The Heart Breaks Open…

…to be held by more.
…to hold more.
Love. Truth. Wisdom.

I live where I live because of a pomegranate tree. Nearly three years ago my now ex-partner and I decided to move to so-called Sydney, the largest city in colonial Australia. We had been living in another capital city, in another state, and we both knew this was coming. Spells were cast, Goddesses were petitioned, Spirits we both held in common consulted… and it fatefully led us to move to the place sometimes called Eora, a Dharug language word which may mean something like, people of this place. The Land and the People are one, but Aboriginal people call this deep truth Country.

So really I live here because of British colonialism and I still live here because of that. I acknowledge that devastating reality. It is true and its effects are everywhere, borne mainly of course by the First Peoples here and the lands, rivers, seas, skies, kin that they take care of and tend to. Their Law, their Country.

Pomegranate trees are of course not native. I haven’t researched this, but I can imagine they came to this continent with Italian and Greek immigrants. So many neighbourhoods in colonial cities like Sydney and Melbourne are filled with fruit trees cultivated in the Mediterranean region. I don’t know who or why someone planted a pomegranate tree in the cute garden along the side of our apartment block, but someone did. And this is why I live where I live. My partner who came to inspect the apartment was of course shown around the whole block and commented to me that he knew this apartment would be for us because of that tree. Each time I go to hang my laundry on the clothesline out back, I look at that pomegranate tree and I smile, sometimes wistfully, sometimes deeply enthusiastically.

I have a deep reverence for pomegranates which began with a reverence for the Goddess called Persephone. She appeared in my life in 2004. Over twenty years ago. And this coming June Solstice of 2025 will mark twenty years of dedication to Her. There is a story - which many of you may know - that Persephone ate pomegranate seeds (perhaps three or four or six) and for this reason for as many months as there were seeds She would need to be in the Underworld with Hades who had abruptly taken Her there. I too have eaten those seeds. Maybe you have too.

I live where I live because of colonisation, because of a pomegranate tree, because of Persephone. I live where I live because my partner then, who I loved so deeply, got a good job here in Gadigal and Bidjigal Country. I live where I live because of a choice I made to prioritise that intimacy and the deepening of that relationship. I live where I live because of fate, synchronicity, luck, and choice - all forces that I weave and conspire with as a witch and ecstatic spirit-worker.

My life transformed drastically three years ago this month. There was a break-up, my heart broke apart, broke open… I wrote about some of this journey with love and heartbreak in The Witch Belongs to the World, my seventh book which came out in 2023. I leaned so hard into the pain, into the reality, into the truth. One of my closest friends at the time - who was fatefully able to sleep in my bed next to me that night after he left - told me in that same month, maybe even days later, that she was aware of how much I was accepting what was happening to me, looking right at it, going right into it. She said many people would not do that, would bargain, would beg, would fall into illusion or story. The truth was the truth as I saw it. Someone I didn’t consciously want to leave, left. My future was decided for me in a moment. Except that of course it’s all fate, synchronicity, luck, and choice. This happens all the time. I have left people too. I have betrayed friends. I have walked away. I have cut ties. And I have had all of that happen to me too. This happens all the time in the seasons and cycles of love.

My heart has become both softer and fierce over the last three years. Interestingly, the magic of the heart broken open to hold more had been a spell I was weaving for several years before any of this would end up going down. Perhaps it was my previous relationship break-up that really taught me about this. After that relationship transformation I moved states, cities, once more, and new love quickly arose. But not just new love, new conflicts. Choices always bear their fruits, consequence is ever present in all things. So often we blame fruits.

If I know anything about choices and consequences it’s because magic has taught me about connection, about change, and about truth. And the truth is, each of us is has a heart and that heart is considered to be the centre of our spirit. It’s considered to be the core of who we are and might become. The heart of the matter is that we love. We love, we may even fall in love, we may even experience heartbreak - almost certainly. We love and in that love we may grow wise and through that wisdom we may encounter truth. And this magic of truth challenges and invites me to stay present, stay with it, lean in, dive deeper… of course it makes sense that we dissociate when the truth is traumatic, that we take breaks and get distracted, that we need time to imagine other fantasies, or become wrapped in self-deception and delusion… but eventually we will come back to that truth, that truth will knock on our door.

We’re in a time right now in which it is extravagantly clear that the power-brokers of empire and corporation do not honour truth, pray to truth, invoke truth… which to me reveals that they have not allowed themselves to grow wise, which to me means they have not surrendered to heartbreak, to falling in love and where that takes us, and to the tender-fierce and daily love of turning up to be in kinship with each other. There’s a discipline here, not just a phenomenon, and how cultures reverence and relate to the Love tells us a whole lot about how the systems within function.

In Wildwood Witchcraft we say that the Lady is possessed of three things, or perhaps that She desires three things of us - they are named Love, Truth, and Wisdom. It is also said, sung, experienced, ritualised - in our lore and mythos - that these three things together reveal the intrinsic Beauty in and as all things. Sometimes this may even be called Holy Dread or Terrible Beauty. The Lady of the Wildwood is a Goddess who has come to me, many times, with a sword held to my heart. She is a Mighty Spirit unto Herself, She is a Queen of Witches, She is a Raven Queen, a Wolf Mother, a Sabbatic Empress, a Holy Lover of the Infinite. And She is a Mystery.

And this Mystery continues to remind me that the way to Truth is through Love. Maybe you know other words and names for that.

May we be Wise in that Love, may we be Lovers of that Truth. May we blossom as the Beauty of this Cosmos, awe-full to behold.

I live where I live, in the heart of things, because of an Ancient Truth… that deep within me, the core of who and what I am, is a Profound Beauty and Awe that links me to you.

I swear it.

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