The Homecoming

This is the tall, standard tulip, deep purple running to black.  They stand in perfect formation like sentinels at the gate, surrounded by the Great Crone’s garden in the Northwest corner of my yard.  Almost all of Her Roses in this garden are of deep, rich and dark hues.  In my tradition the Crone is associated with the colors black, enigmatic purple, and hypnotic crimson.  Her stones are moonstone and amethyst. Her flower is the Rose, Her scent patchouli, Her element Earth, Her quadrant North and Her power supreme.  In the words of another belief system She is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.   Moving between the light and the dark She is both midwife and guide to the next world.

Many Celts see Her as the Goddess Ceridwen, Keeper of the Cauldron of  Life and Death from which we all come and into which we all must go.  The Cauldron itself is an early version of the Holy Grail.  I see the Great Crone as Hecate, Goddess of the Dark Side of the Moon and Queen of the Witches.  It matters little.  All Goddess are one Goddess and appear to us as our soul perceives.  This is one of the gifts of the Crone. 

Knowing of this bequest and others when the Goddess was called the Whore of Babylon and banished from the minds of the people, we Pagans remained devout, keeping Her rites and tending Her fires .  We have been waiting a very long time for the world to open its mind again to the blessings of the Sacred Feminine. 

In a small way the promise of Her homecoming is reinforced every year in my garden.  When Winter subsides and the sanctity of floral beauty returns, Her ladies in waiting the Tulips break ground.  The black is the last to arrive and the longest to stay.  Thus, outside of the garden gate these sentinels watch and wait for the first Rose to bloom in the Goddess’ wake.