Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Bennachie, May 8th

Holy fucking shit am I fucking shattered. (<- Who would've thought changing the fucking guard was the spiritual equivalent of running a motherfucking marathon?) I'm not even going to fake an attempt at being cerebral today, so if you have any expectations of being intellectually stimulated today by yours truly prepare yourself for spectacular disappointment.

One of my major goals this Spring was to locate mature pussy willows (known as "goat willow" here) so I knew where to head next year to gather branches of catkins for our Hieros Gamos / Easter celebrations. (Because palms aren't indigenous to Ukraine the Eastern Orthodox church uses switch-like branches of pussy willow on Palm Sunday. But the use of catkins goes back further than my ancestors' conversion to Christianity. The pussy willow has been venerated for thousands of years in folk art and traditional designs because it was one of the first trees to produce growth after Winter. Pussy Willows heralded Spring, and even Christ and the saints above couldn't untangle the countless generations of association so it was appropriated, adopted and accepted by the Catholic church as a suitable substitution.)

Bennachie was my first choice of location for a few reasons:

1.) It's the highest point in this region, which made it religiously significant to the ancient people who lived here (it's littered with neolithic monuments, markers and stones). Bennachie's revealed archeological evidence of goddess worship, and the female association with the area's held on to the point that the profile of the hill - which resembles a woman's breast - is called "Mither Tap" (Mother Tap, Mother Pap).

Even though I haven't found any indication that the Veiled One - the Cailleach - was specifically worshiped/observed t/here, one commonality I've found with a lot of Cailleach stories is that She's almost always attributed to the highest point of a region. I know it isn't documented, but the Old Woman definitely resides up there making it Winter central. (If the goddess worship, tit-shaped (and named) appearance and neolithic reverence isn't convincing, then maybe the fact that macaulayite - the mineral that makes Mars red - is only found at the foot of Bennachie. <- We're talking about the whole motherfucking world.)

2.) At the Bennachie visitor center the children's "discovery" area clearly stated that pussy/goat willow grew at the base of the hill. (ROCK'N'FUCKING'ROLL, BABY.)

May 8th marked our inaugural Bennachie expedition (which was V. successful, by the way) and in proper Graveyard Dirt-style Italics and I snapped some pictures along the way so I could identify some plants, remember where the fuck the pussy willows grew, document any blossoming trees (I'm still on the hunt for a source of wild crabapples and soles) and record my very first Bennachie blowjob.

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An epiphyte! I really, really wanted this motherfucker but I didn't have the necessary tools to lift it from its home. (Normally I'd leave that sort've shit and just make frequent pilgrimages to visit it, but this tiny sapling is growing on a tree that's obviously being climbed, sat on and swung on so it's only a matter of time before someone accidentally - or deliberately - kills it.)

Next time we go walking around Bennachie I'm going to have to discreetly add a ziploc bag and spade to my usual "out for a walk!" repertoire. (Whenever we go "out" I sling my mother's black leather book bag - always filled with bottled water (for offerings), baby wipes, paper towels, string, a branch cutter, a box knife, candy (for offerings), sanitizing hand spray, plastic bags and my ritual scissors - into the car with us because when you're a witch you never know what sort've gifts the Universe is going to leave out for you.)

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Rather than wander up the hill we ambled along the base, following the babbling stream as it wound around the damp foothills. (I knew if there was any chance of catching a pussy willow, it'd be around water.) You don't even want to know the restraint I needed to exercise around this stream. My cardinal fire ass is a water lovin' fool; any flimsy excuse is a justification for getting wet.

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Looking up towards Mither Tap which, for part of the morning, was discreetly draped by low hanging mist.

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"Holy shit, there's a stone here?"

We wandered off the "discovery trail" (the shortest trail at 1km that partially loops around the base of the hill) in search of the Gouk Stone, something Italics didn't even remember despite countless trips to Bennachie as a child.

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The Gouk Stone! (Or, the Gouk Stane, if you want to be all, you know, old and traditional and Scottish.) Gouk means 'fool' or 'cuckoo', the later of which has rich representation in Celtic mythology (everything from heralding spring, much like pussy willows, the ability to prophesize and the uncanny talent of easily traveling back and forth between the world of the living and the world of the dead).

This particular stone has its own unique stories attached to it. Legend has it that the stane's visited by the very first cuckoo migrating back from Africa (thus announcing the arrival of Spring) and that a giant - Jock O' Bennachie - hurdled the boulder down from the hilltop above.

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If you look hella closely you'll see that words have been carved into some of the stones that make up the small dyke behind the Gouk Stane (you have to look a little less closely if you pop open the image and click through to the much larger original size). The words read "THE CALLING OF THE CUCKOO IS THE OTHER SIDE OF SPRING".

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Equisetum (commonly known as horsetail)! Holy shit, a blast from my childhood past! (<- There's a fair amount of indigenous flora I'm not familiar with, but there's an almost equal share of shit I can identify thanks to my wild days spent in Midwest America's version of hedgerows, forests and wetlands.)

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WHOOMP, THERE IT IS! Past their prime, but definitely catkins. We celebrated their discovery with baked potato chips, Rice Krispie treats and a blowjob.

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So we don't forget where we spotted the pussy willows (or the first place I gave Italics a blowjob on/near Bennachie).

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These beautiful lantern-shaped flowers will eventually grow into bilberries, which will eventually wind up in bottles of vodka and whiskey come Fall (Lammas). (<- Italics isn't much of a fruit eater, and I'm really into preserving and creating shit from scratch so homemade hooch is almost always on the top of our priority list when it comes to harvesting wild berries.)

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I couldn't get the EXACT image I was after (I think I probably should've been a LEETLE closer to the unfurling ferns), but my soggy jeans (from kneeling on the damp ground) said it was close enough.

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Bracken, How frond are we?: "Gold under bracken, Silver under gorse, Starvation under heather".

Bracken, positively primeval, right? In Slavic folklore the plant produces the legendary fern flower, which only blossoms one day of the year - the eve of (Ivan) Kupala Day. If you were lucky enough to find the mythic bloom you're supposed to be granted a motherfucking boatload of boons spanning from good health to luxurious riches.

I've also read that burning bracken heads is supposed to induce rain, but that's fairly new information (to me, anyway) which requires further investigation to better understand the fern/rain connection. (<- I'm relatively new to this "IDENTIFY AND LEARN THE LOCAL FOLKLORE OF INDIGENOUS PLANTS" game so you'll have to excuse my botanical enthusiasm.)