About

ravenhawks' magazine

Ravenhawks’ Magazine began as a printed news letter in 2002  for about 15 recipients  that offered space for advertisements and gave information on the up coming sabbats. It offered something for everyone. Recipes, craft ideas, monthly horoscopes, correspondences for the sabbats. poetry and book reviews. It grew from that into a 80 page printed magazine that was offered free in several new age stores, it never lasted more than a day or two. This was a one woman job that was rapidly expanding. On the last printing of the magazine in 2004, 150 copies were printed and distributed. As the Editor, printer and chief writer I could not keep up with it so decided until I could find an easier format I would put it on hold for a bit. In 2007 I began the newsletter again but as an e-mail subscription. It has grown into the E-Zine that is currently being published. I am fortunate to have many good writers and editors working with me to make the magazine an exciting experience. We have kept the format of writing about magick, spirituality, conscious living, healing, divination, foods, crafts and decorating ideas that can be Incorporated into the Sabbat celebrations. We have added reviews of artist and musician, books for all ages, games, movies and music that may entertain and inform the young wizard and witch as well as the seasoned practitioner.  We also feature information about clothing, household goods and other things that are manufactured with an eye to being environmentally friendly or as we like to call it eco-friendly. We have also added reviews of business that put their employees, the environment and the community they are in as a priority in developing and running their business.

We welcome subscribers and feedback on how well we are doing. We hope to tempt you to take a peek at our magazine.

Dyanna Wyndesong
Editor-in-Chief

18 thoughts on “About”

  2. Hi Dyanna, thank you so much for visiting my blog and reblogging a post. I really appreciate that. You have an amazing site and content! Looking forward to more 🙂 – Faye

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  5. I’m so glad you found me (through my Halloween story) so that now I’ve found you and your blog. It’s inspirational. Keep it up! I published an e-zine for several years also, with my creative writing students. Loved it, but it became too much work (we had about 150 subscribers also). I now really enjoy blogging my fiction and non-fiction stories on flashes of ‘life.’ This blogging community is so fantastic.

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  8. Pingback: Thank you…Lisa | Retired? No one told me!

  9. Dark Magick

    liminal space, where magic reigns,
    crossroads, crises, cusps….
    In the still of the dark of the moon
    after the revelrie has passed on
    deep, deep into the frozen fields of dreamless sleep
    we, walking, silently, along the riverbed
    breathing in ancient ash of woodsmoke
    breathing out long-growing tears
    to weave ghostly tentacles
    along our path
    take each others’ hand up to our heart
    to pray, to kiss, to whisper
    thus casting an eternal spell.

    Chalice

    An empty chalice, open, to be filled by spirit’s essence, placed according to ritual, waits for its turn.

    Goddess of so many duties, so many eras, so many sorrow-filled worshippers, She feels the tears, the emptiness.

    “I cannot fill you. I can not fill the chalice of emptiness. That is not my gift or purpose. I can offer only what is already within you.”

    Almost quiet, sea sounds, dank odor of lowtide, creeping Spring carries melt of harsher climes. She stokes the fire to remember warmth when the Sun was high and strong, and present. Fire has its own secrets, its own order. As do we all, each our own furnace, nurturing a flame that is destiny. So old, She has been burnt by many flames — blistered, scarred, hardened. She still feels every one, tastes fiery spice, seasonings, marinades. It all moves Her to cackling hysteria. You don’t want the pain of knowing what She endures. You just want soothing stories, fantasies to believe in.

    She understands your fear, and withdraws. No need to escalate sorrow. She is self-contained in her work and close-knit layers of exquisite aeons, sense memories, distilled lives.

    “Was I a woman, then, upon the Earth, feeling sweet breeze of early Spring uplift my being when returning birds and budlings made ready for new beginnings?”

