It was time to address the notebooks. Filled with code, some readable, others with illustrations, all handbound and made into beautiful packages.

The ideas held in them ancient and incendiary, not to be handled lightly, but to be studied in depth after inner preparation. They were not for everyone, of course, only the adepts or mad ones.

Women’s contribution to these old manuscripts were slight at the time of much of this writing. Relegated to chores of copying and illustration. Even then mostly under the supervision of those who were in the priest caste. But women also had their own language, and it was a written one – pictographic in some countries, or using the alphabet in others, the recipes were noted and handed down from teacher to pupil. The recipes were also spells or were also herbal concoctions for healing, transformation and travel.

Each plant held a story of its origin, personality and purpose. This would be known by the women, so when a plant was mentioned its history and being were activated and came into the story. Plant combinations are like human combinations, creating so many stories, plots, metaphors and outcomes. So many personalities. The children of plant combinations are energies – healers in their own right, but they only exist because of the plants (the earthly plants) combining to produce them – a new being. And these beings are like music. They heal, they sing, they are certain vibrations which we can attune to. they change our bodies and our minds. Even our destinies. All this is contained in the recipe.

Spells and prayers for childbirth, conception, love, marriage, death, menses, menopause, growth, the moon, gardening, animals taming. All the functions of life.

From these stem womens’ wisdom. The wide stride from the hips as she walks across the desert. And then to write notes on this wisdom: to dare to bridge the dangerous gap and enter the abstraction of letterforms. A mashup of worlds simultaneously braided together to create a new DNA.

This happens in a suburban house – ranch-style with a wide back yard fences with all wood flat fencing, and bushes of roses and yew against the fence. A nondescript house, not rustic or special. In fact, intentionally not special at all. The house to the left looks the same as the one on the right, and same again as those across the street. The trees, planted when the subdivision was built, are now tall and green. Their presence extends.

Take one tree: the image on the ground of the shadow of each tree shows just how much space the tree impacts. As the shadow moves in relation to the sun, it is like a sundial. Its dappling shade circles the ground through the duration of a day, and as the seasons change, its imprint changes, extends or shortens, with the angle of the sun. All the trees on the street do this and it is a moire of delight on the roads and sidewalks. Missed by everyone who is going along living their lives. Maybe noticing a squirrel or the new shoots in spring, or the fall leaves on the ground, or the barren branches, with crows. Or hoarfrost magic on a winter morning. An ordinary treelined street.

The seeds of paradise – a paradise garden, she notates it at once.