of her ancestors’ best-kept secret. One evening, just as that first new moon of spring was rising, she set her mind to seek out that particular sustenance she was craving. She left the warmth of her farmhouse bed, called into the night by the silvery and spectral beams of that milk-white sliver in the sky, passing through her well-tended garden and by her many quiet chicken coops and, before long, finding herself with mud-soaked feet at the edge of a fog-filled grove. In this place, the grandmothers say, the trees had eyes. Juniper could sense the wild all around her, mist-made fingers caressing her face and hissing spirits singing softly into her ears.
Some of the trees watching her now were the kind she was named for, the holy tree of cleansing and renewal to those ancestors she had never known. Others were knotty oaks and naughty pines, holy ash trees with spidery branches, and mourning willows, but all bent to see the seemingly sure-footed maiden moving to stand at the grove’s center. Anyone who had been watching — if anyone would have dared to watch such a clearly sacred and solitary ritual — would have seen Juniper raise her arms moonward, stand stone still at the center of that place, and sprout shaggy greens from her head. They would have seen her skin gray over into bark, her head roll slightly to the side, and her eyes glaze over to become blueberry clusters. They would have seen her white dress pierced through and through by branches, and they would have seen a magick-starved woman turn into a lush and full-grown juniper tree.
But no one was watching, and Juniper’s experience of that night was far different from what it might have looked like to an outsider without the ethereal sight.
Yes, she did reach her arms toward the moon, but all the while her roots were sinking deep, stretching low and wide, meeting and intertwining beneath the soil with the other trees’ ancient memories. The other trees did not look at all to her like bark-and-leaf, knot-and-needle forest dwellers, not any longer; she could see them for what they were in that moment: mothers and grandmothers come to meet her here, disguised as those earthly deities who were, like our foremothers, too often taken for granted.
There were dozens of them, moving toward her now, slowly and with much love in their eyes. She recognized so few of them, though she saw her face in their faces. No names had she for these matrilineal wisdom keepers, but they indeed knew her. Juniper sensed, in that moment, that each of these wild hearts held a piece of that secret that eluded her, a particular line in the story that, until this very moment, she thought was hers and hers alone to know and to share, if she had anyone she cared to share it with.
A hooded and kind-faced crone stepped forward and pulled two small and spotted eggs from the thick woolen fabric she was draped in; one of the eggs smelled rotten and was dull in color, while the other was so vibrantly blue that it glowed with an otherworldly spirit.
“Take them both, child,” the hag prompted. “This one is my grief over a babe lost too young, and this one is my love of the sea.”
Move about the space now, and recover two objects that symbolize these ancestral pieces, placing them in your basket.
The chicken-witch took the gifts with great care, nodding in gratitude.
“And here,” another grandmother stepped forward, dressed as a chaste and holy woman and holding two pink-marble eggs, one cracked and one whole. “This is my devout discipline that might have killed me sooner” — she handed Juniper the cracked egg — “had I not harbored such a wild lust beneath my overstarched skirts.” Grinning, the old one handed her other egg, and it gave Juniper’s hand the slightest shock when she touched it.
Recover two more objects that reflect these ancestral pieces, placing them in your basket.
“Don’t dare forget these,” offered another ancestor, a gender-fluid beloved wearing jewels of bone and shell. “This is my heartbreak when I left my land.” They held a bleeding egg up to their cheek and christened it with their tears. “And this...” They paused, opened their mouth wide, and a blue-quartz egg rolled from their tongue. “This is the Witchcraft that healed me.”
Again, recover two more objects, and name them what you like.
A seemingly faceless granny tapped her on the shoulder, and the chicken-witch gasped at the sight of her.
“Fear not, child,” the shadow beneath the hood ordered. “I bring you the deep mysteries of your people.” She handed her an egg made of bone with a skeletal hand. “The oldest medicine I have.” She pulled another egg from up her sleeve. “And the long-vision.” The spectral crone gave her still one more egg, a bark-skinned thing that seemed to be a seed, and then the whole of her vanished into thin air.
Recover three more objects, and name them what you like.
To Juniper, it seemed only a fateful, teary-eyed evening spent beneath a new moon, receiving long-kept wisdom and family knowledge, whispered slowly in her ear by one woman after another, handed to her as endless gifts of egg after egg. But to anyone living in the fast-paced world she had left, many moons would rise and set over this grove of mismatched trees set ’round the young, rebel juniper in the center.
“Such is the work of the spring,” the last grandmother mused, handing the chicken-witch the last two of her gifts. Juniper’s skirts were heavy now, weighted with a bounty of family secrets, cronely art, deep wounds and certain regrets, and hidden love affairs and, most of all, the wild inheritance that had been hers to claim all along. “This is a deep betrayal by those who claimed to love me.” She held a humble and misshapen shell, the insides long leaked out, and soft whimpers and mewling sounds came from the pitiful thing as she handed it to Juniper. “That heart wound was mine, but it’s yours to heal, my great-great-granddaughter. And this” — she pulled a large and spotted egg from her pocket — “this is my resilience, my refusal to stay down for too long; now it’s all yours, as it’s always been.”
Recover the final two objects and rest your body now, humming softly with basket full and heart tender.
Now, some of the lusty grandmothers who tell this tale say that as soon as she took that last egg, the chicken-witch woke warm in her bed, laughing at the bizarre dream of treespeak and egg-bearing grandmothers, but that the very next day Juniper left her farm sanctuary and went into the world, celebrating the spring at a debaucherous garden party where she met a lover who would become friend, who would become partner.
The lusty grandmothers who harbor a love of the traditional fairy tale end the story like this:
The chicken-witch remained in that grove, a lovely young juniper tree to anyone who ventured to that hallowed ground, for many years, though to her it seemed only a single evening, until a sacred hunter with a warm heart saw her for what she was: a healing woman who spoke the language of the trees, who held a treasure trove of wisdom in her skirts, who needed no saving but rather to wake with a heart made more whole by blood and belonging.
The Garden Hag goes quiet then, recovering from a story well told, and you ponder the treasures gifted you, on this fateful evening as this Season of Tender Roots opens itself to you like a wildflower beginning to bloom.
Opening Practice: Your Spring Initiation
There is much joy to be had under the first new moon of spring, to be sure; so, too, is there much healing to be done, much bleeding on the ground to feed the roots. You find yourself on a precipice of some great, unnamed thing here, and your inner hag is bidding you soften those hard psychic edges a bit. Surrender. Lay your winter-frozen flesh bare on the ground and welcome that annual melt.
Speak