    In the dark, in the cold, enclosed below that hopeful ground, stirrings still find Her. She can not miss the Sun, the Sky, the open fields. They are ingrained in Her, as there and intense as ever they could be. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow. Always all times, all places, all emotions, overwhelm, yet gentle strand by strand amuse. She has no pity. There is only action, including the action of long enthrallment, of stasis within unfolding storms. There is no room for judgment, no excuses. She sees all the rationales, the weak flailing attempts at blame, at justification.

    Laughter takes Her. It makes so much more sense to revel in explosion, expelling, cleansing for exploration, for readiness to take the next step.

    Liminal Spaces

    Twilight, the wee hours,
    the dark of the moon
    liminal spaces,
    places where magic reigns,
    crossroads, crises, cusps.

    There is static on the radio.
    A song
    my voice was singing
    taking flight to surround me,
    the sound of music,
    a comforter of down
    to ease my soul.

    I’ve been trying to define a taste,
    a sense of bittersweet and salt.
    I’ve been trying to find a trace
    a footprint in the desert,
    a sound, a scent,
    a memory.
    I’ve been trying to find a trace of me,
    a piece to fit the puzzle,
    my contribution to the grand design.
    Seeking in the shadows,
    the space between
    myth and matter,
    those places words
    cannot define.
    On those insubstantial plains
    of myst and awe,
    the stuff of dreams,
    threshold of wonder,
    creation begins.

    Samhainic Verse

    Caught up in my Demeter role
    I brought winter to my grieving soul.
    Numbing ice, concealing snow,
    No nurturing soil for seed to sow.
    Longing to sleep in dreamless haze,
    Aching for peace from ravaging rage,
    I ask to serve, to give to others’ lives
    what I am bereft of.
    But the gods in their wisdom,
    send me to fools,
    wicked, nasty fools who mock me
    knowing not my sorrow, knowing not what I disguise.
    Hiding behind hysterically blinded eyes,
    I prepare for my journey deep below.

    Others have travelled this path before me
    and lived to tell the tale,
    strengthened by their devotion
    to their stolen loves.
    In a bubble of my own clouded atmosphere,
    I shall fear no evil.
    Blood coagulates around my heart
    allowing no feeling
    but deadening pain.
    My lips are bound.
    My tearducts desiccated by vacuum.
    Thus am I prepared.
    I am not prepared at all
    for what I may find.
    But neither do I care.
    This is all about desperation.
    This is all about emotion so intense
    that I am beyond response;
    there is nothing left to feel.
    Step by step
    I descend.

    Something about a veil.
    But more like
    a brick wall —
    there may be explosives
    hidden behind that solid image.
    It seems unyielding.
    There are glimmers,
    minor crumblings.
    At times the bricks seem to shift.
    Unexplained.
    If I let myself,
    if I am very quiet,
    molecules move silently,
    disarming resistence,
    there will appear a stair
    to my senses of solid granite,
    wet with the drip of
    melting ice.

    Treacherous.
    A misstep could kill me,
    falling all the way,
    breaking stair by stair.
    I must take care.
    Make careful measure:
    What is the true worth
    of what I might find?

    My weight is unsteady.
    Gaping below —
    a colorless vortex,
    a lake of emptiness
    sucking in all sensation.
    It is enormous, all-consuming.
    My salvation.
    I leap.
    Overwhelmed,
    I am sucked in and through,
    breathlessly,
    silently,
    alone in the Universe
    of silent, inexorable,
    intensity.
    Pulled into an event horizon
    a singularity
    another, nether realm.

    Every act
    Every thought
    Every dream
    Every wish
    Everyone I’d lost
    at every stage of
    our shared experience.
    Every sin.
    Here they live,
    each acting out it’s own story
    in a cavernous space,
    of encapsulated diaramas.
    I don’t sense my body
    — only a vague weight
    of uncertain dimensions.
    It is time released —
    all happening at once eternally.
    No choice but to let it wash over me,
    wave after chaotic, metaphoric wave.
    Sound/light/fragrance/taste/touch/emotion
    craftily embodied in exquisite, endless pain.

