The Crossroads Writing Community
A soul flare for the word witches and spellcasters of language
Pointy Hat Press co-founder Kristin Lisenby and Word Witch Kate Belew are sending up soul flares to the writers, poets, and spellcasters of languages - The Crossroads writing community is back in a new form!
Starting in April, join Kristin and Kate for a six-month creative coven with monthly gatherings, rituals, prompts, folklore, and stories about the Witches of the Crossroads, their potent gardens, and sacred symbols.
Welcome to The Crossroads: The Luminous Months
Gather under the dark moon during the luminous months of April-September.
During this six-month series and program, Kristin and Kate hold space with you at the creative cauldron. By the glow of the bonefire, and under the watch of the guardian oak tree, together you’ll explore and tell the tales of the Witches, Goddesses, potent plants, folklore, and myth. These stories are fodder for your creative work. They are rituals to hold you in the shifting of the seasons. Together, you’ll celebrate the luminous months of the year, spring, which turns toward summer, and finally descends into autumn.
The dark moon is the keeper of many messages, secrets, and stories. And at the crossroads, a few of her favorite stories will be shared. Each class will contain a meditation, a discussion of sacred symbols, an exploration of the crossroads, a story retelling from the Goddesses and Witches of the dark moon, and an opportunity to write an invocation with guidance for each of these mythic figures. Read on to learn more about this seasonal offering.
The Schedule:
Wednesday, April 23rd, 7:00-8:30 pm EST, The Dark Moon of Aphrodite
Wednesday, May 21st, 7:00-8:30 pm EST, The Dark Moon of Maia
Wednesday, June 25th, 7:00-8:30 pm EST, The Dark Moon of Hera
Wednesday, July 23rd, 7:00-8:30 pm EST, The Dark Moon of Artemis
Wednesday, August 20th, 7:00-8:30 pm EST, The Dark Moon of Demeter
Wednesday, September 17th, 7:00-8:30 pm, The Dark Moon of Persephone
April: The Dark Moon of Aphrodite
In our first meeting at the Crossroads, we meet the Aphrodite and her garden of roses.
April’s moon is sacred to Aphrodite, a goddess of the rose. Like her flower, Aphrodite is hypnotic, resilient, and admired for her thorns. Instead of tears, white roses spring from her eyes, and red petals bloom from her wounds. Rose are plants of paradise, but they also embellish grief-stricken fields and the trials of our becoming. In Aphrodite’s garden, love stories become lessons.
Aphrodite wears many crowns, including Lady of the Sea, Bringer of Dawn, and Queen of Heaven. She is a guardian of swans, geese, doves, and the winged ones who keep our passions in flight. With scraps of lust and pleasure, Aphrodite makes nests within our dreams. It is she who awakens our intense, unseen, and mysterious desires. Aphrodite is also a mother, and alongside her son, Eros, she stands at the Crossroads of April’s dark moon.
Eros is a divine archer and a spirit of desire. He dutifully carries out his mother’s bidding, firing enchanted arrows at nymphs and shepherds, but when he’s tasked with punishing a mortal princess whose beauty threatens Aphrodite, Eros does the opposite. When Eros meets Psyche, he falls in love.
Psyche translates to ‘soul,’ and her union with Eros spawns a love story with an ancient knowing – our desires are more than cravings, they’re pieces of the soul.
May: The Dark Moon of Maia
Upon the altar of May, a question unfurls among the blooming flowers – what does it mean to be a part of nature?
Maia is a goddess of messengers and mountains, and during her sacred month, she gestures toward the springtime stars. They’re full of stories, she says.
As the eldest of the Pleiades, Maia is the Grandmother of Magic. She is a shapeshifter – sometimes dove-shaped or scorpion-skinned. In her battle with the hero Orion, she and her sisters are endlessly pursued by the huntsman. Orion is swift, but the Seven Sisters are the children of Atlas, a Titan of the Sky. Just before Orion grabs hold of Maia, the sisters exchange their arms for wings and escape to the Above.
As celestial markers, Maia and her starry sisters are harbingers of spring and the Beltane season. In our second Crossroads gathering, Maia arrives with the greening of the trees. Flowering in her arms is a May Day story, an invocation to the stars and the Bona Dea, and the mysteries unfolding all around.
June: The Dark Moon of Hera
Come the buzzing of June, the air thickens with prayers for Hera.
As a spirit of marriage and coupling, pleas for loyalty litter her summer altar. Devotion drips from her candles, and the goddess sifts through prayers delivered in her name. In the final days of her holy month, Hera stands at the Crossroads of June as a muse and heroine for the heart.
Despite her dominion over the marital bed, Hera still yearns for a faithful partner. Her and Zeus’s honeymoon lasted 300 years, but her husband’s wandering eye became a problem. Zeus’s endless trysts pained Hera, yet mythical tales paint heras the villain. Instead of waging wars against her husband, Hera hurled her misplaced rage against Zeus’s lovers and victims. She became the villain, the scorned wife who was jealous, dramatic, and mad with grief.
