Podcast Episode 2 is Here!

Unty Key's Okie Magic Podcast Episode 2: The Saga of Rogue the Red of Neck. Download directly or through Spotify, Player FM or check your favorite podcast source. In this episode, your Unty Key sits down with Rogue of Rogue Tradition to talk about our own love affairs with the land, football, All-Father, and being "redneck pagan". Here is how to find her and the slew of other things I said I'd give links to:You can find Rogue Tradition on FB, Etsy, and Instagram and email at aroguetradition@gmail.com.

Also mentioned:
The NE Oklahoma Pagans FB Group
New Moon Rising with Pax at Anchor, spotify or others OR find him on FB
Fireside Chat with Eimear #23 (with Shanda!) from the OBOD channel
Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures by Brian Burkhart on Amazon

Okie Wheel of the Year: Feb 22 2021

How can we use the Wind?

An Oklahoma Sky

Finally the Sunrise!

Spring is back in town! After that 12 days of historic cold, it was nice to get back to my morning walk routine and see the sunrise. Some systems refer to the spring equinox as the sunrise of the year, and Imbolc as the growing glow on the pre-dawn horizon. That makes logical sense to me, but I love watching the sun rise during the Imbolc season. The golden sun melts down bare tree limbs and across the last of the autumn’s grasses just as spring slowly spreads across the land. This week we’ll reach the midpoint between Imbolc and the Equinox. The sunrise seems to pick up speed with each day closer to its eastern center on the horizon. The winds also seem to pick up speed at this time of year, so let’s talk about the magic of the Okie Wind.

Wind lore around the world seems to me heavily influenced by whether a culture is coastal or more desert, and of course sailors and, more recently, pilots may have their own relationship to wind. Hippocrates had much to say on how wind affects health, some winds bringing disease and others relief.  Some animist traditions have names for different wind spirits. My OBOD druid tradition treats air as the element of the east, intellect, and clarity, represented by the hawk. Other traditions place the air element differently and may have a different relationship with air. In Oklahoma, our winds predominantly blow north and south assisted by the northerly or southerly wobble of the jet stream. An excessively exciting jet stream plunge to the south was responsible for bringing those 12 days of subfreezing temps all the way from the artic into Texas last week. The jet stream is more typically the cause of our rollercoaster weather, making Imbolc a time of rotating warm and cold, north and south winds, which become more southerly as we ease past the equinox into April.

How can we use this magically? Modern witchcraft makes use of moon phases. The wind has its own energy and its own, less predictable cycles. The north wind might blow in cold winter weather or lovely, cooling summer rain. The south wind may drive back the winter or fill the sky with orange dust from New Mexico and spread wildfire. Sometimes the south wind blows in spring thunderstorms and refreshing north wind marks their passing. The winds’ moods and energies are as varied as the weather itself and they are as strong and influential here as the sea is to the coasts. The sky is our sea. But unlike the stories and songs of the sea, there is no source to consult about the magic of Oklahoma wind. We have to rely on intuition. Different traditions use moon phases differently, some using the full moon for manifestation and others for clearing. The wind also has differing effects on people. The same wind may blow hope and vitality for one person, and cleansing or endings for another. While we can know moon phases by consulting a calendar without ever looking at the sky, wind energies are felt. We feel the wind on our skin and its moods in our spirit. How can you use the powerful Oklahoma wind in your own practice?

February sunrise on winter-ravaged cottonwoods

Okie Wheel of the Year: Feb 15, 2021

Experiencing Imbolc in Oklahoma

Blooming Daffodils Feb 12 2017

"All the land is wrapped in winter.
The air is chilled and frost envelopes the Earth.
But Lord of the Sun,
Horned one of animals and wild places,
Unseen you have been reborn
of the gracious Mother Goddess,
Lady of fertility.
Hail Great God!
Hail and welcome!"
Wicca A Guide For The Solitary Practitioner(pages 130 - 131) by Scott Cunningham

bare feet in hammock Feb 11 2017

Oklahoma's average high temp in February is 55 degrees (F), with days reaching nearly 70 as frequent as days dipping closer to 32. On Feb 11, 2017, Oklahoma City hit 88 degrees and a record high was set in the west when Magnum recorded 99 degrees. In February! Add that to the fact that February is our second-driest month on average, right behind January, and it is easy to see how most years in Oklahoma it can be difficult to connect with the picture of Imbolc described in the words of Scott Cunningham above.  In 2021, we're already a week into sub-freezing temps and a historic winter storm that still has more snow to drop, and I can understand a little better how our northern European friends experience Imbolc.

