Healing Our Aging Bodies

A Companion Ritual for Croning

Witches are healers. That got us into a heap trouble during the middle ages, but otherwise it has mostly been to our benefit. However, even with all our healing magic, we haven’t figured out how to completely stave off the aging process (though we did learn long ago that cackling keeps us young). Yes, we are goddesses (and gods), but we haven’t learned to be immortal.

Beyond the physical changes brought on by years of living on Mama Gaia, our western lifestyle contributes to our aches and pains. Our modern sedentary lifestyle and hours and hours hunched over devices certainly take a toll on our bodies. But we’ve been doing nasty things to our bodies for centuries—corsets, high heels, toxic chemicals to paint our faces—and the toxins build up as we age.

This rite to appreciate our bodies is part of the four part series of rituals to celebrate the crone. It can be performed on its own or in conjunction with the other three rites to create a full day or weekend of cronehood.

Act Three: Taking Care of Our Bodies

The Pains of Aging

Going around the circle, describe the aches and pains of your body. Go ahead, claim that bunion, the stress headaches, the hot flashes, that rash you get in a very personal place after wearing your bra all day long. They are all a part of your experience of your mortal body. Your body is a temple. But sometimes the plumbing leaks.

All respond to each woman’s sharing with empathetic groaning and moaning and wailing. Extra points for melodrama here. We want the body to know we recognize its pain.

Sing (or play recording): Healing Circle Song from Crow Goddess

The Healing Touch

I’m presuming you are performing this ritual with people you love and trust. If not, find a new circle! Because we are about to get a little more intimate than your everyday Presbyterian worship service. As in, I’m going to ask you to touch each other in healing ways. Please mind your pagan ethics: all touch should be with permission of the person receiving.

Some suggestions for healing touch:

1. Massage each other’s shoulders to ease the pain of bra straps and hours hunched over computers or other work.
2. Rub lotion into each other’s hands to honor the work they have done. If you can find lotions scented with mint, rosemary, gardenia or rose, these scents promote healing and wholeness. (Find a local product, pamper yourself with scented lotions, or use a nice unscented lotion and add an essential oil. Witches make do with what’s available. Although I will admit I always have peppermint oil around for life’s little aches and pains.)
3. Massage each other’s feet, honoring the miles they’ve walked and the many places they have been.
4. Fan each other to relieve hot flashes.
5. Smudge each other with a smudge stick to purify the spiritual body.
6. Pour each other cups of hot herbal tea. I love Chamomile with Lavender for a healing ritual. If you want to add a little tipple to the cup, by all means, be my guest. No, really, if you are going to tipple I’d like you to be my guest. Come on over. Bring your own tipple.

Sing: Circle of Healing from Crow Magic

Joys of the Body

Go around the circle again, this time share the wonderful pleasures of your body. Damn the leaky plumbing and the drafts; this temple is still magnificent. Celebrate all the wonderful things your body can do! Appreciate its beauty. Name some cool things your body does for you (such as dancing, knitting, pouring a glass of wine, playing croquet, writing letters to your Congressional Representative, making nasty gestures at appropriate-or inappropriate-moments).

After each has shared, all respond: “Bless you and your beautiful body!” Hooting and cat calls optional.

Grandmother Gifts for Healing

As women of a certain age, we have learned much of this world. We have learned how to heal physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds. And we know the importance of sharing what we’ve learned with each other.

So, we can exchange “grandmother gifts,” thoughtful deeds or materials that might help others ease their pain. These can be physical gifts, like a sprig of a plant; descriptive gifts, like a written note; or metaphoric gifts, i.e. invisible to the naked eye.

Going around the circle, share your gifts: a healing herb, skill, poem, or how-to. (If this ritual is in honor of a New Crone, these gifts should be offered to her. If there isn’t a specific honoree, then the gifts can be offered for the good of all gathered.)

Collect the gifts in a small bag, as simple or elegant as you like.

Sing Deep Well Woman from Crow Magic

The title image for this blog post is the awe-inspiring photograph Centrum-Mystic Stone Circle: a place of healing by Angela Marie Henriette.