But Hera is also our Mistress of the Sky and the maker of the Milky Way galaxy. She is older than Zeus, with traditions that predate the Olympians. In the third gathering at the Crossroads, we’ll walk the spiral of Hera’s sacred wilds. Join us in the Garden of the Hesperides to witness a wedding, a warning, and the mythical ties that bind.
July: The Dark Moon of Artemis
In the shadows of the wildwood, Artemis tracks her prey and nocks a silver arrow.
She draws the string to her ear and wonders if it will be a wayward nymph or a nosy hero that finds their way into her crosshairs this time. Will she transform the human into a bird, a bear, or a tree? As a goddess of fierce, feral independence, Artemis is mostly concerned with her own desires, like running through the trees barefoot and free, and so, without further consideration, she releases her string, and a spell of transformation takes flight.
In the gardens of Artemis, we take the shape of our wildness.
A celestial archer and shapeshifter, Artemis was a child when she went to live with her father atop Mt. Olympus. In exchange for her service, Zeus’s daughter informed the gods she’d wear whatever she liked, go wherever she liked, and possess more titles and epithets than her brother, Apollo. She’d serve as the moon’s messenger, aid mothers during childbirth, and possess a choir of sixty Oceanids as companions. She’d also require twenty river nymphs to care for her hounds and a magical bow and arrow crafted by the Cyclopes. With this bow, Artemis eliminated Olympian offenders and naysayers. She protected the vulnerable and turned her rivals into trees and beasts.
In our fourth gathering, Artemis forges a path through the archetypal wilderness and introduces us to the hunters and the hunted. She speaks about the tree women and other creatures born from her crosshairs. In the gardens of Artemis, the goddess hands us a bow strung with a question: Is transformation a punishment or a privilege?
August: The Dark Moon of Demeter
Demeter holds a sheath of grain in one hand, the other reaches in our direction.
Arm in arm, we tour the goddess’s temple, a garden grown but not fully reaped. The plants are the color of rust, and the flowers bow when we arrive, their faces heavy with smiling seeds.
Demeter is a protectress of mothers, daughters, and the land they call home. She is a reaping goddess, the one who decides the flavor of our harvest, whether opportunities flourish or wither, and the shape of the land when it reawakens each spring. Demeter comes from the Greek ‘meter’ meaning ‘mother,’ and therefore, Demeter is a life-giver and life-taker. She is an Earth Mother and a messenger for seasons and cycles.
In the myth of Demeter and Persephone, after several days of searching for her missing daughter, Demeter stops to rest in the kingdom of Eleusis. She’s grief-stricken and refuses to speak until an old woman dances up to her. Her name is Baubo. Baubo shimmies and frolics, lifts up her skirts, and then divulges a mess of lewd jokes. For the first time since Persephone’s disappearance, laughter erupts from deep within Demeter’s belly, and a spark of hope returns.
Baubo is a belly goddess and a healer. She is a trickster, a teacher, and a spirit of the absurd. In our fifth gathering at the Crossroads, we’ll craft a cornucopia of sacred foolery, good humor, and heart. Under Demeter and Baubo’s guidance, our pens become scythes, each stroke a step in an ancient ritual.
September: The Dark Moon of Persephone
September’s moon welcomes you to the Eleusinian Mysteries. What will you write under the pomegranate tree?
The Eleusinian Mysteries was the most sought-after mystery cult in the ancient Greek world. Also known as the Rites of Demeter, this multi-day ritual involved journeying to a sacred site, consuming a mysterious potion, and watching a reenactment of Persephone’s descent and return from the Underworld.
In this myth (winding back to the 7th century BCE), Hades tears a hole in the earth and abducts the maiden Kore while she’s picking flowers in a meadow. He chariots her to the Underworld and the innocent girl transforms into a queen – Persephone. As Hades’ bride and partner, Persephone gains access to the unseen riches buried in the Underworld. She records the wisdom of harvest season and the shadow months and grows pomegranates beneath the moon. Persephone aids ghosts, guides visitors through the land of the dead, and when spring returns, she reunites with her mother at Eleusis. Persephone and Demeter embrace, and the earth weeps in flowers.
Persephone’s journey illustrates the cycles of nature and the changing seasons, and the knowing that physical death is not an ending but a doorway. Centuries later, the Eleusinian rites remained veiled in secrecy, although Cicero claimed, they seem to be in recognition of the powers of Nature rather than the power of God.
During our sixth and final Crossroads gathering, Persephone initiates us into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Her story is one for seekers, dreamers, and devotees of life’s greatest mysteries.
Learn more about The Crossroads and join the creative coven here.
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I absolutely cannot wait to rejoin the Crossroads, what an amazing line up of goddesses and magic!!