This year's druid grove Imbolc ritual on Jan 30 had much the same weather as always: the sun shone, the wind blew, we were able to have the ritual outdoors even though we always prepare to hold it indoors in case of inclement weather. Plague precautions aside, everything went as usual. We called to Brigid "Come back, Lady, and bring the Spring!", and it felt as if she already had. In past years Imbolc has been the beginning of Outdoor Adventures Season for me. We've gone hiking near Quartz Mountain, Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge, amd even Turner Falls. When the sun returns I'm eager to go out and play before the insects return. Some of my favorite camping trips have been in February. In warm, wet years, the forsythia blooms and asparagus emerges in February, and plum and peach blossoms aren't far behind. The redbuds might bloom before the equinox.

This has been Imbolc for me: instead of a blanket of snow, a blanket of last season's pale grass, instead of delicate green and white snowdrop flowers, sunny yellow daffodils and forsythia, instead of the last furious gasp of Cailleach Bheur, Queen of Winter, a rollercoaster of wind and wild temp swings as the Spring gets wound up for storm season. Not so much this year. I've found myself staring blankly at snow through the window, barely comprehending the numbers on the outdoor thermometer. With all my usual plans derailed, I have time to sit with the idea that this is how a large percentage of the northern hemisphere experiences Imbolc. All those poems that I skimmed because they didn't fit with what I see out my window begin to resonate. I've done all I can to prepare for yet another kind of natural disaster. Now I can slow my excited energy and sit with spring in a way not normally accessible to me. May we all survive the cold. Come back, Lady, and bring the Spring!

Snowy Cedars Feb 15 2021

Okie Wheel of the Year: Feb 8, 2021

OK Mesonet's Braum's Def-Con Ice Meter

Imbolc is a season of fire and ice in Oklahoma. Today, the fire of Brigid makes way for ice. Freezing fog and drizzle led to horrendous multi-car pileups during morning rush hour traffic in Oklahoma City, while the northern and western parts of the state are at “Go Ahead, Make My Day” on the OK Mesonet “Braums Emergency Def-Con Meter”. OK Mesonet is one of my favorite nerdy weather resources. The mesonet is a series of weather information collection towers around the state at much finer detail in space and time than other resources. The Oklahoma Climatological Survey processes the data. Together they offer many kinds of services to meteorological, agricultural, and other industries, and most importantly for me, much of this information is available online! There are graphs of averages over time that I look at when thinking about the Okie Wheel of the Year. There is current data about soil moisture and weather conditions useful for gardening. My favorite is The Ticker. The Ticker "where hot air means more than temperature" mixes detailed weather analysis with good ol’ Okie humor. This is my preferred way to get weather forecast information!

Another type of information available from the Mesonet is about fire danger. This is useful to those planning prescribed burns or managing wildfires, but it’s also useful to me when I’m deciding whether to center my ritual around a burning fire pit, jarred candles, or maybe just stick to smoke and water. Y’all know that wind can change fast and conditions outside your window might not be the same as those out at the lake. During Imbolc the golden grass of autumn gets whiter and more brittle right before the new greenery takes over, and the wind begins the process of whipping itself up to spring speeds. The moment sun hits mud, fire danger can go within hours from Low to Extremely High. This is where we are right now: fire danger is low, but freezing drizzle and a snowflake doesn’t bring much moisture. If the warmer air comes back at high speed we could have fire.

Here I sit, belly full of fresh Irish soda bread, watching ice form on the tips of the redbuds, staring down the barrel of a potentially record-breaking cold snap. Oklahoma’s winter wheat fields sit, full of more soil moisture that usual this time of year, in that mystical (to me) stage where cattle can graze the fields after planting but before jointing. The crop is reportedly doing well, and so am I. This sounds like a good time to remember the lessons I learned from the dark stillness of Yule. Nothing left to do but wait out this season of fire and ice.

Rose Rocks and the Kayax

Long ago, there lived in the land giants known as Kayax. We don’t know how many of them there were exactly, maybe three, maybe more. They were here before humans and even before trees, so the stories we do have are told by the cicadas and birds, redcedars, rivers, and stones, as passed down to them from their grandfathers. Stories tell that the Kayax generally keep to themselves because they like to arrange the land exactly to their own liking, and no two like it exactly the same. They spend their days carrying rocks, stirring the wind, and sifting the rains organizing everything just so. One such Kayax lived in the hills just east of here during a time when a sea stretched all the way almost to her door. The dry land was rocky with ferns and grandfathers of redcedar, but it had not ever seen grass yet nor even a flower. The Kayax piled up their gray rocks into the eastern hills and carved the creeks in the west to keep the high tide’s red mud in its orderly places. One day, a sea giant swam in with the tide and saw the Kayax on the shore. He was shy and unused to talking to the land-dwellers, so he watched from behind a distant wave. He watched her for days upon days, never getting the nerve to interfere, and in her focus she never noticed him off in the water. He admired her dedication and her hard work and eventually fell in love. Not knowing how to get her attention, he decided to leave her a gift. He went deep into the red mud at the bottom of the sea and created the first Rose Rock. He snuck up near the shore at high tide and left it for her.