    Is there a voice here?
    Is there a way to make it talk
    in reasonable tones?
    Is there a way to unravel the senses,
    to frame neat packets of sense
    and talk with them reasonably?
    Is there a rationale within which
    to deal with the feelings,
    to put them in place,
    rational and calm and dignified?
    Is it too much to ask?
    And of whom?
    There is no guide, no authority,
    none but me, infinitely mirrored.
    What will become of all these “I”s
    staring at me, demanding
    retribution, stark, cold justice
    Just Ice and Cold and bitter, stinging snow
    to wrap my frozen soul in hope of sleep
    while Nazgul track my dreams.

    The innocent must bear the sacrifice.
    Power too dangerous to the wise
    and power-enabled,
    that would overtake their skills,
    turn them to evil purpose,
    may be safely given to innocent hands, destroying
    only the sacrificial lamb.
    The wise, in their compassion,
    may suffer unhealing wounds
    of painful knowledge;
    but the innocent are destroyed,
    pitted inside out by corrosion,
    unable to fight,
    unable to understand.
    I am not wise, nor innocent.
    I look into the battalion of
    mirrored images
    and am left just short of
    destruction,
    picking at scabs,
    unwilling to heal
    my agony of remorse
    and betrayal.
    I didn’t know,
    couldn’t know,
    no one told me.
    They said:
    “Do what you are told.
    It will all be alright in the end.”
    But whose end, right for whom?

    What is the treasure I have come here seeking?
    That sweet, sparkling child,
    who played upon the hillside,
    picking flowers
    to weave into our hair —
    I didn’t mean to leave her unprotected.
    I left her in the care of trusted friends
    while I went off to earn our daily bread.
    The screaming
    in my heart
    as she was taken,
    the shattering reverberations,
    I’d never known such pain.
    It stopped me in my tracks,
    overcame my senses,
    never leaves me, never lessens,
    though in time, like anything, I guess
    recedes into background noise
    that I may hear my orders,
    do as duty demands.

    But, duty to what demands?
    The gods,
    my very brethren,
    I realize, have betrayed me.
    Cut to my womanly core
    to drink my blood in bacchanalia.
    The mirror images smile grotesquely.
    I am sickened,
    brought to my humbled knees,
    not in obeisance.
    I have not the strength nor will
    to stand.
    Perhaps I shall dwell here in hell,
    unmoving,
    unresponsive,
    bleeding out,
    pale and ashen.
    Serving them no more.
    No bread upon the table.
    Just Ice and snow.

    II.

    “Mommy,” she cried, dead eyes open,
    awash in tears,
    “I didn’t mean to leave you.
    I didn’t know I would be gone so long.”

    My desiccated heart bathes gladly
    in those soothing tears.
    I am brought back to my journey.
    The mirror images have softened.
    Every face, every form, every failure,
    every sin
    I can’t quite grasp why it would matter,
    how these essences
    combine with mine.
    Perhaps I am hallucinating.
    Perhaps none of us
    exist at all.

    Baby girl, I have always loved you.
    Hated you for dying.
    Hated life and death for dividing us.
    Hated, blamed,
    damned to hell,
    all those mirror images,
    all those wraiths and wretched
    wayward souls who pass me by.
    I have loved and lost and
    lonely wandered.
    And wondered why.
    I hold you close as
    I look into the mirror, deeply,
    drink of the magick of lethe.
    Falling, gently, easily, even leisurely,
    letting go and drinking in,
    all that Hell allows
    now that we create the rules.

    Caught up in my Hecate role,
    I feel the power of my soul.
    Rain and wind and ice and snow
    I feel you all from here below,
    and revel in elemental energy.
    I am the wind, the seas, the fire
    I am all will and all desire.
    It is me you love, and me you hate —
    I am the master of your fate.
    Yet I am hidden from all sight,
    beyond the reach or need of light.
    I have found my peace,
    my place, my voice.
    Take heed, O’ mortal,
    create your choice.
    Create it every day.

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