you can bet she would be D. for Dead by now, if it weren't for me. I keep us safe from passing dogs outside, and the raccoons and other urban wildlife that raid the garbage cans under the bedroom window at three in the morning. I chase away the vacuum cleaners and skateboards. I even keep a sharp eye on boys who look like the type to ride skateboards, even if they aren't doing it at the moment. All this keeps me busy a lot of the time, and when I get a break I like to play fetch or tug, or hide things and pretend I can't find them so Mrs. D. has to come get them for me.

People sometimes ask her if I am her familiar, which apparently means am I somehow involved with what she does in the back room sometimes, or what they get up to when people come over and they start moving furniture around and putting different stuff on the coffee table. I give no attention to any of this, however. It simply diverts her attention from its right and proper object, me. They like to stick me away in the crate or the bedroom for these events, but I've figured out that if I lie low and hide while things are getting started, they are likely to forget about me and leave me alone. I generally do come out when they start on the food, but they don't seem to have anything very tasty on these occasions. If she wants me for a familiar, she should lay in some chicken or something.

Mrs. D. is not the smartest chipmunk in the tree. She can't hear well, for one thing, and she can hardly smell a thing. She also has a lot of very dumb ideas about leashes, and that crate, and little outings to vet. But she's the one who dishes out the food around here, as well as most of the other comforts and diversions, so as a general rule I just go with her program. She does most of the talking, but I may be checking in now and then if I think any of her remarks require back story or clarification.

I see that it was still February when I said it was the Full Moon in March. But there is a three-day orb for the full moon, according popular Pagan custom, so it should not matter much which day I noticed it. Although the old man who first taught me the Craft did not believe this. "Either the moon is full or it isn't," he said.

There technically is only a precise and fleeting moment when it's truly full, not nearly enough time for all the things Witches do about it. I suppose he meant either it looks really full or it doesn't, but that is a subjective and variable perception, like the quickening of a child.

I found Yeats' "A Full Moon in March," though not my paper about it. Here is the end, which I remember having to deliver in a monotonous atonal chant. The director wanted to do it the way Yeats intended it. Yeats was not much of a playwright, and even less of a director. And even for poetry, he did considerably better on many occasions:

Why must those holy, haughty feet descend
From emblematic niches, and what hand
Ran that delicate raddle through their white?
My heart is broken, yet must understand
What do they seek for? Why must they descend?

For descecration, and the lover's night.

I cannot face that emblem of the moon
Nor eyelids that the unmixed heavens dart,
Nor stand upon my feet, so great a fright
Descends upon my savage, sunlit heart.
What can she lack, whose emblem is the moon?

But desecration and the lover's night.

Delight my heart with sound; speak yet again.
But look and look with understanding eyes
Upon the pitchers that they carry; tight
Therein all time's completed treasure is:
What do they lack? O, cry it out again

But desecration and the lover's night.

So it's about descration, not purification. Or maybe that's just one of the things that Witches turn inside out, along with darkness and light, God and Devil, and with black cats and toads and spiders all being good luck. And thirteen a fortunate number, a full coven. Which Jesus of Nazareth had, actually. It only came to be thought unlucky because there was one who betrayed him, which is not our problem. Purification and desecration could be the same thing, depending on who you ask, and when.

The Full Moon in March, 2010

The full moon that falls in Pisces, Maiden Moon, or the Chaste Moon, good for spells of cleansing and purification, and an auspicious time for initiations.

Also the name of an obscure verse play by William Butler Yeats, in which I acted when I was in college a long time ago and then wrote a paper about. I turned this paper in with only slight modifications for three different courses, something I ding my own students for now if I know they did it. I don't remember what the paper was about, and I don't think I ever really knew what the play was about, but I got an A all three times, and Mrs. Drinkwalter went to college in the days before grade inflation, mind you, when an A was up there in the narrow right end of a bell-curve.

Be that as it may, tonight's a good night for a cleansing bath in burdock--wrap bits of the root in muslin and make your bath into one big tea-bag. And if any unwanted entities or energies seem to be hanging around, clean house and leave onions and garlic about to discourage them.