When the Kayax came, they immediately noticed there was a rock where they had not put a rock. It was small, and curiously shaped. No one had ever seen any flower before, much less a rose, so this rock was especially interesting. They picked it up carefully, squeezed it a little, shook it a little, tasted it a little (all solid geological investigation methods still used today), and tried to decide where it needed to be. Tucking it into an apron pocket, they went back to work carving a nearby creek and thinking about the curious rock. The sea giant watched all this and was delighted that she seemed to like his gift. So he began making more. He left them here and there, under the moonlight just a giant’s arm’s reach up the shoreline. The Kayax gathered them up one by one, but piled them in a secret storeroom because their odd shape and curious properties made them stand out awkwardly in her rock arrangements.

The Kayax never noticed the Sea Giant. He made thousands upon thousands of gifts, but the Kayax never cast their eyes out to sea to wonder where they came from. Eventually the waters themselves decided to concede the land to the Kayax’s arrangement and the Lonely Sea Giant slowly sought his friendship elsewhere. As the waters receded, the drying mud began to crack. Larger and larger cracks along the former seabed. With more land to hand, the Kayax had more work to do and, still not knowing what to make of the Rose Rocks, she began using them to fill in some of the cracks, and sealing them in with red sand. Eventually the Kayax forgot about them all together. And that’s why, today, if you search in the right places you might still be able to uncover these mysterious gifts from a lonely sea giant.

Okie Wheel of the Year: Feb 1, 2021

Frosty Tallgrass at Imbolc Sunrise

Happy Imbolc/St. Brigid’s Day!

Imbolc and Lughnasadh are the seasons that inspired me to really explore how the Wheel of the Year works in Oklahoma. Today, pictures of snowdrop flowers with their bright green leaves and drooping white heads, will fill the internet with messages of welcoming spring. But when I step onto my front porch I see nothing of the sort. I don’t think I’ve ever seen real-live snowdrops. This morning, the yellowed tops of resilient tallgrass were covered in thick frost sparkling in the morning sun. Every year, one of my daffodils blooms well before the others poke buds out of the ground, and it always freezes. It is the sign that we have at least one more hard freeze left, but then spring will be on it’s way.

Frozen Early Daffodil

These are the things I see outside this time of year. There is so much more to know about our seasons.  The wheel of the year is solar, but also partly based on agricultural seasons and seasonal weather cycles. I am not a farmer. I might plant a garden, and I do get to see lambs and kids as I drive by neighboring fields sometimes, but otherwise I am disconnected from our agricultural cycles. Luckily, even farmers are on the internet! The Oklahoma Farm Report has data and news relevant to the entire state’s agricultural industry. Market reports and legislative news can be tedious reading, but glancing through summaries gives a picture of how the seasons, weather, climate, and land interact and affect our crops and the lives of those who work them. There are also articles about work our state’s farmers and ranchers do in conservation, research, advocacy, and education. Farmers are sometimes seen as the enemy of those working for environmental protection and climate crisis, but Oklahoma’s farmers have intimate knowledge of these issues.

This is the first installment of a weekly series on the Okie Wheel of the Year. I’ll be introducing sources of information and noting seasonal changes to get a more broad picture than we can see outside our own front doors. The Oklahoma Farm Report top news headlines over the past week say everyone has their eyes on hay stores, the status of wheat fields, cotton and soybean sales, and looking forward to spring calving.

The beginning of a month means data gatherers release monthly summaries.  Mesonet summaries tell us that January averaged a tiny bit wetter than unusual, and drought conditions eased up in the west. They predict a slightly cool but average wet February.  But there are predictions of a drier March and April with increased wildfire danger. This means that right now conditions are good for slowly watching as greenery peeks out from beneath the yellow grasses, but don’t pack up the sweaters yet. As we plan our gardens, be aware that a dry spring means extra watering.

This cold season is also a good time to think about mental health. Issues like low sunlight, isolation and loneliness of winter, anxieties for the future affect us all this time of year. Farming communities also recognize the need for resources such as the Plains Cotton Cooperative Association's Farm Stress-Help and Hope program.  

I can't wait to see what next week brings!