Nostalgia.

The literal first thing I ever purchased at the woo-woo shop (itself rife with nostalgia and sentimentality for me) was a package of really pretty pricy incense. I didn't want to buy witch stuff strait out, man. I had to ease into it with incense and a few crystals at the ripe old age of 'teen-and-terrified. I had to ask a few groundwork questions, and make myself a known entity before I laid out my cards.

Being a poor kid who would get shouted down at the mere whiff of incense burning it became a secret, sparing, indulgence. I only burnt a little at a time, and only rarely. I burnt incense like most teenagers smoke pot - with a towel crammed under the door and all the windows open.  Incense was broken out for the most important rituals, for the most sacred moments.

Well, recently at another occult shop. I saw they had some incenses that came with mini oils. Being a fiend for miniature vials of oil I had to have it. The second I lit it up I was transported back to my youth, the scent was the same as that first package.

I was taken back to my late night forays into witchery, to setting lights in the high, small, octagonal window over my bed (I'd somehow gotten the idea in my head that the window, being neither indoors nor outdoors was a really nice liminal place to worm things into)- to being affronted by and conquering a malevolent entity.

I was taken back to what I'm sure most people think of as the onset of personal freedom in their teens. Being socially isolated, my freedom took place in dark woods under a hooded robe rather than in shopping malls or movie theatres...(that's a thing people still do, right?).

When I started in on my 30 days of reconnecting (it's been more than 30 days and I'm only 14 posts in) it brought me back to a time when anything was possible. When the ideas that came out of my head didn't require research to validate them (experience worked just fine), but also to the amazing rush of discovering that the ideas from my head were the right ideas after all.

So tonight I jammed the window open, stuffed a towel under the door and shared an entire stick of the incense with my familiars. Something I'd never have done back then in the days of 1/2" at a time, a hasty snuff-out and a quiet prayer that no one would come fussing.  I shared with my childhood self.

I reconnected and remembered.