Earth Works: Ceremonies in Tower Time Paperback – Import, 1 May 2018

I received Earth Works: Ceremonies in Tower Time, among a small stack of other lovelies as a gift from one of my best friends, Kaynek. I’ve been spending my evenings in bed either writing, I’m about to finish a Reiki Manual for my first degree students, or reading something good for the soul. I highly recommend if you have the time and space to turn away from your phone and turn a page on something interesting. Sipping tea and reading has much better for my head and body before bed than scrolling under the artificial light of a screen. For the last two weeks I’ve been tucked under covers, dog at my side in the evening lights and the shade of my shawl draped bedside lamp, grounded in salt, selenite, and healing spirits for the room, reading.Earth Works spins story, ritual, and spirit of place into dimensions we can experience in our minds eye, and reflect the work we can do wherever we are. Byron threads the many points of our modern global urgency with attention to these aptly named “Tower Times”, with praise, power, and prose for the Earth and the vital connection we need to make to it: home, that is the part of the planet where we are standing.I needed these thoughts more than I knew.I planned to read a chapter or two a night but I found myself taking notes and reading a bit farther to take in a few last thoughts. Yes, for me, Earth Works was a page turner. Byron pours into the spaces where a lot of simple spells and rituals leave empty by adding meaning through a frankly awesome magickal life. It’s honest, vibrant, gritty, deep, and expressive retelling of memory with so many practical yet poetic invocations is inspiring. The book is ribboned with benedictions that round the magick with salt, soil, and soul.I am looking more deeply at my own rituals now, and I credit Byron’s writing.Maybe my love for this book is where and when I am, but reading these chapters now, for the first time, links many of my own personal thoughts and experiences in a time of environmental transformation, collapse of human systems, and most keenly in the moment that I write this, a global pandemic.Ceremonies in Tower Times breathes life into the ever evolving today by acknowledging the present and what is happening. I think this book was relevant before it was published, and will continue to breathe life into tomorrow’s to come. Part of the bigger benediction in the book is the way that it lives unfinished, and leaves room for us to grow with the work. Encouraging us to dig our hands into the soil and soul, watch the movements of water and wind, and listen for the changes as they come. It’s ancestral, elemental, magickal without asking for any materials. Most ceremonies are with what you have, bodies, communities, words, prayer and poetry. Examples are given from the places Byron has lived, Apalachia, but I feel it asked me look more closely at the map of where I’m at with respect to places of power, and poetry for the rhythm of our land and the way the season happen here in Los Angeles.It brings the magical to the living and the compass around the place where we stand. Magick without the substance of what I feel is the suggested presence of the present place, feels hollow rather than hallowed. Magick while bypassing what is happening all around is almost fantasy. I love the fantastic, I have my science fiction, fantasy and escapes. It most certainly has its cherished place in my life. Any good escape should, as the author reminds us here and there to take a break, retreat and rest during Tower Times is essential. And fantasy has the power to draw us into the mystic while linking us to the present rather than hiding it from us. Byron gives us this while reminding us to check in, with each other, with ourselves, and be more present with our neighbors, not just our Witchfolk.Earth Works: Ceremonies in Tower Time is a book, a memoire, a manual. It’s poetic, meaningful, and I think if you’re looking to navigate the now in a rooted way, a vital read for any magick maker.I love this book. I love this author. I love how her words bring my attention to now, with thought for the future, with a feeling that the me and the land can work better together. Because that is Magick, and I think we need more of that.I highly suggest tabs for your book. If like me you hate to mark in them, little stickies do the trick of bookmarking good passages and favorite rituals. Maybe you will be inspired by honoring the earthworms, or how she sings in the sisters, ancestors, or directions with seasonal and local things, maybe something else, but I know you will find something in here, this beautiful and interesting book.

I have finally found the book to guide me through the upheaval in our world today. Byron's calm voice and grounded wisdom have shown me that there ARE things I can do to affect the community I live in, which gives me hope. Get this book. Read it. Share it. Buy it for your loved ones. Discuss it. Hold circle, or at the least go to your prayer spot that maybe you've nelected recently. Read with an open mind and an open heart. I guarantee you will learn what it is that YOU can do during these Tower times.