Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Yule/2009 Log

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Because I'm TOTALLY incapable of doing anything on time we didn't get around to creating our Yule Log until December 31st. (It was eventually christened "2009 Log" with only three hours left in the year. Fuck, at least it got DONE, right?)

High and stuffed up with head colds, Italics and I spent the remaining minutes of the fading year parked on the sofa playing video games and downing shots of homemade raspberry vodka. I think constructing the log was the most "magic" thing we did on the full moon, blue moon and lunar eclipse of the 31st.

(I was SO prepared to become the Whore of Babylon that night, but infectious illnesses thought otherwise. (FINE THEN, UNIVERSE, FINE. BUT DON'T THINK THIS SACRED WHORE WILL BE AT YOUR BECK AND CALL THE SECOND YOU FINALLY DECIDE YOU NEED ME TO PLAY THE GREAT WHORE.))

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Our Yule Logs tell stories. They're like a diary entry, or an old photograph that jogs your memories. Each log is constructed out of things we've picked up during our adventures throughout the year, and each component used, no matter how mundane seeming, has some sort of significance.

This year the log itself came from a semi-local kirkyard (churchyard) and cemetery. It was one of our FIRST official outings in the new car by ourselves, and to celebrate our freedom we simply took off into the country, hoping to find ancient monuments, standing stones, decrepit churches and forgotten graveyards along the way.

The yard was undergoing some landscaping so when we arrived there was a small pile of perfectly cut wood from surrounding trees. We eventually left with two pieces - one large, proper log (above) and one smaller, sapling sized log (which was given as a gift to a friend). I'm 98% sure that they were/are yew (since we picked them up at the base of a row of yew trees), which in itself is quite special and fitting for their intended purpose.

We cut the greenery - cedar and ivy - from our own garden (I only managed to slip TWICE in the snow when waving my wildcrafting basket and cutting pliers around like a stoned, sick lunatic), and what wasn't used for the log eventually was placed on my kitchen altar. The green embroidery thread used to bind the branches to the wood was given to me by my mother-in-law (who, in turn, was given the thread by HER mother long ago).

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After initially laying down the foundation of the log (i.e., the evergreen) I panicked, suddenly realizing that we hadn't picked up anything remotely centerpiece-y. (Last year? Last year when we found our log we ALSO found a black metal spiral, and a golden plastic star - INSTANT FOCAL POINT!)

My salvation came in the form of a tongue-and-cheek "witch bottle" I had completely forgotten about that I threw together this past fall. Remember back in October when I was all "I FUCKED THE HORNED GOD OF THE FOREST AND ALL I GOT WERE THESE SEVEN LOUSY RABBITS!"? (No? You probably need to hit up RABBITS OUT OF THIN AIR.)

What prompted me to joke with the hunters was my miserable luck mushroom hunting. We originally went to the woods to hunt down fly agaric, but only managed to find two unremarkable boletes, a pine cone (that something threw at us from above) and part of a broken egg. When it become evident that the woods didn't want to share their red toadstools with me I gave up and funneled exasperation into outside forest sex. And the rest? The rest is history.

(Actually the rest is seven dead rabbits which were then skinned, decapitated and defooted for magical purposes (DUDE, WTF WOULD //YOU// DO WHEN THE HORNED GOD GIVES //YOU// SEVEN DEAD RABBITS AS A GIFT? THROW THEM TO THE CURB?) but you can read all about that in the journal entry mentioned above.)

Using delicate floral wire Italics carefully bound the two boletes and pine cone, and once an erect cock was formed (the two mushroom heads fell perfectly at the base of the cone) we added the ONE fly agaric we managed to find this past autumn and the discarded egg shell. By the time we wiggled in a cluster of dried rowan berries (from our tree out front that sits on the crossroads) we had the centerpiece I originally hyperventilated over.

The absolute BEST part of this log? (Other than it being the nicest one we've ever created?) When I accidentally bumped into it and knocked it off its crab pedestal (crabs are a big juju animal for Italics, which is why it's carrying his St. George and the Dragon ritual fire poker and the log itself) about twenty seeds spilled out of the pine cone. Come Spring I'll be planting seeds that came from our Yule/2009 Log, how awesomely magic is that?

(I know this picture is hella blurry, but it's the only close up of the focal point I have. If you look at a larger version of the image you can easily make out the flecks of white on the dehydrated toadstool.)

Below are two images of 2008's Yule Log, but I'm not going to bother going into detail about them since there's an entire entry dedicated to their story. If you're interested in learning about potato thievery and seeing frosted Scottish landscape you can check out the entry YULE LOG '08.

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